Speaker 1: When I found what was left with my grandfather. He
didn't look like he was any closer to God, his
flesh creaking like the bows of a tree. I might
not have recognized what I was looking at if he
hadn't whimpered at my light. I'd only met him once
before that I was about ten or so. I had
no idea about this strange man who turned up claiming
he was my grandfather. For someone who believed cavemen rode dinosaurs,
Elijah wasn't as weird as you might think. He tracked
us down when I was thirteen and came over to
Britain to visit us. Dad had never mentioned his biological father,
and while the old man seemed regretful about the lost time,
he didn't sit around crying about it either. He was
courteous but distant throughout and in Dad parted ways after
those two days and never spoke again, at least not
in person. He did invite us to see him some
day in Texas as he left, but it never happened
Other than that. I remember that he sat me down
one night that talked me through my maths textbook, told
me about imaginary numbers and string theory. Heavy stuff, but
he made it accessible through his simple yet earnest passion.
It was only after he'd gone that Dad told me
the Old Man was a young Earth creationist, believed the
Earth was around six thousand years old, and that every
last solemn word in the Bible was meant to be
taken literally. Twenty eight years later, and I was standing
in the lobby of Elijah's privately owned museum that had
passed to me after my father's death. Dad had never
told me about either the museum or Elijah's own passing,
but going through his estate turned it up, and I
was as surprised as anyone to find out I was
now the owner of sixty acres on the other side
of the world. The whole place was dedicated to teaching
biblical science of the world's creation. I saw stone slabs
with human footprints displayed like great treasures, some of them
sixteen inches healed to toe and with little placards explaining
that the rocks were proof of humans coexisting with dinosaurs.
There was a whole jungle room with plastic caveman versions
of Adam and Eve crouched over paper cut out fire,
while on the opposite side of the room a badly
made stegosaurus watched cane push Abel to the ground. Although
the most ludicrous was the one where two generic looking
caves men used raptor clause the harvest wheat. It was imaginative,
I'll give him that, but it was an especially convincing
How or why Elijah was so obsessed with creationism was
something of a puzzle to me. He'd begun his career
with a pH d in mathematics and a short stint
teaching at a local college, and part of the reason
I spent so much time in that museum packing up
his things was to try and figure him out. During
that time I learned three key things. First, Elijah argued
furiously with every other creationist he could find, and burned
every bridge there was. Without their support, he had almost
no visitors during the thirty years the museum was open.
The second was a cutout of a newspaper I found
on Elijah's desk, showing him him grinning next to a
dinosaur footprint. The article talked about how he'd gotten lost
in the wilderness and taken refuge in a cave full
of old fossils. I recognized the land in that photo
as the place he'd later built his museum on, so
it must have been important to him. I hadn't seen
any cave in my wonderings, though, but I figured if
I kept looking, i'd come across it sooner or later.
The final piece of the puzzle was Elijah's letter to
my grandmother. I never knew he'd reached out to her.
All we knew was she slept with some American gi
and never wanted to see or speak to him again.
The letter was a proposal. Then I was initially surprised
she'd shown no interest. Elijah was wealthy, intelligent, hard working, and,
based on his photos, a good looking and athletic man.
But then I got to the last page or so
ethel I can offer you more than just a good life.
I can offer you an eternal one. I'm sure I
told you by the time I hurt my leg hiking
in the wilderness and was forced to take shelter in
a cave until the storm passed. There, I found many
strange and curious fossils, and I took the first steps
on this strange hobby of mine. But what I haven't
told the others is that I saw more than just
a few old rocks I found a way, down, Down, down, down, Ethel.
I went deep in the earth, and there I found
a paradise, a peace of the world that had been
preserved as it was before the great flood. And I
saw early Man still living as he did in the
days of Eden, ten feet tall and a thousand years old,
and speaking the tongue of God handed down before the
fall of Babel. One of these great men sat me
down and told me the secret histories of the world.
I've kept this knowledge to myself for so long, but
I know I can change the world, and it begins
with this new book I'm writing. After that, a museum
to display all the proof I've gathered. It isn't just
about history, Ethel, it's the future that's at stake. Down there,
I learned how to put a stop to it. All
the wars and the fighting, hunger and deprivation, it can
all be a thing of the past. And I believe
it's God's will I do this. I can change the world, Ethel.
I want you by my side when I do it.
There it is, I muttered quietly to myself as I
read the letter by the dim light of Elijah's old
desk lamp. That was why my grandmother had not responded
to his letters, and why my father did not meet
his father until Elijah tracked him down decades later, six
weeks in the dusty ruins of Elijah's seldom visited museum,
and I finally felt like I understood my grandfather, intelligent, stubborn,
possibly mentally ill. Over the next few days, I continued
to pack up his things and found myself often feeling
sorry for him. It was lonely out there, and it
made me uncomfortable to think of how an old man
painstakingly painted little plaques no one wanted to read, or
planning the best place to build public toilets for field
trips that never came, and he just kept at it
right until the end. It was like I was walking
around the physical manifestation of someone's delusions. But then I
found the door behind the bookcase, and I discovered that
Elijah had built two museums. Whole time i'd been in
that place, i'd felt a kind of quieter ease, but
I'd put it down to the circumstances packing up a
dead man's things, or so I thought. But as soon
as I pulled on that little locking mechanism, and the
shelf popped free with a puff of stale air. I
understood I'd been sensing something else entirely. It was the
darkness that stood out to me, or maybe the smell.
Hard to say, since I'd never breathed air like it
before or since, and looking back, I think I might
be overstating just how black the darkness at the bottom
of those stairs really was. But just the sight of
it made something inside me want to turn and run,
not just out of the building, but out of the
damned country, back to the airport and home again. I
had no idea what was going to be down there,
but for some reason I was scared witless. Just the dark,
I told myself, before forcing one foot in front of
the other and making my way down. Wasn't far before
the plaster chipped away and there was nothing but bare
rock for walls. Turns out I hadn't been able to
find the cave on Elijah's land because he'd build the
museum on top of it. And down there, in a
large chamber bigger than most school gyms, was a whole
other set of displays, eight large glass tanks, each one
bigger than a car. I quickly realized what I'd been
smelling the whole time was from aldehyde, and it had
turned those glass tanks into green and murky pits where
my light revealed only the occasional glimpse of what lay within.
Whatever Elijah was planning on showing off down here, it
wasn't fossilized rocks. There was flesh and bone in there,
exposed muscle, all white and wriggly. I moved quickly at first,
shining my light into each one and squinting. I was
skittish and in a hurry, not sure what I was
going to find. But then I looked into one and
saw a fist sized eyeball staring back at me, and
I cried out in terror. It was the suddenness of
it that got me that, And it was housed in
a socket of rotting flesh, unfamiliar in color and shape.
Couldn't have told you if it belonged to something that slithered,
swam or flew. But as I walked around the case,
I did find a hand curled up in one corner,
with fingers all different lengths and shapes. What was Elijah
planning to do down there? In that hidden room? There
were no plaques, no explanations, only those eight tanks that
took up most of the enormous space, each one raised
so the bottom was about chest height, ready for someone
to wander around and marvel a god knows what. The
floor had been covered in marble, so he clearly had
grand ambitions. Now there was only dust and sandy pebbles
littering the floor, but everything upstairs had been hooky and cheap,
the kind of evidence that was going to convince the
already convinced. But down there, there in the dark, where
I could just make out the great shapes floating in
the murky dark, there was the sense of something electric
in the air, a feeling of revelation that wormed its
way up through the ground, through my feet, and into
my chest, where it settled like a kind of slow panic.
I couldn't stop myself wondering about Elijah's belief and how
it factored into that strange place. What had he preserved
for decades in that chemical filth. I left after only
ten minutes and returned to the normal world above, where
I spent a good hour sitting in the sun, hoping
that tex and warmth would purge the dirty feeling that
dark room had left me with. I briefly made arrangements
to return home, but quickly canceled. Elijah was insane, so
I told myself. But there was something down there, and
it was a damned sight, more compelling than a bunch
of cheap forgeries. That night, I stayed in the same
room I always had, and lay tossing and turning beneath
the moonlight, unable and unwilling to simply let the thoughts
of that room fade away. I was wide awake when
I heard the sound of something moving around the rooms below.
I was alone out there, far from civilization. The sheriff
had spoken to me a fair bit about trying to
get a hotel, and for the first time I wished
i'd taken his advice. He was mainly concerned about squatters,
and that's what I told myself. Must be out there,
despite the danger, I got up to check on it. Anyway,
the thought of a whole night spent hold up in
that room waiting for some crack addict to come stumbling
in didn't seem much better than going out there and
confronting them. But of course there was more to it
than that. I had strange ideas floating in my head,
left over from the short time I'd spent wondering those
great glass displays. Every time I closed my eyes, I
saw images of strange, shadowed things floating within. I wanted
to bury those thoughts as quickly as possible and put
an end to fancy notions of monsters lurking in the dark.
At first, the museum looked much like it always had.
There were boxes of artifacts and books I'd spent the
last few weeks putting away, and quite a few displays
still left standing from where I'd yet to get to them.
In the jungle room, I walked past those funny looking
cavemen and plastic dinosaurs hiding behind find fake ferns, and
stopped briefly to examine the serpent that tented passers by
with an apple in its child sized fist. It was
a cheap looking creation, with a strange childlike face rendered
in fiberglass scales and beady yellow eyes. I disliked it
from day one, and catching it in the dark that
night made me hate it even more. But this time
I stopped and re read the plaque beneath I remembered
the words Elijah had written for it. And at the
time I dismissed them, but some strange feeling made me
revisit them. In that moment, Creatures alive to day, such
as snakes and lizards, looked very different under conditions of
the pre flood world, where the air was alive with
powerful static, and water did not fall from the sky
but seeped upwards from the ground as a kind of
conduct insation. The serpent was probably not like any snake
we'd see today, but perhaps an altogether different creature whose
bones continued to confound the non believer scientists who studied them.
Only through the Bible can we realize what such fossils
truly represent. This is only one interpretation of what the
serpent that tempted Eve may have looked like. When I
looked up, another pair of eyes were gazing at me
from over the mannekin's shoulder. I could not see the
face that hid behind the fake plant, but there was
no denying the two yellow reflective points that fixed me
momentarily before blinking one at a time. I froze, terrified
by such primal sight as a pair of predatory eyes
gazing at me from the dark, and watched in terror
as they slinked away, disappeared entirely. There followed the sounds
of a few rapid and wet footfalls across the tile floor,
as something in that room crawled quietly into the shadows.
That night, I barricaded my bedroom door, and come morning,
when I felt a little braver in the daylight, I
checked the jungle room and found wet and slimy tracks
leading to Elijah's office, where they disappeared behind the bookcase
and into the cave below. It was crazy, I told myself,
all of it was madness, but I couldn't shake my curiosity,
and if you were me, you wouldn't have been able
to either. This was like seeing the ice wall in
the Arctic, proof of some mad conspirital gibberish that we've
all been peddled for years through rapid fire YouTubers who
talk about flat earths and giants under the pyramids. It
was as if I'd felt what Elijah had spoken of.
The air really was electric down there. The ground was different.
But as much as I hated to even give his
beliefs the tiniest iota of credit, I could think of
no other way to describe it than I had briefly
stood in the conditions of another older world. I had
to make sense of it. I'd spent weeks putting away
badly made fakes and forgeries, footprints with visible tool marks,
badly arranged dinosaur bones, and direrharmis of raptors in Noah's ark.
Elijah had found something, all right, but I was certain
it wasn't proof of his worldview. I just had to
understand it on my own terms. Despite every bit of apprehension,
I went back down the staircase. This time I took
a crowbar and slipped a claw hammer in one belt loop,
just in case. I also brought a few wired floodlights
and set about lighting that main room up so I
could get a proper look. It didn't help me see
what was in those cases any better. If anything, the
bright lights scattered even harder in the filth, and it
all looked like a kind of pale green jelly. But
I did find two doors I hadn't noticed the last time.
One was a simple wooden one that led into a
small closet full of old journals and cassettes. The other
was like a metal bulkhead, the kind that would be
used on a ship to seal a flooding hallway. I
know at some point I was going behind that door,
but for the time being I settled for reading some
of Elijah's ol anals. It seemed like the easier of
the two options. Specimen one rat failure. Died after only
a few hours. Preserved and put aside for further investigation.
Specimen two sheep partial failure. The wool continued to grow
at unusual pace, small buds flowers we'll see. Preserved and
put aside for further investigation. Specimen three cow failure. If
size is anything to go by, the ark must have
been colossal. Perhaps these creatures are the origins of the
fossils so many scientists attribute to wooly mammoths. Attempted dissection
but proved too difficult. Specimen has been preserved and put
aside for further investigation. Specimen four spider successful. A truly
prehistoric creature. It returned to its aquatic roots and lived
for many days in its tank before dying during an escape.
Attempt to think these creatures once swam in the oceans.
I have preserved the specimen for further investigation. Specimen five
lizard success. The primitive attempts at speech were a promising sign.
Euthanizing it proved difficult, but ultimately necessary. The things it
said could not have been permitted in a god fearing society.
Reserved for further investigation. Specimen six cactus house plant success.
Question marks relatively unchanged in outward appearance, but dissection revealed
the insights it developed to meet like appearance, continued use
to grow despite best efforts. Preserved in the hopes the
formeldehyde will kill it, but must keep a close eye
on its display. Specimen seven blue catfish success. The origins
of the Great Leviathan perhaps lie within creatures such as this.
Its growth was extraordinary, and it will be a struggle
to fit the beast inside one of the displays. I
do not envy the ancient sailors who encountered one of
these in open waters. Specimen eight sparrow failure, dreadful mistake.
Euthanize itself while screaming obscenities. The things is said were
extremely blasphemous. Preserved and put aside for further investigation. Specimen nine.
Despite my best efforts, exposure to pre flood conditions has
begun to affect me. I'll have to join the Great
men below. If they will have me, I will not
be able to continue my great work, and that saddens
me deeply. Not a success, but not a failure either.
At least I can take solace in knowing this will
bring me closer to God. I looked at the tanks
and suppressed a shudder. With these Elijah's failed experiments, and
if so, what on earth had he been doing to them?
There was no scientific equipment down there, no mad scientist
laboratory with bubbling vials and buzzing tesla coils. That I
had been the size of a cantelope and could not
have belonged to anything on that list, at least not
in its natural state. But Elijah's notes hinted strongly at
him having changed them somehow, a kind of mutation, I wondered,
perhaps even a form of radiation. For a moment, I
considered going through the rest of the notes, but that
was just delaying the inevitable. I was impatient, curious, and
desperate to make sense of these things. So I approached
the great metal door and reached for the lock, but
hesitated when I heard a sound on the other side,
a gentle suscration. I leaned forward and listened intently as
I could. Jacob opened the door. It was not a sound.
It wasn't I could not tell you the tombre of
the voice, the volume, or language. It had none of
those things. It was inside me, and it hurt like hell,
a hammers to my cortex that left my mind ringing.
My sight turned into a slide show. Blood sprayed from
my nose and mouth. The floor was suddenly inches from
my face, and then my hands were reaching for the
locking wheel. I dragged myself to my feet and gripped
it steadily. I was going to open it, even as
my mind finally caught up and I was flooded with
a terrible panic, a desperate, feral need to get out
of there. But I couldn't stop myself. Resisting became a
kind of physical impossibility, as out of bounds as flying
or walking on the ceiling. The loss of control was haunting,
and I would have opened that door were it not
for the sound of splashing water behind me. Something about
it scared me enough that the spell was broken, and
I regained some of my senses. I managed the glance
behind me, and my light caught a glimmer of something
black and oily slithering in one of the tanks. That
sight alone turned my blood towicce, but it still paled
in comparison to the force radiating from beyond that door.
I could feel it still there on the other side,
a white hot aura of domination that threatened to unravel
me like a piece of thread. I'd never experienced anything
like it before, the kind of terror that nearly had
me mewing like a beaten child. Before the thing could
speak again, I ran screaming from that room and out
into the open air with a shock finally hit my
nervous system like a freight train, and I passed out.
When I woke up, my mouth was gummy with dried blood,
and the sun had burned me badly. On one side,
A black boot was nudging me gently in the side.
You're okay down there, I looked up, and a policeman
I had once spoken to not long after arriving in Texas,
was squinting down at me. I'd just about managed to
remember that Wheeler was his name. You need help, well,
he repeated, and I tried to answer. We got a
mouthful of dust. It wasn't until I sat upright and
coughed most of the dust back up that I managed
some kind of response. No, I'm not okay, no sign
of a break in. I looked over to see another
officer step out of the museum. Someone attack. Wheeler asked,
who was it? Crackhead sheriff told you it was a
bad ideas to stay out here all alone. We gotta
get out of here. The deputy put a hand on
his holster and unclipped it. Don't you worry. You're safe now,
he said, Rifle through your things. The second officer added,
as he arrived beside Wheeler, we'll need you to come
look and see if anything's missing. No, no, no, I said,
stumbling to my feet. No, we gotta go. We gotta leave.
Take me to the airport. Calm down now, Wheeler said,
as the two men exchanged the funny. Look, you ain't
even got your passport. Why don't we go in and
take a moment. Maybe let us get a statement. Besides,
Taylor and Keen here have done a thorough sweep of
the place, right yep, the other man smiled. I think
he was trying to reassure me Taylor's just finishing up
in that basement. Elijah Shaw was a funny fella hiding
all that down there. No, no, no, I stammered, le
moving towards the parking lot. We gotta leave, we gotta
leave now, there's something you plan on walking out of here.
Wheeler's hand was on my arm, looking concerned more than angry,
which gave me pause. Whoever left you in the dirt
smash the hell out of your car, he added, that
thing ain't going nowhere. Look, we'll give you a ride,
but first things first, let's go inside and get a
couple of your things. Dejected and let them lead me
back inside. Before I made a bee line to my room,
I didn't do much, packing a single suitcase with everything
I needed to get out of that damn place and
back home. I also took a minute to call my
wife and let her know I was fine. My failure
to call her at the regular time had led her
to phoning the police. Without that, I don't know how
things would have panned out. At the time, I was
deeply thankful just to have her looking out for me,
and all I wanted in the world was to get
back to her and put an end to the whole
weird episode. As soon as I was packed, I ran
back downstairs, where I found Wheeler, who was ready to
enter Elijah's office. Keene went to get Taylor a short
while ago. He said, getting tired of waiting, so you
just stay here while I go round him up. Before
I could beg him to stop, he stepped inside and
I raced after him, but I was too late. By
the time I reached the stairs, the only sign of
him was the light of his torch, already fading. With
him went the keys to the only working car in
that place. I had no choice but to follow. As
soon as I took the first step down, I felt
that strange but familiar energy, only this time it seemed
a thousand times more powerful. It run through the air
like a kind of vibration. Sound seemed both muted and amplified.
My footsteps were silent, but my breath was like thunder.
The effect was claustrophobic, like the world was closing in
on me. By the time I arrived at the bottom,
I had already felt like it was too late to
turn back. I nearly cried out when I saw that
the great metal door was already open, no sign of
the men. For Meldehyde lay pooling on the floor where
it mixed slowly with a puddle of fresh blood, although
I had no idea who it belonged to. The tank
remained intact, which I was thankful for, But it troubled
me to think of how that fluid got splashed around
so violently. And the lights I set up had been
knocked over in what must have been some kind of struggle,
and now they cast long and frightening shadows. Wheeler had
never been more than a couple seconds ahead of me,
and yet he was nowhere to be seen in that room.
But I already knew that every question racing through my
mind could be traced to a single place. Where had
the men gone, What had caused such violence and mayhem?
Why are my ears ringing? Why are my feet moving
of their own accord? What had Elijah found in the wilderness?
What had changed those animals? What had spoken to me
from the other side of a foot thick steel doorway.
What had compelled me to be drawn helplessly towards the
strange and corpulent mist that rolled out of the black
abyss and beckoned me deeper into the depths of the earth.
The answer to every one of those questions was the same,
and it was all due to the force that lived
on the other side of that door. It must have
surely affected the policeman in the same way it had
affected me. I was no more than half way across
the room when it felt like I was actually falling
towards an open vault. After I crossed the threshold, I
seemed to lose all sense of time and self. God
knows what it must have been like for Elijah, all
those years ago, lost in the wilderness. I don't know
what it was he found, but I still think he
was mad and naive to genuinely think it was anything
to do with God. Even now, glimpses of the journey
down echo in my mind like snapshots in the dark.
I remember heat and light. I remember pale mist that
curled around my feet, lit within by some impossible light.
I remember wandering vast caves larger than any stadium. But
most of all, I remember the air and the way
it crackled with skittish electricity. I could feel it across
my skin like a gentle sunburn. There were buildings down there,
and as I went deeper, over what might have been
hours or maybe even days, I saw the air filled
with glowing mists so bright it was more like day
than night. And it was in one of those buildings
I found my long lost grandfather, or what was left
of him. I guess, of course, I say that, but
he was alive. He made noises, so he must have
been alive. The building was enormous, larger than even the
cave above, but poor Elijah had still grown to take
up nearly a third of it. He'd grown taller, like
he believed what happen, and I bet he was longer
lived too. But I don't think the conditions of that
cave had made him into something divine. If anything, he
looked to me like he was breaking down, melting in
slow motion. Made me think of the elephant's foot in Chernobyl.
Someone or something had also staked bits of him into place,
and tied some of his limbs to the vast rocky
beams that supported the building ceiling. There was a touch
of cruelty about it that I couldn't quite place at
the time, but would later attribute to the brands burned
into his flesh at semi regular intervals. If he had
a mouth, I've no doubt he would have begged me
to kill him. But my mind was not my own
at that time, and I left that place and went
back to wondering the mist in search of something I
could not understand. I was merely compelled to go deeper
towards some strange force that beckoned me onwards, working my
feet and body like I was nothing more but a puppet. Eventually,
during my journey, I heard a voice. He was wailing
and sobbing, and he came screaming out of the mist
and ran right into me. Something about the collision shocked
both of us enough that it seemed to break the
cave's effect on us. He looked as surprised to see
me as I was to see him, and for a
brief moment, we both lay in the law and stammered
desperately in an attempt to speak. Eventually I managed to
ask what the hell had happened, but he jumped on
top of me and climbed a hand around my mouth.
He held me there for a few seconds, his wide,
terrified eyes imploring me to stay quiet. And then I
heard the footfalls of a giant, and I felt its
mind looking for us, and I caught glimpses of the
world as remembered by that man shaped creature, the contents
of his mind spilling outwards into me. I saw the
great flood, the ark a world with wondering Seraphim, and
the great Tannin, the Behemoth and Leviathan. But more than that,
I felt a kind of seething contempt in his feelings
towards us, burning disdain for the lesser race that had
inherited the surface. I don't know how to fully describe it,
But whatever that thing was, I don't know how Elijah
could have possibly mistaken it for benevolent. Perhaps he had
seen only what he wanted to. Perhaps it had read
within him a desperate need to believe and used that
to manipulate him. God knows what would have happened if
Elijah had actually managed to fill that hidden room with
people and open the door. Whatever lived within that cave
would have had ten times the number of victims it
had claimed so far. Only Elijah's arrogance and obstinence had
saved him from playing right into its hands. Eventually, the
creature moved away from us. I'm not sure how or
why it couldn't find us. The spelled cast seemed to
come and go, and in that moment, the only thing
I could be sure of was that, once free, I
had every intention of getting the hell out of there.
Wheeler and I seemed to share this understanding, because as
soon as it was saved to he let me go,
and the two of us wordlessly began to skulk back
the way we came. It wasn't as long back as
I feared it might be, Although it's still hard to
be sure of the time. What I can be sure
of is that it was a special kind of nightmare
to leave that place. The mist made it impossible to navigate,
and if it wasn't for the tracks we'd left in
the strange wet ground, we would have been lost forever
down there. Even then, we often got waylaid and had
to take hours just to find our way back to
the track, and more than once we found ourselves forced
to hide in crevices and caves as terrible things drift
close in the fog, drawn perhaps by our scent or
some other strange force. But eventually we found ourselves hiking
upwards at a steep and familiar incline, where the mist
thinned out almost entirely. By the time we were finally
stumbling back out into the hidden room with the class tanks.
I had managed to grow a fair bit of stubble,
and I noticed that what was once fresh blood had
now congealed into a dark, rust colored brown. And I
guess we were down there for a good two or
three days. I'm only thankful our memories of it were
so broken. Wheeler almost immediately made a beeline for the exit,
but I grabbed him and pulled him back the door.
I gasped while grabbing the locking wheel and trying to
push it shut, but I was and he took both
of us, trying with all our might to finally swing
it closed. Once the mechanism clicked into place, I tried
to turn and run, with something in me gave out,
and I collapsed to my knees, where I began to
heave and cry. Wheeler placed one hand on my shoulder
and slowly pulled me back to my feet. What the
hell was your grandfather up to out here, he moaned,
as we both limped towards the exit. God knows, I muttered,
and as I placed my foot on the first step up,
I felt the deepest relief I've ever known flood through
my body. Wake Up. The voice was as clear as
day this time, there was no pain. I looked a
Wheeler to go confirmed that he'd heard it too, and
sure enough, he was staring at me with a horrified expression.
But the command made no sense, and it seemed to
be distant, almost thinned. Was it the distance, I wondered,
or the door. Elijah must have put the barrier there
for a reason, but I couldn't be sure. That was
the only reason. That the voice felt different somehow. But
then I heard the sound behind me, and I realized
why those words had been so strange. The command wasn't
meant for us. The glass tankers broke one by one,
and Wheeler and I both turned to see the room
flood with formaldehyde and slick, oily flesh. The smell alone
was enough to make me recoil and cry out. But
then I saw them, the creatures within God, most of
them merely thrust around. I don't know what that was.
I simply don't know. Something fish like, I suppose, screamed
in an almost human voice and rolled around in the
slick waters. Another thing was pulling apart its face with
a starfish shaped hand. One was just a pile of
legs that wrapped around the central mass, but one of
them was rising to its feet, two yellow eyes glaring
back at me from the dark, the irises glowing with
a sickly rage. It almost looked human. Before I had
time to react, the creature leaped up both of us
and sent us both sprawling onto the steps, where I
hit my head. For a few terrifying moments, I felt
myself being dragged slowly down into that disgusting liquid, where
strange tentacles and insectile legs threshed violently for some kind
of purchase. I remember something hairy and kiteness brushing against
my cheek, and the disgusting sensation was enough to bring
me back to my senses. When I looked over to
where Wheeler was being pulled right beside me. It was
semi conscious and groaning, and I realized it was up
to me to try and get us out of there.
I kicked violently at the strange thing pulling us. It
was smaller than I thought, a bit bigger than most children,
but it held onto my leg with an iron grip.
But my movement woke Wheeler, who finally coming around, began
to fight back. Both of us kicked as violently as
we could and seemed to enrage the monster that was
fighting to pull us towards the door. With a strange hiss,
he let go and turned towards Wheeler, lashing out with
a single swipe of his hand. Almost immediately, there was
an arterial spray of blood and a death rattle from
the officer's lips that made my blood run cold. For
a few desperate seconds, the dying man seemed to fumble
towards his belt and grab something in his fist. I
hoped it was a gun, but instead his limp hand
fell open and revealed a beaten old zippo lighter and
his car keys. I don't know if he meant to,
but in that moment, Wheeler saved my life. I grabbed
both items and ran as quickly as I could, reaching
the steps and refusing to look back for even a second.
I lit the zippo and tossed it behind me, praying
to God that this fire no gambit would work. Something
took a swipe at my back, a hot, burning sensation,
followed by a warm trickle that ran down my legs.
My final memory before I stumbled face first and hit
my head again was one of light and heat, A
blinding flash and a terrible warmth that pushed the last
glimse of my consciousness aside and left me drifting in
the dark. I never recovered from my time in Elijah's museum,
and I never even made it to the car. Please
found me, having crawled just outside while the entire place
went up in flames. The plume of smoke was what
caught their attention, and when they arrived, I was soon
rushed after hospital. The death of Wheeler was attributed to
a violent attacker, mainly an account of the damage to
his body, and they pulled it out of the fire,
not just burns, of course, but the slash throat and
damaged vertebrae. Taylor and Keen, all never recovered, were both
considered victims of the same attacker. For my part, I
never contradicted this theory, but I never could quite bring
myself to outright say some crazy addict was the reason
for the fire and the men's deaths. Besides, I had
my own issues to deal with, third degree burns over
most of my back and damaged to my spine that
left me with severe nerve damage. It'd be a lifetime
of work just to get back at my feet, so
the doctor said back then. As for the museum, I'm
glad it went up in smoke, and I'm glad the
explosion caused the caving down there. My memories of the
cave itself are still quite fuzzy. Of course, I've relayed
as much as I can. We went down, we saw things,
then came back. The images the giants pushed into my mind.
I'm still not sure how trustworthy they are. I still
don't believe Elijah's interpretation of that cave was correct. I
don't think the Earth is only six thousand years old,
or that the Bible is meant to be taken literally.
But they say humans evolved over a million years ago.
I guess there's a lot of history that got lost
along the way. As for Elijah's theory that the conditions
of the cave would cause some divine change in humans, well,
I can remember him clearly enough to know there was
nothing godly about what happened to him. And as for me,
the doctors keep scanning me. It was once every six months,
then three, then one. Then I was being called into
the hospital damn near every other day. And now they
won't even let me out of my room. They won't
tell me what's wrong? Why I sometimes wake up to
find my back itching like it's covered in a thousand ants.
Why the last nurse who gave me a sponge bath
ran out sobbing half way through. They took me in
for surgery a few days ago, and when I woke up,
they'd amputated something from my leg, but they wouldn't tell
me what. I'm lucky my wife managed to sneak this
phone in. It's the only communication I have with the
outside world. I'd like to see her again, but I'm
not sure I will. I guess I was down in
that cave for too long, but I know it's getting
worse and that I don't have much longer. The last
doctor who came in wore a hazmat suit, and I'm
pretty sure when he left he was still coughing out blood.
I wouldn't say we were evil, just bored. Eighteen years old,
first semester of college. Two cocky for our own good.
Me and Derek mostly kept to ourselves. We weren't jocks
or frat types. We just liked messing with people. And
Jeremy was easy. He sat in the front row every class,
always took perfect notes, didn't talk to anyone, like, literally,
not once did I hear the guy make small talk,
even with professors. Just walked in with that same weird
little leather notebook, eyes forward, no phone, no earbuds. Who
does that? It was like he was LARPing as a
nineteen fifties honors student. Plus, there was something about him
that rubbed people the wrong way, not that they ever
said it out loud, but everyone knew he was off,
like he didn't understand how other people worked. He never
got sarcasm, never reacted to jokes. If you bumped into
him in the hallway and said my bad, he'd just
stare at you like he was trying to decide what
species you were. He was rich, too, That didn't help.
His parents owned Heartly Biologics, this huge farmer lab that
basically funded half the scholarships on campus. They'd billboards all
over town with pictures of babies and smiling doctors, clean
white font, soft lighting, innovation from molecule to miracle. Jeremy
didn't act like a rich kid though, No flashy clothes,
no car. He wore the same beat up brown hoodie
almost every day. Derek and I started off small, just
dumb things swapping out his pens, hiding his bag during lunch,
calling him weird and embarrassing nicknames. He never said a
word back. He didn't even look at us half the time,
just kept walking, notebook clutched to his chest like it
was worth more than his spine. That annoyed Derek more
than anything. The way Jeremy acted like we weren't even there.
It was Derek's idea to check his locker. Said it
was a social service, whatever the hell that meant. Mostly
we were just bored between class asses, and Jeremy was
always gone for lunch, probably hiding somewhere with that stupid
notebook of his scribbling equations or drawing alchemy symbols or
whatever weird stuff he was into. The lockers weren't even locked.
They were those old metal ones with a padlock loop,
but most people just use the built in latch. Jeremy's
was witch shut with a pencil of razor, like he
really thought that would keep anyone out. Derek popped it
open with a single pull. Inside books all stacked perfectly notebooks,
a couple of protein bars in a zip lock, no decorations,
nothing to allude to the fact that a human was
using this locker. It looked more like a filing cabinet.
What kind of psycho keeps the locker this clean, Derek muttered,
flipping through a binder. Does he sleep in it? Who?
I was the one who found the paper folded and
tucked behind a textbook. Looked like a grocery list at first,
but then I opened it up and realized it was
directions Turn left at the red house into the tree line,
walk until you see the broken fence, past the creek
wooden cap in north facing door. Just that, and at
the bottom scribbled several times, make sure not to forget.
Derek leaned over my shoulder and squinted. Dude, what the
hell I grinned? Told you it was up to something.
Derek took the paper and held it like it was radioactive.
You think this is like where he goes to play
wizard or something. Who knows what that kind of kid
gets up to in his little hideout in the woodsman,
Derek snorted, weird little freak. We were still laughing about
it when we walked into Kem lecture. Jeremy was already
there front row has always writing something in that ugly
brown note book. We slid into the row behind him. Hey, Jeremy,
Derek whispered, no response. You forget something. Jeremy didn't turn around,
just kept writing. I tapped the back of his chair
with my foot. We found your directions, man. You know
red house, broken, vence, secret helf cabin. What's out there?
Your moon crystal? He froze pen midstroke. His shoulders locked up,
and for a second I thought he might actually say something.
Derek leaned in, voice louder. What do you even have
in there that's so important? He reached over and snatched
the notebook out of Jeremy's hands. Jeremy spun around, eyes wide,
don't he started, but Derek already had opened it. He
flipped to a random page and squinted. This hum hummun dude,
what is this? This hrmunculus has shone from it? Jeremy screamed,
not yelled, screamed high and sharp, like we just lit
him on fire. He lunged forward and ripped the notebook
from Derek's hands so fast and nearly tore in half.
Derek toppled over, and Jeremy just turned and ran out
of the room, clutching it to his chest like a
wounded animal. Everyone in the room went silent. I felt
the heat in my face. Jeremy had, by all means,
just embarrassed us. Derek sat there for a second, jaw slack.
Then he blinked and said, did he seriously just do
that to us? I shrugged, Guess we had a nerve.
He looked at me, then at the door. Jeremy had
vanished through. Dude. I said, let's go to his little hideout.
Derek frowned, what, Yeah, let's see what he was so
adamant to hide from us, I said confidently. The walk
started off easy once we spotted the Red House, a
little squat place with peeling paint and a rusted mailbox.
We turned left like the directions said, and stepped into
the tree line. Branches curled overhead, thin and brittle. Everything
underfoot was damp, patches of old leaves and broken twigs,
all softened by rot. It wasn't raining, but the air
had weight to it, heavy with moisture, cold too, an
early autumn kind of cold. We followed the directions carefully,
as carefully as we could. From my memory and Derek's groans,
the path got clearer the deeper we went. At first,
I thought we were just making good time, But then
I realized the ground had been worn down. Something or
someone had been walking this way a lot. The grass
was crushed flat, no fresh prints, but the path was obvious.
Fifteen minutes in we spotted it through the trees. The cabin.
It sat hunched at the edge of a shallow clearing,
small weathered croked just enough to make your head tiled,
a single square window at the front, clouded with grime.
Derek slowed down behind me. This the place I didn't hesitate.
You see any other cabins nearby. The door wasn't locked.
I pushed on it and the hinges gave a low,
drawn out creak. Inside it was dark, no windows on
the sides, or if there were any, they were blocked off.
We clicked on our flashlights and stepped in. Jeremy Derek
called no response. The air was stale, and the cabin
was one room, mostly empty. There was a wooden shelf
against the left wall, lined with a few closed boxes,
a workbench beneath the window, scratched and stained but white clean,
an old sink in the corner, the kind with a
hand pump. Well, nothing in air looks fun. Derek muttered,
shining his light across the floorboards. I was about to
respond when my beam landed on something at the back
of the room. A square cut into the floor, barely
visible from the way the boards lined up, and a
heavy iron runged trapdoor set within the hinges and a
recessed handbill. I stepped closer. There were scuff marks around
the edge, some smudges of dirt, and other details that
made it easy to assume that this hatch was used frequently.
Derek stepped up beside me and whistled, low, guess this
is where the real free show starts. I reached down
and pulled the handle and listened as the door opened.
Cold air drifted up from below. The hatch opened with
more effort than I expected. My arms shook by the
time it finally gave. The air that came up wasn't foul,
but it was cold and dry, with a faint hint
of chemicals I couldn't name. We stared down into the
narrow stairwell, wood at first, then concrete, no railing. The
flashlight beams stretched just far enough to catch the bottom steps.
Derek hesitated behind me. Are we even sure this is
his cabin? He asked, you really gonna act scared? Now?
Who else would it belong to? I said? As I
stepped down, each step creaked and flexed under my weight.
Once we had the concrete section, the sound changed, less
groaning wood, more hollow echo. At the bottom, the passage
flattened out. We stopped in front of a steel door,
tall and wide enough to belong in a fallout shelter.
It had no markings, just a bolt lock across the
center and a long horizontal handle beneath it. I slid
the bolt free, The metal resisted. It squeaked halfway, then
gave I raised my voice, Jeremy, come out freak. It
echoed down the hall behind us and disappeared. No reply.
I looked at Derek, and the best words he could
muster rop were a shrug and a dumb expression. I
gripped the handle and pulled. The space beyond wasn't big,
but it was dense, maybe twenty feet across, maybe more.
The flashlight beams skated over cold surfaces, steel counters, scuffed tile, tall,
metal shelving units, pack tied with containers and glassware. Beakers
and clips adorned the area. None of it looked abandoned.
The dust was minimal, the floor was clean. This place
had been used recently, maybe even today. There were two
doors at the far end of the room, plain no labels.
My eye caught a set of glass cylinders built into
the side wall, some empty, others too murky to see inside.
One of them held something pale, or maybe just sediment.
Derek stepped beside me. Does this not look like a
lab he said, and nodded slowly. I guess it kind
of does. We walked further in boots, soft on the tile,
flashlights cutting through the dim and still no sign of
Jeremy anywhere. We approached the two doors on the other
side and chose the door on the right. It wasn't locked,
just the push plate and handle. The hinges groaned as
it opened, and the lights fell into the room beyond.
It was colder in there. In the center of the
room stood a surgical table, stainless steel, tilted slightly, fitted
with shoulder restraints and a dark drain. Beneath it, A
folded towel sat at the edge, stiff with something dry
and reddish brown. To my left was a tray of instruments, scalpels, clamps, scissors,
neatly arranged. All clean IV bags hung from an aluminium
stand in the corner. Two of them were full. Another
lay collapse on the floor. Above the table was a
surgical lamp with three segmented arms frozen mid adjustment, aimed
down as if expecting someone. At this point, we both
knew we were in a place we had no business
being in there, but we had gone too far to
turn back. Neither of us wanted to wuss out. Derek
moved closer to the stack of boxes. His parents really
let him play scientists in the woods. I looked around
the room and said, it does look like some extreme
kind of role play to me. Derek went quiet for
a second. Then dude, I can't wait to tell everybody
about this, especially now that I said as I moved
closer to the stack of boxes Derek was standing next to.
They were cardboard and stamped in blue, hardly by logics.
Derek saw them too. His flashlight hovered over the logo
for a second. We know we have the right person.
Derek gave out a half hearted chuckle and turned back
to the hallway. Let's check the other maybe that's where
he is. The second door was heavier than the first
I had to lean my shoulder into it to get
it moving. The hinges protested the wholeway. We stepped in.
The first thing I noticed was the glow, a soft
green light humming from the far wall. It cast everything
in a low aquatic haze, flickering faintly with movement. Rows
of tall cylindrical pods lined the walls, maybe eight feet
in height, two feet across. Each one was filled with
a thick liquid, not water, something heavier, slightly viscous, almost gelatinous.
The way it moved, shapes floated inside them, some small,
some large, all of them in the distinct bloated silhouettes.
I couldn't tell if they were alive or just suspended there.
Some were curled in on themselves, others just hung. A
few parts were empty, one was cracked. I stepped closer,
watching the surface of the liquid as it rippled faintly
beneath the green light. Derek stood behind me, silent. I muttered,
more to myself than anything. Now, this doesn't look like
role play. Maybe this actually belongs to his parents, Derek quipped.
We didn't hear it right away. The room hummed with
low power, not machinery, exactly, just the background noise of
a system still alive, shuffling from the far end, just
beyond the last row of pods, slow at first, like
something dragging across the floor, a wet movement, almost muffled.
We stopped, Jeremy. Derek called out, his voice echoed against
metal and glass. We know you're there. No response. The
shuffling continued, like it knew where it was going, accompanied
by a low, rustling, almost moist sound, something between breathing
and licking. We began walking toward it, running on nothing
but pure, unadulgerted confidence. A flashlight shook a little in
our hands. Derek's being flickered, stuttered, then steadied again. The
sound grew clearer. Now it was easy to identify the
sound of scratching, licking, and breathing. I stopped walking. My
throat was dry. I could sense something was wrong. Jeremy,
I whispered. Still nothing, but the noise didn't stop. It
was coming closer. Still no footsteps. I raised my flashlight
a little, focusing toward the back row of pods, where
the green glow was weakest. Then something moved. It came
from around the far side of one of the large cylinders.
I thought it was a person crouched low to the
ground crawling, but then it rose. My flashlight caught the
shape full on. I froze, and it did as well.
It stood upright, but bare. Its spine bowed forward, forcing
the thing into a permanent hunch. The legs were too long,
digiti grayed like a dog's, with tendons visible under paper,
thin skin, feets, blade wide, four toes, clawed, human in
shape but not in function. The arms hung low, longer
than they should have been, fingers ending in nails. They
looked more like cracked hoofs than claws. Its skin was uneven,
mottled gray and pale brown, dry in some spots and
slick in others, like parts of it had dried out
while the rest kept growing. Tufts of coarse hair clung
to the back of its neck, and spine patchy and unclean.
One shoulder looked almost normal human muscle familiar shape, but
the other was swollen, lunched with a symmetrical tissue, a
mass that pulls slightly when it moved. Its face was pointed,
stretched forward into a narrow snout, but not quite long
enough to be animal. The skin there was tight, almost
translucented pulled too hard across a skull that didn't match.
Its eyes were white set and cloudy, rimmed in red.
There were no eyelids, and then the jaw opened, not
down but out. The skin around its mouth split in
four directions, revealing a dark gullet and rows of teeth
that spiraled inward rather than back. It sniffed the air once,
quick and shallow. Then it came at us. Derek screamed
as it collided with him, knocking him backwards into the
side of the table. He hit the floor hard, flashlights
scattering across the tiles. The thing dropped on top of him,
hands slapping the ground for balance. Mouth opened wide enough
to split the skin at the corners. I didn't think.
I just grabbed the nearest thing I could find, a
metal rod, leaned against the wall and swung it at
the creature's side. The hit landed, and it shrieked, not
high pitched deep. It rolled off deeric and stumbled sideways,
knocking into one of the pods as if flailed. The
glass cracked then gave way. Green liquid spilled across the floor,
thick and slow. Something inside the pod hit the ground
with a heavy slap, curled pale, twitching. It looked like
a combination of an anteater and a human. It twitched again,
then moved arms, dragging its body forward like it didn't
understand how joints were supposed to work. Derek scrambled to
his feet. His shirt was torn, shoulder bleeding. We turned
toward the hallway, but another pod cracked, then another hairline
fractures spied a web to cross the glass, and one
of the smaller ones burst outright, releasing something lean and
fast that landed in a crouch and snapped his head
toward us. Then it sprinted. We ran. The first one
grabbed at Derek's ankles, nearly dragging him down. I turned
and swung the rod again, catching its arm with a
solid thud. It didn't scream that time, almost like it
was getting used to the sensation. Derek kicked himself free
and we bolted across the room, knocking over trays, kicking carts,
anything to slow them down. Behind us, another part exploded,
more liquid, more movement. Derek tripped as we hit the
edge of the room. His foot caught on a cable
or a pipe I couldn't tell, and he went down
hard arms out to catch himself. I spun around, grabbed
his jacket and started yanking him up. But one of
the things was already there. It came from the side,
fast and low, hands slapping the tile. Its skin had
a stretched, waxy look to it, thin hair spouting from
its scalp in random clumps. It didn't look at me,
just grabbed Derek's leg and started pulling backward with sharp
jerking motions, like a dog trying to tear off a limb.
Derek howled. I dropped the flashlight, gripped the rod in
both hands and slammed it down across the thing's arm.
It didn't let go. It just hissed, turned its head
to me with that split, schored grin. We were right
next to the door. I dropped the rod and grabbed
Derek with both arms, dug my heels in and pulled.
Removed maybe a foot, but that was all we needed.
I let go of Derek, then grabbed the door and
shoved it open. The creature's grip didn't loosen, so I
did the only thing I could. I grabbed the edge
of the door and slammed it into its arm once twice.
On the third hit I felt something give a crunch
of bone and cartilage. It let out a gurgling wheeze
and retracted fast, skittering back into the shadows and all fours.
Derreck crawled through. I followed, grabbed the handle and pulled
the door shut behind us. The bolt barely slid in
before something slammed into the other side. We ran up
the stairs, boots slapping against concrete, lungs burning behind us.
The pounding started again, dull thuds against the steel. By
the time we stumbled back onto the road, the sun
was nearly gone. The light was turning that strange color
it gets right before dusk. Everything was washed in gray,
the trees casting long shadows across the pavement. I couldn't
feel my legs any more. Derrec was limping holding his side,
and both of us were covered in dirt, blood, and
something that smelled sour and metallic. We didn't say anything.
There was nothing to say. I didn't even know which
road we were on, just that it wasn't the one
we came in on. A hundred yards later, a small
one story house sat tugged behind a split rail fence.
There was a man out front pushing a rusted mower
across the patch of grass. He stopped when he saw us.
At first, he didn't move, just stared. Then he turned
the mow off and came towards us. You boys, all right,
he asked. Then he took a better look at us.
Come on. He brought us inside, sat us down at
his kitchen table. Clean place, smell like burnt coffee and
old wood. He handed us a towel, then her phone.
When the despatcher answered, I didn't tell them about it creatures.
I didn't mention green fluid or split jaws. I just
gave the address, told them we'd been attacked, told them
someone needed to come fast. They said help was on
the way. I hung up and finally looked at Derek.
He hadn't stopped shaking. They came in under an hour,
two cruisers at first, then a full team. Once the
officers got a good look at the place, we didn't
go back to them, They told us to stay put
EMTs checked us over while more cars arrived, unmarked ones.
This time waiter. I saw the footage on the news.
They showed the cabin from the outside, lit up in
blue and red, officers moving in and out. The anchor
called it a disturbing discovery. Said authorities were looking into
a suspected unauthorized research facility connected to Hardly Biologics. What
they didn't show was the basement. I heard about it
later during questioning. The steel door had been forced open.
Inside they found the lab just like we described, operating table,
surgical equipment, dozens of shattered pods, but no creatures. They
questioned us for hours, separately, then together, and back and forth.
Eventually someone confirmed what we already knew. Jeremy had been
picked up that night, found at home calm cooperative. Said
he didn't know anything about a cabin. He was arrested,
but no charges stuck, and everybody in the town knew why.
His family was already spinning the story before sunrise. I
was in a hospital briefly, but they let me out
the next morning. No broken bones, just bruises, a gash
across my arm and a mild concussion. I walked out
under my own power, but I didn't feel right. Couldn't
tell if it was shock or something else. I didn't
hear from Derek for days. He was still in the hospital.
Puncture wounds, fractured wrist, some nerve damage, and a messed
up ankle. He couldn't stand without help. They said it
might take months for him to walk properly again, might
not ever be the same. I visited him once. He
wouldn't look at me, just stared out the window and
kept clicking the morphine button, even when I knew the
door who had already maxed out. After that, I didn't
go back. A few days later, I got a call
from the detective who'd interviewed me the night of the raid.
His tone was clipped, professional, almost tired. He told me
the charges against Jeremy weren't moving forward, said the family
had lawyers already working over time. Claimed we broke into
private property, roffed of their son, trast a remote site
used for authorized research. Jeremy's statement said he'd been targeted,
that we were jealous, that we fabricated everything. The official
report mentioned structural damage and chemical residue, but no mention
of anything that breathed. Nothing about the pods, nothing about
the bodies, not even a word about the meta. They
buried it all. I found the ad while half asleep,
hunched over a greasy diner booth, stealing Wi Fi from
the subway next door. I've been scrolling through Craigslist for hours,
past the usual flood of make five hundred dollars a
day from home scams, and I need a strong man
to lift my mattress posts. That night, my bank account
was sitting at thirty two dollars and eleven cents. Rent
was due in four days. The ad was buried between
someone offering tower readings and another listing that just said
free dirt caretaker needed seventy two hours only, no experience necessary,
five thousand dollars flat, no fluff, just that single line
followed by patient must not fall asleep under any circumstances,
all equipment provided. Do not contact us after the job ends.
I read it three times. I even closed the tab
and reopened it, expecting it to vanish or change into
something ordinary, but it stayed exactly the same. There was
an email address, nothing more. I clicked reply and sent
a message with one line, I'm interested. The man told
me to meet him at a small cafe off a
quiet corner of town. It was one of those places
with mismatched mugs, hand painted tables, and coffee that tasted
burned no matter what blend you ordered. He sat at
the far end, near the window, a black note book
in front of him, and a cup of tea that
had already gone cold. He stood up when I approached
and shook my hand. He introduced himself as Raymond. He
wore a dark, well fitted suit with a coughlin shaped
like a spiral. I couldn't tell if it was a
symbol or just a rich person. Flourish you came quickly,
he said, motioning for me to sit. I asked who
I'd be caring for. He hesitated before answering, my mother, Marjorie.
She's very ill. He stared at me for a long
time after saying a name, then continued. She has an
unusual condition. Nothing contagious, I assure you, but it's neurological.
You won't have to feed a bather or administer medicine.
Just keep her awake, engage her talk, play music, whatever
it takes. The moment she falls asleep it could worsen.
I nodded, and he exhaled. She was a brilliant woman,
he added, taught literature, used to run a little bookshop
downtown before it burned down. She is not herself anymore.
She has these spells, fugues, hallucinations, night terrors, they come
for her in asleep. He slid a heavy Manila envelope
across the table. Inside was a thick binder titled Protocol,
a black key fob, a prepaid visa card, and a
separate envelope with the address scribbled in sharp handwriting. He
also included a list of items that had already been
delivered to the property blackout curtains, noise machines, stimulant supplements,
and a medical grade led therapy light. I asked why
he couldn't be there himself. Raymond looked out of the
window for a few moments before speaking. She didn't want
me to be the one, said, it would be too
hard on me. I've watched the suffer for years. I
agreed to honor that. He turned back toward me. Three days.
You'll stay in the house the entire time, No visitors,
no calls. She has sensitive reactions that outside stimuli. Everything
you need is in the binder. Follow it exactly. He
slid a phone across the table, cheap and prepaid with
one contact saved. AH. Only use this if things go
completely wrong, he said, Otherwise you won't hear from me again.
After the conversation, I had my doubts, but Raymond had
already given me a debit card and a phone, so
I didn't have much to lose. My first destination was
the local grocery store. I'd never even tried staying up
seventy two hours, so I was in dire need of
some energy drinks. The house sat at the top of
a steep hill on the edge of town, which between
two long abandoned properties. I wouldn't have noticed it if
not for the number painted faintly on the mailbox in
flaking gold. The path up was cracked, grass growing through
every seam. A row of wind chimes hung silently from
the poor much, though there wasn't a breeze inside Inside,
everything was quieter than i'd anticipated, no birds on through
the windows. I noticed that every clock in the house
had stopped, one at twelve o three, one at three
point fifteen, another at four twenty four. The windows had
thick boarded nails over them from the inside sealed tight.
Light came from tall standing lamps in every room, all
of them humming faintly. Marjorie sat in a faded recliner
in the living room, beneath the painting of a forest
that in no path through it. Her body looked smaller
than it should have been, curled in on itself, skin
like parchment pulled tight over brittle bone. Her hands trembled
and her lap, but her eyes were sharp, vivid, and
almost too aware. She didn't speak at first. Just watch
me cross the room the way you might watch someone
approach your hospital bed with a needle in hand. I
introduced myself and explained why I was there. Her mouth
moved a little, but no sound came out. I assumed
she was mute. I was halfway through unsipping my duffel
bag when I heard her voice, quiet, dry, but laced
with something that caught in my chest. I heard about
you from Raymond, she said. I hope I won't be
too much of a bother for you. Her voice didn't
match her body. It wasn't weak, not completely. It had
something else in it, resignation, maybe loneliness. I stood there
for a second, not sure what to say. Then I
just nodded and smiled. It's no bother, I told her.
I'm here to help. She smiled back. The next seventy
two hours would be the longest of my life. The
first few hours passed, I set up the equipment. Just
as the binder instructed, one of the tall lamps flickered
at the edge of the living room, but I didn't
touch it. Raymond had underlined several warnings in the protocol.
Do not move the lights, do not unplug anything, do
not let her close her eyes for more than fifteen seconds.
I double checked the countdown timer I taped above the
kitchen threshold. Seventy one hours and forty four minutes to go.
Marjorie surprised me. She was sharper than I expected, thoughtful,
sometimes even funny. She told me about a book she
tried to write in her thirties, something about a lighthouse
that only appeared in dreams. She asked where I grew up,
what music I liked, if I believed in anything after death.
She didn't speak constantly, but when she did, she spoke
with a stillness that made every word feel chosen. She
didn't complain when I read out loud or when I
played soft music. Her favorite was the cello, said it
reminded her of something not sad, exactly, more worn out.
As midnight approached, I noticed her start to fidget. Her
hands wrung the blanket across her knees, Her gaze darted
to all the corners of the room. Do you mind
turning that one on, too, she asked, pointing to a
lamp I hadn't noticed, tuck behind a dusty bugshelf. I
turned it on. She nodded, but didn't thank me. After
a while, she started whispering under a breath. I leaned closer,
thinking she was asking for water, but it wasn't that.
Her voice moved through the same sentence again and again,
barely audible. Stay with me, Stay with me, Stay with me.
It started around two am. I had stepped into the
kitchen for just a second to heat up water. When
I came back, Marjorie's eyes were closed, her head tilted
toward her shoulder, breathing slow. I panicked, rushed over, clapped
my hands, called a name. She jolted upright with a
gasp that echoed through the room. Her eyes were wide
filled with fresh panic. I didn't mean to, she said.
I didn't mean to. I just please don't let it out.
Before I could ask what she meant, I noticed the
lamp beside the bugshelf had gone out completely dead. I
touched it and felt a thin line of heat coming
off the base. Something else caught my eye. The shadows
in the corners had shifted. They seemed to ripple ever
so slightly when I looked directly at them. They didn't
retreat with the light. They moved when Marjorie blinked. When
she closed her eyes again, even for a moment, the
darkest part of the room pulsed like they were breathing
with her. I lifted the edge of the rug beneath
her recliner to fix a frayed corner. That was when
I saw them, thin black streaks burned into the hardwood,
curving into spirals. It wasn't smoke damage. It looked older
than the wood itself, buried into the grain. Marjorie reached
out and grabbed my wrist. Don't look too long, she said.
It notices when you pay attention. I wanted to leave
the room, just to breathe, but I stayed. I pulled
a stool closer to her chair and sat beside her,
rubbing my face with both hands. She leaned her head
back and stared at the ceiling. If I fall asleep,
she whispered, it gets out. It's always been with me
since I was a child. It waits until I slip,
and then it starts cloring. She didn't say much for
the next hour, just stared, glassy eyed toward the blank
television screen. I tried to distract her with conversation, but
she ignored me. Then, out of nowhere, she began speaking again,
this time to herself more than to me. My mother
died in that same chair, she said. She told me
the truth right before she passed, said it lived in
her dreams, that it would move up to me. Next,
said I would understand when it happened, and I did.
I woke up screaming that night. I couldn't even remember
what I dreamed, but it was there in my head,
at the foot of my bed, in the seams of
the walls. Her voice wavered, but she kept talking. I
never had children. I never wanted to pass this thing on.
I thought if I just stayed alone, if I just
endured it, then it would die with me. But I
was wrong. It grows stronger. I feel it every time
I close my eyes. Her hands trembled, not from age,
from fear. I could feel it in the air. I've
kept it trapped by never really sleeping, never letting it
rose itself deep. But I'm no longer the young, strong
person I was before. I've grown old and weak, and
it knows it's watching me lose. She looked up at me, then,
her eyes shining with tears. I just do not want
this to curse anybody else. I didn't know what to say.
I reached out, unsure if she would take my hand,
but she did. Her grip was frail but steady. She
wept out of grief and exhaustion. I stayed quiet. I
haven't known peace in so long, she said, just the
waiting and the struggling. She didn't ask for comfort, didn't
want to be told who was going to be all right.
She knew better than I did. Outside, the wind picked
up for the first time since I arrived. One of
the boards on the window creaked. Something in the walls
shifted too slow to be the house settling. Marjorie didn't flinch.
She just whispered again, stay with me, and I did.
The following day passed without a hitch. The energy drinks
were working, but I could tell sleep was starting to
creep in. However, the second night was worse in every way.
My head throbbed from the constant buzz of the standing
lamps and caffeine. My vision swam in and out of clarity.
Every blink felt heavier than the last, like my Her
own body was rooting for failure. Marjorie hadn't slept either,
not for more than a few seconds at a time.
Her eyes were bloodshot, her voice more brittle than before.
She had started to mutter nonsense. Sometimes it sounded like poetry.
Other times her words strung together with a logic that
made my stomach tighten. She spoke in voices that weren't hers.
A deep, gutural tone slipped out once, so low I
felt it in my bones. Then later her mouth twisted
into a white grin, and she giggled with the voice
of a little girl. Are you scared yet? She asked,
or what I thought was her. She didn't remember saying it.
By three thirty a m. I had started to hear
things upstairs. There was no second floor, just an attic.
I had not dared to check. The footsteps weren't hurried
or loud, but they paced back and forth. I knew
better than to call out. Three minutes later, every light
in the house shut off at once, the bus died,
the air turned cold. I didn't move, couldn't The only
sound left was Marjorie's breathing, slow and uncertain, and the
soft creak of wood under something heavy. She looked at
me through the darkness. Her face glowed faintly in the
absence of light, not from any lamp or candle. Her
eyes had taken on a sheen, faintly reflective, barely visible,
like something was seeing through her. Marjorie closed her eyes
for a single moment, and before I could think to
wake her up, something caught my attention. The thing appeared
above us, clinging to the ceiling like it had always
been there. Its limbs didn't bend in the way they
should have. There were too many of them, long and thin,
like someone had built it out of smoke and bone.
It watched Marjorie with a stillness I couldn't match. It
didn't breathe, it didn't twitch. Its head tilted slowly as
her eyelids began to droop. The edges of its body
glimmered faintly in the dark, a suggestion of shape, a
ripple through the air. I tried to shout, but the
air caught in my throat. All I could do was
reach for her hand and squeeze. She gasped away, eyes
wide and wet, and the thing above us twitched once,
then receded slightly. It didn't disappear, it just shrank back
toward the corner where the ceiling met the far wall.
Mardrie stared into the black with me, watching it crawl
higher into the dark. That's what it does, she whispered,
though I'm surprised you can see it. Her voice was
her own again. We sat like that for a long time,
silent except for our breath. The air felt thick, heavy,
with a presence I couldn't name. The shadows were heavier now.
The floor beneath my feet pulsed faintly with the rhythm.
Around four a m. The house changed again. I dozed
off only for a second. My head dipped forward and
snapped up with a jolt. Marjorie was still awake, but
her expression had changed. Her eyes were unfocused, and her
lips moved slowly. I can give you peace, she said,
no more pain, no more nights alone. You want out,
don't you. I can get you out. I didn't reply,
I just shook my head. Her face contorted again. You've
always wanted more, she said, more than what life gave you.
I could make people listen. I could make you known.
The voice was wrong. It wasn't Marjorie anymore. It was deeper, older,
and filled with something that didn't understand what it meant
to be human. You want money done, you want fame easy,
you want to be remembered. I can make you the
only name they speak. I stood up. I felt sick, dizzy.
The room was spinning, but I grabbed the edge of
the chair and forced myself steady. Mardre's hands shout out
towards me again. I didn't pull away. I knelt beside her. No,
I said, she stays awake. She finishes this, we both do.
The shadows writhed at the edge of the room, recoiling
like a tide. Forced to retreat, I stayed beside her,
holding her hand, reading anything I could find. I told
her about my mother, about the first last time I
snuck out of school, about the time I broke my
arm falling out of a tree. I didn't stop when
my voice gave out. I played music through my phone
and let her rest ahead on my shoulder. She didn't
speak for hours, but as the sun crawled toward the horizon,
she smiled, a real smile. A tired one, but real.
No one's ever helped me carry it before. She said
that smile broke me more than anything else in that house,
because I knew how rare it had to be. She
closed her eyes for a second. I nudged her gently.
She stirred, still with me for now. On the last day,
Marjorie's body had started to give up. There was no
other way to describe it. Her words slurred and dragged.
Half a sentences faded out before they ended. Her hands
clenched and unclenched. The blanket draped over her legs, each
movement slower than the last. She coughed hard enough to
double over, and when she wiped her mouth, a thick
streak of black fluid clung to the back of her hand.
It smelled like iron and burnt oil. I moved to
help her sit upright again, but her eyes caught mine
with a quiet, trembling urgency. In the drawer, she said,
barely more than a breath. Hallway table, right side bottom.
I did what she said. My legs were trembling under
me as I crossed to the hallway. The shadows shifted again.
When I moved. They didn't follow me, but they watched.
I could feel it behind my ears, the quiet judgment
of something waiting for the final piece to fall. The
drawer stuck, a little, swollen from age. I yanked it
harder and it came loose. Inside was a dusty leather
photo album, cracked down the spine. I carried it back
to her and sat on the floor beside her chair.
We opened it together. The pictures were faded but intact,
black and white shots of a young woman in a
flowered dress standing near a broken fence, Marjorie. Her eyes
were brighter than her mouth, softer the edges. She stood
with a woman I assumed be a mother, tall and stiff,
a distant look edged permanently across her face. The two
of them stood apart in every photo, never touching, the mother,
always near the shadows. There were no children in any
of the images, no friends, no wedding dress, just the
same woman, aging slowly across decades, always alone. She pointed
to one photo with a shaking finger. It showed her
sitting on the floor in front of a boarded up window.
There was a shape behind her, just barely visible through
the gap in the slats. Long fingers stretched vertically holding
on from the outside. No face, nobody, just the idea
of someone watching it showed up after this was taken,
she whispered. I tore the film up that night, buried
the negatives, but it didn't matter. I stared at the
photo and felt my jaw tighten. My voice cracked when
I spoke. How did you live like this for so long?
She smiled with her eyes closed. I didn't live. I waited.
I've almost made it to the end. I'm almost. Her
voice faltered again, her jaw trembled, her wet sound gurgled
deep in her throat. She tilted her head back and
drew in a sharp, rattling breath. The countdown in the
kitchen time I hit fifty nine minutes, twelve seconds. I
think it's time, she said. I feel it in my ribs.
I knelt beside her, my hands wrapped around hers, cold
and papery. Thank you, she whispered, I can feel it coming.
Her head leaned back and her eyes fluttered shut for
the last time. The house went still, not just quiet,
but completely still. The air stopped moving, the walls no
longer creaked, even the wind outside held its breath. I
reached for my phone, hands shaking and dialed nine one one.
I gave the address, said there had been a death.
Tried to explain, but couldn't find the words. They asked
if I was alone. That was when a body cracked.
It started with a small pop at the base of
her neck. Then a spine shifted. Her shoulder blades rolled
unnaturally forward. Her wrists twisted sideways and bent backward. Her
jaw fell open too far, her head lolling as if
disconnected from the rest of her I dropped the phone.
The operator kept talking. I heard her asking me to respond,
but I couldn't. I was frozen. Then Marjorie moved. She
rose slowly, joined snapping as her limbs unfolded the wrong way.
She dropped to all fours and stayed there for a moment,
her breath low and rattling. Her face curled into something
that looked like a smile, but had no warmth. She
launched forward. I barely rolled out of the way in time.
I hit the floor hard and scrambled to my feet.
She moved faster than I thought possible, limbs jerking as
if pulled by strings. Her nails clawed across the hardwood,
tearing through the rug and into the boards beneath. I
ran down the hallway, and the door slammed behind me.
One by one, every door in the house slam shut
with a thunderous bang. The walls groaned and seemed to stretch.
A hallway that had once led to a linen closet
now spiraled to the right, deeper into the house. I
stumbled into a bedroom I didn't remember being there. The
furniture inside was nailed to the ceiling. Gravity had twisted
behind me. Marjorie laughed, not with their own voice, with several,
some shrieked, some crooned. One voice matched mine exactly, calling
out in a perfect imitation, help me, She said, in
my own voice, I'm still here. Please don't leave me.
I slammed the door and backed away. The floor thudded
as she crept closer. Her feet didn't land with weight,
they landed with intent. I shoved myself into the closet
and pressed the door shut. My breath tore in and
out of my lungs. I could hear us sniffing outside
as slow, deep and hail. Then another closer. I bit
my tongue to keep from sobbing. Then I remembered the phone,
The cheap prepaid phone Raymond had given me. I dug
through my pocket, fingers slipping, and pulled it out. The
screen was dim, the contact still read AH. My thumb
hovered over the button. Then I pressed it. The closet
door creaked open a few inches. Her fingers curled around
the frame. They weren't hands anymore. The bones had shifted
under the skin, forming long, hooked points that scraped softly
across the wood. I couldn't breathe. I pressed my back
to the far corner of the closet, phone still clutched
in my hand. The line went silent, no voice, no answer.
Then the sound of breaking glass filled the house. A
window shattered from inside the room, not splintered or cracked
completely obliterated wood crunched. A gust of air swept through
the walls and pulled the shadows back. Heavy footsteps echoed
across the floor, not the skittering limbs of whatever Marjorie
had become. I shoved the closet door open and stumbled out.
Raymond stood in the middle of the hallway, shoulders squared,
dressed in the same dark suits from the cafe. There
wasn't a scratch on him. His eyes were locked under
the thing wearing Marjorie's body as it came, bounding through
the hallway ceiling, limbs bending around the corners. He raised
the weapon that I had no words for. He didn't
look forged or manufactured. He looked grown, smooth and bone white,
with grooves that shifted and rotated along the barrel. Each
ring pulsed as if alive. He fired once. The sound
it made didn't belong to this world. It was soft
at first, like someone dragging stone across wet cloth. Then
it expanded into a shriek, deeper then sound, something that
made my ears ache and my eyes blur. The creature
twisted in mid air. Marjorie's body convulsed and peeled backward,
limbs retracting, face collapsing into itself. The thing inside her
screamed as it pulled away from her skin, unraveling in
ribbons of smoke and bone. It dissolved into thick black
mist that clung to the ceiling before vanishing into the boards.
Silence followed, real silence, not the kind we had suffered
through all night. This was absence. The room exhaled. I
collapsed against the wall, my legs unable to hold me.
Raymond approached calmly and knelt beside me. You did well,
he said, his voice steady, almost tired. We needed her exhausted,
fully exposed. It can't hide anymore. You weakened it. I
stared at him, throat raw, body trembling. He upened his
jacket and pulled out a sealed envelope, thick heavy. He
handed it to me, the full five, as promised, no taxes.
I didn't take it right away. My hands shook as
I reached for it. My eyes drifted to the hallway
behind him, when nothing remained of what had been Marjorie,
not even ash. This wasn't just about mercy, Raymond said, standing,
it was containment. He turned toward the broken window, already
reaching into his pocket for something else, a small metallic
object that blinked red once before going still. I pushed
myself up. Who are you, I asked. He paused at
the edge of the frame, silhouetted against the dark outside.
He looked back over his shoulder, and for the first
time I thought I saw something behind his expression. You
should get some sleep, he said. I've been driving for
a food delivery app for a little over two years now.
Nothing glamorous, just one of those apps, so you tap
a few buttons, grab a paper bag, and drop it
off at someone's door step. Quick money if you don't
mind the gas prices and the occasional stress induced ulcer.
I treated it like a side hustle, deliver a few burritos,
maybe a boba tie or two, and be home by midnight.
But after I got laid off from my last real job,
it became my main gig. The shift never technically ends.
You just drive until your body gives out while your
tank hits empty. Most of it's what you'd expect, fighting
for decent tips, cursing at building numbers that don't exist,
or walking up five flights of stairs for an order
that says leave at the door, do not knock in
all caps. Some instructions get stranger than others, and once
had a guy ask me to leave a sushi quote
in the shadow of the mail box. Someone else left
a note that said, if the front door opens by itself,
just leave the food and walk away. Do not acknowledge her.
I left that one on the welcome mat and didn't
even look back. I wasn't about to find out if
it was a prank. Or not. A lot of us
drivers talk. There's an unofficial group chat we use. Nothing huge,
just a few hundred regulars who post about traffic, bad restaurants,
and weirdest stuff. The app doesn't warn you about loose dogs,
fake addresses, customers who try to pay cash and then
grab the food and bolt. Some drivers even swap screenshots
of creepy houses or instructions that feel off. Most of
us chalk it up to trolls alone people looking for attention.
But there are certain addresses that come up in conversation
more than others, ones that make everyone go quiet. You
learn pretty quickly which places the skip and which ones
to never ask about at all. There's one address that
kept showing up more than any other. Same house, same street,
always boosted, always ignored. Every time I opened the app
late at night, there it was highlighted like some cursed
loot drop, promising three times the usual payout. Ten bucks
turned into thirty, thirty into fifty, and still no takers.
The first time I noticed it, I asked in the
group chat. I dropped the pin, said something like any
one know what's up with this place? A reply came through.
Don't seriously. The message came from a guy named Craig,
and met him once when we both happened to be
picking up from the same Chipotle. Nice, sky bit twitchy.
I remembered him because shortly after I'd seen him there,
he stopped posting altogether, quit delivery work completely. According to
some one else in the chat said the job was
frying his nerves. I figured he was just burned out.
We all get there eventually. Then one night it was slow,
dead slow. My tank was half empty, my wallet even worse.
Rent was due at the end of the week, and
I was already rationing breakfast into two day intervals. The
address popped up again, triple pay, only a few miles
out clean order. I stared and tapped, except I told myself,
if Craig did it and lived the tell the tale,
however cryptic, then so could I. The guy was clearly
a little paranoid. There's no way that a house that
is on this app and has been on there for
as long as it has is dangerous. You spend enough
time dropping off food to people who treat you the
way you would treat a vending machine with legs, and
it starts to mess with your head. The order came
from a local burger spot I knew well. I'd picked
up from there a dozen times before. No issues, fries,
double cheeseburger, large drink. Everything was backed up tight in
a stable brown bag. I almost didn't think about it
again until I was walking out the door and one
of the lion cooks called out behind me. Did someone
finally take it? The cashier looked at the receipt, then
looked at me. Be safe, man, he muttered. I delivered
to a lot of weird places over the years, half
finished basements that smelled of mold, aves parked illegally behind
gas stations, one guy who made me leave a pizza
on top of a tree stump. But this place felt
different for whatever reason. The neighborhood looked like it had
be intact on to the edge of the city as
an afterthought. The road was clean and newly paved, but
once I turned off it, the ashphalt gave way to gravel,
then cracked concrete. The street signs were faded, barely legible.
Every mail box I passed looked like it hadn't seen
a delivery in years, tilted ross streeked, one even dangling
by a single screw. My GPS stopped giving turn by
turns and just dropped a pin. No house number, just
a blinking blue dot and a note that said you've arrived.
I slowed the car to a crawl and finally spotted
it whitged tightly between two larger houses, like it had
been squeezed in after the fact. It was narrow, with
pealing siding and no numbers on the door or curb.
The porch like blinked in a lazy, irregular pattern. A
set of wind chimes hung from the above the door,
clinging together even though the air was completely still. No
visible motion inside, no shapes behind the curtains. But I
had that prickling sensation in the back of my neck,
the kind you get when someone staring at you from
a second story window. I scanned the house once, then again.
The windows were dark, the blinds drawn tight. I sat
in my car for another moment. I would be lying
if I said that all those messages in the group
chat hadn't done a number on me. I was definitely
feeling anxious, but I grabbed the bag and stepped out
into the silence. The instructions were blunt and impersonal. Leave
on the porch, do not knock, do not wait for acknowledgment.
I had seen worse. I set the bag just to
the left of the welcome mat, careful not to block
the door, took the confirmation photo, uploaded it, and marked
the order as delivered. As I turned to leave, I
half expected something to happen. But nothing did. No creak
behind me, or so much as a breath, just the
wind chimes tapping lightly above my head. I walked back
to the car, slid into the driver's seat, and waited
for the payment notification. It came through, clean, full fare
and tip included more than I expected. Honestly, I pulled away, relieved,
drove a few blocks, parked near a gas station and
cracked the window, planning to eat something before taking another order.
And that's when the appinged a new delivery on the
same address, triple pay again. I hesitated, thumb hovering over
the screen. Then I accepted it. If I had done
it once, I figured I could do it again. It
wasn't like anything bad had happened. The house was weird, yeah,
but weird didn't pay rent and I was behind. The
pickup was fast, one neatly packed brown bag. I made
sure not to forget anything. Checked twice, the receipt was
stable to the top of the new instructions printed in
bold leave at back door, do not use front entrance.
So I drove back, same street, same dying street lights,
same wind chimes knocking together in the still air. I
followed the gravel driveway around the side of the house.
The grass was knee high and busted. Plastic chair laying
its side near the back porch, half sunken into the ground,
making it clear that it had been there for years.
The back door was unpainted and had no handle, just
a latch on the inside, akin to something from an
old cellar. I set the back down, gently, snapped the
photo and hit complete. The payment came through almost instantly,
tip concluded more than the last one. I got back
in the car and drove off. I was getting tired
and it was already way too late. That night, I
went to bed without overthinking it, slept harder than I
had in weeks. The next morning, I rolled over, checked
my phone as always and opened the app out of
habit and the address was there again, no driver assigned
to it. It had already been sitting in queue for
twenty minutes. Double pay this time, no takers, so I
took it. The hours in that day blurred together real fast.
Each time the address popped up, I accepted it. Sometimes
the pay was higher, and sometimes it was the normal amount.
Yet still it was so easy and uncomplicated that I
felt like I had just struck gold. But the instructions
also kept changing. Do not ring doorbell, do not make
eye contact, place food and porch, and step back six feet,
use gloves, say nothing. I started joking with myself about it.
I told myself it was some eccentric shut in, maybe
an older person who didn't trust the outside world. The
bags were never moved. However, every time I came back,
the food I'd left earlier was still there, the containers
still sealed, the receipts still stabled. Some of them had
gone soggy from the morning dew. I counted eleven bags
stacked on the front porch, all of them from me.
That was when something in misshifted. Then I started wondering,
what if the person inside was dead. What if the
app was just said to auto order schedule meals nobody
ever canceled. What if they had family who didn't check
on them. What if I'd been delivering to a corpse.
The idea borrowed into me that night. When the order
came through, I didn't hesitate and didn't really care how
much they were paying. I had to check if the
person inside was okay. When I stepped onto the porch
and placed the bag beside the others, I didn't walk away.
I reached for the front door as anxiety was trying
to borrow a hole into my stomach. I knocked three
times food delivery, I shouted. No answer came, and so
I decided to take matters into my own hands. I
opened the door with a painful groan and stepped inside.
The door clicked shut behind me the moment I stepped through.
I didn't even touch it, didn't hear wind or pressure
or anything that might have caused it. It just closed,
smooth and silent. Then I heard the dead bolt slide
into place with a low mechanical clunk. I turned around immediately,
heart jumping into my throat. I tried the knob nothing,
it didn't even rattle. I jiggled it harder, then put
my weight into it to no avail. I also tried
getting the dead bolt unlocked at least, but I failed
every time, I tried, are you serious, and muttered, half laughing,
but with no humor behind it. I pulled out my phone.
No bars, not a single one. The little spinning so
circle on the screen felt like it was mocking me.
Of course, hey, I called out, raising my voice a
little hello food delivery silence. You would think every single
home would have some sort of ambient noise, but this
one didn't. Just dead air and a deafening silence. I
waited for a few more seconds, trying to listen out
for any movement or maybe even someone calling out to
me from deep inside the house. There was nothing. I
didn't want to go any farther, but I told myself
who was probably an old person, someone hard of hearing.
Maybe they fell, maybe they had a stroke, whenever the case,
all I wanted to do was leave and call the
police or the ambulance. So I stepped forward with a
full intention of getting out as soon as possible. The
entryway opened into a short hallway carpeted in a faded
brown that was matted down in uneven patches, like certain
spots had been stepped on too many times and others
not at all. The walls were yellowed, maybe from smoke,
maybe just time. And the air smelled faintly of ammonia
laid over something harder to name, like meat left out
too long in a warm room. The ceiling looked weird,
Strange marks had been left in the material, Circular holes
dotted the entire surface. I took another step, shoes sinking
slightly into the carpet. The floor creaked beneath me, slow
and high pitched hullo. I tried again. I don't mean
to intrude, I just your door locked behind me. I
reached the end of the hallway and leaned slightly to
peek into the kitchen. Pale tile, mostly clean, a few
dark stains near the sink. The fridge was humming, and
the little green light on the microwave was blinking twelve
o'clock like it had never been set. The place wasn't messy,
but it didn't feel lived in either. It had the hollow,
too quiet energy of a model home, something built to
look like someone was there. I offered there for a second,
right at the edge of where tyle met carpet, trying
to figure out what to do next. That's when I
heard it, A noise from deeper in the house, a
sort of raspy breathing. I leaned in just enough to
get a clearer view down the hall that when something moved,
it wasn't loud, definitely not a crash, but I felt
it more than heard it. A sudden, fast shift low
to the floor. I caught just the briefest flicker of
pale skin sliding out of sight around the corner, like
something had darted across on all fours. I jerked back instinctively,
a cold jolt ripping through my chest. My heel slid
across the linonium, and I nearly went down. I caught
myself against the wall, palm slapping into the dry wall
with a dull thud, but I barely noticed. My heart
was pounding so hard it felt like it might choke me.
For a second, I didn't move, just stood there, frozen
in place, the air in my lungs too tight to
let out. Something was here and it wasn't sick, and
it wasn't human. I started backing toward the front door
without thinking, each step light careful, like I didn't want
the floor to know I was leaving. My eyes stayed
locked on the hallway. I didn't even blink The doorknob
was slick under my hand. I twisted it hard. I
felt like a kid checking the fridge every five minutes
to see if anything has changed. I kept tugging and pulling,
each tug making a sound that pierced the silence. Then
I heard it again, that sound, but this time it
was softer, wetter, the steady drag of something moving along
the floor. It wasn't coming from the hallway anymore. It
was coming from the kitchen, right behind me. I turned
around slowly and saw it. It was crouched low behind
the kitchen island, half shadowed, but close enough now that
I could make out its shape. The thing was down
on all fours, bare chalk white skin, stretched tight over
a long, rail thin frame. Its limbs were too long
for its torso, and they bowed slightly like they had
too many joints. Its fingers, if that's what they were,
scraped along the floor in slow, deliberate arcs, each tipped
with yellowed, cracked nails that curved like splinters. Its head
moved slowly, swaying side to side, like it was sniffing,
But it had no nose, no eyes, just the sunken
face with a slack, wet mouth hung wide open, as
if it had been caught mid scream and then forgotten
how to close it. I froze for half a second,
maybe less. It didn't lunge or make any aggressive gestures.
It just inch forward with that same awful calm, dragging
its body across the tile, with a sound like wet
towels sliding through broken glass. It was close enough to
reach me if I hesitated. I didn't. I sprinted, angled
my shoulder and drove straight into the kitchen window with
everything I had. But it didn't give. It cracked, spied
a webbing beneath the impact, but held My arm folded wrong,
pain shooting through it like an electric wire. I dropped hard,
the breath knocked out of me, my back slamming against
the cabinet with a dull, wooden bang. I gasped for air,
vision swimming, and when I looked up, it was already there.
The thing was crawling toward me fast, now, fast than
it had any right to move. Its limbs clacked against
the tile, one of its arms flailed blindly, catching the
helm of my jacket. The sound it made somewhere between
a gurgle and a rattle was directed at me. It
didn't just want to hurt me. He wanted to feed.
Nobody had stepped foot in this house for god knows
how long, and I was the first one it had seen.
I kicked hard, my boot connecting with his chest. His
skin felt soft, almost spongy, but underneath was something solid.
The thing recoiled slightly but didn't stop. Its hand lashed
out again, skimming my knee, this time, nails grazing skin.
I felt warmth, but I didn't check. I pushed myself
up with a grunt, got my hands under me, and
searched forward with everything I had. I slammed into it,
head on, my weight, driving into its chest, and for
a moment I thought it might hold its ground. Its
limbs curled around me like cables, one of them wrapped
around my forearm, pulling tight. Adrenaline surged through me as
I pulled against it with everything I had. My elbow
smashed into what passed for its neck once twice, until
it let go just enough for me to shove its sideways.
It crumpled onto the floor, limbs tangling beneath it like
a sack of broken sticks, still run on whatever adrenaline.
I hadn't burned out in the scuffle. I doubled back
toward the window. The crack I'd made earlier was still there,
spidered across the glass like a frozen explosion. This time,
I didn't brace myself, I didn't aim. I threw my
whole body into it. The glass gave with a sharp,
staccato burst. It came apart all at once, not with
a clean breake, but in a thousand small shards that
cut through my sleeves, my forearms, the side of my neck.
I didn't feel it right away, just the sensation of
air hitting exposed skin as I spilled through the frame
and landed hard in the patchy, uneven grass outside. The
fall knocked the wind out of me again, but I
scrambled to my feet without thinking. Blood was running down
my arms in thin, erratic lines, and my shirt stuck
wet against my ribs. But I didn't stop. I didn't
check behind me. I just ran. I don't remember the
drive home, not really, just fragments, my hands slipping on
the wheel from blood. The street lights looked brighter than
the sun as I drove in the daze. By the
time I made it back home. My hands were shaking
so badly I could barely open the first aid kit
under the sink. I tore it apart, trying to find gauze, tape,
anything to make the bleeding slow down. I didn't try
to explain it to myself, not anymore. I wasn't going
to sit there and rationalize what I saw or what
it tried to do. I called the police, not nine
one one, just the local station. I told them I
delivered to a house and found someone inside, maybe someone dangerous.
I said. I thought they might be a break in
or someone in need of medical help. I didn't know
what I was saying. I just needed someone else to
go there. They sent a car. I waited by my
phone for over an hour, hands bandaged in layers of
gauze and paper towels. When the call came, the officer
sounded annoyed. He told me the resident was an elderly
woman lived alone. The cop asked me if this was
some sort of internet trend. This house has been called
in for things for months now, yet the police never
find anything. He asked me why I felt the need
to make a false report. Warned me that filing again
without cause could result in charges suggested maybe I was overworked.
I didn't argue. I just apologized, hung up, and sat
there in the dark. The next morning, I did what
I always did. I opened the app and there it was,
same address, no number, just the pin, same block behind
the strip mall, same flickering porch light in the preview
photo triple pay order waiting to be picked up. I've
been homeless for a while now, long enough to know
which places are safe, and which ones aren't, and which
ones will get you stabbed in your sleep. I move
around a lot, keep to myself, and never stay anywhere
too long. That's how you survive. The city is full
of tens cities, makeshift little neighborhoods of the forgotten and unlucky.
Some are worse than others. You don't stay in the
ones run by the guys with glassy eyes and twitchy fingers.
You don't set foot in the ones that stink of chemicals, urine,
and death. But every now and then you hear whispers
about a place that's different. There's one under the overpass
on the outskirts of town. I heard about it a
few weeks back. No fights, no cops, no trouble. Nobody
knows why. But people who stay there don't leave. They
don't come back into the city looking for change. They
just settle into that little, tense city and that's it. Supposedly,
they're all happy there. I wasn't planning on going. I
don't like places I can't walk away from, but that
night I didn't have a choice. The rain came fast,
thick and freezing, soaking me to the bone. Within minutes,
I've been hanging around downtown, near one of the busiest streets,
keeping my head down and hoping for scraps. When they
came out of the bar, a group of them, loud, drunk, laughing.
Those kinds of people don't take kindly to people like me.
They started with insworts, Hey, get a job, asshole, that
kind of thing. I kept my head down and kept walking.
Don't engage, don't make eye contact. It's a rule. But
when you're the weakest thing on the street, there's always
someone looking to prove something. One of them shoved me
from behind hard. I hit the pavement, gravel dug into
my head. I could have stayed down, maybe they'd have
laughed and walked away, but I made the mistake of
trying to get up. The first kick caught my ribs,
the second my shoulder, The third I don't even remember.
Everything blurred together, a boot, the taste of blood, the
sound of rain hammering the street, drowning out my own
ragged breath. Then a voice, enough, man, let's go, And
just like that it was over. They were gone, back
to their warm bar and soft beds, their lives, and
I was left in the street, bleeding into the gutter,
shivering like a dying dog. I pulled myself up, one
arm wrapped around my ribs. I needed to find shelter.
The usual spot were taken under the bridge near Maine,
the alcove behind the abandoned gas station, the empty warehouse
there still had half a roof left. Even the beat
up places, the ones with the rats biteunia sleep, were full.
That's when I remembered the tense city. I hesitated, rain
pouring down on my face. Something about it felt wrong,
but I was out of options. My ribs ached with
every step, and by the time I made it, I
was light headed from the cold and the steady loss
of blood. The first thing I noticed was how neat
it was. Tense cities aren't usually this organized. The messy
thrown together from whatever scraps people can find, TARPSTI defense
his cardboards, stacked into walls. This place wasn't like that.
The tents were perfectly spaced, set up in even rows,
all facing the same direction, like soldiers standing at attention.
No signs of fight or scrawled out warnings on the ground.
I stood at the edge of the camp, unsure whether
to step forward. I felt eyes on me, not unfriendly,
just watching. Then a woman, thin, middle aged, bundled in
a ragged coat, stepped toward me, pulling something from a sleeve.
She pressed the dirty dry cloth into my hand for
the bleeding, she muttered, then walked away. Before I could
thank her. A man followed, silent as a shadow. He
handed me a bottle of water, gave me a single
slow nod, then turned and disappeared into his tent. No
one asked me who I was. No one asked what
happened to me. They just helped. I sat down near
the entrance of an unclaimed tent, pressing the cloth against
my split lip. The pain was dull, now, a steady
throb beneath my bruised ribs. I tipped the water bottle
against my mouth and drank half of it in one go.
My body grateful for something clean rough night, I turned
my head. A man in his mid forties was sitting
on the ground a few feet away watching me. He
had a half smoked cigarette in one hand, rolling it
between his fingers. I hesitated before answering. I was in
use to people talking to me. You could say that,
I muttered. He nodded, took a drag, exhaled slow. Yeah,
same here read That was his name. I learned it
a few minutes later, after he scooted a little closer
and offered me half of a protein bar he'd scavenged earlier.
I took it. We sat there chewing in silence for
a bit, just listening to the rain pattering against the tents.
We were both new here, both sizing up the place.
Where are you from? He asked. Eventually I swallowed a bite,
white to my mouth. Know where that matters? Reid gave
a dry chuckle. Yeah, that sounds about right. I didn't
push for details, but he told me anyway, medical debt,
and that's what did him in. He had a wife,
a daughter. Then his wife got sick, the bills piled up.
He took out loans, maxed out credit cards, tried everything.
She still died, and the debt didn't die with her.
His daughter was better off without him, he said, staying
with family. He hadn't seen her in years. I told
him a little about myself, but not much, just that
I ran from a bad situation, no family, no real ties,
just surviving. Neither of us felt sorry for the other.
That's not how it works out here. We just got it.
Relapsed into silence, watching the people around us move between
the tents. The people here are weird. Huh, Reid muttered
and nodded, Yeah, real weird. The rain finally let up
some time after midnight, leaving the camp eerily quiet. The
only sounds were the occasional shovel of feet and the
distant hum of the city. Read and I sat near
our tents, watching the camp move in its strange, silent rhythm.
It wasn't just their behavior that unsettled me. It was
the way they navigated around the center of camp, avoiding
it without looking like they were avoiding it. I looked
at the center of the camp. At first glance, it
looked like any other patch of ground, dark packed earth,
damp from the rain. But the longer I stared, the
more I realized something was off. The soil was loose, uneven,
in a way that suggested it had been recently disturbed.
No weeds, no scattered trash, nothing settled into it. I
nudged Read with my elbow and nodded toward it. You
noticed that he squinted at the dirt, brow furring like
I don't know, like something that was put there or
taken out. A quiet rustling made me glance up. An
older woman stood a few feet away, just watching us. Well,
I thought she was watching us, but it turns out
she was looking at Reed. She didn't say anything then,
as if deciding we weren't worth the effort, she turned
and walked away. Neither of us spoke for a long time,
but I knew Reed felt it too. Her behavior was
the clear sign of an unspoken warning. I woke to
the sound of movement. The camp was in full motion.
Shapes emerged from tents, figures stepping into the cold, heads bowed.
They moved with purpose, but without urgency. Reed stirred beside me,
sitting up and rubbing his face. His breath was visible
in the cold air. The hearl is this, he muttered.
I didn't have an answer. People were gathered around the
fire pit in the center of camp, the same spot
we'd been staring at earlier. The flames flickered weakly, barely alive,
but no one made a move to stoke them. They
simply knelt his angle toward the smoldering embers, hands resting
in their laps. Read gave me a look. What do
we do, he whispered. But if we left now, they'd
notice we were the only ones still sitting near the tents.
If this was some kind of tradition, we should at
least try to fit in. I don't know, man, I
whispered back, but I'm not about to be the only
one sitting this out. Reid exhaled through his nose, clearly frustrated,
but after a moment he followed my lead. We shoveled
closer and knelt with the rest of them, lowering our heads,
doing our best to blend in. Then the muttering started.
At first I thought it was the wind, a low
vibration rolling through the air, but as it grew I
realized it wasn't coming from above. It was coming from
the people. A low rhythmic humming pulsed from their throats,
just a single deep note, stretched out for long, breathless
moments before shifting into another. I didn't understand it, but
I could feel it. The sound buzzed in my chest,
unsettling in a way I couldn't explain. Read and I
exchanged glances. Neither of us spoke, but I could see
the question in his eyes. I did the only thing
that made sense to me at the time. I opened
my mouth and mimicked the sound. The fire pit shuddered.
I thought it was my eyes plain tricks on me,
the glow of the dying embers warping the ground. But
then the dirt moved. It sank. A deep, wet grown
rolled from beneath the soil, like the earth itself was exhaling.
The pit caved inward, not suddenly, but slowly, collapsing in
on itself, like something deep below was pulling it down.
Read stiffened beside me, his breath going shallow. I didn't
dare move. Then something broke. The surface bloated, wet and shuddering,
the thing pushed itself free from the sinking dirt. Its
surface was slick and glistening with patches of dark, wiry
hair or fur clung to it in irregular clusters, sprouting
like weeds from raw, ruptured skin. Beneath it, veins bulged
and throbbed, pulsing in a low, sick way. As it
expanded and pulsed, the smell radiating from it made its
way to us. It was overwhelming, a putrid wave that
clawed its way up my throat. A gagged reed's body
jergged beside me. He covered his mouth, his eyes wide
and horrified. The thing quivered, then split, like meat being
pulled apart by invisible hands, and inside something moved. The
shape within was rising, twisting against the tight, fleshy walls,
trying to push free. A slick tensil slithered out, glis
in the firelight, dripping with some thick amber colored fluid,
then another, then another. My breath caught in my throat,
My body locked up, every muscle screaming at me to move,
to run, to tear my way out of this nightmare.
The thing in the pit continued to unfold itself, slick
tendrils sliding out, curling in the air like they were
testing it. The stench was unbearable, heavy and rotten. My
vision blurred as nausea hit, bile rising in my throat.
I stumbled back, hands digging into the dirt. My legs
felt like lead, but I pushed myself up, heart hammering.
A hand climbed around my fist. I turned and there
she was, the old woman, the one who had been
watching read earlier. Her eyes were cloudy, but there was
no blindness in them. Stay, she murmured, her fingers tightened
round my wrist. It only takes one. A shiver shot
through me, my stomach twisting into knots. Everyone was looking
at Reed. I lost my breath. I turned my head
just enough to see him, still kneeling. He saw it too,
all those eyes locked onto him. His lips parted slightly. Wait,
confusion flickered across his face, then fear. Reid scrambled back
on his hands. His eyes dared between the people kneeling
around their pit, their faces unreadable, not participating. The thing
in the ground pulsed again, its mass shifting and stretching. Wait, Wait,
what the hell is this? I just got here, read, stammered,
voice cracking under the weight of sheer panic. His hands
were raised, shaking as if to show them he wasn't
a threat, as if that mattered. His gaze locked onto mine,
desperation in his wide, bloodshot eyes, silently begging me to
do something, say something, stop this. I couldn't. The moment
stretched silent except for the soft, wet noises coming from
the pit. Then, with terrifying speed, the tendrils lashed forward.
Two large, burly men stood up and made their presence known.
Reid tried running, but they caught him. I watched as
they dragged him toward the creature and pinned him down
right next to it. The tendril punged through his shoulder,
sinking deep with a sound that was both a rip
and a squelch, like wet fabric being torn apart. Reed screamed,
body jerking violently as the muscle around the wound convulsed,
trying to force the thing out, but he was already
borrowing deeper. His legs kicked against the dirt, twisting his
free hand clawing at the tendril embedded in him, trying
to pry it loose. The second one wrapped around his
throat the moment it tightened, his scream cut off, replaced
by a grotesque, bubbling whease. His hands clawed at the slick,
pulsing coil, strangling him, his nails dragging across its surface,
but finding no grip, nothing to hold onto. The thing
lifted him slightly off the ground, his feet scraping against
the dirt, his body shuddering like his brain was firing
off every last desperate command to escape, but the tendrils
just kept pulling. He dragged him forward into itself, his
clothes stuck to its wet, pulsing mass the second he
made contact, as if something beneath the surface had latched
onto him. He tried to kick off, tried to push away,
but the creature's flesh was sticky, sucking him in, pressing
against him with a crushing force that made his ribs
groan under the pressure. His lips peeled back, baring his
teeth in an agonized grins as he felt it starting
to take him. He was being absorbed. His skin started
to pull, to stretch, to sink into the folds of
the thing's body. It didn't eat him, didn't consume him
the way an animal would devour prey. Instead, the flesh
of the thing in the fire pit parted and pulled
around him, pressing in on all sides, smothering him in
a thick, pulsing mass. His body began to fold, not
in the way a person collapses, but like those animations
people made of what it would look like being pulled
into a black hole, his back arching unnaturally, his ribs
cracking apart, his joints popping one after the other as
his limbs twisted at horrific angles. His eyes were still moving,
his mouth was open. His body was breaking apart, but
he was still there. The smell changed, The acred stench
of rock grew thicker, but there was something else underneath it,
now something worse. It was the unmistakable, cut, wrenching stench
of meat cooking from the inside out. Something inside the
thing was heating him, boiling him alive beneath its bloated surface.
Reid started making a noise, a bubbling sound, thick and wet,
rising from deep inside his chest, like his lungs were
filling with liquid. His head jerked forward as if he
was trying to cough, but instead of air, a thick
stream of ambered colored fluid dribbled past his lips. His
lips moved, but no words came out, just more of
that wet bubbling sound, and then with a final sickening crack,
his head tilted all the way back. His face disappeared
beneath the thing's pulsing flesh, and red was gone. The
thing retreated back into the ground, and people started making
their way back to their tents. The woman from earlier
approached me. This time she showed proper emotion. She apologized,
but said that now I had no choice and I
could never leave again, but the camp would take care
of me. The next morning, the camp was unchanged. The
sun rose over the overpass, washing everything in dull gray light.
People moved about their routines, stretching stiff limbs, adjusting their tents,
heating scraps of food over makeshift stoves. A few murmured quietly,
but their voices were flat, absent of emotion. No one
spoke of Reed. His tent was gone, his belongings were missing.
His spot by the fire pit where we had talked
was just bare ground. There was no sign he had
ever existed. The fire bit itself sat cold and undisturbed.
The ashes from the night before were still there, untouched.
The earth with a monster had surfaced where Reed had
been pulled in, crushed folded into something unrecognizable, now smooth,
packed tight. I sat by my tent, staring at it.
I barely slept, maybe an hour, maybe less. Every time
I closed my eyes, I saw it. Read's body twisting,
his mouth open, bubbling sounds rising from deep inside his chest,
The way his bones had cracked, how his body had
been swallowed whole. I pressed my knuckles to my mouth,
swallowing back nausea. The stench of burnt flesh and wet
decay still clung to my senses. I could smell it,
taste it, like it had embedded itself inside me. That night,
I lay awake, staring at the fire pit. Memories looked
over and over in my mind. Reid's face, his voice,
his screams. My hands clenched, nails dug into my palms.
I needed to do something, but if I tried now,
they'd stop me. I stayed, not because I believed in it,
but I needed to stay long enough to figure out
how to escape this place, long enough to understand what
I was up against, to learn their patterns, to see
if they were vulnerable. So I watched, I listened. I
learned their rituals, their quiet way of moving, their unspoken rules.
When they knelt at the fire pit, I knelt too.
When they hummed their strange rhythmic tones, I mimicked them,
forcing my voice into the same lifeless melody. At first,
my presence was tolerated, a stray dog, lingering where it
didn't belong. The longer I stayed, the more they accepted me,
and soon I found myself inside the inner circle. They
gave me tasks. Starting small, I was assigned to collect
supplies ration, out water ment the fragile structure of the camp.
They watched how I followed orders without question. I never
hesitated when something was asked of me. I let them
believe I was sinking into it, that I was dissolving
into the same mindless devotion they all carried. So to them,
I was no longer a risk. The older ones began
to notice. I caught them watching, murmuring in approval when
I followed orders without question. A few of them even
started speaking to me, Not much, but enough. I started
speaking with the elders, the ones who had been here
the longest. They spoke of time as though it had
no meaning, as if this place had always been here.
One of them told me that the city above was young,
that the steel and concrete were just a thin layer
of something much older. The land beneath had existed long
before men had carved roads into it, long before they
built towers of glass and metal and pretended they were
in control. The thing beneath the dirt was older than
all of it. They didn't call it a guard. They
didn't even have a name for it. The part we
saw in the pit was only a fragment, a piece
of something buried deep, something stretched out beneath the land.
Its body sprawled like a great root system. What we
fed it was enough to keep it satisfied here, But
there were other places like this across the world, doing
the same things we did. I was given roles in
the ceremonies, first as an observer, standing at the edge
of the fire pit as they conducted their nightly rituals.
Then I was made an assistant. I played my role well.
I helped choose the sacrifices, walking the camp in the
days before a ritual, feeling the weight of their silent
gazes as I picked the ones who would not wake
up in their beds the next morning. Sometimes they knew.
Sometimes I could see it in the way they carried themselves,
the way their hands trembled when they reached for their food,
the way their shoulders hunched inward like they were trying
to disappear. It didn't matter, no one ran. They all
went to the pit the same way. I try my
best not to be the one that would drag the
victims out to the pit, but sometimes that duty was
handed to me. I gathered what I needed in pieces,
spread out over months. A sturdy can, old and thick,
something that would shatter, and sharp pieces scraps of metal,
jagged and sharp meant to tear through flesh, scavenged chemicals,
and makeshift grenade. Crude but functional. It wasn't perfect, but
it would do the job. That night, a woman had
been chosen. I'd seen it in her before they even
told me. The small shift in her breathing, the way
her hands barely touched her food, the vacant focus in
her eyes. She knew she was lucky. That way she
reminded me of Reed, not in the way she looked.
Red had been hard edged, years of suffering chiseled into
his face, while she was younger, softer, like she had
once belonged somewhere else. But it was in her eyes,
the way she stared through me, past me. She didn't fight.
No one ever fought. When I volunteered to be the
one to take her to the pit, no one questioned it.
I'd been here too long for them to doubt me.
Now I had done my part, played my role, led
enough people into the pit without hesitation. I stood beside
them in the dark, humming their song, feeding the thing
beneath us. They trusted me completely. She breathed, shallow and
steady as they took her arm in my hand. The
skin was warm, pulse light, and steady beneath my fingers.
She didn't pull away. She walked where I led her,
quiet and obedient, just like the others before her. The
camp gathered around us. We walked through them, through the
ones i'd knelt beside, the ones who had stood with
me as the fire burned low, the ones who had
whispered the old stories into my ears. My breath felt
thick in my chest. The weight of the grenade in
my pocket was heavy, burning against my skin. My heartbeat
thudded in my skull. This was it. There was no
backing out now. My fingers wrapped around the fuse up
close The thing in the pit was worse than I'd
ever let myself see. There were mouths, or things that
almost resembled them, gaping slashed open gorges, lined with pulsing
ridges of flesh, but no teeth, just folds of wet,
sucking muscle layed over one another, like the gills of
rotting fish. They twitched, flaring open, and its eyes, if
they were eyes, were scattered unevenly across its surface, shifting
slightly as they swayed, never focusing, but always aware. With
one violent shove, I threw the woman aside. Gasps rippled
through the crowd, a sharpened hail that cut through the
heavy quiet of the night. She hit the ground hard,
rolling to a side. Her face twisted in confusion, But
I was already reaching into my pocket, yanking out the grenade,
my fingers tightening around my lighter. The pit reacted instantly.
The ground pulled apart like splitting skin. A thick, wet
noise rolled from the darkness beneath as the creature reared up,
sensing something was wrong. The thing in the pit wasn't mindless.
The tendrils lasted forward, fast as striking vipers. I lit
the fuse. My breath, ragged sweat rolling down my back.
I was too slow. I knew it in the same
moment I saw them come in for me. There was
only one way to make sure this worked. I lunged
forward and thrust my arm, my entire arm, into the
largest of its gaping mouths. Grenades still clenched my fist.
The second I made contact, it latched on to me.
The flesh around the mouth sucked inward as suffocating, muscle
bound vice wrapping around my arm, locking it in place.
It burned, not like fire, but like something alive was
crawling into my skin, burrowing, spreading. I felt it move
inside me. Veins surged outward from where it held me,
black tendrils creeping beneath my skin, forcing the way up
my forearm, boring into the spaces between muscle and bone.
I screamed as it pulled harder, yanking me toward its body,
trying to make me whole. My fingers locked around the grenade.
My bones started to bend, joints popped, My elbow snapped backward.
My wrist buckled under the impossible pressure. The pain was
all consuming, a raw, electric agony that tore through every nerve.
I lost the part of my vision. My body convulsed,
my legs nearly gave out. Beneath me. It was trying
to crushed me into something small enough to fit inside.
Then the grenade exploded. A shockwave ripped through my body,
sending blinding heat up my arm or what was left
of it, tearing through flesh and muscle, shattering bone. In
an instant, the force tore me away, sent me hurtling backward,
crashing into the dirt, my body skidding across the ground.
The creature shrieked, not in sound, not in anything I
could hear with my ears, but inside my skull, a
raw wail that shattered my thoughts, a wordless, agonized scream
that was neither human, nor animal, nor anything that should
have existed in this world. I couldn't breathe, but I
felt it dying. The pit convulsed, buckling inward, flesh rupturing,
splitting open, sprang thick black fluid in every direction. The
mouths gaped wide, sucking, had the air trying to cling
to life, trying to pull something, anything, into itself, to
stop what was happening. It was collapsing. The earth cracked
beneath it, the pit caving in, the body, deteriorating, turning
to something wet and broken and undone. I tried to move,
but I couldn't. Everything went black. The world came back
in pieces, A steady rhythmic beep, the distant murmur of voices,
white light pressing against the backs of my eyelids, the
sterile weight of blankets tucked around my body, pinning me down,
holding me in place, the unmistakable smell of fantiseptic. I
was alive. I tried to move, but my body refused.
My limbs felt heavy, A deep, dull ache pulsed through
my side, my chest, my skull radiating outward. My throat
was raw, my ribs tight like they had been wrapped
in iron. I turned my head, and that's when I
felt it, or rather didn't. My right arm was gone.
I couldn't see it, couldn't feel it, but the pain
was still there, A deep, phantom weight, like something was
still holding onto it, still digging into my bones, still
trying to pull me back down. The sensation crawled at
my shoulder, a hollow, twisting emptiness, nerves firing into nothing,
reaching for a limb that no longer existed. My left
eye wasn't there either. I lifted my remaining hand, fingers trembling,
and felt the rough edges of a thick bandage covering
half my face underneath. My skin pulsed, tender, stitched, swollen.
The socket was empty. The room was silent, except for
the beeping of machines, the sound of fabric rustling. As
I tried to shift my weight. I could hear footsteps
outside the door, voices too low to make out. Somewhere
in the distance, someone laughed, normal life, the world continuing.
I should have felt relieved, I should have felt something. Instead,
I just felt tired. I let my head sink back
into the pillow. Nurses passed by the door, their voices
drifting through the half open gap. I forced myself to listen,
let the words seep in. They said it was an accident,
a fire, some kind of explosion out by the overpass. Yeah.
No one found anybodies, no traces of anyone living there,
just a a pause, just the whole. My fingers curled
into the sheets. The tense city was gone, The people,
the elders, the silent, faithful, vanished without a trace. Her
slow exhale left my lungs long and steady. I let
my eye drift shut, exhaustion pressing me deeper into the mattress,
pulling me under. For now it was over in our
part of the world. But if it wasn't someone else,
we'll have to stop it. I moved to New Maple
in early spring, right as the snowbanks along the curbs
turned a slush and the neighborhood kids started trading sleds
for bikes. The place was filled with people who waved
from their porches and jogged with dogs that didn't need leashes. Quiet,
unbothered and polite, I told myself I was ready for quiet.
I'd taken a job teaching art at the local high school,
and the rental, an aging two bedroom with creaky stairs
and yellow siding, was the best I could afford without roommates.
I told people I'd moved to focus on my work
to get out of the city. That part was true.
The part I didn't talk about was the slow disintegration
of a relationship I'd spent too many years in, and
how silence had started to feel safer than conversation. The
Avery's lived two doors down. I noticed them on my
first walk around the neighborhood. The house had blue shutters
and a deep green lawn already trimmed to perfection. Two
lips lined the path to their front porch in a
single even row. I saw missus Avery trimming them with
garden chairs one morning, her white sun hat covering most
of her face. She didn't look up when I passed,
only nodded. It took a week before she spoke to me.
You're the one who moved into two on four, aren't you?
She asked? As I carried in groceries the old Duncan house.
She stood on the sidewalk with her hands clasped in
front of her, her voice soft but precise. Her smile
stayed on her face the whole time we talked. She
introduced herself as Marian, and when I gave her my name,
she repeated it twice. Then she invited me over for lemonade.
I said yes because it felt easier than saying no.
The inside of the home smiled faintly of lemons and
wood polish. It was spotless. The cleanliness in there felt permanent.
Every surface had been dusted, every frame perfectly aligned. I
noticed photographs, small ones lining the mantle, larger ones on
the wall near the stairs. A girl with brown hair
and a bright, wide smile. That's our daughter, Emily, Marian said.
When she caught me looking. She disappeared last year. She
placed the glass of lemonade in my hand and asked
if I wanted a cookie. Mister Avery, whose name, looking back,
I realized I never learned, joined us a few minutes later.
He was taller than his wife, thin, with a neatly
pressed collared shirt and an easy practiced way of folding
into conversation. They were charming in the way that old
couples are. I stayed for over an hour. When I left,
Marian pressed the tupperware container of cookies into my hands
and told me to stop by any time. I didn't
plan on going back, but the next week she appeared
on my porch with a pie. Then came the dinner invitation,
then another. Over the next month, the visits turned into tradition.
They always served too much food and insisted I'd take
home the leftovers. We played cards or watched an odd
movie on DVD. Sometimes I'd find myself helping mister Avery
move something into the garage or fix a loose shutter.
I didn't mind it. Felt good to be wanted somewhere.
They had a way of making me feel needed without
ever saying it outright. Then the small comments began. You
have a laugh, Marian said one night as we finished
washing dishes. Emily's laugh used to carry through the whole house.
Another time, mister Avery handed me a book from their shelf.
She loved this one used to read it out loud
on the porch. I smiled, said thank you, and took
the book home. I told myself it was harmless. A
grieving family seeing pieces of their daughter and a young
woman nearby. It was a compliment, that's all. Then after
dinner one night, Marian handed me a folded sweater. I
found this while going through the linen closet. She said.
It used to be Emily's. I think it would look
just perfect on you. It was soft, cream colored with
slightly stretched sleeves. The scent of lavender clung to it.
I hesitated for half a second, but she was already
draping it over my arm. Her hands stayed there, resting
lightly on my wrist. You don't have to wear it now,
just keep it. It'd make me happy. I nodded and
thanked her. Told myself. I'd return it later. I never
wore it, just folded it into the back of my closet,
where it sat behind a box of winter scarves. By then,
I had already stopped telling people how often I was
seeing the averies. I'm not sure why. Maybe I was
afraid of how it would sound, or maybe part of
me already knew something wasn't quite right. I just didn't
know how far it would go. It was a Sunday
evening when they asked. Dinner had been roast chicken, peas,
and soft bread rolls that Marin brushed with melted butter.
I'd brought over a cheap bottle of red wine and
we drank it in mismatched glasses while the sun dipped
behind the trees outside their living room window. They weren't
watching anything on TV. Marian had turned on an old
stereo that played instrumental jazz at a volume just low
enough to barely notice. She waited until I had finished eating,
then reached for my hand. Her fingers were cool and dry,
but steady. Across the table, Mister Avery cleared his throat.
We wanted to ask you for a favor, she said.
I looked between them, unsure of what they meant. Tomorrow,
it is Emily's birthday, she continued, She would have turned seventeen.
Mister Avery nodded, his hands folded in front of him.
We started a tradition just last year, just a quiet
evening timbrance ritual. I suppose you could call it. Marian
gave a small smile, then, the kind that didn't reach
the eyes. We thought, if you were willing, maybe you'd
help us with it this year. I didn't answer at first.
She kept holding my hand. It wouldn't be much. Just
sit in a place at the table, read a passage
from a journal, Maybe wear one of her favorite dresses,
That's all. Mister Avery reached the cross and rested a
hand on his wife's shoulder. She began to cry, not loudly,
which made it even sadder. It would mean so much
to us, he said, People do strange things when they grieve.
I said yes. The next day they dressed me in
a blue the fabric thin and neatly pressed. It was
already laid out in Emily's room when I arrived, draped
over a bed like it had been waiting. I changed
in silence. The dress fit me perfectly. Downstairs The table
was set for three, one plate at the head, one
at the left, and one at the right. A single
white candle burned in the center. Marian stood by my chair,
smoothing the shoulders of the dress as I sat down.
On my plate was a folded piece of paper. I
read the words out loud. It was a passage from
Emily's journal, something about a favorite season, the way the
air smelled before rain. I read it twice, at Marian's request.
After that we held hands. Mister Avery began to a slow,
droning melody. Marian joined in, barely above a whisper. There
were no words, only the sound of their voices moving
in and out of tune with each other. They stopped
humming and began eating. I followed their lead. The food
was thick and oddly sweet, some sort of casserole I
didn't recognize. The texture was soft, but not in a
pleasant way. My stomach tightened after a few bites, still
to be polite, and I cleaned the plate. Afterward, they
insisted I stay a little longer, just to talk. I
nodded along with their stories, most of which seemed pulled
for moments that no longer belonged to anyone. Mister Avery
kept referring to things we'd all done together, times I
knew for certain I hadn't been there. He spoke with
such conviction that I stopped correcting him. Marian stood and
clasped her hands together. You've been such a light for us,
she said. We've been thinking maybe you'd be easier for
everyone if you stayed the night. She gestured toward the stairs.
We already made up a room for you. I didn't respond.
I stood, forcing a smile and told them I had
an early morning. I walked toward the door. Neither of
them followed. They only watched Marian, still smiling, mister Avery,
with his head slightly tilted. I reached for the doorknob.
The world tilted sideways. The last thing I remember is
the taste of metal in my mouth and the floor
rushing up toward me. I woke to the sound of
birds song. For a moment, I thought I was home.
Not my new place, but the apartment i'd shared with
my sister before the move, the one with the crooked
blinds and the peeling wallpaper. In the kitchen, the morning
light had that same watery yellow hue stretched across the
floor like someone had poured it from a glass, but
the room smelled different. There was no scent of old
coffee or laundry detergent. Instead, the air was stale, perfumed
with something powdery and floral. I turned my head and
saw the wallpaper soft pink, with tiny green leaves printed
and even rows. The bookshelves sat beneath the window, filled
with worn paperbacks and dusty trophies. There were doors on
a wooden rocking chair in the corner, a small white desk,
a full length mirror with a lay shawl draped over
the top, and on every wall photographs and a child's drawing,
dozens of them, framed and arranged with obsessive precision. They
were all of her, Emily. Her face stared back at
me from every angle. School portraits, birthday parties, candid shots
in the yard, her eyes always locked with the camera,
always smiling. I sat up. The sheets tangled around my legs.
I was still wearing the dress, my skin itched beneath
a fabric. I reached for my phone out of fabit,
my pocket was empty. I checked the nightstand nothing no phone,
no charger, no keys. My coat was draped over the
desk chair, but the pockets had been turned inside out.
There was no clock in the room. The silence crawled
in behind the bird song and pressed down on my shoulders.
I opened the door. Mister Avery stood on the other side,
holding a tray with toast and a glass of orange juice.
He didn't flinch. His face was smooth, his expression unreadable.
Good morning, sweetheart, he said, We thought you might be hungry.
I stepped back into the room, heart pounding, trying to
keep my breath steady. He followed, placing the tray in
the desk beside the glass lamp. I wanted to ask
what happened. I wanted to ask why I had woken
up there, why I couldn't remember falling asleep, why I
was still in Emily's clothes. But when I opened my mouth,
nothing came out. Mister Avery folded his hands in front
of him and gave a small nod. Your mother thought
you might need a little extra rest after everything last night.
You always get a little overwhelmed when things get emotional.
He looked at the wall, at one of the pictures.
We understand. I forced the words out, where's my phone?
What are you people doing? He didn't answer at first,
just looked at me with that sticked, practiced gaze. You
know you're grounded, Emily. No phone until we talk about
what happened, until you're honest with us. My skin went cold.
He turned and walked to the door. Before stepping out,
he said, almost absently, we'll be downstairs when you're ready.
Just come sit with us when you're feeling more like yourself.
He closed the door softly behind him. I rushed to
grab it, grabbed a knob, twisted hard. It wasn't locked,
but I wasn't ready to leave yet, not without a
plane at least. I checked the window next. The latch
had been painted over. When I tried to slide the
pane open, it didn't move. I sat on the edge
of the bed and stared at the door for a
long time. There was no yelling, no threads, no locked
chains or screaming alarms, just that suffocating sense of stillness.
I could hear Marian's voice echoing through the walls. She
was humming a tune. She sounded happy. I was wirded
out and scared, and frankly, I couldn't wait to report
them to the police. I'd spent a lot of time
with the averies. So I knew what they did and
when they did it, and so I waited until the
mower started. There was an old push model, loud, uneven,
and it took a minute to warm up. From the window,
I watched mister Avery roll it across the backyard, the
blades chewing up patches of tall grass he had let
grow just long enough to look natural. His back was turned,
Marian wasn't in sight. I moved fast, quiet at first,
then reckless. I slipped out the room and crept down
the stairs bare foot. My shoes were gone, so I
wore Emily's flats from the closet. They pinched my toes,
but I didn't stop. The house was still. No clocks ticked,
no footsteps echoed, just the rising whir of the mower,
steady and sharp. At the front door, I reached for
the lock. It clicked open easily. The dead bolt hadn't
been set. For a second. I thought, maybe this would
be easy, Maybe they'd let their guard down. I opened
the door and stepped out into the sunlight. The grass
felt cold through the thin soles and my shoes. I
didn't look back. I moved quickly past the porch, through
the side yard, past the rose bushes that edged the
Avery striveway. I heard the mower stop, then his voice Emily.
I didn't answer. I broke into a run. I made
it half way across the lawn before he tackled me
from behind. My niece slammed into the ground. One shoe
flew off. His arms wrapped around my waist, and he
dragged me backward, his breath hot and uneven in my ear.
I screamed in hopes anyone would hear me enough. He
snapped enough of this, I screamed again, raw and useless.
He pulled me through the doorway and up the stairs.
My hands clawed of the walls, trying to find something
to grab, anything that might catch. He threw open the
bedroom door and shoved me inside. I hid the floor hard,
my shoulder cracking against the leg of the bed. You
don't get to run away from us, he said. He
stood over me, chest heaving, face flush. I could smell
the sweat on him, mixed with something sour. He raised
his hand. The slap rang in my ears for a
long time after he left. When he shut the door again,
the light seemed to change. The sun had begun to
set and the room filled with shadows that stretched toward
the corners like stains. I stood, legs shaking, and picked
up the night's end. It was heavier than I expected,
painted white, with floral knobs, one drawer still filled with
old birthday cards and dried out pens. I dragged it
to the window, raised it above my head, and slammed
it against the glass. The first it only left a
mark that was nothing but cosmetic. The second didn't even
do that much. By the fourth strike, my arms burned.
I let the night stand fall to the floor and
sank beside it, chest rising and falling too fast, the
glass mocking me from above. I didn't hear anyone approach.
The door creaked open behind me. Emily Marian said gently.
I turned a facer. She stepped into the room in
a pale blue sweater and slacks. Her hair was pin
needly behind her ears. She held a silver brush in
one hand and a smile, never wavered. I thought we
could spend some time together, she said. Before I could speak,
I saw movement behind her. Mister Avery stood in the hallway.
He wasn't sweating any more, his face had gone still
calm again. In his right hand was a pistol. He
held it with both hands low against his stomach, but
aimed in my direction. I opened my mouth, but Marian
was already crossing the room. Why don't you come sit,
she asked. She sat on the bed and patted the
space beside her. Mister Avery gestured with his pistol, and
so I sat. Marian reached out and began to run
the brust through my hair. The bristles snaw. I've done not,
she hummed softly under her breath, something tuneless and repetitive.
You always loved this, she said. You used to sit
just like this when you were little. Remember. I felt
the first tear slipped down my cheek before I could
stop it. I tried to hold back, but they came fast,
soaking into the collar of the dress. Marian kept brushing.
Her voice crooned, You're going to feel better soon. All
that confusion is going to melt away. We'll take care
of you like we always have. She kissed the top
of my forehead and kept brushing, even as my shoulders shook.
Days passed like this. Missus Avery came into my room
every night, accompanied by mister Avery, always the same routine.
She came into the room every evening, with mister Avery
right behind her, always carrying the same pistol tucked into
his arm or slipped into the waistband of his jeans.
He never raised it again, but he never put it
away either. It was there to keep the lines drawn,
to make sure I didn't forget who I was supposed
to be. She would talk about memories I didn't have,
cry over milestones I'd never reached. Sometimes she'd sing to
me in a low breathy voice, humming half finished laullabies
and whispering that I'd always be her baby. I didn't
argue any more. I played along. I smiled when I
was supposed to. I held her hand when she offered it,
I responded to Emily. It was the only way to
stay safe. Until the night I reached my breaking point.
I had been staring at the wall across from the bed,
where they'd hung a frame I hadn't noticed before. Must
have been slipped in when I was in the bathroom,
A drawing done in pencil of a small white house
with a porch and two stick figures standing in the yard.
At the bottom the signature Emmy, aged seven. Something about
it opened the door in my chest I hadn't closed
fast enough. I stood and tore it from the wall.
Then the next photo, then another. I didn't stop. I
tore the bed sheet apart and kicked the rocking chair over.
I pulled open the drawers of the desk and dumped
them onto the floor. I had destroyed most of the room.
The mattress had been flipped, the curtains torn from the rod.
I had kicked open the closet doors and thrown every
hanger to the floor. My arms ached, my throat burned
from yelling, though no one had come to stop me.
Maybe they were letting me tire myself out, or maybe
they were waiting to see what I would do next.
I sank to the floor beside the bed frame, hearts
still pounding, tears dried on my face. I didn't know what.
I was hoping to find, some crack in the walls,
some hidden clue that would explain what had happened here
before me. I didn't expect anything real. That's when I
found the notes. They'd been tucked behind the desk, whiched
between the back panel and the wall. The corner of
the paper had just barely peeked out, visible only from
where I'd collapsed. It wasn't hidden in the way someone
might hide a secret. It was forgotten. I crawled toward it.
The notes were thick and worn, the pages soft from handling.
A floral cover faded around the edges, with the name
Becker written across the front in blooming, not the loopy,
curated signature I had seen of her old schoolwork. This
one had been written fast, probably while crying. The first
entry was dated fourteen months ago. I wanted to start
this off by saying that my name is Becker, not Emily.
Marian gave me this journal, told me to write down
whatever she told me to. When she left the room,
I ripped a couple of pages out. I needed to
get my real thoughts across somewhere they took me. I
don't know how to write that any other way. I
keep waiting to wake up to hear my alarm and
crawled back into real life. But it's not coming. I
went to see my old piano teacher. That's how it started.
I'd posted about it on Facebook and Marian must have
seen it. She was there when I came out, smiling,
saying it had been too long, and mister Avery showed up.
I thought it was weird, but I didn't panic, not
until I got into the car, not until the door's locked.
My hands trembled as I turned the page. They told
me my parents didn't want me anymore, that the world
outside was dangerous and they were the only ones who
could protect me. I screamed. I cried so much I
couldn't see straight. They started keeping me in the room
for days at a time, said I needed to calm
down before I earned privileges. Entry after entry blurred into
each other. Weeks of isolation. Meil slipped through the door.
The silence, the slow removal of her name. They started
calling me Emily. That's their daughter's name. She died when
I was little. I think I found a photo once
in a box in the closet. The girl in the
picture wasn't me, but they said it was. I told
him no, but they didn't listen. The more I argued,
the more time they kept me locked away. Mister Avery
hit me for the first time three weeks ago. He
apologized after said he didn't want to, but I provoked him.
Marian gave me ice and a dish towel and told
me to stop resisting. She said the sooner I accepted
that I was home, the easier everything would be. Some
entries were scribbled and hard to read, with the pen
pressed so deep it tore the paper. Others were neat
and almost detached, like she had given up on being
heard and wanted to leave a record. One in particular
caught in my throat. I miss who I was, my name,
my friends, my real mom. I think I'm forgetting what
a voice sounded like. I keep trying to say my
own name out loud when I'm alone, but it sounds fake.
Now they keep telling me I'm Emily. They tell me
I was never anyone else. The final entries were short.
They said we're going to the lake soon to start
over somewhere quiet. I think they're going to kill me.
If anyone somehow finds this, please tell the truth. I
was Becca Harper. I was sixteen. They made everything up.
I clutched the notes to my chest and sat there
in the wreckage of the room they had once given her,
a shell of a bedroom, meant to raise someone and
replace her with a better version, a more obedient version.
They were doing it again. I was still staring at
the notes when I heard a knock at the front door.
I immediately perked up. In all my time spent here
as a prisoner, I hadn't heard someone knock on the
front door a single time. It was a hard knock,
not Marian's gentle tap, not mister Avery's soft call for dinner,
A firm practiced fist against wood. My door swung open.
It was Marian. Before she could even question me about
the state the room was in, she ushered me to
come to the front door, claiming we had visitors. Mister
Avery was already there, gunn tightly bound to his waist.
He was always ready now. He opened the door with
a smile. Two officers stood outside, one older, square George,
the other younger, sharper eyes. The older one spoke, first,
we're falling up on a missing person report. Young woman
mid twenties moved into two one four last month. You
know anything about that? Marian beamed, Oh my, We thought
we hadn't seen her in a while. Mister Avery turned
to me, Emily, you are quite well acquainted with her.
Come say helo. I walked to the doorway. Marian reached
for my hand and held it in both of hers.
Introduce yourself first, sweetie, my mouth opened, nothing came out.
The order officer tilted his head slightly studied my face.
His eyes narrowed just enough to suggest he saw more
than he was letting on. I tried again. I'm she
was gone for a year. She just recently came back,
and mister Avery said quickly, it's been a hard week.
The officer didn't move. I'd like to speak with her alone,
if that's all right. There was a pause. Marian blinked.
Mister Avery didn't speak, but his smile faltered. Of course,
she said, she just needs some air. He led me
down the walkway. We stood at the end of they
I leaned in and whispered, barely able to push the
words out. It's it's me. They kidnapped me. He has
a gun. Please don't make a scene. I think you'll
kill us if you do. The officer didn't flinch. He
only nodded very slowly. Then he smiled. Thank you, Emily,
he said, loud enough for the others to hear. Everything
seems fine here. He walked back to the porch. The
door shut and they left. Marian and mister Avery seemed
to be satisfied. They must have assumed that I had
told them I was their daughter or something equally as sick,
falling for their own delusions, I went back to the
room and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting
for what would come next. That night, I didn't sleep,
or rather couldn't. The raid came late into the night.
There were no red and blue lights flashing through the windows,
only doors being broken and voices shouting. A battering ram
cracked the front door in half. Footsteps thundered through the house.
I huddled in the corner of Emily's room with a
lamp still on, waiting for it to end. One officer
rushed straight to my room, helping me up and escorting
me outside. They dragged mister Avery out after he screamed
and fought wild eyes flashing onto the hallway light. She
is mine, he shouted. You don't understand, she's mine. Then
Marian sobbing, her sweater stained and a handsh shaking Emily. Emily,
tell them, tell them the truth. Don't let them take
us from you, don't let them hurt your family. I
didn't answer. I watched as they were taken from the house,
kicking and wailing. She reached for me as she passed
the bedroom door. I took a step back in disgust.
Later at the station, I told the officers everything I
told them about the notes and everything I'd read, And
with that Becker's case was reopened and her family finally
got the closure they so desperately needed. As for me,
I never quite recovered. People imagine that once the danger ends,
you can breathe again, that the worst part is over
and done with. That's not how it works. You leave
the place, but it doesn't leave you. I still shower
with the door cracked open. I still flinch when I
hear that name. I still dream in that room, the
pink wall paper, the pressed dress, the soft brushing of
a voice behind me telling me I'll be better soon,