Speaker 1: I've been a frogger since I was thirteen. At this point,
a professional squatter had started as survival, but over time
it became something else. I don't do it for food
or shelter anymore. I'd do it because it makes my
pulse race. I do it because slipping between cracks of
someone's life without them ever knowing I was there, feels
like proof that I existed. People think of squatters as
junkies or drifters, but froggers were different. We'd become ghosts
in pristine houses, ghosts with beating hearts, watching the living
world from air vents and crawl spaces. There's a whole
online scene buried. You wouldn't stumble across us by accident.
You'd have to be broken in just the right shape.
Once you're in, you're in. And I've been doing this
longer than almost anyone else. I've lived in mansions, farmhouses, penthouses,
doomsday bunkers. I've crawled on the floorboards while families ate
breakfast above me. I've watched people sleep from the shadows
of their closets. I've held my breath for hours in
insulation that made my skin bleed. There are contests, longest
stay undetected, most dangerous infiltration, most expensive home, most absurd
hiding place. I've won all of them at least once.
They treat me like a legend. Some of them even
message me for advice. There's a thread with my name
pinned to the top of the forum. I post tips, photos, maps, audiophiles.
I teach them how to disappear in plain sight, how
to become nothing and survive inside someone else's everything. Before
all of that, I was a kid no one wanted.
My mom dropped me at a fire station when I
was a baby, a bundle in a duffel bag. I
grew up in orphanages that smelled of bleach and sadness.
Passed between foster homes like a borrowed jacket. Every new
house came with rules, slaps, broken promises. Some of them
starved me, some locked me in closets. I ran away
from all that when I was nine, took a bus
as far as I could afford, then walked. I stole food,
snuck into unlocked garages, lived in empty homes under renovation.
Then I got better, started hiding in homes that weren't empty.
I watched and listened learned habits and schedules. I found
silence and made it my armor. That's when it changed
from survival to skill, then from skill to instinct, then obsession.
I couldn't stop, even when I didn't need to any more.
I got jobs, eventually did odd work. I started making
enough to rent a place of my own if I
ever wanted it, but I never did. I found the
ranch by accident, dragging through satellite images one night while
riding a post job high. I just finished the clean
exit from a two week infiltration in Boulder, wealthy, newlywed.
As always, I didn't take anything, didn't leave a single sign.
That's what separates froggers from burglars. We're not thieves. I
kept rolling aimlessly, waiting for my drinline to settle. Then
I saw it, a rectangular smudge of green in the
middle of Utah's dry lands. Nothing around it for miles
but dust and sand, all scorched and crumbling. It was
a lost square of impossible color, a full orchard, from
the looks of it, a ranch house with a wrap
around porch. It logged perfect. I pulled it into my
files and started scanning deeper. No records in the County
Assessor's database. I grasp referenced it on four different mapping services.
Same thing. I took a screenshot, logged into the forum,
and posted it under the title anyone tried this place?
The replies came fast. What is that a new movie
set in the middle of nowhere? No thanks, Na man.
Those rural folks don't play ye, don't mess with French families.
Two isolated. If they catch you, they'll bury you in
the back pasture. People have their own guns. They'll shoot first,
ask later if you're lockeye. I waited before replying. Eventually,
some one tagged me directly, don't even think about it.
You're good, but that's suicide. Another added, he won't do it,
he knows better. I stared at that line for a while.
Could have closed the tab, gone to sleep, and found
a safer target, but the green rectangle sat in my
mind like a loaded chamber. They thought I wouldn't do it.
That's why I packed my kit the next morning and
started walking east. I was going to Utah. I traveled light.
Everything I needed fit into a canvas pack that had
been stitched and re stitched too many times to count.
My boots were cracked at the seams, souls reenforced with
glue and strips of tire rubber. I stuck the low
ground and outcroppings during the day, walked at dusk, and
slept under shrubs when I couldn't see a head any more.
It took two full days to cross the desolate stretch
leading to the ranch. The air was dry enough to
strip moisture from your lungs, and the ground swallowed footprints
within minutes. When I finally saw it, it felt like
my mind had been tricked. One moment I was looking
out across endless dead nothing, and the next I saw
color bleeding through the heat. Shimmers grass, tall corn, a
patch of orchard trees bearing fruit, rows of cabbage, and beans.
All of it nestled inside a perfect square of green
that pulsed with life. At its center stood a house
with a wide porch and pale wooden siding. There was
a sharp border at the edge of it, a soft
dent in the ground. It was literally one step of
sand then grass. I stopped at that line and crouched down,
pressed my hand to the ground. The dirt under my
palm felt warm and faintly alive. If that's the right
word for it. I brushed aside a patch of grass
and saw that the line was definitely not natural. There
was something buried just beneath the surface, chalk or salt
or ash I couldn't tell. Formed a thin gray barrier
running through the soil, clean as a ruler line. I
stepped over it. The air smelled different. Immediately, the temperature
dropped by at least ten degrees. My skin stopped burning.
I should have turned back right then, but I kept walking.
I found a good vantage point behind a stone wall
that had collapsed on its western edge. The ranch house
sat two hundred yards ahead, wrapped in a horseshoe of
crops and animal pens. The fields stretched out behind it,
and from where I crouched, I could see a set
of cattle lowering near a feeding trough. The entire scene
looked pulled from a dream, something from a calendar photo
or an old oil painting. The family appeared on the
porch just before sunset first came. The father, broad shouldered
and tan, wiping his hands with a stained rag. His
wife followed, carrying a tray of glasses and a picture.
Three children bounded after her, each under ten. They were
laughing as they ran down the porch steps, chasing a
small dog that darted through the grass. They moved in
a kind of grace I hadn't seen in a long time.
Whatever their lives were, they didn't wear the weight of them.
I was jealous. I watched them eat dinner outside, grilling
over a fire pit near the barn. They passed food
back and forth. The sun eventually dipped low, casting amber
light over the field. It was a perfect postcard, every
detail framed by golden haze. I waited until the sky
turned black and the lights in the house started going
out one by one. Then I moved. I crouched low
and moved fast across the edge of the property. Every
footstep I made I would make sure to stop, wipe
it clean so it doesn't leave a print, and stayed
out of open ground, weaving through trees and parked equipment
until I reached the east side of the house. I
waited again, pressing my back to the cool wood siding,
listening for footsteps or voices. There was nothing. I took
one last look at the darkness behind me, then slipped
around the back of the house and tested the windows.
One of them was unlocked, and I was in the
house was old, but not falling apart. Every piece of
it had been cared for, yet nothing had been modernized.
The floors were polished wood. The walls were dark timber,
thick and slightly walked with age. Shelves lined the corners,
each one stacked with books, jars, and figurines. The art
and the walls wasn't the kind you'd find that hobby
stores or Sunday school. Most of it was hand carved
or painted Demons and angels fighting, horned men, circles of
fire and bone, symbols arranged in patterns I had never
seen before. Most of it looked Christian or some weird
denomination of Christianity. Some of the figures looked human, but
wrong in ways I couldn't explain. One piece near the
staircase showed a figure kneeling in front of a goated
head man with his hands open. Weird religious depictions weren't
rare roll homes, but man, it was a shocker to see.
Every time I moved past it and opened the refrigerator,
I took my time. I had done this hundreds of
times before I knew how to take without drawing attention.
I broke off small pieces from a wedge of cheese,
sipped just enough milk to cool my throat, and took
a spoonful of something sweet from a glass jar. I
wiped the edges of the containers with my shirt and
placed them exactly where I had found them. Once I
was sure the kitchen had no cameras or alarm systems,
I scouted the rest of the ground floor. It was
a wide open layout, no hallways. The living room opened
directly into the kitchen and dining area. Beyond that, a
hallway led to a laundry room and what looked like
a study. A staircase and the fire end curled upward
toward the second floor. I found my hiding spot behind
a false panel in a storage closet near the laundry room.
Some one had remodeled this part of the house recently.
The panel didn't sit flush with the wall. I pried
it loose with a butter knife and found a gap
between the inner wall and the original frame. It wasn't spacious,
but I had slept in worse. I tucked my pack
into the corner, lay back and steadied my breathing. Every
creak of the house made me flinch, but nothing stirred.
I slept in short intervals, waking often to listen. The
next morning, I waited until the family left the house.
I heard the kids talking through the walls, their voices
muffled and distant. At one point, the mother said they
needed to find some fresh meat. Soon. The father grunted
something in reply. One of the children asked if they
were going to the usual spot. The mother said no,
they needed something stronger this time. I assumed they were
talking about live stock, maybe venison, something rural and bloody.
The house was larger than it looked from the outside,
two full floors. I started by mapping the layout in
my head. The kids stayed on the bottom level, tucked
into two small rooms near the kitchen. The parents slept
above them, in a spacious master bedroom that had a
double balcony. There was a third room on the second floor,
locked from the outside. I couldn't figure out what was inside,
but the door had been nailed shut and covered with
a faded wall tapestry. One night, while checking around for
a new hiding spot, I noticed the small in dentation
on the rug in the kitchen. When I lifted it,
I found the edge of a small wooden hatch maybe
two feet wide, with a thin brass handle and four
nails holding it shut. A narrow wooden staircase led down
into darkness. The air rising from the opening was cold
and dry, and he carried that same strange scent I
had noticed when I first entered the house, dampness mixed
with something ancient and faintly sweet. No one had mentioned
this space in the time I've been there. So far.
I hadn't heard anyone go down there either. If I
could make that space my own, I could stay here
as long as I wanted. I could vurnish beneath the
house and live for months without a single footprint. If
they never used it, it was mine. Close the hatch
and pulled the cabin at back into place, pressing the
rug down to hide the seam. All I had to
do was wait for the right time to move in.
If I did now, there was no guarantee the stairs
leading down wouldn't creak and groan. I had to wait.
Two mornings later, I heard the mother mention the same
thing again. I had slipped out of my hiding spot
before dawn, and crowds just behind the half open door
to the pantry The kids are in the kitchen eating breakfast,
while the parents moved around the counter packing something into
canvas bags. We'll need to be gone at least a
full day this time, the mother said, maybe two. If
we can't find any on the low trails, we'll go further.
Should we take all three? The father asked no, She said,
just the deep one. The others are too thin. The
land won't respond. I didn't know what they were talking about.
One of the kids asked if he could stay up
late while they were gone. The mother gave him permission,
then leaned in and kissed the top of his head.
The other two whined about having to feed the goats
and prep the drying racks. Again, me, he'll bring back
fresh meat. Be patient, the kids groaned in unison. They
were leaving. That meant the house would be empty. I waited.
Once the house was quiet and I was sure that
the parents had gone, I slipped from the wall panel
and crossed through the kitchen barefoot, stepping carefully to avoid
the boards that creaked. I peeled back the rug and
exposed the hatch and lifted without a sad. I didn't hesitate.
I stepped into the hole and pulled the hatch closed
above me. The stairs groaned, but not too loudly. My
shoulders scraped both walls as I descended, and the temperature
dropped with every step. The smell hit me halfway down.
Iron and soil was thick in the air, clinging to
the roof of my mouth. When I reached the bottom,
I stood in pitch black and listened. My breathing echoed
faintly off stone. I pulled a flashlight from my belt,
wrapped the lens in cloth to dim it, and clicked
it on. The basement was fairly large, rough stone walls
braced with timber hooks hung from overhead beams, rusted chains
dangling beside them, some old fibers stuck to the lynx.
The floor was staining in regular patches. I moved slowly,
casting the light across the space. There were animal bones
along the far wall, stacked in a bin, beside what
looked like a salt block, and several glass jars filled
with dark liquid. I start myself before the anxiety got
too loud. My first instinct was to run. I don't
know why. Maybe it was the smell, or the cold,
or the way the silence bent around me. My legs twitched,
ready to sprint up the stairs, but then the voice
in my head, the one I've been sharpening for years,
kicked in. Calm down, use your eyes. You've seen butchering
rooms before, man farmers put meat and then dry it.
That's probably what they used the basement for. Besides, this
family had done nothing out of the ordinary in the
time I've stayed here. The weirdest thing about them was
the religious stuff around the house, and that wasn't even
the weirdest thing I've seen in homes in my life.
I made my way to the far corner and checked around.
There was no way out but the stairs, but the
corner itself had just enough shadow, and a few crates
blocked direct line of sight from the center of the room.
I pulled them aside, stepped down, and wrapped myself in
the old canvas drop cloth I had stashed in my pack.
Just before I dozed, I heard the basement hatch open,
a faint click, then the groan of old hinges. My
eyes snapped open, and my breath locked my chest. I
twisted beneath the canvas and pressed my face between two
wooden slats. The stairs creaked one step at a time.
Soft voices followed four sets of feet. I angered my
flashlight toward the floor and watched their shadows stretch into
the room. The first two were the parents. I recognized
their outlines immediately. The man walked ahead, carrying something heavy
draped across his shoulders and looked to be a person.
The woman followed with a bundle tucked under one arm.
Behind them came the two others, robed, their faces completely hidden.
The man stepped into the center of the basement and
signaled for what seemed to be his companion to do something.
He took a table that was near them and dragged
it to the center of the basement. The other man
laid the burden across the table. I could see it now.
It was a woman. He sat down, and she seemed
to be unconscious. Her limbs hung limp, her hair had
been matted with sweat, and a stomach bulged beneath her dress.
Was she pregnant? I felt my stomach lurch. Her chest
moved shallowly, so she was still breathing at least. The
robed men stepped fully into view, and I got my
first proper look at them. Their robes were deep black,
made from something thick and textured, and each one was
stitched from the neck to ankle, without a single seam
visible around their hems and sleeves. Cymbals had been embroidered
in a sickly off white thread. One of the row
figures produced a long piece of bone, sharpened to a
fine point, and dipped it into one of the dark
glass jars. He bent low and began tracing a perfect
circle in the dust, followed by a pentagram at his center.
The lines gleamed wetly, and from the way the lantern
caught them, I realized he was using blood. It dragged
across the stone in thick strokes, bleeding into the grooves
carved into the floor itself. The other robed figure stood
by the table, whispering something low. As the father and
mother adjusted the woman's position, Her stomach rose in a full,
tight curve. She was heavily pregnant, close to term. She
remained unconscious. The table they placed her on was an
old butcher's slab, covered in scars and grooves, the grain
of the wood blackened and glossy from years of use.
The father stepped back as the robed man finished the pentagram.
The lines met closed, and the robed man gave a nod.
She is strong, one of them, said, She'll hold, said
the other. The mother moved to the far corner and
opened a wooden crate. She produced a long curved dagger
wrapped in red cloth and handed it to her husband.
He took it without a word and stepped up to
the table. He leaned in and placed the hand on
the woman's forehead, brushing her hair aside, like he was
saying goodbye. Then he placed the blade into a chest
and drove it straight through her sternum. Her eyes snapped open.
She didn't scream, but her mouth twisted as her hand
seized at the edge of the table. Her back arched
and her legs kicked against the slab. A choking sound
rasped from her throat. Blood welled up around the handle,
thick and dark, soaking through her dress and pulling across
the pentagram un eather. She convulsed once more, then went still.
The basement fell into silence for several long seconds. The
father stepped away from the body and wiped the blade
against his sleeve, folding it again in a red cloth
as if it were a sacred object. The two robed
men began chanting something in a gutural language made of
deep clerks and harsh consonants that didn't resemble anything I
had ever heard. The mother ascended the stairs without explanation
and vanished through the hatch. She returned several minutes later,
cradling something in both arms. At first I thought it
was a bundle of fabric, or maybe an animal, but
then I saw it was a severed goat's head, freshly taken.
Blood still dripped from its neck and darkened a blouse.
As she came, bread had across the room with care,
as though presenting her newborn. The goat's eyes were milky
and half closed, and his tongue lolled out between its teeth.
One of the roped men retrieved a short sow and
placed it on the table. The father held the woman's
body steady while the mother guided the blade. It took
several strokes. Her neck split slowly vertebray, crunching as the
saw made contact with bone. I could barely watch. Her
head came loose with a wet snap, and the mother
lifted it free, laying it in a clay bowl beside
the table. Then they placed the goat's head on the
open neck, seating it awkwardly. Blood ran from the seam,
soaking the pentagram. Again. He looked so grotesque and wrong.
I'd use every ounce of willpower to not wretch, an
to throw up. It sat too high, its sizes off
by just enough to make the body beneath it seem small.
The mouth twitched, and for a moment I thought I
had imagined it. The mother and father began to spread
salt in a precise pattern along the edges of the circle.
Every few seconds, they paused, muttered a word, and dropped
small metal tokens, coins, rings, a gear, a broken key.
The cymbals carved on the floor flared dimly, then pulsed
again brighter. The temperature shifted around me, dropping to freezing
in seconds. My teeth clenched as I wrapped my arms
around my chest. The table began to tremble. Then the
body twitched, first the legs, then the arms, then the fingers.
One foot kicked, then the other. The abdomen clenched once twice,
then swelled unnaturally. The goat head rose slightly, its mouth
opened and hung From deep within it came a sound
I'd never heard repeated, since it was low and wet,
a gurgling croak that built into a shuddering intake of breath.
It rose upright, arms rigid at its sides, and then
it spoke, why have you summoned me? One of the
figures stepped forward, arms outstretched in reverence, and bowed low
before answering, The crops have dulled, the ground has dried.
The air takes more than it gives. We need your blessing.
We need the land to breathe again. The goat head
twisted slightly to the side and hovered that way for
several seconds, as if considering their words. Then its arms
jerked upward, bone cracking at the shoulders, and its hands
snapped open. The entire table rattled beneath it. A long
growl rose from his chest and deepened into a gurgling scream,
its volume climbing until it filled every corner of the basement.
One of the jars near the altar cracked. The father
staggered back and caught himself on a crate, his face pale.
The mother clutched the silver charm that had been hanging
around her neck. The creature slammed its hands down on
the table, splintering one of the legs. It bared its
teeth and hissed through clenched jaws. His voice ret turned
less articular. You have wasted blood. I will not take
our offerings in such circumstance. The robed men exchanged the glance.
Something disturbed it. One said, we must abandon this sight
for twenty four hours, let it rest that the lines reset.
The other said, we will stay with you at your ranch.
He said, looking over at the man and woman. When
we return here, we cleanse every inch of this basement,
every crack, every hiding place. It will all be scrubbed.
They began collecting their tools in silence. The creature hissed
again and pressed its hands against the inside of the pentagram,
testing it. The salt still held. I saw one green
tremble at the edge and roll across the line. A
faint spark flared from the ground, and the creature recoiled,
return prepared, it said. They didn't speak again. One by
one they ascended the stairs. The hatch creaked shut behind them.
The sound of metal locks sliding into place hit first,
then the dragging of something heavy across the top of
the hatch, A power drill whined. The seal was thorough.
They weren't just closing it, they were barricading it, ceiling
the basement shut from the outside world, with no intention
of returning until they believed it was safe. I sat
frozen beneath the crates. My back was damp and clung
to the wall. Each bang above me, he sent a
new spike of dread through my chest. I felt like
I'd just been buried alive. I closed my eyes and
buried my head against my knees, counting seconds in my
head to keep from losing it. Then it spoke to me.
I know you're here. The voice came softer this time.
I smelled you as soon as I came. I tried
to keep my breath quiet enough to vanish into the walls.
You watched it, It said, you've been watching for days.
I stayed still, but every part of me burned with panic.
I didn't know if he could see me, or if
it only sensed me. He let out a deep, slow
breath that filled the basement, and like steam rolling out
of a furnace. You and I we are the same.
I stayed curled behind the crates, with my body locked
in place, listening as The creature shifted on the table.
His voice filled the room again, drawing out each syllable.
You are small but capable. I clenched my jaw and
tried to ignore it. But my arms are already starting
to tremble. My legs had gone numb. I didn't know
how long I could keep this up. The voice drifted closer.
I know what you desire. I wanted to yell back,
to tell it to shut up, but I couldn't summon
the courage. You want to leave, it continued. They will
not let you. They will come back tomorrow with fire
and oil. They will burn the walls, they will tear
the floors apart. They will find you. I let the
thought pass through me. It wasn't hard to imagine if
they had gone this far, then finding a frogger in
their basement would only make their work easier. I would
become another ingredient. But I can help you leave. The
words stopped my breath. Break the salt only a single line.
Then we shake hands. That is all I help you,
it said, And you help me. One wish, That is
the price one. I didn't answer. You do not have
to die here, it said. I pressed my fingers to
the floor. I counted my options and found none. If
I stayed, I would be found. If I ran, I
would be caught. If I waited, I would be part
of the next ritual. I stepped out from behind the
crate and walked toward the table. It crouched low on
the table, now knees folded beneath it, one hand resting
on the wood and the other stretched toward me with
its palm open. His head followed my movement without turning,
but his presence bore down on me with unbearable weight.
I approached slowly, my eyes and the edge of the
salt line. The grain shimmered slightly as I neared. You
are close, it said, finish shit. I stepped forward and
used the tip of my boot to break the smallest
section of the circle. The salt scattered outward. The creature
rose to its full height in a single motion, limbs
unfolding with perfect fluidity. It stepped over the line and
stood before me, towering not with bulk but with form.
The dress it wore hung in tatters, soaked through with
blood that had dried in layered streaks. The goat's head
stared straight through me, its hands still hung in the air.
I reached forward and tuck it. The moment we touched,
the entire room shivered. The ceiling cracked once above us.
A gust of wind passed through the room. The creature
nodded once, then spoke. Turn around. For a second. I
thought this would be it. This was the part where
I would rip me in half, or drive his fingers
into my skull, or whisper something into my ear that
would collapse my mind. I thought it would betray the deal,
twist it, drag me down into whatever hell it had
it come from. But I turned around and accepted my fate.
After a while of nothing, I turned back and it
was gone. Then I heard it, wood splintering, a scream,
sharp and short. I crouched and crept toward the stairs
step lightly to avoid the cracked boards. Another crash followed,
then a sound that turned my blood cold. It was
wet and sudden, like someone tearing a roast from the
bone with bare hands. A gurgling cry ran out, followed
by a thud that shug dust loose from the ceiling beams.
Some One else yelled a deeper voice, this time angry,
cut off by a second impact that made the floor groan.
I reached the top of the stairs and pressed my
ear to the hatch. Muffled movement echoed above me. I
eased the latch open. Whatever had been used to barricade
it was gone. I slipped through the opening and rose
to my feet. In the kitchen, the light was dim
fed only by the flicker of lanterns that swung in
the hallway. A smell hit me before I saw anything,
blood warm enough to coat the air. I moved through
the living room and crouched behind the banister near the
front entryway. Beyond the corner, I saw the creature. The
flesh was pale and glistening with sweat and blood. Veins
pushed against the skin as if something large writhed beneath
the surface. His torso swelled unnaturally with each breath, and
the skin around its belly stretched so tight I could
see the outline of something shifting inside. The goat had
remained fixed above it, all still slight, jawed, and expressionless.
The air around it vibrated from the growling sound rising
from its throat. One of the roped men, in clear desperation,
charged forward with a blade drawn from his belt, but
the creature swatted him aside with one arm, shattering his
jaw and throwing him into the far wall. His body
hit the bugshelf and slid down, crumpled and twitching. The
other raised his hands and began chanting. The creature lunged forward,
driving its fingers through his stomach. They punched through his
robes and into his flesh with ease. He buckled around them,
and the chanting died in his throat as he collapsed,
folded in half. The mother and father tried to run.
The father was too slow, however, so he grabbed a
shotgun from behind the door and fired once. The blast
tore through the creature's shoulder, exposing raw muscle, but it
didn't flinch, It didn't bleed. The flesh folded back together
as if nothing had happened. Across the room in two
lurching strides, and tackled him against the wall. I heard
the bone crack before he even screamed. The creature pinned
him there and pulled the gun from his hands, pushed
its face into his neck, and bit down. The mother
suffered a similar fate. I didn't wait for my turn.
I ran through the side door, out across the field
and toward the edge of the property. My legs burned
and my lungs pulled cold air that stung my chest.
The sky above me swirled with smoke and stars. The
property lion came into view ahead of me. Grasp stopped,
and sand began, just as it had the night I arrived.
My body slammed into something solid and invisible. It knocked
me back flat on to the ground. I gasped, rolled
on to my knees, and tried again. I clawed forward
and lunged with my shoulder, but the wall held. There
was no sign of what was stopping me, just empty
air with a density of steel. I beat my fists
against it. I kicked it. I even screamed at it,
hoping something would shift. Nothing did. Behind me, it was coming, galloping,
hands and feet, pounding the dirt frantically. I turned and
saw it charge through the dark, arms bent, mouth wide,
Its goat face stared directly ahead. Those empty sockets locked
onto mine. Its legs kicked up dirt as it closed
the distance. I braced myself and shut my eyes, but
it stopped inches in front of me. Its breath was
harsh and fast. I felt the warmth of it on
my skin. I opened my eyes and saw the goat
head tilted downward, close enough that I could see the
crusted blood dried unto the hairs around its mouth. It
just stared. Then it sat down in the dirt, folded
its arms over its knees, and whispered one sentence, my wish.
It set back, slowly, folding its legs beneath itself, arms
resting on its thighs, shoulders, heaving with slow breath. The
goat's head tilted down toward the earth, and the body
underneath began to sag, Muscles quivering beneath us, stretched sweat
slick skin of the pregnant woman's frame. My wish is this,
you must raise my kin. I didn't understand what it meant.
At first. The words registered, but the meaning floated beyond them.
The creature lowered itself further into the dirt and wrapped
its arms around its abdomen. The flesh swelled and pulsed,
shifting in thick waves as something began moving inside. It
gritted its teeth and bent forward, nails dragging through the
earth beneath it. I watched the belly twitch and lurch,
muscles contorting as if something larger than the frame of
the woman's body had ever been meant to contain, began
forcing itself free. It whimpered once, a low rasp torn
through clenched teeth, then braced itself on one arm and
reached between its legs with the other. Blood poured out
under the grass, soaking the soil beneath it. The stench
filled the air. I wanted to look away, but I
was locked in place. The body convulsed once more, and
then something slipped free and hit the ground with a wet,
muted slap. I was small, no larger than a toddler.
Its body was covered in coarse black hair and gray skin.
Its limbs were jointed like a person's, but longer and hairer.
Bones jotted out at odd angles, and from its back
two leathery wings unfolded and stretched outward with a slow
fluttering pulse. Its head was elongated and bent forward, nose
flat and wide, eyes already open. It blinked once, then
rolled on to its back and looked up at me.
I understood then what I needed to do, so I
rushed forward, grabbed it by the torso, and hurled it
down against the dirt with everything I had it bounced once,
let out a short yelp, and rolled to its side.
I turned found a smooth rock about the size of
a football near the edge of the line, and raised
it above my head. My arms trembled from the weight,
from the panic, from the surge of hatred I didn't
even know I could feel. I brought the rock down
on its skull once, twice, three times. It giggled. Then
it looked up at me and said, dad, there. I
dropped the rock and stumbled back, nearly falling. I wanted
to scream, but nothing came out. It reached one hand
toward me, fingers splayed, smiling. I don't remember walking back
to the ranch. I must have been in shock. My
body moved, but I didn't guide it. My arms clutched
the thing to my chest. It rested against me and
pressed its head beneath my chin, breathing slow instead humming
to itself. Its small hands gripped the collar of my
shirt with frightening strength. I walked into the house, expecting
to see blood, but there was nothing there. The hallway
rug had no stains, no tears. I passed through the
rooms in disbelief, searching for any trace of what had happened,
there was none. The fireplace glowed with a faint bed
of coals, as though someone had stoked it an hour ago.
I climbed the stairs, still holding the creature to my chest.
Its eyes were closed, it smiled in its sleep. In
the master bedroom, the bed was made, the curtains were open.
Sunlight washed through the room in slow golden waves. I
stood in the doorway with my hands trembling and my
knees ready to buckle. The windmill outside turned slowly in
the breeze, casting long shadows across the fields, and I
understood then that I wasn't going anywhere. I tried to
kill it again during the first night, after returning to
the house and wandering through room after room that had
been white clean of blood and memory, I laid it
down on the kitchen floor and grabbed the heaviest butcher
knife I could find. I raised it over its chest,
two hands on the grip, and stared at the pail
pulsing skin between its ribs. Its chest rose and fell slowly.
It looked asleep, though its eyes were open. I brought
the knife down with everything I had. The blade, hid
the skin and stopped as if striking cured leather, I
pressed harder. It didn't pierce. It didn't even leave a scratch.
Her thing blinked once, reaching up with a tiny hand
and tapped the edge of the knife like it was curious.
Then it laughed, a small imitation of human joy that
sent a chill down the length of my spine. I
dropped the knife and stumbled backward. It rolled on to
its side and cooed, dragging itself across the floor. Later
that night I found the father's gun. The shells were
still in a wooden box beside it, organized by caliber.
I loaded it round and pressed it to the side
of the thing's head while it napped in a bundle
of blankets. I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. I opened
the chamber and checked the bullet was clean. I reloaded,
tried again, click nothing. I pointed it at my own
temple and fired. There was a flash and a crack,
and then everything went black. I woke up on the
porch with a creature sitting beside me, giggling. Again. My
ears rang. I checked for blood and found none. The
bullet was lodged in the wood beneath my seat. I
tried again, this time, I aimed at my chest. The
fire bloomed through my ribs and dropped to my knees.
I passed out, choking at my own breath. I woke
up in bed, tucked beneath a wall blanket. The creature
stood by the window, humming to itself, staring out of
the field. The gun rested on the night stand with
a safety on. I couldn't take the sound of its
laugh anymore. I waited until noon, when the sun was highest,
and climbed up the windmill. It wasn't tall, but it
stood far enough above the property that I could see everything.
The land rolled out in perfect symmetry. Everything in this
place was a symbol, from the fences to the paths.
I saw it clearly from above. The windmill stood at
the center each plot of land, each structure, each buried
mark and etching in the stone, had been placed to
match the design of a vast, incomprehensible symbol. I laughed,
I don't know why. I think I lost something in
that moment, something important. I climbed to the edge, spread
my arms and jumped. The fall should have shattered my
legs and broken my spine, but the impact felt like
hitting a warm mattress. I bounced once and rolled through
the dirt. My limbs ached, but nothing snapped. The creature
watched from the fence. It clapped twice, like I had
done something clever. Time started to rot. I stopped counting days.
I would wake up and find the creature'd move the furniture,
arrange plates and circles on the floor, place books in
spirals across the kitchen tiles. It mimics speech and movement.
It watched me eat and copied me, though it never
needed food. I never saw it sleep for long. Sometimes
it stood in the hallway and stared at the ceiling
for hours. It smiled more. Its teeth changed, The front
row straightened, the gums pinkened. The texture of its skin
began to smooth. The wings on its back folded down
and slowly receded. Its fingers shortened, its gate adjusted. It
stooded me when I moved, and copied me without hesitation.
At some point I recalled my old frogging community. I
silently prayed they'd noticed my absence and maybe someone would
come to this ranch and rescue me. But nobody came.
I tried to run. I tried to walk into the
woods and keep going. I hit the barrier again. I
circled the entire perimeter for days. The invisible wall was absolute.
It never stopped following me either. Some days later, something happened.
The sky was clear, the stars flickered in slow spirals.
I sat on the porch, staring at the dark, holding
an empty cup. My fingers ached, my back started to curve.
My hair had thinned. I hadn't aged normally, but I
hadn't stayed the same either. My body was changing. Then
I felt it. A heat rose from behind me, soft
and warm, followed by the faint creak of wood beneath
careful steps. I turned and saw it standing in the doorway.
It wasn't the unholy demon spawn anymore. It was human.
It was morphed. Its features were perfect, Its skin was clean,
Its hair was dark and soft, combed and parted. It
wore simple clothes, a linen shirt, but its eyes still
carried the same smoke. Behind the pupils, a swirl of
faint gray fog moved slowly, and on its forehead, just
below the hair line, a small circular mark glowed faintly.
It stepped forward and sat across from me. Then it
reached forward, touched my hand and said thank you. The
church was empty. It was just me, the candles, and
the rain tapping against the stained glass like a restless child.
It had been storming since dusk, an unending curtain of
water from a bruised sky. I sat in the confessional
with my hands folded loosely in my lap and my
eyelids heavy, but not from a lack of sleep. It
had been a long day, with two funerals, a hospital visit,
and a broken boiler in the rectory. I just started
to think I might close early when I heard the
door at the back of the sanctuary open. A gust
of wet air followed someone in, along with hesitant footsteps,
much different from a regular parishioner's confident pace. I straightened,
Then the curtain slid aside. I heard the soft squish
of wet fabric as they settled on the opposite side
of the confessional, Then a faint rasp of his breath,
and how his weight shifted, like someone fighting the instinct
to bolt. Finally, he spoke, low and unsure but clear,
forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. The ritual took
over my voice came easily and automatic, though something in
my chest tightened. God is always watching my son, I said,
speak freely. The Lord offers mercy to all who seek it.
At first, he said nothing in return. Yet the way
the air changed betrayed his lack of response. I knew
then that he was going to tell me something, and
it wasn't going to be easy. His voice came again, steadier, now,
like he had stepped back into the safety of memory.
I grew up on a farm, he said, Just me
and my mamma, out past the river bend, where the
road turns to gravel. We had no neighbors close enough
to wave two. He exhaled slowly. She was a believer.
She didn't just speak the word no, she lived it.
Every evening before supper, she'd read from her old leather
bound Bible. I remember her soft but unwavering voice. Even
when the storms came and the lights flickered, she'd light
a single candle and read Psalm twenty three like it
was a promise she was making to both of us.
He paused, and for a second I imagined he might
be wiping his eyes as he remembered a fond memory
of his mom. She carved crosses into everything, the fence posts,
the barn doors, and even the wooden spoon she stirred
us dough with. She said it kept evil out, and
reminded the Lord we were watching back. His tone dipped
into something warm and fond. It was in a fancy life,
but it was ours. We had three hens, Pearl Marigold
and little sister Her, and a stubborn old goat named Moses,
who chewed through more of our laundry line than I'd
like to admit. We had potatoes, turnips, and a patch
of carrots that only ever grew crooked. Sometimes we traded
our eggs for milk. There was never more than we needed.
But she always smiled when she said it, the Lord provides.
I could hear something shift in his breath, like he
was close to brushing up against the memory in which
his I don't mind saw the truth. Winter was the hardest.
I remember. One year she boiled onion skins just to
make broth. She told me it was French soup and
made me sit up straight, like you were in a
Paris cafe. She even folded a towel for me to
use as a napkin. I believed her that's the kind
of woman she was. She could make suffering feel like theater.
The confessional had gone quiet around us, the storm muffled
by thick stone walls. But at that moment, I swear
I could feel the cold of that farmhouse kitchen, the
scratch of old quilts, and the soft light of candlewax
dripping beside a prayer. I let the silence hold between us,
unable to shake the feeling that whatever was to come
would be a heavy weight for us both to bear.
It started with Pearl, he said, the oldest hen. She
stopped laying, which was an unusual, But then she started
acting hard, wondering in circles, pecking at her own feathers.
One morning I found her standing motionless in the yard,
eyes leaking this dark red stuff like tears. She didn't
squawk or anything. I ran to tell Mama. She looked
at Pearl for a long time and whispered, And the
next day Pearl was gone, buried. Mama said, But they
never saw a shovel. Then it was Marigold, then little Sister,
then Moses. All of them followed the same pattern their eyes.
Something in their eyes was just wrong. But Mama told
me she'd take care of it, and that everything would
be okay. The garden turned next, one by one. The
carrots split open from the inside, like they'd been cooked
in the dirt. The turnips came up black and soft,
and the potatoes, when we harvested them, were little more
than husks, like something had suck them dry from the inside.
I asked if we were curst, and she said no,
and that the Lord is testing us. I could tell
she believed it. She prayed harder than ever. She would
hardly eat so I could, and in the middle of
the night I'd find a knelt beside the kitchen window,
whispering scripture to the wind, sometimes just mouthing the psalms
into the dark. There was something sacred, and how he
spoke of her like a child, recalling the warmth of
a hand that always knew how to hold his without
needing to say a word. She didn't panic, not once
did I think anything was wrong. She did everything to
keep me calm. Even when I asked what we'd do
without food, she just looked at me and smiled and
said he will provide. And in that moment I heard it,
the quiet turn of something in his voice. It was
the next morning, he said. The frost hadn't even lifted.
When Mamma came to me, her hands wrapped in a shawl,
like she was cradling something delicate. She said, go to
town to day. Look for someone cold, someone who's hungry.
Bring them here the Lord reward's kindness. It made sense
at the time. That was how Mamma thought. When times
were lean, you gave more, You open your door wider.
That's what she taught me. So I went. I walked
all the way into town, kicking rocks and counting steps
and praying I'd find someone to help. Near the train yard,
I found a man. He was older, wrapped in layers
of newspaper and threadbare denim. He was humming to himself,
eyes half closed, like he was dreaming of food. I
told him we had warm soup and fresh bread, a
barn to sleepin' if he didn't mind the hay. He
looked at me like I was a ghost. Then he followed.
Mamma greeted him like she'd known him all the life.
She called him brother. She sat him down at our
little table and served him a bowl of stew. The
smell was so strong it made my mouth water, and
the bread was still warm. I don't remember where she
said she got the flower. I didn't think to ask,
in fear that it would disappear if I acknowledged it.
He stayed the night in the barn. I brought him
an old quilt in a lantern. They thanked me and
said we were angels. The next morning he was gone.
Mamma said he'd left early. She said he was grateful
and traded us something before he went. He inhaled, sharp
and shallow. There was meat on the table that morning,
real meat, pink, marbled, steaming in its own broth. She
said it was a blessing and the man had traded
goods and I I didn't question it. I just thanked God.
After that, we always had something, not a lot, but enough.
Every few weeks she'd send me again to find someone
alone and hungry. I didn't understand it. Then she started
a new tradition where just before eating, she'd take white
linen napkins from the drawer we only used on Christmas
and carefully draped it over her head so it hung
down like a veil. She told me to do the same.
I remember the first time I giggled and said, she
looked like she was playing dress up, but she didn't laugh.
She just looked at me through the cloth and said,
that's the point, baby. We hide our faces so God
doesn't have to watch us eat. We eat in private,
hidden from the eyes of heaven, and then we'd say
the same prayer, always the same words, like a song.
Only the two of us knew. Lord, bless this meal,
Bless the soul who gave it, and keep our hands
from shaking as we take what was given in grace.
She made me whisper it three times before touching the spoon.
It was never skipped, he swallowed. We'd eat in silence,
chew slowly, and pray again when we were done. I
was a child. I didn't understand. All I knew was
I gained a weird sense of hunger that only that
meal could quench. I sat back slightly in the confessional,
the warmth of the wood against my shoulder doing little
to ground me. I wanted to believe this was all
a metaphor, that he was speaking in the language of parable,
of symbolic hunger and strange rituals born of grief or madness.
But some part of me there was a sharpened instinct,
honed from years of hearing the worst of people. Wondered
where those people he had brought home had gone, the
ones soon never came back, who were needy yet still
had things to trade. Still, I could not accuse that
wasn't my place, But I felt the hair at the
back of my neck begin to rise. I crossed myself quietly,
more out of reflex than faith at that moment. I
was thirteen when I found it. He continued. It had
rained the night before, and I was out behind the
barn dumping the meat scraps. Mama said we couldn't use
for breakfast. Into the slop draft for the young pigs.
We managed to buy something white bobbed up, half floating
in the grease. His voice trembled now, just slightly. I
thought it was a chicken bone. I reached in, thinking
it wouldn't be good for them, but it was soft
and pale. When I turned it in my fingers, I
saw the nail and the shape. Oh God, I squirmed
in the silence, shifting slightly on the bench. The air
inside the confessional felt too still, like the world itself
was holding its breath with me, waiting for what came next.
I clasped my hands tighter and kept my voice locked
behind my teeth. This was his moment, but God help me,
I wanted it to pass. I walked into the kitchen
and held it out like I was handing her a riddle.
She looked at it, then at me, and said, some
lambs are meant for the altar, like it was scripture,
like I should have known already. His breath hitched. She said,
the desperate, the forgotten. They don't have much to give.
So when they offered themselves in their weakness, we're supposed
to receive that. She said, it made us holy. My
hands tensed just enough for my knuckles to ake there.
It was a confirmation of my suspicion. The clarity of
it made my stomach twist into knots. And yet I
knew better. I am not a judge. I do not
wield the sword, only the word. I have heard things
in the booth that would make most men sleep with
the lights on. My duty has been and still is,
to listen, to witness, to guide. But at that moment
I could not deny the tremble in my breath, or
the heaviness that settled in my ribs. I nodded. He continued,
his voice dull, because that's what you do when you're
a child. Your mamma's word is final. So I nodded
and sat at the table. That night, I ate the
stew and wore the to hide my sin from God.
But something had cracked. I started waking up, sweating, chewing
my tongue roar in my sleep. I stopped praying out loud,
out of shame. I started skipping bites, then whole meals.
She noticed, of course, she noticed. One evening, she reached
across the table and gently pulled the cloth off my head.
Her eyes didn't look angry, but they had gone hard,
like cold river stones. Don't waste what's been given, she said.
Don't turn your nose up at blessings that cost someone
else their place in the kingdom. I nodded again, like
I believed her, But I didn't not anymore. I couldn't
look at her the same way. But it was strange.
I still wanted her to hold me when I was scared.
He was quiet for a long time, Then, after a
long inhale, he kept going. It lasted almost two more years.
I tried to forget what I saw. I think I
stayed because part of me still loved her too much
to leave, because she smiled at me like nothing was wrong.
She kissed my forehead tenderly every night, and she still
sang hymns while cleaning the kitchen. How do you walk
away from someone who taught you everything, even when you
find out some of it was poison? But when I
turned fifteen, I packed her bag silently and walked out
while she slept. I didn't leave a note, only took
what I could carry. He paused, and I never went back.
I told myself i'd start over. He said, clean slate,
clean soul. I ended up in foster care two towns over.
They were kind, mostly kept the fridge full, took me
to church when they could. His voice thinned. I tried
to be normal. I did everything Brochure said, joined clubs,
and took therapy seriously. I even started cooking real meals
from recipes. I made myself believe that the hunger was
just trauma, just something I could fix. Her breath sharp
and frustrated, I went vegan. I thought maybe it was guilt,
but it didn't work. Then I tried a carnivore diet,
but that didn't help either, raw food, paleo, firsting ice,
chewing clay. I even gnawed at the edge of a
belt once, just to feel the resistance. He shifted on
the other side of the screen, wood groaning under him,
and at that moment a terrible thought flickered across my face.
Unwelcome and absurd. I pictured his hands slipping through the slats,
cold fingers gripping my collar, and his mouth opening wide
to take a bite out of me, like I was
bred and flesh both. The image was so vivid I
almost flinched. It was a silly thought, one I was
not proud of, but it sat there, pulsing at the
edge of my reason, refusing to be dismissed. Every meal
was a disappointment. Every bite tasted like paper, Even the
I used to love, like roast chicken, corn bread, sweet
potatoes with brown sugar. They all turned to ash in
my mouth. His voice dropped lower than it had all night.
I know now what it is I miss. He let
the words settle like dust in a crypt. It didn't
hit all at once. It came in flashes, the smell
of broth, the way candlelight hid steam, the weight of
linen over my head was so nostalgic, I thought I
was just remembering. But it wasn't memory. It was want,
a need. I told myself I could resist, that I
was better than her, that I didn't have it in
me with the hunger it I planned it carefully. I
chose a man I saw often on the corner outside
the train station. He wore a gray hoodie and plastic
bags around his shoes. He never asked for anything, just
sat there. I watched him for a week, made sure
he was alone, that he didn't speak to any one,
that no one would notice if he disappeared. A pause
and her breath. We walked side by side through the
quiet part of town. He kept glancing at my face,
like he was trying to figure out if I was real.
The whole time, my chest ached with something that felt
like guilt. He looked at me with trust, with quiet awe,
like I was saving him. I wanted to deserve that.
But underneath it, deeper than anything I could name, there
was the hunger gnawing through every step. A single thought
echoed through the prayers. I muttered to drown it out.
What will he taste like? At one point, he laughed
low and wheezing, and said, you're one of the good ones. Hah.
I told him I was trying to be. I brought
him back to my apartment, told him I had a
hot shower and some food waiting, and mentioned spare clothes, socks,
and even a razor if he wanted. He looked up
at me like he couldn't believe it, with eyes wide rimmed, red,
hopeful in a way that made my chest tighten. Really,
he asked like he thought the offer might shatter if
he touched it. I nodded. That's all it took, and
it hurt because I knew I was lying. I let
him take the hot shower first, gave him a towel
i'd laid out earlier, let him eat the bread and
drink the tea while some soup simmered on the stove.
He looked so grateful, called me a saint, and I
must have been raised right. His voice cracked slightly, but
the cloth was already in the drawer. He didn't elaborate.
He didn't need to. By now I knew what that meant.
I bought it from a linen shop two towns over,
just like the ones Mamma used, pressed it flat, folded
it three times, and put it in the drawer under
the knives. Silence stretched between us. The stew was rich,
the meat practically melted in my mouth. I had cooked
it that long, he said. I ate it under the
cloth just like before. I said the prayer every word,
three times, like mamma, and for the first time in years,
I felt full, really full. He exhaled slowly, and I
heard the shift. The tremble that had clung to him
like wet wool was gone. In his place was a
strange calm, like he was waiting for me to speak.
So I did. I cleared my throat softly, my son,
I said, carefully, measuring every word. There are things in
this world we carry that were never meant for us.
Burdens passed down like inheritance, cloaked in love and devotion.
He didn't interrupt, so I kept going. You are not
your mother, and you are not beyond redemption. But if
you truly seek absolution, it must begin with truth, followed
by repentance, and then by surrender, not just of your sin,
but of your will. I felt the sweat cooling at
my temples. God half as mercy. Yes, I said, but
not without caste. You must never do this again. You
must turn yourself in. You must choose a path that
leads away from this hunger silence. There was a faint shift,
followed by a hush, and when I peeked between the slats,
he was gone. He hadn't waited for my blessing or absolution.
He vanished quietly, as if the act of confession itself
had been enough, and maybe for him it was. I
sat there a while longer, hands clasped, eyes closed. I
prayed not to carry his burden with me into the world,
that whatever darkness he left behind would stay sealed in
that booth. I prayed that mercy still meant something, even
when offered to someone who may never stop doing the
thing they're sorry for. When I finally stood, I moved
slowly through the empty sanctuary, checking locks, I stepped into
the parking lot. The night air was damp and cool,
and the storm had passed. My car engine grown to life,
and the headlights carved through the dark. I pulled onto
the main road, and there, under the flicker of a
street lamp, I saw a man huddle day against the bench,
wearing only a thin coat and no shoes. I slowed,
and for a long time I just sat there, hands
frozen on the wheel. I couldn't get the Confessor out
of my mind. How he spoke his truth like a
man unburdened, while all I was left with was silent.
And in that silence, I wondered if the Confessor would stop,
if anyone was safe, if he was still nearby, and
all I could do was pray. His voice broke the
silence between us. There's actually something I've been hiding from you.
I looked up from the notepad on my knee, my
pen rest between my fingers. He sat with his spine
drawn inward, shoulders slightly collapsed toward each other, and palms
pressed flat against the tops of his thighs, a man
always trying to make himself smaller. His eyes, shadowed by fatigue,
were fixed on something on the ground. I didn't say
anything right away. I'd learned over time that interruptions could
break fragile moments like these. I'd been his therapist for
a little over a year. From the very first session,
I had sensed that his pain ran deeper than most.
He had peeled it back slowly, as if uncertain whether
it was even worth sharing. In that time, I'd come
to know him as someone who had endured a kind
of persistent misfortune that no rational explanation could account for.
The world, it seemed, had made a project out of
breaking him. I leaned back slightly in my chair, careful
not to make the movement abrupt. The window beside us
caught a thin wash of afternoon light spilling across the
rug between us. I folded my hands and asked, keeping
my voice low, what is it that you've been holding back?
He shifted in his seat, fingers tapping against his knee.
Whatever it was, it was hard for him to say,
but something had changed. There was a weight to the moment,
attention in the room that hadn't been there before. I've
been able to see him for a long time, he said.
But I didn't tell you because I thought you'd think
it meant I was really losing it. I didn't want
you to think I was crazy. There was a brief pause.
Then his name is mister Grin. Oh, well that's what
I call him. I stayed quiet and nodded slowly to
encourage him. There had been no mention of him before,
no allusions to a stalker, or a delusion, this specific,
I was certain of it. There was a different presence
in the room now, one shaped by the tension in
his voice and the stillness in his eyes. And I
remember thinking, as he kept his gaze averted and began
to speak again, that whatever this was, whatever mister Grin
meant to him, it had been festering for decades. It
started the night my mother died, he said. I was
sitting in the waiting area with my father. He took
a shallow breath and kept his gaze down. There were
two vending machines in the hallway and a payphone across
from them. My father and I were just waiting for
them to tell us. I already knew though she had
been out of it for days. He paused for a
moment and scratched at the skin on his forearm through
the fabric of his jacket. When the nurse came out
and said it, I don't know. I guess I didn't cry.
I just sort of sat there. She gave me this
little squeeze on the shoulder and walked away. My father
told me to stay still while he finished something up,
and that everything is going to be okay. I remember
going outside. I couldn't breathe inside anymore. I went at
the side entrance. There was a metal bench near the
ambulance bay. That's when I saw him. His voice cracked
faintly when he said it. I leaned forward just slightly.
There was a fence that ran along the edge of
the lot. Past it were trees, but the hospital kept
a floodlight above the utility building, so it was never
completely dark out there. The light was flickering that night,
you know, when it doesn't folly cut out, just buzzes
and dims. That's how it was. He was standing there,
just beyond the reach of the light. I thought maybe
he was a janitor or a security guy, but he
wasn't wearing a badge. Just this pale white jumper looked soft,
almost fleece. The arms were long, they hung past his waist,
almost to the tops of his knees. His shoulders were
dropped but curved forward, like his back was pulling inward.
I couldn't see much of his face at first, the
light was behind him, but there was this grin. I
guess yes. The corners of his mouth stretched nearly to
the side of his cheeks. His skin had these lines
carved in deep like he'd been smiling for years and
his face had just given up trying to do anything else.
He lifted his hand briefly and touched the corner of
his own mouth, drawing an invisible shape in the form
of a smile. Then his hand fell back into his lap.
I looked away for a second. I think I was
wiping my eyes, or maybe just trying to shake it off.
But when I looked back, he was gone. I hadn't slept.
My mom had just died. I didn't even mention it
to the nurses or anyone. I just went back inside
to my father and left. He raised his head slowly
and met my eyes for the first time since he
started talking. Man, right, that's all. But then I saw
him again. The next time it happened was after my
father passed, but the time after that would come around
a decade later, he said, his voice now steadier. It
was a few months after I'd started college. I'd worked
my butt off to get in, had no backup plan.
Then out of nowhere, I got this notice from the
administration office saying my financial aid had been revoked. There
was a discrepancy in some paperwork. They said it was
a clerical error. I remember thinking, no one makes that
kind of mistake, at least not by accident. He scratched
the inside of his wrist again and blinked. But he
wasn't really with me in the office anymore. That night,
I couldn't sleep. I was up reading emails, trying to
figure you were out who to contact. My roommate was
passed out headphones on, snoring. I got up and walked
over to the window my dorm overlooked the quad, and
there he was, his voice tropped, standing right in the
middle of it, in the dark, arms at his side,
just the same as he had looked all those years ago,
almost glowing in the moonlight. I didn't know what to
think at the time. I hadn't seen him since I
was a kid. I thought he was just something like
a kid's delusion. He didn't move, he said, didn't do
much of anything, just watched. I closed the blinds and
sat back in my bed, told myself I was just tired,
like I always did. His throat bob slightly as he swallowed.
His eyes were glad, I see now, though no tears came.
It kept happening every time something fell apart. When my
roommates stole from me, cleaned me out, and vanished. Overnight.
I came home and found him standing at the end
of the hallway outside my dorm room. He was closer
than I could see more of him. His hands moved
to his temples, pressing gently. He's been there through everything,
when I got fired for my first real job, when
my girlfriend left me, when I couldn't pay rent anymore
and had to sleep in my car for two weeks,
always watching as these things were happening. I hadn't even
noticed he'd been getting closer each time I opened my
mouth to finally speak, but he beat me to it.
I don't know how long I can keep talking. I
have to say this before I lose my nerve. If
I think too much about it, I won't finish. I'll
back out, and then he'll keep eating at me. He
leaned back in the chair and stared toward the floor
for several seconds, then reached slowly into the front pocket
of his coat. He pulled out his phone with a slow,
hesitant motion. His fingers trembled faintly as he unlocked it
and tapped through the screen. Here, he said, I filmed
him last night for you. He turned the screen toward
me and press play. The footage began with the camera
pointed toward the carpet. The audio picked up his shallow breathing,
occasional rustling, and the faint sound of floorboards creaking under foot.
It was dark, with the glow from the digital clock
provided a faint illumination. The video shifted as he raised
the phone. It panned up and centered on a doorway,
with the edges of the frame slightly out of focus.
He said nothing while it played, just watched me and
my reaction. When the video ended, I glanced back at him.
He leaned forward and whispered, that's where he stands every night.
He doesn't sharpen video. But I see him. I swear
to you, I see him. He had a kind of
pleading beneath the exhaustion of his expression. He wasn't trying
to convince me. He wasn't even looking for validation. Have
you ever considered that, mister grim might be a kind
of projection, a figure shaped by everything been through, your grief,
your isolation, maybe something your mind created to contain the pain.
His jaw tightened. It wasn't an angry reaction, but something deeper.
His fingers clenched the edge of his chair. He looked
down and gave a small, sharp shake of his head.
I've taken pills, he said, resperidone, haloperidol, quatiapine for years,
off and on. I've seen neurologists, psychiatrists. I even stayed
in a clinic of state for a month. Nothing touches him,
he stays. His voice had gone thin, with a breathless quality,
as if the words were trying to outrun something behind them.
I thought about suggesting another specialist, someone who could reevaluate
his medication regimen. Before I could speak, his voice broke
through again, lower, now uncertain, would you come over tonight,
he asked, just for a bit please. The word sounded
awkward coming from him, as if he'd rehearsed them and
was still unsure whether he should be saying them out loud.
He rubbed the side of his neck, eyes fixed on
the carpet. I haven't had anyone stay over in years,
he continued. I don't even really talk to anyone any
more outside of here. I just I don't want to
be alone tonight. I know he'll come. I always know
when he's going to. I hesitated. Every part of my
training told me this wasn't appropriate. It blurred boundaries and
created complications. I had spent a career keeping my clients
at a careful distance for this exact reason. But the
expression on his face disarmed me. He looked like he'd surrendered.
I nodded slowly. All right, I said, but just for
a few hours. He didn't thank me. He just looked away,
and I knew he hadn't been expecting me to say yes.
His building sat wedge between a shuttered laundromat and a
currency exchange that I lost half the letters on its sign.
The sun had started to sink behind the skyline, casting long,
reddish streaks across the narrow sidewalk. I buzzed this unit,
and the door clicked open before I could step back. Oh,
come in, he said, stepping aside. The space were small.
The smell of dust and paper filled the air. The
blinds were halfway drawn, casting broken shadows across a threadbare
rug and a sagging love seat. There were stacks of
bucks on the floor. He gestured to the kitchen table
and we sat. He had already brewed tea, though I
could tell from the way he moved that he didn't
usually make it for more than one. We sat quietly
at first, sipping from mismatched mugs, and after some small talk,
something about the vulnerability of this situation made me talk
about my own problems. I moved into a new place
a few months ago, and I said, after the divorce,
it's quiet, which I thought i'd want, But now it's
there all the time. I don't know, meals feel wrong.
I still find myself reaching for her side of the
bed in the morning. He looked up, surprised. I never
thought about you having stuff going on, he said, I
guess I always pictured you going home and just I
don't know, being fine. We both laughed. He leaned forward
a little. You know, I feel guilty sometimes I sit
here and pour all this out on you. I don't
think I've ever asked how you're doing. You're not supposed to,
I said, and took another sip of tea. We sat
in silence, but it was no longer uncomfortable. We finished
our tea just after the sky turned dark. The orange
streaks along the window blinds faded into a dull, stale blue,
then vanished completely. He got up and moved toward the bedroom,
gesturing for me to follow. The bedroom was sparse, A
low mattress pressed into the far corner, one night stand
beside it, scratched along the edges, and a pairing knife.
I looked at him. He was pulling an extra pillow
from the closet, placing it at the foot of the mattress,
as if he had already decided that I'd take the
chair in the corner. I nodded toward the knife. Do
you usually sleep with that there? He glanced back, his
face neutral. I don't use it, he said, 'is just
for comfort if something ever happens, if he ever does anything,
It helps me sleep knowing it's there. He wasn't offensive,
but his tone didn't invite further questions either. I stared
at it a moment longer, then sat down in the chair.
People kept all sorts of things near their beds, flashlights, rosaries,
baseball bats. Everyone had their own form of insurance. Still,
a small ripple of hernease moved through my chest. He
dimmed the lamp and sat on the edge of the bed.
The room fell quiet, apart from the faint sound of
traffic beyond the window. It had been nearly fifteen minutes
of silence when he spoke again. He's close, he whispered,
I can feel him. He was staring at the far wall.
His shoulders had begun to curl inward. His hands gripped
the edge of the mattress. I wasn't even really sure
what to say to him. After this so called mister
Grinn doesn't appear, I was sure he wouldn't. Of course,
my thoughts always go fast when he is near. They
don't make sense. It's like I'm drowning in them, and
they're pulling me lower and lower. He was describing depression
kicking in. A heaviness settled across my shoulders, followed by
pressure in my chest. It felt like humidity, but without warmth.
Goose bumps rose across my arms. I rubbed the back
of my neck, trying to shake it off, or the
feeling only deepened. I don't know when exactly he appeared.
One moment the corner of the room was empty, and
the next the space had changed. There was no footstep
or any other indication of movement. There was only a distortion,
something off in the shape of the room itself, not
physically but optically, as though the light around that spot
had lost direction, and then he stepped forward. He was tall,
his spine bent forward unnaturally, his necks stretched out, forcing
his chin low toward his chest. His skin had a
waxy pallor, but like the sheen of sweat or oil,
the surface looked stretched, almost preserved. His lips never parted,
but they stretched wide, deeper at the corners than what
should have been possible. And his eyes they didn't belong
in a human face, clouded milky white with pinprick pupils
buried beneath. I couldn't breathe. My body had gone still,
frozen in place, or my thoughts scattered. He was real
My patients breathing had turned jagged. The mattress creaked beneath
him as he reached toward the knight stand with a
trembling arm. I can't, he whispered, I can't. He was
gripping the knife, his fingers closed around it. He held
it low. The blade angled toward the floor, as if
unsure whether he intended to use it at all. His
other hand clutched his thigh, gripping through the fabric of
his pants. The muscles in his arms spazzened as he
tried to lift the knife higher, but it was a
weak motion. I wanted to call out to him, but
my voice felt buried under a weight pressing into my chest.
My legs refused to move. Every part of me had
locked up. Mister Grinn, however, had no issues moving. When
he reached the bed, he extended one arm. His hands
closed around my patient's wrist, the one the knife. The
fingers wrapped around it completely. The joints of his hand
flexed as he adjusted his grip, and I could see
that his fingers were disturbingly long. They curved downward, rapping
over the knuckles. He didn't yat the knife like I
thought he would have. Instead, he seemed to guide my patient.
He let out a soft gasp. His body resisted, but
his hand kept moving. The blade rose hovering near my
patient's wrist. Of his free hand. I his words fell
apart beneath his breath. Mister Grinn tilted his head further,
eyes fixed on the man's face. His grin never wavered.
He stared as if memorizing every feature. His eyes remained unfocused,
but still locked on to him. My patience seemed to
try fighting back, but to no avail. Then mister Grinn
forced my patient's hand, and he started slicing the knife
back and forth. The knife slid across the skin, gliding
through the soft flesh and veins of the wrist. The
motion was smooth, almost tender. His body jerked as a
wet gasp slipped out of his mouth. My arms felt numb,
but I still couldn't move from the chair. Blood poured
from the wound in waves. The patient's chest heaved once,
thin twice, and his eyes rolled upward. He made a sound,
desperately wet. The handle of the knife trembled in his hand.
Mister Grinn remained still, His hand lingered on the patient's
wrist for a moment longer, then slipped away. He stepped
back into the corner from where he had come from.
Then he was gone. The space he occupied simply ceased
to contain him. One moment he was there, and the
next there was only the wall. I rose from the
chair with a violent jolt, then knocked it backward. My
knees buckled for a moment, and I stumbled toward the bed.
My patient was slumped forward, chin lowered. The floor beneath
him had turned dark red and glossy. I dropped on
my knees beside him and reached for the knife. His
fingers were still wrapped around the handle. Blood dripped from
his eviscerated wrist under the floor in thick rivulets. Hold on,
I said, My voice cracked. Stay with me, please, I thought,
by pressing my hand into the wound to try stem
the bleeding. But I heard the sirens going off in
my head. My thoughts raced forward faster than my breath.
The room closed in around me. I thought of the knife.
They would never believe I wasn't there. I stood up,
backing toward the door. The floor creaked under my feet
as I reached for the handle, using the sleeves for
my clothing to open it as to not leave any prince.
I looked back at him once more. His body had
gone still, his mouth hung slightly open. The knife remained
in his hand. Then I turned and ran. I spent
the next day in my car. I didn't go home.
I didn't call any one. I parked a town over
and a lot behind a closed antique store and sat
with the windows cracked until the sun went down. When
it got dark, I drove around for hours, taking roads.
I hadn't used in years, trying to find intersections that
didn't lead me back to anything familiar. When I finally
walked through my front door, it all felt so cold.
I kept the lights off. I didn't want to see
I didn't want to look at my phone. I knew
what story would be there eventually, and I didn't want
to see his name in a headline. I told myself
it wasn't my fault. I told myself no one could
have helped him. But those words didn't land anywhere solid
inside of me. They passed through and left nothing behind.
Three mornings after I stopped returning calls, I stood in
my kitchen and made coffee. I'd run out of sugar.
The creamer had gone sour. I stirred the black liquid
in slow, distracted circles, my body moving through the ritual
while my mind wandered. It had started raining some time
before dawn, and the sidewalk across the street shone under
the low light. I glanced through the kitchen window a
man standing still beside the bus stop, half hidden behind
the frame of a tree. He stood facing the window,
facing me. He wore a white jumper, His shoulders sloped downward.
And on his face was a wide grin. I stood
motionless for nearly a full minute. Then I stepped back
from the glass and closed the blinds. I couldn't sleep
after that. I stayed awake, with every light in the
house on. I sat in bed with my laptop open,
searching for something, anything, that could explain what was happening.
I found myself in obscure forums, threads filled with phrases
like psychic contamination and shed trauma apparitions. One post mentioned
a woman who claimed her husband's hallucinations had followed her
after he died. I reached out to psychics, paid a
woman two hundred dollars to burn herbs in my living room.
She set my home with thinned energies and left a
pouch of salt under the window. Nothing changed. I visited
a priest, told him I was asking for a friend.
He gave me a small silver crucifix and asked if
I had repented. I thanked him and walked out my assistants.
After I missed the fourth appointment, I knew I wouldn't
go back. I had no answers any more. Nothing I
could say to clients about hope or progress would hold
any truth. The clinic eventually sent an email. I opened
it and read the first few lines. My license would
be placed onto review. My caseload had been reassigned. I
closed the laptop and placed it under the bed. I
sat in the hallway that night and stared at the
dark space near the bathroom door. I knew he was
standing there. I could feel the air pulling. Two plain
clothes officers came the following morning, one younger, soft spoken,
with a notepad in hand, and the other eyes heavy
from experience. I invited them in because I didn't know
what else to do. We sat in the living room
I hadn't cleaned in days. The coffee table was clotted
with unopened mail and an empty glass with a film
of dust collecting near the rim. One of them apologized
for the visit before we even started. We're just trying
to get a sense of what you might know, the
younger one said. We know he didn't have many people
in his life, but your name was one of the
only ones that came up. We figured if any one
would know something, it'd be you. The words struck deeper
than I expected. I nodded, slowly, forcing my eyes to
stay level. It was hard to get him to open up,
I said, but he was working through a lot, childhood trauma,
long history of loss. He always carried it alone. He
ended our most recent session telling me it'll be our
last one. I was almost proud of him. I thought
he'd finally made the progress he'd come here to make.
But I was shocked when I heard the news. I lied.
The officer wrote something down, then locked up. M yeah,
it was clearly suicide. He added, clean scene. He'd recorded
some thoughts and notes we found. Didn't mention you directly,
but he talked of a man he spoke to one
that helped him immensely. I stared at the grain of
the table and felt something crawl into my stomach. I
wish I could say I saw it coming. I lied again.
The officer didn't press. They stood after a few more questions,
thanked me for my cooperation. The older one paused at
the door and said, you're probably carrying some this with you.
These things believe a mark. You should talk to someone.
I gave him a smile. I will. That night, I
tried to sleep on the couch. I thought maybe the
change in rooms would help. I left the hallway light on.
I closed my eyes for less than a minute. When
I opened them, he was there in the corner of
the room, half shadowed by the edge of the curtain.
His grin carved through the dark. My body folded in
a fetal position. I pulled the blanket up to my
chin and pressed my back against the cushions, as if
that thin layer of cotton could shield me from whatever
his presence meant. My eyes watered from the strain of
keeping them open, but I didn't blink. I missed my
wife and everything I had not that long ago. He
stayed there until the sun began to rise, and even
then I didn't feel him leave. I made the appointment
the following morning. I didn't think it through. I clicked
a name on a list. I booked the first available spot.
I just needed to speak to someone whose voice I
hadn't memorized. She met me in a small office downtown
I converted dental sweep, judging by the layout, young, maybe
early thirties. I sat on a couch and started from
the beginning. I told her about the divorce, about the
years I had spent convincing others that healing was linear,
about the nights I stared at the ceiling, unable to
name what I was feeling. She wrote very little. Mostly
she just listened. And when I could no longer find
ways to avoid it, I looked her in the eyes
and said, there's actually something I've been hiding from you.
Her pen stopped. I said it before I could talk
myself out of it. I told her about mister Grinn,
And then would you come over just for one night.
He's going to appear tonight and I don't want to
be alone. My voice was low, empty, All the emotion
had burned out of it. She didn't answer right away.
Her fingers danced slightly around the pen, her brow furrowed
with uncertainty. I could see the conflict behind her eyes.
She knew the boundary I'd just crossed, knew that she
should say no. Then her face softened and she nodded once.
All right, she said, but just for a few hours.
I've been contracted by the Bureau a dozen times in
the last four years, mostly sinkhole reports or rural spill assessments,
the kind of work no one notices until it costs
someone money. This one came through late in the season,
an old mine outside a place called Evercreek, tugged in
a valley that didn't show up on GPS until we
were nearly there. The brief was minimal, a collapse shaft
from the nineteen thirties reportedly sealed after seventeen fatalities. The
town's records were inconsistent, and what little had been digitized
didn't match the States. Our job to assess any remaining liability,
test for subsistence, and determine if the land could be
safely reclassified for timberlie in and out. No contact needed
with the townsfolk beyond a courtesy heads up. We hit
the edge of town around noon. October, had already stripped
most of the trees, and the wind blew low through
the bare branches in irregular pulses, the way wind does
when the landscape feels hollow. Fog clung to the roots
of the hills, moving only when we did. Evercreek was
smaller than I expected. A gas station, a diner, a
short main road that curved lazily around the church and
disappeared back into the trees. Maybe three hundred people if that.
Some looked up when we passed, but no one waved.
No one asked what brought us. They just watched silent,
still returning to their tasks. Only when our car moved on.
We checked into the motel, four rooms flat. Gravel lot
rushed around the fixtures. The woman at the front desk
handed me the key without asking my name. There was
a small guest book by the window, but the last
signature was dated two weeks ago. My prentice, Seth, took
the room next to mine. After dropping our bags, we
drove the half mile to the mine site. The access
road had been overgrown with vines and thistle, but the
path was still clear enough to follow on foot. Old
warning signs hung loose from metal rods, faded to near illegibility.
A half ratted vent surrounded the mouth of the mine,
with caution tape haphazardly fluttering from rusted stakes. We walked
to the perimeter, marking out but ten a weak points
in the soil and flagging erosion spots. The ground was
mostly stable, though I noted a shallow depression near the
north side that looked fresh. I was jotting notes when
Seth called me over. Just outside the broken section of
the fence was a bundle he looked deliberately placed, not
dropped or blown in a small scuffed baby shoe, a
hand mirror with a crack spider webbing out from one corner,
and a velvet pouch its draw string rotted. Seth opened it.
Inside was a single child's tooth, browned with age. He
turned to me with a half smile. Guess Halloween starts
early out here. I shrugged, reached for a nitrile glove
for my kit, and bagged the items, probably old memorials.
I figured maybe a local tradition or just some grief
left to wither out in the open. Either way, we
couldn't leave it there. Wild life might get to it,
and there was no reason to let someone find it
and think it meant anything now. Seth made a face
as he watched me seal the bag, but didn't say anything.
I made a note to include it under potential public
safety debris. I'd seen weirder things. Back in the car,
we loaded the first round of soil data and logged
the day's findings. The mine wasn't visibly unstable, but the
fence needed replacing, and we'd have to get a look
at the shaft itself if we wanted to close the
file properly. I figured we'd head in tomorrow and get
the rest of it done in daylight. Two more days
of work at most, then we'd be gone and the
town would have their forest back. The next morning, we
decided to split the day between paperwork and local logistics.
Seth wanted to get breakfast and see what the town
was actually like in the daylight. I agreed, mostly because
the state records on the mine were such a mess
that it made sense to check the town's clerk office
while we were here. I figured we might find original
filings or released some version of the truth closer to
the source. The diner was the first stop. It was
the same one from the previous night, though it looked
warmer in the morning light, wood paneled walls, a faded jukebox,
and a specials board written in hard to read cursive.
There were only two other customers, both elderly, both watching
us over their mugs without speaking. A waitress greeted us
with a smile that didn't quite touch her eyes. She
handed us menus, asked where we were from, and then
made no further comment when I said we were working
on a state assignment near the mine. We're just cleaning
up some liability stuff, I added, trying to keep the
tone casual. She nodded slowly, best not to linger past sundown.
Then Seth gave me a quick glance, but didn't say anything.
Breakfast arrived quickly. Everything was hot, and everything tasted fine.
The silence around us remained fixed in place. When Seth
asked the waitress what she meant earlier, she wiped her
hand on her apron and said, ain't much up there
worth surveying anymore, then walked away. He looked over at me,
eyebrows raised. They're all weirdly cagey about this. He noticed
that I had noticed, But I also knew that rural
towns protected their dead fiercely. Tragedy become folklore, and folklore
turned into boundaries. People stop questioning. I figured it was
better not to bush. When we stopped at the general
store afterward to buy some bottled water and replacement gloves,
Seth mentioned the baby shoe, just a passing comment to
the woman at the register. Asked if they did any
sort of local memorials up by the mine. She froze
mid scan. Her hand rested on top of the register
for a full second before she looked up. That's not
for you to handle, she said. Seth blinked, I mean
we already bagged it part of cyclean up. Her expression shifted,
but only slightly. Then she handed him the receipt without
saying another word. We left in silence. Seth kept shaking
his head the whole way back to the car. They're
acting like we dug up a grave. Maybe we did,
I said, not literally, but to them. Could be At
the clerk's office, I asked for records from the mind's
operational period. The woman behind the desk handed me a
heavy binder without asking any questions. Her nameplate was chipped
and the corners of the folder were stained from time
and handling. It had clearly been opened more than once,
but not recently. I brought it to one of the
black tables and started scanning through it while Seth looked
over some land plaits. About half way through the binder,
I found two sheets clipped together, both labeled Casualty Summary
Ever Greek Collapse March nineteen thirty seven. The first listed
seventeen names, each followed by a cross symbol and a
four digit miners ID. The second listed only eleven. The
others were marked simply as unrecovered. There was no explanation,
no read ink or notes in the margin, just two
nearly identical documents that contradicted each other completely. That alone
would have been worth noting. But deeper in the binder,
tugged into a folder labeled post collapse Correspondence, I found
something stranger. Photocopies of town death certificates, bundled by decade.
Some were handwritten, others typed in fading carbon. Most were
a routine old age farm accident, the kind of mortality
you expect in rural places. But until recently, every two decades,
always in late autumn, a name would appear with no
cause of death listed, just missing. The latest century was
twenty years old October two thousand and five. Written by hand,
was a note saying as solution was found, but no
other details were given. Seth came over and asked if
I found anything interesting. I showed him the list. He
whistled low through his teeth. Could be coincidence, he said,
but his voice didn't sound convinced it could. I agreed,
but someone had grouped them all together across nearly a
century of town records. That wasn't standard filing. That was curation.
When I asked the clerk if anyone was expecting us
at the site tomorrow. She shook her head. We don't
go up there, she said, not anymore. She didn't elaborate.
I didn't ask her to. Outside, the wind had picked up.
It came down from the ridge in slow, cold currents,
the kind that settles into your clothes when you stay there.
We drove back to the motel without speaking. The next day,
Seth stayed behind the catalog's soul data while I returned
to the mine sight alone. The air was colder than
it had been the day before. The sky was gray
but dry, and the woods held a heavy stillness that
felt deeper than weather. I paced the perimeter again, noting
where the ridge sloped toward a cluster of collapsed timbers
that had probably once supported the original access trail. From there,
the forest pushed right up against the edge of the
old fence, its roots lifting the earth and stone in
uneven patterns. It was a dramatic subsistence, but it suggested
slow movement beneath the surface, the kind of thing that
wouldn't appear on modern records unless some one went locking.
That was when I heard it, A faint, metallic sound,
sharp rhythmic. It came from somewhere beneath the ground, distant
but consistent, the kind of sound that might have been
dismissed as wind dragging through old ventilation shafts or water
dripping from rusted struts on to a hollow steel plate.
But the intervals were too clean, steady. It struck stone
and rang out in short echoes, as if whatever was
causing it was focused on something specific. I stopped walking,
crouched and pressed my palm to the earth. Felt nothing.
The vibrations, if they existed, were too faint. Still, the
sound continued for another ten seconds, then it stopped all
at once. I stood slowly and scanned the surrounding slope.
Just past the trail collapse, behind a clump of bug thorn,
I saw something that didn't belong. A small clearing, half
swallowed by moss and leaf litter. A shallow pile of
items sat at its center, arranged with deliberate spacing, not
trash and not abandoned. A silver ring tarnished and bented
the edge. A folded photograph warped from moisture, but still
showing the face of a man standing beside a truck.
A pale braid of hair tied at both ends with twine.
All of it was placed with care, though the elements
had done their best to erase the intent. I stood
there for a long time, trying to piece together whether
this was grief, folklore, or something else Entirely. It was
too far from any graveyard to be a memorial, and
the items were too personal to have been discarded by chance.
I photographed the scene from a distance, then like the
GPS coordinates, and returned to the motel. Seth was in
the lobby, working through the geology report over a coffee
that had long since gone cold. I dropped into the
armchair across from him and relayed what I'd found. Second one, huh,
he said, You think it's part of the same tradition,
like another offering sight. It has that feel to it,
I said, But nothing official, no plaques, no town maintenance.
All of it looks like it's meant to be forgotten.
He leaned back and ran a hand through his hair.
I tried asking that waitress again, just normal questions. You'd
think i'd asked about somebody's funeral. She said, they don't
go near the fence line. Told me to mind the
season and let it rest. Whatever that means. I nodded,
same tone I got at the clerk's office. Everyone's polite,
but they're not confused. They know something. Seth looked out
the front window. The sky was starting to dim. The
clouds had thickened since I got back. Do we tell
them we're opening the shaft soon? No point, I said,
It's not a conversation they're interested in having. It was
just afternoon when I decided to stretch my legs and
walk the edge of town. Seth had returned to the
motel to sort data, but I needed to escape the
screen for a while. The air was still pressed down
under low cloud cover. Nothing moved in the trees, even
the birds had gone quiet. The streets were empty in
that in between way rural towns aften aar shops open
but unattended, wind chimes moving without sound. I passed the church,
a one room schoolhouse, and a shuttered gas station that
still sold cold sodas through an ancient vending machine. Near
the edge of the church, I spotted a boy crouched
beside a dry colvert. He was fiddling with something in
the dark, maybe a stick or a bit of wire,
the way kids do when they have more day than structure.
No older than seven. He didn't notice me at first.
I slowed as I passed and gave him a quick nod.
Hey there, I said, keeping the tone casual. You know
any scary stories about the minds? He rose. The object
in his hands slipped from his grip, but he didn't
move to pick it up. I just sat there, my
shoulders stiff and my head lowered. I waited for a moment,
then smiled. I was thinking of going to play up there,
I added, keeping it friendly. Thought I should ask if
there are any monsters to watch out for. That got
him to look up, but not with amusement. His eyes
were wide, in the way kids get when they've been
told a rule that feels larger than them, something that
feels older than their parents. He looked around, then leaned
in slightly. I'm not supposed to talk about it, he said.
I crouched a little, hands on my knees, staying a
few steps back. Fair enough, but I won't tell if
you don't. The boy hesitated, then, in a near whisper,
he said, the faceless ones are there. They only come
out if someone opens it every twenty years or so.
That's why we leave stuff. It stops them from coming.
He stood up and dusted off his pants. Then he
turned and walked away without another word, not running, but
quick head down. He never looked back. I stood there
for a few moments after he disappeared around the corner,
letting his words settle faceless ones. The phrasing was strange.
Not monsters, not ghosts, not even miners, faceless. It was
the kind of story a child might inherit without understanding,
something passed down through repetition, never fully explained, just accepted
to me. It was a bit of folklore, probably rooted
in grief away for the town to ritualize the collapse,
a quiet warning wrapped in superstition. It was an uncommon
I'd heard dozens of versions in other towns across the state. Still,
as I made my way back to the motel, I
found myself repeating the phrase under my breath, the faithless ones.
We started early the next morning, just after the sun
cleared the ridge. The sky was flat and pale, the
clouds stretched thin across the horizon. Seth looked half awake
when he met me by the car, but his boots
were laced and he was already double checking the survey gear.
The drive to the site was short, trees pressed in
from both sides of the axis road brittle with the
change in season. By the time we reached the mine entrance,
the frost and the undergrowth had already started to melt.
The boards covering the main shaft entrance were old and brittle.
They cracked easily under pressure, and pried them loose while
Seth cleared the debris beneath the outer layer. The frame
had been reinforced with thick nails and rusted chains. Someone
had sealed it thoroughly once that effort hadn't held. Behind
the final boards, darkness pressed forward in a way that
felt tangible. The shaft yawned open, lined with rotting timber.
No air movement, just stillness. I stepped forward first and
checked the air with a handheld reader. Oxygen low but breathable,
no methane, no signs of recent activity, just stale air
and the dry rot of long abandoned spaces. Inside the
beam of my headlamp cut through thick layers of dust
and old cobwebs. The walls narrowed quickly, then opened into
the first main corridor carvestone reinforced with woodbeams, most of
them splintered and leaning under their own weight. We moved slowly,
pausing often to photograph structural damage and cross checking support spaces.
Seth handled the laser mapping, marking depth and slow gradients
as we went. The process was tedious, but necessary, no
shortcuts with work like this. About an hour in we
both paused at the same time. A sound had drifted
up from the tunnel ahead, faint, sharp, a metallic tick,
followed by a pause, then another, regular, intervals clean repetition.
Seth raised an eyebrow. You hear that. I nodded, already
listening harder. The sound came again, distant. It echoed faintly
along the stone, but not enough to locate a source.
Could be water dripping. I said, if this metal piping
still embedded in the rock, the echo can carry. Seth
didn't respond, but I could tell he didn't buy it.
I wasn't sure I did either, but I wasn't going
to say what it really sounded like. Not yet. We
kept working. There was still a lot to do who
the map had to be completed before we could even
submit the preliminary risk report. Neither of us mentioned the
sound again, though it returned occasionally, always at the edge
of hearing. By mid afternoon, we were both covered in dust,
our knees saw from crouching, our wrists aching from constant notation.
The work was good, methodical, but it drained you. Old
tunnels had a way of taking more energy than they
gave back. We reached the midpoint of the shaft and
decided to stop for the day. There was too much
to cover in a single pass, and we hadn't brought
enough gear for an overnight trip. Before we left, we
stacked our packs near the entrance. It felt safe enough.
No one in town would likely come near the mine,
not with how they spoke about it, and the equipment
wasn't useful to anyone who didn't know how to use it.
Specialized tools had a way of protecting themselves. We hiked
back to the car without speaking much. The quiet between
us was intension. It was exhaustion, the kid that settled
into your shoulders and made you feel older than you were.
By the time we rolled back into Evercreek, the sky
had already started to dim. We didn't talk about the
sound in the mine. We just drove to the diner
and ordered whatever was still on the grill. We were dirty, tired,
and hungry enough to forget everything else for a little while.
The diner felt warmer than usual when we stepped in.
The windows were fogged at the corners from the kitchen heat,
and the overhead lights hummed softly above our booth. We
sat near the back, away from the regulars who always
clustered close to the counter. Seth looked worn out. He
rubbed his eyes with a heel of his hand while
flipped through my notebook, cross checking some of the beam
measurements from earlier. Our boots left the trail of dry
mud across the floor, and the waitress didn't ask us
to wipe it up. She just dropped off two waters
and walked away. We ate slowly, tired from the work.
Neither of us had much to say at first. Eventually
Seth broke the silence. The place was empty. He said,
not even a raccoon down there. I don't get what
they're so scared of. He said it too loudly, not shouting,
just casual, the kind of volume people use when they
assume no one is listening. Someone was a man in
a booth two tables over turned in his seat. He
stood up slowly, eyes locked on us. His voice was
sharp enough to cut through the entire room. You opened it,
sayth rose mid bight. I set my fork down. The
diner went still, Conversations died, the clink of silverware stopped.
Chairs scraped lightly as people began to stand. Some avoided
looking at us, others stared too directly. The man didn't
say anything else. He just stood there a moment longer,
then walked out. A few others followed him. A woman
near the counter leaned in our direction. Go back to
your motel, She said, lock your doors to night. Sith
looked at me, his brows furrowed. I didn't know what
to say. The waitress came by with a check. She
didn't meet her eyes, then she walked away. The rest
of the meal sat and touched. We paid and left
without another word. Outside, the street had emptied, No one
was on the sidewalks, no cars passing. The sun had
finally dipped behind the ridge, leaving the town in that
in between collar that doesn't belong to day or night.
Windows were shuttered, porch lights were off. The walk to
the motel wasn't far, but it felt longer than it
should have the silence pressed in from both sides, even
the wind had dropped away. When we reached our room,
we didn't discuss it. We said good night at our
doors and locked them behind us. Seth double checked the
dead bolt, then said through the wall, see you in
the morning. I didn't answer right away. Eventually I said yeah, morning,
But it was hard to believe that tomorrow would feel
the same as today. We woke early, though neither of
us had slept well. I kept waking to small noises
that never repeated, moments that might have been dreams, but
left the hair on my arms standing straight. When we
stepped outside, the air had turned colder, A fine mist
clung to the gravel lot, and the sky had the flat,
heavy color that usually meant snow. By nightfall, the town
was still not just slow, not quiet in the way
small places often are. It was still in the way
of shut doors and drawn curtains, the kind of stillness
that implies on watching. The diner was closed, no chairs
on the porch, no light inside. The gas station had
its metal shutters down. The General's door was locked, its
windows dark. We knocked on a few doors, more out
of instinct than hope. We could hear the shuffle of
feet inside. Once there was the distinct sound of someone
inhaling sharply when we knocked, but no one opened up.
Seth looked around and rubbed his neck. They're hiding, they're waiting,
I said, for what. I didn't answer. We made our
way back to the mine. The path had the same
emptiness as the town did. At the mine entrance, everything
was untouched. The boards we had pried loose still lay
in a neat stack by the opening. Our gear sat
just where we left it, the dust undisturbed. It felt
wrong to step into the shaft again, but we did.
The job wasn't finished. Inside. The air had grown heavier,
not from weather or lack of oxygen. There was simply
a pressure to it now, the kind that settles behind
your eyes and makes your jaw clench. Without knowing why,
we worked in silence, mapping, photographing, and logging. I tried
to focus, but every few minutes the sound returned. Tick,
metal on stone, pause, tick. It echoed from deeper in
the tunnel, always past the last point we'd explored, never
louder than a soft chime, but enough to hear, enough
to feel in the joints of your teeth. Seth stopped
once to ask what I thought it was. I gave
the same mansig I had before, groundwater pressure shifts old machinery,
but I knew he didn't believe me. We left earlier
than we had the day before. Neither of us wanted
to be in the shaft when the light failed. Back
at the motel, the hallway smelled faintly of cedar and dust.
Our doors were closed, but something had changed. Inside my
room and the table beside the window sat a basket,
wicker lined with cloth, no tag, no note. Inside was
cheese wrapped in wax paper, jerky, salted in dense, bottled water,
six tall containers, labels peeled off. Seth called from his room.
We had one too. We stood in the hallway a moment,
baskets in hand. This isn't hospitality, I said, no, He
said it's rations. We didn't talk about what that meant,
but I left the basket sealed. When I went to bed,
I woke to the sound of something slamming against the door.
Not knocking, not a fist. It was heavier than that, blunt,
deliberate pace, with the kind of weight that didn't need
to rush. The first strike rattled the frame, The second
made the bedside lamp flicker. I sat up too fast
and nearly fell out of bed. My mouth was dry.
I hadn't heard any footsteps or voices leading up to it,
just the bang, then another, than the silence in between.
I thought at first that the townspeople had decided to
force us out, that the warnings had turned into action.
I imagined a group outside with flashlights and tools, fed
up with our presence, tired of whatever they thought we
had stirred. But I didn't hear voices, no muttering or yelling.
Just one more slow, heavy impact against the door. The
hallway light under the door flickered once, then dimmed. I
backed into the bathroom, shut the door, and locked it.
It was a flimsy bolt, the kind meant for privacy,
not protection. I sat down in the corner beside the
toilet and tried to slow my breathing. Another blow shook
the walls. Then came the sound of wood splintering, long
drawn out cracking, the groan of material giving way under pressure.
Whatever was out there had started breaking something apart, but
it wasn't my door. The sound shifted. I heard a scream, Seth.
It came from the room next door. Not just one shout,
it stretched out, ragged, panicked. I heard furniture scrape, then crash.
Something was being dragged, not fast, a slow pull across
the carpet. Seth screamed again. Then it cut off, sudden
and sharp. I pressed my hand over my mouth and
stayed completely still. My own breathing felt too loud. Then
came the creaking, not footsteps, just the sound of something
shifting weight, a slow movement, wood bending under uneven pressure.
The hallway groaned. Minutes passed, then more, No more sounds,
no more movement. I didn't open the door. I didn't speak.
I sat curled on the tile floor, knees pulled to
my chest, staring at the space beneath the bathroom door,
and waiting for the sky to turn gray again. It
was a long time before dawn came. When morning finally came,
I stepped out into the hallway, expecting to see the
remnants of a break in, maybe even the police. But
the corridor was clean, the carpet undisturbed. My door stood intact, latched, untouched.
I crossed a few feet to Seth's room and felt
the shift. As soon as I reached it, his door
was split down the sundin the frame had been torn
at the corners where the bolts used to be. The
handle hung loose on one screw, and the paint around
the lock had buckled outward. Four clean holes had been
punched straight through on the bottom half of the door.
They weren't ragged. They were narrow and round, drilled deep
and deliberate, about the width of a pickaxe tip. Inside
the room, the sheet had been stripped half way down
the bed. The nightstand lay on its side. The floor
was scuffed in a wide arc. The carpet torn where
something had been dragged. A dark red smear trailed from
the bed to the door, then turned toward the parking lot. Outside,
a woman in a plain gray sweater was mopping the
pavement with slow, practiced strokes. She worked in silence, pushing
the soaked fibers across the concrete. The red line faded
behind with each pass. She never looked up. I stood
there for a long time, waiting for someone else to appear,
for a police cruiser, a medic, a crowd, but no
one came. Eventually, I left the motel and walked into town.
The streets were no longer empty. The diner had its
chairs back out. The gas station pumps were humming again.
A man was putting out a sandwich board for the
Lunt Special. People passed me on the sidewalk without stopping.
Near the post office, I found a small group gathered
in the street, half a dozen men and women, all
standing in a loose formation. They weren't holding anything, they
weren't armed, just waiting. One of them, a man in
a tan coat with sleeves two short for his arms,
stepped forward. He was maybe fifty. His expression was neither
kind nor angry. It's time for you to go now,
he said. I stared at him. What happened to my partner?
No one answered? I tried again, what happened last night?
Where did you all go the day before? Why are
you acting like this is normal? The man's mouth twitched
once at the corner, not quite a smile, more of
a signal, a recognition that my questions didn't need answers.
An offering has been made, he said. I looked past
him to the others. None of them met my eyes.
They stared just over my shoulder, waiting. I turned and
walked away. No one followed. The sky was dull gray
when I returned to the mine. The streets along the
road were still, the leaves half dropped and wet from
a slow morning drizzle. The tires cracked over gravel. For
the rest of the world held its breath. No one
followed me. No one had asked where I was going.
The entrance had been sealed again. Fresh boards crossed the
mouth of the shaft, clean earth than the old ones
we had pulled away. New bolts reinforced the frame. Some
one had worked quickly and quietly, and they had done
it before sunrise. I walked to the fence. The grass
around the path was damp, but a few red droplets
stood out on the pale soil leading toward the base
of the entrance. The color was too bright to be old.
Then I saw a bundle. It had been placed carefully,
resting against the lower beam of the gate, A handkerchief
knotted into a loose satchel, bulging at the center. I
crouched and opened it. Inside with the same kinds of
items we had found before. A ring dulled by age,
a lock of hair braided and yellowed at the tip,
two small teeth that looked far too human, and nestled
among them in the pile of offerings. The plastic corner
of a clipped work badge seths his name, his face,
still clean, still laminated. It must have been taken from
the pack we had left behind. I stood slowly, holding
the bundle against my chest, then lowered it again and
left it there. I pieced it altogether. Something in the
minds the faceless ones that I heard about were in there,
Whether their lost souls from the collapse or something far older,
I did not know. But what I did know was
how they kept them back. Memorabilia, memories from when they
were alive, left on their doorstep, maybe a reminder of
their humanity to stop claiming more souls. They had solved this,
worked this out over decades, and we came in and
messed things up. And how could this have gone any different?
If some here came up raving about monsters and rituals,
we'd have pushed them aside to do our work. No
one had told me what to do next. There was
no official protocol for this, no field manual entry labeled folklore,
no checkbox for an offering made in someone else's name.
I sat in the driver's seat of the truck with
the engine off, and opened my field log mind structure
remains unstable conditions hazardous collapse risk high. I paused secondary
fatality during inspection. Body unrecoverable. Recommend indefinite closure. I didn't
sign it right away, just closed the book and rested
it on my lap. Then I looked back at the
mouth of the mine. I never heard the ticking sound again,
but I so never went back. Greg had always seemed untouchable.
He was the type of guy who could talk a
cop out of a ticket or drunk and half conscious,
then somehow get the same cop to drive him home.
So when his sister called me crying, struggling to get
her words out, I thought something had happened to their mom.
When she finally managed to speak, I had to ask
her to repeat herself. It turned out that the police
found Greg's body in his apartment after his boss called
in a wellness check when he didn't show up to
work for two days. The responding officers broke down the
door and found him in the living room. They wouldn't
let the family see the body. From what his sister
had heard when she had caught the officers on Braig
discussing the scene. His limbs were twisted, his spine curved
like someone had wrung him out from both ends, and
his eyes were gone. Whoever had done it was sadistic
beyond belief. There was no forced entry or weirdly enough
signs of a struggle. The case was being ruled as suspicious,
but that just meant they didn't ever clue who was
behind it. Despite having a wide net of friends, Gregg's
funeral was small. Only a few people made it in person.
Jamie hugged me outside the church. Her eyes were red
and a makeup had started to smear, but she still
looked the same, sharp, blunt, unapologetic. The others were there, too,
raff and legs. We all grew up together back then.
We used the joke that we were stuck with each
other for life, and for the most part we were sure.
We drifted apart for a few years during college, but
we always ended up circling back. But now Greg a
part of us was a closed casket and a photo
on an easel. The priest mumbled his way through a
handful of generalities, though I didn't really listen. I kept
looking around the room, half expecting Greg to appear at
the back and make some sarcastic comment about how weird
it was to watch people cry over you. For a moment,
I thought I saw movement near the exit, but my
brain had been plaining tricks on me since the night
I got the call. After the burial, we stood in
a loose, uneasy circle in the parking lot. None of
us seemed ready to go home. Then Jamie brought up
that night at the lake when Greg fell off the
dock trying to chug a beer upside down. We laughed,
then we stopped. The laughter felt wrong. I still don't
get what the hell happened, Ralph muttered. Nobody knew how
to respond. Our silent grieving was interrupted by a man
in his late forties wearing a plain suit with thinning
brown hair. He moved with a kind of tired professionalism
that told me he'd been doing this a long time.
He stopped just outside our circle and introduced himself, Detective Harlan.
Sorry to intrude. His tone was respectful. You were Gregg
Sutton's closest friends, right, We all nodded. I was wondering
if I could ask a few questions I understand to
day is not ideal, but I found people tend to
remember important things in the hours after a funeral brings
things into focus. I know you people have already been
interviewed and questioned. I'm aware that none of you are
deemed to be suspects. But Jamie crossed our arms, go ahead.
Did Greg have any enemies? I'm aware you've been asked
this question before, but are you absolutely certain there's no
one from the past, someone who held a grudge, maybe
something that didn't seem serious but could have been taken
the wrong way. No, Ralph said immediately. Everyone liked Greg.
I don't mean dislike, I mean resentment anyone he wronged,
even by accident. We looked at each other. I could
tell we were all thinking the same thing. No, I said, finally,
not that we know of. He nodded, slowly understood. Did
he mention anything strange recently, unusual messages, people showing up
where they shouldn't, anything like that. He shook our heads.
Last question, does the name Danny mean anything to you? There?
It was his tone hadn't changed, but I felt my
chest tightened. I glanced around. Everyone held the same expression
as me. No, Jamie said, doesn't ring a bell. The
detective watched us for a moment. I could tell he
didn't buy it, but he didn't press. He thanked us,
gave us his card, and walked off towards his car.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Ralph led
out a shaky breath. Danny true Low, I said a
name I hadn't said aloud in over a time decade.
Danny had been in our class from sixth grade until
the middle of sophomore year. He was a thin kid
with a quiet voice and thick glasses. He was always
hunged forward, like he was trying to disappear. He didn't
fit in, and we didn't let him. To make it simple,
we bullied the kid. The last time we saw him,
we did something that was supposed to be funny. A
dare Raff said he couldn't fit. Jamie said we should
find out. It was after school and the hallway was empty.
Gregg blocked the nearest stairwell while I held the door.
Danny fought harder than I thought he would. He cried, screamed,
and begged. It only made us more determined. I remember
the heat of his shoulder press against mine as we
forced him into a locker. I remember the sound of
metal slam shot, the way it echoed, and his fists
pounding from the inside while we walked away. I don't
know how long it was stuck, Maybe until the janitor
came in the next morning, maybe longer after that. He
was gone, and that changed something in all of us.
The school didn't make a big deal of it, which
in hindsight, was to be expected. One of the guidance
counselors said he transferred. Some whispered that his parents pulled
him out after a breakdown. There were rumors about his
mom showing up in tears at the principal's office demanding
to know what happened. We didn't face any consequences, and
we stopped thinking about him until now. I don't think
it means anything, Raff said, could be a coincidence. Someone
with the same name. Jamie frowned. He said, Danny, not
the full name. Sure could have been any Danny, But
why not did the detective bring that name up in
the first place? What if it was him, though, Leg said,
Ralph rolled his eyes. Jeez, don't start, I'm serious. Leg said.
He said the name right after asking if Greg had
any enemies that means something, Ralph snapped. You really think
some kid we bullied fifteen years ago came back and
twisted Greg into a goddamn pretzel. Raf softened a little.
We were bad, yeah, but we were kids. I don't
feel good about it either, he continued, But that doesn't
mean we jumped to wild ass theories. Greg's dead. That's
horrible enough without spinning it into a revenge fantasy. We
don't even know if Danny's alive, Jamie exhaled through his nose. Look,
if it turns out something more is going on, we'll
talk to the cops right now. We'd sound insane. You
want us to bring up a kid we bollied fifteen
years ago in a murder case. I shook my head,
no exactly. We agreed not to bring it up again.
We went home, each returning to our separate houses under
the glows street light and the silent orbit of patrol cars.
I lay in bed for hours with the covers pulled
up to my chin, staring at the ceiling and reminiscing.
The next day, Rapha and I were at his place,
sitting on the couch of the television on though neither
of us was watching it. A game was playing, but
the volume was low, Yet neither of us had the
energy for small talk. We hadn't seen Jamie since the funeral,
and didn't talk about Greg anymore, not because we were
already moving on, but because we didn't know how to
carry the weight of what happened. It sat between us
like a third person in the room. We were speaking
about some things, trying to crack the silence that loomed,
when we were interrupted by an incoming call on RAF's phone,
his mom. He answered it on speaker, Raf, she said,
and a voice cracked halfway through his name. Something happened
at Lex's apartment complex. He sat forward slowly, eyes narrowing,
already braced. What do you mean someone's dead? She said,
it's bad. Have you not seen the news? They said?
She couldn't finish. We both stared at the phone. Raf
asked for details, She didn't have many. He hung up
without saying goodbye, then turned to me, pale and still
we need to go check up on Les. On the
drive to Lex's place, Ralph drummed his fingers on the
steering wheel the entire time, a nervous ticket had since
middle school. By the time we pulled up to the complex,
who was blocked off with police tape. Flashing lights turned
the lot into a mess of color and shadow. An
officer out front was talking to a reporter. She asked
if he was related to the sudden case. The officer
said they couldn't comment. The reporter kept pressing. She mentioned
the name. We weren't expecting to hear les. We got
back in the car without saying anything. We drove straight
to the police station. Ralph ran to red lights. I
didn't stop him. Our silence had turned heavy, and there
it was less shock and more fear. Now we walked
through the glass doors, and we met with a sound
of voices, paper shuffling, and phones ringing. The front desk
officer looked up, recognized us somehow, and nodded us through
without much hassle. Jamie was already there. She sat in
one of the waiting chairs near the front, arms folded,
foot tapping. Her hair was tied back in a loose
bun and looked like she hadn't slept. Her face went
stiff when she saw us. I heard already, she said,
did you. Ralph nodded yeah. I wanted to contact you guys,
but I was in such a rush to get to
the police station. I was so scared after finding count
I Jamie stood and walked down the hall with us.
I already told them we need to talk to Detective Harlan.
He's in a meeting. Wasn't a coincidence, I said, and
I hated how thin my voice sounded. This person is
clearly targeting our group Danny, Jamie said, biting down on
the word. You think it's him. I don't know who
else it could be. We waited. Eventually Harlan came out
of a side hallway. His eyes moved across the three
of us before settling. He didn't look surprised. He waved
us into a back room without a word. Once the
door shut, Jamie spoke, first, we lie to you about Danny.
The detective nodded slowly. I figured. Ralph stepped forward. We
knew him a long time ago. We went to school together.
His name is Danny Truilo. What happened? We bollied him,
I said hard. It wasn't teasing. It was full and cruelty.
We pushed him out of that school, maybe out of
his mind. We locked him in a locker and left
him overnight then he was gone. The detective took a
breath and rubbed his jaw. You didn't mention that, no,
Jamie said, because well, we didn't want to bring him up.
We thought we were all being weird of conspiracy theorists.
You think he's doing this after all these years. He
was the last person we ever hurt. I said, Danny
going away changed us. We felt guilty. He looked at
the table, then back at us. We've had that name
at both scenes. Danny, no other traces or clues. Whoever
did it definitely knew Gregg and now Lex. If you're
saying this person might be Danny Shruillo, then that gives
me something to go on. We'll start pulling records and
see what we can dig up. If you think your targets,
I'll make sure patrols stay in your area in case
this person comes back, find him, Raf said, please. After
we left the station, I couldn't sleep. I kept picturing
my dead friends. I waited until morning and then started
calling around. The high school secretary remembered me. She didn't
remember Danny, not until I gave her his last name.
I lied and told her it was for an old
alumni project. She gave me the principal's name from that
year and said he'd retired but might still have some
information on him. I contacted Raf and Jamie about it,
and we all try to get it as much information
as we could. Later that day, Jamie sent a message
in the group chat and she told us she drove
to the local records office. She had a hard time,
but apparently she managed to get something. Danny's parents were
found dead in their home less than a week after
he moved. Both bodies showed signs of massive internal trauma,
blunt force and tearing. No weapon was recovered, and no
one was arrested. The case was marked undetermined and closed
after eight weeks. The report was cold and clinical. He
was relocated to a state facility new residents sealed per
court order. That was it. There was no trace of
him after that. It was as if he disappeared completely.
I stared at the block of text on my phone.
My hands were shaking, but I didn't notice, and on
my phone started to slip from my grip. I used
to think guilt was something you felt in moments right
after something happened, or when someone confronted you about it.
But it wasn't like that. It spread. He pushed into
your ribs and your spine and made it hard to breathe.
I knew what we did to him was cruel. I
knew that for years, but I never thought about where
he went, or what came next, or who he had
become to survive. Jamie came over the next night. I
heard a knock and felt a flash of panic in
my chest before I saw her through the people. She
was holding two coffees in a tray and a fast
food paper bag. Her hands were shaking slightly. I let
her in and we sat in the living room with
the TV off. I keep hearing him, she said after
a while. Gregg I nodded, yeah, I am. I haven't
slept since they found legs. I'm scared to close my eyes.
I feel like something is watching me when the lights
go off. I told her I felt the same. We
laughed for a second. The laughter came quick and shallow,
with no weight to it. We sound crazy, she said,
probably are, I replied. Then we went quiet again. The
conversations after was short and awkward, but he felt good
to be in some one's presence. I'm sure that's why
she came over in the first place we parted ways.
Shortly after that, she texted me the following afternoon the
police approved it. I'm going into protective custody. They're placing
me in a secure prison unit. It's the safest place
they've got. I called her immediately, she didn't answer. Ten
minutes later, she sent a voice message, I'm sorry. I
can't keep doing this. I'm losing my mind. Every sound
at night makes me flinch. I'd barely eat. I'm scared
I'll end up like Gregg and Les, and I don't
want to die screaming. This place is safe, and you
guys should probably do the same. I texted back that
I understood. I told her we'd miss her and that
i'd stay in touch however I could. She replied with
her thumbs up and a broken heart emoji. Later, raph
and I sat together in his living room. He'd bagged
a duffel bag, but didn't know where he wanted to go.
He said he didn't trust any systems meant to protect people.
I didn't argue. I felt the same, and we decided
that we wouldn't be going into anything like protective custody.
He ended up crashing in my couch that night, we
made a deal to stick together for now. We had
each other, we had a weapon, and we had police
patrols circling the block. We tried pretending life could go on.
Ralph kept sleeping on my couch and I stopped logging
into work entirely. We stalked up on groceries, though most
of what we bought stayed unopened. I didn't say it
out loud, but we both believed Jamie was safer than us.
She was supposed to be the one that made it.
The call came from the detective, not the news. He
didn't speak right away. I remember his breathing more than
his voice. He came through the speaker like he'd been
running or pacing. When he finally said a name, my
legs buckled. I sat down on the floor next to
the coffee table, or raft stood frozen by the door.
They found her that morning, dead in her cell. Her
body was destroyed, and somehow there were no traces. The
prison's availlance system had failed overnight. All footage from a
wing was blacked out. Between three oh two and three
seventeen a m. Three guards were found unconscious outside her unit,
and again that name Danny, Raph and I sat in silence.
After the call ended. He put his head in his hands.
I could hear him whispering to himself. He didn't cry,
but he shook hard enough that the glass on the
table rattled. Detective Harland came to the house later that day.
He looked like hell, look, he said, voice low. I
understand you boys don't want to be placed in police custody,
not after what has happened. But I say this as
a friend, not as a government body. Now pack your
things and get the hell out of here. We didn't reply,
but he continued, I've got nothing to go on, he said, solemnly.
We're increasing patrols, I've pulled favors for federal assistance. But
this person, who he assumed is Danny Truillo his skill
to a degree I've never witnessed in my life. The
thing's happening at these scenes don't make sense. I've seen
twenty year veterans from it. And what was left to
that girl. He shook his head and stood, we'll keep
a car outside. But if I were you, I damn
it all to hell and go as far away as
you can. After the detective left, Raph and I decided
to follow his advice. I brought up a plan, said
we could go west, stay with my cousin, disappear until
this all blew over. We wanted this case solved, we
truly did, but we were too scared. Ralph said going
west would still mean being close. Jamie was in a
maximum security location and Danny somehow got to her. We
packed our things, decided we'd start the following morning. Drove
until we reached the coast, and then decided from there.
I woke to the sound of something pounding that night.
It took a few seconds to understand what I was hearing.
My mind was still fogged with sleep. I sat up
and reached for the gun instinctively. I'd replayed what if
situations hundreds of times my mind already. The pounding came again,
three dull thuds. Somewhere on the other side of the house.
I called out a RAF. No answer. I moved toward
the hallway, keeping the gun raised. I tried not to
think about why the air smelled sour. I tried not
to think at all, RAF I whispered, still nothing. I
reached the door to the guest room and stood outside it.
I could hear something moving on the other side. A wet,
dragging sound like wet meat, pulled across the wood floor.
My fingers closed around the doorknob. I turned it and pushed.
The door opened slowly, just creaking loudly. The smell hit
me first, rot and bile. The room was dim. The
blackout curtains kept most of the light out, but there
was enough from the hallway to make out shapes. Raf
was on the bed, Oh what was left of him.
His body was bent in half, his spine cracked backward.
One arm had been torn, cleaned off and tossed against
the wall. His jaw hung open from one hinge, the
tongue swaying beneath it. It, on the other hand, was hunched
over him. The creature looked up when I stepped inside.
Its skin was tight and gray, pulled so thin I
could see every bone beneath it. Saws ran up its
back and neck, leaking a dark yellow fluid that clung
in thick strings. Its arms were long, ending in hands
that dragged down to the floor. Each finger tipped in
what looked more like bone than claw. Its chest heaved
with uneven, wet breaths. It didn't move. I raised the
gun and entered the clip into its torso. Each shot hit,
but it didn't fall or seemed fazed at all. It
stepped toward me like the bullets had annoyed it. I
turned and bolted down the hallway. Behind me, the door exploded.
I felt pieces of it bounce off my back. The
thing was moving faster now I could hear its feet
slapping the floor. I reached the bedroom, slammed the door,
and locked it. I grabbed the dresser and pushed it
in front of the frame, then the bookshelf. My breath
came too fast. My chest climbed down in waves. I
could barely see straight. I dared nine one one, but
before the operator could even pick up, glass burst behind
me in an irruption of sound and wind. It came
in all at once, the window imploding inward, spray sharps
across the room. Hands grabbed me from behind. One clamped
around my wrist, the other gripped my shoulder. The next
thing I knew, my feet were off the floor and
a voice was barking into my ear. Move He dragged
me through the broken window frame, and I hid the
lawn hard. My shoulder slammed into the dirt I rolled,
tasting blood in the back of my throat. Behind us,
the bedroom door cracked open. Get up, the man said,
He bawled me again. We ran through the yard, past
the clap's garden bed, over the gravel path that tore
up my souls. My legs moved on instinct, powered by
nothing but fear. I didn't even know what was going
on anymore. There was a car parked two houses down.
We got to it, and the man yanked the door
open and shoved me inside, before climbing in after me.
He started the engine without hesitation. It spluttered and groaned,
but it roared to life. We peeled away from the curb.
I turned to the man behind the wheel, heart pounding.
What the hell was that thing? I asked, And who
even are you? He looked over at me slowly. His
face was worn down to the bone. Deep creases were
carved across his cheeks and forehead. His eyes darker than
I remembered anyone's eyes being, watched me for a second,
longer than felt comfortable. It's me, Danny, he said. My
mind refused the process what he'd just told me. This
man couldn't be the same kid we stuffed into a locker.
This man looked like he'd walked through deserts and lived
in parking garages. His beard was wild, patchy around the jawline,
thick in the middle. His voice carried gravel in every word.
You're Danny Trueilo, He nodded. Before I could respond, he
spoke again. I just want to say I forgave you,
he said a long time ago. I wanted to speak,
but I let him continue. I used to lie awake
every night, he said, back when I lived at home.
I used to pray to anything that might have been
listenting God, demons, shadows on the ceiling. I didn't care
what it was. I just begged for something to take
them all away. Everyone who hurt me, my parents, the
kids at school, anyone who made me feel smaller than dirt.
His hands tightened, and the steering wheel. And one night
after you guys stuffed me in a locker, I was
more adamant that something answered than ever before. And something
did answer. He stared ahead again, eyes glassy expression. Still,
he wasn't recalling it like a memory. He was reciting
it something he told himself so many times the words
had become carved into the inside of his skull. The
first to go were my parents. I found them in
the living room. My dad's back was snapped in half.
Mom she looked like she'd been folded into the carpet.
The police said it was some kind of freak collapse.
They moved me into a home two towns over, and
that should have been the end of it. But it wasn't.
He finally looked at me again. He kept going every
name I had ever whispered in anger, every person I
wished Harman, every curse I made with tears in my eyes.
It hunted them down, one by one, sometimes years later,
sometimes across the country. His voice dropped lower. You were
the last because you were far. That's it. You lived
too far. And it took time. I didn't know what
to say. I didn't know it would last this long,
he said. I thought it would be out or turn
on me. I tried to keep ahead of it, I
really did. I moved every six months. I tried attacking it,
and every solution you could think of, I've probably tried it.
It didn't help. I'm sorry about Gregg, I'm sorry about
Les Jamie Raff. I tried my best. The car sat
in silence for a long time. Danny's story drifted through
the air like a bad smell that wouldn't leave. I
turned toward him, my voice catching before it escaped my throat.
How do we stop it? He didn't answer right away.
He reached between the seat and the center console and
pulled out a dented metal firmace. He unscrewed the lid
and took a sip. The smell that rose up was
sharp and chemical. My stomach turned. I've been preparing for years,
he said, testing things. I don't know if it's alive
in the way you and I are, but it reacts
to pain. I've harmed it before, so it can die.
How I've built something that might work. Ammunition soaked in
a mix I've been tweaking for the better part of
a decade, silver powder, industrial salt, lye iron fillings, and
a few other things. He reached into his pocket and
took out a single round. The casing shimmered, not with polish,
but something deeper, something buried in the metal. He held
it between his fingers with care. I created the first
version of this bullet a few months ago. I hit it,
and that was the first and only time I've ever
heard it make a sound. My throat was dry. How
many of those do you have? Three? And that's enough? Maybe?
I leaned back, mind racing. Every instinct in me was
telling me to run, to take whatever car I could
find and disappear into the back roads until the fuel
ran out. But there was nowhere left to run. I'd
seen what happened to people who tried hiding. What do
you need from me, I asked. Danny looked over, his
voice quieter. Now it needs bait, and you're the last
name left. I nodded. There was nothing else to say.
We made it to an abandoned house. Eventually, the porch
leaned toward the dirt. We drove in under the moonlight
and killed the engine a few hundred feet fat back
to avoid drawing attention. Inside the house was worse. The
walls were covered in pages, scribbled diagrams, symbols, names, ingredients.
Half of them I didn't recognize. The other half made
my skin itch. There were dozens of shellcasings lined up
on a crracked bugshelf. A single mattress lay in one corner,
soaked through with old sweat. Danny opened a chest in
the back and pulled out the weapon It was a
hunting rifle, heavily modified, with wire wrapped around the barrel
and scratches etched into the stalk. He held it like
a man holding a relic, not at aol. I'll take
the shot, he said. You stay in the center of
the room. Tried to distract it. We waited, was passed.
The moon drifted. Every sound made my muscles twitch. I
sat on the floor with the empty gun from my
house across my lap. It was useless now, but I
couldn't let go of it. At some point, the wind died.
Danny raised the rifle without a word. The door exploded inward.
It moved through the door, leaving no trace behind. His
chest rose and fell in quick jerks. Plus spilled from
the holes in its shoulders. His head tilted as it
found me. Danny fired. The creature shrieked, A high, rattling
sound cut straight through my brain. It reared back, Smoke
rising from the impact point his chest streamed. The flesh
there blistered and pealed. It lunged. I duped behind the
table while Danny reloaded the thing through the couch aside
and slammed its clawed hand into the floor. I had
been seconds earlier would split open. I rolled and kicked
out at its ribs. It didn't flinch. Danny shouted and
fired again. This time it hit the spine. The thing
screamed again, louder, and twisted in itself in mid air.
His body started to clapse inward. His torso folded over
its own shoulders, cracking like ice under pressure, It swung
toward Danny. I moved before he could reach him. I
grabbed a fire poker from the hearth and jabbed it
into the side of its skull. Its head snapped to
the side, black icos spilling around the wound. The stench
hit hard, my eyes watered. Danny raised the rifle one
last time and fired into its throat. That did it.
The body froze. Its limbs trembled and bent inward, collapsing
against its own weight. A low moan echoed through the room.
Then it fell apart into ash. I dropped the poker
and stood, coughing through the smoke. Danny leaned against the wall,
one hand pressed to his ribs. The silence after the
creature fell apart pressed on the inside of my skull.
My ears rang not from the volume, but from the vacuum.
That followed it. Dust drifted to the air where it
had been. Danny dropped the rifle and slid down the wall.
His knees gave out first, and he ended up sitting
on the floor with his back to the crumbling dry wall.
His breathing was uneven, and he had one arm pressed
against his ribs. I saw a line of red seeping
through his shirt, trailing down from beneath his elbow. He
looked up at me through strands of sweat drenched hair.
We did it, he said. I nodded. I didn't have
anything to say. My throat was raw and my chest
ached don He motioned for me to come closer. I
stepped over to him. He reached behind and pulled out
a revolver. He didn't lift it toward me, he held
it between his knees. I need you to shoot me.
I stared at him. What in the side? Nothing vital
enough to look real? I took a step back. Why
would I do that? Because the are going to need
someone to blame. They're not going to take this story
and put it in a report. You know that. He tilted
his head and met my eyes. His voice stayed calm,
you shoot me, tell them I lost it. Tell them
I killed your friends, came for you next. You fought back,
barely survived. I take the blame. It's over, and you
go home. That's insane. You've saved my life. His gaze
didn't waver. I crouched next to him and grabbed his arm.
There has to be another way. There isn't. He pressed
the gun into my hand. No one's gonna believe what
we saw. You know that. You can barely believe it yourself.
I can see it all over you. What we killed
didn't leave proof. There's no body or explanation you can
give to the cops. They'll think you snap too, unless
you have some one to point to. I'm not doing this.
Danny leaned back and let his head rest against the wall.
His eyes closed for a moment, then opened again. If
you don't do this, they'll keep digging. You'll end up
locked away, worse blamed for it. They already think I'm
a ghost. Make it real. I sat there, gripping the revolver,
feeling its weight press into my palm. You don't owe
me this, I said. He didn't answer. I raised the
gun slowly, hands trembling. I aimed at the soft space
below his ribs. Do it, he said. I pulled the trigger.
Then he groaned and slumped sideways, one hand clamping down
over the wound. Blood poured between his fingers and darkened
his shirt. He didn't scream, he didn't even fall fully.
He slid until his shoulders hid the floor. Then gave
me a small nod. Call them, he said, through his teeth,
Tell them it's over. I did. The sirens reached us
twenty minutes later. I stood outside, blood on my shirt,
hands raised, gun on the ground. They moved fast, weapons drawn,
shouting commands. I gave them the story Danny told me
to give. The detective didn't argue. Danny was loaded into
an ambulance under heavy restraint. I never saw him again.
The press latched onto the narrative, a local tragedy, a
case with decades of history. An unstable man allegedly traumatized
by years of bullying returned to take revenge. Authorities called
it her revenge, prey rooted in trauma and delusion. The
public swallowed it whole. I was left empty in a hollow.
Everyone that surrounded me was now dead. I spent a
few months organizing funerals and accompanying grieving parents and siblings.
I would later to find out that Danny died in
custody wounds from the bullet I had given him. I
wrestled with that for a while. I had killed him twice,
the first time in a locker and the second time
with a bullet, and I don't know which one I
regret more