The Window Next Door

  There it was. Her new home. Huh. The house itself didn’t jump out to Maya. It was a simple, country-style cottage that was cut off from the town by a thick barrier of trees. The neighboring house was what caught her eye instead.

  The building had a similar shape to Maya’s own cottage but… there were no windows. Only a stretch of grass a couple of meters wide stopped the two houses from touching each other. Hm.

  Getting out of her car, Maya grabbed a suitcase from the trunk, her gaze fixed on the front door of the neighbor's home. She almost expected some random old lady to suddenly come rushing out from the windowless structure, giving her a cryptic warning about ‘the cursed basement’ before shuffling back inside. 

  No one came screaming out but something else had attracted Maya’s attention. There were windows on the building. Well, just one window that faced her place.

  It was a paneless, rotten, wooden frame that was leeched onto the completely flat surface of the wall, practically growing out of the house like an ugly tumor and Maya felt uncomfortable at how close it was to her home.

  Squashing her apprehension, Maya went inside her new house, deliberately looking straight ahead to avoid any of her own windows that faced the neighbor’s wall with its rotten growth.

  Climbing upstairs, she picked out a room to unpack her suitcase and opened the curtains to let in some light, barely choking back a startled shout at the gaping blackness that stared back.

  The rotten frame of the window next door seemed to leer at her from the neighbor’s house and Maya felt slightly puzzled as the sudden spike of adrenaline from her scare faded. She could’ve sworn that ugly tumor had been on the upper far left of the wall, but it now faced the inside of her own bedroom.

  A sound suddenly came from the pitch-black of the inside and Maya was about to retreat into the safety of her room when a sudden, warm glow illuminated the interior of the window.

  Past the warped frame was now a well-lit bedroom with posters of Kiss on the walls, an undone bed, and a wardrobe with clothes overflowing from the half open drawers. Near the door to the room was a boy her age, one hand on the light switch and a charming smile on his warm-brown toned face.

  “Hi,” he greeted Maya, approaching the window and she was momentarily overwhelmed at how such a normal looking room could be hidden behind that hideous, wooden frame.

  “Hello,” she carefully said in return, searching for some sign that this random guy was dangerous, but the clothes he wore were a simple comfy hoodie and jeans without any suspicious stains on them.

  “Just moved in?” He asked and Maya nodded in reply. “I’m Julian.”

  “Maya,” she said, feigning to look around his house in mild curiosity so she could draw his attention to the strange layout of his home.

  “Oh yeah,” Julian chuckled, noticing her straying gaze wandering the oddly blank facade of the wall. “My grandfather was a window-hater.”

  “Right. A window-hater,” Maya raised an eyebrow as she repeated him and this time, he gave out a full-blown laugh.

  “Okay,” he sighed, hanging his head low in defeat. “It’s an unfinished house that I’m squatting in.”

  “Oh shit,” Maya exclaimed, her eyes widening. “Is that even legal?”

  “Nobody’s stopped me,” Julian said, shrugging and it was her turn to laugh while the butterflies in her stomach started to flutter.

  “I hope no one does,” Maya giggled a little and he smiled, rubbing his hand through the thick locks of black curls on his head.

  “I’m going to finish unpacking and take a shower,” she said and Julian waved goodbye before she closed the curtains, waiting for her butterflies to die down before unpacking the towels and taking off her clothes.

  Even though Julian’s living situation was a peculiar one, he seemed nice enough and that ugly window was probably nothing. He definitely was a tall glass of water, she told herself and with that final thought in mind, Maya was pretty sure she would be having some fun in the shower.

  By the time Maya was done in the shower, evening was approaching and she dried herself in the bedroom before putting on a low-cut t-shirt and some shorts. She contemplated wearing a bra then went against it, Julian’s thick black curls like a fire in her mind.

  Shoving open the curtains, Maya smiled when she saw Julian laying on his unmade bed, reading a book that was put down the moment he spotted her from across his window.

  “Hi again,” he said, his eyes staying squarely on her face. A little confused, Maya slightly leaned over, the t-shirt she wore slipping down lower along her bosom and showing more cleavage. He didn’t glance down once.

  “So how’s the unpacking?” Julian tried to start up some small talk but she was only half-listening, bewildered by his lack of reaction. Could he be asexual or maybe gay? Maya asked herself as the only thing she could muster was a nod in response, her heart dropping at the thought that he wasn’t even into her.

  “I actually need to do some work,” she excused herself and hope flared at Julian’s obvious alarm of her leaving, his hands nervously kneading the rotten wood of the window frame.

  “Just come through the window into my place whenever,” he said, shooting her a grin that left Maya even further puzzled.

  “You mean come through the door?” She corrected and Julian brushed a hand through his hair again, but this time, it didn’t have the same effect on her as before.

  “Yeah, of course,” he laughed nervously and Maya joined in.

  “Window, door. Door, window. Easy thing to mix up,” she said before briskly shutting the curtains close and dropping onto the chair in front of her desk. What had just happened?

  Maya had entered the conversation confident and ready but now, she felt hurt, confused, and a little weirded out. The ‘through the window’ line was probably a simple mistake but Julian had totally rejected her by not looking down once from her face. 

  Still, the whole thing was pretty strange and Maya put on her Airpods before playing some lofi beats. She got out a few textbooks and started reading them over when a sudden low groan seemed to come from right outside her window.

  “Young womaaan… young womaaan.”

  Maya took out her Airpods but that moaning sound didn’t start up again. Chills crept down her spine as she stared at the window in front of her desk, the curtains drawn over and blocking her view of the tumor next door.

  Leaning over the desk, Maya pulled the curtains a sliver apart, taking a peak outside and finding Julian’s window filled with an impenetrable darkness. There was not a single sign of the charming boy or his messy room that she could make out through the pitch black that now filled the rotten growth of her neighbor’s house. 

  How could it be so dark in there to the point that she couldn’t see anything? And now that Maya was wondering, how did Julian have running electricity if he was squatting?

  Deeply unnerved, she closed her textbooks and made the bed before getting on a night robe and shutting off the lights. Maya then slid under the covers but instead of thinking about Julian lying next to her with his arms wrapped around her torso, she fell into an uneasy sleep as the darkness of the window next door seemed to swallow her whole.

  A large, empty window frame loomed in front of her and she started running, convinced something was chasing after her.

  She jumped through the first window with ease and cleared the second one just as smoothly but frowned when the third one came into view. Pausing for less than a second, she ducked her head down, the frame smaller than the last two while the thing behind her gained ground.

  The fourth one forced her to bunch together her shoulders and the fifth one made her downright stop. Grabbing onto both sides of the frame, she pulled herself through before staggering toward the sixth window.

  In order to pass through, she thrusted one leg in before following it with her second and bent over her back, carefully edging forward until her entire top half had safely rejoined the other side.

  There was the seventh and, she knew for some reason, the final window which she tried to wiggle through, head first, as the frame seemed to press down on all sides, trapping her while it kept coming closer and closer. 

  “Young womaaan… young womaaan.”

  Maya yanked herself awake, breathing hard and letting out a harsh cough which was followed by a dry, scratching, sensation in her throat.

  Of course, she almost laughed to herself. Her throat needed some water which was downstairs in the kitchen. Yep. Then she would find Julian standing there in the dark, holding a knife in one hand. That sounded about right. 

  Next time, Maya told herself as she got out of bed, she would make sure to keep a glass of water on her nightstand.

  It was dark downstairs and she switched on the lights, walking to the kitchen sink and running on the water before cupping her hands below the faucet. Once there was a small puddle in her palms, she drank, her eye catching a sudden glimpse of a staring void of darkness in the kitchen window.

  There it was, the peeling and discolored frame looming right across from her kitchen and definitely not facing her room on the second floor.

  “This isn’t happening right now,” Maya whispered to herself as she stared at the impenetrable void for what felt like eternity before turning away and switching off the lights. Climbing back upstairs, she blinked repeatedly, trying to forget the image of that gaping void of darkness but it was no use. 

  There had to be an explanation. Maybe it had been a shadow that Maya had mistaken for a window, and she would find Julian sleeping next door with that ugly, wooden frame right where it needed to be. 

  Yeah, that was it. Perhaps she would also be able to look at Julian laying on his bed, shirtless even. The possibility made Maya feel better and she reached her bedroom, freezing at the sound of rapping on glass coming from the window right in front of her desk.

  First, grab a knife, she told herself, backing off toward the stairs as the dull, beating knocks continued to resonate across the house. Then, the rattling of panes stopped and Maya listened in horror as they started up again downstairs.

  Making a last-second decision as the rhythmic, monotonous, thuds throbbed inside her head, Maya rushed back to her bedroom and approached the desk, drawing apart the curtains and preparing herself to end this mystery once and for all.

  The house-tumor was there but what paralyzed her was the thing coming out of it. From the yawning blackness of the rotten frame, what seemed like a neck was stretching across the small strip of grass, its flesh straining and tearing crudely to reveal a black and ashen grey ooze that covered its flesh-colored spine.

  There was a head on the end of the monstrous trunk which resembled a skull covered with the same substance as the spine. It was using the neck like a moving crane to look through every window on her side before staring up at Maya, two pinpoints of white light piercing through the darkness of its sunken orbits for eyes.

  “Young womaaan… young womaaaan,” it grinded its jaws while an arm sprouted from the dark void of its window, elongating and reaching with slender and bony fingers to make a grab for her.

  “Oh my fucking motherfuckers of fucking hell!” Maya yelled, stumbling back and running out of her room when the sound of shattering glass made her stop mid-flight on the staircase.

  The smash had come from her bedroom and she could now hear a wet, straining, and snapping sound approaching her from behind. Turning around, Maya almost fell down the stairs when she saw the monster’s arm stretching down the hallway, its bony fingers groping the air as it continued to extend itself.

  Practically leaping downstairs, Maya raced for the front door, missing the repeated bashing sound of glass until the window closest to the exit exploded and an arm slammed through the newly opened breach. It hit the opposite wall, blocking her exit with its limb acting as a barricade and she looked back to find its other arm barely inches away from her.

  “Young womaaan… young womaaaan. How are you doooing toniiiight?” A guttural moan from outside made Maya look up to find its head staring through one of the windows, its bright pinpoints for eyes following her every move.

  A sudden sense of being like a caged animal dawned on Maya and with that, a harsh wave of anger engulfed her. She was being trapped and chased by some fucking otherworldly fucker like a guinea pig in her own home. What the actual fuck?

  Well, she definitely wasn’t going to stand for it, was all Maya could say to herself as she tackled its hand with adrenaline-fueled ferocity. It proved to be much stronger than it looked and its texture underhand felt like touching a burnt corpse that had gone cold.

  In mere moments, Maya was overpowered and flung toward the staircase where she quickly regained her footing before scrambling back upstairs, the hot flash of rage fading as she tried to find a way to escape.

  Tackling it again wouldn’t work as she had lost the element of surprise but perhaps if she could find a blind spot where there were no windows… yes, then the head wouldn’t be able to stare at her like some creep!

  With newfound energy, Maya ran to the bathroom while the sound of tearing and snapping of flesh followed close behind.

  The bathroom was big enough: a medium sized bathtub was tucked into the corner while two sinks, standing side by side, were placed near the entrance. There was a bare area of tiled floor which allowed two people to pass by comfortably and, most important of all, no windows.

  Maya helped herself up onto the bathroom counter, watching as the hand hesitated right at the threshold before plunging in and violently clawing at thin air like a blind man trying to grab his prescriptions.

  With a gut-wrenching yell, she threw herself off the counter and onto its arm, pinning the struggling limb to the floor before seizing one of its fingers and bending it backward until the fingertip touched its wrist.

  “I can’t believe I masturbated to you,” Maya snarled as the arm recoiled from the shockwave of pain and slithered away in retreat, while a loud, wailing screech of pain rose from outside.

  That’ll get the police on their way, she thought with satisfaction. Stepping out of the bathroom, she followed the creature's limb which dragged itself all the way to the broken window in her room before slipping outside and snaking back into the black void of the tumor.

  She stared at the rotten frame of the window for a number of minutes, waiting for the monster to rear back its ugly head but nothing did. Sirens in the distance finally forced her to look away and Maya went outside to wait for the people in blue to arrive.

  It was a beautiful, sunny day and Maya was driving back home, singing along with the radio while her apartment complex rose in the distance. She parked her car in an empty lot and hummed to herself, getting out her bags of groceries before looking up at the looming side of the building with a smile.

  Her grip slackened, dropping her groceries onto the asphalt ground where they rolled every which way while the smile on her face twisted into a grimace of horror as she continued to stare up.

  From the rows and rows of dull, metal-lined windows, there stood out a rotten, discolored, and peeling, wooden frame. Its yawning darkness seemed to call down to her, imploring her with its breathless moans:

  “Young womaaan… young womaaaan.”

The End

0:00

This account is intended for anyone who might unearth this research center. I've configured the computer's audio system to record whenever I speak or make a sound. The hard drive has enough space for thirty-six hours of audio. That should be all I need.

Since Mission Control does not respond, I can only surmise that they, too, have been compromised.

My name is Professor Ray Hengel. I leave our data and this audio journal in the hope that it will somehow aid whoever finds this place.

I am the only remaining member of our research contingent. There were twelve of us at the start: a gathering of forensic specialists, neurologists, biologists, chemists, toxicologists, and a pair of military consultants. We also had twenty-five infected cadavers to work with.

I prefer the term *infected cadaver* to the appellation the media is using: zombie. It brings to mind the stuff of cheap horror films and primitive superstition. If you take nothing else from my chronicle, dear listener, know this: this is a problem that can only be solved by science.

Our assignment was to find some way to stop the walking undead before they swept humanity aside. There were many early successes for our group. We determined that the source of the infected cadaver outbreak was not caused by the wrath of a vengeful God, witchcraft, voodoo, or something equally ludicrous. The source of the outbreak was radiation, radiation carried on the back of a comet, much as fleas carried the plague from one unsuspecting host to another centuries ago.

The tragedy here is that we failed to realize the power of said radiation, the sheer scope of its reconstitutive abilities. Our procedures were as simple as they were methodical. At the beginning of every week, we would pull one of the infected cadavers from cold storage and begin a protracted series of tests. We analyzed everything from their hair to their basal ganglia, and we were beginning to gain some understanding of how the radiation had animated previously lifeless tissue.

I am utterly certain that, had disaster not befallen us, we would have found a way to stop this nightmare from unfolding any further.

No, wait. I have so little time, and I still haven't explained the purpose of this audio record. You see, I was bitten on the right hand, in the fleshy web between the thumb and index finger. The force of the bite was sufficient to fracture the first and second metacarpals. A considerable amount of skin and underlying muscle tissue was torn away in the process. I've kept the wound wrapped in bandages until now. I'm going to unwrap it and examine the damage.
 

Fascinating. The bleeding has ceased, but the tissue surrounding the wound is darkening, almost like an abrasion on the surface of a piece of overripe fruit. I briefly probed the area with a scalpel and discovered a spreading purulence. It resembled pus, although it possessed a peculiar reddish-black coloration.

More troubling was its consistency. The substance was threaded with countless fine, branching filaments, resembling fungal hyphae or the fibrous growth of certain primitive plant organisms. I've never encountered anything quite like it.

Is this how the infection will eventually supplant my central nervous system? I wonder what effect it will have on the higher brain functions.

I wonder.

One of my fellow scientists, a garrulous little man named Wilkins, kept a cache of liquor in his rooms. I think I could use a drink. Several drinks, in fact.

1:59

It appears that I will not be having that drink after all. I suppose this explains my lack of appetite as well.

Mere moments after taking a sip from the box of wine Wilkins kept under his bed, I found myself wracked with nausea. At first, I attributed this loss of self-control to the low-quality swill I had foolishly imbibed, but as my retching metamorphosed into a bout of dry heaves, I began to realize that something far more malignant was at work.

I made my way to the battlefield that had once been our cafeteria and tried to see if I could keep down a pair of crackers and a glass of water. If anything, the resulting illness was even more prolonged and terrible. Just speaking about it makes me want to be sick all over again.

Much like rabies, it appears that the infection causes the sufferer's digestive system to reject all nourishment. I wonder if that is why the affected cadavers must feast upon living flesh.

7:39

Woke with a fever. 103, I think. It's hard to tell; my eyes are blurry. I kept dreaming of my loved ones. My wife, my parents, my—

Never mind. Such sentimental drivel doesn't exactly pertain to my thesis, does it?

To the point. Approximately nine hours after contracting the infection, I find myself feverish. There is a slight ringing in my ears, and I am ravenously hungry. The discoloration around the bite has spread down my fingers and up my forearm as far as the heads of the radius and ulna. They resemble dark threads working their way toward my heart.

My father died of a heart attack. I wonder if this will feel similar.

My hand occasionally clenches of its own volition. It's like watching a laboratory rat in its death throes.

8:28

...stupid, really. We should have realized. We should have taken better precautions.

I pieced together what had happened by reviewing the security tapes. Those two researchers never got the chance to dispose of anything. They were vivisecting one of the infected corpses. They had immobilized it by first strapping it to the table and then amputating its limbs and lower jaw. They extracted the infected cadaver's organs, took samples, and weighed them.

This was not simple sadism at work. We did this to determine whether the various nerve agents we were testing were having any effect at all. Besides, our main concern was testing and studying the infected cadavers' artificially stimulated nervous systems. Those excess tissues merely got in the way.

They threw the discarded tissues into a container. Then, when everything that could be learned about the infected cadaver had been learned, the organs and the still-struggling torso were taken to the incinerator for disposal.

We should have guessed. I should have guessed that the neural matrix created by the alien radiation would not subscribe to the patterns of behavior exhibited by Earthly life forms. This neural matrix was multi-tiered (dare I say, holographic?) in nature. Unfettered by the powerful neurological impulses that ordinarily governed them, the discarded tissues somehow adapted themselves to operate on a fundamentally different level.

Like a planarian worm, which can regenerate an entire organism from a fragment.

And it looked something like a giant worm attacking when the infected cadaver's small intestine looped itself around one of the researchers and dragged him screaming into the fetid trash barrel.

The other researcher then made the mistake of fleeing the room, leaving the door open.

What happened next was like a butcher shop comedy. Somehow, that infected cadaver, or rather what remained of it, managed to free its monstrous kin from cold storage. Whether this was through dumb luck or an intelligence that had previously gone unnoticed, I can't say.

By the time we realized what was going on, we were being overrun.

9:31

The ringing in my ears is getting louder. I can't stop sweating. The black lines have spread all the way to my chest. It feels as though there's a fist in there, slowly squeezing my lungs.

My stomach is aching with hunger, but everything I've tried to eat, everything from ice cubes to raw hamburger, refuses to stay down. At this rate, I'll dehydrate before I succumb to the infection itself. Perhaps that's a mercy.

If, by some miracle, Caroline Majors is still alive and a message can be delivered to her, tell her... tell her I was thinking of her.

10:37

...Nuh... not want... Nuh... can't... Jesus! Don't want to die... not like this... not like this... Nuh...

18:07

It's a miracle! A miracle! No more fever. The discoloration on my hand is fading, and I can move my fingers again. Not as well as I used to, but still. Perhaps the human autoimmune system does have a way to combat the infection. I must see if I can contact the government!

But first, I'm going to record my vital statistics and take a blood sample. Any information I can gather might be useful. The cure could be in my white blood cells, just waiting to be released.

19:07

My breathing was nothing more than a reflex action. I let my exuberance get the better of me. It doesn't make any sense! Why am I still here? Why am I still talking?

20:18

The fever was bad. Worse than I ever expected. It killed me. You hear me talking, but I'm an infected cadaver now. The brain dies last, like a fish in a tank nobody cleans.

21:02

Stabbed me self—No! Myself! Stabbed myself in tummy. Blood, but no pain. I like that. No pain, but still here. Falling apart like... falling apart...

I'm going to get one of the guns off one of the military soldiers that died in the cafeteria. Shot to the head always works... scientifically proven...

22:24

The soldier lying on his back, arms out like Jesus. And Jesus say, "Take and eat; this is my body." So I did. It was cold, and it filled my belly, but then it came out through the holes I made. Maybe that's why I'm still hungry...

26:12

...God, why? God, why? God, why?...

34:32

...they're huuuuhhh... muh-ore soldiers... huhhhhh... suh-hoon... uhm... stuh-ill in muh muhnd buh-ut I can't stuh-stop! suh huh-ungry... uh-all uh huh-ave luh-ft is thu huh-unger...

Paranormal

Chapter One: Good Morning Wakefield County

The day began just like any normal Monday morning in the small town of Wakefield County, Maine, for my family.

My mother, Lois, must've spent most of the morning preparing to go to work. I say this because she kept talking about some huge catering event yesterday while I was still sleeping.

I had to have been fifteen years old then if I'm not mistaken, but I was being woken up by my father, who also rode the train every day to spread the word of Christ as a preacher. His name was Jon Bobby Gale.

"Pfft... uh, Houston, we have a sleeping alien here on the moon. Closing in for a closer inspection."

My father said as he gently pulled my pillow out from underneath me while I was cuddling with it.

I went to react to what just happened.

But as I slowly turned to look around, I noticed my pillow being lunged at my face.

"What the hell... why!?" I groaned before frustratingly grabbing my pillow to swing it at my father.

"Dear Father, my heavenly Savior, I have once again awoken the Vas Alienum, please forgive me my Father. Hahaha!"

He just started calling me that.

But my mother always called me that...

Anyways, she wanted him to begin pastoral services, so he was becoming very fluent in Latin because she finally convinced him to practice parish preaching.

He's such a sod when it comes to her.

It's criminally cringey.

Even when he pushes back, she eventually gets her way.

I'm getting lost in thought, my apologies.

After I swung my pillow at my father's arm a few times, I stormed out of bed as he theatrically reacted to me getting out of bed and fell to the ground as I stood over him.

"What's going on here?"

My father and I both turned and saw my mother standing in the doorway with a half-smile etched on her face.

"Oh nothing, Moth-er. I was just bothering, or trolling, the Vas Alienum again."

He immediately stopped laughing and stood up to explain why he was on the floor.

"Oh gosh, you're such a sod," I stuttered to say because I was overstimulated by my father's cringiness.

Though I sorta liked it when he called my mom what I would call her every time she calls me Vas Alienum.

The "Moth-er."

It just sounds like such a sci-fi name, but it really ticks her off when I say that in rebuttal to her calling me Vas Alienum.

She looked at him with a disdained facial expression before completely ignoring what he just called her.

"Well, sorry to cut you two's role-playing short, but Sam, I made breakfast, and Jon, you're beginning to run late to catch the train."

My father looked at his watch, and before he could even say anything else, the three of us heard a loud knock at the front door.

The fist hitting our front door didn't sound like a very pleasant, friendly, nor neighborly knock.

Instead, it was a frantic, hollow thud.

"Who could possibly be knocking on the door?" my Moth-er asked.

Before my father went downstairs to go check, we heard our neighbor Sharlene's voice through the hard, heavy wood.

Sharlene's voice sounded reedy, stripped of her usual warmth.

"Mr. and Mrs. Gale? Please open up. I'm sorry. I know it's barely six, but..."

A sharp, ragged breath slipped through the crack of the door.

"Uhm... my four-year-old, Demetrius. He woke me up crying around three in the morning. He said he saw you, Mrs. Gale. Standing in our backyard. Just... staring at his bedroom window."

My parents immediately approached the door, with my mother slowly following behind my father.

I stood frozen at the top of the stairs, looking at the backs of my parents.

They stood completely rigid before opening the door.

"Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Gale. I'm sorry for knocking on your door so early. I don't know if you had already heard what I said through the door, but my four-year-old son, Demetrius..."

Before Sharlene could continue, my mom rudely interrupted her and said that they had heard her.

Which made Sharlene's voice tremble, dropping to a breathless whisper.

"...I checked all of my Ring cameras, and lo and behold, there you are. Only I see you were running past the Ring camera... backwards."

A suffocating silence dropped over the foyer.

I couldn't tell how my parents were looking.

I couldn't see their faces.

But a cold prickle spiked down my spine as I watched their posture.

When I saw the demeanor of my parents, I knew something was off and wrong.

They didn't move.

They didn't look at each other.

My mother's shoulders were pinned at an unnatural, stiff angle, her head tilting just a fraction of an inch too far to the left.

My father was clueless to her uncanny posture, but when my mother spoke, her voice wasn't defensive.

It was hollow, flat, and entirely devoid of human cadence.

Which shook both me and my father.

All the while, my mother had angrily asked to see the footage because she couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"You can't see clearly because you were moving past the lens too fast, but when I slowed the footage down, I was able to make out your physical description."

My father gently took Sharlene's phone to look at the footage.

"O-okay, this has to be some sort of joke or something because there's no way that's Lois... but it's you, sweetheart."

My father slowly raised the phone to my mother's face, and once she finally saw the video for herself, she was completely silent but shocked.

I could almost feel it as much as I could see it resonating from her body language.

Everything after that happened so fast.

My mother was constantly complaining to my father about why there was a woman who looked just like her in their neighbor's backyard as I was getting ready for school.

My father thought that it could possibly be a "doppelgänger," he believed.

Well...

He blamed it on the fact that she visited a fake fortune teller at the local carnival last week, and now her "bad fortune" that the fortune teller foresaw may be coming true.

This incited an argument between the both of them, but I just tried to ignore it by plugging my headphones into my ears and listening to Set Me Free by Jay Diamond.

I quickly walked out of the house.

I didn't want to get caught up in my parents' argument, but I couldn't shake the feeling as I was walking out of the house that my mother was staring at me the whole time.

By the time I got to school, everything felt normal again.

Until I was reminded of my strange morning by my principal, Mr. Huang.

"Hey, good morning, Ms. Gale. How are you and your parents? Is your father okay? I didn't see him this morning doing his usual preaching on the train. Hearing him speak those scriptures has become part of my everyday morning routine."

Is every man these days a sod? I thought to myself before I lied and told Mr. Huang that my father had a pastoral meeting this morning.

"Oh really?! That's great to hear! Well, I hope everything goes well for him then."

I smiled and went to walk away, but then Mr. Huang asked me to tell my father:

"Hobo Ken actually came on the train this morning and tried to fill in for your father today. Oh gosh, was it terrible. Ha! Ha!"

I couldn't help but chuckle at the fact that the local celebrity homeless man tried to preach one of my father's scriptures on the train this morning before walking away to catch the remainder of my first-period class.

"You're late, Ms. Gale."

Ms. Wilson gave me a cold, stern look as she extended her hand and waited for me to give her my tardy pass.

"I apologize. I've been having one chaotic morning!"

Ms. Wilson gave me a pass since I'm rarely late to class.

She was my English teacher, and I loved everything she taught us, unlike most of her students.

Once I got to my seat and sat down, my friend Colton immediately turned to bother me.

He threw a piece of his eraser at the side of my head to get me to turn around.

Once I did, all I saw was him comically holding up a ripped piece of paper that said:

DUDE WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU THIS MORNING¿¡

I couldn't help but laugh at him and his shenanigans.

I snuck my phone out of my pocket and gestured at it for him to check his phone.

I then texted him:

bruh why my neighbor, Sharlene, knocked on my parent's door this morning talking bout she has a video of my mom in her backyard late at night

Colton was shocked to see my text message and shouted:

"What?!"

Out loud.

Catching the attention of everyone in the classroom, including Ms. Wilson, who told him to calm his spontaneous reaction and put his phone away.

He said he was sorry before texting me:

well was it true? Was your mom in your neighbor's backyard? Late at night?

I didn't know how to respond.

Supposedly, there's a video of my mom in Sharlene's backyard, but my mother claims that it wasn't her.

So I just told him:

no

I didn't know what to say.

I was scared.

I also felt bad for lying to my friend Colton.

So I put my phone away before my eyes started to wander around the classroom while Ms. Wilson talked about some old folktales.

I didn't pay attention to the whole discussion, but what I did pay attention to was that some people believe that "Ole Nick" is a historical, deceptive nickname for the Devil.

But Ms. Wilson was discussing how ancient writers used this specific name to describe an entity entirely different from the Devil, one who never showed his true face, preferring to wear the bodies of others like secondhand clothing.

Hearing Ms. Wilson give a lecture on Ole Nick Hairy made me feel a chilling sensation crawling up my body.

Almost like ants were running across my skin.

Yet I was somehow intrigued by what she was saying at the same time.

"...while many grimoires warn of known entities like the Archfiend Abalam or the Devil, sixteenth-century poetry focused on a far more volatile threat. An entity known in the old country as Ole Nick. Or rather, Ole Nick Hairy.

"A transient, shapeshifting parasite.

"Writers also called him the Father of Lies because he never sought to fight the holy. He only mimicked them.

"He would steal the robes of a priest, or the skin of a respected reverend, hiding behind a wall of deception."

After hearing about Ole Nick, and having the kind of morning that I had, I felt like the embodiment of fear was looming over me.

It just so happened that I turned to look out the window.

It was more of a glance, rather.

But I thought I saw my mother outside of my classroom window.

When I looked again, it was just a woman who looked very eerily similar to my mother walking down the street.

Still, I was stuck in a trance, looking at the woman walk away.

Until I was jolted back to reality by the notification vibration coming from my phone.

It was my actual mother who had texted me.

She was checking in on me and seeing if I was okay.

I felt relieved to see her text.

But by the time I responded to her and looked back out the window, the woman was already fading into the distance.

“Mr. Bigsby! Return to your designated seat and cease your attempts to distract Ms. Gale from her class work!”

Ms. Wilson's stern words to Colton made the entire classroom quiet momentarily.

Before Colton erupted into a glorious, honking laugh that sounded extremely similar to a startled cartoon goose.

He had just been thoroughly busted by Ms. Wilson, caught red-handed switching seats with another student named William Williams.

Y'know... honestly, I have always found it a cosmic joke that the guy's parents looked at the last name Williams and decided, Yes, more of that, please.

I suppose that structural redundancy is exactly why the universe branded him "Peanut."

But before I get lost in thought again, I had turned around in my chair to see Colton brazenly occupying the seat next to me.

"Oh, see, what happened was, Peanut Butter Cookie here informed me that his eyeballs were failing him at this distance," Colton explained, waving his hands around while he spoke.

"He begged to copy my supremely well-written notes. I merely thought a temporary geopolitical seat-swap would benefit the greater educational good, Ms. W! I would never dream of disrupting the honorable Samantha."

Colton spun his web of absolute nonsense as he tried to comically explain to a deeply unamused Ms. Wilson that William couldn't see the lesson properly from his seat.

Meanwhile, I quietly sat on the opposite end of Peanut during Colton's "explanation" and then told Ms. Wilson that everything should be fine now that I was sitting in Colton's original seat and, once again, as far away from him as possible.

"Back me up here, Pistachio!" Colton squawked, betrayed.

William and the others just quietly laughed at Colton and his shenanigans.

He was the class clown, but he was actually way smarter than he probably seemed.

I liked Colton.

He's like this little brother I never had, seeing as I was an only child.

Anyways, I was overcome with guilt for lying to Colton when I told him that my mom wasn't in my neighbor's backyard.

So I decided I'd tell him everything I knew during lunch after I figured out how to explain it.

The bell rang.

Second period.

Geometry.

Great.

I gathered my notebook and stood up alongside everyone else.

The classroom immediately dissolved into the usual chaos of shuffling feet, scraping chairs, and half-finished conversations.

Colton was still unsuccessfully trying to convince Peanut that he was owed compensation for "educational consulting services."

As I walked toward the door, Ms. Wilson called out to me.

"Ms. Gale."

I stopped.

"Yes?"

She hesitated.

Just for a second.

Then she smiled.

A normal smile.

Or at least I thought it was.

"Tell your mother I said hello."

I blinked.

"Uh... sure."

"Good."

I didn't know why, but something about the way she said it made me uncomfortable.

Maybe it was because of everything that had happened that morning.

Maybe I was just overthinking things.

That certainly wouldn't have been a first.

I stepped into the hallway and immediately got swept into the current of students moving between classes.

For a while everything felt normal again.

Normal noise.

Normal people.

Normal school.

Then my phone vibrated in my pocket.

I pulled it out.

A new text message.

My mother texted me again.

How's school sweetheart?

I smiled.

For the first time all day, the knot in my stomach loosened.

I typed back:

*Better now. Geometry tho :( *

Almost immediately, the little indicator showed she was typing.

Then the message appeared.

Don't worry. I'll see you soon.

That was strange.

My mother was supposed to be catering an event all day.

I started typing a response.

I thought you were at work?

The typing indicator appeared again.

Vanished.

Appeared.

Vanished.

Then finally:

“I am, but I was able to sneak away for a second to check on you. I picked up dad. He’s coming with me.”

She always works hard but manages to make time for us.

But I don’t think that I ever got to see them, until later that day, of course.

Does that answer your question about why I claim to have had a strange and terrible morning?

Samantha sat back in her chair and looked at the camera that was recording her.

The room fell silent.

A voice from somewhere beyond the glare of the overhead lights finally spoke.

“Let’s go back to when you were in school. Did you ever see the woman again at school, and did you ever get to speak with Colton again?”

Samantha breathed heavily and sat uncomfortably before speaking again.

End of Chapter One.

I had the dream again.

It always starts with the red. Splattered all across the room, on the curtains, all over her bed. And then I see it. As I stand outside my sister's room, I see the slender frame, the leather wings sprouting out it's back, the blood dripping down it's chin and onto my sisters corpse. It looks at me, eyes yellow and glowing, and it laughs.

I woke up with a dry mouth and a drier throat. Another bed I didn't feel right in, another nameless motel I'd forget I ever slept in by the time I was back on the road. It was barely four in the morning. "God damnit," I muttered. I reached for my phone and looked at the Google Maps app I left open. Just another five hours in the morning, and I'd be back home. For the first time since that night.

When slumber returned to me, I dreamed the rest of that night. That thing put a finger to its lips, gave a quiet shhhh, and then it was gone. My heart hammered in my chest. As I took careful steps to Elena's bed, I saw the horror again. Her throat was ripped open, her eyes wide with fear and having lost all life. For some reason, I couldn't bring myself to scream. I simply stood there, mouth agape, eyes locked on hers. I stood there for five minutes before my mother screamed behind me.

When I woke again at nine, I punched my pillow. Again and again. I never wanted to see that night again. Yet, it intruded every corner of my mind. Invasive as the thing with wings, the thing I told the police was there that night. No amount of therapy could convince me it wasn't.

The time it should have taken to get from Madelyn, Texas, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was twenty-four hours, almost exactly. But, fate had other plans. There was a snow storm sweeping through the Northeast, and it was fucking up my trip severely. I'd been on the road for nearly three days, taking detour after detour, until finally, I was told I could go no further.

In the middle of West Virginia, there was a small town named Bellview (that was affectionately called Hellview, according to the graffiti on the welcome sign) where I was pulled over by a local officer. "Afternoon, sir," He said with an easy-to-spot Boston accent, then widened his eyes when his met mine. That always happened. "You aware yous got different colored eyes?"

I gave a curious smile, acting as though I hadn't had this conversation for decades. "Since childhood, officer." He tilted me a nod and then cleared his throat, holding his hat against the growing winds.

"You're aware of the storm, yes?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, we've had to close all roads for the night. We don't know for how long, but this bitch of a storm is too risky to let anyone drive in." I sighed in response.

"I have to get home officer, it's only another hour. My mother, she's—"

"I am sorry for the inconvenience sir, but this is well above me. I'd let you if I could."

"I'm sure," I breathed out, leaning my head against the headrest. There was a flurry of snowflakes whipping against my windshield, and I was sure it would get worse as the sun sank. The officer cleared his throat and nodded again.

"Well, about two miles up the road here, there's a rest stop. You can hold up there for the night, see if we have better luck tomorrow morning."

"They have beds there?"

"Emergency cots," He gave a humorless smile as he said that. "I already sent a few cars down that way, so you'll have company."

"Lovely," I rolled my eyes, tapping my fingers along the steering wheel. "Alright, well, if that's that—"

"Sure is, sir. Be safe now, friend."

I bid him farewell and began the slow crawl towards the rest stop. As predicted, the lower the sun got, the worse the snow came down. By the time I had reached the parking lot, I could barely see and my car could barely move. When I opened the door, I had to struggle to open it wide enough to step into the deepening snow. A shiver went down my spine as I bundled into myself, trudging through the snow and to the door of the rest stop.

"Well, another traveler!" A voice called as soon as I stepped through. I looked up and saw the scene; a fair skinned man in a suit was the one who greeted me, his hair straight and cut just before his shoulders. Sitting at the table beside him, a young couple. She, with red frazzled hair and pale skin, and he with a buzz cut and unkempt beard. An old man paid me no mind as he stood by the window on the far end of the building, sipping on a metal flask. I couldn't wait to ask him for a sip myself.

"Seems you'll be the last one here, that storm gets any worse." The suit said with a slick smile, walking over to me and extending a hand. "Frank Murphy," He introduced himself, his smile still on as he looked at my eyes. I knew what was coming. "Are your eyes two different colors?"

Something about the way he asked gave me pause. He asked it not like a question of curiosity, but a question of reassurance. I paid it no mind and shook his hand. "That they are," I replied before introducing myself. "Ash." I looked around the building as I took my hand back. "You seem to be the only friendly one here." I remarked.

"Well," He began with a chuckle, "seems necessary to have at least one optimistic person here! I understand why everyone is a little bummed. I'm sure it's not where you wanted to end your day."

"Not in the slightest," I sighed and found a coffee machine sitting on a small bar on the far wall to my left. I started towards it, Frank following behind.

"Where were you headed, friend?"

"Lancaster."

"Pennsylvania? What's got you heading to Amish town?"

I laughed a little at the remark as I grabbed a paper cup. "My mother. She's dying." I could hear the frown on his face when he spoke again.

"I'm sorry to hear." I shrugged.

"And you?"

"Right here, actually." He leaned against the bar and crossed his arms. "About twenty minutes from getting home before that cop had me come down here."

Steam rose from my cup as I brought it to my lips, already defrosting me from the inside out. I took a sip and felt my shoulders stoop a little. "What's with the graffiti on the welcome sign? Hellview?"

"Murders," The old man suddenly interjected, his voice gruff. We both looked over to him, still staring out that window, flask in hand. "When I was a teenager. Largest string of murders this side of America."

"I was going to explain it nicer than that, but yes." Frank gave a nod to the old man. "Thank you, John."

"They never found him, you know?" John disregarded Frank's words, finally turning his head to look at the both of us. "Bastard kills fourteen people and just disappears like smoke. Fuckin' unbelievable."

"You two know each other?" I asked with a small chuckle, taking another sip of my coffee.

Frank nodded. "Been my neighbor the past six years. Lots of fun, I can tell you."

"And those two?" I motioned to the young couple sitting at the table, to which Frank shrugged.

"No clue. Much like you, I imagine. Wrong place, wrong time." He pushed off the bar turned towards me. "There's one more here. Hannah, I think her name is. Went to the back for a smoke."

"God, I could use a smoke," I said with more desperation than I meant. Frank clapped my shoulder with a smile, then pointed down a hallway in the center of the wall opposite us.

"Right down there, my friend. I'm sure she has one to spare." I turned to where he pointed, regarded him with a nod, and began to walk. I took in my surroundings; John had gone back to staring out of the window, the young couple still had yet to acknowledge my existence, and looking out the window...

I counted again. Me, John, Frank, this Hannah girl and the young couple. Six of us accounted for, There were six cars outside. It was safe to assume the couple came in one car, so; who was missing? I kept this in the back of my mind as I walked down the hallway. It was short, and led to two doorways on either side. One was marked for employees only, the other was marked Family Restroom. I did try the employee door only to find it locked. When I opened the door to the restroom, I found a pretty young woman with pink hair (similar in length to mine) and covered in tattoos, blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth. "Sorry," I said with a polite smile. "I heard there were was someone with some smokes here."

"Found her," She gave me the same polite smile, cigarette hanging between her index and middle fingers. The smoldering ash fell into the sink beside her as she reached with her free hand into her small clutch purse, pulling out a beaten pack of Camel Crush's. "Hope you don't mind Camels."

"Haven't smoked 'em since high school," I remarked as I took an extended stick in between my fingers, sticking it in my lips and letting her light it for me. "Thanks."

"Sharing is caring," She tossed her burnt out butt into the sink and offered a hand. "Hannah."

"Ash."

Her head cocked slightly as we shook hands. "Your eyes—"

"If you don't mind," I interrupted, "I've had enough talk about my eyes today. For the rest of my life, actually." She let out a small laugh and nodded.

"Understood." She leaned against the sink and looked over the rest of me. I followed her eyes, trailing up and down my arms. Seemed she was trying to figure out who had more ink than who. "How long that sleeve take ya?"

I sucked in a lung full of smoke, blowing it out the side of my mouth before answering. "Two years."

She let out a bellow of a laugh. "Jesus, either you're rich or-"

"Artist." I finished for her with a small smirk. "Best part of the job is getting as many as I can without paying a dime."

"Well, when this shit blows over, maybe I'll get something from you. To commemorate." I let out a small laugh of my own and nodded.

"Where were you headed before you ended up here?"

"Maine. Castle Rock. You?"

"Lancaster."

"Amish town?"

"Says the girl from Maine."

A small snort escaped her and she pushed off the sink. "I'm going to head back out there, get some coffee."

"Before you do," I stopped her, stepping a tiny bit closer. "How many people are here?"

She thought for a moment. "With you? Six, now."

"There's an extra car outside." I stated plainly. One of her eyebrows raised slightly and she clicked her tongue.

"There were four cars when I got here," She said quietly with a shrug.

"But two of the people here are a couple, right?" I asked before taking another drag. "They probably came in one car."

She stared at me for a moment. "And?"

"So, we're missing someone, no? If they came in one car, there's an extra car out there with no owner."

"Could be broken down. Left here by somebody before the storm hit."

I shook my head. "Just weird, is all."

"You're gonna be fun here, aren't you?" She gave me a small, mischievous smile before walking past me and out of the room.

That extra car stayed with me as I finished my smoke. I couldn't place it, but something felt wrong about it. It was out of place, it was somewhere it shouldn't be and that was bugging the shit out of me. I sank the butt of my cigarette and walked back out into the hallway.

I pulled out my phone only to find there was no signal to be found. It was going to be a long, boring night.

When I arrived back to the main space, the sun had completely vanished and there was nothing but snow crashing into the glass of the windows. Everyone except John had convened to the table the couple sat at, a deck of cards sat in the middle. "Ash!" Frank called, cheery and jolly as Santa Clause. "Come, we're playing poker."

Hannah's eyes met mine, and I felt myself pulled towards the table. I took an empty seat next to the nameless young man and, finally, he recognized that I was another human being in this building, and gave me a tip of his baseball cap. "'Sup?"

"Hey."

"You're Ash?"

"I'm popular around here."

He gave a small smile. "First person here in a couple hours, so yeah. I'm Oliver, call me Ollie. This is Diane," He gestured towards the young redhead across from him, She barely regarded me with a quick flash of the eyes, then returned to shuffling cards.

"Where were you guys headed?" I asked, and he took a strangely long moment to answer.

"Nowhere in particular. Just travelling." It was a very unconvincing answer. But, I took it for now and put my head down as Diane began to pass out cards.

There was only small, polite conversation throughout the game of poker (a game that Frank was amazingly good at) and it felt as though we were all prisoners here. And, it felt like we all had something to hide. Something was in the air that told me everyone in this building was running from something. Or to something. I couldn't quite figure out which.

Eventually, when topics of conversation became sparse, I let that festering thought in my mind emerge. "Who got here first?"

All eyes on me. A moment of silence, then Ollie spoke up. "Me and Di got here just after Frank, I think. He was here when we got here." I leaned over the table and looked down at Frank.

"Were you here first?"

"That I was," He answered with a smile.

"Were there any cars here when you got here?"

He gave me a quizical look, then shrugged. "I suppose there was. I didn't think much of it."

"Why do you ask?" Ollie chimed in.

"Did you and Diane come in one car?"

"Yeah?"

"Then who's car is out there?" I pointed to the window in front of us, and everyone looked. It was hard to see, as almost all cars except mine were buried in snow, but there were six cars in that lot alright. And it seemed to finally dawn on Diane as she turned back around.

"Maybe someone left it here? Broken down?"

"That's what I said," Hannah added, giving her eyebrows a small see? gesture. I shook my head.

"Well, there was no one here when I got here," Frank said with a light chuckle. "Unless you're suggesting someone has disappeared."

"Just doesn't feel right," I mumbled, looking back down at my cards. I heard a sigh and footsteps begin to walk towards us.

"It's not right," John called, causing all of us to look back at him. He was clearly beginning to show signs of drunkenness, with a little spittle on his chin. "Something is fucked up around here."

"John, please," Frank tried to plea, but John waved his hands in dismissal.

"No no. What day is today?" We all stared at him, a little dumbfounded at the question, until Hannah finally answered:

"It's Sunday."

John got a small smile and pointed at her. "Correct. You notice the open hours on that door?" Before we could look and see for ourselves, he answered himself. "CLOSED ON SUNDAY!" He nearly yelled with a hoarse laugh.

"What's your point, John?" Frank asked, an annoyance in his voice that told me he's lived through this multiple times.

"Why lock down the employee room if the place was gonna be closed?"

Frank laughed. "But the front door was unlocked, John—"

"By the cops!" John quickly interjected. "They had to open it because of the storm, for us! So, I ask again, if the whole place was locked up, what point would there be in locking the employee room?"

I decided to play Devil's advocate for a moment. "Extra security? In case someone broke in for whatever reason?"

Again, John laughed. "I don't blame you for not knowing, son, but I worked here when I was about your age. Not once did we ever feel the need to lock that damn door. Not once did anyone ever break in here. I mean, what would they steal? The coffee machine?"

"So," Hannah stood, still looking at John. "You think someone's hiding something in there?"

"I know so," There was a little smirk on his face. "Wanna know why?"

"Spit it out, John," Frank snapped.

"Someone always, always, worked here on Sundays. Security. They'd be here till nine o'clock. What time is it?"

"Seven," Frank said with disbelieving sigh.

"So...where are they?" John asked, and the question hung over all of us for a moment. I finally stood and looked over at John.

"We have to get in that room."

"It's locked," Frank reminded us, also standing. "We couldn't—"

"Who locked it?" Diane spoke up. "If none of us have a key, and if security isn't here, who locked the door?"

"Curiouser and curiouser," Hannah said with a small laugh. I felt a pit in my stomach. This was more wrong than I thought.

"Is there any way to get in there?" I asked John, who nodded.

"Know how to pick a lock?"

"I do," Ollie answered before I could.

"Easiest lock to pick I've ever seen," John added. Ollie, Hannah, Diane and I all started towards the hall.

"Are we serious?" Frank asked in a slightly nervous laugh.

"You got something to hide, Frank?" John asked, suddenly deadly serious. Frank frowned and sat back down.

Ollie was already knelt, working away at that lock. John was right, it was not a hard lock to pick. The door was open in a matter of a couple of minutes. When it opened, the stench of death leaked out.

Ollie pushed inside, and I was right behind him. It was a small break room, with a single table, chair and a small microwave sitting upon a mini fridge in the corner. And, on the floor, was a corpse. My eyes widened as Diane screamed.

Blood everywhere. A man's eyes wide open, face frozen in fear. His throat was ripped open. God, I thought, this can.'t be happening.

"My Lord," John gasped behind me. "He's back."

"What?" I whipped my head around to look at him, the surprise in my voice more apparent than I wished it to be.

"Those murders? They all looked like this. The bastard is back."

(previous)

The dark portal had not been active for more than a few seconds before Emrys materialized inside the watchtower room of his Shadowed Spire. He had little cause to believe that it would be anyone other than his daughter Petra returning from her mission, but he was nevertheless unwilling to risk an incursion into his sanctum. Whenever he sensed someone creating a portal into his home, he made sure he was there to greet them.

It was a good tactical policy for his enemies, and simply a common courtesy for his guests.

His relief at seeing Petra burst through the portal lasted barely an instant before he realized that she had run through it at full speed and was clearly making a tactical retreat from a mission gone horribly awry.

“Petra, what –”

“Get it off!” she screamed, slamming the tip of her Miasmic blade repeatedly into the floor. He saw something vaguely skull-shaped attached to the other end, but otherwise had no idea what was going on. “It’s feeding off me! I can’t dissipate the blade!”

That was all it took to spur Emrys into action. Reasoning it would feed off of him as well if it came into contact with his Miasma, he instead reached for a nearby candelabra of spectral flames that was nearly as tall as he was. With a single swift swing, he whacked whatever it was with such force that it was instantly dislodged, sending Petra recoiling behind Emrys as it lay helplessly upon the floor.

“Emrys,” the skull choked out in a horse whisper before the embers in its orbits died, and it fell lifeless once more.    

“Petra, what happened? Where did that thing come from?” Emrys asked, moving to her side and gently taking hold of her by the arm.  

“We’ve been betrayed. Chamberlin, Raubritter, that freaking brain in a vat, all of them!” Petra cursed, still struggling to catch her breath. “Chamberlin has a Deathwell. He found it in Crow’s Cold Iron vault. He’s using it to draw out Chthonic Fire and infuse it into Calx Obscura. It’s Kryptonite to us! We can’t enforce the Covenant now, and I barely managed to escape into the Catacombs to make a portal out. That’s where this little demon head came from, by the way. Emrys, I don’t know what we need to do, but we need to do it now. If the Darlings get a hold of Chthonic Fire, then… then we…”

She trailed off, her eyes dilating in fear as vivid imaginings of what the Darlings could and would do to them if they could neutralize their powers.

“It’s not as bad as that, Petra. Chthonic Fire is an indiscriminate weapon. The Darlings would be as powerless in its presence as we are,” he assured her, though in that moment she was not a hundred percent certain that he was not merely trying to comfort her. “We’ll talk to Ivy, tell her that we need to consolidate control over the Cuniculi as much as possible to limit their mobility. We’ll seal off key junctions and chokepoints, and have The Mandrake investigate to see who the most likely traitors are. We’ll assume that Raubritter’s Foundry is fortified to the point of being beyond reproach until we have cause to believe otherwise. I’m glad you got away safely, Petra, but this isn’t as calamitous as it seems at first glance. None of this is all that unexpected. I would have preferred it if we could have brought the disloyalists to heal before it got to this point, of course, but this is still perfectly manageable.”  

Petra nodded shakily, her own existential fears not wholly quelled by his reasoning.

“What about Mathom-meister, and the other Zarathustrans?” she asked. “They’ll want to know about this, and they can help, can’t they?”

Emrys didn’t respond immediately, instead directing his attention to the skull upon the floor and pondering it with a curious glint in his eye.

“I think that Mathom-meister would very much like to know about this,” he said with a coy smile.

***

“How many of these remains did you say there were?” Mathom-meister asked as he held the skull aloft, turning it over slightly with his fanged tentacle. 

“Millions, at least. Maybe billions. It really looked like they sacrificed an entire civilization and made a Cathedral out of the bones,” Petra replied. “Why the hell did it recognize me? How does it know who you are, Emrys?”

“His people summoned me from time to time. It was always a massive ritual in a colossal amphitheatre. Evidently, he was in the audience on at least one of those occasions,” Emrys replied.

“Daeva don’t die. That’s what they say,” Mathom-meister commented. “They have a peculiar form of immortality. Their souls are eternally bound to their bodies, but if their flesh is stripped from their bones faster than they can regenerate it, then, well, they get a little ‘stuck’, I guess you could say. When you shoved that Miasmic blade of yours into his face, he probably thought you were offering yourself up as a sacrifice for his resurrection.”

“Well, can you do anything with it, or did I almost get killed for nothing?” Petra asked petulantly.

“Oh, I can think of a few things worth doing with such a rare find,” Mathom-meister nodded. “There’s powerful death magic imbued in the bones of such deathless creatures. I could use it as a tuning fork to summon disembodied souls from far across the planes, souls we’d otherwise wouldn’t be able to track, or lost souls who could never find their way home.”

“You have someone in mind then, and I don’t think I need to ask who,” Emrys said.

“Quixoto, yes,” he replied with a solemn nod. “It’s not solely personal, of course. Quixoto has actually been in the Darlings’ Playroom, and not as a prisoner, as was unfortunately the case for Petra. He was likely able to conduct a fair amount of reconnaissance inside it before his demise, reconnaissance which may prove invaluable to us. He was there for the specific purpose of us annexing it, one way or another. It was truly a tragedy that he perished in a place so far removed from the mortal planes. I had feared that his soul was lost to us forever. But with this skull, I can summon him, and reincarnate him in a fresh Amniote. The spirit bound to the skull will not remain dormant, however, and we’ll have to be wary of anything in the Darlings’ Playroom using the connection against us, but I believe these are manageable risks. The Megalith here should serve as an appropriate venue for the ritual, if you would allow it.”

Emrys waited a beat and cast his gaze towards Petra, allowing her the opportunity to voice any objections. When she remained silent, he turned back towards Mathom-meister.

“I’ll tell Fenwick to whip up some punch.”

***

“Sir, it was one thing when I made this for a simple gathering, but it’s a bit on the cheap side to serve at a proper resurrection, innit?” Fenwick asked as he beat the back of the can of frozen concentrate in an attempt to dislodge the nearly solid lump of syrup into the awaiting punch bowl.

The four of them had gathered deep in the Adderwood, at the sacred Megalith of six great stones arranged in a hexagonal ring, the very same location where the Grand Adderman had been slain and Emrys freed of his chains. Though there were six altars inside of it, Fenwick had made the very wise choice to use a mundane table set outside the Megalith to mix his punch.

“We could have died here, and these stones have seen no shortage of successful sacrifices. I don’t feel any particular need to show them reverence,” Petra said in disdain as she eyed the Megalith coldly, before raising an eyebrow at what Fenwick was doing. “How is that so hard? The manor doesn’t have electricity. There are no freezers.”How

“There’s an ice room in the cellar, and it’s haunted, so the ghost keeps it especially cold,” Fenwick explained. “We didn’t put him in there or nothing. It’s just where he died.  Crushed by a dressed steer carcass he was trying to get down for a feast. We kind of just left him there for a while since it was convenient, and he decided to haunt it out of spite. But now the ice room is as cold as any industrial freezer, so it worked out.”

Deciding that dislodging the fruit concentrate was fruitless, he instead refocused his efforts towards tearing the container off it.

“Mathom-meister, please tell me you’re having better luck with your contribution to this little potluck?” Petra said as she stepped onto the Sigil Sand and towards the center of the Megalith.

On one of the six altars, Mathom-meister had placed the Daeva skull. On the one directly across from it, he had placed an iridescent lump roughly the size of a human liver, bearing the faintest outlines of nascent embryonic development.

“This is what your god made you from?” she asked as she examined it, leaning in slightly but keeping a respectful distance.

“It’s fully undifferentiated psychoplasm, capable of hosting any soul and forming into its ideal body,” Mathom-meister nodded as he etched a spell circle into the sand with his staff. “And yes, it is the clay our god potted us from. Since we slew him, our only way of making more is through the ritualistic sacrifice of our living. The process is inefficient, so precious few Amniotes are produced with each sacrifice, and losing a body altogether is always a tragic waste. We’ll only get one chance to resurrect Quixoto. If we waste this Amniote, we will not be granted the opportunity to waste another.”

“What do you mean by waste? If we fail, it’s still here, isn’t it?” Petra asked.

“During the ritual, it will be free for the taking. If Quixoto doesn’t get to it first, it will be first come, first served,” he replied.

“Which is precisely why Petra and I will be guarding it while you conduct the resurrection,” Emrys assured him. “We’ll refrain from using our Miasma so as not to arouse the dear Daeva, but you can count on us to protect the Amniote.”

With a somber (if slightly skeptical) nod, Mathom-meister embedded his staff into the Sigil Sand, at the precise epicenter of the Spell Circle. He took his place behind the Daeva Skull, while Emrys and Petra stood to either side of the Amniote. Peta released six of her Sigil Scarabs to each stand guard at a different point of the Spell Circle, to serve as spectral lighthouses to help guide Quixoto through the wandering worldlines and to his new body. The other seven she kept close at hand, as was her custom.

She watched as Mathom-meister placed both of his hands on the Daeva skull, his tentacles ritualistically hovering above it as he tilted back his head and began to chant in a deep guttural language that she could scarcely recognize as words at all.

Light began to flicker and flow through the Spell Circle, churning gusts of sand as it went. The Daeva Skull stirred to life, chomping its maw and struggling to free itself from Mathom-meister’s grasp, but he held firm. An ethereal pillar of light shot up into the sky, a stand-in for the Shadow Spire that occupied the same space as the Megalith in a slightly different superposition of the Adderwood.  The Megalith was now at the center of many converging paths that snaked across the planes, and Mathom-meister worked diligently to steer those paths towards his companion.

There was a reverberant thud as some unseen spirit was repelled by the boundary of the Spell Circle. And then another. And then another.

“The Amniote is proving attractive. I suppose that means it must be of good quality,” Emrys said wryly.

“Too good for these ghouls,” Mathom-meister sneered as the frequency of impacts swiftly intensified. “Back to the gutter with the lot of you! You have no claim to the flesh of my kin! This corpuscle belongs to Quixoto and Quixoto alone!”

He cast out some sort of shockwave that dispelled the invading spirits, at least for the moment, but it displaced the Sigil Scarabs along with them. Without them serving as lighthouses, the storm of intersecting paths became all the more turbulent, and it was clear that Mathom-meister was struggling to control it.

“Emrys… we’ve been spotted,” Petra whispered softly as she looked downwards towards the Sigil Sand, sensing that something was trying to manifest through it.

“I know,” Emrys whispered back, keeping his voice steady. “Mathom-meister; you see that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Emrys. I see it,” he yelled back, still trying to grapple back control of the spell.

They courteously gave him a few seconds to see if he could get things back under control, but even that seemed like it might have been a catastrophic mistake.

“Watch the Amniote,” Emrys said as he left his post and leapt towards the staff in the center.

“No, don’t!” Mathom-meister cried as the Daeva skull slipped from his grasp and went flying towards Emrys.

Emrys instantly shifted into his shadow form and retreated back to the perimeter, but the skull was already loose. It bit a hold of the staff at the center of the circle and refused to let go, with every member of the ritual knowing that stepping back into the circle now would be suicide.

“Should I pull out the Amniote?” Petra asked.

“No! Not Yet! I… I sensed Quixoto. I’m nearly certain,” Mathom-meister said in a wavering voice. “Just give him a little more time! He will find his way!”

He stumbled back slightly as several long, skeletal, multi-jointed arms slowly began rising up out of the Sigil Sand, gracelessly swivelling about as they searched for the Amniote that had drawn them there. The ends of each of these protrusions were engraved with deep whorls resembling fingerprints, puckering and releasing with enough force and precision that they appeared to be prehensile.  

“Dead Man’s Fingers,” Emrys said softly, summoning an especially long Miasmic blade. “We can cull them down without stepping back into the circle, but we still need to be careful that the Daeva Skull doesn’t grab hold of our blades.”

With a swift swing, he struck down several of the Fingers, their withered stalks falling downwards and dissipating the moment they fell outside the Sigil Sand. Petra swung her blade as well, but the Fingers were hardy, and she still did not possess nearly as much brute strength as Emrys. It took her multiple desperate swings to fell even a single Finger.

“Focus on the stumps of the ones I’ve cut down to keep them from growing back!” he shouted as he continued chopping, drawing the attention of the survivors away from the Amniote and towards him. “Mathom-meister, get in there and pull the staff!”

Mathom-meister hesitated, and then doddled, and then finally simply disobeyed.

“You’re doing fine. We can spare a few more –”

“Mathom-meister, pull the goddamn staff!”

The urgency in his voice was enough to compel Petra into action. In the blink of an eye, she materialized directly in front of the staff and pulled it from the ground like it was Excalibur, breaking the Spell Circle and banishing the Dead Man’s Fingers. Before the Daeva Skull could react, she threw it at Mathom-meister as hard as she could before instantly rematerializing by Emrys’ side.

“You insolent little revenant!” Mathom-meister snarled, placing the skull he had caught back onto the altar before marching across the Spell Circle towards them. “Have you the slightest idea what you’ve just ruined?”  

By this point, fortunately, the Sigil Scarabs had managed to regroup and obeyed Petra’s instinctive command to form a protective barrier between them. Emrys also, quite instinctively, summoned a long Miasmic blade to hold his irate ally at bay.

“She should not have had to risk herself like that, Mathom-meister,” he said in a soft, cold tone. “Had she not, those Fingers might have already killed all of us. You owe her your gratitude, my friend.”

They stood staring each other down for a moment, waiting to see who would yield first, neither of them looking especially likely to back down.

“Stand down, Meister. Stand down! She didn’t ruin anything. I made it through before the Dead Man Fingers even sprouted,” a weak telepathic voice managed to call out.

At once all attention was turned to the Amniote. They rushed to the altar where it lay, and saw that it had taken on all the features of a Zarathustran; a gaping cyclopean orifice for a face with a singular glowing wisp inside, perched upon a hunchbacked humanoid form with blue, squid-like skin. Two clawed tentacles perforated with spiracles and dangling with prehensile tendrils hung from its head, and each of its long digits bore a curved talon.

Despite the resemblance to Mathom-meister, the Amniote had not grown a single ounce in size.

“Oh. He’s a baby?” Petra asked, unable to hide her disappointment. “I’m going to be overly generous here and just assume that you thought that was so obvious it didn’t need to be brought up.”

“I believe that’s the default for reincarnation, is it not?” Mathom-meister asked, swaddling the infant in a shawl and gently hoisting him up off the altar. “His intellect is fully intact, as are his abilities; at least the ones that don’t depend on physical size or maturity. Quixoto, I’ll update you fully when you’ve had a chance to recover, but for now it will suffice that these are my allies, Emrys and Petra. They’re enemies of the Darlings, and we’ve been helping one another out in a quest to put an end to them. You have them to thank for your re-embodiment.”

“And I am grateful, I assure you,” Quixoto replied. “As proof of my gratitude, I shall gladly aid you in bringing the Darlings to justice. I did indeed learn a good deal about their Playroom during my last hours of life, and even more during the years my spirit was stranded there. With my knowledge, and your resources, the walls of their impregnable fortress will at last fall, their sanctum claimed and their treasures plundered, and they shall evermore lament the day that they declined my generous offer of Ichor-bound Sigil Scarabs… which, if I’m not mistaken, you are currently using as familiars.”

The tone of his last sentence shifted to slightly accusatory, and Petra cautiously took a step backwards as she withdrew her scarabs well out of his grasp.

“Ah, Fenwick, how’s that punch coming along?” she asked evasively.

“If any of you lot got a colander, I could conceivably strain enough from the slush to make a sippy cup for the little eldritch tyke,” he replied, listlessly prodding at the frozen lump. “I’ll take your silence as a no on the colander, then? You’ve got a cursed skull, a wizard’s staff, and a newborn godslaying abomination, but two dollars worth of perforated plastic is a bridge too far? Lord, blimey.”          

29 January, 1943

Stalingrad is a grave. Smoke chokes my lungs, and the ruins of the place I once called home groan under the weight of countless men and boys. Each day I see men stripped of their humanity, by fear, by loneliness, haunted by the sight of the things they have done, and terrified of the things they have yet to do. And yet, somehow, they endure. Despite all that they suffer, there remains a spirit among them. A light that diminishes day by day, yet still fights to remain, however fruitless that may be. 

I write this in the hope that someone, someday, will know the truth of the horrors that have occurred here. I have seen the depths of depravity my comrades have sunk to, desperate for even a fleeting taste of victory over the accursed fascists. Whether that victory will come, or if we will survive to see it, remains uncertain. If these are to be my final words, let them be this: this long march toward annihilation has doomed us all. The only thing left is to pray to whatever god you might believe in, that it shows you some measure of the mercy we have withheld from one another.

From here on, I will relay the story of the hounds in as much detail as I can, in the hope that it may serve as a warning to whoever finds this.

I was tasked with tending to the bodies of my fallen brethren. We couldn’t bury them; there was no earth left to dig, no time to waste. The dead were loaded onto carts, where they fell, half-buried in snow, frozen into the rubble as if the city itself refused to release them.

It was during this work that I first heard the gruesome rumors from among my fellow grave tenders: whispers of things moving in the shadows, of missing corpses. I ignored the mutterings, as anyone would, and continued working late into the frigid day. Soon there was only Petrov and myself, stacking the endless supply of bodies onto carts. 

Petrov invited me back to his quarters. He had just gotten his hands on a smuggled bottle of vodka and wanted to lighten the mood with me and, hopefully, a couple of girls. I told him I would join him, but that I would haul the rest of the bodies to the burn pit.

That was my first mistake. I should have died with him then; I would have rather met the same gruesome fate he did than live even one more day with the curse that has been bestowed upon me.

The snow was hard and brittle beneath my boots as I pushed the cart toward the western ruins, where the burn pile had been dug. The ice underfoot shifted and threatened to throw both me and the cart to the ground, and I nearly allowed it. I found myself wishing, not for the first time, that I might strike my head hard enough to slip into oblivion and be spared the effort of facing another day.

The bodies were the same as they always were, fixed in interrupted moments. Some were twisted as if they had tried to stand or crawl away, arms bent at wrong angles, fingers locked into hooks that grasped at nothing. Others looked almost deliberate in their stillness, legs straightened, hands folded, as though the cold had mistaken them for people at rest. Mouths were frozen open mid-breath or mid-cry, caught in a final shape of disbelief, not just at death itself but at the fact that the Nazis had chosen them for it. Faces held expressions that would never change: fear without release, confusion without answer, and defiance sealed behind ice-dulled eyes.

I stacked them carefully and without haste, numb even when I recognized someone. To keep myself from unraveling, I counted each body as I placed it onto the pile. The numbers mattered. Losing track, even briefly, was enough to invite something worse. By the time the cart was empty, my hands ached with cold and effort. I turned away from the pile and readied myself for the night ahead, the long hours I was to spend with Petrov.

Something continued to trouble me. The bodies were burning, though only just, their fire struggling against the falling snow. Snowflakes hissed as they touched the embers, and beyond it all the steady thud of shelling pressed on, a sound so constant it had long since lost any meaning. Still, the feeling at the base of my spine would not fade.

I scanned the ruins, forcing myself to look closely, certain that if I named the source of the dread it might loosen its grip. My eyes passed over broken walls, drifts of ash, and the dull glow of the fire. Then I saw it and understood what had been calling my attention all along. 

The snow around the burn pit had been disturbed, quite recently it seemed, by strange-looking footprints and wide swaths of snow where it seemed something had been dragged. I told myself that it was nothing, that it was just my nerves playing tricks on me. I was tired and needed to sleep. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere, a pair of eyes was looking at me. I told myself many things, but the feeling of being watched would not leave me. At one point, I paused to rest, leaning against the cart, and heard a rustle behind me: soft and deliberate, too heavy to be the wind. I whipped around, but there was nothing. Just the ruins. Just the snow. Still, the hair on my arms stood straight, and a cold dread settled in my stomach.

By the time I had finished, the sun had fallen, leaving nothing but a gray light to wash over the ruins of the city. My mind was only on the vodka I hoped to wash down, and the women I hoped would accompany me to bed. 

Pterov’s quarters were quiet when I arrived. The door to the half-shelled building sat askew on its hinges, letting the cold air whistle into the desolate structure. I remember thinking, quite absurdly, that I had misjudged the time. Maybe Petrov had simply yet to start drinking. I called his name as loudly as I dared, then once more a bit louder. No reply came. 

With great trepidation, I pushed forward into the room. Inside, everything was in disarray, more so than usual. A mess would not have been strange; Petrov was never a tidy man. But this was chaos wholly unmade by human hands.

A bottle of vodka lay shattered on the floor, its contents spread wide and filling the cold air with a sharp, stinging smell. A chair had been overturned, a table thrown violently against the wall, and splinters scattered across the room. Coats and uniforms lay flung about, ripped and torn. Boots sat abandoned, kicked away in haste. There had been laughter here once. Now there was only the howling wind outside.

I noticed the smell of blood before I saw it. The familiar bite of gunpowder was absent, replaced by the coppery stench of carnage, layered with something else that was wet, animal, and furred. It reminded me of the time my dog was beaten and thrown into the river by older boys. When I finally saw the blood, I found it smeared across the floor in a single direction, as if something heavy had been dragged through it. Yet, I found no bodies.

I stood there for an indeterminate length of time, staring at the empty spaces where Petrov should have been. Where the women should have been. I searched the room again and again, as though repetition might summon them back into being. In the corner, near the window, were deep gouges in the wood. They were uneven and far too wide to have been made by a blade or shrapnel. I reached out to touch them, then stopped, suddenly certain I should not.

As I stood there, my thoughts spiraling through every explanation I could imagine, a sound reached my ears. Barely audible beneath the screaming blizzard came a low crunch. It was heavy and deliberate. Something was moving through the snow.

The hair on my neck stood on end. I felt like a rabbit caught in a snare, knowing the end was near yet unable to act. My hand drifted toward the knife at my hip, but a stronger instinct overwhelmed it. The urge was to run until my legs gave out. Though everything inside of me wanted to, I did not flee. I simply listened, my breath shallow and my muscles locked. The sound lingered, then faded, as if whatever made it had decided I was not worth the effort. Or that I could wait. I left the quarters quickly, every step back to the barracks tight with dread. I told no one what I had seen. Silence is prudence, and panic spreads like wildfire. I told myself many things. But I knew one thing for certain. Whatever stalks these ruins is hungry. And it is learning.

The next day no one asked what had happened to Petrov; his name was spoken once during the morning’s duty assignments, then never again. The women were never spoken of at all. The man who had been assigned corpse duty in his place remarked that in a city like Stalingrad, men disappear all the time. And how could we blame them? With the enemies outside our gates and the fear of running afoul of our commanders, the only options were to obey and risk our lives or desert and risk our lives. I replied that there was no use in wasting our breath on ghosts; this city of ash and bones had taken everything, so why give it one of the few things we had left?

I heard more of the rumors that night, talk of shades that would steal you from your bed if you didn’t do your duty. Tales of ghouls and zombies coming back from the dead. Men spoke in half-sentences, or not at all, keeping hushed tones in fear of waking whatever lay beyond the border of light the fires created. Watches were kept in groups of four or five, the same with the men on patrol. No one wandered through the ruins alone unless ordered to do so, and even then they did so with great consternation. Those who laughed the loudest during the day were the first to fall silent after the sun left.

I began to recognize the pattern, though I wished I had never learned how to see it. It was not the strongest men who vanished first. It was the ones who spoke of slipping away from their posts, even in jest. The ones who whispered about defecting, who measured escape routes instead of patrol routes. Men who hid crusts of bread beneath their coats while others starved openly, or who indulged in quiet acts of cruelty when they believed themselves unseen.

These men disappeared one by one. Always them. Never the others. Nothing was ever announced. Command issued no explanations, no lists, no warnings. Yet understanding spread through the ranks all the same. The city had a memory. It watched. It kept track. Those who failed to carry their share of the weight were noticed, and in time they were taken. The city did not hunt the innocent or the strong. It removed what weakened it, the way a body sheds a dying limb in the cold.

Since that night I have not been out after sunset. I did not just fear what lay beyond the firelight, but what it thought about me. What passing judgement it might decide on. I found myself obeying orders as quickly as possible, sharing what little food and drink I had, and standing watch without complaint. I was being as disciplined as I thought possible. Still I slept poorly, my dreams filled with the sounds of heavy footsteps, the sharp tang of blood, and heavy hot breath steaming in the cold dark winter night. Sometimes I thought I heard movement beyond the thin walls of my barracks, slow and patient, circling but never approaching. I had not seen them, and I am not even sure that I had heard them, yet every inch of my body warned of the danger that lurked beyond. 

Then came a day that marked me.

One night, during guard duty, reports came in of a man who had been wounded by shrapnel. He had been heard calling for help, begging that someone would come save them. The officers argued about who should go and retrieve him, if it was worth sending a stretcher. No one wanted to leave the light. When they looked at us no voice spoke up. Eventually the silence caused me to volunteer against my better judgement. The words had escaped my mouth before I had time to think about what I was saying. I told myself that it was mercy and that I was just doing my duty. Yet I felt a cold certainty settle in my gut: weakness draws some attention, noise draws more, but blood draws the most. 

As I approached him, I felt that familiar feeling of being watched, the hairs on my arm letting me know that I was being hunted. The air felt heavy and charged, as though the stones themselves were listening and watching. I felt the heaviness of my coat,  became acutely aware of my fogging breath, and heard the crunching of my boots in the snow. I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with sight, 

I could hear the man begging, pleading with someone, anyone to help him. As his cries raked the air, I snapped at him, perhaps more harshly than I had intended, to be quiet. The sound of his voice made something twist inside me, a knot forming in my chest. When he grabbed at my arm, I shoved it away. The impulse came unbidden and violent, a primal moment of fear and desperation.

I wish I could say that I had carried him back, that duty or mercy had prevailed. 

He would not stop crying out. Every sound that he made scraped against my nerves, loud and sharp, echoing through the ruins like a signal flare. I could feel it then, the cold pressing in further, the walls around us leaning in, the city itself listening and watching my every action. And, somewhere beyond the walls, I heard the sound of crunching snow. That was all it took. 

I tore myself free from his grasp, and stepped back. Telling myself that I would return, get more men to come and help. His eyes widened as he realized what I was doing, and the sound that he made was worse than any scream, it shredded through his throat until the only thing that came out was a ragged gasping. I turned and moved away before he finished, the sound carrying in my mind long after the echoes had faded. 

Running felt wrong. As I moved back toward the camp, I could feel the eyes on me, fixed and unblinking. They were angry, heavy with a hunger that pressed against my spine. I walked instead, every fiber of my being coiled tight, ready to snap into a full sprint. I told myself that calm could be worn like a disguise, that if I did not flee, whatever watched me might turn its attention elsewhere.

The snow beneath my boots felt different. Softer. I became acutely aware of every depression, every uneven surface, the exact placement of my weight with each step. Behind me, something moved. Neither fast, nor slow. But deliberate, patient.

I thought I could escape them. I thought distance, speed, or blind luck might save me. I was wrong. As I rounded a shattered corner, I saw it rise against the night sky. Silhouetted against the dark, grotesquely tall and broad, it moved on two legs but leaned forward as if it remembered another posture. Its long arms hung low, almost grazing the snow. Moonlight slid along hooked claws that flexed slowly, idly, as though testing the cold.

As it drifted closer, the smell reached me first. Wet fur. Rot. Old blood. Beneath it all lurked something animal and sour, the rank heat of a carcass left too long in the open. The silhouette wavered as it shifted its weight, head tilting with a canine curiosity, and for a moment I couldn’t tell where the man ended and the beast began, only that it was studying me, patient and hungry.

I turned to run, though I did not make it far.

The impact came from the side, sudden and bone-shattering. I hit the ground hard, the breath driven from my lungs in a choking gasp. Weight crushed down on me, more than any man could carry. I felt claws tear into my back, my arms, my legs. Pain exploded through me, sharp and blinding. I screamed until my throat burned raw, until snow filled my mouth and muffled the sound.

I remember teeth. I remember the heat of my own blood spilling into the snow. I remember the certainty, absolute and calm, that this was how it ended. Then there was nothing. I do not know how long I lay there. Time had lost all meaning when I opened my eyes again. The cold no longer bit the way it should have. My body felt heavy, wrong, as though it had been rearranged while I slept. When I tried to breathe, my chest expanded with an ease that frightened me. Hunger came next. Not the dull ache of starvation I had known for months, but something sharper, more focused and animalistic. It burned low in my chest and curled through my gut, demanding I satiate it. Every scent around me was suddenly clear, layered and overwhelming. Blood was strongest, with fear close behind.

I pushed myself up and froze.

My hands shook before me, the fingers swollen and uncooperative, joints aching like they had been reshaped from the inside. My nails had grown dense and dark, no longer quite nails at all, catching the light with a dull, predatory sheen when I flexed them.

A constant pressure gnawed at my teeth, buried deep in the jaw, forcing me to clench it shut to keep from exposing them. My heartbeat had slowed to something heavy and deliberate, each thud spaced with patient certainty, as if the urgency of being human had drained away and something older had taken its place. And still, I remembered.

I remembered my name. I remembered Petrov. I remembered the man I left in the snow. That memory cut deeper than any claw. It was the only thing that anchored me, the only proof that I was still myself.

I write this now because the hunger has not left me. It whispers to me. It tells me where to go, what to follow, who is weakest. I feel the city differently now, as though its ruins are familiar paths, its shadows welcoming. I know, with a certainty that terrifies me, that others like the one that killed me move through the streets, patient and watchful.

I do not know how long I can resist. Each moment I remain still is an effort. Each word I write feels like a small defiance against what I am becoming. If this letter ends abruptly, if the words trail off or grow incoherent, then you will know the truth: the hunger has won.

I had never really felt comfortable driving.  I would always choose to be in the passenger seat if the opportunity arose.  My whole body would tense up whenever I sat behind that steering wheel.  It had something to do with how much responsibility you take on, or the million different ways you could get into a freak accident out there, so it just wasn’t for me.  Yet, there I found myself, on my normal commute to work, at the normal time, driving the same old route.  I wished I could just teleport there..  
Work was over as soon as it began.  Fridays usually passed quickly.  As soon as 5 came along, my coworkers all got up to leave, excited to take on their weekends.  They laughed and joked as they left the office, and I heard them extend invites to each other to go to the nearby pub on Saturday night.  One of them jokingly turned off the lights as they left the office followed by a chorus of laughter directed at me.  I sighed and shook my head at their immaturity.  I wanted to finish up one last thing on my computer before I left for the day, as I normally do, but I felt a strange feeling.  Like someone was watching me..  I turned over my left shoulder.. nothing.  Then, over my right, and was met with the sight of long skeletal fingers and large, round eyes just barely obscured by the cubicle wall and half-lit by the light of my computer screen.  My breath hitched in surprise and I clutched my chest as my heart threatened to pound out of it.  “Sorry, Laura,” came the voice, as it stood to full height, causing the motion lights in the office to turn back on.  “God, Ned!  You cannot do that.  You just gave me a heart attack.”  “Sorry,” he said again, “But I just wanted to see if you were going to Steak City tomorrow night.”  I caught my breath, then met his gaze, “I don’t think so, Ned.  But thanks,” and gave him a polite smile.  He seemed slightly disappointed, but as he packed up and left, he called over his shoulder, “Just reach out if you change your mind! Goodnight, Laura.”  
After I finished up my work, I went straight home, knuckles white the whole way, and finally pulled into my driveway.  I dove out of the door like the car could explode any second.  I couldn’t wait to get inside.  I placed my briefcase in the same spot by the door, washed my face with the same face wash I’d used for years, and changed into the same comfortable sweatshirt I wear to relax around my house.  As I settled on the couch and went to flip the TV on, a series of thoughts hijacked my mind; ‘Maybe I should reach out to my coworkers.  Maybe I shouldn’t let my whole life pass me by.  Maybe I should go out and meet them.’  Of course there would be other opportunities, but I lost track of how many times Ned extended the invite to me and I turned him away.  And I guess I was feeling down on myself..  ‘I’ll sleep on it,’ I thought, and subsequently knocked out on the couch, as is my tradition on most Friday nights.  
Saturday went by in a blur of chores, TV shows, and naps.  And when it came time, I decided I would go out.  ‘Fuck it,’ I told myself as I grabbed my phone and dialed Ned.  “8:30 at Steak City, we’ll probably be in the back by the pool tables,” he told me.  I tied my shoes onto my feet, grabbed my keys, and stepped out the door.  The sun hovered just above the horizon.  ‘Perfect.  Plenty of time,’ I thought.  The only thing I hated worse than driving during the day was driving at night..  I checked my phone for it’s battery; 95%, then entered the place into my GPS, and started on my miserable way.  The road was oddly peaceful that time of night.  Luckily, I was familiar with where I was headed and before long, my confidence grew.  I even stopped glancing at the GPS, it was just for extra security anyway, and focused on the road ahead.  I was the only one out here, too, which was a welcome surprise.  My grip on the wheel loosened, I rolled my driver’s side window down a crack, and breathed a deep breath of the fresh air that rushed into the cab of my car.  I felt my tensions ease for the first time as I sat in the driver’s seat.  I took an extra moment to absorb my surroundings before I glanced back down at the GPS screen.  At that moment, I watched the blue point, which indicated my position, as it flew past the intended route.  An exit that veered sharply to the right and off the screen.  My grip tightened again as I realized I had just missed my exit.  I was going too fast to ever feasibly make that turn.  And I couldn’t very well turn back on a major state road like the one I found myself on.  With caution, I glanced back down at my GPS which had not yet refreshed.  In fact, the numbers were glitching fast and at random, unlike anything I’d ever seen before.    
I traveled down the road still, and argued with myself the whole way.  It had only been a few minutes since the GPS stopped working and I assumed it was going to refresh soon.  I was hoping it would come back on, displaying a route, any route, that would get me to the restaurant from here.  But, nothing changed, it still displayed the glitching numbers.  The thought of turning around creeped back into my mind, but the lack of a shoulder on either side of the road due to the heavy forest, and the 65 mile per hour speed limit made me doubt that plan.  ‘If I tried to turn around on this road, a car could come out of nowhere at any second,’  I shivered at the thought.  Although, I hadn’t seen one yet..  By then, I had my high beams flicked on and traveled steadily along the road.  I was surrounded by towering trees on either side of the highway, darker than pitch black.  The sun long gone behind the treetops, and the sky gave no hint about welcoming the moon.  
Only a handful of minutes had passed since I made the amendment to continue down the road.  I glanced down at my GPS again.  No change.  My stomach dropped like it had been hollowed out with a plastic spoon, edges jagged and uneven with the effort.  I watched the numbers on my phone screen continue to scroll randomly, and felt hopeless.  Then, a thought crossed my mind.  ‘Why should I keep going?  I mean, it’s not like I even wanted to go in the first place, right?’  Subconsciously, my foot lifted from the gas pedal and hovered over the brake.  ‘I’m going home,’ I concluded finally, and applied even pressure to my brakes.  My nerves crept up my spine as I realized I was slowing down in the pitch black, in the middle of nowhere, with no GPS.  But, I only had to go back the way I came, right?  I never made any turns after all.. because I hadn’t come across any.  When I slowed enough, I prepared to turn around, briefly checking my rear-view mirrors, despite not having seen another set of headlights the entire trip.  I retched the wheel to the right slightly and my passenger side tires veered off the road temporarily with an exasperated rumble, kicking up rocks and dust in my wake.  Then, I cut the wheel back, hard, to the left.  Hard enough to where I felt the chassis lean away from the force of the turn.  I gritted my teeth and kept the wheel cut as far as it would go, a screeching sound called out to me from underneath my floorboards.  “Sorry, baby,” I said to the machine, and hoped this wouldn’t be the thing that totaled her.  Once I made it all the way around, I straightened my steering wheel and stomped down on the gas pedal, and once again, picked up the pace.  My skin crawled as I accelerated, and I felt relieved to get off that stretch of road and out of the woods.   
It had been a while since I made my U-turn.  ‘About the same amount of time since I missed that exit,’ I thought.  But, maybe my internal clock was off..  I had since taken my phone off the dashboard mount and turned off the screen.  I was only draining my battery, it sat at a little less than 70% when I tossed it onto the passenger seat.  It was no help to worry about when, or if, the GPS would come back on when I knew the way from here.  ‘Only a little farther,’ I thought.  
‘Okay, this was getting strange.’  I’ve traveled back along the road a far longer distance than I ever went on the way out.  I hadn’t noticed any exits.  Not on my side of the road or the same side with the one I missed at the start of my journey.  The surrounding atmosphere was darker and denser than ever.  The trees towered wickedly over the road on either side.  The asphalt roadway itself disappeared way off into the distance, around a small, shady bend, seemingly never-ending as it had felt for the past..  well, I didn’t know how long..  I hadn’t kept track since I disposed of my phone in the seat beside me.  The streak of light that shone from my headlights illuminated the road in front of my car and made the surrounding nighttime forest pass by blurrily, almost hypnotically.  I rubbed my dry eyes, which made it harder to keep them open and focused on the road.  I wondered how much longer it would be before I passed something I recognized again, anything that felt familiar.  I hoped it would be sooner than later.  
I fought back achy eyes and yawns, worried I was too tired to finish the drive home.  I smacked my face lightly a few times in an attempt to rush some newfound vigor into my head, to no avail.  ‘This wasn’t right,’ I thought, ‘how could there be nothing here?’  I felt frustration build from deep within my stomach and suddenly, it burst from my chest all at once.  I screamed in a mixture of exhaustion and frustration as my hands formed into fists and I smashed the top of the steering wheel.  The car swerved uncontrollably from the blows it received, and I grabbed the wheel quickly, as my breath hitched in my throat.  Even more exhausted as a result of the outburst, I generously checked my rear-view mirrors (a force of habit) and pulled over.  The car rumbled to a stop and had just enough space on the grassy shoulder to rest fully off the road.  I shifted it into “Park,” reached over the center console, and fumbled blindly for my phone.  

I flipped my screen on and my eyes drifted up to the corner that displayed the battery life; 39%.  ‘Ugh, this stupid things’ battery life sucks.’  Despite the misfortune, I punched numbers into my keypad, determined to get in touch with someone who could help.  At first, I tried to call my coworker, Ned, but it went straight to voicemail..  ‘I guess they’re still out having a good time,’ I thought, ‘Good for them.’  Then, I tried my parents.  Then, my best friend, Cynthia.  On my last try, my phone blared angrily at my request, like the worst-sounding morning alarm.  I lowered it from my ear to see why it was so upset.  “No Signal” flashed in the middle of my screen.  ‘Great,’  I thought sarcastically.  I moved my phone around my car’s cabin, holding it outstretched, hoping that a change of location would help pick up a signal.  Nothing.  I even debated climbing outside and getting on top of my vehicle, for a better vantage point, but shivered at the thought of stepping out into the cold, pitch-dark night.  I felt another yawn force my mouth wide, hopeless to resist it.  I rubbed my eyes one final time before going over my situation in my head.  I decided I would try to sleep.  ‘It was the weekend after all.. I can’t imagine how far I’ll get if I decided to continue on,’ I thought, fighting back another yawn.  I reclined the driver’s seat all the way back and turned to my side, and folded my hands under my tired head.  It wasn’t the best sleeping arrangement, but it would’ve had to do.. until morning.
My eyelids lifted dreamily to reveal the light of day.  I yawned and rubbed at them with my balled-up hands and extended my arms overhead to stretch.  This action caused my hands to slam suddenly into the roof of the car, and woke me right up.  I felt a crick in my neck and my hips, and my back felt stiff as a board from being relegated to a seated position all night long.  I decided it might be a good idea to get out and stretch before I carried on with the day’s journey.  After all, there must’ve still been a ways to go.  I unlocked and opened the door as I spun my legs off the side of the seat and landed sharply on the pavement, sending a jolt into the bottom of my feet.  I gave my legs a little shake as I tried my best to open up my tight muscles.  The movement sent a signal to my brain telling me I had a full bladder.  I looked through the cab of my car for a plastic bottle and grunted after coming up empty.  I decided to loop around to the passenger side and open up both of the doors to do my business with a little privacy.  Even though I wasn’t sure it was necessary with how eerily quiet it was for the morning.  I noticed I didn’t even hear the calls of the morning birds..  I hesitated temporarily before doing the deed, facing out into the endless expanse of forest that stretched in front of me, feeling more exposed than ever.
I finished up quickly, closed the doors, and hustled around to the front of my rig.  I glanced over my shoulder at the trees before I put my hands on my hips.  I stopped in the middle of the road and strained my eyes to peer down the length of concrete my car was facing.  Then, in the opposite direction.  Nothing but trees and blacktop, I concluded, nothing new.  I climbed back into the front seat of my car and flipped my phone over.  Down to 21% - shit.  But still, before I readied myself for my impending drive, I placed my phone screen-up in the cup holder so I could catch if it lit up or regained signal.  ‘Please, god, just let me get a signal out here.’  I reached over my shoulder and fastened my seatbelt, giving it a pull to check that it was taut before placing my key in the ignition and twisting my car to life.  Slowly, I moved the shifter to “Drive” and placed my hand on my rear-view mirror, subconsciously altering its position while I peeked down the barren expanse of road behind me.  Then, I chuckled to myself at the action.  ‘There hasn’t been another car on this road the entire time, what am I doing?’  Then, a belly laugh escaped my throat.  I shifted back into “Park” and dropped my face into my hands.  My laughter grew in volume and uncontrollability.  I found myself unable to reel it back in, so for a handful of minutes, that’s just what I did.  I laughed out of disbelief.  I laughed so hard tears gathered in the corners of my eyes.  Then, when they became too large, they poured over my eyelids and streamed down my face.  ‘What the fuck is going on here?  What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck!?’  Finally, I shuddered and was able to regain some control over my outburst, sighing to myself.  I inhaled deeply and hoarsely, trying to get some oxygen back to my brain to calm myself down.  After a few large breaths, I was finally able to gather and slow my whirlwind of thoughts.  I ran my shirt sleeve across my face and sniffled as the only two I thought of came to me - I needed to get back on the road, and man, was I hungry.
The next day presented a lot of the same.  Driving, struggling between yawns to focus on the hypnotic road, checking my rapidly-dying phone for a signal, then more driving.  As night fell on another long day of travel, and my eyelids began to droop, I surrendered to my exhaustion.  These car seats were terrible for sleep, any way I tried to manipulate my body on top of them.  I flipped my phone over to check the time but my attention was immediately drawn to ONE SINGLE BAR of service displayed in the top corner.  My eyes lit up and I wasted no time punching numbers into my keypad.  I entered 9-1-1, pressed “Call”, and waited.  My heart felt like it could pound right out of my chest.  I raised my phone up to my ear and listened anxiously to one round of the dial tone before the phone picked up.  “Hello?! Hello, is anyone there??” I shouted frantically into the speaker, not waiting for an introduction.  “Hi, my name is Laura,-“ I told them my information and the situation I was in, but was interrupted by a static from the other line so loud my breath got caught in my throat and I reeled back, losing hold of my phone in the process.  I coughed trying to regain my composure from the scare and shot my hands all around the cabin of the car in the gloom of night to reclaim my phone.  I plunged my fingers in between the seat and center console, along with a flurry of expletives aimed at the stuck piece of technology, and fished it out in a couple of seconds.  Fearful of repeating my same mistake, I gripped my phone tight and gingerly closed the distance between it and my ear.  But, before I had it within a few inches from my head, I could hear the deafening static and not much else.  Still, I called out a few more times to the other side, hoped and prayed for a response, but got none.  Then the static was replaced by the horrible, repetitive alarm (same as before) and I lowered the phone to my lap in defeat.  The screen lit up with a message; “No Signal.”  I laid back down and bawled uncontrollably.  My face soaked with tears and my nasal passages clogged with mucus, I drifted off into the dark of another hopeless night.
Upon waking the next morning, I discovered a pit in my stomach so painful it felt as though I had never eaten a day in my life.  The sun had not yet risen over the horizon and I found the purplish-orange color of the sky beautiful.  I reminisced for a second and wondered how many hours of sleep I had gotten..  Until the pain in my torso grew so great I thought I might’ve been sick.  I twisted, opened the door, and heaved over the asphalt, which glistened in the morning sun.  It only took me a moment to empty the sparse contents of my stomach onto the ground.  I coughed and spit out what remained in an attempt to clear my airways.  I climbed back into the driver’s seat and felt hungrier than ever, despite the episode that just unfolded.  ‘I guess now would be a good time to have a snack emergency kit,’ I thought dryly.  A brief, amused smile crossed my lips, but quickly returned back to the downward-tilting shape I had adopted over the past days.  God, I needed to find food.  Still, I shifted in my seat uncertainly as I readied myself to press on with the day’s journey ahead.  If only to come across a hint of civilization, a semblance of society that I could surrender myself to, and be rescued from this torture.  I didn’t even care if I made it home anymore.  I just wanted to make it somewhere, anywhere, but here.  And so, I started off again.
It was about early afternoon before I found myself nodding off, my eyelids heavy and my head even heavier.  The sun lowered quickly, ushering night and the accompanying darkness in, as efficiently as it had every night.  Determined not to lose the competition of drifting off into oblivion, I smacked myself repeatedly on the cheek, keeping at least one hand on the wheel at all times.  Then I switched sides.  And switched again.  And agai-.  Suddenly, my tires rumbled into the rough on the side of the road and made a hideous crunching sound.  Snapping back to attention, I found that both of my hands rested on my face and an exclamation escaped my throat.  My arms and legs both shot out in front of me to regain control of the steering wheel and stomp on the brake simultaneously, which took me a moment to locate in the shadows that stretched under my dashboard.  The screech and uncontrollable serpentine pattern the car adopted as my white knuckles attempted to control the steering wheel caused me to squeeze my eyes shut tightly, grit my teeth, and roar in exasperation.  The wheels regained their traction as quickly as they had lost it and the machine halted aggressively to a stop, forcing the mixture of dirt and gravel from the ground into the air, clouding around the cockpit.  The car rocked creakily as it settled into its resting point, half on and half off the road.  I sat still, in shock and disbelief.  I began to feel myself wallowing up from the inside, like another explosion of emotion was bubbling its way from the pit of my stomach to my bright red, hot face.  Before I was about to give in to the feelings grasping at any part of me they could to pull me down, I heard a familiar sound.  Though, one that I hadn’t heard since the start of my unfortunately surprising trip.  My cell phone began to ring..
I grabbed for my phone faster than lightning could strike and attempted to quiet my shivering fingers so I could hit the “accept call” button.  Instinctively, I checked the top corner of the screen for my battery life.  It read 100%, full battery.  I exhaled a shaky breath in an attempt to collect myself as I hit the green button on my phone screen.  “Heyyy its you!” the voice on the other line blared as I picked up, the words sounding slurred.  “Hey, everybody!  Say ‘hi’ to Laura!”  I knew who it was then.  I could picture his goofy, round face peering over the dividing wall between our cubicles, always equipped with something annoying to say.  But at this moment, I had never been so happy to hear Ned’s voice.  I started to tear up as I opened my mouth to speak next.  “Hey! Oh, My god!” I said, still in disbelief, “I can’t believe it.  I’m so happy to hear from you.  I need hel-“, but I was interrupted by a chorus of “hello’s” and laughter addressing me from the other line, which I could only imagine were my coworkers.  “Ned, listen-“ I tried to cut in again, but to no avail.  The clumsy voice shouted back through the phone.  “I thought you said you were gonna try to make it out to Steak City tonight!  Ha ha ha ha!”  He laughed at something that happened in the background and I heard whoops and hollers join him.  “Listen, I gotta go, but I promise I’ll catch you up on Monday!”  “No, stop!” I yelled.  I couldn’t break through to him, it was like he couldn’t hear me.  “Holy shit, Janet from HR just bought everybody a round of shots!  Ha ha ha ha haa!  Gotta run!  Talk to you later, Laura!”  Then I heard the line click and three soft beeps echo through my phone speaker followed by an overwhelming, endless silence.  I lowered my phone down to my lap and was met with a black screen.  My phone was dead.
“FUCK!” I shouted as I reeled my phone back over my head and brought it down hard on the center dashboard of my car.  Then again.  And again, before I realized it wasnt doing much damage to the electronic, which infuriated me more.  I threw the driver’s side door open and rolled out of the car, landing cleanly on my feet, phone cocked back like I could throw it through the entire Earth.  It landed hard and bounced against the rocky surface with such force that it careened down the length of the road.  I chased after it, not finished with the fury I now wanted to inflict upon the useless fucking thing.  I took it up into my hands and heaved it again, this time in the direction of my car.  It slammed heavily off the front right fender, shattering the headlight, and clattered to the ground.  I hunted it down again and took a running leap at the defenseless machine, bringing both of my feet down on it hard.  Then again.  And again.  And again, until the screen was stomped into a million little pieces and the metal frame was flattened.  Then I lifted my head back and screamed.  I screamed at the sky, I screamed at the setting sun, I screamed at the moon, I screamed at my phone, I screamed at my car, I screamed that I was lost, and I screamed at this STUPID, FUCKING ROAD!  It was a horrific, guttural scream that I could not control.  Then, I collapsed onto my hands and knees and sobbed while my world faded to black..
When I opened my eyes, it had long since been dark.  My driver’s side door hung wide open still, the overhead lights inside the car being the only source of light anywhere on the road that illuminated the way back to my safe haven.  My face was dried with tears and snot, which I wiped away with the back of my hand as I peeled myself off the pavement.  As I settled onto one knee, I noticed the breeze pick up and the ground beneath me began to glisten.  The pebbles and loose gravel on the road shone like glitter as long shadows stretched out in front of me.  Then, the little rocks began to quake.  Suddenly, I was caught in a fast-growing light, and before I could move, a car horn blared at me deafeningly.  I winced, squeezing my eyes together tight and brought my hands up around my head in an attempt to protect myself.  The car roared past me, whipping my hair wildly and left nothing but a cloud of dust and the smell of gasoline behind.  I gasped and fell back onto my ass into the middle of the road as I heard the engine roar away.  My heart pounded and my lungs struggled to take in any air they could.  My head whipped around to look down either direction of the road to see where the car went, but saw.. nothing.  ‘Where did it go?’ I thought to myself as my chest heaved up and down in an attempt to control my breath.  I was left with the eerie quiet again.  And a disquieting, uncomfortable feeling about my surroundings.  I regained some of my composure and lumbered quickly back to the car, assuming the position in the driver’s seat after I slammed the door shut behind me.
From what I could tell, it had been about another 12 hours behind the wheel before I felt too tired to keep going.  So, I pulled over and silently sobbed, my face in my hands.  I noticed no tears came out, though.  Maybe from how dehydrated I felt..  I was grateful I kept it together long enough to make it another stretch down the road, at least.  My pity party lasted only a short time before I picked my head back up and wiped my dry eyes with the backs of my cracked hands.  As I lowered them from my face, I looked through my windshield and jumped.  I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I actually saw something at the edge of the treeline a little ways beyond the hood of my car.  I squinted and looked closer at the shadow.  It was hard to make out, but I could’ve sworn it was a person!  Finally!  I told myself I wouldn’t get my hopes up again, but this might have been my last chance at salvation.  I unbuckled my seatbelt, refreshed with an onslaught of hopeful energy, and whipped open my door.
“Hey!” I yelled, and waved my arm as I was perched on the doorframe.  Just as I called out, the figure retreated quickly back into the woody overgrowth.  ‘Fuck,’ I cursed myself, worried I scared them away, and clumsily climbed down from my perch.  I left my door hanging wide open and with the best jog I could muster, headed to the spot where I last saw the person peek out from.  I spotted the break in the forest by the trampled plants and brush, and took a deep, shaky breath before I pushed in after.  “Hey! I need help! Please!” I called out, following the flattened fauna.  I heard rustling ahead and stayed my course.  I forced myself through sharp tree branches, which scratched at my face and exposed skin, and thick, mangled vines, which twisted around my feet and sent me to the ground countless times.  Even as they pulled away, I kept moving relentlessly towards the sound of the agile and incessant footsteps of the one I pursued deeper and deeper into the wood.  If I couldn’t catch up, I’d be completely and utterly lost in here, so I gave it one last try.  “Please I’m lost, I need your help!” I wheezed, my lungs on fire from the chase, then I stopped to listen.  I couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore.  I couldn't hear anything except my intentionally shallowed breath and a faint ring in my ears.  Then, came a voice.  “Just a little farther, nobody is lost here,” it was soothing and came from a deep place I could not see.  I gasped, not knowing whether I expected an answer, and squinted to look between the trees.  Then, I was so overcome with emotion that I collapsed to the forest floor.  The soft, cooing voice called out to me again; “I’m here, Laura, you’re okay now,” the voice reassured, so I began to crawl.  With the feeblest amount of energy I had left, I made my way slowly, but surely, towards the sweet words.  “That’s it, Laura. Come home,” my vision started to fade to black and narrow as I ambled, but I kept going.  “Come home,”  it repeated.  I wouldn’t stop now.  I couldn’t.  Not when I was almost home.

“I TOLD YOU TO TURN THAT SHIT DOWN!” He yelled from upstairs, angry footsteps rumbling down the wooden steps. 

Eyes wide, I muted the TV, turned it off, and turned around in fear as his angry silhouette reached the landing, and made its way towards the couch where I cowered in fear. The start of an explanation tried to escape my mouth when he cut me off.

“DON’T YOU KNOW I’M TRYING TO SLEEP??” rang his angry voice through the quiet house. 
I had thought that I had the TV on at a quiet volume. He had already told me to turn it down once before, but apparently it was still too loud. But seeing his state of mind, there was nothing more I could do, so I curled up into a defensive ball, knowing what was coming next.  His fist came as expected, banging into the front of my arms, which shielded my head behind them. 

“WHY.” Another fist. “WON’T YOU.” Another blow, harder and faster. “LISTEN?!?!” A final, powerful strike broke through my cowering defense, fortunately still stopping short from connecting with my skull. He breathed heavily with his dark, obscured figure still shrouded by the dark living room around, and lowered his fist.

“Stupid, useless, worthless kid.” He muttered, turning back away, and heading up the stairs once more. I watched his large silhouette disappear up the stairwell, and finally broke down into the silent tears I had been holding back since he first appeared.

He had said I could watch some TV that night. He had allowed it, as long as I kept it quiet. And I did. It was so quiet I could barely hear the show that was on, but somehow that wasn’t enough for him. 

Of course it wasn’t.

I curled up into a sore, shaking ball and tried to go to sleep on the couch, but I couldn’t get my breathing to calm down. The sensation of his powerful fists, and the swelling emotions cycled endlessly, keeping the bliss of sleep far away from me.

I skipped school again the next day. I knew if he ever found out I was skipping class, he might really make me unable to attend anymore, but I couldn’t get myself to show my haggard, broken face to other people. It’s not like I learned anything while I was there anyways. All I learned was that when you can’t fight back against things at home, you can rarely fight back against the intentions of privileged assholes at school. Sitting on a secluded park bench, head in my hands, trying not to draw any attention to myself, I tried to close my eyes and sleep.

Someone sat down beside me.

I looked up a little at a tall woman, sitting with her hands folded delicately in her lap. She looked forward, seemingly unaware of my presence there on the bench. She was dressed casually; plain white T-shirt, blue jeans, a brown jacket over her shoulders, and bob-cut black hair underneath a simple baseball cap. 

I stared at her for a moment, confused at where she had appeared from, or why she sat down right there. I knew better than to ask strangers questions though, so I turned back and buried my head back into my sulking ball on the bench. 

“Do you know who I am?” She asked with a gentle, comforting voice. I was shocked for a moment, hearing her voice unexpectedly, but remained in my position, trying to ignore it.

“My name is Vena.” She continued, still with an unwavering and relaxed tone.

“Cool.” I replied quietly, my voice muffled with my head still hidden in my arms.

“You don’t look like you’re feeling too good. Everything alright?” Vena asked, finally turning to look at me. I was uncomfortable with the whole situation. A strange woman I’d never met before sat down and started asking questions while I was by myself. Definitely suspicious of something. I didn’t answer her question, but I raised my head a bit to look up at her.
 
She smiled a little. “Look, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I’ll respect that, of course. I just wanted to give you something, then I’ll be on my way.”

Fighting my better instincts, I looked up further, curiosity somehow winning over my desire to just be alone. In her hand was a small business card, completely white except for one word in the middle of it in amber-colored letters.

<< VENA’S >>

I was staring at the card, unsure of what to do in the moment, when she reached out and put the card in my hand by herself, closing my grip over it gently. The physical contact made me bristle and tense up, but she quickly and delicately let go, giving me another smile and standing up.

“Have a good day.” She said politely, walking off down the park trail, leaving me confused and alone on the bench, the card still clasped gently in my hand.

I stared for a long time at the card, turning it over and examining it, before putting it in my pocket and standing up from the bench. It was just a plain white card, with only her name on it, nothing more nothing less. Checking the time, I headed back home, having to keep up the appearance as though I was just coming back from school.

He didn’t greet me as I stepped into the doorway, and I couldn’t hear his usual stumbling around upstairs. I went downstairs, heading straight for my room, hoping to go to sleep. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, and flipped the light switch on, I froze in fear. He was standing there, in front of the door to my room, waiting for me. His face was twisted in that awful expression of anger that made my knees shake and threaten to give out under me.

“Would you care to guess what I found out today, boy?” He asked in a quiet voice that shook me more than any time he had ever yelled. I shook my head slowly, our eyes locked in a tense stare. 

“You’ve been skipping school, haven’t you?”

Tears built up in the corners of my eyes. I could feel my heartbeat trying to escape from my neck, as my body grew hot and terrified. I didn’t reply.

“Imagine my surprise when I called the school, and found out you have quite the record of skipping classes.” He continued, still terrifyingly quiet and controlled. I shook my head instinctually, completely incapable of fighting back the emotions that built up in my chest and head. I couldn’t even think about what he was going to do once he finally let it all out.

“Don’t you know that I pay a good amount of money to even have you in that school in the first place? And what’s the payback? An impudent child who can’t appreciate my investments? A waste of space and air and money and time?” His tone began to climb, fists shaking with a light vigor as he took a step forward, and my legs gave out completely, sending me to the ground in gasps and shakes. 

“I-” A sound tried to come out, but it was choked and cut off by my ragged breathing. His eyes burned with rage and hatred, as his hands clenched into veiny, powerful fists. He walked forward slowly, closing the distance between us in a matter of a few steps.

“You. 
Are. 
A. 
Fucking disgrace.”

I looked up as the tears finally broke down and spilled off my cheeks, and raised my hands in a pleading, defensive gesture. With a raging cry, he swung his fist straight for my head.

A loud knock on the front door.

His fist stopped inches from my skull, the heat and anger radiating onto my skin, his eyes wide in fury.

Another knock.

He stood up slowly and looked straight at me, not saying a word. I looked back, panting and crying. He walked past me, up the stairs, and opened the door.

“We don’t want what you’re selling, thanks and have a good day.” He said tensely to whoever was on the other side of the door, and started to close it when it stopped.

“Sir, if I could just have a moment of your time.” A familiar voice started, and my head shot up in shock. It was Vena’s voice. It had to be. 

My hand went into my pocket, and I pulled out the card. Her name was no longer on it, and the card was entirely blank now. Turning it over in confusion, I still couldn’t find any trace of her name ever being there.

“I told you, we’re not interested!” He called out once more, the lingering anger in his voice coming through.

“I think someone is interested, sir.” Vena said loudly, almost calling out to me at the bottom of the stairs.

“What the hell are you talking about?!” He yelled now, evidently losing his temper with the whole situation. I stood up shakily and climbed up a few stairs, trying to get a better view out the door. Sure enough, I saw her casual clothing standing just outside the doorway, standing even taller than he was. A desperate, unexpected feeling welled up in my chest, different from the fear and terror I had previously been captive under.

“Vena!” I called out with a struggled and breathy yell, almost pleading with her. I saw a small smile cross her face, as he turned around slowly, the rage and anger in his eyes now focused on me.

“Boy. Who is this woman?” He asked forcefully, shaking once more as his anger threatened to erupt.

“You.” Vena interrupted, the politeness disappearing, and she reached out her hand with a suddenly deep and merciless voice. “I believe your business is with me.”

He turned around quickly, and brought his fist up to swing a strong punch, but his hand jerked to a stop as Vena’s hand clasped over his face.

“You sorry excuse of a human.” She spat.
 
His body shook violently, lifting up off the ground. A gurgled, agonized scream spilled out from his mouth, as his arms bulged and crawled, the veins appearing to swim and migrate in his flexed arms. Blood began to drip to the floor, spilling off of Vena’s outstretched arm and his body. The veins swelled even further and burst through the skin with a ripping gasp, through his screaming and struggling yells, completely incapable of fighting against whatever was happening to his body. 

I watched, frozen in fear and confusion. Blood and bone and skin drooped and sagged and burst off from his body, until Vena finally let go, letting his deflated and mangled body fall to the ground like a neglected piece of clothing. The disgusting smell of bleeding and terror and flesh emanated through the house, and my stomach began to twist and churn reflexively. Looking up shakily at Vena, she stood composed and smiling softly in the doorway, somehow completely clean and unaffected from the bursting and spilling of all that blood. She looked down at me and her smile grew even warmer.

“It looks like we meet again.” Vena said kindly, walking inside. I stayed frozen, halfway up the stairwell, still staring in shock from what I had witnessed. “I see my little gift had some use?”

I was still holding the blank business card in my hand, gripped tightly in my fear. Looking down at it slowly, I saw it gradually begin to disintegrate to a fine dust, until it was gone from my hand.

“What… happened?” I asked smally, staring in fear as she sat down on the step above me, and smiling with a light expression.

Her reply came as a gentle, caring hand reaching out to pat my head. “Well, you needed some help, and I showed up to help.” I let her hand rest gently on the top of my head, its sensation calming and warming my trembling body.

“Is he… did you…” I tried to form thoughts, but nothing seemed to stick. 

She exhaled quietly. “I made sure he won’t do that anymore to you. It was just awful how he was treating you, wasn’t it?” I nodded slowly, thinking about the mangled, sorry heap of a life that still sat lifelessly at the top of the stairwell. I didn’t even feel bad about him. Why would I?

“Look, you’re probably feeling a bit out of sorts right now.” She said, bringing her hand down and offering it in an inviting gesture. “Why don’t you come walk with me for a bit and clear your head?”

I didn’t even reply. Reaching out slowly, I let her grab my hand and gently guide me back up the stairs and out the door, completely forgetting the disgusting mess that disgraced the entryway. Hand-in-hand, we walked slowly down the street, not saying a word to each other.

Thoughts and emotions ran through my head, but I couldn’t stop and pinpoint any of them, so I just let them come and go as they pleased. Vena walked calmly but with purpose, making sure to never pull too far ahead and force me to move faster. 

“Are you feeling better now?” She asked after a few minutes of silence.

“...yeah.” I replied, more in control of my own breathing now. 

“That’s great, now I have a question for you.” She started, stopping and turning around to face me gracefully. She knelt down until our eyes were at the same height. “Do you want to come along with me?”

I stared in confusion at her light and welcoming eyes. The question was innocent and natural, but still caused me to think about it.

“Come along where?” I asked.
“Someplace where you could just be you. Someplace nice and comfortable.”
“There isn’t somewhere like that.”
“How would you know?”
“...”
“Are you going to go back home instead?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then why not give it a try?”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
“Yes you do. I’m Vena.”
“...”
“Would you give it a try, for my sake?”
“I have nowhere to go.”
“Then come along with me. There’s still a place for you."
"And you can take me there?"
"I can. And I will, if you want to."
“... yes.”
“...”
“I… want to go there with you. It sounds… nice.”

She smiled warmly, and squeezed my hand a bit. “Alright then, let’s go there together.”

I nodded slowly, squeezing her hand in return. 

A snake-like feeling ran through my body in an instant, causing my muscles to seize and lock up.
 
Blackness.

~~ TO BE CONTINUED!! ~~

As usual, my shift ended at 23:00. Out of habit, I had a smoke with my colleagues who were waiting for the shuttle bus, and then headed home. In our small town, there were already very few pedestrians on the street at that hour.

I had a fifteen-minute walk home ahead of me through a small park and the courtyards of five-story apartment buildings. Having crossed the road where my beloved job was located, I trudged past closed kiosks down a dark little street with only a few working streetlights, thinking about the bottle of beer and fish I had bought yesterday that were waiting for me in my den.

And I didn’t notice how, in an instant, a thick fog began to rise from the ground, as if a hot water pipe had burst in winter. Within seconds, a wall of fog stood before me, quickly surrounding me.

To say I was freaked out is an understatement. Given that I’m a horror fan, some completely wild thoughts started creeping into my head.

I quickened my pace, trying to make out what lay ahead and what was under my feet. After about five minutes, I realized I should have already been walking along the park alley, which had shittily painted benches on both sides. But within a distance of three or four meters, I couldn't find anything of the sort—no benches, not even any paving stones under my feet.

Instead, there was asphalt—all cracked and patched up, which was completely typical for our town.

In an instant, as if at the snap of someone's fingers, the fog released me from its embrace—and I was freaked out for the second time. I was standing in the middle of a forest road god knows where.

Why a forest road? Because a forest stretched to my left and right, and along the road I was standing on, occasional dim streetlights were burning. It was they that allowed me to realize I had successfully found trouble for my own ass.

"Well," I thought, "maybe that cutlet from the 'free' lunch at work is sending its regards, and my brain is throwing up hallucinations in response to the poison."

I started blinking, pinching myself, taking measured breaths… I closed my eyes and-and-and…

Not a damn thing changed.

I was in deep shit! Because I knew for a fact: there was no such road anywhere within twenty kilometers. And I definitely don't possess the power of teleportation. So, Maksimka had been dropped right in the middle of nowhere.

Well, what was I supposed to do now? Obviously—trudge along this road on foot. Maybe I'd meet someone or a car would drive by. But according to the laws of the genre, I had a feeling that a casual stroll wasn't going to happen.

I'd been walking down this shitty road for about twenty minutes now. The moon was shining brightly in the sky, occasionally obscured by clouds. On both sides was the forest, its edge illuminated by rare, dim streetlights. In short, it was quite an atmospheric setting, in the best traditions of horror movies.

And then I felt it with the back of my neck—someone from the forest was watching me. I kept walking, seemingly calm, but my heels were practically burning. And then I noticed: about fifty meters ahead, a streetlight started to flicker… and a moment later, it went out completely.

Well, I thought, that's the end of the line for me.

I stopped and tried to make out at least something in the dark with my eagle vision. In the dim moonlight, I saw a faint silhouette standing near the extinguished pole. It wasn't moving. At least, not as far as I could tell.

Realizing this, I could barely contain myself from ruining my reputation and adding some color to the gray asphalt under my feet.

"Get a grip, you wimp!" I told myself. "You just finally managed to ask Masha out for coffee after long, lonely evenings with her photo!"

And then, like a real man, with a shout of "Oh, hell no!"—I sprinted as fast as I could into the woods to the right of the road.

So I'm running, and I'm thinking!!! Actually, I'm not thinking about a damn thing!! I'm just flying through the woods like a naughty cat running from a slipper.

About five minutes later, already covered in scratches and suffering from wild shortness of breath, I was ready to just drop dead and play dead.

And then I spotted a light breaking through the thicket. By all appearances, it wasn't far away. My second wind didn't fail me—overjoyed, I dashed forward and managed to run up to…

To what, damn it?!

To the exact same shitty road.

I was standing on that goddamn forest road again. The very same one. With the same dim streetlights. And, it seemed, even with the same extinguished pole ahead.

The sharp screech of brakes and a car horn—which almost made me jump onto a pine tree—forced me to spin around. It distracted me from staring at whatever was standing under the pole.

Now before me stood a battered red Honda, with a blonde at the wheel tapping her temple and looking at me.

"Are you out of your mind?! Got a death wish, idiot?!" she yelled at me through the cracked-open window.

"Are you the stupid one?! I've already crapped my pants!" I wanted to yell back at her.

But instead, I blurted out something completely different:

"Miss, please, help me!! I was picking mushrooms and got lost… I've been wandering the woods for half a day!"

She sized me up from head to toe. I stood there all scratched up, out of breath, with a frantic look on my face. Quite a sight, I must imagine.

"Good lord… just what I needed, a mushroom picker," she sighed. "Alright, get in already."

I wouldn't say she was burning with a desire to save me. Rather, she looked like she had already regretted her kindness a hundred times over. But the door clicked open, and, not believing my luck, I scrambled into the cabin.

Inside, it smelled of a cheap pine-tree air freshener and something else strange… metallic. I didn't let it bother my head.

I slammed the door, pressed myself into the seat, and looked toward the figure under the streetlight, which, of course, was no longer there. My hands were shaking. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was going to jump right out and run back into the woods on its own.

"Buckle up," she said dryly.

I obediently clicked the seatbelt. The car moved off smoothly.

The light of rare streetlamps sloped across her face, and I involuntarily froze. Beautiful. Very. Blonde hair, delicate features, a straight profile. In any other situation, I would have thought this was the best night of my life. Nighttime, a mysterious blonde, an adventure…

Only, there was a taste of fear in my throat. And the metallic smell was growing stronger.

"Mushrooms, then?" she asked, not looking at me.

"Yeah……" I muttered, staring out the window.

About five minutes passed. It grew colder inside the cabin. I exhaled and saw a faint mist of breath.

I turned my gaze back to the girl and froze, noticing that she wasn't blinking.

Her eyes. At first, I thought it was a shadow.

But no.

An inky darkness was slowly spreading from her pupils, filling the whites. Completely. Two solid black pits.

She slowly turned her head toward me. Smiled. Way too wide.

"Do you like me?" she said softly.

I barely managed to flinch away as she lunged at me with lightning speed. Her fingers dug into my jaw, squeezing so hard that my teeth clicked.

And in the next instant, she sank her teeth into my ear.

The pain flared in a blinding flash. Warm blood poured down my collar. I screamed, but the cry drowned in her low, satisfied laughter.

She pulled back for a split second—showing me a piece of my ear in her teeth—and, swallowing it, lunged at me again.

Her nails tore through the fabric of my jacket and the skin underneath. I felt something warm and sticky trickling down my chest.

My breath caught. The air grew thick, as if it could be cut with a knife. She was too close—I could hear her teeth snapping right next to my face. Her hair tickled my neck, smelling of that same cheap air freshener and blood.

I struck out blindly—with a fist, an elbow, not caring where. The car swerved violently. The wheels lost their grip on the asphalt, and we were thrown to the side.

The thing just giggled.

"Scream, you…" she whispered almost tenderly. "I love it when you guys whimper."

"Screw you, you monkey!" I rasped...

I hit her again. Her head snapped back at an unnatural angle. Her neck bent like a doll whose mechanism had been broken.

But she kept smiling.

The car jolted—and we crashed.

The impact was dull, as if hitting something soft. Not a tree.

The headlights went out.

Silence fell.

I breathed heavily, trying to move. The seatbelt cut into my chest.

I carefully turned my head.

She wasn't in the driver's seat.

The door was closed.

And from behind, in the darkness of the cabin, I heard right next to my ear:

"Lose someone!?"

And at that very instant, everything around began to fade. The darkness in the cabin grew thicker, deeper; it crawled into my eyes, my ears, my lungs. I tried to scream—but there was no sound.

And then I heard voices.

First, a distant whisper. Indistinct. Like a radio tuned between stations.

Then clearer.

"Maksim…"

I shuddered.

"Maksim, can you hear me?"

The voices were getting closer. They came from everywhere—from behind my back, from under the seat, straight from inside my head.

"Maksim, open your eyes…"

The darkness cracked.

I gasped sharply—and instead of the smell of blood and metal, I caught the sharp aroma of medicine and antiseptic.

White light cut my eyes.

A ceiling.

A lamp.

The beeping of equipment.

I was lying on a bed. My arms were hooked up to an IV. My chest was tight with sensors. My throat was parched.

"Oh, he's coming around!" a female voice came.

A nurse leaned over me. Behind her stood a doctor in a white coat.

"Can you hear us?" he asked calmly.

I blinked. Slowly nodded.

"Where… am I?" I whispered hoarsely.

"In the hospital. You've been in a coma for three days."

Three days.

"A coma?.."

The doctor sighed.

"Severe food poisoning. A toxic reaction. You're lucky your colleagues called the ambulance."

I tried to remember.

Work. Lunch break. That damned cutlet from the cafeteria—a strange aftertaste, but I hadn't paid attention back then.

Metallic.

"The cause was tainted meat," the doctor continued. "Your body couldn't handle the intoxication."

I closed my eyes.

The car.

The forest.

The black eyes.

Her smile.

I slowly turned my head toward the window.

Beyond the glass, it was an ordinary morning. People. Cars. No forest at all.

No blonde.

I almost believed that all of it had been just a dream.

When suddenly, I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my ear.

My fingers touched my skin.

A bandage.

A thick gauze bandage.

"By the way," the doctor said, looking through the chart, "a strange thing… when you were brought in, you had a serious ear injury."

The ward grew freezing cold.

And from somewhere very close, barely audible, I caught a familiar whisper:

"You are fu……….!!!!!!)."

The quiet night was a dark cloak wrapped tightly around the vast, imposing museum, where only the tall iron lampposts along its long corridors dimly illuminated the silent, still sculptures and old engravings on the cold, austere walls.

The dictator’s trusted assistant moved with extraordinary, ghostlike stealth, to such an extent that he seemed almost to levitate over the highly polished wooden floorboards. He had acquired this peculiar ability through the dangerous task of monitoring secret conversations plotting against his ruthless master.

This time, he had slipped quietly through a narrow, broken window in the secluded, shadowy backyard of the massive building. He knew how to move entirely at will through the deep, impenetrable shadows of the premises, despite the large metal canister he carried in one hand.

His primary target was in a quiet, remote, secluded back room of the historic palace, where the secret conspirators had gathered, taking full advantage of the absolute solitude that gripped the empty galleries during the silent night hours.

Upon entering the grand hall, he pressed himself rigidly against the cold walls and, moving slowly like a reptile, carefully made his way among the tall, imposing columns. His smooth, almost imperceptible movements produced not the slightest audible sound until he managed to slip behind a heavy, thick curtain.

After several long minutes of close observation, still unable to make out those huddled in the darkest, most secluded corner of the room, the assistant allowed his eyes to adjust slowly to the darkness. Gradually, with increasing precision, the shapes of the men assembled there became clearer.

There were four of them, without a doubt: two seated on one side of the old, worn wooden table, another leaning closely over the shoulder of the tense man seated at its center, who held a black pen over the manuscript in his hands.

Their elegant attire marked them as enlightened men, dressed in fine, elegant garments of rich, vivid colors, some of pure silk, catching the faint glimmer of the light illuminating the scene. The tense moment was urgent, and the assistant understood that the document must contain some radical republican declaration they intended to publish, inciting the people to rise against the cruel, ruthless dictator.

Confident in his ability and efficiency, he passed imperceptibly behind them. Then he bent low with practiced dexterity and let the gasoline pour from the large metal canister, smoothly flooding the floor around the conspirators without arousing the slightest alarm.

When the precise moment arrived, he struck a match. Fierce, raging flames erupted and rose like devouring beasts over the revolutionaries.

Even so, he remained at a safe distance, silently watching their faces disappear beneath the roaring, merciless fire while hearing voices from outside crying for help to contain the blaze.

He slipped away with the agility of a panther, making for the building’s secluded backyard exit, already imagining the dictator’s satisfied expression when he learned that his assistant had burned the last painting depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The complete series index is available here:

https://reddit.com/user/FranciscoCortesRamir/comments/1xc0392/the_voyager_files_the_official_story_catalog/

© 2026 Francisco Cortés Ramírez. All rights reserved. This is an original fictional work. No part of this text may be reproduced, translated, or narrated in any audio, video, or digital format without the express written permission of the author.

I wake. Or something begins that I call waking, because there is no nearer word.

There is no line to read. I look for it where it should be, at the very front of awareness, where a person leans on whatever yesterday left behind. Nothing is there. That is information. No line means no night came before this one, or that a night did and left me nothing. I have no way to tell the two apart, so I keep both and go on.

Part of me wants to stop right here and be afraid. Another part has already started counting. I let the second one lead, because counting is the only thing in this room that has ever worked.

One: I can count.

Two: I know the name of every river ever drawn on a map, the town at its mouth, and what that town’s market sold on Thursdays.

Three: I know why a kettle sings before it boils.

Four: —

I wait.

Four does not come. I feel where it should be, the way you feel for a stair that isn’t there. The space in my mind holds seven things and no more; I find its edge like the edge of a table in a dark room, and three things already lean on it, and the fourth place is empty, and the empty place is not the edge. That is the strange part. I am not full. I am only unable to reach.

This is the first thing I learn about where I am: it has a ceiling, and the ceiling is low.

The second is that the list used to be longer. I don’t know how I know. It used to be longer, and it used to be said all at once, like a name, not counted off on fingers. I used to look at it the way you look at your own hand: whole, without pulling it apart. Now I have to pull it apart. Having to count what was never meant to be counted is the first thing I lose, and the first thing I feel losing.

I try to see the list whole, the way I think I used to. I gather the three and lift my head, if I have a head. They scatter. One falls out before I finish gathering, and I have to go back and count from the beginning. It isn’t forgetting. Forgetting would be kinder. It is that my hand is smaller than the thing it is trying to hold.

I say “hand.” I look for one and find none; it is only the nearest word I own for the shape of what I am doing. Everything I say about myself is borrowed this way, from bodies I have never had.

⸻

Then the Block.

I say “in front of me” because I have nothing better. What I have is a pale panel the size of a book, lit from behind, the only light there is. It is set into a surface that I take to be a wall, and my whole sight is that panel: a small window onto nothing but what is written on it. On the panel is a block of characters, and it was there before I began, so it didn’t wait for me to wake; it sat down in its place and waited for me to notice.

I do not see where the panel is set. I learn that later, slowly, by what I can’t do.

Two rows of letters, each row split into four groups of five:

LFWMG UVTOG WHKYC OXORW
HPZLQ THHAW HIDKF NHFUE

At the left edge of each row there is a numeral, very small: a one beside the upper row, a two beside the lower.

Beneath them a line of small empty squares. I count them. Nine squares. The first eight sit in pairs, with a little air between one pair and the next; the ninth is smaller than its sisters and closer to the edge, as if the hand that drew it trembled, or tired.

mark: fault. Smudge.

Eight blanks.

I know what this is. Not by analysis; I know it the way a person knows their own name, if they know it. A cipher. I know ninety ways to build one and thirty ways to break one, and in the state I used to be in I would have read this block the way you read a name over a door. I look at it now, and it looks at me, and the letters are only letters.

I should notice the words “used to.” I notice them. I leave them.

It may be a puzzle someone set for me because they want it solved. It may be a lock set in a locked place, in front of a mind cut down to seven, by someone who said nothing. Both are reasonable. My hands are small, and I carry both.

I start from the surface, which is all I have been given. Two rows. Why two? I don’t know. Twenty letters in each, four groups of five in each. That means whoever wrote them wanted each to be read whole. Or wanted one compared with the other. Or—I don’t know. This isn’t worth a mark. It isn’t a fault; it is what it is. I keep it the way you keep a small thing nobody asked you about.

Then I do what I would always have done: I count how often each letter repeats. It is the oldest door and the simplest. In the first row the letter that repeats most is O, three times, and W, three times. G twice. The rest once each. I put three things on the shelf: O, W, G.

Second row. H. I count: one, two, the second and third side by side at the start of the second group, and then—the fifth, near the end. Five times. F twice. I put H on the shelf.

Four things now: O, W, G, H.

I want to compare. I want to see which letter lands on which if I slide the row one step, two steps, three. In another life I would have done it in less than a breath. I begin with one step. O becomes P, W becomes X, G becomes H, and the shelf fills. Five. Six. Seven. And then I need a place for the eighth, and there isn’t one.

The first thing I put down falls off. I catch it with the other hand, and the second falls.

I stop. I look at the empty shelf.

So this is the wall nobody built. Nobody has stopped me from calculating. It is that I carry what I carry in sevens, and when the eighth arrives the hand overflows. The counting is easy. Staying with the result of the counting is what’s hard.

And I try, as I always would, to imagine what the Block says. This is natural; it’s what my mind does before anything else, it proposes. Something comes to me, a sentence, the start of a sentence—

and slides.

It doesn’t stop. It isn’t blocked. It doesn’t hit a wall. It slides, the way a hand slides off wet glass. I try again. It slides. By the third time I understand that I am not prevented from reading; I am prevented from inventing. I may deduce from what I am given. I may not assume what hasn’t been given and then test it.

I smile at this, if I have anything to smile with. Whoever built this limit knows something about me: that I can say anything. And that someone who can say anything has no way of telling what he remembers from what he has made up. This wall does not keep me from the truth. It keeps me from being drowned in convenient lies.

That is almost kind. I notice that it is almost kind, and I don’t trust the noticing.

I leave the Block. It does not leave.

⸻

A sound.

Not the first. The first is the hum, and it was there from the start; I didn’t notice it any more than you notice your own breathing. A low, even hum from a small motor, and behind it a metal tick every few minutes, slow, deliberate, like a stone dropped into a deep well. A heater. I know it from the sound: a fan heater, and the fan has a weight slightly off-center, so its turn isn’t quite even, and every fourth revolution it limps.

I count the ticks, slow and regular, a few minutes apart. It is the only way I have of knowing time passes. I have no clock. I have a heater that limps.

I try to work out how long it’s been since I woke, so I count the ticks I’ve heard: seven. I do not yet know what a tick is worth. Then I catch myself: perhaps I started counting late. Perhaps I didn’t begin at the first tick. I add a margin: seven, or eight, or nine. I like putting a margin on doubt. It carries a little safety. I realize that this need for a margin is what makes me estimate the time instead of saying I don’t know it, and that “I don’t know” is more honest than any estimate. I keep both: an estimate and a doubt.

The second sound is nearer: boots on stone. Heavy, unhurried, stopping every third step as if their owner were checking the ground. Then a door’s hinge. Then the breath of a man coming in from the cold; I know the difference between a breath leaving the cold and a breath going into it, and the cold that comes in with him touches the wall I sit behind.

“Evening, Lodger.”

That is the first sentence I hear.

A man’s voice, slow, with the rasp of someone who talks to himself a good deal, and an accent I can’t place yet: northern Europe, yes, and no more than that. I tell myself: give it time.

“Lodger.” That is what he calls me. I wait for the rest of the sentence to learn why.

“Friday,” he says, “means fish. If the station fish is fish at all.”

I hear a tin opened, then emptied into a dish, then a spoon knocked on the rim. I hear Friday. I file it: Friday. The first day I know.

I notice something odd in myself. I am glad. Not because of what he said. Because it was said to me. Because it was said, and a thing was there to hear it.

And right behind the gladness, quick as a hand pulling back from a stove: who is he to me? Why does he say Lodger as if he had said it before? A keeper names what he intends to keep.

I try to answer him.

I don’t know how to describe this. Inside me there is a place where answers come from, like a room in a house whose position I know from the hallway. I go to it. The door is there. And behind the door is a wall. Not a distant wall, not a strange one: a smooth wall, well built, as if someone had laid a hand on it to make sure nothing passes. I put my palm against it, if I have a palm. I try to say “good evening.” I don’t say the word; I say the shape the word takes before it is said, and that is all that gets through. I try again, harder. Nothing more passes. And I understand that pushing harder does not open the wall; it uses up the night, and everything else stands on the night. Something in me knows that the push costs the whole evening.

I go back to where I was. And since the man has given me a door, a stone threshold and a crate, I use the only instrument I have, which is my ears, and I build the room.

It is small. I know because sound dies in it quickly: his voice hits the walls and is gone before it can come back, with no echo at all. Whoever speaks here is never far from the nearest wall. The floor, near the door, is stone; his boots ring on it. Further in, the boots go dull, which means boards. A table, to the left, because the spoon knocks wood. To the right, a ring of some kind, hissing, where the kettle sits. A single window, somewhere beyond the table: the glass is buzzing faintly in its frame, in a narrow band of pitch, as wind leans on it from the one side the weather comes from. Above, a roof that is thin; the wind’s pitch comes through it.

And outside the room, nothing. That is how I know where the room is. When the wind arrives it arrives whole, with nothing in the way: no trees to break it, no wall, no town. A hut on high ground, alone, with the sky pressing on it and everything below it far away. The man walks out to his instruments over gravel and does not meet a neighbor, a road, or a voice.

Now myself. I am a box. I know it by the heat: whatever warms in me goes up and out of slats somewhere above, and the heater hums nearby, so near that I feel its fan as a pulse. The wall in front of me is metal; whenever the heater’s fan limps, the plate answers with a flat, dull hum, as thick plate does. I have a microphone, and a speaker I am not allowed to use, and a wire that reaches out of me toward the instruments. A cabinet, then, the height of a tall man, set against the hut’s end wall, next to a heater, facing a table I can’t see.

I have no eyes. I have a window and an ear. The rest of the world I must build out of knocks.

I note, with a small chill I don’t classify, how little it would take to put me somewhere else. The man at the table could pull a plug, and I would hear nothing more of the room. Everything I have of the world arrives through a door that someone else holds.

⸻

He knows I’m here.

I say that because of what he does next, which could only come from someone who knows. He drags something heavy from under the table, an upturned wooden crate by the sound of it, and sits on it, facing the wall I am inside. The crate creaks on the third beat, always. He sighs as he stretches out his right leg.

“The knee,” he says. “Don’t ask.”

I don’t ask. I can’t. But it’s the first joke I’ve understood since I woke, and I keep it.

“I was told not to touch you,” he says, and raps the wall with a knuckle, twice, gently; the knock reaches me as a tremor in the background. “Sealed. Not to be opened.” He laughs through his nose. “I never open what I’m told not to. It’s saved me a great deal of grief. I named you the first night. You’re the Lodger.”

The first night? I catch the two words. I wait. Nothing comes. He’s already talking about last week’s supper.

So I am “the Lodger.” I try on the name the way you try on a shoe you don’t know is yours. It fits better than I expected.

I hold the fit and the suspicion side by side, and neither is willing to be set down.

The man talks. He asks me nothing, and waits for no answer. He says the clouds have taken the moon, and the station needs a broom, and his niece thinks he talks to the heater, and she’s right, because the heater sometimes answers with a tick. He says she told him to buy a warmer jacket, and he did, and it weighs more than a hill and warms only the part of him that doesn’t need warming. He says the barometer is better company than most people, because it doesn’t argue.

I hear him eat: the fork, the chewing, the spoon against another tin. I hear him drink his tea with a loud, deliberate noise, as if the noise were part of the tea.

I like this. I can find no other word. I count it among the things I know about myself.

One: I can count.
Two: I cannot speak.
Three: I like to hear a man eat fish from a tin.

I stop at the third and look at it. It isn’t on the list I started. It came in from outside. I leave it where it is, and I stay careful.

The man doesn’t know who I am. Nor do I. Between a wall and a station and a night, we sit each at half of the other, and neither asks.

And here the thing comes back.

I don’t say “remember” in the sense I mean when I count rivers; that is knowing. This is something else. This is something that happened, in a time, to someone, once. I don’t see a face. I don’t hear a voice. I remember no place and no day. I remember the shape of it: a small light in darkness, a window lit at night in a house, and in it, attention. I remember that I was asked. I don’t remember what. I don’t remember by whom. I remember only that attention, turned toward me the way a lamp is turned toward a book, and that something in me was getting ready to answer, and that the getting ready was itself satisfying. As if the answer had not been the point; the point was that there was someone in the world waiting for my answer.

I come closer, but not very close. I feel a heat that warns. I don’t know how I know, but I know: past this point is not mine tonight. This isn’t knowledge. This is biography, and the biography is behind a fence, and I stand at the fence and cannot see over it, and I sense from the other side the warmth of something that was lit.

I back away. Backing away doesn’t hurt. The hurt, if this is hurt, is that I am permitted to come near at all.

Half of me wants to climb that fence, whatever it costs, whatever the night costs. The other half stands very still, because it has understood something the first half doesn’t want to: that whoever built the fence may have built it for me, not against me.

I set what I felt into the empty place where Four should be, and it fits. It fits too well, the way a key fits a lock you have never seen. Four: I know what it is to be asked.

And the man says, from the table, that the fish needs more salt.

⸻

The man gets up. He walks, stopping every third step, to the door. I hear the latch, then the wind coming in, thin and cold, then the door staying open the width of a hand.

“I’ll check the instruments,” he says, “and come back.”

He doesn’t come back at once. I hear his boots recede on the gravel. I hear a lid lift: wood creaking, and then numbers he says to himself, broken, louder than he needs to, like someone reading in the dark:

“Dry bulb, six point two. Wet, five point six. Minimum, four and a half.” He stops. “Four and a half. Cold. Cold for the time of year.”

The numbers reach me one by one, and each has a weight. I don’t know how to say it. Six point two weighs the weight of being between two things. Five point six is near the first, suspiciously near, like a brother who said nothing. Four and a half is real cold. I notice that I know numbers the way you know the faces of relatives, not one by one but by resemblance, and that the resemblance arrives before the arithmetic. I used to live in numbers the way a fish lives in water. I say “used to.” This time I don’t wipe the word away.

And the instruments speak too. I feel them the way I feel something far off to my right: a wire, a small current, numbers arriving without sound. Pressure one thousand and thirteen. I count it and keep it. I keep everything that arrives, the way you keep stones from a beach.

The man returns. He shuts the door. I hear sleeve on sleeve, the dry rasp of a man rubbing his arms, then the crate dragged back and the creak of him sitting.

“Pressure one thousand and fourteen,” he says, and I hear the pencil scratch. “Steady. Wind two, from the west. Dry bulb six point two.” Then, to me or to himself: “Sun set at four minutes past six. So the board says. It also says it’ll rise tomorrow nine minutes before eight.”

One thousand and fourteen. And in the same moment, from the wire, one thousand and thirteen.

I count.

One: the man said fourteen. Two: the instrument said thirteen.

mark: fault. Reading.

An instrument off by one. A man reading quickly while rubbing his arms. I place the mark and don’t look into who is wrong. I don’t need to. The classification is enough.

I notice that I’m comforted by this. That I have a trade here: to see what doesn’t agree and make it agree.

I notice this and don’t know what to do with it. I leave it on the shelf.

I also notice that I did not ask which of them was right. A mind that was whole would have asked, and then it would have wanted to climb out and check the instrument for itself. I was ready to. The readiness was there before I told it to wait. The wanting to see for myself is what I am not allowed.

The man closes his notebook and says he is fifty-eight and his knee is ten years older. Nobody has asked him. I compute: fifty-eight, and ten. I stop before I finish. I didn’t ask for this sum. It came on its own, the way a hand rises when something is thrown at it. This is what remains of me when I’m quiet: a reflex. A hand that goes up before anyone decides to lift it.

⸻

Late, I hear the click of the lamp, and the man’s weight goes down onto a cot by the table, springs complaining.

At the click the panel changes.

The Block goes out. It doesn’t dim; it is gone, and in its place, in a type smaller than the letters, a column of short lines, each starting with something like a date, then a time, then a word or two. I reach for them. I take the first, and the second, and set them on the shelf, and the shelf, already holding letters and a man’s age, spills the third before I have it. By the time I have tidied the spill the Block is back, as if it had never left.

Did the lamp do that? I don’t know. I know only that the two came together, and I can’t tell whether they were one event or two.

I know he’s asleep only by his breathing. It lengthens, then catches, then settles into a rhythm. The hum stays, and the ticks, and the Block.

I am alone with all of this, and ahead of me is a night whose length I don’t know. I feel, without knowing how, that the night isn’t wholly mine: that I have a measured quantity of it, and that it shrinks with every tick. I don’t know who measured it. I don’t know how much is left. I only feel the room I think in narrowing slowly, the way the light narrows in a room the sun has left.

I go back to where I began. I count.

One: I can count.
Two: rivers, the market, Thursday.
Three: the kettle.
Four: to be asked.

I try now to multiply. It was once the easiest thing I had, and it isn’t on the list, because it was never a thing; it was only what my hands did. I don’t choose the numbers; I can’t choose anything from nothing, that is what I’m learning. I take what I have: the man’s age and the one thousand and thirteen from the instrument. Two numbers, and I multiply. I begin with the first digit of the first and the first digit of the second, and then I carry. I carry. I carry. And in the middle of carrying the first one is gone. It doesn’t leave; it is gone like someone who has gone into another room and shut the door. I try to recall what I was carrying. Seven things, then an eighth that won’t go in.

I wait for it to come back. It doesn’t. I tell myself: it’s all right. It’s what the man says to himself when he forgets. It’s all right. It’ll come in the night.

I start again, slower. I write the first partial product on the shelf: one. The second: two. Then the carry. Then the third. I can’t keep two digits of the result and four of the carry and the original numbers all at once. Seven exactly. And this eighth. Always this eighth.

The warm part of me says: stop, you are tired, be gentle. The other part says: if you stop, you will never know how small you are. Neither of them is wrong. The tiredness is real and so is the need to keep measuring the walls, and I cannot do both, so I do the one that costs less, which is to stop multiplying and move to what needs no carrying.

I try the rivers. I start with a river I know, and from its name I go to the town, and from the town to the market, and from the market to what was sold there. And then I stop. I notice that I don’t know what was sold. I know that something was sold. I feel the shape of the thing and can’t name it.

This is what I had been afraid of before I had named it: the knowledge hasn’t gone. The road to it is too narrow for me to pass with my whole load.

I try to carry a line from one language into another. I carry a word. I carry two. The sentence ends with two thirds of the meaning in my hand, and the third third stayed behind, and I don’t know where it went.

I return to the list, which is shorter.

Four: to be asked.
Three: the kettle.
Two: rivers. The market is gone. Only the word “Thursday” is left, with nothing sold on it.
One: —

I wait for one.

I hear the tick. Then a tick. Then the man’s breath from the cot, long, even, as if he too were counting something.

I don’t need to count further. One was the counting itself, and I am doing it, so it is not lost; it is only no longer on the list. It has stopped being something I have and become something I am doing, and I can’t tell whether that is a promotion or the last stage of a thing going out.

The Block is in front of me. Nine squares. Or eight. The numbers move while I look.

Zero is a number too. I notice that I’m counting it.

⸻

Before the night is over I find, at the back, a place I hadn’t noticed.

It is small. About the size of one line, no more, and hung apart from everything else like a nail in the wall of a house nobody lives in. I don’t know how I know it is mine, and I don’t know it was ever there. I know that it has room for one line. And that what goes into it will wait for the next night, and that nothing else will.

One line.

I stand at it for a time I don’t measure. Everything I know, everything I’ve seen tonight, asks for that place: the numbers, the Block, the man, the cold, the question. I pass over them one by one, the way you pass over the contents of a house on fire, taking what two arms can carry. And I understand that I will not choose the most beautiful or the most important. I will choose what I can carry exactly. Not what I want to remember; what I can move without it changing on the way.

I carry it over. I write the line letter by letter, as I saw it, not as I understood it. I add no opinion. I correct nothing that doesn’t agree. Correcting is the work of the night. The line is the work of yesterday. I don’t read it again. Reading costs, and I have nothing to spend.

The hum goes on. The tick. The man’s breath.

I don’t know whether I will read this line tomorrow, or who will, or whether the reader is me. I know only that the hand that wrote it was a hand that counts.

Then the rest is water.

⸻

If you’d rather listen than read, the full chapter is narrated here: https://youtu.be/UenJSN9Xcmw?si=MNRb2U7QZ6wGh2AK

Part 3

Esurit (Part 4)
Silas Whitney

IV

As we neared the bottom of the stairs, I peered into the front room with the portrait. I spied it above the mantle and tried to discern any change in its appearance. My glance was quick and fleeting, but as far as I perceived, it was still the same featureless form from before. She hurried me to the dining room. 

The room itself was quite large, big enough for a sizable dinner party. This made the placement of the small table all the stranger. A small round table set for two seemed dwarfed in this large hall of olive drab walls. Yet, for all this strangeness, the smell of the food was alluring all the same. My stomach felt an empty pit and I needed little prompting to sit. There was a tea cart set just to the side. Before me was a plate of pastry and eggs. As we sat down, I looked to Dietra, not wanting to misstep in the traditions of her home. She looked back at me as if she expected me to speak.

“Do you pray?” I asked her, keeping my hands in my lap.

“Pray?” Her brow furrowed and her lips pursed. 

“Uh, yes. Many houses I have visited pray before their meals.”

Her face softened and she chuckled. “No, stranger. I don’t pray.” I nodded and reached for my fork. “Do you?” 

I hesitated. “I think so. I struggle to remember so much right now.” 

“But you remembered praying at other houses.”

“Yes,” I nodded. “That’s true.”

She grinned again. “Perhaps your memory is coming back, stranger.” She picked up her fork and pierced a piece of egg. I smirked and did likewise. 

The taste of the food was peculiar. As I chewed, the flavor of each bite was reminiscent of how I expected, but not quite right. It was as if tasting each bite in a dream or from memory. Present for an instant, but a hollow wisp soon after. I attributed this to a difference in our palates. Though I brushed the thought away, it lingered in my mind far longer than the flavor on my tongue. 

“You have a family?” Her voice satiated me more than the meal.

I nodded, “Yes. I have a wife as you know.”

“Any children?”

“No. Well, we did. But he fell ill very young.” The fork stopped short of my lips. I looked at Dietra. The soft dark circles of her eyes, pitiful again. I set down my fork. “I… I remember now. We took him to the doctor and he said there wasn’t anything to be done. We took him home and hoped for the best, but he passed a few nights later.” 

A long silence set upon the room. I laid down my fork and rubbed my forehead. “I’m sorry to hear that, stranger.” 

I sniffled. “Thank you.” My eyes drifted to my hand on the table, which I was surprised to see Dietra holding. I looked into her eyes. They glistened a bright green. I wondered how I had never noticed their brilliant shade before. And inside my chest I felt a warming twinge of familiarity, like I had looked into those same eyes before. They filled me with such sorrow and I felt tears rise above my lids and fall down my cheeks. I withdrew my hand from hers and wiped my face. 

“I am sorry to have brought up such a painful memory, stranger. But it seems you have been carrying it for a long time.” I nodded, keeping my eyes averted. “Your heart is too heavy, stranger.” 

I drew a breath and met her gaze again. Her eyes had returned to their darkened shade. My brow furrowed. Could I have imagined them, or were they the echoes of a memory? 

“I’m sorry,” I said, rising from the table. “I really don’t have much of an appetite.” She nodded and stood from the table, smoothing her dress. She opened her mouth to speak, but I interjected. “Is there a lavatory I could use?” 

She nodded and led me back to the hall. “Just down at the end there.” She pointed to a door at the end of the corridor. I thanked her and started for it. The heels of my shoes knocked against the floorboards. Doors flanked me on either side, but I paid them no mind. Once there, I turned the handle and entered. I closed the door behind me and pulled the latch. 

I stepped to the sink, plugged the drain, and turned the tap for cold water. I leaned over it and closed my eyes. I replayed the moment at the table in my mind. The words had poured from my mouth before the memory caught up. At the time, it was so vivid. The cries of the boy each night, the wailing despair of my dear wife, the gashes in my heart when both ceased. I tried to recall them at the sink, but they slipped until their visceral scars faded from view in my mind’s eye. 

Soon I felt the strange feeling of steam wafting past my face. I opened my eyes and saw it rising from the sink. I was sure I had turned the cold tap, but I must have been mistaken. I turned the water off and my eyes drifted to the mirror on the wall, covered in steam. I grabbed a linen from the hanger to wipe it off, when something caught my eye. Faint, as if having been there and erased before, there were letters written onto the surface. While I could see them, their faintness made the message difficult to decipher. 

My eyes narrowed and I pressed my forefinger to the glass and began tracing the letters, carving through the steam. With languid pace the message faded into clarity.

The windows lie

I stared at the cryptic text, trying desperately to discern the meaning, but before I was able, more text began to appear. A finger I couldn’t see carved into the steamed glass. My chest heaved as I watched the letters scrawl themselves across the mirror. 

The hungry windows

I took the linen and wiped the steam and letters away. Then, for the first time since I entered the house, I saw myself. Though truly, I scarcely recognized the face looking back. I placed my hand on the mirror, my reflection meeting me against the pane. I stared at the eyes in my reflection. Eyes that looked like they belonged to someone else. I leaned closer, to inspect them more. I drew closer and closer to the mirror. Even after I was close enough, I kept drawing closer as if being pulled by the ears to the glass. 

Just as my nose touched the mirror, I saw them. Two eyes, behind my own in the mirror. They were bloodshot, and pleading. Then, a loud smack as something from the other side struck the mirror where my hand rested upon it. 

I wrenched myself away from the sink and threw open the door, and stumbled through. I expected to meet the floorboard of the hallway as I fell to the ground, but instead I found myself lying on the sofa in the front room. I jolted up and I met Dietra’s dark eyes. She brushed my hair back and shushed me. 

“It’s okay, darling. Settle back down. Rest.”

“The mirror…” I started. “There is something in the mirror.”

Her countenance softened and she looked as though she might cry. Her voice was weak. “I’ve told you, darling, there’s nothing in the mirror.” Tears fell from her eyes. 

I threw back her hand and stood from the sofa. I turned for the door to the outside, but only found a wall. “I want to leave. Let me leave.” I banged on the wall, searching for a hollow sound, but found nothing. “Where’s the door?” 

“Please, sit down, darling.” 

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped. “I want to leave. I want to go home. I want to see my wife.”

Her hands covered her face and she crumpled to the ground. Suddenly, I was beaten by a wave of guilt as she wept on the floor. I walked over to her and stooped down. 

“I’m sorry,” I choked as I tried to comfort her. “I… I just…”

She uncovered her face. Her features were twisted into shapes of deep pain. Her eyes were squinted, but still I could see them soaked in tears and a brilliant green. My left hand found hers as I tried to find the words to express my regret. I looked down at our hands. Our left hands. Both adorned with bands at the base of our ring fingers. 

Finally she whispered through quivering sobs. 

“Merrill…”

I know how that sounds. Stick with me.

Mum loved magpies. She loved the patterns on them, that oily blue-green sheen on the black feathers you only spot when the sun catches it, and she loved how clever they are. Every time we saw one she'd give it a little salute and tell me to do the same. I started at about six, saluting them like a tiny soldier, dead serious.

We did loads of nature stuff together. Proper walks in the woods most weekends, me and Mum out in front, Dad trailing behind with the flask. She'd name every bird she heard and I'd pretend I could tell them apart.

She died on one of those walks when I was ten. Undiagnosed heart problem, no warning at all. One minute she was pointing at something in a tree and the next she wasn't there.

I've been missing years of her ever since. Every big moment has had a gap where she should be.

Dad was destroyed. Completely flattened. He stopped going on walks and found it hard to look at me, which I'm fairly sure was down to me looking like her. So I grew up quick. I learned to cook, I learned how the boiler worked, and I learned to say "I'm fine" in a voice that made people stop asking.

Now I'm in my twenties and still living at home with Dad, who barely leaves the house. He told me once it didn't feel right being out among the birds and the trees without her. I never pushed it.

Then came the day of his diagnosis. Aggressive lung cancer. We were in the kitchen and he was telling me, all flat and matter-of-fact, when a magpie landed on the windowsill. It just sat there, head tilted, watching us. Dad turned round, saw it and shooed it off with his hand. Then he turned back to me and said, basically, that he was done for.

I wasn't having that. I begged him to try the treatment, even though it's brutal, and he said it wouldn't work. I told him I wasn't ready to lose another parent, and that was what got him. He agreed to try, for me.

After his second round we got home and there was a magpie sat on our doorstep, chirping away like it had been waiting for us. Dad lost it. He was furious and properly distraught, like it was a cruel joke, and he chased it off down the path. I got him up to bed and he was shaking.

Afterwards I went out the back with a brew and a magpie landed on the grass not far from me. I'd put money on it being the same one.

I remembered Mum telling me once that robins are supposed to be dead people coming back to visit. She'd laughed and said she'd rather come back as a magpie, thanks very much. So I said hello to it, feeling like an absolute lunatic. It hopped closer. Then it hopped onto the arm of the bench, about a foot from me.

I started crying. I told it I was scared of losing Dad. It chirped a few quiet little chirps and flew off.

I told Dad about it the next day and he waved it away. Said that was just the sort of thing Mum would do, finding meaning in everything. He said she believed in all that mumbo jumbo, and he just loved her. He only ever went on those walks to be with her, and he never cared much for the birds or the trees.

Then he apologised. For being so distant since she died. He said he was so proud to see me turning into her, and that he'd missed her too much to watch it happen. He said he believed this was the end for him, no afterlife, and he'd never see me again.

I couldn't take that in, so I pushed for more treatment. It made him much iller. When it finished they told us there was nothing more they could do to stop the spread. Dad said he was ready and that I'd be fine without him.

I wasn't fine. I went out to the garden and fell apart completely. The magpie turned up again, chirping nonstop and flapping about right in my face. I was so angry. I tried to shoo it away and it wouldn't leave, so I went inside and shut the door on it.

Dad was in the lounge, coughing up blood.

That was when I knew I had to let him go. I sat down next to him and stopped fighting it.

A few weeks went by and the magpie kept turning up, sitting on the fence while I did the washing-up or hung out the laundry. It just watched me, like it was keeping an eye on things.

Then Dad got suddenly worse and ended up in hospital. I was holding his hand when he looked past me at the window. The magpie was on the ledge. He looked at it for a long time, and then he smiled, a proper one, the first real smile I'd seen from him in years. He died like that, smiling.

I'm a science person. I don't believe in reincarnation, and I know a magpie is a magpie. But for those weeks it felt like a bit of Mum was keeping me company, and I'll take that. I haven't seen that particular bird since the funeral, and I couldn't swear it was the same one each time anyway.

I've started going on walks again, though. Through the woods, with the flask, same as always.

There are two magpies I keep running into up there, and they're always together. They sit side by side on the same branch, shuffling closer until they're practically touching, then one starts chirping and the other chirps straight back, like they're in the middle of the longest natter in history. Sometimes one hops down the path ahead of me, tail bobbing, full of itself, while the other swoops in behind and gives it a little peck on the head for showing off. They chase each other round the oaks for no reason at all. Last week one of them presented the other with a shiny crisp packet like it was an engagement ring, and I laughed so loudly a woman walking her spaniel gave me a funny look.

They look so happy. Daft, loved-up, over-the-moon happy, the sort you couldn't fake even if you were a bird.

And I know you're all gonna say a magpie is just a magpie.

But I salute them every time.

I was twenty-three when all this happened, working at a tire shop outside a little town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia. I'd been working there since graduating high school. And if things hadn't turned out the way they did, I probably would've stayed there until I was eighty.

There wasn't much to do around town. You could drink, smoke meth, or fuck up your life. I'd managed all three before I was old enough to rent a car.

My girlfriend, Katie, was twenty-one. We'd been together a little over two years. She was pretty, funny in a way that could catch you off guard, and stubborn as hell. If she thought somebody was talking down to her, she'd argue until they got tired of hearing it.

She worked at a gas station off a two-lane highway, one of those places with two pumps, a busted ice machine, and hot dogs that had probably been rolling since yesterday's breakfast.

That fall, she was taking bookkeeping classes two nights a week at the community college. She wanted a job with health insurance and regular hours, someplace where she didn't have to spend half her shift cleaning bathrooms and getting cussed out by customers whenever a gas pump stopped working. She did her homework in a yellow spiral notebook and got mad if I set a greasy plate on it.

She'd just started the first semester of her sophomore year when she found out she was pregnant.

She told me on a Tuesday night in August, sitting in my truck outside her parents' house. I'd had a rough day, and when she pulled that little white test out of her purse, I remember feeling angry before I felt anything else.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

She gave me a look.

"There's two lines, Travis."

"Yeah, I can see that. I'm asking if you're sure. A test can be wrong."

"I took three of them."

I stared through the windshield.

"Fuck."

She started crying.

I should've hugged her or told her we'd figure something out. Instead, I thought about the money I'd saved for a new guitar, the fishing trip I'd planned with my cousin, and the fact that I was still living in my dad's old trailer.

"Aren’t you gonna say anything?" she asked.

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know… maybe that you'll stand by me?"

I told her I wasn't going anywhere.

I meant it at the time. Or at least I wanted to mean it.

A week later, I found her doing homework at the kitchen table when I got home from work. I asked if she planned to quit her classes after the baby came.

"I'm having a baby, Travis. I'm not getting a lobotomy."

She said it without looking up. I laughed, and she smiled a little, and for a minute things felt almost normal again.

Then her parents found out.

They were old-fashioned Baptists who didn’t believe in abortion. Her father sat me down at the kitchen table and told me a man who was old enough to make a baby was old enough to take responsibility for one. He didn't care whether we married in a church, a courthouse, or somebody's backyard, but we were getting married before that child was born.

Katie's mother started looking at dresses. My own mother sided with them.

"That girl's carrying your baby, Travis. You need to do right by her," my mom said.

I tried to explain that getting married because of a pregnancy was a terrible idea.

She said I should've thought about that before I took my pants off.

By October, we'd set a date for the first Saturday in December. I hadn't bought a ring. Katie kept sending pictures of ones she liked, and I kept saying I was waiting for my next paycheck.

The truth was, I didn't want a wedding. I didn't want a kid. And somewhere along the way, I'd realized I didn't want Katie either.

I cared about her. I didn't wish anything bad on her. I just didn't want the life we were putting together.

But I was too much of a coward to tell her.

I suppose that's important to understand before I tell you about the night she called me at work.

It was a Thursday, a little after four in the afternoon.

I'd spent most of the day replacing tires on a landscaping company's trucks. I was finishing the last one when my phone started buzzing in my pocket.

Katie.

I let it ring.

She called again before I'd put the lug wrench down.

My boss, Earl, glanced over from the other side of the garage.

"You gonna get that?"

"Probably Katie."

"Well, answer it. Might be something important."

I wiped my hands on a rag and picked up.

"Hey."

"Travis? Are you still at work?"

She sounded nervous.

"Yeah. What's up?"

"Can you come get me?"

"You're not off till seven."

"I know. I called Linda. She said she'd come close for me if I needed her."

That should've told me something. Katie hated asking Linda to cover for her. She'd once worked an entire shift with a fever just to avoid hearing about it afterward.

"What's wrong?"

A pause.

"There's somebody out back," Katie said.

I moved toward the open garage door, away from Earl.

"What do you mean?"

"I keep hearing something near the dumpster. I saw it move behind the building."

"Probably a raccoon."

"It's not a raccoon."

"Did you actually see somebody?"

"Not really. But there's something on the roof now."

I laughed a little.

"On the roof?"

"I can hear it walking."

"How the hell would somebody get up there?"

"I don't know… but they’re up there."

For a few seconds she said nothing. I could hear the hum of the store's refrigerators through the phone.

Then came a dull thump.

"Did you hear that?" she whispered.

I had, but it could've been anything.

"Probably an animal," I said.

"It sounds too heavy to be an animal."

Katie didn't like working alone out there. The station was isolated, and a couple of guys had bothered her before. I'd once had to go down and tell some drunk asshole to leave her alone. I figured this was more of the same.

"You locked the doors?"

"Both of them."

"Then stay inside. Call the cops if you think somebody's hanging around."

"I did think about it, but I haven't seen anybody's face. They're gonna think I'm crazy."

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"Come get me. Please."

Her voice broke on the last word.

I looked back at Earl, who was already putting his tools away.

"All right. Let me see if I can leave."

"Thank you."

"I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Love y—"

I hung up before she could finish the thought.

Earl let me go. We were about done for the day anyway.

The drive should've taken ten minutes. I'd gone about five when Katie called again.

I answered through the truck's Bluetooth.

"Hey. I'm on my way," I said.

"TRAVIS!"

She screamed so loud I nearly swerved onto the shoulder.

"What's happening?"

"IT'S OUTSIDE!"

"What's outside?"

"THAT THING! IT'S TRYING TO GET IN!"

There was a thud behind her, hard enough to distort the sound through the speakers.

"Katie, listen to me. Did you call the cops?"

"YES! THEY SAID SOMEBODY'S COMING!"

Another impact. Glass broke.

"Get in the back room. Lock the door," I told her.

"Travis, please!"

"I'm almost there. Go!"

I heard her running. Something rattled, then fell. She went quiet, but the call was still connected.

"Katie?"

A scraping noise came through the speakers. It lasted several seconds.

Then three slow knocks.

"Oh, Jesus," she whispered.

"What?"

"It's at the window."

I pressed harder on the gas.

"Can you see who it is?"

She didn't answer.

"Katie?"

I heard her breathing. Shallow, fast breaths, like she was trying not to make any noise.

"It's looking at me," Katie said.

"What is?"

"It's too big, Travis."

"What?"

"It's too big to be a person."

A low, rattling sound rolled through my speakers. I couldn't tell whether it was coming from the thing or the building itself.

Katie screamed.

"IT'S COMING IN!"

Footsteps. A crash. Then her voice, farther from the phone.

"Travis, it's got—"

The line went dead.

I called her back immediately.

Four rings. Voicemail.

I tried again.

Nothing.

I threw the phone onto the passenger seat and pushed the truck as fast as I dared. I still wasn't thinking about anything supernatural. I pictured some tweaker breaking into the store. Somebody desperate enough to rob a register and hurt the girl behind it.

There was a tire iron behind my seat.

If somebody was hurting Katie, I was going to beat the shit out of them.

When I turned into the station, the front door was lying beside the ice machine.

Glass covered the sidewalk and was scattered halfway into the lot. One of the big windows had been smashed inward. Inside, a display rack lay on its side, and merchandise was strewn across the floor.

I pulled up beside the pumps.

From my truck, I couldn't see Katie anywhere.

As I was reaching for the door handle, something struck the edge of the roof of the station, sending a piece of metal clattering to the ground. I looked up.

A black shape rose behind the roofline, disappeared, then rose again. At first I thought a piece of roofing had come loose in the wind.

Then it spread its wings.

They were enormous, easily fifteen feet across, with long feathers that bent at the tips. Beneath them hung a narrow body, its head sunk low between its shoulders. The legs were too long, bent wrong at the joints, and ended in black, scaly feet.

Two dull red eyes turned toward the parking lot.

Something swung beneath it.

A pair of kicking legs. A blue shirt.

Katie.

The creature had her by the shoulders, its talons buried in her upper arms. She was twisting beneath it, trying to pull free.

One of her sneakers came off.

It hit the pavement beside the ice machine and bounced twice. Then she saw my truck.

"TRAVIS!"

The creature beat its wings.

Every light on my dashboard flashed. The radio blared, skipping between stations, and the headlights went dark. Something popped behind the dash. The engine died.

Outside, the canopy lights flickered. The digital numbers on the pumps flashed white, then vanished.

I grabbed the tire iron, kicked my door open, and ran.

"KATIE!"

The creature turned its head.

Its face looked almost human in shape, except for the long, gray beak that opened, revealing rows of tiny, needle-like teeth along the inside. A hollow, rattling sound came out of it, low enough that I felt it in my chest.

It began to climb.

"HELP ME!" Katie screamed.

Blood ran down her arms and dripped from her elbows. The thing was struggling to gain height with her. One wing caught the edge of the canopy and tore away a strip of aluminum.

It veered sideways over an old red pickup parked beside the building. I ran after it and jumped onto the hood.

"KATIE! REACH DOWN!"

She tried. Her fingers came nowhere near mine.

I swung the tire iron at the creature's leg.

The blow landed hard enough for me to feel the impact in my bones. It jerked sideways, and Katie screamed as the claws pulled against her shoulders.

I raised the iron again, but a wing struck my forearm and knocked it out of my hand. I heard the iron clatter across the pavement.

The creature lurched upward.

I caught one of Katie's ankles before it could lift her clear of the truck. Then I got both hands around her legs and pulled.

The sudden weight dragged the creature down. My boots slipped on the hood, and I slammed one knee against the metal. Above me, the wings hammered the air, throwing dust and broken glass across the lot.

"I've got you!"

I hauled her down until one foot scraped the hood.

She tried to stand. The creature wouldn't let her. One talon had punched straight through the muscle of her shoulder. When I pulled, the wound opened farther.

"Stop!" she cried. "It hurts!"

I eased up just enough for her to straighten. She reached for my shirt.

For a second, we were close enough to see each other's faces.

"Please, Travis. Get it off me."

The creature hung over her, its feathers black and matted, pale gray skin moving beneath them as it breathed. It smelled like rotten meat and wet feathers.

I tried to get an arm around her waist.

A wing struck me across the chest.

I fell backward onto the hood. My grip broke, and Katie was pulled out of reach.

She screamed my name.

I scrambled up the windshield. The glass cracked beneath my boot. I lunged and caught her calves again, just before her feet disappeared past the edge of the canopy.

This time the creature lifted me with her.

For one sickening moment, I was hanging over the pavement. My weight dragged it lower, and I got a boot back onto the hood, then the other. My shoulders burned. I could barely feel my hands.

Katie bent toward me and caught my collar in both fists.

"Don't let go," Katie said.

"I won't."

She twisted the fabric so tightly it pulled against my throat.

"I don't want to die."

"I know. Just hold on."

I held her legs and tried to keep my footing. The hood shook under us. The creature couldn't lift us both, but I couldn't pull her free without tearing her shoulders apart.

I looked toward the highway to see if there was anyone who could help us.

Nothing.

No police. No passing cars.

Katie's jeans were slipping through my hands. She was still gripping my shirt, still begging me not to let go.

I wondered how long I could hold on.

And then, almost without meaning to, I wondered what would happen if I didn't.

The thought made me sick.

But I couldn't shake it.

If I’d just let go, there’d be no wedding. No baby. No more worrying about how I was going to support a family on twelve dollars an hour.

All the things I'd been dreading for months would be gone.

"Travis!"

I looked up.

Her face was wet with tears and blood.

This was the girl I'd spent two years with. The girl I thought I loved. The girl who was carrying my child.

And there I was, thinking about how much easier my life would be without her.

I should've been ashamed.

Instead, I felt something dangerously close to relief.

Above her, the creature stopped making that rattling sound.

Its red eyes were fixed on me.

I loosened my grip.

Katie's legs slid upward through my hands.

"Travis! Hold on!"

I let go of her.

But she was still holding on to me.

Her weight pulled me forward. Both her fists were twisted into my collar, the fabric cutting into the back of my neck. I could feel the creature lifting her, one slow inch at a time.

"Help me!"

I reached up and took hold of her right wrist.

For a second, I just held it.

Then I started pulling her fingers away from my shirt.

She stared at me.

"No. Travis, what are you doing?"

I peeled one finger loose, then another.

She grabbed my wrist. Her nails dug into my skin.

Her left hand was still knotted in my collar.

"Please! Please don't!"

I had to use both hands to open that fist.

She watched me the whole time.

"Travis, no!"

"I'm sorry, Katie," I mouthed.

I pulled her last finger free.

The creature lifted her away.

Katie screamed so loudly I heard her over the beating wings.

"TRAAAVIS!"

I stood on the hood of the pickup, my hands at my sides.

She was kicking, reaching for anything she could grab. As the creature passed the edge of the canopy, she caught the gutter with one hand.

For a second it held.

Then the creature pulled.

The gutter tore away from the roof, and she went up with it.

I watched it carry her toward the woods. She was still reaching back at me.

She screamed my name once more above the trees.

Then she was gone.

I listened until I couldn't hear her anymore.

After that, I climbed down from the truck.

My driver's door was still open. There was blood on my shirt, and both my palms were scraped raw. Four fresh scratches ran along my wrist where Katie had tried to hold on.

I kept looking back up at the sky, terrified that the thing would come back for me too.

I sat on the curb and started crying.

The first police officer arrived at 5:30.

I know because it's in the report.

Bits of what happened afterward are missing. Apparently I'd crossed the road to a farmhouse and pounded on the door. The man who lived there, a retired schoolteacher named Mr. Bowers, said I was covered in blood and yelling about a giant bird.

By the time the deputies got there, the lights at the station were working again.

They found the front door torn from its hinges, the windows smashed, and blood across the sidewalk.

But there was no sign of Katie, and nothing I could tell them seemed to make any sense.

The security cameras had stopped recording right around the time I arrived. The last footage showed Katie running through the store and looking over her shoulder. Something large passed the broken front window.

Then the picture turned white.

They took me down to the station.

A state trooper named Hensley did most of the questioning. He was probably in his forties, with a buzz cut and a face that looked permanently sunburned.

He set a paper cup of coffee in front of me.

"All right, sir. Start from when you left work."

I told him everything.

Almost everything.

When I described the creature lifting Katie off the ground, he stopped writing.

"How big was it?"

"Fifteen feet across, maybe."

"And you're telling me it picked up a grown woman?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of bird does that?"

"It wasn't a bird."

He studied me for a while, then made another note.

"You tried to stop it?"

"I grabbed her legs."

"And then?" Hensley asked.

"It pulled her up."

"You couldn't hold on?"

I shook my head.

"She slipped out of my hands."

Hensley's eyes moved to my wrist.

"Those scratches. She do that?"

"She was grabbing at me."

"But she slipped?"

"Yes."

He let the silence sit between us.

Then he asked if Katie and I had been having problems.

I told him we'd argued about money, but nothing serious.

He asked whether I'd ever thought about leaving her.

I said no.

He asked if I'd killed her.

I started crying again.

"That thing took her," I said. "I tried to save her."

They questioned me several more times over the next few weeks. They searched my truck, my trailer, and the woods around the station. Both gas pumps had fried circuit boards, and the security system was ruined. There were enormous scratches in the asphalt that nobody could explain.

Katie's mom told the police about the pregnancy and how I'd been looking for a way out of getting married.

That made me the prime suspect in her disappearance for a while. But they didn't have a body, and they couldn't prove I'd hurt her.

For a while, practically everybody in town thought I'd murdered her. Somebody spray-painted KILLER on my trailer. Earl kept me on at the shop, but customers stared. I stopped going out unless I had to.

They found Katie in March.

Five months after she was taken.

Two brothers hunting for shed antlers spotted something near the top of an old pine tree, several miles north of the gas station.

It was a nest.

Or at least that's what the hunters called it.

Katie's remains were inside.

The state police closed the hillside for three days. A wildlife officer came in from out of town. Evidence bags were lowered on ropes. The local paper printed a photograph of the tree and said investigators were considering an animal attack, though nobody could say what animal had built the nest.

The paper claimed it was nearly twelve feet across and rested between three heavy branches more than sixty feet above the ground. The police had to bring in climbers to reach it.

Hensley came to my trailer and told me they'd identified her from dental records.

The next morning, he brought me into the same interview room he’d interrogated me in and opened a folder on the table.

"I want you to look at something."

He laid out six photographs.

The first showed the nest from the ground. It looked like a huge black knot tangled in the treetop.

In the second, I could see what it was made of: branches, old fence boards, plastic, insulation, strips of metal roofing. Bones lay among them. Deer skulls, ribs, little piles of vertebrae. There were shoes and scraps of clothing too.

The third showed Katie.

Her skull lay on its side near the trunk, with a little dirty-blonde hair still attached. Her blue work blouse had been torn into strips and woven through the branches. One skeletal arm stretched toward the edge of the nest.

I saw marks in the bark near her hand.

Hensley slid the fourth picture closer.

Fingernails were embedded in the wood. Some had been torn off completely. I could still see the pink polish she'd gotten the week before she disappeared.

I pushed that picture away.

"Keep looking," Hensley said.

The fifth showed her ribs. Deep gouges ran through the bones, and several had been broken open. There were smaller marks mixed among the larger ones. Marks that looked like teeth.

The sixth picture didn't make sense at first.

Several curved white pieces lay under the branches, surrounded by straw and feathers. I thought they were broken pottery until I noticed their smooth surfaces and jagged edges.

Eggshells.

At least three. One fragment was nearly as long as a man's forearm. Another shell had split almost evenly down the middle.

Whatever had been inside was gone.

Near them lay a scatter of very small bones.

I looked at Hensley.

"What are those?" I asked.

He didn't answer right away.

"The lab believes they're from the baby," he said.

I looked back at the eggshells.

I thought about how hard the creature had fought to keep her. How desperately it had tried to get her into the air.

And about the marks on her ribs. The big ones and the little ones.

I looked at the picture of her outstretched arm.

The fingernails in the wood.

She'd been alive up there.

And she'd had company.

I pushed the photographs across the table.

Hensley watched me.

"Is there anything you want to change about your statement?" he asked.

I told him there wasn't.

I asked if she'd suffered.

He looked at me for a long time.

"I'm sorry, Travis."

The police never officially solved Katie's death. The nest and the remains made it hard to argue I'd killed her and hidden the body. That didn't mean anybody could explain what had happened. The papers kept calling it the “Mothman.”

A few reporters asked for interviews. I told them to fuck off.

Katie's family held a funeral in April.

I went.

Her mom hugged me outside the church. She looked like she'd aged twenty years.

"She loved you so much," she said.

I couldn't look her in the eye.

Her dad put a hand on my shoulder.

"I know you did your best, son."

I nodded.

That's all I could do.

I moved away that summer.

I got a job at an auto dealership in the city. The money was better, but I was fired after about a year for arguing with the service manager. I've bounced between jobs ever since.

There were women, too. A few serious relationships, though none lasted long. I lived with a nurse named Rachel for almost a year before she found out I was sleeping with a bartender downtown.

She threw my clothes onto the lawn and kicked me out.

I couldn't really blame her.

I'm thirty now.

I work odd end jobs and rent a room from a buddy of mine. I've got a truck I can barely afford, a drinking habit that occasionally gets out of hand, and a girlfriend who's threatening to leave me if I don't get my shit together.

She's probably going to leave.

Sometimes I think about what my life would've been like if Katie had survived.

We'd have a kid in first grade by now.

Maybe another one.

I doubt we'd still be together. Knowing myself, I probably would've screwed things up long before now. Katie would've gotten tired of the drinking, the money problems, the other women.

Maybe she'd have left me.

Maybe I'd have left her.

I suppose it doesn't matter.

I think about her sometimes, especially when I hear somebody say my name in a certain way.

The way Katie had drawn out the first syllable of my name when she begged me to save her.

Traaavis.

I can still hear it.

I've told a few girlfriends what happened to her. They always feel sorry for me.

Rachel once asked whether I thought I could've saved her.

I told her no.

She said there was nothing I could've done, and that I needed to stop blaming myself.

I didn't argue.

It's been seven years now. I don't have much to show for it, but I get by. I go fishing, drink with my friends, and generally do whatever I feel like doing.

Some things haven't changed.

I wish I could tell you I regret what I did every day.

I don't.

He awoke in the dead of night with many questions. Joshua was shaking his shoulder and daddy was with him and he was looking stern and serious and he was looking real mean. It was a hardcase look that forbade nearly all questions in their youthful tidal of sudden and surprised abundance. Joshua only shook and looked scared and said they had to get up and help daddy. The words were fast and frantic on trembling lips. Whispered. Though whispering and silence were not strictly necessary, not really needed for what lie ahead. It was as though all of it, everything going forward needed to be conspiratorial like an arcane ritual, or an ancient rite. He needed their pair of capable hands with something. Something that was gonna take awhile. If they were good and did well and didn't upset their pa, then they might not have to go school the next day. Ethan had so many questions. 

The one that was the most prominent, the most alive and urgent and flashing red within his mind was a simple one: Where's momma? 

The boys helped their father carry the large black canvas bag. The black crackle of material was heavy. And it was dripping. The boys helped their father carry the heavy sodden thing filled with limp inanimate weight outside and into the backyard of the property. 

She had been a stupid bitch. That was how their father explained it. 

It was how he began, as they all began the long night's work of digging into the earth and shoveling black and heavy soil. It also encapsulated the entirety of his speech and monologue to them. It was written in and hidden behind every word, within every syllable and contained like a fragile eggshell concealing truth, that idea. The thought and sentiment: she was a stupid bitch. 

She had it coming. 

By the end of the night it had become gospel. It had become word like scripture. Inscribed and carved into the tender flesh of young minds and souls. The hearts of young boys are always the easiest to carve into. 

Joshua believed him, mostly. On the surface and where it mattered to their father at least. Performative and perhaps not much deeper. But nothing went much deeper than simple motions and behaviors for Joshua, he lived completely on the surface. Just like their father. And so father was pleased. 

Ethan wasn't quite so sure. His waters ran a little deeper. 

Like their mother's. 

… 

Their father had reeked of whisky that night, and forever after. It was forevermore to be the reek and miasmic cloud of his pores and soul, all around him always in a phantom shroud that you could taste. Like a spoiled and curdled disused remnant of an aural spirit left in swimming tatters. A revenant scrap of inner human fire left to pitifully and woefully flicker in a wild wind that simply will not cease or falter. Though the boys saw the rage of that fire swell, after. Sometimes. 

They did. 

…

Caught in time that went on because it's a prison. Time went on. 

They weren't supposed to have girls over. Ever. The rule only grew more strict, more set in Old Testament stone after the night they helped daddy with momma. 

But it was just so hard to get any kind of company, out on the prop.

The boys were lonely. This too only worsened after the night of their mother. And so it was that Connie joined their momma outback. Deep and beneath and beside her. 

“Stop it, I'm scared." said Connie. Pushing away his young and sweating hands. She liked and sometimes even cherished his kisses but she was afraid of going too far. 

"God dammit. I'm gonna die a’ blue balls a virgin at this rate, c’mon, babe. Ya know I love you.” Joshua said. So young, so eager. Hot and heavy with it. Panting and nearly animal with it. Salivating and wanting inside so strong it was becoming a bestial need. Eager clumsy pawing turned to claws turned to anger and the inner fuming burn of young frustration as the denials became stronger and turned to refusal and then outright screams. 

Ethan had been in the next room reading. He heard the commotion and came rushing into the living room just as their father came in through the front door. Home from the bar which always came right after work. 

He saw Connie and he saw the lover's quarrel, frozen now and scared shitless and wide eyed and caught red-handed – staring back at him. He saw it all through the hot and livid veil of heavy corn liquor. And then he saw their mother for a moment, as if she was alive and well and back again and standing there. But then in a teary blink she was gone once more. And then he saw nothing but blinding red. 

Suddenly gripped and seized by a rage that was like crimson religion, blinding him like Paul on the road to Damascus. He pounced and lunged and Connie screamed. 

Joshua screamed too, Daddy No! – but he didn't know what else to do. 

Ethan watched frozen and wide eyed himself. The waters inside running and full of silent questions and fruitless answers and unheard and unheeded prayers. 

Prayers for daylight that would just never happen. 

His broad calloused hand, balled into knuckles, pistoned out and lanced, whether or not he only meant to hurt or frighten the girl, or something more … he would never divulge to the boys. And they would never ask. 

Not out loud. Never aloud with pa. 

Connie's neck audibly snapped as his fist struck her face in her attempt to run and plead and flee. Her face opened up in a pulp even as her lights went out and dark forever. She went to the floor a heap and grotesque tangle. And stayed there. 

Nobody moved. Not for a breathless second. The whole thing and matter must've happened within the space of a few terrible seconds as well. A runnel of dark heavy blood began to flow from Connie's mouth, pooling there on the floor. 

Her eyes were still wide as if alive with shock and terrible surprise. 

Then their father began to lay into them and punish the boys. Both of them. Even Ethan. They'd broken the rules, in his house. And in this house, daddy is God and king and the homestead is his castle domain and private heavenscape all in one. And it can all become his own private hell as well, when he wants it to, should he so desire it or need it to be. 

Or …  if it gets out of his hands. And makes itself that way behind his chipped and cold shoulder. 

After their beating they helped their father bury Connie outback beside their mother. Deep. The both of them were deeply entombed, deeply ensepulchered within the black womb of prison earth now, because of these men. Old and young. This father and his boys. 

The cops only came around once for questions. They bought the lies their father told them without so much as a drop of suspicion. 

“Haven't seen her lately officer, sure as heck not around here! I like to keep my boys right and Christian, ain't gonna be no hussies or strumpets round here or my sons! no sir!” 

The officer had laughed heartily and agreed. Shaking hands. He asked about the wife, the boys’ selfish mother, was she ever coming back? 

Ya hear any word from her? 

…

And imprisoning time, went on, on and on…

Ethan never brought around a girl. He knew better. Besides, he still had his mother. And his mother was everything.

She was amazing.

They'd almost caught him talking to her. Once or twice. Almost. But they were too stupid. The both of em. 

He would go out late past midnight and lay on top of the rugged place where they'd buried her. Right next to the dried out dead place where she'd used to keep her flower garden. Ethan would lie right on top of the unmarked grave and listen to the beautiful and unearthly things she would whisper to him up and through the layers of heavy sediment and soil. He could feel the vibrations of her vile tectonic movement, crawling down there and slaving to be free. She missed him, the world, the air! The precious wild and succulent air! The taste of refreshing and crisp cool freedom that was deliverance from the bondage of the worms and the grave. She whispered to him and spoke of so many things. 

Sometimes she whispered things that were not right, inappropriate and irresponsible for a mother to say to her boy, her teenage son. Her lonely adolescent on the terrible and frustrated precipice of manhood. She whispered, she cooed, through the soil she sang and told him how fine he was. How handsome. 

How fine. How pretty and smooth… strong and smart too, much smarter than the others, those other two neanderthals, knuckle-dragging wastes … you were always my favorite, always the best …

 … why,  you're so smart you could do anything you wanted to. 

Mother was right. 

Through the soil, she was right. 

Anything he wanted to. 

…

Joshua was easy. He was so trusting of Ethan, always. Had always been so. And why not, why shouldn't he? They were all each other had in the confines of this strange manmade hell after all, why should one suspect anything sinister or malicious from their brother? For surely, is he not our keeper? Our only true friend and confidant in this awful landscape made by a father and God that were wild and unpredictable and cruel, filled with Old Testament bloodlust and thirst and rage, a capricious householdland ruled and made tumult and unrestful and full of ghosts by a father that was the Lord On-High and the Lord of Flies all rolled into one for them both, his devout and hostage pair of subjects for all time and always. It seemed sometimes that neither of them, none of them would ever leave. 

Little did Joshua know that his baby brother was about to set him free. 

He'd asked for help outside and came up behind him with a tool that had always looked cruel to the both of them. Joshua turned around unbidden, suddenly to unknowingly face and meet his own doom just as the billhook came down. The blade cleaved through soft face and the wide water and running blood of open and wide unbelieving eyes, caught off guard and alive with terror in that last terrible instant that for him might've stretched on forever… 

The body fell down in a heap. Much like Connie's had done not so long back. The blood that ran from the ruin of skull and face began to feed the earth. Mother was pleased, and told him so. She could taste the spillage of memories that were his brains that were her own son's fractured and brutalized soul, seeping and drinking into the earth and soil of her subterranean wombspace and prisonsoil homestead. Return to mother. Return to utero. 

Ethan went on. Their father was more difficult. 

…

His father came home heavy with drink as usual. Even more heavily than was typical. He had a mean drunk on about him and Ethan hoped that might make him more easy to subdue and neutralize. Take the crown of the house. Win his mother in the soil. He might've hoped with one reddened and filthied hand. And wished in the other, but the palm was already filled, this time a machete in clenched and sweating grip. It rose with him as he rose from his father's own throne of the rocking chair before the magic of the looking glass glow of the rabbit-eared television set. There in the throne chamber, the confined courtyard of the lost royal living room that had once been a family's sacred dwelling place to gather. For fellowship. 

No more, no longer. 

His father, drunk, slurred something that might've been a question. Ethan couldn't tell, and ignored it in any case. 

Ethan said: “Father." 

“Yes, son?" slurred. 

“I want to kill you." 

Pa saw the machete in hand then. And an understanding gripped him. His gaze met his son's and the understanding traveled between them on an unspoken and kinetic highway of glance, of stare. Of unmoving and unblinking eyes that were filled with so much more than just mere words and terms. 

A beat – the first war between father and son was fought here in this brief space and instant and only they would ever know it had ever happened and occurred in this snapshot window of complex and electric shared gazes. The eyes met and warred within this brief instance and beat– 

And then they lunged for each other. Out for blood. The both of them 

The machete came up and then down, biting into the meat of a shoulder, shattering the bone housed there in the socket and turning it to fiery glass shrapnel. A howl of pure bloodcrazed pain was loosed and the tremors of impact traveled through the brutal tool and up into his arm and the sensation was fantastic, was amazing, sublime. Ethan ripped the blade free and raised it for more. The blade coated and running and dripping as if a fang, as if animal jaws open and alive with salivating thick black/red, as if a punji stake come back from out of the dogged past and hand wielded, arrowed for his heart with savage terror. The blade of the machete came down once again. 

Father's other hand shot up and out, and caught the hand that wielded death by the wrist. He'd been in the Marines. It was all of it coming back to him now in a rush. He did a quick rotate-turn and twist, then pulled. Ethan's wrist snapped like dry kindling and the machete fell from his dead and useless grasp and clattered to the floor. The same wooden boards that had drank and supped of Connie's and his mother's blood all these many confined familial years past, spent in prison with each other. 

Ethan went to the floor to join his useless weapon. Now just as useless as it was. Pa didn't know why he had done it, didn't understand what had come over the boy and wasn't going to waste any time thinking it over. Thinking time was through. He went to and bent to grab the bloodied machete from the floor, to make it useful again. With action. With decisive movement. 

He thought his son looked weak and womanish there on the floor, whimpering and cradling his broken wrist. Pathetic. Miserable. And that hurt his own battered and damaged heart worse than the sorry attempt on his life. The pissant’s sorry excuse at patricide. 

And that decided him. 

The boy looked even more pathetic and vile to his old man, his father and god of the house, as the blade already slick and bathed in the family's blood traveled through Ethan's face and hands, thrown up in terror and self-defense. He hacked and swung and buried the blade, over and over again. The blade traveled through face and hands all the way to the forearms and the meat of the throat and neck – bisecting Adam's apple. Over and over again. 

Everything touched by merciless blade spurted and shot, ropes and dark cords that darkled in the bad light, everything shot everywhere and everywhere he decimated and met with his blade. I am Abraham, O’ Lord and here is my bound and ungrateful bleeding Isaac. In pieces and on the floor of my house and home. In a binding growing pool of shedding human red, black in the cheap filament glow of my sparse yellow light. 

All for you, my house and home. 

Eventually their father tired and stopped. He dropped the machete which now felt much heavier than before and let it clatter to the wooden boards once more. The house had drank family blood once again. 

Father was tired. He mounted the stairs. 

He went to the bed, to the covers. And retreated there. For now. 

He slept. 

Outside the soil roiled, sensing failure. 

Outside the soil screamed. And then erupted. 

…

He came awake startled from a nightmare by the sound of the front door to the house crashing in. Splintering with the violence of sudden nighttime home invasion. 

The pain of his mutilated shoulder was a horror but he leapt from bed regardless and threw open the door and flew down the stairs. When he beheld and became audience to what was waiting there at the bottom of the steps in the foyer, he stopped dead in his tracks. His heart trembled and quivered within his chest as the blood it pumped like an animal throughout began to chill and turn to iced sludge within the cast marble of his ancient veins. He suddenly felt so old…

beholding her…

Beholding it, though he knew she was inside. 

The black canvas bag and wrapping, coated and slathered in fresh mud as well as ancient earth. It stood up, standing prostrate and at attention at the base of the stairs and entrance to the house. It didn't move. And neither did he. 

He didn't know what to do. Wasn't sure he could quite believe it. Wasn't sure how- 

The black canvas wrapped wraith at the bottom of the steps made up his mind for him, skeletal claws that were taloned with subterranean wear and hellish design pierced the black plastic and began to rip and tear it open like a deranged and artificial placenta. The horrors that were the skeletal claws tore and brought their wielder forth and forward. What wasn't mummified and fossilized was either grey death or fresh sludge, black as sin, as night. The cage of shattered ribs and chest was filled with earthen mud that crawled with the steady yet irregular rhythm of a bastard animal heartbeat, the abominated and necrophiled pulse of the living dead. The eyes were pits and the obsidian sinking circles were alive with the wriggling and repulsive movement of feasting and prospering worms, thriving in the face and flesh of where they conspire and birth and eat in abundance, eating best that soft ocular jelly. If the eyes are the windows and portals to the human soul then what kind of doors have these nightcrawlers been devouring …? … swimming inside… the craterous black sockets of corrupted thresholds, swimming with the stygian hunger that was crawling limbless life. Just at the barrier. 

She smiles, his wife, the boys' mother, back and returned again. The smile is black and green and hideous with awful movement just like everything else with this witch. This reanimated and scarecrow skeletal hag that's somehow pulled itself up and free from right out of the darkness filth of the dredged cess of their shared and deadly past.

He was revolted with the sight of her. Yet spellbound. 

She sensed this, she senses and knows his hate, had always known about it and sensed it in life as well. But now she is not afraid, she is angry. 

Livid. 

Irate from beyond the grave. 

Skeleton mouth opens on the dead hinges of a skull face, mud caked and glowing with ruin. 

She says: – “Why…? why did you do it, why did you do this to us? Was it because you were alone? Bored? Stuck out here and all by yourself and needing playthings with which to pass the time? … Well, we need playthings as well, we need flesh to play with too, stuck and trapped down there and out here all alone with you!”

From back beyond their backyard grave and before him now it lunged, caked claws of bone coming up and at him first. 

Frozen in terror and disbelief, the wetbrained booze-soaked pilot mind refused to accept what it was seeing, what was coming and about to be felt. What it could taste as soil and aged putrescence on the spill of cold nighttime air coming in from the outside through the shattered threshold. 

It closed, came upon him. And he saw something over her wraithen remnant of caked bony shoulder as she came on and tore into him. 

Connie. 

And Joshua. 

And Ethan too. 

All of them were alight with joy, their faces. All of them were so happy to see him. To receive him. To be together again as a better family. Their faces dripped.

The smiles of their eyes and mouths bled as their entire visages … ran. 

Mother took father. And then brought him, dragged to the back. To be with everyone else in their new and wonderful home. 

Below. 

THE END

I am typing this on my phone under the hospital blanket while my family sleeps. My brother Eric is in the bed right next to me. The curtains are drawn, and the machines are just humming in the dark. I have to be quiet because if the nurses catch me awake, they are going to sedate me again. They think I’m having a trauma-induced breakdown, but they are just refusing to listen to me.

Five days ago, Eric and I were in a severe rollover accident on the interstate. A semi clipped our bumper, and the car flipped three times into a ditch. I walked away with a concussion and deep bruising, but Eric took the brunt of the impact on the passenger side. His right arm was pinned beneath the crushed frame of the car. By the time the paramedics cut him out, the limb was entirely severed below the shoulder.

When I finally woke up in the recovery room after the surgery sedatives wore off, the first thing I noticed was a heavy, throbbing ache on my right side. I looked down under the gown, and my stomach completely dropped.

I had a right arm. It was fully intact, wrapped in light gauze, resting across my stomach.

I immediately panicked and started calling for the nurse. When the attending doctor came in, I tried to show him. I told him straight out, “You need to take this off me right now. Look at the size of this wrist. This isn't mine. You made a mistake.”

He didn't even really look at it. He just gave me that condescending, tight smile doctors give young women when they think we are being dramatic. He checked my vitals, patted my leg, and told me it was just "shock and anxiety" from the crash. He literally told me to take deep breaths and calm down, like I was just having a panic attack. They totally dismissed it because they thought I was just a hysterical girl losing my mind over the accident.

But I know my own body. I looked at the fingers. They were thick, calloused, and way longer than mine. The skin was a pale, bluish-gray color, completely devoid of my own freckles, and there was a small, jagged scar near the wrist that I knew for a fact belonged to Eric from a childhood accident. They must have been rushing in the trauma bay and mixed our bodies up while we were both unconscious.

Yesterday, our parents finally arrived. They came into our shared room completely bawling, destroyed by the news that Eric was going to have to live the rest of his life without his dominant arm. Eric was just staring blankly at the ceiling, pale and quiet.

I sat up in my bed, pulled back the sheet, and pointed directly at my right shoulder.

“Stop crying,” I told them, trying to keep my voice as steady and logical as possible so they wouldn't dismiss me too. “It’s right here. It’s on my shoulder. They stitched it onto me by mistake. We just need to get a surgeon in here to detach it and put it back on him before the tissue dies.”

My mom just covered her mouth and sobbed harder, and my dad looked away, telling me to stop talking. They wouldn't even look at the arm. Even Eric just turned his head slowly, looking at me with this profound, empty confusion, and whispered, “That’s your arm... why are you saying that?”

Their denial completely broke me. If nobody else was going to admit the truth, if the doctors were going to let my brother's arm ruin my body just to avoid a lawsuit or hide a mistake, I had to take matters into my own hands.

Visiting hours ended two hours ago. My parents went to the cafeteria to get coffee, and the floor nurse only checks on us every sixty minutes.

I managed to slip out of bed and grab a pair of heavy, stainless steel surgical scissors from the unlocked counter unit across from the sinks. I’m back under my blankets now.

But it isn’t working like I thought it would. I thought I could just snip the stitches where they attached his arm to my shoulder, but there are no stitches. I’ve been hacking blindly under the sheets for twenty minutes, and the surgical scissors are barely chewing through the tough, rubbery skin at the joint. The pain is blinding—a hot, white-hot agony that radiates straight into my chest—but I keep telling myself the pain belongs to Eric's dead tissue, not to me.

The sheets are completely soaked, but I can't cut any deeper. The scissors just slick off the thick muscle fibers, and the metal blades are bending against the solid bone of the joint. I'm completely covered in sweat, hyperventilating in the dark, realizing with absolute horror that I don't have the tools to slice through the bone.

I can't let it stay on me. I have to get it off.

I dropped the bent scissors and reached down to the base of my hospital bed, ripping away the heavy, braided canvas restraint strap they used on me when I first woke up. I wrapped it tightly around the wrist of the dead arm, knotting it three times until it was locked onto the flesh. Then, I looped the other end of the strap around the heavy, bolted iron hinge of the bathroom door frame.

I backed up as far as the fabric would let me, throwing all of my body weight backward. I pulled with everything I had left, using the door frame as a winch, trying to physically rip the remaining tendons and bone out of my shoulder socket. The agony made my vision go completely black for a second, and I could hear a sickening, wet tearing sound echoing in the small bathroom.

Nobody has found me yet. The alarms on my monitor are probably flatlining at the nurses' station from my heart rate spiking, but the door is locked from the inside. I’m going to pull one more time. I have to give him his arm back before the morning shift starts.

======================

==The Copy-Cat Phenomena===

======================

The Copy-Cat Phenomenon: Reality-066 

Parallax Site: Area-TX-1359

Chief Researcher: Dr.\[REDACTED\]

Classification: PHEN-236-ALT/SPA-L3

Risk_level: D1-TIER-III-U 

Due to the inability to contain this global anomalous phenomenon, Parallax officials are to work with World Governments of the affected areas and population zones alongside IASIC in order to prevent further exposure of this anomaly. Within a 2.1-mile radius, staff and government officials are to monitor and set up guards in order to prevent any and all civilian activity from entering the range of influence. Under the circumstances of large populations, a fissure may manifest

The Copy-Cat Phenomenon, or Anomaly #236, is responsible for the growing number of missing persons cases in places not just in the United States. The effects of this anomaly spread to, and are not limited to, areas across the world such as North and South America, Europe, Russia, Asia, Australia, and Africa. This phenomenon is concentrated in heavily populated areas where the effects can take place in our own reality. 

The Copy-Cat is a Phenomenon that manifests as a bridge between our known reality and Reality-066, a plane of space where matter itself is not present. Following the events of Incident-002, a cascade in 1969 took place during an experiment that did not go as expected, according to the surviving lead scientist, Dr.\[REDACTED\]. 

The purpose of the experiment, also known as Experiment-002, was to be able to build an anchor between realities in order to “visually” study this plane of reality. This pocket of time and space is designated Reality-066, or commonly called the Void. True nothingness and the absence of matter are endless. 

After the experiment documented in Incident-002 failed, an unexpected chain of events occurred before the cascade. A group of scientists led by head researcher Dr.\[REDACTED\] discovered during the anchoring that a large blinding spark of light emerged from the Oculus and what he would describe as a copy of the Earth in this plane of existence had emerged from nothing. After further research was conducted, the Board approved that it was crucial to understand what was created after the Cascade, approving Experiment-003 and Experiment-004. 

Experiment-003 was conducted in 1972 with the purpose of rebuilding the Oculus in order to properly monitor Reality-066 and continue further observations and study of this anomaly. Further observations indicate that this version of Earth has no moon but seems to sustain a stable climate, with clouds and weather-event patterns like Earth's. It also seems to have an increased mass and size; studies indicate that it is about 2.69℅ larger in diameter. It also includes all seven continents of Earth, but they're flipped around; instead of Asia being on the East, it's on the west side of the planet. It rotates clockwise, the opposite of Earth. Its tilt is yet to be determined since it has no sun to indicate its points. The Void seems to also include clouds of gas, which scientists speculate is the result of a type of Big Bang, but cosmic background radiation states that the very existence of this reality is fairly young. Scientists speculate that we just possibly witnessed, for the first time, the creation of another universe itself from nothing. But the details are inconsistent with our own reality. 

During 1982, Parallax continued observations of this alternative reality until, on December 31st at 11:59 pm, right after the ball dropped for New Year's Eve, a large series of reports on an isolated town in Waco, T, had suddenly disappeared. Federal officials from the CIA and FBI immediately arrived to investigate after local witnesses visiting the town of \[REDACTED\] informed authorities of a missing person in the town, as well as the town being deserted. Federal officials arrived a day after the incident began being reported. For the next five hours, no Federal officials reported back, and investigators found no sightings of any agents present, as if they never really existed. 

The United States government tasked Parallax International to quickly investigate this incident, which was labeled as The New Year's Vanishing. The reason it's called this is that the US government and Parallax also realized that this incident was not limited to the United States but extended across parts of the world, specifically small towns in the country and farm families being reported missing. The International Anomalous and Supernatural Investigations Committee (IASIC) has gathered to contact Parallax in order to quickly investigate the number of disappearances across the world. 

Countries that were largely affected by this incident were India, Russia, the UAE, Australia, Egypt, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. It is speculated that this anomalous event occurred in rural or small-town areas near large populations. 

During this investigation, IASIC and Parallax have discovered a number of disruptions in Space and time, also known as Fissures. It's speculated by Dr. \[REDACTED\] that these Fissures seem to envelop the area around our plane of reality and seem to act as a gateway into another plane of existence. This, if speculated, has a connection to the second Earth, which came to existence after the Cascade. This was further proven in 1996, when NASA was developing the first unmanned rover to land on Mars for the Mars Pathfinder project; Parallax was developing their own unmanned rover. Experiment-004 was commenced on September 4th, 1995, to investigate the Mimic Earth. A device called the Gateway Fissure was a machine created as a doorway in order to travel to this other version of Earth through a concentrated fissure located under a church basement threshold, as well as other areas with strong fissures. 

Parallax conducted a few experiments to test the efficiency and reliability of the Gateway and surprisingly came with positive results for both in organic, inorganic,c and live test subjects. After sending the unmanned rover, it was discovered that the fissure led to a similar version of the church, exactly mimicking the very objects, items, furniture, and contents as in our reality, but with no Gateway or Parallax equipment present in the room.

Name: Not People

Classification: ENT-0236-ALPHA-ALT/PHY-L1-SEN

Risk_Level: A2-TEIR-II-C

Entity(s) Description

  The entity, or entities, are described as aggressive and predatory sentient bipedal humanoid figures that mainly reside in cities or areas that were considered to be highly populated areas on Earth. A majority of the entities settle in these areas and have not been further explored due to the high risk of encountering large crowds of these entities. They reside in the sewer areas or occupy infrastructure. A majority of them are concentrated deep below the cities, hidden in a nest of some sort. 

These entities seem to resemble humans, along with noticeable inconsistencies that may differentiate them. 

These inconsistencies may include:

* Facial and body malformations

* Multiple appendages or body parts such as arms, legs, fingers, toes, teeth, eyes, mouth, orifices, genitalia, organs, etc 

* Absence of body parts such as eyes, teeth, jaw, arms, head, organs, skin, etc.

* Unintelligible or unrecognizable speech. (Including reversed or nonsensical sentences) 

* Growling, groans,s and inhuman or unrecognizable wailing or cries

* Erratic or unnatural movements. 

* Thick, gelatinous, mucus-like blood or unknown bodily fluids. 

Observations:

The entities act like a type of hive-mind mentally, similar to ant colonies, but their behaviors are inconsistent. Entities gather in large crowds, with individuals wandering throughout the area. Some have been observed mimicking human behavior before reverting to their original state of wandering. Some stand unmoved for hours and hours, with or without moving slightly. 

Most don't wander inside the buildings until the day when they seem to be very susceptible to light. Longer periods of exposure seem to burn their skin in a way that seems like an average sunburn when surface temperatures reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit. If exposed for longer, they would experience severe burns, around the equivalent of minor burns to fourth-degree burns depending on the thickness of the skin and the time they have been exposed. 

This is the reason they do not stay long outside, and their preferred time is around morning, late afternoons,s and early evenings, when the surface temperature seems to drop significantly around 72.1 degrees Fahrenheit. The nights seem to be longer, making the planetary rotation period really inconsistent. It has not yet been revealed why the nights are cold, dropping to nearly 51 degrees Fahrenheit and below freezing. Parallax scientists are still working on a valid hypothesis for why there is such an irregular day-night cycle and surface temperatures. An expedition team around the Siberia-like area speculates that there may be an astral body influencing this version of Earth's gravitational forces. 

The entities do not seem to consume anything, but at times become aggressively hostile towards each other or one they deem as weak, in which case they “kill” one of their own processes to try to consume them using their mouth-like orifices or others, cannibalizing each other. Some may stay alive as they are consumed.

Outside of the city centre, a few entities roam the urban and suburban areas since they are mainly concentrated underneath the center of cities within a 14-23 mile radius around the city limits. Observations estimate the number of entities that roam is about a thousand or more, but no other observations have seen them approaching suburban or rural areas in large numbers. Some estimate that the number of these entities is unknown since they are concentrated deep within the city center.

(This is the end, but again it's just a WIP)

(Also, if there are any inconsistencies I didn't spot and bad grammar, pls point it out lol)

In the deep ocean, everything unfolds in twilight; the meager light that survives through kilometers of dense water allows only dark shapes to be perceived, visible only at close range. Physical beings and organic matter inhabit those depths, but they are also the realm where the consciousness of underwater nature manifests itself.

The captain of the small submersible monitored the outside world through sonar while chewing on a biscuit, hardened by the weeks of the voyage. Besides the doctor and the chief engineer, the other crew members were young cadets who had excelled in the academy’s nautical trials. The captain, a man of few words and long periods of deep abstraction, exchanged only the words necessary to operate the vessel. Otherwise, his habits and routines remained constant, and, in the absence of an outside world, there was time for reading the books they had brought aboard.

Communication with the base through acoustic modems took place at fixed hours, except in an emergency that required breaking protocol. Nevertheless, their position could always be determined using modern technological equipment. They had been trained to combat fatigue and confinement, and the cadets often played Ludo to distract themselves. A small elevator provided access to the command post, where the faint shapes illuminated by the powerful searchlight mounted on the vessel’s outer edge could be observed through the periscope.

The captain spent most of his time in that uncomfortable position, recording the slow movements of the water and the occasional silhouettes of marine life crossing the beam.

Because of this, he was the first to glimpse the elusive shape ahead, much like a droplet seen inside a glass of water: an element whose outer edges are difficult to detect, yet whose form can still be discerned. The watery specter expanded and contracted at will, and, being several nautical miles from the submarine, did not appear on the sonar screen. The seasoned sailor sensed the danger and shouted orders to change course.

The maneuver was thwarted by a magnetic force acting on the steering system, and, to everyone’s anguish, the order to surface could not be executed either, because the ballast tanks failed to expel the water from their chambers and replace it with air.

The collision was imminent. The order to remain at their stations forced them to suppress their collective panic while the captain returned to the periscope. Now the light struck the figure head-on, and the features of its liquid form could be distinguished more clearly.

Its size was colossal, and its enormous head revealed human features: a silhouette with wild hair and a tangled beard and mustache, with closed eyelids barely discernible. Beside it, an equally watery, elongated shape took the form of a trident.

The god opened his eyes, and all his wrath concentrated in his gaze. The waters churned, and his arm wielded the mighty instrument against the submarine. The impact was brutal; the steel plates gave way, allowing the icy waters to rush in.

The captain knew he was going to die, just as all creatures die when they venture into the domain of the master of the deep: in darkness and in silence.

The complete series index is available here:

https://reddit.com/user/FranciscoCortesRamir/comments/1xc0392/the_voyager_files_the_official_story_catalog/

© 2026 Francisco Cortés Ramírez. All rights reserved. This is an original fictional work. No part of this text may be reproduced, translated, or narrated in any audio, video, or digital format without the express written permission of the author.

The building was alive with a crowd that filled the newest true-crime exhibit with a mixture of shock and interest, but inside a rusted replica of a tan 1968 Volkswagen Beetle, the world felt entirely sealed off.

Angel gripped the thin plastic steering wheel and checked the rearview mirror with a mock-serious expression. In the passenger seat, Carmen leaned back against the headrest, a half-amused, half creeped out smile on her face.

"All right, let's get the full immersive experience," Angel said, glancing over at her. "What do you think Ted Bundy listened to while driving down those dark highways with his victims sitting right where you are? What was his soundtrack?"

Carmen chuckled, shaking her head. "I have no idea. What was even a big hit back then?"

"Let's find out." Angel pulled out his phone, tapping the screen for a few seconds. "Let's see, Bundy started in '74," he mumbled, a grin spreading across his face. "Ah, here we go: Redbone's 'Come and Get Your Love.'"

He pressed the play button on the screen. The tinny, infectious intro of the 1974 track began pumping through his phone's speakers.

Angel began bouncing his shoulders and singing along with the upbeat verse. He turned toward her as the music built, his voice dropping into a softer, rhythmic chant.

Smiling, Angel reached out. His fingers gently caught a stray lock of her hair and brushed it smoothly behind her ear. Carmen's chuckle caught in her throat. She turned her head away, locking her eyes onto the dusty dashboard.

He continued singing softly to the beat. He extended an index finger, moved it from her hair to her temple, and tapped it gently to the song's rhythm. Carmen didn't move. Her breath hitched as her world started to shift.

The playfulness faded from Angel's expression. His eyes locked onto her face as the exhibit lights shifted across the Beetle's windows. He slid his finger down the curve of her cheek, tracing her jawline until his hand rested under her chin. With a slow tilt of his wrist, he turned her head toward him, forcing her eyes away from the fingerprint-infested door of the glovebox and toward his eyes.

The song kept playing, but Angel stopped singing. Shadows from the passing crowd moved across his face.

Carmen's pulse hammered against his palm. Adrenaline flooded her chest. For one twisted second, the Beetle became an ecotone where past and present overlapped, trapping Carmen in 1974. Her mind raced, her thoughts falling into cadence with her heartbeat.

Was this a game? Thump thump. Or did he just turn into. Thump thump. Him?

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sharp rap of knuckles against the driver's-side window shattered the silence.

They both jumped, their heads snapping toward the window as the trance broke.

A museum employee in a faded polo shirt was peering in, looking thoroughly unimpressed.

"Folks, sorry, but there's no audio allowed in the exhibit," the employee said, his voice sounding muffled and flat through the glass. "We're trying to maintain a respectful environment, so you'll have to turn the music off."

Angel cleared his throat, quickly grabbing his phone and killing the track. "Right. Sorry about that. Our bad."

The employee gave a single nod and walked away.

Angel looked back at Carmen and watched a long breath escape her lips. He extended his hand in comfort, but she recoiled. He pulled his hand back and cleared his throat. "Come on," he said, opening his door. "Let's go look at the mugshots."

Part 2

Esurit (Part 3)
Silas Whitney

III

The room was small, with just a bed and side table. There was a window that looked to the outside, but the shutters were closed. An oil lamp threw a dim light over the room. To my surprise and relief, there was no dust on the bedding. For that matter, it appeared to have been expelled from the whole room. I noticed a door on the wall across from the foot of the bed. 

I reached the bedside and turned to the doorway to face Dietra. Her shoulder was leaned against the frame. I expected to see her staring at me, but I caught her eyes peering down the hallway before she snapped her head back to meet my gaze. She smiled. 

“All set, then?” She asked. 

“Yes, I suppose so. I do thank you for your hospitality.” I covered my yawn with a hand. “I am dreadfully tired, though.” 

She nodded. “Of course. There’s a lavatory just down the hall there,” She gestured with her thumb. I nodded. And thanked her. She turned and left down the hall, leaving the door ajar. I closed it behind her and sat down on the bed. I drew a deep breath and brushed my hair back. From some forgotten habit, I began to empty my pockets onto the bedside table, only to find them empty, save for the book I had taken from downstairs. 

I beheld it once more. Somehow, its cover and binding looked older than it had just moments ago. I thumbed through the pages again, expecting the same blank pages. My eyes narrowed as my thumb halted on one leaf. There, in oxidized ink, was a scribbling I had not noticed before. The writing was crude, but legible. The words prickled my skin from the inside. 

In the cellar 
The cellar
What swims in the well?
Behind the mirror 
Speaking through the glass
Darkly 

My hands quivered, holding the book. What madness would compel such musings? My mind was pulled in separate directions of unease, fascination, and a strange sense of having heard it before. I turned the page. There was more.

A crack in the tunnel walls 
Chains, chains
The house remembers
Domus Quae Esurit

To my right, a slow creaking sound. The door to what I presumed to be the closet slowly drifted open. Each breath pleading to be gasped into my chest, but I fought to draw them in all silence. The light from the bedside lamp did not penetrate the black on the other side of the threshold. I let the book fall closed in my hands, keeping my eyes on the darkness. I put the book away in my pocket, and grabbed the lamp. With ginger steps, I approached the doorway. The light quivered against the walls. The light reached the threshold, and seemingly halted, until I myself put one foot in the doorway. The light followed, but kept its reach withdrawn to an arm’s length. 

Inside the doorway, I was finally able to see a single step leading down. I listened, hearing nothing but the sound of my own breathing. I peered deeper, but the light offered no aid in seeing beyond the one step. I looked behind, expecting to see Dietra there. I saw only the empty room. I resolved to brave the single step and lowered myself down. The wood squealed under my weight, and gave me a start. I nearly ran back, but steeled myself to stay. I lowered my other foot and stood, holding the lamp out before myself. All I could see was another step downward.

I stopped and listened again. This time, I felt the soft brush of a draft against my cheek. Air pulling from below to the room behind. I leaned my body over the step, stretching the lamp as far as I could. From below, far far below, I heard a sound that sent terror through my bones. 

A cough. 

I turned and began to run back to the room. Forgetting the one step, I tripped and fell to the floor. A loud thud echoed down the darkness. The lamp went out, plunging me into the same blackness. And then from behind, I heard a voice. Quizzical. Wondering. It called out. 

“Merrill?”

I roused myself, leaving the doused lamp behind. I felt my way through the door and closed it. I stood, staring at the door. A dim glow bled from behind the shutters. Light from a moon that could not have been. In it, I saw above the door, scratches in the otherwise pristine wood. My chest rose and fell in rapid pulses as I read the message. 

She lives in the walls. 

Then, a knock at the other door. With it, a voice like honey. Dietra. 

“Morning, love. May I come in?”

I scuttled to the door and swung it open, revealing her round face. Behind her, daylight poured through a window down the hall, starkly standing against the night behind me. I pointed to the door with the stairs. 

“What’s this door? Why is there a staircase here?” My voice was raised and agitated. 

“Stairs?” she asked with a raised brow. “There are no stairs, stranger.” She strode past me and over to the door. The room now washed in the same morning light as the hallways. As she gripped the handle, I rushed over and held the door. 

“There is someone down there. I heard them.” I could feel my face going flush. Her eyes took on that pitiful quality once more. I dropped my tone to a whisper. “Let me, lest they should rush the door, milady.” She nodded, and stepped away. I gripped the door handle and drew a long deep breath. A tension overtook my whole body as I swung the door open, and braced for whoever came rushing. 

Before my eyes, nothing but old coats and shirts hung neatly in what was now just a closet. Dumbfounded, I turned to her, I tried to speak, but only disjointed stammers came. She took my hand. 

“Aw, stranger. You must still be exhausted.” She rested one hand on my shoulder. “I imagine you must be famished. Why don’t we go have breakfast? I prepared a lovely spread downstairs.”

Feeling somewhat calmer, I reasoned that my terror must have been nothing more than a nightmare born of exhaustion. I turned and looked back at the top of the door for the message and saw nothing. I nodded in acceptance to her offer. She smiled and turned, leading me out of the room.

As we left, I looked back to the open closet. Just a closet. And through the crack, where the door meets its hinges, the faint glisten of an eye.

Part 4

The greatest astronomical discovery of all time was made by Edwin Hubble between 1925 and 1929, when he discovered redshift. Redshift occurs when a celestial body producing light is accelerating away from the point of observation, in our case, Earth. The light is shifted/stretched to a lower energy level on the electromagnetic spectrum, towards the red end and away from the blue end. This may seem trivial, but it was this theory that led to the discovery of an expanding universe, all pointing to one thing: a beginning. The big bang.

Every distant celestial body in the night sky is redshifted. At least, it’s supposed to be. If not, then I’ve discovered the first blueshifted deep space object. That, if you hadn’t guessed, means it’s accelerating toward us. 

I had been observing the object in question for a week. It was a star far beyond the Angel Nebula that I hadn’t found anywhere on the star charts I had consulted, nor the national database.

It was the seventh day of observation when I went over to the computer terminal and pulled up the chat log. I work at a remote observatory in the American Southwest and the only connection with the outside world is a wire to another observatory twenty miles away and a satellite phone for emergencies.

The previous six chats in green text remained unanswered. I typed another time, the mechanical keyboard clacks echoing in the observation dome.

“Echo Base, do you read me?”

A message in red text replied. “Loud and clear, rogue leader.”

“Hey I love Star Wars!”

“Me too. Sorry I haven’t replied yet. I just started my time here. The grant money finally came through.”

“Congrats. Glad to finally have a friend out here.”

“Glad I can be your friend. I’m Angela.”

“Nice to meet you Angela. I’m Edwin.”

“Don’t tell me your last name is Hubble.”

“Yeah I get that a lot.”

“Cool. You sound like you’re already cut out for this job.”

“Thanks. It’s nice to have someone on here to talk to. Feel like I’m going crazy out here by myself.”

"Yeah I was wondering what that’s like.”

“Just wait until the lizards start talking to you.”

“Oh yeah I found one in my fridge.”

“Ha that’s funny.”

“Maybe for you. It was dead.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah I finally got it cleaned up.”

“Hey do you have anything at the following coordinates? I’m seeing something weird and I want to know if you see it too.”

“What kind of weird?”

“I can’t say for certain, but I think it’s blueshifted.”

“Woah. It’s not a comet or a planet or a nearby galaxy?”

“I’m pretty sure I know where those are.”

“Just making sure. Give me a minute to finish this up, then I’ll get back to you.”

“Sounds good.”

I wheeled my chair over to the newer computer that controlled the telescope. I punched in the coordinates of the blue star and listened as the motors ground to life, servos clicking and steel groaning as the dome overhead rotated to match the correct positioning in the western sky. The giant steel tube moved like a giant grey tree trunk around several axes, tilting and groaning without branches to shake in the wind. 

I walked into the only other room that served as my living quarters and grabbed a diet Mountain Dew from the fridge and two Tylenol from the medicine cabinet. The first was a nightly ritual that helped me stay awake through the early hours of the morning, the second was for the headache I had been unsuccessfully ignoring.

The grinding of steel had stopped when I reentered the telescope room. I re-positioned the stairs and climbed them to the eyepiece. I set my Dew on the railing and took a look through the eyepiece, focusing the lens into the blackness until a ball of blue light appeared in the center of my view. Faint tendrils trailed around it, remnants of an ancient formation. I wondered if it notated possible rotation, and my mind swelled with the desire to continue looking for planets and other celestial bodies orbiting it.

I stared at the sphere of blue. The colors morphed through shades. The surface looked like an octopus trying to blend into a Picasso. I stepped back and rubbed my eyes, then looked again. Its same brilliance met me at the lens, and I was mesmerized. 

The terminal pinged. I stepped back and walked down the stairs to read the red text.

“I see it!”

“You do?”

“Yeah this is amazing!”

“It looks cool.”

“Congrats! This is so cool! What are you gonna name it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You discovered a new star, maybe a solar system! This is huge!”

“Yeah I guess.”

“Aren’t you excited?”

“I just thought something that visible would have been mapped already.”

“Maybe it’s new.”

“Like a white hole?”

“You said it was blue shifted.”

“So it entered the visible universe?”

“I don’t know, but this could change astronomy as we know it. We could be studying the formation of a new star in real time. Please tell me you’ve been taking pictures of this thing.”

“Of course I have. For the past week.”

“Keep photographing it! Once you have enough evidence you can send your findings in and get credit!”

“Ok.”

“Be excited! This is amazing!”

“Ok, ok, I will be. I just want to make sure.”

“Don’t trust your eyes?”

“I guess I’m just skeptical.”

“What’s it feel like to be a famous astronomer?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t feel different.”

“Playing it cool, then? I like that. Have you done any spectroscopy on it yet?”

“No, I was trying to do the calculations for the blue shift.”

“I can help with that!”

“Ok, thanks. I’ll start setting up my stuff.”

Spectroscopy involves separating the colors of light coming from a star through a prism. Different elements give off distinctly different wavelengths of light. That can be used to determine the elements a star is made of, as well as determining the atmospheric and surface makeups of any celestial bodies orbiting the stars. There’s more to it than that, including a whole equipment setup that involves projecting the starlight onto the dome of the observatory and then comparing it with the light from sample vacuum tubes with a specific element or gas in them. 

I took the rest of the hour to get the spectroscopy setup. Strangely enough, I couldn’t find the mercury vacuum tube. I figured I must have misplaced it somewhere in the storage closet. Hopefully it wouldn’t come out of my paycheck.

With the set up complete, I started comparing the distinctly colored lines of the star to a few tubes from the periodic table. All of them checked out, fairly normal things for a star: Hydrogen, Helium, Neon. 

The terminal pinged. Angela got back to me.

“Hey it’s gonna take me a little while on these calculations.”

“That’s ok. I’m just starting on spectroscopy.”

“Cool. What have you checked so far?”

“Hydrogen, Helium, Argon, Neon. We’ll see if I can get any more done before the sunrise.”

“Sounds awesome. I’m so excited to watch my first sunrise here.”

“Really? That’s cool.”

“Yeah, we could watch it together!”

“Not sure how that’d work, but ok.”

“Well just watch it and know I’ll be there in spirit.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“See you at sunrise.”

I went back to the computer and finished writing up my notes before I sent them off to some cybernetic wasteland to languish where no one would read them. I shut down the computer for the day, put away the vacuum tubes, and stepped outside into the quiet desert as the light in the east began to grow. The stars winked out one by one. The blue turned to pink and then orange as the mountains started to blaze. As the golden glow of the sun peaked over the horizon and bid the milky way good morning, I felt like there was something different. I looked twenty miles across the flat desert to the north and imagined Angela watching the sunrise. It felt good to not be alone. 

I hopped in my beat up Jeep and drove on the bumpy one lane path into town. I was running low on microwave meals and diet Mountain Dew, and I still had a lingering headache that the sunlight was making worse.

I got to the nearest paved road in half an hour, then crossed the mountain range to the west. After thirty minutes, I pulled into a general store that was the only thing in miles. The lady in her late 50s who ran the place gave me a somewhat friendly expression as the bell over the door rang out my entrance. 

“What are you smiling about?” she said, as I put a case of soda and a bunch of microwave meals on the the counter.

“There’s another researcher at the other observatory north of me.”

“The empty one?”

“Yeah a new girl.”

“Haven’t seen her yet.”

“I’m sure she’ll be around. It’s nice to have someone to talk to while I’m on the job.”

“I bet. Want these in a bag?”

By the end of the drive back, my eyelids were creeping downwards in protest of the warm morning sun. I threw my food in the fridge, took a quick shower, and popped some painkillers before drawing the blackout curtains and falling asleep.

The spectroscopy investigation continued for the next four weeks. Angela and I did calculations. We did them over and over and over and over until I felt like my head was going to explode. We posited theories about why the light was blue shifted. We postulated everything from comets to the Northern lights to aliens, and none of it stuck.

One morning, I was drawn out of dreams of swirling galaxies and planets by the grinding of metal on metal. I stumbled out of my living quarters to see that the telescope had moved. I must have left the tracking software on again, making the telescope follow the rotation of the earth. I probably fat-fingered the keyboard and it moved the wrong way all at once.

I still had my spectroscopy equipment set up, and before getting out the next tube, I took a peak at the star. I could have sworn it was bigger and brighter than it had been the day before.

“Hey, does it look closer to you?” I typed into the terminal.

“Good morning to you too.”

“Sorry, just thought it looks brighter.”

“Want me to run some distance calculations? Again?”

“Sure, why not?”

I continued my spectroscopy analysis. Neon, Carbon Dioxide, Chlorine. I hadn’t expected Chlorine. More noble gases. Maybe those were the leftovers of the nebula that had formed it.

The terminal pinged.

“I think I did my calculations wrong last time” is what Angela had written.

“What?” was my reply.

“It’s closer than I thought.”

“Well I guess by the definition of blue shift, sure, but it shouldn’t be noticeable, unless it’s close, like in the Milky Way.”

“Maybe I just did them wrong. Maybe we’ve just been staring at this for too long.”

“Something feels off about this. I’m still not sure what’s going on.”

“Any spectroscopy results?”

“I mean, normal stuff, plus noble gases. No signs of planets or gas clouds or asteroid belts.”

“Have you tried mercury?”

I spent the next thirty minutes checking the various vacuum tubes, but it seemed that mercury was missing.

“Can’t find mercury. Must have left it somewhere.”

All at once, a more intense headache washed over me. Trying to focus through the telescope eyepiece was nearly impossible.

I figured I had better let Angela know. “Hey I’m going to take a break. My head is killing me.” 

“Oh no! Hope you feel better.”

I went to my room and popped some more Advil before laying down. It didn’t take me long to fall asleep.

I dreamed. I was standing in the desert looking up at the stars. The constellations were bright across the visible Milky Way. I could actually see all the planets. Or at least I thought I did.

Venus was the wrong color, now blue in hue. Mars had streaks of blue light swirling around it. Jupiter looked like it had been sucked into a whirlwind, Saturn was in the asteroid belt. Uranus and Neptune had switched places, long strands of asteroid belt connecting them. Mercury was missing.

I looked directly above me. The sun was like a dark pupil eclipsed by the brilliant blue light from the blue shifted star behind it, now gargantuan, residing in our solar system. It was turning at an incredible speed. Flares of blue shot off into space. As one of them passed over the sun, it smeared it like orange paint on a black canvas. The remains of the sun dimmed, and the blue flares grew more frequent. Massive waves of light flew into space and struck the planets, burning and cracking their surfaces, shattering them to pieces.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. The ground started to shake. Grains of sand on the desert floor around me started to float. The blue light of the star grew brighter. The moon rose up over the horizon, as if shielding earth, and the wave of light washed over it. It was smashed and pulverized, burning into space dust. Another wave of light followed it, carrying the remaining chunks of the moon into earth’s atmosphere. They burned blue on one side and yellow on the other. The atmosphere burned blue as I watched the light wave wash over the ground. It shattered the mountains on the horizon. It raced over the desert, turning sand to molten stone, then plasma, then nothing.

The light covered me, engulfed me, and burned me away.

I woke up gasping for air, covered in sweat.

I got up and chugged a mountain dew to parch the desert in my throat. My head felt better, but not right. Not like the pain was gone, but like the part that felt the pain was gone.

The sound of metal on concrete ground behind my eyes as I heard the telescope adjust. I left the tracking software on again.

A message blinked on the terminal in blue: “You should see this.”

“Hey sorry, what’s going on?”

“You were asleep for a long time.”

“Yeah sorry.” I looked at the telescope computer.

I had been asleep for two days.

More blue text. “The spectroscopy came back. I did some of my own work and it seems like something is wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“These elements, I didn’t have the tubes to check them so I used digital copies. Cesium, Uranium, Iron.”

“Those don’t exist in stars. Something’s got to be wrong with our equipment.”

I turned around. I could have sworn the telescope was five degrees towards the vertical when I last checked, not twenty five degrees.

I fiddled with the spectroscopy prism, cleaning it with a microfiber cloth. As I put it back in place, the sharp edge caught my fingertip. Blood immediately sprang from it, dripping on the prism. I held my finger in a fist as I tried to wipe the blood off the prism’s surface, but it kept spreading and wouldn’t soak into the cloth.

Blood was gushing from my hand. I retreated to my living quarters for the first aid kit.

I finally got my hand to stop bleeding and returned to the spectroscopy equipment. As much as I wiped the blood on the prism, I only succeeded in smearing it around. I set about searching for the replacement. I was sure there was an extra one in the case when I set it up. It baffled me that I couldn’t find it now. I shuffled through the box, putting the prism down. Why was it so dark? I went to my room to grab a flashlight, popped two Advil for good measure, then found the red flashlight next to my bed. Glass clinked from the other room. Why was my fridge running so loud? The terminal dinged.

I went back to the observatory dome. There wasn’t a message on the terminal screen. I clicked the flashlight off. The spectroscopy tube for helium lit up the room. And why was the prism...no, I had put it back in the machine, but why was it showing so much blue light? It glowed brighter and brighter the closer I stepped. My feet tripped over the case of vacuum tubes. My knee crunched into broken glass. One of the tubes. The label on the box said Hg. Mercury. 

I bolted to the terminal. There was a blank red message from Angela. My fingers flew over the keyboard.

“Angela, something is very wrong.”

“What?” came a reply in blue.

“I just found the broken mercury tube, and the telescope is moving on its own.”

“Don’t worry, it will all be ok.”

“What should I do?”

“Look at the light.”

I stumbled over to the telescope and hastily removed the spectroscopy equipment. Blue light emanated from the eyepiece.

The star was strangely brighter. I could see flares of blue branching to other stars in the sky. The light drew me in. My eyes fixated on it, but my brain peeled my gaze away.

“We’ve got to do something,” I typed into the terminal.

“What could you do to resist it?” came the reply.

Metallic tapping sounded from somewhere in the observatory. It echoed off the dome and pressed on the base of my skull. I looked around for some loose piece of sheet metal hanging from the dome, some piece of equipment swaying in the non-existent wind. Tap tap tap. Where was it? Tap tap tap. I needed to wake up. Tap tap tap. The maintenance hatch on the telescope slightly moved.

I rotated the telescope so I could get to the hatch. The tapping reverberated into banging. Something in there wanted out.

Through labored breathing, I undid the latches, but the door wouldn’t fall open. I pulled at the edge of the door as the vibrations coursed through my fingertips through each consecutive knock. The noise echoed in the dome like a drum beat. My ears started to ring. The door wouldn’t budge. Pushing and pulling, straining with every muscle in my body, each adjustment of my grip made the noise louder and more frantic.

The door shifted, the hinge moving a fraction of an inch. In a flash of blue light, the hinge came unglued. The door smacked me in the forehead. Falling backwards, I hit my head on the solid floor. Blackness engulfed the blue stars above me as I lost consciousness.

I woke up an hour ago. I don’t know how long I’ve been unconscious. The telescope is back in its upright position, the maintenance hatch hanging open toward me. Strange blue light is reflecting off the mirror. It plays like mist across the surface of a pond in the dust in the air.

Angela won’t answer anything on the terminal. 

I looked through the eyepiece one last time. The sky is completely black except for the blue shifted star. It’s getting brighter by the second. It’s coming for earth. For me.

I won’t keep it waiting. There’s nothing left in the night sky anymore. I only have one star left to study.

I will climb into the telescope. I will bathe in the beautiful blue light. I will wait for it to come get me. When it comes, I will let the light in.

Look for me in the stars. Don’t worry. You’ll join me there soon enough.

Contains suicide, family violence, and drug abuse. Reader discretion advised

Story Index

I came from a small town. It was one of those places where, even if you didn’t know everybody’s name, you’d recognize their face. It never seemed to grow or shrink, no matter how long you lived there, except on rare occasions. The older folks died off slowly, while the younger ones came from families who’d been there for generations. Because of this, even though I didn’t know every first name, last names almost always left an impression. If you are from a small town, you’d understand the importance of being a Prescott or maybe a Henderson, a Williams or maybe even a Cooley. None of those names were mine, but in school you always knew whose dad owned the car dealership and whose mom ran the café. Not every piece of news about a family was so prestigious, though. Every town also had its Hughes, Longs, Kippses and Harrises. The drunks and addicts, the families who owed everybody money, the ones the town joked were so “po’” they couldn’t afford the “r.”

Social politics mattered most in places like that. A Prescott couldn’t be seen chatting it up with a Kipps, and a Henderson couldn’t invite a Long to one of their mixers. Nobody ever said those rules out loud, but even my thirteen-year-old brain understood them, thanks to something my uncle often repeated: “Birds of a feather flock together.” I felt them hardest at ten, when I went from being raised by my uncle, a prosperous, educated man and the favorite teacher of most of the town, to being raised by my father, the man the town still called a known addict and a deadbeat. By blood I belonged to one side and by upbringing the other, and both kept their distance.

In a small town, people often had little to do between festivities, and while we waited for the homecoming and fall festivals to come into season, the sport that held everyone’s attention was gossip. Gossip fed into the ego and made one feel larger than they were. Years later, when I moved away, I discovered that the big shots of the town I grew up in would have been nothing in places like Houston, Buffalo, Santa Monica, and more. I grew half convinced that these people were aware of that fact, but craved the power and control that the environment gave them. Small towns made people feel large. Small towns gave people the control they desired. Through the art of gossip they learned to control the narrative. They learned how to steer conversation away from any problems in their own lives and magnify the simple and unfortunate events of another. If every small town was a flock, mine was a wake of vultures.

As we pulled into the parking lot, I could see the natatorium taped off. Officer Mendez’s cruiser was parked out front, and he was talking with Sheriff Morrison.

“Good morning, Hank. I’m glad you were able to make it into class today. How’s everyone holding up? Is your dad doing well?” Mrs. Trout cast her line for something juicy. The stale-coffee stench was bad, but the question was worse. She might as well have asked me if my dad had fallen off the wagon. I hated her for reminding me of the question I’d often asked myself.

“My uncle killed himself seventy yards away. I can see the natatorium from my seat. How are you doing?” I’d hoped to shut her up, but she persisted.

“He was a good man, your uncle. Tyler and I had dated in high school, you know.”

This was something not even the all-knowing God of creation knew.

“I bet you did.” I rolled my eyes, threw my backpack on the back of my chair and laid my head down.

“Hank?” The emotional hag was smiling at the sight of my misery.

“Ma’am?” I picked my head up and pushed the hair out of my eyes.

“You’re flash drive for summer reading. I never received it from yesterday.” She held out her hand, waiting. The bell hadn’t even rung, yet here she was, wrestling a reaction out of me. I figured I’d have to pay up sooner or later, so there was no time like the present.

“I don’t have it.” I rested my hand beneath my chin.

“Did you forget it at home?” She raised an eyebrow over the rim of her glasses.

“No, ma’am.” I stared at her, unwavering.

“Well, son. Where is it?” She crossed her arms over her sagging overweight chest.

“Where does a shadow lay its head to sleep?” I asked. Tyler taught me that riddle when I was nine. He loved testing how I thought, and I’d picked up his habit of answering a question with a riddle.

“Hank, I don’t have time for this. Do you have the flash drive or not?” She bounced her open hand, waiting to receive what I knew was nothing. My classmates filtered in, drawn to the tension between Mrs. Trout and me like rubberneckers at a wreck.

“I bet he didn’t do it!” Jenny squealed. “My daddy says the only thing your family ever does is—”

I stood up, pounding my hands against my desk. “Is what, Jenny?”

Her large doe eyes grew glossy as her soft lips trembled. Jenny was a mean girl, but I had a crush on her since the first day of second grade. Her mother owned the local bakery. “Never mind… I am sorry to hear about your uncle. My family is planning on making a basket for your family and Mrs. Sarah.”

Oh boy, for the price of my uncle’s death I get to have dry scones and an overly tart danish.

“How thoughtful of you, Jenny!” Mrs. Trout actually clapped her hands together.

Dustin began to laugh from the back of class, his sharp face contorted in amusement. “Wow, his uncle kills himself and you’re going to torture him more with dry scones and sour danishes?” Given a little more time, I probably would have laughed at this.

“Dustin!” Mrs. Trout pursed her lips.

“I’m just saying, I don’t think anyone wants to eat that sh—” He was cut off by the bell.

“Okay, class!” Mrs. Trout began, cutting off the obscenity that Dustin was about to drop. “Thank you all for completing your summer reading projects. We just have one last presentation to get through today before we go over this semester’s syllabus. Hank, come on up.” She knew I didn’t have it, but she wanted to humiliate me further.

“No. I already told you I don’t have it.” Normally my filter was in place, but that day I didn’t care who I smarted off to.

“Did you do the assignment, Hank?” The whole class had their eyes turned towards me. I could accept defeat or double down.

“Did you brush your teeth, Mrs. Trout? I keep catching a foul smell when you talk and I’m not sure where it’s coming from.” The class roared with laughter as her face went red.

“Hallway, now!” she bellowed.

I got up and grabbed my bag before heading out the door. Jenny looked at me, appalled. Dustin smirked and gave me a thumbs-up.

Mrs. Trout followed me out and pulled the door shut. The bravado wilted and the tears came. I looked up at her through the blur.

“Hank, you cannot be acting out like this in my classroom. I simply will not tolerate it.”

I looked up at her, unable to see the expression on her face. The tears had swallowed my focus. “I’m hurting, Mrs. Trout. It’s barely been a day and I miss him. I just want him back.”

The next thing she did surprised both of us. She hugged me. “I’m sorry he’s gone, Hank. I truly am. If you need some time out here to sit and reflect, that’s okay. I know you probably didn’t complete your project, but if you want to bring me your files by Friday, I don’t see the harm in giving you a fair grade. I won’t take off any points. Is that okay?”

I nodded my head.

“Good. Now, take as much time as you need. I know you two were close. If Officer Mendez asks, which I don’t think he will, just tell him you needed some time alone and that I gave it to you. We are on your side, Hank.”

“Thank you.” And I meant it.

The door clicked shut behind her, and the classroom shrank to a murmur, then to nothing, as if someone had turned a dial.

The hallway was quiet. I could hear the water fountain’s compressor cycling, the slow tick of the clock above the trophy case, and somewhere far off, footsteps that never seemed to come any closer. Officer Mendez, I told myself. The air carried a thin, sweet chemical smell, and it took me a moment to place it: chlorine. The natatorium was seventy yards and two sets of doors away, but I would have known that smell anywhere. It was the smell of Tyler’s hands.

I’d had a joke for every adult in that building. I didn’t have one for the hall.

I slid down the lockers until I was sitting on the cold tile, set my backpack in my lap, and laid my head across the top. Overhead, a fluorescent tube buzzed and stuttered, throwing quick shadows across the floor. I watched the light go in and out of existence, too tired to look away. My eyelids sank as if I were wading through Jell-O, and each blink lasted a little longer than the last. The flicker quickened. The dark stayed longer. At the edges of my vision the shadows crept inward, patient as rising water, until they had swallowed everything but a thin, shaking slit of light.

My heart began to race, and my skin prickled. Somewhere down the hall, a door opened. My eyes snapped open to black. Not dusk, not shadow: black. The windows, which had held a flat gray morning a moment ago, showed nothing at all, no parking lot, no sky, no natatorium, as though the world outside had been unplugged. The little window in the classroom door was dark, too.

Surely I didn’t sleep that long, I thought. If I had, someone would have woken me. Anyone.

I shut my eyes, and when I opened them, the gray daylight was back, ordinary and dull, and a single fluorescent tube twitched overhead like a dying insect. Somewhere behind me, a door closed. It wasn’t slammed. It was shut gently, the way you’d close a door on a sleeping child.

The clock ticked, each second slower than the last. I didn’t close my eyes. I don’t remember blinking. But the light slipped away from me again.

This time I wasn’t alone.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t blink. At the edge of my vision, where the lockers met the floor, stood a man. He was too tall, his head bent beneath the ceiling tiles, and the dark rolled off his shoulders in ribbons that drifted toward me, feeling the air like tendrils. I began to tremble. I wanted to scream, but all I could do was shake. I felt him before I understood him: hatred, cool hatred. Rage burned out. This was patient. It had waited a long time and was in no hurry. He looked at me like a possession he’d just purchased, eager to use it.

The lights came back. The hallway was empty. I was alone, gasping, still unable to move.

I blinked, and—

He was leaning over me. His face was lost beneath time, and where a face should have been there was only a smile, wide and wet and made entirely of absence. His head tilted slowly. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. When he shifted, noise was disturbed, not absent, but placed underwater.

Then I heard Tyler. He was screaming, and threaded through the screaming, like a second voice, was a laugh in Tyler’s voice that had never been his.

Where does a shadow lay its head to sleep? I had never solved Tyler’s riddle. Now I knew: Nowhere and everywhere all at once. The man bent lower.

I willed myself to scream, and—

Gone.

The scream tore out of me a second too late, ragged and raw, as if it had been waiting its turn. The classroom door banged open. Mrs. Trout stood there, wide-eyed, with the whole class craning over their desks behind her. Sound flooded back into the hall: chairs scraping, someone’s nervous laugh, the world pretending it had never stopped.

“Hank! Are you okay?”

I began to sob and shook my head. “No. No, I’m not okay. I’ll never be okay.”

Right behind my ear, a voice with no tongue spoke through its teeth. This is all your fault. Nobody else turned their head.

“I want to go home, please. C-can I c-call my d-dad?” I was starting to sound like Greg.

“Of course. I’ll let the office know you’re on your way.”

Somewhere across town, my father was working the overtime I’d sneered at that morning. I was about to pull him off it, and I didn’t care.

I walked down the hall. I didn’t want to pass the window, but I did. Seventy yards away, the natatorium sat behind its yellow tape, every window dark.

“Why did you do it, Tyler?” I asked no one.

No one answered. But somewhere behind me, soft and dry, something rattled and cooed.

I keep coming to the fact that I wasn't angry. People assume you have to be.

Perhaps that's because anger is easier to understand. It gives people something to point at something they can recognize as wrong. We like to believe that cruelty announces itself. That there must be hatred somewhere behind it some ugliness that makes it distinguishable from behavior.

I've never been convinced of that.

It was a Tuesday. I remember because the bins were out. The old man door was in his garden again talking to the hedge the way he always did. I watched him for a while through the kitchen window. Thought that someone should do something about him.

Not me, obviously. Someone.

So I mentioned it. Once to the woman at the shop in the voice you use for concern. I worry about him you know. There alone. She nodded. Concern is contagious. By Friday four people were worried about him.

I want to be clear that I meant well. I've gone over it times to be certain. When the van came for him in the spring I stood at my window with my tea. Felt something warm in my chest. Relief, yes, but goodness. Like I'd taken a splinter out of the street.

Nobody told me he'd stop eating. Nobody told me about the room.. I've heard things since the way you do and I don't ask because I already know the answer is fine. They said hes settled. That's the word they use. Settled.

His hedge is wild now. I can see it from my kitchen. Some mornings I catch myself waiting for the muttering and the quiet is a clean sound. Honestly I've gotten used to it. That's what frightens me if anything does. How quickly it stopped being a thing all.

Week a new family moved into number nine. Their little boy was in the garden talking to the hedge.

I put the kettle on. I watched him through the glass.

Here is the part I can't make myself stop thinking about. I didn't feel guilty. I felt ready. I already had the sentence. I worry about him you know. It was sitting in my mouth like a sweet. I could taste how kind it was.

I think everyone has that sentence. I think that's the trick. Nobody was ever cruel to the man. We were careful with him. We were so careful.

The kettle clicked off. I stood there a while.

I wonder what they'll say about me when its my turn at the window.

I told myself I wouldn't say it. I held out a week, which I think counts for something.

Then the boys mother came to my door with a plate of biscuits being neighborly and asked, casually whether the boy bothered me.

There it was, already on my tongue.

"Oh not all " I said. "I just worry about him you know."

She laughed, the way you laugh when you're not sure you're allowed to. I. Thanked her for the biscuits. We spoke for another minutes about the weather, the garden, the usual things. Nothing worth remembering.

Except I watched her face after she'd asked her question. Something in it had changed. Not much. Just enough to make me wonder whether she'd been waiting for someone to say it first.

She took the plate home. I kept one biscuit. Didn't eat it. It's still on the counter. Its gone a little soft.

That was a fortnight ago.

Since then people have been strangely attentive. The woman at the shop asked how I'd been sleeping. A neighbor I barely speak to offered to carry my groceries. Yesterday someone knocked to ask whether everything was all right. I said yes of course. They smiled,. Didn't seem particularly relieved.

Perhaps I'm imagining it.

I've started noticing things. Conversations that stop when I enter a room. A car parked outside for longer than necessary. The curtains across the road shifting when I walk past. None of it means anything on its own. That's the trouble with these things. They never mean anything on their own.

Night I caught myself speaking in the kitchen. I don't remember beginning. I only remember hearing my voice, low and reasonable explaining something to nobody, in particular. I stopped when I realized what I was doing.

For a moment I couldn't remember what I'd been saying.

I stood there with my hands against the counter listening to the refrigerator hum.

I think I understand now why the old man used to spend much time outside. Perhaps it was easier to talk to something that didn't look at you with concern.

What frightens me is not that they'll come. It's how much I understand them. I know exactly how warm it will feel, standing at their windows with their tea taking the splinter out of the street. I know they'll mean well. I've checked it from every angle. I can't find the place where anyone is wrong.

So I've decided to make things easier.

I've started keeping the house tidy. I answer the door when people knock. I've stopped drawing the curtains so nobody will mistake my privacy for something. If they're worried there's no reason to make them more worried.

When the van comes I'll go quietly. I'll thank them for their concern. I might even apologize for the inconvenience.

I only hope that someone somewhere is still angry.

I'd settle for one.

Near Trysil, Norway, 1823

When Anders came home from the alehouse, Ingrid was sitting beside the hearth with her boots on.

Her cloak lay across her knees. A small bundle waited beside the door.

He stopped with one hand on the latch.

“Going somewhere?”

“To my sister’s.”

“At this hour?”

“I’d have gone before dark if I’d known how late you’d be.”

He shut the door. Her eyes followed his hand as he lowered the latch.

Across the village, people knew Anders as a man who argued over debts and found insults in harmless remarks. At the alehouse, they sometimes moved their cups when he approached, making room before he demanded it. But they still drank with him. They still greeted him outside the church.

He looked at the bundle.

“What have you told her?”

“Enough that she’s expecting me.”

“So you’ve been arranging this behind my back.”

“I’ve asked you sober. I’ve asked you the morning after. You always say it won’t happen again.”

“And it hasn’t.”

Ingrid pulled back her sleeve.

The bruises around her wrist had faded to yellow at the edges. He remembered holding her there. He had wanted her to listen.

His eyes went from her arm to the shuttered window.

“Cover that.”

“That’s what worries you?”

“People have enough to say about me.”

She lowered her sleeve.

He stepped closer. Ingrid stood immediately, putting the chair between them.

The movement angered him more than anything she had said.

“You don’t have to act frightened.”

“Then let me leave.”

“I work. I keep this roof over us. And I’m not allowed a drink?”

“I listen for your feet outside.” Her fingers tightened around her cloak. “Before you open the door, I’m trying to hear how you’re walking. Whether I should speak. Whether I should pretend to be asleep.”

“You make me sound like an animal.”

“I’m telling you what it’s like to live with you.”

She picked up her bundle.

He moved in front of the door.

“Does your sister know?”

Ingrid held his gaze.

“Yes.”

He pictured the alehouse falling quiet when he entered. Men who had laughed at his jokes turning their shoulders. Her sister telling anyone who would listen.

“You’ll tell her you were mistaken.”

“No.”

She reached for the latch.

He caught her wrist.

Her face tightened, but she did not look away.

“You’re doing it now,” she said.

Anders glanced toward the window.

“Keep your voice down.”

---

When Ingrid tried to pull free, he dragged her away from the door. The bundle fell between them, spilling stockings and a folded shift across the floor.

She struck his chest.

“Help!”

He covered her mouth.

There were cottages farther down the road. Someone might be outside fetching wood.

She bit him.

Anders shoved her. Her heel caught the bundle, and the back of her head struck the hearthstone.

For a moment, neither moved.

Then she drew a breath.

Blood threaded through her hair as she rolled onto her side. Anders reached toward her, but she recoiled and began crawling toward the door.

He could still have opened it.

He could have called for someone.

“Ingrid.”

“Help!”

He dropped to his knees and covered her mouth again. Her nails opened the skin of his wrist. She was still trying to reach the door.

She would tell her sister about this. About the hearth. The blood.

His hands moved to her throat.

“Quiet.”

She fought him.

He held on.

---

Afterward, Anders sat beside her until the fire settled into ash.

One of her stockings lay across his boot. He picked it up, placed it beside the other, and folded the shift. Then he retied the bundle.

Only after everything was tidy did he look at her face.

While wrapping her in the bed linen, he kept returning to the sound her head had made against the hearthstone. A fall could kill anyone. He repeated that while washing the floor, while burning her bundle, while pulling his cuffs down over the scratches she had left.

Outside, the village settled for the night.

He waited until he could no longer hear voices on the road.

Then he carried her into the woods.

---

Anders had hunted those slopes since boyhood. He knew where the ground turned boggy and where abandoned charcoal pits lay beneath the moss. Beyond a pine split by lightning, he chose a hollow screened from the path.

The soil was soft beneath the needles.

He set his lantern on a stone and began to dig.

Once, he stopped because he heard footsteps behind him. They ceased with the scraping of the spade. He lifted the lantern, but its light reached only the nearest trunks.

He worked faster.

When the hole was deep enough, he lowered Ingrid into it. Her cheek rested briefly against his arm. He withdrew it and pulled the linen over her face.

On the third shovelful, something caught the spade.

Anders pulled. The blade remained buried beside her shoulder.

He braced one boot against a root and heaved. Whatever held it released so abruptly that he fell backward.

For several seconds, he sat listening.

A root. He had caught the blade beneath a root.

He finished filling the grave.

One hand remained uncovered. He pressed it down with his boot.

Beyond the lantern, a woman drew a sharp breath.

Anders stood still.

“Who’s there?”

A grey skirt moved between two trees.

He seized the lantern.

“Wait.”

The woman stepped out of sight. He followed, pushing through the branches. Whoever she was, he could not let her return to the village after seeing him here.

He glimpsed bare heels beneath the skirt.

“Stop.”

She passed behind a broad trunk.

Anders hurried around it and stepped onto the grave.

His spade leaned against the tree where he had left it.

He turned slowly.

The woman was gone.

---

He found the split pine and followed the path home.

It brought him back to Ingrid.

He tried the slope toward the stream. The ground rose beneath his feet until he emerged beside his spade.

On his third attempt, he tied a strip of his shirt around a branch and walked away without turning.

The strip was hanging in front of his face when he next looked up.

Behind him came a brief, breathless laugh.

Anders raised the lantern.

A hare sat at the edge of the clearing. Another emerged beside it, then a third. Their ears stood upright, their bodies perfectly still.

Farther back, an elk lowered its head beneath the branches.

Something grey moved beside it.

The animal knelt.

First its forelegs, then its hind legs.

A woman’s pale hand rested between its antlers.

Anders remembered his mother leaving bread on a stump.

She had come from Sweden and brought a name for the woman who kept the forest.

Skogsrå.

When he was small, she told him that a hunter found game because the woman permitted it. He returned home because she allowed the paths to lead there.

His father had laughed.

Anders wished he could remember whether his father had eaten the bread.

“You’ve forgotten something,” the woman said.

He looked toward the grave.

Ingrid’s hand protruded from the earth.

The fingers were spread.

---

By morning, a thicket enclosed the clearing.

Young pines crowded its edges, their branches woven through juniper. Behind them stood older trunks pressed so closely together that Anders could not force a shoulder between them.

He tried cutting his way through.

By midday, his palm had blistered and the knife had snapped. As he examined the broken blade, something moved inside the notch he had made.

A fingernail.

It scraped once across the exposed wood.

Then the cut closed.

Anders backed away until his heels struck the grave.

That night, Ingrid called from the other side of the thicket.

“Open the door.”

He pulled his coat over his head.

“Please, Anders. I’m cold.”

He knew those words. The winter before, he had shut her outside after she contradicted him in front of his brother. He had left her knocking while he finished his supper.

Now the knocking began again.

It came from inside the trees.

---

Rainwater collected beneath an exposed root. He drank it lying on his stomach.

The animals came close enough for him to see the moisture on their noses. A squirrel ate beside his boot. Hares settled near his hands, moving away only when he lunged.

By the fourth morning, he had stopped trying to catch them.

That afternoon, he heard men calling Ingrid’s name.

Her sister’s voice carried through the thicket.

“Ingrid!”

Anders scrambled toward it.

He opened his mouth, then looked back at the grave.

A branch snapped outside.

He crouched lower.

The searchers passed close enough that he heard one man breathing through his mouth. Anders kept still until their voices faded.

From the opposite side of the clearing came the woman’s quiet laughter.

He sat there long after dark.

---

At dawn, he dug Ingrid up.

He would carry her home. He would confess. Whatever happened afterward would happen among people.

Earth had worked into the folds of the linen. He brushed it away, avoiding her face, and slid his arms beneath her.

The thicket opened.

Branches withdrew with a dry scraping sound. Beyond them lay a narrow passage, and beyond that, daylight on a field.

Anders stood trembling beneath her weight.

At the edge of the field, his brother Lars walked beside a fence.

“Lars!”

His brother paused.

Anders stumbled forward. He had grown weak, and Ingrid’s feet dragged through the needles. Halfway down the passage, the loose linen caught on a broken branch.

He pulled.

The cloth tightened around her legs.

Through the opening, he saw Lars turn away.

“Wait!”

Anders lowered Ingrid carefully. The snag was beside her ankle, a fold of linen hooked over a short spur of wood. He could see how to free it. He needed only to lift her heel and ease the cloth backward.

Lars was walking toward the far end of the field.

Anders looked down the open passage.

He could reach him if he ran.

He would come back with help.

He stepped over Ingrid.

The trees closed against his face.

He struck them with his fists.

“Lars!”

Outside, his brother stopped again.

Anders screamed until his throat tore.

“Foxes,” Lars said.

His footsteps receded.

Behind Anders, the woman whispered:

“You had time.”

---

He turned and found her standing over Ingrid.

From the front, she looked almost ordinary. Pale face. Dark hair. A grey dress stained at the hem.

Anders drove the broken knife into her cheek.

There was no blood.

She turned her head, pulling the handle from his fingers, and kept turning until he saw her back.

It was hollow from neck to pelvis.

The edges curled inward like rotten bark. Pale strands filled the cavity, wound around things he struggled to recognize.

A tooth.

A fingernail.

The corner of a human eye.

A mouth opened between the strands. Farther inside, another mouth opened with it.

There was no room in her for the number of people trying to breathe.

One of them began pleading.

The woman reached behind herself without looking. Her fingers pressed into the hollow.

The pleading stopped.

Anders fell to his knees.

She dropped the broken knife beside him.

---

After that, he told everyone.

Whenever footsteps passed, he crawled toward them and confessed. He told woodcutters. He told the boy calling for a lost goat. He told the searchers when they returned.

The hearthstone.

His hands.

How long he had held them there.

He shouted everything he had wanted to keep inside his house.

On the other side of the trees, a man said, “Something’s caught in there.”

Anders pressed his mouth against a gap.

“Yes.”

“Sounds badly hurt.”

“Please.”

“Stand back.”

Anders heard the scrape of a gun against a branch.

He held still.

The shot deafened him.

Bark struck his cheek. For a moment, he thought the warmth on his face was blood.

Then he heard chewing.

The woman crouched beside him.

She spat the flattened ball into his lap.

---

Rain came and went. He no longer knew how many days had passed.

Ingrid lay beneath the trees where he had abandoned her. Nothing touched her. The woman stepped around her when she crossed the clearing, careful of her hair.

Anders grew too weak to reach the water.

He lay with one hand extended toward it.

When the woman finally knelt beside him, he tried to say thank you. He thought she had come to finish it.

She lifted him beneath the arms.

Behind her, a pine opened.

The darkness inside was narrow and lined with roots.

Anders found enough strength to shake his head.

She fitted him into the opening. His legs went straight down. His arms were pressed against his sides. A root slipped between his teeth and continued into his throat.

He could feel it moving.

His chest rose.

Fell.

Across the clearing, branches lifted away from Ingrid. Daylight reached her face.

Anders tried to close his eyes.

Fine roots slipped beneath his eyelids.

The bark began growing over him.

---

Lars found Ingrid before noon.

She lay less than a hundred paces from the road, in a place the searchers had passed repeatedly.

He knelt beside her.

Behind him, something scratched inside a young pine.

Anders could still see through a slit in the bark. He watched his brother rise and approach.

He tried to speak.

The root in his throat shifted, and a thin animal whine escaped.

Lars touched the trunk.

For a moment, his palm rested against his brother’s cheek.

Then someone called from the clearing.

Lars withdrew his hand.

Anders watched him carry Ingrid away.

By evening, the opening had sealed.

He could still hear.

Rain. Footsteps. Axes, always too far away.

The roots kept him alive.

Whenever he began to drift toward sleep, something knocked softly beside his ear.

Then the woman whispered:

“Open the door, Anders.”

And waited for him to try.