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Alone, he stands in the middle of the room, surrounded by dark walls with nothing but a dim light bulb hanging from the ceiling right above him. A man, with light brown skin and black hair that messily reach his shoulders, blankly stares at the light. His beard, full and untamed, has spots of dirt and grime. He wears glasses that frame his deep blue eyes and short eyelashes. A dirty white labcoat overlaps his tucked-in black shirt and ripped blue jeans. Thinking deeply, he tries to put together the events that had led up to his captivity. He was just a scientist who was trying to find a cure for the outbreak, but the government thought otherwise. They thought that it was he and his team who had spread the disease even further. The government was looking for someone to blame to ease the minds and voices of the quickly depleting population, and who better than the only remaining scientist left who had anything to do with their project?
“..on! …mson! Samson!” The scientist takes his fixed gaze away from the light bulb and looks towards the reinforced door. It was too dark to see on the other side of the room, but he had heard the heavy clank of metal, indicating one of the guards had opened the slot on the door. “Are you ready to talk?” Samson keeps quiet for a moment. They’ve kept him here in this dark room for four days, deprived of food and water. Being a scientist, Samson knows what deprivation of food and water does to the human body. He was dizzy and fatigued; simple everyday tasks became difficult to do.
“What’s the point?” Samson replies calmly with a dry mouth. “I’ve answered all your questions, but you will not even hea-” the door slot slams with that same heavy clank of metal. He sighs deeply and walks towards the wall behind him, slowly, with his hand outreached trying to feel for the wall. He sits down in the darkness and stares back at the dim light. He then closes his eyes and thinks about his wife, for it was the only thing keeping him sane and alive. Her beautiful face and the memories they shared; he must survive.
He had sent his wife, Emily, to France after assembling the team of scientists who were trying to find a cure. He sent her there in fear that his wife would join those who have been infected by the disease, but that was a couple of months ago. He missed her so; she was the only person he had left in his life. Everyone he knew was gone. His neighbors, his parents, and the old couple from flower shop. The flower shop he thought.
Samson remembers buying his wife flowers for their anniversary about a month before the outbreak. He and his wife were very good friends with the old, lovely couple that ran the flower shop. The old couple would tell Samson that he and his wife reminded them so much of themselves when they were younger, and that Samson was taking the right path to a happy life.
Samson holds back tears as he starts to reminisce about the day he had gone in the flower shop for his anniversary.
* * * * * *
“Samson, your wife is a very lucky woman!” a cheery voice cries.
“Thank you for your kind words Mrs. Ramos, but it’s nothing much. Really!” Samson exclaims, blushing.
“Oh, nonsense! You come here every week. You always have something for her to show your love. These aren’t just words, Samson. This is the truth,” insists Mrs. Ramos with a delighted smile. She was wearing her favorite red flower apron and a pink dress under it.
“Look who we have here!” blasts a voice excitedly; powerful, but calming to Samson. “So what will you be getting this time ‘round Samson? Same thing as last week?”
“Good afternoon Mr. Ramos!” answers Samson. “Actually, I was thinking about getting her something a little different today. It’s our anniversary and I wanted to get her something extra special.”
“Ahh. I’ve got just the thing for you, Samson,” Mr. Ramos says. He wore a white polo with khakis and had a smile that never seemed to leave his face. “Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back,” Mr. Ramos makes his way to the back of the store. Within a minute, Mr. Ramos comes back out with the most brilliant bouquet Samson has ever seen. The flowers are vivid, exotic, everything he could’ve imagined; Samson was speechless. “We got these a few days ago,” Mr. Ramos continues. “We saved them just for you.”
“W-wow. This is just amazing! It’s perfect, thank you! How much wo-”
“Stop right there,” Mr. Ramos interrupts. “Now who said anything about you having to pay for this?”
“Oh no, please. Let me pay for this, it must be expensive!” Samson pleads. Mr. Ramos looks at his wife with a smile. She smiles back, and Mr. Ramos hands the bouquet to Samson.
“Think of it as our present to you and Emily. Happy anniversary.”
* * * * * *
Samson opens his eyes. He realizes that he let out a few tears after all. What a lovely couple. He hoped that he and his wife would be just as happy as they were when the time came for them to be their age. He closes his eyes again and imagines the old couple being so full of joy. A light smile, serving as a glimmer of happiness, falls within his tired expression. But soon, it fades. He had almost forgotten what happened.
When the outbreak came, Samson checked on the old couple to see if they were okay, but was instead met with an image he will never forget. The vision of the lovely couple was soon replaced with the horrifying picture of their half-eaten bodies and ridiculously angled bones. Memories of that day start to fill Samson’s mind; he remembers everything.
* * * * * *
“Mr. Ramos! Mrs. Ramos! Hello?! Is anyone here?!” Samson paces quickly outside of the flower shop. He hears the piercing sounds of sirens and alarms as he calls out for the couple. The Diseased have reached their city and Samson wanted to bring them with him and his wife to someplace safe. He tries the front door of the flower shop, but it was locked. Hastily, he goes around the building hoping to find another entrance. A few seconds later, he comes upon the back door of the shop. He places his hand on the doorknob and feels relief when it twists open.
Samson enters the back room carefully and starts calling out for the couple again in a calmer tone. “Mrs. Ramos? Are you here? We need to get out of this city,” Samson feels as if he was talking to himself, but he couldn’t assume no one was here. As he walks through the room carefully, a foul stench befalls his sense of smell. He covers his nose and looks around the room for the source. His eyes search around the room and soon meet the sight of a dried bouquet of flowers on a shelf across him. It was the same set of flowers that the old couple had given to Samson and his wife as an anniversary gift. Samson’s motivation for his search grows, remembering everything the old couple has done for them.
Finding nothing else in the room, Samson makes his way towards a door that leads to a small hallway and calls out again, “Mr. Ramos? Mrs. Ramos? It’s Sa-” suddenly, his heart drops. Samson turns the corner and sees the Diseased, three of them to be exact, crouching, feeding at the end of the hallway. Samson goes quiet and feels true fear. He has never seen one before, but he knows that they were the Diseased. Never taking his eyes off of them, Samson starts to walk backwards into the previous room. After a few steps, the fear he feels grows even larger as thoughts race about who the Diseased could’ve been devouring.
Determined to find out, Samson halts his retreat and starts to move forward again. Sweating and shaking, he quietly makes his way towards the creatures. There were two rooms that lay before him: one was a few feet away on his left and the other was near the Diseased on his right. He entered the first room he encountered and put his back against the wall where the door was hinged. He carefully peeked out and calculated how far the next room was. Silently he inched closer and closer to the next door. Suddenly and quickly, one of the Diseased jerks its head up. Samson stops dead in his tracks and holds his breath. The Diseased keeps its posture and sniffs the air while the other two continue with their feast. Not daring to alarm them, Samson stands still and makes no sound. He listens to them eat; the gushing of blood, the breaking of bones, and the tearing of muscles soon fill his ears. Finally the Diseased went back to its meal. Samson keeps his position for a few more seconds before moving again. More cautiously, he slowly makes his way to the other room.
When inside, Samson puts his back against the wall again and sits down on the floor. He takes deep, quiet breaths as he looks down, holding his fore head with both of his hands. He realizes that the foul stench he smelled from before filled this room. Regaining his initial curiosity, he stands up with the intent of searching the room. From first glance, he had already known that this was the storage room. Discreetly, he ruffles through boxes and little trinkets that obscure his path. Using his sense of smell, he attempts to sniff out whatever he was looking for. Shelves, reaching the roof, stand in the middle of the room. A flickering light in the top corner of the room gives momentary visions of the mess scattered around. During the intervals that the light shines, Samson quickly looks around for anything worth looking into. By the sixth time he tries, he spots flies hovering around in the corner of the room across the light bulb.
Samson makes his way towards the flies, making sure he is not making too much noise. Once he reaches the corner, he slowly stands up and looks closely. His expression quickly changes from curios to horrified as he faces the dead bodies of the old couple. He falls to his knees with an awestruck look as he stares at them. Their arms have been broken in many ways and directions. Mr. Ramos, wearing his blue overalls and white shirt, had his neck broken and dangling. His stomach, along with Mrs. Ramos, was robbed of its belongings. What was left of their intestines hung from the holes created by the Diseased. Mrs. Ramos, wearing her red flower apron and white gloves, no longer had a right arm and only had half of her other. A deep color of blood covered their exposed bones. Their legs, once full of fat and muscle, were nothing more but leftovers for the rats.
Samson was stuck in a shocked state. The smell, though stronger, no longer bothers him. The situation was too much for him to comprehend. Suddenly the old couple groans quietly. Both have a quick two-second spasm and groan again, but louder. Snapping out of his trance, Samson shakes his head and gets back up again while backing away. Tears roll down his face as the old couple start to move, having difficulty because of their broken bodies. They look helpless and desperate; Samson feels a heavy sadness in his heart, knowing that he can do nothing for them now. “I’m sorry,” he silently says with regret and walks away.
Only a step away from stepping into the hall, he hears the Diseased around the corner snarl; Samson had completely forgotten about them. Being aware of his surroundings again, he takes precautions for his escape. He peeks out once and takes a quick glance at the Diseased. Sneakily, he walks away from them and into the first room. He heads towards the door and passes by the dried flowers, never seeing them again.
As soon as Samson steps outside, he shuts the door close and falls down on the ground, completely breaking apart. He sobs, cursing the infection and everything religious. He pounds the ground with his fist, causing them to bleed. The echoed noises of shrieks and agony did not phase his sadness. A couple of minutes pass and he pulls himself together. He wipes his face and rips off part of his shirt, using it to cover his bleeding hand, fearing it will leave a trail to his home. He gets up and prepares himself to return to his wife.
Samson ran. He ran nonstop through the city, hearing random screams and cries for help. Why, he thought. Why is this happening? What have we done to deserve something like this?
* * * * * *
Samson woke up to a banging sound coming from the door. He didn’t realize he had fallen asleep, but was thankful for being woken up. He didn’t want to think about the old couple anymore. Still weak and weary, Samson stays seated and waits for the guard to open the slot. To his surprise, it was not just the slot on the door that had opened, but the whole door.
Samson squints his eyes; the brightness from the outside of the room was something his eyes were not used to anymore. Still, he looks towards the door. He sees the silhouette of one of the guards standing right outside of the room. Soon, two more figures join the guard. One of them was another guard, but he could not figure out who the third figure was.
The third silhouette looked quite frail and seems to have a bag over his head. Perhaps another prisoner? Samson asks himself. Then he notices a sort of chain coming from the guard’s belt and into the figure’s neck. The guards push the figure inside the room hard enough to have let him hit the ground. The guards come inside the room and quickly remove the bag from the figure’s head. Samson’s muscles tighten all around his body. This person, or more so, thing on the floor snaps its teeth in the air. It started twisting and writhing, its face contorted with pure hunger and violent rage. Its eyes, once a different color, are nothing but shades of yellow. The guards have brought in one of the Diseased.
The guards then release the creature from its chain and calmly walk out. As the door slams shut, the guards wave at Samson, mocking his situation. Those bastards he thought. Who in the right mind would do something like this? Having no other option, Samson mentally readies himself for the upcoming confrontation. He closes his eyes and quickly counts to three. A deep breath follows after and he opens his eyes.
Samson stands up weakly. He musters everything he has in him to stand up. He was stuck in darkness with a single light bulb that didn’t even illuminate the whole room with one of those creatures. His eyes, moving swiftly, scan the room from left to right nonstop. Though he was exhausted, Samson controls his breathing; it was tiring to stand and he didn’t dare to sit back down. So he stands waiting and listens to the creature sniffing around with its occasional moans and groans. Its scent soon filled the room, smelling like a mixture of vinegar and human waste. The stench makes Samson gag, and the Diseased hears him. The creature snaps its teeth again and gave a quick snarl towards his direction and got louder, hungrier; it knows that there was food in the room. Samson has given away his position. The groans were getting closer and closer, until it gives a fierce growl not more than five feet away from him. Samson frantically runs, dodging blindly from one corner of the room to the next. He could not see it, only hear it, but the creature could smell him; It knew exactly where to go.
Finally, Samson decided to run towards the middle of the room where the only source of light shines. He runs and stops at the edge where the light reaches its end. He turns around and finally sees the creature for the first time walking quickly towards him; it was a no man, but a woman. Light gray skin, an open stomach, a nasty gash from her right eye going down to her lower lip and her whole left cheek missing. Come here you ugly bastard Samson thought. She snarled louder as she was finally able to see her dinner. She reaches violently for Samson. Her hands outreached with fingernails pointed and ready to dig. With all the energy Samson has left, he grabs both of her forearms before she was able to get a hold of him. He almost wanted to let go, he has never actually held one before, and the feeling of this woman’s body was not what he had expected. Her skin feels very soft and cold; it felt as if it could be ripped off at any given moment. She was as soft as a baby’s blanket and as cold as ice, but she was incredibly strong; the Diseased have no threshold for pain, giving them no limit.
Samson struggles with the creature. He was trying to knock her down so he could give her head one big stomp, but she continuously snarls at him and tries to bite him. Samson was losing hope. He couldn’t stop her, and unlike the Diseased, humans get tired. He closes his eyes for what he thinks would be the final time he will, but an image of his wife appears in his mind. Memories flood him. With renewed resolution, Samson tightens his grip on her forearms, lifts his right leg, and gives one final kick to her chest. The skin on the creature’s arms and hands rip and slide off into his own, but he couldn’t be disgusted by this now. She snarls loudly as she looks at him with angry eyes from the ground. With a loud yell and all his might, Samson drives his foot into the creature’s head. One. Two. Three. Four.
Four stomps and it finally stops moving.
He stands there once again under that light, staring down with anger in his eyes and staggered breathing. His whole body shivers as he stands above the creature, making sure it was no longer alive. He keeps his arms tense and flexed, prepared for another conflict. After a few moments, he calms down. It’s over. He wipes his hands on his clothes to get rid of the skin from the creature. As he did, he hears a small sound. A sound that a coin would make if dropped on the ground. He searches the floor and sees a small object reflecting the faint light; it was a ring. It was stuck with the soft skin that was pulled off of the creature’s hands. Samson remembers that these were once people, too. Curious, he picks up the ring, sits right next to the creature, and examines the ring. Inside of the ring, something was engraved. Samson drops his jaw and widens his eyes with disbelief.
“Together forever – Samson & Emily”
|
It was July the 2nd, 1998 when she first appeared. A slight, pale woman with large black rings around her eyes, thin, hollow cheek bones and hair like matted wire. I watched from the front desk everyday as she flitted up to the window, stared into the police station and repeatedly tapped her bony fingers against the glass.
I’d been drafted to the small seaside town of Gentry less than a month ago and not a day had gone by without the woman appearing at the window, sometimes for hours on end. I’d asked a couple of my superiors what she was doing but they merely avoided my eyes and told me not to pry into private affairs.
Today was no different; the woman crept over to the window and danced her fingers across the glass. The sky outside grew dark as the hours dragged on and I watched as the first drops of rain fell from the sky. This light drizzle quickly progressed into a downpour and I observed as the woman went from being doused to being drenched in a matter of minutes. Yet her movements didn’t cease and she continued to tap fervently on the window, her hollow, maddeningly wide eyes fixed on me the entire time. When her hair began to literally melt out of its precarious bun I pushed back my chair and walked over to the door.
I hesitated for a moment, glancing tentatively behind me to make sure that all eyes were averted. Quickly, I wrenched open the door and stuck my head outside and called “Hey! Do you want to come inside until the weather calms down”?
The woman froze and snapped her head towards me. I was startled by her movement; the angle of her head made it appear that she possessed no spine to speak of and instead that her head was disconnected from her neck; a near complete rotation without her moving her shoulders. I couldn’t suppress a shiver as she twisted her body to align with her head and began to creep towards me, her arms lying limp at her sides.
I stepped aside to allow her inside and she twisted her head in that inhuman state to face me. We stood like that for a few painfully long seconds before she whispered “I have a crime to report”.
Her voice was delicate and childlike; as though encased within the putrescent grey skin and bedraggled hair lay a sweet child with pink ribbons scattered in her blonde ringlets.
“Of course ma’am” I smiled, gesturing for her to follow me to the front desk. I’d barely taken a step before she clasped her fingers around my wrist; her cold skin creating a crushing vice that stopped me in my tracks.
“Please sir…could we go to the back room”?
Her question surprised me but I could understand why some witnesses would be too scared to declare crimes in the open. I had never heard of any witnesses being relocated to an actual room in the time I’d spent at the station but the itching desire to know more about the woman prompted me to nod and change course; heading down a long, thin corridor leading to the tiny back room.
As we walked, I stole a glance back at her and noticed that she was a fair deal younger than I’d first assumed. Her slender limbs, hunched figure and dark eyes made it appear that she was an elderly woman but on closer inspection her undeveloped physique and smooth face suggested that she was most likely a prepubescent child. I was shocked at myself for not noticing this sooner that I almost strolled headfirst into the door of the backroom. Halting in the nick of time, I fumbled my keys before unlocking the room and stepping inside.
The room was comprised of dark metal walls and a concrete floor complete with a stainless steel table and two chairs. I took the chair closest to the door and waited for the girl to sit down.
I pulled out a recording tape from my bag and set it on the table.
“Okay,” I smiled “Go ahead…”
The girl’s dark eyes stared into my brown ones and she let her jaw grow slack. After a moment however, she began.
“It began like every other day. The sun rose, the tide ebbed from the shore and the seaside town stuttered into life. However this day was special-”
“Um, wait a second please,” I interrupted. “You don’t have to tell it like this; like a story, I mean. You can just tell me the key elements and I can submit a report.”
She fixed me with her intense stare and replied “But this is how it goes. I have to tell the story how it goes…”
I sighed and waved her on, not in the mood to argue with a child.
She continued. “It was a special day because it happened to be the birthday of the mayor’s daughter; Cecilia Abigail Townsend. Her mother had promised Cecilia that she could ask for anything she wanted so the little girl had replied ‘A doll’. So Cecilia’s mother went searching for the most beautiful china doll in the town. She looked in quaint boutiques and upmarket department stores but she found no doll worthy of her beautiful daughter. Finally she found a little girl playing on the street, a cherubic doll clutched in her hands. She begged and pleaded with the girl to part with the doll but the child would have none of it.
As the child played on, steely clouds rolled in from the ocean; threatening a storm. Finally the girl set the doll on a nearby bench while she went to fetch an umbrella from her house which lay only a few yards from where she was playing. Taking her chance, the mother snatched the doll from the bench and ran home, not stopping once along the way.
She arrived home and wrapped the doll before presenting it to the delighted Cecilia that night. Cecilia however, received a great number of presents that night and the little doll was forgotten amongst the onslaught of gifts.
Cecilia bade her parents goodnight and left for bed as the moon rose in the sky. Her father soon followed her but her mother was left to clean up the mess that the wrapping paper had created. It was only when she had completely tidied the kitchen that she noticed the doll sitting on Cecilia’s chair; its glassy eyes staring straight ahead.
Cecilia’s mother had been sure that the doll had been discarded under the table earlier and no one had re-positioned it on the chair, unless it had somehow climbed up there itself…Scared by her own musings, Cecilia’s mother switched off the lights and retired for the night.
When the clock struck midnight, Cecilia Abigail Townsend awoke to a small voice whispering in her room.
‘Cecilia…I’m in the front hall.’
Cecilia slipped out of bed and padded to the front hall which led from the kitchen to the grand staircase. The doll was lying on the carpet, its gaze directed at Cecilia who stood at the top of the staircase.
Thinking perhaps her brother was performing some sort of trick on her, Cecilia shook her head and walked back to her bedroom. But then the voice returned.
‘Cecilia, I’m on the stairs. I’m on the first step… I’m on the second step… I’m on the third step…’ the voice continued until the very last step on the grand staircase.
Cecilia crept outside to check and, sure enough, the doll was lying at the top of the stairs, its hollow eye staring straight at her.
Truly frightened now, Cecilia ran to her room, locked the door and dove under the covers. And still the voice continued.
‘Cecilia, I’m in your brother’s room…’ There was a sudden scream of agony followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor ‘Got him’…
Cecilia began to cry, her teeth tearing through her bottom lip as the voice went on.
‘Cecilia, I’m in your parent’s room…’ Another set of screams followed ‘Got them.’
Cecilia listened in horror as her lock clicked and the door swung open.
‘Cecilia, I’m at your toes…I’m at your knees…I’m at your waist….I’m at your shoulders…'”
“STOP!” I yelled, slamming my hands down on the table. The girl didn’t look taken aback in the least at my outburst, instead gazing at me as though waiting to continue.
“I demand you stop this right now!” I growled “This is a police station, not a campfire and I’ll have none of your tales here. I know very well that today is the mayor’s daughter’s birthday and that they are all alive at this moment so please kindly stop wasting my time and”-
I was interrupted by the door bursting open and the Chief sergeant leaning in, policemen dashing backwards and forwards behind him.
“Detective, we need you at Mayor Townsend’s residence, please come with me”.
I looked back to the chair and saw that the girl had slipped behind me and out the door while my attention had been preoccupied. Gritting my teeth in frustration, I turned back to the Chief and nodded, following him back though the station and into the sheeting rain…
*
When we arrived at the Mayor’s house, the coroners were removing gurneys laden with bodies covered in blood spattered sheets. One of the sheets was blown back in the wind and I saw the mutilated face of Cecilia Townsend; her throat slashed into ribbons of flesh and her mouth slit from ear to ear in a horrific grin.
I felt bile rise in my throat and excused myself to empty my stomach behind the house. I was wiping my mouth when I heard a light tapping, even through the rain. I glanced up and saw a figure standing in the upstairs window, its fingers splayed across the glass. Squinting I could make out the outline of the girl from the police station, a large smile upon her usually deadpan face and a doll with blonde ringlets clutched in her hand. She tapped on the glass again and began to write something on the window. When she was finished she waved at me, her smile growing impossibly huge, before disappearing into the room’s shadows I stepped closer and saw the words daubed on the window in blood red letters:
DON’T TAKE MY DOLL…
Credit To: Lilith Luna
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So a little bit about myself before I relay a little bit of my story and if you guys enjoy it I will periodically come back and tell you a few more stories. Wealth may not run in my family but I sure inherited a lot of ghost stories.
The story/stories I’m about to recount have almost nothing to do with me. They are mostly to do with my grandmother, who was the sole inspiration and caretaker that I had coming from a defunct family. Thanks to her, I am currently in a good University and will be leaving for Japan in March on a full scholarship.
Anyways, before I even begin to tie in where I come into the story (if I ever get that far), I think the most important thing would be telling you guys a good background of my grandmother. My Grandmother was born on December 23rd, 1933, in Gangwondo province which is now a major province of South Korea. She was born to a poor family, her mother a poor YangBang (noble scholar class) and her father a farmer. With three of her sisters (whom live in all parts of the world now), and with my grandmother being the eldest, she was already the next in line to keep the house running (cooking, cleaning, laundry) at an extremely young age (7).
If you know a little bit about Asian history, you would know she was born during the Japanese occupation of South Korea. When my grandmother turned eight years old, I suspect my great-grandfather killed a Japanese MP, and they had to relocate to a different province to prevent my great-grandfather’s execution. During the escape, my grandmother was captured and sent to Japan to what she presumed to be a forced labor worker.
When my grandmother was in Japan, it started a long relationship she claimed she had with what she calls “our other halves.” When she was telling me the story, she told me she was going to take these stories to the grave. She had a strong belief that the same antagonistic nature of spirits would claim those who spread it. However, she came to the United States and converted to Christianity, and thus her storytelling began with a devout belief in Jesus, her protector.
Sorry for the digression. My grandmother was sold out to a disgraced Samurai family, the current head of the household had put down his father’s sword during the time of his country’s war and pursued academia and business. Therefore, while he had money, he was exceedingly looked down upon by his fellow countrymen. He had resorted to living with his wife in the middle of nowhere.
My grandmother was one of the three women workers the Head had purchased as labor workers. My grandmother was the youngest of the three, and was looked upon with great favor by the Oksan (Madam) of the house. She was barren according to my grandmother, and was glad to have her around the house, albeit it was never quite a true mother-daughter relationship, due to the racial implications.
However, the trouble began when one of the older women workers started to have an affair with the Head. During this time of Asian history, especially with war raging and Confucian values and morality taxing people’s consciousness, a good wife would have kept her mouth shut and simply accepted the fact her husband enjoyed a little love making on the side.
The only thing that bothered the Oksan greatly was the fact the Head was infatuated with the worker. The head started to neglect the Oksan, shun his own room, and would instead lie with her in her slave’s quarters. This infuriated the overly emotional Oksan to no end, and it finally blew over when the worker became heavy with child.
When the worker realized she was with child, she immediately tried every primitive trick to abort the fetus. She sat in cold water for a long duration during the early months, and when the swelling started to appear, she ingested a near lethal dose of poison to try and abort the baby.
The baby refused to be aborted, at this point, even my grandmother knew it was simply not possible for the baby to be alive any longer. What was growing in her fellow worker’s stomach was a stillborn if they were lucky, or at the very worst severely deformed.
However, the Head had caught the mania of having a child under his name. He promised to elope with her in Kyoto, and forge her Japanese citizenship papers as long as she bore him a child.
The Head had let his intentions known too late, and the damage was already done. The stillborn continued to grow in her stomach, and she did not have the heart to tell him of the acts she had done, certain that she would of been cast out to die when discovered.
The Oksan certainly was not a stupid woman, and a month before the delivery, no matter how much the worker had bind her stomach, or put on many layers, she was discovered.
The Oksan’s rage is one of my grandmother’s favorite thing to tell, she was so angry that it was the closest my grandmother saw to someone dying of a heart attack out of anger. Grabbing the Head’s father’s ceremonial sword, she dragged the girl to the middle of their large yard, where a well was kept for the little livestock they had.
Cutting off her hands, the Oksan cast the girl with the stillborn in her womb, over the edge of the well.
The Head was heartbroken, and in an era where divorce did not exist, he left alone for Kyoto permanently. Sending back home money every now and then to keep his estate running. According to my grandmother, this was where the “other” problems started to happen.
When the few other forced Korean workers tried to hold a small ceremony in the girl’s honor, the Oksan flew into rage again, and threatened to kill all of them if they tried to throw as little bit of rice into the well as offering. Fearing the now crazy disgraced Oksan, the forced workers including my grandmother hastened to obey.
The first problem began with the small puddles of stagnant water that started to appear around the main wooden porch near the well. A scuffle happened between the yard/garden worker and cook about who was leaving water behind on the walk, but ended at that. My grandmother being the youngest and weakest at the time, was charged with mopping the water up. She says she vividly recalls a long black strand of hair being in one of the stagnant puddles, but dismissing it as her own or one of the worker’s, and continued on with her day.
Weirder things began to happen as winter turned into spring, and many of the Japanese servants who worked the estates were spooked very badly and left. The slaves had no choice but to remain on the estate as long as the Oksan lived.
Stagnant water started to appear everywhere throughout the house. My grandmother was hard pressed to clean up all of the stinking water that the other slaves refused to touch. My grandmother was too young to full grasp what was fully going on, and instead just followed orders.
Already the slaves believed the girl who was killed heavy with child was beginning to haunt the estate, however everyone including my grandmother knew better than to talk aloud about it. She continued to work and mop up after the puddles.
One night as she was headed to bed, the Oksan ordered her to sleep with her. The Oksan made her lie next to her and held her like her own daughter, according to my grandmother, and this caused my grandmother of then to weep. The Oksan for the first time in months acted gentle toward her and helped her fall asleep.
However my grandmother’s sleep was cut short when she heard a light thud on the side of the paper screened wooden door. Believing it was all in her head or a stick thrown up in the breeze, she was about to head back to sleep when the paper screen at head level of the door started to darken. The paper had started to soak up water.
My grandmother, believing she was completely dreaming, walked to the door and opened it, to discover her fellow worker standing before her, her hands missing, and completely drenched in water, while still showing signs of being with child.
My grandmother began to talk to her now deceased friend, only to be met with silence. After my grandmother gave up talking, her friend only pointed with her stump to the Oksan. My grandmother rushed to wake her up.
Upon waking, the Oksan looked toward the door and gave a shriek, clutching my grandmother in both her arms and screaming bloody murder. My grandmother blacked out from the shock, as well as her grip.
When my grandmother came to, she claimed the Oksan had now retired to her own room, and had fallen ill. Over the course of the next few days, a few doctors and medicine men visited to no avail. There was nothing that could cure her illness.
Up until the day the Oksan died she was tormented, she claimed everything she drank, from the pricey plum sake the doctors tried to get her to drink, as well as water from the communal water stream tasted like dirt. Whenever she was alone, she claimed when she lifted her lids off her bowls to eat there would only be wet matted hair in the bowls. This apparently never happened when others were present.
The Oksan passed away, and with no one else to boss the workers, and with all the Japanese servants gone, my grandmother and her workers lived off of the estate’s savings until the Americans dropped the A-bomb and liberated North East Asia. My grandmother was one of the first people to get on the boat to return to Korea to find her family.
Now, I understand this story has no closure, and is almost childlike in quality, but there is where I would like to present the part that gives me chills and terrifies me to this day.
I heard this story when I was 10, and my grandmother’s ghost stories never quite scared me (as I’m sure it does nothing to you as well), there were better scares to be had. Sleepyhollow was more frightening to me at that age than my grandmother’s tales.
However, when I was 15, I was watching a Korean summer program that was running that summer. Every summer, a Korean broadcasting company would air a little creepy hour segment of scary shorts depicting urban myth and legends. It was your basic junk, don’t look up in the shower, never leave a little kid by them-self, etc etc.
However, a segment I watched that year made me take my grandmother a little bit more seriously.
One of the hour specials was dedicated to Japanese urban myths and spooky happenings. It was still the same junk, different names. Akai-Onna, scissor woman, bed monster. Etc.
However, if I remember correctly, there is an apartment complex in the Shiga prefecture of Japan, that is haunted by a very different ghost.
Every night, if you try to get on an elevator by yourself, the doors will be just sliding shut when a woman will call from just around the outside corner of the elevator, asking you to hold it. If you are quick to react and manage to hold the elevator, the woman will get on with you.
People on the show described her as a young lady who was obviously pregnant, and is soaking wet. A few people claimed she politely asked the person on board with her a floor (usually 5, fellow Asians in here knows what that means) and will get off before or after you depending on which floor you get off. She will always pick a different floor according to the people on the show, so you never step off with her.
Those who discover something is off with the woman drenching wet when it wasn’t raining aren’t so lucky apparently. Although it didn’t say if anyone directly started a conversation with her based off on her state of appearance, I can’t say. However, the victims on the show constantly said they had nightmares when they were aware of the girl’s “other” status during the ride.
I certainly got chills watching this, hunched over my computer in my hot summer room, with my grandmother sleeping in the next room. But rationality seeped in, and I relaxed a bit. I mean, it’s not that crazy, the chances are high of this type of shit happening, right? Right.
However, what came next sucker-punched me in the gut. Apparently, the “haunting” got so bad that the building superintendent himself went on a mission to find out what the hell was going on, after being plagued by a series of nightmares himself.
The segment went on with more and more information, but I could have recited it from memory. It used to be a noble estate, there was a disused well in the basement that was now overfilled with stagnant water and is hazardous to excavate. The Head left the estate to Kyoto, and they believe someone might have died in the well and the haunting may continue to this day.
I understand in the world of creepypastas and stories saying “this is a 100% true” doesn’t go far. But I have tried my best to relay all I can recall in the most concise manner from memory.
Bitters, out.
P.S: I can’t take full credit for any of the stories I contribute to this site or /x/. I simply transcribe what I heard from my family from memory, and will give credit where credit is due in my works (if people ever want to hear more. Hah).
Credit To: Bitters!!5vnyOocdDtO
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It was a tattered notebook. I’m not sure why I even picked it up. It sat there forlornly on the dock, seeming to stare at me as I stepped off the ferry. It had been a bright red at one point, but water and general exposure had made the coloring dull. I picked it up gingerly, with half a mind to throw it away. I’ve never been able to let litter sit on the ground, whether it was mine or not. But as I walked toward a trash can, I realized something was off. While the cover of the notebook was wet, the pages inside did not seem to be.
I flipped it open. Pages full of scribbles met my gaze. At first the handwriting was steady and strong, but as it went on the stroke became more erratic until finally it culminated in what looked like a written scream. Two words, “Stop me”.
I turned towards the trash can again, unnerved. Whoever had used this book last might come looking for it and given the apperance of those last two words I did not want to meet them. I paused though. Stop me? What if this was some poor soul who was going to commit suicide? Or some other horrible crime? What if all I had to do was skim this notebook to save them?
Raindrops began to patter on my head. I looked up at the sullen gray sky and sighed. I had been thinking about heading south to Boston for an evening on the town. My little “town” if you could call a couple hundred people that, in Essex County north of Boston didn’t offer much of a night life. But a night on the town would have to wait. I had a notebook to read.
Twenty minutes later found me in the small house I rented, curled up on the couch with a mug of tea and a blanket. I flipped open the notebook and began reading:
“The music is what bothers me most,” it began. “There is this strange ethereal music in the air. Only, ethereal isn’t quite right because it is so very very real, almost solid. But no one else hears it. It surrounds me, and it sounds like the strident call of trumpet, but it’s not a trumpet making the call, it’s a string instrument, but sounding more strident than string has a right to, but then again there is the pounding boom of the drum. And they aren’t seperate sounds as in an orchestra, it’s all one at once. I just, I can’t–”
There were several slash marks, as if the writer had grown frustrated. As I turned the page I paused. Just for a moment, I thought I had heard something. Some music of some kind. I put the book down and walked into the kitchen to check my radio. It was off. Shaking my head I looked outside. The sky had gone from gray to black. Rain went from a patter to a pour as I looked out, clanging on the window and the roof above me. I was glad I had decided to stay in now, I wouldn’t want to be driving out in this weather.
Settling back down on the sofa I began reading again. “It’s not important. The music is just a symptom. You must know this!!! The music is only the beginning.” I shifted on the couch and sighed. I was beginning to doubt that I really needed to be reading this. But, I had come this far, and I had nothing better to do.
“You must also beware yellow. It is not safe after this. I stopped her and I thought it was over. But it has only gotten worse. And now I know, now I understand.” Here there was a doodle in the margin, a large circle with what looked like wiggly lines coming out of it. Tentacles maybe? There was an arrow pointing to it, with the caption “He Calls” underneath it. As I stared at it, again, just on the edge of hearing, a strange music fell on my ear. It reminded me of a trumpet call, but done with a violin…
I sat straight up and looked around. My tiny living room, with only the TV and DVR box besides my couch and easy chair was empty and still. I looked back down at the notebook doubtfully. I was letting this thing get to me. I should just stop reading it.
I made a move to put it down, but instead I found myself turning the page again. The writing was frantic now and I knew I was nearing the end of the account. “I can’t stop now. I want to but I can’t. Just like her. The river at midnight on 09-20-20**” I raised my eyebrows at that. That was tonight. “He calls and he calls and I cannot stop.” There were a couple blank pages and then that written scream. “Stop me.”
As I took a breath, the doorbell rang. I jumped from the seat, dropping the notebook and landing on my bottom. I blinked, coming back to reality as the doorbell rang again, this time longer and, somehow, louder. Standing up, I made my way over to the door. I opened it a crack and looked outside. A man underneath a large black umbrella stared unblinkingly at me as water cascaded off his umbrella from all sides. “Hello,” he said, and, while is voice was friendly, it put me on guard. “Are you Mr. Howard Phillips?”
“Yes,” I said, holding the door fast. “Who are you?” I’m afraid I wasn’t very polite.
This didn’t bother umbrella man very much though. “I’m Professor Wilmarth of Miskatonic University.”
“Miskawhat now?” I said.
He put up a hand. “That’s not important right now. I believe you found something of mine on the dock? A weathered red notebook? The man who works there saw you pick it up and gave me directions to your house.”
I relaxed a little. That would be August. He wasn’t quite a friend, but he was more than an aquaintance. “Oh, that. Yes, I found it.” I paused and looked at him doubtfully. “You wrote that stuff in there?”
“Oh no,” he said. “A… well not friend, but someone I was trying to help wrote that. I was hoping to use it to find him. Not that it had helped me before…”
“It’s just all complaining about music, and the color yellow, and something about a river,” I said. “I don’t see how it could help you.”
“You read it?” he asked. His eyes became pentrating. I had thought the question would be accusatory but there was an edge of wonder to it instead.
“Yes, I have basic reading skills,” I said, tersely. “Look, I’ll go get the notebook so you can be on your way, okay?”
“What did it say about the river?” he asked, as I began to turn away. “It’s very important.”
I sighed and turned back. “Something about wanting to stop something tonight but not being able too.”
“I see.” The Professor looked down for a moment. When he looked back up, his eyes met mine and I couldn’t look away. “I’m afraid the man I was helping, Richard Derleth, was somewhat suicidal. I know what river he’s talking about, and I think he means to kill himself there tonight.”
I drew in a breath. That had been my initial thought after I first found the book. “Well, let’s call the police,” I said, turning.
“There’s no time!” he said, grabbing my arm. “Please, will you come with me to stop him?”
I looked back at him, surrounded by water, and for some reason it scared me. I threw off his arm and backed up. But just as the feeling came it passed. I straightend. If there really was a man out there trying to drown himself I couldn’t just let it happen without notice. Especially after reading his plea for help. I ran back in the house and grabbed the notebook, just in case it held anymore clues. “Let’s go.” I said, pulling the door shut behind me.
The rain worsened as the Professor drove down backroads that I hadn’t even known existed. In places they were little more than dirt tracks, or rather mud tracks now, and I was sure he was going to get his car stuck or spin us out. There was a look of peculiar determination on his face. I understood he wanted to save this fellow, but somehow, he seemed more worried than he should be. Not that a human life is nothing to sneeze at, but the way he looked, you would’ve have thought we were out to avert a war.
He jammed on the brakes and I hurtled forward into the dash, even with the seatbelt on.
“For God’s sake, man, you’re going to get us killed instead of Richard!” I said, pushing back off the dash.
The Professor said nothing but pointed straight forward. There, illuminated in the headlights, was a shivering wet man. His hair was plastered to the sides of his head. He did not turn as we got out of the car and slammed the doors. The rain beat down on me as I began to walk forward.
As I walked, I noticed everything seemed to have a sea green tint to it. I narrowed my eyes and looked up. No, I wasn’t mistaken. Even the clouds themselves looked green. Didn’t that mean tornadoes or something? I looked over to the Professor. He stopped abruptly and I did so as well.
“Richard!” he called. The man did not turn, did not even look back. “Richard Derleth, we are here to stop you.”
Richard began to shake, and I thought he was crying. And then a small high pitched squeal pierced the air and it grew and grew. And I realized he wasn’t crying, he was laughing.
“You’re too late,” he said, his voice starting on a low growl and ending on a high pitched squeek. “I am his. And he will be free this night!”
“What now?” I said, but before I could voice anymore then basic confusion the green tint darkened around him and then suddenly expanded towards us. Professor Wilmarth put up his hands and gave a cry of alarm. The color passed through me without incident but it seemed to slam into the Professor and fling him back.
“Holy–!” I said, running back to the Professor.
He was getting up off the ground and pulling something out of his pocket. As I knelt down next to him he pressed something into my hand. I looked down. It was a gun. “Stop him,” he said, urgently. “Stop him now before the connection is complete. But it must be done from within the circle. You can enter, I cannot.”
I dropped the gun as I stood up. “You’re crazy I said, backing away from him, back into the area of green. “This is crazy. I don’t even know where we are, or what the hell river that is,” I said, turning back around. And then I stopped. The river was gone. Before me stood an endless ocean under a sky of strange stars, with patterns and constellations I had never seen before. Richard Derleth was raising his arms to the skies and chanting softly to himself, with each round becoming louder and more powerful than the last. I didn’t understand the words, they tumbled from his mouth fast and fluidly, almost like water.
And then my eyes turned to the ocean, the impossible ocean itself, and I saw in the center a stirring. Ripples. And the ripples were huge. Whatever was coming up was larger than my mind could comprehend. Not even a whale could account for the ripples I saw forming and gliding, not even a pod of whales. And they were coming faster. The words were drawing it up, drawing something. Something… I didn’t know, not really know, but somewhere deep and dark in my mind, somehow, it knew whatever was making those ripples I could not let it break the surface. If it did, it would not matter what I did next or what anyone did next.
I stepped back, almost in a daze and leaning down picked up the gun. Moving now, almost in a dream, I ran forward. It was close, so close I could feel it. And the music, like a drum beat in my mind, but the clarion call of the trumpet, and the screech of a violin all melding, all one, and louder and louder as it came closer and closer. I raised the gun. “The stars are not right,” I said without knowing why. “Sleep still in R’yleh.” I pulled the trigger and the bang of the gun cut through the chants. Richard Derleth tumbled end over end on the sandy beach until he came to rest in the water. Slowly, ever so slowly he sank beneath the water and disappeared.
Shaking, I sat down, the music still throbbing in my ears. I put my head in my hands, letting the gun fall to the ground. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up. Professor Wilmarth stood over me, looking relieved and sad. “You did it,” he said, simply.
Taking a breath I looked up. The ocean was gone. Only the river was there now. I still didn’t know what river it was, but it was comforting none the less. I stood up and looked left and right. There was no sign of Richard Derleth’s body. “Where’d he go?” I asked, moving forward. “Did he fall in the river?” I turned back to the professor.
He shook his head somberly. “No,” he said. “We will not be finding Richard Derleth’s body.”
I felt the need to sit down again but refused to give into it. “If only the damn music would stop,” I muttered, clawing the side of my head. “It only gets worse…” I paused, mind flying back to the notebook. Panic filled me and clawed in my chest, making my breath come out in short gasps. “Oh, God, what’s happening, what’s happening–Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!” I clapped a hand over my mouth.
The Professor put a hand on my arm. “You see, the reason you could stop him is because you could hear it too, the Call.” He held up the notebook. “This,” he said flipping the pages, “is not in English. I could not read it. No one can, except those who have been marked.”
I was backing away from him slowly now, shaking from head to toe. “It’s not true,” I said, my voice trembling as much as the rest of me.
“Look closely,” the Professor said, still holding it out. “You still retain enough of yourself to see as a man, instead of what Calls to you.”
Staring at the book I could see, for a moment, the words seemed to waver and blur, becoming elongated and impossible to read, and looking like someone had taken a salt shaker to sprinkle apostrophes on it. And then they snapped back into place. I sank to my knees. “What happens now?”
“The same thing that happened to Richard, I am afraid,” the Professor said sadly, picking up his gun. “You have a few months of encroaching madness before you until finally,” and he waved his hand at the river. “Oh, and you really should beware yellow after this. It is not safe.”
“How can you be so calm?” I said trying to be angry and failing. I could only feel fear.
“Because, dear sir, I have seen it happen before and will see it happen again.” He picked up his umbrella and dusted it off. “I am almost curious about what would happen if I didn’t stop it. Perhaps we would go back to the time when this place was called Arkham.” He smiled to himself. “In ways it was easier then to find help. ” He shook his head. “More likely it’d just be the end of humanity though.”
I huddled on the ground. “Shoot me,” I said, as the music crowded in around me. I could feel it, embracing me, enticing me to follow it.
“Can’t,” he said. “You are protected now. You will not be able to kill yourself and only another marked can kill you.”
I stood up and walked unsteadily to him. “Give me the gun,” I said. He aquiesced easily enough. I turned it towards me and held it against my temple. “Come on, come on,” I muttered as the metal shook against my head. After a few moments I gave up and gave the gun back to the Professor. I hung my head. “What must I do?” I asked softly.
“The same thing Richard did,” the Professor said, holding up the notebook. “Only you might want to cast the net a little wider than Richard did. We almost didn’t make it.”
And so, that’s it I guess. Writing it down was easy once I got started. Hacking these sites was not. I picked some likely ones, that seemed to have people with the right mind set, people who had been touched. Did you think it was a mistake you were reading this? That you could read it? I am sorry, truly I am. But He Calls and I cannot stop. Please, by all that is holy, please, stop me.
Credit To: Star Kindler
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While honeymooning in Maine, my wife and I stopped in the picturesque town of Boothbay on a particularly dreary and rainy day. Since our planned picnic was out of the question, we sought shelter in a dilapidated little antique store near the harbour. While my wife inspected the large chests and side tables near the door, I eagerly examined the antique tools and seafaring equipment inside the glass sales counter at the back. Being a collector of optics and mariner’s instruments, I hoped to find a sextant, or perhaps an old leather-bound telescope.
A particularly interesting piece caught my eye. It appeared to be a heavy brass flashlight, bearing a worn brown patina but remarkably modern in design. I asked the shopkeeper, but he could only tell me it was found in the same old sailor’s chest as several of the compasses and the sextant also on display. He inquired as to whether I would like to purchase it for five dollars, or perhaps have it for free. “It’s worthless to me, nobody wants it.” When I remarked about the price, he sighed wearily, and then reached into the cabinet and retrieved it for me.
“Here, see for yerself, feller.”
The craftsmanship was wonderful—quite durable and apparently hand-made, perhaps originating from somewhere in Europe. Worn lettering indicated it might be German, or perhaps Austrian, in origin. I twisted the bulb housing and a weak red beam swept out. Poking it into a dark corner of the shop, I was greeted with fantastic monotone swirls, moving and entwining with each other like a pit of eels. As I stared further into this unusual projector-kaleidescope, my fanciful mind invented ghoulish faces and sinuous, gnarled tendrils.
Shutting the device off, I turned excitedly to the shopkeeper. “Fantastic!” I said. “It must have an oil filter of sorts in front of the lens! I have two Victorian kalediscopes, but none that are illuminated like this.”
“You don’t get it, do you? Nobody gets it. They all come back to return it after a while.” The shopkeeper leaned on the counter and I could see that he was breathing heavily and perspiring. “They all think it’s some sort of trick… till they start seeing it when the light’s off.”
“That ain’t no projection, mister. That… damned thing, that light… it ain’t makin’ up those creatures. It’s just lettin’ your eyes see what’s already there.”
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Publisher’s Note: This story is a prequel and takes place before all of the previously released Father Cooke and Magister Alexander stories, which you can find here. The author invites you to read the other tales in the series after completing this one.
Oh shit, I thought as I walked through the front door and saw the little furry body of my daughter’s pet hamster, Cee Cee, lying on the floor in front of me.
Cee Cee wasn’t the hamster’s real name, it was Chubby Cheeks, but Samantha’s sister Allison had trouble saying that, so we came up with the nickname just for her.
I nudged Cee Cee’s body with my shoe just to be sure he was really dead. He was. I was afraid this was going to happen. Our cat, Baal, loved to catch things and leave them for me to find, and his favorite place to leave them was right by the front door.
Samantha must have left her bedroom door open when she left for school. I warned her that this would happen. Every time that door was left open, even for a second, Baal would come running from wherever he was and try to sneak into the room.
I figured Samantha was going to want to bury the hamster in the backyard, so I went into the garage and found a suitable box to bury him in. Then I used my car key to flip the body into the box. I know I wasn’t being delicate, but the hamster was dead. I don’t think he minded.
As I stood there with the box, I briefly considered throwing it in the trash and telling my daughter that Cee Cee must have escaped. I wanted to spare her the heartache of losing a pet, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was a bad idea. Pets die, that was something she was going to have accept.
I took the box into the kitchen where I stuffed it with paper towels to keep the hamster’s body from sliding around. When I finished, I walked over to the junk drawer to grab some tape to keep the box closed. That was when I saw the note I had written on the dry erase board.
EARLY RELEASE TODAY, the note said. I had underlined it three times and I still forgot about it.
If today was an early release day, the girls should already be home. I checked the time just to be sure. It was after two o’clock. They should have gotten home over an hour ago.
“Samantha! Allison!” I called out as I walked through the house. I called out again when I got to the foot of the stairs.
No one answered, but I did hear a soft thump from one of the upstairs rooms. As I walked up the steps, I noticed that Samantha’s door was wide open. She had to be home. I could see her backpack sitting on the bed.
Once I made it to the top of the stairs, I walked over to Samantha’s room and peeked in, but she wasn’t in there. I did notice that Cee Cee’s cage was sitting sideways on the floor with the top lying a few feet away. I shut her door and continued to call out, wondering where they were. They knew better than to leave the house on their own.
When I got to Allison’s room, I noticed the door was slightly ajar. I don’t know why, but when I grasped the knob, I got the sudden feeling I shouldn’t open it. I figured it was an irrational fear, likely caused by my growing concern over where my daughters were. I wasn’t going to let that stop me from searching for them though. I took a deep breath and swung the door open. What I saw made me take a step back and place my hand over my mouth.
Sitting on the bed, with her knees tucked underneath her, was my daughter Allison. She was leaning on her left arm while she licked blood off of the fingertips of her right hand. She licked her fingers the way a cat would lick its fur, with long strokes of her tongue. Around her neck was Baal’s collar.
When she noticed me, she stopped what she was doing and made a soft mew sound. Then she started purring. It sounded so unnatural coming from her.
“Allison,” I said as I slowly approached her. She just stared and me and continued to make those unsettling cat noises.
That was when I glanced down and noticed the black furry legs poking out from beneath her bed. I squatted down, grabbed the closest one, and slowly slid the body of Baal out into the open.
I looked up at Allison and watched as she continued to mimic the movements and sounds of the dead cat, right down to the way she cocked her head inquisitively at me.
“SAMANTHA!” I yelled suddenly. That startled Allison. She hissed at me and produced a low growl from deep in her throat.
I ran out of the bedroom and shut the door behind me. I rushed frantically from room to room, calling out for Samantha. She wasn’t supposed to leave Allison alone, but I couldn’t find her anywhere. I was hoping she could tell me what the hell was going on.
I searched the entire house until I came to the door of the one place I had yet to check, the basement. Please be here, I thought as I slowly opened the door.
“Samantha!” I called out to the darkness, but no one replied. I didn’t expect her to. She was afraid of the dark. If she was down there, the lights would be on. I still wanted to check though, just to be sure.
I turned the lights on and walked down to steps into the basement. When I reached the bottom, I looked around and called out her name one more time. There was no response. I was about to go back up to the kitchen when the door that lead to the backyard swung open and Samantha poked her head into the room.
“Mom, is that you?”
“SAMANTHA!” I rushed over and wrapped my arms around her as she walked into the basement.
Happy that she was safe, my fear quickly turned to anger as I tried to make sense of what was going on. I pushed Samantha away and held her at arm’s length, “What happened to your sister?” I demanded.
She started to sob, “I don’t know. I was laying on my bed when she crawled in on her hands and knees wearing Baal’s collar. When I yelled at her to get out of my room, she attacked me.” She showed me the scratches on her arms.
“Allison did this?” I looked down at long red welts.
She nodded, “I tried to force her out but she was like a wild animal, so I ran over to April’s house. I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.”
I reached for my phone, which I normally kept in my back pocket, but it wasn’t there. I must have left it in the car. I did that frequently when I had it connected to the car’s USB port.
“Come on,” I grabbed her hand and led her up the basement stairs and into the kitchen. I was going to take her into the bathroom and clean her wounds, but I stopped when I saw Allison sitting on the kitchen counter.
“Allison,” I held my palm out towards her in a placating gesture.
“That’s not Allison,” Samantha said.
“What do you mean?” I asked
“It’s Baal.”
Before I could ask Samantha to explain, Allison leapt off the counter and ran at her sister, hissing and snarling as she closed the distance.
I pulled Samantha back into the basement with me and shut the door right as Allison collided with it. I held the door shut as she clawed at the other side, trying to open it. I didn’t let go until she gave up and walked away.
I turned towards Samantha, “I need to go and get my phone out of the car.”
“No,” She said while shaking her head.
“It’s okay. I will only be gone for a few minutes.” I reached into my pocked and pulled my car keys out. “Come here and hold the door closed. She won’t be able to open it if you’re holding it.” I figured that would give her a sense of security while I was gone.
She reluctantly reached out and grabbed the handle.
“I’ll be right back,” I assured her.
It took me less than three minutes to run out to my car and retrieve my phone.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” I told her when I returned. “Why don’t you go back over to April’s and I will come get you in a little while.” She just stood there and stared at me. “Go ahead Sam, its ok. Allison isn’t going to leave the house.” I wasn’t positive of that, but I hoped it was true.
Once I convinced her to leave, I pulled out my phone and opened my contacts. I scrolled down until I found my husband’s number and tapped the screen. I stared at the ceiling, wondering where Allison was while I waited for my husband to pick up the phone.
“This is Father Cooke,” I didn’t recognize the voice that answered.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked down at it. The number showing on the screen was not my husband’s.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I must have dialed the wrong number.”
“If you are looking for Pastor Reed, he won’t be in today. Perhaps I can be of assistance.”
That explained what happened. Pastor Reed’s number was listed right above my husband’s. In my haste to call my husband, I must have accidentally tapped the wrong contact.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized again, “I really need to get in touch with my husband.” I hit the end call button. I didn’t want to be rude to the priest, but I didn’t have the time to explain.
I opened my contacts again and made sure to tap on my husband’s number. After several rings, it went to voice mail. I left a message telling him to call me back as soon as possible. Then I hung up and called him again. I tried calling him several times, but I kept getting transferred to his voice mail.
I leaned my back against the door in frustration and slid down it until I was sitting on the steps. I didn’t know what to do at that point, except wait. So, that is what I did.
When the phone rang a few minutes later, I jumped up and answered it, thinking it was my husband.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Duncan, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I hope you don’t mind me calling you back. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You sounded upset,” Father Cooke said.
“No!” I yelled into the phone, “I’m not okay! I have a dead cat and a daughter that no longer thinks she is human…so no…I am not okay!”
“Maybe you should start at the beginning,” He said calmly, “Tell me what happened and don’t leave anything out, no matter how crazy or irrelevant you think it might be.”
I was surprised by his response. He was nothing but polite to me and I just screamed at him. He seemed like he genuinely cared and wanted to help. Maybe he could help. He was a priest after all and what I was dealing with seemed a little outside the bounds of reality. I felt bad for yelling at him.
I was originally going to have my husband come home and help me catch Allison, so we could take her to the nearest hospital. But as I thought about it, maybe that wasn’t the best idea. I took a deep breath and told Father Cooke everything that happened since I got home.
“Stay where you are,” he said after I finished telling him what happened and given him the address. “I will be there shortly.”
He seemed convinced that my phone call wasn’t an accident. He believed something had guided my hand and brought the two of us together so we could help Allison. I hoped for my daughter’s sake that was true.
Twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the basement door, the one that led to the backyard. I walked over and opened it. Standing before me was Father Cooke. He was dressed exactly as you would expect. When he saw me, he pushed his thick rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose and introduced himself with a smile.
“Please come in,” I stepped to the side.
“Where is your daughter now?” He didn’t waste any time getting to the point.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged, “Probably upstairs”.
I followed Father Cooke up the basement stairs and into the kitchen. He stopped and listened. I could hear the soft thread of footsteps above us.
“Is there anyone else in the house besides your daughter?” He asked.
“No.”
He walked through the house until he came to the staircase. He placed his hand on the banister and started to climb the steps. “Which room is Allison’s?” He turned and asked before continuing.
I pointed to her door. I waited and watched as he walked into her room. A few moments later he walked out and continued down the hall. I could no longer see him, but I could hear him.
“Hello, Allison,” He said. “I’m Father Cooke. I’m a friend of your mother.”
Allison hissed in response and then started to growl.
Father Cooke backed down the hall slowly. He had his hands out in front of him as he tried to calm Allison down. When he made it back to the stairs, he descended them backwards, keeping his eyes on my daughter. She followed him, hissing and growling the entire time. She didn’t stop until she reached the steps.
“Let’s go,” He said and put his hand on my shoulder to guide me away. I let him lead me into the kitchen then back down into the basement.
“The collar your daughter was wearing, did that belong to the cat?” Father Cooke asked me once we were safely behind the closed door of the basement.
“Yes, it did,” I answered.
“Where did you get the cat?”
“It was a stray. It just showed up one day and started hanging around the house. The girls started feeding it and letting it into the house and we just sort of adopted it. It didn’t seem like a bad cat.”
“Was it always wearing that collar?”
I nodded.
“I need to make a call.” He pulled a phone out of the pocket of his jacket. “This is a little outside my area of expertise.”
“Do you still think you can help her?”
“Yes, I think so,” he said, then excused himself to go make his call.
When he returned, he was smiling, “Help is on the way.”
While we waited for whoever was coming to help us, Father Cooke did his best to ease my fears and reassure me that everything was going to be alright.
A short time later, there was a knock on the back door of the basement. Father Cooke walked over and answered it.
“I’m Father Cooke. I’m the one who called,” The priest introduced himself and reached out his hand to the tall thin man who stood before the open door. He looked like he could also be a priest, but he wasn’t wearing the white collar.
“Father Cooke? The exorcist?” The man asked as he clasped the priest’s outstretched hand.
“I guess my reputation precedes me,” The priest seemed uncomfortable.
“Theodore Alexander,” The man introduced himself.
“Magister Alexander?”
The two men seemed to have heard of each other. I could tell they had a great deal of respect for each other as they talked.
“I’m a bit surprised they sent you,” Father Cooke said to the man he called Magister Alexander.
“They didn’t send me. I was dealing with another matter when I overheard your call. A priest calling us and asking for help is a rare occurrence. I was intrigued and had to come and see what was so important for myself. I must admit, I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”
“I was also in town for a separate matter, one you might be able to shed some light on involving a local pastor.”
Magister Alexander smiled, “I’m not sure I know what you are talking about.”
It was obvious to me that he was lying.
“We can discuss it later, after we deal with the matter at hand.” Father Cooke could tell he was lying as well.
“Of course,” Magister Alexander said, then asked, “Where is the girl now?”
“She is upstairs,” I blurted out and pointed to the ceiling.
“You must be Mrs. Duncan,” Magister Alexander walked over and offered me his hand, “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“Same,” I said. But I wasn’t being honest. There was something unsettling about the way the man looked at me.
“I’ll show you the way,” Father Cooke offered.
I followed the men through the house until they stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Father Cooke pointed at my daughter where she was sat at the stop of the steps.
“She is wearing it on her neck,” the priest said.
I watched in amazement as Magister Alexander walked up the stairs and placed his hand on Allison’s head. To my surprise, she leaned into his touch and started to make that unsettling purring noise.
While he was stroking her hair, he used his free hand to reach into his pocket and pull out some sort of pendant. I couldn’t make out the design from where I stood. He placed the pendant against her forehead and started to speak in a foreign language. When he finished, Allison’s eyes rolled into the back of her head and she slumped to the floor.
I gasped and placed my hand over my mouth. I was about to run up the steps, but Father Cooke stopped me by placing his hand on my arm.
“She’s fine,” He whispered in my ear, “He knows what he is doing. This way was much safer than having to perform an exorcism.”
I looked over at the priest than back up at Magister Alexander. “Why would she need an exorcism?”
“Your daughter was possessed by your cat.”
“How is that even possible?”
“With this,” Magister Alexander had removed the collar and held it out towards us.
“It’s just a collar, isn’t it?” I knew something was seriously wrong with my daughter, but hearing she was possessed by our cat was hard to believe.
“This is much more than just a collar,” Magister Alexander said as he slid it into his pocket, “It’s a simulacrum.”
“A what?” I had never heard that word before.
“It’s a possessed item,” Father Cooke said, “If it is worn, it allows the spirit bound within it to possess the wearer.”
Before I could ask one of the thousands of questions running through my mind, Magister Alexander bent down and lifted Allison up off the floor, “Which room is hers?” He asked as he stood up.
I pointed to her open door then walked up the stairs and followed behind him. I entered the room as he gently laid her down on the bed.
“She will probably sleep for the rest of the night,” He said as he stepped out of my way.
“Why was the cat wearing that collar?” I asked as he walked out of the room.
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t believe him. I could tell he knew more than he was saying. I wanted to confront him and demand an answer, but I didn’t have the energy. I was too tired after everything I had been through. Instead, I sat on Allison’s bed and ran my hands through her hair while she slept.
“Why did you lie to her?” Father Cooke had come up the stairs and confronted Magister Alexander right outside the bedroom door. Even though he was trying to keep his voice low, I heard him clearly.
I got up and quietly made my way to the door so I could hear them better.
“I did it to protect her family. If she knew that cat once belonged to her grandmother, how do you think she would react? Her mother gave her life to leave the coven. She paid the ultimate price so that her daughter could have a normal life. I am obligated to honor the deal she made.”
My mother died when I was young and I never knew my grandparents. What I just heard alarmed me. Was Magister Alexander implying my mother was a witch?
“If her mother made a deal to leave the coven, why was the cat here?” Father Cooke asked as they descended the stairs.
“I was hoping you could help me with that,” Magister Alexander responded, “This cat shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here and yet we are. We were brought together for a reason and we need to find out why.”
That was the last thing I heard as the men let themselves out the front door.
|
“The Old Gods are Still Here…”
In a pink sky, the sun was the color of bad blood. It was ascending now, reborn. It took no notice of the screams, and neither did any other stars. They were as indifferent to this as they were to rape and the fall of nations. So was the world. It didn’t disturb sacraments such as these; not with the cawing of crows nor the bright, gleeful sound of small birds. If it was a crime to God, then his planet was an accomplice.
Brittle walls, grey and made thin by time, concealed the act. An old toolshed perhaps, yet if it was, then it had lately taken to more sinister uses. Screams of agony burst from a broken throat, loud and cracked, then bled into silence like a struck string. It was the last, and a horrible, gurgled breath followed it. Somehow, that was worse.
For someone, all had fallen still. A woman appeared amidst rows of corn, young and elegant, but as naked as when she slid from her mother. As bloody too, for her skin glistened red and black in the new light. She made no sound as she crossed the lawn, almost as if she floated above it, yet the ancient door creaked on rusty hinges as she pushed it open.
He was waiting for her. Unsettling blue eyes set upon hers, and his lips stretched into a grin. He had a charming, friendly and inviting face. Had his arms not been covered in blood, or for the fact a fresh corpse swung from a hook behind him, he might’ve passed for a kind uncle. He was proud of her. After all, this was her first time.
“Is it ready?” She mused, voice strangely detached, but the man found nothing odd about her tone. His smile grew wider and he offered a single, deep nod. Her own smile surfaced then, eyes lighting with a deep, glinting greed which jagged against her soft features, and made her look slightly like a wolverine.
In the next breath, she spoke six words. As she said them, the sun burst over the treetops, flooding their part of the world with orange brightness, and yet nature seemed to shiver in disapproval.
“Then let us partake in communion.”
She had that look. Chris recognized it all too well, he’d seen it off and on over the last twenty-five years after all. It was not her own, or maybe she’d made it her own, but originally it belonged to her mother. He’d never known what to tell his wife in those moments and his daughter made it even worse. She’d perfected that holy female craft.
“So…” He began tentatively, and when this was met only with silence, he decided to push on. “School’s going okay?”
“Mm…”
“Difficult studies?”
“Nah…”
“What was it again, English major?”
“Psychology….”
“Oh…”
He swallowed and felt something stuck in his throat. It was probably his heart. Itching on his forehead forced his hand off the gearshift for a moment. Sweat everywhere, every crevice of his body. It was unpleasant, making the already uncomfortable ride worse. Marcy was the only woman who made him nervous, afraid of fucking up. Yet that’s what he always managed to do. Every time was worse, increasing the space between them which was already oceans wide.
She was here, right beside him, yet she might as well have been picking rocks on the moon. Sixteen years old, where the fuck did all that time go?
“How’s your mother doing?”
“Fine…”
“What’s he like… that… Jackson?”
“Mark… he’s cool.”
“Mm…That’s good.”
But it wasn’t good. He didn’t deserve her anymore, he knew that. Still, the thought of her heart belonging to someone else made him yearn for the end of a bottle. Sometimes it was too hard to resist. Like September last year when he’d – in vicious stalker mode – had parked down the street from the house which had once been their house. He’d seen them come back, seen her wearing that gorgeous red dress he’d given her for her thirty-first birthday. When the steroid junkie had pressed her against the car, kissed her and let his hand slide underneath that silky crimson fabric, Chris had been forced to look away.
There was no way Jackson, Mark or whatever, could have known he’d been watching, yet it felt like a message.
I’m going to fuck her tonight, you just feel free to watch. Grab a beer, enjoy yourself!
Minutes later he’d been at Bernie’s. He’d ordered a double whiskey and stared at it as if he’d forgotten what it was. When his tears finally fell, he’d been unable to think of a reason not to. The program could go fuck itself. He drank, then he drank some more. At some point, someone had been offended. He could no longer remember how or why, but while the love of his life was giving his replacement a happy ending, he’d been visited by the grim reaper.
Someone had smashed a bottle on his head and split it half open. He’d spent four days in the hospital. Another week on sick leave, mostly doing exactly what the doctors told him not to. He’d been drinking. Again, there had really been no reason not to. Neither of them had come to visit, even though he knew they’d heard. That was the worst part.
It had taken him another three months to realize there was a reason not to. The first love of his life would never return to him, but perhaps he still had a chance with his second. Marcy, whom everyone except her mother just called Mace. It didn’t take a genius to see she wasn’t the happiest kid in the world, and it took even less of a genius to understand why.
From the age of five, she’d been a witness to his fall, he knew that. She’d seen the late parties, his mistakes, the broken promises. How many times had she cried herself to sleep when he’d stumbled through the door at 2.00am in the morning, greeted by the fury of the woman he adored? How many times had she been awakened by the shouts? How many times had she wished she’d never been born when she walked into a cold, unfriendly atmosphere in the kitchen the next morning?
Even then it might have been alright. It could still have been repaired. The marriage, the parenting, the life. It could have been fixed, it was even being fixed. But he’d ruined it, like a giant wanting to stomp on something beautiful. After six months of following the program, six months of fixing it, he had a slip-up. After-work; one of those dangerous traps AA liked to call “slopes”. You think you’ll make it, but you always end up on your ass.
And he had. One beer had become six, then ten. He’d contemplated sleeping outdoors, ashamed of himself and scared of his wife’s reaction. If he had, it still might have been okay. She would’ve been angry, but she would have gotten over it. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened, because once you made one mistake, you might as well go ahead and wreck the whole fucking picture.
Stumbling through the door, just like the old days, he saw she’d already been crying. That was the first time she’d said it. No matter how many fights, how many drunken episodes, that was the first time. Divorce. The word flared like an emergency alarm in his mind, and before he even knew what he was going to do, it was too late. It had only been words, but his final mistake had made them real.
Her bruise was still fresh when they walked into the lawyer’s office. They’d both signed, him with tears in his eyes and she with her lips in a pale line, drained of blood. He knew he was the monster. Fee-fi-fo-fum, the giant said.
“Hey, would you like to stop somewhere for an ice-cream or something?”
“I am not really big on ice-cream.”
“You used to love ice-cream?”
“Yeah, ten years ago, Dad.” Annoyance seeped into her tone and her gaze snapped from the window to glare at him. It was the only look he’d been afforded since he picked her up, and she might as well have been spitting acid. It carried her real words, the part she didn’t say. The way her black and purple get-up relayed the same thing. Her black fingernails, purple hair, eyes drowning in a sea of cosmetic shadows, all designed to deliver one message.
It’s too late! Too late! I’m fucked up and it’s your fault!
She’d wanted a tattoo for her sixteenth birthday. Her mother had protested, no surprise there, but Mace got her will, she always did. A friend had given it to her. The result was a black rose on her left arm, pretty good for amateur work, not that he would ever say that out loud. Cindy called him the same day, and even if she never actually said it, the message came through loud and clear. It was his fault.
He felt his heart crawl higher up his throat. This trip might be his last chance, his only chance, and he was already fucking it up. If it didn’t work, if she was adamant on hating him, he didn’t know how he was going to make it. He would end up eating the barrel.
“Well, I’d like to stop somewhere. My throat it killing me. A coke would be nice.”
“Yeah, or a beer.” She replied with such contempt it was like getting slapped in the face. It hurt, but it also pissed him off. It was like kicking a handicapped. But she was just a teenage brat, she didn’t know any better. If anything, she was the one who was hurting. She just wanted to spread it around.
“I don’t drink anymore, Mace.”
“Yeah, we’ll see for how long…”
They rode in silence for the next ten minutes, then Mace was the one who spoke up.
“It’s not like there is anywhere to stop anyway. Not unless there’s a diner somewhere in the corn.”
“There is supposed to be a town up ahead, just a couple of miles.”
“Well, you’re the fucking navigator.” She replied, head plastered to the passenger side window.
“Watch your language, Mace.”
“Fuck you.”
Another hour passed in silence, then another. The fields of corn seemed endless, just like the road. Not a car had passed, not even an animal. He became aware she was sleeping when she turned in her seat, huddled up in a little ball. She’d always done that when she was a child, and the sight broke his heart. Long strands of purple hair covered her face. He wanted to brush them away to see her, really see her again, a face which had regained innocence, but he didn’t dare.
The sign appeared and snapped his eyes back to the road.
Grimm Haven – 12 Miles.
There was nothing odd about it, yet its rusty corners and faded letters imparted a sinister sense of dread. He tried to shake it, even physically shook his head, but the unease remained. It might as well have said; “Beware, traveler, here lurks dragons.”
The corn fields still reigned here, but now the occasional barn or farmhouse could be sighted on the horizon. It was beautiful, especially as the day died and painted a sky of burning ember. The sight calmed his unease but didn’t drown it. To his right, Mace stirred as a moan slipped between her lips. Chris was suddenly very aware of her, of how fragile she was. Her vitality was like a stark aura; strong, but easily extinguished.
That’s when he saw the man. The stalks of corn gave way for a field of cropped grass with a thin dirt road running its length. At the end of it, a farm appeared. But what caught his attention was not its neat cape-cod or tended lawn, blaring red barn or the horses on the field.
Just where the dirt road joined with its paved brother, a man in a straw hat and farmer’s overalls glared at the approaching vehicle. What frightened Chris was not so much the man’s appearance, as the way he was watching. It was not as if he’d been out there to collect the mail and just caught a glance of a car, deciding to watch it speed by. No, it was if he’d known they were going to pass, right now, and had come out to wait for it.
His arms hung limp by his sides, face masked by shadows underneath the hat. He didn’t move. He didn’t make so much as an indication to even being alive. For a moment, Chris thought the man might just have been a scarecrow. Then, despite being a city-boy, he realized no one would put a thing like that by the side of the road.
When they passed, he threw a look in the rear-view mirror. The man turned, slowly, and in the exact same position as before, he watched the car disappear. Chris tried to swallow, but his throat had dried up. He realized he was terrified. His hands felt weak and brittle as they clutched the steering wheel. When he looked to his right, his heart jumped up his throat again.
Mace was staring at him, eyes round and lips slightly parted. She was an image of the terror he felt.
“I had a bad dream,” she croaked, voice strangely hollow and distant. “I dreamt a man was watching me from the side of the road. In the dream, he pointed at me and the sun turned to blood behind him. I heard a voice, but I can’t remember what it said…”
She trailed off. Chris had gone pale, his lips blue and cold. Had it just been a coincidence? No, his logical mind told him. She’d been half awake, seen the strange man and implemented him in her dream. That was it, the wonders of modern psychology. Well, that was probably wrong but he had no idea what else to call it.
“Don’t worry, baby, it was just a dream.” How long since he’d called her that? In shock, his mind had reverted into seeing her as a child again. He thought she might throw him a sarcastic remark, but she’d lost interest in him. She’d gone back to peering out the window, but in the reflection thrown by the glass, he saw terror in her eyes. That also, wasn’t normal, not for her.
“Are you alright?” He asked, forcing his voice not to tremble.
“Mhm…”
None of them said anything for a few minutes. Chris felt sweat sticking the wheel to his hands. When he adjusted his grip, a glaring symbol on the dashboard caught his attention. They were running on fumes.
“Fuck…” He muttered, and almost flinched at the way his voice trembled.
“What’s the matter?” Mace croaked, spite and sarcasm replaced by a childish fearfulness.
“We’re almost out of gas.” Chris replied simply, trying to regain some illusion of confidence.
“Great.” Mace moaned, and despite a hidden accusation beneath the surface, Chris felt relieved to hear a sliver of her usual self.
The landscape changed quickly after that. Corn fields thinned out and eventually became wide spanning meadows. Some were inhabited by livestock, some not, but they all shared that same trace of human care.
Chris noticed they were suddenly going downhill. Soon they could see the town. It was one of those in-between places, something both urban and countryside. The roads were paved in old, faded asphalt; cracked in places and the lines were worn to almost nothing.
Most vehicles roaming the streets were either trucks or tractors. There was the occasional station-wagon, but none younger than 82’. Some of the shops had closed down, leaving only dusty windows and signs saying; CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. No one moved on the streets, and a dusty, lonely atmosphere weighed heavily on the town. If the zombie apocalypse was going to start at some point, Chris reckoned it had already begun here.
When he found what he’d been looking for, the meter was so close to empty they might as well have been pushed on the wind. Conoco, the sign said. The letters were worn but the place seemed in good shape.
An old man sat on a bench in front of the store. His face was concealed behind a bushy grey beard, as well as the shadow cast from his white baseball cap. In his hands, he held a bottle of coke, glass perspiring and casting cold diamond shapes on the pavement.
Chris swallowed and was once more reminded of how dry his throat was. He gazed into the man’s yellow tinted eyes and felt that familiar wave of unease. There was something sinister there, unformed and shapeless. The stranger didn’t regard him with hostility, nor was there a question there, any wariness or even friendliness. It was as if he’d seen him here a thousand times before, or just knew he would show up.
“Wait here, I’ll fill up the tank and get us a couple of cokes.” He murmured to Mace, not taking his eyes of the old man. She nodded and sank lower in her seat. Chris meanwhile got out of the car, slammed the door shut and stepped warily towards the pumps.
“Hey there.” He said as he lifted the nozzle, eyes meeting those of the stranger.
“Hey yourself,” the old man croaked, voice hoarse and thick as if he’d been smoking since before he was born.
The machine whirred restlessly as it pumped the gas. Chris felt eyes scorching the back of his neck. When the familiar Click finally came, he put the handle back in its place and defiantly turned to meet the man’s gaze. It hadn’t changed.
“You live in town?” Chris asked, taking a few steps closer to the door. The dying sun glared upon the glass, turning it into a mirror and concealing the room on the other side. It might have been just as well. Inside, the clerk and her tree customers had all turned simultaneously to stare at Chris and his daughter. Blank faces, but their eyes gleamed with a greedy cruelty.
“Yeap.” He spoke in a thick dialect Chris couldn’t place.
“That’s great. Hope you’ll enjoy it.” He was just about to pass when the man spoke up again.
“You can’t go yet.” His voice had turned smug and low, as if he was telling secrets. “You have to stay for communion.”
Chris felt a chill caress his flesh, making his hairs stand on end. An itchy need to hurry came over him, a need to run away. But it was soon smothered by years of knowing just how the world worked. There was nothing in the dark, there were no monsters, towns weren’t inherently dangerous. Had he turned and run back to his car as his instincts persisted, things might have been different.
Instead he opened the door. The store was a small room, gloomy but clean. The air-condition was a welcome relief. Almost as soon as it closed, the door opened again. Mace stood there with her arms wrapped around her thin frame like a protective shield. Her eyes were large and frightened, lips pressed together tightly.
“Are you alright, Mace?”
“Yeah… I just didn’t want to be alone in the car.”
Chris nodded and felt a need to reach out. He wanted to hold her like he’d done in the old days, when she’d been a child and scraped her knees. He remembered when she’d been five and insisted on trying the neighbor’s skateboard, an idea which didn’t quite end in disaster but very well could’ve. Afterwards, he’d held her in his lap and kissed away her tears.
But those days were gone. He didn’t dare. Instead he turned and walked towards a fridge stocked with sodas on the other end of the room. He picked up two cokes, and as he was about to turn, he saw the case of Budweiser on a shelf to his right. How badly he wanted it; turning away was almost painful. No one stared at them now, except for the clerk. She was an attractive blonde woman in her mid-thirties. Pale blue eyes accompanied a pair of flushed full lips.
“Would that be all, sir?” She asked. Her words were drawn out, as if she was mocking him. People in this town sure were peculiar.
“That and the gas.” He said, trying not to meet her gaze. He was afraid she might see the conflicting feelings there. He wanted her, but she also terrified him. He had no idea why.
She gave him the price, and as Chris removed the bills from his wallet, she said;
“Remember you can’t go yet. We love strangers in this town. You must stay for communion.”
Chris held Mace’s hand when they left the building. He couldn’t remember taking it, nor how they had somehow wound up outside. His muscles were trembling, face pale and heart racing. They got back in the car, carried on stiff legs and heavy breaths. A rumble came as he turned the key, but when he put in first gear and released the clutch, the engine died. He turned the ignition again. Nothing happened.
“Dad…?”
He didn’t reply. As he sat there, forcing his lungs to breathe and his heart to calm down, he tried to find some center, some place of refuge inside himself where the world still made sense. People here were strange, there was something off, true, but why was his alarm bells ringing like air raid sirens? Where did it come from, and why? Questions he couldn’t answer. Everything he knew about the world told him there was no danger. Still his instincts disagreed, telling him somewhere a predator had rung the dinner bell.
A truck which might once have been red, but had over time faded into a dull shade of pink, drove up on the other side of the pumps. Chris paid it no mind for now. He was too busy taking deep breaths and regaining his sanity. Mace was fidgeting with her fingers and staring through the windshield, sweat pearling on her forehead and making purple strands of hair stick to her skin.
The sun was barely holding on to the world, yet its heat lingered, merciless to those unshielded by air-condition. He took one of the cokes he got from the store and handed it to the girl. He had time to relish its chilled glass against the palm of his hand, then she took it gratefully. She even offered him a faint smile. What was the world coming to?
He turned the key again and met with that same dry click. He’d never been a genius when it came to cars, but he supposed if there was any place to begin, it was with the fuses. He checked.
Soon as he bowed down, Mace gave off a loud shriek which had him bumping his head against the steering wheel. A man was staring at them through the passenger side window. His face was shrouded in the shadow of a straw hat, but Chris could still make it out.
He was weathered in an attractive sort of way, eyes deep blue and chin covered in a thick, blonde beard. His smile was wide and friendly, yet kept miles away from his eyes. They were like cold diamonds.
“Got some trouble with your car there, friend?”
The man said in a voice muffled by the glass. Even so it was a pleasant voice, smooth and soft in a way which contradicted his worn features. Chris disliked his tone however. Muffled or not, there was a smugness there; the soft cling of mockery which came just before I-told-you-so.
“Do you mind rolling down the window?” He continued when Chris offered no reply. Mace said nothing either, but had crawled up in her seat so close he could feel the heat emanating from her skin. Once again, he felt that need to put a hand on her, embrace her, make her feel safe. Once again, he didn’t dare. A moment’s hesitation, then Chris did as the stranger asked.
“Is there an auto-repair shop in town?” He asked hoarsely.
“I think there was one back in 87’.”
“Great…”
“Now hold your horses, son.” The stranger said and held up a hand. Chris didn’t particularly like being called “son,” especially since he was approaching forty-six years of age.
“We like strangers in this town. They don’t come through that often, you see. My wife got a steak going back at the house. I also happen to be pretty good with fixing up old cars, and this doesn’t look exactly brand new, if you don’t mind me saying.”
Chris shrugged.
“You’re lucky this happened here and not on the road. Out that away there’s about a hundred miles of farmland and corn,” he said, gesturing east of town, or rather nowhere in particular as far as Christ could see.
“Had the car given up out there, you could have been stuck there for days.”
Yeah. Chris thought. Real lucky, we are, truly.
“Why would you help us?” Chris asked suspiciously, tossing another glance at Mace who remained silent.
“Because we don’t get many strangers. And, because I reckon I’m the only hope you got…”
No, no, no, no, no, no, absolute –
“I suppose you’re right, and I’d appreciate the assistance.” His treacherous lips replied.
“I’ll tow you back to my place. I got a cable.”
Back on the road, some of Chris’ irrational panic faded. If it was irrational. The people seemed peculiar, but on the other hand nothing had really happened. With dusk just about passing to night, the land had attained an almost mythical beauty. The sight of it seemed to wash away some of his anxiety.
There was a primitive peace about it. A peace reminiscing of gone days, when just about everyone was a farmer and a cow was the family fortune. A simpler life. In the sight of such, it was difficult to remain paranoid, and his brain was already drowning his gnawing instincts in rational conclusions.
You imagined it all. And what about communion? This is a small place, they probably have a variety of customs strange to you. That man by the road? You just saw it wrong, that’s all. So forth and so forth.
“I don’t think this is a good idea, Dad.” Mace groaned.
“What makes you say that?”
She parted her lips to speak, but the words seemed to stuck in her throat. They closed again, leaving only her eyes to silently plead her case. A moment later they returned to the landscape outside the window. Chris offered nothing in return.
He expected to be afraid. Whatever alarms had been blaring off and on for the last hour would return full force, blowing his brains out and having him run through the corn fields. But it didn’t happen, not so much as a twinge. He seemed to have known where they were going. Perhaps some hidden, mystical part of his being, that which was still attached to the primitive magic which kept the world rolling, had whispered it in his subconscious.
The man was gone now. If Chris had to guess, he would say he was sitting up front, wearing a blonde beard and unsettling blue eyes. Maple Spring’s good Samaritan. But the dirt road was still there, the field of grass and the farmhouse at the end. Chris emptied his coke. It was lukewarm and not very appealing anymore, but it was something to do. How he wished it’d been a beer. Budweiser, cold, perspiring.
Slowly they approached the farm. It loomed closer in the growing darkness like an ominous castle. It was higher than Chris had first predicted, white and old fashioned in its statuesque, wooden dignity. There was no backyard. It was all surrounded by fields of corn. The lawn had spotty patches of decayed, shriveled grass where the summer heat had shown no mercy, but the corn was flourishing.
It was vital in an almost unnatural way. The fresh green of its leaves, mingled with glints of gold, was so thick it looked as though it had been painted upon the air. He wondered if he stroked one of the stalks, would his hand come off green?
“Come on, baby.” Chris said softly, nudging her lightly with the back of his hand. “It’s going to be okay, I am…” He hesitated. This trip, his last attempt at being a father which he’d been so afraid of fucking up, had fallen flat around his ears. He dragged her half across the country just to be stuck in the middle of nowhere. What was worse was that she had never wanted to go. No surprise there. After months of staying sober, he’d been able to nag Cindy into giving him a chance.
One last chance. She persuaded Mace, most likely with the promise of something else down the line, and Chris had been given his turn at redemption. Such a fuck-up he was.
“It’s okay, Dad.” She shot back, seeing the apology form on his face and waving it away. “Let’s just… get going again soon, okay?” Chris closed his mouth. He still wanted to apologize, but the words had gone lost somewhere in his head. He nodded.
As they got out of the car, Chris felt the warm breath of the sun lingering on the air. He’d hoped it would cool off as the day passed, but no such luck, it seemed. It took him a few more seconds to notice how silent everything was. Something was just missing. Gazing around, it came to him as abruptly as a slap in the face. The wind was still, so was all animals, insects and other mundane disturbances. He’d never experienced such lack of sound before, and it chilled him to the bone.
Mace had wrapped her arms around her body. Standing there, thin and exposed, she looked more fragile than ever. This time Chris dared. He put an arm around her shoulders, and she welcomed his presence. She nudged closer to his protective, fatherly warmth and leaned her head against his shoulder.
They remained like that. Soon the stranger approached, and if Chris didn’t know better, he could have sworn the heat intensified.
“Name’s Travis, by the by.” He offered, extending a hand. Chris didn’t want to take it, but inbred social etiquette demanded it of him. He expected it to feel rough and callous, the hand of a laborer, but he was surprised. It was soft and cool. It wasn’t cold, but as if he’d just returned from getting something out of the refrigerator. It also, to Chris’ obvious imagination of course, seemed to completely lack lines.
“Well, let’s look at what you have here.” Travis continued, walking around them to reach the driver side door. He got in and turned the ignition. Click.
“Yeah,” he nodded, as if this was what he’d expected all along. He sounded cheerful to Chris’ displeasure.
“Most likely the battery’s dead. You need to get a new one.” Chris felt his heart drop.
“So… we’re not going anywhere until we get a new battery?”
“Don’t look like it.”
“Can’t you just jump-start it?”
“Sure. Not that you’d get far.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Chris groaned, and for a moment he had a childish impulse to kick the ground. He resisted, like a true champion. “How do you even know that from just turning the key?”
“Now, hold your horses, son. I happen to have a friend who can help you. Stay here tonight, supper with us, and tomorrow morning I’ll give him a call. You’ll be out of here in no time.”
“I would never want to cause you any…”
“Trouble?” Travis cut him off and chuckled. “Don’t you worry about that. We’re happy to help. You go on inside, I’ll get the car into the barn for tonight. You and Mace can take the guest room.”
Chris blinked as his heart skipped a beat.
“How do you know her name?” Suddenly on edge. He hadn’t mentioned her name, he was sure of it.
“You gave it to me when you told me your name was Chris,” Travis said matter-of-factly. “
“Are you feeling alright, son?”
“I never gave you my name. Never gave you either of our names.” Or had he? He couldn’t entirely remember. Besides, he was looking into Travis’ blue eyes, and his memory got hazy. Maybe he had.
“I… sorry.”
“Don’t you worry.” Travis mused. “You must be tired.”
“Dad…?” Mace tucked lightly on his hand, forcing his attention away from Travis’ disconcerting eyes. His head suddenly felt clear again. “I want to go… I don’t think we should stay here…”
Chris opened his mouth to speak, then noticed the way Travis was looking at his daughter. There was a hunger there. More, there was a predatory expectancy, as if he was waiting for her. Unease crept back into his heart.
“Maybe we should go, actually.” Suddenly that idea seemed very fine, very urgent, indeed.
“Where are you going to go?” Travis chuckled, now looking as if he found all of this rather ridiculous. “You have no means of going anywhere.” Ominously he stepped out of the car. He did so slowly, and once he came to his full height, Chris could have sworn the man had grown slightly. It was crazy, but the truth.
“Who the fuck are you?” Chris growled, gritting his teeth and took a step backwards. Without realizing it, he’d spread his arms in front of Mace. “What do you want from us?!”
“Just want to help, is all.” Travis replied dreamily. “We’d like you to stay for communion.”
“What the fuck does that mean?!” Chris yelled, his rational mind seeming to eat itself as panic exploded in his consciousness. Suddenly a sound disturbed the sinister quiet, feet moving through tall grass.
Chris snapped his attention to the field, and saw to his horror that faces had appeared there. Pale faces they were, seemingly gleaming in the growing darkness. They all regarded him in that same expectant way; like predators waiting for something to happen.
Travis was on him then, grabbing his collar, and yanking him off the ground as if he was a weightless rag doll. Chris would’ve screamed, but dread clogged up his throat and denied him all but a light gasp. He struggled, pulled and beat at the hand, but it might as well have been made of metal.
Travis never ceased his smiling. Casual, simple and friendly; the inviting smile of a kind neighbor. Yet his eyes were worst. They shone like blank coins reflecting moonlight, insane and maliciously detached from pity. They were the eyes of a spider clutching a fly in its deadly embrace.
“Run!” Chris croaked, words struggling to escape his throat. Yet Mace didn’t run. She barely seemed to be there at all anymore. She was staring at Travis, open mouthed and shocked, but not in a fearful way. If anything, she seemed to be in awe, or in trance. Travis’ smile grew wider, the shine of his eyes intensifying.
“No no, son…” He mused, tone kept on the same, frustratingly calm level. “I think you’ll find she won’t go anywhere. You’re not a father anyway, are you? You’re just a drunk piece of shit.”
Chris wanted to scream. He wanted to curse and spit, scratch and shove his fist into that calm, pleasant face. Instead his lips trembled, arms losing strength. How many times had he told himself those exact same words? How many times had he emptied one bottle after the other, telling himself it didn’t matter anyway; he was just a pathetic bum?
Too many times. Far too many times in f
|
Chapter 1
Jonathan was fascinated by magic.
For as long as he could recall, it was something that undoubtedly enthralled him. Perhaps it was that the enigmatic nature that drew him towards it. He remembered witnessing his first act of wonder on the street, when an old man had a random woman select a card from a deck.
He could still recollect the old man’s appearance. He had pale skin veneered with a river of frozen ripples across his face. His cheeks sagged to his chin as if pocketing small bundles of change. His eyebrows were white and bushy, veiling his eyes while complimenting his dense mustache.
He wore a classy suit, featuring a tasteful vest beneath. A golden chain looped precariously from his vest, disappearing behind the flap of his jacket. A top hat sat idle on his head adding to his already towering height.
The woman appeared rather extravagant herself, donning a quite lavishing red dress with a brown fur coat, her brunette hair resting comfortably upon the fleecy collar. Even in the heels she sported, she barely measured up to the old man’s chest.
He had her gaze upon the card before returning it to its home in the deck, shuffling them while he entertained the audience with an array of phrases, gaining their laughter in return.
After the cards had received enough attention, he fanned them out in a smooth and yet swift motion. Every card held their red backsides to the audience, all but one. In the heart of the arched row of cards poked the white tip of one rebellious card. At that moment there, everyone including Jonathan had begun to gasp. The old man asked the woman to retrieve the card.
As she did, he inquired if that was the card she had selected, and regardless, right or wrong, he would later tell her something about the card she was removing. The woman procured the card, staring at it before slowly shaking her head in discontent. Jonathan remembered how he felt at that moment, almost feeling sorry for the old man, and holding his head down in dismay.
However, the old man wasn’t finished. He simply shrugged his shoulders feebly before asking the woman why she had taken two cards from him. Confused, the woman argued back that she hadn’t. Yet, the old man pressed on, ensuring that she in fact had taken two cards and that one was in her coat pocket. She was hesitant, but slowly she placed her hand in her pocket and immediately her eyes lit up.
Jonathan’s lit up as well unable to gauge at the possibility of the old man’s act. The woman removed her hand from her coat pocket and to everyone’s amazement, a card was in it. The old man once again asked her if the card she now held, the two of diamonds was the card she had selected. With quivering hands, she was speechless, simply nodding, producing an extended smile and showcasing everyone the card.
Everyone around applauded, but the old man held up his hands to gesture silence. He notified everyone that he had vowed to inform the woman something about the first card she had selected. He asked her if the first card had been her original choice before selecting the second one. She was speechless again, holding one hand to her mouth. After a few seconds, she claimed that it was, but that it was something she had decided in her thoughts.
It was at that moment, the crowd burst into a thunderous applause, even louder than before. The old man’s lips curled into a satisfied smiled, and he issued a long leisure bow.
After that day, Jonathan was forever instilled with captivation. From then on, he recognized that a Magician is what he wanted to become.
Jonathan had witnessed that act three years ago when he was eight years old. From that moment on, card tricks were the tool he toiled with, anxious to create a routine of his own that would have crowds applauding in amazement.
Of course this was all a pipedream, if anything. He lived with his mother in a rather rundown part of the city. His father had passed some years ago when he was too young to remember. His mother had claimed that he died from stress, of working so hard at the shoe factory, barely keeping their heads above water to make ends meet. They were just shy from being dirt poor, and with his father gone, the weight of that burden now resided on his mother who worked long hour shifts.
Jonathan tried to pull his own weight to assist his mother, functioning as a paper route boy. Every morning, well beyond even the slightest glimmer of light, he would wake to meet his boss, Mr. Garrett at a stand down the corner. Mr. Garrett who was a rather impatient pudgy fellow was reluctant to hire the boy at first, but caved after Jonathan proved his worth by working the first few shifts free of charge. Jonathan was hard-working at his job, often finishing earlier than Mr. Garrett’s past employees that he barely had anything to say against him.
So when Jonathan went on again about the headline on the papers about “the Great Occam Cobb,” he indulged the boy.
“Mr. Garrett, it’s him again!” he exclaimed excitedly.
Mr. Garrett was lazily fanning through one of the papers. He was an objectively large man and always seemed to have a frown pressed across his lips. One of his hefty fingers rubbed his brow, after correcting the cabbie hat on his head. Afterwards, he lugged his attention from the paper he was reading.
“What’s that?” he asked in a monotone voice.
“It’s him, the Great Occam Cobb!” Jonathan answered, giving the name his best announcer voice.
Mr. Garrett sniffed briskly, before returning his attention to the paper. “Oh that coot, huh? Is he still at it?” he asked dryly.
“At it?! He’s the greatest Magician in the world and it says he’ll be performing here all week starting next week!”
Mr. Garrett was silent, turning the pages nonchalantly. “Mr. Garrett, did you hear what I said?! He’s coming here!” Jonathan repeated in a voice even more excited than before.
The elevation in his voice seemed to startle Mr. Garrett as if pulling him out of a trance. “That’s great, kid,” he said without looking up, the top of his hat bobbed from nodding.
“It’s fantastic!” Jonathan replied, staring wide-eyed at the black and white photo depicting a man. It was a rather young man with black hair combed and greased to the side. He wore a nice suit similar to that of the old man years ago. One hand rested just under his chin with fingers curling around it while an eyebrow was raised. His other hand poked from under his arm clamped tight to a wand. His entire expression seemed as though he was peering deep into Jonathan’s eyes, almost inquiring him if what he would see was genuine magic or deception.
Occam Cobb was Jonathan’s favorite Magician or maybe idol was a better word for it. Although, he had never attended a show of the man, the rumors of his talents and reputation were enough to fuel his imagination of what the man could do. He heard nothing less than: “Occam Cobb was a true Magician of the Ages” or “Occam defies Laws of Physics” or his favorite, “The Great Occam has surpassed all his predecessors, creating a new genre of Magic.” Of course, these were all headlines on the newspapers, but even the words from people were no different.
Alas, Occam Cobb was coming to his city to perform. The thought alone set a spark of vigor through Jonathan’s body. He immediately dug in his pocket to pull out a beaten set of playing cards. He was able to purchase them after saving up enough. At the time, he was uncertain to buy them, but his mother insisted that he could, since all he talked about was magic. She said it was okay and that it would be his early birthday present for that year.
“Alright, Mr. Garrett, can you pick a card, please?” he asked, holding up the fanned out deck.
Mr. Garrett sighed behind the paper, before dropping it and sluggishly grabbing a card. He quickly peered at the card barely looking at the face before putting it back in. Jonathan smiled devilishly while shuffling the cards, attempting to once again give his best announcing voice.
“So you picked ‘that’ card, huh? You think ‘that’ suit is the one to do it? It’s possible I might never find it, but you can’t resist the image of the card in your mind, can you?”
When he was finished shuffling, he put his finger on the top of the deck.
“The card on the top will be the one you pick!” he exclaimed. “Are you ready?”
Mr. Garett had a glazed look in his eyes, issuing another brisk sniff. With the awkward silence, Jonathan continued.
“Okay! Is this your card?!” he said, lifting the card, revealing it to him. The card revealed a three of spades.
Mr. Garrett nodded with an unfazed face. “Yeah that’s it. Good job, kid,” he said, returning to his paper. “You’re all done for the day, right? You can go home then, see you bright and early tomorrow.”
Jonathan barely heard his words, having returned his attention to the picture in the paper. He smiled to himself admiring the photo. He knew Mr. Garrett had seen the trick a million times. He needed to make a new trick though, one that would surely blow the minds of everyone away. Better yet, if he could meet Occam Cobb, even if just for a second, he could show him his trick, and maybe it would be enough to amaze even the greatest Magician.
Chapter 2
Occam Cobb would arrive in a week which meant Jonathan had to create and perfect his trick in that allotted timeframe. All throughout the next few days, he found himself contemplating on the trick, on what to do and how to do it. He began multitasking, pondering while working, while on breaks and even before sleeping at night. With the arrival of the Magician drawing closing, Jonathan began to worry he wouldn’t be able to come up with a clever enough trick.
However, two days before the inevitable day, a new trick had donned on him. Throughout those final two days, he practiced the trick intricately, even threatening to be late on a few deliveries. He became more and more obsessed to perfect it, making sure to pay attention to all the details until at last the week at hand had arrived.
That day, Jonathan had never felt such a surge of anxiety and apprehension. He found himself stuttering a few times when talking to a few fellow customers, even with Mr. Garett.
“You alright, kid?” he asked later that day. “You were a little skittish today.”
For some reason, he had lost his voice at the point. He simply nodded a little. Mr. Garrett gave him a puzzled look, but gazed at the headline of one of the papers stating: “See the Great Occam Cobb Tonight!”
“Ah, you’re nervous about that Cobb fellow. It really means that much to you, doesn’t it?” he said, giving off the first smile Jonathan had ever seen. “Tell you what, you can get off early today.”
Jonathan’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Yeah go on, get outta here,” Mr. Garrett replied.
With that, Jonathan took off, racing home, never stopping once until he arrived. He came across his mother who happened to be on her way out.
She was a frail looking woman with a face stained with light wrinkles, mingling of stress and exhaustion. She stood with a slight hunch, more than likely a result from preserving the posture at the sewing factory. A few strands had managed to escape her poorly sustained bun falling across her weary eyes. They widened when they recognized the boy running up to her.
“Jonathan!” she exclaimed, while he greeted her with a hug. “What are you doing home so early?”
“Mother?! You-wouldn’t-believe-it…” he said excitedly, half out of breath. Occam-Cobb-is-here-tonight-performing!”
She shook her head in complete confusion, holding up a hand to her head. “Slow down, child. Catch your breath first.”
He smiled, pausing for a second before attempting to repeat the news. “Occam Cobb, mother! He’s here tonight performing!”
She closed her eyes rendering a soft sigh of relief before giving a sheepish smile. “That’s wonderful, Jonathan. I thought something terrible happened.”
“No, it’s greatest thing ever!”
“Well that’s good. Why don’t you head inside? I started to warm up some soup for dinner. I’ve got to head in for my next shift,” she said, starting to leave.
“Well mother, I was wondering… if it was maybe possible for me to go?” he brought up.
His mother halted, giving off another long sigh. “Jonathan, we’ve talked about this before. I don’t mind when you play with your cards or tricks as long as it does not interfere with what’s important,” she said, looking him deep in his eyes. “What’s important right now is our home and the money we get to keep it. We can’t just throw what little we have on just anything, especially not just to watch another person. Our priority is for the things that can keep us alive. You understand that, don’t you?”
Jonathan felt his heart grow heavy. His eyes fell to the ground slowly.
“You understand?”
He sighed, nodding. “Yes, I understand, mother.”
“Good. One day, you will get over all this magic and you’ll look back at this moment and realize that this was the right decision,” she said, issuing a light kiss on his forehead. Afterwards, she parted ways disappearing down the street.
Jonathan felt his eyes grow watery, a few tears escaped, rolling down his cheek. He quickly rubbed them away. His appetite had diminished not caring for the meal his mother had prepared for him. Instead, he began walking down the street with his head still lowered. Along the way, he could see a man with a tall pole lighting the candles of street posts. Around him, the skittering of paws could be heard from the stray cats that ran amok. The sky grew cooler and darker, the street lights becoming his only guide in the darkness.
In the distance, he could see another set of lights brighter than the area around. Upon inspecting, he could tell it was coming from the city’s Grand Theatre where Occam Cobb would perform. He made his way towards the building, observing the crowd of people flooding slowly inward. “Witness the Great Occam Cobb” was spread in large letters across a long banner hanging in the front.
The people were all dressed lavishly with men in noteworthy suits, some with comparable top hats, even a few with canes. The women wrapped along their arms were ones to gleam as well. They glowed with gorgeous dresses, coats of the most extravagant fur, and jewelry that pirouetted at every movement in the light.
They muttered among themselves while the line traversed forward to a man at the door accepting their tickets. The people were about to witness the performance of a lifetime, he thought to himself. Unfortunately for him, he was left to simply speculate on what marvels he would be missing out on. After a several more minutes, the crowds had subsided, completely contained within the wide structure. The air around had reverted back to its ensnaring stillness.
Chapter 3
Jonathan sat across the building with his knees to his chest, resting his head atop. He listened as an orchestra could be heard blaring their instruments from inside followed by a thunderous applause. For every long pause of silence, the orchestra would intervene followed by another round of clapping. He was ready to return home until he was startled by a man exiting the side of the building. He was carrying a box and tossed it to the side before reentering.
Jonathan bit his lip, thinking for a second. This was his chance and it might be his only. He nodded his head and quickly made his way to the door. After waiting a few seconds, he attempted to turn the knob; it twisted open without effort. He carefully glanced around before entering, shutting the door behind him.
Inside, he found himself to be in a poorly lit storage room. Stacks of old wooden crates towered around, some entangled in long dusty cobwebs like fish caught in fishermen nets. The air itself smelled of oil fluid and musty loafs of bread. The amount of dust in the air managed tickled the back of Jonathan’s throat.
He continued through the room, being cautious to not draw attention to his presence. The faint light seeping in the room emanated through the cracks of a set of large wooden double doors. Sneaking to the doors, he placed his ear up against it to listen. He heard a few voices on the other side before they grew faint in the distance.
Carefully, he gave the knob a twist all the while pulling the door open to take a peek inside. Immediately, his face met with a calm airstream, flooding his nose with an aroma that of saccharine honey and garden-fresh flowers.
His eyes regarded a massive candle lit hallway decorated with walls of gold and white. Golden columns permeated from the walls, expanding to the ceiling, running along the both sides of the hallway. Exquisite portraits draped the walls amid the spaces of the columns, each depicting a man or woman posing in a manner of prominence. A radiant red carpet accompanied the hallway, gracefully stretching down its wide corridors.
Jonathan’s eyes widened, taking in the glorious sight before him. Never had he had known such a beautiful configuration existed. Another loud applause from further within drew back his attention from the fantasy he was encased. He frantically looked around, attempting to find some manner of entrance that could grant him an audience to the show.
Making his way down the hallway, he came to a large circular room. The room was similar to that of the hallway, containing identical golden columns hugging the wall with more portraits just the same. However, a few sets of furniture were present, including a few chairs and tables that could entertain many people. Another hallway could be seen to right of the room where he heard the applause erupt louder.
Jonathan was ready to head towards it, but began to hear voices from within, approaching his direction. Panicking, he quickly looked around the room to locate a place to conceal his presence. Finding nothing, his heart began to race frantically until he noticed a wooden staircase to the left. Without hesitation, he bolted up the stairs which led to a stiff door. It took several pushes with his shoulder, but he was able to finally budge it a second before the voices arrived in the room below.
The room he had entered appeared to be an attic of the sort, housing similar stacks of crates like below, entangled in cobwebs. A few rats scampered across the floor before disappearing into the darkness. The attic itself was hard to see in with minuscule strands of light escaping the cracks of the floorboard.
While he stood there letting his eyes adjust to the dark, a voice startled him; it sounded muffled but spoke as if addressing many people. It sounded near so he began making his way through the attic. He held his hands up to prevent himself from walking into any of the stacks. Even so, he tripped a few times.
He finally came across a window frame with a set of old curtains drawn across. Behind the curtains, he could hear the applause even louder. His heart began to beat faster with anticipation. He reached for the curtains, pulling them to the side. Immediately, a cloud of dust was released into the air. He coughed a little while fanning the smog of particles away.
When he gazed back at the window, his heart dropped. Below him, he could see countless rows filled with people down in the Theatre. All of them were at the edge of their seat, admiring the prospect before them. Jonathan’s eyes surveyed through the rows, guiding them to where the rows met the stage. Before he could view the man upon it, he heard his voice echo throughout the air.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for being the lovely audience that you have been all night!”
Jonathan’s eyes grew wide while a smile formed into a full-blown grin. It was him, the Great Occam Cobb. With all his luck in the world, his eyes were able to gaze upon the greatest Magician of all time, and without a ticket.
The stage was massive with tall velvet curtains to its side, looming to meet the height of the immense ceiling. Occam Cobb himself appeared trivial upon it, but confident with his arms extended out, radiating from the illumination focused on him.
“It is with my greatest pleasure that I introduce to you, the final and most intricate spectacle in my hat to conclude this miraculous evening!” he continued on.
Two women appeared from opposite sides of the stage, each rolling a tall, thin black box that stood vertically. Each box had golden letters engraved upon them, the first saying Witness, while the second, Greatness. They placed the boxes at opposite ends of the stage.
At that moment, the orchestra erupted in a loud ambitious melody.
“Ladies and Gentlemen! What you are about to witness, is an act so simple, so mind-blowing that it must be viewed twice to believe it!” the Magician’s voice echoed. “Imagine for a second, the idea of being in two places at once all under a single second, to be in one location and then a next in a blink of an eye!”
The orchestra increased its tempo to further amplify the moment. It was working; Jonathan was leaning closer, eager to see what impossible feat he was describing. Below, the audience could be seen doing the same.
“I am proud to present, the Occam Transporter!”
The audience rendered another loud wave of applause before immediately dying down, eager to hear how the trick would work.
“Behold! Behind me, you see my two lovely assistants have brought forth onto you, two boxes!” he exclaimed, holding up two gloved fingers.
“To your left!” He gestured to the box labeled ‘Witness’. “I will step inside and enclose myself within that box.” He turned his attention to the box on the right. “I will attempt to transport myself from the first box into the next in just one second!”
The crowd began to murmur among themselves in dissatisfaction. He paused, before curling his fingers onto his chin, similar to that of the newspaper photo.
“Hmm… I can tell that some of you have your doubts, in fact, I think some of you think that I, the Great Occam Cobb, can do better! Well, you’re right!”
A long chain emerged from the ceiling hovering above the left ‘Witness’ box.
“What if I told you, that I can ante up the stakes and lift the box I will be contained within and drop it?! That’s right Ladies and Gentlemen, I will plummet to my doom, if I cannot indeed transport myself from that container to the next!”
Jonathan bit his lip in discontent, he did not like the sound of this act. The audience seemed to feel the same way, issuing a light clap all the while murmuring among themselves.
“And if that wasn’t enough, the box I will be contained in will be secured with a lock!”
One of his assistants gracefully paraded the lock in the air. At this moment, the audience grew even more rowdy. The Magician extended his arms outward.
“Alas!” he exclaimed and immediately turned around, facing the left box. His smiling assistant opened the door for him. He walked inside the tight box, facing the audience inside. His assistant shut the door. His voice, although muffled, could still be heard within.
“Now, my lovely assistant will apply the lock to the box!”
At his cue, she applied the large padlock to the box’s door.
“She will now attach the chain to my case!”
Again, she moved on cue, climbing a small ladder brought out. At the top, she attached the chain to the box’s top ring. When she climbed down, she removed the ladder. The chain began to hoist the box high into the air. Everyone at the moment was dead silent, including Jonathan. A series of knocks could be heard coming from within the case.
“I assure everyone that I am still within the box!” a muffled voice yelled out. “Please ensure that you do not pull eyes away, not even for a second or you dare to miss the opportunity to…” he continued before pausing. “Witness…!”
At that last mutter of the word, the chain released, plunging the box swiftly to the ground. Everyone gasped out in fear as it fell, shattering into many pieces. However, the moment the box touched the ground, the door to the second box swung open.
“… Greatness!” the Magician exclaimed, finishing his sentence from before without delay.
It took a second for the audience to register what had happened. Yet when they did, they quickly erupted in a thunderous applause louder than ever conceived that night. Many of them rose to their feet clapping and cheering as they did. Jonathan clapped as well from his position, filled with a mixture of reverence and angst.
He had done it, performed the impossible and amazed with true wonder. The Magician smiled gracefully taking the hand of his assistants, rendering both a light kiss. Afterwards, he issued a bow. The curtains began to gracefully descend, but stopped when he held up a hand.
“Ladies and Gentlemen! I informed you earlier that the trick would happen so quick that you would need to see it twice! So how about it, would you?!”
The applause died with the crowd murmuring among themselves, before sitting down quietly.
“I thought as much! However, I being the Great Occam Cobb couldn’t simply lull you into watching the same trick exactly! Oh no, as always the stakes must be raised! So that’s why I am giving one of ‘you’ the lucky opportunity to be the one transported!” he exclaimed, extending his arms outward again.
A slight delay occurred before the audience issued a light clap, continuing to murmur amongst each other.
“Who dares to leave this world in a second and return in another?!” he asked, pointing his finger among the seating.
One of his assistants rolled another case in, setting it in front of the broken shards of the last box. The new box had the same word ‘Witness’ engraved across it. Again Jonathan bit his lip; what he would do to be part of that act.
“I assure you, Ladies and Gentlemen that the box will not be suspended like the other, so there is no cause for alarm! So who will dare the trip?! Who will venture into the unknown?!”
There was a long pause until a man abruptly stood up from the back. “Yes, sir! We have a beautiful woman back here who would love to volunteer!” he announced.
The woman sitting next to him shook her head in dismay, playfully hitting the man to stop. However, he pressed on jokingly urging her to do so.
“Ah yes, come along milady!” the Magician replied out.
Jonathan could see her crossing her arms in discontent, firmly glaring at the man still standing aside her.
“It looks to me, the lady is shy. Perhaps a round of applause will grant her the courage she needs!” he requested, clapping his hands together.
The audience followed suit applauding. The woman began to blush before finally conceding. She stood up making her way to the stage. The Magician helped her up the small set of stairs, planting a kiss upon her hand once she was safely up.
She was beautiful with short locks of blond hair. Her white dress glimmered in comparison to the jewelry athwart her neck. Her thin figure was very much apparent from the firm press of the dress.
“And what, do I have the pleasure of calling you?” he asked.
“Carol,” she responded, blushing.
“Well, Carol. It is truly a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said, issuing another small kiss to her hand.
She blushed harder at this notion.
“Now Carol,” he said guiding her over to the first box. “You saw here, how the trick works. I am going to place you into this box, wave my hands and in a mere a second, you will get to experience firsthand the Occam Transporter!” He said, gesturing to the box on the right.
The woman swallowed a little. She spoke rather soft, her voice barely carrying across the stage. “What do I have to do?”
The man smiled, turning his attention to the audience.
“Carol, here asked a very important question. She asked ‘what will she have to do?’ And I tell her as I tell you, nothing! Nothing my dear! All you have to do is enter that box and I will do the rest. Are you ready?”
She swallowed again before giving a light nod with a sheepish smile.
“Okay then!” he responded, guiding her closer to the left box.
The orchestra began playing their aspiring music once again. Once the woman was in front of the door, he opened it and helped her in. Immediately, he shut the door and began knocking against the box with his fist while addressing the audience. This struck Jonathan rather odd; it was possible it was just a coincidence, but the knocks almost sounded identical to the ones earlier. He quickly shook it off though ready to see if the Great Occam could fulfill his promise.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, Witness… Greatness!” he yelled, pointing to his assistance to open the other box’s door.
She opened the door and as promised, the woman appeared on the other end. The assistant helped her out of the box and the audience erupted into another thunderous applause. Strangely though, the woman held her hand up to the air as if everything around was too bright. She almost appeared dazed. The Magician walked over to her with a quick pace, taking her hand.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Carol!” he exclaimed.
The audience continued to applaud. He took a bow while still holding her hand. The woman smiled weakly before being guided back down the stairs. Jonathan curiously watched as she continued to appear dazed before finally being guided back to the gentlemen she was seated with. With that, the Magician took one final bow with the echoing of applause still roaring. The curtains made their decent soon after, fully concealing the stage.
The audience below began making their way to the exit of the Theatre. Jonathan leaned back from the window, contemplating the last few moments he has seen; he felt a smile slowly form across his lips.
Chapter 4
After waiting for the lingering crowds to leave, he made his way back down the stairs. In the room below, he ensured no one was around before entering it again.
It was marginally quiet; he could hear some of the voices of the people from outside faintly through the walls. This was his moment, he thought. This was his opportunity to see Occam Cobb. His luck had already presented the rare opportunity of catching the most breath-taking Magic act ever conceived and was sure it hadn’t run out yet.
Jonathan crept down the hallway leading further into the building. The hallway led him to a much larger room almost similar in length but clearly the lobby. At the end, a man was sweeping the floor, guiding the dust towards the set of doors for the entrance of the Theatre. His back was to Jonathan, allowing him to shuffle through the lobby to the hallway parallel.
This new hallway curved around towards the direction of the stage. Coursing through it, he came to a door marked, ‘Backstage.’ After carefully peeking through and finding it safe, he continued through the other side. Behind the door, the path was dark. Only two wall-candles lit the way, the ones next to him and the others at the end.
The hallway was unlike the other ones. In the light, the walls were unadorned, containing many rough cracks in its dry wooden features. The air back here was cool as if the wind from outside was coursing in. Small skittering of feet, suggested the presence of rats. Jonathan sighed softly and began to venture through the corridor. A few times along the way, he felt something brush against his foot.
At the end of the hallway, he came across another door. The candlelight was dim, but its rays managed to illuminate the words across the door just enough. ‘Performers Only’ the sign read. Jonathan pushed open the door. Inside, he found clothing racks with an abundance of outfits hanging from them. A variety of suits hung layered tightly together on several of the racks while a plethora dresses hung from others. The cluster of racks made the room feel almost suffocating.
Moving past them, the room became more open and clear. To the side, he could see a large full-body mirror up against the wall. A thin desk sat next to the mirror sporting a chair set aside as if someone had recently left it. Piles of papers filled the top of the desk along with a very peculiar set of gloves. Jonathan slowly approached the desk, recognizing the gloves.
His fingers grazed across them, feeling the smooth silk of the fabric. Afterwards, he turned his attention back to the room around.
“Hello?” he called out softly. “Mr. Occam Cobb, sir?”
The air was silent as ever. He sighed softly to himself, realizing he had missed his opportunity. He started to make his way back, but stopped when he heard a voice answer him.
“Yes, how can I help you, young man?”
Immediately, he sprung around and to his amazement, there stood the Great Occam himself. He was a much taller man in person with a thin frame. His black silky vest hugged tightly against his body with the sleeves of his white button shirt rolled up to his elbows, his arms crossed. His eyes leered back with a quizzing nature while his sharp chin was raised.
Jonathan noticed how the colors of his eyes differed, one being blue while the other ap
|
My boss is an absolute dipshit. Sorry, I hate to be so blunt but that’s just the way it is. My name is Sarah Collins and I work as a personal assistant for a private law firm. It’s probably safer for you if I don’t mention where. Anyway, back to my arsehole sleazebag of a boss. He’s a short, fat little man who walks around the office like a total bigshot, Rolex watch, Armani suit… you get the picture. He’s also got one of those ridiculous moustaches that look like a gerbil sleeps on you upper lip. He’s a completely sexist pig and treats me like garbage. To give you an example, the other day he walked past my desk and “pretended” to trip, spilling a giant glass of water over my white blouse, making my shirt see through. It was so embarrassing. I would have left ages ago if I didn’t need the money so much. Simon Jones is his name. He orders me around like a dog, with no respect or praise at all. But back to the point. The other day after his usual rounds of berating everyone in the office he headed to his private lift to whisk him away to the safety of his ridiculously large office. Yet, when he pressed the button, a screeching noise of metal on metal filled the room and smoke billowed through the closed doors of the elevators. It was broken, which, as you can imagine made for a pleasant morning for the rest of us. NOT. He stormed into my cubicle, his ‘stache twitching furiously. “I don’t care how you get it done, or how much it costs, but if that elevator isn’t fixed overnight it’s coming out of your pay!” he leaned closer. “Slut” he whispered. I lowered my gaze, my face burning ferociously. “Yes sir” I mumbled. Unfortunately this would mean that I would have to spend the rest of the day searching for a repair man.
*
After 2 hours of searching I had made no progress and realized I was screwed. When everyone had left the office and it turned to 9 PM my finger scrolled down the webpage further and further, but I thought it was pointless. What sort of mechanic is open past nine? My heart fluttered when I saw the next ad. It didn’t stand out and the wording was dull and boring but there it was: Mr. Mechanic – WE FIX EVERYTHING. It also said that they were available whenever needed. I called their number which was really unusual, 005 555 555. A voice picked up on the other end, male but no emotion whatsoever. “Hello Ms. Collins” it said. “Hey” I replied before getting straight to the point. He was patient and when I was finished he said: “I will depart shortly”. I thanked him and hung up. I didn’t realize then that I hadn’t mentioned my name yet. He arrived faster than I had expected. His grey overalls were matched by his grey cap that both sported the slogan on the website. He was tall and unusually slim and his eyes were dull and glassy like marbles. I led him to the elevator and told him that I’d be catching some sleep in my office. An hour later I woke at my desk, a pool of dribble formed at my mouth. The office was eerily quiet. I looked up and the mechanic was staring at me from the door to my cubicle. “All finished.” He said. “Great, you’re a lifesaver. What’s the charge?” I replied. He told me there was no fee as it was an extremely simple job. I thought he was joking but then he nodded at me took off his hat and left. I locked up and went home and dreamed of men with grey hair and glass eyes.
*
Simon Jones strolled around his office impatiently whilst drinking a glass of bourbon he had poured himself two hours earlier. He was waiting for the CEO of a competing company to arrive so they could attend lunch together and discuss the civility of their situation. In frustration he threw his glass against the wall and it shattered everywhere. The phone at his desk buzzed and he jogged over to pick it up. “Mr. Jones, the competition has arrived sir”. “Good” was all he said before slamming down the phone and heading to his elevator. He pressed the button and the doors slid open silently and smoothly. He smiled to himself and adjusted his tie around his bulbous neck. Whoever that dumb assistant of his had hired, they had done a good job. Jones took one step forward, but his foot found no purchase and he fell, screaming 34 stories down an elevator shaft to his death.
*
After my boss died, his brother took charge. He was a great guy who gave me a promotion and a pay raise. A touch of class. There was an investigation but when tested following the incident, the elevator functioned perfectly. I was asked to show the police the number and the webpage of the mechanic I had called but the page had disappeared and when I called the number in front of the police a mechanical voice informed us that the number did not exist. However, one warm evening I was walking back to my apartment and a grey van swerved around the corner. The glassy-eyed man was behind the wheel. It may have been my imagination but he turned quickly to me, doffed his hat and gave me the briefest of smiles before disappearing around the next corner. I never saw him again, but the words on his van, overalls, hat and webpage are forever stuck in my head. WE. FIX. EVERYTHING.
|
I know scary stories are fun to read, but they can also be a warning. I’m writing and posting this only because I know the people that come here will actually read the whole thing, maybe even with interest. I want to tell my story so that no one is stupid enough to make the same mistakes that I have. I’ll make it quick. Do not take this lightly.
I, for one, do not like talking on the phone. I don’t know why. I’ve become more and more anti-social over the years and I only make an effort to hang out with a select group of people. Even with my best friend, Katie, our conversations are almost always through text. It’s sad, but it’s the reality of the times. Everyone wants what they want fast and with minimal effort. There are a million reasons why our technology addiction is harmful to us as a society, but I’m not talking about any of that right now. I’m talking about a real, immediate danger.
When you text, just like when you talk to someone online, you have no way of knowing who is on the other end seeing what you’re writing. Yes, it says your friend’s name or your mom’s name because that’s how you saved it into your smart phone, but what if that precious device ends up in the hands of a predator?
When you speak to someone face to face, or god, even over the phone, you can hear their voice. You can tell that you are speaking to the person you intended to speak to and you can hear things like sadness, distress, or joy in the tone of their voice. Through text, you don’t know. You just don’t know. You may think you know, and that something weird like this won’t happen to you, but you’re wrong. That’s what I thought too. Keep reading. Please.
A few weeks ago, my boyfriend was out of town visiting his family so I had the apartment to myself. I was excited to get some alone time, but I also offered my couch to my friend Katie who was in between apartments at the time and had nowhere to stay. I told her to stay anytime, but that she should definitely stay that weekend because it would be just us and she wouldn’t have to feel weird staying over when my boyfriend was there. Plus, we could have a girls’ night like we used to when we lived together.
It was a Friday night and I was tired from a long day at work but I told her to come over whenever. She said she would be out late with her friend John and would probably just stay at his place. I said OK and went to bed early.
I’ve lived with my boyfriend for about a year now and I’ve definitely gotten used to having someone here at night. I’ve always been a little scared of the dark, and I’ll admit that while he was gone, I left on all the lights in the apartment and I double bolted the front door and my bedroom door AND left the T.V. on. I’m a wimp, I know.
That night I fell asleep around 11pm and woke up around 1am to a text from Katie saying she really needed to come over. It said;
“Please can I come over? I have nowhere else to go.”
I told her to go ahead but to call me when she got here and knock because I would probably fall asleep again. She said to just leave the door unlocked and she would be quiet coming in and lock it behind her. I felt a little weird about it because it was late at night and I was being a little paranoid, but in the end I figured it was a safe neighborhood and I would just lock my bedroom door for good measure. I told her I would leave it unlocked.
“Thank you. I’ll see you soon,” she wrote.
“No problem. The address is 1422 Mt. Vernon. Apt. 3 in case you didn’t save it from last time,” I wrote.
Katie had only been over once and I didn’t want her to call me and wake me up again when she realized she couldn’t remember which building it was. I fell asleep with my phone in my hand and the lights on, with the bedroom door locked just in case.
I woke up the next morning around 7am and needed to go to the bathroom. I checked my phone and saw that Katie had gotten in around 1:30am.
“I’m here,” she said.
I opened my door and looked around. She was gone. The blankets on the couch were moved so she must have slept over and left early for work. I made some coffee and when I walked back into the living room I noticed muddy shoe prints all over the living room rug.
“God damn it, Katie.”
I went to get a paper towel and saw that the tracks were leading over to my bedroom. There were muddy handprints on the door from the ground to the top and most of it was on the doorknob. I immediately ran to the front door and locked it. Something was wrong. I knew something bad had happened but I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
I called Katie’s phone but she didn’t answer. Maybe something had happened to her or she was just really drunk that night, but I needed to speak to her and see if she was alright. I called three times and she didn’t answer.
The mud was making my apartment smell bad. It smelled like rotten vegetables. I remember crying then, and I called Katie’s Mom. I didn’t want to worry her but I just had a terrible feeling. She answered and told me that she was with Katie and she was alright.
I was so relieved, but before I could fully take a deep breath, her mom told me that Katie had been mugged when she was out in Hollywood the night before and that they were both at the hospital.
“What happened? When did this happen? How did she get from my place to the hospital? I would have taken her,” I said, feeling guilty for sleeping through it.
“Last night? No. She came right to the hospital last night. John was with her and said that a man hit her on the head with something when she was leaving the comedy club and tried to drag her to his car, but John intervened when he caught up with her and the man got in his car and drove away with Katie’s purse. He took her phone and wallet and I.D. and everything. Thank God John was there. He brought her straight here.”
I could hear my heart beating in my ears.
“When did this happen? What time last night?” I said.
Her mom asked something I couldn’t hear, presumably to John or the nurse.
“They say around 12pm last night.”
I think I started crying again at that point. That was way before Katie texted me last night. Then my phone buzzed in my hand and I looked down. A text from Katie.
“I’m here. I’m outside the door. Why did you lock me out. I just had to get something from my car. Let me in,” it said.
I could hear Katie’s mom still talking. She was saying Katie wanted to talk to me and that she would hand over her phone since Katie’s was taken.
I looked at the front door and started backing away into my bedroom. Katie’s phone started calling me and texting me to let whoever it was in. I finally screamed;
“YOU”RE NOT KATIE! YOU’RE NOT KATIE!”
I called the police and locked myself in my bedroom until they got there. They couldn’t find anyone, and Katie’s mom shut off the cell phone immediately because we kept getting strange calls and text messages asking us where we were and:
“Can I come over?”
|
There aren’t a lot of advantages to being the sole teaching assistant in a small computer science department, except that once in a while the professors are nice enough to unload a bunch of old tech on you for free. Maybe they’re cleaning out their offices for the first time in decades, and have a few Macintosh Classics that would otherwise end up in a dumpster. Sometimes the department gives them new tablets, and their old ones need a new home. Or else someone retires, and everything not absconded with for nostalgia’s sake becomes fair game for scavenging. Courtesy of the faculty’s generosity, I have a bunch of old computers, disk drives, motherboards — and virtually any other computer parts or accessories you can imagine — kicking around my apartment.
Tinkering with dated machines can be a great deal of fun. You can practice soldering without having to worry about flushing a bunch of money down the drain if you accidentally brick your machine. When you pull them apart, you might find so-called “upgrades” from years past that seem genuinely laughable now, like the 32 KB “deluxe memory expansion” card I once yanked from a 1995 laptop. And let’s not forget the charm of obsolete archival media! Remember the Zip Disk? …No? Figures.
Well. Even if you’re not a tech geek like me, you can at least appreciate the best part of my perks system: discovering ancient computer games that nobody else remembers, and actually having the wherewithal to play them. Cleaning out offices or browsing through forgotten hard drives, I’ve stumbled upon games that I’ve never seen archived anywhere on the Internet. Some of them even existed before my parents did. And I’ve been able to play every last one. You can’t pretend to know gaming until you’ve played something on a legitimately floppy floppy disk!
Anyway, since I’m given first dibs on any abandoned tech, the department let me raid the office of some adjunct — whose name I never quite learned, not having interacted with him all that much — who must have followed through at last with his vows to quit his overworked and underpaid position. I didn’t blame him; I heard he made less than I did, and I don’t hold a degree nearly as advanced as his! Whatever the reason, Sussman — or was it Hausmann? I can’t remember — didn’t return for the spring semester, and didn’t leave us any way of reaching him. So, a couple of weeks into the semester, after the faculty felt reasonably sure he wasn’t coming back, they provided me with a key to his office, and granted me free reign to swipe whatever I wanted.
I let myself in the second I had a free moment one night after classes, when my teaching assignment was taken care of for the day, and the rest of the department had long since headed home. The building was dark by the time I arrived, but the motion-sensor lights fired up once I set foot inside, flickering into existence one by one as I made my way down the hallway. The adjunct’s office didn’t have a nameplate on it; I’m told few adjuncts even have offices, for that matter. Consequently, I found the correct room only after I’d tried — and failed — to open an unmarked broom closet with my new key.
The adjunct’s office might as well have been a broom closet, though. It was barely larger than a bathroom stall. On top of that, it didn’t have any windows, and the only light came from a single, dingy incandescent bulb dangling from the ceiling. It didn’t have a lightswitch, either, so I had to fumble around in the darkness until I could find and tug its pull-cord. No wonder the poor guy quit — who could be expected to work well under such conditions?
Once the dirty light washed over the place, I could see everything that Professor What’s-His-Name left behind. It looked pretty unremarkable to me, at first glance. He’d somehow coerced a desk into the cramped space, and found a chair to join it. Both of them wobbled at the slightest touch. A bulky cathode monitor occupied most of the desk’s surface, while a keyboard and mouse perched on what space was left in front of it. Shoved into a corner, a stack of coding textbooks had begun to gather a thin layer of dust. One sight struck me as pretty odd, though: a cup of coffee, still almost entirely full, had been set beside the chair and evidently forgotten.
Nothing interested me right away, so I rifled through the desk’s drawers in search of something worth taking. Pens and pencils clattered inside, rolling off piles of coffee-stained lecture notes and small hoards of secondhand office supplies. In short, nothing worth the effort. Which came as no great surprise. I had expected that, if I were to find any prize here, it would be the desktop tower the adjunct had neglected to take with him.
So that’s exactly what I went after. The monitor’s cord trailed behind the desk, leading me to a grimy but sturdy-looking Dell that still had a 3.5-inch floppy drive installed. I didn’t have a shortage of floppy drives or anything, but I decided to swipe the machine anyway. You can never have enough spare hardware, after all. Besides, I wanted to scope out what kinds of files the adjunct kept on that computer. Sometimes that’s where the real treasure lies.
The hour had grown late by the time I returned home, but I couldn’t resist staying up a bit longer to peruse my new acquisition’s contents. I hooked the computer up to one of my flatscreen monitors, introduced a keyboard and mouse, plugged it into a power outlet, and went to the fridge to retrieve a high-caffeine soda while I waited for the machine to boot up. Once I came back, a green glow had saturated the screen, dousing my keyboard and desk in sickly colors. The usual boot dialogues for a late-80s OS appeared, written in green, low-pixel characters.
That’s strange, I thought. Most early operating systems and programs only looked green because of the monitors they used. The visuals themselves, under ideal circumstances, were simply black and white. And my current monitor was pretty close to ideal. I figured it was probably a custom OS, coded to look green for nostalgia’s sake, like that word processor DarkRoom.
I also found it strange that the adjunct hadn’t locked his computer with a password, but I was too excited by my new toy to think too much about it.
The OS had a GUI comparable to the oldest Apple offerings, so I had no trouble navigating it. To my astonishment, the icon for the floppy drive indicated that a disk had been inserted. How had I missed that when I first inspected the computer? Sure enough, the ejector button on the tower protruded like something had been placed inside. I poked it, and out popped a deep red floppy disk. I slid it into my hand. A label on the disk’s front side, written in black marker with the most compact penmanship I’d ever seen, read simply: “TOTER’S MAZE.”
Was it a game? If it was, I’d never heard of it, but then again, I was always unearthing titles I’d never heard of before in my office excavations. Maybe it was a personal project the adjunct had been developing. But whence that title? Programmers named things after themselves all the time, but this one seemed foreign to me — I couldn’t have told you the adjunct’s name, but I felt confident it wasn’t Toter.
By that point, my curiosity couldn’t be restrained. I slid the disk into its drive, and ran the single executable file it contained. The mouse cursor turned into an hourglass as the computer processed my command. Then, for no more than a millisecond, it transformed into a completely different shape. I could have sworn it looked like a terribly distended face, but I didn’t catch a close enough glimpse, because shortly thereafter the screen went black.
A second or two later, blocky green text, cleverly arranged ASCII-style to look as if it were dripping or melting, filled the screen. “TOTER’S MAZE” appeared in gigantic font, with a single red dot punctuating the center of the O, resembling a pupil caught in a camera flash. Beneath the title, a substantially smaller font presented me a binary command: “BEGIN? [Y/N].” Messing with the arrow keys, I found I could move the red dot around, but that it couldn’t maneuver beyond the letter that ringed it. I appreciated this simple diversion that the programmer had thought to include — it showed some consideration for the player. Wondering what the rest of the game entailed, I hit the Y key.
The screen again went black, save for the O with the red dot. Small green letters began to appear one after the other with seconds-long intervals between them, as if they simulated someone making a tentative remark. Eventually, they finished spelling their message. “ARE YOU SURE? [Y/N].”
What a bizarre feature, I thought. Usually you saved something like that for quit functions, so that a user doesn’t accidentally lose all their progress from a botched keystroke. The unexpected dialogue only made me more curious. I pressed Y. At that, the small letters erased themselves one by one, saving my Y for last. Then the large O disappeared. The red dot stayed for a moment before it, too, disappeared. I was left with another black screen.
Soon some text seemed to float up from the blackness, like bubbles rising from a deep pond. “LEVEL ONE.” Then the text seemed to sink out of view. After it disappeared, a bunch of angular green lines drew themselves into existence, forming a kind of labyrinth that looked like a simplified view of an intestinal tract. It wasn’t much of a maze, though. There was only one route available — no branching paths, no dead ends. The red dot from the title screen waited at one end, and a blue dot of slightly smaller size resided at the other. I presumed that I controlled the red one, and I was right. I could navigate the red dot with the arrow keys. It moved at a much brisker pace than I had expected. If I drove it into one of the green lines, it stopped moving. The game imposed no penalty if I did. I supposed there was no objective other than to reach the blue dot, so I started guiding the red dot toward it.
When the two dots finally touched, the blue one simply faded away. The rest of the level followed suit, and the red dot disappeared last. Text reading “LEVEL TWO” emerged from the blackness as if rising from liquid, exactly like what I’d seen for the previous level. It seemed anticlimactic to me, but then, nobody plays games like this for cutscenes and stories. I figured the difficulty would amp up, at least, and perhaps make for a more entertaining experience.
The second level proved no more challenging. It drew a square that took up half the screen. The red and blue dots both appeared inside, on opposite corners. There were no obstacles. By no stretch of the imagination could it be called a maze. It seemed Toter had used up all of his or her imagination on the title screen! Needless to say, the level didn’t take me long. Curiously, the “victory animation” was a little different this time. Instead of fading outright when I touched it, the blue dot disappeared line by line, each successive section seemingly absorbed into the red dot as it vanished. It seemed weirdly fluid compared to everything else in the level.
The next few stages began as usual, and had designs equally as insipid as the first two. A basic, featureless rectangle. A longer rectangle, bland as the first. A straight line, barely wider than the red dot I controlled, leaving me no option but to move in one direction toward the blue dot. All that changed was the animation at the end. Sometimes the blue dot seemed to dissolve. Others, it cleaved in two before disappearing. In one particularly arresting instance, the top quarter of the blue dot seemed to be lopped off, landing beside the dot’s remains, then vanishing like the rest of the stage.
Before long, I’d arrived at “LEVEL TEN.” That’s when things became genuinely disconcerting.
See, the tenth level was nothing like the others. It was rectangular, with a bunch of smaller rectangles inscribed within, lining the top and bottom while the center remained empty. The blue dot was somewhere near the dead center of the map. My red dot began in a corner. I started directing it toward its usual target, but then the blue dot did something unexpected.
It moved.
That’s not even the right word. It ran. As my dot drew closer, it inched over by a pixel, as if it had heard something and turned to check out the noise. When the red dot was only a few pixels away, the blue dot took off at incredible speed. It hurled itself against one of the small rectangles until its wall seemed to yield. Then the blue dot moved inside, cramped by the tight quarters, and the wall reappeared.
What the heck had I witnessed? And how was I supposed to clear the level now?
My only idea was to try ramming into the small rectangle’s side like the blue dot had done. As I did, I swear that the blue dot quivered. Eventually the wall collapsed, and the dots touched — resulting the blue one splitting into many tiny pieces that coated the inner walls of the small rectangle. They didn’t fade away like the rest. The red dot disappeared first, and the level and the remnants of the blue dot lingered there for a while, burning the image into my retinas before cutting all at once to blackness.
Somehow, I felt as if I’d done something awful.
Then came “LEVEL ELEVEN.”
This one featured comparatively sophisticated cartography: rectangles within rectangles, and liberal use of walls, although it still didn’t look much like a maze. The path to the blue dot was pretty obvious, and most of the space in the level seemed entirely superfluous. As I moved the red dot along, however, something about the stage began to make me feel uncomfortable. Insane though it sounds to say this about a bunch of green wires, it struck me as dimly familiar. I felt as though I had been there before. I blamed the feeling on the late hour, suspecting that a lack of sleep had started to toy with my senses.
When I reached the blue dot, its shape didn’t change. The color drained from it, top to bottom, until — I don’t know why these were the first words to enter my mind — a gray husk remained. I told myself I sounded crazy, but I couldn’t reason away the dread I had begun to feel. It weighed upon my chest, constricting my lungs, adding to my panic with each breath.
Somewhere in my fight for air, I realized why the the eleventh level seemed so familiar: it looked uncannily like the floor plan to my stepfather’s house.
How many levels were left in this bizarre game? Even one was too many. I didn’t want to play any longer. I pressed every key on the keyboard, but none of them — nor any combination of them I could think to try — let me exit the program. I tried to force the computer to shut down by holding its power button, but even after two consecutive minutes of pinning it, the screen still showed that hateful game. All the same, I couldn’t bring myself to pull the plug on the machine. I somehow believed everything would stay on even if I did yank the tower’s plug from its socket, and I doubted I would react well to the sight.
As if reading my mind, the level finally began to change. Instead of the entire thing fading to black, however, the red dot grew in size, expanding until the whole screen shone red. If migraines can be said to have a color, that red would be it. It seared my eyes, and when I held them shut to guard against the scorching pain, the imprint of a horribly distended face glowed against my eyelids. Reflexively, my glance darted from it, but the thing reappeared wherever my eyes settled. Unlike most residual images that soften and fade over time, this one seemed to grow more detailed by the second. Its skull was deformed, stretched into an oblong shape like pulled putty. Its jaw seemed detached, one side hanging much lower than the other. Where its eyes should have been, I saw only empty sockets that nonetheless seemed to watch me with malevolence. There was no way for me to avert my gaze from its frightening, hollow stare except to open my eyes again. Once I did, the screen had at last turned black.
I felt far more afraid of not finishing than finishing.
So on I went to “LEVEL TWELVE.”
I recognized this level, too. It clearly matched the floor plan of the computer science department, being almost an exact replica of the fire escape diagrams I’d seen posted on the walls there. The level’s blue dot ambled about the stage, pausing at certain points while swaying back and forth over them. The red dot lingered in a small room that corresponded to the location of the adjunct’s office.
It’s only a game, I chanted to myself like a mantra. It’s only a game.
My ritual almost restored my calm until my cell phone buzzed, stridently vibrating atop my desk. I yelped at the sound — I couldn’t help it. A text message had arrived. I felt reluctant to pick it up, expecting some correspondence worthy of The Ring. But it was only something from my mother. Even so, that put me on edge. She was far from a night owl, so for her to need to contact me at such a late hour did not bode well.
“Something’s happened to Ron,” the message read. Ron was my stepfather. “I don’t know what. Blood everywhere. I don’t understand. Have called police. Too shaken to talk right now. Call me soon. Please.”
My stomach had knotted so tightly that I nearly vomited. I felt responsible. I almost certainly was responsible. What the hell kind of game was I playing? Who would make a game like this? And why?
I couldn’t finish the thought before I ended up disgorging my soda onto the floor. I slumped forward, the sting of stomach acid hot in my throat. As I pulled myself upright, I glimpsed the slow, deliberate movements of the blue dot on the screen. Based on its patterns, it probably indicated a member of the custodial staff. The poor fool had no idea what horrible fate awaited. For that matter, neither did I. I could only imagine — but didn’t much want to imagine — what the red dot signified; my creative powers couldn’t begin to fathom what it would do to its next victim.
It was too much. I couldn’t knowingly kill somebody. I would never forgive myself for the deaths I had accidentally caused, but I didn’t have to allow any more to happen. I was better than that. I would not be an accomplice to murder. I pushed my keyboard aside, and stared at the screen with defiance as I pondered what to do next.
The game, however, thought farther ahead than I had. Within moments, a timer appeared in the corner of the screen. I barely registered that it showed 30 seconds before it rapidly began counting down. What would happen if the timer hit zero? Twenty seconds. Then fifteen. I felt my resolve crumbling. If the game had proven this horrible when I did what it wanted, what kind of retribution would it visit on me if I went against its will?
Ten seconds. Nine. Eight.
I had to make my decision.
Seven. Six. Five…
The decision came quickly, more instinct than conscious choice. I pounded the arrow keys. The red dot flew at unfathomable speed. The blue dot had no time to react. As soon as the red touched it, it collapsed in a pile, scattering like a handful of dust.
The stage turned to water and fell from my eyes.
By the time I had dried them, the hateful green font had risen. “FINAL LEVEL.” Stage thirteen. How auspicious. At least it couldn’t torture me — nor anyone else — after one last death. I felt almost grateful that there would be only one more, and tried to think of his or her demise as a sacrifice to the well-being of everybody else. It would almost be a good thing, ending this horror once and for all…
I had a moment of panic as it occurred to me that the game might try to pull a fast one on me. What if the final level featured an abundance of blue dots, like a crowded shopping mall on the other side of the world, or something? I couldn’t do that. At least, I didn’t think I could…
The text gradually disappeared. The level’s blue and red dots appeared first: one of each, with almost no distance separating them. I began to heave a sigh of relief.
Until I saw the map.
It was my apartment, rendered in harsh green pixels.
I whirled around in my seat. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness, for my eyes had adapted to the brightness of my monitor. I thought I detected a faint red glow on the walls around me, even though the only light source in the room was emitting green.
I felt my body begin to lock up, starting with my legs. The tension worked its way up my body until it settled in my jaw. My mandibular muscles clenched so tightly that I thought I’d drive my teeth into my skull. But I couldn’t help it. I’d never known fear so intense.
There were no sounds but the pulse in my ears, no movement around me but the flicker of shadows in the burgeoning red light. I wheeled myself back to the computer screen. It was completely awash in blinding, migraine red. I clenched shut my eyes. Deep in my own darkness, I spotted a flicker of red. It drew closer and closer. I didn’t even need to see it to know what it was. That face — that thing I had unleashed — had returned. It came so near that I thought I could feel it breathing on my face.
I opened my eyes. The face had overtaken the screen. It glowered at me for a moment. Then its maw widened, revealing a dark, cavernous hole. It swallowed every pixel, plunging my room into blackness.
And something hard as bone, warm, and sharp cut a deep gash across my throat.
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I don’t really know how to start something like this, writing journal entries isn’t something I’d say I’m used to. Anyways, the doctors said it might help to get something down on paper so, it’s worth a try. I’ve been in this hospital for a few days now and, I haven’t really been able to do anything apart from write. They told me I had a near death experience, and say the traumatizing event triggered the memories and visions I’m now plagued with. After seeing the things I saw, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget them; I remember it all so vividly, every sound, every conversation, every feeling of terror, as if I’m still stuck in that nightmare. The events replay over and over again in my head without any end and, I haven’t been able to sleep. So, I’m writing down everything that happened, while it’s still clear in my mind. I’ll start from the beginning…
Everything happened about a few days ago when I was invited to go on a camping trip with my friends, Matt and Alex. Nothing over the top of course, we just wanted to spend a day or two in the wilderness, and I really just wanted to take a break from my busy work schedule. Matt suggested we check out the forest that surrounded the hunting cabin his family owned considering it was relatively close by and fairly easy to get to. Alex and I agreed, the idea seemed as good as any, and within the next day we all arrived at the property in Matt’s pickup. We didn’t waste any time and, after making sure everything was in check, we gathered our gear out of Matt’s truck and headed out towards the tree line, following a small path through the tall grass and up to the forest’s edge.
As we followed one another into the forest Matt took the lead, picking up a stick to walk with and humming the catchy tune of some infomercial. We headed north for about an hour or so, Alex cracked a few jokes which we laughed at but there wasn’t all that much conversation among us. It was still reasonably early in the morning and we mostly concentrated on walking without tripping over fallen branches and simply taking in the beautiful scenery that surrounded us. After a few hours, we stopped to rest and snack once or twice but continued our steady march into the wilderness shortly after. It wasn’t until later in the day when we came across something, out of the ordinary from the repetitive branches and foliage of the forest.
A worn path cut across our route, overgrown by tall grass and vegetation. It was barely visible, and we would’ve passed it if not for the break in the trees. We didn’t have a solid plan as to where we were going to set up camp for the night so, seeing as we weren’t in any immediate rush, we ended up following it. The path headed straight for quite a ways before it took a sharp turn to the right, reviling a clearing in the trees and an old, run down warehouse of sorts. We looked around for any sign or form of advertisement, but there either wasn’t any, or it had long since been swallowed up by the forest. I asked Matt if he knew about the building, but he denied it, just as surprised as me and Alex. I couldn’t blame him either, in retrospect Matt’s hunting cabin was barely used and the idea of there being some old abandoned building close to his property really didn’t surprise us that much.
I looked at my watch, it was 6PM and beginning to get dark. Matt must have noticed the time too and suggested we camp in the building for the night. I agreed, deciding sleeping on the flat warehouse floor would be more comfortable than the uneven forest floor. That and quite honestly, I was too tired to bother putting up a tent. Alex was less reluctant, being somewhat apprehensive about the whole idea, but soon caved after Matt told him he could sleep outside alone if he really wanted to. We walking up to the entrance and tried what was left of two battered doors that marked the building’s entry. They were already slightly open but stiff from being untouched for so long and we had to wrestle with their rusted hinges to gain entry.
The inside of the building was a barren shell of an old factory, broken and boarded windows, weathered paint, completely empty save for a few boxes and cobwebs here and there. We decided to set up a makeshift camp in the center of the main room and move the spare boxes around to sit on. We had been talking and joking around for a while, eating what food we brought with, when we heard a distant clash echo throughout the building. Our heads all glanced to the left where the sound seemed to have originated.
“You guys hear that?” Alex asked.
I shook my head, still listening, and Matt was about to say something when another clash echoed again, more faint, but unmistakably noticeable. Upon inspection, a small hallway branched off of the main room ending in a thick iron door with a small viewing window built into its center. The three of us headed towards the door after Matt and I each grabbed a flashlight from my bag, and waited, peering through the scratched window at a staircase leading down into complete darkness.
“Basement maybe?” Matt guessed, staring at the door.
A few silent moments passed before Alex stepped in, “Well whatever it was, it’s gone now, probably nothing lets g–”
Another clang cut him off pulling our attention back to the window. Again, no movement was visible in the darkness.
An unsettling silence fell over us…
“Let’s check it out” Matt said, already tugging on the handle, the hinges screeching loudly as the ancient door opened.
“Are you crazy!?” Alex exclaimed.
“Relax,” I said, “It’s probably just an animal, a raccoon maybe.”
“What, are you scared?” Matt teased jokingly. He laughed when Alex flipped him off and walked back towards the main room,
“Whatever, I’m going to bed, see you idiots in the morning.”
With that Matt began to slip through the door, “You coming or not?” he said, starting down the stairs. With nothing better to do, I placed a loose brick on the floor as a door stop and descended the stairs with him. When we reached the bottom, the air was, somewhat heavy, a musty odor hung around us that I could taste in the back of my throat.
As my eyes slowly adjusted to the absence of light, I could make out various pipes and vents that ran the length of the walls and ceilings. I shown my flashlight around us and found that we were in a small rectangular room about 15 feet wide. Three or four tunnels branched out of the walls in various directions and I aimed my light down the nearest one but saw nothing as the tunnel only stretched farther onward, seeming to go on forever.
“Which way do you think it came from?” Matt asked, staring into the darkness of the front tunnel.
“I don’t know man, does it even matter anymore?” I said flatly.
“What, you scared of the dark too?”
“No it’s just–”
“C’mon lets see what’s down here,” Matt called out before ducking down the passageway and disappearing in the darkness, the only thing visible being his own flashlight bobbing up and down. Being an idiot, I followed after him, keeping my eyes on the jumping light through the labyrinth of tunnels.
“Matt let’s just go back, this is getting ridiculous!” I called after him.
His words echoed down back to me, “Hey man I think I heard something over here…”
I saw the light dart to the left, likely another turn in the tunnel, and caught up only to find that his light was nowhere to be seen. I jogged forward a little more hoping to hear his footsteps or something just to point me in his direction. But there was nothing.
“Matt?” I called, “Matt you still there?” my voice bounced uselessly off the walls of the tunnel. I reassured myself it was probably just another one of his idiotic pranks, he always messed with me and Alex, but, something didn’t feel right about it. The feeling of dread grew in the pit of my stomach as I rounded yet another corner just to find more darkness, no light, and no familiar jump scare from Matt just, more tunnels.
Suddenly, the tunnel was filled with a bloodcurdling scream that seemed to come from everywhere around me, stopping me right in my tracks. But just as quickly as it started, it ended, as if cut short by an invisible force. I hesitantly called out to Matt again but there was no answer, only the occasional drip of water from the ceiling. It was at this moment, in this silence, when I heard it.
Footsteps.
I aimed my flashlight down the tunnel thinking it might be Matt running towards me. But as the sound grew louder, it seemed closer to something, running on all fours. Whatever it was, was coming towards me, and getting closer. Without waiting any longer, I dropped my flashlight on the ground and darted into the next passageway, hiding myself in the darkness. Moments passed and as the sounds grew louder I could hear whatever it was, panting and wheezing, seemingly more in pain then from exhaustion.
The flashlight on the ground illuminated the figure now at the mouth of the tunnel. I struggled to stay silent as I gazed at a horrid creature now only a few yards away from me. It was on all fours, its back twisted and bent at a grotesque angle to compensate for its longer back legs. Its skin was pale, bruised and battered, wrapped tight around its skeletal figure. Bones strained and cracked as it bent down to examine the light and it was now that I could see its face. What few strands of hair it had hung wet from its head and swayed as it breathed heavily through its crooked mouth. Unblinking eyes sunk back in its skull, and a glow hung in its pupils like that of a dog’s at night as it continued to study the alien instrument. It cocked its head slightly and the light illuminated more of its facial construction. You need to understand that this thing, was once human.
My heart raced and blood pounded in my ears so loud I prayed that it wouldn’t hear me, prayed those glowing orbs wouldn’t shift in my direction. Without warning it snapped its head upwards with such force an audible snap could be heard from within its neck. It listened for a moment, then let out an inhuman shriek that pierced my ears and echoed down tunnels in every direction, its neck and chest heaving to produce the disturbing noise. I shuddered as a faint echo of another shriek reverberated off the walls followed by another…and another…and another.
There was more than one.
The echoes were coming from everywhere, I couldn’t pinpoint where they were. The deformed being let out another shriek before taking off down the tunnel, leaving me more terrified than ever. I stayed in that corner for what seemed like hours, too petrified to move just listening, every so often hearing one of them howl far off down another tunnel. It was as if they were searching for me…Hunting me.
I had to get out of there, I had to escape. The thought of what these things would do to me if I was found chilled me to the bone. So I did the only thing I could do. I grabbed the flashlight, and ran. Finding my way back was useless, I was completely lost, all I could do was run and pray for an exit of some sort. I kept my eyes forward as I ran quietly down the tunnel, constantly terrified that I would hear the ragged breathed and footfalls of one behind me at any moment. I was about to turn the next corner when my legs snagged on something in front of me and I fell headfirst into a puddle on the ground. In the dim light I could see the outline of a crumpled mass. My mind told myself not to look but, curiosity got the better of me and I grabbed my flashlight, shinning it down to my feet.
I immediately wished I hadn’t.
At my feet lay the body of…Matt. What was left of his mutilated corps was torn open, practically ripping him in two. His organs lay scattered around him and thick blood coated the wall and floor. I shook violently but dared not scream, fear overpowering the sickening sight of my dead friend sprawled on the ground in a heap of blood. Looking away, I got up and sprinted down the tunnels as quietly as I could, turning the flashlight off so as not to attract any more of those, things, I didn’t want to end up like Matt.
I ran for as long as I could even after my legs burned but, eventually, I had to stop. I doubled over, sore and exhausted, covered in sweat and consumed with fear. I heaved as bile rose in my throat delayed from before. My shirt and pants were covered in Matt’s blood and I breathed heavy, trying to regain what ounce of strength I had, shaking as I rose to my feet.
A slight crack sounded from my right…
My hair stood on end and I tried to turn my flash light on but it refused to work.
Another crack sounded, slightly closer…
I panicked and hit the top of the light repeatedly until finally it sparked to life illuminating a thing composed of the stuff of nightmare. Glowing pupils constricted as its eyes widened, lips curled back into a snarl revealing teeth stained with blood and rotted with decay. I inched back in fear as it shifted closer towards me, its shoulder cracking with each stride as if dislocated. My mind screamed at my legs to move, to run, get to out of there as fast as possible, but it wasn’t until the thing threw its head back and screamed to its other pack members that I was released from my terrified trance. I sprinted down the tunnel, fueled with adrenalin. Its head snapped back to me when it saw my movement. It snarled and bounded on all fours with inhuman speed.
I sprinted as fast I could, taking rights and lefts in the disorienting tunnels but its enraged screams were always right behind me. I couldn’t outrun it, I needed to hide or find something to defend myself with, even if fighting was useless. My eyes turned to the wall where rusted pipes ran its length and connected to the ground. In a desperate attempt I grabbed the nearest one and pulled with all my might hoping it would come off the wall with ease. My heart dropped as it moved only slightly and my arms burned as I pulled ruthlessly on the rusted pipe, the shrieks and screams of it, and now others, growing closer and closer.
Finally it came free just in time as the creature crashed around the corner. It lunged at me, arms outstretched and clawing the air. I braced myself and swung with what energy I had left, feeling it collide with the creature’s jaw. A sickening crunch echoed in the tunnel, and the being shrieking in pain and confusion. In blind furry it swatted me away with its arm, knocking me back against the wall so hard I saw stars. It moaned again, its head bent to the left at an absurd angle from where the pipe had collided, before collapsing on the ground. Movement caught my eye behind it, more of these, people, streamed around the corner, their pale bodies crashing into themselves, shrieking all the while. I turned and ran as best I could, clutching my now mangled arm from where I had been hit, only turning back to see them feeding on their fallen comrade. It’s screams of agony went unnoticed as it was now nothing more than food in their minds. It wasn’t long however, before they began to climb over each other to continue the chase, their wild eyes locked on me.
My vision blurred and blood pounded in my head as I ducked past another archway in the tunnel. I had long surpassed my athletic limits and was running on fear alone. I could hear their shrieks and cries just down the tunnel as they raced towards me, limbs and bone clashing as each one tried desperately to get the first bite.
I turned yet another corner and my heart stopped. A sliver of light illuminated the end of the tunnel, a drain pipe, just large enough for a child. There were only moments, seconds even, between me and the mass of deformed bodies that hurtled down the tunnel. There was no time to decide, I bolted for the opening and dived through the narrow space, crawling as fast as I could. It didn’t matter how much the hard pavement scratched and tore at my knees and arms, I was so close to escape but I knew they were right behind me clawing savagely for my legs, enraged by the instinct to feed.
Just as I was nearing the end of the opening, fingers dug into my ankle, bolts of pain shot up my leg and I screamed in agony. I felt something snap in my ankle as it snarled and drove its nails deeper into my skin. I yelled in anguish, struggling as I was pulled back down the pipe. With a last ditch effort I kicked as hard as I could with my free leg feeling it connect with something hard. It shrieked in more in anger than pain, only tightening its steel grip on my leg. I brought my foot down again and again desperately trying to free myself until it finally let go. I looked back to see a bloody tangle of arms and figures, savagely fighting to reach me as I pulled myself along the last remaining inches and fell…
This is where my memory begins to fade…
I remember hitting cold water and seeing the night sky. Too tired to do anything but lay in the water, I remember looking up to see glowing eyes staring back at me through the narrow opening before I welcomed rest, and blacked out…
I was found washed up on the side of a river half dead and suffering from hypothermia. My left ankle was broken and my right forearm completely shattered. I awoke later in the emergency room, doctors told me I was lucky to be alive and before long, police authorities came to question me. I told them everything but, my story was dismissed as a result of stress and shock. As I said before, I can’t sleep, every odd sound sends me into a state of panic, and I can’t deal with reliving every event of that day when I close my eyes. But the worst part, that terrorizes me even more, is that Alex is still there…and that door…
That door is still open.
Credit To – AStoryTeller
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This is difficult, very difficult. I am not at all comfortable with this. I keep reminding myself why I’m doing it. These are not the typist’s words. The typist is not me, but my sister. I don’t know if she believes me, but she’s giving me the help I need, the help I’ve needed for a while now. She is transcribing what I’ve spoken to her with a trembling voice. I could not type it myself since I do not own a computer anymore. What has happened has tainted technology for me, presumably forever. I wanted this to be in the past. I wanted to lock it up in a box never to be reopened, but I have to visit that dark place now. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. I am managing in my life, not thriving, but managing. I have a small place where I keep the television on all the time. I like the sound. I sleep with on so that the noise will drown out the bumps and whispers that plague me now. It was a television that prompted me to do this, to tell this story. I was awake one night, as I am most nights, and I came across a television program called “Catfish.” I did not know what this show was about or what the title meant. I was horrified when I found out the premise of the program, people using fake photographs to meet romantic partners on social networking websites finally revealing the truth to those they had fooled. The deceit did not shock me nor did the anticipation of the reveal. I was so stunned that there were still so many people on the Internet who would search for a fake photograph to lure others into conversation and romantic relationships. This concerned me so much because it is exactly what I did and its what changed my life forever.
I will start from the beginning, the pertinent beginning. When my family first got the Internet my sister and I would stay up late during the summer and venture into chat rooms. This was before webcams and digital photography so people didn’t really ask for photos of their chatting partners. A description would suffice and it didn’t really matter what you would make up. Of course, I would create someone who I thought was the ideal beauty. Someone who was tall and thin who had long hair and a perfect smile. Needless to say in reality I did not fit this description. I have no deformities or abnormalities, but I’m not a dream girl by any means, just plain. I could be in a room with you for an hour and you may not notice. I’m that type of girl.
Usually, the Internet was reserved for weekends and holidays. I was part of the last generation whose entire youth did not revolve around the Internet I suppose. That all changed when I was a senior in high school. This was during Myspace’s glory day. Suddenly there was a way of communicating online that did not involve a chat room. Your whole existence could be laid out for all to see. Your likes, dislikes, education, hobbies, musical preferences and, yes, pictures, were right there in front of everyone. All the kids at my school had joined and talked about it often, but they rarely mentioned talking to each other on Myspace, but rather they would speak about all the new friends they had made through the site. This intrigued me. Could I be someone completely different on Myspace? Could I start from scratch? No one had to know the real me, or at least I could show them only the parts I wanted them to see. How terribly I wish that this silly idea had never come to fruition.
I filled out my Myspace with truthful and accurate information. I listed my favorite bands and movies, my birthdate and a short bio revealing that I liked swimming and watching horror movies. Everything I posted was true except for the photograph. I knew that if I posted my own photo I probably wouldn’t get much attention. I will admit, as stupid as it makes me feel, that is part of what I wanted, attention.
I wondered how to find my new face. Maybe I could scan a picture of a pretty girl from my school. No, then people from my area may recognize her. Being oblivious to the obvious I, at last, realized that the answer was right at my fingertips. Myspace had millions of users. I could just search for the Myspaces of girls my age and pick one whose photos I could steal. As naïve as it may sound I thought I was the first and only person to do this. I felt ashamed, but reconciled my guilt with the fact that I wasn’t hurting anyone, or so I thought. I decided to search for girls who lived far from me so as to not be found out by someone who may know the girl in reality. I live on the east coast so I picked California, a large state full of cute sun kissed girls.
I scanned through dozens of profiles passing on girls who were too this or not enough that. I don’t really know what I was looking for exactly. I did not have a clear picture of the girl I was looking for, although many of these girls were beautiful, none of them seemed quite right. I was growing tired in my search and wanted to take a break, but instead I decided to scroll through one last page of profiles.
I remember it clearly the photo, that photo. It was on the second to last row from the bottom of that last page I clicked on. I have tried to describe the girl pictured, but my descriptions always seem to fall short. You would not mistake her for a supermodel, but you would definitely look twice at her. The picture showed the girl from the knees up. She was youthful, but womanly. She wore a light blue sundress with thin straps that showed her lightly tanned shoulders and arms, which hung casually at her sides. Her light brown hair was put into a high ponytail with the long bangs tucked behind her ears. She wore no apparent makeup or jewelry. She had a close-mouthed smile and almond shaped sea green eyes. It was her eyes that interested me the most. I had always wished that I had green eyes instead of my chestnut brown ones that my sister would liken to roaches when teasing me. I do not remember anything else about what was shown in the photograph or the Myspace profile, I just remember the picture. I knew this was the picture I had been looking for. I quickly opened her Myspace, saved the lone picture that was posted and uploaded it to my own profile.
I was anxious to check Myspace the next day. It was Sunday, but I awoke shortly after sunrise and hurried online. I had about a dozen messages and at least twice as many friend requests, mostly from men. I accepted everyone without checking their pages; I was just so excited to have these people notice me, or who they thought I was. The messages were pretty obligatory, “Hi, how are you?” “What’s up?” A couple of them were more specific with questions and several mentioned how pretty “I” was. Of these messages one stood out. It was from a guy who I will call “Ken.” “What did the girl mushroom say to the boy mushroom?” His message asked. I responded back with “What?” As I waited for a reply I opened Ken’s Myspace. He was from my state, but a different town a few hours away. He attended the local college where he was studying political science. He wasn’t someone who, perhaps, would be considered great looking, but he had a friendly smile. I suppose “friendly” is the first word I would use to describe Ken.
I hoped that Ken would reply. I wanted him to break up the monotony of the one-word messages I was receiving. How disinterested I was in these men and how much I wanted to hear from Ken made me realize that more so than I wanted unfiltered attention I wanted someone to talk to. Finally, I got a response, “You’re a fungi :)”
Over the next couple of weeks Ken and I sent messages back and forth. We told each other stories from our childhoods, shared movie reviews and discussed whatever happened to be on our minds. The more we talked the more I liked him. He never crossed the line between flirtatious and inappropriate. Sometimes, I would forget who he thought I really was. I would let myself believe that he liked me, the real me, but then he would mention something about that picture. He liked the hair, the smile, her legs…those eyes. Ken never brought up the fact that I only had one picture or had no Myspace friends who seemed to actually know me. I think, maybe, he just wanted to believe she was real. She could make him forget all the inconsistences and suspicions.
Ken brought up speaking on the phone after about a week of chatting. I was apprehensive about letting this guise go further than an online friendship, but I did want to speak to him, to hear his voice. I finally agreed and eventually Ken and I were spending hours on the phone with each other each week. Our online correspondence became less frequent, but he would still send me messages when he was at school telling me a joke or a story from his day. I didn’t pay attention to any of the other people I had on my page. I stopped accepting friend requests or responding to messages. I was satisfied with just talking to Ken.
On a certain day I was scanning my messages to see if Ken had sent me anything and noticed that I had a message from a girl named Melissa. This was very unexpected. I almost never got messages or friend requests from girls. The message was one line, “I think someone stole your pictures.” Followed by a link to a Myspace. The link opened to Sarah’s page, and I saw my new face staring back at me. The clothes were different. She now wore blue jeans and a light pink sweater, but had the same hairstyle and the same coy smile. The picture was odd. It looked as if someone had taken off the clothes in my picture and replaced them, like a paper doll. It was too convincing to be photo shopped. The stance, the direction of the camera, the angle, everything was the same, except for the clothes…and the eyes. The sea green that had struck me was instead a dark hazel. I don’t remember what I thought at the time, perhaps, just the lighting or digital enhancement software was to blame.
Sarah had several hundred friends and a mile long list of comments citing her beauty. She was listed as being from the Midwest, but her admirers came from all over. At first I was afraid that I had been found out, then I realized that if this is the real girl from the photograph I could possibly get more pictures to add to my page’s validity and hopefully keep Ken believing I was this girl. I checked her pictures, but she only had the one. I saved it and tried to post it to my page, but each attempt ended in an error message. I gave up, but bookmarked Sarah’s page.
As the weeks went on Ken and I grew closer. He had brought up meeting in person several times, each ending in an excuse on my part. In retrospect, my excuses didn’t hold much credit, but Ken always accepted them so we kept to our phone and Myspace conversations. As often as I would check my own page for Ken’s messages I would check Sarah’s page. New pictures were never uploaded and the latest comment was posted over a year before. I was curious about Sarah’s life. I wanted to know what this girl with the perfect face was doing. How was she living her life? Was she as happy as I would be if I were her?
As Ken and I grew closer I lived more in my fantasy life. I imagined the two of us together in reality, having those comfortable conversations in person. I would let myself day dream about the life we would have together, sharing an apartment, getting married, having children. As much as I lived for these fantasies and my talks with Ken I always ended up feeling guilty. I thought about this man who, possibly, loved this woman he hadn’t met. I wondered if he thought about us the same way I did, but his fantasies wouldn’t be riddled with my shame. I finally convinced myself that, perhaps, Ken did not really care about that picture. Maybe it didn’t matter as much as everything else about me that he liked. Could I actually come clean?
Each day I wrestled with these thoughts. They accompanied me during every task, growing more prominent when I would check Sarah’s Myspace page. Having checked it every day for months at this point it had become part of my routine, then, one day, it was gone. Only an error message appeared when I clicked on the link. I tried several times growing more and more anxious. I had not realized how attached to Sarah I had become. I believed she was the girl I would give anything to be. If I knew more about her, knew her, maybe I could start to possess some of whatever she had that was so captivating. Now she was gone, lost. Maybe she just made a new page, wanted to start fresh and get away from all the men that flooded her Myspace. I had convinced myself that was it.
I resolved to search for Sarah. I knew which state and town she was from and all of the other identification markers I needed. I filled them in and looked in dismay as more than a hundred pages of results were found. I went through page after page of 18 to 20 year old girls from her area. I tried all the zip codes for the city looking at a 25-mile radius, but page after page of disappointment was turning into fear. Somewhere between the 60th and 70th pages something caught my eye. The display picture appeared to be one taken by a school photographer, with that familiar yearbook pose. I clicked on the profile and, yes, there they were, those same sea green eyes that I found so fascinating in my picture of the girl. This wasn’t her face though. This face was that of a cornhusk blonde cherub. Her sincere smile revealed misaligned teeth and several acne patches marked her skin, but those eyes were there. What caused my heart to drop even more than seeing the eyes was what read above the photo, “R.I.P.”
I wanted to just get up and walk away from it all. My gut, my intuition, told me to leave it all behind, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk away from Ken. I knew that. Any strength that I had was usurped by my desire to have him. I suppose somewhere buried with that desire was also a curiosity. I wanted to know more about that girl whose eyes my picture shared.
The “about me” section listed the girl’s full name, date of birth and date of death. I will call her E.M. to protect her family’s privacy.
E.M. had died close to a year earlier, just before her 16th birthday. My eyes were burning badly from looking at the computer screen for so long. Tears began to roll from them. I can’t say whether they came from the eyestrain or something else that was gnawing me from the inside. Those eyes, they seemed to burn right through me.
The information categories on the page were scarcely filled out, but several photos were posted. They pictured scenes from a childhood, a little girl sitting on Santa’s lap, holding a miniature pumpkin, cradling a new baby, all with those eyes staring into the camera lens. I clicked back and read the “who I’d like to meet” section and read instructions to contact the local police with any information. Why would the police need information? What happened to this girl? I knew I didn’t’ have the kind of information they wanted. Anyway, if I were to tell them this strange tale I would have to come clean about my Myspace and the picture I used. I did not know what to do, but I knew I couldn’t let it end there. I began looking through the short friends list of the dead girl. As I clicked to go the last of two pages I noticed one of the friends’ names. I frantically clicked back. There was a girl with E.M.’s last name in its unusual spelling. Maybe this is a relative, a sister perhaps. Maybe she could and would give me the information I so desperately sought. I sent a message to her that I’m sure was riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors. I just needed to know who this girl was and what had happened to her.
The next day I received a reply message from the woman with E.M.’s last name.
E.M. was my cousin. She was murdered about a year ago. Please contact the authorities if you have any information, our family would appreciate any help.
I could almost feel the sadness in those words. I could almost touch my own fear now. I messaged E.M.’s cousin back expressing my sympathy. I wasn’t feigning this concern, but in complete honesty I wanted to know what happened to her. I needed to know to sooth my own fears. What was I afraid of though? I was afraid of it all ending, of everything ending. It couldn’t end. I felt like everything was slipping away. I felt like Ken was slipping away. I couldn’t fathom losing him. I had to do something drastic.
I reconciled that some how, someway, I could convince Ken that the picture, that girl, didn’t matter. I was the person he wanted. This was the only solution. Going deeper into this dark unknown matter was not feasible. I called Ken right away, he didn’t answer. I left a voicemail agreeing to meet him on Saturday, two days away. Since I had called him so hastily I panicked and blurted out the first meeting spot that came to mind, a community lake. I didn’t think to take into account that it was mid winter and there would be no shelter from the cold. I thought about calling him back and changing the meeting place, but I was afraid that I would just chicken out and tell him I couldn’t make it since as soon as I hung up the phone I regretted making the call at all. Ken called me back a couple of hours later, the ringing made me jump from my seat as I was so focused on the computer screen waiting for a reply from E.M.’s cousin. I didn’t answer, but I could hear the exhilaration in his voice when I listened to the voicemail he had left. I didn’t know if he was excited to finally have one of our wonderful conversations in person, or maybe he was just eager to see that picture come to life.
I spent little time contemplating Ken’s motives compared to what I would have before I discovered those eyes on E.M. Instead, I spent the next two days and nights at home, forgoing school and sleep. I would pace my floor to relieve the aches in my back and neck that came from spending my time glued to the computer waiting for the Myspace replies I would receive from E.M.’s cousin. I spent much time crafting my messages, trying to mix in the right amount of concern and condolence with prying questions. I wanted to successfully build a rapport with the cousin. I wouldn’t get the information I needed without it.
I found out through E.M.’s cousin that she was shy and quiet and had few friends. She was teased for her weight, caused, in part by the beta-blockers she took for a heart ailment. Her parents were divorced and she rarely saw her father. She was an avid reader especially loving adventure novels. Her favorite author was Jon Krakauer. Her family thought this was odd since she spent most of her time in her room and didn’t seem to like the outdoors very much. The police had no leads to go on concerning her death. E.M. didn’t seem to have any friends and had never had a boyfriend that anyone knew of. Her untouched bag was found near her body and she was not sexually assaulted. There was no apparent motive, but the manner of her murder led police to believe it was not random, that she was specifically chosen. Why was she chosen, this simple little girl? I sent one last message to the cousin asking her to explain. My message was blatant and I hoped that our prior communications provided efficient sincerity and ease to warrant a reply.
My lack of sleep and interaction with others made these days melt together. I did not have a real sense of time and a barely a sense of place. The center of my existence became the Myspace inbox. I now know that the final message came on Saturday at approximately 9 o’clock in the morning. This message from E.M.’s cousin still makes my heart stop when I picture in in my mind’s eye. I don’t claim to have a photographic memory, but what is below is, I’m sure, that final message verbatim.
E.M. was found in the bathroom at a park not far from her house two days after leaving to go to school. There was no running water in the bathroom so no one really goes in there. Two teens went into the bathroom, probably to get high, and found her. They thought she had passed out. She was on the floor with her eyes closed. They tried to wake her up by shaking and screaming at her, but couldn’t. After calling 911 they continued to try to get her up. They lifted her eyelids. Her eyes were gone. There was no blood, no fingerprints, nothing. Police couldn’t find a real cause of death, just that her heart had stopped, but obviously they knew it was murder.
I read this message over and over, holding my breath each time. Her eyes were gone? How could someone’s eyes be gone? No blood? That’s not possible. Is this a lie? I knew it wasn’t. I’m not sure why I believed in E.M.’s cousin’s validity, but still, none of it made sense. Why was she there alone? Was she alone? I couldn’t send the cousin another message. I wasn’t concerned for her state of mind having to rehash the awful details of her family member’s death, but I was certain she had told me everything she could. As a testament to my own state of mind, instead of searching for help in reality, I dove back into the cyber world for answers. I had the information; I knew the name, date, place and enough other details to narrow down my search. I found news articles on E.M.’s death and read each one. A teenaged girl being mutilated in a park bathroom was not a story many papers would pass up. Most of the articles revealed nothing I hadn’t learned from the cousin, but at the end of one of those stories was a short paragraph. What I read left my head spinning and my stomach churning. The body of a yet identified young man was found less than one mile from the scene of E.M.’s murder. Police did not know if they were connected, but there was no apparent evidence that they had known each other and for the first time the article gave E.M.’s middle name as “Sarah.”
After vomiting mostly bile into my trash bin, I wiped my face on my unchanged shirt and continued searching the paper’s archives. There was only one further article that mentioned the young man. It said nothing more than the previous about his death, but it did mention his name. I found the man’s Myspace. It became apparent why it was assumed that he and E.M. did not know each other. He was catalogue perfect and why would a catalogue perfect young man be associated with a chubby, shy, 15-year-old girl? He was also from a neighboring state, possibly explaining why the local papers covered his death so little. I rifled through his page. There were no answers. I clicked around desperately looking for anything. He had one blog entry titled “school.” In it he explained his frustration with and dislike for academics, every subject except literature. He had recently gotten into Jon Krakauer, “Thanks to Sarah.” He wrote.
Was this the same Sarah with my picture? Was it E.M.? I remembered her cousin’s description of the girl who loved to read adventure novels. Was E.M., Sarah? The fragments began link together in my head. They were still fuzzy, but coming together nonetheless. The seconds masquerading as hours had reversed their roles. It was now 2:20 pm, 20 minutes past my scheduled meeting time with Ken. My legs got me down the stairs and out the front door despite their flaccidity. I only remember the constant red lights from the drive to the lake. I had driven there at least a dozen times in my mother’s blue car, but each stop light seemed like a fresh obstruction, put there just to hinder me.
The lake is too big to freeze in the winter, but the water is too frigid for fishing and air too cold for jogging its perimeter. I expected the parking lot to be vacant and was startled by the lone black four-door backed into one of the spots. I parked across from it and hurried out. I saw no signs of life, only the swaying of the bare trees in the heavy woods that surrounded the vast lake. Was I too late? What was I too late for? I had no fewer questions than I did before, just more avenues to get lost in, more places for that unknown horror to pounce out from. I stood at the lake’s edge, my face and hands numb. I had not thought to dress for the temperatures and wore only a long sleeved shirt and thin cotton pants. I stood at the water’s edge and stared into it. In this temperature it would not take long. I could just end it, be done with it all. I would never have to think about Ken, Sarah, E.M. or those eyes again. Most of all I could bring an end my shame.
My contemplation was broken by a sound behind me. This sound was quiet. Not a sound that would illicit a quick turn around and investigation, but rather the kind of noise that makes your breath halt and your legs turn to stone. It was familiar, but still unidentifiable. What was it? Dragging, yes it’s dragging. It was closer now and still moving. I had only two options, turn around and see or just walk, walk into that icy mud colored water. I don’t know why I made the choice I did, but in my mind I see myself turning around in slow motion, with all the color draining from my surroundings. There he was, Ken, standing there. His normally olive skin was white, his mouth gaped open and his eyes stared at me with bewilderment. I could feel the tears turn cold as soon as they left my eyes, freezing on my cheeks. I stared into his eyes, neither of us moving. Suddenly, a burst of dark blood leapt from his opened lips, splattering onto my front. I was so stunned that I stumbled back hitting the shore crashing water. The temperature robbed my lungs, but no more than Ken’s body falling on top of me did. We lay there in the water, me struggling to breath and Ken gurgling and convulsing. As I was pushed further down by Ken’s weight my eyes saw it. It was standing over us, the beauty replaced by unfathomable decay. The skin dripped with puss-likened liquid as the straw hair danced in the winds. Its eyes, those eyes, just vacant holes indicating the status of its soul. My hands gripped Ken’s wet coat as it neared me. I was crying, but my throat had tightened so much that no sound could escape. It was there right above me, the dreadful image eclipsed only by the odor from it mixing with the lake’s damp aroma. It was there so near that it was all I could see; this was it, then…black.
I woke up to my face burning so badly it felt like a match had been lit inside my sinuses. The familiar sense of confusion was much stronger. Voices were muffled and foreign. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Shhh.” I recognized my mother’s tone. Her words were unclear, but the shushing soothed me. I thought I was dreaming. My eyes were closed. I needed to open them to wake up. They won’t open. Why won’t they open? I believed I was saying this out loud, but instead I was screaming, a primal, instinctive scream.
They’re gone. Those eyes are gone; my eyes are gone, replaced by forever darkness. I was saved from the water, first by Ken as his dying body’s last warmth was given to me, or the warmth that I stole, which is how I describe it. The second person to save me was an out of man visiting the lake for sightseeing. I told the police about Ken, he wasn’t found, even after the lake was dragged. Maybe the lake scavengers got him, or maybe he’s still down there, still waiting for that girl. I will never see Ken again. I will never see anything again. The irony is that of all the things I miss seeing, I miss the face looking back to me from the mirror the most, my plain face. I write this, not to frighten the reader, but with hopes of stopping other people from turning away in disgust at their own reflections and looking for someone who they wish to be online. But, if you still want to find that perfect face to parade as your own, please, if you see a beautiful smiling girl looking straight through you with chestnut brown eyes, look away from those eyes. Those eyes are mine.
Credit To – Ju-Ju B.
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A laptop computer was found in the city sewers on Monday, April 22nd of 2013, after screams were heard echoing from below. As far as authorities could tell, there was no owner. All picture files on the hard drive were corrupted, and forensics failed to reconstruct all but one of them. The reconstructed photo partially revealed a terrified man in his late teens or early twenties, and some sort of face behind him.
Analysts have disputed whether or not that actually is another face, or simply image noise created as a result of the reconstruction of the photo. Apart from the single image, all that remained on the laptop was a cryptic word file left open, unsaved. Some see this as the suicide note of a deranged lunatic. Others see it as a prank. All that is known for sure is that over the past three months, there have been over twenty disappearances, all leaving no trace.
**********
I just hope I can finish this. I need to tell it. I can’t NOT tell it. But I don’t have time to finish it. And that’s what’s horrifying. Because, if I don’t tell, then it might get the rest. I HAVE to. I’m on very limited time, but I’m gonna be as detailed as possible. So it doesn’t get the rest. Please bear with me, please listen to me.
I guess it all started three months ago, when we found that secret room. The room in the sewers with the little trap door under the rug. When that happened, everything went wrong. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I have to tell the full truth. Or else it will get the rest.
I’m nineteen years old. Me and my three best friends have always been fond of the sewers. We would go down there and explore, at first using rope, then chalk signs, then nothing at all as we learned every twist, turn, and passage to the point where we could find our way around in pitch darkness, something we’ve had to do on at least three occasions when our flashlights died.
Now, what’s strange, is that we never found the room. It was when James asked to join us that the room was discovered. James was more of an acquaintance than a friend, but we often found him hanging out with us. We never told him about our excursions to the sewers; most people thought of that as strange. We had known James for probably six months before he overheard us speaking about the sewers.
Of course, he wanted to know what we were talking about. So we told him, about how we went down into the sewers every now and again to explore. He, of course, wanted to join our next expedition. We said it was fine, and we went early the next Saturday.
James wasn’t very good with darkness. We found that out the hard way. Or maybe it was the darkness coupled with claustrophobia. I don’t know. But, once we got into the deeper levels of darkness, where the daylight ceased to exist, and the tunnels became black, he began to hyperventilate.
At first, it was almost unnoticeable. His breathing got quicker, and he moved closer to me. Then, without warning, he began to breathe wildly, and he dropped his flashlight. It hit the ground and went out, and just like that, he was sprinting, sprinting and screaming for help, down the dark tunnels.
We chased after him. Following his screams, we started to lose all of our sense of direction. We went deeper than we thought possible. We thought we knew these tunnels. But there was one small niche, that we had never noticed before, that led into an even older series of tunnels. We had to crawl on our stomachs to get through it, and it opened into a tunnel not much bigger than that. We had to crouch down to the point of being on our hands and knees to traverse it.
It’s in those same sewers that I’m sitting now, with hundreds of white Christmas lights strung up around me, and stretching down the tunnel. These won’t last forever. The battery I’m running them off of can only keep them lit for a few hours. But they keep me comfortable, and serve as a warning. The thing can’t stand to be in light. It’s coming for me, I know it. But the lights will go out before it can get to me, so I’ll know.
I’m hiding here because this is the last place it will expect me to go. It’s looking for me. But it wouldn’t think that I would go into its sewers, its very back yard. I know that it will find me, and soon. But I just hope that this will prolong the inevitable. Long enough for me to get my story out. I’ve got my phone programmed to dial 911 in two hours. And I’ve got a camera, with night vision, ready to record when it shows up. So the cops will know, to stop it.
I just hope they can.
We eventually tracked down James, and he was sitting outside a big rusty door. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. Somehow we convinced ourselves to open it and oh my god I just wish we hadnt this crap would have NEVER HAPPENED IF NOT FOR THAT STUPID DOOR OH MY GOD IM GONNA DIE AND
I have to stop. Panicking won’t do anything to help me. I’m past help. Have I told you our names? There was me- Curt, and then James, Alan, Josh and Chris.
Writing down facts help me calm down. Just bear with me. I’m almost there.
We went in the door. That was a mistake. In the room, was an ancient chair, and a threadbare rug. Not much else, except a table full of disturbing instruments. And a calendar. The calendar was old and faded, and a dark yellow, but I could just barely make out dates in the faded ink.
The calendar was dated for 1903. Over a hundred years prior.
The table had what looked like torture tools set on it. I recognized a thumbscrew. Josh cut himself on some kind of twisted knife-hook-thing. Hammers and nails. I shudder thinking of what some of the other instruments were used for. There was what looked like the remains of a skeleton on another table in the corner of the room.
A rectangular table with Metal rings at each corner, and decayed ropes through those metal rings. I felt sick.
We decided then that we needed to get out, but Alan tripped over the rug and kicked it to the side. There was a trap door under it. Again, curiosity got the best of us, and we opened it, against James’s protests. It was pitch black down there. An old ladder led down, but that was it. We shined our lights in, and there were several things that might have once been human remains, but were now nearly dust.
At this point, something came over James. He climbed down the ladder into the hole, against our protests. After a moment, his light flickered and then died. Nothing but silence from down below. We were just beginning to panic when he casually walked into view.
He smiled up at us.
His eyes were just empty bleeding sockets.
We all just stood there in stunned silence, and then our lights wavered and flickered out. Mine flickered back on for a split second, and we saw some THING standing behind him. I don’t know what it was. Yes I do.
It was IT. The thing that’s been hunting me and my friends.
It looked very angry. It looked horrifying. It was dead blue skin and decomposing face. I could see its skull through its cheeks. It looked female. It had long decayed hair, and a bony frame. What looked like slashes in its dead cheeks, and gashes around its empty sockets. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I think, that if I would have seen it for more than a split nanosecond, I would have gone insane. Gone insane or dropped dead.
The light lasted for a fraction of a second, a fraction of a second that has haunted me every minute of every day since then, and then everything was dark and James was screaming. I ran. Everyone else ran too, but I was the first. We scattered. Floundering in the dark, in the unknown. I don’t know how long I was down there. It felt like centuries.
Eventually, I made it to the surface. It was pitch dark in the dead of night. I remembered that we had gone in during the early morning hours.
I went home. It was four o’clock in the morning. All I remember is turning every light in the house on, blasting Looney Tunes on the TV, and then passing out.
The next day, I found out that only Alan and Chris had made it out the previous night. We went to the police and they organized a manhunt. Twenty people went into the sewers that night. Me, Alan, and Chris were not among them. We vowed to never step foot in those tunnels again. The manhunt never found that room.
We never told them about it. We agreed to tell them that we had found a section of sewer that we hadn’t explored before, and gotten separated and lost.
The search was unsuccessful. After a week, the police were forced to call it off. And the rest is history. Over the next several months, everyone who went into those sewers has disappeared, without a trace. Alan, Chris, gone. I’m the only one le
Oh fuck I think a light just went out. The darkness is coming, and I think I can see her or it whatever the fuck it is shit
Im the only one left you cant go into the sewers. They need to find the room and SHUT THE TRAPDOOR and SHUT THE OTHER DOOR so it cant get out
oh god the lights are going out oh shit oh fuck fuck look for my camera and shut the doors PLEASE YOU HAVE TO
**********
Police found a dropped camera deep within the sewage tunnels. No one has spoken about what footage is on the camera, and all to see the footage have committed suicide soon thereafter. Police are currently working with city records to conduct a coordinated search of the sewer system to find the location spoken of in the file….
**********
Detective Alexander Sherridan sits down in front of the television. He had requested a copy of the tape that has so disturbed anyone who has watched it, and now he has it. He feels apprehension building. Should he watch this? Some think it is cursed. However, Sherridan is not a superstitions man. He puts the tape in and presses play. A young man comes on the screen, the same from the picture. He is screaming, while behind him the lights are rapidly going out, moving in sequence towards him. What he is screaming is mostly incoherent, and what Sherridan is able to make out is simply more of the same of what he said in the word document– “close the doors.”
Suddenly the last lights flash out spectacularly, and there is a small glimpse of the laptop before the camera goes dark. What ensues are some of the most horrifying screams that Sherridan has ever heard, but he only barely registers these. He refuses to believe what he thinks he saw. To be sure, he rewinds the video, and plays it again. And again. And again.
Finally, he pauses it and goes forward frame by frame, until he sees the image he feared. Just as the lights flash for the final time, there is a woman grabbing the young man. Except he is not sure that she is a woman. It has no eyes. They look like they were gouged out at some point. There are slashes in her face, or what is left of its face. It is mostly decayed bone, with some skin stretching over it. The teeth are worn nubs. Sherridan averts his eyes. He can’t look at this thing anymore.
He notices at that moment, in the background, stand other things. People that have disappeared. All decaying. All with no eyes. They seem to be looking directly at him, accusingly almost. He tells himself that that is impossible, as they have no eyes. Then he notices motion.
The woman holding the young man pulls her face in some caricature of a smile. Then, she begins digging her fingers into his face. He begins screaming, as she literally rips his eyes out of his head. Sherridan runs forward and presses the power button on the TV. Nothing happens. The woman/thing continues to rip the eyes out of the man’s head, and Sherridan begins screaming with him, as he feels his sanity begin to slip. He rips the plug to the TV out of the wall.
Nothing happens. He retches as the thing pulls the remains of the eyes out, and begins pressing them into her own sockets. He turns and runs full force towards the wooden baseball bat mounted on the wall. He grabs it. He intends to destroy the TV. As he runs back towards the television, the he raises the bat. Just as he’s about to swing and destroy the screen, the thing winks at him with its new eyes.
Whatever vestiges of sanity that are left in Alexander Sherridan shatter at that moment. He drops the bat and stumbles backward into the next room. All he knows is that that thing knows where he is and how to get to him. And he knows that he doesn’t want that to happen.
As he presses the barrel of his police issue Glock into his temple, he vaguely recalls some urban legend or quote or something he’d heard somewhere about how if someone dies a violent death, their spirit stays there, angry, forever. “Fuck that,” he says out loud, before squeezing the trigger.
On the television screen, all that is seen is a terrified young man in a bright flash of light. Nothing more.
Credit To – Matt M. – read more of his work at http://mattmhorror.wordpress.com
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It was the 2nd of January, 2:04 AM. I woke up to a knocking on the door. One knock every 3 seconds. I slipped on my slippers and walked down the stairs. As I walked down, the knocking on the door got faster, almost like a heartbeat. When I got to the door, the knocking stopped, I looked outside and nobody was there.
I went back up to my room and went back to bed, thinking it was just some kids playing a prank. At 4:21 AM I woke up to the front door slamming shut. I jumped, terrified. I looked over at my frosted window to find “smile” written all over it in the frost. I grabbed my phone next to me, ready to call 911, only to find a message written on it saying “I told you to smile”. I cried and ran for my life running outside.
As soon as I got outside I knocked on my neighbors house across the road. They answered and held me while I sobbed. They phoned the police. At exactly 5:42, the police came to my neighbors house after an extensive search of my house. They told me there had been no evidence at all of anyone in my house other than me. The messages on the window were gone, same with my phone. They told me to get some sleep and advised me to see the doctor about stress and anxiety problems. Fuck that. I knew what happened to me was real.
The following evening, after spending the day at my neighbors, I went home. I went up to my bedroom and set up a camera. It was aimed at my bedroom door and my bed. I set it to record and went to sleep. Thankfully, I slept through the night. However, as I watched the footage, I couldn’t believe what I saw.
At 3 in the morning, something crawled out from under my bed. It was a completely naked, anorexic man. He stood up and looked at me on the bed. He did so for another hour, not moving at all. Then he moved. He walked over to the camera until his face took up the whole shot. He was extremely pale and had bulging veins all over his head. His eyes were completely black, with a huge smile on his face. He stared at the camera for another two hours, not blinking, just slightly twisting his head every now and again.
After two hours of him staring went past, he walked back over to my bed and crawled back under. I skipped the video forward until it showed me getting up and walking over to the camera. The video finished. I was frozen with fear. The video showed him going back under, but not leaving. Whatever it was, it was still there.
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Fallout 3 contains several in-game radio stations. The most diverse and important station is Galaxy News Radio.
Many players of the evil persuasion know that you can kill Three Dog and he will be replaced by the technician Margaret. She is not a charismatic person and has very little to say, seeming to not enjoy her new announcing duties. She also never appears in person, and therefore cannot be killed. Once Three Dog is dead, you’re stuck with Margaret.
What most players do NOT know is that under certain circumstances, GNR will become a “numbers station.” A numbers station is a station that broadcasts an unusual coded message. Many of these exist in real life and some hypothesize that they are a nuclear retaliation control network. Simply check Wikipedia for more information about these odd broadcasts as they relate to the real world. Back to Fallout 3…
No one is really sure which actions are needed to hear the numbers station in Fallout 3. It appears that you must kill Three Dog, because no one has reported hearing the numbers station with him still alive. It also appears that you have to skip over the quest “Galaxy News Radio” where you help boost the signal so that the station can be broadcast further than just the immediate DC area. This is easy enough to do with either a speech check or simply using the FalloutWiki to look up where to go next and advance the main plot. Finally, you definitely have to destroy Raven Rock. This is the actual trigger to turn GNR into a numbers station, and it will remain such for the rest of the game. However, the vast majority of the players who perform these three actions still continue hearing the standard GNR broadcasts, so there must be several more requirements the community has yet to isolate.
If you’re lucky enough to have hit upon the right set of circumstances, just after destroying Raven Rock, you will get the message, “Radio signal lost” and a few seconds later, “Radio signal found.” You cannot, however, actually listen to GNR just yet because you didn’t boost the signal and are out of range of the broadcast at the exit of Raven Rock. Luckily, Raven Rock is situated in the mountains and is right near one of the few places outside DC that you can get high enough to catch the signal. So far, the confirmed location to hear the GNR numbers signal are:
Within the immediate DC area obviously…this is true for the regular GNR throughout the game.
At the top of the ferris wheel at point lookout
On the tops of some of the satcom arrays you can climb in the northwestern map area.
On the roof of Tenpenny Tower, though this may be within normal broadcast range anyway. Feel free to playtest and get back to me on this.
On the highest point of the broken bridge around Arefu…again, may be within braodcast range anyway.
On some of the highest points of the mountain tops in the area near Raven Rock. This is obviously your easiest chance to first listen to the numbers station.
When you tune in, you will hear an old familiar voice…Three Dog, despite the fact that you killed him earlier. However, you will quickly notice that he does not seem to be “in character.” So I guess it’s not technically Three Dog, but just the voice actor, Erik Dellums. He reads a series of numbers in a monotone, depressed sounding voice. He always recites a list of single digits between 9 and 12 characters long. For example, “nine-three-seven-nine-one-seven-two-zero-three-four.” Hever never uses a multi-digit number like “eleven” or “forty.” These numbers are followed by widely varying lengths of Morse code. This is then followed by the song “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.” All other music tracks seem to be inactive on the numbers station.
The Morse code was the easiest part of the mystery to crack, as the code is widely available and many people actually know it by heart. We quickly had a list of a great number of messages in English. Some sounded completely mundane and even comical, such as “Washed the car today, maybe Chinese for dinner.” or “Have you watched my YouTube video yet, I uploaded myself kicking bums in the nuts.”
You may be saying, “But wait, YouTube doesn’t exist in the Fallout universe,” and you are right. As far as we could tell, all of the messages sounded like they were based in our reality somewhere near present day.
Some of the messages, however, are quite sinister, such as, “The Queen has died today. The world mourns, as on days like these, we are all Brits.” or “I can’t believe they’re actually done it. Not long left. The noise. I can’t take the noise anymore. I have a pistol in the attic.”
Just recently, a player on the wikiforums noticed a message that brought to light the meaning of the messages. He was reading a thread that collected all known messages, transposed from Morse to English, and saw the line, “one-two-zero-five-five-two-eight-two-zero-one-zero. What are you talkin’ about? You’ll be missed.” He realized this referred to the recent death of Gary Coleman, and the quickly realized the numbers were the time and date of death. He immediately scanned through the messages to try and find more examples of this apparent future telling by a game that’s more than a year old. The next message he read shocked him and pushed him to enlist the aid of the others to decipher the codes. The message was “nine-four-five-four-two-zero-two-zero-one-zero. Accident in the gulf, several dead. Oil spill apparently averted.” He realized this was the BP explosion and the erroneous day-one assessment that the well was not leaking.
From this point on, all numbers will be transcribed as times and dates. All times were given in game in military format and remain so in this document.
Numerous members of the FalloutWiki message board began looking over the messages to see what else we could learn. We quickly found that most of the dates were after the game had been released, yet oddly some were from the past. “22:15 April 15, 1865 He’s dead and blame will probably be placed on that actor, Booth. Johnson better not cheat me out of the payment.” This shed new doubt on the official version of the Lincoln assassination.
As the community quickly started piling up interpretations of the messages, the mods of the site summarily banned everyone who had posted in, or even read the thread. All reference to the numbers station was removed from FalloutWiki and filtering software was put in place to prevent reposting of any relevant information. A few people, however, are trading emails and slowly finishing the translation of the remaining messages and putting dates to the existing ones.
“The Queen has died today. The world mourns, as on days like these, we are all Brits.” 4:02 March 19, 2014
“Have you watched my YouTube video yet, I uploaded myself kicking bums in the nuts.” 24:16 December 24, 2012
“I can’t believe Britney’s actually won an Oscar!” 21:33 February 27, 2023
“I can’t believe they’ve actually done it. Not long left. They were warned, but they just had to keep pushing the boundaries of science. The noise. I can’t take the noise anymore. And the light, dear God! The Universe is slowly unraveling around us. I’m not going to wait for death. I have a pistol in the attic.” This is actually the only message not preceded by a string of numbers.
It may be worth noting that the latest date on any of the messages is 1:27 July 6, 2027.
CREDIT: Anonymous
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We were all there that day. The day they released him. Me and Kent, Bonnie and Simon, Nora and Anthony, Dustin and Patrick, and Darlene. We didn’t bring the kids. I think it was Nora’s idea to leave them at home. And it was Patrick’s idea to go watch the release. Chad Lamb strode from the prison, wearing the smirk that had won us over six long years ago. He stopped at the gate, spotting us. Dustin waved. Darlene raised a finger to her throat and slowly dragged it across in the classic execution motion. Lamb scowled, exited the gate, and turned west, heading for the bus stop. There was an empty lot across from the prison where we waited by our cars. Lamb, I was happy to see, continuously checked over his shoulder as we watched him walk away. He wasn’t afraid, but he was cautious. When he disappeared from view, Nora said flatly, “It’s time. We need to go to her now.”
Three years ago, the kids had started having nightmares. They woke up crying, but would refuse to say why. They’d started making up excuse to avoid going to school. And they’d reacted with fear around Mr. Lamb, their charming, engaging new teacher. Finally, over the summer, Patrick and Dustin had taken their adopted daughter Yuan to a consular, who’d convinced her to open up. Lamb had touched her. Had touched several other students. With a little more pressing, Yuan gave a few more names. Dustin and Patrick had gone to their parents, gone to us. It was hard. I didn’t want to believe it, but Stan had been so scared. He’d evaded us, refused to answer the questions at first, but finally broke down. He’d been convinced he’d get in trouble. So had Violet, Eddie, and the twins Tyler and Beatrice. Lamb had done a real number on them. The police had been wonderful. Slowly, gradually, the children built up their courage to testify. My stomach twisted as I recalled Violet breaking down in tears on the stand in court. Poor, sweet Violet. Then again, Violet wasn’t sweet anymore. She went from a shy, helpless seven year old victim to a ten year old black belt with a mean streak. Six year old Kayla had the meanest, toughest sister in school. If only Beatrice had been so strong. Once again, I thanked God it hadn’t been my Stan. Then felt horrible for the thought. I heard the car stop, and looked up. We were in front of her shop. I could see the other parents waiting in front of the emerald door. “Come on.” Kent said wearily. “She hates it when we’re late for our appointments.”
The shop was crowded with books, animal bones, statues of gods and fairies, strings of strange plants, and several ancient weapons. The glass counter at the back separated the public shop from the private meeting room. Darlene trudged to the counter and hit the bell once. A black curtain, emblazoned with purple eyes, was pulled aside, revealing Coda. “Heya parentals! Today’s the day, ain’t it!” Coda was always cheerful, no matter what. He had long, sharp teeth, and nails to match, with eyes as yellow as candle flames. If I’d cared, I might have wondered what he was. The boy wasn’t human. She had confirmed that. “I’ll get The Bone Woman, ‘kay?” Coda offered, disappearing back behind the curtain. “Come on!” He called, and we followed. As we always had. Nora had found her. I never asked how. The Bone Woman’s might had been proven to me, and her effectiveness was all that mattered to me. We each took our usual seats around The Bone Woman’s table, and waited. Eventually, Coda returned, leading his master by the hand. The Bone Woman’s glass eyes gazed sightlessly over us as Coda gently helped her into her massive, throne like armchair. She had a thick book, bound in a shining white material. We’d seen the book before. She’d shown it to us the first time we’d visited her. The Caligo Veneficus. The Darkest Magic. One of only thirteen in the world. Bound in the flesh of a murdered priest, the stitching done in human hair, taken from a mother who died in childbirth, and the ink it was written in mixed with the blood of a hanged man. “Are you sure?” She asked, breaking the silence. “We’re sure.” We said in unison. She nodded grimly, flipping the book open to a page near the center. The Iratus Motuus. The Angry Dead. Nora and Anthony looked grim and determined. Bonnie put her hand on Nora’s shoulder. “Are you sure, honey? Completely sure?”
“This is the only way to put things right.” Anthony said, and Nora nodded. The Bone Woman shooed Coda away. “I will need the item.” She said as he left. Nora reached into her pocket, and removed a silver necklace. A heart shaped chunk of aquamarine winked cheerfully in the fire and candle light. Anthony swallowed, tears in his eyes, as soon as he saw the necklace. I remembered that necklace. Beatrice’s favorite. She’d been wearing it even when they found her in her room, hanged by her belt. A news article proclaiming Chad Lamb’s coming release from prison clutched in her hand. Nora regretfully handed the jewelry to The Bone Woman. The shaman took it, inspected it, and nodded. “Her soul has left a mark upon this object. It will work. It will call to her.” Coda came back, holding several bottles, cans, and herbs. He dropped these unceremoniously onto the table, and then turned to a shelf in the room, fetching a brass pot from it. He set this on the table too, and vanished again.
As we watched in silence, The Bone Woman went to work. She seemed to not need eyes to identify what was what. She seized a decanter of dark, red wine, pouring it into the pot, and began to chant. Three yellow rose blossoms, a pinch of salt, seven rabbit bones, a lock of red human hair, a handful of grave yard dirt, snake fangs, on and on and on. The brew began to smoke and steam without being boiled, and The Bone Woman’s chanting grew faster and louder. I heard Beatrice’s name sprinkled in the foreign chant. Lamb’s name as well. Finally, she reached the finally stage of it. “Arise, my child, arise, arise, arise! Your killer now walks free, and justice has done not its duty. The time of justice is gone, now comes vengeance. Arise, my child, arise, arise, arise!” There was a burst of sound, and lavender smoke poured from the pot, filling the room and blinding us. A tortured, horrified scream split the air.
The smoke cleared, and The Bone Woman looked at us gravely. “It is done. She shall be waiting for you at the agreed upon place. Go to her. But, Nora, Anthony, be warned. This is not your daughter. This is an instrument of revenge and unholy justice. Remember that.”
The coffin stank. And the body was disgusting. Why did she get this gig? She’d wanted a fresh corpse. The body slowly reassembled, stitching itself back together via the Shamaness’ dark magic. The Bone Woman. Ah. Her. One of the strongest. Soon, the hands were fully reformed, and she’d slammed upwards, tearing open the coffin’s cherry wood lid. She pushed up, up, up, through the soft, icy Earth, and into the midnight air. The throat fixed itself, and she gulped down oxygen. She didn’t need it, but it felt nice for the body. She pulled herself up, settling her feet on the frosty grass. She knew where to go. She rolled her still repairing shoulders, and walked. Heading for the iron gates, down the dirt road, towards an abandoned barn that her master had ordered her to proceed to. “They, shall, be, waiting.” He rumbled.
The white dress was tattered, torn, the lace slightly yellowed. She’d lost a shoe on the trip up, and the another on the walk down the hill the grave was on. It was two hours to the barn, and the legs were stiff. The arms swung limping, the feet shuffling and shambling. It grew to be too much effort to keep the mouth closed, and she let it fall open, the tongue lolling out. She felt restless. She wanted to rip, tear, kill, devour. She wanted to get the job over with and go home to the fiery, sulfur-scented fields of home. The crumbling barn appeared, and she vaguely spotted several cars parked. She grimaced. Damn. Late. As she approached, she heard shouting. “The damn witch cheated us! Nothing’s here! God damn it Nora, how could you—“ She got to the door, reached up, and ripped it open. Nine living humans looked over at her, startled. One of them took a hesitant step forward. “Be-Beatrice?” The human whispered. She said nothing. Only a raspy moan for an answer.
The human drew back, gathering together, whispering. “What did she say for us to do?”
“Uh…We send her to Lamb, I think. Yeah.”
“Okay, okay.” They broke apart, and another one approached. “Es…es vos iratus…mortuus?” He fumbled out uncertainly. His Latin was awful, but she nodded once. She pulled back the blackened lips, showing the sharp teeth granted by the spell. She held up the hands, the black, claw like nails casting shadows. She gave another raspy, hungry moan, and one of the humans burst into tears. “Send her away, send her away.” She wailed. The one before her pointed back out into the night. “Chad Lamb.” He said firmly. “5831 Carmen Lane. Soon. Within a week. Understood?” She nodded, moaned, and turned, shambling away. Some instinct, evolved from the earliest days of her people, led her back outside, towards town. She did not run. She had time. So much time.
She took back roads, moving like a shadow through trees and backyards, quickly approaching Lamb’s house. She got hungrier with every step. She needed to eat! Good, she was sure the nose was picking up his scent. Finally, thank you high dark master, there was the house. There was her meal.
Chad was still up. On his computer, surfing his ‘special’ sites. Thank God that the American government still hadn’t started monitoring what registered sex offenders looked up on the web. He was so engrossed in a newly posted video, that he didn’t hear the back door open. Nor did he hear the sound of dirty, cold feet padded across his kitchen floor, through his front hall, up his stairs, down his hall, stopping in front of his closed office. He did finally hear the office door open, and looked up. “WHAT IN THE HELL??!!” Beatrice Mastin was standing in his doorway, standing in at him with puffy, sticky eyes. She smiled at him, her dirt stained fangs filling her mouth. She shuffled through the door, holding out her arms, curling her claws in and out. Chad fell off his chair, his pants around his ankles, scrambling backwards, until her ran into the far wall. Beatrice reached him, and stopped, staring down at him.
The girl, from far away in another world, asked her to say something, and she complied. After all, fear made the meat taste better. “I’m hungry, Mr. Lamb.” The man’s screams were almost as sweet as his skin.
Credit To: I live in your closet
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Publisher’s Note: This story is part of the author’s Father Cooke series of interrelated stories. If you enjoy it, the author invites you to click here to read the other tales in the series.
“1…2…3…4…5…6…7.” I flicked the light in the bathroom off and then on again seven times, counting every flick of the switch. Once I finished the routine, I could feel the sense of doom start to dissipate from my mind.
Before leaving the bathroom, I walked over to the toilet and took a piss. As I turned to leave, that sense of doom started to cloud over my mind again. The light switch routine wasn’t enough. If I didn’t perform the toilet routine, something bad might happen. I reached down and flushed the toilet, then proceeded to push the handle down another six times.
I decided to skip washing my hands. I didn’t want to risk triggering the hand-washing routine. I couldn’t handle scrubbing my hands seven times and then turning the water on and off again seven times.
I don’t know why the number seven became my magic number. I just know that all demands must be performed seven times. If I don’t do it, the feeling that something bad is going to happen just gets worse.
I never know when the demands will make themselves known. They come whenever they want, as often as they want. Some of them happen so frequently that I have started to preemptively perform them to prevent that overbearing feeling of dread.
“Bad day?” my wife asked as she walked into the bedroom, “I heard you jiggle the toilet handle.” She knew about my condition and tolerated it as long as it didn’t interfere with my life or inconvenience her too much.
Technically, my routines interfered with my life, but not in a way that debilitated me. They were just annoying and time consuming. Thankfully, my issues were confined to the house. I could function like a normal human being when I was at work or out shopping, but once I got home it was only a matter of time before the clouds moved over my brain.
“Just a little,” I said. “Work has been a bit stressful, and these things always seem to get worse when I am stressed.”
She walked over and hugged me from behind. I leaned my head against hers, where it rested on my shoulder. “We’ll find someone that can help,” She said. She had taken it upon herself to cure me.
“I’ll be fine,” I said.
I didn’t think I needed to be cured. I just needed to find out why things started to escalate when we moved into that house. Something about that house was making me worse. I always had little quirks, but they were manageable, and I could go several days without an incident. Once we moved into that house, the demands started to come one after the other until I couldn’t go a day without having to perform several routines.
“Don’t get mad.” My wife circled around me, keeping her hands around my waist. When she was standing in front of me she looked up into my eyes before continuing, “I invited someone over… someone who may be able to help you.”
I sighed in frustration and rolled my eyes.
“Just give him a chance… please… for me.” She gave me her best doe-eyed look.
It was hard to say no to her, so I just squeezed her shoulders seven times then stepped away from her.
She started to walk out of the bedroom and I followed. As I closed the door behind me, I started to pull on the knob seven times. When I counted the sixth pull, my hand slipped off the knob. That was not good. In order for the routine to work, I had to maintain contact.
“God dammit!” I cursed. I could feel my wife’s eyes on the back of my head knowing she had turned around to stare at me.
The air around me became heavy as the feeling of dread intensified. I quickly grabbed the handle and pulled on it seven times. I then performed the routine six more times to erase the failed attempt.
By the time I finished, a light sheen of sweat had formed on my forehead. I took a deep breath, let go of the handle, and stepped away from the door. The feeling hadn’t left completely, but it subsided enough for me to walk away.
If I am honest, that feeling of dread never went away completely. Not since we moved into that house. I could always feel it hovering just outside my perception as it waited for an opportunity to invade my thoughts. It didn’t matter how perfectly I preformed my routines. It was always there.
When I got downstairs, I went into the living room to watch TV while my wife put on a pot of coffee in anticipation of our guest’s arrival. As I scrolled through Netflix, trying to find something to watch, that familiar feeling came over me. I could feel it worm its way into my brain and start to demand I turn off the TV.
A new routine was being thrust upon me. I’ve never felt compelled to turn the TV off. I tried to fight it, but I couldn’t. I turned the TV off and then on again seven times. Disgusted with myself, I walked into the kitchen.
“That probably isn’t good for the TV,” my wife said as she pulled some mugs down from the cabinet.
“You’re probably right,” I snapped at her, “but it’s not like I can stop myself.”
She gave me a look that warned me I had almost crossed the line of her patience.
“Sorry,” I apologized. Her expression softened when she saw the pained look on my face. I didn’t mean to snap, I just get so frustrated at myself for giving in to the demands so easily.
That was when the doorbell rang.
“Why don’t you go have a seat in the dining room,” my wife suggested as she went to answer the door.
When she returned, she was followed by two men. The shorter man, who she introduced as Father Cooke was obviously a priest. The taller man, dressed entirely in black, who she introduced as Mr. Alexander, made me feel uneasy. There was something off about him. He had this way of looking at me that made me feel like he could see right through me. That look seemed to exacerbate my sense that something bad was going to happen.
“This is my husband Gary,” she said as everyone took a seat around the table.
I nodded at the men then slid my hands off the table and placed them in my lap. I didn’t like shaking hands and thankfully neither man offered theirs in greeting. As I sat and waited to hear why my wife had called a priest and whatever Mr. Alexander was, I clenched my fists six times and tried not to make a fool out of myself.
Father Cooke laid the large roll of papers he was holding onto the center of the table. As I eyed Mr. Alexander, I noticed he was carrying a small black box that he sat on his lap. He smiled when he noticed I was watching him and placed his hand protectively over the box.
“Coffee?” my wife asked as she set the mugs on the table and began to pour the steaming liquid into them.
“Thank you,” both men said almost in unison as they reached out and took the offered cups.
“I’m sorry,” I finally blurted out. “I don’t understand how you can help me. I’m afraid this is just going to be a waste of your time.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Bower, I think we may be the only ones capable of helping you,” Mr. Alexander said. As he spoke, he helped Father Cooke unroll the large sheet of papers to reveal a set of blueprints to our house.
I looked over at my wife while I waited for them to continue.
“Your wife explained your situation to us.” Father Cooke noticed me looking over at my wife. “While OCD isn’t reason enough to call in a priest, it can be a sign that something more sinister is at work.”
“Sinister?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Heaven and Hell exist.” Mr. Alexander set the box he was holding on the table. “And they are nothing like you’ve been led to believe.” When he finished speaking he turned the box towards me and slowly opened the lid.
I quickly stood up, causing my chair to fall over backwards as I moved away from the dismembered hand that crawled out of the box, “What the hell is that?!” I cried out. My wife came over and placed her arm around my shoulders to calm me.
“I didn’t believe it when I first saw it, either,” she tried to reassure me.
I stood and stared at the hand as it began to tap its index finger impatiently. I didn’t notice it at first, but I had started to tap each one of my fingers against my thumb while I counted to six repeatedly.
“Did you really have to do that?” Father Cooke chided Mr. Alexander.
“My apologies, Mr. Bower. I felt the best way to introduce to the world that haunts you is to just throw it out there.” Mr. Alexander sounded sincere.
“What?!” I exclaimed. Things had gotten really weird, really fast.
“I think you need to hear them out,” my wife said as I picked up my chair and sat back down. “I’m going to step away for a moment and give you boys some privacy. Trust them.” She kissed me on the top of my head then left the room.
“This is Lefty,” Mr. Alexander gestured to the animated hand. “He is the unfortunate victim of a botched summoning spell.”
“Victim?” Father Cooke laughed while shaking his head before turning to me. “Lefty is a demon. I won’t get into the specifics of how he came to be trapped in that hand, but I assure you he is not a victim.”
While he spoke, Lefty rolled over onto his knuckles and gave the priest the middle finger.
“I think that’s enough out of you,” Father Cooke said as he scooped up the hand, placed it back in the box, and handed the container to Mr. Alexander.
“Have you noticed anything different about your routine since we got here?” Mr. Alexander asked.
“No… wait.” I didn’t realize it at first, but I had been counting to six instead of seven since they arrived.
I looked up to see Mr. Alexander smiling. “You’ve started counting to six instead of seven, haven’t you?”
“How do you know that?” I didn’t think I was counting out loud.
“Numbers have power. The reason you have been counting to 6 is because you are an empath. You can feel the presence of angelic and demonic creatures. You subconsciously became aware of Lefty’s presence. That triggered a change to your routine as you unknowingly tried to defend yourself against the perceived threat. The greater the threat, the more often your routines are triggered.”
I scoffed. “That’s insane.”
“Is it?” Father Cooke nodded to the box as Lefty started knocking to be let out.
“How does that explain why I’ve been counting to seven?”
“That is where these come in.” Mr. Alexander pointed at the blueprints. “Let’s start with this one.” he pulled out the sheet that showed the floor plan of the basement. “Now watch as I line these up.” He placed the rest of the blueprints in order with the basement on the bottom and the attic on top.
“Okay… what am I supposed to be looking for?” I should mention that as I spoke with the priests, I continued to perform different routines, mostly with my hands or feet, to keep them from becoming a distraction.
Father Cooke produced a book from the inside of his jacket and opened it to a bookmarked page. He placed the book on the table and pointed to a symbol drawn on the page. “It might be hard to notice at first, but keep looking.”
I glanced at the stack of blueprints. The paper they were printed on was semitransparent, allowing the darker lines of the bottom sheets to be slightly visible. I then glanced back to the picture in the book. As I did so, I started to see the similarities between the symbol in the book and the layout of our home.
“What is it?” I asked,
“This is an Enochian Nexus.” Father Cooke pointed to the symbol in the book.
“For reasons we haven’t been able to discern, your house was built to resemble a three-dimensional nexus,” Mr. Alexander explained. “That is why you have been counting to seven. Angelic creatures are drawn to your house because it is a weak point between Heaven and Earth. Whenever you feel their presence, your defense mechanisms are triggered and you perform one of your routines. You count to seven because seven is the number of Heaven.”
I stammered as I tried to make sense of what they were saying. I couldn’t put into words all of the thoughts that were racing through my mind.
“It’s a lot to take in,” Father Cooke said. “The good news is we can help you.”
“The bad news,” Mr. Alexander cut in, “is that we are going to have to destroy your house to close the nexus.”
Right at that moment my wife returned carrying two large suitcases. “They already explained everything to me,” she said as she set the bags down.
“They can’t just destroy our house!” I raised my voice.
“I can’t keep living this way.” My wife fixed me with her tired eyes. At that moment I could see the toll my issues had placed upon her. She was as much a victim of my condition as I was. “They assure me the insurance will pay for the house. We just can’t be here when they destroy it.”
“What about work?”
“I already took care of that. I told your boss I was taking you on a surprise vacation.”
“Where?” I asked.
“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you.” I loved seeing her smile.
“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay,” I said.
“You said that seven times,” Mr. Alexander noted. “I think it’s time we conclude our business before the creatures using this nexus figure out what we are up to.”
As we all got up from the table and gathered our things, I stopped and turned towards the priests. “How are you going to do it?” I had to know.
Mr. Alexander opened the box that held the demonic hand. “Lefty has become an accomplished arsonist during the short time he has been with us. I am confident he can make it look like an accident.” The hand rolled over onto its side and gave a thumbs up.
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Hey there. Are you lost? Me too. Aw there there, don’t be scared, someone will come along. Someone always comes along. Sooner or later.
I’m Amy. We can wait here till someone finds us. In the meantime, would uh… would you like to trade? Yeah I’ll tell you a story and, well… you listen to it. It’s a great way to pass the time, you know.
So do you want to trade?
Yeah?
Great!
Ok, my story happened a long time ago, I got lost then too. I kinda feel like I’m always lost, you know?
*****
It was late September when my family and I took the visit to the Great Corn Maze Farm. This was the largest corn maze in the state and we had traveled for nearly two hours just to get here. The farm boasted 5 separate mazes all intertwined into the corn field. They ranged from “Lil’ Pumpkin Path” that was the easy level, to the “Devil’s Labyrinth” the longest and hardest maze in the field. The Devil’s Labyrinth was nothing to laugh about, it wound around and around in horrid circles and had long twisting paths leading to dead ends. Without any direction you could get completely turned around in there and spend hours trying to find your way out. Luckily, you could grab a maze map at the entrance so you wouldn’t have to wander around hopelessly lost. Although for me getting lost in a corn maze is usually half the fun.
This maze had a reputation for being creepy and strange. At my high school there were all kinds of rumors about the Great Corn Maze, especially about Devil’s Labyrinth. Some kids swore that strange creatures or demonic scarecrows or other such monstrosities lived in the maze and came out at night to steal souls or eat brains or whatever. I never believed any of them, they were just lots of silly Halloween type stories just told to frighten people. Only one rumor floated around that had any kind of menace. It was really simple, just an old newspaper clipping about a little boy that went to the Great Corn Maze last year, he went into the maze, and simply never came out again. No one knew why… maybe he got lost…
But things like that didn’t really happen to people, and like I said, I didn’t believe in silly rumors. No silly rumor was going to spoil my birthday trip! No way!
Or so I believed…
We drove up to the farm, bumping over the dirt roads. Eagerly I gazed out the window at the huge green cornfield, unable to contain my excitement. I loved corn mazes and this was the best one ever! Late September was my birthday and this year, my family had splurged just to bring me here! I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to wander through the rows of sweet smelling corn… We pulled up to the dirt and hay field that served as a parking lot, driving our little Nissan over the rough mud ruts. We all got out, Mom, Dad, my cousin and me.
We passed by the other attractions at the Farm. There was a hayride, a little train ride that went around and around, a carousel, a petting zoo, an obstacle course, an empty field for pumpkin throwing, a typical haunted house, and various other little food vendors and kid playground attractions. There weren’t many people here today, and many of the vendors were closed up. But then again it was the early part of the season. Halloween was still weeks away, so it would make sense that not everything was open. Unfortunately…..
“They closed the maze?!?!” I exclaimed as I stared in shock at the cheap wooden sign hanging over the maze entrance, forbidding passage to my birthday adventure.
“Fraid so,” mumbled a farmhand that worked there.
“Why?” I asked, disappointed. “Isn’t the maze finished?”
“Uh huh. The maze is all there, but um… well the corn ain’t ripe enough. Field is still too green.”
I didn’t like the way he said that; somehow that hesitation in his voice told me that he was lying. “Come on, you gotta be kidding me! Couldn’t we just go inside for a little while?”
“No, absolutely not!”
“But why?!” I didn’t mean to act like such a baby, but I just couldn’t help it.
“I told you why! Field is too green, and anyways we ain’t got the maps printed. You can’t go in there without a map.”
“I don’t need a map… ”
“Without a map, ma’am… ” he leaned in close to whisper to me. “You might get lost.”
“Pfff, I don’t mind getting a little lost.”
For some strange reason this seemed to upset him greatly. “No ma’am. You don’t want to be lost in there. You don’t ever want to be lost in there!” Then he caught himself and replied more casually, “I sure don’t ever want to be lost in there, I always carry a map and so does everybody else, cause no one wants to be lost in there! You hear? We ain’t got the maps so the Maze is closed!”
I could not believe it. My birthday trip and the main attraction was down because they didn’t have the stupid maps, and the corn wasn’t ripe? It wasn’t fair. As my family and I walked away to enjoy the train and the hayride and all the other little attractions that the Farm offered, I kept stealing sullen glances at the closed corn field. I watched the beautiful green stalks sway in the autumn wind, beckoning me. I wanted so badly to go in there, to smell the growing corn, to run laughing down the paths with my arms outstretched, winding and twisting ever deeper into the maze until I became lost and playfully found my way out with my map, only to rush back in and get lost all over again. But that luxury had been stolen from me… It just wasn’t fair.
“Amy, Helllllllloooooo? Are you lost or something?” my cousin’s voice snapped me out of my reverie. “Huh what?”
“I asked if you wanted to go to the petting zoo with us?” my cousin repeated.
My mother joined the conversation. “If you didn’t want to go to the petting zoo, then you and I could go shop for some souvenirs over there, maybe pick out a birthday present? Or you could venture over there and do the Haunted House? You would have to go by yourself though…”
I glanced over where the Haunted House was. I enjoyed haunted houses, but I already knew this one. Plastic looking but still with a gory edge to it, loud music and sound effects came from that corner of the field along with shouts from the costumed people within.
“Yeah,” I decided. “I’ll take in the haunted house and maybe the train ride again.”
“Ok sweetheart.” Said my mother. “We’ll all meet up right here again in two hours. Have fun! Don’t get lost, sweetie, don’t get lost!”
I waved goodbye to my family and walked away… I should have listened closer to those last words, “Don’t Get Lost”
But like I said before, getting lost is half of the fun….
Right?
*****
I stopped to grab an ear of roasted corn from a nearby food vendor. It was piping hot, so I left it in the bag to cool for a little while and followed the screams that led to the Haunted house. I smiled wondering what kinds of halloweeny scenes they had made this year. As I started to go up to the entrance, a sudden gust of wind blew me back slightly. I heard a soft papery sound at my feet and when I looked down, I saw a thin corn husk blowing in the breeze along the dusty ground. It flew up in a small whirlwind and then breezed around the side of the Haunted house. I didn’t know why, but it felt like I ought to follow it. Somehow, I needed to see where the wind took it. So I darted after it. The papery husk flew in front of me, then ducked around the corner of another building. Growing ever curious, I followed around the corner….
…and there was the Corn Field, tall and green and wonderful before me. I watched the green stalks bow with the breeze, seeming to welcome me back after a year of waiting. I caught a whiff of the green scent of corn on the breeze. It smelled like the sweetest perfume, rich and irresistible. Looking around I saw that no one was near this part of the field, and I ducked under a feeble roped off walkway. I tiptoed along the outer perimeter of the corn field, stepping carefully over ruts made by a tractor. I dared to get close enough to touch one of the growing stalks. Huh, that was weird, it seemed… warm. Must be the sun, I thought.
Suddenly out of the corner of my eye, I saw the papery corn husk again. It floated on a gust and blew along the perimeter, staying just within my vision. I couldn’t seem to help myself, I followed it. Like it was drawing me to some amazing discovery, and that if I just kept going, just kept walking around the edge of the field, I would find it.
And I did find it.
An exit.
An exit that led INTO the maze!
I was looking at one of the five maze exits that led people out of the corn field. But this time it seemed to be pulling me in. The wind swept over the corn stalks making them bow and sway, calling to me. Beckoning me to enter their lair of greenery. All day long I had been wishing that I could run into the corn maze, run and laugh and enjoy the winding trails that led through the cornrows and now here was my chance! Nervously, I looked around, afraid that I would get caught wandering around. But the area was empty. Nobody noticed me, the coast was clear. Cautiously, I tiptoed up to the maze pathway, their perfumed scent flooding my mind with a kind of childlike joy, and silently I entered the lush jungle of bowing stalks.
Left turn, right turn, middle fork, left turn, right turn, right turn, dead end. Go back and take the right fork… I was grinning and running with my arms outstretched as though I could fly, my fingertips grazing past the ears of green corn, not yet ripe. One hand clutched my bag with my ear of roasted corn still in it. I was so happy! I felt this total euphoric freedom and rebellion against the stupid people that had closed the maze today. I couldn’t see why they had, the field was perfect! Maybe a little muddy perhaps, but otherwise perfect! I ran and ran, trying not to laugh with joy, lest someone heard me and caught me. I danced around the corners loving the smell of the fresh green stalks and the feel of the warm sun and cool breezes. Oops another dead end. I grinned and spun around taking another right fork and running around a zigzag of freestanding stalks in a large square clearing before finally I came to a halt, breathing hard but feeling amazingly happy, as my birthday wish had come true.
I took out my cooled ear of roasted corn and bit into it. Mmm the sweet taste of the golden kernels mixed with melted butter had never tasted so sweet as they did in that beautiful field. I gobbled up about half of the ear, put it back and decided that it was time to head back the way I had come. I had my fun, but I sure didn’t want to get caught in here. I gazed around the large square empty clearing with joy then turned back toward the entrance path. Or rather…. the exit path…. right?
Take a left turn, right turn, right turn, left, right, right, left, I stepped back along the path trying to recall the way I had come. Most of the path looked ok, but it seemed to be taking a while. I turned left again, and again, then the path went straight for a while and came to a fork. “Did I take that fork from the left, or from the right?” I thought to myself. I kept going, further and further. For no apparent reason, an image from the story of Alice in Wonderland flickered into my mind, poor Alice was wandering through the Tulgey Wood and getting lost; she kept saying to herself, “Did I come this way, or that way? This way or that way?”
“Wait, I don’t remember a T junction here…” I said out loud, a flicker of worry crossed my mind. I didn’t have a map and I was starting to not remember coming this way at all. “We ain’t got the maps…. without a map you might get lost…” the farmhand’s warning floated through my mind like the echoing moan of a lonely ghost. I shook off my slight fear and doubled back for a while. At the next junction, I took a different path certain that I would find my way back to the exit again. After all, I hadn’t come that far…. had I?
The wind blew the stalks together and made murmuring noises. “This way or that way? This way or that way?” They seemed to be whispering. I felt a slight touch of claustrophobia as I gazed at the green pillars growing high above my head. Where at first the corn stalks had seemed so welcoming, now they seemed to be staring at me, lifeless green husk-eyes that followed my every move as I continued down the winding twisting paths. A series of left turns gave me a sudden flash of hope, and then crushed me as I came to an unfamiliar dead end. I was getting lost, but this time it wasn’t fun! Panic started to grip at my heart, I ran faster down the pathway, looking down every corner for a familiar junction, somewhere I knew I had been. Had I come this way, or did I go that way? This way or that way? This way or that way? My heart was starting to pound frightfully in my chest. I looked toward the green stalks for some kind of answer; but now the rows seemed to glare coldly back at me, the pathway looked darker and more forbidding.
I stopped along the path trying to get my heartbeats to slow down. I breathed hard, trying to calm down. I had to still be near the rest of the farm, I thought. I listened for a sound from one of the other rides, the whistle from the train ride, the familiar sound effects coming from the haunted house… I listened expecting to hear phony screams and families laughing… I listened for any sound that might give me comfort. All I heard was the rustling whisper of the wind through the corn… and footsteps.
Footsteps?
I concentrated hard as I stayed where I was and listened. Yes! Soft footsteps coming from in front of me, no… behind me…. no… where were they? I spun around trying to find a person, a face, some source of the tiny footfalls. Was that a child walking so softly? “Hello?” I called out. I no longer cared if I got caught by the farm workers anymore, I just wanted to be out of there, I wanted to be out of the maze and with my family, I wanted to not be lost anymore. “Hello?”
Silence. The footsteps had stopped, even the wind had stopped.
“Oh Amy, why did you wander in here?” I asked myself, shivering. “Why didn’t you listen to the workers and just stay out of the maze?” I didn’t even know which maze I was in, the exits all looked alike. I really hoped I wasn’t in the Devil’s Labyrinth. Without a map, it might be dark before I managed to find my way out again. I started to run down the path. It couldn’t be very much farther, I thought. I ran faster and faster, a few of the green corn husks slapped at my face. The ground grew wetter and slippery. Suddenly I tripped over a broken corn stalk and went sprawling, down down, face down into a patch of rotten smelling mud.
Pain shot up my knee and my left side, and I gagged as my mouth filled with greasy muck. I spat and groaned and tried not to be sick. God I hope they didn’t use pesticides in their corn. Wiping mud from my hands and my face, I looked down and saw that my left knee was bleeding, my jeans torn, my shirt ripped where it caught on a sharp ear of corn. All I kept thinking was: how could I have let myself get lost in this maze?
I glared at the corn stalks around me, now I was angry. I felt betrayed, like this maze had lured me in here, like the sweet sticky maw of a Venus Flytrap. Here I was, lost and afraid and struggling to get out! I stared up at the yellowing stalks and wanted to scream.Furiously I grabbed a nearby ear of ripe corn and shook the dry husk from the cob…. I blinked at the ripening kernels. Slowly I looked around at the golden yellow stalks, swaying like a dry wheat field.
I thought the corn was still green? Why did this area seem so dry and yellow? My questions went unanswered as a sudden chill ran down my spine. I turned around and tried to go back the way I had come. But this wasn’t the way I had come, not at all. The pathway seemed totally different now, the furrows were dry now, not muddy like they had been before; and the corn was ripe and golden everywhere, and the wind felt cold and crisp. Like late-October wind. Or mid-November wind. I shivered and turned down a long unfamiliar corridor with a dozen different paths to follow, I tried the first left path and got a dead end. I tried to turn around but suddenly the corridor wasn’t there and the path veered off to the right. I went along until the path split into a fork, I went left but soon changed my mind and turned around to take the right path, but there was no right path, the corn rows had closed into a dead end behind me. I couldn’t understand any of this! Was I going this way? Or was I coming that way? This way or that way? This way or that way?
I fled down the pathways faster and faster, feeling panic rise in my chest and an acidic bile taste rising steadily my throat. My heart began to pound and my bleeding knee throbbed. Every few seconds I looked behind me and each time the paths were different than they had been before. Then I flew back around again only to find the open path I had been walking had turned to another dry dead end. Now the dead end was behind me… now there were two dead ends and no paths! Now the dead ends were really a four way intersection that stretched on and on and on forever! My head started to spin, nothing was making sense anymore! This way or that way? This way or that way!?!
I clutched at my ears and shut my eyes tightly. Stop it! I thought. This isn’t happening! This is not happening! You’ve got to pull yourself together and get out of this damn maze!” I stayed like that for a while, thinking, hoping that it was a dream, that I would open my eyes and be safe in bed. But I could still hear the wind rustle through the rows, mocking me, Thissss waaaay or thaaaat waaaay? Thisss waaaaaaaaaaay or thaaaaaaaat waaaay?
I opened my eyes and finally saw a place that I had been before! The old square clearing with the zigzag of freestanding corn stalks. I had somehow wandered back into that same clearing again! Only….. the corn stalks were now a rich golden yellow, the husks papery thin and many of them littered the pathway, the ears of corn were going dry and overripe, the sky was a stormy gray with a cold bitter wind that whipped at my face.
I trembled with fear. Just how long had I been in this field? It had only been a little while right?A few minutes…. a few hours….. a few days….. a few weeks…..
“No no no no no no no no no no!” I couldn’t let myself think like that. It wasn’t possible, I simply couldn’t have been lost in here for that long! Could I?
Voices floated in my head. More disembodied ghostly moans… warnings that I had not listened to… my friends telling their scary rumor stories…. ‘People would wander into the maze,’ they would say, ‘and never come out again. They would go on wandering this way or that way, this way or that way and never be seen again….’
“Help!” I finally screamed. I grasped the dry corn stalks and shook them like prison bars. “Someone help me! I can’t get out! I’m lost! Help me!!!!” I cried and shook and ran around the clearing, feeling terrified. I was afraid to venture along another path, afraid I might never find my way out again. Afraid that I would be lost among the rows and rows of corn stalks, wandering this way and that way….forever….
Wait, I suddenly looked down and realized that I was still holding the bag that held the half eaten roasted ear of corn I had just bought. I opened it up quickly, perhaps the sight of that fresh roasted food might bring me back to reality, might remind me that I was not really in this Rip Van Winkle nightmare all around me. I grabbed the wrapped paper that held the other half of the corn cob and opened my mouth wide to bite into that sweet buttery corn, to taste reality again…..
And screamed as a million crawling black bugs swarmed out of the paper and down my hands, arms and into my mouth.
“Ohhhhhhhhh!” I flung the bag away and swatted at the mass of legs and black shells furiously. I felt them slide down my shirt, wriggling up my sleeves, crawling up my face, biting me, stinging me, everywhere, millions of them! I gagged as I felt a stinging crawling sensation inside my mouth, and bending over I puked my guts out, watching as the black intruders struggled in the pool of sick brown liquid. Somewhere in my mind, I wondered if I had really eaten any corn at all, or if I had really been eating those stinging black bugs the whole time…. “Ohhhhh”
I ran. I ran without stopping or thinking; I couldn’t see any paths anymore, just corn. Rows and rows of corn, stretching endlessly on and on. I ran, stumbling over the rutted cornrows, the dry stalks clutching at my hair, ducking under dry corn husks swarming with bugs and mold, the stench of dry rotting plants invaded my nose. And still I ran, I ran till I couldn’t see, ran till my sides ached, till I couldn’t breathe, and still I ran and ran and finally I tripped and fell…..
Into a puddle of mud.
Eewww! I gagged as the muddy water filled my mouth and nose. I sat up quickly and wiped my eyes, but I felt afraid to open them, afraid of what I would see now. I froze, as the faint sound of soft footsteps approached me…
“Are you ok?”asked a tiny voice.
“Huh?” I looked up quickly and saw a young boy, about 6 or 7 years old. He was looking at me down in the puddle I just fell into. I looked around at the normal green corn rows, the simple square clearing with the zigzag of green cornstalks, the muddy ruts, sounds from the nearby train and haunted house attractions wafted by. The perfumed scent of green corn drifted around us. Everything was normal, everything was ok.
“Yeah, kid.” I exhaled a sigh of relief as I wiped muddy water away from my face and grinned. “I’m doing great.”
“Wanna trade?” he said holding out a napkin for me to wipe the mud off with.
“Sure.” I took the napkin and wiped my face with it and stood up. I looked at the dusty little face and realized I had nothing to trade with. “How come you are in here?” I asked.
“I got lost.” he said. “But I knew that someone would come along and find me. Someone always comes along. That’s what she told me.”
“Umm.. who told you?” I asked, mildly confused. I started to notice the dark circles under his eyes and the haunting way he was looking at me.
“The girl I saw. When I got lost in here, I met a girl and she was lost, and she had met another girl who was lost, and the other girl met a man with a cloak and scary eyes. The man said: whenever a person gets lost in here, they have to wait for someone to come along. And when they do, then they can trade.”
“Trade? Trade, what?” I felt my mouth go dry, why did this thin little kid scare me so badly?
The little boy let out a sigh like the dry rustling of the corn stalks. “Trade…. souls. So that the person who was lost in here can go home.”
I decided right then that I didn’t like this story at all. I dropped the napkin he had given me and started to back away. He looked up at me with his haunted eyes and gave that low rustling sigh again.
“Mommy told me not to go in here, but I did. I didn’t have a map so I got lost, and I didn’t know how to get out. I went this way and I went that way, but I couldn’t get out. Then I met that girl and she wanted me to trade with her and I did. I’ve been lost in here for a whole year.”
“Wait… wait!” my mind was reeling from the strain of trying to make sense of it all. The corn, the changing, frightening maze and now this haunted thin figure masquerading as a little boy. “You couldn’t be lost in here that long! You just couldn’t! Someone…. someone would find you! Someone would help…” I sputtered to a silence.
His dusty head shook from side to side as though it were blown by the parched wind. “Not while we are lost in here. No one can find us if we are lost…. ”
The ghostly warning voices returned with a laughing, ironic hopelessness. Without a map, you might get lost. You don’t ever want to be lost in there. I always carry a map, no one wants to get lost… Even my own mother’s voice calling to me, Don’t get lost, sweetie, don’t get lost…
“The maps…” I whispered more to myself than anything. “They didn’t open the maze because they didn’t have any maps…”
“I didn’t have a map, so I got lost.” his eyes gazed hollowly from that dusty solemn face. “Everybody else always has a map, so they never get lost, so they never found me. Until you came along… ” The skeletal little figure bent down and picked up the napkin, when he looked up again, he was smiling. His smile resembled that of a grinning skull, a death smile. “Thank you for trading with me.”
“No….. no….” I shook my head violently as though trying to shake off muddy water, or crawling black bugs, or moldy ears of corn…. I scrambled for the nearest path, the sounds of the rest of the farm seemed to be fading into the distance, I chased them hopelessly. “Please, ” I begged to the corn, to the sky, to anybody. “Please, let me out! I don’t want to be lost anymore!” The wind whipped at my face like a knife, an icy cold, jagged knife at my heart…. so sharp… so cold….
His tiny haunted voice seem to float into my ears. “Don’t be scared, the other girl told me that someone will come along and you’ll get to trade souls and go home. Sooner or later, someone will come along. Someone always comes along.
*****
Creepy huh? Yeah, that happened to me about five years ago. Still gets me every time I think about it. I wonder how he’s doing sometimes…. but anyway that is my story.
Oh and by the way…
Thanks for trading with me.
Remember, I asked you if you wanted to trade with me, and you did.
It won’t do you any good to run away, this corn maze won’t let you go until you’ve made the trade, believe me. After five years of wandering this way and wandering that way, I know. The maze will keep you lost, and won’t let you go.
But don’t be scared. You’ll get your chance. Sooner or later, someone will come along.
Someone always comes along.
The End
Credit To – B.J. Byrd
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This is a true story, a quite disturbing occurrence I had the misfortune to experience when I was at the impressionable – and, mind you, easily frightened – age of 7. The entire spectacle is centered around a road trip. This I must explain to you immediately, so that I can tell you the background of the story.
A month prior, my father had entered a contest. The contest was launched by a chain of failing gas stations in my area as a means of advertising. The concept was to distribute bumper stickers that bore the name of the gas station, (which I recall as “Iron-Pump” or something similarly cheesy), and at the end of the promotion, the first person they saw on the road sporting one of these poorly craft automobile accessories would be given free gas for a year. I suppose their intention was to make back their money with the free advertising, as they didn’t expect anyone could use very much gas in one year. They obviously had no idea the kind of person my father was. As you can probably assume, he won the contest, and was given a contract to sign giving him permission to use all Iron-Pump gas pumps free of charge for exactly twelve months.
The very next day, my father rented a tanker truck that is usually used to transport oil. Then my dear old dad set about emptying every single pump at our local Iron Pump into he truck. The attendants tried to stop him, and of course threatened lawsuit, but my father was a smart man, albeit a filthy crook, and had found multiple loopholes in the contract that essentially allowed him to take as much gas as he wanted. The idiots hadn’t specified a maximum.
Now, our family wasn’t very rich. My father was a genius, but he was lazy, and his law degree served the sole purpose of dust collection in his bedroom closet. Because we weren’t the most frugal family in the neighborhood, we rarely went on vacations, or family outings. So we were quite excited when our father announced we’d be embarking on a nationwide road trip beginning next week. I could hardly contain my glee. Ah, the irony.
So we set off in my mother’s disheveled Range Rover, an old piece of junk that worked once in a blue moon, and filled a trailer full of gas tanks my dad had filled up in the week proceeding that we hitched behind us. No more running on empty for this family! I remember packing not enough clothes, and too many crosswords. I was obsessed with word games at that point. I had quite the vocabulary for someone who couldn’t ride the tea cups when the circus came around.
It was about four days in that the car troubles started. And it was four hours in that the boredom began, so our irritation at my mother’s poor excuse for a vehicle was only inflated by our restlessness. It got to the point that we’d stall out three or four times in one hour. It only took about two hours of this for my dad to lose what little patience he could fit into his mind. He concocted a plan that involved selling some of the extra gas we had brought along to passerby’s, and renting another car to continue the O’Reilly family outing extravaganza.
“What about mum’s car?” I remember my little sister asking. My father chuckled and told of the glee it would fill him with to never have to see that piece of garbage again. My mother passively agreed. They, of course, implied by this that they would be abandoning the MomMobile.
We eventually sold enough gas to rent a car. My scoundrel dad filled up half the tank with rocks to make more profit, so it wasn’t difficult. A suspicious state trooper came by, asking what we were doing. He got a tremendously good deal; two tanks free. What a good person my dad was.
We walked up to the car Rental place, which was literally in the middle of no where. A dirt road on a flat plane that expanded to all visible horizons was the only other thing of interest. Completely devoid of life. The first thing I remember about the rental place was that it reeked of something dead. We could smell this even before entering the property. I had to hold my shirt to my nose, and clenched my mother’s hand extra tight. I felt a sense of uneasiness immediately. How was this rental place still open? All the cars were completely cloaked in dust. They looked as though they’d been there so long, i was surprised they hadn’t eroded. The building itself was completely devoid of windows, and looked to be a part of some prison complex. “Watch out!” my mother said, as I almost tripped and fell on some rusty razor wire that was sticking out of the sand on the ground.
“Hello?” My dad called out. No answer, save for a rustling in the tall grass on the side of the road opposite the car dealership.
“We need a car! Are you open?”
“Why yes, I am!” My entire family jumped in unison, and even my headstrong father flinched instinctively. We all spun around to face a grinning salesman in an indigo blue pressed suit who was emerging from the grass on the opposite side of the road.
There was a moment of tense silence. We were awestruck. Why was the sole employee of this run down car dealership across the street? And there was something about his voice, something… artificial… that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“Um… we’re looking to rent a car. Could you help us out?”
The man didn’t budge from his spot across the road, his legs still concealed by the tall grass. Come to think of it, he didn’t budge from his expression either. He had sustained the same grin and widened eyes as before. Now that I had a moment to really inspect his face, he was downright unsettling. His hair was in such a perfect wave it looked like he had dunked it in craft glue and let it harden. His smile was stretched to a physically painful extent, and his eyes were watery from being open so… so wide. So impossibly wide. I remember thinking how it was possible to tense the muscles of one’s face so much and not physically shake. Then I noticed that his face WAS shaking. It wasn’t noticeable at first, but his whole head seemed to be vibrating, in the way someone’s arm would who was clenching their fist as hard as they could.
“Well of couuuuuuurse!” The man replied. The way he said “course”, he modulated his voice throughout the final syllable, adding extra inflections, so that it sounded more like “CouUUuUUuuuUuUUurSSE!”
It’s true what they say about a mother’s instinct, for as soon as the man said this, my mother stood in front of my sister and I instinctively. I later asked her about his sudden protective stance, and she told me she hadn’t thought about it at all. Something inside her had known this man had the most despicable of intentions.
“Okay, well… It’s getting kind of troublesome to have to shout across this road, so could you come over here and we can discuss it face to face?”
I’ve never seen someone’s expression change so quickly. In the blink of an eye, his happy go lucky smile had whipped around into a menacing frown. This frown was stretched just as painfully wide as the grin, and his head shook with an intensity about equal to when he had been Mr. Happy Salesman.
“Nnnnoo.” He said very calmly. It sounded like “uhNoooeee’w.”
“Please? This deosn’t seem very professiona-”
All of a sudden the Salesman punched himself in the face with full force. “Jesus!” my dad exclaimed. At this point, my mom covered my sister and I’s eyes and walked us away from the man, so my memory of the dialogue from this point on is vague. But I’ll try to remember some of what I heard.
“Listen, we can just … it’s not necessary to …”
Thwack! (presumably the man injuring himself again)
“Fuck, stop! Stop …”
“… Two Nights, three fiftyyyyyy”
“That’s fine … keys… family”
“enjoy … rides well, but ….”
“Yeah, you too…”
I heard my dad’s feet crunching on the dirt towards us. “Fucking lunatic…” he said under his breath. I also heard the jingling of keys, signifying my dad’s success in renting a car from someone who was obviously mentally deranged.
My mother’s hand had been removed from my eyes at this point, but it made no difference, as my eyes had been shut as tight as possible throughout the entirety of the debate, and I was going to keep them that way until we were out of sight of the dealership. I heard a car door open, and I stepped in and buckled up. My dad hooked on our trailer, started the car, and backed out. I thought I felt eyes on me, so I decided to open my lids instantaneously to make sure I wasn’t being watched. It was one of the worst decisions of my life, for at that moment my window was approximately two feet away from the salesman. I screamed in terror, because his head was now undergoing tremors of impossible magnitude, his neck bending in ways I didn’t think possible, sometimes whipping his head so far forward that it whacked upon my window. My dad gunned it out of there so fast that the State Trooper couldn’t have morally accepted a bribe if he saw us this time.
Being a child, I lived in the moment, and before long, my tears of fright had dried and I had effectively forgotten most of the experience. I was now happily singing along to the wheels on the bus with my mother and sister, although we weren’t joined by my father, who was having difficulty navigating our expedition.
“Shut the hell up a minute, will you?” he cried in a frustrated rage. The car was immediately silent. “Martha, see if there’s a map in the glove box. Middluh’ frickin nowhere…” my mother complied silently, but didn’t get far in her quest, as the glovebox turned out to be locked. It was locked not by a mechanism of the car itself, but with a physical rusted padlock that looked more ancient than my grandfather.
My mom opened her mouth to relay her findings, but my dad saw it before she could open her mouth.
“Oh, for the love of…! Everyone look around your seats, the key’s bound to be somewhere!”
And so we initiated our rental car Easter egg hunt, in which there was only one egg, and we were harnessed in place by seatbelts that were too tight and chaffed our necks. My sister was the one to find it, tucked into a slit in her seat’s leather. It bore no markings.
My mother hurriedly inserted it into the padlock, which opened with more ease than we imagined. She yanked it off, not realizing that her efforts to open the glovebox earlier had technically “opened” it, and that the only thing really keeping it closed was the padlock. And so, onto my mother’s fine linens, their fell jars upon jars of human appendages. Now, I remember identifying the body parts progressively during the duration of my mother’s blood curdling scream, so that is how I’ll present my findings to you below. Both lines of dialogue happened at once.
My mother:OH GOOD CHRIST! GOOD LORD! FUCK! FUCK! AHHHH! AAAAH FUCKING GOD FUCK!
Me (inwardly): Fingers, Toes, Oh that’s an eye, More eyes, that just looks like red paste.
Of course, I was screaming too, so it was mainly my subconscious mind that calmly separated the contents of the morbid jars into neat mental categories. So by the time my mother was done assaulting our eardrums, I had a pretty good understanding of just exactly was in those jars.
And it’s a good thing, too, because before my sister (who didn’t see the jars because she was only 5 and was sitting behind my mother) could tell what the fuss was about, all 6 jars of human body parts were flung out the window with such speed that they could’ve been mistaken for a Yankee candle. My father had kept his eyes on the road, so the only two people in the car who had any recollection of the contents of the jars were me and my mother. Me because I had made a subconscious effort to remember, and my mom because it was burned into her mind for eternity. This was helpful later, when we had to explain to the police what was in there. One person could easily be mistaken, but two who saw the same thing were more likely to be taken seriously by the authorities.
This rapid propulsion of the contents of the glovebox out the window was succeeded by several minutes of terrified silence. Well, from my mother and I. My father was yelling with a ferocious anger, demanding to know what the hell that was all about, and my sister was doing the same, but with the cute, still developing language skills of a toddler who just wanted to know “What happen, mommy? Why’d throwum the windoe?”
Eventually, we were able to communicate what we’d seen, and my dad calmed down enough to calm US down. He told us it was probably fake, meant to scare people, that the Salesman was probably a practical joker of sorts. But to ease our simple, simple minds, he would go to the police and get the car inspected to make sure there were no more spooky surprises lurking in our newly rented vehicle.
Here is the exact list of items found by the police in our car, which they photocopied and gave to my dad, who gave it to me when I turned 18 as a keepsake:
2 legs, human, severed at thigh, vacuum sealed -Trunk
4 Containers of Industrial Strength Razor Blades -Trunk
Three vacuum sealed plastic cubes of unknown meat(later found to be human fat) – Underneath Driver’s Seat
1 copy of unmarked book, poor condition, written in unknown language (they never figured out what it was, though some speculated Latin)
2 pints of human blood- taped under vehicle (This was the most disturbing part, as this blood lab tested positive for countless diseases; HIV, measles, mumps, and others that I don’t remember how to spell nor pronounce)
The vehicle was unregistered. When the cops got to the dealership, there was no sign of the man. Records showed that the dealership had been abandoned for 23 years prior, which explain the dust coated cars, broken glass, razor wire, and why the car we rented was the only one not covered in dirt and grime. My dad now admits it was a stupid decision to to rent from there.
The K-9 unit had dogs try and track the man’s footprints, which looked promising at first. But they started getting farther and farther apart, mysteriously, and then disappeared into a lake. They closed our case when it became evident that no more was going to come of it. The police triple checked with us to make sure the man had no way of knowing any of our personal information, and we confirmed that we never even told him our first names.
To this day, that man’s expression still haunts me, and I only buy from car dealerships where you can see your reflection in the hoods.
Credit To – Dylan, TCW
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*Introductory Note* What you’re about to read actually happened while on an internship during Fall of 2014. In order to protect people’s privacy, I’m not including the names of my friends, the name of the company I was employed with at the time, or the name of my university. But after you read my account, if you feel skeptical or otherwise have any questions about my experience, feel free to e-mail me at [email protected]. I know the address looks like a spam e-mail, but QQ is actually an extremely popular social networking site in mainland China as Facebook, Twitter, and all the western networks are blocked by the Chinese government. The reason for the suspicious username is that your QQ number is randomly generated and assigned to you when creating an account (that’s right, your identity is literally reduced to an itemized number until you provide personal details on your account).
In fall of 2014 I got a job as a supervisor over 13 volunteer English teachers. I would be working in a Chinese city called Weihai [pronounced ‘way high’] located in Shandong [shawn doe-ng] Province. The company that hired me sends English teachers to Mexico, India, China, Russia, and Ukraine each semester. I was super excited at the opportunity because not only would I have the chance to live in China again (I’d originally been one of the volunteers for this same program several years prior), but my university was willing grant me a semester’s worth of Chinese language credits as an academic internship. I could get good job experience, live abroad in a country that I consider my second home and complete a semester of school, it was my dream semester!
In Weihai, the volunteers and I lived and worked at a prestigious international private school. They treated us really well, one of the biggest perks being that in addition to taking the same vacation days as the school’s faculty that took place over China’s national holidays, we also got an extra week or two of personal vacation time. It was during one of these vacations that I had one of the most disturbing experiences of my life.
Two of my friends from the group, I’ll call them Sara and David, decided they wanted to travel down south to China’s Guangdong [gwahng doe-ng] Province during the Dragon Boast Festival. I suggested that we visit Yangshuo [yahng sh-whoa] a little-known village surrounded on all sides by the region’s gorgeous mountains. I’d visited it a year before and wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity to visit there again. Search Google images of Yangshuo’s scenery and you’ll understand why I’m so crazy about the place.
Yangshuo isn’t a large town, but even so, if you plan to do everything that you want to while you’re there, you need transportation since most of the things to do are out in the countryside. The problem was that we’d chosen a super busy time of year to visit such a popular tourist location. All the traffic in the area the entire 6 days we were there was literally a continuous traffic jam, so taking cabs or hiring rickshaws wasn’t an option. We were fine though, as we’d rented some bikes which gave us the freedom to go anywhere we wanted. It actually worked out even better than relying on cabs because we would be able to get to some of the places that were out of the way an inaccessible by car.
I remembered some mud caves pretty deep in the countryside that I’d visited before. It was about an hour outside of town by bike, so it was more than a little out of the way, but its secluded nature was one of the reasons it was such an appealing destination, especially during such a busy holiday where it was a nice to have a break from all the tourists. I convinced Sara and David to make the trip to these mud caves, explaining how we’d already done everything there is to do immediately around the city. They reluctantly agreed, and the morning of the 5th day, we grabbed our bikes and headed out.
We rode for an hour. An hour and a half. Two hours. After the two hour mark I realized that I must’ve gotten us lost. Granted, it had been quite a while since I’d last been there, so I think it’s understandable that I didn’t remember the route. Regardless, I felt stupid and guilty because I’d talked up the mud caves so much to my friends and it looked like we weren’t even going to make it to them. Not only that, we seemed to be in a completely isolated section of countryside. I spoke the language, so finding our way back to town wasn’t going to be a problem. Provided we found another person. From what it looked like, we were in the middle of the wilderness. I was worried that I’d inadvertently wasted one of the last days of our vacation.
I explained the situation to my friends who groaned and were noticeably annoyed at me but who, to their credit, didn’t complain or even blame me for ruining their vacation. That actually made me feel even worse about my screw-up. This was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I knew that losing a vacation day was no small matter to them.
We stopped our bikes and began discussing what we should do. Should we continue following the current trail and maybe find someone further along the way, should we try to backtrack and run into someone closer to the main road? Should we just abandon our original plan and try to find something else to do out in the country?
While we were deciding what course of action we should take, I noticed some old-looking buildings hidden within a valley, obscured by the thick vegetation clinging to the steep mountain slopes. I was elated; there was bound to be some people in or around those buildings and it couldn’t have been more than a 15-minute ride from where we currently were! Aside from which, some of the most memorable places in China are the ones that you stumble upon by accident, the ones that aren’t known as big touristy places. Our bad luck could turn out to be a good thing after all.
It was evident as we rode our bikes into the enclave that it had been abandoned for some time. The buildings were obviously once part of an old commune from the Maoist era when Communism was in full swing and everyone was required to live in communal compounds. After Mao’s death and Deng Xiaoping [Dung Shyow Ping] started on economic reforms to move China away from Communism, people deserted these communes to make a life in the city and chase a capitalistic dream. So what we’d stumbled upon was actually a really cool piece of Chinese history. We decided to check it out, look around, take some pictures, etc. etc. The entire compound was an enormous siheyuan [sih huh yuwhen], which is essentially a house contained in the walls surrounding a large courtyard that usually contain smaller structures (again, you can Google it for a better idea of what it looks like). In this case, though, it wasn’t just a single household, it was an entire walled community. The walls themselves comprised the living quarters, the central area contained an overgrown field where they would’ve kept the publicly-owned livestock. It looked like some animals had taken up residence since the people left; some goats and cows grazed the long grass and chickens clucked around their feet. Scattered around the perimeter of the field were a few run-down buildings dotting the compound which I assume at one point were the dining hall and some small for textile mills or small-time industrial production plants, depending on what this place specialized in.
We checked around the living area, and it was immediately clear that this place had been abandoned for several decades. The rooms were almost completely vacant, only furniture and a few odd assortments of possessions—woks, chopsticks, portraits of Mao—were left behind, creating a sort of gloomy atmosphere amid the cracked, crumbling walls.
We snapped some pictures, recorded some videos and just generally took in the scenery. We were getting ready to leave when I heard a voice coming from the far end of the commune. Was somebody still living here? It was possible. We had seen some animals left in the central area, after all. I’d assumed they were wild, but it made sense that somebody was still raising them. In fact, it probably made more sense because it didn’t seem very likely that stray animals would find their way inside a gated community like this.
We approached the apartment where the voice was coming from. The front door was slightly ajar and the rich smell of incense wafted out. The voice continued droning on, almost like a chant.
David spoke up. “You think this guy knows the way back to Yangshuo? You should ask for directions.”
I thought maybe the person inside was performing some kind of religious ceremony, so I was reluctant to interrupt him, and I said as much.
“We don’t know how long they’re going to take in there. Do you seriously just want wait outside their door for a couple hours like a bunch of creepers? Just knock on the door and if what they think they’re doing is really important, then they’ll ask us to wait and give us directions when they’re done.”
I was a little bit annoyed by that because David had a tendency to use our celebrity status as white people to expect special treatment from Chinese nationals. I preferred to try to blend in with the culture as much as I could, and I have a strong respect for local customs, particularly religious ones. But he also had a point—Chinese people are naturally hospitable and eager to help others. If this person was a devout Buddhist or Daoist, then their willingness to help us would be even greater, and would most likely drop whatever they were doing the second they saw us.
So I rapped lightly on the door. There was no response. I knocked a bit louder, and the person continued mumbling to themselves. I opened the door slightly and called out to them to alert them of our presence.
“Wei? (Way?) Ni hao! (Knee how!)” The the chanting stopped for a moment, almost imperceptibly, but then continued as though nothing happened. I pushed the door open all the way and saw an elderly, hunchbacked man wandering around the room, shaking a wooden tool as he hobbled about, mumbling his incantation.
He was certainly a Communist-era comrade. His hunched posture and wrinkled, yet calloused skin, told of years of hard work. He was practically doubled over at the waist and only had a few wispy white hairs on the top of his head. His clothes were the classical Communist fare; dark-gray pants with a matching button-up shirt that reached his Adam’s apple along with a squared-off cap. He must’ve taken great care of his clothing because they were in surprisingly good shape, considering they were from around the 1950’s. It’s not like anyone could find a replacement for era-specific clothing 60 years after the fact.
Even more surprising than his physical appearance however, was the state of his apartment. Given how empty the rest of the rooms were in this commune, I was shocked at how decorated this one was. It looked as though he’d scavenged everything his neighbors had left behind when they left. None of the walls were accessible because tables had been pushed up against them, occupying every inch of the room’s perimeter. The tabletops were completely covered by candles, statues of miniature Buddhas in various poses, wilted flowers, beaded bracelets and necklaces, the shoes of infants, calligraphy drawn carefully on rice paper, and what looked like the personal effects of loved ones who had either passed away or abandoned him. There looked to be thousands of other items that I couldn’t even begin to identify.
I approached him and began to speak, asking if he was familiar with Yangshuo and if he would be able help us find our way back to the main road. In response, he only muttered a short phrase
“Wo shao si ge ren [whoa sh-ow sih guh run].”
Wo shao si ge ren? ‘I’m short 4 people?’ Was this person expecting company?
“Excuse me?” I asked, in Mandarin.
“Wo shao si ge ren!” he repeated again, urgently. He glanced at me, and then his eyes darted to Sara and David. He looked between the three of us, repeating this phrase over and over. I felt bad. This poor man must have been senile. Maybe his friends or family had left the commune and promised to come back and he was still awaiting their return. Or maybe he was just pretty far gone and honestly believed he was preparing to receive 4 guests who hadn’t yet arrived. I tried communicating with him a few more times, but he simply continued mumbling this cryptic phrase, shaking the wooden object in his hand.
I took a closer look and realized I’d seen the object he was holding before. It was a religious instrument used for venerating statues of Buddha. Similar to how Catholics believe that partaking of the Eucharist purifies members of their sins, Buddhists use tools like the one this man was shaking to sprinkle statues of Buddha with water, symbolically cleansing themselves. They were shaped like Spanish maracas and were riddled with tiny holes that would allow for a several of water to escape from each hole with each shake. Sometimes people would infuse the water with lavender or other herbs to invoke a pleasant smell. I don’t know what this man had mixed in with the water, but it was a pretty putrid smell.
I ignored it and turned back to Sara and David.
“What’s he saying?” Sara asked.
“He just keeps saying, ‘I’m missing 4 people’,” I replied.
“What does that mean?”
“Honestly, I have no clue. But I have a feeling he’s not going to be able to help us. Should we just try to head back to the main road and hopefully we’ll run into someone there who can give us directions?”
“What the hell!” David yelled. Sara and I spun to look at him.
“That old guy just soaked me!” He complained, motioning to a wet spot on his shirt. I rolled my eyes.
“Give him a break,” I said, “He obviously doesn’t know what he’s doing.” As I said this, the elderly man continued to shuffle around the room, sprinkling water on the statues of Buddha and the other artifacts laid out on the tables, all the while muttering ‘wo shao si ge ren, wo shao si ge ren.’
“I’m fine with just going, but you should at least ask him if he has any water. My bottle’s completely empty,” Sara said. It was a good idea to get a refill before we left. Yangshuo is ridiculously humid and hot year round, so even though it was already late October, it felt like mid-July in Florida. We were so sweaty that we could easily get dehydrated just by standing around, even if without riding bikes.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” I responded. I was about to turn to the man for one last attempt at communication, to hopefully find out where we could get some water.
He violently shook the maraca-like tool, drizzling water on my shoes and the floor around my feet. Some even splashed up on the pant legs of my shorts.
“Wo shao si ge ren…” he muttered again, but this time, it caused a chill to run through me. Something didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was wrong.
“Wo shao si ge ren…”
I took a step towards the man and felt my foot slide slightly it touched the floor. I looked down and saw the unnatural layer of gray dust that had collected on the floor. How could there be so much dust on the floor if someone lived here?
“Wo shao si ge ren…”
I was getting increasingly uncomfortable and felt the urge to leave, but I couldn’t understand why. I glanced over to Sarah, about to speak, when I realized something I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe I missed it due to all the clutter, but this room was in noticeably worse condition than the others. The walls had black stains on them, the wood in the window frame was blackened and seemingly shattered, far more brittle than those of other apartments. It almost seemed like this specific apartment survived a series of accidents, but was still somehow standing. So why was this the only room left occupied?
“Wo shao si ge ren…”
The broken old man shuffled past once again and this time I got a quick spray in the face. The powerful odor assaulted my nostrils. The smell of the scented water was off. It was too potent, too abrasive. It almost had a…toxic fragrance to it. It made me want to cough, to get it out of my nose and throat.
“Wo shao si ge ren…”
An icy shiver ran through me as I made a sudden realization.
“Guys, we need to go, now.” I said. I didn’t wait for Sara or David to respond, I made for the door and ran until I reached my bike.
“Hey! What’s going on?” David called out as midway through the courtyard.
“Why’d you ditch us?” Sara asked. They’d both caught up to me and were mounting their bikes, slightly out of breath. I didn’t answer them. We rode the trail we entered through in silence. After only about half an hour of riding we stumbled upon some hikers, both Swedish. They spoke impeccable English, which was good because I wasn’t in the mood for talking and Sara was eager to take over so we could find our way back to the hostel. It wasn’t until later that evening when we were back at the hostel that Sara insisted that I tell them what had me so freaked out.
“What’s going on? Ever since we were at that creepy old guy’s house you’ve been acting really weird.”
I didn’t want to tell them because I was hoping that if I kept it to myself then maybe the realization I made would somehow be less real. Maybe if I didn’t say it out loud, then I could believe that it hadn’t really happened. But it had. Remaining silent about it wouldn’t change that.
I sighed.
“You know what the guy kept repeating?”
“Yeah, you told us it means ‘I’m short 4 people’. That can’t be what’s bothering you, though…”
“That’s not what he was saying. I heard it wrong,” I replied.
You see, the thing about Chinese is that tones make all the difference. For example, if you hear ge ge (guh guh), it could either mean ‘older brother’ or ‘each and every’, depending on what tones are used. What I thought was “I’m missing 4 people” wasn’t that at all. It wasn’t until I understood what he had actually sprayed me with that I realized I’d been hearing the tones wrong.
He wasn’t sprinkling water all over his apartment. He was sprinkling kerosene. And he wasn’t saying “I’m missing 4 people,”. What he was really saying was
“I burned everyone.”
Note*
The Romanization of the phrases and their Chinese translations are as listed below.
I’m missing 4 people:
wǒ shǎo sì ge rén
我少四个人
I burned (literally burn-kill) everyone:
wǒ shāo sǐ gè rén
我烧死各人
Credit To – nibris
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Sitting at his table illuminated by a small bedside lamp, Robert Francis poured over a map jotting down notes each time his eyes fell onto some point of interest. It was 10:30PM and he reckoned that, if he set off at six in the morning, he would be able to avoid the early traffic and catch the first train to Milngavie before cycling from there, making it to Aberfoyle village in a couple of hours.
His itinerary was set and he was filled with excitement at the thought of finally being on holiday. It had been eleven months since he had so much as taken one day off from his work, so the thought of spending eight whole days cycling through the Scottish wilderness with only his backpack and tent for company, was frankly exhilarating.
He owned a number of bikes, but for this adventure, he would take his favourite and most trusted one. With a custom paint-job reading ‘ROB’ in large white letters across a frame of black, this was a bike which had never failed him; no bumps, no bruises, not so much as a punctured tyre.
In the morning Robert woke filled with excitement, starting the day with purpose. Negotiating the little traffic there was in the city with glee, before he knew it he was hopping off of the train in Milngavie and making his way along quiet country roads towards Aberfoyle.
Scottish summers are notoriously unpredictable and it was colder than Robert had expected; but he did not care. As he made his way through the open countryside, passing the occasional car or rural household, a smile crept across his face; cycling was his passion and Robert was in his element.
A couple of hours passed as the sparse yet rolling green hills soon gave way to a more imposing and altogether impressive setting. Slight hills soon became domineering mountains, pockets of woodland soon gave way to thick and visually impenetrable forests, and wide open roads soon made way for their narrower, and less trodden counterparts.
It was not long before the welcome sight of the village of Aberfoyle came into view, flanked on one side by a steep incline dotted with picturesque cottages, and on the other a wide open plain stretching out towards a mountain range in the distance. A childish excitement grew in the pit of Robert’s stomach. Aberfoyle was the last evidence of humanity which he wished to see for the next eight days, and on leaving it behind he would truly be alone, able to relax in the serene beauty of the Scottish countryside.
It was now on to Queen Elisabeth park, one of Scotland’s largest nature reserves, and into the true wilderness which it contained.
After stretching his legs on the unusually deserted Aberfoyle Main Street, Robert embarked on the last leg of his journey for the day. Within minutes he was out of that small innocuous town and into the unknown. For the past three months he had been in a quandary about where to go on his adventure, but when he passed over an old stone bridge, with a babbling stream underneath like a thousand voices whispering for attention, and found himself face to face with a forest which covered the hills, mountains, and valleys like a blanket, for as far as the eye could see; he knew he had made the right decision.
A dirt road cut through the labyrinth of trees and it occurred to Robert that as he cycled further into the reserve, the sun seemed to diminish with each mile, blocked by the huge pine trees on either side as if light itself was an unwelcome visitor.
By six o’clock the sun was dipping towards a line of craggy mountains on the horizon. It was time for Robert to find a suitable place to camp for the night. He continued onwards, struggling over uneven hills and patches of wet mud, scanning his surroundings for a suitable location to camp in. Finally, he spotted a small clearing in the forest not far from the road.
Clambering through some thick underfoot and entangled bushes, Robert managed to haul his bike through the tree line and then into the clearing. It was a small pocket of grass, and several fallen trees were spread across the area; trees which Robert assumed had created the clearing in the first place.
After finding a flat patch of grass, he set his tent up for the night, gathering some dry wood nearby which he gleefully turned into a camp fire with the aid of some lighter fluid and matches. Building fires was one of Robert’s favourite parts of camping in remote areas. He often thought that there was something of the arsonist about himself, but that was a fact he kept only for his trips into the wild, and in any case he loved nature and was always careful not to harm it.
Night fell and, unimpeded by the false light of man, the stars shone bright and bold. After a few hours of sitting next to the warm glow of the fire, Robert reluctantly turned in for the night excited by the prospect of another day’s adventure in the morning.
In the early hours the fire still smouldered and Robert felt refreshed and rested; more so than he had done for many years. Packing up his belongings and making sure the fire was extinguished, he set off once again.
It had rained slightly during the night, but thankfully the road was relatively dry. After cycling for another hour Robert noticed a change in the landscape. It had become more unkempt, less constrained. The trees seemed closer together and any occasional gaps in the forest scenery were filled by clearings and small fields which had obviously been left unattended for countless years.
Robert realised that he had travelled far enough into the forest that he was now out of the reach of even the park rangers who would normally maintain such a place. It seemed as though, beyond this point, the land had been neglected by its carers for some reason. The thought that even those familiar with that wilderness were afraid to tread there, flirted with his attention momentarily before being quickly dismissed as a flight of fancy.
The sky grew grey as the day wore on and it was clear that rain of a substantial volume was well on its way. After pushing his bike up a steep incline which he felt was too uneven to cycle on, Robert reached its peak revealing a landscape which opened up, sprawling forward between pockets of woodland and still, stagnant pools of water slumbering in a deep set valley below which stretched across the land for miles. It was populated by sparse areas of long vibrant grass, which in places gave way to the wandering boundary of the forest.
With rain imminent, Robert decided that he would set up camp early in a wide circle of grass he could see at the foot of the hill. Not half an hour later he was there, the tent was up and all that was left was to gather some firewood.
It was important to get a fire going as quickly as possible, as the Scottish midges (a type of fly which feeds on blood) were out in force and the smoke would help disperse them. The only problem was that Robert had picked a camping spot dominated more so by grass, bushes, and shrubs than trees. He would have to venture out across the valley for a little while and gather from one of the wooded areas nearby.
A collection of pine and fir trees which seemed to form an isolated island of woodland, about half a mile across, was close enough to his camp and after ten or fifteen minutes trudging through the long green grass, occasionally sinking his foot unwittingly into remnants of a marshy bog below, Robert found himself at the edge of the woods.
Its boundary was dominated by older trees which had long since withered, covered by thick brown hanging moss – nature’s own burial shroud. The broken trunks of once beautiful and majestic Pines and Sycamores littered the ground, open and rotting from the inside not unlike a poor wounded animal. It occurred to Robert that these woods seemed somehow out of place. The trees did not belong to the landscape as others did. The long grass which characterised the entire area seemed to thin out and change from a healthy natural green colour to a morbid yellow-brown. As this thought ruminated, accompanied by an increasing sense of unexplainable dread, Robert realised that he was looking at a large dead ring of grass which followed the tree line perfectly, encircling that pocket of woodland as if marking the limits of a tomb.
On their own in a forgotten part of the world, many would have been cautious of such a sight, but Robert quickly shook off his initial sense of vigilance, finding the area to be an intriguing natural occurrence, and with a bold stride stepped over the woodland threshold into the dim light within.
On the forest floor he could see many relics of past trees lying on the ground, but the wood was soaked through as if it had lay for countless years at the bottom of a river, and Robert rationalised that dead wood further into the area would be drier, as the canopy above grew increasingly thicker with each step, sheltering below from the rain.
Scanning the floor Robert looked up and suddenly realised that he had wondered quite far into the woodland interior. Indeed, while it was daylight outside, the woodland trees were now blotting the sun from the sky and if he had not known better he would have sworn it was dusk.
At last he found a collection of broken branches and logs which were dry. Robert knew this was as far as he should go as it was becoming increasingly difficult to navigate through the trees, which seemed to be growing closer together, their branches often interlinked and touching as if trying to keep those inside from escaping.
What a silly thought, Robert smirked to himself.
It had started to rain, and although he could hear the drops of water pelting off of the leaves above, his surroundings were perfectly dry. It made sense to make his way back and get a fire started as soon as possible because once everything was wet, it would prove increasingly difficult to do so.
He quickly gathered the last of the wood up into his arms, but just as he turned to leave and follow his own tracks on the pine covered floor out of those unnerving woods, something caught his eye. Several feet away, obscured by a ring of trees particularly close to one another, appeared to be a strange arrangement of stones on the ground.
Robert being Robert, he just had to investigate.
After clawing his way through a net of branches, he found himself staring at what looked suspiciously like a grave. Hundreds of uneven grey stones the size of a fist, and some substantially bigger, had been piled on top of one another about three feet wide, seven feet long, and a couple of feet off of the ground. It looked as though a mourner had marked the resting place of a body.
A shudder crept up Robert’s spine as he momentarily experienced a feeling as of being watched.
He soon abandoned this frightened state when he noticed that lying around the stones was a collection of randomly scattered belongings. Several empty beer cans lay strewn on the floor, a jumper covered in rotting leaves sat on the ground, while a sleeping bag, scraps of newspaper and even some old food cans betrayed the ‘grave’ for what it really was; someone’s camp-site.
Robert breathed a sigh of relief and surmised from his surroundings that a few students had probably come here in the summer, got caught in the rain, moving into the woods to remain dry. The stones were probably just placed there out of boredom, or even as a prank to creep out any passer by in the future.
University summers really were great, Robert thought, casting a fleeting eye back to memories of summer trips with his friends.
One thing about the stone configuration, however, intrigued him. Sticking out between two plain grey rocks on the side of the pile was a stone which appeared to be markedly different from the rest. Triangular in shape, it was wider than a human hand, smooth in places and not dissimilar to black marble, tapering off to a dull point at one end. Before he really considered it with any degree of scrutiny, Robert dropped the firewood, bent over and tugged at the stone. It felt polished and cold in his hands, but it seemed to not wish to leave its home, wedged as it was so tightly amongst the other rocks.
Growing slightly exasperated, Robert wrapped both his hands around the stone and finally, with an exerted judder backwards, it was free. Staring at it intently, it looked suspiciously like an ancient axe head. Whether it was or not, Robert was not qualified to answer, but it certainly looked like a man-made object and he could see chisel marks along its side. Perhaps the previous campers found it nearby and then used the rock in their construction without knowing of its significance. Robert was excited by the prospect and knew instantly that on his return home he would ask a friend of his, who had studied archaeology at university. whether it was what he suspected.
After examining the object for some time, Robert was reminded by the sound of rain above that he really should make his way back to his camp-site. Pocketing the stone, he bent over to pick up the firewood, but as he did so he heard a noise. It appeared as though one of the stones on the pile had slid off and landed on the ground. A creeping sense of unease slowly started to exert itself upon Robert’s nerves. He quickly picked up the firewood, leaving the rest of the stones unmoved, and began to make his way back.
With every step something deep within himself was telling Robert that he was no longer alone, and in fact that he was being followed by someone in the woods, but with every glance backwards he could see nothing. A few times he even fancied that he heard the sound of twigs and pines cracking under foot, but again no one was there.
Breathing a sigh of relief, the tree line came into view, and Robert was filled with delight knowing that in a few moments he would be back out in the open. But just before he reached the periphery of the woods, he heard a crack again. This time it was definite, it was louder than before, more pronounced, and accompanied by the hairs on the back of his neck rising in unison.
He was convinced that someone was standing just a few feet behind; staring at him.
Caught between the fear of knowing and the fear of not knowing, Robert finally turned around slowly.
Yes, there it was, he saw it! Only for a moment, but he saw it!
A shoulder or arm, something disappearing behind a tree nearby.
Robert’s mouth grew dry making it difficult to swallow, and his heart started to thud deep within his chest. He began to back pedal slowly, hoping that he would not trip on an unseen root or weed on the floor, leaving him vulnerable on the ground.
With each step the forest grew lighter, and as he neared its edge the light from outside bathed its interior in a blueish hue. He did not take his eyes off of the large sycamore trunk where that shadowy figure seemed to be hiding. Not for one moment!
It was peculiar, but an overpowering sense of safety out in the open dominated his thoughts. Normally a person feels exposed and vulnerable in the open wilderness, but not Robert, at least, not in that situation.
As he edged slowly towards the grassy plain outside, the subtle, foreboding sound of leaves rustling and swaying almost in anger progressed into a crescendo of noise. But there was no wind to gust, no breeze to disturb. There was only one conclusion to be reached; something was moving. And then he was outside. Out of the woods, away from whoever had been following – no not following – stalking him.
Robert was not a superstitious man, you could not afford to be when camping alone in such remote locations, as the mind tends to play tricks twisting the benign sounds of nature into something much more malevolent, but regardless he did not wish to stay around long enough to find out who his unwanted companion in the woods had been.
Dropping all but the sturdiest piece of wood, which Robert reckoned would make a good makeshift weapon, he ran as fast as he could towards his own camp. All the while glancing back at that strange island of trees, surrounded by dead grass.
But nothing emerged from within it.
Arriving at his tent, out of breath and agitated, Robert packed up his belongings as quickly as possible, carrying his bike up a hill and back onto the dirt path. Waiting not one moment longer, he cycled hard and fast, hoping to put as much distance between himself and that place – and its strange resident – before finding somewhere safer and more welcoming to camp.
The road was now nothing but a single track of mud which covered Robert in a shower of dirt every time his bike sloshed through an uneven depression in the ground. The weather was bitter, unusually so at that time of year and the rain, accompanied now by a freezing wind, battered his face making each foot of progress feel like a hundred. Robert tried to continue onwards for as long as he could, hoping to leave the necessity of making camp until the last usable ray of sunlight, but after a couple of hours the skies opened further and the rain came down in sheets.
He had to find shelter, and quick.
Robert concluded that he had put at least fifteen or so miles of winding, difficult track between himself and that bizarre coven of trees. Regardless of whether it felt enough or not, it was simply impossible to continue due to the elements.
On the left hand side of the path there was a rather steep drop which led down into a large field, but it would not provide the shelter Robert knew he required. To his right was a humble gradient of grass which rose up into another wood. Following his strange experience from earlier, some hesitancy did present itself to him, but he again dismissed this as preposterous and after pulling his bike up through the grass, entered the forest.
The torrential rain filtered through the tree canopy and it took a while before Robert could locate a suitable spot to camp. Finding a large bush under several tightly nit fir trees, he pitched his tent there as the area remained relatively protected from the horrible weather outside in the open.
Using some dried roots, grass, and twigs from the forest floor, he was able to start a small camp fire which allowed him to cook some food while raising his spirits. Night began to close in, and as the wind and rain diminished, the sound of sausages sizzling in a frying pan on the fire provided the first sense of well-being and comfort that he had experienced since the morning.
Thinking over his experience in those woods, Robert began to rationalise the events. He had found various belongings in there; a sleeping bag, clothes, food and beer cans. It was obvious now that he had just disturbed a fellow camper. Someone who no doubt became frightened seeing another human being wandering around their camp-site in the middle of nowhere.
That must have been it. The man, and he was reasonably sure that it was a man from the little he had seen of him, probably hid behind that tree because he was simply scared or unnerved. Robert relaxed into a sigh of relief, but just as he did so he slipped his hand into his jacket pocket. Touching its cold black surface, he had completely forgotten about the unusual stone he had picked up from that collection of oddly arranged rocks.
Removing it from his jacket pocket and observing it in the low, red light of the camp fire, Robert was certain that it had been shaped by human hands. It felt old, ancient even, but he would wait to contact his archaeologist friend before getting his hopes up too much. He would have to admit though that the idea of finding a relic from the past was something which thrilled him deeply. Since he was a child he was always obsessed by hidden or undiscovered history, which perhaps explained his fascination with exploring the Scottish countryside, a land steeped in stories and myths of strange and forgotten peoples. Above all else he hoped that it was of Pictish origin; that mysterious indigenous people who vanished without a trace over a thousand years ago. Something which historians still ponder and puzzle over.
Of course in all probability it was a modern replica, but the romantic side of Robert’s personality hoped that it was so much more, and enjoyed entertaining that hope.
As he stared at the relic, something unusual began to filter into his awareness; something different. Above the crackling sound of the fire, the now subtle wind, and the occasional rustle of a woodland animal nearby, came a noise. It was distant, how far Robert could not tell, but it echoed out through the ridges and valleys nearby, scattering through the trees in the dark.
It repeated again and again with only a moment’s pause between utterances; and it was an utterance of some description. An animal perhaps? Robert could not identify it, despite his impressive knowledge of the local wildlife, the sound possessed strange characteristics of a creature unknown to him. In some ways it was reminiscent of a bird of prey, parts high pitched and shrieking, but under this lay a painful wretched noise more akin to that of a fox crying in the night looking for its young.
That was it exactly, it sounded like it was looking for something.
For the next three hours Robert lay awake listening to the screeching noise ebb and flow as whatever was producing it moved closer, then farther away.
As he eventually drifted towards sleep, the thought occurred to him that the movement of the sound was not unlike that of a search party, yelling and shouting, looking for someone lost in the wilderness; following a distinct search pattern.
In the cold light of day the noise was gone and while Robert had accepted that what had scared him yesterday was simply a timid camper cautious of a stranger nearby, he still could not shake a feeling of impending dread deep from the pit of his stomach.
The day passed quickly, and while Robert made good progress he did not do so with the delight he had previously exhibited. Something toxic lay in his mind, just outside of his awareness, something which suffocated his spirits.
That night again he camped in a clearing, and yet again that same horrible shriek screamed out across the wilderness looking for something lost. Something precious. Shrieked with one subtle difference from the night before.
It was closer.
Sleep did not come easy once more, and Robert fancied that during the night he had heard footsteps nearby, but attributed these to the simple nocturnal wanderings of a lonely deer or stag.
While the following day remained overcast and grey, the wind and rain were gone, both a distant memory but for the occasional accumulation of water on the dirt track. Robert moved onwards, negotiating a network of paths while realising that he had strayed from his intended route at some juncture. He was confident, however, that he knew where he was and that this change would simply be a small detour and nothing more. At times he made great progress when the ground was even enough, stopping occasionally to take in a variety of deep set valleys and rising peaks. Uncharacteristically, however, he kept his distance as much as he could from the woods and forests which often accompanied the road. While dismissing it as merely his imagination, at times he felt like there was something within them, peering out from the dark, watching.
It was late afternoon and Robert was beginning to feel tired, most probably due to a restless night combined with the unrelenting pace he had set himself throughout the day. In the back of his mind he was still somehow running from something.
The path he had been on for the past couple of hours had been rather predicable for the most part but now it curved sharply around a grassy hill to reveal a change in the landscape which had been previously hidden from view. A long stretch of dirt and uneven track penetrated a thick forest of fir trees. What Robert found interesting about the path was that it was unnaturally straight, and what he found oddly frightening about it was that it was so narrow, only a couple of feet across. Spreading your arms you could touch both sides of the forest. This proximity provoked the deepest feelings of over exposure and claustrophobia. If he had been a soldier in a war-zone, Robert would have highlighted this long narrow path as a perfect place for an ambush.
Standing with his mountain bike only a few feet from the beginning of both forest and track, he felt uneasy about the current situation. It was clear that the path was the only way forward and while it appeared as though it exited the forest a few miles onward, there was something inherently dubious about it. What, Robert could not tell, but he did feel that he did not wish to traverse it.
Weighing up the pros and cons, he realised that both the way he came and the unknown land ahead provoked trepidation in him. For that reason he dismissed the sense of dread as a figment of his over-active imagination, and with measured movement, slowly set off down the long, straight track hoping to quickly pass in and out of the forest without incident.
A black cloud hovered above and as Robert negotiated the overly uneven path as quickly as he could, the feeling of foreboding which he had so nonchalantly dismissed began to ferment in his stomach, rising up through his body forcing the hairs on his arms to stand on end.
He kept his head down for the most part, occasionally glancing ahead at what he assumed was his exit in the distance. He just wanted to be through and out of that place as quickly as possible. Just over half-way down the path an unnerving yet unwelcome familiarity overtook him. A sensation which had accompanied him for days, but now seemed to be sharper, grating more profoundly on his nerves, filled Robert’s every thought; the feeling of being watched.
Stopping for a moment to catch his breath, he tried as best he could to shake the unmovable sensation that he was not alone. The path stretched out ahead and as is common amongst those who attempt to reach a goal or threshold, without thinking he looked back to measure his own progress. He had managed to cover a substantial amount of the track’s length and was quite confident that in a short time he would escape that narrow stretch of dirt.
But just as he turned to continue onwards, something caught Robert’s eye farther down the path in front of him. He immediately wished that he had not taken the route he had chosen, that he had turned back and started homeward.
It was there. Unmistakeable. Unwavering and utterly paralysing.
Some distance away in the direction he was heading stood a figure. Robert could not entirely define or make out the discrete features of the person because they were standing to the side of the path between a cluster of trees, covered in shadow, but this was certainly not his imagination.
Someone was standing there, watching and while Robert was a distance away, it felt to him as though the figure’s presence was almost on top of him; its stare accompanied by an uncommonly potent sense of… well… malice was the best way that Robert could describe it to himself.
Then it was gone, disappearing back into the forest. But the feeling of danger, of the necessity to flee did not diminish or decline, but grew in intensity. The sound of something moving between the trees rang out across the emptiness, increasing in volume as it neared.
Robert panicked, turned, and cycled as quickly as he could in the direction he had come. So eager was he to escape that narrow passage flanked on all sides by the impenetrable forest, that he did not see a deep hole in the ground. The front wheel of his bike crashed into the depression sending Robert flying over his handle bars, scraping along the ground.
Dazed for a moment, the shambling sound of broken branches and displaced leaves which was nearly upon him, quickly brought Robert’s mind into focus. Blood dripped from a wound in his leg, and his arm was badly bruised from the impact, but all he cared about was escaping from that suffocating pathway, away from whoever seemed to be moving in the woods.
Robert’s beloved paint job across the etched letters ‘ROB’ on the bike’s frame had been scratched slightly in the crash, but that did not concern him. Two spokes on the bike’s front tyre were broken and that most certainly did. The last thing Robert needed was to be completely stranded there, so he would have to ride carefully and hope that the wheel would not buckle, lasting long enough to carry him home.
Home.
That was exactly where he intended to go, as quickly as possible, and as he was now facing in the direction he had been travelling for days, there was no time like the present.
The moving sound in the trees continued and as Robert carefully, yet at pace, negotiated the broken ground, he hoped above all else that his trusted mountain bike would get him out of there. Despite his obvious advantage of speed, the sound seemed to be only moments behind and as he came closer to the end of the forest path and out into into the open, he heard a noise which chilled him to his very core.
From within the forest spewed that same, shrieking, tortured cry from the nights before, echoing out, piercing Robert’s ears and scratching through his nerves like a shredder.
Was it that figure who had been wandering near Robert’s camp at night?
Surely no human could make such a sound!
Panicking, he increased his speed as the front tyre of his bike wobbled and creaked under the pressure and strain. Finally he was out of that narrow place, but Robert did not stop, cycling for hours without once looking back. Only when sure that his pursuer could not have followed did he stop to rest.
Night was once again drawing in and now every sound, every smell, every part of what had always made the countryside fascinatingly inviting to him took on a new, ominous, and menacing form. He decided that tonight he would not set up camp; no fire, no tent. Robert was sure that the person following him had been able to do so because of the noise and light which he had made from night to night.
It would not be pleasant. It would be cold, wet and uncomfortable, but Robert wanted to make sure that he could not be tracked. There were various paths and dirt-tracks in the area that he could have taken, but hopefully this man who was stalking him, for whatever reason he was doing it, would not be able to find him.
Robert knew of course that his tyre tracks could easily betray his location if his pursuer was smart enough to follow them. The bike marks were obvious. For this reason Robert backtracked slightly off the path in an attempt to confuse anyone following, should the need arise. The worst thing he could do would be to sleep next to where his tracks ended. Finding a large bush with space underneath to sleep (which was satisfactorily far enough from where his tread marks ended) Robert hid himself and his bike for the night with one question on his mind: If this stalker was able to keep up with his progress each day, he must have been using a bike or vehicle of some description, but where were the tyre tracks?
Sleep did not come at all that night, but around three in the morning that wailing inhuman noise did. Moving around the area, searching.
By now Robert was beginning to suffer from lack of sleep and rest, but in spite of this, at the first sign of daylight, he quickly uncovered his bike from its hiding place and started on his way once again.
Not one foul noise was heard that day, nor any evidence that his stalker was anywhere nearby. Rationality began to overtake Robert’s fear as night once again settled in. He covered much ground throughout the day and had managed to take care as best he could of his bike’s front wheel, which bar the occasional creak or groan was performing admirably.
Robert concluded after much soul searching that he had allowed himself to get carried away by the isolation of his surroundings and the, admittedly, unnerving person he had seen in the forest over the past few days. But surely it was preposterous to believe that he was really being followed? Perhaps the individual he had seen was not the same from that strange island of trees? It would make more sense that it was in fact just another camper. Maybe there were a few of them and that explained the noises, and as for the unfamiliar animal screeching at night, it must just be a species of bird in the area which he had never heard before. That night, Robert would set a camp fire. He would cook his food, eat well, and enjoy the solitary countryside as he had intended to for such a long time since planning his holiday!
After locating a suitable spot in the forest, this is exactly what he did. He cooked on a roaring camp fire and sat for hours gazing at the night sky through the branches of the
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Jonathan Felix sat back in the chair after affixing the final electrodes to his skull. He currently reclined in one of the most expensive private scientific investments in the world, and today was the fruition of his, and many others, efforts. The aim of the project was to open a human beings mind and allow them to perceive one of the spatial dimensions above the mediocre three.
The actual result was still a point of debate, but it was suspected that the individual would be able to study all possible universes that could be created from his actions, and then choose the one that he wished to follow. A man whose every action would be perfect as he had already witnessed the results.
Felix had jumped at the opportunity, because he was young and headstrong. In his early twenties and brilliant in the field of quantum mechanics, he was relishing the opportunity to apply the usually theoretical aspects of his craft to a physical medium. He gave the final thumbs up to the techs behind the safety glass, and they activated the first stages of the machine. A microphone in the room relayed his words as the process started
“If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”. Imitation was the highest form of flattery, he thought with a grin.
The chair reclined back until it became a flat table, and a large rotating dome lowered down to encompass his entire body. Within the dome, there was a complex crystalline structure lining the inside. He focused on the facets of the crystals, and noticed that they had started to morph, shifting in ways his mind just could not understand. He started to feel light-headed and dizzy. His sight was suddenly filled with explosions of light, and his body started to spasm.
Reading his health signs in the control room, the engineers instantly halted the operation. A medic ran in checked the vitals of Felix, and was pleased to find a weak, yet consistent heartbeat.
Felix opened his eyes a couple of minutes later. He looked up at the doctor and suddenly jerked up as he realised where he was.
“What happened? I don’t feel any different…..”
The doctor smiled and patted him on the shoulder
“Any landing you can walk away from, right?”
The doctor turned to walk away, caught his ankle on a trailing cable, tripped forwards, and cracked his forehead against the corner of the table. His head twisted to a sickening angle…….
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The doctor turned to walk away, caught his ankle on a trailing cable, tripped forwards, and then was grabbed from behind as Felix threw himself from the chair, stopping him inches from the table corner.
Felix collapsed and threw up.His hands shaking, he realised that he had just perceived two universes and had actively chosen the one he wanted. He smiled at the doctor.
“I did it! I can see them …I can see them all……”
Felix’s smile faded.
He now saw two new universes, both the same as far as he was aware. Suddenly, a third, a fourth, a fifth blossomed in his mind. He could see all of the possibilities that he was capable of, some he didn’t wish to see. His mind began to fracture.
Felix grabbed the medic and in an act of unnatural rage plunged his thumbs into the poor attendants eyes…..
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Felix looked despairingly into the eyes of the medic and started to scream, refusing to stop even when bubbles of blood foamed around the corners of his mouth…..
reset
Felix grabbed the table leg and forcefully head butted the corner, only achieving his goal of shattering his skull on the fourth strike……..
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Felix sat on the floor experiencing all the potential evil that he was physically capable of. His body shook as he was racked sobs of horror. He grabbed the collar of the medic and drew them face to face.
“TOO FAR……TOO FAR……” he screamed
His eyes blurred for a moment, then started to turn yellow and shriveled. At the same moment his hair changed to the purest white. Felix in his final moments became aware of a magnitude of universes bearing down on him, and he would have to live through every single one. His gripped slipped and his mind was lost to the abyss.
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Credit To: The Silicon Lemming
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If you’re reading this, then I am hopefully long gone. It’s been… two months now since the meteor struck Mississippi. There was a lot of public interest in it, astrologers and the like all gathering around for a look. They took samples of the rock and shipped them all over the world to museums in every country. Hell, I almost made a trip to have a look myself, but I had an interview with a potential employer. If he hadn’t called me up the previous day, I’d be dead now. Three days later, after the initial hype died down, the news reported nothing on the meteor for a couple of days.
The next thing I heard about it was when I got home from the pub and turned on the late-night news. I was just in time to catch a breaking news article. The worried-looking reporter informed me that almost everyone who had been in the vicinity of Mississippi when the meteor went down had been hospitalised. Their symptoms were similar to those that a corpse experiences during decomposition. Ten people had already died, mostly the elderly and the very young. Scientists and geneticists from all over the globe were working frantically to try and find a cure. Being smarter than the average bear, I gathered some supplies and prepared for an epidemic. Years of being paranoid beyond reason was finally about to pay off.
The news the next day had a lighter tone. A Chinese scientist had worked out that the meteor had contained an alien strain of bacteria that slowly broke down flesh tissue. The scientist also remarked that the bacteria were only affecting humans. He had also worked out that if a victim consumed a living being, such as an insect, it would delay the progression of the bacteria, giving the scientists more time to figure out a permanent cure. Anyone who thought they may have contracted the infection was to eat as many live creatures as they could. The reporter also explained that the US Army was attempting to contain the infection.
They failed.
Anyone who has read Stephen King’s book, The Stand, will have an idea of how the bacteria made its way around the world. It passed through the air, but to catch it, you had to be near someone infected. Because the symptoms took between three to five days to kick in, people didn’t realise that they were infected. In a week, Victus Somes Disease, as it had been named, was global.
I had barricaded myself in my house, with towels and blankets stuffed into every crack. I had the TV tuned to the news all day and night. The scientists had not predicted that the bacteria would adapt to the infected people’s efforts at trying to keep it at bay. Victims all over the world were claiming that the insects were no longer working. People were starting to catch small mammals and eat them.
As the days went by, people were slowly eating larger and larger animals. The first reported case of cannibalism was, ironically, the last broadcast made. The anchorman’s hair was falling out and he was missing three teeth. He nervously told America that there had been a reported case of cannibalism in Southern Europe. He also said that there would be no further broadcasts. All survivors were to lock themselves in their house and not let anyone in.
For the next week and a half, I watched the infected shamble up the street, knocking on doors. One of my neighbours, a couple of houses down from me, was stupid enough to open the door. Three people dragged him out and started biting his flesh. They started with his arms and legs, trying to keep him alive for as long as possible. They were crying as they ate. Their meal was shrieking in pain, and the three people eating him were apologising furiously through mouthfuls of his arm. I don’t think they were unable to control themselves; it looked more like they were disgusted by what they had to do to stay alive.
They tried to break into my house five or six days later, but my barricades held. They were outside, begging me to let them in. “Just one bite. Please, be generous.” I listened to their pleading all night, too scared to sleep.
I suppose I should explain why I’m writing this. I’m infected. Yesterday I coughed and lost a canine. I spent the night pulling out my teeth, easing them out one by one. It didn’t hurt; they just slid out, like pulling up carrots. Anyway, as I was saying, I’m infected. The bugs have stopped working, and all the wild animals have long since run away. I have decided to lure someone into my house and attack them. It sounds so wrong writing that out, but I don’t want to die. And I’m so hungry.
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.
//
Credited to BananaCorn.
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When Conner arrived at the gas station, he exited the car with a speed that surprised even him. He took a few quick steps, almost at a run, before turning back towards the car. Under the garish sodium lights of the service station, the little blue sedan looked a sickly greenish gray. It looked squat and malign in its stillness. The little throbbing headache at the base of his skull seemed to diminish with every step and he began to catch his breath.
He took the phone from his pocket and raised it high into the night sky, waving it from side to side like a signal flag. Nothing. The signal meter defied him by remaining empty. Not even a flashing roaming message. Conner scowled at the little phone and thrust it back into his pocket.
He glanced around at the station, two solitary pumps and a closed convenience market. An isolated island of pale yellow light in the dark of the North Carolina forest, the silhouettes of the trees bit sharply into the starry night sky, surrounding him like a ring of teeth. The grating hum of electricity mingled with the crackling of insects from the woods beyond, drifting in the warm summer night air.
Jutting from the side of the shuttered market was a scraped and listing pay phone, its metal stalk visibly bent from some long ago impact. Conner approached it, digging a quarter from his pocket, and gripping the scarred plastic handset. For a moment, nothing happened, and the sense of isolation deepened, like the ground being pulled out from under him, and the panic returned. A series of quick clicks bit into his ear and the dial tone chimed. His fingers felt numb as he dialed.
Even at a few hours past midnight, Reynolds answered on the first ring.
“Yes?” Reynolds’ rolling baritone was silky, and unmarred by the late hour. “Who is this?”
“S’me. Conner.” He was unable to keep the quaver out of his voice, and he had a sudden urge to look back towards the car, suddenly afraid that it might have moved, or left him there all together.
“This isn’t the phone I gave you.” Reynolds liquid voice darkened, almost imperceptibly.
“It’s a payphone. Ain’t got signal out here. Middle of fucking nowhere. Listen Ren, I-”
“Is something the matter, Conner?” Conner bristled at the mild, calculated condescension in the older man’s tone, and inhaled slowly, measuring his next words with caution.
“Well… Shit. I don’t rightly know, Ren, but I got a real bad feeling about this.”
“Where are you?”
“Service station. Just got off the freeway. Bout to head south through Natahala.”
“And what is the matter, Conner?”
“Like I said, there’s something fucked up about this one. Didn’t like the guy I picked the car up from, don’t like whatever it is that’s in the fucking trunk. I know this sounds fucking stupid, but it’s giving me a headache. I feel like I can smell it, but I know I can’t. Something just feels rotten about it. I mean rotten, rotten.”
There was a long silence on the other end, and Conner knew that Reynolds was unmoved. Even as Conner said the words, he knew how stupid it sounded.
“Conner,” the old man said at last, “We’ve worked together for a long time. I like you. But you’ve never given a shit about what you deliver. What’s the strangest thing I’ve had you carry?”
“The heart.” Conner answers without hesitation, seeing the white styrofoam cooler steaming with ice, strapped in the front seat like a babies car seat.
“Yes. You also once delivered several pounds of heroin. Did you know that at the time?”
“Not ‘till after the fact.”
“Because it’s better that way, isn’t it, Conner.” Reynolds paused, the smooth rhythms of his voice already calming the younger man. “It’s better if you don’t know. The man you picked the car up, in his own way, is as trustworthy and reliable as you are. I understand why you might bristle at him, given his unfortunate looking visage, but he is like you. A trusted contractor, and discrete. I employ you both, for your discretion. Do you understand Conner?”
“Yessir.”
“Good. I think you understand why I’m offering so much more for this delivery, and why it has to be late at night, and on the backroads. Our client this time has specific instructions, and we’re not getting paid to wonder why. We’re not getting paid to pry.”
“I understand.” It galled Conner, how stupid he’d sounded, how stupid he’d been, panicking, and calling Reynolds late in the night.
“I know you do. And I know this one is odd, son. I do. I hope you believe me when I say that it makes me as uncomfortable as it makes you. I’d do it myself, but no one is as good as you. I’m smart enough to know when to trust the best.”
“Thank you, Ren.”
“No, Conner, thank you. Now, get back on the road. When you drop off the car, the client will have his own men to take care of the package. And then you can sleep, and you won’t have to work for a year. All for one nights drive.”
“Okay. I gotcha.”
“Conner. I trust you wouldn’t, and forgive me if this is insulting, but, don’t open the trunk okay? It wouldn’t help, the package is locked up anyway. And it needs to stay locked because the client wants it locked.”
“Of course, Ren. Look I’m awful sorry for calling, I guess I just got spooked something fierce.”
“Not at all. That’s what I’m here for. Now, get on the road Conner. And call me when it’s done.”
Reynolds hung up before Conner could reply, and he returned the handset to the cradle.
Keys in hand, Conner returned to the car, driving himself forward even as his newfound confidence waned as he approached. The phantom odor, more like a memory of a scent than an actual smell returned, something sweet and corrupt. As he turned the key to start the engine, the gentle pain in the back of his head returned, rising slowly. He gritted his teeth, and pulled out of the service station.
The Natahala national forest closed around the two lane road, and the darkness swallowed the service station behind him. Conner tried to focus on the destination, the route laid out, the starry sky outside. Anything but the trunk. It worked, for a few minutes.
Conner’s blood coursed with caffeine, and a tiny dose of some high grade speed, just enough to keep him awake, but still, after a half hour on the dark road, his eyes began to flutter. At first, they simply felt dry, and he batted his eyes to wet them. But they began to stay closed longer, seeming to stick at the zenith of each blink. The tires hit the yellow reflectors of the center line, and with a sick jolt of adrenaline, he realized he’d been drifting.
Ahead, the headlights illuminated a hundred yards of road, and picked out reflectors for another hundred. The glowing dots chased out in front of him like tracer bullets, outpacing the lit road, and marking his path into the darkness. They curved upward ahead, signaling a rise in the road before it could be seen.
Conner focused on the reflectors, letting them swim by him like the gentle dripping of water. He watched the phantom line of glowing points dip and rise with the road, and then, with numb disbelief, watched it whip upwards, above his line of sight, twisting skyward. Conner thought absurdly of a sharp upward rise, wondering if the car could take such a steep ascent.
Then the line whipped like a snake, striking across the night sky, and his foot struck the brake with all the force that his terror could muster. The car slid to the right, and he corrected, pulling back onto the road, and jerking to a halt. From the trunk there was a hollow and dull thumping noise, and Conner’s heart surged.
Ahead, the road was perfectly flat, the yellow reflecting lights fixed back in reality. With the car no longer in motion, Conner’s guts sang to him to leave, to flee into the relative safety of the dark woods. His hands clutched the steering wheel, bloodless in their intensity. From the trunk, came another small thud, and Conner’s heart seemed to stop.
Conner was out of the car before he knew it, the keys rattling in his grip. The fear had become something like a manic curiosity now. If he could simply see the thing in the trunk, he could move on, could start driving, could do another line and stay awake long enough to dump the fucking thing and just sleep.
The trunk opened with greased efficiency. The smell caught him first. It was the phantom smell from before, but now it felt cloyingly real, clinging to his nostrils. Putrid meat. Dead dog in the hot summer road, burst belly and cloudy eyed rot. He gagged, choking on the intensity.
When he blinked the tears from his eyes, he could see what was inside, but could not understand at first. Shiny emergency blankets, silvery on one side and gold on the other, reflecting the trunks meager light, were wrapped loosely around a large, man sized bundle.
Conner’s hands were peeling back the metallic sheets before he had time to think, the drive to know almost painful, even as his mind screamed what he already knew: he was carrying a fucking corpse.
Beneath the first shining layer was an woolen army blanket, sodden in black and oily fluids. The smell was even stronger now. Conner debated, briefly, stopping there, but he reached out, and peeled back the blackened sheet, feeling the wet fluids adhere to his slender fingers.
The corpse was naked to the waist, and horridly disfigured. One arm ended in a shredded stump; an unmistakable bruised and pierced field, a buckshot wound, patterned the grey and sunken chest. The head was cracked open, one hand sized chunk of skull, clotted and matted with thinning gray hair, lying next to it. Black and rotten teeth grimaced through a frozen rictus of pain. One dull, dark eye stared up it him.
Around the neck, was a black leather collar, cinched tight against the mottled grey skin. What looked like metallic wires in delicate filagree curved across the leather, tracing a circuit board like design. At the clasp was a small metal box, where the wires met and joined, encircling a small green LED light that winked rhythmically.
Conner stared, disbelieving for some time. The silent forest surround him, and his eyes held fixed on the corpse, the dead hobo with an electric collar in the trunk. He wanted to be angry, he knew he should be terrified, but it simply didn’t make sense, and he could muster no single emotion, despite the hundreds vying for release. The headache pulsed sharply, and it pushed him out of his trance, where he found himself staring off into the woods.
He shut the trunk, after wrapping up the body and wiping off his hands. He found himself back in the drivers seat, staring ahead at the flat road, his breathing oddly calm. He was tired again, and the nameless dancing fear was far at the periphery.
It was simple now. He had to deliver the car. That was all there was to it.
He sped now, against his own rules and instincts, taking the forested roads with reckless velocity, music cranked loud to hammer him awake. It didn’t work. The drowsy fog seemed to tug harder at him now, and the ticking regularity of tall trees, and the rhythm of the white reflective paint on the road beat out a tattoo of hypnotic regularity.
It was a while before he came to realize that the radio was no longer on. There was only the steady lulling white noise of the engine, the hiss of the tires peeling away from the asphalt. And the knocking from the trunk.
A steady beat of impacts. Sharp raps. Fists on metal.
Conner closed his eyes tight, grinding his teeth together. The headache took on a new pitch, a sudden sharpening, and a chill spread across his body. He pressed the accelerator as if he could speed himself bodily away from the trunk and it’s cargo, but he felt it speeding with him, pursuing him with a matched intensity.
When he opened his eyes, his heart leapt into his throat. The forest was gone. He was on a four lane highway, but the terrain was foreign to him. He resisted the urge to stop sharp again, tried to quell the hammering in his chest, but he could settle the panicked animal desperation.
Everything was wrong. Despite the massive road, he was the only driver in either direction. There were no road signs. No mile markers. He’d lost time on long drive before, but he always stayed on course, coming out of the trance precisely where he wanted to be. And he’d never been lost. Conner knew every thoroughfare and backwoods trail for 100 miles in every direction.
But he could not tell where he was. The clock on the dashboard proclaimed that he’d lost mere minutes. He’d been a dozen miles from any road of this size.
It’s not fair, he thought, and then repeated it again, aloud. His voice was pinched and thin. A child’s protest.
“That’s not possible.”
The unbroken field of blacktop and reflective plastic and paint rolled away beneath him and behind. The trunk was now silent, but still lingered malignant behind him. He grabbed the telephone beside him, and flipped it open. Nothing.
Conner only had one course of action that he could see. Take the first exit, find another service station, reorient, deliver the fucking car. The little thread of hope, woven by as solid a plan as he could muster tugged at him, and he pushed the little blue sedan even harder. Together, driver and passenger hurtled down the road.
He felt a surge of elation, as up ahead, an orange sign broke the monotony of the phantom freeway. It resolved from the gloom as he approached, tall black letters reading ROADWORK AHEAD.
It wasn’t what he’d hoped for, but it was a change, and something to break the impossible blankness of the unknown road.
Ahead, the left lane was blocked off by a sloping line of bright orange traffic cones, pushing Conner one lane over. The line continued, disappearing into the dark. Conner strained to see the lights and hear the sound of construction vehicles, the late night shift adding a fresh layer of tar. Nothing.
The line of cones veered again, blocking of the next lane. Conner merged with it, feeling his hopes seep away into the dark. The line moved again, forcing him into the far right lane.
Finally, as he understood it would be before he even saw it, the plastic traffic cones blocked of the last lane, and then the shoulder, one bright orange line, bisecting and blocking any further progress.
Conner slowed, ingrained instincts to obey all rules of the road screaming as they tried to process this logical contradiction. It didn’t take long for him to decide. He knew he didn’t want to be out here, alone, and unmoving, with the thing in the back. The thing that might not be dead. If he was rolling, he was at least getting closer to being done with it all. He gunned the engine, brought the car back up to speed and plowed through the line of cones.
They folded beneath his wheels, tossed high into the air, and illuminated by the red of his brake lights as they bounced off the road into the night.
Everything in Conner’s career had been focused on not drawing attention. He’d not been pulled over since he was caught joyriding at age 13 with a phone book beneath his seat, and a tin can tied to his foot to reach the pedals. He’d made a career of escaping notice, but now he found himself wishing to see flashing blue and reds lights behind him.
He didn’t know how he’d explain driving into a roadwork zone, speeding, or the hideous wreck of flesh in the trunk. He didn’t care. He’d give anything to see another person. If he could just reach Reynolds, hear that calming voice…
Ahead, the four dotted lines of reflective paint vanished. The four lanes evaporated into a featureless plain of smooth black tar. Conner felt empty, beyond shock. Hot tears welled up in his eyes. Without the lines of the road, he suddenly felt he was drifting, veering of the road. Impulsively, he turned sharp to the right. The smooth field of blacktop spread away into the distance of his headlights.
“Fuck this.”
The sound of his own voice shocked him, causing him to leap slightly, and he let his foot of the pedal. The car drifted to a stop. He opened the door, and stepped out, onto the black plain. The brittle pain in his head flared as he did, but he knew that if he could just get away from the car, he could think straight.
He picked a direction and began to walk. The night sky was starless, the horizon featureless. He looked behind him, once, seeing the pool of bright light where the car still sat. His head throbbed, and he picked up his pace, jogging now.
The night air was clean and sweet, and although the throbbing in his head still continued, he felt refreshed by the freedom of being on his own two feet.
After what felt like several miles, walking blind across the asphalt field, he began to worry if Reynolds would ever hire him again. Such a relatively mundane concern, absurd in his current situation, hooked him like an anchor.
He was hallucinating, he realized. Although he couldn’t tell where his senses became unreliable, he knew that was the only possible answer. And sooner or later, he would stop. And he’d likely never work as a courier again, would likely have ruined Reynolds business with his strange, wealthy client that paid to have the corpses of transients shipped across backwoods roads, but so fucking what? With a dry chuckle he realized that Reynolds would be better off without that sort of client even if the old man didn’t see it that way at first, because who knows what the client would ask of him next? And hell, he’d find work again, even if he had to uproot and find a new backyard to get familiar with, because he was the best goddamn driver there was.
Up ahead, he saw a light, a tiny deviation in the darkness, and he began to run, a smile spreading across his face. As he approached, the skin on the back of his neck seemed prickle, and the icy point of the headache pushed deeper. He knew what he was looking at, but he still couldn’t accept it.
It was the sound that made it real. The engine he heard first, then the other sounds, the chirping ring of his cellphone on the front seat, the bleating of the car’s open door alarm, and then at last, the steady tapping from the trunk.
He didn’t want to look at it, wanted to turn away and run off into the dark forever, rather than confront the car and its evil fucking cargo just a few feet in front of him when it should be miles away.
He picked one errant thought out of the confused and desperate whirlwind of his mind: The phone. It was still ringing. He pressed in closer to the car, feeling its presence like a thick fog, blacker than the darkness around it. It seemed to yield to his incursion, allowing him in to shut off the engine and grab the phone.
He clicked the phone open and pressed it to his ear, trying to ignore the noises from the trunk.
“Hello?” he whispered into the receiver.
“Conner.” It was Reynolds’s voice, but something was wrong. The sharp precise diction, the smooth tone, some indefinable quality was gone. “Conner, listen to me.”
“Oh Jesus, Ren, I think I’m in a lot of trouble.”
“Did you unlock the package?”
“Fuck no, sir, but I don’t think that matters.”
“You have to check. As long it’s still locked, nothing else matters.”
“I don’t think I can look in there. I think it’s still alive.”
“Conner. You must.”
Conner felt the heat rising in him again, the paralyzing anger at the absolute bullshit unfairness of it all, and he yowled wordlessly at the sky, before shakily approaching the rear of the car.
He slid the key in, fingers trembling uncontrollably, and swung the trunk open. The smell hit him, but it had changed, the rot had gave way to some predator musk that put Conner’s hair on end.
The silver blankets were shredded and pushed aside. The thing inside was almost unrecognizable. The shredded arm was now a thin and reedy limb, pink and newborn with too many jointed elbows. The buckshot wound was almost invisible, and Conner watched in horror as one of the few remaining holes disgorged a small lead ball before closing up around it.
Both eyes stared out at Conner, one shrunken and glistening, but filled with malevolent light. It grinned, revealing not the black and rotted teeth he’d remembered, but a shark’s grin.
Conner found himself on his back, not remembering falling, scuttling feebly away from the car. The headache was suddenly gone, and a confusing flood of stimuli crashed against the beachhead of his senses.
He was still in the woods.
The car was pulled off to the side of the road. In the sudden painless clarity, the broken parts of the last hours fell into place. He remembered opening the trunk that first time seeing the body. He remembered stripping the collar from the corpse, tossing it into the woods. He remembered wondering why he’d done it even as his fingers closed around it.
He remembered forgetting. He remembered wondering why he’d found himself staring off into the woods.
He still couldn’t find his footing, could only crawl away from the open trunk, the thing now rearing upward, silhouetted by the wan light of the trunk’s single bulb. One of the too long limbs, with the impossible joints slid out, a spider emerging from a drain.
The phone was still in his hand, and he saw, without any real surprise, that it was still searching fruitlessly for a connection. He tossed it away, using his hands to pull himself upright.
It was out now, crouched and waiting. Its dark eyes flickered in the moonlight.
Conner raised himself slowly to unsteady feet. The thing mirrored him, extending to its full and horrid hight, the bloody scraps of pants clinging to it’s pale and now unmarked frame.
Disgorged of its hideous cargo, the little car now looked like sanctuary, like hope, like freedom. But the thing stood between him, and any chance of escape. It leaned forward toward him, the shark teeth glistening with spit.
Conner began to laugh, a hopeless and mournful sound, his limbs locking in fear as it reached out for him, its spider legged hands curling around his arms. Its touch was cold, and the knobby fingers felt like the tightening of vices.
The thing laughed with him.
—
CREDIT: Josef K. / Cameron Suey
This is a follow-up to the story Exit.
Please wait...
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A is for Astronaut
Very rarely did something ever come into view of the International Space Station that wasn’t Earth. There was considerable surprise when, hovering just beyond the reach of the station and well beyond the reach of Earth, floated a single EVA space suit. A quick search of the ISS found that all their suits and astronauts were accounted for. No signals were received by the ISS during the brief five-minute period that the suit was within range of their portholes. No signals were able to reach Earth either.
The suit watched them as they floated by. No eyes could be seen beneath its inky visor, but the numerous rips and tears did enough to suggest that even if someone had been inside, they were long since dead.
That’s what they thought before the suit waved to them, just before it fell out of sight.
* * * * * *
B is for Beach
Tommy was playing in the wet sand. His parents had, again, turned their gaze from him to each other. This trip would have been so much better, they both secretly thought, if they didn’t have to babysit little Tommy. He was much too rambunctious to handle on a good day. All the excitement from the trip made him unbearable. So, they didn’t notice when he started calling their name.
He couldn’t resist. The biggest, most awesome cave had just been found, and he needed mom and dad to come look. It was taller than him, lopsided and drooping, but he thought it was a masterpiece of beach engineering. Little Tommy noted, as he was supposed to, that it was exactly big enough for him to fit inside.
His parents didn’t even notice as the cave collapsed back into the beach like a wave, and sunk below the sand. Tommy was gone. There was the smallest disturbance on the surface as the cave pulled it’s catch under the sand and back into the water.
* * * * * *
C is for Conversations from Down the Hall
“What were you thinking?”
“What?”
“Sam just spent the last twenty minutes crying his eyes out, Jake! I don’t know what you were thinking!”
“I don’t know what I was thinking! Barb, tell me what the hell’s wrong!”
“This damn thing you got our son!”
“What?”
“This ragged fucking teddy bear! I don’t know where the hell you got it—“
“What teddy bear? What is that?”
“Don’t give me that!”
“Barb, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Look at it! This thing’s arm is barely hanging on. I’m surprised it doesn’t have bed bugs, or STDs or something. It looks like you pulled it out of a swamp. Ugh, it’s disgusting.”
“I want a hug.”
“Well don’t drop it on the rug! It’s going to leave a fucking stain!”
“Well it’s on you. I don’t blame Sam. It’s so creepy! Did you hear it? You couldn’t even put new batteries in the thing? It sounds like the fucking Devil, Jake.”
“Babe, look at me. I didn’t get him that teddy bear.”
“What? But he said you got it for him.”
“I didn’t get him any teddy bear.”
“Then where did it come from?”
“He probably grabbed it out of a dumpster.”
“He says he didn’t. He’s adamant he found it in his room. He said it was a present.”
“Well that’s nice but—Wait.”
“What?”
“Where did it go?”
* * * * * *
D is for Deforestation
The bulldozer slowly approached the tree, cutting through the thick brush. A lion stalking its prey. It lowered its plow like a shark extending its jaw. It bore its serrated teeth. Its engine snarled.
The edge of the plow had barely touched the bark.
It all happened in a reflexive instant. Like dolphins breaching the sea, about seven roots shot out of the ground and folded inwards towards the tree. They found solid ground, raised the trunk from the soil, and then the jointed, arachnoid legs carried the tree swiftly away. Its banshee howls echoed as it disappeared into the depths of the rainforest.
* * * * * *
E is for Exercise
Just minutes ago, Tori’s legs had been carrying her through seven-minute miles. Now, the left one is dragging behind her, leaking blood onto the burning asphalt, and the right leg is cramping. Every second it threatens to give in. She stumbles. A pain, a venom, crawls through her body. Below her, the Florida sun has cooked the bike trail as hot as a skillet. She can almost feel it through her shoes. Half of her mind is trying to balance; the other half is focused on the lumbering beast behind her.
The beast is too hungry to mind the heat. Its scales almost sizzle as it drags itself forward with its two, massive forearms. It’s long, bat-like fingers painfully grip at the ground, and they seize as the beast laboriously pursues its prey. Its all too human eyes watch Tori close, and its all too human mouth drips with spit, venom, and blood. It’s tasted her once. It refuses to let her go. It failed the ambush, but if it can push itself just a bit further, everything will be alright. It hasn’t eaten in weeks. Worse, it can almost hear its young behind it, pleading from the ditch in high-pitched voices. Two have already died. It refuses to let the other three wither.
The two race onwards, in the heat of the Florida sun. It collapses first. Its tail spasms, trying to give it one final push forward. In a cruel irony, Tori collapses barely twenty feet away. Its tongue blisters as it licks her blood off the bike trail.
They both close their eyes.
* * * * * *
F is for For Mom
For Mom,
I love you.
It’s so cold now. We’ve been wandering around for two weeks in these mountains. The snow hasn’t let up.
Every day, the voice gets louder. It bores deeper, like a termite in my head. I tried. I tried really hard, Mom. I fought.
I remember the stories you and grandpa told me. The tales of the monsters out here. I think there’s one inside me. The spirit that devours. It’s going to make me kill Kieran. He’s the only one left, besides me.
I’m so hungry. It tells me Kieran will taste just like meatloaf, just like you used to make. It says his thighs will be sweetest. Like pork. He’s sleeping. It doesn’t need to tell me that it’d be so easy.
I’m sorry.
I hope you never find this note.
* * * * * *
G is for Grandmother
“You have to,” his mother said.
Zack didn’t want to. His grandmother looked so helpless there, atop the mangled debris of the forest’s floor. The blood had started to dry now. Earlier it had been rushing down the side of her face. Her eyes were, thankfully, closed. They were such a pretty green. He fell to his knees, feeling like he was going to vomit.
“I can’t,” Zack croaked.
“I did,” his mother said. “So did she. It’s just tradition, honey.”
His grandmother had been bound by Zack’s hands. She’d felt so old and fragile beneath his fingers as he worked. He’d been the one who brought her down, too. He’d hunted her all throughout the thick, pine forests behind her house. He had no choice.
Next to her bleeding visage was a knife. It was the same ceremonial knife she’d almost driven through his heart not minutes ago. She’d cornered him, and had she not slipped on the leaf litter below, he would probably be dead. In his hand, clenched tightly still, was the rock he’d used to take her down. He had taken advantage of his good fortune to bring the rock down upon her brittle skull. He had won.
Now the spoils were his.
The honor was his.
“How?” Zack asked.
“It isn’t nearly as hard as it seems,’ she said, compassionately. “Especially if you could know how proud she is right now.”
“She looks so—“ Zack started.
“Yes,” his mother knelt beside him. Her smile was sincere. “But you’ve proven yourself worthy to be called her blood today. Just as one day one of your children will prove to me, and your grandchildren will prove to you.”
His mother stood back up. She watched him, as she had watched him throughout it all.
“Besides,” she said. “She thought this would never happen. All three of your siblings before failed. So enjoy it, Zack. You never liked them anyways.”
His siblings had been dead for years. Not one of them lived past thirteen. But Zack would. He dropped the rock. Shamefully, he allowed his mandibles to emerge from within his mouth. It felt wrong. It was if he’d suddenly become naked in front of his mother. He turned from her, but she placed her hand on his neck. It caused a reassuring chill to course through his skin. It felt good.
His grandmother was still breathing as he bit into her neck. She smiled.
* * * * * *
H is for Hunter
The buck collapsed. He was pleased with the clean shot. It was perfect. Through and through. Leaves crunched as he approached. The noise caused the buck to struggle. It writhed, and it moaned in seemingly complete misery. It was only when he got close, and he raised his rifle, that the hunter noticed it wasn’t the buck struggling.
There was something struggling to get out of the buck.
Beneath the fur, something massive thrusted, and through the wound crawled skeletal phalanges. The hunter dropped his gun, as the skeleton emerged from within the deer’s warm flesh. It stood, and it watched the hunter flee with empty sockets. It gave him a head start.
* * * * * *
I is for Into the Hatch
*The following excerpts are from an oral account of the events that transpired during the spring of 1977 involving the disappearance of Chuck Shaw near Bow, New Hampshire. Witness is Robert Athens.
Why did we make him go in? We were all, what, ten? Eleven? Of course we bullied him into it. Chuck was a runt. He was THE runt. Of course we made him go in.
There was a short period of time where we—where we started to really get worried, ya know? It was just, well, what just looked like a bomb shelter. The door, rusty door, was sticking up out of the ground like a tree root. There should have been one room, but within, I don’t know, ten minutes we couldn’t even hear Chuck anymore. Where the hell did he go? Ya know?
I think it shocked all of us when he screamed. Oh yeah, he screamed louder than anyone I’ve ever heard. Bloody murder. And then he came out of there like a bolt of lightning. I think he pounced on Ben like a wild tiger, ferocious, but then he started bawling. I don’t think he ever would have let go of Ben had Frank and Pete not pulled them apart. He was real silent after that. Whole way home.
It took about a week before he started to talk again. Personally, I don’t think he could talk. I think he screamed the voice right out of his throat. Even then, he still wouldn’t tell us what he saw for another month. Even then he really only told Ben.
I still don’t think I believe it all. See, you have to understand Chuck was pretty imaginative. We all were. That’s why we were too scared to go into the woods to begin with. Yeah, I think it took us a whole month of consistent prodding before that boy ever told us a thing. I think he made half of it up just to make us stop.
Rambling was more the word. He rambled about this giant, what’d he call it, a factory? I think that’s what he said. Like a slaughter house. That’s the word he used. Underground. Massive, he said. Acres wide and deep. Impossible, right?
He was very stingy with me after that. I think it’s because I pushed harder than Ben, and I think Chuck blamed me for everything. Honestly, have you contacted Ben? Ben Huckins? He was closer with Chuck. I still think he has a few morsels left to pull.
Anything else? Well, I know Chuck disappeared on the twenty-first, I think. He was getting real weird the week before. Paranoid. His parents were real worried. I’ve never seen any ten-year-old act as freakishly as he did. He went missing on a Wednesday. Of course Ben did too, but the difference is they found Ben. He was in the woods, wandering around. He claimed he knew nothing. They tell you that? Did Ben tell me anything? Yeah, Ben told me a little, and I told all of it to you. I think he knows far more than he has ever let on, though.
Every bit of it was crazier than anything our little Chuck ever said, though. Those woods will drive you crazy. You should talk to Ben.
* * * * * *
J is for Jersey’s Devil
His girlfriend kicked him.
“Look, Ron!” she exclaimed. “There’s a deer outside our tent!”
Sure enough, as Ron came to, and he put on his glasses, he saw the outline of a deer painted across the tent by the light of the full moon.
“I didn’t know deer sat like that,” Ron noted, pointing out how the shadow sat on its hind legs exactly like a dog.
“Shush,” his girlfriend said. “You’ll scare it away!”
But it wasn’t spooked. Instead, the shadow on the tent was still. In the quiet, Ron was quickly aware of the shadow’s breathing. It was coming in raspy, and fast. Heavy. It sounded almost pained.
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.
His girlfriend couldn’t answer. Her jaw had dropped, voiceless, as the shadow on their tent stood up, and spread its bat-like wings.
Its breath became hot, as they all screamed.
* * * * * *
K is for Killer
Nearby, the bodies of his brother, sister, mother and father lie. Collectively, they’ve turned the entire carpet red. Alone, he stands in the bathroom. He’s the youngest of them all. He’s responsible.
Partially.
“Now your face.”
The boy sees himself in the mirror. He has cuts all up and down his body. Blood seeps, yet his face smiles. It’s his face, but not his smile. His face is still unmarked.
“Do it across your cheeks.”
The voice isn’t commanding. It’s speaking out loud, using his mouth. The boy is no longer in control of his body. He can’t even cry, as his arm brings a knife straight up towards his face. He can’t even close his eyes. He just watches as the blade touches his cheek.
* * * * * *
L is for Lucky
The woman running towards him was perfect.
Her breasts were plump, succulent, and so were her pearly white thighs. They seemed to glow in the moonlight. He wondered what her flesh would taste like. Oh, and her hair. It was so short, and red. Vibrant. And she was coming right at him.
It was just the two of them on the street. The sun had barely risen. To his right was a ditch, and just beyond it a field full of wheat. He imagined grabbing her by the throat, and tumbling down with her. He’d drag her into the ditch to finish her off.
Or maybe he’d pin her to the hard sidewalk. He would crack her skull against the concrete like an egg on a countertop. His van was close he realized as she jogged past it. Maybe he would pull the pocket knife out of his pants and stab her. He would drag her by the hilt, and twist the knife. He imagined letting her free a few times, letting her fall to the ground just so he could stab her again and again. He’d load her in the back and take her home.
His mouth started to water.
As she drew near, he reached around for his back pocket. He found the knife, nestled safe and warm. His fingers seized it. She smiled at him. So close. He smiled wider. He could smell her now. She was musky, sweaty.
She was right on him.
“Hey. Beautiful morning.”
“Yes,” he said, turning as she passed. “Beautiful.”
The runner continued onwards, and he continued down the road. He whistled “Hey, Jude” as he started his van and drove away.
* * * * * *
M is for Marriage
She was late that night.
A chill rode up his spine as the window opened. Cracking his eyes, he noted the red numbers on the clock. “4:23 AM”. A breeze seemed to lift the covers behind him. Like a mist, his wife glided into bed. He didn’t even notice her icy touch anymore. Her hands wrapped around his chest and he smiled.
He loved her, but still that animal instinct struggled within. His heart started to race. He wondered again about their infant daughter down the hallway. She was warm, like him. Was she safe? Was he safe?
Again, he forced the doubt, the fear, back down. It subsided.
Of course she was. Of course they were.
She loved her daughter. She loved him. They were both safe.
He felt a heat on his neck as she pursed her lips and kissed him. The blood red mark stayed there until morning.
* * * * * *
N is for Night
I never feared the night sky. At night, you can see beyond our world for miles and miles. Everything is so clear, and I can see It.
At day, the sky clouds. The blue covers my view. I can’t see It. I hate when I can’t see where It is.
The only thing reassuring about the day is that at least It can’t see me either.
I hate the way It smiles at me.
* * * * * *
O is for Orbit
They did see the space suit again. This time it directly hit the front of the station. It bounced off the solar panels, and rolled onto the side of the ISS. They didn’t see it through the rear facing portholes. There was a knocking at the airlock.
* * * * * *
P is for Paralysis
He made a bargain with the wrong man.
James Collins was stuck, paralyzed, just outside the corner of his apartment building. Ethereal, the only one who could see him stood before him in a black brimmed hat. The man bid him adieu, with a tip of his hat and a flash of his teeth. His words rang in his ears like rusted bells.
I granted you your desire. Your family is now fully sustainable. Your enemy has been dealt a rather unfortunate hand in the stock markets this morning. Your son will be set for life. The son of your foe will find himself another unfortunate victim of a drive-by. Gang violence is so depressing. Now, as promised. You owe me this. Fifty-years. Those will be spent here. You can watch, and you can listen, but you’ll never be seen or heard. In half a century, I shall return to release you. Until then, live in the moment. Every moment. To watch time pass is a privilege. If you allow it to be.
So he waited. He missed the sensation of his own blood pumping through his veins, and the cold rush of air down his throat. He watched as his son left. The apartment they used to call home would surely be beneath him now. Years flew by, and he watched the city around him grow. Soon, days became like hours to him. Hours to minutes. Minutes to mere seconds.
One day he noticed a particularly interesting looking man strolling down the lane in a fancy suit. He was young, with a head full of ginger hair. If James didn’t know better, he’d assumed he’d fallen backwards in time. The young man was him. Surely, and in a way, he was.
The young man removed a canister, a flask, from his suit, and drained it. Then his ass fell to the concrete below, and tears started to flow.
“Where did you go, dad?” He asked with a start. James realized then that the young man was his son. He had come so far, and the years had changed him. James had given everything, so he couldn’t imagine why his son had grown so sullen.
Tears couldn’t fall as his son left his side, walked into the building, and was reunited suddenly, not five minutes later, with the ground. He lay beside his father, but his father couldn’t touch him.
James had twenty years left to go.
* * * * * *
Q is for Quiet Study Hall
White ashes fell from the white ceiling. They danced in the air around his head. The desks around him had started to crumble, as if they too were made of ash. The glass wall beside him showed an empty hallway that led nowhere. He was alone with the thing. The thing stood in the front of the classroom, tall and bulky, and tapped its claw against the blackboard. He gave it his attention. Atop its massive shoulders was fixed an antelope’s skull, with wild, twisting horns. Its body was concealed by a cloak of black, tar-like feathers. It seemed to breathe. Protruding from the center of the cloak, were four skeletal hands. It turned its gaze to the board, and it started to carve. Black ash fell from the tip of its claws, and gently they formed uneven piles at the base of the wall.
The bell rang, and he woke up in a familiar room. A detention sheet greeted him for once again sleeping in the quiet study hall. He couldn’t remember what the thing wrote on the board.
* * * * * *
R is for [REDACTED]
Dear Senator Cornyn,
I’m writing to you today because of recent questionable, and disturbing events. I live in Santa Anna. I have done so for about thirty years now. My mother, however, has spent her whole life in Anaheim, Texas. It’s a small little town, barely 100 people in total, and she lived a very happy life there.
In regards to Anaheim, I know everything about it because I grew up there. It’s a quiet, very personal community. They stick to their guns and each other and that is it. I was one of the only kids who ever sprung up out of that dirt-hole. Me and my brother, that is. Everyone else were ranchers, ex or current. To them, and me, Anaheim was about as real as anything.
Now, the problem I’d mentioned earlier started about four months ago. That’s how long it’s been since I have been in contact with my mother. The last time she called she’d mentioned something strange had been happening with her neighbor, and she thought he was up to something rather fishy. She was in rather a panic about it, and my mother is a Texas-born woman so it would have taken something pretty serious to rile her up. So I drove up to stay with her.
Now, Anaheim is just northwest of Santa Anna a little ways. It’s an hour north straight up 283, and then on to 153. It’ll take you all the way up, and then you’ll find Anaheim just off 153 before you hit Nolan onto Farm Rd. I know this because I go there all the time. The problem is, when I got to the turn-off, there were police cordoning off Farm Rd. I asked them what they were doing and they told me to leave or I’d face federal prosecution. So I went up around north past Nolan and I was told to stop at two other roads that led to Anaheim, and again I was told about federal prosecution.
I tried calling my mother again, and there was no answer. So I waited with a friend in Nolan for the night, and come the next day I couldn’t find Farm Rd at all! I couldn’t find any road that led into Anaheim. I got to a point of frustration where I even tried to walk through the dirt to get there, only to find there’s now a fence surrounding the whole town. I was asked to leave at gunpoint by Federal guards long before I was able to get within half a mile of the fence.
It’s going on months now, and I still have no answers. The town no longer appears on Google, and I’ve been asking around. There seems to be a gag order on any reference to the town. My friend in Nolan, the very one who let me stay at his house, is now terrified and adamant that Anaheim never existed. He’s continued to encourage me as such, like he’s trying to bribe me. But it did. My mother is still in there, and I need to make sure she’s ok. I need answers. My brother needs answers.
Please find this letter well,
Miranda Hawkins
Dear Ms. Hawkins,
I’ve been authorized to write to you on behalf of Senator Cornyn.
It’s my understanding that for the past several months you have had an inquiry involving a particular town in western Texas.
“Anaheim, Texas”.
In regards to this inquiry I can personally assure you that there is no such place as “Anaheim, Texas”. I’ve been very thorough, I assure you. There has never been a town such as the one you described in the registry. There is nothing south of Nolan besides wind turbines and farmland. I apologize for any inconvenience and undue stress this has caused you.
If you have further questions please feel free to respond to the return address on this letter. I would love to answer any further questions you might have. Perhaps if you could send me your mother’s name we could search for her current whereabouts.
Robert McConnell
DSA
* * * * * *
S is for Survivor’s Guilt
*The following excerpts are from an oral account of the events that transpired during the spring of 1977 involving the disappearance of Chuck Shaw near Bow, New Hampshire. Witness is Benjamin Huckins.
Not a day goes by I don’t think about Chuck. The weeks after we went into the woods, I was his only friend. Bob certainly wasn’t. I don’t know what he told you, but he was never really a friend to Chuck. He wasn’t with him in the end.
I was. I think I was the only one who believed him. Even back then.
There were things that Chuck only told me. He told me those in confidence, so please understand if I can’t convey everything that happened to you. It’s been years and I still don’t feel comfortable talking about it. That “place”.
Chuck was convinced that he was being hunted. That was the word he used. “Hunted”. He said, and he only told this to me, but he said he wasn’t alone in that place that day. He said that he heard something walking around, making clacking sounds on the metal.
No, he never described it. Yes, “it”. As in “thing”.
I can’t talk about the day he disappeared. Yes, the paranoia was real. Chuck was convinced that the thing was coming for him. The thing in the place, yeah. Honestly, no, I didn’t believe him. I believed he was afraid, surely, but no, I didn’t believe he was in any danger.
That changed on the night before he disappeared. It’s going to sound silly to you, but I had a nightmare of sorts. At least that’s what I pray to God every night that it was. A fit of sleep paralysis, hopefully, but it scared me. There was something in my room. On my ceiling, hanging there. It blended into the shadows like a tiger blends into the damn jungle. It wasn’t watching me, so much as it was smelling me. I could hear it breathing. Heavily. It was sniffing. For a good ten minutes or so. It then decided I apparently wasn’t worth its time and just crawled out of my window like a centipede. I woke up after that. At the very least I sat up.
Chuck went missing the next day. I’ll tell you what I’ve told everyone for years. Yes, I saw him that last day. I tried to help him. I ran so deep into those woods.
I just wasn’t fast enough.
No. I don’t think it was actually a nightmare. But I can still pray.
* * * * * *
T is for T.V.
He knew what would happen next. The room glowed from the light of the television as he fled into the hallway. He pried open the folding closet doors, and once he’d squeezed inside he tried to shut it. The edge of the door skinned his foot, but he didn’t dare cry.
He heard the static. The TV was still displaying the same scene.
Headlong view of an empty road. Empty fields on both sides. Cornstalks lay, decomposing against the dirt. Something stirred on the right side, beneath a pile of stalks.
Moving his foot, the boy continued to pull the door shut. It hit the other side, the other door, too hard. The other door opened a smidge, allowing light from the hall to fall inside the closet.
A moist sound came from the television. Something had come onto the road. It stumbled forward. Its shredded arm reached for the screen.
The boy cursed one of the curses his daddy had taught him as he reached for the other side. The other door was closed flat, but the one in front of him still bent at the joint. The smallest sliver of light shone on his tears.
The thing crawled out of the TV.
He stopped moving when he heard it growl. Each footstep was highlighted by a moist, padding sound as the thing limped out of the room. The boy didn’t dare move. Through the crack, he watched the hallway. Light from the TV room around the corner still reflected off the dark wall, and into the closet.
Something blocked the light.
* * * * * *
U is for Ugly Christmas Sweater
The intent was for it never to be worn again.
Rachel, fueled by a fear and vengeful rage, spent all night sewing onto the damned thing horrendously misshapen patches of ugly wool and uneven strips of velvet. The arms and ends were held down, tight, by large textbooks and unwrapped presents. On the front, she’d cut up one of her own Christmas sweaters. The damn thing was horrendous, and that meant it was perfect. She placed the image (A redneck Santa Claus who wore a red “Duck Dynasty” hat, and a sleeveless white T-shirt) dead center, and she did her best to rip and tear at random stretches of exposed sweater. By morning, the lump of a shirt was nearly unrecognizable. Chunks of sewn together pieces formed what could barely be called a shirt. Rachel laughed at it, as she dragged it away.
She went to the front porch, and she dumped it into her trash. She heaved a large potted plant on top of it, just to be sure.
Her attention finally fell back to her husband. He lay in the same place he’d lied for the last eight hours. She sat down next to his body, and she cried as the sun rose. The light illuminated his mangled form. His chest and his back were gone. The flesh had been stripped away. The damn sweater had pulled them with it when Rachel had pried the thing from her still screaming husband. She had looked inside the sweater, but couldn’t find her husband’s skin.
She laughed, imagining the sweater in the trashcan. She couldn’t burn it, so this would do. She thought she could hear it banging. It was surely hissing at her.
“Merry Christmas,” she called to it, mockingly.
Her job was done. It was a shame, too. It had been so beautiful before. After what she’d done to it, though, no one would ever wear it again.
* * * * * *
V is for Velociraptor
The museum was quiet when Billy snuck out of his father’s office. His father was the curator, and had to take Billy with him for his late night. The sun had set, and Billy was too young and energetic to let an office hold him. For a kid, it was the greatest feeling in the world. He ran through empty corridors and exhibits. Only twice did the lumbering security guard almost spot him.
It didn’t take long for Billy to find himself in the dinosaur exhibit. The models, to the twelve-year old stowaway were so incredible. They were beyond compare and larger than life. He assumed they’d always be that way. At least, that’s what he’d thought before. Tonight was different. He wanted to feel the awe, but he couldn’t. Something felt off.
He lost interest. He took off down the hall, running again out of a primal urge. He raced through endless stretches of granite halls, before he turned a corner. He paused, stumbling forward from his momentum. There was an exhibit out of place.
A skeleton model stood not thirty feet away from him. A Velociraptor mongoliensis skeleton stood in the center of the shadowed corridor, its neck was craned like a bird. The white bones were significantly shorter than Billy (a Velociraptor only ever grew to about a foot tall, and about six feet long). Its arms hung, folded against its rib cage and its long, toothy snout was turned just to the model’s left, straight down the corridor towards Billy.
Billy, forgetting for a moment it was only a skeleton, tried to match its placidity. He had the strangest need to not startle it. His breaths came in intervals too sudden, and too loud for his liking. He truly believed it was alive, or at least he pretended it was. How else could it have gotten there? But that was just his imagination on steroids. Surely, it hadn’t gotten there on its own.
Then he noticed the model’s ribcage expand and contract, as if it were taking breaths.
The model’s head tilted slowly. It was almost a curious motion. Billy was no longer frozen by choice. As their staring contest continued, the raptor continued to tilt its head. Left. Right. The raptor was trying to figure what to make of Billy, and Billy wasn’t sure what to make of the raptor.
Billy found his control once more. He was aware of a twitching in his right leg. He managed to move his foot back.
To his shock, the raptor responded in kind. It stretched one of its legs forward. The long, sickle-like claw on its medial toe clacked hard against the ground. The sound seemed to echo through the hall. Billy shivered. He took another step. Again, the raptor followed. Its gait was significantly longer than Billy’s. It seemed to bounce forward with each step. With each step Billy took away, the raptor would still get closer.
So Billy stopped. So did the raptor. It watched him. Billy knew that even without eyes, it was looking right at him. The skeleton’s claws twitched and fidgeted. Billy was being sized up. Through a glance to his right, Billy saw it. His father’s office. The light in it was still on, but the door was shut tight.
He was farther from the door than he was the raptor.
Seconds wafted by, and his eyes danced. The raptor didn’t move. Billy didn’t dare call his father. The raptor would be on him too fast. Maybe if he ran. Maybe then he could call his father as he was running, His father would open the door for him. His father could help him as long as he bought himself enough time and distance. Tears fell as he tried to make a decision. It was so far, but it was his only hope.
The decision was made for him, as the raptor’s jaw descended. On a hinge, it slowly swung open. It lowered, like a ramp to a plane. Ready to rip and tear.
The silence was murdered by a howl. The raptor was yelling, screaming, and it sounded just like Billy. The lungless beast spread its razor clawed hands wide, ready to embrace its prey. It charged as Billy turned.
Billy cried for his daddy. He wailed, and he ran. He wouldn’t make it. He was sure of that. He wouldn’t make it.
The screaming had stopped, but Billy would cry all the way home. Hi
|
I work in security at Disney World, the happiest place on Earth. Typically, I wouldn’t say where I work as obviously there are some pretty strict rules about things employees can put online, but I just don’t think I can tell this properly without that context. And, honestly, I think this may be it for me anyway with this job. I just can’t see myself working here any longer now.
I’ve been with the company for 23 years. The first 20 years I worked in the parks – nabbing shoplifters and rounding up people who were drinking too much for the heat. Occasionally there’d be a fight to break up, but people usually kept it pretty mild.
The heat and walking were getting too much for me the last few years so I asked to be transferred somewhere with air conditioning and the company moved me to one of their resorts. While the working conditions were 110% better as far as climate and comfort go, the guest issues were trickier – mainly domestics. I guess the expensive and stress of vacation got to a lot of people and I’d be called by neighboring rooms because some mom and dad were yelling at each other. I’d try to suggest they take a nap or go do separate activities for a bit and that would usually calm them down.
But none of that is what I’m here for. I’ve got to get this out while I have time.
Three days ago I got a call from management. Apparently a couple of days before that, housekeeping had gone into a room that should’ve been turned over that day (turned over is when one guest leaves by about 11:00 a.m. and the next guest checks in around 3:00 p.m.) and all of the guests’ items were still in the room. Housekeeping made a note of it and moved on, but during the next two days when they entered the room, everything was still there and untouched.
I went to check it out and sure enough, there was an empty room full of luggage, clothes, snacks, some toys, everything a family would need for a vacation. The manager had already looked up the previous reservation and it was for a family – dad, mom, two little kids. I tried to call the phone numbers they had given but all I got was voice mail. We were a bit stumped so I made the call that housekeeper could clean the room and take the family’s personal items to be held until we got in contact with someone.
I went digging into the reservation more. The family had arrived five days before housekeeping discovered all of their stuff. I found that the family had paid a parking fee and their vehicle description was listed. A quick walk of the parking lots and I had easily located their vehicle. So that ruled out a car accident or them deciding to just leave all their stuff behind.
Next, I saw that they had bought a dining plan. This is when a guest prepays for all of their food. They’re given a certain number of “credits” to use for meals. This family had only used three credits, and the last one was two days after they checked in. It appeared that the day they arrived, they got here late and probably just stayed on the resort. The next day, they used two credits at Epcot. The second park day, they used just one credit at the Magic Kingdom and it was at breakfast time.
Now, at Disney, we have something called Magic Bands. Magic Bands are worn by the guests and act as a room key, park ticket, credit card, dining reservation payment, FastPass (a system used to bypass lines), and more. It took some work, but I was finally able to look up this family’s FastPass history. The day they went to the Magic Kingdom, they had breakfast at a restaurant in the park, rode a couple of rides, and then rode their last ride, It’s a Small World, around 11:00 a.m. Then nothing.
Finally, it was time to bring in someone else on this. I called an old co-worker at the Magic Kingdom and asked him to pull security footage for It’s a Small World at the time they rode it and I made my way over there. When I got there, my friend was very confused, almost distraught, looking. He showed me what he found. There’s usually a camera in the direction of where rides load and unload. The footage showed them scanning their bands to use FastPasses for the ride and boarding the ride. The footage from the exit of the ride just showed the other people in their car exiting. They weren’t there.
Of course we thought the worse, maybe one of the kids had fallen out and mom and dad and the other kid got off in the middle of the ride to help and they all got injured or killed or stuck in machinery somewhere. So we shut down the ride. Middle of the damn day. Turned off that ear worm music and turned up the lights. My buddy and I walked that ride three times before we called in help. Eventually, there was close to ten cast members searching, and we didn’t find shit except for three cell phones and a hat.
I was right stumped. I’ve kept digging the past couple of days, and I’m not sure who to tell what I found next to. I’ve called the police and I suppose they’re on the way, but the company has a way of covering up things like this and I decided I can’t live with myself if I don’t put out some type of warning.
I kept digging into their reservation over the last couple of days and today I noticed they had purchased memory maker. There are photographers all over the parks and cameras in a lot of the rides and, with memory maker, the photos are all free. They automatically get added to a guest’s Disney account when the system knows their picture has been taken. And the system always knows. Everyone’s whereabouts are always known with the Magic Bands.
Well, I opened up their memory maker photo album and, I swear, there are 732 pictures. The first 30 or so are pretty normal. Epcot, a few rides, in front of the castle. But the rest. The rest are all in It’s a Small World. The rides only take one picture per go around. So it appears as though this family has ridden this ride over 700 times. The first picture was pretty normal. Everyone looked happy. It was a busy day, and we had a full car of guests. The next one is rough to look at. The car is empty except for this little family, and they look so darn confused. The next 10-15, I can see dad getting angry, yelling. Mom is holding onto her two kids like her life depends on it, and you can see the kids getting increasingly upset, crying. And it goes on, and on, and on. After 50 or so, it looks like they’re trying to get out. In one, the dad is missing. In another, they’re all gone. Maybe like they’ve bailed early in the ride and tried to walk out, but in the very next one, they’re all right back in that damn car. After around 450 or so, I only see the mom and kids. It’s just when I look closely I can see dad, maybe just his body now, slumped down in one of the other seats. Since about 675, there’s just mom and one kid. Another body in another seat. The mom and kid aren’t moving anymore. I think they’re still alive, just damn near catatonic. Looking straight ahead, pale.
And, y’all, I swear on my life, the dolls are moving or something. In some of these pictures, I can tell they aren’t where they should be. I even saw one with a doll in the car with this family.
I can’t look anymore, or I’m going to lose my lunch. I closed the album. Its file size has increased since I closed it. God, are there new pictures being added?
I see on security cameras that the local police department just arrived, so they’ll take over soon. I wish I knew what is going on, but I also wish this damn thing had never landed in my lap. I don’t think I’ll be able to update this. After I talk to the police, I think I’m going to walk out of here and never come back. I just wanted to get this out there, before Disney feeds the media some lies to cover up the reasons behind why a whole family vanished.
Because they didn’t vanish.
I know exactly where they are.
|
Working late one night, preparing for a court appearance the next morning, I was somewhat taken aback by the sudden breath of the long-forgotten, but supremely familiar scent of the desert air. A phantom smell. I was in Boston, far, far away from the desert back home. Why that particular scent came upon me, I couldn’t say, but it brought back a strong, and disturbing memory.
Back when I was in college, I had a remarkably upsetting experience. I was twenty-four, mostly broke, driving an ancient car that had been passed down to me from several previous owners. I was a good kid, though. I never got into any trouble and when I went home on weekends, I still lived with my parents. They were always glad to have me, even though dad threatened to turn my bedroom into a game room. Plus, free laundry machines and food. In my estimation, there was nothing better than my mom’s homemade macaroni and cheese. There still isn’t.
I did well in my studies and was working toward a degree in social work with a focus on child advocacy. My mother used to say I was born to serve.
The night it happened, I was driving back from school, heading toward home. My drive was about three hours long, and included a very lengthy stretch of desert road. A lonely highway, especially at night. It always creeped me out a little bit, so I typically tried to get through that area before the sun set and left the road in inky blackness. There was not very much to see during the drive anyway – sparse brush dotting the shoulder of the road, sometimes sand skittering across the blacktop, stirred by a whispered breath of air, the occasional car. With the windows down – as they usually were – I could smell the creosote and desert sage. The fragrant dry air was how I knew I was nearly home. I usually had the radio cranked up to deafening levels to distract me from the boredom.
That particular afternoon, I’d gotten a late start, so by the time I got to the desert, the shadows were already drawing long and purple lines over the scrub and rocks and the sun crowned golden on the bluffs ahead. Sitting in my office, I was transported back in time, caught up in the memory the phantom scent brought with it.
I saw the chick walking down the long stretch of road from about a mile away. This desert road, so straight, so freaking boring; I saw her immediately. She was so out of place. A blip on an otherwise empty radar. Even from far off I knew she was a she. I also knew that she wouldn’t be way out here unless there was something wrong. My mind processed all this pretty quickly and I resolved just as quickly that I’d stop to see if I could help. I’m a decent guy, you know? That is, I try to be.
As I got closer, I saw the backpack. Her long, blond hair – in a pony-tail – draped over the pack like a tassel. Hiking boots. From behind, she was something, that was for sure; I couldn’t wait to get a look at her face. Wouldn’t it be great if I rescued a beautiful damsel in distress on a long, desert highway? I killed the radio and started humming “Hotel California.”
I rolled to a stop just in front of her and waited for her to approach; my hands totally visible on the wheel. It was getting dark fast now, so, though the tops of the far-away hills were still kind of bright, it was sort of dim and purplish down on the road. I didn’t want to freak her out by getting out of the car. You know, strange guy, middle of nowhere, long, creepy shadows? Kind of seems like the plot to a bad “B” movie.
Anyway, sure enough, she walked right up to the car…and then right by it, like it wasn’t even there! She just kept going. Same pace. Boots putting distance between her and wherever. She was definitely moving. At that point, I did jump out of my car.
“Hey!” I yelled. “You OK?”
She paused, turned her head around, and looked at me like she was confused. “Yeah. Why?”
“Oh, well…I thought maybe you needed help. You know, like a ride or something?” I said.
“Nope. I’m good. Thanks anyway.” She turned around, pony-tail swinging, and continued hoofing it.
I stood there like an idiot watching her walk away and didn’t know what to do. The desert was super dark at night. Got pretty cold, too, even in the summer. Admittedly, she didn’t seem concerned about her situation. And that backpack looked stuffed full. I guessed she probably had some camping gear in there. Maybe she’d be alright? But, I really didn’t like the idea of just leaving her out here. It bugged me, you know? I jogged a bit to catch up with her.
“You again?” she asked, giving me a sidelong glance. She did not turn her head. She did not stop walking.
“I guess so,” I said.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Like I said, just thought you might need help. It’s getting dark out. Like, really, really dark. The desert isn’t friendly at night and the next town isn’t for another sixty miles. You sure you don’t need a ride? I promise, I’m not a weirdo.”
“I promise,” she said, mocking my tone, “I’m really OK.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” I said, doubt lacing my voice.
“I’m sure. See ya,” she said, clearly dismissing me. She kept walking.
I looked back at my car, which was further away than I expected it to be. Did we really go that far? I shrugged my shoulders and jogged – a little more quickly than before – back to my car.
She was pretty, but not in a blow-your-socks-off kind of way. She seemed – hard – somehow. Like she’d been there, you know? Maybe she’d had a hard life. I sat behind the wheel of my car for a couple of minutes mulling things over. Did I leave her out here? Did I shadow her? I mean, it’s not like she wouldn’t know I was there, but it would make me feel better knowing she was safe. But, wow! Another sixty miles to the next town, even at her pace – which was pretty quick – would take forever. This desert was…unsettling at night. Did I take her at her word and just go on?
As I watched, the shadows swallowed her; her form becoming dimmer and dimmer. Finally, she was barely visible, and then not at all. The sun was only just touching the very tips of the hills now and full-dark had taken over the road. I got a serious chill down my spine. I wasn’t afraid, exactly; I’d literally been down this highway before. A lot. But that chill, man. I was definitely a little weirded out, you know? It’s not every day you find a self-aware, determined, clearly capable, blond chick walking down the road in the middle of the desert. I decided to let her be. I needed to get home anyway.
As my car started moving, I began looking for her to appear in my car’s headlights. I drove an older-model Chevrolet. It was really ugly, but it ran like a champ. One headlight pointed straight ahead and kind of up a little, and the other pointed off to the right side of the road. I’d gotten used to the weird blind spots. But when I didn’t see her after driving for five minutes – because, truthfully, I should have seen her; she couldn’t have gotten that far away yet – I started to get concerned again. I drove for another five minutes and still no sign of her.
You know that little voice in your head that tells you something? Trust me, that voice usually has pretty good advice, and yeah, I really should have listened to it that night. I told myself she’d just veered off the road to make camp for the night. I told myself maybe I’d just missed her; my headlights were stupid anyway. I told myself maybe she’d switched sides of the road, so she could see oncoming cars at night. I told myself all manner of things to try to convince myself not to double back to check on her.
But I did.
I turned my rust-bucket on wheels around in the middle of the road, in the middle of the desert, in what felt like the middle of the night, and went back the way I came looking for the lone blonde hiker. While I was driving in the opposite direction, that little voice was literally screaming at me to make another uey and get on home. That voice can be pretty stubborn, but then again, so can I, you know? And I didn’t listen.
When I’d driven for ten or fifteen minutes back the way I’d come, I convinced myself I hadn’t just missed her; she was not there. Damn.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
I’m going to have to track her down.
Why should I even care? Why am I making this MY responsibility? I’m just a regular twenty-four year-old guy. I do not need to take on the world’s responsibilities, you know? But, I’d feel terrible if I got home, went to sleep in my nice safe, warm bed, only to wake up tomorrow morning to news that a girl was found in dead the desert.
After another hasty U-Turn, I was headed back toward home again. I felt better having the nose of my car pointed in the right direction at least. I stopped the car and snagged my cell phone from the passenger seat. There was no signal out here so it was pretty much useless, but it had a flashlight. I activated the little light, which felt like a beacon of hope, and left my car to make a visit to the trunk.
The dark surrounded me like a blanket. Well…actually, that’s not really true. Blankets are warm and comforting, and this darkness was not comforting. I rummaged through the crap in my trunk and unearthed the giant, bright yellow flood light I kept back there, and yanked out two of those triangular emergency reflectors. Once the flood light was on, I deactivated the little flashlight on my cell phone and tucked the phone into my back pocket, slammed the trunk, and set up the reflectors behind my car. I really didn’t want anyone (if anyone came along) to accidentally slam into my car. I figured I was being pretty responsible, you know?
Anyway, I finally turned that giant light toward the desert on the right side of the road and stood there, sweeping the light back and forth. I saw not much more than some low scrubby brush, and a bunch of rocks. It was pretty flat and lifeless. Maybe an occasional cactus or two, but not much else.
Staying where I was, I turned and swept the light across the left side of the road. Nothing.
Dammit.
Back on the right side of the road again, I looked at my feet and stepped down about four inches from the pavement onto the rocky desert sand. Taking a deep breath, I said a little prayer that I would find the girl and everything would be fine. We would laugh at my stupidity and I would go on my merry way.
Moving forward, I continued sweeping the flood light slowly back and forth, back and forth. It was so quiet out here. Yeah, there were the occasional sounds of small desert creatures scuttling here and there, but nothing major. I listened pretty carefully, too. I could hear the crunch of my sneakers, but that was about it.
After walking for about ten minutes, I decided I should make a wide arc and return to my car. There just wasn’t anything out here. I turned a little bit and began the route back to my car, swinging the flood light around as I had been.
And then I did see something.
I really only noticed it because it was out of place. A long shape among a bunch of flat nothing. The reach of my flood light was pretty far, and this something – this shape – was at the far end of my light, off to the left.
Keeping the light trained on the shape, I headed in that direction. I was actually feeling pretty hopeful, because it looked like – at least from my distance – a sleeping bag. The chick had bedded down for the night under the stars and among the desert scorpions. (Ugh. Scorpions. I hated those things.)
As I got closer, I realized I was right, it was a sleeping bag. And hope filled my heart when I recognized the blonde hair.
“Hey!” I called, too loudly in the dead quiet.
There was no response. I found it hard to believe she could have fallen asleep already.
“Hey, blonde chick!” I called again. I actually said it that way because I knew it might make her respond to me. Girls really don’t like to be called “chick.” I expected her to respond with her name, at least.
Nothing.
No sound.
Finally, I was within easy reach and what I saw had my heart beating right out of my chest.
The girl was there. On top of the sleeping bag. Her blonde head propped up on her backpack. At first I thought she really was asleep. Or, at least faking it. She had her hands laced together on her stomach. But when I got right up close, I could see I was totally wrong.
Her face was gone. In its place was only a sticky skull. Skin, eyes, muscle and sinew having been eaten away by desert creatures. Her blonde hair still mostly attached. The effect was horrifying. Her clothes (she was on top of the sleeping bag, not tucked into it) were dirty and torn. I could see where carrion creatures had eaten holes in her body; I could see her right femur. I couldn’t look away. I was simultaneously terrified out of my mind, and morbidly curious.
But finally, I noticed the blood – long since dried – that had pooled in copious amounts underneath her. A giant dark stain on her sleeping bag. The handle of a large hunting knife sticking straight up out of her chest, just under her sternum.
Realizing the truth – and suddenly feeling like a coward; my gorge rising – I ran. Booked it back to my car as fast as I could go. I was so grateful for that giant flood light; I would never have found my car again without it. I think I drove the last sixty miles to town in about twenty minutes. My first stop was at the police station to report what I’d seen.
It was only as the story was coming out of my mouth did I understand what I’d REALLY seen. The girl I’d talked to on the side of the road? The one I worried about enough that I went searching for her? She was the ghost of the body I’d found, covered in blood, in the desert. The officer I’d been talking to watched me carefully – understanding in a second what I’d only just understood myself.
As daylight came – man, that was the longest night of my life – I was in the back of a police car headed out the desert road once again. I had tried to explain to them that I would never be able to find the exact location again; everything looked the same. But they insisted I go along.
After a while, the officer who was driving said to his partner, “Look Mick, look there.” He was pointing at something ahead and off to the left a bit. I craned my neck to see what they saw.
They were looking at two triangular emergency reflectors and some serious skid marks on the asphalt.
I still had the newspaper article somewhere. Jesse Norris, runaway, aged 18, missing for nearly a year, finally discovered in the middle of the desert. Though there wasn’t much to go on, time and elements having washed away any real evidence, it was surmised she’d hitched a ride and was murdered by whomever picked her up. Her parents, at least, had been glad to finally have some closure.
What the newspaper article never mentioned, however, was the means by which she had been found. The officers, and the staff writer for the newspaper, had both decided it was better to leave out the part about her ghost.
She still haunts me. I still see her face, so world-wise and weary, as she spoke to me when I’d offered her a ride. I prefer to remember her like that, instead of the nightmarish skeleton she’d become when I finally found her.
Years later, mom will sometimes call me to report another sighting. Jesse is still hiking that long stretch of desert road.
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I worked in the dredging industry for quite some time now. For those of you unaware of what dredging is, it’s a sector of marine construction that involves excavating the bottom of a body of water, and relocating the material elsewhere. If you’ve ever been to a beach on the East Coast of the U.S., there’s a pretty fair chance that we were the ones who put that sand under your feet. Coastal restoration was our most lucrative and commonplace type of contract, but, over the years, our tasks have ranged to most everything imaginable. We’ve had military contracts where we’ve removed UXO’s from the ocean; we’ve had marsh jobs, cleaning decades of silt (and what was buried within it) from waterways. The variety in the work we’ve done is innumerable… and, might I add, not limited to the U.S.A. So, to keep it brief, dredging is simply digging up the bottom of a body of water… and water is very good at hiding its inhabitants. This will be a collection of the “unexplainable” or “extraordinary” things I’ve seen over the years. Please keep in mind that these instances are quite uncommon, and had given an opportunity to investigate further, would most likely be revealed mundane. But under the shadows of night, fog, grove, and depth, these specters make good stories.
I feel it appropriate to begin with my personal, “first”, unexplainable encounter in the dredging world. I was relatively new to the industry, since most of the men who work in dredging are lifers, or retired Navy. Still a virgin to the ocean’s wonders…and horrors, I was working on a clamshell dredge. Quickly, a clamshell dredge is a barge with a massive crane on it that operates a bucket (shaped like a clam) and dips underwater, clamps the material from the bottom, and swings it over to a holding barge on either side of the dredge; I highly recommend a quick Google search for visualization. Thus, everything that is pulled from the ocean ends up in the holding barge, also known as a scow, and can be seen from any elevated vantage point from on board the dredge. Nearly 100% of the time, the scow is filled with mud, water, logs, and other combinations of detritus tailored specific to the type of job we’re on. But on those rare good days, we’ll fish up an anchor, a table or chairs, even a cannon one time, or other interesting relics damned to the deep until our hallowed vessel raised them from their aquatic perdition; this was one of the “best” days. A deckhand performing a routine scow inspection notified the crew that there was a “treasure chest” partially buried in the mud of the scow. We were digging off the coast of Louisiana at the time, and skepticism that it was actually a treasure chest was high… and rightfully so. Since no one is actually allowed down into the scow for safety reasons, the operator picked the section of mud that the chest was in up with the crane, raised it to deck level with the scow, and two crewmembers retrieved it from there. Given that two men hoisted it out with certain ease, any lingering hopes of it being filled with gold were instantly silenced. Interest noticeably lower amongst the crew, a few guys stuck around to offer their passive gaze; me, just barely graduated from my green hard hat, was all but ogling the chest. After busting the lock off with a sledge, my eyes widened with the chest’s maw; when we could finally see what was inside, they might have just widened all 180 degrees with it. Inside, were ingredients- ritualistic ingredients. Strange religious icons, what looked like fat pitchforks with spiral insignias on them, filled the chest nearly to the brim. Interwoven amongst them were other totems: small animal remains, bones all but picked clean by shrimp or minnows compact enough to infiltrate the chest’s tight breaches. Odd jewelry, seemingly fashioned from rodent skulls and rocks bound together with hair, was snagged between the other inhabitants. Maybe a book had been in there; we found what looked like the remains of a leather bound spine, the rest of the pages long dispersed amidst the Gulf. And, second most creepy of all, was a human skull. It was small, about the size of a 3 or 4 year old maybe, and while the other “goodies” were partially buried under the pitchforks, the skull was perfectly atop them. But, there were no other human sized limbs in the chest. Even after we pulled out a crowbar, no one dared actually touch the box of Satan’s groceries, we did a little sifting; we found no other bones sized even close to that of a child. It was just his or her head. Now you’re probably thinking: what could be in a voodoo style ritual chest that’s creepier than a kid’s head? Well, the scratch marks. Scratch marks, varying in streaks of three, four, or five, covered the entire inside of the chest’s lid. There just, weren’t any bones that could have made them… or any way that they could have gotten out. We re-locked it with a padlock, and tossed it overboard.
This next one is pretty unbelievable. I actually had trouble going into the ocean after this. The job was off of the coast in the middle of nowhere outback, Australia. There was a refinery out there, and we were to pull mud and sand from the Indian Ocean and create a bank against a cliff face to help stop erosion for another 100 years or whatever. The point is, we were using what was called a cutter dredge. Once again, quickly, this dredge grinds up material and suctions it up via a massive drill at the working bow of the barge; if you didn’t Google the other dredge, please do yourself a favor and look up this one; it’s badass. Then, using hundreds of feet of steel pipeline that we set up, the mud and sand is pumped all the way to the shore. One day, the barge started heeling starboard side. Most dredges are set up on spuds, giant pillars that actually work as feet. Thus, the dredge was standing 40 feet below on the bottom of the ocean instead of floating. Dredges tip like this all the time, because the spuds can be staggered at different heights to change the angle at which the cutter can operate. So, the crew only became unnerved when the operator announced on the radio that he was not shifting the spuds. A 250 foot barge was being pulled over. At this point, the shore crew radioed us from land, and asked if we had stopped digging because the material had ceased. Noticeably panicked, I remember the Captain laughing through his answer in utter disbelief: “Yeah, we stopped. I think something is trying to pull us under”. Now, this isn’t as dramatic as I’m accidentally making it sound. Sure, it would take something the size of a sperm whale to shift us on our spuds, but the dredge was only dispositional by a few degrees. On board, the angle was barely noticeable; my office chair would sluggishly roll, and only when I took my hands off of my desk. What is dramatic is what the dive crew found the next day. The four foot in diameter steel piping had been parted and collapsed on one end. Steel piping had been torn through and bent closed. There are things in the ocean that can bend steel piping. The creepiest part, I quivered when I saw the divers’ pictures, was that the end of the piping was pulled out away from shore, down towards a drop off on the ocean floor. The darkness swirled around the edge of the piping. Shortly past that was the ocean’s invisible frontier. From the camera’s point of view, we looked like we were tethered straight to hell.
This next story takes place back on the cutter dredge; so, I can skip the sleep inducing yet largely necessary introduction. Our job was to grind up large rocks and debris on the ocean floor, off the east coast of Florida, so that a different dredge can raise the material up more efficiently. While cutting dense rock, you can feel the impact from topside of the dredge. After hours of being constantly jostled, your mind will just begin to ignore the repeated stimuli. It’s similar to how when you step into a room for the first time, you can smell its distinct odor. But after you’ve been in there for a few minutes, the room’s odor neutralizes. When the dredge suddenly stopped jostling, without the operator having stopped us to move forward, we all noticed the change in our bodies’ equilibrium. We also all noticed the plume of red water dyeing the ocean’s surface around us. I didn’t see the eruption myself, but the operator of the drill said that the blood just exploded from the deep- the bright red a stark contrast from the light tinted royal blue royal blue. Now, for perspective, we’ve never drilled anything that produced visible blood before. First off, we send out periodic electric shocks in the water to keep all fish, of all sizes, away from the drilling area. Second, the dredge was surrounded by blood. Picture a rubber duck in a bathtub. Our 250 foot craft was the rubber duck, and the deep red water was the surface size of the tub. At first we didn’t even think it was blood because it was so plentiful. But, we had absolutely no other explanation for what it could’ve been. The 4 sharks that showed up a few minutes later stopped us from racking our brains any further. Typically, divers aren’t used to survey the seafloor, only to inspect equipment. But, we had an ecologist on board to watch for sea turtles approaching the drill area. It’s required by law for certain jobs, in spite of our own aforementioned precautions. She insisted that we dive to investigate… and I’m kind of glad she did. The divers came out the following day. It’s typically a day or two of bureaucracy before we can get unscheduled divers out, so the blood was gone by this time. All that was found was a graveyard of one. Bone fragments were strewn about the seafloor, but no parts of flesh had survived a whole day’s onslaught of ravenous sea scavengers. Also, there was no identifiable body. Whatever was struck by our drill could not have survived. The blood was too prolific. But, the bones were “too badly damaged” to point towards any definitive skeleton. The fragments were surfaced and taken by the state for analysis; I never saw a Yahoo article claiming we had killed a sea monster, so I’m not sure what their findings were.
These final stories all take place on a crew boat. A crew boat is a smaller vessel, typically 30-40 feet, taken out from shore to the larger vessels in the fleet. That is to say, you are more vulnerable on crew boats than dredges.
This first ride is from off the coast of Brazil. The run took around 45 minutes to reach the dredge; but, since I was on night shift, the run took around an hour due to lower visibility. This was a clear night with very calm waves. When the waves are gentle, the crew boat barely sways. It feels like mother-nature herself is actually rocking you to sleep. These are the best naps I’ve taken in my entire life. Anyway, about 30 minutes into our ride out, a thick fog just appeared around our boat. It was almost like a magician snapping his fingers and smoke engulfing him for his getaway… but less dramatic and more unnerving. This isn’t supernatural, though. Flash fog is pretty common, and it does just phase in and out in seemingly no time at all. Still, no matter how ordinary it is, being suddenly suffocated out of nowhere puts any man on edge. Needless to say, the crew boat had to slow its pace further due to critically low visibility. This is when we noticed something that did seem unnatural. With our speed cut to a slow trawl, the waves began to catch our attention. They were much higher now, maybe a foot to a foot and a half high, and there was no wind. It was still a calm night, just as it had always been, but now the waves were rough. In order to combat seasickness, or even just discomfort when subject to bouncing waves, you’re supposed to look out over the water. Do not close your eyes or follow the horizon; you want your eyes to agree with the fluid in your ears that registers the imbalances around you. So, as I scanned the water, I saw it through the fog. It was only about 20 yards from the boat, at the very edge of our visibility through the unrevealing air. It looked like a whale’s blowhole, but it protruded from the back rather than situated at surface level; it was more like a blow spout. It would expand and contract in slow, rhythmic beats. And from this spout, the thickest of the fog would rise. I could see just passed it on either side, but just above it was an impregnable opaque. I tried to follow the spout to the water’s surface with my eyes, but the fog cut me off. With my view censored, I continued squinting at the odd appendage. This is when I realized that it wasn’t moving. Or rather, it wasn’t moving laterally. As the crew boat continued forward, the spout was becoming less and less visible. But, it was rotating in a manner such that I always saw the same side of it. As if, it was tracing our boat with a hidden sense that required a rigid line of reference. This whole time, I hadn’t said a word to the other men. I was entranced by wonderment and intrigue. These emotions changed when the spout fell behind a thick patch of fog, and my gaze trailed down to the wake outside of our boat. A dark mass could be seen just a few feet from the hull of our ship. A few feet wide, this shadow trailed off under the fog, spanning at least 30 feet in length. If (something that I began to speculate later) it was the same mass connected to the fog spout, it must have been at least 60 feet long. I remember shuddering, and reeling my attention back into what the spout could have been. There are shadows lurking under the surface all of the time, and they are never as mysterious or terrifying as the beast your mind fabricates for them. This time may be an exception to that rule. After our boat pulled out of the fog and arrived at the dredge later on, it occurred to me that the shadow was also listing to face us. Whatever it was, it was eyeing us… and was at least twice as large as our vessel.
In my entire dredging career, I’ve only seen one man die on the job. This is a surprisingly gracious record, given the mortality rate for this profession. How this man died was not entirely “unexplainable”, but it was ghastly none the less.
In the northern states, on days of considerable cold, the waves that splash up onto the deck of the crew boat will actually freeze over. The crew will be riding in the cab, but when we step out onto the deck to transfer, there will be visible ice glossed over the outside. One time, a deckhand opened the hatch of the cab and went out onto the deck. He was going to put down some rock salt to help with our transfer, as we were slowly nearing the dredge. Then, we all heard him yell “What the fuh…!” and a splash soon to follow. He never surfaced. The sub-zero waters and no way to dry off would’ve killed any man out here in a matter of minutes. State divers arrived within the hour, and they found his body almost immediately. He was just floating at about 6 feet, frozen solid. The rescue personnel couldn’t even lower his arms to secure him to the stretcher… nor could they pry his fingers open to remove the knife. No marks were found on his body, and the report read that he had accidentally slipped overboard. The thing is, the deck has a railing on both sides. All transfers from the crew boat happen at the stern, where there’s an opening in this railing. But… the bag and salt lines never made it past mid-ship.
This next instance, we were dredging down in the Keys; this was on the Gulf side, so, sadly, I have nothing to testify for the Bermuda Triangle in my repertoire. During another heavenly long cruise in the morning (about an hour and a half in permissible weather), the unknown was in front of us rather than below. Listing into our path was a shrimping vessel. The two outrigger booms were a dead give-away to its identity. As our craft approached, we noticed that it wasn’t trawling. None of its balloon nets were cast, and it wasn’t running. It was just drifting: no anchor, no engine. Unless you see someone rod fishing or breaking into a beer on board, a drifting vessel is almost always a negative sign. The crew boat captain radioed the vessel’s call sign on channel 13, the Coast Guard required monitor frequency, but there was no answer. Now, this was back in the ‘90s where safety red tape was less adhesive and more of a guideline. So, we did what any self-respecting sailor would do, and boarded the trawler. We moored Stern to Stern with the derelict craft, and me and two other guys jumped on board. As expected, we almost caught ourselves in the balloon nets that were scattered on deck. After untangling our boots, the deckhand and I went to see if there was any owner identification or, god forbid, bodies in the cabin; it’s not too often that a boat is intentionally left unattended. We didn’t have too much luck, but we had enough. The walls were stained a reddish yellow from rising algae or such, and the cabin reeked of iron and guano and was in utter disarray; most of the furnishings were eviscerated and their contents scattered afoot. Also, since the cabin door was left open, any of the surviving documents were ruined by infiltrating rain or tide. However, given the call sign on the bow (which will remain unnamed) and a few accompanying certificates of inspection framed on the walls barely safe above the invading waters, we managed to ID the ship. Successful, and with the captain radioing the Coast Guard with the ship’s coordinates, me and the deckhand started back to our crew boat. This is where the third man comes into play. The mate, who took a rather long time joining us inside the cabin, was still on deck carefully palming through the nets. “Looking for shrimp?” I remember the deckhand jesting. It was pretty good, so I let out a ‘nice’. I couldn’t tell if the mate was less amused, or even registered what he had said. Because, the next thing he did, was hold the net up to our faces. Tangled within the woven nylon beyond any means of escape, was a human hand. Its fingers curled around the net as if for dear life, the bones still barely held together by its few most robust tendons… The Coast Guard arrived in about 2 hours, and make of it what you will, informed us that the fishing boat had only just left for a registered, commercial run 18 hours prior. The ship looked like it had been wayward for weeks, enduring everything offered by inclimate weather and carrion feeding cycles. But, the facts just stated otherwise. Its dilapidated state was simply unjustifiable. We left the rest up to the Coast Guard, and resumed our trek out to the dredge. Along the way, we chatted and japed, happy with only a half days left of work ahead of us… except the mate; he wasn’t too jolly. I wouldn’t call his demeanor frightened or shaken. It was more concerned and quizzical. He let us know, eventually, what was on his mind: the net he was inspecting had a large hole thrashed in it. And, apparently, we idiots didn’t notice that the cabin door wasn’t ‘open’, it was gone. “The hinges were splayed, the door was ripped off, and your heads were so far up each other’s asses that you stumbled into that cabin anyway”, were his exactly words I believe. Perhaps the Coast Guard figured out what had happened on that trawler, but we sure as hell couldn’t come up with anything close.
And that’s it. An entire lifetime at sea, and these are what I have to show for it: no monsters, no demons, only stories- stories that the ocean told to me. The darkest shadows, the ones cast below the surface of the water, are what spun these yarns. No one truly knows what we’ve seen, staring from our manmade craft into the primordial abyss. But, what I do know for certain, is that the ocean is a mysterious place. So mysterious, that an entire life spent buys naught but hints and more questions. Perhaps, the sea is hiding creatures more fearsome than the abyssal nightmare that can only be created in our own mind’s eye. Or, it hides nothing; the ocean may just be a talented pretender, tricking anyone too willing to believe. So, the choice is yours: do you see shadows or do you see monsters?
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Fabled Oaks Elementary School – 1998
The bell rang out through the corridors and classrooms of Fabled Oaks Elementary School, signalling the end of another day for the children and teachers within.
“Okay kids, that’s the bell!” Sarah Rogers stood up from her desk and made the announcement to her 2nd grade class, who had already started packing up their things. “Don’t forget your homework for tomorrow! Write out one rule you have to follow at home and why you think it’s a good idea to follow it.”
A couple of the kids looked up at Sarah and nodded or smiled politely. Michael Redman kept his eyes on the floor, slung his bag over his shoulder and made a b-line for the classroom door. Sarah moved to stop him, crouching down to his level.
“Did you hear that Michael?” She enquired sweetly.
Michael stopped but didn’t look up from the floor. “Yes Miss Rogers” he mumbled.
“For tomorrow, yes Michael?”
Michael scuffed his foot on the classroom carpet. “Yes Miss Rogers” he repeated in an identical mumble.
Sarah placed a hand on Michael’s shoulder in an effort to at least inspire some eye contact. It didn’t work. “It’s a just few sentences, no more than half a page. Ask for your mom for help if you get in a bind okay?”
Michael stood in silence with his eyes still fixed on the floor, waiting to be dismissed.
Sarah stood up and stepped out of his way. “Go on home now Michael and you have a great evening!” She tried to sound as chirpy as possible but couldn’t help letting out a heavy sigh as Michael hurried out of her classroom and down the corridor.
Stepping out into the crisp winter afternoon, Sarah breathed in the fresh air. She watched all the parents gathering kids into their arms, wrangling them into cars or forcing on gloves and scarves for the walk home. Sarah wrapped her own scarf round her neck and strode off towards her apartment. It was only around a 15 minute walk back home but Sarah relished the opportunity for some time to herself to get a little exercise and listen to her walkman. Today however, she couldn’t help thinking about little Michael Redman as she walked among the bare trees that lined the picturesque streets of Fabled Oaks. Of course she’d taught quiet kids before, daydreamers and artistic types, but they usually came at least a little out of their shell after a few months. Michael had come into her class nervous and introverted and had remained that way for the 7 months she’d taught him. She wasn’t aware of any problems at home, though she’d never met his mom, his dad seemed pretty together, providing a stable home with his stable job. There was just no reason for Michael to be quite as distant as he was, save for the fact he might just be a weird kid, which was of course okay as far as Sarah was concerned. Most famous and well respected singers, actors and artists claim to have been weird kids at school, he probably had a lifetime of greatness to look forward to. Just as long as he wasn’t being bullied, wasn’t being damaged at school… or at home.
These thoughts stayed with Sarah right up to the door of her apartment, but they were immediately pushed from her mind when her roommate Ryan swung open the slab of bleached wood and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“He called this afternoon!” he cried theatrically before practically dragging Sarah over to the answering machine. He forced her down into a chair and then sat opposite her, a captive audience.
Sarah reached out and pressed play on the machine. What followed was a message from a man named Derek, with whom Sarah had been on two dates. They’d gone well and now Derek was asking if he could come over on Friday night and cook her a romantic meal. The message ended and Ryan waited expectantly for a reaction.
“Okay, cool” was Sarah’s muted response.
“Okay cool?!” Ryan flew up from his chair. “Okay cool?!” he repeated incredulously. “This is the third date Rogers! The third date!” Ryan clapped his hands together with glee as Sarah stood up and started taking off her coat and scarf.
“So?” she replied, uninterested.
“So? So?!” Ryan marched over to the window and flung it open. “Let the world rejoice! This Friday the great dry spell of 1997 to 1998 will finally be broken!”
“Ryan!” Sarah switched into teacher mode as she told him off and slammed the window shut. “Our neighbours already hate us” she snapped.
“No Sarah they hate me, they pity you because they’re all closed minded bigots!” Ryan made a point of raising his voice and angling its direction towards the wall as he said the last three words.
Sarah threw a pillow at him, shushing him aggressively.
“Be more excited Sarah” was Ryan’s giddy response, “my God do you need this!”
Sarah flopped down on the sofa and finally let a smile spread across her face.
“Yes!” Ryan cheered, “stay right there, I’m making celebratory spaghetti!”
Sarah sank back into the cushions. She’d always prided herself on the fact that she didn’t need a boyfriend to be happy and while that fact still remained, it had felt like a long year… Derek seemed fun and Sarah would be the first to admit that she could really use some fun in her life.
At 3 o’clock the next day the bell rang out again and again the kids in Sarah’s 2nd grade class began packing up to go home for the night.
“Anyone who hasn’t handed in their homework yet needs to do so before they leave!” Sarah called out over the rumble of chairs scraping across floors and books being shoved into bags. Everyone handed in their sheets of paper and left in a hurry, eager to get home to their comic books and cartoons. Sarah would not be leaving so soon, choosing to grade the aforementioned homework in the peace and quiet of her classroom, away from Ryan and his distractions. She didn’t read the papers in the order they were handed in, instead she went straight for Michael Redman’s, eager to get a further insight into his home life. She found it near the bottom of the pile, scrawled in red pen.
At home I have to eat all of my vegetables.
I think this is a good rule because even though I don’t like vegetables Mommy says if I don’t eat them the ghost of Lisa Lynn will come to my room at night and pull out all my teeth and my tongue for not looking after them.
I like my teeth and my tongue so I think it is a good rule.
Sarah shuddered as she read the words, even more so when she saw the macabre drawing at the bottom of the page. Still in stark red biro, scribbled with violent strokes was a woman crawling across a floor on all fours. She had messy, thin hair hanging limply over her face and her mouth was gaping wide open, filled in with nothing but red spirals. Sarah was all for using a child’s imagination to drive home important life lessons, but this seemed a cautionary tale too far in her opinion. She tried to work out if Michael’s mother had helped him write the piece, whether she knew this was what his teacher was going to read. The grammar was fine but Michael was a smart kid, he was capable of writing at this level on his own. Had he made up the story? From any other kid Sarah might not have been so worried about the thought, but stories that dark coming from kids as introverted as Michael were usually not a good sign. Sarah put the paper aside and tried to push those thoughts from her head while she graded the others.
“Have you ever heard of Lisa Lynn?” Sarah asked Ryan as he emerged out of the kitchen clutching two glasses of red wine.
“Is she the guy who’s gonna bring you back from the land of sexual repression?” Ryan smiled as he handed Sarah a glass. “No? Let’s talk about Derek instead then! Have you called him back?”
Sarah knew she wasn’t going to be able to breach any other topic with Ryan until they’d laid that one to rest, so she obliged. “Yes, I called him at lunchtime, he’s coming over tomorrow to cook me a meal”
Ryan stamped his feet with glee. “And you’ll-”
“Shave every inch of my body below the neck tonight, yes” Sarah cut in. “And you’ll-”
“Make sure I’m not here from tomorrow lunchtime to Saturday afternoon” Ryan responded in kind. They took a moment to look at each other in shared excitement before Sarah pulled the conversation back.
“So. Lisa Lynn. Ever heard the name before?” She asked, taking a sip from her glass.
Ryan thought for a moment before his eyes widened just a little and he opened his mouth to speak.
“Serious answers only please” Sarah cut him off again.
Ryan faked a frown before seriously considering the question. “Are we talking someone from School? Work? Mutual friend? Long lost cousin?” A surprisingly valid question, at least he was taking this seriously.
“We’re talking urban legends, cautionary tales that kind of thing. Like Bloody Mary or The Sandman.” Sarah replied.
Ryan was suddenly a little more interested. “Oooooh, can’t say I have. What’s her deal? Say her name three times and she appears and eats you?” Ryan was seriously into urban legends, so his lack of knowledge concerning this particular one suggested it probably hadn’t reached an audience any wider than the Redman family.
“Close… kind of.” Sarah took another sip of wine as Ryan leaned in, relishing the idea of a new tale he could tell at Halloween parties.
“She visits you if you don’t eat your vegetables and she pulls out all your teeth and your tongue”
Ryan fell back in his chair in a fit of giggles. “Eeeeeew, that’s gross!” he spluttered. “But lots of people don’t eat their vegetables… pretty crappy story if you ask me, most people will know it’s not true straight away.”
“Lots of people never eat any vegetables?” Sarah commented dryly, “and are there any urban legends that anyone actually believes?”
“Yes Sarah, this is America” Ryan shot back, “and have you ever said Candyman 5 times in a row?”
Sarah didn’t respond, which was enough of an answer for Ryan.
“Exactly!” he laughed triumphantly before standing up and heading to the kitchen to fill his empty glass. “Maybe she only appears once you know about her, like there’s no excuse after that?” he suggested as he came back into the living room with full glass and a fresh bottle. “Where did you hear about her anyway?”
“One of the kids wrote about her in a homework assignment.”
Ryan stopped, mid movement. “Jesus Sarah what was the assignment? You teach 2nd Grade right?!”
Sarah laughed and Ryan seemed pleased with the reaction, realising she was worried he’d decided to cheer her up.
“It was about writing a rule that they have to follow at home, and why they think it’s a good one to follow. This kid Michael wrote about his mom making him eat his veggies so Lisa Lynn wouldn’t come and… do her thing.”
Ryan began to put together why she was so worried. “Wow, that’s kinda messed up.” he observed. “What’s the kid like?”
“Who, Michael? He’s small, introverted, quiet” Sarah sighed.
“Ain’t it always the quiet ones” Ryan growled like a hard boiled detective, managing to extract another little laugh out of Sarah. “You think he made it up? Pretty dark for an 8 year old.”
“You’d be surprised at the kind of shit 8 year old’s can conjure up out of their twisted little minds, Ryan” Sarah laughed again, but then her face dropped a little. “If it was any other kid I wouldn’t be worried. From any other kid it’d be a joke, seeing how far they could push the boundaries y’know? But Michael’s different.” Sarah looked down at her wine, lost in thought.
“You’re gonna call his mom, right?” Ryan asked.
Sarah snapped back to reality. “I think I have to, don’t you?” Her eyes searched for reassurance.
“I most definitely do!” Ryan obliged.
Sarah stood up headed for the phone.
“You’re gonna call now?!” Ryan gestured at the bottle and the empty glass in front of Sarah’s chair.
“Yeah, I’m fine! Plus I won’t be able to concentrate on anything else till I sort this out.” Sarah dialled for the operator and looked out the window onto the street while she waited for an answer. “Hi, can you connect me to the Redman household please? In Fabled Oaks, yes” she twisted the phone chord between her fingers while she waited to be connected.
“Hello?” came the voice on the other end of the line. “This is Harry Redman, who’s this?”
“Hello Mr Redman” Sarah’s phone voice was soft but professional. “This is Sarah Rogers, I’m Michael’s 2nd Grade teacher.”
“Ah, hello Sarah, am I okay to call you Sarah? Please call me Harry.” His voice was warm and friendly, as he had been the few times he and Sarah had met previously.
“Of course Harry, how are you? I was wondering if I might speak to Michael’s mother?” Sarah cut straight to the chase; she hated talking to parents about their kids’ issues.
“Oh we’re all fine thanks but Rachel can’t come to the phone at the moment, she’s- she can’t come to the phone. Is there anything I can help you with?” Harry’s tone was suspicious, suddenly his warmth wasn’t so easily felt.
“It’s just a little question about a homework piece Michael wrote” Sarah tried to retain her composure through the conversation’s sudden shift in tone. She looked round at Ryan, who responded with an encouraging thumbs up. “It would actually be great if I could meet with her in person to talk about it, could she come in after school on Monday?”
“Oh no, she wouldn’t come into the school.” As Harry said the words Sarah could hear a strange noise coming from the other end of the line, as if someone else in the room was groaning. Trying to ignore the disturbing sounds Sarah pressed on.
“She wouldn’t come into the school? May I ask why not?” she asked.
Harry struggled to make himself heard over the groaning. It was as if someone was trying to talk to him but didn’t have the capacity to form the words properly. “I mean, she wouldn’t wait until Monday, could she see you tomorrow?” He asked, distracted.
Sarah sighed in frustration, remembering her plans with Derek. “I’m afraid I have to be back home as soon as school finishes tomorrow.” The noise on the other end of the phone got louder.
“Could she drop by your house, then?” Harry asked blithely, as if he didn’t realise the irregularity of his question. It took Sarah aback and she answered without thinking,
“I suppose. I live pretty close to the school, the Pine Grove, apartment 203.” She regretted the words as soon as she said them.
“That’s great! She’ll come over around three-thirty?” Harry’s full concentration was still focused elsewhere as the moaning continued.
“Okay, tell her I’ll see her then.”
Harry hung up without saying goodbye.
Sarah stood for a moment, phone still at her ear, unsure of what to do next.
“Well that sounded odd.” Ryan’s observation snapped Sarah out of the confused daze the conversation had left her in. “Am I right to think you’ve just asked this kid’s mom to come here? The same evening you’re supposed to be ‘entertaining’ Derek?” His tone was almost accusatory.
“Well I couldn’t wait around at school for her!” Sarah snapped back.
“And why is waiting around here any better?” Ryan still sounded like he was telling her off and Sarah raised her voice and sharpened her tone in response.
“Because I can be tidying and getting ready while I wait and as soon as she’s gone I don’t have to make time to get home or anything, I can just be getting ready.” She was coming up with accuses as she was saying them, afraid to admit that there was no reasoning behind her decision to have Michael’s mom over to the apartment, she’d just panicked and agreed to it out of politeness. “Besides, what do you care, you won’t be here remember?” Sarah was shouting now, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the phone and waved it in Ryan’s direction.
“Yeah, I’ll be at Kate’s house!” Ryan was shouting right back at Sarah. “If you’re still cozying up with this kid’s mom when Derek gets here send him over to me, I’ll make sure he doesn’t waste any more of his time!” He swiped the wine glasses from the table and stormed out of the room.
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Sarah shouted after him but it was too late, he’d already left her company.
The next day at school was much like any other. Fridays were always harder because the kids knew it was the weekend soon, so they were more easily distracted, more excitable. Sarah did her best to try and teach them something through the constant hum of chat and giggling, but she too was preoccupied. Her phone conversation the previous night still had her spooked. Something was seriously off with Harry Redman and that groaning noise. That horrible groaning noise, Sarah could still hear it if she closed her eyes. It wasn’t like someone in pain or anything, it was just like they were trying to communicate with Harry, or whoever else was in the room. It was high pitched, like a woman or a child’s voice and it was calm, like someone slowly and methodically trying to form words without the proper capacity to do so. Like someone trying to talk without a tongue. The thought hit Sarah in the middle of third period. Harry had originally said that his wife wouldn’t come to the school, but even when Sarah questioned it he had simply suggested meeting on a different day. It was Sarah who said she couldn’t meet at the school that evening, but Harry had never suggested meeting at the school, he did suggest meeting at her apartment, though. Away from the judging eyes of the public. Why would Michael’s mother be afraid to meet in public? Who was making those strange sounds on the other end of the phone? Sarah was suddenly terrified of meeting with Michael’s mother. She didn’t want to hear any more about what Lisa Lynn might do if you don’t eat your vegetables, especially if she might hear the story told by someone with first hand experience.
“You think a ghost took this kid’s mother’s teeth?” Sasha handed Sarah a strong coffee and sat down opposite her, shifting uncomfortably in the cheap, itchy armchair that had occupied the staff room since the school was built in 1964. “Are you sleeping enough?”
Sarah couldn’t help but laugh at herself, hearing it laid out in plain english she realised how ridiculous she was being. “After hearing it out loud? No, I don’t believe that.” She looked down at her coffee nervously, swirling the liquid around and staring into the blackness. She was telling the truth, she didn’t believe Lisa Lynn had visited Michael’s mother, so why did she still have a knot in her stomach?
“You don’t even know that was her making noises on the phone, right?” Sasha asked.
“No, I guess I don’t.” Sarah replied.
“So there’s a pretty strong chance that this woman will come to your house tonight, get offended that you’re either questioning her parenting methods or calling her child a psycho, and leave mumbling something about moving schools, right?”
“Right.” That particular scenario didn’t exactly make Sarah feel better.
“Worst case scenario?” Sasha continued. “It was her making weird noises in the phone and she hasn’t got any teeth or a tongue. She probably lost them in a horrific accident and now struggles through life without the ability to talk or chew properly, the one silver lining being that she can use her disfigurement to make her kid eat his vegetables.” Sasha stopped and took a moment to lean in and make eye contact with Sarah. “Remember, I’m making this up, I don’t believe any of this is true for a second.” Point made she leaned back into her armchair again. “So you have to make it through an awkward evening of trying to communicate with this woman whilst making it seem like her total lack of oral furniture doesn’t totally freak you out. That’s all you’d have to do.”
Sarah smiled timidly and looked out through the window at all the children on their lunch break, running around in the playground, not a care in the world.
Sasha reached out and touched her arm gently. “You won’t have to do any of that, Sarah. This kid’s mother is going to be a normal, functioning human who thinks her horror stories teach her kids more lessons than you do, just like all the others.”
For the first time that day Sarah felt okay about the whole situation. It was a talent of Sasha’s, rationalising and explaining things clearly and honestly, it’s what made her a phenomenal teacher despite her rampant pessimism.
Sarah had called to try and cancel the meeting several times throughout the morning, but there was never any answer at the Redman house. Sasha’s pep talk had put her mind at ease dramatically, but given the choice she would still rather not go through with the meeting. When three o’clock rolled around and school finished for the week, Sarah checked in at reception to see if anyone had called back to confirm the cancellation. A frail shake of the head from the ancient receptionist dashed any of her last hopes and she resigned herself to the fact she’d have to find out in person whether her hunch about Michael’s mother was right. She watched Michael as he left school to see if anyone came to pick him up, but he got on the bus with the other kids as usual. She didn’t listen to her walkman on the journey home, she just thought about Michael and Lisa Lynn. Or rather she thought about Michael’s mother and Lisa Lynn. She got home around three-twenty and busied herself with some tidying, although to Ryan’s credit he’d done a pretty good job of clearing tables and washing dishes before he left. Sarah hoped that meant they were okay after last night’s argument. Three-thirty came and went with no visitors at the door. Sarah’s hands began to shake less as she allowed herself to think that maybe Michael’s mother had got one of the messages she’d left. Maybe she wasn’t coming after all.
The knock came at three-fifty three. Sarah’s heart jumped into her throat as the sound of the banging shot right through her. She took a minute to calm her breathing and straighten herself out before answering the door. As she got closer the banging suddenly stopped. The visitor obviously saw Sarah’s shadow through the peep hole or heard her footsteps, nothing too weird or out of the ordinary there. It was the sound that could be heard now that the banging had ceased that put Sarah’s teeth on edge. Through the door she could hear a low rasping noise, strained and sinister, getting louder and faster. Knowing full well she’d lose her nerve if she listened to the noise any longer, Sarah steeled herself and opened the door. The woman standing on the other side was small and slender and she looked to be in her early 40s. She was dressed conservatively and smiled sheepishly but sweetly when Sarah reached out to shake her hand.
“Hi there, you must be Rachel, Michael’s mother? Is it okay if I call you Rachel?”
The woman gave a small shrug as she smiled again and nodded.
“Please come in, I’m hoping this won’t take long. I just want to quickly talk to you about a homework paper Michael wrote this week.”
Rachel entered the apartment as she was ushered in and sat in the chair at the dining table Sarah was gesturing to.
“Can I get you a tea or coffee?” Sarah asked.
Rachel shook her head but still didn’t say anything.
“Okay then, let’s get straight to it!” Sarah tried to sound upbeat as she retrieved Michael’s homework from her bag and sat down next to Rachel, but the only thought swirling around in her head was that Rachel had not said a single word since arriving at the apartment. Sarah handed over the paper and waited for Rachel to read it. A few minutes passed and Rachel was still staring at the piece of paper in front of her, so Sarah decided to cut in before the meeting dragged on too long. “It’s not down to me to tell you how to teach your children valuable lessons Mrs Redman, I just wanted to check that you were aware of this and that it’s not something we need to worry about. Michael seems to be a very sensitive child and-” Sarah suddenly noticed the look of satisfaction on Rachel’s face as she seemed to be reading the paper over and over again.
“I’m guessing from your reaction that you know about this? That’s all fine then I suppose?” Sarah asked hopefully. She was relieved that further discussion might not be needed, but Rachel’s expression of grim pleasure was hugely unnerving.
Rachel put the paper down and smiled, nodding again.
Sarah smiled back and let out a small polite laugh. “I’m guessing such a tale really works! Michael always eats his vegetables?”
Rachel nodded again and started to laugh with Sarah, a slow, low laugh from deep in her throat.
“Did you come up with the story yourself?” Sarah wasn’t laughing anymore. She couldn’t, Rachel’s laugh was far too sinister. Her heart started beating faster as the laugh got louder, surging up through Rachel’s throat and forcing her lips open.
Rachel started tapping the piece of paper with her finger, then pointing at her own chest with the same finger. Nodding. Laughing. Her mouth opening wider and wider as her laughing grew more violent. It soon opened wide enough to reveal two rows of empty gums, surrounding a hole where her tongue should be.
Sarah just sat, frozen to her chair as Rachel laughed her guttural, toothless, tongueless laugh.
She maintained eye contact, rocking back and forth as she tapped the piece of paper on the table then tapped her chest triumphantly.
When Sarah couldn’t take any more she stood up abruptly, marched over to the the door and flung it open, gesturing for Rachel to leave. “Well I think that’s everything Mrs Redman, I’ll let you get back to your evening.” she said, briskly.
Rachel rose slowly from her chair, her laugh dying down back into her throat as she shuffled out towards the open door. She stopped in the hallway and turned back to Sarah, croaking something at her in a low, but somehow familiar moan. Through her toothless gums the words were almost comprehensible as she repeated them again for Sarah’s benefit. It sounded like she was trying to say,
“Take it from me, it’s a very good rule.”
Sarah screwed her mouth shut and slammed the door, fighting back tears. She immediately went for the phone, dialling the only person she felt she could talk to about what had just happened.
“Hello?” It was such a relief to hear a familiar voice as Ryan’s friend Kate answered the phone.
“Hi Kate it’s Sarah, Is Ryan there? Could you put him on please?” Sarah tried to sound as normal as possible but her voice quivered through the sobs trying to escape her lungs.
“Uh sure, everything okay Sarah?” Kate could obviously tell it wasn’t.
“Yeah everything’s fine don’t worry, I’ve just got something I need to tell Ryan.” Sarah heard Kate put the phone down and call for Ryan, who picked up soon after.
“Sarah? What’s up? Has something happened with Derek?”
Sarah let out a small laugh, she’d completely forgotten about Derek. “I don’t think that Lisa Lynn thing is an urban legend, Ryan. I think Michael’s mom knows about her from personal experience.” Sarah could hear how crazy she sounded as she said the words. She was only half joking.
“What? Lisa Lynn?” It really wasn’t what Ryan was expecting to hear.
“I just met with Michael’s mom, she didn’t have any teeth or a tongue.” Sarah felt herself calming down just from the act of telling another person what had happened. There was a long pause on the other end of the phone before Ryan suddenly remembered their conversation from the previous night.
“Because she didn’t eat her vegetables.” He whispered, almost in awe of the revelation.
“Because she didn’t eat her vegetables.” Sarah repeated “Or she was in a car accident or something.”
Ryan laughed at the bluntness of Sarah’s explanation, but Sarah didn’t join in. “So she made up the story so she could use the disfigurement to really drive home the point? That’s pretty smart, you gotta admit.”
Sarah allowed herself a small chuckle. “It also explains why you’d never heard the story before.” There was a moment of satisfied silence as the puzzle pieces aligned. Sarah broke it when she glanced back over at the table and saw Michael’s homework still sitting on it. “I just really wish you were here right now Ryan, she was terrifying.”
“Ouch! Don’t think you can say that about cripples Sarah…” Ryan laughed.
“I don’t think you can call them cripples either, Ryan.”
“Fair point, but isn’t Derek gonna be there soon anyway?”
Sarah glanced at the clock. “Shit! Okay I’ll see you tomorrow Ryan.” Sarah slammed down the phone, thoughts of accidents and disfigurements quickly fleeing her mind as she ran into the bathroom to get ready.
When Sarah stepped out of the shower she could hear the phone ringing in the living room. She squelched through, wrapping a towel around her as she went.
“Hello?” Sarah balanced the phone between her chin and shoulder as she started drying her legs.
“Hi! Is this Sarah? Michael’s teacher?” Came the voice on the other end of the phone.
“Yep this is Sarah, who’s this please?” Sarah replied.
“This is Rachel, Michael’s mother. I’m so sorry I just checked our machine and heard your messages, I didn’t even know we were supposed to be meeting today!”
Sarah stopped drying her legs.
“Did you make the appointment with my husband? He’s been so preoccupied with our daughter Megan, I’ve been working late and he’s been looking after her, I’m afraid he completely forgot to tell me I was supposed to be seeing you.”
“That’s okay Mrs Redman” Sarah’s mind was whirring, her hands shaking uncontrollably.
“Oh please, call me Rachel! What was the meeting about anyway?” Suddenly the same moaning from Sarah’s conversation with Harry started up on the other end of the phone.
It gave Sarah chills as she remembered that woman’s parting words, spluttered out through an empty mouth.
“Shhhh, sorry about all the noise Sarah” Rachel chuckled down the phone, “that’s Megan, she’s just learning she can make sounds but it’s not quite words yet, it just sounds like-”
“Someone trying to talk without a tongue or any teeth” Sarah cut in without thinking. Out of context, it was a pretty strange thing to say and it led to a long, awkward pause before Rachel made the connection.
“Is that what this is about? Michael’s homework paper about the rule?”
Sarah didn’t answer, which Rachel took as her cue to explain further.
“It’s an old story my mother used to tell us years ago when I was just a kid. There was this girl who lived in the apartment directly below us who was missing all her teeth and her tongue. The rumour around the building was that her mother had pulled them all out because she refused to eat her vegetables, to teach her a lesson. It goes on that the girl went mad and killed herself after 20 years of not being able to talk properly, not being able to tell people she was being abused by her mother. Now she wanders around beyond the grave, visiting kids who aren’t eating their vegetables to teach them the same lesson, make them feel the pain she was never able to explain or whatever.” Rachel recited the tale as if it was the least interesting thing she’d ever said.
“And you told this story to Michael?” Sarah couldn’t conceal the judgement in her voice.
“Oh no, of course not!” Rachel chuckled down the phone again. “I only found out the whole story from my mom when I was much older, horrible rumour really, the poor girl was probably just in a car accident or something, but you know how people love a good horror story. My mom just used the name and the pulling teeth thing to make us eat our vegetables and it worked wonders. I figured it would work with Michael too, I mean it didn’t do any lasting damage to us, despite how gruesome it was!”
Sarah didn’t say anything, it was all she could do to remain calm and professional.
“Was that all it was? I can still come round if you want to discuss it more?” Rachel asked.
“No no, that’s okay Rachel that’s all there was to it.” Sarah just wanted to escape the conversation now, forget about the rule and the story and the woman who had visited her earlier that evening.
“Oh okay. It’s a shame actually, it would have been a nice trip down memory lane!” Rachel was chuckling again and it was grating on Sarah’s already frayed nerves, but she couldn’t leave that comment dangling.
“Memory lane?” She asked.
“Yes! Harry said you lived at the Pine Grove? That’s where we used to live years and years ago when I was a kid, apartment 303. That’s where I first heard the now infamous story of Lisa Lynn!”
Sarah’s blood turned cold.
“Let’s see, he’s written here that you’re in apartment 203?” Rachel continued. “Well how about that, you live directly below our old apartment!”
Sarah’s heart stopped as Rachel laughed down the phone at the coincidence. The phone slipped from her hand and onto the floor, but Sarah could still hear Rachel’s laughing. Somehow the sound didn’t seem to be coming from the phone anymore, though. It was coming from the kitchen, or maybe Ryan’s bedroom, she couldn’t quite tell but there was definitely someone laughing in her apartment. Someone with a deep, low, guttural laugh.
|
I got called out to Seal Cove on the coast about a year ago for duty. Small town on the coast, you know how it is. Maybe 700 people, tops. That’s including the ones who aren’t on paper. They told me I’d have a quiet eight months. Not much happens around there usually, besides the odd poacher or pissed-up drunk who needs a night in the tank to sober up. Never any real crime. Never any murders or nothing.
It’s a bit of an odd spot, but nice enough. Folks are pretty friendly. Made me feel at home. Lots of old folks – old fishermen and trappers and such – and they tend to keep to themselves more often. Not a lot of young people around. I guess most of ’em head off to college and then they don’t come back much.
Things were going pretty good until about two weeks in. I walked into the station that morning – Wednesday, I think – and I hear Sheriff Thompson and Deputy Colby talking in the lunch room, real hushed, like something’s wrong. I figured I should pop my head in and say good morning. And grab some coffee, too. So I stroll on in and nod and give ’em a “good morning” and I’m about to grab a cuppa joe to head back out to the office when Sheriff tells me to sit down.
You can always tell in somebody’s voice when there’s something truly wrong. They always stumble, like they forgot how to explain things, or that the words they use don’t make sense at all any more. I could hear it in Sheriff’s voice that morning – he didn’t sound right.
Turns out, Sheriff Thompson’s father-in-law passed away the summer before at the age of 75, and he and his wife were real pioneer-type folks. Mr and Mrs Dossit lived up the coast a ways in a little inlet called Loon Harbour. They had the place all to themselves – not a single other cabin around. They were totally off the grid: no power, telephone, roads – you get the picture. Only connection they had to the outside world was their wooden outboard motorboat and little CV radio. Mr Dossit was an old school trapper, and his missus worked with him, side by side, curing and tanning hides and prepping them up to ship off to the city where they’d get sold at auction. The Dossits made their living from the land, and got their supplies from Seal Cove, without ever having to step foot in the city. That was the way they liked it – a quiet, simple life. Not a lot of people do that kind of thing anymore. I have to say, I admired it.
Since old Mr Dossit died, Sheriff said that his mother-in-law hadn’t ever been quite the same. Old Mr Dossit had been having trouble with his knees the last few years and so him and Mrs Dossit would stay with the Sheriff’s family during the winter, before heading back to Loon Harbour in the spring. The Thompsons didn’t mind – they all thought that Mr and Mrs Dossit were getting too old for their rough-and-tumble lifestyle anyways.
In the months following Mr Dossit’s death, Mrs Dossit started talking about spending the winter in Loon Harbour again – something that deeply concerned the Sheriff’s family. They tried to persuade her otherwise; that alone in the wilderness was no place for a woman at her age. In the end, though, Mrs Dossit got her way. Her undying reasoning being “It’s what he would have wanted.”
Sheriff got real quiet then, and said that up until Monday, his wife and Mrs Dossit had been in touch every day, and Mrs Thompson made sure to get every detail about how she was doing on her own. The last two mornings, though, Mrs Dossit hadn’t been answering her radio. It wasn’t like her, Sheriff said, to just leave people hanging like that. Something was definitely wrong, either with Mrs Dossit or her radio, and we were going to have to send a team to make sure things were alright.
We’d take Colby’s personal speedboat and head up to the Harbour and check in on Mrs Dossit, taking a specially prepared medical kit from Donna, the town’s resident doctor. The thaw was just starting so we’d have to take our time and watch out for ice, but it should be easy to do in a few hours so long as we all keep our eyes open. Sheriff told us the plan was to leave as soon as possible and be back before dark. I thought we’d easily be back by noon, but I hadn’t realized at the time what we might find at the cabin in Loon Harbour. None of us could have.
By nine we were kicking off from the pier and making our way out of Seal Cove, northeast along the shoreline. Wind was like ice in our faces, but Colby’s boat had a windbreak on it which made the trip bearable. The whole way, Sheriff had an uneasy look about him, which was understandable, given the thoughts that were probably going through his mind. It was his wife’s mother, after all. If something bad had happened to her… hell, I wouldn’t want to have to take that news home to Mrs Thompson.
The trip took about forty minutes, and by the time we turned around the point into Loon Harbour, we were feeling pretty anxious to get in out of the wind and onto land. The harbour was something else – bordered on either side by hills littered with remnants of the winter’s heavy snow, and with a low valley that reached for miles inland, curving left and right and filled with old, evergreen trees. It was truly a hermit’s paradise.
The Dossit cabin stood a short walk from the water’s edge, in a small clearing specked here and there by birch trees. Colby tied the boat on to the end of the little dock where Mrs Dossit had hauled up her boat for the winter. She had a winch, sure, but still – not bad for a 67 year old.
Despite all the beauty of that place, something seemed off about the whole picture. The harbour was ice-free, so why hadn’t the old girl put her boat back in the water? And why wasn’t there smoke coming from the chimney? Strangest of all, where was she? Now, I know Mrs Dossit liked to keep to herself these days, and I’m sure she had work to take care of inside the cabin or out back, but after two full days of no human contact surely she would notice the racket of an outboard motor less than a hundred yards from her front door.
“Claire,” Sheriff shouted out, “you around?” Silence. “Here with some o’ the boys to check up on yah.” Still, no answer.
“Probably busy inside,” Colby offered. He meant to comfort the sheriff but the shakiness in his voice gave him away. He must have had that same feeling of discomfort that I did. We started up the path, walking slow and looking around for… well anything, really. And when we got a little closer I could tell the curtains were all closed. It looked like nobody was home.
“Something ain’t right boys,” Sheriff said. We knew.
Up on the front porch things got even more strange. It hadn’t snowed for the last week or so, and anything lying on the ground was leftover for a while, hard and crusty on the top from melting and freezing over and over. The whole front porch was covered with a layer of crusty snow. No footprints anywhere, and I started feeling mighty apprehensive when Sheriff pointed out the front door. It was open… just a little bit.
“Claire,” Sheriff called again, “we’re coming inside.”
I tensed up, preparing myself for what we’d find inside. I’d never found a cadaver before – never seen one besides at funerals. Sheriff opened the door.
In the dim light of the cabin, there was dark shape. It was hanging in the middle of the room… swinging slightly from the breeze that we let in. At first I took it for a blanket, or coat… but as my eyes adjusted I saw the familiar texture of raw meat.
“Dear God,” I let out. Colby swore. Sheriff ran to the porch rail and got sick, over and over. The shape was a body, a woman’s shape… hanging by one ankle from a rafter and spinning round, slow. Beside, on the floor, a knife with a long, curved blade lay in a pool of blood. A skinning knife.
The cabin was cold, so cold. Colder than the air outside. There was no smell – no scent of decay – and I knew at once it was because the body was frozen.
We all stepped down onto the snow-patched grass and took a breath. We couldn’t have imagined this. How could anyone have imagined this? The sheer horror of that poor woman’s body was unfathomable. We stood there, staring out at the water and slowly the reality of the situation settled itself in. This was a crime scene. A murder scene. We were police. We had a job to do.
Colby and I insisted again and again that the Sheriff ought to sit it out – that he shouldn’t get too involved because it was family we were dealing with. He would have none of it. I think in his mind, making sure the investigation went as smoothly as possible was a sort of farewell to the old woman. So the three of us got started.
There were photos to be taken, so many photos… every surface in the cabin, from every angle. The body. The knife. We dusted for prints, took samples of hair, blood, all the usual stuff. All the while we were collecting evidence, Mrs Dossit kept spinning round to take us in with those lidless eyes. Before long we cut her down and got her in the body bag. I’d like to say we did it out of respect but that way we didn’t have to feel her eyes on us anymore.
If things weren’t already terrible enough, other aspects of the crime scene were starting to stand out as being peculiar. First off, the lack of footprints outside the front door meant that nobody had entered or exited the cabin for at least a week. The radio was in prime working condition – something we discovered when Mrs Thompson called in to ask if we had fixed the radio yet. We didn’t respond.
The cupboards were stocked nearly full, and upon closer inspection it seemed as though Mrs Dossit hadn’t touched her winter supply. In the garbage, only a few empty cans were found. It was starting to look as though the murder had occurred much earlier, at the beginning of Mrs Dossit’s trip. This was backed up by the fact that the woodpile, which was stacked against the leeward side of the cabin, had hardly been diminished. Inside, a small pile of sticks sat neatly by the woodstove. Stranger still, was that there was only a small amount of ash in the stove – the remnants of one, maybe two fires. From the looks of things, she had been killed just a few days after returning to Loon Harbour.
“Sheriff, when was it you said Lucy and her last talked?” I asked, wearily.
“Day before yesterday,” he said, “I heard her voice myself on the radio.”
Clearly things weren’t adding up. We were reading the scene wrong, somehow. Maybe Mrs Dossit had extra wood and food stocked for the winter. Maybe she had gotten rid of the garbage somehow. Simple enough explanation. Only explanation, really. It was just hard to keep my mind thinking logically after seeing something so… disturbing.
Of course, the next thing that came to mind was the murderer. Where did they go? How did they get in the cabin and sneak off, seemingly without a trace? And how did they get there in the first place? It was frightful to think that the horror of a man who had committed this crime might be a mere two days walk from here. Perhaps closer. Where was he? And, more worryingly, where was the-
“Jesus Christ!” Colby shrieked from a few feet behind me, deafening my ear. I spun around as quick as possible, nearly choking with shock as he fired two rounds through the glass of the living room window.
“The hell, Colby?” I shouted, grabbing for my gun. Sheriff came running out of the bedroom, revolver at the ready.
“What’s happening?” he demanded of us, but by that point Colby was darting out through the door.
“Son of a bitch!” we heard him yell as he disappeared into the bright spring sun outside. He had seen something. He had seen them.
“Follow me, Porter. Now!” Sheriff said, and we made out way out onto the porch. Colby’s footsteps lead away from the shore, towards the Dossits’ trapline. Straight into the woods.
“Colby!” Sheriff yelled, but no reply came. Then, another shot.
We ran as fast as we could, Sheriff in the lead, watching the right, while I brought up the rear, watching the left. We could hear Colby shouting again, swearing. He sounded far off, not quite straight ahead. We were sprinting when two more shots rang off to our sharp left. Colby had left the main path. In patches of dirty snow there were footprints, spaced far apart. Another shout. Another shot. And then… silence.
“Colby, talk to us!” I shouted, praying that it was him who had fired that last shot. There was no sound for a good ten seconds and then…
“Here,” came a weak reply. Off to our left again this time. He had started to turn back towards the cabin, full circle. When we found him, he was standing with his back to a tree, gun gripped tight in both hands. Eyes wide open. The poor boy was shaking like a leaf of grass in the wind.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Sheriff boomed at him. Colby just shuddered at the noise, looked wildly around, and ran to us. The look on his face when he got near was indescribable. I’d never seen somebody look so relieved to see me.
“I saw… I… I mean… I saw… I saw…” he kept muttering, over and over. He looked scared, but almost like he was embarrassed to show it. “I mean… I saw… I think…” was all he said.
We made our walk back to the cabin, slow and cautious. Whoever it was that had been watching us was surely still nearby. We figured it best to get out as soon as possible. Grab our things and take the body back to town. Those woods seemed like the worst possible place to be at that point.
By six o’clock that evening we were pulling back into town. Nobody’d said a word since we left Loon Harbour, and the ride seemed to go on for hours. Colby was too stirred up from his encounter in the woods, and I figured it best if Sheriff avoid as much stress as possible so I’d offered to steer us back to Seal Cove. The whole ways, though, I kept glancing over to the shore, expecting to see… somebody watching us, I guess.
The funeral was held three days later. No casket for poor Mrs Dossit – the family had her cremated. Poor Mrs Thompson looked like she’d had all the blood drained from her body. Still, she held it together. For the kids, I suppose. Colby didn’t show up for the funeral. After I offered my condolences to Sheriff and his family, he told me that nobody’d seen Colby at the station since the day we got back from Loon Harbour, and I should keep an eye out for him.
That night I found myself back at my desk, sorting through photo after photo from the cabin. The woman had been dead for quite some time – likely for most of the winter. Whoever had done this to her was still nearby when we arrived at the harbour, but they couldn’t have possibly spent the winter there. There was no food missing, and no sign that the place had been occupied. Nothing was adding up.
I started putting the folders away when a terrible thought entered my head. What if the murderer was never outside that window? What if deputy Colby had fooled us all? He claimed to have seen somebody outside that cabin and certainly convinced the Sheriff and I that it was true, but who else had seen it? Only Colby.
What if he had killed Mrs Dossit?
It would explain the condition of the cabin, his mysterious encounter, everything. Colby had a boat and could have easily taken a detour to Loon Harbour during one of his hunting trips. But why on earth would he have done such a thing? What grudge could he possibly hold against the Sheriff’s poor mother-in-law, or against Sheriff Thompson himself?
My mind was racing, my hands shaky. Hell, it was past midnight and I hadn’t slept more than an hour each night since that wretched day. I needed to head home and try to get some rest. It would be best to have a clear head when I confronted Sheriff about this in the morning.
I left the station and started walking to my rented house but decided to stop in at the pub for a quick drink. A little something to unwind. I took a seat and ordered up a double rum, just as somebody slid into the stool at my left.
“How’d the funeral go?” Colby asked, clutching an empty glass and stinking of whisky. My heart nearly stopped when I heard his voice, but I had to play dumb.
“Very sad,” I said, taking a gulp of rum. I had to get out of there as fast as possible. “You didn’t come.”
“I was, ahh… busy,” he slurred, tapping his empty glass.
“I see.”
“Been spending some, ahh… quality time with dear Craig here,” he said, pointing at the bartender. “How ’bout one more, bud?” Craig filled up the glass, shaking his head but saying nothing. Clearly Colby had been here for the last few days. I hoped it was the guilt getting to him, the sick bastard.
“You haven’t been at the station,” I said.
“Nooo, no no,” he muttered. “I cant be lookin’ at those pictures. Memory’s bad enough ain’t it?”
“It’s our job,” I said through gritted teeth. How could he sit here and talk about her like that? I was disgusted with him. I turned to look him straight in the face. “The son of a bitch is still out there, somewhere.”
“You got me there, Porter,” he said, staring into his whisky. Drunk as he was, it would be so easy to cuff him then and there.
“Well, you saw him with your own eyes, didn’t you?” I pressed.
“Her.”
“So it was a woman you saw?” I was getting impatient.
“It was her.” Colby twisted in his seat and looked me dead in the eyes. “Her, Porter.”
I didn’t know what to make of it. He didn’t look like he was guilty, or grieving, or lying. He looked afraid.
“What do you mean?” I asked. Colby drained his whisky in one go.
“Claire Dossit,” he said. “I saw her face watching us through the window. Or maybe I’m just crazy.” With that, he got up and walked out, leaving me staring at the bottles behind the bar.
“Another?” Craig asked me.
“No.”
I’m not sure why – it must have been something in Colby’s voice – but I decided to hold off on telling the Sheriff about my suspicions. I’d have to have a chat with Donna, the doctor. I was curious to hear what she’d have to say about Mr Dossit’s death.
The night crept by with agonizing patience. Stars sliding in and out of view behind the bank of fog that hung over the harbour. Each time I closed my eyes I would see Mrs Dossit’s lidless gaze. The last few hours of darkness I spent at the kitchen table, staring at the front door with a hand on my revolver.
The clinic was quiet that morning, and when I first spoke to Donna I could tell she was looking at me in a peculiar sort of way. She offered my a cup of coffee which I gladly accepted. I must have looked like shit.
“I have a few questions for you about Mr Dossit,” I said. The coffee seemed to warm me straight away when I took a sip. “About his health before his death.”
“Right,” she said. “Where would you like me to start?”
“Sheriff Thompson told me about his decline in health during his last year. Said that his father-in-law was unable to stay at the cabin like they had been doing all along. What sort of problems was he having? Sheriff mentioned arthritis or something like that.”
Donna took a sip of coffee, with a puzzled look on her face. “Mr Dossit had been having joint trouble for some years before his death. I had told him that he should start easing off, retire. He’d have none of it. I gave him information about other, less strenuous activities he might try, to keep active, which he dismissed as ‘yoga for hippies’. I wouldn’t blame his arthritis for slowing him down so much as his more general well-being.”
“In what way?”
“Well, mentally. More or less. He suddenly seemed paranoid of those around him. He seemed to think that he was being watched.”
“Interesting.” It was cold in the office. “Can you remember when exactly this… behavior started?”
“I could find the folder with my notes from Mr Dossit’s appointment.”
“You have notes?”
“Scribblings, more like. I’m not a psychiatrist, officer, but I know enough to tell when somebody’s mind is in a troubled state.”
“And this was?”
“About six months before his disappearance.”
“His…?” Apparently Sheriff had left that part out. He’d never mentioned anything about any missing person case.
“You didn’t know?” Donna took a deep breath. “That poor family has been through so much. Lucy was depressed for a long time. Sheriff Thompson took her into the city for therapy for a few months, I remember. Mr Dossit just got up one morning, went out for a walk and never came home. It was a sad time for the whole town.”
“I can imagine. There was a search, yes? Did they ever find the body?”
She shook her head. “No body. They couldn’t even give the man a proper burial.” Donna gave me a look. “The sheriff would know a lot more about the case than I do, officer. Have you spoken to him?”
“Not about this. Not now. I don’t want to give him or his family any more grief. Sorry to bother you, Donna, but I’ve just got a few more questions.”
“Sure.”
“You said that Mr Dossit’s behavior changed quickly about six months before he went missing. Given your medical knowledge, what do you think could have led to this change?”
“Well there are many possibilities, too many to guess. Again, I’m not a psychiatrist, Officer Porter, but it seemed to me that his personality changed due to some sort of experience, not a medical issue. Some trauma that he alone had gone through. Whatever it was that he saw or imagined, I can’t say, but it certainly left him…”
“Unhinged?”
“Broken.” Donna looked very sad. “I’d never seen somebody so full of fear. Claire used to come with him to his appointments. He seemed afraid of being alone, even for a moment.”
“But the day he went missing, Mr Dossit left home alone.” It seemed very strange.
“Yes.”
“Thank you, Doctor, this has been very helpful.” I got up to leave.
“I’m glad to help, Officer. I admit, I was expecting you ask me about Lucy’s mother, not her father. Have you found some sort of connection between them?”
Yes, I thought, but instead I said “I’d rather not say right now.”
“Of course,” said Donna, and she walked me out.
It was still early, too early for lunch. I wasn’t hungry anyways. I headed to the station to find a folder on my desk. Sheriff’s office door was shut, and I didn’t want to bother him. I opened the folder.
Coroner’s report was on top. I flipped through the pages but most of it was old news. Time of death was undetermined, but certainly more than a month ago. Notes about stomach contents, minor cuts and defence wounds. I poured over it all, obsessing over every line, but the one thing that grabbed my attention was the cause of death – hypothermia – and the side note that read “minimal blood loss, no cutting of major arteries.” She had actually survived being skinned alive. God, the thought of it was enough to drive somebody over the edge. Lucy would probably be needing some more therapy after all that had happened.
Lucy… I thought. She was the one aspect of the murder that complicated everything else. All of the evidence, all of the details about the crime scene, they all were shifted into the unreal by Lucy saying she had been in contact with her mother throughout the winter. It was the her testimony that made the whole thing so damn complicated… so what if it wasn’t true?
The Sheriff’s wife had a history of mental distress, I knew now. Extended periods of depression. She was obviously worried about her mother’s well-being, and under a large amount of stress. Hell, being married to a police officer was probably enough stress on its own. What if her conversations hadn’t really happened? What if it was just a delusion of hers?
But no, I realized. That wasn’t it. Sheriff had told me that day at Loon Harbour that he had heard Mrs Dossit’s voice over the radio himself. Another explanation shot down. Another reason to feel very much at unease. There was only one logical next step. I’d have to talk to her myself.
If anybody would know an important detail about Mrs Dossit’s situation, surely it would be her own daughter. The woman had spoken with her every day, she claimed. She must have noticed something, some small detail that would explain everything. Sheriff wouldn’t be happy but, damn it, I had to do something.
Sheriff’s office light was still on. It would have to be now, before he got home. I could use a walk anyways. I grabbed my jacket and walked out into the street. I was shocked to see that night had just begun to fall. Christ, I had been so wrapped up in things that the hours had melted away. I suddenly realized the churning hunger in my stomach and the tired ache in my eyes, but it would have to wait until later.
The Thompson house was located on a new side road that hadn’t been paved yet. Theirs was one of the first houses built in that area, and it was a short walk through the woods to get there. It was cold out, so I zipped up and walked fast. The hard packed gravel crunched lightly under my feet, echoing off the bare tree trunks that carried on out of sight to either side of the road.
But was that an echo? I didn’t quite sound like an echo… The footsteps sounded faster than my own.
I stopped, and they got faster, louder.
I spun around, reaching for my revolver and realizing too late that I’d left it own my desk at the station. The figure flew at me from the shadows and rammed straight into my chest. It knocked the breath out of me, and as I struggled to get it off of me the stench of sweat and whiskey filled my nose.
Colby’s face was mere inches from my own, his bloodshot eyes staring into mine and darting wildly off to one side or the other, scanning the woods around us before looking back at me. Tears were wet on his cheeks and spit flew in my face as he screamed.
“STOP IT! STOP IT! YOU HAVE TO HELP! HAVE TO STOP IT PLEASE! MAKE HER GO! MAKE HER GO!”
“Let me go!” I yelled back, struggling to free my hands, but he had pinned them to the ground. “Get off of me, now!”
“I SAW IT! I SAW IT AND IT WANTS ME, PORTER! SHE’S GOING TO KILL ME, PORTER! PLEASE!”
“Fuck, Colby, snap out of it!” I yelled, but he was beyond reason. There was madness in his eyes.
“YOU SAW HER TOO! YOU WERE RIGHT THERE, YOU HAD TO! SHE’S COMING PORTER, HELP ME PLEASE! MAKE HER-”
I’d managed to free my hand, and slammed a fist into the side of Colby’s head. He rolled off, screaming and swearing and crying. “What in god’s name-”
I didn’t get a chance to finish before he lunged at me again. I had barely gotten to my feet, but in his crazed, drunken state I managed to get out of the way. I had just grabbed for my handcuffs when he pulled the gun on me.
“NO!” he screamed, scrambling to his feet. “DON’T DO THIS TO ME!”
“Colby,” my throat was dry. “Colby let’s talk about-”
“NO!” He was sobbing now. The hand holding the gun was shaking. He was pointing it at me, but his eyes kept darting off to the trees. “NO PLEASE! IT-”
There was a loud “crack,” like the breaking of a branch, off to one side and he swung the gun around, firing three shots into the woods.
That was my chance.
I slammed a boot into the back of Colby’s leg as hard as I could. He went down like a wounded animal, screaming and shaking. Gunshots were ringing out as he fired wildly around.
I ran. I ran faster than I’d ever before. I scrambled over the gravel road, nearly falling head over heels while Colby’s screams and gunshots filled the night among other, stranger sounds.
My memory after that is fuzzy. Bits and pieces are all that remain. I know I got to the Thompson house. I remember the look of shock on Lucy and the kids faces when I stormed in, slamming the door behind me. I remember the Sheriff arriving, and an ambulance showing up. Colby was nowhere to be seen. All that remained on the road was a handful of empty bullet casings and some blood.
I remember handing over my badge, and leaving the house key in my landlord’s mailbox, along with a short letter saying I was moving out.
My last memory of Seal Cove is the bus ride back to the city. Four hours of dead radio and nothing to look at but trees. I looked at the floor instead. I got a new job, new apartment, and tried never to think about it again.
Until now.
News station tonight aired a story on the growing number of missing persons in rural towns. The count now stands at eleven – nine being residents of Seal Cove, including the town’s Deputy Sheriff. They showed a quick clip of Sheriff Thompson, who looked more gaunt than ever. Only three bodies have been found, exhibiting what the reporter referred to as “heavy mutilation.” It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out exactly what that means.
People have to know that it’s not safe anymore. That thing – whatever it is – has gotten bolder. It had to have started with Mr Dossit. He had awoken it at Loon Harbour, it seems. After that, it had lured him off somehow, made him follow it into the trees. Then it descended on his wife when she was alone and miles away from help, probably in Mr Dossit’s form. And Colby… poor innocent Colby… the thing had followed us back to Seal Cove in pursuit of him after he’d seen it at Loon Harbour. We had lured it straight to humanity. How many of these new cases are victims of the same evil? Is this all our fault?
I don’t know if it will leave the woods long enough to come enter the city, but how will we know when it does? Each stranger you pass on the streets could be it in disguise. Each voice you hear on the phone could be a lie. The only safety, it seems, is to never be alone. Mr and Mrs Dossit, Colby… they had all been alone when it came for them. Maybe if I hadn’t abandoned Colby in the road that night, he’d still be alive.
Tomorrow I board the bus and head back to Seal Cove for questioning by the Sheriff. Being the last person to see Colby alive, I always knew it was just a matter of time. God knows if I’ll make it back, or if that thing will take me and make a new mask of my face.
The Skinner, I’ve come to call it. It haunts my dreams every night, though I’ve never seen it with my own eyes. In my dreams it’s always Colby, though, always watching silently from behind the trees.
It won’t stop. It’s on the move and picking up speed. I wish I could say I know more about what to do but I don’t. For now, all I can say is stay close, stay safe, and stay out of the woods.
-Kevin Porter, 2015
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I’ve always been an art enthusiast. I guess I inherited that from my grandmother. She had been a painter for many years, and tried her best to instill a love of the fine arts in me. I have many fond memories of trips to museums and galleries with her, gazing upon the countless beautiful and thought provoking pieces.
Sculpture and photography were nice, but I always had a special place in my heart for paintings. Especially old oil paintings. It’s hard to explain. There’s a sort of special property to paintings that you can only appreciate with your eyes in person. Photographs do them no justice. The way the light refracts off of the oil, and bounces back to your eyes give them a sort of life that no other medium can.
Well as much as I loved oil paintings, I was never much good myself. As a child, my grandmother tried giving me lessons. She’d create a breathtaking scenery, whilst the only thing I managed to make was a colossal mess.
Despite my apparent lack of talent in the oil painting department, it did not in the slightest diminish my love for the craft. My grandmother had a room dedicated to the paintings she had created or collected, which she dubbed “the gallery”. I spent hour upon hour in that room, staring in wonderment.
Despite my being a child, my grandmother had no qualms with leaving me alone in a room with tens of thousands of dollars worth of paintings. She knew I had far too much respect for them to damage them, even as a bouncy little girl. She did, however, have one rule that was to be strictly adhered to at all times in the gallery: if any paintings in the gallery are covered, you are NOT to uncover them. Not even to peek.
Now some might think this a strange rule, I certainly did as a girl, but there is reason behind it. Oil paints are very sensitive, and it’s possible the pieces she had covered up could be damaged if exposed to light, or various other factors.
But regardless of the reasoning, I made sure to follow that rule. Or at least I did, until the day my grandmother received her newest piece.
I remember arriving at my grandmother’s home for a visit and running straight for the gallery. I rounded the corner into the room when I was forced to screech to a halt. There, in the center of the room was an incredibly large painting, propped up by an easel and covered with a long, dark curtain.
I had never seen the piece before, and the sheer size of it astounded me. My curiosity overtook me for a moment, and I found myself slowly reaching out a tiny hand to unveil the mysterious piece. But just as my hand grasped the dark velvet, my grandmother entered the room, wearing a frown.
“Evelyn what are you doing? You know the rule about covered paintings!”
My hand instantly whipped back to my side and my head sulked at the realization of my actions.
“I’m sorry Grandma. I forgot. This painting, it’s so huge! What is it?!”
My grandmother’s expression softened and she placed a hand on my shoulder.
“This painting was just given to me by a friend. Her ill sister painted it shortly before passing away. She said she couldn’t bear to look at it because it made her too sad, so she gave it to me.”
“May I see it?” I asked.
“Perhaps later. It’s very sensitive because it’s in poor condition. I’m going to try to preserve it though. After I’m done, I’ll let you see it like with all the others.” she warmly responded.
Although my curiosity was not satisfied, I agreed and resigned myself to looking at all the other pieces in the gallery. Content that I would no longer cause any sort of mischief, my grandmother returned to the sitting room.
I lay there in the soft plush carpet, gazing at the works of art until my focus drifted. Despite how bad I knew it was to disobey my grandmother, my curiosity continued to burn hot in my chest. I had already stared at each and every piece in the gallery to detail, and had grown restless. I had to see what was beneath the curtain.
Holding my breath, and tiptoed over to the massive easel and grasped the soft fabric in my hand. I’d just peek for a moment. It wouldn’t hurt. Just long enough to quench this burning need to know.
I released the breath I was holding and quickly pulled the curtain aside. Immediately, I felt myself release a gasp. I had seen countless paintings of all genres and matters, but none so utterly disturbing as what lay before me.
The painting depicted what appeared to be a pale young women. Her skin was a sickly yellow, and appeared clammy and unwell. She wore a tattered ivory dress, and her long black hair flowed behind her, seemingly following wind sources from no particular direction.
She sat in anguish, with her hands held up to the side of her face, digging her long black nails into the flesh. As uncomfortable as the piece was as a whole, what really unnerved me was her eyes and mouth. Black, gaping holes sunk into her head where they should have been, and a thick, rust colored fluid seemed to leak from them.
Immediately I panicked and threw the curtain back over the horrid painting. I wanted to run screaming and crying straight to my grandmother, but I restrained myself. I knew that if I did that, she’d know I disobeyed her by looking under the curtain. So instead I gave myself a moment to regain my breath and composure before calmly joining my grandmother in the sitting room.
I never went into the gallery by myself again.
That is until my grandmother passed away, naming me the sole recipient of her painting collection.
The reading of the will was an uncomfortable enough experience on its own, but it was made worse by the fact that my jealous cousins were also present. My grandmother’s estate, belongings, and all of her life earnings were to be split evenly amongst the family. I however, was chosen to receive the paintings alone.
I knew this was because my grandmother knew of my great love for the art, and that I would be the only one not to sell all of them for the money. However, my cousins simply saw it as me inheriting nearly $80,000 in oil paintings, and not sharing a dime of it.
Oh, you can believe they tried to contest the will, but it was iron-clad, and despite their protests, I soon enough found myself transporting the pieces into my own home.
My boyfriend Edward and I had purchased a lovely Victorian style home two years prior, and I, following in my grandmother’s footsteps, had dedicated the long hallway and large room at the end of the third floor to hosting my own collection of paintings.
My grandmother had a great deal more paintings than I, but Edward and I managed to shuffle things around until everything had a cozy new home. Well, everything except for the one, nearly six foot tall canvas, wrapped methodically in several layers of brown paper and twine.
Instantly a knot formed in my stomach. I knew exactly which piece it was. The image of the tormented young woman with bloody caverns in her face flooded my mind, and I felt myself growing pale. Edward however, did not share the same unfortunate memory, and excitedly began unwrapping the piece.
I rushed forward to stop him, exclaiming how I wanted him to keep it wrapped, as it was a horrifically gruesome piece. However, by the time I reached him, he had already revealed the piece’s glossy surface.
I prepared myself for the horrible sight, but to my shock, it was different. The sickly girl in the white dress still stood, hair flowing in the non-present wind and hands digging into her cheeks, but the bloody craters were gone.
Instead, she now appeared to be a pretty little thing. She had soft pink cheeks, sparkling green eyes, and her lips parted daintily into a dreamy smile. I recognized the style immediately. This was my grandmother’s work. She had done an exceptional job covering over the old, horrific facade, however, if I inspected the piece closely, I could still see traces of the gruesome sight hiding right below the surface.
My grandmother had clearly worked painstakingly on the piece. To anyone who hadn’t seen the original, it actually did appear quite pleasant. I, however, hated it to my core. Edward on the other hand, was instantly in love.
The next few days consisted of us arguing over where the piece would be hung. We were out of room in the gallery, and he insisted upon hanging it on the large, blank wall on the far side of our bedroom. I of course wanted nothing to do with the piece, thus the fighting began.
Finally, we came to an agreement. I would let him hang the piece in our room for the time being, but I would begin looking for the family of the woman who originally painted the piece. Obviously, they wouldn’t want to look at it in its former state, as it forever captured the state of sickness in their beloved family member. But now, it was beautiful. It would memorialize her as she was before the sickness began changing her. Certainly they would want it back now!
Edward was hesitant, but agreed that returning it when I found the family would be the right thing to do. So it was that I prepared myself for a few weeks tops of having to gaze at the uncomfortable piece.
The piece went up, and despite my reservations, it actually wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Without the bloody chasms, the threatening aura of the piece was gone, and I will admit that seeing my grandmother’s painting style made me a little happy.
And while it had taken a few days, I finally tracked down a phone number for the family. The daughter of the woman who had given the painting to my grandmother answered, and seemed excited when I told her of the relic from her aunt. She said she wanted the piece, but she needed some time to find a place for it. Excitedly, we both agreed to hand over the piece the following week.
My excitement however, quickly faded when I learned that Edward was going to be leaving town for the remainder of our time in possession of the piece, due to business. Displaying the piece was one thing, but being home alone with it was an entirely different situation. Despite my grandmother’s beautiful work, being alone in the same room with the piece always left me with an uncomfortable knot in my stomach.
So after kissing Edward goodbye, and locking the door, I immediately ran to the linen closet, where I promptly grabbed a sheet to throw over the creepy painting. I stormed into my bedroom, armed with the linen and a tack, and came to a halt in front of the piece.
It was very vague, and I needed to squint my eyes and lean in to notice it, but it appeared as though my grandmother’s paint had begun to crack and peel a bit, revealing glimpses of the rusty brown color hiding right below.
That was impossible though. The piece was nowhere near old enough for that to occur. Oil paint is famous for staying wet for a very long time. There are even some paintings from the middle ages that are still moist on the inside! There was no way the paint here should be peeling!
Just the sight of that gross, rusty paint made me feel ill. I immediately threw the sheet over it, and breathed a sigh of relief when I was no longer confronted with the eerie sight. I couldn’t give the painting back soon enough.
It was about this time that strange things began happening. Nothing huge and panic worthy. Just little things. Doors I could swear I had left open would be inexplicably closed, every so often I’d feel a soft gust of air as if someone had just walked by, and an occasional creak or groan, which weren’t all too uncommon in a home as old as mine.
Things continued on like this for the first few days Edward was gone. It was Wednesday. Edward would be back on Sunday, and we’d return the piece on Monday. As uncomfortable as I was, my goal was in sight, and I knew I’d make it.
A few more days passed, and things were going relatively well until I decided to look at the piece again. I had been on the phone with a shipping company earlier, trying to decide the best way to wrap and transport the piece. I figured that the cracking and peeling of the piece must have been due to improper preparation and handling, and wanted to avoid further damage. Hesitantly, I lifted the sheet for a quick assessment.
I immediately dropped the sheet once more, and backed away in a moment of panic. The paint had continued to deteriorate, and now even more of the seeping rust was breaking through the girl’s once lovely face, now leaving her with a grotesque, cracked open face.
It was at this point that I decided I needed to speak with the family once more. I dialed the number, and to my surprise, found that the woman who had gifted my grandmother with the piece all those years ago was still alive, and had answered the phone. Apprehensively, I told her about the piece, and she immediately invited me over to talk about it over tea.
Jumping at the opportunity to not be home alone with the piece, I grabbed my purse and immediately headed over. Upon arriving at the address, I was greeted at the door by a smiling old woman. She graciously welcomed me into the home, and in minutes we were settled in the front room with daintily painted teacups in our hands.
She released a long sigh before speaking.
“That painting should have been destroyed a long time ago.” she breathed sadly.
“You’ve seen it. It’s terrible and frightening. It’s the result of a very sick mind.”
She shifted her gaze down to her teacup before continuing.
“My sister had brain cancer. In its final stages, she became very ill mentally. When there was nothing more the doctors could do for her, they sent her home and told us to make her comfortable. She always loved painting, so we bought her the biggest canvas we could, and hoped to make her last moments happy ones.”
“But as you can see, they weren’t. Her mind was plagued by demons. She began withdrawing more and more into the madness of her own world, and it showed on the canvas. I actually walked in on her slashing her arms with a palette knife, and mixing her blood right into the paint.”
The image of the gross, rusty color oozing from the craters in the girl’s face flashed across my mind, and I had to set my cup down for fear of dropping it.
“I was going to get rid of it” the old woman continued “Burn it after my sister passed away. But your grandmother, ever the art enthusiast insisted on keeping it instead. I don’t know why. It’s a horribly dreadful piece.”
“And now, what’s worse, my daughter wants it back in our home. Please, I beg of you. Burn it. Burn it right to ashes. Destroy that accursed thing.”
Right at that moment, the old woman’s daughter walked into the room.
“Mother! What is wrong with you? We have almost nothing to remember Aunt Marnie by, and when something she made with her own hands finally resurfaces in our life, you say to burn it?!”
“It’s a bad painting Sarah. It’s dark, and it’s angry, and it holds all the ugliness of the disease that took your Aunt from us.”
“No! It’s not! Evelyn here said that her grandmother restored it! It’s beautiful now, and I want to display it in our home to honor Aunt Marnie. You’re my mother, and I love you, but this is my home, and I want the painting. That’s final.”
By this point, the atmosphere in the home had gotten quite awkward, so I readily thanked them for the tea, and made my way back home. My newfound knowledge about the piece making me even less eager to keep it in my bedroom.
Without realizing it, I had spent far more time visiting the old woman than I had expected. That paired with the sizable drive back home, I found night to have already fallen by the time I finally arrived on my front porch. The house was empty and quiet, and confirmed my decision to sleep in the guest room that night.
Edward would be back the next day. Silly as I felt, just one night in the guest room wouldn’t kill me. I snuggled down with a good book, and read until I felt my eyes growing heavy. It had been a while since I had felt this at ease. I was quite happy to have made the decision to sleep away from the dreadful painting.
Within moments, I found myself drifting off to a peaceful sleep. However, this did not last. What I assume to be several hours later, I awoke to the sound of a slamming door. I jolted awake, my heart racing. I was home alone, and feared for a burglar.
I immediately began scoping the room for something I could use as a weapon. Thinking quickly, I pulled down the pole that was holding up the curtain, and wielded it like a staff.
Slowly, I crept through the doorway, keeping as silent as possible. The only thing I could hear was the sound of my own heart rapidly beating in my ears. Strangely, nothing in the house was amiss. I stood in the hallway pondering a moment before deciding which direction to move in.
My first instinct was to reach for the light switch, but if there was an intruder, hitting the light would immediately give away my position. So I decided to navigate in the dark. I knew my own home better than a thief would, so if I moved quietly, I’d have the element of surprise on my side.
Just then I had to muffle a scream as the door to my bedroom at the end of the hall slammed shut. Then the sound of weeping filled the home. It was sad, and distant, but it was definitely coming from my room.
Acting on instinct instead of logic, I hit the light switch in the hall, and went to investigate. Slowly, and as quietly as I could, I cracked open the door. The light from the hallway spilled into the dark room, and immediately, the weeping stopped.
I held my breath for a moment, not sure of what would happen next. That’s when my eyes fell upon the painting.
The sheet lay crumpled beneath it. I know it was covered the last time I had seen it, yet there it was, strewn across the floor.
Shaking, I pushed the door open further, allowing more light to spill into the room. The oil painting on the far end of the room illuminated, hungrily refracting the beam of light that now shone across it.
The last flecks of flesh colored paint my grandmother had painstakingly applied to the topcoat had crumbled away, once more revealing the horrifying visage I remember from my childhood.
I froze for a moment, overwhelmed by the same disgust that had captured me all those years ago the first time I laid eyes on the piece. That sickly yellow skin, those long black nails, the inexplicable wind that defied natural law. It all looked so terrifyingly real in the faint light.
Those deep oozing craters… Wait. Oozing? Oh my God. There’s no way. The craters in her face were actually oozing that horrible rusty material. It was impossible, but those deep, dark crevices were literally dripping with the stuff. I could see it seep out of the canvas and hear the splatters on the hardwood floors below.
I knew I should run, but my feet seemed glued to their place. I tried to calm my heavy, raspy breathes, however, I soon realized that they weren’t mine… I held my breath for a moment, and the scratchy exhales continued. I focused my gaze on the abomination on the wall, and released a silent scream.
The painting was moving. The woman’s bony, misshapen chest was jaggedly rising and falling in sync with the heavy breathing that now filled the room. My eyes widened in terror as my worst fear came to light. The painting slowly began to lurch. The shape of a crater filled head began to push through the canvas as if it were merely a sheet of spandex.
As the wretched figure began to force its way through, I finally regained my senses. I slammed the door shut and began running down the hall. I had only made it a few feet before I heard an enormous thud. The canvas had fallen off the wall. And at that precise moment, the wailing resumed. This time so loud I physically had to cover my hears.
Right as I rounded the corner, I shrieked in fear as I was immersed in total blackness. I tried desperately to orient myself, but my night vision had only just started to develop. In a panic, I continued forward with my hands outstretched, hoping to find the banister that lead downstairs.
A jolt of terror ran up my spine when I heard the creak of a door opening, followed by the sound of something heavy thumping, then dragging down the hall. The weeping had turned into wild shrieks, and were so loud they were disorienting. I nearly fell down the stairs when my hands finally grasped the banister.
As quickly as I could, I began racing down the stairs. The thumping and dragging sounded closer now. It was moving far faster than I thought. When I got to the bottom of the staircase, I felt for the side table on the right and threw it to the ground, hoping to slow it down.
Something was off now though. The shrieking had stopped. It was silent. No thumping, no dragging. Just silent. For some reason this scared me even more. So I ran as quickly as I could, despite the dark, straight for the front door.
Right as I was mere feet from grasping the handle, I felt my feet give out from underneath me. Something bony and cold had wrapped itself around my ankle. I fought wildly to break free as the sound of heavy breathing filled the room loudly again. I saw the form of something large and dark approaching me, and I swung wildly with my hands.
I felt them dig into something cold and moist. In disgust, I used all my might to push it back, and break through the front door, slamming it shut behind me.
I didn’t stop running until the sun had begun to rise. When I finally stopped, I collapsed on the ground, panting heavily. I raised my hand to wipe my brow, but stopped. I had been so focused on fleeing up until now that I hadn’t taken a moment to look at my hand. It was covered in a dark, rusty material, and tangled in several strands of long, black hair.
***
When Edward returned, he found the home to have been targeted by burglars. The place was trashed, but it was rather odd. Only one thing in the entire home had been stolen. He noticed that the large, lovely painted my grandmother had restored was nowhere to be found.
The police came by, and told me I was lucky to have escaped. I just nodded and kept quiet. After all, a burglary was the only logical explanation, right? This was a fairly textbook case, you see. A large, Victorian home full of valuable paintings makes a tempting target for thieves.
There was however, one detail about the case that seemed to have everyone baffled. All throughout the home there were trails of a dark, rusty fluid. Lab reports later confirmed it to be a strange combination of paint and old, rotten blood.
I’m not much a fan of paintings anymore. Edward and I sold the gallery, and are using the money to plan our wedding and are currently looking for a new home. I told him that I have trouble sleeping here because I have nightmares about the break in, but the truth is, we never did find the painting.
And some nights, I’ll lay in bed, moments away from drifting off, and I’ll swear I hear the sound of distant, raspy breaths.
Credit To – Madame Macabre
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The first known case of Kystlich Syndrome occurred in Bonn, Germany on June 27, 2014. The media was all over it, of course, due to the grisly and disturbing nature of the event, but stayed with the story due to the unraveling strangeness that emerged as more details emerged. On that day, police initially responded to a report that a mob of people had attacked and seriously injured a person on a side street in a shopping district. When first responders arrived on the scene, they were shocked at what they found. Over a dozen people scattered around a wide side walk in various stages of shock. They were all covered in blood and gore, covering their shirts, arms, face and especially on their hands and around their mouths. Some of them were weeping openly, some were catatonic, and a couple appeared to be trying to induce vomiting by sticking their fingers down their throats. However, this was not the most unsettling aspect of the scene.
Lying roughly near the center of the assembled group was a human corpse, though this wasn’t immediately obvious. The corpse was in taters, with its chest cavity torn open, most of the face shredded, and several limbs mangled and broken, with the right arm actually having been separated from the rest of the body and dragged several yard away. The most disturbing aspect of the victim, however, was the nature of the wounds. Cursory inspection revealed that most of the wounds to the body had been inflicted by human teeth.
Several eyewitnesses would later recount the same story to the police. The victim had been walking down the street, doing nothing out of the ordinary, when he stopped to check a bus schedule. It was then that several people passing by him had suddenly stopped, and turned their attention to the man, who seemed oblivious to the sudden attention. A few moments later, witness claim that the passersby leapt at the man, knocking him down and tearing at him with teeth and fingernails. The attackers made animalistic grunts as they rent the man asunder, some tearing flesh free with their teeth and eating it, while others shoved large handfuls of organs into their mouths and devoured them. By far the most disturbing aspect was the account of several patrons of a shoe store directly across from the site of the attack. One person had left a nearby shop, screaming and brandishing a long pipe at the attackers to drive them off, but when he got within a couple yards of the attack, he suddenly came to a halt, as if dazed. Several seconds later, he had dropped the weapon, and joined the attackers in their savage dismemberment of the man.
What startled the police most, however, was the behavior of the attackers after the attack. After the attack had been going on for over a minute, the attackers suddenly stopped. Some witnesses described it as though they appeared to be coming to their senses, and then they began screaming. Many of them scrambled away from the body, retching, while others simply fell back and went catatonic. One attacker, an elderly woman, lost consciousness and would later pass away from heart failure. The police rounded up all the attackers, and carted them off to the police station. Several hours of interrogation and background investigation would only deepen the mystery.
The people were all complete strangers, unrelated by any factors other than their proximity to the victim when the attack occurred. They were mostly coherent now, and as coherent as you could expect given their circumstances. Most showed deep revulsion at what they had done, but couldn’t adequately explain what had happened, only that they had been overcome by an uncontrollable urge to attack and devour the man, and how his flesh had tasted delicious to them, right up to the point when they had regained control of themselves. This led to the investigators nicknaming it Kystlich Syndrome, after the German word for “Delicious”. Eventually, they were all quietly sent to mental health institutions for treatment of their ‘temporary’ psychosis.
News organizations speculated wildly about the attack. A thrill kill gang, a secret cult of cannibals, a viral marketing stunt for a new zombie movie and other theories floated around for most of the following weeks, right up to the second attack. This attack occurred in a small village in China, this time involving several people in a street market attacking and devouring a vendor whose stall they’d been near. The same pattern was described, the people suddenly freezing before attacking the man, the same gory attack, and the same sudden cessation of hostilities followed by horror on the part of the attackers. The government media was quick to cover up the attack, though stories of it managed to leak out through the usual internet channels.
By now, several multinational agencies had become involved, looking for a pattern in the attacks, the main suspect being some here to for unknown religious cult or gruesome drug cartel. It wasn’t until the third attack, ten days later, that the true nature of the attacks would start to be uncovered.
The third recorded incident occurred in London, in a heavily monitored portion of the downtown area. The footage of the attack, which eventually leaked out to the internet, showed the same pattern of attack as the previous two incidents, though this time, a string of events would shed further light on the true nature incidents. The attack occurred along a busy street, and this time, the victim, a young man in excellent physical health, managed to break free of his attackers and run out into the street. His attackers pursued him, but the man and those following closest were struck by a bus as they entered a bus lane. Those behind them pulled up moments after the bus struck and dragged their intended victim several yards down the road, and this seemed to cause whatever had come over them to release its hold, and they seemed to regain their senses, though they were clearly in a state of shock. The young man himself was apparently killed the moment the bus struck him. This footage and a subsequent autopsy would lead to the discovery of the horrific truth behind the incidents.
An autopsy of the body, complete with chemical analysis, showed an unknown chemical in the body of the young man. This chemical was present throughout the body, but mostly in the blood and on the skin of the deceased. This chemical was determined to be a previously unknown aromatic hydrocarbon compound that had been produced by his bodies own glandular system. This chemical would then begin to waft off the person, become airborne, and would enter surrounding people through the mucus membranes of the nose and mouth, finally accumulating in the olfactory and cranial nerves. When present at a high enough concentration, the hydrocarbons would begin causing something akin to a ‘short circuit’ in those nerves. What followed was cascade of neurological reactions would then ‘supercharge’ the part of the brain associated with hunger, quickly overwhelming the conscious mind , banishing higher thought, and causing them to go into an animalistic state where they needed to devour the source of the ‘smell’. The hydrocarbon itself was unstable, and once it came in contact with air, it would begin to break down. This was what had limited the radius of the attackers. It also explained why they had ceased their attack after the death of the victim, as exposing the inner workings of the body would expose the chemical to air without any source of replenishment, causing it to disperse and release its hold.
The chemical had only been detectable in the accident victim due to the circumstances of his demise. By the time stunned onlookers had rushed to aid him, he had already passed away. The chemical present in his spilled blood and on his skin had diminished enough to not affect those who approached the body. However, with the cessation of vital functions caused not by consumption of said organs by other humans, enough tissue to sample was still present and find traces of the chemical.
Needless to say, the governments of the world worked quickly to keep these findings under wraps. They began looking for a source of the change in the glandular system. Bioterrorism was suspected, and across the globe, intelligence agencies worked overtime to try and find any signs the disease had been manufactured by the usual rogue’s gallery. Researchers worked feverishly to try and find a food or airborne vector, but to little avail. The incidents continued to occur, but did not accelerate in frequency, nor did a geographic common point emerge. It wasn’t until late 2015 that the answer emerged. In early 2014, astronomers had begun to register an unusual subatomic particle burst originating from deep space. They had no clear source, and were not particularly plentiful, but it did make some news for its quirkiness about how little we understood about subatomic particles. Researchers continued to gather data on these particles, but in September 2015, a Spanish government researcher noticed a correlation between these bursts and the attacks, with bursts being recorded in the general area the victims had been in hours before the attack. Studies would reveal that these particles, passing through the human brain, would spark the process to alter the human glandular system.
This information led to a flurry of activity from the governments of the world. The announced to the world the existence of Kystlich Syndrome and its cause in February 2016, and assured the citizens of the world they were working on a solution. Till then, they advised people to wear air filtering devices when going around in public and to wear newly designed devices that would detect when your body began to emit the hydrocarbon so you could make your way to a hospital for isolation. But this was where the problems began.
It soon became clear, thanks to tests on victims who managed to reach isolation before it was too late, that the alterations in their glandular could not be reversed without causing fatal reactions in the human body. Furthermore, the high energy particles turned out to be impossible to block without extremely expensive and difficult to produce materials. Several years of fruitless experimentation couldn’t change these two factors, and the bursts showed no signs of stopping. Some people suggested developing the particle detection system further, but it finally decided that it wasn’t worth it, since knowing it had occurred was akin to closing the barn door after the horses had gotten out. One of the few pieces of good news was they also didn’t show any signs of increasing either. Meanwhile, governments had begun to enact mandatory respirator laws in order to prevent attacks, but these were met with surprising resistance. After all, the chances of a given person being exposed to a person experiencing the peak of Kystlich Syndrome were very slim, less than 1% of 1 % of 1% for a given person’s lifetime, less than the odds of being struck by lightning, one famous statistician showed. And so, the laws were eventually repealed, replaced at first with campaigns urging citizens to wear them, until these were eventually defunded. Furthermore, it was argued, that it was unjust to punish those who had perpetrated these attacks, since they had been overwhelmed by the foreign chemical in their body, and couldn’t resist. Soon, laws began to spring up making Kystlich Syndrome an acceptable defense in court, and the attackers would often receive government aid in order to help them recover from the trauma of the attack.
That was all years ago, and here in 2037, we don’t really think too much about it. It’s like getting struck by a car or attacked by a wild animal; it’s just something that can happen. Oh, we have taken steps as a society to deal with it. Young children are taught about the condition in health class at a young age, in order to engrain in them the necessary tools to avoid being traumatized by it. It teaches them what the sensation of hunger would be like, and that, scientifically, it’s no different than eating raw meat. These programs, in place since 2020, have been designed by experts, and have been largely effective at helping avoid long term psychological damage. It’s not something they can control after all. We don’t even really monitor for the bursts anymore. Just some spot checks to confirm they are still occurring.
It was just last week, however, that news has begun to circulate around the internet about an attack in New York City. A pair of teens attacked a homeless man in an alley, and devoured much of his body. They had passed lie detector test that they had been overcome by a tremendous urge to eat him, and that he looked delicious. However, enough was left for a Kystlich compound test. Apparently, no sign of the syndrome was found in his body.
Attacks have been higher this year, actually. And it turns out, most of the attackers have been teenagers or younger. All of whom have stated that they were gripped by an overwhelming urge that someone simply looked “Delicious.”
Credit To – Discardable
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Anyone who hasn’t read my story should do so before looking in this thread. My first story had some updates to it too. My second story is my girlfriend’s account of the events.
Hey guys, I promised pictures and updates, so here we go. I will also respond to some questions. So first’s things first, let me bring you up to speed:
We have not had any encounters with Rose since last night’s “break-in.”
Police called this morning to check on us and told us to stay careful and call should anything happen.
I talked to my mother on Skype and it was, well, disappointing. She only knew Rose as a normal person. She actually doesn’t even remember Rose asking about me much. She never got the hint that Rose may be a crazy cunt. My parents are now really worried. Not sure if they think I’m going crazy or they are legitimately afraid for my well-being.
Lila hasn’t gotten a hold of her mom at this point (her mom is in England).
We’ve been talking a lot. We decided that it must be some cult in action since neither of us are believers in the spiritual side. It is hard to explain how Rose would know us both before we met each other.
I got tons of PMs asking me about how we met. That’s a good question, an I forgot to include that part in my story. Basically, last summer, I was out with my best friend in a club. Club closes at 1:00am and then everyone gets in front of it and sort of chills for a while. We were standing outside when this older man came up to us. He started openly hitting on me (in a homosexual way). I am far from a homophobe but this man was persistent. Then I heard Lila’s voice: “Hey baby, what are you doing?” I turned around and saw her sitting at the nearby bench with two of her girlfriends. I realized she was talking to me. The look on her face told me everything. She was saving me from the man. I said “excuse me, my girlfriend is waiting” and walked away and sat with Lila. He came after me. Lila and I had an immediate chemistry. Man didn’t believe us that we were together and kept asking questions about us, but Lila and I played off each other so well that he finally decided we were telling the truth and left. We kissed that night. She was visiting that town for only two days, but promised to come back and see me. And she did two weeks later. We’ve been together since.
I realize that some may suggest that the man was part of the cult and tried to “force” us onto each other, but it still took free will from both of us to do what we did, so I doubt the possibility of that conspiracy.
Lila is in a bad mental shape right now. She is terrified and jumps on every little noise. I don’t know how to help. I am scared myself, but am trying to appear strong for her.
Some of you have suggested that this story is fake. I will say this: I am fully aware of how incredible this all sounds and this is exactly why I posted it here. Many of you helped with advice and kind words and I thank you guys. Others that don’t believe me, you can view the story as a piece of shitty fiction. I never said it’d be good, just true.
If you guys feel that the story of my baptism may have something to do with this, I will find time to write it, although I have to note, you are an inpatient bunch. Please realize that we are going through a lot right now. Thanks.
Some updates regarding the pictures I am posting here:
8 So, I snapped a few pics before the police came. Also, after they left (and left the orange), I noticed something engraved/written on the peel. I took a photo of that too. Bottom word I was able to decipher: It says “OTVORI” which means “open” in my language. Top word I cant tell what it is.
I don’t know what to do with the orange. I still have it. Will throw it out soon.
Enough bullshiting.
Picture 1 is of our staircase leading to the room.
Picture 2 is the view from the door of our room.
Picture 3 is closeup of oranges.
Picture 4 is a closer look at oranges. Notice the peel.
Picture 5 is another blow-up of the fucking thing.
Picture 6 is of the message written/engraved in the peel.
Picture 7 As I said, someone changed it to the picture from my childhood that I didn’t have on my laptop.
If anyone can make any sense out of this, I’d appreciate any help at this point. Polaroid picture is at the police station, but the cop I know told me that if nothing happens within few days, I’d be able to at least come and make a copy of it if I really wanted to.
That’s all for now.
Edit: I blurred out part of the last image to protect my privacy, it was revealing my name. Kind Redditor discovered it and messaged me.
So, here’s another update: (also, do I update on these posts or create new ones?)
I told my mother what’s going on and she asked to see the picture. She recognized it. The woman in the picture is her friend from when I was a child and the kid in the picture is her son. She doesn’t know where the pic came from, or that it was ever taken for that matter. My mom said she spoke to my grandma who still lives in Bosnia and my grandma seems to know something. I will have to call her tomorrow. Later on, I will upload the desktop pic that was put on my lap top. Still in search of original files and/or hidden folders.
Credit To – Milos Bogetic
NOTE: This is the third in a series of several popular Reddit posts documenting some seriously creepy experiences. We are publishing them here with express permission of Milos Bogetic aka inaaace, the original poster. The story is in multiple parts, and will be published completely over the next few days – much like what I did with the ‘Bedtime’ series earlier this year. After the stories have all gone up, I’ll edit each post with links to the other parts.
The OP has finished the book that he promised during his successful kickstarter project.
You can find the paperback and Kindle e-book versions here: The Story of Her Holding an Orange by Milos Bogetic – full disclosure: our referral link is included.
I know that this will not be new material for all of you, but for those of you who – like myself – don’t use Reddit, I wanted to post it so that you guys could enjoy it as much as I did after having it brought to my attention. Thanks again to Milos for letting me post it, and enjoy!
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You know, Mom, I remember now how it all started.
It was right after moving to the new house. How old was I? Four, maybe five? I was so young. So innocent. So unsuspecting.
The new house was beautiful, Mom. Do you remember how I used to run from room to room? You always laugh so hard when you recount those times. We were so happy. All of us.
The house was so big, much bigger than the old house. This one had two floors. The main floor had the living room and three bedrooms: Judy’s, Dad’s and your’s, and my bedroom, at the end of the hall.
Do you remember what I used to tell you about the basement though? I always told you to not go into the basement. You would brush it off. Wave away my fears. You probably don’t remember me telling you at all.
But I remember. I can never forget.
It all started with going downstairs on my own a few times. When I would go down there to get something, I would see things moving. Small, black things. In the corners, on top of the TV cabinet, in the hallway, in the laundry room, anywhere. They would move in and out of the corner of my eye. This would cause me to dash into the half-dimmed room and scurry upstairs. I remember one time Judy commented, “Oh, Kelsi’s scared again.”
I was scared of these beings, Mom. I was so scared. When you sent me down into the darkness alone, I feared for my life. I never knew what would happen when I was down there. I got to the point that I never went anywhere without turning a light on. A light switch would always be switched before going in any room, and then a frightening dash back upstairs. But I also didn’t want anyone to know I was afraid. I hid my fear the best I could, Mom. That was until seeing wasn’t the worst part.
It was not long after I began seeing them, that I started hearing them. Saying things in hushed whispers. Mocking me. Snickering. Moving objects in the basement. The small noises meant nothing to you and the rest of the family. You could turn your back to the sounds. You closed your eyes to the unknown living in your house.
I remember this one time; you found a handkerchief waiting for you on your bed. You laughed it off. You all laughed it off. The handkerchief didn’t belong to any of us, and it was just waiting there for you, almost like a warning. But you all thanked the beings for their kind gift, making a mockery and a joke out of it. Mom, why didn’t any of you listen to me when I told you to stop?
By the time I was eight, the voices were a constant occurrence in the house. I could hear every word they said. These creatures, which I called the Whisperers, talked about everything. They talked about new things to do to be nuisances, how much we amused them, how best to hurt the family living in their house. I had learned from you to put these things behind me and ignore them.
But that became harder and harder. I remember one night, laying in my bed, I heard the door creep open. I hadn’t been able to sleep well, so small noises jerked me up in the middle of the night quite often. But the Whisperers never moved objects so carelessly. They knew I was awake, and they knew the best way to frighten me. Loud movements were heard from the kitchen, and to save myself, I flung the blankets over my head. I wanted to cry for you like a toddler, Mom, but I didn’t want to put you in harm.
I heard a yelp from the kitchen. It was soft enough that no one else would be awoken from it. I know if you ever read this, Mom, you’ll yell at me for being so stupid, but I had to see what was in the kitchen. I had to know what evil was preying on my family.
The hallway felt eerily cold in the hot summer’s night. The light, being already on, hardly made my descent to the kitchen less terrifying. My feet shattered the silence as I struggled to creep as quietly as I could. I was so afraid, and the sweat from my body glued my clothes to my skin.
Mom, I don’t want to scare you with describing what was in the kitchen, but I’ll tell you best of what was there. A small creature, about 2 foot high, stood before me. It was pitch black and beady yellow eyes. This is the only way to describe the appearance of the creature, Mom. It smelt of a mixture of vegetable oil and that paving stuff that they put in the cracks of roads. It gave off this sound, like a crackling fire and constant murmuring whispers. The creature made me afraid, Mom. It was fear incarnate. This creature drove a stake right into my soul, making me cold and writhe in true darkness.
While I watched this…thing, it stared me down and opened its mouth, which was invisible at first glance. Its mouth was simply a whole full of razor-sharp teeth, and it snickered as I gasped at the pure horror of the scene. As quickly as it opened, the creature’s mouth closed, and it turned its gaze over to its right. I hadn’t noticed her, Mom. I hadn’t noticed Dino.
Dino, our poor hound, lie directly in the center of the kitchen underneath the countertop. A large butcher knife was nestled gently between two of her ribs. Dino whined one last time as she took in her last breath and died a painful death.
I didn’t know what to do then, Mom. I had no control of my body at that time. I cried. No, I screamed while tears fell from my eyes. I didn’t know what else to do, Mom. I couldn’t help it.
That’s when I heard them, down the hall again. Judy’s door and your door was open. Oh, God, Mom. I was so frightened. Without thinking about it, I ran into Judy’s room.
Judy was dead, Mom. I found her mutilated, but I know you wouldn’t want details about how your daughter was killed. Let’s just agree that she had not stood a chance.
I had no time to grieve. I had to check on Dad. Strangely, the light to your room was on, so I didn’t need to go too far inside to see Dad laying lying on the ground, in a distraught, disturbing way. Two butter knives were lodged into his neck, Mom. I don’t know how that was done.
You were not in the room. You weren’t there. Why weren’t you in your room? Did you hear it coming, the footsteps? Did you honestly think that running to the basement would be the best answer?
I knew immediately, Mom. I knew you were down there, trying to escape the evil that was upstairs. I ran down the stairs, hoping to beat the Whisperers to you.
I found you in the family room, Mom. The light was off. I found you in front of the TV. You had gashes in your head and your legs. You were losing so much blood. When you saw me, you screamed. You screamed so loudly. I didn’t understand.
But then I saw them. The Whisperers had beat me to you. And they were chanting.
Kill her. Kill her. We must kill her. We must kill her. Kill her. Kill her.
They were chanting at me, Mom. They were telling me to kill you. They were telling me that you had to die.
That’s when I looked at my hands.
They were covered in blood, Mom. Blood was staining my new nightgown. Blood was running down my arms. I was holding a knife. A knife from the kitchen.
When I looked back up, the Whisperers were gone, and it was just you and me.
I turned on the light and smiled. You screamed again. I advanced you, raising the knife in my hand.
I told you to never go into the basement, Mom. Why didn’t you listen to me?
Credit To: Rose
|
In every major town and city, there is a house of which no official record exists, and whose windows have been boarded up for longer than anyone around can remember. The previous occupants, if there ever were any, are untraceable, and no organisation or individual will ever lay claim to the plot on which it stands.
Nevertheless, when you break in–always through a back, ground-floor window; you must never touch the outer doors–you will see amongst the dust the signs of inhabitants long gone. A flattened cardboard box, an overturned child’s cot, balding patches on the carpet where the pile has been worn away. Invariably there will be an orphaned double mattress in the master bedroom. What you will not see, however, are rats and cockroaches, or animal waste. Vermin know better than to come here.
These are Her sacred spaces.
The first time you visit, bring only what you need to help you enter the house. Then locate the master bedroom, stand in the centre, and draw an unbroken circle in the dust around your feet. Make it about a metre in diameter to be safe.
Face the doorway and say aloud; “I wish to make a sacrifice. Will you welcome the offering?”
Then leave as quickly as possible. You must not return until night has next fallen.
This time, bring nails, a hammer, an empty litre bottle, a sharp, sturdy knife, and a torch. Enter the same way you did last time. Remember the mattress in the master bedroom? Someone will be sleeping there. Don’t worry about waking them up; She has taken care of that for you. Turn the sleeper over onto their back and cut their jugular vein, making sure to collect as much blood as you can.
You will need to pour a little of the blood onto the floor of every room, including this one, but make sure you have some left at the end. When you’ve finished, leave by the same way you entered, and close up the boards again. (This is what the hammer and nails are for.) Walk home. Speak to nobody on your way. When you get there, tip some of the remaining blood into your right hand and smear it over your door handle before you enter. Then go to bed.
If there is any blood left, you must pour the rest of it onto any pavement in the city, but do not allow it to be poured down a drain. The knife you must never use again, and should bury. Do not trouble yourself with covering your tracks. When you next leave your house, the blood on your door will be gone, and the murder you have committed will have no repurcussions. From the moment you leave Her temple, DNA evidence will never again implicate you; law enforcement will creep around your footsteps without touching them. On cameras, your face will show up a blur.
You are under Her protection now.
Just make sure you get the right house.
|
Still no messages on my phone.
I guess he wasn’t going to call me back after all. I can’t really blame him, maybe I came on a bit too fast yesterday.
I had noticed him long before he noticed me. His shiny black hair and unnatural blue eyes. I wasn’t the only one watching him, that’s for sure. His movements were elegant in a boyish way. And his smile…his smile.
I would die for that smile.
Still no messages…
I thought about calling him, maybe apologize for going too fast yesterday. I’m a coward, I know, but I just couldn’t bring myself to dial his number.
Besides he’d promised he’d contact me when he’s ready.
So I’ll wait. I’m patient.
I know, I’ll just casually stroll past his house. Just to see if he’s home. Maybe he’s out, that would explain why he couldn’t call me yet.
He only lives half an hour away anyway. Maybe he’s shy and is scared to call me. Silly boy. I’ll go to him and tell him that he doesn’t have to be scared. That I don’t mind if he needs time.
He lives pretty secluded in a farm on the outskirts of town. I can hear the sheep in the stables as I approach. My heart skips when I see there’s lights burning inside. He must be there, he told me yesterday his parents would be gone for the weekend. They left him to look after the sheep for those days. Poor baby, that must be hard work. He was probably just too busy to call me. I’ll have to stay here until his parents come back and help him take care of all those sheep.
I knock on the door, but he doesn’t answer. Maybe he fell asleep. The thought of his beautiful face even more softened by sleep makes me smile. I try the door, it’s unlocked. There’s hardly any crime around here, so I guess locking the door is not needed. I try to be as quiet as possible as I sneak through the house. I want to surprise him. I cringe at every creak the stairs make as I climb them.
Finally I’ve reached the bedroom and I carefully open the door.
There he is, lying in bed as I thought. Quietly I switch on the nightlight on his desk so I can see his face.
His blue eyes are open, staring into space and his whole face is one bloody mess. His cheeks have been carved, the skin mostly removed and hanging loose on the sides of his face. He’s missing his fingernails, they are laid out on the bed carefully arranged. On his bare chest words are carved.
I look at him, my hands covering my mouth.
He’s still the same as I left him yesterday. He must have been so tired that he slept all day. How cute!
I softly kiss his forehead, making sure I don’t wake him. Then I write another message below the one on his chest, letting him know I’m here when he needs me.
I leave the room, heading back outside. I think it’s time for the sheep to go to sleep.
And tomorrow I’ll introduce myself to his parents. I’m sure they’ll love me too.
—
Credited to Boudica.
|
Griffin and I were both 25. We hadn’t seen each other since college but kept in close contact. I was working at a cybersecurity firm, and I really wasn’t sure what he had been doing. He always told me he was “just working on something.”
I took a few vacation days from work to go and see him. We went camping for a night. When we woke up the following morning, he told me about The Machine.
“Wow-wee, sure is beautiful,” I said stepping out of my tent.
“Damn right it is,” Griffin responded. He was a silhouette in front of the red light of dawn creeping over the mountain behind him. “Come here.” He was fixing a pot of coffee.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s serious. Come here.”
I sat beside him on a large log we’d rolled over the night before to sit on around the fire. “What’s up?”
“I want to tell you,” he said.
“Tell me what?”
“What I’ve been working on.”
“Oh, alright.”
“But hear me loud and clear, you can’t tell anybody. It’s a secret between you, me, and God.”
“I won’t. I swear to—”
“No, no. I don’t need any promises or swears. I just need your word. Say it again. You won’t tell anybody.”
“I won’t tell anybody, Griff.”
“Okay, then,” he sipped from his thermos and muttered, “a man’s only as good as his word. Someone famous said that, I think.”
“I think that’s from the Bible, dude.”
“Ha! That’s funny, considering what I’m about to tell you. Makes me wonder if there is a God…” he trailed, looking off in the distance.
That made me uneasy for some reason. “Go on, tell.”
“Let me start off by saying this: I know how it’s going to sound—crazy. I know. You’re gonna think good ol’ Griff has lost his mind. But bear with me, now. I have proof. I have it with me.”
“You have what with you?”
“The Machine. That’s what I call it.”
“What does it do?”
“It can—well, let me show you.” He ran to his tent, unzipped something, and came back with a laptop, of sorts. But it was heavily modified, and connected to it by wires was a small, black box. He put the laptop in his lap and put the box next to him on the ground.
“You carried all that on a hike? You could’ve shown me all this stuff back at your place.”
“I could’ve, yes, but didn’t want to. What I have here is a game-changer, man. If the government is tapping our phones and TV’s, I don’t want them to know about this.” He pressed a couple of buttons and The Machine made a whirring startup sound. “It takes a minute to get going.”
“What does it do?” I asked again.
“It can create, destroy, and transport matter.” He said it bluntly then sighed long and hard. I could tell he’d been waiting to tell someone about it.
I didn’t have an answer to what he said. I was silent. I didn’t believe him, but at the same time I believed he was about to show me something—something I’d never forget. Dread began to boil up inside of me.
“You don’t believe me.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t believe me either, but let me show you once this gets working.” He patted his hand on the box like a man would pat his dog’s head.
“You’re really telling me that thing can, just, what? Create something out of nothing?”
His smile never thinned. “Yes. And delete something into nothing. And it can move matter in a millisecond—faster even!”
“So, your box breaks every law of physics?”
“It’s not ‘my box.’ It is The Machine.” A couple of beeps came from the modified laptop. He typed a couple of things frantically, and then looked in my eyes. His smile had been replaced with a stern, determined grimace. “Hold out your hand,” he said.
I obeyed, and held my hand out, palm towards the sky.
“Ready?” he said.
I nodded wordlessly, my tongue stuck in my throat.
He pressed a button, and I felt a weight in my hand instantly. Faster, even. My jaw dropped slightly and all my concentration, all my senses, and all my sanity was working overtime trying to comprehend what had just happened.
In my hand was a nice, shiny, red apple. It came from nowhere. There was no sound, no wind, no WOOSH or KAPOW. It did not exist a second before, but there it was, sitting in my hand.
“Hold out your other hand,” he said. I was not looking at him, but I knew he still had his serious face on. I complied, and held out my other hand, almost hypnotically. My eyes were still transfixed on the apple.
That is, until it wasn’t there. It had moved to my other hand—if you could even call it moving. It transported. It teleported. It shifted through time and space like it was no big deal. And then a couple of seconds later, it vanished. Gone. He deleted it. Never to be seen again.
Astounded. Excited. Terrified. Those three emotions battled out in my head. I took in a deep draw of air, realizing I had stopped breathing somewhere in those 20 seconds or so.
“How…” that was all I could manage to say.
“Later,” he told me, “later, I’ll tell you how everything works. Quit your job. Work with me.”
“I… I just…”
“I know. It’s mind-boggling. Come work with me on it. It can be improved. There’s so much to do.”
“But… I need a paycheck and—”
“No, you don’t. When I said this was a game-changer, I meant it. What do you need money for? Food? We can create all the food you need. You want a new house? We can build one with this. But how are you going to keep the lights on? We hook it up to a battery-run generator, and we simply create and replace the battery with a fresh one every day. Car? Gas? Water? I haven’t had a bank account for a full year, man, and I’ll never need another cent again.”
My hands were still stretched out, and my body felt like it was in shock. “Okay.”
“Okay?” His smile reappeared.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
He closed the laptop and put it to his side. He cracked a beer open, even though it was 8:30 AM, and he looked to the sunrise. I turned and watched it too.
“The possibilities are endless,” he said.
“So, you’ve tested it a lot, I’m assuming.”
“Yep. A whole lot.”
I don’t know why my mind went to this, but it did. “Have you ever, eh, done it to a human?”
He side-eyed me. “Done what?”
“Well, you know. Have you ever deleted someone? Or moved someone? Or, created?”
He seemed to think on it before responding. “I’m not sure if I can create a human. I don’t know the intricacies that go into building a living being. But I’ve moved myself—teleported—whatever you wanna call it. Not far, just to a different room in my house. It’s a weird feeling. But it works.”
I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. So, I asked, “And… deleted?”
“No.” he took a swig from his bottle. “I’ve deleted an insect, though. A spider. He was just gone. Like the apple. Never done it to a human.”
I was relieved he hadn’t murdered someone, but then I thought, well it wouldn’t be murder would it? They wouldn’t be dead. They’d just, not exist anymore. Every atom of them would be gone from the universe—any consciousness or awareness they once held would be vaporized into absolutely nothing. Maybe it’d be more peaceful than death, or maybe it’d be a fate much worse.
But then I thought of how this could change everything. This machine could feed the hungry forever. It could erase tumors and cancerous cells. It could provide shelter and clothing for everyone. It could eliminate the need for any transportation. It could clean the atmosphere. It could transport people to other planets instantly. Humans could expand all across the galaxy—the entire universe, maybe.
“We are going to change the world,” I said.
“We are going to run the world,” he responded.
And as his words died in the morning air, my worries came to life. The Machine can destroy anything, idiot, I thought to myself. It can and will destroy. Sure, your goodie little two-shoes wants to help humanity. But imagine what would happen if a terrorist organization had it. They could wipe out an entire city at the snap of their fingers. A hostile country could delete an entire continent if they like. Hell! All it’d take is one evil son of a bitch with the key to that thing to destroy the entire Earth! Or the Solar System! Or the Universe!
These thoughts clashed in my head.
I sipped my coffee. Griffin sipped his beer. We watched the sunrise.
Whatever was to come, I couldn’t stop it now.
* * * * * *
I spent the next couple of months living with Griffin. In that time, he spent almost every day explaining to me how The Machine worked. It was very complex, but I finally understood. I will not be explaining to you how it operates. And I hope you’ll forgive me for that, and hope you understand why I refuse to share that knowledge.
After learning all there was to learn about it, I posed the question to him.
“Do you think you could make another?” I asked him.
“Sure, it’d take me a couple of weeks but—”
“No, I mean, do you think we can create another Machine using this Machine?”
He cocked his head back. “Wow, I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that.”
So, we worked for a few days, programming every detail of The Machine into The (original) Machine, and by day five, the code was complete and ready to go. I pressed enter, and there it appeared. A second Machine, right next to its partner. Its creator. Its father. Its God. Yet they were equal.
“Now we each have one, I guess,” he said.
“Thank you,” I told him.
“Thank me? It was your idea.”
“No, not for the machine. For letting me know. For teaching me about it.”
“You’re my closest—really my only, friend. I didn’t want to go about this alone.” He put his hand on my shoulder.
“So, what’s the actual plan? What are we going to do with these? Where do we start?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Do we tell anyone?”
“Hell no. Like I said before, this is a secret between you, me, and God.”
“Okay, but, think about it. Think about all the things we’ve talked about doing the past couple of months. Cleaning the air, deleting all plastic from the ocean, feeding the hungry, and traveling to Mars and beyond! Those are things that we can’t do unnoticed. It’s going to get out.”
He let that rattle around in his head before he replied. “That’s just talk, though. You know how dangerous this is. I know we’ve been beating around the bush and not talking about that aspect of this. This can’t be public knowledge. This goes beyond danger. If this technology falls into the wrong hands, it’s over.”
“Are you saying we don’t do anything?” I grunted. “So, what do we do? Sit here with a thumb in our ass looking at the greatest invention of human history and never use it for good? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying.” There was a long silence before he spoke again. “I just—I don’t know. We can’t not do anything with it, you’re right.”
“You’ve known about this much longer than I have. What have you been thinking about? What’s the endgame in this?”
“Honestly?” he asked.
“Honestly. Tell me all your thoughts.” I said.
“Well. Okay then. I’ll tell you. My entire thought processes. The good, the bad, and the horrific. I’ve thought about all the good stuff, like you have. Helping the hungry, the poor, all that. But to tell you the truth, I’m afraid of that too.”
“Why?”
“Let’s say we feed and shelter every human. Let’s add to that too, why not? Let’s give out free generators to every home and building in the world, like our houses have. And once a day the batteries are replaced with new ones. So, we have free food and water, free shelter, and free energy.”
“Okay…”
“Well, then no one will want to work anymore. Why should they? What do they need money for? All their basic needs will have been met. That’s millions, if not billions of people quitting their jobs because they don’t need to work.”
“That kind of sounds nice, actually. Everyone would be relaxed.”
“Sure, at first. But you know who else stops working? EMTs. Police officers. Firemen. Those people that work long hours and save lives every day no longer have a reason to go in. Doctors, who study for years and step into six-figure debt willingly? They won’t want to practice medicine anymore. And school? Why go? What’s making anyone want to go? On top of that, who would teach? There’d be a billion dummies by the next decade who don’t know how to read or write. So, if we give it to the public, we’re screwed. The whole world is screwed.”
I hadn’t considered any of this. I was stunned. And he wasn’t done talking.
“I’ve also thought about using it for other things, though. Let’s say we keep this private. What would we do with it? We could use it for other purposes.”
My eyes had widened. I knew what he meant. But I still asked. “Like what?”
“Any way we like. Let’s go right to the extremes, shall we? Imagine a politician, live on TV, making some big announcement to the nation…”
I nodded.
“…and all of a sudden, he drops dead. All we had to do was shift his brain stem an inch to the left. Or! Or! Let’s get even more graphic! We just delete the fucker’s head right on national TV! A clean cut, right across the neck. We delete every atom in his head and boom! Gone. Dead. No one knows why. Or we delete his entire brain. The autopsy comes back and no one knows what to make of it. Biggest news story of the century! We could create a new genocide. We could create a new virus every day and spread it worldwide. We could create a fucking asteroid and send it straight into Earth!”
I couldn’t believe the things he was saying now, things I didn’t know a regular person could think. He kept on, his face was reddening, and eyes were bulging.
“Or! Let’s think even bigger! We could change the entire atmosphere on Mars. Make it just like Earth’s. Nice and stable. Then, we teleport ourselves and The Machines there. We can bring a couple of ladies and start a whole new town. A whole new planet! And we can look to the pale blue dot in the sky that we once called home—look at everything we knew, everything we loved, every ounce of human history, and burn the bitch to the ground. And when the fire goes out, we delete it, like it never existed in the first place.”
My mouth was slightly open from shock. I was at a loss for words, yes, but found my footing and spoke. “But—but you don’t actually want to do those things? Right?”
He panted a little. He was out of breath. His face slowly came back to its original color. “No. God, no. I wouldn’t do any of that. But you asked what I’ve been thinking about. And you asked me to be honest.”
“Yeah, I guess. I’ve thought about some of that too. Maybe not quite as… detailed, I guess.”
“You asked for honesty. And whether you like it or not, the human brain has its dark places. I’d never act on it. They’re just thoughts. And I was sharing them.”
“I know, Griff. I know. Just thoughts.”
Just thoughts, I supposed. Yeah, like gunning down a bunch of high-schoolers. Or flying a plane into a building. Those are just intrusive thoughts that people have sometimes. Maybe a lot of people. But it only takes one person crazy enough to act on those thoughts.
“So, we can’t take it public, and we aren’t going to be killing anyone or destroying the planet. What do we do?”
He shrugged. “We have fun, I guess.”
* * * * * *
We did have fun, for a while. We lived in nice houses we designed ourselves. We drove nice cars we created (not as hard as it sounds, surprisingly). We drank and ate in excess. And we never paid for any of it. When we wanted to go out to bars, clubs, or restaurants and pay for things, that wasn’t a problem either. Once we figured out how to create legitimate $100 bills, we could pay for anything. No one would ever be able to tell the difference, because there wasn’t a single atom out of place.
Then Griff found heroin. I do not want this to become a story of addiction. No, a story of addiction would be about a man, struggling to survive, battling out his demons, losing money, and finding a balance between substance and family. No, once Griffin found heroin, nothing else existed for him. Heroin and The Machine were all he needed.
He never had to pay for it, either. When he wanted a fix, he simply typed the command in The Machine, and there it was, ready in a nice, clean needle waiting to be stuck in his vein. He never left the house after that. Why would he? He needed nothing outside his bedroom, as long as The Machine was there.
That was one possibility we didn’t even consider. Something so simple that we both overlooked it. I would do anything to go back to that day we were camping, and make an oath that we’d never touch any drugs again. What a mistake.
Griffin died of an overdose on December 24th, 2018. I found him the next day. He never got to open his present.
How? How could a man with all the power in the universe—more power than any man had held before—fall so feebly to something so plain? He was a God walking among men and was taken down by an ounce of liquid in a syringe. He had an endless path of wonder and possibilities in front of him, and he chose not to go. He chose to stand still.
I chose not to stand still.
I was about to get busy, very busy.
I was alone. Me and my two Machines. The universe was my playground. Griffin was gone, but his knowledge was not. I had that.
Yes, I had that.
A secret between me and God.
And no one else
|
Teddy Wilson rapped one knuckle against the smoked-stained glass door adorned with the worn, white letters that announced, “Martin Croker: Editor” before popping his head into the room.
“You wanted to see me boss?” The man who served as his immediate supervisor for the last decade was on the phone with some unfortunate soul receiving the sore end of one of Martin’s verbal beatings.
“No…that’s inexcusable,” Martin cried emphatically into his IPhone before putting a hand over the microphone and motioning Teddy to the faded leather couch that sat adjacent to his massive desk. “Have a seat Teddy; this is almost over anyway.” Of course, whomever was on the other end of the line could still his words. Martin, who had been a stalwart in that office for nearly thirty years, was as close to being an expert in newspaper journalism as anyone could claim to be. In many regards, however, he was absolute dinosaur when it came to the current flood of technological advancements and it was little things like that which made him, much like the entire industry of the printed word, a dying breed. It was only through Teddy’s tutelage that he’d been able to utilize the Apple device at all.
“I told you three days ago,” the grey-haired dynamo of intensity continued the call; “that you had three days to get that article in. If I recall, you said that would be the ‘very last’ extension that you’d need. Am I wrong about that?” Teddy quietly closed the door behind him and settled into the couch that often served as Martin’s bed on those nights when Jack Daniels overstayed his welcome…which seemed more and more frequent as of late. Teddy would have preferred one of the three chairs but the couch was the only portion of the office that wasn’t buried in random papers, folders and back issues; the entire sum of which could’ve fit on a single flash drive were the man not having to be drug kicking and screaming into the digital age.
“You’ve been on me for six months for bigger assignments…and now that you’ve got one…well…let’s just say that this little shit-show isn’t filling me with confidence.” An outside observer would’ve cringed at the apparent awkwardness of the moment but for anyone who actually knew Martin…that wasn’t the case. The man had two gears: intensity and anger…and both were deeply seeped in sarcasm. It came part and parcel with a position at the South Carolina Sentinel and if you couldn’t handle it…you were probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
“You have until tomorrow. If I don’t get four hundred brilliant effen’ words from you about the Councilman’s scandal by noon tomorrow…you might want to start on a new piece: your resume!” Martin slammed the cell phone down on the desk to end the conversation, obviously missing the satisfying crack his old rotary phone provided, and turned his steely gaze towards the room’s newest occupant.
“I’ve got a new assignment for you.” Teddy nodded, anticipating as much. When he first applied for his position ten years ago there was very little call for a ‘technology reporter’ and he was barely able to convince Martin of the need. Now, as both men were aware, the only reason the paper still held an audience was due in large part to their online presence and without Teddy…that would never have happened.
“I want you to give me something good about the deep, dark web.”
“Actually…” As loath as he was to correct his boss, he just couldn’t let it slide; “the ‘deep web’ and the ‘dark web’ are two different things.”
“Okay…fine,” Martin didn’t seem as irritated as Teddy had expected from the comment. “I’m not asking you to explain it to me. I just want a solid lead out of it. I want something…juicy.” Teddy sighed. “Juicy” was Martin’s key word for salacious sensationalism…not the kind of thing he normally expected from his resident tech expert.
“I don’t know what it is you’re wanting from me Martin. I talk about computers, cellphones and new apps; it’s hardly what you’d consider ‘juicy’.” Martin shook his head and Teddy could tell he was most likely going to be unable to talk his way out of this one.
“I’ve seen YouTube videos. This deep web or dark web or whatever the hell they call it is where the sick-shit takes place: the sex trade, drug sales, pedophilia and such. That’s what I want…and if you give me something good enough it’ll go as the weekend lead.” It was exactly what Teddy had been afraid of.
“Martin…that’s…. that’s just not what I cover. It’s like asking a carpenter to explain the activities that take place in a house after he’s built it. I can tell you all about the construction and layout…but what the hell do I know about the criminals who moved in?” Martin seemed to consider the argument for a moment and Teddy felt the slightest sliver of hope before the older man bluntly brushed it away.
“I guess it’s a bi-line then. Tell Susan she’s on the story with you. You’ve got two weeks; make it your top priority.” Teddy could feel his jaw falling to the floor in cartoonish fashion but was unable to do anything to stop it. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined being assigned to a story with Susan Collins, the Sentinel’s official “Gossip Reporter”. Having dubbed herself the “Queen of High-Society”, she chased minor celebrities and local socialites as the closest thing their little rag had to a paparazzi. Teddy never deceived himself into believing he was working for the NY Times, Washington Post or even USA Today…but he still had strong convictions about what constituted ‘news’ and Susan represented everything that didn’t belong in a real newspaper. Hell…even her title was an oxymoron. How could one accurately report on gossip…a pretty was of saying ‘hearsay’, ‘rumor’ and ‘innuendo’. The whole notion was just ridiculous.
He was just about to verbalize as much to Martin when he got the three words that ended virtually every conversation with the gruff man, whether one was finished with what they had to say or not: “We’re done here.” Teddy wasn’t really sure what would happen if he continued on past that point…no one on the current staff was. If one were able to hunt down the previously employed Dawn Hinton, Mark Sheffler, or Jacob Gasby they might get the answer to that question. Needless to say, “we’re done here” meant we’re done here; and Teddy quietly shuffled out wondering just how in the heck he was going to explain this to Susan, who he’d not said more than a hundred words to in the five years she’d been working there. While it was true they didn’t really know each other, it was clear that they didn’t really like each other. This couldn’t have come at a worse time either; he was so close to finishing his piece on the new, upcoming Microsoft platform release. At this rate, his readers would be using Windows 15X before he could even tell them that it was coming. He would always have a tremendous amount of respect for Martin and all that he’d done in his lifetime…but in moments like these he could help but to feel like the man was a complete…
“IDIOT!” Susan screamed a half hour later while Teddy sat in the only other chair her cramped cubicle contained. She was technically a “field-reporter” and field-reporters weren’t really provided a lot of space in the old office building that sat in downtown Charleston; the thought process being that they should be spending the majority of their time out of the office, working their stories. Teddy was already anxious to get back to his own spacious office, the second largest behind Martin’s…thanks in large part to the Sentinel’s online advertising revenue. Martin would never say it out loud but it had long since exceeded what the subscriptions brought in and was, for the most part, what was actually paying the rent.
“Why on Earth would that fossil put me…you…us on this kind of story? Neither one of us has ever covered anything like this…and what the hell does he even want from us? Pedophilia…sex trade…seriously Teddy, W. T. F.? How are we supposed to even start in on something like this?” The cadence of her voice was getting faster and her breaths were getting shorter. Teddy could see the anxiety pushing her towards hyperventilation…and it surprised him. For some reason he hadn’t imagined her to be so susceptible to the stress’s influence. From across a room she always seemed so calm, collected and in control, radiating a confidence that bordered on cockiness.
Without realizing that he was going to do so, Teddy reached out one hand to her shoulder and squeezed it gently.
“Try to calm down. We’ll be able to figure this out. It’s going to be okay.” She met his gaze, her brown doe-eyes just starting to pool with tears.
“You really think so?” Teddy’s own blue eyes tried to convey a confidence he didn’t actually feel, suddenly feeling quite protective of her obviously vulnerable emotional state. It probably had a lot to do with growing up with three younger sisters.
“Yes…” he lied; “I do.”
“I don’t even know what the deep web or the dark web is?” Teddy pulled his hand back as her breathing began to slow and nodded his head; most people didn’t.
“I’ll try to keep it simple.”
“Please.”
“Try to imagine the entire internet as a giant mansion.” He wasn’t sure why he was keen to using so many architectural metaphors today…just that they seemed appropriate each time. “The main floors and living areas are where everyday people like you and me go to when we use Firefox or Explorer. It’s where your Facebook, Twitter and the like are found. Now…there are some rooms upstairs that are owned by different governments, companies or techies that are locked to most people but if you have the right key…you can still get in. These are all the places that ninety percent of the online population go to. Are you with me so far?” Susan nodded.
“But that’s not the whole internet. There’s still a basement…it’s called the ‘deep’ web; and the only way you can get down there is with special internet browsing software and a very specific idea of where it is you want to go. Otherwise you’d just be stumbling around in the dark. This basement was originally created by our very own government and the Department of Defense and it’s where they conducted the business that they didn’t want the general public at large to know about: the kind of stuff that sparks conspiracy theories.
While they may have created that basement however…the ‘deep web’…it didn’t take long for the software to be commandeered by the generation born into the computer age. Not only did the Millennials seem to understand the way these things worked better than their creators, they were able to create changes that the government could no longer contend with.”
“I don’t understand…what changes?”
“True anonymity. It’s the key to what makes the deep web so compelling to criminals. They’ve developed a method which bounces your connection off several random servers through the entire world making it all but impossible to track down the original IP addresses. Most people think they’re anonymous when they’re online…but they’re really not. In the deep web…they are. And that brings us to the ‘dark web’ which is that part of the deep web where all of the perversity and criminal activity take place. It’s the dungeon beneath the basement, that no moral person should ever want to visit. Do you get it now?”
Susan’s eyes were wide…but no longer moist. In fact, the edges of a smile seemed to be pulling at the corners of her mouth as she nodded ‘yes’. The anxiety appeared to be losing out to an odd anticipation; she was starting to get excited about the story. Teddy wasn’t so sure he was happy about that.
“What kind of ‘perversity’ are we talking about?” Teddy could only shake his head.
“Honestly…I really don’t know. I can only imagine that it’s the worst kind of stuff.” He paused for a moment of consideration before continuing; “I have a friend…well…not really a ‘friend’ per say, but a contact I’ve used as a source quite a bit over the years. He’s a high-level programmer, systems analyst and code breaker…of the independent variety.” Susan’s smile broke through completely. Too many Michael Crichton and Ernest Cline novels in her home library pushed the word from her lips…
“Hacker?” Hector Luna chuckled the next day as the three of them sat in the living area of his studio apartment; “No…I wouldn’t call myself a ‘hacker’. That’s more of Hollywood expression. In my particular field we tend to call ourselves ‘crackers’.”
“Crackers?” Susan prompted before taking a sip from the cold can of beer they’d had no choice but to accept before being allowed into Hector’s inner sanctum.
“That’s right,” he confirmed; “Kind of like a safe-cracker…except with complex security systems. I find vulnerabilities and…depending on my actual goal…I exploit them.” Susan smiled, obviously impressed. Hector, who was known online as the infamous “Moon-Hex”, turned his attention back to Teddy. “So Big-T…what exactly can I help you guys with today? Let me guess…you’re wanting some inside info on that Brown-hut Trojan that held up the Bank of America for three hours last Tuesday? I’ve heard that nearly two and a half million accounts were copied before they managed to shut it down.”
“Yea…” Teddy agreed; “It’s crazy these days…but no…that’s not it. I actually covered that day before yesterday. Honestly…I feel kind of stupid even asking for your help on this one because we both feel like the assignment is coming from an area of ignorance.”
“Martin?” Hector asked with a small chuckle. Teddy and Susan nodded in unison and joined him in the laughter. Hector had come into contact with Martin on only a couple of occasions due to his relationship with Teddy, but he’d heard more than enough stories to have a fully painted mental approximation of the man. “Don’t tell me he wants you to explain why no one uses floppy disks anymore?” Sadly…this wasn’t sarcasm. When it came to contemporary science and electronics…the man could be his own walking punchline. Hell…he’d once asked for five hundred words on the differences between ‘the internet’ and ‘the world wide web’…literally.
By and large, however, and for the overwhelming majority of the time Teddy had been at the Sentinel, Martin didn’t really give Teddy actual assignments. He tended to show a tremendous amount of faith in Teddy’s ability to continue to provide relevant content for an audience he knew nothing about. For the most part, this held true with Susan as well; Martin, much like Teddy, put very little stock in the type of events she covered as being important. Her online “news” feed held the greatest number of subscribers, however, so he figured she was probably doing her job well enough.
This trend had been bucked somewhat as of late, it seemed…for Teddy at least; and in a sense…it was his own fault. He was, after all, the one who introduced Martin to the world of YouTube in the first place. Like most newbies, the first few weeks saw him making little progress beyond scare-pranks and cats’ reacting to cucumbers; but, as of late, the man had found himself in the world of the unknown…far-flung topics: ghosts, conspiracies, ancient civilizations, aliens and just about any other subject that sent him into the occasional mad-man’s rant.
In the last six weeks he’d given Teddy more, seemingly random, assignments than he had in the six years before then: Trans-humanism, Artificial Intelligence and the Mandela Effect rounded out the extreme ends of his requests. Teddy hadn’t really minded too much; he just had to find that fine line that presented the topics in the light Martin had wanted them without sounding too much like an Alex Jones report on “Infowars”. They were definitely extreme variations on his normal fare but his readers had seemed to enjoy the occasional break from the somewhat dry articles he was known for. Some of them even leaned towards being entertaining rather than what he normally shot for: informative.
“Martin wants the two of us…his tech-reporter and his…social…uh…expert, to turn in something about the deep web and the dark web: something ‘juicy’.” Hector chuckled again; he knew of Martin’s key word as well.
“Juicy you say…” Hector shot-gunned the last of his beer before clamoring to his feet from the well-worn groove in his Lazy-Boy. “And you thought of me. I’m touched.” As he shuffled his more than a little overweight frame to the refrigerator in the corner kitchen area he motioned with the empty can to see if anyone else needed a refill; they didn’t. “Well…that’s about the vaguest thing that you’ve come to me with so far. When your text said ‘random’, you weren’t kidding, were you?” Susan and Teddy shared a knowing look with each other, having already discussed just that topic on the taxi ride over. “Please tell me,” Hector prompted, head partially buried in the fridge; “that you guys have at least got some type of angle already?” The two reporters shook their heads with a meek symmetry; how could Martin have had no idea how far outside of their comfort zones this assignment really was?
“I wish we could.” Teddy finally answered once Hector had returned to his place in the seating area, fresh beer in hand. “I wish we could.” He paused to take a sip and contemplate which direction they could go in without sounding like some conspiracy website bloggers.
“Obviously we’d like to find something unique,” Susan offered; “but no one’s shooting for a Pulitzer here. I think the sooner we’re able to put this one behind us, the happier we’ll both be.” Teddy gave her a look of observable agreement. This was definitely right on the edge of what those in the industry called “fringe assignments”.
“Yea…I bet. Well…” Hector stroked an imaginary beard with his beer-free hand, the few straggly wisps of red hairs that were present running between his fingers. “You could always go with the ease of access to illegal products route: order an eight-ball or an AK-47. It’s not terribly original but it’ll still be news to anyone who’s never been on YouTube. Of course, you’ll need to contact the authorities if you do that and coordinate through them…otherwise you might be looking at an arrest warrant the moment the story comes out.”
They had, actually, already considered going that way but, much as Hector pointed out, it wasn’t exactly a hot scoop. Just about anyone who regularly utilized the internet, which were now the majority of their readers, knew about dark web black markets. Most folks had even heard of the “Silk Road” website at some point or another, the most notorious in the field before being shut down by the FBI in 2014. Teddy had covered that story at the time and although Ross Ulbricht, the infamous “Dread Pirate Roberts”, would be spending the rest of his life behind bars, his legacy continued to live on as thousands had sprung up in the space he left behind. The market-places were so vast, varied and exponentially produced…it was an impossible task to eliminate them entirely. The dark web was still the ‘wild, wild west’ and outlaws reigned supreme.
“What else you got?” Susan asked before accidentally letting a small beer-burp escape, turning her a dark shade of crimson as a result. “Excuse me,” she mumbled sheepishly causing Hector to laugh and release his own, much more resounding, exhalation of carbonated air which vibrated off the walls. The crude response had its intended effect and immediately comforted Susan’s, normally delicate, sensibilities.
“Better out than in, my Shrek always says,” he announced before tackling her question. “As for ‘what else’…it’s hard to say for the tone of The Sentinel. Everything else just gets darker from there…but that’s not to say that there’s not a huge area to mine. Just take your pick: there’s live streaming pedophiles, crazy sex stuff, snuff and torture films…”
“Like what?” Teddy interrupted him, although more out of morbid curiosity than any desire to follow up on that last one as a lead.
“Like whatever you can imagine. There’s some real sickos out there. You’ve seen the ‘SAW’ and ‘Hostel’ movies, right?” Neither of them actually had. It was quite apparently not Susan’s cup of tea from the beginning and, although he’d started both of the first films…Teddy hadn’t finished them. He could distinctly remember thinking at the time that it probably took a really disturbing personality profile for someone to watch that type of graphic infliction of pain onto another person and consider it enjoyable entertainment at the same time. Sure he’d grown up as a fan of the “Friday the 13th” and “Nightmare on Elm St” movies and they were plenty bloody…but they also had jump scares, degrees of suspense and a fairly unrealistic display of the gore. These new types of torture movies were on a different level altogether, however. The degrees of realism in the violence and the reactions of the torturer and victim combined with the unrelenting focus of nothing more than the infliction of pain…well…it wasn’t really his cup of tea either.
“Oh man…honestly…anything you can imagine…most of which you wouldn’t want to. Either of you guys heard of ‘The Doll-maker’ or ‘The Chew-Chew Man’ …you know…spelled like ‘chew’” Hector chomped his teeth together a couple of times to emphasize his point; “…or even ‘Mr. Plaintoes’?” It was obvious from their expressions that neither of them had heard of any of his references as well as the fact that they were now at his completely enrapt disposal.
“Okay…well…” He stood, stretched and headed back to the fridge for another beer. Suddenly both Susan and Teddy were equally amazed at the discretionary speed by which their host could polish off a can. At this rate, he’d be on his second six-pack before they’d even finished their first beers. Not that either would say anything aloud. It was really more impressive than anything. “Where to start…” He tossed his empty into the garbage and returned with a total of three. For a moment they were both ready to say, “No thank you” when he squeezed them into the chair next to him and they realized that they hadn’t been brought for them.
“So ‘Mr. Plaintoes’ is some kind of demonically written nursery rhyme that kills people…think something like a cross between ‘The Ring’ and ‘The Babadook’.” Hector paused for recognition but was only met with two blank stares. “You know…for reporters, you guys are painfully ignorant of pop culture.” Neither of them could argue; if it didn’t come in a “Wired” or “Cosmopolitan” magazine…they were ‘painfully ignorant’. “Regardless…that one reads more like a ‘Creepypasta’ than an actual occurrence…but supposedly it’s still out there for anyone who wants to test the urban legend. I know that won’t be me.”
“What’s ‘The Doll-maker’?” Susan asked. Having a sizable collection of antique dolls herself, she was extra curious the moment he’d said it although she knew full well that she wouldn’t be liking that answer.
“Oh man…that guy’s a real piece-of-work. I tell you what…I don’t consider myself a violent man…but I wouldn’t think twice about putting a bullet right between his deranged eyes. This guy buys young women and girls and performs these elaborate surgeries on them before reselling them on the black market as living sex dolls.”
“Surgeries?” Teddy pressed, certain he didn’t really want to know.
“Yea…not good stuff,” Hector continued; “Removes the arms and legs so they can’t go anywhere. Removes the tongue so they can’t speak…sometimes sews the mouths shut entirely. Even puts hooks in their backs so they can be hung on the wall.” He gave them a moment to process the disturbing image.
“How…how…” Susan was stammering in shock; “How do they stay alive?” Hector shook his head grimly.
“Mercifully…they don’t. I believe they have a pretty short shelf-life. Not that it deters some people of paying millions of dollars apiece.”
Susan picked up her beer from the end table and stared at the beads of condensation slowly streaming down its sides; she’d never been more grateful for the safe and pampered life that she’d lived thus far. It wasn’t like she was ignorant to the fact that there were people, especially women, out there who had it a lot worse than she did…but being presented with something as horrific as the nightmare those poor women had to live through by being maimed beyond human recognizability only to be violently raped to death. Just knowing that there was evil like this out there, lurking in the shadows…right at that moment; it was enough to send a shiver down her spine and she set the beer back down without having taken a drink.
“Are you sure Martin said ‘Susan’…and not ‘Sam’ or ‘Sarah’ or even ‘Marcus’?” she asked for the fourth time in the last twenty-four hours and, while the joke was getting stale, Teddy still chuckled before pressing Hector onto the next subject. It was evident from the pall in the air that they were all ready to move past that one.
“I’m afraid to even ask…but what about the ‘Chew-Chew Man’?” When Hector’s expression didn’t brighten any, Teddy had the feeling he’d be sorry that he asked. Turns out…he was.
“That guy…jeez…another evolved individual.”
“Evolved?” Teddy asked.
“It’s the newest form of our evolution…depending on who you ask…a form of humanity that’s supposedly evolved beyond the need for such trivialities as morals or ethics. I know it sounds crazy but there really are people out there who think that way…think there’s no such thing as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’…only ‘action’ and ‘reaction’, ‘as above so below’ and all that bullshit. These are the type of people who are in the highest places: politicians, movie-stars and the generational wealthy. They see the general populace as useless eaters…a sheep-like population that needs to be culled more than anything.”
“That’s depressing,” Susan sighed.
“Yea,” Hector agreed; “It kind of is. Anyway…the Chew-Chew Man is most likely one of those generationally wealthy S.O.B.’s with more money than God. I’m guessing he’s probably one of those secret society bastards as well, gauging from the number of masked sycophants he keeps around him. Anyway…” Hector paused and sighed; “wow…I don’t even like saying this aloud; I can’t fathom how sick these people must really be. Anyway…the Chew-Chew man has his own, very elaborately decorated, train station as well as his own railway engine car that looks like something straight out of ‘Death Race’.” The reporters exchanged another, slightly baffled, look with each other and Hector sighed yet again, this time for an entirely different reason.
“Seriously guys? No ‘Death Race’ either? Not the original nor the remake?” He shook his head in disbelief. He was somewhat aware of Teddy’s lack of contemporary pop-culture knowledge and yet the depths to which it extended still managed to surprise him. In the chatrooms he frequented that type of ignorance would be unforgivable. “Okay…this is just unacceptable; I’m springing for a Netflix account for both of you.” The three of them shared a chuckle and sip of beer before allowing their grim expressions to return as Hector continued on with the story he didn’t really want to tell and they didn’t really want to hear.
“So I’m sure you can probably imagine where this is going from here. The Chew-chew man and his helpers strap several naked people to the tracks with specially built restraints. Then they all stand back and watch the carnage. Once the car clears the kill-zone, these masked men and women…who are dressed in expensive tuxedos and ball-room gowns, mind you…fall to their knees in the pools of warm blood and proceed to…consume…the remaining mess.”
“Consume!?” Susan blurted out. “Like…Oh Dear Lord…like cannibals?”
Hector nodded. “Yea…like cannibals.” A few moments of silence descended upon the room as the horrific thought wreaked brutal havoc upon their subconscious. Teddy, personally, had no qualms with ingesting a little Stephen King before slipping into a dream-state, but this was the kind of thing that would definitely keep him up at night. An author’s imagination could be appreciated…but knowing that there are real monsters out there was just unnerving.
After allowing a full minute to pass, Teddy finally verbalized what they’d all been thinking.
“Um…no. That’s definitely not our story.” Susan agreed and they became silent again before Hector snapped his fingers and proceeded to pull one of his many laptops from the coffee-table drawer in front of him.
“I think,” he began as he powered up the computer; “that I may know of something you’d be interested in. Frankly…I don’t know why I didn’t think of this one before. I first read about this on 8Chan’s dot onion forum a few months back…even did a bit of preliminary investigating.”
As Hector became quiet and put his full focus on the laptop’s screen, Susan turned to Teddy and asked, “8Chan dot onion?”
“Deep web message board,” he answered for her. “The dot onion is like dot com, dot net or dot gov: deep web extension.” She nodded in understanding…or in feigning as much; and Hector piped up once again, apparently finding what he was looking for.
“A-ha! Here we go.” Returning his gaze to theirs and lowering his voice conspiratorially, Hector asked with a sly smile and an expression that would’ve seemed just at home before a midnight campfire; “Have you guys ever heard of The Contract?” Immediately drawn in, they both shook their heads ‘no’, much as he’d anticipated.
“Yea…I didn’t think so. This one’s extremely obscure…even for the deep web. There’s very little documentation to back it up…but there’s enough to start with, at least.”
“Okay…” Teddy responded; “I’ll bite then. I’m familiar with a few different contracts; so what makes this one ‘The’ Contract?”
“Well…again…it’s not terribly well known…but in some circles it’s called ‘The Devil’s Contract’ or ‘The Final Contract’ and everything about it is just inexplicable.”
Over the next ninety minutes Hector proceeded to tell them a story that could’ve easily been an episode of “The Twilight Zone”, and despite finishing off another eight beers in that period, he never once slurred his words. It was one of the longest periods Teddy had spent with the younger man and he’d never realized before what a raging alcoholic he was.
The Devil’s Contract was something of a deep web urban legend that, at least according to Hector, had some significant degrees of validity to it. He wasn’t certain when the contract first popped up but the story had been online for a couple years now, thanks in large part to a man known simply as “Jeff the P.I.”. Jeff had been hired by a woman to find her missing brother and the investigation had led him to the story of the contract. When no one would believe the results he’d seemingly uncovered, he took the story online. The gist of which was this: somewhere a shadowy party of private benefactors somehow makes contact with individuals who could best be described as…desperate. The secretive group then negotiates a payment, usually in the millions, for what Hector called “life-control”.
According to the legend, once a price is reached they are sent a digital copy of the, supposedly legally-binding, contract, as well as a bizarre questionnaire. Once signed, the person has officially signed away their life…so to speak. It was a provision of the contract that the person’s life wouldn’t be ended or even endangered…only that they would no longer have control over the way they would live the rest of it.
“If they can no longer control their own lives,” Susan had asked at that point; “what good does the money do?”
“I thought the same thing at first,” Hector had answered; “but the money doesn’t go to them. One of the first questions included with the contract is to whom the money should be paid. But even that it just the tip of the weirdness of it all. According to Jeff at least, the payments are delivered through methods which should be all but impossible.”
“Like what,” Teddy had pressed.
“Well…like the sister that hired Jeff to find her missing brother. The only way she’d been able to hire him in the first place was because she’d just won five million dollars in the Powerball. There’s not a lot of examples to choose from but supposedly all the payments have been through means that shouldn’t be possible to manipulate…including a government grant that was never applied for. If any of that is true, then the people behind the contract have a nearly inconceivable reach.”
“So…” Susan prompted this time; “if the contract was non-lethal in nature…what happens to the people?” Hector shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s the real que
|
We live in a world where anything is possible and Dr. Dyson Lynch truly believed that. In fact, it was his credo and the science needed to make anything possible was his first and only true love. From the moment he saw his first diagram of an electron in the second grade he was hooked on the world hidden beneath the world on the micro and nanoscopic level. Determined to discover every veiled aspect the universe had to offer, Dyson’s was the type of mind that defined generations: a Newton, Einstein, Edison or Tesla. Once he even refused to explain one of his theories to Stephen Hawking because he, “just wouldn’t understand it.” Having very little patience for those who couldn’t keep up with his advanced intellect, which was nearly everyone, it often showed in his abrasive personality.
On just about any other person his perceived mental superiority might have seemed egocentric but for Dyson it was a fact as indisputable as the hours in a day. The sky was his favorite color: blue, wine came from grapes and no one would ever be as bright as Dyson Lynch. For this reason above all others, he rarely indulged in what lesser mind’s considered “entertainment”. He didn’t watch television or movies, nor did he read works of fiction. If he wanted to fall asleep with a good book, he usually settled on one of the many quantum mechanics textbooks stacked at his bedside…even if they were a little remedial.
That being said, he had, however, garnered a strong affinity for one particular piece of fiction in his nearly seven and a half decades of life: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Since its first publication in 1818 there have been many interpretations of the masterpiece; it having been seen as everything from a commentary on the nature of mankind and our desire to play God to the physical representation of man’s basest fears. In truth, Mary Shelley was only eighteen-year-old when she wrote the long standing staple of horror and was only inspired to do so by a wager with her friends and future husband as to whom could write the best short story. It was unlikely she imagined it to become the revered piece it would be and even more unlikely that she thought it would be seen as a “how-to” manual.
Obviously, the science in the original work was very ambiguous, Shelley having no real technical expertise to speak of. The narrative is very much a theoretical fantasy, quite possibly the first book that could be called “Science Fiction” and bore no basis in reality. At the turn of the 19th century, the world’s technology was in a very different place. The vanguard of science saw the first steam engines and a slow end to the horse and buggy; in striking dichotomy the 21st century was the first quantum computers and a quick end to naturally created DNA profiles.
We were, as a species, tinkering with the building blocks of life…creating new forms of life. We were breaking down matter to study the places in-between and poking our toes into the ocean of dark matter. Yet, with all our advancements, there was still so much that was unknown. In 2018 the idea of bringing the dead back to life was just as fantastical as it was in 1818 and Dyson Lynch felt that two-hundred years was long enough. It was time for the inspired notion of Frankenstein’s monster to see fruition.
It would be easy to assume that Dyson’s motivations lay in the places we feel comfortable seeing them…easy to believe his drive was based in the pain of losing a loved one or the desire to bring back a brilliant intellect. One might hope his passion came from lofty ideas, the advancement of the longevity of the species or just the pure pursuit of knowledge. None of these things could be further than the truth, however. The real reason was much pettier than that.
Dyson’s greatest desire was to be “the one”. The one to go down in the annals of history as a god among men and to do what only the Creator had been able to do before: breathe life into existence. It wouldn’t be enough to reanimate dead tissue. Mere twitching muscles weren’t what he sought and anything save a sentient existence would be considered an abject failure. With this in mind and no expense spared, “Project Shelley” was created. Originally it was to be called “Project Lazarus” but Dyson felt compelled to give credit to his true inspiration despite its farcical science and fictional results. Plus…how poetic would it be if he could cry out, “It’s alive…it’s alive,” at some point in the process?
Rather than robbing graves in the dead of night to salvage the parts they needed, the team Dyson had assembled took advantage of the billion dollar budget and grew their own Frankenstein’s monster. They began with one, base-line set of human DNA…Dr. Lynch’s own. Then through a series of DNA and RNA manipulations, tweaks as it were, and an abundance of stem-cells they grew their organs and body parts. The heart and lungs were developed in pigs while, oddly enough, things like ears and a nose where actually produced as attachments to mice.
There were other items that didn’t come from animals at all. The eyes, for example, were essentially fledged in Petri dishes and jars and integrated with the latest nano-technologies, making them far superior than that of the average human. It was the same with the nervous system and muscular structure, invisible electronic platelets providing quicker reaction times and strength. These enhanced augmentations were the main reason they didn’t just grow a complete clone of the doctor to begin with. The creation was to be called “Beta” because they, as natural humans, were the “Alphas”, the original version; Beta was to be the next level in evolution.
It took twenty-one of the best surgeons in the world, along with a team of nearly a hundred technical aides, to put the puzzle together and, in the end, they only lacked one piece. They had to install the coup de gras; Beta needed his brain. When all was said and done, it turned out to be both the most expensive and time consuming aspect of the entire project. What they had decided to do was create a central processing unit based on quantum technology which would act as the brain. It took close to six-hundred million dollars.
A real human brain could have been used, and initially it was the plan to do so. Months were spent arguing over the viability…not the morality, mind you, but the viability of using another person’s brain. With the money at their disposal and the strings they could pull, getting a brain wasn’t really that difficult. There was no shortage of “volunteer” brain donors. The issues mostly lay in the identity of the person used. Were they intelligent? Were they violent? But also in not knowing if latent personality traits would carry over. Would Beta think it was a twelve-year old girl or a death-row inmate? Would he still have the dreams and desires of these people? They were important questions to ask. Too much money, time and effort had already gone into Project Shelley to have Beta destroyed at its conclusion because it thought the wrong thoughts or asked the wrong questions.
The human brain was, in itself, the most complex central processing unit on the planet and, while they had the brain’s activities mapped perfectly, the complexity had proved too much to reproduce in the many years lead up to that point. That was until D-wave and DARPA gave the science community access to quantum computing; a form of computing that no one in the general public had an actual clue about. The science journals and research papers did an excellent job using incomprehensible jargon to conceal and withhold the most important thing about this new type of computer…nobody really knew how it worked. People are taught that the dimensional parameters around them, as well as their own being, were results of an evolutional process, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The signature of intelligent design was present on a sub-atomic level in all areas, including DNA.
That was one of the first realizations that the “secret science” organizations kept to themselves; now there were too many to count. Somewhere along the way the world’s science split into a schism. There were those considered to be at the forefront of innovation, researching cancer cures and rocket propulsion and then there were those who were truly “in the know” who, in military bases deep beneath the general population, were perfecting anti-gravity and quantum dimensional information transfers.
They had already proven the existence of alternate dimensions or a “multi-verse” of sorts as Hollywood liked to present the concept. That was part and parcel of the new quantum computers created by D-Wave. Most people thought that quantum computers were just the next evolutional step in computing, and in a very ignorant way, they would be right but what they didn’t know, or understand, was that what they had designed was a type of “computer” which stored its information, operating system and did all its computations in an alternate dimension.
They didn’t even know where it went, but they found out early on that it could sustain a virtually endless amount of data, not being hampered by anything as trivial as a SSD or hard-drive, and send instantaneous information over an unlimited space. Geordie Rose, the CTO of D-Wave, described it as “kneeling at the altar of an alien god” and it all went to the fact that there was still so much they didn’t know. Even though the field was still in its infancy and despite their ignorance, the otherworldly computing power potential was the closest they could come to recreating a brain. It, when they finally figured it all out, would be what would birth authentic artificial intelligence or “the singularity” as it was known in tech circles.
The single biggest obstacle to the creation of Beta’s brain was conquering the sub-zero temperature parameters that the quantum system required. The solution was elegant and complicated at the same time and, as long as Beta didn’t suffer any significant head trauma, probably wouldn’t result in a small atomic explosion that would wipe out the entire facility and its small corner of the state. Risk and reward went hand in hand, however, as they were all keenly aware.
Dr. Lynch’s complete brain scan took nearly a month to complete with him needing to be put through a large number of psychological scenarios in order to determine the total scope of, not just his intellect, but his personality too. When they had finished, the total amount of information gathered had to be stored in a separate facility off-site in a supercomputer larger than the infamous IBM Blue Gene/P and then downloaded in increments into Beta’s CPU. That process took nearly a year and provided the most tedious and personally vexing moments; several times Dyson wondered if incompetence was justification for murder. Not that anyone on his team was actually incompetent…but if they didn’t meet the exacting requirements he set forth or input code in the same specific manner in which he would…well, it tried his frayed patience. For Project Shelley, perfection was not too much to ask.
It was during the last month of Beta’s brain transfer when Dylan had “the breakthrough”, so to speak. Transferring more than just a copy of his mind to Beta had been something of a secret side-project that only the doctor and a few of his hand-selected assistants knew about and had been toying with in tandem with Project Shelley. It, much like copying and transferring his mind, seemed to be no more than fantasy early on, but advancements were being made exponentially over the last few years as the concept inched closer and closer to reality. Dyson Lynch wanted to transfer his consciousness into Beta as well.
The science was beyond cutting edge…even in the secret science community. Dyson’s equations and theories were at the very tip of what humanity had been able to achieve thus far and he realized that significant risks would come with such an attempt…but he had to try. Successfully bringing Beta to life would give him an opportunity to play god; successfully integrating himself into Beta would make him a god. Like any problem in life, he had to ask himself if the reward outweighed the risk and, frankly, he could think of no greater reward.
The same characteristics of the quantum computing that made Beta’s brain possible in the first place were what also led to his breakthrough and a digitized form of his own consciousness that would involve an instantaneous replication of his exact neuron brain activity once Beta had fully downloaded all other aspects of Dyson’s being. By that point Beta should be an identical host just waiting for the proper input that would be, in essence, him. If it worked properly, he would close his eyes in one body and open them thirty seconds later in his new body: Beta. The process, unfortunately, required an enormous amount of radioactivity which would, for all intents and purposes, destroy the original copy.
So one major risk he had to assume was that the new version of Dyson Lynch that opens his eyes in Beta…won’t actually be the same one. Theoretically, it was possible that his current body and accompanying consciousness could die while a new one continues on with the exact same memories, believing they were the same person when, in fact, they would be nothing more than an intricate copy. It was a disturbing idea and the one he wrestled with the longest but, in the end, it once again came down to the risk/reward ratio. Besides, even if that was the way it ended up he would still live on in a sense and that was possibly all any of us got anyway.
Whichever the case would be, the morning of the transfer Dyson ate all the things he would have wanted in a “last meal”. An hour after that he had sex with Juliette, the beautiful physicist half his age that he had been exchanging casual flirtations with for the last six months. Finally, in the minutes leading up to being prepped for the procedure he had a cigarette after not having smoked one in twenty-two years. Before allowing himself to be strapped and hooked up to the massive, one-of-a-kind machine, Dyson took a good look at the Beta which was already loaded into its aqua-tank on the far side of the machine and being kept alive with a respirator and electric currents…an empty shell waiting to be filled.
Although he had overseen Beta’s construction, piece by piece, he had never really taken the time to appreciate the finished product with a beating heart, heaving chest and healthy hue. It bore more than an uncanny resemblance to the doctor…it was him. To his seventy-three-year-old eyes the creature’s form was nothing more than a memory of a reflection but it was a memory he knew well…an exacting replica of Dyson when he was thirty-three. His initial reaction, and he supposed it couldn’t be helped, was one of an odd sadness. It was much like any old person who sees a picture of their younger self and longs for the days when their bodies were vehicles and not prisons. It was fleeting, however, and replaced by an excited anticipation he had probably not felt since he was thirty-three.
Just before inserting his breathing apparatus and being lowered into his tank, Dyson was asked by Dr. Lenemoy if there was anything he wanted to say, “just in case”. It pissed him off at first; he really didn’t need those type of invading thoughts but upon a moment’s reflection he changed his mind…not before shooting Dr. Lenemoy a death-gaze, however.
“Nothing will go wrong today people.” Firm and authoritative, it was a command rather than a statement. “We are all about to make history…and sadly, no one but us will ever know.” There was a genuine round of chuckles…they all got the irony. “If, for any reason, I am unable to lead our team after today there are contingencies in place and you will continue forward to break the bonds that nature has placed on us.” He raised and shook one fist, wires dangling. “And, as a species, we will create something greater than ourselves!” The small team in the room broke into applause as Dyson inserted the breathing tube and gave the signal to be lowered into the light green liquid.
It was impossible to hear anything once he was inside but he could see the room’s activity bathed in a green glow. A monitor lowered before the tank as the screen came to life. There was a countdown from five at which point an elaborate mathematical equation appeared…it was one of Dyson’s own theories. After a few seconds a second countdown appeared and it was his cue to close his eyes and solve the equation from the beginning to its end at which point the transfer would, in theory, be complete. The equation was a doorway spark to the information downloaded into Beta’s memory banks, a crank of the engine. It also served to keep his brainwaves calm and well within the parameters they were supposed to be in.
Frankly, Dyson had no real idea what to expect the process to literally feel like. He had theories…hopes really, but nothing concrete. Ideally, it would be a painless, seamless transfer but he was not nearly naïve enough to expect it to go that way. The amount of power that was about to surge through his body couldn’t possibly go unnoticed. Dyson closed his eyes and began to work the through the long string of mathematics. It was one of his favorites…the one that made his consciousness transfer possible in the first place, and he knew it well.
A third of the way through there was a blinding zapping of electricity and his train of thought was lost completely, washed away by a clean, white nothingness. It was still him…and he was somewhere; but he had not body nor desires and wants. He was aware that something had seemed terribly important just a moment ago but now there were no goals that he could remember…no important thing that needed to be done. There was just…being. There was a type of comfort in it…the floating…the lack of purpose. If he had a face it would have been smiling.
Time did not seem to exist in this place, making it impossible for him to determine how long he had been there before the black dot appeared in the distance which grew larger and larger by the second. He felt himself being pulled toward the gaping black hole and, although he tried in vain to fight it, it eventually sucked him right through and with it came feeling and the unpleasant sensation of having a body again. The black was the back of his eyelids.
His head was pounding and aching and his body hurt all over. This didn’t feel right. Dyson struggled to open his eyes and move his hands and legs but his muscles refused any commands. It took several long seconds for his system to reboot and to remember just exactly how to open his eyes. In the time spent grappling to regain control of his facilities he could hear voices…far off at first but then getting closer…louder. Suddenly they were accompanied by another noise…a high-pitched, mechanized whirring sound, like a dental drill or…bone saw.
“Miss Courting, please make sure you take notation of each organ and please, please, please guys, let’s not fuck this up.” It was Dr. Liedner…Dyson recognized his voice. He was, for all intents and purposes, the mortician of the facility. Andrew Liedner was a decent surgeon in his own right, but his area of expertise as far as Project Shelley was concerned was in dealing with the cadavers, most especially during the brain transplant experimentation period. It made absolutely no sense for him to be in the room right now and, without a doubt, the man shouldn’t be giving any type of orders. He wasn’t even classified for the final procedures. Why the hell was he hearing that idiot?
Dyson had already gathered that something must have gone wrong with transfer…or at least deviated from any plan they had prepared for. For starters there was the sense of gravity and the feel of the cold steel on his backside; he was no longer in the aqua tank…or even the recovery facilities for that matter. The electric whirring was right above his chest now and Dyson could feel someone’s warm breath against his nipple. Was that fool not even wearing a mask?
Dyson began screaming at his eyes to open…his muscles to move and just when he had reached the point of nearly giving up there was a slew of gasps around him.
“He moved!”, “Oh my god”, “His finger!”, “Is he alive?” were reactions he heard. It was enough to re-motivate and within a few seconds Dyson’s eyes were fluttering open and he was laboring to sit up off the cold metal table. Dr. Liedner, who was holding a bone-saw, and several other technicians all pulled back in shock, no one even lifting a finger to aide him. On top of everything else…he was naked? What the hell?
“Andrew…” his voice was dry and cracking, “what is going on here?” The room looked at him as though he were an alien speaking a language from another world. Dr. Rita Borne, who held three PHDs, fainted and collapsed to the floor with no one around her making an effort to stop her fall. Everything felt foggy as he struggled to assess the situation; Dyson’s lightning fast intellect didn’t appear to be processing with the speed to which he’d become accustomed and that, more than anything, stoked the flames of fear that were slowly growing in his gut. After several long seconds of wide-eyed stares all around, Nick Forrest, one of Dr. Liedner’s technicians, came forward with a white robe and blanket. The action seemed to break the barrier of shock holding everyone in place and the lab which had been set up for a dissection became a flurry of frantic activity. It wasn’t that anyone knew what to do exactly, but the act of scurrying about with a false sense of purpose seemed to ease the frightened bewilderment that had overwhelmed the lab’s occupants. The only real result of the frenzied bustling, however, was to see the autopsy equipment relocated to areas where their presence wouldn’t be a reminder of what they had almost just done.
Dr. Liedner’s eyes were still as wide as saucers as he watched Dylan take in the commotion with what appeared to be silent reflection, certain that the brilliant scientist was quietly running the conundrum through his internal data bases to figure out what exactly had happened and very aware that the man was most likely the only one in the world that could. Unfortunately for Dyson, however, Dr. Liedner’s assessment couldn’t have been further from the reality of what was really happening inside the project leader’s mind. Dr. Lynch was trying to process information…just not what everyone else presumed it to be: the how and why of their current predicament. No…Dyson’s thoughts were as far from that as was possible. In the first few minutes of his return to consciousness, his mind began a slow regression…nearly unnoticeable; the pace, however, seemed to increase with each passing second. It was now at an extremely noticeable, exponential rate and if he could have remembered what “fear” felt like…he’d have been afraid.
Instead, the most pressing issue that plagued his cognizance in that moment was: what does the color “blue” look like? Of course this inquiry was followed closely by several more which, on the surface seemed quite trivial, but on a deeper level were the most important questions he’d ever pondered…mostly because he was quite sure that they were things he should’ve known the answers to. Was “Cocker Spaniel” the name of someone he knew…were they friends? Was a “rectangle” a type of tree or a type of car? Did he have a mother and father, were they still alive…and if so, what were their names? Was a “doughnut” something you ate or wore around your wrist to tell time with? What was “time” again?
Like weaponized Alzheimer’s, Dyson’s wires had become crossed to such a degree that even the basest facts that every second grader should’ve known had to battle their way into perception. Somewhere within the jumbled mess of misfired neurons he was aware that this struggle for basic cognition was a new occurrence; he seemed to remember being very intelligent at one point in time and somewhat aware even that there was still a plethora of information stored in his data banks, just beyond his reach. His SSD had been hacked and the only thing his operating system was giving him was some scammer’s error alert.
Dyson turned to Dr. Liedner who seemed to be watching him with some kind of expectancy and the man whom he’d known just a moment before became suddenly unfamiliar. What was his name…something with an ‘A’…Allen? Eric? Chad? Barry? What was an “A” again? He wanted to say something to one of the people in the white lab coats…wanted to express the difficulties he was having…but words eluded him completely. At the exact moment that the gifted intellect of Dr. Dyson Lynch ground to a screeching halt, he had no way of knowing how truly fortunate he was to be suffering a stroke in a room full of doctors who could easily recognize the symptoms. Deep within the blissful, white obsolescence of his coma, Dyson was unaware of the emergency treatments he was receiving for the damage caused by what should have been a lethal dose of electrically charged radium. The old adage says that “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” however, in this particular instance that wasn’t quite the case; what hadn’t killed him had left him nearly dead.
Had he been in any top-side hospital in the continental United States, Dyson would have died…despite the depth of treatment his celebrated cerebral prowess would have garnered him. Being in the center of the most advanced biological medical amenities at humankind’s disposal, deep beneath the earth, had advantages the normal person could never conceive. That didn’t even touch on the fact that the secret laboratory doubled as a holding facility for multiple copies of every organ in his body that weren’t just compatible with his…they were his. He was in the uniquely fortunate position of having his entire radiated body shut down mere yards away from his stockpile of spare parts.
Of course there was one thing they weren’t able to replace, and the one thing he believed at one point in time that made him irreplaceable: his brain. Swollen to a degree that his skull would no longer comfortably house it, the team were forced to remove the top portion of his cranium with a bone saw. For nearly a week he existed in a hermetically sealed tube while his grey matter remained exposed. There were a couple of moments while he was floating in the abyss that a flash of lightening captivated his attention, completely oblivious to the fact that they were actually camera flashes. Even though they knew it would probably mean their jobs if they were caught, several of the less prestigious staff members couldn’t resist the temptation of taking a “selfie” with the patch-work monstrosity that only vaguely resembled the man who once graced the cover of “Time” magazine as its “Man of the Year.”
Once the swelling reduced, they were able to reattach the skull-cap and cover it with grafted, synthetic skin; but it took an additional month of healing before they felt it was safe enough to bring him back out of the coma, which had been maintained intentionally now for the last few weeks. Once they finally did, Dyson was beyond any degree of relief he’d ever felt before…his mind seemed to be functioning properly again. It was still hazy with the same drug-induced lethargy that was and would continue to affect his body, but there was still an immediately noticeable increase in his computing power from his last stint in consciousness. Basic knowledge was once again at his disposal and what qualified as “basic knowledge” for Dyson Lynch could fill a library. His body, which had been converted into a version of Frankenstein’s Monster in its own right, was still wracked with the tremendous levels of pain that permeated through the morphine drip. Despite that, from the moment Dyson’s eyes first opened, he was ready to start finding answers; and he called for a bedside meeting of all the department heads.
When they hadn’t arrived ninety minutes later, those old feelings of anger and irritation began rising within him even though he was fully aware that the only feelings he should be feeling were those of a grateful nature. Still being alive when simple logic dictated that he shouldn’t would seem to most to warrant as much, but he was still the same man he’d always been…and that man had no patience for incompetence or the type of tardiness that represented just that.
Two full hours after his edict had been issued the recovery room door finally slid open while Dyson was disdainfully examining his reflection in the tiny vanity mirror he’d requested. In the several long seconds it took for him to pull his gaze away from his own frightening visage, Dyson’s periphery registered the five department heads gathering around his bed. When he was finally able to pull his eyes away, they locked onto the man standing at the foot of his bed: a sixth person who’d entered the room behind the ones he’d requested; Dyson was frozen with shock. His mind was dealt the staggering blow of having his sight-line go from the scarred version of his well-worn face to the smooth and shining version of his younger self embodied by Beta.
They stared at each other with identical expressions of fascinated inspection as Beta made his way past Dr. Kline and Dr. Hatani to stand next to him at the side of his bed. For nearly a minute neither man said a word…rapt by the warped reflections each represented for the other. The shock of seeing Beta walking about independently, eyes displaying an obvious intelligence, was a little overwhelming at first; but it did give a strong indication as to what their current situation happened to be. Without asking question one, Dyson was fairly certain he’d ascertained the end result of Project Shelley.
It had always been a distinct possibility that the procedure wouldn’t actually result in the transference of a singular consciousness…his consciousness; but rather it would create a uniquely separate, if not identical, version of himself…right down to the memories leading up to the transfer. In this scenario, however, there had been no contingencies for the survival of the original host or…him. It was a development that should’ve been statistically impossible. Yet…here he was.
There were a lot of emotions that could’ve been reasonably expected and even some that might have been reasonably unexpected, but Dyson’s initial reaction came as a surprise to even himself. He felt happy. Since he had begun reading at a college level in the third grade, Dyson Lynch had found himself in an intelligence bubble of solitude. Even as he had done his best to surround himself with the greatest minds he could find, there was still an ever-present knowledge that none of them were working on the same level as his. Despite having always considered himself a fiercely independent individual, the inherent loneliness that came from having no one to exchange his advanced theories with was unavoidable. He had existed on the extreme ends of cerebral fringes and that could be a very secluded place. Now…well…now that might not be the case anymore.
Dyson suddenly, and without any real warning, found himself in a world where there was another mind not only nearly as brilliant as his…but exactly the same. For a fair number of years growing up, he had secretly wanted a sibling…a brother, specifically. The reasons ranged and changed with his ages: at four it was to play with, at twelve it was for protection and at sixteen, it was for a solid wing-man; but the one theme that played throughout was the desire for a real friendship. Dyson didn’t make it easy for people to befriend him and he hardly seemed aware that that street went both ways. Of course he’d never said it aloud…nor would he; it showed a terrible ineptitude in the “world’s smartest man”, but that didn’t make it go away…even for an old man. Somewhere in the back of his mind there had always been that desire and now, without one iota of warning, he could have it. Beta could be that person now.
He was better than any brother could ever be…even an identical twin…because he was Dyson. Beta would know every thought, every dream, and every desire…even the things he could never share with another person. Beta would know it all because he will have lived it all as well; there were no secrets…nor would there need be. They were guilty of the same sins and had achieved the same goal
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Ever since history began, mankind has been fascinated by fire. In the days of the caveman the hunter’s campfire was often the only thing that protected our prehistoric ancestors from the predators that prowled the dark. The scenario must have been terrifying as the cavemen sat around their fire knowing that death watched from the shadows. Something about this experience must have imprinted itself upon the human race back in those days, for even today a campfire can bring a chill to most people’s spine, given the right circumstances, and one of the favorite pastimes on camping trips is to sit around the fire and tell scary stories. Many may find this tradition old fashioned and cheesy, but I always felt a small thrill whenever the talk would turn to tales of the dark and disturbing while I was in the Boy Scouts. There is one night in particular that sticks in my memory, and when I tell people about it they are surprised that I am not in therapy.
People sometimes ask me what the scariest thing I have ever experienced is. They are usually surprised when I tell them that I have to think about it for a while. I may look not look like the sort of person that strange things happen to, but I have had far more than my fair share of weirdness in my life. This is one such story.
To begin with, I have to provide some background information. I am the oldest son of a large family and I live in the north-eastern United States. (I have had to fudge the names of people and geographic locations, although some people may be able to recognize the places and people I am referring to.) One of the greatest joys of my high school life were my activities with the Boy Scouts. I am an Eagle Scout and a Brotherhood member of the Order of the Arrow, scouting’s honor society, so I am no stranger to the outdoors. In fact, I so loved scouting that, once I was old enough, I joined the staff of Six Hills Scout Camp as a summer camp councilor. Like most summer camp workers, I had coworkers who were among the most awesome people that I have ever met, some who I wish I had never met, and a whole lot of people in between. The two people that I hung out with the most were my friends Topher and Joe. I actually ended up going to the same college as Topher and our camping experiences were how we became friends, but that is another story. Topher was a very logical guy who loved studying the plants and animals of the wilderness and frequently expounded upon them at length, while Joe was more bookish and shy. The three of us were about the same age, and after our Junior year of college Joe found himself a girlfriend named Ann who frequently visited camp.
Unfortunately, for every Topher and Joe there was a Kyle. Kyle was one of those people who made my skin crawl and yet for some reason most women found him irresistible. Kyle would frequently string along several lovesick girls at once, use them for what he wanted, drop them in the dirt afterwards, and then brag about it. Needless to say no one could stand him and the only reason he was on camp staff was because his uncle was camp director.
The last person on camp staff to play into this story was Bert. Bert ran the camp’s health lodge and was primarily responsible for giving out medications to the campers that needed it. The fact that Bert was in charge of the health lodge was a source of great amusement to most of the campers as he was very old and not in the best shape. In fact, he often drove around the camp in a golf cart as he couldn’t walk long distances very well. In spite of this, Bert was actually a pretty cool guy once you got to know him. He was an Eagle Scout and had traveled around the world a good deal, although he was very reticent about why he traveled so much. If you got him talking he could tell some fascinating stories about the things he had done or the legends that he had heard.
As the last week of summer camp drew to a close that year there was a sense of melancholy among the staff members. As much as the kids had driven us crazy, we would miss them. The last of the scout troops had left that morning and Joe, Ann, Topher, and I were sitting around a campfire as the last of the evening light faded. As usual, the talk turned to scary stories, but we found that we had run through most of the classic ones already. The tales of Hook Hand, Don’t Turn on the Light, and the Licked Hand had already been told and we were running short of ideas. It was Ann who finally came up with a solution.
“Hey,” she said. “Why don’t we tell each other the scariest true story that we know?”
“Here we go with BaronVonRuthless91 and that Aztec Idol again,” said Topher.
“Don’t even joke about that.” I replied. “That is a long story which I am not going into right now.”
“I’ll go first,” volunteered Ann. “Have you guys heard about those murders that happened up on the mid-state trail a few miles from here?”
We agreed that we had. The campers had spoken of little else for the last couple of weeks.
“Well,” continued Ann. “You guys don’t know the full story. The cops are treating it as a homicide because one of the guys was tied to a tree before he was killed. The strange thing is that that other man and woman who were with him were practically torn to pieces. They found parts of them up to a mile away from where they were killed. What type of man could do something like that? They also say some other hikers on the trail have been hearing strange sounds in the night.”
“Probably a coyote or a fox,” suggested Joe. “They make pretty weird sounds sometimes.”
“Not like this they don’t,” said Ann. “That’s how I found out about all this stuff. My dad is a zoologist and they brought him a recording of the sounds the hikers heard on the trail. He said it definitely wasn’t any animal he had ever heard. The strange thing is this. If some kind of animal killed those three people, how did that one guy end up tied to a tree before the bear, or whatever it was, disemboweled him?”
The thought was unsettling. We sat in an uncomfortable silence for several minutes and we nearly had a heart attack when a twig snapped it the night. There was a short huffing sound and the antlers of a large deer poked over the top of a bush. We breathed a sigh of relief when we saw the antlers. The deer was just as scared of us as we were of it and after a minute we heard it move away through the bush.
“You know,” said Topher. “For some reason that reminds me of something that happened to me a little while ago. “ Topher turned to me. “Do you remember that weird guy at the Order of the Arrow ordeal?”
“Vaguely,” I replied. “I remember you talking about him, although I never actually saw him.”
“That’s right, you didn’t actually see him because we were on different work crews. Anyhow, we were at our Order of the Arrow ordeal.” Topher turned to Ann. “It’s kind of an initiation ceremony where we spent the weekend working. We weren’t supposed to talk unless absolutely necessary. To make a long story short, there was this strange guy who showed up at my work crew and just watched us. Since we couldn’t talk we couldn’t ask him who he was or what he was doing there. He just stood in the trees by where we were working and looked at us. It was really creepy. I had to run back to the dining hall at one point to use the restroom, and he actually followed me for a little while until I ran into one of the scoutmasters. I probably should have told someone about the guy but I thought I would get in trouble for talking.”
“Well that is a little creepy,” admitted Joe. “I probably wouldn’t consider it to be the scariest thing that ever happened to me though.”
“You didn’t see this guy,” said Topher. “It was the way he looked at you. He looked at us the way a snake watches a rat before eating it. The reason I thought of this story just now is because of those noises that Ann mentioned. That night when we were walking back from the big campfire, I remember hearing some kind of weird animal. It sounded like a cross between a lion and a hyena. Is that what those hikers recorded on the trail?”
“I’m not sure,” replied Ann. “The sound my dad heard really gave him the creeps. He wouldn’t let me listen to it.”
At this point there was another sound in the forest. This one was unfortunately all too familiar to the four of us; it was the unmistakable sound of Kyle’s voice followed by a feminine giggle from whoever was with him. A minute later Kyle stepped into the firelight with a dark haired girl who was clearly drunk leaning against his shoulder.
“Well, helllloooo everybody,” exclaimed Kyle in a voice that was just a little bit too loud. I was fairly sure that he had been drinking as well. “I hope I am not interrupting anything.” When he said this Kyle made sure to leer at Joe and Ann. Ann narrowed her eyes angrily and looked as if she were about to reply with a snappy retort until Joe placed his arm on her shoulder. After a second she relaxed. Kyle had spent the previous summer trying to seduce Ann to no avail. Then, at the very end of last summer, Ann’s little brother, Tyler, had died in an accident. He had been two years younger than us and had worshiped the ground that Joe had walked on. He had been at camp with us and had been one of the kindest souls that I had ever met. He had gone out on a walk late one night, and had fallen down a ravine where he broke his neck to the point where he was almost decapitated. I still remember seeing the paramedics take out his body the next morning. The strangest thing about the situation is that the most vivid thing in my memory was the Captain America t-shirt that Tyler has been wearing. The shirt was all torn up and covered in blood, and the image still haunts my dreams. In the aftermath of the tragedy it was rumored that Kyle had taken advantage of Ann’s emotional state for his own purposes, although we never dared to ask her if this was true. Ann had only just started to recover a couple of months previously when she had started dating Joe, and every lecherous look that Kyle gave her was like a slap in the face.
“What are you all up to?” Kyle asked, pretending to not notice the death glares we were giving him. “Oh and by the way, this is Whitney,” he said gesturing to the girl hanging onto his shoulder. “She was hiking along the trail and got lost. I offered to put her up for the night until she can get her bearings. After all there is a murderer on the loose.” Whitney giggled again and the rest of us tried not to visibly cringe.
“We were kind of telling each other scary stories about things that have happened to us,” Joe said quietly. “I guess it’s my turn now.”
Kyle let out a harsh guffaw. “Is this going to be about poor baby Tyler again?” he jeered. At this point even I started to stand up to show Kyle exactly what I thought of him. Thankfully for my well being (Kyle was pale and scrawny but surprisingly strong) Topher stopped me.
“He’s not worth it,” he said quietly.
“What is Kyle talking about?” asked Ann. “Did something happen between you and Tyler?”
Joe winced. It was clear that he had not been planning on telling this particular story. “It’s kind of complicated,” he began. “The thing is…I suffer from something called sleep paralysis. It’s when you wake up from a dream and are conscious, but you can’t move. Sometimes you also see strange hallucinations. The most often hallucinations for me are long fingered shadows with way to many teeth. I would wake up at three in the morning and not be able to move. After a few minutes I would hear my closet door open, or something move under my bed, and then the shadow creatures would appear. Sometimes they would actually touch me. Even though I know they aren’t real I can still feel them brushing against my face or sitting on my chest. I had one of these episodes the night Tyler died. I woke up but couldn’t move or talk. I saw Tyler sit up in bed. I saw him look at his phone and then go outside. He must have gotten a text message or something. The point is that I saw a bunch of the shadow creatures follow him outside. I know it doesn’t make sense. There was no way I could have warned him. I just feel like I could have stopped his accident and I couldn’t”
By this point in the story there were tears streaming down both Joe and Ann’s faces. Ann gently put her arm around her boyfriend’s shoulder and the two of them quietly wept. The silence lasted for another minute before Kyle interrupted again.
“Well,” he said. “That is all well and fine but I have a real story to tell. It is the tale of what really happened to RON GRAYSON.” Kyle paused dramatically to let the words sink in. Ron Grayson had been a local lawyer ten years previously who had one day vanished off the face of the earth. They found his car abandoned in a supermarket parking lot and his cell phone in the river a few miles away, but there was never any body found. The incident was one of our areas biggest mysteries and, even ten years later, just about everybody had a theory about what had happened to him. The prevailing theory was that he had either committed suicide or run afoul of some inner city mob boss, but there was no conclusive proof either way.
“No one knows what happened to him,” I said. “The man could have been abducted by aliens for all we know.”
Kyle smirked. “That’s what you think. See this is the thing, remember two years ago where I had to spend a couple of days in jail on those drug charges?” We remembered. The charges had eventually been dropped. “My cellmate was this guy who worked for the mafia as a hired killer. He was there waiting for trial.” We raised our eyes skeptically. “I’m serious, this guy was a hardcore killer. He was a mess though. Apparently there was this hit that went wrong a few years back. He and his partner were supposed to off this lawyer who was filing charges against his boss, so his boss sends my buddy and his partner to make the problem go away. The thing is, my buddy’s old partner is like a cat. He likes to play with his food before he eats it. Anyhow he convinces my buddy to kidnap this kid. They found some homeless kid up in Pittsburgh that no one would miss, and they bring him down here. They have this lawyer tied up in the woods and they tell him they will let him go as long as he shoots the kid. Sure enough, this lawyer guy shoots the kid to save his skin. The problem is that the lawyer is a horrible shot so this kid doesn’t die right away. He starts screaming bloody murder and then something in the forest starts screaming back.”
“My buddy gets spooked, so he gets in the car and leaves his friend to finish the job. The thing is, his friend never comes back. My buddy goes up to the place they had the lawyer the next day, and there is nothing there. No lawyer, no kid, no psycho killer for hire, and no monster. Anyhow, that’s how this guy told me the story. The next day he hangs himself in his cell. I get out and I look up any disappearances around the time this guy says this stuff happened, and I see that Ron Grayson disappeared around that time. So there you have it. The lawyer was eaten by a monster. Maybe it was the same one that killed those hikers.”
Once again there was a sound in the bushes and we all jumped. Off in the distance we heard a faint howl. At the time I figured that it was a coyote, but now I am not so sure. A second later a light shone through the tree branches and there was a strange rumbling sound. We all let out a breath of relief when Bert’s golf cart came puttering around the bend in the trail. Huffing and puffing as if he had just run a marathon, Bert heaved himself out of the golf cart and sat down by the fire. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a peppermint candy and tossed it to Kyle. Topher held out his hand for a candy as well, but Bert seemed not to see him.
“Well that’s that,” Bert sighed. “I just finished a run through of camp and everything is more or less in good shape, although Troop 83 did leave a giant archway in the middle of their campsite for some reason.”
“I guess that means we should be able to get on the road pretty early tomorrow then,” I said. “I’m looking forward to a few days rest before I head back to school for the semester.”
“I think it’s your turn to tell a scary story.” Joe said to me, and so I began my tale.
“Kyle’s story actually reminded me of something,” I began. “I think I actually saw Ron Grayson at this very camp a year or so back.”
“Uh, he’s dead,” interrupted Kyle. “Didn’t you hear my story?”
“Well it must have been his ghost then,” I continued. “It was really weird at any rate. I was doing a night patrol of the camp last summer and I thought I saw someone down by the trading post. I just caught a glimpse of him as he walked around the corner. I thought it was weird, and I didn’t recognize him as one of the scoutmasters, so I decided to investigate a little bit more. I walked up onto the trading post porch and there was this man standing in the corner looking out over the lake. There were a few scouts on the other side of the lake and the man was watching them. We stood there like that for a while; him watching the scouts and me watching him. Then he turned around suddenly and saw me. Then, I swear I am not making this up, he grew a giant pair of antlers, screeched at me, and took off into the forest. I thought about telling someone about this at the time, but I thought no one would believe me. The point is, I was reading the paper a few months ago and I saw some news report about Ron Grayson and they had a picture of him. I realized that he was the man I saw on the porch. Well, at least before he grew that pair of antlers and did his best Nazgul imitation in my face. I actually have a picture of the article on my phone if you guys want to see it.”
I passed my phone around to the others in the group and when it reached Topher he went as white as a sheet.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he replied. When he saw that none of us believed him he reluctantly continued. “It’s just that that lawyer looks an awful lot like that guy who was following me around in my story.”
“My turn! My turn!” called Whitney, still very much intoxicated. “I was hiking the mid-state trail last year, just like I am doing now in fact, and one night I tried some new…” She cast a suspicious glance at Bert and then continued in a quieter tone of voice. “Stuff, I tried some new stuff. It gave me the biggest high of my life but it also made me see some strange things. So anyhow, here I am in the middle of the woods and I have to go take a crap. So I go off by myself and take care of business. Keep in mind during this entire thing the trees are trying to tell me the meaning of life. Anyhow, I am on my way back when I see Count Dracula fighting with Captain America on top of this hill. I realize that this is just the drugs of course but I still don’t want them to see me. I can hear them yelling at each other. Captain was telling the Count to ‘stay away from my sister’ or something like that. It was weird. Eventually, Count Dracula hits Captain America over the head with a stick and then throws him down the other side of the hill. At this point I decide to get out of there, so I slip away. On my way back to the campsite I see all kinds of crazy things. The trees started trying to attack me, these little goblins would laugh at me from behind the rocks, I think I also remember a bunch of bears and deer ballet dancing. It was a weird night. I’m tired, I think I am going to go to sleep now.”
With that, Whitney lay down and began to snore. None of us quite knew what to make of that story. Bert philosophically stared into the fire before tossing Kyle another peppermint candy. For some reason Joe seemed particularly disturbed.
“She said she saw Captain America getting thrown down a hill by a vampire,” he mused. The image of a bloodstained t-shirt sprang into my mind. “You don’t think that…?”
“Oh for crying out loud!” yelled Kyle. He seemed to be very unnerved by the story as well. The look in his eye resembled that of a frightened rabbit who has just detected danger. “You guys aren’t taking that load of bullshit seriously are you? She had ingested enough drugs to kill Charlie Sheen, nothing she saw had any basis in what was really going on.”
“Are we sure of that?” murmured Bert. “There may have been a kernel of truth hidden in her story.”
“Come on Whitney, we are leaving.” Kyle said roughly shaking Whitney awake.
“Not now Edward. I want to sleep.” She replied and then promptly went back to snoring.
This response seemed to anger Kyle even more. Swearing at all of us, he stormed away from the fire into the night.
“Did he really kill my brother?” asked Ann quietly.
“We will probably never know for sure,” said Bert. “Whitney probably doesn’t recognize what she saw consciously. No jury in the world would convict based on something that may have been a drug hallucination. Although the fact that she just called Kyle ‘Edward’ is telling. I saw Kyle and Tyler having a heated discussion the day before he died. I mentioned this fact to the police, but the coroner ruled the death an accident, and that was that.”
“So he is just going to get away with murder,” said Topher angrily. “Where is the justice in that?”
“Sometimes there is no justice in this life,” replied Bert. “Sometimes we have to wait for the next life for our reward or punishment. In this case, however, I think the situation will take care of itself. It’s getting late and I have a scary story to tell you as well before we go to bed. It is about a creature that was once called the Wendigo.”
As Bert began his story the fire seemed to die down and a cold wind sent a chill down our spines. Whitney let out a whimper in her sleep and curled up into a ball close to coals of the fire. The shadows at the edges of the light seemed to stretch closer, and the insects and night birds fell silent as if they too were listening to Bert tell his story.
“The Native Americans would tell their children tales about the Wendigo. They sometimes called him a Forest Giant. The story goes that the Wendigo could change his shape so that no one could see him coming or kill him. The legend also goes that a man could become a Wendigo if he ever ate human flesh. That is how the old stories used to go. When I was a lot younger I met a Medicine Man when I was doing some work on a reservation. He told me some more stories about these creatures. He said that a man didn’t have to be a cannibal in order to be turned into a Wendigo anymore; although that was still a good way to become one if anyone ever wanted such a thing. The man said that the Wendigo was in constant pain as a result of the curse. As the years went by, the pain would get worse and worse until it drove the Wendigo into a frenzy where it killed anything in its path. The Medicine Man said that there was only one way for the Wendigo to stop the pain; and that was for the Wendigo to attack someone who had been as wicked as it was, someone with innocent blood on their hands, and turn them into a Wendigo. Then the pain would fade for awhile, and eventually the original Wendigo would die after it had created a few new Wendigos. It is very difficult to kill a Wendigo although there are certain things that attract them or repel them. They don’t like light and the smell of garlic for example, while fresh blood, peppermint, and the sound of young children will attract them like moths to a flame.”
“A few years after the second World War there was a little boy who claims that he saw a Wendigo. He had gone out on an overnight backpacking trip with his troop when he became very sick. One of the scoutmasters had to drive him back in the dark along with one of the other scouts because of the buddy system. Now this scoutmaster was not a nice man. He had only recently come to the United States and he claimed that he was Dutch. However, a lot of people who were actually German claimed to be Dutch in order to come into the United States. We were not that friendly towards Germans seeing as we had just fought a war against them. The rumor in the scout troop was that this particular adult leader was one of these Germans who had pretended to be Dutch. The rumor further went that not only was this man a German, but he had been a Nazi. At any rate the leader and the two boys were driving along the back roads towards the hospital when all of a sudden they see this man standing in the center of the road.”
“The adult leader swerves the car to avoid this guy and ends up crashing into a tree. One of the scouts was knocked unconscious in the crash but the leader and the sick scout were still all right. The leader gets out of the car and goes over to where the man is standing and starts to yell at him. The man doesn’t say anything. He just stares at the leader and the two scouts. The sick scout is back at the car and managed to drag his friend out of the wrecked vehicle where the scoutmaster had left them. At this point the man in the road grows this big pair of antlers and opens his mouth wide. The scout can see that all of the man’s teeth are at least three times the size of a normal man’s teeth and are very sharp. The strange man jumps on the scoutmaster and begins to tear him apart before coming after the boys. Luckily the one scout managed to find a large hollow log and pulled his friend inside before the monster could get to them. The Wendigo spent the rest of the night clawing at the log trying to get at the boys. Around dawn it went back up to the road and crouched over the body of the scoutmaster. The boy then swore that he saw the dead leader stand up and follow the monster into the woods. The sun came up and a search party found the two scouts a few hours later. The little boy spent the rest of his life looking up information on all kinds of monsters, and travelling the world to hear the various stories about them, so he could find out what happened to him that night.”
There was a long silence after Bert finished the story. Finally Whitney let out a drunken giggle. Apparently she had woken up part way through the story.
“The scary stories were supposed to be true stories that actually happened to us,” she said.
“Sorry,” said Bert after a slight pause. “My mistake.”
“Well we should probably turn in,” said Joe. “We have a long day tomorrow.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Bert. He turned to Whitney . “Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?”
“I have a campsite a few miles up the trail,” she responded.
“You know what?” said Bert. “You can sleep on the sofa in the health lodge. Something tells me that tonight isn’t a good night to be out in the woods alone.”
Bert helped Whitney into the golf cart and the two drove off down the trail. In the distance there was a very faint sound that could have been a human scream that was suddenly silenced. Shortly afterwards there was a strange call that sounded like a cross between a lion’s roar and a hyena’s laugh. Topher, Joe, Ann, and I decided to share a tent that last night. I had a funny feeling that we would never see Kyle again and we didn’t. Topher claims that it is probably because he ran away for fear of getting arrested for murder. I am not so certain. That last night in the woods I remember drifting off to sleep with dreams full of antlered men and peppermint candies.
|
Back when we were six, my brother developed a notorious sleepwalking habit among his various other disorders. So much so that dad child proofed the doors to our room and closet (after an unfortunate pissing incident involving a soiled pile of clothes) so that when we were awake, we could leave, but asleep, no dice. It was one of those plastic coverings that you had to squeeze and turn simultaneously, y’know, the ones that are impossible for anybody under the age of 18 to possibly hope to open due to the sheer amount of pressure it took to turn the damn knob. I’m being facetious now, but I really hated that damn child proof bullshit.
But, due to his sleepwalking, he was kept on the bottom bunk.
Some nights, he’d wake up and try to leave the room, tugging on the door and only succeeding in making an unnecessary amount of racket, only to fall back asleep at the foot of the door after his failure. Before the child proof door, there were only a select few places he’d go, but it became a game of hide and seek with him. I found him inside the toy box once, and I just remember thinking… “how did he even fit himself in there?”
When these incidents happened – and that was at least three times a week – I took it upon myself to get him safely back in his bed when I actually caught him, so long as he didn’t wander past the stairs, which thankfully now wasn’t very possible.
I hated the stairs. Well, not so much the stairs as the hallway that my room was at the end of leading to the stairs around the corner. That place was hellish at night.
Yes, I was terrified of the dark. More so of my own wild imagination spurring the darkness to life with monstrous intents. I was sure we were plagued with a closet residing boogie man or a homicidal shadow dweller, maybe even the neighborhood serial killer. My father, God bless the man, every night before bed, he’d open the closet door, reach up and pull the dangling string to turn the light bulb on, – the switch had shorted on our sixth birthday- and search the closet for my own reassurance. Sometimes, he’d even make a show of it and enter with a baseball bat or a plastic gun, threatening the monster hiding in there. Every time he did it, there was nothing in that closet.
There never was.
My brother wasn’t afraid of the closet like I was. On the lower bunk, sometimes he’d climb the ladder and sleep with me after I’d been sitting up and staring at the closet for what seemed like hours. It was like my fear woke him up.
They say twins have inexplicable bonds.
I always had this strange sensation like I was being watched, or perhaps the feeling of knowing someone’s talking about you… I knew I held something’s attention. And that thought kept me up in such discomfort for what seemed like hours. In reality I probably had the attention span to stay up thinking for half an hour before succumbing to sleep. And stranger still, it wasn’t every night.
In hindsight, that made me feel uneasy. If a child is afraid of the dark, weren’t they afraid of it every night? Don’t get me wrong, I feared the dark, but obviously I was safe under the covers. Most nights, it was merely a childish fear. And some nights, that fear evolved into uneasiness I can’t explain… like violation of my privacy. And no amount of blankets made me feel better.
Something was there. And it was watching. I knew it was. I always expected to see a pair of glowing eyes behind the blinds of the closet door. But I never did.
One night in particular stayed in my memory all the way into adulthood.
The first detail that’s strange in hindsight is that I was already asleep. Something woke me up, not violently, but suddenly. And I still have no idea what.
There was this cold that had settled on the room. And not like a winter cold that could freeze water, but this stale, stiff cold – like an abandoned house.
The same stillness and cold I would feel several years later when grandmother died in her hospital bed and how her skin felt just minutes afterward.
Lifeless.
And a smell wafted through the air like really burnt steaks and rotten trash cans.
I grimaced and said groggily “Geeze, did you fart?” Waving my hand in front of my face.
There was no reply, so I dangled my head over the edge to peer at the lower bunk. Not surprisingly, he wasn’t in his bed.
Illuminated dinosaurs chasing each other endlessly around our room projected from our spinning night lamp was the only source of light – a disco ball of dinosaurs if you will. I traced them around the room to find it empty with the exception of me.
I knew that wasn’t true.
Climbing down the ladder, my feet slapped against the wood floor sending an uncomfortable shock of cold up my legs.
As I turned, the room seemed to widen. It was the moment that makes children gulp in uncertainty. The sudden loss of familiarity. I was in my room, but I felt uncomfortable, the same discomfort when you stare off of a cliff, knowing that one false step and you will die. Completely exposed.
But I trudged on, searching for my misplaced sibling.
He wasn’t on the floor in front of the door, he wasn’t on top or inside of our toy box… I dropped to my knees to find the space under the bed empty. Was it possible he somehow got out of the room?
When he used to leave the room, there were three places he typically was. The hallway bathroom – notably curled up in the corner between the vanity and toilet, in dad’s old red chair in the upstairs living room right down the hall and to the left, or somewhere downstairs, a place I dare not tread in the darkness alone.
I padded to the door and squeezed the plastic covered door knob with both hands, struggled with the damn thing for a moment and pulled it open. I was greeted with pitch blackness. The dark hallway now looming ominously in front of me. There were no windows, the only source of moonlight would be around the corner where a window was beside the staircase.
The hallway wasn’t just dark, of course not. It was never that easy. No, it had to be pitch black.
It made me even more uncomfortable, staring out into that blackness with my pulse steadily rising, I could hear my heart beating in my ears. Anything could be out in that darkness.
I felt like I’d see a pair of eyes staring back at me.
Whatever was in that darkness had no eyes, or at least, they didn’t glow like in the movies.
But I jumped at the sight of a long, black shadow cast from behind me, freezing in terror as it disappeared.
It happened again, casting my shadow across the hallway’s floor.
The nightlight on our dresser that cast dinosaurs the walls of our room, and now out in the hallway.
On the bright side, I had a source of light now.
I was transfixed, staring out into the dark hallway as it lit up with the distorted dinosaur.
I looked down, my toes were barely behind the baseboard that separated the wood flooring from the carpeted hallway. Before I crossed that line, I needed to make sure there was nothing hiding in that darkness.
Anything could hide in shadows that black.
The dim light flashed from behind me
My eyes caught something unnatural… I could’ve sworn someone was pressed against the wall at the end of the hallway to the right, like they wanted to plaster their back to the wall. It didn’t really register until the light had already passed.
I gulped, my body tensed uncomfortably, eyes locked on the darkness where that person had been standing. In this darkness, they could’ve moved wherever it saw fit to move. It could be five feet in front of me for all I knew.
With that thought I was dreading the next pass of light. Did I really want to see this thing?
Before I could even answer myself, the light passed over again, and the shadowy figure remained, unmoved.
Because it was the shadow of the open bathroom door resting door knob length away from the wall.
Just my imagination.
I released a shaky breath, satisfied that the hallway was empty, and lifted my foot, slowly, unsteadily crossing my perceived line of safety out into the unprotected blackness of my house made foreign by the nighttime.
My toes curled into the carpet, tensed like the rest of my body like I was holding onto the railing on a roller coaster.
The light passed by again, and I kept my eyes peeled, stopping my movement completely as it did, just for safety. If I could just get to the bathroom, I could turn on the light.
The hallway light was beyond the bathroom, so that was out of the question.
I had to be brave. I traversed the darkness, taking long steps on my tippy toes just to stay quiet in case something were actually in that darkness. My whole body would stiffen when the light passed behind my back only to continue and try and cover as much distance as possible while I was still hidden by the shadows.
The whole time I had that feeling of being completely exposed in this hallway, as if I were actually being hunted. I kept thinking; what if I’d missed something and now whatever it was was in the hallway moved behind me.
I dare not turn. I pictured a vile creature staring right into the back of my head, breathing down the back of my neck. If I turned, I’d only be greeted by sickly, glowing eyes and a wicked smile.
So I didn’t.
But finally, I made it to the bathroom without incident, but my joy was short lived as I peered into the pitch blackness that was the bathroom. And this time, there was no dim light to chase away the shadows. If only for the brief moment.
The light switch was on the left inside, right above the counter and under the medicine cabinet. I had to tippie toe to reach it.
I gulped down my fear. Now or never. I strode inside with purpose and ignored the chill of having my back exposed yet again but to a completely unknown abyss.
Even then, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.
The light flicked on.
And my worst fear was realized in full. Just like I had pictured, it was behind me. A black mass I barely caught a glimpse of in the mirror because I jumped and spun almost immediately.
I was being watched by a dark colored towel hanging on the rack behind me.
My breath slowed as my near heart attack was avoided. Just my stupid imagination.
There was nothing in here. I had peeked my head behind the shower curtain just to be safe.
Disappointingly, the bathroom was empty, which meant I was still alone in the night.
One place left to look outside of my room.
Dad’s chair. Which meant a trek further into the unknown worse than that, this journey involved a corner.
That might not seem significant, but something could easily hide around a corner and jump out without warning. Corners at night time were terrifying.
I peeked out into the hallway, looking both ways and seeing only what I saw during the day thanks to the bathroom light.
My fears were unwarranted, the hallway was empty. Thankfully, I didn’t even feel like I was being watched anymore.
Just my imagination. Just like always.
But my heart stopped in the next moment.
There was a sound, like a light thump coming from my room, as if somebody was knocking on the walls.
My face warmed uncomfortably as my head turned slowly back toward my room.
All those other times I only felt watched or was afraid of seemingly nothing.
This was a sound! This was a tangible sense!
It was waiting in my room! It must’ve snuck passed me while I was in the bathroom.
But… could I have possibly imagined that? Maybe just a pipe or something?
Another thump that caused my legs to stop working.
I definitely hadn’t imagined it.
I stared down the hallway into my open room intently, my eyes must’ve been the size of the bathroom doorknob that my hand squeezed so tightly.
I was unable to move. Even a little bit.
I knew it was waiting. I just didn’t know what was waiting…
The silence was defending, I could only hear my own heart beat faster and faster, and a buzzing in my head that got louder and louder the longer I stared.
There it was again.
Thump.
I jumped into action, quickly spinning around searching frantically for some sort of weapon. I took the head off of my electric toothbrush leaving only a small metal tip that I could jab into the monster.
Now that I knew where it was, I didn’t mind shutting the bathroom light off and walking back toward the room. In fact, I thought I’d be able to surprise the fiend.
I made it to the baseboard once more, reluctant to pass back into my room. I stared inside, waiting with bated breath for any signs of movement. Surely it would try and take me, right?
The cartoon illuminated dinosaurs dancing on the walls suddenly seemed to more feral with jagged teeth that threatened to eat me. They were no longer comforting as they were meant to be. And the shadows they left took shapes of horrifying creatures of the night just waiting for me to step inside so they could pounce on me. Inanimate objects now seemed to move ever so slightly on their own accord.
The heater sounded like a monster in the vents, the breeze pushing tree branches against the windows looked like clawed monsters scraping to get inside.
And then there was a sound that took all of my attention away from everything else.
A long scratching, as if this monster dragged the tip of its claw along the walls. It came from the closet. The one door that freezes every child in fear. Fear of the unknown, of what could be behind that door. Of what your imagination puts behind that door. The boogie man, and I knew he was in there. I knew it. I stepped inside of the room and stood in front of the closet, both hands gripping my toothbrush so tight that my knuckles were white.
That shuddered, white door seemed to stare back at me. It has to be standing behind that door, which meant that it was only a few short feet away from me. This thin piece of wood was all that separated me from my nightmare.
“I promise there’s nothing in the closet.”
My dad’s voice rang in my head. There never was. Every time he checked the closet, nothing was in there.
But this was different. I was alone now.
I felt as though the boogie man was daring me to open the door. To see what would happen if I did.
Heart pounding like a machine gun, face hot like the stove, throat scratchy and dry like dirt… I found it hard to move my limbs like they had all fallen asleep.
And then my heart froze over as dread descended down on me like a bucket of water. There was a soft click and light flooded from the shudders of the door.
Something was in there, and it turned on the light!
I needed to get dad! That was the only thought in my mind.
I wanted to scream for him but my voice didn’t work. I wanted to run as fast as I could away from that closet, but my feet were glued to the floor. .
I heard a light shuffling on the other side of that door, and my body stiffened even more if at all possible. My eyes must’ve been popping out of their sockets. This was it! It was gonna take me!
Suddenly my legs were working again, stepping backward, feet clumsily stumbling over themselves. I landed on my rear, my toothbrush clattering along the floor. Was that… self preservation kicking in?
Was this what fearing for you life felt like?
“Luke?” I heard my name spoken in a small, muffled whimper that accompanied the shuffling.
I blinked.
“Luca, i-is that you?”
It was my brother!
Oh God it was only him!
Just Tyler! I thought I was gonna cry from the relief. I pushed myself up very quickly and struggled with the child lock, pulling the door open. He was sitting in the back of the closet hugging his knees beside some clothes that had fallen. Queue the hangars scraping the wall, and my brother thumping around.
Oh thank god! He looked just as terrified as I had. I ran in the closet and hauled him to his feet as he asked me how he got in there.
“Sleepwalking you doofus. I thought you were a monster!” My hand stayed clamped on his as if I’d lose him if I let go, still shaking from residual adrenaline.
He had a look of uneasiness, trepidation and pure confusion. “I… opened the door?”
I had to pause.
How did he get in the closet? I had to squeeze the plastic with both hands and actively try to turn the knob. No way he did it in his sleep.
Well, he had to have. How else would he have gotten in…
Though at that moment, I didn’t really care.
I just shrugged.
This little night of horrors was done and I just wanted to sleep.
I helped him back to his bed before turning back to the closet. I stood on my toes to flick the switch down.
Only… it was already down.
I gazed up to see the cord dad always pulled to turn the light on dangling, swinging lightly back and forth.
The tingle at the crown of my head shot through my entire body as cold realization struck me.
“How did you turn on the light?” I shakily asked.
“…I didn’t.”
|
Ruby was in her usual spot. Sitting cross-legged, right under the stern “No Busking” sign that was screwed into the old brickwork.
“Busking” being the British term for street-performance; juggling, fire-breathing, magic tricks, whatever.
Ruby was a musician though. A pretty good one, so she’d been told. Just the simple, classic, acoustic guitar-sweet-folksy-singing combo. She wasn’t out to change the world, she wasn’t out to become famous or make tonnes of money. She just enjoyed it, and she thought that was as good a reason as any.
It was a pretty simple gig, just sit down, preferably in a place with a lot of passing foot-traffic and good acoustics, then play through a few songs over and over for an hour or two. This tunnel near the river was perfect and by now it felt like home to her, way more than any actual home she’d had.
She was convinced that a fair few passers-by believed this was actually her home and that she was homeless. Not that this stereotype bothered her, but she could usually tell what people were thinking as they passed.
Some would hurry to find a few coins in their purse, wallet or pockets, in a charitable and rather patronising way. To Ruby this displayed ignorance more than anything, but of course she accepted the coins all the same, she felt kind of sorry for them.
Some people, however, would practically scorn and tut as they walked passed, as if to say get a proper job. This displayed a totally different kind of ignorance, but one for which she was not sympathetic.
Sometimes people would deliberately avoid eye-contact, or busy themselves on their phones, as if Ruby would be angry or heartbroken by their choice not to throw a few coins in the hat. She always found this one the weirdest. She was doing a job as far as she was concerned. She wasn’t begging, but at the same time she hadn’t been asked to perform so why would she be offended if you didn’t pay her?
People were passing, left and right as usual. It was a Thursday evening in Springtime; not quite warm enough for the crazy summer crowds but enough to make the session financially worthwhile.
Out of the corner of her eye she became aware of a shape, a figure, not moving with the crowd one way or the other.
She looked up and saw a middle-aged woman and a young girl watching her.
This happened now and again. It was usually quite nice to have someone actually pay attention to more than a few lines of her songs, it felt more like a genuine performance. Often it happened with children and parents, which was always very cute. Usually the little audience would shuffle off at the end of the song and the kid would put in a generous tip.
Not this time.
Ruby finished the song and they stayed standing, watching. This was a less frequent occurrence but it did still happen from time to time. People decided they wanted their moneys worth, whatever that was, or they genuinely were enthralled with the music. Sometimes it could be annoying actually, as it made her feel a bit too self-conscious and then liable to make mistakes. There had also been times when Ruby had been made uncomfortable by people standing and watching, because she’d suspected them to be muggers or worse. In this instance she usually just feigned a little break from the performance and the characters in question would applaud, maybe pay up and finally move along.
It felt kind of different this time though. The mother and daughter were stood there, waiting and watching but not applauding or really reacting at all. Weirdest of all they were still smiling.
Ruby shook it off and started the next song. Feeling as though she had to put more into the performance. She really went for it on the vocals, closing her eyes and delivering more than the usual amount of emotion needed.
When she opened her eyes there were more people stood watching. Three more separate people had stopped in the foot-tunnel to watch her. It startled her slightly but again this was a phenomenon she’d experienced before. Sometimes when one person stops to watch, it encourages others and the situation kind of snowballs.
There were still people walking past and not stopping but it felt like there were less passers-by now. Ruby continued to play.
Another song and again no applause or tip from the bystanders. She definitely hadn’t played to an audience like this before. By now there were about seven or eight people stood around watching and it was starting to freak her out. By the time the assembled crowd had reached the region of about fifteen people she decided enough was enough and she should finish for the night.
She ended the song, a little hastier than usual, mumbled a “thank you, goodnight” and began to pack up.
Leaning down to pick up the soft guitar bag she suddenly heard footsteps rapidly shuffle towards her. She immediately looked up to see the middle-aged woman and daughter looming over her, too close for comfort.
“Please…” Said the lady, through an almost pained smile “keep playing for us. My daughter loves this music. Please won’t you play some more?”
Ruby didn’t know what to say. She felt sorry for the woman somehow. There was a look of desperation on her face.
“I…I’m sorry I have to be going really…” Ruby fumbled.
The young girl looked disappointed, like someone let down yet again by a loved one who had done it many times before. A man appeared beside Ruby with the same sad-but-smiling expression.
“Please, we love the music. We always listen.”
This last sentence confused and scared Ruby. She performed in this tunnel practically every week but she’d never seen these people before. Did they pass by every day and just coincidentally decide to stop and listen to a full set of songs on the same night? Had they prearranged to get together as her audience? She didn’t like the thought of either of these possibilities. She felt almost like her privacy had been invaded. Busking gave her anonymity despite being out in public. This was all very weird.
“I suppose I could do one more perhaps…?” She offered, supposing she could get the hell out of there after one last number. The expressions on the audience’s faces seemed to relax at this and the members of the gathered crowd who had come forward stayed where they were, expectantly.
Ruby nervously started another song, a particularly shrill and melodic one, a song which she only occasionally played as it was pretty old and the average tourist didn’t really know it. The crowd seemed to move inwards, making her feel crowded and yet more uncomfortable. She couldn’t really see the rest of the tunnel anymore but it seemed as though there were no more people walking through it.
She played through the song, attempting to avoid eye-contact with anyone, instead she looked down at their feet and clothes and for the first time she noticed their clothes looked very old. Not shabby and worn-out but old-fashioned. Out of date. Not that she was a fashion historian but she guessed them at around fifty or sixty years old? Like something her grandmother would have been wearing in old black and white photos of her childhood.
She gazed up and saw the people were blissfully staring into each other’s eyes, or swaying slightly to the song, some with their eyes closed, some hugging each other. A melancholy satisfaction washed over Ruby. She drew the song to a close tenderly and the middle-aged woman smiled. The young girl let out a small sigh and said; “Thank you dear. That was beautiful.”
A well-dressed couple walked along the riverside. They’d been out somewhere and, feeling a little tipsy, had fancied a stroll before finding a taxi home. They heard music as they approached the foot-tunnel.
“Can you hear that?” said the woman, smiling.
“Yeah, there’s a few buskers along here usually.” The man replied. After a pause he said “You know about thirty people died in this tunnel during the war. They were sheltering here during an air-raid.”
They entered the tunnel and saw a young lady sitting on her own, playing a tune on a guitar, eyes closed and blissfully unaware of the emptiness around her.
“My grandfather’s whole family got killed here” the man continued, sneering down at the busker as they walked past “when I think about how hard those people had it back then, it makes me sick to see people like her…”
|
My friends and I had just left a party at a local bar, and we were walking back to my house, seeing how it wasn’t too far away from where we were. On our way back, we happened to come across a small lot sandwiched between two apartment buildings that was filled with black garbage bags and piles of tires. Rich proposed going in, and after a few minutes of consideration, Dennis and I agreed. Obviously, there’s nothing special, or fun, about a rotten-smelling junkyard, but we were a bit drunk, so the idea seemed great at the time. We decided to play a game called “King of the Hill” on the fort of tires that stood before us. Basically, we were just pushing each other off of the top. After a while of climbing up, and falling down, a pile of tires in an idiotic attempt of having fun, we took a break by sitting against one of the dumpsters that stood near the entrance. As I tried to get a hold of my breath, I gazed around the small dump, and noticed something I failed to spot out before.
There was a white grocery bag hanging from the fence in the back corner of the junkyard. I figured that someone tried to throw it over, but it got caught on the fence on its way down.The bag seemed to be filled with something. It had blocky edges poking out from all sides. I know something as plain as a grocery bag isn’t much, but it still intrigued me.
“Hey,” I said as I nudged Rich, who happened to be sitting next to me,”Look over there.”Dennis leaned out behind Rich, and looked towards where I was pointing.
“So, it’s just a few rips. No one’s gonna care about whether or not the bags are torn.” Said Rich. He was pointing out the tears our shoes had left in the trash bags when we played our little game.
“No, the grocery bag hanging from the fence.” I said,
“So?”
“Well, it’s filled with something.”
“And?” Said Dennis. I shrugged,
“Don’t you guys wanna know what’s inside?”
“No,” Rich chuckled, “It’s just trash, man.”
“What if it was something like jewelry?” I said as I stood, and made my way towards the grocery bag.
“You’re just gonna find a dead cat in there, dude!” Dennis hollered as I struggled to climb the mound of garbage bags that blocked my path. His sentence was followed by the two of them laughing. I didn’t really care what they had to say. I was just a bit curious, that’s all.
Once I made it to the other side, I reached for the grocery bag and grabbed it. Inside of it was a whole bunch of cassette tapes, and an old Walkman.
“No way, you guys gotta see this.” I called to my friends,
“Did you find the leprechaun’s gold?” Rich mocked,
“Hold on, I’m coming.” Hastily, I climbed the pile of trash and walked back to where they were sitting.
“Look at this.” I held the bag open, letting Rich and Dennis view it’s contents. I pulled out a tape and read it’s label,
“Journal entry one,” I pulled out another, ” Entry three.” I read,
“No way, it’s someone’s diary.” Said Dennis.
“I wonder why they threw it away.” I said,
“Probably because they realized how stupid they were for keeping a diary.” Said Rich.
“Whatever,” I dropped the bag on the ground,” It’s one in the morining, we should be heading back.”
“Woah woah woah,” Said Dennis, as he snatched the bag up from the pavement,” What the hell are you doing, man? Don’t you guys wanna listen to these?”
“Well, it could be a bit funny.” Said Rich
“Journal entry one,” Started Dennis in a stereotypical british voice,” I walked my dog, BonBon, today at the park and came a across a rather odd squirrel.”
I laughed, “Dennis, you’re such an ass. Fine, lets take them with us.”
We left the junkyard, and continued to walk down the street towards my house. I remember how excited I was to listen to those tapes. Stupid, I know, but the thought of listening to someone’s personal life sounded interesting to me.
Once we arrived at my house, I unlocked the door, and immediately walked towards the dining room. Dennis set the bag down in the center of the table and pulled out the Walkman, as three of us grabbed ourselves a seat. Eager to hear what it had to say, I siezed the first tape, put it in, and pressed play. I was suprised at what I heard. The voice wasn’t at all what I expected. It seemed to be a boy who sounded as if he was in his late teens.
Hey, my name’s Chris, and I’m a Junior in highschool. I don’t have many friends, actually, I have none. I guess it’s just because people don’t like me, or maybe because I’m just too weird. I’m not weird, am I? Anyways, that’s not why I’m here. It’s actually because my uncle gave me this Walkman and a few tapes. He said that the Walkman used to be his, and that he just didn’t have the heart to throw it away, because he used it so much as a kid. So he made it my birthday present. Well, I didn’t have the heart to let it catch dust in the corner, so here I am, using it. Maybe it’ll come in handy one day, I don’t really know. Should I go on with telling about myself? Well, my favorite class is science, and I’m extremely bad at math. Blue is my favorite color, and I prefer dogs over cats.
A door slams in the background, causing all of us to jump.
That was my mom. Her and my dad have been arguing alot lately for reasons I can’t even bother to figure out why. I know for one thing that my dad is thinking about calling a divorce, which doesn’t really bother me. It would bother anyone else, though, but it doesn’t bother me. That’s not weird right? I’ve been hearing alot lately that I’m a little ‘weird’. I don’t see why, though. I eat, drink, sleep, and live like a normal human being. That’s what I think, anyways. Maybe it’s just because I’m not as talkative as everyone else, or what if everyone was just making it up, so that they would have a reason to pick on me. Frankly, I can’t see why anyone would want to pick on me in the first place.
“What a loser,” Said Dennis, “I can see why people want to pick on him”. I shrugged,
“Let’s just play the next one.”
It’s January 14th, which is three days since I’ve made the last tape. I decided that I’m going to continue making tapes, and keep it as my journal. Who knows, maybe I’ll look back at these old recordings one day when I’m a bit older for a small dose of nostalgia. I’m making this a short one, because I have to leave in about five minutes. My mom’s taking me to some stupid jewelry party at one of our neighbor’s house because, according to her, I absolutely have to be there, or we’ll make a bad impression . So here I am, sitting in dress pants, a white button up, and a stupid tie. I don’t have dress shoes, so I just wore an old pair of Nike sneakers, which makes this situation about five hundred times worse. Maybe in the next tape I’ll talk about how the party went, hopefully it went well enough for me to talk about it.
We looked at eachother and laughed.
“Nike sneakers.” Rich muttered in an almost giggly tone.
“Should I seriously play the next one? I’m not sure if I can handle listening to this for another ten tapes.” I asked. Dennis and Rich nodded with giant grins on their faces.
January 16th, I was punched in the face at school today by a senior whose name is Jake. Honestly, I don’t even know the guy. To make my day even more wonderful, I ended up eating outside in the rain, because all the seats in the cafeteria were taken by the time I got back from the nurse’s office. I could’ve simply cleaned up the blood pouring from my nose by myself in the bathroom, but one of my teachers, Ms. Hoffington, insisted that I go see the nurse. While I was at the nurse, I managed to get a glimpse of myself when I passed the tall mirror that hung on the outside of the bathroom door. I was a bit amazed at the amount of blood that was smudged across my face. Actually, it was kinda cool. I felt a small amount of pride when I got a good look at my face. Probably because I’ve never actually spilt that much blood in my life before. Jake got suspended by the way. For a week to be exact. I think he should be expelled, so that I didn’t have to see him again. Oh yeah, and, uh,by the way, the jewelry party went well. No one noticed my Nike sneakers, and the food was good.
A small amount of shock appeared on our faces. “Damn, he got punched in the face.” I said,
“Well it serves him right. Someone must’ve known he was making stupid ass tapes in his bedroom.” Said Dennis,
“How can you even be happy about getting a bloody nose?” Rich added, ” What the hell is wrong with him?”
I shook my head,” I don’t know, man.”
January 20th, While fooling around on YouTube for about two hours, I came across a weird documentary on something called the ‘Slenderman’. It’s an odd creature with no face, wearing what looks to be a suit, that has tentacles, giving it a dark, spidery look. It’s said to lurk in forests, and that once you see it, it stalks you before actually claiming you as its victim. No one really knows what the Slenderman actually does to his, or its, victims, and that all we really know is that they go missing without a trace. I guess alot of people are creeped out about this, and I can see why. The photos that depict him look pretty disturbing, but what actually generates the most fear are the stories about him. Actually, I’ve been listening to them all night, and I’m not scared at all, just intruiged. Turns out, these stories come from a site where people just write, and submit a whole bunch of creepy stories, and not all of them about the Slenderman. I’ve heard a couple that talk about lost episodes of famous Tv shows that depict some disturbing, twisted version of the actual show. I’ve also heard stories about serial killers, ghosts, and whatever else that’s remotely scary. Some are more gruesome, while others are just a bit eerie. I, for one, have never found any of these stories to be scary. I usually find myself thouroughly mystified as I read.
We all glanced at eachother, a bit confused about what the Slenderman is. I guess the kid was a horror fan. I put in the next tape, and held my head in my hands, wanting to go to sleep.
January 26th, Did I ever mention the site where I found all these stories from? It’s called creepypasta.com. Yes, I realize that it’s an odd name because an Italian dish is in no way creepy, but if you’re interested, check it out. You know, now that I think about it, these stories have showed me how much darkness can exist in this world. You’re never actually aware of it until you start thinking about it. What I’m saying is not crazy, it’s true. Darkness lurks in the hidden corners of everyday life. Right here, right now as I’m saying this, a person is getting brutally murdered.
Immediately after he said that sentence, my head shot up and I looked at Dennis and Rich, bewildered at what I just heard. They shook their heads and shrugged.
Somewhere out there a person is dying. Could be a full grown man, or a child. You never realized it until you heard me say it just now. But, hey, that’s the real world for you. Lately, I’ve been noticing how everyone else at my school is so blissfully ignorant to the horrible things in this world, while I’m being constantly reminded of it. No one sees what I see. It kinda makes them all look a little bit dumb. Don’t they see? Don’t they notice what happens around them? They hear sirens echo down the road, and it could just be a plain car crash, but what if it was caused by something far from our reach? They don’t know that. Their eyes aren’t opened wide enough to notice. At least I’m aware of it.
February 2nd, Have you ever noticed how much death is involved in an average creepypasta. It’s almost as if death is a needed element in the story. You know, ever since I started reading these stories, I’ve become pretty comfortable with the thought of dying. Sometimes, I laugh at those poor, poor people in those stories. I guess they haven’t realized how much of a friend death could be, even when pain is the price you have to pay for meeting him. After all, aren’t we all going to face it one day? Sooner for some people, later for the rest.
There was a long pause before he spoke again.
I’ve been thinking about writing my own creepypasta soon. After reading everyone else’s, I figured I should try it for myself. It’s worth a shot isn’t it? I think I’m going to write one about the Slenderman, or maybe Jeff…Or maybe I’ll write a story about a man who goes crazy, and starts killing everyone he knows… That sounds like a wonderful idea.
February 17th, They didn’t accept my story. What was wrong with it? Was my grammer off? Was the spelling bad? All I wanted was for it to be out there for everyone to see. Hell, it was probably one of the greatest ideas they ever came across, but…
He voice became angrier and a bit frustrated, almost as if he was about to go off on a full blown rant.
But they turned it down. Are they too stupid to see the brilliance in what I wrote? On top of that, I found two assholes who decided to read it, and make a mockery of my hard work. Idiots, they’re just a bunch of idiots who can’t see the genius in one’s work.
A loud scream erupted from the speakers of the Walkman, and a hard thud was heard soon after. I figured that he had just thrown it out of anger. I wonder what his story sounded like, and why they turned it down. The next tape started, and we immediatly realized how angry he was. He spoke in a loud, irratable tone, which was almost terrifying.
February 22nd, Stupid people. Stupid, stupid people. They should all rot in Hell for all I care. I shouldn’t have to deal with them everyday. Once I walk through that school’s front door, I’m surrounded by them. My teacher gave me a detention for not paying attention in class. Why should I? We’re all going to die. We’re all going to die someday, and there’s nothing we can do about it, but no one around me is smart enough to see that. Why? Why can’t they just open their eyes, and pay attention to the horrible world around us? They’re too preoccupied with their lives, and what comes tomorrow, instead of what comes at the very end. Did I tell you that I was pushed down the stairs today? Ben Trinner. He did it, and this time, I’m not letting it go. I’m going to find him, and he’s going to pay. You might be wondering how I’m going to get out of the house without my parents seeing me. It’s okay, they’re already gone. Dad’s still at work, and Mom-
There was a short pause, and a slight chuckle arose from his voice.
Mom’s taken care of. He’ll find her when he gets home, and I’m not coming back. I don’t have to deal with them anymore.
“What, what did he mean by ‘Mom’s taken care of?'” Asked Dennis in a hushed tone.
“Do you think-”
“No,” Rich cut me off, “There’s no way in Hell that little fucker did that. Play the next one.”
I obliged and put in the next tape, a little scared of what I may hear.
February 24th, I found an old warehouse in the outskirts of the town, and I’ve decided that that’s where I’ll be living from now on. The lights still work in the rooms where they’re not broken, and the boarded windows keep out most of the rain. It’s not that bad of a place, really. I stole all the money from my mom’s wallet, so food is already taken care of. In one of the rooms of the warehouse, I found a really old Tv. It’s a black and white one, and it uses a dial to change the stations. The reception’s a little bad, but I could still make out what’s happening behind all the static and whitenoise. I decided to change it to the news channel, and I was greeted with a picture of my mom.
A loud, almost evil, laugh echoed from the speakers, which goes on for a few minutes.
They think I’m dead, which is good on my end, because they won’t bother searching for me. Oh, the glory I felt when they announced how she had been stabbed five times in the chest. It made me feel a little bit excited to know that I have done such a thing. It wasn’t easy, but it sure was satisfying in the end. And now I have to find Ben. He doesn’t know it yet, but tonight is his last one on Earth. Luckily for me, his house is a few blocks from here. It’s eleven at night right now, and I should be finished by one. Wish me luck.
I quickly put in the next tape, now a little bit more concerned with what was going on. Was he really going to kill that kid? It almost seems too real to just be a sick joke. But no matter how much I wanted to think it was just a joke, a frightening truth stood in the back of my mind, telling me that it was all true.
February 25th, I’ve never felt so happy before in my life. You can’t even imagine the butterflies I got when I saw him gurgling his own blood in a worthless attempt of fighting for his life, and no one heard a thing. I was able to open one of the first floor windows without a hitch, thank God. It took me about thirty minutes to walk up the stairs without making a noise. I had to be careful, for even the slightest of all noises can awake someone. When I got to his room, I was able to open the door without him waking up. And everything else that followed seemed to happen so quick, almost as if my memories of the event were a flip book. I quickly covered his mouth before I dragged the knife across his throat, severing his jugular. I wanted to laugh at his squirming body as he died, but I didn’t, out of fear of waking his parents. I pulled open his bedroom window, jumped out, and ran. I think I hurt something in my foot when I landed, but I didn’t care. All I could feel was the cold, bitter wind slicing across my smiling cheeks as I ran. I’m back at the warehouse now, and it’s 1:45 in the morning. I have the Tv switched to the news, waiting to hear about my newest accomplishment.
We all looked at eachother, still a bit traumitized from what we had just heard. An uneasy atmosphere hung in the room. He killed him, and no matter how much we didn’t want to believe it, we knew it was true. I hesitantly put the next tape in the socket, and pressed play. Immediatly, a loud, abrupt white noise blasted from the speakers, making us all almost fall out our seats. Even though that would be something we’d end up laughing about, no one broke a smirk. I grabbed the next tape and put it in, turning down the volume before I pressed play, fearing that there would be more static. I heard a faint voice, signaling me to turn the volume back up. This time, the kids voice sounded a bit huskier, pointing out that it has been year or two since his last tape.
January 17th, It’s been a while since I made one of these. Well, a few weeks ago I was kicked out of the warehouse. I had to move my location, since the police were planning to investigate the area on account of the recent murders.
He started to laugh again. The sound of it was almost sickening, and added a sense of dread to the atmosphere.
Seven, seven people have died since I’ve made my last tape, and each murder has become more gruesome and disturbing as the last. The last person’s eyes were gouged out, and their wrists broken. There was no rhyme or reason to why I did it. I did it simply because I HAD to. It’s just not enough. I need to kill. It’s the thing I find the most pleasure in. It’s even more fun to hear it announced to the public. Anyways, the police are investigating the area to find the body of another one of my victims. They suspected that it was the same killer as the last dozen, and they weren’t wrong. So, I’ve moved my location. I walked for quite a long time through the woods that bordered the southern part of my town, before I managed to enter the next town and take refuge there… It’s almost like those stories I took so much interest in. No, it’s exactly like those stories. What a dream to actually be part of my own Creepypasta, oh if only the rest of the world could hear about it.
The next tape was the strangest, and most horrifying that night. When I pressed play, all we could hear was static, but after a while we heard what sounded like screaming. There was a certain quality to it… It sounded panicked and strained, as if the poor person’s throat gave out from screaming too long.
January 22nd, You hear him. I know you do. That’s one of my newest… ideas. It makes me smile, seeing him beg and scream for help, knowing at this point nothing could save him. Why don’t you give up hope, my dear friend? You see, death is inevitable for you, and theres no escaping it now. But, hey, you shouldn’t have been walking around town so late. You know that there are terrors hiding in the corner every night, and that you should avoid them. But then you came across me.
He started to laugh again. The sound of it made me want to throw the Walkman at the wall, hoping to stop the evil laughter, but I knew I had to keep listening.
The best part is, he’s not even restrained. I broke his legs, making it impossible for him to walk. He should be proud to be the first one of my victims to die like this. I realized that every time I kill someone, I do it too quick, to the point where it’s not as… satisfying as I hope it would be. But by bringing him here, I’m able to see him struggle for his life before it actually ends.
Small bursts of static were heard, but even through all of that we could hear what was going on. We heard heavy, slow footsteps that faded away, as the distance between the Walkman and Chris grew. The screaming became louder, and more struggled. The sound of it alone made me want to puke. The screaming was then replaced with a horrible gurgling noise. Even through his blood filled throat, you can still hear him scream, begging for his life. I heard the familiar click and felt a bit relieved, but that quickly went away, as I realized that there was one more tape left.
February 5th, I have come up with the most wonderful idea yet. And it’s probably the best one. I figured that instead of just a slow and hesitant death, I’m going to let them rot and decay in their own fears. Should I tell you what it is?….It’s a surprise, and I would hate to spoil it.
The last tape clicked and we all looked at eachother with a grim look on our faces. We knew what we had just witnessed in the past ten minutes, but none of us wanted to acknowledge it, or believe it was real. After sitting in silence for what seemed like about twenty minutes, I spoke up,
“What do you think the suprise is?”
Rich abruptly sat up and pushed in his chair,
“I don’t know, man, and I don’t want to know,” His voice had an uneasy feel to it. It almost sounded as if he were a bit frustrated, “I’m leaving. I don’t want to take part in anymore of this.”
I stopped him,”Wait, you can’t go. What are we going to with the tapes?”
“Fucking burn them. Get rid of them. Pretend it didn’t happen. I’m leaving,” Said Rich
“Dude, calm down. We have to figure this out. We have to know who he is. He could still be out there.” I said. Dennis cut in,
“We should hand them over to the police. Maybe they could do something,”
“Really? And you know what else the police would do if we give these to them? Fucking nothing. We gotta figure this out on our own,”
“Oh yeah?” Started Dennis, “You wanna solve this big mystery? I know you want to know who he is, but you shouldn’t try messing with something that could kill you,”
“Sure, he might kill me, but he also might kill a shitload of other people. We have to figure out where this fucker is.”
“You’re not some kind of hero, Jake. I wouldn’t bother messing with it.” Said Rich
“I’m not trying to be a hero. What do you guys think I’m gonna do? Walk outside with a flashlight, and call his name like a lost dog? All I want to do is some research, that’s all.” We stood in an uneasy silence for a moment.
“Why were those tapes hanging on the fence in the first place?” Asked Dennis. He was right. Why were they hanging on the fence?
“Do you think someone had already found them and was trying to get rid of them?” I asked.
“Look guys,” Said Rich,” It’s, like, three in the morning. We’re all a bit tired, and we’re all a bit confused, so trying to figure this out now would be useless.” Dennis and I looked at eachother and nodded a bit sheepishly, realizing how true the statement was. Rich started to walk towards the door, and Dennis followed him soon after.
“I’ll catch up with you later, Jake.” Said Rich as he opened the door, making his way out. Dennis waved a goodbye at me and shut the door behind him. The sound of the door clicking shut gave me a sense of finality, and the silence that followed afterwards was almost sickening. I walked into the living room, and turned on the tv, hoping to uplift the heavy atmosphere the tapes have caused. I grabbed my laptop, sat on the couch, and turned it on. While it was starting up, I looked into the dining room, staring at the cassette tapes and walkman that still sat on the table until I heard the Windows 7 start up sound call for my attention. I immediatly opened up Google and searched for murders and deaths in this area, but nothing came close to what Chris had described. I tried looking for the school he went to, hoping I would get some clues, but that didn’t work either. I sat for a second, staring at the Google search bar, until I came across an idea. I clicked on the URL box and typed in ‘www.creepypasta.com.’
A site with a black background and white text came up, with the simple heading “Creepypasta.com”. I scrolled through the page, and read some stories and announcements.
“This is what he was obsessed over?” I muttered to myself. Sure, some of these stories are kinda scary, but it certainly wasn’t anything that can drive someone to kill. How long has this site even been up? It doesn’t seem that old. This was probably around since my Senior year. I shut down the laptop and turned off the tv. After I got up, I walked into the dining room, and shoved all the tapes back into the bag. I decided that I would hand the tapes over to the authorities the next morning.
I barely went to sleep that night, because I was still shooken up over what I had witnessed earlier. And as I layed in bed…it almost seemed as if there was a presence, like someone besides myself was there. I quickly shrugged it off as my paranoid mind causing me to feel things that weren’t even there, and fell asleep soon after. When I awoke it was around twelve in the afternoon. I had slept late, which isn’t suprising, considering I went to bed at around five. I didn’t even bother to eat or brush my teeth after I got up. I just got dressed, grabbed the tapes, and got in the car. The tapes and Walkman were sitting in the passenger seat. They seemed to emit some uneasy feeling throughout the ride, which only made me more eager to get rid of them.
When I arrived at the police station, I quickly grabbed the tapes and entered the building. I didn’t even bother to turn the car off. The building’s lobbey was vacant, and the only person who was there was the cop sitting at the desk, sipping coffee and filling out paper work. I dropped the bag onto the counter, causing the man to look up from his work.
“Can I help you?” He said in a somewhat irratable tone.
“I-I think I solved a few dissapearances.”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and glanced towards the filled grocery bag that sat on his desk.
“Those?” He asked. I nodded quickly. He sighed, grabbed the bag, and put it on the floor next to him,
“Alright, I’ll present it to the authorities when I can.”
“Aren’t you the authorities?” I asked, a bit frustrated at how little he was concerned.
“Listen, I only hand out speed tickets and search for lost parents at the mall. But right now, I’m doing this here paperwork, and when I get the chance I’ll hand them over to authorities.” I nodded with some dissapointment and left, relieved that I didn’t have to be close to those tapes anymore.
Once I got home, I grabbed my mail and opened the front door. As I made my way into the living room, I tossed the stack of bills onto the table. I was suprised to hear something hard hit the wooden surface. When I looked back I noticed that the manilla folder that layed among the white envelopes wasn’t filled with sheets of paper, but a small object. A bit curious, I went back and opened it. I cringed when I saw what the folder had revealed.
Inside the folder was a small, black cassette tape labeled, “Entry 15.”
No, this wasn ‘t possible. It had to be Rich or Dennis. There is no way another tape was sent to me. We were the only ones who listened to them that night. And I was certain no one saw us, except for a few cars that passed when we were walking down the street.
I wanted to hear what the tape said, but I remembered I gave the walkman to the police. I searched my basement for a radio, anything, that I could play this tape in. I had to know what it said. Finally, after searching for what seemed like an hour, I came across a box in the basement that had a small cassette player inside. Hastily, I grabbed the dusty object from the box, and ran back up stairs. As soon as I reached the table, I put the tape inside the player and pressed play, hoping to hear that this tape and the other’s were just a sick joke one of my friends had planned out. But once I heard the voice, my stomach dropped, and I felt as if I were going to puke.
April 12th, Hello Jake what did you think about my game? It took me a while to get it ready, but it was all worth it. I knew your curious little mind wouldn’t be able to help itself. I’m surprised at how smoothly this all went out, actually. You and your friends barely noticed me when I put that bag on the fence. And you went and grabbed it, almost as if it was on cue…Are you still surprised, Jake? I’ve been keeping a close watch on you ever since I killed Ben, but I never actually carried out anything ’till now. I knew I had to save the best for last just for you. And now that I think about it, the waiting was all worth it. I’m shocked, Jake. You seem like you don’t even recognize me at all. Don’t you remember punching me in the face back in highschool?
I started to hear the sound of leaves shuffling. It sounded as if he were walking through the woods.
You guys look pretty scared over what you heard in that last tape. I can see it right through the window.
Once the tape had stopped, slowly and unwillingly, I looked towards the window on the south side of the dining room. There was nothing there except for the bushes that stood directly in front of the glass.Terrified, I ran towards the phone to call the cops. When I heard a voice on the other end, I jumped into a panic.
“Hello!” I desperately asked the phone. As I spoke, I patrolled the house, making sure that all of the windows and doors were locked.
“Oh, it’s you again,” Said the policeman I met earlier, “Listen, I told you I would get to it when I ca-”
“Someone’s after me. I just recieved another tape in my mail, and there were threats directed towards me on it, I think it’s the same person who made the tapes I gave you. He’s going to kill me.”
The officer spoke in a bored tone, “Well make sure that everything’s locked up, first,” He paused, “Now, are ya sure it’s not just one of your friends trying to mess with ya?”
“I’m absolutely sure it’s not one of my friends. Please, send someone out here.” I pleaded
“Sorry, but all you can do for now is to make sure that no one can get in. Just go up to your room and quietly read a book or something.” I slammed the phone back onto the hook. He’s not listening to me. I grabbed my laptop, and headed up to my room. I didn’t notice before, but I was the Jake Chris had mentioned in one of his tapes. And now he was back to get me, just like how he had killed Ben. I shut my door behind me and locked it, hoping it would serve as an extra layer of defense.
I decided that I would document what had happened to me, and submit it to creepypasta, so that it could serve as a warning to everyone out there. And that’s how I got to here, typing desperately on my laptop. I just heard some glass break downstairs, and I’m becoming more terrified by the second. I’m going to try to finish this up the best I can.
Please, for everyone’s sake, if you happen to have a “thing” for scary stories, don’t get too obsessed, or you may turn into what you originally have feared. If not, then watch out for those who are vulnerable to becoming the monster that Chris is.
Chris, honestly, I hope you’re happy. You have your own creepypasta, and you live in what you admire so much. You were right, the darkness in a simple scary story is more real than I thought.
Credit To: TVATR
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I had recently spawned a new world in single-player Minecraft. Everything was normal at first as I began chopping down trees and crafting a workbench. I noticed something move amongst the dense fog (I have a very slow computer so I have to play with a tiny render distance). I thought it was a cow, so I pursued it, hoping to grab some hides for armor.
It wasn’t a cow though. Looking back at me was another character with the default skin, but his eyes were empty. I saw no name pop up, and I double-checked to make sure I wasn’t in multiplayer mode. He didn’t stay long, he looked at me and quickly ran into the fog. I pursued out of curiosity, but he was gone.
I continued on with the game, not sure what to think. As I expanded the world, I saw things that seemed out of place for the random map generator to make; 2×2 tunnels in the rocks, small perfect pyramids made of sand in the ocean, and groves of trees with all their leaves cut off. I would constantly think I saw the other “player” in the deep fog, but I never got a better look at him. I tried increasing my render distance to far whenever I thought I saw him, but it was to no avail.
I saved the map and went on the forums to see if anyone else had found the pseudo-player. There were none. I created my own topic telling of the man and asking if anyone had a similar experience. The post was deleted within five minutes. I tried again, and the topic was deleted even faster. I received a PM from username ‘Herobrine’ containing one word: ‘Stop.’ When I went to look at Herobrine’s profile, the page 404’d.
I received an email from another forum user. He claimed the mods can read the forum user messages, so we were safer using email. The emailer claimed that he had seen the mystery player too, and had a small ‘directory’ of other users who had seen him as well. Their worlds were littered with obviously man-made features as well, and described their mystery player to have no pupils.
About a month passed until I heard from my informant again. Some of the people who had encountered the mystery man had looked into the name Herobrine and found that name to be frequently used by a Swedish gamer. After some further information gathering, it was revealed to be the brother of Notch, the game’s developer. I personally emailed Notch, and asked him if he had a brother. It took him a while, but he emailed me back a very short message:
I did, but he is no longer with us.
— Notch
I haven’t seen the mystery man since our first encounter, and I haven’t noticed any changes to the world other than my own. I was able to press “print screen” when I first saw him. Here’s the only evidence of his existence
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I’m writing this down to A) help me process what happened and B) create some sort of written record.
I’m a Disneyland employee—have been for 5 years. I started running a concession stand, moved to ride operator, then into resort operations. All the while, I was a pursuing a degree in psychology with intentions to become a psychiatrist someday.
After I graduated, I continued working at Disneyland while I applied to grad school. To my surprise, Disney offered me a job—something that would allow me to work in my field (kind of) and stay in the park. Job title: Mental Health Assistant.
I’ve been in this role for exactly a week.
[first week / worst week / last week?]
I haven’t been fired yet, but let’s just say I’m expecting a call.
Let me back up a bit.
Deaths in Disneyland are rarely reported on, courtesy of the sophisticated PR team of a $168 billion company.
Suicides (anywhere) are also rarely reported on. That shouldn’t surprise anyone.
So what do you think happens when there is a suicide inside a Disney park?
It doesn’t happen.
Not to the outside world anyway. Families of victims, innocent bystanders, or anyone else affected by suicides inside the park generally go away with generous cash offers and thick non-disclosure agreements.
A disturbing online community has developed over the past year—a group that encourages its members to kill themselves in Disneyland. It’s called the Disneyland Suicide Pact, or DSP, for short.
Their stated purpose is to serve as a metaphor. To illuminate the stark contrast between “The Happiest Place on Earth” and the utter horror and darkness of suicide. A metaphor that people who are happy on the outside can be dead inside. For some, a call back to when they were last happy.
I think their actual purpose is to terrorize innocent people, to forever pervert happy childhood memories for the handful of people who happen to see the aftermath of suicide before staff cleans up.
The suicides have become more frequent in recent months, leading Disney to create the Mental Health Assistant role. They told me I was the ideal candidate—someone young and hip enough to speak the internet language of the DSP community, someone well-versed in the park itself, and someone with a psychology background (however meager that may be).
In the two weeks preceding my job offer, four suicides happened in the park:
Kelvin Goodwin took a fist full of pills then got on the Star Tours ride. Died in the middle of it.
Clifton Hedges pretended to fasten his seatbelt on the Guardians of the Galaxy tower ride, finagled his way off the elevator near the top, and jumped 200 feet down the elevator shaft, dying instantly upon hitting the top of the ascending elevator cabin.
Patrick Brayhill climbed off a Pirates of the Caribbean boat and hid in the Pirate’s Lair scene. He slit his throat and bled out. He wasn’t found until the next morning.
Jenny Davies scored an overnight stay in the highly-coveted princess castle, only to jump to her death in the middle of the night.
And I bet you’ve heard of none of these.
They’re not in the news, they’re not on the “List of Incidents at Disneyland Park” Wikipedia page, they’re not on YouTube. They’re nowhere. That’s the power of Disney PR at work.
I’d like to think Disney wants the trend to stop out of the goodness of their hearts, but let’s be real, it’s all about the bottom line. If the witnessing patrons or the victims’ families talk too much (despite the non-disclosure agreements and cash settlements), it can have a lasting effect on park visits.
A $168 billion-dollar company can keep a lot of people quiet, but how many?
In my first couple days on the job, I generated a fake online persona for Dave Karat—a name I thought of while driving past a Wendy’s (founded by Dave Thomas), and then looking down at my coffee cup (lid imprinted with Karat), creating accounts on Facebook and a few others. Once it was believable enough, I applied for the Disneyland Suicide Pact’s online community—appropriately named the Mouske-tears. I was accepted a day later.
Just to be clear, you don’t have to make the ‘suicide pact’ in order to join the Mouske-tears. Anyone can join after a “light vetting.” Once you’re ready to join the pact, you undergo a “heavy vetting”—something that Dave Karat probably wouldn’t pass—and are awarded a Mickey Mouse badge that accompanies your username on the site.
After being accepted, I began clicking on all the usernames with the Mickey Mouse badge, trying to determine who the next victim may be.
I quickly flagged four users as short-term risks—those that talked seriously about suicide in the park and appear to be planning a trip—but one stood out above the rest.
Her username was “beauty_or_beast.” Her profile picture showed a gentle girl with long blonde hair, probably 16 or 17 years old. She was very forthcoming about her life, detailing her reasons for suicide and why Disneyland is the ultimate venue. She mentioned the nostalgia of Haunted Mansion on three different occasions.
I saw her and others talking extensively about “Death Day” a couple weeks earlier. Upon a bit more investigation, I discovered that Death Day referred to December 15th, the day Walt Disney died. December 15th was only a few days away.
Beauty_or_beast mentioned that her family was planning a trip to California during the week of December 15th and that she may, in fact, be in the park on Death Day. Someone suggested that perhaps the stars have aligned for her.
I private-messaged her asking what her plans were, saying that I may in the park for Death Day. She messaged back quickly and said she wasn’t sure. That she didn’t want to ruin the day for her family.
My heart broke.
I asked if she’d do it in Haunted Mansion. She said she didn’t know. Of course, she did know. That and so much more.
She told me her plan was to push for her family to go to the park on December 14th, then she’d say she’s meeting a friend and ditch her family just before park closing. Really she’d hide in the park overnight—something that’s much easier than people think—then kill herself right before park opening on Death Day.
I knew that the online community was a toxic place for her. That if I could talk to her in person, I could help her. I told her to message me when she knew her plans cause I might be there too. She told me she would. She said her name was Shay Kane.
On the morning of December 14th, I messaged Shay to see what time she was getting to the park. She didn’t respond. She had changed her profile pic to a photo of Walt Disney with blacked-out eyes.
I spent most of the day standing in the security control room watching the turnstile camera feeds. It’s common for at-risk kids to change their appearance shortly before committing suicide, especially girls, so she must have slipped through unnoticed because I never saw her come in.
I messaged her a few more times, telling her I was in town and that we should meet up, or even meet in the park somewhere. She never responded. Before I went home that night, I showed Shay’s picture to the overnight security staff and let them know to keep an eye out.
I hardly slept that night.
The next morning, I headed to the park at 7 AM—two hours before open. I gave printouts of Shay’s picture to the morning security team then walked to Haunted Mansion.
Disney is very thorough in their security camera coverage of areas where patrons are, but not so much “behind the scenes”—Disneyspeak for employee-only areas. That meant that I had to physically inspect every room of Haunted Mansion. After a fruitless hour of walking through the eerily empty ride, I continued my search through the rest of New Orleans Square then Frontierland. Nothing.
About twenty minutes before park opening, I got a call from the security staff. They saw a female similar to the picture I gave them walking around the backside of Haunted Mansion. I rushed back to the ride.
I barged into the side employee entrance and immediately started calling Shay’s name. This was only a couple minutes before park opening, so the ride was now running—music and sound effects and all. I moved through the haunted graveyard, the seance scene, the beheaded groom scene, all while yelling “Shay!” at the top of my lungs. I felt defeated. There were a million places she could’ve been hiding.
Finally, I made it to the dining room scene. The ride moves along the mezzanine level of a two-story dining room. The scene features a large, elegant dining table with gold place settings, all caked in cobwebs and dust. There is a tall fireplace, floral wall moldings, high-back chairs, and ornamental windows. Holograms of ghosts dance around the room.
Finally, I found her. She was standing on the mezzanine level but over the railing about fifteen feet from the tracks. She was holding a rope in her hands. Her hair was cut short.
“Shay?” I climbed the railway and shimmied across the decorative mezzanine. I was worried the whole thing would collapse since it was built for show—not to support actual people.
She looked up to me. She had been crying. “Who are you?”
“I’m Rich,” I said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Can we talk?”
She held the rope up for me to see. Her eyes followed it to where it was tied around a fire riser behind us. I sat down next to her.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I said.
We sat in silence for about two minutes. I watched the ride cars roll by, “Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize,” playing in the background. They hadn’t let people on the ride yet, which was a good thing.
Eventually, she warmed up to me and began talking. She opened up about everything going on at school, at home, in her head. It became clear that she didn’t want to kill herself. She had thought about it. A lot. But when she became a part of the Disneyland Suicide Pact community and heard all the talk about Death Day—which happened to coincide with a planned family trip—she felt that it was her time.
After about twenty minutes of talking, she paused and looked down. “There’s something else,” she said.
“You can tell me anything.”
“I’m not the only one.”
“The only one, what?”
“Death Day. I’m not the only one that planned to kill myself on Death Day.”
A pit in my stomach grew. The room began spinning around me. I started thinking about my research into all those on the forums that had talked about Death Day. About how Shay was the only one that was for sure going to be in the park that day.
“Who else?”
“Oh god,” she said, and brought her hands up to her face. “Rich, I was supposed to be a distraction.”
“A distraction from what?” My mind was racing a thousand miles an hour.
She began sobbing. “It’s a small world.”
“Shit.” I stood up, not knowing if she was making it up to get me away, or if she truly was a distraction. “Come with me,” I said.
“I’m fine. You go,” she said.
I pursed my lips then buzzed medical on my walkie-talkie. I told them Shay’s location inside Haunted Mansion. They were already waiting out back. I also told them to send a team to It’s a Small World, that we might have a situation there.
I climbed over the railing and ran through the ride to the front entrance where hordes of antsy people were waiting for the ride to open. I ran past them, setting off a chain of whispers amongst the crowd—”What’s he doing?” “Who is that guy?” “Did you see his face?”
I called ride operations and told them to close “It’s a Small World,” that we might have a suicide attempt, potentially multiple. They said that they hadn’t opened yet anyway, due to a mechanical issue, but that they would keep it closed until the situation had been cleared.
The park had only been open for a few minutes and it was already crawling with people. I began running across the park when I got a call.
“Small World didn’t get my shut down order in time, the ride opened for a few minutes after our call.”
“Shit—what happened?”
“You better head over there.”
I continued running and was soon joined by medical teams in yellow jackets, also running toward the ride. One of the park ambulances drove by, bewildered guests jumping out of the way. As I got closer to the entrance of the ride, the real horror began. People—men, women, children—were crying. Many hysterically. One woman stumbled out of It’s a Small World’s emergency exit and threw up violently into the hedges. I heard screams from inside.
I stopped one of the medical staffers running out of the emergency exit. “What the hell—”
“It’s bad. It’s really bad.”
I pulled my employee badge out of my shirt so that it was visible. Park guests in line began stopping me. “Sir, do you know what’s happening?”
I ignored everyone, hopping the fence and bee-lining for the emergency exit near the entrance. People were still climbing out of boats, following the emergency lighting to the exit. One of the ride operators came on the loudspeaker. “Please calmly exit the boats where safe and follow the arrows to the nearest emergency exit. Ride operators will assist those who need help. Parents, please shield your children’s eyes through the Scandinavian exhibit.”
Parents carrying children filed past me along the emergency path. “Keep your eyes closed, sweetheart, we’re almost there.” “What were those people?” “Why was everyone screaming like that?” “Are those people hurt?”
The pit grew in my stomach as I moved through the North Pole exhibit and into the Scandinavian room. Then I began to smell it—the overwhelming stench of vomit. I started to notice vomit tracked through smeared footprints along the walkway. For a moment the music kicked back on and the ride began to move again. Although it appeared that everyone had been successfully evacuated, the music startled everyone.
“It’s a world of wonder a world of tears, it’s a world of hopes and a world of fears.”
I turned the corner and immediately felt my stomach turn violently. About ten bodies dangled from the ceiling spread throughout the exhibit. Beneath the bodies—all with bulging eyeballs and kinked necks—the model Scandinavian children swayed back and forth in their white snowsuits. “There’s so much that we share that it’s time we’re aware…”
The medical staff scrambled around, trying desperately to reach the bodies, gently swinging about ten feet off the ground. “We have to get to the ceiling. To the ceiling—go!”
I couldn’t bear the sight any longer. The pressure in my face intensified until the tears began streaming down my face. Hot tears. Tears of death. Of loss. Of failure. Tears of the hundreds of friends and family members that would be impacted by these suicides.
I climbed back through the emergency exit, through the North Pole exhibit and into the sunlight. I caught a whiff of vomit and felt the churning in my stomach pick up again. I ducked behind one of the hedges and vomited.
“Are you okay, sir?” One of the guests waiting in line asked.
I looked at him. “Go find another ride.”
I radioed the medical office asking if they knew if Shay made it out of Haunted Mansion safely. I began walking that direction while I waited to get an answer. Eventually, they came back on.
“Shay appears to have left.”
I was shocked. “Like they let her go?”
“No, she made it back to the medical office then slipped out before she was evaluated.”
I began running to the medical office near the front of the park. The closer I got to the front gates, the more chaotic it got. Crowds of families were running for the exits. The customer service lines were packed fifty people back, guests demanding refunds, I imagined.
Disney is great at covering up incidents in isolation, but when ten people commit suicide on one of the busiest rides right at opening, that’s hard to recover from.
The medical office was nearly empty since the suicide victims had all been taken by ambulance to various hospitals in the Anaheim area. I took a deep breath and looked around. So eerily empty. So void of life.
I walked out the back door of the medical office and looked around. I wondered if the pandemonium had spread to the entire park or only to those that had seen the ambulances and medical staff running around (and those that saw the direct aftermath of the suicides, of course). I walked along the service road behind Disney City Hall looking through the fence into the thick brush that lays just beyond park boundaries.
There stood Shay.
She stood about twenty feet behind the fence amongst the trees and bushes. She saw me and took a step forward.
I opened my mouth to speak, then realized I had no idea what to say.
She smiled, turned around, and disappeared into the brush.
Out of everything I saw that day, Shay’s smile is what I think about most often. Was it one of gratitude—a smile that said you saved my life? Or was it sinister—a smile that said I played you for a fool?
She told me her job was to serve as a distraction. Whether she was planning on killing herself that day or not, she succeeded.
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Ellie’s eyes fluttered open, only to be blasted by strong, white light. Her arm shot up and hid her face from the glare, as she slowly became able to see her surroundings.
She was stuck in a Plexiglas cube, big enough for her 13-year-old self to stretch out her arms and barely be able to lay down both palms of her hands on opposite walls. The material was transparent, and through it, Ellie could clearly see that her cube cage was somehow stuck to the center of a square wall, about five feet off the ground.
The room was a brilliant white color, marble tiles decorated the floors and a very strong light was coming from a simple white luminaire hanging from the center of the ceiling. Its shape was rectangular, as the wall opposite to the one Ellie’s box was mounted on was much further than the ones to the side. That wall had a white door with a silver knob in the center. There was a desk at the halfway point between her box and the door, offset towards the wall on Ellie’s right-hand side, though she couldn’t see a chair behind it.
A black fountain pen with a golden nib resting on a black round holder and a white clipboard with blank papers were the only things on the table, which seemed to be made of white, glossy plastic.
Next to the table and below the light hanging from above stood a person. He was tall enough to meet Ellie’s eyes without her looking down. The slenderness of his body was emphasized by the black buttons creating a dotted line from his neck to his white pants and plain black shoes.
His face, as if floating in the whiteness, was framed by a curled cloud of thick black hair. His most striking features were his blood-red eyes, staring motionlessly, unblinkingly at Ellie. The man’s face was expressionless.
Ellie, startled, knocked on the translucent wall, trying to get the man’s attention, but to no avail. She felt the claws of fear and panic slowly climbing up her stomach, weaving spider webs in her chest, making it hard to breathe. Her fear rose like the mercury in a thermometer sunken into hot water.
She heard a metallic humming noise of something running through pipes from behind her, followed by a splash. She quickly veered her head around to find the source. Water was pouring onto the floor, the pressure making the glass-looking jet come down just shy of the center of the bottom panel. It soaked into her skirt and got into her shoes before she could get up on her knees.
Her face was now in the tight grip of terror as she slammed her palms against the window, desperately screaming for help. The man stood, unmoved. The transparent liquid pooled about a centimeter deep at the bottom of the cube, and it looked as if it was the bottom panel expanding upwards. Ellie had given up on the staring man and looked for a way out. She shoved at the top panel with all her might, then pressed her back against one side and pushed at the other with her feet. It didn’t budge.
The cube was over a quarter full by now, the water level well above Ellie’s waist. The little girl’s clothes were soaked now, clinging to her body. She reassumed her position on her knees, once more pleading with the motionless man. Her cries became high-pitched as the cold fluid slowly crawled its way up her thighs, unsticking the bottom of her skirt from her body, making it float. Tears viciously poured down her cheeks as her cries for help turned to sobs.
Soon, she was on her feet, her palms pressed against the top window, the liquid up to her neck. Her silent crying occasionally turned to loud wails of mixed horror and anger, but subsided whenever her chin touched the liquid, and the paralyzing fear of drowning repossessed her body.
As the last two centimeters of the cube were filled, Ellie took one last deep breath and went under. She looked through the front panel, but could barely see two black specks. One was the penholder on the table; the other was the man’s hair. She hit the glass again, a few precious air bubbles escaping her lips.
Her chest began to hurt from holding in the air. She placed her hands over her lips, desperately trying to keep the air in. Her palms slowly moved to her throat. She couldn’t take it anymore. The need to exhale was like a hot iron stuck in her head. Exhale. The air had to be pushed out. Ellie hit the glass.
A bouquet of bubbles erupted from Ellie’s mouth. The silver flowers of her last breath floated to the top of the cube and were slowly sucked out by unseen tubes. Ellie took a breath of the fluid and immediately started to cough it out, a few more sparkles escaping her lips. Then, her world faded to black.
The black-haired man stood and watched as her lifeless body floated in the liquid, her hair fanned out like a curtain, crowning her head with the dark chestnut color. She looked as if she was caught in a giant ice cube that had very sharp edges. Her face wasn’t contorted with pain or screaming anymore, it was peaceful now.
* * * * * *
Ellie’s eyes shot open, her entire body flinching. She was lying in the soft embrace of a bed, the covers pulled up to her neck. It was so delightfully dry and warm that even in her panicked state, she was able to appreciate the comfort it offered.
Just then a figure leaned over her and into view, causing Ellie to let out a frightened gasp. It was the man. The one who’d watched her drown. Except…
“Hello, Ellie.” His blue eyes sparkled with a calm kindness.
“W-where am I?” she asked, trembling with fear. Even if he did hear the question, his features didn’t show it. “Am I d-dead?” Ellie stuttered on. At this, the man’s clean-shaven face softened into a smile.
“Oh…” she said, looking somewhat disappointed and only slightly less weary. She eyed the man very carefully. “Are you… God?” The man’s smile remained motionless. Ellie took it as a yes, but investigated further.”
“But you look just like that terrible person who, well, I told him to help me, but he just stood there and, and, there was all this water and then I think I… I think I drowned.”
“Oh?” asked the man, with a voice, which was perhaps a bit too smooth. She had always imagined God as having an angry, roaring voice, like the one her mother imitated whenever she read bible stories to Ellie before bed. The story about Moses, at least her mother’s rendition of it, was her favorite.
“Yes, his eyes were different, but you look just like him.”
“Hmmm…” the man answered, his eyes now focusing on Ellie’s.
“What?”
“I always look like the last person you saw during your life. Did you not like the person who looks like me?”
In spite of everything, Ellie was nearly convinced. She remembered she had drowned in that see-through cell after all. “Can you prove it? Can you prove you’re god?”
The man curiously raised his eyebrows, then went back to smiling. He motioned for Ellie to sit up. She did so, and was now able to see around the room. She was lying in a four-poster queen bed with white wood posts. The sheets were white, with detailed floral designs. The carpet was white, and so was a chest of drawers up against the wall across from Ellie. There was an open window to the left and white silken curtains were swaying gently in the wind. Beyond it, Ellie only saw bright light. There were no doors anywhere in the room.
The man was sitting next to her on the bed. His arm was now outstretched, fingers limply pointing at the chest of drawers. The palm of his hand slowly rose and with it the piece of furniture. It stopped three feet off the ground, before he gently set it down again.
Ellie tried to stifle a “Whoa!” but failed, feeling like a little kid for doing it. She fell into silence, her mind trying to comprehend everything that had happened. “So this is heaven, then?” she finally asked.
“Not quite,” answered the blue-eyed man. “We’ll talk about that a bit later, though. Now, we should talk about you.”
The two spun a long thread of conversation, and Ellie told him all about her life. They talked about her family. Ellie loved her parents and her little brother dearly. She admired her father for being so knowledgeable, but also confessed that she was sad whenever he was too engrossed in his work to listen to her. They talked about school. Ellie did pretty well academically, but she felt quite at odds with most of the other girls. She didn’t give much thought to the boys, unless they purposefully nagged her. Even then, she would usually ignore them as they would give up eventually.
Ellie had a few friends. Throughout her schooling, she had always stuck around one person most of the time, though that person changed every two years or so. She would still maintain good relationships with most of the girls that had been her friends like that, but not all of them. They talked about Aisha, her best friend at the time. She and Ellie shared what they thought was a unique craziness, which would only come out when they were at home, one visiting the other. They would put up shows to an imaginary audience, which would invariably end with both of them rolling on the floor with laughter, barely breathing.
Aisha had that one music band which she’d always listen to. Ellie noted that she was slowly warming up to them, having already learned two of the songs by heart. Aisha lived on the internet, her mobile phone constantly chirping with notifications whenever the two were together. They would often read through them and answer strangers on the net, giggling at how witty their responses must’ve been.
They talked about books, which Ellie thought was kind of funny. She’d read a lot of books up to the age of ten or so, but then sort of stopped. It fell out of fashion, and though she’d always advocate books, she wouldn’t really read them all that much as of late.
She had just finished explaining that, although she liked romance, fantasy was her favorite genre, when the man interrupted her by saying: “Excuse me, Ellie, but are you hungry by any chance?”
Ellie’s stomach had been rumbling for a while now, but she hadn’t noticed as she’d been immersed in the conversation. “Yes.” she simply answered, hiding her embarrassment.
“Good. How does apple pie sound?” the man inquired in a soft tone.
“That’s… my favorite.” Ellie said, momentarily touched. “How did you know?”
The man simply smiled in response, opened the bedside cupboard and pulled out a hot pan of apple pie, a plate, and some utensils. He cut out a piece and handed it to her on the plate, watching her as she hungrily devoured the delicious treat.
“Oh, excuse me, would you also like some?” she asked, halfway through her piece, her eyes practically begging him to say no.
“That’s very kind of you, but I’m quite alright.” said the man, still smiling. He patted her head and sat back down on the side of the bed. Quite some time had passed since Ellie had awoken.
“Ellie, may I ask you another question?”
“Yesh,” answered Ellie, her mouth full, a crumb of pie rolling out and somewhere between the sheets. Her eyes frantically searched for it on the bed around her, and when they found nothing, she turned back to the man, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.
“Before I take you to heaven, I can give you another shot at life, if you’d like.”
Ellie cocked her head to the side, expecting an explanation.
“If you go to heaven with me, you won’t see mommy, daddy, your little brother or Aisha for a very long time. But, if you go back, you might see them again. You might live out your life, and the next time we meet, could look different. I might look like your future husband, or one of your children, if you have either of those.”
Each of the words nudged at Ellie, making rips in her current peaceful mood. She wanted to see her parents. She was pretty sure she would’ve liked to have lived a longer life. Her eyes welled up.
“Can you do it?” she asked in a strangled voice.
The smile, again.
“Please, do it then,” she said, her head sinking.
The blue-eyed man pulled a small silver box from his pocket. He opened it and got out a syringe of clear liquid. He flicked it gently, then squirted some out from the needle. He started lowering himself towards Ellie.
“This will help you calm down. Then, you’ll wake up back in the real world.”
He squeezed the contents into her arm. Ellie started to feel dizzy almost immediately. He set the syringe down on the cupboard and gently held Ellie’s hand until her world went dark again.
James Knight got up from the bed, only taking a second to admire his handiwork. His hand slipped into his pocket, pulling out another box, this one smaller and gray in color. He took out a red contact lens and gently placed it on his left eye. Then, he did the same for his right eye. Then he produced a tissue from the same pocket and wiped the small droplet of blood that had gathered on Ellie’s arm where he had injected her.
The red-eyed man gathered the girl in his arms and carried her down to the office. He stepped up on a step ladder and gently placed Ellie into the clear glass cube, which was again empty of the liquid, its top side opened like a lid. He closed the lid and locked into place by pressing it down. Then, he carried the step ladder out of the room, came back in and closed the door behind him.
James Knight watched, completely still, as Ellie woke up. He watched Ellie scream and beg for his help. He watched the absolute horror in her eyes when the perfluorodecalin again began to pour into the box. It wasn’t water pouring into, but rather a breathable liquid. It wouldn’t really drown her, since she could still breathe while submerged. But Ellie didn’t know that. Ellie couldn’t have known that. And so, he watched, yet again without expression, as her air ran out. Ellie drowned, again.
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Have you ever felt wanted, but by something you seriously did not want to be desired by? Perhaps someone is attracted to you, and you can’t get them to acknowledge your lack of interest. Maybe there’s someone at work that you don’t care for, but they always talk to you. These people do not truly ask for you though. That admirer hopes for your affection and companionship. That annoying person at work, they just want a friendship with you most likely. Can you say, that something truly wanted you? Not something from you, but you; flesh, blood, and mind. Willing to lie, intimidate, bribe; anything it could think of to get you. Believe me, it’s something no one should ever experience.
My family and I moved into a large old house in our small town. Living there was a temporary arrangement. There was tension in the old house, and so my parents felt we should live somewhere else for a while. They just honestly felt that living somewhere else a bit nicer for a bit would relieve some stress.
I was merely eight years old at the time. I actually was quite excited to live in the house. There was no ominous feeling. I felt no dread as I explored the two story dwelling. It was old, and so naturally, there was that slightly decayed look. At night there was a lot of creaking and other small noises. For the most part however, it was a normal house. I’d play my Nintendo 64 every night before going to bed, keep the TV on, and fall asleep easily. If I wasn’t at school, I was probably playing around in my room. My best friend didn’t like the house as much however.
The first time my friend was over, him, my dad, and I discovered a compartment behind the wall in my parents’ bedroom. I was a scaredy cat, and didn’t want to go in. Feeling safer with the two however, I dared to venture into the compartment. It was cramped, too small for my dad to actually fit. My friend and I could, and there was nothing to be worried about. There was some red and black spray paint applied randomly, but otherwise it was just bare plywood and some exposed insulation. There was one thing in that compartment. Underneath a latch door, was some very grainy sand. Within this sand were buried army men, kinds I hadn’t seen before.
My father tried to squeeze in further to look. “Well, looks like someone forgot about their hidden army men. I suppose you two can have them now.”
The thing was, my friend and I both didn’t feel like taking those army men out. I didn’t really think about it then, but doing so now, it’s quite odd. Him and I both loved playing with army men for much of our childhood. Yet at that time, we both just unspokenly agreed to leave them. I really was ignorant, I just didn’t feel right about taking them. It was like they were still somebody else’s. To whomever they may have belonged to, I do not know. I was never able to learn who was there before us.
That event to me was insignificant, I really thought nothing of it. Still the nights felt easy, and I got plenty of sleep. My friend on the other hand, did not sleep so well. Whenever he stayed the night, he always complained to me that there were sounds in the walls. He described merely that it sounded like something was moving inside of them. I’m really not sure what the sound was like, as I never heard them while he did. Even when he woke me up in the middle of the night over the sounds he heard, I heard nothing.
The idea was still unsettling to me, even though I never heard it. I had come to know that the house held doors that were not in plain sight. There were small places you had to look to find. I always didn’t want to know though. I just stayed where I felt it was normal. I knew nothing of these other places. It was like I protected myself the way adults do — denial. I simply somehow did not accept anything could be odd. Ignorance is bliss they say, and so ignorant I was. It would be one night, however, that would break the calm for me.
It was Easter night, and I was up a bit later than usual. Somewhere between nine and ten. It doesn’t seem late, but at that age my parents took making me go to bed early quite seriously.
“I will not tell you again, go to bed. Do you want the Easter Bunny to come or not?” scolded my mother from the doorway to my room.
“Yes mama, I’m just changing now.”
So I went to bed with the TV on. I always just stared at it, falling asleep before an hour would have passed. I stared and watched Disney cartoons for some time, until finally I drifted off into sleep. This would be the last time I easily drifted off for quite a while.
I awoke, and heard loud noises from the kitchen. All sorts of things opening and closing. I heard the rustle of tableware in the drawer. I heard cupboards being opened, then quickly shut. For a while, I just lay there, listening. It was actually very close to me. My room was oddly placed, the doorway went directly to the kitchen. Being only eight years old at the time, I innocently believed the Easter Bunny was finding hiding places for eggs. What got me to get out of bed, was a call of nature. I slid out of bed, half awake, half asleep, headed for the bathroom. As soon as I walked into the kitchen however, a powerful thud was made in the room. I stopped, wondering if the Easter Bunny would be upset with me. There was indeed something in that kitchen with me. The Easter Bunny isn’t real though. I would have preferred that it was this friendly character of the childish imagination. What I saw however, was nothing remotely close.
As I peered into that dimly lit room, I saw a dark figure. At first, you perhaps would try to call it a shadow. This does not describe the dark entity correctly, however. Shadows are merely breaks in light, and are stuck clinging to surfaces. This thing, it was a pitch black silhouette, crouching like a predator in the open space. I was taken aback, but not as scared as I should have been. I was still half asleep, and couldn’t seem to take in what was happening in full. I simply stood there looking at it half dreaming. It, in return, simply stayed crouched in the shadows, staring back at me. It hid in the darkest part of the room, and yet the reason I could see it, was because it was darker than its own surroundings.
To this day, I cannot believe what I did that night. I slowly walked to the nearby bathroom, relieved myself, then hazily started walking back to my room. I halfway glanced at the ominous figure. It simply looked back at me, not moving, making no sound. Then as I crawled back into bed, I heard steps, and saw an elongated figure slowly pass by my bedroom doorway. Unnaturally shaped, unnaturally moving, and cold air sweeping through my room. It was like it didn’t really walk past, but stretched itself over. Knowing myself, I should have been in a fit of terror, but I simply went back to sleep.
That next morning, what happened during the night didn’t even occur to me. I simply went on with the egg hunt of Easter at first. Then I did remember eventually however, I remembered vaguely. I remembered the loud rummaging noises. I looked in these places, and in none of them were eggs found. My parents tried hinting to me that they hadn’t hidden any in the kitchen, without spoiling the holiday for me.
“But I heard it in these places.” I explained to them last night with some lack of recall. My parents just dismissed it, finding my story odd but sure it was just my imagination or a dream nonetheless. After the day had passed, I started to think about last night.
A sickening pressure built up within me. For some reason, I was being totally unaware of things that I should have been terrified by. I was always a very paranoid child. Even the silliest scary movies would make it impossible for me to sleep at night. One time my dad jokingly put me in the bathroom with the lights off, pitch dark. I screamed at the top of my lungs. He never did those kinds of things after that. My dad always liked playing jokes on us, but he didn’t ever exploit that fear again. I really was not at all hard to scare. After these thoughts crossed my mind that afternoon, I asked myself a question. Just why wasn’t I afraid before? That was easily the most horrifying thing that had ever happened to me. This house had unnatural feelings now. I finally felt fear, I finally realized what was happening. I never slept well in that house again.
At night now, I would lay awake for long periods of time. I felt like I heard so much more noise than before. Every night was like this, and nothing more. It was enough to leave me on edge, but my anxiety would die down a little each night. My fear would quickly rise up once more however, after I had the dream.
I woke up in the middle of the night. I saw a boy through my doorway, running around frantically.
“Get out! Get out! Leave me alone!” I clearly heard. The boy wasn’t speaking to me. He seemed to know I was there, but his attention wasn’t fixated on me.
There was something else in the house. Suddenly, I saw the same dark unnatural figure from that night. It drooped over the boy, and in pure terror he ran off, disappearing. The dream was already a nightmare at this point. Then, the figure stopped, dead silence took place. I felt it turn, its gaze came upon me. Then, slowly it forced itself over to me. How it moved, it’s impossible to really describe well with words. It stretched, and oozed, and seemingly hovered slowly. I was paralyzed with fear. It came closer and closer. Even when it came into the light, it remained a solid black shape. Then the light disappeared, but I could see it still. Nothing was darker than it; it was a vacuum of light. It came finally right to my face. With a knot in my throat, and sweat all over my body, I tried to squeak out a single question.
“Who are-” was all I muttered, and then it enveloped me, and the dream ended. I woke up then, covered in sweat, and my heart beating faster than ever. I was quick to call for my parents that night.
Luckily that was the only nightmare I had in that house. Well, the only significant one. I had a few other bad dreams, but they didn’t have that thing in them. I know that it was in that house that my misfortune began. A few other disturbing things would happen. Of course, the nights always were restless. I heard noises, but never to the full extent. Even then, the sounds in the walls my friend spoke of, I never heard. It was like, something wanted to be there with me, without me knowing. At this point I certainly believed the house was haunted. Indeed it was, from the very start of us living there, it was. The difference being, while we lived there, one entity belonged, and the other didn’t. One was there originally, and the other wasn’t. The original was a harmless resident, the other a malevolent predator.
One morning I woke up, and one of those army men was on my shelf. I never took any of them out, nor did my friend. Mom wouldn’t have bothered, so I assumed Dad must have done it. When I questioned him about it though, he gave me a confused look.
“I never got it out, I wouldn’t force myself in there just to get one army man.”
I was confused, and with the way things had been going, somewhat disturbed. That night I had another dream, it wasn’t too nightmarish, in fact it scared me more after I woke up.
In my dream, that same boy came in, he had tears on his face. He was pale, and looked like he hadn’t slept in days with purple bags under his bloodshot eyes. He stared straight at me, and in a weak sobbing voice said
“I gave you nothing.”
A strange sort of sound I can’t described started getting louder and louder, and the boy continuously faded.
“Don’t – don’t let this happen to you.”
Then he was gone, faded out completely. The dream either ended there or I simply couldn’t remember anything after that point of it.
Even though I was only eight years old, I knew what the boy was talking about. It just made sense to me, and I think you know what it meant already.
My family was getting better, and so my parents decided it was time to move back into our old house. I left that army man behind, where it belonged. I thought my worries would be over from there. I never had a weird experience in our actual home. It was a trailer house, a bit run down. Nothing unnatural however save for a place before it that burned down. As far as we knew, no one had died in the fire. Our house in short, had no dark history to suggest anything out of the ordinary could loom over it. I brought something back with me however, and as you know, it definitely wasn’t that army man.
Things were as I expected them to be after we moved back into our old house. There was nothing to terrify me. I was more worried about my parents going back to their irritable selves actually. They didn’t like the house, they never really had. They couldn’t afford to get something they liked however, and so that’s where we stayed. I spent most of my time either playing outside or in my room. I had mostly put the frightening events from the house we rented out of mind already. There were some things that had changed about me though. For one, no matter what I did it took me ages to fall asleep at night. I’d simply lay there. I actually wasn’t even scared, I just simply didn’t fall asleep. I had trouble falling asleep before after watching a scary movie with my family perhaps, but never like this. I’d lay there for hours after I went to bed wide awake for no apparent reason. It was an issue, but as far as my fear went, I was still fine. Sadly, I only had it this easy for about two weeks.
Strange things started happening once again in very subtle manners at first. One day, I was looking through my mother’s music albums. I was reading the back of one plastic reflective cover, when suddenly I noticed a black figure run behind me very quickly. It startled me, but after thinking about it for a while I decided that as brief as it was, it could have easily been my imagination. Sometimes a whole room would seem to be wrapped and covered in darkness for a mere moment, but I brushed this off also. Things only kept getting worse of course. First of all, my paranoia started to return. At night my sleep became even worse as I simply felt terrified. I would lay there, constantly scanning my room for hours. I always felt like if I didn’t watch my dark room diligently, something would surely take advantage of my vulnerability and do something awful. Every day I absolutely dreaded having to go to bed. My only sanctuary was the light shed by the television in my room, and the bathroom light that faintly shown through my doorway. Fortunately at this point, my terror really did seem to stem from nothing. The real oddities remained subtle things during the day. Feelings of being watched, noticing things out of place once in a small while, sometimes feeling uncomfortable being alone in a room suddenly for no apparent reason. These were all things that I knew my parents would simply be annoyed by if I told them.
“It’s just your imagination” or “You need to quit finding things to scare you.” Those are the kind of things they would have said I’m sure. Honestly, I kept telling myself that. I was trying to be as rational as an eight year old could be about it. My real feeling about it however? I didn’t feel safe at all, and my gut instinct knew something was not right in the house. Whatever it was that was disturbing things, it was becoming more bold.
One evening, I was playing some video games. I’ll admit I was a bit of a game junkie at that age. It was just getting dark, and I decided to wrap it up as I knew I’d be eating dinner soon most likely. I had a hook in my room for hanging up my wired controller. As I did hang it up, as soon as I let go, something shocking happened. It was like two other hands grabbed the controller and its wire immediately after I did. It quickly yanked it left, right, left, right. In a split second reaction time I fled from my room. My only thought was to reach mom and dad so I could be safe from whatever it was that just seized my gaming controller. I found them down the hall to my left in the living room.
“Don’t run in the house like some spaz for christ’s sake!” exclaimed my father, lounging on the couch with my mother. I contemplated telling them what happened, but I knew they wouldn’t want to hear it. I simply apologized then just watched the television with them, ate dinner, then avoiding going back to my room for as long as possible. I tried to get away with sleeping in the living room, but my mom nudged me to go to my room even though I pretended to already be asleep. My heart was pounding as I entered. My gaming controller was dangling from the hook, except now it was hanging on the right instead of the left side. My stomach twisted even more. Looking back it now, it seems insignificant, but at that time it was terrifying. I slowly slid into bed, had my television up playing cartoons as loud as I could get away with, and then I simply laid there. I constantly scanned around, more paranoid than ever before. I could feel the wrongness. I could feel how I was in danger, like I was some sheep unknowingly laying next to a wolf. Nothing happened that night however. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that… “it” was still there, but it was merciful enough that night to just drool over me, out of sight.
It was getting harder and harder to sleep, and thus harder to function normally. I’d have no ability to focus during the last weeks of school, and at home I frustrated my parents a lot with my tendency to always be out of it. I started seeing things at night, and I don’t know if it was my sleep deprivation or something real. I think that’s part of what added to the terror, my imagination and reality were getting more difficult to tell apart. To make it even worse, I think that’s what it wanted. At this point, I just thought something was wrong with me.
On one night, I would lay there as usual, paranoid and watchful as usual. Over time however, my eyelids grew heavier, and heavier, until finally, I fell asleep. I found myself in a dream. I was sitting in a room, in front my of piano I had started learning to play on not long ago. I for some reason, needed to talk to my mom. I don’t know why, note this was a dream, and it doesn’t entirely make sense. I sat up from the piano bench, and called for my mother. Down the hall I saw her peek around the corner. Immediately I felt uncomfortable, as the way she peeked was disturbing. She had a crazed look in her eye, and a artificial smile that no human would actually make.
“Mom…?” I barely managed to utter. I waited there, staring at her, while she eerily stared back at me with that crazed look and a maniac’s smile. Then suddenly she whipped around the corner, and from there it was the worst nightmare I had ever had. A loud shrill noise and rhythmic clanging rang throughout at an unbearable volume suddenly. I stared at my mother, and the dread that gripped my heart was so intense, I almost literally felt like my heart was about to explode. Her body made grotesque sounds of bones snapping out of place, things sliding around, fluids moving around inside her. Her face became more demonic than human, and she was hunched over like some animal. Anomalies were all over her, nothing fitting in place naturally. She quickly advanced toward me, every movement making more disgusting popping and cracking sounds. In her eyes I could see nothing but pure evil, a sadistic desire. The feeling of terror and dread was so pure and strong, it was a real feeling in my chest. When I snapped awake right before my “mother” reached me, my chest almost hurt, and I could feel my heart beating harder than ever. What made it even worse… I couldn’t yell for mom. She would have made my panic even worse. I couldn’t call for my dad without calling for her as well. I had no one to reach out to. I was so scared, I felt like crying.
Suddenly, I heard a faint knocking sound. Something was whispering a single word, and at first I couldn’t tell what. I made it out after listening as hard as I could.
“Chrissstopheeer…” it faintly whispered. My heart sank at the recognition of my name being pronounced with that eerie elongation.
“Christopher honey… are you ok? It sounded like you had a very bad dream…”
I recognized the voice as my mother’s, and suddenly despite the nightmare I had just had, I felt relief. I suppose it takes a lot to really be scared of your own mom. She was far better than what I thought it might be at first.
“Mom…?” I faintly said. It wasn’t really normal of her to talk to me without actually coming in my room, and the way she talked sounded off. She did come in after that however. “She” quietly and gracefully floated into the room. It looked like her at first. Then I saw it. Her eyes were nothing but hollow sockets. I didn’t run away though. I really should have, but I think I was just in so much shock, I didn’t really believe it. All I could do were choke out a few words.
“Who – who are you?”
She – I mean it, gave me an awful smile. It was long, from ear to ear, and sort of wavy, like some poorly made clay figure.
“I’m your mother of course.”
I felt a strong feeling to retort. This thing was definitely not my mother. I didn’t know what it was, but it was not my mother, it couldn’t even have been human. All I knew was, it wanted to trick me, and I wasn’t going to play along.
“No you’re not!”
It simply gazed deeper at me with those infinitely dark hollow eye sockets. Its brows furrowed, its mouth distorted into this disturbing frown, and spoke again.
“And you…” It spoke soft, and gently. It was without a care in a world, like it was the most innocent and caring voice you could ever have heard. Then, its voiced changed to be more fitting of the expression on its face. Its voice became warped, thick, and deep. “-you are mine!”
With that it reached out for me and I screamed on the top of my lungs. I ducked under its reach and ran out the hallway. My parents were quick to turn their lights on I could see as I headed for their room. I didn’t bother looking behind me.
At first they were quite concerned. After I started to exclaim to them what happened, my mother sighed, and father scowled at me.
“Chris, you’re nine years old now, it’s time to grow up. If you can’t get over these imaginary fears, we’re going to have to get you some help. Do you want people to think you’re crazy?”
“No dad…” I said with great shame.
“Alright, listen, we’re tired. Go back to bed and get some sleep so you aren’t a zombie tomorrow.”
There was absolutely nothing that would bring me back to my room. The amount of rejection I had of that idea was so strong, I would have rather slept in a sewer.
“No! Please! I can’t, please just tonight let me sleep with you guys!”
My dad looked angry now.
“You can’t be serious, you need to gr-”
“Jeremy” my mother piped in, “just this night should be fine, he’s obviously had a very vivid nightmare. You can be understanding of that.” My father sighed and relaxed his face.
“Alright Chris, but tomorrow you’ve got to get over this. Promise me Chris.”
“I promise dad.”
I climbed into bed with them and lay there, feeling safer than I ever had in ages. They both quickly fell back asleep from what I could tell. I felt relaxed, but I still had trouble sleeping in the room that was darker than I was used to sleeping in. I gazed out the doorway. My heart skipped a beat.
Past my parents doorway, standing away at an angle in the hallway, was my fake mother. It simply stood there with a stoic expression, staring straight at me. It whispered, projecting its voice at me.
“I was going to give you so much. I was going to show you things no one else can. We need each other Christopher. You need me as much as I want you.”
I simply stayed in bed, staying as close to my mom as I could, with hot wet tears running down my face. It went like that for some time. It told me about how it wanted to show me things. That I would love it if I only trusted it. It asked me to come see it, made bribes. There of course was absolutely no way I was going to believe anything it said. After a while, it started to get darker. It grew impatient, telling me if I didn’t come to it, it would grab me itself.
“Fine, cling to your pathetic mother you calf. What does she give you that I can’t?” The dark distorted voice started to return, and it began to lose the form of my mother and looked more like that infinitely dark shadow I had seen before. “Mark me boy, you can’t hide from me. You will be left alone, and there will be no one to help you.”
With that, it began fade to out. By that, I mean the shadow sort of just faded into the darkness, so that it didn’t stand out as an even darker part of the shadows.
The next day I managed to stay the night at a friend’s house. Right after that, I spent two weeks at my grandparents. I avoided having to sleep alone in a room for as long as possible. Some of those nights I had more nightmares. In one, I was back in my house. I was alone in the living room, sitting on the couch. The shadow appeared in the doorway adjacent to the hall, boring into me with two eternal green eyes. A thunderous demonic roar erupted through the room, and my chest felt like it was being tore open. The purest form of dread and terror was funneling inside of me, so strong it felt worse than the anticipation of death. I screamed and then woke up suddenly, in pure silence. The next dream, I was in a room I didn’t recognize with my mother and a stranger. I meandered around the room like a bored child would, when suddenly, two pitch black arms stretched across the floor and grabbed me, they came from a black void on the wall. Those same green eyes were present inside the void. I screamed, and screamed for my mother. She didn’t even acknowledge me. No matter how much I fought tooth and claw, no matter how hard I screamed, I was always dragged back towards the void, and my mother did nothing. The same feeling of absolute dread, pure and ancient terror, filled my being. I gave up, and right before I was dragged into the void, I woke up.
When I finally came back home, it was a happy reunion with my parents. I think they were happy to be away from my issues for a while, but they missed me. I went through the day as normally as I could, and I did feel a bit better despite the awful nightmares I had been having. When it was time for me to go to sleep however, I was still terrified. After that night of the thing trying to take me, I simply could not bring myself to sleep in that room again. I scanned around constantly, waiting for something terrible to happen. Much to my astonishment however, nothing happened. Nothing happened the next night either. Nothing for the next, nothing for the next month, nothing even happened within the next year. My life went back to normal.
I was 12 years old, and had come to think that the horrifying events from when I was eight and nine years old were simply products of my own mind. I really didn’t want to believe that it was real. Alas, I would be punished for betraying my own senses. I’ve never been confirmed to have any issues with my mental health. Believe me, I got myself tested after I grew up. If I ever was ill that way, I made a full recovery after my childhood. I have good reason to believe that I was healthy then as well sadly.
One evening I was home alone, my parents were out of town grocery shopping in a bigger city about an hour away. They could buy things there that weren’t available where we lived. I never liked going shopping with them, so I chose to stay home alone. It was about eight at night, and I was simply in my room watching television. Suddenly, I heard my mothers voice.
“Christopher, can you come help us honey?”
Normally I could hear my parents in the driveway before they came inside, but I figured I must’ve been really out of it watching television. It was typical for me to help them bring groceries inside as soon as they got home.
“Coming!” I said as I then walked down the hallway to the kitchen. My mother was at the table with her back turned to me, she seemed to be looking down. I noticed she was alone.
“Where’s dad?” I inquired.
“He’s going to the bathroom, come he-” I quickly tuned her out however. I had a quick nervous feeling as I realized that I had used the bathroom and didn’t flush. I ran back down the hall as fast as I could to the bathroom, then saw that dad wasn’t there. A thought popped in the back of my mind.
“God no, oh please god no.” I walked over to the bathroom window. and I ever so quietly strained to see out the distorted glass. I hoped with all my might that I would see my parent’s familiar car parked outside. – The car port was empty.
At this point, I knew what was in the kitchen, and I began to tear up. I had two ways of getting out of the house. There was the kitchen door, obviously out of the question. My other option was to run back into the hallway and into the living room, where the only door out was. This was still difficult, as I would have to get closer to it by going back down the hall. I felt a strong conviction to get out however, and quickly acted. I quietly but quickly paced down the hall. It was standing there waiting for me. Those hollow eyes, those infinitely dark, empty sockets. They bored into my own eyes, as if they were ready to devour me whole.
“Chris, I asked for your help.”
“Get away from me! I know what you are!”
“Don’t talk to me like that boy, get over here, now!”
“Leave me alone!” I quickly turned the other way back down the hall and ran into my room. I locked the door and quickly dragged my dresser in the way. I could hear it walking slowly towards my door. Thud. Thud. Thud. I backed away as far as I could from the door, whimpering and curled up in the corner.
“Let me in Chris. I’m not angry, I promise.” I didn’t respond, I just hoped with all conviction that it would go away.
I could see two black shoes through the crack of the door melt away into shadow.
“Let me in Chris, quit fucking with me!”
“What do you want from me!” There was a pause. All I could hear was my heart beat and the television in my room. Then suddenly, in a dark booming voice, it gave me its answer.
“I want you, you are mine calf!” With that, the power in the house went out. My television and the lights both went out, and my terror exploded. My door burst open and my dresser flew against the wall, nearly hitting me. I screamed, and felt two ice cold hands grab my ankles. All I could see were two green orbs above me. I gripped the floor as hard as I could, fighting with all my strength to stay put. It dragged me out of my room with ease anyways. It took me down the carpet hallway, some of my fingernails were torn off as I gripped the floor. At this point, I could process only one emotion, one thought. Fear, the desire to escape. It dragged me out of the door outside, and with a shadowy tendril it stitched my mouth close. All I could let out now were muffled moans of pain and terror. It continued speaking to me in its dark voice, but this time instead of it being a demonic boom, it was like a subtle whisper in the wind.
“We will have so much fun together Christopher. I’m so happy we’ll finally be together.”
I strained to see where it was taking me. I gasped in my mind when I saw where. We were headed towards my neighbour’s old well.
“Down, down, down we’ll go! Don’t worry, you’ll never be alone again!”
I tried to scream in response, but I simply felt more warm blood from my lips drip down me as my pleas for help were muffled.
“You had me worried little calf. I thought I was going to actually lose you. No one gets away from me.” It began to speak with an almost tired voice. “I’ve been doing this, for far, far too long to lose.”
We weren’t far from the well. At this point I was so exhausted I couldn’t even fight anymore. We reached the well, and it stopped. Its gaze turned to me. Our eyes locked together, and I submitted to my fate. It let go of me, and I couldn’t bring myself to get up to run again.
“Oh Christopher… we’ve been so hungry.”
Then suddenly, light flooded around us, and it quickly escaped down the well. My parents slammed on their brakes in the middle of the driveway and ran to me. I passed out after that.
My parents didn’t see the shadow, that was no surprise. My injuries were real however. My parents were terrified and had rushed me to the hospital after calling the police. The police led an investigation for whoever broke in and potentially tried to murder me. Obviously, they didn’t find anyone. To this day, my lips are incredibly scarred from the numerous stitching holes. Everyone was shocked by my wounds. I told the truth, but they all were convinced I was suffering
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The 1980’s. The wonderful years of my early childhood, filled with the delicious smells of Christmas, baked apples and amazing memories of endless, warm summer days filled with laughter and innocent, childish friendship. It was also, however, the end of this decade that marked the beginning of the end of my unblemished view of the world and thrust upon me the realisation that sometimes in life we encounter eerie situations that we just cannot explain.
I grew up in a city in the Midlands of England called Stoke-upon-Trent. My mother had grown up in a town on the outskirts of the city called Uttoxeter. I recall countless happy visits to this town to see family and friends; however, it was during one of these visits that the first incident that really made me question my views on reality occurred.
It was the summer of 1989 and I was nine years old. My family was visiting an old childhood friend of my mother. I was very excited to be there because these people had a daughter named Allie who was my own age and it meant that I would not be subjected to the endless whining of my irritating six year old brother alone. There was to be a dinner party late in the afternoon, after which my family would be leaving me there overnight for a sleepover. I felt special because my brother was going to be going home with my parents and I would be having all the fun.
The other guests had not arrived and dinner was quite a while from being ready. Not wanting children underfoot while the food preparation was taking place, Allie, my younger brother, her even younger brother and I were unceremoniously foisted outside into the back garden to play until it was time to go inside to wash our hands and eat.
Allie lived in a cul–de-sac, the end house of which backed onto Uttoxeter Racecourse. Behind Allie’s house, running the entire length of the short street, was a huge plot of land containing an old condemned house that had suffered some fire damage many years earlier.
Rumours were rife in the late eighties about the fate of the house. There were rumours about arson due to drug debts, rumours that the house had been home to a sex offender and his family who had fallen prey to a vigilante style attack, even rumours that one of the occupants had committed murder and that somebody had decided that it was high time that this person get what they deserved. All anyone knew for sure was the fact that in one upstairs bedroom two very certainly innocent young people had sadly succumbed to smoke inhalation.
Surrounding the house was a huge, overgrown orchard and surrounding the grounds themselves was a high wall. The entrance gate, equally high and locked with a gigantic rusty padlock was situated right at the other side of the grounds, far away from Allie’s house. As young children, blissfully unaware of the desolate history of the house, Allie, our brothers, and I had spent many delightful hours with our parents slipping through a gap in the hedge at the bottom of their garden and walking the grounds to pick apples, pears and blackberries with which we could make fruit crumble when we returned home.
On this particular day, as Allie and I sat restlessly at the bottom of the garden bored to tears after having played with all the outdoor toys and having spent at least ten minutes petting her rabbit, our eyes met and she glanced and nodded at the hole in the hedge. Knowing full well that we were not supposed to enter the orchard without permission and stealing a stealthy glance up towards our brothers playing with their boring “boys’ toys” up by the back door, we surreptitiously slipped through the hedge into the woods beyond.
We felt absolutely no fear for the orchard was our playground of old. We fantasised about fairies and magical beings as we clambered around through the undergrowth, dropping apples from the trees into the front of our outstretched jumpers. Maybe if we told our parents that we only ventured a little way in, they would disregard our disobedience and allow us to make apple crumble after dinner.
Suddenly and seemingly with no warning, we realised that the old derelict house was directly in front of us. You could tell from the outside that the place had once been truly magnificent. Two storeys high, built of grey stone, the house inspired our nine year old selves to romanticise about beautiful princesses trapped in ivy covered towers. It was sad to see the soot licked, empty downstairs window frames that were still home to shards of jagged broken glass and the weed ravaged front door that had long since fallen from its hinges and began to decay upon the moss covered ground. The upstairs windows were boarded up, presumably less accessible to vandals and the roof looked patchy as if the slate grey tiles could fall at any given moment. We stared up in awe. I confess that I was again thinking of handsome princes charging through the orchard, sword in hand ready to bestow “True love’s kiss”.
Allie, being a “Sixer” in one of the local church’s brownie groups and also being heavily involved in a lot of out of school sporting activities, was much cockier than I and of an extremely curious nature. She quickly stated that we “absolutely must” go inside to explore. Hesitant for merely a second, I agreed and we marched bravely forward. Peering in through the dilapidated door frame, directly in front of us we could see a long hallway with a large, fairly well lit room to the left. Gazing farther down the hall we saw several more doors that led off to the left and what appeared to be the kitchen at the end, but it was hard to tell as the hallway really did seem very long, more like a corridor. There was a wide staircase to the right that obscured any possible doors on that side of the hall.
Looking up the staircase I felt my first faint twinge of unease. Due to the boarded up windows on the upper level, it was difficult to see very far up the staircase at all. In fact (of course this must be due to my childish imagination) the stairs seemed to be swallowed just over half way up by an unnatural, eerie darkness.
Seeming not to notice that huge, gaping mouth of a staircase and grabbing my hand, Allie pulled me into the large room to our left. It had obviously once been a sitting room. Defaced by graffiti, there was a good amount of soot damaged flowery paper peeling off the walls. There were even some old and extremely dingy looking armchairs that had certainly seen better days. Forgetting all about the staircase, I squatted down by the fireplace beckoning Allie to follow and we allowed our apples to fall onto the cracked hearth. Light, magically dappled from the canopy of trees above us, streamed through the empty window frame. It seemed enchanted, almost as if real fairies might actually live here.
We sat and chatted for quite a while, giggling with our childish innocence about a trick that we meant to play on her brother that night. She had a set of walkie-talkies and we planned to leave one under his bed and whisper into it as he was falling asleep to basically scare the pants off him. In hindsight this seems very cruel, but at the time we genuinely believed that it was terribly funny.
I bit into an apple and we toyed with the idea of visiting the other rooms on the ground floor level. We both agreed that we would not be going upstairs as even at such a young age we had the sense to be aware that the staircase was almost definitely unstable after the fire and we did not want to risk it, knowing that our parents would be furious if anything happened. It then occurred to me however that she too may have noticed the unnatural darkness and silence of the staircase as we entered the house and felt no desire to go poking around in places that certainly did not appear to be very welcoming.
As we sat and pondered, a sound became apparent *tap. tap. tap*, very softly, followed by what sounded like a soft scratching noise. It seemed to come from the outside of the window frame of the room that we were sitting in. We froze, our heads whipping round to stare at the empty hole. We stayed that way for what seemed like ten minutes but what must have realistically only been a few seconds. Upon hearing nothing else, Allie giggled which unnerved me. After all, “they” may have heard her, but then I ticked myself off for being such a baby; however it did hit me how silly we had been to sneak off into the orchard with no one knowing that we had even left the garden.There were no more sounds. All was suddenly very quiet.
“Did you hear that?” I hissed.
Allie shrugged, stating that she believed it was probably one of the neighbour’s cats, or even just the wind blowing a tree branch against the empty window frame. Nevertheless, to me our sanctuary was now slightly tainted. We stowed our fruit back into our jumpers. She took my hand and we stood up and made for the doorway so we could explore further.
Upon exiting the room, Allie and I had a better view of the hallway. There were in fact just two more doors on the left hand side. They both appeared to be ajar, however, the lighting was far from wonderful; we would not be able to see inside without venturing forth. I remember feeling that the place seemed extremely creepy. I just felt a kind of unsettling unease. I voiced my opinions to Allie about not wanting to continue our explorations but she laughed and told me that I was being silly.
Pushing my fears aside and again chastising myself for being such a baby, I followed Allie into the next room. Once inside I relaxed a little. Again the glass in the window was broken but the frame was large and the room well lit. It appeared to have once been very pretty indeed. In its heyday I am positive that it had been a very grand dining room. Most of the furniture appeared to be pretty much still in place including a large wooden sideboard. No bone china remained, of course, for the house would have been looted years ago by thieves, but there was much less graffiti than there had been in the first room. This room, however, was a considerable amount dingier and more damaged than the previous room. Touching the rotting remains of a large wooden table, I was able to draw a face in the soot.
Allie bounded about opening drawers and chattering endlessly about who might have lived here. They “absolutely must have been very posh,” as the furniture was all very beautiful, or it had been at one point anyway. As Allie explored I moved over to the sideboard to examine the pretty design that had been chiseled into the wood. As a child I loved anything intricate, it always seemed to draw me in.
It was at this point that I became aware of what sounded like soft but quick footsteps directly above the place that I was standing. I said nothing and listened for a minute, feeling my skin start to break out in goose bumps. The steps seemed to be scuttling back and forth. One, two, three, four, five and stop. And again. And again.
“Allie, do you hear that?” I whispered, nodding at the ceiling above.
Allie’s movements slowed to a halt and she looked up, following my eyes to the ceiling. Silence. The sound was gone as suddenly as it started. Yet again, Allie giggled at me and told me that I was a “wimp” and that I should be braver.
Upon finishing her inspection on the room, Allie insisted that we “needed” to explore the third room on the corridor, then we could go as I was obviously too much of a baby to continue. Was she seriously not feeling the sense of dread that was now firmly lodged in the pit of my stomach? How on earth could she be so blasé about the fact that we were in the middle of a creaky, abandoned house in the middle of an orchard and that nobody else knew where we were?
Allie placed one hand on the door of the third room, making sure not to drop her carefully gathered apples and pushed gently. The door swung open and we both gasped, me in horror and she, I suspect, in awe. This was obviously the room in which the fire had raged at its worst. It was a much smaller room than the other two and the window was extremely tiny, hardly allowing any light at all. The walls appeared to be almost totally black from grime; there was no furniture to be seen. The wall parallel to the kitchen had been entirely burnt through and we could see the outlines of the blackened remnants of kitchen units hanging like long dead prisoners manacled in some hellish dungeon. A dripping noise gained our attention. We looked to the source and noted a dirty grey puddle lying against the same burnt wall and leaking through into the kitchen. Looking up we saw a sizable hole burnt into the ceiling, appearing as emptily black and uninviting as the staircase. This was the source of the fluid and I knew then that I had had enough.
“This place is horrible,” I hissed at Allie.
All fantasies of fairies and princesses had long disappeared and been replaced with an unpleasant disquiet. This was no palace. It was a place where bad things happened. I had become certain of that and I wanted to leave.
Allie looked at me and sighed, “Okay,” and we turned to face the open doorway that lay at the end of the hall, as open and inviting as any ice cream parlour or toy shop.
This was when things started to take a turn towards the inexplicable.
We took several steps towards the door and we froze. Remember back in the day those toys called Space Hoppers? They looked like giant, heavy duty balloons with large ears that you held onto so you could sit on and bounce around. Well, Allie owned one. It was bright pink and had the face of a goofy bunny rabbit painted on the front. And it was there, out in the hallway near the base of the stairs, facing us. I remember that I felt physically sick. I had been correct; someone was there, but who on earth could it be? Oh, how silly we had been to just disappear like this. Had our brothers seen us sneaking off into the orchard and decided to play a joke on us similar to the one that we planned on playing on Allie’s brother that night? I stood frozen to the spot, not wanting to venture any further along the corridor and confront whatever must be lurking there waiting for us.
“Come on,” Allie whispered.
There was no other way out; I didn’t fancy my chances with either of the empty window frames in the first two rooms which still housed shards of broken glass. If I ripped my skirt, my mother would be furious.
I felt sick to my stomach as we slowly took several steps forward, more of the hallway coming into view revealing the wide, open mouth of the staircase. Suddenly, Allie was jumping up and down and howling with laughter. She grabbed my hand and pulled me onward. I looked up and felt an immediate sense of relief.
There, standing on the first step of the staircase, was Allie’s friend Evangeline. I had completely forgotten that her family had been invited to the dinner party. A year older than us, Evangeline lived in the road parallel to Allie’s, the road that boasted the entrance to Uttoxeter Racecourse where a lot of well to do, rich people lived. Evangeline was by character extremely bossy and horsey, a direct result of having grown up “privileged.” Upon our questioning of what she was doing there and did she see us sneak in, Evangeline smiled at us with that wide, cheeky, grin that we knew so well and she pointed up the stairs.
“Come upstairs,” she giggled in her distinct, rather posh voice (Evangeline’s father was the managing director of a company several cities away and she attended boarding school during term time and always returned for the holidays extremely well spoken,) “I have been exploring up there and I found something that I really want to show you.”
With that, she turned her back to us and bounded up several stairs. Allie of course moved forward immediately but gazing up into the pitch darkness and remembering the dripping black hole of the third room, something inside made me grab her wrist.
Without turning back around to look at us Evangeline spoke again.
“Come on,” she urged, “you really need to see what I found up here.”
At this point she was no longer bounding up the steps. She was walking very slowly one stair at a time, lifting one foot then the other without looking back. It almost looked as if time had slowed down. I found this odd and again a nagging feeling of disquiet gnawed at my stomach. What on earth could she have possibly been able to find in that pitch blackness? And quite honestly, what had she been doing up there all alone in the dark in the first place? It was the last place any well behaved little girl should be.
Evangeline took another step towards the darkness and stopped.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
This time her voice seemed laced with what sounded like an irritable, maybe even demanding tone. However, despite her obvious irritation she didn’t turn around and her arms hung down limply by her sides. Again Allie made a move forward. This time when I grabbed her, I yanked her back hard and she turned her large green eyes on me in surprise.
I looked up at Evangeline as she took another step into the ever increasing darkness and then something struck me. Evangeline was a girly girl. She, Allie and I often compared clothes. Remember in the 1980’s, those awful layered “Ra Ra” skirts with matching frilly T shirts or jumpers? Well Evangeline would never be seen without one of those outfits on, yet the girl in front of us was wearing what appeared to be cut off, mid calf length dark blue Jeans and a grey Sweatshirt. As I watched her climb, almost swallowed now by the unrelenting nothingness, it was then that I noticed something else. It had to be a trick of the eye surely? As the gloom closed in on her, her arms seemed to be growing longer and longer as they continued to hang limply by her sides. I looked across at Allie again and noticed that she too was staring at Evangeline and her eyes were now narrow and confused, as if for the first time she was getting some inkling that something may indeed be amiss.
I tried to take a step backwards but for the first time ever in my life I was paralysed with what must be irrational fear. It had to be the eeriness of the house coupled with the odd behaviour of our friend causing me to imagine things. Barely visible now, Evangeline finally stopped her slow, deliberate steps and turned around. She was nothing but a dark silhouette. Again we heard her speak. This time we heard it in a whisper but it seemed to me like the sound was inside our very heads.
“Are you coming to see what I found or will I need to come and fetch you?”
As she spoke the last few words, she reached out her arms towards us and, I kid you not, those arms looked like tentacles in the darkness. Black; almost fluid like, her arms appeared to snake through the air down the stairs towards us.
This broke the spell. Allie and I both suddenly found our feet, turned our backs on the thing on the staircase and shot out of the front door. Forgetting our plans to make fruit crumble, the apples tumbled from our jumpers. We stumbled madly through the undergrowth, finally bursting through the hole in the hedge, our hearts thundering and both of us sweating like pigs on a spit. Our brothers looked on in amusement at our disheveled appearance.
“What on earth had just happened?” I wondered. “What on earth had Evangeline been playing at scaring us like that?”
By this point, back in the safety of the garden (meaning back in our comfort zone) we briefly talked and convinced ourselves that the eerie nature of the upstairs of the house had caused our minds to play tricks on us. I even began to feel somewhat guilty for leaving our friend behind in that scary place.
Looking at each other, we stumbled up the garden path to the back door, both still rather shaken and desperate for a drink of water after which we were planning to try to convince our brothers to break the rules and accompany us back into the orchard to try to see if we could find Evangeline and bring her back with us.
The back door to Allie’s house opens to the kitchen which leads to a hallway that runs the entire length of the rather small house ending directly at the front door. We both had a quick drink of water gazing out into the hallway as we did so.
A knock at the front door caught our attention. We automatically walked forward to see Allie’s mother answer the door for Evangeline’s mother who was clutching a bottle of what looked like wine. She was apologising for being later than she expected and explaining how her car had failed to start after she had visited the bank in town and it had set her back half an hour. As she was ushered into the living room by Allie’s mother, our jaws dropped in terrified, gut wrenching horror as she moved to the side to reveal Evangeline behind her, hair braided neatly wearing a pink and white skirt and T shirt set and clutching a fluffy pink rucksack.
Allie and I gaped in horrified amazement and Evangeline stared back with a puzzled look on her face. Had we imagined our encounter in the abandoned house? Had it been someone else? Oh, the way children rationalise everything. We did after all still believe in fairies. It must have been another girl, but we had been so sure that it had been her.
Finally, the puzzled look evaporated from Evangeline’s face and she smiled at us, then moaned with that sense of entitlement that she always exuded that her day had been “reallllly boring” so far so and could we “pleasssse” go up to Allie’s room to play with her My Little Ponies for a while before dinner began? She passed her partially opened rucksack to Allie for her to hang it up on the pegs at the foot of the stairs. Allie glanced down at the bag and her face went white. I looked from Allie to Evangeline wondering what on earth was wrong now. Still smiling, Evangeline, now standing on the bottom step of the flight of stairs looked directly at me and simply said,“Silly, silly, silly,” as Allie dropped the rucksack in revulsion, spilling its fruity contents out onto the hall floor.
“You left behind your apples,” Evangeline continued, her eyes glinting wickedly. “How were you ever going to be able to make crumble without them? Now, are you both coming upstairs?”
Needless to say, in favour of the adult filled safety of the living room, we declined.
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My involvement in the experiment started only a few weeks ago. I was visiting my grandfather, who lives alone and needs someone to come over and help out with the house once a week. I’d usually go for the well stocked library in his office, and the long conversations about any book, from Harry Potter to The Odyssey.
While browsing one of the bookshelves for something new, the phone called. He keeps the phone on the office desk at all times, so I handed it to him before going back to the incredible worlds behind leather bound volumes and filigree titles. My attention snapped back to the phone when my grandfather said the name ‘Daneel’ in surprised recognition.
Daneel was my cousin, living in England. I’d met her once at a family reunion when I was ten, and remembered her mainly as the girl who kicked my ass after we disagreed which X-Men characters would win in a fight.
My grandfather got out of his comfy chair and left the room, something he never does. I usually let people have their secrets, but it was only last week I’d asked him how my uncle’s family were doing overseas. He’d died just after the reunion, leaving behind Daneel to be cared for by her mother’s sister. Going against all my instincts, I followed to the half closed door, and listened. He’d had some problems with his hearing the last year, and to my relief he chose to take the call over speaker like always. A young woman’s voice sounded over the phone, and with a slight chuckle I could clearly recognise the little girl arguing in Nightcrawler’s favor.
‘Hey, I’m sorry to just call out of the blue, I know it’s been a while.’
‘Not at all, my dear,” my grandfather replied. He had a slight accent, but he’d put a lot of effort into learning the language after his son married an English woman.
‘Heh, okay,’ Daneel continued. ‘It’s good to hear your voice again. I was just wondering about something. Something about my father? I’m at Sarah’s place, and going through some of his old stuff in the attic, I found a cassette tape. It looks pretty old. It’s just, there’s someone else’s name on it. Do you know if he had any friends named James?’
‘What does it say on the tape, exactly?’
‘Ehm. It says ‘England, 1985. James’ track 14′.’
My grandfather got really quiet. I frowned and thought I’d might have missed something, before I heard Daneel ask if he was still there.
‘Yes, my dear. No, I don’t believe he knew anyone by that name. I will look into it, and call you back.’ After that, he said a hasty goodbye, and hung up. I grabbed a few books, opened the door, and walked out while reading the opening page of The Count Of Monte Cristo. He paid me no attention as I sat down by the fireplace. The days were getting colder, and a warm fire was already sending dancing shadows over the walls. I didn’t ask any questions, and after about ten minutes, he said he was going to bed. It was still early, even for him, but I just nodded and kept reading.
Daneel started everything with that phone call. I couldn’t help being curious, because I knew so well that my grandfather had lied to her. Why, I had no clue. Pinned to a cardboard above his desk was an old polaroid photo, and after I’d made sure grandfather was asleep, I took a look at it. Once, when I was helping packing up stuff after grandmother, I’d turned it around to see if it had been hers. If I wasn’t too mistaken, the name James would be on the back.
‘Me and Timothy on our way to Reinsnos, 1978.
James wanted to be in the photo.’
I was right. The picture was of two young boys, maybe 13-14 years old, standing on the side of a road. The shadow of the photographer fell across the bottom part of the photo. James.
I opened my mail account on my ipad, and found Daneel’s old email address. I’d never used it before. I told her about the photo, and sent her a picture taken on my phone. I didn’t think much about it after that; I already felt like I’d invaded someone’s personal space. My grandfather rarely mentioned Aleksander. Losing him had been a hard blow to the family, especially since Daneel’s mother had left them right after she was born.
I went home, made dinner, watched some TV series with my girlfriend, and went off to bed. It would have ended for me, if Daneel hadn’t emailed me back the next day. She’d found a phone number connected to the other boy in the photo, Timothy. She’d talked to his twin brother.
That is why I, three weeks later, found myself outside the local police station, holding a folder full of printed pages. I will tell you the same things I told the officers. It was a lazy day, as it always is in a town of five thousand people. The officer in charge was a woman in her late forties, whom I’d seen many times and even talked to during career days at school when I was younger. She was a strict but gentle woman, and easy to talk to. Her office was bright and cosy, full of colourful files and documents neatly arranged in metal cabinets. Above her desk were the typical pictures of the king and queen, as well as the prime minister. The assistant closed the door behind me, and Officer Aune rose from her chair to shake my hand, and showed me to a chair opposite her.
‘Now, how can I help you, my dear?’ She asked.
‘I’m here to report a missing person,’ I said. She looked surprised, to say the least. Things worse than the occasional lost dog or drunken vandalism rarely happened here. She nodded, grabbed a pen and a pad, and looked at me in a much more serious manner.
‘I see. Name?’
‘Daneel Selwyn,’ I said. Officer Aune looked up from the pad, one eyebrow raised.
‘Is this person a tourist, or…?’
‘No. I-‘ I breathed in deeply, looking down at the floor. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come here. Thank you for you time.’ I quickly rose to leave, but she picked up on the tone of my voice.
‘Hold on, it’s okay.’ I hesitated, and turned back to her. ‘You have nothing to worry about, we will do everything we can to find your friend. I just need all the information you can give me.’
I nodded slowly and sat back down. ‘She’s my cousin. I think she left England maybe two days ago.’
‘And she came here?’
‘Yes.’ I put the folder on her desk, opened it, and revealed the first printed page. ‘Three weeks ago, she called my grandfather, asking for help with identifying an old friend of her father. Since then, she’s been investigating what happened to them in the 80’s.’ I folded out the pages. ‘She started keeping this blog, to show me everything she found out. There’s pictures, emails, phone calls…’
‘And you think this all led her here?’ Officer Aune leaned forward and looked through the pages. ‘Why?’
‘That’s exactly it. She’s not posting anymore. I haven’t heard from her in a while.’
Officer Aune leaned back and breathed out heavily. ‘What makes you think this girl is missing? To me it seems she came to find something, and wants to pursue it alone. Why do you worry about her?’
I hesitated, wondering how much information I could hold back. The experiment hadn’t expected me. I was an outsider. I felt that for some reason, I could break the rules. I could spread the research. ‘Because someone is following her.’
Officer Aune frowned. ‘Who?’
I leaned over the desk and looked through the pages until I found the right one. It was a copy of an old newspaper clipping. ‘Daneel found something that linked all the people in this photo.’ I pointed to the photo I’d sent her. ‘There was an accident in 1985, just outside of central London. A bus went off the road, and five people died. Both of Daneel’s parents were on that bus, and both survived with minor injuries. James and Timothy were there too.’ I pointed to the writing at the back of the photo.
‘Wait,’ Officer Aune said. ‘You’re losing me here, kid. How is this relevant to your cousin being here, thirty years later?’
‘Because I found something she hasn’t seen. I can’t get a hold of her anymore. You’re the only one who can.’
Officer Aune got quiet, and just stared at me for a few seconds.
‘You said you would do anything you could to help me find Daneel,’ I said. ‘So…in your records. There has to be something about Reinsnos in 1978.’
‘Wait, what? Kid, you’re making no-‘
‘Please, just check it! That’s where Daneel is going. It has to be!’
She sent me a disgruntled look, before she logged onto her computer. She clicked around a lot, like her generation usually do, before she typed in a search field. I could see text reflected in her glasses, and waited impatiently. After about a minute, she nodded slowly.
‘What exactly would I be looking for? You know, this information is not exactly for your eyes.’
‘Most of it is already in public archives,’ I replied. ‘I’ve read most of it. I just… I don’t know what they were looking for. I don’t know why they were all gathered on that bus, and why they needed them.’
Officer Aune shot me a sideward glance from behind the screen. ‘You’re right. It’s public. If you’re referring to the experiments?’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ I said quickly. ‘Daneel’s father went to Reinsnos when he was thirteen, and that’s where he met Timothy and James, probably Daneel’s mother too. Their families were being paid pretty well for the experiment.’
‘What kind of experiment was this?’
‘The only thing these kids had in common. Daneel’s father had Hyperosmia. Timothy had Hypergeusia. James had-‘
‘Slow down,’ said Officer Aune. ‘Explain these words to me, please.’
‘Heightened sense of smell. Heightened sense of taste,’ I said. ‘James had unusually good hearing, while Daneel’s mother could see better than most. They all went to Reinsnos in 1978 to be part of an experiment having to do with their senses. Then, in 1985, they came together to continue the experiment in England, only they never got there. Five other subjects died, and the rest almost seemed to go off the radar after the accident. Timothy died three months after he left the hospital. Daneel’s father died when she was eight. Her mother disappeared shortly after she was born, and god knows what happened to James. For some reason, everyone connected to that experiment, are now gone.’ I paused, dragged five fingers through my hair, and looked down at the file on the desk.
‘But there’s something Daneel missed.’
‘What is it?’
‘The distance,’ I almost whispered. ‘Of the five victims, two of them died at the hospital less than ten hours after the accident.’ I looked up. ‘They died at the exact same time. They should both have survived. Then Daneel’s parents and the rest of the survivors disappeared, until Timothy’s body was found in a field three months later.’
‘What did you mean when you said ‘the distance’?’
‘The two in the hospital. They went the same distance from the crash site to the hospital, so they died at the same time. Timothy, he travelled around for three months. He kept moving, so they couldn’t catch up with him. Then Aleksander, Daneel’s father, who died many years later. He moved back to Norway, then went on business trips all over the world, so he made it for a long time.’ I could feel the adrenaline pump through my veins. Officer Aune looked at me with a mixture of shock and interest, and what I guessed had to be a hint of concern.
‘Don’t you get it?’ I asked. ‘The subjects of this experiment died according to the time and distance they moved away from the location of the accident. Daneel figured this out too. They were never supposed to get to wherever the bus was taking them. It was supposed to crash, because that was the experiment.’
‘Alright,’ she said, and folded her hands on the desk. ‘Let me now just assume that this is all correct. Why the distance thing? Why would that matter?’
I swallowed hard. ‘Because… Because of their conditions. The experiment started when they went on the run. It’s the only explanation. Whatever or whoever was after them, James was the only one who could hear it, Aleksander was the only one who could smell it, and Daneel’s mother was the only one who could see it. That’s why Timothy died. A heightened sense of taste wouldn’t be much help. Something followed them after the accident, something normal people wouldn’t be able to sense at all. I just don’t know what it was, or who.’
Officer Aune clicked with the pen, and looked down at the pad. ‘I will contact the London police department, and her family. Then I’ll call the officer in charge in Reinsnos. If that’s where she’s headed, they’ll know it when a foreigner comes around.’
I managed a grateful smile. ‘Thank you. I know this sounds just… strange.’
‘No, not at all. I actually wondered when you’d come around.’
I stared at Officer Aune, trying to find the right words. ‘Wh…what do you mean?’
Officer Aune crossed her legs, rested one cheek against her fist, and smiled. ‘I mean, you are Aleksander’s nephew, after all. Don’t you think we’d keep an eye on you in case you showed some similar skills?’
I felt as if I’d frozen to the chair. ‘You’re joking. You don’t believe me, so you’re joking.’
Officer Aune chuckled. ‘Nope. Not at all. You actually did a wonderful job. We’ve been looking for Daneel for a while, and now we have a chance to find her.’
I slowly rose from the chair, never breaking the eye contact. I could feel my voice shaking. ‘Why? Why would you drag her into this?’
‘She’s been part of it since she was born. It was no one’s choice.’ She sent him one last smile, as she closed the folder, handed it back to me, and turned toward the computer screen. ‘It was nice talking to you, and thank you for your cooperation.’
I stared at her, stunned, before I took the folder, and walked towards the door. I stopped at the sound of her voice, but didn’t turn around.
‘Oh, and… Henrik, isn’t it? As for what is following Daneel, you really shouldn’t worry about it. She may not have a choice in the matter, but so far, you do. Go back to your flat, to your girlfriend. Clean your grandfather’s house once a week, and finish The Count Of Monte Cristo. Let me worry about finding Daneel for you.’
I slowly turned the handle, and closed the door behind me. My head was spinning as I made my way outside in the fading sunlight. Yellow and orange leafs lay scattered outside the office building, and a sharp wind played in the treetops. It will be winter soon. Daneel went far north, alone.
I’ve told you everything I told the police, and I know it was a huge mistake the first time. But I have to do something. I’m leaving soon. I’ll be going north, to find Daneel. She needs to know.
The address to her blog is daneelselwyn.tumblr.com, and the password is ‘aleksander’. Whatever happens, I need to find her first.
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June, 2354
It’s hard to begin but let me preface this by saying that Earth does still exist, but it’s a wasteland. If you’re listening to this you need to know where you come from.
The scientists were right. Climate change was a real threat. In the early 21st century, the majority of the population was at odds with this decision. Facts pointed to a steady shift in climate changes dating back thousands of years prior to the dates of the test, which showed there was no indisputable evidence fingering us as the cause. Governments argued, scholars debated, and citizens either ignored the situation at hand or made lifestyle choices in an attempt to lower their carbon footprint. A consensus was eventually reached sometime in the mid 2000’s pointing towards a steady increase in heat and climate change.
This motivated many governments across the world to lower their carbon footprint. Recycling became mandatory under punishment of jail time. Solar panels were installed in every house, office building and establishment. Big name companies like BP, Shell, and Exxon lobbied through official channels stating that their rights were being impeded. It didn’t take long for laws to be passed eliminating the public consumption of fossil fuels. Nuclear facilities started to sprout up for means of electricity, car companies were forced to move to a renewable source of energy. Soon there were cars running on salt water, electricity, and solar energy.
Despite our efforts, it seemed as if the damage had already been done and was far past the breaking point. This became evident when Venice was on the brink of being submerged. In the year 2113, sea water covered the streets of this once historic city and a mandated evacuation order was given. Several Greek islands disappeared completely, and many beachside cities faced the real issue that was now on their doorstep.
Through our desperation, our innovation with technology greatly enhanced. As the seas rose, so did we as the human race. Anti-gravity technology was perfected and implemented in modes of transportation. All modes of travel had an absolute zero carbon footprint as cars were made from electric machines powered and lubricated from the sea water. They propelled themselves using magnets, and were automated to prevent haphazard driving, and affording the luxury of being able to sleep, eat, drink, read or otherwise relax while in transit.
Why is this important you might ask? It’s hard to describe how things are now without understanding the whole timeline of events. I need to stress the importance that nothing we did could have prevented this disaster. Nothing we did could have saved Earth or ourselves. Nothing could fix the damage that we caused, but on the large scale of things, it was a blade of grass on a field of strife.
We grew leaps and bounds. Colonizing Mars, setting up multiple space stations and developing faster than light travel. Well, by that, I mean we found a way to harness the universe’s power to create permanent worm holes to go to and fro between one solar system and the next. The issue was, since it was physically impossible to do this without actually being in the area to set up another wormhole, we had to travel to those areas first. This is where the problem lied. The closer to the speed of light you go, the more mass you have. This means that more energy is required to go faster. Even in the vacuum of space where mass is almost a non-issue, it becomes one. And that’s not even the end of the weirdness. Time changes, navigation is difficult, and then figuring out how to stop.
As of right now I’m traveling at .2 the speed of light towards HD 85512b, which is 40 light years from Earth, on a colonization mission we departed on 4 years ago. That’s .8 LY traveled, well out of our solar system and into the unknown. Over 500 citizens, including myself, are just one of the 18 ships that left Mars to further discover these habitable planets. We weren’t the first expedition, and with the new expected life span of humans, the 200 year trip is easily feasible.
With over 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting the “goldilocks zone” we had plenty to choose from. So in 2243, the first manned mission to Gliese 581-d departed. With Earth united under a single government, it wasn’t difficult to raise the funds and materials to put together a massive ship with enough spare materials to build a warp gate. The parts were shipped through the Earth-Mars warp gate and assembled there as Earth’s atmosphere was cluttered with space debris. The “Cosmos Reformation Act of 2236” prohibited building anything orbiting Earth except satellites anyways. They left with the intention of building a warp gate from Mars to Gliese 581-d. Let me point out that these names for planets are ridiculous, but the only way we can rename a planet now is to physically be there and colonize it. Another product of the Space Reformation Act.
Again…why is this important? You see, the problem was our Sun. March 18th, 2231 was the day everything happened. That day, called the Day of Desolation, the magnetic field surrounding Earth was stripped away, leaving the planet, and everything on it defenseless against the dangers of the sun. The worst part was no one knew it was coming. Our sun had a violent coronal mass ejection, 100 times that ever recorded before.
It takes 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach Earth, and there was no way in predicting this. Huge blasts of radiation battered the Earth killing billions. Some places were so completely devastated that there was no chance life would survive. Temperatures soared to 110 degrees at the poles, and even hotter towards the equator. This period started a mass exodus to Mars, which has a weak magnetic field, but it still offered some protection. Those left on Earth began a difficult period of life. Famine, drought, inhospitable locations and the constant threat of radiation forced us to reevaluate our position in the universe.
By 2243, Humans and animals became cave dwellers which was the only way to protect ourselves from the dangers of life outside. Another reason why we had to build the Genesis on Mars.
Work call, I’ll be back later to finish this if I have the time.
August 2354
I don’t think I explained why I’m writing this. The ship I’m on, the Tesla, is coming up to our 5 year anniversary of the start of our mission. A catalog of events is something that I needed. The before, during, and after. We didn’t take a lot of data with us in regards to history and why we are here. Journalism is hardly a priority when embarking into the unknown. So I’m taking it upon myself to write all of this down. Well, talk about it anyways. I don’t think I’ve touched a keyboard since history class. It’s also kind of hard to get over the fact that I’m talking to myself, but really, talking to you. It might make me sound crazy but it’s really a way to try to stay sane in this box of a room. Oh, that and that technical stuff earlier? When you’re leaving everything you know behind, you do as much research as you can so you can see the way forward.
I’m a culinary scientist, which is a real profession I assure you. My job on this mission is to study the flora and fauna and see what is possible to eat as well as ensuring the sustainability of the food on the Tesla. Everyone aboard the Tesla has something they bring to the table, with multiple people working the same job. I have 8 other coworkers monitoring the different nutrition stations here. It helps, it gives us time off to relax, watch movies, or whatever. Like to get this whole thing out.
As I mentioned earlier, famine was destroying us, we were living in caves, and there seemed to be no light of salvation at the end of our tunnel. Genesis was important to our survival. We had tried to live in the oceans but the instability of the temperature as well as the corrosiveness of the salt made any long term survivability low. Think about the famous shipwrecks of history. Did they last long? Not really in the grand scheme of things. This is why it was ultimately decided against and people opted to move to space exploration instead. Even with constant maintenance, the fact that the seas were rising yearly, and warming, it was only a matter of time before the land marks we were going to build would be subjected to a lot of additional pressure.
Famine became a very real issue for our population. Without fields to grow crops, and livestock to feed, synthetic materials were needed to be created in order to sustain us. There were hydroponic farms built underground so we weren’t completely isolated from organic fruits, vegetables and livestock, but they were rare and hard to come by in the days to come. But there was a way for them to survive, and live, even if it was underground.
Special suits had to be designed and made to protect us from the sun. It created importance in the infrastructure for scientists, construction workers, technicians and the like. They were largely evacuated to Mars to begin the building of the Genesis. All of our available resources went to this. It was our only chance to survive. We resorted to journeying to the asteroid belt and hunting down asteroids for minerals and materials to build the ship with.
Expedition ships aren’t without some teeth. We did develop working shields that will eliminate most space debris under a reasonable size. Meteorites on Mars are a very real and constant danger since there is little atmosphere. They needed to make sure that the Genesis would reach their destination safe. We can’t drive straight through a planetary object unscathed, nor do we have weapons with the ability to destroy said objects. It also takes a while for the power cells to recharge after a certain amount of volleys.
They also developed a new way to propel through space. Controlling anti-matter explosions enabled us to move very quickly. It wasn’t a new technology, but it was one that took a while to perfect. Anti-matter isn’t very easy to obtain, create or control. However, harvesting enough anti-matter to propel a ship at phenomenal speeds took a long time, and there was only enough to use it twice. Once to go forward, and once to stop. Steering would be relied on via atmospheric expulsions through vents.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever had to calculate a path in space before, but it’s hard. You need to know the position of where you are, where you will be when you finally take off, and where the planet will be so many years from when you started. If there was a problem in the final calculations, there was an option for inter-system travel, but that was it. If they couldn’t maintain the speed by the time they arrived and the planet wasn’t there, they had to wait until it came back around in orbit.
We solved the gravity problem on ships via using a few grams of a neutron star and isolating it in the middle of the ship. Just enough gravity that we don’t lose bone strength or atrophy during our flight. Electricity is powered by dual magnets and everything.
Fun stuff huh? Speaking of, I’m going to go for now. My co-worker Mike and I are going to go play some video games.
September 2354
We’re coming up on our anniversary! December is right around the corner! It’ll be nice to talk to my family again. Communication is going to take a long time to get there, but it’s better than nothing. I’ll get to see their response in a year or so. Depending on how long it takes for it to get there. Like I said before, everyone here is essential, so there are no free rides. I guess it’s good I’m not married, I don’t think I would have been able to do this if I had to leave my wife and kids behind. There are some couples here on Tesla, but reproducing is strictly against the rules. I’m not sure what they’d do, but we have exactly enough food for 500 people during the expedition.
That’s part of my job, maintaining the green house. Well, what we call a green house. A huge hydroponics area where fruit and vegetables are grown. Not options for meat except synthetic lab grown stuff, but you start to forget about it after a while. We recycle the water and filter out the impurities from grey and black water, but also restock every time we go through a hydrogen cloud. It’s amazing what this ship can do in terms of sustaining life. Though I guess it has to.
November 2354
I miss my family. One month to go. We looked ahead of what was in front of us, and we’re going to pass by a planet twice the size of Jupiter. It’s going to be amazing if the video we were able to get of it. The most amazing colors you can possibly imagine!
December 235
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Eliza was in her bed upstairs. Mother cleaned her up. She made her look very pretty. Like sheʼs sleeping.
I donʼt know why we didnʼt expect this to happen. Not because of the way she was. More because of what we did to her.
My brother James and I, we always knew tell there was something unusual about her. When she was born, she never once cried. Mother and Father thought she may have had scarlet fever. Dr. Coffett, our family doctor, made house calls regularly for the first four years of her life. I overheard him telling my parents what he thought was wrong with her. He called it “Neurasthenia”. He thought it seemed to explain her symptoms: the quietness, the staring straight across the room, never seeming to notice you even if you were right in front of her. And the long bouts of mumbling after Mother put her to bed at night.
I was five when she was born. James was nearly seven. What was odd was that our entire family has chestnut brown hair, but Elizaʼs grew in blonde.
As far as Eliza and I went, we werenʼt very alike at all. Apart from the way we look (my eyes are Kelly green, and Elizaʼs were steel gray, as Father put it), I was always told I was bold, the adventurer type. Mr. Ainsworth, my schoolteacher, once told me, “Martha, you got a lotta gumption. Thatʼs a rare thing for a girl to have. You put that to good use, youʼll be all right.” One of my favorite things to do was climbing trees as high as I could go. Iʼd leave a marker at the spot (usually a ribbon), and return to see if I could climb higher. I always tried to get Eliza to come out to see if sheʼd be a good climber like me, but she’d never listen.
No one in the family knew if she would ever change. We wondered how she would get on in the world as a grown-up if she never spoke to anyone or asked for help. Once I overheard Mother and Father talk about sending Eliza away. To a special school if she didnʼt come out of whatever she was in.
To our surprise, she did. Even stranger than her behavior was how abruptly it stopped after four years. Like coming out of a dream, she transformed. Once sullen and absent, she suddenly became a lively and sociable girl. It was Christmas Day.
Father had gone out all day Christmas Eve, and came back with gifts for the three of us. We were to wait until morning for them. James and I argued. Eliza said nothing.
Christmas morning arrived. The three of us went downstairs to join Mother and Father for breakfast. Ham, eggs, and tea, our Christmas tradition. After breakfast, we went into the living room and waited on the couch. Father had us close our eyes, and placed the gifts in our hands. James was given a brass pocket compass. The arrow quivered as he smiled down at it. I got a jade necklace. The cloudy green stone was sanded in the shape of a heart. I fell in love with it. Eliza, however, did not have anything put in her hands. Father said, “Eliza, open your eyes.” We looked. Father was holding a kitten. Tawny brown, with faded white stripes and gray-green eyes, the tiny thing looked up at Eliza as her eyes filled with tears. “Oh Father, thank you! Thank you!” she sobbed, kneeling on the floor as the kitten tottered over to her. We all looked at each other. We couldnʼt remember the last time Eliza had spoken of her own accord.
As I watched her cradle the kitten, I smiled. I couldnʼt help but marvel at the look she had in her eyes as she stared at the kitten’s gray-green ones.
Sometimes, I would look in her eyes, and see something that made my spine tingle. I couldnʼt always see it. But sometimes I could. It was darkness. Some deep abyss in her black pupils, something that made me think of only one word: foreverness. I couldnʼt stand looking at them for too long. James saw it too. Once, I tried to explain it to Mother. She smacked me on the behind and told me I was a sinner.
But now, watching her, I saw something different. There was some happiness, unearthly happiness in her pupils. The darkness wasnʼt there. In fact, I felt like I could see light coming from them, like a glowing sun.
She named it Eirene. None of us knew where on earth she had gotten the name from. Eliza said she read it at school.
From then on, Eliza and Eirene were rarely without one another. The two would sleep, eat, and sometimes bathe together. Eliza constantly tried to bring Eirene to school, only to be caught by my Mother or Father.
For two years she beamed when she was with the cat, and sobbed when it had to stay outside because it had gotten ear mites or something. In two years, we nearly forget how Eliza used to be. We were happy. Until Eliza fell ill.
Like a plague of locusts, the darkness that once surrounded her swarmed in again. The hours of idle staring, the incoherent muttering, and the sinister, cavernous look in her eyes returned. She began ignoring our parents and had to be forced out of bed to school. The only difference was that the darkness she emitted wasnʼt quite as dark as before. At least not when she had Eirene.
We were quickly trained to respond to her removed looks and sinister demeanor by shooing Eirene into the room, while we watched from the doorway. Eliza would notice the cat, and her eyes would glass over. Her brow uncrossed. She smiled at the little thing, cradling it in her arms.
Dr. Coffett determined her Neurasthenia had been addled by a nasty gastrointestinal infection. He would treat her as best he could, but we were to watch her for signs she was getting worse. Eliza was confined to her bed.
For weeks she remained as she was, never quite cheerful but never distraught either. Eirene stayed upstairs with her, unless she needed to go outside for the bathroom.
It was one of these times when it happened. I was with Mother and Father in the kitchen, while James was in the front yard. Eirene was at the back door, meowing gently. Her brown tail quivered, a sign that she needed to go out. “Martha, would you mind taking Eirene out to the woods?” Mother asked. I got up from my homework and strode to the back door.
At the border where our backyard met the woods, I sat on the grass, looking up at the sky. It was bright blue, almost devoid of clouds. I tried to find shapes every time one happened by. It must have been so warm, the grass so soft, I fell asleep.
BANG
I jumped up from the grass, looking around wildly, to see James near the back of the house. He saw me and grinned. “Hey Martha, didnʼt see you there!” he said.
“James what are you doing?” I yelled at him. “You scared me half to death!”
“Iʼm sorry, but like I said, I didnʼt see you.” He was holding Fatherʼs rifle, the tip still smoking.
“You can be really rotten sometimes.” I glanced over at the woods. “Whereʼs Eirene?”
“What?”
“Eirene, James!” I shouted, a panic rising inside me. “Eirene, I took her out here to the woods! Where is she?”
Jamesʼ face went white. “I…I donʼt know…” He looked over at the woods.
Without another word I sprinted into the trees. “WHERE DID YOU SHOOT?” I screamed, searching the brush covered floor.
“Uh…over there!” he shouted, “Somewhere over there!”
I didnʼt need to look where he was pointing, though. My eyes caught a brown gray mass near the base of an oak tree. I skidded to my knees. Eirene was lying there, panting, red muck clinging to the fur on her left side. Her legs twitched, and her eyes stared up at her forehead. Seeing me, she meowed.
James ran up to my side. “Oh…no…” he said. “Oh no, oh no, what did I do?”
Eireneʼs breathing quickened, became more shallow. We both kneeled there, frozen, watching blood dribble out of her side and disappear under the leaves. She looked up at me. I saw pain and fear there, like a fear of something ominous, something inevitable. Then they lolled back to their place, looking straight ahead, and stopped.
At that moment, adrenaline rushed through me, driving out my frozen shock. I scooped Eirene up and bolted out of the woods to the house. Maybe it was the tears burning my eyes or my concentration on that back door I had to reach, but I didnʼt see Eliza watching me from her bed behind the upstairs window.
*
Dr. Coffett arrived later that afternoon. Eliza had been overcome with a bout of vomiting, only this time she started vomiting blood. Dr. Coffett told us this had to do with ulcers in the lining of her stomach.
Eirene was wrapped in linen and placed in a shoebox. Mother asks us not to tell Eliza what had happened. She didnʼt want her condition getting any worse.
We could smell the vomit from her room. It seemed to float through the entire house. She made horrible retching sounds through the evening. Mother and Father and Dr. Coffett stayed up there with her. We all wondered why she didnʼt ask for Eirene.
At 10:16, and as crickets and peepers chirped outside, Dr. Coffett came down the stairs. “Iʼm very sorry to have to tell you this,” he said to James and I, “but your little sister has died. I know you both loved her very much, and I know she loved you as well.” With that, he donned a black bowler hat and left without a goodbye.
James and I went silently up the stairs to Elizaʼs room. It was just opposite Jamesʼ. Inside, Mother and Father were leaning over Elizaʼs bed, crying. Mother beckoned us in for a final goodbye, and there we all wept.
Sleep didnʼt come easily to me that night. Mother and Father told us they were leaving her in her bed for the night, and would make arrangements for her tomorrow. I laid in bed for what felt like hours, until finally, I slept.
I woke up. Not knowing why though, the house seemed quiet. I stared off into the pitch black, waiting to fall back into sleep.
Martha…
My stomach dropped. Did I really hear something? Was it my name? My spine tingled as I pricked my ears up, waiting for anything.
Martha…
My breath caught in my throat. I heard that, clearly, drifting into my room from down the hall where Elizaʼs and Jamesʼ bedrooms were. A door creaked open, and with it, an acrid smell wafted into my room. I choked. The smell was metallic, like that brown rusty water we sometimes get in the drinking fountain at school. My eyes had adjusted to the dim of the room, helped along by the moonlight casting in through the window behind me. I stared, transfixed, at the open door. Beyond it, I couldnʼt see. But I could hear…something…
shhhook
shhhook
My ears strained to pick up the sound. My sweat chilled me as it soaked the linen of my pajamas and grew cold. The metallic smell grew stronger, stinging my nostrils. I gagged, but my eyes never left the doorway.
shhhook
shhhook
The sound was growing louder. My body was pressed against the backboard, trembling. I tried to scream for my parents, but only a hoarse squeaking left me.
shhhook
shhhook
It was right outside my room. The smell was making my head spin. It was a familiar smell, but worse than I had ever known it. This made me realize what it was. When I realized, I let out a high-pitched moan. My throat dried up.
It was the smell of vomit, saturated with blood.
Eliza dragged herself around the doorway. She was wearing the nightgown we had dressed her in. The white fabric was covered in a gray and red mess. Curdled chunks of food and bits of intestine dripped from her chin. Her face was ashen-white and sunken, and her blonde hair was stuck around her mouth. But her eyes frightened me more than anything. The steel gray irises of her eyes were whited over from the hours of disuse, but her pupils were blacker than anything I could have ever imagined. She dragged herself by the arms along the floor, leaving a trail of steaming vomit and blood behind her. She reached my bed, and slowly pulled herself up over the side, never taking her eyes off me.
Martha…
I held my breath, knowing if I breathed again, the full power of that odor would kill me right here.
She yanked my bedsheets as she hoisted herself on top of me, closer…closer…
Now sheʼs here, inches from my face, that smell of decay burning my eyes, the red and gray stew spilling onto my chest and neck. I stared into her eyes.
In them I saw nothing. I saw the coldest, outermost limits of foreverness. I saw the void.
You…killed her…
“No!” I screamed, “I didnʼt kill her! I didnʼt, please! I didnʼt see James had the gun! Iʼm sorry! I didnʼt mean to let her die! Please! PLEASE!”
This last word I screamed. Her pupils grew bigger, grew around me, swallowed me whole, and I fell out of the universe and into the abyss, forever.
“Wake up…” My Fatherʼs voice. “Martha, wake up…”
I opened my eyes. I was staring at a ceiling. My ceiling. In front of it were my Mother and Father. They looked down at me, concerned, as I groggily tried to put words together. “You had a bad dream, sweetheart,” said my Mother. “You were crying.” I swiveled my head. My wall. I swiveled it back. The underside of my bed.
“Eliza…she was here…” I said, trying to fight off dizziness.
“No, sweetheart, sheʼs in her room.” Mother starts to tear up. “I know how hard this must be for you. Itʼs hard for all of us. But weʼre still a family, and we still love each other.”
“Would you like to sleep in our bed tonight?” asked my father. “Come on, honey, letʼs go.” He picks me up, my hands absently reaching around his neck to hang on.
Lying between the two of them, their warm bodies holding me in place, I canʼt think of anything but sleep.
*
Sunlight poured in the windows when I woke up. I looked down to the end of the bed at an unfamiliar wall, and an unfamiliar door. Then I noticed my parents on either side of me. The fuzzy memory of being carried came back to me. With that, the dream came back. Eliza was alive. She was in my room. I fell into her eyes. I canʼt remember anything more than that.
I slid to the foot of the bed, and hopped off, careful not to wake my parents. I tiptoed down the hall, past my room, and stopped outside Elizaʼs. There she was, lying on her bed with her eyes closed, in her clean white nightgown. I sighed.
Turning around, I walked into Jamesʼ room. I wanted to wake him to tell him about my dream, and ask him if he wanted to come with me outside to pick flowers for Eliza before my parents wake up. That would make them happy.
“James, wake up,” I said, pulling off the covers, “I want to tell you ab-”
James was lying on his back. His eyes were gouged out. His jaw was ripped halfway off his face, leaving him with a gaping openmouthed scream.
I stepped back. My knees buckled, and I hit my head on the foot of his bed. The world swam in front of me as I lay there on the floor. I stared out through the door into Elizaʼs room, where I saw her lying there, her head turned towards me. She had a smile on her face, and her eyes were open. In her black pupils I saw a deep abyss. It made me think of a word: foreverness.
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Forgive the length of this message, this is the first and possibly the last time I’ll have access to a computer so I thought I’d better write this all down while I can and get it to those who should know. I’m leaving town; I don’t know where I’m going, I’m just getting as far away as I can.
Okay so as some of you may know, I took out a loan and opened my own auto shop a little over year ago. Business has been going decently well, I can’t complain, and I’ve always been grateful to all of my customers who would come to me exclusively when God knows there are so many already established places in town. I’ve been doing well enough that I was able to hire on my buddy Neil a few months ago, and he’s been working hard and helping out really well, as I always knew he would.
Well, I needed to take a day and go to a Lamaze class with Rebecca last month, and so I entrusted the shop to Neil for the morning and most of the afternoon. That’s the day I think everything actually started, because when I got back, he seemed to be in a stupor and was covered in oil. He’d even had some smeared across his face, as if he’d tried to drink it or something. I told him to go home and clean himself up because we had no clients at the moment and I could take care of anyone who came in for the time being.
He came back 45 minutes later but he was still much quieter than usual. He worked as well as he ever did, but something just seemed off about him. I asked him if anything happened while I was out and he just shook his head. I asked how many clients we had, and he just muttered something unintelligible. I asked him to repeat himself and he turned and glared at me and for the briefest moment I could’ve swore his eyes appeared to be completely black, no iris, no sclera, just utter all consuming blackness. I stumbled back and bumped a shelf, knocking things down. When I looked back at him, he was still looking at me, but he didn’t seem to be glaring hatefully the way he had before, he just seemed kind of…out of it.
“Just a couple,” he answered. “Some woman, and then a tattooed biker-type looking dude.” I assumed one of them must’ve asked for an oil change and that’s when he spilled it, so I asked if he had any trouble and he simply shrugged. I had looked around the garage while he was gone and I saw no traces of an oil spill, so whatever had happened he must’ve gotten it all on himself and none of it anywhere else, miraculously. But he seemed reluctant to talk about it, so I didn’t press the issue, and we worked on throughout the day. That day and the next were relatively normal other than him still being awkward and quiet. I asked him if he’d like to go out and get us lunch while I tended the shop and he said “sure.”
When he came back I was busy doing a diagnostic for a client, so he put the food on the counter in the office to wait for me and he went ahead and ate. I finished up with that customer, we’d have to keep her car over night to figure out just why it kept dying on her, so I asked Neil to give her a ride home and then I went to grab my food. He’d brought me some Chinese food and an iced tea, so I opened the soy sauce packets to pour some over my food when I noticed the strangest thing…
It was as if the soy sauce was a living thing somehow…spreading out like dozens of squirming inky black maggots when it fell into the fried rice and burying itself inside. I took the fork and started to scoop out the rice to look deeper inside and small smoky tendrils would rise from the rice occasionally and dissipate. I was incredibly hungry at that point but I was way too creeped out to eat that so I chucked it and the iced tea in the garbage and decided I’d just wait ‘til I got home that evening to eat something I’d prepared with my own hands. I’d never in my life seen anything remotely like that and I couldn’t even fathom how I would ask Neil if he’d noticed anything similar. As cold and distanced as he’d been lately I was sure he’d look at me like I was looney tunes, so I just shut up about it.
That Friday we went down to the ol’ watering hole as we always do to get some drinks and watch the local bands play, and Neil was just as quiet and distanced as he had been all week. He’s not a bad looking fellow, though, and so despite him not really going out of his way to speak to anyone, a woman went over to where he was sitting and started talking to him, and they ended up leaving together that night.
Monday morning I tried breaking the ice by asking how his weekend went, he gave me a nod and muttered “alright.” I asked him if he got lucky with that young woman I saw him with, and he gave me the smallest grin, which was quite possibly the first grin I’d seen on his face in a week, and said “it went well.” I didn’t pressure him for details, I knew he’d share if he chose to, and his small grin was enough to assuage my worries and lend me some hope that he might get back to his old self soon.
The day was relatively busy until about 3PM, so I finally had a spare moment to sit in the office and listen to the radio while I waited on the next client. So there I was, leaning back in my chair with my feet propped up on my desk when I swiveled around and looked at my bulletin board that sits behind my head with all manner of clippings stuck to it. I had a few sunday comic strips such as Garfield and Calvin & Hobbes that I’d read maybe a hundred times since I’d opened shop there…but that day something was different.
The first panel seemed normal, but in each subsequent panel, inky black tendrils crept out from the edges of the frame and from behind the characters. Blood dripped from the ears and eyes and sometimes even their noses, and in each of the strips one of the characters would say “HE COMES!”
I sat staring in astonishment for a moment before I realized the tendrils were moving ever so slowly, and then each of the characters’ heads turned ever-so-slowly towards me and I threw myself back away from the bulletin board, sliding over my desk and onto the floor. I ran out into the garage and yelled for Neil, I could not be the only one to see this! To my surprise, he had gone…and so I hesitantly walked back to the office and peered inside. The comics were still corrupted, but they no longer appeared to be moving. I crept over to it and reached out to pluck one of the comics free when I noticed the inky black tendrils starting to seep across the page towards where my fingers were at least three times as fast as they’d moved before and I jerked my hand away. Nothing good could possibly come from letting that blot of ink touch my skin.
Of course I ripped the entire bulletin board down, burned it in a tin trashcan out back, and never spoke of it again. That night I went home and my wife was already in bed, fast asleep. My mind was racing and I couldn’t even bring myself to eat dinner that night. With no one to vent my worries to, I fell into a restless sleep, and kept awaking to nightmare after nightmare seemingly every hour of the night until I just gave up on sleep entirely.
That Friday I went to the bar again, even though my wife couldn’t drink, being pregnant and all, and Neil wasn’t really any fun to hang with anymore, and none of my other friends could seem to be reached. I just needed to get a good buzz and I’d start feeling better, I reckoned. After downing a couple beers I excused myself to the restroom when I noticed I was more inebriated than I’d estimated, so I leaned over the sink to splash some water onto my face and that’s when I heard it. Like a sheet of fabric being dragged across a floor, a voice rasped ever so quietly out of the drain. It sounded like a prolonged exhale for the longest time until I finally recognized words hidden amongst all those vowels. “Heeee cooooomes!”
Cracks appeared in the porcelain, snaking out from the ring around the drain. At least, they looked like cracks at first…but after a few seconds I recognized them as the same tendrils of corruption I’d seen in the comics earlier that week…snaking their way slowly along. I stumbled backwards out of the bathroom door and right into someone’s chest. I turned around and stared up into the pitch black eyes of a six and a half foot biker with tattoos covering every piece of exposed skin besides his hands and head. I stumbled quickly away from him and his evil piercing gaze followed me as I retreated through the bar. It felt like a dream, where whenever you’re running for your life it feels like running through quicksand. As I walked across the room I noticed the biker wasn’t the only one staring at me. It seemed every pair of eyes in the place were focused on me, and more than half of those eyes appeared to be perfectly black, with no hint of iris or sclera. A few lips moved, and though I couldn’t hear their voices over the sound of the jukebox I could easily guess what they were saying. “He comes!”
I didn’t get a wink of sleep that night.
I haven’t been getting much sleep for the past couple of weeks as a matter of fact, which I’m guessing those of you who’ve spoken to me recently could’ve guessed. I keep seeing those pitch black eyes staring at me. I’m afraid every one I see will turn and whisper those words to me, staring deep into my soul with that evil glare. Every time I go near a sink or go to grab a bite to eat I’m afraid I’ll see those inky snaking tendrils squiggling towards me. Even my wife has seemed cold and distanced lately.
Then tonight as I’m driving home from work, struggling to keep my eyes open so that I don’t drift into oncoming traffic, my cell phone rang and it was Rebecca. She was on her way to the hospital to have our baby, and for the first time in two weeks I was actually happy!
She was in the labor room strapped to a monitor when I got there, watching for her contractions. She barely noticed when I walked in, but didn’t seem startled when I sat down beside her and took her hand in mine. I tried talking to her, but she was unresponsive, and I was so tired I didn’t even realize I had started to drift off to sleep until the nurses came in and started moving her to the delivery room about a half hour later. I put on my scrubs and a hair net and went in with her to hold her hand and coach her through like they’d trained us in Lamaze, when she started cursing and screaming.
I was prepared for that, as well as her ever tightening grip on my hand, but when I saw the movement in her tummy my mind started to reel. The doctor said the baby was crowning and told her to push. I echoed his orders and she screamed at me with a voice I couldn’t begin to describe. When I looked down at her she was staring up at me with those same eyes I’d seen on the biker. The same eyes I thought I’d seen on Neil weeks before. I tried to jerk my hand away but she maintained her grip. Black tar-like blood splashed the front of the doctor’s scrubs, but he seemed to pay no heed. When I looked at her tummy again, black veins seemed to stand out beneath her skin, pulsating. She continued to stare at me, and she was no longer screaming, just grinning…those obsidian eyes boring into me.
“To invoke the Nezperdian hivemind of Chaos,” she breathed in a raspy voice.
“He who waits behind the wall,” the doctor continued as he stared down at the child, my child, lying silently, cradled in his bloodstained hands. He looked up and raised the baby, and it appeared to be covered in oozing inky black liquid, much like that that had covered Neil a couple weeks prior. It did not cry out, but it was alive, and it moved when he held it up. When its eyes opened, they were as black as my wife’s. As black as the doctor’s. In unison, they all breathed his name.
“Zalgo!”
I ripped my hand free of my wife’s iron grip and stumbled out of the room, barrelling into the nurses passing in the corridor just outside. When I stood up and looked back into the room, I could see the inky black tendrils seeming to extend from the doctor and my newborn, across the floor to where I stood. I turned and ran down the hall to the elevator and slammed my finger into the buttons. When I looked back, the tendrils had come into the hallway, yet no one else seemed to notice until it slithered over their feet and up their legs, at which point they abruptly stopped, turned and looked at me with those same obsidian eyes.
I abandoned my effort to call the elevator and broke into a panicked run for the stairs. I ran down the 15 flights of stairs all the way to the lobby, tore ass out into the parking lot, hopped in my car and started driving. I didn’t know where the fuck I was going, I just had to get the fuck away from there. I don’t know if I’m going crazy, it certainly seems like it, but I just can’t be around anyone I know anymore. They all have those same eyes and those same dead stares and even my child…oh god my baby.
I still saw those eyes staring at me from the cars beside me, and by some strange coincidence the same biker from the previous Friday night at the bar pulled up beside me an hour away from the hospital and followed me for nearly two miles. He’d turn and stare at me, grinning. I couldn’t see his eyes through his sunglasses this time but I knew it was the same guy. His tattoos seemed to move of their own free will, the flaming skull on his right bicep began bleeding from its eyesockets.
As soon as I could, I slammed on my brakes, allowing him to fly past me as I swerved to my left and did a U-turn. I think I lost him, that was about an hour ago. I’m at a motel 3 hours out of town, the first place I found that has wifi, and I’m tired, and I’m shaking, and my hand itches where my wife’s nails scratched me open. I honestly don’t know what to do, or who I can turn to. This story will sound insane and I’ll probably be institutionalized and I’m not sure that wouldn’t be the best thing for me but I just can’t bear to look into those eyes anymore. Every time I see someone new and they stare at me I start to panic because I know…I just know it’s out there looking for me, w̝̹̩͎͍̘h̪a͖̮͚̪͓t̩͍͎̣̱e̖̜v̪͈̹̥̟ͅe̤̖͙r̗̱̹ͅ ̲͕̳̟͓̰i͉̝̼̤̜̱t͕̼̤ ̝̱̮͕͔̤i̩̭̤̬s̩͇.̖͎̬̱
And even when I lay down and start to drift off to sleep, I̫̮̣̜͎ͭ̽ͪ̾̀́ͯͮ ͍̻̻̞̬̞̾̍̋ĥ̥̰̲̱͙̰̖̟̔ͧ̎ͤ͆͛̚e̦̪̭̙̎͌͐̅͌̄a̼͎͈̘̰̮̹͈͇ͣͪ̐͐ŕ̞̱̤ ̞̬̲̑t̖̠̠̗̱͊̾h̪͈̭̪͋ͨͥo̮̱̺̜͖̙̘͚͌ͧs͍͔̉̽ͥ͑͐͌e̯͍͎̗͕ͪ̈ͦ ͔̮͕͆́w͔̲͕͓̩̼̗͖ͦ̽̔ͅò̭͚̼̣̼̺̰̃̿ͭ͐̈́͋̆̇r̰̪̠͎̳͚̯͚̎̋̉d͚̦̭̟̯͚̹̘ͣ͌̄͂͊ͅs̟͍̗̹͕̫͎̈́̒͑ͨͫͨ͐̓̓.͕̠͍̪̙̹̣̘̿͋ͬ.̼̖̣ͥͮ̒ͬ̓́.̺͚͔̟͚̫̮̏̑͐ͯ”̗̦͍̗̝̠̼͉͔͍̺̱̠͉͇̟̳ͭ͆ͧ̌ͦͫ͂
H̺̼̞̼͇̮̖̭̗̳̳̣̜̦̬̟̻̄͐͗̎͂ͤ̄̌͆͂ͩ͑̿͛̏͂̇̚e͓͖̰̹̯̬͙̼͇̊ͯͫ̈̊ͩ̔ͣͤ̾͂ ̮̭̙̂ͪ̏̿ͫ̇̐̆͗̐͂ͮͣ̂C͔̪̣͊͋͑̆ͪͯ̍ͩ̎͌͛͋̆͑͗ͅo͍̭̟͎͓̹̖͔̱̼͉̪̪͕͖̭͐̇ͤͯ͛͂͛̅̔̓̋͒̊̐ͩm̯̭͖͚͇̯̠̫͔̼͔̟̯̪̲͛͐̈̃̀̈́́ͨ̽̔̏ͪ̅͐͐͗̂ͮ̔ê͎͚͎͇̣̟̺͇̲͉̱̫ͬ̒̐̉ͥ̐ͭͭͫ̔͐̈́ͨ͑s͉̫̥̬̠̤̭̙̿̑̃̾͒̌ͧ͛̍̚.̳̼̟̙̺̰ͩ͐̇̍̅ͮ̓̇̏̎͌̏͆ͤ̃̍ͨ̚ͅ”̩̺̘͓̯̹͉ͨͭ͑̌͂̐̋̃͊ͥ
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Day 1
After stowing our luggage away under the bottom bunk and taking a few moments to adjust to our new ‘home’ for the next seven days, we turned to face our travelling companion or the random stranger who made the journey work out that little bit cheaper. She seemed pleasant enough. Her name was Elena; she was 25, foreign, Eastern European I would guess, average looking. We could have done worse. After the initial small talk and introductions were over, we took our seats and my wife and I began chatting about the trip and such.
I noticed Elena go to the window and watched from the corner of my eye as she pulled back the curtains. She seemed to freeze suddenly and almost jump back from the window with a gasp. I started to get up to see what she was looking at but she motioned at me to sit back down and returned to her side of the cabin. “I thought I saw something but there was nothing”.
Day 2
I was finding the journey quite pleasant by this point. The scenery was more impressive than I could have imagined and I was getting excited about our first day trip in the morning. My wife, Elena and I would chat now and again but Elena was conscious of the fact that we were newly weds and needed our privacy. I liked her for that.
Come night time, I was pretty tired and fell into a deep sleep almost instantly. I don’t know for what reason but I awoke with a start some time later. I could feel a presence, like someone was where they shouldn’t be. I peered over the side of my bunk and there she was. Elena. Just stood at the window, staring. “Elena?” I whispered. She looked up at me, terrified. She looked back at the window then walked back to her bunk and got in, back turned to me.
Day 3
That morning I had expected Elena to mention the events of the night before but she didn’t. She got up as normal, got ready and was off the train as soon as we were permitted. I wondered if it had been a dream. My wife and I enjoyed the city sites, ate some good food and generally had a good day.
Back in the cabin Elena was reading a book and my wife was resting. I got up to go to the toilet and noticed that Elena’s eyes followed me out, almost as though she was waiting for me to leave. When I returned she was at the window taking photo after photo. She turned to me holding out the camera.”Tell me, please. What do you see?”. I looked down at the camera. “Scenery. Blurred scenery. Blurred trees”. Terrible photos? She looked at me blankly.
“Then… you do not see… her?”. She was shaking violently.
“I just see trees…”.Elena shut off the camera and left the cabin quickly.
Day 4
Elena’s behaviour had become very strange by now. She didn’t come on that day’s excursion saying she was ill and she rarely engaged in conversation. I was past caring. She was weird and I was cursing myself for being so tight with my money.
My wife and I returned from dinner to find Elena by the window yet again. I sat down and looked up at her with disdain. Slowly her head began to turn in my direction until she was staring directly at me. She looked horrific, like she hadn’t slept for years. She was wide eyed and her mouth was open slightly. “The train is always moving but she… she is always there”. Slowly her head turned back to face the window.
Day 5
Early night. The excursion today was tiring. We had spent the day touring a “modern Soviet city” and took a bunch of photos of the Opera House and statue of Lenin. Elena didn’t come again. Like I cared.
A noise brought me out of my sleep, a noise I couldn’t make out at first. My heart racing, I sat up and looked at the source. Elena was pounding heavily on the window over and over again. I leapt off my bunk and grabbed her hands. “Elena, stop!” I held her wrists tightly until she seemed to come round. She looked up into my eyes, opened her mouth and screamed so loudly my ears felt like they would bleed. “Jesus, Elena, what the fuck?” I let go of her and she returned to the window and began hitting it again, relentlessly. “I’ve had enough now, I’ve fucking had enough of this crazy bitch”. I grabbed my wife and went to find someone to get us moved.
After a lot of talking and persuasion (and some money) we were offered another cabin. We returned to ours to pick up our stuff with a porter. Elena wasn’t there. Good, I thought.
Day 6
I enjoyed this day a lot more knowing that we wouldn’t have to return to Elena that night. My wife and I were looking through our photos from that day, drinking beer. I got up to go to the toilet and kissed her on the head.
I started to walk down the corridor when I saw a familiar figure standing deathly still by one of the train doors. Elena. I began to turn the other way thinking I would just go use the others when suddenly she reached out and opened the door. “ELENA, NO!” I tried to run to her but she just jumped. Like that , she was just gone. SHIT. I closed the door and ran to get someone. She’d dropped her camera so I swept it up on my way, I don’t know why exactly.
Day 7
The train had been stopped for some time now and I had answered as many questions as I could. We had been told we would continue to the next station at some point where my wife and I would get off. Given the circumstances, I wanted off the train anyway. It started up again. I was relieved.
I sat down on my bunk and reached into my bag to get Elena’s camera. I knew I should have given it to the police but something inside stopped me. I flicked it on and started scrolling through her photos. I felt sad to see the shots she had taken on the station and of the empty cabin on her first day. She must have been as excited as we were, I’m sure.
Suddenly I froze. I’d come to the blurred scenery shots she’d shown me days back, only this time I could see something amongst the trees. I zoomed in slowly. My heart was hammering hard against my chest as my brain tried to take in what my eyes were seeing. There amongst the blurred trees and forestry was a woman, stood there, staring up at the camera, her face frozen in an eternal scream. I flicked to the next picture. She was there again. And the next and the next. She was in each and every photo, no matter where Elena had taken the photo, at what angle, the woman was there. I kept flicking through. I must have gone through over a hundred photos and there she was again and again.
Then, she was on the train. The photo was taken from inside our train and she was there at the end of the corridor, stood at an awkward angle looking at the camera, her face still frozen in a scream. The next photo she was closer. She was walking towards Elena. She was getting closer. I got to the final photo and my blood ran cold. Her terrifying face was right up to the lens.
I threw the camera down onto the bed and ran to the window, ripping back the curtains. A scream caught in my throat.
There amongst the trees, in the distance I could see her. The woman. Staring up at me from afar. My eyes followed her until she was out of sight then I looked back to my original focus point and there she was again. I repeated these eye movements over and over and she was always there.
My wife came in at this point. “What are you looking at?”
I stared at her, horrified and unable to move. “The train is always moving but she… she is always there”.
Credit To – TheRoyalGame
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l once knew a man who was afraid of nothing. No monstrosity man made nor fictitious could subdue his spirits, and the mere mention of the word ‘supernatural’ would elicit a most cynical example of laughter. This bravery was both his greatest strength and his most profound weakness, for ignorance and heedlessness can often be mistaken for a deep and foolhardy sense of courage. He was to learn the limits of his bravery down in those oppressive tunnels, deep below the streets of Amsterdam.
His name was Henke, due mainly to his Finnish ancestry on his father’s side, and although his parents had passed away at an early age, it was clear that he believed his courageous convictions could be attributed to his father’s character.
I had met Henke four years earlier while travelling with some friends on a rather common rites of passage: Backpacking through Europe during a university break. He and a few of his friends were on a similar trip and happened to be staying at the same youth hostel as myself and my companions in Rome. We all got on well, but both Henke and I struck up an immediate rapport with one another as he was a keen musician and I was at the time still filled with the self promise, or should I say delusion, of stardom through my own musical pursuits.
This friendship continued onwards and we maintained it via email; swapping musical discoveries, talking about politics, and generally getting to know one another as best two people can through simple correspondence. I grew to enjoy our friendly debates over the years and on a few occasions we even visited one another. Henke moved around a lot and as such it gave me a good excuse to visit a number of mainland European countries, not to mention that he always knew which local pubs served the best beer and which restaurants were to be best avoided.
Last year I visited Henke in Amsterdam. The Dutch city seemed to be a good fit for him as he always liked to live in the liveliest of places, and with countless meandering canals, bridges, and walkways swamped with millions of tourists every year, Amsterdam, for Henke, felt like the very embodiment of life and vibrancy. At the time he had been recently hired to carry out some important maintenance work on the Rijksmuseum, which is one of Amsterdam’s most impressive buildings, and this seemed to have rooted him to the one place for longer than was usual.
When I met him in a small darkened corner of a local pub, well away from the burgeoning tourist trade, I was shocked at his appearance. Here was a friend I had grown to know as being larger than life, exuding bravado, and yet I was presented with a shell of a man, slight in stature and racked with self doubt.
He proceeded to impart on me the circumstances which resulted in his precarious condition, of which I will relay to you now.
Henke had been working as a civil engineer for some time and relished the challenge of renovating and maintaining the Rijksmuseum, a building with such a long and compelling history. The museum houses Amsterdam’s finest collection of historical relics, and being given access to some of its more hidden places which are inaccessible to the general public, piqued Henke’s fascination for the obscured and unique.
He had been hired most specifically to lead a maintenance crew which had been assigned to assess and repair the building’s foundations. This oldest part of the structure dated back centuries and had a most bizarre and, it must be said, quite horrific history. The Rijksmuseum itself had been constructed in 1885, but what it had been built upon possessed a much older and interesting history.
In the bowels of the building under its marble floors and deep red brickwork, lay a labyrinth of abandoned tunnels which at one time served as part of the old city’s sewer network. They had long been disused and fallen into disrepair but they were nonetheless an essential part of the building’s foundations and had to be assessed and repaired, otherwise the entire structure would be in danger of subsiding.
The ground and upper levels of the museum were beautiful and displayed many wonderful historical relics from all over the world. So welcoming and warm was the atmosphere of the building that it was difficult to imagine the darkness which festered below. After some quick words with the building manager, Henke proceeded to an old, seldom used room at the back of the museum which housed a rather antiquated, creaking, and cage-like elevator which was being used to access the lower levels and sewers underneath.
Pulling on a pair of dirt covered yellow overalls, complete with hard hat and head lamp, Henke entered the elevator for his first descent. On his trip downwards towards the abandoned sewers, Henke thought to himself that those of a nervous disposition may let such a dank and isolated place prey on their minds. This may have explained why the previous man in charge of the repairs had left so abruptly, citing nervous exhaustion and refusing to ever so much as set foot in those pitch black corridors of cold stone ever again.
The elevator winch and engine stuttered as it lowered Henke down four levels into the basement. With each passing floor he observed a slight dimming of the lights and each subterranean level appeared more sparse, and stone-like than the one before. A rusted plate attached to the elevator betrayed its age. It struck Henke that the year of its construction, 1932, must have been amongst the last periods of maintenance carried out there before the persecution of the Jewish people and the outbreak of war in Europe.
Henke knew much of the shameful history of the region as he was part Jewish and his great Grandfather had died during the holocaust. Many had fled to Amsterdam for sanctuary from the Nazi regime in the early 1930s, but the long blighting arm of Hitler’s horrific ‘final solution’ eventually reached the borders of Holland, sweeping many thousands away to those shameful and barbaric concentration camps.
The elevator shuddered to a halt and after forcing the rusted sliding door aside, Henke disembarked. The tunnels – comprising Amsterdam’s disused sewer network – were curious in construction and steeped in a history which stretched back much farther into the distant past than that of the museum itself. Having spoken to his employers, Henke had been specifically told to pay heed to the assessment and repair crews’ knowledge of the tunnel layout, as the place could be disorientating and as the lighting system required to illuminate repair work had not been fully installed yet, that he would find it all too easy to get lost.
Most importantly Henke was informed that the two-way radios normally used to communicate between team members had been playing up, and that they were very unreliable due to interference, probably produced by nearby metallic deposits in the ground. This meant that communication between his team members would have to be carried out verbally, or by using the light from their torches to convey simple messages via Morse code; this was particularly useful in the longer tunnels. In any case, it struck Henke that the catacombs below really were isolated, lonely places.
Care must be taken.
Henke was greeted by Jones, his second in command. Jones was a substantially stout fellow and was rather humorous in nature. He debriefed Henke on the current progress being made by his new team, informing him that the initial mapping and assessments of the tunnels had gone well. All in all there were 16 four man crews, each of which would be assigned a section of the sewers to repair. Henke would supervise two of the crews which were working in one of the more isolated tunnels.
After walking for 15 minutes Henke arrived at the area which would be his workplace for the next few months. The sound of occasional drilling could be heard in the distance as the workers continued to install the still non-operational lighting system. As Henke’s men would be working further away from the other crews, it seemed logical – although not desirable – that they would have a lighting system installed last.
Each passageway seemed oddly shaped with no two tunnels being quite alike, this entire section of the sewer was in fact so antiquated that it had been built long before the careful planning of such constructions had become commonplace. One tunnel would arch onwards for over several hundred metres in a strange semi-circle, while others bisected it at right angles, carrying on in a regimented straight line into the darkness. Henke even found a passageway which seemed to dip and rise only to slither its way along in an unnatural S-shape. Some tunnels seemed to go on forever, others stopped abruptly as if the original builders had been unable to complete their work, leaving in a hurry. Jones tried to keep the conversation light and with his experience of walking through the tunnels for the past two months, Henke was glad to have a guide to show him the way.
Waiting in a large alcove were four of Henke’s team. They would work this section of the tunnels during the day, while the other shift would take over later, working through the night. Jones introduced each of them. They seemed nice enough, but Henke was surprised to find the men largely in the grips of silence. In his experience humour was normally found in abundance, with repair crews using it to slice through the monotony of working in such cramped and repetitive conditions. Here though, he found them uttering not one word, sitting in silence in that imposing alcove, removed from any consideration of camaraderie or fellowship; the only inference that they were not a collection of subterranean statues was the occasional movement of their head lamps altering the shadows around them.
They seemed wholly disconnected from, not just each other, but the very environment in which they worked.
Henke brushed this feeling of unease aside and committed himself to cultivating conversation; if these men were in some way angry or uncomfortable with one another then Henke would soon lay that to rest; a happy workforce is a productive one.
The first order of business was to survey this section of tunnels and decide where repairs were most pressing. Preliminary assessments had already been made, but Henke liked to evaluate any repair project he was involved in from the ground up. Henke walked the catacombs with his team and noticed immediately that they were still on edge, that they seemed frightened in an almost childlike way. No amount of questions casual or otherwise could elicit anything other than one word broken replies. As they toured the numerous tunnels, lighting their way with the small torches attached to their safety helmets and taking notes about failing walls, water damage, and estimations of any possible repair time, Henke pressed the men on their obvious sense of fear, asking why such an experienced crew who no doubt had worked in many tunnels before, were so apprehensive of mere bricks and mortar.
They avoided the questions, looking nervously at one another and changing the topic of conversation with mono-toned lethargy whenever it veered towards their experiences of the old sewers, or of their previous boss’s unceremonious departure from the job. It began to dawn on Henke that the men’s verbal and physical awkwardness was not the result of tensions between workers, but rather of a deep seated and worrying apprehension; of what he did not know. What was clear was that his team seemed to be counting down the minutes until their shift ended, when they could finally clamber out of the darkness into the safety of the world above.
As the beam from his head lamp trickled over the damp and crumbling brickwork of the tunnels, Henke again conceded to himself that some may find such a setting unnerving; but not him. Whatever had caused such trepidation and disquiet amongst the men working down there, was surely a simple case of idle superstition, mischief making, and the quite understandable psychological toll of working in a dark, cramped, and forgotten part of the world. Even Jones, who had through most of the catacombs been jovial and talkative, now adopted the same sullen expression and seriousness of disposition as the others.
The passages wound and meandered their way through the ground, long steady trajectories intermittently and abruptly interrupted by sharp blind corners which made it difficult for Henke to identify exactly where they were. There were so many winding corridors that Henke felt slightly disorientated and was ready to joke with his men that if they didn’t like him as a boss that they could probably leave him there and he would never find his way out.
But his men were no longer with him.
He was standing at the mouth of a tunnel and while he had continued onwards talking, trying to fill in the difficult silences, his men had stopped at the last junction. They stood motionless some twenty feet behind, staring at Henke with blank expressions occasionally betrayed by the slightest flicker of a very real and gripping emotion beneath; a look of suppressed terror.
When he asked why the men were not following, they whispered in reply that where they stood was where the last of the repair work was needed. Pulling out a map and perusing it intently by the light of his head lamp, Henke surmised that he must have wandered into the most remote part of the sewer network, at the back of the catacombs, and while the tunnels continued into the foreboding distance this must have marked the boundary of the Rijksmuseum’s foundations.
What confused him was that where he stood had been marked for repair. He was standing at the entrance to what appeared to be a rather innocuous tunnel, but on the wall next to the opening Henke could clearly see that someone had placed an identification plaque there, marking it for repair. It read ‘Tunnel 72F: Water damage & failing brickwork’.
After double checking his map, it was clear to Henke that tunnel 72F was indeed still under the Rijksmuseum foundations and had to be appraised and repaired, but when he told his men this they simply informed him that where they stood was as far as they would go.
Anger began to take over, accompanied by frustration that the team he was supposed to be supervising were being so difficult, but even raising his voice and demanding that they head into the tunnel did not seem to move them. Just as things became heated and Henke began demanding that the men do as he say, Jones interjected:
“We’ve worked down here for two months, Henke. This is a good, hard working, talented crew you have. They will do exactly as you ask, when you ask it, but you will have to accept that for them, and me, our work stops at this junction and that none of us will go near tunnel 72F. Whether you want to believe it or not, there is something in there.”
Taking a deep breath and calming himself, Henke explained to his men that he understood the stress induced by working in such an environment for an extended period of time, but that repairs in that tunnel had to be carried out. He would talk to them later about it, but for now he would carry out the survey himself.
As Henke stepped over the threshold and into the apparently forbidden tunnel, Jones and the other men protested vehemently, shouting on Henke to leave the passageway immediately, but he saw this as foolish. He was not to be swayed by unsubstantiated, superstitious nonsense. There was nothing in this tunnel to fear, and once more Henke would prove to others that they should not be so scared, by stepping up, being a man, and pushing forward into places others who are more timid in nature fear to tread. It was a point of pride for Henke, he believed in always being bold.
While the tunnel seemed fairly common in its construction at first glance, as Henke progressed deeper into the darkness it was apparent that this was unlike any sewer he had seen before. The ground was uneven; the floor dipped and rose much like some of the other tunnels, but what was peculiar was how fractured the surface felt under his feet. The ground was obscured by a thick, almost oily water which in places reached up as high as his knees. He trudged through the stagnant water slowly, not because he was scared, but simply to insure he had a sound footing. One thing was apparent, however long the water had lay there it was long enough to fester and produce an unpleasant, rotten stench.
The walls were of a different, much older composition than most of the brickwork he had seen in the sewers elsewhere. Whatever the material was which had been used, it was hundreds of years old and was obviously failing, with long penetrating cracks scarring the surface of the increasingly unstable walls and ceiling.
The light from Henke’s head lamp was enough to illuminate much of the tunnel, but as he ventured further towards what he thought was a dead-end, he realised that the passageway was narrowing and that the tunnel itself did not stop there, but rather tapered slightly before curving abruptly into a blind corner.
Henke estimated that he was around 80 feet into the sewer and while his curiosity for what could be beyond that corner urged him to move forward, he believed he had made his point to his men and would now ask them to abandon their fears and enter the tunnel with him. He unholstered the black hand held radio which all the workers had been issued with from his side, and began requesting for Jones and the others to meet him at the corner of the tunnel.
No one responded, and nothing but a quiet buzz could be heard from the radio speaker. Of course Henke now remembered that he had been warned about how unreliable the radios could be, but just as he was about to turn and shout on his men, something caught his eye.
Surely not.
There was nothing in this old tunnel but stagnant water and himself! But pushing relentlessly against Henke’s bravado and self assured disposition was the creeping reality that something was standing at the end of the tunnel. Obscured by the turn, Henke could only see a glimpse of it, but it was unmistakable. A ragged piece of cloth poked out from around the corner and although Henke’s mind was unwilling to accept it, the cloth was obviously part of a sleeve, a sleeve which contained an arm, of who’s or what’s he did not know.
Disbelief.
Stubbornness can be an effective tonic for even the most horrifying and unbelievable of situations. Henke’s belief in himself and his long history of triumphs over adversity welled up inside of him, filling his chest with pride, and with a strong confident stride Henke marched towards whatever was behind that corner.
The slush and slosh of the black water echoed throughout the tunnel as he made his way to that blind turn. Apprehension now turned to sadness and empathy, for standing there, shivering and dishevelled, was a girl who could not have seen more than 13 years. Her face and hands were blackened with grime and dirt hiding her pale and malnourished frame. A ripped shirt was all that she wore, hanging from her loosely with much of her body exposed to the cold of that dank, isolated place.
Gazing at him between strands of dark matted hair, Henke was struck by how beautiful the young girl was, and how afraid she must have been. At first he believed that somehow she must have made her way into the sewers and lost her way, but no matter how softly he asked her she would not answer, appearing afraid and nervous.
Henke tried his radio again, but was greeted with the same meaningless static. Regardless, he had to get her out of that tunnel, back through the sewers and into the Rijksmuseum and seen by a doctor. He did not want to shout on his men as it may have added to the girl’s disquiet, so he decided to lead her out of the passage himself. As he approached, Henke spoke gently to the girl explaining that he would take her up above to safety. She seemed terrified of him, and this made Henke feel uncomfortable as he prided himself on being someone who would do anything to protect the vulnerable, and not at all someone to be feared.
She made no sound, but as Henke neared she raised her hand, pointing one finger at the light on his helmet. He suddenly realised that the light must have been frightening her somehow, so he merely took the lamp off and held it in his hand, the torch now illuminating the girl’s shirt more starkly. The changed angle of light brought something unsettling to Henke’s attention. Pinned to the shirt was a yellow cloth star. It surprised him as it was entirely familiar but it took a moment for his mind to grasp the memory; it was exactly like the yellow stars forced upon the Jewish populations during their persecution, to allow non-Jews and members of the Nazi regime to identify them.
Henke’s mind fought against the ramifications of such a discovery. After a momentary pause, he once again was resolute, disregarding the cloth star and asserting to himself that he must take this poor girl out of such horrible surroundings.
A tremendous sense of sadness overcame Henke as he grew closer. The torch flickered unusually in his hand as he looked down at the girl, her face momentarily illuminated by the shifting light, as he prepared to carry her out of the sewers if need be. But this sense of duty, this compulsion to be brave and assertive in even the darkest of places, was now replaced with something which Henke had never felt before. Up his spine and from the very pit of his stomach fear gripped him, terror took him, and a horror so potent made him feel anxious, weak, and unsteady.
For Henke had not noticed something so subtle, yet essential to his predicament. The girl had not stopped pointing at him as he drew closer. Her arm was ridged and her finger remained outstretched, even the light which was now in his hand seemed entirely unimportant to her. Realisation swept over him like a plague of abject dread.
The girl was not pointing at the light, she was pointing behind him.
Henke did not remember much more of what happened in that tunnel, but he knew that he had indeed turned to face whatever was standing there. He thanked God (not something he was normally inclined to do) that Jones and those men who feared that dark hollow so acutely, had dispensed with this fear and ran into the passageway as soon as they heard his screams.
Henke regained his composure back at the alcove where he had met the men, but he immediately pleaded with them that they take him back out of the tunnels, which is what they did. Once back in the elevator room of the Rijksmuseum, the men sat and had a frank discussion with Henke about what had been happening down there over the past few months. Jones explained that the first survey team which had encountered that specific sewer passageway resigned from their posts after just one night down there. A week later one of their co-workers who decided to stay on, committed suicide after complaining to everyone that he could hear whispers coming from that tunnel while he worked nearby. Not long after that Jones’ previous supervisor had seen someone standing at the mouth of tunnel 72F and had followed them inside. One of the clean-up crews found him crawling out of the sewer on his hands and knees, crying hysterically like a child.
He had been heavily medicated ever since, but no one knew exactly what he had seen down there, he would not talk of it, but the men who recovered him claimed he was repeating one word over and over frantically:
“Nazi”.
Henke was a nervous wreck after his experience and ordered that no one go into tunnel 72F. He continued to work down in the sewers, day after day in the dark, but he was consumed by the notion that he had seen something so frightening that he had forced himself to forget. Over the next few weeks he lost weight, and had trouble sleeping often waking up in a disturbed state, drenched in a cold sweat, unable to recall what he had been dreaming about.
The very idea that brave Henke could be reduced to this, that he could be affected so deeply by something he could not even remember in its entirety, preyed on his pride and his sense of self worth. He first tried to combat this feeling of helplessness by increasing his knowledge of the tunnels. Knowledge, as they say, is power and Henke felt that if he knew more about that place in the dark, that he would somehow be less afraid of it. He read about the history of the museum, and while he found very little of it helpful, one local legend struck a chord with him.
It was rumoured that during the second world war a number of Jewish families took refuge in the tunnels below the Rijksmuseum. When two SS officers were tipped off as to their whereabouts, they entered the tunnels with some local volunteers hoping to arrest them down there and most probably send them off to a concentration camp. The rumours were that the families ambushed the SS officers and their Nazi sympathisers, killing them and dumping the bodies somewhere in the sewers.
This was the story Henke related to me. It was sad to see him so shaken and vulnerable; a strong powerful individual who had never shown so much as a hint of fear for, or of, anything, to be reduced to a diminished man living on his nerves.
Unfortunately the story does not end there; some men are haunted both by what they have seen, and by what they cannot understand. Ego can be a terrible burden on anyone. Once it is fractured or damaged, the lasting effects can be devastating. Henke could not let go of his pride, nor his desire to feel strong again, whole. He had never been afraid of anything before and no matter what was in that tunnel, no matter how much I attempted to dissuade him, he was determined to confront it and reclaim his self worth.
Three days later Henke’s body was found at the mouth of tunnel 72F, stuffed into an old duffel bag. It was a heart attack which had killed him, but whoever broke, twisted, and shoved his body into that morbid sack after he died was never caught.
I should mention that the bag was of particular interest to the police in case it could reveal something about Henke’s death. It was traced to Germany, army issue to be precise, and hadn’t been manufactured since 1941.
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“It’s time to sleep now, Justin. Seriously. You’re getting too old for this.” My father stated, while slipping the covers underneath the edges of my body, to keep me snug in place as he tucked me in.
“You’re almost eight years old. You know the difference between what’s real and what isn’t.” His words didn’t comfort me in the least. He didn’t know what I knew. He couldn’t see what I have seen.
To this date, I’m still uncertain if what I had experienced on a nightly basis, was a series of reoccurring dreams, or a supernatural event that took place, which left me in a state of paralysis, and unable to die. I’m still here though, so it had to be a dream? Didn’t it?
My father gave a slow shake of his head, bringing his hand up to run his index and thumb against his thick mustache, one that was commonly seen on any man who had served time in the Canadian Militia. He was sleep deprived, and stressed because of my constant appearances in my parent’s bedroom late at night, due to these… Events?
“Now go to bed. I don’t want to have to talk to you again about this.” He stood from the side of the bed. He turned around, wearing his dark blue house coat, wrapped about his form so that nothing but the calves of his legs could be seen. He reached out for the light switch to my room. “Wait.. Leave it on?” I asked, almost in a begging tone, thinking that the light would be the key to keeping this.. Creature.. Away.
“Justin. You’re too old to be sleeping with the light on.” My father responded in his usual stern, uncompromising voice.
“Please…” I used my best pleading tones on him, hoping to sway his decision. A few seconds went by with his hand on the switch.
“Alright. But just for tonight.” He stepped around the corner and closed my door, which made me nervous for some reason. I waited to hear the sounds of footsteps that my father made as he trekked down the hall to his room, and then sprang from my bed, rushing to my door and opening it as gently as I could, so that I wouldn’t alarm my parents with the sounds, completely absent minded to the fact that the light from my room shone directly into their bedroom, as they never slept with the door closed.
I let out a soft sigh, sticking my head out of my door frame to gaze down towards their room. I could see a dark image of my father retiring to his bed. I then turned my head to look down the opposite side of the hall, which led to the living room, but for some reason, I couldn’t see anything. Just a pitch black tunnel which lead to a void of nothingness. Clearly not the case, but my over-active imagination was turning the gears in my mind.
After a second or two of playing out in my mind, skeletons from a video game I had played earlier, emerging from the black hole in the hallway that I had been staring into, I shook the thoughts from my head, and moved back to my bed, which was tightly placed in the south eastern corner of my room. My door was just a few feet away from the foot of my bed. I liked it, because I could see someone coming, giving me the chance to prepare myself for company. That’s what I told my family anyway. The real reason for the bed placement was so that I could watch the monsters and demons who were crawling into my room to take me away, warning me so that I could hide underneath of my covers. They couldn’t get me there. They could never get me there.
I reached to the side of my bed, where a pair of milk crates were stacked on one another, and an old radio played music from a radio station I listened to quite frequently. A minor amount of static could be heard in the background, but the joyful tones of the positively influenced music shut out the eerie sound of nothingness. I relaxed against my pillow, dragging the sheets and the duvet up to my shoulders, wrapping the edges of them around my neck to assume a comfortable position as I curled up, staring at the clock of my radio, feeling my eyes becoming heavy. Sleep, becoming free of fear and any bad emotions that would accompany it.
“What was that?” I sprang, sitting straight up in my bed as the distinct sound of someone bringing up the contents of their stomach onto my floor sounded heavily into my ear. It was even worse, considering the intense phobia I had of vomit, clutching the back of my neck to make the sounds make me feel even worse. I started to get choked up, feeling fear trading places with the blood that ran through my veins, freezing me in my spot.
“Mom? Tressa?” I asked in a shaking voice, hoping to all things that would hear me, that it would be one of my family members. Though, there was no reason for my family to be in my room, puking on my blue patterned carpet.
I sat up further, hoping to catch a slight view of who ever was being sick on my carpet, though my back fell against the wall that had one of my pillows up against it, as I had seen the black and green liquid spreading out onto my floor, followed with more gagging and dry heaving. My stomach churned, watching the soft spatter of bile spray onto my floor. Please stop.. Please..
I sat up again, and looked over the foot of my bed, though I didn’t see pajamas, nor did I see a house coat. I saw the bare back of a being, who looked as if they had been deprived of nutrition for quite some time. I could clearly see the rib cage, coated with a thin layer of skin, and each individual section of a spinal cord that trailed down the being’s back. I cried out for my father, hoping that he would storm into the room to rid this creature from existence, but no such thing happened.
Sitting up slightly, the being stood, looking as if it’s limbs were fused together, coming from different bodies. It’s mouth was wide across it’s face, a gape with small, thin rows of ivory spikes, still coated in that black and green liquid. His stomach continued to heave, forcing out small trickles of vomit onto the covers of my bed that hid my feet. I started to cry, but I couldn’t move. Tears welled up in my eyes, watching this.. Thing, staring at me. It wasn’t standing still, however. It’s entire body was throbbing and convulsing, even though it wasn’t making any movements towards me. It just stood there, shaking in spot. It’s black eyes, void of any soul, watched me in place, which seemed to please it. My fear, seemed to please it. I knew what it wanted. It wanted to take me back to where ever it came from. It could have been my subconscious in my head, after hearing nursery rhymes sung to my sister, but I had labeled this creature in my mind as Humpty Dumpty. I didn’t know why, but for some reason, I knew that was it’s name. It had no resemblance to an egg, or anything of the like about the character named in said tale, but this was what I called it.
It didn’t speak. It just made gurgling sounds, short, quick inhales of breath to made noises that appeared to be a form of chuckling. I cried out louder for my father. My mother. Anyone who could hear me. To no avail. A gnarled hand, which had flesh peeled back to expose bone fragments here and there, coated with it’s own plasma, reached down towards my feet. A brief surge of confidence flowed through my body. My feet were covered by my blankets. There was no way that it was getting through.
The hand seemed to alter it’s density, and the hand passed through my covers with no resistance, and I could feel it’s hand grasping at my ankle. It felt hot and cold at the same time. I can’t explain it. I blinked, and looked down, and saw that my blanket was completely gone, cast aside to the opposite corner of my room. Too far for me to throw. The hand then clutched tighter at my foot, and he pulled me. I felt paralyzed again, as I couldn’t move my own body to try and grip at my mattress, or remaining sheets to try and hold on for dear life. Limp, my body was dragged out into the hall.
I feared that this creature had come from the abyss. The one that I had played out the appearance of skeletons with earlier. No, oddly enough. The being who was taking me from my bed, had turned to begin dragging me down towards my parent’s room. What was going on? The last thing I remember about the blackened hallway, was seeing my sister peeking out from around her door frame, watching me in utter terror as this monster pulled me into my parents room.
There was a slight step going downwards into my parents room, and the back of my head cracked against the floor boards. I let out a yelp of pain, which seemed to awaken my parents, as both of them had sat up from their beds in synchronization. I turned my head, crying hard and reaching out for them, trying to express that I needed their help, but they just watched me, completely still with smiles painted across their faces. I was so confused.
Their wooden floor started to crack, and I could feel warm liquid soaking into the back of my pajama pants and shirt. I turned my attention back to the hand that was grasping at my foot, only to see that some how, regardless of physics, my ankle was being pinched in between two floor boards, and was slowly being pulled downwards. I screamed as loud as I could, watching the blood pumping out of the wound on my leg as my flesh and bone continued to be drawn down into the floor. I cried for my parents, who when I looked, were still staring at me, though their bodies were shaking, and their lips, pursed to grin, had spread slightly, showing teeth while watching me become sucked down between the thin gaps of their floor.
I kept crying, looking above myself, and seeing my sister standing in the doorway. The only person who actually looked like they gave a damn about what was happening to me, but she wouldn’t advance, nor would she say anything. She would just watch in horror as my body continued to slide into the crevice of the floor. “Please help me.” She couldn’t hear me. My entire lower body was consumed into the cracks, and I could only look down at my waist as it kept sinking, as if I were in quick sand. The pressure of blood building up, made my eyes feel like they were swelling. I couldn’t take this much longer. I opened my mouth to cry out again, as my stomach was claimed by the wood, though all that came out, was a heavily flowing river of blood that was forced from my lower body, to erupt from my mouth, followed by my eyeballs popping out of place due to the pressure inside of my body. Blood flowed from my mouth, nose, and eye sockets like a faucet was turned on inside of my cranium. My body was consumed completely, and the evidence of blood on the floor was absorbed into the grain of the wood, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
Finally, I opened my eyes again, hearing the sounds of chickadees chirping, and seeing beams of sunlight flowing through the curtains of my window on the other side of my room. I rolled to look behind me, seeing that my sister had come into my room in the middle of the night, wearing her pink one piece pajama suit. She stirred awake, bringing her hands up and rubbing her eyes. It was just a dream. I sighed in relief, and sat up onto the edge of my bed.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him.” Expressed my sister in a groggy, sleepy voice.
“What?” I shot a look back towards her, curious as to what she was talking about.
“He told me that if I wouldn’t go with him anymore, then he would take you.”
I stood, looking to her in horror, then looking to the foot of my bed, and seeing a miniature lake of vomit. My heart sunk, looking to it as my mother passed my door. She paused, looking into by bedroom at the mess on the floor.
“Justin, are you sick?”
“No mommy. That was me.” Tressa replied.
Was it? Or was my sister just playing to the demands of the monster who had killed me last night? How long had it been here? How long had my sister been dealing with the brutal torture that he had wrought onto me? Was any of this real? Was I truly awake? Tressa got out of the bed, and reached down, plucking her nursery rhyme book out from underneath of my bed, which was opened to the story of Humpty Dumpty. She apologized again, started crying, and left the room.
Credit To: [email protected]
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This journal was found in the attic of a fully furnished and abandoned town house in 2007 next to the last purported owner’s death certificate.
I.
My life is so perfect that it scares me. I see smiling faces from my wife and coworkers, my boss tells me that I’m doing a fine job, and the pastor pulls me up in front of the choir to set an example for the congregation.
They know nothing of my desire. If my priest knew what I was meddling in, he would condemn me to the fires of hell.
When my life was difficult, I felt more alive. Each day when I open my eyes as a successful family man, I feel as though I’ve slipped one rung further on a downward spiral of age, wrinkles, and systematic failure of my body as it repeats a daily crucible of perfection that most would envy.
I know some are jealous of my life when they see me on the street, and yet I would trade life, limb, and soul to live in their shoes for one day.
I crave INTENSITY.
The easy life is mind numbing.
II.
Routine, routine, routine. Every day is exactly the same as the one before it. There are a few minor details that I barely have a measure of control over. I can order a ham and swiss instead of a turkey and pepper jack for lunch, and I can scratch my dog’s left ear before his right. Coors Light, Michelob Ultra, Budweiser Select, Sam Adams Summer Ale. It doesn’t matter if I fuck my wife from behind, if I finish up on her glasses, or if she swallows.
Drunk is drunk. Pussy is pussy.
Everything is always the same. Soon, I’m going to try it.
I’ve waited long enough.
III.
This is the last week I’m going to keep myself locked in this prison of endless repetition. I have all my affairs in order. I’ve written a note to my family and provided for everything and everyone.
In case I get senile, this is a typical morning in my life on a normal day.
I wake up at five thirty on the dot because my bones have internal timers in them, and my hip catches on fire at around five thirty four. I take a swig of mouthwash on my way to the toilet to save time, and I spend a three minute stretch swishing Listerine through my mouth and managing to squeeze out inconsistent bursts of urine. I’ve had to prop my hand against the wall since I was fifty. Standing straight up to piss is beyond me these days.
My third young trophy wife Margerie can only make decent eggs over easy, and sunny side up is out of the question unless we go out. The bacon is microwaved for two minutes and thirty seconds because although her rack is perfect, she can’t cook to save her life. She spends every morning breakfast session explaining to me that my children from previous marriages are ungrateful and deserve to be cut out of my last will and testament. This all comes while I’m chewing spongy bacon and drinking cofee that tastes like engine oil.
By seven thirty, after I’ve shit, showered, and shaved, I’m in my boring Saab, puttering twenty minutes to work on economy cruise control. This twenty minute window is the highlight of my day. There’s no traffic, the morning show I listen to is sometimes funny, and I take my first valium as soon as my rear tires hit Nutwood Street.
For the record, my life was once gritty and unpolished, but also glamorous in a way that it was poetic. I miss being piss poor, living paycheck to paycheck, and not knowing what the next day would hold in store. I miss my first marriage, when everything was new, including some positions that I can’t do anymore because my fake hip would crucify me with pain for trying. I miss my 1970 Oldsmobile 442 that got six miles to the gallon. It was a one fifty five big block with a superstroke and a twelve second ignition top out. You felt like you were going to die if you lost even a smidgeon of control on a country road.
I was young then. It all comes back to age.
Old people all go out the same way. Heart attack, stroke, brain aneurism, cancer.
I want to be different.
It’s still sitting on my mantlepiece, but it doesn’t have to beg me anymore.
I’ll soon be determined to take it down and use it of my own free will.
IV.
I did it. I’ve been carrying it in my jacket pocket. I can feel how cold it is through my shirt.
In case I lose my mind, let me describe a normal work day, more for myself than for you. I am the second in command under a tyrannical office crone by the name of Jana. She runs a tight ship and she’s only been in the business for five years. She inherited the company from her father —- my old business partner. Soon, she had the support of everyone else, and I became the sideshow with some measure of plastic authority. She still wields the iron rod.
I usually sneak a second valium in for the morning meetings, and I smile and nod more than anything else. I make Jana feel like her ideas are good, like the employeees actually care about what she has to say. When we break for lunch, I use my hour to go to one of five places.
I can’t go anywhere the costs more than eight bucks. I made one hundred and sixty two thousand dollars last year, but Margerie doesn’t put out for me if I eat expensive food without her. She IS a trophy wife, after all. My choices are always limited to the Taco Bell Pizza Hut two in one, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, or the China Spring. The best deli in town is open before three, three blocks down, and I get to eat there once a week when our meetings cut short. They always have to put the meat back out because I stroll in at two fifty eight, and they glare at me with the utmost loathing. There’s no telling how many pastrami and loogie sandwiches I’ve had, courtesy of Jana’s rambling motor mouth.
When I get back from lunch, Jana is always gone, and I spend three hours walking around the office and telling my employees how good they are at their jobs. The truth is, some of them really ARE good, and they know they deserve a raise. I have to tell them that I need more out of them because Jana is too much of a tightwad bitch to pay them higher salaries. She saves the extra cash for botox and the newest Corvette every year.
No matter how good my day at work is, it ends in absolute frustration. I live eighteen miles from my office in the city, but in five thirty traffic, it takes me ninety minutes to get in to my driveway.
The best day at work I ever had was the last day for one of our interns, Sally. It was about ten years ago, but I still remember when she unzipped my fly, pulled out my cock, snorted a line of cocaine off of it, and then drained me dry.
It took me two hours to get home because of a jack knifed tractor trailer that day. Work always ends on a bad note, even when Sally is there for your afternoon delight.
I hope my wife doesn’t find this diary if something goes wrong. I never cheated to hurt her. I just like to feel intense. This fucking crazy thing is so cold in my pocket now that I have a red spot on my chest from where my skin is chafing against my shirt. I think I’ll sleep with it under my pillow tonight.
I’ve had enough of normal.
When I wake up tomorrow, I’m opening it.
V.
For such a long time, it was a smooth, hard stone, not unlike something you’d pick up out of a creek and throw through Jana’s front windshield. It’s been that way since I was ten.
When I was young, this town wasn’t much more than a church, a gas station, and a diner. I rode my Schwinn to service on a normal Sunday morning.
He wandered in after the offering prayer, and I know most of the Methodists thought he was a homeless vagrant, sliding from town to town with three handles of whiskey inbetween. He wasn’t.
He pulled me aside behind the cemetery graveyard in broad daylight before I went home because my folks weren’t at the service that day. Everyone talked and gossiped and I got plenty of warnings about talking to strangers afterward, but he was different than anyone I’d ever met. He didn’t have much to say, and he had to be at least a hundred years old, but one thing sticks in my mind, seventy one years later.
“You’ve got the blood to use it, boy. I have none left. It’s someone else’s turn.” he said with dry, cracked lips.
I wasn’t interested in his gift at first. Here’s an old man waving a rock in front of me and gibbering on about some lost art called “necromancy.” I told him I wasn’t interested in any work that was not of the good Lord’s. I was brainwashed.
To persuade me to take the rock, he used it on my bike. As of right now, you’re the third person to know about this.
I watched a clumsy, rusty contraption that had been handed down from poor kid to junk yard to dirt poor kid transform before my eyes. The stone glowed almost digital green, like the display you’d get on a high tech wilderness watch or something.
The problem is, back then, digital didn’t exist. Neither did color television.
I watched rust melt away in liquid red flakes, and dents faded like the metal was made of silk. In a few seconds, my bike was brand new.
“I’ll be dead soon, boy. Use it on something that breathes.” he said. He looked to be in such ill health that I was scared by the prospect of his death. He dropped the stone in my pocket, and I fled.
Back then, I thought honesty was the best policy. I told my parents an old man fixed up my bike for free in the graveyard with a rock. They kept me locked in the house for the next three months and told me it’s not nice to lie. I never told them about the stone. I kept it hidden in a safe place. It stayed in the back of my mind, but I ignored it for a long time.
When I was fifteen, my dog Becky got caught in the wheels of the neighboring farm’s tractor because she liked to chase things. It was an accident, but she lost an eye, broke both her back legs, and she was on her way out. It was horrible.
Of course, my father wanted to spare me the pain and grief with a blast of buckshot. Everyone told me it was the easiest way — that Becky would die an agonizing, slow death if my father didn’t end her life now.
An hour before he got home from work to put an end to it, I took the stone and wrapped Becky in a blanket. I still remember her crying from the shifts in weight as I carried her broken body to the graveyard. Every footstep was painful to her.
It took me six hours to figure out how the thing worked. I had to cut myself and give it some blood. As soon as my blood touched the surface, it opened up and became soft, like a fleshy sponge opening its mouth. The more droplets I gave it, the more it glowed, and the more frozen it became in my hand. My skin was numb with the cold — I couldn’t even feel my pocket knife.
I know I didn’t do it the way he did, because I ended up with a puppy with both eyes, but two broken legs.I couldn’t bring Becky back to my family as a pup without them asking questions, so I gave her to a gypsy trying to hitch out by main street.
My father tanned the living shit out of my backside when I got home, but luckily, he was the type of man who would beat you and stop asking questions afterward. He considered the matter finished, and I was grateful for that.
After feeding my blood to the stone, I felt a few years older, and my body showed the signs of it. I shot up to six foot three, got hairier, and started looking at girls more often. I can never say for sure, but I think giving that time back to Becky cost me most of my adolescent years. I went through high school as a twenty year old pretending to be a teenager. My birth certificate said otherwise, but for all intensive purposes, I was older than everyone around me.
I’m not asking for sympathy. I just want to pull you in to the sad affair that has become my life. My past is interesting. The present? Not so much. If I don’t explain all of this, then you’ll think I’m a horrible person for what I’m about to do. The future holds the most potential of the three.
Maybe these words can put you on my side. The only explanation I owe the world is “why.”
I don’t want sympathy or forgiveness; I only want you to understand.
VI.
I always had an inkling that my own blood wouldn’t work if the target of the stone was myself. It’s much worse than I imagined.
Here’s the last part of my daily routine. I know you have no interest in it, and that by now you’ve certainly heard enough of my babbling about how terrible normal can really be. I need this from you, and you can skip ahead to the end of the grimoire if you’d like, but it will help me to write it down. I feel so old that I can’t keep it straight in my head anymore.
When I pull in to the driveway on Nutwood Street, Margerie meets me when I open the garage. She tells me whatever concoction she’s left in the oven for me. It’s a game of mundane surprises. Tonight it’s meatloaf.
Before I can open the door in the garage that leads to the kitchen hallway, I have to shell out some cash for my darling wife. She’s most fond of Ulysses S. Grant and Bejamin Franklin, but today, Roosevelt will have to suit her.
To this day, I truly have no idea where my wife takes that money, or what she does with it. I’ve never asked, and I never will. This is possibly why I’m in my third marriage, but the intensity in life that I crave does not come from prenuptial feuds and accusations of infidelity. She shows me the movie tickets and provides better reviews than Ebert and Roeper. I’ve grown quite fond of her cinema rants.
After I pay my wife and she leaves, I spend a brief moment of time at the dinner table. Usually, I attempt to eat the food as quickly as possible, and I rarely finish half of it. Mostly, I’m looking forward to the after dinner valium and a glass of wine.
When I finish dinner, I watch recorded episodes of Jeopardy on the DVR with my new mutt, Sasha. I have her trained to bark in time with the bells when someone hits the Daily Double. Usually by Final Jeopardy, I’ve fallen asleep, but sometimes I keep my eyes open long enough for the Skinemax porno. More often than not, I fall asleep with my cock in my hand, and Margerie wakes me up to escort me upstairs for a goodnight romp.
You think these nights of the routine don’t sound so bad, but after so many years, it gets vicious. You can substitute Margerie for my first or second wife, change the house, and put new cars in the driveway, but the routine will never, ever change without something drastic to pour in to the mix.
Tonight, after forcing half of her dry meatloaf down my throat with a generous helping of Heinz 57, I opt to place the rest of the scraps on the kitchen floor for the dog before I lock the house. I grab this grimoire of my darkest confessions, and then I get in to my Saab and start the engine. I rarely see the dashboard lights and I’ve driven the Saab after the sun goes down less than a dozen times.
Driving on the open road with a dying sun rehabilitates my sense of danger and excitement. Not a single human soul knows where I am right now.
My first destination is the vast library at my country club. I haven’t used my membership in three years. My second destination is a back alley by the corner of Norfolk and Phelps Avenue, where the railroad tracks intersect the city between the haves and the have nots. There, I will surely find a soul in desperate need of my resources.
I’ve read enough, researched enough, and toyed with this stone enough. I should have known you can’t drain yourself to make yourself younger. It’s like moving money from your checking to your savings and saying that you have more money, when really, nothing changes. Eventually, if you do it enough times, the bank will get pissed off at you.
It won’t go from soft to hard again. It’s sitting here in my pocket, gaping wide open, expecting what it knows it’s eventually going to get.
I need someone else’s blood to make the magic truly potent.
VII.
She looked vulnerable enough. I never would have imagined that she was packing a Smith and Wesson.
The struggle was brief, but exciting. I didn’t open with a ruse or story. I told her that she looked hungry and down on her luck, and that I would like her to accompany me to dinner at the Cajun Kitchen, a short distance away.
She ordered a shrimp po-boy with red beans and rice and devoured it with an intensity that I truly envied. I’ve never suffered the pains of true hunger. I paid the tab and we left to walk a few blocks back to her alley.
She pulled the revolver from her torn coat around the same time that I shanked her with the dinner knife I swiped from the back of the restaurant. I waited until the train passed through at nine, and thank the heavens I did, for someone surely would have heard the gunshot otherwise.
Her eyes bugged out around the same time that her finger depressed the trigger, but the shock of being run through with a butcher knife overpowered her sense of depth, timing, and perception. She didn’t have time to aim the weapon and shot herself in the stomach. She made it easy for me.
I tried scooping her blood out with the stone, but that wasn’t enough. I used mason jars to store it in my trunk. When I got home, I went straight to the attic to give it what it needed all at once. Margerie wasn’t back yet.
I was able to retrieve large sections of the Munich Manual of Demonic Magic, despite the odd stares of the librarian hussy and her ill repute towards my interest in the subject.
I learned about the power of circles and the danger of using the stone without standing in the middle of one. I learned about fire and ash and the requirement of sacrifice to complete any true necromantic ritual. My sacrifice tonight was the neighbor’s cat —- or its organs, if you want to be specific.
Kiss my routine goodbye. Nothing will ever be the same again. Do you know how it feels to stand side by side with the spirits of eternity?
With each new drop, I saw the lives the stone had consumed. I could only guess which ones were victims of the old man who possessed the artifact before me, or how far back the lineage of sacrifice went. My homeless vagrant was last, and her stomach still had a gaping hole in it. She gnashed her teeth and tried to lash at me like a demon, but the barrier of the circle impeded me from harm.
If I’m going to be alive forever, I need some form of companion, and Margerie won’t cut it. She’s a terrible cook. God, just the thought of eating her eggs for eternity makes me want to find a random sewer rat on the street and give it a brand new lease on life at the cost of my own. I used the blood of the homeless woman to rejuvenate my dog. Sasha growled at first, but once she was in the circle with me and the stone took its hold over her, she seemed to enjoy it.
Even animals aren’t beyond the lure of eternal youth.
I still don’t know whose soul I will use to make me youthful again. A few names come to mind —– it’s choosing one of them and not the others that really challenges me.
The ritual ran in to the early hours of the morning, and Margerie was wary of my secrecy in the attic. How many owners has this thing had?
I doubt I will ever know the answer to that.
VIII.
Sasha has been bouncing off the walls when I get home and she paws at the locked bedroom door when Margerie and I have sex. She hasn’t done that in five years.
The term I’ve coined for the accuracy and power of these rituals is “necropotence.” The sacrifice, the environment, the time of night —- these are all factors that determine the extent of your success.
These small details could be the difference between your body evolving in to an eternal medium for the dead, or shaving decades of wear and tear off of your lifeline. The line I walk is so very thin. I’m lucky I didn’t unleash something by mistake when I was younger. Sasha turned out halfway good, and halfway possessed, but at least she’s not human. If she becomes dangerous, so be it.
All spirits serve me now.
I’ve realized that this power makes me greedy, and I’m ashamed to say that it feels wonderful. I won’t relinquish this for anything.
I don’t seek revenge on them for letting me lock myself in to a lifetime of mediocrity. Instead, I will use their lives as an apology. They will become part of something greater. They don’t realize who they have become or how miserable they make the rest of the world around them, but I do.
I have a duty to find a meaningful purpose for them.
I have seen the dead face to face, restrained from consuming my soul by nothing more than a line of chalk on the hardwood floor. Their rotting smiles form insidious and leering grins at me when I funnel the blood of my subjects through the stone.
I call them subjects and not victims because they become a part of the kingdom of the dead when they pass in to my prized artifact. This is above and beyond anything they could have hoped to achieve on this plane, because I have chosen them by the very classification that their lives are pathetic.
As of right now, I am no longer a man of the routine, but a necromancer.
IX.
Sasha and I didn’t have to sleep last night. We went for a walk.
She helped me chase down another vagrant across the railroad tracks. Something tells me that it’s not exactly Sasha inside anymore. Whatever’s behind those amber eyes is in this with me for the long run. She’s better for it.
I concocted an impromptu ritual in the woods and used most of the old bum’s blood. Right before the sun came up, I fed the last of what I’d gathered to the stone. I was back in time to take my morning piss at five thirty five, and guess what?
I can piss standing up now, and I flushed my valiums. Soon, I’ll be on my way to work.
X.
I made my own eggs and bacon and I told Margerie that she’s never been good at it. I also told her I was donating my entire estate to the local funeral home and cemetery. I found it fitting. The owner and I run in close circles.
When I got to work, I quit on the spot and told Jana I hated her more than I hated her old man. I spent time writing checks to various people around the office who have never received a Christmas bonus, but earn more for the company than Jana does herself. People told me I looked good —- ten years younger, even.
I waited in the parking lot until she left and I followed her to her condo on the other side of town. I wasn’t surprised to see her whip out a bottle of Early Times as soon as she hit her living room.
Jana won’t have a drinking problem anymore, and if I were to approximate the years she gave me, I’d put myself right around thirty years old.
When I got home, I told Margerie that I dyed my hair and I’ve been exercising. She’s threatened by my new outfit I have going here, but she also can’t resist the urge to fuck me.
I waited until she was riding me reverse cowgirl, and I thought myself a warrior poet as I slid the knife inbetween her third and fourth ribs. The sheets did a marvelous job of soaking up all the blood. I was able to wring them out in to the circle.
I should bleed more people out in bed. I feel like a teenager again.
XI.
Those were all my changes. Maybe you’re sitting in my attic and you’re the first person to come across this monumental discovery. I can’t give you any more of the names on my list or reveal my plans for the future. You understand, I’m sure. Although I have the forces of the underworld on my side, I can’t have anyone meddling in my affairs.
If you’re the detective type and you have some great sense of right and wrong, I can imagine you’ll probably be on your way out the front door of my empty house to contact the authorities.
Maybe you are the authorities. My place has been condemned for so long that society has been forced to notice. In that case, good luck. You’ve never seen my old face, much less the face of my youth. Will you take this dirty journal to a precinct and place it in a folder where it will grow cold over the next twenty years until the statute of limitations expires?
Or, perhaps there’s a chance that you’ll change your routine.
Look around. I’ve left the stone in the basket of my old Schwinn in the corner of the attic. To have any chance of chasing me, you’re going to have to reject mortality.
Will your magic be potent enough to find me? How much are you willing to bleed?
Will you bleed for justice, or become one with the dead like me?
Do your research. Without enough necropotence, you’ll be nothing when you finally face me.
CREDIT: D.A. Wilcox
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Publisher’s Note: This story is a sequel to the original story Violet. The author encourages you to read the first installment prior to reading this tale, for maximum enjoyment.
The money was running out, but Violet needed to splurge. The loneliness of being on the run was getting to be too much. It was time for some fun, time to feel like a kid again. She rubbed some warmth back into her arms as the line slowly snaked its way along the cracked sidewalk before disappearing into the club’s entrance.
Tonight was an eighteen plus show. It wasn’t too much of a stretch, but her diminutive frame would beg for an ID check. She could handle that. For now she kept a low profile and avoided conversation until she reached the front of the line and the welcome warmth of the club’s entrance.
The bouncer, a bald beefcake with a black goat-tee, looked at her with a knowing smirk. “Ticket, and I.D. please”, he asked, skepticism written across his face.
Violet handed over the ticket, but she had no I.D. to give.
The bouncer took the ticket with a knowing smirk and began to speak. But before he could utter a sound, Violet returned his gaze and entered.
It took no more than a moment to manipulate his unsuspecting mind. A minor rearranging of thoughts was all it took, harmless really. A glazed look came over the bouncer’s face as he tore her ticket, senselessly handed it back, and waved her through making no move or protest as she disappeared into the dark noise beyond. He’d already forgotten her.
Inside, Violet’s youth was no less conspicuous, but she wouldn’t be challenged so long as she didn’t try to buy a drink or cause a scene. She took her time exploring the club and taking measure of the crowd. Events like this were great for people watching. It seemed more like a costume ball or Halloween night than a metal concert. Everywhere she looked young people preened about in their best leather and denim costumes festooned with patches and emblems like a jumbled collection of merit badges.
She felt good being among people like herself, well more like herself at least. Her abilities had advantages, but life in the shadows had created a sense of alienation. Having no friends and being alone at an event like this, where everyone else was in groups or pairs, only deepened those feelings.
Violet floated over to the merchandise booth to peruse the concert shirts, more to seen occupied than anything else. At $40 each the shirts seemed insanely overpriced. The wad of cash she had scored from Johnson had grown dangerously small, and that $40 could feed her from some time.
“Hey,” came a voice over the din of the crowd and DJ. Violet turned and found herself faced with another young girl. By her size and body Violet guessed she was the same age or close to, but her heavily lidded eyes suggested she was a bit older.
The girl was dressed for a night out in pink fishnets that disappeared into a short black skirt, an exposed midriff leading to a low cut tube top that barely covered a modest chest, and topped off by a puff of artificially wavy blonde hair and gaudy make up. She screamed glam-punk.
“You look young for eighteen”, the girl challenged with a catty look.
“So do you,” Violet tersely responded.
“I wonder why,” the girl added with a wink and a lilt that would pervade her speech. Without missing a beat she went on, “I freaking love this club. It is like the best to see a show in! Such a good scene.”
Violet wasn’t sure how to respond but wanted to keep talking to the girl. She offered a noncommittal “Yeah, looks it.”
The girl smiled broadly at Violet “I’m Abigail” she said deftly extending her right hand. Violet hesitated briefly before taking it. It had been so long since she had spoken to another person her age that it seemed strange, strange but also comfortable, normal, like the way her life should be.
“I’m Violet” she responded.
“Nice to meet you,” said Abigail, “but really, call me Abby, everyone does. Hey, it’s getting late. Let’s move towards the stage. I want to be close when the band starts.” She grabbed Violet by the arm and led her through the throng.
The pair snaked through the crowd moving ever closer to the stage as Abby shamelessly pressed her body against guys only to slide past them. Violet declined to imitate and simply rode Abby’s wake. They talked mostly about music and the bands they liked, or rather Abby spoke and Violet occasionally interjected. She seemed the perfect popular girl, bubbly, charismatic, comfortable grabbing and holding the attention of others.
Violet took advantage of a slight break in Abby’s monologue to blurt out, somewhat awkwardly, “How come you’re alone here?”
Abby gave another catty look; she seemed to give them often. A man may have found it seductive, but it had no effect on Violet. “Because most of my friends aren’t into metal and can’t be bothered trying to slip in on an 18 plus night,” Abby answered.
“Well, how did you get in?”
“Probably the same way you did.”
This gave Violet a start and her eyes betrayed her. Abby noticed and gave a knowing smile and wink, as if to say it was no big deal.
Violet’s thoughts raced. What did Abby mean? She couldn’t know what she had implied, but Violet could find out. Abby’s wide deer-like eyes were so open and expressive that she could be in and out of the girl’s mind easily. But that seemed wrong, like a betrayal. Everything was going so well and she was having fun just being young, so why mess it up over something so small? Best to just let it go.
Abby opened her mouth to continue but instead abruptly pulled a vibrating cell phone from her pocket. The screen’s glow lit Abbey’s face and reflected in her eyes as her fingers danced across the glass surface. Texting, Violet correctly assumed.
Finished, Abby opened her mouth to start in again but this time was interrupted as the lights dimmed to darkness signaling that the show was about to start. The crowd roared as an illumination of the band’s ominous logo appeared on stage, and the show began.
The second encore finished leaving both girls exhausted and disheveled. Violet couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun.
“That was freaking awesome,” shrieked Abby.
Violet nodded in agreement.
“I can’t believe that they played Love Bites at the end! That’s like my favorite freakin’ song!” Abby looked peaked and a bit pale, but it could just be the lights. “C’mon” she said as she grabbed Violet’s arm and lead her towards the bar. “I am so thirsty after that. I can’t believe they played Love Bites!”
The club had mostly cleared out and the few available seats were occupied by drunken young fans waiting for their nausea to subside before stumbling away. The two girls stood by the bar each drinking a soft drink, and continued to engage in small talk about their now shared experience. Abby suddenly rolled her eyes, placed her cup down on the bar, and reached in her pocket to pull out her cell phone.
“Just one sec,” she said as her fingers deftly poked about the screen. She finished quickly and tucked the cell in her back pocket.
“Texting your parents? asked Violet.
Abby snorted, “nah, just a friend.”
“A boyfriend?” Violet was trying to be catty now, but it didn’t feel right, and she knew it didn’t sound right.
The awkward moment passed as Abby shook her head and took a sip of her drink before continuing, “so, you wanna try ‘n meet the band?”
“Meet the band?” Violet scoffed. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, don’t get your hopes up. Not everyone does it but if the band is really cool, sometimes they’ll hang out by their tour bus and meet a few fans. I’ve done it before. We’re young pretty girls. They’ll take a few moments for us,” Abby added a wink.
Violet considered. It didn’t seem too far-fetched, and it wasn’t as though she had any place to go, nobody was waiting up for her. Besides, she liked talking to her new friend, just being with another person felt good. Why not let the night linger before going back to her real life.
The girls left the club for the crisp spring air of the city, Abby in the lead.
“Down here, I think I saw the tour bus parked off Washington Street when I came in. C’mon.”
Violet followed Abbey around the corner and down the darkened street.
A pair of blue tinged headlights cast the girls’ shadows long on the pavement, but illuminated no tour bus. By the time Violet realized, a large black SUV Suburban had stopped alongside them, and it was too late.
“Abby baby!” called a cheerful voice from the rolled down passenger window.
Abby turned and replied, “Hey Steve, I was just looking for you.”
“’Course you were, baby, course you were.”
Two giant barrel shaped men ambled out of the car and approached the girls. A quick glance across their eyes told Violet all she needed to know, they were ready for violence.
The one in the car called Steve continued in a friendly cadence, “so Abby baby,” he said it like it was one word, “is this the one you were telling me about?”
Abby nodded, “Violet, this is my friend Steve. He takes care of me.”
A cold sinking feeling flooded Violet’s body as realization set in. She had trusted Abby, even thought of her as a friend.
“Ain’t you gonna say hi?” asked Steve. The light glinted on a gold tooth and Violet could see her own image reflected back at her in his dark mirrored sunglasses.
Her mind raced. Play it cool she though. “Hi,” she responded trying to seem collected and unfazed. In her peripheral vision she glimpsed the behemoths moving behind her, cutting off escape.
“Well, what we waiting for? Let’s hit the road,” Steve commanded the girls.
Abby obeyed without comment or hesitation, but Violet hung back.
Steve turned the mirrored lenses on Violet. “Why don’t you just hop on in Violet? I’d hate for us to get off on the wrong foot.”
A massive hand fell on Violet’s shoulder and began driving her forward. Escape was not an option; it never had been, not since she’d decided to trust Abby. With effortless power the behemoth guided Violet to the rear passenger door of the vehicle.
There was no choice, she climbed into the SUV.
The interior of the vehicle had been modified to create a spacious passenger area. The second row had been removed and the first reversed to face the rear. Steve sat alone, sprawled out on the rear bench facing the two girls across from him.
“So Steve,” started Abby, “that thing we talked about, you know, if I brought you somebody.”
“Don’t worry baby. I’ll take care of you when we get back to the Casa.”
Violet was scared but understood that in situations like this, looking weak was dangerous, best to seem confident, or maybe even dumb. “The Casa?” she asked.
Steve turned his lenses towards Violet. “The Casa,” he answered, “is my place of business and your new place of employment. Which leads to the next issue, sweetie. It ain’t normal for somebody looking like you to slip into a club alone like you did. You got anybody out there who might be looking out for you, someone that might object to me giving you this opportunity?”
She saw a dim chance “Actually, yeah.”
“Uh-huh. And what, may I ask, is his name?”
“Johnny.”
“Johnny?” Steve smiled broadly. “I never heard of any Johnny, and I know every player worth knowing. So either your ‘Johnny’ is a two bit nobody I don’t need to worry about, or he don’t exist. Now, you’re not lying to me are you?”
Violet kept silent.
“Cause lies are nothing to build a relationship on. Real or not, this Johnny ain’t going to be a problem, is he?”
Too terrified to lie or even speak, she simply shook her head.
“Good, cause I don’t like having problems. Problems are bad for business, but ‘ol Payday and Breaker here, they real good at solving problems. Ain’t that right boys?”
“Damn right boss,” the hulking driver responded over his shoulder.
“All kinds of problems,” Steve added cryptically, looking directly at Violet.
“Steve,” Abby butted in, “do you think that I could have just a little taste now? It’s been so long and …”
“Bitch, I told you when we get back to the Casa I’ll hook you up, ‘til then shut your mouth. Shit. You outta learn something from this Violet here. She knows to keep silent and let the man do the talking. Ain’t that right?”
Silence.
Steve smiled. “See! That’s what I’m talking about. You learn quick. I can see you’re gonna work out just fine.”
Steve prattled on, all the way to the “Casa” which turned out to be a white two story building that might once have been called Victorian but the only architectural description it now merited was dilapidated.
The SUV parked and Violet, flanked closely by Payday and Breaker, followed Steve and Abby up the cracked and wobbly paved walkway. Steve pounded on the on a windowless slab of a door, white paint flaking off onto the stoop. “Open up, it’s me,” called Steve. A mechanical locking mechanism sounded and the door creaked open spilling forth a gloomy smoke filled light that smelled strongly of cigarettes, pot, and musk.
“Sup crew,” called Steve as he sauntered in. Violet again felt a powerful hand on her should that drove her inside.
The interior perfectly complimented the circumstances. Every flat surface was piled with various magazines, overflowing ashtrays, crumpled baggies, drug paraphernalia, empty bottles, balled wads of aluminum foil, and discarded food wrappers. Among the detritus, on torn and broken furniture, sat several inebriated young men, the “crew” as Steve had called them. Violet’s green eyes fell across their bleary eyes and briefly entered a few minds, but there was nothing to see behind their empty stares.
Abby called out in her habitual bubbly voice “hi guys!”
One smirking thug on a shredded couch responded in a gravelly voice, “Abby, my favorite little hoe. We’re going on a date later on, right?”
“Ask Steve about that.”
Steve ignored the interchange and raised his hand for attention, “listen up boys. I want to introduce y’all to my new employee, this here is Violet.”
“Young as always, eh Steve?” commented one.
“Ya got a good eye for talent man, this one is fine,” said another.
Steve waved his hands dismissively. “Yeah, well hands off for now. She’s booked already.” Violet raised her eyebrows at this. “Introductions done, I’m gonna show the little lady to her room so she can rest up for tomorrow’s first day of work. C’mon sugar” and he waved Violet to follow.
“But Steve!” Abby desperately interjected. “What about what my fix!”
“Christ! I said I’d take care of you! Hassle me again, and you’re going to be dope sick all night. Now entertain these gentlemen ‘til I get back. Then, I’ll hook you up.”
Steve led the way through the smoky gloom into a short hall lit by incandescent bulbs that hung from bare wires. Violet was driven from behind by one of the behemoths, Breaker or Payday, she had no idea which. Steve stopped at a bare door that instead of a knob had only a metal plate, in the center of which was a keyhole. Steve produced a single key from his pocket and unlocked the door which creaked on its hinges as it swung open and ushered Violet in with a gracious wave of the arm, like a butler showing off five star luxury suite.
“This here is your new home and office all rolled into one. You live and work here for now, ‘til you prove yourself. Behave, do what you’re told, and keep the customers happy. Make yourself worth my while and I’ll make it worth your while, we clear?”
Violet silently looked at her own image reflected in his dark glasses.
“Good. You get some rest. You got a big day tomorrow.” The door swung closed leaving Violet alone in the dark.
* * * * * *
Bill pulled his BMW into the open garage beside the Casa d’Amour. Every time he thought of that ironic name it made him smile. He heaved his corpulent bulk out of the driver’s seat and clumsily pulled down the garage door before moving through the gloom and cobwebs to a side exit that conveniently opened into the fenced-in back yard. He trod heavily on the worn path through the overgrowth and climbed the stairs of the porch. The sodden rotting boards creaked under his weight as he wrapped on the door three times.
A gruff, “who’s there” called from inside.
“Pfff, you saw me pull in. Open up.” Bill called. The latch opened and the door swung in. The doorman fell back into the shadows to reveal an approaching Steve striding to meet Bill, his hand outstretched.
“My man!” exclaimed Steve as he chummily shook Bill’s meaty hand. “Been too long!”
“Ah, work you know. I hear you got something for me, eh?”
“You know it, fresh meat from the street.”
“Meat from the street? You make it sound so appealing.”
“Nah, take my word man, this one’s nice and fresh, and fine as hell!”
“Another runaway, huh?”
Steve nodded and led the way into the hall. “Recent by the looks of it,”
Following behind, Bill continued, “but I’m the first right?”
“First of mine.”
“Good enough, the way you run ’em they aren’t good for much after a few months.”
Steve stopped at a door. “Alright, she’s in here. One hour?”
“To start.” Bill pulled out a wad of bills. “The regular deal?”
“Sure thing,” replied Steve pocketing the cash as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Here’s the key if you need it,” he said passing it to Bill, and then continued loudly, “if this bitch gives you a hard time, you just call out. I’m close by.”
Bill cast his eyes over the dank and miserable room. It was square and prison cell sized. Paint and plaster flaked from the cracked walls, the ceiling was water stained, and the floor looked to be hard wood but was almost black from years of neglect. The only furniture was a bureau, a lamp with a humming bulb, and a metal framed unmade bed on which sat the girl.
Steve hadn’t been exaggerating. If Bill had to guess he’d say she was about 16 and tiny, a mere waif, with long dark hair that hid her downcast face.
Bill smiled at Steve over his shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
“Have fun,” called Steve as he pat Bill’s shoulder and quietly closed the door. The lock turned from without.
“So,” Bill said with a smile. “You’re Violet?”
No answer.
“Well, I don’t need to call you anything, but you’re going to call me ‘mister’,” he said unhitching his belt. “Now, look at me and say my name.”
Violet looked up and met his gaze.
At first he was struck by her beauty, how her angular features were framed by long dark tresses, but then by those deeply beautiful green eyes. He caught his breath and found he couldn’t look away. Not that he wanted to. All that existed in this moment was an overwhelming loveliness that seemed to be engulfing his mind.
His fading reason dimly realized the trap, but it was too late, he couldn’t escape, even if he wanted to. Bill fell to his knees before Violet, and gazed up at her as she took full possession.
Time passed in a blur. He relived past “conquests”, and enjoyed flashes of gratifications he had never experienced. He saw scenes of lovely young girls bound in a white van, and witnessed cruelties that his jaded imagination had yet conceived.
But there was something else, a scratching in the depths of his brain. As though some alien being were lurking in the folds of his subconscious, moving and rearranging ideas, thoughts. At times he sensed its presence and moved to reveal its shadowy form, but then his attention would be distracted by the opening of some new vista of beautiful obscenity.
Now and again came a knocking on wood and a voice, as though from another world, asking something he couldn’t make out. Nonetheless, he would hear his own voice respond simply with cries of “More! More”.
Time passed and the intensity slacked and waned. The visions became repetitive and less engaging. The lurker’s presence faded and his grip on his own mind reasserted.
He awoke suddenly to find himself sitting on the floor, his pants around his ankles, and his hand on himself sticky with cool drying seed. He looked up to see the girl, what was the name, Violet, lying on the tattered bed, her face to the wall, shaking with sobs. Bill smiled at that. He always found it gratifying to leave a whore in tears.
He wiped his hands on his undershirt and pulling up his pants noticed that his watch read 7:08 pm. He had been here for more than four hours! Where had the time gone? He hurried to his feet, fumbled the key from his pants pocket, unlocked the door and swung it open to reveal a waiting Steve.
“Bout damn time, buddy,” Steve said dryly, his stare so severe that it pierced out from behind his dark shades.
“Yeah, well…”
“I don’t want to have a problem here Billy, my man. But the thing is, you ran well over your time. I had another appointment that you shot right to hell for me. Fortunately they let Abby baby fill in, but this shit ain’t cool.”
“Sorry man,” Bill explained, trying to play it off as though he could control the situation. “I just lost track of the time.”
“Yeah, well I didn’t. And you know what they say about time and money, so…”
“Aw, c’mon. You know I’m good for it, I just need to run to the bank and get some…”
“You need to run? I think you mean we need to run, in my car, with Payday drivin’. Am I right?”
“Hey, that’s fine.” Bill smiled and put his hand on Steve’s shoulder trying to defuse the tension. Steve’s expression didn’t reciprocate. “You hooked me up today. I’m not going to do anything to screw that up. ”
“Glad we straight.”
“It’s just that…”
“What?”
“That” Bill stopped himself and struggled against his words, but to no avail. Some compulsion came over him, as though he lost control of his own mouth as the words mechanically came forth. “That, I don’t want anyone else to see Violet. I want her for myself.”
Steve’s face shone with disbelief.
“And,” Bill went on, surprised at his own words but unable to stop himself, “I want to buy her from you.”
Steve threw back his head and laughed. “Shit, man! Is that pussy made of gold or what? I had you pegged wrong. I never thought you were the type to fall in love with some hoe.”
“It’s not like that. There’s something about her, something I can’t explain… I” Bill fought against the words, but was unable to avoid blurting out, “I need to buy her.”
Steve’s face lit with amusement. “Damn, that bitch must be mad crazy to stir up your nasty head! Problem is, you know I don’t roll like that. That ho in there, she belongs to me and if she’s half as crazy as you say, that pussy’s worth a lot more to me than it is to you.” Steve put his arm around Bill’s slumped shoulders as he lead the man down the hall and towards the car. “Besides, ‘buy her’. What the fuck you gonna do with her? Keep her in a box or something?” he said with a laugh.
“You’re right man,” Bill replied, “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Twenty minutes later the latch to Violet’s door opened and Steve emerged.
“Baby, you done some fine work today!”
Violet didn’t look at him.
“You’re a natural born hoe!” He tossed a McDonald’s bag on the floor that landed with a crunch.
“Dinner’s served. Now, you eat up. And when you’re done, put these on,” and tossed in a grocery bag filled with what Violet assumed were clothes.
“Now listen, eat then dress. I don’t want any stains on those clothes. Tonight you’re hitting the streets with Abby baby and I need you looking good.”
Hitting the streets with Abby, Violet thought. So it hadn’t worked. At least she had escaped the afternoon and bought a little more time. One thing Violet was sure of, this was not going to happen. She would rather die than be a victim.
* * * * * *
“What’s the matter Abby baby? Why you keep grabbing at your head?”
“Ugh, I have the worst fucking headache.” Abby cupped her temple as the pain hit again. “I was fine earlier. It just started. Shit timing. Steve, I don’t wanna turn tricks with a headache. Maybe I can get just a little taste now, before I start, just for the pain?”
Steve snorted, “I don’t think so Abby baby. I need you working, not passed out in some dumpster. Besides, tonight’s Violet’s first night on the turf and I need you to show her the ropes. Course, from what I hear she could teach you a thing or two. Ain’t that right Violet?”
No answer.
Steve chuckled and nodded approvingly, “cool, baby, cool.”
Abby looked at Violet on the seat across from her and felt the pressure building for another bolt of pain. This chick looks pissed, Abby thought to herself. Yeah, well tough fucking luck. Maybe it was rotten what she’d done, but she needed another warm snatch around. Ever since Mandy “left” she was pulling all the jobs herself, and it was wearing her down. Besides, if this chick was going to live on the street she would end up a whore sooner or later, and good enough for her. At this Abby’s thoughts were drowned out as another wave of pain broke over her.
Steve looked askance at Abby. “Alright Breaker, you can stop here, this’ll be fine.”
Violet and Abby climbed out of the black Suburban and onto the dim sidewalk. Steve rolled down the window and looked at Violet through his lenses, “A john gives you shit and don’t wanna pay, mention my name. See the police, run. They catch you, don’t mention my name, don’t talk to ’em, don’t say nothing ’til I come for you. You feel me?”
Silence.
Steve nodded and gave the ‘eyes on you’ sign as the SUV sped off.
“Let’s go,” said Abby, “The game tonight is to do BJs. Anything else takes too long. Steve needs us to make …” but she was interrupted when Violet grabbed her arm and looked into Abby’s face.
“Why?” Violet asked staring deeply at her, “tell me, why you keep doing this? Don’t you want better?”
The questions boiled up such pain that it took all her effort to prevent it from spilling onto her face, not that it mattered. Violet could already see into Abby’s soul, and knew she spoke her heart.
“You think you’re some fuckin’ princess? This is real, bitch. This is what I do to live. And you wanna know what? You ain’t no better, and you’re gonna live the same fucking thing.” It made Abby feel good to unload, to make somebody else feel like she did, worse even. Violet had just arrived on the bottom while Abbey had already been there long enough to get used to it.
Violet’s eyes blazed as Abby continued, “you may not get it, but I know what I am, and I know what you are. You’re just a trash street slut.” Explosive blinding agony dropped Abby to her knees and left her dry heaving onto the pavement. Through tears and sweat, Abby watched as Violet lifted first one foot and then the other, smashing each down on the ground hard, breaking off the high heels.
“You don’t know what I am,” Violet spat at her as she turned and ran.
Abby smiled, she knew this wasn’t the smart thing to do. The prissy bitch would never get far. Steve was far too careful with his possessions.
Sure enough, just as Violet reached the end of the street the black SUV pulled to a screeching halt as a towering shadow poured from the passenger side. The thug easily caught Violet and held her back against his huge body as Steve calmly stepped forward to confront his disobedient employee.
“And what the fuck was that? No sooner you get out here than you try to run? Violet, I thought we understood each other.”
“No, I wasn’t trying to run,” Violet cried. “I, I, saw a rat. I hate rats.”
“No, Steve,” said Abby stumbling over, a shit eating grin on her face. “There wasn’t any rat. She said she was going to run away and tried to get me to go with her. She said that we’d be better off without you, in some lesbo fantasy of hers.”
“Lesbo fantasy, eh?” said Steve.
The giant’s hands dug deeply into Violet’s flesh, powerful and irresistible.
“Payday, toss this bitch in the car, we’re going back to the Casa. Abby, you just earned yourself a night off, and a reward,” he added with a smile.
Abby beamed and winked at Violet as Payday effortlessly manhandled her helpless body into the back of the SUV.
From somewhere a roll of duct tape was produced that was used to blind Violet’s eyes, gag her mouth, and bind her hands behind her back. She heard the Suburban’s back hatch pop open and felt herself roughly tossed inside.
The bouncing of the vehicle settled as the car came to a stop and the engine died. As the hatch lifted a dim phosphorescent light shone around the edges of the duct tape over Violet’s eyes. Strong hands grabbed and roughly hauled her out of the trunk before setting her on her feet, gripping her shoulders and shoving her forward.
Violet dragged her feet, unwilling to assist in her nightmare.
“Better fucking walk or I’ll drag you by the hair,” growled the deep voice of her captor from behind.
With no choice, Violet allowed herself to be driven along the cracked pavement and into the brothel, roughly shoved past a smiling Steve who held her door open as she was sightlessly tossed in, falling helplessly onto her face, her hands still bound behind her and unable to break her fall.
“Breaker!” Steve’s voice called. “You’re up brother-man.” He turned his attention back to Violet. “As for you, bitch. You’re gonna learn a hard lesson tonight.”
Steve slapped Breaker on the back and said, “Have at her man! Show her how you earned your name!”
Steve withdrew as the giant slammed the door heavily shut and locked the door before turning to regard Violet menacingly as she lay helplessly on the floor.
“Time to get down to business, gonna work your ass over good” he said in a deep gravelly voice as he drew a box cutter.
Terror rushed through Violet as she thrashed and gasped ragged breathes over the duct tape gag, wet with drool and spit. She felt herself grabbed from behind and effortlessly lifted has Breaker manipulated her tiny body, pressing her face down into the unmade bed. Cold metal scraped across her wrists and the duct tape binding separated, releasing her hands. Scarping up the back of her head as the wet and dripping gag went slack and dropped from her mouth. Finally the blind was quickly ripped away from her eyes taking strands of hair with it.
Roughly turned over, Violet gasped for breath and peeled her eyes open to reveal that disgusting male lust she had seen all too often before smiling down on her. The drool soaked gag still clung to her hair and her makeup was smeared all over her face.
“Nice and messy, just the way I like ‘em,” Breaker crooned.
Now was her chance, now or never. Violet focused and charged into Breaker’s mind, sharply and quickly. His eyes rolled back and the limp mass of muscle and fat slumped heavily on top of her.
Violet had no idea how long Breaker would be out, minutes or hours. The real question was how long until Steve and his cronies decided to check on her.
She wriggled from underneath the unconscious monster and his body flopped heavily to the floor.
Her clothes were still on the bed where she’d left them. She quickly stripped out the whore outfit Steve had provided, wiped her face clean on the skimpy lace threads and dressed in her own jeans and t-shirt. They may be dirty and crumpled, but more appropriate.
Moving to Breaker, she rifled through his pockets, quickly finding the key and a wad of cash, both of which she stashed into her own pockets. Finally she pried the box-cutter from his fingers and considered her options.
The blade was something, but far too little to use against Steve and his crew. She had her talents, but even still the struggle would be heavily against her and she couldn’t pierce Steve’s glasses. She needed a distraction, something to give her time. As Violet surveyed the room, her eyes fell on the lamp and a bad idea germinated in her mind.
She dragged the dresser and placed it on top of the bed. Unplugged the lamp, cut through the brittle nylon shielding of the power cord and twisted the bare positive and negative sections of wire together. She then wrapped the bedclothes around the exposed copper and laid the sheet wrapped wire on top of the mattress.
Unsure what to expect, Violet gingerly held the pug end of the lamp’s power wire and leaning away, ready to jump clear, she decisively drove the plug into the wall socket.
Heavy black wisps of smoke immediately began emanating from both the sheets and wall outlet, quickly followed by aggressive sparks that erupted from as if from a sparkler.
The smoke and sparking gave way to a flashing and loud pop as the fuses blew taking out the power and plunging her room, and most of the first floor, into sudden darkness. The gloom surrounding Violet brightened as flames rose from the bedclothes and quickly began to consume the bed as they moved up the wall, and filled the room with a noxious smoke.
Violet dropped flat to the floor and crawled towards the door, the short blade in one hand and the key in her other. The room was filling quickly and Violet, staying low, felt with her hands up the door to the key hole. The unlocked door swung it open and with it a burst of air filled Violet’s starved lungs but also breathed stronger life into the blaze which roared with growing
|
There’s this painting my wife loves, called “Death and Life”, by Klimt. I don’t know what she finds so fascinating about it. I made all the right noises when she showed me her beloved framed print when we were first dating, “oohing” and “ahhing” and making up some bullshit about warm and cold color schemes and the specific choice of angles and line. She was an artist, our first few dates involved long walks through museums, starting in Picasso’s blue period and ending in heavy petting and blue balls.
I took an art history course as an elective when I was finishing up my doctorate, I remembered enough of the lingo to charm my fantastically gorgeous future wife and lure her back to my stupidly filthy apartment. We’re talking me as the foul bachelor frog, sitting on a lily pad made of empty take out containers surrounded by pond of enough unwashed clothes to keep a laundromat in business for a cool six months.
I remember scrambling to find two of any sort of cup-like container for the bottle of wine we had brought back while she was in the bathroom. I rinsed out a couple of coffee mugs and ran into the bedroom to try to clean up the condom wrappers that had been sitting on my bedside table since 2003. On the bed, neatly laid out against the rest of the chaos, were my wife’s dress, bra and panties. She came out of the bathroom completely nude aside from a pair of high heels, took the wine from me and took a swig straight from the bottle. I fell totally, completely and irrevocably in love.
I have no head for artistic things – I work in finance, I get creative with numbers, not paint – but I fucking love her stuff. She’s made a name for herself over the past few years, critics call her the American Damien Hirst. One of her first exhibits was composed of a dozen oil paintings of rotting pastries, surrounding an actual cake filled with thousands of dead ladybugs being fed to a mummified tarantula dressed up as Little Miss Muffet. I have no idea what it meant but it was sick, successful and catered by Balthazar so I ate about 20 croissants. They did not have bugs in them. I checked.
She was amazing. She had the body of a Laker girl and the face of a Modigliani model, and still does. She’s charming, charismatic, deep – the kind of person people flock to, want to be around constantly. She fucked like she had something to prove, she had a twisted sense of humor. As soon as I hooked a job with enough figures to keep a girl like her satisfied the way she should be, I proposed, bought her a historical brownstone in the city with a garden full of roses and hardwood mahogany floors. And for the first few years, she seemed happy. We were the kind of couple you see in New York Magazine and scoff at because they’re just too damned lucky.
But we had a rough spot, like all married couples do. She was still the superficially the same woman I fell in love with – looked amazing, people always asked me when she was going to host the next dinner party, she still had an amazing eye for art. I knew, though – I knew she was miserable. I could see it – the misery – in the corners of her eyes and the curve of her mouth.
It happened gradually. First it was the shower curtain. She bought three or four from a small boutique downtown, brought them home so we could choose one out together. We decided on one, pale blue, made of material that was impractical and way too expensive for a drapery in a bathroom but we had the money and it made her happy so why the hell not. A few days later, I was shaving and realized she still hadn’t put the curtain up. It wasn’t until about a month after that I caught a glimpse of it hanging up in her studio, cut to shreds and dyed till it was almost unrecognizable.
I chose to ignore it because I had learned it’s usually not the best course of action to call an artist out on their creative license, unless you want to start an all-out war with no discernible end.
A year after that, though, I had no choice. She had been so on edge it was like she was standing on a razor. She usually had a show every 3, 4 months or so, and if anything she had too many ideas, the galleries always asked her to trim down her collections. When the year passed without so much as a single finished painting, I started to worry, both about her well-being and our bank account. We were extravagant spenders, and each of her shows would bring in a cool $20,000 that paid for a few months of European beaches and ski trips in Aspen.
The final straw, though, is when she burned down the roses. It turned out she had finished dozens of projects over the year, she had hated all of it and had either destroyed or painted over everything. While I was at the office, she flew off the handle, doused about 16 canvases in lighter fluid, and set the yard on fire. When I got the call from the fire department, I rushed home to find her sitting in the back of the ambulance, covered in ashes, blonde hair singed at the ends. She was smoking a cigarette. I looked over the burnt flowers, the skeletons of her paintings, the ruined limbs of broken sculptures, and asked her what happened and why. She took a drag of the cigarette and said, “It was mine to burn.”
She took big, fancy pictures of the inferno. A family of bunnies suffocated in the smoke, she had them stuffed and mounted in size order on a baking soda volcano like the kind you see in middle school science fairs. She gathered up a few of the charred bits and pieces, wired it together, and made some warped, pained-looking kind of phoenix thing weighing in at 400 pounds and easily over eight feet high. She called the whole thing “From the Ashes”, and the reviews in the Times called it “…incendiary. Her first foray into becoming a true artist.” Someone bought the phoenix. I pity the person who wakes up every day and looks at that strange thing, suspended in constant agony.
We were both drunk, at a random, expensive, vaguely Dante’s Inferno-themed bar in San Francisco when I finally got a chance to ask her what was bothering her. We had been making dark jokes all night about the beautiful irony of her show and our current locale. At first she vehemently denied anything was wrong, angrily pointing out that we had made four times as much off of her last show as anything before it, that it had more than covered the damages, that it had paid for the vacation we were on. I stayed silent. She tossed her newly cropped hair, and looked like she was going to open up for a second. I saw her soft blue eyes fill with tears, then she took a shot of whiskey from a glass that had a bull’s head and smirked.
“Well, for starters,” she slurred, nonchalantly dangling the glass from the bull’s nose ring. “I’m fairly certain I’m pregnant.”
She let the glass drop from her finger and it shattered on the floor as she slid out of her seat and stumbled to the exit. I sat there for awhile and drank more, feeling furious, confused, and miserable. I remembered her face when she showed me that Klimt painting. I remembered how she wore glasses back then, and how she pushed them up the bridge of her nose when she smiled as I talked about the fucking warm and the fucking cold colors and the fucking angles and lines.
We converted her studio into a nursery. Rather, I did, while she stayed in San Francisco and did God-knows-what with her artist friends. I had a landscaper come in and replant the roses. I worked a lot of overtime, drank myself to sleep while I skimmed through parenting books. She came back when she was almost full term; I came home from work one night to find sonogram pictures posted all over the fridge of two healthy-looking twins, big baby girls. I walked into our bedroom and saw her dead asleep on top of the covers, belly swollen, smelling faintly like pot and paint thinner. She had a rainbow of dried paint on her fingertips. I loosened my tie and walked to the nursery.
She had been busy.
The canary yellow I had chosen was covered in a layer of translucent blue, and she had covered one wall in Klimt-esque patterns and curlicues. The creamy plush carpet was covered in paint splatters – she had worked furiously to finish. She had cut a swathe from one of the new rose bushes and made a giant bouquet, shoving them so tightly in the vase that some had escaped and made their way from their perch on the changing table to the floor. She had scattered them in the bassinet, on the windowsill. It was chaotic and beautiful. The next few years were peaceful, for the most part. We bonded over raising the girls. Despite my wife’s less than careful prenatal preparation, they were wickedly smart and beautiful. They both looked like her, with long, curly blonde ringlets and blue eyes. Sometimes, when I put them to bed, I wondered if any of my DNA was in them at all. They were like miniature versions of her.
My wife agreed to see a psychiatrist for a little bit. She took some medication for awhile, Xanax, some mood stabilizers. Eventually she and her doctor decided her crisis had been hormonal and temporary. We started having dinner parties again, soothed the gossip that had infected our social circles.
She stopped painting and took up teaching at a university. She seemed content again, even happier than she was before. Every once in a while I would catch a look in her eyes like repressed artillery fire, like she was ready to explode at any second, but it never lasted for longer than a few seconds before they went back to the soft cornflower blue I knew so well. And who doesn’t get a little agitated every once in a while?
I rose through the ranks at work. I loved the feeling of power that came with promotions. I loved my girls. And by God, I loved her. My crazy, disgusting, beautiful, hateful and loving, extraordinary wife.
Then came today.
Today, I came home from work early.
Today, my wife took the day off to be a chaperone on a class trip to the MET. They were after her for months because of her expertise in the art world, they wanted the children to experience the culture in the most sophisticated way possible. I thought it was ridiculous, they were one to three-year-olds in a private daycare; they saw more beauty in Cheerios than in Monet’s water lilies. But they wore my wife down, and she was given a gaggle of toddlers and wide-eyed teachers to tour around the museum.
I came home for lunch because I had forgotten my iPad that had notes on it for a presentation I was giving that night. I walked through the rose garden and noticed a tiny piece of sculpture left over from the Ashes exhibit from so long ago. It was half of a tiny bird – it had the kind of exquisite detail that my wife used to be so famous for. I was pretty sure it was an actual bird that she had cast in clay. I thought I could see a small piece of feather in one of the cracks. I idly wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before.
I went inside and poured myself a glass of orange juice. The fridge had pictures that my daughters’ drew – happy, crooked stick figures that looked nothing like the beautiful horrors their mother used to churn out. I was happy about that. I hoped they would fall in love with numbers like I did.
It was absolutely silent, and I sipped the sweet citrus and enjoyed the nothingness. Then I thought I caught a vague scent of fresh paint in the air.
Curious, I walked into the living room. And there was my wife, sitting on the leather couch with a bottle of wine, looking like an angel of death.
She was covered head to toe in blue-gray body paint, with a special concentration underneath her eyes. She was wearing a revealing patchwork blue dress, covered in crosses of various shapes and sizes. Not a dress, I realized, but the shredded shower curtain from so many years ago. I could see most of her still-perfect breasts, the curve of her waist. The bottle of wine was elongated and painted a strange shade of orange. The smell of paint was stronger in here, an overwhelming smell of lighter fluid, and something else I couldn’t place. She had shaven her head.
I stared at her for awhile – minutes? An hour maybe? Eventually she took a swig of wine from the bottle, swirling it around in her mouth. I noticed paint, deep blues and even deeper reds, around her fingers. I sat down in the arm chair across from her, unable to think of what exactly I wanted to ask her.
Maybe because I knew.
Maybe because I didn’t want to know.
I noticed a camera on the table between us, I went to pick it up and she rested her gray hand on mine before I could, softly, gently, with all the familiarity of years of marriage. She opened her mouth to speak, soft pink lips made pallid by the paint.
“They were mine.”
And I’ve been sitting here, knowing what’s behind the door to my daughters’ room, with the Klimt wall we never repainted. Knowing why my phone keeps ringing with calls from the school, from the NYPD. Knowing why I couldn’t find my sleeping pills last night. Knowing what that smell is. Seeing in my peripheral the red pooling and staining the carpet from underneath the door, the pile of clothes neatly folded next to my wife on the couch. I can picture that thick wire she used to fit all of her subjects where she wanted them, what a perfect, detailed recreation it must be.
Because she’s so perfect.
I see the phoenix in my mind’s eye.
I hope, when she flicks that cigarette she’s about to light, we both fucking burn.
|
Part 1
I stared at the odd hole that had appeared in my arm overnight. It was located on the inside of my forearm just before the bend of my elbow. I’m positive it wasn’t there when I went to bed last night. How can I be so sure? Easy, because there used to be a mole where the hole is. It’s like the mole collapsed in on itself and became a hole.
I couldn’t tell how deep the hole was. All I could see was the rim of skin around it and then blackness. There was nothing else, no blood, no tissue, nothing but an endless black void.
I probed it with my finger and expected it to be sore, but it didn’t hurt at all. If you saw how deep it was you’d think my entire arm would be in pain. The hole was the same shape as the mole it replaced and was about as wide as a pencil. There wasn’t any blood that I could find on my clothes or sheets. Whatever made it did so without breaking any blood vessels.
Since I wasn’t in any pain and the hole didn’t look inflamed or infected I was going to wait and see if it would close on its own. Once I decided that I jumped in the shower. As I washed my arm I noticed something that alarmed me a bit, all of the water that flowed into the hole never filled it up. That’s not possible, right? It would eventually fill with water, right? It didn’t though.
That unnerved more than I cared to admit so I finished washing and quickly got out of the shower. After seeing the amount of liquid that poured into my arm I couldn’t stand to look at the hole any longer. I covered it with a small bandage then got dressed and ready to go to school. Before I did that though I gave my forearm a little shake to see if I could feel any water sloshing around inside of it. I couldn’t.
I did my best to ignore the hole and was doing pretty good until lunch. While I ate my sandwich my arm started to feel wet. I glanced down and noticed a small stream of water flowing out from beneath the bandage. I quickly ripped the bandage off and couldn’t believe my eyes. Water was streaming out of the hole.
I used the tip of my finger to plug the hole and get the water to stop flowing. It worked, but only as long as I kept my finger pressed to it. Since I didn’t know how to get it to stop I walked into the bathroom and held my arm over the sink and just let the water flow down the drain. After a few minutes the water eventually slowed to a trickle and then stopped altogether.
I returned to my table and sat down. After I glanced around to make sure no one was watching me I grabbed the straw from my drink cup and placed it over the hole in my arm. I then started to slowly push it into the hole. I wanted to see just how deep it really was. I got it about halfway in my arm which should have been impossible. The tip should have started poking out the bottom of my arm, but it didn’t.
What happened next scared the shit out of me. I went to pull the straw back out, but it was tugged out of my grasp, and into the hole where it disappeared. What the fuck, I thought as I jumped up and stared at my arm. This had to be some sort of fucked up magic trick. My mind couldn’t think of anything else to explain what had just happened. It was that or I was going crazy.
As I sat there and wondered what I should do a little metal cylinder slid out of the hole. I just watched as it popped out then fell onto table. When it hit the tabletop it came apart to reveal a rolled up piece of paper nestled inside one of the hollow sections.
I picked up the paper and unrolled it which revealed the handwritten note on it. This is what was written on it:
Hey Collin (or however you choose to spell your name), I know you have a lot of questions about the hole in your arm. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much. What I can do is apologize for the inconvenience it has caused you and will likely continue to cause you.
We had a little problem with this experiment we were working on. We don’t know what went wrong, but whatever happened caused this weird little wormhole to open in the mole on my arm that leads to the mole in your arm.
Because of this hole we are now connected across space and time. I know that sounds like the plot to a really bad science fiction movie, but I really am you. I just live in another dimension. Don’t worry, I am doing everything I can to fix this mistake and I am confident I can close the wormhole. In the meantime, if you could, please sign your name to the bottom of this note and place it back into the wormhole so the next Collin gets the message.
P.S. Please refrain from sending anything else through the hole. It can create some awkward situations. Also, keep it covered when you bathe.
P.S.S. If something living comes through the hole, burn it (or drop it in acid if you happen to have some available.)
I picked up my pen and glanced down the list to look at all of the other Collins that had signed before me. There must have been over fifty signatures on the sheet so far. Even though each of the Collins that had signed came from a different dimension the handwriting for each one was very similar.
I signed my name to the bottom of the list and placed the sheet of paper back inside the cylinder. Then I picked it up and slid it into the wormhole. As I did so I wondered how many Collins the cylinder would travel to before it made its way back to the first Collin or back to me.
Then I thought, what the fuck did he mean by something living!
Part 2
“Collin.” The sound of my name being called out pulled me from a restless slumber. I looked at the clock and groaned. It was just after 1 AM.
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “Collin.” There it was again. It sounded deep and throaty, kind of like a frog.
I stopped and peered around my dark bedroom. I thought I was dreaming when I heard it the first time. The second time it clearly came from somewhere in my room.
I reached over and turned on the lamp that sat on my nightstand. “Collin.” That time it sounded like it came from the closet. As I turned towards the closet doors, I happened to glance down at my arm. I stopped what I was doing when I noticed a small hole in the bandage I used to cover the wormhole.
The opening was ringed with ragged little half-moon shapes and frayed pieces of fabric. It looked like something had chewed its way out. Have you seen a leaf that has been eaten by a caterpillar? That is what the hole in the bandage looked like.
Seeing the bandage reminded me of the note that had come through the wormhole a couple of days earlier: If something living comes through the hole, burn it…
“Collin.” That didn’t come from the closet. That sounded like it came from the bathroom. Whatever was calling my name seemed to be moving around. The bathroom is on the opposite side of the room from the closet.
I stood up and walked to the center of my bedroom and waited for it to happen again. I figured I’d have better luck pinpointing it if I listened from a central location.
When I got up off the bed I clamped my hand over the hole. I didn’t put much thought into the action. I just wanted to prevent anything else from coming through. While I waited for my name to be called again I looked down at my hand. Then I imagined something biting its way through the bandage. My hand probably wasn’t the best thing to plug the hole.
I didn’t want something to bite its way through my palm, so I removed my hand. I had no idea what had come through. I let my mind wander over the possibilities. What did it look like? How big was it? What if it were venomous, or worse, what if it were infectious or harbored parasites? I was starting to get worried. I’ve seen enough movies to know alien creatures were never a good thing.
I ripped the damaged bandage off my arm then scanned my room for something I could use to cover the exposed wormhole. That was when I noticed all of the spare change that sat on my dresser. I walked over, grabbed a quarter, then walked over to my nightstand and grabbed the roll of duct tape I kept in the drawer.
“Collin.” I didn’t bother to try and pinpoint it. I wanted to secure my arm first.
I placed the quarter over the hole and wrapped my arm in a layer of tape. That should keep anything else from getting through for the time being. Unless it could chew through metal, I thought. Shut up! I chided myself. I needed to focus on finding the thing that had come through. Worrying about what it was capable of wasn’t going to help me at that moment.
I tossed the tape on the bed and returned to the center of the room and waited. I didn’t have to wait long. “Collin.” It definitely sounded like it was coming from the bathroom.
I quickly walked in, turned on the light and scanned the room, but saw nothing. This was really starting to annoy me. The sound was so loud and so clear. Why couldn’t I find the thing that kept calling my name?
I started to move my toiletries around. I opened the cabinet under the sink. I pulled the shower curtain to the side. I even got down on my hands and knees and peered behind the toilet. I couldn’t find anything.
I turned and started to walk out of the room. “Collin.” I nearly shit my pants. I am not kidding. It sounded like someone came up behind me, leaned over my shoulder and yelled my name in my ear.
I whirled around and gave one of those halfhearted karate swipes, but I only struck air. I then took a defensive stance and glanced to the left and right. That is when I noticed the strange looking bug on my shoulder.
If you have ever seen a cockroach then you already have a good idea what this thing looked like. Imagine a standard cockroach, the ones that can fly, that has been stretched to twice its length. It also looked a little stockier than a normal roach. Instead of being brown, this bug was an off-white color, almost grey. The creepiest thing about it was that it was semi-translucent.
I may have screamed as I flicked it off my shoulder and onto the floor where it landed on its back. Once it righted itself it shuffled its wings, cleaned its head with its front legs, and said “Collin.”
Holy shit, it’s a talking bug, I thought to myself. Then I remembered the warning and shut the door to prevent it from escaping.
The bug cocked its head to the side as it seemed to consider what to make of the giant standing before it. I guess it decided I wasn’t a threat because it spread its wings and silently flew directly at my face.
Okay, it might not have been coming right at my face, but it did start to fly. That put me on the defensive so I used my karate chop to swat it out of the air. It was a good chop. I knocked it into the toilet.
I walked over and watched as the bug flailed around in the water. For a moment I considered flushing the toilet, but again, I remembered the warning.
I shut the lid of the toilet and ran back into the bedroom and grabbed the lighter out of my pants pocket. I then grabbed the empty soda can off my nightstand and returned to the bathroom. My plan was simple. I was going to put the bug in the soda can and set it on fire.
To get the bug into the can I used an old razor I had on the sink. I held the can just above the water and used the razor to guide it into the opening. The bug didn’t hesitate when it was given the choice to enter the can or drown. It crawled into the can.
When I set the can on the counter the thing said my name again. “Collin.” I could feel the can vibrate as the sound reverberated against the aluminum.
I quickly shoved a bunch of toilet paper through the opening with just enough sticking out so that I could light it. Then I lit it. I could hear the bug run around the can as it frantically tried to avoid the flame. After a couple of minutes the fire died down to a few embers of paper and the bug stopped moving.
I shook the can just to make sure it was dead. When it didn’t make any noise I dumped the contents of the can into the sink. The bug’s legs were all curled up close to its charred body. I poked it with my finger. When it didn’t move I picked it up and held it in my palm to get a better look at it. It definitely looked like some weird species of cockroach.
As I examined it I felt a soft pinch on the center of my palm. It wasn’t dead! It bit me! I could see its head move ever so slightly. I dropped it into the sink and used the bottom of the can to pound it to pulp. Then I picked its body up with a wad of toilet paper and shoved it back into the can. I burned it again. Once the flames went out I packed it with more toilet paper and burned it a third time.
When I looked at the small welt growing where the bug bit me I started to panic. I convinced myself I was going to die. I cleaned the wound as well as I could. I washed it, I poured alcohol on it, and then I put some antibiotic on it.
By that time I was feeling light headed and felt like I was going to pass out, so I crawled back into bed. Before I knew it I fell asleep.
I awoke around 8 AM and sat up quickly as I remembered the events of a few hours ago. I looked down at my hand. The welt was gone and all that remained was a slight red area that was sore to the touch. I guess I wasn’t going to die.
I swung my feet out of bed and was going to go take a shower when I heard a metallic tapping. I didn’t know what to make of it until I realized it was coming from my arm. Something was banging against the coin I taped to my arm.
I pulled the tape off and removed the coin. As soon as I did, a small metal cylinder popped out of the wormhole.
I picked it up, opened it, and unrolled the note that was inside. This is what was written on it:
To the Collin who sent the bugs through the wormhole, you are a COLOSSAL DICK. That was not funny. I know you did it intentionally. If those bugs lived in my universe I totally would have done the same thing.
To everyone else, be on the lookout for some long thin cockroaches. They have the strange ability to mimic sounds by rubbing their wings together. This particular species seems to be able to mimic the sound of our name. I thought my fucking house was haunted.
I hope this note finds you before the roaches do. Don’t worry. They are harmless and relatively easy to kill with standard bug spray. Don’t try and pick them up though, they bite.
P.S. Make sure you kill them all. They breed rapidly.
That is just like me to pull something like that. I agree with the Collin who wrote the note, I totally would have done the same thing if those bugs lived in my dimension. As I rolled up the message, placed it back in the tube, and sent it back into the wormhole I wondered just how rapidly the bugs bred.
I got my answer when I heard my name called out a dozen times from various locations around my room. It was just like the seagulls in Finding Nemo, only they were saying Collin instead of mine.
Fuck burning them. I caught them all and sent them back.
Part 3
I slid the thick rubber strap back over the opening to the wormhole. I had to remove it to allow a message tube to come through. Once it was back in place I read the note.
At first I thought it was another joke. The wormhole had become a source of amusement for quite a few Collins. They liked to send random things through it (like the roaches) and wait to see how the other Collins responded. That is why I thought, yeah right, when I read the first line of the note. When I finished reading it that thought was quickly replaced with, oh shit.
This is what was written on the note:
WE ARE BEING HUNTED (There was no greeting this is how the note actually started.)
I have received a few messages asking if anyone else has seen a strange man in a black suit hanging around. I have seen him. At first I didn’t know what to make of him, he didn’t seem threatening. He would just stand off in the distance and watch me. That changed this morning when he tried to kill me.
My advice to you is this: If you see him, KILL HIM! If you cannot kill him then RUN! (The capitalized words were underlined three times.) Do not wait for him to make the first move. You might not live to regret it.
Given the number of queries that have come through I think it is safe to assume that this is not a single man, but several men with the same appearance. Their arrival probably has something to do with what happened to us. I think they may be drawn to the wormhole.
If you have not seen a man in black yet, it is only a matter of time before one finds you. You need to prepare yourself. If you do not own a weapon, find one. If a man in black shows up in your dimension his only goal is to kill you.
Stay safe and I am sorry I caused this. Once you are done reading this please pass it along.
P.S. These assassins may look like men, but they are not. Don’t be fooled by their professional appearance. When you look one in the face you will see it only looks human from a distance. (This was the last line of the note.)
Great, I thought. As if things weren’t bad enough with all of the weird shit that kept popping out of the wormhole, I now had to worry about being stalked by some interdimensional serial killer.
I spent the next couple of days constantly looking over my shoulder searching for the boogeyman in black. Every guy I saw in a dark suit was a potential suspect. I’m sure I made more than one businessman uncomfortable with my scrutiny. There was one guy who seemed to like the attention, but he was way too weird to be an alien.
I considered buying a gun, but I couldn’t afford one. Plus, I’m not sure I would be able to shoot someone, even if they were from another dimension or wherever. I opted to carry an old pocket knife instead. My father gave it to me when I was ten. The six-inch blade was dull and had several nicks, but it would still get the job done.
Four days after I received the note I started to let my guard down. I couldn’t keep walking around in constant fear of a man that might never show up. The note was the first and only time I’ve heard about the men in black.
Who knew how many Collins were connected; there could be a million of us, right? So, the way I figured it, the chances of a man in black showing up in my dimension were about the same as the odds of me winning the lottery. I was never going to win the lottery and figured I’d likely never see the man. Why would he come here? I’m not that special.
Yes, I know my assessment of the situation was flawed. I failed to take into account that there were an unknown number of men hunting us down, and that we didn’t know how they were finding us. I learned I wasn’t good at figuring out odds when I won the man in black lottery later that afternoon.
The morning of that day was fairly uneventful. Nothing had come through the wormhole and I didn’t have any classes. For the first time since it appeared in my arm everything felt normal. It was such a mundane morning that I was lulled into a false sense of security as I got ready for work that afternoon.
As I was about to open my front door and head off to work, I got this strange feeling of vertigo. I felt like I was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I know that is vague, but that is the only way I can describe it. It only lasted a few seconds, but it troubled me enough to make me stop and lean my hand against the door.
I could see the giant rubber band wrapped around my outstretched arm and wondered if the wormhole might be what caused the dizzying sensation. Weren’t things like that supposed to emit radiation or some other type of dangerous substance?
No sense worrying about it now, I thought as I grabbed the knob and opened the door. I’m sure the look I gave when I noticed the man standing on the other side my door was meme worthy. I bet yours would have been too if you opened your door and came face to face with the man in black.
Collin was right when he implied the man in black wasn’t human. He was pale to the point of being white. He wore a hat to cover his obviously bald head. His expressionless face was completely hairless and looked too perfect; like it had been manufactured. Even the material of his suit seemed otherworldly. The worst part was his eyes. They looked artificial. Like the eyes you’d expect to find on a doll.
I noticed all of that in the second it took to slam the door and lock it. I wish I had been able to afford a gun. I wouldn’t have had any problem shooting that creepy fucker.
I ran out of the backdoor onto my balcony. I then climbed over the railing and lowered myself down until I could drop to the ground. Thankfully, I was dressed for work, so I had my keys in my pocket.
I ran over to my car, got in, and drove off. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw the man in black standing on the curb watching me as I drove off. As I watched him disappear from view, I started to wonder if that strange sensation I experienced had anything to do with his appearance. I needed to send a message to the other Collins as soon as possible in case that is what happened. Having some kind of warning, even if it only gave us seconds to react, was better than none at all.
I drove about an hour outside of town and stopped at a truck stop. I figured that should be far enough away to gather my thoughts. I quickly sent a message telling the other Collins about what I felt right before I saw the man in black. Then I called work and told them I wasn’t feeling well and needed to take the night off.
I did all of this while I ate dinner at the diner that was part of the truck stop. After weighing all of my options I decided to head to my parents’ house and see if I could lay low there and figure out what to do next.
As I pulled out of the parking lot and headed back towards the interstate, I saw the man in black as he casually walked down the side of the road. I don’t think he noticed me as he continued on his way towards the truck stop. Apparently he could track me; there wasn’t any other explanation for how he found me so quickly. I would have to let the Collins know about that.
Since I could be tracked that meant I couldn’t go to my parent’s house. I didn’t want to put them in danger. My only option was to keep driving until I figured something out. That was eventually going to be a problem considering how broke I was.
I doubt anyone would let me crash on their couch while I fled a killer. This is one of those times I wish I had a crazy friend who collected weapons like the apocalypse was coming. I could use a small arsenal right now.
Part 4
Things went from bad to worse a week after I fled the man in black. While I was on the run, more and more reports of the strange men started to pop through the wormhole. Thankfully, some of the Collins had sent through accounts of how they managed to kill the one stalking them. Apparently, I’m a bit of bad ass in some dimensions. However, I was not a bad ass in my dimension, so it wasn’t going to be an easy task for me.
The men in black could not be stopped by simple means and by that I mean guns and knives. You couldn’t shoot them in the head or stab them in the heart and expect them to fall. Their bodies didn’t function the way ours did. Injuries that would kill us didn’t faze them. The only way to stop them was to dismember them or burn them. That was a prospect I was not looking forward to.
I fear that more than one Collin may have fallen victim to the men in black. A few days earlier a plume of dark smoke started to pour out of the wormhole. The smoke was so thick I had to pull over and wait for it to stop and clear out of my car. Normally the smell of cooked meat would make my mouth water, but when it accompanied the smoke it made me queasy. My car still reeks like a steakhouse and not in a good way. I started to drive with the windows down after that.
The smoke wasn’t as bad as what came through the wormhole the next night. It happened while I was driving. I had one arm on the steering wheel and the other on the gear shift when my arm started to feel wet. I assumed it was just water. When I glanced down and saw what it really was, I slammed on the brakes and almost got rear ended by the driver behind me. It wasn’t water that I saw, it was blood. There was enough coming through that it started to seep out from under the thick rubber strap that covered the hole.
I recovered my wits and drove to the next exit and pulled into a fast food restaurant. I ran into the bathroom and pulled the band off my arm. There was so much blood coming out you would have thought I punctured an artery.
I held my arm under the water until the flow of blood slowed, then stopped altogether. I grabbed a paper towel to dry my arm, but stopped as something else started to come through the wormhole. I couldn’t identify it at first, but once enough of it had spurted out I recognized it for the meaty flesh it was. I immediately started to gag. I was able to keep myself from throwing up until pieces with bone and bits of hair started to come through. I barely made it to the toilet before I hurled my guts out.
I didn’t care that I was hugging the bowl of a public toilet. Pieces of what I assumed where another Collin just came through the wormhole like ground beef from a grinder. That was far worse than anything that could be on that toilet. Just thinking about it as I write this is making me nauseous.
I sat and hugged the bowl for an eternity. I know I pissed off at least one customer who wanted to use the toilet. But I wasn’t going to get up until I was good and ready to.
After I cleaned the vomit out of my nose and off my chin I went about the task of cleaning up the pieces of Collin that had come through. Most of them were on the floor next to the toilet. They continued to ooze through as I puked up everything I had eaten that day.
I managed to clean it all up with without throwing up, but only through sheer force of will. As I walked out of the bathroom I decided someone was going to pay for that and I bet you can guess who I had in mind.
I sat in my car and took stock of everything I had with me that I could use as a weapon. I had my pocket knife, but the other Collins said that was an ineffective weapon. I had my car. I could use it to run the bastard over. I had my lighter which I could use to set him on fire, if I had an accelerant. I also had a tire iron in the trunk, but that had the same problem as the knife. It couldn’t do damage fast enough.
To make matters worse, I only had a quarter of a tank of gas left and was down to my last five dollars. Even if I hadn’t decided to confront the man in black I would have been forced to face him sooner rather than later anyway. Frustrated that I couldn’t think of what to do I got back on the interstate and drove.
I got about five miles down the road before my car started pulling to the left. I didn’t know how far it was to the next exit so I just pulled over onto the shoulder and got out to check what was wrong.
Fuck me, I thought as I noticed my front tire was flat and I didn’t have a spare. I looked up the road then back the way I had come. I could walk forward and hope there was an exit or I could walk back to the exit I just left.
It was a tough call, so I just flipped a coin. Heads I go forward, tails I go back. It landed on tails. I popped the trunk and grabbed the tire iron. I wanted to at least be able to defend myself.
As I grabbed the tire iron I looked over at the band around my forearm. Nothing had come through since the bathroom incident. That seemed ominous and it got me thinking about some of the messages that had arrived earlier in the week.
When news spread about the men in black all of the Collins were sending out their theories about who they were and what they wanted. Most of them were ridiculous, but there were two that stuck out as possible to me.
The first one proposed that the men in black were some type of entity whose function is to maintain the balance of order and chaos in the universe. When the wormhole that bound the Collins together was created it likely tipped the universal balance towards chaos. In order to restore balance we must be eliminated.
The second theory proposed that the wormhole was not an accident, but was instead a deliberate act designed to tether all of the Collins together. It would make us easier to track through dimensional space and therefore easier to kill. The big question here is why? None of the Collins had a good answer to this question except something wanted to erase us from the multiverse.
Both theories had one thing in common; the men in black wanted us dead. That meant they probably weren’t going to stop trying to kill us. In other words, if I kill the one stalking me now there is a good chance another one will show up and take his place. Our only hope was if the Collin that created the wormhole was able to close it.
I mulled all of these thoughts over in my head as I walked back to the exit. I must have walked about 2 miles before I saw the silhouette of the man in black in the distance walking towards me. I guess it’s time, I thought to myself as I tightened my grip on the tire iron.
The stretch of interstate I was on was dead. I hadn’t seen another car in over 30 minutes, so I didn’t expect anyone to stop and help me. Even if they did, they’d probably try to help the man in black first since he was dressed in a suit and looked like a respectable businessman. At least from a distance he did. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that hadn’t been washed in a week.
When he was about a hundred yards away I stopped and waited for him to close the distance. As I stood there I noticed a large chunk of asphalt sitting on the ground. I picked it up and weighed it with my hand. When he came within throwing distance I chucked it at him. It hit him on the shoulder. He kept walking.
He stopped when he got about six feet away from me. He then reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a strange looking device. I held the tire iron up ready to swing it the moment he made his move.
He took one step towards me. I fidgeted and raised the tire iron a little higher.
He flipped open the device. It looked like some sort of metallic cuff. He took another step towards me.
He was now within striking distance. He didn’t seem concerned by my threatening posture. I swung the tire iron and struck him on the side of the head. All it did was knock his hat off and make him turn his head to the side.
He then reached out with his free hand and grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off the ground. I dropped the tire iron and tried to pry his fingers loose as I started to choke. His grip was like a vice.
This entire time the man in black didn’t make a sound or show any expression. I don’t think he even blinked.
I flailed around as he tried to place the metallic device on the arm with the wormhole. I was starting to lose consciousness and with it the strength to fight. In desperation I reached into my pocket and pulled out my pocket knife. I flipped the blade open right as he snapped the thing onto my arm. I lashed out with the knife and felt the blade pierce the device then sink into my arm.
There was a flash of light and that weird sensation of being everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Then I lost consciousness.
Part 5
When I came to I was lying on a carpeted floor. My head was pounding. I tried to open my eyes but the room was too bright. All I could do was squint. I stayed on the floor until my vision grew accustomed to the light. Then I sat up and leaned my back against the bed that was next to me.
I was in a large spacious bedroom filled with a bunch of futuristic looking furniture and electronics. Even the lamps on the nightstands looked like they belonged on a moon base. Everything looked polished and shiny. The coolest thing in the room was the large flat screen that sat on top of the dresser. I later discovered it was a television which was a shock considering the TV’s in my dimension were huge boxes that sat on the floor.
I had to adjust the way I sat on the floor because something in my back pocket was pressing uncomfortably into my butt cheek. I reached back and pulled out a small rectangular electronic device. When I held it up the screen lit up showing several small icons arranged in rows. I didn’t know what half of them referred to, but I could easily tell it was a communication device of some sort.
That is when I happened to look down and noticed I was wearing different clothes. When I struggled with the man in black I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Now I was wearing black slacks and a long sleeve grey polo shirt. They looked expensive. Actually, everything in the bedroom looked like luxury items that probably cost way more than I made in a year.
I stood up on shaky legs and went to find the bathroom. I had to take it slow to keep the pounding in my head to a minimum. The first door I tried was the closet. The second door opened to a hallway.
I walked down th
|
It all started when I was about 8 or 9 years old. Actually, I guess it may have been earlier, but that’s around the first memory I have of it. See, I have had sleep paralysis as long as I can remember, although it is rare now that I am an adult. Most people that I’ve told about this have assumed I’m just scared of the dark, or have bad nightmares, but that’s not it, although I am and I do, ha-ha.
I have always had very vivid dreams. When I was dreaming, I was there, I could see, smell, hear, and feel. I was also a very adept lucid dreamer, having the choice to affect my dreams at will. That didn’t work on nightmares though and I often had nightmares before these episodes, horribly vivid nightmares, almost every night. Dreams of falling, fire, death, being alone in empty space, but mostly monsters, and those were the worst. Some of them were your classic 80’s slasher film icons, Jason, Freddy, etc. (I think my mom let me watch those movies a little too young, along with reading Stephen King, but she is still my hero.) Those usually involved running and hiding while being in a strange place, usually creepy abandoned buildings or out in the woods. The monsters that didn’t come from movies were way worse though. Dreams come from your subconscious supposedly, so I guess somehow my mind created them, although as a child it seemed like they were from the depths of Hell. Twisted, grotesque things; sometimes vaguely resembling a human form, with missing limbs or too many, hideous faces with skin missing or eyes hanging out of sockets; some were not human at all however, giant creatures with wings and razor-sharp claws and teeth, black shadows with red eyes that would just stand in the corner and watch me while I went about mundane tasks, like homework or watching TV. Sometimes I would wake up before they got me, not always. People say you’re not supposed to die in dreams, but I have many, many times. I have fallen and hit the ground, I’ve burned up in fire, been stabbed and sliced; I’ve even had a dream where I was at a funeral that turned out to be mine, I didn’t go back to sleep that night.
Well, I’m not really scared of the dark, per se, or even scared of the nightmares, I am afraid of waking up in the dark. Let me explain what a typical night was for me when I was younger and maybe you can start to understand.
I would fall asleep in my bedroom with the TV on, mostly for light, sound would be just loud enough to make out what they were saying; sometimes I would fall asleep on the couch with the light and sound coming from my parents room before I had a TV in my own room. Then the dream would start. The worst one ever, which I had often (I don’t know how rare recurring dreams are, but I feel I got more than my fair share) would start with me waking up in my own bed. I would be viewing as though from my own eyes, rather than 3rd person as a lot of dreams were. I would look over at my alarm clock and it would say 3:33 AM, always, then the fear would start, I knew what was coming, but powerless to prevent it. I would slowly place my feet on the floor, and stand up while stretching and yawning. I’d start to head for the bathroom (not sure how I know the bathroom was my destination, as I never made it there), and I would trip on something. I crash on the floor, hitting my nightstand causing my alarm clock to fall on my head, and bounce to the floor. So I’m lying there cursing myself and looking under my bed. There is nothing there, and I mean nothing, the meager light in my room should penetrate at least a few inches into the darkness, but it’s like a wall of black shadow, an empty void. And I freeze with fear. Suddenly two small blue orbs of fire appear, directly eye level with me, the eyes of some unknown being staring into my soul. Its breath was the worst part; I would see it and smell it at the same time. I only know it was breathing because it came out in a fog, like when you are outside in winter, only it wasn’t cold in my room, and the breath upon my face was cold enough to chill me to the bone; and the stench, ugh! It was as though someone took dead animal carcasses and dirty diapers and lit them on fire with a thousand matches, like sulphur, burnt hair and shit. My mind would be screaming “RUN! HIDE!” but my body is frozen. I am hyper aware, I can feel every muscle in my body tense up in preparation but nothing happens. Then it grabs me, I see nothing, no limbs of any sort, but I am being dragged under the bed. Then I am in total blackness, I can feel its disgusting breath on my neck and hear my heartbeat, but my sense of sight has totally abandoned me. I don’t feel arms around me specifically, but I am being held there, it feels like someone has wrapped a blanket made of flesh around me, but it is stronger than I am and holds me completely still. Then I feel its tongue slowly lick from my neck to my ear, as though tasting my fear.
In a voice I can only describe as broken glass soaking in blood, gravelly and grating, but wet, it whispers. “What do you like about playing under the bed?” That’s when I snap out of it. I struggle and fight, swinging my elbows and kicking my legs hard as I can, eventually loosening the creatures grip, and I would wake up.
Here’s where the real fun begins. I would be completely frozen, sometimes to the point where I could not even open my eyes. Sometimes that would be all, just frozen for a minute or two then I would snap out of it. I’m getting a little freaked out even writing about it, the memories are that vivid as it comes out. Other times the nightmares followed me. I remember once, I was lying there frozen, trying to force my eyes to close when I heard that same thick gravelly voice say, “Come back under the bed, the games were just starting.” I couldn’t turn my head to look toward the sound, not sure I would have even if I could, but I could feel its cold breath on my ear. I guess I must’ve screamed although I don’t remember doing so, because my mom ran into the room and turned on the light. I swear I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye melt into the floor, heading back under the bed. She checked, assured me there was nothing under the bed, I still don’t know what to believe. According to the therapists and counselors I have talked to I was experiencing “visual and auditory hallucinations common to Sleep Paralysis.” They don’t know how real it was though.
When I would wake up in bed, once able to move I would jump off my bed, making sure to stay well away from the edge, run to my parents’ bedroom, and crawl into bed with them, sadly until I was about 14. Often times though, I would not wake up in my bed as I had fallen asleep. Sometimes after that specific dream I would wake up on the floor next to my bed, which was the worst, especially if the paralysis kicked in, which was often. I’ve woken up on the couch, on the floor in my parents’ room, on the kitchen floor, in the empty bathtub, even once on the porch. On these occasions I would sometimes find scratches and cuts on my body, often small although once I had a 6 inch gouge across my ribcage (still have the scar). The therapist said this was due to sleepwalking and running into things.
My grandmother had a very different view of things. I loved my grandma; she definitely wasn’t your regular sweet old lady. My grandmother had a deep appreciation for the occult. When I told her about my dreams, she crossed herself and did that weird little evil eye hand gesture. I asked why she was freaking out.
“My dear, 3:33 is a time of evil,” she explained. “3 is a number of Satan, 3AM is the witching hour dear, when the veil between realms is thin, and reality can be warped. It was more likely that it was an actual demon trying to drag you to the underworld. You are lucky to have survived the attacks.” She also told me that I wasn’t sleepwalking as the therapist suggested, but actually in another, I guess you’d say alternate plane or dimension, or even “the underworld.” We always thought she was a little crazy, now I’m not so sure. I wish she was still alive to help my family.
Recently, my 7-year-old son has been waking up in the middle of the night (right around 3:30AM), screaming about the monster with blue fire eyes. I was holding him after one recent episode telling him it was a dream and he will be okay. He kept repeating the word NO! When I got him to calm down a little, I asked why he was saying no, He said he doesn’t want to play under the bed.
|
From the window I can see the wide green and gold of the bogland stretching as far as the horizon. Between scattered rocks and narrow channels of peaty water some dark shape moves, or is it only shifting clouds and a trick of the dying light? I can never tell.
Gabby plays on the rug, weaving another story from drift wood and clothespin dolls. We’d been on the beach every summer day, early, before the waves washed the good stuff out to sea again. I’d spent hours in Gran’s thread box choosing colors for wrapping the little clothespins while Gabby changed her favorite color from blue to purple to lime green.
One last breath from the old sun sends a long streak of light shooting out over the marsh, turning it all to mirrors, and then it’s gray. Nothing moves. It’s dead.
“Gran?” I say, not sure she’ll be there. But I can smell cooking, lamb and potatoes in a big pot on the stove, and there she is. “Gran,” I say, again.
She looks at me with blue eyes, watery and hidden behind round glasses shining in the lamplight. Smiling, she says, “Get yourself to the basin, Jamie, and wash for supper.”
I run cold well water over my hands and think how to ask her my question. I haven’t decided yet when she’s set the table or when we’ve sat down and Gabby’s dug her spoon into the broth and come up with lumps of carrot. I haven’t decided when we’re lying on the rag rug in front of the fire, Gran in her chair, rocking and knitting long skeins of gray lambs wool.
“Tell us about the bog-men,” Gabby says.
I shiver. I hate the story of the bog-men, but Gabby loves it. I hope Gran decides she’s too tired to tell it. But she only smiles gently, clicking her needles together like a song, and says:
“On a grand soft day, your Grandfather was cutting peat out in the marshes.”
This is how she always begins.
“And as he cut, the wind began whining down and a fret rolled in from the sea, covering all the grass and red lichen on the rocks until he couldn’t see more than a step in front and behind.”
I lived in fear of those sea frets once. The sudden, wooly mists that cover the whole world in seconds used to keep me close by the weathered garden fence and well away from that trackless mire.
“But your Grandfather had lived on this island his whole life and he knew the way of it better than anyone, so he hefted his spade across his shoulders and turned once to the left and started walking. Sooner or later he’d come to the sea, if he could keep out of a bog.”
“But he couldn’t!” Gabby chimes in.
“No, not he. The bog-men couldn’t let him go. They came from their beds, long fingers in the mud, pulling themselves along with their dead hands.”
Gran makes scratchings on the arm of her rocking chair. I want to put my hands over my ears, but I don’t, because Gabby might laugh.
“And who are the bog-men?” Gran asks.
Gabby bounces on her knees. “Travelers!” she says. “Wanderers and the unwary. Lost people who sank in the mud at night.”
Gran nods, picking up her knitting again and rocking. “That’s it. They come back up in the frets and on moonless nights. The bog-men gripped your Grandfather’s ankles with both hands and dragged him down.”
“Why?” I ask.
Gran doesn’t answer. She just rocks and finally she shrugs. “Nobody knows the why of it. The marsh takes what it takes and how it takes it is none of our business.”
I say nothing. Gabby crosses the wooden floor on her little bare feet, climbs into the window and presses her face against the glass.
“You won’t see anything,” I say. “It’s too dark.”
“I can see the bog-men’s lights.”
I don’t want to see them. I turn my face away as my feet take me to the window. Gabby puts her hand in mine, taps the glass, pointing. “See?” she says.
I see little green flames, round, glowing lanterns in the dark. Blowing in the salt wind off the sea they dance and bob along the ground, close to the mires. A dozen or more.
I don’t like it. Gabby won’t let go, so I jerk my hand free. She pouts. She’s too cute to be so ghoulish. Gran puts her knitting in the cradle-shaped sewing box beside her chair and stands. “Time for bed,” she says.
So I climb the corkscrew stairs to bed, and take off my shoes and put on my pajamas and climb into the big bed that’s all mine. I wait for the creak of the floorboards that say Gran has gone to her bed. I wait for my eyes to see in the dark, wait for the wind to rise and moan around the gables.
I hear the soft pad of bare feet and the faint sigh of her breathing, standing near the bed. Most nights I would try to ignore her, but tonight she climbs in next to me, snuggling down where it’s warm, without asking.
“Gabby,” I say.
She wiggles round so we’re face to face in the dark. I shut my eyes to shut out thoughts, but memory doesn’t work like that.
“What was it like?” I ask.
“When?” She says, her high pitched whisper close to my ear.
“When they dragged you.”
“Oh.” She pauses, thinking. “It was scary. And cold. Their hands were hard and pinching. I didn’t like it when I couldn’t breathe, but then it was quiet.”
“Oh,” I say. I finally decide to ask my question to Gabby, not to Gran.
“Why don’t you leave?”
She snuggles closer, small arms around my neck. “We’re lonely outside,” She says.”You left us out there. You ran, and Gran and me couldn’t.”
****
In the morning, a man comes from the mainland. Tall and thin, wrapped up in a brown wool coat against the autumn wind, he looks like a scarecrow. He has a case in one hand, shakes my hand with the other.
“I’m so sorry,” he says.
I nod. He’s here to take me away from this place, so I’m glad of him coming. We walk up the grassy hill, along the gravel path, through the dying garden to the house.
The man comes up the steps, stops, points to our door. I painted it this summer in deep green, and I was proud of it, so I look too.
“Do you have a dog?” the man asks. “We can take him back with us on the ferry.”
I see it, then, the long marks on the new paint. Deep scratches in the wood itself.
“No,” I say. “We never had a dog.”
I know what they are, though. They come from their beds, long fingers in the mud, pulling themselves along with their dead hands.
The marsh still wants what it wants. Even when you run.
|
You may recall back in June of 2021, how the first live televised execution of a death row inmate had gone off without a hitch. It was one of the most anticipated TV airings in recent – and I suppose even in distant – memory.
The months leading up to the event had been filled with controversy. There were clashes between protesters and supporters. The protesters stated that the general public, especially children, should not be subjected to such “barbarism”. The supporters argued that viewing it was not mandatory and that children could be kept from seeing it by their parents if they felt it was necessary to shield them. Not only that, but it would also be a major deterrent for many would-be criminals.
Right or wrong, it had already been decided upon and approved by all government agencies involved. When it was announced in January that this would happen, it became the primary conversation point of every man, woman and child. People discussed it around workplace water coolers. Strangers discussed it on subways, buses, and in doctors’ waiting rooms. School children talked about it at recess and in gym locker rooms. It could be eavesdropped from adjacent restaurant tables everywhere. Everyone had an opinion, and everyone was curious how it would all play out.
The criminal’s name was Harlan Wade Forrester – known by all three of his names, as most serial killers seem to be. However, before his capture the public knew him as “The Red Baron Killer” because he’d left each victim with a neatly carved Maltese cross in the small of their back. He was the epitome of a vile human being. In the three years leading up to his capture he’d managed to kidnap and murder 23 people, mostly teenage girls, but with occasional adult men and women thrown in for good measure.
He had always left their corpses out in the open posed in the most ordinary situations. For example: one of his victims was found early in the morning when the sun rose, sitting on a park bench with her hand resting palm up on her lap. The hand was filled with bird seed and pigeons flapped about and ate from her palm. Another was discovered late at night riding in an el train car in Chicago, leaning against the window as if looking out at the passing scenery. She had ear bud headphones in place and an mp3 player still blasting away. And so it was with each of his victims – one found behind the wheel of a car in a K-mart parking lot – one relaxing in a lawn chair on her back patio with sunglasses and a drink with a little umbrella in it. All were fully clothed. All appeared perfectly fine and normal until approached.
The incidents had taken place throughout nine states in the Midwest. As the body count rose, so did the panic level. News story after news story surfaced with seemingly no end. It became rare to see teenage girls out alone. They began doing everything in groups – pairs at a minimum. People only stayed out late into the night if they absolutely had to. Many would not go out after dark at all. If someone was found sleeping or resting motionless in public, they were approached with great caution as the next possible RBK victim.
There was a collective sigh of relief in big cities and small towns alike on the day it was announced that he’d been captured. Relief swept over the population, and things returned to a sense of normalcy. Folks went about their lives without having to keep that madman in the back of their minds.
Harlan Forrester’s trial gripped the nation. He was without question the most hated man in America, and if you asked anyone you met, they’d tell you that they couldn’t wait to see him pay for what he’d done. It just so happened that they would get their wish.
The court proceedings were highly publicized and not a day passed that local and national news channels did not update the trial’s progress. The FCC had already been searching for a case to use as a precedent, but there were two main factors that led to Harlan’s case being chosen as the first for televised execution.
One: He was guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt. After all of the DNA and fingerprint evidence was collected and presented he had confessed to all of the killings, and even divulged two that had not yet been discovered. There was no way the FCC was going to allow a criminal to be executed on live TV if there was even a miniscule chance that he was innocent.
Two: Everyone wanted him dead. As mentioned previously, the public’s opinion of Harlan was on par with Charles Manson or Adolph Hitler. If the FCC was ever going to act, now was the time. It was a perfect storm.
The trial reached its completion in December 2020 and Harlan was sentenced to death by lethal injection. The execution was immediately scheduled for Monday, June 21st, 2021 – 6:00 PM. This brevity in the legal process was almost unheard of, but special circumstances were encountered due to the nature of the case and to keep public interest heightened for the impending broadcast.
On the day of Harlan’s execution the entire country, and many other parts of the world, came to a virtual stand-still. People took the day off to prepare their homes for viewing parties. Those who did have to work that day, made sure television sets in break rooms and conference rooms were capable of picking up the network that had won the bidding war for the broadcast.
As 6:00 PM approached there were fewer and fewer cars on the road until finally, almost every metropolitan area in the nation resembled a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Time stood still. And we all watched, riveted to our TV sets and devices.
It would come to be known as one of those defining moments that people would never forget. They would always remember where they were and who they were with when they watched it happen.
—–
In September of 2021, I attended the estate auction of a man named John Radcliffe. He had died alone just days earlier, the victim of an apparent home invasion. He had no living will and no close relatives to claim his belongings, therefore the state took control of selling his personal effects.
I always enjoyed going to auctions such as this because every once in a while I would come across a deal that was just too good to pass up. And this auction was no exception. Being a movie buff, I was excited when lot #312 hit the block. It was two large plastic tubs full of Blu-ray and DVD movies. I estimated that there were probably two hundred or more. During the sale of that lot I raised my hand several times until I was the only remaining bidder. I smiled, knowing that I had landed a remarkable deal at a mere $57.
At home that afternoon, I couldn’t wait to begin unpacking and cataloging the contents of the tubs. My initial thought as I removed the lid from the first container was ‘I’m going to have to buy more shelves.’ However, it was a problem I didn’t mind facing. I spent hours unboxing the movies and arranging them in alphabetical stacks on my living room floor.
It was what I found in the bottom of the second container that puzzled me – a small unmarked USB thumb drive. I shrugged at first and set it aside in favor of continuing my cataloging, but the more I thought about it, the more it ate at me. I retrieved my laptop and plugged in the drive. Contained on the stick was a single audio file titled RBK_execution.mp3. I double-clicked it.
The audio clip began with an inordinate amount of noise as the person doing the recording fumbled with the microphone. It then settled into the steady hiss of ambient background noise.
“This is John Radcliffe”, the recording began, “and I feel that I have to share my story. It’s been bothering me for weeks now and I want to get it off my chest.”
[He paused and cleared his throat.]
“I was involved in the live execution of Harlan Wade Forrester – The Red Baron Killer. I was approached by the deputy warden of the prison where he was being held two days before his scheduled execution and asked if I would take part in it. I had no idea why at the time. It wasn’t until I was escorted to the prison and was briefed by the Warden that I really knew what was going on.”
[There was another pause, then a sound as if he’d taken a swig from a bottle, which gave way to more ambient hissing.]
“You see, I was chosen because I look so much like Harlan – at least that’s what they told me. And I agree. I do look like him. Well, as it turns out, Harlan had actually escaped from his prison cell the previous day. Don’t ask me how he did it. They wouldn’t tell me either.
“The thing is though – they wanted to go ahead with the execution for the public’s sake. It had been played up so much and millions of dollars had already been spent on the TV contract, and advertising, and what not…”
[Another drink from the bottle.]
“They just didn’t want everyone to go back into panic mode, you know? Not only that, but the prison needed to save face. There would’ve been hell to pay if the higher-ups found out that RBK had escaped on their watch. And so… as the old saying goes… the show must go on.
“I laid there just like they asked me to. Didn’t move a muscle. I was a perfect actor. When it was all said & done and the cameras were turned off, I was debriefed, given some monetary compensation and told never to tell a soul about this. I had to sign a bunch of papers saying so. Then they let me go.”
[There was a somewhat long pause and then another bottle clank and swig.]
“Technically I’m not telling anybody. I’m just recording this for my own conscience. I need to be able to sleep better.”
[And then more ambient hiss before the recording device clicked off.]
I was in shock. I had no idea what to do with this information. It was like I’d stumbled onto proof that the moon landing was faked, and I was the only person on earth that knew about it. Except in this case there were at least a handful of others that were privy to the charade. I needed to think.
I turned on my TV – the very same TV on which I’d witnessed some guy named John Radcliffe fake the death of Harlan Forrester back in June. The evening news was on, and to my surprise, there was a mention of the death of John Radcliffe. The young lady anchoring the news was barely able to keep her composure while she read the lines from her teleprompter that told how John’s autopsy had revealed a Maltese cross carved in the small of his back.
|
Things have simply not been the same for Dalton Whitworth since the carriage accident. Colors are not as vivid – music not nearly as pleasurable. Every meal he consumes is bland and leaves an unsavory aftertaste. Days filled with sunlight are no longer warm, enjoyable experiences. On the contrary – he finds the light to be oppressive, causing his eyes, head and neck to be in a constant state of discomfort and torment.
Dalton had previously enjoyed these simple pleasures in his life – even as recently as last month – until the accident that took away his beloved Rachel. Now he feels as if he spends all his effort avoiding everything. He dreads having to eat yet another tasteless dinner. He stays indoors as much as possible, only daring to venture out long enough to acquire the necessities for survival. He goes out of his way to avoid human contact. Even though his circle of acquaintances showed great care and sympathy for him upon the loss of his wife, he would much prefer to be left alone now.
If, by chance, he did encounter a familiar face in public he knew the conversation would invariably turn toward his tragic experience, forcing him to relive the nightmare. He would again see in his mind the spooked horse on its hind legs – the carriage, jolting harshly – Rachel letting out the briefest of screams as she is thrown from her seated position atop the open-air coach – the cobblestone pavement – the blood pooling under her lifeless form – his helpless inability to alter the outcome. Dalton cannot bear these images any longer, and he is frightened of closing his eyes for fear of being accosted once again by these horrific visions.
He passes the days in his apartment reading by dim gaslight anything he can get his hands on – novels, textbooks, newspapers and other periodicals, packaging for common household products – anything that will help him to escape. When he is not reading, he extinguishes the gaslight and sits in his armchair near the only window in his tiny quarters. He pulls back the heavy, dense curtain just enough for one eye to ingest the world outside. He is careful not to allow an overabundance of sunlight into the dark room. People outside go about their happy lives, content and oblivious to the dark matters that one who has suffered a loss must endure.
On one particular morning when Dalton awoke, he was immediately confronted with an odd sensation. Something wasn’t quite right. He was in the habit of standing at the foot of his bed every morning and facing the mirror as he dressed. He did so this day as well, but with the exception that the image being reflected did not appear as it had on other days. He wasn’t able to pinpoint its inaccuracy until he attempted to button his jacket – the same jacket he wore most days. This day, the button second from the top was no longer visible in his reflection. This had never been the case before, and Dalton was uncertain of how such a discrepancy might have occurred.
Have I grown shorter overnight? Has the mirror been raised on the wall? Nonsense! These options were impossible!
All throughout the day as Dalton made his way around the apartment his rhythm seemed to be off. After years of living in the same rooms, amongst the same unmoved furnishings, one develops a sense of rhythm to their comings and goings – eight steps to the armchair – five more to the front door – a slight inward turn of the left foot while entering the bedroom, lest one’s toe be stubbed on the protruding dresser again. These are all subconscious, of course. There is no actual counting or calculation involved, but the human mind takes note of these nuances internally and builds its own map of the landscape. Movements are subliminally adjusted to achieve the utmost efficiency, to the point where it is possible to flawlessly navigate the surroundings even in complete darkness.
Dalton was not in complete darkness, and yet he continued to stumble throughout the day. The sides of his shoes bumped corners of walls. He approached the bookshelf from his armchair in seven steps instead of eight. His top hat grazed the overhead gas lamp in the main hallway. At dinner he slid his chair out from under the table, to the point that it was touching the wall, and yet he was still barely able to squeeze himself between the table and chair in order to sit for his meal. Later that night after he finished his reading in the dim light, he reached up to extinguish the lamp and clumsily jammed his finger against the brass fixture. It hadn’t been so close last night, he thought while rubbing the pain away.
Sleep did not come easily that night. Dalton tossed and turned in a feverish heat of sounds and images in his mind – the horse neighing loudly as it bolted away – Rachel helplessly tumbling from the side of the accelerating carriage – Dalton lying next to her on the ground, calling her name, trying to rouse her, fighting his tears.
The following morning Dalton noted his red eyes and the dark circles underneath them as he dressed in the mirror. However, this was not the only startling revelation. As he buttoned his coat, he also noticed that the top button was no longer visible in the viewing pane. A rush of adrenaline flowed through his body, leaving him with a brief pain in his chest and a sweat beginning to emerge on his brow. He took a step backward, but it was not enough to bring the button into view. One more step backward and he stumbled against the foot rail of his bed. This can’t be! Am I going mad? he pondered. He became lightheaded and was overwhelmed with the urge to sit. He made his way down the hall to the armchair and fell into its velvety comfort. After a time of rest and catching his bearings, Dalton proceeded to the bookshelf (he could have sworn it only took six steps this time!) to peruse for an item to read. Once he selected his book, he settled into the chair once more to immerse himself in a world far from his own.
Dalton awoke abruptly. He had no idea how long he had slumbered in his reading chair. The remaining light in the apartment was dim, and one quick glance behind the thick curtain revealed a deep indigo dusk sky. To his astonishment, Dalton realized that he’d passed the bulk of the daylight hours unconscious. He had even forgotten that he had been reading until he found the book face-down on the floor next to the armchair. He arose from the chair and stumbled a bit, still unstable from his lengthy nap. Upon making his way to the bedroom, he nearly ran full-steam into the wall at the end of the hallway. He had reached the end a full three paces sooner than before.
Suddenly, he felt fully awake. His annoyance at this scenario having grown to its peak, he decided to investigate further – to prove once and for all that he wasn’t going completely stark raving mad. He retrieved a broomstick and laid it on the hallway floor with its end touching the wall. He marked the other end with his finger pressed tightly against the floor and then slid the stick forward until it aligned with his marking finger. Repeating this process all down the corridor, he determined that it took six full lengths of the broomstick with a remaining space of about ten inches (that last portion he estimated in his mind) to reach the front door. He noted this dimension on the inside cover of the book he’d picked up off the floor, and vowed to measure again soon.
Before going to bed that evening, Dalton paused to have a look at his reflection in the mirror once more. He stood with the back of his calves touching the footboard of the bed. He almost broke down into tears when he saw the sickly man in the reflection – a shadow of the man he was before losing Rachel. Aside from his startling visage he also took note of the truncated image. Now, his face was only visible down to the chin – no neckline, no buttons on his coat. He reached his arms out before him and was able to touch the wall with his fingertips – something never before possible as the wall had always been a good seven feet away from the foot of the bed. Defeated, he hung his head, removed his outer clothing and crawled into bed, hoping to sleep indefinitely – not minding if he never awoke again.
But awaken he did. He had slept soundly all night long, only stirring momentarily when thoughts of the accident attempted to encroach on his dreams. It was morning light now, and the first thing that Dalton noticed was something pressing against his bare foot. Still in a fog, he bent his already-stiff neck downward to catch a glimpse of what it was that had come into contact with him. A swell of panic and fear overtook him when he determined that it was the wall with the mirror on it – pressed all the way up against the foot rail of his bed. Dalton jolted his neck the opposite way to see the space behind the headboard. It was still snugly against the opposing wall. His heart raced with dread at this unexplainable event. His mind did not know how to process this information. He exited the bed on the left side and squeezed past the pressing walls and through the doorway into the hall. After retrieving the measuring broomstick, he employed it to measure the hallway a second time. His hands shook, but he was careful to line up the stick accurately at each interval. Upon reaching the front door, he nearly fainted to find that he’d only counted four and a half lengths of the stick.
“What is happening to me?” he cried out, to no one as he collapsed onto the floor. He sobbed openly. Not only because of the strange predicament, but also for his current condition, and for Rachel, who had brought such peace and contentment to his life just a month prior. Oh, how things could change so quickly. After regaining his composure, Dalton was overwhelmed with the desire to flee – to get out of that oppressive apartment, even if only temporarily. As much as the idea frightened him, he decided to pass the daylight hours outdoors. Where exactly he would go, he did not yet know. He picked himself up off the floor, found his hat and overcoat, and made his way to the front door, noting how it took fewer steps to approach it.
Dalton walked along the cobblestone path through town. He stared at the ground as he walked, hoping that no one would try to speak to him or even make eye contact. No one did. Turning the corner near a leather tanning shop, he had to divert his path as the store owner came bursting from the front door of the shop and threw a bucket of wastewater into the street, nearly wetting Dalton’s shoes. How completely rude and insensitive, Dalton thought, though he did not speak to the man. He continued on toward an area free of businesses, buildings, and the commotion of life – a park-like area with benches, a pond, and trees displaying their colorful autumn foliage. Dalton sat on the nearest park bench upon entering the clearing. It was relatively calm and peaceful since it was mid-morning on a weekday. The only other patrons were a mother feeding ducks in the pond with her toddler son, an elderly gentleman sitting on a bench opposite Dalton reading a newspaper, and the occasional passerby, on their way to more important things.
Dalton sat and observed until he felt his eyelids getting heavy. The breeze and the silence lulled him. The cloud cover was a thick grey blanket preventing any harsh sunlight, much to Dalton’s delight. Even so, it was unseasonably warm which only furthered his sleepiness. As he was on the verge of crossing the threshold into dream territory, he saw a woman in a pink dress pass by in front of him. He was startled and followed her with his eyes as she approached the pond. Jolting to full alertness, Dalton’s heart began to pound as his mind guided him toward this inevitable thought: My God, she looks just like Rachel! He could feel his pulse throbbing in his neck. He stood, and slowly approached the woman from behind. When he was standing just adjacent to her, he mustered the courage to speak.
“Rachel?” he asked in almost a whisper, his voice weak and quivering.
The woman turned and looked him directly in the eye.
It’s her! By God, it’s her! he thought.
“Dalton!” Her voice was filled with relief and longing, as if the wife of a military man being reunited with her husband after long months apart.
They immediately embraced. Rachel’s head pressed tightly into Dalton’s shoulder. They both wept. Dalton repressed the confusion in his mind of how this could be possible. It didn’t matter to him. His precious wife had returned to him and he wanted to revel in that fact, plausibility be damned!
The longer the embrace lingered, the more Dalton noticed the heaviness of Rachel leaning on him – the slackness of her body. Soon it felt to Dalton as if he were supporting her entire weight. She had gone completely limp in his arms. Still holding the embrace, they collapsed to the ground together, Dalton attempting to ease his wife’s descent. It wasn’t until they reached the ground that her head fell away from his shoulder revealing the truth. Dalton recoiled in horror upon seeing the decaying face of his once-lovely bride. Her eye sockets were sunken and deep, her jaw slacked open to an impossibly wide angle. Her complexion was grey and flecked with dry, cracked areas. Her hair, previously beautiful and one of Dalton’s favorite features about her, was now thin and stringy, matted to the shape of her head.
Rachel’s lifeless body fell away onto the stone walkway as Dalton pulled his arms away in disgust. He felt the pain of losing her all over again – fresh as the day it first happened.
Dalton jolted awake to find himself still sitting on the park bench. He nervously looked around to see if anyone had noticed his startled awakening. He hoped he had not screamed out in his sleep. He was relieved to find that there was no one around. The woman with her young boy – gone. The old man reading the paper – gone. The sky was now a much darker shade of grey. The clouds had thickened to the point that it appeared it may rain at any moment. How long had he been sitting there? What felt like minutes could possibly have been hours. As Dalton stood to make his way back to his apartment, the first raindrops began to fall.
He was thoroughly soaked as he stood in front of his apartment door and fumbled with the key. In his haste, he dropped it into a puddle then bent over to retrieve it. Once he finally managed the lock, he pushed the door open, but was dumbfounded when it hit a hard object after having only opened up a third of the way. He backed the door up a few inches and pushed again with the same result. Dalton turned sideways and stuck his head and right shoulder into the dark foyer in an attempt to observe the obstruction. Pressed up firmly against the door was his favorite velvety armchair.
“This is madness!” he said aloud, still standing in the soaking deluge. He took several steps back out into the street. The building appeared no different on the outside. He returned to the doorway and pushed hard enough to slide the chair a small amount – just enough to squeeze through and into his apartment. What he found was completely astonishing. The size of the space inside had diminished to the point that the furniture was gathered in the center of the room – walls pressing in on all sides. He’d had to remove his hat and crouch down, lest his head hit the ceiling. There was no need for Dalton to measure in order to confirm his suspicions. The room was so small now that he could not even walk through it without stepping over furnishings that had once been placed feet apart from one another. The hallway was practically nonexistent and he reached his bedroom in only three steps, turning sideways to squeeze between its walls. He had to step up onto his bed as he crossed the threshold into the room. The walls touched the bed on all sides, and the mirror had fallen onto the foot of his bed, face-down.
Dalton sat on his bed and turned the mirror over. He did not recognized the man staring back at him. Pale. Gaunt. Sickly. Haunted. Not knowing what else to do, he lay on his bed and waited. Waited for what? He didn’t know exactly. For the walls to consume him, he supposed. For the ceiling to drop down and crush the last breath from his lungs. He was ready. He was resigned.
There was rumbling when the walls and ceiling shifted again. This was the first time Dalton had witnessed the movement himself. It was alarming at first, but he knew it was inevitable. He accepted the dust that flaked onto his face as the ceiling dropped inches more. He welcomed it, even. The head and foot boards of his bed cracked and splintered as they buckled under the pressure from the wall on either side. The gaslight fixture mounted on the ceiling touched the mattress next to him. He held the mirror flat against his chest. There was no longer room enough to stand it upright.
More rumbling. The mattress bent and formed a tomb around Dalton. He closed his eyes and waited. He waited until he lost consciousness and all was black.
– – – – –
Dalton’s eyes slowly opened. He was enveloped in complete darkness. He felt groggy and his head was pounding. It took several minutes for him to come out of the fog, but once he did, it was as if he hadn’t felt this clear-minded in quite some time. He was alive. Not only that, but he wanted to live. He felt the energy of revitalized life flowing through him. Memories came rushing back. In his mind’s eye he saw a lovely day with Rachel. He saw them mounting the carriage together after their evening meal at Dupont’s Bistro. He saw the spooked horse rear up. He remembered the severe jolting of the carriage. He saw his wife plummeting to the ground. He saw himself also falling harshly onto the pavement stones, his head slamming against them violently. Everything after that was blackness.
Dalton was barely able to move. When he finally regained a small amount of control over his limbs, he felt around for his surroundings. He was lying on his back – on something plush and soft. His hands found the edges of his confines quickly. There were soft, satin-like walls up against his shoulders and inches from his face. The ceiling directly in front of him felt as if it had an arch shape to it. Awakening further, he determined that he could not move his body beyond this position, as he was lying in a depression that fit snugly against him. The air was thick and musty – barely breathable. It hurt his lungs to inhale it too deeply. Sweat formed on his brow as he realized the full extent of his environment.
Panic set in.
“No!” he yelled, using up some of the remaining stale air inside. “I’m not dead!”
He banged his fists against the lid as best he could within the limited space, but it only created a muffled thud on the soft interior. Dalton screamed and began sobbing. When he tried to take more air into his lungs it felt like someone had placed a pillow over his face. He labored to inhale again.
Approximately six feet above him was a marker which bore two names: Rachel A. Whitworth on the left side; and Dalton G. Whitworth on the right side. Below each was inscribed a date of birth and a date of death – the dates of death being identical. In between the names was chiseled into the stone, “Together in life – Together in death”.
– – – – –
Two days after the burial, two lone mourners – coworkers of Dalton’s – visited the grave site to place flowers. They stood in their top hats and overcoats, staring solemnly at the headstone.
“It’s a shame he didn’t recover from his coma,” one grieving man said to the other.
“Indeed,” the second man responded.
“I do wonder though…” said the first coworker, “Do you suppose someone in that state knows? I mean, are they capable of thinking? Or dreaming?”
After some thought, the second man dismissed the idea. “Nah. I doubt it.”
But Dalton Whitworth, if he were here today, would beg to differ. “Yes,” he would say, “We are capable of thinking and dreaming. And it is as vivid as life itself.”
|
Juliet stood on the sidewalk, hands on her hips, and stared at the house. How depressing. Her Aunt Camilla had passed away just three short months ago. An aneurysm or stroke is what the doctors had said. Camilla had been in her nineties and a spinster. With no husband or children, the probate court had informed Juliet that she was the nearest living relative, and had therefore been awarded her aunt’s estate.
At first, Juliet looked upon it as a windfall. She had hardly even known her aunt – actually her great-aunt – and could count the number of times she had visited with her on one hand. She then sadly realized how lonely the old woman’s life must have been. Even her closest relative was almost a complete stranger.
Juliet tried to put that feeling behind her as she drove to the small, New England town where her new home was located. She tried to avoid thinking about the point that she was, in fact, not much different from Camilla. Juliet had been an only child. Her parents were long since passed on, and she had no “real” friends to speak of. At the age of fifty-two, she was pretty much resolved to the fact that she would be a spinster herself. She had been living on social security income ever since an auto accident in her thirties, and had a small apartment that she could barely afford. It was for this reason that she had decided to pack up her few belongings and move into the old house.
Looking at the house from the outside, she could see that she had a lot of work ahead of her. In addition to a thorough cleaning inside, sorting through all of her aunt’s possessions, the yard needed some serious tender loving care.
The lawn had grown so tall that it had gone to seed, and it was riddled with weeds. A row of five things that might have once been considered shrubs were so overgrown that they just about covered the house’s front porch. The wrought iron railings of the porch that did manage to peek through the bare spots were wrapped in dead remnants of ivy.
“Ah well,” she rubbed the back of her neck in anticipation of the coming pain, “It’s not like I don’t have time. Hey, free house, right?”
The first thing that had to go, though, was the ugly old garden gnome that was poking its disturbing head up from the tall grass. It was male, bearded, wearing a red hat, and smoking a pipe. She had never been a fan of lawn ornaments, especially gnomes. They were so tacky. This one, though, was especially disturbing. It’s glazing was faded and crackled, leaving the face looking jaundiced and wrinkled; as if it had once been an actual living creature that had died and was rotting away.
“Yep, that thing has to go. First things first, though. I don’t even own a lawn mower.”
Nearly a week had gone by and she had all but forgotten about the gnome. She had visited the local hardware store and bought the first pair of hedge trimmers she’d ever owned. A man would be stopping by later in the day with a lawnmower he had for sale on Craigslist. She had spoken to him on the phone earlier in the day and he promised that it was in great working order. She had already decided that she would use her “feminine wiles” when he arrived and try to whittle the price down a little.
“Not that I have much left in the wiles department,” she smirked. She stopped in the front hall and looked at herself in the full-length mirror mounted to the closet door. She had to admit that the work boots, shorts, flannel shirt, and her aunt’s old sunhat did look somewhat cute on her.
Juliet was still hacking away at the first shrub, which was starting to resemble a real hedge, when a red pickup pulled into the drive. The man who got out of the cab seemed to be about her age, and not too bad looking, either. Juliet pulled off her gardening gloves and jogged down the drive toward the truck.
“Hey there, stranger. So… I believe you have a mower for me.”
The man surveyed the yard, and let out a long whistle. “Yeah, and it sure looks like you could use it. Name’s Jim, by the way. You must be Juliet.”
“Yes, um… So how much did we decide on?”
“Twenty-five, but… um,” said Jim as he cocked his head, “I didn’t realize that I was headed to old Camilla’s place. I’d about give it to you free just to see the place cleaned up.”
Juliet smirked. “Yeah, it’s pretty much a hot mess.”
“How’s the old bird doing anyway?”
Juliet bit her lower lip and winced. “Oh, she passed away about three months ago. That’s why the yard was in such bad shape. I’m afraid that I haven’t really had the chance to come out before now.”
“Oh, geez. Way to go, Jim. Open mouth, insert foot.” He removed his baseball cap and ran a hand over the top of his head, ruffling his unkempt hair. “I’m sorry. So, are you her grand-daughter?”
“Ha!” barked Juliet, giddy with the compliment. “No. I’m sort of her great-niece, I guess. I never really did see too much of her, but apparently she didn’t have any other family.”
“Yeah, yeah. Very sad.” Jim brightened back up. “Hey, let me get this old mower down. Come to think of it, I will let you have it. Just bought a new one and I would have just put it at the curb anyway. I thought I’d try Craigslist first. But, you seem like a nice gal. I just wouldn’t feel right taking your money.”
“Really?” Even without rent to pay, Juliet was still strapped for cash, so she wasn’t about to turn down the kindness of a stranger. Especially when it came to cash. “That’s so nice of you.”
Jim pulled the mower to the edge of the pickup’s bed and heaved it down with very little effort. “She still has a little gas in her… Hey, how’s about I help you tackle this lawn?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t…”
But Jim put up a good fight, and truth be told, she was looking for an excuse to get him to stick around. She hadn’t noticed any sign of a wedding ring on his finger. She decided to test her theory, just to be sure.
“Well, would you like to use my phone? You know, let your family know that you’ll be late?”
Jim peeked out from under the brim of his cap. “If by family, you mean a wife and kids, then that won’t be necessary. Never did get around to settling down.” Then he hid his mouth with the back of his hand and joked, “And there’s not much of a selection of pretty ladies in this town.” Nodding again, he said, “Until now, that is.”
Juliet let out a girlish giggle before she had time to restrain herself. Her face turned as red as a beet, but she didn’t care. She was beginning to think that moving here might have its perks after all.
Juliet returned her attention to the hedges while Jim started up the mower and began pushing it through the tall grass. It cut out on him several times as he got into the thicker stuff. She was glad that she hadn’t resisted his offer too heartily. With her neck pain, taming this jungle would have been nearly impossible. When Jim was about halfway through the front lawn, she stood and yelled out to him, “Hey Jim, I’m going in to get us some lemonade. Be right back.”
Jim stopped, but didn’t turn off the mower. He just smiled and waved back, mouthing the word “Okay!”
Juliet stood in the kitchen. She stared out the window over the sink and regarded the back yard. It would need as much work as the front, possibly more. She was certain that she could get Jim to volunteer to help. The thought excited her. She had just finished pouring out the second glass of fresh lemonade when she heard the mower stop. Juliet didn’t think that Jim had finished the lawn, so she assumed that he must have run out of gas or hit another rough patch of grass too heavy for the old mower to make it through.
Holding one frosty glass in each hand, she made her way through the living room and pushed open the screen door with her hip. She stood on the porch and looked out to see Jim standing motionless and staring at the ground with a blank look in his eyes. As she approached him, she noticed that he was standing directly in front of the ugly, old gnome and gazing as if he were entranced by the malice in its eyes.
“It’s pretty ugly, isn’t it?”
“Gah!” Jim literally jumped a little into the air. “I didn’t see you coming.”
“It is ugly, though. Don’t you think?”
“Um, it might actually be considered handsome, in a way,” he said, as if he did not wish to offend the statue. His attention began to drift back to the gnome again, but he caught himself and turned away to face Juliet. “You know, it seems like everyone in town has one of these little guys, but I never noticed one in Camilla’s yard before.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not surprised, given how tall the grass was.”
Jim shook his head. “No, even when Camilla was living here and having the lawn mowed by the neighborhood kids, I never saw it. I would definitely have noticed. I know a little something about gnomes, you know. You might say that I’m even a collector, of sorts.”
Juliet groaned internally. She began to question her thoughts of inviting Jim to stay for dinner that evening. “Well, you can have it if you want. I plan to get rid of it as soon as possible.”
“You can’t,” he almost screamed. “I mean, I couldn’t take him. It wouldn’t be right. It’s very unlucky.”
“Really. Enlighten me, gnome-man.”
“Well,” Jim removed his hat, almost reverently, and stared at the gnome as he spoke, “Gnomes are a class of legendary creatures, originating in Europe, that could take on several meanings. Most generally, though, they refer to very small people – usually men – that live in dark places: especially underground, deep in the forest, or more recently in gardens. Most European ethnic groups have their own gnome legends with local variations.
“Despite all of the varying forms, gnomes all possess the common attribute of being able to move through the earth as easily as we move atop it. Paraclesus, a sixteenth century Swiss alchemist, identified gnomes as a class of nature spirits comprising earth elementals, as opposed to the air, water, and fire elementals. Other subclasses of gnomes include dryads, elves, brownies, goblins. Some help plants and animals, some help humans, some reclusive ones stay underground, perhaps hoarding treasure.”
By now, Juliet’s eyes were glazing over, but she was trying to keep up her end of the conversation. “Mmm hmm. And which type is this little guy?”
“Well, out in the open like this, I’d guess that he’s one of those mischievous ones. The sort that plays pranks, or even causes harm, to humans.”
Now she stared into his eyes defiantly, but still with a sort of playfulness. “Well, great. That’s it then. It goes in the trash tomorrow.”
“No,” Jim pleaded. “Please just leave it where it is. It’s probably quite valuable, you know. Most of the people around here have those cheap hardware store gnomes. Made of resin or plastic, you know? But not this guy.” Jim stooped lower to look at the gnome, almost affectionately. “This guy is definitely terra cotta, and old at that. The artist sculpts a model, and then casts a mold around it. Once the mold sets it is removed, reassembled, and thin runny clay is poured in. He allows the clay to set against the mold’s inner walls for a bit, and then pours out the excess.”
“So he’s hollow?”
“Well, maybe,” Jim said teasingly, “Unless there’s a real gnome inside.”
Juliet friskily punched him in the arm. “Enough. Or he definitely goes in the trash.”
They drank their lemonade and resumed work on the yard. A few more passes with the mower, a couple more stops for lemonade, and they stood in the driveway admiring their work. They agreed that it wasn’t too bad, for the first day, and Jim offered to return the next day to tackle the back yard.
“Oh, you really don’t need to,” Juliet said unconvincingly.
“Nope, I started the project. Now I want to see it through. That’s the way my Daddy raised me.”
Juliet offered to cook dinner, but Jim begged off, saying that all he needed after that day’s work was a hot shower and a soft bed. Juliet paused to wonder if that had a double meaning, but shook off the thought. So, they exchanged phone numbers, agreed on getting back to work in the morning, and parted ways. Juliet chased him back to his truck, though, and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. She couldn’t believe how bold she was acting.
“You’re staying for dinner tomorrow, though. I won’t take no for an answer!”
By the time Juliet finished up with her own hot shower, it was dark outside. She toweled her hair dry and put on a robe. Stepping into the kitchen, intending to make dinner, she stopped at the rear window to check out the backyard and come up with a preliminary plan of attack. That was when she noticed a pointy, faded red hat sticking up from the tall grass. She immediately ran to the back door, flipped on the jelly jar light, and stepped out onto the rear porch. Sure enough, there was another gnome, identical to the one in the front yard. She was surprised that she hadn’t noticed it earlier.
Confused, she walked back through the house and out onto the front porch. The gnome that had been there was gone. She realized that the one in the back yard must have been the one previously out front.
“What the hell?”
Muddle-headed, she again ran back through the house to the rear porch to examine the gnome in the back yard – just to be certain. When she got back out, it was gone. She ducked inside the door and slipped on her tennis shoes, then went back out for a closer look. Five minutes of walking back and forth through the high grass turned up no sign of the gnome. After standing still for a minute with a blank look on her face, she went back inside, locked the door, and turned off the light. As she did the same at the front door, she could swear that she saw the pointy hat sticking up from behind the hedge. She briefly considered stepping outside again, but decided against it when a chill ran up her spine.
“Too tired to deal with this shit,” she reasoned. She locked up, returned to the kitchen, and made a light meal. After a little television, she turned in early. She drifted off to sleep actually looking forward to another day of hard work – with Jim’s help.
Juliet told Jim all about the gnome the next morning. He told her about the pastime of gnoming. Kids would cruise around town, stealing lawn ornaments from peoples’ yards and moving them around, sometimes taking them from one yard and placing them in another. It was a nationwide fad. In some extreme cases, kids would steal a gnome and travel around, texting pictures of the gnome in different locations – sometimes across the country – to the original owner, or posting them on websites. It was annoying, possibly illegal in some cases, but mostly harmless.
“Well,” said Juliet, “Another reason that I don’t want it in my yard. Maybe next time the kids take it, they won’t return it.”
Jim pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. “I’m telling you, Juliet. It’s bad luck. You’re better off just leaving him be.”
“Now you’re creeping me out. Stop calling it a ‘he.’”
As if the terra cotta gnome itself wasn’t creepy enough, Jim went on to tell her about so-called “real” gnomes. He said that gnomes consist of a number of different types. The most common is the forest gnome who rarely encounters man. The garden gnome lives in old gardens and enjoys telling melancholy tales. Dune gnomes are slightly larger than their woodland brethren are and choose curiously drab clothing. House gnomes have the most knowledge of man, often speaking his language. It is from this family that Gnome Kings are chosen. Farm gnomes resemble their house brethren, but are more conservative in manner and dress. Siberian gnomes have been more interbred than other gnomes have and associate freely with trolls. They are much larger than the other types and have an infinitely more nasty nature. Jim said that it is best never to evoke the ire of such gnomes, for they delight in revenge.
“So, if all of that is true, then why is it lucky to have one in my yard?”
“Well,” explained Jim, “Garden and house gnomes are very protective, both of their home and the people living in it.”
“Hopefully he’s interested in protecting me, and not the house.” She slapped her forehead. “Oh God, now you’ve got me calling it a him.”
Thankfully, Jim stayed for dinner that evening. Although she desperately wished that he would stay the night, for more reasons than one, she didn’t feel comfortable enough to hint at it yet. She walked him to the door, but waited there while he walked to his truck. She felt a little creeped out by the thought of walking outside after dark now. He made it half way down the drive, then turned around to give a little wave goodbye. She waved back and then, after staring at the house for a few seconds, he walked back toward her. Her heart leapt a little.
“Um, Juliet,” he said haltingly.”
“Yeah?”
“I think that your gnome moved again. It’s not here.”
She was really beginning to like Jim, but was getting a little pissed off about this whole gnome business. She considered telling him to go home and slamming the door, but now, more than ever, she didn’t want to be alone.
She stepped out and confirmed that the gnome was gone. “Do you mind checking the back yard, Jim?”
“No problem.”
Juliet waited at the front door, and after what seemed to be the longest minute in her life, he popped back around the corner of the house.
“He’s not back there,” he said, actually looking somewhat sad. “Maybe you got your wish and the kids took him for good.”
“Oh, well, that’s too bad.” Juliet said it for Jim’s sake, but she was secretly jumping for joy inside. She was glad it was gone, and hoped that the kids who took it never brought it back.
After a second goodbye and a promise to get together again the next night – for a real date, this time. Dinner, at a restaurant. She watched him walk to his truck and pull out of the drive. She shut the door slowly and flicked off the porch light. Putting her back against the door, she sighed. Aside from the gnome business, the move to this new town, the house, the opportunity for a fresh start, and Jim were all working out quite well.
Juliet went to the kitchen and cleared the plates from the table. As she set them on the counter beside the sink, she attempted to resist the urge to look out the window. She realized how silly that seemed, but still… Finally, as if in defiance of her fear, she looked up quickly. There, even closer to the house than the night before, stood the gnome.
She and Jim went out the next night. He walked her to the door, but didn’t come in. The date did end with a kiss, though, which pleased her. She was almost as pleased by the fact that the gnome was back in its original position in the front yard when they returned from dinner. She couldn’t take much more of this joking around by whomever was trying to prank her. They probably thought that it was funny, but to her it was not.
She had no reason to enter the kitchen that evening, and so did not. She even avoided looking out of the rear window of her upstairs bedroom, for fear of glimpsing that stupid gnome. She did not want to spoil an otherwise perfect evening getting upset over it.
Juliet had just slipped her clothes off and was about to get into the shower when the doorbell rang. She assumed that it must have been Jim, and so a thousand thoughts raced through her head. Why did he come back? What did he want? What would she do? She pulled on a terry cloth bathrobe and quickly padded down the steps. She flipped the light switch for the front porch and threw open the door.
With a smile on her face, Juliet said “Well, hello stranger. Long time, no s…” She screamed and jumped back from the door. There, on the doorstep, stood that dreadful little gnome. She quickly slammed the door and locked it, leaving the light on, and ran back up the stairs. Grabbing her cell phone and throwing herself on the bed, she punched in Jim number and waited. It rang six excruciating times before going to voicemail. She hung up and dialed again. This time, he picked up on the first ring.
“Hey babe, sorry I couldn’t make it to the phone the first time. I was just walking into the house. Miss me already?”
“Jim! Thank God! He’s back. He’s doing it again.”
“Slow down, Juliet. Who’s back? What’s going on?”
“The gnome! The doorbell rang, and I answered, and… Oh my God, he was standing there on the porch!” Juliet began hyperventilating.
Jim tried to speak slowly and in a soothing voice. “Calm down, hon. It’s the kids again. They’re messing with you. A clay statue can’t move on its own and it sure can’t ring a doorbell.”
Juliet took deep breaths. “Whoo, okay. You’re right. I’m being silly, aren’t I? Why am I letting this upset me?”
“I’m sorry, Juliet. I shouldn’t have filled your head with all of those dumb stories. Gnomes aren’t real.”
Juliet let out a little laugh as she calmed down. She stood up and began to stroll around the bedroom while she spoke with Jim. She reached the rear window and gazed down toward the ground.
“Holy shit!” she screamed. “It’s in the back yard again! It’s on the back porch!”
“Juliet. Stop. Do you want me to come back over there?”
She didn’t even need to think about his offer. “Yes! Please! And please hurry.”
“Okay, just try to hang on. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
Juliet couldn’t bear to be near the windows. In fact, she wanted to be in as small a space as possible. She considered her walk-in closet, but decided that would be overreacting. She went into her bathroom, locked the door, and sat on the closed toilet seat. She waited, and waited, checking her cell phone every few seconds to watch the time go by. “Just ten minutes,” she told herself, “Just ten minutes.” She jumped as the doorbell rang again. It couldn’t be Jim; she had only hung up a minute ago. She knew that it was the gnome again – or the kids who were pranking her. Either way, she wasn’t about to answer it. Then came knocking. She couldn’t tell if it was the front or the back door, but she had a good idea that it was the back. She left the bathroom and poked her head out of the bedroom door. Her skin tingled and goosebumps raised up as the knocking started again. It was at the back door. Soon after it stopped, the front door bell rang again.
She let out a little yelp and dove back into the bedroom, first slamming its door shut and then locking herself back in the bathroom. The ringing doorbell and the knocking alternated back and forth, back and forth. Then the knocking turned into hammering, as if whomever was there was trying to smash its way through the door. Now the hammering was coming from both the front and the back, again alternating. The doorbell began ringing incessantly.
With horror, she realized that when Jim did arrive she wouldn’t be able to tell. Just as the thought came to her, her cell phone began to ring.
“Yes? Jim?”
“I’m here, Juliet. I’m at the front door. No kids, no gnome. You can let me in.”
“Thank God.” She bolted down the steps and, after turning on the light and carefully pulling back the windows shade on the front door, saw Jim standing there on the porch. In a state of near panic, she struggled with the lock, but finally threw open the door and hugged Jim tightly, burying her face in his shoulder. She began to cry.
Jim had a duffle bag with him. He planned to stay the night, on the couch if necessary, but he had a feeling that Juliet would want him closer. He had barely stepped through the doorway when the hammering at the back door resumed.
“Oh, that’s enough!” he roared. “I’m going to beat the living shit out of whoever that is.” He charged toward the back door and yanked it open. “Who the hell..?” There was no one there. He and Juliet simultaneously realized that they had failed to shut the front door. He was first to enter the living room, but Juliet was just behind him. Her hands flew to her mouth as soon as she came into the room and she screamed. The gnome was standing there in the middle of the living room floor, a trail of dirt leading from the doorstep to its current position on the carpet.
Jim lunged for the statue and picked it up with both hands. He thought that it seemed surprisingly heavy, but he shrugged the thought away. He made for the door and ran out into the driveway, Juliet following a few steps behind.
“Screw bad luck! We’re through with this thing,” he screamed as he threw the gnome onto the concrete drive with all of the force that he could muster. On impact, it shattered into pieces, sending bits skittering across the driveway. Staring down at the aftermath in the cold light of the moon, both Juliet and Jim were aghast. Their breath caught in their throats and they were not even capable of making a sound.
Mixed in among the broken shards of terra cotta, there were the remains of a tiny, humanoid skeleton.
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Note: The following is a sequel to the creepypasta entitled “Breach”. The author recommends reading “Breach” first, as it is followed chronologically by the events described in “Blood and Oil.” Thank you!
In the last hour of her life, as she ran blindly through the forest that surrounded her, Amanda Conners wondered what she’d done to deserve such an awful fate.
She hadn’t been a perfect girl, god only knew. She’d been a rebellious spirit from her youth, growing ever more independent and angry with age. Amanda had fought her parents over almost every rule they’d laid down when she lived with them in Ann Arbor. It rarely mattered to her if they made sense or not. It was simply in her nature to fight, to squall with every ounce of energy her tiny frame could produce.
Her last words to them in person before moving to Southdale had been in anger. Amanda felt bad about that. They’d reconciled on the phone, but the guilt that lay uneasily on her heart when she thought about her meek father and hand-wringing mother just wouldn’t go away. She had hoped to apologize to them in person when she returned home after the coming fall semester. Maybe then they’d understand why she had to leave. Maybe then she would have found the courage to tell them how desperately she needed to live her own life.
Moving to Southdale, a small unincorporated township just outside Spring Valley, had been frightening for her. It was the first time she’d ever been alone, and despite having a job from a young age she found the idea of working for an employer she’d never met to be a little scary. Still, Angie’s Diner had been the only place hiring for miles, and it was only fifteen minutes away from the beautiful old country home that was renting at such an attractive price. Everything had seemed so perfect. She’d felt like the Universe was inviting her to jump out into the world and make her mark.
What Amanda didn’t know was that the Universe is a cold, cruel mistress. Like a spider it had snared her, tricking her into thinking that she would have a future like she’d always imagined. The howling of the mob that pursued her through the thick undergrowth was proof enough of that. Muffled by the leather masks they wore, that sound was the death scream of all her hopes and dreams.
Weeping in panic, she floundered blind through the dark woods, hands outstretched in front of her.”Somebody help me!” She screamed, senseless in her terror, tears and mascara running down her face in dark rivers. “Please, somebody help me!”
The dreams had started as soon as she’d arrived. She was always running in them, her bare feet tearing on a dark gravel road in the middle of a field. Amanda’s muscles ached as she pumped her arms, willing herself forward, her lungs burning. Her heart felt like it was about to explode in her chest. She was covered in blood and oil, completely naked. Every ounce of her was in agony, a pain so sharp it made her gasp.
There were others in the field around her, each of them also in flight. They were dying, one by one, falling to pieces in the flickering light that seemed to follow her no matter how much she ran into the darkness. A thick, choking fog was roiling up from behind them. The fog brought death with it, a massive, hulking shape that tore into them with harsh, barking snarls. They were screaming as they died, one by one, until it was only Amanda left, running down that endless road.
The giant in the smoke was coming for her. There was nothing she could do to stop it. It would catch her, and it would kill her.
She woke weeping every time, clutching her arms around herself like a mother cradling a child. Amanda didn’t understand the dreams. They were nonsense to her. She’d never seen a road like that in her life. She’d never seen such a field, with tall grass seeming to stretch on for an eternity.
In order to forget the terror that came to her every night, Amanda dedicated herself to her job. Angie’s Diner was the only restaurant in Southdale, and that meant she was worked to the bone every day she was there. The farmers and construction workers that stopped by were extremely courteous, quite different from the customers in the city where she’d grown up. Amanda quickly got used to being called “honey” and “sugar,” understanding that the men who called her that meant nothing by it. She appreciated it, and the generous tips they always left her. Despite the horror that came at night, during the day Amanda felt as though she was accepted and appreciated by the town she now called home.
She felt especially appreciated by Byrd. She couldn’t bring herself to call him Jack now, after all he’d done, but she remembered how she’d felt when he’d first waltzed into the diner. He was older than her, maybe by five or six years, but had such a boyish face that it had taken her some time to realize it. He’d moved with an easy grace and confidence that men her own age lacked, and it had been that which first attracted her so much to him.
He’d asked her out the second time he visited Angie’s. She’d blushed and said yes. He took her to the movie theater in Spring Valley, and on the way introduced her to several varieties of country music she’d never heard before. He laughed when she told him she’d never listened to Charlie Daniels or Willie Nelson. It wasn’t an unkind laugh. He wasn’t an unkind person, she didn’t think, even though he was one of the masked men shrieking in the woods behind her.
They’d started going out on a regular basis. Every day after work he’d pick her up and take her out somewhere new. Picnics down by the river, an afternoon in the park, a matinee, it didn’t matter. Byrd couldn’t get enough of her, and it felt so good to be wanted. He was her first serious boyfriend, and after only a month she was wondering if this was what love felt like.
He took her to meet his parents. They lived on a small farm at the very outskirts of the township, next to a great cornfield on the edge of a thickly overgrown forest. His father was tall and whippet thin; his mother, short and squat. They had been standing outside the house as they drove up in Byrd’s brand new pick up truck, eagerly waiting.
They were so excited to see her, it was like they couldn’t contain themselves. Mr. Byrd had embraced her, and then Mrs. Byrd, squeezing Amanda so tight it nearly drove the air from her lungs. The old woman was practically bouncing with joy.“Bless you child,” she kept saying, over and over. “We’re so happy to meet you. You can call me Mama Byrd, everyone around here does.”
She’d put her hand up to cup Amanda’s pale cheek, her rough palm grazing one of the scars on her face. They were still visible despite the heavy makeup she wore, and usually she felt extremely self concious about them. Here, though, Amanda felt only acceptance. When dinner was over they headed back to Byrd’s apartment. She’d fallen asleep in his arms as they watched TV. She woke the next morning, covered in a blanket, to the smell of him making breakfast for her.
Amanda paused for a moment to get her bearings, the torn wedding dress she wore trailing behind her. She spun frantically in place, trying to catch a glimpse of a break in the trees. They were swaying in time with the too-close beating of the drums, the black smoke rising from the fire in the clearing billowing high into the night sky. Beads of sweat ran down her neck and filthy arms. She heard the hooting and yelling get louder and started running again, heedless of where she was going.
Byrd had understood her desire to not be intimate. After a full month of him not asking she figured he’d soon start feeling frustrated. They’d done nothing but kiss. Amanda had never done anything but kiss, and she finally told him that abruptly after one of their dates. While she’d rejected most of her parents teachings, she planned on following through with her commitment to stay a virgin until she was married.
She’d expected Jack to be upset, or to argue with her just a little. Instead he just smiled, his sharp white teeth glinting in the light of the campfire.“God has some special plans for you,” he said. “I’m never going to force you to do anything you don’t want to.”
The squealing had started not long after that. She’d heard it coming from the field outside her house one night, initially thinking nothing of it. Amanda had seen feral pigs in the area, and knew that the boars would leave her alone as long as she stayed out of their way.
It became slightly more disconcerting when it started coming from her basement. She’d heard it as she read on the couch, a low snuffling followed by a high pitched whine. After a moment’s deliberation she’d called Byrd, and they’d investigated together. She said she saw hoofprints in the dusty cellar, but he’d laughed, kicked at them with the toe of his boot, and said she was imagining things.
Something heavy struck her from behind. She gasped, toppling forward, barely managing to catch herself. Amanda got back up, not daring to look back. It didn’t matter. Powerful hands gripped her waist. She bucked wildly, lashing out with small fists.
“We love you!” She smelled cheap aftershave and whisky as the man wrapped his arms around her. His leather masked pushed into her hips as they struggled. “Scars and all!”
Amanda’s free hand grasped at a rock on the ground. She swung it overhead, cracking it solidly on her attacker’s nose. He released her, moaning in pain, his pig-snout mask askew on his face as she clambered to her feet.
“He has such great plans for you,” he blubbered, reaching up to her as she turned and fled. “He loves you so much.”
Amanda ignored him and kept going as fast as she could. The forest seemed to be thinning out. That was a good sign. A second later she burst from the woodline, running headlong into the massive cornfield behind the Byrd’s house. She pushed her way blindly through the stalks, holding her dress up with one hand, hearing it tear again and again and not caring one bit.
Only a few short hours ago (though by now it seemed an eternity) Byrd had told her he had an extremely special night planned out. He’d swept her off her feet, taking her to the only Italian restaurant for twenty miles. He’d brought her back to his apartment after that, and played her a song on his guitar that he’d wrote specially for her. He told her that he loved her, in English, Spanish, French and even Japanese.
He’d also drugged the single glass of wine he’d offered her. Amanda passed out almost immediately after taking a few sips. She thought she remembered hearing Mama Byrd voicing approval, and had a vague sensation of soft lace being pulled over her face, but she’d been unable to regain consciousness.
Amanda finally awoke in the middle of the clearing, surrounded by dozens of people wearing robes the color of her flaming red hair and strange masks with upturned snouts. Her eyes widened in terror as she saw them falling down and wailing before a strange statue in front of a great bonfire, lifting their hands toward it and screaming for its blessing.
She was lying on a bed of cushions on the forest floor. They’d neglected to bind her in any fashion, not expecting the drugs to wear off as quickly as they had. As soon as she could she rose woozily to her feet and staggered away into the woods. After only a few minutes they had noticed she was gone and given pursuit, crashing through the forest behind her.
After another fevered minute of running she broke free of the cornfield. Her elation was short lived as she saw Mama Byrd and five other townspeople standing before her, between Amanda and the Byrd’s farm. The others all wore their masks, but Mama Byrd’s was pulled up onto her forehead. The doughy old woman had a pleading look on her face as she stepped forward, palms held placatingly toward Amanda.
“Please, sugar,” she said. “Please, we don’t mean you no harm. I know this must seem crazy-”
“Stay away from me!” Amanda shrieked, tripping over her dress and falling backwards to the ground.
“Nobody is tryin’ to hurt you,” the old woman said soothingly. “We wouldn’t dream of it, darlin’. You’re so precious to us, to him. All we’re trying to do is introduce you two, that’s all!”
Amanda struggled to her feet, screaming for help that she knew wasn’t coming.
“We waited so long for you,” Mama Byrd continued. “So, so long. Watching the signs, prayin’, hopin’ that the day would come when you’d arrive. And you did! You did. You were an outcast, just like he said you’d be, and you were beautiful and strong despite your scars, just like he said you’d be. You’re perfect, darlin.’ Absolutely perfect.”
They wouldn’t stop advancing. Amanda turned to run back into the cornfield and slammed headfirst into one of her pursuers. She went down again, seeing stars, the impact making her ears ring.
“Dammit Tony, you hurt the girl!” She heard Mama Byrd yell. “You better pray she’s alright!”
“I’m sorry ma’am,” the masked man, stooping over her and gently pulling her hands behind her back. She remembered his voice; she’d heard it every day in the diner. “I certainly meant you no harm.” Amanda felt cold metal circle her wrists, and heard a metallic click. “Are these on too tight, ma’am? I can loosen them a little if you’d like.”
She was too tired and too stunned to fight back. The big man lifted her gently, putting her over his shoulder, making sure her dress didn’t hike up and compromise her modesty. “No,” she wept quietly as they headed back into the forest “No, no, please. Let me go.”
None of them said anything as they walked slowly back to the clearing. When they reached it Amanda saw that those who had stayed behind had erected a small platform in front of the statue with a wooden beam rising from its center. It was there they gently put her on her feet, linking her handcuffs over her head to a wire restraint on the pole.
“Do you need water?” A familiar voice asked from next to the platform. Groggily she turned her head to see Jack standing there, his mask pulled up. “More wine?” He looked sad, as if he might suddenly burst into tears. “More wine might make all this easier.”
“Why are you doing this to me, Jack?” She croaked, her throat dry as tinder. “I thought you loved me. You said you loved me.”
“I do love you,” her betrayer said, having the nerve to actually start weeping. “I love you because he loves you, and I am his child. You are so perfect and precious. You will bring so much good into a world that needs it so desperately.”
“What are you talking about?” She whispered.
“We are all god’s children,” Jack said, his eyes burning with the conviction of a true believer. “The whole world. But we’ve strayed. We’ve strayed so far away, Amanda. The time is coming for a new flood, a different kind of deluge that will wash away the wicked and save the righteous. The sons and daughters of god will walk the earth again, as righteous judges of the entire planet.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Can’t you see?” He replied, his face shining, voice cracking. “You’re his bride. You’re going to be their mother.”
A sudden pounding of drums cut off the rest of his words. Amanda looked up to see the few remaining cultists emerge from the woodline. They began surrounding the statue and the bonfire, swaying back in forth in time with the music. They were chanting, bellowing words that made Amanda’s ears hurt.
For the first time she really looked at the statue, barely able to comprehend its bizarre shape. It was humanoid, but only roughly so. It was fifteen feet tall, standing on a pair of legs that appeared to be made of thick lead pipes. Its torso was a rapidly burning wicker cage, stuffed with dozens of eyeless dolls, dirty plates and melting silverware. Hundreds of cables and wires made up its arms, ending in massive shovel blades and rake heads for hands. It had no head, only a sharp three-pronged barb at the very top.
The drums increased in tempo, the townspeople that circled the idol beginning to sway faster and faster. A small break in the circle appealed as four robed figures came forward, carrying a litter on their shoulders. The drummers wailed, and the fire behind the idol suddenly grew hotter, making Amanda’s skin prickle.
The bearers reached the statue and lifted something from the litter. Amanda couldn’t see what it was. With their backs to her they climbed a small ladder going up the side of the edifice and raised whatever it was high. The cultists cried as one as they set it down on the spike, pushing down hard and twisting it into place.
Byrd was still weeping as the litter bearers climbed down. “Look,” he told Amanda, her mouth open in horror. “The face of God.”
It was a pig’s head, a massive, tusked boar that looked to have been killed quite recently. Crow feathers had been painstakingly sewn into it, giving it a mane of jet black feathers. Its wide maw was open, its teeth ripped out and replaced with rusted rail road spikes. A crown of barbed wire and rodent carcasses sat upon its head. The crest of the crown, forming a symbol that made Amanda’s eyes hurt to look at, was adorned with seven human skulls, their mouths wired open in a perpetual scream.
A hush fell over the clearing. The cultists fell to their knees, their hands silently lifting towards the statue. Byrd slipped away from her side, quickly taking his place among the rank of worshippers. One of the litter bearers stepped forward, standing directly before the great effigy.
“We call upon thee oh lord,” he shouted, his voice unmistakably that of Byrd’s father. “We call upon thee to enter our sinful world and make straight our paths! We offer you the blood of nonbelievers, and the blood of our conviction! “ He gestured with one hand behind him, towards where Amanda was bound. “Behold your pure Bride. We pray that we find favor in thy sight, even as she has. Walk amongst us, oh lord! Bless us with the thunder of your footsteps!”
There was a high-pitched wail that seemed to come from all around them. Amanda screamed as a bolt of lightning tore from the sky, crashing down into the idol. Byrd’s father was thrown to the ground, the light so bright it left all of them blinking. Amanda saw stars, the heat from the lightning strike so intense she felt as if her face was blistering.
She passed out for a moment. When she opened her eyes, blinking away the afterimage of the lightning strike, she saw something impossible happening to the idol. The lightning strike had set it completely ablaze. The fire climbed higher and higher over it, twisting around it like a snake. Amanda watched as it shuddered, creaking in a phantom wind that blew out of nowhere.
The fire reached the idol’s head, and the eyes of the pig blinked. The entire structure shuddered as a squealing roar tore out of its mouth, the crown of its head rattling wildly. The eyes blinked again, rolling around in their sockets. Its stout legs snapped backward, turning into the disjointed hind quarters of a ruminant. The wires around the arm seemed to tense and bulge as black, burned flesh covered the skeletal wires. Its massive claws grew longer and more slender, ending in stiletto-sharp points that curled and flexed.
It stepped out of the fire, shaking bits of debris off its hulking form with another roar. Its feet were massive hooves that left smoldering prints in the dead grass; prints that looked all too familiar to Amanda. Another bolt of lightning split the sky, the thunderclap drowning out the fevered praise of the cultists. They prostrated themselves on the ground, babbling mindless prophecies and rending their clothes. They cut themselves with knives and hooks, falling upon one another in violent ecstasy.
“Behold the Pig!” Byrd screamed, suddenly rushing forward to stand beside his father. “Behold the Pig that takes away the sins of the-”
His words were cut short as it reached down and grasped him in a massive eight-fingered hand. He didn’t have time to react before it lifted him to its mouth, opening its maw with a screech of tortured metal and snapping sutures. It slammed its rotted teeth down around his hips, shaking its head back and forth, ripping him in half in an instant. It shoved the rest of Amanda’s boyfriend down her throat and swallowed hungrily.
The Pig stalked towards Amanda as Byrd’s father cut his own throat at its feet. It moved with an unsteady gait, occasionally dragging one of its legs as if not quite used to gravity. She wept at its approach, desperately trying to wake herself from the nightmare. It towered over her, blotting out the night sky. The seven skulls in the crest of its crown were screaming, rattling out words forced upon them by a savage power not seen on earth since the days of the bubonic plague.
The skulls told her of her destiny, of the future that was approaching. She saw it all in her mind’s eye: what the Pig intended for her, the horrific union of mortal and god, the months of torturous gestation as monsters grew within her body and soul. Amanda saw the fruits of her womb, a dozen blasphemous half-deities that devoured Human cities in the form of plague and genocide. Millions would die. Humanity would burn in the fires of a new dark age, never knowing that the savagery inflicted upon it came at the hands of a demon-god’s children.
It stepped towards her limp form, its claws reaching down to roughly grip her arms. It delicately severed her handcuffs, lifting it slowly up towards her. As she stared at it, unable to move, unable to even utter a plea for mercy, the skulls leered down and told her the identity of her tormentor.
In that moment, as its name thundered inside her mind, several things happened to her all at once.
There was a flash of light so bright it made the lightning pale in comparison. It was enough to be noticed by air traffic controllers nearly a hundred miles away, and caused temporary blackouts in all surrounding cities. The Pig was at the epicenter of it. It dropped Amanda to the ground, squealing as it backed away, raising its hands to its singed face.
The woman who was Amanda Conners died in a heartbeat, the name of the monster triggering a thousand hidden memories deep in the very darkest recesses of her mind. Her mother and father, her high school years, everything about her life before Southdale, was wiped away like the flimsy falsehood it was. She remembered the truth. She remembered
sitting with her arms crossed in the briefing room, staring at the holographic image of the target. “PE I-X-889 will be far too canny for any other approach,” she said, brushing a strand of blood-red hair out of her face. “Any attempt at psychic infiltration will likely be noticed immediately. It’s waited nearly seven centuries to attempt a return to reality. If it has any idea at all that this is a trap, it’ll turn tail and run back into the aether and likely try and come up on the other side of the planet. We’re lucky it chose a crossing in North America at all; if it runs we’ll never have another shot at it.”
Dolos sighed, running spindly fingers through graying hair. “So conventional means of infiltration are out of the question. That doesn’t change the fact that we need to lure this thing into reality to take a shot at it. What are you proposing?”
“Simple. Use me as bait.” She let it sink in for a moment before continuing. “Lock away my memories. Create a completely new history, a life story that will make me exactly what we know this thing is looking for in a mate. Make me weak and vulnerable and damaged. Even if this thing scours my mind, it’ll only find the fake memories we’ve planted there. A standard hypnotic trigger will suffice to bring down the barriers we put in place once the time comes for action.”
“It’d have to be a very specific trigger,” Dolos said thoughtfully. “If you remember too soon, it’ll sense your awareness and your cover will be blown.”
“We know from the PE’s we’ve interrogated that this thing is arrogant,” she said. “We’ve heard it screaming its name in the aether ever since it came into the shallows six months ago. It’s been a long time since 889 walked the earth, and I’m certain it will want to make its presence known to its bride. Make its name my trigger. As soon as I hear it, I’ll be ready.”
The woman that had been Amanda Conners a moment before levitated in the air, borne on the burning winds of damnation. Her eyes glowed an electric blue, hellish red light issuing from her open mouth. She howled into the aether, calling out to a presence that waited patiently for her hundreds of miles away. It answered her call, thundering out her name as it raced towards her via translocation. The cultists echoed its cry, gripped by the terrifying power she unleashed, wailing in agony as they tore themselves to pieces in psychic shock.
BELLONA! BELLONA! BELLONA!
A hole in reality opened up behind her, a vortex into worlds only ever seen by prophets and madmen. The Pig took another step back, its ancient mind racing feverishly to understand what was happening. Never before had it encountered such resistance. Never before had it seen its sacrifices rise up with such anger and power.
Something massive came stomping out of the aether; a jet black construct five meters tall, its breastplate opened like a set of titanium petals. Tortured ghosts trailed from it in long, frozen tendrils, lesser spirits that had been caught in the wake of the behemoth. It stooped low, its massive arms reaching down to gracefully catch the tiny woman before it up into its chest.
Bellona stood, a smoky-eyed goddess of war in armor that shone in the brilliant light of the fire. Needles punctured the skin of her back in a hundred places, slamming into her spine and brain stem. Her body spasmed, the arms and legs of the armor reflecting her every motion. The Aegis was glad to see her; she could sense it in every relay, every system scan, every tactical readout that flooded her brain.
The dispersal cannon on her left shoulder hummed into life, the missile rack on her right immediately locking onto the target. Dozens of laser-guided munition systems highlighted the Pig in every energy spectrum known to exist, paving the way for the high-energy laser batteries stacked onto her wrists. She clenched her fists, allowing meter-long blades made of silver and cold-forged tungsten to snap from their sheaths between her knuckles.
Bellona sensed the Pig’s confusion. With a single thought she seared an image into its inhuman mind. She showed it a burning sword, raised in defiance of all gods old and new, blazing eternally against a darkness whose time had finally come to end.
The long night is over. Dawn approaches, and I am its herald.
The Pig seemed to finally understand what was happening to it. It took a step forward, its skulls chanting blasphemous prayers to beings even more loathsome than it. Bellona grinned, baring her teeth. The trap was sprung. The enemy was before her. The Aegis’ thirst for blood and war mingled with her own, sending out murderous pulses of psychic energy that set the trees on fire.
“Alright, you bastard. You wanted me,” she snarled, her visor slamming shut. “Come and get me.”
–
Walking through the blackened remains of the forest, John Hauser slowly made his way to the center of the clearing. His heavy black boots sent small ripples through the pools of blood still covering the ground. The charred remains of the trees were covered in the stuff, sticking to his hands as he pushed his way forward.
The cleaners were hard at work, each of them outfitted in bulky biohazard suits built to protect their mortal frames. While the bodies of the cultists had all been removed by the time he had arrived, he could still see the fire close by where the lingering remains of PE I-X-889 continued to burn. It would take several hours of continually purging and salting the fields to erase the beast’s presence.
This was one of the most important jobs of the cleaners; to completely remove any lingering trace of supernatural taint from a region. To do otherwise meant running the risk of the location becoming a confluence for supernatural activity. Hauser remembered many dark days in the early years of his organization when they had learned that the hard way.
Lies and half-truths were already being spun up about what caused the disaster. In an era of uncertainty, Hauser’s superiors had quickly decided that terrorism would be best to blame for the death of fifty-five members of a three-hundred person town. Already corpses with Middle-Eastern features were being flash cloned and deposited in strategic locations at ground zero. A few citizens in the town proper had heard the violent battle between Bellona and the Pig, but none had come to investigate. There’d be no reason for them to disbelieve the story that several of their fellow townspeople had been rounded up and then blown to pieces by a group of highly-trained Islamic suicide bombers (quite probably hailing from Pakistan, as Hauser’s men would suggest through a variety of carefully hidden clues)
Hauser wasn’t worried about the press or the government taking too close a look. Individuals loyal to his organization had already begun exerting their influence. Homeland Security would think that the FBI had things well in hand, while the FBI would receive word that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms would be taking control based on the terrorists utilizing weapons purchased in the States. There would be power struggles with the local police and sheriff’s office. All organizations would receive word that biohazard teams from the CDC had gone to the site in order to quarantine for a possible anthrax threat, but upon further investigation it would be discovered that the CDC had never sent such a release to anyone, and that it had been mere hearsay working its way through the various departments. It’d be extremely embarrasing for all involved, and more importantly, would give Hauser’s team a full twenty four hours to complete their work. By the time someone actually got on the scene, they’d all be long gone.
As he finally reached the edge of the clearing, he saw the massive frame of Bellona’s Aegis standing protectively over the girl. The suit was almost completely out of power, but he could sense a lingering consciousness in the Veil hovering near it. The construct was prepared to protect the tiny figure sitting at its feet, staring into the fire as she meditated. Not for the first time Hauser was highly impressed with the latest prototype. The men and women in engineering had done an excellent job.
“I was wondering when you’d get here,” she said, still gazing at the witchfire that consumed the Pig’s corpse. “I sensed your arrival as you translocated.”
“I’d hoped to arrive in enough time to prevent such damage from occurring,” he smiled, repeating the words she’d once spoken to him as he fished a cigarette out of the pack. “Would you like one?”
Bellona didn’t answer. Hauser shrugged and lit up, the acrid tang of the smoke a welcome relief from the smell of charred flesh and corruption.
“I had dreams, you know,” she said. “Dreams of being a little child, running naked down a gravel road. Something was chasing me, murdering my kin as it went. I was covered in blood and oil, and I have no idea why.”
“The Pig was linked to your mind as soon as you arrived here,” Hauser said thoughtfully. “Perhaps you were accessing some residual memories of another target.”
Bellona shook her head. “No. These weren’t residual memories, or hallucinations brought on by psychic trauma. These were my own memories. Memories of a time before I was an agent.”
“That’s impossible.” Hauser sat down next to her, beneath the Aegis. He seemed almost comically oversized compared to Bellona. “Our memories of our previous lives are completely purged away. None of us remember anything before the indoctrination.”
“So they say.” She turned slowly to look at him. The light of the fire cast strange shadows over him; shadows that looked like that of a hulking beast that chased young girls down dark gravel roads. “I had a life for a moment, Agent Hauser. I had a family that I believed to be real. I had a relationship that was real, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.”
“You played the part incredibly well,” he conceded. “It was the single greatest feat of infiltration I have ever seen.”
“And now I am returned to this world where I am Bellona, not Amanda.I do not know how old I am. I do not know if I am capable of love. I do not know if she was who I might have been had…” She turned back to the fire. “Had you never come for me, years ago.”
Hauser was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You are as capable of love as I am, Bellona. While you’ve sacrificed much in becoming an agent, you haven’t given u
|
My first love was a pretty girl
with golden hair and skin of pearl.
We thought our meeting one of chance,
our senses caught in that first glance,
and watched our love unfurl.
Our lives entwined at dizzying rate,
as if our love was set by fate,
and none were taken by surprise
when talk of marriage did arise
and soon we’d set a date.
The engagement ring I slipped upon her hand
was an expensive golden band
topped in the centre with a ruby, sullen red
as if from some heart it had been fed
to suit the love she did demand.
For though gentle in her looks so fair
a passion dwelt far under there.
A will of iron and mood to match,
and though she was indeed a catch,
I often wondered at her stare.
For day by day I saw her look
at that ring, the time she took,
and then glance at me as if to say
“I’ve caught you now, you can’t get away”
like a fish, pierced upon on a hook.
And then one night as we lay in bed
In a simple monotone she’d said,
“Promise me your heart forever
that on this ring, not even death will sever
the love that holds us in its stead.”
At this her hand had gripped mine tight
as if to bind me to my words that night,
and laughing, I’d repeated them
addressing that dark and solemn gem,
‘fore sleep had stole my sight.
—
—
A month before the wedding day,
she fell ill, and wasted fast away.
I sat beside her bed and wept,
as my love, adrift in illness, slept
but could no longer stay.
I held her hand as she passed on,
until the light in her eyes had gone.
and wiping back a final tear
I promised all those who stood near
she would be the only one.
Before her death, to all she’d stressed
she wished in her bridal gown be dressed,
and so buried in silken white
as if a princess waiting for her knight
laying peaceful at her rest.
Admiring her serene face,
her head rounded by her veil of lace
I looked down to where her hands they lay,
and following her final say,
the ruby ring took pride of place.
Love, however, will have its sport,
and turned my promise into naught.
So it was I loved once more
a girl whose charms I did adore,
for time is long, and memory short.
Her beauty was not marred
by a nature dark and hard
instead her mood was light,
her eyes both kind and bright
and she healed a heart once scarred.
Happy times with her had led,
to me thinking things long since fled,
of a future spent just her and me,
and I knew she’d eagerly agree.
So made my mind that we should wed.
But on the day that I proposed,
dreams of my first love now deposed
began to fill my every night
with visions wove of sickly fright,
of her displeasure now disclosed.
Asleep, I’d dream of a graveyard’s gloom,
and me, in the trappings of a groom.
Thus dressed, I’d hear a happy cheer
coming from a church door near
and walk in, to some unknown doom.
A church aisle stretched far ahead,
each row populated with the dead,
and whilst the organ wailed within
they threw confetti of corpses skin
as I stumbled to my love to wed.
They looked at me with empty eyes,
their sockets round and black inside,
A need to flee, to simply run,
but my steps would only lead me on,
until I stood beside the bride.
A vice like grip would take my hand,
and there in frozen terror stand.
My bride would then turn her head,
a worm riddled mockery of she now dead,
my first love’s wedding now at hand.
Every night the self same dream
’til my sanity now stretched the seam
and every night I saw it clear
the thing that she had held most dear,
the ring and its ruddy gleam.
Maybe I was mad by now
but I knew the dreams had showed me how
to finally free myself from she
whose spirit would not let me be,
and so I made a vow.
—
—
Only the Moon saw me leave
at midnight on my wedding eve
to the graveyard, to where she lay,
to dig at all that miserable clay
and from her hand that ring to cleave!
I no longer wondered if I should,
only knowing that I would.
So gripped with anger and nascent fear
I hunted she I once held dear,
until the spade struck wood.
I clambered in that hellish hole,
and looked upon my wretched goal,
all to claim back that cur-sed ring
and end the nightmares of that…thing
that stalked my dreams and wracked my soul.
And then, as if in part the devil’s jest
the hallowed silence was unseemly blessed
by the maddening calling of my phone,
that incessant, demanding drone,
and to my head the phone I pressed.
My new fiancee’s voice filled my ear,
her voice too fresh and crystal clear
to be heard in such an awful place
amongst this deathly quiet race,
but still I stopped to hear.
She gushed about a gift she’d found,
left on her bed and simply bound.
From me she’d known it must have come,
for its beauty had near struck her dumb:
a golden ring with ruby round.
What words I said I do not know,
mind gone blank and thoughts gone slow.
A single, dreadful thought was left
and with that spade the lid I heft.
To see what horror was below.
There she lay in rotting glory,
her nails and hair grown long and hoary.
A Cinderella bound in death
whose stench, not looks, now took ones breath.
A bride in some horrific story.
She wore a torn and mildewed gown,
of mottled green and rancid brown;
her flesh and skin picked clean
by time and morbid things obscene,
bearing swollen maggots for a crown.
With wild eyes I cast around
within the casket and surrounding ground,
but no ring I saw in that horrid place,
just a rictus grin on that mocking face,
‘til I heard a shallow, beating sound.
I followed the noise to whence it came,
real or not, it meant the same.
The odd sound that my attention caught,
was not the thing that I had sought,
and then I saw the source of blame.
The sight was of no wedding band
but in seeing I knew myself full damned.
For in that grisly meeting,
I saw my own heart beating,
grasped tightly in her bony hand!
Now here I sit in broken dread
in the grave of one thought long since dead.
To her, a promise made on my heart,
was an oath from which she would not part,
and from me now has all hope fled.
For around the grave stand figures tall
spades held in bony hands of all.
A burial party just for me
and my first love for eternity,
and on me clumps of dirt now fall.
I shall write these words and place them near
whilst time is left, I’ll state it clear.
Make no promises you cannot keep
for in truth the dead, they do not sleep,
and a broken word is much to fear.
Credit To – CharminglyShallow
|
Ever since I can remember I have had a strange fascination with mirrors. The idea that there is a piece of glass which reflects everything you see. I still wonder what the first man thought when he was saw his reflection in still water. Did he instinctively know it was him? Or did he spend a few minutes moving his arms around until he realized that this other man matched his movements completely? Whatever the case, my natural curiosity for mirrors led to one of the most unbelievable moments of my life.
It was 7 years ago. I was a ten year old who had just moved from the cozy suburbs to a large ranch house, smack dab in the middle of 10 acres of land. I had many memorable experiences in that house and on the surrounding property, getting bitten by a racoon, having late night airsoft wars; but there is one that I have never told. One that is set apart from all the others.
We bought that house as a fixer upper, and since I was a ten year old with a taste for adventure, I claimed the lone upstairs bedroom as my own. The room was complete with dated brass fixtures, thick teal carpet, and it’s own connected bathroom.
Over time as I have thought through this story in my head, I am still surprised that I didn’t notice anything when I first went into that bathroom. I didn’t have a dark foreboding, there wasn’t anything stand out creepy or weird about it, just a room. A sink. And a mirror. The mirror was massive. It sat behind the sink so you couldn’t help but see yourself when you walked in. It had a slight yellowed tint, and was covered in dust and grime. But nothing really seemed out of the ordinary, nothing that would signal what was to come.
The first two nights spent in that bedroom were completely normal, nothing strange except the occasional midnight creak or moan from the ancient air conditioning unit. But on the 3rd night, laying in my bedroom bed, it started.
I woke up suddenly, the groggy feeling of heaviness that accompanies being woken from a deep sleep. I slowly started to gain consciousness and my ears strained to hear what could have woken me. That’s when I heard it.
Drip…. Drip…. Drip….
I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized I just must have left the bathroom faucet on. I sat up, turned on my dim bedside lamp, climbed out of bed, and stepped into the bathroom.
As I set my foot down on the tile, I was surprised when I discovered it strangely chilled. I continued in, not thinking too much of it, and turned the bathroom light on.
My reflection greeted me. I was in my Mario pajamas and my hair was a bed-heady mess. I smiled at how silly I looked. I looked at the faucet handle and sure enough, it had been left ever so slightly open. I turned it all the way closed, turned off the light and went back to bed. As I was drifting off to sleep I made a mental note to ask my dad if he could tighten the faucet in the morning.
Though, by the time I got back from school, as you can expect from any 5th grader, I had a million different things on my mind, and completely forgot. Instead spending my time at Goodwill with my parents looking for the perfect costume for halloween, which was coming up in a few days.
That night though, it happened again. I awoke suddenly, with the same strange heaviness that covered my body the night before. Instinctively I strained my ears, and I heard it again.
Drip…. Drip…. Drip….
I sat up, annoyed. I was sure I had double checked the faucet before I went to bed. I turned on my bedside lamp, walked across the carpet and set foot on the bathroom tile. My foot recoiled instinctively. The tile wasn’t just cool anymore, it was actually cold. Too bothered to care, I turned on the light and jumped at the sight of my reflection. I still wasn’t used to seeing anybody else (Even if it was me) this late at night. I guess all that TV before bed was starting to take it’s toll. I turned the faucet off, and the dripping stopped.
The next day I got my dad to tighten the faucet handle. He walked in with the tool bag, appeared to be tightening something, than walked out.
It turned out that everything was already tight, and he told me to make sure to check the faucet before I went to bed.
So, that night before I went to bed, I walked into the bathroom, the frigid floor greeting my bare feet once again. I looked at my ever present reflection, feeling a dull sense of unease for whatever reason. I didn’t look my reflection in the eyes very long, I still don’t know why at that point I felt uncomfortable with it. I checked and double checked the faucet handle, nothing was dripping.
Feeling relieved that I could finally get some uninterrupted rest, I layed down in my bed, turned off the light and drifted off.
I awoke again, my body felt even heavier than usual, my mind seemed groggy, everything was completely black, I think my head was still under my covers. My ears pricked up, listening.
I still get shivers thinking about this part.
I didn’t hear a
Drip… Drip… Drip…
I heard
Psshhhhh
After spending a few moments trying to decipher what this sound was, I realized it was the faucet.
The faucet was on completely. No longer a drip but a steady stream.
I tried to sit up, but it took a few tries to get my bearings after being awakened from my near catatonic sleep.
I attuned my ear and made sure what I heard was what I thought it was. Yes, the faucet in my bathroom was completely on. I gulped.
I stepped off of my bed, my feet being cushioned by the dated carpet. The light from my bed lamp was dim, only casting enough light to light up my floor, the bathroom was still pitch black. I stepped in.
This time when I placed my foot on the floor, it wasn’t just cold, it was freezing. It felt like the tile had been in a deep freeze.
Unsure what to do, I stepped in fully, goosebumps shooting up my calf, and turned the light on. I don’t know what I expected to see, but what I saw was me.
I looked deeply into my own eyes, feeling a sense of distrust. I still don’t really know how to explain it, but the only closest word I can think of, is detachment. Like looking at a photo of yourself when you were younger. You know that’s you, but you feel…. detached.
I reached my hand slowly towards the faucet handle, still meeting my own stare. I slowly started to turn the handle, my eyes meeting my own. The water poured less, less, less and then finally the handle clicked to its full rotation, the water was off. My hand remained on the faucet I started at the eyes of my reflection, and that’s when it happened.
It blinked.
I saw my reflection blink.
I let out what I thought would be a scream but ended up just being a sudden and horrified gasp.
I ran out of the room, down the stairs and straight to my parents bedside.
They were a little surprised that I ran to them crying because I hadn;t for years, but they could tell I was upset so they let me sleep in their room.
All I could muster out that morning in explanation was “Nightmares”
I didn’t dare tell my parents, I don’t know if it was my childhood fear of not being believed, or what. I think part of me was still trying to convince myself that it didn’t happen.
I tried telling myself that my eyes were just playing tricks on me, anything to convince myself that I didn’t really see “my” reflection blink. Anything to convince myself that that mirror was just another mirror.
That evening, was halloween. I was invited by some of my new fifth grade friends to go trick or treating with them, but after a few hours we had to stop early due to a giant rainstorm kicking in.
When I returned to my house, pillowcase full of candy in tow, my parents greeted me with news that send shivers down my spine.
They were going on a date night.
I tried to explain the various made up excuses I had for them not to go, I even tried to use the lightning storm outside as an excuse, but nothing worked. And I didn’t dare tell them the real reason.
They patiently explained how I was 12 years old, they’d only be gone for a few hours, and I had their phone numbers if I needed to call.
Once the door shut behind them, my heart dropped. I was alone. With the mirror.
I spent the first hour or so downstairs. I tried to get the tv to work, but because of the storm outside I was only getting static. That’s when I made my decision.
I still don’t know what drove me to go back into the bathroom.
I’ve tried to explain it as childhood curiosity, temporary insanity, and a few other things. To this day I still don’t understand it.
Whatever the case, I found myself climbing up the stairs to the top floor where my bedroom was located.
I waked into the bedroom, and as if on cue, a particularly loud clap of thunder made the windows rattle. I turned on my bedside lamp, and sat on my bed staring at the bathroom doorway.
I pulled out my still full candy bag, reached my hand down into it and pulled out a few tootsie rolls. I ate quietly, hoping the sugar would give me courage.
I walked into the bathroom, turned the light on, and looked my reflection dead in the eye.
Time seemed to stand still.
My reflection no longer felt like me.
Looking at it made me feel almost offended, that there could be something so similar to me, but so different.
Everything got very quiet.
I could hear my heartbeat loudly in my head.
My reflection was moving.
Its arm, to be specific. I only saw it out of my peripheral vision because our eyes were locked, but it was definitely moving.
What felt like a electric current shot up my body, my hair stood on end and I was frozen, staring, every single muscle in my body tense.
I tried to scream but I couldn’t move.
My reflection still stared back at me, it’s face neutral.
It was moving it’s hand towards the faucet handle on its side, it got closer and closer and then I felt something on my hand, strained my eyes to look down just a tiny bit and realized my own hand had grasped the faucet handle on my side.
It had moved it’s hand to the faucet handle and I had too. I tried to pull my hand back, but I couldn’t.
It was as if the signals from my brain weren’t being communicated to any parts of my body. I willed my body to move, but nothing happened.
My reflection’s face looked at me knowingly, then moved its head slightly closer to the mirror, and parted it’s lips, revealing a devilish grin.
I felt my own face contort, matching its features.
BANG A clap of thunder rattled the mirror.
My whole body felt heavy as I stared at this smiling abomination, somehow controlling my body.
It’s free hand started to move up, and though I couldn’t break the stare with its eyes, I could see out of my peripheral vision that my hand was also moving up. Our hands simultaneously started moving towards the mirror. I tried to fight back, to pull away, but it was useless.
As my hand got closer to the mirror, I felt a vibration emanating from the grimy glass surface, but it pulled my hand closer still, it’s horrifying smile still stretching my face.
BANG an even louder clap of thunder rumbled the very ground I was standing on.
As my hand got closer and closer to the mirror, my fingertips started to feel incredibly cold. I was trying with all my might to pull my hand away from the mirror, my fingertips were grazing the surface of the mirror, and then I felt it. An icy coldness, a tingling sensation, on the tips of my fingers, and I could see, my fingers had partially gone through the mirror, to the other side.
My heart dropped.
And that’s when I realized it was trying to pull me over to its side.
BANG the loudest lightning strike of them all shook the house, and in an instant, darkness. The lighting had killed the power, and to my delight I could no longer see my reflection, only pitch black darkness.
I pulled my fingers out of the glass, I could control my body again.
I turned my head away from the mirror my body scrambling to be anywhere but in that bathroom. I dove out of the bathroom, hitting my shoulder on the door on the way out, then landed not so softly on the floor. The colors of my room got distorted, everything was purple, then green. The room was spinning and my head felt light, I tried to get up but my body wouldn’t listen. That’s when I blacked out.
That was the last night I set foot in that bathroom. Heck, that was the last time I even set foot in the bedroom.
It took less work than I thought than to convince my parents to let me sleep in the game room.
Eventually though, our family decided to move. We renovated the whole house. We tore up the dated green carpet, we repainted all the rooms, and we removed the big, grimy, dusty mirror in the bathroom.
I refused to help.
The day went by so fast, as I was kept busy clearing out the garage, but I specifically remember the workers carrying the mirror towards the back of the pick up truck my dad had borrowed.
First they tried to break it to fit easier in the truck, but nothing worked.
They tried hammers, axes, but nothing even scratched it.
My final memory of that mirror, was of it standing upright in the back of the truck. Still dusty, grimy and dirty, but other wise completely unscathed. As the truck drove away the mirror happened to be angled perfectly to see my reflection once again.
I saw in the mirror, a kid standing alone in a drive way. Staring with eyes wide, full of fear.
That was the last time I saw the mirror.
Credit To – Duncan Key
|
This is the final entry in Stephan D. Harris’ Harlequin series.
“Sometimes I wonder; what exactly is a monster? Is it really something to be feared, or is it something to be respected? Is that frightening, hideous thing that stalks your nightmares trying to tell you something, something important? Maybe the monster isn’t there to scare you at all. Have you ever wondered about this? Have you ever wondered if the monsters that hide under your bed are actually just there to protect you? To protect you from something so much worse?”
– The Wilcox Journal, 1989
At this moment, at this serene and terrible moment in the outer edge of the Union Street Cemetery, I’m wondering whether or not my thoughts are truly my own, or if they have been constructed by artificial means. By artificial I mean to say externally, unwillingly, or unconsciously; the kind of definition one should consider at the tail end of a mushroom trip just as things start to seem normal again, but not quite. The drug analogy is not what I had in mind, but who knows what I have in mind. Maybe it wants me rattle away like this, maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know.
What I do know is that with each thrust of the shovel, a little part of the Earth has been displaced. I do this while my right hand throbs in pain under the bandages. I don’t even care. After enough soil has been removed, the hole will be ready for the lye. I brought a few bags with me for just this reason. The idea is that even an isolated place like Union Street won’t be able to guarantee safety, so the hole needs to be filled with something that will burn hot enough to get the job done the next time it rains. I can already see the storm blotting out the horizon. Attention is a dangerous thing, this fact I know well. Nobody knows I’m here. The distant thunderclaps remind me. There’s another fresh grave next to the one I’ve already started. I made that one too, only a few days ago. By now the body of Reverend Proust has disintegrated into a carrion wad of filth, a sickening blob of putrefied mucus that not even maggots would find tasteful.
“And you don’t even know why he deserved it, do you?”
I stop digging for a smoke. The thing about habits, they always become the strongest when you know you’re going to quit. The time’s as good as any for a moment of self-reflection though, may as well use it.
Billie left yesterday on her motorcycle, to where I don’t know or don’t want to. She left with a duffle bag full of cloths and food, her bass strapped to her back and a gun or two strapped somewhere else. There were no goodbyes; two people who know each other well enough don’t need words or petty sentiments. Just a silent exchange of nods acknowledging that things will never be okay. I’m not worried for her though, she knows how to survive the chaos. Terry’s ending is a little different. After the wedding was called off, after the smoke settled, he finally gave up holding on to this miserable town. He sold his half of the Broken Window last week, and as soon as he gets a bank or an agency or anyone to handle the house he’ll be leaving for New Orleans. I thought it was kind of funny actually, knowing how the poor bastard doesn’t stand a chance yet still possessing enough human compassion to lie to his face. It’s hard not feel bad about it, but sometimes honesty is the cruelest option. Besides, I could be wrong. The knowledge could be fabricated.
But I digress. The outcome means nothing if the means to the ends are ignored.
By now, the story should be obvious: the Harlequin, the mortuary, the stranger and the willow. I thought I knew what I was doing, we both did. Billie and me, fighting side by side against something we barely understood. We thought we knew how it worked, and we thought it was something we could stop. It sickens me how wrong we were.
“You are always wrong.”
As far as final chapters go, the ending began were the beginning had ended. By this I mean, I may as well recall the appropriate backstories the each of us, me the dark eyed mortician and the pierce studded Billie-Joe Kimble. Oh who to pick first? Let’s go with Billie, she is and always has been the real hero of this fucked up little nightmare of a fairy tale.
Billie was born just outside of Richmond, which is known to be less of a city than it is more of the world’s largest Civil War museum. She never told me much about her childhood, mostly because it seemed irrelevant to her and also because Billie isn’t much for dwelling on the past, but what I do know is that she was named after her father, who was apparently a heavier drinker than she is, but not for a lack of effort on her part. They didn’t get along so well, which makes me suspect that he’s the reason for how Billie learned to keep fighting long after her knuckles split.
“He wanted a boy, but got me instead.” She used to say. Billie, the dainty flower, the girl next door. Short and sweet like a pulled tooth.
Billie never finished high school. When she was seventeen she dropped out in her senior year to start a band in D.C. leaving Richmond in the very same manner she left Charlottesville, no goodbyes. For three years she drifted around the streets of our capitol looking for the perfect sound to compose the soundtrack for the endless anarchy that she felt summed up her existence. A new tattoo there, another piercing here, a week goes by without eating but the next doesn’t sleep. From the way she told it, it seemed like it should have been her very own slice of paradise, but of course even chaos can become boring. What she really wanted was adventure. Obviously the dozens of post punk bands she founded or joined weren’t able to provide this for her, otherwise she might have stayed there instead of making her way back south. She skipped Richmond two years ago, parking her uninsured motorcycle outside of a dinky bar in North Carolina, and there it stayed parked for eight and a half seasons worth of restlessness. Terry gave her a job and a place to live. She met four guys who called themselves musicians, fell in love with the blues, fell in love with Terry not long after. That’s the way it was for just over a year. That’s the way it was until I showed up.
I smoke the cigarette down to the filter and toss it into the growing hole just as the wind starts to pick up. It blows my tie around to the back of my neck and I can’t help but think of it as a noose. I’m wearing the red one today. It’s my favorite.
My story is somewhat dull compared to Billie’s. I grew up in a town called Baily Meadow, a place about an hour’s drive east of Charlottesville. The house I lived in was nice, my parents, a pediatrician and a financial accountant, were also nice. The neighborhood was nice, the school system was nice. The people were nice. I graduated at the top of my class, got a full academic scholarship to the university of my choice and promptly enrolled myself into a mortuary science course at a college in Raleigh, obtaining a bachelor’s degree along with a minor study in decomposition anatomy while simultaneously working through my funeral service apprenticeship. This resulted in my current position as professional embalmer of the Burnswick Funeral Home in the lovely town of Charlottesville, NC; population 943, unincorporated. This was about a year ago by now, and really that’s what my entire life has been working towards, at least the interesting parts. I doubt that anyone would be interested in the dead raccoon that I tried to keep in my parent’s freezer when I was eight, or the dumpster fire that I started when I was fourteen. No one wants to hear about the summer I spent in the juvenile detention center for stabbing a classmate with a broken pencil or the six months I stopped speaking. Those stories are irrelevant to who I am as a person. It’s not like I was a particularly disturbed child just because of a few antisocial interests, I was just different. It’s why I’m so good at what I do. I can ignore the sort of things that would make other choke or gag. Just because I’m callous doesn’t make me some kind of monster either.
“Real monsters don’t hide under the bed.”
By now, Billie must be at least halfway to California, but I try not to think about it.
The final chapter of this little anthology began the day after the butchering of a young hitchhiker in Terry’s bathtub. The following daylight hours included several instances of what would latter amount to something over and above what Billie and I had assumed to be a known truth. From my point of view, the morning went as according to plan with the incineration of the severed limbs of the unfortunate traveler in the Burnswick crematorium furnace as a much needed disposal method of his body, because neither Billie, Terry or I were in any position to explain to the authorities as to why we felt the need to murder a vagrant with a hammer in the middle of the night. “He was possessed by alien brain monsters,” probably would raise more questions than answer. Not to mention that Billie and I were also responsible for burning a farmhouse to the ground earlier in the evening. Cutting the body into pieces at the joints and draining it of blood for easier transportation to a crematorium was by far the best option for the three of us. It helped that my employer had one of those En-V 127 Heat Crushers that does a full incineration in under ninety minutes with a built in pulverizer to take care of the hardened calcium deposits. I had the whole thing done and gone by the time anyone else showed up for work, no one even asked why I was already there in the first place. A funeral home requires constant cleaning; the simple excuse of sanitation was enough to avoid suspicion.
Aside from the sleep deprivation headache, the rest of my day went along as normal as ever, with two embalming’s and eight cups of coffee. Nobody bothered me or my work until after Burnswick and Madelyn left for the day.
They left me alone to lock up shop.
Not that this was an abnormal occurrence in itself. Often I would be the last one to leave, it was just the nature of my work to keep track of how much of what supplies had been used and when more would be required, because running out of formalin halfway through a procedure would be very very bad.
No, what was out of the ordinary was the visitor who walked through the front door just as I was on my way out. Not to my own surprise, I didn’t recognize this man. Because of my long held beliefs, (or more accurately, lack thereof) not once in my entire stay in Charlottesville had I ever joined the ceremonial burial of any of my clients, or more importantly, entered the Trinity Baptist Church.
“I apologize, but we’re closed for business until tomorrow morning.” I told the man. He was wearing a black collared shirt tucked into a pair of blue jeans. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, with a head full of perfectly combed salt and pepper hair. Something about him immediately caused a feeling of pure and total contempt.
“But if you’d like, I could pencil you in to meet with Mr. Burnswick first thing when we reopen tomorrow.” I continued, jingling my keys in the most apparent way possible. He stared at me for a beat too long before speaking.
“I don’t believe we’ve met.” He said through a smile. “Reverend Joseph Proust pleased to meet you.” He extended his hand toward mine. I ignored it.
“I’m Stephan D. Harris, head embalmer. Like I said, Burnswick left already and I’m on my out as well.”
“That’s a shame; I guess I’ll have to find him later. But tell me, Stephan is it? How long have you been in Charlottesville?”
“Going on a year by now.” I tried to say without letting the growing frustration show through.
“A year! My word, how is it that I’ve yet to see you in the pews on Sundays? Don’t tell me you’ve been going to that Presbyterian goliath out on the interstate. They may be big, but they won’t give you the same sense of family that I try to cultivate.” The way he spoke his words made me want to grind my teeth down to stubs, but I managed to collect myself.
“I’m not much for taking anything on faith.” I responded in the most polite manner possible. The reverend’s face lost its smile almost instantly.
“Well, that’s disappointing.” His tone was that of a disapproving parent. The kind who think they know what’s best even when they don’t, or at least that’s the way I heard it. “I believe there’s quite a bit you could gain by joining our flock. The world is full of evil, and it gets worse every day, it may be wise to seek the protection we offer. If you change your mind though, you’ll be welcomed with open arms.” Nothing he said sounded like a welcome.
I wasn’t in the mood for this nonsense, not then, not ever. I shuffled through the last two days without sleep, the night before being an exceptional case of overwhelming violence. Drained and tired, the last thing in the world I wanted to deal with was the leader of what Billie has been calling a cult. The Trinity Baptists have been aware of the same sort of phenomena that the rest of us have. Everyone has seen the lights in the sky, everyone knew about aneurism epidemic. The difference being I knew the cause, but they thought it to be a divine message proclaiming the end of days. Most importantly, I’m a sunny day asshole who just doesn’t enjoy meeting new people.
“Listen, it was nice meeting you,” I lied, “but I’ve really got to be going now.” Proust nodded his head as I led him out of building, locking the door behind us. The sun had already begun its descent towards the western sky, stretching the shadows of houses and tress across the ground like they do. I turned right, Proust walked to the left. Just before I was out of the range of ear though, I heard him call out once more over his shoulder.
“Don’t burn any bridges Mr. Harris. You never know what you’ll need to cross.” The side of my face that had had the stubble burned away from the night before began to itch. Just a little, as a reminder.
The walk home was quite, and oddly enough the ten minutes of pedestrian travel wasn’t accompanied by the sense of being followed. Lately, the creeping linger of paranoia had been a problem for myself while walking the streets of Charlottesville alone, but not this evening. In fact, I’d say it was enjoyable for the portions where I could forget about the unexpected meeting with the reverend. Until I reached my front door.
I bought a house last year. Because of the shit economy and the constant fall of property value that started when the Charlottesville Paper Mill caught fire and killed a third of the town’s income, I was able to get a place of my own for a ridiculously low price. I filled it with thrift store furniture and an ever growing collection of books until it eventually resembled the inner dwellings of a reclusive psychopath. I never cleaned the place; medical books lay open and scattered across the floors, empty mason jars and animal bones sat indefinitely on every table, blankets and cigarette butts a permanent fixture of the sofa. In other words, my home was the living embodiment of static entropy. One thing I would always be sure of though was that I would never, ever, under any circumstances, leave my front door unlocked.
When my key refused to make an audible click of a moving tumbler, I knew something was out of place. Stepping cautiously into the living room, I stood still a moment to listen to a faint noise of… something echoing from the bathroom. Mildly alarmed, more annoyed than anything, remembering that I kept a .357 snub nose in a drawer next to the television and so moved to retrieve it. At this point I wasn’t even surprised that something had broken into that house, it was only a matter of time before “they” caught on enough to try something. I call them the Abominations only because I don’t know what the correct terminology would be for a mutated-as-all-hell host body that smiles and giggles as it crawls across the ceiling reaching its absurdly long fingers towards your face to rip out your eyeballs or whatever. It’s what I think happens when a Harlequin worm decides that it wants take direct control of the body that it’s been hiding in, as opposed to quietly causing the victim to slowly loose its sanity. Maybe I’m right about this, maybe I’m wrong. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
“More than you know.”
So there I was, with a loaded single action revolver ready to blow as many holes in something’s face as fast as the trigger could be pulled. I tiptoed my way to the bathroom door, placing one hand on the door knob while the other held Stubs the Gun. Noticing the crack of light coming from beneath the door frame and another shuffling noise, I took a brief inhale, and kicked in the door to my bathroom. It screamed at me the way an animal does, it screamed and scratched and foamed at the mouth as I fired five shots into the legs and once more through the far side of its jaw, the mirror and the sink and the walls dusted with specks of red as I finished the job with a straight razor, my fingers slipping over the blood of its pathetic whimpering throat as a sharp edge ran across the eyes. So glorious, so violent, so beautiful and so vicious, the sound of skin as it peels from bone filling my ears like a thousand symphonies playing all at once over dissonant laughter. My laughter. The kind of laughter that follows the abandonment of all hope, where you laugh….
“The way you would at a sick joke.”
Except that’s not the way it happened, I’m remembering things wrong again. There were no shots fired, there was no blood or symphonies either. But there was screaming, the screaming of a startled girl.
“Check your damn voice mail for once!” Billie yelled as she spat a wad of toothpaste from her lips. “I called you like, two freaking hours ago to tell you that I’d be here.”
This turned out to be true, in fact the message Billie had left me was oddly specific about how I should avoid shooting her when I got home. “Hey Stephan,” it said, “Terry and I had a fight about that crap that happened last night and now he’s all butt hurt about it. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to crash at your place until he stops bitching about how we’re going to get ourselves killed or whatever. I’m heading over there now, don’t worry I still have a key, but call me back so I’ll know that you won’t freak out and try to shoot me or something with that snub nose I gave you, because that would suck. Kay, bye!”
“So, is it cool that I hang around here for a while?” She asked me after I had finished listening to her message. Billie had just finished taking a shower by the time I noticed the front door unlocked. She still had a wet towel wrapped around her boney little torso. Catching a glance of the hand grenade tattooed just above where her cleavage should have been, I promptly made my decision.
“Yeah you can stay.” I passed out on the sofa without taking off my suit twenty seconds later.
Waking up I became worried that I had slept through an entire workday, almost falling off the couch as the panic set in. It was dark outside; the feeling was understandable until a look at my wristwatch convinced me that it was four in the morning. An unpleasant way to awaken for sure, but at least the headaches were gone, so I decided to crack the kinks out of my neck and smoke a cigarette before the weight of the world inevitably came crashing down. This is what it feels like to be rested enough to sit quietly in the dark and listen to your own thoughts in peace; temporary.
The first drifts of the cognitive sea lead to Proust so I tried to sail the other way. Some efforts are futile however, and so acceptance must be so. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the good reverend had gotten the drop on me somehow. I mean, I had lived in Charlottesville for going on about a year, and not once had he ever so much as noticed me, or I him. Part of me thought his was strange. No, the word is improbable. It was improbable that for a year I had been working in an industry that is almost codependent with that of the church, and so one would assume that Proust and I would have met at an earlier time. Funerals are primarily of a religious concern are they not? Yes it is true that I am basically an atheist, an atheist that considers the very concept of faith to be a blasphemy against the human condition to search for meaning in an inherently meaningless universe, and so of course I would have done everything within my power to avoid the Trinity Baptists, but just by pure chance we should have been made aware of each other sometime before. Why yesterday of all days? Yesterday at a time when I was the only possible person he could have talked to at the funeral home, the very day after Billie and I had seen the lights of the Trinity Baptist Church at two in the morning, just before we killed those Abominations at the farmhouse?
I knew that he knew something but I didn’t know what he knew. Had I figured out what it was earlier, I would have murdered him right there in the Burnswick lobby.
Sitting in the dark alone with my thoughts started to become tiresome, so I stood up to crack my back before shuffling my disheveled ass to the bedroom. I wanted to take a look at a few things that I’d been sleeping on. Billie was lying face down on the floor of my room surrounded by empty bottles of what used to be my beer stash, I assumed that she must have found some way to make her own fun without my help. Tiptoeing around her, I began searching through a desk where I’d been keeping important tidbits of information, or at least the things that seemed even remotely relevant. Things like photocopies of old newspaper articles about the paper mill fire, notes about who had died around the Charlottesville area from unexplained brain aneurisms, the video of the first autopsy (which I had yet to mail out to anyone who might have found it useful, I hadn’t even considered doing so until just before I decided to end everything at the Union Street Cemetery.) Nothing seemed to connect. If I organized the notes into any sort of coherent narratives, it still looked like a game of connect the dots made by a low functioning mental patient. The paper mill was central to this madness, but the how was the real question. What did a twenty odd year old industrial accident have to do with parasitic brain worms? Where did Proust fit in, if at all?
“They heard the noises, they all knew what it meant. Every. Last. One.”
It didn’t really come from anywhere, or maybe it was everywhere. Maybe it was something I had forgotten about intentionally because the thought itself carried with it a sense of ominous dread so overwhelming that feigning ignorance seemed a better alternative.
Suddenly it seemed very important to put on a pot of coffee. And to take a shower. And to iron my suit, to dump out the ashtrays and cancel all my magazine subscriptions. Cleaning the toilet. All the little things that I did every day, the things I never wanted to do or had been putting off, it all seemed so important. Everything but the dishes but anything to keep me from thinking about what I’d have to do once Billie finished sleeping off her hangover. My memory gets a little hazy around this part, but the last thing I did before we left was phone in to Mr. Burnswick. I told him that I’d need to take a personal day.
“Fade to black.”
“I don’t like this.” Billie said. “I mean I truly, sincerely, genuinely do not like this at all.” Billie rarely displayed any emotion without even the faintest sense of bravado. It was a bright sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, every bird was chirping, every woodland creature in the land frolicked without a care in the world and yet the mere sight of the crumbling ruins of the old paper mill was enough to set off her alarms. What was worse was that I agreed, and with good reason. The stigma that had been put on that place had been enough to keep the crazy homeless people and drunken teenagers away for two decades.
“Yeah, well, we both knew it was inevitable.” I lit a new cigarette with the cherry of the old one while I said this. I think I might have even chuckled a little to myself. It was funny because neither of us had batted an eyelash at the idea of trudging through Lucid Marsh two and a half months ago to look for a cannibal man who lost his mind after being sucked under the water by a man sized worm. That was a perfectly normal occurrence compared to this.
“Probably, but I still don’t see what this has to do with Reverend Proust.” Billie mentioned as she checked her backpack for the third time in ten minutes, as if not kept under a watchful eye the shit load of ammunition would vanish without warning. She had packed it with nearly a dozen or so fully loaded magazines of whatever caliber her illegal-ass machine gun needed in order to explode the air into a hell storm of bullets. Probably an HK417 or 416, I can never tell the difference. As usual she duct taped a flashlight to the barrel and threw in a bunch of painted bunny rabbits to pretty it up. I chose to be a bit more conservative, bringing only the snub nose, a speed loader and a couple of road flares.
We started walking through the tall grass that had sprouted out of what used to be a parking lot before I collected my words.
“Proust knows what we did the other night.” I answered. “He knows about the farm house burning to the ground, and he knows it was us.” Billie looked at me with that type of face confused people make. I pulled a business card from my pocket and waved in front of her eyes. “I used one of these to start the fire. I’m guessing enough was left legible to put two and two together.”
Billie shrugged. “I guess it’s plausible, and I guess you’re right about the mill. We’ve put it off long enough already. Best learn what we can before the lynch mob comes to rape you.” I stopped a beat to try and think of a way to respond to that, but I gave it up in favor of focusing my attention on the goliath whose shadow we stood beneath… the Charlottesville Paper Mill. Fully integrated, constructed in 1958, turned inferno in 1989, killing three hundred workers in under ten minutes, no indication as to what caused the initial fire. Some say arson, others say malfunction, but anyone who survived remembers the cackling laughter heard throughout the cutting line, just before it all went to shit. For what, nearly thirty years now, the remains have sat there, enduring the harsh North Carolina seasons, sitting there, waiting, like a sleeping colossus: massive, angry, and most of all, patient. As Billie and I approached the outer wall, just past a rusted barb wire fence, the tune to “Chop the Willow” started to go through my head. It seemed fitting.
“The clockwork points to midnight.”
“The sounds of metal grinding against metal, the echo of a close yet distant thing feeling its way through its own self-imposed prison, much as the absence of motion between the sway of a pendulum draws attention to the tension between opposites. Time is not relative; it is simply the most probable observable outcome, subjective and arbitrary, never any choice in the matter to begin with but open to all interpretations. The context becomes irrelevant, and we call them wrong things for a reason.”
– The Wilcox Journal, 1989
The main doors were chained shut, probably had been since the fire. Yellow hazard tape tattered around in the wind like it stopped giving a shit years ago. The loader doors were too heavy to lift by hand, another problem. Billie had found a window a few feet above a concrete staircase, smashed in the glass with the butt of her gun while I threw a rubber washer mate over the remaining shards. A push and a pull later, we were in. The mill was surprisingly well lit, actually not surprising at all. A good chunk of the roof had caved in above the pressing line, little rays of sunlight peppering everything. “Where should we start?” Billie asked. I looked around for some sign of direction. “I dunno,” I said back, “Let’s just, look around.”
We did, finding ourselves following a hallway into what was probably the accounting office; a few burnt desks, filing cabinets lying on the ground spilling their innards about. The ash covering the melted carpet reminded me of a woman I had prepared for burial back in Raleigh. She had died in a car collision, but not on impact. Her gas tank exploded, spraying liquid fire into the drivers’ seat while the side door had been pinned closed by another car. It was a closed casket. I didn’t bring this up to Billie, who had found an intact staircase. “Down?” I asked her as she flicked her flashlight to life. “May as well.” She replied.
I apologize for what follows.
I’m not a scientist. I don’t know anything about astrophysics or quantum entanglement. I couldn’t describe how phase velocity works if my life depended on it, Planck’s constant might as well be written in Egyptian hieroglyphs for all the good that it would do me.
Particle decay is confusing, and the uncertainty principle strikes me as it sounds. One thing that I do know however, is that what constitutes reality is entirely dependent on the limitations of one’s own sensory organs, the organs in charge of compiling all external stimuli into a coherent perspective. Most people forget about this, myself included. It’s hard to convince your own brain that it sucks using nothing but your own brain. Sometimes though, a certain external force is so otherworldly, so strange and uncompromising that it forces your brain to admit some humility.
“Why don’t you try it?”
I’m having some trouble remembering the order of events that took place within the basement of that mill. Billie would later have the same problem, so part of me suspects that whatever happened in that mill, whatever it was that broke open the ether to where the harlequins came from was still in effect. I’ve already considered every possibility for this, everything from wormholes, to dark energy expansion, to psychotropic frequencies. Any option is valid, even if I can’t explain it. The only concrete memories are the ones where Billie and I climbed through that broken window, and the one where we leaped out in panic. What happened in between is variable. I know this, because even without a consistent rate of time, I remember three important scenes. Interestingly enough though, Billie told me later that some of what happened didn’t, and some of what didn’t did. I both believe and disbelieve her claims because of two important facts. First of all, she says that we never found Ryan Wilcox’s journal, despite it being held in my hands while she told me this. The second falsehood was when Billie told me that she saw me die. I thought that one was pretty funny.
Because I saw the same thing happen to her.
The Wilcox Journal: I found it in a janitor’s closet that was next to a pile of paper rolls that had rotted themselves back into wood. Billie stood at the precipice of the closet to keep watch while I searched the shelves that once held cleaning supplies. It was one of those leather bound journals made to look like a real book. The fact that it was in decent condition was what drew my attention. Everything else in that mill was either burnt beyond recognition or passively falling apart, so no doubt a healthy looking book would be an object of interest. The first page told me that it belonged to Ryan Wilcox, the previous embalmer of the Burnswick Funeral Home, whose wife had been the floor manager of the Charlottesville Paper Mill. She died in the fire, and Ryan being an embalmer was the one responsible for her remains. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that his private thoughts had returned to the place of his wife’s death, especially when it was Ryan who first discovered the Harlequins, noted their number, and left enough clues for me to track the source back to that place.
“What does it say?” Billie asked. “Let me read it and I’ll tell you.” I said back to her, flipping through the first couple of pages. Eventually I got to a place where all the words had been written in red ink. They read as such:
“They come from a place outside of time, beyond space, far separated from what reason may describe. There’s something wrong with this mill, it changes itself as it needs to, shifting between possibilities as they come and go. It holds onto everything indiscriminately, I can see this place as it was the day before the fire, and decades after. I can see myself wandering the dirty paper machines as they show their faces. I can see the men and women with their candles chanting in their prayer
|
Staring at the tree, whiskey in hand, Pete was pleased that this year would be different from the last. It had been the strangest time of his life, but he truly felt like things were finally coming together, and when better to come together than at Christmas? A time he loved more than any other.
In some ways the past year had been like an eternity, in others as if it had succumbed to time in the blink of an eye, but either way he was glad to see the back of it.
Staring at the Christmas tree, its beautiful lights casting a warm hue over the room, and the snow quietly falling outside as the sun set, Pete began to think of the past year, of his daughter Lana, and his wife Janet.
It had started with a very normal December, 12 months earlier. The small town in which they lived was covered in a thick layer of snow, the residents spending most of their days clearing driveways, and Pete’s wife going off for one of her usual wanders.
She had been gone for a couple of hours, but while Janet was utterly devoted to her family, she still needed moments to herself. To clear her head. To diminish the stress that comes with a loving yet disorganised husband, and a little girl who was kind, but whom enjoyed trying her parents’ patience as much as possible.
When the tensions of a domestic life clouded her feelings, or began to weigh on her spirits, Janet would wander out of the back door into the fields and woodlands which characterised the entire area, and trek for a little while through the pines which dotted the landscape.
It therefore wasn’t unusual for her to be gone for fairly long periods, especially since it was around that time of year when she would take it upon herself to choose the Christmas tree. No matter how much Pete or Lana asked to help out; this was Janet’s job. She loved the tradition of it, the process of choosing the best possible tree, cutting it down, and then seeing the bright smiles on her family’s faces, as they would gleefully take the tree indoors and decorate it with sparkling glitter garlands, warm glowing lights, and an array of festive baubles.
It was a small Highland town, where they lived, far away from any major city, but Janet and the rest of her family loved their home. The simplicity of it, the feeling of being an integral part of a close-knit community, and of course the beautiful surroundings, lush during the Scottish summer and cold, crisp, stark but yet awe inspiring in the winter. Most importantly, she loved the pine woods nearby, specifically a collection of trees which sat at the top of a small hill within walking distance from the house: Perfect for picking a Christmas tree! She would return there each year, and while their numbers thinned due to a few other neighbours going there for the exact same purpose, there were enough trees to last a good many years.
When she had been gone for three hours Pete began to grow nervous, as this was longer than usual, and since it was getting dark, he took it upon himself to venture outside, telling Lana to lock the doors after him, and that he would not be long. Lana laughed when he told her that he expected that mummy was struggling through the snow with a huge tree; bigger than any other they had ever had!Pete loved to see the excitement in his daughter’s face at this time of year, and he told her to watch from her bedroom window to see what they would bring back. With this, she excitedly ran up the stairs straight to her window before he had to call her back down to lock the door.
Gazing at the beautiful tree, he could remember that night like it was yesterday.
The snow was crisp on the ground and crunched under his feet as it began to freeze. Small flakes fell from the sky occasionally, but Janet’s footprints remained uncovered. Even without them, Pete knew where they were heading.
The hill where Janet returned each year was only a forty minute hike away. She would pick a pine tree from there. In fact sometimes she picked two. One around six foot, the other a young tree about half the size, if they could find one suitable. It was difficult at times to find smaller trees as they seemed to be rare in that area. Everyone in the town seemed to like the idea of having a small tree in their children’s bedrooms, so people would climb up there with an axe and take what they wanted, so there weren’t as many at hand. Lana at one time had thought it was sad to cut down and kill the trees just for people to look at, but Pete explained to her about tradition and that he was sure more would grow back. With time, she forgot this protest and looked forward to the years when she could have one. If a smaller tree couldn’t be found, they had a lovely synthetic one which would sit at her window – secretly she loved this just as much, but as her father had said: ‘Tradition is tradition’.
The larger tree would be placed in the living room and adorned with an assortment of baubles, glittering decorations, and lights. The other, in Lana’s room, would be sprayed with a can of fake snow and covered in hanging candy sticks and chocolates. Although she was always told she could only have one a day before bed as a treat. Of course occasionally she would break this rule and just hope no one would notice. Janet could always tell, but she would let it go. Christmas time was the best of times after all, and it was so brief.
As Pete approached the hill, he knew something was wrong; he felt it in his bones. As he climbed, the snow began to fall in greater volume and the sky dimmed with it. Standing at the humble summit, a stillness spread; silence interrupted momentarily by the almost audible patter of snow flakes floating gently to the ground.
He followed the footprints now with purpose, knowing that if the snowfall increased that it would be nearly impossible to find Janet. Twilight fell, covering everything in a dark blue wisp of colour, as the frost began to nip at his now rosy cheeks. The footprints bobbed and weaved their way through the huge pines, finally stopping next to a wonderfully thick and vibrant tree. One which was perfectly suited for their purposes. The perfect size; almost seven foot tall, a deep life-filled green, and a thick abundance of branches and pines which made it almost impossible to visually penetrate its cover in such a light. But yet Janet was nowhere to be seen, and as far as Pete could tell there were no other tracks in the snow leading away in any direction. She had most certainly been here, but where had she gone?
This was both puzzling and worrying. It seemed impossible, but there they were, Janet’s last two footprints engraved in the ground, but the snow all around, virgin, undisturbed, and lacking all signs of life. It was as if she had just vanished into the night.
Looking at the base of the tree Pete ran his fingers over a deep gash in its trunk. There was no doubt about it; Janet had taken a few swipes at it with her axe. Then for some unknown reason, she had left, or perhaps moved on to a tree she felt was more suitable.
Surely not though? This tree was perfect!
That must have been it though, she must have moved on. Perhaps there was some random, freakish flurry of snow which covered her tracks. Yes, that must have been it. But Pete knew this was wishful thinking. He had lived there for years, and in all of that time he had never seen such a thing.
Then he saw it. Several metres away lying in the snow, was Janet’s axe. He rushed over to the object, falling once as the snow deepened. Rising to his feet it was now unmistakeable. Yes, it was partially covered in snow, but it was Janet’s axe all right. It lay there much like the footprints, isolated but with the absence of any human imprints. It was as if the tool had been dropped from a great height, but Pete did not care to speculate. A sense of growing worry permeated his mind as the thought of Janet lying somewhere injured increased his anxiety.
Shouting his wife’s name repeatedly drew no reply as darkness now began to creep ever closer. If she was hurt, he would have to raise the alarm and get the town out looking for her, along with mountain rescue. She wouldn’t survive long in the snow, in that biting cold. At this thought the panic grew; worry, fear, hurt that can only be felt through love.
With torch in hand he continued in the direction the axe had taken him. As he entered a thick den of pine trees, he noticed the broken branches littered on the ground as if something had rushed passed, tearing them apart and breaking them off on impact.
Maybe Janet ran through here?
The scale of the damage, however, looked too great to have been dealt by one person alone. Had he been in any other country he would have assumed a bear was nearby, but they had been hunted to extinction in Scotland long ago, along with the wolves and any other predators. For a moment his torch reflected off of something scuttling under a bush, but it looked more like an insect than anything else, and again far too small to cause such devastation.
Pete fixed his scarf, trying to cover his face as the frost bit deeper, but just as he did so, something caught his eye. Something on the ground. Shining his torch on what he at first thought to be a dead animal, was the crumpled body of Janet, lying still on the ground.
A heart attack they said. A heart attack! But Pete had seen her face, he had looked upon those eyes once so filled with kindness, transfixed in a frozen stare. Cold, glassy, black with fear. Her hands were clenched in front of her and the pathologist told him that this was perfectly normal for one suffering such a massive heart attack in such low temperatures. As was the contorted look on her face, although at the mention of this Pete saw a flicker in the pathologist’s eyes which gave away that he was as puzzled by that look as anyone. A look Pete would never forget. Darling Janet, love of his life, mother of his children. Dying alone in the cold, with lips pulled back over teeth in agony, frozen into an inhuman sneer.
The whole ordeal had devastated him. If it hadn’t been for their daughter Lana, for the necessity of her needs to be met before his own, Pete would have found it nearly impossible to have gotten through it.
The past twelve months had been cluttered with reminders of an aching loss. As with any bereavement, the first time of doing something once shared without that person made the pain more acute. The first Christmas, the first day at work, the first walk to school, the first family get together; every person’s face etched in concern accompanied by the usual well-meaning but empty traditions of ‘how are you holding up?’, ‘It must have been so difficult’, and ‘If there’s anything I can do…’.
Helping his daughter through the loss of her mother was all he had to make sure he could face another day.
But that stopped now. They had been through the horror, through the denial, through the silent meals, through the lonely cries of despair at night, through the birthdays empty and sombre; they had been through it all. All these ‘firsts’ were over. It had been over twelve months since Janet’s death and Pete felt almost exhilarated by this. He still missed her everyday, the pain would never truly leave him, but the feeling of accomplishment, of strength – something which he thought had deserted him – that he had endured, filled him for the first time with thoughts of the future; thoughts that life does indeed go on, even when our dearest have gone before us.
And what of his beautiful daughter? Dear, kind Lana. He may have felt compelled to bring her through the past year, but her empathy and strength had left him in awe. Characteristics which someone so young had no right to possess, but which were thankfully present nonetheless.
When she had cried he had been there, and on more than one occasion when he lay sobbing, staring at that empty void of space in his double bed at night, Lana would waken and climb in beside him, and they would both cry together until they fell asleep.
She was his rock, and by God she was going to have the best Christmas she’d ever had. Pete had made a number of arrangements. He had spent a fortune on every gift imaginable, he had filled the house with every food and treat that she enjoyed, and both Janet’s parents and his own were flying in for Christmas dinner to be with their brave, sweet little granddaughter. He’d also organised for Lana’s friends to have a sleepover on Boxing day which she had pleaded for, but Pete always knew he would give in eventually. She never asked for much, but this year, this Christmas she would have more than she could imagine.
The house was perfect, but there was one thing left to do. One thing that Pete had dreamt of since the night he found Janet’s body. She had chosen that tree. It was going to be sitting in their living room adorned with all manor of decorations. That was its purpose, its very reason for being. Janet never finished cutting the damned thing down. It was in many ways her dying act, and Pete was going to make sure that it was fulfilled.
On the anniversary of her death, he wandered through the snow, winding his way through the pines until he stood at the foot of that ominous little hill. The sun shone brightly and it wasn’t as cold as it had been the night Janet died, but each footstep was accompanied by a sickness in the pit of Pete’s stomach. Each stride a morbid reminder of the previous year, and that terrible heartbreak in the snow.
Marching to its peak, he first walked to, and observed the scene of Janet’s untimely death. Standing there where her body had laid, Pete wiped the tears from his eyes and placed a small Santa figurine on the ground, burying it in the snow. It had always been hung from the branches of each yearly tree, and was her favourite decoration, it seemed only right that it be with her.
After another few minutes of trudging, there it was. It was still standing! That damned tree! As if ravenous for revenge, Pete pulled Janet’s axe from his backpack and charged at the pine. He battered and chopped at the cut which Janet had made the previous year, making it deeper with every slice, with every pound of pressure he could muster.
The tree groaned and creaked as if in pain, but Pete did not care. This tree was the final reminder of Janet’s death. Whatever had happened that night, it happened because of that tree. As crazy as it seemed, it all made sense for a moment, and then clarity was clouded by mundane reality.
She had simply died of natural causes.
With the roar of cracked wood breaking under its own weight, the tree swooned and collapsed to the ground in defeat. Tying a rope around its trunk, and then using string to fold its branches inward, Pete dragged that memory, that cold hearted pillar of nature’s brutality through the snow, over grass and gravel, and finally to his back door.
He was victorious.
With little thought for carpet or furniture, he dragged it up the stairs into the house and placed it in front of the window in the living room, wedging it upright into an old wooden stump they had used as a stand every year. Breathless and covered in sweat, he stood back looking at the tree standing tall over all it surveyed.
You picked a good one love. You picked a good one.
He held back the tears and waited for Lana to return home from her friends. Pete put an old Christmas film on the television as they both decorated the tree together, singing, laughing, and being a family. There were moments, fleeting glances when they caught one another’s stare. A glance which showed pain buried deep down inside. One which said: I miss her too.
But it was Christmas, and the moments of grief passed, buffered by longer, caring, periods of happiness. Contentment caressed smiles from ear to ear, and festive spirit once more filled that home, which had for too long been host to loss and anguish.
As night began to fall, after Lana went to bed – earlier than usual because the excitement had worn her out – Pete decided to reward himself for the day’s efforts. The lights were dimmed, and after pouring himself a large whiskey, he sat on the living room couch and stared at the tree. Draped in tinsel garlands and adorned with bright white Christmas lights, it really was a sight to behold. The best tree they had ever had.
‘Here’s to you, gorgeous’ Pete said, lifting his drink to the sky in a symbolic gesture.
Staring at the Christmas tree, its beautiful lights casting a warm hue over the room, and the snow quietly falling outside as the sun set, Pete began to think of the past year, of his daughter Lana, and his wife Janet.
Time passed slowly as he thought of all things gone, how they had led to this moment through pain and suffering, but now hopefully onwards to the future, and one filled with at least the briefest possibility of joy.
The glow from the tree reflected off of the window, but it penetrated far enough to illuminate the now thick blur of snow, falling to the ground silently outside. The room remained dark, but the lights bathed everything subtly in a warm Yuletide radiance, which when accompanied by the orange lambency of the fire only served to cultivate the anticipation for Christmas even more so.
For the first time in a year, Pete was happy.
Something bothered him though. There was a slight apprehension or annoyance at the back of his mind. Something which was spoiling the display. Sipping at his whiskey, casting a glance at the entire room, he finally saw what the problem was; two of the Christmas tree lights were occasionally flickering. Not constantly, but often enough to be noticeable, and more importantly, aggravating.
Downing the rest of his drink, Pete rose to his feet, now feeling the aches in his muscles from the effort exerted while dragging that thing all the way home from the hill. Walking over to the tree the lights were indeed flickering, but there was something unusual about them. They seemed deeper than the rest, as if coming from around the trunk, rather than resting on the branches. Again, Pete was struck by how dark the interior of the tree was. That even in the presence of many lights placed upon it, he could not peer, or adequately see between the branches. Even the two lights which sat deeper behind the pines did not seem to illuminate their surroundings in any way.
The empty glass slipped from his fingers, smashing on the floor.
The lights were fine, they were not flickering at all, but the occasional blinking of two eyes amongst the branches had been enough to catch his attention. He froze to the spot, and it was as if the room grew somehow darker. Something stirred between the pines, between the knotted wood, and the scratched porous surface; something lived there. A feeling of utter paralysis now took hold, his feet firmly glued to the ground as the two eyes slowly pushed forward. Creaking and cracking, a face revealed itself from between the pine covered branches, as if seeping out from its innermost visceral point. Mould covered, ancient, its features twisted in rage.
Fear began to course through Pete’s veins. His heart beat faster and faster as the face moved closer, its eyes devoid of pupils now swamped in a maddening yellow, and from below, the protrusion of two thin, moss covered legs arching out from between the branches. With a creak and snap, it straightened itself now standing in all of its terrible glory in front of the tree.
It was now pitch black outside, and it would have been clear to Pete that this animal, this creature was of a nocturnal nature, but in its stare he found himself helpless. His heart skipped. First it was a palpitation, then he could feel a searing pain in his left arm. He clutched his chest, but his feet remained adhered to the ground and it was impossible to look away from those yellow unmarked eyes.
Its gaze came closer still, and in the pain which it brought, Pete knew he was going to die. To be found like Janet, cold, face contorted, and the second victim of that which lived amongst the pines on that hill.
The pain was now unbearable, but the paralysis removed the possibility of a scream. What little light there was from the fireplace now illuminated its head, elongated on one side and pulsating on the other, its face dominated by a large dark hole which appeared in place of a mouth or nose. One which no light could penetrate. As its boil ridden head stooped to meet his own and the hole in its face almost touched his mouth, an involuntary sneer pulled Pete’s lips up to reveal his teeth, as his face contorted into an entirely unnatural position.
Then that one word. A word so powerful, so pure that even the most evil of intentions could be dispelled by it:
‘Daddy’.
With the snap of wood, the gargoyle-like creature turned its wide, yellow gaze to Lana. Standing at the bottom of the stairs in her pyjamas, her scream echoed out into the night. Arms outstretched, its odd-numbered fingers moved with a stutter as its moss covered legs groaned, carrying it forward in a peculiar unbalanced motion towards her.
Now Lana was paralysed by its stare, and with each step closer, her face contorted more fiercely, and the pain in her chest brought her to the point of unconsciousness. As intense as its ancient gaze was, it was focused. So focused that it did notice Pete clawing his way across the floor towards the kitchen.
The wooden creature’s unsure movements made it appear more like a puppet than a thing of autonomous purpose, and as it reached Lana, it cupped her face in its uneven hands and stared wide eyed and pupil-less into her face. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
The sound of feet running filled the air, and as it twisted to investigate, a loud crack was heard as Pete ran up onto the couch, jumping high into the air bringing Janet’s axe down deep into its spine.
No blood ran or gushed, but a plague of unfamiliar insect-like critters poured out of the wound. Instead of a howl of pain, the creature emitted a crescendo of strange squeals and clicks before throwing Pete to the ground and smashing through the back door.
Lana’s father gave chase, but it was impossible, as the wooden creation moved at an unimaginable pace, gliding on the ground with each stride, leaving no footprints in the snow.
After a visit to the nearest hospital, both Lana and her father were given a clean bill of health, but they never returned to that house, filled with memories of the good times, the happy times; of a mother, a wife, a kind soul; of birthdays, and weddings, and of course, of Christmas time.
Pete didn’t know what that creature was, whether it was alive, or dead, or something else entirely inconceivable to human mind, but he made a solemn promise to himself from that moment on: Never again would he cut down a tree, decorate it, and take enjoyment in its appearance as it died, because no matter how pretty they are, no matter how much warmth they may give, no matter how much they might make people think of Christmas; you just don’t know what may be living inside.
|
“JESUS!!” I cried.
Being jolted from a half dose at a quarter to midnight by my new ‘Halloween theme’ ringtone didn’t do wonders for my heart-rate, especially since I’d momentarily forgot I’d changed the tone at all that day.
Took me a while to find my phone stuck down the side of the armchair I was sitting in, not helped by the fact that the only light in the sitting room was the static on the widescreen TV.
“Unknown Number.”
I answered it, there was no-one there.
To be honest I was expecting heavy breathing on the other end as I was still a little freaked out, but there was no noise at all.
I hung up, took a deep breath and frowned- Maybe I just pocket dialed myself.
My old iPhone could make a fake ‘self call’ designed to create a diversion, so if I was having a boring conversation with someone I could pretend mom was ringing or something , although I wasn’t familiar at all with this ‘new’ piece of crap.
Dad bought it from a gas station for twenty bucks a few days ago, as I’d lost my iPhone on a trip to the city last week.
I flicked through the features on the menu screen trying to find the fake call option, but didn’t have much luck, for one thing the screen was about half the size of a credit card.
I cursed and decided to watch T.V. instead to take my mind off things.
I tried using the light of my cell to find the remote with little success.
Groaning out of laziness, I hauled myself out of the chair to get to the light switch.
Stopping halfway, I registered the fact that I had the T.V. on the satellite channels when I fell asleep yet now: static from the analogue Ariel.
I ran the rest of the way to the switch and basically punched it.
Light flooded the room and my darting eyes saw nothing.
After another deep breath, my moment of fear passed, guess I was a little unused to having the whole house to myself.
Mom and Dad were only gone for the night, but it was quite a treat for me since they rarely went anywhere, even during the day.
Nowhere to go but fields around this part of the country, so them going to a friend’s wedding meant I finally had some solitude.
I still couldn’t see the remote so I decided to recheck the sides of the armchair.
I threw my phone on the seat and reached deep down either side.
The Phone rang again at full creepy blast with my ear pressed right up against it.
I angrily grabbed it- “Dammit WHAT!??”
Again, there was dead silence.
Cursing, I threw the phone back on the seat hard.
POP!!
At that moment the lightbulb blew out violently and the power went out, thrusting me into total darkness.
With a shriek, I scrambled to grab the phone again and found it after an instant of blind terror.
Using the tiny screen light to see, I panicked and bolted down to my room as fast as I could, jumped into bed and pulled the covers. I curled into a fetal position.
I was panting hard, from both the run and the fear. I couldn’t form any thought for about 5 breaths, until I decided to call dad.
Looking at the screen, I saw I forgot to hang up the last call.
My breath caught in my throat as I saw that this time, it wasn’t an “unknown number”- It was mine.
My old number from the phone I’d lost.
As I hit the red button my terrified mind began to race through a thousand horrible implications until I realised something else.
My bed was already warm.
BEEP BEEP. The message tone nearly gave me a heart attack.
“It’s under your pillow”
Ever so slowly, my trembling hand slid underneath the pillow- and found the T.V. remote.
From under the covers I heard my bedroom door close, then lock.
Credit To: Beefnuts
|
~Written 2 months ago~
~Mood: Nostalgic~
Okay, so I feel I must explain a few things to you. First of all, I am male, and believe it or not, I am a homosapien. That may come as a shock to a few of you seeing as I do come across as slightly ‘weird’. However I would prefer to tag myself as eccentric.
I guess it is partly due to my love for old things that makes me this way. One thing that I absolutely adore is old records; I love the authentic sound they produce, especially when they’re slightly scratchy.
I listen to all sorts of music. Some of you will remember my love for swing, and that love is still on-going.
I’m telling you this because today, I obtained yet another gem! I am listening to it now, and I must tell you that the voice of Fred Astaire is simply marvellous!
‘Now, if you’re blue and you don’t know where to go to why don’t you go where fashion sits, puttin’ on the Ritz’.
That is one of my favourite songs!
Well I must go now. I’m expected at @Tazer64’s house for dinner. His wife is cooking some special Thai meal, so that ought to be interesting… *Psst. She’s not too great of a cook :S*
Signed: Steam_master00
3 Comments:
@Tazer64: Hey! Watch it, Captain!
@Steam_master00: Captain? ;) Well that’s a new one. Where did that come from?
@Tazer64: Well you know, ‘cause you’re Jack. Jack Sparrow?
~Written 7 weeks ago~
~Mood: Hungry~
Well @Tazer64’s wife’s cooking was actually fantastic! I guess she found her forte in Thai cuisine.
However on a different note, I had a slightly strange experience earlier. I was attempting to tap dance to Fred Astaire’s beautiful voice (hey don’t laugh!) and I swear down to all that is holy that he was screaming during an instrumental… Now I can’t find it again, but I swear that I was NOT making it up. Granted, it wasn’t very loud, but it was noticeable. Then again, it might have been something going on outside.
I’ll let you guys know if it happens again.
Signed: Steam_master00
7 Comments:
@Mimixo: You’re just going mad, that’s all.
@Kiethorz: I could try my hand at exorcism…
@Kiethorz: Seriously :)
@Rayza: Whatever. I think we all know you make a lot of crap up. Just shut the hell up!
@Kiethorz: If you don’t believe in this sort of thing, don’t comment on anything to do with it. And also, if you don’t like Steam, you know what you can do? UNFOLLOW him!
@Rayza: Oh aren’t we getting a bit pissy ;) Chill out big boy. I wouldn’t want you to awaken the ghosties!
@Steam_master00: Reina, please stop doing this. You’re just embarrassing yourself..
~Written 7 weeks ago~
~Mood: -~
Okay so that was the worst night I’ve had in a while… I only had nightmares. I guess I’ll tell you about one.
I was walking home from the store near my work, but when I got home, it wasn’t exactly my home, but my old high school. I could hear music playing at the end of a long corridor, but it was really distorted as though it were played on some sort of wind-up gramophone. As I got nearer to the room at the end, the pitch of the music got lower and lower. I entered the room, and it was a massive hall, but it was empty apart from a gramophone with a record playing (now at the right.. or so I think.. pitch) in it. The only light-source in the room was a candle on a table next to the gramophone.
I walked over to the gramophone to see what record it was, but it was spinning really fast. It got faster and faster and faster, and I was mesmerised, and someone suddenly tapped me on the shoulder. I swung around and it was a young girl in a ballet outfit.
She stared at me for about a minute without blinking or saying anything. She then walked into the centre of the room and began to dance. Her dancing was weird and disjointed in the way that a ball-jointed doll can bend in disturbing ways. She danced for a while, and then all she did was spin on one foot in the centre of the floor. For an instance, all sound dropped away, and then there was an odd sound that was slowly growing louder and louder. At some point I realised that it was screaming. The girl was screaming. And just spinning. And screaming. And staring at me… her head never moved from facing me…
Oh it sends shivers down my spine to remember that. She was, hands down, the most unnerving thing I have ever had to experience…
Signed: Steam_master00
7 Comments:
@Rayza: Oh here we go again…
@Tazer64: Hey, man. You coming again tonight?
@Steam_master00: Sure.
@Tazer64: Be here at 7, no later.
@Ebonymist: I’ve had creepy dreams, but this is in a league of its own. You might want to go to someone who specialises on the meanings of dreams.
@PinkieMan: Punch it in the stomach!
@Steam_master00: Oh yes, I’m sure that will help!
~Written 6 weeks ago~
~Mood: Sick~
‘Mood: emotionally sick’, that ought to be. I have had hardly any sleep these past few nights. That dream I explained to you keeps reoccurring… each time, her dancing becomes more disjointed, and now, as she screams, blood begins to come from her mouth.
Also, every time that I listen to that record, I notice more and more screaming. Yes, it started off quietly and I couldn’t tell if it was from the record or from somewhere else. Now I am certain that it is from the record.
Signed: Steam_master00
0 Comments
~Written 6 weeks ago~
~Mood: -~
Ummm… that was just weird.. I was about to go for a shower when the record started playing of its own accord. The screams are playing all throughout the track now, and I can barely hear the singing. There is no way to turn it off! Oh I’m out of here!
Signed: Steam_master00
1 Comment:
@Kiethorz: What’s your address? I will be over as soon as I can if you want me to try some sort of exorcism.
~Written 5 weeks ago~
~Mood: Scared~
The girl appears in my room, and it’s not just at night; it’s the day time as well. Well.. it’s not like she is a physical being, but there is definitely something here. I can sense it. The reason I know it’s her is because the feeling I get from this being watching me is exactly the same feeling I get in the dream. Oh God…. Oh dear Lord.. I think she knows that I’m telling you this. And she won’t stop playing that infernal record!
It has started playing in the middle of the night.
I made @Tazer64 come over with his wife. Well… they were the ones who wanted proof, so they came over to see what was going on.
They. Could not. Hear. A. BLOODY. THING!!! And what’s more is that as soon as they told me they couldn’t hear anything, the girl spun the record faster, laughing. It was such an eerie laugh. I would say that it was like a child, but there was something emotionless and old about it, too.
I’ll feel a bit safer if I am with someone, maybe. I am going to go live with someone else for a while until I can do something about it.
Signed: Steam_master00
2 Comments:
@Rayza: Ha! Attention whore!
@_______: If you run, I will only follow you. I can hurt you even when you are not alone.
@Steam_master00: Uhhh… what?
~Written 5 weeks ago~
~Mood: Nauseous~
So I am staying with a friend of mine. For the first day, it was alright. I seriously thought that I was rid of this girl and her screaming, and the screaming swing, but oh boy, was I mistaken.
I woke up this morning at about 3 in the worst state. You’ll have to pardon this, but I had drenched the sheets in sweat. She came to me last night. As she was spinning and screaming, she reached out her hand. Apparently she was closer than I imagined, and she began to scratch me across the chest as she span. I really tried to run away, but I was paralysed. Her screaming became interspersed with that sickeningly manic laugh. The pain was unbearable, as eventually, she was re-scratching at raw flesh. I could feel the blood dripping down my chest.
So I woke up believing it all to be a dream, but as my panicked panting wore off, I noticed a searing pain across my chest.
Oh God, if she can HARM me… well… she can harm me.
The music of the record follows me now wherever I go. And her screaming, bacchic laughter is driving me to insanity! I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE!
Signed: Steam_master00
0 Comments
@_______: Soon.
~Written 5 weeks ago~
~Mood: -~
Why is it that no-one else can hear any of this. They can’t even see my wounds.
The dream has slightly changed now… well kind of. Now they just start where they left off, and each night, she is closer to me. Each dream, she digs deeper, and each morning, I lift up my shirt and the cuts are deeper. I now have a line of raw flesh across my chest, and it has got to the point where I can see a line of white bone… my ribs, that is.
I needed stitches yesterday, badly, but I knew that no-one could see the cuts, and so I had to sew myself up. What a waste. I woke up this morning and she had sliced right through them. I don’t like where this is going. I thought that it would stop, but clearly, CLEARLY, it is getting worse than I’d ever expected.
I think she knows what I type here and what I say to people. Whenever I insinuate that I am going mad, or that I might be able to get help, she laughs right in my ear, caressing me with those horrifying nails. I can smell the iron of my blood when she is near.
Signed: Steam_master00
1 Comment:
@Rayza: You do need help. I’m glad we broke up. You’re insane.
~Written 5 weeks ago~
~Mood: -~
Okay so this is maybe some salvation. I had the dream as usual last night, and this time when I woke up the record was playing. There was no screaming or laughing. The only sound on the record was Fred Astaire’s voice. I couldn’t believe it. I thought that it had finally ended and all I could do was smile in relief. I called @Tazer64 to tell him the wonderful news (Sorry mate, I know 3 am isn’t the best time for ecstatic laughter and joy). I got up and danced to the music. Of course I didn’t realise that this was odd as my record was still at home.
That’s when it came to me. That sickening smell of iron… and something pushed me to the floor. I could feel a dead weight on top of me, and the smell grew stronger. I am ashamed to say that I threw up, but so would you if you could have smelt that. As I choked, that laughter burnt through my body and then, she spoke. She whispered in my ear, slowly, almost spitting the words out: ‘This is it’, and then the weight was released from my body. The laughter rang throughout the house, and it travelled outside and was gone.
I think.. I pray.. I think she has gone!
Signed: Steam_master00
7 Comments:
@Kiethorz: Way to go, mate! That was some freakish shit, but maybe she got what she wanted.
@Ebonymist: I talked to someone about your dreams. He said that he’d never heard of something like this, but he suggested you might be stressed about something.
@Tazer64: Mate, we were getting really worried about you. We suggested calling some counsellor.
@_______: Oh just you wait.
@Ebonymist: Okay, whoever this is, stop. You know that Steam’s going through a hard time, so he doesn’t need you to add to this. You’re just creeping him out even more.
@Hanana: Oh this is great! I’m starting to believe this!
@Tazer64: I can assure you that he was seriously going through this. Whether it was all in his mind or not, I cannot say, but he really was having a horrifying time.
@Hanana: Alright…
~Written 5 weeks ago~
~Mood:-~
I have what I want from him, at least. His body will make the ideal portal, as it were, for us to enter your world. All we want are your minds and your hearts. We feed on your hearts, and your minds provide the necessary electrical signals for us to bind ourselves to you. We will have you all.
Signed: Steam_master00
17 Comments:
@Tazer64: Uhh… what’s up?
@Kiethorz: Oh this is not good…
@Hanana: Why? O_o
@Kiethorz: Never mind.
@Hanana: Urrr okay?
@Rayza: Freak
@Tazer64: Okay, dude, where are you?
@Rayza: Ha! He’s probably been abducted by aliens!
@Kiethorz: Don’t make fun of him! He’s gone through a hell of a lot, and at this point, we all need to support him.
@Tazer64: That would be a great thing to do if he would just answer his phone, his email… ANYTHING!
@Tazer64: Okay.. this is not funny now. It’s been about a month. Where the hell are you?
@Tazer64: Oh dear Lord. I just went to his house… he is not there, but a hell of a lot of very real blood IS there… and it feels like hell to stand in there.
@Hanana: Oh shut up! Shut up! I don’t want to know!
@Kiethorz: Shit. I told you it wasn’t good.
@Ebonymist: I… am not sleeping tonight…
@Tazer64: @Kiethorz, come and visit me. I’ll send you a private message with my address. You appear to know a bit about this.
@Rayza: …
|
Tuesday, October 11th
Today, I drove my 7-year old son James into town to go Halloween shopping. I didn’t have to buy any candy this year because we live in a cul-de-sac out in the middle of a farming community on the outskirts of the city. I moved last year because I had divorced my wife and lost my old house along with custody of James. It’s rather the shit-end of the stick, but James and I love Halloween. It’s one of the few times a year that Tracy finds it acceptable for my only son to come visit me. James stays with her on every other holiday throughout the year, his birthday, and everything else in between. I get to see him only on my birthday and the week preceding Halloween, unless the high bitch-court finds it suitable for him to come spend the night every once in a while. Hmph. Frankly, I’m surprised she let him come shopping with me.
Upon perusing the aisles, James showed a strong affinity to a flamboyantly green and purple Buzz Lightyear costume. It’s really typical for a kid to have an eye for the most expensive thing on the rack, but I didn’t have the heart to say no to those bottomless blue eyes. He also picked out all the house decorations. I know we won’t be getting any trick-or-treaters out where I live but adorning the exterior of our home was always one of our favorite things to do together.
Friday, October 21st
It looks like James and I will be having some competition for the “Best Halloween Decorations” award, which sadly, in this neighborhood, is only a pat on the back. When I lived with James and my ex-wife, he and I won the trophy every year since he was three.
Reminiscence aside, my next-door neighbor is really giving us a run for our money. He did quite the splurge on decorations. He must have ordered everything online because aside from the cliché “Happy Halloween” banners and the like, the festive treasures found on his house and lawn were nowhere to be seen in the store where James and I shopped- which sold only festive decor. The fellow’s garage door sat below a strand of kite string on which hung dozens of expensive-looking bones and skulls. He also placed several other bones sticking straight up out of his lawn. There was no color or detail, just random bones placed here and there; strewn about his unkempt lawn. Truly, though, he’s nothin’.
Saturday October 22nd
While walking through my house at dusk, outside the dining room window I noticed a quick flicker of movement dash in and out of my peripherals as I was preparing for James’s week-long stay. I inspected. I don’t even know if I should be glad that I did. I walked back in front of the window and saw the same animation, but this time in the center of my vision. I walked back away from the window, and slowly, I peeked out from the corner of the glass. I made out the shape of the very top of a person’s head peering over the top of my fence, and it seemed to be watching me. Whoever it was ducked down again right after they realized we had made eye contact. I backed away from the window. I don’t know why. I crawled over to the family room window, which was about 15-20 feet to the left, but facing the same direction as the dining room window.
I stayed knelt. Timidly but curiously grasping the curtain, I ever so slowly pulled back the cloth, only to gaze upon the masked fellow who was snooping around behind my property. This time, I saw his entire head. The mask had a gaping, dangling mouth, similar to the mask used in the Scream series. The only difference was that the jaw of this particular mask was swaying about in the wind, and it also had teeth. Long, thin, fang-like growths that appeared almost like the strands hanging from the mouth of a whale, though fewer in number. The expression on the mask was plain, and the color was rather pale, with slight gray discoloration. It didn’t have a goofy smile or an intimidating stare, just a mouth hanging wide open and a couple of perfectly round, beady little chameleon eyes- eerily shaded.
After about ten seconds of observation, one of the eyes appeared as if it was steadily drifting off- away from where it was fixated, and very slowly, began to scan to the left- and as soon as he seemed to lock on to where I was, he quickly disappeared.
Tuesday, October 25th
I don’t really know my neighbor, much less where he gets all of his decorations. I noticed a new ornament of sorts in front of his door today. It was a ceramic bowl full of guts, comically placed where he would place a bowl of candy were he too lazy to answer the door for trick-or-treaters. Behind it was a large white piece of paper bound to the wall of his house. On it was written in nearly illegible chicken scratch: “TAKE ONE”. The whole sign had bloody fingerprints smeared all over it. More convincing yet was the bloody tape. And the bloody wall. Nearly the entire wall was smeared in brownish-red. Spooky. The streams of blood that ran from the handprints were, strangely enough, dry. I didn’t know they made novelty blood that could dry like that.
I’ve only ever spoken to this guy once, and it was around the time that I moved. He seemed rather distraught. As I approached him, I asked if everything was alright. He said that he was late for work, which was odd, because it was around 8:30 at night. I asked him where he worked, and he revealed to me that he was a biologist and worked at the military base, with no other details. It was strange. Every time I saw him after that encounter, his pants had traveled up his ankles another centimeter. Midlife growth-spurt, I guess. He was henceforth stumbling around awkwardly and tripping over himself. My other neighbors and I mocked him from time to time. I remember one specific instance when he was watering his shrubbery, and one of his knees gave out. Backwards. Kind of like a large bird’s leg. A pelican, or perhaps a heron. It looked excruciating to me, but he just walked it off. I’ve only ever seen him outside again once after this display, but it was months ago.
And last month, as I walked to the mailbox late one afternoon, I heard his kids crying frantically. Screaming, almost. It continued into the evening. The noise stopped eventually, though. I was having trouble sleeping through that horrifying racket. I sincerely hope he had his parenting privileges revoked; however, I’ve never even seen his kids. Let’s hope he’s only an uncle.
Wednesday, October 26th
Ever since James arrived earlier this week, he has simply abhorred the idea of removing his costume. Little Buzz has been running rampant throughout the house quoting Toy Story. He hasn’t disrobed once since he put it on, save for when I demanded he allow me to wash it because he was quite literally rolling around outside in the dirt.
I haven’t seen any more of this weirdo in the mask lately. Probably some mischievous kid from the neighborhood behind mine. It’s a cul-de-sac too, just a bigger one. There is a dirt road that accompanies an irrigation canal separating the two neighborhoods. My house is the farthest house from the main road, and the canal runs parallel to my fence. I don’t know of any bridge he could have used to come across, but I never look back there, and I don’t particularly care to.
Neighbor-man bought a new ornament. 200 feet of lights to accompany the 200 feet of intestines he had previously thrown all over the tree in his front yard. The lights coexist uniquely with the prior décor, though; all I could smell when I went outside was the burning odor of the sizzling ensemble of mix-matched decorations hanging from the tree. The moisture of those oddly-genuine-looking innards had adhered to his archaic festive bulbs, producing a deep red glow. Intentional or not, the smell was almost enough to coerce a complaint out of me. Almost.
Come to think of it, the smell wasn’t so bad. Almost like a barbecue.
Friday, October 28th
I’m going insane. No simple words can properly describe what I believe I have witnessed. As the sun was setting this evening I got another glimpse of this “masked” man. What I saw now was not at all what I would describe as a “mask”. I was sitting in my living room reading. The bay window in my living room overlooks the entire street, and I had my blinds open. I had startled and looked up and out the window toward the nearly-dissipated sun because I had heard what sounded like an asthmatic man gasping for air through a megaphone over top of a vocal, frightened cat. I stood up from my couch and walked briskly toward the window. I cupped my hands above my eyes to deter the sunlight, and pressed my face against the window. And I saw it. It was pursuing a small cat. It ran like an Ostrich. Where it was not bald and discolored, it was spotted with long patches of spindly hairs and networks of pulsating blue veins. Thinning, isolated strands of gray hair flat against its flaky, decomposing head. Its flapping, low-hung chin keeping rhythm with its bounding stride as the sprinting thing began to overtake a creature built for agility. Ultra-thin, ultra-broad shoulders dutifully bounding up and down in harmony with its tree branch-like arms, easily giving it at least a five foot reach. Mammoth hands, chopstick fingers, and those repulsive, chameleon eyes. Buckets of drool spilt impatiently from behind its hellish teeth. Emaciated, stilt-like legs completed the horrific image. Altogether, I observed an eight-and-a-half foot freak show with greasy hair practically leaping from yard to yard chasing this poor kitten for a reason ostensibly beyond simple sustenance.
The cat approached a fence on the left side of the street. It leapt towards a delusion of safety. The beast proceeded to effortlessly jump from the sidewalk, over the lawn, and snatch the animal from the top of the fence with its talon-like claws, as a falcon might. The cat didn’t stand a chance, nor did it even manage to voice a squeal. The thing disappeared into the shadows with its, erm, meal. An unforgettable two-and-a-half seconds.
Then I thought of my son. He could have very well been in the place of that plaintive animal. No, I should never say such things. Regardless, what am I to do? Forgo what little time I have throughout the year with my boy because a scary monster is on the loose? Tell my ex-wife that my neighborhood in the middle of nowhere has become too dangerous for our son to stay with me? Buy a rifle and hunt the thing myself? No matter. With only two days until Halloween I doubt there will be any more trouble.
Saturday, October 29th
I’ve thought about calling the police, but for what, exactly? I definitely couldn’t call in and report a burglar- or even anything human for that matter, because they wouldn’t be looking for what needed to be caught. No one can know.
Earlier tonight, my neighbors threw a street-wide costume party at their place down at the entrance of the street. I didn’t go because I had to work late, and after I picked up James from his friend’s house, we anticipated having a game night with just the two of us.
Sometime during the night, James took a bathroom break. He was gone for over fifteen minutes. When he returned, he seemed excited to inform me that he looked out the living room window, in between the blinds, and saw what he described as a “Really tall weird-looking person with a bag” running patiently to the house where the party was being held, empty bag in hand. According to James, it would disappear into the back yard of the house, and seconds later, bolt out of the yard with a full bag and tear off towards my neighbor’s house, wearing a costume. It repeated this process several times, each time, wearing a different costume than before.
He said that on its last round, it stopped in the middle of the street, cocked its head to the right slightly, and its right eye slid to the side of its head and stared right at him as if there weren’t blinds between them. He said that it then turned its head 180 degrees and locked eye contact with him, and then its colossal mouth sluggishly transformed from a probing expression to the widest smile he thought he’d ever seen. “Millions of teeth” were his exact words.
He said that its smile had then hastily collapsed, dropping the chin into a visible freefall which ended with a swinging slap on its chest. It then darted off into my reclusive neighbor’s yard and that was when James decided to come alert me of his findings.
I thought of that horrid monster smiling at my beautiful boy. I despised the idea. I tried to envision what that particular smile might look like, though I really couldn’t. I didn’t think a flapping maw that gargantuan had the muscle to maneuver that flailing chin in the first place. Then again, it has to eat sometime.
Sunday, October 30th
More decorations were, stealthfully as always, erected by my mysterious neighbor. A couple-dozen or so skeletons, all different sizes, all dressed in cliché Halloween attire. There was a Marilyn Monroe skeleton, a Darth Vader skeleton, an Abraham Lincoln skeleton, so-on; so-forth. Every one of them was strung up by the back of its neck, feet swinging, head looking down. I really wanted to ask this guy how he comes up with all this. Where he gets it all. Perhaps if he knows that last night’s rain washed the color off of most of his little knick-knacks. Gotta hand it to ‘im, though. That slew of morbid décor in combination with his filthy, run-down, cobweb covered home emits a true horror movie feel.
It’s now just past midnight. I just got finished with my work, I brushed my teeth, and now the doorbell’s ringing. Again. And again. And again. Reluctantly I rise up and walk toward my front door.
I open it. My neighbor. No, the freak next door, but the fellow who lives behind me- on the other side of the canal. He’s disgruntled. He’s practically out of breath and is threatening me about something but none of it is sinking in because one of the skeletons hanging from my neighbor’s tree- a newcomer- is staring right at me. Its jaw unhinged, unlike the others. It’s smaller than the other skeletons- and appears to be dripping with something. Moonlight revealed to me its eyes. Big, blue eyes.
I turn to face the man yelling at me.
Him: “You listenin’ over there?”
Me: “Oh… Yeah.”
Him: “’The hell y’tryin’ to pull. Y’almost gave my wife a heart attack with that mask”.
Apparently my son and I aren’t the only ones who have spotted the neighborhood missing link. How could he possibly confuse that thing with me?
Him: “And don’t try and smooth-talk yer way outta this one pal. I saw ya jump clean over that fence a’ yours- ‘the hell you managed to do that I’s a-still wonderin’- and crawl right back inte yer basement. It’s dark n’ all but no doubt it was you, pal.”
Me: “….I’m terribly sorry…” I improvised. “I don’t know what came over me…” “If there’s anything I can do-“
My heart sank.
Me: “Wait here.”
There’s no way. I’m running like a fool into my own house because this asshole bangs on my door at 12:15 in the morning to tell me that he saw this… thing jump into my basement. With my trembling hands applying convulsing energy to the doorknob, I turn, and fling the door wide open to reveal my son, sleeping, facing the wall, just as I had left him. Figures. He’s never all the way under the covers like that, but it is a bit cold in here. Goddamn, though, this guy at my door really does have some nerve. He scared the shit out of me.
Me “Sorry… I just-“
He interrupted.
Him: “Aww, save it. I ain’t give no shits at all about yer problems. Y’just stay the hell away from me and mah family. Y’hear?”
Me: “Yeah… Sure…”
A calming chuckle digs its way into his angry tone as I recognize those freshly familiar bottomless blue eyes stuffed inside the head of that skeleton.
Him: “I gotta hand it to y’though. I nearly busted out laughing when I saw y’runnin’ around wearin’ that little kid’s Buzz Lightyear Costume.”
|
I’d had them ever since I was a kid.
I can remember being incredibly self-conscious about them, hiding them in my pockets under books and bags. The kids at school never said anything to my face, but I knew they were laughing behind my back.
I remember asking my parents to take me to the doctor, to get them checked out. The growths on my hands seemed to be the elephant in the room back then, since they’d just say I was fine and change the subject. But I knew better.
I had tried to remove them as a child, but without avail. Scissors, knives, potato peelers; trying to cut or scrape them off was always a lost cause because I couldn’t continue once the pain kicked in.
But today was different. It’s amazing how numb you can get with a couple of tourniquettes and a bottle of Jack Daniels. I was originally planning to use a sharp knife, but figured that trying to slice through the tough flesh of the growths would be too arduous in my drunken state. I opted for the slightly more technological plan B.
I had to hurry though. I was already pretty light-headed and was starting to feel dizzy. My hands and forearms, nearly blue from the lack of circulation, couldn’t wait much longer either. The whirring of the blender helped to put me in a sort of trance–ready to do what I had wanted to do since I first looked down at my strange deformities.
I shoved my left hand in first. The immediate sensation of sharp blades slicing through flesh was jarring, but I was surprised at how well the alcohol was working–I expected it to hurt more. I could hear the sharp metal churning and cutting, working perfectly as planned. I pressed my hand down harder. All those bad memories, all of the embarrasment–all of those horrible things were now nothing more than a thick red pulp.
Breaking from the feelings of ectsasy, I pulled out before the blades hit knuckle. I smiled, taking a good look at my new hand. As for the growths–well, five down, and five to go.
|
Publisher’s Note: This story is preceded by a prequel. To read the earlier chronological installment of this series, please click here.
After my dad shared his Halloween tale about the disappearance of his best friend Jake and the town’s O-Lantern Man urban legend, I asked him if he would tell me another story…and he did, several. We were actually up pretty late that night talking about my dad’s childhood.
My dad said he had experienced so many terrifying and bizarre encounters, he figured it would be best to start from the beginning.
To give you a quick introduction, my dad’s name is Martin, but his friends called him Marty growing up. He moved to a small town in Mississippi when we was 8 years old. It was about a twenty-minute bike ride from the Mississippi River. It wasn’t an ideal place to live, but his parents could not afford much better. My dad ended up spending the remainder of his childhood, stuck in this town. He plotted several attempts to run away, but he wasn’t able to escape until shortly after he graduated high school.
When his family first arrived at their new home, my dad immediately noticed there was something strange about the house across the street. It was two stories, but the top half leaned to one side like it could collapse at any moment. The old house was an eyesore for the neighborhood. Every glass window had been shattered and boarded up. It had once been painted a light green, but most the color had been chipped away, revealing the dark rotting wood underneath. The front yard was nothing but dirt, with a short staircase leading to a roof covered porch.
When my dad asked his parents who lived there, they told him it was empty, and that he should never, ever, go near it.
My dad’s bedroom window faced out in the direction of the street. He had a direct view of the decrepit house and as the days passed, he started to notice that both his fear and curiosity were intensifying.
He began waking up with nightmares, terrified that something might be happening across the street. After his parents would tuck him into bed, he found himself frequently getting up at night and staring outside his window. He wanted to make sure that all appeared safe before closing his eyes.
About two months after moving in, my dad stood in front of his window late one night. He noticed that there was something unusual about the house. It had always been an eerie pitch black, but that night, there was a light on the porch, ominously flickering in the darkness.
He was afraid, so as any young child would do he went to wake his parents. His mom and dad followed him back to his bedroom and together they peered outside his window, but the light was gone. The pitch-black darkness had returned.
My dad swore and promised that he saw a light, but his parents assured him it was probably just a bad dream, kissed his forehead, and tucked him back into bed.
The following morning was the first day at his new school. He would meet some of his best friends in his third-grade class. It was Jake, Boone, Grady, Parker, and my dad Marty. They would call their group the High-5 Troop. They were inseparable and would frequently show off their super-secret high-five handshake in front of their fellow classmates. They were definitely the “cool” bunch on campus.
The boys were immediately fascinated when they found out where my dad was living. They each had their own stories about the infamous house, and shared that their parents had also warned them to never go near it. There was a lot of mystery surrounding the house and their stories varied, but one thing they all agreed on was that it was definitely haunted.
Every night, my dad would continue to check outside his window to see if the light had returned.
About a week or so passed, when he was awoken by a strange noise. The days had been warm and he would leave his window cracked open at night to catch an evening breeze. He silently laid in bed, holding his breath, trying to determine what the eerie sound was and where it was coming from. He soon realized it was resonating from outside. It was a repetitive high pitch creaking, like a rusted door hinge opening and closing over and over again.
He got up and stared out his window. The light had reappeared, once again flickering on and off. However, this time he could see that the porch was not empty, something was swaying in unison with the odd noise.
He rubbed his eyes and slapped his cheeks hoping that it was just his imagination or a bad dream, but he was wide awake and the flickering light held just long enough to reveal what was making the disturbing sound. Seated in a tall rounded chair, was a woman, and with each creaking movement, she rocked slowly back and forth.
My dad was frozen in fear, and remembers trying to scream for his parents, but all that exited his lungs was a heavy breath of heart-pounding emptiness.
He watched as the woman slowly sat up from her rocking chair. The tall mysterious figure began to rigidly walk down the porch stairs, across the dirt yard, and towards my dad’s house. She stopped in the middle of the dimly lit street.
My dad says she was standing hunched over, with long gray hair that covered her face and dangled passed her waist. He could see that her hands were raised out in front of her. She was holding two long crochet hooks, and moved her hands back and forth as she stood knitting in the middle of the road.
He was able to snap out of his state of paralyzing panic, as he turned and raced for the hallway. He began hysterically crying at his parents’ bedside. My dad tried to explain what he saw to his worried parents, but says he was barely able to speak clearly. His parents were finally able to calm him down, and his mom spent the rest of the night in his room comforting him.
At school, he shared what he had witnessed with the rest of the High-5 Troop. They were captivated and his story sparked the boys’ imagination with suggestions on how my dad should approach the situation.
One such bright idea came from Boone, who sarcastically recommended that my dad just walk over, ring the doorbell, and introduce himself to his freaky neighbor. This got a good laugh from the group, but ultimately led to the concept for their final plan.
The boys had all been told stories about the haunted house next door, but Jake, Boone, Grady, and Parker were ready to see it for themselves. So, one night, they arranged to have a sleepover at my dad’s house. They did not all fit in my dad’s bedroom so they set up their stuff to camp out downstairs.
With the hopes of catching a glimpse of the strange woman, the boys devised a plan to take a ball of yarn from their school’s art supply closet. They would sneak out before it was dark and string each end from house to the other. They believed that if they were lucky, the knitting woman would take their bait and follow the line back to my dad’s house.
Jake was brave enough and volunteered to run one end of the ball of yarn up to the porch, while the rest of the troop kept watch. It was a success, the plan was now in place, and all the boys had to do was wait.
“Absurd idea…right?” my dad asked me.
“Maybe just a little bit it…” I admitted with a playful grin.
“Well, we were just a bunch of third graders, but guess what? …the plan worked.”
My dad continued to elaborate.
The idea was that the boys would take turns staying awake. Whoever was on watch was equipped with a flashlight and was ready to wake up the rest of the group if anything suspicious happened. The nearby kitchen window was left open for the purpose of both running the other end of the yarn inside the house, while also to listen for the sounds of the rocking chair.
My dad stayed up for the first hour, handing off the flashlight to Parker, before settling into his sleeping bag and falling asleep.
He’s not sure what time it was, or who was supposed to be on the lookout, but he was startled awake by a loud and familiar noise.
He sat up, looking around the room. It was hard to see in the dark, and my dad started calling out for his friends, nudging them all awake.
“Who has the flashlight?” my dad kept asking in a loud whisper.
Boone had fallen asleep during his watch. He was alerted awake by my dad’s commotion and immediately turned on the flashlight shinning it in the direction of the creaking noise. The rest of the group was now awake and together they gasped when the light revealed an empty wooden rocking chair, rapidly swaying back and forth in the corner of the room.
“Where did that come from?” Boone asked startled.
The boys were all terrified, huddle together, and unsure of what to do.
Suddenly, a deep and raspy shriek came from the darkness behind them.
“MAAARRRTTTYYY….MAAAAARRRTYYY….” the voice cried.
Boone turned around shining the flashlight into the direction of the kitchen. Standing just beyond the open window was the mysterious woman. Parker was the wimp of the group and screamed jumping into his sleeping bag to hide. The rest of the boys gripped each other tightly, interlocking arms.
“MAAARRRTYYY…WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COLOR???…MARRRRTTTYYY…”
“What is that thing?!” Jake shouted. “How does it know your name?!”
My dad was just as afraid as the rest, and even more disturbed to hear the unfamiliar woman calling out his name. Boone was shaking, as you could see he was struggling to hold the flashlight straight.
The woman was slouched over with her head down. Her hands were moving quickly back and forth as she was holding on to her crochet hooks.
‘WHAAAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COLOR MARRRRRTYYY…?” the woman shrieked again as she began to move closer one stiff and rigid step at a time.
My dad was speechless, in a state of complete terror-stricken shock.
“Answer it!!!” Grady shouted, shoving my dad in front of him.
“MAAAAAARRRRTYYYY….TELL ME MAAAARRRRTTYYYY…”
The woman had slowly walked her way from the kitchen and was now towering above the terrified kids. She slowly lifted her head, revealing a ghostly face hidden underneath her long gray hair. She stared directly into the beam of the flashlight. My dad still vividly recalls her sinister appearance. Her eyes were dark empty holes, her face was sickly white with wrinkles on top of wrinkles, and the bottom half of her jaw dangled loosely like it was dislocated.
“MAAAAARRRTTYY…WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COLOR??…MAARRTTTYY?” the woman scowled one last time before my dad shouted out his response.
“BLUE!!!!!”
As soon as my dad answered the flashlight bulb exploded. The room was again pitch black, and all at once in unison, the boys all let out a horrified scream.
Then suddenly, the lights in the room turned on.
“What in god’s name is going on down here?” My dad’s mom hollered.
The boys were all frantically looking around the room, but there was no sign of the woman or her rocking chair. Everything was in order, like nothing had happened.
The boys tried to explain what they had witnessed, but my dad’s mom was clearly upset by their raucous behavior. They promised they would keep quiet for the rest of the night, but requested that all the lights be left on.
This was only the first of many bizarre encounters Jake, Grady, Boone, Parker and my dad would experience. They all came to the agreement that they had indeed seen a ghost that night…but the story doesn’t end there, not for my dad.
The boys never saw the spirit of the rocking chair woman ever again, but my dad is pretty certain that she came back to visit him one last time.
A couple of short months later, it was Christmas. The last gift my dad opened was tucked behind the tree, in an unwrapped cardboard box. It had his name scribbled across the top in messy cursive handwriting.
He slowly broke the taped seal and peeked inside.
“What is it Martin?” his mom asked in excitement.
He reached inside and pulled out a fuzzy hand-knitted sweater.
His mom began to smile. “Wow that is beautiful, who’s it from?”
“It didn’t say…” my dad responded as he could feel a rush of fear-induced panic beginning to course through his body.
His family never determined who the holiday gift was from, but my dad says he immediately knew. The first thing he noticed when he pulled out the sweater from the box was that it had been hand knitted in his favorite color, blue.
My dad says his mom forced him to wear the sweater that year for the family Christmas pictures. Somewhere at our house, stored away in the attic, are some of my dad’s old childhood photo albums. He insists that if you look through his pictures, you’ll find one of him wearing the blue sweater. It is a Christmas my dad will never forget, and a haunting gift he wishes he did not receive.
“So the ghost you saw, do you have any explanation for who? …why? …or how the heck it knew your name…?” I asked him.
“Well, we are talking about the supernatural, so anything beyond understanding is possible…” he retorted. “But…I remember that Christmas my mom kept saying the sweater reminded her of something Nana would have knitted.”
“Did you ask your grandma if the gift was from her…?” I replied.
“I never had a chance to meet my grandmother…I’m not even sure what she looked like, we had no pictures of her,” my dad responded in a softer tone. “She had passed away shortly after I was born.”
“Sorry to hear that, I never knew that happened,” I sympathized. “So…then you are saying…you think maybe the spirit you saw was…”
“You choose to believe what you want…” my dad interrupted. “In the town I grew up in, your truth is all you had, because nothing made any sense. ” My dad paused for a brief moment.
“To answer your question, yes. I do think I was visited by the spirit of my Nana, but what else did I have to believe? You see, without creating your own interpretations, finding a plausible explanation for the improbability of what you experienced…you would just go crazy, and some us did.”
My dad ended his story by saying he still has a lot of unanswered questions about what he and his friends saw that night, but there was one thing he did know for certain…he never wore that blue sweater ever again.
|
“Dad, just a few more houses, pleeeasseee?”
Why did I say yes? I blame myself every day, but how could I not? If you saw his face, if you saw those big beautiful brown eyes staring up at you I don’t see how you could refuse. My son, Daniel, dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow for the second year in a row, pulled and tugged at my hand until I relented. I agreed to a ‘just a few more houses, then we go home okay?”
I was weak, spurned on by love.
We had finished our third block of houses. His pillow sack was almost full of all sorts of candy, a fact I was reminded of every passing minute as I lugged it around on my back. He had one of those small plastic pumpkin carriers for the front doors, and then he’d run back to me and dump the contents into the pillowcase. Our system was flawless, a perfect combination of team-work and strategy meant to produce maximum amounts of candy. Those answering the door would see an adorable Jack Sparrow with an empty bucket, and most of them would add some extra candy bars or gum packets to accommodate the poor pirate.
So he didn’t need more candy. He was just enjoying the night, an unseasonably warm October after so many years of miserably cold Halloween nights. I couldn’t say no. Children only have so many years of trick or treating in them, and I wanted him to make the most of each one.
We walked down an alleyway to the next block, the last street before the country fields took over. The first house was lit up with orange and white lights, fake spider webs draped over their hedges. He practically sprinted up to the door, not noticing the fake body sitting on the chair.
At least I thought it was fake.
It started to move. I tried to yell and warn Daniel but the body on the chair already grabbed my son’s arm, emitting a howling growl at the same time.
Daniel, Captain Daniel, was unfazed. He even started to laugh! I was so proud of him in that moment. After thanking the woman at the door and wishing her a ‘Happy Halloween!’ he sprinted back to me, excitedly dumping the contents of his conquest into the bulging pillow sack.
“Dad, did you see me? I wasn’t scared at all!”
“Buddy, you are a champ. If that was me a little bit of pee would have come out. Bet on it!” We shared a laugh together, and he threw his arms around me.
It would be the last time either of us would laugh.
I looked down at his eye-liner streaked face, his beautifully crafted hand-sewn pirate hat (courtesy of the Mrs.) and to my everlasting shame, I said the words that haunt me every day.
“Okay, little Captain, one more house.”
There were only three more on the street. The two beside the house we had just gone to were dark and had no decorations on them. Every child and parent knows this as the universal sign of ‘don’t bother coming to my house for candy’. So we skipped those two and ended up at the house at the end of the road. To his credit, Daniel noticed that it also didn’t have any decorations, but the front porch light was on. He looked at me, silently asking for my approval. I didn’t get a sense that anything was particularly wrong or off about the house. Even though it didn’t have any of the lights or spiderwebs or fake bodies the other houses had, the outside light was on and we could both see a red and white candy-striped bucket on the front porch. There was also a note above the bucket, and I could already guess that it instructed that you take a few pieces of candy and be on your way. But I was always cautious, ever weary. I told him to stay on the sidewalk, and I walked up to the front porch. I picked up the note. It read:
“If no one should answer when you ring the bell, please take a candy and I wish you well.”
There were no windows that I could subtly peer into. But the house on the outside was perfectly presentable. The porch was clean, the lawn crisply cut and clearly maintained. I peered inside the bucket and my eyes lit up. Even as an adult I knew that full-sized chocolate bars were rare, but there they were. Snickers, Mars, Oh Henry. All of the classics, in full-sized glory. I was so excited for Daniel. I turned around and went back to the sidewalk, where he was practically brimming with energy. Even after a long night like this one he was raring to go. I put on my best pirate voice.
“Alright, Captain, the note says to knock on the door and if no one answers, you can take one of the treats from the bucket. Just one though, okay? Make it fair for the other children.”
“Aye aye, me matey!” he said back in his best pirate voice. We gave each other a fist-pump. He walked up the pathway to the front door. I made sure to watch him the whole way. It could be another setup, some clever house owners putting together an elaborate ruse to get the childrens’ guard down before they reveal the big scare.
My phone vibrated once in my pocket. No doubt it was a text message from my wife. I watched as my son knocked on the door and patiently waited. We agreed before the night began that if nobody answered within ten seconds, then it was time to move on. I remember every detail of those next ten seconds:
One.
I took my phone out of my pocket, still keeping an eye on Daniel.
Two.
I entered the code in without looking at the phone, unlocking the screen.
Three.
Daniel was still waiting at the door.
Four.
Through muscle memory I brought up the new messages screen, still not taking my eyes off my son.
Five.
He began to turn around.
Six.
He started to head towards the bucket left on the front porch.
Seven.
He smiled at me.
Eight.
I glanced down at my phone.
Sent: You and the Captain okay?
Nine.
Reply: On our way home.
Ten.
Daniel was gone.
I didn’t register it at first. I figured he was hiding behind… something. Daniel! I called out. DANIEL!! There was no reply. I ran up to the porch, but I found nothing. No clue as to where he had gone. There was no way he could have ran around the house, not in the span of one to two seconds.
No way.
I looked up and down the street but there was no one; no parents, no kids, nobody. Did someone open the door? Was he inside? I started to pound furiously on the front door, screaming my son’s name. I was screaming at the top of my lungs as I tugged at the door handle, trying to get it open. I must have screamed loud enough because the woman whose house Daniel was so brave at opened her door and yelled after me.
“Is everything alright?”
“No! Have you seen my son? The little boy dressed as a Captain?”
“Oh my goodness, no I haven’t. Should I call someone?”
Call someone.
His cell phone. I smacked myself in the forehead. I forgot he had one on him. I grabbed the phone out of my pocket and dialed his number.
It went straight to voicemail.
I almost threw the phone away right then and there, but I tried to calm myself down. Tried to think back. But all I could picture was someone, some… thing, opening the door, grabbing my son and covering his mouth before he could scream for me. I dialed 911. I didn’t care if we found him later, if he was playing some trick on me. I just wanted him back.
I told the neighbor to grab a flashlight and help me look for him. When the cops arrived, the neighbor and I had been looking all around the house, trying to find a way in. I was about to break a window when I heard the sirens. Those wailing screams echoing in the distance. I took such comfort in those sirens. I just knew in my heart that as soon as they got here, my son would pop out of somewhere, tell me it was all a big joke. I wouldn’t scold him, I wouldn’t yell at him. I would just hug and squeeze and hold onto him until he left for College.
I told the cops everything, down to the exact detail as I remembered it. They also pounded on the door, but when they saw my frantic behavior, the impatience riddling my body, they went ahead and broke the door in. They told me to stay behind, let them clear the house. I wanted to protest, to scream at them, to tell them nothing could keep me away. But when they drew their guns and yelled into the house I knew they were taking this seriously. Five of the longest minutes of my life passed by. I don’t know when she did it but at one point I looked down and the neighbor was holding my hand. She had children of her own, she knew what was happening, what could be happening. When the two cops came out of the house the look on their faces said it all. I almost broke down there on the street, but I had to hold on a little longer. I tore into the house, past the outstretched arms of the officers and started yelling for my son, bursting in and out of each room with ferocious intent. It wasn’t until I went up the stairs into what was once a bedroom that I realized no one was living in this house. No one had been living in this house for years.
I ran down the stairs, almost knocking the officers down as I ran up to the woman, the helpful neighbor. I grabbed her and started yelling.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me no one was living here?”
She started to stammer, taken aback by my sudden turn, my aggression towards her.
“I….I didn’t know! I’ve only lived on this street for a few months. I never saw anyone come in or out but that could be for a hundred different reasons. I’m sorry! I didn’t know!”
I stood there, on the street, breathing heavily, holding onto the shoulders of a woman I only met a few minutes before. The officers placed their hands on my arms and I released her.
I looked back at the house, that two-story monstrosity bathed in darkness, and I knew. However impossible it was, I knew right there and then.
Daniel wasn’t coming back.
* * * * * *
Things for me were dark, really dark, for many months afterwards. I don’t really remember all of the police searches, the news bulletins, the press conferences. I ignored the pitied looks of my friends, the suspicious glares of my neighbors. My wife and I, despite everything, remained strong together. Every night we told each other “no body, no death”. In our hearts Daniel was alive.
The initial investigation of the house amounted to almost nothing. The previous owner had declared bankruptcy and abandoned the house. The bank hadn’t been able to sell it to anyone, so it sat there collecting dust. No one could account for the maintained lawn out front, and the police never found any bucket full of chocolate bars or any note. I don’t care what they say, I know what I saw.
I know there were some on the police force that suspected me. I went through rigorous interrogations, but they came up with nothing, as I knew they would. I didn’t blame them. If I had been in their position, I would have suspected me as well.
After three months all things concerning Daniel dissipated, except for in our household. We still put out flyers all over the surrounding neighborhoods every week. We still kept up to date with social media, pleading anybody and everybody to keep an eye out for our boy. I drained my accounts hiring private detectives to look into the house, the neighborhood, anything that I thought could help. They all came up with nothing. No clues. No traces.
Daniel had simply vanished.
Every night I had the same nightmare. Someone knocks on the door to our house, and I race down, hoping against all hope that it’s Daniel. And every time I open the door it is Daniel, and he’s standing there in his Captain Jack uniform and his pumpkin candy carrier. I scream out in joy and grab a hold of him, except his flesh starts to melt and sift through my fingers. His body turns into sand, and suddenly my son is a pile of dust and dirt on the carpet.
Then I wake up.
* * * * * *
Two weeks ago I was on the couch in the afternoon staring at the ceiling when I heard a knock on the door. I got up slowly, thinking it was a reporter coming to do a follow-up, or some punk kid claiming to have seen my son, something that happened all too often. I opened the door and nearly screamed. Not in joy but in sheer terror.
My son was standing there. Daniel.
My wife came barreling down the stairs, and she screamed as well, but hers was all happiness. She pushed me out of the way and took Daniel up in her arms. I couldn’t move. I kept waiting for his body to turn into mush, his ashes spilling through my wife’s fingers. I kept waiting to wake up in my bed, sweating and crying.
But that didn’t happen. Against every single odd in the book, Daniel had been returned. Through all the crying and hugging and kissing, Daniel didn’t say a word. He was just… there. No expression on his face, nothing registering in his eyes. We put it down to shock. Clearly something had happened to him.
As each day passed, not a single doctor or therapist or police officer could find anything physically wrong with him.
“Everything should be in working order,” said one particularly pompous doctor after examining Daniel. “I can’t tell you where your son was, or what happened to him, but whatever happened, nothing is wrong with him on the outside.”
Nothing was wrong with him on the outside? I nearly knocked out that smiling white coat right there and then, but I was so elated to have Daniel back that I shrugged it off, ignored it. Nothing mattered anymore.
Daniel was home.
Later that night, I was sitting at the dinner table after having tucked Daniel in when I came to the sudden realization that I wasn’t exactly happy. I should have been. I should have been screaming over the rooftops with complete joy in my heart. But something was wrong. Daniel wasn’t Daniel anymore. That happy, brave boy had come back… different. I tried to think about why. Obviously it had something to do with where he had been, what had happened to him. But there was something else. Something nagging at the back of my neck.
Then with a cold, sinking feeling, I remembered. Daniel had said something when I tucked him in. He had whispered, “I like it here.”
I didn’t register it at the time, but sitting at the table I didn’t like it. What did that mean? I ran up the stairs and opened his door. He was sleeping just as he should have been. I almost laughed out loud. What was wrong with me? My son was home. That’s all the mattered.
A few nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night to see Daniel standing in the doorway. He wasn’t moving. He was just…standing there. I looked over to my wife but she was sleeping. I turned back to Daniel.
“Hey there, Captain, are you okay?”
He didn’t say anything at first. He just looked at me and smiled, and for a second my blood turned cold. My flesh raised. That smile wasn’t my son. Then he whispered something. I couldn’t hear it.
“What was that?” I asked him.
Then he sprinted towards me. So fast. So quick. And he yelled, “I LIKE IT HERE!” Then he ran back out of our room and into his, slamming his door.
My wife slept through the whole thing.
Last night was the turning point. I was just about to lock the front door for the evening when my wife started screaming. And I mean screaming. I was convinced in the few seconds it took me to bound up the stairs that someone was killing her.
In a way, I was right.
I burst through the bedroom door to find Daniel standing over my wife with an axe. He had that dead smile on his face again. The axe was raised above his head when I tackled him. He started to scream, and I started to cry. He just kept repeating the same thing over and over again:
“You’ll like it there! You’ll like it there! You’ll like it there!”
Now, I’m lost. I don’t know what to do, who to turn to. And as Halloween approaches, I think I have to go back. Back to the house where it all began. I’m going to take Daniel.
Maybe he can show me where he wants us to go.
|
It all started after moving into my new house. Yeah, that’s pretty cliché. Believe me, I know, but it’s what happened. I never experienced anything supernatural before and, though interested, I never really expected anything to happen to me.
I was able to rent the house for pretty cheap. I didn’t think anything of it because it was old and not in the best of neighborhoods so I guessed I just got a good deal. After moving everything in, things were fine for a while.
I don’t remember exactly when it started because it seemed so minor at the time. I’d leave a light on in the kitchen or the bathroom and come back to find it off. Honestly, I thought I was just forgetting that I turned them off already when I came back. After a while, I began to wonder and started leaving a couple lights on purpose. Sometimes, nothing would happen. Sometimes, I’d come back to find the lights turned off.
By now, I figured out that something was off. I wasn’t really scared, but just confused. I thought maybe something was wrong with the electronics. I started leaving lights on a bit more often, because I thought I might be able to get some sign of why they would randomly shut off. That’s when it started to take another turn.
The first real time I remember something crazy happening was when I left the kitchen and living room light on while I was asleep. I woke up to a deep, rumbling growl coming from the kitchen. Now, from the bedroom, you can see down the hall to the living room and that room is connected to the kitchen. I remember waking up and thinking that there was an animal or something in my house.
I looked down the hall toward the living room to see the light darken. Somebody had flicked off the light from the kitchen. Another low growl came, this time from the living room and I nearly screamed as I saw something bolt across the length of the hall opening and then the living room light went out.
I couldn’t tell exactly what it was though. It just seemed like a black shadow or something. It didn’t really matter. I was scared shitless. I bolted from my bed then and threw on the bedroom light, expecting something to be in this room and getting ready to come after me.
Nothing. There wasn’t anything in the room. I let out a low breath and then I slowly moved down the hall into the living room. Once I got to the end, I practically ran to throw on the light switch there. Again, nothing. Kitchen next and, once again, nothing!
I was starting to think I dreamed all of it before I went to turn off the kitchen light and stopped. Now, I was a grown man but here I was terrified to turn off that switch. And I’ll admit it; I slept with all the lights on that night.
That was a mistake.
When I woke up the next morning, all the lights were off once again. I went to push myself out of bed and winced as my body felt sore. I pulled the sheets off to see long red marks running down along my legs and arms. It looked like something scratched me in the night. That terrified the hell out of me but not nearly so much as what I saw around the house.
Every light I left on was smashed.
Every light bulb that was on last night was broken, every lamp knocked over and smashed in. My breath caught in my throat as I looked around. Something was fucked up as hell here. And something tried to…well do something to me. I called in for work that day and went to immediately replace all the lights.
I didn’t know what to do then. I thought about leaving but, and I know this probably sounds stupid, but this was my home. It was my first time away from my family and this was MY home. I couldn’t give it up. So…I stayed.
Even as it got worse.
Even though I was beginning to become terrified of the dark, I couldn’t really sleep with the light on me at night in the bedroom. I’d leave other lights on though, like in the hall, or the living room giving myself enough to see pretty well in my darker room.
And, almost every night, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to hear something growling and prowling around the living room and then the lights would shut off. I didn’t want to go look. I was terrified at the thought of being in the same room with whatever was in there. So I curled up in bed and prayed it never came in.
One night, after this went on for a while, I had it. I bought a gun and turned on every light in the house. Then I sat down in the middle of the living room with my gun in my lap and a baseball bat sitting next to me. I waited. There was nothing at first for a long time. At around 2 in the morning I began to hear it. Oddly, it was behind me. I turned and peeked toward the hall to my bedroom and could hear that familiar growl.
I swallowed and held my gun in one hand and the bat in the other and slowly began to step around to get a better view of bedroom from the living room. As I began to get a view of my bed, I heard a loud THUMP! followed by an inhuman roar. I, being the brave man I was, jumped back and away from the hallway.
I wanted to end this all but, dear god I didn’t want to deal with that thing! I could hear tearing and smashing but, and I don’t know how I caught it, but I did manage to hear an audible “click”. And then nothing. Slowly, I went back to peek down the hall and the light was off once again. A deep breath and I ventured forth, my weapons ready.
When I came to my bedroom and flicked the light back on, I gasped. My bed was ravaged, torn completely apart. It was like some animal had jumped into it and just ripped it to shreds. I stepped forward to look at what was left of my bed and just stood in shock for who knows when. It wasn’t until I heard the sound of a familiar growl that I turned around. Standing near my door, right at the light switch, was when I finally saw it.
It was a man, a white and rotting man with a mangled body that looked like he had once been a dog’s chew toy staring at me. I was too in shock to even raise my weapons. He stared at me for just a moment and then…flicked off the light. I screamed. I’m not even ashamed to admit it.
I screamed and bolted. I didn’t care of that was where that…man…had been standing. I ran right past where I had seen him, swinging my bat like a madman. I nearly put a hole in the hallway as I ran through into the safe light of the hall. I turned to look back then, just in time to see him once again near the hall’s light switch. He turned that one off too. By then, I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to be safe. I burst past the living room and into the brightness of my kitchen.
I heard the sound of growling and scratching nearly all around me then and I knew he was coming back. I looked back to once again see that mangled and rotten corpse of a man turn off another light with a broken finger and plunge me into terrifying darkness. I broke for the living room.
This was going to be my final stand. I’d have to fight here. I drew close to the standing lamp that was my last line of defense. It hated the dark so I’d stay right here, next to this comforting standing lamp. I waited for it to turn off but…it never did. I looked around and…quiet. Nothing but quiet.
I turned then to look at that saving grace of a lamp that refused to yield. I started to find myself laughing; a crazy but ALIVE laugh and I thought I’d finally be ok. I stepped closer and I swear I almost hugged that lamp.
Until I saw it.
I heard the growl first coming not from behind me but in front! From that lamp. My eyes widened and I stared as the light from that lamp intensified. I stumbled back and, I don’t know what happened but I think I tripped on something. I just know I found myself flat on my back staring up at that bright, intense light. It wasn’t comforting any longer. Just hot and heavy and bright…I thought it was going to burn me away. And then it came.
I don’t have words to describe what poured from that lamp’s light. It was hideous, twisted, and filled with rage. I know I’ll never forget those eyes though. Bright, hot, and white…two glowing circles of pure malice. It hated me. It hated everything about me. And not just me. It hated all of us. Every human being. But it was stuck here. And it would lash out at what it could. Me. I don’t know how I knew this but…I just knew. I lunged for me and I prepared myself for a painful death.
“CLICK!”
The light went out. Once again came, darkness. Sweet, quiet, relaxing darkness. I stayed on the ground for a long moment, letting my eyes adjust as I kept my gaze fixated on where my standing lamp was. As the seconds passed, I could start to make him out. That mangled man standing by the lamp, one torn hand upon the switch as he looked down at me.
I understood then. I understood what it all meant. Everything that happened. The man pulled his hand away from it and then pointed a mangled finger toward it before, very clearly, shaking his head from side to side. All I could find myself doing was nodding.
He wasn’t the one trying to harm me. All this time, all those instances, he was trying to protect me. That creature could only come in the light. And this mangled man had been trying to keep me safe. He didn’t want someone else to repeat his mistakes.
I moved out the very next day and never looked back. Whatever it was, it was confined to that house and, so far, nothing has come at me from another light source. However, that thing will always stick with me in my mind. Every night, in my new apartment, I made a habit of wondering around the house, making sure every light is off, every curtain is closed, and made sure to plunge myself in quiet, comforting, and safe pitch darkness.
|
Times of Departure
By John Clewarth
When Ida Renton had first read Public Information Leaflet Number 3, in the month of July 1939, she had had no conception of the events that would befall her later that year. Evacuation: Why and How? Indeed, it was true that the Lord Privy Seal’s Office, when producing the leaflet, certainly understood why the evacuation would take place. As to how? They would have been as blissfully ignorant as all the human cargo aboard the locomotive, on that fateful evening in early September.
In a matter of days the very fabric of Ida’s life had begun to disintegrate and fall apart. The family that she had thanked God for in so many private prayers, and worked so hard to nurture, had been divided as a direct consequence of the anti-semitic actions of the hated Adolph Hitler. Her beloved Charles had left for front-line action on September 10th, and barely three days later she had packed her belongings and those of her children, preparing to leave her London home indefinitely. She had lost all control of her life. Just like before…
So many years of abuse at the hands of her tyrannical father. The beatings had been merciless and absent of reason. She and her mother had been human punchbags ever since Ida’s birth. That was when the excessive drinking had begun. William Dexter had degenerated from that time forward. Almost inevitably, his threat to ‘swing’ for her mother had become harsh reality. One blow too many. He had beaten the poor woman to death. He would, without doubt, have taken his own daughter’s life also, to silence her, if she had not been fleet enough of foot to escape his drunken lumberings, and flee the house by the back door. She had run through the passageway between the back-to-back terraced houses and half-way down the street; straight into the huge form of the village policeman.
A month later, William Dexter had stood on the trapdoor, noose around neck, screaming revenge on his daughter. The ravings of a maniac, of course. Revenge for what? And by what method could he wreak it, when seconds later he would die dancing on the end of a rope?
He died in disgrace. And not one soul voluntarily attended his burial.
As she waited on the station platform, with so many other women and children, her father never crossed her mind. It was Charles that she missed so intensely. He had been the first man that she had trusted since the execution of her father. But she did not trust him immediately. Charles, however, had been so patient with her; so reassuring to her. She had gradually lost her heart to him and they were married. The fruits of their love – George, four, and Joseph, three – huddled close to her now, as the train slowed into the station. Older children, less fortunate than themselves, bearing labels like so many packages, prepared to bid farewell to their mothers until they knew not when.
Two hours later the train was leaving the bustle of the city miles behind, as it slithered through rolling hills and valleys like a black serpent, heading for Wales. Ida’s tears had long since dried and she now sat holding her two sons close to her, as they peacefully slept; they were oblivious, at least for the present, to the upheaval in their lives, as they travelled into the fading light.
With the feeling of desolation and isolation almost too great to bear, Ida closed her eyes against the harsh reality of evacuation. For some reason which eluded her comprehension, the simple act of lowering her eyelids had an effect not dissimilar to the switching on of a cinema projector.
The livid features of her father, twisted by alcohol, jeered over the prone form of her mother, as his huge fists rained blow after blow upon her head and body. Her poor face was so battered that her eyes were mere slits; nonetheless, the pleading was still evident in them. And then the fiend was up and coming straight for Ida, ready once more to administer pain and suffering.
She opened her eyes again, preferring the desperation of the present to the nightmares of the past. And yet, although the memories of her father fled, the darkness remained. Fear held her close. When she had closed her eyes, the daylight had been diminishing, but it was far from the black of night. Now, seconds later, she stared blindly into a complete absence of light.
This was terrifying enough, but something further seeped into her subconscious, carrying with it foreboding and horror.
There was a presence in the carriage with her and her children. An evil presence – so evil it stank.
She dare not move. The children stirred in her embrace. She pulled them still closer. Her heart raced. The youngest boy murmured, “Mama,” – then the infants were torn from her arms by an unseen force. She screamed long and hard, rising to her feet, her arms flailing the air in hopeless search. What she listened to next was the most petrifying sound she had ever heard.
Her father’s voice. From beyond the grave.
“Ida,” gruff, mocking, “I’ve returned to settle our differences.”
Silence. Seconds that seemed like hours. Her ears strained. Cold sweat dampened her skin. Still she blindly groped with her hands, seeking her children.
“Please,” she began to sob, “please don’t hurt them!”
The Hell-voice boomed out more violently: “Hurt them? No, Ida, I wouldn’t hurt my own grandchildren. You denied me the opportunity to ever know them. Oh no, I won’t hurt them. We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I’m taking them with me – to the other side.”
With the conclusion of these words came the soul-destroying screaming of the innocents, as they implored their mother to help them. High-pitched, panic-stricken screeching which, to the even greater distress of Ida Renton, began to grow fainter and fainter…
Then silence once more.
An explosion of sound. Contrasting in timbre. The guttural sound of her father again. But this time it was he who vociferated with abject fear.
Strangely, whilst his howling filled the fuliginous void between this world and the next, his decaying stench dissipated, to be replaced by an aroma familiar to Ida. As the children were propelled back into her arms, and the hopeless wailing of her long-dead father grew distant and then silent, the sweet smell of limes – that scented her darling Charles’ cologne – lingered in the carriage, long after the light returned and the youngsters clung tightly to their bewildered mother.
When she received the telegram a week later, informing her of her husband’s death as a hero in front-line action, she wept her heart out. And only she knew of his last true act of heroism.
Charles Renton had been killed shortly after dawn of September 13th 1939. Later that day, on a steam locomotive bound for Wales, he had returned to his beloved family one last time.
THE END
Please wait...
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It’s Saturday night and you’re dressed up in your favourite smart-casual outfit. Excitement fills your heart as you check yourself one last time in the mirror, make a final adjustment to your hair which is now perfect, and head out of the room. You glance at your coat as you walk past it, smiling to yourself as you open your front door and allow the warm, summer sun to splash your exposed skin, a gentle breeze tickles your face as it creeps into your house. It’s going to be an exciting night! Your friend will probably be waiting for you at the local bar, ready to celebrate her birthday. Most of your other friends will also be there. It’s not that often you all get together like this but it’s always sure to be immense fun when you do. After locking your door, keeping your house secure, you head down the street you’re most familiar with, not really paying attention to where you’re walking, but with your face to the sky basking in the warm evening air surrounding you. You’ve walked this route a thousand times, and you know it so well that your body goes into autopilot as you allow your mind to wonder about what the night has in store for you, drinking and laughing with your favourite people in the entire world.
Shortly after setting off, you arrive at the pub you’ve been in countless times before – your pub. The sound of singing birds and a gentle breeze erupt into the merry ruckus of debate and laughter as you step through the doorway. The smell of alcohol and and hot food dances around your nostrils bringing with it a warm nostalgic feeling that simmers in your stomach. You spot several of your friends gathered around a table in the far corner all waving frantically at you and you cannot help but to beam with delight at seeing them. Almost jogging over, you give them all a warm hug and wish the special guest a happy birthday. A drink already awaits you, a glass full stood among a variety of other beverages, all of differing volumes. You take your seat and take a sip, feeling the cool liquid swish around your mouth, the flavours of your drink of choice exploding on contact with your tongue and the warmth of the alcohol sliding down your throat to rest in your stomach. The feeling of that first sip was incredibly satisfying. Sliding into the conversation is easy with these people, and no more than a minute goes by before you’re already in full swing bringing more laughter to the group. Sip after sip, your drink diminishes steadily. Your mood is high, your body is relaxed. As time passes, more friends join the group and more alcohol is consumed. The empty glasses pile up and are removed by bar staff as you take turns heading to the bar to top up. The bar buzzes around you, the sun sets outside and the dark shroud of night covers your oblivious world.
Another few hours pass and some of your friends decide to start heading home after another brilliant night, an opinion shared by all. You may have drunk a little too much, however, and your vision is blurred. It becomes difficult to maintain focus and balance as you hug your friends goodnight and slur words of love and friendship to them. The words are returned and followed by more hugs and hand shakes as the bar staff politely urge what is left of your group to make your way outside. Without causing a fuss, you oblige and stagger to the front doors and outside into the warm night time air. The familiar breeze strokes your face as you say your final goodbyes for the night, ready to amble home on your own allowing your legs to direct you. The chatter of the streets fades to the ambient sounds of rustling leaves and solitary footsteps. The night is quiet, warm, and lonely. Now far away from the pub you came from, you mumble and giggle to yourself, following the comforting glow of the street lights illuminating the path back to your comfortable home. The streets twist and turn, you’re aware of the familiar route you should be taking, and as you shuffle along steadily you make the same right-turn you’ve made countless times before. You’re almost home, and it’s a good thing too as the temperature seems to have taken a sudden downward turn.
The night seems darker now, and much colder than it was barely a few minutes ago. You clutch your shoulders hoping to bring yourself some warmth and pick up your pace to get home quicker. Following the street lights seemed easy earlier, but now they blink and fade with every step. The large circles of light once so bright now seem difficult to see. Your heart begins to beat faster, and your stomach turns. The alcohol is making a comeback, and stretching your arm out to rest on the nearest lamppost proves to be a bad decision as your hand touches nothing. With your weight behind you and no lamppost to hold you steady, you fall to the ground scraping your hands on the cold, hard concrete beneath you. Your stomach can no longer hold the quantity of liquid you consumed earlier and with a mighty heave, the contents of your stomach is ejected all over the ground in front of you. Another heave and more vomit to add to the puddle. Dragging your wrist across your mouth to wipe away the remnants of saliva from your lips, you slump back against a wall and take some deep breaths. You look up to the lamppost that was supposed to break your fall and see nothing. Looking left, and then looking right, nothing. No lampposts, no light source. Confused and disoriented, you help yourself to your feet and scan the area around you. This street is familiar, but at the same time you know you’ve never seen it before. Despite the lack of light, you can somehow still see through the darkness, barely.
Tall, foreboding houses tower above you each side of the street and run parallel to the road. The trees here are bare, no more than a construct of sticks and branches mocking you, teasing you, confusing you. A sharp wind gusts down the street dragging a bitterly cold air behind it. You shiver and your skin goosebumps. Scared and confused, you start down the street again, hurrying yourself along. Your vision begins to return to normal as the adrenaline pumping through your system starts to sober you up. As you glance at the houses each side of the street, blank faces stare down at you. You can see them, you can feel their uninviting stare burn through your skin. Icy claws drag pointed fingernails down your spine and you break into a hurried jog. Your eyes widen and your heart pounds faster and heavier with every step. Your heavy breath mists as it leaves your body with every exhalation. The figures watching you from blackened windows, motionless, expressionless, are silently screaming at you, casting you out and threatening your soul. Tears of fear well up in your eyes as you think of home and your warm bed. You stop running and shut your eyes tight whispering to yourself; “This is just a dream. This is just a dream.” You concentrate hard on waking up, and open your eyes.
You feel your blood drain from your body and pure dread grips your lungs, removing all breath from your body as you hear a slow, ominous creak from behind you. The darkness is still very much surrounding you, and the icy air scratching at your face confirms the horror that you are not dreaming. Turning slowly, you see the door to the house behind you is ajar. Shadows seep out from the crack and creep towards you. In a moment of horrified panic, your legs freeze up but as the shadows only visible in your mind sneak ever closer, you convince yourself to run. You don’t know where you’re heading any more, but as you run you see more open doors, you feel more creatures, more things follow on. Glancing back you see them. Tall figures, almost humanoid, are stood still yet somehow also following. You try your hardest to speed up but your legs cannot move any quicker. Tears are cascading down your cheeks and your heart feels ready to burst through your chest. The smell of stale air suffocates you and suddenly you hear them. You hear the whispers and groans that complete the unadulterated fear squeezing your heart. Incomprehensible, vile whispers spit at you, enveloping your ears. Vicious claws reach out for you, fully intent on causing harm and destruction. You can sense the pure feeling of evil reaching out for you, wanting you, hoping to deliver you to death.
With every backwards glance, the figures draw progressively closer. The night falls deeper into blackness. Your vision becomes restricted, your breathing is tight. You gasp for air as your exhausted legs tumble beneath you, carrying you forward with all the pace they can muster. As you begin to glance backwards again, you stop short when you see razor-sharp teeth beside you, grinning psychotically and dripping with hunger. They lash out to bite you and just scratch your arm as you recoil and lose your balance. Falling to the ground again you cower, hiding behind your arms and sobbing. For a long while, nothing happens. You raise your head and peek out from behind your arm to pitch blackness. Your vision is gone, you see nothing, you hear nothing. Terrified and perplexed, you feel consciousness slowly slipping through your fingers. Mentally grasping at a metaphorical rope, you try your best to stay awake but your fight is in vain. Slumping gently down, reality itself runs away from you, the complete dead of the night lulling you gently to sleep.
The warmth of the sun hits your face and you bolt upright in bed, sweating profusely and straining to catch your breath. Resting your hand on your bare chest, you feel your heart beating rapidly and cold flushes run up and down your spine. Looking around your room, you realise everything is normal and a tidal wave of relief washes over your entire mind, body, and spirit. Now convinced it was just a bad dream, you let out a small, nervous laugh and throw the duvet to one side. Following your normal morning routine, you swing your legs out and scratch an irritating itch on your arm, only to recoil in pain as your run your fingernail over some unexplained gouges resembling a bite. The wave of relief retreats back into the ocean of anxiety as your heart refuels itself with panic. You hop out of bed and rush to the blinded window, throwing aside the curtains and staring blankly at the street outside. Only the blackness of the night and unfamiliar houses greet you. There is no sun. The trees are bare. An aimless soul is clutching their shoulders on the street below.
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“Alright, kids,” the counselor announced, a devilish grin stretching across her face. “You know what time it is!”
Jack nodded vigorously, bouncing up and down with excitement. He had been waiting for this moment all day.
“That’s right!” she responded. “It’s time for our scary story competition! I want you to share the most terrifying tales you can imagine, and the camper with the most depraved imagination wins bragging rights for the whole summer! Muahahahaha!” the counselor finished with an over-the-top evil laugh.
Jack had to sit on his hands to contain his enthusiasm. The atmosphere was perfect. The campers were seated on log benches around a vigorous fire, surrounded by darkly foreboding trees through which the wind rustled like something alive. Jack had always adored the bizarre and frightening – it was in his nature – but tonight, horror stories weren’t the only thing that had him excited. The other reason for his anticipation was seated directly across the circle…
Dante met Jack’s eyes and smirked, his soft, shiny black hair falling roguishly across his brow. Unlike Jack, he looked calm and collected, with more than a hint of arrogance about him. Jack grinned back challengingly, jaw clenched tightly in anger. That guy’s demeanor really pissed him off; Dante seemed to think he was so much better than everybody else. Oh well, thought Jack, he’ll quit smiling soon enough. Right after I win this thing.
“Now!” exclaimed the counselor, “Who’d like to start us off?”
“Ooooh! Me! I would!” Jack yelled, waving his hand in the air like a madman. Across the circle, Dante gave a snort of derision.
“Alright, Jack,” she agreed. “Let’s start strong!”
“Yeah!” Jack exclaimed. He couldn’t stand waiting, especially when he was this pumped up. Under the circumstances, most people would have been more nervous than excited, but Jack was young and reckless, and the possibility of losing barely registered in his mind. “Everybody listen up close, ‘cause this is gonna be the scariest story ever told! The terrifying tale of… THE SWAMP THING!”
Swamps are some of the scariest, most dangerous places in the whole world! They’re putrid and mucky, with hidden pits of quicksand just waiting to suck you up and bury you forever. Huge trees are everywhere, dripping with vines and moss to tangle you up and big, snaky roots to trip you. There’s always fog creeping over the ground, so you can barely see where you’re stepping. And that’s not good, because there are all kinds of dangerous animals in the swamp: crocodiles and snapping turtles and giant boa constrictors that could swallow you whole!
But the most dangerous thing in the swamp is one that few people know about. Most believe it’s just a legend, but it’s as real as you or me. It hides beneath the water and muck, in bogs and marshes and anywhere even remotely swampy. There’s probably one hiding not far from this campsite, in some low, wet place in the woods. It isn’t picky as long as it can find enough mud to bury itself in.
You’ll never know if you pass one by, though. It won’t poke itself out while you’re snooping around. But it knows you’re there. It feels your footsteps on the ground; it feels them vibrate in the earth and stir in the water. It watches you, and it waits. Waits until you’re nice and settled in, until you feel comfortable and safe.
Then it rises out of the bog, slowly and quietly, hidden in the mist and the trees. It’s got a humanoid figure, but its looks are far from human. It’s enormously tall with thick limbs like tree trunks, dripping with weeds and algae and muck. No one knows what it looks like under that muck; it’s so completely caked in slime that it looks like the bog itself came to life. The only place that isn’t covered is its mouth – a dark, gaping hole too huge to be natural. It doesn’t have fangs or anything, but that’s because it doesn’t need them. It could swallow a grown man whole in one gulp!
If it wanted to, that is.
What it actually does is much worse. It sneaks up behind you, through the mist and the trees, looming taller than you’d imagine possible – but you won’t see it until it’s too late. By the time you realize something’s behind you, it will already be close enough to grab you by the throat. You may turn around in time to catch a quick glimpse of it before its huge, mucky hands close around your neck, but that’s the best you can do.
Once it’s got you by the throat, it forces you to the ground, sitting on your chest and crushing you with its bulk. Then it takes a fist and shoves it into your mouth, cramming it with vile, swampy gunk; with mud and weeds and rotting fish. It shoves the muck down your throat, more and more and more of it, until finally you choke to death on the revolting slime.
But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is, it won’t let your soul escape from your now useless body. You’ll stay trapped in that hunk of flesh as the creature drags you back to the swamp and buries you, deep under the muck and slime, then joins you beneath the swamp. There you will stay for years, decades, centuries, as your body decays and the scavengers invade your every orifice… until you become one with the swamp.
And finally, one day, you’ll feel something stir in the muck around you. A hapless traveler will wander by, unaware of the danger… and as he passes, you will feel a strange compulsion. You will rise, slowly and dreadfully, out of the mud and slime. You will rise… as a new SWAMP THING!!
The other children clapped as Jack finished his tale, though across the fire Dante smirked patronizingly, as if he had found the story cute. Jack, however, was confident about his performance, and stuck out his tongue at the infuriating boy. Let’s see YOU do any better, Jack’s expression said.
“That was very good, Jack,” the counselor commented. Jack beamed proudly. “Anyone think they can best that?”
Jack fully expected Dante to take a shot at him immediately, but the boy sat calmly and observed as another camper tentatively raised her hand and stuttered, “M-may I try?”
“Of course,” the counselor said with an encouraging smile. “Go for it!”
The girl took a deep breath, furrowing her brow in concentration. She looked like she was trying to imagine them all in their underwear. She’ll probably just end up stuttering through the whole thing, Jack concluded dismissively. But when she finally spoke, her voice was strong and measured, like she’d memorized the words by heart…
Most people see the campfire as a point of safety, right? It is light in the darkness, heat in the cold. It wards away shadows and wild animals, along with any horrors lurking in the darkness. As long as we’re within the fire’s warm glow, perhaps roasting a marshmallow, we feel protected from the wild.
How ironic is it, then, that a campfire may in fact be a source of great danger? Oh, nothing will go wrong if you care for it properly. Keep it in the fire pit, tend it carefully, and – most importantly – be sure to put it all the way out before you go to sleep. You may be tempted to cut corners, ignore the few remaining embers and go straight to bed. However, you mustn’t succumb to this temptation. For if you leave even a single spark unquenched, if you leave those smoldering embers unwatched into the deepest, darkest part of the night… well, you may get back more than you bargained for.
Beneath the moon, at the stroke of midnight, the dormant remains of your once-welcoming fire may give birth to a dark child. An observer might see the ashes begin to shift, the orange embers to glow a bit brighter. He might watch in puzzlement as an amorphous shape began to form in the remnants of the blaze, writhing like some strange animal. And he might recoil in horror as the shape solidified and took its first, questing steps out of the pit. The malign spirit, the fire elemental…
The flame salamander.
“Salamanders aren’t scary!” Jack interjected loudly. The girl jumped with surprise, then glared daggers at him. Jerk, she mouthed.
“Now, Jack,” the counselor scolded. “No interrupting! Be quiet and let her finish.”
“Whatever,” Jack murmured, scuffing his shoes in the dirt. The girl took a deep breath and haltingly resumed:
W-well, at least, that’s what they’re called. In truth, they don’t always look like salamanders; it’s just one of their favored forms. They may also emerge looking like snakes, or rats, or great, hairy spiders. No matter how they appear, though, they are NO animals. Their bodies are made of ash and charcoal, their veins of embers; their hearts are white-hot, blazing sparks of purest flame incarnate. They have but one purpose, one irresistible drive – to burn every living thing within their reach.
Leaves, wood, flesh, bones… it does not matter to them. They exist merely to consume all life and transmute it into flames. Dead matter doesn’t interest them, only living plants, living animals… living humans. Some salamanders will crawl into the woods, turning the landscape into a raging forest fire in mere moments. Others, however, will flock straight into nearby TENTS, crawling inside sleeping bags and pajamas, making nests in campers’ hair. Unlucky victims will wake to a sensation of uncomfortable heat, only to realize seconds later that they are on fire.
Many victims panic, try to smother the flames searing into their flesh, but few of them succeed. The salamanders are wily and persistent. Even if you try to shake them off, they will stick to you like glue, crawl and slither around under your clothes so quickly that you don’t know where to slap. If they can manage, they may even crawl into your mouth or ears, roasting you from the inside out. Many will seek out the zippers of sleeping bags and weld them closed before setting the fabric on fire, trapping their victims inside burning cocoons of inescapable heat.
And even if, by some miracle, you manage to escape the ambush, you’ll emerge from your tent to find a massive forest fire raging all around you. But this is no ordinary fire, oh no. Any fire set by salamanders is, by nature, a SENTIENT fire – a stronger, more voracious fire elemental forged from the salamanders and the lives they have consumed. The sentient flames will twist and warp into various shapes – a bear, perhaps, or a dragon – all with gnashing teeth and burning eyes staring hungrily in your direction.
No matter how fast you run, you cannot escape. The fire is all around you. Within moments, the flames will fall upon you like an avalanche, melting your flesh and reducing your bones to ash. But that isn’t the worst part. Not by a long shot. The worst part is that fire elementals consume not only your physical body, but your soul as well. After such a fire is done with you, NOTHING is left. You are erased, scrubbed from creation, and no force on earth can ever bring you back.
A brief, solemn silence followed the end of the tale, in which only the crackling of the campfire was audible. Then the campers began to applaud – Louder than they did for my story, Jack noted resentfully, refusing to clap along.
“That was wonderful!” the counselor exclaimed. “Very creative!”
“Mine was creative, too,” Jack muttered under his breath. Nobody seemed to hear him. For the first time, it occurred to Jack that he actually might lose. His stomach churned nervously as he contemplated what that would mean for him. Jack glanced almost instinctively up at Dante, who met his eyes with a particularly nasty smile. The look sent a shiver of fear up his spine.
Stop it, Jack thought to himself. You’re being ridiculous. You took care of all this in advance, remember? You’re NOT going to lose.
“Well, who wants to follow that up?” the counselor asked, looking around the circle eagerly. Now will be when Dante butts his ugly head in, Jack thought, but once again he was wrong. After a few moments of silence, another girl slowly raised her hand. She had a somber, lonely aura about her, staring fixedly into her lap so that her long, oily bangs obscured her eyes. She said not a word, but the counselor recognized her immediately.
“Alright, we have a taker! Do your best!”
The girl slowly withdrew her hand, then sat still and silent for a seemingly endless moment. Jack was just beginning to wonder if she’d changed her mind about competing when she spoke in a low, rasping voice…
Death. It is the greatest of all mortal mysteries and the deepest of all mortal fears. How many countless hours have been spent contemplating Death? How many philosophers have been enthralled by visions of the afterlife? The obsession with Death is equaled only by the fear of Death… and of anything associated with Death. Even the most idyllic cemetery becomes a place of terror come nightfall. Carrion birds and other attendants of Death are greeted with loathing wherever they tread. Even Death Itself has been personified in various ways, assigned hierarchies of servants and messengers to carry out Its grim duties.
And of these harbingers of Death, perhaps none is more dreaded than the banshee.
The banshee is an evil spirit said to haunt the homes of people soon to die. It appears as a pale, emaciated woman, draped in a shroud of ashen gray. However, banshees are rarely seen – they announce their presence in other ways. A banshee’s shriek is described as the most piercing, bone-chilling sound imaginable, comparable to nothing else. It is a wailing screech both high and low, dissonant and grating, and has even been known to shatter glass. It wedges itself into your brain like an ice pick, filling your head with a cold, resonating pain.
However, the sheer loathsomeness of the sound is not the only reason to dread it. According to legend, a banshee only cries when someone within earshot is to die within a fortnight. In bygone times, banshees were associated with certain ancestral homes, gliding about the house and wailing every time a family member was about to die. The louder and shriller the wailing, the more tragic and unexpected the death to come.
As despised as banshees were, though, they were rarely seen as CAUSES of death – merely OMENS, Death’s heralds and messengers. Oftentimes, they were even construed as mourners, crying a harsh lament for the death soon to come.
This, however, is utterly wrong.
Think about it. If banshees are messengers of Death, why do they only appear to certain people? Why not wail for everyone? This leads us to a crucial omission in their mythology. You see, banshees do not merely shriek to warn of approaching Death.
They shriek to strike fear into those who have incurred their wrath.
As I’ve said, banshees are evil spirits – spirits of the dead that fail to pass on due to resentment or hatred. These evil spirits wander about their tombs, festering with violent spite, waiting to unleash their fury upon the first unsuspecting passerby to provoke them. Perhaps you took a shortcut through the cemetery and walked across one of their graves. Or maybe you knocked over a vase of flowers dedicated to the spirit’s memory. Whatever the details, your perceived disrespect will be met with dire consequences.
From that day on, the spirit will follow just a few steps behind you, constantly looking over your shoulder. You won’t notice it much – just an eerie feeling of being watched every now and then, a cold spot in your hallway, a subtle movement in the corner of your eye. But make no mistake, it is always there. Lurking in the depths of your shadow. Staring at you with venomous malice. And as your death approaches, it will rejoice, for its vengeance is at hand.
The banshee will begin to wail, striking fear into your heart. For days, the sound will follow you, startling you when you least expect it, echoing in your deepest nightmares. Then, when Death finally arrives, you will see the banshee for the first time: its dark, pitiless eyes boring holes into your very soul; its gaping, bottomless mouth shrieking your funeral dirge with malicious glee.
As the light fades from your eyes, the banshee will take your arm in a cold, vice-like grip and begin to tug you down – out of your body, beneath the Earth, and into the very depths of Hell. There, both of you will be consigned to the torment of the damned for all –
“Hey! You stole my ending!” Jack interrupted. “That’s way too similar to how I ended mine, right Counselor?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jack, she didn’t steal anything!” the counselor scolded exasperatedly. “Honestly! Go ahead and finish, dear.”
“It’s okay. I was done,” the girl responded, sounding even gloomier than usual.
The counselor sighed. “Very well. That was a lovely story, don’t you agree?” The campers applauded politely, even Jack grudgingly joining in. “Now, does anybody else want to have a try?”
Across the fire from Jack, Dante finally raised his hand. “I’d be happy to, if you don’t mind,” he said, his voice smooth and mellifluous.
For a moment (though he would never admit it) nervous butterflies filled Jack’s stomach. As good as the girls had been, this would doubtlessly be Jack’s stiffest competition. After all, Dante was no ordinary boy. He possessed a wily nature and a silver tongue, and just like Jack, he had more than pride on the line in this contest. Despite his anxiety, Jack couldn’t help but smile as he contemplated the spoils of victory. You just wait, Dante, Jack thought, by the time this is over, you’ll be CRYING.
“Go right ahead!” the counselor assented, beaming.
Turning away from the counselor, Dante slowly scanned the ring of campers. His arrogant smile faded into a look of solemn concentration; however, there was still a mischievous spark which never quite left his eyes. He locked gazes with each of his peers in turn, and when Jack’s turn came, he could have sworn that he saw one corner of Dante’s mouth twitch upwards into a smirk. Jack shivered despite himself.
Finally, Dante finished scanning the circle and began to speak. “Listen well,” he intoned in a low, sinister voice, “for the tale I spin is one of creeping death, of helplessness and despair in the face of unthinkable evil. It is a tale that answers little of how and even less of why, but presents the unforgiving world in all of its dark glory. Ladies and gentlemen: the tale of the Forest Walkers.”
Dante made a sweeping gesture, and suddenly a log in the fire broke with a resounding *CRACK,* sending crimson sparks into the night air. To Jack’s intense chagrin, the noise startled him enough to flinch. Dammit, that’s no fair! he thought. But he forced himself to remain silent as Dante began…
Now, I want you to imagine a nice evening stroll through the forest. What do you see? Perhaps you think of golden twilight trickling through the canopy, of lush foliage, of wildflowers and berries. Or perhaps you imagine birdsong, the sound of a babbling brook trickling through the woods. A lovely scene, is it not? But beneath this idyllic façade lurks a brutal truth which most of the world likes to ignore.
Even on the most beautiful day, a constant battle of life and death is taking place all around you. The bird calls that you hear may in fact be warning cries, signaling the presence of a hawk. The second those notes fade out, their singer may feel razor-sharp talons gouge mercilessly into its flesh, crushing its fragile heart in their grasp. Right now, somewhere in this forest, a deer is taking its last breath as wolves tear into its still-living flesh, devouring it as it bleeds out onto the ground. Elsewhere, a fly is caught in a spider’s web. Hopelessly entangled, it can only struggle in vain as it waits for the predator to puncture its body and pump it full of poison, dissolving it into mush. Later, a parasitoid wasp may lay eggs inside that very spider, turning predator into prey as the newly hatched young devour the paralyzed arachnid alive.
And yet we walk through the woods and feel perfectly safe – tranquil, even – because humans consider themselves ABOVE this dance of life and death. Though we may be frightened of meeting a wolf or bear, all it takes is a rifle by our side and we feel in control again, no longer beholden to the capricious cruelties of nature. The idea of a creature that could prey on us with immunity, a creature before which we would be as helpless as a fly in a web, is completely foreign to us. “Surely,” we reason, “with our great intelligence, we are no creature’s prey!”
Oh, but how wrong we are.
For there is indeed a creature which preys upon humans. Many, actually, but one rises above the rest as an unstoppable, ruthless killer. In the few places where their existence is recognized, these are known simply as… the Forest Walkers.
The Forest Walkers are like nothing else in nature. Indeed, there is very much of the “supernatural” about them, at least by our current understanding. They lurk in gaps between dimensions, existing in a constant state of flux. This grants them powers far beyond any ordinary creature: powers to see and hear across dozens of miles, to traverse great distances in the blink of an eye, and, perhaps most frighteningly, a power of camouflage so profound it renders them all but invisible.
If you are unfortunate enough to stumble across one of these creatures, you will never realize it is there. It may be standing right beside you and you will not see it. It may brush its long, gnarled fingers across your arm, and you will think it merely a branch, even if you are looking straight at it. (Forest Walkers have been described as tree-like in appearance, but no one truly knows if this is the case, for the few that have seen them and lived were unable to identify where the creature ended and the forest began.) Some particularly sensitive individuals may feel a chill or a sense of being watched in the presence of a Forest Walker, but even these signs are few and far between – easily dismissed as mere fancy.
At least, until the Forest Walkers WANT you to notice them.
They will desire this, you know. Perhaps not at first, but after following you for a time, they will start dropping hints of their presence. Initially just enough to startle you or make you uneasy – the snapping of a twig, perhaps, or a movement in the corner of your eye. But slowly they will escalate, filling your head with the sounds of footsteps, of low growling, of rustling and dragging and the clicking of claws. They’ve no need to conceal themselves. Once you have wandered into their territory, once they’ve determined to hunt you down… well, you’re already as good as dead. It is now their privilege to play with you at their leisure, enjoying the sweet taste of your mounting panic.
As you continue your doomed trek, more and more Forest Walkers will gather, like vultures to a carcass. Eventually it will seem as though the forest itself is turning against you: branches grabbing at your arms, grass tangling in your legs, thorns ripping across your skin. Enjoy this time, for once the Forest Walkers have tired of playing and decide to get down to business, mere terror will seem sweet as honey in comparison.
You see, the Forest Walkers don’t merely kill their victims. They don’t subsist on human flesh. They feed upon emotions – on hatred, on malice, on envy and grief and horror and disgust and all things that agonize the human soul. They will seize you and immobilize you, locking their gaze onto yours with eyes like infinite voids. And as you look into their eyes, all of your worst memories will resurface in vivid detail, playing through your mind as though you are actually living them. Once you have run out of memories, the creatures will begin on your nightmares, playing out your worst fears with horrific realism – enough to convince you that they have come to pass.
This process may take hours, even days, and all of this time the creatures will cluster around you, sucking down your agonized emotions like children at their mother’s teat. However, it won’t last forever: eventually your emotions will be sucked dry, leaving nothing behind but a cold, unfeeling lump of flesh without the will to even move.
They will leave you alive, though you’ll most likely die of thirst in the following days. On the off chance that you’re found before death, the doctors will probably diagnose you catatonic, and you will live out the remainder of your “life” as a vegetable, still and unresponsive on a hospital bed. Finally, you will die, and nothing will be left of you but the barest whispering of a consciousness, the meanest entity which could possibly be called a “soul,” condemned to a purgatory of unrelenting nothingness for all eternity.
A reverent hush followed Dante’s tale. The silence seemed to spin out infinitely, with no one wanting to be the first to break it. Even Jack had been so enthralled that he’d forgotten to interrupt. Finally, the counselor began to clap, followed by the rest of the circle. Jack sat thunderstruck, torn between envy and grudging admiration at Dante’s performance. There was no doubt that, in a fair contest, Dante would completely trounce him.
Luckily for me, though, Jack thought, an unpleasant smile twisting his features, I cheated!
“Well, Dante, that’s one of the best stories I’ve heard in the history of this camp!” the counselor exclaimed, elated by the depths of her charge’s depravity. “I daresay we have a winner!”
The smile slipped off of Jack’s face like taffy, replaced by a look of utter shock. Wait… WHAT? he thought numbly. No way… That’s impossible!
“Why thank you, Miss Counselor,” Dante replied, and though he addressed her, his eyes were locked intently upon Jack. That nasty, wolfish grin spread across his face again, and Jack’s heart sank. As the other campers applauded and cheered, it all became too much for Jack, and he leapt from his seat and took off into the woods.
Jack ran for several minutes, ignoring the others’ cries for him to return. When he finally stopped, leaning against a tree to catch his breath, the camp had fallen so far behind him that even the fire was out of sight. The dark forest surrounded him on all sides, just barely illuminated by the cold light of the moon. Suddenly, a twig snapped behind him, and Jack’s first, irrational thought was that it was a Forest Walker. The frightened child spun around… only to see Dante, looking eerily unruffled by his trek through the woods.
“You promised,” Dante stated simply.
“N-No,” Jack protested, too shaken to argue coherently. “I mean… Y-you can’t… I demand a do-over!”
“No do-overs, no modifications, no backing out. We both agreed to that, remember?” Dante chided patiently, a mischievous smile still playing across his lips. “We have it in writing. In blood, no less.”
“B-but… this is impossible!”
“Are you really that arrogant? Of course it’s possible. It just happened. You bet that you could win the camp’s story contest, and you lost. Now it’s time to pay up.”
“NO!” Jack shouted, and in his hysteria he lost control of himself. A guttural roar tore from his throat as savage flames erupted around him. His skin flushed a vivid crimson and his horns and tail sprung into full view.
Dante watched the enraged demon with mild amusement, as though observing a petulant child’s temper tantrum.
“You don’t GET IT, you sorcerous sonofabitch!” Jack roared. “You CAN’T have won because I HAD MY MOTHER POSSESS THE GODDAMN COUNSELOR! She should have picked ME!!!”
“It was a lesson you had to learn, dear,” a feminine voice interrupted. Behind Dante, the counselor emerged into the clearing. “And I find that experience is the best teacher. Cheating is all well and good, but clumsy cheating is just embarrassing. Not to mention risky. Besides, you NEVER ought to trust others.”
“B-b-but Mooooom,” Jack stuttered, dismay and betrayal evident in his voice.
“No buts,” Dante smirked infuriatingly. “You lost, so in accordance with our contract, you’re now my familiar. You must serve me loyally until the day I die. Now, transform yourself into a frog and come sit in my pocket. I should be getting back to camp.”
Jack gave one last, pleading glance at his mother, but got only a stern glare in return. Sighing reluctantly, the demon disappeared in a puff of smoke and reappeared as a small frog.
Dante picked up the frog and pocketed it with a grin, then turned around and started back toward the campsite. As he passed the counselor, however, she whispered into his ear (softly, so that the frog couldn’t hear):
“I hope you won’t forget our bargain, boy.”
For the first time, a shiver drifted down the young conjuror’s spine, and his self-assured smile faltered just a bit. “Of course not. It ought to be a much better challenge.”
As Dante walked away, a vicious sneer twisted the counselor’s features. “Oh, my naïve boy,” she breathed, licking her lips rapturously, “I’m afraid it will be no contest.”
|
Grandpa was 97 years old when he passed away.
He lived far from where his three children had settled. Grandma died when I was a small child, and he ended up remarrying another woman a few years later who demanded that he move out west so that she could be nearer to her sons. She was a piece of work, was Grandma Hester. We all wondered how Grandpa could stand her. It turns out that perhaps he could not.
We’re not precisely sure when he developed dementia, but it was probably years before we noticed it. He’d tell us about people he was speaking to, or visiting with, or a trip he took. Years later, after we learned he was suffering from dementia, we’d learn that conversation, that visit or that trip never actually happened. For all we really know, any story he told us from the last decade and a half leading up to his coming back east could be a false memory. We would have no way of knowing. Hester rarely communicated with us herself.
Probably our first clue that Grandpa wasn’t himself anymore happened a few weeks after he came back east to live with my parents. Most of the family had settled in one area; my wife and I lived in the south end of our city, as did one set of cousins, but my father and his two sisters all lived in the north, within driving distance of each other. A few of my aunts’ children had moved out of town, and my brother had as well, but there were still enough of us around that Grandpa could visit with. We would often have gatherings at my parents’ house where Grandpa would either hold court with some story or would go to sleep.
One afternoon, my daughter Breanne, who was in her late teens at the time, came in from playing with my cousin’s kids and sat down at the table, where Grandpa had been napping. He suddenly woke and smiled at her.
“Well, hello, Claudia!” he said, brightly. Claudia was my aunt; Dad’s youngest sister.
“I’m Breanne, Grandpa,” said my daughter.
“No,” said Grandpa, almost sounding offended. “You’re my daughter, Claudia.”
Later that same month, he told my aunts and uncles the story of how he came out east after living with Hester got to be too much. “I prayed to the Lord,” said Grandpa. “And the next thing I knew, Martin was there.” Martin was my father. I remembered him driving out to the tiny, cold house on a hill in Colorado to get Grandpa. He had not come due to any divine intervention. He had come because Grandpa called him in the night and pleaded with him to come get him.
We all loved Grandpa, but caring for him was not easy. For one thing, Grandpa had gotten it into his head that he was a young, single man with many years ahead of him, and the only thing missing was a young woman at his side. If he spoke for any length of time with a younger woman, he became convinced that she was in love with him, and that perhaps she should be his new bride. Hester was even still alive at this point. He had forgotten her utterly.
The women he made advances on included my mother, two of my cousins and my own wife. Thankfully, he couldn’t do much more than talk, so it was just a matter of politely changing the subject whenever he would start with that, but it got worse when he decided he could do things like take walks on his own or try to drive my father’s car.
Dad and Mom didn’t let him go on walks by himself, but that didn’t mean he didn’t sneak away sometimes when Dad was away and Mom was in the basement. He had to use a walker to get around, and simply couldn’t do stairs, but refused to admit this to anyone, including himself, leading to a lot of falls. He would also get confused as to where he was, or where he lived. At times, during his walks, he would attempt to find the old family home that he raised my father and aunts in, despite it having been long gone since before I was born. Dad picked him up from a police station, where he had been taken after some patrol officers saw him wandering around, clearly lost.
The time he tried to drive Dad’s car was after that. He decided that the reason he got lost is because he had to walk. He managed to get the E-break off and rolled right down the fairly steep incline outside my parents’ house, crashing into a fence. The damage was minimal, but after that incident, my parents realized he needed to be in a full time care facility.
He got worse after that.
My father visited him three times a week. I have no idea how often my aunts went, or if they even did. I tended to only go when there was a family gathering, and increasingly I began to realize that he had no clue who I was. He’d smile and greet me as though I was someone he had just met. He’d tell me about his children, describing them as “little kids”, and even going as far as to invent a friend who was looking after them while he was in this home with “all these old people.” Grandpa was 93 at the time. He was much older than many of the others who lived there. But somehow, they were the “old people”, while he was not.
But when I say he got worse, I mean he changed. The false memories, the refusal to acknowledge that he was elderly, the attempts to chat up ladies and inability to remember that his children were grown and that he had grandchildren and great-grandchildren had been a part of who he was for years, ever since his early 80’s.
But he had never been violent before. That changed one night when Dad was called to come to the facility quickly. Grandpa had wandered into the wrong room, and had come out screaming, raising his walker up in the air and slamming it into the ground, taking a few swings at people who tried to calm him down. He began accusing the staff of stealing his things. He was bellowing as loud as he could: “Give them back! Give them back!”
I wasn’t there for it, and I still have a hard time picturing it. Grandpa barely raised his voice above normal volume during the last decade of his life, except to laugh.
When Dad got there, they had gotten him into his room, and he was somewhat appeased. Somewhat. He had a can of Ensure in a tube sock, and almost hit my father in the head with it when he came in. He apologized (Dad was one of the few people he always recognized), and said he had been waiting for “the thief” to come back. “A man who’d steal from me’d just as soon kill me,” he explained. The Ensure-in-a-sock was his weapon to fend off the thief. He told Dad about the men who had come to give him all his things back. “They put it all back, just like it was,” he said. “Didn’t take ’em long.”
Later that night, he told Dad about how much it had scared Florence. He hated that she’d had to go through that. Florence was my grandmother; the one who died when I was six.
He finished by saying that Florence had gone somewhere, and when he went looking for her: “They told me she was dead. One day, they’re gonna come looking for me, and they’re gonna find me dead.” That was a jolt to my father. Grandpa had never, at any point before that, acknowledged his mortality, his advanced age, or the fact that he had probably no more than a handful of years left at best. Aging, and death, was something that happened to other people. But here he was, accepting that death was near.
That wasn’t the last night he mentioned the thief. He even gave the thief a name; Charlie Rosen. It was strange that he would invent a whole person, name included. He didn’t even name the friend who was looking after his kids. In fact, that person ceased to exist; Charlie Rosen had stolen his kids. Had killed Florence. Had come to his home in Colorado and routinely taunted him, beat him, and he even declared that Hester had been sleeping with him. He remembered her now, and was certain that she and Charlie were ganging up on him to make his life a living hell.
In the last six months of his life, he would become increasingly agitated. Dad could not have a single visit wherein Grandpa would not mention Charlie. And then the violence started up again.
In one visit, Grandpa accused Dad of being Charlie, and attacked him. After that, Dad’s visits dropped to once a week, and he didn’t stay long. Once, I went with him. It was the last time I saw my grandfather alive, and I will never forget it.
“Charlie was here again today,” Grandpa told us as soon as we arrived. “He told me I couldn’t leave this room anymore. He’s trapped me here.”
“Dad, this is where you live,” my father tried to explain. “See, here’s a picture of Mother. Why would Charlie let you keep that?”
“He killed your mother, you know,” said Grandpa. “Murdered her in her sleep.”
“Mother had an aneurysm,” said Dad. “You and I decided together to unplug the machine. She died in her sleep, but no one killed her.”
“No, no, it was Charlie.” Grandpa’s voice was not agitated. It was solid, like he knew for a fact what he was saying. “He poisoned her. Made something go wrong in her head. I didn’t know it then, but I realized it later, after he introduced me to Hester. Conned me into marrying her. He’s my personal demon, that Charlie.”
Dad finally had had enough. “There is no Charlie!” he said, nearly shouting. You aren’t supposed to correct people who have dementia; it just confuses them more and makes them upset. But my father forgot this in that moment. “Charlie is someone you made up! Mother died naturally, you met Hester at a coffee shop years after Mother died, and while she was not a nice woman, she was not unfaithful to you! Please, stop talking about Charlie!”
“Dear Lord in Heaven,” said Grandpa. “He got to you. He told you to say these things. You’re part of it too!”
“Uh, Grandpa,” I said. “Why don’t we start a game of checkers?” Usually he loved checkers.
“I don’t want to play any fucking checkers!” screamed Grandpa. I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d hit me. Grandpa had never used profanity in his life. “By-words”, as he called them, were only used by bad men, as far as he was concerned. “Not with you! Not with him! Charlie Rosen’s pet demons! He comes to me every day. He talks to me about Florence. He taunts me. He reads my mind and he takes thoughts away and puts in new ones, worse ones. He tells me about how he rapes my little ones. How he and Hester keep them half-starved and chained in their basement. I can’t stop him! He can go inside my mind! He’s controlling me!”
We left after that, without saying goodbye.
Driving home, I almost wanted to cry. This kind, loving man was ending his days as a raving, violent lunatic. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. What kind of monster was this Charlie?
That thought stopped me cold. For an instant, I had accepted that Charlie was real. Giving my head a shake, I resolved to think about something else. But an image of Charlie had been forming in my mind, beginning a few months back, when Grandpa had first started talking about him. I only now realized that when Grandpa spoke of this demonic man, I was picturing him in my mind, and I could see him as clearly as I could memories of real people.
I thought of the last time I had visited Grandpa in that tiny house in the mountains of Colorado, when I was a teenager, sitting at that little round table while Hester served us some of her inedible glop, and I would see a man standing in the corner of the kitchen, watching us eat. A tall, gangly man with leathery skin stretched over sharp-looking bone and corded muscle. Shaggy grey hair hanging down, obscuring the upper part of his face, his smile stretching like a knife-slash across his jaw.
I thought of the wedding. I was twelve years old. I met Hester for the first time. And standing a ways behind her was that same man. I remember a family gathering at the facility Grandpa was concurrently staying at. Didn’t we pass that man in the hall once?
No, of course not. These were just images my mind had cooked up the more Grandpa talked about this shady character that never existed. The brain can do that; insert false people in your memory just because you decide, subconsciously, to remember them. It doesn’t mean you’re insane; it’s just another way for your brain to play tricks on you. Grandpa had invented a person who he talked about with such conviction, as though Charlie was real. So my mind had conjured up a Charlie Rosen. But there was no Charlie Rosen.
Grandpa died two months later. I remember the funeral like it was yesterday. I still wake up at night in a cold sweat, remembering.
Everything was normal at the start. My parents, my aunts and uncles, my wife and I, and our children, my brother and his wife, and their son, my cousins, their spouses and their children, we all gathered under the same roof for the first time in years. No one was missing. No one was out of town and couldn’t make it. Two of my cousins I hadn’t seen since they were children. It was nice to catch up with them.
The service was nice, as well. The pastor who served the spiritual needs at Grandpa’s facility was the officiator. Grandpa looked calm and peaceful, whole, so unlike what he had been in the last few months of life. I started to feel calm myself; Grandpa was where he belonged now, where the devils of his own fevered, decaying brain couldn’t get to him anymore.
And then we drove to the cemetery. The coffin was lowered. We all sprinkled a handful of dirt on the coffin and began our walk back to the cars. And then the gravedigger came out of the shadows to start shoveling the rest of the dirt. I could barely read the embroidered name tag on his coveralls. It looked like “C. Rose” or “C. Risen”. Or…no. It couldn’t be.
He was tall, gangly, with leathery skin, sharp-looking bones, corded muscle, long grey hair. And that smile. That smile that haunts my nightmares to this day.
I watched as this phantom dumped shovel-full after shovel-full of dirt on my grandfather’s coffin. He was laughing, softly, under his breath, but I have never heard such cruel laughter.
Today, I felt like I had to write all this down. To make sure I remember it all, before things get worse. Because today, my father called me to complain that Charlie was driving past his house and staring in his windows.
|
Nobody lived in flat number six. As far as we were aware, it was empty. The date was October 1992 and my wife and I had moved in almost two months ago. We had bought flat number five, and were quite content to live in it – it was a neat, cosy little apartment with a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and one room which merged the living and dining spaces.
Not to mention, it came cheap and was only a ten minute walk from the train station. Sure, the wallpaper was a little fuddy-duddy, and the kitchen designing was a little seventies, but with a bit of paintwork and a few trips to the furniture store, we would hopefully make it work.
The little outer London neighbourhood was appealing, too. It was the kind of idyllic suburban places where there is enough traffic on the streets to reassure you that you aren’t in the middle of nowhere, and there is little enough traffic to let you get to sleep soundly. The high street had everything, too – a doctor’s surgery, an optician’s, a dentist, and a Tesco supermarket.
At any rate, we were feeling nicely settled in by the end of two months, and had high expectations of our new life in England. You see, we came over from the States, and in spite of the fact that the English speak the same language as Americans, there were aspects of living over there that were entirely alien to us. It was home, but yet it wasn’t quite home.
The weather was also something of an issue – not a disappointment, though, as we had had a great deal of forewarning about the clouds and the rain that fill England’s skies in the autumn and most times of the year.
Perhaps now I should turn the focus back to our new home. Ours was number five out of six flats which belonged to a tidy apartment block with the name ‘Gretel Cottage.’ It was situated midway along a street which held a mix of detached houses, blocks of flats, and even a few guesthouses.
Gretel Cottage had three levels to it: on the ground floor the hallway led to flat 1 on one side and flat 2 on the other, on the first floor flat 3 shared the landing with flat 4, and likewise flat 5 shared the second floor’s landing with, well – with flat 6. There were no other levels.
In our first week there, we had taken time to get to know the residents of the other flats – rather, they had taken their time to come upstairs and greet us. They were a friendly lot, for the most part.
There was a Ms. Miggins in number 4, a Mr. Smith in number 3, a Frenchwoman in number 1, and one other fellow in number 2. Remarkably, not one of them could have been younger than sixty-five. I was twenty-four and my wife twenty-five. Yes, I guess we did feel a little out of key with our neighbours. They never seemed to go out unless for groceries, and that seldom. We went out daily.
More remarkably yet, not one of them didn’t live alone – widowed or divorced. I suppose it’s a lonely time, old age – you get the feeling that nobody wants to talk to you, you feel detached from your loved ones.
Back in our apartment in Ohio, literally all of our neighbours had been young couples or families. There had been a great deal of noise over there: we heard children’s shoes bumping along down hallways and a great deal of both grown-up and children’s laughter. Sometimes we even heard quarrels, and parents scolding their children – and of course that meant very loud crying. But we had been surrounded by life and youth, and the place had seemed brighter and cheerier.
Gretel Cottage was different. It was nice and quiet – so quiet that sometimes it felt lifeless. Perhaps the dreary weather added to it, but the lack of sound gave the building a subtle lonesome feel about it. It was sad, in a way. Actually it was a bit eerie.
The good thing was that we spent less time at home than we did outside. We both worked the standard nine-to-five office jobs in the inner city, and returned home at about seven. As for weekends, we went out pretty much all day, both days, and came back at times ranging from six thirty to beyond midnight. When home, we were either watching the telly, making dinner, or simply unwinding. Sometimes we went to the gym. Sometimes to the cinema. Sometimes we just sat and talked and talked and talked. We had a good time, I’ll admit.
And then there was flat six. There was nothing immediately remarkable about it – it had an oaken door and front porch identical to all the others, with a knocker and a bell and a bristly brown doormat. A brass ‘six’ was fixed into the middle with nails. Nobody had opened that door to greet us on our arrival, and after a week of seeing not a thing go in or out, we assumed that the flat was empty. And what could be wrong with that? Nothing, right? Well – I know it sounds childish coming from a man of my age, but there’s something very slightly unnerving about an empty house. I’m sure you’ve all had a house on your street with no dwellers in it, and I’d bet many of you sometimes got the chills when you walked by it in the evening. Come on – admit it, empty, abandoned houses are creepy.
Well, with flat six, it was like that but… different – worse. All day and all night the empty flat was literally on the doorstep of our home. When we opened our front door to leave in the morning, that ominous door stood in wait for us, looming. When we returned home, we would turn the key in the lock and know that the dreaded door was behind us. Imagination would make us wonder ‘what’s in that flat?’ and ‘what if it opens right now and comes out?’
Alright, fair enough – that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It wasn’t really that bad – just a little weird, that’s all. And I’m ashamed to tell you this, but when I said ‘we’ and ‘us,’ I ought to have said ‘I and ‘me’ because to be honest with you, my wife didn’t feel in the least put off by flat six.
Yes – yes, I know. It’s shameful, I’m a jumpy, nervous sissy – I admit it. We had different teenage years: she went out and saw all the horror films she could, while I saw few enough as to get the creepy side of my mind working but not enough to dampen my imagination. We still went out for a scary one now and again, but I was never the one who suggested it.
Now that I’ve given you more than enough background knowledge on myself and my life at the time, and now that you have an idea of how brave a man I am, I should probably hurry up and tell you about some of the things that happened in late October 1992.
Nothing truly weird took place until the postman came one Monday. I remember I was sitting at the table with a plate of half-finished scrambled eggs, a cup of tea, and watching the BBC News. There was a scuffling of paper being shoved through the letterbox, and the damp clank as it fell shut. My wife was back in a moment with two letters. One of them, she explained, was an advert from some insurance company, and the other was a bill. She left them on the table and we returned to breakfast and the news. So far, so good.
Then a few minutes later we tidied up, switched off the television, and stepped outside. Something struck me as off as soon as we locked the door behind us. It hit me in a second – there was an envelope lying on the doormat of flat number six. My eyes searched the door and I noticed that there was no letterbox – or, rather, that the letterbox had been boarded up. I didn’t need to point out the envelope to my wife – you couldn’t miss it; a neat white rectangle, yellowish at the edges, sitting unobtrusively on the doormat. She gave a puzzled frown, looked curiously at it for a while, and then made a start as if to go and look at it. I caught her by the arm immediately, for some reason.
“What’s up?” she asked, even more surprised by my reaction than by the envelope.
“Don’t –“I began, clearing my throat and not letting go of her nor letting the envelope out of my sight, “Leave it.”
She looked at me with a kind of pitying smile, shook her head, and told me that I was being silly – but she listened, thankfully, she listened. I sighed and thanked her; I just didn’t want her to go anywhere near the letter, it didn’t feel right.
I got a strange call that day at work, during my lunch hour. I had just finished my smoked salmon sandwich, and was about to tuck in to a cookie when my phone began to ring. It wasn’t unexpected or anything, because I get calls all the time when I’m at work from colleagues. It wasn’t a colleague – I could tell as much.
“Hello? Who’s this?” I asked quite clearly, but all I could hear was the crackly hiss that you hear in the background of a call.
“Hello? Hello?” I asked.
Then I can swear I heard laughter – a kind of gleeful snigger, as if it might be some teenager prank-calling me. But I was not sure if it was a teenager; it sounded old – kind of weird. I was a little weirded out, so I hung up and checked the number. Strangely enough, the number was very similar to the number of our flat, but two digits were different. “I guess it’s a neighbour or something – maybe the estate agent.” I told myself that, but I wasn’t so sure. The estate agent wouldn’t have laughed at me like that.
Then something else weird happened. I got home before my wife, and was just turning the key in the lock when something made me look back. The envelope on the doorstep of number 6 – it was gone. I stared hard at the door for a while, and it seemed to stare back at me. My imagination threatened to scare me, so I opened the door to my own flat as quick as I could, and shut it behind me. I remember I felt a little anxious for my wife to get back soon. Something about the letter being gone had me creeped out – somebody was living in flat number six, and they had come out to pick up the envelope while I had been away.
I turned on the TV and made myself a quick cup of tea, sitting, brooding, and not really watching the screen as I waited for my wife’s return. When she came back, I told her to wait in the flat while I checked something outside. It was pretty abrupt and unexplained, but she waited while I ran down the stairs and out of the building to check the windows of flat number six. I saw that the curtains were drawn, and the panes had been in need of a clean for ages. When I got back to the flat, my wife had also noticed the absence of the letter. She was standing just at our doorway, and pointing at the doormat of flat six. “Have you seen-?” “Yeah I know,” I butted in, “there’s somebody there – I’m pretty sure there is.”
She strode up to the door of number six, and was about to ring the bell when I cried out to her, “Don’t do it!” “What’s up with you, Matt?” she looked at me in a slightly concerned way, and then raised a hand to ring the doorbell. “Please don’t – I don’t like it!” I protested like a child. “I seriously don’t get you sometimes,” she shook her head, “this is stupid – I’m going to ring it.” And she did. We listened, her calm and ready to greet whomever it was, and me tense and not sure if I wanted to meet them. As I had half-expected, nobody answered or even seemed to move inside the house. If the whole envelope incident hadn’t taken place, then we would have been convinced it was empty.
“What the hell? There’s nobody there – I suppose they’re out.” My wife assumed that in her realistic, matter-of-fact way. “Out?” I protested, “They’ve never been out as long as we’ve been here. There’s somebody there, alright, but it’s some kind of antisocial weirdo. Either that, or they just died a while after they picked up the letter!” I don’t know why I said the last bit, but it got me even more freaked out.
“Maybe, Matt,” my wife began, as we made our way back into our own flat, and as she turned the living-room light on, “maybe there’s nobody there, and the caretaker simply picked up the letter as it hadn’t been taken.” I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced, but that was fine with me – I liked that explanation a lot more, so we stuck with it and ate dinner. “Oh, and by the way,” my wife asked me later, as we got into bed, “did you get a call today at about two o’clock?” “Yeah – a weird one, with some guy laughing?” “Yeah… I got something like that too.” “You did? Who do you reckon it was – not many people here have our numbers, you know.” “I’m not sure. I expect it was the estate agent’s kids playing pranks – maybe got our numbers off their dad’s phone.” I agreed, but I didn’t stop thinking about that until I fell asleep. I dreamt about flat six, that night. I dreamt that I opened the door to it, and could only see pitch darkness inside. I dreamt that I listened in, and heard that same sniggering laughter coming from somewhere in the darkness.
On Tuesday night, I came home to find that I had forgotten my keys, and that my phone had run out of battery. You can imagine how frustrated I was when I found that my wife was not home, and that I had to wait on the landing for her to get back and open the door. You can imagine how anxious I grew when she wasn’t back an hour after the usual time, and I couldn’t get through to her. And I bet you can imagine how uneasy I got as I sat on the landing, within three yards of the door to flat number six. You know when you’re alone and vulnerable to getting spooked, you seem to think of the last things you would like to spring to mind when you’re feeling tense. Last night’s dream, for instance, kept playing upon my mind and I thought that at any moment the door to number six would burst open and something would come out and see me, and I would see it. Clearly, my wife was trying to get through to me, as I could hear the telephone ringing inside our apartment – she expected that I had got home. I was glad that she was alright, and able to ring me, but it made me nervous to think that she was probably getting anxious about me as well.
Then I looked at flat number six’s door again, and I could swear I heard a ‘click’, a tiny noise, come from somewhere inside that apartment. I frowned and listened closely, but didn’t hear anything else.
After that, I went outside to escape that dreaded landing for a while – she still wasn’t back and it was nine-thirty. Heavy rain started, and forced me back inside and up to the landing. I was almost considering asking a neighbour for a phone to call her (yes, at that time of night), but to my great relief, at a little after ten o’clock, she came up the steps to the landing and was startled to see me slumped on the floor outside the door. “Thank goodness, I was getting worried about you, where have you been?” I got up and spoke rapidly, catching my breath. “My colleague offered to drive me home – but the traffic was horrendous out there. I tried to call your mobile, but it’s out of battery, isn’t it? What about you? Why aren’t you inside?” I explained apologetically that I must have forgotten the keys inside the apartment in the morning.
She sighed, unlocked the door, and we stepped in. While I searched for my keys (they were strangely not on the key hook), my wife turned on the lights and I heard her gasp a little at the answer machine. “Look how many missed calls there are on the telephone!” “Yeah – you must have been calling me non-stop,” I told her, “I only called you twice on the home phone – there are like six missed calls, and – hang on. Come over here.” “What is it?” I hurried to see what had put the worried expression on her face. I looked at the numbers for the missed calls: two of them were my wife’s mobile phone number, and the other four numbers were the same number. “It’s the same number as those weird prank-calls we got yesterday,” she seemed now more irritated than nervous, “goddamn kids!” She deleted the missed calls, and we went to bed without dinner (it was a bit late, and we were both exhausted). I never found those missing keys.
Wednesday was worse. I got more calls from that number, but the hoarse, unfriendly voice at the other end was saying things now. I was shocked – intimidated, even – by what I was hearing. The voice was saying the vilest things, talking about rape, murder, and using pretty much every swearword in the book. The thing that really got me scared about the calls were how much the person at the other end seemed to know about us – he knew my name, my wife’s name, and that we were from the states, as he referred to us as ‘filthy yanks’ more than once. I made up my mind to report this fellow at some point, and as I was on my bus home, I blocked his number. There was peace for a while. And then – just when I thought I wouldn’t hear any more from that nasty, irritating sonofabitch, my phone rang again. I was amazed to see what I thought was the same goddamn number calling, but then I realised that it was not that number. It was OUR number. Somebody was calling me from my own home. I picked up and asked frantically if it was my wife at the other end. That ominous crackling sound followed, then that same mocking, sniggering laughter. It took me a few seconds to register how serious the situation was, and when I did, I almost vomited with anxiety.
I jumped off the bus, sprinted home, burst up the flights of stairs, and came up to the landing where I collapsed with sheer, utter terror. The door to number five was open.
“Oh my God!” I cried aloud, and staggered to my feet, rushing into my flat to catch the intruder. There was nobody there when I looked, so I rushed out of number five, and broke the door to number six open with by force. Hell – I would have gone in there and showed that thing what happens to people who mess with me, but when I saw that bare, empty, dimly-lit hallway beyond the door, I could not force myself to enter that place. I was a coward, and I collapsed and I fainted.
The police searched flat number six very thoroughly when they arrived, and also looked around our flat, as me and my wife stood on the landing in between and just stared into space. We felt violated – as if somebody was deliberately trying to make us feel unwelcome in our own home. She even suggested moving out, which was drastic – I don’t blame her; she had received a few of those calls lately as well. We were reassured, if not a little frustrated when the police claimed that they had found nobody in either of the flats. Interestingly, flat six had been empty after all – we ourselves even took a look around in there and found absolutely no traces of anybody living there. There wasn’t a phone in flat six either, so whoever was calling us couldn’t have been living there. Further investigation showed that the envelope had actually been meant for Ms. Miggins in number 4 downstairs, and she had checked upstairs, because her son who had sent the letter had in the past mistakenly addressed his letters to number six. My fears about flat six had obviously been sheer paranoia – there was nothing to worry about, so it seemed, in flat six.
As for my keys, they were found lying on the landing outside the flat – the intruder had obviously dropped them there before he had made his getaway.
We gave the police the number that had been troubling us, and they told us sincerely that they’d look into it and arrest the perpetrator for breaking and entering, as well as for going against the 1988 Malicious Communications Act.
More or less as reassured as a person can be after having their home broken into, we both thanked the ruddy faced inspector and the four constables before bidding them Good Night and closing our front door. We sighed and fell wearily onto the sofa and watched the TV for a while – it was some kind of sitcom, ‘Fawlty Towers’ I think it was called. We fixed ourselves a small dinner and watched in front of the telly, laughing at the bits we found funny, and laughing anyway at the bits that weren’t too funny. At about 11:30 we turned off the TV, washed the dishes, and turned in for the night.
Settled into bed, I was about to turn off the bedside lamp when my wife told me to wait a little. She had her mobile phone in her hand and a kind of smirk on her face.
“Why don’t we give the prank-caller a little taste of his own medicine?” she suggested, “He won’t like being called up at this time of night!”
“Sure do it,” I said, liking the idea as soon as I heard it, “what are you going to say to him?”
“I don’t know – suppose I’ll just make creepy noises or something. Anything to get back at him.”
“Sure, go ahead!”
She dialled the number and we were chuckling to ourselves gleefully as she called. We were quiet for a while, grinning stupidly while the phone connected. Then a noise from our living-room wiped the smiles right off our faces.
A phone had started to ring in the living-room.
|
Have you ever visited Edinburgh? Beautiful city, no matter what time of year you go. The castle that sits at the centre of the city is awe-inspiring, looking down on the surrounding area from the Mount. The peaks and valleys of the land have resulted in a city that flows with the landscape. Streets that surround can be steep, with the numerous sprawling alleyways even steeper. It is here that we find Fleshmarket Close.
It could be mistaken for any other darkened causeway in the city. It sits among the shops and tourist traps, relatively non-threatening, and can be used as a short cut to get down to the station if you are in a hurry. The name has been justified, through some who point out that fleshmarkets were a local term for butchers, and through others who suggest it a hangout of women of the first vocation. These are incorrect. There is a market on the close, but flesh is not the product. It is the currency.
Market hours are dusk until dawn, and the entrance fee is one mouthful of your own blood. Prepare a glass, and progress down the alley. As you get halfway down, swig from the glass and spit it against the wall. The blood will bubble and spread across the wall, coagulating into a hardened scab. This will then start to flake and scatter. A rather anti-climatic door will be revealed beneath. Stepping through is disorientating as logic will tell you you are stepping into a building. The space you are stepping into has no walls, with darkness shrouding the edges. It is at the penumbra that a number of stalls are set up, run by individuals who look like market traders from across the globe, from Arabian merchants to Cockney grocers to New York street con-men. All of their clothes are splatted with blood and offal
These figures will entice you to come speak with them and will gesture to numerous signs around their stalls regarding the sales they are currently having. Upon approaching one of the stalls they will start to pressure you to make a deal with them. You are certainly welcome to do so, and the products that are available are certainly worth consideration.
Starting at the cheap end of the spectrum, you may wish to offer one breath. A lungful will net you knowledge of the weather for the next day. In itself a rather pointless purchase in this age of smartphones and the Met office, but centuries ago invaluable. Taking this offer will result in the seller reaching out with his hand flattened, then quickly grasping it into a fist. The air will literally be stolen from your lungs, and cause a few moments of gasping as you catch your breath.
Are you attached to your fingers? How attached? I mean, do you reckon you could do without your little finger? This sale will provide you instant forgiveness from any one person you desire for any wrongs you may have encroached against them. Agreeing to this one will cause the trader to grin and shout “One Yubitsume Special, coming right up”. They will lunge forward and grab your wrist, pinning it to the table. Don’t resist, because no-one likes a tough sell. A flash of steel and you will be minus one digit. Just remember you can only pay twice.
Now make no mistake, it will hurt. There will probably be a lot of blood, and if you don’t take care of the wound, it may even get infected. As the price goes up you may want to consider taking precautions regarding what you trade. Tourniquets and sutures would certainly not go amiss.
Now some of the trades will seem familiar and may hark back to stories and legends that have existed for millenia. This is is the influence the market has had on our culture, leaching in over the centuries. A pound of flesh will make it impossible for the next person you make a trade with to renege on the deal. Especially useful if you don’t trust the company you keep. It has no use within the Market as all of the traders here are trustworthy, and will honour a purchase to the letter and the spirit. Best to leave this transaction until last.
How about one of your eyes? Depth perception is over-rated any way. Offering up one of them will allow you to converse with our avian friends. You will be able to call down the birds from the trees, and they will be able to answer any questions you may have. It is advisable that you avoid ravens. They have their own agenda, and it is not in your best interests. The salesman will grab you around the throat and slowly prise his fingers into the socket. A snap of the wrist and your visual organ will rest in their palm. Another snap, and it will disappear.
It is at this point where you may want to consider stronger measures to ensure your survival of payment. In this strange little world or ours, the market is hardly the strangest. Artifacts and incantations exist that can allow the body to continue to function long past the point at which mortal coils would be shuffled from. One or two can be picked up here, but few are willing to live without their sexual organs. It seems eternity is that little bit colder without the ability to get your rocks off. I’m not going to go into the details as to how they are taken, suffice to say that it is unpleasant and messy.
At this point the prices become a little more …..Vital. What would you take for your stomach? In this deal it would merit you the ability to understand the desires of anyone you talk to. Whilst you converse with them, your mind will be filled with the images of that which they covet the most. This would provide a significant advantage to any budding salesman, and the deal has been taken up by several of the stallholders themselves.
Some may argue that such a gift would be more poetically suited to the heart. That vascular muscle, however, is apart of an altogether different deal. By bartering with your heart, you can guarantee the happiness of any given individual for the rest of their life, however long that may be. The removal of these types of organs can be significantly painful, but the dealers will allow you a moment to prepare yourself before they will produce a short, keen blade. One practised swipe later, and they will be digging into your tissues. They have unerring accuracy and a level of cleanliness that rivals any surgeon.
Now it is acknowledged in some places that once the deal has been sealed, a buyer may have second thoughts and may want to back out. This is not one of those places. Most of the contract is left unspoken, but you are expected to have done your research. The buyout clauses are a killer.
Whilst most of the body can be put on the table, there are limitations.The fact of the matter is that the brain is the seat of sentience, and cannot be fully placed in. I say fully, there was one individual who offered to lobotomise the part of the brain that holds memory as a part of the deal. The problem is he cannot remember what it is he received in return. I hear he suffered night terrors for the rest of his days.
Now at this point I offer a warning. Up until now I have detailed the price list for your own body parts. What ever you do, do not attempt to purchase anything in the market with organs of another. Every figure in the market will stop and stare at you, and the one you attempted to defraud will scream “THAT IS NOT YOURS TO TRADE!”. What ever it is you have tried to barter will, that body part will be taken from you as punishment. A very literal eye for an eye.
Despite whatever theological perspectives you may hold, offering your own soul will elicit the same result. There have been many theories postulated for this response, but the honest answer is we just don’t know.
The market has been trading in blood and bone for as long as civilization has existed, though the entrance has moved from city to city. Many have visited and shook hands with the butchers, though not quite as many got those hands back. A smart man would wonder how it is that these individuals are capable of honouring the deals they broker. A smarter man would ask himself why his body parts are of such high value in this economy. Just understand that it is supply and demand.
And as long as there are fools willing to supply, you shouldn’t need to concern yourself with who is doing the demanding.
Credit To – The Silicon Lemming
|
I’m posting this tonight in the hope that it will clear up the misunderstandings surrounding the disappearance of Debra Lindsay Caine, at the risk of my personal ridicule. Sticks and stones and all that. None of it will matter after tonight. Consider this my one pathetic attempt at an apology, if nothing else. It’s sort of my fault what happened.
Even in her heyday, internet blogger Sugarcaine was just another web comedian. She was funnier than average and certainly skilled with a pen, but otherwise no more remarkable than the rest. For years the circumstances surrounding her disappearance were only occasionally mentioned, and only in the most obscure threads on a couple of forums. She would’ve been forgotten forever if those city workers hadn’t found the tape recorder last Monday.
Sugarcaine’s true identity was a boyishly cute redhead named Debra Lindsay Caine. Her sister Payton described her as, “…a bag fulla fists, nails, and opinions just looking for an excuse to burst open on somebody, nourished by beer and spite since our Papa died in ’91.”
Debra unintentionally began her career as a humor blogger when she let her friends talk her into setting up a MySpace account. She thought blogs were self-absorbed, whiny, and without substance, and thus used her MySpace page to parody the asinine ramblings of her peers. After a while she graduated to belittling popular culture and occasionally reviewing books, comics, movies, and whatever hate mail she received from her growing reader base.
She quickly realized people enjoyed her writing, and by mid-2005 she’d ditched her MySpace account and set up her own humor site, Sugarcaine Junction. Despite Debra’s more-than-decent writing the site was mediocre at best. Most ‘net junkies likely never knew she existed, much less that she’d vanished and possibly been murdered.
Until the city workers found the tape.
Sugarcaine Junction never failed to celebrate whatever holidays and festivals came its way, and its seasonal articles were usually the most eagerly anticipated. Debra composed surprisingly witty drinking songs for her Oktoberfest review, and a touching poem for Father’s Day that she refused to talk about afterward. For her 2005 Christmas rant she wrote a series of parodied Bible passages that broke her weekly hate mail record overnight.
Back then I was known as DeadAtFifty and counted among Sugarcaine’s regular readers. During the first week of October 2006 I suggested that she spend the night in the Daley family’s haunted house and write about the experience for her Halloween article. She announced to her readers that I was a child and a moron. I added a one-thousand-dollar prize to the mix. She eagerly accepted.
On the last week of October Debra announced she would make the hour-long drive to the Daley house for a “spooky sleepover”. She embarked on the evening of the 29th, encouraging her readers to “Stay tuned for the details of my thousand-dollar journey through the haunted Daley house!” I had every intention of awarding her the money, and I never would’ve mentioned the Daleys if I had known what would happen.
Debra always researched her subject before or after her “journeys” (as she called any experience she blogged about — “Stay tuned for the dirt on my journey through the latest Scorsese flick”), if only to make her praise/mockery of it all the more complete. In her apartment the police found stacks of newspaper clippings about the Daley family as far back as 1960: praise for Kevin Daley and the lives he saved as a firefighter; his marriage to sweetheart Naomi Welch in 1970; the birth of their son, Jeff in 1971; Jeff’s growing fame as an abstract artist at only twelve months of age; the rumors that Naomi deliberately dropped her son down the stairs and caused his borderline autism; and of course, the fruitless search for the bodies when the family vanished in 1982.
The bulk of the articles were testimonies from neighbors and friends about the last they saw of the Daleys. Jeff’s performance at school dwindled, but the work he produced in art class was as detailed as ever, depicting macabre realms of twisted abstract shapes and looming shadows — imagery he hadn’t produced since he was a toddler. He claimed that the “whisperers” made him draw these things. His only explanation for a “whisperer” was, “they follow me around my house — I can’t see them, but I know they’re there.”
I don’t think Jeff Daley was dreaming: I think his subconscious was a doorway to other worlds, and maybe his mother knew it and tried to kill him. If that’s the case, I wish she’d been just a little more persistent.
Kevin’s coworkers described him as “nervous, constantly on edge, like he was being followed by a lunatic and couldn’t shake him.” Naomi, normally known to greet her tavern’s patrons with bright smiles and warm hellos, seemed to have crawled into a shell and refused to come out. She took frequent bathroom breaks, only to curl up inside a toilet cubicle and cry with her hands over her ears. And then one day Jeff never showed at school, and his parents never showed at work. They’d vanished into thin air; and according to their neighbors, they didn’t go quietly.
Other articles described strange but seemingly unremarkable sights and sounds on the abandoned Daley property from 1989 to 2004. A few of those articles were so strange they were considered hoaxes or gross exaggerations.
A neighbor’s dog ran barking under the Daley porch. When it returned it spent the next two days whining and cowering and howling miserably for no reason. One morning the owners woke up and found the dog missing. It was never seen again.
A young couple claimed a silhouette in the shadows of the front yard whispered something at them as they walked past the house late one night. They couldn’t tell if there was someone there or not, and when they continued their walk the shape stalked them for several blocks before vanishing altogether.
Several mailmen gave identical accounts of hearing movement and gibbering voices inside the house while on their routes. One assumed it was the local pranksters and alerted the police. They never found anyone inside.
Earlier this week the city workers were preparing the house for demolition when they discovered the recorder under an old desk. Remembering the house’s history of missing persons, they turned it over to the police. The officer who received it — a friend of mine whose name will go unmentioned — had at one time been a Sugarcaine fan. I spent an entire evening listening to the tape at his place. To help spread this story around the web I’ve prepared a transcript of the recording for my own site, which you can read below.
*
[Tape begins with fifteen seconds of silence. Broken by husky female voice.]
“Don’t think I’ve ever been to this side of town before. Had to stop at a diner and get directions ‘cos I managed to get my stupid ass lost. Supposed to be an hour long drive, but it’ll be close to midnight by the time I find this dump.
“Oh, I told the lady I was coming to visit an old friend who lived in the Daleys’ neighborhood and she was happy to help me find my way. Imagine I won’t be well received if I go around telling everybody I’m spending my weekend breaking into other people’s houses. Even if the Daleys are too dead to give a shit.”
[Silence for eight seconds. A sigh.]
“I feel silly going through with this. On the plus side I’ll get to pay my rent for the next month.”
*
“It is now…eleven p.m. on the dot. Took me forever to find the stupid house. Kept turning down the wrong streets. Hard to miss it once you find the right one. The front yard is a jungle of wiry vines and three-foot grass infested with species of insects never before seen by man. You can’t even see the front door from the street this late at night ‘cos the shadows gulped it up.
“Parked two blocks away and walked. Gonna find a window to climb through. Hopefully won’t need to pick the back door ‘cos that’ll take forever. More as it develops.”
*
[Hollow footsteps on old wooden boards. A series of distorted thuds as the recorder rattles violently. Silence for sixteen seconds.]
“Tripped. Ow…It’s pitch black in here. Where’s my damn—?”
[Quiet shuffling for the next minute, and more footsteps. Debra releases an exhausted breath. Tape rattles slightly.]
“Okay, I’m in. My camp is set up in the…I guess this was the office. There’s a dusty old desk next to the window I just climbed through and a bookcase to the right of the door. Both are bare. I’m about to take my tour of the house. Camera ready, although this place isn’t much to look at. Keeping the flash off, so the pics might need to be tweaked when I get back. I ought to keep the flashlight off and just let my eyes adjust, but…yeah, I’m not gonna do that.”
[Two minutes of silence apart from footsteps and the occasional electronic shutter sound of a digital camera taking pictures. A cough.]
“The house is a really roomy two-story deal. Oh, there you are, you elusive stairs…The carpet’s been all torn up except for one corner of the living room, so the floor’s all crusty wooden boards.”
[Footsteps. Loud, human-like shriek of pain from the rusty hinges of a door. Debra lets out a startled gasp, curses.]
“…a moldy bathroom untouched since nineteen eighty-two…”
[Several coughs as the camera clicks. More squeaking hinges, significantly quieter. More camera clicks.]
“Ugh, goddamn wolf spiders everywhere!”
[Seven minutes pass with footsteps, camera clicks, and Debra’s coughs the only sounds; halfway through, hollow thunks of boots on wooden stairs, and footsteps change to loud, unhealthy creaks. Now and then Debra makes various comments on the house’s layout.]
“[unintelligible muttering] —dust in this place is murdering me. Second floor is rickety as hell. Here’s hoping the building doesn’t collapse on me in the night.”
[Hollow thunks again as she returns to the first floor. At the ten minute mark, dead silence for approximately twenty seconds. Debra exhales.]
“I think that’s it for the tour. I’m off to sleep with the spiders.”
[Silence for two minutes. Debra whispers to herself inquisitively. Wooden clunking.]
“Found a loose board in the office floor. ‘Previously-pried-up’ loose. I’ll have to check that out tomorrow morning.”
[Clomp of steel-toe boots carelessly tossed onto wooden floor. Rustling of thick cloth. Coughing.]
“Ah, god, I can’t breathe in this place…Awright, time for bed. We’ll finish up our notes tomorrow. G’night!”
*
[Recorder rattles. Debra begins to say something, only gets the first syllable before going quiet again. Silence for another minute.]
“There’s something in here…”
[Pit-pat of bare feet. Silence. Door creaks shut. Rustling.]
“Fuckin’ rats. I knew it. I hear ‘em scuttling in the living room walls. I shoulda brought a cot.”
*
[Exasperated sigh.]
“Okay, well, I won’t be sleeping tonight after all, so I’m pryin’ that board up to pass the time. More as it develops.”
[Recorder rattles as it is set aside. For the next five minutes there’s nothing but fingernails and something metallic — possibly a Swiss army knife — scratching into wood, and occasionally a clunk. A gasp, and the clatter of a small object. Debra’s bare footsteps move out of range. Another minute of silence. Debra says something too far away to make out and seems to wait for a response. She repeats herself, louder.]
“Who’s there?”
[Nothing for a minute and a half. Creak of the office door closing. Pit-pat of bare feet returns. The tape rattles.]
“I’m losing my mind. I could swear I heard—”
[Silence. The scratching and clunking returns, and moments later there’s a wooden clatter like a board being tossed aside.]
“Gotcha!”
[Paper rustling.]
“Um…”
[More paper rustling. Silence.]
“Um, there’s…drawings. Wadded drawings stuffed into this little space beneath the loose board. I think they’re Jeff Daley’s pictures. When he was five he used to draw his bad dreams to…No, these can’t be real. The detail is—?”
[Crumpling: wadded paper being unraveled and then flattened out. Debra speaks quietly, almost inaudibly, as if reading something aloud to herself.]
“Don’t listen. It’s not Daddy. It’s not Daddy. It’s not…”
[Silence. A deep, trembling breath.]
“Okay, um…Okay, this isn’t funny anymore.”
[A distant sound, possibly out in the hall, and a shrill gasp. Two minutes and forty seconds of silence.]
“[incoherent mumbling] –not funny.”
[The sound again, within five feet of the recorder: a human voice speaking almost above a whisper. It says a single word difficult to make out, but sounds like Debra’s name. The recorder rattles violently as it hits the floor.]
“It’s not funny! Stop it!”
[Silence. Pit-pat of bare feet leaving the room. Three minutes pass with no sounds except a periodic thump deep within the house and Debra shouting angrily. The footsteps return. Heavy slam of the office door. Quiet sobbing within three feet of the recorder, and nothing else for another minute.]
“[speaking too quietly to register on the recorder: her throat has tightened up]”
[The sobbing stops abruptly as Debra holds her breath. The voice speaks again as quietly as before, from inside the room. Feet scrambling across the floor. The office window shrieks as it is torn open. The rest of the tape is silence.]
*
Debra posted an update the same night. There was no trace of her usual snide narrative, and she exchanged punchy one-liners for razor-edged curses. She wanted someone (me) to apologize to her for what she believed to be a perverse Halloween prank. She’d managed to keep one of the drawings she found under the loose floorboard and included a hi-res scan in her rant, condemning it as an obvious attempt by a barely capable adult artist to reproduce the work of an eight-year-old retard.
Drawn entirely in black crayon, it resembled a caricature of someone’s living room as done by Salvador Dali. At the center stood a dark shape with a grayish head misshapen like in a funhouse mirror, making it impossible to tell if it was supposed to be human or not. The thing stared right at the viewer over its shoulder with two empty black holes for eyes. Three more of the things stood beyond it, also staring at the viewer — it was as if the act of drawing the scene had grabbed their attention. Although their faces were amorphous mushes of white and gray, the three in the background seemed to be smiling. And it really did suggest a level of artistic finesse beyond that of an eight-year-old boy, but the style matched Jeff Daley’s other drawings.
Debra and I both got our share of hate mail after that blog. Half her readers thought I was an asshole for setting her up for such a nasty trick. The other half thought Debra was pulling a hammed-up Halloween prank of her own, and when her next two updates erratically described how the sounds in the Daley house had followed her home, everyone became all the more certain of this. They still believed it was a joke when she failed to make a single update for two weeks afterward.
On November 4th in the middle of the afternoon, Debra had called her sister, Payton. She was blubbering so much Payton couldn’t understand a word she said at first.
“She let loose with the heartbroke drunk routine. Said she was sorry for missing my wedding, sorry for always being a spiteful bitch when we were growing up, sorry for kicking our dog when she was twelve — apologizing for all kinds of silly stuff like a desperate sinner at confession.
“She stopped to catch her breath, and I heard somebody else in the room with her talking quiet like they didn’t want me to hear. I asked if she wanted me to come over. She started sobbing again and said, ‘I hear Daddy, but it isn’t Daddy.’ Then she hung up and I called the police. They didn’t find anybody when they got there. I was talking to her only minutes before.”
Most folks still think Debra’s abduction by the whispering stalkers of Jeff Daley’s nightmares is a hoax orchestrated by Debra or by some other sick individual. The tape has been “proven” a fake by one ignorant skeptic after another, and it won’t be long before Sugarcaine Junction fades into obscurity once again. I hope to prevent this, not because I feel pity for Debra Lindsay Caine, though I really do pity her; but because I hope to prevent others from vanishing like she vanished, and like the city workers who found the tape vanished, and like my friend vanished. They mark their territory — like they marked the Daley house and the tape — and they can smell anything that comes in contact with it. Once they smell you, they hunt you like bloodhounds until they’ve marked you, too.
They call to you softly like they’re afraid to talk too loud — sometimes two rooms away, sometimes right next to you. They imitate people you’re closest to. Maybe they think it’s funny. But you can’t listen to them. You have to shut them out, otherwise you’ll be too scared to open your eyes or move a muscle. You won’t have the chance to kill yourself before they drag you to whatever unholy hell Debra Lindsay Caine was taken to.
I have to go take a bath with my toaster now. Mother has been calling to me for the last hour, even though she’s been dead for five years.
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Call me outdated, but Counter-Strike is still at the top of my all-time favorite video games.
Late night at the dorm alone, playing up until 3 am, with full volume on. Yeah, that’s my style. Today was supposed to be no different.
I turned on my MacBook Pro. The glossy screen made a clear reflection of my long, narrow room. The dorm’s rooms were all made just for one person, so I was always alone. My laptop was propped up on my desk at the end of the room, opposite the door.
It was almost too routine. After a long, boring day of classes, I’d get back to my room at 10 pm. I’d go Facebook, Twitter, 9gag, up until I’ve surfed every nook and cranny of the net. Then, bored as fuck, I’d open Counter-Strike, and go firing deep into the night.
But tonight, while surfing, a friend suddenly messaged me on Facebook.
“Hey dude! Check out this sick CS Map! (Download link)”, Kevin messaged me.
As he was a CS addict just like me, I opened the link. The map was called ‘de_darkness’. With my 10 mb per second internet, the map downloaded in a flash. Excited, I immediately opened Counter-Strike to try out the map. I set it up to play a good old fashioned, 5 v 5 affair.
The map, living up to its name, had many dark areas. Set late at night, only the pale blue shade of the night sky and a few lamp posts gave light to the area. Stone walls lined each corridor, filled with long, green vines. Dark hallways and tunnels snaked at the center of the map.
Around it was an elevated area, perfect for sniping unwary players on the bottom, through ceiling holes in the tunnels. Bridges also kept the map interesting, hovering across the width and length of the vicinity.
‘Darkness’ seemed to have nothing special to it. There were two ways of getting kills in the map. The first one, which I like to call the ‘pussy’ way, was camping and sniping in the elevated areas of the map. It was almost too easy, as the darkness gave you instant camouflage. You could rack up tons of kills immediately.
The next one was the more interesting part of the map, which was running the maze of tunnels at the center. It was perfect for sneak attacks or point-blank kills.
As usual, I racked up more than half of my team’s kills in the first few rounds, even while switching between the 2 ways to play.
It was after the first 5 rounds that I started to notice things.
One time, while roaming the map, I started to hear creaking noises; they were nothing like the usual sound effects I hear in CS maps. Some players’ footsteps also started to sound different. Instead of the usual thud of military grade shoes, a metallic clink and clank would be heard, even when no player seemed to be in the immediate area.
And then, I started to notice an extra character in the map.
While staying in the elevated area, a shady figure appeared in the outskirt forests of the map. It was impossible to get up there. Curiously, I zoomed in my crosshairs on the human-like figure, but he disappeared.
Next round, the figure appeared again. This time, he was only a few paces away, so I was able to get a better look at him. He wore a brown overcoat, extending to the knees, fully buttoned up. A matching pair of brown slacks completed his outdated fashion statement.
The only thing more puzzling than the man’s clothing was the face that rose above it. He had dark, round eyes, with an empty stare straight at me. A sinister smile accompanied it, but the man didn’t seem to have any lips. A grey, faded complexion covered the rest of the mystery man’s face.
Just like any other opposing character I see, I fired at the guy. Bullet after bullet, aimed straight at his thin, 6 foot body, all seemed to have no effect. Before I could try other ways to kill him, another player killed me.
Wow. This map has something special after all. An extra character, almost impossible to kill? A sense of excitement hit me like never before, like it was just the first time I got my hands on this game.
I spent pretty much all of the remaining rounds trying to find and kill this character, even if it meant lowering my kill-death ratio. I noticed that the man only appeared in dark spaces, randomly across the map.
Many times, the man would toy with me. When I try to run at him, he would stand still, but no distance would be made up. Other times, while firing at him, the man would contort and shake rapidly, like thousands of bullets showered his body all at once. But one thing remained: I was never able to kill him.
It must have been an hour or two already, as I was starting to get sleepy. Trying to kill the mystery man was now a boring, futile effort. It was great fun while it lasted, so I closed the application. Shutting down in 3…2…1…and my Macbook’s screen shut off.
But something remained on the screen. The same shady figure wearing brown was still on the right hand corner. Is my Macbook glitching now?
Then the figure came closer, and closer, and closer. Now, his grey face, empty eye sockets, and sinister smile occupied most of my screen. Then I realized.
I was staring at my laptop’s reflection.
Credit To – Brian Tan
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Poem of fractured mind
Doctors and nurses digging through my head
Stitching through psyche like needle through thread
Picking through all of the places in mind
Searching for something that they’ll never find
Looking for feelings and workings and cures
They think they can help me…
But they can’t, I am sure.
They think ink blots and head shocks will break down my chains
But these only bring physical, additional pain
I can’t understand what they hope to achieve
My confessions and stories that they won’t believe
And if they won’t listen then what shall I do?
The voices in my head provide no help to.
And most of the time, they place me in my cell
My own personal, padded and very small hell
Again, this is something they think will help me
But I don’t want to be here, I want to be free
Surely they know this, surely they care?
But it seems their concern vanished into thin air
It seems that they want to wash their hands of me
For what value to anyone is insanity?
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An orange sun lowered steadily into a pit of evergreen teeth, valiantly spilling it’s last light upon the Night Springs Cemetery while it still could. If he had noticed, middle-aged Simon Willis might find himself grateful for this light so he might continue overlooking his mother’s grave in peace. After all, the cemetery was dangerous after dark. Not for any mysterious reason, mind you. The forest outlining Night Springs Cemetery was one of the only places wolf sightings have been reported in all of Pennsylvania.
“You know about the wolves, don’t you?”
Simon jumped at the voice and twisted his body at the intruder with anger. He managed to calm himself as he recognized the kindly-looking old man who approached him as the groundskeeper for the cemetery. His cold annoyance further melted when he saw the old man raising his hands in apologetic surrender.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you like that. I assumed my creaky legs would’ve given me away for a mile.”
The old man laughed and continued to approach, as Simon allowed himself a small grin for the first time all day. For a minute, the groundskeeper stared silently at the grave beside him, in solemn reverence. Despite politely declining similar offers from friends and family, Simon appreciated the man’s company here. The groundskeeper brought a sense of practiced officiality to Simon’s mourning and gave him a reason to stay rooted to the spot. The man even seemed to know the appropriate time to break the silence.
“I dug this grave you know. I dig all the graves around here. It keeps my body younger than I really am.” he said, eyes winking with pride. It was true too. Simon knew the man was well into his eighties at least, because he remembered the site of him as a child. He didn’t seem to have aged much in that time. He looked like he could be just barely approaching sixty.
“I’ve had this job for forty years now. Got it from my father after he died. I must’ve been about the same age as you when it happened. My name’s Jeremy Carter, if you’re wondering what to call me. Plain ‘Carter’ does most people just fine.”
“‘Carter,'” Simon repeated vaguely. “How’d your father pass? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“No, no, it’s fine. He just got tired of living, I s’pose. Probably smoked too much tobacco and buried too many good people.” He changed the subject here. “I didn’t know your mom much–could recognize her from passing in town, but I never knew her name or nothing. I heard she was taken by cancer.”
“Yeah.” Simon’s voice sounded so hollow and he wondered if that’s how it’d always sound from now on.
“A terrible way to go, cancer. Wasting by inches. You’re tired of hearing this, but you have my sympathies all the same.”
Carter was right. The “thanks” that tumbled out of Simon’s mouth was smoothed from overuse. The word felt like an overworked muscle–raw and lifeless–and Simon wanted nothing more than to hide away from all the apologetic well-wishing that demanded response and give the word time to rest until it’s meaning could be salvaged once more.
Simon wanted to talk about his mom to this man. He even managed to push out a forced “She–” before he realized he had no words to follow it and found his throat dry. Somehow, the old man seemed to understand this and brought the subject closer to his mother.
“I know your mother always lived here, so am I right in assuming you grew up in Night Springs too?”
The question offered direction and Simon gratefully seized upon it.
“Yeah, I never knew my dad so I grew up here alone with my mom.” He corrected himself. “Well, not alone you know. There’s the whole town, of course, and I used to know just about everybody here. My mom never had another kid or remarried though so it was always just us two in the house.”
Simon paused a moment, reflecting, then realized he needed to speak more to properly convey his mother.
“It was great though. My mom was a great woman. The house was small compared to others, but just fine for the two of us and my mom worked her ass off to made sure we always had it. Mr. Anderson at the bank–I don’t know if he still works there anymore–he wasn’t at the funeral today–Mr. Anderson was always good enough to give my mom an extension on the loan if she needed it. He helped out a lot when I was going through college. My mom had two jobs back then so I wouldn’t have to do any work myself and could focus on my education. Got a business degree and then went to law school and later became a lawyer working out of Chicago. I stopped seeing her and the town so much, since then. I tried to come back for the holidays, you know, but something started coming up and I missed more than I ever should have allowed.”
“I was crushed when I found out my mom had cancer. I tried to get her to move in with me–get her better medical care, you know?–but she was dead set on staying in Night Springs. She always loved this town. I couldn’t wait to get to college, but she was always happy living here. I thought of moving closer, of course, but I couldn’t just abandon all my clients and practice. And my mom insisted Debbie next door was taking good care of her. They were always like sisters to each other. I offered to pay Debbie as a nurse, but she wouldn’t hear of it. You know how people in this town are.”
The two men grinned in shared understanding for a moment. The sun was nowhere to be seen now. You could make out some orange lingering in the night right at the edge of the horizon, but no more than that. It was getting very dark.
“She fought it for a while. I was… am very proud of her. Seven months later though, that was it. I visited a lot in that time. At least a dozen times, though never more than for a weekend. Still, I just figured she’d pull through somehow. I never let myself consider that she might actually go like this until the last couple weeks.”
Simon realized he was finished. The man clasped him on shoulder and said “You were a good son. I talked to Debbie, you know, and she told me that all your mom’d do is talk about you and how hard you were trying. She’s very proud of you.”
Simon didn’t cry, but he couldn’t speak either. A long pause and then Carter broke the silence once more. “Well, I best be leaving now. A gravekeeper’s work is always plentiful. You’d best be getting back soon too. They howl up a storm some nights, but I’ve never known the wolves to actually attack anyone unprovoked. There ain’t no lights around here though and you’d be best be careful if you want to avoiding cracking your head on someone’s grave.”
“Thanks. I’ll be heading out soon. If it’s okay, I think I might stay another few minutes.”
Carter patted the man’s shoulder one last time and said “Of course son.” With that, he dipped away through the moonless night, leaving Simon to mourn his mother in solitude once more.
Simon was good to his word. He waited a few minutes. He thought some final words to his mother, hoping she would hear them, wherever she was. He tried to remember every good time they ever had together and did his best to press out intruding images of his sickly mother wasting away on her death bed. He was just about to leave when he heard the scream.
A howl was heard just moments before, then a quick shout followed by agonizing screams of a voice he recognized.
“MR. CARTER!” he shouted, running in the direction of the scream as they grew more frenzied. It didn’t take long for the small, black headstone to trip him up, sending him hurtling into a freshly-dug grave. Simon Willis died instantly.
Only fifty paces away, shrouded in darkness, an old man tossed his dog a treat. His throat was a bit raw from screaming, but he made sure to say “Good boy,” to his pet wolf for acting on cue.
Slowly and methodically, Jeremy Carter made his way through the labyrinth of graves and finally approached the one he had just finished an hour ago. He had filled the bottom with wooden spikes about three feet tall placed every six inches or so.
He shook his head in mild disappointment as he peered at the body, punctured and bloody. He was good kid, he thought. Almost wanted him to just run and save himself. A strange thought for Carter. Maybe he had buried too many good people too. Still, he drunk deeply from the energy leaving the man’s body and moaned in relief as his ailing joints seemed to strengthen somewhat.
Maybe he would call it quits soon, but his father was only a hundred and twenty when he passed and he was determined to make it a bit longer than that. Besides. A gravekeeper’s work is always plentiful.
A wolf howled into the night as Jeremy Carter set about filling the hole he made in the earth.
Credit To: Jered Kral
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I live in the UK. A colleague at work heard this from her boyfriend. He works with someone who said that his sister’s friend got the last tube (subway train) home a couple of weeks ago. When she got on there were 5 rows of seats empty but the last row had three people sitting in them. As she was a little afraid, she went and sat opposite these people. She settled down and looked up to see the woman sitting opposite her really staring at her.
So she got out her book and started to read but every time she looked up the woman was still staring. The train pulled into the next station and a man got on. He looked up and down the carriage, took a look at her and the people opposite her and came and sat next to her. As the train left the station the man leaned back and said quietly in her ear “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get off at the next station with me”. She was scared but thought the best idea would be to get off at the next station as he asked as there might be people around.
The next stop comes up and she leaves the train with this man. The man says “Thank God, I didn’t mean to scare you but I had to get you off that train. I’m a doctor and the woman sitting opposite you was dead and the two men either side were propping her up”. According to the guy who told this story, the girl and the doctor called the police who stopped the train at the next station.
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“I can’t sleep,” she whispered as she crawled into bed and spooned against my back.
“Jesus, you’re cold,” I murmured.
She only snuggled closer, throwing her leg over mine. I lay there for a few beats, caught between my alcohol-induced sleep and wakefulness, until I realized whatever this cold thing pressed against my back was, it was not Danae. She’d been in the grave three months now.
My eyes flew open, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Adrenaline surged through me, but I lay paralyzed except for my eyes and my thundering heart. The icy thing holding me never moved. Instead of it taking on my heat, I took on its chill.
I fought against it, and somehow managed to wiggle my toes. Then my whole body spasmed, pitching me out of bed and onto the floor.
The crack of my face against the hardwood dazzled me and the coppery taste of blood filled my mouth, but at least I could move. I struggled onto all fours, afraid to lift my head, terrified I’d find some dead, exsanguinated version of Danae peering over the mattress at me.
A glance at the clock on my nightstand dispelled some of my night terror. Shit! I should’ve left ten minutes ago. I couldn’t be late again. Even though I half-expected an icy hand to cover mine, I grabbed the mattress and pulled myself to my feet.
The empty bed held a tangle of sheets and pillows, but no dead, accusing wife. I didn’t dare take time to shower, or even brush my teeth. I threw on my uniform and ran out the door. This job was all I had now, and I sure as hell wasn’t in any shape to find a new one.
At the hospital, I swung my truck into the Emergency parking area, grabbed my cigarettes from the seat and ran inside. I clocked in with twenty-eight seconds to spare.
Tony, my nightshift partner, frowned when I burst into the Security office. “Dude, you look like shit,” he said.
I glanced down at my half-tucked shirt and my rumpled pants. I hadn’t even brushed my hair.
“I’m sorry, man. I haven’t been able to sleep, and when I finally did, I crashed.”
“Come on,” he said, and motioned me to follow him. Like a chastened toddler, I did. We ended up in the family restroom on the first floor. Tony ducked out while I washed my face with pink liquid soap and dried it with paper towels. He reappeared in a moment with a plastic tub that contained a patient welcome kit– toothbrush, toothpaste, comb and deodorant.
“I’m worried about you,” he said.
Join the club, I thought.
My mother, my brothers, and Abi all worried. Looking at my red eyes and drawn face in the mirror — hell, even I worried about me.
“I can’t sleep. And when I do, it’s these fucking nightmares.”
“Do you take anything to help you sleep? Melatonin, Ambien?” he asked.
“Does Jack Daniels count?”
He didn’t smile. Instead, he put his hand on my shoulder. “Jake, we’re all real sorry about Danae. We loved her. We love you. But you gotta pull it together, man. You did all you could do.”
I nodded, and he clapped his hand on my shoulder. Then he left me alone to make myself presentable. When I came out a few minutes later, Tony had already left to make his checks. I grabbed my clipboard to make mine.
Hospital security wasn’t a bad gig. On the weekend, a lot of the areas–like surgery–were empty. Of course, tonight’s full moon would probably have the psych ward hopping.
By the time I’d done my first walkthrough, I felt better. At least I’d slept some, before the incident this morning. I wandered down to the Emergency waiting. Twice a day, local churches brought in free meals for the families camped out in these waiting areas. I nodded at the volunteers I knew, fixed a styrofoam to-go plate and stepped outside.
Mack grinned when he saw me and stubbed out his cigarette. He carefully placed the half-smoked cigarette in a tin, tucked it in his pocket and reached for the plate I offered. “It’s the Baptists tonight, ain’t it?” he asked. “Those little women are the best cooks.”
I laughed. “Yeah, you’re gonna like it. Fried chicken. Want me to ask any of those little women if they’re single?”
“Shoot, no, son,” he replied. “Papa is a rolling stone.”
We shot the breeze for a few minutes, then I told him I needed to head back in. As always, he thanked me, and as always, I told him no need. Technically, we weren’t supposed to feed the homeless, but we all loved Mack. I wasn’t about to let a decorated war veteran sit out here hungry when a table creaked with food inside. I knew Abi took him breakfast before she left, and I suspected others looked out for him, too.
Walking back through Emergency, I caught a flash of Abi turning the corner and hurried to catch up. I tugged her blond ponytail and she turned to smile at me.“Hey, Favorite,” she said. “What’s up?”
She’d called me that as long as I could remember. We’d grown up next door to each other. My three brothers, at some point or another, had all competed for her attention. I was the Favorite, however, or as she liked to tease them– #1 Fults. The others would alternate being #2 and #3, except for Joe, who annoyed her so much he was always #4, or she’d tell him he was her least favorite Fults. Even as adults, Abi and I still lived next door to each other. She’d helped me get this job, and also tipped me off to the house I lived in now. Days like this made me thankful I lived only five minutes from the hospital.
“Not much,” I said. “Seems quiet so far.”
“Shh!” she admonished. “They’ll hear you.”
I’d probably opened the gates of Hell just by uttering that. To say a night was easy always seemed to curse it. We walked to the elevator and the doors opened before I could even press the button. We looked at each other. “Abracadabra!” I said, and motioned her inside.
“So, how are you?” she asked.
“I’m good.”
She frowned. “Liar.”
“Good enough, then,” I said.
I could tell by her face that she knew that, too, was a lie. “You did all you could do,” she said.
“I wish people would stop saying that!” I snapped, before I could stop myself.
She said nothing, just punched the fourth-floor button. I sighed.
“I’m sorry. It’s … I failed her, Abs. We were fighting and I just drove off.”
“There’s no way you could’ve known,” she insisted.
I wiped a hand down my face. “I told her I wanted a divorce.”
Abi’s eyes widened. “You never told me that. How come you never told me that?”
The elevator doors dinged open. I followed Abi out and she motioned for me to wait. After a brief, muffled conversation with another nurse, Abi returned and dragged me to the staff break room. She pushed me into a chair and said, “Talk.” When I didn’t speak, she said, “Halverson?”
The whole hospital had buzzed with rumors of an affair. I hadn’t told Abi when Danae finally confessed, because that would’ve destroyed any fragment of friendship they had left. I didn’t suppose it mattered now.
“Halverson was part of it. She admitted it.”
Abi shook her head, her green eyes narrowed. “Again? She cheated on you again? With Halverson?”
The ‘again’ threw me for a moment, and I wondered if there had been others. But no, Abi would’ve told me. We were too close to shield each other from bitter truths. She meant the time three years ago, before Danae and I married.
Abi’s disgust at Halverson’s name stung a little, because she didn’t know the worst of it. Not only had Danae slept with the old, gruff doctor, but she had also done it for a price.
“She confessed, said it was a mistake and begged me to forgive her. That wasn’t even our real issue. She was back on the pills again. Oxys and Somas. Halverson wrote her the script.”
Abi gasped. “You should turn him in! He knew her history. He should lose his license.”
“I can’t prove he knew. I’d just look like the bitter, cuckold husband.”
“I never really believed the rumors about them. I even asked her point-blank one day. She denied it, and I believed her. I’m so sorry, Jake.”
Abi didn’t get that it wasn’t the affair that bothered me most. Danae said that it was just sex, and I believed her. She could shut herself off in ways that I didn’t understand. She said it was because of childhood abuse, a coping mechanism. At times, I was closer to her than anyone, but there were places in her heart where even I was a stranger.
Abi and Danae had gotten along well enough, I suppose, but I never doubted where Abi’s loyalty lay. Danae had always been a little jealous of her, and she absolutely hated that Abi called me Favorite, but I’d made it clear when we started dating that my friendship with Abi was non-negotiable. I’d never been unfaithful, never given Danae a reason to doubt me. She couldn’t say the same.
“We fought again that day. I’d already thrown away all the pills I’d found, but I guess she had a stash. She kept falling asleep in her food. I fucking hated that. Still, she denied it. I told her I wouldn’t live with someone I couldn’t trust. So, I got in my truck and I left.”
I closed my eyes, remembering that awful day. Danae had chased me into the yard, crying and begging me to stay, but I’d jumped in my truck and roared off. She tried to call me a dozen times, but I kept hitting Ignore on my phone. Then I got that text. By the time I made it back home, it was almost too late. Hell, I guess it had been too late, because even though she’d lived for three days, she’d never regained consciousness. I got lost in that memory, of busting down the bathroom door. Of her pale face sinking in that swirling red water.
Abi squeezed my hand. “Stop,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault. Danae had a history of depression. She tried to kill herself the first time long before she started working here. Long before she ever met you.”
“That’s why I should’ve been more careful. I saw one attempt, remember? I knew how fragile she was.”
“You were not responsible for her happiness.You didn’t know she’d do that. You are not God.”
My pager buzzed and for once, I was grateful. I looked down at the screen and said, “I gotta go. I have a transport.”
“Okay,” she said. “But swing back around “ later.” When we stood, she hugged me. “I love you, Favorite. We’re gonna get you through this.”
“Love you, too, Abs.”
The worst part of my job was definitely the transports. Carla, the nursing supervisor, waited for me in the ER.
“Hey, good lookin’,” she said. “Ready to take a ride?”
“Anytime.”
I liked Carla. She was good at her job and strong as an ox. If I had to do a transport with anyone, I’d just as soon it be her. But I grimaced when she led me to exam room #3–the same room they’d wheeled Danae to when we first arrived.
Thankfully, a sheet already covered the body on the bed. “Is it a child?” I asked.
“Naw, she’s in her twenties, but she’s a little thing. You could probably just throw her over your shoulder.”
She didn’t mean any disrespect. That’s the way things were in hospitals. Gallows humor to deal with all the horror.
We transferred the body from the bed to the gurney, then took the staff elevators to the basement. Carla and I made small talk, then she asked how I was holding up. Sometimes it was nice to work with people who knew what I was going through, and who treated me and supported me like family, but sometimes I wished I was just another guy in another place, where no one knew anything about me.
Carla left, her job completed. I pulled up the computer screen, opened the morgue book, and moved the sheet to look at the dead girl’s toe tag. The tattoo on her foot stopped me cold.
A daisy.
Danae had one in the same spot. She’d gotten it on our first date. I’d taken her to a little hole-in-the-wall bar in Nashville to see one of my favorite bands, Goodbye June. She’d fallen in love with their song “Daisy” and I’d fallen in love with her. She’d gotten the tattoo that night, on 10th Avenue. I’d taken to singing “You drive me crazy, Daisy,” to her, and it evolved into my pet name for her.
Though I knew the girl on the slab wasn’t her, that the tattoo wasn’t even the same, it spooked me. Tendrils of this afternoon’s nightmare brushed me, threatened to wrap around me again. I could almost hear her say, “I can’t sleep.”
I forced it from my mind and hurried to get the girl’s information down so I could get out of there. I completed the computer work, then looked back at the tag to double-check the spelling of her last name.
Her cell phone blared to life with Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life,” and I jumped backwards, banging my head on a shelf. It would’ve been gruesomely funny if Carla had still been in here with me, but in my current state, it scared the shit out of me. The song blasted on and on as I scribbled my entry in the morgue notebook. I didn’t know how her phone even had a signal down here. I had to carry a pager. With the thick concrete walls of this place, I was lucky to get a signal even outside the basement.
Only when the morgue door closed behind me did I feel like I could breathe again. But my relief was short-lived. When I approached the elevators, the doors opened without me getting anywhere near the button. I knew it was nothing to freak out about, probably some kid messing with buttons, but I was extra jumpy today. I almost didn’t have the nerve to get in it. Things had been happening around me for a while now. Creepy things. Objects moved around the house, phone calls with no caller information, her songs on the radio–even the old, obscure ones. I didn’t know whether to attribute it to too much alcohol, too little sleep or losing my damn mind. But any of those things were better than the alternative that maybe Danae was haunting me.
Thankfully, the next few hours passed uneventfully. I went to find Abi again around midnight for lunch. She looked up when the elevator doors opened. I waved and headed down the hall toward her. As I walked past one of the rooms, a sound from inside distracted me. Beep, beep, beep in a frantic rhythm, like someone’s heart thumping about 170 beats per minute. It sounded so odd that I stopped to listen. It slowed until it was more like beep… beep… beep. Then it stopped altogether.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Someone’s coding.”
Abi gave me a confused look, but didn’t move.
“Hurry!” I shouted, and threw open the door.
An old man sitting up in his hospital bed glowered at me, then turned his attention back to The Price is Right. The noise–the beeps–someone had just spun the fucking wheel.
Abi appeared at my shoulder. She snickered in my ear, then she burst out laughing. She laughed until her eyes shone bright with tears.
Feeling really stupid and trying not to smile, I shut the door and muttered, “Asshole.”
Abi laughed even harder, until she was hugging herself and leaning against the wall. Tasha, another nurse, came out of one of the rooms and said, “What’s so funny?”
“Code Bob!” Abi squeaked, and I couldn’t help it. I laughed too.
“It’s Code Drew now,” I said. “Come on, jerk, and I’ll buy you lunch.”
“Give me, like, two minutes.” She swiped at her eyes. “God, I needed that.”
It took her more like five, but then she grabbed her purse and we headed to the cafeteria. I remembered what she’d said about needing the laugh and asked, “Rough night?”
‘No,” she said. “Not bad. You?”
I told her about the girl in the morgue, thinking I’d get another laugh but she squeezed my forearm and said, “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t want to talk about bad things with her. She had heard enough, been there for me enough. She’d been working Emergency the night I’d carried Danae’s dripping, almost lifeless body through the double doors, screaming for someone to help me. I’d driven Danae to the hospital myself. After trying to tourniquet the mangled wrist she’d slashed so deep and vertically, I’d panicked and thrown her in my truck. We lived so close to the hospital I thought it would be faster than waiting for an ambulance. Abi told me that had been the right reaction, although it hadn’t made much difference.
The cafeteria, as usual, didn’t have much selection. I grabbed a pre-wrapped cheeseburger and Abi got a plastic-wrapped salad. When she reached for it, her sleeve pulled up and I noticed the ugly purple bruises on her wrist.
“Hey!” I said. “What the hell?” I grabbed her arm before she could stop me, and turned her wrist to inspect it. Those were definitely fingerprints. “Did Connor–”
“What? No!” She looked around. “No,” she said again. “It was a patient. One of the psych admits.”
She answered quickly enough, and her answer made sense, but something flashed in her eyes before she pulled away to grab a juice from the cooler. I waited until I’d paid for our stuff and sat to say, “Look, if Connor hurt you–”
“Shh, no. I told you what happened, so drop it. Please.”
No chance of that. Abi meant way too much to me. The thought of someone hurting her made my gut clench. And it felt good, to feel something besides pain and grief. I wasn’t going to drop it, but next time I mentioned it, I’d be taking it up with him. I’d despised Connor since the day I met him. The arrogant, overbearing doctor was totally wrong for her. She’d told me the same about Danae–the totally wrong for me part–but maybe she should’ve warned Danae instead.
“Hey,” Abi said. “Beep beep.”
“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”
“Oh, God, no!” she said, and I flipped my Coke lid at her. She grinned at me, then said, “So, your Mom called me today. She wanted to know what I thought about having a surprise birthday party for you next week.”
“What? Please tell me you shut that down.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course I did. I got your back, loser.”
I thanked her and toyed with the salt shaker. “My mom calls you more than she calls me. I don’t think she’s ever given up on the idea of us together.”
Abi made a face. “Uh, excuse me. You should be so lucky.”
“There’s a problem with my eyes,” I said. “I can’t get them off you!”
She grinned, then made an ‘ohhhh’ sound. “I’m having a problem with mine, too, because I can’t see you getting anywhere with me.”
We laughed at our inside joke. I’d had the distinct pleasure of sitting beside her at a bar one night when some guy tried that on her, and been shot down in flames.
It felt good to laugh again, and to hang out with Abi. But it also made me feel guilty. How could I laugh about anything, when my wife was dead?
After lunch, I did my next round of walkthroughs, then went back to the security office to watch the waiting room monitors for the homeless who sometimes slipped in, or for gang activity.
Everything seemed calm. I scanned all ten waiting areas. Most everyone seemed to have bedded down for the night, though a few cell phones glowed in the dim light. The TV still played on the third floor, but the people inside didn’t seem to mind. Three of them slept while a fourth scrolled on his phone. As I watched, he laid his cell down and pulled the blanket over his head.
I don’t know why it caught my eye. I almost missed it. Opposite the recliners, in one of the chairs, something white and smoky rose. For a moment, I panicked, thinking ‘fire.’ But it didn’t look like a fire. It looked like … someone standing. I gaped at the screen, and the thing seemed to take on a shape. It almost had a face, which it turned toward the guy with the cell. The TV winked off, pitching the room in darkness. The televisions here were old. No remotes, no timers. To shut it off, a person had to physically touch it.
The guy’s cell phone lit up. He held it over his head like a flashlight and scanned the room. Then he lay back down.
At that moment, Tony walked in, giving me my next jump of the night.
“Dude, you have to see this,” I said. “Tell me what this is.”
I replayed the video for him. He frowned, then watched it again. “That’s just some distortion in the tape.”
“And the TV?”
He shrugged. “Maybe the power blinked.”
Tony was one of the most practical people I’d ever known. If a leprechaun came through the door riding a unicorn, I’m sure he’d logic the hell out of it until he had a reasonable explanation. But he wasn’t the one I really wanted to show this to. I wanted to show Abi.
“I’m going to walk around,” I said.
When I stood, he grabbed my arm. “Hey, I have something for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small square of wrapped up paper towel. “Ambien. It helps me sleep. I thought you might want to try a couple of mine and if you like it, get someone to write you a script.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said, and took it from him. I’d actually been thinking about it. Anything to chase away the nightmares.
I got in the elevator, and after some hesitation, I hit the button to the third floor. I had to check that waiting room.
The people inside slept–all four of them–and the TV remained off. I moved over to the chair, expecting something white and spectral rise from it at any moment, but nothing did. No ghostie. But the chair was not empty. A single daisy lay on the seat.
Unnerved, I stalked back to the elevator and went to Abi’s floor. On my way to the nurses’ desk, someone called to me from one of the rooms. I peeked inside and the elderly woman on the bed motioned me closer.
“Ma’am? Can I help you with something?”
“I’m cold,” she said. “Can you get me an extra blanket?”
I got her one out of the closet and covered her.
“Thank you, dear. But what about her?”
“Who?” I asked, looking at the unoccupied bed on the other side.
She pointed behind me, at an empty corner.
“The girl in the pink gown says she’s cold, too.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Turning on my heel, I ran from the room. I forgot about Abi, forgot everything except what it felt like to drag a beautiful, pale girl from a tub filled with hot water and blood, and how it had stained her white gown pink.
Somehow, I made it through the rest of the shift. I didn’t care about the ghost in the waiting room, or the ghost in the old woman’s room. I only worried about the ghost waiting for me at home. That’s one reason I stopped by the gas station near home and picked up a six-pack of Bud Lite.
My house didn’t feel like a ghost lived here. It didn’t feel like anyone did, myself included. I still didn’t have a door on the bathroom, though I’d thrown the splintered one in back of my truck and hauled it to the dump. I took the Ambien, drained three of the beers and climbed in the shower.
I ran the water hot–as hot as Danae had in this same tub. I closed my eyes under the spray but I had to open them again because all I saw was her face. The pink, steaming water. Her gored wrist, and the one that wasn’t, because she’d done such a great job on the first one she hadn’t been able to finish the other.
Shit, I did not need to be thinking of this before I tried to sleep. I considered trying to stay up, but there had been too much of that lately. I desperately craved sleep. Yawning, I cut off the shower and grabbed a towel. After drying my face, I glanced at the mirror.
The words LET ME GO stood out on the mirror, scrawled on steamed glass.
It hit me like a punch. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know how long it had been there, or if it was even real. I wandered to the kitchen in my boxers and peered out the window at Abi’s house. Connor’s Mustang sat in her drive. Glancing at my bedroom door, I couldn’t go in there. Instead, I sat on the couch, finished the six-pack and passed out.
* * * * * *
I woke in my own bed after more dreams of my dead wife snuggling next to me, trying to escape the chill of her grave. Thankfully, the bedroom light was on. The clock on the nightstand read 9:43. Panic froze me before I realized this was Monday, my day off. I took a deep breath and rolled onto my back. The space beside me was empty.
When I threw back the blanket, my heart stalled. Mud stained the bottom of my white sheets, and my feet. Grimy footprints covered my bedroom floor. My heart thumped painfully when I realized there were two sets. Mine leading into the room, and a smaller set going in both directions.
I used to dream sometimes of chasing a poisonous snake through my house. I was scared to go after it, but even more terrified to let it get away, because then I wouldn’t know where it was. That was how I felt looking at those footprints. I didn’t want to follow them because of what they might lead to, but I couldn’t stand not knowing either. I tracked them through the living room into the kitchen.
Food wrappers littered the counter, like a starving person had raided the cabinets. A half-empty peach Nehi sat on the marbled surface. Danae’s favorite drink. I hated those things. After she’d died, I hadn’t been able to throw them out.
The footsteps led out the door. I hesitated, my hand on the knob, childishly afraid to step outside into the darkness.
I glanced out the window at Abi’s house. Connor’s Mustang still sat in the drive, parked next to her Camaro. But as I turned away, something caught my eye. A cigarette glowing in the darkness. A flash of blond hair in the driver’s seat of her car. I watched for a moment, but she simply sat there. I’d never known Abi to smoke. My curiosity and need to talk to her superseded my fear of the dark. I walked outside in my bare feet.
I rapped on the window and she jumped. Then she looked back at the house and rolled the window down. She’d been crying, though she ducked her head and tried to hide her swollen eyes from me. All the crazy thoughts in my head dissipated like the smoke from her cigarette, replaced by concern for her.
“Abi, what’s wrong?”
She opened her mouth, then she began to cry again. I jerked open the door and took her in my arms. She clung to me for a moment, then we heard Connor yell from inside.
“Go!” she said. “Go, please. I’ll–I’ll be over in a little bit. I’ve got to end this my own way. If you’re here, it’ll be worse.”
“What? You’re breaking up with him?”
“Abigail!” Connor yelled.
I hated how he called her that, Abigail, like Abi wasn’t good enough for him. Abi was too good for all of us. She shut the car door, dropped her cigarette in the drive and ground it with her heel.
Then she did something that stunned me. She grabbed me and kissed me.
When she broke away, I stood there, paralyzed. She started walking toward her house. Then, over her shoulder, she shot me a tremulous smile and said, “I have wanted to do that my entire life. I’ll talk to you later, Favorite.”
I didn’t know what to do. I listened for a moment, but didn’t hear yelling, so I walked back to my house to wait.
I stopped in the middle of my yard, staring at Danae’s flower bed. All of the daisies had been dug up. Daisies and clumps of mud covered my lawn.
Had I done that?
Periodically, I stole glances at Abi’s house through the kitchen window as I cleaned up the mess, then showered. I didn’t know what to think. Abi and I had never been like that, though. Not that I hadn’t thought about it over the years. I mean, who wouldn’t? Even though it felt like a betrayal, that kiss had felt right.
“Let me go.”
Danae’s voice startled me, clear as a bell in that empty living room. I jumped, then turned around, half-expecting to see her behind me. Nothing.
I grabbed an 8×10 wedding photo off the wall and slammed it on the floor. Glass flew everywhere.
“You let me go!” I shouted. “You left me. You left me, Danae.”
My cell rang. I grabbed it up, expecting Abi, but it was the hospital. Lanny, one of the night shift nurses, said, “Man, I hate to bother you on your night off, but it’s Mack. I think it’s a stroke. He’s pretty bad. And he’s asking for you.”
I didn’t know what to do about Abi, so I sent her a text that read, “Mack’s in intensive care. I’m headed to the hospital.”
I guess I was a mile down the road when I realized my CD was playing the same song, over and over. “Let Me Go,” by 3 Doors Down.
At the hospital, Lanny met me at the desk. “Glad you made it. I don’t think he has long. He keeps saying your name. I thought–”
“Thank you,” I interrupted. “Where is he?”
Of course. Exam room #3.
Mack’s eyes were closed when I stepped around the curtain and I thought he was already gone, but then he opened them and beckoned me.
I think I read his lips more than anything, but he said, “Danae.”
“Danae?”
He said something else, but I couldn’t hear, so I leaned down. He said, “Contract.”
Then he died.
The word mystified me. What contract?
“Goodbye, Mack,” I said, and walked outside.
Numb. I felt so numb, and I couldn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t know what Danae wanted from me, and I sure as hell didn’t know about any contract. If only I could talk to her … then I realized maybe I could.
I caught the elevator to the fourth floor and found myself standing outside the old lady’s door, the one who’d mentioned the girl in the pink gown. If she’d talked to Danae once, maybe she could talk to her again. I knocked.
“Come in,” she called.
Thankfully, she still didn’t have a roommate.
“Ma’am, I don’t know if you remember me–”
“You brought me a blanket,” she said. “I’m not senile yet.” I gave her a polite laugh, but my smile faded when she added, “The girl in the pink gown talks about you. She says your name is Jake.”
“Yes,” I said. “My name is Jake. Did she say anything else?”
The old woman reached for my hand, and I gave it to her. She squeezed it with her frail fingers. “She said you have to let her go. She can’t move on until you let her go.”
“What does that mean?”
“She says there’s a contract she can’t break.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know anything about a contract. I don’t know what she means.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
I thanked her and left. Halfway to the parking lot, my cell phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket and froze when I saw the incoming caller ID.
Danae calling …
Her cell phone lay in a kitchen drawer, disconnected and dead for weeks now. I hit the Accept button and said, “Hello?”
The crackle of static filled my ear, but the pounding of my pulse nearly drowned it out. I tried to say hello again, but my mouth went dry.
A voice broke through, gritty and shrieking, but undeniably Danae.
“Hurry!” she screamed. “Hurry!”
Then she shouted something that knocked the breath from me.
“Abi!”
I jumped in my truck and tore out of the parking lot.
Connor’s car still sat in her driveway, but I didn’t care. I took her front steps two at a time, then banged on her door. Something crashed. Fueled by adrenaline, I jerked the knob and barreled my way inside.
Connor straddled her on the living room floor, choking her. Abi’s small hands beat ineffectively at him, her face an ugly mottled red.
I grabbed him in a headlock and yanked him backwards. He let her go to defend himself, and Abi scuttled backwards like a crab, gasping for air.
We tumbled around her living room, trading blows and knocking over furniture. I finally found my feet and hauled him to his, jerking him out the front door. I tried to push him down the front steps, but he grabbed a fistful of my shirt and we both went.
Sirens screamed in the distance and soon strobing blue lights lit Abi’s yard. Rough hands jerked us apart and they hauled both of us to the station.
Nearly three hours later, I sat with Abi on her front steps, holding an ice bag to my eye and drinking a Jack and Coke.
“What happened?” I asked her.
She didn’t speak, and it took some prodding to get it out of her. They’d been fighting about me.
Abi had come home from the grocery store and found me passed out in Danae’s flower bed. She’d helped me inside, inciting Connor’s jealousy and rage. The second set of muddy footprints had belonged to her.
“I meant to come back over and help clean up,” she said. “But things got a little crazy.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I simply squeezed her hand.
“I’ve known he was wrong for me for a long time, but I didn’t want to admit it. I thought I could change him, but all I did was harm myself.”
Harm myself …
Suddenly, I realized what contract Danae meant. I jumped up and said, “Abi, I’ll explain everything in a little while, but I need to go find something.”
“Can I help?”she asked, as I started across the lawn to my place.
“I think I have to do this alone. Can I come over to talk later?”
“You better,” she said.
It took me nearly an hour, but I finally found it, tucked in a drawer of Danae’s jewelry box. I lay across our bed to read it.
Danae’s first suicide attempt had been in her teens, but her second had been about a year after we’d started dating. She’d told me about her battle with depression, but I’d never seen it coming, never had a clue how bad it was until I’d walked into that apartment that day and found her sprawled on the floor, empty prescription bottle in her hand. It’d been a close call that day, too.
A few days later, we’d been lying in her hospital bed together and I’d begged her to never do that again. She’d promised, then made a joke about shaking on it, or drawing up a contract.
“I like that,” I’d said, and she’d taken it more seriously than I’d thought. The next day, she’d presented me with this.
I, Danae Roberts, make a commitment to living. I will not harm myself or anyone
|
I found it three weeks ago, or rather, I found them. A knotted circle of fur, claws, and death. Six rats, tangled together by their tails, thrashed about my front lawn with little direction. Their shrieks pierced the air of what was normally a quiet street. I was going outside to get the mail when I spotted them. I approached as close as I dared to get a better look, I couldn’t imagine the diseases they were carrying. At least half of them were dead or dying, their weight a hellish burden on those still cursed with life. They would flail vainly against the knot trapping them together, before briefly fighting amongst each other whenever they collided in their confusion. They did not understand why they were stuck, and they took their confusion and fear out on one another. Even from a safe distance, I could tell the bodies of the dead rodents had been partially eaten away. I could feel my breakfast threatening to free itself at the sight. I had never seen anything so horrid and depressing, but I’d be damned if I went anywhere near that collage of nightmares. I safely retreated back inside my home and called animal control.
In a few short hours my doorbell rang. I was greeted by two animal control workers with a third worker standing on my lawn. He held a clear plastic bag, the awful circle of rats motionless inside. The first man introduced himself as Brian. He was a tall, heavy-set gentleman who stared at me behind a dark pair of aviators and held a toothpick between smoke stained teeth. He immediately asked if I had experienced any other rodent issues in or around my property. When I explained that I had not, he simply rolled the toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other, grunting in acknowledgement and fidgeting with the bill of his beige company hat. Kevin, the younger worker, explained to me the significance of what I had stumbled upon. His over-enthusiasm was a little unsettling.
The jumble of rats I had found was called a rat king. It was a phenomenon that resulted from a population of mice or rats that had become stuck together and been unable to free themselves. This was often after coming into contact with some sort of sap or tar-like substance. Once enough of the rodents became stuck this way, their flailing would result in the crude circle formation that had found its way onto my lawn. As Kevin gleefully described this peculiarity, I silently decided to skip lunch. He only stopped to breathe once Brian put an imposingly large hand on his shoulder and interjected.
“The thing is, these rats were tied together by their tails. That only happens when there’s a huge mess of ‘em somewhere, but this is the first one I’ve ever seen,” confessed Brian.
Well that was comforting. I explained that I had only been in this home a few months. My wife and I had bought it and I had moved in ahead of her while she finished the final few months of her contracted employment.
“Is there any chance I just didn’t notice the signs of an infestation?” I asked, imagining my walls filled to the brim with rodents.
Both workers shook their heads immediately. “With the amount of rats it takes to make one of those things, you’da known this place was infested after about five minutes,” Brian said, his southern accent soaked into the emphasis.
I was partly relieved, knowing that we hadn’t purchased ground zero of the next plague. Still, that didn’t explain how the rats had made their way onto my lawn. As if reading my mind, Brian quickly attempted to assuage my fears. He explained that animal control was going to check to see if there was any sign of an infestation in the nearby drainage system. Kevin recommended that I have some pest preventative services done around the exterior of my home just to be safe. I went ahead and scheduled an internal inspection as well, not fully trusting my own ability to spot a rat infestation. I figured that being proactive was the best way to get ahead of the game.
It was a over week before I heard anything regarding the rats again. The exterminator thankfully saw no signs of any infestation in or around my home. I opted for some outside traps anyways, unable to fully shake the sight of the tangled mess of rats from my mind. I hadn’t received any updates from Brian, so I assumed animal control hadn’t discovered some awful rat colony making their home in the sewers. I wasn’t particularly afraid of rodents, but the thought of the circumstances which produced a rat king were enough to give anyone chills. I pictured thousands of rats piled on top of each other with nowhere to move. In that horrid pile of confusion their tails becoming knotted, joining them for the rest of their inevitably short lives. I could almost hear their squeaks and shrieks of fear and instinctive rage, attacking their fellow prisoners who were just as innocent as they were in the tragic merging. But it would be a different sound that brought them back into my life.
I was busy unpacking boxes for our study. My wife was the one who owned all these books, and for months I had procrastinated in unpacking them and putting them up. Unenthusiastically, I cut the tape on the third box when I heard a noise. It was faint, but still clearly the sound of scratching. I immediately stood and walked out into the living room, which served as the center point of the house, to listen for where the sound was coming from. It took only a moment to determine that the scratching was coming from the front door. It was similar to the scratching sound our cat Kane made when he wanted to come back inside. Knowing Kane was still three states away with my wife, I approached the door slowly and peered through the peephole. It was difficult to see the porch surface, but it didn’t appear as if anything was there. I unlocked and opened the door, but I found nothing on the other side besides an empty porch. I thought that maybe some animal had wandered up to the wrong house. I took a few steps out into the night to see if could catch a glimpse of anything. I did. In fact I caught a glimpse of twelve things.
The second I saw the rats they screeched, as if the approach of some predator sent them into a panic. I would be lying if I said I didn’t scream too. How could I not? This rat king was twice as large as the first one, and this time it seemed most of the unfortunate were still alive. They attempted to flee every which way, falling over each other and dragging the smaller ones about. I had heard that rats were normally clean creatures, but whatever pit these had crawled out of had branded them with a foul rank that brought on just as much nausea as the sight of it all. I stumbled back, nearly retching then and there.
What the hell was going on?
Why was there ANOTHER one?
These among many other questions rattled my brain as I retreated back into my home. The scratching sound I heard, there was no way that screeching circle of hell had caused it. And what of Brian and Kevin? Weren’t they supposed to check to make sure there wasn’t an infestation? I had no answers, and all I could do was wait until the morning to call animal control again.
I had a nightmare that night. I dreamt I was lost somewhere in the sewer, blindly trying to find my way around with no light source of any kind. I began to panic, quickening my pace until I was sprinting through the damp, foul labyrinth. I’ve never recalled being able to smell in a dream before, but I sure could in those sewers. The same awful stench belonging to the rat kings possessed my nose, only intensifying as I ran with reckless abandon. Inevitably I tripped, and I awaited the awful splash of sewage as my body toppled towards the ground. The splash never came. I instead landed on hundreds of small, furry bodies.
I knew.
The lake of rats squealed both beneath and around me, swelling in size as my terror became their terror. I tried to stand, but they were already crawling over me, weighing me down. I screamed, but it was a whimper compared to the endless screeches of a panicked horde. I flailed wildly, trying to shake myself free and push them off in an identical frenzied fear. I looked down at my feet, only to see countless tails wrapped around my ankles, tied together in fleshy pink and beige knots. I tried to scream again, but I was silenced under the pile of fur and tar.
Nothing kept me from screaming when I woke up. I wanted to cry. I’m not ashamed to say that. I do so every time I have to put a pet down or while watching the first twenty minutes of Disney’s “Up.” But I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I was so afraid that I was nearly brought to tears. Only the fact that it was a nightmare kept me from losing it. I called animal control immediately, and was fortunate enough to be transferred directly to Kevin due to it being an open and ongoing case. I think he could tell how shaken I was over the phone despite my best efforts to keep it together. He promised me they would head to my house immediately.
An hour later I had regained my composure, and I wasn’t shaking like a fool while I stood out on the lawn watching Kevin slide the second rat king into an even bigger bag than the last time. I had asked that they wait to fetch me until after they did what they needed in order to deal with the rats that were still alive. I didn’t want to watch that part, a mercy or not. Brian was scratching his head, not quite as bewildered as I was, but he certainly lacked the reassuring demeanor he wore when we first met.
“I’ll be upfront with you, we’re a bit stumped on this one,” he admitted, continuing to his scratch his head.
“I don’t understand, you said that there had to be a huge infestation to make these things,” I said, incredulous at his complete lack of insight.
“Yes and I’ll say it again too. These things don’t just happen when there’s a handful of rats around.” His tone suggested he had taken a slight offense to me quoting his own words back to him.
“So what did you find in the sewers?” I pressed, ignoring his tone. I didn’t have the patience for his pride while giant circles of rats were still appearing on my lawn.
“That’s the thing. We found nothin’,” he said with a shrug. “There’s a couple of ‘em running around down there, always is, but nothin’ near what it would take to make one of those suckers.” He gestured back towards contents of the bag as Kevin sealed it up.
I ran my hands back up through my hair, trying not to get frustrated. Taking a moment to calm myself, I managed to ask “So what do you suggest I do?” my tone as respectful as I could muster.
Brian and Kevin shared a reluctant look, one that created a pit in my stomach. That pit ballooned into a canyon when the senior of the duo broke the news.
“Honestly sir, it might be time to consider that it could be somebody’s leavin’ these things here,” Brian said. Even behind his aviators, I could tell his face was grimacing behind the weight of his words.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked. Honestly, I heard him word for word. My mind however, wasn’t ready to process the implications of what he just said.
Brian sighed, removing his hat and revealing his heavily balding scalp. I imagine something like this was out his depth, but how did he think I felt?
“I’m sayin’ you might want to notify the police,” he clarified, which only added to my mountain of questions.
“Because someone might be leaving those things in my yard… on purpose.” I laid out his insinuation as if he had just asked me to believe in the Tooth Fairy.
He nodded, “‘Fraid so. I’m tellin’ you that these things don’t just pop up.” He gestured to the direction of our sewer drains. “There’s nothin’ down there close to what you would need to make these things”
“Which means that some sick freak made that thing and dropped it off in my lawn?” I knew the answer, it wasn’t that hard to piece together. Saying out loud just made it a bit easier to believe, if not to stomach.
“We don’t know for certain, but for your safety I’d file a report if nothing else,” said Kevin, chiming in. “Anyone who would do that to an animal, pest or not, is just not right in the head.”
Despite the fact the day was now worse than it had started, I thanked both of them for getting out here so soon and being upfront about everything. At the very least the second rat king was gone, but I needed to decide if I was going to tell the police about it, not to mention my wife. As a token of goodwill, Brian said he would come by the next day to check the drain near my home again. The first inspection had already shown that there was no infestation, but I appreciated that he was willing to check once more if only to confirm the initial conclusion of his work.
That evening I called the local police station, who said they would send an officer by in the morning to take my statement and file a report. Afterwards I called my wife, but for the life of me I could not bring myself to tell her anything about the rats over the phone. She was so busy trying to meet the deadlines of her contract, not to mention packing up the rest of our stuff, that it felt wrong. I felt that adding a nice stack of ‘we might have an animal-torturing stalker’ to her plate would only give her a panic attack. Regardless, it wasn’t as if she could help from where she was. I promised myself that I would tell her soon, but at the very least I wanted to wait until I had a chance to speak to the police and figure out my next steps.
That night I dreamt I was in the sewers again. This time, I wasn’t lost or panicked. Instead, it felt like I knew exactly where I needed to go. Eventually I came upon a woman, who looked as if she had no business being in a sewer. She was tall, draped in a spotless black dress that contrasted her pale skin. Much like her dress, her skin was flawless like it had never suffered so much as a scratch. Her delicate hands tucked jet black hair back behind her ears, revealing bright red lips curved upwards in a disarming smile. Calling her beautiful would sell her woefully short. She reached out a hand and beckoned for me to join her. She spoke to me, but I couldn’t recall what she said. I only remember that her voice was inviting and I walked towards her without so much as a second thought. The moment I took her hand the dream ended and I woke up to the blare of my alarm.
Guilt loomed over me during breakfast. That dream was infinitely better than drowning in rats, but it still felt overtly real. I thought of my wife and felt ashamed of how easily I went to the woman when beckoned. I know it wasn’t real, but the fact that I didn’t even think of my wife in the presence of this impossibly beautiful woman still upset me. Luckily, I wasn’t able to mull in my shame for very long when I heard the police knocking on my door. They had sent a single uniformed officer, whose face I couldn’t read very well as I recounted the grotesque events of the past week. I made sure to mention that animal control should have my case documented, so that I wouldn’t come off as a paranoid nuisance or a LSD enthusiast. Fortunately, Brian’s van pulled up alongside the curb while I was giving my statement. I pointed to him and waved, not so subtly hinting that he was the man who could verify my sanity. The officer gave me a card with the information I needed if I wanted to follow up on the report, and left to go speak with Brian. I felt better after reporting what all had happened, and while still troubled by the whole debacle I was at least comforted by the fact I wasn’t sitting on my hands and waiting for the worst.
That evening I went out to check my mail. It wasn’t until I was already at the mailbox that I noticed Brian’s van was still parked near the curb. I walked over to and found no sign of Brian but I did find the manhole cover removed and placed to the side. I called out into the circular opening, but there was no answer. I used my phone’s flashlight to try and see down into the sewer. I was worried that he may have been injured and unable to call for help. The flashlight wasn’t much use, and I couldn’t see the ground very well. The light did, however, reflect off the metallic frames of a pair of aviators I recognized instantly. I called out for Brian again, louder and less composed than before. There was always a chance he had just dropped them when descending into the drain, but in the back of my mind I feared something much worse.
In hindsight, I should have called the police first. Instead I sprinted inside to grab a flashlight and put on a pair of more durable pants and boots. Dread tends to fill the mind with worst case scenarios, and I imagined the overweight smoker having some sort of heart attack while he was alone and out of sight. Brian had come out for a second inspection to alleviate my fears, and now my guilt fueled my obligation to help. Running back outside, I quickly climbed down the iron bars fastened into the concrete wall. The reality of my own naivety didn’t strike until I reached the bottom.
The neighborhood and the region around it was prone to flooding. When we bought our house, the Real Estate agent made sure to inform us of that fact. She had reassured us that the government had installed large drainage piping to reduce the risk. She wasn’t lying, the tunnels were massive. I stood over six feet and even I would have no problem walking straight into them. That would be good news if it weren’t for the complete lack of lighting beyond my flashlight. The manhole connected to the middle of a large concrete pipe, with only a black void of darkness waiting on either side. I wanted to call out for Brian, but something told me I shouldn’t. There was this odd, instinctive voice that just kept repeating “Be silent.”
With nothing more than Brian’s glasses at my feet, I had no idea which direction to search first. Suddenly, I heard the faintest sound of scratching down the right path. The noise sent chills across my body and goosebumps covered my skin. It was just scratching, but I couldn’t help but think back to the sound I heard before I found the second circle of rats. Despite my fears, I knew there was a chance Brian was hurt and that noise could be only way for him to call for help. I headed down the path on my right, my flashlight barely strong enough to avoid getting swallowed by the dark tunnel. It had been nearly two weeks since our last rain, so only the faintest trickle of water flowed steadily down the middle of the pipe.
I had always imagined the sewers as a much scarier, dungeon-like underworld filled with corridors and iron barred grates. I should have realized the plain reality would not match the medieval European picture I had seen in movies and video games. Part of me had worried it would match the sewers of my recent dreams, but I was so far off base that it made me feel silly as I thought back on my nightmare. The pipe was just a straight shot, with smaller pipes leading into its sides as it headed towards whatever waterway it emptied out into. It didn’t smell great, but the unchanging grey of concrete was much less imposing than what my imagination had cooked up. I was confident that I would have to run into Brian with how straightforward this system was. After a minute or so of walking, my flashlight found a point in the pipe up ahead where it connected to another large pipe.
I didn’t like the idea of another potential path. Every added turn made my chances of getting lost that much higher. I decided I would peak down that path, but would turn around if I didn’t see any sign of Brian. As I neared the intersection, the smell in the pipe began to worsen. It didn’t take long to recognize it as the same stench I had come into contact with twice before. I could also hear the scratching, louder and more plentiful than before. I covered my nose and pressed on.
“No infestation. Yeah, right,” I thought to myself.
Maybe Brian had found the elusive infestation of rats and had just been down here dealing with them. If they were bad enough to create one of those awful rat kings, then I could see how it might be an all day project. As I rounded the corner I was prepared to call out and make sure that I didn’t scare the man while he worked. I bet I looked rather stupid with that relieved look on my face and a mouth already open to make a snide comment. Whatever I expected to find, my jaw snapped shut and I froze in my tracks as I saw a horrendously different scene.
Rats.
Thousands.
They covered every inch of the pipe’s floor, swelling halfway up the sides. The piping echoed with the scratching sound of their skittering feet. The huddled masses made no other sounds as they shuffled about in a busy fashion. In their silence I had confused them for being much further away when I turned the corner, and the primal fear that gripped me locked my feet up in place.
In the middle of the horde was large pile of what looked like to be a mixture of trash and sticks. Soaked cardboard folded over twigs of every size, with piles of wet leaves filling in the gaps. The rats surrounding it circled continuously, as if patrolling a small perimeter. A nearby storm drain opening dropped just enough natural light for me to see exactly what sat on top of the pile. It was much too large to be a rat. I’d have guessed it was a large dog suffering from severe mange if it weren’t for the hulking, pink tail that curled around its resting place. Its flesh was pale, bare except for inconsistent patches of black fur. The fur was thickest at the head, with long black locks that looked more like human hair than that of a rat. Yet the pointed snout, thick whiskers, and bulging eyes screamed rodent much louder than any human trait. Its jaw hung slightly agape, as if malformed to the point where it did not match the top of the mouth. Drool poured out of the sides in slow drooping streams, dropping onto the circling rat guard below. The awkward jaw curled up, and it almost looked like the creature was smiling as it watched the endless parade from what I figured to be a bed.
Slowly, it reached out its hand. It’s fingers were thin and excessively long. The pale digits gently reached into the marching black mass and plucked a single rat from his patrol. The rat sat completely still in the delicate grip as the overlord picked another worthy candidate from the endless flow. I watched in nauseous horror as the monstrosity slowly gripped the motionless rats and began to tie their tails together. Not unlike the rest of the horde, there wasn’t so much as a squeak of protest from the two victims. Holding them gently, the horrid thing reached back into the infinite supply below to select a third member for knotting. It didn’t take me long to figure out what it was making. A gasp escaped my throat before I even had the chance to stifle it, and the creature’s head snapped in my direction.
Every tiny foot in the pipe became still. The rat beast seemed to study me for a moment, but I could not see any curiosity in the murky white pools that made up its eyes. Slowly, it rose up as if to sit up on its hind limbs and I discerned that I had greatly underestimated its size. Six pairs of swollen nipples jutted out from chest to stomach. Surrounding them were endless bed sores, oozing with pus and staining the alabaster skin a bruised red. Beneath where the creature had been laying, I spotted the pool of bright pink. Hundreds of baby rats lay shifting and squirming as they fought their way to the top of what I now understood to be a nest. None of this made any sense. I needed to run.
“Don’t run,” commanded the voice in my head. My feet wouldn’t move. Or maybe I just didn’t want to run.
“It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.” The voice was soothing, familiar. I felt myself relax. Some part of me resisted, screaming to hold onto my fear. I still didn’t run.
“Come here,” she beckoned.
I knew what called to me. The black sea of rats slowly parted, opening a pathway to the swollen monstrosity. Her arms slowly reached out as if for an embrace. My mind was cloudy, but still I did not run.
I walked towards her.
As I walked, the obedient rodent children sat still as stones, putting the silence of mice to shame. My mind struggled, failing to grab and hold onto a single thought other than the command to walk. My vision blurred, and the monstrosity had that summoned me began to change. Her features warped and twisted, and soon the woman in black from my dream stood in her stead. I had never been near something so beautiful in my life. Her arms were still outstretched, waiting for me to join Her. Little by little, my thoughts melted away until there was only Her. I stepped into Her arms and wrapped my own around Her pale body.
She had chosen me for a purpose. The dreams, this kingdom, and a crown handmade by the Queen Herself were all for me. In Her embrace I came to understand the truth. I was always destined to be right at Her side.
I am the Rat King.
She leaned down and whispered into my ear, “You are mine,” and I was…for a moment.
Somewhere in the farthest reaches of my mind a single memory persisted. It was the only image remaining that was not of Her. It was my wife. The one who I had bought a home with. The one who was working to exhaustion so that she could join me in our new adventure. The one who was waiting for me to call her. I grasped that memory and held on as hard as I could, tearing myself free from the force that had caged the rest of my mind. I pushed her off me and I saw not the alabaster beauty but instead the monstrosity for its true appearance. Her bloated frame swayed backwards and her weight carried her off the nest and onto hundreds of her loyal servants. Her massive tail failed to balance her and instead swiped another tens of rodents into the air. Her clouded eyes shot towards me and for just a second, I could swear her deformed, ill-fitting face looked sad. That sadness was replaced by the most horrid of shrieks.
I staggered back, trying to cover my ears from the piercing sound as it nearly ruptured my ear drums. Her legion of previously mute and motionless rats joined in with their chorus of shrieks and squeals as I turned to run. I could feel the sound of her fury cut into my bones. My legs carried me faster than I think I’ve ever run. I could feel the vibrations of thousands of large, angry rodents giving chase. I never looked back, but their sound carried so horribly well through the pipes that I thought they were right on my heels. I expected my legs to soon be overcome by the horde, swallowing me in a most excruciating death, but the moment never came. I made it to the iron barred ladder and climbed up and out of the manhole without a single glance to the rabid void that chased. I sprinted to my car, grabbing the magnetic spare key under the tire and peeled out of my driveway. Half an hour passed before I felt safe enough to pull over.
Eventually, I begrudgingly gave into logic. I had taken off without my wallet, keys, or phone. I had to go back. Eventually Brian would be reported missing, and it wouldn’t look good that I had just driven off in a panic. I dreaded the trip back, half convinced that the black fur army would be waiting inside my home to drag me back into the sewers. Surprisingly, nothing awaited me when I arrived. My home was as empty as I had left it. I closed the front door behind me before I slumped against the wall and broke down crying. When I composed myself I called my wife, just to hear her voice. I assured her everything was okay, even though she could tell it wasn’t. I promised I’d explain it all to her soon, and this time I really will. My next call was to the police.
I don’t have much to say about the investigation, but I can tell you I’ve been questioned repeatedly. I haven’t been charged with anything yet, and they haven’t found Brian’s body. Even his aviators were gone, along with any sign of the rat kingdom I stumbled upon. The only new evidence was a third rat king. Twenty-four of the biggest rats I’d ever seen all neatly tied together like before, placed right on my porch. A call to the police and another round of questioning later, I’m here writing this tale.
I’d give anything to just pack up and leave this place tonight, but with the investigation it’ll only make me look responsible for Brian’s disappearance. Still, I know I’m not safe here. Even now that monster is down there in the sewers, plucking rats from her crowded kingdom to make another offering, the third of which proved she has not given up on her King. My wife and I just wanted a place to make new ties. Instead I’m stuck here, alone, tangled in knots, and I can feel them getting tighter.
|
We called them fallen angels. They were strung up by their ankles and suspended from trees. There was always barbed wire. Wrapped all around the body. Sliced the skin and ripped the tissue, and it was worse if they struggled. Ideally, they would die of dehydration. But this mercy was extended to only a very fortunate few. Most of the time, they would dangle from the branches for hours as the barbs tore their flesh and the pressure built in their heads. When upright, the heart doesn’t have to pump blood that hard to circulate through the brain. Gravity does most of the work to get it back down. Consequently, the blood vessels up there are smaller and thinner than in the rest of the body.
I’d rather be hung, personally. I would much prefer the struggling for breath and kicking the air and the white-hot agony of my vertebrae coming apart than waiting for the blood to pool in my head, clot, and eventually burst the veins and feel the warm, sticky liquid drip out of my eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. A noose would be kinder, and suffocation gentler.
“There’s somethin’ in there,” my brother would tell me from the porch, pointing his cigarette toward the trees. “It watches people. Then strings up the ones it doesn’t like.”
As paranoid as he was, I agreed with him. He spent a lot of time on that porch. I don’t let him smoke in the house. He sat out there, cigarette in one hand, gun in the other, just watching the woods and waiting for something to come out. One night, I heard him yelling, frantically trying to get my attention. Gunshot after gunshot exploded through the air and intermingled with his crazed screaming.
I ran out onto the porch to find my brother in a panic that was slowly turning to rage. “Guns don’t do shit.”
“I saw them. Their eyes were just peering out from the trees, fuckin’ watching me. They almost glowed,” he emphatically pointed to the woods behind our house, trying to show me the eyes that weren’t there.
“That’s no reason to wake up the whole neighborhood.” My brother had this habit of keeping his cigarette between his teeth when he talked. It didn’t matter how important what he said was. I could only see the glowing end of the cigarette bobbing up and down as the words fell out. It was fucking infuriating, and it was one of those trivial things that finds its way under your skin and stays there, tapping at the inside of your skull. I had expressed my displeasure several times, but he didn’t seem to care much. I must have been giving him a look this time, because he yanked the cigarette out of his mouth and let it limply dangle in his fingers.
“I will not be strung up in those woods,” he spit his final words at me before stomping out his remaining half cigarette and storming inside.
I wasn’t worried that the neighbors would call the police. They knew my brother, and they knew the woods. It was amazing, the things you could get away with in this town. Everybody here was afraid, but more than that, they were constantly on edge, as if their whole body seethed with anticipation. The paranoia that was so ingrained into these people could only be borne out of desperation. It seemed that they had tried everything, guns, knives, brute force –shit, one time somebody tried to light the whole forest on fire.
The kids played in the street or, preferably, if they had friends from the next subdivision, in the backyards the next neighborhood over. When they grabbed their flashlights in the middle of the night, they would tell stories about the woods. They never talked about Bloody Mary or Slenderman because in Fairdale, the real horror lived ten feet behind their homes.
I don’t think anyone in that town had seen the creatures in the woods, but we all knew what they looked like. The descriptions were spread in passing whispers and hushed voices, out of fear that they were listening. All the children spoke softly but emphatically about their gray skin, six-inch fingers, and hollow, infinite sockets carved deep into their skull. They seemed almost human, and maybe they once were.
Once, that I can remember, a kid went into the forest. A bunch of others dared him to. They waited in the shadows between houses, hearts pounding even though they weren’t the ones going in. In silence, they watched him glance back, hoping they would call the whole thing off, and reluctantly submerge himself into the trees. There was the snapping of twigs and then, abruptly, stillness. The group did not take their eyes of the woods, yet they could see the fear among their friends. They waited for a minute surprisingly before cautiously taking a few steps backward, then turning and sprinting away.
The boy was gone. The very next day, a group of police officers, most of whom resigned that same day, were sent in after him. Let me tell you, he struggled. The wire tore through the skin of his abdomen, leaving his internal organs to spill out and hang from his body. After that day, no children went into the woods. They didn’t even have to be told not to.
After the paper ran that story, Fairdale lost its mind. Sure, bodies turned up every other week, but it was never a child. That kind of death was somehow more than murder. It was a disaster, a tragedy.
I lived right on the edge of the woods, and that incident stuck with me. It somehow made the whole thing real. These things were here, right behind my house.
My last night in Fairdale was hopefully the worst of my life. My brother was outside smoking, and I was on the couch, mostly asleep. I’m not a heavy sleeper, so I was glad when the small noises around me seemed to quiet down, but just as I was about to drift off, my brother fired that goddamn gun about three thousand times, ran inside, and slammed the door behind him, his fucking cigarette, still lit, clamped fiercely between his teeth.
I shot up, dazed and unsure of what was happening. Hands trembling, my brother ran to all the doors and windows, making sure they were locked.
“What the fuck, man?” I rubbed my eyes, wishing that I was sleeping.
He sat on the coffee table inches away from me, voice raspy and frightened, “I saw them. They came out.” His eyes were crazed. As his mouth was running faster than his head, he inadvertently blew smoke from his lips with every rushed word and forced breath. “I didn’t even know you could see them.”
My mouth opened, but before I could speak, I heard something tapping on the sliding glass door. My jaw hung ajar, and my brother and I froze instinctively. It was too soft to be a knock, but too hard to be the wind. A moment later, it came again.
“They’re comin’ to get me,” my brother whispered. His eyes were wild, darting across the room as if he was afraid to leave them in one place for too long. “They don’t like me.”
“You sure you saw them?” my voice was barely audible. Somehow, I knew that they could hear me anyway.
“I first noticed them in the corner of my eye, just one at first, but more came.”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Tall, my god they were tall. Until they started moving, I thought they were trees. Their arms hang at their sides and are as gangly as branches. What gave them away was the skin. Looked just like ash.”
Tap. Tap. Tap. While the sounds did not increase in volume, they came to new places. I heard them still from the door, but now they were also at the windows, sides of the house, and most disturbingly, the roof.
“They don’t have faces. I mean, they’ve got eyes, but not really. They’ve just got these holes,” my brother made circles with his pointer finger and thumb and held them up over his own eyes. “And the holes have this black shit comin’ out of them, just dripping down their heads.”
“I think they could have been human, if they wanted to be.”
Tap. Tap. Tap.
My palms were clammy, and I broke out in a cold sweat. I could picture their long, bony fingers rapping on the house, their not-eyes inches from the window, waiting for us to draw back the curtain and meet their gaze. Until that moment, I don’t think I have ever been truly afraid.
Tap. Tap. Tap. It echoed all around us.
We knew we couldn’t leave, and even if we called someone, what good would it do? I didn’t think that anything could save us. Our only option was to wait and hope that we had not received a death sentence.
Tap. Tap. Tap. I now could hear it coming from beneath the house. These things were everywhere. It scared me that they didn’t just burst in, that they were waiting for something, and it scared me more that I didn’t know what. I couldn’t do anything but wait. This isn’t how I wanted to die. My brother and I sat on the floor between the couch and coffee table and hoped it would end.
“What do you think they are?” I asked. We had all heard the stories, but these creatures had no name. They simply existed. They were always here, and we did everything we could to leave them alone, to live without them, and for the most part, they let us. They took some people, I supposed, to make an example. It was a constant reminder of the fear, and maybe it kept this town in line.
My brother’s head was bowed, and his eyes would not meet mine. He lit his fourth cigarette of the night, taking a long drag and holding it deep in his lungs before releasing it. With his eyes still fixed at the floor, he said the only words that have ever struck real fear into my core. “Jimmy, I think they’re God.”
I could only hear the tapping and feel them staring into me from all directions. Despite the emptiness of the house, we knew that they were, in some way, both inside and outside. I forced my eyes shut, and in the darkness, I was only able to picture their elongated limbs hanging at their sides, their shoulders hunched to fit under our low ceilings. God, I could feel the inky ooze dripping onto my hair. I refused to open my eyes because if I did, they might have been there. If they remained closed, it was easier to pretend.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
My brother promised me that he would stay awake all night. He swore. Grabbing a pillow from the couch, he handed it to me and insisted that I slept. I argued, but I was so tired. Eventually, I did fall asleep, albeit against my will.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It had to be noon when I awoke. I was alone. I checked the whole house, and even mustered up the nerve to step onto the porch, but I was alone.
Dead or alive, I had to find my brother. I went into the woods. I think that was the biggest fuck up of my entire life. After a deep breath, I stepped into the tree line. The sun was high in the afternoon sky, but it was impossibly dark inside that forest and even more unbelievably silent. I was the only thing that disturbed the stillness.
I’ll be honest here and say that I didn’t have a plan. I had no idea where to look for my brother, and I didn’t know how I would react if I found him in the branches. When I stopped in a small clearing to look around, the blurs at the corners of my vision began to move. I knew what it was. I froze, and I think that even my heart stopped beating. Maybe they wouldn’t see me. Maybe they’d leave. Maybe I was losing my mind.
They got closer to me, close enough to see. If they didn’t move, they could be the trees, but if they did, they were something that shouldn’t have been allowed to exist. I shut my eyes and ran blindly through the forest, running into trees and scraping my arms on low-hanging branches. Miraculously, I made it out. I didn’t stop running until I threw myself in my car. I sped down the highway and checked into a motel.
Though it took me an extra hour to fall asleep that night, I kept the TV turned up, just in case they came tapping.
I never saw my brother or Fairdale again. I am no genius, but I knew when to get the fuck out of that town. I moved to a new state, this time making sure I lived in the city, away from the woods.
Even though years and miles have passed since that night, every so often I hear the tapping again. With the knowledge that I can never escape my hometown, I am left with nothing else to do but wait until it’s my turn and hope I dehydrate.
|
Let me start by saying that I’m no professional storyteller. I just have a story to tell.
Every summer my parent’s would drive from our home in rural Lincolnshire, to our holiday home in a little village in the West Norfolk coast. I won’t say where exactly, but it was a beautiful village, a ten-minute walk away from the beach. All the houses were made from Norfolk stone and flint, quiet, picturesque and the kind of place where everyone knows each other; there was a real sense of community. I loved it there. My house was in the heart of the village, it was called Manor Lodge because it used to be living quarters for the servants who worked in the Manor House that backed on to my garden. The Manor House had been abandoned since I could remember. No one ever went back there and no one knew who owned it, so it was just forgotten about. Left to become derelict.
I would spend my time playing with my friends Dylan and Peggy, their parents had holiday caravans on the main site in the village so we spent a lot of time together in the school holidays. We would ride our bikes to the beach and play, or hang out in the park, typical things 10-year-old kids would do. In 2001, it was normal for parents to let kids out unsupervised until dusk fell. That was our call to go home, before the darkness descended. And, seeing as we were in a safe village, no one really worried about us.
My story starts here. It was the beginning of the summer holidays and neither Dylan nor Peggy had arrived with their families for the summer. I had been at our house for a week already and I was bored so I went out into the garden to play. Our garden was fairly large, a few flower beds that my mum liked keeping herself busy with and a conservatory where my dad sat in a lounger and fell asleep in most days. The end of the garden was like a mini forest. Nothing major, save for a few small trees that I could hide under or make a den in. This particular morning I found the very end of the garden. A six-foot wooden fence sealing off the boundary. It was quite rotten and was clear that no one had been back here to check on it for quite some time. Now, me being me, I thought it would be a wonderful idea to kick a hole in the rotting wood and see what was on the other side; I was quite a curious and inquisitive kid so I just went for it.
When I made a hole big enough I wasted no time in scrambling through. I found myself in a small, overgrown field. Tall, yellowing grass and thistles dominated the expanse but it was quite easy to navigate my way through. I was tall for a 10-year-old so I could see over the top of it with ease. The Manor House was on my right. I had to stomp down a path to the middle of the field before the surrounding trees subsided and the house came into view. It was huge, more of a Mansion than a Manor. Dark red brick, brown, wooden window panes and covered in thick ivy. I carried on making my path until the field ended and a gravel driveway at the front of the house appeared. The front door was incredible. Painted black wood with cast iron decoration, it was like something out of a Harry Potter film. I noticed a small number 1 etched into the wood; I just assumed it was the house number.
I lifted the cast iron latch and tried to shove the door open but it must have been locked from the inside. On the right of the door, there was a window that looked into what I thought was the living room. I pressed my face to the glass trying to see inside. It was pretty much empty. Old-fashioned wallpaper had been ripped from the walls and there were crayons strewn all over the floor. It looked like a child had ripped the paper down so they could draw on the walls, but the room was so big I couldn’t quite make out what the drawings were. As I mentioned before, I was quite a curious kid, so I scouted the exterior of the house to try and find another way in. I carried on walking along the right-hand side of the house when I came to a small side door overgrown with ivy. We don’t have poison ivy in England so I knew I’d be ok pulling as much of it off the door as I could. You might think this was predictable, but this was genuinely what happened, as I pulled the ivy off the door I saw the latch was broken, it didn’t shut properly so it was ajar, ready for anyone to walk in.
Opening the door and stepping inside, I found myself in a small corridor that led to the living room and what I assumed was the kitchen beyond. I wanted to see the drawings so the living room was my first stop. As I entered, a pungent smell hit me, stale and damp, as if something had died in there. Holding my sleeve over my nose I walked up to the back wall where the drawings were and took a closer look. They were clearly a child’s drawings, simple but had enough detail to know what was happening. My eyes widened as I processed what it was I was seeing. They had drawn a story. A dark story. An expressionless, young girl, I think about my age, was pictured holding hands with a black silhouette of a man, he was terrifying. As my eyes scanned to the next drawing he was beating her with his bare fists, a punch reigning down onto her face, another showing him twisting her arms behind her back, her bones snapping like twigs; all the while the girl was completely expressionless. The last drawing was of the girl locked in a cupboard under the stairs. It looked like she was banging against the door, crying and trying to get out. It surprised me to see this was the only drawing she had an expression in; it was one of true desperation and fear. The man wasn’t in the last picture, but the child had started to write something in black crayon. The letters R U N were shakily drawn onto the wall, but before the child had a chance to finish the letter N it trailed off, the crayon mark furiously running across the wall as if being dragged away. I followed the crayon as it ran across and then down to where the wall met the floorboards. I wasn’t expecting there to be anything else but I was wrong. Splatters of deep red were at the end of the crayon trail as well as on the floor. It didn’t take a genius to realize what it was…Whoever drew those pictures died right after drawing the last one.
I ran. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, right back through the side door, through the field and back into the safety of my garden. My mum was in the flower bed and saw my disheveled appearance.
“Are you okay, love? You look like you’ve seen a ghost back there!”
“I- I’m fine, mum. I just got a bit too into the game I was playing, that’s all.”
I hurried back into my house and didn’t come out for the rest of the day. Something bad happened in the Manor House, and I wanted to know what… But there was no way in hell I was going back there on my own.
* * * * * *
Dylan and Peggy arrived two days later. I hadn’t stopped thinking about what I saw in the Manor House. Who drew those pictures? What happened to them? Who was that man? These questions floated about in my head but I couldn’t figure it out with the little information I knew. I had to tell Dylan and Peggy, I wanted them to come with me.
The day after they arrived, they both came over to my house. “Guys, I have to tell you something but you have gotta’ promise not to tell your parents ok? Swear?” Dylan and Peggy both glanced at each other, obviously hooked on what I was going to tell them.
“Okay,” said Dylan. “What is it?”
“The Manor House…” I told them. “I went there two days ago. I saw… Well, I don’t really know what I saw, this is why we need to go back.”
Dylan was always keen for an adventure, Peggy not so much.
“Alice, what exactly did you see?” Peggy asked, a little unsure of what I was asking her.
“This is the thing,” I replied. “I saw drawings, kids drawings, but they weren’t of dogs, or fairies, or anything like the stuff we draw Peg’s. They were… dark. The last one was just a word, RUN.”
My 10-year-old self couldn’t quite describe the menacing, murderous drawings accurately. But Peggy understood.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked both Dylan and I. “Won’t we get into trouble?”
“Oh, come on, Pegs!” Dylan exasperated at her. “This sounds awesome! Don’t you want to explore?”
“Fine! I’ll go, but I still don’t think it’s a good idea.” Peggy folded her arms and winced as she asked her next question.
“So, when are we going to do this?”
“Now!” I quickly answered back. “I need to figure this out guys and I don’t want to go alone. I’m scared.”
We walked down to the end of the garden, through the gap in the fence, followed the path to the graveled drive, and walked to the side door I found two days ago.
“Through here, follow me!” I beckoned to them. Both Peggy and Dylan followed and I showed them the drawings in the living room. “See?” I said. “What do you think?”
Dylan took a closer look. “I thought you said they stopped with the word ‘run?’” he said, confusion in his voice.
“It- it did.”
Underneath the word, there was a new picture. A little girl in a pink jacket was holding hands with the silhouetted man. It definitely wasn’t there the day before.
“Alice, I really don’t like this. Can we go?” Peggy said this with unease, like she was truly afraid. I didn’t understand why until two days later.
We made our way back into the hallway, and there he was. A tall, black silhouette of a man stood at the end of the hall blocking access to the main entrance hall. All three of us froze, staring into the only part of him that had any features; his gleaming white, evil eyes. The form moved towards us with a jolt. We turned and ran.
Panicked and in shock we raced through the field and I lost Dylan and Peggy.
My parents weren’t home when I made it back to my bedroom. I slumped down onto the bedroom floor, my back pressed against the door and tried to catch my breath. I assumed Dylan and Peggy made it out of the house as I was certain I heard them running after me. Kid’s didn’t have mobile phones back then so it wasn’t like I could text them to make sure they were okay. I had to just hope…
Dylan finally showed up two days later. His mum saw what state he had returned back to his caravan in and thought he was ill so kept him in for a couple of days until he appeared better. Neither of us had seen Peggy. We went to knock for her at her caravan but no one was home. Her parents were very sociable people, so they were probably at the beach or out with friends for the day so we didn’t think much of it.
Dylan and I played for most of the morning. Neither of us brought up the Manor House incident. I think we were both scared to even think about it, let alone talk about it. We were pretending as if nothing had happened and, to be honest, I was more than ok with it. This was probably the one time that my curiosity was curbed through pure, unadulterated fear.
As lunchtime approached, Dylan was getting ready to go home. He left his bike in my back garden so went to go get it.
“Uh, Alice, is that Peggy?”
I squinted to the trees at the very back of the garden and sure enough there she was!
“Oh my god, Pegs!” I cried out. “Where have you been? We called for you but no one was there.”
Peggy smiled. “I’m okay,” she said. “I’ve been playing in the field. Come and play.”
Peggy disappeared back into the trees so Dylan and I followed, eager not to lose her again. We were all stood in the overgrown field, unsure of what to do next.
“I keep thinking about the Manor House,” Peggy casually told us, shocking both Dylan and me.
Peggy seemed so afraid the last time we went, and now Dylan and I were afraid too. How could she seem so nonchalant about what happened?
“Really?” I replied. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I just feel drawn to it. I want to go back inside. Come with me?”
She was very eager for us to say yes, so we reluctantly agreed. Were we mad?! Two days ago we were running from an evil presence in that house and now we were going back?! It was classic, ‘Don’t go in there!’ horror story moment, but we stupidly did it anyway.
We slowly walked up to the front door and decided what to do next. I surveyed my surroundings again, familiarising myself with quick exit routes should I need to run again, when I noticed the number 1 on the doorway was scratched out, and in its place was a freshly etched number “2.” Weird, I thought.
I refused to go back into the living room so this time we chose to explore the kitchen. Peggy seemed a little more anxious now she was back inside the house, which although was a bad thing, it was more normal than her carefree attitude to the situation outside; that unnerved me much more.
The kitchen was tidy, no plates or bowls, kitchen equipment or anything like that left around, but an inch thick layer of dust coated the counters, cupboard doors hung off of their brackets and mice droppings everywhere. It looked like it hadn’t been touched for years. Strange considering someone must have been living here, I mean, who else could’ve added that drawing in the living room? Or changed the door number to “2?”
We had a look in some of the cupboards, wiping away the dust but found nothing unusual or out of the ordinary. Dylan kept a lookout for the silhouette man, but he never showed. Maybe we imagined it? As I was scoping out a cupboard that was full of canned food from 1902, Dylan called out to us, laughing.
“Guys, a crayon just rolled through the doorway…”
“Ha, we’re in a creepy house, you’d think something more frightening would appear through the door than a crayon!” I replied trying to stifle my laughs. Although I was scared, I took this opportunity to laugh down the situation we were in, making it appear like I was less frightened than I was, and to be honest, laughing at a crayon was helping.
I followed Dylan through the kitchen side door that led into the main entrance hall. It was a large room with a double staircase to the right side, double doors that led out into a courtyard at the rear and the dark wooden door with the cast iron decorations to the front. The door was bolted shut from the inside; that’s why I couldn’t get in the first time I came here. Dylan was stood by the side of the stairs, holding the black crayon that rolled into the kitchen. The stairs cupboard door was open and he was transfixed on whatever it was that was inside.
“Dylan? What’s the matter?” I asked as I walked up to stand next to him. When I saw what was inside the cupboard under the stairs I gasped.
“What the..?”
The walls were covered with bloody fingernail scratches, like someone had desperately tried to get out. I instantly remembered the drawing in the living room of the terrified little girl locked in the cupboard under the stairs. This blood was fresh… The person’s fingernails had come off on to the wall they had scratched so much. It was a scene of absolute horror. In a state of disbelief, I noticed something crumpled in a pile on the floor of the cupboard.
“Dylan, what’s that?”
Dylan bent down to pick up the heap of pink material and we realized.
“Wasn’t Peggy wearing this jacket when we came here the other day?” Dylan asked me.
She was. Peggy’s pink jacket was now on the floor of the cupboard under the stairs, soaked in still wet blood. And above it on the only clean patch of wall was a drawing of the silhouette man, his eyes boring into us like he was coming for us next.
A scream erupted throughout the house and that was all it took to jolt Dylan and I from our shocked states and once again run from the house. Dylan dropped Peggy’s jacket and sprinted to go back through the kitchen and out the side door, but our pathway was blocked.
Silhouette man was stood in the kitchen doorway, this time grinning at us; he made no other movement which rattled me to the core. Why didn’t he come for us? Thinking quickly, I remembered the front door could be unbolted from the inside. Dylan followed me to the door and helped me with cast iron bolts. They were heavy and stiff, I couldn’t have moved them on my own. When we saw daylight again I was relieved. The house was so dark and dingy it was easy to lose track of what time of day it was, and something about the light felt safe. I didn’t look back until I was once again in my garden, Dylan behind.
“Where’s Peggy?” I asked, panting and out of breath.
“I don’t know,” Dylan replied, equally as exhausted. “I thought she was following me, but I guess not.”
Just as he finished his sentence, my dad came out into the garden with Dylan’s parents and two police officers.
* * * * * *
“Alice, Dylan. You need to come inside. Now,” my dad demanded.
We obediently followed, thinking we were about to get the telling off of our lives for trespassing, but when one of the officers opened his mouth and started talking I was absolutely dumbfounded.
“Alice. Dylan. I’m sure you are aware by now your friend Peggy Langdon has been missing for two days. Have you seen her in the last 48 hours?”
I literally couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“No, she hasn’t,” I replied in confusion. “She was just with us. We were exploring the Manor House. I know we shouldn’t have been in there, but she was honestly just with us!”
Dylan nodded furiously in agreement as I began to explain everything to the police officers.
“I went exploring on my own about five days ago. I got a bit freaked out because I saw some weird drawings on one of the walls in the house. Peggy and Dylan came back there with me so I could show them and it freaked them out too. That’s when we saw him. The silhouette man! We ran and then we all didn’t see each other for two days. Peggy showed up this morning in my garden and she wanted to go back to the house. We found blood and fingernails and a pink jacket we thought was Peggy’s under the stairs. We got scared and ran again. We’ve all just come back from there… At least, I thought we all came back…”
I trailed off realizing that when we got back to the garden Dylan pointed out that Peggy wasn’t with us.
“A pink jacket, did you say?”
“Yes,” Dylan replied. “It was in the cupboard under the stairs, along with the blood and the fingernails. We thought Peggy must have dropped it when we ran away the first time, she wasn’t wearing it when we saw her today.”
“Kids, Peggy was wearing a pink jacket the day she went missing. Are you sure she was with you today?”
I tried hard to think back to the first day we all went to the house; the day the police claim Peggy disappeared. And I remembered… As clear as day I remembered the new drawing in the living room. The drawing of the little girl in the pink jacket holding silhouette man’s hand. I remembered being freaked out that a new drawing had appeared. I remembered seeing silhouette man standing in the doorway of the living room, and I remembered me, Dylan and Peggy running. Peggy running in her pink jacket… Only, I lost them both when I returned to the garden.
“We were with her right up until I found the cupboard,” Dylan said.
I burst into tears at the realization my friend was gone. It all added up. But I was just with her!? My mum enveloped me in a hug and tried to soothe me but I was just inconsolable.
“We need to investigate the house immediately. If what you are saying is true, then that blood may belong to Peggy Langdon. Thank you for your time, kids. I’m so, so sorry this is happening to you.”
The two officers left and within the hour there were more police officers with their sniffer dogs, forensic tents going up and men in white overalls flooding our back garden; searching the fence and the Manor House for any clue as to where Peggy could have gone. That evening, the tents were taken down as quickly as they were put up and the police left the area. I didn’t understand. Didn’t investigations take a lot longer than a few hours? I was playing with Peggy at lunchtime and now it was almost 10 pm and the police had pretty much left. All but two officers remained and they looked extremely irritated. There was a knock on our front door and my mum answered.
“Mrs. Taylor, may we have a word with you and Alice?”
She called me down from the confines of my bedroom and the scalding began.
“Alice.” One of the officers addressed me. “Did you know it is against the law to waste police time?”
I obediently nodded and waited for him to carry on.
“Good. So you know that making up stories about your friend when they are missing is very wrong and scared her parents into thinking she was dead?”
At this remark, a look of bewilderment spread across my face and I couldn’t hide it even if I tried.
“I wasn’t making it up! It happened! I swear it did! I was with Peggy at lunchtime!” I couldn’t have sounded more exasperated if I tried. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t believe me until he spoke again.
“Alice, we searched that house for all the things you said. The blood, nails, even the drawings… There was nothing. Not a trace. We didn’t even find her pink jacket. There was no evidence to even suggest you, yourself, had been in that house.”
In frustration and anger, I screamed and I cried. What was happening? My head felt completely scrambled and I couldn’t make sense of anything that was going on. Reality was a blur now and I didn’t know what to believe. The icing on the cake what when the officer continued,
“We haven’t been able to find Dylan since we spoke to you both earlier. His mum found a black crayon in his room, but nothing else out of the ordinary. Do you know where he is?”
I shook my head and tried to speak through my sobs.
“He might be hiding at the park. He doesn’t like getting told off,” I managed to say.
“Thank you, Alice,” the officer replied. “And Mrs. Taylor, I think your child may have an overactive imagination. You might want to take her to see someone. Might be ADHD. You know what those kids are like…”
The officer shook his head at me then called his colleague to leave. I was still sobbing away in my mum’s arms. Fatigued and emotional my dad took me off of my mother and carried me upstairs to bed where my mum changed me into my yellow pajamas. I drifted off to sleep quickly through sheer exhaustion.
The next day passed fairly quickly. I slept for the majority of the day and refused to talk to anyone or come out of my room. Every hour I’d look out of my bedroom window to the back garden and try to relive what happened. Try to make sense of it, but no matter how hard I tried to organize the events in my mind, I just couldn’t. It was impossible.
At 6 o’clock in the evening, my parents announced they were going for dinner and tried to persuade me to come. I ignored them and after 15 minutes of trying, they left and told me to come and get them if I needed them. They were going to the pub next door to our house so weren’t far away. To be honest, I was glad for the peace and quiet. I took comfort in being alone, adult’s were untrustworthy in my mind now and their presence disgruntled me.
7 o’clock passed and I did my new ritual of looking out of the window to try and piece my thoughts together when I saw them…They were stood at the bottom of the garden waving at me, beckoning me to come outside. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief and looked again. Dusk was beginning to fall and the sky was an incredible burnt orange color, but it was still bright enough to make out who it was at the bottom of the garden. I sprinted out of my room, down the stairs and straight out the backdoor that led to the garden.
“Peggy! Dylan! I knew I wasn’t lying!”
I raced over to them but before I got there they ran into the trees and back through the hole I kicked in the fence. I chased after them in elation that I knew I wasn’t going mad, or fabricating stories about my friends. They were here, not missing, and I knew it! I knew it! I could hear Peggy laughing with delight, and I followed her giggles all the way to the front door of the house. The numbers 3 and 4 were now etched into the front door and I still couldn’t figure out why but at this point I didn’t care. I just wanted my friend’s back. I wanted to prove to everyone that I wasn’t lying. I hesitated at the front door a little while longer, remembering all the negative things that happened in this house until I was snapped back to reality by Dylan calling my name.
“Aaaliiccee!” he chanted. “Aaaliiccee!”
I took one last look at the beautiful summer night sky and proceeded to follow Dylan’s chant to the living room. No one was in there and the room fell silent upon my entrance. A wave of dread suddenly filled my body at the realization I never actually followed them into the house. I was here on my own. Looking over at the back wall the drawings were there clear as day, except this time, another new drawing was added. The picture of a girl in yellow pajamas with the number “4” scrawled above her head, holding silhouette man’s hand. It was me
|
The first thing Courtney noticed as he pulled his beat up old Ford into Rod’s driveway was the massive gash in the field just east of the farmhouse. It was early January and the ground sat frozen under a thick blanket of snow, yet despite this something had torn a small gorge twenty yards long across the length of the field. It looked as though God, with a great sweeping gesture of his arm, had scooped up a handful of dirt and snow and thrown it away, like a child scooping sand from a sandbox. Courtney couldn’t imagine what could have caused such destruction, but he figured it had something to do with the call he had received begging him to come over as fast as he could. The last words of that call still rang in his head as he pulled up to the house, leaving a sour taste in his dry mouth—make sure nobody follows you.
As Courtney climbed the rickety staircase that led to Rod’s door each board creaked noisily beneath his heavy boots, as if moaning out in pain. Just as he was about to knock he heard a cry from behind him. He spun around to see Rod slipping out of the barn, moving so urgently that he was nearly tripping in the snow. He waved his arms in a come-to-me gesture and Courtney descended the steps, making his way toward the barn, stepping carefully in the footprints which already littered the snowy ground before him.
“What the hell is going on, Rod?” Courtney asked, smiling despite the steadily sinking feeling in his gut.
“You weren’t followed, were you?” Rod’s eyes shifted nervously over Courtney’s shoulder, scanning the road beyond.
“Jesus Rod, who’d want to follow me out here?” The smile slipped from Courtney’s face. For the first time he noticed the dark bags under his friend’s eyes, the nervous grinding of his teeth.
“You see the wreck?” Rod asked, his eyes shifting to the field Courtney had noticed driving in.
“Yeah, what the hell was—”
“I found something, Court. Something fell out of the sky and into my field last night.”
Courtney shifted nervously in the snow, looking first at the field and then at his friend’s face. There was no doubt in his words, no lying in his eyes. Courtney slipped his hands into his pockets, suddenly very cold.
“What do you mean? Like, a plane?”
Rod shook his head slowly, a mixture of certainty and fear on his tired face. He glanced around once more, checking for a final time to make sure nobody had followed Courtney out.
“If I show you this, you need to promise never to tell anyone.”
“Yeah, of course Rod.”
“I’m not fucking around here, Court. I need you to fucking promise.” Rod’s voice was now so shaken that Courtney considered dropping the whole thing and walking away. Only the absolute fear in his friend’s eyes kept him from leaving.
“I promise,” he said, and once more a powerful chill ran through his body. Rod nodded, and rested his hand on the barn door. Before slipping into the building he turned back, locking eyes with Courtney.
“I’m sorry for bringing you into this, but I can’t face it alone,” he said, disappearing into the shadows of the barn, the heavy door swinging shut behind him.
Courtney was left staring at the door, an old chunk of splintered wood and chipping red paint, not unlike the rest of the structure. He’d been in the barn a thousand times over the years, but never had the building seemed so foreboding as it did now. Every fiber of his being told him to turn tail and never look back, but the depths of the old barn called to him like a siren in the night. He found himself wishing desperately that this was some elaborate joke Rod was pulling, but the pit in his stomach said otherwise. Rod’s eyes had told him otherwise. Slowly, as if he was sleepwalking, Courtney moved to the old barn and pulled open the door, slipping into the shadows and leaving the light of the low winter sun behind him.
The air in the barn was still and heavy, smelling of old hay and cow pies, and Courtney felt as if he could choke on it if he were to breathe too much too quickly. A few stray rays of light shone through the cracks in the barn’s ceiling and walls, offering a welcome reminder that something existed beyond the slowly decaying walls of the place, which seemed as if they could close in on the men at any moment, swallowing them whole. An ancient gas lantern glowed lazily on a crate near the center of the barn, and Courtney was surprised to find that its light was not needed to see the thing which Rod had chained to the far wall, a thing which knocked the breath out of Courtney faster than the dank air of the barn ever could.
Courtney hadn’t known what to expect, but the feeling in his gut and the shiver down his back had prepared him for something horrendous. What he saw chained to the wall now was not horrible, but beautiful beyond all words. It looked like a man, but to call it such seemed to degrade the flawlessness of its design. Every curve of its body seemed deliberate and graceful, every ounce of pale flesh seemed pure and smooth. It sat on its knees with its arms chained behind it, hanging its head before the men, its long locks of hair falling like golden thread before its face. Most striking were the massive feathered wings which sprung from its bent back, and drooped now as if pulled down by weights. The being’s entire body was surrounded by a powerful and striking light which appeared to come from no source and lit the far wall of the barn with a white light, as if the thing was hiding a small sun behind its back.
Courtney stood, mouth agape, staring dumbly at the creature as Rod nodded his head in agreement.
“Yep, I felt the same way first time I laid eyes on it,” he said, a note of disbelief still hanging on his voice.
“How…What is it?” Courtney heard himself ask, though he couldn’t recall his mouth moving.
“Well hell, seems obvious enough to me. It’s an angel,” Rod answered, and for the first time Courtney was able to draw his eyes away from Rod’s captive.
“But how is that possible? How did you get it in here?” Words were spilling out of him now, questions hitting him like bullets.
“I don’t know why it came here or how, but it landed out in that field last night. I saw a flash and heard a bang, thought the barn had been hit by lightning. I ran out to see what was wrong and found him in the field, just lying face down in the dirt. Thought he was dead at first, but I guess he proved me wrong. I didn’t know what to do so I drug him up here and locked him up for good measure.” As Rod recounted his night, his eyes never left the wall where the angel hung.
“Does Wendy know?”
“Naw, she’s at her mom’s place, thank God. I wouldn’t want her mixed up in this mess.”
“Yeah, that’s true I suppose. Has it said anything to you?”
“Not a word. I don’t even know if it can. It just sits there and stares at the ground.”
Suddenly, as if on command, the angel raised its head and looked directly into Courtney’s eyes. Its eyes were as golden as its hair, and in them Courtney saw more fear and anguish than he had thought a creature capable of. As he stared into the angel’s eyes, unable to tear himself from its gaze, he heard a whisper in his ears, as if the thing was standing right next to him.
This man plans to kill me. Look behind him.
Courtney looked at Rod, whose eyes were still locked on the creature. Just as he himself broke away from its golden gaze, Courtney noticed the shotgun laying against the wall of the old barn.
“I swear to God that the thing hasn’t moved all night.” Rod sounded more excited than he had all morning. It became apparent to Courtney that he alone had heard the angel’s whispers. His heart was racing now, threatening to burst out of his chest at any moment. He looked back at the angel, whose eyes hadn’t moved an inch.
Please help me. I shouldn’t be here.
“Rod,” Courtney said, turning once more away from the angel’s piercing stare, “what exactly do you plan to do with this thing?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Haven’t really thought about it.” Rod said, his own gaze growing shifty again. “I was sort of hoping you’d have an idea, seeing as you were always the smart one.”
His honeyed words will spoil and rot in his mouth.
“Well, if it truly is an angel, and from the look of it that’s the case, then shouldn’t we let it go?” Courtney asked, testing the waters. The angel was practically singing in his ears now, its voice sweet and melodic, and its freedom suddenly seemed an urgent necessity.
“Let it go? What would it even do if I did? Where would it go, Court? McDonald’s? Pick up a Big Mac?” Until this point Rod had seemed nervous, but now the first edge of harshness slipped into his words, reminding Courtney of the gun only a few steps behind him.
“Jesus Rod, why’d you even ask me out here if you’re not going to listen to my suggestions?”
“I’m starting to wonder myself! Maybe this whole thing was a mistake.”
Something about what Rod said sent Courtney back in time to his boyhood, back to an event that he hadn’t thought on in years. A stray dog, a mutt Rod had found limping around the streets of the nearby town, collarless and mangy. He’d wanted to bring it home and keep it as a pet, and he’d brought Courtney in to help figure out what to do. Courtney knew no such beast would be allowed to live on a farm, especially with a father like Rod’s, and he had said as much. His advice had gone ignored and when Rod’s father found the dog three days later, it was Rod he forced to shoot the animal with his .22 rifle. Courtney had listened to the horrible details of the shooting a few days later as Rod recounted them with horror in his young eyes. A .22 is a small caliber, and when you’re a young boy shooting your pet with shaking hands and tears are clouding your vision, sometimes a single bullet might not do the job. Rod had shot the dog four times before it died, its loud death throes giving way to weak whimpers in the end as it slowly bled out behind the very barn they stood in now. All Rod had said after his story was that it was a mistake, over and over again.
Courtney was jutted from his memory by the sudden sound of the angel’s voice, more urgent than ever.
Don’t let me be that dog, Courtney.
Courtney looked into Rod’s eyes, his hand slowly moving toward the pocket knife that always sat on his belt. Rod nervously glanced at the door of the barn, a million miles away from where the men now stood.
“You could just shoot the thing,” Courtney said, his voice cold and distant as his fingers met the cold metal of the knife. “You could kill it like you did that dog back when we were boys. Make another mistake for old time’s sake.”
“Court… why would you say that.” Rod was sincerely hurt, but Courtney was too far gone to realize it. In his mind the angel revived a hundred dead memories of the times Rod had wronged him in his life, all the while whispering for the man’s death.
“What’s the gun for, Rod?”
“For God’s sake, it’s for defense Court!” Rod said, his eyes slowly falling on Courtney’s knife. “We don’t know what this thing is capable of!”
“You really think this thing would hurt you? An angel?” The being’s voice was begging, pleading that Courtney save him.
“I don’t know,” Rod’s eyes narrowed. “The Devil was an angel once too.” The words meant nothing to Courtney, whose mind had been largely made up for him.
“Let it go, Rod.” Courtney had begun to move forward, his hand resting firmly on his knife. The voice of the angel begged him to kill the man. Its voice was so sweet, so innocent, so urgent. There was a long moment of silence in which neither man moved and time seemed to freeze in the dank confines of the barn.
“I don’t think I can do that Court,” Rod said, tears filling his sunken eyes.
When it happened, it happened quickly. A break was made for the wall. The knife was pulled. Courtney stabbed his best friend over and over again as the angel screamed inside his skull, its cheering broken only by the bang of the shotgun blowing Courtney backwards across the room. Before they knew it both men were lying on the ground, bleeding out and unable to move, like that dog from so many years ago.
And as suddenly as it had popped into his head, the voice of the angel disappeared. Slowly the light began to withdraw into the being, and with the last of his dying strength Courtney managed to turn his head toward it. As he watched the golden hair fall from the being’s head in dirty matted chunks, as he watched the pale skin darken and rot, as he watched the great feathered wings grow leathery and membranous, as he watched to golden eyes turn beady and hungry and the teeth turn into jagged razors, as he watched the beast rip itself from the wall on which it was never truly trapped and crawl towards him in the lamp lit darkness, Courtney became aware of one indisputable and immediate fact: this thing was not, after all, an angel.
|
Okay, so the first thing I’m going to tell you, in the interest of full disclosure and because it’s fairly pivotal to everything that comes next is that I am a drug user.
User, not addict. And I realise that this may well lead you to discredit everything I’m about to say as either lies or the fantasies of some junkie but that’s a risk I’ll have to take I suppose. Everything I’m about to relate to you is true, whether you want to believe it or not is entirely your business. If you want to just walk away at the end of this and forget all about the crazy druggie and their nonsense then that will be no skin off my nose.
So, I’m a drug user. Me and most of the guys were. I know it’s painfully cliché…a bunch of Wall Street big shots who do cocaine but there you have it.
Sometimes clichés are clichés because they’re true and in our case it definitely fit. It wasn’t anything we were into in a big way; however you would define that, which is why I reject the label ‘Addict’. It was never something I HAD to do, just something we did.
And it really did take the edge off, though I realise that’s probably a cliché excuse as well. But after a week of looking at numbers, staring at paperwork, filling out reports, moving sums from column A to column B, it became something to make unwinding that little bit easier.
There were four of us usually, myself, Peter Creed, then there was Raymond, Jake and Blakely. We’d go out, hit up a club that we knew had a reasonably hygienic bathroom and we’d do coke.
Blakely was usually the one carrying and usually the one to get it for us too.
And he was always the one to suggest trying something new, which we always went for, because after a while cocaine had lost its thrill. The first time I’d done it I’d been terrified of getting caught. The second time I’d been exhilarated at getting away with it. But after the fifth, the sixtieth, the hundredth? Honestly all I was worried about was whether I’d have a clean tissue if my nose started bleeding.
I suppose it’s like anything, if you do it often enough it becomes monotonous.
It stops becoming a thing you do because you want to do it but rather something that you do because it’s just something that you do. It becomes part of the routine, dull and predictable.
It stops being fun and becomes just
another aspect of your daily life.
You work nine to five and then Friday night you go do cocaine. So when Blakely had something new for
us we paid attention.
Blakely was the youngest of the group and easily the wildest. He hadn’t yet lost touch with old buddies from his college the way most of us had as work got in the way, hadn’t yet lost that energy we’d had when we felt ready to take on the world. He wasn’t the sort of person you could ever be FRIENDS with but he had this certain something that still made you want to be around him, spend time with him. He had energy, an enthusiasm, and a confidence that made you want to see what he’d do next.
It was a magnetism of sorts, a charisma that drew you to him even if your better judgement told you to keep away.
He had a spark…I suppose it would be fair to say that of all of us he was the one who seemed the most alive.
This is ironic given what happened later I suppose but I’m getting ahead of myself. Excuse me.
So anyway, Blakely. It was Friday night and we were all at some horrid little club the size of a shoebox where the music was too loud, the drinks were watered down and overpriced and the crowd was made up of equal parts thugs and morons. And Blakely, over the sound of the music and the people tunelessly singing along, asked me ‘Have you ever tried White Owl?’
I had no idea what he was talking
about. He was clearly trying to be discreet though not doing a good job of it as it was impossible to have a quiet conversation, and leant closer toward me.
“White Owl! It’s some next level shit!”
“Have you got any on you?” I hollered into his ear and he shook his head, grinning that wide grin of his. That was another thing about Blakely; he would always have this big, stupid smile on his face. Most of us figured it was the coke or whatever pills he was popping at work, giving him that little boost that stopped it breaking his spirit the way it had ours.
“No man, that’s not how it goes!”
“So what is it?” I asked, a little curious as to what exactly he was talking about. He shook his head again.
“No, no this shit, it’s not something you DESCRIBE to someone. Listen…” and at that he jerked his head toward the exit, beckoning me to follow him.
Pushing through the throng of bodies we found ourselves out in the open air, our only company one or two smokers desperate enough for nicotine fix to brave the cold night air.
And he began to tell me about White Owl.
Apparently it wasn’t something that could be carried around with your even purchased from a dealer. It was something far more exclusive than that, available only by invitation at a certain time and a certain place, to a select few who were picked out to get to try it. He’d been invited in by a friend who’d been invited by a friend and so on and so on. Once you were in you were able to select others to join the select group who got to partake of it.
It all sounded like a pyramid scheme or worse, some kind of cult to me, but Blakely was so lively as he talked about it, so eager and excitable that I was a bit curious. And more than anything I was desperate for something, ANYTHING to break the cycle, the soul crushing routine that felt like it had been going on for an eternity.
I was twenty six years old for Christ’s sake and my life was going NOWHERE. I wanted something to add some kind of excitement, some sort of thrill.
Blakely pressed his sweaty palm against mine, giving me a card with a time, a date and a place. Apart from that the only other thing on the card was a large white oval on a black background, with two large dark circles like eyes on it.
“Try it out man. It’s exactly what you’re looking for”
I was honestly still debating whether I would go or not when the anointed day came. Curiosity warred with cautiousness in my mind as the part that was eager to see what exactly was so special about what Blakely was talking about argued with the part that feared that all of this was some kind of trick, that at best it would be a prank and at worst this would be some kind of operation designed to snare unwary drug users, catch us in the act.
And my parents certainly hadn’t sent me to the finest schools in the country so that I could end up with my picture in the paper having been caught in some low rent crack den.
But in the end I wound up taking a cab down to where this ‘White Owl’ stuff was supposedly available, the desire to see what was so special about it winning out over fear and paranoia. The address was for one of those ghastly little places that’s meant to look ‘run down’ or ‘Urban’ but in fact cost a ridiculous amount of money to put together and was usually occupied mainly by hipsters and ‘artists’
desperate to feel like they were seeing the city’s ‘real’ face.
Spending a lot of money to make something look cheap is probably the best way to describe the aesthetic of these places. The one I was driven out to however didn’t seem to be occupied, unless everyone had their lights off at ten of clock on a Saturday night. I got out, paid the driver and made my way to the apartment specified on the card.
A few quick knocks on the door later and I was being greeted by a sight I really hadn’t expected. The person who had yanked it open in a manner which suggested they resented being bothered by anyone was about three feet tall, and dressed like he would be at home as a performer in some kind of carnival or circus.
His face was…deformed. That’s the only way I can think of to say it politely and from the looks of it, the deformity was not one he had been born with but rather something that had been inflicted.
He nodded at me, grunted and then motioned for me to follow him down the hallway.
As I passed a few closed doors I was aware of odd noises coming from behind them but I obviously wasn’t about to go snooping around this place, especially with my ‘host’ right in front of me.
Instead I followed silently to a lounge area where various people sat staring straight ahead. And all of them were staring at laptop screens.
The laptops themselves were set up on desks and had an incredibly strange design. It was as if random bits and pieces had been bolted, welded or wired up to them, none of the additions seeming to serve any purpose or function other than to make the laptops look odd. All the laptops were displaying a blank blue screen except for those that had people sat in front of them, those screens displaying nothing but static instead.
The people had a slack jawed expression on their face, headphones on their ears preventing them from hearing anything around them. It was a very strange sight to be greeted with and I was about to ask the dwarf what exactly was going on when a voice called out to me.
“You came! I knew you would!”
I turned to see Blakely just as he came up to me, giving me a slap on the back, his grin wider than ever, his face sweaty, eyes wide. He looked like shit, in all honesty but he certainly seemed happy to see me.
“Yeah, what IS this exactly?” I asked gesturing around at the people sat at the desks, “What, do they give us a free peepshow while we take this stuff?”
“This IS the stuff. Come on”
He led me to a chair and a desk, sitting me down and handing me a pair of headphones. I looked at him with an expression of confusion and discomfort but put them on all the same at his silent urging, wondering where this was going.
“Okay, now just watch” he said.
I looked at the screen. After a few moments it began displaying static and white noise could be heard through the headphones. I was wondering just what I was meant to do here and if this whole thing was some massive waste of time, if Blakely had been pulling my leg about this ‘White Owl’ thing. But then something happened.
Through the white noise I began to be aware of what sounded like snatches of conversation. The odd word here or there, muffled and hard to make out.
And as I stared at the screen I began to think that I could see something. It was vague and indistinct, like the blurry world a guy with bad eyesight sees without his glasses, or when you try and view something or someone through frosted glass.
But it was there. And I began to think that if I just tried to focus on nothing but what I was hearing through the headphones and seeing in the static, maybe I would be able to make it out. I began to become dimly aware of a shape forming, the white dots merging together to create one huge white mass as the black dots became huge circles in it, like eyes gazing out at me.
A hand on my arm jolted me out of the trance like state I’d slipped into and Blakely was looking at me with a smile as he yanked the headphones from my head.
“C’mon, time to go”
“Time to go? I’ve only been here for…”
I began but I trailed off as I looked down at my watch. I’d been there for five hours, staring at the screen, listening to the white noise. How had I been there for five hours? How could I possibly have not noticed that length of time passing me by? I’d heard of zoning out, losing track of time, but this was ridiculous.
I hadn’t taken anything. Nothing had been snorted, injected or otherwise entered my body. Just the screen and the headphones and the sensation of being on the verge of seeing something, hearing something, to the point where everything else slipped away.
“I don’t get it…all these people just come here and do this all night?” I asked, gesturing at the few who were still there, all still staring at the screens that doped up look on their faces. Blakely nodded.
“The first time’s just a taste man.
When you’re doing it regularly, that’s the real shit”
I really didn’t know if I wanted to be doing this ever again, whatever this was. I was creeped out, frightened by how I’d seemingly lost five hours of my life to static. We walked towards the exit, the little man with the scars holding it open as Blakely explained that the first time was free but after that you had to pay for any future visits.
I asked how much it was, more out of curiosity than any real desire to come back. How much would people be willing to pay to look at a screen? The little man grunted something in what could have been Russian and I looked at him quizzically. In a low growl he said,
‘One thousand’ in English.
“One thousand dollars? What, a day? A week? A Month?”
“Hour”
“On thousand an hour for THIS?”
Blakely was starting to look nervous now. That smile on his face was a little too forced; his skin looking like it was stretched taut over his face. Christ he really did look awful.
“It’s worth it man. Listen, I’ll pay for the next one. Long as you need. And if you don’t like it the second time, that’s it”
He was gripping my arm tighter now, to the point where it was becoming painful. There was urgency, a need in his eyes and more than that, a fear. He looked afraid of something, though whether it was the little man or something else I didn’t know. I just mumbled something like ‘Fine man, it’s your money’ and agreed though I had doubts about whether I’d stick to it.
Blakely looked relieved and the little man gave us cards with the date, time and place of the next meeting and then slammed the door behind us. I suppose the price explained why the guy running this show was such an asshole. If they were charging their customers a thousand and hour for this shit they probably weren’t too worried about attracting new people to these little get togethers anymore.
It was while Blakely and I were walking back together that I asked the obvious question.
“Why is it called White Owl?”
Blakely looked at me confused, tilting his head like a dog looking up at its master.
“You didn’t see it man? Everybody sees it, even the first time”
It took me longer than I would have liked to work out what he was talking about. That shape in the static, a white-ish mass with two large black ovals where you’d expect to see eyes.
Like a white owl. Was that what Blakely was talking about? But that made even less sense than when I had no idea why they named it this.
“What do you mean everybody sees it?
You can’t share a hallucination”
“Everybody sees it man. I don’t know what else to tell you”
We said out goodbyes and I made my way home, thinking about what Blakely had said. It must have been something other than a hallucination that I saw I told myself, some trick they did on the screens. Or maybe even some marginally less low-tech version of those ‘Magic eye’ images you would stare at when you were a kid. It was a trick.
Though that didn’t explain the odd sensations I’d felt while it happened. It hadn’t been exactly like being high, but it was comparable to that. And the time I’d lost, how could that be?
I didn’t sleep well that night. I jerked away with a word on my lips that
I’d never spoken before and didn’t know what it meant. The covers were drenched in sweat, despite the cold of the room and I found myself feeling strangely exhilarated, like I’d been running. My heart was beating fast and my eyes darted around the room. I couldn’t get back to sleep.
I figured they had to have slipped me something or else used some kind of subliminal messaging, some fancy mind-fuck that messed you up. Why anyone would pay to feel like that was beyond me. And yet despite myself, despite every rational impulse in my body telling me to leave this alone, I wanted to go to that second meeting.
I wanted to find out what was so special about the second time that it made people want to come back again and again, pay such huge amounts of money for the privilege of being part of this little group. And I told myself that since it was going to be Blakely paying for it I didn’t really have anything to lose, except maybe a few hours of my time that I’d only spend sleeping or at some shitty bar or club anyway.
Why not try it out, a little voice in my head whispered. Why not see what makes it so special?
The night came and this time Blakely was waiting for me outside, looking anxious until he spotted me at which point he smiled happily and rushed over to meet me, like an eager little puppy.
“I was getting worried you weren’t gonna show” he said and I shrugged, brushing off his concern. Why the hell would he be worried? All me not showing up would mean is that he got to keep his money.
“Whatever. This is probably going to be the last time I do this” was all I said back, the words coming out a little more bluntly than I mean them to. But
Blakely didn’t seem to care, instead hurrying along towards the building, looking back now and then to make sure I was following him inside.
It was the same set up as last time, though a few more people were there now. The headphones went on, I sat before the screen and the static and white noise began to play.
Except this time it was different.
This time somehow the images seemed sharper, the voices more distinct. This time I began to feel more like I understood what I was seeing, what I was hearing. I began to feel immersed in it, as if the static was pouring out of the screen, flooding the room around me, surrounding me in a sea of black and white, all other noise lost in the roar of the sound from the headphones, the sound of voices, many voices.
A thousand, a million, maybe more. All speaking, in hushed whispers or perhaps loudly but infinitely far away, my skin tingling as I watched, as I felt myself being taken somewhere else.
And above it all was the shape, wings stretched wide, covering a thousand miles or more, its eyes looking into me, those black, empty eyes. The White Owl.
As before the session felt like it was over before it began. But this time I didn’t feel confused and irritable, this time I felt…different. I felt charged, energised. I felt like I was overflowing with life, like there was too much energy in me to be contained.
I felt like I could do a million things all at once and still not feel remotely tired, that I could do anything, anything at all.
I felt potent and primal, felt like a lion about to pounce upon limping prey.
That sensation of barely repressed power, ready to be unleashed upon the world. Like I could burst.
Blakely could clearly tell that this time was different. As soon as we were out the door I began to speak, hurriedly and eagerly, a grin on my face that would probably rival Blakely’s own.
“That felt INCREDIBLE!” was the first thing that came out and he nodded, evidently not surprised at this reaction.
“What’d I tell you? After the second time it’s all different”
“I feel fantastic! I feel…I feel BETTER than I’ve felt in…in ever! Like I could do anything, beat anyone, achieve any goal! I want to…I want to run! I want to run and swim and jump and…and HUNT”
The word slipped out without me even consciously meaning to say it. I had no idea why I said it. And yet it felt right, felt good. It was true, wasn’t it? I did, I wanted to hunt. I wanted to see something run before me and to give chase, to run it down, chase it until it was exhausted, until it couldn’t run anymore and then to pounce upon it, to devour it whole. To rip. To tear. To eat.
I was hungry. I was so hungry.
After that experience I started going more and more frequently. In fact pretty soon I was never missing a meeting, showing up for every single one of these little get-togethers the people selling ‘White Owl’ did. I was spending a small fortune on this every month and yet it really didn’t matter.
Because the more I went there, the more a funny thing started to happen.
Things just started falling into place for me. My job, that I’d found so taxing, so draining, became so simple.
It was if each burst of that static, each dose of that white noise had the effect of sharpening my mind, like a knife on a whetstone. As if I was being sculpted, perfected, the dull witted thing I once was being moulded into someone who could overcome any obstacle, beat any challenge.
Raises, promotions and hearty slaps on the back from those above me became a commonplace occurrence at work as I proved myself to them. As I became smarter, more focused. The imbeciles around me, unable to see the solutions
I saw, unable to work to the standard I worked, gazed at me with envy.
“What’s his secret?” I imagined them muttering to themselves.
I won’t deny that there were…side effects. The odd dream I’d had after the first dose became the norm. My dreams became increasingly bizarre. Not frightening I would say, just strange.
I would imagine myself somewhere else. Someone else. Something old and powerful and strong, in a place far from here. Wet grass beneath my bare feet, and the sound of the ocean, the smell of fresh air that had never been tainted by the pollution of man.
I would imagine myself surrounded by things, things that slithered and skittered and crawled, that chattered in a billion strange and ancient voices, in a language not meant to be heard by those unworthy of this blessing. I imagined myself stood with others like me on an island far from ‘civilisation’, in a place long forgotten by the foolish and fickle.
We would sing and dance and run and hunt. We would call up to the sky and hear an answer from somewhere far away and yet close.
I imagined a vast structure, huge and imposing, stretching up to the sky like a tower of Babel, its design utterly alien, utterly unlike anything one would dream up for people to live or work in, covered in strange writing and odd sculptures.
And I knew that there were things living inside it, vast things. I imagine shapes, things I could recall with no great clarity when I woke up, huge fleshy bulks that glistened and shimmered and moved so fast that they made everything else appear to be slow motion. And above it all, her wings stretched out to blot out the sky, her eyes looking down upon us, was the White Owl, the beautiful and terrible White Owl.
Each time I would wake up I would remember a little bit more. Never the whole thing, never the whole shape of what I was seeing but my memories would become clearer. Like they weren’t memories of a dream but memories of something that really happened, long ago. Sometimes I would imagine, just for a brief moment that I wasn’t alone in my room when I woke up. That all around me were things in the dark, chittering and hissing their eyes locked on me.
I imagined they were proud.
I was hungry all the time. I was eating more and more and yet never gaining weight, my clothes getting baggy and loose on me no matter how much food I gobbled down. It was as if the White Owl wouldn’t allow me to put on weight, as if it sculpted my body as perfectly as it sculpted my mind, not letting me get out of shape. It was the same with Blakely and some of the other guys too I noticed.
The first stray dog I killed was probably about nine months into this thing. I didn’t plan to do it or anything, I just…I saw it there. Old and limping and weak. I picked up a can from the sidewalk and threw it, made it run.
It had to run, had to flee. Had to have a chance, I suppose. And then I was bounding after it, pouncing on it, teeth and nails digging, biting, and ripping into it.
I was disgusted with myself after I was done. But for the first time in months
I felt full. I felt satisfied.
After that it became something of a nightly thing for me. Stray dogs and…other things. Standing there with blood under my nails and on my teeth, licking it from my lips. I felt like I was tapping into something ancient and powerful, buried underneath all the layers of politeness and ‘society’. I felt like roaring up to the sky, howling my triumph to the stars. Sometimes I imagined that there were eyes looking back down at me, proud of my accomplishment.
Proud of the hunt.
Then came the night that changed things.
We knew that there was something different as soon as we arrived, Blakely and I. When we showed up at the time and place we’d been told to gather there were no screens set up, no headphones waiting to be comfortably fitted over our ears. Everyone was sat in a circle, a bunch of the regulars and a few of the ‘casuals’…those who either didn’t have the money or the dedication to make it to every meeting, who didn’t do White Owl every time it was available.
How we despised them. How we sneered. They would never understand the full experience, never truly be embraced by this majestic and beautiful thing we had allowed into our heads. For them this was just another buzz, another high. For us it was something transformative. Something holy.
Blakely and I sat down, no one saying a word. We all eyed each other up; all wondering what this could be about. And then the door opened and a newcomer stepped into the circle.
She was tall and dressed in a dark black suit with red gloves. One side of her mouth sported a jagged scar, giving her the appearance of a jagged grin, her short red hair a mass of curls. She held a chain in one hand, attached to a collar around the neck of a man dressed in a wifebeater that was stained a bright red, his arms and face caked in the same. He would take a few lumbering and clumsy steps with each tug on the chain, his eyes bloodshot, his pupils like pinholes.
“This is Jonas.
Jonas is my dog” the woman said, by way of introduction. She didn’t give her name. Her voice was strange and difficult to listen to. At first I was unsure of what it was but something about it sounded hollow, artificial.
Like it wasn’t a real voice at all but one that was being generated by a computer or something like that. And more than that, the voice hurt. She spoke normally and yet it felt like it was too loud, like all the noise in the room was absorbed by it so it was the only thing you were allowed to hear.
“One of you has let me down. One of you has broken my heart with your betrayal.
And Jonas is here to find the betrayer.
One of you has been talking to the police. Naively thinking there is anyone you can talk to who doesn’t belong to me. Naively thinking that they are smarter than me”
Her voice hurt so much to listen to. I could tell it wasn’t just me, the others flinched with every word, looking nervously at each other, all of them thinking the same thing. Which of you was it? And what will she do to us because of it? Every single one of us was afraid in that moment, afraid that all would be punished because of what one had done.
Myself, I was most worried that she would no longer give us the White Owl. The thought of having it taken from me, not getting my regular fix of the White Owl was the worst thing I could imagine.
The woman came to look at each of us in turn, her eyes focused on us with a frightening intensity. Her eyes looked wrong. Her face looked wrong. Not the scar, the scar was hardly the worst thing I’d seen but just something about her was off. It made my skin crawl to be near her. I saw others flinch away as she brought the tips of her fingers near to their faces.
Finally she came to a stop at a sickly looking man. He was a casual user of White Owl, not someone who showed up often but I’d noticed him there a few times. It didn’t surprise me to see that it was one of the casuals who had sold us out. In that instant I hated him, despised him, wanted to tear him apart. How DARE he try and ruin this wonderful thing for us?
He began to whimper and stammer out claims that this wasn’t true, that he would never do this thing but the woman looked like she was looking right through him, like he wasn’t even there. Like nothing he said was being heard.
“Darren
You have upset me”
The man’s face drained of all colour as if he knew that those words would be some of the last ones he would hear in what little remained of his life.
“Hold him”
Two of us stepped forward to grab his arms. He begged and cried and pleaded for us to stop this, his voice becoming higher and shriller as she beckoned for us to bring him, tugging on Jonas’s chain. The blood soaked thing on the chain turned and followed her, the rest of us accompanying them, dragging the kicking and shrieking man with us, knowing that this location was surely carefully chosen so as to make sure that no one would hear him who could help.
We stepped out into the cool night air to see a crowd had gathered. Others dressed in smart suits like us but with the crucial difference that each of them wore upon their faces a white mask, featureless but for two large dark ovals. I didn’t feel surprised to see them. I can’t speak for the others but none of them, even the casuals, looked that shocked that they were there.
Like the woman they were new to us, unfamiliar and yet at the same time it felt like we knew them. Like we had seen them before. And we all instantly knew that they were here to be a part of whatever was to follow.
Darren, the crying and screaming wreck of a man who had earlier been so composed, was hurled to the ground at the woman’s feet. She looked down at him the way one would look at a mass of maggots they had found in their dinner, a look of unrestrained and complete disgust. He got on his knees, sweaty hands clasped together as if in prayer, begging for his life, begging for her not to hurt him, insisting he had done nothing wrong.
She clearly did not care.
“Run”
He looked at her, confused.
“Run
You’ll be given a five minute head start
Then we hunt. We hunt YOU”
He looked at each of us in turn. Did he expect any of us to plead his case? Ask her not to do this? HELP him? What a stupid little man. As if any of us would cross her. As if any of us would do anything that might get us cut off from the supply of White Owl. But then that’s a casual for you. He took off running after a few moments and I looked over at the woman.
And for an instant she wasn’t the same. She wore no mask and yet for just a second, for a split second, her face was not her face at all. Her hair was gone. Her head was bald and devoid of facial features, save for two massive black circles where one would expect to see eyes. Two pitch black sockets that seemed not to merely contain darkness but an absence, an absence of anything at all.
And then it was gone and she was once more as she had been before. Her eyes lingered on me as if she knew what I had seen, and I thought for an instant
I saw a smile there.
We waited for a few minutes and then Blakely stepped forward, eager to begin.
“So do we do it now?
Do we hunt?”
There was a pause. She looked at him, her expression unreadable. Unknowable.
“The five minutes weren’t for him”
The gunshot was louder than I thought it would be. I mean I’d only heard a gun go off on TV before now. In real life it’s really much noisier.
Blakely’s expression slowly turned from that confident, cocky grin to a look of confusion and pain, as a dark red stain began to spread, seeping through his shirt. Dumbly he pressed his hands to the wound, as if not quite believing it was real, red coating his hands as he dropped to his knees, much as Darren had before him.
“I knew it was you Blakely.
I just wondered if you would confess”
I was so disappointed in him. But then Blakely had always been greedy. But to try and sell us out, to sample the delights and wonders of White Owl and then try and earn himself a quick buck by selling us out, it disgusted me. It was strange how little our former friendship meant as I looked down at him, I suppose. But suddenly he wasn’t a friend or even a man at all.
He was traitor.
“The hunt is sacred, Blakely. Do you think I would desecrate it like this?
Traitors don’t get hunted.
Traitors just get butchered”, the woman said.
And then, as one mass, we fell upon him. With nails and teeth we fell upon him, clawing, biting, scratching, gouging, ripping tearing. The sound of tearing clothes followed by the sounds of tearing flesh, as Blakely vanished into a dozen hungry, eager mouths. And he wasn’t even a traitor to me anymore. Now he was meat.
I didn’t feel hungry for weeks afterwards.
You should have seen Darren’s face when we caught up to him…forgive me for chuckling but he really thought we were going to hunt and eat HIM! Oh lord was his face a picture…we all had a good laugh about it afterwards though, once he’d calmed down and gotten himself another dose of the good stuff to calm his nerves. The woman, who I learned after was named Fenris, even gave him that nights dose for free, to compensate him for his troubles. He was a good sport about it after that.
Blakely officially took off on an ‘extended vacation’ after that, during which, as far as the boys at the office and his family members are concerned, he met a beautiful young woman who he eloped with on the spur of the moment.
I’m sure he’
|
I awoke to the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance. I smiled to myself, relishing the quasi-rational excuse to sleep in. I could see light through my closed eyelids, and hear the seagulls squawking nearby. If it wasn’t about to rain, I would probably encourage myself to get up and outside to do some yard work. Spring was finally managing to punctuate a particularly long and snowy Maine winter. I had things to sweep and rake and plant outside, but it would have to wait for another Saturday. I stretched my legs out while cozily snuggling further under the blanket. I swept my feet across the foot of the bed but was impeded by a firm object blocking my path. Slightly annoyed but not at all surprised, I pushed my cat over with my foot so my tall frame could take advantage of the full length of the bed. She reacted to this rude awakening by standing up, stretching her muscles and settling back down for more sleep.
I should probably mention that sleep doesn’t come easily to me, and when it’s disturbed I can be pretty unpleasant. I’ve had a problem with insomnia for as long as I can remember, and take medicine to help me sleep. It works pretty well, and I always try to get enough sleep at night so I don’t fall asleep driving and hurt someone. These current pills seem to make me more forgetful than I used to be, but I can live with that. Not being able to sleep is worse.
As I was drifting back towards unconsciousness, my ears suddenly registered a muffled noise coming from somewhere. It was a monotonous beeping, like that of an alarm clock. Knowing it wasn’t mine, I lay still trying to ignore it, patiently waiting for its owner to wake up and turn it off. After about 10 minutes, I rolled over on my back and groaned, accepting the fact that I wasn’t going back to sleep. So much for cozily napping with my cat during the thunderstorm.
The sound was, as I was now clearly aware, coming from my neighbor’s apartment above me. I lay staring at the ceiling for several more minutes, silently hating him, and finally decided to get up. I sleepily walked into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, my bare feet quietly padding on the old wood floor. I took a shower and sat down at my kitchen table with a steaming cup of coffee, carefully sipping it. As I quietly sat trying to finish waking up, I realized I could still hear the alarm from upstairs. I looked at the clock. 10:11. The alarm had started at nine-thirty. Jesus, that guy must be capable of sleeping through anything. If the alarm is loud enough for me to hear it, it must be blasting in his ears up there.
Maybe he died, I thought with a wicked smile. Or, as I continued to postulate, he’s a jerk who went out of town without turning his alarm off. Probably that one.
I finished my cup of coffee and stepped out my front door, fully intending to yell at this guy if he was home. I clomped angrily up the wooden stairs leading to his front porch. When I reached the top, I could see through the window in his door that his apartment was dark inside. I peered in the window and examined the lifeless interior. I knocked and waited. No answer. I knocked again twice, both times receiving no indication that anyone was home. I walked over to his window and, upon trying to open it, found that it slid up easily.
I leaned down and called in, “Hello?” No answer. I called once more, louder. I listened for any sound coming from inside, but there was nothing apart from the beeps of his alarm. From my position at the window I could see into his bedroom and that his bed was unoccupied. I debated for a moment and decided I might as well pop in and turn the alarm off. I’d come this far and the damnable thing was sitting roughly 20 unimpeded steps from me. He’ll never have to know his privacy was violated, I reasoned.
I opened the window as far as it would go and climbed through. I stopped and listened to make sure I wasn’t about to be chased out by a frightened guy with a bat. Nope, still nobody home. I went into his bedroom where the alarm was blaring and saw clothes scattered on the floor. Dude’s kinda messy, but that’s not that unusual I suppose. I walked over and turned the alarm off. Ahhh, silence. My ears rang as they adjusted to the newly silent apartment, the peaceful sound of ocean waves caressing my ears from the open window. I took a curious look in his bathroom and saw more mess, bottles and things lying around on the counter and floor. Kinda looks like someone was looking for something, or packing in a hurry.
As my eyes finished scanning the room, I suddenly felt something soft touch my leg. I jumped back with a frightened shriek, only to find a cat looking up at me inquisitively. Sheesh. Thing just took ten years off my life.
Given the rushed state of affairs in the apartment, I wondered if the guy remembered to feed the cat before leaving. I went back to the kitchen and found the cat’s food bowl overflowing under a pile of food. The bag of food was sitting overturned next to the bowl.
Something in the back of my mind gnawed at me making me increasingly uncomfortable. The longer I stayed in here, the more I risked being caught in my breaking-and-entering foray. My curiosities and samaritan duties now satisfied, I climbed back through the window, closing it behind me. I leaned against the balcony rail, enjoying the satisfaction of having successfully completed my stealth mission.
Man, this bastard is lucky, I thought. His balcony has a nice view of the ocean over the neighboring houses and treetops. I surveyed the dark clouds looming in the distance, now noticeably closer than before. I’d almost forgotten the encroaching storm. As if on cue to remind me, a crack of thunder echoed across the sky, interrupting the quiet. As I listened to the rumble get quieter and quieter, the same sense of unease I felt before came creeping back, although this time I couldn’t pin it on a fear of being caught. It was quiet. Too quiet. I kept listening for several seconds, fully expecting to hear some kind of noise. Given that I’m in the middle of the city, I should be hearing all manner of sounds right now. I strained to hear a car, a dog barking, music playing, people talking, anything. But there was none. Not even birds, which I found disturbing. Just the roar of the ocean. And the thunder. How long had it been this quiet? I didn’t notice it before.
I’m pretty introverted and also work from home, so I can go days without talking to another human being, and when I do it’s usually the cashier at the grocery store. But this was unnerving. Right now all I wanted was to hear someone’s voice.
I called out to no one in particular, “he-Hello? HELLO?” My shaky voice echoed through the trees and nearby houses. There was no response. The only contact with life I’d had since waking up was with two cats. Loneliness was beginning to soak into me like cold water, and a sound like static on an old television invaded my ears as the panic rose in my throat.
And that’s when I heard it.
Or rather, stopped hearing it. You know how sometimes when you hear a noise go on long enough, it seems to fade away into the background of your subconscious even though it’s still there? Like a loud smoke detector chirping, or locusts in a forest, or the noise of an electric fan? Only when the noise stops do you become aware of it. Maybe that’s what happened. Or maybe my mind blocked it out to protect me from the dread I’m feeling. It doesn’t matter now anyway.
I slowly began backing away from the balcony rail, my mind reeling, until I bumped into the damp vinyl lounge chair behind me. I didn’t hear the sound of the chair’s legs scraping against the wood as I collapsed into it, my legs finally giving way beneath me. My stunned mind desperately tried to explain the noise away as something else, replaying it again and again from where it still lingered in my cloudy memory, burning like ash, making my eyes water. But the sound was undeniable.
It was the city’s emergency alarm. The one they use to alert you of some impending disaster. When I finally accepted that, my memory made a connection. The emergency weather bulletin that came on as I was drifting to sleep last night. Something about a major storm and massive ocean swells.
As the sobering reality washed over me, the static in my ears was reaching deafening levels. But it wasn’t my panic. It was the ocean.
My memory quite often fails me, but usually not quite so colossally. Not with such… finality. A sick feeling of regret tore at me, leaving me in my final moments with only my eternal yet fleeting remorse, and the shame at being the cause of my own demise.
I slowly got up and walked over to the edge of the balcony to look in the direction of the ocean. A monstrous, unforgiving wave was colliding with my abandoned neighborhood.
My heart sank. I was alone.
Credit To – herbalcell
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“I just wanted to say, none of you have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“What’s that, lady?”
“I couldn’t help but overhear—”
“How hard did you try?”
“Don’t give her a hard time. She looks like she has a story.”
“I do. It’s not a story you’ll like to hear, though.”
“Try us.”
“I’m just saying, you all talk like you know these big secrets about what goes on in this city, but you don’t know shit. There’s only one secret. Only one secret that matters, anyway.”
“Are you going to tell us what it is?”
“I am. Not because you deserve to know it, but because listening to you talk made me angry. This story is your punishment.”
“You hear that? We’re going to be punished.”
“I, for one, am petrified.”
“Should we beg for mercy?”
“Ignore them, Miss. I’m very interested in whatever you have to say.”
“It was a few months ago, just before Christmas. It happened because I was the last one leaving the theater. And because I had been Antigone…”
***
It was opening night. For the understudy, it was also closing night.
She would still have a part in the chorus, of course. But tomorrow Evangeline would come back and claim her rightful place as the lead and the understudy would go back to being, well, an understudy. Learn the lines, watch the lead, perform your own small role, and wait, that was the game. Still, the understudy thought, at least I got one night in the spotlight.
Not that they could afford decent lights. They couldn’t even afford a real stage, just an empty room with a performance space marked off. The house manager had added another row of seats in an act of delusional optimism (they could barely fill the ones they had) and now the chorus couldn’t move without elbowing each other. And the costumes didn’t really fit and there was no money to pay any of them and the heating in the old theater did not work anymore, leaving players and audience alike shivering even with as tightly packed in as they all were…
But people still showed up, and the show still went on, and even the understudy couldn’t help but smile a little when she saw the Xeroxed playbills: “Antigone,” with the director’s name right under it and Evangeline’s right under that and the understudy’s own name (in much smaller print) toward the bottom. It was a good show, in spite of everything. A classic.
The understudy was the last cast member to leave. Everyone else had gone out to celebrate, but she found she wasn’t in the mood. She carefully folded and hung the bits of her costume in the single communal dressing room so that Evangeline would have nothing to complain about when she came back from whatever “emergency” called her away on opening night. Glenda, the house manager, was waiting at the door and the understudy thought she might be annoyed at the holdup, but then the older woman smiled and whispered, “There’s a man here to see you.” As if were the most amazing thing in the world.
The understudy picked up her purse and headed for the back door, but Glenda added: “He says he’s a critic.” The understudy stopped. “He says he won’t leave until he meets you. I think he really liked the show…” There was a note of pleading, and beneath that a note of insistence. The understudy wavered for a moment and then turned back toward the front. She tried not to notice Glenda’s smug, pleased expression as she did.
As advertised, a man was waiting in the lobby. He wore a shabby suit of indeterminate color, and a brand new fedora hat. He was not a handsome man; in fact he was profoundly ugly. But when he saw her he grinned in a way that made him look, for a second at least, tremendously appealing. He fanned himself with his playbill and pantomimed a swoon. “Antigone,” he said, enjoying each syllable. The understudy told him her real name, but he waved it off. “Tonight, you’re Antigone. The finest Antigone I have ever seen. I first saw the play in 441, at the Dionysia in Athens, and you were a better Antigone tonight than I saw there, or anywhere since.”
She gave him a non-committal look. He smiled again. “Can I walk you out?” he said.
The correct answer, the safe answer, was no, because simply because a man claimed to be a theater critic (of no particular publication that he had mentioned, she noted) did not make it a good idea to wander off down Taylor Street with him in the middle of the night. And no was the sensible answer, because she had to rest after the premiere and because she felt a headache coming on. And she opened her mouth to say, “No, thank you,” but, somehow, it came out as, “Yes, that sounds lovely.”
The strange man took her by the arm. Outside it was cold and the sky was that distinct shade of black that it only gets in December in the city. The uneven rows of tall buildings with their dark windows pushed higher and higher over them. Lights flashed here and there. The critic began walking downhill and the understudy (for some reason) went with him. He was still talking about her performance. She blushed, but feigned modesty. “I’m only the understudy,” she said. “Our real lead will be back playing the part tomorrow.”
“No she won’t,” said the critic. “Evangeline will never play Antigone again, or any other part.” He said it with such conviction that the understudy was briefly speechless. She felt cold and afraid all of a sudden. Eager to change the subject, she said:
“You haven’t told me your name.”
“Pan,” the man said. He kicked a bottle into the gutter.
“Like the Greek god?”
“Not like him. I am him.”
They stopped walking; the street was deserted, though on the cross street below she saw the glare of headlights and bumper-to-bumper traffic. She gave him another sober look. “Where are your hooves?” she said.
“In my shoes.”
“And your horns are under your hat, I suppose. It’s not a very good line. Anyway, you told Glenda you were a critic; I thought Pan was a nature god?”
“The god of the fields, and of the summits, and the streams and the forest. The god of the shepherds, and the flocks, and the leaves and the grass. The god of the beasts and the spirits and the great far wild places where men are afraid to go but feel compelled to journey anyway. The god of the shadows under the boughs of the trees and the secret places in the furrows of the earth.”
The understudy had been about to laugh at him, but when he was done speaking she found she couldn’t.
“But,” he said, smiling again, “also the god of theatrical criticism. So you see, I am a critic. The first and the best.”
“God of theatrical criticism? I’ve never heard that. What sense does that make?”
“Because in those days plays were dedicated to the great god Dionysus, and I was his favorite companion, so who better to judge which playwrights were worthy and which were not? And because before the Athenians built their theaters the first actors gathered on the slopes of the green hillsides where I spent my days, and they wore the skins of goats, and they would drink and dance and sing in divine ecstasy and pour libations in my honor, and I liked that very much, and blessed their revels.”
He was standing very, very close to her now. The long shadows of the winter night had not improved his unhandsome features, but he had a certain quality (perhaps his voice, perhaps his expressive features, or perhaps just what they call je ne se qua) that made him compelling to watch and be near. He even cupped her face in his rough palm, and she did not object.
“But you don’t believe I really am the Great God Pan, do you, little Antigone?”
“No,” said the understudy.
“Then I’ll prove it to you.”
“How?”
“Come with me.”
It was a stupid suggestion. Stupid, unsafe, illogical, insane. Anyone in their right mind would say no.
She said yes.
The man(?) took her by the hand and drew her away with him; not in the direction they’d been going but down the side street, and then down an alley. It was pitch black but he knew his way. In the dark it seemed to the understudy that his legs were twisted in some unearthly manner, making his gait long and wide. They encountered no one in the trash-strewn alley. The buildings they passed were just dark, blank shapes, black against black overhead. The understudy felt drunk and addled, somehow. Her mind could not focus on any one thing, and the world swam in front of her eyes, as if a film covered everything. It seemed they were moving very fast. When he finally stopped, she was out of breath. He pulled her close (his suit seemed to be made of some coarse hair, and it had a barnyard musk about it) and said, “We’re here.”
She looked around and gaped; she recognized this place. It was the grove. But that was clear on the other side of town, miles away? How could they get here on foot, and so quickly? The leaning trunks of those huge, primeval trees offered no answers. The man with the crooked legs led her down the crooked path as she wavered on her feet, dizzy and uncertain (crooked of mind, she thought). He took her to the place with the stage. In the spring there was a music festival here every year. In the middle of winter it should be empty, but now torches lit everything with blazing orange light. The man sat down and actually pulled her onto his lap. She did not object.
“How is my Antigone feeling now?” he said. Under the brim of his hat his eyes appeared very strange. The understudy groped for words and came up with:
“‘In just spring…when the world is mud…'” She was reciting something from memory, but she did not know what. She giggled, then, uncontrollably. Her head throbbed. She felt as is she’d drunk a great deal of wine.
“That’s good,” said the man. “Now we’re going to see a play. You showed me such sights on your little stage tonight that I thought I should return the favor. This play is called, ‘The Cyclops.'”
“I know that one!” the understudy blurted out. “By Euripides. It’s a satyr play.”
“Yes, and here are the satyrs.” He pointed to the stage with a gnarled finger and the understudy saw shapes converging there. They were men in costumes (at least, she thought they were costumes) of animal hide, with hooves that tromped the boards. They wore masks, but not masks like the understudy had ever seen; though simple painted wood, these masks had faces no human mind could conceive. The chorus (for that’s what the satyrs were) gathered at center stage and, at the strange man’s signal, they began to dance. Not just dance, but cavort, and leap, and even writhe, wretched and mad, heads wagging and eyes rolling. The understudy did not like the way that they moved; it was not natural. She particularly disliked the way that their legs bent. It hurt her eyes to look at them, but the strange man did not let her look away.
“‘It’s spring, when the world is puddle-wonderful, the little lame balloon man whistles far and wee …'” he whispered to her. They were not the lines of the play, but lines from something else. The understudy knew them but could not remember where they came from or why they seemed important just now. The strange man shifted under her, and she felt the coarse hair of his bent legs rub through the fabric of her jeans and heard the stamping of his hooves as he kicked his shoes away. Onstage, the chorus finished their dance and then the chorus leader stepped forward. The understudy knew the play’s the opening lines:
“Unnumbered are the toils I bear, no less now than when I was young and hale…”
And the chorus joined him: “Here we have no gods, no roll of drums, or drops of sparkling wine. Dear friend Dionysus, where are you while we do service to the one-eyed cyclops, slaves and wanderers we?”
When the understudy had seen “The Cyclops” before the satyrs had been funny, even when they complained, and the chorus leader had been old, fat Silenus, baldheaded and hapless. But these satyrs wept real tears and gnashed their (sharp) teeth and tore their hides with their twisted fingers, and the understudy did not like to look at them, or to hear them. Their voices were hollow and full of pain. Pain, and anger.
“This is how the play was performed in the old days, before the theaters, before the Athenians, before Euripides gave it a name and wrote it on his scrolls and gave the parts to mere humans in masks,” the man said, whispering in her ear. “But this is still not, yet, the greatest truth you will see. Watch.”
The play went on: Odysseus and his crew washed up on shore and met the satyrs, and gave them wine, and laughed as the satyrs got drunk and rowdy. The understudy would have thought the Greeks would not be as frightening as the satyrs, but their masks, though fully human, show faces line and creased with fret and grief, livid with anger and bitterness, or wan with utter despair. They were the faces of those who had suffered so much that they hated living. And though the understudy saw the strings that held the masks in place and the empty holes where the actor’s eyes peered out, it seemed, in the flickering torchlight, that the features the masks moved…
The satyrs were warning the Greeks that their master was coming, but Odysseus was not afraid. “For surely the ghosts of Troy will moan in their graves if we flee from a single man after standing with shields steady against the fifty sons of Priam,” he said. “If we die here we will die a noble death, or, if we live, we will maintain our great renown.”
And then there was a voice that made the understudy scream and cover her ears. Even with ears covered, she heard the words boom like thunder:
“What means this idleness, your Dionysian revelry? Here have we no Dionysus, nor roll of drums. One of you will soon be shedding tears of blood from the weight of my club; look up, not down.”
And now the trunks of the trees were shifting as if a huge wind were blowing them around, and now a great shape was stepping through, too huge for the whole of it to be seen in the light of the torches. The satyrs all scattered and the Greeks took up their spears, but most of them fell to their knees or clustered together, shaking and crying, as the cyclops loomed over them with its one huge eye and opened its great mouth to reveal rows of gore-spattered teeth. When it took a step the world shook and the understudy screamed again and shut her eyes and the universe was spinning and mad, and the Great God Pan caught her in his arms. When she opened her eyes, the stage was empty; the men and the monsters were gone.
Pan whispered vile words in a language she did not know but still understood:
“Don’t you like my play?”
He no longer seemed even remotely human, and even the twisted, goat-like legs and horns were gone. Now he was a dark, slithering, shapeless thing, twisting and reforming around her all the time. The understudy blinked through tears. “What are you?” she said.
“I am Pan; my name means ALL, for the Hellenites knew that I was no simple god of the fields. I am the heaviest rocks at the bottom of the earth and the tallest peaks at the edge of the sky. I am the deepest roots of the oldest trees that will never die and the beating hearts of the great beasts that swallow eons in their jaws. I am the long hour between day and night when nothing is real. I am frenzy and madness and death. I am a world that doesn’t care, that dashes your minds and bodies against the rocks and watches you break, and calls it good.
“And when they began to fear me they cut down my forests and plowed under my fields and cut my rocks into columns and roofs and statues. And when Thamus reached Pilodes he told them, ‘The Great God Pan is dead,’ but it was not true. You have paved me over and cut me down and tried to drown me in the poison from your machines, but I can never die. I have always been here. And now I will show you the future of your wretched race. Look.”
He pointed to the stage again. Pale, wretched figures, hairless, eyeless things shimmered into view, things that twitched and writhed, blubbery skin rolling across their bones as they danced. Pan whispered more:
“What you are seeing is a piece called the Dance of the Nephilormus. They reenact the great battle that will take place on this spot, ten thousand years from now, between the human race and the nephil, which for them is ten thousand years in their past. Your kind will suffer and crawl the face of the earth and curse their enemies in that war, and they will call out to me to save them, but I will not. I will only do what I always do: endure.”
“Take it away,” the understudy said, sobbing. “I don’t want to see the nephils.”
“The nephils?” Pan laughed, and it hurt her ears. “These are not the nephil that you see. These are the humans!”
And he laughed while she wept and the vile dancers flopped their shapeless limbs across the stage, worshipping Pan with their suffering. And she wondered, is this real, is this happening, or is this a dream? Did I leave with the others and drink too much and now lie, sweating and afraid, in the back of someone’s car? Or has my whole life up until now been a dream and this is finally the waking?
The dancing went on and on, and soon the whole world spun in a mad circle in front of her eyes, blurring into nothingness, and she was left with just the same words, repeating over and over again in her head:
“It’s spring and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan
whistles
far and wee…”
***
“…”
“Jesus!”
“Lady, what are you on? Where can I get some?”
“Go ahead and laugh at me if you want. It doesn’t matter.”
“Miss, are you all right? Do you need a doctor, or a place to stay tonight?”
“I’m not insane. And I’m not on any kind of drugs. What would I need them after what I’ve seen?”
“Well I think she’s full of it.”
“But I don’t understand; what even happened?”
“Pan liked my performance, so he tried to reward me. But the things that a god calls a reward are the things that humans might call a curse. He showed me the truth about the world.”
“And what’s that?”
“That time and place are illusions. That what we call reality isn’t any more real than a play on a stage. If you were smart enough you could see the seams in everyone’s costumes and the frayed edges of the scenery, like he does, and like I can.”
“So where’s Pan now, then?”
“Hey, don’t mess with her. I don’t like that look she has.”
“He’s in me.”
“What?”
“He’s in all of us. His name is ‘Pan,’; it means ALL, because he’s everything. We’re just nsects pretending that we matter, until the day comes when he’ll…”
“Swat us?”
“Something like that. Anyway, that’s all I had to say. I’m leaving. You can all stay, and drink your beer, and tell your ghost stories.
“And pretend that it matters.”
Credit To – Tam Lin
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This is not a fictional story. This is an account of what happened to me when I was young.
It was a normal day in County Kerry in Ireland, well, what the rest of you would consider to be normal. The likes of you reading this will probably have a job of some vague description or be in some form of education. Not me, I’m a free spirit. I do not, or did not when it happened, attend school. I left early because; well, because school just wasn’t for me. Let’s leave it at that. I was more of a ‘hands-on’ kind of person. I’m not saying I’m stupid because I’m not, it’s just I had a different sort of intelligence than that which was demanded by the education system. Myself descending from an agricultural background, and I’ll tell you this – strange things happen out in the country. Strange, eerie things. Growing up in Ireland I of course heard my fair share of folk tales told to me by my dearest mother. God rest her soul. Tales warning me not to disobey my parents or else the “Tall man” will get me, but that’s not what this is about. I grew up listening intently to these folk tales, because that’s what they were to me back then – tales and fables…just stories. I’m not sure if you readers are aware of one of Ireland’s most famous folk tales (forgive me if I am wrong), a creature known only as the ‘Banshee’.
I’m seventeen now, but when it happened I was around the age of twelve. It was a normal day for me and my little sister, who shall remain nameless out of respect. We were playing out in the fields one late afternoon. The winds of Ireland swept across the barley created waves across the land which rippled in various shades of gold and yellow. The sun was starting to retreat back into the horizon, illuminating the world in rich shades of purple and orange. As usual me and my sister were playing hide and seek in the fields, and me being the older brother I tended to opt for the seeker, just so I could see her smile when she laughed as I found her. On the verge of the field were the woods. Even when the sun cast celestial vibrancy upon the woods, it still remained dark and foreboding. Anyway, we were playing hide and seek when I noticed something just on the rise of the field before it dipped down again. It was like…like this black bag, that’s the only way I can describe it. Just kind of floating there at the bulge. It dismissed it, assuming it was just farming waste, like something had fallen off a tractor.
As I continued searching for my little sister (she was an excellent hider, and some days I wouldn’t even find her at all. Causing my mother to panic rather frequently) through the barley this black bag thing managed to keep itself fixed in my peripheral vision. Again I dismissed this, thinking it was that cause of the wind fluttering the ‘bag’ around. I noticed some movement in the barley about 20 metres from me, so I crouched down and silently waded through hoping to find my sister, and hoping that the sound of the wind would mask me. As I hoped for the sound of the wind I heard something quite different. Like, a sort of wailing, a very faint and distant wailing far in the distance. I stopped and listened intently and made a ‘cup’ over my ears. The sound of the wailing merged with the whistling of the wind coming through the woods, almost like the sound of a kettle boiling. I crouched there listening for X amount of time, thirty…maybe forty seconds. My sister jumped up from hiding and ran to different location, which made me jump out of my skin.
That bag blew nearer to me and was now in my sight, just floating there. I began to be creeped out. It seemed like it was following me. I shouted to my sister that the game was over and that we were heading back inside. My gaze was fixed upon this black bag which seemed so ominous. My sister appeared at my side, she looked up at me and I down to her. She knew that look, I wasn’t joking around. I told her to go back to the house which was just over the wall and a hundred yards down the road. She obeyed, as she knew that tone I gave her. I made sure she got over the wall safely, and then I turned to where the bag was…or at least where it used to be. It seemed to move across the field in a zigzag pattern…towards me. I froze with shock as I didn’t know what to do, and all I could do was watch this bag come closer and closer. The wailing became louder and louder, like the sound of shellshock.
After what seemed like an eternity the bag was in range of being able to distinguish what it was. It wasn’t a bag. It was…some sort of black robe (Much like the Witch King form Lord of the Rings). Tattered and torn, the bottom of it stained. I stood there, mouth open. In terror, I watched this thing come towards me, this bundle of rags float across the field. The wailing became louder and my heart began to pound, trying to escape my chest. Sweat flooded off of me. All I could do was watch this thing come closer and closer and closer…
The bundle of rags stopped several metres in front of me and the wailing stopped. All I could hear now was my heartbeat in my ears, like some ancient primal drums of war thumping away. The bundle of rags rose from the ground and emitted a blood-curdling shriek. A piercing scream which deafened me briefly. I held my ears and felt the blood trickle out of them. A hooded entity filled the robes. It stood tall and thin, long white hair flowing out of the hood. It then turned to me, and looked right into my soul. I felt this sharp pain in my chest. I clutched my chest in agony and writhed on the ground. It let out the same deafening scream and I noticed through fighting back tears that it was a woman. Pale and hollow she looked. It pointed at me with her long, skeletal fingers and then it pointed in the direction of my house. It then looked directly back into my eyes, and as quickly as it attacked me it disappeared into a bundle of rags on the ground.
I lay there in the earth, panting, sweating and looking at the bloodstains on my hands. I lay there, in pain and in fear. It was then I realised what I had just seen. The Omen on bad news and death. The Banshee. It wasn’t coming for me, it came as a warning! I had to get back to the house. I stumbled up from the earth and eventually ended up in the house. I found my sister standing in the kitchen, silent, in shock. She didn’t hear me crash through the door. I startled her when I touched her on the shoulder. She looked at me in horror, tears streaking her face. Speechless. She looked at me then looked to the floor, where my mother lay. Dead.
Authorities report she died of a heart attack.
But I knew what really happened.
Please wait...
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Log found on IP ████████████ on December 15th, 2003. Nothing else in the memory other than the following that are dated the entire month of September. Laptop was found in ██████ ████████████’s apartment after her Mother called authorities to search for her daughter after a very disturbing voicemail was left on her cell phone the previous evening.
We would like to thank the ████████████ family for allowing the public to view the following logs from their daughter.
September 1st, 2003 4:39:02pm EST
Fully moved into the new apartment! Can’t believe it’s taken two weeks to clean this place up considering I didn’t have much to bring with me to begin with. Thanks a bunch to my Mom for buying the furniture I needed and letting me keep her old dresser to use in the bedroom.
I can’t believe this place is so cheap. Who would want to give this up? Whatever, their loss is my gain!
September 1st, 2003 8:07:29pm EST
Well there is one flaw to this place, the closet door doesn’t stay shut. I hear it click and then two seconds later it opens right up. I’ll talk to the landlord tomorrow and it should be fixed in no time. No biggie.
Noticed I have no neighbors next to me or across from me. Wonder if anyone is going to move into those apartments any time soon?
September 2nd, 2003 7:23:01am EST
Must have had too much wine last night because I woke up on the couch. The cable is officially hooked up and I can only watch television and go online in the living room. The bedroom doesn’t seem to let me do anything at all, couldn’t even get a damn lamp plugged in. I knew this was too good to be true, everything was perfect when I came to see the place and it all fucks up the second I move in! Figures!
Put a few of those lights Mom bought me for the closet on the night stand and such. At least there will be SOME light in the room when I go to bed tonight. That closet door was wide open again. I spoke to the landlord and he said he’ll send someone to fix it soon. I should tell him about the bedroom sockets as well.
September 2nd, 2003 3:54:48pm EST
Emailed my editor everything he needed from me, it takes fucking forever for him to get shit done. Hopefully being out and away from my parents will help me write better. Still got a nice pretty penny from the last two books but this one needs to go through pronto so I can hopefully get a new place after this lease is up. Not for nothing, but if this doesn’t get fixed I might as well just live in a cave.
I thought I was going nuts for a second this morning. Heard water running and when I looked nothing was turned on but there was a huge puddle on the floor. I have a chair against the closet to keep it from opening, I keep getting the wullys whenever I walk by it. Creepy.
September 2nd, 2003 9:45:59pm EST
My editor told me I have to go to a signing tomorrow. Way to give me notice for this sort of thing so I can get ready for it. Have to go to ██████ ████████ for it and it’s only three blocks away so that’s a good thing. I think a few of the shoe boxes I had on the top shelf of the closet fell cause a little while ago I heard a loud thump from inside of there. I’ll fix it up tomorrow.
Landlord said the handy man is on vacation so in a week that closet will be fixed.
September 3rd, 2003 5:32:55pm EST
Rough day. Woke up and the closet was empty. EMPTY. No fucking idea where any of my clothes and shoes are at all. I had to run to the store in my pajamas for something to wear to the signing. Once it was all done a woman asked me if I lived in the ██████ complex, when I said yes she did this prayer at me. Weirdos live around here.
Whoever it was that was fucking with me left my clothes on the couch in boxes when I got home. Thank you for being an asshole. Closet door was wide open and the only thing they put in there was a potato peeler. It wasn’t even the one I own.
September 3rd, 2003 10:03:41pm EST
No internet in this bedroom but at least I can write in the word processor. That’s good enough for me, I write better when I’m in bed. Everything is back in the closet and the book signing was a hit, sold a bunch of copies and even got to announce a date for when my new book comes out. I tried to call Mom to tell her but she let that phone go right to voicemail as usual.
Already was asked about doing a short story to release after this book goes through. I should pull out something from a while back and edit it and such so I can hand that to them. It’s better than nothing right now.
████████████, ████ ██████████████████@yahoo.com 3:01:23am EST to ████████████, ██████ ████████████@gmail.com
YOU SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THE HINT WHEN WE LEFT YOUR SHIT IN THE BOX. NOW LOOK AT YOU. SLEEPING THERE. YOU LOOK SO PEACEFUL. WE ARE GOING TO RUIN YOU. EVERYONE GETS ONE WARNING. ONE. WE WILL HAVE SO MUCH FUN TOGETHER, YOU’LL SEE. SO MUCH FUN.
September 4th, 2003 12:28:55pm EST
You see that fucking shit? That was in my email this morning. Opened up my laptop and saw it was already opened up to the damn message. When I tried to write them back it says the email doesn’t exist and when I contacted yahoo they told me no email was sent to my IP address at all.
This is all some sick joke from my publisher. Trying to ‘scare’ me so I’ll have a good story to tell people at the next signing. They need to stop this shit soon because I’m tired of all the jokes. There was a dead bird on the floor of the kitchen this morning and it looked like someone made it fly into a few walls a few times. I had to call someone to pick it up. I wasn’t going to touch that thing, who knows what was on it or what kind of shit it was infected with to make it go nuts like that.
September 5th, 2003 6:52:03am EST
Had myself a nightmare that would make Hellraiser shit himself. I was just being tortured and there was all this laughing. All I could really see was my bed, it’s freaky, I swear to you it was like it was all going on from inside of the closet. I can’t get back to sleep at all, I am shaking right now I’m so spooked.
If the handy man doesn’t come back from his vacation soon I’m gonna nail that damn closet door shut and live out of a suit case.
September 5th, 2003 3:14:15pm EST
I’m probably just over reacting over everything, right? Living alone and then stress from this book deal going through. I’m probably scaring myself by thinking too much into it. That email was probably a joke and I’m wound up so tight I’m sure I can shit out a diamond anytime I want.
I need to relax and just try to clear my head. No writing, no nothing. A whole day of that. That should help a bit, a mental rest. Sounds good, right?
████████████, ██████ ██████████████████@yahoo.com ██████pm to ████████████,██████ ██████████████████@gmail.com
4:00:00PM – YOU LOOK SO WIRED. YOU SHOULD TRY TO RELAX MORE. THAT DREAM WAS JUST A LITTLE TASTE OF WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU. WE THOUGHT YOU WOULD LIKE A TEST RUN.
5:00:00PM – THAT’S A GOOD GIRL. LAY DOWN. PRETEND THIS IS ALL IN YOUR HEAD.
6:00:00PM – YOU FELL ASLEEP. HOW CUTE. YOU SHOULD TRY EATING A BIT MORE FRUIT IN YOUR DIET. YOU DON’T TASTE VERY GOOD.
7:00:00PM – WHY DO YOU LOOK SO CONFUSED? YOU ENJOYED WHAT WE DID TO YOU WHILE YOU NAPPED. SQUIRMING AND ARCHING YOUR BACK. WE DIDN’T WANT TO WAKE YOU SO WE DIDN’T RE-DRESS YOU.
8:00:00PM – YOU ARE SUCH A TROOPER. THINKING YOU DID THAT IN YOUR SLEEP BECAUSE YOU USED TO SLEEP WALK AS A CHILD. DON’T WASH OUR TASTE OUT OF YOUR MOUTH WITH THAT WINE AS IF YOU DISLIKE IT. YOU LOVED IT BEFORE.
THAT’S RIGHT. GO TO BED. JUST SLEEP. WE WILL HAVE SO MUCH FUN TONIGHT. WE EVEN PUT THIS HERE IN YOUR LITTLE FILE FOR YOU. SAVED YOU THE TROUBLE. SWEET DREAMS.
September 18th, 2003 8:05:23pm EST
How the fuck did I miss this much time!? I woke up doing the fucking dishes and I can’t remember shit! Nothing! That closet door is wide fucking open, a letter is on the table from the handy man saying how glad he is that I fixed the problem on my own.
What the fuck!? And that email?? What the hell is this shit?? I called Mom and yet again got her damn voicemail. Why the fuck does she have a phone if she doesn’t answer it!? I called the cops, I’m waiting for them to come by.
September 19th, 2003 3:07:21pm EST
The police are useless. They said there is absolutely nothing they can do because that email address doesn’t exist and there is no IP address to track it to. They said I should leave cameras up to tape what is going on but I have to ask my landlord if I can and that fucker went on vacation and won’t be back until next month! Useless shitheads!!
I am going to sleep at a hotel tonight. I can’t handle this.
September 23rd, 2003 3:47:03am EST
Another time lapse. I’m back in this apartment. I don’t know what is going on I’m in the bathroom because something is at the fucking door. I woke up halfway inside of the closet and I bolted in here.
I’m just waiting for that shadow to go away so I can get my phone and call my Mom so she knows I’ll be back home. She can have our neighbor come by with me to get my shit. Or not. I don’t fucking care. I want out of here now. I hate this so much.
WHAT THE FUCK. IT LOOKED LIKE A FUCKING TONGUE UNDERNEATH THE DOOR. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS. I CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE. I’M GOING INSANE.
September 25th, 2003 5:55:01pm EST
I’m in the apartment next to mine. It’s empty and I can’t find my phone and no one is answering the house or anything at all. It’s like I can’t get a hold of anyone. The neighbors are all quiet. No one is answering when I knock. I KNOW they are home. I heard one of them lock the door when they heard me knocking.
I can’t do this. I passed out in the bathroom and woke up bent over the kitchen table. I keep tasting this nasty shit in my mouth and NOTHING gets rid of it. I can’t even go to a damn hotel or anywhere without waking up back in that apartment. Come on, SOMEONE pick up the fucking phone!!! ANYONE. I JUST WANT OUT.
September 26th, 2003 9:33:45pm EST
I’m awake. I’m wide awake. I haven’t slept and I’m trying to conserve my laptop battery in case someone signs on fucking ██████ so I can tell them to get me. I tried to leave. I did. I opened the door and it led right to my bedroom. I have an old dresser against that door to keep anything out and away from me.
I have claw marks all over my thighs and my back. I don’t remember these ever being there within the last couple of hours. It’s like they appeared out of thin air. The longer I stay here the more things start coming back to me from when I blacked out.
I don’t want to fucking remember this. No. NO. NO IT WAS JUST A BAD DREAM. ALL OF IT.
September 29th, 2003 3:00:00am EST
I fell asleep. Why did I fall asleep!? Why didn’t I stay awake!? Videos. There are videos on my laptop. I watched only a piece of one and I can’t stand it. That isn’t me. I refuse to believe that is me. I refuse to.
I called my Mom and left her a voicemail. Please, oh god, please answer your fucking phone, Mom. Please!!!!
September 30th, 2003 8:09:12am EST
I’m exhausted, I’m naked, I’m hungry. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I want to end it. Those videos. These memories. All those things done to me. It wasn’t even like the nightmare, it was all some kind of sadistic sex joke. Those things… Those were’t human. No. I can’t do this. I don’t want to write about what …No.
I spaced out for a bit. I hear someone walking down the hallway. I know those footsteps. Mom!? I think she came. Oh my god thank god! Thank god!
File ██████████████████, Case ████████████098
Date: July 28th, 2012
Gender: Female – Age: ██ – Height: ███ – Weight: ███
Name: ██████ ████████████
COD: [DATA EXPUNGED]
Medical Examiner’s Report:
Victim is a ██ year old Female, she appears to have died ██ days ago. According to her Mother, █████████ ████████████, her daughter’s birth date is ██████ ██, ████. Though from tests done she has not aged one bit at all, note that further investigation is needed for a timeline over the pass nine years.
Victim was subjected to extreme sexual torture such as [DATA EXPUNGED] as well as mental trauma. She is missing her canine teeth and they appear to have been taken out by her own hand.
The female ripped her own hair out of her head and wounds along her stomach prove she tried to scratch something out of her stomach.
UPDATED: Test results show ██████ gave birth before her death approximately two months ago. Any and all other information on this case is being moved to [DATA EXPUNGED].
Credit To: Savannah Rodriguez
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I met my girlfriend’s nightmare on the night of our three-month anniversary. It might have just been that point in our relationship — the point when she had grown to really trust me — but it was probably the champagne.
We fell asleep together on her couch and I woke up to the sound of screaming. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. The scream was so intense, so full of fear and horror, that it shot through me like an electric needle in my spine. I leapt over the back of Kaylee’s couch and I was standing ready for a fight when I realized that it was Kaylee screaming.
She was on the couch with her hands to her sides and her fists clenched. Her skin was ghostly white in the light from the TV and her mouth was open far enough that it hurt to look at. Her eyes were open too, but they were just staring upward, blank and black.
She was still screaming.
I jumped back over the couch to shake her awake and I landed on the empty champagne bottle. My feet went out from under me and I hit the hardwood floor with a meat-slab thud.
The bottle clattered and spun away across the floor.
The screaming stopped.
After a moment, Kaylee’s head poked over the edge of the couch and looked me in the eye. “Danny? What are you doing?” she asked.
“You screamed,” I explained.
She didn’t say anything, but she bit her lip and her head disappeared back over the edge of the couch.
I crawled to my knees and looked over the cushions at her. She was sitting scrunched in the corner of the couch and she was crying.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
She blinked at me and I watched her swallow the tears. “I have a nightmare,” she said, wiping her face.
Something told me it would not be a good idea to say, “So what,” so I kept my mouth shut. Instead, I sat down next to her.
When I took her hand, words started to pour out of her mouth: “In my dreams there’s this little man. He’s horrible — like little gnarled troll with shiny black skin and long, white hair. He crawls up the bed and sits on my chest.” She placed her hand on her sternum as she spoke. “I can’t move, I can’t even whimper. It crawls up to my mouth and — Danny, I swear it sucks out my soul.” She looked at me, her eyes glistening in the dim blue light of the room. “You’re not supposed to die in your dreams but I die every night. And when I die, when that thing kills me, that’s when I can finally scream.”
As I listened to her, the last three months started to make sense. Particularly why she’d never let me stay over. I’d been more than happy to give her space but this…
“Kaylee…” I whispered, “…You should have told me!”
“What?” she asked, wiping her eyes.
I turned and grabbed her shoulders so we were eye to eye. “Anything you need me to do, I can do. I can keep you safe. If you need me to sit up all night and make sure the monsters don’t come I’m your guy. Hell, I’ll sleep at the foot of your bed and be your guard dog.” I gave her a shake. “I’m your guy.”
She stared at me in silence, her dark eyes searching my face.
“Kaylee, I love you, I won’t let you be scared for one second more than I have to. I promise.”
And that’s what we did. I slept beside her that night, my arms curled around her protectively. I felt the rise and fall of her chest and I felt it slow until I knew she was asleep and it was safe for me to fall asleep too.
As I lay there falling asleep, thinking angry thoughts about what I would do if I could get my hands on that creature, I could have sworn I heard the scritch of tiny feet on the floorboards beneath the bed.
Kaylee and I had known each other for two years before we fell in love at first sight. I moved to Oregon in 2012 and got a job at a little factory. I’m not going to name names, but we make fruit baskets. She was a receptionist and the first person I saw on my first day. Every day, for six hundred days, I walked past her desk and we said hello and generally ignored one another.
A day of angry, pounding rain changed that. The road to the office had become a river. I saw a little, metallic-blue Honda abandoned on the shoulder and Kylee, drenched and wretched, hiking along the road with her head down and her dark hair a dripping sheet over her face. I had to pull over — I couldn’t leave her like that.
After work, it was natural to ask after her car and to offer her a ride when I learned it was in the shop for a week. The next night, it seemed just as natural to ask her to dinner first.
I’d started our relationship by protecting her, and I think that was why it was so easy to make the promise to protect her from her nightmare — but I didn’t know that it would be an impossible promise to keep. Every night, I lay beside Kaylee listening to her breath and waiting, then, just as the world started to disappear behind the swirls of purple and red behind my eyes, she would scream. Twice, I stayed up all night lying beside her and both times she slept through the night. But if I fell asleep for even a second I woke up to Kayle screaming.
Last week, I talked her into going to see a doctor. She didn’t like the idea at first. Her parents took her to doctor after doctor when she was a kid and nothing worked, so she reasoned that nothing would work now. It wasn’t easy, but I convinced her that maybe medical science had made some advances since she was in pigtails and PJs.
And I was right. We talked to this blonde psychologist with a permanently scowled face and horn-rimmed glasses. She gave Kaylee some pills that she said might help. Well, they helped…in a way. I guess — this is what the angry psychologist told us — everybody is paralyzed while they sleep. It’s something our body does to protect us from flailing about in our dreams. For some people, people like Kaylee, the paralysis lasts after we wake up. She would wake up and not be able to move and then her still-dreaming mind would conjure a little creature that was the cause of her paralysis.
The pills kind of turned the paralysis off, as I understand it, but they came with a warning. “Pills may cause you to move in your sleep.”
The first night she took the pills, she didn’t dream about the monster.
I did.
I woke up to a pair of swirling green eyes, peering at Kaylee out of the dark at the foot of her bed. He inched toward her and I saw a black shell that glistened in the dim light from the window. A mane of white hair stood up on top of a face that nearly human except for a hooked, witch’s nose. He reached out with a tiny hand and a clawed finger and touched Kaylee’s foot. She groaned and rolled over in her sleep and he jerked back in surprise.
Then those green eyes turned toward me. He crept forward slowly, inching his way over the foot of the bed. His claws snagged on the blankets as he moved toward me. I felt him touch my feet with a hand as cold as snake’s blood and I wanted nothing more than to jerk away, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t twitch. I couldn’t shift or kick as he crawled up my leg. I wanted to scream as his claws caught the skin on my chest and I wanted to cry when he leaned over my face and grinned with a hundred little needle teeth.
Kaylee saved me. She rolled over in her sleep and slapped me in the face. I woke up midway through falling off the bed. All the blankets came with me and I fell in a tangled pile.
I stayed still for a moment, remembering the dream, until Kaylee’s head appeared over the edge of the bed.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You thwacked me,” I told her, feeling the side of my face. It hadn’t just been a light tap. It felt like she’d punched me. She apologized about a hundred times as I got back into bed. I told her it was okay but I was distracted.
I could have sworn I saw something under the bed. A pair of green lights that faded into the shadows almost as soon as I saw them.
The next morning, Kaylee and I had a fight on the way to work.
“– You don’t think I’ve tried to get help before?” she demanded.
I swerved around a little white sedan and pulled into the fast lane. The ancient, blue Chevy I drive doesn’t have much on maneuverability, but it’s imposing and people usually get out of my way.
“I don’t know — you won’t talk about it!” I said back — a little louder than was strictly necessary. “But I do know that you don’t quit therapy after one session.”
“Fine!” Kaylee yelled, much louder than me. “You want to know? You want to know how my screaming in the middle of the night would wake up my parents? How I slept with a nightlight until college? You want to know how my parents took me to the doctor and the doctor accused my dad of abusing me? That the doctor blamed it all on stress and the only way a little kid could be stressed out was if my dad was…I’ve had night terrors for a long time, Danny. I dream about a little creature that sits on my chest and sucks out my life. I feel myself die every damn night!”
She didn’t say anything else and I didn’t know what to say.
Kaylee looked at me and, very quietly, said, “Go ahead and do it Danny, we both know you’re going to.”
“Do what?” I asked. It was hard to keep the frustration out of my voice.
“Break up with me.”
I didn’t say anything. Instead, I pulled the truck over against the curb in front of the office. I put my hand on her leg before she could climb out and waited until she was looking at me before I spoke, “I’m here Kaylee. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. What the hell else do you want from me? I just…” I paused and looked my girlfriend in the eyes. “I feel like you shouldn’t be able to be that afraid when I’m there. I should be protecting you. I’m supposed to make you feel safe.”
Kaylee hung for a moment with her hand on the door handle. Then her face turned hard and she opened the door. “I’m sorry my being insane hurts your feelings, Danny,” she said as she jumped out.
There wasn’t much of a point in staying at Kaylee’s that night so I slipped by after work to grab a few things and went home. Kaylee was going to get a ride with one of the other receptionists. I found three messages on my phone when I got home. The first two were pretty standard apologies, but in the last one she was almost in tears. I started to call her back, but I didn’t have any idea what I would say to her so I turned off my phone and to bed early.
I woke up in pitch dark. I wasn’t sure why so I froze and listened to the room.
Something touched my toe just as I was about to fall back asleep. Something lifted itself over the edge of the bed and sat on my foot. Something that had claws like a rat — a two foot tall rat — touched my leg. I crushed every impulse to look at it, to jump out of bed or to scream like a little girl.
Keep still. Figure out what it is. Then kill it, my own voice said in my head.
One thought lay heavy in my mind. I remembered the sound of scratching and the eyes under the bed. What if Kaylee’s nightmare wasn’t a nightmare? What if it was a monster.
That would be good. Monsters can bleed.
The creature crawled up to my chest with agonizing slowness and I kept repeating to myself, You’re mine. You’re mine.
When the monster reached my neck, I moved.
I shot out of bed with the corners of my blanket in my hands. As I stood, I folded the blanket into a sack and something squirmed and thrashed around inside. I bunched the ends of the blanket in my hands, wound up like I was going for a home run and slammed the creature against the wall.
“You like that, don’t ya!” I screamed and I slammed it into the wall again. “Picking on people when they’re sleeping!” Again. “Messing with my girlfriend!” Wham. “You picked the wrong guy this time, didn’t you?” Thud. “Didn’t you?” Thud. “Not quite as heavy a sleeper as Kaylee, am I?” Thud.
I stopped. The blanket hung limply from my hand, the lump inside was still, but it made little squeaks of protest. I was breathing hard and there were dents in the wall. Blue stained the blanket in a few places.
“One more to grow on,” I said. I kicked the lump and it squealed in pain.
I tossed it on the bed and flipped the blanket back. In a flash of black, the nightmare tried to skitter over the side of the bed. I didn’t let it get away. I hauled it back by its tiny leg and pinned it down with one hand. We stared into each other’s eyes. The nightmare’s eyes were bright green and malignant beyond anything that I had ever seen. Its face was covered in black shell, but now blue liquid leaked out of cracks in its carapace and colored its white hair. The creature looked at me and I let my face slowly break into a grin. I opened my hand and dropped two chalky, yellow pills beside the creature’s cracked face. Kaylee’s pills. The creature’s green eyes followed them, uncomprehending. I punched it in the face as hard as I could. Its shell made a disgusting cracking noise like someone walking across a floor of cockroaches. Then the nightmare screamed. It screamed so loud that I flinched a little and I almost let it loose. But, it didn’t try to get away. It writhed on the blankets and it shrank and shriveled up like a piece of jerky. When it was just a twisted black thing the size of my thumb, it exploded into black dust and ash and, before I could react, the dust was gone too.
I stared at the space where the nightmare had been. I looked around the room at the dents in his wall and the blue goo on the blanket.
I went to the kitchen and got enough paper towels to clean the blue smears off the wall. I changed the blankets and tossed the stained ones in the dumpster outside.
The bed was nice and cozy and there was a smile on my face as I wrapped myself in new blankets.
…And I woke up.
My apartment was quiet and dark. I got up and found the light but when I turned it on…everything was normal. The blankets I had thrown out were still on my bed. The dents in the walls were gone.
My elation slowly drained away and was replaced with a cold pit of frustration.
It wasn’t a monster. It was a nightmare. You can’t kill a dream.
These days, I wake up from my dream where I fight the little monster about twice a week. Some nights I win. Some nights it gets away. Some nights Kaylee wakes up screaming and we fall back asleep together. You can’t kill a dream, but you can share one.
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The people of Acton, Massachusetts knew the devil walked among them. How else could they explain how routine death was? Their only bulwark against oblivion was the small stone chapel that had been erected in the center of town. It was there that the congregation met every Sunday for service. It was there that the local farmers established some sense of community, and it was there that the people of Acton went to escape the bitter cold. Stone church walls kept out the elements better than rickety log cabins, and everyone in Acton knew to risk staying away from the church when the winter storms rolled in was certain death.
Everyone, except for Hunter Solomon. Hunter was a strange man in a time when any semblance of strangeness lead to rumors of witchcraft and wizardry. A tall, hairy, hawkish man Hunter lived on the outskirts of Acton, in a cramped, decaying cabin. Few spoke to him, and the only person who regularly contacted him was Old Nan, a kindly old woman known and loved for her treatment of children. Though many were suspicious of Hunter, none dared accuse him directly of any wrong doing, due entirely to his immense hunting skills. Every week Hunter would stride into town to leave a freshly slaughtered deer on the steps of the church for any hungry man or woman.
No man in their right mind went into the woods around Acton alone; too many had disappeared. When the grandparents of the current generation of settlers had first arrived, the land that became Acton was completely abandoned. There were no Indians and no apparent trails, despite the rich farmland. Those original settlers had been a hardy crew, and hacked a life out of the oppressive woods, despite the dangers posed by the wolf pack that lived in the shadow of Acton. This current generation had learned fear from their forbears, and so, whenever fresh meat was needed, a hunting party was formed to ensure that no man had to go into the woods and brave the wolves alone.
Hunter Solomon went into the woods alone. Rumors swirled among the townspeople that Hunter had sold his soul so that he could safely walk among the wolves. Some said that when Hunter had been a young man he and his father had gone into the woods on a hunting trip, where they had been attacked by the pack. Days later, the people of Acton said, Hunter had emerged from the woods, limping and trying his best to hold his scalp to his head. Old man Solomon was never seen again. That hunting trip left Hunter silent and covered in scars. No one could fight off wolves, the townspeople said. The Devil must have protected his servant. Few remembered the sociable young man Hunter had been before this trip, but all knew the silent, reclusive hermit who had returned.
It didn’t take much for the people of Acton to turn on Hunter. When Reverend McGarvey passed away during the winter of 1701 the people of Acton desperately sent out requests for a new minister. When spring arrived so did Reverend O’Brien, a red-headed fire and brimstone preacher who inspired a new level of devotion among the frontier faithful. With him was his eight year old daughter, a small, wild lass who shared his red hair. Her name was Lucy.
No one in town knew for certain when Lucy and Hunter first met. All they knew was that Lucy adored Hunter. Whenever Hunter would stride into town, bringing fresh food from his hunt, Lucy would run out to greet him. Hunter always brought something for her, an interesting leaf, a small carving, a poorly made doll. Soon other children started running out with Lucy to greet Hunter. Hunter always had toys for the children, and they soon came to adore Acton’s hermit almost as much as they adored Old Nan and her stories. Some saw this as a sign that Hunter was, at least partially, a decent man. Others, including Reverend O’Brien, knew that the Satan worshipping Hunter was corrupting his daughter, and the other town children.
Reverend O’Brien took no small amount of pleasure from his first sermon about witchcraft. The townspeople, already suspicious of Hunter Solomon, hung on his every word. Vivid descriptions of covens and curses drove the townspeople into a fervor. Soon, they began to notice every misfortune. Farmer Jones’s cow died suddenly. Little Danny Gilman fell severely ill, and died several weeks later. Rachel Jones miscarried. James Sloan’s wife was caught with another man, and swore on the Holy Bible that an outside force had seized control of her body.
The breaking point came early in the winter of 1702, when Lucy disappeared. That Sunday, Reverend O’Brien poured his heart and soul into his sermon, calling for the people of the town to drive out the devil. All knew to whom he referred. The enraged congregation loaded their muskets, and lit their torches. It was time to kill Hunter Solomon. It was time to drive out the devil.
When the mob reached Hunter’s cabin they found it to be abandoned. Reverend O’Brien and James Sloan led a select group of village elders into the cabin to see if there was any sign of where Hunter had gone, or if he was to return. They found a small cot, numerous hunting trophies, and a set of manacles chained to the wall of the cabin. The manacles were solidly built, and showed signs of frequent use. Along the cuffs of the manacles were several thick, dark hairs. Reverend O’Brien proudly announced that the manacles were proof that Hunter had been summoning and enslaving demons to his will. Soon though, the bitter cold and howls of wolves drove the mob back to the safety of Acton and the church.
The second child to disappear was Annie Smith, daughter of Giles Smith, the town drunk. Reverend O’Brien’s sermons became even more impassioned, and soon the witch hunt began. Any woman accused of being in Hunter Solomon’s coven found themselves speedily tried by a council lead by Reverend O’Brien and James Sloan. None of the accused were found innocent, and the degree that witchcraft had infiltrated the village caused a panic. In short order Peggy Sullivan, Lindsey Anderson, and Jane Sloan (James Sloan’s adulterous wife) were burned. Still, more children continued to disappear, and Reverend O’Brien led his flock in a great purge, claiming the lives of many young women in the village. The townspeople rallied behind Reverend O’Brien, the holy man they knew to be a crusader for justice. Despite their faith the number of missing children continued all through that long November and December.
The message appeared the night after the blizzard. Though all of the townspeople had taken shelter in the church, Giles Smith was the only one who saw it. Despite the poor visibility caused by the snow flurries, Giles swore that the beast was easily the size of a horse. No one really believed him, and the following morning offered no proof of Giles Smith’s claims. The heavy snow had obscured any tracks, and Reverend O’Brien was quick to dismiss the drunk’s claims. That was, until he saw the door of the church. Crudely carved into the door of the church were two words, “I know”. Reverend O’Brien turned pale, and hurried to his home, stating he needed to prepare the following day’s sermon.
That sermon was never given. All throughout the night, the townspeople were kept awake by loud, lonely howls that sounded like they were coming from just outside the village. The next morning, as the people of Acton exited their homes in their Sunday best, they were greeted by a ghastly sight. Sprawled on the steps of the church was the mangled body of James Sloan. Reverend O’Brien was incensed, and immediately called a meeting of the council. It didn’t take the council long to accuse Old Nan of witchcraft and conspiracy with Hunter Solomon. The remaining children looked on in horror as their storyteller was seized by the council, and Reverend O’Brien sent his congregation out to gather wood for a pyre. Soon they returned, and dumped their wood around the stake Old Nan was now bound too.
Here, standing next the pyre, was where Reverend O’Brien was in his element. As Old Nan sobbed and begged for mercy Reverend O’Brien hollered about evil, the Devil, and all the depraved acts Hunter Solomon and Old Nan had been responsible for. Descriptions of demon summoning and secret meetings in the woods with Satan drove the crowd into a screaming frenzy.
A deafening snarl silenced the mob. Pacing around a house at the edge of town was the wolf. If anything, Giles Smith had underestimated the size of the beast, which was easily larger than any horse. The crowd panicked. Some fainted, some fired their muskets, some ran, and Reverend O’Brien stood rooted in place, holding the torch he had planned on using to ignite the pyre.
The wolf charged forward, surging through the crowd directly towards Reverend O’Brien. Panicking, Reverend O’Brien dropped the torch on the pyre, turned, and ran. As the flames began to lick up the pile of dry wood towards the desperately praying Old Nan, the wolf altered its course. Throwing its weight into the air it sailed through the pyre, snapping the stake and sending Old Nan tumbling free. The wolf lay thrashing on the ground, trying its best to extinguish the fur that was now ablaze. With a desperate howl it rolled into a nearby snow bank, extinguishing its fur, and ran out of town.
No one could have predicted that a badly burned Hunter Solomon would knock on Farmer Jones’s door later that night, or that the next morning, Farmer Jones would gather a group of townsmen, kick in the door to Reverend O’Brien’s house, and hang him from a tree at the edge of the forest. Fewer still could have predicted the remains of the missing children were recovered from the basement of that very house. Hunter Solomon has not been seen since, but the townspeople of Acton no longer avoid the woods. Hunters go out alone, unafraid. Children play in the places that were once forbidden to them. Every now and then a hunter will hear a lonely howl, every now and then a child will find a poorly made doll, but no one goes missing, and no more rumors spread about Hunter Solomon.
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