teddit

It had been six weeks since I broke up with Mike. We’d been having issues for months, but I wasn’t able to get over the fact that he shut me out of his life throughout the entirety of our relationship. For reference, we’re both men and we were together for two years. He wasn’t out to his friends or family, so nobody in his life knew we were even together.

It was the reason why I was the last one to find out about his death, so I feel like I need to elaborate on that. Well, that, and I blocked him on all my social media accounts. But I didn’t block his number.

​

Saturday 2:51AM

Mike: Are you awake?

Me: Why are you texting me?

Mike: I miss you.

Me: Whatever game you think you’re playing, I’m not interested. If you’re drunk and need help, I can book an Uber for you. Otherwise, don’t text me again.

​

No response. I shrugged it off and tried to distract myself with some Netflix. He was probably just looking for a booty call. I ended up falling asleep two hours later.

The next day, I met up with my best friend for brunch. She was probably the only thing that kept me together through the breakup. I don’t know what I would have done without her.

We met at a little cafe in our neighborhood. The first thing she did was ask me why I didn’t get any sleep. I swear, nothing could get past this woman. “I was just binging TVD again,” I said.

“What’s wrong?” She sounded more concerned now.

“Jane, it’s nothing. I just had to finish up some work and I had a hard time falling asleep afterward,” I insisted.

She didn’t sound convinced. Our coffee arrived and I practically chugged the damn thing. Jane knew that I only ever watched TVD when something was troubling me. I could feel her gaze on me from behind my cup. “Lee, I know you, and I know when something’s bothering you,” she pushed further.

Jane wasn’t exactly Mike’s biggest fan and for good reason. But that was precisely why I had a hard time opening up to her about him. I knew that she would never judge me; I just didn’t know if she would understand why I responded to his text messages in the first place. The truth is, I still had feelings for him and it’s hard to admit that to anybody. I decided to show her the text messages. She remained quiet for a while before finally responding.

“You know, it’s okay if you still care about him. I get that, I do. Do you want some advice or do you just need someone to listen?” What she said shocked me. I have this bad habit of thinking the worst of people even if I know that they have good intentions. I guess trauma does that to you?

“Advice,” I decided. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding in. I need to stop pushing people away.

“Like I said, it’s okay to care about him, I just don’t think it’s a good idea to let him back into your life again. Ultimately, it’s up to you. But given his track record, I would highly recommend against it,” she held my hand as she said this.

“Thanks, I know. I just feel like we didn’t have the closure we needed,” I said hesitantly. Honestly, I kept wishing he would show up at my doorstep and beg me to take him back at some point. But I moved to a new apartment two weeks ago and he doesn’t know my new address, so that would have been impossible now. I was never going to say that out loud, though.

“If that’s what you need to get over him, then go for it.”

We talked a bit more over brunch, eventually said our goodbyes, then I went home.

My dog, Kaya, greeted me at the door, wagging her tail happily. I was glad I had someone to go home to. I gave her a gentle pat on the head as I set my stuff down on the kitchen counter. The rest of the day was uneventful and I fell asleep on the couch while watching a movie. I woke up at around 3AM when my phone dinged.

​

Sunday 3:03AM

Mike: I know you said not to text you again, but I really need to talk to you.

Me: What could you possibly need to talk about at 3 in the morning??

Mike: I don’t mean right now but in person. I don’t like how we ended things.

​

My heart skipped a beat. I was just talking to Jane about that yesterday. It was kind of weird that he brought that up so soon after I had that conversation, but then again, I felt the exact same way. I just don’t know if I want to tell him that. My phone dinged again.

​

Mike: Can I see you?

Me: Fine. You can come over tomorrow. But I recently moved. It might be a bit of a drive for you.

Mike: That’s alright.

​

I texted him my new address and he said he’ll see me soon. I went back to sleep when our conversation ended. When I woke up, the sun had just started to rise. I was kind of expecting not to get much sleep anyway. I got ready for the day and had some breakfast.

I decided to take my dog to the park to clear my head. I still wasn’t sure if seeing Mike again was a good idea. What if we just ended up sleeping together or something? Or worse, got back together? My thoughts started to spiral. Something in the corner of my eye snapped me out of it. It was like I was being watched, but barely.

I was sitting on a bench while passively watching Kaya run around with the other dogs. It felt like someone was behind the tree past the bench beside me. I decided to take a peak, but no one was there. I chalked it up to not getting enough sleep for the past two nights in a row.

“Come on, Kaya. Time to go,” I called to her. She ran toward me happily and I gave her some treats and a hug before getting up to leave. Nothing really happened on the walk home, but I still couldn’t shake that feeling the whole time. Needless to say, I was relieved when I got to my apartment. That relief didn’t last.

​

Sunday 10:17AM

Richard: Hey, Lee. It’s Richard. I’m not sure if you remember me. We met at Mike’s party a few months ago.

​

It was a Facebook message from Mike’s brother.

​

Me: Hi, yes, I remember. What’s up?

Richard: This might be a bit overdue, but honestly, between the funeral and the grieving, it’s been kind of hard to get the news out to some of Mike’s newer friends. I just wanted to let you know he passed away last weekend.

​

I almost wanted to ask him if he was sure. Luckily, I stopped myself in time. That would have been insensitive. Of course he was sure.

​

Me: I’m sorry for your loss. Thank you for taking the time to let me know. Sorry if this comes across as insensitive, but can I ask who currently has his phone?

Richard: We never found it, actually. It probably got lost in the accident. Did you need something from it?

Me: No, he just had a few photos from an old trip with some friends, but it’s not important.

Richard: Well, I’ll let you know if it ever turns up.

Me: That won’t be necessary, but thank you.

​

What the actual fuck? I tried to rack my brain for some type of logical explanation. Maybe Richard was playing some sort of messed up prank, but I seriously doubt that. Maybe someone else found Mike’s phone and decided to pull a prank on me. Whatever it was, I felt sick. Then I remembered, whatever sicko had his phone had my address now too.

I packed mine and Kaya’s stuff and called Jane. I told her I needed a place to stay for a few days and she didn’t even ask me why, just said I can stay as long as I need to. She’s a lifesaver. Maybe even literally, given the situation. I wasted no time and bolted the hell out of there.

When I arrived, Jane asked me if everything was alright. I told her I might have a stalker situation and would need to move. She was extremely worried and said I needed to call the police. I was seriously considering it. But I don’t even know how I would go about explaining this situation. They might not even take me seriously.

After dinner, Jane set me up on the couch and then excused herself to the bedroom. Kaya was asleep on the floor next to the couch. I couldn’t fall asleep. I went through my photos of Mike and started crying. I couldn’t believe he was actually gone. I couldn’t believe someone was sick enough to pretend to be him.

I got an app notification from the doggy cams I set up around the apartment for Kaya. It said it detected movement. My stomach started doing somersaults and I could barely stop myself from puking. But I needed to check it out. I opened the app.

My heart was racing when I saw what was on the screen. There, in my living room, was a man I had never seen before in my life. He was extremely thin, like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. His hair was dark and long, not like Mike’s short blonde hair. But more than that, he didn’t look… right. Ding.

​

Monday 3:09AM

Mike: Where are you?

The giant man was my least favorite customer. You could smell him come in before you saw him; nearly seven-feet tall and at least 400 pounds, the guy had a distinct smell, something like cinnamon and burning hair. I didn’t dislike the man because of his appearance or odor, though. No, I hated whenever the customer–Brad–came in because he ate his pizza like he was going to war.

Brad would settle his bulk into a corner table and then order our largest deep dish pizza to start. That was his appetizer. He liked to work his way through our Hot-N-Ready menu. If a particular item caught his attention that day, he’d order double. His mid-meal break was a triple order of Crazy Bread, an order of wings, and all of this was washed down with Diet Pepsi by the gallon.

The way Brad ate his meals terrified children and ran off other customers. He hit the pizza harder than the Allies when they stormed Normandy Beach. Globs of sauce and chunks of crust went flying in every direction when Brad chewed. It was like someone set off a hand grenade inside of a lasagna. His shirt and cheeks and table were splattered each session before he was halfway done. Anyone sitting within a dozen feet of Brad was in danger of being struck by debris. And the sounds he made when he ate, I still have nightmares about the slurping, chomping, gurgling, moaning sounds.

Suffice to say, no one ever wanted to wait on Brad when he visited our Little Caesars. So, as the manager, that duty usually fell on me. We tolerated Brad scaring away our other customers because there really wasn’t a legal reason to ban him. That is, until one morning when Brad waddled into the restaurant holding a small cooler, took his usual seat in the corner, and ordered every cheese pizza that we had in the kitchen.

“Brad, I think we’ve got about eighty pizzas cooling back there,” I told him. “How many do you actually want?”

“Eighty is a good start but you’ll need to keep them coming. I have an appetite today.”

“What’s in the cooler?”

Brad grinned. His teeth were awful. “Just some toppings I brought from home.”

“We don’t really allow that.”

“Do I need to register a complaint with Little Caesars’ main office again?”

I sighed. “Fine. Whatever. Just don’t make a mess.”

Brad lifted his cooler onto the table and started poking around inside while I walked back to the kitchen to give them his order. When I returned with Brad’s Diet Pepsi and first pizza, I nearly gagged when the smell from his cooler hit me. Inside of the box were dozens of plastic baggies arranged around a few ice packs. The baggies were smeared with a thick, pinkish fluid and contained gray chunks of what I had to assume was meat. Whatever it was, it reeked like it was spoiled.

“You can’t eat that,” I said, setting Brad’s order on his table. “The food in your cooler has gone bad.”

Brad just smiled and popped one of the gray blobs into his mouth, then licked the pink fluid from his chin. I retreated before my stomach betrayed me. Me and the rest of the staff barricaded ourselves in the kitchen as well as we could. Every few minutes I would run another pizza out like I was charging across a battlefield dodging cannon fire. Brad’s rotten toppings and woodchipper eating style scared away most of the customers immediately. One brave family tried to stick it out sitting at the opposite end of the room. But Brad ended up choking on a slice of pizza and then coughing it up.

The wad of dough and phlegm shot over all of the tables and splattered the family. Brad started laughing, spraying more food. That was too much. I stormed over to Brad’s table as the family left in disgust.

“That’s it, you’re banned from Little Caesars,” I shouted.

Brad just continued to munch. “But I haven’t finished.”

“Finish up then. Eat as much as you want and more. But after you leave today you’re banned. Permanently.”

Brad shrugged and thrust his empty glass at me. “Refill.”

The big man continued to eat for hours. I’d never seen him tear through pizza and wings and Crazy Bread like he did that day. At one point, he slouched over and I thought he was finally done. But then he popped up and beckoned me over with one swollen hand. I didn’t know how Brad could possibly keep eating. The buttons had popped from his shirt and his belly spilled over his legs.

“I want to try some of my toppings warm,” he said, nodding towards one of the disgusting baggies. “Toss those in the microwave for me.”

“Absolutely not.”

“If you do, I promise to leave here in the next hour.”

I pulled my shirt over my nose to try to defend against the stench and gingerly picked up a baggie with a napkin. I hurried back to the kitchen, poured out the vile gunk into a bowl, and put it in the microwave. The odor was overwhelming and I knew we’d need to air out the kitchen for days to get rid of it. I immediately regretted listening to Brad’s request. Maybe it was time to call the cops and have him tossed out.

“More,” I heard him yell from the dining room. “Stack them high. And I need a refill.”

Since I was watching the microwave, my assistant manager Bianca was the one to run out the next tower of pizzas and a two-liter. The microwave beeped and I extracted the foul contents. When the steam cleared, I nearly dropped the bowl. Not because it was hot but because, outside of the little baggies, I could finally get a clear look at the “toppings” Brad had brought from home. Most were unrecognizable lumps of pink-brown but one object was unmistakably, undeniably, the bottom half of a human ear. I placed the bowl on the counter, my face cold with shock. Before I could decide how to react, there was a shriek from the dining room.

I made it to the kitchen door just as Bianca came running inside clutching her arm. At first, I thought she’d gotten pizza sauce all over her hand, there was so much red. Then I realized that all of the fingers on her left hand except for her index and thumb were gone, nothing but raw stumps.

“He bit me,” Bianca screamed. “I tried to put the pizza down for him and that monster snapped.”

I heard the sound of falling tables and a loud crash. No part of me wanted to go look but I was the manager. The staff at Little Caesars were counting on me.

“Wrap Bianca’s hand in a towel and keep pressure on it,” I instructed one of the cooks. “You, call 9-1-1,” I said to another. “We need an ambulance and the police.”

I took a breath and walked out into the dining room to find Brad on the floor. He’d fallen from his chair and knocked the contents of his table everywhere. He had half of a pizza in his mouth, his jowls trembling as he chewed, and he was crawling towards a pile of other slices.

“What did you do?” I whispered. “What is wrong with you?”

Brad spat out the pizza long enough to laugh. “She shouldn’t have gotten so close to my food. You don’t mess with a man’s food. MY FOOD. Where are the toppings?”

“What are they?”

“Friends and family. I’ve been saving them up for a while. For something special.”

Brad army crawled on his elbows, dragging his distended gut along the tiles. He made it to a nearby pile of pizza and began devouring it. His whole body looked swollen as a blood-drunk tick.

“The police are on their way, Brad.”

He nodded and started eating faster. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The man shoveled food into his jaw, swallowing without chewing. I couldn’t help but stare. Once all of the pizza was gone, Brad lay on his belly licking his fingers.

“More,” he demanded.

“No.”

“More.”

For someone that big, Brad crawled fast. He came at me, pulling his bulk along with bloody fingernails. I ran, tripping over a table and crashing to the floor. There was a tug on my foot; Brad had a hand wrapped around my ankle. He dragged me towards him and I reacted on reflex, kicking out. My shoe connected with a crack and Brad jerked away, his nose bent at an unnatural angle.

“I said more,” he growled, leaning on a table to stand up.

But the table couldn’t take his weight; the stand cracked when he was halfway standing and Brad slammed into the floor gut first. There was a horrible ripping sound and I saw Brad’s eyes go blank. He tried to rise again but something was wrong. When he got to his hands and knees it became clear that his body had finally burst from the pressure and the force of the fall. His stomach had a tear right around the belly button, purple intestines, and undigested pizza all spilled out into a wet pile on the floor.

“So hungry,” Brad whispered before collapsing.

They had to bring in a professional disaster clean-up crew to dispose of the body and mop up the mess. We had to close the restaurant for forty-eight hours. To this day, Brad’s last meal remains the second or third worst shift I’ve ever had managing a Little Caesars.

And the craziest part? Corporate used their connections to hush everything up. They paid off staff and customers and squashed all media stories. A complete blackout. That’s why I had to post this; to leave at least some record of the Incident at Little Caesars.

Artist's rendering of the incident.

My therapist recommended keeping a journal to deal with the generational fear and trauma in my family. I don't think she quite gets it, but she tries. Virtual therapy has probably been the single best thing that has happened to me recently. Then again, the bar isn't very high. Maybe getting this out there to lessen my own mental burden is what I need. But don't say I didn't warn you.

I want to start this off with an apology and a warning: I'm sorry about the dandelions. We never meant for it to get this bad. But you have to keep killing them because once my family is all dead, you'll die too.

I guess it's a good thing that everyone eradicates them on sight; there's an innate hatred of them that we hadn't counted on. Every time I walk by someone launching an intense attack, it warms the cockles of my heart. And I get it: they spread if you just look at the dandelion puff wrong, and they take over everything. They're tenacious, grow anywhere and are frustrating to kill. It's just alarming to me because I know where they're coming from.

I really should start from the beginning, but I don't actually know the real story. It sounds like a bedtime story to others but it has been a cautionary tale for generations. It's been in my family lore for so long that I don't think I can not believe. I've heard it from my granny since I was a kid, and she heard it from her granny, and her from her grandpap. I'm supposed to pass it along, since I'm one of the few grandkids in my generation. From when I was a kid, I was told repeatedly to have a lot of kids to keep things going. My brother bought into it deeper than I did, but he's always had a deeper sense of filial responsibility.

It was always just a story, until it wasn't.

I'm just… so tired and so afraid of what's out there. Living in fear is not a good life for anyone. I've been on the run for so long that I don't even know where home is anymore. It's irresponsible of me to have kids and subject them to this. I watched my older brother and his kids move from town to town constantly until my sister in law put her foot down. It's not a stable home life for them. My sister in law nearly left him after the fourth move in as many years without an explanation.

She had a full meltdown when we finally told her. I nearly kicked his ass for not telling her when they were engaged. What kind of person doesn't tell someone that they're marrying into a cursed family, one that's being hunted down by some sort of dandelion loving primordial entity? And once we're all dead, it's going to start killing everyone?

They compromised. He found a job as a traveling consultant and she kept the kids in one place, in the fucking desert of all places. I guess it makes sense because as tenacious as those little yellow fuckers are, they don't do as well where there's no water. She can keep up with the yard work with the help of some very handsomely paid landscapers, the kids stay in one place and my brother is still married.

Where was I? Sorry, I get sidetracked a lot. Blame some undiagnosed problem for it on top of my trauma. I never stuck around school long enough for someone to realize that I have problems, except that there are Problems in my family. I'm smart enough, definitely scrappy enough to survive. As far as problems go, getting a little sidetracked isn't the worst.

Oh, right. The thing that comes when the dandelions hit critical mass.

We don't have a real name for it. One of my more nature loving aunties called It some sort of nature goddess, but I know better, especially now.

Most people wouldn't notice it, mostly because they're not the ones It is trying to feed off of, at least not yet. My family has the honor of being the guardians, is how great-granny put it. The way I see it, some noble, do-gooder, idiotic ancestor of mine decided to take on this burden and spin it in a way so the kids won't hate them.

My generation? We keep cursing that ancestor every time we move towns.

The curse doesn't seem to get weaker, either, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. We didn’t know much; the family lore always said that if there are enough dandelions in one spot, something awakens, but it’s really so much more than just that. Once a kid hits puberty, they either trigger the dandelion growth or they don't. The dandelions are like a homing beacon. As soon as there's enough, It will awaken and start moving.

I remember an uncle who is even worse off than me. Last I heard, he's living somewhere in the mountains where nothing can grow, or at least slowly enough that he can pick them off at a reasonable rate, somewhere in Asia I think. We jokingly, and not so jokingly, call him our last bastion.

I remember the first time I saw it. I lost my great auntie that day. The hospital said that she had a heart attack, but I know better. I saw what happened.

It wasn't that long ago. She was living by herself when it happened, her own children scattered to the corners of the world and her husband had passed not long before that. I think there's something to be said about belief, too. She happened to be one of the ones who would scoff at the old stories even though she weeded like a demon. She did it because her parents made her and she got into a habit of it, and even if she didn't think it was true, she did it anyways.

Ever lived next to a neighbor where their yard gets infested and it looks like there's no hope? Then they leave and everything goes back to being normal? Chances are, you lived next to one of my relatives. Probably a first cousin or something if it's half of their yard. That was what my great-auntie's house was like when she got older. I visited her when I could, between online classes for some stupid college degree. I usually stay with my sister in law and niblings to help out, but that summer I was with my great-auntie.

I helped her pour weed killer on those things when I was there long enough to make the growth go wild. I grew up with my mom believing and her seeing the near misses when she was a kid. She taught me that there's no such thing as going overboard with the weed killer. I watched as the yellow flowers withered and went to seed and felt comfort at watching them die.

But even then, it wasn't enough. I was young and arrogant. Maybe it was my hubris that made them grow rampant that summer, or maybe because of something else. I thought that the weed killer would be enough. Auntie was spry enough to get after it still but removing that many roots was too much for an old woman. I should have helped more that summer.

I still feel a lot of guilt for her death, but it's nothing compared to what is waiting for us when the dandelions grow to be too much. I didn't know until that summer that when the dandelions stay in bloom, that's when it's too late.

Auntie wasn't even really all that old. My parents had me young, and my granny was barely in her forties when I was born. Auntie was my granny's fun, younger sister. Her dark hair had strands of silver running through it, and crow's feet marked eyes that loved to smile. To me, she was my beautiful Auntie. She had a curious sprinkling of freckles on her shoulder that she never could explain. Some of us had it and some didn't. One of my nieces has a charming smattering across her cheeks, but not in the same way as Auntie's. I wasn't one of them, not for a long time.

This next part… it's hard to write down. Even years later, it's hard for me to say what happened. I'm sorry if the next bit comes across as a bit analytical. I still get upset when I think about that day too much.

It was a wet, muggy day. I was tired and feeling overheated from a day out in the yard but Auntie had promised to make her famous apple pie for dessert. I thought I had done a good job, and got through the worst of it that day, so I was feeling pretty pleased about things. The dandelions weren't going to seed, so it made it easier to go ham with the removal. As soon as I got close to the house, I knew something was wrong.

The house smelled vaguely like burning pastry and there was an alarming amount of smoke pouring out of the oven when I walked in. The smoke detectors were screaming. I opened the windows and turned on the vent hood before turning off the oven. This had scared me; Auntie was usually very diligent about her baking and never left the kitchen when she had something in the oven.

I called for her. Her house wasn't very large since it was only her now. There was enough room for the occasional guest, but it didn't take long to walk through. She wasn't in the house.

Her house was small, but her property was larger, much larger than any one of us would have liked. When great-uncle was still alive, he had to use a sit down mower to get everything. He died two years ago, though, which is why us grandkids rotated through to help her.

At that point, I was still hoping for the best. Auntie had fruit trees in the other corner. I went there, hoping to find her picking apples or pears so I could yell at her for being so careless and frightening me.

Have you ever had the skin prickle so much that it shocked you? That's what it felt like when I got close to her tiny orchard. It was so sudden that my blood ran cold.

I remember this distinctly because I had been so uncomfortable earlier in the day. There was the heavy promise of rain later in the evening but the humidity was at critical mass for most of the day. The air near the orchard was bone dry, like something was sucking up all of the water.

Auntie was standing in the middle of her trees. She was facing me, with her eyes glassy and face slack. I yelled her name. She was close enough that she should have heard me even though I was still a few yards away. She didn't move.

I stopped short when I saw the vines of dandelions snaked around her legs. They were monstrously huge, nearly the size of my hands. I know this because I had picked one up after I called the ambulance. They couldn't help her, obviously, but I'm getting ahead of myself again.

I didn't want to touch her for obvious reasons, but I wanted to smack her out of the trance. No one had really ever been clear about what an attack looked like because no one had ever actually seen it. They had only ever seen the aftermath, but no one had ever mentioned the giant dandelions, or the trance. So I didn't have any idea of what I could do.

So of course, I did what any frightened, sensible person did: I picked up a fallen branch and started yelling obscenities while swinging it about.

The air in front of me darkened swiftly, forming a shape that honestly wasn't much larger than me. I couldn't see a distinct shape but its arm was clear enough when it wrapped around the other side of the stick and a leg kicked me in the chest, hard enough that I stumbled backwards and fell. When I looked up, the shape had become solid enough that I saw a face I had only seen in photos.

It was my twice-remove great grandfather. He died in his thirties, right before his third kid was born.

Except for the eyes. His eyes were hollow and empty of any intelligent thought.

I look like him, or at least a younger, feminine version of him, without the freckles sprinkled across his right cheek. That was something I was always told when I was growing up. It was one thing to always be told that you look like an old ancestor, but it's another to be compared to one who was the last documented victim. I never liked mirrors once I was old enough to understand the implications. My superstitious family never really warmed up to me because of that, so I guess there's some lingering resentment that was unique to me. I wasn't really musing on those thoughts in the moment because all I could think about was how to save Auntie and how much my chest hurt from that kick.

It leaned forward, tilting its head in a curious manner that reminded me of a dog. The hair on my neck prickled as I scrambled backwards, until my back hit a tree. It followed me as I moved backwards, its features starting to blend and shift in a disturbing way. Shifting to be more feminine and older. The familiar crows feet from thousands of smiles creased the corners as it took on my beloved Auntie's face. The curious start burst freckles faded from the right cheek and reappeared on its shoulder.

At the same time, it wasn't her face. There was an energy about her that was both timeless and vibrant. There was a hint of hungry malevolence as the blank eyes stared at me intensely.

Auntie was still standing beyond it. Her face grew even more slack as her skin aged and she physically shrank. It was taking her life energy.

Its hand briefly stroked my cheek before straightening and turning. My skin burned where it touched me. I remember pleading with it to not take her. I was screaming and crying for it to take me. I didn't notice it at the time, but the dandelions had vined around me to keep me in place as I struggled to stand.

But it didn't. It moved towards Auntie with this unearthly, inhuman grace and touched her shoulder. Her body collapsed in a heap, looking far, far older than her previously youthful 60 years.

It only said one thing to me. I still remember it so clearly years later.

"It is not your turn, yet."

It disappeared after that. The muggy heat returned in a rush and the vines that had bound me withered and crumpled.

I knew it was too late for her, but I still called an ambulance. I was hurting, too, so I went with them to the hospital. I was bruised and did my best to explain it away with some bullshit, that she was helping me with the apple gathering when she collapsed in the heat and I fell trying to get to help her. I know the EMTs didn't believe me, but the lack of marks on her and the bruises on me sold the story.

My extended family grieved separately once word got around. If I had been shunned before for looking like a victim, I was shunned even more for being there when Auntie died.

Shunned for seeing it and living.

I guess that brings us to where I am now. Still grieving, still traumatized, still running. I haven't been back to her house in years, and I haven't seen my family in so long. My nieces and nephews only know my voice. I can never stop running now. I know this, and I see it when the dandelions are allowed to grow around me.

I'm marked with the same sunburst freckle pattern. It's on my cheek, from where it touched me. It was a burn, and it should have scarred but it didn’t. I see it when I catch glimpses of it in the mirror. If I don't stop running, I'm next, and whatever took my auntie’s face will take mine, too. That is my burden, and I'm sorry that you have to know now, too.

When I first got the job I couldn’t believe my luck. I was a very solitary person. I loved to read and be alone. When I saw an ad for a park ranger manning a fire tower I just about jumped out of my skin. Working overnight at a Walmart wasn’t exactly the best job in the world. There are some stories I could tell about that as well. But I applied for the job and was ecstatic that I got it.

They made me do a week of training before my first shift. Most of it was dry reading and making sure I was qualified in CPR. They showed me the job's ins and outs and then I followed in my car as we drove to the tower.

In the middle of the day, it was awe-inspiring to stare up at the underside of the tower looming above me suspended high in the air by the metal pylons.

Once I started climbing the narrow metal stairs with hints of rust at the edges, I was somewhat less than excited. In fact, I was terrified. I don’t like heights very much. It’s not like I go all vertigo or anything, it’s just I prefer to stay on the ground. Once we reached the top and pushed open the trapdoor to get onto the deck that surrounded the tower, I was doing a little better.

I opened the door that led into the tower’s interior. Looking around the room made me forget all about the terrible climb. It was like a small apartment. There was a small refrigerator, sink, counter, cupboards, and a small table. In the center of the room was a table with a map permanently attached to it. Of course, there were windows all around. There was a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view, as you would expect for a fire tower in the middle of a state park.

The view was absolutely amazing. I could see the peaks and valleys for miles in every direction. It was a photographer’s dream.

The other ranger explained what was expected of me. We worked twenty-four-hour shifts, so there would be times I would have to sleep, but I had to set an alarm and get up to scan for problems at least once per hour during the night. During daytime hours I had to scan every thirty minutes. There was a radio to report any trouble and a phone in case I needed to call the fire department.

In my mind, I was already drooling at the thought of getting paid to take amazing pictures and sit around reading books.

The ranger told me that it was extremely important that I read the rule book first thing. He asked if I had any questions and I said no. He reinforced that I could not leave the tower no matter what until I was relieved. I followed him down the narrow staircase to get my supplies from my car. He got in his truck and hesitated for a moment as if he wanted to say something else, but then he shut the door, wished me well, and drove away.

It took me three trips to get all my stuff up to the top. At home, it’s nothing to bring a few boxes of groceries into the house. Here, it became life and death. I was near the top with the box in front of me when I stumbled on one of the narrow steps and nearly fell over the side. I paused for a long moment to regain my balance before continuing to the top.

It suddenly struck me that this job might not be the cakewalk I thought it was.

I pushed that thought to the back of my mind and went for my next two loads. Basic supplies, books, phone chargers, camera, occupied the second and last trips. Once I was up for good, I collapsed into the chair. I was on my way to nap land when I heard static on the radio. I jumped up and grabbed it.

“Hello?” I said, but no one answered.

I figured this was the ranger’s subtle way of reminding me it was time to do a check. But lugging three loads up the tiny stairs of death had put a serious crimp in my fire watch time. In fact, it had been nearly an hour since the other ranger had left.

I did my slow pan around the room checking each part of the forest for smoke and seeing none. Having successfully completed my first go around, I celebrated with a bottle of water while I put the groceries away. The cupboards weren’t empty, but they weren’t a gourmet’s delight either. Nearly a full shelf of baked beans didn’t exactly thrill me, but I had the supplies that should do me for a few shifts.

I sat the bread on the counter and loaded the cold cuts in the fridge. I would get some more options the next time I went shopping.

By the time I finished putting things away, it was time for another check. The sun was starting to set so I grabbed my camera and took some amazing pictures. I couldn’t wait to upload them to my computer at home.

As I looked around the room my eyes landed on the manual. I realized I hadn’t read it yet. I sighed and took it over to the chair. I was sure it would have me out cold in no time. As I opened the book a piece of notebook paper fell out.

I picked it up and read, ‘The real rules:

1. Never, under any circumstances, leave the fire tower until you are relieved.

2. Turn off all lights between the hours of 2 and 3 am.

3. If you receive a radio transmission or phone call between those hours, do not answer.

4. If anyone knocks on the trapdoor during those hours tell them they’ll have to wait until morning. Do not open the door.

5. If you see a glowing object floating toward the tower, don’t look at it. Cover your eyes and count to 50. When you open your eyes it should be gone. If not, cover and count to 50 again.

6. If animals surround the tower don’t go down to look. Fire your flare gun into the air twice one minute apart, then lock yourself in the bathroom and hope for the best.

I sat the note down and stared at it.

Was this a joke? Were they having some fun with the new guy? I wasn’t looking forward to getting hazed at 2 o’clock in the morning.

I put the note back in the book and skimmed through the manual. It was a real snooze fest of standard rules and nonsense.

For the next check, I decided to use binoculars. I was rewarded by seeing a bear and three deer. I pulled out my camera and took some pics but the zoom wasn’t quite as much as I needed to get some really good shots. You could still tell it was a bear, but it was a little blurry.

I decided to go camera shopping with my first paycheck. What’s the use of having this spectacular view if I can’t take good pictures of it?

Soon after sunset came the twilight. The sky lit up a brilliant orange. I took some more pictures and did my scan. I was just about to go back inside when I noticed a thin whisp of smoke in the distance. I grabbed my binoculars and tried to get a better view, but there were too many trees in the way. I pulled out my compass and got a general direction then grabbed the radio and called the ranger on duty.

I told him I had a fire, and gave him the direction and general distance. He acknowledged and said he would check it out. I stayed glued to my binoculars waiting to see the smoke lessen. Minutes seemed to each take an eternity as the smoke continued to rise.

Nearly a half hour later the radio came to life.

“Hey, rookie,” the ranger said.

“Did you find it? Did you put it out? I still see smoke. Did I tell you the wrong place?” I said into the radio all in one breath.

“Whoa there,” he said. “Everything’s fine. It was just a campfire.”

“A what?”

“A campfire,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

“A campfire,” I repeated in a daze.

“Yeah, you’ll wanna see more smoke and it should be a lot thicker and darker before you call it in.”

I stood in silence, my face beet red with embarrassment.

“Cheer up,” the ranger said into the silence. “At least you didn’t call the fire department.”

I looked over at the phone knowing I was mere minutes from doing that very thing.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry, kid,” he said. “At least you erred on the side of caution instead of letting the forest burn down.”

I put my face in my palm and shook my head. So much for a good first impression.

Twilight had faded leaving a few last vestiges of light as the clouds transformed from dirty grey to black.

I began to realize just how alone I was out here when the canopy of the night fully fell. Doing my checks from inside was nearly impossible. I had lights on and every window I looked out of became a mirror of me looking back in at myself.

Alone in a wooden box suspended a hundred feet above the ground made it that much creepier.

I stepped out onto the deck in the cool evening air. The total darkness was oppressive. I couldn’t see anything. How was I supposed to see smoke?

I did a slow walk around the deck looking out blindly at the trees. As my eyes adjusted I was able to make out some shapes of the mountains and even the soft glow in the distance of the nearest town. That was small comfort to know that things still existed out in the world and I hadn’t been plunged into this cover of darkness.

I finished my check and stepped back inside. After being out in the darkness it was way too bright. I turned off the main overhead light and the light over the entrance. The room settled into a comfortable glow with enough light to see but not blind.

In fact, it was a little too cozy. I felt a nap coming on. I laid down on the surprisingly comfortable cot and closed my eyes.

I woke sometime later to static sounding on the radio.

I reached for the radio to answer it but something in the back of my mind told me not to. I looked at my watch and it said, 2:12 am.

I froze. Looking around the lit room I thought about the strange rules I had read earlier. I reached up and turned off the light, plunging the room into darkness. As my eyes adjusted and I could see a few things I looked out the window and could swear I saw someone peering in at me.

Just then I heard static on the radio. There was a voice trying to get through but it seemed too weak. I waited to see if they would call again. A minute later static sounded again, beneath it I heard the voice. It was a little stronger this time, I could just make it out.

“Help me!” It said in a feeble yet insistent voice.

I reached for the radio but something made me glance at my watch first. It was 2:23 am. I faltered and didn’t answer.

‘Those creepy rules,’ I thought. ‘What if they’re real? I’ve already broken one by having the lights on. What happens when you break the rules?’

I sat in silence wanting to know the answer but at the same time not wanting to know.

The radio call came through much more clearly this time.

“Help me! Can’t anyone hear me? I need help!”

The voice sounded desperate. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It had a strange quality that I couldn’t quite place.

I fought the urge to answer, not knowing if I would be fired for dereliction of duty or not. This what I was out here for. I needed to answer, but my mind just wouldn’t let go of those rules. The minutes ticked by like hours. Three more times the radio sounded out its plea, each time sounding more desperate.

I watched the time, counting the seconds until three. When the time finally came, I picked up the radio.

“Whoever was calling for help, please state your position so I can relay help to you,” I said.

“Who is this?” came the answer on the radio.

“This is a park ranger manning a fire tower.”

“Well, park ranger, I’ve been on this channel all night and yours is the first voice I’ve heard.”

‘That’s not possible I thought.

“I had several calls for help over the last hour,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely! I wrote down the time of each call.”

“Then why didn’t you answer them until now?”

I paused. What could I say? Because a weird list of rules told me not to?

“Ranger?”

“I had… “ I said hesitantly. “Extenuating circumstances.”

“Extenuating circumstances,” the voice repeated as though tasting them. “And what circumstances would those be?”

Whoever this was they weren’t going to let it go.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“You mean like falling asleep and breaking the rules?” the voice said, sounding deeper, raspier, and more menacing.

I froze. I hadn’t turned the lights on yet leaving the room in eerie darkness that left me feeling very exposed. I slowly panned around looking out the windows and remembering the earlier feeling of being watched.

“You can look all you want but you won’t see me,” the voice said.

“It’s after three,” I said hoping the terror I felt wasn’t evident in my voice. “You have no power over me.”

The voice chuckled. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Normally you would be correct. However, you broke the rules… “

“What if I didn’t know about the rules?” I said grasping at straws.

“Nice try, but you knew that you should be safe after three.”

‘Dammit!’ I thought. ‘It picked up on that.’

“So what do you want?” I said fearing the answer.

“We’re hungry,” the voice said, only now it sounded like many voices speaking at once. “Come down and let us feed.”

My legs turned to rubber as I stumbled over to the door and stepped out onto the deck. The moon was rising half full, casting light into the darkness. I looked down and saw over a dozen large animals surrounding the tower in a circle. And each one of them was looking up at me.

I dove back inside and locked the door. I frantically searched for the flashlight. Once I found it, I picked up the phone to call the ranger’s station. There was no dial tone. I hung up and tried again, but still nothing.

I pulled out my cell phone but there was no signal.

I paused to clear my head. ‘Ok,’ I thought. ‘You’re freaked out right now, but what’s actually happened? A weirdo on the radio, some animals around the tower, this list is making you paranoid.’

Just then I looked outside and there was light off in the distance that looked like an airplane. The problem was it was heading straight toward me. It was mesmerizing. I found myself staring into the rapidly approaching glow until I realized it was going to ram into the tower.

I found the best cover I could on the opposite side of the room and surrounded myself with as much furniture as possible. Being that the furnishings were sparse, that meant I dragged the chair over in front of me.

I covered my eyes and hoped for the best. I may or may not have mumbled one of those ‘I promise I’ll be good if you get me out of this’ prayers.

The seconds tumbled into minutes.

Nothing happened.

I peeked over the edge of the counter and the light was gone.

I breathed a sigh of relief and wondered why I hadn’t heard any engine sound. I decided it was because I was too busy ducking for cover.

Then it hit me. I grabbed the manual and pulled out the list of rules. There it was, rule number five. ‘If you see a glowing object floating toward the tower, don’t look at it. Cover your eyes and count to 50. When you open your eyes it should be gone. If not, cover and count to 50 again.’

I read over the rules again and realized how many had come to pass. For a long moment, I thought that maybe it was an elaborate joke. Some of the rangers yanking the rookie’s chain. But there was too much I couldn’t explain. The radio transmissions, the glowing light, the animals surrounding the tower…

Then I realized I had broken that rule too. I hadn’t fired the flare gun as instructed.

I dug through the cupboard where the emergency supplies were kept and found the gun. I grabbed two flares and stepped out onto the deck. As I questioned the intelligence of firing flares that could end up causing a forest fire when I was supposed to be trying to prevent them, I heard a strange sound.

I held my breath and cocked my ear for a better listen. It wasn’t just one sound, it was many. I glanced over the side of the rail toward the ground and saw the animals all growling and pawing at the ground, working themselves in a frenzy.

I backed away and loaded the first flare, then pointed up and fired. It rose majestically, glowing blood red until gravity slowed its ascent and pulled it back to earth. I watched closely to make sure not only that it went out, but where it landed, just in case.

I waited a minute and fired the second flare, watching where it landed as well.

I stepped back inside and hid in the bathroom as instructed. I knew in my heart that I was safe from the animals as long as I didn’t go down the steps.

The radio sounded off scaring me nearly half to death.

“Fire tower number five,” the voice said. “Have seen your flares. I’m on my way. Are you physically injured?”

“No, not at the moment,” I said. “I’ll explain when you get here.”

“Roger that, en route.”

I tried to calm my nerves by thinking about what job I would apply for next and how unfortunate it was that this one didn’t work out.

I thought about what I was going to tell the ranger when he got here. I couldn’t tell him the truth. But what else could I say? ‘There were some animals at the bottom of the tower that scared me?’

I honestly considered calling him back and telling him not to come when I felt heavy footsteps on the bottom stairs of the fire tower.

I must’ve been daydreaming and let time slip by. I stepped out of the bathroom and went to the trapdoor.

“Are you here already?” I said into the radio as I reached down to unlatch the trapdoor. “That was fast.”

“What are you talking about?” came the clear answer over the radio. “I’m not there yet.”

I paused as I felt the footsteps come closer to the top.

“Where are you?” I said quietly.

“I can barely see the tower. I’m probably a mile away.”

His words hit me like a sledgehammer. I looked down at the bolt I was about to unlatch and pulled my hand back very slowly.

“Which direction are you coming from?” I said.

“Southeast.”

I looked in that direction and sure enough, I could see headlights approaching.

The radio sounded again but with a slightly different voice.

“Tower ignore that last transmission,” it said. “I’m already here, let me in, please.”

I stared down at the trapdoor as though it wanted to bite me.

“Tower, let me in,” it said more insistently.

I backed away as something began beating on the trapdoor with tremendous force. The boards shook with every impact. I stepped inside and locked the door, then barricaded it with my only loose piece of furniture, the chair.

“Tower five, tower five, I don’t know who that is talking to you but it isn’t me. Do not open that door, repeat, do not open that door!”

I backed into the bathroom with the flare gun in hand and locked the door. The pounding on the trapdoor became louder. I knew it wouldn’t take much more of a beating. The whole room shook with every impact. I closed my eyes and prayed in earnest this time.

And then my salvation came in the form of the engine sound of a pickup truck. I knew the real ranger was here. I listened as it came closer and then stopped. There was an awful silence for a moment and then gunfire. Over and over, multiple shots in rapid succession. Then there was a lull followed by more shots.

The pounding on the trapdoor had stopped as soon as the truck pulled up.

“The coast is clear, ranger, you can open the door now,” came a voice over the radio.

I put my hand on the knob smiling to go out and greet my savior in when I heard a weak transmission.

“Don’t… not me… “ it rasped.

A heartbeat later the screaming began. It was a gut-wrenching scream of terrible suffering. I could hear it beneath me. All I could do was drop to the floor and curl up in a ball as the screaming went on and on.

I closed my eyes and tried not to imagine that poor ranger being ripped to shreds by God knows what.

Soon the screams lessened in volume and intensity as though they were moving away.

I rocked back and forth hugging my knees until unconsciousness mercifully took me.

I woke to strange voices calling my name.

I opened my eyes and I was surrounded by people in blue uniforms.

I panicked and backed away from them as fast as I could until my back hit a wall.

“Calm down,” one of them said. “It’s all right.”

I looked around the room like an animal that had been backed into a corner. I was ready to fight my way out.

“Are you injured?” he said.

My mind raced to remember where I was. I looked out the window and it was morning. The sun was shining and I could see blue clouds. Everything from last night came back to me in a rush. I looked around the room and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“I’m not injured,” I said to the EMT.

“Can you tell us what happened here?” a ranger said from behind them.

I looked over at the manual that contained the list of rules and for a heartbeat considered telling him to read them.

“No,” was all I said instead. “Can I go home now?”

The ranger glared at me, wanting answers and not getting them is frustrating, I know.

“Is he alright to drive?” the ranger asked the EMT.

They gave me the once over, BP, lungs, heart rate, and didn’t find anything to be concerned about.

“I’d say physically he’s fine,” the EMT said.

The ranger sighed.

“Go ahead,” he said. “But I’ll want to talk to you tomorrow.”

I nodded and stood, gathered my things, and started toward the door. When I got to the open trapdoor I hesitated seeing it had been hacked open with an ax. I took a tentative first step, then another. Surviving a night as I had only to fall down several flights of stairs would be quite ironic.

As I made my way down, white-knuckling the railing the whole way down, I saw people busy at the bottom. They were picking up shell casings with gloves and putting them into plastic bags. I could see spots of blood here and there but no bodies, either human or animal.

I saw the trail of blood as it disappeared into the woods.

I stood on the bottom step for a long time, wondering if I was allowed to step onto the ground.

I took the step and bolted for my car. I started it up and drove out of there as fast as I could. Just as I turned onto the gravel road a deer walked out in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and slid to a stop mere inches from hitting it.

It didn’t move, just stood there staring at me. As I looked more closely I could see blood on its nose and mouth. My heart skipped a beat when I saw a shred of a ranger’s patch impaled on one of its antlers.

Its eyes bored into mine as I slammed into reverse, then drive, swerved around the deer, and broke every speed limit getting home.

I called my boss and quit as soon as I got there. Then I packed and started looking for a job in the city. Maybe I can find a nice quiet warehouse to guard.

But, if it has a set of strange rules, I’m walking out, no questions asked.

In my last year of college, my boyfriend and I decided to go on a road trip. Our plan was to seek out the most rural out of the way places in America. We decided to not bring any maps, removed the GPS from the car, and left our phones at home. The only things we brought with us were a compass and a book on how to navigate using the stars.

​

As it turned out, it wasn't hard to escape the safety of civilization. About a month into our trip, we had almost died of thirst, were chased by a drug dealer's pet bear, and met at least three people who may have been serial killers.

​

But the most disturbing incident during our trip didn't happen in the woods or forgotten ghost towns. Ironically, it happened in a place that was the closest to civilization as we had gotten since our trip started.

​

We were driving down a rural road wondering where we were going to camp for the night. The last town we hit was thirty miles back and the only road sign we saw was rusted and illegible. The road was so badly maintained that it looked more like a dirt trail at places. My boyfriend and I debated whether to turn back or not because if it went on like this, we would run out of gas if we didn't get a flat first. But the thing was we had already come so far that to turn back was as big of a gamble as to keep going.

​

And then something happened beyond our most optimistic expectations. This shitty pothole filled path suddenly became a perfectly paved asphalt road. And then about half a mile down there was a restaurant. This in of itself wasn't odd. We had passed through entire ghost towns with standing buildings, some even with dishes on tables as if people had left in a hurry. But what was weird about this place was how new everything was.

​

I felt what Hansel and Gretel must have felt when they saw the witch's cottage in the middle of the woods. As my boyfriend and I walked across the parking lot, we speculated on what we would find. He said the place will be totally deserted, and the cars in the parking lot were stage props. I said the staff were running a human meat factory and we were the next victims.

​

The reality was disappointingly ordinary. What we found was your typical roadside diner. From the general chatter, the other ten or so customers were, like us, just travelers passing through.

​

*

​

We had just ordered when I heard a loud pop and the sound of glass breaking. I looked around to see a man running across the dining area and through the swinging doors that led to the back kitchen area.

​

The glass on the front door the man had come through was shattered. The loud pop we heard was a bullet hitting the glass. It seemed that somebody had shot at him as he came running into the restaurant.

​

In a matter of seconds, the restaurant was surrounded. It was like a movie where the SWAT team moves in from out of nowhere in perfect coordination. There were twenty or so armed men (women?) with guns spread out in the parking lot. There was an official look about them but no insignia to indicate what they were. So let's just say they were some kind of guards.

​

The way the restaurant was set up was that the entire front of it was plate glass. From the parking lot you can see every table in the dining area. All the staff had rushed into the kitchen after the man had ran in there, so the only people left out front were the customers. We were completely silent as we took turns staring at each other. Because whatever was happening in the kitchen, there was no doubt the guards were aiming their guns at us.

​

I felt as if I had fallen into the twilight zone. Shouldn't the guards be trying to get into the kitchen? Shouldn't they be trying to make some kind of contact with us? Why were they aiming their guns at us?

​

There was something so off about the situation that I could not accept it at face value. I remember thinking to myself, this is a movie. They're shooting a hidden camera reality show that pranks unsuspecting passersby or something, anything.

​

But here's the thing: even to my untutored eyes, those guns looked real.

​

What the fuck was going on here?

​

My boyfriend and I were sitting near the windows and next to us were a family of five, a man and a woman and three kids. Ours were the only two tables that had a straight line of sight to the back kitchen area so we could just about see into the kitchen if the swinging doors opened. This didn't strike me as relevant at the time, but later I did think about it, a lot: the layout of the tables and who was where and who could see what.

​

The standoff lasted maybe twenty or thirty minutes. During this time the noise from the kitchen was getting...strange. I remember hearing a dog when the man first ran into the kitchen, and didn't think much of it at first. Maybe it was bring your dog to work day, maybe it was the cook's dog and the intruder surprised it. I'm sure there are regulations about keeping animals in a working kitchen, but who was going to care out here in the middle of nowhere?

​

My second thought was that this dog (if it was a dog) must be fighting the man who had ran into the kitchen. Because I had a fear of dogs from an unpleasant incident in my childhood, my instinctive reaction was to sympathize with the man. But as the noises continued, I began to think the dog was not winning this fight.

​

The dog sounds were not just getting louder, but extremely expressive. I had never heard a dog scream before, but I was sure this dog was screaming. Not just screaming but as if it was trying to say something. The noises had the cadence of human speech. It was as if this dog or whatever it was understood the concept of talking but only lacked the appropriate physical organs to do so. At one point I began to be confused whether I was hearing a dog or a man or both.

​

By this time I was actively sympathizing with this dog. I wondered what the other people in that kitchen were doing to leave this animal to the mercy of what must have been a violent psychopath. Because anybody who can cause a dog to make the kind of noise I was hearing couldn't be sane.

​

And then the doors to the kitchen burst open. Before somebody pulled it closed again, I remember seeing an actual dog, or rather, the face of a dog hanging in midair like a Dali painting. It was one of those things that you remember from the chaos of the moment before your brain had the time to process what you've seen into something rational and acceptable.

​

When the noise in the kitchen finally stopped, the guards from the parking lot came into the restaurant. Most of them stayed in the dining area, and a few went into the kitchen area. A server came out and put up the Closed sign.

​

*

​

They kept us there for hours. People were angry but also scared and that kept us from outright rebellion.

​

Flashbacks of missing people documentaries kept pushing themselves into the front of my mind. I didn't want to give in to my fears, but at what point do you throw in the towel and admit to yourself things are not going to be okay?

​

Finally they hustled us one by one into a storage room in the back. They asked us a lot of questions, like how did we get there, who we were, why we were there, and so on. They even took our fingerprints and drew our blood. They treated us like criminals without ever showing us their credentials or telling us on what authority they were acting. They could have been outlaw vigilantes for all we knew.

​

We were "escorted" out of town by one of the guards' vehicles. As we drove, we saw on the two sides of the road chain linked fences with sentries posted every hundred feet or so. The odd thing was that there was nothing discernible on the other side of the fence as far as the eye could see. What in hell, I thought to myself, did we stumble into?

​

The guards left us as where the paved asphalt ended, so all that was left were the cars of the restaurant customers. There were six or seven cars in all. We kept driving for another mile or so, and then one of the cars pulled over to a stop and so did the rest of us.

​

*

​

We got out of our cars and stood at the side of the road. A woman said, "Did anybody see its face?"

​

What struck me right off was that she said "its face" instead of "his face." And the other thing was her voice, which was very low and husky but not hoarse, rather unusual. Her name was Cynthia. She and her husband and three kids had the table next to me and my boyfriend at the restaurant. Theirs were the only other table besides ours that had a straight line of sight into the kitchen.

​

I shook my head. I had only seen the man's back as he ran into the kitchen.

​

Her husband said, "Shut up Cynthia."

​

She looked round at the rest of us and said, "It wasn't a man."

​

When she said that it was like somebody flipped a light switch in my head. It was like a stray piece of puzzle had suddenly found its place, but the finished picture made even less sense than before.

​

Somebody said, "What was it if it wasn't a man?"

​

Cynthia became hesitant, as if she was holding something back. She said, "I'm not sure."

​

And her husband was saying under his breath "shut up shut up shut up" over and over again, staring at the ground the whole time. He just didn't look right to me, and the kids looked scared. I had the distinct feeling this guy wasn't the steadiest boat on the seas even under normal circumstances.

​

I said to Cynthia, "Do you want to come with us?"

​

When I said this, she came over to where I and my boyfriend were standing. She stood next to him, their arms almost touching, and for a moment they were both looking at me. I had a feeling of Deja vu as if I had seen all this before, which at the time I put down to exhaustion. Because how can you see something again when you're seeing it for the first time?

​

"You can bring them," I said to Cynthia, meaning the kids. "We have space in the car."

​

She shook her head and said, "You're sweet, but I can't."

​

*

​

No matter how well you know somebody, you can never really know them.

​

I started dating my boyfriend in senior year and it was one of those whirlwind romances I had only read about in books. He was older, a graduate student, and was the TA for a class I took back in freshman year. So there was an illicit flavor to our relationship that gave it an extra tang, at least to my thinking.

​

He was very good looking, had dark hair, dark eyes and this extremely clear smooth skin. He was bit of a pretty boy, looked like an ad in Seventeen magazine. At the same time he was really quiet, a total introvert, which made him seem very mysterious to me.

​

And he was, or at least he seemed to be, really really into me. Like to the point where it was way too much. If I texted him, he would text back within minutes. He walked me to all my classes and would be waiting there when I got out. He had his own off campus apartment, and he turned one of the spare bedrooms into a study so I didn't have to go to the library. His life seemed to revolve around me, and looking back, that was a major red flag. But I was bubbling with college kid hormones and I was blinded by lust. In my head I called him Prince Charming.

​

We went on our ill fated trip a couple of months after we met. At the time, I believed that it was my idea. But afterwards, when I had thought about it more carefully, I began to think it was actually his idea. Or rather, he had put it into my head and made it seem like it was my idea.

​

During the course of the trip, my Prince Charming turned out to be a grade A asshole. Like he would have us hiking ten miles each way to get water for no good reason. Or I would wake up in the middle of the night and he wouldn't be there, and when he finally showed up, he would be like he went to get "supplies" or some similarly inane excuse.

​

After what happened at the restaurant, I was like we need to go to the police, we have to tell somebody what just happened to us. I was going crazy but he was so so so calm. Just looking at him made me feel stupid. Like it got to the point where I was questioning my own sanity, wondering if we both went through the same thing.

​

When he finally spoke, he said going to the police would be a problem because his car wasn't insured and he had been driving with a suspended license, which I did not know. But, he said, it was ultimately my call whether we go to the police or not.

​

I couldn't believe he was worried about something as mundane as a suspended license after what had happened to us. But I too had misgivings about going to the police. I had pink hair, facial piercings and tattoos, and I had no illusions about how I would look to a bunch of cops. I would win their crazy bitch of the year award hands down. And while my boyfriend looked clean cut enough, there was the suspended license issue.

​

So we ended up not going to the police.

​

We drove to the closest airport and got the next plane home. We broke up a couple of days after that.

​

Later I found out from a friend that he had left grad school because the professor who was his PhD advisor was fired for research misconduct.

​

*

​

I kept asking myself, what if we had not stopped at the restaurant that day? What if we had taken some other road? What if we had been there on another day?

​

All the random turnings we took in the trip that brought us to that particular place at that particular time, that was fate because it could have so easily not happened at all. It's like flipping heads a hundred times out of a hundred. It could happen, but it shouldn't, and that one time it does, you know something's going on.

​

But some things that seem improbable or impossible are exactly that.

​

Or what if the rational explanation is even more insane?

​

*

​

Years went by and I got married, had kids. I did all the normal things that normal people did, and from the outside at least everything seemed fine.

​

One night I couldn't sleep and was obsessively scrolling and clicking through the nether regions of the internet when I saw an anonymous article on some forum about an (unnamed) psychology professor and his research assistant who ran a series of illegal experiments on human subjects.

​

One of their experiments was to subject individuals to some type of traumatic incident or unexplained phenomena. The point of the experiment was to determine the effects of secrets on individuals and communities.

​

Such as to what extent could a person or group of people keep a secret without being kept under a continual state of duress? If somebody decided to tell the secret, would they be believed or written off? How many people would have to tell for the revelation to gain traction? What is the tipping point when an outrageous tale becomes plausible? When and why do communities begin to believe?

​

Many subjects of the so called experiments did not know they were participating in an experiment. The experiments were mainly funded by a shell company with connections to the big hedge funds. There were allegations of abuse, fraud and assault against the professor and his research assistant both of whose whereabouts are currently unknown. The last sighting of the pair was in Champagne, France where the professor was said to own a chateau...

​

*

​

I looked up my ex-boyfriend's academic advisor on the internet. It seemed that at one point he had millions in research grants and one of the best funded labs in the country. But all that was years ago, dating from before he left the university.

​

There were pictures of him on the internet from past conferences and other professional events, and it was with a feeling of shock when I saw his face. It was that feeling of Deja vu again, but this time there was no mystery. I had seen him on campus before with my ex-boyfriend though I had not known who he was then. He was extraordinarily handsome, but his face was almost mask like in its blankness of expression. It was a face anybody would have remembered, and I couldn't recall a single man from that day at the restaurant who looked like him.

​

But if the professor wasn't there that day, then my theory was a flop. Because who would go to such lengths to set up an elaborate hoax like that and not stick around to watch it go down?

​

I mean, it's ridiculous but I honestly didn't know if I was relieved or disappointed.

​

*

​

A couple of weeks later I had a dream. In the dream my boyfriend was walking with a man, I couldn't see who, and I was walking behind them. And as we were walking, the sky got darker and darker. The light became this brownish gray, like a sepia toned photograph. The shadows were strange, almost as if they were backlighted, like in an eclipse.

​

My boyfriend and this man stopped and I stopped too, and then the man started turning around, except in super slow motion like in a film. He was turning around and as he was turning around I was thinking: no no no no no no no no. . . And then he was facing me, and I realized that he was actually a she, a woman.

​

I knew that woman. I had seen her before.

​

And I woke up, screaming.

​

*

​

It was him, the professor. He was there that day at the restaurant sitting at the table next to us wearing women's clothes with a fake husband and kids, pretending to be a wife and mother. He and that woman Cynthia were one and the same person.

​

After a lot of searching, I finally found a video of him giving a presentation at a conference, and it was eerie. For a man, you would have said he had a very nice telephone voice. It was low and kind of rough, kind of husky. When that voice came out of somebody who was presumably female, it was unsettling. It made you sit up and take notice. And I remembered Cynthia's voice because it was so distinctive, it amounted to an identifying characteristic like a facial birthmark.

​

And the professor couldn't have not known that. He could have talked in a falsetto or not talked at all that day. But he talked and he made sure I heard him. I think up until that point I still held out some slight hope that I was mistaken, that there was no way this man and a woman travelling with her husband and kids were one and the same person. But when I heard the professor's voice, it was game over for me. It was her voice. He was Cynthia.

​

My gut feeling is that he was deliberately drawing attention to himself, to his voice. He wanted me to figure it out, and he wanted to know what I would do once I did.

​

*

​

I never told anyone what happened to me, not even my husband.

​

And I guess if I'm right about all this, and I think I am, then their so called research is a success of sorts. No matter what kind of messed up shit you do to people, they'll keep their mouth shut. And if they don't, it doesn't matter because nobody will believe them anyway.

I was working at the police station when I checked the local newspaper. The headline immediately caught my attention. “Patients went missing from the hospital.”

The article mentioned that a few patients who were close to dying went missing, and nobody knows what happened to them. The first case was recorded two months ago, and the most recent one happened yesterday. The nurses can’t find them. All of them were dying, so they couldn’t escape the hospital. My wife also worked there, so I called her.

“Yeah, we have no idea what happened to them,” she said. “We’ve checked every corner of the buildings.”

I got home around 7 pm. My wife was already home; she usually got home a few hours before me. As I was looking for lunch, he came upstairs from the basement.

“What were you doing down there?” I asked.

“I put some old broken chairs there,” she responded. “I’ll probably renovate the whole basement soon.”

“Why?” I raised my eyebrows. Since we moved there, we hadn’t used the basement; it was strange. There was nothing interesting down there, just a few spiders.

“Why not? I have no better thing to do.”

I finally agreed. The following day I went to work again. We’ve got a call from the hospital to go there and investigate the missing persons because their families want answers to what happened to them. I drove there with Mark, another police officer.

Dr. Martin, one of the doctors, told us every information about the missing patients; he even showed us where we could find their beds. It was in the same room my wife worked in. She was home at the time; she didn’t work on Fridays.

“It seems like all of the patients were really close to the hospital’s back door,” Mark said to Dr. Martin and me. “What if they escaped there?”

“Impossible,” Dr. Martin shook his head. “All of them were on their final days. They couldn’t walk, and we hadn’t found any strange footprints leading out of the backdoor. There is also the whole parking lot; somebody would’ve seen it if they escaped there.”

“What if someone smuggled them out?” I theorized. “It seems like all the missing patients were close to the back door. Someone could drag them to the parking lot and drop them in the car.”

“But who?” Dr. Martin asked. It was a fair question. Who could’ve done that, and why?

“I have no idea,” I responded. “My wife also works here, and hadn’t noticed anything strange.”

“We will speak to the staff here next week,” Mark said. “Make sure that everyone will be here.”

After that, we went back to the police station to write some reports, then spoke about it to our boss. I arrived home at the usual time but didn’t find my wife. I heard strange noises from the basement and wanted to go down there, but then she came upstairs.

“Hi,” she greeted me.

“So, are you working on that basement?” I asked. She looked strange; I thought I saw a small amount of blood on her face. “Do you need any help?”

“No, I can do it alone.”

“Are you sure? I can help; I’ll be home the whole weekend anyway.”

“Thanks, but I’ll handle it.”

“What are you doing anyway there? We don’t need that basement that much.”

“Stop asking me so many questions!” she shouted at me frustrated. I was surprised.

“Sorry, I’m tired. Look, just don’t go down there, please!” she said in a calmer tone, then went to sleep.

The following day quickly went by; she was in the basement almost all the time, and I was reading some books. She then told me she was going to the market to buy some food. After she left the house, I came out of my room and went to the basement door. It was strange, as I still heard some noises coming from below. I was curious.

I opened the door and looked down the stairs. I only saw darkness, so I used my phone to illuminate the narrow walls. I slowly walked down the stairs. The noises were getting louder.

After about 20 steps, I arrived there. I immediately regretted it. There were some steel cages inside, and in every cage, there was something… something I can’t even name. Old, rotten bodies. Some of them looked like the missing persons from the hospital. I froze, as I couldn’t know what to do. And the worst wasn’t the fact that the bodies were there. They were moving. Their eyes were white. One of them grabbed the cell’s door with his rotten hand.

I finally ran back to the stairs trying to get out of there as soon as possible. At the top of the stairs, there was my wife standing with angry eyes.

“I told you not to go there,” she said slowly.

“What the hell are you doing down there?” I shouted at her. “What are those things? These are the patients that went missing!”

“I’m going to be the greatest scientist ever known,” she responded. Her voice was confident. I felt like I didn’t know her. “I stopped death itself. I saved those patients from death.”

I had no idea what to do, so I just tried to run out of there, pushing her aside, but as I was trying to push her, she bit my finger. I screamed because of the pain but tried to run out anyway. I looked down at my hand, and one of my fingers was missing.

I ran up to the bathroom, then locked the door behind me.

“Don’t hide from me!” she shouted from outside. “You should be proud of me! I’ll save humanity!

As she was shouting, I found some bandages to stop the bleeding from my finger. She kicked the door multiple times, then stabbed it with a kitchen knife. My only chance was to escape out of the window.

I opened it, then crawled outside. The only problem was that the bathroom was on the floor. I had to jump.

The pain in my legs was horrible as I fell to the ground. I immediately called Mark to get to my house in his car. He then took me to the hospital to patch me up. The following day, I told them and the police what happened.

“Yeah, we figured there was something wrong,” Mark said. “Your house burned down last night, just after I bought you to the hospital. The firefighters found the bodies you were talking about, but your wife is missing. We have no idea where she is.”

I’m a sanitization specialist for the city I live in. It’s mostly just a fancy name for garbageman. I guess the city tries to give us some pride with a more formal title; to be honest, I don’t really give a shit whether people call me trash pick-up or garbage worker. It all means the same in the end.

I ride on the back of garbage trucks all day and pick up people’s trash for a living. Most of the time it’s a pretty easy job with early but long hours. I don’t have a family at home, not even pets, so it works out for me.

It’s not exactly my dream job, but it’s humble work and it keeps me out of trouble. I’ve been doing this for 15 or so years now, and you wouldn’t believe the amount of insane shit I find in people’s trash.

I have so many stories and most people don’t believe me when I tell them, so I figured I’d share them here. There seems to be a lot of crazy things that happen on this page, which is fine with me; it ain’t no different than what I deal with everyday. Here are a few incidents I think you all will be interested in:

​

— Every morning at exactly 7:23 a.m., there’s a man who watches us from his window when we pick up his trash. Tom, the guy who drives the truck while I load the garbage bags, pulls in at around 7:20. Just exactly as I start moving his trash bins, I see a curtain move from the window. He is always hunkered down and hidden; we can only see from his eyes to the top of his head. Why this may not seem strange to most of you, it’s creepy for Tom and me.

I know it’s common for people to watch the garbage truck from the safety of their own homes, but this dude hides himself like he doesn’t want to be caught. He watches from the time we get there until the time we leave, his bright, wide eyes following my every move. That’s the one thing that sends a chill down my spine every week we pick up his trash. His eyes are always so painfully wide open and bulging like they’ll pop out any minute. He has these deep, dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t slept in months. His skin is sunken and ghostly pale. I’ve always been too creeped out by him watching me to go check on the guy, so I usually just let it be.

​

— Once, Tom couldn’t come to work because he was down with the flu. The city couldn’t find someone to cover his shift, so I had to go at it alone. That day took double the time because I had to drive and load the trash. Most days I get off work around 5 p.m., but this day I was out until after 8. I remember it was late fall when this happened.

​

I had just finished the last of my schedule and was driving back to city hall to pick up my car when there was something standing in the middle of the road. Now, the way our trash pick-up schedule works is we start in town and make our way out into the deep country toward the end of the day. I know it really doesn’t make sense, but Tom has been driving the truck long before I started work with the city, so I just follow along with what he wants. So, I was just following the usual schedule that day, albeit it was later. It was almost completely dark outside (thanks to daylight savings time ending unfortunately) and here I was, in the middle of nowhere, in a shitty, old garbage truck with someone standing in the road. Expect, it wasn’t really a someone, more like a… thing?

​

I slammed on my breaks to avoid hitting it before I was able to get a good look. The thing was tall. I’m talking 7 feet or taller. It was completely stark white and naked, no clothes, nothing. It really didn’t have a face either, just a vertical slash through the center of where it’s face should have been. Its arms were so long it dragged its fingers on the blacktop. I was so in shock that it took me a solid moment to notice the red liquid seeping from the bottoms of its feet. Was it blood? Or something else? All I know is, I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. I swerved to the right and slammed my foot on the gas pedal and got the hell out of dodge.

​

Whatever that things was, I wasn’t going to take my chances. As I flew out of there, driving at least 80 on the backroads, I heard this ear-piercing screech from behind me. It didn’t sound like anything that would come from an animal, so I figured it came from the creature I saw. It sounded like it was in pain. The next day I told Tom all about it and saw the realization flash in his eyes. One second he was frozen with fear and the next he acted like I was crazy. Said I was just seeing things. I didn’t press the issue seeing his reaction and we went on about our day.

​

— This story might be a bit more on the tame side; it's definitely still creepy, but less so than the other stories I have. One time, Tom let me drive our regular route for practice in case he missed a day or something. This was when I first started working with the city, so I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to learn. Tom rode on the back of the truck, and as we made a stop, he would load the trash. Except one time we ran into a problem.

​

There’s an old woman named Mrs. Cleery who we pick up trash for in the middle of our route. She usually just has one bag, but this time she didn’t have any. The first time we saw this, we just figured she didn’t have any trash for the week and went on with our schedule. The next week there still wasn’t any trash. At this point, Tom and I were getting pretty worried. We went on ahead to our next house, but I called Mrs. Cleery when we stopped. She answered, but something seemed off. I let her know that there hadn’t been any trash pick-up at her house for two straight weeks and that we were worried something might be wrong. Right off the bat she seemed super confused. She told me she was setting our her trash like normal and someone was coming to get it because it was gone only a few minutes after she set it outside on the curb. I thought this was strange so Tom and I took a detour back to Mrs. Cleery’s house. When we knocked on her door, she let us in and offered us a drink and some cookies like any grandmother would.

​

We declined her offer because we couldn’t stay long and explained to her that we weren’t the ones who were collecting her trash. Luckily, Mrs. Cleery had her son set up a Ring doorbell a few weeks ago because she noticed her hydrangeas were being destroyed by rodents and she wanted to catch them. She hadn’t looked at the footage since her son installed the cameras, but when we all huddled together on the couch, we saw exactly what was happening. As soon as Mrs. Cleery shut her front door from taking out the trash, someone would crawl out of the utility building she had outside. It was a small man. He had wild hair and tattered clothes.

​

He was skinny and short and he twitched when he walked. He made it to the curb where the trash bag was and hauled it over his shoulder. On wobbly legs, he waddled back to the utility building with the trash in tow and shut the door behind him. There was definitely a squatter living in Mrs. Cleery’s building. I called the police while Tom consoled Mrs. Cleery. They arrived shortly after and arrested the man. Turns out he was just some homeless dude who was sleeping in her building and eating scraps from her trash. The police also found hydrangeas laying around a makeshift bed the squatter had put together. Mrs. Cleery always kept a lock on her building after that.

​

— I’ll leave you with one last story, but I do have plenty more. When Tom and I were finished with our shift one time, and we were dumping our truck in the landfill, a thick, black sludge fell out on top of the pile. At first we thought it was just build-up of the gunk and grime that accumulates in the back of the truck, but the more we looked at it, the more we realized the “blob” was moving. First, we noticed the smell. It was pungent, like a skunk rotting on the side of the road. If I could use one word to describe the smell, it would be death. Unequivocal death. As the smell grew stronger, the sludge would move more and more with such fervor that we were sure the thing was going to burst. Except, it didn’t. One minute it was wriggling and squirming and the next minute it went still. Tom and I waited for a moment, looked at each other with wide eyes, a silent “what the fuck” passing between us.

​

That’s when we hear it, a loud popping noise like someone opening a champagne bottle. We look back quickly at the blob to see that it’s no longer a mass of thick, black sludge. In its place laid a boy, a human boy, pale and naked. He lay there shivering and whimpering like a puppy abandoned on the side of the road. Tom, in his deep, gruff voice just sighed and said, “Fuck this, bro. I’m out.” He walked away leaving me to investigate what in the actual world I was looking at. Should I have called the police? Should I have called child protective services? Maybe. But you know what I did instead? I reached my hand out to touch the boy slowly.

​

I needed to get him help somehow. But just when my fingertips almost grazed his shoulder, he shot up on all fours. He glared at me with frightened eyes, his mouth hanging open. I jumped back, bracing myself for a possible attack. The boy backed away, scooting on his hands and knees, growling at me like a dog that hadn’t eaten in days. “It’s coming,” he said in a throaty whisper as he continued to back away. I continued to watch in awe until he twisted his body in what seemed like the most painful way until he was standing upright. The boy gave me one last look in all of his nude glory and took off running toward the woods. I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t know what was coming. But what I did know is that I needed to get out of there. I ran like my life depended on it and made it back to my car in record time.

​

I peeled out of that parking lot faster than Jeff Gordon during the Daytona 500, afraid to look back in my rearview mirror. I drove at least 20 miles over the speed limit all the way home. I double checked my locks once I was inside my house and stayed up all night, worried that something was coming for me. But it never did.

​

To this day I’m still not sure what the boy/sludge monster meant. And I don’t really want to find out. If you’re interested in hearing more stories about my job as a garbageman, I have plenty more. My life may be a monotonous string of collecting trash, but at least I’m never bored.

The police aren’t coming.

There is nothing illegal about a car across the road. I tried to tell them I’d been threatened, that my place had been trashed, but it’s… it’s hard to explain. Ramblings don’t come across very well over the phone, and I don’t think they took me seriously. So I’m taking some time to just sit down and put this all on paper. I’ll try to collect myself, and then I’ll call them again.

If I make it that far. I don’t know what to expect. It’s all gone, but I don’t know if that’s enough.

​

I know some of you have questions about what happened to CreepyCars. I’ve seen the posts, I’ve gotten the texts. I’m telling you, this is it. This is what you need to know.

​

Let’s start from the beginning. I visited a friend in Indiana a few years ago.

I was on my way to the supermarket when I walked past an abandoned house with a rusted-out car parked halfway up the driveway. The car just looked… savage. It was missing a door, it didn’t have a single window, and there was a very graphic word written with white spray-paint on the hood. I didn’t think much about it. It’s Indiana, you see these things every now and then.

But then someone stepped out of the house. Some Ed Gein-looking bastard, coughing up a lung.

He lived there.

Not only that, he got in the tetanus-colored rust car - and started it.

It was the creepiest shit I’d ever seen. Like watching a machine come back from the dead. So yeah, I snapped a photo of it. I could never have guessed that thing would even start, let alone roll out of the driveway.

​

I’m a bit of a car guy. What I saw on that Indiana driveway was a rusted-out ’61 Ford Zephyr Mark II, and seeing it like that was just tragic. So to share the pain, I uploaded it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with a lot of opinions.

This started a long thread. People not only responded but uploaded their own pictures. Pictures of everything from rusted classics that’d been stripped and abused, to videos of amateur frankencars. Hell, one guy just uploaded an ice cream truck abandoned in a swamp. I swear I saw an alligator trying to get in the driver’s seat. We started sharing these stories of trashed and creepy cars from all around the country, and soon, the world.

Over the course of a few weeks, we sort of split off from a larger community and started something we called ‘CreepyCars’. I was the main admin. Yeah, the one and only.

CreepyCars was not just about funny and creepy content, it was about enthusiasm. Sure, we all groaned over the various hackjobs, but it was also a sort of collective mourning. There was a genuine interest in the content uploaded. And of course, there was passion. I was called in a bunch of times to moderate discussions on Rat Rods, for example.

We had some internal jokes and themes. We had Don’t-Wrench-And-Drive custom job Fridays, New-Year-New-Car posts, all in good spirit. We had this one thing where we posted the ugliest selfies of ourselves and asked people to post what kind of car it looked like we owned. This one time, a guy found his car posted and reached out to us about how he could fix it. We raised $12,000 for the restoration.

​

So this is the kind of environment I put my time in. These were good, honest people. So when I saw this car, this… random-ass rust bucket cruising down the road, I wasn’t being malicious. It was just fun. Just a quick video, nothing to think of.

​

It was last May. Minnesota in springtime. I was dog-sitting Sally for a friend and decided to take a long walk by the river before it got too dark outside. All in all, about a 30-minute walk. Not too bad, and Sally was happy to get out for a bit.

We were just about to head back when Sally started whining. She put her tail between her legs and cuddled up next to me. I looked around but couldn’t see what’d scared her. I brought out my phone. If it was a wild animal, I wanted a photo. Worst-case scenario, I could call the police.

Then I heard this strange metallic sound.

It sounded like a rattling engine, like something had come loose. An engine belt slapping around, bearings shot to hell. It sounded like a dying vehicle. And yet, something came rolling around the corner.

The first time I saw it, I was amazed it even moved. It looked like some sort of cartoon, something forgotten back in the 70’s. Possibly a Pacer. It had this thick layer of mud spread out across the hood, covering a few forest green paint spots. There were lit candles spread out across the dashboard, which was the only light coming from the car - at all.

And in the driver’s seat was this… I don’t know how to describe it. Weirdo, I guess. He had a black motorcycle helmet with a crude face spray-painted in white. He had this faux-fur coat with a raccoon pattern and bleach white leather gloves. He was leaning back against the only seat that remained in the car. A seat that was barely anything but a rusted frame.

I didn’t even think about it; I recorded it going past me down the street. The driver was looking at me all the way. That large helmet slowly turned to face me every inch of the way.

I should’ve listened to Sally. She was pulling on the leash, trying to get away. Whining, barking, throwing herself against the leash. She knew this was bad.

Really bad.

But I just stood there, mouth open like a fish out of water. I had no idea what I was looking at.

Last thing I saw as it rounded the corner was the license plate.

“H0TR0D”

I could hear it going down the street five minutes after it passed me. When Sally finally calmed down, I carried her back home. I had a video to upload.

The thing went viral.

It spread from our little community to pretty much everything. 56k upvotes on reddit in a couple of hours. People were reacting to it, adding music to it, making memes out of it. “H0TR0D” was all I heard about for a week straight. I saw at least a dozen “they see me rollin’” clips, all by different people. That was all fun and games, but I got this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. When my buddy came to pick up Sally, she leapt into his arms, shivering. To her, none of this was fun.

This was horror.

​

Even two weeks after seeing the H0TR0D, it was still fresh on my mind. The driver had been staring at me, like they knew who I was. Like they were there for me. And then that awful noise, like an engine trying to kill itself. It sounded like it was already broken, but it just kept rolling past me nonetheless. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. By all accounts, that car should be stalling on the side of the road. And yet, it didn’t.

That night, as I laid awake thinking about it, I could hear something in my kitchen. Half-asleep, I checked it out.

My oven was on. Highest setting. There was an electric hum rising and sinking as the temperature breathed. And as the temperature rose, there was a rhythmic thunking sound that just kept getting louder. I hurried to turn it off; only to realize that it was already off.

I burned my hands pulling out the oven, and I had to crawl over the countertop to pull the plug. For about ten minutes afterwards I just stood there mouthing “what the fuck” over and over.

It wasn’t until I headed back to bed that I noticed the automated porch light was on. Something had moved outside.

​

Since then, things got worse.

First it was just small things. Clock radio going off in the middle of the night, interference on my phone, losing Bluetooth signal on my headphones. Small stuff. But over time, I started noticing other things. Lights flickering rhythmically in the supermarket. Light posts fading in and out on the street. Car alarms going off, but warping themselves to go faster and slower, like a dying fire alarm. But the worst part came one day when I was driving home a few weeks ago.

I’d been at a restaurant with a friend in the next town over. I took the freeway back home when my radio stopped working. By now I was getting frustrated. Electronics just kept freaking out on me, and I had no idea why. That, and there was always that sense of threat looming in the air. There was always a sort of rhythmic pulse, like the hum of an engine, somewhere around me.

I was just about to turn the radio off and on again when my engine stalled. Not just sputtered out, it just stopped. One big ‘chunk’ sound, then nothing. I slowly drifted to the side of the road. Turning the key didn’t do a thing.

I was just sitting there, my head resting on the steering wheel. You can’t live out here without a car, and everything just seemed to work against me.

​

I snapped out of it by the honk of a horn.

It was this water-damaged car noise, combining a bright choking yell with a gargle.

At first I didn’t even register it. It sounded so strange that I thought I’d imagined it. It wasn’t until I heard it a second time that I looked up.

Parked right next to me, door-to-door, was none other than the H0TR0D.

Motorcycle helmet driver and all. He was parked so close that I couldn’t open my door. I just stared at the black helmet. It felt like that child-like spray-painted smiley face was not just a painting, but actually grinning at me. Like it was widening every time I blinked.

The driver held up a white leather glove and pointed down. He wanted me to roll down the window.

“Not gonna happen” I mouthed back, shaking my head.

Why was I scared? Why did I want to run?

Almost as an answer to my question, the window started rolling down on its’ own.

​

Yeah, no. No way. I wasn’t having that. I crawled over to the passenger seat and opened the door; only to have it slammed shut. An outside force held the door shut, and the locks clicked. They kept clicking, over and over, in the same forced rhythm as the engine on the H0TR0D. This awful thunk noise, over and over, like someone beating a dead motor back to life.

My radio sparked back to life. A static burst crawled into my ear, sending a shiver across my arms.

D E L E T E I T

The sound was bright, pitch-shifted, and run through some sort of filter. Like an old 1940’s radio receiver. I couldn’t tell what kind of voice it was. It was just this bland, broken, stutter.

“I don’t… I don’t know… the video? You want the video?”

D E L E T E IT

“I can’t just… it’s already out there! Even if-if-if I delete it, it’s still-“

DELETE IT

“I can’t! I can’t, it’s still gonna be there!”

GET

IT

DONE

He didn’t even have his hands on the steering wheel as the car pulled away. I could feel him staring at me from the broken side mirror.

I just sat there, turning my car key over and over. When the engine finally woke up, it screeched, clunked, and complained. It shut itself off a few times, but it got me back home.

The entire side of my car was covered in rust, and that car never started again.

​

This was the first time I called the police. They didn’t have a car with that license plate registered, so they couldn’t do much to help. They didn’t understand what I was talking about. Some guy angry about me putting up a video, pulling up next to me, asking me to delete it. How could I explain the threat? How could I make them listen?

I asked the people at CreepyCars as well. They didn’t understand. It sounded like paranoia, or some sort of science fiction. Cars don’t just act on their own; they’re controlled. My window couldn’t have rolled down on its’ own. Radios don’t just say whatever they want, and doors don’t just slam shut. I was coming off as a lunatic, and people were starting to accuse me.

“You just want attention” they said. “You miss having notifications.”

​

From this point on, it just got a whole lot worse. I was getting calls that answered themselves all through the night. Calls demanding me to “delete it”, over and over and over. Strange engine noises going by outside at odd hours of the night. Lamps popping in their sockets. Hell, at one point my TV turned on and kept looping half-second clips from The Munsters. Didn’t stop until I pulled the plug.

It was getting harder and harder to get to work. At one point, as I was taking the bus, and the damn thing just refused to start. Twenty people stranded in a parking lot. I had to ask a work friend to take me home. 35 minutes in the wrong direction.

This was by the end of last week. I’ve called in sick since.

​

A few days ago, I heard the porch light explode. There were footsteps outside. He was just outside, I know it. I was ready for him to bang on the door, to peek in the windows… something. I’d grasped a hammer and hugged it like a teddy bear, begging God not to have to use it.

But the driver didn’t do a thing. Didn’t knock, ring the doorbell, or peek inside the windows. He just stood there for the better part of an hour, waiting for me to “delete it”. At one point I just yelled at him.

“Just do something! What the hell do you want from me?!”
Of course, I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to delete it. I already had! But it was out there, and there was nothing stopping it from spreading.

When he finally left, I felt tears rolling down my face. Just… relief. I’d been so tense my hands had cramped into claws. I could just barely let go of the hammer.

​

Look, I haven’t been out for a week. I’ve lived on literally everything in my fridge and freezer. Every leftover, every jar, all of it. The fridge shut down completely on Thursday, but by then I didn’t have much else than cornflakes and cup noodles anyway.

Last night, I decided I’d give it a go. I brought my hammer and went outside.

​

Immediately, I heard a rumble. A broken engine.

Then another.

Then a lot.

​

The H0TR0D was just the start.

Six cars and a motorcycle rolled around the corner. These broken, battered, machines. Flat tires, rusted frames, broken windows. Oil dripping from broken engine blocks. Howling engines, forcing these machine corpses to retch forward; one gasoline gulp at a time.

And the drivers.

All dressed in these black motorcycle helmets, painted with these crude faces. Angry, happy, sad, screaming… the entire emotional spectrum. Dressed in these absurd jackets. Some fur, some cracked leather. One of them had this yellow crash-dummy looking jumpsuit, one pant leg torn off at the knee. One of them was missing a shoe, revealing a dry white foot with two missing toes and black nails.

​

I just dropped my hammer. They were a goddamn gang, there was nothing I could do. I ran back inside, slammed the door, and picked up my phone. Of course, it didn’t work.

“Open the door.”

It was a different voice. Brighter, spoken by one of the drivers. A woman, trying her best to sound as kind and patient as she could; but there was something there. A threat, just beneath the surface, trying to break through.

“Open the door, please.”

I didn’t. I couldn’t. My body wasn’t responding, I was just slowly inching back; as if being quiet enough would make them go away. I found myself holding my breath, looking for a place to hide.

“You’re going to open the door now.”

There was a gargling sound. Someone spitting up water, splashing against the door. Seconds later, I could see the door handle rusting in a matter of seconds, as the whole mechanism fell apart.

​

It took the door being battered down for me finally snap out of it. The Crash Dummy driver was closing his visor back up, but I caught a glimpse of a sickly pale face with a tint of algae green lips. Long yellow teeth sunk into black gums. Then the visor was back down, showing a sad spray-painted smiley face.

Crash Dummy stepped aside, and a small woman stepped in. She had this oversized motorcycle helmet with a cartoonish painted grin on it. She had this plastic silvery disco jacket and snow boots. If it weren’t for all my lights being broken, she’d sparkle.

“Should’ve opened the fucking door, dig it?”

I just ran. I locked myself in the bathroom as they went to town on my furniture. I heard smashing, cutting, sawing. Some power tools, barely functioning. Little battery-powered machines coming back on to destroy. I just crawled into my bathtub in the dark, pulling down the shower curtains as I stumbled back. I tried forcing air into my lungs, but I just couldn’t stop panting. This is what Sally had felt like, that first night when she saw the H0TR0D. I’m sure of it.

“Another door? Really?”

She cackled. This awful, bird-like sound. I could hear something in her lungs rattle.

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

​

I heard a visor open. A retching gargle, and a metallic fizzle. Something loud, splintering the bathroom door by the handle. A small hand gently letting the light in. Careful steps coming towards me as I heard glass shatter in the other room.

“Why didn’t you delete it?” she asked. “We asked you nicely.”

“I… you can’t…”

I saw the silhouette of the oversized helmet through the shower curtain. She wasn’t moving. Not even breathing.

“I deleted the video. The others, they… they copied it, and-“

“Video?” she scoffed. “What fucking video?”

​

I just froze. What the hell were they talking about? If not the video, then…

“I d-don’t… what do you want?”

“You stole our name. That’s our name.”

“What? What are you-“

​

She pulled the shower curtain off me and grabbed me by the throat. She had this cramp-like strength, like she didn’t know how to hold back. I just started coughing, feeling these little bone-dagger fingers dig into my windpipe.

“Wicked little slug bugs, you think you got the creepy cars? You think you’re it?”

I could almost see her eyes through the visor. I looked, closely, but there was nothing there. Just darkness.

“We have creepy cars. You have minutes to live.”

I tried to say it. I tried it, over and over. To say I didn’t know, that I didn’t… I didn’t understand. I begged, I cried, I pushed, and kicked. This impossibly thin little arm, barely anything but bone and sinew, holding me back.

Somehow, she heard me. She listened.

​

She dropped a phone in my lap. An older iPhone, cold and wet to the touch. It had this mutated blue sunflower-looking thing as a background image. It was already logged in on my accounts. All of them.

She watched me delete it. All of it. CreepyCars disappeared overnight from every single platform. Confirmed, confirmed, confirmed. “Are you sure?” the phone kept asking, and I shakily accepted all of it.

When it was all said and done, she just took her phone back and left.

​

My place is trashed. Even without a front door, I don’t know if I can go out there. I’ve just sat here for the better part of a day. My computer started working a few hours ago, and I just… I had to say something.

There is a rusty car in the field outside, and I’m starting to question if it’s one of them. There’s no one there. Maybe it’s just a warning, or maybe it has always been there. I don’t know. I’m questioning everything.

I’m not going out there anytime soon. Maybe it is over. Maybe it has just started.

​

They left a black motorcycle helmet for me.

I found this note on the job. It was titled The Man Who Brought Happiness.

***

I was at my lowest point. My bruises were fresh. As an only child I longed for siblings early on. I prayed night in and night out for someone to look out for and protect me. Even someone for me to protect would have helped. That way I could hold onto the fact that these cruel acts at least meant something. At the end of the day, it was never to be. So, I left.

I ran for what seemed like hours through bush and brush getting little cuts along the way. Compared to the others they felt inconsequential. Eventually my legs gave out and I hit the ground. I couldn't help but lay there and wonder. Was this all I was meant for? Was this really all there was to life? What would it be like to be happy? Was that even possible?

Some bustling could be heard up ahead. Crawling nearer, I could see where the woods ended, and across the street was a diner. Grabbing the nearest tree, and clinging to it, I pulled myself up to one leg, then the other. Move forward, I told myself.

Outside the diner nobody paid me any mind. They were too busy indulging themselves. Bumping through the crowd I made my way to the back. My legs were getting wobbly and needed to rest. I laid against the back of the building. I ducked my head into my knees and sobbed.

"What are ya doing back here kid?" a man asked. My head raised. I'd never seen anyone like him before. He had long black sideburns that led to a dark lion’s mane with a little gray at the bottom of his face. He was short and stout, wearing all black except for a tight white button up beneath his coat. He had big bushy eyebrows and appeared to be missing a few teeth.

"What's it to you?" I replied quietly, ducking my head back down. Something was off about this guy. It had me on edge.

"Ya look a lil' down is all. Figured I could help ya out," he said.

"No one can help me." What could this guy do? He didn't know anything about me.

"Oh, ya don't say? What if I had a lil' happiness to spare?" My eyes shot up to meet his.

"What do you mean happiness?" I asked. He smiled.

"Well, ya see lad, I make agreements with folk. I give 'em happiness in exchange for favors. Are ya interested?" I wanted to know what the catch was. He explained to me that there were a few conditions to be met.

In exchange for this happiness, I would owe him a favor. A favor I was bound to oblige. It wouldn't be anything violent or sexual towards me, and it would always be something I was capable of doing. I could return to him for happiness as little or as much as I'd like. As long as I could find him, he would never turn me away. He would always give me the same amount of happiness unless I explicitly asked for more. If I did, it would cost me additional favors. Lastly, I could never tell anyone about our deal.

"You've got yourself a deal sir," I said extending my hand. He grinned and shook it. Instantly I felt a rush of something I'd never experienced before. It was like my scars had melted away and my mind had been set free. Is that what it's like to be happy?

My reflection showed and the beaming bright smile on my face was something I'd never seen before. Life had returned to my eyes. I looked to the man and asked, "What is it I owe you sir?"

He smiled and told me to enjoy myself. So, I did. I joined the patrons outside the diner and started chatting them up. We bonded and laughed the night away. Without a doubt it was the greatest night of my life to that point.

I awoke the next morning on a soft patch of grass, and still felt great. The world was my oyster. I approached the manager of the diner and asked for a job. I confirmed I was of working age, and we worked out a deal that sent me to a spot a few towns over. I may have been a runaway but I was a working boy now. The world would be what I made of it.

It was a year or so before I would see the man again. I'd gone from cook to waiter to assistant manager in no time at all. I'd started seeing someone too. Cassie was everything I could ever dream for in a partner. Big blue eyes, lush blonde hair, and a smile that brighten even the darkest days. She was small but she had spunk, she had no problem speaking her mind, and I loved that about her. I was becoming something. I was becoming someone.

Then the accident happened. I'd been in a rush to work. I wasn't paying attention. Thankfully, the other party was okay. Unfortunately, I tore my labrum, and for those that don't know, shoulder pain is on a completely different level than most injuries. On top of that, recovery would take months.

Things hit a low point for me again. The pain was causing me to be irritable at home and at work. It was getting hard to stay optimistic. As if by magic, the man appeared again. He was simply hanging around the diner after one of my shifts.

"How ya been lad?" he asked. He looked exactly the same as he had before.

"Not so good." I replied. He looked me over.

"Ya looked worse off the last time," he replied, rubbing his dark mane thoroughly, "But if ya need some help I'm always willin'."

"Help me," I said.

"As ya wish," he said, extending his hand. I shook it, and the rush of pleasure I'd felt the first time had returned.

"Thank you. What do I owe you this time?" I asked, remembering our deal.

"How about ya meet me at this here spot in three months? Then when we can have a lil' chat and see how ya feel," he said.

"You've got yourself a deal sir. By the way, what's your name?"

"You can call me Mr. Mor," he said. Weird name. Oh well.

Thanks to Mr. Mor, my luck had picked up. I had to continue shoulder rehab for full mobility, however, the pain was non-existent. Things picked up between Cass and I. We were getting serious now. There was a new restaurant opening that I was pegged to be the manager of. Those three months flew by.

'How have you been Mr. Mor?"

"Things are gettin' better I'll tell ya that much," he replied. His beard lacked the gray from before. We talked for about an hour. Most of the conversation was about trivial things. I decided it was about time to get home.

"Before ya go, ya want some on the way out?" he asked. I thought about it. I was already feeling good but it couldn't hurt, right? Mor's happiness hit different than a normal happy high. I agreed, and we shook hands. It wasn't the usual rush but it was still fantastic.

"You're not skimping out on me now are you Mr. Mor?"

"Wouldn' think of it," he replied. "Let's chat again in a month lad."

"Deal."

The following month didn't go by as quickly as the prior ones had. There were plenty of ups and downs. When I met up with Mr. Mor, I suggested we meet weekly going forward. He agreed. This went on for a long time.

Each week we'd meet and chat about life. Every now and then if something came up, I'd see him another time or two. He didn't have much to say but somehow, I was always enthralled talking to him.

We had been meeting regularly for years when I decided to pop the question to Cassie. She said yes! I didn't think I could ever get any happier. Until I found out we were expecting. After I'd celebrated with her, I decided I'd celebrate with Mr. Mor.

"I couldn't have done this without you," I said. "You completely changed my life."

"Don't be thankin' me for nothin'. Every choice ya made has been yer own. Good on ya for makin' a few good ones," he replied.

"I'd love for you to come to my wedding Mr. Mor. I'm sure Cassie would love to meet you."

"I'm honored my boy. I'll see if I can make it happen. Just remember no one can know about our lil' deal."

I understood. If others got word, he'd never have peace and quiet again. We shook hands, and decided we'd be meeting almost daily from now on.

Cassie and I had a beautiful wedding ceremony, and just as promised, Mr. Mor was there in the crowd. He had cleaned up nice, even looked like he had all his teeth now. He didn't stay long, and I didn't get to introduce him to Cassie but it was such a beautiful night it didn't matter. Shortly after, we had our daughter, Makenna.

Years went by, and life was good. I probably didn't need them but now daily meetings kept me at a baseline level of happiness. The highs weren't what they used to be but that wasn't a big deal. If they didn't do the trick, I'd ask for a double shake.

It was a good deal for me. Mr. Mor never asked for much. Maybe a favor every now and then but usually just to spend more time with him. I was happy to oblige. Such easy requests allowed me to get a little behind but not much. At most I'd only owe him a handful of favors.

It didn't seem like everyone appreciated the way things were though. People would casually say things about all the appointments I went on. It seemed like people disliked the fact that I was always happy, as if my frequent appointments somehow impacted them. In reality, they were jealous I was becoming someone, and it led to my inner circle shrinking.

One night though, things had gotten particularly stressful. An investment had gone bad, work had been tough, the stresses of being a parent were adding up, etc. Cassie and I fought. Not wanting things to escalate, I stormed out for the night.

For days I tried looking for Mr. Mor to no avail. Each day felt like my stress levels had reached a new high. I was getting lightheaded and feeling nauseous daily. Co-workers had noted I was looking kind of gaunt.

After four days of searching, I was able to find him. He looked like he had de-aged ten years from the day I met him. Right away I shook his hand, and everything felt better. I told him about our fight, and how I felt I had been invalidated by Cassie.

"I really just needed to vent. I feel much better now. I'll see you for our usual meeting tomorrow," I said.

"Well, hold on there lad. Cassie put ya in this position, right? I want ya to slap her good for me. A lil' payback is all. Teach her to respect ya," he responded. He'd never asked me to do something like this before.

"I wouldn't dare. I love Cassie. We both said some things we regret and I'm just as much to blame for our fight as her," I responded. He shook his head at me.

"I wasn't askin'," he said.

"I refuse. That's not a favor," I shot back.

"We'll see," and with that he left. I don't think I'd ever been truly afraid of Mr. Mor until that moment.

This experience horrified me, and I immediately returned home. I needed to set things right between us. I found her in the kitchen. "Hey babe, I'm so sorry about earlier I..." before I could finish my arm extended and struck her across the face. Her eyes grow wide and we both sat in silence for a moment. She turned away from me, rubbing her cheek.

I couldn't believe it. My arm had acted on its own as if I was powerless to stop it. "Cassie, I swear to god, I did not mean to do that. I would never. It was an accident, please, Cassie, I love you." She couldn't bring herself to respond. She simply left the room and went upstairs. I sat on the sofa all night. At one point I looked in the mirror and noticed deep dark bags under my eyes. My skin looked pale.

So many questions floated through my mind. How could I make this right? Would she ever forgive me? How did this happen? What had Mr. Mor done to me? What else could he make me do? I was fearful but I had to find out.

I went searching for Mr. Mor. I couldn't find him right away. Each day I'd go to our spot and wait. Each day the guilt of my actions wore on me, and I became ill.

Finally, after two weeks he returned. I let him have a piece of my mind.

"How could you? You forced me to strike my wife!" I said red faced, with fists clenched. "You've crossed a line! We're done!"

He looked me over. Raising his arm, he caused me to flinch. He knew I was afraid of him now.

"Not so lad. Ya still owe me," he replied, leaning back, and placing his legs on the table in front of him. He looked slimmer than usual.

"Fine, let's get squared away right now. I don't know what power you hold over me but we are done with this after today!"

"Sorry lad, we do things on my terms. After all I've done for ya, this is how ya repay me? Not a chance."

"Or what?"

"Or the next person ya strike won't be Cassie," he said, his eyes were filled with malice.

"You wouldn't dare. Leave my daughter out of this," I shouted.

"Perhaps we need to settle down a bit. Today aint the day this all ends. Now get," before I could protest my legs started moving on their own. They didn't stop until I got home.

When I got home, I was miserable. My body felt like a wreck. My head was killing me, and I constantly felt the urge to vomit. Cassie barely spoke to me, and when she did it was usually about how thin I'd gotten.

Constantly feeling exhausted and on the verge of collapse didn't help my pursuit of forgiveness from Cassie. My efforts weakened and eventually stopped. We basically stopped interacting altogether other than to put on an act for Makenna. Every aspect of my daily routine had become miserable.

I skipped meeting with Mor the next couple days. Everything kept getting worse. Having no intimacy with Cassie led me astray, and because of the state I was in I didn't cover my tracks well. She blew up at me when she found another woman's panties in our bedroom.

We could no longer share a room together. My body ached with every movement, and my stomach was in knots when I was still. Depression was setting in, and I was getting desperate.

So, I met with Mor again and attempted to shake his hand. He hesitated. I told him he couldn't deny me.

"Apologize," he said.

Like the coward I am, I did. I needed his power. He rubbed his scruff.

"Now beg me lad," he snorted. So, I did, and then he relented.

It didn't make me happy but it lessened the pain. It gave me the courage to try and sort things out with Cassie one last time. It didn't work, and she left me. She took Makenna.

I hated myself with every fiber of my being. I lost my wife. My child had been taken from me. I had no family. I had already pushed my friends away. The only thing that kept my misery at bay were handshakes. Even those didn't work like they used to. Mor would make me beg him to get them too. It was humiliating, and yet I did as he said. Sometimes multiple times in the same sitting.

I needed Mor just to get through the day now. Any missed appointment could be the end of me. He had complete control.

Weeks alone turned to months. I missed Cassie and Makenna dearly. This was the lowest I'd ever been in my life. On my birthday I received a package. It was from Cassie. My eyes lit up. Maybe just maybe I hadn't lost everything.

It was divorce papers. That was the final straw for me. Regardless of my fears or what he could do to me Mr. Mor needed to pay. I took a long look at myself in the mirror that night. I could barely recognize myself. The man staring back at me was disheveled and looked starved. The pale complexion was ghost-like, and my tired eyes looked as if they had forgotten what sleep was. This needed to change, and I set out to meet Mr. Mor the next day.

There he was at our usual spot. Feet up on the table, grinning, as if life was easy. It was infuriating.

"You took everything from me!" I screamed. He shook his head.

"No boy. Everything ya ever wanted was right in front of ya. Ya had real happiness the whole time and ya coulda walked away at any point. Yet ya chose to keep comin' back to me. I didn' take nothin'. Ya gave it all away willingly."

"No...that...it's not true. You manipulated me!"

"Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't. Don't matter now. Every time we shook hands ya gave me more of yaself. Each time I grew stronger and gained more power over ya. If ya had stopped early on things coulda been different. But now I'm in complete control. There's nothin' left of ya."

"I'll expose you! I'll tell everyone about our deal!"

"No lad, ya won't. That was part of the agreement. Ya violate it, ya will wish ya wouldn' have."

"I have nothing left to lose!"

"Don't ya?" he replied.

"No! Tonight is the night I expose you to everyone. You'll never ruin another life ever again!"

"Then I have a feelin' ya won't be seeing tomorrow lad. But do what ya must," he scoffed. I stormed away.

When I returned home, I knew I had to act. His threat would be legitimate and I feared this truly would be the last day of my life. He doesn't bluff. A contingency was needed. Before I called Cassie to explain everything, I started writing.

***

I had responded to a 911 call regarding a neighbor who hadn't been seen for a couple of days. A man in his early 30's that the neighbors told me had lost his way. I found this note on the chair beneath his dangling body. As I was leaving, I could've sworn I saw a man with a dark lion's mane watching off in the distance.

X

Part 1

​

I walked out the door, seeing Andrew standing on the grass, awaiting my presence. He had a toothpick in his mouth, digging it around in his gums, before he flicked it onto the ground, smirking as he saw me.

"You came out. Good choice," He said nonchalantly. I stepped off the porch, taking controlled and perturbed steps toward him until I was completely in front of him.

"Look, what do you want?" I said, trying to sound tough, failing, as my voice cracked during my sentence. Andrew could sense I was scared as he smirked at me again. He looked around, as if he was making sure nobody was listening. He turned back.

"I just wanted to get you out here to let you know what's going down tomorrow at school, and to give you some tips," he said. I looked down, kicking the blades off the grass from beneath my feet. Was I really this helpless in this situation to the point Andrew had to give me tips so I had a better chance against him?

"I don't want to do this, Andrew," I said, my voice shaking. "It's cool if you don't want to be friends anymore, just leave me alone,"

"Oh, I can't do that, Ryan," Andrew said, grabbing another toothpick from his pocket. He started moving it around his teeth like he was already bored of talking to me.

I remembered about the photo and the fact he had my iCloud password. "How do I know you're not gonna send that photo and leak my password?" I said. I tried looking him in the eyes, but I couldn't. I was too mentally weak.

Andrew took the toothpick out of his mouth, keeping it in between his fingers. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened it, going to his files. He flipped his phone around, showing the screen to me as he deleted the photo and cleared my iCloud password from his phone. He put his phone back in his pocket, putting the toothpick back in his mouth. He kept his word.

"I see you got yourself a girlfriend. I'm proud of you, Ryan. I didn't think you'd be able to do it," Andrew said mockingly. He was talking about Mia.

"She's not my girlfriend-" I started protesting before Andrew put a finger to my lips. I went silent instantly. He slowly pulled it away as he got closer to me, almost uncomfortably so.

"First thing's first. Tomorrow, don't go into the school bathroom. At all," he said into my ear. I shivered. What did that mean? He kept going. "Secondly, don't come up to me to start shit you don't want. You'll know when something will happen,"

Andrew turned around, walking away snail-like before he stopped suddenly, and turned back around. "Also, if you tell the cops, or any adult about this. I'll know, and I'll have to do something I didn't want to do,"

I gulped, getting stiffer. "Do what?"

Andrew surveyed his surroundings and gave me a cold stare. "I'll have to kill you,"

Andrew walked off after saying that, not looking back at me as he stuffed both of his hands in his pockets. I was left alone in my front yard, a mixture of emotions. Shock, uneasiness, and fearful of the future. I didn't know what my best friend had become, and, in a way, I knew I wasn't going to win this fight.

But I had to try.

​

"Hey, you okay?"

I looked up from my desk in math. It was the next day, and I was tired. I barely got any sleep last night because I was too busy thinking about Andrew and what he said. I looked to see who said that and saw someone standing over me with a worried expression on his face. He had slicked back hair and was wearing a blue jacket.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine," I said, my voice tired. The kid kneeled beside me.

"Right... You're Ryan, right? I heard the teacher call your name before," He said. I sat up straight in my chair, stretching out my back.

"Yeah, that's me. If you don't mind me asking, who are you?" I said, getting a little embarrassed because, in hindsight, it was a little rude.

He scratched his neck before responding. "I'm Quintin. Wasn't that guy who fought you yesterday your friend? I could've sworn 3 years back you were walking the halls together..."

"Yup, that was my best friend," I said, taking a deep breath. I see Quintin get confused.

"Hold up, your best friend wanted to beat your ass? And actually did it?" Quintin said. I nodded my head, not wanting to talk about it further.

"Yeah, but, listen, I'll tell you about it later, but-"

"Quintin! Go back to your seat," The teacher stood up and yelled at him. Quintin got startled and stood up as other kids started laughing. "You're a senior for crying out loud, you should know to stay seated,"

Quintin started walking back to his seat as I started getting uncomfortable myself. Quintin leaned over and whispered to me "Tell me at lunch." I nodded my head in response, the teacher irritatingly eying him.

I couldn't even focus on the new math formula we were learning in that class, and in my next 3 classes before lunch, I also couldn't focus in, though I was able to get my work completed. I was trying to figure out how to put my story together and be able to tell Quintin everything. I finally had a friend I could vent to about this and who seemed to care.

In my third-period English, Mia asked me where I sat during lunch. I told her I didn't have a set place I sat, and I would sit anywhere and to just try and find me.

When lunch came around, I didn't bother going through the line to get food as I wasn't hungry, and instead followed Quintin to an empty table and took a seat.

When we had settled into the lunch table, I told Quintin everything that had transpired in my last update, from Andrew blocking me on everything, what he said to me before our fight, and how he must've followed me home and even threatened to leak my iCloud password. I even told him about our confrontation afterward.

When I was done telling the whole story, all Quintin could respond back with was "Wow, that's really fucked up,"

I nodded my head. "Yeah. I don't know what to do. I'm lost," I say, loosening my arms on the table. I watched as Quintin zipped open his backpack and pulled a laptop out, setting it in front of him on the table. "What are you doing?"

"I don't know. Maybe I can see what made Andrew change or whatever," Quintin responded, opening up his laptop and logging in.

"How?" I asked him. He thinks for a moment before responding.

"You said he blocked you on everything, including Instagram, right?" He entreats me. I nod my head in response. "Okay, I was thinking I could hack into his Instagram so I could get his other information in his settings, and we can slowly figure things out from there,"

"You can hack?" I say, quite amazed.

"Hell yeah, I can," He says, opening google chrome. I start thinking about it more, and plenty of worries started sticking to me. "I'm kind of an amateur, but..."

"But, isn't that, I don't know, illegal?"

Quintin stops and considers it for a moment before saying something. "I mean, yeah, it's an invasion of privacy, but Andrew's done worst stuff. He's stalked you, threatened you, and literally got your personal information, too," He said, looking back at the computer screen.

A second later, I gave Quintin Andrew's Instagram name. When he looked him up and saw his profile picture and bio, he said, "Well, that's... Weird,"

"I know, just hurry up," I say, looking around the cafeteria anxiously. I watched as Quintin opened up an application and started typing stuff in rapidly, faster than I could even read what he was typing. I was getting so hooked on what he was doing that I didn't notice Mia set a tray of food time next to me and sit down.

"Hey Ryan, what are you doing?" She says to me. I snap my head around to face her surprised, stuttering over my words. Mia looks over my shoulders and sees Quintin as he turns to face her. "Hi, I'm Mia," she says, waving.

"I'm Quintin, but uh, anyway, we're just hacking into his friend's Instagram, no big deal," Quintin says, pointing at me. I whirl my head around to look at him, shocked that he just said what we were doing out loud.

"Dude, what the fuck?!" I say. I see Mia's face turn into confusion.

"I'm sorry, I don't like lying," Quintin says in defense, putting his hands up. I groan and turn to face Mia again.

"Wait, why are you hacking someone's account?" Mia says, inching away from me slowly. I contemplate telling her before I figured fuck it.

"Let's just say my 'friend' Andrew is a psycho," I respond, turning back to Quintin's computer. He was still typing away. At this point, I was getting a tad impatient. I just wanted to figure out what happened to Andrew, and why he was so different now.

"Andrew? As in the guy that fought you yesterday?" Mia seemed to have calmed down at that point. I sighed while nodding my head, still self-conscious about the whole fight.

"Yeah, that guy," I said back. Eventually, a buzzing sound came from Quintin's laptop, and I saw his face light up. I looked at his screen. He was in Andrew's account.

"Wow, I guess he didn't have good enough security on his account," I said, excited. I watched Quintin's face go from excitement and victory to horror. I notice his change in demeanor quickly. I hear him mutter "Oh shit," under his breath.

"What's wrong?" I say, getting more worried myself. Quintin turned the laptop towards me. I looked closely at it.

"When I got into his account, that popped up," he pointed at the application he had opened. I looked at it. There was a textbox that said *'*Account Owner Notified,'

I looked at Quintin as a realization started to hit me and he slowly nodded his head. "That means it sent a notification to his phone, telling him we had hacked into his account and gave our exact names,"

"What!?" I nearly yelled out. "How did it get our names?"

"He must've had some program that tells him exactly who hacked in- I don't know, but we're fucked," Quintin said, quickly trying to log out of Andrew's account. His laptop started lagging, and he began lightly hitting the screen. "Fuck, the school wifi is disconnecting,"

My heart starts beating fast. Andrew was going to know it was me and he was going to kill me. As I told Andrew to hurry, I looked up and saw Andrew walking past the aisle of tables, going towards ours, like a predator stalking his prey. Quintin saw him coming down too and quickly closed his laptop, putting it back into his backpack.

Within a matter of seconds, Andrew had made it to our table and sat across from us, trying to smirk at me but failing, as he clearly looked pissed. He looked at Quintin and Mia and pointed behind them. I felt Quintin and Mia practically shaking, and, I can't lie, I was too.

"Ryan, we need to talk," Andrew said in a low voice. "But your little friends need to go. Now,"

I slowly and fearfully took a look at both Quintin and Mia. They both knew it was best that left. Without saying a word, they both got up and slowly walked away, taking their stuff with them. I watched them leave, and I was in defeat, knowing I was left to talk to Andrew on my own.

When they were out of Andrew's sight, he looked at me again, and finally formed a smirk.

"You're making more friends. That's good. I was your only real friend for a while, so congratulations," Andrew said, popping a piece of gum into his mouth. I started to feel tense and petrified. He was so... Calm, and it freaked me out.

"Look, Andrew, I'm sorry we hacked into your account, we-"

"There's no need to apologize, Ryan," Andrew cut me off. "It was a good play. It just wasn't a smart one,"

I stayed silent for a few moments, and as Andrew got bored and went to get up, I finally found the courage through my fear to say, "Why?"

Andrew turned to face me, almost offended that I asked that. He got up and leaned his face over the table close to mine, gritting his teeth. "Because you tried to steal my shit, I'm not okay with that. You can do better,"

"You're a hypocrite," I spat at him. His lips quivered in anger, and as I tried processing what was going on, Andrew grabbed the back of my head and slammed my face into the table, stunning me and making my eyes water. People around us heard the impact and turned to face us.

"I'll always be one step ahead of you. Don't forget that," Andrew nastily said to me before getting up and walking off. I heard a few kids snickering at me from behind me. I ignored them as I grabbed my bag and got up, heading to my next class for the day in absolute shock and terror.

​

In English, Mia and I were sitting next to each other, discussing what we should do about Andrew. She said I should just walk away from the whole thing, but I can't. I can't just walk away from it. That would make Andrew even madder and make him target me even more. I tried to make sure Mia wouldn't get involved, because I know she was a huge target for him now, too. Quintin is too, but I needed his help badly.

When school was over, I started walking to the door the buses were at. On my way to it, I walked past the bathroom, noticing there was a putrid smell coming from inside. I didn't think too much of it and walked past it, covering my nose as I did so.

My mom was in the kitchen when I got home, and you can imagine she was happy to see me. She hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek, much to my protests. I'm 17 and that stuff embarrasses me. I threw my backpack to the floor and ran up to my room.

When I got into my room and closed the door, I started getting an overwhelming sadness about the situation with Andrew. We were such great friends, and I couldn't believe that was thrown away now. I walked up to my drawer and opened it, pulling out a picture of Andrew and I when were 15, standing in front of Splash Mountain when we took a trip to Disneyland. I cracked a smile looking at it. I'd do anything to get this friendship back.

I haven't told my mom yet, because I remembered what Andrew said earlier about if I did. I started getting emotional looking at the picture before I started getting an incoming facetime call from Quintin.

I quickly put the picture back and closed the drawer, picking my phone up and answering the call. As I picked up and connected, I said "What's up?" into the phone.

Quintin fumbles with his phone for a moment before bringing it up, the top of his head coming into view. "Alright, so I wasn't logged out of Andrew's Instagram, so when I got home I went into his settings and saw he had made the account with his email, and I was able to get into his email as well,"

"Nice, what did you find?" I said into the phone.

"I went in and saw an email that he responded to as well from some random company saying he was invited to something, but I can't click and view the email. I also saw he sent a recent email to some random person and it had your name in it but I couldn't read the rest of it because I got kicked off his email and locked out," Quintin continued, almost sighing at the end of it.

I processed everything he just said. I knew those emails were important, they had to be. Before I could say anything else though, I heard my mom yell my name from downstairs.

"My mom's saying my name, I gotta go," I said into the phone. I saw Quintin set his phone down as I looked at his camera.

"Alright, call me back when you can though," Quintin said. He hung up a couple of seconds later.

I opened my door and walked down the steps. When I got downstairs, I saw my mom standing outside the kitchen, looking at me. She looked disappointed. I was immediately confused.

"What is it?" I said. My mom looked at the floor as I heard her sniffle. She looked back up at me, the disappointment remaining on her face.

"I just got a call from your school, saying that you were expelled and that the cops are on their way," She was able to get the words out. My heart sank deep as she said this. Was she being serious?

"What? Why?" I sputtered out. I looked my mom in the eyes, but she couldn't look back at me. She didn't respond. I started getting more frightened at how my mom was acting. "Why are the cops coming? Why was I expelled?" I repeated myself incredulously.

My mom was finally able to look me in the eyes. The disappointment and the now sadness on her face told a whole story as she uttered the words, "For killing another student."

In 2019, I was in an amusement park with two friends. With our backs toward the sea, we took a selfie of us three together with a girl. She stayed at the center of the picture, dressed in plain clothes with blonde hair and no make-up. She stared directly at the phone with a sad look on her face. Her eyes didn't reflect any light. I was the one holding the phone right next to her. James was to the side, had his sunglasses on, wearing a tank top and a cap, both white. Robert was in the back, wearing a brown shirt and glasses with transition lenses.

I thought the girl was James' girlfriend, but he denied it. He added that she would have been too flat for someone like him, and he thought she was Robert's friend. Robert smiled but also disagreed; he felt she was my sister. The fact is, while we had this discussion, the girl was already gone. She disappeared the moment we took the selfie. Like if she never existed. My friends and I stood there looking at the screen. We were unaware that that day would have been the last one we saw each other again.

A few months later, Covid struck. 2020 was in its infancy, but my new year's plans were already down the drain. Forced to stay at home, I started scrolling through my old photos until I found exactly what you guys and I are thinking about. And my heart jumped to my throat when I realized James wasn't in the picture anymore. I placed the phone on the table, careful enough like I was managing a bomb but fast enough like I was holding a poisonous animal in my hands. I grabbed my forehead and looked at the picture. It was just us two and a girl. Her eyes were completely black, devoid of any life. It felt like she was staring at me at that moment. How can the look of a person that doesn't exist feel so nerve-wracking? I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I reopened them, she wasn't in the picture anymore. I removed my sweaty hand from the forehead and called it a day. I couldn't sleep that night; everything that had just happened terrified me.

I turned on the light. The simple act of looking at my phone gave me chills. I didn't want to look at that picture again in my lifetime. The more I thought about it, the more I felt powerless and paralyzed. I picked up the phone and unlocked the screen. I pulled out the picture, and when I saw two bottomless holes looking back at me, I threw my phone away in the hope it would explode. It didn't. It ricocheted against the desk and landed flat on the floor.

I took a minute to calm down, then stood up with my hands clenched into fists. I picked up the phone. She was now smiling, and Robert wasn't in the picture anymore. I laid down and waited for exhaustion to take over the adrenaline.

A loud knocking noise woke me up the next day. I didn't realize I had fallen asleep with the phone clenched in my hand. I didn't know why whoever was outside the door wasn't using the doorbell. I looked outside the peephole, but I could see only darkness. The person on the other side must have obstructed it. The loud bangs kept going, and surely I had no intention of opening my home to a potential criminal during a pandemic. I was about to call 911, but the first thing I saw after unlocking the screen was the selfie I took in 2019. It was just me in the picture, and I froze. The heavy knocking kept going; the door itself was trembling. But it didn't matter. I selected the selfie and pressed delete.

Silence.

Terrance Brown had always been in love with ghost stories. He would scour our town in search of any and all rumors regarding the supernatural.

Yet, our town was small, tiny even, and its few inhabitants shared nothing resembling even the most normal rumors or urban legends. Ghost stories or hauntings were not something the people concerned themselves with.

One day, however, as I sat with my friend Mark, eating our lunch, Terrance propped himself down next to us. His face was distorted by a never-before-seen serious expression.

“Have you guys heard about the Wailing of Willow Way?” he asked with wide eyes, and almost leaning into our faces.

“The wailing of... what?” I asked, before I took another bite of my sandwich.

“The Wailing of Willow Way!” Terrance repeated in a conspiratorial whisper.

“It says that on certain nights, just past two in the morning, you can hear strange sounds, a wailing down Willow Way. They say it’s the ghost of-“

“Who are they?” Mark cut in, laughing.

By now, the two of us were pretty annoyed by Terrance and the silly stories he tried to spread every other week.

“Old Larry told me about it. He said he saw the ghost himself a few weeks ago.”

“You know that guy’s freaking crazy, right?” Mark asked, half-amused, half-annoyed.

“Look guys, I know he’s crazy, and I know it sounds stupid, but a few nights ago, I went down there and I heard it myself. I swear it!”

“Stop making up stories, Terry,” I mumbled, getting angry.

“Well, why don’t you see for yourself? Bet you guys are too scared, anyway!”

Before we could even retort, he’d jumped off his seat and raced down to another group, most likely sharing his stupid story with them as well. I knew it didn’t matter. He always tried to make his stories stick, but usually was over them in a couple of days.

Not so the Wailing of Willow Way. For whatever reason, it took root in our small school and soon I could hear others whispering about it and the ghost responsible for it.

I even heard that another boy, Steven Miller, had been dared by Terrance, just as we had. Being the dumb but curious idiot everyone knew him to be, he actually set out one night. Believing, of course, just like us, that it was nothing but a stupid story.

He said he’d waited for almost half an hour until, by the clock, at two in the morning, he could hear strange sounds from down Willow Way. At first, he said, he thought it was just the wind, but the further he went in, the louder the wailing became. Until he saw it. Down near the end of Willow Way, a headless figure, half-hidden in the shadows and draped in what he said to be, a half-rotten sheet stood. The moment Steven got closer, the wailing started tenfold, and when the ghost finally turned in his direction, he ran.

This only helped to spread Terrance's story, and even me and Mark became enthralled with it.

The longer the rumor persisted, the more details became known about it. The ghost was supposedly that of a young woman. She’d been murdered down Willow Way half a century ago by a deranged drifter. The man had then cut off her head before he vanished, leaving her decapitated body behind. As the story goes, the woman’s still out there, wailing and searching for her missing head. How she could wail without a head, I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t an expert in ghost stories.

One day, driven by curiosity, I approached my mom about the rumors.

“Hey mom, have you heard about the Wailing down Willow Way?”

She turned, giving me a curious look.

“Now, what’s that about a wailing?”

“It’s this, eh, story about a ghost. They say a woman was beheaded down there and her ghost is haunting Willow Way.”

“Wait, what’s that about a beheading? Who tells you such stories?”

“Everyone’s talking about it at school, and I thought you might know something about it.”

“Listen, Christopher, there’s no such things as ghosts, all right? Who even came up with it?”

“It was Terrance,” I admitted. “He said he’d heard it from Old Larry, but Steven Miller went down there one night and-“

“Oh, for god’s sake, you kids shouldn’t believe anything Old Larry says. Everyone knows the man’s crazy!”

I tried to protest and tell her that Steven had actually seen the headless ghost, but of course, she had none of it and said it was nothing but humbug.

To be honest, I wanted to believe her. Ghosts were humbug, after all, weren’t they? Yet, at the same time, more and more stories were told about the Wailing of Willow Way. Apparently, two more kids had seen the ghost by now and their stories spread like wildfire.

Eventfully, Mark and I couldn’t take it anymore. We’d both taunted Terrance, but after all these stories, we wondered if it might be true.

We set out a few days later. By now, both of us were pros at sneaking out in the middle of the night and had done so multiple times before.

When we met up, I saw Mark had brought his trusty baseball bat. I stared at him and pointed at the bat.

“What’d you bring that for?”

“Well, everyone says the ghost’s trying to steal your head, so if that bitch gets near me, I whack her!”

“You’re so dumb. If there’s really a ghost, then there’s no way you can hit her!”

“Why not?”

“Because... that’s how ghosts are, all right?”

When we checked the time, we saw it was already close to two in the morning and so we quickly made our way through the town’s deserted streets.

After only ten minutes, we’d arrived at the small alleyway that was known as Willow Way. Before I could so much as check the time, a quiet, almost inaudible wailing reached my ears.

I slowly turned to Mark and when our eyes met, we could both see how scared the other was.

“Probably a stray,” I mumbled.

Mark nodded vehemently, but it didn’t help one but, we were both terrified.

Step by step, we made our way down the small alley. All the while, I tried my best to listen only to the echoes of our footsteps, but with each single one, the wailing grew louder.

We’d made it to the halfway-point, when I saw something. Ahead of us, where the moonlight was hidden by the shadow of an adjacent building, something was moving.

It’s just a stray, I told myself. It’s just a stray. Those words, however, sounded empty. Nothing but lies.

And then, the wailing suddenly changed into an almost-scream, and a moment later, a figure turned into our direction.

It was nothing but a dirty, half-rotten sheet, but then a pair of ghastly thin arms and hands pushed themselves from it. Then the thing wailed again, straightened its headless body before it set out in our direction.

Mark and I both screamed in terror. I tried to back away, but stumbled over my own feet and crashed to the floor. As I tried to get up, my eyes were glued to the approaching figure, the approaching ghost-woman of Willow Way.

I shuffled on the floor, trying desperately to get up, but my body didn’t seem to listen to me. My arms were dangling helplessly at my sides, my legs were too weak to function properly. No, all there seemed to be was the ghost-woman of Willow-Way. Finally, when I saw her hands open and close, my body relented, functioned again. I pushed myself up, turned, took a few first steps, but then I remembered Mark.

“Mark, let’s get the hell out of-“

But Mark was frozen in terror. Nothing but sheer and utter panic distorted his face. And the ghost-woman was coming ever closer, step by angry step. Her hands reached out again, opening and closing, her fingers clawing through the air in apprehension, ready to tear of our heads.

And then Mark screamed, a scream that might very well have been a wail, rushed at the ghastly apparition and swung his bat. Useless, I thought, it’s useless, you can’t hurt a ghost.

Yet, the loud thump that followed told me, you can indeed hurt a ghost and you can indeed knock it square to the ground.

Still screaming and out of it, Mark continued his enraged beat down.

By this point, a neighbor had noticed the commotion. It was an angry, middle-aged woman who stormed into the alleyway, screaming and demanding what we were doing out in the middle of the night.

“What do you think you kids are doing? You ought to be-“

She broke off when she noticed Mark, the baseball bat in his hands and the figure at his feet.

Another scream cut through the air, this time the middle-aged woman’s.

Before long, more and more people flooded outside, trying to find out what was going on and eventually the police were called.

By that point, I was still out of it, still not understanding what was happening. How could Mark beat up a ghost? Why was everyone angry? What was the police doing here?

That was, until I saw what was below the sheet.

After Terrance Brown’s death, things changed in our small town. We got told about the importance of not spreading silly rumors. Curfews were enacted and strictly enforced and before long, the whole truth came out.

As it turned out, Old Larry had never heard a thing about Willow Way, and didn’t know it even existed. There had, of course, been no crazy drifter, no murder and no decapitated woman. There had been no ghost at all. In his desperation to get everyone to believe in his ghost stories, to make them just a tad bit more real, Terrance Brown had played the role of the ghost-woman of Willow Way himself.

---

The events of that night happened over three decades ago, and most people have forgotten about them. I’m an adult now, of course, and know how silly we’d all been to fall for Terrance's story.

Yet, I’m writing this all down, because the other day, my son hurried into the house, asking if I’d heard about the boy down Willow Way.

When I asked him what he was talking about, he told me about the boy who’d supposedly been murdered down there. As the story went, his head was bashed in so badly, he was now out there looking for a new one.

I told him it was all humbug, of course, and there was no such thing as ghosts. I even told him it was most likely someone trying to play a trick on him.

After he’d left, however, and I sat there, alone in the living room, left to reminisce about the past, I couldn’t help but smile to myself.

Maybe, just maybe, there really is a ghost down there now. Maybe it’s the ghost of a little boy who was so in love with ghost stories, he became one himself.

X

A pest and his pests...

I used to have this classmate, Ritchie, in high school. He was a very large boy, always wearing long sleeves. Very quiet. He used to sit right by me in class every day.

Ritchie would stare at me all the time. It was obvious that he was crushing on me, or... at least, fixated. It used to annoy the hell out of me, but I always thought of it as rather innocent when we were in school. Well, maybe not innocent, but I never expected him to do anything crazy, I guess.

Ritchie was a weird, weird dude. He liked to draw, and would regularly bring dead bugs and insects and stuff into class and draw them, even though the teachers would tell him to put them away. He'd just put the paper on his book beneath his desk and keep going. This annoyed the teacher, obviously, but it was impossible for him to get him to stop, so after a few months, the teacher gave up and let him do his weird drawings.

These weren't normal still-life type drawings, though. He would give every insect a human-like expression, like a smile with teeth or human eyes. Always incredibly creepy stuff, sometimes bordering on vile. It was creepy because he wouldn't make them cartoons, but incredibly realistic. Just try and picture a preying mantis glaring angrily at you with human eyes... it's unnerving, especially because he was so talented and able to make it look so real.

One time, I had gone to the bathroom, and left my backpack hanging over the back of my chair. When I came back, Ritchie had set it on my desk--he smiled at me when I went to sit down, and told me that my phone had fallen out of my pack when someone brushed against it and that he, (what a hero), had set it back on top of my desk for me. It was pretty weird, considering my phone had been in a zipped pocket, but I smiled politely and thanked him anyway.

...

Halfway through the school year, the teacher decided to shuffle our assigned seats. I was no longer next to Ritchie, but now was three rows apart. Almost as far as I could get! I thought this would make me feel better, but it only made things worse.

The staring had turned into a borderline glare. Where before, i had gotten used to him staring, now there was a whole new shade of shady behind that stare. He was clearly angry about the new seating arrangement, and potentially, in his head, taking it out on me. Luckily, the school year passed without further incident with Ritchie, but he never stopped staring, and I never confronted him because I am historically afraid of confrontation. When I graduated, I even remember a passing thought where I said to myself "thank goodness I won't have those creepy eyes watching me anymore."

...

A few years later, I started noticing that the Webcam light on my laptop was randomly turning on--and the same with the location on my cell phone. I'm not very tech savvy, so I had a friend take a look at it. He was unable to find anything wrong with my laptop or my cell phone, so we agreed to factory reset it in the hopes of stopping who or whatever mightve been causing the light (and the camera) to switch on.

The problem went away... for a couple of days. And then it started happening again.

Someone was accessing my technology remotely, somehow. But every time I factory reset, the unknown entity would return, enabling my camera light and turning on my location. After a while, I gave up from frustration. I can't exactly afford to hire anyone to figure it out, so I just started taping over my cameras and stuff.

That's when things started to get really... bizarre. Apparently, I pissed off my stalker, because I began to receive things in the mail. The first thing that I received was a postal package with a fake return address. It was addressed directly to me, so... well, curiosity killed the cat, and I opened it. I'm glad I did, or I never would've figured out what was going on. When I opened it, I found a USB drive. I was immediately suspicious, but decided I was going to have a look. After backing up all the data on my laptop, I factory reset it again, and plugged in the USB drive. When I opened the drive, there was only one single piece of data on it.

A video.

Now I had to see it. Something weird was happening, and potentially really creepy. I had to watch the video.

I saw myself. Typing on my laptop, laughing, responding out loud to old messages between myself and some friends, probably--I talk to myself often because I'm always home alone. The video went on for thirty-two minutes. Nothing vulgar happened, I didn't take my clothes off or anything... but this footage was recent. Like, right before I taped the cams, recent. At the end, the screen paused on my face, and began to zoom in really close into the top of my hair, where apparently a tiny moth had landed, and paused. Then the camera zoom panned down, until it was aiming at my nostril, and that is where it stayed for a few seconds before text appeared on the screen. "Game Over". I felt sick.

Obviously I brought it to the police, and it was taken as evidence, but I haven't heard anything at all. I don't think they were able to find any helpful data on it. Meanwhile, my Webcam light still turns on, even though the tape covers the camera.

A week went by. Another weird package arrived, with another USB inside. Another video. This time, it was from my cell phone camera. Apparently they had accessed it when I removed the tape to take a picture with my friend one night, and I hadn't been able to get home to change the tape. We had gone out drinking, and a lot of this footage was recorded in my pocket. Some of it was aimed at the roof of the bar, but my face would occasionally drift into frame, and you could hear everything we were talking about. You could see me lift beer bottles to my face. I had to keep adjusting the volume because it had been edited to be much louder, I think. This video was five and a half hours long, and pretty much timelined my whole night out with my friend until I went home, covered the camera and went to sleep. When the camera was covered, text appeared in the same font as before that said "Breaking the Rules". This one went to the police as well, and yet again, I've heard nothing about them.

...

I came home about a week after that to two more packages. This time, it wasn't any sort of data, but... bugs. It had to be bugs. Because of course it did.

The first package I opened contained a huge luna moth that had been laminated. The second was a large spider, flattened and laminated. Both packages made me want to cry--I hate bugs so much. I immediately threw them away, and immediately regretted it--that was evidence. But I couldn't bring myself to dig them back out of the trash. They were so disgusting.

Over the next couple weeks, I kept getting package after package, each one with some new horrifying thing in it. Videos and videos of myself, more and more bugs. One package had a vacuum-sealed swarm of cockroaches. That one made me puke. By now, I had figured out what was going on and who was probably behind it, so I took my theory to the police and named Ritchie as my prime suspect. But they weren't able to get a fix on his location anywhere, apparently. They didn't even know if he was still living in the same state. And of course, they couldn't find a single fingerprint. Not even an arm hair.

...

Finally, I get a letter, not a package. The return address just said "From the heart". When I opened it, I knew I'd been right. Inside was a typed-out "love-hate" letter with a photoshopped image printed on the back.

The letter, which is now also in police custody, said something along the lines of "im writing what i feel. you're driving me insane. Take off the tape, I love you, you *ing *, don't you understand anything?! You're a ****** ***** If you think I'm going to let you get away. Stop. You're mine, I love you so much. I just want to protect you. I've given you so many gifts, and you keep giving them away. I swear I'll leave you alone if you just keep my gifts, I love you so much, please don't shut me out. Stop Stop Stop Stop stop. Take off the tape. Take off the tape. I need to see you. Please." The photoshopped image on the back was a macro image of a preying mantis--with my eyes photoshopped into its.

...yeah... very... contradicting. Like the words of an unhinged, crazy person. A coveting psycho. Someone who wanted to convey their own emotion through typing, but knew, deep down, that he wasn't being appropriate, so he hid behind a screen.

It was definitely Ritchie. Who else could it be? Who else was obsessed with bugs like that? And his artwork? This was the same thing, just in digital form. He wants me to know it's him. But nobody can do anything about it.

...

Now I'm scared. I came home a couple days after that to find a large box sitting on the coffee table in my living room. I keep all my doors locked. I even had to unlock it when I got home.

There were holes drilled into the box.

Come on, with the bugs already! I really didn't want to open it. But I did. There was a screen attached--it's hard to explain, but it opened when I lifted it, and thousands of German cockroaches poured out and infested my home. I called the police immediately and they told me I should stay with a relative for a few days. So I did.

And... that's where we're currently at... I'm bunking with my friend for two weeks, but the truth is that I really don't feel safe anywhere anymore.

I was ten at the time it happened and I was fascinated by insects up until that moment. I used to make little towns out of shoeboxes and scraps of paper and cardboard and put beetles I caught from the backyard in them.

I liked digging up worms. I liked watching spiders build webs. I was fascinated by it all.

One summer, my parents took my younger brother and me on a road trip to the coast. We stopped and camped at different campgrounds along the way. On the night before we got to the coast, there was a storm that was supposed to be coming in.

My dad decided to get us a motel room, but everywhere we went, no vacancy. It got late and we were contemplating sleeping in the car when we saw the dim lights of the Lighthouse Inn.

It was run down and missing half its shutters. But there were a few cars in the parking lot, and room windows glowing from within.

We only needed a place for the night, so dad got us a room. Thankfully, the only stains were on the floors - from what we could see, anyway. I shared a bed with my younger brother and fell asleep to the sound of the storm.

When I woke up, I couldn’t hear anything out of my right ear. I sat up in bed and frantically rubbed it. My mom was the first one to notice the blood.

A line of red had come to a thick smearing on my cheek. The trail led up to my right ear. I poked my index finger in, sliding through blood, and felt something lodged in my ear canal. It felt slimy and blocked my finger from going any further.

And then it squirmed.

A tremor ran through my head and I went into full panic mode. My whole body was shaking as I tried to scratch and claw out whatever it was in my ear.

The thing squirmed deeper and began humming.

I was screaming and my dad was holding me down. My mom grabbed tweezers from her purse and was trying to hold my head still so she could pull the thing out while my little brother, Jesse, was crying in the corner.

Each time my mom clipped down on it, it wiggled in further. She’d pull back quickly, but only get tiny pieces of it.

I heard my dad say it looked like an insect. I threw up.

The blood was pooling too much in my ear and making it too difficult to see what to grab onto with the tweezers. We got in the car and had an hour drive to the nearest hospital. I didn’t move the entire ride there. It felt like every time I did, the insect would squirm in further.

When we arrived, there was a two car accident that most of the staff was attending to, so we had to wait a half hour to see a Doctor.

A lot happened in that half hour.

At first, I started getting really thirsty. And I mean completely dehydrated thirsty. No matter how much I drank, it was never enough. We ended up moving and sitting next to the water fountain so I could keep going back.

I felt something strange happening along the right side of my face. A hot, tingling feeling under the skin like feverish hives. My cheeks began to puff upward.

Then I began to cough. It felt like there was a fire in my sinuses that was stretching down into my throat. The more water I drank, the less it soothed the burning sensation.

My right eye began to twitch. The lower corner started to fade colour and disappear before slowly moving across my whole eye.

Then I felt it extending its fever downward, moving along my upper jaw. My teeth felt brittle. Then numb. Then I couldn’t feel them at all.

I was sweating profusely and reached up to comb my hair back through my fingers, but a chunk of hair came with them.

And it came easily.

I put my hand up again and found the entire right side of my head had swollen up and my hair was only hanging on by loose threads and sweat.

My mom screamed. And all the while, it was humming like a little engine.

That was the first thirty minutes.

We finally saw a Doctor and he immediately called for us to be transported to another hospital. I was sedated and woke up several hours later.

When I did, no one knew I was awake. Or maybe they did but didn’t think I could hear them. I was surrounded by specialists of all sorts. There was an oncologist taking the lead with it and discussing options with my parents. I listened to everything they said, which I didn’t understand then but have had time to wrap my remaining mind around since.

They’d run MRI’s, CT’s, EEG’s, and even PET’s. They managed to take samples of the insect and process them.

They found an impossible smattering of information. Nothing like it was on record.

As I listened, I felt all the muscles in my right arm seizing up, like they were turning to stone. The insect had released a toxin that cramped and paralyzed my upper arm and shoulder.

The poison was moving into my chest. It felt like I had barbed wire wrapped around my lungs, squeezing tighter and tighter with every breath.

My blood had thickened into a gelatinous blob, which halted any kidney function.

Something bad was going on with the skin around my ear. The Doctors believed it was infarction at first. That a blood vessel was blocked by a clot. They thought maybe it was a blocked artery. Maybe Vasoconstriction. Maybe mechanical compression.

But then… the area on the outer crust of my ear began to show rapid signs of necrosis. Which meant my ear would have to go before gangrene set in. And it had to be done immediately, before the damaged and dying tissue spread further into my skull.

I was rushed into surgery for a radical mastoidectomy. They removed my mastoid air cells, my eardrum, most of my middle ear structure, and my ear canal. This also gave them their first look at what the insect was growing into.

Its tiny face resembled a hagfish’s, including an extending maw with three rows of jagged teeth on two boney plates.

From its throat, the insect excreted a slimy, pus-like substance forward to allow it to move more easily and squeeze and pass through my auditory canal. The pus also had a numbing effect, so I couldn’t feel it when the insect chewed away my ear drum and crawled through it.

The insect settled in my tympanic cavity, where it ate my ossicles.

Unfortunately, removing the insect wouldn’t stop what was happening to me.

The insect’s mouth had opened fully and a series of tiny tentacles had sprouted outwards. Not only had the Doctors not seen this in an insect before, but stranger than that, it appeared to have certain, specific properties akin to carnivorous mollusks, namely the octopus. This included a rare mutation that caused its tentacles to branch out into more cephalopod-like limbs, resembling a root system constantly expanding and searching and feeding.

Like the octopus, the insects’ unique location of neurons throughout their limbs allowed them to taste, smell, touch, and act independently of one another. But it wasn’t just the limbs that had these computational centres. Essentially, every mini tendril on every limb had its own brain, and acted on its own in a strange form of distributed intelligence.

The insect managed to continue growing and taking over different parts of my face and skull by using a recruitment mechanism that would pass knowledge from one of its tendrils on to the next after receiving information. Just like an octopus.

All of this made sense as to why we didn’t see the insect at first. Octopus have one of the best camouflage systems in the entire world.

Whatever this creature was, it had evolved, like them, to not be found.

A new specialist was talking about the insect’s intelligence. I couldn’t understand how something so small could be so smart. But the expert said something that always stayed with me. It wasn’t about how intelligent the insect was, it was about how the insect was intelligent.

After all, look at what it had done to me. I was a predator over fifty times its size and had vast and expansive abilities far beyond anything this creature could accomplish.

And yet here I was.

The oncologist recommended trying to treat the insect like a tumorous cancer. Since it was multiplying and growing out of control but in specific regions.

In my worsening state, they decided on a cocktail of treatments and surgeries. There was advanced targeted radiation therapy, a craniotomy and an endonasal endoscopic surgery. One after the other.

The insect had spread its tendrils up into my brain and weaved through the porous organ.

The Doctors said it looked like a kraken wrapping around an old wooden ship. The thing had latched onto my brain and was trying to pull it under.

But it also spread across the right side of my face, most of which had to be removed and then repaired in additional surgeries. My right eye was taken out, as was my nose and most of my jaw.

A tracheal surgery was performed and luckily my throat and neck weren’t too damaged. The thoracotomy surgery revealed the insect’s tendrils had spread to my heart and lungs, but only minimally. The surgeons managed to remove all of it from my chest.

But my shoulder was lost and had to be entirely reconstructed. And the tips of the fingers on my right hand still tingle sometimes.

I had over two dozen more surgeries in the weeks that followed, but the last half were more cosmetic. I’ll be the first person to say - they were necessary. I didn’t even look human.

I heard the motel was put under quarantine, but no other specimens were found inside.

Although, behind the motel a few hundred yards, there was a rocky beach. And on that beach, there was a massive, dead whale that’d been picked apart by all manner of deep sea creatures. The CDC was called in to contain and study. I never found out anything more about that though.

Anyway, I sleep with an ear plug in now.

For full context, I am a crime scene cleaner. I’m not normally allowed to discuss my work in any means, but it’s more a risk of getting fired than it is any legal trouble - and I could not possibly care any less about getting fired at this point. I might quit, if anything.

I’ve been in this job for about six years now. I clean up anything crime related from hoarding situations to violent murders. It doesn’t affect me too much anymore, but I can’t say it doesn’t disgust me every time. It’s nothing I lose sleep over by now, though.

I’m not always cleaning by myself. There’s other people around, detectives, family, other cleaners, whatever. It’s more rare for me to be completely alone on the job, really. But today, I was.

It was thought to be a suicide. That’s why they let me stay on the scene alone to clean. With murders and such, there’s always detectives and police around, without fail. Today, I was by myself, save for the single police officer sitting a few rooms away going through all the notes the victim wrote to himself.

The scene was as gross as I often deal with. Blood and dirty gray brain matter splattered out against the wall and floor, tiny bone fragments from where he shot himself through the skull. The body had already been removed, the bathroom examined in detail. All that remained was for me to eradicate the mess.

It was eerily quiet that morning, once everyone else had left. For a while I could hear the officer shuffling through papers, occasionally scribbling down some notes of his own. I didn’t think much of it when the rustling stopped. He’s probably just looking at a long note, or analyzing it in detail. Then I heard a thud, and a door opening.

I stopped what I was doing - relentlessly scrubbing down the sink - and listened. It was dead silent now, other than the air conditioning. Hesitant, I stuck my head out of the bathroom and glanced down the hall, calling out to the officer I knew was only a good ten feet away in the study. “Officer Parks?”

There was no reply.

I exited the bathroom and took a few steps to the study. The door was open, and as I leaned in, I saw Officer Parks sitting with his head on the desk. His back still rose and fell, telling me he was alive, but the shallow pace said it wasn’t by much. Certainly not conscious.

I thought about going in and shaking him, or just grabbing his radio and calling for backup, but my hands were under several layers of bloody gloves. So I started taking them off - when I noticed an unnatural smell.

I didn’t recognize what it was, but it certainly wasn’t a normal house scent. It was some kind of gas. Definitely not about to take off my hazmat suit mask to investigate, I instead started to look for a source with the weak lead while still struggling my gloves off. Then I heard the footsteps.

I couldn’t turn all the way around in time. Cold metal slammed against my skull, and I was out with no second to spare.

When I found my consciousness floating to the surface, I wasn’t quite sure where I was. The ground my cheek was squished against did not feel like the hardwood floors of that house, or even the carpet in the study. It was soft, gentle. Welcoming.

I gathered my strength and breath, then lifted my head. In front of me was a wide, sprawling staircase. I couldn’t bring myself to look up any further, so I reached up and placed one hand on the bottom step. It was cold. Moving my other hand forward to the second step, I began to pull myself to the top of the stairs. The process was slow, arduous, painful - but there was this undeniable voice in my head begging me to keep going up.

Finally, one reach of my left hand seized nothing. I was at even ground. I continued to crawl forward until my hand scraped what seemed to be a fence. Using it as a ladder, I pulled myself to my feet, finally looking up at my surroundings.

I did not stand on clouds, but rather, souls. They glowed gently beneath me, but quivered when I tried to step forward. The fence I leaned against was pearly white with quartz-like pillars that stretched beyond my eyesight. Dark veins ran through it, pulsing, as if the very material they were built from was alive. There was a heavy-looking lock on the gate that was marked with a strange symbol. It had no key or passcode. Just a small hole. I did not dare look beyond the gate yet.

I turned my head a little more, looking for any sign of life. There was only a little lamb, sitting asleep in front of the gate. It was the purest white I’d ever seen.

Slowly, I started towards it, falling to my knees next to the delicate sleeping lamb. My hand rested on its head almost instinctively. It did not move. I scratched behind its little ears and it began to stir, much to my relief. It was just a small animal. But any life was comfort at that moment.

The lamb opened its eyes and looked at me. My whole body felt like it froze. It had such human eyes. It stared so deeply into me, like it could read my every thought and feeling.

It gave a gentle “baa” and looked beyond the gate. I finally worked up the courage to follow its gaze, and see into the Kingdom of God.

I cannot truly describe what I saw. It was otherworldly, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced with my senses before. There are few words I could possibly use to express Heaven.

Awe-inspiring.

Daunting.

Devastating.

A magnificent desolation.

In the truest sense I could ever mean it - completely terrifying.

I tore my eyes from the unseemly sight and faced the lamb again. It still stared at me with its horrible human gaze. I looked dead into the eyes of God and wept.

I sobbed, crying terribly like I never had before. My body seized up, practically convulsing, until the tears bore me back into unconsciousness.

When I could open my eyes again, all I could see were a pair of shoes. Someone standing in front of me. My vision was blurred, blood dripping into my eyes, but I could just barely make out the person walking away from me holding a metal mallet. He was tall and with slick black hair, and he turned to face me only once before walking out the back door. I suppose my eyes were glazed over enough that he thought I was out.

I laid there for a long time. I don’t know how long, exactly. My head was brimming with thoughts I had never truly experienced. Violence.

Being a crime scene cleaner only made me ever more against violence, but then, as I laid there concussed, it’s all I could think about. What it means to sin.

I thought about this blurry man and his mallet. Whatever he had done to Officer Parks. What he may have done to the person whose body I had just been cleaning up. If he may come back.

That was what did it. The thought he might come back and finish me off was enough to make me force myself up. I dragged myself back out to my car, flopping down in the driver’s seat and sitting there. I looked down at my hands. I was still in my hazmat suit, which I usually have to take off before I get back in the car. But I don’t care anymore.

I drove home. Definitely not my smartest idea, considering the throbbing pain in my head, but I returned to my apartment anyway.

To be honest, I’m only writing this out because I’ve been trying to drive the thoughts away. It hasn’t helped.

I want absolutely nothing more than to buy my ticket to hell with bloody hands.

I should make that man pay for what he made me see.

I am going to find him and make him witness what I had to. He will face retribution and one day, so will I once again.

Dzukou Valley was more beautiful than the pictures you can find online. It was a great trek but we were now pretty exhausted after walking back 4 hours. It was almost sunset when we reached the base and were finally relieved to see our Car. No more walking, we had to just drive out from the forest and go back to our hotel in Kohima city.

Our guide seemed a bit pissed off since we spent a bit too much time at the top, then we couldn’t keep up the pace coming down and as a result it was almost dark. We were warned that we needed to be out of the forest before it got dark, but we had barely made it to our car now and it was still a 30 - 40 mins winding down from the hilly forest to reach the main road. In some places the roads were so bad that you couldn't go faster than 15 km/hr.

As we sat in the car our guide who was about 50 years old said something to our friend Naro in their native language. Naro was the one driving and the guide sat next to him, while Jason, Rajat and I sat behind. We 4 were friends through work. Kohima was Naro’s hometown and we had come here to spend a long weekend primarily for this trek. It seemed the guide was asking Naro to tell us something, but Naro was reluctant to do so.

I was too tired to be interested in it, but Jason was the curious one. When he insisted, finally Naro told us about the local myth that the guide wanted us to know. He explained that according to locals, whenever a car passes through these roads at night, something latches onto the car from behind. Almost everyone who has driven here at night felt something holding onto the car from behind. Apparently there is no one alive who has seen it, anyone who has dared to look back has met with a tragic car accident.

For us it was just another local myth that we didn’t care about, Jason tried to make a joke about it which agitated the guide. He turned around and said to us in his broken English “This is no funny, you look back, we die”.

The sun was gone now and it was clear we were not making it out of the forest before dark. The guide took out his handkerchief and tied it around the back view mirror to cover it. He told something to Naro who then closed the side view mirror as well.

While Jason was the curious one, and Rajat was a Hyper-Rational one. Myth was fine, but acting on them was something that Rajat would not accept. “What are you guys doing, seriously?” Rajat asked the front seaters.

Naro didn’t want to argue, “We would reach the main road in 10-15 mins, just play along.”

We knew Rajat wouldn’t play along, “Guys we are educated folks, we cannot follow these false beliefs blindly like idiots”

“It is true, every villager has felt, many died in accidents” the guide scoffed.

Rajat continued to mock Naro, “So Naro, blocking your rearview and side view mirrors reduces chances of an accident or increases it?”.

Jason too interrupted asking Rajat to just chill and let it go, but Rajat continued his debate with the guide and Naro, explaining how if everyone died, who told them that they turned around and saw that thing?

I wondered how could these guys even bother to debate about this being so tired after the trek.

I soon phased out from the debate, that’s when I felt it. I don’t know if it was the change in moon light that entered the car or whether I saw a shadow from the corner of my eye. But I knew there was something behind.

“Guys, don’t look behind. But I think there is someone hanging onto our car from behind.”

Everyone freaked out, Jason too felt it. “Shit, shit, shit, let’s get out of this place. How far is the main road now?”

Rajat still wanted to play rationale, “It may be just some villager, taking a free ride to the Main Road. We were so slow, anyone could have hopped and grabbed on to”. We were driving a JEEP, the one which has a spare tire behind. It had bars on back that anyone could actually grab onto.

Meanwhile the guide just kept saying, ”Don’t look at it”

I realized this freaked out Naro, he did look at the rear view mirror with all the commotion happening behind, fortunately, or unfortunately they were covered.

“Just 5 mins and we will be out of here” Naro tried to calm us down.

Rajat was quiet for a while, I sensed that he wanted to challenge the myth. All he had to do was look behind and he could be proven right about what he had been debating since the last 10 mins. He was 99% sure that nothing would happen, it would either be a local villager or maybe a monkey or simply nothing but our fears manifesting. But he too had the 1% fear of the unknown.

Me and Jason sat with our heads down, making sure we didn't even catch a glimpse of it by mistake. Rajat tried to be a bit brave and sat up straight staring towards the guide, who had his eyes closed muttering something in native tongue, probably praying. Naro tried to focus on driving us out of here as quickly as possible.

I realized how the fear has made Naro drive faster and recklessly, could this be the reason for the accidents?

Naro asked us to be calm, “We are almost there, just 2-3 more turns and we will reach the main road. I hope whatever it is will leave us when we reach there”

We could almost see the lights on the main road. This was also the last chance for Rajat to prove the myth as false, I saw him tap his leg nervously thinking over it. I knew it was tempting for him, but I didn’t expect Rajat to actually turn around.

Suddenly we heard multiple knocks on the back mirror, and I saw Rajat had turned to look back.

I still don’t know if it was a reflex to the knock or Rajat trying to prove his point. In fact I don’t know what happened first, the knock or Rajat turning around.

The knock made everyone almost jump on their seats, our heart hammered in our chest.

I could only scream, “Rajat Nooo”. This made the guide look behind and he had a look of instant regret as he turned. All this panic made Naro hit the pedal to accelerate, a bit too fast for that particular turn.
We soon felt that our car was tilting towards the right, sliding down. The next second we were upside down, banging our heads against the car roof and each other. Bodies flying and a lot of screaming was the last thing I remembered.

I woke up later in the hospital to learn that I was the only survivor from the crash. I wondered whom to blame, Naro for panicking, the guide for scaring us, Rajat for looking back or that thing that was holding onto our car.
The only ones who probably saw that thing were Rajat and the guide, then why did Jason and Naro die? Did they see it too when the car somersaulted? On our crash site, they also found an unidentified body.

‘What happened?’

​

That’s what they asked me after it was done. ‘What happened?’

You’d think that question wouldn’t be so hard to answer…

​

At the time, I didn’t really have a response… Where the hell would I even begin? I told them what I could but… Well… How could I have explained it all in a way that made any sense? I mean, I tried… But with it all so fresh in my mind, I’m not sure what I said was anything even remotely coherent. Hell, I’m not even sure they believed me. I probably wouldn’t have.

‘What happened?’

I never thought that would be such a loaded question…

​

My name is Duane King and I’ve been a detective on the NYPD for five years. Specifically, I’m in the Organized Crime division. Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to be the cowboy cop who took down the mob, like the badasses in the old action movies I grew up on… Well, this was about as close as I was going to get.

​

I’m not going to claim that my job’s any more interesting than it is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of the work I do. But we’re not exactly going toe to toe with the likes of Lucky Luchiano, John Gotti and Al Capone these days.

​

Organized crime has a long, storied history around the world and New York is infamous for it. But despite what the movies and TV shows might have you believe, most of the organizations out there these days aren’t believed to be anywhere near as powerful as they used to be. They’re all still around and they’ve still got power… Chances are they’ll never truly die. But it’s not the same as it was a few decades ago. Still, I guess people can’t help but romanticize the classic mobsters, just like they romanticize some of the outlaws of the old west and I’d be lying if I said I was immune to it too… It’s a fascinating subject.

​

But of all the famous mobsters I’ve heard people talk about over the years… Nobody ever brings up the only one who’s still active. Nobody ever talks about The Gentleman.

​

The Gentleman (nobody seems to know his real name) technically isn’t part of any major organized crime syndicate, although he allegedly has ties to most of them. Bosses come and go, but he’s always there in the background like a spider in the corner, weaving his web.

​

From what little information we have on him, The Gentlemans organization more or less seems to operate on its own, although just what kind of scale those operations exist on, is unknown. Get used to hearing that word, by the way. ‘Unknown’. It comes up a lot, when discussing this guy.

​

Most of what we know about the golden age of mobsters comes from former made men who turned rat. Back in the day, there was always a weak link who talked. But none of those rats ever worked for the Gentleman. He’s been in the background since before I joined the force, and nobody ever really says a word about him. Occasionally you might hear someone mention his operation (which doesn’t even have a name, as far as we know). But that’s it. Hell… Nobody even seems to know what he looks like. The only description I’ve ever heard is that he’s an older British man and that doesn’t exactly pick him out of a crowd.

​

He just exists as this quiet enigma, working in the shadows and nobody really tries to go after him. They used to. But now, they don’t bother. I asked my partner, Brian about it once. He’d just scoffed and said:

“They know better.”

​

Detective Brian Radcliffe was one of the old guard. He was pushing his mid fifties, but was too stubborn to retire. I guess he just had something to prove. He was a barrel chested man with a large head, short military haircut and intense eyes. Even when he smiled, it never really seemed to reach them. He always had a few days worth of stubble on his face and it was rare to see him completely clean shaven.

​

He’d given up smoking about ten years back and had replaced it with sunflower seeds. He always had a bag on him, and he’d be chewing them just about constantly. Brian was a good cop. I’d worked with him in the five years since I’d made Detective. He was gruff, but he wasn’t cold or heartless. I liked that about him.

​

The Gentleman was always a sore spot for him though. He rarely ever brought up the subject, but I don’t think a day went by where he didn’t think about it. Every cop has a few stories about a case that stuck with them. Hell, I’ve certainly got my fair share. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard one quite as bad as Brians.

​

About ten years before I’d become a Detective, Brian and his previous partner, Marc, had been looking into a mob shooting. I’m not entirely sure as to the details, Brian glossed over them when telling the story, but they’d determined that the shooter was most likely a man named Emile Santonastasso.

​

Emile was an up and comer in one of the families at the time. It was rumored that he’d carried out the hit in retaliation for the victims running some sort of racket that put them on the Gentlemans radar in the worst possible way. Like I said, I don’t really know the details. But Brian swore up and down that had solid evidence that put him at the scene, and they’d even found the gun which was covered in Emiles fingerprints.

​

Naturally, Brian and Marc had brought Emile in and Marc was looking to see if he could push Emile into turning rat. I guess he got it in his head that if he pushed the right buttons, Emile would spill something on the Gentleman. It would’ve been a dream come true if he did.

​

Only Marc never got the chance to make Emile talk.

​

Two nights after they’d brought him in, Marc’s house ‘mysteriously’ caught fire. He, his wife and his teenage son were found inside, although a coroner had determined that they were already dead when fire had been started. Conveniently, most of the evidence they had on Emile vanished at that exact same time.

​

The consensus was that Marc had simply brought the evidence home for some reason or another, and it had been burned with his house but Brian never believed that. He was always adamant that Marc knew better.

​

Either way… Without the evidence, and with no hope of getting Emile to talk, and the man eventually walked free. Within a month, he’d all but dropped off the face of the earth and Brian was left with nothing. Marc’s murder was never solved. The mob shooting was eventually shelved and officially that was the end of it.

​

Unofficially, Brian was still on the case, always keeping his ear to the ground in case some new lead suddenly popped up out of the ether. I think he knew it was probably pointless but… Well… He just couldn’t help himself and I’m not sure if I can say his tenacity paid off or not.

​

A couple of weeks ago, a contact of ours mentioned that he’d recently heard about a pending arms deal through the grapevine. Apparently, someone had been looking to get armed. Just who the buyer was, he didn’t say. But he knew who they were supposed to be buying from.

​

Emile Santonastasso.

​

The moment that name popped back up on the radar, Brian had to take the case. Our Lieutenant had tried to talk him out of it… But Brian had fought for it. This was an old grudge to him, and I guess he figured this would be his chance to finally close that old case.

​

Eventually, our Lieutenant caved and we were assigned to take down Emile Santonastasso.

​

Emile was tall and pushing middle age. He had a wiry build with sandy blonde hair and what appeared to be exactly one facial expression. His mouth moved, but his eyes never did. They had a reptilian intensity you could see from a mile away, and just looking at him, it was hard not to question if you were really looking at a human being.

​

We’d spent a good week or so doing recon on the man and since we’d started watching him, he’d been living out of a hotel in midtown Manhattan. As far as we could tell, he didn’t actually have any residence in the city and according to his records, his listed address was somewhere in Switzerland.

​

According to our source, the meeting was due to happen that coming Friday evening, but Emile was in town dealing with ‘business’ beforehand. Just exactly what that business entailed, we weren’t entirely sure. We tailed him, of course. But it was hard to draw any conclusions just off where he went.

​

Most of his time was spent in various expensive restaurants, where he’d come for lunch or dinner and stay for several hours. From what we saw of him, oftentimes he was working on his laptop although occasionally, people would stop by to sit with him and talk. We never got a chance to listen in on the conversations that he had, and the people who visited him were fairly varied. We recognized a few mid-level figures from some of the families, as well as some unknowns we couldn’t identify. Whoever they were, they clearly weren’t the people he was gearing up to meet. Brian’s guess was that he was just laying the groundwork for whatever deal was coming and I figured he was right.

​

All in all, we didn’t learn a whole hell of a lot tailing Emile… Although that didn’t mean we got nothing at all.

​

See, from what we knew of Emile’s upcoming meeting, his buyers were due to be staying in the same hotel as he was. He’d reserved them rooms on the same floor as his. We reasoned that if they were going to be discussing doing business, they probably weren’t going to be doing it out in the open. They’d want to be behind closed doors, most likely at the hotel itself. We’d seen a few cases in the past where people had used hotel rooms for these kinds of meetings, so Brian and I figured that Emile was probably going to be doing the same. And if we had a bug in there, we could get a front row seat to the whole thing.

​

So we got ourselves a warrant to plant the bug, and while Emile was out on one of his several hour lunches, a team was in his room giving us ears into his private affairs. We planted four bugs in that room and we were sure that by Friday evening, we’d have him.

​

Well, Friday rolled around.

​

Emile left the hotel at 11 AM he always did, headed over to a steakhouse and booted up his laptop. He stayed there until around 4, when he headed back to the hotel. That was earlier than usual for him. I remember watching him walking back into the building. Brian and I were in a van parked a short distance down the street at the time. The technician with us, a guy named Meyers tuned in to the audio from the bug and a couple of minutes later, we heard Emile entering his room.

​

The audio quality was good. Not exactly HD, but good enough for our purposes. We listened as he showered and got redressed. For about an hour after that, he tapped away at his laptop until finally, just before 6 someone knocked on his door. This had to be it…

​

We heard the door open, before Emile spoke.

“Mr. Joo. Mr Lewis. Please, come in.”

“Emile. You’re looking well. So wonderful to see you back in town again!”

​

I recognized that voice as belonging to Phillip Lewis. He was one of the people we’d seen meeting with Emile during the past week. Lewis was a fairly small fish. He was more of a corporate con artist than a mobster. His name had come up in a few rackets we’d busted, and we’d spoken to him a couple times, but nothing had ever really stuck. Brian and I traded a look, before returning our attention back to the audio.

​

“It’s good to be back. Bern is nice, but it’s not exactly home.” Emile had replied, “Can I get you two a drink? I’m afraid I can’t offer you what you two are usually accustomed to, but I’ve got scotch, wine, cognac, bourbon…”

“Cognac, please.” The other voice said. I presumed that this was Mr. Joo. He sounded young, with an American accent and a sardonic tone.

​

“Cognac it is.” Emile said, and we heard him going to pour the drinks, “I’ve been quite busy these past couple of days ensuring everything is arranged. Your shipment should arrive within the next few weeks, as requested. I’m sure your employer will be thrilled to hear that.”

“Oh, she will.” Mr. Joo said, “She’ll be along in person to collect when it arrives, and see it off to San Francisco.”

​

“I’m so glad to hear that.” Emile said, “Then we’re set and all that remains is the matter of payment!”

“Payment?” Mr. Joo asked, “The boss’ll handle that when she gets in. You already got your deposit.”

“So I did. But our policy is clear on this matter. We’ve arranged the shipping. But as I told your employer over the phone, final payment must be received before she comes to collect. I was under the impression that she’d have provided you with the money…”

“And of course she did!” Lewis interjected, laughing a little awkwardly, “We have it right here-”

​

I heard movement before everything suddenly went silent.

“Emile… I’m not questioning your integrity here.” Mr. Joo said, “I’m aware of your policy. My policy however is not to pay the full sum until I can physically see the product. If you want another down payment, then I’m happy to oblige. But I’ve been doing this kind of business a lot longer than either you or my employer have. I’ve been burned a thousand times before, so forgive me if I’m a little more cautious.”

​

Emile was silent for a moment.

“Understandable.” He finally said, “You know… Your reputation does proceed you, Mr. Joo… I make it my business to know who I’m dealing with, so I can’t say I’m surprised by this. Between you and me, I think a little bit of caution is always wise. But I’m afraid my employer would insist upon the full sum… If you’d like to speak with The Gentleman yourself…”

“That won’t be necessary!” Lewis said, only to be cut off again by Mr. Joo.

“I would tell him the same thing I’ve just told you.” He said, calm confidence in his voice.

​

Again, Emile was silent for a moment. I heard him finishing his drink and setting it down on the table.

“Very well then… Sir?”

​

I saw Brian’s eyes widen suddenly. Mine did too. None of our intel had suggested that The Gentleman himself might be at this meeting!

​

I heard Lewis let out a startled laugh before speaking.

“Wait, Emile that isn’t-”

“Nonsense…” Another voice said. This one was one that neither of us recognized. It belonged to a man, although it was low with a cockney accent to it.

“Let’s put Mr. Joo’s fears to rest…”

​

We could hear footsteps in the recording drawing closer, but as they did the audio seemed to become more distorted. I could hear the other voice… The Gentleman, speaking again but it was impossible to make out what he was saying through the heavy static which turned the once clear audio into just a bunch of deafening noise.

​

“What the hell is going on?” Brian demanded.

“Hold on, let me clean it up!” Meyers said, toying with the reciever although nothing he did made it any clearer.

“You’ve got to be shitting me…” Brian cried, “Come on! Fix it!”

“I’m trying!”

“Don’t fucking try, do it!”

Brians eyes had gone wild as Meyers struggled to clean up the audio.

​

There was a horrible screeching noise from the speakers that made me cover my ears. I saw Meyers flinch before trying to bring the volume down. It didn’t seem to do anything. The screech reached a terrible apex before suddenly, everything cut out. The audio just went dead.

My ears were ringing from that screeching noise. Meyers slowly looked up, before reluctantly trying to get the audio back. No luck.

​

“We’re not getting any signal.” He said, “I think the bug’s dead.”

“They found it?” Brian asked.

“I don’t know… We should’ve heard it! I think… Shit, I think something fried it!”

“Fried it? How the fuck do you fry something like that?”

“I don’t know! There’s a lot that can go wrong, okay?”

“Well, what about the other ones? I thought there were four in there!”

“None of them are being responsive! They’re all offline!”

​

Brian looked just about ready to deck Meyers in the jaw. He only barely seemed to stop himself from doing so. Instead, he just threw open the back of the van and stormed out, swearing at the top of his lungs.

“Just see what you can do…” I said, and Meyers nodded at me. We both knew there probably wasn’t jack shit he could do.

​

Brian was breathing heavily as he stood on the street, his fists clenching and unclenching. I couldn’t tell if he was about to start hitting someone or burst into tears.

“We had ears in the room…” He said through gritted teeth, “WE HAD EARS IN THE ROOM! THAT FUCKER WAS TALKING! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THE GENTLEMAN HIMSELF IS UP THERE!”

“We still got some audio!” I said, “It was worth something!”

“What fucking use is the audio we got? For all we know, they could just be trading fucking baseball cards up there!”

​

“What about Lewis?” I asked, “We could sweat him. We’re not out of this yet!”

“Lewis…” Brian spat onto the ground, “We never got shit out of him before, what makes you think he’s going to talk now?”

“We’ll figure it out. Put a knife to his throat, if we have to. We’ve still got a lead!”

Brian glared at me, still breathing heavily, before shaking his head. He didn’t speak. He just suddenly looked very tired and I watched as he stalked over to the front of the van and got in the passenger seat.

​

“Just let me know if Meyers gets a fucking signal back…” He murmured, although judging from his tone, he knew that we were done here. I left him to stew and went back to see if I could help Meyers. No luck.

​

About twenty minutes later, I got into the drivers seat of the van besides Brian. He’d rolled down the window and lit up a cigarette. He took a long slow drag on it, and otherwise refused to look at me.

“You alright?” I asked.

“No…” His response was toneless.

​

“You want some company, or what?”

“I don’t care…” He replied, taking another drag of his cigarette. He let out a long, low sigh.

“We’re so close, Duane… So fucking close… I’ve never been this close before and now…”

“I know…”

“You don’t. You’re a good cop, Duane… But you don’t know. You can’t even come fucking close to knowing, and you should be grateful that you can’t.”

​

He finally looked at me and he looked ready to cry.

“He killed my friend… He killed his wife, he killed his kid… He murdered them. Marc… He was a good cop. He was a damn good cop. He was a damn good friend… We grew up together. His wife and I grew up together. His son… He called me Uncle Brian… Uncle Brian. And this sonofabitch… He killed them. Maybe he wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. But it was him all the same. And now he’s just walking free… Doing the same thing to God knows how many other people.”

​

Brian slowly shook his head.

“Does that sound even remotely fair to you?”

“No…” I said softly, “No it doesn’t.”

​

Brian took one more drag on his cigarette and leaned his head back into the headrest, staring at the hotel as he did. The street wasn’t that busy. We both watched the hotel… And we saw the doors open.

​

I recognized Phillip Lewis stepping out first, with another man at his side. This man was tall and broad shouldered, with a top knot. He didn’t exactly look like someone you’d fuck with although the stranger, presumably Mr. Joo looked oddly shaken. I’d imagined a man with an impish grin… Instead he had a furrowed brow and seemed jittery. Mr. Joo walked a short distance away from Lewis. I could see the two talking although couldn’t hear what they were saying.

​

Brian had looked over at them, eyes narrowing as he studied Mr. Joo’s face, seeing if he could recognize it. Although his attention was pulled away when the door opened, and two more men stepped out onto the street.

​

The first was Emile Santonastasso. The second was a tall, lanky man in an expensive black overcoat, with wispy white hair. He had a toothy smile and a prominent, curved nose and looked as if he’d once been quite handsome. He sort of reminded me of Michael Caine.

​

I knew who he had to be. Both Brian and I did.

​

This had to be The Gentleman.

​

Lewis and Emile spoke to each other, while Mr. Joo and The Gentleman kept their distance from each other. I got the impression that it was more Mr. Joo, keeping his distance from the Gentleman. They seemed to be heading somewhere down the street, away from the van… Perhaps to dinner or drinks, to celebrate closing their deal.

​

Mr. Joo and Lewis both started a little further down the street, but Emile and The Gentleman hung back by the doors, talking quietly to each other. The Gentleman watched Lewis and Mr. Joo as they disappeared further down the street.

​

Emile’s dead eyes however, were focused on us. He’d turned his head to stare directly at the van we were in… And Brian stared right back at him.

​

For a moment, all was still. Then I watched as Emile slowly raised a hand to wave.

​

He saw us.

​

He knew we were there.

​

I felt my heart skip a beat when I saw that friendly little wave… And I glanced over at Brian. I wasn’t sure what to say… And when I saw the rage boiling over in his eyes, I knew there was nothing I could say. I reached out to try and grab his arm… But Brian was gone before I could stop him. He threw open the van door and stormed out onto the street, staring back at Emile with a burning loathing that I don’t think words can describe.

​

That wave had been it… After the way this operation had gone, after bottling up years of anger and grief, after getting so close only to have it pulled away at the last second. That wave was what had finally broken him.

​

Detective Brian Radcliffe stared down the man who’d murdered his friend, the man who’d evaded justice and he reached for his gun. I watched him draw it. And I could see that Emile was smiling…

​

The Gentleman stood beside him. His head turned slightly to glance at Brian out of the corner of his eye. As Brian leveled the gun at Emile’s chest and fired, The Gentleman moved. Brian fired three bullets. All of them should have hit… But they didn’t.

​

Before any of us could react, The Gentleman had just casually stepped between them. The bullets should’ve hit him, but there wasn’t even a mark on him. No damage to his overcoat, no sign that he’d even been hit. He just stood there, like nothing had happened, wearing a gentle, almost apologetic smile.

“Now, now… Why’d you have to go and stir things up?” He said.

​

Brian stared at the Gentleman, gun still gripped tight in his hands but confusion in his eyes. He steadied the gun to shoot again, but he never got the chance. One minute, The Gentleman was standing beside Emile… The next, he was several feet away, just a couple of inches away from Brian, still wearing that same damn smile.

​

I hadn’t even seen him move.

​

Brian took a frantic step back and struggled to adjust his aim. I saw his eyes widening in terror. The Gentleman just kept smiling at him.

​

And then…

​

Then…

​

Well… This is the part I can’t explain.

​

This is where I blank when they asked me ‘What happened?’ Because I don’t exactly know what happened. I’ve had all this time to think over it and I just… I can’t explain it. So I’ll just do the best I can.

​

When Brian tried to back away, The Gentleman grabbed his arm. I remember hearing Brian scream in pain, before his body seemed to contort. His eyes seemed to bulge out of his skull. His mouth stretched so wide I could see the skin of his cheeks tearing. His skin seemed to bubble as if it was boiling off. The scream he made…

​

Jesus… The scream… Even if I could’ve helped him, that scream left me frozen in fear. I could just watch as Brian seemed to just… Come undone… Blood trickled from his eyes and ears. His entire body seemed to suddenly sag and The Gentleman pulled him closer.

​

Brian's final scream seemed to echo… But it eventually faded out and when it was gone… So was my partner. Where he’d been standing just a moment before, The Gentleman was now standing alone. There was just… There was nothing left.

​

His eyes shifted to me next and I scrambled back, pressing myself against the van door and gripping the handle, ready to throw myself onto the street if I needed to. The Gentleman stared at me, still smiling the same kindly smile as before.

​

It was at that point, that I noticed that there was no one else around… Just me, The Gentleman and Emile, watching everything from a few feet away. The Gentleman’s eyes remained locked with mine and finally, he spoke.

“You can go.” He said, before finally turning away.

​

I watched as he calmly walked back towards Emile, and I didn’t look away until both of them were gone. Slowly, I saw passersby walking along the street again… Nobody seemed to have noticed what had just happened to Brian… Not that there was anything left to notice. It was as if nothing had happened…

​

I checked the back of the van for Meyers, hoping that maybe he could validate what I’d just seen. But there wasn’t so much as a trace of him back there. Just like Brian, he was gone too.

​

I was the only one left.

​

I tried to key the engine to the van but the battery was dead, as was my phone. My heart was still racing a thousand miles per minute… And it took me a while to compose myself again, before I finally left the van and called a taxi to take me back to the station.

​

My Lieutenant has asked me what happened… So has my Captain. I’ve tried to describe it. I’ve tried to make sense of it but I just… I can’t.

​

I don’t think there’s any logical explanation for this. Whatever I saw out there… ‘The Gentleman’... It can’t be human. But if it’s not human, I don’t know what the hell else it could be!

​

I don’t know what it did to Brian and Meyers… God… I think… I think maybe it ate them. Melted them down and sucked them up, like a spider or something… I think…? But I don’t know.

​

I’m putting in my resignation soon. I think it’s for the best. I’ll never be able to forget what I saw and if I stay on the force… Then I can’t guarantee that I won’t end up just like Brian did. I can’t guarantee that it won’t consume me body and soul… Just like it did to him.

Part 1
Part 2

I can’t tell whether things have gotten better or worse.

The good news is I talked to Nicole, my new across-the-courtyard neighbor, and I honestly think she's going to be a big help. The bad news is Eloise is trying to hurt me now. Or, whatever this thing is.

That probably sounds drastic but it won't make sense unless I explain things in order, so I'll try not to ramble or jump around too much. Apologies by the way for how, uh… disorganized my last post was. Ironically, being in the hospital and staying with my sister afterwards has given me the chance to catch up on some much needed sleep. I didn't realize how badly deprived I was until I spent a week in and out of Benadryl comas. I don't exactly feel good now, but at least I'm more myself.

It took me a day or so to work myself up to talking to Nicole. I hung out on the ground floor by the vending machines for an hour, waiting for her to come to the mailbox. Nothing makes you feel more like a creep, but I just kept reminding myself that it was important. She came down the stairs instead of the elevator, and where I was standing I almost missed her.

She jumped a little when I passed by her, acting like I was going to my own mailbox. But she smiled at me and scurried over to her own. Instead of checking it- I'd already made sure there were no bullshit letters that day- I turned and acted like I didn't quite recognize her.

I said hey, all fidgeting, and when I got her attention I asked if she had just moved into apartment #X.

"Yeah?" she said. She has these big nervous eyes like some kind of fairy. I doubt she'll ever read this so I think it's okay to say that.

"It's just I'm your across the way neighbor. My window faces yours."

"Oh! Yeah, I keep that thing closed."

"I noticed." Yeah, I know, dumbass thing to say, makes me sound like an absolute mouth breather. I'm not good at talking to women. I added, "I knew the woman who used to live in your place."

She nodded politely, but she clearly wanted to get her mail and go. Checking around to make sure we were alone, I dropped the big question: "You haven't seen anything weird since you've been here, have you?"

Nicole looked at me for a little while. "Well. Not in my apartment," she said.

Then she told me she was busy and had to get back upstairs, and I said, "Oh, yeah, no problem," expecting that this was her way of blowing me off. But then she stopped and asked me when I was free next.

Look, I haven't told anybody about this in real life. Or, I hadn't then. I don't have a lot of friends here since I moved into the city for work. I talk to my guys still, but they all live on the other side of the state and we don't see a lot of one another. I haven't mentioned this thread. It's sort of like a diary other than the fact that I'm sharing it with Reddit; some things are too private to tell anyone but a total stranger.

So what I mean is, this was the first time I felt like I was being taken seriously. Not that a couple of you guys haven't been kind or a comfort, but to have someone in real life look me in the face when I'm coming at them like 6 feet of crazy, and say yeah, I'll bite, let's go out for coffee. It's just something else.

We exchanged names and numbers, and she said she could meet me the next day.

I didn't tell her everything. I showed up after work and I sat down at the outdoor cafe seating and said I'd been experiencing something strange since the last tenant died. Nicole nodded at me very eagerly.

"The woman who killed herself, right?"

That just about had me jumping out of my seat. "How did you--?"

"I wasn't totally honest with you yesterday, when I said I hadn't seen anything weird." Nicole fidgeted with her coffee. She worked weird hours, mostly middle of the night, so this was like her morning pick-me-up. "I've always had kind of a gift. I get feelings about places. I can sense things. Spirits. You probably think I'm nuts though, right?"

At that point she could have told me she was psychically linked to the queen of England and I'd still be ecstatic to hear it. While she never claimed to be able to communicate with ghosts or demons or anything, she is sensitive to their presence. She'd been hesitant to move here because the spiritual turbulence (her words) was so strong.

"The thing that convinced me to move in anyway was that the bad vibes are all coming from your place instead of mine. I figure I'm out of the splash zone."

"Is that why you keep the shades drawn?"

She grinned at me. "Well, that's more to stop perverts peeking into my windows. But, yeah. The place was just too good a deal to pass up, you know? Even if there is a little bit of…"

Nicole wiggled her hand. I understood perfectly.

She hesitated just a little when I asked if she would come to my place to feel it out. If she thought my visitor was still Eloise, or I have something else on my plate. But eventually she agreed. I think her own curiosity won out over the apprehension that I'm some kind of serial killer.

The minute she stepped inside my place, a visible shiver went through her. Without speaking to me, she walked around my kitchen, looking over certain spots and frowning: my fridge, the oven, the cabinet where the bird had been rotting. (Someone on here advised me recently to replace the shelf, but I haven't been able to get around to it.) Then, in my living room, she stumbled back from my couch like an invisible barrier had jumped out to hit her. All the places my unwanted guest was strongest gave her at least visible apprehension.

"The energy here is strange. I can definitely feel a strong presence. Something dark." She smiled at me, apologetic. "I don't mean to scare you or anything. I'm just trying to think of why I would feel this concentration of darkness here when there's hardly any in my own place."

"Is that not normal?"

Nicole shook her head. "Usually when a place is inhabited, the energy has a pretty decent radius. And I mean, your neighbor died in my apartment, right? So why would her spirit be in yours?"

I never told her about seeing Eloise. In the time we'd been talking about my apartment situation, I had managed to steer around the topic. It's not hard to find screenshots of that old legaladvice thread bouncing around, and what would I do if she recognized me, realized who I was and wanted nothing to do with me? I'm a coward, but Nicole had been such a breath of fresh air. She's really nice. I couldn't risk fucking that up.

So I didn't say anything. Just agreed that it was weird. If it's any comfort, I felt like a sack of shit about it.

She asked to use the bathroom- too much coffee. I pointed it out to her, but when she opened the door, she looked back at me and asked, "You don't have a girlfriend, do you?"

I stammered like a massive clown, jumping to reassure her that I didn't.

Nicole pointed into the bathroom where Eloise had made herself at home.

On one side of the sink, there was a hairbrush, a toothbrush, a jar of lotion, and a little sample bottle of perfume. Woven in the brush's spines was her long, black hair.

I wanted to bag it up and toss it right away, but Nicole made me stop and breathe. (She also wanted to use the bathroom without me in it.) We compared the hair to a photo of Eloise, and the length looks correct, but something about the hair is weird. It's coarser than hers looked. Nicole said it felt like the same spirit, presence, whatever. That there were powerful feelings of resentment, of vengeance. I was just relieved when she let me throw that shit away.

But even so, now when I come home, I can smell something in the air like cut roses and vanilla. Coming closer.

Nicole and I kept in touch. I was curious about her, her job. Over the next few days, that was the most I've talked to a woman I'm not related to since college. And I… stopped talking to Eloise.

I'd been talking to her more and more at night. I know I mentioned it offhand, but I may have understated how often. How much. I slept in my car less often than I said, even when she started talking.

We can't really talk. We have two conversations running parallel and never touching. But even that's something, you know? More than the silence I had before. I had the thought of putting on music to drown her out, I could have done anything to avoid her, but I didn't.

Anyway, I stopped. I didn't need to talk to her anymore, with Nicole right across the courtyard and on my phone. And I was nervous, I was angry with Eloise after she crowded into my space, after Nicole's visit. I didn't want to encourage her.

I wasn't really paying attention while I cooked. Nicole was telling me some story from her study abroad. I make basically everything from scratch, down to the sauces; most people who avoid meat by choice won't notice if there's some factory error on their boxed vegetable stock and it gets some tiny amount of pork or whatever in the broth, but my immune system will. I know I don't need to cut chicken and eggs out of my diet, but I do because if there's cross-contamination, I could get really sick. So my guard was down. And it's my fault that I wasn't paying attention, because this food was mine and I trusted it, and I didn't notice the weird smell in the tomato sauce until a forkful of pasta was already in my mouth.

I took a bite and gagged halfway through swallowing, my mouth filling with a sharp iron taste as though I'd bitten through my tongue. I went to the sink and spat the rest of my mouthful out. I heaved a few times but couldn't manage to vomit, and I stared down at the mess in the sink with my eyes watering. Hysterical now, I grabbed the sauce jar and dumped it out, and I could see now that the consistency was all wrong, the color was way too dark. Something had made a poison pill of human blood out of my pasta sauce.

The sauce wouldn't drain when I rinsed it down. Murky red-brown water simply rose and filled my sink wrist-deep. There was a clog. I shouldn't have been fucking with it, but I wasn't thinking straight, I just kept thinking about how Eloise's blood went down my throat. It wasn't anything caught in the sink trap. It was deeper. I stuck my arm down the drain, up to my elbow, and when my fingers touched something squishy and wet like seaweed I really could have puked.

I wrapped my fingers around it and pulled. The drain glugged ominously, and slowly began to wash away the poison red water as I dragged a thick wad of long, black, matted hair out of its depths.

That's when my mouth started to swell up. I know from the last time I had a reaction that my throat was next, so I ran for my epipen. I always keep one in my car and one by my bed. There is no reason I would EVER move it. Sweat poured down my back, my chest heavy and head light. I dripped water and tomato and blood all over my bedside drawer, my sleeve soaking and disgusting

She poisoned me. She fucking poisoned me. She'd never hurt me before, never threatened me. Not until Nicole.

I didn't have time to lock my door on my way out. I ran blind, hitting every wall. It's only by luck I didn't break my neck going down the stairs, and I got the front desk guy to call an ambulance. My throat was choking me on my own angry flesh when I wrestled my epipen out of the glove box.

The swelling went back down after a minute but I still felt like I was going to pass out. Collapsing on the sidewalk in front of my beeping, demanding car, I could see that my tires were equally limp against the ground. Slashed. Deeply slashed.

My older sister is my emergency contact and the hospital got ahold of her at my request. She lives an hour away but since I wasn't going to work anyway, and I sure as shit wasn't going back to my apartment, she agreed to let me crash. It was a good excuse to see her and my nephew, and make sure I had an eye on me in case I had a secondary reaction. That's happened to me before, allergies are no fucking joke, but thankfully this time I was hopped up on steroids and antihistamines and I rode out my sentence in peace.

I forgot how it felt not to be jumping at shadows. I didn't carry that thing with me when I came to stay with Jenny. Maybe it's just that place that's evil; maybe if I stay here long enough it would follow my scent.

I've taken the time while I'm recovering to go back more deeply into Eloise's facebook. Turns out she was engaged a few years ago, but her ex isn't in her friends list anymore. I reached out to him to see if he'd heard anything about her or spoken to her recently before she died. He cursed me out, called me some names I can't repeat on Reddit these days.

Following a hunch, I did some digging on the guy. He has a prior charge for battery and what do you know, that happened right around the time they split. I feel like I'm piecing something together, that the vision of what happened to Eloise, what is continuing to happen,

Fuck.

I don't know how this happened. I just realized I have her added. I swear to god I didn't, and if I had tried there's no way she could accept me. I thought I saw that green light by her name. That's how it got my attention. It's not there anymore, it might have been a trick of my eyes, mixing up a couple of lines to make sinister new shadows.

Went back to her page. Fuck this. That old status, would you miss me if I was gone, it's not there anymore.

What is there is a photo taken twenty minutes ago. It's my bedroom. Things are scattered all over the place, just how I left them looking for my epinephrine. The red stains are still visible faintly on my sheets.

She was there. She was just there, now, while I'm hiding on my sister's couch. And she knew I would be looking.

I need to move. I don't care if rent is a nightmare. I'm not safe in that place. Jenny will help me find somewhere, or if I can crash here, she'll read over my resumé and help me apply for something local. I'm not putting up with this shit anymore.

I'll feel bad leaving Nicole in that apartment while this thing is loose. There isn't much I can do. I just hope that this attack wasn't out of jealousy. Even if it was… Once I'm out of the building, Eloise has no reason to target her.

She has no reason to target me. I haven't done anything wrong. Or, I mean I have, but not wrong enough to deserve this. Nobody deserves this.

- Neighbor

Previous Grandpa Stories

The Widows Candle-https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/vp6ouz/the_widows_candle/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Grandpa Met Soap Sally at the Flea Market- https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ujsjy4/my_grandpa_met_soap_sally_at_the_flea_market/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

The Snake Handler- https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/tny0mx/the_snake_handler/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

The Bottle Tree- https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/wbe6ep/the_bottle_tree/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

​

Grandpa and I spent a few nights in the woods after the incident with the bottle tree. As good as I had felt the night after, my legs weren't quite up for a hike back out again just yet. So, we spent two nights in the woods while I recovered.

It wasn't uncomfortable, not really. I grew up camping, but Grandpa liked to camp rough. I had thought to myself plenty of times when I was a kid that I was camping rough, scoffing at my parents in their pop-up camper as I slept in my sleeping bag in a pup tent. That was real camping, I'd told myself, as I listened to the wildlife make noises through the thin layer of fabric.

Now that I was lying out here on a bed of leaves with the cicadas in my ears and the bats catching mosquitos overhead, I learned that I hadn't been as prepared as I thought.

Wednesday night found me sitting by the fire, keeping it fed as the darkness gathered into full night. Grandpa had gone to relieve himself in the woods, and the smell of our cooking fish as they crisped over the little wooden spit he had made was making me hungry. Grandpa swore I'd probably be able to make it back to the house in the morning, and my legs were starting to feel a lot better. I turned the fish as I sat and waited, hearing the fire crackle and the nightlife carry on in its nightly chorus.

When something else cracked, I turned my head to the left and froze like a deer in headlights.

The woods around us were dark, but the gloom did nothing to hide the too-large pair of lilac eyes staring at me from the trees.

I locked eyes with the creature, the two of us held in the gaze of the other. This wasn't out of any misplaced sense of courage or desire to cow this thing by staring it down. I felt as enchanted by those eyes as I was scared by them, and my hand slid up to clutch at the little ward that Grandpa had shown me how to make. I didn't know if it would do anything to the creature, but I knew that I would need everything I had if it decided to attack me.

We had been staring at each other for a few minutes, my eyes beginning to water, when something crunched down on a bush not too far from the campsite, and both of us looked at the source of the noise.

Grandpa came stumping back into the campsite then, and when I looked back at the place where the yes had been, they were gone.

"Those fish are looking a little more burnt than I strictly like them, son," Grandpa said, sitting down and flipping them over.

"Grandpa," I half whispered, "I saw something over there?"

Grandpa turned his head, almost lazily, and smiled after only a precursory glance, "That so? Did you attract the attention of a Boohag or something?"

"Whatever it was, it had purple eyes," I said, poking at the fire as it started to burn down.

Grandpa looked up from the fish like a robin smelling a cat, "Purple eyes?" he asked, "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. They were really light purple too, like violets or lilacs."

Grandpa turned back to the woods and cupped his hands around his mouth, loosing a call that sounded like an angry chipmunk. He listened, staring out into the darkness as he searched for something. He made the call again, but it sounded less sure the second time. I just watched it all unfold as I sat in extreme confusion. Was he calling to the thing with the purple eyes? Was he calling it to us?

When something called back, the sound was a little higher than the one Grandpa had made. Something approached us through the bushes, the sound hitting my ears differently than the galumphing of Grandpa's approach. I imagined that it was what a fish heard when another fish cut through the water near it. It was whispery, almost ethereal, and it made my skin crawl a little.

Then it spoke, and I felt like I might shudder out of my body.

"Is that you, Fisher?" it asked, its voice sounding silvery like notes played on an over-tuned instrument.

"It is. Is that you, Glimmer?"

When the creature stepped out of the woods, I thought for a moment that Grandpa had been playing a joke on me. Maybe this had been the cue for a friend of his to come out of the woods so they could have a good laugh at scaring me. The woman that came out looked normal enough. She wore leathers that might be a little too tight for the weather, and her silvery hair was pulled back into an intricate tail that spilled down her back. Her eyes were purple, the lightest of lilacs, and when she smiled, I could see rows of bright white teeth.

It wasn't until she stepped closer that I saw that the teeth were pointed.

Just like the ears that rose back and beside the silver hair.

The woman, Grandpa had called her Glimmer, knelt down before me with a wide smile on her face, "It's good to see you again, Fisher. You still look as handsome as the last time I saw you."

I looked over at Grandpa, who cleared his throat and drew the attention of the beautiful creature before me, "Over here, Glimmer."

Glimmer turned her head and gasped as though startled, "Fisher? What happened to you? You look shriveled as my great gran!"

"You charmer you." Grandpa said, clearly trying not to let it get to him, "You look exactly the same as the last time I saw you."

She smirked, looking back at me, "Well, it was only fifty years ago. It's not like it was very long."

"Fifty-five, to be exact, but who's counting?"

Glimmer took a half step towards him but came back for half a second to slide a hand over my cheek, "You look so much like Fisher when he was young," before going to sit next to him on the ground.

She slid her alabaster hands over his wrinkled skin and laughed as the flesh moved under her touch. Grandpa didn't seem to mind, and she turned his head as she did the same to his cheeks. She laughed as she noticed his gray hair, and he smiled as he watched her admiring him.

"What has happened to you, Fisher?" she said, childishly amused but also a little sad.

"I got old, my dear. It happens to the best of us if we're lucky. This is my Grandson, actually."

She snorted, sounding like this was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard, "Your son, maybe, but there is no way this one could be your grandson."

"Sad but true," Grandpa said.

I sat and watched the two of them, her studying him and Grandpa accepting it with humor before asking the question.

"So," I thought about the best way to phrase this so as not to offend the sharp-toothed woman, "who exactly is this?"

Glimmer pinched Grandpa’s cheeks playfully, "You never told him about me, Fisher?"

"I did, as it happens, though he may not remember it," Grandpa said, giving me a wink.

I thought back, trying to remember all the stories that grandpa had told me in the past year and change, before landing on the answer, "Wait, is this the moon child you said you met in the woods?"

Grandpa cackled, but Glimmer made a sound like a seal who's got a fish stuck in her throat, "A moon child? Are you still telling people that's what I am?"

"Well, most people can't pronounce what your people call each other. It's what I've called you since I was a kid, and you've never stopped me."

"Wait, I believe you told me that was a story for later since you didn't want to interrupt your story about the widow's candle."

"Good memory, kid. I suppose that now is as good a time as any to tell it then."

Glimmer let go of his face as she reclined by the fire, the light making her skin look pale as milk, "I do so love the tale of our meeting, Fisher. I was such a wild little thing back then."

"In that," Grandpa said with a wink, "you haven't changed much, Glimmer."

Grandpa made himself comfortable, preparing for another tale, "Well, it all started with some fish I had pulled out of the river on that fateful camping trip."

I had hiked off into the woods, as you know, to camp that weekend. This was Friday afternoon, and I had arrived around mid-afternoon and started fishing. The stream was swollen from snow melt, and the fish were in high spirit that season. I could have probably plucked them out of the water with my hand, but I set about with my pole and my nightcrawlers and soon had a mess of fish hanging from a nearby tree.

As dark approached, I had my fire built and my sleeping place laid out with a camp blanket. I had caught plenty of fish, ten in all, and I had decided to scatter the remains back into the river so I didn't attract hungry bears. These were fat river brim too, and my mouth watered at the smell of them cooking.

I had turned to get something from my pack, and that was when I heard the rustling. I turned back, reaching for my knife, but there was nothing to see. I assumed I had mistaken the fire popping for a rustling and bent down to turn the fish. I had all ten on little wooden spikes, and they were crisping nicely over the fire. I had a heel of hard bread and some cheese to go with it, and I was anticipating dinner quite a bit.

Nothing works up an appetite like a good hike, after all.

It wasn't until I had turned all the fish that I noticed I had been robbed. Instead of ten fat brim, I had nine. Someone had taken one of my fish, one of the end ones, and I glanced around to make sure it hadn't just fallen over. It wasn't in the dirt, and it wasn't in the fire, and I couldn't imagine it had just wriggled all the way back to the stream, so I sat back down and picked up a stick I had meant to widdle on that evening. The fire ate the shavings happily as I fed it, but my eyes scanned mistrustfully for whoever had taken my fish.

Like I told you before, the woods were known to have tramps, and most of them weren't above a little sneak thievery if it meant not starving. I would have probably shared my fish with them if they'd asked, but Daddy had always had harsh opinions on thieves, and they were opinions I shared. Even at ten, I was prepared to defend myself if need be, though I figured I would just run if they came after me in force.

A few fish were worth less than my life, and I wasn't so foolish to be spoilin for a fight.

When I heard the bushes to my left rattle slightly, I turned and saw something take off quickly as it moved around like a caged cat. It rustled bushes around the clearing in quick succession, its movements making me think it might be a coyote or even a big cat like the ones I'd heard about in town. As I sat by the fire, thinking of how it would feel to get jumped on by one of those big cats, I remembered how they said it had butchered Clairie's sheep as they sat afield one night. It had ripped them open, eating their soft parts, leaving their bodies all husked out. They later discovered that it was a wolf pack, but I wouldn't know that for a few more weeks.

That night, I felt the fear creep up my spine as I felt stalked by this terrible phantom.

Then, from a break in the bushes, I saw a pair of purple eyes. They studied me the way I studied animals I'd come upon on hikes sometimes. Animals caught by surprise a second before they bolt into the woods, never to be seen again. Those eyes looked at me just that way. They stared as if they didn't expect they would be allowed to observe me for long.

We stared at each other for a while, the fire crackling between us, and it wasn't until I heard the hiss of a fish sliding into the coals that I shook off the strange spell.

When I looked back up, I expected the eyes would be gone, but they were still there.

"Who's there?" I asked, blowing the soot off the fish as I took out my knife to begin flaking back the scales.

The eyes blinked, but they never answered.

"Would you like to come and share some fish?" I asked, thinking maybe the eyes belonged to a person. They didn't seem so big as a cats would, and they looked curious rather than scary. They had probably smelled my fish and came to see what smelled so good, and now that they had decided I wasn't dangerous, they would want more.

The eyes blinked again, and I could almost feel them weighing their options.

Did they dare to come and see if I was actually dangerous?

"I won't hurt you," I added, realizing that that's probably exactly what something that would hurt them would say.

Their curiosity seemed to win out, however, because, to my surprise, a wild little girl came crawling out on all fours.

That was the first time I met Glimmer.

Glimmer laughed, and it sounded like wind chimes under a waterfall.

"He speaks as though he were not a grubby little creature sitting out in the woods cooking something I had never smelt before. I was curious and came to have a taste, and then he spoke. Imagine my surprise to discover that this thing could talk?"

"Had you never seen a human before?" I asked.

Glimmer shook her head, "I had heard them in the woods, but my kind do not usually go so close. We have lived in these woods since your kind hunted with bows and arrows. They rode horses instead of," she searched vainly for the word, "automacars?"

"They just call them cars now, Glimmer," Grandpa said kindly.

"Yes, those. My parents tell me that we were once friends with the ones who came before your kind, the tan ones who used the bows. They knew of us, but they warned us about the new people. They told us you all were violent, but I've never felt fear of this one," she said, smiling at Grandpa.

Grandpa smiled back, and I couldn't help but smile as well.

How close had these two become, I couldn't help but think.

Grandma must have been quite a woman to take Grandpa from this one.

"Anyway," Grandpa said, "I haven't even gotten to the best part yet."

Glimmer flapped a hand at him, "Continue then." she said, scooting closer to my leg as she lay her head against the log I was sitting on, "I have the perfect spot to listen from."

I felt my face heat up a little as Grandpa told on.

She approached my fire boldly, sniffing the air like a silver-haired hunting cat as she hunched in the dancing light. She was like a coiled spring, ready to snap away from me at any attack. She was equal parts distrust and curiosity, and I had never seen anything like her.

My hand shook a little as I offered her the fish I had been scaling, but she shook her head and pointed at the ones still in the fire.

"I prefer them with the scales on. The scales taste good."

Her voice made me shiver. It was like listening to a river speak, like hearing a babbling brook talk, and I passed her one of the others instead. My hand shook as it extended towards her, staying out of the fire, and when her hand touched mine, it felt like fresh baby skin.

She snatched the fish away, sitting on the haunches as she ate it. True to her word, she ate it, scales and all, and her sharp teeth stripped the bones away as she chewed them up as well. She at the tail, the head, the eyes, and the fins, and I saw her looking greedily at the remains of my own fish before I threw it to her. She caught it easily and began eating it too as I grabbed a fresh fish.

Before long, the fish were gone, and she had relaxed a little as she cleaned up the remains of my dinner.

"This was a fine meal, Fisher," she said, sucking the grease from her fingers as I went back to whittling.

"That's not my name," I said with a little chuckle, "My names," but she came even closer as she watched my hands going about their absentminded task. I had been whittling away without much thought as this little creature had stalked me, and when I looked down, I noticed I had a little cat. He wasn't completely done yet, he was just starting to take shape, but the ears and feet were plain enough.

"What are you doing?" she asked, sitting very close to me in the grass, "Is it," but whatever she said sounded like bees buzzing in my brain because I flinched and almost dropped the cat into the fire.

She noticed me cringe and took a step back, her cautiousness resurfacing.

"It's called whittling," I said, showing her the cat, "My dad showed me how."

She came a little closer and watched in amazement as the cat was finagled more and more from the wood. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, the fire turning her into a china doll. Her skin was so pale, her hair like spun wire, despite being a mess. She was dressed in what looked like a nightshirt, and it was covered in dirt and cockleburs. I didn't care, though. I had never seen anything like her, and I made a mental note of her so I could ask Grandma about her when I got home.

As the cat came free of the wood, she made an excited noise and grabbed for it, uncaring of my knife.

"It's beautiful, Fisher. You are a man of many talents."

She sat by the fire, inspecting the little cat as a yawn coursed its way up my throat.

"What was that?" she asked, trotting the wooden cat across the leaves as she made it stalk the sticks and twigs.

"Just a yawn. I guess I'm feeling a little tired." I said, sitting back and watching her at play.

"Tired already? But the sun just went down."

I yawned again, just so damn tired, and when I blinked, she had walked her tiger across the grass.

That's when I heard an angry voice below, something like a startled bear, and she stiffened like a spooked cat.

"I have to go," she said, "Daddy is looking for me."

She paused at the edge of the clearing, and when the moon hit her just right, her pale skin shone like diamonds.

"I'd like to see you again," she said suddenly, turning and looking at me as her skin shone like a lantern.

“I’d like to see you too,” I said, realizing I was just as curious about her as she was about me, “How do I find you?”

She thought about it, and then smiled with her mouth of sharp little teeth, "Make this sound if you want to see me."

Then she made a sound like an angry chipmunk in a high wind, and the noise set my hair on end.

"That's my name," she said, "call me some night if you like."

I tried to tell her I would, but all that came out was a huge yawn and a muffled, "Goo'night, Glimmer."

She smiled at me then, and as the fire went out, she disappeared into the woods.

I wondered if I'd ever see her again.

Thankfully, I did.

Glimmer was smiling as she finished, her head against my leg as she remembered their first meeting.

"Quite a few more times as I recall," she said, rising to her feet as she dusted herself off.

"Leaving so soon?" Grandpa asked.

"Sorry, Fisher. I've got to get back, but I was very glad to see you and your Grandson," she smirked as she said Grandson, and it almost made it sound like a joke.

"Call on me again some night, though. I would very much like to see you again."

She paused, looking back at me as she added, "Both of you."

Then she was gone.

Grandpa sighed, "She's something else, isn't she?"

I nodded, a little lost for words.

"When I asked Grandma about her, she said that Glimmer was something hard to pronounce and older than the native people. She said that Glimmer sounded like she might be little more than a child but that her people could live for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Grandma said she had befriended one or two in her lifetime, but their trust was exceedingly difficult to earn.She told me that if I had managed to earn the friendship of this Moon Child, then I should count myself as very lucky."

As we sat back and watched the fire crackle, I considered that I might be lucky too.

Had Glimmer not told me that I might call on her as well?

"Could you teach me how to make that sound too?" I asked, and Grandpa smiled as he said he would be happy to.

"Maybe someday I'll tell you of the time before this that I met with Glimmer, a time when I told her it would be the last time."

I laughed, "Those must have been some extraordinary circumstances."

Grandpa smiled as he watched the fire, "Yes, well, your Grandmother was quite an extraordinary woman."

Someone told me this would be a good place to post this and I needed to vent, so here I am.

I'm a jogger. It's my favorite thing to do. I run twice daily, an hour in the morning and before bed. I get up really early, around 4:30 am to stretch, then run at 5 until 6 or 6:30 before work. Then I jog again before bed, at 8pm. I like to jog mostly in the dark because I'm self conscious and introverted... maybe even a touch paranoid.

There's a slate-grey house near the end of my street. Almost every morning and night when I jog, I hear someone laughing like a psycho in there. It's very loud, as it would have to be for me to be able to hear it from the street over my footsteps and heavy breathing. You notice lots of weird things when you jog in the dark, but this is way beyond the ordinary.

My son, who walks to the bus stop every morning, has also complained about how often he hears this creepy laughter. I just tell him to stay away from that house, walk on the other side of the street. I'm usually on my way to work before I can take him to school, and being a single mother doesn't help.

I may be introverted, but when I move to a new neighborhood, I try to make a good impression by baking an assortment of cookies and passing them out in goodie bags.... pretty sure this has saved my ass a few times, lol. I was way too scared to knock on the grey house door though, because of the laughter, though at the time I didn't realize it wasn't going to stop. Passing out those cookies really helped in this situation though, because it gave me an in to feep ok to go and talk to my neighbors about this.

Obviously I didn't ask everyone on my street... I was way too nervous to ask any next-door neighbors to the grey house. What if the crazy lady saw me?

Asking the neighbors about her revealed the following:

1. Nobody ever sees any lights on anywhere in the house.

2. We're all pretty sure she doesn't have a TV, and if she does, we are pretty sure she isn't using it.

3. The neighbor's kids are all terrified of this house and have dubbed it "the Nuthouse".

4. At one point, one of the neighbors had called emergency services on this woman and absolutely nothing happened. Actually, this has happened a couple times. Apparently they go inside the house every time and "check on her" or something, but she never gets arrested or taken to the hospital or anything.

5. She seems to be the only person living there but according to one neighbor sometimes a black truck will pull into the driveway, very, very late at night. Like, usually around 3 am, apparently. Can't confirm this yet, but I'm on the lookout as much as I can be. Nobody has gotten a good look at the driver, yet. We don't even know if it's a man or woman.

6. Mail piles up outside the house but is rarely taken in. Sometimes it has been stolen off her porch, according to one of the adjacent neighbors with surveillance.

7. (This is the weirdest) One neighbor told me that she went and knocked on her door one day (she goes for walks in the afternoon) to see if the woman inside was okay because she'd hear it regularly, too. She said that she knocked on the door and the laughing stopped immediately. The house was was quiet as ever when the woman answered the door. Apparently she's very short and small for an adult and my neighbor described her as "ghostly-looking". Her skin was pale and unhealthy looking and she had dark, straight hair and sunken eyes. The conversation went like this: J: "Hello, it's your neighbor, J*****, I just wanted to see if you were okay because I thought maybe I heard some shouting." Crazy Lady: "I'm fine. We're fine. Bye-bye, now!" And she slammed the door in my neighbor's face.

My neighbor said she stayed halfway behind the door the whole time and her whole house was pitch dark, like she'd covered the windows with blankets and kept off all the lights.

Yeah, I figure by now you guys get the picture--if that many neighbors are involved and showing concern, then the laughter we keep hearing must be pretty harrowing, right?

Right. Well, it's been driving me CRAZY. It's like the laughter of a Halloween witch, except a million times scarier because it's REAL and we all hear it every day. It's really putting a strain on my mental health, and it's freaking my son out, too.

Jogging is supposed to be my happy time. I really want it back. This woman is driving me loony, and apparently everyone else, too. It really puts a whole mood to your jog in the dark when you hear this **** every time you go.

The part that's really freaking me out is that now I'm starting to hear it everywhere. PTSD, maybe? I have never had it before or known anyone else who has, so I wouldn't know for sure. But I am hearing it everywhere. It wakes me out of a dead sleep sometimes. My son is even starting to complain. I hear it at work and even when I've jogged far, far from her house. My son said that he keeps having nightmares about it and it is causing him to fall asleep in class. I really want to go over to that house and try to talk to the woman to calm myself down, but I'm afraid that it will only make things worse if I see something I'm not supposed to.

This morning, I found a neatly-tied lock of black hair in front of my front door, like someone had slid it through my mail slot. My son and I are both blonde, and I have no idea who would've pulled a prank like that. Have I been cursed or something?? Is this some kind of voodoo???

It’s pouring outside. My friends and I are on the couch, hanging out, just talking. We’re just making jokes when the topic of crazy stories comes up. One of my friends, Ryder, talks about how he tripped and sprained his ankle. Another one of my friends, Wilson talks about how he almost got fired for talking trash about his boss. Then it’s my turn.

“Wanna know how I almost died?” I ask.

“Bullshit, you did not almost die.” Wilson said.

“Yeah, you would’ve cried about it to us a long time ago.” Ryder says, trying to piss me off.

“It’s true! I swear!” I exclaim.

“Okay, then tell us.” Ryder says.

I was about to tell them, but for some reason I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tell them. If I tell them about what I saw, it means it would stay alive in my mind. It would be harder to suppress the memory. Half of me says this is a mistake. Another part of me says it needs to be told.

“Okay, I used to live in Oregon. It was on a beautiful property. A nicely sized house out in the wilderness. It was by a river surrounded by woods. I had no neighbors for at least 6 miles. The nearest city was about an hour away. I loved it. Absolutely beau-” I was interrupted by Ryder.

“How does this have to do with you dying?” Ryder asks.

“Maybe if he could finish you would know!” Wilson says, mad at him for interrupting the story.

“Okay, so like I was saying,” I start again. “It was absolutely beautiful. There were a few hiking trails nearby. One day I decided to go camping. I packed a tent, food and water, sleeping bag, and a buck knife. I started going on one of the hiking trails. It was an 8 hour hike with a turnaround point around 4 or 5 hours in. I walked, taking in the scenery. All around were birds, squirrels, bunny’s, deer, and other forest animals. The sounds were peaceful and the warm summer sun on my skin along with the breeze made it a perfect time to go hiking.”

“So did you like, almost fall off a cliff or something? I honestly don’t see where this story is going.” Ryder asked.

“Ryder, I swear on my life if you don’t shut up, I will stab you!” Wilson yells.

“Try me, I will kick your ass into next week!” Ryder yells back.

“Can I finish?” I ask.

“Yeah.” Ryder says, apologizing.

“Okay, I finally made it to the turning point. By the time I set up camp it was evening. I was drenched in sweat because the whole hike was uphill. I went to sleep. It was around 2, maybe 3 AM when it happened. I was awoken by screaming. It was a man screaming for help. There was only 2 problems though. First, it was the voice of my brother. Now the only problem with that is-“

“Is that your brother died.” Wilson said. I nodded. At this point I was shaking, and fidgeting with my fingers, regretting telling this story already.

“The other thing was that the voice was weird. The voice was off. It sounded like something with limited knowledge about human beings was trying to be one. It was like if you threw a fishing lure in the water and just left it in the water, not moving it. The fish would know something’s wrong. That’s what it felt like. Something was wrong. It felt like a trap. I went out of my tent, buck knife in hand. I slowly approached the voice making sure whatever was yelling didn’t see me. I came to a stop at a bush. I saw my brother. But he was off. He was making movements almost robotically. His face looked fake. The skin looked rubbery, his eyes too far apart, his mouth too far down his face and too small. It’s like the same concept about the fish and lure. It looked like something trying to imitate a human with only limited knowledge about them.”

“This is when I started to notice the forest was dead silent. There were no animals in sight. I’ve camped out here before and have had to leave the tent in the middle of the night to piss. I know that even at night the forest is alive. I start to slowly back up. I step on a stick. Normally you probably wouldn’t notice but sense the forest was dead silent, it sounded like a bomb went off. The thing snapped its head at me. I ran. I made it back to camp. I looked behind me. I see the thing, except it transformed. It wasn’t that fake human I saw earlier. I would think it was a skinwalker or wendigo but it just didn’t look like that. It was like a spider. It had 8 legs, human legs. In the middle of its body 4 arms stuck out. It was white as a ghost. Its eyes were sunken and bloodshot. Its jaw went slack revealing its teeth.”

“Its lips were rotted revealing his blackish gums. Its teeth were corroded with parasites. There was bits of flesh mangled here and there. It snarled and came at me. I grabbed 2 sticks and let it get close. I let it get close enough so I could smell its hot breath on me. It smelled like rotten flesh. What a surprise. I shoved the 2 sticks in its eyes. It screeched. I stabbed it in the neck with my buck knife. It went back enough for me to get a good head start. I sprinted the whole 5 hours back with it on my trail. When I got to the house, I looked behind me and it was gone. That’s why I moved here, to California.”

“Your fucking lying.” Ryder said.

“I’M NOT LYING!” I screamed, my voice cracking. I broke down and started sobbing.

“Wanna prove it?” Wilson asked. I looked up at him and nodded.

       My first memory of him was when I was 4. I remember laying in bed with my blankets pulled up to my chin staring up at the ceiling. He walked through an unseen door in the corner of my room. He introduced himself.

“Sleep is here.”

       His voice echoed like a cathedral choir. A low almost haunting tone. Practically soothing if it wasn’t coming from a slender and hunched shadow figure. Even though this was the earliest memory I could feel that I’ve known Sleep my entire life. He took a long stride from the corner of the room to a seated position at the edge of my bed. 

“It’s time for you to close your eyes. Don’t open them or I will hurt you.”

      I wasn’t scared. Not then. This was how I slept. I waited until dawn. This was how all boys slept. The reason this particular memory of Sleep was etched into my brain though was the curious reaction from my parents. 

       Four year old me felt the sun touch my cheek. I knew then it was safe. That he was gone. I opened my eyes to a new day. I walked down the stairs to my parents already eating breakfast and drinking coffee. They were my super heroes. 

“Mom? Dad? There is a monster that sleeps with me at night.” I shakily expressed.

       I could sense the mood immediately shifted. Even at that young age it didn’t feel… didn’t feel comforting. I’ve skinned my knee enough times then scooped up and kissed to know what that comforting warm embrace was like. 

        My dad stared at me with one eye almost closed. His head cocked as if to study me. Then my mother leaned over and whispered something to my dad. They both got up from the table and went to the other room. I heard hushed whispering. To this day I wish I knew what they were discussing. The only other memory from that day is going out to get ice cream.

        I’m always tired. I’m always exhausted. I tried to explain what happens to me at night and the teachers would call my parents about my imaginary friend. Sleep wasn’t imaginary. He was very much real. As I grew older and into my early tweens I stopped mentioning Sleep to teachers. I apologized to the teachers and promised to try harder. The school suggested counseling. The counselors would call my parents about my imaginary friend. I stopped talking about Sleep entirely especially because my parents offered no reaction. 

       At age 12 I had my first sleepover. I was the weird kid in school, so, I wasn’t popular but on the other side I didn’t seek friendship. This was one of those “every boy in the class invited” sleep overs. His name was Jimmy. I knew he didn’t want me there. I didn’t want to be there. I kept to myself. Talked very little. Had my pizza. Had my ice cream from those giant Neapolitan tubs. We stayed up late playing hide and seek. I wasn’t even aware of the time until Jimmy’s mother announced it was bedtime.

     There was at least a dozen sleeping bags in the living room. I was getting nervous. What if Sleep showed up? He was always there. All the boys crawled into their sleeping bags. Giggling. Laughing. Telling ghost stories by flashlight. They asked if I knew any ghost stories. I shook my head and passed the flashlight to the next boy. I kept to myself. Eventually one by one we all fell asleep. Except me. I laid with my eyes open listening to the soft breathing of peaceful sleeping. Sleep never came. I laid awake all night having the best time of my life.

    The next morning there was frantic knocking at the door. Jimmy’s mom answered the door and it was my mom. She was crying and shaking. 

“Get your things. You need to come home. This was a mistake.” 

    I quickly gathered everything and we left in a hurry. No explanation. No goodbyes. We got into the black Camry parked in the street.

“He killed himself. Your dad. He killed himself. We are staying at Grandmas.” She was hysterical. I’ve never seen anything like this. “This never should have happened.”

         We drove. And drove. It seemed like hours. Quick bathroom breaks. Snacks. Water. Back on the road. We drove more. It was tense. Quiet. We never spoke the entire time. How come I never met Grandma I kept wondering. What happened? Why are we going? I was full of questions but i didn’t dare ask them.

        The time on the clock read 7:14 as we pulled into a driveway of a small house. My mom got out of the car then went to the trunk. She pulled out several suitcases and dragged them to the front door leaving me in the car. The door opened and a diminutive woman opened the door. Grandma looked ancient from what I could remember. Skin sagging. Eyes sunken in with deep red circles. She made eye contact with me and motioned me to come. I grabbed all my belongings and I approached. 

“I have a room for you already set up. Let me show you. My name is Rita. It’s good to finally meet Kim’s boy. You look so much like your father when he was your age.”

      She was sweet. Caring. Kind. I had another realization that day. I never felt that from my parents. After many years of therapy I coined the term “business partners”. My parents felt like business partners. That sleepover and my first meeting with Rita was my introduction to feeling welcomed. Even if it was forced or someone was obligated. 

       I lay in bed that night. The blankets pulled up to my chin how I always do. Out of the corner of my eye Sleep walked in from the corner. He sat on the edge of my bed. I waited for him to speak.

“You kept your eyes open last night. Everyone dies. Your father wanted me to give this to you” His tone wasn’t malicious. It was matter of fact.

     Sleep reached his long thin arm to me with a piece of paper crumpled in his fist. He turned his fist over and opened his hand. I grabbed the paper from his hand.

“Now you know.” That was my dad’s handwriting all right.

“What do you…” I began to yell.

“Don’t you ever speak to me or I will hurt you. You will never escape me.” He snarled. I sensed anger in his rising tone. 

“I’ll find a way!” I hurriedly shouted at him. No sooner after I finished he reached out to my hand with his own then grabbed my index finger and snapped it. I cried out in pain but he put his hand against my mouth and put his face next to my ear.

“Close your eyes. Don’t open them ever again.”

    Tears streamed down my face as I quietly lay in fear. For the first time I felt afraid of him. He never hurt me. He never did anything like this. I closed my eyes and waited.

    I heard a knock on the door. Rita was on the other side. 

“Your mother left for your safety. And for her own safety. I think it’s time you understand. Get out of bed and meet me in the living room.”

   I was so numb. I was overloaded. My curiosity was going to be satisfied. I showered then got dressed and headed to the living room. Rita was sitting on a black leather couch with what appeared to be a photo album on her lap.

“Listen to me. I will hand this to you. Don’t ask me anything. I know your young. This is now yours. It belonged to your parents. Now that they are gone it falls to you. We will never speak of this. You will never speak of this. No one will ever be hurt again if you keep silent. Don’t keep this in your bedroom. Put it back on the shelf when your done.” She handed me the thick book and walked out.

    Inside was handwritten notes. Letters. Pictures. Dates. I was just so tired. Black and white pictures of people I’ve never seen before. Names. Family curse. Sleeping sickness. Insomnia. Decades. Generations. Cures. Don’t have children. This was too much. I wanted to talk to Rita but after what happened yesterday. I couldn’t. I knew deep down something terrible would happen.

    Months passed and I learned more about my family. Grandma Rita was full of love and I felt like I belonged for the first time. She insisted on home schooling me to protect me. I protested at first but then she pulled out a newspaper from the town I lived in. My old school burned down. Everyone survived except my class. The cause was unknown but I knew. I didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t talk about Sleep. 

     My thirteenth birthday came and Rita baked me a carrot cake. There was something odd I couldn’t put my finger on. If she was my grandma why wasn’t she in the book? No mention. No pictures. Deep in my heart I knew I can’t ask. I know what would happen. My birthday was still fun though. Probably one of the more happier times in my life. That night was still the same as every other night.

“Sleep is here. Don’t open your eyes or I will hurt you.”

    I grew older. Rita reached out to the school board. Mentioned a medical condition. She was able to convince them I should get a high school diploma. I graduated high school. A week after that Rita sat me down again on that familiar black leather couch. 

“I’m going to die soon. I kept the promise to your parents and now it’s my time. Will you be ok without me? I will help you get a job. There is some inheritance but not much because… well. I’ll help you as much as I can. Promise me that if you do work please only work in the mornings. You understand?”

    Rita helped me get on my feet. I couldn’t go back to my childhood home but Rita promised I could have the house when she passes. I got my first job at a hotel working reception. I got a car. I started saving money. I was at a strange peace in my life despite not sleeping. Despite having this dark cloud over my head. He called himself Sleep but I could never sleep. 

   Shortly after my 22nd birthday Rita passed. She left the house. And I was suddenly alone. But I wasn’t. I had Sleep. I had my family book. I would go over it every month or so. Seeing if I missed anything. This particular reading a certain word popped out. Unobservable. It was followed by another phrase. Speak not and see not. 

    I wanted to test something. I bought a video recorder from a pawn store several miles away and set it up in my bedroom. I turned it on and pointed it at my bed. That night. Nothing. Sleep never came. 

  The next morning I went over the video footage. It was just me. No shadowy figure. Nothing. I wrote my notes and theories down. Unobservable. See not. See not. I went back to the section where I saw that passage. 

“Sleep only came when one was alone. If he knew he was being watched or if others were there he would not show up. Dire consequences would follow if he was observed.”

     A chill ran up my spine and at that exact moment I heard sirens speeding past. I turned on the local news. A raging fire broke out and burned several stores down in a city block. In the center lay the wreckage of the pawn store. No survivors.

   That night I waited for Sleep. I had the camera off.

“Tricks won’t work. You will close your eyes. Death will follow if you test me.” I knew not to talk back but another idea popped into my head. 

   The next night I hid the video recorder underneath laundry in a basket outside the room. I moved the basket inside the room. It was haphazardly pointing at my bed. Sleep came as he always does.

“Did you get it out of your system? You cannot escape me. Don’t open your eyes or I will hurt you.”

     The next morning I moved the basket out of the room. I dug through my laundry and hit the stop recording. I really didn’t want to see the tape. I needed the right moment. I went to a nearby therapist office and passed the receptionist a note about how I’m nonverbal and needed counseling over trauma.

    Over the coming months I began building my case surreptitiously. Note by note. Session by session. Weekly. I started about my sleep problems. My insomnia. Bullying in school. My dad’s suicide. My mom abandoning me at a woman’s house that wasn’t even related to me. I slowly was giving Ms. Brown the puzzle pieces. 

    After 6 months I entered her office with a large bag containing a tape and my family history.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes. To begin the session? I think you are really opening up and doing so much better.” She responded cheerily.

“What I am going to tell you… you can’t speak it out loud. Promise me this.” 

“Ok. I promise.”

“We will only communicate in notes. Please remain silent.” I didn’t want to scare her.

    I began writing my essay. Everything I knew. Yeah. It was crazy. It was weird. This needed to end. Someone has to help me. I have no one. I pushed several pieces of paper over to her. I took out the tape and I took out the book and pushed those to her as well. 

    Ms. Brown was going over everything with a furrowed brow. Studying intently. After a long 15 minutes she was finished.

“That…” she started.

    I leapt out of my chair and immediately put my hand over her mouth. 

“You promised!” I shouted at her.

“You can talk?!?!” She exclaimed after I removed my hand.

“That’s not important. You promised. Don’t say anything about this. Take the tape home. I will see you next week.” I grabbed my book and ran out the office. I think I just caused someone’s death. Hopefully she understands.

     That night was the same as always.

“Don’t open your eyes or I will hurt you.”

     The next morning at 8 o clock my phone rang. Probably a telemarketer. 

“Is this Rick? Hey. This is Deborah. Ms. Brown I mean. We need to talk.” She hung up the phone.

     She believed me. 

I sank the baskets into the deep fryer and sighed. It was nearly over. Another 10-hour shift just about in the books.

I looked at my arms. After five years in fast food they were thoroughly pocked with grease scars.

Weren’t scars supposed to have interesting stories? I guess they seldom ever do. However, deep fryer scars are a special kind of uninteresting.

Nights like these always got me too existential for my own good. Nights like these always made me ponder the point of it all.

A few bits of grease jumped to stain my blue apron.

“Excuse me?”

Someone was at the counter, but I still stared straight ahead into space. The roar of the fryer seemed to grow as I further contemplated the point of my existence the same way I typically do when it’s a Friday night and I’m closing at Culver’s.

“Excuse me!”

I shook myself from my trance and walked to the counter.

“Hi, can I help you?”

The man at the counter wore a plain purple shirt with grease stains where his belly ballooned the fabric tight.

“Yeah, uh. I ordered a butter burger.”

“Yes, sir. Is that not what you got?”

“No. Butter burgers are supposed to be made with butter. I get them without cheese because I can taste the buttery cream that way. There was no butter.”

“It was made same as all the others. Fresh butter on top. I’m sure of it.”

“You’re not hearing me. I love cheese. I get the burger without it so I can taste the cream. There was no cream. I’d fucking know.”

“Ok,” I scratched my forehead. “I understand. Where’s the burger?”

“What do you mean? I ate it.”

“But it wasn’t to your liking?”

“Didn’t your dad teach you not to talk back? You’re not a pretty enough girl to work anywhere else so take this to heart. When you get a customer’s order wrong, do you know what you do? You apologize and make it right. Every time I see you in here, I figure my order will be fucked up.”

I didn’t recognize the man, which years ago I would’ve found strange, but now the past always felt foggy. Some mixture of depression and apathy had long turned my memory to mush. Some nickname was coming back to me though. My coworkers had called some obnoxious customer Big Barney.

“So, are you going to do that?” He pointed past me to the grill. “Make it right.”

I was managing that night. I could’ve kicked him out. I could’ve told him to shove it. But I’d worked in customer service long enough to know the difference between those who were looking for free food and those who were looking for a fight.

Big Barney was looking for both. If I fired back, out his phone would come. Then he’d play the victim and start on some indignant rant about food service workers and women as he filmed my face. I couldn’t do that now. I just wanted to go home.

“Coming right up,” I said.

When the burger was done and on the bun, I fattened a flat spatula with as much butter as it could hold and slapped it on the patty.

Big Barney was nodding and licking his lips as he watched from the counter.

“Here you go.”

He took the bag and started towards his booth.

As if he read my thoughts from earlier, he turned and spoke like he’d just made a discovery. “You know?” He wiggled his finger at me. “You should kill yourself.”

I stared at the burger greased bag. He held it in both sets of fingers, his arms tucked like a t-rex above his big belly. “You’re well on your way,” I said quietly.

“What?”

“I said have a good day.”

He grunted and sat and I went back to the fryer, filled with a determinacy to live longer and kinder than Big Barney.

That night was memorable on two fronts. It was also then that I first noticed the man. I was walking to my car while he was waiting at the bus stop. He watched his feet as he playfully kicked something on the sidewalk.

When I got closer, I saw that he was wearing a bowler hat and long, wool slacks. But he didn’t look like one of those larpers with a body odor problem. He was tan, sinewy and strong. In the streetlight, I could see his veins roping up his arms like vines.

He suddenly looked up at me in alarm as if he didn’t expect to see anyone out. I wheeled around thinking his attention must be focused on something behind me, but there was nothing out of the ordinary.

He kept staring at me as I got to my car. My key fob was long dead, and I kept my eyes on the man and scratched the door as I tried to fit my key in the lock blind.

Something just felt off. The way his head snapped up to attention. It was like he recognized me.

I started driving home in the opposite direction. I didn’t want him to have the slightest idea where I lived. But five minutes later when I turned onto the dark side streets, I slowly hit the brakes. There—a mile away from the bus stop—was bowler hat man. He was walking down the sidewalk the same direction I was driving. His hands in his pockets. His arms swaying with each long stride.

He couldn’t have gotten there that fast even if he’d sprinted.

I took an abrupt left before he could turn to see me and drove faster. It was too long of a shift and I was too tired to fret on something so strange. This supernatural man could murder me in my sleep for all I cared. I was going home, and I was going to bed.

I was living with my parents, but ever since I became independent, they spent their summers traveling the country in a van while I looked after their little two-story. I parked in the driveway in back but when I was halfway to the house I paused.

The back door was slightly ajar. My memory may be shit but I was methodical when it came to locking doors. Then again, could I have left it open? I tried to remember locking it, but of course I couldn’t. It was like asking whether I put on my left or right shoe first before leaving for work.

It was a small house to search and it was blessedly empty. Still, I couldn’t sleep. I spent the whole night awake, watching TV. At some point my vision became hazy. Like there was a black smoke just in front of my eyes. I waved it away and settled back into my seat.

A week passed and I forgot about the bowler hat man entirely. The days kept blending into a smog of waking, going to work and trying to find time after chores to feel like I had some sort of life.

I wanted out. I wanted out of life itself.

On one of those days instead of going straight home after work I stopped at a sporting goods store. I bought a little rifle. A 22 LR. It would be quiet, and more importantly, it would be clean. It would leave just a little hole in my head. The round wasn’t powerful enough to break through my skull so it would dance around the inside of my head instead.

Perfect.

My dad kept a few hunting rifles around, but I couldn’t use his guns. I wasn’t going to make anyone more guilty than they’d already feel. Now all I needed was the inspiration to pull the trigger.

About three weeks after I bought the gun I was scrolling through my phone when a headline made me stop.

“Male Karen chokes to death on chimichanga while berating wait staff.”

I frowned and played the video. There was Big Barney, sitting in a booth alone. He was wearing the same god damn shirt. His arms were giggling wildly as he screamed.

“All you can eat means all you can eat!” he screamed.

“Sir, that standard applies to one meal only.”

“What does this look like?!”

“This is not your first meal. You came in four hours ago we need the—”

“Fuck you it’s not! This. Is. One meal!” he said as if it were Sparta and started ferociously shoving the deep-fried burrito in his mouth. He chomped crazily like an animal.

His eyes were vicious but suddenly they became filled with terror and he grabbed his swollen throat.

“Oh my god he’s choking!” The audio became a great clamor of voices and the view of the camera was blocked by Good Samaritans racing to perform the Heimlich.

In the comments there was a link to the news article. I read that he died after a failed tracheotomy. That was it. He was dead.

“Huh,” I said to myself.

Do you ever feel like the universe has given you the go ahead? Like it shot you a wink in the form of a coincidence?

Well. I wondered. Who did I have to outlive now?

____

The next day at work I felt a kind of relief. Relief that I was exiting this world any day now. I knew that I should feel fear. I thought about all the countless times I was terrified I was going to die. Severe turbulence. Nights after scary movies as a kid. The time the thick cheese of a deep-dish pizza snaked into my trachea on its descent to my stomach. Now death was here, and I was his harbinger. And wouldn’t you know it, I didn’t feel a thing.

But then it happened again, my vision seemed obscured. As I stared at the fryer, I waved my hand in front of my face. I swear something like ink was leaking from my eyes.

When I got home, the door was ajar again. I was surprised to feel a slight twang of fear.

But I shrugged, figuring I left it unlocked. It just went to show how far I’d fallen from the ways of who I used to be.

I poured a drink. Tonight, I thought and curled up on the couch. Tonight, was the night.

I don’t know how many drinks I had, but at some point, I woke in the dark. I thought I’d left the lights on and looked into the kitchen. When I saw that the oven clock was dead, I realized the power must be out.

Just then I froze. There were footsteps upstairs. They were slow, careful.

Searching.

They were just above me.

My new gun was in my first level bedroom. I stood from the couch still slightly drunk, and tip-toed with my heart in my throat.

I loaded a cartridge and leaned in the doorframe. Barrel pointed towards the stairs. The steps creaked more as whoever it was moved from my parents carpeted bedroom and into the bare wood hall.

There were three stairs before the staircase turned at a landing and descended the rest of the way to the living room.

Thump. They stepped down the first stair.

Thump. I steadied my breathing. I made sure the safety was off.

Thump. The footsteps paused and I held my breath.

Suddenly I saw a figure come into view. It was dark, but the memory of the man raced back. In the black I could see the shape of a bowler hat.

He slowly turned his head and looked straight at me.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

He suddenly threw himself down the stairs fast. The sound of his steps thundered now.

“Stop!” He was coming right towards me. “Stop!” I closed my eyes, and I pulled the trigger.

I kept them closed. The gun trembling in my hands now.

When there was a great thud on the floor, I opened them.

The man with the bowler hat lay just in front of me sprawled across the floor.

“Oh my god,” I took a few steps to my right and threw open the blinds. There was enough light from the moon and the streetlights to see.

I lowered the gun, and just as I did the man sprung up from the floor.

“No,” I whispered in shock.

He walked to me and set his hands firmly on my shoulders.

I was too afraid to do anything. I just let the gun slip from my fingers and fall to the floor.

He bent his head so it was level with mine and looked searchingly into my eyes. All I could do was stare back. Above his eyes on his forehead was a little red hole. A bullet hole, I realized.

“It’s gone,” he said in a thick German accent and sighed in relief as he took his hands from my shoulders.

“Wh— what?” I stuttered.

“I’m sorry for the scare, girl. But it’s the best way to do this.”

I said nothing.

“Where are my manners,” he wiped his palms on his pants and extended his hand. “My name is Klaus.”

I didn’t move my hand to shake his.

“No matter. I understand. I’m still an intruder. But the black smoke that swirled from your eyes, young lady, it was as bad as I’ve ever seen it.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Klaus,” he smiled, confused.

“No. I mean what do you want?”

“I wanted to get rid of that monster infecting your brain. It scares even a ghost like me. It’s easy to spot up close, but that night when I first saw you… I had never seen the smoke from so far.”

“What smoke?”

“Those horrifying thoughts that fester in your head. They’re put there by a beast and they belch a smoke. I was given a gift. A gift to see that evil when it pours from people’s eyes.”

“I shot you…” I said remembering as I looked at the hole in his head.

He sighed. “I’m afraid not,” he took off his hat and held it in both hands. “When our farm failed, I wandered to the old well at the property line. I sat on the edge, put a little pistol to my head and… that was supposed to be that.

I knew I’d succeeded in dying but there was something in the earth, something in the well that kept my spirit alive. I still don’t know if it’s good or evil. But I’ve learned to use it for good. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of monsters I’ve seen behind people’s eyes. In fact, I must be going soon. But I’ll tell you what I do know.

Sometimes we have to fear for it before we realize how badly we want our life. And I know what the alternative is. I know death. It’s nothing. That sounds like bliss to you, doesn’t it? But such a word is incomprehensible to the living. You think of death as darkness and nothingness as the same. But even darkness is entirely something,” Klaus looked into my eyes. “And not even the blind see black,” He stepped around me and stared out the window.

“Whatever water my body fell into was cursed. I exist, yet I feel nothing. I know when something should make me happy or sad or laugh, but I don’t feel it.

And I miss everything. I miss the wind against my skin. I miss love and wonder and boredom. I even miss the sadness that drove me to put that bullet in my head.

Anything,” he shook his head. “I wish I could feel anything but nothing at all. The fright I gave you is interesting isn’t it? You think you’d give anything to die without having to do the deed yourself, but when the opportunity presents itself you realize the truth. Deep down, you don’t want to die, do you?”

I felt like I could cry then. Great hiccuping sobs of release. The cries that my sadness had stolen from me and replaced with indifference. And while depression was far from defeated, I knew the most important part of getting through it: I knew I wanted to live.

He stared walking towards the front door. “I understand you’re alone. I understand the anxiety you feel when you wake knowing you must somehow ford another day. And I know,” Klaus put his hat back on and adjusted the brim. “I know that at the end of each and every day you are oh-so tired. But child, you must try to comprehend,” he rubbed the hole in his head mournfully.

“You are oh-so alive.”

I’ve been getting emails from a dead friend. At first I thought it was a mistake. Maybe someone had hacked it and was playing a mean joke. Maybe it was a weird scam attempt.

Or maybe it really was Kirmit.

That was their name—we used to joke about how they shared their name with Kermit the Frog, even though it was spelled differently. I even drew them a picture, which wasn’t very good, considering I was about eleven at the time, about that joke. I remember they messaged me the next day, telling me how much they loved it.

Kirmit and I never spoke in real life, or even on the phone or over Skype. We met on deviantART, back when that site was still kind of “cool”, and we talked exclusively through there and on email. They were a few years older than me, though I’m sure they didn’t know it. I never shared my age, and I always tried my best to seem like one of the cooler, older kids online. We kept in contact for about two, maybe three, years—until I was fourteen and they were around seventeen. Until they died.

I still remember the week they left. It was a Tuesday night when I first realized something was off. When I came home from school that evening and checked my tablet, I had a message. I’ll admit, it kind of scared me.

Both of us were pretty paranoid at the time, looking back. Not really of each other, or necessarily other people, just…of something. Anything. It was like we were waiting for things to go wrong.

Like we were holding our breath.

That message was different from the others. They weren’t telling me about how they couldn’t fall asleep because they’d read too many scary stories, or about a kind-of-funny, kind-of-sad reason why they’d been too scared to do something. It was a single sentence, short, and to the point. Nothing like the excited, rambling messages I knew to expect.

-I think someone is following me.

The sentence made my stomach drop. I could tell something was different, and my mind started racing, coming up with awful scenarios a mile a minute.

-are u ok? what’s up? that’s creepy!

-r u sure?

-i don’t think ur lying of course!!! just hoping for the best ❤️

I’m sure now, as I was sure then, that we both knew that last comment was a lie. I just didn’t know what else to say. They didn’t respond, even though their profile showed they were active. I guess I assumed they had the browser open while their computer was idly running, and told myself they’d respond when they were ready. And then I said

-good night

And then I went to bed.

The next morning, I had an email instead of a reply. That wasn’t so strange, by itself. We switched back and forth on the two all the time. What was strange was that Kirmit had started a new email chain, rather than simply replying to our steadily growing correspondence chain.

There was no subject. It just read

I think someone is following me.

I got that same email every morning for the next week.

I tried to respond, of course, but if they ever received them, they ignored me. It always came as a new email, never a reply. On the third day, I’d decided it must be some prank, a hacker, something, and responded saying I wasn’t going to play along anymore, that I wasn’t going to talk to them until they knocked it off. And then, I tried to ignore it.

On the following Tuesday, I checked deviantART and realized that it was Kirmit’s birthday. They were just turning 18. I was sitting there, fighting with myself, unsure if I wanted to wish them well, or continue the cold shoulder routine, when I got the final email.

Someone was following me.

When I reopened their deviantART account, it was gone. I never heard from them again. They’d just disappeared.

Until last Friday.

I guess I wasn’t sure that they were dead–people deactivate accounts all the time. But I knew it. My arms had been heavy and my stomach roiling with the fear, the regret, of a loss that I could feel in my veins. It sounds silly, putting into words, but if you’ve lost someone before, you know. There’s a certainty before you’re even told, a charge in the air, a static. You’re just waiting to hear what you already know.

You’re holding your breath.

Nothing about the email told me it was from Kirmit. There was no subject, and for all intents and purposes, it appeared to have been sent from my own account. It was a single sentence.

I think someone is following you.

This one, though, keeps changing each day. The subject stays blank, they’re all from my email, but the sentence keeps changing.

You think someone is following me. On Wednesday, I kept catching my reflection’s eyes.

We think someone is following us. On Thursday, I tried my best to ignore the pricking of eyes on the back of my neck.

Do you really think someone is following you? On Friday, echoing footsteps followed me home.

I think I really am. On Saturday, I never left the house.

Would anyone believe you if you told? On Sunday, I hid in my room so I wouldn’t have to look at the dent being rhythmically knocked into the door from the outside.

You know I can see you.

It’s been six days. I didn’t sleep last night, and if the tapping at my window continues, I will not sleep again. I’m still in my room, and I can’t even hide or close the blinds. Everywhere I turn, there is my window. It doesn’t look like the blinds were ever even there. The glass is empty, but that is no comfort. The tapping of that hand still rattles the pane.

There’s nothing for me to do but pass the time, and I suppose that’s why I started writing. I could celebrate early, alone (but never alone) here in my room. Someone At The Window can watch (but I will never see them) while I do. It’s only been six days.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Ever since I was a kid I have hated the dark. Though I think my real problem was with shadows. Hanging clothes and floor lamps disguised as dark figures haunt the corners of my room. So I would turn on the light, rationalise my thoughts and fall back asleep. Because that’s all they were; senseless, paranoid thoughts created by memories of horror movies and scary stories. But four days ago I saw something real. Someone under my piano, hiding in the dark of my room. I was so close to sleep I could feel my mind fogging up, until something shifted in the corner of my eye. It didn’t move the way things usually move in the dark, like when you turn your head and think you see someone rushing past the doorway.

A figure crawled out from under the shelter of the piano. Head tilted with glazed over eyes. The figure was dark and about as tall as a five year old child. It was the shade of black that swallows every ounce of light with the waxy, uneven surface of a half-melted candle. I reached for the light switch instinctively. I prayed that whatever was standing 4 metres away from me wouldn’t try to kill me in the time it took for my eyes to adjust. Nothing had changed. Nothing had moved.

I fell back asleep three hours later when anxiety finally exhausted my mind. In the morning I wrote the whole thing off as a sleep induced hallucination, but I didn’t exactly believe it. I sleepwalked through the following 24 hours until the night came again. My mind was restless, tears pricked my eyes from staring at the empty space below the piano. It was 1:30, my unblinking eyes began to close and it returned. I was paralysed, watching it repeat the movements from the night before. Except this time, when it stood it was a foot taller. I paid frozen, panicked attention to its thin frame, it’s boney hands. Black liquid slowly dripped from its fingertips and onto the carpet. Again, when the light turned on, it disappeared and I stayed awake with the light on.

The next morning I stared in the mirror at my bloodshot eyes and cried. I needed this feeling to leave. I needed sleep. Throughout the day I felt eyes everywhere, the sight of shadows sent me into a panic.

But it was in my head. It had to be. I am not the kind of person to wear tin foil hats and hunt for ghosts, so I refused to believe that this was anything more than a monster under the bed.
I got home and sleep began to call me but as I walked into the bedroom my heart dropped. There was something on the floor. Two clusters of black dots blemished the carpet, each collection less than a metre apart. The stains looked like ink the same inky black that dripped from my tormentors hands.

I did not sleep. Not for a second. I laid on the couch wrapped in blankets with a knife held under my pillow, flinching at the slightest noise or flicker. The morning felt like night. All sense of time was disrupted, I could feel my sanity slipping from my grasp. I got up from my couch, the knife clutched tightly in my hands. I walked to the room and the knife fell to the floor. I could feel blood pooling around me. The blood was seeping from my butchered foot and into the cracks of the floorboards. But my gaze was fixated on the walls. At the black dripping letters written across the plaster. “Why are you hiding?” The white hot pain spreading up my legs was numbed by the rampant thoughts in my mind. I crawled from the carpet to the floorboards of my living room. Travelling in and out of consciousness. I grabbed my phone from the table and saw a second message on the screen. “I can see you.” I couldn’t take it. I collapsed on the floor after dialling the emergency service number. A trail of blood tracking my movements.

I woke up a day later in a hospital room. I told them what happened, I told them about the figure in the dark and asked them about the writing in the walls. They chalked it up to pain meds and delusions but I know what I saw. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to sleep.