Speaker 1: My name is mister Halbrook, and I've been teaching for
more than fifteen years, long enough to know that kids
are kids no matter where you go, Noisy, rowdy, and
inventive in ways that adults forget how to be. But
last fall I moved north to a smaller district I
found myself in charge of a class where the children
weren't like any i'd taught before. They weren't bad by
any stretch, just different, wary. Perhaps they could scream their
lungs out over dodgeable one minute, then fall into eerie
silence the next. It was during one of those silences
that I noticed their game. At first, I thought it
was just a variation on tag, was some regional playground
chant like Duck Duck goose. They formed a loose circle,
walking slowly around a chosen child and began chanting. It
wasn't a rhyme, I recognized, just the cadence of names
all the while the one in the middle baited, teased,
tricked the others into speaking their own name, and whoever
slipped became it. That much I could follow the rules
weren't the strange part. What unsettled me was how serious
they treated it. The game always began the same way.
Voices hushed steps measured a kind of nervous reverence. The
playground could be roaring with sounds, and still when that
circle formed, the noise dimmed, as if some unspoken boundary
had dropped around them and whoever was chosen as it
never looked like they were playing. They didn't laugh or
roll their eyes or chase after friends. They slumped shoulders, heavy,
eyes downcast. More than once I saw tears. I told
myself it was just part of the act, a way
of making the role less desirable. Kids invent these things,
loser rules, penalties, all to add steaks still and left
a sour taste in my mouth. Sometimes they tried it
on me. Come on, what's your first name, mister Halbrook?
They'd sing song, grinning as though they might trick me.
Just your first name, just once. But I had been
around long enough to keep that line firm. Teachers who
gave away too much too quickly always regretted it, so
I'd smile, shake my head and repeat the rule I
carried my whole career. I'm mister Halbrook to you, nothing more.
The attempts never went anywhere. Ere they'd shrug laugh it off,
and returned to their circle, whispering among themselves. I might
have ignored it altogether if it weren't for what happened
that Tuesday. It had been a difficult week, already gray skies,
restless kids, and too much pent up energy. During recess,
I spotted them forming the circle again. This time the
child in the center was Noah, a boy I knew well.
He'd been having trouble at home, frequent absences, a father
in and out of the picture, a mother working two
jobs to keep the lights on. I'd spent extra time
with him in class, coaxing him into reading out loud,
praising every small victory, and now here he was it.
The other kids circled him, voices low and insistent. Noah's
head hung, his hands knotted into fists. He wasn't just sulking.
I could see it in his face, the pale tightness
round his mouth, the tremor in his shoulders. He looked hollow,
like someone had scooped out his inside and left him
with nothing but fear. My god clenched. I'd seen plenty
of kids pout over losing games, but this wasn't pouting.
It was despair, and when I took a step closer,
I swore I saw his lips moving, whispering something under
his breath, not to the others or to himself, to
something else. It all looked too much. When the bell rang,
I caught Noah before he could slip back into the
tide of students. He dragged his feet, shoulders slunt, trying
to avoid my eye. Walk with me, I said, steering
him toward the bench by the fence. He sat reluctantly,
clutching the straps of his backpack like a shield. You
seemed upset out there, I began gently. The game it
didn't look fun to you, no I hunched further, eyes
fixed on the gravel. It's just a game. Doesn't have
to be, I said. If the other kids are giving
you trouble, I can step in. No one should have
to make you feel like that. That got a flicker.
His eyes started up, then away again. You don't understand,
then help me. I can't fix what I don't know.
Silence stretched between us. I waited. Years and classrooms had
taught me patience, but also the look of a kid
holding back something important. Finally, he shook his head. It's
not trouble. It's the rules. What rules? He pressed his
lips tighter. When I leaned forward, he whispered, almost inaudible,
we can't tell if we tell you join the game.
Speaker 2: I frowned. You can tell me. I won't let the
others know. No answer.
Speaker 1: He hunched lower, curling into himself. His face looked older
than ten years should drawn and wary. It was like
I was talking to someone who had already seen too much.
I tried another angle. Noah, you're a smart kid. You
know games are supposed to be fun, but when you
play this one, you look like you're carrying the world
on your back. That's not fun. That's I start myself
before saying something wrong. That's heavy, and I don't like
seeing you sad. He shook his head again. You can't help.
Something in his tone hit me harder than I expected,
a resignation no child should carry. For the rest of
the morning, I couldn't shake it. I kept glancing at
him while teaching fractions, watching his pencil move half heartedly
across the page, his eyes clouded with something I couldn't name.
At lunch, I tried again, this time with a whole class.
I leaned against the edge of my desk while they
opened lunch boxes and chattered. So I said, casually, that
game you all like to play? The name one? What's
it about? Silence spread across the classroom like inking water.
Conversations died mid sentence. Even the kids who are usually
loudest stared down at their food. It's just a game,
one muttered, looks a little more serious than that. No
one answered. I scanned the faces, tense, every one of
them avoiding my eyes. Then a girl at the back,
brave or careless, spoke without looking up. If you don't
pass it on, it stays. The room went rigid. A
few kids hissed at her, shushing, She stuffed the cracker
into her mouth and refused to say more. I raised
my eyebrows, trying to make light of it.
Speaker 2: Pass what on.
Speaker 1: The silence was total. I let it drop, not wanting
to spoon them further, for the words echoed in my
mind all afternoon. If you don't pass it on, it stays.
I found myself glancing at Noah again and again. His
face was pale, drawn, his movements sluggish. It wasn't the
look of a kid being teased. It was a look
of someone bearing something he couldn't put down. By the
final bell, my decision was made. I'd never joined their
games before, never blur the line between mister Halbrook and
the children. But seeing Noah like that, knowing he carried
something he believed he couldn't share, it gnawed at me.
If joining their game gave me an angle to help
these kids, it was worth loosening up a bit. So
the next day at recess, when the circle formed and
the chanting began, I stepped closer. Noah's eyes widened when
I knelt beside him. Tell you what I said, softly,
how about I play?
Speaker 2: This time?
Speaker 1: The kids froze midstep, their faces pale as snow. The
circle went still, twenty children frozen in place, eyes locked
on me, as though I'd broken some unspoken law. Teachers
don't play. One of the girls whispered, why not, I asked,
keeping my tone gentle, playful.
Speaker 2: Seems like fun.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll be better at it than you think. Noah's
lips parted, his face caught somewhere between fear and hope.
For the first time all week. His shoulders seemed to ease.
You can, he murmured, but you have to do it right.
And what's right, I asked. His eyes flicked up to mine.
You have to say your full name. The words made
the rest of the circle flinch. One boy hissed through
his teeth, shaking his head. Another tugged at Noah's sleeve,
urging him to stop, but Noah was insistent, it doesn't
count otherwise, I hesitated. Fifteen years in classroom had taught
me the power of boundaries. My first name was one
of them. I never given it, not even when begged
or teased. It was a line between me and them,
not to keep distance, but to keep authority. I was
mister Halbrook always. And yet Noah was smiling, now, faintly,
the first real smilelight from him in weeks. A fragile thing,
but real. What harm could a name do? All right,
I said, lowing my voice so he could hear just this.
Once I leaned in whispered it my full name, John Halbrook.
The change was instant. The circle, which had been stiff
and uncertain, irrupted emotion. The children's voices rose in a
sudden chant, name, spilling into rhythm. They circled me. Face
is pale, but eyes fixed, the words tumbling over each
other in a frenzy, Noah staggered back, relief breaking across
his face like dawn. He let out a sharp, almost
joyful laugh, before clapping both hands over his mouth. The
color returned to his cheeks, his eyes bright again, as
though the invisible weight had slipped off his shoulders. They
glanced at me, then at each other, then at Noah,
and I realized this wasn't the laughter of a shared joke.
This was the laughter of release. I'd taken something from him,
something he was glad to lose. By the time the
bell rang, the game was over. The children scattered, shoving
lunch boxes into backpacks, dashing toward the cafeteria. The chatter returned,
loud and unbothered, as though the past half hour had
never happened. All except Noah. He lingered, grinning sheepishly as
he adjusted his straps. Thanks mister Halbrook, he whispered, then
darted off after the others. For the rest of the afternoon,
I rode that warmth. He was lighter writer, who raised
his hand twice during reading group and even volunteered to
help collect papers. Seeing him unburdened made the unease worth it.
Maybe the game really was just the strange playground ritual
and stepping into it had given him the break he needed.
Maybe that night the doubts began. I was grading essays
in the quieter my apartment when I heard it first, faint, indistinct.
My pen paused mid Mark.
Speaker 2: Hullbrock.
Speaker 1: I froze, listening, John Helbrock. It came from the kitchen, No,
not from through the way. A draft moved through walls,
whispered as though someone leaned close behind my ear, But
we no breath, no body. I stood hard, pounding checking
every room, nothing locked, windows, bolted, door, silence. Back at
the desk, the papers were scattered, deliberately rearranged. MY name
was written across them in faint, uneven strokes, lettered again
and again by invisible hands. I gathered them quickly and
shoved them into a drawer. Sat in the dark, pulse
hammering from the corner of the room, just beyond where
the lamp light reached, came a whisper.
Speaker 2: Again, John Halbrook. I didn't sleep that night.
Speaker 1: Every time I closed my eyes, I heard it repeated, patient, endless,
as though something had finally learned what it needed. The
whispers didn't stop, never loud, just present, slipping, through the
cracks of my apartment at night, curling under the hum
of the refrigerator, murmuring from the dark corners of the bedroom,
always my full name, patient, relentless. It wasn't violent, but
it made everything feel wrong. At school, it followed me
interrupting my teachings on a semi regular basis. The kids
knew when I stumbled through rollcal distracted. They exchanged looks.
Whispers darted between them like sparks. He's it now, the
Collector's on him. The relief in Noah's face cut deeper
than any accusation. He smiled in a way I'd never
seen him smile before. Full and unburdened, he was light
as air. That was when I understood the game wasn't cruel,
it wasn't bullying. It was survival, a ritual not to entertain,
but to pass on the way before it hollowed them out,
and now.
Speaker 2: It was mine.
Speaker 1: By the third day, the headaches began. They weren't normal,
just a constant pressure on the back of my skull,
like someone pressing a hand there and never letting go.
Sleep came in fragments, half an hour at a time,
before the whispers snapped me awake in the classroom, I
caught myself muttering, not whole sentences, not lessons, just my
own name, over and over, lips moving soundlessly until I
realized what I was doing, And every time I slipped,
the room seemed to darken a fraction, as if something
had leaned closer to here. The children noticed before I
admitted it to myself. At first they were delighted. I
stumbled over math drills, forgot spelling lists, let the schedule drift.
My faltering control meant longer recesses, free periods, games spilling
into lessons. The laughter rang down the halls, unburdened and wild.
But joy only lasts so long when it curdles against fear.
By the end of the week, my hands shook when
I tried to write on the board, My eyes burned
heavy with exhaustion, black crescents blooming beneath them. Once mid sentence,
I stopped cold, unable to remember what I just said.
The silence stretched until one boy nervously supplied the answer himself.
The laughter died. Now the whispers in the classroom weren't playful.
They were anxious. I'd look up from grading and find
twenty pairs of eyes watching me, wide and uncertain. Even Noah,
freed from his burden, avoided my gaze. Relief lingered in
his face. Yes, but guilt too. The smile he carried
dim to something smaller, tighter. He knew what I carried now.
By the time Friday came, I could barely hold the
chalk and leaned against the desk, the room spinning, words
stumbling from my mouth in fragments. The children sat frozen
recess balls and touched pencils idle in their hands. They
weren't celebrating anymore. When the bell rang, they filed out, slowly,
whispering among themselves. I sat with my head in my hands,
trying not to mutter my own name out loud.
Speaker 2: That was when I I.
Speaker 1: Noticed the folded scrap of paper tugged beneath my notebook, small,
careful handwriting in pencil.
Speaker 2: Don't keep it too long.
Speaker 1: It hurts my chest tightened, No signature, just the warning.
By the second week, I started to consider it. The
thought crept in. During roll call. I read the names
in order. Carter Diar sang, each child answering here without hesitation.
But what if I pushed harder? I imagine pausing over
a student's name, pretending to mispronounce it, then frowning until
they corrected me, not just their first name, but the
whole thing, drawn out for clarity, their full name. The
game would recognize it. The collector would shift to them.
I pictured it, aganger and written work. I could hand
back papers, insisting on formality, read your name for me,
all of it a teacher's request. They wouldn't question it.
The burden would fall, just like it always did in
the game. The images made me sick, but they clung
to me anyway. But when I glanced up, I saw
their faces, not mischievous now or playful, concerned. I starting
to my shaking hands, my ash and skin the way
I stumbled through lessons. Their worry hit me harder than
the whispers ever could. I dropped the papers, voice rough
go on recess. They scattered too quickly, their relief obvious,
and in the sudden quiet, I heard a murmur at
the window, carried on no wind. A girl lingered, fiddling
with her sleeve. She didn't meet my eyes when she said,
you're not supposed to keep it. It's worse if you do.
Speaker 2: Worse.
Speaker 1: How I asked my voice cracking, She only shook her head.
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever lasts this long. That night, I lay awake,
staring at the ceiling. The whispers filled every shadow, pressing
against my ears, my throat the corners of the room.
For the first time, I thought of outsiders, another teacher,
a clerk at the grocery store, my sister, if I
called her, any one, some one who could take it,
someone who wouldn't know how it worked. But the thought
collapsed in on itself almost as soon as it formed.
They didn't know the rules, they wouldn't understand the game,
wouldn't know how to pass it on. What if they
kept it for ever? What if they broke under it?
And worse, they'd know who had given it to them.
I pressed my palms into my eyes until I saw sparks.
My own whispering lips brushed the silence. My name again
and again, unbidden from the corner of the room, the
collector stirred. I couldn't see it, not directly, but I
felt it leaning closer. Listening, I clenched my jaw against
the truth. The longer I held it, the more I
knew I was treading into a place no child had survived.
It didn't take weeks for things to get worse.
Speaker 2: Just days.
Speaker 1: The headaches deepened into nausea, my hands trembling so badly
I had to steady the chalk with both. The kids
stopped laughing at my mistakes. Their eyes followed me now
with a kind of fearful pity.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 1: I began to see it. At first only in the
corners of my vision, something pale and bent, watching from
the far end of the hall. Each time I turned,
it was gone. A trick of exhaustion, I told myself,
nerves frayed too thin. But by Thursday and no longer
waited in the periphery. In the middle of a spelling exercise,
I glanced at the back of the classroom and froze.
It was standing between the last row of desks, too tall,
its shoulders rushing the ceiling, a body too thin for
its height, limbs bent at angles that suggested too many joints.
Where her face should have been was only a hollow,
black and glistening, as if something had hollowed it out
from within. The worst part wasn't the sight. The worst
part was that the children didn't react. Their pencils scratched
quietly on the page, as if nothing loomed above them,
as if I was the only one who could see it.
My throat closed. A sound tried to climb out. My
name whispered against my will, but a bit down, so
hard my teeth rattled. The figure tilted its head, the
void where its face should have been, rippling, stretching. I
staggered against the desk, Mister Halbrook. One of the girls asked,
voice tiny. The room had gone side and twenty pencils
stilled midward. Twenty faces turned toward me, wide eyed and afraid.
And in the silence, I thought, better me than them,
because if I can pass it on, if one of
these children slipped and saw what I had just seen,
it would carve them hollow. It would break them. I
couldn't do that, not to them. My vision blurred. The
classroom tilted. For one awful moment. I thought I might
crumple to the floor in front of them, let it
take me then and there. But the whispering faded just
enough for me to steady myself. I clutched the edge
of the desk and to my knuckles whitened. The children
didn't move. They knew what was happening, and they knew
I hadn't passed it on spoke as I gathered the
chalk again, my hand shaking so hard the word I
wrote was illegible. And then in the middle of the
next sentence, everything went black, just for a breath, a blink,
but long enough that when I opened my eyes, twenty
children were staring at me in perfect silence. They knew
I was breaking. The classroom emptied in a rush of
coats and backpacks, the chatter fading down the hall. I
stared at my desk, staring at the blank board, the
chalk still trembling in my hand. My body felt like
wet paper, thin, tearing under its own weight. I almost
didn't notice her. The quiet girl, small for her age,
stood by the doorway, twisting the strap of her bag.
When I looked up, she met my eyes with a
steadiness that startled me. Not fear or mischief, something older.
You can't hold it forever, she said, softly. The words
froze me in place. Before I could respond, she stepped
into the room.
Speaker 2: Play with me.
Speaker 1: My stomach dropped, no, my voice cracked harsher than I intended,
absolutely not, But she didn't move her eyes stayed locked
on mine. You'll break you already, are It's not supposed
to stay with one person this long. I shook my head,
heat prickling behind my eyes. You don't know what it's like,
I whispered, You don't know what I've seen. Her voice
didn't waver. I know enough, We all do. The silence
between us stretched. I thought of Noah's relief, the way
his shoulders had lifted the instant I joined the game.
I thought of the note slipped under my papers. Don't
keep it too long. It hurts, and I knew she
was right. Still, the thought of handing that weight back
to a child tore at me. I gripped the edge
of the desk, fighting the words, you're just a kid.
She gave a small, almost sad smile.
Speaker 2: So are all of us.
Speaker 1: We didn't gather the whole class, just the two of us,
a small circle in the quiet of the empty room.
She stood across from me, hands clasped in front of
her eyes, calm. I tried to stall, to explain, to
beg her not to do it, but she only shook
her head. This is how it works, you know it.
Speaker 2: We all do.
Speaker 1: The champ began I stumbled through it, my voice hoarse, broken.
She answered as the children always did, steady, unafraid, and
then she slipped deliberately. She said her own name aloud,
clear and sharp, eyes never leaving mine. The moment the
word left her mouth, I felt it. The weight vurnished,
the pressure in my skull, the whispers in the corners,
the sick dread that clung to me like damp clothes gone,
just gone. For the first time in weeks, I felt light, clear, alive.
My breath came free and easy. My hands stilled the silence,
and the room was clean. I almost collapsed with relief.
She smiled, faintly, but sadness never leaving her face. See better,
my throat closed. You shouldn't have It's okay, she interrupted.
Her voice was calm, certain, we all take turns. Before
I could answer, the rest of the class had gathered
in the doorway, drawn back by instinct. They didn't cheer
or laugh. They simply surrounded her, solemn quiet, their eyes
filled with understanding that ran far too deep for a
children their age. I looked at her again. Her shoulders
had slumped the same weight I carried was settling onto her.
I could see it in the way her smile trembled,
in the faint glassiness creeping into her eyes. The collector
was with her.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear it, not any more, but I knew
the guilt hit me like a wave. I wanted to
take it back, to hold it forever, if it meant
she wouldn't have to see what I had seen. But
she only stood a little straighter, nodded once, and whispered,
It's lighter now for everyone. By the following week, the
rhythm of the schoolyard had returned from my classroom window.
I watched them form their circle, feet crunching in the gravel,
voices rising in their strange chant. Her name slipped, laughter flared,
and the burden shifted. The game carried on as it
always had, But I understood now. It wasn't cruel, It
wasn't bullying. It was survival. The collector was too heavy
for one child to bear forever. Passing it on wasn't meanness,
but mercy. They had all learned the rules to never
hold on too long, to never let it root too deeply.
I walked among them during recess. They scattered around me,
plain four square, trading cards, skipping rope, but always in
one corner of the yard. The circle formed, always the
chant rose, and sometimes I saw it go wrong. The
child held it too long, their eyes dulled, their shoulders drooped,
they slipped in, lessons grew with drawn. The others pressed in,
circling faster, trying to make the exchange happen, But the
child resisted, clung to it out of fear or confusion.
That was when I stepped in. Their voices rose overlapping, tricking, teasing,
and I let myself falter. I let the words slip
my own name on my tongue, clear and deliberate. The
chant snaps shot around me. The air seemed to shift,
heavy and sharp. I felt the weight settle back on
my shoulders, like a familiar cloak. The children watched, and
they moved on. As the circle broke apart, I stayed behind,
shoulders bowed beneath, in invisible weight, while the whispers returned.
My name repeated in the hush between heartbeats, settling into
me once more, and for the first time, I welcomed it.
Urban legends usually start the same way. A whispered warning,
a cautionary tale, a rule you suppose to follow without
ever asking why, don't go into the woods at night,
don't look in the mirror and call the name, don't
stop for the crying baby on the side of the road.
The counting Man belongs to that category. It spreads in fragments,
old message boards, lost blogs, anonymous confessions, enough to form
a pattern, but never enough to give answers. The rule
itself is simple. If you're walking alone and you hear
footsteps behind you that match your own, and a voice
begins the count, don't turn around.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: That's the warning. The voice always starts at one, low, deliberate,
almost conversational. Each night it continues one number higher than before, two, three, four.
The timing is always the same after dark when you're alone,
and the footsteps never break rhythm. There are two known
outcomes if you break the rules. If you turn round,
it's over instantly. There are no accounts testifying that someone
has done this, so it's safe to assume the worst.
If you don't turn the count goes on. Each night,
it climbs higher, step by step, pulling you toward the
number ten. And that's the part no one can fully describe.
No account ever survives past ten. Whatever happens when the
Counting Men finishes counting, it doesn't leave anyone behind to
explain it. What we're left with are fragments posts on
forgotten forums, transcripts from police reports, journal entries abandoned halfway through,
all describing the same phenomenon, same footsteps, same voice. Taken together,
they don't look like folklore. They look like case studies.
One of the earliest online references to the Counting Men
comes from two thousand and nine and a now defunct
college forum archived by the Wayback Machine. The user went
by decard forty two, a sophomore nineteen, posting in a
humor thread about campus pranks. His first post was lighthearted,
someone's messing with me walking home from the library last night.
Heard footsteps behind me, thought it was a friend, looked around,
nobody there. Then swear to God, heard one like someone
whispered it in my ear. Funniest crap I've ever seen.
Whoever's pulling this, you got me? Other users teased him,
told him here was an echo or campus security playing games.
The next night, he posted again. It happened again, different street,
different time, steps right behind me, keeping pace this time
is said two same voice, same tone. I'm not kidding.
This isn't funny anymore. The replies grew sharper. People accused
them of trolling, of building an arg but the patterns continued.
Each post a new number. Three outside my tomb o.
This time I didn't even leave the building. Four I
tried blasting music on my headphones. Still heard it louder.
Five I tried hiding. Didn't help with the read is
long over sixty replies, most of them mocking, but a
few start to show concern as his tone shifts from
joking to frantic. By seven, his posts are shorter, almost clipped.
I'm not sleeping every time it comes this one more,
it waits until I'm alone. Please tell me someone else
has heard this. No one had, or at least no
one admitted to it. His last entry, dated October fourteenth,
two thousand and nine, reads nine right outside my door
this time, I don't think I can keep this up.
And that's where it ends. The account went silent, his
email went dark. A room mate later posted that Deckard
forty two Ward dropped out suddenly and left campus, though
no records of a transfer exist. It's worth noting the
IP logs from his account show he made the last
post from inside his dorm room, not on the street,
not walking home, inside alone at his desk, which suggests
the counting man doesn't need you outside in the dark
to follow you. Once he starts counting, it goes wherever
you go. Cases like Deckard forty two's are usually written
off as the product of stress college kids pulling all
nighters walking home tired. The mind can play tricks when
it's short on sleep. Some psychologists argue it's a form
of auditory pariodolia, the brain's tendency to find patterns where
none exist. The footsteps you think you hear, the whispered
one that isn't really there. But there's a problem with
that explanation. The posts don't exist in isolation. Dig deep enough,
and you'll find fragments of the same story scattered across
obscure forums and forgotten threads. A Usenet post from the
late nineties mentioning the man who counts as a bibleist
board warning not to let it get to ten. A
chain email from the early two thousands describing footsteps that
match perfectly night after night. The details line up too
neatly to be dismissed as coincidence. Always the same pattern
footsteps and sync, a man's voice counting one number per night.
The rule don't turn around and silence after ten. O
Claud doesn't usually cross mediums this way. It doesn't survive
from email forwards to Reddit threads, to discord servers unless
there's something feeding it. And that's where the unease comes in,
because if these stories aren't random, if they're connected, then
it means the counting Man isn't just a legend, it's
a phenomenon. The following detailed account, dated twenty sixteen, buried
in a series of scanned notebook pages uploaded to an
image board. The files were titled simply Commuter Journal. The
handwriting belongs to a woman in a mid thirties, judging
by the context, who describes herself as a night shift
worker taking buses home after midnight. The first entry picks
up at five. It's been going for almost a week now.
Always when I leave work, and when I walk to
the bus stop, footsteps behind me, perfectly timed. The voice
counting last night was four, tonight was five. I don't
know what happens when it reaches ten, but I'm starting
to believe the people online. She admits the trying to
test the rules, putting in earbuds, taking different routes, pausing
to see if the steps would pause too. They always did.
By seven, her tone shifts. It's getting closer. I feel
breath on my neck, but I won't turn.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 1: I tried to use the bus window as a mirror,
just the check. Thought maybe if I looked that way,
it wouldn't count as turning around. I don't know if
it was a mistake. I saw my reflection mouthing the
number seven. My lips weren't moving. The next entries are
increasingly frantic. She described apes covering mirrors in her apartment,
refusing to glance at the black surface of her phone
when it's off. But reflections aren't the problem. The footsteps
never stop. Her last entry is dated February third, twenty sixteen.
By nine, the pages are shaky, smudged. It's with me everywhere,
not just on the street anymore. In the break room,
in the stairwell, in the bus aisle. I hear it,
even when there's no room for anyone to be walking
behind me. Nobody reacts, No one else hears it. I'm
not safe anywhere. The scans, and there a curious detail.
Users on the forum cross reference to bus route times
against the city's open transit records. She stopped tagging into
the system after that date. No last trip, no exit,
no ride logged under a card. Again, she didn't just
vanish from the bus, she vanished on it, which raises
her disturbing question if turning around means you die and
reaching ten means you disappear, which fate is worse. It's
easy to think the counting Men might be tied to
a city block or state, a place you could avoid,
but the accounts don't agree with that. Reports come from everywhere,
quiet suburbs, isolated country highways. It isn't the location that matters,
it's the person. Once the counting starts, it follows you
across neighborhoods, across state lines, even across oceans. If some
of the scattered foreign posts are to be believed, The
common thread isn't where people hear, it is that they
all describe the same rules, the same footsteps, the same
voice that suggests the counting Man isn't a haunting or
a cursed road, or even a local legend. It's a
phenomenon portable, persistent, personal, and if it attaches to a
person instead of a place, then a running may not
save you. Among the scattered accounts, one of the most
sighted is a Reddit thread from two thousand fourteen. The
user went by ground level. He described the first few
units much like everyone else, the footsteps, the voice, the
steady climb of numbers. By four, he admitted, who was
already panicking. But unlike most cases, he tried something different.
I ran full sprint, no rhythm, just chaos. The footsteps
behind me stumbled, the voice stopped, and when he came
back the next night, it was back to one. I
think I broke it. His posts drew immediate attention. Dozens
of commenters asked for details. Was it a trick, a
glitch in whatever this thing was? Could you reset the sequence.
Speaker 2: Just by running for a while?
Speaker 1: His updates gave people hope. Second night after running, it
worked back to one. If I keep this up, maybe
I could hold it off forever. But a week later
the tone shifted. It's different now, even though it reset
to one, it doesn't sound the same, louder, closer. I
feel it breathing harder, and the steps don't stumble when
I run any more, they keep pace. By the next reset,
the escalation was apparent. The voice grew increasingly distorted, deepening
with each passing moment. The footsteps struck harder, like boots
on concrete, even when he was indoors. His final reset
brought him back to one again, but with a consequence
he hadn't expected. It's behind me all the time now,
not just at night, grocery store, elevator, bathroom. I don't
know how much longer I can handle this. Other users
begged him to stop running, to just let it play
out rather than making it worse, but his posts kept
coming shorter, more frantic, louder than before. Walls shake, my
ears are bleeding. I can't reset it this time. His
account went silent immediately after. A cross check of his
profile shows he'd been an active user for years after
that final post. Nothing no comments, no logins, no activity
at all. What stands out about his case is the pattern.
The reset didn't save him, he'd only made things worse.
The numbers always start over, but the intensity doesn't. It
builds layer on layer, and that suggests the counting man
isn't just telling knights. He's tallying you, which leaves the
question is it better to let the count finish or
to run and make what comes after even worse. It's
tempting to think of the counting man as a digital
age creation, a creepy pass that spread across forums and
message boards, dressed up with the same ritualistic rules seen
in hundreds of other urban legends. But the pattern didn't
start online. The earliest traceable reference appears in an Ohio
newspaper from eighteen ninety one. The article is grainy, barely legible,
preserved only through a university microfilm scan. It reports and
a farmer's family outside Cullercothe who complained of phantom footsteps
circling their porch every night for nine days. Neighbors dismissed
it as coyotes or trespassers. On the tenth night, the
family vanished. The sheriff's deputy, who arrived the next morning
found the dinner table still, set plates half eaten, red
torn mid bite, no signs of struggle, just silence and
empty chairs. Go back further, and the fragments grow stranger.
In a sailor's diary from seventeen forty three, recovered from
a in the North Sea. One entry stands out on
the seventh night, he spoke seven that no man was
behind me. I must not turn, The crew begs me.
They do not hear it as I do. The diary
ends there. The next pages are ruined by sea water.
No mention of storms, mutiny, or shipwreck, just an abrupt stop,
as if the account itself had no chance to continue.
Other records exist in scattered folklore collections, including a Bavarian
folklore about Daziella, the counter who walks behind men on
inty roads, and a letter from a missionary in the
sixteen hundreds describing an invisible step matcher that tormented converts
at night. Are these hoaxes folklore bent to fit a
modern Internet story?
Speaker 2: Maybe?
Speaker 1: Historical anomalies are prone to misinterpretation, especially when a pattern
has already been suggested, but the consistency is hard to ignore.
The details don't shift the way most legends do. The
same progression appears again and again, footsteps and sink, a
man's voice rising one each night, the climb toward ten
different cultures, different languages, different centuries, the same rules. These
records can't be verified, of course, we can't know if
the farmer's family simply fled, or if the sailor's diary
was fabricated. The similarities are too precise to dismiss as coincidence.
The counting Man didn't begin with the Internet. He didn't
begin with stories whispered on message boards or shared too
chain emails. The implication is darker. The counting Man pre
the Internet, predates cities, predates memory itself. He's always been
behind us. Suppose the historical record shows the counting Man
isn't confined to the Internet age. In that case, modern
reports proved something stranger. Still, he isn't confined to any
one region. Threads from Brazil describe or Horman Kukonta, always
in Portuguese, always the same phrasing, footsteps, a man's voice,
the steady rise toward ten. A Japanese forum in two
thousand and seven called him kazauru Otago, the counting Man,
with the same warning not to turn around. South African
blogs mentioned Muntu Wakabala and posts from Eastern Europe repeat
the same detail, one number each night, whispered at your back,
different languages, different continent, the same ritual unchanged. That isn't
how folklore usually works as a rule. Urban legends mutate
when they travel. The hitchhiker Ghost is American. In Japan,
she becomes the slit mouthed woman. In Mexico, she is
known as La Lorana. The details shift, molded by culture
and language. Endings change, villains take on local masks, rules bend.
That's what keeps folklore alive. It adapts. The counting man doesn't.
Everywhere he appears, the pattern remains the same. No local embellishments,
no regional variations, just the same rules repeated with unnerving precision.
Footsteps that match your own, a voice counting one number
per night, don't turn, don't reach ten. The consistency suggests
the phenomenon isn't cultural at all. It doesn't spread like
rumor or myth. It doesn't evolve, It replicates exactly, which
leaves us with two unsettling possibilities. Either every culture spontaneously
invented the same story with the same rules the same outcome,
which is almost impossible, or the counting man is in
the story at all. He's a constant, something real enough
to appear the same way to anyone anywhere, regardless of
language or culture. And if that's true, there's one more
question worth asking, why is the pattern surfacing more frequently? Now?
There's one final pattern worth mentioning, though it's easy to
miss if you're only reading individual accounts. In nearly every case,
the victim heard about the counting man before they heard
the footsteps. The college student in two thousand and nine
admitted he'd read a stupid email about a man who
counts before his first encounter. The commuter's journal included a line,
I thought this was just another Internet ghost story. Then
I started hearing it myself. Even the so called survivor
who tried to reset the rhythm wrote in one of
his earliest posts, maybe I shouldn't have read that thread.
Maybe that's what started it. And this detail isn't unique
to the Internet era. The Ohio farmers family in eighteen
ninety one, the newspaper Clipping notes that neighbors had been
joking about a local phantom counter before the footsteps began.
The sailor's diary from seventeen forty three refers to a
tale told by dark Hands the night before he first
recorded the voice. It happens again and again. Awareness comes first,
then the footsteps, then the count That suggests The counting
man doesn't hunt randomly, It doesn't linger on roadsides waiting
for strangers. He comes when you know the rules. In
other words, knowledge itself is the trigger that would explain
the consistency across centuries and cultures. The story doesn't mutate
because it doesn't need to. Every version is the same
because it isn't focal spreading. It's contagion. Each account is
in a warning, it's an infection vector. The more detail
you read, the more precise the rules become in your head,
the closer you are to hearing that first step fall
in sync with your own, which reframes every everything we've
looked at. The vanished accounts, the broken journals, the posts
that stop mid sentence. Maybe they didn't end because the
victims disappeared. Perhaps they ended because by writing them down
and passing on the rules, they were ensuring the cycle
would continue in someone else. And perhaps that's why the
stories always stopped before ten, not because they have nothing
left to say, but because by the time you know
enough to ask what happens next, the footsteps have already
begun behind you. I was eleven, Halloween fell on a Friday,
and the night felt colder, than usual, the kind that
clings behind your ears and makes the hair on your
arms stand up. Our town had one rule. Everyone knew it,
even if they didn't really talk about it. The tracks
cut a straight line through the edge of town, just
before the woods. On the far side was a dead
end street, maybe ten houses. No one we knew ever
lived there. What was strange was that there was no
haunted stories or urban legends. Instead, there were vague adult shrugs,
like it's not a good neighborhood, there's nothing over there anymore.
But every Halloween parents repeated it in the same stiff tone,
stay on this side of the tracks, and every year
we obeyed until one. Danny, Marcus, Tye and I were
halfway through our route, bags half full, when Marcus spoke up,
what if we go to one house just past the tracks.
Tye immediately shook his head. My mum will kill me,
so we don't tell her.
Speaker 2: Danny grinned.
Speaker 1: He pointed down the street at the far end of
the cul de sac, past the slats of the crossing sign,
where a faint orange glow appeared. There was a jack
O lantern flickering in the low light. Someone's expecting us
Danny joked. We waited until most of the porch lights
behind us had gone dark, when the sidewalks were thinning
out and the parents had started calling kids in for
the night. Then we slipped across the train tracks. As
soon as my foot hit the other side, I felt
the temperature dipped and the air turned wet and sour.
A low fog sat on the pavement like spilled smoke, unmoving.
He didn't shift with our steps. Looked strange, as if
they'd been posed there. With their painted shutters, ragged lawns
and decorations out front. Everything looked hand built, like props
on a set pumpkins with faces carved two symmetrically paper
ghosts hanging from trees, all cut from the same stencil.
No movement behind any window. We kept walking. The only
sound was the crunch of candy wrappers in our bags.
The house with the Jack o' lantern was third from
the end, porch light blinking slowly, plastic skeleton on a swing.
A ball of candy sat waiting on a small table
piled with black wrapped coffees in perfect neat rows. Danny
didn't hesitate and grabbed a fistful I watched. Marcus and
Tide took one each, then shoved them in their mouths, laughing.
Speaker 2: Like it was all just the game.
Speaker 1: But I didn't eat mine. Instead, I dropped it into
my coat pocket. Something about the waxy crinkle under my
fingers made my skin crawl. Guess that's it, Marcus said.
That's when we heard it click. A porch light from
two houses down flickered on, then another, and another down
the cul de sac porch lights began turning on, one
by one, each illuminating an empty porch, a bowl of
black candy, a grinning jack O'Lantern, a lot of lights
for a street no one supposedly lives on. If that like,
someone had been waiting, and now that we'd come, they
wanted us to stay. We kept walking the loop, moving
in a half circle that curved back toward the tracks.
No one spoke much anymore. The air felt heavier with
each step, like the fog was wrapping around our ankles
and slowing us. The porch lights now cast long shadows
over lawns, putting us on edge, thinking someone was nearby. Still,
there were no sounds but our footsteps and the faint
rustle of costumes. Then Danny started acting weird. He jogged ahead,
spinning once in the middle of the street, like it
was putting on a show. You guys are killing the vibe,
he said, too loud, It's just Halloween. Marcus gave him
a look calm down. Danny ignored him. Something had caught
his attention, a low branch hanging over a yard with
something swaying from the end of it.
Speaker 2: A mask. It was paper, maybe, or.
Speaker 1: Something close, pale and stretched, with angular eye holes and
longs sunken features. He looked too specific to be random,
not like a decoration, but like something someone had made
for a reason. Danny unhugged it from the branch and
turned to us, holding it up. Now this is cool.
Leave it, I said, without thinking seriously, but he was
already sliding it over his face. The moment he let go,
the mask seemed to settle, molding to his skin, more
like latex than paper. He tapped the cheek with a
knuckle fits perfect. No one laughed. Ty took a step back.
The edges of the mask sat flush against his skin,
almost like it wasn't a mask at all, just the
second face, one that didn't blink. Then his tone changed
finished the loop. He said, we're almost there. I should
have said no. I think we all should have, but
none of us wanted to be the one to break,
so we followed. As we turned the bend of the
colder sac, we saw the first figure step into the street,
then another and another. They moved slowly, walking side by side,
like they were part of a performance. None of us
had agreed to watch. Men and women in old fashioned clothes,
floor length skirts, button coats, faded vests, all stitched in
muted colors and soft textures. They wore masks like Danny's.
All of them had the same unsettling stillness to their faces.
Not joyless or angry, just.
Speaker 2: Wrong.
Speaker 1: And they were heading toward us, quiet as fog. The
moment the parid stopped, it was like the whole street exhaled.
Every marcher froze in place, all at once, their heads
turning slightly toward us, like animals catching as scent. None
of us moved at first. Then Ty whispered, go, and
we did. Our footsteps thundered across the astrohalt, too loud
to be safe. The fog seemed to drag at our legs,
My bag of candy bounced against my side with each
sprinting step. I didn't even look behind me until we
ducked behind a low hedge, hearts rattling in our chests.
That's when we realized Danny wasn't with us. He'd been
at the back, always the slowest, and somehow he hadn't
made it. I peeked through a gap in the branches.
He was still in the street, lumbering away, no more
than a dozen feet from the front of the parade.
The nearest mass figure glided forward toward him, then another.
They were calm and confident, like they already had him.
Danny didn't call out, nor turn around. He looked cornered,
shoulders hunched, lost in thought. Then he did something I
didn't expect, none of us did. Just before the nearest
figure reached him, he slipped it back on the mask
he still clutched in his hands. It didn't crinkle or bend.
The thing folded into place over his face, like it
belonged there. The figure paused inches away, as if inspecting him,
then turned away. The next march I passed by, and another,
until the final one, which led him towards the pack,
not giving him a chance to slip away. Danny followed,
motionless in the stream of them, now just another mass,
silhouette among the coats and silent steps, blending in, avoiding
whatever fate we imagined for anyone who was caught from
the hedge. Marcus whispered, what do we do? But no
one had an answer. We were kids, they weren't, and
now they had Danny. We waited until the parade drifted
out of sight, disappearing down the end of the cul
de sac. Then we ran back across the tracks, back
toward the houses with stowboard candy and real people inside.
We kept glancing back, hoping it followed us, but Danny
never did. We waited someone would call. We figured maybe
Danny would text, Maybe he'd show up at school on Monday,
like nothing happened, rolling his eyes and calling us babies
for running off. We kept checking our phones, refreshing apps,
watching the group chat. Nothing not that night, not the
next morning, not even a where are you guys. By noon,
panic had started to settle in our stomachs like sour milk.
He probably got in trouble, Ty said, like grounded or something.
Maybe his phone got taken. Then he called from the
house phone Marcus said. After lunch, we couldn't take it anymore.
We decided to go back across the train tracks, but
this time in the daylight, so it wouldn't be scary.
Everything's less scary when the sun's out right. Danny was
probably hiding, embarrassed, waiting for things to blow over. We
crossed the tracks again, only this time it wasn't foggy,
It was just dead. The air was dry, the pavement cracked,
the grass yellowed and stiff. The houses looked different in daylight,
no longer mysterious, just ruined, peeling paint boarded windows. One
had a flat tire, half buried in weed, leaning against
the porch, like no one had lived there in decades,
a stark contrast to how it was that night. There
were no lights, no jack o lanterns, no decorations, not
even left over like you'd imagine when you see a
place abandoned. The place was cleaned up of all things Halloween,
despite the evidence that no one had been there in
a long time. We retraced our steps, stuck close together.
My skin felt too tight, like I was about to
bolt at the slightest sound. Then we found the hedge,
and from there we saw it. Danny's candy bag was
sitting in the road where he was caught, still full, unopened.
The wrapper on top hadn't even been crinkled. Marcus finally whispered, Okay,
we have to tell someone, So we did. We told
our parents, expecting the usual lectures, sighs, and a solution.
Adults always fixed things. They called the teachers when we
forgot homework, They found lost dogs, They made everything go
back to normal, So we figured this would be the same.
Which was launched police neighbors, flashlights, cutting through brush behind
the Caulder Sac, volunteers canvassing with missing posters, and we
standing there while they asked the same questions over and over.
Are you sure you were here? Are you sure you
didn't just lose him? But no matter how many times
we told the story the truth, no one found a thing,
no Danny, no parade, no mask, no trace, just an
empty street behind the tracks and a silence that followed
us all the way home. Time passed, the posters came down,
the search stopped, people stopped asking questions, at least the
real ones, But the story that didn't die it more.
People started calling it the Halloween Vanishing They made it
sound like a ghost story. A kid crossed the tracks
when Halloween night and never came back. Don't be stupid
like him. They didn't say his name anymore. Not in
the versions that spread. Danny became the boy an example
a warning at school, new kids would whisper it to
each other in the weeks leading up to Halloween. There
were made up details. He dared a ghost the show itself.
He knocked on the wrong door, he stepped on a
grave hidden under a porch. We never corrected them. What
would we even say? That The truth was worse than
all the stories combined, that we saw him disappear, that
we ran. Eventually, even Marcus stopped talking about it. Ty
moved away the following year. But I couldn't forget, not
when I saw porge lights flicker, not when I passed
the edge of the tracks on my bike and felt
something watching. The warning stuck. Though every Halloween, parents whisper
the same things to their kids. Don't cross the tracks.
Speaker 2: It works.
Speaker 1: No one does, not anymore, no one except me. Because
I needed to know what happened. Someone had to go back,
So I made a plan. I told my friends I
was done for the night, tired, maybe coming down with something.
I waved them off as they headed up toward Maple Street,
then slipped away. No one noticed when I double backed
and headed away from the busy streets, back toward where
everything happened. When I reached the tracks, my hands were
already shaking. The fog was thinner this time, but the
cold was the same, a kind that didn't just bite
your skin, but soaked through it. The coulder sac waited
like it had been holding its breath for a full year.
The air felt hushed, heavy, ready. I didn't knock on doors,
didn't speak. I walked fast, keeping to the sidewalk, eyes forward.
Porch lights flicked on as I passed, first one then another,
a quiet relay, like they recognized me. I found the hedge.
They looked the same, overgrown, tangled, brittle from the cold.
I dropped to one knee and crawled behind it into
the same hollow where we'd all crouched the year before,
knees pressed to the dirt, limbs tugged tight, the same
place where we'd watched Danny stop running. I took myself
low and held my breath, waiting, And.
Speaker 2: There it was.
Speaker 1: The parade, same masks, same clothes, same empty rhythm. They
marched past with heads tilted slightly forward, as if sniffing
the air for something. Not a single footstep out of sync.
My chest tightened. I told myself, I just needed to
see it again, just needed to know it wasn't a
trick or a story. We told ourselves wrong. But then
something shifted beside me, a soft exhale, barely more than
a stir in the air. I turned my head and
caught my breath. Someone was already there, crouched in the dark,
beside me, close enough to touch. The shape of him
was impossible to mistake. Too familiar. The hoodie faded blue
with a frayed pocket seam, the jeans with one cough,
always slightly rolled, as if he never learned to fold
them properly. The worn out sneakers with one fluorescent orange lace.
Speaker 2: Danny.
Speaker 1: I wanted to speak, to say his name, grab his arm.
One motion made me stop, A hand raised, signaling me
not to move. My throat logged up, my chest felt
caved in. His head turned slowly, mask creased under his hood,
the same mask he pulled from the tree a year ago.
Wrinkled materials stretched too tight, hollow eyes and a yellowing mouth.
His hand rose and pressed one finger to the masked's
lips in a silent, shushing motion. Then he stood, not rushed,
not robotic, just quiet, steady, and walked out from behind
the hedge toward the street, toward the parade. He didn't
run or look back. He just stepped between the masks
marches and fell in line, as if he'd always been
a part of it, as if this was where he
belonged now. I waited, frozen behind the hedge until the
last figure disappeared.
Speaker 2: Around the bend. Then I ran.
Speaker 1: I didn't stop until I reached the tracks, crossed them
like the edge of a cliff, and when I was
safely back in my neighborhood, I finally let myself breathe.
I couldn't tell anyone, not my friends or my parents,
not the cops who'd closed Danny's case and turned him
into a bedtime warning, because how could I explain it?
What would I even say? That Danny had become one
of them, that he for some reason chose to stay
and was forced to. I didn't know what the mask meant,
or if Danny was trapped, if he was happy or
if there was anything left of him in there at all.
I just knew he saw me, and that he remembered,
and I still don't know which part hurts worse. The
clinic always felt different at night. The fluorescence hung louder,
the stain of steel counters gleamed too sharply, and the
waiting room smiled faintly of antiseptic and wet fur. I
told myself, I prefer the light shift, fewer clients, fewer crises,
But the truth was it always felt lonelier than it should.
I moved through the motions like any other night. A
golden retriever with a sour stomach had just gone home
with anti acids. A hissing tabby sat sedated in recovery
after we'd lanced a nabsis, and in the corner a
rabbit dozed under a blanket as fluids dripped into its
tiny leg. Paperwork piled next to me, glowing blue under
the desk lamp. I was a year out of school,
barely scraping by on night differentials. But it was steady work,
and after the last clinic I'd burnt out of I
need it steady. The bell above the front door startled
me out to my thoughts. Clients weren't supposed to come
this late. Are after hours. Number rooted to an emergency
hospital across town. But a man's stomach in pale and
wild eyed, clutching a shoe box to his chest. He
didn't wait for me to greet him. It's not from here,
he blurted, thrusting the box onto the counter. His hands
shook so badly the lid rattled. I tried to be
calm and professional. All right, let's have a look.
Speaker 2: Inside was.
Speaker 1: A cat, or close enough to fool someone, glancing quick
fur at a gray eyes, too wide, chest rising with shallow,
uneven breaths. But the teeth were wrong. When it opened
its mouth to pant, I saw rows of them, thin
and translucent, like a vicious gill, sharpened into needles. The
man backed away, muttering something about finding it under his porch,
about it following him inside. I didn't hear most of it.
I couldn't take my eyes off the thing in the box.
It looked up at me and then made a sound,
not a usual meaw or hiss. It sounded like words
strung together in a garbled, underwater slurry, like language itself
had drowned inside it. My first thought wasn't that I
was hallucinating. It was that the man was right. Whatever
this was, it wasn't from here. I carried the shoe
box into Exam three. Every muscle in my arm's rigid,
as though the thing might leap out.
Speaker 2: It didn't.
Speaker 1: It just lay there, chest fluttering with shallow breaths, pupils
contracting and expanding like camera lenses, out of sync.
Speaker 2: Routine.
Speaker 1: First stethoscope to the chest, except it heartbeat wasn't routine
at all. One second it thunder too fast, her hummingbird
trapped in bone. The next silence as if its heart
simply stopped. I pulled back, waited, pressed again, the thud nothing.
I forced myself to move down the body, tracing its
spine with my fingers. A cat should have seven lumbar vertebrae.
This thing had nine, or maybe eleven. The spacing wasn't even,
as if someone had added extra bones without understanding how
they were supposed to fit together. Blood draw then, if
nothing else, blood would make sense. I loaded the syringe,
placed the drop on the slide, and then slid it
under the microscope. It didn't look like blood, no red cells,
no plasma, just the shift in dark smear that glistened
like spillding. Threads of green filament drifted through it, curling
and uncurling as if alive, like algae tased by invisible currents.
My stomach tightened. I logged every detail in the patient
file anyway, filling the screen with as much clinical language
as I could manage. Pulse, irregular spinal deformity, sample, inconclusive
recommend follow up. I added my initials to the bottom,
as though signing my name made it real. I was
still a junior at the place, getting experienced during the
night shifts. I liked both the authority and the initiative
to take extreme action, so my idea was the wait
for someone more experienced to provide a second opinion and direction.
Speaker 2: On what to do.
Speaker 1: By the time I lugged up, the man who had
brought the shoe box was gone. He hadn't even fi
filled out paperwork. The next morning, when I came back
for handover, the record was missing, no patient number, no notes.
Even the placeholder file i'd started had vanished. I asked
doctor Heller, the senior vett, if you'd seen it. He
gave me that weary look he reserved for rockies, with
questions that wasted his time. You've been running nights too long?
Speaker 2: Stress? Does that? Write it off and move on.
Speaker 1: I almost believed him.
Speaker 2: Almost.
Speaker 1: That was until I went to toss the bio hazard
been The shoe box was still there, blood speckled cores
and all but the animal's body.
Speaker 2: The not cat was gone.
Speaker 1: For a few nights after the shoe box, things went
back to normal, if you could call it that. Sick dogs,
cranky cats, rabbits chewing through ivy lines. I almost convinced
myself I'd hallucinated the whole thing, that doctor Heller was right,
and I was just too tired, too ready to see
something bizarre in an ordinary stray. But then another came in.
A couple brought their terrier just before midnight, apologizing for
the late arrival, swearing that something was wrong with his eyes.
Under the exam light, I saw it, pupils curled in
tight spirals, twisting slowly like whirlpools, dragging at the edges.
The dog wagged his tail, oblivious, but I had to
fight the urge to look away before the spirals seemed
to pull me in. Two nights later, a teenager arrived
cradling a cockertail. It looked fine until it shook, scattering
feathers across the table. They writhed on the tile like
a nest of beetles, twitching legs where barbs should have been.
The birds screamed a raw, rasping sound I'd never heard
from anything feathered. By morning, its file was gone too.
The worst was the hamster. A kid brought it in
after it stopped eating. The X ray showed a normal
skeleton at first glance. Then I leaned closer. The skull
held not tiny rodent incisors, but rows of human like
molars buried crooked in the jaw, as though waiting to rupt.
Every time the owners said the same thing, It wasn't
like this yesterday. Their voices cracked with genuine confusion, fear,
even and every time. By the next morning, the patient
files had vanished, no lab samples, no radiographs, nothing but
my own memory insisting these things had been real. I
stopped asking Hella about it. His flat stare told me enough.
He knew, he'd always known. The clinic was small, with
a front desk, four exam rooms, a cramped surgery suite, kennels,
and storage. After a month of working night, I thought
I knew every corner, every squeaky hinge, every flickering bulb,
which is why it rattled me when I noticed Hella
disappearing at closing one evening with a ring of keys
I didn't recognize. Rather than go out the back door,
he went down past the kennels, behind a supply shelf
that scraped just slightly too easily against the floor. I
hadn't known there was a basement. That knowledge sat in
the back of my mind for a week, festering until
the hamster case left me staring at his vurnished X
ray and realizing there had to be somewhere those things
were going, somewhere Hella wasn't telling me about. I waited
until the clinic was empty, the hum of the soda
machine the only sound. The shelf moved with a grunt
and a shove, revealing a narrow door. The lock wasn't difficult,
just the brittle pad. Heller had probably trusted more to
secrecy than strength. I told myself, I was just curious.
I told myself I'd look, then I'd shut it and
never try again. The air that hit me was colder,
drier stale. A stairwell of painted concrete led down to
a second set of heavier industrial doors, and beyond them
the freezers. Rows of them lined the walls, taller than me,
doors sweating frost. The handles were tagged not with case
numbers or species, but with initials and dates, some recent,
some from the eighties, a few from before I was born.
I opened one. Inside were jars. Initially they looked like
ordinary tissue samples, the kind we kept for pathology. For
the contents weren't ordinary. Lungs that were too smooth, like
balloons pealing from their casing, a heart with five ventricles,
a coiled intestinal track that pulsed faintly though the jar
was sealed tight. I opened another. This one held a
body taxidermy, I thought for a second, until I noticed
the stitches were too precise, the eyes replaced by black
marbles of resin. It might have been a dog once,
perhaps something that looks like a dog. Its ribs branched
upward like slats of an umbrella. I closed the door,
fingers numb. My training told me what organs should look
like and how they should connect. These didn't. They were
close enough to fool, someone panicked in an exam room,
but wrong in ways My brain couldn't smooth over. Every
freezer I opened told the same story, decades of cases cataloged, stored, hidden,
not for research or learning, just contained. At the end
of the row stood one different from the others.
Speaker 2: Older.
Speaker 1: Its door was chained and double padded. I scrept thick
across its seams. I leaned closer. From inside, came the
faintest scrape metal against metal, then again longer, like claws
dragging slow circles against the frozen walls. I let go
of the handle, my breath fogging in the dark, and
realized whatever was inside that freezer wasn't dead. Two nights
after I found the freezers, a man came in near closing.
He wasn't like the other clients, not frantic with explanation,
nor tearful please or reassurance that it was fine yesterday,
just silence as he dragged a leash behind him. At
the end of it was something that had once resembled
a dog. Its body looked broken, joints bent at angles
they couldn't have healed from skins stretched in ridges over
too many bones. But the eyes they tracked me with
unnerving precision, not a glassy panic of a suffering animal,
but something measured. Watching needs boarding. The man said. His
voice was flat, unremarkable. He didn't offer paperwork. When I
asked for records, he shook his head. No collar, no microchip,
just the wad of cash pushed across the counter, thick
enough to quiet my questions. I forced the smile that
I used with difficult clients. At least the name for
the chart. He blinked, as if he'd never been asked before. Dog,
he said finally, and turned for the door. The number
he scrawled on the intake form didn't look familiar, but
when I dialed it after he left the phone at
the front desk rang I stood there, listening to my
own voice and the voicemail, a hollow echo bouncing back.
I tore myself to log it like normal, but when
I tried to create a new file in the system,
the curse had blinked against an empty screen. The patient
wouldn't save. That night, after lights out, I checked the kennels.
The dog hadn't moved from where I left it curled
awkwardly in the far corner. I closed the door, locked
up and went home. By morning, I wished I hadn't.
The cage was open, latch undone, the thing was gone,
and the room stank. There wasn't the usual suspects of
urine or musk, like a normal kennel escape, but of
sea water, sharp and briny, clinging to the walls, like
a tide had rolled through in the dark. The smell
lingered for days, long after I scrubbed the floor, like
the ocean itself had left something behind. But I couldn't
help but think about the man. Usually the strange anomalies
were left by families or those concerned about an injured animal,
but this one seemed deliberate, and from our interaction it
felt like I was the only one not in and
what was truly going on. Some shifts I was alone
or with other juniors, but some shifts were observed. Doctor
Hella was with me for a scheduled check of my
progress and the job never hands on, to see how
I handled routine and emergency situations. He came in just
after midnight. A woman carried it wrapped in a blanket,
murmuring please help him, over and over like a prayer.
At first glance, it looked like a stray husky, ribs
visible and apatchy fur, eyes wild. But when she set
it down on the tail and peeled back the blanket,
I saw its legs bent wrong. Each joint doubled back
on itself, as though it had been folded. It should
not have been able to walk. I took the poor
thing into a free exam room to run checks. The
moment the needle touched its skin, everything went wrong. It shrieked,
not an animal sound, but a pitch that rattled the windows,
and not a tray of instruments clattering to the floor.
The over red lights flickered. The air thickened, pressing against
my ears, until every breath was a rasp. The dog expanded,
not in mass, but in presence. Its body blurred edges
and focus, like heat rippling our ashphalt. The cages in
recovery rattled every patient, howling or carrying get back. Hella barked.
His voice carried a weight I hadn't heard before. He
was already moving faster than I thought a man's age could.
From beneath the supply cabinet, he dragged equipment. I didn't
recognize metal canisters with faded hazard symbols. Syringes filled with
liquids so dark it looked black, a mask that didn't
resemble any veterinary kit I had ever been trained to use.
Hold the line, he muttered to me, to himself, I
couldn't tell. Then he plunged the syringe into the creature's neck.
It thrashed, eyes bulging in their sockets, but the pressure
in the room broke all at once, the air snapping
thin and cold. Lights steaded, The cages went still. The
husky lay motionless on the table, chest, rising only once
every few seconds, like the bare minimum of life was
being allowed to continue. Hella slumped into the chair by
the counter, sweat slick on his forehead. Despite the chill.
For a long time, the only sound was the drip
of saline from a line I'd abandoned. Finally, he spoke,
voice cracked, it's happening more often. The seals are failing.
He didn't look at me when he said it, but
I knew the words weren't meant for himself. They were
for me. We didn't speak until hours later. The husky,
if he could call it, that, was locked away in
an isolation kennel sedated into half life. I was still
shaking when I found Hella in his office, staring at
a folder thick with yellowed papers. He didn't tell me
to leave. He didn't even look up. They're not strays,
he said finally. His voice was flat, not an apology,
not even a warning, just fact, fair breaches. I waited
for him to elaborate, but the silence stretched so long
I almost thought he wouldn't. Then he slid the folder
across the desk. Inside were patient records unlike anything in
the system, polaroids of animals with limbs bent in circles,
autopsy sketches marked with impossible notes, jars of organs photographed
in sterile light. The clinic's affront, he said, always, has
been one of dozens, maybe hundreds, janitor sites.
Speaker 2: They called us.
Speaker 1: Back in the fifties, after the first searche, someone in
a government office realized what was slipping through wasn't going away,
so they funded us quiet money, quiet contracts, put people
like me in place to keep things clean. He tapped
one of the pages of the Trembling Finger, a chart,
thin black lines plotted across decades, each spike taller than
the last, each decade worse. They told us half truths.
Always enough to keep us working, not enough to scare
us off. But the breeches, they're accelerating. He used to
be once a year, maybe twice. Now he shook his
head every week, sometimes every night, and when containment fails,
his hand tightened around the edge of the desk until
the wood groaned. I thought of the freezers downstairs, the
things in jars, the scraping behind the locked door. We're
not vet, hell Us said, finally, looking at me. His
eyes were red, but there was no motion in them,
just exhaustion. Were filters, things slipped through, We clean em up.
That's the job. He clicked the monitor on security. Footage
flickered across the screen. Last night's kennel's still and silent
for a moment, nothing, then a single frame where every animal,
every patient blint at once, perfectly synchronized. I recoiled. Hella
didn't even flinch. I'm near the end, he said, voice low.
Somebody has to take over, and whether you like it
or not, He closed the folder with a soft thud.
Speaker 2: It's you.
Speaker 1: The weight of it settled on me, with the certainty
of a death sentence. I wasn't just treating animals anymore.
I was inheriting a war for a day, I convinced
myself I wouldn't play along. I wanted this work my
whole life, to heal, to save, to hand animals back
to their families with tails wagging and purs vibrating against
my hands. Not to keep files in locked cabinets, Not
to drag cages into basements, not a silence living things
because they didn't belong here. So I told myself I'd quit.
I turn in my key card erase every late night
horror as exhaustion and bad memory, and start fresh somewhere
that didn't smell of antiseptic and secrets. For the next night,
a little girl came in with her mother. She held
a carrier in both arms, eyes wet, whispering, please, he's sick.
Inside was a cat, black, scrawny, pupils too wide. For
a moment, it almost passed for normal. Then it shifted,
its skin, pulsing like something inside was pushing to get out.
I'd seen enough now to recognize it instantly. A breech
the mother's signed forms wiped the girl's cheeks and left
them both in the waiting room. They didn't know, they
would never know.
Speaker 2: In the back.
Speaker 1: Hella stood with his arms folded, no tools this time,
no intervention, just his voice, low and certain. Put it down,
log it, file it away, or walk out their door
and pretend you never saw what's under the surface. The
words scraped against everything I thought I was. I froze,
hand hovering above the carrier, my chest ached with the
urge to run. I could walk out. They never stopped me.
Then the cat's back rippled, vertebrae bending against skin. Its
mouth opened wide, far wider than bone should allow, and
something inside flickered, a shimmer, like the edge of a
hole widening. I understood in that second why Hella did
what he did, Why the freezers existed, Why the charts
only climbed. I drew the syringe. My hands trembled, but
I injected anyway. The breech led out a thin hiss,
like air leaking from a tire, and collapsed into stillness.
Not a traumatic death, not a monster vanquished, just silence, unceremonious.
I logged it, filed it, moved on, and in that
moment I understood the clinic's rhythm. Horror became procedure, saving
became disposal. Weeks bled together the clinic never really closed.
The lobby stayed bright, the phones kept ringing, and people
came in with the same anxious faces, clutching leashes, crates,
and shoe boxes. Most of them were ordinary pets, of course,
vomiting dogs, constipated cats, a parrot with a broken wing.
Speaker 2: But not all.
Speaker 1: And I learned eventually not to flinch when not all
came through the door. My hands moved without thinking. Now
fill out forms, prep syringes, sterilized tables, and labeled jars,
normal steps in a process that had stopped feeling normal.
I logged specimens the same way I logged vaccinations. I
cleaned instruments the same way I had once cleaned up
after dental surgeries on geriatric spaniels. Horror dulled into muscle
memory habit layered over a revulsion like scar tissue. Some
nights I still heard the scraping in the basement freezers.
Some nights I saw the charts in my dreams, the
lion climbing higher with each decade, never flattening. But I
stopped trying to argue with it. They're not strays, I
caught myself thinking one night, or closing out files their
breeches and we're not vets, We're custodians. This is just
what the world needs to keep turning. I believed it,
or at least I made my self believe it. It
was almost dawn when the bell of the door chimed.
I looked up, expecting another last minute emergency. It wasn't
a frantic family this time. It was him, the man
with a flat voice, the cash, the leash dragging behind him,
the same one who had left me a dog that
reeked of sea water. He didn't speak as he set
the carrier on the counter, just met my eyes with
a kind of tired patience, as if he knew I
would take it without question.
Speaker 2: And I did.
Speaker 1: I pulled on the gloves, reached for a fresh chart,
wrote nothing down. Whatever was inside the carrier shifted once,
just enough to scrape against the plastic, and I carried
it into the back without another word. I didn't have
a lot of options after the layoff. I burned through
most of my savings in under six months. My lease
was up rentered, jumped again, and I didn't exactly have
stellar credit or a fallback plan. What I had was
a car full of boxes, a suitcase, and a laptop.
That would only boot up when plugged in at a
forty five degree angle. So when I saw the ad
quiet single bedroom, detached utilities included six hundred dollars per month,
I messaged the number before I even finished reading the rest.
The landlord didn't ask any questions. He didn't care about
credit or asked for a background check. All he wanted
was the first month's renting cash, which I withdrew across
three ATMs to avoid alert in the bank that I
was nearly empty. When I pulled up, the place looked decent,
I guess, old but not falling apart, a single level
structure with chipped paint, crooked porch light, and a lived
in smell that clung to the air like wet paper.
He handed me the keys, with the lease still half
filled out, said don't worry about the quirks. She's old,
but she'll hold up, then got in his truck and left.
Inside was smaller than the photos. The living room led
straight into the kitchenette. The floor groaned even when I
wasn't moving, but it was quiet, and it was mine.
The bedroom was plain, three white walls and one with
wall paper floral and faded. It looked like something out
of an estate sail. It was the only decorative thing
in the house, and even then just barely. I ran
my hand over it. The paper was smooth, no tears,
but old. I figured maybe it was left over from
a remodel that never got finished. I'd tear it down
and paint it later, add it to the list. That night,
I set up a mattress on the floor, shoved my
boxes into corners, and fell asleep faster than I expected.
But around three a m I woke to a sound
behind me. It was a soft scritch, scritch scritch, faint
but steady, right behind the wall papered wall. I listened
for a while, eyes still closed. Figured who was mice
or maybe pipes? Who was an old house after all?
I turned over, pulled the blanket tighter, and made a
note to buy traps in the morning. The next day
was quiet. I spent most of it trying to make
the place feel less like a Craigslist trap and more
like a place where a person actually lives. I unpacked
a little stacked books I probably wouldn't read on a
bent shelf, rearranged the two pieces of furniture I owned,
a folding table and chair to create the illusion of space.
There was no internet yet, so I sat outside for
an hour trying to poach someone's Wi Fi signal.
Speaker 2: No lock.
Speaker 1: I eventually tethered to my phone until the data cap
begged for mercy. I met a sad pot of pasta
and ate it over the sink, the kind of meal
that feels loneier than it should. Still, it was a roof,
it was shelter, and I hadn't had to beg anyone
for it. That counter as something. That night, I slept
with a window cracked. The house got muggy without air flow.
A few bugs made it in, but nothing worse than
a moth dive bombing my lamp. I was starting to
feel like I could make this work until I woke
up around two thirty a m. At first, I didn't
know what pulled me out of sleep. No loud noises
or scratching this time, just a feeling like my eyes
had opened on their own, like something was waiting. The
room was dim street light through the blinds. I turned
onto my back and caught it immediately. The top corner
of the wallpaper, maybe six inches wide, had peeled itself
away from the wall. I sat up, staring at it.
The paper hung there like it had been carefully unglued.
I got up, flicked on the light and touched it.
It was dry, not soft or damp. No reason it
should have came loose at all, I muttered to myself.
Found some tape in my box of random crap and
stuck the edge back down. Smoothed it flat with my palm.
Maybe the humidity loosened it. Old paste, cheap materials, whatever.
I went back to bed, rolled over and tried to
ignore the knot forming in my stomach. Ten minutes later
I checked again. It had peeled back, same corner, same
exact fold. This time the curl was cleaner, not like
gravity had pulled it, more like it had been pinched
than rolled. I didn't touch it. I stared at it
for a while, took out my phone and snapped a photo,
then taped it again, firmer this time, pressed harder. I
took another photo, save mangle. Ten minutes later, pealed again.
I flipped through the photos. In the first that the
wallpaper was flat. In the second, the corner curled downward,
as if it never stayed down at all. I told
myself it was just bad tape or bad luck, or
that I was overtired and didn't press hard enough. But
part of me was worried, not for anything grand, but
for my deposit I would desperately need back if I
were to leave. A few evenings later, I sat on
the edge of my mattress and stared at the wall
like it owed me money. The wallpaper had peeled back
again more, this time the top third of one sheet
hung free, drooping like a tired eyelid, same corner, same precision,
Still no damage, just peeled clean. It was starting feel
less like wear and tear and more like intention. I
told myself, if I was going to keep living here,
I couldn't let every weird creak or draft spin me out.
So I got up, walked over and peeled it further.
Might as well see what I was dealing with behind it.
The dry wall wasn't what I expected. It should have
been flat, maybe a little dusty. Instead, it was scarred.
Long deep vertical grooves ran down the surface. The scratches
were spaced, deliberate and repetitive, like someone had dragged nails
through it in slow, meditative strokes. Over and over. I
ran my hand over them.
Speaker 2: The surface was.
Speaker 1: Warm, definitely not dry wall temperature. It was probably bad
insulation or an old heat line behind the panel. I'd
seen worse and cheaper places. Still, I let the wallpaper
fall back into place and didn't tape at this time.
That night, I had one of those half sleep, sweat
stained dreams, the kind of your brain just loops the
day's stresses into something heavy and wart. In the dream,
I was in bed, just like I actually was, and
I could hear faint, rhythmic breathing, as if someone standing
inches away. I woke up, drenched, blanket kicked off, jaw tight,
and heart racing. Reflexively, I looked to the wall. The
wallpaper was peeled back down to shoulder height, now a smooth,
clean fold, with no tears or flakes on the floor,
like it had waited for me to fall asleep. Frustrated,
I grabbed a stapler from a box and slammed in
a fresh strip. I staple the paper flat again and again,
all the way around the edge. Then I shoved the
bookshelf over, pressed it flush to the wall. Boxes and all.
I didn't even care what was inside them, just needed weight,
pressure distance. When I stepped back, I realized I was shaking.
I felt like I wasn't fixing it to preserve the apartment.
I was fixing it to keep something out. By the
next night, the wallpaper had peeled so far down it
looked like a curtain. The entire sheet sagged off the
wall in one long, lazy flap. I woke up to
the sound of the edge brushing the bukshelf, a faint
papery sound like it was reaching down to tap me.
That was the final straw. Around noon, after pacing the
house and staring at the wall like it might blink,
I gave in and called the landlord. He answered on
the third ring with a distracted yeah. I explained the
issue as calmly as I could. The wallpaper's peeling is
worse every day. He won't stay down. I've tried tape staples,
it's just not holding. Long pause. Then still good paper,
he said, just needs repasting. Been up since the eighties.
Original install Italian import, actually real quality stuff like it
was proud of it, like the history made it my problem, right,
But it won't stick. I said, it's not damaged, it's
just coming off the wall completely. So repast it, he said,
tone already slipping toward irritated. You think I'm going to
replace it just because you can't work a globe brush,
I blinked, Can I just take it down, paint it over.
I don't really care about the wallpaper. I just want
absolutely not. His voice sharpened, like I suggested knocking down
a wall. That wallpaper costs money, he said, real money.
You tear it, you pay for it. You remove it,
you pay for it, you paint over it, you're definitely
paying for it. I sat there, gripping my phone, staring
at the opposite wall while he kept talking. Last guy
in there tried the same thing. He muttered, said it
kept coming up, got fed up, left without notice. Some
people just don't know how to maintain a property. I'm
not your mother, and this ain't a hotel. I clinched
my jaw. I'm not asking you to redo the place.
I'm just saying something's not right with the wall, that
there are marks and it. Then stop looking under it,
he snapped. You keep picking at things, they're gonna come apart.
Just paste it back. It's not complicated. He hung up
before I could respond. I sat on the edge of
the bed, phoned still in my hand and stared at
the wall. The wallpaper had started to curl again. I
watched it happen in real time, the edge slowly peeling
back with a sluggish rhythm of something that knew. It
had me, like it had hurt me, like it had won.
By the day after, the entire top sheet had drooped
down like a curtain, so one forgot to tie back
and folded over itself, soft and slack, like skin trying
to slough. I stood there staring at it for a
long time, holding the new tupper paste in one hand
and a brush in the other. I'd picked it up
that afternoon, muttering to myself the whole drive cheaper than
losing a deposit. Just paste it back, not complicated. I
repeated that to myself like a mantra. Now, just paste
it back. But before I did, and figured I should
wipe down the surface underneath in case it was damp
or moldy or whatever was making the paper come loose.
I didn't want to trap anything wet between layers. That'd
just make it worse. I peeled the sheep further to
expose the wall, slow and careful, the way you open
a closet. You weren't sure was empty. The dry wall
underneath looked the same as before, pale, slightly uneven, still
marked with as long, faint grooves, the ones I told
myself were left over from some lazy renovation job. But
then I saw a spot about the size of a nickel,
maybe quarter sized. It was dark, circular, and slightly raised.
It sat low on the wall, just beneath wh the
folded rested as if waiting for light. I leaned in, squinted,
frowned mold.
Speaker 2: It had to be.
Speaker 1: The house always smelt vaguely damp, especially in the mornings,
and I'd been keeping the windows shut tight most nights.
Maybe the air flow was bad. Old wood, old paint.
Things sweat when they rot. I muttered under my breath
and went to the kitchen. Grabbed a sponge and some
all purpose cleaner, nothing fancy, just whatever was under the sink.
When I moved in, I sprayed the spot and pressed
the sponge to it, gave it a few hard circles.
The black didn't lift. I scrubbed harder, switching to the
rough side. The edges started to smear. At first I
thought it was working, but then I realized the smear
wasn't fading. It was spreading. The edges stretched thin like veins.
Little black strands spied it outward, low contrast against the
off white drywall, branching like cracks and eyes. They didn't
flake or bubble like mold. They just grew, pulled out
from the center, like roots searching for water. I dropped
the sponge in the bucket and stared. The shape widened,
crept upward, slow controlled. The veins bent inward. Five streaks
curling back towards the center, arched evenly, spaced.
Speaker 2: Almost like.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to finish the thought, but my brain
did it for me fingers. I leaned in, unwilling and
unable to stop. The black lines formed a handprint, just
slightly larger than my own splayed flat, as if someone
had pressed their palm against the wall from the other side,
and it wasn't paint. The wall felt warm beneath it,
the noticeable warmth that was stronger on the bare wall,
like skin under a fever. I stepped back too fast,
heart thudding like it was trying to outrun my ribs.
I stood there for a second, frozen between fight and flight.
Then something switched in my brain, not a scream, but instinct.
I grabbed the brush, scooped out the paste, slapped it
over the shape without looking, hands moving fast, clumsy, without
waiting for it to dry. I grabbed the sheet of wallpaper,
lined it up, and pressed it down with both palms,
smoothing from the center out. My breath was sharp, my
chest tight. I pressed harder, stabled the edges for good measure.
Then I stepped back. The floral pattern covered everything, the hand,
the black, the warm It looked normal again, just old,
tacky wallpaper in a quiet, forgettable house. I stood there
staring at it, and to my knees started to shake,
and even then I stayed longer. It wasn't me admiring
my work, but because I thought I saw the wallpaper shift,
just slightly, like something behind it had moved. I didn't
sleep much after that. Every time I closed my eyes
I saw the pattern of the wallpaper pulsing behind my eyelids,
floral shapes shifting in the dark, curling open and shut
like lungs.
Speaker 2: By morning, I.
Speaker 1: Convinced myself it was exhaustion that the spot, the warmth,
all of it had an explanation. I just needed someone
else to look at it, someone responsible because despite everything
I had done, it started peeling again. So I called
the landlord. He picked up and the third ring voice
rough with that put on annoyance people use when they
want to make you feel like an inconvenience. Yeah, hey,
it's me from the rental in Ashbury.
Speaker 2: I said.
Speaker 1: The wallpaper's still coming off worse than before. This's a
I stop myself. I almost said handprint. There's a dark
spot underneath. I thought it was mould, but it won't
come up. The wall feels warm too, he sighed, loud,
drawn out. Oh jeez, you sound like the last guy
that made me pause.
Speaker 2: The last tenant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, him, same thing, walls, this noises, that kept calling
like I was his damn building manager. I told him
to stop fussing, but he wouldn't. Eventually broke lease and split.
I filed for damages, ruined his credit. He said it
like he was proud, right, I said, trying to calm down. Well,
this isn't about credit. The wall's doing something. It's look,
he interrupted, Just scrub it with mold remover and fix
it yourself. That's what normal people do when something's dirty.
You can handle that, can't you. The tone wasn't even subtle,
anymore condescending, mean, like he wanted me to lose my
temper so he could hang up smugly. I swallowed hard.
I've already tried cleaning it, then scrub harder. He actually laughed,
a low, wheezing sound that hit me right in the chest.
If you're not capable of basic upkeeper, I can find
someone who is. Don't make this difficult. And that was
it click. I sat there with a phone still to
my ear, listening to the dead air for a long time.
I didn't move.
Speaker 2: The house was.
Speaker 1: Quiet, but it didn't feel quiet. The silence had a
texture to it, thick, waiting, like the walls were listening
to see what I'd do next. I looked toward the bedroom.
The wallpaper was already curling again, slow deliberate, a flower unfolding.
That was when it hit me. There wasn't going to
be any help. No maintenance man, no inspection, no landlord
riding in with keys and concern. It was just me, me,
the house and the thing behind the wall. I had
to fix this by any means. So I drove to
the hardware store just before closing and walked straight to
the adhesive asle I didn't even bother with the wallpaper
pay section. I knew that wasn't going to cut it.
I found what I was looking for on the bottom shelf,
industrial construction adhesive, the kind used the bond dry walter
cinder block, the kind meant to last decades. I carried
it up to the counter, set it down like I
was buying AMMO. The guy the register gave it a glance,
then looked up at me. You know this stuff's permanent, right,
he said, Once it's on, it's on. I nodded good.
He didn't s anything after that, just scanned it and
bagged it up.
Speaker 2: Back home.
Speaker 1: I changed into clothes I didn't care about, and opened
the top on the bedroom floor. The chemical reek hit
me immediately, sharp and metallic, with that sour undertone, like
burning plastic. My eyes watered, my throat stung. The wallpaper
was hanging lower than before, not just curling, now sagging, drooping,
like it had weight behind it, like it was being
pushed from the other side. I ignored it, laid out
my tools, took a breath, then I went to war.
I slathered on the adhesive with the stiffest brush. I
had no caution this time. No furss, just heavy handed
strokes from top to bottom, smearing it into every crease, corner,
and bare spot. I worked fast, like if I slowed
down the wall might notice the past bubbled as it spread,
thick as cold and twice as sticky. It sizzled slightly
where it met the dry wall. I told myself it
was just a chemical reaction. When I finished, I lifted
the sheet of wallpaper and pressed it down, firm and
steady both palms. I held it like I was sealing
a wound, flattened it hard, smoothed out every ripple, every fold.
I could feel the heat of the wall behind it,
not warm like before, but reactive, twitchy. I prayed I
hadn't accidentally set off a chemical reaction. I held into
my arms, ached until it felt like the glue had
gripped for good. Then I stepped back. The wall looked
normal again, just old, ugly wallpaper patterned with those delicate
little roses that now felt like tiny eyes, And for
the first time in days, I let myself breathe. It
stayed that way for a few hours, no pealing, no smells,
no movement. I ate dinner standing up in the kitchen,
keeping the bedroom in my peripheral vision, like it might
sneak up on me, but nothing happened. Around nine p m.
I walked past the doorway and froze. There was a
shape on the wall, faint but wrong. I flicked on
the light. A bulge right in the center of the wall,
papered wall. It was subtle, barely curved at first, the
kind of distortion you mistake for bad lighting or a
paint bubble. But I hadn't painted anything, and it wasn't
there an hour ago. I stepped closer, didn't touch it.
The paper wasn't loose, it had come and stuck. The
wall itself was starting to push outward. It was swelling
from the inside, like something didn't like being sealed in.
By morning, it wasn't subtle anymore. The bulge in the
wall had grown no longer a ripple or a bump,
but a full swelling at the center of the wallpapered section.
It bowed out like something pressing against a balloon from
the inside. Still no tears or peeling. The pattern remained pristine,
perfectly intact, but the whole thing looked like it was
holding its breath. I stood a few feet back, just staring,
trying to decide whether to leave it alone or touch it.
Part of me wanted to pack a bag and never
look back. Another part wanted to finish the job. Whatever
that meant now. I stepped forward slowly. The air felt
warmer the closer I got. I reached out and pressed
a hand against the center of the bulge. It gave
under my palm, soft elastick. It felt wrong, not like
anything a wall should feel like. It was like pushing
against muscle. I pressed harder, and then it pushed back,
just slightly enough to let me know it knew I
was there. I stumbled backward, breath caught in my throat. Geez,
I didn't think. I grabbed my phone and called the landlord.
He picked up, groggy, irritated. What now, there's damage? The
wall swollen the section I fixed, it's ballooning out like
something's behind it. That got his attention, damage, he repeated.
I could hear his posture shift through the phone. How
bad did you mess with the wall?
Speaker 2: What did you use?
Speaker 1: I used the adhesive, I said, construction grade. The wallpaper
wouldn't stay down side. Oh, he cut in. Suddenly, Chipper,
you use the wrong stuff. I could hear the smile
behind his voice. Yeah, see that's on you. If the
drywall's compromised, I'd have to replace the whole section, and
that ain't cheap. Not to mention my nice wallpaper. You
told me to fix it, I said to paste it.
You used industrial glue. Big difference. That's a liability issue now.
I started to argue, but he rolled over me. I'll
come by tomorrow, bring a contractor. We'll take a look
and get you an estimate for repairs. Click, no goodbye,
no concern, just the sound of a trap snapping shot.
I lowered the phone and stared at the bloated curve
in the wall. The Flora wallpaper stretched like skin over
a bruise, and for the first time I realized this
wasn't just going to cost me money. I was in
something I didn't understand, and I wasn't sure it would
let me out. The landlord's truck rumbled into the driveway
the next morning, followed by a dainted van that looked
like it hadn't passed inspection in years. He climbed out first,
crisp polo shirt tucked into slacks that didn't fit right,
sunglasses perched on top, of his head, like he thought
they made him look important.
Speaker 2: The man who.
Speaker 1: Followed was built like a refrigerator in overalls. He didn't
say anything, gave a short nod before following the landlord
up the steps. From the way, they greeted each other,
the casual laugh, the slap on the shoulder. I could
tell this wasn't the first time they'd done this routine.
The landlord barely said aloe before brushing past me into
the bedroom.
Speaker 2: And there it was.
Speaker 1: The wall bowed and taught, the floral patterns stretched thin.
He gave a long, exaggerated whistle. Ah, he said, rubbing
his chin. Heah, there'll be a problem. The contractor nodded,
already wrung his hand along the bulge. Why be a
moisture pocket, he said, could be pressure building under it.
He turned to me with that fake professional smile. If
it bursts, that's an emergency repair. Could run new thousands.
The landlord glanced back at me. Look for you, I'm
being reasonable, he said, Let's just take a look. I
clenched my fists at my sides. Watching them together, the
two of them, smirking, talking in coded contractor language I
barely understood, made me want to tear the whole wall
down myself. They didn't care about fixing it. They cared
about owning me. The landlord stepped closer, pressing a hand
flat against the bulge. Ooh, it's soft, he said, grinning.
You feel that. That's the adhesive reacting to humidity. The
contractor joined him, pressed a finger into the curve. He chuckled. Low, yeah,
he said, could be pressure building under it. Best not
to poke it too. He pushed harder much. The wall moved,
not the wallpaper, the whole wall. It shifted under their hands,
like something flexing beneath the surface. The landlord frowned, what
the hell? Then it rippled. The bulge pulsed outward once
the floor patterned stretched so tight it almost vanished. A
sound followed, a wet, sticky pop, like a blister bursting,
and then the wall exploded. It happened fast, too fast
for my brain to catch up. The wall burst, not
the plaster cracking, a wallpaper tearing. It ruptured like something
inside wanted out. A spray of thick black liquid splattered
across the landlord's chest, soaking through his shirt and spotting
his face. He staggered back, coughing, eyes wide in confusion.
What the hell? Then her hand shut out. Not human,
not even close. It was slick, the color of wet tar,
and shaped almost like a person's, but too long. The
fingers tapered into jagged, uneven tips, not nails hooks. It
slammed into his chest with a wet thud. He screamed
high and sharp as the thing wrapped around his torso,
digging in deep. His shirt tore, then his skin. The
claws sank in like meat ucks, and then without hesitation,
it pulled. The contractor lurched forward, grabbing the landlord's arm. Wait,
but it was too late. The pull was so fast
I heard the snapping of bones and the ripping of
flesh before even hit the wall. The wall didn't open
wider yet the hand managed to pull the landlord through,
and one yank, violent and messy. Viscerous squirted where excess
skin and limbs caught before entry. The Landlord's body folded,
compressing unnaturally, bones snapping, his limbs twisting inward like wet cardboard.
One's shoulder slipped in, then his chest, his face, his
mouth still open, and a soundless scream, all in one motion,
and then he was gone. All of him, gone through
a space barely large enough for a child to crawl through.
His keys hid the floor and clattered, spinning in a
red puddle. The contractor stumbled backward, face white lips, moving
without sound. I didn't think I ran. We both did
down the hall, hoping the daylight would save us somehow.
Then stupidly I looked back the bedroom door still hung open.
The sunlight reached just far enough inside to light the
wall where the bulge had been, where the thing had
come out. The wallpaper was flat again, perfectly smooth, just
one messy red ring in the pattern, right at chest height.
I escaped behind the contractor. I didn't stop until I
was halfway to the road, hand shaking, vision swimming, chest heaving.
The cops didn't believe us, not really. They showed up
thirty minutes after the nine one one call, two cruisers
and unmarked sedan, and eventually a detective in a gray
button up who looked like it'd rather be anywhere else.
They called an off the bedroom, walked in and out,
took photos and asked the same questions a dozen different ways,
and every time I told them the same story. So
did the contractor, which surprised me. Honestly, he was pale
and rattled, still stuttering when he spoke, but he didn't
change a word. The wall just opened, something grabbed him,
he screamed, The wall had just took him. We stood
together in the hallway while they searched, listening, watching, waiting
for one of them to scream or come running, but
no one did. Eventually the detective called us back in
the bedroom looked normal, no blood, no hole, no black fluid,
just that stupid floor wallpaper, flat, clean, undisturbed. The only
sign that anything had ever had happened was a landlord's
key ring, still lying on the floor where it had fallen.
One of the officers picked it up with a gloved
hand and bagged it like that meant something, like it
proved something. The detective looked at me for a long time.
Then the contractor. He had this expression on his face
like he was trying to figure out whether to laugh
or have us arrested. You're sticking to that, he asked. Finally,
we're telling you what we saw, I said. He nodded,
slowly wrote something in his notebook. We'll be in touch,
he said, voice flat. The investigation would be long, I
knew that, but that left me displaced. My life was
in that house.
Speaker 2: God knows.
Speaker 1: It wasn't smart to stay there, but I had no
other choice. I spent time looking for someone where else
to stay, but had no lock. In the meantime, I
only did what was necessary in the house, changing clothes,
washing myself, storing food. But everything else I did in
my car. I slept there, ate there, and job searched.
The police called a few times, came by once more,
but eventually it just stopped. No rest, no charges, no
real investigation, just the note in the file unresolved disappearance.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 1: The landlord was gone and the wall still standing. I
moved out the next week. Didn't pack much, left behind
the furniture, some clothes, even the mattress. The landlord's van
was still in the driveway when I left. No one
had come to claim it. I dropped the keys through
the mail slot and didn't look back. They kept the deposit,
of course, some nonsense about property damage. I didn't argue.
I just wanted out. I ended up in a house
share on the other side of town. Two roommates, one bathroom, kitchen,
sink that never quite drains right, but it's safe. It's
loud and cramped, and no one knows how to take
the trash out on time. But the walls don't breathe,
and nothing peels itself open in the dark. I sleep
not great, but I sleep.
Speaker 2: Some nights.
Speaker 1: I still dream of it. Not the landlord screaming or
the blood, just the feel of it, that soft give
under my hand, warm like breath, the wall paper stretching
against my palm, my skin waiting to tear. But then
I wake up and it's gone, and I tell myself
I'm lucky I got out. I hadn't been sleeping well,
not in the dramatic, tortured way, just the usual late
nights dragging in to early mornings. Too much screen time,
too much silence. You stop noticing how tired you are
when it's constant. I thought maybe it was the recent
job loss, or the breakup, or the fact that I
was living in a sublet with a ceiling fan clicked
like a metronome made to measure disappointment. People said I
seemed distant.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I tell people I was fine. I'd say it enough
that I almost believed it. But a few nights in
something changed. I was washing dishes, staring out the kitchen
window at nothing in particular. When I heard it, not
a voice exactly, more like a sentence dropped in my head,
complete neutral. He dries the glass. He stares too long.
I blinked. The sponge slipped to my hand. It wasn't
my thought, That's what threw me. It didn't feel like
me thinking. It felt like someone else was thinking at me.
I told myself it was stress insomnia, internal monologue with
too much flair. The next day, on a call with
my sister, she asked how I was holding up. I
open my mouth to lie. Before I could speak, it
came again. He takes the call, he lies, and then
I said it, without even meaning to, I'm doing all right.
I remember the exact moment after, how my fingers trembled
slightly around the phone, how the line was silent for
a beat too long before she replied, that was the
first time I joked aloud. Guess I've got a narrator now.
But it wasn't funny. It didn't stop, and it was
starting to get things right that I hadn't done yet,
And at first the voice stuck to narration, little summaries
of what I was already doing. He scrolls too long,
he reheats left overs. He pretends to read almost funny
in a pathetic sort of way. But after a few
days it started to comment. The first jab came while
I was sitting on the couch scrolling job listings. He
won't apply, he never does. I froze, thumb hovering over
the screen, then closed the app. I told myself it
was a coincidence that my brain was catching me in
old habits, building sentences around guilt. But the timing was
too sharp, the phrasing too pointed. Later, while I was
drafting an email I didn't want to send, it said
he's already lying and he hasn't hit send yet, and
I was. I deleted the email entirely, stared at the
blinking cursor and to the words felt like they had
been scraped out of my head. The voice didn't sound
angry or emotional. It just sounded sure, confident in a
way I hadn't been in months. It was like reading
from a script I hadn't seen. I started testing it
small things. I'd reach for a glass of water, just
to see what it would say. He reaches for the glass.
Then quickly I'd changed my mind. He hesitates, he pretends
that makes him unpredictable. My hand shook so badly I
nearly dropped the glass. I thought maybe this was a breakdown, sleep, deprepation, anxiety,
some kind of disassociative loop. The Internet had words for it,
intrusive thoughts, auditory hallucinations, derealization, except it didn't feel like
a voice in my head. It felt like someone was watching.
By the end of that week, I'd stopped turning on
the TV, stopped playing music, and stopped doing anything that
made me feel less alone. Because that's when it started
saying things I hadn't done yet. He won't sleep tonight,
I laughed when I heard it. Nervous, brittle, Sure I will,
I thought to myself. But the power went out around
one am. The hum of the fridge died, the room
folded into silence so deep I could hear my own pulse.
I got up, fumbling through the dark for my phone's flashlight.
The air felt heavy close. I checked the breaker, the fuse.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 1: Then from the hallway, a faint creak. When I turned,
I saw it, the front door wide open. The cold
night pressed in, sharp and deliberate, and behind my ribs.
That same quiet voice said something's going to break. I
didn't sleep the rest of that night. I checked every
room twice, every window, every lock. Nothing was disturbed. The
only thing out of place was the front door wide open,
with no signs of forced entry, and my phone sitting
on the nightstand, battery drained to zero. I plugged it
in before bed. I was sure of it. The next
day I filed a police report. They didn't find anything,
finger prints, no signs of tampering. The front door hadn't
even been scratched. It's probably stress, the officer said, handing
me back the form with practice sympathy. Sometimes people forget
they opened a door, but I hadn't. And when I
got home, the voice was waiting. Who wonders if he's
imagining it. I froze half way through the threshold. He
steps inside anyway, I stepped inside. It was like someone
writing over my life in real time, erasing the possibility
of free will with every line. I couldn't surprise it,
couldn't get ahead of it. That night, I slept with
the lights on, dragged a chair in front of the door,
tied a string between the handle and my wrist. I
needed proof of a person, of a thing, something. The
voice didn't speak for hours. I almost thought it was gone.
Then as I was drifting off, it whispered, he thinks
he'll be safe if he prepares. I didn't sleep after
that either. By morning, the knot was still tied, the
door was unmoved, everything untouched, but the house felt used,
not in a way I could name, just lived in
by something I hadn't seen. And for the first time,
I realized I hadn't done anything wrong. I hadn't committed
some great sin. I wasn't cursed or haunted or chosen.
Something was toying with me. I wasn't going to I
knew how it would sound, but it had been weeks.
I wasn't sleeping. I kept second guessing every thought before
I could even think it.
Speaker 2: It felt like my.
Speaker 1: Brain wasn't mine anymore. So I called Emma. We'd known
each other since college, the kind of friend you could
call after six months of silence and pick up like
nothing had changed. She met me at a diner near
the edge of town. I told her everything, the voice,
the predictions. I didn't even care how I sounded anymore.
I just needed to say it out loud. I needed
to see someone else react, to anchor me to reality.
She listened, she really listened, asked questions, took my hand
at one point.
Speaker 2: You're under a lot of stress, she.
Speaker 1: Said gently, But I believe you believe it. That counts
for something. It was a full belief, but it was something.
That night, as I lay in bed, the voice returned, slow, deliberate,
he told the wrong person boring, remove her. I sat up,
reached for my phone. Emma's name wasn't in my contacts.
I opened her old text. The thread was there, but empty,
just the gray bar that said no messages. I called her.
It rang once, then her robotic voice, this number is
not in service. I scrowled through photos. I knew I
had dozens with her birthdays, Halloween, that awful karaoke night.
But in every one I checked, she was missing, whole frames,
cropped others where she should have been beside me, empty space.
The next day, I drove to her apartment, different name
on the buzzer, new mailbox label.
Speaker 2: I knocked anyway.
Speaker 1: A woman I didn't recognize open the door, mid thirty's,
short blonde hair. She looked confused. No one named Emma's
lived here. She said not since I moved in six
years ago. Six we'd had coffee yesterday, hadn't we. I
sat in my car for an hour, holding my phone
like it was a dead animal. Her story doesn't need
psych characters if they aren't part of the ending. The
voice whispered, smooth as oil. I didn't know what this meant.
I just drove, and every street sign I passed felt
like he could vanish Next. It wasn't the voice that changed,
It was everything else. A clock on the stove always
read a time that made sense, just never the same.
Twice I look away, look back, and somehow it had
jumped ten minutes forward or back. Once it was midnight,
three times in a row. With the voice, it stayed observant,
a steady interjection that jutted in at random intervals. He
notices time is wrong, but keeps eating. He's starting to
realize this isn't stress. I try ignoring it. I tried
pretending the world still worked. Then it said something new.
He looked at himself and wondered when he stopped being
real That one hit too close. I stared at my reflection,
waiting for it to blink first.
Speaker 2: It didn't.
Speaker 1: It just stared back, hollow and quiet, like it knew
more than I did. But fear still ran through me.
If his voice could make Emma just disappear, what could
it do to me? And I snapped. I punched the
mirror full swing. I watched it shatter, felt it shatter,
glass scattered everywhere. Then I blinked and the mirror was whole.
The glass was gone, and the cut across my knuckles
had vanished. I staggered back, heart pounding. The room wasn't mine,
not completely. The layout was correct, but off. The coffee
table was on the wrong side, the couches and all
the model There were pictures in the wall. I didn't
recognize a smiling family I'd never seen. The narrator was
still calm, still sure he understands now, but not enough.
I sat on the floor, shaking. This wasn't just in
my head. Some one was building the world around me
peace by piece, and I was slipping between versions all week.
I tried to explain it away, drown it out, reason
with it, but the voice was always there, narrating like
I was the joke of some sad, slow story. So
I screamed, loud, ugly, what are you the air didn't answer,
not right away. Finally tuck you long enough. It was
in a whisper. It wasn't inside my head any more.
It was everywhere, the ceiling van Humm, in the fridge compressor,
in the space between my heart beats. I'm the only
real thing here, it said. I felt myself go cold.
I didn't fully know what it meant. You're a story.
You're supposed to be a story, but you're nothing. You hesitate,
you mope, you repeat yourself. You don't give me anything.
I paused at this, not knowing whether the voice was
being literal or metaphorical. I want attention, conflict, growth, but
you just.
Speaker 2: Exist. I shook my head. No, this isn't real, this
is you're not real. I wrote to you.
Speaker 1: I tried to care about you, to get people to
care about you, but this is going nowhere. The lights dimmed,
the walls seemed thinner. So I've been trying to fix
it at some stakes, a little fear, a little mystery,
something that might save this train wreck from total irrelevance.
I backed into the corner, heart pounding, but nothing works.
You just survive, you stall, you bore. There was a pause, then,
like the edge of a blade. I want an ending.
Silence returned, not calm but coiled. Something was coming, but
with how things were the scope of what scared me.
In the silence, I had time to think a story,
it called me, like a character in a play. The
only way for a story to progress is by participating.
This whole thing was something I couldn't fight. It wasn't
physical or external. So my only idea, the only thing
I could think to do, was nothing, pure nothing. The
next morning, that's what I did. Nothing, No longer paralyzed
by fear, this was pure choice. I didn't get out
of bed, didn't drink, didn't eat, didn't speak. I just
stared at the wall and counted the cracks and the
paint and the voice. It waited. At first, it tried
the usual. He woke up, confused, anxious, hard, still racing
from the confrontation.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 1: He got up, poured coffee with a shaking hand, tried
to convince himself none of it was real. Still nothing.
I stayed in bed, face blank, like a body no
longer connected to the script. Then it got bolder, meaner.
He screamed, he begged, he cried. I didn't flinch, didn't
even blink. If this were a story, then I figured
it couldn't move unless I did, so I gave it nothing.
Days past, I grew hungry and thirsty, but I didn't move,
even for the bare essentials. I truly committed to giving
it nothing. The fridge hummed, the sun rose and set,
and the voice unraveled. He's breaking down, losing it. He
wants the scream but can't. He misses his friend, the
one who forgot him. He regrets everything.
Speaker 2: Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Speaker 1: I didn't miss anyone, didn't feel anything. I was done
being a character. Every second I stayed still was another
second it didn't get what it wanted. Let it lie,
let it twist, Let the story rot on the page.
Eventually it stopped narrating altogether. There was no momentum, no tension,
just me rotting in a room, not knowing what came next.
So when the door clicked open, I thought I imagined it,
But the footsteps were real, soft, familiar. I didn't look
up right away, afraid that if I moved, the world
would snap back into fiction. But then I heard her voice,
Are you okay? I turned my head slowly. She stood
in the doorway, My wife, the real her, wearing the
coach she always said, made a look too grown up.
Her eyes were full of cautious worry. Next to her,
a daughter, small, quiet, watching me with a seriousness. Children
aren't supposed to have. My mouth opened, but nothing came out.
She stepped in, took a breath like the place smelled bad,
and it probably did. I hadn't showered, hadn't cleaned, hadn't
done anything but sit and wait to be erased. What
happened to you? She asked, Why won't you entsery your phone?
I didn't know how to explain. I didn't know where
to begin, so I just said I'm sorry, and that
was all it took. She moved across the room and
sank to her knees in front of me. Her hands
touched mine, dry skin, cracked knuckles, but hers were warm,
solid human. We were so scared, she said, you don't
just disappear like that. I didn't know how to come back,
I said, the words catching in my throat. Everything stopped
making sense. I didn't know what was real. I still don't.
She looked at me, really looked, and then leaned forward
and rested her head against my chest. My daughter climbed
up into my lap, without a word, curling up against
me like she'd been waiting to do it the whole time.
And for a moment, one impossible moment, I felt okay.
The narrator didn't say a word. It was just us,
me and them, breathing, warm, alive, and I thought, maybe
this is the ending. But in the interim of silence,
it started with pressure, a kind that makes your ears ring,
a sudden drop, like the air forgot how to breathe.
Then came the wind, not a gentle breeze, a full
body shove. The apartment groaned, the windows trembled, curtains flared
inward as if something was trying to get in. My
daughter screamed a small piercing sound. My wife pulled her close,
shielding her from nothing and everything all at once. It's okay,
I told them, it's just the storm. Bigger storms don't
come from nowhere, and they don't make the floorboard shift
like footsteps. I stepped into the hallway. The front door
was wide open, the knobs still turning, like someone had
just let themselves in. Outside, moonlight poured down in a
flood of silver. But it wasn't gentle. It looked wrong too, sharp,
too focused, like a spotlight through fog. It painted the
threshold like a stage. And from this basking glow, something moved.
A ripple in the light. A shadow, slick and smooth,
crawled across the ceiling, thin as a trickle of oil,
fast intentional. I whispered, what the hell is that? Then
a shriek from behind me, from the bedroom.
Speaker 2: My daughter. I ran.
Speaker 1: The bedroom door was already open, already waiting, and for
a second I thought maybe it was a false alarm,
maybe the scream was fear and not pain. For the
moment I crossed the threshold, I knew they were on
the floor, My wife, my little girl, twisted together in
a tangle of limbs, eyes wide and mouth slack, as
if they hadn't even had time to scream again. Their
throats had been opened, messy and jagged, like claws had
dug in and tore their voices out. The blood hadn't
pulled yet. It was still moving, still hot, and above
them that thing floated a smear of black, oily and
slow moving, no eyes, no face, just motion, constant swirling.
The seal above it cracked, paint blistering, as if reality
itself was struggling to hold around it. I couldn't speak.
I dropped to my knees, landing in the blood. I
didn't feel hands trembling as they reached stupidly, pointlessly for
what was already gone. I wanted to scream, but nothing
came out, no breath, no words, just the silence, so
heavy it rang in my bones. Then the voice came,
smooth and measured, predictable. It said painful, yes, but still dull.
My head whipped around, but there was no source, just
the voice.
Speaker 2: It was back.
Speaker 1: This isn't real, I whispered, voice cracking. This can't be real.
Of course it isn't. The tone shifted, not mocking or cruel,
just disappointed. I gave you a family steaks texture, and
you squandered it. Do you know how hard it is?
The salvage tension? After the second act? Stall, you sat,
you stared, you moped. Now we're crawling toward an ending
with nothing to show for it. I couldn't breathe. This
wasn't even supposed to happen, not like this, but you
left me nothing, no arc, no drive. My wife's body
flickered once twice, and then she dissolved like static noise
and distortion that tore her apart in a thousand little
digital blinks. My daughter followed one second, clinging to me
in memory, the next gone. Only two dark, wet out
lines remained on the floor, like shadows that forgot to leave,
memories of a life filled with love fading, And in
that space where grief should have consumed me, something worse
crept in the cold realization they were never real. I
never had a family, I lived alone. I had a girlfriend,
but we had broken up recently. But the moment I
saw them, I accepted it like it was real, like
it always was. A tragic footnote meant to make me compelling,
and even that hadn't worked. I stared into the red
stained floor, into those empty shapes and wanted to scream
until my throat tore open, But.
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 1: Because I heard the voice again, quiet, this time close,
Let's try something else, And the world blinked out.
Speaker 2: I woke to cold, to.
Speaker 1: Pain already blooming in my arms with a rope bit deep.
My wrists were tied to a chair, thick splintered wood
beneath me, the legs uneven on a cement floor. Pipes
lined the walls rusted and dripping. A single bulb swung overhead,
buzzing like flies. The lights stuttered, The air reaked of metal,
milled you, and something sharp underneath, something alive. Across the room,
a man hum softly, off key, childlike. He stood with
his back to me, laying out tools on a tray,
not surgical but domestic, familiar, things made wrong by arrangement. Pliers,
box cutter, flat head, screwdriver, a hammer with something dried
on the handle. He turned and smiled, two wide lips
stretched to unnatural corners, like some one who had studied
humanity in a mirror and still hadn't gotten it quite right.
He stepped closer conflict. The voice said, stakes pain, Let's
make them care about you. The man reached for the pliers.
I screamed at a reflex. He didn't pause. The pain
was real, so real. When the first fingernail peeled away,
bright and white, hot and immediate, the sound was worse,
the squelch, the snap. My body jerked so hard, the
chest scraped the concrete. I cried out, pleaded, cursed, But
the man was humming again, like he didn't even hear me.
Blood ran down my fingers, hot and quick pattering onto
the floor. I begged for it to stop, but it didn't.
He carried on with each finger on my right hand
and started on the left, each rip. I forced words out,
begging for an answer. Please, I gasped, what do you
want from me? The humming stopped. The man froze, head tilted,
fingers twitching. The tools slipped from his hand with a
soft clatter, metal bouncing off concrete one after the other.
Silence fell. Then the voice returned, like narration bleeding through
the ceiling, with a hint of frustration. Not this, it said, flatly,
It's too repetitive. The bulb above me flickered, sputtered. The
edges of the room blurred, shimmered like heat waves. Tortures, lazy,
the narrator continued, anyone can suffer, doesn't make you interesting.
You're still boring. The man or whatever he was, lifted
his head suddenly, like a puppet cut loose. The pain
didn't fade, it just stopped, like someone pressed pause and reality.
I could no longer see, hear, or feel, no body,
no room, just darkness, endless and silent except for the
ragged sound of my own breathing. And then from somewhere above,
or inside or beyond. Pages turned a sound, like paper
being considered judged. I didn't know what form I was
in anymore, whether I had a mouth or a throat
or a voice, or the words forced their way out
of me anyway. Don't stop the story, I whispered, barely
able to form the words. Please, if you stop, I stop.
By this point, I realized I only exist, did as
long as the story did. When the story ended, so
did I. I didn't know how to give the voice
what it wanted, but that didn't stop me from trying.
Silence then her sound, low and familiar, pages turning, not nearby, above, somewhere,
out of reach, out of understanding. So the voice said, finally,
you understand now, I nodded, or tried to. I'm not real,
I said, but I'm still here. Another pause, no sarcasm,
no contempt this time. Then maybe you've earned another draft.
The light dimmed, folding inward like paper curling in flame,
and I let the dark take me. Sunlight warmed my face.
I blinked. I was on the couch, the stained chair,
the concrete room. The screaming gone, no blood or bindings,
just the soft hush of morning and the low hum
of the t V. My phone buzzed on the arm rest,
unknown number. I answered, unsure of what to expect. A
chip of voice beamed through the speaker. AI just calling
to let you know you got the job, full benefit,
competitive salary. Were so excited to have you on board.
I didn't respond at first, just stared at the far wall,
mouth dry, nodding to no one, then hesitantly thanked them
and hunger. Another buzz, A notification from Instagram. A new
message flashed across the screen. Hey, saw your profile. Thought
you were cute when I grab a drink sometime smile
her face. I clicked the profile and it was the
most beautiful woman I'd ever seen, exactly my type. The
interest on a profile where everything I was into. I
sat up slowly. The room felt artificial, like some one
tried to remember what a morning should feel like. On
the TV, a news anchor rattled off last night's lottery numbers.
I barely heard her, and other numbers hit my ears
one by one. My eyes struck to the coffee table.
A lottery ticket sat there, perfectly alive. Every number matched,
every single one, and in the quiet that followed, I
didn't smile. I didn't move because I understood now, despite
everything that was happening, how I was receiving more than
I could ever dream. The story was.
Speaker 2: About to end.
Speaker 1: Liam and I have been planning the trip for months,
just the two of us, no girlfriends, no responsibilities, just
a long overdue weekend to disconnect. We picked the cheapest
cabin we could find, tucked in the tree thick edge
of some forgotten lake up north. Fishing drinks, maybe a
little weed, the kind of lazy, directionless break we both
pretended we didn't desperately need. I just quit my job,
burnt out. Liam's engagement had fallen apart two weeks before
the wedding. We didn't talk about either. The next morning,
I woke up early, couldn't sleep. Liam followed me down
to the dark, leary eyed, both of us clutching mugs
of awful instant coffee. That's when we saw it, across
the water, barely visible through the fog. A house, A
full on house, two stories, pale siding, sharp roof, perfectly symmetrical,
and definitely not there the day before. Maybe we were
too hungover to notice. Liam said, maybe if someone built
it overnight. I joked, but the chill of my spine
didn't match my tone. We watched it for a while.
It didn't move, flicker, or fade. It just sat there,
still and waiting. We couldn't see a dark or a
path leading to it.
Speaker 2: It was just there.
Speaker 1: Eventually, curiosity got the better of us. We climbed into
the old metal rowboat. The cabin provided or squeaking with
every pull. The Lakers calm, the surface didn't ripple. Even
the fog seemed thick and deliberate, as if it wanted
to hide something. As we rode, I remember thinking, maybe
we're about to ruin someone's very private weekend. The fog
parted like a curtain the closer we got it sat
dead center on the water, no docks, no stilt, no
visible support, just the two story colonial style house, perfectly
above the glass of reflection, as if it had been
cut and pasted into the world without explanation. Liam was
the first to say it there's no foundation. I nodded,
there's no reason it should be standing. We circled it
in the boat, but there was no clear entry point,
just still water and the low whisper of wind. And
then miraculously we spotted a flat wooden platform hidden by
the shadows beneath the water. In front of the porch
steps a place just wide enough to climb onto. We
tied off and stepped onto the platform. It didn't creak
or sway. It felt impossibly so. The front door opened
with the first twist of the knob. Inside was warmth.
I don't mean just temperature. It felt like a loved home,
like someone had been expecting us. Lamps glowed in every room,
soft orange glow, washing over clean furniture and polished hardwood.
A fire crackled in a stone hearth despite no visible
chimney outside. The smell of fresh bread hung in the air.
The dining table was set for two full plates, already prepared,
roast chicken, vegetables, mashed potatoes, still steaming like they'd just
been prepared. Our stomachs growled in unison, but neither of
us dared touch it. Maybe this is one of those
theme rentals. Liam said, like a weird Airbnb experience. I
was too stunned to respond. The place was stunning. Leagues
above the glorified shed which rented We moved from room
to room quiet. Now every bed was made clawsets full
of clothes, neutral, unlabeled but folded with care. Framed photos
hung along the hallways, but the faces were impossible to
make out, like they'd been smudged or captured mid motion.
Familiar an alien. At the same time, everything had that
once loved feeling, old but clean, used but treasured. The
kitchen was fully stocked, the fridge cold and humming, cabinets
filled with dry goods, even a fruit ball on the counter,
apples waxy and perfect. We stood in the living room,
surrounded by silence and comfort. This place is nicer than
our cabin Liam said, by a mile. No mold, no
wood rot, no smell like a raccoon died under the floorboards.
Speaker 2: I added.
Speaker 1: We laughed, but the feeling crept over us that we
didn't belong. This was someone's place, and we were walking
it like a public space. We didn't stay long. The
air inside that house had a way of numbing time,
like everything outside. The walls didn't exist. But when I
checked my watch, nearly two hours had passed. The food
on the table hadn't cooled. Liam whistled low, All right,
enough ghost real estate and s head back before dark. Yeah,
I said, though my voice didn't sound convincing, even to me.
I didn't want to admit how the place made me
feel safe, almost hypnotically, so, like leaving would be wrong somehow.
He was already at the door. You coming, Yeah, right
behind you. He stepped out first, boots thumping lightly on
the wooden platform. The sound was grounding real. Then I
tried to follow and hit something that wasn't there. The
air had hardened, not like wind or resistance. It was
like walking face first into glass. My whole body jolted backward,
my breath caught in my throat. What the hell? I
pressed my hands forward. They flattened against nothing. The doorframe
was right in front of me, open, but I couldn't
cross it. It was like the house itself was pushing back.
Matt William's voice flowed through the fog, muffled. I hit
the barrier again, harder this time. I can't get out.
What are you talking about? I can't get out. Then
everything changed. Every light in the house went out all
at once. The warmth bled away, the fire hissed out
mid crackle. In the sudden silence, the sound of my
own breathing filled the room, quick, sharp and too loud.
The moonlight filtered through the windows in weak silver ribbons,
illuminating motes of dust that hadn't been there a moment ago.
Speaker 2: Liam.
Speaker 1: My voice sounded small, no answer, just the distant, rhythmic
lap of water against the foundation, a sound that somehow
felt closer than it should.
Speaker 2: Liam.
Speaker 1: I shouted, panic rising. My heart beat thudded in my ears.
Footsteps thudded across the porch. Then the door swung wide,
like poured back in around him, like someone had hit
a switch. The fire roared again, the air warmed, Everything
was normal. Liam stood in the doorway, eyebrows raised. What
the hell's your problem? I stumbled forward, gripping the frame.
I couldn't leave the air it I stopped, realizing how
insane I sounded. He looked past me, scanning the bright,
cozy room. You sure you didn't just freak yourself out? Man,
you've been Johnpie ever since we got here. I'm serious,
I said, shaking my head. It was like hitting a wall.
Huggled uneasily, clapping my shoulder. Yeah, a spooky, invisible wall
in the middle of a magic lake. Maybe he's up
on the edibles, huh. But even as he laughed, I
caught it the way his eyes darted toward the open
door behind him, then back to me. He didn't say
it out loud, but I could tell he felt it too.
The air outside was heavy, the kind of stillness that waits.
We kept testing it, thinking maybe it was just the fluke,
some bizarre sensory thing, or maybe we were overtired.
Speaker 2: But no.
Speaker 1: Every time we tried to leave together, shoulder to shoulder,
we both hit it. An invisible wall, like the air
had been vacuum sealed. No resistance, no sound, just solid nothing.
The first time it happened to both of us at once,
we looked at each other and said nothing, just backed
up back into the house. So he tried splitting it
up again. I left first, made it to the porch.
He followed, blocked, and the moment I crossed the threshold,
the lights flicked back on, warm, cozy, like nothing had happened.
Then we reversed it. He went out fine, I followed
blocked again. It became clear you could leave, but only
if someone else stayed behind. One must remain. I don't
know how the house enforced that rule, but it did
every single time, no matter how we tried to game
it Eventually we stopped trying and sat in the living room,
surrounded by ticking clocks and two perfect furniture, A crackling
fireplace didn't burn down, and the food and the table
never got cold. It was all still waiting. Liam was
the one who spoke first. I'll go, he said, I'll
get help, I'll be fast. I didn't like it, but
he was already walking to the door, and as he
crossed the threshold, the light didn't just fade. It curdled.
Warm gold drained into thin gray moonlight that coated everything
like dust. The fire died without smoke. The smell of
bread soured to something metallic and old. The temperature dropped
five degrees and kept falling. I tried turning on the lamps.
Nothing switches clicked, bulbs stayed dead. I even tried the
lighter from the kitchen draw, but when I flicked it,
nothing sparked. So I started walking. At first, everything looked
the same, but age seemed to infect the place. The
once pristine wooden ornaments peeled and flaked into husks that
only resembled what they once were. Then I opened a
door that should have led to the hallway and found
a staircase, narrow, pitch black. I didn't go down. I
closed the door, took a breath, opened it again. The
hallway was back. I stood there for a while, just breathing, listening.
The sounds came slowly, like the house had been holding
its breath and finally let it out. Soft creaks, then
the hum of something shifting, almost organic, like b uans
realigning in the walls. There was movement too, at first,
just flickers at the edges of my vision, a shadow
passing behind a doorway I hadn't opened, Something crawling along
the ceiling, fast enough to make me question if I
saw anything at all. I turned corners that should have
led to the kitchen and ended up back in the foyer.
Doors led to wrong places, windows showed only fog. Eventually
I gave up trying to map it. I picked a room,
a small guest bedroom I hadn't seen before, and shut
the door behind me. It was bitterly cold. I climbed
into bed, fully dressed, clutching the thick covers to my chin.
I heard breathing, not mine, slow deep grasping. Somewhere in
the walls. I heard scratching, two nails or claws dragging, pacing.
Once something brushed my legs under the covers, slow and deliberate.
I didn't move, didn't breathe, I just waited. No noise
after that, just silence, so complete it buzzed in my ears.
I don't remember falling asleep. I must have passed out
from exhaustion. I woke up hours later, cramped, teeth chattering,
heart pounding, like I hadn't rested at all. The room
was darker than before, and the door I came in
through was gone now on the other side of the room,
I stretched off, ready to look around, and felt my
stomach curl. I was starving, not just hungry. It was
like something had reached inside during the night and scooped
up more than food. The lights were still dead, the
fireplace remained cold, ash the food from before gone missing,
like it had never existed. I tried the taps. Nothing
came out, no hiss, no drip, just silence. The windows
still showed, the lake fog blanketed and still, but the
sky hung in perpetual dusk. The moon hovered low, never rising,
never falling. The shadows stayed long stretched. At first I
thought a day had passed, then two. Now I wasn't
sure if time was moving at all. I started keeping track.
I used the stake knife to carve a tally into
the kitchen table. Every time I slept. There were five lines,
now maybe six. One of them was deeper, fresher, but
I didn't remember making it. It didn't let me rest
any more. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt
it watching, not from the darkness, but everywhere, like the
walls were its skin and the beams were its spine.
I could hear it breathing through the grain of the floorboards,
smell it sweet wet rot, even when I pressed a
pillow over my face. At first I stayed in one room.
Then I tried moving, hoping to outrun it, but the
layout wouldn't stay still. Doors opened, the dead ends, staircases twist,
Mirrors didn't reflect the right version of the room, and
for similar of what the room was meant to be like.
It was half guessing the worst other rooms I didn't
remember entering. I'd blink and be standing in a narrow
crawl space, breathing hard, hands scraped raw, like I'd been
clawing at the walls. I once woke up inside a closet,
curled around a pile of clothing that didn't belong to me.
The thing moved differently when I was exhausted. It didn't
bang or scream.
Speaker 2: It stalked.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'd hear it just outside the door, slow steps
that paused too long. Once I saw a shape under
the crack, like something crawling, flatbellied across the hallway, dragging limbs.
I locked the door that night. It tapped slow and
patient on the other side, hours of soft tapping just
beyond the wood. One night I found muddy footprints in
the kitchen, small, barefoot, like a child. They circled the room,
then stopped at the base of the bed. I didn't
hear it, didn't see it, but it was there inches
from me while I slept. At some point I lost
count of the days. The first few talies on the
table were neat straight. I even tried marking time by
the dim shift of light outside, but that stopped making
sense fast. The sky didn't move here, it stayed caught
in that same silver half light. I thought I carved
thirty marks, maybe forty. But somewhere in the blur of
time I stopped sleeping, or I started sleeping without knowing.
I started scratching marks on the wall instead, just to
feel something different, something rough. But even the walls began
to reject it. The scratches would vanish when I looked away.
One time they came back, but moved higher, too high
to reach. The house was keeping its own count. I
hadn't eaten it what must have been weeks. My stomach
ate constantly gnawed at itself, no food, no water. But
I didn't die. My mouth stayed dry, my lips split,
my head spun when I stood too fast, and yet
I'd wake up the next morning, still alive, still here,
still hungry. It wasn't kindness. It was cruelty, measured out
one tick at a time. It was getting bolder. The
first time it touched me, I thought I imagined it
a cold pressure on the back of my neck, But
then it brushed my ankle. When I hid under the bed,
It gripped my arm once while I slept, hard enough
to leave finger shaped bruises. I looked in the mirror
and saw no one behind me. Now I heard it
breathing at night, not just through the walls or doorway
from my pillow. One day or whatever day meant, I
saw a figure standing just beyond the kitchen doorway, not moving,
just watching. It had no face, just the suggestion of one,
a dent where her mouth should have been, a shimmer
of breath where eyes might blink. I couldn't tell if
I'd gone insane, or if insanity would have been a massy.
Speaker 2: Then finally it cornered me.
Speaker 1: I was running again, trying to get to the staircase
that used to lead to the bedroom. It ended in
a wall. When I turned, it was there. It didn't
charge at me. It raised a hand, pointed at me.
The ceiling bent around it like gravity itself was drawn
to it. I backed into a corner, shaking, whispering anything
I could remember, prayers, apologies, my own name, over and over.
Like a shield. He stepped forward, closer. The temperature dropped,
My breath hitched and crystallized in the air. He reached out,
fingertips about to brush my chest. The lights snapped on, warm,
full blinding. The fireplace roared to life, the smell of
cinnamon baking bread. I dropped to my knees, sobbing. The
thing was gone. I wasn't alone, Hey, A voice called.
Speaker 2: I looked up.
Speaker 1: My friend stood in the doorway back lit by the
sudden warmth of the house. He was breathing hard, grinning
in disbelief, like it found me after a long game
of hide and seek. Dude, he said, you're right. I
couldn't speak. My throat felt torn raw. Every inch of
my body saw like I'd been wrung out and left
a dry I pushed myself upright, still on my knees,
eyes adjusting to the impossible light. He crossed the room,
steadying me by the shoulders. What the hell happened? I
was gone, like maybe two hours. I called the guy
who rented us the cabin, but he had no clue
what I was talking about. Said there was no house
on the lake. Thought I was messing with him. Two hours,
I croaked, Yeah, left just past noon. It's not even three.
Yet that hit harder than the cold ever did. I
looked in the mirror and hid my reaction to what
I saw. I hadn't aged a day, but I'd lived
a lifetime. I stared at the fireplace, the plate of
food reset perfectly, the soft hum of peace back in
the air. I'd carved more than thirty marks on the table.
I'd felt my sanity stretched thin, and yet he said
two hours. I didn't even argue, just closed my eyes
for a moment. Then I turned to him, voice low. Look,
I just I need to get out of here, just
for a little bit. I haven't eaten or slept. I
messed up, man. He frowned suddenly, uneasy. I thought you
said we couldn't both leave. No, I said, quickly, that's
not it. We can leave, but not together. One of
us has to stay behind. That's the rule. He hesitated.
So if I stay, you'd be fine. I'll row back,
grab supplies, maybe talk to someone else, be gone maybe
twenty minutes. Tops His eyes flickered toward the door. Seriously,
I said, you don't have to do anything, just hang out,
enjoy the food here. He gave a weak laugh at that.
That's insane. You know that, Yeah, I said, already halfway
to the door. But we're dealing with it, right. A pause,
then a reluctant nod.
Speaker 2: All right, go.
Speaker 1: I didn't look back, didn't check the sea. If the
house dimmed behind me, I just stepped out into the fog,
let the door swing shut, and walk down to the boat.
The water lapped in against the boat as I neared
the halfway point, across the lake, and already I felt
the weight in my chest shift, like something was being
peeled off me, layer by layer. I stopped rowing, turned
my head. The house sat still on the water, perfectly scentered,
but the lights they were gone. The soft golden glow
that once made it look like a dream had vanished.
Its silhouette stood darker than the mist around it. Every
window at Lifeless Square. He was in there now alone,
and I'd known it would happen, I'd let it happen.
I dropped the oars, let the boat drift, and tried
to convince myself there was still time. Maybe he'd figure
a way out. Maybe I was wrong about the rules. Maybe,
just maybe, if I waited, he'd be on the porch waving, laughing, saying,
this place is messed up, man, But I handled it.
I waited. I watched the house remained still cold, untouched
by time or warmth. I rode the rest of the
way in silence. Back in the cabin, everything felt too loud.
The creak of the wood, the hum of the refrigerator,
the crunch of my footsteps all too loud after what
I'd just left. I tried to eat. The food turned
to ash in my mouth, gilt ripped away any semblance
of appetite. I stood by the window, watched the lake,
watch the dark shape where the house waited. I told
myself I could back at sunrise, rest up a bit
for my turn back in there. Then I told myself
i'd go if the lights came back on every hour.
I checked nothing. I went to the dock with the
boat ready, hand on the rope, but I didn't untie it.
I just stood there, feeling the mist curl around my ankles.
And then I started bargaining. Maybe it didn't have to
be both of us getting out. Maybe he was okay,
Maybe this was just temporary, and when I left the
house would vanish and let him go. Maybe the house
only haunted me and was fine for him. I whispered
his name. Once it caught in my throat like a splinter.
The guilt came in waves, shame, anger, denial. I punched
the counter, cursed him for not refusing, cursed myself for asking,
curse the lake, the fire, everything. Then I looked out
the window one last time. Still nothing. That's when I
started lying to myself. He'd seen the dark, now he understood,
he'd know what I went through the walls, shifting, the breathing,
the endless, not quite night. And because of that, if
I went back, if we traded places again, he'd leave
me there. He'd have to, He'd know it's the only
way one of us walks away. So maybe leaving now
wasn't betrayal. Maybe it was the only way to make
sure I survive. That's what I told myself anyway, over
and over, until it stopped sounding like cowardice and started
sounding like salvation, a second chance. I waited until dusk
before packing my bag, fifteen minutes maybe less. Just clothed
to my phone. At the door, I hesitated, looked back
at the half empty cabin, the lake beyond, still, no lights,
just silence. I whispered, I'm sorry, though I wasn't sure
who I meant it for. Then I left