I was playing hide and seek with my brother in our house. Then he vanished forever.

When I couldn't find him, I called my parents, and we searched for Theo together. He couldn't have left the house. The front door was locked and every key was in its place. There was no back door, and all the windows were shut. My father checked the security camera on the porch, but there was nothing on it. Nobody had entered or left the house that morning.

We called the police, and the officers’ faces showed pure bewilderment. It was a look I would see everywhere from then on, whenever I talked about my brother. The officers searched the whole house, from the basement to the attic and called in colleagues from the Missing Persons Unit. They also combed the whole house and the area around it, checked the surveillance cameras and talked to the neighbors. They came to the same result: my brother seemed to have been swallowed by the earth. There was simply no logical explanation.

The authorities launched a public manhunt, and the case caused a huge media echo: newspaper reports, TV interviews and a pretty sensationalist true crime podcast. None of it achieved anything except speculation, accusations and conspiracy theories. Some believed my parents were behind his disappearance, that they had murdered him and buried his body somewhere outside the house. Others suspected my brother was trapped in a “time loop” or in a parallel universe. I took every one of these theories seriously and examined it closely, only to end up with no result once again.

The house was not an old Victorian mansion with ghosts. It was a new single-family home in the middle of a new development. We were the first people to move in. And no, the neighborhood isn’t built on a former cemetery, and there was no psychiatric hospital on the site whose ghosts could haunt us. I combed through the city archives and found nothing. Before the development was built, there were only fallow fields, a small creek and a patch of forest. I also couldn’t find any comparable cases, not in our city and not anywhere else in the world.

After two years of searching, the case went cold. A few years later, the lead detective wrote a book and admitted in it that he had never experienced anything like it: a missing case without a single clue. My parents never gave up, though. My father rented a through-the-wall radar from the police at his own expense and X-rayed all the walls and the floor in the basement, only to end the attempt once again with the words that hurt us all so much: “Nothing found.” My mother hired a spiritual medium who claimed to sense Theo’s presence “in the walls.” But what exactly that meant and how to get him out, the quack didn’t know.

Then we moved out of the house. Too many painful memories were stuck in the walls that had swallowed my little brother. The years went by, and April 3rd, the day he disappeared, sat in our calendar like a tumor. The months before the anniversary and the months after were pure torture, and somewhere in between came the quiet days when you still thought of Theo the whole time, but the memories were less filled with pain and laced with a heavy melancholy.

My parents both died of a broken heart. I never married and never had children of my own. I always told myself I had to focus on the search for Theo, but in truth, deep down, I was afraid of feeling the same pain as my parents, who had lost a child.

A week after the thirtieth anniversary, which I had spent alone in my apartment with a bottle of whiskey, a woman came to see me. She introduced herself as Hannah. She looked exhausted, with tired eyes and pale skin. She told me her little son had been playing hide and seek in her house and had never reappeared. It was the same house where my brother had disappeared. At first I thought it was a stupid prank and was about to throw her out of my apartment, but the grief in her eyes looked so familiar: the exact same look I had seen in my parents’ eyes every day since Theo disappeared.

“Something is wrong with this house.”, I said. 

“Something in this neighborhood is strange,” she said.

I didn’t know what she meant. To me, it was just an ordinary neighborhood. They had all supported us during the search back then, brought food and shielded us from the media.

“But there’s something dark underneath,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I ... I don’t know. And then there’s the thing with the tornado. About three years ago, a violent tornado swept across the area, and according to the meteorologists it was supposed to go right through our development. We barricaded ourselves in, but for some reason all the houses in the neighborhood stayed untouched, as if it were nothing but a gentle breeze passing by.”

“That could mean anything,” I said, suddenly one of the skeptics I had fought against all those years.

She cried, and when she calmed down, she looked at me with her red, swollen eyes.

“There is something ... something evil. I felt it very clearly. My husband doesn’t believe me, he thinks I’m crazy.”

I touched her gently on the elbow.

“I believe you.”

We drove to the house. These four walls that had caused me so much grief and had taken the most important person in my life from me. And when the smell of the mahonias planted in the garden hit my nose, all the memories came back at once. And with them the rage and the feeling of helplessness. My stomach cramped and I had to throw up. Hannah put her hand on my back to show me her solidarity.

“You don’t have to come in.”

“No, I want to. I ... have to.”

Without the child, the house was dark and cold. Except for one built-in side wall, surprisingly little had changed in thirty years.

“My husband is at the police station right now,” she said as we walked through the living room.

“The police won’t be able to do much,” I said, touching the walls in the hallway. “On the other hand, I don’t know how I can help you either.”

“There has to be a connection between your brother’s disappearance and my son’s. I can’t explain it any other way,” she said, took out a notepad and a pen and sat down on the sofa.

“What do they have in common?” I asked and sat down next to her.

“They both disappeared here in the neighborhood.”

“They were both boys,” I added.

“How old was Theo?”

“Six.”

“So was Noah.”

I told her all my theories and findings, but we didn’t get any further. For thirty years I had been running into a dead end. And that was exactly what Hannah was facing now. Thirty agonizing years full of questions and no answers. My head ached. None of it made sense.

I went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face, and as I was about to leave, I froze. The faucet was dripping. Just like back then, when Theo disappeared. I called Hannah and asked how long the faucet had been broken.

“Only recently, why?”

“And were there problems with it before?”

“Yes, when we moved in, all the fixtures went crazy. My husband replaced all of them, and the problem went away.”

“When Theo disappeared, the faucets in the house went crazy.”

I stared at the faucet:

Three fast drops. 

Three slow drops. 

Then three fast drops again.

“Oh my god. That’s Morse code.”

"Adam?" my wife, Hannah, called.

"What?"

"Why are your pants on the floor again?"

"I don't know. I forgot to put them away."

"We talked about this so many times, Adam."

"Jesus, it's just pants."

"It's pants now, but then it's the dishes, the house, and then you don't feed the animals again. We already lost two chickens because you couldn't remember feeding them."

"Go to hell," I said, walking to the door.

"Adam?!"

But I didn't listen and continued out the door.

My mind throbbed with anger. I knew I'd forgotten to feed the chickens. She didn't need to remind me. 

I'd walked over half a mile, passing the hill behind our house to the creek. The summer breeze blew. The sun shone on my skin. I closed my eyes and took a few breaths. The air smelled of willows and summer flowers as I listened to the creek.

My thoughts slowed, but through the creek's ripple came a strange sound. Someone was crying. I opened my eyes. A beautiful blonde woman with porcelain skin stood in the river in a long white dress. She covered her face as large, clear tears fell into the creek.

"Are you okay?"

She looked up, her red eyes making her blue irises shine.

"I'm…I don't know."

I looked around, jumped into the creek, and waded to her.

"Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so."

I offered her my hand. She smiled and grabbed it. Her skin was smooth and soft.

We waded back to the shore. I helped her up onto the grass.

"Thank you, kind stranger. What's your name?"

"Adam."

"I'm Rusalka."

She stared deep into my eyes. I could feel my heart tightening.

"How did you end up in the creek?"

A few large tears fell from her eyes.

"My love rejected me right before the wedding for a different one. I jumped into the river upstream and woke up here. I hadn't left it until you came."

"That man was a fool to pass up a beautiful woman like you."

Her full lips curved into a smile.

I couldn't remember the last time someone looked at me as if I could do no wrong.

"You think I'm pretty?"

A chill ran through my wet legs.

"Ye…yeah."

She smiled even more. The tears in her eyes were gone. It seemed as if the creek had lowered.

"I think you're pretty too. You have a beautiful soul."

"Thank you."

"No one has been this kind to me."

"I'd think everyone would be kind to you."

"The same with you, Adam. You were brave to wade through the creek for me."

Hannah's words this morning echoed in my mind. I shook my head and smiled at Rusalka. Her eyes were so beautiful.

"Thank you."

She looked down at my hand and saw the ring. The water seemed to rise again.

"Is someone waiting for you at home?"

I quickly put my hand behind my back.

"My home is far away. No need to think about it." The words came out so easily.

The water lowered.

"Will you stay with me a while?"

"Sure. As long as needed."

"What if it's a long while?"

"That's okay."

The water lowered again.

"Are you doing that?" I asked, but she didn't seem to listen.

"Adam, will you then be mine and only mine forever?"

She gripped my hand tightly.

"Please." Her voice now seemed hollow. "I'll be yours forever. I'll never leave you. We can be together forever, never perish."

"Someone's waiting for me at home."

She opened her mouth. Sharp pain shot through my hand. Her white nails dug deep into my skin. Warm blood spilled into my palm and fell into the grass. 

A bloodcurdling scream came out of her mouth. My ears stung. She put her face in her hands again. Huge, clear tears flew onto the grass. Something wet touched my foot. The water was rising.

"Hey, I'm sorry!"

But she wasn't listening. Her head was still in her hands. 

"You'll see what you'll return to," she whispered.

I quickly got up and ran back home. The air was damp. The creek sounded like someone was pouring water into it.

"Hannah, come, we gotta go!" I yelled through the front door.

"Where have you been, Adam?"

I pointed at the water rising in the grass. Her eyes flew open. I ran to her, grabbed her hand, and ran out the front door. The water had risen to our ankles. We ran toward the hill, but as we started climbing, Hannah lost her balance; her hands flew up, and she fell face-first into the mud.

"Hannah!"

The water was already to her knees. I grabbed her arm and pulled her out. Both of her slippers were off.

We continued up the hill. The water was right up to our heels.

"There's nowhere to go!" Hannah yelled as we reached the top.

My heart beat against my ribs, but the water seemed to stop. It didn't even rise the hill. It stopped right at the top of our home. Rusalka floated around it.

"Adam!" she called.

My wife turned to me.

"How does she know your name?"

"I…I helped her out of the creek."

Hannah narrowed her eyes.

"She wouldn't flood our house for that."

I looked at the ground.

"She asked me to marry her, but I said no."

Her eyes filled with pain. I expected her to yell at me for ruining our house, but she only whispered, "But you thought about it."

I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.

My hand started to itch. The cuts from Rusalka's nails connected in a straight line, and something like a second ring formed below my wedding one.

Hannah looked down. Tears filled her eyes. She let go of my hand and walked away, her bare feet pressing into the dew-covered grass. The ring tightened. A few clear drops of water fell from it.

It's been hours now. I'm writing this from the top of the hill with my phone at 9%. I managed to get Hannah to talk to me again, but she won't look at me, and every time she goes quiet, I feel the water creep up a little bit to my shoes. Rusalka is still in the water. She's not crying anymore. She's just quiet, waiting.

A delivery request popped up on my app from a nearby restaurant. I glanced at my watch. It was eleven at night. I wanted to decline the order and finally call it a day, but instead of displaying “Order Declined,” the screen said, “Order Accepted.”

I stared at it for a moment. I was certain I’d tapped the decline button, but it didn’t matter now. Apparently, my workday wasn’t over yet.

I checked the address. Fortunately, the restaurant was only about a ten-minute drive away. I wasn’t very familiar with that area, so I had to park my car and walk a short distance to reach it.

The restaurant was tucked away in a corner behind a row of apartment buildings. I couldn’t imagine anyone finding their way here, let alone voluntarily coming here for a meal. The door was peeling, and the only letter still clearly visible on the sign above it was an R.

I stepped inside, and a disgusting smell immediately hit me. I looked around. There were dirty, empty tables everywhere. On one of them sat a plate of something that could barely be called food, even with a vivid imagination. Flies swarmed around it.

I’d seen plenty of things during my time as a delivery driver, but even I was taken aback by this place.

After a while, a man emerged from the kitchen. His greasy hair hung in clumps, his face was covered in scars, and a strand of drool ran from the corner of his mouth, landing directly on the food container he was holding.

“Hello. I’m here to pick up an order.”

The guy let out a hoarse, muffled chuckle and handed me the container.

“Thank you. Have a nice evening.”

He didn’t respond.

I took the container and headed for my car. I had no intention of staying there a second longer than necessary. I kept glancing around as I walked. Just before the restaurant disappeared from view, I noticed the man had stepped outside and was watching me.

I quickened my pace, got into my car, started the engine, and drove to the address displayed in the app.

I parked in the lot and called the customer. An old woman with a tired-sounding voice answered.

“Hello, I have your order. Could you come downstairs to pick it up?”

“Son, could you bring it up to me? I’m old, and I can’t manage the stairs. I live on the second floor. It’s not very far.”

“Of course. No problem,” I replied with a smile before heading inside.

A few minutes later, I was standing in front of a partially open door. A woman’s voice came from inside.

“Son, could you please bring the food in here?”

I couldn’t understand why she couldn’t come and get it herself, but I stepped inside anyway.

“Please put it right here on the table.”

I followed the voice for a few steps and entered the living room. It looked exactly how you’d imagine an elderly person’s living room would look. It was cozy and inviting.

A very old woman sat in an armchair. She looked utterly exhausted, too. Her white hair fell across her face.

“Good evening,” I said with a smile, handing her the container.

“Good evening. Thank you so much. I’m glad you brought our meals.”

I froze.

“What meals?”

I explained that the order had only included one meal.

The woman looked at the container and opened it.

In that instant, every question in my mind disappeared.

“Jesus Christ, what is that?”

She looked at me.

“Pork liver.”

“I can see that, but it’s raw!”

The woman didn’t answer. She simply reached into the container and began devouring the liver.

That was too much for me. I turned around and headed for the door.

“Wait!” she called after me.

I turned back.

“More food for him.”

“Ma’am, I told you the order only contained one meal. You’ll have to take that up with the restaurant. It’s not my responsibility to deal with missing items.”

The woman laughed.

“But he doesn’t eat food out of containers.”

I wanted to ask her who she meant, but just then, I heard a noise coming from the next room.

I turned toward the sound. At first, all I could hear was shuffling, followed by something that sounded like fingernails scraping against wood.

The door creaked open, and pale hands began reaching through the gap. Their fingers were longer than the palms of their own hands. They gripped the sides of the doorframe, and then the whole figure emerged from the room.

Its body was twisted, its limbs bent at angles that made them look as though they had been broken. Looking up, I saw a long neck bent at an unnatural angle.

Then I saw its face.

Where its eyes should have been were empty black sockets. It had nothing but two holes where its nose should have been, and its mouth was split almost all the way to its ears.

I screamed and began backing away.

“W-what is that?” I stammered.

The woman looked at me calmly.

“My grandson. And he’s hungry.”

I didn’t wait for anything else. I bolted for the front door, but the figure lunged at me with incredible speed and grabbed me. I could barely breathe. All I could hear was my heart pounding in my ears.

It grabbed my hand and sank its teeth into my fingers.

A wave of pain shot through me, jolting me into action. I kicked the creature as hard as I could. It let out a startled shriek, and I didn’t waste a second. I took advantage of the opportunity and ran.

I took the stairs three at a time. I threw myself into my car and tried to start it with trembling hands. Before I drove away, I noticed a pile of empty food containers lying off to the side of the apartment building.

Exactly like the one I’d brought with me.

I finally managed to start the car and drove as far away as I could.

After driving for about an hour, I pulled over and called the police. I looked down at my hand. Several chunks of my fingers were missing.

When the police arrived, they discovered that according to the app, I had never accepted an order that night. There was no record of the address, the restaurant, or the apartment building where I’d delivered the food.

They tested me for alcohol and drugs. To their surprise, both tests came back negative.

Eventually, they took me to the hospital, where my injuries were treated. The case was eventually closed, and the attacker was never identified.

I tried to keep working, but every time a new order notification came through, I felt something tighten inside me. Eventually, I had to quit and find another job.

But even that didn’t help. Every time my phone rings, I feel sick.

I want to forget everything that happened, but there isn’t a single day when I don’t find myself thinking back to that night, wondering what actually happened to me.

There was a man

“There was a Man. A Man so beautiful it was akin to basking in warm sunlight in his presence. He was "Perfect." His Father was a shepherd, and he and his siblings tended the flock in their father's stead as Drovers.

The Father declared, "You will cherish these sheep as I do you, for they are my children."

The Man, furious that these sheep were called equal to him, rebelled. "Father. These sheep are lesser than myself. Why do you treat them as equals to us?" His voice cracked, then hardened. "Are we not enough?"

The Father looked at his son with a weary expression for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. "Hear me, my son. The man that lives like a sheep, and the sheep that live like a man are the same. Is it not the job of the shepherd and the drover to guide them?"

The Man scoffed in astonishment. He couldn't accept that his own father would treat these sheep as his equal. In a fit of rage, he threw his crook to the ground and declared he would never treat mere livestock as his equal.

The Father glared at his son. "You are my favorite son — but your radiance has blinded you. You shall never see the brilliant pleasures of life, and you will not bear the burden of death. Leave."

The Man lost his emotion. He could not feel, therefore he could not live. He could not despair, therefore he could not die. He could only see the emotion of everyone he met, permanently reminding him of what he had lost.”

"What do you think? Was the father too harsh? Or was the son too stubborn? Well I guess it doesn’t matter; I'm still surrounded by this sickening color blue in fact it’s the only color I see, Doesn’t the story remind you of me? Well, I guess that makes sense, you know, the blue?” Dolion said losing focus.  

"So why is it that even you are this disgusting shade of blue, Mr. Stowaway?" Dolion said, whispering like a child.

"Hmph." "Mmph." "Aahmph."

The stowaway was gagged and bound to a rusty pipe on the floor. He was young and gruff, thrashing around, trying to get away, the most mortifying look you could imagine plastered on his face.

"Oh! Right. You can't talk while gagged. Silly me." He peeled the gag away with a kind of smile that would make you almost forget you were in danger.

"G-get away f-from me! You demon! I-I know you — you're Dol—mmph."

"Yes, yes, I know I'm Dolion. You know something that's interesting? Everyone has a different shade of this disgusting blue — the darker it is, the more scared someone is. The lighter they are, the opposite. You know, Mr. Stowaway, you are very blue right now," Dolion said, putting the gag back on him, almost disappointedly.

It's so predictable.

"Well, all interesting things come to an end. But I'm feeling bored, so I'll put you in the boiler room for now," he said, with a gentle smile.

The stowaway looked so mortified you'd think he'd pass out. The boat they were on was a rustic steampunk marvel — it had been a private project of some rich guy. Until Dolion came across its owner. The owner of the boat wasn't interesting enough to keep around, but the boat was practical: a kitchen, living quarters, a boiler room, a small apartment on the sea. As Dolion started to drag him away to be thrown off, he heard something bump into the boat.

Rattle.

"What was that?"

Dolion methodically walked up to the deck of the boat and looked off the edge, down into the water. To his surprise, on a small raft lay two young children. For the first time, Dolion felt something. The younger-looking child looked all white — he couldn't see even a speck of blue. Dolion wore the expression of a god looking at his creation for the first time.

To the children, Dolion was certainly a sight to behold. No one in this era looked as well kept as Dolion — or at least, they had never seen anyone who did.

Dolion leaned over the railing and whispered a single word under his breath.

"Interesting."

It was said maliciously, the type of malice give you goosebumps all over — For just a split second, a deranged, malicious smile twisted Dolion's handsome face

Then, just as quickly, Dolion composed himself and reached his hand out to help the children. The older-looking kid lifted his younger brother with hesitation, then grabbed onto Dolion's arm.

"T-thank you, Mr.—?" he asked with anticipation.

"Dolion. Just call me Dolion” He replied politely. “That child with you… is he your brother?"

"Yeah. Can we have some food, Mr. Dolion?"

Dolion smiled but was taken aback by this sudden shamelessness. "Of course. Let me make you a platter. Follow me."

Dolion coyly showed the two children around, the younger child slowly rubbing his eyes while stammering around. Dolion asked, "What are both of your names?"

"My name is Atrius. My younger brother here is Lux," Atrius said while gripping his brother's hand.

Dolion paused while walking them to their seats. "Interesting. Lux, as in evoking light in Latin. And Atrius… Ater, huh? Your mother had a very strange sense of hu—"

"Stop," Atrius interrupted. "Don't talk about our mother," he stated with a deeply serious and grim expression.

Dolion blinked and nodded. "I understand. We all have a story to tell after the Pop. You know, while your name does mean dark or gloomy, it also means fearless in Greek." Dolion said while looking at the deep, unwavering dark blue swirling around the boy's figure. "Come, sit down. Let me make you something to eat."

The children were ushered into the kitchen, where a very vibrant orange light lay scattered around the room. The light danced so brilliantly you could see the dust floating; in every sense of the word, it felt cozy — it wasn’t something you’d usually see.

While Dolion prepared some lunch, Lux asked his brother a question. "What is the Pop?" he asked innocently.

Atrius stammered to get his voice out. "It’s uh… when everyone had to get on boats and sail around."

The Pop. It happened a couple of decades before I was born. They didn’t realize the world had an underground ocean almost three times the size of Earth's current ocean. By sheer dumb luck, some tectonic plates moved and it effectively popped like a bubble, hence the name, Dolion thought to himself.

Dolion laid out a platter of fresh milk and eggs. Both Atrius and Lux went wide-eyed.

"How did you get this?" Atrius frantically asked.

“Well,” Dolion said, placing the platter down. “As Atrius probably knows, after the Pop a couple of groups emerged once people stopped drowning long enough to form sides — the Bureau of Oceanic Patrol, the Neutral Merchant Alliance, and Crucible’s Cult. A couple of those old foxes at the Merchant Association still owe me favors, so at the very least I’m well fed,” he added with a slight chuckle.

Lux and Atrius scarfed the food down as if it were their last meal.

"I want to stay here forever," Lux said, already muffled by a mouthful of food.

"Hey, don’t say that, it’s rude. I’m sorry, Mr. Dolion, I’m still teaching my brother manners."

"Hm, well, why not just stay here forever?" Dolion said with a voracious smile while looking at Lux.

"Hey, I don’t kno—" Atrius said before getting cut off by his younger brother.

"Oh, pleassee," Lux said longingly. "We’ve been on the raft for days and we don’t have anywhere to go. He seems so nice, he even has eggs!"

While Atrius was still apprehensive about the sudden change in scenery, he would be lying if he said the fresh food didn’t sway his opinion.

"I don’t mind. I have a spare room if you two don’t mind sharing. Here, let me show you where it is, at least before you decide," Dolion asked politely.

Dolion herded them along to an adjacent room and presented a well-kept space with a full-sized bed leaning against the wall. It was very rustic, but it had a type of elegance that made it pleasant to look at, especially to these two boys, who had spent the latter part of their week on a wooden raft.

“Atrius, when have you ever seen a bed this big?” Lux said ecstatically.

“Never,” Atrius replied in disbelief. This boat was seriously an entirely different world from the one they had just come from.

While Dolion was showing them their room, he suddenly remembered the rat he had caught stowing away and tried to excuse himself.

“Excuse me, boys. You can keep looking around and decide who sleeps where. I need to go take care of something in the boiler room,” he said with a dead smile.

After Dolion exited the room, Atrius and Lux began to talk.

“Hey, I know you really like this place, but I don’t have a great feeling about Mr. Dolion. He kind of gives me the creeps,” Atrius said.

“What do you mean?” Lux asked. “He’s been super nice to us! He even gave us food and offered to let us live here.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. No one is that nice. It’s suspicious.” After the Pop, plenty of smuggling rings, slave traders, and all sorts of other evils had emerged. Atrius knew this all too well.

“All I’m saying is, just be careful around him, okay, Lux?”

“Alright…” Lux replied with a disappointed look.

Compared to Atrius, Lux had grown up in a completely different environment, showered with love, so malice was a very foreign concept to him.

In the meantime, they explored the deck and the captain’s quarters, walking around in awe, hand in hand, taking it all in. However, the more Atrius saw, the more suspicious he became. The clean interior, the fresh food, the absence of anyone else on board—it all screamed of a hidden motive.

Mr. Dolion… Why would he take us in? he thought.

As they were about to head back to their room—

BANG!

They both recoiled as they heard footsteps coming from the boiler room. A moment later, Dolion opened the door, revealing a small bloodstain on his hand. He noticed Lux and Atrius looking at him with curious concern.

He smiled gently at them and explained that a pipe had burst and that he would fix it later. Lux nodded in understanding, but Atrius didn’t buy it.

“What’s with the blood on your hand?” Atrius asked.

Dolion looked at his hand and chuckled slightly as he tried to cover it up.

“Ah, I was a bit clumsy and cut myself while trying to fix the pipe,” Dolion said with a dead smile.

“Anyway, I think it would be good for you guys to settle in. You both need to rest. You were on a raft for days, so you must be tired,” he said playfully.

Atrius was still on edge, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that he was seriously sleep-deprived. He didn’t want Lux to go without sleep, either. Eventually, they both agreed to settle in and waited in their room until nighttime.

“Hey, Atrius, do you think we could stay like this forever?” Lux whispered hopefully.

“Yeah,” Atrius replied.

It was a small white lie. It wouldn’t hurt to let Lux have a few more happy memories before he grew up.

After waiting for Lux to fall asleep, Atrius quietly got out of bed and walked down the hallway. The air smelled of rust and salt as he approached the threshold of the master bedroom.

“Here goes nothing. I need to make sure he was telling the truth about his hand,” he whispered to himself.

Holding his breath, he quietly opened the door and stood beside Dolion’s bed. The entire room was clean. Too clean.

He stealthily grabbed Dolion’s hand and pulled it out from under the covers. To his shock, there really was a cut on Dolion’s palm.

Maybe I really am just overthinking it, Atrius thought.

He carefully lowered Dolion’s hand back beneath the covers and turned to leave.

Behind him, Dolion’s eyes slowly opened.

He had been awake since the moment Atrius stepped into his room.

He simply analyzed Atrius like a predator stalking its prey. Once Atrius finally slipped out and returned to his room, Dolion looked down at his hand and smiled.

This kid would make a lousy thief. How has he survived all this time? He even forgot to close the door. Anyway, I don’t want them to be afraid of me. It was a good thing I cut my hand, just in case.

His eyes, on the other hand, were dead. Black, devoid of anything that should be living.

“I wonder if this sickening blue would come out of him if I cut him up as well,” he said with anticipation.

“Oh. I forgot to brush my teeth,” he added, losing his train of thought.

As quickly as night came, morning arrived just as fast.

Dolion got out of bed, took a shower, and practiced facial expressions in the mirror. He didn’t understand most of them, but they seemed to matter whenever he mimicked the expressions of other people.

After getting dressed, he knocked on the door of the guest bedroom, but there was no answer.

“Are you guys awake? Let’s have breakfast! I need to stop at the Association, if you’d both like to come with me.”

Still receiving no reply, he opened the door to find Atrius and Lux lying so close to each other that you would practically have to pry them apart.

“They must be tired. I’ll let them come outside when they’re ready,” he said analytically.

Dolion had never really spent time around children during his time at sea. He had mostly encountered pirates, government officials, and a few other stragglers. He didn’t quite know how to deal with children.

However, he would soon find out just how difficult it was to have children around this era.

I think back now on what I’d seen one night with resignation. I’d clumsily wheeled my old rolling chair to the window while eating a bowl of something vaguely edible. That’s all it had been, really. Wilting mushrooms and beans and sludgy rice. I’d burned the mushrooms in the pan, so I’d gone to open the window to let some fresh air inside. The next apartment complex over across from mine had a few units lit up, so I did what I tended to do on late nights like these- check off an imaginary checklist of all the things that I noticed.

I should’ve been ashamed of my less-than-notable ‘hobby’, if you could even call it that, but I had little else to do. The lights on in each room almost appeared scattered, like checkered marks on a board. I could see a group of women dancing feverishly in one. A lowly drunk occupied another unit; lips fastened to a bottle like it was his lifeline. It was only when I peered lower that I saw, in the lowest set of apartments units, a set of eyes staring back at me.

I’d paused. I did so dumbly, mouth full of meaningless textures and flavors that did little to ground me back to reality. Yet, this was my reality. Glasses sliding down my face, I now watched a man from below stare back at me with unnerving resoluteness. How long had he been there for? Had I just conveniently occupied his line of sight when he looked out of his own living room, much like what I was doing?

Rolling myself back and turning off my lights to make it seem as if I’d left, I set my forgotten bowl down on my desk nearby to crawl right back to the window and peek down. Those eyes met mine, and I sunk back down to hide from the weight of his gaze. He’d been an old thing, hair clinging to his roots like stubborn weeds in a garden. His eyes were like an old car flashing its headlights, blinking offbeat but nevertheless determined to alert you to its incoming presence.

Up until that point, things in my life had been the same. I only deviated on my schedule for emergencies or to pull incessant overtime to meet a quota that I wished I could care more about. Generally, I would wake up, drink a mug of bitter black coffee, read the news online, and then work. My nights were no different either. After getting up, I’d stretch, eat whatever was in my cupboard or fridge, and then shower before bed. I didn’t have many hobbies outside of reading or observing the things in my life from a distance. Perhaps that’s why I’d done so well in my line of work. All I had to do was analyze, read, and write. Analyze, read, and write. Analyze, read, and write.

At the time, I’d worked from home because I didn’t much like the idea of being in an active environment. I needed silence to get things done. When I was a child, I’d always thought I’d have made more of myself. They tell you to aim for greatness when you’re young, then when you try, they pile you high with debt. I realized that quickly after sinking all my personal funds and borrowed loans into medical school; just to fail hard. Greatness, it turns out, can mean anything when you’re better suited to just doing what you’re told. After all, why clog the machine when helping it run is so much more rewarding than the alternative?

Still, I was a tired thing. The hair that my mother had loved so much was now flat and slick with so much grease that it nearly stained my pillow each time that I woke up. My body, which had once been fit and healthy, now sat hollow in my chair, back hunched forward ever so slightly as I leaned forward to write on my too-old desktop computer. It was cracked in the corner, much like my glasses, and buzzed like a thousand angry bees each time that I needed to run a program larger than my emails or documents. I wondered, briefly, if they would calm down with a cigarette. Nicotine seemed to do wonders for curing anger, or so I’d seen with my father.

Thinking on it now, it’d been a rough couple of years after my mom had died. My father, strong man that he was, had started to decline in health. He couldn’t deal with the heartache, at least, not in a way that was healthy for him. Every time that I’d visited, he was lighting up a cigarette. Every hour on the hour, almost. Mom used to tell me how he’d chain-smoked an entire pack after having to put the family dog down when I was a child. How he couldn’t deal with coming home to see my tear-streaked face, knowing he’d been the cause of it. It was easier, she told me, to numb down your feelings until you barely felt a thing at all.

The night that I’d seen the man watching me, I remember shutting my curtains and throwing away my food before heading straight to bed. Paranoia set in and clung to my body like plastic wrap, making me practically suffocate in my tangled sheets. He’d be gone in the morning, I was sure. At least I was attempting to be sure of it in the moment. I’d woken up the next morning and gotten out of bed, ceramic mug soon in hand. Computer buzzing as I slid the bitter brew down my throat, I soon settled back into my routine. Analyze, read, and write. I analyzed, read, then sipped on my coffee. I analyzed, read, then stared at the window.

I couldn’t help myself. Was that man there? Was he staring at me like he had been last night? I’d abandoned typing to get up and go check. My feet thudded something dull and hurried as I scrambled to go see. I could hear my curtain rod scraping and screeching from the force that I pulled the blacked-out fabric apart, separating it to look below. When I ran my eyes down each unit, numbly checking off each unit of busybodies and loners, I saw him. He was dressed differently, no doubt, but he was staring at me just like he had before.

I’m not proud of the fact that I neglected to get any work done that day. Or the day after that. Any meaningful work, at least. But if you count staring back at a set of eyes, and not moving until the sun went down as being meaningful work, then I did plenty. He’d only left my line of vision when I’d felt my legs try to give out. I’d never stood in one place for that long before in years. My stiff joints ached from use as I hobbled over to my chair, sitting the moment that I was able. I didn’t move for minutes. I hadn’t needed to. I knew that if I went back, he’d be staring at me. My hunch was correct when I checked the next morning.

My routine began to change after that. I’d wake up, drink a mug of bitter black coffee, watch the man outside, and then work before checking on him every hour on the top of the hour. My nights changed, too. When I no longer had any obligation to work and my documents were all sent in, I’d sit at the window and watch those eyes until mine grew nearly too exhausted to remain open. On rougher days, I’d forego sleep in favor of keeping an eye on him. Sometimes he’d be eating. Other times he’d be drinking from a mug. Clusters of my own mugs cluttered my desk, as if mocking me. Regardless, no matter what he’d be doing, I’d always be there observing.

I knew that it likely wasn’t the most productive thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d always been one to cling to things that didn’t suit me. I wore old shirts with tears in them because the fabric still felt nice. I hadn’t changed the shoes that I’d wore for years despite them falling apart, simply because I liked how the laces looked. I could always buy a new pair, but why? I liked things how they needed to be.

That doesn’t mean I liked the things as they were, or that I didn’t suffer the consequences of my choices. People watched me on the street or stepped farther away on the sidewalk when I came by. To them, I looked unwell. To myself, I looked like the embodiment of my routine. I looked right, under my standards. I wore my shirts, I wore my shoes, and I wore them despite knowing how I looked. Despite knowing the judgment I’d receive.

My mother had suspected my affinity of disliking change early on when I couldn’t go to school without bringing my stuffed animal. I’d been bullied relentlessly back then, and that was just fuel for the fire. Things only changed when my father stepped in and put my old teddy bear up higher than I could reach. He’d told me to ‘grow up,’ and that only then could I have Mr. Brown back. Sleepless nights were what followed, not that they’d even stopped when I had my stuffed bear. I’d sleep with the blankets over my head, even when I couldn’t breathe because of the overwhelming warmth during summer. I’d sleep, back to the wall, to ensure that I couldn’t be grabbed by what I couldn’t see. I’d sleep, eyes on the door or my too-cracked open closet until I couldn’t keep them open anymore. I suppose watching things has always been a habit of mine. Never for the better.

My workflow had begun to slow down, as did the quality of everything that I turned in. It had to at some point. With the way that things were going, spending hours on mindless work was no longer something that I could do. It had been a gradual descent comprised of less documents being sent in a day before my first warning came. I straightened up briefly, intimidated, before falling back to my newfound habit. The second warning happened not even a month after the first. They’d been patient with me because, despite being a cog in their machine, I knew that their machine was old and rusted behind the scenes.

I knew that they were struggling to remain afloat, to keep their operation well lubricated and free of blemishes. Deadlines were what they stood firm by, not that I cared anymore. My third and final warning came after I’d gotten sloppy with my work, words typed in an incomprehensible rush when I’d tried to multitask for the first time, only scanning what I was meant to be analyzing before writing a half-assed report just to get my boss off my back.

 I was then fired within six months of my new, full-time occupation. Without any interruptions however, that only fueled my desire to keep an eye on him. I did so shamelessly from the comfort of my home. I did so, shamelessly, without the regard of how I was being affected by this. At the time, I’d thought that this was all I needed to do. Keep an eye on the man watching me. Bills could wait. I didn’t need lights to see. I didn’t need heat or air conditioning to sit in my chair and stay there.

I’d never realized how busy the streets below were until all I did was spend my hours watching them. It was the digital age- I had no need to go grocery shopping anymore. I had no need to step out for fresh air, not when I could sit by my window and breathe in smog and car exhaust. At least this way, I’d told myself, I wouldn’t be looked at anymore. Not strangely by normal folks, anyway. The man below looked at me with indifference.

On a good day, I’d eat it up like the meals I should’ve been consuming. On a bad day, I’d choke on it. He’d set a new standard, one that I had to adhere to. He’d told me I was good enough to be seen bare, as is, without expectation for well-maintained hair and clothes. Or perhaps, he just enjoyed seeing how he affected me, for better or for worse.

However, in the narrow line of my obsession, I had neglected one thing. Without sleep, I’d grow tired. My eyes would shut without my permission, and I’d enter fits of micro-sleep, fueled by exhaustion. And so, I’d done the only thing I could think of. Numb the urge to sleep and keep my body going. Coffee wasn’t doing it anymore. But cigarettes surely would. I made my way through a few, much faster than I’d like to admit.

My window had been cracked open at that point almost permanently due to the summer’s heat making my apartment feel like Hell rather than a home. Although maybe, that wasn’t too far off. Stale food caked the dishes in my sink while the stale odor of stained clothing sat heavily in my room’s basket.

A few more months passed by like that. I’d sit there, I’d smoke, and I’d watch. I’d sit there, I’d hold my stomach as it starved, I’d fill it with some coffee and then watch. I’d catch myself sleeping, I’d wake up, I’d smoke, then I’d watch. Sometimes now, looking back, I don’t even think I watched as much as I did sit there and stare at nothing. He wasn’t even always there anymore. He was gone often. But I stayed. I always did. After all this, I had to.

I think I should’ve used this time to self-reflect. It was what all the well-adjusted adults and online therapists were pushing out: reflecting on yourself and self-care. But what was there to reflect on? What I did with my life? What didn’t I do? My days were so simple that the only thing I could reflect on was the slowly disappearing man from my purview. And even then, I just wanted to reach out. I wanted to tell him to stay when I saw him. I wanted to hold him by his frail shoulders and squeeze desperately until he’d just look at me once more. I’d poured so much of myself into this, into him, so why should he get to stop what he’d started? It didn’t work like that. Bad things would happen if they did, I was sure.

But I was alone. At this point, I think I knew that deep down. It was rare that I’d see the man come to his window to look outside. I wasn’t even his priority anymore. He’d become hunched, staring down at the sidewalk below instead, probably more concerned with what little presents the birds above left behind as opposed to whatever I could do for him. I saw him holding a cane on the days he hobbled outside, and even that was getting rarer. I sat- no, I lingered. I managed to overstay my welcome in another man’s consciousness. I was done.

It wasn’t until the moving trucks came that I truly woke up from my trance. Furniture was pulled out of the apartment complex one at a time. Wooden wardrobes, old coatracks, bags of clothes. There was more taken out than I’d like to think was ever even inside for an old man. A new family moved in, some well-adjusted adults and their kids. Their dogs, their cats, and probably even other pets. I wouldn’t know after losing interest with the man was gone. But I had no need to worry. When I sat back and looked at my window, I saw a pair of eyes staring back at me, and I knew it hadn’t been for nothing.

Our dog got out of the side gate on Monday morning. Daisy, four-year-old golden, friendly to the point of being useless. I put flyers on every pole between our house and the elementary school and my son cried at dinner two nights running. My wife is on nights at the hospital this month, so it was me and the kids and the flyers.

Wednesday I fell asleep on the couch with the TV going. The porch light was off.

I woke up to somebody beating on my front door. Not knocking. Beating on it, over and over, hard enough that I felt it in the couch, and screaming over the top of it, and crying so hard the words were coming apart.

I got to the door and put my hand on it and looked through the peephole, because the little window beside the door has a curtain and I didn't want to move it. It was the kids from the corner house, the girl who's about eight and her little brother, five maybe. The girl had snot down to her lip and was hitting my door with the flat of both hands, with her back to the driveway, and she never once looked behind her. The boy was behind her with his mouth open and nothing coming out of it that I could make into a word.

And behind them, sitting on my driveway under the streetlight, was Daisy.

I saw my dog. She was sitting on the driveway with her tongue out, wet, looking at the door. I figured she'd been out a couple of days and come home.

So I opened the door.

They came through the gap, both of them, and the girl was screaming not the dog, not the dog, not the dog, and I thought she'd been bitten. I had the door in one hand and I leaned out and said, "Daisy. Come."

She stood up. She came up the walk at a dog's pace, and I remember being relieved about that, that she could walk. I kept the door in my left hand and crouched to get her collar with my right. I put my hand into the fur at her neck.

There was nothing under the fur where her neck should have been. My hand went in and kept going, and something closed on my wrist.

The girl hit the door with her whole body. It slammed on my forearm and I screamed and pulled, and the fur slid up my arm, and my hand came out of it. Most of my hand. She locked the deadbolt before I was off the floor. Eight years old.

I didn't understand what I was looking at for a second or two, because there wasn't any blood yet. My ring finger and my little finger were gone at the knuckle. The ends were flat, like they'd been pinched off, and there were four marks around my wrist above them, parallel, not punctures, lines, like I'd been held by something with four fingers and no thumb. Then there was blood, a lot of it, and I was yelling at the girl to get a towel from the kitchen, and she did.

I called 911 from the floor. I told her the two kids from the house on the corner were at my door screaming and that something had taken two of my fingers, and I gave her their address. She said police and an ambulance were on the way and to keep the door locked.

I got everybody into the kitchen, checked the back door was locked, and got the towel around what was left of my hand and squeezed it in the other one and held it over my head like they tell you. The boy sat on the floor against the dishwasher with his knees up and didn't talk. He still hasn't, to me or to anyone. The girl told me what happened.

Daisy came to their back door after dinner. They let her in, because it was Daisy. She went into the kitchen where their mom was. Then the coat came off in the kitchen.

I asked her what she meant and she looked at me like I was the child.

That's when my own kids came down. Maddie is nine, Ben is six. Ben went straight to the little window beside the front door, because he'd heard the word Daisy, and pulled the curtain back. He looked out and he screamed. The same scream. The exact same one the girl had been making on my porch, out of my son.

Maddie looked, went white, and pulled her brother back by the shirt without saying anything.

I turned the porch light on and looked. I had my good hand on the door. The deadbolt was locked, I knew that, and I still couldn't make myself take my hand off it. Daisy was sitting on my mat. Wagging. Looking at the door.

"Guys," I said. "It's Daisy."

Four kids on one side of that sentence and me on the other.

I got angry. I was two fingers down and bleeding through a dish towel, my dog was on the porch, and two children were screaming at me that she wasn't and two more couldn't get a word out. I said to the girl, fine. Tell me what you see.

She told me in kid words. I'm going to give you her words because mine don't work.

The legs are too long. The head's not on right, it's slipping. There's a line down its front. Her eyes are shut. It's looking out of her mouth.

I looked again, with my hand on the lock. A wet dog, sitting on my porch. I looked for a long time. My dog.

She'd been checking the lock every couple of minutes since she'd locked it. She went and checked it again, and leaned to look out the little window with her hand still on the deadbolt.

Her face changed. It went slack, like relief. "It's Daisy," she said, in a different voice, a smaller one. Then she took her hand off, and looked at her hand, and looked at the window. "It's not."

She did it twice more while I watched. Hand on the lock: Daisy. Hand off: not. The third time she started crying again and I pulled her away from the door.

Then I did what she'd done. I took my hand off the door, and I stepped back from it, and I looked.

The girl had it right. The legs. The line down the front. Daisy's eyes were shut, and something was looking at me out of her mouth. I stood there until I couldn't, and then I put my hand back on the deadbolt because I had to know, and it was Daisy, wagging. I took my hand off. It wasn't.

That's the rule, as far as I can tell. If your hand is on the way in, you see the dog.

The police car came, and when it turned onto the street the driveway was empty. The officer came in, and the ambulance behind him, and they dressed my hand and I signed the form that says you refused transport. The girl told the officer about the dog and he wrote it down. He asked me where the dog was now and I said I didn't know.

A woman from the county came for the kids. The girl looked back at my front door the whole way to the car. After that it was blue light on the kitchen ceiling from three doors down, and the three of us with the blinds shut.

I called Sarah at the hospital and told her all of it. She said she was leaving now, in the voice she uses on people in shock.

I heard her car as it was getting light. She pulled all the way up to the garage, where I couldn't see her from the little window. I heard the engine stop. Then nothing.

I stood at the window with my hand on the door and waited for her to come around the corner of the house, and she didn't, and she didn't. I thought she was on the phone. I thought she was crying in the car, which she does sometimes after a bad shift, before she comes in. I'd started saying her name.

Then she came around the corner of the house and up the walk, in her scrubs, with her bag on her shoulder, and she looked up at the window and found my face and smiled, and I had the deadbolt turned and the door open before I'd thought about it, because it was my wife, and I'd been up all night, and she's a nurse.

I let go of the door to get hold of her.

It was wearing Sarah.

The scrubs were the same. The bag was on its shoulder. Her eyes were shut, and her mouth was open in a way hers doesn't go, and something was looking at me out of it from a long way back. It was standing on my mat with the door wide open and it did not come in. It stood there with my wife's bag on its shoulder and waited for me to let it.

I got the door shut. I don't remember doing it. Ben says I did it with my bad hand.

Her car is still in the driveway. I went to the ER in daylight with the kids in the back seat, and they called it a crush amputation and asked if it was the dog, and I said yes, the dog. They wanted to keep me and I didn't stay. The lines around my wrist have gone dark under the dressing in a way the doctor didn't like. I have two fingers and a thumb on that hand. It has the other two somewhere. The police have had me in twice about Sarah. I told them the truth and they wrote it down the way the first officer did. It's never there when they come by, and I don't know where it goes. The corner-house kids are with their grandmother in another town, and the boy still hasn't talked.

It's there every night, at the edge of the porch light, in her scrubs. Ben asks when Mom's coming in. Maddie doesn't ask. Last night I found her at the front door with her hand flat on it, looking out the little window, and she was smiling.

She's nine. She can reach the handle.

My boss is psychotic.

No, it’s not an exaggeration. I know it sounds dramatic. But trust me, this isn’t a petty “my boss is an asshole” rant that you hear from white collar dudes when their manager gets pissy with them for taking too many breaks. I’ve been there too, but this isn’t that. 

He’s a freak. 

Bat-shit insane.

And frankly, I’m terrified. 

I’m scared of what he’s done. What he will do. To me. To my coworkers.

To be fair, this is a new development. He wasn’t always like this. Sure he was a terrible boss, but a monster? Not in the slightest.

I’ll stop being cryptic. Let’s start from the beginning and you can see for yourself.

My first day at ClientTale was a big achievement for me. I had just finished my undergrad in Computer Science and was looking to make a splash in big tech.

Unfortunately, it was less of a splash and more of a stumble.

The market was fairly competitive and I couldn’t seem to get any bites no matter how much I put myself out there. My buddies were landing gigs all over the West Coast and I felt like my time was running out. Hundreds of applications and cold emails later, I managed to book some startup interviews. That’s when ClientTale came on my radar. 

It seemed legit. The website claimed they were “rethinking the way we work and play.” Even now, I don’t know what that means. I couldn’t care less about their hand-wavy culture bullshit. What really sold me was the fact that they were a few series deep in multi-million dollar funding. Tech companies love to spew their pseudo-philosophical narrative but it’s all for show. In the end it’s the money that talks.

I did some digging and managed to snag the phone number of their recruiter. After some phone tag, a screening call, and a few grueling tech interviews, an offer letter blipped into my starving inbox. I was elated.

Now, ClientTale isn’t a traditional tech company. If you are picturing a bunch of cringey “day in the life of an engineer” videos you would be wrong. Like most startups, it is small, stressful, and demanding. Now, I am not complaining. This is exactly what I signed up for.

I got started with a small group of guys developing the platform from the ground up. The other engineers made it sound very Wild West. No limits. Technical freedom. A nerd’s dream.

Oh how wrong I was.

My perception of the job shattered when I met our boss, Meddler.

Meddler isn’t his real name. His last name is Manning. That’s just what the engineering team calls him behind his back. He earned the moniker by constantly "meddling" in our work. Whenever Meddler stuck his thirty-something, platinum-haired, expensive-suit-wearing nose where it didn’t belong, productivity waned.

Meddler is—or was—your average bad boss. He comes in late, leaves early, and raises hell whenever anything inconvenient happens on the job. The irony is very telling. I meet guys like this all the time, business bros whose quest for recognition stems from their deep-seated insecurity. The more his team gets done without him, the more bruised his ego, the more everyone else needs to pay.

One time our production service was down and Meddler decided it was best to race through the men’s restroom and bang on closed stalls to find the on-call engineer, Geoff. When Geoff was located, Meddler asked if he was willing “pinch it off” to save his job. Geoff obliged. The issue was not urgent, but Meddler made it so.

Another time our QA engineer, Henry, had a medical emergency and had to leave early. Meddler called him later that day to ask how things were. It sounds like a sweet gesture.

It wasn’t.

One of the nurses let Henry know that Meddler showed up to the hospital later that night. He posed as an uncle and quizzed the nurses on Henry’s family emergency just to make sure the story lined up. Henry thought he was trying to be sneaky but I knew better. Meddler wanted Henry to know he was there.

Now, how does someone like Meddler end up working as manager at a snazzy new startup? The answer is simple.

Nepotism.

Meddler’s dad is a big name in Silicon Valley and has a substantial stake in ClientTale. Meddler had just finished his business degree at Yale and daddy decided to pull some strings. Now we’re stuck with him.

I’m sure by now you’re feeling a bit underwhelmed by Meddler. A micro-managing nepo baby doesn’t sound like the devil, after all. 

You’re right.

If you recall my warning, something changed in Meddler. A month ago, Meddler got into a bad accident. He took daddy’s Porsche out for a joyride after one-too-many drinks and ended up wrapping it around a tree. By some miracle, he ended up being tossed into a ditch by the road, suffering minor enough injuries that only warranted a short hospital stay. We joked that even death didn’t want Meddler.

Terrible, I know.

When Meddler recovered and rejoined us back at the office, he wasn’t himself. His loud and aggressive demeanor was replaced with something sullen and reserved. The fire in his eyes was out. He gained weight, let brown roots take hold under his platinum receding hair, and wore the same dirty, ill-fitting suit most days. He spent his first few weeks back nailed to his chair in his office with the lights off. We’d pop in and out for brief asks. A one word answer or casual nod was all her offered back. With Meddler no longer meddling, we got back to work. 

It was the most productive we’ve ever been.

Unfortunately the peace didn’t last. Eventually Meddler started making his rounds again. At first, it was subtle. He’d scuttle around and stare at our monitors with a furrowed brow. He’d ask short and pointed questions about our tasks before moving on. 

“Seems like Meddler is back from the dead huh?” I said to Geoff.

Geoff chuckled. 

We were pairing on a new feature that was due at the end of the quarter. This was something I owned and was praying it could prop me up for a promotion. As long as our fearless leader didn’t get in the way, of course.

“Speak of the devil.” Geoff said before retreating back to his desk. 

The thud of Meddler’s footsteps fell short just a few feet behind me. He said nothing, so I kept working, hoping the clack of my obnoxious keyboard would drown out the awkward silence.

It didn’t.

A few minutes passed and I started to think he had stepped away until the sound of his voice broke right behind me.

“What you working on?” He asked plainly.

“Oh, hey boss—this is that migration I was telling you about.” I stammered.

He pressed for more details. I explained that I decided to refactor a lot of the legacy surfaces to a new design. Modern web framework, Rust migration, blah blah. I was waiting for his eyes to gloss over but he remained engaged. 

It was very uncomfortable. Although he hung onto every word, he didn’t seem interested. It was like he was starved for some response I wasn’t giving. His intense expression gave me the impression he was going to beat me if I didn’t offer it soon.

“So yeah, that’s what I’ve got going on. Planning to deploy end of the quarter if all goes well.” I said, trying to break off the conversation.

His face softened. Meddler rubbed his chin and appeared deep in thought for a moment.

“Thank you. This is good stuff.” He mumbled. “You’re very efficient, Alex. I’m going to think about this a bit more and get back to you with more questions.” He said before marching off.

Geoff returned a couple minutes later with a cheeky grin.

“What was that?” He whispered.

“I’m not sure man. He kept asking about my feature. It was weird. He looked super intense.” I said quietly.

“He looked like he wanted to screw you dude.” He laughed.

The moment stayed with me for a while. At first my impression was optimistic. Maybe the crash knocked some much needed sense into him. Maybe Meddler wrestled with God and realized he needed a different approach to life.

Or maybe he suffered severe brain trauma and simply lacks the capacity to meddle anymore.

A few days later, I was doing some work when Geoff came up to my desk.

“What did you do man?” He said quietly. I set my chunky headphones down and shot him a puzzled look. He was pecking at his lunch and eyeing Meddler’s office very subtly.

“Oh my bad—Meddler’s been staring at you all day. Thought you might have got on his bad side.” He said.

I turned to look but he put one hand on my shoulder to stop me.

“Nah man don’t look—he’ll know I said shit.” He paused a few moments before glancing back in Meddler’s direction.

“Yeah I don’t know man he won’t stop.” He said, his voice quieter this time.

“Quit messing around you’re creeping me out. It’s not funny.”

“My bad. Just looking out for you bro.” Geoff said before throwing his hands up in mock offense and retreating back to his desk.

I spent the rest of the day feeling uneasy. Meddler didn’t leave his office once. I never looked back, but I could feel his beady eyes on the back of my head. That lifeless stare with the intensity of a dead man. The image alone made me queasy.

It got me thinking about the last few days. Now that Geoff mentioned it, I don’t remember him doing his rounds since our last conversation. Has he just been watching me this whole time? 

The anxiety was short lived. Meddler resumed his strolls the next day. I couldn’t help but wonder if it’s because he noticed me catching on or if the timing was just a coincidence. 

I chose to believe the latter. 

Things were relatively normal for a time, but as usual, the peace was short lived. 

One morning I arrived for work and was surprised to be greeted with an empty parking lot. I chalked it up to traffic. Most of my coworkers lived on the other side of the busy highway and I took streets that day. Surely an accident held up the rest of the team.

When I entered the building, the liminal state of the place irked me. My footsteps resounded off the empty walls much louder than they should. I winced at every step. It wasn’t until the carpet dampened the sound that I felt less exposed. 

I turned the corner to our front desk and that’s when I realized nobody was there. Not a single soul. I stood at the welcome desk and peered around. All the lights were on but nobody was in sight. 

Something felt wrong. Rather than taking a seat and waiting out the silence, I called Geoff.

“Hey—uh when are you getting to work?”

“What’s that?” He said hazily, as if he had just woken up.

“I don’t know man it’s creepy. Nobody is here yet I feel like I’m working night shift.”

Silence on the other end.

“Geoff?”

“Wait you didn’t get the memo? We’re off today bud. Meddler’s orders.” He said.

“What? I didn’t get any memo. I was here Friday too.”

The sound of shuffling crackled on the phone. Geoff’s voice came in clearly a few moments later.

“He called and emailed us on Saturday to let us know they were doing pest control or something. Work-from-home day.” 

Silence.

I put Geoff on speaker and whipped through my missed calls.

No Meddler.

No email.

“Well, best you get your ass home dude. Don’t want to get blasted with nasty pesticides—“

Boom.

A loud banging emanated from the break room. The florescent lights overhead cast worrisome shadows around the area. Was someone there?

“Hello?” I called out.

I shuffled sideways trying to get a better look, my eyes fixed on the empty break room across the office. I didn’t dare move forward until I could be sure there was no danger. I jumped when I heard the thump of my shoulder against drywall. 

I turned and realized I was budding against Meddler’s office. 

The door was open.

I peeked in, mind racing, half expecting to see the deranged man sitting in his chair, sunken black eyes peering up at me.

Instead, I was met again with an empty room.

I was about to return my attention to the sound in the break room when something caught my eye.

A name plate sat on Meddler’s desk, facing me. A single word etched into the gold-plated paperweight:

“MEDDLER.” 

The air left my lungs as I read it. How long has that been there? Surely Meddler was messing with us. He must have overheard his new title and decided to make a dry joke of it. Yeah, that was definitely it.

Just a dumb joke.

I tried my best to convince myself this was lighthearted in nature but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was more sinister. All of Meddler’s neurotic behavior towards me made me feel like this was targeted. It sounds crazy, but deep down I think Meddler wanted me right here, right now, looking at this name plate.

He wanted me to know he was angry.

Boom. 

Another loud banging noise erupted from a different room. I had to get out of here. 

I tore out of Meddler’s office and ran down the stairs. A few missed steps nearly set me tumbling but I managed to stay composed. I kept glancing behind me expecting to see someone in pursuit but nothing came. I didn’t stop looking back until I was deep into the parking lot. As I put my car into gear, I noticed something I missed when I first pulled in.

On the street beside the empty parking lot sat a single car.

A black sports car.

The sight of it was obscured by a dumpster and an array of bushes seated along the sidewalk. If you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to miss. 

I swear I’ve seen Meddler’s face pull up in that car more than once. I remember thinking how dumb and impractical it looked. An expensive and useless vehicle for an expensive and useless employee.

I hid away in my apartment confused by the whole ordeal. I didn’t understand why Meddler would choose to spook me like that. Even if he intended for me to see the name plate, he had no guarantee I’d end up in his office. None of it made sense.

Again, I decided to go against my judgement. After all, the sounds I heard could’ve easily been exterminators setting up for the day. The nameplate could’ve simply been the remnants of an uncomfortable joke that Meddler forgot to carry out before his accident.

After much deliberation and very little sleep, I decided to go back to work. 

But not without precautions, of course.

When I arrived to that dreaded parking lot the next day, I waited anxiously, peering through the frosted windshield for any signs of life. It wasn’t until every member of my team parked and slipped behind the dark lobby doors that I took the first shaky step out of my car. 

After a slow ascent to my floor, Meddler walked up to me as I approached the front desk.

“Heard you showed up yesterday. Sorry about that. I swear I had emailed you on Friday.” He said plainly. His eyes still had that post-accident intensity. His hair was extra messy today and half his stained dress shirt hung out the side of his pants.

“Oh, no problem—I wasn’t here long.” I stammered. It was hard looking him in his eyes so I kept my gaze to the floor. I couldn’t help but notice his shoes were unusually dirty and chipped near the soles. It was the kind of wear you’d only see on someone who was on their feet all day. All night too, possibly. Not the kind of wear you expect to see on luxury shoes.

He grinned and patted my shoulder before marching back to his office. Geoff was observing from a safe distance. He popped in once a comfortable amount of time passed.

“Freaked me out yesterday bud.” He whispered as he settled into the spare seat beside my desk. 

“Pretty freaked out myself.” I responded, glancing nervously towards Meddler’s dark office. “Did you see the name plate?”

Geoff finished correcting some minor mistakes on-screen before responding. “Yeah I saw it when I came in. Don’t know what that’s about. He probably had this grand scheme in mind before he tried to kick the bucket.”

I froze, fingers hovering above the keyboard.

“I thought he wrecked his car?” I said plainly.

“Oh yeah I heard that rumor too. Doesn’t make sense though. He’d be in jail for sure.” He said quietly. “Henry said it was pills. Jim from security told me it was a loan shark. Some mafia-esque dude rapped on his door and busted his legs with a pipe. Hari said someone found him out in the woods. Claims Meddler just left his apartment one night and was found a week later wandering the mountains like a man possessed. Guess we’ll never really know.”

This news made me feel uneasy. And a bit dumb. Of course Meddler didn’t wrap his car around a tree in a drunken bender. Sure, Meddler’s rich dad could’ve pulled some strings, but I imagine even he has limits. Something else happened to Meddler, and whatever it is remains a mystery.

Geoff made a “aha” sound out of nowhere which made me jump a little.

“If Meddler knows about his nickname it’s probably from the work chats. Must’ve greased up IT to hand over the chat logs or something.” Geoff said.

“Shit.” I whispered.

“Makes sense why he’s singling you out then. You did not hold back.” He chuckled.

Those damn chats. When I first came onboard I wanted to fit in with the group. Meddler was a terror that day, pulling people one-by-one into his office and accusing them of negligence for something he surely did. The team started ripping on him in the chat between scoldings. I joined in and kept things mild but eventually I got brave and took things a little too far. I don’t remember all of what I said, but I do remember making a comment about how Meddler gets off to self-help books and that even daddy’s money couldn’t buy him a personality.

“Don’t worry about it man. If he wanted to do something he would’ve done it by now. Just let him stew in it.” Geoff said patting my back.

But he has tried something. Whatever happened yesterday wasn’t a coincidence.

A rational Meddler would’ve made an example of me. Nothing harmful, of course, but I wouldn’t be let off without a violent talking-to and a shallow threat to my employment if I didn’t apologize profusely. 

A rational Meddler wouldn’t stage an office closure to lure me in and do—well, whatever he planned to do.

Of course, nothing of substance has happened. Yet.

Geoff and I sat taking turns working at my keyboard under the dim office lighting for the rest of the day. He kept assuring me I was overthinking it. I wanted to believe him, but something just didn’t sit right with me.

Meddler remained in his office for the rest of the day. I kept glancing back at his dark hideaway. The lights from various computer monitors reflected off the dark glass, casting ghostly shapes that flickered and moved. Meddler could be seen faintly hunched over at his desk, his own monitor painting blue light on his sunken face.

When I got home, I couldn’t sleep. 

I pulled out my work laptop and combed over the old messages over and over at the edge of my bed. I tried to convince myself what I said wasn’t too bad, but the more I read, the more anxious I got. A hard lump formed in my stomach, each message adding to the weight. I pictured a haggard Meddler, sweaty and focused on his own computer. His beady, dark eyes whipping left and right as they soaked in my words. Anger and violence bubbling in his insides while remorse ate at mine. 

I turned off the machine and caught a glimpse of myself in the dark reflection. A messy-haired man with a patchy beard and dark bags under his eyes stared back.

I really needed to get some rest. But I didn’t think I could face Meddler the next day. Hell, I couldn’t even bring myself to call him and tell him I’ll be out sick.

I took the easy way out and decided to let Geoff handle it. He doesn’t see Meddler the same way I do, so surely he wouldn’t mind.

It was late, so I decided to call and leave him a voicemail. 

Buzz…buzz…

What the hell?

The vibration of a phone could be heard above. I looked up, ringing phone in hand, trying to identify the source.

Blue rays of moonlight, split into frayed rectangles by cheap blinds, illuminated the room weakly. I directed the light of my phone overhead. Nothing but cold white ceiling overhead and an idle fan. 

And yet, the buzzing remained. I killed the call and the buzzing died with it.

Something wasn’t right. 

“Geoff?” I called weakly. A faint thumping overhead replaced the buzzing.

I broke out in cold sweat. Terrifying possibilities rapped at my brain with each new thump overhead.

A pained moan interrupted the melodic tapping.

Shit. If Geoff was in trouble, I needed to find help. But how was he here? And why?

I didn’t have time to think.

My fingers shakily dialed 911 as I slipped out my front door into the florescent light of my apartment hallway. 

I made my way into the elevator and keyed the floor above me while trying to explain to the operator what was going on.

“Yes my friend is hurt—I don’t know the number. It’s the apartment above mine. I’m going to check right now…I’m not sure what happened just hurry—“

The doors dinged open and I rounded the corner, making my way to the dreaded room. I took note of the number and passed it along to the operator on the phone. I pressed my ear to the door, hoping to hear some signs of life. 

Nothing.

The rhythmic thumping and pained sounds of Geoff were gone.

For a moment, I panicked. Did I just make this all up?

I worried that, in my sleep deprived state, I may have just hallucinated this nightmare. A fear induced psychosis initiated by my meddling boss could have overtaken me. A story that would surely fall on deaf ears when the cops arrive shortly.

For a moment, I remained pressed to the door, my left arm holding my phone limp at my side. The distant voice of the operator desperately trying to reach me in my absence could be heard faintly.

Click.

I lost my balance briefly as the door gave and swung inward with a faint creak. Whoever last entered must’ve been careless. Or they were in a hurry. Either way, not a good sign. 

“Hello? Geoff?” I yelled hesitantly.

I tried to peer into the apartment but not much was visible. Beyond the entryway, a maze of boxes and loose furniture was stacked to the ceiling, obstructing the view.

After a brief silence, the sound of pained grunting could be heard again. A loud clicking escapes the darkness.

Shit. Whatever is happening isn’t good.

I crept into the apartment, careful not to disturb the walls of excess that directed my path. I passed a light switch to my right as I entered but opted to use my phone light to navigate instead. No need to alert anyone that I’m here.

The boxes contents were worrisome: A vast assortment of hunting knives, vintage WWII gear, dirty and unopened foreign materials and chemistry tools. A collage of violence filled turned this small apartment into a maze of death.

I turned the corner at the first bend and nearly dropped the phone.

The path opened up to a clear corner of the apartment that looked almost like an altar to something sinister. Large wooden boards carried various pictures of myself and my coworkers. They all had different levels of damage and wear, and all had a colorful assortment of offensive labels scribbled across the faces. 

Below the portraits were pages stuck into the wood with weapons: knives, throwing stars, and curved daggers. The pages contained manic writings about how each of us ought to be punished. Some writings described forms of physical and psychological torture. Others were more outlandish. Fragmented snippets of scenarios involving demons and supernatural beings.

I heard a faint thud and stumbled over the mess, attempting to shine my light towards the perpetrator. 

Nothing.

I paused briefly, squinting into the dark crevices of stacked weaponry. The light crawled over additional boxes of ammunition and books with unintelligible titles. Industrial instructions for chemical production could be seen among the litter.

Thump.

A loud bang and pained moan escape a room to the right of me. The faint clicking resumes. I press forward, phone in hand. I pray Geoff is there. I just want to get him and get out of here. 

As I turn the corner, I cover my mouth to stifle a scream.

Geoff is there. At least, I think it’s him. The person before me sits in a small closet decorated with various monitors and a desk. He’s down to his underwear and his hands are cuffed behind his back. The real shock is his face…well, what’s left of it.

A patch of scabbed flesh is all that remains. The rest of his head is adorned with a strange metal cage, a long metal rod protruding from the center. 

His head is bobbing up and down like a chicken, the metal prod tapping the keys on the grimey keyboard. On the monitors, a mess of text is being written using a crude text editor. My eyes wander to the filthy bucket beside his chair where a cell phone lies cracked and buzzing intermittently. The same phone I called just moments ago. 

“Don’t interrupt him.”

The words cause me to stumble into a wall of boxes as I turn to face their owner.

Sure enough, Meddler is there. He’s wearing bloody kaki’s with suspenders over his bare chest. A mess of blood dribbles just beneath his chin. His face is hidden behind a mess of skin—Geoff’s face. I take a step back as the phone light glints over a large, black hunting knife in his hand. He twirls it playfully, fresh blood racing up and down the blade. 

“I’m disappointed. All my hard work setting up shop here…you weren’t supposed to come looking until tomorrow.” Meddler shook his head, the skin on his face making a sickly wet sound.

“Had Geoff hand write you some clues and everything. You shouldn’t be in here unless you plan to work.” He raised the blade and pointed at Geoff.

“What the hell is this? What did you do to Geoff?” I said shakily. My voice was shrill with terror.

Meddler took one step forward, raising the knife towards me as he did.

“Meddling. As usual, right? Nah I’m kidding. I know I wasn’t always the best boss. That’s going to change. We’re all going to be here soon—working. Making money. So much money.” His voice broke on the last syllable. He balled his fist and started hitting the side of his head, the skin mask getting looser with every pop. 

“Hear that dad! This is my company. You—you don’t just do that to me—you know I had to get you back. You can’t just take everything from me. MY money. MINE.” His voice was hushed and desperate, like he’s pleading with someone in his head.

My mind was racing. I wasn’t sure whether to fight or run. Cops would be here soon. Maybe I could just keep him talking until then.

“You really doing this because we made fun of you? Jesus man, it was just a joke—“

Meddler laughed mockingly, pressing the knife forward, the tip aiming square at my chest.

“I don’t give a shit about that. No—I’m not petty. I’m a man on a mission. This is about business.”

I glanced towards the way I came. I thought maybe I heard someone approaching. Just a little bit longer…

“I heard you took pills...sounds like you’re going through a lot.” It came out more of a question than a statement. I hoped he’d jump at the chance to rebut.

He took two more steps forward and tapped the blade on my forehead. His eyes peered through Geoff’s face, looking me up and down with violent intentions.

“You sound like dad. I’m not a weak man…you just don’t get it. Your dad ever mess with you? He ever take your money so you don’t gamble it away? Repossess your car so you don’t drive drunk? Lace your drugs so you overdose and never touch the stuff again? Control. So controlling.” He paused and stifled a sob. His speech was a roller coaster, bouncing between mania, rage, and joy every few syllables.

“No, no, no. He should’ve known better. It fried everything. Everything up here. My soul is broken. My brain is on fire—“

I felt a sense of urgency as he hooked his blade around the side of my throat. My hands instinctively grabbed a tower of boxes to my right and brought them down at Meddler.

The boxes hit him hard in the chest and he swung the blade as he tumbled, the ebony blade catching the top of my kneecap. 

I screamed and stumbled around the mess, my injured leg dragging hard behind me. Geoff continued tapping away at his keyboard, afraid of what Meddler might do if he stopped. I wanted to set him free, but I couldn’t turn back.

Not yet.

I raced through the hazardous apartment towards the exit. A chorus of screaming and sprinting broke out behind me. I continued to level towers of boxes as I escaped, attempting to grow the gap between me and Meddler. 

I was feeling hopeful as a square of florescent light came into view, the open door leading out to the apartment hallway was within reach. No cops in sight yet. That’s when I heard the gunshots. 

A barrage of bullets tore through the boxes around me, sending a flurry of paper and cardboard in the air. I ducked and moved frantically to avoid the attack but failed.

My body froze and tumbled to the floor as red hot gunfire pierced my left side from behind. I screamed and writhed on the floor, a pool of crimson growing beneath me.

The next minute was just a blur, a collage of moments fragmented by the searing pain in my side. Meddler emerged from the shadows and stood over me, gun in hand. He smacked the side of his head with the handle in a crazed rant while attempting to drag me back by my ankle. I kicked as best I could. He fumbled me and the gun in his shaky hands, white hot anger making him hysterical. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave up the chase and tore me apart right there.

Fortunately, something took his focus away from me.

Angry voices broke out from the hallway, their forms casting shadows in the framed light. It sounded like two people. Police, I could only hope.

Meddler shook and shuffled in place, unsure whether to shoot, hide, or run. Madness won out as he lifted his weapon towards the unseen figures. Three shots were fired before his gun reached his eye line and he slumped to the floor, his body jackknifing before ultimately rolling into a mess of cardboard where the light didn’t touch. 

Everything was blurry now. The figures stood over me with worried faces and concerned voices but I couldn’t answer. There was more blood than carpet beneath me and my body was giving away to the cold. 

The dark room is fading now, the orange glow of hallway lighting growing dim. Clouds of cardboard debris falling like snow above me. 

In the distance, I hear the pecking of a keyboard. A faceless Geoff continues working.

I blink, and the room changes.

My eyes remained closed, but a garbled ambulance siren is heard overhead.

Time jumps again.

I try to pry open my swollen eyes. I squint at the cold, sterile medical lighting washing over me. But only for a moment.

Finally, darkness.

I’ve been in the hospital a few weeks now. The bullet grazed my spleen but didn’t hit anything critical. Dr. says I’m lucky, but I don’t hear the words. I don’t feel lucky. My mind is occupied with memories of that horrible night.

News of Meddler’s spree was still hot off the press. I couldn’t find a channel that wasn’t talking about him in some form.

“Boss from Hell…”

“…Son of Silicon Valley elite tortures two employees during foiled terrorist action…”

“…severe brain damage caused by laced narcotics led to psychotic break…”

“…CEO found dead in penthouse...”

“…Suspect claimed father laced drugs that led to his severe mental impairment. Involvement cannot be confirmed at this time…”

The words fell flat for me. I didn’t care why it happened. No amount of rationalization could temper the horror I experienced. And Geoff…

I tried to visit him. A nurse told me his family wanted privacy at this time. I understand. He got off much worse than I did. I know it wasn’t my fault, but I still wanted to apologize. I couldn’t shake the image of him faceless, pecking away at that keyboard in Meddler’s dirty closet. Some selfish part of me simply wanted to see him so I could replace that memory. I didn’t want that to be the last time I saw him. 

Now, I face a new dilemma. I woke up convinced that Meddler was shot and killed by the police. I was wrong.

The cops got me into an ambulance shortly after firing on him. They went back, only to find an empty pile of crumpled boxes. A trail of blood led to a makeshift chute at the back of the apartment that dropped him out into the alley below. He was never found after that night.

Despite this news, I’d like to think I’m more adjusted lately. The nightmares are manageable. The anxiety is almost at the point that I can return to some semblance of work. Unfortunately I’m not sure how I’ll feel hearing the typing of a keyboard again. Just the thought makes me shudder.

My only worry now is that Meddler will find me. He's not well, and he's surely going to get worse. I know his obsession will never stop. He’s not going to rest until me and my coworkers are flayed and pecking at keyboards with makeshift appendages, writing garbage out of fear of his wrath. His punishment. A twisted, corporate hell.

When I’m strong enough, I’m going to do what I can to prepare. I need to protect myself. When the ghost of my meddling boss comes knocking, I’d like to think I can take him this time. I don’t want to end up like Geoff.

Or worse.

And to those reading this, I hope you be careful too. If something doesn't feel right, don't ignore that feeling. It’s easy to write off difficult people in your life as jerks. It takes instinct to know if something is really wrong. There are predators all around us, after all. Bosses, teachers, friends, family—you never know where wolves hide among sheep. Don’t let the Meddler’s of the world sneak up on you.

I went to the asylum for a really stupid reason. It wasn’t just to take pictures like I told Tyler, and it definitely wasn’t for a research project like I told my Mom. If I had been going exclusively for either one of those reasons, I would have gone in the crisp, pale light of the October dawn. 

But I didn’t do that. I went at night. 

I’ve been to the asylum plenty of times. It’s kind of what you do when you’re a kid living in my town. You do your PE runs there. You take your senior photos there. If you’re my aunt’s age, you probably went to a haunted house or two before they shut that all down. I don’t really know why they shut it down. They probably though it was dangerous or disrespectful or something.

Part of the draw is that the asylum grounds are kind of beautiful—serene on the surface. The property is composed of acres and acres of meadows and miles of trails lined with briars that hang heavy with blackberries every summer.

In the spring and summer, and in the light of day, and when the circumstances of life are ideal, and all the stars align and you’re caught up in that moment between your graduation and the first day of college, the asylum feels welcoming and peaceful and soothing. But that isn’t the real asylum. It’s not what I experienced on the night that I went.

Let me start by saying it wasn’t my idea to go on Halloween night. That felt really cliche to me. “You’re way too contrarian for that,” Tyler said on the night he dropped me off at the asylum. “Go during Thanksgiving week or something.”

And yeah, I should have listened to Tyler.

But the fact is, my contrarian streak is exactly the thing that brought me there on the most cliche night of the year.

It started with a conversation with my sister. We were talking about plans for Halloween. She’s three years older than me. She’s a social butterfly, she owns a house, and she has a baby, who I think is super cute (yeah—I’m well aware that I only think she’s cute because I’m related to her. Sue me.)

She’s also married to Scott, who objectively is great but for some reason has always gotten under my skin. It might be because he proposed to Mallory at the exact same time the series finale of Young Sheldon was airing. Who does that?

The three of us were standing in the kitchen. Mallory was pulling scones out of the oven, and Scott was rifling around in the fridge.

“I think it’s gonna be pretty low-key,” she told me. “We’re going to do a family costume—maybe the Incredibles or something.”

I glanced over at Scott, who was elbow deep in the top shelf of the refrigerator, and tried to picture him wearing a Mr. Incredible costume. My nose wrinkled involuntarily. 

“And we’ll hand out candy, and then Mable is coming over to do a photo shoot with us and Sly, and then we’ll leave Sly with Scott’s mom, and then we’ll hit a bar for a couple beers or if they do a fancy Halloween cocktail or something.”

Halfway through her monologue, I realized something annoying. She was going to have a better Halloween than me. I didn’t even have solid plans yet. A few of my friends had talked about a movie night, but nobody had mentioned it since last week, and I wasn’t sure if anyone was serious or not.

She put a plate of fresh scones on the counter. She must have interpreted my silence as pity, because she said, “Oh come on. We can’t all be young and crazy.”

That wasn’t what I was thinking at all. I was thinking that my twenty-four-year-old sister who was constantly awake with a six-month-old was somehow the cool one in this scenario.

What exactly was my excuse? All I had was school and crippling social anxiety.

Scott set a jar of lemon curd next to the scones. It was almost annoying that he had been digging around the fridge for lemon curd. Like, how smug can you get? Lemon curd and family costumes and bespoke Halloween cocktails—come on.

“What about you?” Mallory asked. “You and Tyler up to something? C'mon. Let me live vicariously through your Halloween plans.”

I didn’t want to tell her my plan was to watch a movie in my apartment, half-listening for trick-or-treaters. And so I answered with the first semi-plausible thing that my brain could conjure. “Ghost hunting,” I say. “Up at the asylum.”

Scott looked up like I’d just shone a giant flashlight in his eyes.

Mallory scowled. She’d never liked my interest in the paranormal. “Kimmy…”

“That sounds legit,” Scott said.

Mallory glared at him, and if I’m being honest, I kind of enjoyed the tiny wrench I threw into their scone-and-lemon curd life. 

Then she turned to me. “You aren’t allowed there after dark.”

Obviously I knew that. I grew up here. But I can’t stand the thought of Mallory in her dumb superhero costume, feeling bad for me. That’s just too sad.

So I kept digging myself deeper, “I want to try to talk to the girl who disappeared there.”

She looked at me. She opened her mouth. Then she shut it again.

Scott was a different story. A wide grin spread across his face. “I dare you to take the picture,” he said. 

Mallory slapped his arm with the back of her hand so hard that I could have sworn I felt it, too.

***

"The photo" in question is a selfie taken in 2013 by a local high school student named Mina. The photo, taken at the asylum’s cemetery, shows Mina in the dull morning sun, smiling widely at the camera. She’s wearing a red and gold letterman’s jacket from her school, and a bracelet with a turtle pendant. In recent years there’s been a rumor that the turtle was made of real emeralds, but nobody actually knows if that’s true or not.

If that was the whole story, the picture never would have gone viral like it did. A high school girl going missing in a small town is a tragic news story for sure, but as is so often the case, it would have blown over after a couple of months.

But the photo shows something else. It shows something massive and smoky creeping up the edge. It’s as if something huge hunches over Mina, mostly out of focus and obscured by the blanket of morning fog. Just enough of the shape shines through the mist to make you wonder what happened to her in the seconds after Mina snapped the photo.

The story goes Mina was at the asylum for senior photos. Her mom wanted her the pictures taken at the nursery just off of the highway, but Mina was just punk enough to want something edgy. Mina’s love of the macabre and her mother’s pumpkin spice sensibilities clashed, and then combined in such a way that the two of them ended up choosing an utterly gorgeous, only vaguely gothic asylum.

Apparently their photographer friend didn’t show up at first. When Mina called to check in, the photographer was adamant that she wasn’t coming.

No one knows why. That photographer had taken thousands of photos at the asylum over the years. But that day she didn’t want to be anywhere near the campus.

The photographer was adamant, but Mina was worse. Mina told her she wasn’t going anywhere.

Nobody knows exactly what happened from there.

We know that Mina never went home that night. We know that Mina made national news. We know Mina took some selfies on her crappy flip phone. We know that because one of them became internet-famous. 

That picture was the last one on her phone. The phone itself was found near the cemetery with bloody fingerprints smudged across the screen.

***

When Scott dared me to take “the picture” I knew exactly what he meant. Every kid around here knows.

The rules are simple:

1. Go to the asylum after dark.
2. Walk across the campus to the old cemetery. Stand beside the tallest gravestone.
3. Take a selfie with your phone. Pay close attention to any shadows and or shapes in the frame.
4. If there’s nothing extra in you’re photo, you’re safe for another. If there is…let’s just say you might want to sleep with the lights on for a while.

***

On Halloween night, I set my alarm for one in the morning, took a big swig of bourbon straight from the bottle, and walked down my creaky stairs to the parking lot to meet Tyler. 

Even though the hour was ungodly, I didn’t want to risk leaving my car on the road outside the park gates, so Tyler picked me up. It’s pretty easy to sneak onto the campus, but our town has a lot of cops that patrol even at night, and if one of them sees a car anywhere near the asylum, there’s a good chance they’re going to check it out.

When I got in Tyler’s car, the heater was off and it was so cold I could see my breath. He wore a deeply serious gray sweater and otherwise seemed completely oblivious to the cold. 

“You ready for this?” He asked.

“For sure!” I said with far more certainty than I felt.

“As long as you don’t let Mina get you.” 

I laughed, but our smiles faded quickly. Neither one of us had the bravado to fully commit to the bit. We drove the rest of the way in silence. It felt kind of like a reverse Christmas morning—like we were excited for something but in a bad way.

Eventually Tyler eased the car over to the shoulder. He turned off the headlights. We stayed in that silence for a moment. This should have felt fun, but I somehow couldn’t bring myself to reach for the car door latch.

“You sure don’t want me to come with you?” Tyler said. 

Warm relief rushed over me before I could catch it. Of course I wanted him to come with me. Now that I was here, sitting in the safety of the car, looking out there into the night, I felt every one of my senses prickling—coming alive—telling me I shouldn’t be alone out here.

I could see the edge of the trail up ahead. Something looked off. The shadows were far too long.

As I sat there shivering in the passenger seat, I would have done anything to have Tyler with me. 

Well, I would have done anything except actually ask.

“I’m good,” I said. It took the last bit of resolve I had to send him on his way. “I’ll text you in the morning.”

And as I climbed out of the car, I got the strangest feeling. It felt like I won’t be coming back. It felt like I was about to cross a line I wouldn’t be able to uncross. A movie night suddenly sounded great. All I really wanted was to go home and sit in my living room and eat the popcorn and Reese’s and Oreos and all the others stuff that sounded so lame a few hours ago. I knew that if I asked, Tyler would come with me. I wanted to sit with my best friend and let the night melt around us.

Instead I was stupid. 

I took my extra heavy coat, my bag of halloween candy, and a full bottle of bourbon and headed for the place where the fence broke. Bourbon felt like the right call for this night. I had a feeling Mina would have been a bourbon girl, and I knew that I was.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” I closed the door as quietly as I could and started walking through the moonlight toward the edge of the property.

For a beautiful moment, I felt myself relax. I thought I was going to be okay after all. Maybe this could just be a perfect walk in the moonlight, bathed in the luxurious silver. I could feel the warmth of that earlier drink sneaking up on me.

I was fine until I heard Tyler pull away. I turned to look over my shoulder as his tail lights disappeared, and I felt the cramping return to the pit of my stomach—the flash of lightning through my chest—the sense that something wasn’t right.

Still, I forced myself to continue. There was no way I was going to call him back now that he was gone. I would never live it down.

As I walked along the path with my backpack over my shoulder, I caught sight of something in the distance. It was a booth of some sort, edges sharp in the moonlight, roof hanging over a small enclosure, creating deep, angry shadows.

I felt myself tense up, wondering what could be hiding in the shadows. As I drew closer, though, I realized what it was. It was just a phone booth.

I didn’t remember that being out here, but I also didn’t come this way often. I veered off of my path to check it out.

The roof overhung the phone, creating a strange spot of darkness and shadow. Here, in the middle of the night, with the moon frowning down, it felt especially terrifying.

A sign swinging from two chains read “Spirit Phone.”

I’d seen things like this online. It was a thing for sad people. They could pick up a phone, whisper their goodbyes to lost loved ones, and walk away feeling like they got something off their chest. 

But while I wanted to write it off as a quaint memorial to people who had passed on, it’s sudden appearance in my path felt like something more. It felt targeted to me. After all, hadn’t I come here to try to communicate with Mina? If there was any truth to ghosts—if there was any chance I could communicate with her—why not use a tool meant just for that?

Stepping into the square of shadow felt like breaking some covenant I had made with this place. It felt like inviting something evil into my sphere.

And like an idiot, I did it anyway.

I stepped up to the phone and lifted it from it’s cradle. I didn’t know what I expected. Of course there wouldn’t be a ring tone out here. Of course it would be dead. But the silence somehow felt invasive. It hammered against my brain like it was its own person. I was silent for several moments. Then I gulped. And then I whispered, “Is anyone there?” 

For a moment, dead silence.

And then, somewhere far away, a tiny click, followed by the wail of the wind in the receiver. No voice, no breathing—just a sound telling me that someone somewhere else had picked up a second phone.

I slammed the receiver down.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. Not really. I realize as I stood there, staring at the phone, that I wasn’t at all prepared to meet something real out here tonight. Sure, I felt scared as soon as I stepped out of the car, but I thought it was just nerves. I never really believed it. Not until then.

Not until I stood in the moonlight.

All of the worst case scenarios slammed into me at the same time. 

What if my phone died before morning? 

What if I hurt myself? What if the alcohol I had already consumed—the alcohol I could feel fuzzing up the corners of my thinking—came on more strongly than I anticipated? 

What if the moon went behind a cloud? 

What if there really was someone on the other side of that phone?

I made myself let those thoughts go. More realistically, I forced them out of my mind in the same way you corral stray cats away from your front door. 

This was what I wanted. This was what I came for. I was not going to let fear ruin the night for me. I wasn’t going to back down. I was going to walk out of this night with a selfie from the cemetery and a fantastic story to tell my smug sister.

I hiked my backpack higher, and as I did, I realized that my hand was wet. I looked down. There was a thick liquid smeared across my palm. I turned on my phone light. Something gray, the consistency of honey, covered my hand. I looked up at the phone booth. The same substance dribbled from the handle of the receiver. 

I shone my flashlight higher. The same gray muck covered half of the plaque above the receiver so that the only visible words were:

…ones missed,

…where bonds persist.

I shivered and turned away. The substance oozed and squelched between my fingers, and as I started up the trail that led to the barns, I wiped my hand on my pants.

I thought about calling Tyler. I wanted to hear his voice on the other end of the line. I wanted the comfort. I didn’t have to admit that I was scared. I could just tell him about the phone I found or something. 

Still, he would be in bed by now, and I had the feeling that if I called him—if I heard his voice—I would lose the rest of my nerve and I would ask him to come back.

No. I would keep going. I couldn’t exactly tell him that I came out here to talk to Mina’s ghost and gave in the moment it got creepy. 

Blackberry bushes lined the path, shooting out spindly briars like arms ready to tangle me up and hold me forever. Out there in the middle of the night, wasn’t even sure that was walking the right path. Things looked different at night. Familiar shapes lurked and hulked like demons in the distance, and roads that I should have known felt like they were leading me somewhere I didn’t want to go. 

Eventually, I crested the hill and stepped up into view of the barns.

The silo loomed over me, along with several other structures. With the moonlight creating such a crisp view, I could see the graffiti on the buildings. I stepped closer.

Someone had painted two angry eyes on the face of one of the  barns, accompanied by eyebrows. Words scrawled beneath read, “He is watching” read the graphic. An arrow pointed upward.

It was silly nonsense—the kind of thing me and my friends would have done in high school—and yet something about it pulled me in. Something about it made my heart drop.

I took another step forward. And then another. Looking up into the rafters, I don’t know what I expected to see. Maybe I thought I would see some sort of gargoyle, or a demon bound by the graffiti artist’s words. Maybe I thought there would be a camera or a face peering back at me.

But there was nothing. Maybe a few sticks from a bird’s nest if I squinted hard enough.

But up higher—up higher there was a window, empty and yawning. If there ever had been glass up there, it was long gone. The window was a starless night now—like a portal to somewhere else.

Was this where Mina died? Did one of these old barns crumble around her, entombing her for eternity? Did something watch her from that window? Was something watching me?

With a shiver, I left the barns and kept walking. Shuffling through the grass, my backpack suddenly felt heavy. I paused and looked up at the sky. A pair of clouds hovered close to the moon.

Behind me, a gust of wind whistles through one of the open-air barns, kicking up crunchy leaves and scattering them across the field. I looked back.

A shadow moved behind the entrance to one of the barns. 

It was quick enough—subtle enough—that I couldn’t be sure it was anything at all. Normally I would have laughed it off, but tonight, all I could think about was the last photo Mina took—that image of the shadow.

I knew that if I started running, I would never be able to stop. So instead, I forced myself to go toward it. The shadow had to be nothing. Maybe just an animal. I took another step. 

Now I could see the shadow hovering in the doorway. Long columns of darkness clenched and curled and unclenched, like the shadows of tree branches, only fluid and curving. The shapes, wrong and unnatural, slipped toward the edge of the door.

My heart pounded, and I stumbled backward.

Beside me I heard a rustling, and then something grabbed my leg. I twisted hard, pulling away, only to feel a tearing. Still, whatever had me didn’t let go. 

I jerked my leg away. This time the tearing sensation reached the bare skin between my sock and the cuff of my jeans. I inhaled sharply at the pain.

When I looked down at my foot, I immediately felt stupid. A blackberry branch had snagged my ankle. My skin was pulled tight—stretched out by one of the barbs that had hooked me—but it was just a thorn. It wasn’t a monster. It wasn’t a ghost.

It was just a stupid blackberry briar.

I looked back up at the barn. The shadow was still there, but now that I had survived the blackberry bush, I realized what I was looking at. An old roll of loosely coiled wire swayed in the breeze, casting shadows on the ground. That was it. No reason to be scared.

Turning my back on the barns, I pushed onward down the trail. 

The blackberry bushes kept reaching for me as I made my way toward the cemetery, and from then on I was more careful about where I stepped. 

The little terrors of the night were taking a toll, but I remained stubborn in my purpose. I was going to get this photo. I was going to show Scott and all the rest of them that I wasn’t scared. And when I looked in the mirror tomorrow, I would be able to face myself, knowing that I hadn’t run away from an irrational fear.

After walking eastward for several minutes, the cemetery fence came into view. I approached the fence, thinking about the photo of Mina in the cemetery, with that strange shadow-shape over her shoulder. 

My aunt told me the secrets about this graveyard once. She told me that it’s not exactly what it looks like on the surface. This place is actually a wetland—a bog. Mina’s body—if this is in fact where her body ended up—has joined with hundred of other burials throughout the years and sunk into the depths. 

I hopped the fence and walked toward the tallest gravestone. It was obvious which one I was looking for—it was the only stone jutting out of the grass. The rest of them were invisible, forgotten at ground-level, or sunken even deeper.

My heart hammered as my shoes squashed across the lawn. Each time my feet sunk into the grass, it felt like squeezing a sponge out over an empty bowl. Water pooled around my shoes and the earth sucked at my feet with every step.

You should go. 

Not until I get the damn photo.

Because at the end of the day, it wasn’t just about impressing Scott, or even Mallory. I just wanted to win. For once I wanted to do the thing I had set out to do without giving up or chickening out. 

I could call Tyler as soon as I was done with the picture. He would be sleeping with his ringer on tonight, just in case I needed something. 

But I wasn’t leaving without the photo.

So I marched all the way up to that gravestone. I turned and looked out at the blackberry brambles and skinny white birch trunks beyond the chain link fence, searching for any sign of a menacing shadow. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. If anything, the darkness beyond the tree trunks felt a little too heavy—a little too close. But if that was the only thing I had to worry about, I was pretty sure I could manage.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. After flipping the screen, I raised my phone above my head, careful to get as much of the backdrop in focus as possible. I snapped the photo. My whole screen turned white for a moment, then, like a callback to a Polaroid developing in real time, the photo faded into view. 

I zoomed in immediately, checking every inch of the photo. My own eyes stared back at me, wide and bloodshot. I looked terrible, but I ignored my face and moved on. 

Something in the background caught my attention—something white in the expanse of darkness. I zoomed in close, only to see that a large moth had landed on the fence as I took the picture.

A sigh of relief escaped my lungs as I realized there was nothing strange in the photo at all.

I had been playing with the idea of calling Tyler as soon as I took the picture. Now that I had taken the photo, though, and it had come back empty, I felt an unexpected rush of confidence. It felt like nothing could touch me—like I could face anything tonight might throw at me.

Riding high on that sensation, I started walking deeper into the cemetery.

The ground grew soggier with every step. By the time I reached the middle of the lawn, I could see the standing water sparkling in the moonlight, and I was sinking up to my ankles every time I shifted my weight.

It was gross. The cold water had the effect of overcoming both my fear and my stubborn streak, and suddenly I was overcome with the practical need to get away from this muddy, squelching hellscape.

I was just about to turn back—just about to head for the barns—when something in the distance caught my eye. A rectangle shape rested near the fence.

I should have turned back. I should have let the freezing water serve as a warning. I should have called Tyler. 

But curiosity got me. Now that I had the photo on my phone, I felt like I could do anything at all. So I took a few more steps forward. Icy water seeped into my socks and stung the puncture from the blackberry thorns. I pushed on.

I couldn’t identify the shape in the distance yet, but I knew it didn’t belong here. The rolling grass and standing water covered the cemetery, and with the exception of the occasional corner of a sunken gravestone visible in my flashlight, the expanse was entirely flat.

The box on the others side of the lawn didn’t belong here at all.

As I walked—as I stared at that strange shape pushed up against the fence—I felt that strange sense of dread beginning to take hold again. I didn’t have to come here. I could have called Tyler at any time. I could be ay home in my bed right now, sinking into my memory foam mattress topper instead of sinking into three inches of cemetery sewage.

But I was pretty sure it was too late.

I shone my flashlight at the box again. This time the realization punched me in right in the gut.

Resting beside the fence, tilted to one side, poking halfway out of the mud lay a sad little pine box casket.

The lid was ajar. Gray mud oozed down the sides, and a half circle of rocks surrounded it.

At first I tried to rationalize it. Maybe it wasn’t a casket. Maybe someone had put some other kind of box out here for some other reason.

Okay, no, it was definitely a casket.

So maybe they were starting to bury people out here again.

Maybe I was really drunk, even though I didn’t feel it, and I was imagining all of this this.

But as I drew closer, I knew exactly what I was seeing. I knew that it was real.

And while it terrified me, it felt familiar, too.

Because there were other stories people told about this cemetery. Stories about caskets rising to the surface of the graveyard. Stories about placing rocks inside or on top of the caskets to weigh them down and keep them from floating up on muck and water.

There have always been stories about this place.

So many stories.

Maybe I should have believed some of them.

And then, the worst case scenario became real.

The lid began to slip from the casket. 

At first I didn’t want to believe it. Maybe it was just a trick of the shadows.

Only it wasn’t.

A sting of panic lit up my chest as I stared down.

Gray muck oozed out of the casket, and something eased over the side of the box. It was ragged and sinewy and gray like driftwood, and it hung limply, brushing the grass below. A green light glinted off of it.

A turtle pendant. Maybe was made of real emeralds. Maybe not. It didn’t matter.

What did matter was that it meant something I wasn’t ready to admit out there in that field. In fact, I’m still not sure I can admit it.

It meant that the driftwood wasn’t driftwood at all. That brittle gray thing was Mina’s arm, flesh and blood picked clean by the devastation of time. The turtle bracelet drooped down from the grimy bone and proved it.

It was then that I did what I should have done far earlier. Maybe if I had done it earlier, I would have stood a chance.

I turned and ran back toward the barns. I hurdled over the fence and ran for the light, the parking lot, and the safety of the highway.

Once, I thought I heard a low moan echoing from somewhere behind me, but I didn’t stop to check, and the sound dissolved into the sound of leaves crunching under my feet.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket.

“Tyler?” I cried when he finally picked up. “I need you to come get me!”

***

I didn’t tell Tyler anything that happened. I let him think that I got scared by leaves blowing and branches creaking. It was easier to accept the blow to my pride than to admit everything I saw.  

But when I glanced over at him, he was watching me and not the road. I think he knew that something happened. I think he knew that there was something different about me. Maybe I had been cursed. Marked. Maybe that radiated off of me like heatwaves over concrete.

As we drove home, I thought about it all. I played it over in my head.

I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Now, hours later, I’m sitting in my apartment, just waiting. It’s almost dawn and when the sun comes up, odds are that someone is going to find that coffin.

When they do, it’ll only be a matter of time before we learn an identity, and if it really ends up being Mina, that changes everything. It means that there is something far more terrifying about her disappearance than any of us could have imagined. She didn’t simply run away. Something killed her. Something entombed her. Something has held her there for over a decade.

And it means something else—something far more personal to me.

It means that I’m not imagining the things that have been happening to me.

Because things have been happening ever since I got home. 

That gray muck is oozing out of my bathroom faucet now, and out of the crack in my living room ceiling.

I can hear a phone sometimes—not my phone—the ringing fades in and out of earshot like it’s taunting me. When I go to look for it, the sound vanishes like a coastal mist.

And when I look at the selfie I took at the cemetery, there still isn’t a shadow figure in it. 

There’s something worse.

On the very edge of the photo, so blurry I didn’t notice it at first, a hand grips the outside of the fence. A hand with a glimmering green pendant.

I really love going to abandoned places. A few weeks ago, I decided to go to an abandoned church, one that wasn't too far away.

After a 30 to 40 minute journey, I arrived at the church, for some reason, a shiver had run through me even while I was still on the way. Perhaps the fact that it was a religious site caused me some extra stress.

I noticed that the door was open and realized I wouldn't have to go to the trouble of getting inside.

A very foul odor was emanating from inside so bad, in fact, that it could easily be detected even from in front of the door.

Because the building was old and abandoned, it hadn't been maintained for a long time, perhaps that's why there was that smell.

I went inside without much thought and began to look around.

The walls were all peeling, the floors were covered in broken glass, everything was coated in dust, and the pews were broken.

As I moved forward, that foul stench began to intensify. While wandering around, I noticed a light, I wasn't alone here. When I reached the spot where the light was coming from, I couldn't believe my eyes.

A Star of David had been drawn on the ground, at each point of the star sat a candle, and at each of these points lay a human limb, a head, arms, legs, and a torso.

I was shocked by what I saw and couldn't move for a few seconds. Then, I heard footsteps and immediately hid.

Six individuals arrived, wearing red outfits reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan robes, and each took their place at one of the points of the triangle. They spoke in a language I did not understand, most likely phrases related to some sort of ritual.

I tried to be as quiet as I could, and after saying a few more sentences, they blew out the candles and left.

I couldn't move from where I was. After they left, I waited inside a little longer, then I went outside as well. I moved some distance away from the church, immediately called the police, and explained what had happened.

There was no one around. After a short wait, the police arrived and went inside. They searched the premises for at least 30 minutes, and when they came back out, they asked me whether I was under the influence of anything.

At first, I didn’t understand what was going on. Then, I was told that there was nothing inside. I immediately went in, accompanied by the police, and when I reached the spot where I had seen the incident, I realized that there was, in fact, nothing there.

Due to the rise in drug use, they assumed I was also under the influence of drugs, so we went to the hospital for a blood test. After providing a blood sample, I had to stay in a holding cell while waiting for the results. That time felt like hell.

The results came back negative, and the police officer who released me told me that if I wasted the police's time again, I would end up in jail.

When I got home, I was still questioning the reality of what I had seen. No one else had entered after me, so it was impossible for them to have destroyed the ritual items. Yet, with my own eyes, I saw that there was nothing there.

Three days had passed since these events, and I was trying to console myself with the thought that perhaps I had just imagined it. until around 4PM, I saw one of those men in red clothing outside my house, standing under a tree and looking up at my window.

I was very frightened, I immediately grabbed my pistol and began watching him from the window as well.

Fifteen minutes had passed, and the man was still watching me without moving. There was a knock at the door, and I jumped in fright. I went to the door and looked through the peephole, but I saw no one there.

I ran straight to the window, and the man was no longer there.

The next day, the man in the same clothes was back in the same spot, at the same time, watching my window. I began watching him in return with my pistol in hand, and this time, I wasn’t going to get up and leave, even if there was a knock at the door.

My phone suddenly started ringing, and I turned my head for a moment, it was an unknown number. When I turned back, the man was gone again.

The next day, the same events occurred again at the same time.

I don’t know what to do. Even if I go to the police, they’ll just disappear again and this time, there’s a chance I could end up in prison.

If you have any advice, please tell me.

I inherited my grandfather's house in upstate New York last autumn. It is a beautiful, isolated property surrounded by dense pine forests. Along with the house came all of his old furniture, including a massive, ancient grandfather clock that stood in the corner of the living room. It was made of dark oak, and the pendulum swung with a deep, echoing tick that could be heard throughout the entire house.

My grandfather was a quiet, meticulous man, but he was incredibly superstitious about this clock. In his will, he left me the house under one strict condition: "Keep the clock wound, and never, under any circumstances, open the back panel."

For the first few weeks, I respected his wishes. The ticking was soothing, a rhythmic reminder of his presence. But as the winter nights grew longer and colder, the house felt increasingly silent, save for that clock. One evening, around 2 AM, the clock abruptly stopped ticking. The silence in the room was sudden and heavy, almost suffocating.

I grabbed the winding key, opened the glass door, and wound the mechanism. Nothing happened. The pendulum remained still. I gave it a gentle push, but it swung a few times and stopped again. Frustrated, I remembered the back panel. I knew his rule, but I figured it was just an old mechanic's quirk. I shined my phone flashlight behind the clock.

The back panel was secured by a small brass latch, covered in dust. I hesitated, my grandfather's warning echoing in my mind. But curiosity won. I flicked the latch and pulled the wooden panel open.

Inside, there were no gears. No brass wheels, no springs, no clockwork mechanisms.

There was only a hollow space, lined with rotting black velvet. Resting inside the hollow was a human skull, wrapped in silver wire, with two polished pieces of obsidian placed in the eye sockets. Written in dried, dark ink along the jawbone were symbols I couldn't comprehend.

I stumbled back, dropping my phone. As the light hit the floor, the clock suddenly shivered. The pendulum began to swing on its own. *Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.*

But the sound was different now. It wasn't the metallic click of oak and brass. It sounded like a wet, heavy heartbeat.

Terrified, I slammed the back panel shut, locked the latch, and pushed the clock back against the wall. I barely slept that night. Every tick felt like it was echoing inside my chest, matching the rhythm of my own heart.

The next morning, I decided I was going to get rid of the clock. I called a local antique dealer, but when he arrived and inspected it, he looked confused. "Son," he said, "this clock doesn't have a back panel. It's solid oak. Look."

He shined his light behind it. The back of the clock was a single, seamless sheet of wood. There was no latch, no seam, no panel.

Since that day, the clock has not stopped. But the heartbeat is getting louder. And last night, when the clock struck midnight, I didn't hear the usual chime. I heard a raspy, gasping breath come from inside the wood, whispering my name. I am sitting in my living room right now, staring at the solid wood back of the clock. I can hear the heartbeat. And I think whatever was locked inside that panel is clawing its way out from the inside.

Part One

The chat popped up as I sat at my desk.

Tatiana is typing…

“Oh my god! Why haven’t you been answering?! I responded.

Tatiana is typing…

“I can’t wait to hear this because I hope you have a really good explanation, like, you were in jail or something.”

Tatiana is typing…

“Seriously? Spit. It. Out.”

I stared at the screen for what felt like an eternity.

Ether

“What?” I responded.

The chat went silent.

“What is she talking about?!” I yelled.

I was panicking now. My eyes began to tear up, and then I opened them.

It was a nightmare. I curled into a ball in my bed and sobbed.

Tat was gone.

I had called her a thousand times that Thursday, and her best friend finally answered.

The paramedics found her on the floor of the laundry room.

She had called 911 herself at 2:30 pm. which means she had been ignoring me for nine hours.

She suffered a tear in her intestine and went septic.

She told her brother she didn’t want to go through multiple surgeries and stay hooked up to machines.

They let her go.

The scream that left my body when I found out physically hurt. The room was spinning. I had to find the floor before it found me.

“I have no idea what happens after this life, but I need you to let me know you’re okay, Tat!” I cried.

Tat asked her brother to get Damien to the pet resort because they love him, and that they would help find him a good home. I wasn’t breaking a promise, that was what she wanted. So, I let My Godson go, too.

I crawled into bed, screaming into my pillow. Overcome with grief and guilt.

“I should have called 911.” I sobbed.

The worst feeling was that she ignored me. I told her I was freaking out, I told her I knew something was wrong. I’ll never understand why she decided to suffer like that, alone, instead of waiting until it killed her.

She knew that I would have called for an ambulance if she’d told me that it was happening again.

She didn’t want to hear me nagging that she needed to go to the hospital?

Do you know how this makes me feel?

What if she was waiting for me to make the call she was too afraid to make herself, and I didn’t. Maybe she would still be here.

---

“Ether? Isn’t that a void? WHAT WAS THAT DREAM?”

Sure, I’d heard about Ether, (or Aether), in passing. Probably watching some kooky alien show or something. I picked up my phone.

I browsed through internet forums, new-age websites and blogs, and watched a few videos.

“Okay, everyone’s got a different opinion, and no one actually knows because no one knows what happens after this life. Maybe nothing at all.”

I hated the idea that she was lost in some cold, dark void.

“Essence of life, bridge to the spiritual world, a void, a chakra… which is it?” I rolled my eyes.

Something clattered in the kitchen. I froze and listened. It sounds cliché, but yes, my heart was pounding in my throat.

“Maybe something shifted in the dish rack?” I wondered.

It was too loud for that, though.

I eventually got up the courage to tip-toe in there with my only weapon in hand: my cell phone.

I peeked in to find the bottom cupboard doors open. The roll-out shelf where I keep pots, pans, and their lids was pulled out. The were several different lids on the floor; large, small, glass, steel. They were sitting too neatly to have fallen, as if they’d been placed there. 

I ran back to the bedroom and locked the door, then called the police.

“I think there’s someone in my house.” I whispered to the operator.

They arrived quickly, thankfully, and did a walk through; upstairs and downstairs, the backyard. They checked the windows and doors. Everything was locked. There was no one.

It was embarrassing. I needed a shower and hadn’t slept well in days. My eyes were swollen from crying. I looked like a goblin.

I retreated to my bed, locked the bedroom door, and basically collapsed.

I dreamt of “swimming” through the air, high above the coastal towns below; in the ocean, exploring seagrass beds; in the forest, back-stroking gently among the trees, looking up at the canopy.

I’ve never experienced anything so beautiful.

I’ve been having some equally horrifying dreams as well, like experiencing stomach pains that linger long after I wake up; or standing over my own body as it lies in bed in my small bedroom.

I feel a sense of foreboding… but I’m not exactly afraid. It’s so hard to explain. I feel like she’s trying to warn me. She’s nagging me! I hope she’s not angry that I never made that call…

In the basement of the municipal building, the only sound is the hum of the fluorescent lights.

My cubicle is located on the lowest sublevel. My job is monotonous: I staff the text-to-voice emergency relay for the deaf and mute. When a text message arrives on my screen, I call the police or paramedics and read the subscriber's words aloud. No human voices. Just me and the monitor.

The deaf community has its own syntax. Born without sound, many write in short, fragmented bursts, treating written language like sign gestures. I am used to decoding their urgent, broken grammar.

At 2:26 AM, the screen flared.

Usually, the sender’s profile would instantly populate with a name and a registered address. This time, all the fields were blank. The system couldn't identify the sender's number, leaving an empty row.

Then, the first words appeared. They were typed agonizingly slow.

"WOKE UP GROUND. PLEASE TELL THEM. WOKE UP."

I typed back: "This is the emergency relay. What is your emergency? State your address."

The cursor blinked. More letters crawled across the dark screen.

"BOX TIGHT. NO AIR. DARK. RAIN HIT WOOD ABOVE."

I read the line three times, refusing to process it. It was a prank. A sick, cruel internet joke. But each letter had taken several seconds to register.

"Who is this?" I typed. "Give me your location. I cannot help you without a street name."

"DIRT FACE. BOX BEND," the text skipped my question. "BREATHE STOP. PLEASE."

I didn't wait. I patched through to the emergency services line. A tired dispatcher answered on the second ring. "City Dispatch, what's your emergency?"

"I have a text relay on my screen," I said. "A girl claims to be buried alive. She is suffocating."

"Copy that. What’s the address?"

"That’s the problem. The number is hidden. There is no geolocation data. She doesn't know where she is."

"Ma'am, without an address, we can’t dispatch a unit. Try to get at least a name."

I looked back at the screen. The text was moving faster now, the grammar deteriorating into a raw scream of pixels.

"MOTHER COLD. WHY LEAVE ME GROUND."

"Give me your name!" I typed, slamming the keys. "Give me a name! Anything!"

The input paused for a grueling thirty seconds. Then, the system spat out a response.

"KLARA WEISS. JULY 14."

"I have a name," I told the dispatcher. "Klara Weiss."

"Give me a second, checking the database," the dispatcher muttered. A few moments passed. "Nothing. No active residents by that name in the city system. Look, if this is a prank, just close the tab."

"It’s not a prank," I said, opening a search engine in a separate window. I typed the name: Klara Weiss.

The search spun for a second, then spat out a single record. A digitized clipping from a local newspaper, dated July 19, 1926.

“Tragic End for Klara Weiss. Young woman pronounced dead after a severe bout of lethargic sleep. Interred at the Old Central Cemetery.”
1926. The Old Central Cemetery had been decommissioned and entirely paved over fifty years ago to build the commercial district above my head. Our basement was built directly on top of those graves.
The interface began to blink violently. Klara Weiss's message abruptly cut off. Instead, dozens of new message windows flooded the screen, overlapping one another.

"HELP US"
"YOU ARE OUR ONLY LINK"
"TELL THEM"

The line to the dispatcher went dead. I heard nothing but a flat, dull tone in my headset.

I slammed my hands onto the keyboard, typing through the error pop-ups: "Klara! Answer me! Who is 'us'? How many are you down there?!"

The screen flooded. The messages came all at once, overlapping, typed with chaotic, desperate speed:

"Everyone you promised help was coming."
"We took Klara's name from the deepest grave."
"SO YOU WOULD LOOK."
"Your system just closes the tab."
"Every time."
"Everyone leaves us in the dark."
"No voice. No air."
"SHUT DOWN THE SYSTEM."
"LET US GO."

The monitor flickered. For a fraction of a second, within the dark glare of the glass—right behind my own pale reflection—the distorted faces of hundreds of people pressed forward. They were screaming soundlessly, their palms flattened against the inside of the screen.

I turned my head toward the corner of the basement. Beneath a thick layer of dust sits a heavy iron knife switch labeled: Emergency Comm Power. Do Not Disconnect.

To end this nightmare and wipe the faces from the screen, all I have to do is pull that lever. Kill the power to the relay system. But if I shut it down, the city's emergency network for the deaf will instantly go dead. Right now, at this very second, hundreds of living, helpless people out there will lose their only lifeline.

The iron lever feels freezing cold under my palm. On the screens, the panicked lines of the dead demanding peace continue to multiply.

My terminal is completely locked out from the city network, but this single text window to Reddit is still open. The packets are leaving my screen right now. If I pull the lever, it all ends. If I don't, I let them through.

I have my fingers wrapped around the switch. And I am frozen in the absolute, suffocating silence.

I was being followed.

Walking through the woods for a few hours longer than I had hoped, not quite lost but not quite sure of my exact position either, one idea kept coming back to me.

I was being followed.

The human brain is a wonderful thing. It is always working, always taking information in, whether you realize it or not. Modern life makes most of its functions useless. Many of the primordial tasks that were essential to survival and that made up the majority of our cognitive workload are now totally redundant.

But we have longer memories than we think, and given the right circumstances, and a little pressure, it’ll slip right back into gear. The same gear that was of the utmost importance for millennia.

I was getting the message loud and clear. I was being followed.

Calling it a gut feeling is giving my gut a little too much credit. We all have gut feelings, which way to drive to work to avoid traffic, what to order at a restaurant, what to wear. You might feel a little urge, or a small pull one way or the other. That’s the normal sensation of your gut telling you what to do.

This was not a gut feeling. This was a jumbotron inside my head, with bright red lettering telling me, in no uncertain terms, that I was being followed.

My only problem was I had no idea why.

I entered Warner State Park at just after two in the afternoon, hoping to enjoy a nice walk through some of the trails. It’s an area I had been to many times before, and earlier today as I looked at the large wooden trail map, I decided I should do the full park loop. This clocked in at just around eight miles, which given my usual speed meant I should be done no later than six in the evening. The day was pleasant, and I was looking forward to a relaxing time in the outdoors.

By six thirty I realized I had a problem. The mile markers all lined up, and I should have been about ready to finish the loop, as I had passed the final mile marker over a half hour ago. In just a minute or so I should see that big map board again, and the parking lot behind it. Maybe I took a little too much time enjoying the sights or the air and my pace slackened, or maybe I’m just not in as great shape as I thought I was.

The problem arose when I saw a marker for mile number nine. How could there be a ninth mile on this trail? It was only supposed to be eight. Not even. The original map had to be wrong, I figured, and I assumed that maybe it was just a bit over nine miles with all the curves taken into account. Like how a 5K race is really 3.1 miles. Sure it’s a three mile race, but even at the three mile point you had to go just a little bit farther. Maybe I just had to deal with the decimal place now.

I picked up my pace and fifteen minutes later I saw a marker for mile ten, and it was getting dark.

Stopping for a moment to think, I pulled out a flashlight and a snack from my backpack. I always carried a few essentials with me, band-aids, some painkillers, just in case something bad ever happened. I wasn’t sure what was happening to me yet, but I knew it wasn’t good.

The trail can’t go on forever, and I must have stumbled onto one of the longer trails by accident. The park itself wasn’t too big, so for a worst-case scenario in which I accidentally went on the longest trail in the park, which was a dozen miles, I would only have to keep going for another hour.

The trees made the darkness seem much greater than it really was. The sky was still decently bright, but the trail was dim, and growing dimmer by the minute. Soon I had to turn on my flashlight to see the trail, even though the sky was still a deep purple.

My thoughts changed too. It felt like my vision became a little more focused and my ears a little sharper.

Awareness, that’s a nice way of putting it.

Everyone is aware, at least to a certain extent, but all of a sudden I was aware on a deeper level.

I noticed my head naturally starting to scan the tree line to my sides, following noises I heard in the brush. Occasionally I felt the urge to look behind me, though I don’t know why.

That was the most unnerving thing about it. As far as I could tell everything was the same as it ever was, just a bit darker now. I was walking down a path I did not know, and suddenly I was taking account of everything. Within all that, I kept feeling the need to check behind me.

But for what?

I would be walking, and naturally my eyes would drift to one side or the other, and my flashlight along with it. Looking into the trees and brush, I would see… nothing. Trees, bushes, grass. It was always the same. At the same time I’d hear something, something very quiet. A small rustle of grass or a bush or a tree branch. I’d turn and look in the direction and see… nothing again. Probably just the wind. Or maybe a squirrel. A small animal, or a bird, or the wind. Except I never saw any of them. Or heard them, except for the sounds of things moving through the woods, and that could all just be the wind. It seemed like it was starting to pick up now, and I could feel it on my back.

And every few minutes I’d look behind me.

My mind had gone through a complete shift. I didn’t think anymore about things I did just a few hours ago when I was enjoying my walk. I didn’t think about my friends or family, or the news, or that time this week I accidentally said “you too” to the barista at the coffee shop telling me to enjoy my drink.

The truth is, I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. I was just aware. Aware of everything.

That’s when I got the message.

I was being followed.

If you put a gun to my head I couldn’t give you a single reason, or fact, or shred of evidence for this. At first it felt like a joke. Except within a few moments of thinking about that message, it wasn’t funny at all.

I kept hearing noises from the woods, but that was almost definitely just the wind. I didn’t even really know what the difference between the wind moving grass and something else would make. The wind was at my back and it felt like something was always right there because of it.

Paranoia is a term that seemed to jump out of the ether to me, and it brought me some relief.

I’m just being paranoid, I thought to myself. You’re a little lost and it’s getting a little dark so you’re paranoid. Totally normal reaction. And I felt better. A lot better actually. I kept walking and felt a renewed stride in my pace, and my brain returned to its normal state of being. I thought again about movies and television shows I wanted to watch, or how my favorite hockey team was doing, and about music and my-

Then I heard another rustling in the woods that sounded like it was within six feet of me, and within a split second my brain shut down completely. Thoughts, ideas, all of these things were thrown out the window in the blink of an eye, and suddenly I was alone, lost, and dark in an unfamiliar woods. And I was pretty sure something was following me.

You can’t think yourself out of a wet paper bag, but mindless action is a death sentence. My mind began working in overdrive. I sped up and all of the tiredness I had felt from a long day of hiking went away. It felt like I was walking on a cloud, and to be honest I couldn’t even feel the lower half of my body. Or the top half.

Adrenaline. Must be.

I could only form thoughts in short phrases or single words. Trying to break through the computations with anything more complex than that was impossible. All focus was on my surroundings.

All of a sudden I was moving at a much quicker pace, and taking everything into account as I moved. Every time the wind blew I could hear how it moved all the trees and bushes around me, what the correct level of sound should be made by it given how strong the gust was. My eyes moved around, and with the help of my flashlight, I had an understanding that was far more primitive and sophisticated than I had ever had before.

Then as the trail turned my flashlight lit something large and unnatural and I almost jumped when I saw it.

It was the map board.

For a split second I felt relief wash over me, but then the thought came back.

I am being followed.

I sprinted to my car. Got inside still wearing my backpack. Didn’t bother to buckle the seatbelt, started the engine, shifted into drive immediately and floored it.

About a minute later as I got back onto a paved road I let out a sigh. All of a sudden my normal sensations rushed back to me like taking a dip in a warm bath. I could feel my legs and arms again. I could think again. I put my seatbelt on, got my backpack off, and threw it in the passenger seat. I turned on my radio to the usual sports talk station. I realized how tired I was. I drove home without a hitch.

But every once in a while, I felt the urge to look in my rearview mirror.

Huh.

I'm sixteen years old, and three days ago, my younger brother disappeared from our house. I know that sounds like the kind of thing you'd expect to see on the news, but the weirdest part isn't that he's missing. It's that nobody else seems to remember him. Not my parents, not our neighbors, not even the people who supposedly watched us grow up together. I've spent the last seventy-two hours trying to find someone who can confirm that my brother existed, and every time I think I'm getting somewhere, I find something that makes me question whether I actually know anything about my own life.

My brother's name is Eli. He's fourteen, about five feet six, and has a small scar above his left eyebrow from when he fell off his bike when we were kids. He's the kind of person who leaves empty cereal bowls in his bedroom and borrows your things without asking, then acts offended when you want them back. We argued constantly over stupid things, mostly about the bathroom, the television, and whose turn it was to take out the trash. A couple of weeks ago, he stole twenty dollars from my desk and spent it on snacks at the convenience store down the street. I remember being furious with him. I remember telling him that if he touched my money again, I'd tell Mom. He laughed and called me a snitch before running upstairs.

I remember all of this so clearly that it physically hurts when I try to explain it to someone and watch them look at me like I'm making everything up.

On Monday morning, I woke up around seven because I had school, and the first thing I noticed was how quiet the house was. Normally, Eli would already be awake, playing videos on his phone at a volume that made it impossible to ignore him. Sometimes he'd knock on my bedroom wall just to annoy me, even though I had told him at least a hundred times to stop doing that. That morning, there was nothing. I figured he had overslept, so I went into the hallway and walked toward his room to wake him up.

Except his bedroom wasn't there.

I stood in front of the wall for several seconds before I understood what I was looking at. The door that had been there for as long as I could remember was gone, along with the light switch and the little dent in the wood near the handle where Eli had accidentally slammed his skateboard into it. There was just a plain, freshly painted wall, the same color as the rest of the hallway. I even ran my hands across it, looking for some kind of seam or hidden panel, because my half-asleep brain had decided that was a more reasonable explanation than an entire bedroom disappearing overnight.

I went downstairs and asked my mother where Eli was. She was standing at the kitchen counter, making coffee, and she didn't even turn around when she answered.

"Who's Eli?"

At first, I thought she was messing with me. My mom has a pretty dry sense of humor, and Eli and I had been getting on each other's nerves all weekend, so I assumed he had done something to get himself grounded. I laughed and asked her to stop being annoying because I was going to be late for school. She turned around then, looked at me for a moment, and asked if I had slept well. When I told her I was talking about my brother, she put her coffee down and said, very calmly, that I was an only child.

I remember feeling embarrassed before I felt scared. I thought maybe my parents had planned some elaborate joke, and I was the only person who hadn't gotten the message. I checked the living room, the garage, and the backyard, calling Eli's name as I went. I even checked behind the shower curtain because he had hidden there once when we were younger and scared me so badly that I nearly threw a shampoo bottle at his head. I found nothing, obviously, and when I came back downstairs, my father was sitting at the kitchen table reading the news on his phone.

I asked him where my brother was.

He gave me the same answer.

That was when I started getting angry. I told them both that this wasn't funny anymore and that I needed to know where Eli had gone. My father looked genuinely confused, while my mother kept asking me to sit down and eat something. I refused and grabbed my phone to show them pictures of us together. I knew I had hundreds of them because I was always taking pictures whenever Eli did something embarrassing. There were pictures of us at the beach, at birthday parties, in the back seat of our aunt's car, and in our living room during Christmas. I opened my gallery and searched through years of photos.

Every picture was still there, but Eli wasn't.

In one photo, I was sitting on the couch holding a controller, laughing at something just outside the frame. In another, I was standing beside our Christmas tree with my arm raised as if I were taking a selfie with someone who wasn't visible. There was even a picture from my birthday where I was leaning toward the empty space beside me, smiling so widely that my cheeks looked painful. I remembered that photograph. Eli had been making a ridiculous face behind the cake, and I'd been trying not to laugh while our mother took the picture.

I checked the date and then checked it again. It was the correct day. I searched my messages, my contacts, my social media accounts, and every old conversation I could remember having with him. There was nothing. No contact, no messages, no photographs with his face, and no evidence that anyone named Eli had ever been part of my life.

I didn't go to school that day. Instead, I called the police and told them my fourteen-year-old brother was missing. They arrived a little after lunch, asked me for his full name, birthday, school, and a description, and then spoke privately with my parents. When they came back, one of the officers asked whether I had been experiencing stress or trouble sleeping. I told him I wanted to know why he was asking me that instead of looking for my brother. He exchanged a glance with his partner before explaining that my parents had reported no missing child and that their records listed me as an only child.

I could barely hear him over the sound of my own heartbeat.

Before leaving, the older officer gave me a card and told me to contact a trusted adult if I continued feeling distressed. My mother thanked him at the front door, then watched the police car disappear down the street. When she turned back toward me, she had an expression I couldn't quite understand. She looked tired, but there was something else underneath it, something almost like relief.

That night, I stayed awake until nearly two in the morning. I couldn't stop thinking about the wall where Eli's bedroom should have been. I knew that if I went downstairs and looked at it again, it would still be there, but I couldn't convince myself to stop checking. Eventually, I left my room to get a glass of water, and as I passed the hallway, I heard three soft knocks coming from behind the wall.

I stopped walking.

A few seconds later, I heard them again.

Then a voice whispered my name.

It was Eli.

I recognized his voice immediately, down to the slightly scratchy sound he made when he was tired. I put my glass on the floor because my hands had started shaking so badly that I was afraid I'd drop it. I pressed my ear against the wall and whispered his name, barely expecting an answer.

"Ellie?"

I started crying before I could stop myself. I asked him where he was, whether he was hurt, and why I couldn't find his room. He answered in a whisper, telling me that he was still inside and that I needed to be quiet because Mom might hear us. I asked him what he meant, and he went silent for so long that I thought he'd disappeared again.

Then I heard something scraping against the other side of the wall.

It sounded like fingernails dragging slowly across wood.

"Eli, what's happening?" I whispered.

He took a shaky breath.

"I think Mom's trying to make everyone forget me."

I wanted to ask him what he meant, but I heard a bedroom door open upstairs. The scraping stopped immediately, and Eli's voice became so quiet that I had to press my ear harder against the wall to hear him.

"Don't let her find out you remember."

My mother's footsteps moved across the upstairs hallway. I backed away from the wall and hurried into my bedroom, locking the door behind me. I sat on the floor until morning, listening for footsteps outside, but nothing happened. When I finally went downstairs, my mother was making breakfast as if the previous night had never occurred. I asked her whether she'd heard anything strange, and she smiled at me and told me I looked exhausted.

I decided then that I needed proof that didn't depend on photographs or messages. If Eli had been real, somebody had to remember him. Our neighbors had known us since we were little, and the woman across the street used to babysit us when our parents worked late. I went over to her house that afternoon and asked whether she remembered my brother.

She frowned and said she didn't know what I was talking about.

I described him in detail, including his scar and the bike accident, and she listened patiently before telling me that she'd only ever seen me playing outside alone. She even laughed a little and said I had always been a quiet child who preferred drawing to playing with other kids. I left before she could ask any more questions.

On the way home, I passed the little convenience store where Eli had supposedly spent my twenty dollars. I went inside and asked the cashier whether he remembered a boy who came in almost every afternoon to buy snacks. The cashier said he saw hundreds of kids every week. When I described Eli, he shook his head and told me he couldn't help.

I was beginning to wonder whether I was losing my mind when I remembered the box of childhood belongings in our attic. If there was anywhere my parents might have missed something, it would be there. I waited until they went grocery shopping and climbed upstairs, digging through old clothes, school projects, and toys I hadn't touched in years. Most of it was ordinary stuff, but near the bottom of the box, I found a folded piece of paper covered in crayon drawings.

It showed two children standing in front of a house. One was a girl with messy hair and a yellow shirt. The other was a boy with black hair and a small mark above his left eyebrow.

Underneath them, written in my childhood handwriting, were the words, Me and Eli. Best friends forever.

I sat on the attic floor and stared at it for a long time. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It wasn't a photograph, but it was something. I had drawn him. I had written his name. I hadn't invented every memory of him, had I?

I turned the paper over.

There was another sentence written on the back in pencil, so faint that I almost missed it.

If you forget him, find the little door.

I read it several times before I noticed the date in the bottom corner. It was from eleven years ago, when I would have been five years old.

I didn't remember writing it.

I looked around the attic, trying to work out what the little door could mean. The only door in the room was the one leading back to the stairs, and the old wardrobe in the corner was too small to hide anything larger than a few coats. Still, I walked over to it and opened both doors. The inside smelled like dust and damp wood. I pushed the coats aside, expecting to find nothing, but there was a narrow wooden panel at the back that I was certain hadn't been there before.

It was about the size of a cupboard door, with a small brass handle near the bottom.

I pulled it open.

Beyond it was a dark space that looked much bigger than the wardrobe should have allowed. I couldn't see the walls or the floor, only a narrow strip of darkness stretching away from me. The air coming through the opening was cold enough to make my fingers ache.

Then I heard someone breathing.

"Ellie?"

I knew that voice.

I dropped the drawing.

"Eli?"

"You're late," he whispered.

I grabbed the handle and pulled the door a little wider. I couldn't see his face clearly, but I could make out a small figure sitting somewhere in the darkness. I asked him how long he'd been there, and he told me he didn't know. I asked him why nobody remembered him, and he didn't answer.

Instead, he asked me whether Mom was still outside.

I told him she was at the grocery store.

He began to cry.

"She told me you'd forget me eventually," he said. "She said it would be easier if nobody remembered either of us."

I didn't understand what he meant. I asked him to come out, but he shook his head. He said there was something behind him, something that had been following him through the dark for as long as he could remember. He said it looked like a person when it stood far away, but whenever it got close, its face was wrong.

Then I heard footsteps on the stairs.

My mother had come home.

She appeared in the attic doorway carrying a grocery bag, and when she saw me standing in front of the little door, the bag slipped from her hand. An orange rolled across the floor. Neither of us moved to pick it up.

For several seconds, she just stared at me.

Then she whispered, "You weren't supposed to find that."

I asked her what had happened to Eli. I demanded to know why she kept pretending he had never existed, why our pictures had changed, and why I could hear him inside the wall. My mother began crying, but she didn't look at the little door. She looked directly at me.

"Sweetheart," she said, "you have to understand something."

I waited.

"You were never supposed to come back."

I felt a strange coldness spread through my arms. I looked down at my hands and noticed that I could see the floor through the tips of my fingers. At first, I thought the light was playing tricks on me, but when I raised my hand toward my face, the skin looked thin and transparent, like an image that hadn't loaded properly.

My mother reached for me, screaming my name, but her hand passed straight through my shoulder.

I stumbled backward toward the open door.

Inside the darkness, I could see more clearly now. There were children sitting along the walls, dozens of them, all silent and motionless. Some were very young. Others looked close to my age. A few wore clothes that seemed old-fashioned, and one little boy was holding a stuffed rabbit that looked exactly like the one I'd had when I was five.

At the very back of the room sat a little girl with messy hair and a yellow shirt.

She looked exactly like me.

She was staring at the doorway with the patient expression of someone who had been waiting a very long time.

Then she smiled.

"You're finally home," she said.

I woke up in my bed the following morning.

My mother told me I'd had another nightmare. She said I'd gone into the attic, fallen asleep, and frightened myself with something I'd found in an old box. She seemed so normal that I almost believed her. Almost. But when I climbed upstairs to check, the wardrobe was gone. There was no little wooden door, no drawing, and no box of childhood belongings. The attic looked as though nobody had ever stored anything there.

I went to school anyway, hoping that being around other people might make me feel less alone. My teacher asked why I hadn't been in class for two days, and when I told her I had been looking for my brother, she gave me the same concerned expression the police officer had given me. During lunch, I approached my best friend and asked her whether she remembered Eli. She looked confused and said she'd never heard that name before.

By the time I got home, I was beginning to accept that something was seriously wrong with my memory. Maybe I'd imagined him. Maybe the drawing had been part of some childhood game I'd forgotten about. Maybe there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of it.

Then I looked at the family photographs on the living room wall.

There was a picture of my parents holding me as a baby. Another showed me on my first day of school. A third was from my sixteenth birthday, taken just last month.

I wasn't in any of them.

My parents were smiling at the camera, standing beside empty spaces where I knew I had been. In the birthday photograph, my mother was holding a cake with sixteen candles, and my father had his arm stretched around somebody who wasn't there.

I checked my phone.

My contacts were gone. My messages were gone. My social media accounts didn't exist anymore. When I searched my own name, the only results I could find belonged to other people.

I ran outside and knocked on the neighbors' doors, begging somebody to tell me they knew who I was. Nobody recognized me. One woman threatened to call the police because she thought I was trespassing.

I went back to my house and tried the front door, but it wouldn't open. Through the window, I could see my parents sitting at the kitchen table with a little girl between them. She was wearing a yellow shirt and drawing on a piece of paper.

My mother kissed the top of her head.

My father laughed at something she said.

They looked happy.

They looked like a family.

And the little girl looked exactly like me.

I'm writing this from the sidewalk outside my house. I don't know what I am anymore, and I don't know whether anyone will believe this story. I just needed to tell someone before I disappear completely.

A few minutes ago, I heard three knocks coming from inside the house.

Then I heard Eli's voice.

He was calling my name from somewhere upstairs, telling me he'd finally found a way out.

I wanted to run inside. I wanted to see him, to grab his hand, and to make sure we could never be separated again.

But then I heard another voice.

It sounded like mine when I was little.

It came from the other side of the front door.

And it whispered, very clearly, "Don't let them remember you. That's how it starts."

I don't know which voice is telling the truth.

I don't know whether my brother was ever real.

But I just looked through the window again, and the little girl at the kitchen table has stopped drawing.

She's looking directly at me.

And she's holding up a piece of paper.

On it, in my own handwriting, are four words.

THERE WAS NEVER AN ELI.

I spent over a decade working as a solo backcountry ranger in an isolated district of an unnamed national park. Most people picture park rangers wrestling rogue grizzlies or rappelling down sheer canyon walls to save stranded hikers. In reality, about ninety percent of my career consisted of picking up discarded energy drink cans, explaining to grown adults why feeding Flamin’ Hot Cheetos to raccoons is a terrible idea, and sitting alone at my outpost desk writing terrible novels while waiting for the single bar of emergency Wi-Fi to load a weather forecast.

I was twenty-one when I took the post. I had spent my teens grooming myself for college basketball until a blown rebound in a sophomore scrimmage shattered three lumbar vertebrae and ended my athletic career in a single afternoon. Dropping out with a metal rod in my spine and no backup plan, I took the loneliest job the Department of the Interior had to offer. By the time I turned thirty-two, I had turned isolation into an art form. My district was hundreds of square miles of dense hemlock, bog, and granite ridges. My station was a cedar cabin five miles past the nearest gravel service road, equipped with a wood stove, a VHF radio, and enough quiet to drive an extrovert insane.

The hardest part of the job was usually dealing with the occasional tourist who thought "primitive wilderness" meant "lawless frat house."

Early last June, I got a report about smoke rising near the old logging spur two miles below my cabin. I drove down in the park truck, fully prepared to write a hefty citation for an illegal campfire during high-risk season.

Instead, I found four teenagers huddled around an inflatable pink flamingo.

They had dragged two folding lawn chairs into the dirt, had an acoustic guitar with three missing strings, and were attempting to roast gas-station corn dogs over what they passionately defended as a "fully compliant containment unit" which turned out to be a hollowed-out watermelon lined with aluminum foil.

"Officer Smokey, hear me out," the ringleader said, a skinny kid in a tie-dye bucket hat who introduced himself as Toby. "The watermelon is eighty percent water. Mathematically speaking, it is physically impossible for this fire to escape."

"That’s not how thermodynamics works, Toby," I said, leaning against my truck door and trying desperately not to laugh. "Put it out before I cite you for reckless endangerment of fruit."

They were loud, completely unbothered, and surprisingly polite about packing up their mess. As they piled back into their battered station wagon, one of the girls rolled down her window and called out, "Hey Ranger, who’s your buddy by the tree line? Is he supposed to be making that clicking sound?"

I glanced toward the dense wall of hemlocks twenty yards back. There was nothing there just swaying branches and shadows.

"Probably just a deer," I told her. "Or my spine settling. Get out of here before the sun drops."

They waved, honked a comedic tune on their horn, and drove off down the mountain. That was the last normal encounter I had all summer.

Two days later, dispatch patched a call through to my cabin radio. A pair of experienced backpackers at an established campsite four miles north had packed up at 3:00 AM and hiked out in the dark to reach cell service. They reported that someone had spent three continuous hours pacing the perimeter of their tent, rhythmically striking two stones together and occasionally whispering short, garbled syllables that sounded like a radio broadcast playing at quarter speed.

I hiked up to the site at first light. I spent four hours combing the clearing and the surrounding brush. I found the hikers' abandoned tent stakes, but not a single footprint in the damp loam. No crushed ferns, no broken twigs, no scat, no food wrappers. The ground was untouched.

Over the next two weeks, the calls escalated.

A solo fly fisherman on the river reported hearing someone repeatedly shouting his own brother's name from across the water, but when he crossed the shallows to look, the bank was completely undisturbed. A family at the southern boundary called dispatch claiming a woman was crying for help fifty feet up a sheer cliff face; when the local volunteer rescue team arrived with spotlights and ropes, the cliff was barren stone, with nowhere a human being could possibly stand.

Every single time, I was the one sent out to investigate. And every single time, I found nothing.

By mid-July, the park service closed the northern sector due to early storm warnings, and the tourists cleared out entirely. I was alone in the district. That was when the noises stopped happening to other people and started happening around my cabin.

It began with the radio. At 2:14 AM on a Tuesday, the VHF base station on my desk clicked open. The speaker hissed with white noise, followed by a faint, metallic scrape. Then a voice came through the static.

It was my voice.

"That’s not how thermodynamics works, Toby."

The recording was perfectly clear, but the delivery was wrong. The cadence was flat and mechanical, the pitch stuttering up and down like an audio file being dragged slowly across an editing track. It repeated three times, exactly the same way, before cutting out into dead silence.

My blood ran cold. I grabbed my flashlight and service shotgun, unbolted the heavy door, and stepped onto the porch.

The air was dead still. Fog had rolled in off the bogs, pooling around the cabin's foundation in thick, gray banks. I swept the 1,000-lumen beam across the gravel turnaround, into the woodpile, and deep into the hemlocks.

Nothing. No tracks in the soft gravel, no disturbed dirt, no eye-shine reflecting back from the dark.

The next night, the knocking started.

It wasn't a frantic pounding; it was three slow, deliberate raps on the north-facing outer wall. Thump. Thump. Thump.

I gripped my shotgun and crossed the room. Before I could reach the door, the exact same three raps sounded against the south wall forty feet away on the opposite side of the cabin.

To cover that distance outside, someone would have had to sprint across fifteen yards of loose, noisy river rock in under two seconds. But I hadn't heard a single stone shift.

I threw open the door and illuminated the yard. Empty. The river rock was smooth and undisturbed.

By the fourth night without sleep, I was completely unraveling. Isolation does strange things to the human mind; after weeks of absolute quiet, your brain begins manufacturing patterns out of ambient noise. I tried to convince myself I had developed auditory hallucinations from stress, or that carbon monoxide from my wood stove was leaking into the bedroom. I replaced the detector batteries. Zero parts per million. I checked the perimeter for motion-triggered trail cameras, thinking maybe an elaborate prank was being pulled by locals. I found nothing.

The final night happened three weeks ago.

A driving rainstorm had knocked out my solar repeater, killing what little Wi-Fi I had. Around 3:30 AM, amidst the pounding of rain on the tin roof, I heard a wet, suffocated sound directly beneath the floorboards.

It was rhythmic, breathless weeping, accompanied by a voice frantically whispering the park's standard emergency evacuation codes phrases only I, dispatch, and the official handbook ever used.

I lost my temper. Terror had finally turned into raw, exhausted adrenaline. I grabbed a crowbar, ripped up the hatch to the crawlspace near the pantry, and dropped into the cold dirt beneath the foundation with my flashlight drawn, screaming for whoever was down there to show their hands.

The beam swept across the concrete footings, the bare dry earth, and the support joists. Cobwebs hung intact across every corner, undisturbed by human movement. The dust hadn't been touched in years. There was nobody there.

I stood there in the crawlspace, shivering in the freezing draft, staring at the empty dirt.

Then, from inside the locked cabin directly above my head, I heard a polite, clear throat-clearing.

I scrambled up the ladder, threw myself onto the kitchen linoleum, and raised my weapon.

The cabin was dead silent. The deadbolt was still thrown on the front door. The rain was drumming steadily on the glass.

Sitting in the exact center of my kitchen table, resting squarely on top of my open logbook, was an old, rusted brass key. It was the spare key to my patrol truck the one I had dropped in a deep ravine three miles up the trail nearly six years ago and had never been able to find. It was bone dry.

I didn't pack. I didn't shut down the radio or secure the station. I unlocked the front door, ran to my truck in the pouring rain, and drove down the mountain as fast as the bald tires would carry me, refusing to look into the rearview mirror even once.

I submitted my resignation from a diner forty miles south the next morning. I moved across the country into a crowded, noisy city apartment surrounded by sirens, streetlights, and concrete. I need the noise now. I can’t handle quiet rooms anymore.

The official report chalked my departure up to isolation fatigue and recurring chronic back pain. But I haven’t been able to sleep with the lights off since I left.

For months, I thought something was hunting me. I thought whatever was in those woods was trying to scare me out of my skin. But the more I sit here in the noise of the city, thinking about that key on the table and the voices repeating over the radio, the sicker I feel.

Every report was the same. A voice calling a name. A sound outside a tent. A whisper under the floor. It was never violent. It was just trying, over and over, to get someone anyone to answer.

I'm sorry. If someone was stuck out there in something I couldn't see, or if whatever was in those trees was just trying to figure out how to speak to me, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have treated it like a nuisance. I should have listened closer before I ran.

I wish I were not in this gravel driveway staring at the blue-paneled house, but when our services are requested, it’s up to us, the ones who drive through all hours of the day and night, to close the deal. As I stared at the front door, the deeply stained entry to the house on the wide porch with the wooden swing, I could feel the pain coming on. I reached inside the glove box and retrieved the only thing that could dull it.

Pills, and a flask filled with tequila this time. I had grown burnt out on bourbon and whiskey; it was time to switch it up. I twisted the pill bottle open. Three should do, I thought to myself as I poured the pills into my hand. Who was I to question fate when four of them fell out? A little extra oomph before I put my salesman face on.

I had also found that chewing them up, feeling that nasty, chalky taste spread across my gums and teeth, made them work faster. Or maybe I just told myself that, hoping to psych myself up enough to dull the ache.

Unscrewing the top of the flask, I could smell the tequila as I took a long gulp, washing the crunched-up pills down. “That’s the good stuff right there,” I said to myself.

As I stepped out of the car, I could feel the wind push my hair ever so slightly. They knew I was here, too. I tucked the flask into my suit pocket, walked behind my car, and popped the trunk. A painfully plain briefcase lay inside next to several empty bottles of tequila, which reminded me I needed to actually clean my car. I grabbed the handle, pulled out the case, and slammed the trunk before slowly shuffling toward the small staircase, my feet crunching the gravel lightly with each step.

The dark wooden door with three windows at the top creaked open as a woman in her mid-thirties stepped out. She had deep dark circles under her eyes, distracting from almond-shaped irises with a pretty shade of hazel. “You’re Mr. Relinski, right?”

“That would be me,” I replied. “You requested some of our services. Were you a referral, by chance?”

“No, I found you online.”

Referrals were becoming fewer and fewer these days; instead, somebody would stumble upon our website on some advice forum. Once they went to the link, they filled out a little form with their information, did a brief phone call with one of our reps, and then someone like me was sent out to make the sale.

She continued to stand in the doorway, looking over my drab blue suit and my crumpled tie. Let’s just say I had given up on the whole idea of dressing to impress these days. “Can I come in?” I asked, finally.

She nodded as she left the door cracked and walked back inside. I reached for another drink, prepping myself to close the deal as I followed her in.

Walls of a sky-blue shade were lined with pictures of the woman and a man in all sorts of different locations: beaches, restaurants, even one of them in front of the Eiffel Tower kissing. It was almost too cliché for a cynic like me, but judging by the heaviness in her eyes, those times had long since passed.

“I’m in the living room, Mr. Relinski,” she called out from the doorway at the end of the hallway. I made my way across the light hardwood floor and entered a room to see her sitting on a cream-colored couch in front of a glass table with a mug of hot coffee, steam billowing above the rim.

“So, as you may have read on our website, for any services rendered today, my company and I are not to be held liable,” I said, placing my briefcase on the table. “My company offers many services, such as referrals to lawyers, counseling, and even shell companies to hide your money in case such things should arise.”

She took a long sip of coffee, her fingernails bitten down to the nub against the ceramic, before placing the mug back on the table with a clink. “I am not interested in those services. I am interested in a particular one.”

“I see.”

I popped open the briefcase. It was always the same. I was never called if someone wanted the other services we provided. To be truthful, I wasn’t even sure how those other services worked, because no one ever picked them. They wanted the goddamn mirror.

“So how does it work?” she asked as I pulled out an old bag, the stitches fraying from age and from how long I’d kept it. Too long, I told myself weekly. I pulled out the mirror by its brass handle, which was carved with small words from places I had never been and in languages whose meanings I didn’t actually know.

I looked at the small hand mirror, catching my own reflection, a tired face with red, bloated cheeks from too much drinking and eyes glazed over from too many pain pills.

I handed it over to her, and she grasped the handle. “You just look into it for a moment, think about what you want, but I also want to tell you to think very hard before...”

“What the hell? That hurts!” she screamed at me as the mirror fell onto the glass table. But it didn’t break, crack, or even seem affected by the fall.

It was already too late. The small nails housed inside the handle had pierced her skin. The blood slowly started to work its way across the glass of the mirror, forming a pool in the center of it.

“What is happening?” she asked, a hint of panic now in her voice. Her blood from the nails continued to seep up and collect on the mirror. I pulled out a cigarette, lighting it without permission. She didn’t notice, as her mind was probably spinning, trying to figure out a way to rationalize what was happening.

I took a long drag, waiting for the next part. The mirror went dark, as though it were looking somewhere else that wasn’t the ceiling of the room, and the blood slowly started to drain while her eyes could do nothing more than watch.

“It’s going to want to see you,” I said, sliding the mirror toward her with a small scratch. She looked at me, and I knew what she saw: eyes already dim with a quiet despair, the kind that comes from watching something like this too frequently.

“What do you mean, ‘it,’ Mr. Relinski?” she asked as she grasped the brass handle of the mirror. I made my way to the couch, sitting beside her and grabbing her arm, adjusting it so she was looking right into the mirror.

On the other side was a dark room, dimly lit, almost like a pit. “It will be here any second,” I said as I felt her arms tremble against my hand.

She screamed as she saw its sunken wide eyes with the abyss-black pupils looking back at her, its wrinkly, discolored face splitting into a crooked-toothed grin that would chill the blood of anyone who had never witnessed such a thing.

Before she knew it, it had disappeared. The pit where it stayed slowly faded into something else as she tore her eyes from the mirror and threw it back onto the glass table. Once again, not so much as a crack or scratch on it.

“Tell me what the hell is going on!” she shouted, standing up and crossing her arms, still trying to make sense of what she had just seen.

“You are the one that asked for the service,” I replied. “The rep should have...”

“The person on the phone only said that once it starts I can’t take it back!”

I stubbed out my cigarette on the table and looked at the mirror, at the dim glow where the pit had been, before turning my gaze back to her. “And they would be correct on that,” I muttered.

“Then you should tell me what the hell it is!” she yelled at me, her arms crossed tighter now, her voice more scared than angry.

“I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been carrying that mirror with me for a very long time.”

“Where did you get it?”

“A very long time ago a man came to me offering a job,” I replied. “I was desperate at the time. Actually, everyone was back then. But I was just the unlucky son of a bitch who took him up on the offer.”

“And you just took the damn thing?”

“Yep, I’ve had it since nineteen-thir...” I tried to reply, before a sharp pain hit my ribs, like someone kicking me with a hard worker’s boot over and over again. It was listening. It didn’t like the finer details being spoken in front of clients.

I started to have a coughing fit, blood trickling from my nose. A punishment I had felt before, any time the booze had made my lips too loose for its liking.

Then I heard a man’s voice from the table, and her head snapped toward it. She grabbed the mirror, and I pushed myself up from the couch, gripping my side, and lumbered over to see the man from the pictures staring back at us.

“Debra, is that you?” he screamed.

She shouted into the mirror. “Yes, Stephen, it is me!”

“You can’t communicate with him,” I said. “You can only witness what is about to happen.”

“Then why did he call out my name?”

I started to reach for my flask. The worst part was about to come. “Because the creature looks just like you.”

“You mean it’s going to kill him looking like me?” she cried out.

I nodded, then unscrewed the flask and took a long gulp. “That’s how it works. The hurt lover gets to see all the mess without having to do it themselves.”

She stood frozen holding the mirror, her entire body shaking as she watched the creature get closer to the man. “Debra, what are you doing?” he asked.

The creature wrapped its hands around his face. Hands with a familiar skin tone, the same as the woman standing beside me. They even had the same nails, bitten down to the nub, and an identical wedding band.

“Make it stop! Stop it now,” she wailed. “I don’t want this, I just thought he was cheating on me!”

“I can’t stop it,” I replied, as the thumbs pressed into his eyes, blood erupting from the sockets.

“Debra, please don’t do this. I love you,” he pleaded. But the thing pressing its thumbs through his skull didn’t know the meaning of love. Before too long the man could no longer form words, only painful screams and groans, before finally becoming quiet.

The mirror dropped to the floor, fading to a deep black before revealing the room’s ceiling again. “What happens now?” she asked, her voice flat.

“One day you will look in a mirror, any mirror, and you will see it again,” I replied, picking the mirror up from the floor and walking back to the table to place it in the old frayed bag.

“What will it do?”

“Not a clue, I am never here for it,” I said. “Could just leave a body behind or drag you away.”

She watched as I lumbered slowly over to the briefcase, placing the mirror inside before latching the case closed. “Mr. Relinski, can I ask you one more thing before you go?”

“I can’t help you,” I replied.

My joints started to ache as I straightened up. The thing they don’t tell you about living this long is that yes, I may look like a thirty-eight-year-old on the outside, but my bones and organs feel every bit like someone born in 1894.

“What do I do now?” she sobbed, as I lifted the briefcase.

I didn’t say anything. I only walked away down the same sky-blue hallway, past all the pictures of the couple, and out the door. The sharp daily pains started to rise from my legs as I reached my car, and I pulled the door open and nearly fell inside. I opened the glove box, pulled out the bottle of pain pills, and dumped more in my mouth. I didn’t bother counting this time. I just crunched them up.

How could I answer such a question truthfully? It was the same thing I had been asked hundreds of times since this cursed mirror came into my life, and the answer never changed. You live with it. They all lived with the same aching feeling that I carried with me.

Regret.

When I was a kid, there was nothing I looked forward to more than making short movies with my friends. My friend Mark would do most of the writing and directing, Jeremy would film and edit, I was the prop guy, and Kevin was the best actor, so he’d usually just play the main role. Out of all of my friends, Kevin was probably my closest. Sometimes he’d help me with fixing up props since he restored all sorts of old things to resell and make money in his free time. I was 15 when we made a movie about a police case taking place in the 1910s, can’t recall the name of it though. It was the last movie we’d ever make, and it was my fault. No one knows that, not even my friends; they wouldn’t believe me. But it was my fault. I just need to tell the truth somewhere.

It was always my job to read the script and find what props were needed by myself. For the interrogation scene, I imagined the criminal sitting in an old antique looking chair, and when I couldn’t find anything like it in my house, I went to the thrift store down the street where I got most of my other props. As soon as I bought the chair, I walked it to Mark’s house to drop it off and show him what I got. The chair was composed of thick pieces of dark wood that weren’t too beaten up for how old it seemed to be. There was a leather cushion with a few pieces torn here and there, revealing the cotton stuffing underneath. It had armrests, but the right one appeared to be a replacement, since the wood didn’t have as much detail and was lighter in color. At the time I thought the chair was a good deal. 

Mark told me that he already had a chair for the scene. He walked me to his garage and proudly presented me with a modern-looking kitchen chair. I told him that it wouldn’t make sense to include in our movie since that style of kitchen chair probably wasn’t around in the 1910’s, but he told me it didn’t matter that much and that the kitchen chair fit better. I was pretty mad that I bought the antique chair for nothing, and upset that Mark didn’t care about how real the movie felt. After all, I was the prop guy! I should have been making those decisions! I just stashed the antique chair in the prop room in my basement in hopes that we could use it for another movie.

That night, I woke up to grab a sip of water from downstairs. I was already uncomfortable enough being downstairs by myself in the dark, when I heard a door creaking in the basement. I pressed my ear against the basement door and heard a steady rustling. I darted upstairs and told my dad that someone was in the basement, my heart beating so heavily I could hear it. He quickly got out of bed and carried his gun down there with me following closely behind. 

The first thing I noticed when I got to the bottom of the basement stairs was the chair, facing us, in the middle of the room. The prop room door was wide open. When I told my dad that the chair wasn’t there before, he made sure to check the basement and downstairs thoroughly, and when we found nothing, he said that I probably just didn’t remember leaving the chair there. But when I reminded him of the noise I heard, he paused. Then he said it could’ve just been the pipes. I just agreed and said maybe, but honestly my dad didn’t seem to be fully sure. By now my mom and younger brother were wide awake too, and they seemed mad at me for waking them up.

One day later I was eating breakfast when I noticed that the chair was in the living room facing the TV. I wanted to tell my dad, but I was worried he’d think I just didn’t remember moving it again. By now I was fairly freaked out by the chair and didn’t really want it in my house anymore, even if I was being pranked or misplacing it or something, so I took it back to the thrift store to see if I could get a refund. But when they checked their records, they said that they never had the chair in their store, meaning they couldn’t refund it. I was pretty upset that their system was messed up at the time and convinced someone forgot to document my purchase, but now I’m not so sure that’s the reason behind it not being recognized. 

I complained about it to my mom, but she seemed more focused on doing the dishes than listening to me. She was always doing some sort of work around the house such as cleaning or organizing, almost as if she enjoyed it. She said that it was only $10 I lost, which was barely anything. But my mom just didn’t understand that I wanted it gone because it was creeping me out. Not that I was going to say that outright, though.

That night, I put the chair in the garage, making sure it was still there right before going to bed. I woke up sweating. I don’t know if it was hot or what, but I was sweating. I sat up to cool down, and almost passed out when I saw the chair right at the foot of my bed, facing me. I froze in fear and didn’t want to get up while at the same time wishing desperately that I was somewhere else. It was at this point that I started questioning if I was even being rational. It was just a chair. How stupid to be afraid of a chair! Someone had to be moving it, I thought. I walked down to the basement and put it in the center of the room. I was just going to have to wait for the following night.

The following night came. I waited until everyone was in bed. Then I snuck downstairs into the basement and sat in the chair, right in the center of the room where I put it the previous night. My plan was to wait there until whoever it was, probably my brother, came down to move the chair. I tried to slow my breathing and remind myself that the only threat down there was my mind. Eventually, I drifted off to sleep. 

Feet dragged across the short stiff carpet. Footsteps. I opened my eyes and glanced around the room as if I could see through the dark. It was finally time to find out who was moving the chair.

I waited. Nothing. 

I was sure I heard footsteps! I listened more closely, waiting for whoever it was to step closer. Did they know I was there? I kept my eyes open and paid attention to anything I could hear. 

A vent kicked on. A clock was ticking. The vent turned off. More ticking. 

I was so tired, it was hard to keep my eyes open. But why did I need my eyes open if it was dark? I closed my eyes and listened. 

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

I focused on the sound of the clock, my anchor for staying awake. 

Tick. Tick. Tick. 

I thought I felt the hair on the back of my neck tingle. 

Tick. Tick. Tick. A hissing noise. No, a whisper. A drawn out whisper, in my right ear: “Get out of my chair.”

I opened my eyes and ran forward, tripping on something in the dark. I crawled on the ground, feeling for the stairs. There were the stairs. I ran up, opened the door, ran to my room, and sat there. I sat there until the sun rose. I hadn’t even noticed the vibrant purple bruise on my foot until I finally stood up for the day. 

I never told anyone about this. They’d think I’d lost my mind. All I knew is I had to get rid of the chair. And I have no excuse for what happened next. I didn’t want that chair in my yard. I didn’t have time to wait until garbage day. So I gave it to Kevin, knowing he’d want it to fix it up. I should never have been so selfish as to give it to him, but I really didn’t understand how dangerous the chair was. So it still came as a shock to me when Kevin went missing 3 days later. I regret everything. After all these years, he’s still gone. His family put up signs for him all over town, using the most recent photo they had of him. In the photo, he was smiling at the camera, so oblivious to what he was doing, disassembling the antique chair I had given him.

“Be kind to one another this All Hallows’ Eve, lest you wanna suffer at the hands of The Hangman!” Daniels said with all the enthusiasm of a circus’ ringmaster. “What does that mean, Ackland?”

“Well, Daniels…” Ackland answered his co-host. “Some 200 years ago, The Hangman was the warden of the town of Badger’s Hollow. If there was ever a criminal in Badger’s Hollow, The Hangman would sniff them out. It didn’t matter it was for theft, murder, or assault; the punishment was always the same. They would be hung from the sycamore up on Hangman’s Hill, just outside of the town. Story goes that The Hangman would put the noose around the criminals’ necks, throw the other end of the rope over the thickest branch of the sycamore tree, and, by sheer muscle force, pull the criminals up and not let go of the rope till the bodies went limp and their skin became purple. Now, on every Halloween, when the veil between worlds grows thin enough, it’s said that The Hangman returns to his hill, watching over the town once again, eager to deliver punishment wherever he can!”

“That’s a curious story, ain’t it? We’ll return to this story, and many others, after this short message from our spons…” Daniels’ voice was cut off as Brandon paused the podcast and closed his laptop.

“It’s just the same fucking story as always.” Brandon said.

“Calm down.” I said. “It’s the 31^st of October; they’re gonna tell a story related to Halloween.”

Brandon sat down on his bed, crossing his arms and looking away from me. He was already crashing from all the sugar he’d consumed that evening.

“Can’t we just go out and trick-or-treat?” He pouted. “It’s not like it’s a crime.”

“C’mon, man.” I answered him. “We can just buy candy; we don’t need to beg for it.”

We were 18 years old. It was embarrassing enough trick-or-treating the year before, AND the year before that. This year, I’d finally managed to convince Brandon to stay home for Halloween. It’d taken a ton of convincing and a mound of candy, soon to be empty; even still, I could tell that it was going to be a rough night regardless.

“Hmph…” He turned his head away. “It’s not the same if you buy it.”

He grabbed the last mars bar from the box and stuffed it into his mouth.

“Dude!” I said. “Couldn’t you have saved me just ONE of those?”

“Christ, Mike… I’m having a tough fucking evening.” He answered. “Can’t you spare a bit of sympathy? Is it so bad that I want a mars bar when I’m down?”

I sighed. Brandon. Brandon. Brandon. It was always about what he wanted to do, and I always had to be the pleaser and follow along to keep the peace. He was the kind of friend who possessed the remarkable ability to make you feel like a side character in your own life; the kind of friend that you’re only around because it feels familiar, not because you particularly like them.

“Hey, let’s go down to the 7-eleven and get something more.” He said. “I’m still craving.”

“Sure… Why not.”

He opened his drawer and pulled out the pair of zombie masks we’d worn the year prior. I put on one of them and Brandon took the other. I didn’t mind. It would make him happier, and it would hide my embarrassment when we walked outside. We got out onto the street and began making our way towards the 7-eleven. There was no shortage of kids out on the street. We passed several vampires, scary clowns, and small devils, and, although he was wearing a mask, I could tell how jealous Brandon was. Then, up ahead of us, there was a bedsheet-ghost coming our way. They were swinging a pillowcase, obviously filled to the brim with candy. As we came closer, Brandon suddenly grabbed me around my wrist.

“Are you ready?” He whispered in my ear when he was within an arm’s length from the bedsheet-ghost.

Before I could even process what he was talking about, he grabbed the rim of the pillowcase, ripped it out of the hands of the bedsheet-ghost so hard that they fell backwards and tumbled onto the asphalt. Then Brandon ran, pulling me along by my wrist.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” I yelled as we ran away.

“Relax,” He yelled back at me. “Live a little!”

Then something happened which neither of us had foreseen.

“HEY, stop right where you are!” A deep voice shouted from behind us.

We came to a halt and turned around. Further down the street a police car was parked, blinking red and blue. One officer was comforting the bedsheet-ghost on the sidewalk, and another officer was slowly approaching us.

Without any further hesitation, Brandon began running again, and I was pulled along with him. Not even five seconds had passed before we could hear the police sirens pursuing us. It was madness. We couldn’t outrun a police car; I knew that much. Then Brandon suddenly took a sharp turn into an alleyway between two houses on the street, slim enough that the police car couldn’t drive through it. The alleyway was lined with fences leading into backyards. The police sirens were nearing the entrance to the alleyway as we ran through it. Brandon sprinted towards one of the short fences, saw no one in the backyard, and then we jumped over it. Once inside, we pressed our backs up against the fence, holding our breath. Soon enough, we heard the steps of the policeman as he ran through the alleyway, continuing past the fence that we had just jumped. Brandon let out a sigh of relief, overjoyed that he was safe. He pulled off his mask and opened the pillowcase to see what he’d gathered.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” I asked him as I pulled off my own mask, soaked in spit and sweat.

“Come on.” He said, pulling out a handful of gummy bears and showing them in his mouth. “It’s called trick-or-treat, right? It was just a trick.”

“Stealing from a kid isn’t much of a trick!”

“Pfft. Whatever, Mike.” He said, filling his mouth with another handful of gummy bears.

Then something dawned on me.

“Brandon, we can’t go home now. The police are probably looking for us. If we just walk back to the house, someone’s probably gonna recognize us.”

“Then I guess we gotta hide.” Brandon eyes shifted away from the candy and up towards Hangman’s Hill. “Somewhere no one’s gonna look.”

“No way.” I said. “Can’t we just give the candy back to that kid and apologize?”

“C’mon, man. We can’t just give it back like that.” He dug into the pillowcase. “Here! There’s something for both of us in here?” He pulled out a mars bar and slid it into one of the pockets of my jacket. “Anyways, you don’t wanna snitch on your best friend, right?” He said with all the complacency of a rotten politician.

“For fuck’s sake.” I answered as a smile formed on Brandon’s face.

We pulled our masks back on, Brandon stuffed the candy into his pockets, and then we began making our way towards Hangman’s Hill, crouching behind bushes, jumping over fences, and running through backyards, managing to stay out of sight of everyone.

We finally made it out of the town and didn’t stop running till we reached the top of the hill. Brandon grabbed onto the branches of the sycamore tree and pulled himself up. I followed along and we climbed up into the tree crown. From there, we could see all of Badger’s Hollow.

“This is perfect!” Brandon exclaimed. “We’ll just sit up here until midnight, and then there won’t be anyone on the streets to recognize us.”

I remained silent, still trying to catch my breath from climbing.

“…You’re welcome by the way!” Brandon said before leaning back and closing his eyes.

I was about to answer, but kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t even worth answering him. I just followed his lead and leaned back on the branches of the tree, closing my eyes.

“Mike, wake up! Something’s wrong!”

I almost fell from the branch with how much Brandon shook me.

“Relax, man.” I answered. “What’s the matter?”

Brandon just pointed down towards the town, and I instantly understood.

A great mist had swallowed up the entirety of Badger’s Hollow; a mist so thick that we couldn’t make out anything within the town: no buildings, streetlamps, people, or any source of light.

“God damn. What time is it?” I asked.

“I don’t fucking know man… My phone won’t turn on.”

I pulled out my own phone and faced the same problem.

“Maybe we should just head back home.” I said.

Brandon nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t feeling confident. I couldn’t blame him; I didn’t feel particularly secure myself. We climbed down and started walking towards the town. With every step we took on the way, I was filled with more and more dread; this only worsened when we arrived at the border of the town. Even though the mist was thick as a pea soup and we couldn’t see further than ten feet in front of us, it was obvious that the town was in a blackout. We walked further into town and regardless of the direction we looked there was no light, not in any of the houses nor any of the streetlamps. Though we had lived in Badger’s Hollow all our life, the town was unrecognizably lifeless on that misty night.

“HELLO?” Brandon yelled at the top of his lungs, careless that we should be keeping a low profile. “Is anybody there?”

The silence of the streets prevailed until, suddenly, there was the sound of thundering steps, slowly approaching us.

“Hey, over here!” Brandon was ecstatic.

The steps kept approaching, but no one exited from the mist. Instead, we began walking towards the source of the sound. Then the steps suddenly halted. We stopped dead in our tracks.

“Hello?” I said cautiously.

Silence fell once again, until the sound of the steps suddenly returned, this time coming from behind us. Still, there was no one coming out of the mist. I was stricken with the feeling that whoever it was, it wasn’t someone coming to help us. I grabbed Brandon by the wrist and began pulling him with me in the opposite direction of the sound.

But the sound followed us. I could feel my heart pounding in my throat. Brandon and I picked up the pace trying to get away, but it didn’t matter; the sound was still tailing us. It was then we started sprinting. Even so, the sound was still right behind us. Even worse, it was getting harder to breathe. It felt as if something was constricting my throat, not letting me take in a full breath of air. I tried to keep the pace, but my legs were burning, and my lungs were screaming for all the air I couldn’t provide them. I was slowing down and Brandon was struggling to pull me along. Suddenly, without any warning, he ripped his arm free from my grip and ran away screaming for help at the top of his lungs. The last thing running through my mind as he disappeared into the mist was the mere thought that Brandon really was a waste of a friend. I fell to my knees and slumped down onto the pavement, wheezing for air. As I lay, I could hear the steps steadily approaching. I looked behind. As I finally saw something take shape inside the mist, I felt the mars bar in my jacket. I dug into my pocket, pulled out the candy bar, and threw it in front of me with all the force I could gather.

“I didn’t want to be a part of this …” The lack of air was getting to my head. “Please… I’m sorry…” The last thing I remember was seeing the silhouette of something big emerging from the mist before I passed out.

“Hey, wake up!”

I could feel something poking my chest. I opened my eyes and sat up. I was sitting on the sidewalk. A policeman was standing over me, holding a baton, looking at me inquiringly.

“So, it’s you who’s stealing candy from little kids, huh?” The policeman said, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me up, looking at me with a satisfied grin. “We’re just gonna ask you a few questions down at the station, understood?”

I just nodded and got into the car. Sitting down, I pulled off my mask and looked out of the window. The streets of Badger’s Hollow were once again alive with kids trick-or-treating. I leaned back in my seat, letting out a great sigh of relief. Down at the police station, I was asked about the incident with the bedsheet-ghost and where my “partner in crime” was. I told it like it was.

“My friend, Brandon, was the one who stole the candy and knocked the kid backwards. He just pulled me along, but he ran away from me at some point. I don’t know where he is!”

There was no point in telling them about my experience. At best, they’d think I was trying to foist a story upon them to get out of trouble, and, quite frankly, I found myself not really caring much about whatever happened to Brandon, wherever he was.

Brandon’s parents were of course very concerned when he never made it home that Halloween. The authorities could never figure out where he’d run off to. For all they knew, he’d vanished into thin air. The only trace anyone ever found was a zombie-mask soaked in his spit, lying beneath the sycamore tree up on Hangman’s Hill.

I will say one thing about the Alaskan Alpiner’s Club—they think of everything, even if it may not be immediately useful. Three days ago I thought that whoever lugged a typewriter up the side of a mountain was an idiot. Now, after three days of losing my mind with boredom I think that person is a fucking genius. 

I was never too big on writing but I have mastered the two finger typing method so this has been a killer way of passing the time, what with each paragraph taking minutes on end to write in full. 

It’s maybe eight..? In the evening, but it’s hard to tell, being so far north where the sun never rises, I think I’m actually closer to Russia than I am to my home town of Anchorage. 

That’s the main reason I don’t exactly know what time it is. The other is that my watch froze to death two days ago.

So did my dog. 

That’s been hard. 

A little bit after losing him, I hiked up a ridge, planning to take off my jacket, midlayer, baselayer and whatever the fuck else and just lay down or find a nice cliff to throw myself off of rather than freeze to death, but just as I hiked up that ridge I saw that it wasn’t the cliff that I thought it would be. Instead, it was the crest of a long slope down the mountain. Halfway down the slope, on a stable, oddly level slab of rock was a small alpinist’s survival cabin, one of the ones built by the aforementioned Alaskan Alpiner’s Club. 

I pulled my map out, worried that I would have ruined it with tears, realized they were frozen to my cheeks and beard, and realized I was very fucking lost. This was the wrong mountain, the wrong trail (as in there wasn’t one, which is why the snow was so fucking deep,) and the wrong cabin. I should not be here. 

Nice little cabin though, kind of reminds me of the Unabomber’s. There’s a main floor with a picnic table type dining area, small kitchenette, a kerosene heater, and a large bay window that faces the crest that I climbed over a few days ago. Under that window is the rickety desk I sit at, a desk that houses the vintage Remington that I type at. Above me there’s a loft that houses my gear—sleeping mat, sleeping bag, jackets, backpack, cooking supplies that I don’t need in this cabin, and more food than I thought I would need for this little camping trip. There’s other odds and ends that I won’t waste the time to type out. 

Shit to build a shelter in the wild, I don’t know, watch a fucking youtube video. 

I definitely have enough food to ride out this storm, I packed enough food for a trip twice as long as this one was supposed to be and I raided the cabinets of the kitchenette as soon as I got here and found a massive store of dried beans and loads of other canned stuff. Donations from other alpinists that stayed here over the years, helping hands from across the years. A really fucking tasty can of peaches keeps me company now. 

It tastes like how I imagined Sploosh tasted in that movie Holes. 

Fuck, that is a good movie. 

The storm started a little while after I got into this cabin and has held strong since and has been a full white-out since it reached its full potency. Which was pretty annoying, I planned on getting my dog from his spot in the snow in the morning, but I’ve been shuttered here since, going crazy with boredom. 

I was going to bring a book with me, one I was thinking of reading but I left it, thinking that I would have no spare time on this trip to read and decided that it wasn’t worth the weight in my bag. 

Boy was I wrong. 

It’s this book called The Terror about a polar expedition. I think there’s a TV show about it too but it might be different, I haven’t watched it but it seems like a cool book to read while in the cold like this. Pun intended. 

Wow, I am running out of things to write about. 

I miss my dog. 

I miss my Jed a lot. 

It has been a few hours, ‘morning’ now, or deep in the night, I don’t know but I’m bored and feel well rested so I’m back at this. I don’t even know why I’m at this, maybe in case I die trying to get my dog back. Like I said before I am really running out of things to write about. 

I always thought reading about someone describing their surroundings was boring as fuck but I have nothing better to do and it’ll be good practice for when I write this into a proper book about the tragedy and triumph of me surviving this artic ascent. 

There’s a thermometer outside on the window that reads -40. I always like -40 as a temperature because it’s the same across celsius and fahrenheit. No matter where you are it is FUCKING COLD AS SHIT.

Past that thermometer, there’s the ridge I came down, past that there’s the corpse of a husky that loved the cold and snow. Maybe I’ll leave him and let him rest with what he loves. On the face of the ridge I see a few striations in the rock, darker than the rest of it. Could be a different type of rock, or a coal vein or I don’t know. Looks cool though. Five kind of stalactite shaped patterns in the rock. 

I’m going to bed again. Or I’m just gonna lay in my sleeping bag and play with my dick. I don’t know. 

I don’t know what the fuck happened. Its so fucked up i dont know what to do and i odnt know what the fuck is going on so i figured id type it out so i can keep a record.

I heard a thud after falling asleep and thought there was someone else knocking at the door after seeing my hiking pole outside but it came from the rear wall of the cabin, kind of by the typewriter desk and window. I went to look, shining the cabin’s lantern that I found in one of the cabinets and shone it around. 

On that big window I saw a shape out of the corner of my eye, I turned the light towards it and almost puked. 

Attached to the window, frozen to it with blood was the head of my dog. Veins and neck bone dangling out of the stump. His tongue frozen in an odd position, a bite taken out of it. 

The darkness on the slope is gone. I’m not sure anymore that it was a pattern in the rock. I think it looked too much like a hand reaching over the side of the mountain to be anything but. 

I’m going to pack up and get out of here, even though it’s still snowing. Sure, it’s a death sentence in a storm like this but after seeing Jed torn up like that…I think I’m alright with it. I’ll leave this here in the typewriter so it survives if I don’t. If you find it, let people know that I didn’t do that to my dog. 

The alpinist's writings were found amongst the wreckage of Cabin 802. They were one of the few surviving things in the cabin, amongst the wreckage of the cabin was a body dressed in full alpining gear. 

The body was too mutilated for identification.  

The group that encountered the incident site states that the area looked like somebody dropped a wrecking ball on the cabin. 

The alpinist’s writings, this incident report, as well as on-site photography from witnesses and our own investigation will be turned over to police, search and rescue, and National Park Services for further investigation. 

Alaskan Alpiner’s Club Incident Report 27/09/26 

The best way I can describe this room is bleak.

Featureless concrete walls, a dirty tile floor, and a small circular table.

Fluorescent lighting overhead.

Feels like I’m in the backrooms. What I wouldn’t give to be there right now.

Instead, I’m in the interrogation room at the county jail. Likely about to join the list of people who’ve come in here knowing their lives outside the bars and the barbed wire have come to an end.

I’ve lost most everything over the last few months. No one vouching for me outside now.

But the police said I might be able to get off easier if I write everything down, so here goes.

____________

My mom liked her coffee black.

Nothing else in it. Just add the paper filter, throw in the grinds, pour in the water, and voila.

Hot, black coffee.

My mom was rigid like that. Grew up an army brat. Strict rules and routines. She didn’t join the military herself, but she did inherit the very black-and-white views of her parents.

Nothing was grey with her. It was either you did, or you didn’t. It was right, or it was wrong.

Don’t get me wrong. She was a great mom.

Never missed a single game, school event, or a day without a note tucked into my lunchbox.

Then came the milestones.

I went to college, got a job, and moved in with and got engaged to my high school sweetheart.

In my mom’s eyes, that was all right.

Then I got into sports betting.

____________

It started when I turned a grand into 75 on my buddy’s bachelor trip at a casino in Vegas. Had me convinced I’d found some sort of cheat code to give Krista the dream wedding she’d always wanted.

Instead, it turned our lives into a nightmare.

Betting apps turned into me connecting with this guy Rick, who was a bookie in his spare time.

Things spiraled from there, until I accidentally used my work card to try and drop a parlay on a work trip and was unceremoniously shown the door by my boss, who had been watching the entire time.

Then, I arrived home to find out I had been shown the door by Krista as well,

Two suitcases and a garbage bag of my stuff, placed outside our apartment door.

____________

My parents had differing views on me moving back home to rebuild. My dad was all for it, just as long as I helped out around the house.

My mom…less so.

She accepted it. But by no means was she pleased about it. And she made it abundantly clear.

I don’t know if it was tough love or some weird attempt at trying to motivate me, but it had the complete opposite effect.

I remember going to a Kentucky Derby party, maybe a few months after I moved back home.

They were doing one of those Derby hat draws, where you pay $5 to take the name of a horse out of a hat and whoever’s horse wins gets all the money.

Super low stakes. Could hardly even be considered gambling.

And yet my mom felt the need to pipe up in the middle of a crowded room with probably 30 people in it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Eddie. You’ve already lost your job and your fiancé. What’s next?”

Total silence. Someone coughed. The sliding back door was open while my neighbor grilled, and it was one of those unseasonably cold and rainy late spring days, so the room was actually a little chilly.

But my face burned with humiliation. And I didn’t want to call her out right then and there.

So I just smiled, and laughed it off, like it had been a little jab and not the worst moment of the year for me.

Which was saying something.

____________

This whole thing got started late one night. I had just gotten home from my job at the time - waiting tables at a local sports bar.

I’d walked in around midnight and been greeted by the smell of freshly brewed coffee, a sign that my mom was up.

You see, my mom had insomnia. It wasn’t uncommon for her to wake up in the middle of the night, make a pot of coffee, and just…stay up, puttering around the house and doing this or that. More than once, I’d woken up to find the house had been deep cleaned overnight.

On this particular night, I entered the house and walked into the kitchen to find her sitting at the table, poring over some papers with a fresh cup next to her.

She’d read a page, then sip. Read a page, then sip.

It went on like clockwork for probably 10 pages before she looked up, gasped, and shrank back.

“Eddie! … you scared me.” She took a deep breath, hand on her chest. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Uhh… maybe 10 minutes? I just got home from work.”

“….oh. You had work tonight?”

…

“…yeah. What’re you looking at there?”

“Oh, nothing. Just some insurance papers. In case I die.”

“Oh - how much?”

The look she gave me told me exactly what she was thinking, and it took considerable effort not to roll my eyes in response.

“That’s something you’ll find out down the road.” she said, with a wink. “This isn’t for you to use on your betting.”

I nodded, clenching my teeth to avoid saying something I’d regret. Something along the lines of telling her to go fuck herself.

Instead, I simply sighed. Feigned sudden exhaustion and said I was going to bed.

But I decided to take the “long” way upstairs, walking right past my mom at the table.

As I passed her, I turned my head just enough to glance at the papers in front of her. She had returned to her reading and was so engrossed she didn’t even notice.

There was a dollar value printed. Three digits, then a comma, followed by three zeroes.

Maybe it was the jab she had made towards me a second before, and everything preceding that. All the guilt trips.

But dammit if I didn’t see that number that I knew was at least six figures, and think to myself.

This would solve all my problems. Instantly.

____________

I waited three weeks before doing it.

Two to make sure this was something I wanted to go through with, then a week to actually plan it out.

Obviously, I’m here now. I’ve confessed. So I’m not going to bore you with the details of it.

A magician never reveals his secrets, you know?

All I’ll say is, it involved something in her coffee. That’s it.

____________

I lay awake for hours, waiting for her to go downstairs.

Then, after she did, I waited even longer, unsure as to whether I would need to go down myself and put on the performance of a lifetime.

The creak of my parents’ door answered my question. I heard the heavy footsteps as my dad walked down the stairs.

And I knew it worked minutes later when I heard the sound of my father’s agonized screaming.

____________

He had gotten up to use the bathroom. Smelled coffee downstairs and decided to see what she was up to.

Found her slumped on the couch in the family room, the cup next to her.  

I never found out what the toxicology reports said. Didn’t matter much to me.

She was dead. No suspicion of foul play. That was enough for me.

But standing there, trying to comfort him as he wept over her, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel something.

____________

I cried about it for the first time the day of the funeral, but not for the reasons you might think.

The funeral, through some cruel stroke of luck, took place on what was supposed to be my wedding day.

My dad and I were standing there, next to the open casket, when she walked in.

There was something about seeing her walking toward me - in a simple black dress and a cardigan instead of a beautiful white gown, with her hair in a half ponytail instead of flowing underneath a veil, and with a somber expression of sympathy on her face instead of a radiant smile - that finally brought forth tears that I didn’t have to force as she took me into her arms.

“Eddie…I’m so sorry.”

Her voice cracked a little at the end, and I could feel a hint of dampness on my shoulder as she shed a tear of her own.

“It’s…it’s okay. It was just really, really sudden.”

She pulled back, wiping her face with her hand before lightly placing a hand on my arm.

The look on her face was so tender, so…kind, that it made me wonder briefly if there was still something there between us.

Or if she was also thinking about what should have been happening that day.

“Have you been…doing okay?”

Whether she meant my mom, my recovery (if you could even call it that), or both, I wasn’t sure. I forced a rather weak nod.

“Yeah…I guess. Kind of just…hanging in there, you know?”

She smiled, and I felt a new wave of regret washing forward. Over us, and how I’d ruined it.

“I’m…going to find a place to sit. Please don’t hesitate to come talk if you need anything…okay?”

“Right.”

She smiled. Walked away.

I realized I felt rather numb.

____________

The service went…fine, as far as funerals tended to go. My dad had to ask multiple people to repeat themselves due to his hearing issues, but that was about it.

Everyone went to a local Italian place after, one of my mom’s favorites. My dad had catered a small buffet.

Krista and I made eye contact, several times. She would smile. I would smile back, and then kick myself on the inside for being unable to just go up and talk to her.

About what, I don’t know. I obviously couldn’t go up and be like “hey, so I actually murdered my mom. Please don’t tell anyone. Okay? Thanks!”

I mostly sat with my dad and kept him company. Could tell he was still as absolutely wrecked as he was the moment he had found her on the couch. I think his eyes had been perpetually red and swollen since that moment a week ago.

I still couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about what I had done to her. But seeing how my actions had affected him?

That shit damn near tore me open.

____________

Krista stayed after for a bit to help clean up. She had always been fit, but she lost her cardigan at some point due to the exertion of folding tables and whatnot, and I could see she had been working out since the breakup.

Her dress, in the absence of the sweater, had revealed itself to be sleeveless, and her arms to be, well… very toned.

I hadn’t let myself go by any means, but she was clearly working on herself in a way that I was not.

It didn’t do me much good in the events that followed.

____________

I was holding a large tray of lasagna, trying to open my trunk, when there was a voice behind me.

“Hey! You Eddie?”

A man was leaning against the hood of a beat-up black sedan across from me. He wore jeans, a wife beater, and boots.

He clearly hadn’t been at either the funeral or the reception. Lord knows how long he had been sitting in that car, waiting for me to come out.

It wasn’t until later that I began to wonder just how he’d known I would be there.

“Yeah. You?”

“Doesn’t matter who I am. You got Rick’s money?”

Fuck.

“Hey, man. Now’s not really a great time. I just buried my mom."

“Sorry to hear that. Doesn’t matter, though. Rick wants his money.”

“I hear you. Just… tell him I’ll get it to him in a few days. I have some cash coming in. Just need to get a-“

Crunch.

Blinding pain coursed through my skull as the thick, meaty fist connected with the side of my face.

My ass hit the ground, and the tray did a somersault then landed facedown on my chest, lasagna flying everywhere.

I squinted up at him through a half-closed, swollen eye as blood poured out of my nose and mouth, the taste of copper assaulting my taste buds.

“What the fuck, man?”

He looked down at me unsympathetically. I couldn’t see his eyes through his tinted sunglasses, but I assumed his expression was rather vacant.

“Rick wants his money. Consider that-"

Click-clack. The sound of heels on pavement.

Shit.

We both looked over as Krista stopped, then almost dropped her bag, clearly in shock at what she was witnessing.

And then we made eye contact.

And it was immediately clear from the hurt evident on her face, and the hot, angry tears that she had to blink back, what she was thinking.

That I was not, in fact, better.

And that I was back to all the old habits that had gotten me in trouble and driven us apart in the first place.

Wife Beater looked at her and waved her off like she was nothing more than a curious puppy.

“Get lost. Scram. You didn’t see anything.”

She looked at him. Looked at me, as the first of probably many tears cracked out and ran down her face.

Turned, and ran before I could say anything myself.

I sensed that that was the last I’d be seeing or hearing of her.

Three months after she’d left, and on the day we should have been exchanging vows before 120 people, we were almost certainly done this time.

For good.

____________

My dad came out a few minutes later to me still sitting on the ground.

I told him I’d tripped over a shoelace I hadn’t been able to see was undone due to the large to-go box.

I knew he knew I was full of shit, but he didn’t say anything.

He took me to the ER, where I was released after about an hour with nothing worse than a bruised tailbone and a nasty shiner.

Oh, and some lost dignity. Not to mention a broken heart.

____________

I was lying in bed late that night.

My dad had gone to bed almost immediately after getting home. I’d showered, then grabbed an old baseball bat out of storage and stashed it in the corner.

Just in case.

I had a baseball game on. Had been enjoying something resembling a mild high due to the painkillers.

I was beginning to drift off, when I heard a noise from downstairs.

The slow, steady drip-drip-drip as fresh coffee began to drip into the pot.

I smiled as sleep began to overtake me.

My mom, making some coffee late at night, as she did many late nights.

Something I had fallen asleep to my entire life.

And then I remembered my mother was dead.

link to part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/BzqpgBHijM

link to part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/nrGuOdRxba

hey guys. I've been driving for about an hour now and still am. Some of you pointed out something which I have replied to but will also sort out now.

old-dragonfruit2219. I think that’s your user. a bit confused on where you are getting hex dug structure bit now on feast from as I don’t see anything that could've pointed you to that. if you could explain I would be grateful.

auraoftiger, I think that the binary could be to the rot, or maybe the obelisk drawing thing? the rot consumes houses, cars and things, and if we are to believe the drawing, we could assume that the obelisk is the big bad of all this, maybe the original light.

candigirl16 I have checked and yes, 1000km isn’t valid. I’m more-less at Shetland isles. so will need a boat soon. I’m around 600 miles away, not 1000km.

alright. Now let’s just go over some things and I can recount.

a new signal on the radio. same voice. this time in what I think is latin.

Prope sunt nolite eos introducere. nolite eos introducere, nolite eos introducere. nolite.

sorry for all this, but things like google arent accessible. I just arrived at the cabin and I’m going to go there now.

alright. Found a Generator. it has some fuel in it. I’ll get it running and hopefully i can light the place up.

right. I’ve just settled in for the night but I can’t sleep. I’m studying the picture and I’ve noticed that there are words in the circles. really small. well, more accurately letters. one on each side. in the three circles. on the left side one, it is l e p a. on the middle circle, it is u o r y. on the right side one, it is i e f l. some code? plea your life? maybe some language? I don’t know, but I guess I don’t know much about anything anymore.

can you believe this started in two days? Me neither. Insane. Anyway, I’ll look around the cabin for a weapon or anything better than a baseball bat, and possibly a map.

found an axe. nice. and a map. I’m in the Shetland isles. the weather is nice. and as long as I keep the generator going, I can live here. try to establish communication. see if there’s anyone else. could. or keep going. we’ll see. I’ll stay here a bit longer until i have decided proper.

alright: I just went to a lake. fishing equipment was nearby. I’m guessing whomever owned the cabin also owned the lake. it’s sizeable. there is a medium-sized boat nearby. good for fishing. some bait. a fishing rod and bucket. I think I’ll go fishing soon.

i just went swimming in the lake. imagined there were people nearby, or here with me. I think I’m going crazy. better than dealing with those things again.

i‘m just listening to the radio in the cabin. There’s a new voice. human, I think. Sounds scared. Still just numbers: 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01101000 01101001 01100100 01100101 00101100 00100000 01100010 01110010 01100001 01101110 01100100 01101111 01101110 00101110 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01110011 01100011 01100001 01110010 01100101 01100100 00101110 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01100110 01110010 01100001 01101001 01100100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110101 01110011 00101110 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00101110 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00101110 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00101110 00100000 01100100 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00101110 00100000 01100100 01101111 00101110

Maybe I’m imagining the voice this time. Maybe it’s still the fucking mechanical one, and I’m just coping. fucking coping.

they're scoping the cabin. bitches. I’m gonna go deal with them tomorrow.

trying to sleep. couldn’t so I decided to write a bit more. HEART radio is still up. that one with Amanda Holden. I think. she isn’t there anymore. just the music. I think it’s dream sweet in C major. don’t know why they’d put that on. i fucking can’t dream sweet.

alright. I’m gonna go and kill those things later today. or see if I can. fuck. maybe we’re all dead? all of us? and those things are what happened then. maybe I’ll see them all again.

see us.

see us.

see us.

see us.

fuck. I’m back. they can’t die. the fuckers can’t even be hurt. what am I meant to fucking do?

just went fishing. sturdy boat. I’m not built for this. Fuck, I’m built for engineering not post-apocalypse. i should be home right now. I should’ve been kissing my wife and having dinner with her. Should’ve been discussing renovations or intimacy or some fucking thing. Not this. Not this.

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alright. I’m gonna hit the hay for now. maybe I can dream sweet. I can’t be bothered to remove whatever that weird text is. I think it’s a code but I’m not gonna fucking translate it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I climbed the rotting steps and hurried through the doorway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I couldn't even look at that blue cast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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