Speaker 1: I found the ad while half asleep, hunched over a
greasy diner booth, stealing Wi Fi from the subway next door.
I've been scowling 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 two 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 a 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 himselves 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
her name, then continued, She has an unusual condition. Nothing contagious,
I assure you, but it's neurological. You won't have to
feed her baither 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 any more. She has these spells, fugues, hallucinations,
night terrors. They come for her in a sleep. He
slid a heavy manilla 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 LTE.
I asked why he couldn't be there himself. Raymond looked
out 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 mail
box in flaking gold. The pathop was cracked, grass grown
through every seam. A row of wind chimes hung silently
from the porch, though there wasn't a breeze in sight. 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 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 on her lap,
but her eyes were sharp, vivid, and almost two 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 outloud 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 toward the corners
of the room. Do you mind turning that one on
to 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 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 parts of the room pulsed like there 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 burnt 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
root 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 what 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 since so long, she said, just the
waiting and the struggling. She didn't ask for comfort, didn't
want to be told he 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 wall
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 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, 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'd started to hear things upstairs.
There was no second floor, just an attic. I had
not dared to check. The footsteps weren't horrid 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 buzz 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 awake, eyes wide and wet, and the thing
above us twitched once, then receded it slightly. It didn't disappear,
it just shrank back toward the corner where the ceiling
met the far wall. Marjorie 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
fell 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 am, 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 on focused,
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.
Mardra's hands shut 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 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, whole away 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 fire 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 a 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 to 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, no body,
just the idea of someone watching. It showed up right
after this was taken, she whispered. I tore the film
up that night, buried the negatives, but it didn't matter.
Saed at the photo and felt my jaw tightened, 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 blade 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 claw 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. Marjory 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
her sniffing outside as slow, deep in 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
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 backward. 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 unto
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 forwarded 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 than 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. A I was tired. We
needed her exhausted, fully exposed. It can't hide anymore. You
weakened it. I stared at him, throat raw, body trembling.
He opened 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,