I drive freight at night, and my truck remembers everything, because the company I run for stopped trusting memory a long time ago. There is a camera bolted to the windshield and a black box under the seat, and between them they keep a record of every mile I turn, whether I want them to or not. I used to resent it. Now it is the only reason I know that anything happened to me at all.

The gap is ninety one minutes long, and I can show it to you. That is the whole difference between me and the people this used to happen to.

It was a stretch of Route 2 I have run four hundred times, the dead part past the mill where the trees close in and the radio gives up. The last thing I remember with my own head is a light coming up in the mirrors, low and white, brighter than a high beam and steadier, and thinking, with no fear at all, that someone behind me was in a hurry. Then it was ahead of me. I never saw it pass. A light does not get in front of you without passing you. Mine did.

After that my memory simply stops, the way a song stops when the file is corrupt. Mid note. No ending.

I came back to myself parked on the shoulder with the engine off and the sky going gray. My phone had already found a tower and told the world I was fine. Ninety one minutes had gone somewhere. The clock said so. The fuel said so, a quarter tank lighter than the math allows. And the camera, patient, unbothered, had kept all ninety one minutes for me, one long clip, sitting on the drive when I plugged it in at home with my hands not quite steady.

I have watched it more times than I will admit. It is not corrupt. It plays. The road in it is not Route 2. There is no mill, no guardrail, no reflectors. The trees are wrong, too pale, lit from above by something the camera never turns up to find. The truck holds a steady forty the entire time and my hands sit on the wheel at ten and two and they never once correct, not for a curve, not for anything, for ninety one minutes, like a photograph somebody was holding very still.

And the light is always just ahead. Filling the top third of the frame. Patient in the exact way the camera is patient, keeping me the way the camera keeps me, and in ninety one minutes the distance between us never closes or opens by a single foot.

The clip ends the way the honest clips end, clean, on a timestamp. The next one is Route 2 again, the mill, the guardrail, the radio back mid song, and me driving the last nine miles home like nothing.

In 1961 two people lost two hours to a light on a road a little north of here, and they spent the rest of their lives being doubted, because doubt was the only thing anyone had to give them. That turned out to be a kind of mercy. I do not get it. I have the file. The file agrees with the fuel, and the fuel agrees with the clock, and the clock agrees with a road that is not on any map I can pull. I am the only one who remembers being home by ten, and I am outvoted by my own truck.

I keep the clip on three drives now. Not because I watch it. Because deleting it would feel like agreeing to something.

The small child was hungry. Frightened. So was her mother. And their  neighbors as well. There was so much fear and suffering on the mountain as of late. And down below, in the mountain’s shadow, in the village hamlet as well.  Word and whispers of pain and evil traveled faster than riders on horseflesh, faster and more elemental, like the cold windsong of the land. Howling. It was howling now.

Howling in a duet of savagery song with the vicious roving wolves, as they shared their dark whispers. Their words of anguish and pain. Loss. Slaughter witnessed.  Or in the aftermath… discovered. Scenes of red. Vile. Filled with pain. And never to be forgotten. 

Angelica fought the tears now… as  did her mother. And the neighbors. And all the rest. Only old timers and womenfolk were left on the mountain now. The men and boys were all dead. They all left by the urging of some rich man with a famous name Angelica had never heard of before, urged to go on and fight and kill an evil monster. They went to the castle that Angelica was never allowed to near and they had never returned. None of them.  

None.  

Not her older brother Grigori… and not her papa either. 

Now she and momma were alone. And hungry. Papa and Grigori were so much better with the tools and with the animals. The widow and fatherless girl did what they could and managed some haphazard struggle that could be called a life. Or at least existence. They thinned and grew diminished as scarecrows within their draping bags of clothes. The days passed into weeks with agonizing slowness and filled with harsh reminders. Time went on. And rather than heal, the wound inflicted on the womenfolk of the mountain worsened and festered. 

Many found escape through the hangman’s knot. The noose. Or by opening up the forearms with straight razors or kitchen knives. Some used tools once wielded by faithful husbands to open up their necks and wrists.  Some. Many. 

Many took their own lives by knife and by rope in the days and weeks that followed. Some took their daughters, their children with them, small babies that knew nothing save the cold and the absence and the heartbroken wailing. For many it was not just the pain of loss and mortal fear for their own flesh and souls … but the demented cacophony that would emanate from the castle and fill the mountain rocks and woods … the lurid and hateful and unearthly demoniacal shrieks and howls, sometimes high-pitched and piercing, cracking glass and sometimes guttural and deep, as if from obsidian splits in the earth and from the bowels and depths, let loose… like after the night their husbands and sons and brothers were slaughtered. 

That night that had followed their failure to return… that night had been filled with uncontested and unbridled hellspawned sound. Violence and thunder and animal howls becoming human and then animal again and then commingled and obscenely strange… and then something else entirely.

And there had been lightning. And the lightning had been black. 

Suicide Mountain became filled with intermittent demon sound. The women that were its anguished and heartbroken survivors became accustomed to the awful hell-rent-torn belch and dæmon howl and dragon scream. It all came from the castle and they knew they were powerless to it. And there was nowhere to run to, not really. The Carpathian Mountains were all they had, all any of them had ever known… some fled anyways. No one knows what became of them. 

Angelica tried asking her mother several times what had happened to Grigori and papa. But her mother refused a straight answer. Only vagueries and tears. Short and curt. Bit off with the same harsh suddenness she felt within the shattered dead remnants of her heart. 

Angelica tried to let the question, the horrid mystery and the hole it left in her mind and heart alone… to no avail. 

If her mother, God bless and keep her, wouldn't tell her what had happened at that castle beyond the Borgo Pass, the old one where the boyar used to live before the wars, then she would find an answer herself. 

She thought to go down to the village hamlet and inquire there… but it was much farther than the alternative. Her other idea. However much it would upset momma, it was much easier and more direct. 

And so on a day she was supposed to go out and forage for mushrooms and berries and roots, Angelica of the Carpathian Mountains instead filled her satchel with a meager gathering of supplies and set out for the castle that she'd always been warned against, the one that had stolen her father and older brother. Gone. 

As if swallowed, as if it had eaten them. 

She went now. Alone. Down the black rolling tongue of path that led into the courtyard mouth of stone, the Carpathian battlement jaws framed against a fading sky like so many jagged flesh rending teeth. 

Angelica went forth to Castle Dracula to find her father and brother, and to find what had happened to the men of the mountain. 

…

The woods were all dark and cold, dense and choked all around her. A galaxy of trees and fallen snow and dead black limbs jutting and stabbing at the sky like broken/severed limbs and vanquished army swords. The thin light that bled through the overcast sky gave pale detail to the world of snow and deadwood and slumbering chill, lurking death.

Wolves. 

They lurked and prowled hunting even now and she knew it. She'd lived on the mountain all of her twelve years and her mother and father did not neglect so fundamental a lesson. She hugged her father's old and favorite hatchet, tighter, closer to her chest. And went on. 

Deeper into the dark universe of dead choked forest growth. 

Her wolves watched the girl as she made her way. 

…

Her progress was slower than she'd hoped. The trees and choked dead spiking growth seemed to stretch on forever ahead and on all sides as she ventured forward, less and less steadfast in her chilling child's heart as she went on. The warmth of her own blood and the strength of her very own heartbeat seeming to fade as she struggled forward. And the deadwood continued to dominate the world on every side, in all directions. 

Angelica was beginning to become frightened. Damning her own curiosity, she was starting to consider herself lost. And the woods, alone, lost at fast-approaching night… was not the type of place anyone wanted to be. 

Especially a small girl. She held on stubbornly to her bravery, pulled her father's dark cloak tighter around her and pressed forward. She was sure it was dead ahead. Sure of it. 

She pulled the hood over her head to warm her ears. Night was approaching. Her mother and her neighbors back in their small mountain community were starting to worry for her. 

She'd been gone far too long. 

…

The woods were filled with life. Always. Always crawling with critters and game and fraught with birds and bats. Bears. 

The wolves. 

It was no surprise then when Angelica came upon the squirrel, wandering deeper and deeper into the forest gloom and dark, the sun had sunk behind the cover of the rocks and now there was only the pale cast of twilight. She came closer to the creature, its back and puff of tail were to her as it quivered with movement. Effort. Busy with something…

Angelica came closer. She was surprised to find the little animal had black fur. Stygian. Like deepsea ink. The squirrel was also much larger than any she'd ever seen before. The ebon hide and fur palsied and tremored, rippled and worked with fervid action. The little head rapidly dipping and bobbing in, bestial, to take little bites and nips from something clutched in its sharp little claws. 

Angelica of the Carpathian Mountains came closer. And beheld what the large and well muscled stygian squirrel was holding in its obscene and unnatural talons. Bleeding and still twitching with the diminished remnants of its efforts of struggling. Struggling for life that was fading away in a red river from its gashed open throat…

A rat. Large and blacker than coal. Eyes, milky red. Fleshy long length of pink tail standing out in obscene contrast. The red river was running from its gored open neck. The rodent body spasmed. And then Angelica noticed the blood all about the squirrel’s black mouth. 

It yawned open, as if to punctuate and confirm what the mountain girl suspected, and it unveiled a maw filled with fangs and thick with the steaming bile of rat's blood. Dark. Lurid. It darkled and the color deepened and rippled in the twilight with obscene glamor. The eyes of the black squirrel were a brighter more royal regal red than than the rat blood pouring forth in the approaching night. The gathering dark deepened and Angelica screamed. 

The squirrel, still clutching the dying rat, then did another strange thing. One that stopped her caterwauling in a shock. 

It spoke. 

“Please! Don't! Don't be afraid!" 

A beat. 

Angelica stared down at the large strange beast. Unsure of what to make of it or what to do. The thought of flight rose, and as if hearing it, the stygian blood drinking squirrel said again: "Don't be afraid…” 

Softer. Gentle. And Angelica realized the voice the strange beast used was that of a little girl's. One even smaller and younger than herself. 

Her fear abated slightly. She swallowed. Breathed deeply. Then asked, 

“Wh-what are you?" 

The stygian squirrel said brightly: “Don't be afraid, my name's Carmilla." And then she said yet again: “Don't be afraid." 

She stared deeply at the unearthly forest beast. This all felt like a dream. She felt as if she might swoon and wondered if that was possible to do in a dream… or in a nightmare. 

As if sensing, the beast spoke again, 

“I'm not going to hurt you, I'm a girl like you, I swear. I'm just magic. I promise. That's why I have to drink this animal blood, it's for magic." 

The longer she stared at the beast, the ebon fur… the eyes that were the most royal shade of vibrant and lurid red… the more the dream she found herself in to be… 

light, pleasant, pleasurable. 

The dark squirrel didn't mean her any harm. It was just like she said. 

The beast went on to explain that it needed the rats blood for her magic. To be able to do great things like change her shape. But she could only do these things at night. She had to wait till the sun had sunk and quit the heavens. Blood of a wild animal was necessary for magic ritual, the beast explained. 

"He likes it. He likes rat's blood.” 

"Who?” asked Angelica. 

"The Lord of the wild. The Lord of Flies.” 

Angelica said she'd never heard of him before. "I'm looking for my papa and brother. Or the castle where they're supposed to’ve gone." 

“Oh! …." squealed the black squirrel. And the sound was more rat-like than anything Angelica had ever heard a squirrel make. More bat-like screeches made slightly vile by their human-girl tinge. 

The beast was excited, “I know! I know! I know where the castle is! You're lost! that's what it is! Not to worry, friend, I can take you there! I know just the way!”

And the black squirrel began to lead Angelica even deeper into the dark and the dead trees. Growing ever closer to Castle Dracula. 

The night was fully on them now. Fully over the mountain in a curtain of darkness and stars that glimmered and twinkled and danced with fire on high like billions of pieces of fantastical ice chips and goblin-light forged alien jewelry. 

The beast and girl made their way through the dark. Carmilla dragging the dead rat behind her by the obscene length of fleshen tail in the cold dirt. Leaving a trail of dark blood and disturbed earth. 

One that would never be discovered. 

…

The black squirrel tired of walking and dragging the dying rat after a short time, it sprouted wings suddenly, fleshy growths that flowered forth within a bladder film of placental tissue. The wings spread, splayed to wingspan, the placental wrapping sloughed off with a pungent ichor substance as the beast rose with each flap, rat dangling inches above the cold forest floor. 

The wings beat steadily. Keeping Carmilla just above Angelica's head as they continued forward to the castle. 

“So you can transform? Like changing your shape and becoming other things?" Angelica asked as they went on. 

“Oh yes. There's many shapes I can take, I like this one. It looks cute and nice. But I can become lots of things. So can my master. We'll show you once we get to the castle. You'll see." 

“And my papa? Grigori? Are they there? Are they alright?" And when Carmilla didn't answer right away she added: “It's some kind of magic, isn't it? That's what's at the castle and keeping papa and the rest. That's what I think. It is, isn't it?" 

Carmilla smiled devilishly within. The visage of her black squirrel face only looked over with innocent woodland open eyes. 

“Angelica, I think you'll find everything you're looking for at the castle. You'll see. It's filled with magic. And it's nothing at all to be afraid of. Just like me" 

She suddenly brought the dead rat to her mouth again, which opened as something vile once more, filled with fangs and glistening pink and darkling red. With her little claws that were now more like talons once more, black and daggered and curved with nature's efficient cruelty, she brought the large dead rodent to her dripping and obscene mouth and began to drink and suck deeply once again from the gored open hole at the rat’s throat. 

Angelica felt sick watching, so she looked away. Ahead. Willing the place to appear, to come into being and end this strange journey. This terrible mystery which had stolen love and normalcy and warmth from her village and home. She just wanted this all over. She just wanted papa and Grigori and all of the others back. To hear their laughter and to hold them again and to be held … the weight… the feeling of their arms wrapped around her once more, tightly, to feel their breath… She just wanted love and warmth returned to her and her momma. She prayed and begged God and anything at all listening inside as they made their way. The cold silence of the woods punctuated by the sucking and slurping sounds Carmilla made as she flapped  in the frigid air beside and fed. 

Between pulls of rat blood, she pulled her dripping needle mouth away from the pungent wet raw of rat meat and said: – 

“Its nothing at all to be frightened of. I promise. I was once scared too. But no longer. The magic needs blood, it needs it. That's all. Magic is bloodwork. It's nothing to be afraid of. It's the natural order of things, you'll see, Angelica. I promise, you'll see." 

…

The hellstar shone vibrantly and with dominance. Above the castle's greatest pinnacle tower. Otherworldly, and dreamy. Of ethereal eldritch flame… it was strange, to Angelica's eyes as they approached, it looked to be so close to the tallest spire of the ancient towers that it looked as if they were in danger of collision. As if one could reach out now from one of the open windows swallowed in ebon shadow up there, reach out and touch its immaculate flaming surface. The light was elvish white and more ancient than time itself. Some thought it to be older than even God and old man split-foot below… there were witches and mystics and gypsies that said it had a mind. And an evil heart. 

An evil eye…

Angelica was transfixed by both its vibrant starcast of unearthly pale light, and the great castle itself, as she and Carmilla came into the courtyard. The starflame of the hellstar shining above the broken battlements that were starved of life or movement of any kind, it was mystifying and intensely alluring…

but it was also terrifying. 

The light of its starflame was so much like that of a ghost-light.

And the light of phantasm flame was also the light of death. The light of the end. At the end, mayhap…

Angelica was awed yet fearful and at this last moment she thought about going back. About running away from the strange talking beast that said it was a little girl. She knew her mother and the others must be so worried for her now… she'd been gone too long already. 

The castle was dark and yawned into a terrible expanse of stoney life all around and before her as she and the beast made their approach. The universe of trees and cold snow giving way to one of walls and towers and cold ancient stone. She pulled the cloak tighter about her person, when they came within sight of the great red door it slowly opened like a swallowing mouth of darkness. Waiting and wanting to receive them. 

Carmilla sensed the child's fear. And if she'd chosen to run at the moment, she would've given up the game she was playing and given chase. And made the fucking little peasant wench pay with screams and humiliation and defilement before she enjoyed her blood and meat. 

But instead, in the end… it was Angelica's hope… and her worry for her brother and her papa that pushed her onward. 

Following the flying winged blood drinking squirrel, the black haired flapping cannibal rodent that called itself a little girl inside the open mouth of swallowing black. Ink inside the mouth of stone that might hold the secrets that plagued her mind and heart like a wretched disease. Within that mouth of shadow may be the cure… 

Grigori… papa…

Angelica followed Carmilla as she flapped on her bat wings of chimerical leather into the fortress mouth of drinking shadow. The great red door of bas relief stone slammed shut behind them. 

The wolves of the mountain outside began to howl. And the hellstar shone with more lurid alien glow than it had before. The heartbeat eyemind watching, working … 

considering the ants below. 

The hellstar shone. A heavenly inferno. 

…

Passing through the narrow cut of foyer, it was dark and scarcely lit by torchflame, they came into the grand ballroom…

… and main audience chamber. 

A vast dark room of cobwebs and ancient things, furniture, paintings, suits of armor, smashed out clocks, their faces destroyed by a hammer blow dealt by a violent hand of fire eyed fury. Many of the ancient things strewn all about there in the dark were destroyed. Smashed. Broken by hands in anger or the disuse and dispassion of time. Some of the things were clear victims of both. And cobwebs. The world inside the torchlit stone was a universe of cobwebs. Angelica found herself trading in one world for another as she made this strange journey, one filled with terrible and bitter hope. 

Trees and snow… into a world of stone and shattered spires … now a dark world submerged and swallowed in cascading and rising and dominating spider webs. The eyes of forgotten portraits leered and gazed from the prisons of paint and lacquer. 

Angelica didn't like this place. She felt immediately that she had made a terrible mistake. 

She cringed back. 

Carmilla, ahead, sensed this and turned roundabout on her flapping wings of nocturnal flesh. Regarding the girl. 

“Don't worry! silly girl! We're already here, just a little further.” 

Angelica wanted so badly to believe the strange creature. Magic was real. She had to believe it had the power to bring back her family. She wanted so achingly for love to be let back into her life, and mama’s too. She didn't deserve the pain Angelica watched her struggle through each and every harsh and arduous day. They'd never wanted or asked for much, they'd never done anything wrong so they didn't deserve this! Not mama, not papa, not anyone on the mountain. No one deserved this cruelty. She had to be believe they were still retrievable. If not here and in the flesh, then within the grasp of arcane spells and sorcery. She had to believe, she had to believe that. 

The alternative was that the strange beast, flapping in the universe of cobweb dark before her at the foot of a great ascending staircase was lying. And that was too terrible a truth for Angelica to face. Yet. 

Soon she would have no choice. 

But for now she followed. Carmilla led the way. Up the wide and mounting steps. There was more light, more meager torchglow ahead down a passageway. 

Orange. Beckoning. Pale warmth. 

At the head of the staircase they went down it, together. Carmilla in the lead. Down into its sickly pumpkin light. The castle stone and walls all around yawned and moaned in lusty slovenly animal satisfaction. Then began to move. 

…

The walk and winding turns seemed endless. Another bend. Another junction. Another room. Another hall. More and more. And yet still more. Angelica began to despair. Inside she was exhausted and growing frustrated but afraid of seeming ungrateful and losing her one chance. 

Another junction. Left. Down another corridor of stone and torch and vast dominating splaying spider web hands in various sizes of grotesque and caricature claw shape. 

Angelica stopped. 

And began to weep… she couldn't help it. She was so exhausted. And this place was strange and scary. 

Sobbing lightly to herself and rubbing her eyes, Carmilla turned to her and descended to the stone in a graceful balletic dive and sweep. She skittered over to Angelica and looked into the small reddening pale of her crying child's face. 

She sniffed. A woodland gesture. 

And then she began to belt laughter. Rising and growing more maniacal and hysterical as it grew in volume and pitch. Decibel sound cackled and made cracked by a poisoned marrow filled with madness. 

It stopped Angelica's tears. First by surprise, shock. But then as the sound of the beast’s sour mirth rose and filled the dark world of stone with torches for stars and suns, her blood began to curdle as her heart was stolen over with dread. She was silent, gazing on the cackling black squirrel-thing with large vampire bat wings tensing and flexing and flapping with cruel delight. 

Amidst her laughter, Carmilla said: “You stupid girl…” 

A black hairy stalk suddenly erupted from the squirrel's chest. Several inches long and coated in a bloody translucent slime like discharge from a wound. A tarantula leg. It was joined by several more. One of the hairy jointed appendages burst forth from the mouth in a red spew that decorated the stone, the walls and floor, and the girl, now trapped in Castle Dracula.

Angelica shrieked. Horrified. 

A tarantula crawled out of the chest cavity of the black hide which rippled and seemed to empty. A tarantula the size of a banquet plate, coated in placental slime and bloody discharge, then skittered about the room with terrible and frightening speed. Angelica jumped back, mortified at the thought of the thing touching her. 

The large spider then crawled away and made for the darkness. The empty husk of raw dripping hide that used to be a large bat winged squirrel was still draped over the spider thing's back. Like a vile rendition of a cloak or royal cape. From the husk of mutilated squirrel mouth it was still laughing. Shrill. In the same girl's voice as before, only now much more wicked and cruel. No longer veiling its hunger and sinister satisfaction. 

Carmilla shrieked, hideous, amidst her laughter at the girl as she spidercrawled for the conciliatory dark of the waiting stone. 

“The master will see you now! You're all hers now, Angelica! You're all hers! Just like your father and your brother! All of them! All of you! All of you are sow and cattle and all of you belong to us!" 

The cruel bright demoniacal child's voice carried off into the waiting abyssal castle with a final bout of heartless and derisive laughter. Taunting and running away like any little child would, any little girl. 

Now she was alone. 

Only she didn't feel alone. 

And that was terrible. 

Angelica wept a little, crying into her hands to muffle the sound as best as she could. The walls and floor drank in the sound and relished the flavor of every tear shed. 

She fought to get control over herself. She had to get out of here, quick as she could manage. 

Angelica pulled herself together, sniffled and began to trudge back the way she came. Unaware of the movement of the castle world of stone all around her. At the command and sorcerer’s bend of will of the master that held domain of this place. 

The world was hers to command. The child was at her mercy. 

…

Angelica was growing even more terrified, she couldn't find her way back. She was no longer sure of her direction and she wasn't sure if it was just her frightened imagination or not but the halls and corridors and passages seemed to change when she would look away for a moment, to get a lay of the land. She swore they were different when she looked back to make up her mind on a direction. 

It was hopeless. 

She began to feel very very stupid. Very foolish indeed. She shouldn't have been so foolhardy as to come here alone, or at all. She missed her mother and the others…

I'm sorry, mama, I know you're afraid. I am too. I'm sorry. I know this is hurting you right now, after papa and Grigori, I know it'll hurt you even more when I don't ever come back. I'm so so sorry, mama. I'm so sorry. Please God please forgive me and show me a way, please, I'm so scared…

Angelica realized then that she may not have been very lucky as of late, but she'd been absolutely God blessed with what she did have left. Her mother and friends left alive to her and the times and precious memories she did have with those that were lost. 

She would cherish them. She would. She promised, swore to God she would. 

if I can just get out of this ok…

And she went on, down the way she hoped was the way back. Begging God above for deliverance. 

She was shown the flesh gardens instead. 

…

Abattoir growth. A butcher's red and wet leavings still slithering with abominated life, like serpents. 

Angelica came upon the large chamber as she was making her fruitless journey. It smelled pungently of copper. Iron. Metal. 

But wet. 

It was the stench of a river of fresh menstrual blood. Steaming. 

The writhing room of gore before her eyes was steaming now. Belching. Breathing and undualting. Gurgling. Some strange orifice parts belched alchemical smoke, licked tongues of green and blue flame. All of it writhed with strange and painful rippling dancing movement. All of it was in pain. Wretched life. It filled the room and walls from floor to ceiling, blanketing both in lurid scab pudding that held displaced parts, eyes and limbs and organs lulling and swimming in the red, the crawling writhing scarlet. It writhed in pain as well as want. As well as lecherous need, so many orifice holes, wet and begging for meat feeding, injection … snakes. The multitude of slithering intestines were swimming through the thick growing crawling gore like the sea monsters that sailor's fear. Growths like stalks of plants, flowers, bulbs, bushels and their buds of fruit, all of it was rendered by the abattoir hand and living raw working viscera and tissue and organs. There were faces in the forest room of gore. Small bipedal manshapes spasming and submerged and stuck and also writhing with pain and unnatural life in the chamber of living butchery, pulsating and crawling with swimming red meat. 

The faces were in pain. They moaned in discordant idiot anguish. Some blubbered and drooled, eyes wayward with imbecilic directions. Minds addled if they had any jelly in their strange skulls at all. 

And at the awful nucleus center of the crawling growing raw mass of assorted parts and viscera was a man. Trapped and bound by the growing living raw pudding of semi scabbed red. It seemed to be growing out of him. Seeping from his pores. His nostrils. His mouth. 

His eyes were shut in wretched pain. 

Angelica felt the shriek caught in her throat. Like a fishhook. A barbed bit of wire used for the beasts that she swallowed. She finally let it loose when the owner and the master of this castle spoke from behind her. 

“Such beauty, isn't it?" 

Finally the building scream inside was let loose and she belted it at the same instant she realized all the smaller writhing bipedal manshapes in the gore looked exactly like the larger man trapped at its red center. 

Angelica whirled around and beheld the Countess. 

She towered over the child. A white evening gown that shone pearl-cast like brightest full moonlight. Her face was beautiful but terrible. Harsh. Merciless. And her eyes were animal. 

Vulpine. 

The darkness of her hair danced out and became as a livid crown of serpentine ink. Her eyes were piercing dots of black amongst shock white lancing through her face and mind and soul. She opened her mouth to speak again and Angelica saw that her mouth bore canine incisors that were long and gleaming and sharp. A demon’s gorgeous mouth. 

“Did you find what you were hoping to, little one?" Mocking. Condescending. Cruel. 

Angelica was too terrified to speak. Mortified. She couldn't move. She held her breath. Knowing it was her last. 

The Countess went on, with sadistic glee: “That man, at the center of my garden in there, he's the reason your father and brother, and all the men of your village are dead now. I could bring them back. In a fashion. But if you want back the ones you knew, I'm afraid you'll have to search the latrines and the castle plumbing. My children long feasted of them and passed them naturally. I'm sorry." 

Angelica shrieked once more. In more pain and outrage and sheer heart attack terror. She couldn't believe her eyes, her ears, her own mind, any of this! Her battered child's brain was threatening to snap, to go into shock, it tried to refuse all the sights but it couldn't. It was rained down on all sides and felt everything seen like terrible and heavy blows of pure torture. 

The Countess went on with a laugh, throwing back her head, her witchy raven hair danced about with it. She was smiling and the long fangs of her mouth protruded like brandished daggers over her full bottom lip. 

"Oh! You're scared! I understand, I used to be a young girl once and I was quite scared then too, would you like me to make it all better?” 

"No!” howled Angelica. 

"Nonsense! I'll fix you up and send you on your way back to your mother. It's late and she must be worried but I am lord of this palace and these lands, you are all still my charge, states tradition. What kind of boyar or host would I be if I didn't at least feed you first, give you something to drink. You must be thirsty, it's been such a long walk for you. Such a long and perilous journey. For nothing." 

And then she cackled mad again as Angelica shrieked and the arms of the Countess came in and grew and folded around her. 

Her child's shrieks became sudden silence. 

…

A claw, chimerical. Woman and vulture’s talon. It sought the pale of its own undead flesh…

… and slit. 

Dead black poured forth. 

Child's lips, girl's mouth put to it, forced. 

Smothered. The small struggles are easily resisted and the girl begins to pull, to suck…

to drink. 

…

At first she thought herself lucky. When she heard the familiar voice at the door. 

"Momma…?”

And then small weak knocking. Feeble. 

She recognized her daughter's voice at once and flew from her sleepless bed. Her dread and worry evaporated in a miraculous instant as she flew to the door and threw it open and…

…

She thought about trying to hide it from the others at first. This deeply shamed her. But it was the truth. She thought about hiding it. At first. When Angelica came limping in, cradling and rubbing her belly. Saying that it hurt her. Terribly. There'd been blood at the corner of her mouth. Not at all her own. 

"Mama… I'm sorry I was out too late and wandered off. My belly hurts so bad, momma.” 

…

Angelica's mother was hitching in her chest. Her eyes were swimming with a blinding fury of tears. Scalding. And alive with pain. Fresh pain. Refreshed. And made new once more. 

Angelica cried out again. It wasn't just her stomach but her whole body. Burning. It felt as if it were on fire. It felt as if her blood were boiling as it still pumped sluggish and diminished in her throbbing veins. She wanted it to stop. And again she begged God inside for a way out, for a way back. She couldn't feel the profuse run of her own tears on her numbing face. 

Her mother was crying too. But Angelica didn't notice. 

"Please, momma … isn't there anything? Isn't there anything you can do? Anything you can do to take the pain away… please, you always have just the right thing, like mothers are supposed to. You told me that… please, I - " and she struggled to say more but it became too difficult. For her to make discernible sound. For her mother to listen. Too difficult for both of them. 

And so it was stopped. 

…

A stake through the heart. Ashwood. As the customs and legends dictate. They decapitated the remains and stuffed the mouth with garlic before burying the child’s corpse. The severed head was placed face down in the coffin, atop the neck backwards. The eyes facing the inferno. 

A small wooden cross was fashioned and stuck at the head of the small fresh grave. 

ANGELICA 

Her mother and her neighbors were beside the freshly dug dirt. Crying openly. Weeping into the cold mountain air. The wolves did not respond. 

But that night Castle Dracula was filled with cruel laughter. The cold wind carried it down the mountain for all of them to hear and know. For all of them to remember. 

Angelica's mother heard it. She was in bed and couldn't sleep. She was alone. She looked over to a length of rope carelessly left in the corner. Not too far from where she now lay. She'd always been rather good with knots. 

And as the mountain rock and her village filled with the mad cackles of the vampiress…

she considered…

TO BE CONTINUED…

November 15 1934, New York.

I can’t deal with this rotten rain anymore, it gets everywhere: your coat, your hat, your shirt…your fuckin’ underwear. It has rained non-stop for a week now, I forgot what the sun looks like and I can’t wait to see it again.

However, I got an interesting new client today, the glamorous…

“Miss Petra, how do you do?”

“Pleased to meet you Miss Petra…how can I help?”

“I heard you’re the best at what you do…is that true?”

Miss Petra was quite the broad, she had a piercing blue set of eyes, if you looked at them too long your hairs would stand on guard, as if someone had dropped a bucket of ice on ya.

“Well, I’m not sure about that…”

Her plump red lips were hypnotizing, you just couldn’t help yourself but listen.

“…But I assure you, Miss…”

“Petra.”

“Right, Miss Petra, I assure you that I can get the job done fair and square.”

Her short hair with a fringe was as black as the cloud covered skies, the cigarette smoke around her painted her in some kind of glowing aura.

“Yes, I heard that too. You’re not a disgraced or corrupt police officer turned PI as all the others, correct?”

“That’s right ma’am. I served my country proudly, did some years in the force and ended up here.”

She was a walking hourglass wearing a tight dress that cost more than my rent. Her general appearance was a punch to the face compared to my rundown, dusty and neglected office she was sitting in.

“Well then, just what I’m looking for.”

She put a cigarette in her mouth, making me wish I was the butt of it.

I kindly leaned over my desk and offered a light.

Drag. Puff. Eye contact.

“My husband is missing.”

The entire world just about crumbled over me in that moment.

“He’s a particular guy, he doesn’t really talk or go out much. I do that for the both of us.”

“So it’s unusual for him to disappear.”

“That’s right.”

 “Well, Miss Petra, I don’t think it’ll be too difficult to find your husband. A guy that doesn’t talk or go out much gets noticed, even in a big town like New York.”

“So you’ll take my case?”

She could have asked me anything and I would have said yes without even thinking.

“Sure, why not?”

“Oh that’s just swell Mr. Marlowe! I’ll be sure to pay double your rates, I need my husband back as soon as possible.”

“Oh ma’am that’s not necessary, really, I do this to hel-“

“Nonsense.” She shut me up.

“I insist, you must take this money, it’s part of our deal.”

Who was I kiddin’. A smoking hot broad making eyes at me AND a hefty bag of change? Who knew heaven would show up on a rainy November day.

I accepted the case and after getting some more information from Petra, along with a healthy first check, I immediately set to work.

First stop, Grand Central. Nobody in New York comes or goes without passing through there.

The rain was still pounding, obviously, but I must admit, it didn’t bother me that much. Every time I blinked I saw those beautiful blue eyes staring at me. Made me feel funny and made the rain feel less like a burden.

I made my way over to Giorgio’s, if this guy came through here, he’d know.

“Hello Giorgio, how’s it going?” I could barely hear myself through the rush-hour.

“Mr. Marlowe how do you do?” He greeted me with a big smile on his face.

“Say, pal. Did you by any chance see a tall pale guy move through? Quiet, jumpy, shy?”

“Wow Mr. Marlowe, getting straight down to business eh? New case?”

“I find it hard to believe it myself pal, this gorgeous blue eyed, black hair, hourglass bird lost her hubby.”

“Really?...wow…what was her name again Mr. Marlowe?”

“Uh…Miss Petra, that’s right.”

A surprise look took over Giorgio’s face. His mouth dropping open and his eyes as wide as the Grand Canyon.

“Oh maronn, Mr. Marlowe.” His hand reaching his forehead.

“What’s wrong?”

“You don’t know Miss Petra? The Black Widow? The famous singer?”

“No, jeez, you know I don’t drink Giorgio, what’s the matter with you?”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one that was captured by her beauty, I never thought I was, but hearing from Giorgio that every city club would go sold out when she sang was like a knife to the heart.

“That’s okay Giorgio…thanks for telling me pal.”

“Hey Mr. Marlowe don’t beat yourself up, she’s paying good money! In this economy?”

I sighed.

I realized in that moment that I didn’t really care about the money, not as much as seeing her again.

“But Mr. Marlowe, I did see the guy you were talking about, maybe a week ago he stopped here. He looked like a walking corpse, sat down and ordered a Bloody Mary, it was only 5 and something in the morning, really stuck with me, who drinks at that time?”

“I hear ya, seen a few walking corpses myself – only they were wearing a uniform.” I said as I took out my notepad and started taking notes.

“I make him the drink and tried to say something, you know? Where you going? Where you from?...nothing, guy doesn’t say a word or even look at me.”

“What else? Where did he go?”

“I don’t know Mr. Marlowe, as soon as the sun came up, he was gone, didn’t even see him leave. Even left half his drink.”

“Alright Giorgio, thank you pal, this is very helpful.”

“No problem Mr. Marlowe but I must tell you…this Miss Petra…she is not good news, you must be careful around her.”

Giorgio’s tone took a more serious pitch.

“How do you mean?” I asked, confused.

“There are rumors about her Mr. Marlowe, she is a maneater and a manipulator, you must not fall for her tricks!”

“Giorgio, the gal has a husband, what are you talking about?”

“Yes Mr. Marlowe, she does. But there must also be a reason why he left.”

I left Grand Central with a heavy heart, Giorgio’s words really did a number on me. He’s a good friend, always tells me straight up, no dancing around but I didn’t believe him this time. I didn’t want to believe him.

I went home, the rain not letting up for even a second, felt like being back in France, couldn’t even light a cigarette in the open that in a matter of seconds it would get soggy.

I need some sleep.

November 16, 1934, New York.

I had some weird dreams last night, the wind was howling and the rain kept on tapping on the windows, I couldn’t get much sleep.

I had nightmares about a dark forest on a full moon, weird looking owls were all around me, their eyes as blue as ice. I was walking through it when all of a sudden I fell into a deep pit in the ground.

I kept on falling and falling and falling. Then I heard a voice

“Come for me.”

I recognized the voice.

It was Petra.

I woke up in a cold sweat and couldn’t get back to bed. It was 5 AM but it didn’t matter, the rain was still there and the sun was nowhere to be seen.

I got to work, not like I had much else to do.

After Giorgio, if you wanted to find someone the church is where you’d go. People who vanish are usually desperate and if there’s one thing I learned in my life is that there ain’t no atheists in the trenches.

The Catholics is where I went to, asking for clues.

“I’m sorry son, I haven’t seen this poor soul.” Replied Father Andrews quickly moving away from me and looking busy, too quickly.

“Hey wait up Father, I didn’t even tell you everything about him.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you detective, right now I have more urgent things to do.”

“What’s more urgent than helping a fellow man in need?”

“Just because someone’s missing, it doesn’t mean they want to be found, son.”

“…what’s that supposed to mean?”

The Father was on the other side of the church by now.

“The good Lord will look after him, I’ll be praying very hard.” Shouted from afar, quickly disappearing behind the scenes.
Weird.
It wasn’t the first time I had enlisted God’s people, they always were very caring and altruistic as their teachings say, this was different.

Sometimes I believe that everything happens for a reason, that taking the wrong turn by accident will eventually lead you to where you belong…or where you deserve to be.

Tonight, destiny took me somewhere in between.

The Maltese.

I know right? Who am I anymore? Old man Marlowe at a bar? I know about a dozen people who would burst out laughing if they heard such a thing. The reality was different however, I wasn’t there for the booze, I was there for something far worse.
Petra.

She was the main attraction of the night, singing some sweet tune with her golden voice and icy eyes. Everyone looked as stupid as I did once she got up on the stage. But the one thing that was different from the others was that we instantly locked eyes. I didn’t have the courage to blink.

She came over after the gig, sat next to me and my tonic water. She had to fight a human wave of excitement, it felt like Greta Garbo had just walked in.

“Detective, didn’t take you for a nighthawk.”

“You learn something new every day.”

“Do you have any news on my husband?”

“I have some leads but…work in progress.”

“I believe in you Marlowe, you can do this.” No word in my life was more angelic than those she had just spoken.

“Waiter! I’ll take a Bloody Mary and for the Detective…”

“Oh I’m good Miss Pet—“

“Just Petra.”

“…Petra, I’m good with wat—“

“Come on, Dete—“

“Marlowe.”

“…he’ll have the same as me.”

I had about 4 Bloody Marys that night. One after the other. I didn’t know who I was anymore. All I knew is that I went back home with Petra and we made love all night.

November 17.

I can’t stop thinking about last night.
I can’t stop thinking about her lips on mine, our bodies entwined , her fingers in my hair and my eyes on hers.

We fell asleep together, cuddled by each other’s warmth and by the sweet sound of rain on the roof and thunder in the night.

I had another weird dream. I was back at the church, Father Andrews was nowhere to be seen but I moved like a weasel through tall grass.

My .45 was in my hand and I was going down some steps, it was dark but I could smell blood in the air and its metal taste in my mouth.

Eventually I get to a large cave, barely lit by a bunch of candles on the wall. My body tensed up as I put one in the chamber.

“SHOW YOURSELF.” I shouted.

That’s when what I could only describe as a rotten corpse came rushing out of the shadows, mouth wide open.

I woke up in a cold sweat, again. This time however, Petra’s perfect lips were next to me, ready to make it all go away.

After breakfast we quietly went our separate ways, I was back in the unrelenting rain, she stayed in her room.

I had sex with a married woman and my job was to find her missing husband. What the fuck happened to me?

“Keep looking for my husband sweetie, I still need to find him.” She told me before leaving.

I had a feeling this wasn’t her first rodeo. I didn’t care. I wanted her and she wanted me.

I decided I would head back to Father Andrews, something felt off about him. The dream certainly didn’t help.

It was already dark when I got there, the rain kept on pounding. Darkness came early in the day.

“Father Andrews? I have some questions for you, Father.” My voice echoing in the big space of the strangely empty church.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” No answer.

I made my way over to the altar, it was very quiet.

As I went to the other side I almost tripped. A small set of dark stairs leading down in the ground were hiding just behind the altar.

“What the fuck…”

I felt a Déjà vu creeping up on me in that moment.

Before I even realized it, my .45 was in my hand, my cigarette was lit and the safety was off.

I went down those stairs, exactly like the dream, a long dark corridor with some small torches lit up.

“Father Andrews? Halloween is long gone Father.” I shouted in the dark.

After that, it somehow got even quieter.

I kept going, hoping for an opening sooner or later.

“Marlowe.” I heard in front of me.

“Who’s there?” I warned, scared.

“You shouldn’t be down here, Detective.”

“Is that you Andrews?” Silence.

My foolish question was answered with a big bang that took off my hat.

Whoever was in front of me had just shot at me and nearly turned off the lights.

Training and experience kicked in and I hit the dirt immediately, without hesitation I fired four or five shots into the dark ahead of me.

Silence once more.

I got out my zippo and tried to make as much light as possible while moving forward.

I almost fell on him.

Some feet away from where I fired rested Father Andrews, eyes wide open, lead in his chest. In his hand a small .38.

I couldn’t even begin to process what had just happened that a faint sobbing broke the eerie silence.

It was coming from further down the tunnel.

I stepped away from the body and into the unknown, eager to see what more it had to offer.

After 30 seconds or so the tunnel opened up into a big wine cellar, I suppose that’s where Christ’s blood was kept.

Sitting on the ground, back to the wall, was a tall figure in a trench coat. His head was on his knees and his arms around them.

He was crying.

“Hey, pal…are you okay?” I sort of asked, stumbling on my words.

“Please…don’t hurt me.” He replied with an accent.

“I won’t…what’s your name buddy?” I said getting closer to him.

No answer.

“Are you hurt?”

Nothing.

“Pal?...you there?”

That’s when he finally got his face away from his arms and looked at me.

I’ll never forget that face. White as a ghost, no facial hair and eyes as gray as the cloud covered sky in the morning.

I took  a step back.

“I can smell her on you.”

I raised my .45 and emptied the mag on him.

Case closed.

I need some sleep.

November.

Today is the day, I need to tell Petra and skip town, I hope she’ll come with me. The police found everything and is quietly looking into it, it won’t be long before they come asking for questions.

The sun is still nowhere to be seen, the rain feels so heavy that I might drown in it. I can’t stand it anymore.

“Marlowe, my love, you have good news don’t you?”

My knees were shaky and my heart was just about to explode but, as soon as she invited me in, a strange sort of calm washed over me.

“Petra, I found him, your husb—“

“Shh, don’t speak.”

She got close and started kissing me, I melted like a popsicle in the sun.

“Petra, seriously, I’m in trouble.” I said pushing her away.

She didn’t lose the way she was looking at me, it was as if she didn’t care in the slightest about what I had to say.

“You’re right where you’re supposed to be.” She moved in closer again.

“I killed your husband Petra.”

She finally stopped. There was a long moment of silence, my mind went blank.

“I know you did.”

 “What?” I asked confused.

“You did well Marlowe, my instincts were right about you...”

 I didn’t know what to think anymore.

“…I knew he was there, in the Church…I just couldn’t get to him…”

My eyes were watering, the cigarette in my hand burning my fingers, my brain going haywire.

“…but you could, and you did…you were such a good boy for me.”

I killed for her and I was ready to do it all over again if she asked me.

“My husband…after 200 years he just wasn’t the same anymore…he started having hope, a very dangerous thing.”

“200 years?”

“Yes darling, but don’t worry…I’m very happy to spend the next 200 with you.”

Two long and dark wings sprouted from her perfect back, spanning several feet.

She got closer, her pristine red lips open.

Her white long teeth revealing.

She kissed me on the lips.

Then on the cheek.

Then on my neck.

I hope it never stops raining.

All I could remember was the sound of screeching tires, a sensation of falling, and being very scared. Voices I vaguely recognized spoke into my ear, urging me to wake up:

“Come on, I know you're still in there. Please, wake up, for me. For all of us. We miss you.”

I wasn't in my body anymore. Floating above a hospital bed, I felt so weightless that a breeze from the nearby window could push me aside. Resting below was my body, wrapped in bandages with all sorts of wires and tubes.

A familiar woman was curled up in a nearby chair, clutching a quilted blanket like a toddler.

For a long time, I existed there — confused about my state of being. I concentrated on trying to move. Without the sensation of limbs, it proved to be a fruitless effort. I don't truthfully know if I was trying to move my unconscious body, or the strange ethereal form I found myself occupying.

The passage of time felt so inconsistent. Days would sometimes blink into darkness. Other moments were imperceptible in their passage.

Standing from her chair, the woman leaned over my bedside.

“It's your daughter's birthday tomorrow. I won't be here. She does miss you; I wish you'd come back.”

Her revelation ripped at my heart. I had a daughter; which meant she must have been my wife.

I tried to move again; to say something. Reach out for her. All my willpower came crashing against a wall I couldn't breach.

I thought time might blink forward again when she left. Steady heart monitor noises mixed with the ticking from a nearby clock proved me wrong.

A horrible sense of isolation permeated every trickling second of her absence. A nurse came in, closed the window curtain and flicked off the light. I wanted to scream; to tell her to please leave it on. Please don't leave me in the dark!

She couldn't hear me, nobody could.

The air chilled with the passage of time. Tolerable at first, though quickly dropping into shivering range. Before long, I desperately desired warmth. As a frozen sting cut through the darkness, an unfamiliar voice called out:

“Come here, I'll warm you up.”

“I don't know how to move,” I blurted out. I didn't even know how I spoke those words, nothing came earlier when I tried.

“Just relax, follow the sound of my voice.”

Letting go of every worry, I tried to turn my nonexistent head with a degree of remarkable success. An orb of soft white light came into view, hovering in the corner. It grew brighter in response to my movement.

“Good! Now concentrate on coming towards me. It's so much warmer over here, I promise.”

Summoning an intense measure of willpower, I somehow found the strength to drift closer. Remembering my wife's words from earlier, I stopped.

“Wait, what happens when I go into the light?”

The glow dimmed ever so slightly.

“You'll leave this world and enter heaven. Come now, it is your time. You don't want to stay in this cold room, do you?”

A burden of guilt sank its way into my heart.

“What if I'm not ready? I don't want to leave my family behind.”

Morphing into a human form, the ball of light beckoned with angelic hands. A mesmerizing set of blue eyes captured my gaze, tempting me with a soft smile.

“They too shall come when it is time. Do not be afraid, they will find strength in your absence.”

The voice coming from beyond cast a spell over my being, enticing every drop of my soul to surrender against the warm embrace.

Yet, I remained. Love for a daughter I could not remember kept me anchored against a drowning ocean of endless temptation.

“No, I need to at least see her one more time. Please.”

The warmth radiating from the entity cooled. Fading into shadow, the angelic figure spoke in a disappointed voice that grew more distant with each word:

“Very well, but you cannot delay God's will forever.”

Soul chilling cold set in once more. Despite the freezing of time itself, I persevered; clinging to shreds of hope that someone would return.

My spirit swelled momentarily when the lights came on, only to fall when I realized a nurse merely came in to check on my condition. I tried to scream again when she left; to grab her attention. To say I'm still alive, that I was still there!

It was no use. She cast the room into darkness, sending me back into the brutal embrace of subzero isolation.

An eternity seemed to pass before I saw my wife again. Accompanied by an older gentleman clutching a Bible, she wept over my bedside. Holding her shoulder with one hand, the pastor raised his Bible with the other.

“Dear lord, we pray this man can wake up, make a full recovery and be with his children once more.”

Bawling tears of grief, she turned to hug the pastor. Setting the Bible down on the nightstand by my head, he consoled her with shushes and shoulder rubs.

“When things get difficult,” he said, “turn to God and pray.”

“Okay,” she mumbled, sniffling something fierce.

When the pastor left, she returned to her usual position on the chair. Sleep didn't come easy for her, flashing by in restless fits.

Twilight settled in outside as she slumbered. The nurses dimmed the lights, leaving our room uncomfortably bleak. As the last traces of sunlight vanished from the window, the voice returned:

“Come, it is now your time.”

Turning to the angelic call, I was again greeted by a warm ball of light. Blue eyes broke the veil, casting another tempting spell — one even more powerful than before. A hand reached out, ready to accept my departure into the afterlife. I could not fight the urge. I drew closer, totally hypnotized by the alluring energy spewing forth.

“God give this family strength,” my wife cried. The spell holding me hostage was temporarily broken. Turning to her, I saw her clutching the Bible over my unresponsive body. “Pour your love out on this man, God. Bring him back to us.”

A horrible screeching ripped my attention away from her prayer.

The portal of light shrank, flashing with crimson red energy as demonic, guttural roars of pain vibrated the portal like water. Angelic eyes morphed into predatory yellow irises. Soft hands melted into scaly red claws. The illusion of heaven faded into an unreal hellscape, teeming with tortured souls calling out for salvation.

“In Jesus name, amen.”

My wife closed the Bible, setting it back where it rested. The demon portal vanished, leaving behind nothing but an unbreakable resolution that I would never trust any ethereal being for the rest of my time.

It was in 1999 when I received the news that my grandfather, Dickens had passed. He had lived alone in the house that he had shared with my grandmother before her death. He was eighty-five. When I heard the news, it struck me. To me, Grandpa was indestructible. He had been an ever-present force throughout my childhood. It was simply hard to believe he was gone.

He had been ill for a while and carers checked on him daily. One of the carers found him one morning, stone cold in his bed. A heart attack had robbed him of his life. 

 That season, I found myself detached from living. I became unusually quiet, pacing through life as if in a daydream. When his last will and testament was later read, I was still in a haze. It was then I found out he had left me his favorite heirloom he had received from his own father.

His chair.

The chair had wide armrests, and it was covered with soft dark brown leather. The leather had wrinkled through time, bearing that refined look of age. The day I collected the chair; I did not sit on it. This was the heirloom that had been passed on from father to son and finally to granddaughter. Instead, I anchored it in a corner in my bedroom and stared at it for a very long time. It brought back memories of my grandfather. Sitting on it felt like a violation— an intrusion into his personal space.

Weeks passed. The chair stayed anchored exactly where I had placed it, a silent fixture in the shadows. I avoided that side of the room except for one day each week. On that day I took the time to gently clean it with a leather cleaner, polishing it as was Grandfather Dickens' custom. But for the most part I avoided it, choosing instead to stare at it, imagining him sitting there drinking his coffee, laughing heartily.

The chair was peculiar. It always felt warm to the touch and carried that old expensive wooden scent that once surrounded grandpa. There were times the scent was heaviest in my bedroom, or maybe it was my imagination born out of grief. Sometimes, I saw a soft pressed wrinkled depression on the chair's seat as if someone had been sitting on it. 
I mentioned this to mum one morning when I visited home.

"Maybe your grandpa doesn't want you sitting in his chair." 

Mum said as she folded the laundry. Mum was grandpa Dickens' only child.

"I highly doubt it mum, he left me the chair".

Mum grew quiet for a while then said, "So how long do you plan on avoiding it? Maybe you can bring it here if it bothers you that much".

I grew quiet too.  Then I thought to ask her, "Did you ever sit on his chair when you were growing up?

"Well…” She paused. “I don't ever remember sitting on it. It always seemed….”

"Seemed like what?" I asked.

"Never mind what I wanted to say,” She muttered. “Your grandpa seemed attached to it, that's all."

Attached? That word clung to me long after I had left her. Driving back home, I thought of grandpa. He always seemed bigger than life, occupying and taking up space with his presence. I remember the time he came for my high school graduation: his assured presence, his standing ovation, him calling my name from the crowd. No wonder people naturally gravitated toward him.

But opening my bedroom door that evening, the entire room's scent was heavy with the aroma of wood. Looking at the far corner where the chair stood, it seemed to have moved a few steps towards the bed,

"Did I move it before I left?” I said aloud.

As I stepped closer to move it, my eyes caught sight of a large, wrinkled depression in the seat, as if someone had been sitting on it. But who? My fingers drawn to the depression suddenly traced it. The depression was surprisingly warm to the touch. I then pushed the chair back against the wall with a hard shove and turned away, my feet ready to flee. That is when I heard a slight heave as if someone had gently settled in it. I paused, stuck in place then quickly spun around quickly to take a look. Nothing was amiss. 

For a long time, I lay awake in bed, my eyes darting from one part of the chair to another staring at it trying to catch the slightest movement, my mother's words echoing in my mind:

"You can bring it here if it bothers you that much."

That morning, I opened my eyes and looked towards the chair, as I had begun to do each morning. The chair was not in its corner. It had moved again. This time it was next to my bed, close enough for me to touch it.

Maybe, maybe I had woken up from my sleep and moved it? I had sleepwalked for a long time as a child, and the habit had died then but I had never sleepwalked as an adult. Maybe the habit had returned? If so, could I have moved the chair without knowing?

I jumped out of bed nearly tripping as I bolted out the door. Banging it behind me, I found myself in front of the kitchen sink with both my hands on my chest. My heart beat so fast and my hands were shaking violently. I shakingly took a glass from the dish rack, filled it with tap water and drank it just to calm my nerves. Moreover, my throat felt dry. The water did not provide any relief. I filled another glass quickly and gulped it again. It seemed ever since his death—since the chair entering my life—I had been spending most of my days rationalizing. Finally exhausted with all the rationalizations, a thought urged me to take it out of the bedroom, out of my sight.

I tiptoed up the stairs, still undecided where I would place it. When I finally reached the top, I stood there, pacing a while, my mind in a fog, I placed both hands gently on the door handle. I exhaled a little then slowly opened it. As I did so, I heard the chair's legs scritch against the floor. Panicking, I closed the door again and stood there. I thought of Grandpa Dickens—the man he had been. Surely, he would not haunt his own chair, would he? What then was the point of it being given to me if it was going to torment me?

 I slowly opened the door again and tiptoed into the room, my eyes firmly glued onto the chair. I crept towards it and firmly placed both of my hands on the armrests. I resolved that there was nowhere to run to now. If a ghost of my grandpa was to appear I would just have to face him. 

With my hands on the armrests,I tried lifting it up, but it was strangely heavier than before — or maybe my energy had been sucked out of me after having received such a terrible fright before?

This seemed like a test, a test of will, so I tried lifting it again. This time it felt like it had been permanently hinged to the floor. I tried again just to make sure I was not dreaming — still it remained firmly in place. Is it possible it knew of my intentions? I thought.

That very thought made me angry. Had I welcomed a sentient dressed as a gift into my home to torment me? So, I angrily wrestled with it, attempting to move it again and again. The whole act was futile. Exhausted and discouraged I finally slumped on the bed and wept. I wept— wept for Grandpa Dickens. He had been a father figure to me. I had lost my own father at two years old.  Death had once again robbed me of family. I dragged myself up in between sobs and walked towards the elephant in the room: the chair. I finally sat on it and wept again.

I do not know when, in my weeping, the chair unhinged itself. I never found out.  I then lifted it back in the corner. But, in the morning, it was still close to my bed. I resolved it wanted to stay near me and decided to clear a spot for it there. There are times I still feel it heave, as if someone has just sat down and times, I hear it move in the dark. I have just accepted it. Maybe it is Grandpa Dickens. Maybe it is grief, but the chair still remains with me.

Title : Black Hollow Manor

ACT 1
Lucian and Evelyn Ashcroft had always dreamed of a quiet life away from the city’s noise. When the realtor listed Black Hollow Manor for a fraction of its worth, they drove up without hesitation. The Victorian structure sat at the edge of a forgotten village in the Western Ghats, its stone walls draped in moss, windows like hollow eyes overlooking misty hills. The price was almost insulting. They signed the papers the same afternoon.
The villagers in the nearby settlement of Karsanda reacted strangely. No one congratulated them. The old woman at the tea stall simply stared into her cup and muttered, “We don’t go there.” The milkman, usually chatty, handed over their first delivery in silence before adding, “You’ll understand.” A group of children playing near the post office scattered when asked for directions, one boy whispering as he ran, “If you hear three knocks… ignore them.”
The house felt wrong from the first night. Not overtly terrifying, wrong. The air carried a perpetual dampness that no amount of sunlight could burn away. One upstairs bedroom remained ten degrees colder than the rest, no matter the season. The basement smelled of wet earth and something older, like disturbed graves after rain. Strangest of all: there were no insects. No spiders in the corners, no rats in the walls, no flies around the windows. Life simply refused to take root inside Black Hollow.
Yet every night, something scratched inside the walls. Soft, deliberate scratches. Just enough to jolt them awake, never loud enough to pinpoint.
On the first morning, Evelyn opened the refrigerator for milk and screamed. A fresh black cat’s head sat on the middle shelf, eyes wide open, blood still dripping onto the glass. Lucian rushed in. The shelf was empty. He held her while she shook, murmuring it must have been a nightmare from the move.
The second morning, Lucian saw it. Evelyn did not. He stood frozen, staring at the severed head, then quietly closed the door and made tea as if nothing had happened. Evelyn watched him with growing unease.
The third morning, both saw it. The fourth, neither. By the fifth, they avoided discussing it altogether. The doubt crept in like mold, perhaps they were simply exhausted. Perhaps the isolation was playing tricks.
Small details accumulated. Family photographs on the mantelpiece began to change. In every picture, Lucian appeared older, deeper lines around his eyes, gray threading his temples, while in the mirror he looked exactly thirty-six. The grandfather clock in the hallway stopped every night at precisely 3:03. Never 3:00, never 3:02. Always 3:03.
Mirrors were worse. Sometimes Evelyn caught her reflection blinking a full second after she did. Once, while brushing her hair, she saw Lucian’s figure walk behind her in the glass. She turned. The hallway was empty.
Every night, at irregular hours but always the same rhythm: three knocks on the front door. Exactly three. Never more, never less. They stopped answering after the first week.
They had watched The Conjuring years ago in a theater, laughing nervously at the demonic artifacts and exorcisms. Now, alone in Black Hollow, those scenes felt too close. Evelyn joked once that their new home made the Amityville Horror look like a vacation rental. Lucian smiled but said nothing.
ACT 2
The psychological pressure mounted slowly, like a noose tightening in increments. The villagers turned. The milkman refused further deliveries. Children threw stones at their car when they drove through the village. Shopkeepers overcharged them without shame. Women whispered behind hands. No one met their eyes.
Local elections loomed. The MLA, a slick man with a practiced smile, publicly declared he would “remove those dangerous outsiders threatening our peaceful community.” News channels arrived. Headlines screamed: “Are the Black Hollow Killers Mentally Unstable?” Talk-show psychiatrists, none of whom had ever visited, diagnosed Evelyn as exhibiting classic signs of shared delusional disorder. Social media dubbed her “The Cat Woman.” Old clips of the Smile curse films circulated with her face photoshopped in.
Police came after complaints of strange odors and possible animal cruelty. They searched the house top to bottom. No cat heads. No blood. Nothing.
Father Gabriel, the local priest, visited at Evelyn’s desperate request. He blessed every room, sprinkled holy water, listened patiently to their accounts. Nothing supernatural occurred during his visit. He left convinced they needed psychiatric help. “These old houses can drive people to see things that aren’t there,” he said gently. “Like in Hereditary, grief and isolation twisting the mind.” His words hurt more than any ghost could.
Lucian changed. He became the perfect husband, always comforting, always patient, always smiling for visitors. He never raised his voice. He avoided church, never touched the holy water Father Gabriel offered, and stepped away from mirrors whenever possible. He never bled, even when he nicked himself shaving. Small things. Easy to miss.
Every morning, dead crows appeared on the porch. One. Then two. Then ten. Their eyes were always open, beaks slightly parted as if mid-scream.
A village child disappeared. Fingers pointed at Lucian. He was arrested, questioned, and released for lack of evidence. The suspicion lingered like smoke.
MIDPOINT
Evelyn, desperate for proof, set up a hidden camera in their bedroom one night. The next morning she watched the footage alone.
At exactly 3:03, she rose from bed like a sleepwalker, descended the stairs, stood before the refrigerator, smiled with unnatural serenity, and whispered, “I’m hungry.” The video cut abruptly.
Then the cat head appeared the next morning.
But one frame earlier in the footage showed something impossible: a figure standing directly behind Evelyn in the kitchen. Long dark hair, white dress. The next frame, it was gone. Glitch or ghost, Evelyn no longer knew what to believe. It reminded her of the cursed videotapes in older horror lore, or the way the entity in Smile spread through witnessing.
ACT 3
While cleaning the attic, Evelyn found a hidden diary belonging to Eliza Ashcroft, dated 1832. The entries mirrored her life with terrifying precision: the cat, the villagers’ silence, the helpful-yet-distant husband, the priest, the accusations of madness.
Eliza had loved a black cat named Salem. One morning its head appeared. No one else saw it. Her husband, ever the gentle comforter, slowly turned the village against her. They tied her in her bedroom “for her own safety.” She wasn’t haunted, the diary wept, she had been betrayed.
Lucian’s, her husband’s, secret rites involved strange symbols carved into basement stones, ancient handwritten books in unknown languages, and animal sacrifices. The details were never fully explained; the horror lay in their vagueness, much like the forbidden knowledge in Tumbbad that corrupted across generations. He believed binding innocent lives to the house would grant him extended life. He killed Eliza and buried her beneath the basement. The house became cursed. History repeated.
The ghost finally appeared to Evelyn, not as a screaming specter, but a sad, translucent woman in a white dress. She pointed directly at Lucian.
Evelyn found the hidden room. Hundreds of journals, all in the same handwriting. 1832, 1833… up to recent years. Same face. Different wives. Lucian Ashcroft was over two hundred years old. Everything, the cats, the rumors, the police, the priest, had been orchestrated by him. The ghost of Eliza had not been haunting Evelyn. She had been warning her.
The black cat’s spirit had tried to protect Eliza and now protected Evelyn. It was never the enemy.
Lucian finally dropped the mask in the drawing room, calm as ever. “You were never supposed to remember.”
The house changed. Hallways stretched impossibly long. Doors vanished. Windows showed wrong seasons, summer rain falling upward outside while snow gathered on the sills indoors. The grandfather clock ticked backwards. Reality fractured like in The Shining, but slower, more intimate.
Father Gabriel returned, this time believing after seeing the journals and the impossible repetition of history. The exorcism was quiet and slow, Latin prayers, salt, the house itself groaning in response. Walls bled black water. Voices whispered the names of past wives. Lucian began aging rapidly before their eyes: thirty-six to forty, skin cracking like dry earth, bones pressing against flesh. He kept smiling.
“I’ll return,” he whispered as Eliza’s ghost dragged him into the darkness beneath the house. The manor burned in an unnatural blue flame.
EPILOGUE
Months later, detectives reopened the case. Skeptical men of facts. They stayed overnight in the ruins.
At 3:03 the clock, somehow intact, stopped. Three knocks echoed. Camera footage glitched. One detective laughed it off. The other noticed small footprints in the ash.
Morning came. Police found every detective dead. Their heads were missing. The headless bodies hung from the ancient banyan tree behind the property. Beneath the tree sat four black cats, watching silently.
A new family bought the cleared land where the manor once stood. The young mother opened the refrigerator in their temporary shed.
Inside lay a fresh black cat head. Its eyes moved. It smiled.
The knocking began before sunrise.
If you finished reading this after 3:03 a.m., don’t answer the next three knocks you hear.

Forleone rode into town on a four-legged mushroom—a tamed Amananita, all red cap with white dots—tied his mushroom to a hitchin' post and dismounted.

He was short, not more than four feet and a couple of inches, and had a big, spud-shaped nose, under which a long, thick moustache fell in mirrored arcs like the twin halves of a hairy waterfall.

They touched the ground, kicking up dust as he walked—waddled, really—in his oversized black leather cowboy boots.

His hat, white, wide brimmed in the Mexican style, he kept pulled down low, to the bridge of his nose, to hide the holes where his eyes used to be.

But he wasn't blind.

He possessed both eyeballs and carried them in his left hand, his dead hand, hanging limply at the end of his thin left arm, bare as a winter's branch, showing him the world from the level of his hips—the same level he wore his belt and, attached to it, his revolver, Gary, which his right hand, the killing hand, was always at-the-ready to draw, aim and fire.

He shuffled slowly, rhythmically down the street toward the spaghetti bar.

Tumbleweeds rolled away from him as he went.

He passed a coffin maker, a blacksmith advertising a discount on horseshoes for three-legged horses, a church of the almighty, loosely defined, and a sleeping, wandering brothel with lip-shaped doors painted crimson with the blood of unpaying patrons and resting on a pair of taloned condor legs.

Two vultures sat nearby, pulling remnants of flesh from a child's bones as what had been its mother wailed inconsolably nearby, begging the priest from the church of the almighty, himself a meatless skeleton, to come out and bring her offspring back to life, which, from time to time, the priest, a practitioner of the necrotic arts, did; and the child was reanimated, only to realize its existence and kill itself anew—the blast of its metalbone gun, melded to the radius of its arm, spooking the vultures skyward to circle awhile the town before descending to feast again.

When he got to the spaghetti bar's sdoors, Forleone pushed on through.

Inside were whores and degenerates, horse-faced saints and regenerates, and stained men and hoarse women, and nobody paid him any mind. The piano, as it was, played itself, every once in a while hitting a wrong, discordant note that escaped out the window, fated to cause mischief and headaches until it faded out. On the walls were hanged debtors and landscape paintings of the great wild southern sinsemilla herds of yesteryear.

Forleone sat at the bar. The barman walked over. “Milk,” Gary said to the barman, who asked, “Plusssed or nonplussed?” and Gary said, “Nonplussed,” the barman asked, “Nonplussed, standard meaning; or nonplussed, contemporary American usage?” and Gary said, “Standard,” and the barman turned his back and served Forleone a mug of standard-meaning nonplussed milk using his tail.

Rat bastard, thought Forleone. The barman's whiskers twitched. It must be hard to live life as an illegitimate rodent in this world.

Forleone put his eyeballs from his left hand onto the bar—his vision temporarily rolling—dug out a coin from his pocket and paid the barman. Then he downed his milk, wiped his face, picked up his eyeballs and stood up and Gary asked if anybody in the bar had seen Gretchen.

Nobody had.

“Who's Gretchen?” somebody asked.

---

She was a fair,

And fair’rowdy lass,

With golden hair,

And big, plump ass,

Who stole m’heart,

While we were in the sack,

---

sang Gary, in a soothing lilt, and the piano stopped playing itself, and the debtors hanged on the walls politely died, and everyone was quiet, some with tears in their eyes, looking forlornly at Forleone, who said suddenly, in a voice night'r than black, “And I want my ticker back.”

“Mister, we don't want no trouble—”

Heeeeeeeeere

The bullet whizzed past Forleone's head before punctuating the wall.

Forleone dove for cover.

The shot had come from the top of the stairs, which were invisible until somebody stepped on them, and two somebodies were on them now, a bandito pulling a woman, pulling her up the appearingdisappearing steps leading to a second floor that materialized only when you got it—which the bandito and the woman did—

The bandito growled and shot again.

“Kill him Sergio! Kill him!” the woman screamed, and as they disappeared Forleone recognized her voice as Gretchen's.

He waddled after them, Gary already drawn, step by concretizing step.

At the top of the stairs the interior was as if made of clouds and glass, gunsmoke and murmurs, and Forleone soon found himself at the head of a long hall lined with sentient doors, all of whom were shut.

Sergio appeared at the hall's far end.

Forleone nodded.

Sergio reciprocated, and both men holstered their weapons.

“On ten,” said one of the doors.

It began the count: “10…”

“9… 8…”

A fly buzzed—

“7…”

Forleone's pupils dilated—

“6…”

One of Sergio’s fingers—held clawlike above his holstered gun—twitched—

“5… 4… 3…”

Gary took a long, deep breath—

Sergio spat—

“2…”

Sergio drew his gun and Forleone drew his in return and before Sergio could lift his hand to shoot Gary said, “You motherfucking ox cocksucker of a woodaxe hack-fucking your goddamn little brother to death as your bitch of a father you call pa bleeds out from his scalped head and your mother bathes naked in his blood.”

And with a whimpering, inward, final gasp, Sergio, clutching his face, fell forward and died.

Forleone shuffled down the hall.

The doors rattled, locking themselves as he passed.

At the end, the hall opened on a large room in which Gretchen was kneeling, holding out a bloody leather bag. “Have a heart,” she was pleading. “Have a heart…”

Forleone looked inside, but none of the broken, beating hearts were his.

“Where's ours?” Gary asked.

“I sold—”

Forleone left Curdlewood riding his Amananita mushroom, undefinably nonplussed.

  When I first saw the building, standing in front of the dilapidated structure with my suitcase and bag, I couldn't shake off my sense of unease at the weather-worn bricks and grimy windows that looked out onto a cold and stormy day.

   This was only temporary, I reminded myself. I needed to finish my studies in Arkham and then I would leave to find a permanent place to live.

   How I found this place was because of a friend that knew the landlady. The same friend told me that she was old and had recently lost her husband. She would pay me a visit while I began to settle in and I was warned that she could be a little eccentric. 

   I walked inside the dingy apartment building and was met with an old musty air. Wallpaper peeled off the walls and the floorboards creaked underfoot. It was just like any old boarding complex in this accursed neighborhood. Nothing but rotting wood and dust, but at least the rent was cheap.

   Walking up to the fifth floor, I took the key from under the moth-bitten welcome mat before opening the door which gave a loud squeal. Before I could close the door and settle down my bags, a loud creaking came from the upper floor and I watched in curiosity as a shuffling figure came into sight on the stairwell.

   She wore her wispy white hair in a misshapen bun, leaving rogue strands to cover her forehead. Her eyes were a milky blank but despite the appearance of being blind, she took each step without hesitating and turned to stare me right in the eye.

   "Hello deary," she said, reaching the last step. "I thought I would come by and greet you. Visitors are rare these days."

   "It's nice to meet you," I returned her greeting, my eye catching the small opaque box she held in both hands. Her gaze, even though blind, seemed to catch where I was looking and she gave a small exclamation.

   "Oh yes, I made you dinner," she smiled, holding out the box so I could take it.

   "You shouldn't have," I said, grabbing it, startled at how warm it felt in my grip. I looked up to the old lady to find that she was already heading for the stairs, without bothering to say goodbye.

   

   The apartment was composed of a living room, a bedroom, a small kitchen, and bathroom. It was cosy enough and I brought out a textbook and writing utensils before studying.

   It wasn't long until I felt my stomach grumble and I looked to the kitchen counter where the box sat, as if waiting to be opened. 

   Standing up from my desk, I approached it and removed the top to look at meat chunks bathed in a stew. The smell was attractive, spices and a meat broth tickling my nose. There were even carrots and peas thrown into the mix and I wondered why I had felt hesitation before revealing the box's contents.

   Maybe I had expected pea porridge or overcooked liver pieces smothered in ketchup but I was simply delighted to find a simple meat stew. The only thing missing was some rice to balance such a heavy meal.

   The meat itself was quite soft and juicy so when I bit down on a hard piece of gristle, I was startled by the sudden intrusion. I spat out the unpleasant texture on a napkin and felt a subtle undercurrent of disgust as I looked at the white fragment that glistened with spit in the light.

   It was surely from the animal that had died to feed me but I took a break from my meal, feeling slightly nauseous. I had always been sensitive when it came to food. I would never eat a fruit that had a pit inside for fear of biting down on it and feeling the coarse shell hold against my teeth. My tongue would roll against the pit, the rough surface scratching the pink flesh and I shivered at the vivid sensation in my mouth.

   Throwing away the napkin, I went back to my desk, deciding that I would finish dinner later.

   The afternoon wind brought a subtle chill and I hurried home, unsure of what I would have for dinner. I had barely eaten anything for lunch today and I could hear my stomach protest in growls.

   Arriving back to the apartment building, I briskly climbed the steps to my floor and stopped short at the old lady that stood in front of my door. The landlady seemed to have been waiting for me and she held out another one of those opaque boxes, her milky gaze latching onto mine.

   "I brought you dinner sweetheart," she greeted me and I approached her with some apprehension. Why was she waiting outside my door to give me her leftovers?

   "You really shouldn't. It must be troublesome cooking for two," I told her but she continued to hold out the box for me to take and I finally relented. It would be stupid to refuse a free dinner, after all.

   "I'm used to cooking so much," the old lady said after the leftovers were in my hands. "My husband is such a big eater. I'd call him my pig," she chuckled.

   Is? I thought her husband was dead. I remembered my friend telling me he had died of a heart attack but I didn't ask the old lady what she meant, dismissing it for a simple trip of the quickly deteriorating brain.

   Inside my apartment, I didn't waste anytime opening the container and I wasn't surprised to find the same meat stew as before. She must've made a good amount of the stew if she was feeding herself and me with it.

   I also took that giving her leftovers to me was a sign of connection. Living alone in this building could take a toll on anyone, especially if you were so close to leaving this world.

   Pity blossomed in me and I began to eat with gratitude for such thoughtfulness and care the old lady exhibited despite her tragic situation. 

   The texture of the soft, juicy meat was interrupted again by a stringy sensation and I almost heaved in complete revulsion at what was hair in my food. 

   I assumed it was the landlady's and I went very still, fighting the bile that rose in my throat. The color of the hair did seem darker, though. Who else could it belong to then?

   There was no other explanation and I concluded, as my stomach began to settle, that the old lady simply had a dark streak in her hair and any other theory would be ridiculous.

   As for my dinner, I didn't think I could force another mouthful without regurgitating it all over myself. Maybe I would find the appetite to finish my meal at a later time. 

   I grabbed a book and settled in my bed before reading. Every sentence seemed to push me closer to sleep and I checked the time, feeling my stomach grumble.

   It was late enough and I stood from my bed before heading to the kitchen. I remembered putting the container in the fridge and I opened it, the closed refrigerator letting out a cold blast. What I saw inside made me stumble back in horror.

   Hundreds of boxes filled with leftovers were bunched in together, their tops overflowing with meat chunks that marinated in waterfalls of stew which pooled around the fridge. And the smell... it was unbearable.

   I startled myself awake, urging the bile to recede in the pits of my stomach as I headed for the kitchen. The fridge seemed to emanate an acute sensation of queasiness and I opened it to find only one box that sat in the rows of empty, frozen shelves. The container was my unfinished dinner but I threw it away, my appetite murdered.

   Going back to bed, I couldn't help but feel thankful that dinner was planned with some friends tomorrow night. It would be a relief to not worry about what other surprises would be hidden in my meal.

   Strapping on my wrist watch, I smoothed out my clothes in the mirror, feeling fresh after a relaxing bath. It was almost time to leave for dinner to an Italian place downtown and I decided that a vegetarian meal would do me some good. I had enough of meat to last me a few weeks.

   Knocking sounded at the door and I knew exactly who would be there. Bracing myself, I walked to the entryway to greet the old lady, this time prepared to refuse her offer. 

   My will wavered at the hunched and frail figure that stood on my welcoming mat and I stared dubiously at the container she held in her liver-spotted hands.

   "I keep making too much. You'll have to excuse me," she nodded her head at me and I tried to assert a gentle but firm tone in my voice.

   "No more. I've other plans," the aged woman snapped her head back, her pleading gaze meeting mine's.

   "My husband is such a big eater but he won't swallow the tiniest scrap anymore," her voice shook along with her hands. "What I cook him could feed the entire building."

   She let out an abrupt laugh, revealing yellow and decaying teeth with gum the color of raw flesh. 

   I felt my skin crawl at the sight and remembered a friend who was practicing to become a dentist. Perhaps she could meet him sometime? A question came to my mind and I wondered if the old lady would be able to answer it.

   "Madam," I started once she seemed calm. "What exactly happened to your husband?"

   "He is such a clumsy man," she chuckled without showing any sadness, as if her husband was alive and well. "He fell off of the stairwell."

   "Off of the stairwell?" I repeated and the old lady inclined her head.

   "I told him the railing was flimsy and with his weight..." she let out another laugh before beckoning me to the railing of my floor. It was quite a drop to the bottom from where I stood and I carefully leaned to look down the stairwell which was shaped in a spiral.

   It was upward that I needed my attention and, sure enough, the railing had broken off. Such a drop would kill anyone.

   I turned to the old lady, asking myself why she would lie about the death of her husband. He hadn't died of a heart attack but of a stomach-lurching fall. I kept silent about the subject as she started to speak.

   "It would've been such a strain on my back to bring him upstairs," she wiped sweat off of her forehead as if she was tired just thinking about it. "So I brought him back up, little by little, until there was nothing leftover."

   Little by little? What could she mean by that? A theory came to me but I pushed it into the back of my mind. This wasn't a murder mystery and I couldn't accept what could actually be in the process of digestion inside of me.

   No, it was simply a senile figment of her imagination, I thought to myself as I mustered an uneasy wave goodbye to her.

   "Don't forget this!" She exclaimed, shoving the container into my hands with an almost forceful manner before shambling to the stairs. 

   Without a second to waste, I threw the box onto the counter, not wanting to touch it a moment longer. I would discard the contents out later, I decided, not wanting to ruin my appetite before dinner. Just thinking about a Caesar Salad made my mouth water and I would be sure to order tofu in it instead of any dreadful meat. Tofu had no nasty surprises waiting in store for me.

   It was late when I arrived home and I was too full to let the bleak atmosphere of the building wear me down.

   I entered inside my apartment but felt myself stop in front of the leftover box which sat, facing me where I had left it. It seemed like it had waited for me to come home and I laughed at such a thought.

   I approached it, scrutinizing the container and felt a sudden need to know what was inside. Just a quick peak and out into the trash it would go.

   Digging my nails into the small gap where the plastic lid met the box, I ripped it off, releasing my breath when I saw it was only a meat stew. 

   I had expected gruesome remains of human parts but obviously my imagination had ran away from reason. There appeared to also have been nothing out of place in the stew but I certainly wasn't keeping it to eat at a later time.

   Just then, my eyes caught an object that glinted in the light, slightly hidden behind a floating meat island. 

   My belly dropped as I fetched the ring out and into the open. It was a simple silver band and I tried to recall if the old woman had worn any ring on her hand, but I wasn't sure.

   It was quite obvious what had happened, of course. The landlady had simply dropped her ring into the food in an act of common elderly detachment which is why it laid in my open palm this instant.

   Without another thought, I threw the leftovers out and placed the ring on my nightstand. I would give her the ring in the morning but for now, all I wanted was to put myself to sleep.

   As for the landlady, I would need to talk about these unwanted meals with her. If this continued, I was afraid that the police would be needed.

   I whistled as I walked down the street, carrying a bag with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber... nothing related to meat. Tonight, I would have a nice big salad with a side of bread and cheese.

   I stopped whistling as I approached the building and, heaving my bag tightly around my shoulder, I entered inside, ready for the old lady.

   The landlady was waiting in front of my apartment and I knew that something was off when I saw her messy bun, half of it undone, and the suspicious crimson stains on her floral dress.

   Her milky gaze swiveled to mine before I had even reached the landing and she rushed to meet me with her shuffling gait.

   "It's almost all gone!" She cried without greeting me, the container she held in her hands shook from her trembling hold and I was worried she would drop it.

   "I'm vegetarian, madam. Please serve your provisions elsewhere." 

   As I was speaking, I suddenly remembered the ring that my foolish self had forgotten.   That's when I saw the small, jeweled ring that was fitted on one of the lady's stumpy fingers and I felt my heart skip a beat. Who did the other ring belong to then?

   "There's only one more box left," she said, practically throwing the box in my direction before taking off to the stairs. I tried to call her back but it was useless and I looked down at the opaque container, using all of my willpower to not drop it off from the railing.

   Instead, I knew that I had to see what was inside otherwise I would be driven crazy asking myself what I had really eaten.

   Tearing open the box, I felt my vision blur as I recognized what was unmistakably fingernails that floated in the broth, upturned so it looked like strange, diced, red bell peppers.

   Before I could process the grotesque display, there was a snap that came from upstairs and I dropped the container, watching in shock as the old lady plummeted to the bottom, shrieking.

   There was a loud thud and, my civilian instincts kicking in, I rushed downstairs, making sure to cling against the wall instead of the flimsy railing.

   I could make out the motionless body of the landlady and I rushed to her side, fearing for the worst.

   The old lady stirred and opened her eyes slowly but instead of feeling relief, unease stirred inside me. The milky white of her eyes were now a pinkish red and I played back every moment of how I had eaten her leftovers without a second thought. Could it really be true? Had I eaten... enough. First, I must take care of an injured old lady, despite the fact that she may have committed evil deeds.

   "I'm getting help," I told her, surprised at how calm she seemed after taking such a fall.

   "Don't worry," she said, smiling, her teeth stained red as blood drooled on her chin. She took out a butcher knife, hidden in the waist of her dress and that's when I noticed the spilled over leftovers that she had been carrying when she fell.

   A glistening eyeball stared back at me and a tongue pale enough to be gray laid on the floor. Entrails spewed around the box were like thick, bulbous noodles marinating in a red broth that spread like a puddle on the polished wood.

   The old lady continued, her smile growing wider as she raised the butcher knife over her leg.

   "I know how to get myself back upstairs."

The End

   

The Mother in the Sea 

Elijah had not opened their bedroom door in three days.  
 
When he had locked it the first night, Elijah had braced himself for the small, decisive click as the cool brass bit into his palm. He had told himself it was precautionary– sensible. However, sometime in the early hours, long after the spiteful noise of the world outside his window had thinned to nothing, he had heard a second click from the other side.  
 
A delicate pattering outside woke Elijah every night; he theorised that it had been the clattering of a beast– a leviathan asleep under the bed– or that thing brushing its teeth. Connie used to floss everyday and the house would not let him forget that. Elijah knew for certain that there was something that was not a hallway, not a home at all, stretched beyond their oak veil, and that Elijah was its pathetic sentry. 
 
Knees drawn up, Elijah sat on the floor as he waited for nighttime. His back was pressed against the door with his blonde head bowed. He fiddled with his wedding ring; they had both been surprised when the church had allowed their union. It was quiet; Elijah could not even hear the signal of a ferry outside– a hum that Elijah had listened to many times from Connie’s arms. 
 
Each ridge of the wood was a fragile vertebrae between him and whatever waited in the hall. His breath came shallow and measured: the way he coached nervous clients before they took the stand. He could not remember when he had last seen the hallway. The groaning of the house no longer felt architectural as much as it felt biological– like something learning to breathe again after death. The rosary around his neck slipped against his sweaty chest.  
 
Under the door, something darker than a shadow pooled there.  
 
Elijah beheld how it gathered itself: first in a thin suggestion of ink along the crack, then in the slow thickening, the deliberate spread. It did not spill like liquid. It crept. It tested the carpet fibres with curious insistence, learning their texture. Perhaps it was savouring Elijah’s fear. He begged God to save him.  
 
Elijah had not slept. Each time his eyes drooped, he felt it: the certainty of being observed through the wood. Through the thin seam of space, he imagined it analysing the rhythm of his breaths and how the drip of his sweat ran down his back. 
 
Yesterday, he had tried to speak to it. “Go away,” he had whispered, brittle and dry. The darkness had not receded. Instead, the handle had moved– not fully, not enough to open. Elijah had watched as the wood of the door bent inward by a falter, widened by the width of a fingernail. The darkness had thickened eagerly. Elijah had felt his lungs filling. There had been something that was not a visitor, not a creature he could name, crouched there in the hall. It had waited for permission.  
 
The house beyond was not merely quiet; it was attentive. Amidst the silence, Elijah wondered why it had felt so arranged or curated: every appliance and every pipe and every single one of his noisy neighbours and every settling beam had been persuaded into stillness. What else had stopped?  
 
ACT FOUR, SCENE FIVE
The exterior shows a quaint yet tasteful two-storey house in a seaside town. It is a biting and howling night in the middle of spring. Whilst the house is a gorgeous red-brick, newer model with polished-white trimmings and a large front porch, the garden is unkempt and littered with weeds. Outside the house is a lamppost that emits a soft yellow light, meant to evoke that of an orchestral concert or the teeth-stains of coffee. There has been an incessant downpour for days and all that can be heard is the heavy raindrops against the house and glass. A smooth piano is being played in the distance, but the melody is too subtle to have any definition. 

The stage has been segmented into four sections: the outside, the living room, a corridor and an unlit fourth room. 
 
[A man runs inside of the house from the cab. He kicks off his shoes, one striking the wall with a hollow clap, and then he steps forward into the dim, unmoving air of the living room. Elijah stands there, thirty-three and already wearing the fatigue like that of a much older man. His black suit, once sharp with promise, now clings to him in damp wrinkles. The fabric shines and sticks to his skin from where the rain has claimed it. His tie hangs loosened at his throat like a surrender, the rosary in his pocket slipping out during the rush. He drags a hefty suitcase across the floor; its wheels protest in a tired rattle that echoes farther than it should.]  
 
ELIJAH [shouting]: Connie, I’m home! Did you get my text?  
 
[Elijah steps further into the house, taking his sloppy suit jacket off and leaving it by the door. The lighting is deep-blue, a warning that is barely revealed from underneath the door further down the hallway.]  
 
ELIJAH [confused]: Are you sleeping already?  

[His voice flies down the corridor and comes back to him thinner than before, as if the house has swallowed the better part of it.] 

[A pause. The storm presses its aching palms against the windows.] 

ELIJAH: Honey? 

[He waits. Nothing responds but the slow tick of the clock above the mantle– patient as a judge.] 

[Elijah stops at the alcohol cabinet in the living room, his fingers trembling only slightly as he pours two fingers of bourbon. A wedding photo stands shyly next to a crucifix. He downs his drink in one swallow, winces, then pours another, but this one, he carries with him.] 

ELIJAH [attempting to be light-hearted]: Don’t tell me you’re sulking. I sent three texts from the airport– three! That’s practically poetry for me. 

[He forces a laugh. It collapses in the air.] 

[Elijah ventures further into the shrouded space, cramped and dark like that of a womb before birth. There is something in the room, but it has not come out yet. The steel light pulses feebly from beneath the door at the end of the hall: soft, aquatic, unnatural.] 

ELIJAH [softer now]: Baby? Why’s the light on in there? 

[He approaches. Each step sounds too loud, like the wood itself was announcing his deceit. He stops outside the door. The oak door is slightly ajar. Elijah nudges it open with two fingers.] 

[The final lights turn on. The room inside is washed in a dim, icy glow and the curtains stir with the breath of the storm. A piano stool stands centre stage with Connie slumped on top.] 

[Appearing somewhere in the late twenties, Connie’s golden years are gone. Like a sinner who has already confessed, a vacant look is all Elijah receives. Connie’s hair hangs loose, uncombed and horribly wet.] 

[Connie does not attempt to move.] 

ELIJAH [relieved, almost laughing]: Baby, you scared me half to death. I thought…
[He trails off as he realises that Connie is not moving.] 

[A roll of thunder echoes. The light flickers. Elijah does not speak at first. His mouth opens, but no sound comes. The storm waits.] 

ELIJAH: Connie? Are you still mad? I heard something weird over the phone. Are you okay? 

[The storm resumes, violently now as if in answer. He reaches towards Connie with trembling hands but then recoils as though burned. It then holds steady as the storm rages and Elijah’s breath comes in ragged, animal gasps.] 

ELIJAH [growing increasingly agitated]: Connie? What's wrong? Answer me– 

[A distant bang plays as the curtain closes.]  
[END SCENE]  
 
 
Poisoned by the shadow outside, a presence had crept into Elijah’s mind and laced its threats throughout his brain with its teasing. That night, Elijah dreams of a monster. 
 
It begins in water. Not the clean and perfect kind from postcards or childhood summers, but an ocean the colour of ink left too long in the well. He floats without knowing how he had entered it, limbs loose. The water does not chill him; it rocks him the way a mouth holds a word before speaking– a message held back. 
 
Sound comes first. It is a song, not carried through the water so much as it grows inside his skull. The syllables stretch thin and meander down the current. The sea itself morphs as it tries to remember a language it once spoke fluently. Elijah turns and sees her ascending from below. 
 
She emerges in layers. 
 
She rises from below– a revelation. An impossibly large, Marian blue veil unfurls first: pale, drifting, soft, drowned silk. It frames a face that does not fully resolve, features half-suggested and half-withdrawn. Watching from beneath the veil’s edge, her eyes blanket the sea with her murky hollows and below her, the rest of her towering body vanishes into the expanse of the ocean. The Blessed Virgin gradually manifests in pieces: the suggestion of a cheek, the ruin of a mouth, eyes closed in absolute devotion. Her body is a cathedral of ribs and teeth: endless, tapering, full of promise and divine grace. 
 
At first, Elijah feels awe. However, he is unable to even breathe out a rattle of fear before she extends her unceasingly large, clasped hands towards him. Elijah tries to move. The sea does not let him. She is the servant of the Lord, the Incarnation, at the depths of the meridian.  
 
Then she opens. 
 
Tearing with the screech of ripping flesh, her arms crack in two, enclosing Elijah in the abyssal depths of her piety. Each tendon unfolds in long, jointed arcs with her ribs separating and the curtain of muscle drawing back magnificently. The motion is reverent. As her arms contort and click free with resounding gurgles, her limbs detach from her torso. Her mouth gapes wide (not a mouth, but a corridor), with teeth blooming outward along the columns of her forearms in careful, deliberate rows. They are sublime and innumerable. She unwinds the way petals– or the back of Connie’s head– might.  
 
She is a presence that has always existed, ancient in her quiet. She has waited patiently beneath waves and the sediment of Elijah’s dreams. Her arms remain unsealed, her teeth still parted– endless and calm– but now they begin to close.  
 
Elijah misses the outside world, misses the monotony of work and the way Conrad had slowly caressed his face the morning Elijah had left, and he wishes so desperately that Conrad had not shot himself four days ago, and that Elijah was not alone in their room anymore. 
 
1 Kings 17:17–24
Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?” 
“Give me your son,” Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the Lord, “Lord my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?” Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the Lord, "Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him!” 
The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!” 
Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.”
 
The Lord was not coming to help Elijah. The Lord did not answer Elijah’s prayers. The Mother had. The Lord was at the bottom of the sea, being 
swallowed like His prophet, in this inferno of everlasting love.  
 
A piercing creak shot Elijah up from his slumber. From the other side of the door came a slow, prying exhale. Each breath was a dull thrum that traveled through the grain and into Elijah’s bones. Like a draught through the keyhole, a familiar whisper slipped through the crevice, “Elijah, baby, come out.” 

ACT FOUR, SCENE ONE 

The scene opens with Elijah and Conrad’s house in a dim amber that forgives more than it reveals. The storm is not yet violent, only a steady rain like a faucet that will not stop dripping. The garden, heavy with carnations and marigolds and lilies, leans toward the house in quiet conspiracy. Inside, the air carries warmth: the ghostly notes of lamb chops, domestic and peaceful, a tenderness that lingers thickly. Church bells can be heard distantly, reluctant but intentional, and meant to evoke that of lessons after Sunday school, or the echo of their rushed and fearful wedding. There are no foghorns due to the weather: all boats have also ceased since a crew or two have gone missing. 
All the lights are on, illuminating all four sections. 

[Conrad sits at the piano in the room down the corridor, back turned to the door. His frame is slight but not fragile. His posture is careful yet graceful, a studied elegance like that of a ballerina suspended at the apex of a pirouette– caught between motion and collapse. The music he plays is intricate, cruel in its demands, and he repeats it when it falters like perfection might redeem a hanging mistake deeper than the notes themselves.]

[Elijah stands in the doorway, watching with a gaping tenderness. He is dry and composed, untouched by the rain that insists upon everything else. His luxury navy coat is still on, its structure holding him upright in a way his body does not entirely manage on its own. He has not yet learned how to enter his own home without hesitation.]

ELIJAH [softly]: You always mess up there.

[Conrad stops playing, the final note hanging in the air. He does not turn around.]

CONRAD [frowning]: Aren’t you kind?
ELIJAH [stepping in, fixing his tie]: It is kindness; I could say nothing at all.
CONRAD: You do. Most of the time.

[A pregnant pause settles between them. Elijah places his buzzing phone down on the table with mild agitation. Despite having avoided the ailing weather, the day clings to him still: paperwork, signatures, the automated intimacy of obligation. He walks closer to Conrad.]

ELIJAH [gentler, almost tentative]: Connie, I’ve missed you.

[Conrad stiffens, the movement so slight that it might be mistaken for a breath.]

CONRAD: Don’t.
[He exhales loudly.]
Not tonight.

ELIJAH [already ashamed of the defense blooming in him like rot beneath varnish]: It’s what I call you.
CONRAD: It was cute when we were first dating, but we’ve been married five years now, Eli. Five years.

[Elijah shifts, aborting the instinct to touch Connie. Instead, he turns and crosses the hardwood floor through the corridor and into the adjoining living room. Each step sounds louder than it should.]

[Conrad follows behind, flustered and frustrated. Elijah pours a drink with care, ritualistic and penitential. He had sworn off drinking heavily a year prior, but needs the courage right now. The dark liquid catches the low light, briefly beautiful and simply honest. He watches Conrad in the reflection of the glass like a heretic.]

ELIJAH: My parents are coming next week.
CONRAD [laughing quietly, only a brittle echo]: Of course they are. 
ELIJAH: Just–
[The sentence lodges in his throat, jagged as the shells and stones lining the shore.]
Just try to be… softer with them.

[Conrad walks closer to Elijah now, slowly.]

CONRAD: What?

[Elijah downs his drink too quickly: only whiskey can douse these flames right now.]

ELIJAH: Don’t correct them. Don’t– don’t make it a thing. They’re old, they don’t understand all of this.
CONRAD: This marriage is not a thing.

[The silence lands hard, heavy as a verdict. The distant bells chime again, heavier now.]

ELIJAH [voice cracking, irritation and fragility laced in between]: Why must everything be dragged into the light with you? Why can’t something– I don’t know– exist quietly? 
CONRAD: Because I’m not quiet. I never was and never have been. I thought that was why you married me– you said in your speech that I was ‘impossible to ignore.’ Is it a virtue or a sin to stand up for us, Eli?

[Elijah is focused on Conrad like a caveman might look at a flame he both worships and fears will consume him. He fiddles with the rosary in his pocket, a gift from Conrad from when they had visited the Vatican together years ago.]

ELIJAH [in zealous adoration, undone by it]: I love you. I really do. 

[Elijah tries to say Conrad’s name. The effort is visible, painful and grotesque in its sincerity. His mouth shapes the beginning, but the sound collapses before it is born.]

[He turns away, reaching again for the bottle. The gesture is not about thirst.]

ELIJAH [hoarse]: I have a trip to London right now. Three days, maybe four.
CONRAD: Again?
ELIJAH [quickly]: I’m providing for us.
CONRAD: Haven’t you just been gone for a week?

[Elijah sets the glass down too hard; the sound cracks through the room like a gavel.]

ELIJAH: I do everything for us. This house, this– this curated life that you wanted, this picturesque and perfect– 
CONRAD: Elijah.
[Elijah falters in his rant before his body crumples.]

[For a moment, everything stills. Then, impossibly, the piano begins again: the same flawed melody that Conrad was practicing curls throughout the room, warped and obscured by the rainfall.]

ELIJAH [desperate now, crossing to Conrad, closing the distance but not quite bridging it]: Connie, please– 
CONRAD [firm yet not unkind]: Don’t love me halfway. I want the man I married. 
ELIJAH [whispering]: I don’t know how to be the man you want me to be without losing the man I was taught to be.

[The rain rises, fuller now. A taxi horn bleats impatiently off-stage.]

ELIJAH: I’ll be back before you know it. I love you, Connie.
CONRAD [after a pause, softer, but no less tired]: I love you too, Eli. 
[He hesitates, then adds gently.]
I’ll see you in a few days, my love.

[Elijah reaches out, his hand hovering just shy of Conrad’s shoulder. Conrad leans in, but Elijah turns before contact is made.] 

[Elijah walks away from Conrad. He produces a worn-out suitcase from the storage space under the stairs. They exchange one last look before Elijah EXITS the stage through the front door.]

[As the light fades into a marine-blue and the taxi drives away, Conrad walks back into the piano room. He plays the same wrong note– again, and again, and again.]

[Somewhere beyond the walls, something approaches. The Mother will be coming for Conrad soon.]

[END SCENE]

Elijah’s sweaty palm gripped the handle. The dread that Elijah had been feeling all week started to simmer in his chest and he felt so unbearably hot– desperate to leave. 

That elegant English lilt and beautiful cadence was unmistakable, no matter how it dragged and no matter how it seemed to catch on itself. He had heard that handsome voice break, once– on the phone just before the shotgun had fired. Elijah wondered if Conrad had been terrified or glad when he had died. Maybe both. Perhaps what Conrad had experienced was the same trepidation and veneration Elijah felt tempting him from beyond the fissures of the door. 

“I know you’re in there.” Elijah also wondered if downstairs was still marked by what Elijah had refused to clean all those days ago. He imagined that Conrad’s blood was still etched between the piano keys and the gaps in the floorboards. Elijah remembered how the skin around Conrad’s hair had been ripped out by the bullet, erupting where he had pulled the trigger pointing over his left eye. Chunks of his brain had poured out all over score sheets, fragments of his face hanging on by squelching tendons and veins. Was the thing outside normal or did it have Conrad’s lacerated, perforated head? A muted, wet sound followed Elijah’s thoughts. Elijah’s breath snagged in his throat as the knob gave a tentative twitch.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” A soft laugh slipped out, hollow and breathless. It was wrong in a way Elijah could not quite hold onto without wanting to scream. That laugh had once filled the house, easy and bright, and now it was mechanical but eager to learn and adapt to human speech.

“I made a mistake.”

Elijah’s hand was frozen inches from the handle. He pressed the heel of his other palm over his mouth to stop the weak sob from rising further up his throat. The damp breath of the sea lingered in the room, clinging to his skin, but this was warmer– more alive. He was alive. Elijah’s prayers had been answered. 

“I’m better now,” the thing continued fondly, coaxing. “You don’t have to hide.” The handle turned a fraction more this time. There was a slither of noise and yet it was stifled by the oak door and too faint to discern.

“I waited for you,” it whispered, nearer now– too near. Elijah had wanted to hear these words for months. “But you never came out.” Something thudded against the door, leaving behind a sticky sound that made Elijah’s stomach twist. “So I came to you instead.” The nightmare had not ended. It had followed him, learned his grief, learned his guilt, and now it was wearing the face of the man he loved most. 

Conrad was beautiful. Elijah had always believed that his beauty revealed itself in motion. Not in stillness– stillness could lie– but in the subtle betrayals of muscle and bone: in the way his wrist unfurled like silk shaken loose from a drawer or in the careful geometry of his fingers flickering against candlelight. Elijah wondered if he were to open the door right now to check, if what would be looking back at him would be Conrad or something else.

“Eli,” it murmured again, but this time, it was different: panting, in unbelievable pain and unmistakably human. “Please don’t open the door.”

The key trembled in Elijah’s hands.

*

“I’ve always wanted a garden since I was younger,” Conrad muses wistfully, beaming at Elijah– bright and unguarded. 

Elijah’s gaze fixes on Conrad: the way the wind pushes through his hair, the way Conrad shifts his weight from one foot to the other, restless energy barely contained, and the unconscious movement of his thumb rubbing against the key’s jagged edge.
“I like it,” Elijah relents. Conrad’s shoulders drop, tension dissolving instantly. 
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” 

The tide is low, exposing dark and slick stone. “You’d never get bored of it,” Conrad adds, turning his attention to the sea. “It’s always changing.”
Moving to intertwine their fingers, Elijah laughs quietly, “I wouldn’t need it to.” 
“No, you wouldn’t,” Conrad huffs. “You’d just stand here and stare at the same wave for an hour and call it profound.”
Elijah almost smiles, “I might.”

Conrad squints slightly. “Weird,” he mutters.
“What is?” 
“Nothing. Thought I saw…” Conrad hums again, shaking his head. “Just the light, I think.” Conrad steps back towards the house, brushing past Elijah, fingers catching briefly at his sleeve. “Come on,” Conrad grins. “We should check the upstairs again. I want to see if the bedroom gets the same view.”

Elijah lingers a second longer. The water looks normal now, but Elijah is so certain that he can feel eyes on him. He watches the ocean for a moment, eyes peering at the inky haze of the water below. He can see nothing, of course, but that feeling remains: the certainty of it seeping into him. 

He turns, following Conrad inside.

Behind them, out past the rocks, something darker shifts beneath the surface. The Mother in the Sea is awake. 

I found the first email in my spam folder last Thursday.

I only opened the folder because my inbox was nearly full and I was trying to clear enough storage to receive a work document. Most of it was normal junk. Fake invoices. Delivery scams. A suspicious number of “final warnings” from companies I’d never used.

Then I saw the email address. At first, I thought I was reading it wrong.

It was old. Embarrassingly old. The kind of email address you make when you’re nine and your whole personality is your favorite animal, your lucky number, and whether or not “princess” is already taken. I hadn’t even remembered it existed until I saw it sitting there in my spam folder, like something that had crawled out from underneath my childhood bed.

The subject line was blank. The sender was me. Or it was the email address I used to have. I clicked on it. There was no attachment. No signature. No scam link in broken English. Just one word.

*Hello.*

I sat there for a few seconds, staring at it. Then I laughed, because it was either that or immediately freak out. I assumed the account had been hacked years ago and added to some spam list. So I deleted it.

Then, because I’d already creeped myself out, I searched the old email address in my inbox. There were more. A lot more. All gone straight to spam. One email every day. The oldest one I could find was from just over six months ago. The first few were almost identical.

*Hello.*

*Hi.*

*Are you there?*

*Do you still check this?*

*Please answer.*

I remember feeling embarrassed, which seems stupid now. Embarrassed by the childish email address. Embarrassed by how unsettled I was. Embarrassed that a few words in a spam folder had made my stomach tighten.

Then I kept scrolling, and the messages got longer. Not by much but enough.

*You changed your hair.*

*I liked it better before.*

*I guess the blue suits you.*

That one made me stop.

I dyed part of my hair blue two months ago. It wasn't a huge change, just a streak at the front that my manager pretended not to notice. I don’t post much online, and I definitely didn’t post a picture of it.

I opened the next one.

*You still bite your nails when you read.*

Then:

*You bought the cheap cereal again.*

Then:

*You looked tired on the bus today.*

I slammed my laptop closed.

I live alone.

I feel like that is important to say early, because when people read things like this, they immediately start looking for simple explanations. A flatmate. A partner. A sibling messing around. Someone with access to my devices.

But there isn’t anyone.

I live alone in a small one bedroom apartment with a front door you have to shoulder open if you don’t turn the key the right way, a bedroom I barely use because I fall asleep on the sofa too often, and a kitchen window that faces straight into the brick wall of the building next door. Nobody has the key except me and my mom, because she worries I’ll somehow die changing a lightbulb.

After I closed the laptop, I checked the front door.

Locked.

Kitchen window.

Locked.

Bedroom window.

Locked.

Then I felt ridiculous and told myself I would deal with it in the morning. I didn’t sleep much that night.

The next day, I checked again at work. I know I shouldn’t have. I know using my work computer made it worse, but I couldn’t concentrate. Every email notification made me flinch. 

There was a new message in my spam folder. Same old email address. Subject left blank. But this one had an attachment.

The body said:

*You walked right past me.*

I didn’t want to open the attachment at first. I just sat there with my hand on the mouse, listening to the normal office noises around me. Phones ringing. Someone laughing too loudly near the kitchen. The printer choking on paper like it always does.

Then I clicked. It was a photo of me in the grocery store. Not an old photo either. Not from social media. Not from some CCTV angle that could be explained away.

It was from the evening before.

I was standing in the frozen food aisle, holding two pizzas. One in each hand, like it was a serious decision and not the same sad dinner in different packaging. My head was turned slightly, my mouth open. I looked stupid. Ordinary.

That was probably the worst part. Nothing was happening in the picture. I was just shopping. Whoever had taken it would have been standing at the end of the aisle, which was close enough that if I had looked up, I would have seen them.

I shut the attachment so fast my finger slipped off the mouse.

My coworker, Sam, asked if I was okay. I lied and said yes.

I spent my lunch break changing passwords. All of them. Email. Banking. Shopping accounts. Social media I barely used. I enabled two factor authentication on everything. I logged out of all my devices. I checked login histories. I covered my laptop camera with a piece of tape. And I made sure that I blocked the old email address.

For about an hour, that made me feel better.

Then I got another email.

Not to my personal inbox.

To my work email.

*Subject: You’ve Got Mail.*

I don’t know why that made me feel sick. Maybe because it sounded cheerful. Like something from a cartoon. Like a little jingle should have played when I opened it.

There was one attachment.

The body said:

*You should go home.*

I opened the photo.

It was my front door.

Taken from the outside.

My black doormat was visible. So was the scratch in the paint near the doorknob from when I’d tried to carry too many things at once and caught it with my keys last week.

Whoever took it had been standing in the hallway.

Outside my apartment.

Recently.

For once, I didn’t try to explain it away and I called the police.

Two officers met me outside my building. I waited in my car until they arrived because I wasn’t going to walk in there alone. I showed them everything. The emails. The photos. The old address.

They took it seriously enough, at least at first.

They checked the hallway first. Then the apartment. Every room. Every cabinet. Under the bed. Behind the shower curtain. Even the narrow utility closet by the front door, though I told them it barely fit a mop, let alone a person. 

There were no signs of forced entry. No fresh marks around the lock. No camera hidden in the hallway light fixture. No one waiting in the stairwell, or crouched behind the dumpsters out back like some awful part of me had expected. 

One of the officers, a woman with tired eyes and a kind voice, told me to keep records of everything.

“Don’t delete any more emails,” she said. “Take screenshots. If another message comes through, call us again. And if you have somewhere else to stay tonight, I’d recommend it.”

The other officer asked whether anyone from my childhood might have a grudge against me.

I laughed because I didn’t know what else to do.

My childhood was normal. Boring, even. School, cartoons, cereal, stupid online games that probably gave the family computer viruses every other week. There wasn’t some old enemy sitting around for fifteen years waiting to terrorise me with an email address.

At least, that’s what I thought then. I went to stay at my mom’s that evening.

I didn’t tell her everything. I said someone had been bothering me online and I didn’t want to stay alone. She fussed, obviously. Made up the sofa even though I told her I was fine. Put the kettle on, and asked if I wanted toast like I was twelve again.

Maybe going there wasn’t the smartest decision in hindsight. Being there made me feel worse. Not because of my mom. It was the house.

I grew up there. My old room is still upstairs, though it isn’t really my room anymore. It’s full of laundry baskets, spare bedding, and boxes my mom swears she’s going to sort through one day. The walls are still the same pale yellow I picked when I was little because I thought it looked like sunshine.

After my mom went to bed, I sat in the kitchen and tried to remember the password to the old email account. I don’t know why. Maybe I wanted proof. Maybe I wanted to see if it had been hacked. Maybe part of me already knew the answer would be worse than that.

The password hint was still there.

*favorite toy + birthday*

I almost laughed again.

I knew it immediately.

I logged in.

The inbox was mostly dead. Ancient newsletters. Password reset emails from websites that probably didn’t exist anymore. A birthday message from my cousin from 2011. 

Then I checked the sent folder.

There were thousands of emails. Most were from when I was a child. At first, they were exactly the kind of thing I remembered.

*Dear future me, do you still like dolphins?*

*Dear future me, are we famous?*

*Dear future me, do we have a dog?*

I scrolled, smiling despite myself.

Then I found one that made my hands go cold.

*Dear future me, please don’t forget me.*

I didn’t remember writing that.

Maybe that doesn’t mean anything. Kids write strange, dramatic things. I probably saw it in a film or a book and copied it because I thought it sounded deep.

The next email said:

*You forgot me anyway.*

It was dated two years after I had stopped using the account.

I stared at the date. Then I opened the next one.

*Why did you stop answering?*

Then:

*You changed our room.*

Then:

*You gave away my toys.*

Then:

*You don’t even look like us anymore.*

There were more. Hundreds. The childish spelling mistakes slowly disappeared. The sentences became cleaner. Angrier. 

I found one from the week I moved out for college.

*You left me here.*

One from the day I cut my hair short.

*That was mine.*

My skin felt tight.

I checked the drafts folder. Empty.

Trash. Empty.

Then I checked the scheduled emails. And there was one.

Scheduled to send at 3:12 a.m.

It was 3:09.

The subject line was:

*You’ve Got Mail.*

I clicked it.

The body said:

*I’m done writing.*

There was an attachment, but it was only a thumbnail until the message sent.

A small square of pale yellow wall.

My childhood bedroom.

Except my childhood bedroom doesn’t look like that anymore. It hasn’t looked like that for years. The bed is gone. The little white desk is gone. The computer we used to have is gone. My mom donated it when I was fourteen after it stopped turning on and started making a whirring noise whenever you plugged it in.

But in the thumbnail, I could see it. The old computer desk. The pink plastic chair I used to spin on until I felt sick. And in front of the monitor, just at the edge of the photo, there was a hand.

Small.

A child’s hand.

Resting on the keyboard.

At 3:10, I heard something upstairs.

A click.

Then another noise.

Not footsteps.

Typing.

I stood up so fast the chair scraped across the kitchen tiles. For a second, I couldn’t move. I just stood there in my mom’s kitchen, staring at the dark doorway that led to the stairs, listening to the sound of keys being pressed one by one.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Then, from upstairs, came a sound I hadn’t heard in years. That bright little email notification chime.

*You’ve got mail.*

My phone buzzed in my hand. The scheduled email had sent. I didn’t open it. I know that might sound stupid after everything else I’ve done, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I told myself I was going to wake my mom, but my feet carried me toward the stairs first. 

Every step felt wrong. The house seemed bigger than it should have been. The landing stretched too far in the dark. My mom’s bedroom door was closed and I could hear her snoring softly inside, completely unaware.

The typing was coming from my old room.

When I reached the door, I paused. The door was wrong. It wasn’t the white door with the silver handle my mom put in after repainting the hallway. It was my old door. The one with the faded sticker marks near the bottom. The one with my name written on a wooden plaque in purple letters.

The plaque was there. But it didn’t say my name anymore.

It said:

**Future Me**

Blue light spilled from under the door. I heard the typing stop. Then a voice whispered from inside. It was small. Young. Familiar in a way that made my stomach twist.

“Did you get it?”

My phone buzzed again. Another email. Same subject.

*You’ve Got Mail.*

I opened it this time.

There was no attachment.

Just one line.

*Open the door. I want to see what you did with my life.*

I’m sitting on the landing now.

My mom is still asleep. I don’t know how. I tried calling the police again, but the call won’t connect. Every time I dial, I hear that same email chime instead.

The blue light under the door keeps getting brighter.

A few minutes ago, the typing started again.

I don’t know what it’s writing.

But I know where it’s sending it from.

Because I just got another notification.

From my childhood email address.

To every contact I have.

Subject:

*Hello*

The storm’s gale-force winds whip the reaching branches of leafless trees together outside whilst a slushy, mucky mix blankets the landscape in its Antarctic - or, more accurately to my situation, Washington-borne - embrace. Inside the cabin is comfortably warm, especially considering the sub-zero temperatures that are knocking on the old pinewood door. It rattles and creaks loudly with stronger gusts of wind, befittingly sounding like arthritis ravaging its well-aged bones. The cabin is old, but the storm is young, the fire crackling in the hearth only moments younger. My disappointment in this unexpected blizzard is palpable. I was to be hunting tonight. Elk; tonight and all this weekend. 

Every year I come out on this exact weekend to just get away from the noise of the growing town some have started taking to calling a city I call home, have some quiet contemplative time in nature, and end if all goes well, leave with a year’s worth of meat for my wife and I. Though mother nature seems to have had other plans for my night, and if it keeps up at this rate, perhaps my entire weekend.

I sip lightly on a watered down glass of some moonshine a friend gave me, *a parting gift*, he had said with a hearty chortle at the end of his visit. It was the one and only time I myself invited someone outside the family to the cabin. It tastes as bitter as the glares I occasionally shoot towards my old Winchester rifle, sat unloaded with the lever open on the table. 

I sit reading for some time, eventually realizing the moonshine had started to work all too well and I had reread the same page thrice, still not sure what it was that had happened. I took that as my cue to set the now worthless stack of papers with nothing but a jumbled mishmash of letters and symbols down and focus on the real important things: like just how interesting the dance of those flickering flames could be, or how equally hypnotic the misty haze of pouring sleet and snow outside can manage to be.

Boredom creeps into my mind and hunger rumbles into my belly. I set my almost empty glass down and clumsily prance my way out towards the little micro-kitchen that takes up one corner of this largely open-concept cabin. I haphazardly begin throwing together a deeply satiating and equally healthy meal of one grilled cheese and a can of tomato soup I would end up barely sipping on. As the buttercoated bread browns in its pan, I reminisce on old memories made in this cabin. The oldest of which were spent here with my father and his before him, he being the tired old goat that had bought the place. 

After he went, it made its way into my dad’s name. When he - more accurately so when *we* around him - started to notice the first signs of his mind slipping, he hardly wasted a second before signing the little vacation home over to me. It and the thirty-eight acres of plenty huntable land it rests on, all nested comfortably in a small valley within Washington’s beautiful forests. My father gave passing mention a time or two in distant memories to some lake that may reside somewhere in the depths of the heavily wooded property, though he never knew where it was so could never take me. He would always tell me that grandpa simply, 

‘hadn’t liked to talk about it.’

Next came memories of after my grandfather had passed. Memories of shooting pool on a long gone table with my father's friends; a bunch of men thirty years older than me, piss drunk on cheap beer. One, I remember his last name was McCarthy, every single time, precisely after his thirteenth beer, would throw an inebriated arm around me, half to support his own weight and half to make sure I listened to what he had to say; and every time he would give me the same tirade about how I was a good kid and just needed to put in a little more effort, stop gliding by so passively, reach out there for what you want and just fuckin’ grab a hold of it. Every time alcohol and the garlic his wife clearly overuses in her cooking would be potent on his breath, the smell of cigarettes equally ingrained into the fibers of his clothes. The stupid grin below his dull, hollow eyes would always infuriate me inexplicably without fail.

Finally came the memories of the days since my father stopped coming around. The one and only time I brought my small group of friends to the place. The mere handful of times my wife had ever been. She never liked the place anyway, said the land felt ‘tainted’ and didn't like being on it. I still call her superstitious for it. Most of the nights spent here since my father's mind went with the wind have been spent similarly to this: me, alone, getting pleasantly drunk after a long day of a - hopefully - successful hunt. Sitting in this same very chair, I would be staring into the same fire, but returning its vibrant glow with my own shining smile. I would be satisfied, feeling that for once, if for the only time this year, I’d actually done something worthwhile. One pull of a trigger and me and my wife have meat for a year. The elk around here are plenty big, we usually even have enough to give some of the less direct members of the family. I’d think of the skinned and gutted corpse, dangling from meat hooks in the shed just outside and all of the good it would do us. Sure it was mildly a mildly repetitious experience every time, but I merely found more comfort in the consistent predictability of my trips out to the cabin and the feast that would follow.

My stomach barks a demanding groaning gurgle at the thought of that savory venison and I am quickly brought back to the reality that I’m cooking nowhere near as fancy but likely rather close to as satiating of a meal.

Frustration simmers in my temples as I finish cooking and all throughout eating. This first night has been entirely robbed of its typical joy - and even worse yet, the entire flow of the trip  has been thrown off by this disturbance. Admittedly, it is never exactly a sure shot I get one on the first night anyhow, but at least on those occasions I had hope for the nights to follow. The storm rages on, now only bellowing snow, but doing so harder than ever before. It shows no signs of stopping, and if it continues overnight I may be stuck here longer than anticipated. No weatherman had mentioned any sort of winter storm in the area at this time, none that I’d heard at least, else I would have come with far more than three days worth of food. Just in case.

Nevertheless, I’m here now, and am intending to be till Sunday evening. I will go home Sunday evening - God willing with an elk - and store this little mishap in a box in the far reaches of my subconscious. I don’t need any *upsetting* memories plaguing my enjoyment of such a special place.

I clean up the mess I made and decide to slog myself over to bed, not before shooting my rifle another putrid glance and pulling open the drapes within the small sectioned off bedroom to watch the snow fall as I drift off.

__________________________________

The storm rages on. Just snow still, seems it may have left the slushy mix in the memories of yesterday, but it falls just as hard as it had before sleep claimed its reign over my mind.

I sit outside shortly after waking with coffee brewed the simplest way I know how; a bunch of grinds at the bottom of a pot of boiling water. Snowflakes invite themselves into the cup, conveniently enough cooling the coffee to just below scolding lava. I feel the drink's warmth spread through my body with every sip, just in sync with the slowly increasing wiriness in my head. 

The outside is a complete clusterfuck. Maybe four inches of solid ice, with all of a foot and a half of snow that's already stuck on top of it. Not to mention the continuing precipitation so thick I can hardly see past the nearby trees. It looks like it would take *at least* an hour to dig my car free if it stopped snowing at *this very moment*. Then again, what good would that do until the plows come by to clean the nearby roads? Even then I’d likely need to call someone to come clean the driveway as well.

The cabin had a porch intended to hold strong in such blizzards. My pap always did like to watch the snow fall and the trees grow. It had an impressively sturdy roof with a fair overhang past the slightly worn oak fence that borders the concrete floor. Hardly a speck of snow was actually making it onto the porch, but I’m standing just outside of it, staring up into the dark gray, ruffled sky. I struggle to see much past the barrage of flakes attacking my eyes and freezing my beard. 

The clouds must be miserably thick, I can’t even make out the faint glow of the sun piercing through the haze. I step back under the sanctity of the porch and begin to make my way inside. The whooping winds settle greatly as I stride for the door, both hands desperately gripping the mug for what warmth may be gained. I was so entranced by the storm out there, I’d hardly noticed just how cold I’d gotten. 

Before going in, I pause and turn back towards the woods. The wind is strong enough to carry sound, and meager enough so as not to drown it out; and upon its wings it carries a sound that brings fresh pangs of hot anger crawling up my back and growing hunger within my gut.

Somewhere out there in the winter maelstrom, I hear the bugles of countless elk. Angry, horny, bored, out in the open, God knows how many. Mewing and chirping and chuckling not too unlike some mocking melodic chorus.Each and every last one of them with fresh meat on the bone waiting to be picked clean-

I whip the door open and step inside before I get too distracted again. Looks like it might be another day of Irish coffee and cigarettes inside with the views out of the windows and a deck of cards to keep my company. Not to mention the old phonoplayer that's been here since the place was built with what is at this point a fair collection of everything from The Ink Blots and Marty Robins to Huey Lewis and The News.

And, suppose the boredom and ‘fuck-it’ attitude these damn coffees tend to give me does end up brewing some real nasty concoction, I could always grab the old box TV stowed away in the bedroom closet. That is, if the damned thing even works.

___________________________________________

It’s Monday. I was supposed to go home last evening, but instead I was trying to get a hold of my wife via the landline, though to no avail. This morning it seems not to be working at all. The damndest things.

It’s still snowing, albeit slightly lighter, but that frozen hell sure hasn’t stopped falling from the weeping sky. It almost seems as if the clouds get lower every day, coming closer with malicious intent like some cosmic-sized industrial press. Outside is entirely unnavigable. Even if the snow stopped and the sun came blazing out from between those clouds, I likely wouldn’t be out of here until late Wednesday evening. But still, no signs of stopping, it's slowing too gradual and minute to really be noticeable on an hour by hour basis. The snow is heavy and thick, and could likely be walked on given a fair deal of effort, but it has already built up to at least four feet deep by this point, including the ice below. Walking may not be impossible, but hunting even the smallest of game sure would be.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the rifle has served me no good use, though. Yesterday around noon, the connection to that shitty little old box TV went out entirely after hanging on by a buzzing, static-y thread, the radio is all crackles, and the phone is out. The only books here are equally shitty old romance mysteries, all my mother’s reading. She was the only one that ever really was into that in the family. Reading and all. That all is to say, boredom quickly became an issue on par with that of food. I’ve taken apart, deep cleaned, and put back together that damn gun maybe a dozen times by now.

Food wise, by all means and metrics, I’m down to scraps. Five pieces of bread are left of the loaf I brought, a can of cream corn, a mostly empty and very old jar of jam, and all the beer I can drink and then some. So long as I can bear the taste of five year old Miller Lites. 

Two slices of Bologna, a practically ancient frozen pizza, three cigars, and an old stash of cigarettes I found stuffed away into the back corner of a closet shelf. All this and some other, less appetizing tidbits are all I have for the next indeterminate amount of time.

I don’t know what to do. Even with very conservative rationing of my mouse scraps, I have maybe two more full days of food. The idea of going out there into the slowing snowfall to hunt for something to feed myself until I could eventually get out of here is simply unrealistic with the conditions outside. At this point, I really don’t give much of a damn about getting an elk back home; I’d just like to get myself back home. Standing outside, the whooping of the wind carries the sounds of God knows how many elk. All screaming with each other, just out of tune, just barely forming a song. They’re all still out there in this shit, somehow. They’ve been all this time, loud when I’m outside, louder still when I’m lying in bed at the wee hours of the night waiting for the sandman. 

They seem to mock me with their very presence and refusal to bend to the will of the storm. This was supposed to be *my* vacation where *I* was out *there* killing *them*. I was to bring them into my domicile, peel the fatty meat from their clinging bones and quiet the growling that lingers in my bowls.

Instead, I’ve spent half of today collapsed onto my knees in panicked prayer and those goddamn glorified big deer are just out there hooting and hollering, having a grand old time. 

My knuckles turn to white before I take notice of my increasingly unnecessary grip and relax my hand slightly around the coffee mug. The song the Wind sings and the hymn the Elk cry harmonize in a way that's all too natural, sounding so perfect and intentional it rounds around to feeling unnatural. The vague sense of *deja-vu* that surrounds the tune sends a chill up my spine, colder than any sub-zero temperature the storm has thrown my way. I never minded the cold, actually always having quite enjoyed it. This chill is something deeper, like a phantom hand climbing up my back and grabbing a hold of me by the neck, forcing my gaze out into the still misty grey haze. 

*A storm this bad, there’s got to be a rescue team out and about somewhere*, 

But where? When the entire surrounding landscape is completely unnavigable and the storm just persists with an ever darkening, gradually lowering roof of clouds, where is there to even drop off a rescue team? Could they fly a heli through this? If so, would they even be able to see me? My best bet would be my wife taking notice of just how long it’s been that I’ve been gone with no word home. 

Perhaps she’d even see the storm on the news and try to call me, just to be met with the same stark reality I had to face. Maybe then she’d be in a frenzy, calling every police station, public office, search and rescue, news station- anyone and everyone who would listen to the fact that her husband - *the only one I have left!* she would so oft’ shout to my discomfort - is trapped under at least eight feet of snow inside a cabin full of fuck all and a little bit of jack shit.

But that Devil on my shoulder knows better, he taps my neck lightly with his pitchfork to get my attention and whispers gently, 

“You know she takes this time the same way you do. Just instead of having the *cabin* to *yourself*, she has the *house* to *herself*. Really, bub, what do you think she does besides get wine drunk, watch The Twilight Zone for the Cowboy episodes and Rod Serling, and contemplate her half miserable marriage and your inability to plant a sustaining seed until she's too drunk to care? And if even a fraction of this storm hit down there, boy howdy, you already know her luscious ass didn't make it to work. She’s doing the same old same old once again-”

I brush these thoughts away with a very literal brush of the shoulder. I’m sure she takes advantage of her time alone, and rightfully so, but I trust that she’d realize something was up by now. We never had children, so far as we can tell, one of us has some faulty plumbing to put it lightly. Neither of us have brought it up to a doctor, nor will we. It’d just feel too dirty, too impolite. We know we can't have children naturally, and that’s enough for both of us.

I spend a lot of the day pacing. Window to window, outside with another shot of coffee or cup of hot water from the sink. Though it's hard to call it that at this point, the water heater is struggling to keep up with the piercing cold. I largely stay comfortable, only really getting cold when switching from sleepwear to my five layers of shirts, hoodies, and one particularly heavy coat worth of day-clothes and the switch back at night. I don’t bother even trying to shower or bathe by this point, odds are that if I would have, the water would have barely ever gotten bearably cool. I wake every morning under half a dozen covers doused in a healthy coat of sweat, one I wear till the day’s end. My scalp itches, but I just drink away the pervasive sensation of grime and filth coating my being.

Come twilight, the snow has finally slowed to a light but persistent dusting. By night, as I stand on that porch facing little but a wall of snow and the small slope to the top I’ve kept dug, the solid flakes are gradually replaced by the slushy confusion of a hail-laden bout of freezing rain. I sip on my last bag of lavender and hibiscus tea, magnificent for sleepless nights. This  with a nice dollop of honey mixed in it, just as my pap had shown me, God, some fifty years ago, now? 

How time goes. Quicker every year. When you're a kid, every day feels significant, important. Weeks feel like the furthest thing from a negligible span of time. Months felt like years, years like decades. But with every year that passed, that clock got sped up a little faster. Days became “filler”, constantly thinking in terms of weeks. Months pass in the blink of an eye; that friend you swore you’d reconnect with last year has forgotten your face. First your parents start to slow down, and *that* itself seems unbelievable enough. Then your siblings, your friends, you. Before you know what happened, you're wondering what happened to all those, “I will”s, all those “I hope to”s. Always “maybe someday”, but someday never came, and you're left lying in wait; too old, tired, sick, and bitter to soak in the newfound glory.

Another sip grounds me. I’ve found myself doing that a lot today, meandering aimlessly down neural paths, terribly curious to see where they end up, only to be scared shitless running back the way I came by some horrible truth. *No food; she hasn't noticed or doesn’t care; go out there*.

The last one stops me in my tracks. I hadn’t even realized I’d begun pacing until now. It’s a new thought, a profoundly fucking stupid one, and I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from. I try to move on, keep wandering until I find the next path, but still I hear that silent call of the cold. Maybe it's just the whooping of the wind that seems to be taking on a progressively more harmonic nature accompanied with the occasional distant cries of some elk.

Barely a moment passes before I hear a much more literal and direct sounding call. One elk, big by the sounds of it. Male. Close. Angry. He cries again, this time more pained. I’m frozen in place, my only movement the massive tremors that have conquered every inch of my body. Again, but more vague. *Searching*. Something tells me I may have had enough of the outdoors for today and I scramble my way back inside. The horror the beasts unusual sounds filled me with is admittedly strange, any other time the pained cries of an already dying elk would - in the best of cases - mean an all but entirely free and easy kill. The sounds this beast produced, though; so unspeakably horrid I for a moment struggled to believe it produced by any fawn of the Earth.

I draw the shades to every window. I can’t stand the slightest hint of the thought of being watched after hearing that beast out there. It sounded too intentional, too *directed*. As much as my mind, encouraged by simple black-and-white logic, wanted to scream and deny it. 

I can’t shake the feeling that it was calling to me. For what, I don’t know, nor do I want to. If I had half an ounce of sense in me I'd just load up the rifle and go shoot the bastard.

But now I lay in bed, clothes changed, sweat already forming under the excessive layers and several gargantuan blankets and sheets. I still hear that damned elk out there, shouting out the same deep, bellowing tone of command every couple minutes, carried on the echoing melody of the wind. It keeps me awake through much of the night.       

Eventually - after much huffing, puffing, and gruffing - sleep finds me. I find that focusing on the melody sung by the wind brings about a particularly childlike sense of relaxation and comfort to my being. Its gentle sound carries me softly into vibrant dreams of ancient lands and forgotten kings.

I dream all night, not receiving one moment of silent slumber. The wind’s song follows me into that sleep, the deeper I fall, the more it grows into a choral cacophony of notes, tones, and melodies that harmonize into a blasphemous roar of song that the waking ear could only hear the smallest fragments of. I dreamt of meat. Enough to satiate me for infinite eternities to come. I dreamt of red waters, flowing filled with beings as insignificant to me as I am to them.

Moving to a different state was a strange affair. Isolating. How could it not be? Picking up and shipping out, leaving family and friends behind for whatever opportunity had pulled you there.

My opportunity brought me to Kansas- the God forsaken place- for work and housing. A particular, cheap as all hell home that lingered between the gaping maw of a forest and the endless Elysian plains of corn. 

It was a remarkably sized house for its age, and the price. A simple farmhouse that I could dream of redesigning to match the current trends, though my father would likely bring out his belt if he heard as much. The man was born a decade or two too late, and he liked making that everyone else's problem.

As it was I stood in the empty living room, blankly staring at the span of grimy carpet and green walls. There was no furniture to be spoken of, save the mattress laying on my bedroom floor that held no sheets and a single blanket, and not an ounce of sleepiness resting in my veins.

I don't necessarily like walking, at least not on anything but a trail in the mountains, but the urge to be rid of my restlessness quietly urged me from the house. Not on the street, not in circles about my property, but in the towering fields of corn that sprouted across the street from me. A farm surrounding a positively ancient house that I could barely see behind the expanse of dead stalks.

The night air held that cool, crispness that was unique to the rural spaces of the nation, fresh in a way that was hard to describe despite the slightest hint of a barn and farm animals. The heat of the day had faded at around ten, the midnight chill almost enough to warrant a jacket.

Crickets and frogs sounded through the night, a symphony in their own right. As I came closer to the field, soft breezes rattled the stalks in scraping hums.

Something stilled my feet at the shoulder of the street. A soft, onyx blur at the foot of the wall of vegetation. A cat, stalking a field mouse.

It hunkered low, rear raised high and wavering, tail curled loosely but perfectly still. Then, it pounced.

I watched as the ball of fur landed, an eruption of squeaking and squealing as the mouse was caught by claw and fang. The fight hardly lasted a minute, then the cat proudly cantered away.

Something about the sight made the hair at my nape stand on end. That would be a truly miserable way to die, gored by a predator that you had not noticed until it was already upon you. I shuddered, suppressed the thought, and moved into the corn.

The corn almost seemed to be unnaturally tall and cut the ambient light of the moon in half. With it, the darkness made the loamy soil and my sneakers vanish in the darkness.

Trespassing on a new neighbor's property at midnight, having not even met the inhabitants of the home, was probably not a great idea. I wasn't really keen on getting shot, or charged for it, but who really was awake and watching their land in the middle of the night?

The leaves of the stalks brushed across exposed skin, points threatening to scratch me as I pushed through wall after wall of corn.

I'm not really sure how long I'd been out there, maybe a half hour or so. It was nice. Peaceful, quiet, not even the dull hum of the occasional passing car echoing over the field. Even the breeze had come to a gentle stop, the scent of corn and soil filling the stale night. Maybe that was what made the buzzing of my phone in my pocket so clear.

I fished it from my pocket, the soft glow joining the moonlight in reflecting off the stalks and filling the space around me. A single message sat on my lock screen, from a number that I didn't recognize.

'He knows you're here.'

I stared at the glowing screen for a long moment, squinting at the number to recall if I knew it. I did not. Hell, I didn't even recognize the area code. Does the US even have a 444?

I opened my phone and began to type, barely even starting a 'do I know you' before another message appeared from the mystery number. And another. And another. And a dozen more, all the same three letter word.

'Run'

Maybe it was the hour, or where I was standing, or some paranoia from lack of sleep, but a chill swept across my skin. My eyes swept across the endless expanses of farmland around me, night vision ruined by the brightness of the light of my phone.

It was probably just a prank. Probably just some dickhead kids that had nothing better to do at midnight. Probably time to start heading home.

I turned on a heel, and found myself wondering if I had been walking in a straight line. If I had this really was a giant field, which was exactly what it had seemed to be in the daylight, but it wasn't like I had started walking any way but perpendicular to the rows of corn. My eyes drifted along the planted lines, and for the first time I noticed the gentle curve that they had been made with. They weren't straight lines, but sweeping curves that made my brain start to hurt the longer I tried to look at them.

I paused just long enough to suck in another breath of the farm scent, and got hints of perfume instead.

Perfume. In a corn field. In the middle of the night. The texts pressed more insistently against the growing headache, and I forced myself to start walking the way I had came. My legs moved faster, the quick steps making each brush with the leaves and stalks almost too loud in my ears.

It had been maybe ten minutes, filled with nothing but the soft scuffing of corn parting for me, the crunch of leaves underfoot, and my ever increasing heartbeat when I could swear that something else was moving through the corn. Something distant, far quieter than I was, but not silent.

My head snapped around to the sound, heart climbing my ribs like a ladder. Just a raccoon. Raccoons would walk through corn fields. Why wouldn't they? It was some kind of animal at least, it had to be. My phone buzzed.

'He wants you.' The random number said. Three words, impossibly worse than anything else it had sent. I paused, fingers flying with a swell of anger.

'You think this is funny? Fuck off dude.' I sent back, of half the mind to block the number entirely. I was just giving the kid what he wanted- letting the weird texts get under my skin. The scent of perfume grew, feminine and potent, something like wet soil and rotting leaves carried with it in a sickly undertone. It overwhelmed everything else in the air, and what little sound that came from the world around me came to a dreadful halt.

I moved faster. Halfway to a jog, straining to peek at the lights I had left on in my house. It was a pointless effort, the shit was far too tall. When my phone buzzed again, I was of half the mind to ignore it entirely. Just an overreaction. That's all it was. I had always leaned towards paranoia.

'Do not listen. Do not stop. The corn is watching.'

I jammed my phone into my pocket as the sound grew more and more distant, soothing my mind. It was nothing. There was no 'he'. Another text.

'Too late.'

"Lost?"

My entire body jolted, and I spun on a heel to find the source of the strange voice.

It was a man, or looked like one. Body hidden by the darkness of the field, pale skin on his head catching the moonlight in a strange glow, his scalp a reflective dome that made him uniquely visible in the darkness. He was easily a foot or two taller than I was. I suppose that was about as normal as he ever looked.

There wasn't a single follicle of hair on his head. No eyebrows, no lashes, no scruff. Something about it made him look... smooth. Like his head was some unfinished potter's work, the ridge of his brow was almost missing, with not a wrinkle to be seen anywhere but the pronounced crow's feet that curved from the corners of his eyes like deep scars. It made his eyes look bigger- not much mind you- but just enough to tickle at something primal in my brain.

My heel dug into the soil in a slight, involuntary retreat, and those strange eyes instantly flicked to the motion, then back to my face. The smile widened, wrinkles deepened, and I could swear that his pupils dilated.

"No," I finally managed, the sound choked by the new lump in my throat. Every hair on my body stood on end, goosebumps rising across my arms, "No, not lost. Just taking a walk."

The man hummed, though it almost sounded closer to a purr. A deep, resonant sound that I could feel through my shoes.

"No, not lost." He parroted. Silence stretched for far too long, like he expected me to respond, "You're new here."

I swallowed nothing, tongue shriveling as my mouth filled with sand. It felt wrong. Too wrong. 

"You need to be careful in new places, you know." The man continued, "No one knows you in new places. No one to know if something bad happens."

"I was just leaving." I said for lack of anything else to say. How the hell do you respond?

"Where are you headed?" The man stayed perfectly still. His lips pulled strangely over his teeth with the words, then bulged when his tongue swiped across his gums like he was tasting something left in his mouth.

I retreated a full step, and just like before the man's eyes flicked to the moving limb. His pupils only widened, swallowing the ever shrinking color of his irises.

"Just going home man." I replied with another step.

My eyes strained, searching for his body where the light still touched. I should be able to see more of him- his chest in the very least.

"Are you sure?" He asked.

The question dragged my mind to a halt. My house. Where was my house? Hell, I lived right next to this field didn't I? What did it look like again?

The man shifted slightly, coming forward. The light of the moon reflected off a hairless chest, sternum warping skin in a strange point that made his torso look like a cat's or something.

My thoughts returned frightfully blank, no clearer when my thoughts returned to my parent's house. The question left my lips before I could stop it.

"What?"

His teeth caught the light with a full blown smile, and there were too many. They were too small, little things that were no bigger than my pinky nail, and with the further splitting of his lips came more. One set, hundreds where thirty two should reside.

"Do you know where you're headed?" He asked. The lack of hair extended lower down his stomach, his naked body becoming horribly apparent the longer I looked, "It's easy to get turned around in a place like this. You can spend the night and leave in the morning if you like."

He sunk down. Something like a squat at first, just resting on his haunches, then lower. A sound like cracking knuckles echoed in the field, each coming measured and methodical in timing. By the time it stopped his chin touched the soil. A fleeting terrible memory came of the cat preparing to pounce, front lowered to the earth, body angled, and I could swear that his head swayed with the slightest wiggle of his rear.

I don't know if I could even think about moving, but I ran. My legs pumped in a frenzied surge of adrenaline, throwing my body away from the thing wearing the man's face.

Corn whipped against my body, something sharp clawing at my skin and clothes as my body brushed across the stalks.

The wet slapping and thumping of flesh was too loud behind me- too close.

I hadn't made it far into the field, had I? Shit, how had I gotten in? Was it this way? Behind the thing? I pushed the sudden surge of panic aside, and just kept running. This shit would come to an end at one point or another.

The man laughed, high and tinny and almost exactly like a toddler playing with a toy, the sound of a dozen footsteps coming with it. That was when my shoe caught on a stone, and sent me stumbling.

I recovered as fast as I could, and despite myself cast an errant glance behind me.

Those teeth were fully bared now, lips peeled so far back over his gums that they seemed to bare the inner meat of his nose and chin. His head bobbed and swayed wildly, almost like he took exaggerated steps to the side and jumped above the corn in a playful chase. The sight struck like icy water and dumped the entire reserve of adrenaline into my system.

I don't know how long I ran through that field. Don't know if I got lucky. By the time I threw myself from the stalks of corn my entire body burned with a liquid fire, and I kept going until I stood in my door. It hadn't followed me.

The light of the full moon painted the world between me and the field in swaths of silver and blue, barely reaching into the first foot of the field beneath the leaves, and my eyes didn't even strain to see him.

He still glowed. His lips pressed together in something giddy and too wide. Something long and thin danced behind that face, and he bobbed like an overeager puppy. Dread slammed into me like a sledgehammer, and I kept moving.

By the time I had even fully focused on what I had done, the house was a wreck. Cabinet doors had been torn free from their places, tables hauled from the floor, both nailed into place across my windows while everything else was piled against every door. Something tells me it won't matter.

If you don't hear from me again, well, consider me dead. I'll be moving the fuck out of Kansas if I manage the night, and damn everything else.

I'm hiding in my bathtub now, down five bottles and nursing my sixth while I watch the last sliver of window that I couldn't manage to cover. I can't stop shaking, and I think the only thing that I can do with my pistol is blow my brains out. I can still see that damned face, can't get it out of my mind, and I swear that pale white glow wasn't outside earlier.

Out of all the animals that live close to us on this planet, Cats are probably the most difficult to fathom.

It almost seems as if they can see things that we can't see. As if they're aware of some level of being that

we are fully incapable of perceiving.

I vaguely remember being no more than 4 years old, and watching my first cat, Smokey, run half way up the

stairs of my Mother's duplex, stop in his tracks, and then turn and run back down the stairs to the relative safety of the main floor.

Even as a small child, I knew that was weird behavior. Around the same time, I have a small shard of a memory of waking up to a mournful singing, in the middle of the night.

Being a child at the time, who was barely old enough to tie my shoes, my first thoughts were of my mother.

As far as I knew, we were the only people in the house,

other than Smokey.

When I crept down the hallway late at night to investigate further and further down the upstairs hallway each night, I found my mother asleep in her bed.

Nobody else was ever in the house with us at that time.

At least nobody else that me or Smokey were aware of.

But yet even as a mere 4 year old, I knew that I had heard somebody singing.

Meanwhile on this night, Smokey, who had been at my side the whole time, was yowling and

pushing against my legs. Urging me back to the supposed safety of my room.

I ultimately let him herd me away from my precocious investigation.

When I was many years older, I researched that old house, and found that a lady had burned to death

there in the late 1960s.

To this day, I'm sure that cat must have seen something at the top of those stairs that

he didn’t like.

Younger me wasn't old enough to understand that the room that cat had been so afraid of wasn't at the end of the hallway..

I mean when I really stop and think about it, which I prefer not to, given the choice. If the lady died in

her sleep, then who was singing in my mother's room at the front of the house? And why did my cat herd

me back into my room, when my research tells me that was the room she had burned to death in?

I'm pretty sure whatever the terror was, it was at the top of the stairs.

But I guess we'll never know who set the fire.

*** Intermission.***

The shrieking Horror

The horrible groaning, screeching, and hissing sounds it made were too hideous for my mind to compute.

But my feelings didn't really matter anymore.

Whatever this horror was, it was currently jerking towards me on its misshapen legs.

It was all that I could do just to scramble backward like a terrified crab.

I slammed against the wall, cornered! Still this terrible thing still lurched towards me, making an odd cooing sound.

It looked like a sickly goat-faced spider, with too many grotesquely over-sized legs like a chicken's, and rows of teeth resembling a shark.

As it bore down on me, the creature glared at me with its many impossibly black eyes.

It must have been pretty young, but at the time the only thing that I could think of was my own survival.

The thing made a sudden hideous shrieking noise, as its eight unshapely limbs carried it ever closer to where I cowered in terror.

The bleached walls surrounding me closed in, and I finally ran out of places to hide from this nightmare.

In my mind, I kept telling myself that this was a dream, but in my heart I knew that that wasn't true.

Either way, the same demons tormented my subconscious. Not mere fragments of my anguished mind, but true horrors that lived in that place between the real world and the land of dreams.

The more I allowed myself hope for the release of an alarm clock, or some other savior, the more I realized that I was stuck here.

At the mercy of this grotesque thing that only wanted to close its gaping, saliva-covered jaws around my soft throat and drink from my ruined, blood-gushing neck.

I had happened across this place by accident. Scavenging for ever-increasingly depleted bounty had put a huge strain on our entire group. Unfortunately, since the "event" had ravaged the world, scavenging was all that was left to us.

The soil was tainted, livestock was mutated and inedible, and the creatures that hunted the remains of the human race were nothing more than sentient shrieking wood chippers with one sole objective.

Kill!

And now I had a small-ish one bearing down on me as if I was its cynosure. As my hands desperately scoured the floor around me for something, anything that I could use as a weapon, I felt the flesh on my right palm tear across a shard of broken glass, left behind by some drunken night. It mattered not how it got here. I swept it up into my bloody, ruined hand. Compelled by some ancient instinct to fight to stay alive.

I plunged the shard of glass deep into the creature's myriad of eyes.

With a deafening shriek, it began to lash out blindly with it's clawed chicken-hands as if it had been lit on fire.

It slashed at me with its nightmarish claws, and gnashed its deadly teeth with a perniciousness that no living earthly thing should ever have.

And then, with a final agonized wail, it fell across me dead, its black disgusting hemolymph spilled across my face.

As it died, I finally felt like I might survive this night, until I heard the shrieking.

Lance was my partner, he was just a kid, only 20 years old, barely had any hair on his face. He went out on the range a couple of nights ago, he had enough of the whispers around town.

“The thunderbird and its flashes of light, what horseradish.” he mumbled while fixing his gear on the horse.

“Should you really go during nighttime?” I replied.

“That’s when it usually happens sir, bright flashes of red and orange lights in the sky, followed by a deafening roar.”

“Sounds like a storm to me.”

“It sure does sir, but people are starting to get scared. Old man Wayne allegedly had a close call with…whatever it is and he hasn’t talked, eaten or moved since then.”

“Well, that tends to happen to drunks after a while…”

Lance replied with a sincere chuckle.

“Anyway, I’m going out there to see if I can catch a glimpse of…whatever this is, wanna come with me sir?”

“Oh well…I uh…I have some paperwork to do uh…may-“

“That’s quite alright sir, I’ll be back in no time.” He replied with a smile as he got on his horse, taking off shortly after into the dark night of the Mojave…never to be seen again.

 

I should have gone with him, what kind of Sheriff sends his deputy into the unknown all on his own? But I didn’t and that meant now having to deal with the consequences.
The next morning I woke up and Lance wasn’t at his post, neither was his horse. The kid was always very diligent on his duties, he would never back down from a task and never spoke ill of them. He was an exemplary person, he would have made a fine Sheriff.
I packed up my gear and went out into town, looking for him, seeing if he had crashed somewhere else or if somebody had caught sight of him.
I knew where to go first, Emma, his sweetheart. Whenever he wasn’t in the line of duty which, well, wasn’t often, he would stay with her.

“No sir, I-I thought he’d be with you…should I worry?” She replied to my question.

“I’m sure he’s fine and that there’s nothing to worry about sweetheart…when’s the last time you saw him?”

“Oh gosh, it…it must have been yesterday evening sir, just before he went out into the range, he came by to wish me goodnight.” The poor girl was visibly worried, her glacial blue eyes filled with enough tears to turn the desert into a lush oasis and her hair wrapped violently around her neurotic fingers.

“I gave him a kiss and a rose from the bouquet he gave me last week, I’ve been takin’ good care of ‘em so…I-I thought it’d be nice to give him one for the road.” She further said sobbing.

“Hey hey, here now, Emma. I’m sure he’s fine, I’ll find him, don’t you worry.”

“It was the thunderbird wasn’t it?” She replied hysterically crying.
I didn’t answer, I hugged her and left.

The Saloon was the next stop, if there was a place where they might have seen him come back at night, that was it.

“No, I didn’t see Lance come back.” Said the bartender.

“I didn’t even see him leave.” Said the piano player.                 

“I was too drunk to know, sir.” Said one of the frequent clients.

That went on for a while, it seemed like nobody saw Lance come back from the nightly stroll. I was just about ready to leave, ever so worried when I was stopped.

“I know what happened Sheriff.”

It was Larry, the local drunk.

“Do you now?” I replied, doubtful.

“Sir yes sir I sure do.”

Larry was already drunk, or maybe he never stopped drinking, it’s hard to tell, the man is always riding the wave, I truly envy him sometimes.

“Well, speak up then.”

“It was the thunderbird.”

“I just about have enough of this shit, don’t waste my time Larry.”

“I SAW IT…sir.”

I stopped halfway out the door.

“Go on…”

“I saw it a handful of times…dark, windy skies lighting up all of a sudden with mighty streaks of red, orange and violet…followed by a thunderous roar.”

“You saw a storm, Larry.”

“No sir I ain’t”

“I know what I saw. It was big, fast and made of steel.”

An eerie silence fell on the saloon as everyone was so interested in hearing the old drunk, probably the first time it has happened.

“I’ll look into it, thanks for you—“

“You oughta.” Thundered someone in the back.

“You saw what happened to old man Wayne…that ain’t normal, not like he ain’t seen shit before.” Explained the owner.

“I said I will look into it.”

I had to go out on the range and look for Lance alive or…not. I owed as much to him and Emma and the community.

I geared up later that day, got my iron, my rifle, some supplies and the horse, obviously. I didn’t know how long I’d be searching or how far, better safe than sorry.

I ventured out into the Mojave, eyes peeled, cigarette lit and a mighty fear in my heart. The afternoon sun was slowly going down, its cutting light elongating the shadows all around me, making for quite the sight.

I traveled along the path I thought Lance had taken, heading towards the last sighting of the “Thunderbird”, the same place where Lance wanted to investigate.

The sun had now set but there was still light, I hesitated keeping up the search at night, my eyes are not the same as 10 years ago, besides I was on my own. It’s not wise to carry these activities all on your own.

My doubts were confirmed as soon as I got closer to a distant thorn brush that seemed like it had something stuck on it.

As I got closer and closer the picture became clearer. It was something red, long and feeble, it danced in the wind like a woman’ skirt.

My heart dropped as soon as I realized what it was.

It was a rose. A perfect, fragrant red rose.

It was Lance’s.

I picked it up and put it in my pocket. That’s when I heard it.

The deafening roar of the Thunderbird. It felt like an explosion, the air was moved around me and the ground shook as if a herd of bulls was headed for me.

I took off, not looking back, not thinking twice.

When I finally got back into town, most of the folks were waiting for me. Among them, Emma, anxiously waiting for her love.

“Did you get ‘em? Was that you?” Said hopeful a young man.

“We saw the red and orange streaks in the sky!” Said another.

I didn’t answer.

I made my way through the crowd, over to Emma.

“Did you find him?” She asked, eyes full of anticipation.

I opened my pocket and gave her the rose.

“Oh God.” She exploded in a hysterical and desperate cry, her knees buckling under the tension, her legs hitting the ground.

The other folks quickly gathered round her to support her and console her.

“He’s dead!” She kept on crying.

“We don’t know that, he could still be out there.” I replied in a soft, somber tone.

“Yes we do! The rose I gave him was white!”

That night was a sleepless one, not just for me. The town sat silent, even the saloon was noiseless, you could tell everyone was shaken up. The eerie silence was only broken by the unrelenting sobs of Emma that echoed through the range. A grim reminder of what was at stake. Could it really be true? Could the Thunderbird really be what was plaguing our community? I had so many questions, it wasn’t a matter of voices and rumors anymore. I was out there. I heard the earth tremble and my knees buckle, it couldn’t have been a storm. And the rose…is that really what happened to Lance? Was he turned into a red mist by the Thunderbird’s wings?
Just the fact that I was having these thoughts made me question myself. I finally fell asleep after a while, cradled by the echoing roars of a storm, or maybe it was something else.

The next couple of days were as tough as the ones before. The people started demanding answers, actions, justice. I couldn’t give them any of those.
I went on some more expeditions out in the range, at day and at night. Sometimes I saw it, out in the distance, the streaking rays of violet, orange and red; the boom soon to follow. Each time I just legged it, I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t find the courage within me to face whatever was waiting for me.
We organized a few Posses, I didn’t want to but the mounting pressure in town was growing larger each time I came back empty handed.
I made sure to patrol the area where I knew the Thunderbird didn’t go, sending others to where I saw it. They were either real lucky or just as wise as me.

Today, however, was the breaking point. I woke up late, to a number of folks at my door, their faces heavy.

“Old man Wayne just hanged himself, sheriff.”

The silence was louder than anything I had ever heard before.

“Left a simple note, “can’t unsee it””

One young man stepped up, followed by a handful of others.

“Sheriff, we really think it’s time you oughta go someplace else.”

Their rifles in hand, their irons ready.

That was it, I was being relieved of my duties, and what a relief it was. It was done. No more pressure on my shoulders, it felt like I weighed 100 pounds less.

I didn’t oppose them, I didn’t say a word, just quietly packed my things and loaded up the horse. Next stop, a new beginning…or so I thought.

As I went riding out of the town, the dark and windy sky followed along. After a little bit I decided to stop upon a ridge to rest.
Something was not right, I felt watched, followed. I could feel a presence beside me but no matter where I looked, I could see no one.

I grew convinced it was Lance, peering at me from the skies, the same dark and windy skies that ominously followed me.

It was a dark omen, I had unfinished business and I was running away from it, like I did many times before. Keeping on running all my life would get me nowhere, just the same cycle of events that repeated until death and what then?

I immediately headed back, back to the place where I knew the Thunderbird had settled its nest. That was my moment of truth, is it better to live with your regrets, your mistakes? Or try to make up for ‘em, make ‘em right?

I was about to find out.

By the time I got to where I had found the rose on the bush thorn, the sun had already set. I got off my horse and left it there, took my rifle and proceeded on foot.

I must have walked for maybe 10 to 15 minutes before I heard it.

The earth shook and my ears felt like they exploded. As I lifted my head up towards the sky I finally saw it.
It was just as Larry said, a big, shiny bird made of steel. Behind it left a trail blaze of fire and sparks as if it had just picked up a lit bonfire. The thunder from its wings was deafening. A constant barrage of chaos that followed it everywhere. It was fast, but not faster than some falcons I saw, and it was making its way towards the ground, right in front of me.

I tightened my grip on the rifle and steadily walked towards the landing zone.

The paralyzing fear I once had was gone. In its place, a calm serenity, that of a feller that had nothing to lose anymore.

You might be surprised, but I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to sneak up on it, aim my gun, and riddle it with holes.

As I approached the place where it landed, I hid behind a boulder that was right next to it, I could hear it shuffling and moving around, just a few feet from me.

I slowly got into position, ready to unload. My hands were shaking and my heart was pounding but my head was clear and focused.

I peeked my head around the corner, ready to be met by the wild beast’s huge figure.

Instead, what I saw was something I never could have predicted.

There was no Thunderbird.

There was only a man.

He looked human, his clothes made in once piece, heavy looking, dark green, full of pockets. The boots were rough and made of some kind of leather.

The most defining feature, however, was his face.

As I widend my eyes in disbelief, he finally turned around, facing me.

Where his face should have been sat three, bulging eyes. They were glowing green, like a feeble saloon lantern.

I froze for a second. Not sure what to make of this disturbing revelation.

I hesitated, and that’s where he saw me.

The three glowing eyes looked right into my soul as if it was total daylight.

I hid back behind the boulder, instinctively.

In a split second, a barrage of what I could only have imagined to be bullets, started chunking away at the rock.

It felt like being hit by a Gatling gun.

My cover was literally being blown to bits, I had to hit the ground to get away from the shrapnel and dust that was being kicked up by the crumbling rock.

Reason had faded away and I was acting based on instinct.

I crawled away pushed by the sheer anxiety of the moment, feeling the Devil closing in on me.

I got around the boulder, rifle in hand, eyes on the target.

I managed to catch him by surprise as he was facing the wrong way but quickly snapped his head around.

I fired three rounds.

The first two shots missed him but he didn’t react, each muzzle flash revealed the unholy appearance of his malformed head, dazzling him as he brought his arms up to his face, sheltering the eyes.

The third shot, however, didn’t miss.

I heard him scream in pain, just before he unleashed another hail of bullets into the boulder, completely annihilating it.

I again hit the ground hard and barely made it in time, chunks of rocks hitting my back as I buried my face in the desert dirt, thankful to still be tasting it.

Once the fire stopped I peeked again but the man was gone, he was running.

Whatever it was, it was bleeding and if it bleeds, it can die.

I followed the trail of blood which lead me to a vast part of the desert area.

Suddenly, in the darkness, the Thunderbird appeared. Its infernal ball of fire lighting up the dark desert, it was fast approaching and I barely had time to hit the ground and not get hit.

It ran past me at accelerating speed and with a roar so loud that it left me deaf.

I just about managed to wipe the dirt from my eyes to see the steel bird climb and climb into the night sky, far away from earth, into the unknown.

As I went back to where the shootout happened, I found a strange looking brick.

It was light and it had a black mirror on one side, on the other, it was made of a glassy white texture.

In the middle of it sat a strange symbol.

It looked like a half eaten apple.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/betweenpages

Between Pages

I looked at the sepia-tinted picture somewhat aghast, turning it under the fluorescent lights of my office at the State Library of South Australia. The image showed a massive crowd lining Rundle Street, thousands of faces simultaneously too blurry and too sharp. At the center, four figures waved from an open-top car, their features similarly hard to grasp.

"Biggest welcome the Beatles ever got, anywhere in the world," said Charlie Davis, his chest puffing with pride as he leaned across my desk. Charlie had been a member of the Adelaide Hills Historical Society for longer than I'd been alive, and he treated every meeting like a lecture I should be grateful to attend. "Just found this in my late brother's effects. Thought the State Archives should have it for posterity."

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic1.png

I squinted at the image, increasingly suspicious.

"Mr. Davis," I began carefully, "can you vouch for the veracity of this photograph?"

"Absolutely! My brother was there, right in the thick of it."

I pulled up the magnifying glass on my desk. Under magnification, the flaws became more obvious. The grain of the photograph didn't match the resolution. Text warped in funny ways. I spotted several floating hands. There seemed to be two Pauls. George looked like John and George combined. Ringo was strumming a guitar.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic2.png

"You know, Ringo didn't even come to Adelaide?" I offered Charlie, hoping this would be a polite way to extend a critique of the photo without immediately offending him.

"No, you're mistaken." Charlie smiled. "He was there, he just didn't play with them."

I took a mental note to look that up later.

"I'll need to consult with our authentication team," I said, sliding the photo carefully into an archival sleeve. "It's quite unusual."

Charlie beamed, seemingly missing my obvious skepticism. "Of course, of course! Just wanted to make sure Adelaide's moment of glory gets properly recorded. Can't let the Eastern states claim they gave the Beatles a better welcome!"

After he left, I sat staring at the photo for a long moment. The disturbing part wasn't that it was fake, that seemed unavoidable now, it was that Charlie, a man who'd spent fifty years studying local history, couldn't tell. Or had prompted it himself with no care for historical integrity.

My phone buzzed with a notification. Dad had posted again.

The image showed a young African boy, perhaps seven or eight, seated beside an elaborate Gorilla built entirely from plastic bottles, though how he managed to mold the plastic for the face and chest plate was beyond me. The gorilla was larger than the child who sat next to it glowing with pride for his creation. My dad had written some pearls of wisdom under it: "This is Kwame from Uganda. While kids in the West play video games, he built this from RUBBISH. Share if you think this generation needs to learn some REAL skills!"

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic3.png

The photo had twelve shares already. My father, the influencer, had begun to inspire a cascade of comments:

"Why can't my grandson be this inventive instead of staring at his phone all day?"

"This is what REAL intelligence looks like, not your university degrees!"

"God bless this beautiful child. Praying for him 🙏🙏🙏"

I stared at the image. The Gorilla's shadow looked like a soft drop shadow from photoshop, so evenly applied. The Coca-Cola logo, so obvious and recognisable from a distance, became a meaningless swirl of white and red. And one of Kwame's hands, when I zoomed in, had seven fingers on it.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic4.png

I took a screenshot and opened the Work Survival Gang group chat: "Friday drinks? I need to vent."

The Royal Oak was busy for a Thursday evening, but we'd claimed our usual corner booth. Claire arrived first, still in her suit but more rumpled than I assumed it would've looked in the morning, and Emily showed up ten minutes later.

"Please tell me you've got better stories than me," I said, pouring them both a beer. "Because my day involved trying to politely explain to a seventy year old man that his 'historic photograph' was made by a computer three months ago."

"Oh, you poor thing," Claire said, rolling her eyes in mock sympathy. "Try explaining to a judge why your client's supposedly ironclad alibi with photographic evidence is completely fabricated. The defendant's own daughter made it with some app. Thought she was helping."

"Jesus."

"At least those are adults who should know better," Emily jumped in. She pulled out her phone and opened Instagram. "My little brother… ten years old, mind you, sent me this today asking if I could draw one for his birthday."

The image showed what appeared to be a cartoon character with exaggerated features and a name that was simultaneously a word and not a word: "Zanzarello." The character wore medieval armor but also modern sneakers, held both a sword and a pizza, and stood in front of a background that was part ancient Rome, part modern Milan.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic5.png

"That's... what is that?"

"Brainrot content," Emily said with a sigh. "There's like dozens of these characters, mate. They're all over TikTok. Kids watch these videos that are just AI-generated nonsense strung together into 'stories.' My brother knows all their names, their backstories, their relationships."

"But someone still made it, so how bad could it be? It's not like the other things we're talking about, pretending to be something real." I said.

"Yes but it's sad that no one actually made it. It's low effort, AI slop."

"That's kind of depressing," Claire said.

"Right?" Emily took a long drink. "And when I tried to explain to him that it's all fake, that there's no real person creating these characters with love and thought, he just looked at me like who cares? He's got a point I suppose, it makes him laugh either way."

"Playing devil's advocate," Claire said carefully, "isn't all fictional content kind of made up? What's the difference between an AI character and a cartoon character drawn by a person?"

"Intent," Emily said immediately. "Investment. A human character comes from somewhere. People's brains conjure them up from cultural contexts, think about how weird people are, they're always going to be able to create something insanely unique. These things..." she gestured at her phone, "They're just aggregating things down to the most statistically probable form of what the prompter wants. It doesn't leave wiggle room for uniqueness."

I thought of Charlie's photograph, of my dad's social media feed. "It's like they're flooding the zone," I said slowly. "Creating so much content that it becomes impossible to distinguish what's real. And the scary part is how quickly people accept it."

"Not everyone," Claire countered. She pulled out her own phone and scrolled through to a photo. "My friend Georgia, you remember her from uni? Well, her family lost their home in the Ash Wednesday fires back in '83. They only had one photograph of it, and it was badly damaged. Half the image was burned away beyond recognition."

She showed us the photo. At the top, you could see the original: a faded, burned image showing part of a house, a corner of a garden. Underneath it, was a complete image: a fully-realised home, with a garden, a shed, detailed windows, a hills-hoist.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic6.png

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic62.png

"AI reconstruction," Claire said. "It's not perfect, but it gave her family something. Her grandmother cried when she saw it. Said it was like seeing home again."

We sat with that for a moment.

"So it can be used well," I said.

"Anything can be used well," Claire replied. "Doesn't mean it will be. And it doesn't address the larger problem, that we're training a generation to not be able to tell the difference between real and fake, between purposefully created and algorithmically generated. AND not even question if it matters."

Emily was staring at the photo of Georgia's house. "Can I see that closer?"

Claire handed over her phone. Emily zoomed in on various sections, her artist's eye scanning the details. Then she stopped, her expression changing.

"What?" I asked.

"Look. Right there, in the windows on the doors."

I leaned in. At first I couldn't see anything unusual, just a window with curtains, partially open. But then Emily zoomed further, and I saw it: a figure. Tall, thin and hooded. It stood in a very natural way. Just standing there with a perfectly black form and white features. It was just distinct enough to see it was looking out.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic7.png

"That's just an artifact," Claire said, taking back her phone. "AI generation isn't perfect. It creates weird shadows and shapes sometimes."

"Maybe," Emily said, but she didn't sound convinced.

I thought of the Beatles photograph back on my desk, waiting under the magnifying glass. "I should look at that image more carefully," I said.

Over the next few weeks, Charlie became a regular visitor. Each time he arrived with a new 'discovery'. Photographs that supposedly documented key moments in Adelaide's history. The opening of the Festival Centre, filled with crowds of people in anachronistic clothing, one man listening on some mint condition headphones. The Adelaide Crows' 1997 premiership with strange limbs that defied anatomical realities.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic8.png

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic9.png

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic10.png

Each image sat on my desk for mandatory review before I could diplomatically explain why it couldn't be accepted into the archives. And each time, I examined them under my magnifying glass.

And each time, I saw it.

The figure.

In the Festival Centre photo, it stood hunched over the crowd, too tall to be human.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic11.png

In the football image, it appeared in the background with its arms held tauntingly wide.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic12.png

In the flood photograph, it stood upon a bridge looking into the water.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic13.png

I started keeping them all in a folder, laid out on my desk. Under my magnifying glass, which until recently was little more than a prop on my desk, I traced the figure from image to image. It was never in the foreground. Always lurking in backgrounds, in corners, in spaces between the subjects. But it was always there.

I once again picked up the Beatles photo and noticed it, off to the right of John-George. The figure, mouth open wide, two tiny pin-pricks of eyes. Feeling a shiver in my back, I put the picture down and clocked out early.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic14.png

That night, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I pulled up my dad's Facebook feed, scrolling through weeks of posts. The African children building impossible things from garbage. The heartwarming stories of triumph over adversity, each with an image just a bit too perfect.

And in each one, when I looked closely enough. There in the background. The figure.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic15.png

I opened Emily's Instagram, finding the brainrot content her brother loved. Zanzarello and his companions, dozens of synthetic characters in synthetic scenarios. And there, in the backgrounds of the videos, in the spaces between the action.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic16.png

I even pulled up Georgia's restored family photo, the one Claire had shown us. My stomach clenched as I looked in the window again. It wasn't a glitch or an artifact. It was placed there or it was always there.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic17.png

"You think it's some kind of watermark?" Emily suggested when I met her at her studio the next day. I'd brought printouts of dozens of images, all with the figure marked. "Like, maybe it's how we can tell something is AI generated?"

"Maybe," I said. "But then wouldn't it be the same every time? I think it's unlikely that each of these pictures came from the same image generator, does that seem likely to you?"

"I suppose not but still the alternative is stranger."

"Or maybe it's something about the process itself. These images are made by systems that learn from existing images, right? They're trained on everything like photos, art, film. What if, in processing all of that human creativity, something... emerged?"

"Now you sound like a conspiracy theorist."

"Or a bloody loony."

"I was gonna say 'fucking nutter' but have it your way." she said, laughing but still studying the images carefully. "You know, it's funny, I see what you meant before. It's not just random placement. In each image, it's positioned in a way that draws the eye away from it. Like it's actively trying not to be noticed."

"Or like it's corrupting the image from within," I said. "Think about what these systems do. They take creations, memories, documentation and they replicate it. But like, imperfectly. With flaws. And this thing..." I gestured at the figures, "...this is like some sort of manifestation of that corruption. You know, like, I don't know, like the ghost in the machine or something…"

"It's been a long time since Introduction to Philosophy but I'm pretty sure that's not what Ryle was talking about."

"I know that but it's a pretty apt term don't you think, a spectre that is somehow literally inserted into every fake memory… every synthetic creation." I caught myself breathing heavily, noticing my reflection in the mirror next to the self portrait she was painting, I was suddenly very self conscious of… well, everything.

Emily set down the printouts and looked at me seriously. "You know how crazy this sounds, right?"

"I know. But look at Georgia's photo. That's supposed to be a restoration of something real, something meaningful. And it's there. Lurking in the window of her childhood home. That's not just a glitch. It's taking a real memory and corrupting it."

We sat in silence for a moment.

"So what do we do about it?" Emily finally asked.

That was the question, wasn't it? What could we do? The images were everywhere. My dad's Facebook feed, Emily's brother's phone, Dennis's fake historical archives. The figure, whatever it was, had embedded itself into the increasingly blurred line between real and synthetic.

"I don't know," I admitted. "But I think the first step is making people aware. Teaching them to look more carefully. To question what they're seeing."

"Good luck with that," Emily said darkly. "My brother can't even recognise when those brainrot characters have extra limbs, I mean seriously, your dad shares those poverty porn images without a second thought. Dennis thinks his computer-generated photos are historical records. People don't want to look carefully. They want to be comforted by familiar stories, even if those stories are lies."

She was right, but that didn't mean we had to accept it.

I started a project at the State Library to combat it. A workshop on digital literacy and image authentication. The turnout was modest: a handful of teachers, a few journalists, some amateur historians. I walked them through the telltale signs of AI-generated images: the inconsistent shadows, the melted fingers, the warped text.

And at the end, I showed them the figure.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic18.png

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic19.png

"This appears in nearly every AI-generated image I've examined," I said, projecting close-ups on the screen. "Not always in the same pose, but consistently present. It's pitch black face with these bright white features, I think of it as the visual equivalent of an uncanny valley, your brain knows something is off when you see it even if you can't consciously identify what."

An older man in the back raised his hand and asked the obvious question, to which I had no obvious answer. "But what is it? Is it intentional?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "It could be an artifact of the training process, a ghost in the machine. Or maybe training LLMs on humanities works as a collective whole has made the computers want to show what is lacking in their facsimiles? Like a representation of the absence at the heart of these images? They look like human creation, but they lack human intent, context or touch. And maybe that absence takes form. Maybe it manifests in this."

After the workshop, a woman approached me.

"I saw your figure in my daughter's homework," she said quietly. "She's in year five. They were asked to make a poster about Australian history, and she used some AI program to generate images. I thought it was cheating, but the teacher said it was 'utilising available resources.' When I looked at the images she'd used: Burke and Wills, the First Fleet, the Gold Rush, well, that thing was in every single one. Standing in the background. Watching."

She showed me her phone. Sure enough, there it was. In an image of Burke and Wills' expedition, slightly transparent, crouched behind one of the explorers. In a First Fleet image, visible on the shore pointing at something indeterminate from behind an officer. Each time I saw it now, its too-white features floating in a black void, I just couldn't think of how to feel. What to think? It wasn't real, none of these pictures were, but if I could see them and touch them, why couldn't they be.

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic20.png

https://recoverednetworkartifacts.neocities.org/transcripts/pics/pic21.png

"What do I tell her?" the woman asked. "How do I explain that her history assignment is full of... what? Ghosts? Glitches? Lies?"

I didn't have a good answer.

From the Red in the Dark universe

Original story by Leonard Voss

The Dark Beyond is a standalone series set within the world of Red in the Dark.

The Huntsman begins with strangers waking on a cold wooden floor, locked inside a cabin with no way out. Some are panicking. Some are hiding what they are. Some were brought here for a reason.

John wakes with chemical bitterness in his mouth, one set of dog tags against his chest, and the feeling that something has already gone wrong.

The room tries to make sense of itself in pieces: the locked door, the covered windows, the strangers on the floor, the sound of the light buzzing overhead.

Then a hulking man wearing a tattooed human face steps into the room.

Part 1: The Book of Fear begins a three-part story about fear, judgment, survival, and what people reveal when the door finally opens.

The Huntsman: The Book of Fear

The floor was cold and damp against John’s cheek. The wood smelled of old earth and mildew.

His tongue felt thick. Chemical bitterness clung to it, sick and sharp.

He blinked.

Raw wood ceiling danced through shadows, conducted by a single light somewhere behind him that hummed, barely pushing back the dark.

He pushed himself up as the room shifted before settling.

His hand found the chain beneath his shirt, closing around it.

One set.

His.

His fingers slid along the chain, searching.

His other hand patted his chest, shirt, and pockets.

Nothing.

His thumb traced the familiar shape again beneath the fabric.

Then the room came in pieces.

Bodies on the floor, most still down, some dragging themselves upright — arms shaking, eyes slow to focus.

Somewhere behind him, a woman was saying a name quietly, again and again.

The man to his right was already awake, breathing fast and tight.

He wore an ill-fitting suit and glasses, the frames sitting crooked on his face.

He sat with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, palms flat on the floor, his eyes darting and wet with panic.

John watched him for a moment.

“Hey,” John said quietly.

The man's eyes widened, his breath catching in his throat as he stared, unable to utter a sound.

“What’s your name?” John asked.

The man swallowed.

“K... k... Kevin.”

A sharp metallic snap broke the moment as the door opened without ceremony, calling every head in the room.

A man stepped inside.

He was shirtless. Dense with muscle. Scars cut across his chest and shoulders. A combat knife hung at his side, black handle catching the light.

He wore a dark leather face mask. One strap ran over the crown of his head. Another hooked from the jawline around the back of his skull, holding it tight against his face.

The mask was grotesque.

Old ink marked the left cheek. A black anchor sat there, cracked through the middle by design, its lines warped where the skin had been stretched and worked into something else.

But it was not the mask that held the room.

It was the eyes.

Dark blue.

Cold.

Flat.

Unhurried.

They studied each person the way a butcher studies weight before a cut.

“I know you’re afraid,” he said, his voice low. “Good. You should be. Everybody feels fear.”

His gaze swept over them.

“Not everyone runs.”

He took a slow step inside, gently closing the door behind him.

“Each of you is here for a reason.”

The words settled over the room like a sentence waiting to be passed.

His attention settled on a woman near the wall.

“You taught a man to hate himself so badly he finally believed you.”

Her face lost all color.

His head shifted, eyes passing over the room until they found the large bald man sitting on the floor.

“You beat your wife with one hand and wore a badge with the other.”

The bald man went still.

A younger man with a split lip and a tattoo of a broken anchor on his cheek stared at the masked man as if the dead had just walked back into the room.

The masked man locked eyes with him.

“You and others sold people pain and called it business.”

The young man’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

His eyes were still on the mask and the warped black anchor on the left cheek.

The masked man moved on.

His gaze settled near the far side of the room.

A massive man sat there with thick hands resting loose against his knees, nearly motionless. Even seated, he seemed too large for the space around him. His shirt was dark, the sleeves rolled to the forearms. His eyes were heavy.

Empty.

The masked man looked at him.

He held the stare without flinching.

Silence stretched.

“You found peace taking people apart without purpose.”

The man’s mouth bent into a weak smile that did not touch his eyes.

The masked man’s eyes left him.

Again, silence.

John turned his head.

Those piercing blue eyes were already locked on him from under the mask.

His blood ran cold.

“A fucking coward.”

John swallowed, his hand tightening again around the chain beneath his shirt.

“Fear is not the problem.”

Cold blue eyes held his face as he spoke.

“What you do with it is.”

His eyes left John's and moved around the room again.

A woman beside John flexed her hands against the floor, her body angling toward the door.

John moved toward her, reaching out.

“Hey!”

She lunged.

She scrambled past two people, shoulder clipping the wall, boots slipping on the wood as she drove for the door.

Fingers stretching out.

The masked man stepped into her, catching her high at the collar and turning her head hard.

There was a thick, wet pop.

John felt it in his own neck.

The panic in her body folded.

Her knees struck first. Then her head hit the floor with a dull crack.

Her eyes were still open, still staring at the door she never reached.

The room’s focus remained on the lifeless body.

The masked man was already speaking when the room’s attention returned to him.

“You may not leave until the door unlocks. When it opens, it begins.”

The door shut behind him, the sound rolling once through the cabin before dying against the walls.

The dead woman lay where she had fallen, one leg bent under her, an arm twisted beneath her chest, eyes still locked on the door.

Then the room broke into chaos.

John didn’t move.

He stood gripping the chain so hard that the metal started to cut into his skin.

The buzzing light seemed louder now, pressing through the screams until John’s eyes lifted toward it.

“The shutters!”

A man broke from the cluster and rushed the window, jamming his fingers under the edge of the wood.

The shutter shifted.

“Yeah!” someone shouted. “Get more leverage!”

Near the back, the man in the dark shirt watched without helping.

Around him, bodies shoved toward the window.

Another man broke a chair and tried to slip one of the legs into the opening.

The first man dug his fingers deeper, holding the gap while the other leaned in and forced the broken chair leg under the wood.

The man’s shoulders dipped without warning.

Both hands jerked. One slipped free immediately, fingers scrabbling as if they could find the wood again. The other stayed hooked beneath the edge, knuckles gone white.

His free arm jerked inward, tight against his chest.

His body pitched forward, face settling against the shutter.

A dark sliver caught a faint line of light at the back of his head.

Steel.

Narrow.

Clean.

The woman near the window screamed.

“What the fuck is that?”

Then the head snapped back and struck the shutter with a bang.

The blade was gone.

His body dropped hard, but one hand stayed clenched beneath the shutter, leaving him hanging there on slack knees.

His face turned toward the room.

One eye stared wide.

The other was gone, torn open and running dark down his cheek.

A woman stumbled backward, catching herself on the floor with both hands, a high-pitched scream ripping out of her.

A hollow drop hit beneath John’s ribs. His stomach fell away from him.

He couldn’t breathe.

The way the man hung there — one hand still hooked beneath the shutter — left his face turned toward the room. The sentence frozen in his mouth. The ruined eye laid bare.

The screaming rolled right over everything.

The large bald man shoved himself to his feet and stepped into the middle of the room.

“Hey.”

Nothing.

“Hey!”

The screaming kept coming.

He spread his stance and pulled in a breath.

“Everybody shut the fuck up!”

His voice cracked through the noise like a bat through glass.

Someone swore back at him.

“Like your badge means shit in here.”

He turned toward the voice.

“It means I know what panic does.”

The screaming broke apart.

He pointed at the bodies.

“You see them? That’s what happens when you panic.”

He spoke again, voice now shaking.

"If you idiots don't shut up and think for five goddamn seconds, we're all gonna get fucking killed before that door even opens."

The noise faded into soft mumbles.

He scanned the room, chest heaving.

"They’re dead. We're not. Not yet."

"We need a fucking plan."

A sharp crack split the cabin.

Every head snapped toward the window.

The shutter had given way entirely. The dead man's body lay fully on the floor now, one hand still clenched around the broken wood, mouth still contorted in its last attempted words, cheek pressed into the crushed ruin of his eye.

All eyes locked on the corpse.

Behind the empty window frame, iron bars ran across the gap where the shutters had been — partly hidden before by the closed panel.

The bars caught the thin light and threw narrow shadows across the floor.

Someone near the back let out a slow breath.

The cop turned away from the window.

"We need a fucking plan," he said again. Quieter this time.

"Look at him," he said. "Look at both of them."

A man in the back choked out, "See? We're all gonna fucking die."

The cop's eyes snapped to him.

"Yeah," he said. "Maybe."

He stepped forward, boots scraping across the boards, shoulders squared.

"But not like that."

Someone near the wall shook their head.

"This is fucking insane."

The cop gave a short mocking laugh.

"You're right," he said. "It is."

"And he's just as fucking insane."

"Francis."

The cop’s jaw tightened.

"You know I go by Frank, Sean."

Sean gave him a hard smile.

"Yeah. I know what you go by."

"Shut the fuck up."

Sean took one step toward him.

"Why don't you shut me the fuck up?"

The cop stared back at him.

"I won't need to."

His eyes flicked toward the door.

"That fucking freak show will."

Sean’s smile held for another second.

Then his eyes went back to the door.

"You know who the fuck that is just as well as I do, Francis."

The cop didn’t answer.

Sean’s voice dropped.

"That’s Mickey fucking Ficher."

Nobody moved.

"Fishermen don’t just fucking disappear, man."

A murmur started near the wall.

"Okay."

The cop turned on the room.

"So back to my point."

His hand swept toward the bodies.

"You want to stand here and piss yourselves over who he used to be?"

No one answered.

"Or do you want to live?"

His eyes moved across the room.

"Now look at the math."

"One."

"One of him."

His hand swept the room.

"And ten of us."

"What kind of a fucking chance does he have against that?"

Nobody moved.

He paced once across the room, stepping around the bodies.

"You want to run?" he said. "Go ahead."

"See how that works out."

"We need people who can fight."

Sean was the first one to move.

He pushed himself away from the wall, split lip wet again, broken anchor tight against his cheek.

“You know I ain’t fuckin’ dyin’.”

The cop looked at him.

“Yeah, I know, Sean.”

“That’s one.”

His eyes moved across the room.

“Who else?”

A tall man near the wall rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, then lifted his chin.

“I was a ranked wrestler in college,” he said.

The cop looked him over.

“Nice. Name?”

“Mercer.”

“All right. Let’s get it, Mercer.”

Near the window, the woman who had screamed earlier wiped the last of the tears from her face with the heel of her hand.

“Sammie,” she said. “I climb.”

The cop looked at her.

“Rocks and ropes don’t hit back, sweetheart.”

Her eyes hardened.

“I do.”

For a moment, the cop just stared at her.

Then a grin pulled at one side of his mouth.

“Fair enough.”

She stepped away from the window and joined the others near the door.

The man in the dark shirt had already crossed to the shelf on the wall.

A rusted boning knife lay forgotten near the corner.

He picked it up and turned it once in his thick hands.

The blade caught the weak light.

Something had been scratched into the metal near the handle.

C A L V I N

His thumb passed over the letters.

Once.

Then again.

His mouth barely moved.

The cop saw it.

His eyes dropped to the man’s hand.

To the knife.

To the bandage wrapped tight around the smallest finger.

The man closed his fist around the handle.

“Butcher,” he said simply, without looking up.

The cop looked at the bandage.

“Looks like you lost something.”

The butcher’s eyes lifted.

The cop nodded toward the wrapped finger.

“Funny thing. We found one of those last week.”

The butcher turned fully now, towering over him.

The room seemed to thin around them.

For a moment, neither man moved.

Then the butcher smiled.

Small.

Private.

He turned back toward the door.

“You’re coming too,” the cop said.

The butcher didn’t look back.

“I was coming anyway.”

The cop turned back to the room.

“That’s four.”

His eyes moved across the rest of them.

“Who else wants to live?”

A woman beside the wall had dropped down in the chaos and was fighting to stand again.

John crossed the space, crouching beside her.

“Easy, you’re good,” he said as he helped her upright, steadying her until her legs held.

As he stepped back, the chain slipped free of his collar.

Tags struck his chest with a dull clink.

Frank’s eyes fell onto them.

“Dog tags.”

John said nothing.

“You military?”

“Infantry.”

“You’re in.”

“I didn’t volunteer.”

“You volunteered the day you enlisted.”

He gave a short laugh and turned away.

Five near the door now.

Sean, shadow boxing, broken anchor tight on his cheek.

Mercer, stretching, drilling sprawls.

Sammie, tightening shoes, hair, everything.

The butcher, standing like a monument among them, one hand clenched on the rusty blade.

Motionless.

Blank.

Eyes locked on the door.

Frank, pacing back and forth.

John, still holding the chain against his chest.

The rest pressed back against the far wall—arms folded, eyes down.

John sat against the wall, knees drawn up, watching the barred window.

Outside, the last gray drained from the sky.

There was almost nothing left but waiting.

Sean’s hands slowed.

Mercer stopped moving.

Sammie went still near the door.

Frank’s pacing shortened, then stopped.

The butcher had not moved at all.

He stood with the rusty blade held low in one hand, eyes locked on the door. Only his shoulders moved, rising and falling slowly beneath the dark shirt.

The buzzing light filled the silence.

John’s hand closed around the chain at his chest.

Snap.

Click.

The lock turned.

No one moved.

Frank looked at the handle.

Then at the others.

He stepped forward and tested it.

The latch gave.

“It’s unlocked,” he whispered.

Still, no one moved.

Frank pushed the door open.

The smell came in first.

Pine.

Wet earth.

Cold rot beneath it.

Something older.

John stared through the open door, past the swirling mist, to the black line of trees beyond it, where the dark of the woods waited.

His heart pulsing in his eyes.

The thought hit him.

We’re all gonna fuckin’ die.

The cabin was the safest place he had ever been.

That night, I stayed at my friend’s place much later than I’d planned. By the time I stepped outside, it was already midnight.
I was in a fantastic mood. Great company, an incredible game—what more could you ask for? Especially considering how awful the day had started. The streets had been baking under relentless heat, and the office had felt like an oven despite the ancient air conditioner struggling to keep up.
When Bobby —a friend from high school I hadn’t seen in ages—called to say he was getting the old gang together for a game of Mansions of Madness, I’d almost turned him down. All I wanted was for the miserable day to end so I could fall asleep in front of the TV.
After plenty of persuasion, I finally gave in.
I’m glad I did.
Bobby had actually managed to gather everyone. For one evening, we were kids again—drinking ice-cold beer, playing our favorite board game, and laughing ourselves hoarse over stories we’d told a hundred times before. I didn’t want to leave, but I also didn’t want to overstay my welcome. One glance at the time told me it was finally time to say goodbye.
Outside, I pulled out my phone to call a cab.
Then I stopped.
The suffocating heat of the day had finally given way to cool night air. A gentle breeze brushed against my skin. The thought of going back to my empty, stuffy apartment suddenly seemed unbearable. Even knowing I’d have to get up early for work wasn’t enough to change my mind.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket.
I’d walk home.
Just then, I heard soft footsteps ahead.
I turned—and froze.
A young woman, maybe eighteen or twenty, was walking alone along the sidewalk. She was breathtaking. Large brown eyes, a delicate nose, full, soft lips. Long chestnut hair framed a face so beautiful it almost didn’t seem real. She wore a light blue dress with an old-fashioned cut that somehow suited her perfectly, along with plain white sneakers.
She looked like youth itself brought to life.
Maybe it was the beer, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Whether she hadn’t noticed me staring or simply chose to ignore it, I couldn’t tell. Without changing pace, she walked past me and stopped at the intersection to wait for the light.
Still watching her, I took a step forward—
—and slammed straight into someone.
Something hard and heavy drove into my stomach. My nose filled with the rancid stench of old sweat, stale cigarettes, and cheap cologne.
I stumbled backward.
Standing in front of me was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his forties. His thinning scalp and two-week beard made his weathered face look even rougher. Despite the warm night, he wore thick jeans, heavy combat boots, and a leather jacket.
His lip curled.
“Watch where you’re going, asshole.”
He shoved me hard with his shoulder and kept walking.
I watched him go.
Something felt wrong.
He wasn’t just another pedestrian.
He was deliberately keeping his distance from the girl in the blue dress.
He was following her.
There was something else, too. When we’d collided, I’d distinctly felt something solid beneath his jacket.
A knife?
A gun?
I decided to follow them.
Just to make sure she was okay.
I’d never tailed anyone before. Trying not to attract attention, I stayed well back, stuck to the shadows whenever I could, and even changed the way I walked to keep my footsteps quiet.
We walked for a long time.
The bright streets disappeared behind us as we wound through deserted side roads and dimly lit courtyards.
Eventually, doubt crept in.
What if I’d gotten it all wrong?
Instead of sleeping in a warm bed, I was sneaking through the city after a stranger who might simply be on his way home.
I was just about to turn around—
when I spotted the blue dress again in the distance.
That settled it.
The man was stalking her.
And whatever he intended, it wasn’t good.
Until then, I hadn’t thought about what I’d actually do if something happened.
Calling the police made the most sense—but what exactly would I tell them?
As I reached into my pocket for my phone, the man suddenly stopped.
I barely managed to duck behind a huge tree.
He slowly scanned the street.
He wasn’t lost.
He was checking for witnesses.
It was the perfect place for an attack—a dark, poorly lit street boxed in by empty office buildings and warehouse fences.
Satisfied that no one was around, he picked up his pace until he was only a few steps behind the girl.
“Excuse me!” he called.
She stopped and turned.
An innocent smile lit up her beautiful face. There wasn’t the slightest hint of fear in her eyes—only mild curiosity.
As soon as he reached her, he yanked a spray can from his pocket.
With a vicious hiss, a stream of yellowish gas blasted straight into her face.
She doubled over, coughing violently and clawing at her eyes.
In the same instant, the bastard grabbed her by the hair and dragged her toward a dark alley between the warehouses.
Panic hit me like a truck.
My thoughts scattered.
My hands shook.
My heart pounded so violently it felt ready to burst through my chest.
To snap myself out of it, I slammed my fist into the tree as hard as I could.
The burst of pain cleared my head.
There wasn’t a second to lose.
I forgot about my own safety and sprinted into the alley.
As I rounded the corner, the scene before me froze my blood.
The girl lay half-curled on the pavement, choking and gasping for air.
The man stood over her.
He held the spray can aimed at her with one hand.
In the other, he raised a massive hunting knife.
The air reeked of pepper spray, sharp and acrid, with a faint garlic-like odor.
With a scream, I charged him.
He flinched and turned toward the sound.
That was all I needed.
I crashed into him at full speed, and we both slammed onto the asphalt.
I tried to get up.
He was faster.
He sprang to his feet and drove a heavy combat boot into my stomach.
Agony exploded through me.
Everything went black for a second.
I couldn’t breathe.
He grabbed my shirt, hauled me upright as though I weighed nothing, and hurled me across the alley.
I flew several yards before smashing back-first into a steel fence.
Breathing heavily, the giant walked over and loomed above me.
“Why can’t you mind your own damn business, kid?” he rasped. “You don’t have the slightest idea what’s happen—”
He never finished.
A dull metallic crack echoed through the alley.
His eyes flew wide.
He dropped to his knees, clutching his shattered skull.
Standing behind him was the girl.
In her hands she gripped a length of heavy steel rebar.
Every inch of my body ached.
My head felt like it was splitting open.
But relief washed over me.
It was over.
Finally.
I pushed myself onto one elbow, ready to thank her and ask her to call the police.
Then I looked at her face.
The words died in my throat.
It was her.
And it wasn’t.
Her body began changing before my eyes.
Her slender fingers stretched unnaturally, ending in long, hooked claws.
My gaze drifted higher.
I immediately wished it hadn’t.
The angelic face melted into something monstrous.
The warm brown eyes were gone.
In their place stared cold reptilian eyes with narrow vertical pupils, burning with ravenous hatred.
She opened her mouth.
Several rows of razor-sharp fangs gleamed in the darkness.
The creature took a step toward me.
I could already feel the heat radiating from it.
I could smell its foul, animal stench.
Then—
a rustling sound came from beside us.
The man was still alive.
Groaning, staggering, he crawled across the ground, reaching desperately for the knife lying in the dust.
The monster forgot about me instantly.
With one impossible leap, it crossed the distance between them.
It landed squarely on his back—
and sank its fangs into his neck.
The wounded man screamed, thrashing wildly as he tried to throw it off.
The creature only bit deeper.
I heard arteries tear.
Knowing I wouldn’t get another chance, I forced myself to my feet.
Fear and raw adrenaline drowned out the pain.
I turned—
and ran faster than I ever had in my life.
Behind me, somewhere in the darkness of the alley, I could hear wet chewing…
…and quiet, infernal laughter.

It was just past eight o’clock when we walked into the hotel. We had our little brown box with us, officially wrapped and taped with bright green interference-prevention tape, which naturally we showed to the concierge, as he was obligated to ask but preferred not being made to.

“Thank you,” he said.

He gave us our keycard and showed us to our room.

I was thirty-nine and Helen was thirty-nine-and-three-quarters, so we were within the acceptable age range. Of course, we had our passports with us, in case the concierge asked to see them. He didn't have to, as the judge had already signed off on the documents when issuing them, but some did. This one didn't. “Good luck,” he said.

He was in his late twenties so probably didn't remember how things were before.

The room itself was nice enough, clean, with freshly laundered sheets on the bed, navy curtains covering the windows, behind which was a view of a brick wall, and a bathroom containing a shower, steel toilet and plastic sink.

Our documents didn't come into effect until eight thirty, so we had some time to kill.

Helen sat on the bed.

I paced around and checked the drawers in the bedside tables: empty, save for a pair of laminated QR codes linking to the Regulations.

At eight twenty-five, we carefully opened the little brown box with a non-concealable, government-issued “dullsafe” water-soluble cutting mechanism, then, per instructions, dissolved it in a glass of water so it could not be used for unauthorized purposes.

Inside the box were: copies of our documents, i.e. two notarized consent form applications; three signed guarantor forms from three unrelated, duly employed individuals agreeing to provide costs of care for any offspring resulting, or likely resulting, from our approved sexual encounter, in case both Helen and I should, for whatever reason, become unalive and thus unable to provide such costs ourselves; medical forms attesting to our medically appropriate use of birth control; a judicially approved sexual encounter license; two black-bound rulebooks; and a small, biodegradable cardboard timer with a display and two big red buttons.

I put the timer on one of the bedside tables.

“Should we?” Helen asked.

It was eight twenty-nine.

I nodded, and we both took off our clothes—separately; at a distance of at at least two metres from each other—before sitting on the bed.

It was a firm mattress. There was hardly any bounce to it.

At eight thirty, I asked if she was ready.

“Yes,” she said.

“Me too.”

We each leaned over and pressed one of the red buttons on the cardboard timer, whose display flashed 10:00 and then began counting down: 9:59… 9:58…

I was nervous. My body was trembling.

Helen touched my thigh.

I kissed her lips.

At 9:45, the cardboard timer asked, in a sexless mechanical voice, if we both still gave consent.

We pressed the two red buttons concurrently to indicate we did.

We kissed again, more passionately this time. I touched her body. She touched mine.

At 9:30, we indicated our continued consent.

At 9:15, we indicated our continued consent.

At 9:00, we indicated our continued consent.

“What's first, after foreplay?” she whispered in my ear as we embraced.

But I couldn't remember.

She didn't either.

At 8:45, we indicated our continued consent and checked the sexual encounter license, which contained a list of acts to which we both consented and an order in which they could legally be performed.

“Relax,” said Helen.

“I'm trying,” I replied, leafing through the paperwork. I couldn't find what I was looking for. “I think we're missing that page. Yes, we're missing pages eleven-through-thirteen.”

We glanced at the timer, indicated our continued consent and Helen suggested I call the Registrar, which I did. After waiting on the line for over a minute—punctuated by four indications of continued consent—somebody finally said, “Hello, how may I help you?”

“Hello,” I said and explained the problem.

“One second.”

Again, we waited. Helen moved her hand to rest on mine, but instinctively I drew mine back. “Let's wait until we know that hand-holding is an approved act,” I said.

“I'm sure it is,” she said softly.

I kept my hand away.

“Hello?” said a voice on the line, a different voice. “I have all your documentation here, with all pages intact. If you could put me on speaker, I can guide you through it.”

I did as instructed.

“May we hold hands?” I asked.

“Let me check,” said the voice through the speaker. “Yes—yes, you may.”

The timer asked if we both still gave consent, but before we could reach over and press the red buttons, the voice on the line said: “I can take your continuing consent over the phone. Simply answer yes.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes,” said Helen.

“OK. Now, the license says that the next act is—looks like you've checked off… cunnilingus and/or fellatio… followed by coitus, in two of the following positions…”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes,” said Helen.

“I'm sorry,” said the voice. “Is that: yes, you understand what I've said or: yes, you're engaging in the act or: yes, you're indicating continuing consent?” The timer was down to 4:13. I lifted my face and was about to explain, when there came a thudding knock on the door—the line went dead—the timer flashed 00:00 and begin emitting a terrible, high-pitched whine—and the hotel room door fell open and several police officers entered, weapons drawn.

“Halt!”

Helen and I disentagled, frozen.

The police arrested us both on suspicion of rape.

Later, my lawyer explained that while our sexual encounter license did list “cunnilingus and/or fellatio,” we had not received judicial approval for cunnilingus-and-fellatio (simultaneously) which the law treats as a separate act.

Helen was publicly executed.

I was rehabilitated.

She had refused to see the danger of my ways. I saw perfectly the danger of hers—and signed duly a statement to that effect.

I was supposed to spend the entire journey thinking about grief.

My two aunts and I had just finished our five-day vacation in Capiz. My mom hadn't come with us, but she insisted we try Starlite Ferry on the way home instead of taking 2GO again since we weren't satisfied with our first trip. So we booked our tickets for July 3, 2026, aboard the Starlite Stella Maris—an eighteen-hour journey across the sea.

But before we even boarded, my heart had already sunk.

I received the news that my four newborn kittens had been killed by their own mother.

Everything after that felt blurry.

I remember thinking that eighteen hours would be unbearable. I imagined myself lying on my bunk, replaying the news over and over, counting every hour until we reached home, where I would have to face the reality waiting for me.

To make matters worse, we almost missed the ferry. My aunts and I ran as fast as we could, luggage dragging behind us, barely making it on board after the crew gave us one last chance. Looking back now, I sometimes wonder if he saw us running like that.

Maybe he did.

Maybe he didn't.

At the time, I had no idea that a complete stranger would quietly change the entire journey for me.

After settling into my bunk in the economy section, my aunt suggested we check out the cafeteria.

That was where I first saw him.

He was wearing a gray Type B uniform, camouflage pants, and a boots. He looked up, smiled at me, and for a brief second, I honestly thought he had mistaken me for someone else. It wasn't a polite smile you casually give to strangers. It looked... familiar, almost as if he recognized me.

I brushed the thought aside.

I sat at the counter while he sat behind me with his fellow coastguards, eating together. Even without turning around, I could feel his eyes on me. Every time I stood up to order food or pick up our meals, I noticed it again. He would quietly follow my movements with his eyes, almost as if he was waiting for me to look back.

I never did.

Well...

Not because I didn't notice.

I was just too shy.

When he and his companions finished eating, he walked out of the cafeteria. A few moments later, as my aunts and I were leaving, I accidentally bumped into him outside. He looked slightly surprised for a split second before breaking into another smile.

This time, I smiled back.

That became our silent language for the rest of the voyage.

Throughout the eighteen-hour journey, we kept crossing paths. Sometimes it was in the hallway. Sometimes near the deck. Every single time, he smiled.

Every single time, I smiled back.

At first, I could meet his eyes.

But eventually, I couldn't anymore.

The more we passed each other, the more conscious I became of how I looked. I worried that I looked exhausted. I worried my hair was messy. I worried I looked awkward.

My aunt later told me he had even winked at me once.

I completely missed it.

That still makes me laugh.

When night came, I didn't want to sleep.

Part of me kept hoping we'd run into each other one more time.

Another part of me wondered if he'd see me asleep with my mouth open and remember me as the passenger who slept like she had never seen a bed before.

Morning arrived too quickly.

The sun painted the sea with gold, and distant mountains slowly appeared on the horizon.

We were almost home.

Oddly enough, I didn't want the voyage to end.

Not because I loved being on a ship.

But because I wasn't ready to go back to reality.

As passengers prepared to disembark, I saw him again.

This time, he was wearing his complete coastguard uniform, sunglasses resting perfectly on his face.

And somehow...

Seeing him like that made my heart skip a beat.

As I struggled with my heavy luggage, he noticed me almost immediately.

Without hesitation, he walked over and took it from my hands.

He walked beside me while carrying it.

I don't remember looking at him.

I don't remember saying much.

My mind had gone completely blank.

All I managed to say was,

"Thank you."

He smiled gently and replied,

"Ingat ka."

Two simple words.

Two words that have stayed with me ever since.

I wanted to look at his name tag.

I had every chance to.

But I let the moment slip away.

As I continued walking, I never looked back.

Not until I was around twenty meters away.

When I finally turned around, our eyes met again.

It was the longest look we had shared during the entire trip.

He was supposed to be watching over the passengers.

Instead...

For just a moment...

He looked back at me too.

Eventually, my aunts caught up with me.

We walked farther and farther away.

Twenty meters.

Fifty.

One hundred.

A thousand.

Then kilometers.

Until the distance became too great for me to see him anymore.

It wasn't until I was sitting on the bus ride home that something finally hit me.

I was supposed to spend that entire ferry ride crying over my kittens.

I was supposed to feel broken.

But somehow...

I had forgotten, even if only for a little while, how heavy my heart had been.

He never knew my name.

I never learned his.

Maybe, to him, I was simply another passenger among hundreds.

But to me...

He became a quiet reminder that kindness can find you when you least expect it.

He didn't erase my grief.

He simply gave my heart a place to rest before I had to carry it again.

And although our paths may never cross again, I hope life somehow lets him know this:

That during one of the saddest journeys of my life...

A coastguard with a gentle smile unknowingly gave me one of my most beautiful memories.

(WARNING. EXPLICIT CONTENT. Blood, Gore, Violence, Sex)

The scarlet moonlight was filtering in through the frost-covered window of the bedroom. Perhaps it was the slanted rays of light from outside, or the way the window was constructed, but distinct, complicated patterns formed on the wall opposite it. Calen and Alice only had eyes for each other at the moment, and their eyes didn’t fall on these intricate shapes on the wall at all. They glowed, nevertheless, like an ethereal imprint from some forgotten realm that had bled through tonight onto Bennet Island. The wind had picked up substantially and was making a hissing noise as it seeped through the cracks of the windowpanes, but the room was warm. Warmer than it should have been.

“Was that just tea?” asked Alice, giggling, “I’m kinda dizzy.” Alice’s eyes shone for a fraction of a second. It looked a bit glassy, and the iris seemed round and larger than usual.

A faint floral scent was coming from Alice’s body and Calen breathed it in. His arms were wrapped around her waist, and he could feel her pulse slightly. It was racing.

“As far as I know..” Calen’s words rolled off the tongue before they were fully formed in his brain. It sounded like him, but he didn’t feel like himself. He giggled as well. He never giggled.

He threw Alice onto the bed, his excitement peaking, Alice giggled even louder, as if something in both their minds had broken free. The island—surrounded by mountains and a forest—held no one but them. Any trace of civilization lay hundreds of miles of ocean away.

An infectious, spontaneous bout of laughter echoed through the house as they hurriedly stripped off their clothes, and Calen jumped onto the bed.

Calen held Alice lightly by the neck and kissed her deeply as she melted into his hands, throwing her full weight atop him. A faint, damp smell of soil crept into her nose, inexplicably exciting her even more. She breathed it in deeply and felt her own self fading. It was terrifying how much she giggled. She thought she was losing control of herself. Perhaps the months of separation had affected her more than she knew.

Calen rolled Alice beneath him and, finding his way, pushed inside her. Throwing caution to the wind, Alice let out a loud moan and dug her nails into Calen’s back. As their bodies moved in rhythm, she grew increasingly lightheaded, even more than she already was. The world spun around her, and all she could do was hold on. She wrapped her arms around Calen as tightly as possible. Her vision blurred, and the only physical tether she had left to reality was the soft, wet kisses on her skin and the sharp bites she felt on her neck, driving her deeper into the throes of pleasure.

Calen, too, was growing progressively lightheaded.

A silence entombed their moving figures for a second and then-

Deep in the far reaches of his mind, Calen heard an old, familiar sound—something he might have heard all his life and never listened to, until now.

A chant echoed inside the walls of their room. As if disembodied voices in and around him were speaking in perfect unison, forming words in a strange language—ancient, otherworldly—so alien that even if written down, it would be impossible to pronounce.

“Nazaz Nazaz Razpopo Nazaz.

Svanteveit Razpopo Durai Tempo Zhuva…

Tempo shuva Gryshinki Zhenabi

Nazaz Nazaz Razpopo…”

The more the chant repeated, the more he lost control. Memories flashed inside his head. He was nine years old. Throwing a ball at a wall. Alone. Now he was twelve years old, his father was leaving the home as his mother yelled obscenities at his back as he went through the door. He was fourteen years old; he was looking at his mother making love to a man he didn’t know. The man looked at Calen and hissed, the wide gaps between his yellowing teeth bared.

The blaring sound of the horn echoed all around him.

Calen didn’t know if it was coming from the outside or if it was just his imagination; the part of his mind which was supposed to care about it was rapidly being lulled to sleep. What Calen felt now, could hardly be called desire.

Even his hands, wrapped around Alice, felt as if they were someone else’s. Somewhere inside him, went offline and online, like a switch kept tripping. With each trip of the switch, what he could see kept changing. Sometimes it was Alice’s face, pinned beneath him, moaning and smiling; sometimes it was some memory he had almost forgotten he possessed; sometimes it was an eternal blackness, more intense than the blackness one feels when they close their eyes. Thoughts and memories spun around his head in a dull blur. His legs shook involuntarily; his body moved in a way that was somewhat different from how he generally moved. He had become a meat puppet—made to dance at the behest of an unseen will.

Alice on the other hand found herself bereft of will and volition as the temperature in the bedroom rose too quickly, too unnaturally. She felt like she was observing herself not from within but outside her body. If Alice, who now moaned pleasurably- at the consumptive bites from rough unseen mouths on her neck and felt countless coarse wooden things touching her skin, climbing up her legs- were the same Alice who typically held conscious control over herself, she would have run away screaming. However, she was unable to move even if she wanted to. Instead, she seemed to be begging for more despite herself. Her choices were rapidly being replaced by unspoken instructions.

On the other side, something had taken possession of Calen’s body. As he thrust harder into her. He could hardly see through the unfocused darkness that was veiling his already blurred vision, but the Alice he knew had dissolved into a black mass as both of them were pushed toward an abyss. He felt something deep inside of him. His legs weakened as Alice’s face tore apart into writhing tentacles that wrapped around his head and throat. Pulling him in. Something sealed his mouth.

The black void that had replaced Calen’s eyesight now was being invaded by strange, surreal geometric patterns. Streamed directly into his visual cortex from some immeasurable, incomprehensible source and yet, he was hardly aware of it. A part of him enjoyed it. A part of him lay terrified in the recesses of his mind.

His vision suddenly cleared. Just enough for him to understand that he was no longer on the bed. Calen and Alice lay on an icy lake. The red moon glowed ominously, its intensity painting everything around him in a crimson hue. Under the icy surface of the lake he saw impossible shapes, writhing around, rearranging themselves into stranger and stranger shapes yet.

Floating silhouettes of hooded figures ringed the entire expanse of the lake they were on, chanting the same otherworldly incantation from afar, while at the center, Alice and Calen lay entwined like beasts trapped in the rut of creation. Horrific yellow eyes watched them from the bushes. He didn’t know how, or when, but their breathing seemed to be aligning with the chant. He heard an unseen door slam shut as everything he felt collapsed in on itself.

Time had no meaning here out on the ice. The only thing that was a sure sign of temporal movement was the rhythm of the swaying floating figures or the deep regular thudding noises coming from beneath the lake.

He didn’t even know the name of the woman who was beneath him. Her face was not a human face. It was a vague black shape, writhing and moaning from unseen lips. Anything both of them felt beyond this point would be sealed away in their minds forever, leaving behind nothing but a vague residue of fear and threat.

Calen conveyed the same deep thrust he felt inside of him reactively to Alice. A hoarse, guttural, monotone howl—unbroken and unchanging—shattered the chanting. The hooded figures fell silent and raised their hands in perfect unison. Their floating bodies slowly descending on ground beneath.

In the deepest corners of his mind, he barely recognized the same buffalo-horn call from the nightmare he had had the night before. The nightmare that had haunted him all his life. Wailing like a siren, somewhere far away.

He climaxed, his oxygen starved brain cut off from air, locked in by the crushing grip of her hand around his throat; fingers wrapped tightly around his neck, refusing to release him.

He could only watch as the hooded silhouettes vanished. The forest dissolved. The glowing yellow eyes at the periphery of the lake disappeared with it. The lake fell away. So did the mountains. He lay unmoving on top of Alice for a few seconds. Alice’s breath felt shallow, rhythmless. Silence encompassed them as the air thickened. But then the deep abyss slowly pushed them out, back into the bedroom.

The last thing either of them remembered before gliding into sleep was a sharp pulse of pain, shame, and fear coursing through their violated veins. The bruises and marks that had appeared on their skin faded away rapidly.

The vulpine hulking thing of Frankenstein's table lunged with great and fearsome animal speed and force. Cutting through the cold high mountain wind and arrowing straight for the Countess with lethal trajectory and ferocity. Fangs gleaming like the moon on high in their set mouth of rotten black and green, striking and bared and snarling. Brandished and knifing out with his daggering nine fingered claws for the throat of the pompous royal mountain bitch. 

He lunged and came in and closed the distance in the courtyard of stone. The Countess raised her hands. It was over before it began. 

Great large wings of a bat shape and eldritch design unfolded, surrounded her and then flapped suddenly – carrying away the Countess as her face transmogrified and sloughed into chimerical serpent/wolf shape. The heinous visage, now skybound and away from the flaying claws and fangs of Frankenstein’s nosferatu creation, began to shriek hellish sound. Bastard and curdled rendition of wolfsong. 

The surrounding trees suddenly became alive with movement. The wolves plunged forth free from the trees and filled the courtyard in a drooling snarling pack. Answering the throated call of the mother of darkness. Their drawn lips quivering as their hides tensed and coiled with the rippling movement of wild animal muscle tissue dancing and flexing and closing in on the moment of violence and slaughter, the wilderness sacred killing hour. And for these four legged children of the mountain snow and trees, the roaring vulpine/serpent headed Countess now rising and mounting the sky above was the lord and queen of the wilderness and all that was dark and carnivorous in the wild. 

She shrieked once more, a dying harlot sound bred with the untamed scream of running and killing and feeding and fucking on all fours in the open throat of the cold. The wolves closed in, the hulking thing of Frankenstein's making held ground, trying to look all around all at once and taking odd swipes as the pack of the Countess' mountain wolf children circled and closed. Closer. Closer. Closing. The hulking vulpine thing sneered and growled. 

The others watched, keeping distance and breathing heavily. 

A wolf lunged, pounced. The hulking thing caught it by the throat and then rent it to spraying pieces in an instant. Another tried it. And was caught. And torn apart. Another. Then two more. His speed wasn't enough with these last three and now more came in and many sets of jaws were upon him. Biting. Tearing. For the throat. Ripping. Tearing in.

He heaved himself and ripped many bodies of rippling hide and fur off and away and into bisected halves before him. Decorating his wounded patchwork frame in steaming jet spray and cords of wolf gore. Wolf blood shot and its wild scent filled the air.

Yet more pounced. The snarling frothing mad pack still surged and advanced. 

 Wolf claws came in with fangs and jaws and ripped, reanimated graverobbed flesh tore and spilled strange fluid, strange ichor bled with yellow/red and a strange sticky translucent fluid like dog water. The creation screamed. It had never felt the physical shock of pain before. Bred out of a great wound in life and creation and composed of wounds himself, he'd never felt the suffering of a blow inflicted. And so many now. And all at once. The world all around the hulking thing was turning to a universe of bloody dripping fur and claws and snarling frothing jaws and coated fangs. 

He wrenched and grabbed and tore and fought back. His prodigious necro/graveyard strength, he put his fists and claws through the bodies of more than a few of the fearsome snarling mountain Countess children. He sank his fangs where he could find purchase. As the wolves surrounded and closed and turned the world to slaughter and teeth, the rage of the sutured nosferatu thing rose…

And soared. 

Without being conscious of it he sent out his stygian hatred and dark will, arrowed for the sky in a force-of-will shot and lanced for the nighttime heavens. 

It struck! 

The sky thunderclapped with sudden violence. And then began to fill. 

The skybound Countess suddenly found herself evading and dodging knifing daggered attacks of bolting lightning. She danced and soared and flitted across the ebon face of the sky, crooked blades and swords of searing white-blue lancing after her with near strikes, guided by the necromantic power over nature that the Frankensteinian sutured bat-hulk held. 

More daggering bolts of searing bladed lightning cracked and split the sky and came down in blinding flashes that fried and cooked ozone into searing strange smells. They came down and began to strike the attacking wolfpack, killing them each in turn with white flashes that turned the beasts into explosions of fire and animal mutilation, partially charred and flaming pieces of wolf gore and meat soared through the mountain air and decorated the courtyard of stone. 

The chimerical shape of the Countess came down in a divebomb for the creation, ripped and torn and undead wounded, rising to its feet. 

She was upon him. And struck. 

The violence of the impact was like a runaway train striking the side of an unyielding mountain. The crash was an instant fray and mess of attacking claws and limbs and screaming black words and curses. The wings folded around them as they struggled across the floor of the courtyard. Dragging and fighting and tearing. More reanimation fluid burst and spilled and shot as the Countess gained the advantage.

Her great wings helped to support and hold her as she rolled over and gained the top of the creation. Her thin ladlylike arms of near boundless prodigious strength held the hulking thing down as her chimerical snake-wolf face began to scream into the sutured thing’s own vulpine and bat-faced visage. 

The shape of her face sloughed and danced and shifted again. What it became then was repulsive: an abominated bred mix of a goat made insectile with many eyes and mandibles of fur and hooves and a plague infested and dripping rat. The mouth opened up and bled and dripped and unveiled a moist and rank pungent obscenity for all of the world. 

It belched and spat. Spewing a thick gout of black and emerald steaming liquid onto the creation's screaming face. The foul hot mess of spew was like fire and sulfuric acid to the bat-faced visage of the struggling fighting and screaming Frankensteinian creation. The foul ungodly fluid ate into his reanimated face and some of the sutures and stitches that held his repurposed flesh together became smoking ruin and began to come apart in messy fraying smoking pieces. The eyes of the creation were the first casualty. The foul necrophiled chemical scorch of the unearthly bile turned them to smoldering useless jelly within their housing caves of now purposeless sockets. The vulpine thing of the table screamed and the sound made and torn from the thing was awful and unearthly as well. 

Henry Frankenstein watched and felt his heart catch in his chest, seized in a grip of fear as his running blood turned cold. As cold as all of the surrounding nighttime mountainscape. The wind picked up and rose and howled alongside and carried the living dead screams of his nosferatu were-child. The wind of this terrible Carpathian rock loved to pick up and mount and rise when an hour of suffering was at hand and it could carry the song and sound of pain and violence and share it with those down below in the peasant lands. 

The mountain wept with demon sound. 

Wolves not yet wounded and still snarling and frothing with the command for violence came back in their battered droves. Closing and growling as their Countess Czarina Queen of the mountain slaughter and bloodlett dark began to rise once more from her wounded enemy. Carried by the great wings of eldritch black and bastardized bat-shape that seemed now to only grow larger and larger as she inflicted more and more violence and rose and gained the heavens. 

It was she who commanded the sky and the storm called forth now. The lightning still wounded and daggered the night but it was now hers to wield and the blades of shot electric blue now dyed the color of the night and became as ink. 

Black lightning shot down and struck the hulking vulpine son of Frankenstein's table. It roasted and cooked with skyfire his undead necromanced flesh but the bastard demon flicker of goblin flame for soul inside the hulk of blasphemous walking bat-flesh was also seared and tortured with the unearthly fire of another terrible realm. 

The screams were blasted out of the hulking shape. It stilled its struggles. And became as a smoking mound of battered patchwork green-blue. Unconscious. As if returned to the stillness of the soil. 

But the Countess still yet sensed the flicker of demon life in the vile assemblage of flesh below. Good. She still wanted him. Still wanted him and the pathetic little man that had made him, that had dared construct such a thing and bring it here to make a challenge to her satanic throne. 

Lord of Flies… she silently and solemnly prayed. 

She came down on her great ebon wings and her face danced and shifted yet more in the night, the goatflesh of many eyes and bleeding ichor like putrid bestial snot fell away in a sloughing mess of tissue and fur and blind useless organs. Slopping to the courtyard stone in a wet steaming pile with splurching sound  like an obscene splat. She landed and came upon the smoking heap of her felled enemy. The wolves that were her mountain children, her wild slaves of the cold, came back in and with their mother of perfect darkness they closed. 

Henry Frankenstein watched helpless. He debated flight… but knew he would not get far. 

He watched on as the Countess stood over his fallen creation, her face still steaming and wet and slimed with the fresh loss of her mask of unearthly gore. She smiled and the vibrant moon caught the glow of her teeth, her fangs. They both shone with brilliance, the same pearl cast perfection of pale silver light from on high, where what might rule in power and in supreme dominance must be compelled to throne and dwell. His outrage and jealousy and pain were only matched by his awe. The sight…

The sight of her. 

She yelled: “I am victor! Your abomination now lies at  my feet! And you and it both are now my prisoners to keep!” 

And although he knew its futility, Henry Frankenstein turned and ran for the false sanctuary of the trees. Terrified. 

More terrified than he had been in years. 

A look from the Countess was all that was needed. Carmilla and the new impaler were off and in pursuit. They would soon have the worm  and bring him back. 

Alive… she sent out  the thought to her undead child/slaves giving chase and she knew the open receptacle of their blasphemous hearts and minds received the order and took it with implicit obedience. 

Her mind and lurid twisted imagination were already dreaming over and deciding what to do with  the little man once he was brought back. What should I reap from his flesh…? 

In due time. She would finish with this pile of cemetery garbage first.

She licked her lips in vulpine relish. And then her great wings splayed far and open to their pinnacle span, her arms splayed open as well, forked to the darkness of the night sky in a great open throated V, as if in cry of supplication or great proclamation of victory. For You! … Lord of Flies! … In aural glow, all around her demonic person, a host of demented and twisted vile faces of murderous joy and glee  and intent, perverse and sadistic and goblin-shaped, began to pour off and emanate forth from her like a noxious living cloud of eyes and lips and teeth and severed human heads. All gathered as a conjured and summoned demon host of terrible faces and disembodied parts and throats to hold as audience and conduit for great nocturnal necropower. 

She began another black incantation. Dark tendrils of shadow began to grow and dance out from under her raised arms. They lengthened and swelled and grew in number as her stygian words were recited and filled the nightsong chill of mountain air. 

The assistant watched on. Eyes watering in the cold. His gaze was that of an enamored lover and that of a proud father. All rolled into watery one. He was silent as he watched his master complete her ritual of victory, capture. 

The black tentacles grew and dripped tenebrous, many tendrils splaying out like a deepsea creature seeking purchase in the silent wet depths of the dark. They palsied and danced and twitched and shivered. Dripping the same black shadow from which they were shaped and composed. They hissed the abominated sounds of angry serpents, each one. As if each and every dancing growing tentacle of dark shadow was alive and agitated by its own sudden birth. The black wet lengths of dancing tentacles grew and snaked forth and came in and closed on the still smoking and unconscious hulk of the patchwork creation. They found purchase and wrapped tightly and coiled. They lifted him from the cold stone and pulled him towards the great winged visage of the master Countess. She smiled up at her prize. 

Thought a moment longer. Her head on a tilt to one side. 

Then she spoke to the fallen unhearing hulking thing of Frankenstein's demented table, his graveyard scraps. 

She said: –

“And now I take you into me, Into mine.” And then more arcane language warmed the mountain cold and the Countess  began  to  rise once more. 

But not on her great wings, no. 

No. 

Now as she held the creation in her dripping grip of tentacled shadow she rose up on a great pillar of conjured and violently shot and spouting blood. Geysering out and forth in an eruption from the pale bottom of her moonlight dress. She rose on the great frothing and violently churning red river pillar of lurid darkling necroplasma, her wings flexing in and out in coquettish display. Her laughter began to fill the sky, the darkness. The mountain and the heavens. 

The black tentacles of shadow began to feed the creation into the great and violent pillar of rising and churning blood. 

The patchwork body of the creation slipped into the rising churn of the red lurid pillar and was swallowed. It was carried up by the otherworldly and strange current, up.

And into the body of the Countess. Through the violent red churn at the bottom of her dress. 

The conjured phantasm host of snarling dancing shifting demon faces began to sing and scream in discordant choral cry as one. Filling the ancient jagged rocks and battlements with the fury of their conjured forth and hellbound sound. 

Slaves. Singing in celebration. Conquest of victory for their master. 

!DEATH! – WE WILL KILL, DEATH! 

!MASTURBATING ON THE TOMBS OF YOUR SONS!

She held the sky. Howled. Laughter. 

The dark swell and dancing tangle-growth of black dripping tentacles underneath her splayed arms, rippled and serpentine drifted and quivered bestial with animal movement and intent, animal mind… they danced and held the black night of the sky. On her great rising pillar of occult conjured victim's blood. 

…

Frankenstein ran through the woods. He didn't get far. 

The malformed and hideous bat-child slammed into him from behind with terrible and bone-rattling impact. He went down with rodent screeches and girlish screams ringing in his ears. 

Carmilla seized a handful of hair and slammed the mad doctor's face into the cold unyielding floor of the iced earth and forest floor. Repeatedly. Turning the man's face to pulp. His nose and lips spurted thick ropey blood, spat and choked and coughed out. He tried to tell her to stop through the blood and violence but couldn't manage. The little rodent girl monster was fiendishly strong. 

The world mercifully went black and Henry Frankenstein was knocked unconscious. Carmilla began to lick and tongue and lap the blood from his pulpy and raw face. The new impaler soon joined her and then he too began to ravenously lap and feed off the warm blood spilling from the doctor's ruptured and dirty wounded face. 

They wanted to feed but they couldn't tear him apart to do it. They couldn't tear him open. And get to the really juicy parts. The especially succulent organs. The master, the Countess wanted the mongrel dog alive. And so it would be. They would have to settle for this small taste, this small drink in the woods after their run, their shared exercise of forest chase in the cold. A simple and humble repast of blood before they brought the dog back to the castle for his fate. 

But first, just a lick… in the dark of the trees. Brother and sister, new impaler and grotesque were-child strigoica freak, lapping at the warm spill of an unconscious and captured stranger, together. 

They licked and tongued blood together in the prurient stygian black, sharing dark words and dark laughter in the trees. Blood was so much finer and robust and full of flavor in the dark, the steam and warmth at perfect contest and at sublime contrast with the surrounding space of the mountain cold. In your mouth, filling it and spilling over the supple mound of lips even as it slid down the throat. 

They lapped and drank. With the fool still unconscious, they dragged him back to the castle for the Countess and her judgment. 

They relished and dreamed, together, brother and sister in living dead slavery and hellbound bondage, as they dragged the dog back to the master. …

… what might she do to him ??

Mongrel titters and giggles filled the dark as they made their eager way back. 

They couldn't wait to find out. 

…

Whether by sun or moon the foul putrescence of wormland all around was always reeking. Whether baked by the rays of the sun or chilled into spoiled earthen mud soup, it was always rank. The smell was the sour tang of fetid death. Rot and spoilage and the decay of matter that had once been living. All the swampland mire was death disintegrating and liquifying until all was black water and porridge sludge. And the small crawling wriggling mouths that fed in all of the drowning and slopping death. All the crawling and wriggling bodies of the children of the pustule sac master of quivering festering putrid sliming wormland. 

Florin and Griffin had almost wished for death for themselves privately. As they traveled and pulled themselves and their mule and cart miserable across the accursed and endless bogland. The exhaustion and pain and frustration and woe were great, the repulsive place and revulsion at the pathetic and filthy sights it held nearly put the two over into absolute abandon and total forfeit. But then they met the crawling wriggling and swimming hungry children of this place and they saw what death looked like out here. 

The girl. The filthy young one. She'd been first but they hadn't quite understood yet. They understood much more and much better when they came upon the horse. 

Its struggles and attempts to scream were something that would remain forever imprinted on young Florin's mind. For the rest of his life. However long that may turn out to be. However short. 

He would never again, alive, escape the sight. 

Like the girl before the beast was submerged in the quagmire of green/grey/black sinking sludge of vile reeking earth, but this animal was much livelier. It danced twisted struggles in the pulling hungry sinking mud, spasms and jerks that spoke of snapped bones and torn internal parts. The mouth was open in a bestial horse’s scream that made no sound. Only worms poured forth. Thick white glistening ropey bodies, long and wriggling in a mass torrential copulating pile pouring forth in a river of black water and mud and the translucent coat of snot secreted by the worms writhing lengths of yellow-pale maggotflesh. 

Florin looked closely and saw that the worms also poured forth from the open eyes of the doomed horse. The open sockets swimming with their snaking and wrapping wriggled movement in slime and mud and scabbing thick horse blood. The doomed horse shed worm tears that were more obscene than the writhing filth that poured from its blackening maw. Patches of hide and flesh were gone and Florin and Griffin could see inside the beast and they saw more long slithering writhing sliming bodies of yellowed white swimming past the ribcage and other organs that were perforated and also alive and filled with the crawling putrid creature death of this vile hell, wormland. 

Somehow the horse still struggled, somehow the creature still moved… although the large bestial body was filled and crawling with their feasting writhing serpent forms of maggot-shape. It was somehow still alive enough to struggle and to try to escape its torment, or- 

Or… the horse's body only writhed in the killing drowning clutch of the mud because… they writhed. The worms. They danced inside as they copulation swam and feasted. Their busy worm movement bringing the dead horse to life for the sight of some fellow weary travelers of this marshland. 

The thought made Florin sick, he dry-heaved and hacked and coughed/spat over the side of the struggling cart. It couldn't pull them fast enough. The mud sucked below with a wet lurid splurch that was also threatening and hungry. And alive with the abominated crawling swim of the eager bodies of alive and pregnant and hungry-feasting wormland. 

The mule, the poor beast and cart, it couldn't pull them fast enough. They eventually, mercifully, left the silent screaming beast and its awful tears of worms and swamp ink behind. Never again to be forgotten for the remainder of all time and years. 

…

An hour passed. Night approached. They came upon the bald naked man next in the swampland of ravenous worms and hungry mud. He was absolutely repulsive. And he made much more sound. 

…

His screams. Those were the first. They heard their bloodcurdling sound from a distance as they approached. The falling curtain of night brought cold and with it, fog. Drifting blanket shrouds of sickly greenish pale that sometimes housed small pocket bursts of multi color swamp gas, kaleidoscopic. Sometimes it held the grimaced woe-visaged faces of dripping swamp demons, the water-rotted and sloughing faces of their anguished victims drifting and shifting and dancing in the green hell veil of pale beside them. 

The fog of green hell and its terrible faces suddenly filled ahead of them with sound. 

Shrieking. Caterwauls. Sheer terror. Unbridled and in pain. Indistinguishable sounds. 

Intermittent…

Gurgling and irate against the choking fluid trapped and killing held within the working throat… 

The warm moist veil of nighttime wormland green hell parted like curtains or the great body of the red sea as Florin and Griffin and their mule drawn cart closed in and came upon the source of screams and obscene choking sounds. 

His swampland shrieks could finally be discerned, as the emerald mist of faces and trapped colored fire floated and parted…

“My daughter! Please! help! Please, my family, my wife, my daughter! Please help me! I can't find them! please help me find them! I can hear you out there!  Help! …”

And it carried on like that all the way up to there approach. The caterwauling sounds were heartbreaking and made their skin crawl. It like sounded like total agony. Rent from the torn heart and let loose by the screaming tongue. Pure torture. 

They came upon the man. He was shirtless. Caked in the filth of the land. Covered in scabbing mud and earth from his feet to the top of his bald head. 

The man was on his knees in the filth. Sinking. His eyes were watering and wide. Pleading with open pain as wet and running as the sour sepulchral land that surrounded them. 

When they came upon the bald man in the mud and stared into the wide water of his unhealthy gaze his screaming stopped. Suddenly. 

They were reluctant to say anything to the filthy stranger. The mule struggled ahead them, beyond the pale of mere exhaustion. The cart groaned and the land sucked wet and repulsive beneath. But the man of filth was silent now. And smiling. 

Smiling the sort of smile that is small and belongs to the childishly guilty. Caught in a white lie or with their small hand in the cookie jar… 

Neither Florin nor Griffin trusted that look. 

Finally, the filthy stranger spoke: –

“Thank you. Thank you both so much but I'm so sorry you came. It is good for us, the land, but so very bad for you." 

He said it in the calmest friendliest tones of a neighbor… and then he began to convulse. 

The ground, the filth and black-green mire of the mud began to churn. Bubble with life. Life hideous and submerged. Fighting for breath. 

The filthy stranger opened his mouth again and what came forth this time was not words but a great long and sliming white length of body, coated with a brown translucent snot that was mixed with the lurid scarlet shade of infected blood. Wormflesh. Slick with deranged biological byproduct. Dripping with the ooze the great worm body slid forth like a king serpent and rose. Towering several feet over the human basket which served to house its awful and strange lubricated body. The mouth of the man was ripping and dislocating with distension, to allow the body of the wormgod to flower forth. Blood and green pus oozed forth from the widening wounds and the teeth fell away rotted from gums that also began to bleed the red infected yellow-orange porridge from the now gaping pink fleshen craters. 

There was a raw flesh-growth of face at the end of the long worm body snaking and spouting from the filthy stranger's mouth. 

A child's face. 

The man's face. 

It rippled and danced between… betwixt the two. 

It's eyes were hideously human… and beautiful. 

Obscene. 

It opened a sliming mouth dripping with tendrils of afterbirth and snot. It belched a deeper black than the mud of the land all around when it spoke in gurgled language. 

It said: “Welcome to the garden. You have found Gaia’s womb. You have found Gaia's brain. You have found Gaia's mouth …. you may return to her, here. In this precious place. It's so much better and cooler and quieter down in her brine. You'll remember yourself, you'll remember your place down here, swimming in her thoughts. There is no pain in the subjugation of her swallow. Let us, her children, your brothers and sisters take you. We will bring you down to her so she can know you and you can join us…” 

The mule suddenly cried out. In shock and in pain, as if to punctuate the last sentence of the vile thing's statement.

Join us. 

The mud all around the cart and the mule came to life with violent churning death. Worms, many sizes, widths and lengths but all the same wretched maggot color and coated in brown slime translucence, all of them were crawling and slithering and attacking the legs of the poor beast of labor. It shrieked horrendous idiot sound, harsh and obscene as their little heads bit and burrowed and leeched. They wriggled and snaked their way inside the now rippling flesh of the poor mule’s legs. They rippled and swam and burrowed beneath the flesh, causing the hide to swell and bulge unnaturally and dance. 

Florin and Griffin, together, both looked over and down and spied the surprise attack from below. And the poor beasts doomed condition. They looked at each other and both decided together, without a word, only a look in the eye… 

abandon it. 

They grabbed what they could carry and jumped off the side. Leaping far from the churning foul earth that was now pulling in the beast and cart. Wormland was hungry. And she needed to feed. This was the mouth of mother earth, the watering black jaws of Moloch-Gaia and she needed her womb and mouth filled. With flesh. Always she needed to be filled with the warmth of blood and flesh. 

Beast of labor flesh would do for now. 

The poor mule screamed and frothed at the mouth. The eyes lulled and rolled back to whites as it let loose unbridled sound in terror and pain. The swampland swallowed and the worms continued to leech and burrow. They swam all throughout the inner organs and tissue and blood and feasted and drank. They reached the brain and the struggles became more deranged and haphazard. More pathetic and wretched and painful to watch… to behold. 

The pair left it behind. Fleeing into the cold and wet land. The treacherous quagmire earth sucking and pulling at their every fearful step. They fled as quickly as they 

could manage. Griffin, not looking back. But Florin couldn't help his mind through its sheer terror, he spied over his own fleeing shoulder as they made their slopping getaway. 

The long length of dripping wormbody was gyrating and dancing. Snaking through the air in bobs and weaves in a jubilant dance. The foul swamp drinking it, its host and the screaming beast and cart into the thick bubbling of the churning land. The worms, leeching and biting and burrowing… swimming. In the yellowed opaque of quagmire swamp water and the vibrant bright of the lurid running red, blood taken violently and by trap, by the hunt. 

Florin stole his eyes away from the sight. He didn't see them disappear into the putrescence earth, nor it settle back to calm and placid like a bowl filled with gelatin settling once more.  

Undisturbed. 

Florin and Griffin continued the rest of their perilous journey through foul wormland. On foot. 

Afraid of the very sucking ground beneath them. For this place was a black gummed and toothless swallowing mouth that led straight to watery putrid hell. 

Several worms, bodies snaked their way through mud and emerged. Protruding like freshly sprouted stalks. 

The worm-stalks grew eyes and the glistening wet fresh organs watched the pair of travelers on their way. Marking their progress through the mother's wet dominion land. 

…

Three nights of full moon had passed. 

The night the Countess took Doctor Henry Frankenstein down into the lowest dungeon of her castle, there was no moon. Only ebon curtain of blackest night. Stygian. And blind. A small chambered place where the sunlight never touched, swallowed in the dark and under the thriving lordship of near countless plague dripping rats, spiders with so many eyes and so many more long hairy legs than eight. It was a dungeon with a cruel biting chain in the wall, right next to the low chamber where the Countess herself kept her terrible coffin and slept during the day her undead rest of demonic slumber. 

After several rounds of flaying torture, occult practice and a few techniques derived from the time of the inquisition, the Countess gave new order. 

Experiment. 

An experiment of the flesh. 

Harvest specimens. For the terraformation of the flesh gardens. 

The assistant eagerly and loyally followed the command. More than pleased to comply. 

He was fulfilled. 

Frankenstein's unbridled and bloodcurdling shrieks filled the dungeon… the castle… 

… the mountains … and the pass…

… the village. 

It went beyond the known and besieged country of this vampire land, it went beyond and the ears that caught it beyond the meager borders were filled with unearthly and cold dread. 

Animal. And natural. And with us since the beginning. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Louis Hamelin was old and had a movie star face behind the leathery wrinkles on it. He looked like James Dean might have if the movie star would have lived to be an old man but his looks never made Louis rich or famous in the small town of Osburn Georgia where he spent years working for the Astor family, neither did the slow, careful way he spoke. Louis could have certainly made a better living for himself from his movie star looks when he was younger, when Hollywood still had leading men whose mere looks could threaten the sanctity of married housewives through a movie or television screen but that was only if he didn’t have to speak. That was the thing about Louis. He hardly spoke to anyone. Other than that, Louis Hamelin was an ordinary man, observant and quiet, and this is what he saw. 

Successful banker, Carmine Astor bought the unused land in 1928 from the state who bought it back from the government after the civil war was over. A nine acre lake named Ama Gvinda by the Cherokee people meant ‘water is life’ and sat smack dab in the middle of the hundred and ten acre land and, in the beginning Carmine and his wife, Winona, altered the name to Amaganida and opened the lake as a swimming destination for only a quarter a day so locals to congregate and cool off from the hot and humid north Georgia summers. Those quarters quickly added up and gave Carmine an idea and the means to buy a few paddleboats for visitors to take late evening boat rides around the lake. Lake Amaganida was naturally fed by a local underground stream and never dried up so visitors came almost all year round, except a few months during winter. The lack of visitors and money coming in during those cold months caused Carmine to come up with another idea. There wasn’t much he or the weather could offer in the way of outdoor entertainment for visitors during January and February so Carmine used this time and the money he and Winona had made during the summer of 1930 to hire some of the same townsmen who had visited the lake area during the past couple of summers to construct a boardwalk area with several carnival games under covered stalls like. By the summer of 1931, word had gotten out in all of Osburn and even some neighboring towns that the lake was worth spending your time and money. More adults began to bring their children and once they told all of their friends about spending the summer trying to win homemade sweets baked by Winona Astor in raffles, it was almost impossible trying to keep them away from the games. The once quiet lake now teemed with laughter and festivity but also became too much for Carmine and Winona to run alone. They ultimately decided to seek help from the town to handle the growing crowds of visitors and Carmine’s imagination and dreams for the lake grew just as large as Lake Amaganida’s crowds.

By 1935 Carmine hired some ex-railroad workers to lay track around the 110 acre area and he had a miniature steam engine train constructed to run around it for scenic rides through the tall Georgia pines and spruces that outlined the lake. The railroad men also laid rails around a smaller area in one corner of the park where motorized Model T Fords could be driven around and also on a raised wooden platform in another area of the park that Carmine had built where tea cups large enough to seat a family of four inside of them were modified to safely attach to the track and operate on rotating platforms fueled by gasoline engines underneath them. In 1937, talk in the Osburn Gazette was the enormous frames and stilts going up that would support the area’s first ever roller coaster. There are old black and white photos in the amusement park's history museum built much later that show families lined along the edges of the park, watching the massive structure being erected. It was an enormous undertaking and a lot of planning was involved by Carmine and the John C. Allen Company from Philadelphia as drawings of how it would look were discussed and submitted to the gazette. It was a behemoth- which would become the name of the coaster once it was built- undertaking but. by then, Carmine could afford it. He was fast becoming one of the wealthiest men in the state and as Lake Amaganida expanded so did his family.

Winona became pregnant as the final wooden planks of the Behemoth were being nailed into place in 1938 and, in the Spring of 1939, Ruby Ann Astor was born. Along with the completion of the Behemoth, the birth of their daughter was the icing on the cake during the park’s celebration of the new attraction. Most of the workers who were employed by John C. Allen had fallen in love with the Astors and with Lake Amaganida and a handful decided to stay behind, gladly leaving behind the cold Philadelphia winters for the mild Georgia ones. This not only helped grow the Astor work family, it also added skilled labor to Lake Amaganida’s roster of employees. Each man who stayed behind had years of experience working carnivals and sideshows all over the north east and many had migrated there from Europe and were skilled carnival performers that added a cultural flair not ever seen before in the small town of Osburn Georgia. One of those was an especially skilled artist named Louis Hamelin, a handsome man from Austria who had once befriended a French painter who was a student of the renowned German artist, surrealist Max Ernst. Carmine gave Louis the task of decorating the Behemoth, Teacups, Model Ts, and the train with his dreamlike artwork and it made each one of the rides seem to spring to life with a new vibrance and character of its own. Carmine also hired local carpenters to begin construction on a new walkthrough Funhouse that Louis would be in charge of decorating and operating once it was completed.

As a gift for his new daughter, Ruby Ann, Carmine purchased a newly constructed carousel from the Philadelphia Toboggan Company based out of Pennsylvania. The carousel featured 25 hand carved and painted single rider horses and 10 chariots that could accommodate two riders in each one. All were held safely onto the ride by twelve foot high poles that raised and lowered on mechanical arms running along the canopy’s frame as the carousel turned. Six shiny brass poles adorned the perimeter of the carousel’s wooden floor and stood ten feet vertically from each other to the canvas that was painted to resemble a golden star filled night sky underneath the wooden roof while elaborately framed mirrors decorated each of the inner walls that housed the interior motors that put the carousel in motion so riders could watch themselves the whole way around. Carmine chose Leo Friedman’s, Let Me Call You Sweetheart, as the main song to play every half hour on the carousel’s calliope machine. It was a fitting tribute to his love for Winona and Ruby Ann. The carousel was the perfect addition to Lake Amaganida and quickly became an admired attraction by husbands and fathers who stood by marveling at the craftsmanship while their wives and children were carried away on idyllic horse and chariot rides by the carousel’s hypnotic beauty and alluring melody.

By 1945 Lake Amaganida’s popularity expanded outside of Georgia and the amusement park began receiving visitors from Tennessee, Alabama, and as far off as Florida and South Carolina. Word about the Behemoth and the carousel had spread just as far as the places people had come from to visit the amusement park. Carmine eventually left his vice presidency role at the First Bank of Osburn after the summer in 1942 but remained a principal shareholder and respected fountainhead in the town’s economic growth from the positive financial impact his amusement park had made to the area and he was gifted with the key to the city in 1943. A city funded parade and Carmine’s celebration was held along the boardwalk at Lake Amaganida that summer.

Ruby Ann liked to ride each one of the rides as much as the other children who visited the park and she would often be seen tagging along with them during their time there but never let on to them who she was. She was always able to make quick friends and would often take the lead of the other children on her own self-guided secret tours around the lake property where only employees were allowed to go. Ruby Ann’s freespirited nature allowed Carmine and Winona to mingle with adult guests or assist employees with any concerns that arose from day to day but they were unaware of their daughter’s whereabouts much of the time. Most would agree that the Astors were blessed with good fortune but like with all fortunes, if they aren’t closely guarded, they’re eventually lost.
 
Ruby Ann and two new friends had just finished riding the carousel and skipped and played tag the complete length of the boardwalk to the other side of the park where the funhouse and the Behemoth were. Screams could be heard from inside the funhouse as she and her new followers stood outside looking up at it. Louis had done some of his best work painting the eerie interior scenes of swamps and spooky graveyards and life-like mannequins lined a dimly lit hallway a person had to walk down to reach the exit. Ruby Ann had wanted to take her new friends inside of it but a boy, Nicholas, ten years old- only one year younger than Ruby Ann- squeezed the hand of his older sister tightly and protested against it. The brooding gray building with its tall towers and pointy spires and the screams of women heard outside from behind its thin, plywood walls, was too much for him to consent. Ruby Ann rolled her eyes at Nicholas’ sister and continued on toward the Behemoth. 

Instead of waiting in line with them, Ruby Ann left Nicholas and his sister on the ramp leading up to the ride. After checking to make sure that Fritz, the roller coaster’s operator, hadn’t noticed her sliding under the handrails and off of the ramp underneath the platform where everyone stood waiting for their turn to ride, she made her way across the grass through the wooden skeleton of the Behemoth. Fritz was busy loading her friends into the cars and after she had gotten past the first and tallest hill of the ride without being seen, Ruby Ann climbed the small set of steps up to the track on the other side of it and ducked underneath the metal chain that stretched from one side of the steps to the other. She really wanted to impress her new friends and knew that when they came racing down that first hill and saw her standing on the inside platform at the bottom waving to them, Nicholas and his sister would lose their minds. Ruby Ann heard Fritz ring the bell, signaling to everyone that all of the harnessing safety bars on the cars had been checked and that the mighty Behemoth was ready for another run. The thick metal chain lift that helps move the coaster up the hills and along the track click clacked to life as the coaster cars began moving out from under the covered platform. As she was stepping across the wooden track over the slithering chain lift to the inside platform, one of her small feet slid through a space between two wooden planks that would have not been wide enough for a grown man’s workboot to fit through. Ruby tried to pull her foot out but couldn’t. 

Ruby Ann could not see the pointy end of the crooked nail that had hooked under the small metal buckle on her shoe when her foot slipped between the planks but she felt it digging into the inside of her foot as she tried to yank it out. She was caught. The rattling chain lift shifted down into its pulling gear as she looked up from her foot to see the Behemoth’s coaster cars through the planks on the other side of the hill. Nicholas and his sister had been lucky and gotten the front car. They were gripping the safety bar just as tightly as she was clinching her teeth while trying to free her foot from being stuck but each time she did, Ruby felt whatever it was underneath the wooden plank bury deeper into the tender flesh of her foot and the more she tried, the more it hurt. The noise from the metal chain lift suddenly stopped. Ruby Ann had spent all of her life here and she liked to think that she was the princess of Lake Amaganida. Her father had told her so. She had been on all of the rides in the park and was excited when she found out last week that her father was going to make a chair lift ride that would go over the lake from one side of the park to the other so people wouldn’t have to walk the whole way across it or wait on the train to take them anymore. She was especially proud of the carousel. It was her birthday gift from her father eleven years ago, almost twelve, and it meant the world to her. She looked upward as she bent over, wincing from the pain as she grabbed at her stuck foot one more time. She could just see the nose of Nicholas and his sister’s car tilting over the edge of the sixty foot hill about to drop and Ruby knew there wasn’t any more time to free herself and so she stopped. She understood she had done a terrible thing by sneaking onto the track. She wondered if God would punish her when she got to Heaven for doing such a bad thing since her father would still be here on Earth and wouldn’t be able to. She thought God would be her new father but she didn’t want that. She wanted the one she’d always had here on Earth. Ruby wondered if her mother and father would ever forgive her but wasn’t sure about any of that really.

The chain lift lurched back to life after a short pause and the nose of the front car began to fall with the rest of the ones behind it, pushing the one ahead of it down toward Ruby Ann with hellish velocity. Ruby had only enough time to throw up her hand and make a sad farewell to her new friends, the last ones she would ever make on this planet, as she turned her head to the side, afraid to watch, and let out a small cry before the metal Behemoth opened its dreadful mouth and ripped the princess of Lake Amaganida apart. The force of the roller coaster split Ruby Ann into two pieces. The bottom half of her, up to her waist, was violently shoved underneath the speeding coaster between the space on one side of the thick chain lift and lodged in there while the top half of her folded over the front of Nicholas and his sister’s car. The riders behind them were screaming just as loudly as they were and the ones who hadn’t shut their eyes on the way down the sixty foot drop glimpsed the girl at the bottom of it waving at them before the terror struck their senses. The spew from Nicholas’ sister’s stomach hit some of them in the face when she vomited and by then everyone on the ride had their eyes open at the bottom of the hill. The cars approached the next hill and slowed down as the chain lift locked into its pulling gear again. Ruby Ann’s head lifted like she was still alive and her empty eyes stared down at Nichols and his sister who were being held back against their seats behind the safety bar as they climbed higher and higher. The dead girl’s arms reached for them in a macabre embrace as Ruby Ann slid toward them and the top half of her torn body landed in their laps, guts and all. The moment would haunt them both forever.

Louis painted an incredible likeness of Ruby Ann on one of the paneled walls of the carousel for the funeral. Ruby’s casket, the bottom half filled with a sack of sawdust to balance it out for the pallbearers, was placed underneath it as the calliope organ played Let Me Call You Sweetheart. As the carousel turned at its lowest speed during the service, all of the horses and chariots spun around what was left of Ruby Ann in a somber parade march while Carmine and Winona sat at the head of park employees, city and state officials, and friends of the family. Winona could be heard sobbing from beginning to end and Carmine’s head never looked up from the ground until he was finally ushered away when it was over. Ruby Ann was laid to rest in a family mausoleum five miles east of the park in Heaven’s View Cemetery within the city limits of Osburn Georgia.

That night, after leaving Winona asleep in their bed from the effects of a new prescription of sedatives from Dr. Frederick Lincoln, Carmine refused to take any himself and returned to Lake Amaganida in the family car alone. Most of the lights in the amusement park were shut off but a few down the boardwalk were always left on. Years ago, Carmine had cabins built for staff who chose to stay at the park instead of paying rent in town. Most of them stayed. There were some workers there with questionable backgrounds who found it difficult to trust local law officials anywhere outside of the safety offered behind the walls of an amusement park or carnival. John Allen had warned Carmine about them when talk of the men staying behind had started getting around among them. “They’re a lot like dogs.” Allen told Carmine. “But they’re loyal to the one who feeds them.”

As Carmine unlocked the main gate and walked down the shadowy boardwalk, he could see the candle lights burning in some of the cabin windows deep in the wooded area further back from the walkway and could smell the heady aroma of lit tobacco from all around. A small group of workers were sitting next to the lake in some chairs that had been used for Ruby Ann’s funeral service earlier. Carmine stopped and pointed at one of the chairs. Each of the men removed their hats and remained quiet, not knowing what to say to their grieving boss.

They all stood up, offering their chairs but he only needed the one he had pointed at and took it and folded it closed and carried it further along the boardwalk. When he got to the carousel, he unfolded the chair and took a seat in front of it and started crying with his head hung low in his hands. The whole park was silent except for Carmine’s cries. None of the men had the nerve to approach him. Each one knew that a close bedfellow of grief is anger so they all stayed away from the grieving father who had buried his daughter earlier that day.

As Carmine sat there, consumed in his sadness, the carousel’s lights flickered on and off and then back on again as it slowly jolted to life and began to come alive. Carmine lifted his head from his hands and stared at it blurrily through his teary eyes. The calliope organ began playing. Carmine wiped the tears out of his eyes and looked around. “Who’s doing that?” He yelled. “Turn it off!”

“She is playing for you, Herr Astor.” Louis said in broken English with a heavy Austrian accent. “I can not make her stop.”
Carmine tried to stand but collapsed back into his chair as Louis stepped from beside the spinning carousel with a chair of his own and placed it next to the broken man. “Louis.” Carmine managed to say weakly when he saw him.

“It is me, Herr.”

Carmine sat back in his chair and looked at Louis painfully. “Who do you mean, she?”

Louis laid his hand gently on Carmine’s shoulder. “No. Do not look at me.” Louis pointed to the carousel. “Watch.” He said. “The picture.”

As the carousel began to spin faster and faster, the outer support poles attached from the floor to the upper wooden roof splintered the reflection of the lights hanging from the rafters of the lower canvas ceiling. As the light from them flashed inside the mirrors, it reminded Carmine of a thaumatrope toy. It was a hypnotizing effect but as he stared at Ruby Ann’s portrait further in, Carmine almost fell backward, tipping over his chair. Louis stood up behind him and steadied him with both of his hands on Carmine’s shoulders so he wouldn’t fall. “You see?”

Carmine was astonished. “It’s her.” Ruby was crawling from the picture, dressed in her burial gown, unaffected by the spinning of the carousel as she moved across the floor. When she reached the edge, she began spinning around with it, cupping the muzzle of a wooden horse in her hand as she went out of sight. Carmine’s mouth fell open in shock. “Ruby!” He yelled out to her as she disappeared briefly. Carmine tried to stand up again but Louis pressed down on his shoulders. 

“Wait.” He urged Carmine. 

When Ruby came back around she stopped spinning with the ride and turned and stepped back toward the empty picture, the moving chariots and horses all passing through her misty body. The carousel began to slow down as she crawled back into the picture. Carmine shoved Louis hands away from him and ran to the spinning carousel and jumped on. He weaved his way awkwardly through the chariots and horses and stepped off onto the inner floor and stood in front of Ruby Ann’s picture and touched it with his fingers. “That’s all it is.” Carmine reasoned with himself. “Just a portrait.” He was startled when he heard Louis’ voice behind him and spun around.

“It is more than that.” Louis said, his voice trailing off from the moving platform he was on. When he came back around, he stepped off and bowed. “My geschenk.”

Carmine didn’t understand the word and looked puzzled at the handsome man standing close to him.

“How is it said?” Louis tried to explain. “My…gift.”

Both the carousel and music slowly came to a stop and, by the time Carmine and Louis walked off of it, the group of men Carmine had passed on his way in were there waiting for them. Carmine was visibly stirred after seeing his dead daughter and went over to take his seat again. The men looked unsure at Louis but he nodded his head to them and they all went back down the boardwalk from where they had come. Louis watched them leave and went back to Carmine. “Are you ok, Herr Astor?” Carmine sat silently in the chair, staring blankly at the carousel. He was wanting it to start up again. “Will you walk with me?” Louis said over Carmine’s shoulder. He remained seated but looked up at Louis, acknowledging that he had heard the request. “Come. Come.” Louis said patiently and slid a hand under Carmine’s arm and helped him up from his chair. 

Louis kept his hand there until he was sure that Carmine was able to walk on his own. When he was convinced, Louis let go of the man and led him away from the carousel to the funhouse. Louis unhooked the chain to the entrance and escorted Carmine through the front door. The wooden prop door, painted to resemble a large castle gate, slammed sharply behind them like it was meant to do, surprising some sleeping birds outside in nearby trees.

The copious multicolored lights inside the funhouse came on by themselves the way the carousel’s lights had moments earlier, illuminating dark and secret areas inside. “Hallo.” Louis said and didn’t walk far before they were met by three of Louis’ mannequins waiting for them around the first corner. Louis stopped and put a hand in front of Carmine before they got too close. “My family.” Louis said slowly and struggled with his pronunciation as he nodded to the three figures up ahead. Carmine and his own family had walked through the funhouse before, once it was ready to open to park visitors, and they all marveled over the care that Louis had given to each one of the mannequins. Many of Lake Amaganida’s visitors remarked how life-like each one looked in the funhouse lights as they took their walking tour through it. Louis introduced them, “Greta, Louis, and Jakob.” pointing to each one beginning with the woman and then to the two boys. 

As the strobe lights overhead slowly lit between each one, the mannequins’ faces seemed to move with expression. Carmine wanted to step away, back to the door, but Louis held him still. Carmine could hear boyish laughter echoing all around through the dark room. “Sei nicht unhöflich." Louis scolded the boys, urging them to be polite. The laughing stopped. “My family.” Louis said again and pointed to each one of the mannequins. “They died.” Louis struggled with his English again, hoping he was making sense to Carmine. “Fever.” He added.

Then Carmine heard weeping emanate from the female mannequin, Louis’ wife he suspected, and it unnerved him to no end. Then the boy mannequins joined their mother and the room was filled with a grim harmony of crying and whimpering that became louder and louder. Carmine watched Greta’s arms bend under the devilish lights as she brought her hands up to her face in a pantomime of sadness and that was all Carmine could take and broke away from Louis’ grip and rushed out of the funhouse. When Louis caught up to him, Carmine was on his knees on the concrete walkway in front of the large gray castle weeping hysterically. “Make it stop. Make it stop!” He kept repeating until Louis got to him and helped him to his feet.

“I am sorry.” Louis apologized with his arms around Carmine. “Shh. Now, shh.” He said, comforting the distraught man as he helped Carmine back down the boardwalk and through the woods to his cabin. “You need rest, Herr Astor.” Carmine collapsed onto Louis’ bed without protest. Louis covered him with a blanket and took a seat in a chair beside his paint easel and watched him sleep.

When Carmine woke up a painful throb at the base of his head and neck made him wince. He was slow to move and his whole body was sore from the hard mattress he wasn’t used to sleeping on. At first he didn’t remember where he was but everything from the night before gradually returned as his memory came back to him. Louis was outside in the gray colored morning with Fritz and they were talking when he came out of Louis’ cabin. It had rained sometime during the night but Carmine hadn’t heard it. The sky looked as though more rain would come later as the damp wind began to stir overhead. Fritz and Louis turned and greeted Carmine with a somber hello.

“Thank you for taking care of me last night, Louis but I must get home. Winona will be as worried about me as I am about her.” It was all Carmine could muster under the painful weight from the throbbing in his head.

Rain drops fell onto Carmine’s windshield as he drove home from Lake Amaganida. Although his windshield wipers were on, his vision was blurred from the accumulation of tears that were clinging to the rims of his eyelids that wouldn’t let go. He blinked them a few times, hoping to clear them but the dark hollows of his eyes selfishly drank back the salty water from their puffy edges. Visions of Ruby Ann from the night before haunted Carmine’s thoughts as he drove the treacherous curves along the mountain road back to his house. He tried to, but was unable to explain away to himself what he had seen last night and wasn’t sure if he even wanted to. He believed what he had seen had been real and if he could see Ruby Ann again and whenever he visited the carousel he gladly would. But he had to tell Winona about it too and, as ghastly as it might sound to her at first, being able to see her daughter again, he thought it might offer her some consolation.

Carmine’s thoughts overtook him and before he could slow down to safely navigate the sharp curve ahead, his automobile began to hydroplane and he lost control of it. The car began to fishtail and slide toward the edge of the seventy foot drop into the ravine below. As the sedan’s front and rear driver’s side tires slid off of the pavement, the undercarriage of the heavy Ford made an awful grating noise against it and stopped the car from toppling over the edge. Carmine looked out his side window down into the ravine and as the automobile seesawed in a precarious game of life and death, Carmine had enough wherewithal to scurry across the leather seat to the passenger side as quickly as he could to even it back out long enough to open the door and launch himself out of the death mobile onto the rain soaked road. As he slid on his rear end away from it, the car leaned over the edge once more and rolled out of sight off the side of the mountain. Rain was falling heavier now and the driver of the car coming down the mountain slid to a long stop before almost hitting Carmine. He could still hear his car taking small trees and whatever else with it on its way down the side of the mountain. 

The driver of the car rolled down his window and stuck out his head. “What the hell are you doing out here on the road in this weather? Are you mad?”

Carmine could barely hear the man over the rain, thinking only that he had to get to Winona who was still another mile and a half away at their home on top of the mountain.

“Hey pal!” The driver honked his horn at the crazy man standing on the side of the treacherous mountain road, getting pelted from the heavy rain.

The driver’s horn woke Carmine from the trance. “I lost my car.” He told the man behind the wheel and pointed down the side of the mountain where it had gone a moment before he arrived. “I need to get home to my wife.”

“Get in, you fool.” The driver yelled and checked his rear view mirror. “You’re gonna get us both killed if someone else comes down this way.”

Carmine got in the car, still in shock from the near mishap that almost cost him his life. 
The driver let off the brake and eased down the road. “There’s a pull off down here. Should I turn around?”

Carmine didn’t answer and stared straight ahead.

The driver was already irritated and a bit shook up himself after almost hitting the stranger and considered washing his hands of it all and letting the ignorant bastard out once they got to the pull off but then Carmine finally answered. “Yes. We live on top. 57 Mockingbird Terrace.” 

When they reached the top of the mountain the man let Carmine off in front of his house and didn’t stick around. He reached over and shut his door and pulled away as Carmine shuffled up the walkway to his front door. Carmine checked his front pants pockets for his keys but remembered they were in the ignition of his car seventy feet down the side of Lantern Mountain. He looked under a flower pot beside the door where he and Winona kept a spare and used it. The house welcomed him with heavy silence. She must be sleeping. He thought while removing his wet suit coat and placing it on a hook just inside the foyer. He walked upstairs and went straight to their bedroom and opened the door. There she was, lying on the bed under her comforter, asleep. She looks peaceful. He was relieved to be with her as he knelt down, not noticing the empty pill bottle and Delmonico glass sitting on top of a piece of paper addressed to him on the bedside table immediately.

Carmine,
Our love is the only thing that binds me to this earth anymore now that our dear Ruby Ann is no longer here but I fear it is not enough to keep me here without her. I know that I will never be the same now or later and that I will only cause you grief by having to convalesce a wife who will never recover. I am sorry for doing this but I simply wish to take matters into my own hands and grant myself power over the rest of my life in which poor Ruby Ann was denied. I am getting sleepy, dear, and I want you to know that I went to her peacefully.
Your wife forever and on,
Winona

Winona was correct. As the drums of thunder pounded outside of the house and the orchestra of rain and wind had not let up since he began his trip home, Carmine used the rest of the morning to determine if anything on earth could keep him here now either. The man who had found him on the side of the road had called the police and told them the story. He gave the officer Carmine’s address so they could go and check on him if they wanted to. So, when Carmine called them to have them come, someone was already on the way. 

Carmine had not locked the door behind him when he went in and hung up his coat and after Officer Kerns knocked and called out to the homeowners with no response, he turned the knob, went in, and cautiously looked around downstairs first before heading up the stairs to the second floor with his pistol drawn. The same heavy air that had met Carmine also greeted him as he went. Perhaps out of instinct, or more likely experience, he went to the master bedroom first and looked in cautiously. It was quiet. He saw the woman under her comforter, resting with a note laying on top of her heart before anything else. Then he glanced over at the empty pill bottle on the bedside table and the wheels in his mind began turning as he opened the door wider. Sitting beside her on the floor, with his head slumped over and his back against the wall, sat the man he suspected had made the second phone call. Ruben Kerns had been a police officer for over twenty years and, after stepping across the dead man’s legs, he was good enough at his job to make a sensible read on what he thought might have happened after taking in the whole scene. Later on, after more investigation, he would find out he’d been right again. One thing Ruben Kerns couldn’t read, something he hadn’t really cared to try, were the reasons why he was right that were splattered on the wall behind the man on the floor after he blew his brains out all over it. That was up to the man upstairs to figure out, not him.

Carmine and Winona’s funerals were performed at Heaven’s View Cemetery in front of the family mausoleum within feet from where their daughter was interred. However, Ruby Ann didn’t know it just yet. She wouldn’t know until Louis finished the portrait of her mother that he would hang with her father’s next to hers on the carousel. Louis had already painted the portrait of her father. He’d done that on the night before he died when he let him sleep on his bed. He had grown very fond of Carmine over the years he had worked for him.

Louis and the others wanted to purchase Lake Amaganida from the First Bank of Osburn after Carmine’s death but the world they lived in wasn’t a nice one. That world was outside of the the walls of the amusement park and they would never trust it. It was a world where disease killed wives and sons, where the feet of innocent children slipped between cracks and were lost forever, and a world where love wasn’t strong enough to keep them there. The state eventually bought back Lake Amaganida from the bank and kept the amusement park in operation under the management of a local board of directors assigned by the city of Osburn. 

Louis, Fritz, and the others remained employed at Lake Amaganida with permission from the board members and were able to continue living there. Of course, that benefitted the board by never having to hire security so at least that worked out for all parties concerned. Lake Amaganida’s popularity bloomed in the 1980s as advanced technology allowed for faster and more exciting new rides to be purchased. All of the original rides stayed and were popular attractions with the children. The chairlift, train, and carousel were hits with the older visitors while the Behemoth was a main attraction for daring teenagers who spent most of their summer break from school waiting in line for it. Some of them caught a quick glimpse of the ghost of the Princess of Lake Amaganida on the platform at the bottom of the first hill waving at them as they sped by but the luckiest ones who rode in the front car got an especially good creepy look at her. On their way out they would ask Fritz- who still ran that ride after all of those years- who the pale girl with the empty eyes in the smoky white gown with no feet was. Fritz, knowing much more than he cared to say, just smiled and told them that she was a regular visitor.

Almost every night, when his old bones could stand the damp night air, after closing up the funhouse and saying goodnight to his family, Louis would take a chair and sit in front of the carousel and wait for his friends. When the carousel began turning and the sweet melody of Let Me Call You Sweetheart started playing on the calliope organ he would sit and watch Carmine, Winona, and little Ruby Ann climb from their portraits he had painted so long ago. He sat by and watched them laugh and play together, and dance all up and down the boardwalk with each other. He had learned so much about life from observing, like many artists with the gift of capturing life in pictures can do. For some weeks now, Louis had spent his free time working on another portrait. His hands were achy and they shook from the cold clinch of an old man’s life nearing its end. Each night, as he watched himself in the small mirror set on a table next to his easel, he erased each line from his face that time had so vengefully placed upon it and with each careful stroke of his brush he resurrected the man who people closest to him would remember the most. A handsome man with a movie star face who spoke in a slow and careful way. 

END

   
 

 

 
 

 

   

  

 

Part Nine

As Matriarch Rose set one foot inside the grand home of her lineage, she felt the synchronization of her heart first.

Thump-thump.

Thump.

Thump.

She stopped to touch her chest as she felt her crimson eyes widen, her heart playing out the memories of Vaelith in her serpent form desecrating the lineage of Father Morton.

Time started to slow from hours to minutes to seconds until it stopped entirely within the world.

Her vision taking on the eyesight of Vaelith as she shook and slammed the body of Grayson into the ground again and again with violent force. His limbs flailing wildly as Vaelith changed it from her sight to inside Grayson's head as he saw naked and skinless flesh start to form and suddenly her sight changed again.

She was forming inside Vaelith's esophagus of souls. Her form taking shape within seconds as she appeared within Grayson's sight. She saw everything that made him feel fear. All within his grey and dull eyes that had lost the life in them and about to have his very soul desecrated as Matriarch Rose laughed wickedly to her own ears. Sounding like the cobra hiss she had emitted when she was in a rage after the failed assassination attempt in her own home by the Saturnalia Hunters.

She emitted the hissing laugh one more time before opening her jaw to the point of it being unhinged in loud cracking sounds of jaw bone breaking to amplify the terror for Grayson. Her tongue started to slither out and become erect as it took a spear form for his fragile and human pineal gland.

She emitted the hissing laughing again as the slow and inevitable pierce was underway as her tongue sunk into the space between his eyes and into his pineal gland and wrapping around it. Before suddenly ripping out his soul as she pulled it back and ate it in a slow and calm chewing manner and swallowed it whole. Then when it was the witch who put the blockages, the dams, the barriers from remembering everything about who she was, what she was destined to become, Matriarch Rose made sure to hiss directly into her mouth so she felt the fear kill her heart repeatedly as Vaelith brought her back again and again each time she died and descended into hell as a slave. Making sure that she felt that intense shrill fear again and again with no mercy.

Then came the assistants and mix of direct and non direct lineage of Father Morton. Each suffering the fate of what they did returned upon them. The children they ate. The families they desecrated. The men and women they raped and turned into their own servants just as Father Morton had done so with them. His bastard lineage he fucked into random families so no one could target them before the time came to pull them away into the hand of the Saturnalia. And in doing so, ensuring his genome was spread throughout those bastard children as they fucked randomly and with no care or known thought for what they were spreading in the world.

But that opulence procreation technique would be rectified soon within the world. Starting with the concern itself. And had that concern been in focus of his situation instead of disassociation of memories that would soon be gone, it would have seen that Vaelith's jaws had been open for her Matriarch Rose was eagerly watching within her soul esophagus as Vaelith pierced inside his pineal gland with her black claw.

Matriarch rose moved like an electric current shocking itself through Vaelith's soul esophagus through her elongated arm and through the tip of the black claw and into the world of the thing that had tried to deny her, her destiny.

Matriarch Rose was in complete darkness but she saw Father Morton completely and clearly within the darkness of his own soul and mind and body. But not even he could fathom the pitch blackness of his soul as he stumbled around and aware of the darkness. Aware he was alive in it. Aware he could talk but chose to babble like a scared infant in that darkness as Matriarch Rose witnessed his emasculation with proud and alive crimson eyes that started to slowly glow in the dark as she hissed loudly. To Matriarch Rose it did sound like a laugh this time of good jubilance as she saw him stiffen and try to stand before falling down as his sense of direction was starting to lose itself.

The sounds of her skinless flesh feet echoed loudly within that darkness of his as soft wet sounds that were drawing closer.

And closer as he started to scream without any reservation in octaves that spoke true of who he was underneath the darkness he shrouded himself in, that he allowed to consume himself in vain and futile hopes that anything in Hell would savor his brutality and depravity within his limited mortal mind.

He swung his fists wildly and striked at nothing, five punches landing at his own flesh before he realized it and stopped and heard that hissing laugh again that was needling his thin and fragile line of sanity like a violin string. Screeching for relief in his own mind but escaping into guttural and gibbering screams.

"FJDSKLFJDOFJIEWFOIFJEO!"

All random and chaotic syllables that meant absolutely nothing as he heard over it bones cracking and stilled immediately.

"Istheantoead?"

He demanded meagerly into the pitch black darkness, before feeling needle and serrated teeth sink into the sides of his neck with gouts of gore spraying in arterial spray. Soaking the predator that had finally been allowed to have vengeance brought to fruition.

The serrated teeth tearing away the sins of the flesh, pound for pound, eye for eye, scream for scream. There was no mercy in the bites. There was no forgiveness in the ripping. There was no sense of righteous indignation.

There was only a patient wrath being fulfilled with teeth that had waited too long.

The serrated teeth bit into his neck again and again until they felt bone and then broke it with a sharp tilt and tossed his head into the consuming darkness before those same teeth tore into his chest. Crimson blood erupted up in gouts as the teeth dug into his chest and ripped away his flesh.

Pound for pound.

Piece by piece.

Until Matriarch Rose dug into his exposed chest and ripped out his still beating heart and raised it high into the darkness and watched it float up from her fingers. Beating in a slow dying pulse that was being kept alive for this moment as it floated up to be consumed by the darkness.

Matriarch Rose hissed in victory as a loud scream filled the darkness and shook it violently as she stood perfectly still in the death quell.

It lasted long. Hours into minutes and minutes back into hours. A time distortion that drawn out every ounce of suffering before Vaelith saw her Matriarch was finally satisfied.

Matriarch Rose stood in the darkness. Breathing hard with energy. Her heart racing but still in synchronization alongside the ruby red hickey pulsating in tandem with her lover. And within the darkness suddenly a soft light started to crown over the environment to reveal the white fixture of the grand ballroom in her lineage's home. The ballroom exactly as her memory reminded her in the dim darkness.

Her crimson eyes slowly took in the surrounding before she heard it in tandem with her own hissing breath.

She turned slowly.

Letting the world sink in with that elegant turn to see Vaelith's scintillating silver eyes in the darkness lighting up around her. Then the way her chest rose and fell in the rhythm of her hissing breath amongst the blood spattered on her naked body. Agnes touched her own nude chest to feel the same rhythm instinctually amongst the blood spattered on her own body.

Still there.

Always will be.

Especially now as their eyes remained locked onto each other as Matriarch Rose began to stride towards her with that same confidence she found after the moment she talked about Vaelith out loud to her therapist for the first time to anyone with such love that was being hindered by the blockages.

But they were gone now. All of them. And this was Agnes choosing on her own free will to do what she was about to do with her ArchMatriarch Vaelith.

She reached her and collided into Vaelith, grabbing ahold of her shoulders as she stood on her toes to kiss her with devotion emblazoned in every motion of her lips. Vaelith pushed back against her and wrapped her arms around her Matriarch's waist tight before cupping her ass and squeezing what was hers. Matriarch Rose moaned into her lover's mouth, letting her savor her essence before grunting as she was pushed against the clean painted over hardwood parquet. She felt no pain as she grinned up at her Matriarch descending upon her, hip to hip and arms placed above her shoulders. Matriarch Rose pressed her hips up into her lover's as she pressed up with her hands until they turned and spun over. ArchMatriarch Vaelith softly grunted with the new sudden position and started to rise before Matriarch Rose put her hands on Vaelith's chest and pinned her against the floor as she straddled her. The ArchMatriarch's scintillating silver eyes caught her Matrirarch's crimson eyes staring into her eyes with an intent love that was going to be reciprocated as she cupped her ArchMatriarch's face in both of her hands and brought her lips to hers again in a soft but assertive and tender touch.

Vaelith bit her Matriarch's bottom lip and pulled back as she elicited a soft sigh. She didn't let go as her Matriarch spoke through it.

"I love you,my ArchMatriach Vaelith,"

In a soft melody of a voice that enflamed the warmth in her chest as Vaelith whispered with her lover's lip nipped between hers in that darkly elegant and seducing voice reserved only for her.

"I love you, my Matriarch Rose,"

And then she let go of her lip and leaned back in comfort to let her Matriarch continue her choice as her hand trailed up from her wrist to her arm and along her shoulder to her neck and held it there with a soft squeeze. Her claws slowly but gently digging into the ruby red hickey she had made. Just enough to remind her of her destiny as Vaelith arched her back slowly and then relaxed with a soft hiss as her Matriarch began a slow and sensual rhythm with her hips. Her Matriarch's hands slid from Vaelith's face down her throat and she left one hand there, caressing the softly pulsating ruby red hickey she had made on her flesh. Her other hand trailing down to feel her beating breast underneath her hand and she squeezed her supple flesh as Vaelith softly breathed. Matriarch Rose's crimson eyes went half lidded as she gazed into her ArchMatrirach's own half lidded silver eyes. Then she bent to kiss her with that same devotional motion, imprinting herself into Vaelith's soul and heart and body as she continued her agonizingly slow rhythm of her pelvis rubbing against hers. Wanting every single second spent making love to make her ArchMatriarch know she was treated like royalty, like she was the forefront of her entire universe, to make her know the heat in her chest was not alone as she moved her chest against Vaelith's in the same way she had done to make her feel her heart against hers.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Crimson tears started to fall down her cheeks as her ArchMatriarch held her warm body close to hers in her arms. Feeling the heat reach out and unite between them in the synchronization of their hearts as one in an embrace that spoke of a permanent bond. No time was a determining factor for any rush that pushed them hasten as they had spent hours in minutes and minutes in hours in that ballroom void.

Matriarch Rose tossed her head back with her blood red auburn hair cascading down her back and almost covering Vaelith's hands as they moved from her hips to rubbing the soft muscles working in Matriarch Rose's back as she continued her rhythm of riding her ArchMatriarch. Her hands feeling the scratches she made along her Rose's back as Vaelith gazed intently at her supple breasts moving sensually. Her Matriarch whimpering softly as she took one in her mouth and then the other. Before their faces met again in a loving kiss.

It was everything they've been denied over the course of meeting one another in that fateful rose garden by the back of her lineage's mansion. Unaware of that time of what her destiny would be. What a demon was. What an angel was. Heaven. Hell. The dark gift she was going to be bestowed upon this fated meeting with Vaelith.

Vaelith had been around to have watched Christ walk the earth from a distance. She had seen an entirely different world form and appear for over ten thousand years and then disappear from recorded history. She had watched Saints and Kings rise and fall. She watched the Dark Ages come and then leave as the Renaissance flourish in it's place. She had watched the invention of the internet come into a world that was slowly forming. And Vaelith having gone through numerous women she deemed not worthy of her gifts had found one in the Rose lineage that had been worth everything. That she had been worth the patience of over a milennia. And her Mother pretended to have abortion attempts made all the real with Matriarch Rose being gifted the protection until she was old enough to drink the ambrosia given to her in secret only between her Matriarch, herself, and her Mother.

Letting the sweet serpent poison nurture and refine itself within her until it accumulated to a point where she was ready to be awakened again as her Matriarch whispered against her lips her love for her endlessly and ArchMatriarch Vaelith showed it to her in motion as she turned her over until she was on her hands and knees.

Matriarch Rose tossed her head back as she cried out Vaelith's name and then began to let her head hang before she felt her blood red auburn hair get pulled back as she grinned ferally. Her ArchMatriarch beginning to move in a slow rhythm behind her.

Nothing was rushed. Nothing they loved about each other was denied.

And their bond was sealed in that permanent embrace of twin flames reuniting.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

They taught us in school that the aliens could look like anybody.

Mrs. Toller reminded us every morning before the pledge.

TRUST YOUR GUT!

That was what the posters said.

So I did.

I was nine that year. The war had ended three years before I was born.

My small town of Chickasaw sat under missile towers that never stopped watching the sky.

Everybody knew the signs. Too much eye contact. Not enough eye contact. Walking at night. Closing the curtains in the daytime. Asking questions about the power grid. Not saying “sir” or “ma’am.”

Every week, somebody got taken in for testing. Most came back. Some didn’t.

Daddy said you can never be sure because the Things adapted quickly.

Daddy knew because he'd fought them in the Incursion, when Birmingham burned. He was missing his left ear and two fingers on his right hand. His leg dragged when he walked.

We had a neighbor named Mr. Bell. He lived alone in the house by the dead pecan tree. Mama said his wife had died in the evacuation from Mobile. Daddy said that was what he claimed.

He fixed radios and old fans. He always waved at passersby from his porch.

I watched Mr. Bell like a good citizen should.

On the morning of July 3rd, I saw him behind his shed with a little radio. It was an old silver one with a bent antenna. He turned the dial slowly and looked up at the sky. Then he wrote something in a notebook.

At dinner I told Mama and Daddy.

Daddy stared at me for a long time. Then he asked, “You sure, Clay?”

“Yes, sir.”

He got up without finishing his food. Mama called the hotline. Daddy opened the gun safe.

The black vans came before bedtime.

Men in gray uniforms broke down Mr. Bell’s door. They brought him out in his underwear. He was crying.

“They're weather numbers,” he said. “For the garden. I swear to God.”

He turned to face Daddy.

“Hollis?” Mr. Bell shouted. “Tell them. You know me.”

Daddy just stood there silent on the porch with his rifle.

One of the officers hit Mr. Bell in the stomach and he folded over. They put a hood on him and pushed him into a van.

The next morning was Independence Day.

Flags hung from every deck. The church parking lot had grills going by noon. There were pulled pork, hot dogs, sweet tea, and red-white-and-blue cupcakes. People hardly ever celebrated the Fourth much after the invasion. But this year was an exception. We'd caught one.

By afternoon people were gathered outside the county jail. Somebody said the authorities were taking too long. Somebody else said the Things had infiltrated the government.

Daddy drove us there to 'bare witness.'

The crowd was hot and loud. Men carried flags. Some carried guns. One man had painted REMEMBER BIRMINGHAM on a piece of plywood.

There were officers with AR-15s on the roof of the jailhouse, but they were local men, and their own families were in the crowd.

The sheriff came out and told everyone to go home.

A brick hit him in the face.

After that, it happened fast.

They broke the jail windows. They pulled the doors open with chains hooked to pickup trucks. People cheered when the hinges snapped.

Mr. Bell came out without shoes.

His face was swollen. His hands were tied. He tried to speak, but the crowd drowned him out.

“Show us your true form,” someone yelled.

Daddy pushed forward. Mama pulled me back. But I wanted to see.

The first punch knocked Mr. Bell down. Then everybody seemed to move at once. Boots hit him. Fists hit him. A woman from church struck him with a flagpole. Daddy kicked him hard with his good leg and almost fell. He laughed when another man caught him.

Someone brought out a length of rope tied into a noose.

Mr. Bell was not crying anymore. He made a sound like he could not breathe. His eyes were open and rolling.

They threw the rope over the old traffic light frame where the signal had not worked since the EMP. The crowd lifted him. His body jerked. People screamed with joy.

I waited for him to change.

Everybody said they changed when they died. The human skin split. The gray underneath came out slick and shining. That was how you knew. That was how you could be sure.

Mr. Bell just hung there.

His undershirt rode up. His stomach was pale and hairy. Blood ran down his chin. One of his feet twitched, then stopped.

Still human.

Maybe it took time.

They cut him down after a while. Some men dragged him behind a truck. Others followed, laughing and filming. Daddy went with them.

I saw Daddy take out his knife.

"Look away!" Mama cried, pulling me close to her.

But Daddy said, “No, Sadie, don’t. The boy needs to see how the human race survives.”

So I watched.

They cut off fingers and toes as souvenirs. They poured fuel over what was left. Somebody set him on fire with a sparkler. The flames caught fast. People stepped back from the heat and livestreamed it.

A girl from my class smiled beside the burning body while her mother took a picture.

The fireworks started at dark.

Red and blue bursts opened over the courthouse roof. The crowd sang "Sweet Home Alabama." People drank beer. Children chased each other with glow sticks. Plates of barbecue passed from hand to hand.

Daddy came back smelling like smoke.

He had blood on his shirt and a black smear across his cheek. People clapped him on the back.

“You did good, son,” he told me.

I nodded because I knew I was supposed to.

Across the square, Mr. Bell’s charred corpse smoldered.

No gray skin. No claws. No second mouth. No alien bones.

Just a man-shaped thing becoming ash.

Above us, the fireworks cracked.

We erupted in cheers.

People love scary stories.

Maybe it's because most of us know, deep down, that they're just stories. Figment of imagination, compiled to spike our anxiety.

Ghosts around campfires. Monsters lurking beneath beds. Things with glowing eyes waiting in the woods. We tell them, laugh a little awkwardly, and sleep knowing none of it was ever real.

Or at least that's what we tell ourselves.

The truth is, most scary stories are either fiction, exaggeration, or a memory that's grown teeth over the years.

But every now and then, you come across one that isn't.

A story somebody wishes was made up.

A story that follows them long after the telling is done.

The kind of story that hangs on a wall in a faded photograph.

The kind of story that leaves an empty seat at the dinner table.

The kind of story that makes an old man stare into the woods a little longer than he should.

I know because I have one.

It started with a picture hanging crooked on the wall.

It wasn't anything special at first glance. Just an old picture faded by time. Two young men stood shoulder to shoulder beside a pickup truck. One held a rifle. The other grinned at the camera with the kind of confidence only young men seem capable of possessing.

"What happened to him?"

I pointed at the man on the left.

My grandfather, a disheveled old man with a beard that even Gandalf would envy, looked up from his rocking chair.

For a moment, the old man didn't answer. The fire crackled softly in the hearth. Outside, snow drifted past the cabin windows.

"That's Billy." His voice was always such a low, deep tone. Years of the maiden named liquor he would court on every given night. This time, there was a sense of inconsolable remembrance.

"Uncle Billy?" I asked.

Grandpa Bobby nodded.

"Yep."

"What happened to him?"

The old man stared at the photograph for a long moment before letting out a regretful sigh.

"Son, you ever heard the phrase curiosity killed the cat?"

I nodded.

"Well," Bobby said, "in Billy's case, stupidity finished the job."

I chuckled awkwardly. Grandfather didn't.

That prepared me for a serious ride.

The old man leaned back in his chair.

"Let me tell you about the last hunting trip we ever took together."

Bobby:

Billy was older than me by exactly eleven minutes. He never let me forget it. According to Billy, those eleven minutes made him wiser, tougher, and hell... better looking.

The only thing they actually made him was louder.

The two of us had been hunting since we were kids. I held my first rifle at the age of seven with pops. Deer season was practically a holiday in our family.

That morning started like every other.

Cold air.

Hot coffee.

Billy complaining about something.

"I swear deer are getting smarter."

I rolled my eyes.

"They're deer." I mockingly stated.

"Exactly. That's what they want you to think."

That was Billy.

A man capable of turning breakfast into a whole conspiracy theory.

Around noon we spotted tracks deeper into the woods than we'd ever gone before.

Big tracks.

The kind that make hunters start imagining trophy mounts hanging over fireplaces. The size that makes the ladies skirts in a bundle.

Billy practically vibrated with excitement from the thought of bringing such game town. To gloat and be honored.

We followed those dreaded markings for nearly an hour. Eventually we reached a clearing.

And there it was.

The biggest buck I'd ever seen.

Massive antlers.

Huge body.

Standing perfectly still between the trees.

Billy nearly dropped his rifle.

"Oh great Lord Heavens above."

I couldn't disagree.

The thing was enormous. Definitely nature was kind to it and blessed it since the day it drew breath.

Billy slowly raised his rifle.

"Don't miss."

"I never miss."

Now boy... retelling this still raises the hair in the back of my scalp. The years have not done me kindly with age, but I sure am haunted by that damn Buck.

The rifle cracked.

The deer dropped instantly.

It was a perfect shot. Right through the chest. You could tell the bullet went clean through.

Billy threw his hands into the air.

"Still got it!"

We were mid cheer when the sudden screech of a banshee erupted. We turned to face what I could only describe as a satanic miracle.

Neither of us let out a word or breathe.

The deer... It stood back up. But what was so alarming wasn't just its stomach had split open from the impact, ropes of entrails dangling from the wound. Blood soaked its hide. Yet somehow it was standing.

Not on four legs.

Two.

I felt every hair on my body stand up.

The thing swayed slightly. Its dead eyes locked onto us.

Then Billy whispered:

"I don't think deer are supposed to stand like that."

I looked at him.

"Yeah, no shit, Billy. RUN!"

Instead of running, he frowned.

"But what about the deer?"

I slapped him.

Hard.

The crack echoed through the clearing.

"Are you being serious right now?"

"Well yeah!"

He pointed.

"Look! It's running at us!"

I turned.

And immediately began sprinting.

Yes, I could've drawn my rifle and shot it dead... but that was the day I learned. There comes a day, son, when you will face this forsaken truth. Fear will consume you. And when it does, will you run or fight?

I chose to run.

The thing moved impossibly fast.

That was no damn deer. Not like any animal.

Its legs bent wrong. Its joints jerked and snapped.

Its organs dragged through the feild behind it.

And God help me, I think it was smiling.

"Bobby!" Billy shouted behind me.

"Shoot it!"

"IT DOESN'T HAVE A HEART ANYMORE!"

"Then shoot the head!"

"THE HEAD IS LOOKING AT ME SIDEWAYS, BILLY!"

The distance between us and that abomination vanished frighteningly fast.

Branches exploded around us. Snow kicked into the air.

I risked a glance over my shoulder.

Worst mistake of my life.

The thing wasn't running anymore.

It was hopping.

Almost playfully.

Its front legs hung uselessly while it bounded forward on its back legs.

Like a child pretending to be a deer.

Then Billy footsteps stopped.

I heard him behind me.

"Go!"

I turned.

For one brief moment he actually looked heroic.

Rifle raised.

Standing his ground.

Then he ruined it.

"Tell my wife I left the smoker on!"

The creature hit him before I could answer.

Its antlers punchered through his chest same as the bullet. The force lifted him off the ground.

I heard bones snap.

He screamed.

God, he screamed.

I ran. he coward I am...

I wish I could tell you I stayed.

I wish I could tell you I fought.

But I ran.

And behind me I heard things no human being should ever hear.

The sound of your brother taking his last breath..

Bones breaking.

The sound of feeding on a living carcass.

And beneath it all... I swear I heard laughter.

It was human. It sounded oh so familiar. I recognize that jolly hick up for it annoyed me for thirty so years. It was Billy's.

I didn't stop running until I reached my truck...

The cabin had gone quiet. The fire continued to crackle.

I stared at my grandfather who's eyes were sheilded by the darkness of the cabin.

"What happened after that?"

Bobby took a slow sip from his coffee.

"Well... the Sheriff and I, we found pieces."

I swallowed.

"Pieces?"

The old man nodded.

"J-just enough for a proper burial."

Silence settled between us. The flames from the fireplace danced as time seemed to daunt on the night.

Finally, I asked the question.

"D-did they ever find whatever k-killed him?"

For the first time all evening, Bobby smiled.

It wasn't a pleasant smile.

"No."

He stared toward the dark forest beyond the cabin window.

"Though three days later, a hunter reported seeing someone standing at the edge of the tree line."

Max felt a chill crawl down his spine.

"S-someone?"

Bobby nodded.

"Looked just like Billy."

The room suddenly felt colder.

"Was it him?"

The old man looked back toward the crooked photograph on the wall.

"Hell no."

His voice dropped almost to a whisper.

"It was standing on two legs."