Gregg was an adventurer despite everything he had been through. He took to the
hill behind his home with firm footsteps, marching up the mile long road like
it was a path to great treasure. Even as his sister and I plodded
behind him, swear pouring down us in the stifling August heat, He turned
and cried for us to keep up. How he was so animated, I
didn't know. Not even grasshoppers chirruped under the midday sun, and the tall
grass, usually so green, had turned to yellow straw as summer reached this
peak. Come on, he cried, as he reached a seemingly arbitrary spot
on the road. I saw it this way, he pointed into the grass,
a thin footpath barely visible between wavering fronts. What did you see?
Samanthus shouted. She was usually so calm and responsible, but I could tell
she was close to blowing that cool head of hers. Not long ago,
Greg and Samantha had been a trio. The loss of their older brother,
gone two years by this point, had broken their parents in an unusual way.
It was not uncommon to lose children in my home town. It felt
like every year the class register grew shorter by at least two names. But
where most parents became overprotective, Gregg's had gone the other way. They grew
listless and morose, withdrawing not only from the world but their remaining children.
Three times a week, Gregg and Samantha came to my house and ate food
with us. The rest of the time, Samantha cooked for a family,
just as she packed at Gregg's lunches, and washed his clothes and did anything
else that a parent usually did. If she had been older, she would
have probably forbidden Greg's expeditions entirely. But she was young and exhausted, and
every time Greg set out to explore the wilderness at the edge of town,
his face lit up so bright it must have been impossible to say no.
Today, he dragged us both to see something. He'd found, something that
he claimed was incredible. You have to see it for yourself, he said.
When we caught up with him. Samantha and I were breathless, but
Greg was practically jumping on the spot with excitement. I need a break.
I wind a good idea Stephen, Samantha replied, between heavy breaths. Let's
just enjoy the view. We turned to face home, on on left was
the forest. On our right open space, and below us, built on
the sloping side of the mountain was our hometown. Looking at it from so
far, it appeared plain and small and normal. But in the corner of
her eyes, drifting from the spaces between the trees of the forest, we
could see the red twine. Hundreds, maybe thousands of strands floated over open
air down the slope. We just climbed and entered the town miles below,
where it formed a complex and ever changing web. Each string had small golden
bells attached at every meter, and you'd think that with a string strung so
far between such distant points, that every gust of wind would create a chorus
of ringing. They were silent, and they would remain so unless someone was
careless enough to touch one of the snares. It's actually kind of beautiful,
Samantha mused quietly, And I found myself agreeing. You've checked for snow on
this route, she asked her brother. I checked yesterday, he cried,
turning to the path like a dog straining on a leash. It's not far,
it's right there. The twine could have moved since then, she said.
I don't like this. I don't think we should be doing this.
It's dangerous. Think about the golden rule. I know the golden rule.
Gregg suddenly screamed, don't touch the thread. Gregg kept shouting the phrase over
and over until his face turned pink. Did it help Jonathan, he finally
shrieked as he lost energy. No, he was the most careful of all,
and it's still got him. So what's the point. Samantha's gasp was
so loud it stopped Gregg's tantrum dead in his tracks for a second. Her
hand twitched, and I thought she was going to hit her younger brother.
But it was only the slightest of movements, right, she said, as
stern as any head mistress. That's it. Back we go, Stephen.
I'm sorry Greg had to ruin this by being a potty mouth. Greg's face
soud into regret and despair. No, no, no, no, no,
no. You have to believe me. You have to see it.
Samantha took a deep breath and knelt down to Greg's level. Do you know
what the most important rule really is? Don't touch the thread? Greg sobbed.
No. Samantha shook her head the most important rule. The one that
you'll one day appreciate is the hardest of them all, is the one that
says you never ever help someone who's touched the snare. I know that his
words were choked out between heaving breaths. No you don't. I mean you
do, but you don't really know what it means. What it actually means
is leaving someone you love behind, even if they scream, even if they
cry, and when it comes to take them, you walk away, run
if you can, and you don't look back. Could you do that for
me? Greg? If I was lying there crying for you to help me,
could you just run away? I I don't know. If I had
to do that, I think it would kill me. My heart would never
be whole again. Do you want to leave me for dead if something goes
wrong. Greg shook his head to signal no, that's why we should turn
back. Samantha continued. It's too risky, you're too excited. Do you
know what it would do to me if you run over one? Do you?
Samantha swallowed and wiped her teary eyes with a cardigan's sleeve. We're going
home, that's final. She turned towards me and went to speak, but
in a few seconds where her back was to Greg, his face crunched up
and all his anger returned. I thought he was going to leap at her
and start kicking and punching, but he did something much worse. He ran
into the tall grass. Samantha didn't even have time to turn around and call
his name before he saw the grass disturbed and heard a loud thump, followed
by a twang and the ringing of a bell. The snare wherever it was
must have been perfectly placed to catch him. There were a few agonizing seconds
before Gregg started crying. I could tell from his voice that my friend had
seriously hurt himself, but neither Samantha nor I moved. The bell kept ringing.
It would not stop. It was an unnatural sound, and one by
one the red twine in the distance began to shiver sympathetically, and a thousand
other bells joined in. The haunting sound lit up not only the mountainside but
the town below us, and I knew that already my family would be terrified
to find me and know that I was safe. I wanted to run back
to them, to flee the rising alarm that seized not only my thoughts but
the very air around me, as miles and miles of web thrummed with anticipation.
But before I could turn, Gregg appeared out of the grass and stared
at us. He was, in spite of everything silent. He must have
been shocked. He certainly looked like he was surprised to find several meters of
ordinary looking twine fused to the bear skin on his arms and face and coiling
bunches. No blood, just swollen flesh slowly turning pink, as if it
too were shocked to find its own boundaries violated and was now having a delayed
reaction. Quick invader shut it down, But this was no microbe or allergen.
Several strands of the stuff had fused to his hair and face and arms,
and in places like his cheeks and ears. It had even punched through
the flesh entirely and emerged on the other side with a firm grip. It
was slowly but surely beginning to pull him back into the woods. That force
would only increase with every passing second until there was simply no resisting. But
Gregg fought on. He pushed against them and staggered towards us, reaching out
a hand readed with twine. Samantha didn't move, but she did raise a
hand as if to embrace him. The sound of me crying out and falling
backwards made a look away from her brother, who finally began to wail and
sob. She fixed me with teary eyes, and in that moment I watched
Samantha's heartbreak before she turned from a weeping brother grabbed my hand and ran.
Greg followed. Neither of us knew in detail what happened when the snare catches
you, but as Greg continued to stumble after us, his cries and please
grew increasingly furious. I darkly found myself wishing it'd just hurry up and be
over with. Looking back, I'm surprised at the ten year old's imaginative vocabulary,
But he was face death, and I think his mind dug deep.
God, he hated us in those moments. I'm sure of that. He
was scared and hurting, and the only people close to him were abandoning him.
He told us we'd go to hell. He told us we deserve to
die. He told us a lot, not stopping until halfway down the hill
when he finally fell. I turned, not meaning or wanting to, and
saw him push himself up with his hands, gravel embedded in the puffy,
bleeding skin of his face, and he glared at me with burning hatred.
He tried to pull out the snares embedded in his forearms, but his hands
bonded to the twine immediately, and it only left him too tangled to resist
any further. The twine pulled harder and he fell back backwards, and with
kicking feet, he was dragged slowly out of sight. I was so afraid
of what I'd seen. I sowed myself and my vision blurred. My legs
grew faint, and Samantha, barely slowing, picked me up and carried me
the rest of the way. When we reached the town, my parents were
waiting for us. They held me so tight that it hurt my little ribs,
but I didn't care. I sobbed into my mother's arms and paid only
a moment's notice to the weak, hysterical Samantha, whose own parents were nowhere
to be seen. I can't believe you bought it. I can't believe they
sold it, I replied, as the helicopter banked over the town below.
From this eyeh up, the snares resembled something blood red and fleshy, the
floating celia of a strange jellyfish tangled in an artificial reef. The town,
a litter of miniatures that grew from the mountainside like coral, was clearly abandoned.
It had never been well looked after, not even when we lived there,
But over the last few years it had begun to look apocalyptic. Did
the government tell you any more about what they found? Samantha rasked. I
looked across at the woman beside me. She looked older than her age,
but there still remained a ghost of the teenage girl who'd saved my life.
And if I looked further, still a hint of resemblance to her brother.
Does it hurt for her to look in the mirror? I wondered? Does
that familial resemblance sting? So many ghosts lingered around her, not just Gregg's
two brothers, two parents. No one was around to witness the latter subduction,
but their disappearance was no mystery. How could it be? People did
not go missing in my hometown. Everyone knew what it meant if someone failed
to show up at breakfast, or was a no show at work or church.
It meant they'd gotten careless. It meant they touched the snare, and
there was no coming back from that mistake, although in the case of Samantha's
parents it was unclear if they'd done so by accident. They didn't find anything,
I said, nothing concrete anyway. I think it frustrated them, this
unsolvable problem. Maybe they hoped I'll throw enough money at it to figure it
out. Let some billionaire spend his cash and leave their budget alone. God
knows his what most people think when they find out I have money. An
awkward silence settled between us. Thank you, Samantha said, wanted a godnon
long enough. I know you must get a lot of people asking for charity.
Don't worry, I replied, cutting her off. I didn't mean to.
It's the least I could do. He was my friend too. It's
just if that drone footage is real. She was referring to the one bit
of fruitful evidence the government had dug up, a short video taken by an
aerial drone racing through overgrown trees. It lasted no more than five seconds,
covering one hundred or so meters before the machine had failed. But for the
first time in mine was Samantha's life, we had finally had a glimpse into
the forbidden woods, which are the source of the red snares. Five seconds
of nothing, seconds of blurry trees and autumnal leaves, and a frame,
a single frame, A frame that was emailed to Samantha by an anonymous researcher,
A frame that prompted her to call me and cash in all that guilt.
I could have been angry to find this ghost that my child had returned,
demanding I spend millions on some whim, but I wasn't. She had
sent me the image, and I immediately knew what she wanted and why.
Six months later, and I'd managed to bribe in off officials to let me
purchase the derelict and empty remains of my hometown. The image was of Greg,
a blurred shadow, recognizable only by the distinct make and coloring of his
clothes, details burned into both mine and Samantha's memories, details neither of us
could forget. No, you could not see his face, but we didn't
have to. We knew it was him anyway. Samantha's expression grew sad as
her eyes fell to the window. With a town passed directly beneath us,
we were slowing. As the chopper approached the landing site. I briefed the
pilot that the situation was fluid and he would need to keep a keen eye
out for a place free of snares. A glance at the direction he was
taking told me he was heading straight for the church. Do you know what
it was like in the end, she asked, Eyes still on the town.
Even from this height, we could see thousands of snares, snaking from
building to building, window to window, through abandoned cars, and around tilting
telephone poles, a cat's cradle of sh shimmering red twine. My dad called
a few weeks before he disappeared. I answered. Every couple of months,
he'd call and go through the list every time it got smaller. In the
end, he was just one person. I asked if it had been a
good month, if people had been extra careful. He told me they just
weren't enough people to go missing anymore. In the end, he was the
last, too stubborn who refused to move down below. The church raced into
view In the months since the town had emptied, the once impeccable kept grass
had been left to grow wild and unkempt in the autumn heat. I wondered
what it might hide, so I leaned forward and got the pilot's attention.
Radio the guys on the ground and tell them not to step on the grass.
I shouted. They used to keep it short for a reason. The
pilot gave me a thumbs up before speaking into his mic. Standing sheepishly at
the edge of the old lawn, three small figures looked up at us and
waved to get our attention. When I first paid for the expedition to enter
the town and map its contents, there had been four two scientists and two
former soldiers hired a security. It didn't surprise me, looking down that we
were missing one of the scientists. It's worse than before. Dr Wagner,
the expedition scientist, looked at me with curiosity as we picked away carefully down
main Street. It wasn't unusual for one of the roads to have a few
snares across it, I added, but the air is practically red with the
stuff. Perhaps it has become frustrated with the lack of food. She replied,
you think it eats them? And she nodded. Seems possible, I
added, as I studied a nearby shop window, a little boutique that sold
dresses the kind women would wear to charge. I remember waiting outside while my
mother bruised inside for what felt like hours on end. Sometimes I would grow
impatient and want to go inside too. But something about the mannekin in the
window scared me. Faceless, featureless, hard plastic limbs. What was it
about the lack of eyes that left me convinced it was looking right at me?
It had only cotten worse with age, its head a raw shack of
peeling paint, beige and white, untarnished gun metal grays. It must be
intelligent, sentient, if not sapient, Wagner said, as I turned away
from the unsettling doll. The scientist was a small woman in her late forties,
usually quite brazen and funny, but twenty four hours in this town had
already worn her down. It knew to target the objects that Mike doctor Magnola
touched regularly. I cringed at the reminder of the expedition's losses. It isn't
just intelligent, I said, it's vindictive. Did I tell you what happens
if you damage the thread? She shook her head. One man set fire
to a whole bunch of snares on his lawn, I told her used a
can of spray paint, and his lighter woke up the next day to find
a snare punched right through his belly and tied to a bedspring on the other
side. The scientist winced at the thought, but I left out the part
where the man had stayed in his bed for a full two days before he
was finally driven mad by the itch of the twine running through his guts.
I'd heard from some older kids that in the end he tore at himself like
an animal in a trap, and in a rare twist, the twine did
not take him. It left his body there, skewered on a piece of
string, and the doctor had to come round with a couple farmers and cut
him out. But still the twine stayed fixed and taught, so that his
family could not get rid of anything it touched. Not the sheets, not
the mattress, not even the half inch or so of flesh the twine had
bonded to the stink of infection infested the house, they said, and on
hot summer days it even reached the streets. It must have been hell living
here. Why would any one stay? Most people didn't. Just about everyone
my age left as soon as they got old enough. Town went from five
thousand to a few hundred in just a couple decades, I replied. When
my dad was a kid, there were maybe two or three snares at the
time, few enough that if he got tangled, others would cut you out
without too much risk to themselves. Hurt like hell, mind, but survivable
by the time it got real bad. Some people were just too old or
stubborn claus I suspect some stayed in the hope that was taken would come back.
My father was definitely in that camp. At least you got out,
Wagner said. If you'd stayed, you would have either been taken already or
probably gone insane from the loneliness. I understood the words, but I didn't
feel them. People who were born into this were never really normal. I
couldn't go to the bathroom without checking the door five times each way. Sleep
was short, fitful at best, since there was always when you were most
vulnerable. From what I understood, most people who'd left the town hadn't fared
so well, I suppose. I shrugged, and we continued to carefully step
over strands of red twine. The thrumed with excitement as our feet passed over.
We got maybe halfway down main Street before Wagner tripped, fell and set
off the first of the snares drop it. She lowered her backpack without taking
her eyes off it. Lucky woman had fallen in such a way her bag
had taken the hit, but already other snares started to gom up the fabric.
They attracted each other somehow. You never saw the move. They just
appeared when you weren't looking, almost like they were always there. But a
quick person could beat them. Jesus, I cried. Step away. Wagner
ran over to me as dozens more snawes appeared wrapped around her backpack. Slowly
they began to constrict, melding into and right through the material, looking for
the flesh of its owner, while still dragging it further into the web so
more snares could seize it. Slowly, but surely, the bag was dragged
into the darkness of a nearby alley. I was close, the scientist said,
once the bag was out of sight. I didn't bother chastising her.
No one could really get used to this kind of place. He had to
live with it for years before the lessons had taught you, sank In.
I merely offered to take a short break, sharing what little food I had
before the pair of us continued. At least she was a little more watchful
going forward. Nothing more I could ask for. The journey dragged on for
hours, with our pace so slow, we used the time to document what
we saw the state of the town. Crumbling buildings, twined punched glass without
shattering, it blending perfectly with wood, rock, metal, and plastic.
Where one end met man made structures, while the other ran off towards the
horizon, inevitably disappearing into the darkness beneath the forest's canopy. From there,
no one knew where it led, only that disappearing into the woods meant you
never came back. Meanwhile, the silence bore down on us. I wasn't
used to it, certainly, not here of all places, what was once
a home to me. But aside from us moving and speaking, there was
nothing to break up the eerie silence, And even then our words felt intrusive
and dangerous, like we might catch the attention of something lurking just out of
sight, perhaps somewhere behind the windows that peered down on us, old,
gray and grimy, the rooms beyond hidden like islands in the fog. The
only splash of color the red twine that ensnared the spaces within those decrepit rooms,
hardware shops, florists, record stores, apartments once occupied by people who
had left no one behind to claim their things. So now toasters and TVs
and ovens and fridges and all manner of personal items lingered on, gathering no
dust because there was no one to shed skin and create some I felt watched
by those windows. Slowly but surely, my paranoia spiked, like a child
in a haunted house, convinced that something was waiting to jump out. Wagner
spoke to me in places, and I just ignored her, willing her into
silence out of fear of something coming along. At one point she had to
grab me to get my attention. Do you hear that? She asked,
her eyes wide with fear, and I realized for the first time it wasn't
just me who'd been feeling the pressure. I listened there. It was the
tinkle of a bell, but unlike the ones I'd heard when a snare was
touched, this was gentle, playful, singular, A lone bell, a
lone piece of twine somewhere being played with, like a cat batting a toy.
What the hell? I muttered, clearly more baffled by this than Wagoner.
The bells did not ring alone. I knew this. Every one in
the town knew this. They always screamed in unison. As quickly as it
came, it stopped, but we investigated anyway. Pulled by the law into
the doorway of a shop, I went first, Wagoner close behind. When
she saw the figure standing there, she gasped, but whatever noise I wanted
to make was caught in my throat. At first I assumed there was another
person for their stock. Still pose could not have been achieved by any one
with a pulse. It was a mannekin, the mannikin the one I'd studdied
at at the other end of the street. It even wore the same clothes.
It had been punjured by snares in dozens of places, the head,
the neck, the yelbow, and knees, so much so it resembled Marionette,
and even as the comparison popped into my head, it turned to face
us. Stiff rotat achieved by the tug of a twine. With more stilted
movement, it reached out and held up Wagner's bag, suddenly unharmed, albeit
a little scoffed should I Wagner almost reached out. Hell no, I cried,
while snatching a wrist. I've never seen anything like this, But jeez,
if it doesn't look like a trap, I don't know what does.
No. No, we need to move. We need to find the others
and get the hell on with this expedition. No more notes radio the others,
I added, more, glaring at the empty street, watching for signs
of further movement. Behind all that dull and lifeless grass, It's time to
move into the woods. Samantha and I were standing on the crest of the
same hill where Gregg had fallen over twenty years ago. Only now the air
was cooler and the grass greener, and plenty of birds chirruped in the nearby
trees. It had seemed, through no gentle twist of fate, we'd been
brought to the trail He'd singled out years ago. This is definitely what the
satellite picked out, I asked, while Samantha chewed anxiously on a thumb.
This is the root, Wagner replied. Why is there something wrong with it?
It's just that the infrared and elevation scans made it clear. If we
want to enter the forest, this is our best bet. No, if
you're sure, you're sure, I said, or briefly, nudging a charred
shoe back into the long grass. I could only hope Samantha hadn't noticed.
Come on, one of the soldiers said, while taking point. We need
to get moving, or else all risk getting stuck here in the dark.
The woods were surprisingly free of snares, but for the last century the townspeople
had treated it like cursed land, and it seemed so had the wild life.
No trails, no paths, no sign of intervention by humans or animals.
Nothing dared to encroach on these trees to weather down their grip on the
earth. They grew over one another like people in a jostling crowd. Roots
left to thicken and fight tooth and nail, crowding so tightly they burst through
the soil and crawled over one another. Like something in a mangrove swamp.
You didn't hike through this forest. You crawled along on your hands and knees,
climbing steep inclines, one moment, gripping gnarled roots like the rungs of
a ladder, before descending the other side in reverse. Was this place always
free of snares? One of the soldiers asked, Honestly, I don't know,
I replied. Both Samantha and I had been shocked by the fact that
neither of us had talked since noticing it. No one went into the woods,
Samantha added, as the same man helped her over a particularly steep set
of roots. It wasn't even a matter of being forbidden. It was just
that if you entered, you never returned. High stakes for a hike,
he replied, I'm not sure I'm being paid enough to never see the sun
again. Well, we've walked what thirty minutes, and we're still alive,
Wagner said. Maybe people just got lost. Nothing, says Wagner, was
climbing beside sam as she spoke, only her words came to a startling halt.
Before she could finish. She cried out, lost her footing and tumbled
backwards, but as she fell, her cries grew shrill and almost hysterical,
and I rushed over to help, unsure of what had happened. When I
reached her, she was on her back clutching an old piece of root.
In a blur, she threw it far away from herself and began to point
at something inside the roots. Oh no, no, no, no no,
she muttered, while hyperventilating. Oh my god, Samantha cried as her
eyes picked out what had upset Wagner. It took a second to see it.
I had crawled over that exact spot just moments ago and noticed nothing.
But there it was, a moss covered bundle of leathery and muffled skin,
the features below so brutalized by decay that it was scarcely recognizable as anything that
might have once skittered or skulped around these woods. The dear dead desicated taken
years before, poor Wagner had gripped one of his bony mistaking it for a
route. It was nearly identical due to the moss covering it, but only
the slimy gift of its skin beneath her fingers had clewed her in and then
once she saw those hollow eyes gazing back at her from the darkness. Well,
it's a wonder she hadn't screamed the whole place down. Looks like it
died and got caught up in the tree roots, one of the soldiers said,
as he took a closer look. Do you think it touched one of
the snares? Wagner asked, as she rubbed her hands clean on her trousers.
Guys, does it even take animals? Wagner added, it can,
I replied, Guys, weren't a loud pets because of it. Samantha added,
birds seemed to avoid the snares instinctively, but cats, dogs, anything
like that really didn't fare so well, guys. One of the soldiers shouted
from the nearest deadfall, where he peeked over the top. I found the
townspeople. They moved. Chasing them or walking towards them was a sure way
to get lost, and the soldiers let us know that empathetically. We were
to continue as is, penetrating deeper into the forest in the hope of finding
something, anything, that gave us answers. Meanwhile, all we could do
was ignore the strange figures that bobbed amongst the trees. Limp bodies, hanging
arms, drooping heads, hair full of twigs and leaves, mouths full of
soil, moss coated skin, pallid and soft. Dead bodies suspended like poppets
and twine. They didn't run if you approached them. They merely drifted away,
as if the hands that controlled them were taking them off stage. This
was the first time in my life I've seen the red thread use for something
other than snares. Somehow this felt worse, Guys, I said, after
we march for another hour, I think we can safely say how that image
of Greg was taken. I gestured to one of the bodies that floated amidst
the trees, its body swaying in unseen currents. Are we sure we need
to go further? He's right, one of the soldiers said, as he
dropped his bag and began to roll out his shoulders and back. I don't
like this one bit, and we now know the context of that screen grab.
I know I'm not paying for this whole thing, but I think it's
time to call it a day. He reached down and grabbed the bag,
ready to pull one strap over his shoulder when we heard it. How had
we been so stupid? The woods had never been free of snares. It
was just another way of getting us to lower our guard. When the soldier
had reached for the bag, his hand, bare skin even had brushed against
the snare that it appeared. When her eyes were turned, a dozen brass
bells rang out from the contact, and slowly joining in one by one,
A thousand, a million others joined a deafening, maddening, ear splitting cry,
the most unnatural thing I've ever heard in my life. Decades gone without
it, but here it was once more, powerful, enough to make me
feel like a weeping child waiting to be grabbed by Samantha's arms. The soldier
looked at me, terrified. You said there weren't any in the forest.
He cried, pale as a ghost, and began to stammer. I wanted
to say we'd made no promises, that I'd only agreed with others observations.
But what would that achieve? Calm down, I shouted instead, But he
tried to run towards us. Already new snares had appeared to tangle up his
feet, binding to his clothes, wrapping around his limbs from the ever rising
panic that made him thrash about The man was going to die, destined too.
It was too late. Maybe if we'd taken it slowly, reacted just
right, But that ship had sailed. Now he was bound in dozens of
them, and as he continued to panic, it only grew worse. They
melted into his scalp, his cheeks, his brow, his hands, and
where his top rode up in the mad struggle. They now began to weld
to his chest and back. No, no, no, no no,
He muttered the words over and over. His friend took a step towards him,
but I held out a hand to stop him. What could you do?
The soldier continued to thrash in fear. Anyone who got near him would
end up touching a snare, and there was no coming back from that.
His panic made him as dangerous to us as he was to himself. We
had to watch as the snares ramped up their pressure, dragging him with increasing
speed up and over a cluster of roots. Oh no, Wagner was the
first to notice. The snares did not run over all the roots, They
went through them, under them. Their path was a complicated weave in and
out of ancient bows and roots. Don't watch, was all I managed to
say, as his body hid the first of many split directions. As one
we turned away. Manthera scrunched the face, trying as hard as she could
to shut out any and all light. Wagoner clasped her hands over her ears
to block out the sound of breaking bone, but there was no escaping those
screams. She surely must have heard them, and the remaining soldier, for
some reason, he watched. When it was done, there was only blood
slicked tree, limbs, torn and shredded clothes, and a grown man on
his knees, throwing up and crying from what he'd just seen. And behind
us. All around us, all except for a single router head. The
snares had returned so many the air thrummed like a dropped guitar, so many
it was hard to see further than a few meters in any direction, So
many that the message they sent was clear. After all, the timing of
the first snare could not have been an accident. Whatever lay them was telling
us as loud as it could, there's no turning back. We did not
hear the soldiers cries, but we heard the struggle. I'm still not sure
what happened, only that by the time we turned, he was one foot
off the ground, his mouth a mask of twine so thick it resembled a
writhing nest of earthworms, a faceless body floating, his limbs shivering from the
overwhelming agony. God, I hope that if he can die of pain,
it at least happens quickly, and his face a quivering, ever shifting bundle
of blood red. The sight was like a nightmare, and it was all
the worse that we hadn't even seen it happen. If it hadn't been for
one of his shoes falling off he had a seizure, we might never have
even known he was gone. But that wasn't the worst of it. No,
the worst was that he came back. Wagner noticed first. She was
already at the rear when it became apparent to her that another person had floated
up behind and was now just a few meters away. She mewed a desperate
cry for help, and Samantha and I turned in unison. The man who
had been taken just an hour before had resumed his position at the back of
the group. He bobbed along the woodland floor, but his feet did not
touch the ground. If we approached, he moved away, just like the
others, but unlike them, he was being paraded in full view, close
behind, to make sure we stayed on track. If we took a step,
he took a step as well, bouncing along in mock imitation of us.
Whatever had happened to him in the canopy. He looked broken now,
crunched, crumpled, plado squeezed in a fist of an angry child, sunken
eyes and a toothless mouth hung low, his dislocated jaws swinging freely as saliva
collected on a swollen tongue, just like the Mannikin with a stiff arm.
The twine moved him and gestured for us to carry on. At last,
after the hours had gone on for so long, the sky turned a dull
gray, ready for nightfall. We found it a clearing in the woods,
as large as any stadium. And there before us lay what I could only
describe as a congregation, And like many great gatherings, held him secret and
silence. They knelt in supplication, heads pressed to the floor, skin and
hair withered away, released marred by the filth around them that they were hard
to tell apart. Individual identity meant little in this crowd. The clothes,
too, were close to falling apart. But all these people on their knees.
Somehow, their shoes still told the story. Leather boots, rogues,
moccasins, slippers, trainers, chocks, nikes, Doc Martin's boomers to millennials,
three generations of a town brought to their knees, bright and colorful,
stern and business like. The elderly and the younger like lay before us,
dead men and women praying to a woman bound in twine. She was not
another floating marionette. This was immediately apparent. Her features were not hidden,
her skin not marred by soil. Her hair, a rich chestnut brown,
was long and flowing. Her clothes, what little we could see beneath a
cocoon of red twine, was a pale white gown. But time had not
left her alone. Her head was a withered skull, her mouth a lieringape,
A corpse as surely as any other, but free from the abuse of
a life on the forest floor, For she floated high amongst the trees,
thousands of red snares emerging from her body to suspend her in the center of
an explosion of red lines that radiated out from her core. Beneath her lay
the remnants of an ancient bonfire. Above her, the branches and canopy had
been scorched black, but the woman appeared to have been untouched by the flame,
A ghostly image of death. It was like something out of a Renaissance
painting, beautiful and haunting, otherworldly and divine. The sight of her made
my heart break, even if I couldn't say, why, Who is she?
Wagner asked, her voice choked with tears. All at once, the
bodies turned to face us, moving from their bad position just enough to fix
us with vacant, cloudy eyes. Gregg was one of those many. I
spotted him nearby, still a child. He glared at me with empty sockets.
There seemed darker than any shadow, like a flicker of his betrayal remained
alive within him. Had he worn that furious expression for all these years?
I wanted to answer Wagner's question, but the answer froze in my throat.
I had no definitive proof, but couldn't see the betray on the woman's face,
couldn't see the hatred in a hollow eyes god being stood there. It
felt wrong, felt dangerous. It felt like I just wandered into Chernobyl and
was making direct contact with the elephant's foot. Whoever that woman was, she
radiated hate the same way the sun radiates heat. Whatever the details of her,
there was no mistaking the intensity of her contempt for us. I'd spent
decades wondering what force or creature could hate my town so much they would torture
us. For nearly three decades, looking at her, I understood easily where
that cruelty came from. A witch burned? Perhaps I never heard of that
in our history, and who burns a witch in the nineties? But who
knows what happens in the deep woods? Who knows what atrocities are committed in
the dark? And so far from watching eyes? Then again, did she
need justification to hate us? A part of me felt like I was standing
before a god of some kind, and who knows what they do or do
not take offense to? After all, do you explain to an ant why
you crush it? As if hearing my thoughts, she turned to face me,
dead but alive, rotting but whole, And for a brief passing instant,
I saw enough to render the world white, for blood to come bubbling
out of my ears in a warm stream. I wouldn't notice for hours more.
And then, after that silence darkness, my final thought was the realization
that I had been right. I had just heard a God speak. From
the town came church bells. Even from where we sat on the hut of
her car, miles away awaiting extraction, I could see the glow in the
tower. The town had come alive at last. Our journey from the woods
had not been alone. Her congregation, easily a thousand rotting bodies, floated
down behind us, and she came in toe looming overall like some nightmarish puppeteer.
Only when we reached the bottom of the hill and passed the first building
did the woman in red move into the lead, where she slowly took a
congregation to the center of the town. There she remains even now, still
floating, still bound in a million threads, but her congregation moved on.
Gregg returned home. My father too, hand in hand with the mother,
the woman he'd loved so much. There wasn't much room for me. Others
had work to do. Shopkeepers flicked close signs to open, switches were flicked,
barber's poles came to life. Neon signs began to throw, and glow
light floated the nighttime streets as ancient bulbs flickered once twice, and then finally
fell into a steady hum. All of them lifeless bodies, manipulated by the
twine, cloudy eyes, brains as inert as lumps of insulation. And yet
they were animated with just enough hints of a former life as to make me
wonder what exactly the woman in Red had been doing with them up there for
all those years. Either way, if Versimile was shocking, if you could
ignore all the snares and the strange way its citizens floated and bobbed along,
the town almost appeared normal as life began to slowly flood back in. It
had been a miracle to get electricity back on so quickly, But the woman
in Red brought no argument. Her demands were many, and if I hadn't
accepted them, she would have boiled my brains right there in that clearing.
What happens when we die? One day, Samantha rasked as we watched houses
light up one by one. What happens if there's a power cut. She
can move the cars on her own, but electricity I don't know, I
replied, or shaking my head. But already I was thinking of ways to
install a generator something The twine could maybe move in emergencies enough to keep the
town going while I took care of the rest. But I'd really rather not
find out what happens if she doesn't get her own way. I collect random
home VHS tapes, a simple hobby, very niche too, so it can
be quite cheap compared to more common hobbies. A lot of young people clearing
out their deceased relatives home find tapes and droves either blanks or random taped shows.
There's a fun feeling to finding snippets of old shows, sometimes they're not
even well documented, and there are forums dedicated to post findings to people love
finding lost episodes of the shows of old. There are many in the space
who solely dedicate themselves to this side of the hobby, but personally, I
like the real life lootbox feeling of simply watching what's on the tapes. I
have a room dedicated to my collections on top of my memorabilia sections, which
are some toys and collectibles from shows I used to love. I have two
main shelves, one of random shows that I label and categorize. The other
shelf is of home videos that were mixed in with the blanks or unmarked VHS
patches. These I collect after I try get back in touch with the seller
to try to send them back to no avail. As for the blanks,
I have them boxed away. I later resell them since I have no use
for them. One of these tapes, however, has taken my whole attention.
It came in a box of mostly blanks, white labels, unmarred except
for one which had most of its sticker blacked out with a thick marker.
Either there was something written on it that was blocked over, or it was
heavily marked to stand out from the rest. If that was the case,
it worked because I picked it out immediately. I haven't acquired a new tape
since because I've been obsessed over this one. So I'm sharing his contents that
i've seen so far. Once you see what I mean, you'll know why,
and you'll know why you can never see it. It started with my
first watch. I made sure it was fully rewound and sat back, hoping
it was a good one. The shots started with a man at his desk.
He seemed to be working on something challenging, as all his attention was
on the papers in front of him. His brow furrowed constantly as he meticulously
chipped away at the mountain of literature in front of him. It seemed rather
inane at first, just a man working hard and for some reason, filming
himself. I hoped the scene would develop, trying to piece together a plot.
If this scene was from an old TV show, this made my eyes
wonder, hoping something would happen. But as he continued to dive deeper into
his work, I noticed the mirror slightly off angled behind him, a calmon
narrative device in more artsy visual storytelling. In it was a small snippet of
the wall behind the camera. Every time he pulled his head up from his
desk, he would clip into the frame of the mirror. But something seemed
off. I couldn't figure out what I found off about it, but keeping
an eye in it made the many minutes of this shop more amusing to watch,
as I wasn't getting any enjoyment from watching a man struggling late into a
nine to five. There was one part that solidified what seems strange about it,
though. It was when he swung back far to stretch his back out
a bit. As he ended up in the mirror's frame for a bit longer
than usual, I noticed this reflection was imperfectly mirroring his actions. It seemed
a bit out of sync, almost like the reflection wasn't a reflection but another
person trying to be a reflection. I thought it could have been a shoddy
attempt from the director of trying to replicate a mirror. However, that seemed
way too elaborate for this kind of work. Once I noticed this, the
oftness became much more apparent. Even on the tiny snippets. The reflection seemed
to be like he was slightly more turned than he should have been, with
just a few frames too late in response. Before I knew it, the
scene ended, The tape snapped black, and the whir of the VHS players
spanned to rewind. It was the end of the tape. It was only
about twenty minutes, but the time flew by after my fun little game started,
so as soon as it clicked back to the start of the tape.
I immediately hit play to try to see how early this strange, unsynked mirror
started. But instead of a man at a desk, it was something else
entirely. It was now a woman in a shopping aisle. She was deciding
between two similar brands of cereal and trying to figure out which one she wanted.
It seemed the decision between strawberry or chocolate was a hard one, because
she was at this for a while. But while she was engrossed in the
thoughts, something in the background started to move. A colorful box of cereal
slightly further up the aisle started to shift slightly. It moved so slowly that
she took no notice. However, I could see it in full, just
slowly inching out little by little. Eventually it was almost all the way out,
teetering on the middle of its own weight, before it toppled over and
fell. She immediately turned at the noise of it hit in the ground,
staring at it for a few moments. Once she realized it was just a
box that fell, she went back, picked up the strawberry option, put
it in a basket, and walked away At this, the scene ended,
and the tape went back to black and started rewinding. This established the pattern
of my new obsession for a start. This scene wasn't nearly as long as
the first one, yet it still hit the end of the tape. More
importantly, it was completely different to what was on the tape before. I
hit play once more, and once again, it was a different scene entirely.
I don't know how it worked, but I knew I had something strange
in my possession, so I took to seeing what else would happen if I
kept watching the tape over and over, at first for fun, but later
not so much. I took to the forums, but as you can imagine,
they were no help. This obviously wasn't how tapes worked, so even
the most vague description of my first experience was either ignored or made fun of.
But this didn't deter me. I never did this hobby for attention,
so since then, I've just kept this to myself, something I can enjoy
in my free time. And plus it saved me money too. I no
longer had to hunt down new tapes, knowing this one provided new content to
watch each time. It was my own personal heaven. The goose that laid
golden eggs. My next few watches went similar to my first two. A
person sitting at a park feeding ducks, but instead of ducks, disheveled children
came to eat the bread, which the patron didn't seem to bat an eye
too. A man fervently driving his car, making sharp turns to the wheel
and looking around frantically, which after a slow, long zoom out, the
car turned out to be unmoving, stuck in a ditch. Some impatient patrons
outside a bar waiting for it to be open if the building looked derelict and
boarded up so it couldn't open. They were like little dark comedies, twisted
punchlines for no one to appreciate but me. But my last watcher that night
set a different tone. The scene was of a figure lying in a bed.
The skin was jet black, charred and crisp. Wisps of steam danced
around the body. Between the dried cracks of skin, there were thin lines
of red where it split. This caught my attention as it was significantly different
from any of the previous times I viewed the tape. They were dead still,
the camera too, the only light color in this dark scene was their
eyes leaking softly out of the socket. After many chilling minutes of silence,
the body twitched once, then twice, then started spasming violently, jitters and
jumps, flinging around wildly periodically, until it was all they were doing.
As they constantly spun around and writhed. Colours slowly returned to their skin.
Panic restored on their slowly forming face. I figured there were screaming, but
couldn't confirm with the lack of audio. Eventually they were back to human,
a middle aged woman twitching in her bed until she settled down, back to
a peaceful slumber. No sign of danger on the way like they somehow burned
alive, and their tape was reversed, yet no fire was ever seen.
I thought this was a hint to reverse the tape, so I hit rewinder
see if anything would change. But when the scan lines shot around and the
tape word, the shot went to black and for the rest of that scene
no picture showed. That was a new lesson I'd learned. Any interference with
the tape and it would cut to black until the tape ended and rewound itself.
The next day I took off work. I wanted to see as much
as possible, even though some of the snippets were a bit dark. Seeing
it through the scan lines of an old cort TV dampened the blow somewhat.
My thirst for knowledge had just gotten started. I sat down with my early
morning coffee and popped in the tape. The first watch started with an over
the shoulder shot of an elderly man standing in front of his bathroom mirror.
Though I couldn't see him directly, I could make him out clearly through the
cleaned mirror he stared into. He stared intently at his reflection, seemingly willing
it to do something. After a few tense moments, he slowly raised his
right hand and hesitatly waved at himself. The reflection followed along, which seemed
to anger the man slightly, the reflection mimicking his fore a demeanor. He
tried again, slowly raising his hand giving an uneasy wave, and again the
reflection seemed to follow along, perfectly reflected. He tried this over and over,
the same movements, the same reactions. I almost thought the tape was
looping, until he started acting more and more frantic, waving and waving,
not seeming to get the reaction he wanted defeated. His shoulders sunk and he
turned to leave, but his reflection didn't, and it continued to stare in
the direction of the camera. The tape ended. There after the whirr of
the VHS stopped. I hit play again. This next scene faded into a
panning shot of a room full of plushes and toys, a mix of relatively
old releases and very retro collectibles from old mechas the soft plushes, though I
could tell there was some marring from dust, they looked like they were placed
with pride, something I did myself with my own collection. After the slow
pan the shots centered on one of the dolls in the middle of one of
the shelves. Slowly it zoomed in the frame, getting smaller and smaller.
However, as some of the toys were getting cropped out of the shot and
the sides, I swear I could see them twitch a little. Some would
lean as if pushed slightly, but some looked more deliberate, like a leg
jerking or a joint pivoting. Eventually, the camera was so zoomed in that
only a few toys remained, and when enlarged unscreen, I could see it
more clearly. Toys were moving or to anymously when they were almost out of
shot, like the timing was just off from trying not to be caught or
trying to be deliberate enough for me to see. Eventually, the shot landed
squarely on the scented toy's eye, a disturbing extreme close up of the glossy
bead that made up part of its face. The shot lingered for a good
few moments before its eye blinked and the scene cut. Each watch seemed to
bring something new, yet I pieced together that there seemed to be a vague,
reoccurring theme of mirrors, and the eye stood out to me as it
made me think back to the woman in bed. I watched the tape over
and over, taking small breaks to eat and do general tasks throughout the day,
but went away from the screen. My mind never left my one seater
in front of my dusty CRT TV. The tape was coming up with these
scenes and the fly then it never seemed to run out of ideas. However,
the effects were done. They were pulled off immaculately, where ahead of
their time. If there was some trick to the tape that did this,
like it was somehow connected online, pulling random horror scenes from lesser known movies.
It was beyond me, Like the goose that laid golden eggs, analogy
I've already mentioned. I didn't want to cut the goose open out of greed.
After eating the quickest meal I could make, I popped back into my
collector's room, hoping to get some new watches in before bed. Even though
I took off work, I knew I couldn't stay up. Obsceemly late,
the scene sparked a life with flickers. The lightings seemed to be sketchy in
the room, but when it lingered long enough between the flashes, I saw
tile and old bottles. It was a ceramic coated bathroom, a sterile white
veneer that screamed cheap rent. Eventually, there was a final crack of energy
and the bulb clung to life enough to light the scene. The camera led
with a tilt top, tracking across the bathroom floor or the while an occasional
sloshing could be heard, the tub sounding very full. Sometimes a squeaking sound
would sting, like skin shifting on porcelain, the movements of someone uncomfortable in
the bath. The camera had tracked up slowly leading to the lip of the
tub with a sloshing and jostling got louder. The frame lingered level to the
edge for a few moments, not revealing the inner of the tub, and
the first sign that something was off was when some of the liquid spilled over
the edge. It was only slight, but a thin red streak glistened down
in a fast red line. This was the camera's que to lift over.
The reveal was not what I wanted. The liquid was of viscous and thick
red, rumbling with little movements underneath a meek struggle beneath the shallow depths.
Occasionally a pale arm or leg would bob up briefly, momentarily freeing itself to
the surface, before plunging back under an arm and leg and an arm again,
like they were coming up for air in sporadic intervals, yet no head
ever came up. The shifting became more erratic, so much so that the
liquid looked like it was boiling. The water splashed over the lip, spilling
over the now pink hued floor, until it all came to a sudden still
and whatever was under rested on the surface. The parts weren't of a person
trapped under the water, but many parts dismembered arms and legs of a half
dozen similar looking people. The only one that wasn't a limb was an eye
that floated haplessly in the middle. The tape cut black. After this,
I was unsettled. Sure there was some things that bordered on dark that I'd
seen before, but this was so many steps up the others I could pass
off as tricks of the camera, or at best the kundriins from the mind
of directors being too experimental. But this went too far. I cut my
viewing sessions shorter than I'd want. That night at work, I waded up
if I should just stop. Let me tell you. If I had,
life would have been simple. I'd go back to working my regular job and
hunting for tapes in my spare time. But as you can tell, the
story doesn't end here. See, this hobby had me addicted. The thrill
of finding some rare or unique footage was exhilarating. I'm sure you can liken
it to the biggest rush in whatever hobby you're into. Make your own similarly
for how it feels so to get that on demand, rather than waiting days
for a listening to show up, fighting over others like me in a bidding
war, and then waiting the sometimes weeks for it to get here because sellers
cheap out so much on shipping, and that also causes some tapes to be
wrecked by the time they arrive to mention package thieves. It was easy for
me to cope that that last episode was on one off, something that could
just randomly happen in the pool of footage. It seemed to hold, so
maybe I could keep going. What were the odds of something like that happening
again? I decided to challenge those odds. I tried to resist when I
got home, give myself some breathing room for a bit, but after finishing
some chores around the house and taking some time to make a nice meal,
the downtime was deafening and I wanted to fill it with my obsession. The
tape was already in the player, untouched since the bathtub scene. I sat
down and hit play. The camera panned over her serene park on a cloudy
day, and the camera revealed a young woman on a bench. The camera
was close enough to make out the name tag on her chest. Anna,
she looked like she was feeling directionless and came to the park to try and
clear her head. She gazed up, lost in her mind for a while,
eyes glazed, and thought that something got her attention and snapped her out
of a stupor a whisper in the wind that quarter off guard. Yet I
could hear it too. Look up, was all it said in a low,
soothing voice. She must have been desperate because instead of looking around or
even contemplating whether or not to follow a randomly given direction, she followed it
like divine intervention. Anna stared at the dull sky, skinn around for something,
though not knowing what. But it didn't take long for her to find
what she was looking for. Anna's face switched through so many emotions. Whatever
had her attention must have been otherworldly, because I can't think of anything that
could appear in an open sky that would garnered that kind of reaction. Maybe
the cloud sending a message or a vision of some sort. I would never
know, because the shot only stayed on her. Her face settled and beheld
something in the sky had a smitten in a divine way. Anna was soaking
in the bliss of whatever She gazed upon hope returned to her face, which
seemed like something she'd been missing for a long time. However, the sky
soon got darker, A thick cloud passed over the lowering sun and her face
draw Whatever she was looking at twisted something grotesque. Yet she never once looked
away, and the scene ended. Hooked on the mystery, I hit play
again. The room in the opening was sterile. A large mirror was centered
on the wall. There was obviously a two way to me, but not
to who they were observing. The subject was a girl, definitely in the
single digits of age. She was in a hospital gown with pajamas underneath,
and in front of her were a number of old dolls. A clack sounded,
and over a fuzzy integomb speaker, her voice asked, can you talk
to one of the dolls? Okay, she replied meekly, and she proceeded
to introduce herself to the first one. Not that one, a low voice
said, though it didn't have the intercom static like the previous voice. It
said, not this one, she said back. The interviewer must have been
confused by this, as there was a pause of contemplation before he re formed
a new question, which doll is speaking? Honey? It seemed that the
girl could hear the voice, as could I, but the man observing and
possibly others behind the screen could not. She turned back to the dolls and
asked them who was speaking me? The low voice responded. She turned towards
the doll in the middle and pointed at it. Okay, honey, can
you ask him some questions for me? The man said mm hm. She
obeyed. When addressed, the doll seemed to move slightly, almost as if
trying to turn to face her. However, she was unfazed by this.
What is it that you want, child, the doll quizzed, which she
repeated back to the hidden man. The man on the other side of the
two way mirror, intrigued by the doll's response, asked, can you ask
him who he is? The girl turned back to the doll and repeated the
question. The doll's head tilted slightly as if considering its answer. I am
a vessel, it said, his voice had grown, which she echoed back.
The silence lingered as the man seemed to ponder more about what to ask,
but just as he hit the intercom button, sounding that awful clack.
I was about to ask the doll another question, something happened. The doll's
eyes began to twitch, blinking rapidly UNSYNCD, and its head spun around to
face the two way mirror. I see you, the doll said, his
voice echoing throughout the room. I see all of you. The man frantically
called out, what's going on? What is he saying? It seemed they
had never encountered her anything like this before. But before she could answer,
the doll spoke again. The eye sees all, it said, and now
the experiment ends. With that, The doll fell silent, its eyes returning
to their normal lifeless state. There was no response as the girl asked over
and over if she could be let out, unfazed with a whole ordeal.
As the static rattled out from the intercom from the buttom that was still held
down, no more voices came from behind the screen. The scene abruptly cut
to black. I had seen a handful of thematics of eyes, or rather
a singular eye, but this was the first true mention, addressing it as
some sort of thing. This was enough for me for the night, so
I turned in now, wanting to figure out the narrative theme of the clips.
The weekend was the perfect time to try and pack this. I swore
that I'd watch over and over no matter what I saw. I was in
deep and I wanted to weather the deep end for a satisfying conclusion. If
something disturbing came up, I'd simply get over it and watch again. There
was a message here, and I wanted to figure it out. Scene after
scene. I watched the tape over so many times that day. A shot
of a person sitting on a couch reading a book. As the camera zoomed
in on the book, I realize that it was not a normal one.
It was some ancient tome with a strange symbol on the front. A scene
of a person standing in front of a window watching the rainfall. As the
camera zoomed in on the rain drops, I saw that they were not normal
water droplets. They were black and oily, and they seemed to be eating
away at the windowpane. The person was nonchalant about his impending danger. A
shot of a man walking through a forest at night with strange symbols etched on
the trees. He hears strange, otherworldly whispers all around him, but can't
make out what's being said. Suddenly, a figure appears behind him, its
face hidden. The figure speaks in a soft, whispered voice, promising to
reveal the secret the universe to the person if they're willing to make a sacrifice.
The person hesitates with the figures words are hypnotic, and they find themselves
drawn in. The scene ends with a person making a pact with the figure,
the details of which are left unclear. I had a patterned paper to
jot down things I thought could be important. I saw a reoccurring symbol in
a handful of the clips. It looked like an uppercase h with a cruelly
drawn circle in the middle, A new reoccurring theme that would occasionally pop up
as I watched. I felt unnerved. At first. I thought it was
from the more disturbing scenes that would occasionally happen, but it lingered even as
I wandered my room while getting a drink. It felt like eyes were upon
me, A thought implanted into my head from what I'd seen, But I
wasn't wrong. I was being watched. My collectible memorabilia, the things I
collected outside of VHS tapes were in the room with me. Inane decoration for
most of my life that now loomed in the corners with watchful eyes. I
collected them all up in a box and store them up in the attic,
far enough away that I hoped they'd be out of sight, out of mind.
But even with them in the house, I felt uneased. Though I
couldn't bring myself to outright throw em away because they meant so much to me,
my sense of a knees never left. I found myself catching glimpses myself
in my mirrors, never seeing anything off, but feeling like something was amiss
when I wasn't looking, doubting myself when it felt like my reflection was out
of sink in the corners of my eyes as I'd turn away. I eventually
came and boxed them up too, and left them in the attic in a
box next to my collectibles. But it didn't help. Even without mirrors,
I'd catch my reflection in the dark color in my cup or the back of
a clean spoon. But one I could never avoid was myself looking back at
me from the blacked out CRT screen. After each episode ended, fervently denying
anything off about my reflection. One more I kept telling myself one more and
I'd be done. I just needed one more scene to satiate my curiosity.
Even though I was reaching new levels of anxiety and stress, it was still
an adrenaline rush of catching a scene that felt like I was progressing through this
nightmare. I hit play. The camera showed a person trapped in a small
room with walls that seemed to be closing in on them. The person tried
to push against the walls, where the pressure was too strong. Strange whispers
and screams echoed through the room. The person looked like they were on the
verge of going insane. As the walls got closer and closer, the person
started scratching at them, which were marred with the strange symbols from before.
They looked that they were carved with a sharp blade, and they seemed to
be pulsing with an otherworldly energy. Suddenly, I heard a clear, sinister
voice above the whispers. You can never leave. The voice said, You're
trapped here forever. The scene ended with the person realizing that there was no
escape, though I wondered if there was a hint of irony that the message
could be about me. This was and what I wanted, so I hit
play again. Next was the shot of a person entering a derelict house.
The camera followed them as they explored the many rooms of this place. The
air was thick with dust and cobwebs, and the only sound was the person's
footsteps and the creaking floorboards. As he went deeper into the house, he
stumbled upon a room filled with old dolls. The dolls seemed to be looking
at the person with accusing eyes and unease washed over the man's face. Suddenly,
the dolls started to move on their own, the joints creaking as they
turned their heads to look at the person. They seemed to be controlled by
an unseen force, and the person realized too late that they were in danger.
The scene ends with the person trying to flee the house, but the
dolls seemed to be blocking their escape, and the scene fades the black.
The reoccurring themes of curateosity and danger was lost to me as I searched for
what I could deem my last watch. All I could do was ignore my
unmatched reflection on the black screen and keep hitting play one more time. I
repeated again, this will be the last one. A lie, I tried
to reaffirm myself with the tape popped to life once more, but instead of
a shot there could start a new narrative, it just lingered on an extremely
uncomfortable zoom of an eye. The shot so grainy from the zoom and lighting
that I couldn't make out the collar of the eye nor the shade of skin.
It just stared. The only indication that it wasn't frozen was the occasional
twitch of the eyelid, though it never blinked. Once I could swear I
saw something what could be a clue in the black of the pupil, a
swirling movement that caught my attention, but it was too small on the screen
for me to see from where I sat. So I stood up to get
a closer look, and as soon as I did, it moved. The
eye tilted slightly upwards and stayed in that new position. I didn't dare move
in case I missed something, but it now lingered at this new angle in
the same motions as before, So I slowly edged around my coffee table to
get that closer look I wanted, trying to not let my eyes leave the
screen for even a moment, and as I did, it moved once more,
a slow bank to the right, exactly where I was moving. He
watched me. I don't know how, nor did I want to entertain that
Idea was tracking me like an animal track this prey. My froze at the
realization. I only to confirm my fears. It stopped too. I slowed
my breathing, not knowing what to do, frozen like a deer in headlights.
Though at least a deer would sooner or let her know what kind of
danger it was in, I was completely in the dark. Eventually, an
intrusive thought came to me that if it really was watching me, that it
was something I needed to stop as soon as possible. So I dove down
to my coffee table and hit all the buttons of my remote, the eye
snapping in the direction I moved. As I did so, the screen cut
black at the moment of interference, as it had before, and played out
with a black screen until the end. I racked my brain trying to think
of my next move as the machine clicked and started to rewind. The scene
was not long enough to give me pause for thought, as it hit the
start of the tape much too quickly. And played automatically. The shot didn't
give me the reprise of fading in. It cut instantly to a shot of
my room framed directly from the point of view from my TV, the brightness
of the shot lighting me up enough to be visible in the screen, which
seemed like a cinematic paradox I didn't even want to try to unpack. The
fluorescent of the screen flickered with life enough for me to see myself frozen at
the side of the coffee table. Remote still in hand, and I was
once again frozen in thought. All the while none of the buttons were working
to stop this nightmare I was now in. A new time limit was added
as I stared at the screen, with the angle of the shot thus the
right amount of illumination. A glass pane on one of my units I used
to display some of my more prized collectibles just caught my reflection in it,
something I didn't think the consequences of until my reflection started moving without my accompanied
action. It slowly turned, fighting some unseen force that tried to pull it
back to how it should be. All the while, movement caught my attention
from my coffee table. My car keys had a keychain of a small rubber
duck fashioned into a fasimile of a superhero. I heard that labored plastic bend
as its head tried to lean up to look at me. It seemed whatever
moved the toys from the scene wasn't constrained to logical humanoid shapes looking back at
the screen. Against all odds, my reflected self managed to turn it off
to face me through the screen and was trying to raise its hand like someone
reaching towards a window pane, an idea that scared me into a fight response.
I ran over to the TV and kicked it over with as much force
as I could, something I felt needed, as old CRTs have some hefty
weight to them. It was enough to send it reeling back, and I
used this opportunity like ad somehow stunner person by kicking their head and grabbed the
VCR player from under the unit and ripped it out of its nest of wires.
I ran all the way to the front door and mudged to the behest
and my confused neighbors threw it out as hard as I could and slammed the
door shut locks slammed into place. I caught my breath, trying to suck
back in my sanity with each gasp, hoping that I wouldn't suffer any of
the fate of the many whom I'd witnessed over the many times I've watched the
tape. I locked the door to my collector's room, resigning it to a
problem for future me. For then, I was content to letting the dust
settle, and paranoidly staying awake until sleep forced itself into me. Since then,
I'd only been in that room once. The TV was still kicked over,
the VHS taped shelves were unmoved. My couch was where it always sat,
neatly, where the indents of the feet had rested for the years since
it was placed there. The VCR remote still scattered to the side from how
it bounced off the coffee table when it fell. Mycabinet was the last place
I wanted to look. But no matter how much I tried to rationalize what
I was seeing, there was enough for me to know that this was real.
The sweaty remains of a handprint pressed on the other side of the glass.
Sure I could say I might have done it myself from the last time
it was opened. Many months ago, and I'd somehow forgotten to clean it,
despite myself always keeping that glass crystal clear on a regular basis. But
the symbol etched in the scenter of the palm was much too specific to explain
away. I yet do not know if whatever ritual happened was far enough for
something worse to happen, whether I stopped it in time or delayed the inevitable.
The VCR was gone in the morning, and I hoped it was collected
as refuse and left a rot and a daunt somewhere. I can't imagine the
demographic of a retromedia collector had somehow thought they stumbled upon a new find,
and that a neighbor took the hint that it was not worth salvaging from the
condition I left it in as it cracked around on the concrete outside. I've
since boxed up all my tapes and disposed of them. Oh many great memories,
many of which were unique, now gone. All my childhood toys and
memorabilia from that era gone to along with anything reflective enough to see a shape
myself in. For things I couldn't move, like my bath double windows,
I simply coated them with a map finished spray. No, I don't have
a profound message to tell, just don't be stupid. It'd be wrong to
say I don't like kids. It's adults I have more of a problem with.
In my last school, when I called one of the ten year old
boys in my class a little asshole, he wasn't the problem. His parents
are the ones who insisted I get fired. But that boy didn't mind me
swearing at him because he knew damn well he'd keeped my car even if I
had no proof. He just thought it was funny. No different to the
sort of interaction he'd have with an older sibling. On that note, I
wouldn't say I like children either. Kids are little adults. They're more truthful,
but only because the stakes are lower. People with jobs and mortgages tell
great, big, tremendous lies. Kids don't have the weight to the world
and their shoulders, So why lie about mistresses and promotions and why you've been
crushing up antibiotics s into your wife's morning smoothie. Instead, they just lie
about where their homework is. The kids I teach are right on the cusp
of it. Some of the boys might get caught giggling at the back,
or showing each other naughty little videos they don't understand but can't look away from.
But then they go out and chase each other around, do cartwheels,
play tag, hide and seek, cry if they take a particularly bad knock.
Kids are weird. Got one whose dad is in jail and he talks
about it like it means nothing. His old man tried to kick a woman
to death in the parking lot of a bar and won't be out until the
boy's a teenager. Kid don't care, doesn't get it. If anything,
he thinks it's funny. But then last week I confiscated his novelty pencil that
was the size of a cucumber, and he screamed so hard he threw up
all over the speckled tile that had been glued to the floor since ninety six.
Ten is a weird age, old enough to feel the vaguest hint of
life's problems just beneath the surface, like lumps in a pillow, to question
why mommy downs three bottles of wine on a Tuesday. A white daddy changes
his shirt and hides it in the garage before coming in from work, but
too young to know what's really under the surface. These kids can feel something
is wrong with the world. They just don't know what not yet Anyway,
they have my sympathy. Twenty six years of teaching has eroded most of everything
else. I'm not particularly invested in whether these little turres become scientists or janitors,
nor am I particularly interested in helping them process their emotional luggage. If
any of you want me to undo the damage you've done to your own kids,
then you can start by paying me a hell of a lot more.
But I do feel sorry for them because they don't really know what's going on.
But unlike a five year old, they can't just fumble around in blind
ignorance. They're stuck in between worlds, one where you cry yourself to sleep
at night over your parents divorce, but still think Santa and the tooth Fairy
are real. Maybe it's different at a rich school, one where kids don't
go to food banks, but where whole families don't have to share a smartphone.
I doubt it. Don't know why. I just doubt anyone's out there
living the plot of the Bernstein Bears, rich or otherwise. I used to
dream of teaching at one of the big schools, A couple of towns over
the ones with all the funding. Oh, that'd be nice walking into a
building that doesn't look like a set dressing for the next season of True Detective.
Now I just dream of getting out of this profession entirely. Maybe if
I play my cards right. Sounds crazy to say out loud, so I
won't. But maybe I found a way out. Well, to be exact,
the kids found it. Don't know what they got, of course they
don't. The kids, They haven't a clue. But I think I'm maybe
thirteen weeks from another go and when that happens, you can bet your ass
I'm asking for a ticket out of here. At first, I planned on
getting a cushy job in one of the schools a few towns over one,
where the school bus doesn't have to plan its route around multiple trailer parks.
Now I realize I was thinking small. If I'm smart, I won't ever
have to work another day in my life. Imagine that thirteen more weeks.
Right now, Greenwig is with Laila, sweet girl, but she's smart enough
for it to be a problem. The dumb ones for the best. You
wake up to something grinning at you at your bedroom window. It helps to
have a sort of mind that doesn't ask questions about what floor you're living on.
Layla isn't winning a genius grant anytime soon. But I can tell it's
bothering her because deep down she knows how wrong this all is. Dark circles
under the eyes, pallid skin, eyes that keep darting to the corners.
Sometimes she falls asleep at a desk. Sometimes she wakes up with a little
jump, like something only she can see has startled her. It's hard.
The only reason she sticks it out is the same reason you or I would
the rewards. She got a smartphone last time. I wonder what'll be this
time. These kids don't ask for a lot toys mainly one of them got
crazy good at football real quick. That makes sense, But it's that kind
of thing, you know. They don't ask for the lottery. Well,
nothing like that, because money's a little too abstract right now. Strange thing,
though, as young and naive as they are, they learned the rules
pretty quickly. I guess Greenwig's lessons aren't subtle. Just look at one of
my former students, Jared Now. At the time, all this flew under
my radar, kidding my class lost, the parent moved away, so what
things happen. Turns out he asked for his father to get sober. Next
day, the poor guy got caught in the machinery at his job. CCTV
footage was very popular in live leagues, makes for grim viewing. I'm not
particularly handy, so I never knew a lathe could do that to a human
body. Anyway, it's not good to ask things for other people. I
wish my dad was this, I wish my mom was that. Ugh Aliot
told me that upfront, around the time I started asking why half the kids
in my class had new iPhones and Nintendo switches. She said it was easy
to ask for things, but it was riskier to ask to chain something into
another thing, and downright awful to ask it to change a person in any
way, no matter how small. Even that kid who got good at football
played a risky game. It paid off, but the other kids wouldn't go
near him for a week. They kept expecting something bad to happen to him,
and they didn't want to be in the splash zone. I can't pretend
to understand the subtleties like the kids. I can only observe what happens to
other people, and learn the lessons that in parts, nothing about Grenwig is
guaranteed. There are no certainties. Even the kids get worn down by it.
Whoever has it, they're a pariah risk assessment in under a Lean's strange
thing to see. But unless it's your turn, you don't even want to
risk something as inane as a game of catch with his chosen friend Grenwig,
his territorial, possessive bizarre. Didn't even believe it until it was somehow my
turn, which the kids found pretty alarming. Grenwig doesn't like adults. I
thought it was a ghost at first, lights coming on and off, footsteps
in the corridor outside my apartment, pretty creepy, sharing my home with something
I couldn't see. I didn't like it, but it had only been a
couple of nights, and I did a good job of convincing myself there was
no ghost or poltergeist, just an overactive imagination. Yeah, sure, the
TV changed and there were finger marks on my bathroom window I hadn't put there,
so what wait. At the back of my mind, I'd reserved a
little bit of space for the possibility of a haunting, but otherwise I remained
a skeptic. Jesus, if only it was as simple as a haunting.
I don't know if I could explain to you how it felt the first time
I woke up to Greenwig gently stroking my toes, the violation of it,
the feeling of a world that didn't make sense. My eyes glared at his
fingers, terrified, heart pounding, head throbbing like I'd taken a knock,
and I kept waiting for it to make sense. My eyes wandered, tried
to find the hands those fingers belonged to, but they just kept going and
going and going. They stretched for meters, and they disappeared into the shadow
of my closet. Whole time, they kept massaging the big toe, cold
as ice. I started counting the knuckles. I got to thirteen and gave
up. But they were fingers. I could tell from the nails, the
hair that ran along the dimpled skin, the color of cement. And then,
just as I started to really appreciate that I was awake, one hundred
percent, stone cold, sober, and lucid, and what I was seeing
wasn't a dream or a nightmare or some other conjuration of the mind, just
as I felt panic began to flare up inside my chest like a burgeoning heart
attack. Those impossible fingers withdrew into the darkness like a spider curling its legs.
I got up and thrown the lights, found my claws empty. Felt
the world was coming apart. Had to be a night terror, I decided,
hadn't had one for decades, But what else could it be. I
wanted to go back to sleep, to at least try, but I was
so scared I couldn't face the dark again. So I decided to stay up.
Went out into the living room and turned the TV on, plopped down
on the sofa and let my head tilt back. I might have drifted off
again, I don't know for sure. All I remember was the feeling is
the cushion beneath me adjusted, and I heard it the sound of something tightening,
like a creaking door. I looked down and saw white bands wrapped around
the entirety of the sofa fingers. They tightened, and the material a let
out a groan as the tension went up a notch. I flew upwards in
a terrible panic. By the time I turned back, the fingers were gone,
but the indent they'd left and the sofa remained. This repeated itself all
night. Each time I felt close to drifting off, those impossibly long fingers
would reach out of the darkness somewhere and make an appearance. They knock glasses
off, countertops, opened the fridge, turned on the oven, and whenever
possible, they touched me, stroked an ear, tickled my nose, slid
between my fingers, and tried to hold my hand. I tried to play
chicken with it, at least once. I stayed stock still as a greasy
finger plucked at my lips and tried to find its way into my mouth.
But before it met any success, I flipped out and ran, shrieking into
the corridor outside my apartment. Panting in the hallway. I told myself I'd
never stepped foot in that apartment. There was something about the way all my
neighbors came to their doors one by one and just stared at me in my
underwear and sweat stained vest. I felt like a damn idiot. Before I
knew it, I was offering modeled apologies whilst slinking through my front door.
By the time I got to school the next day, I felt like I
was teetering on the edge of a breakdown. I genuinely suspected my day was
going to end with me being carted off in a straight jacket last people.
I expected to find any understanding from with my students, But when I came
in looking like a sleep deprived drunk, they all stared at me in silence.
And this wasn't the slight Jeorge idiocy I'm sometimes used to with these kids.
At that time, I told them I used to have a wife.
This was something else. Took me a second to decipher. It not the
sort of expression I'm used to from that age group, with what with half
of them being miniature psychopaths. It was sympathy. They felt sorry for me.
But when I took a step forward, every single one of them scooted
their chairs backwards. Just like that. It clicked. I spent the last
year watching them take turns ostracizing one another, and I'd just ridden it off
as just a peculiar product of childhood social dynamics. It felt cruel, and
I tried over and over to mitigate it, to sit with the excluded kids
and talk with them, try to figure it all out. But it was
an enigma, all of it. If it wasn't for the fact that this
messed up system seemed to operate and a kind of wrotor, I would have
been forced to intervene. But as it was, the kid who was targeted
would always be back with the crowd a week later, and they'd be the
ones excluding someone else. But now all of that made sense the way they
were looking at me pity recognition. They knew what I'd spent the night going
through, and for the last year, they'd gone through it themselves, one
by one. You should play with Grenwig, sir. One of the quieter
girls piped up, looking wide eyed, like a hostage at gunpoint, and
all the other kids nodded, Yeah, he wants to play. You need
to play with them. He gets real impatient. A chorus of whispering AHAs
Grenwig. I muttered, one word is that what is called? I wondered,
and all the other kids nodded, But they could read my mind.
There are no records of Greenwig anywhere, by the way, Good God.
I tried a thousand times over to find something anything. The best I could
think of was that Greenwig was a kind of boogey man. But what does
that even mean? Just the word use to give the world a little more
shape, a little more structure. I'm not sure Greenwich has much of either.
The games he plays are like what a toddler or a young dog would
be interested in. Basic stuff, no rules. I moved something, Greenwig
moves it back. Our was lost tracing the spiral of my hair, or
pulling at my cheeks and face to create strange new expressions of flicking the lights
on and off. In that time, I took to eating lunch in my
car, largely because it was hard to be around people who couldn't see why
a glass went flying at the wall or why I had to keep stacking plates
until they were so tall they toppled over. At least the kids gave me
a heads up, most important warning I ever gotten in my life. Every
kid had their own observations, some more relatable than others. Most of them
boiled down to the simple fact that for seven days you belonged to Greenwig,
you were a toy, a source of endless amusement for something that had the
sense of humor of a three year old. Pretty Much every kid agreed on
one concrete thing, though saying no to Grenwig was dangerous. Now I can't
say for sure, but I'm poussile Grenwig gave the kids more leeway. He
left them alone for lunch and dinner. Bedtime games were usually quieter, but
for me, it was almost like part of the game was watching me go
about my adult life as he did everything to mess with me. He'd snatch
my steering wheel, giggling from the dark foot well, yellow eyes peering up
from between my legs. He grabbed my phone and throw it into the middle
of traffic, or sit there tickling my neck and armpits as the principal demanded
to know why my classes behavior was so erratic. He made it difficult,
pushed me right up to breaking point. Eventually I snapped. I slapped his
hand away as he tried to mess with me during a traffic stop. Felt
like screaming at him that he was this close to getting me shot, but
of course I couldn't. Just had to sit there as this cop looked over
my license and mulled give me a sobriety test. Couldn't blame him. I'd
been swerving all over the road until I saw the flashing lights. Didn't help
when as he approached my I pulled over car, he saw me slapping furiously
at the steering wheel, hissing stop it, over and over. He inevitably
issued the test, which I passed. The cop gave me a long,
narrow eyed stare before telling me to go get some sleep. He must have
figured I was just a stressed mental case instead of a drunk, and he
was right. It was day six and I barely slept. Despite all the
grave warnings from the kids about the dangers of telling Grenwig off, I drove
off, hoping that maybe he would just let this one go. I went
to school and taught lessons as usual, but Grenwig made no appear, and
says I asked the kids if his little rota ever found itself wrapping up a
day early, and they all shook their heads like they knew bad news was
coming my way, but none of them wanted to say for sure. Still,
it was my first time, so I ignored the look in their eyes
and tried my best to focus on the hope that maybe Greenwig was going to
finally leave me alone. A feeling and I dissolved in its entirety when I
opened my front door and found a package on the floor, A large box
about one foot cubed It looked like old cardboard, like what happens when it
gets soaked but left out to dry, just dingy. Its sides had been
stable together two and that gave it a real homemade look that went the extra
creepy little mile. I expected something bad. I knew the second when I
went to lift it and it was too heavy, that something was wrong.
It just felt well, fell, like lifting an overfull bucket from the bottom.
And then there was the smell and the noise that sounded like a distant
transmission of a mewing child, tinny, like the muffled cries of someone on
the other side of a very thick wall. When I finally opened it,
I found the policeman inside familiar because of the shield and name he Well,
he'd been folded, I guess, is the best way I can describe it.
At first I thought it was just this uniform, but well, clothes
aren't warm, and obviously a folded uniform wouldn't explain the force hair and skin
poking out the side. I recoiled, terrified, fell backwards onto my ass,
and this was when Greenwig made his appearance. His eracnid fingers curled out
from the box, I'd say about a dozen of them this time. There
are always more in the dark, out of sight. And these did when
I couldn't have brought myself to do on my own. They unfolded the policeman
lifted him up like a tailor shone off a suit, and the flayed's skin
opened up to reveal the barely recognizable outline of an adult man. He was
still alive, and the rest of him, I soon found out, was
in my bathtub, and that half was also very much alive, thrashing and
sliding as it struggled to gain a grip on the smooth ceramic, begging for
its other half. Words I don't really think were a natural fit for the
stern man who'd interrogated me just ten hours ago, But then again, it
wasn't really the same man either way. He spoke of the darkness between atoms,
the infinite space where time doesn't exist, and the endless shapes that swim
the murky abyss fleeing their cruel God. More than that, he lamented no
longer being whole, feeling himself in two places at once. He called it
wrong, and on that he had my agreement. I begged Greenwig to take
it away to undo what he had done, and that was how I used
my first favor, the box, and the man disappeared, dragged off to
some dark corner that was out of sight, and that was the last I
saw of him, although a bit of research later on revealed that while Greenwig
did indeed put him back together, the poor man has been catatonic in a
hospital bed ever since, alive but definitely not well. The next day,
the kids asked me what I'd requested. I told them I asked for a
new PlayStation. Didn't tell them the truth, partially because it would traumatize them,
but partially because acknowledging it even happened would traumatize me. After that,
I crunched the numbers. I figured out the number of kids and how often
the rotor would fall on me. Based on this info, I booked the
week off ahead of time, and well, I just waited. I tried
to support the kids as best I could when it was their turn, but
they didn't really have the same problems as me. I mean, it wasn't
a holiday for them either. Each one came to school looking like they'd spent
the night watching their dog die over and over. Just this straw ruined exhausted,
But like I said, Greenwig generally let them eat their food or interrect
with their parents and siblings without demanding attention at the worst possible time. Eventually
round two came along. The kids seemed damned relieved. As for Greenwick's games,
this time I came prepared. I had already noticed that Greenwig only ever
emerged from the shadows, and the kids corroborated that fact. So in the
run up to my turn, I spent the week setting up my bathroom with
as many lamps and torches as I could find. Was an EA to eliminate
all those shadows. I had a lot of sleepless nights trialing different arrangements,
but eventually I got one as close to perfect as I could. I figured,
if I could just have one or two nights of sleep, it'd be
damn easier to deal with. An hour passed before my stomach began to ache.
By the time I realized what Grenward was doing, I could already feel
the urge to throw up. Guess I hadn't given him much of a choice.
He wanted to play, and there was only one place in that room
that was still dark. Wasn't until I threw myself out into the living room
and switched off all the lights that the pain eased up. By then,
I was already close to suffocating on the finger sticking out of my throat when
it finally withdrew and I took my first breath in over a minute. I
collapsed to the floor, unable to do much of anything except heave and sob.
Greenwig yellow eyes glaring at me from the space between my sofa, giggled.
In hindsight, I'm lucky he found it funny. I think he thought
he was a game of sorts. God knows what would have happened if that
little stunt had made him mad. Otherwise, a second round passed without incident.
At least I wasn't at work. It was hell, but I didn't
have to worry about driving anywhere or being out in public waiting for those wretched
hands to find me. I just stayed indoors and played his weird little games,
which mainly just involved me cleaning up whatever stupid thing he decided to make
a mess of. I found it helped if I played up my exasperation.
The less I reacted to his mischief, the more likely he'd escalate. When
it was all over, I asked for a winning lottery ticket. Unfortunately I
didn't specify the amount, which I suppose is my fault. At least the
amount I won covered rent that month, even if my expectations were a little
higher. Still, I figured it'd be better next time. I'd be more
specific. I decided best laid plans of miceome men. You ever lost someone,
most people have, I have, for sure more than once too.
It nearly unmade me, and I was a fully grown man. It was
about a couple days before my turn that Alia experienced the first loss. Most
kids, it's a hamster if they're unlucky. A grandparent for her, who
was her older brother. I taught him eleven years earlier, and he was
a good kid, smart like her, went on to become a mechanic.
His passing wasn't anything strange or sinister, just an accident. Jack popped off
car crossed him random devastating. She was called out of a lesson by the
principal and her parents, the three of them looking like hell, like they'd
spent a month one on one with Greenwig. A little reminder that not all
nightmares hide in the dark. I suppose. I don't know why this hit
me hard. I think it was probably my own experience with grief. Either
way, it stuck with me. Her absence, the empty chair and desk
felt hard to ignore day after day, knowing what she was going through.
I think it's one thing to except that these kids will face circumstance, poverty,
bad parents. Life isn't fair. I don't get a say in the
way societies say some kids get ponies and others get rickets. But there's something
about losing someone that way, just a random confluence of bad luck, that
it's harder than most. I don't know if I can explain it. It's
just earlier. It's already grown up at the bottom wrung of had not very
invisible class system. Hadn't she had a fair share of bad luck already.
I mean, damn, even Greenwick Grant's favors, even that wretched monster isn't
all bad. But an accident like what happened to Alia's brother, there's no
upside. It's just a mess. Thing is like I said, my turn
was coming up, and I mean the way I saw it, the boy
was already dead, right, wasn't like he could die getting wrapped up three
times around a Lathe was that already come to pass. I decided to do
something, But even at the time I figured to be pretty stupid. But
if there was a chance it could work, well, I had to try.
Round three of Greenwig went real easy. I preemptively bought a bunch of
jigsaws and left them half done. He honed in on them straight away.
I did as much as I could in a single sitting, turned around,
turned back, and he'd muddel them all up. I'd play out my anger
in irritation, then go back to it. Drank a lot of coffee and
whiskey, watched a lot of movies. Grenwig loved it. Broke a couple
of plates and mugs too. It was an all plain sailing. Woke up
one night to find him licking my neck and had to ruster the hospital to
get the chemical burn treated. Still, for the most part, the week
went by without much incident, because well, I had something in mind.
Couldn't get it out. This idea. I had to act on it,
and the promise of what it would mean if it worked meant I practically skated
through the week with a smile on my face. At least I had the
sense to specify. The boy returned to me not earlier. I thought if
anything went wrong, it'd be best if she didn't have to see it.
It was four in the morning when I was awoken by a sound that had
slipped into my dreams as a kind of creaking door. But as I opened
my eyes and reality reasserted itself, I realized that what I was actually hearing
was a little more gravel being trod on strain which distant quiet. I held
my breath, if only so that I could hear better, but it seemed
to only amp up the sound of blood rushing through my ears white noise.
It's so hard to perceive what's there sometimes, isn't it. All I wanted
was for my ears or eyes to report something useful to me without having to
get out of the safety of my own bed. Instead, all I got
were dim shadows and the sea like sucerrations of my own breathing. At least
I could ascertain I wasn't alone in my apartment. Over time, the longer
I waited, the more sure of that I became. Something was out there
in the corridor between my bedroom and the living room had a guess, moving
with a kind of irregular rhythm that belongs only to live things. This wasn't
the wind or some pipe settling. Something was moving, and it was moving
in my direction, low to the ground, a noise I couldn't put any
shape to wrong. All wrong made me think of breaking pencils, grinding teeth.
In the end, I couldn't help myself. I got up and called
out, who's there? The words didn't feel real to me. The world
took an a realer than real distortion that comes with terror, coupled with a
prickling white heat at the nape of the neck. For a moment, I
swore as outside my own body, staring down at myself from above. It
was too much, but that sound was clearer than ever before. There was
no pretending this ghost wasn't real. I turned on the light. Alia's brother
screamed and crawled away from the light, Neglected whimpers left behind like a trail
that led me to the living room, where I found him curled around a
table leg. He was alive, but not whole. Guess I hadn't given
much thought to what a car would do to a man's chest. Every breath
was a strange orchestra, too many sounds, the disantangle bone on bone,
crumbled, ribs expanding, or at least trying to and draw an oxygen into
blood filled lungs. Moss had grown across his face even in the short time
he'd been in the ground. A hand ice cold shot out and grabbed my
wrist and cried out, but he didn't let go. He followed as I
tried to push myself away, his bottom half trailing along limp and misaligned with
his torso felt like pulling a sack of meat across an ice rink. Don't
send me back, he whimpered, don't send me back. Eventually my foot
hit the sofa and I fell into it. He dragged himself using his hands,
over to the side so that we will face the face before I even
had time to push myself upright. He likes you, he whispered, and
I recoil at the smell of his breath. There are so few things in
the dark that know how to leave, but he doesn't. Don't ask him
to send me back. Please. For the first time, my mind started
working. Was he talking about Grenwig, i wondered, But of course I
told myself who else? What what's over there, I asked. He went
to answer before the words choked in his mouth and his face twisted into a
mask of melancholic agony. Trying to utter something, he burst into painful sobs.
Don't make me go back. That was all they could manage to say.
Don't make me go back. Don't make me go back. Please,
please, don't send me back there. You don't know what they do to
us. I don't I don't know what to do, I stammered. The
boy grabbed me and pulled me close. Unsure of how to comfort him,
I let him hold me in an embrace. We aren't the same when it's
done with us. What. I never saw him take the knife from the
kitchen, but I suppose he'd been in my home for longer than I'd been
awake, and he had plenty of opportunity. First thing I felt, which
surprised me even in the moment, was that it suddenly became hard to breathe.
That was the punched lung, but like the worst pneumonia I'd ever had
come over me in the space of five seconds. Just boom, suffocating on
your own blood so much that it spilled over my lips and down my chin.
By the time I registered the aching waves of dull agony pulsing out of
the spot on my rib cage, I was already slumping back down onto the
sofa, sitting there like I was getting ready for a Friday night move,
not that I was helpless. I took maybe two seconds tops after what had
happened to understand it, and then I was able to drive my heel into
his head as he tried to climb up onto me. Weirdly, his broken
back helped him. He sort of just bent with a blow, but it
didn't actually dislodge him. I had to kick him again to do that,
and then I just stand up and do it again and again, and I
think around the fourth or fifth kick I realized I had something of a problem.
The pain didn't really bother him, Not when I kicked him in his
pulp chest, not when I stamped on his hand as he tried to push
himself back up for the tenth time, Not even when I rolled him over
and stamped on his head, struggling to aim my foot through the tears in
my eyes, even as I'd immobilized him, Even as I fumbled around and
found an old bike helmet, and clubbed his skull until my arm grew sore.
He didn't cry out in pain, he just kept trying to get back
up. Damn, I screamed. As seconds turned a minutes, which just
kept ticking on. I felt like I was swinging for hours, but in
truth, I don't know how long. Eventually I stopped for breath and frantically
looked from one corner of the room to another, desperate for the first time
of my life to see those horrible long fingers take him. I cried,
for God's sake, take him back. I suspected he'd been waiting and watching,
because with very little delay, Greenwig finally made his appearance. Yellow eyes,
clustered together like frog spawn, winked at me from a shadow under the
table. They seemed self satisfied, as they always did, but I didn't
care. The mutilated man who lay in the floor continued to bark, with
wet laughter pouring at me with broken fingers. I was feeling faint, and
my whole right side was burning hot and cold all at once, as warm
blood began to pull. Oh God, I cried, just take him back.
Greenwick's hands wasted little time, and that man's laughter grew only more hysterical
as the fingers wrapped around his chest and legs and slowly towed him towards the
dark. I felt a brief moment of relief as I hoped this would be
the end of my mistake. But then I felt his arms wrap around my
legs. Even broken, his strength was something special, trapped in a bare
hook, slowly being pulled toward that abyssel's shadow. I began to panic,
but it was far too little and far too late. I went feet first,
a feeling like nothing else I'd ever had. In the end, I
was clinging by the tips of my fingers to an impossible ledge. Above me
was a sort of opening with no defined beginning or end, and on the
other side laid my living room. I looked down and for the first time
saw Grenwig as a whole. In hindsight, it had been a mistake to
think of him as humanoid. I think I just decided the bugeyman should look
like a man. But what floated in the strange ether beneath me was more
akin to a jellyfish or maybe a spider, I don't know. It was
dark in that void and yet impossibly clear. I could see things in there
more than just Greenwig. It defied dimensions as we understand it. It was
both an ocean and a landscape. In the distance, le Viathans swam through
open space. I'm not even sure I was seeing based on light. When
I blinked, I still saw everything. Greenwig found it all hilarious. He
had a mouth, and it laughed moniacally as it peeled Elia's brother from around
my waist, leave me free to kick and pull my way back into reality.
As I slid onto the carpet on my living room, his laughter persisted.
As soon as I was out, I crawled and rushed to the bathroom,
where I locked the door and passed out. Greenwig's next turn with me
lasted two weeks, which I think was because I made two requests, one
rawliest brother to return from the dead and and the other for him to be
taken away. Either way, I didn't begrudge Greenwig's games, but it did
mean I didn't get another request. I have to wait until next time.
Meanwhile, I've watched the children approach the end of the school year, and
I find myself wondering if they'll age their way out of Greenwig or take him
with them to the next teacher's class. If he leaves them alone, will
he terrorize the next lot of kids I teach? Either way, I think
Grenwig will let me double up again. And that's important because if so,
I know what I'm going to do. Like I said before, I'm out
of here, no more teaching. I'm cashing out. But I've decided,
after what I did to earlier and her brother, that I can at least
take Greenwig with me. He can become a permanent friend. Leave the kids
the hell alone. I don't want him following them or haunting the next bunch
to come along. I'm going to stuff my pockets so full of cash that
I can build him and me a playground and he won't ever have to bother
them again. They have enough to deal with. I worked as a social
worker for twelve years out on the East Coast. I saw children who were
mistreated, women that were abused, and plenty of others that had mental health
problems, bad judgment or worse luck. So many people suffering, and you
get invested and try to help and then have to leave it at the job
so it doesn't eat you were alive when you go and for the most part,
I was good at compartmentalizing that stuff. But then, five months before
I quit and moved across the country, I met a young, traumatized woman
and everything changed. Her name was Hattie McGovern, and she was a college
student who had been attacked the night before as she crossed through a park and
the way to a neighborhood. When I saw her, she was on the
first day of three days of observation. She had injuries, sure, but
there were largely cuts and abrasions to a scalp, and what she was saying
didn't entirely make sense. When we were alone and I was finished telling her
about the government services she might benefit from, I asked her if she wanted
to talk about what happened. I'd heard enough from the nurse outside to know
it would be wild, but I had no idea of the details until she
began to speak in a soft, hoarse voice. She said she'd been half
way through the park, walking at a fast pace because she planned on taking
a shower and then heading back out to meet some friends, and was running
behind when she realized an older man was walking next to her, well not
next to her, she said, about fifty feet away traveling across the grass,
stepping over hedges and sidewalks, without slowing or even looking at where he
was going. Instead, he was just keeping pace with her, step for
step and staring at her with a wide smile that made him look like a
skull between his pale skin and his bald head. This freaked her out,
of course, and she began walking faster. She didn't run, she said,
because she felt like it was kind of like running from a bear.
You shouldn't show weakness or fear, but just get away before things went from
weird to bad. So she turned to look to where she was going and
to see if she saw any people closer than her apartment complex ad block away.
There was none, and when she looked back to where the man had
been, he was gone. That when she felt the hand plunging into a
long blonde hair and pulling her to the ground, I'd known he was going
to be something about her hair. Her injuries, other than a bruise on
her throat and a couple of other scrapes, were all on her head,
dozens of oozing places where the strange bold man had held her down and roughly
cut off all her hair with a straight razor. Crying softly, She showed
me a picture of her the week before. Long curly hair the color of
summer honey framed her, then smiling face. I passed her that didn't know
what was about to happen. The version of her before me looked ten years
older and broken in some fundamental way. Sniffing back tears, she said that
when the men yanked her to the ground, the breath went out of her,
but she immediately started trying to get up and get away. That he
had grabbed her by the throat and held her back down, but just for
a moment, just long enough that he could spit on her face. Hattie
said it made no sense, But after he did that, she couldn't move
anymore, not at all. The girl told me the doctors had tried to
say it was shock or fear, but she said that was nonsense. She
was paralyzed by the thick, foul smelling wad he'd spat onto her face,
and even him producing the straight raizor from a hidden pocket didn't get a move
And again, beyond the hammering of her heart, he never said anything,
just smiled as he began gripping handfuls of her hair and scraping them off a
scalp. I asked her if it hurt, and she gave me a wardy
laugh. She said that sure it did, but that wasn't the worst part.
He was feeling so violated and having a part of her taken away,
even more than the fear of what he might do to her after The feeling
had been the worst. When he had rolled her over to a stomach to
cut the rest of her hair off, she felt the first tingles of movements
starting to come back, not enough to really move, but some small,
stirring twitches. She decided to wait, let it come back more, and
then tried to run when the opportunity came or he was distracted, not that
she was just sitting and waiting for him to do whatever he wanted. Every
moment she was tensed to try and fight if she saw the blade coming for
a neck, or if he tried to take her clothes off. She just
knew that she couldn't really move or fight yet, and she wanted him to
either go slow or just stop and leave her alone. He chose the latter.
When he had cut off the last of her hair, he scooped up
the pile next to her head and walked a few feet away out of a
line of sight. She heard some kind of gasping, choking sound then,
and while it took all her strength, she managed to turn her head slightly
to see what he was doing. He was eating her hair, all of
it. Golden fistfuls were crammed in one after the other as he chewed and
gasped and choked and swallowed. The sound was disgusting, but seeing it was
worse. She said it scared her worse than before, though she couldn't have
said why. And it was then, as she lay frozen and horrified,
that the man suddenly let out a gasping groan and toppled over onto the grass.
He lay there, twitching for what felt like a minute or two,
and though from her angle she couldn't see his face, she felt like he
was either having a seizure or choking to death. She hoped for the latter,
but didn't dare rely on that. Forcing her limbs to move, she
got to her hands and knees and started to crawl out of the street.
Everything felt weird and slow, oh, but she started making progress, periodically
looking back to see if the man was still out, first time, still
down and twitching. Second time, he was sitting up and staring at her.
It was at this point that she started shaking and crying harder. So
after waiting a couple of minutes, I asked the question to prompt her.
Did he come for her again? No, she said, They looked at
each other, he gave her another smile, and she started crawling faster or
screaming her head off. The guy was jogging down the other side of the
street and came over to help. When she looked back the next time,
her attacker was gone. Thank god, I said, and she nodded in
mute agreement. But I could tell there was something more. When I asked,
she paused a long time before shaking her head. You'll just think I'm
a crazy liar, like they do. I had to reassure her that I
wouldn't think any such thing several times before she finally told me the rest.
When he sat up. When I saw him that last time, he wasn't
bald any more. He had long, curly hair, blonde hair just like
mine. He ate my hair and stole it from me. Over the next
couple of months, I checked on her case. Hattie had moved back to
Wisconsin to be with her family, and while her physical wounds were healing well
enough, she still had emotional issues she was working through from the attack.
When I called her mental health counselor at a new college, she tried to
talk very broadly and not give me any details. But toward the end of
the conversation she did let one slip the poor dear, it's so strange how
her hair won't grow back. It was another month and a half before I
saw the graffiti. I normally took a bus home to just two blocks from
my work, but one day my normal bus line was delayed due to an
accident, so I had the choice of paying for a taxi or walking further
to a different stop. I picked the latter, And while the neighborhood I
traveled through didn't seem especially rough or dangerous, it was more run down than
the places I worked or lived, more closed businesses and unkent plots, and
graffiti scattered along the walls here and there. It was when I was nearing
the bus stop that I had to walk under an overpass bridge that I had
colorful drawings and sayings, insults and boasts. Yet among that riot of lines
and squiggles, one thing stood apart, as though none of the rest wanted
to be close to this single line, written in simple letters of dark red,
he only eats the best of us. A year earlier, I would
have laughed at the line, wondering if it was a social commentary or a
line from a movie. But walking through that patch of shadows, as the
words burned down at me from above, my mind immediately went a hattie,
and I walked faster until I reached my stop. When I reached it,
I looked back, and that's when I saw him, a thin, pale
man with long flowing blonde hair. I might have let out a little scream
right then, I don't remember. I do recall turning back to the street,
thinking I needed to call a taxi or get someone's attention. When I
saw the bus turning the corner, A blocked down and I nearly cried in
relief. Running to meet it, I jumped on as soon as the doors
opened, and when I looked back, I saw no sign of the man
anywhere. Heart pounding, I scanned my pass and took a seat in the
middle of the bus. It was only half full, but the comfort of
being around other people, even total strangers, was deniable. I felt like
a gazelle hiding in the herd from a stalking lion. The dramatic flare of
the thought made me laugh. Wasn't I overreacting? Had I really seen the
man? Or had I just imagined it because I was tired and taking a
strange route that made me uneasy. Glancing at my phone, I guessed my
nearest stop to home would be about twenty minutes away. After a moment's debate,
I set my phone alarm for fifteen in case I dozed off, though
that seemed unlikely given the panic I'd felt a few moments before, I might
not ever sleep. I woke up to words being spoken right next to my
ear. You have lovely eyes. I jumped in my seat and started to
turn around. When I froze. The evening had fully come on by now,
and the windows of the bus were all black with the growing night outside.
In the reflection of the window closest to me, I could not only
see myself, but who had spoken to me. It was the old blond
man, leaning against my ear like a whispering lover. In the reflection,
my terrified gaze found his milky eyes hanging like infected moons above his sickly sickle
smile. He held me with that look for a moment before rasping out the
words again, you have lovely eyes. My fear broke the spell this time,
and I jumped out of my seat and rushed to the front, yelling
for the driver to let me out. Let me out now, goddamn it.
Looking surprised and irritated, he pulled at the curb even as my phone
alarm went off. I was just two blocks away now, and I wasn't
above running the entire way, so that's exactly what I did. I jumped
off the bus as the doors opened, pulling off my heels and running barefoot
down the sidewalk for two blocks to my building. I never looked back the
entire time, and it wasn't until I was behind my door and the dead
bolt was thrown that I took a breath or dared to look back out through
the peep hole. I saw no sign of anyone out there, and when
I went to my windows to look for any sign of the old man following
me, I found none. Good it was maybe a coincidence, but even
if it was, Hatti's guy. He couldn't have followed me all the way
home, not with how fast I was. There was a knock at the
door. Stifling another scream. I crept back to the door, not wanting
to betray that I was home. Looking back through the people, I saw
nothing. Maybe it had been a mistake and the person had realized they had
the wrong door and went on. I waited for a couple of minutes,
watching and listening for someone, and there was nothing. It wasn't until I
turned to go into the living room that a new knock returned, this one
more rhythmic and familiar, knock knock, kno knock, knock, knock knock.
I gave a shudder as I realized I recognized what that was. Shaven,
a haircut, two bits. Biting my lip, I went back to
the door and stared out again through the hole. There was still no one
out there that I could see, not that I was about to open the
door to fully check if they were just standing to the side waiting for me
to crack the door. I debated calling the police, but I wasn't sure
what to tell them, or if they'd even come for something so small,
so instead I called the building's handyman. George told him I thought a creepy
guy might have followed me into the building, and now someone kept knocking on
my door. I asked him, did he mind coming up and just see
if he saw anything. He sounded sleepy and irritated initially, but when he
heard the fear of my voice, he said he'd be right there. Less
than five minutes later, there was a new knock on the door, but
this time it was quickly followed by George's voice. Miss Castillo, there's no
one out here. Now. I'm going to double check the other doors,
but I think you're okay. Someone did leave you something out here, though.
I unlocked the door and opened it part way. Left something what?
George pushed the items through the crack and handed it to me. There,
that's for you. I guess. I think you're okay, but you be
careful. Okay, there are some bad things out there. I noticed that
he said things instead of people, but I let it pass. George,
is something wrong? He looked a little paler as he forced a smile and
shook his head, never raising his eyes to me. No, I think
everything is okay. Just keep your door locked, O. Kay, and
let me know if you have any more trouble. I gotta get back downstairs.
I thought about reminding him to check the other floors, but then he
was gone, shutting the door back and locking it. I decided it didn't
matter. I had a feeling he wasn't going anywhere except down to his own
apartment to turn his own dead bolt. That feeling only grew when I turned
on the lights and looked more closely at what had been left for me.
Maybe it had been a mocking threat or a warning, but I knew what
it felt like a promise. So the next day I gave my notice and
moved most my stuff into an extended stay hotel. Three weeks later, I
was driving a moving truck across the country to my new home. The first
thing I set out in my new house was the gift I got that night.
I hate looking at it, but I need to see it, be
reminded of it. Like a head or heart full of scars, or the
red letter scrawled underneath a bridge. It warns me to never let my guard
down, to never assume that the darkness has nothing but empty fear waiting for
me in its depths. Even now, I can see it on my mantle,
gleaming a dull gray. I think it's made of pewter, and it
feels very heavy and old. The few times I've been able to make myself
touch it, not that I need to any more, I still see it
when I close my eyes. A thick handled metal spoon with a deep round
bowl that tapers to a sharp edge on the outer rim, not by initial
design, but by use of whetstone or a grinder. It's more of a
razor, now hard and cold and bitingly thin, shaped for cutting and digging.
And I know without checking that if someone were to stick it into my
eye socket, they could sliced through the lid and scoop out my eyeball like
a bit of overripe melon. My hands are shaking as I tell you this.
I can't quite look at the mantle any longer, so I look out
the window instead. It's not dark yet, but the shadows are growing fatter
with each passing morsel of the day. I force myself to keep looking into
the deepening twilight, and some nights I even tell myself I'm not still afraid,
but the whisper in my heart is enough. Bravery or strength. It's
the dreadful double thrum of the gazelle's heart, looking out into the darkness,
not looking out of courage, but out of terror and necessity and weak trembling.
Hope, hope that when we look out into the darkness, nothing looks
back or is drawing near. A few years ago when I was invited to
a dinner party, and it wasn't that fancy, just a few o friends
reconnecting people I hadn't seen since high school. Some of the people on that
list were people I hadn't seen or heard of for years, so it'll be
a nice opportunity to catch up. My wife couldn't come, though invites only
she didn't mind. I looked forward to it all week. I dug out
my old TOMSCG high school baseball cap and went through the guest list. There
were a few names I recognized at the drop of a hat, and a
few that I didn't. I figured some people had changed their names over the
years. While it wasn't a proper reunion, more I could get together of
old friends, I still got the sense that there was something more to it.
There was no anniversary coming up, so it sort of came out of
nowhere. I got the impression that maybe something else was up, like a
proposal or some other announcement. The big night took place on a Saturday.
I had a rented venture just outside of town, some old clubhouse, nothing
big or fancy, but enough to house the eight party goers that had pressed
the I will attend button. I got there a bit early, dressed up
in my favorite jacket, sporting the classic baseball cap. It smell a bit
like mildew, but what the hell. If there ever was a time to
wear it, this was it. Rolling up to the house, the first
person I ran into was the host, herself, Jerry, short for Geraldine.
She was the de facto head of the av club back in high school.
The elected president of the club was often missing or off doing their own
thing, leaving Jerry to take care of the practicalities. If there was one
person I'd bet on to arrange a night like this, it'd be her.
She swept me up in a big hug, pulling a little on my baseball
cap. Oh we're bringing out the big guns, eh, she laughed.
Should have kept my club sweater. Got to represent the Tugs, the stupid
name we used for the locals. It was still around. Over time,
the others dropped in, the overachiever Olly or Ole who was on the student
council, Chris and Corey, the twins Omar who didn't move in until the
final year but instantly made himself part of the group. Finally, we just
waited for Tess. It was getting late, so we figured she could catch
up later. We had a couple of drinks and got snacking on some appetizers
Jerry had arranged for a catered meal. It didn't take long for us to
fall back into our old roles, finding our way back to each other like
we'd never left. There is a saying that the better you know someone,
the less you need to talk to them. It really is true. It
was just a matter of minutes before we were right back to where we left
things all those years ago. But Tess was a no show. I figured
she'd run into some sort of last minute issue, but Jerry wasn't convinced.
If anything, Jerry was being a bit strange about it, avoidant. Halfway
through the main course, Nelly cheked her phone. She fell silent all of
a sudden. It was hard to tell since everyone else was laughing and chatting
about but I saw her lift her hand to her mouth and her eyes stopped
blinking. She'd seen something, something shocking. I gently elbowed Omar next to
me, who noticed the same thing. Once the two of us quieted down,
so did the others. It didn't take long for the entire table to
notice. Nelly looked up at us. She's there's been an accident. I
think she tests it's not, she sniffled, putting down a phone. She
buried her face in her hands, trying her best to hold back the tears.
Everyone picked up their phones, trying to see if what she'd said was
true, checking local news, social media, anything, But I kept my
eyes on Jerry. She was unnaturally quiet about this. It didn't take long
for the room to devolve. Nellie was openly weeping. Oley just went pale,
staring into the wall. Chris and Corey started arguing about the details as
they differed from one source to the next. Omar just shook his head over
and over, trying to convince himself it wasn't true, but of course it
was. Turns out Tess had some kind of aneurysm earlier that day, out
light the moment she sat down in a car completely unavoidable and undetectable. It
just took some time for people to notice, since it looked like someone just
sitting in their car. But Jerry just sat there, sipping a whine.
She didn't look at her phone, and she didn't join the conversation. There
was a shake to her hand, like she was suddenly nervous. I wanted
to pull her aside and ask her about it, but there was no space.
People were talking over one another, calling out demanding my attention, all
the while Jerry didn't move a muscle. Then the power went out. It
went completely dark. For a moment, all I could see were faces lit
up by smartphone screens. Like ghastly apparitions joined in and so did Jerry.
With discussion just died as we all looked at one another. At some point,
someone turned their phone towards the table, as if looking for something.
As the light panned across the room, we all noticed in unison a shape.
It was only there for a fraction of a second, something tall,
dark and spectral arms that reached all the way to the floor. Something sickly
thin and black as oil. There was a shrill screech like the cables inside
the walls were burning, screaming for help. This high pitched burn, something
overloading, bathing the room in the smell of burnt plastic and gypsum. In
the blink of an eye, the power returned, and with it, the
dark disappeared. The room irrupted. Nelly was on her feet, backing away
from the table. Ali crouched down. The twins just stood up, looking
lost. Omar just froze, not knowing what to do. But my eyes
landed on Jerry and what she was doing. She just sat there, staring
at the space where the dark thing had stood. As the room fell silent.
I caught her attention. What's going on? I weezed, what was
that? Jerry shook her head. As the rest of the room turned her
attention to her. She began stuttering, Her eyes shifted from one to the
next, until she finally gave in. It's it's hard to explain, So
now we got the real story. It started a couple of months ago.
It started with a woman named Gwen. She had been an acquaintance at best,
someone that most of the group hadn't interacted much with. She was part
of another clique in a way, and there was much crossover between the groups.
She had suddenly passed, leaving some former classmates devastated. Tess had heard
about it somewhere in a social peripheral. One post in particular had stood out.
In one of the memorial comment sections, someone mentioned she knew this was
coming. She'd seen the specter of death, she told me, and I
think she was at peace. After that, there'd been two more deaths,
a man and a woman, both dropping dead within a month of one another,
again vague hints to seeing something and a specter, but this time Test
knew them a little better. In fact, she talked to one of them
just weeks ahead of their death. Two things became apparent, one that they
were being followed by something, and two that they knew their time was running
short. By that third death, Tess figured who was no longer a coincidence
their old friends were dropping like flies. She reached out to Jerry to kind
of get the gang together to talk about it, But only days ahead of
the reunion, she'd started to see the specter herself. She wanted us to
go ahead with or without her, said Jerry. She knew this would happen.
So what does it mean? Nearly asked, We all saw it are
we all next. Jerry shook her head as the questions reigned. What the
hell is that? Yelled Corey? Were you going to tell us? Chris
joined in, question after question after question. Finally, Jerry just slumped into
a chair, still shaking her head. I don't know, she repeated,
over and over. I I just don't know. Olly was the first to
react. He headed for the door. I'm getting the hell out of here,
he yelled, screw this. The moment he opened the door, the
power was cut again. My phone was glowing hot in my hand, overloaded
by static electricity. All the illuminated faces flickered as our phones struggled to stay
alive. In a vague flicker from one of our phone screens, Ione caught
a glimpse of it, a figure so tall we couldn't see the head as
it loomed outside the door, and impossibly long arm reached in. Olli just
screamed, evolving into a series of ever repeating no, no, nos,
until he was silenced. It took longer for the lights to return now.
When they did, Olli was curled up on the floor like a dying bug,
face frozen in surprise and horror. He was already pale as limestone,
his eyes glazed over, a single tear in the corner of his frozen eye.
Dead as a doornail, the room irrupted into panic. Jerry screamed at
them to stop. The twins headed for the back door, only for the
lights to go out again. A bull popped from the fridge, and I
could smell something burning. The scene played out as if there was strobe light.
As light bulbs struggled to come back to life, little snapshots of chaos
burned into my retinas. Chris dropped immediately in the doorway. Corey made it
all the way back to the dinner table before he collapsed, and impossibly long
arm touching the back of his head. He fell haphazardly forward, breaking the
two legs at the short end of the table. He pulled down most of
the tablecloth, along with the plates and glasses. Carefully prepared mimosas and half
drunk wine bottles spilled onto the floor, mixing with froth and dust. He
was dead before he hit the ground. Omar panicked but nearly managed to hold
him back. Jerry was hiding in the corner. I was just standing there,
deer in headlights, trying to remember how to breathe. I had never
been the one with a vital flight instinct, like a genetic thing. Nellie
shook her head. I have to do regular checkups for work, she said.
I got a clean bill. We went through a checklist of things,
trying to figure out an answer to why us. It was the only thing
we could do. Our phones were dead, and no one dared to leave.
We just stood there, our thoughts running away from us at the speed
of panic. It didn't make sense. We were different genders, backgrounds,
ethnicities, and religions, with different occupations, aspirations, hopes, and dreams.
For all intents and purposes, we were wildly different people. The only
thing tying us together was our association with one another and our share time at
Tomskug High. At one point, we'd all curled up against the walls.
I hugged my knees close to my chest. I couldn't look at Jerry without
my eyes crossing paths with Corey's body curled up like a dead bug, fingers
twisted and turned in a painful final expression. I opted to just not look
at her, instead speaking generally to the room. So that's it. Then,
I said, there's no reason. We just screwed. We tried to
leave and were screwed. That can't be said Omar. Then why wait,
why not just kill us? None of this makes sense, muttered Nelly,
shaking her head. Why now, that was a good question. We considered
what had been going on in our lives lately. I mentioned moving into a
new house with my wife, who started a new job as a realtor.
Nelly talked about accepting a position in Minneapolis. Omar was moving to South Dakota
to be with her sick mother. Jerry had been working remotely for a company
in Dallas for years, and only recently they decided to enforce a return to
office policy. There were no obvious patterns, relationships, families, jobs,
It all looked very different. Omar tried a different approach. Maybe it's more
practical, he said, Maybe we have to leave as a group. Why.
I don't know. I don't even know what it is. So let's
look at it rather than us. Let's look at what it's doing. I
said, it's keeping us here, It wants us to be here. We're
safe now, right. We all looked around as if to make a point,
and we were indeed safe for now, but despite it all. No
matter how much logic we tried to apply to it, I couldn't wrap my
brain around what we'd been looking at. Some kind of otherworldly entity tearing through
us without any kind of retaliation, or maybe there was. Nelly argued that
we should attack it. We'd seen it, so it was some kind of
physical entity. It had a shape, a form that in itself should mean
that it could be destroyed. Slowly getting off the floor, we looked at
what we had. A few broken table legs as clubs. Jerry figured we
could try using salt, and as it was supposed to have some sort of
supernatural properties on non worldly entities, Oh my, figured trying a cross wouldn't
earth. We armed ourselves to the best of our abilities, figuring we should
try something as a group. If it really was a physical entity, that
meant it was constrained by its own properties, meaning it couldn't catch all of
us at once, So instead of moving as a pile of pigs through the
slaughter, we would spread out, scattering to the wind. It was risky,
but who was all we got. Omar positioned himself by the front door
with a table leg. Jerry got the back door with a frying pan.
Nellie and I took windows on the opposite side of the room. She armed
with another table leg well. I used the roast pan as a shield and
a kitchen knife. We reviewed the plan again. We would go on five,
heading in different directions. Once out we would be calling for help.
If confronted by the entity, we'll be using what we had to force it
back just enough to run. We hadn't seen it move much, so maybe
it wasn't that fast. It was a risky, stupid plan, but we
were desperate. Nellie counted down from five. I held my hand on the
window, watching the other's follow suit. As the countdown continued, I could
feel the strength in my arm wane, like everything in me just wanted not
to run, but to crawl into a corner and just wait. And yet
the countdown reached zero, Nellie flung the window open, Omar kicked the front
door open, Jerry pushed into the back door, and me I realized my
window was locked. The reaction was immediate and violent. Out of every window
and every door, dozens of shade like appendages appeared. Knife sharp, bonelike
fingers reached for us. The windows blown apart by the pressure, covering my
hand in a hundred little cuts, shattered pieces of glass boring into my hair.
I didn't fight that instinct just wasn't there. I scrambled backwards, doing
exactly what my instinct taught me to, to make myself as small and invisible
as possible. Omar thought Nelly too. Jerry actually managed to hit something.
I could hear the thwunk of the frying pan, but it was quick,
no screams. As the lights died, I saw Jerry's head being grasped as
she was dragged outside. Her heart stopped before she even dropped the frying pan.
Nelly got half way across the room before they got to her, making
a face plant into the hardwood floor in a morbidly comical manner. An entire
life snuffed out, ending with an embarrassing self inflicted nothing. Ohmar just stood
there as one of the things loomed over him. It reached for him,
and he did nothing. It was calm, collected, even reverent in a
way. But as what looked like a thumb approached his forehead, he started
shaking his head. No, he pleaded, no, I can't not like
this, and with that he fell to the floor. Empty, They made
no sound. Dozens of dozens of specters pulled into the room, surrounding me.
I wanted to screen. When my breath was stuck in my throat.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was so far from the world.
I knew that it started to feel like a bad dream. It simply
couldn't be well and truly real. But feeling that cold, hardwood floor against
my cheek made me think differently. I looked up only to see one of
the specters looming over me, so tall that its head cut through the ceiling.
It reached to me, a thumb like appendage reaching for my forehead,
and in that moment it spoke to me, less of a voice and more
of a series of impressions. It's hard to explain. It showed me flashes
of a life me settling down with my wife, growing little blue sunflowers in
the backyard, having kids, growing old, and dying on a park bench
near Frog Lake, never leaving the little Minnesota town where I'd grown up,
a long, peaceful and uneventful life, little spots of sunshine and joy along
a gray path. One I'd willingly bind myself too. But then it showed
me something else, a different world full of dark shapes, in an endless
desert of black sand. There I wondered as another faceless thing, saying nothing,
doing nothing, and there was no end, learning hellscapes where my flesh
was reforming as fast as it melted from my bones in a perpetual cycle of
pain. In another place, I was stuck in an empty, starless void,
where my being was spread among dying stars, eternally drifting. In another
I was floating and a sensationless ocean, staring up at a night sky or
a single red eye, the sighs of a moon stared back. I was
a consciousness bound as stages of life I could never break free from. It
was an invitation. They were asking me to stay here, there and forever.
That's what had killed the others. They had wanted to leave. I
finally understood I wasn't running, I wasn't leaving. I was staying in this
town, while the others had been eager to settle elsewhere. But this invitation
wasn't just about me and they're here and now. This was about an endless
multitude of existences waiting to happen, one where an end was not promised a
perpetual me, bound to whatever form necessary, like them, Like all of
them. I could feel myself shaking my head into a no. I could
feel my tongue licking the roof of my mouth, looking to push out that
n but I couldn't. I froze, Yes, I cried, Yes,
of course, A cold dumb touched me as if drawing an invisible mark across
my forehead. And that was it. One by one they left. They
gained what they came for, a recruit someone to stay with them, to
join their group at an unfathomable cost. The final one left, with the
breeze knocking over my Tomskock high baseball cap home of the Togs. I just
stood there alone. Contorted remains of people I used to know littered the floor
husks. The lights came back on, phones buzzing across the room, pings
from mist calls and messages. But after all their notifications died down or that
was left. It was me, sobbing on the floor, doomed. You
might have heard about all this, but in another way, they blamed it
all on wine poisoning. There was a sham investigation. I think something around
two thousand bottles were recalled. Not a single soul believed my testimony, and
my lawyer recommended me to retract my official statement, as it would either send
me to a madhouse or get me in legal trouble perjury. Maybe instead I
said that I simply didn't drink any wine, that I had settled for a
beer that in itself was a lie, but everyone was willing to believe it.
Perhaps they all knew there was more to it, perhaps they didn't care.
A few years down the line, now I have two daughters, I
have a nice job. My wife and I get along well, caring for
the house together. It is a good life. But I can't help but
to get that nagging feeling that I've doomed myself, that there was something waiting
for me that I can't come back from. That maybe at the end of
all this, I am the one getting the raw deal and not the shriveled
up corpses that I left behind in that clubhouse. They say that you never
really leave the small town life, that it follows you through your life one
way or another. I never thought it'd be this literal. My name is
Alex and for the past eight years I've been a nine to one to one
dispatcher, I worked tirelessly in a dimly lit room filled with glowing screens,
buzzing equipment, and low chatter. Nearly every day I sit at my station
wearing a headset that connects me to the voices of those in need. Working
as a dispatcher has changed me, though. After handling countless emergency calls,
you develop a certain level of emotional resilience. You have to. There's no
room for panic or hesitation when someone's life is on the line. I've heard
the fear in people's voices, the desperation that terror. I've listened to the
last words, sent help racing to the location, and done everything in my
power to keep them calm until help arrives. It's a heavy burden to bear,
but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Still, though it can get
to you, leave you in a dour mindset at the end of a night.
Night spent drinking to forget some of the more unforgiven circumstances that you endure
through the night. Life at the Core Center has become a sort of second
home for me. I form close bonds with my fellow dispatchers, sharing stories,
laughter, and tears during our long shifts. Together, we've become a
tight knit family, supporting each other through the emotional highs and lows that come
with a job. It's a demanding career, one that often leaves me feeling
physically and emotionally drained the end of a shift. But as I lay my
head down to rest each night, I find solace in the knowledge that I've
made a difference in the lives of those who needed me most. Sometimes it
feels like a thankless job, one where I just tether the right people to
whoever's in trouble. But at times I get to be the voice that stays
on the line during a traumatic moment, which spurs me on. I remember
it was a cold, rainy night in October when I received the strangest call
of my career. My shift had started as usual. It was a week
day, so the first few hours had been relatively quiet. I just settled
in with a fresh cup of coffee and the phone rang. Glancing at the
caller id, I was confused that it was coming from my own number.
I tap my phone, which was face upon my desk, to see it
was idle on the log screen, no pocket dial going out despite it being
impossible anyway, so I hesitated for a moment before answering the call. As
I picked up the call, my mind raised with thoughts of why there would
happen. Maybe it was a similar number off by one digit that I'd misread
at a glance, or a simple mistake on the system. Either way,
my mouth autopiloted the opening words that I'd said a thousand times over nine one
one, What is your emergency? The voice on the other end of the
line was unmistakably mine, which sent a chill down my spine. It was
full of fear and panic. Alex, I needed to listen to me.
I don't have much time. There's going to be an accident on the corner
of Oaken Elm in ten minutes. You have to warn the authorities and get
them there before it happens. Lives are at stake. I was dumbfounded.
The voice sounded so much like my own that it was impossible to believe it
could be anyone else. As the fear in the voice gripped me, I
felt my own fear rising. I knew I couldn't afford to let it cloud
my judgment, though maintaining composure was a core part of the job. Who
is this, I asked, hesitantly. Just trust me, Alex, The
voice implored, you'll understand later. Please just send help to Oak and Elm.
You can prevent a tragedy. Before I could respond, the line went
dead. I stared at the phone, my hands shaking, my thoughts a
whirlwind of confusion and fear. My instincts as a dispatcher urged me to treat
the callers legitimate. A part of me couldn't help but question the bizarre circumstances.
With a deep breath, I decided to trust the voice and dispatched the
emergency services to the intersection. As I did, I couldn't shake the feeling
of discomfort. It only just hit me that he knew my name, adding
more to the pile of mysteries. I anxiously awaited an update from the responders,
hoping beyond hope that I had made the right choice. When the radio
crackled to life, confirming that a major accident had indeed occurred at the exact
location and time the voice had predicted, my heart dropped. I was flooded
with relief that I had taken the warning seriously, but at the same time,
the sense of dread gnawed at me. If the voice had been right
about the accident, what else did it know. Just as I was beginning
to process the implications of the first call, the phone rang again. My
heart leaped into my throat as I saw my own number displayed once more.
The fear and anxiety that had been building within me threatened to overtake me,
but I knew that I couldn't let it. I'd been witnessed to so many
dramatic calls that I had a strong resolve, and I pulled on that experience
to push me to do my job despite the horrendously terrifying situation. With a
trembling hand, I picked up the call, praying for answers and stealing myself
for whatever came next. Alex, the voice urgently whispered, I know you're
scared, and I know this is difficult to believe, but you have to
trust me as a woman named Sarah who will call you in exactly three minutes.
Her abusive ex boyfriend is trying to break into her apartment. She'll be
hiding in the closet. Tell her to stay quiet and send the police to
her dress immediately. As I listened to the voice. My emotions were a
swirling tempest of disbelief and concern. I was terrified by the unexplainable connection I
seemed to share with this caller, But at the same time, I couldn't
ignore the fact that if the first call was legitimate, then there were potential
lives at stake. I felt in immense pressure to make the right decision.
Who are you, I asked again, my voice wavering, How do you
know all this? I can't explain everything right now, but I promise you'll
understand soon. The voice replied, a hint of desperation creeping in, almost
matching my own. Please just trust me. Once again, line went dead,
leaving me with nothing but my racing thoughts and the dull hum of the
call center around me. As the second sticked by, I felt a growing
sense of her knease, the tension in the room almost palpable. I glanced
around at my colleagues, wondering if they were having as similar experience as me.
After the longest three minutes of my life, just as the voice had
predicted, Sarah's call came through. Her panicked voice echoed in my ear,
and I knew that I couldn't ignore the warning I'd been given. I guided
Sarah through the terrifying ordeal, keeping her calm as I dispatched the police to
a location, all the while my own emotions threatened to bubble to the surface,
a strange sense of connection to this woman I'd never met. When I
received the confirmation that Sarah had been safely rescued and her ex boyfriend apprehended,
a wave of relief washed over me. But that relief was short lived as
the way of the situation continued to bear down on me. The voice on
the phone had known these events would happen, and I couldn't shake the feeling
that there was more to come. It wasn't long before the third call came.
My heart was leaping as my own number appeared on the screen once more.
I hesitated for a moment, my hand hovering over the phone. I
felt a deep sense of dread, which screamed at me to tear my hand
away. But I couldn't ignore the call, not when lives were potentially on
the line. Swallowing hard, I picked up the receiver and braced myself for
what was to come. Alex, Alex, the voice said, now sounding
more urgent than ever. You need to leave the call center right now.
There's a gas leak in the building. It's going to explode in less than
five minutes. You have to get everyone out. My blood ran cold as
the gravity of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks. Everything that
had been building within me throughout the night threatened to overwhelm me. But I
knew I couldn't let it. I had to act quick. How do you
know this, I demanded, my voice trembling. Who are you the voice
now? Frantic replied, don't freak out, Alex. There isn't time.
I'm you. I'm calling from the future. I know this is hard to
believe, but you have to trust me. There's no time to explain.
You need to evacuate the building right now. My mind raised as I tried
to process what I was hearing. Was it really possible that I was speaking
to myself from the future. The notion seemed too real to be true,
yet the evidence was impossible to ignore. I had to make a decision,
and I had to make it quickly. Feeling the weight of responsibility bearing down
on me, I made my choice. I slammed down the receiver and jumped
to my feet, my heart pounding as I rushed to alert my colleagues with
a frantic and confused evacuation, hailed by constant questions from everyone moving past me,
I was too deep in thought to explain anything to them. Many protested,
knowing how important the job was and to leave the center was a huge
endangerment to the people in need, but I just layered on the urgency until
they too left. We barely made it out in time. As we watched
from a safe distance, the building was engulfed in flames, the explosion shaking
the very ground beneath our feet. I stood there, my fellow dispatchers huddled
around me, their faces etched with shock and relief. As the reality of
what had just happened began to sink in, I found myself grappling with a
whirlwind of emotions, relief that we had all escaped unharmed, gratitude to the
voice that had warn me, and a lingering sense of disbelief that I had
truly been communicating with my future self. When asked how I knew what was
going to happen, I gave some half hearted response about smelling something, but
most people were too much in shock to probe further than that. But amidst
the chaos and confusion, one thing became clear. I been given a gift,
a chance to changed the course of my life and the lives of those
around me, and I knew I couldn't let that gift go to waste.
In the days that followed the explosion, I found myself consumed by the events
that had transpired. The voice on the phone, my own voice, had
saved countless lives, including my own, and although I struggled to wrap my
head around the concept of communicating with my future self, I couldn't deny the
reality of what had happened. As I tried to come to terms with the
situation, I realized that the knowledge I had gained could be both a blessing
and a curse. I was suddenly faced with the daunting responsibility of this secret
knowledge, and I couldn't shake the feeling that every decision I made could have
life altering consequences. The weight of that responsibility felt like an immense burden,
but I couldn't let my fear hold me back. I knew that I potentially
had a unique opportunity to make a difference to those who needed it most.
And so with each passing day, I found myself more determined than ever to
trust the voice and see if I can use these calls for good. A
nearby building was rented and very quickly set up to take dispatcher calls. It
was necessity, so no expense was spared in getting the setup expedited. I
dove head first into my work, answering calls with a renewed sense of purpose
and urgency. I kept a close eye on the caller id, always anticipating
the next mysterious call from my future self, and when those calls came,
I heeded their warnings without hesitation, trusting my own voice to guide me.
I found myself constantly on edge. I felt a deep sense of loneliness,
knowing that I couldn't share my secret with anyone, not even my closest colleagues.
The days turned into weeks, I began to see the impact of my
actions. Lives were saved, tragedies subverted, and hope restored. And with
each success, I found my confidence growing, my fears slowly giving way to
a sense of pride and accomplishment. I knew that I was walking a fine
line, playing with forces that I couldn't fully understand, but in my heart
I believed that I was doing the right thing. No one suspected anything.
Often, the dispatcher is simply the bridge between the caller and the services,
so it was easy to think that it was a coincidence that I had simply
been the one to pick up the phone. As I continued to heed the
warnings from my stranger self, I came to understand that the greatest power I
possessed wasn't the ability to predict the future or change the course of events.
Rather, it was the power of choice, the choice to trust an urgent
voice to embrace the unknown. One night, as I sat at my station,
the phone rang once again, this time displaying an unknown number. I
read it in anticipation. As I picked up the receiver, the voice and
the other end was familiar, but off, as if it wasn't quite human.
Alex, the voice growled, you've grown complacent. There's a terrible future
ahead of you. I've seen it, and you must prevent it. Drette
washed over me, my mind raising as I tried to figure what was happening
this time. Was this another version of myself? I listened cautiously as the
voice continued. Over the course of several calls, the voice provided cryptic warnings
and riddles, each one hinting at a potential disaster or tragedy that I needed
to avert. At first, the instructions seemed relatively benign. In the first
call, the voice told me about an argument that was about to take place
between two of my close friends, which would lead to the end of their
friendship. It gave me the exact time and location to intervene and mediate the
conflict. I hesitantly followed the instructions, and to my surprise, I managed
to prevent the fallout between them. The second call, the voice directed me
to leave an anonymous tip to the police about an elderly neighbor who was at
risk of a gas leak in a home. The voice claimed that if I
didn't act, she would suffer a terrible accident. I wrestled with the decision,
but eventually decided to make the call. The next day, I found
out that the police had indeed discovered a gas leak in a home and had
it repaired just in time. As the calls continue nude, the voice's aggression
and demands began to escalate. It instructed me to break into a coworker's home
to find evidence of a conspiracy plot, convincing me that the coworker was planning
something malicious that would affect many people. Reluctantly, I obliged, only to
find seemingly inconclusive evidence, which made me question my actions and the tips I
was getting. The next call pushed me further, urging me to sabotage the
breaks of a car to prevent an accident that would lead to a catastrophic chain
reaction. Each instruction was darker than the last, leaving me increasingly lost compared
to the first Alex that was calling me. Still, though there was a
chance that I was still doing good, the glimmer of hope sparked by the
many calls, still stuck in my heart. Fearing the consequences of not heeding
the warnings, I became and to follow the voice's instructions to the letter,
even when they involved morally questionable actions. As I did, I felt my
relationships with friends, family, and co workers deteriorate, leaving me isolated and
paranoid. As I continued to follow the voices instructions and nag in, doubt
started to grow in the back of my mind. I couldn't help but question
whether the voice was genuinely another version myself or something more sinister. The line
between right and wrong had been blurred, and I struggled to make sense of
the chaos that had enveloped my life. Feeling increasingly lost and desperate, I
decided to do some research, hoping to financewers or any explanation for the bizarre
events that had been occurring. I had to dredge through many hoaxes, correct
parts of keyboards, and straight up other worldly conspiracies. In my search,
I stumbled upon a concept called tulpa, a sentient being created from the collective
thoughts, believes an energy of its creator. According to the information I found,
a tulpa can become powerful and independent, even capable of interacting with the
physical world. The more I read, the more I became convinced that the
voice on the phone was a tulpa. I had inadvertently created. My loneliness
and the emotional turmoil of working in the emergency Dispatcher Center had given birth to
this entity, which had begun to take on a life of its own,
something that had been masquerading as my future self all along. It had been
using me as a pawn to create scenarios that brought suffering, feeding on the
emotional highs and lows it had caused. With this revelation, I knew I
had to take control of the situation and reclaim my life. I understood that
it fed and my fear, despair, and loneliness. So I had to
face my emotions and confront the entity head on. I waited for the next
call. My anxiety was through the roof as I prepared to confront it,
though now for different reasons. When the phone rang, I answered it without
hesitation, asserting my new found determination. I know what you are, I
told a voice firmly, and I won't let you control me any longer.
It laughed, attempting to undermine my resolve. You think you can just get
rid of me, Alex. I'm part of you, you know, I
said in my voice, focusing on staying strong. I created you, and
I can unmake you. I won't let you hurt anyone else. I hung
up and carried on through my shift with a forced composure, realizing that I
had to weaken it by depriving it of the negative emotions it fed upon.
I began to reconnect with friends and family, rebuilding the relationships I had neglected
while under this thing's influence. I saw professional help to cope with the emotional
stress and loneliness I had experienced as a result of my job. Over time,
the callless power waned. The scenarios it called in were more and more
mundane, until all it could conjure was a cat stuck in a tree.
As I continued to cultivate positive connections and emotions, its voice grew weaker with
each call. As it became increasingly desperate to maintain its grip on me,
I knew that I had to sever the connection completely to put an end to
its existence. One night, I received the final call from my number.
I faced it with a sense of calm and determination. This is the end,
I told the voice firmly. I've taken back control of my life and
you no longer have power over me. The talber's voice faded into a whisper,
its existence flickering on the edge of oblivion. You can't do this,
but I had already made my choice. Goodbye, I said, and hung
up the phone for the last time. From then on, it was gone,
vanished from my life forever, I faced my inner demons come real,
and conquered them, emerging stronger and more resilient than before. Ther Deal had
taught me valuable lessons about the power of emotions and the importance of staying connected
with the people I cared about. As I moved forward with my life,
I carried the lessons I had learned with me, determined to use them to
shape a brighter and more fulfilling future.