Speaker 1: I never thought i'd see half the town show up
to bury a man nobody actually liked. Ricky Helden wasn't
a monster or anything. He was one of those loud,
broad shouldered firemen who made every story about himself, the
kind of guy who'd tell you about a house fire
he'd put out in eight like it was Vietnam. Still,
he'd been part of the fabric of this place, and
in small towns, even the people you don't love feel
like pillars. But the mood at his funeral wasn't grief.
It was fear. There were no tears. Instead, people watched on, whispering,
glancing over shoulders at shadows that weren't there. To the side,
Missus Harlan kept repeating, it's earlier than last time. Two
older men stood behind me near the tree line, speaking
low as the past droned on. It started again, twenty
seven years, like clockwork, thought would get more time. I
pretended not to hear. I grew up listening to this
kind of nonsense, stories about the black cycle, about the curse,
about how every twenty seven years someone would dine in
a way that didn't belong to the world. To me,
it was always just superstition layered over tragedy. Small towns
loved patterns, even if they had to invent them. But
this time, This time felt different because nobody had an
explanation for how Rick burned to death inside an empty
grain silo. There wasn't an investigation, no state fire marshal, nothing.
All he got was a close casket funeral and a
quick burial before anyone outside town could ask questions, and
the siloh itself. I drove past it on the way
to the service. The whole structure had been reduced to
a perfect black circle of ash on the ground, like
someone had dropped a giant branding iron on it. Rick
had been in the center. I was left of him anyway.
After the service, people lingered in clusters, talking like frightened cattle.
Then the whispering started. It's the vault, the vaults waking up.
That's when I knew I wouldn't sleep if I didn't
see the sight myself. I waited until sundown, until the
sheriff's car was gone and the road was empty, then
drove out to what was left of Holden silo. The
fields were quiet, the air unnaturally still. The ash circle
felt wrong. It didn't look charred in the way you'd expect,
more like the ground had melted. I crouched, brushing my
fingers across the surface. The concrete was glassy and smooth,
fused into a dark, rippled shape, and in the center,
where Rick had died, the scorch marks curved into an oval,
wide at the ends, narrow in the middle, jagged around
the edges, almost like teeth, a mouth an open one.
I stood slowly, feeling a cold bloom in my chest,
like recognition, though I didn't know why. I left. Before
my mind could make sense of what I'd seen that night,
I dreamt I was underground. I wasn't buried in dirt,
buried in bone, in a coffin made of interlocking teeth,
and above me, something massive exhaled, something waiting and hungry.
I didn't go to work the next day. Every time
I closed my eyes, I saw that shape burned into
the silo floor, those jagged edges, that impossible symmetry, like
a fossil of something that had taken a bite out
of the world. So instead of clocking in at my
job at the hardware store, I drove to the town museum.
It was like an overgrown attic, cold, dusty, full of
things nobody wanted to throw away or remember. I told
the curator I needed to do some genealogy research. Archives
are downstairs, she muttered, barely looking up. If anything bites you,
it's not our lie ability nice. The archive room smeled
like yellowing paper and mildew. Rows of metal, filing cabinets
containing stacks of old town ledgers and newspaper reels older
than anyone alive in town. I started with obituaries eighteen nineties,
nineteen tens, nineteen thirties, nineteen fifties. A pattern began to
emerge before I even wanted to admit what I saw.
Every twenty seven years, the death count spiked. An old
man wiped out in a house fire, a pastor found
hanged in his own church rafters, a child drowning in
a lake during a drought, just like the stories. Then
I found the nineteen ninety eight folder. It contained detailed
council minutes, and they were terrifying. There were references to
a selection committee and a recipient list. The names were
blacked out with heavy ink strokes, but the phrasing was
unmistakable when entry read, consent acquired the vault remained sealed.
What vault? What consent? I flipped page after page, hands sweating,
until I found a single note clipped to the inside cover.
If the list is incomplete, notify the elders. No cycle
can begin without unanimous selection. That was the first moment
I felt something twist in my gut. Something had gone
wrong this year. I pulled an old town survey map,
spread it across the table and started comparing landmarks mentioned
in the minutes. A creek that dried up in the sixties,
the road was re rooted in the forties, an old
settlement boundary. Then I found it, a place marked only
once in tiny faded letters, vault Mouth. It was deep
in the woods, far beyond the main trails, so remote
it wasn't on modern GPS, A place nobody talked about,
a place meant to be forgotten and, judging by the
council minutes, deliberately avoided. I was stuffing the documents back
into the folder when a chart slipped out, A folded
piece of thick, brittle paper looked like it hadn't been
touched in decades. On it was a family tree of
the original settlers of the town, with dozens of names
and dozens of branches, most of them were crossed out
with red pencil, and when I saw my own last name,
my stomach dropped. My family's branch wasn't crossed out. It
was circled hard, several times, deep enough to bring up
the fibers of the paper, and next to it written
in the same red pencil, next to seal the mouth.
The room felt suddenly smaller, the air grew colder, and
the hairs of my arms studd at attention, sending chills
down my spine. I stood there, staring at that circle,
that message, feeling like a hand had reached out of
the past and grabbed the back of my neck. Whatever
was happening now, my family hadn't just been a part
of it. We were at the center of it. There
were only two elders in town who had lived with
the nineteen seventy one cycle, and one of them didn't
talk anymore. The other was Delorous Kint. She lived on
a faded yellow house on Birch Lane, the kind of
place that looked like it should have caved in years ago,
but by miracle stayed standing. Had seen her at the
grocery store sometimes pushing an empty cart, mumbling to herself.
Some said she had dementia, but I also heard she
watched her entire family die through a single October. I
figured both could be true. I knocked on a door,
but there was no answer. I was just about to
leave when a shadow moved behind the curtains and the
locks clicked one, two, three four. She opened the door
just wide enough for one eye. Yaw the more craft boy,
she said. I didn't correct her. I wasn't sure if
she meant my father or me. Her living room smell
like dust, medicine, an old, damp carpet. She shuffled around
in slippers, muttering tea, tea, Do I make tea? When
I told her I had questions about the past, she
stopped moving, just stopped. Her back stiffened, and she turned
her head in a way that made my saliva taste
like despair. When I swallowed, What year is it? She asked,
twenty twenty five? She sucked in a sharp breath. That's soon,
she whispered. She wondered to a recliner and sat down, hard,
hands trembling. I pulled a chair across from her, dolorous,
I said, quietly, I need to ask about nineteen seventy one,
about your family, about the deaths. She didn't react until
I said the word vault mouth. Her eyes snapped to mine,
clear as crystal, like the fog lifted all at once.
You shouldn't know that name, she exclaimed. Only the chosen
and the choosers know that name. I found documents, I said,
council notes from nineteen ninety eight, mentions of a selection committee.
She let out a shaky laugh. No one chooses any more,
she said, That's why it's angry. Then her voice dropped
or a rasp. It doesn't want a person, It wants
the choice. That's the pact, I swallowed. What happens if
there's no choice? She leaned forward, gripping the edge of
her chair with white knuckled fingers. If the town does
not give, it takes, and it will keep taking until
the mouth is full. Her eyes suddenly darted to the window,
like she expected something to be peering in. Then her
expression changed went blank. Fog rolled back in. She looked lost.
What were we talking about? She murmured, Do I know you?
I said to leave, but before I could make it
two steps, her hands shot out and grabbed my wrist hard.
Her voice was clear again, sharp, urgent, Say it out
loud and name with intent it listen, And then like
a switch flipped, her grip loosened and she sank back
into the recliner, staring at the far wall. Her mouth
moved silently, like she was praying to something that wasn't God.
I left the house, trembling as I stepped onto the walkway.
The sound of screeching tore down the street, then a horn,
followed by a sickening, metallic crack. About fifty yards away,
a car had slammed into a telephone pole. The front
end was crumpled like an aluminium can. Steam billowed from
the engine. But what shocked me wasn't the crash. It
was the open driver's side door swinging gently. No one
was inside. There was in a trail leading away, no
blood or body from the impact. A shiver crawled up
my spine. This wasn't the first death. This was the
beginning of something feeding. The map said it was called Vaultmouth,
but the land around it had no name, no roads,
just a thinning tree line off Route nineteen and a
path that felt like it hadn't been walked in decades.
I parked where the road turned to gravel and followed
the rest on foot, shouldering through brush, slipping down embankments,
boots snagging on hidden roots. The air got heavier the
deeper I went. Eventually I found the fence, or what
was left of it, Rotting wood posts spaced unevenly around
a clearing, warped with crumbling barbed wire and rusted iron nails,
half driven in, half bent outward. Faded signs dangled by
one hinge, words long gone but symbols still visible, circles, spirals,
her mouth full of triangles, Latin etched into the boards,
almost burned in non ellegamous carnem carnum elegant noss. We
do not choose the flesh, The flesh chooses us. It
wasn't just creepy. It felt deliberate, like a warning whispered
by dead hands. I stepped over the boundary. The trees stopped,
all life absent, The soil turned ashen. The center of
the clearing was perfectly flat, ringed with pale stones, half
sunk into the earth, and in the middle it was
a hole. At first glance I thought it was a well,
but on closer inspection It was a smooth, vertical shaft,
wide enough to drop a body into without folding it.
The inside was black, no bottom inside and around the
rim the stone had been carved in a tight spiral
grooves that curved downward like something of dread claws around
the edge a thousand times just clean, dry stone, and
the faint hum of pressure like the air was breathing
in and out. I picked up a pebble, held it
for a second, then dropped it in nothing, no click
or bounce, just gone, like the earth swallowed it before
it hit the bottom. Near the lip of the shaft.
Embedded in the ground was a slab of metal, iron
gone orange with age, bolted down with thick rivets. Names
etched across the surface in uneven hand carved rose, dozens
of them. I ran my fingers across the grooves, reading aloud.
Many I didn't recognize. Then near the bottom one I did.
Walter Moorecroft, my father, the last name on the list.
My breath caught in my throat. He'd never mentioned this place,
never said a word, but somehow he was part of it.
He knew. I left the clearing as fast as I
could without running, like tying my back on that hole.
Too quickly might give it permission to reach for me.
The sun was starting to set by the time I
got home. I opened the door to my trailer, and
there he was, sitting in my kitchen. No call or warning,
just there. His eyes were sunken, shirt still half buttoned,
knees jittering. His voice came out flat and shaking. You
shouldn't have gone there. I hadn't seen him in months.
We weren't as strange exactly. We just moved around each other,
like planets on a different orbit. He's only ever showed
up when something has gone wrong, and something had gone very,
very wrong. He looked older than I remembered, drained. His
shirt was unbuttoned and crooked, hand shaking, eyes bloodshot with tiredness,
like he'd been waiting for something. Sit down, he said,
I did, because the tone wasn't optional. He lowered himself
into the chair across from me, elbows on his knees,
breathing slow and heavy, like he had to convince his
lungs to keep working. I know what you've been looking into,
he said. The archives dolorous skinned the vault. Hearing him
say it out loud felt like ice water poured down
my spine. Dad, what is it? What's in the vault?
He looked away, jaw clenching. Then he said the words
that would ruin everything I thought I knew about this place.
The town isn't cursed. It made a deal. He rubbed
his face with both hands. Back in eighteen ninety, he said,
the founders struck a pact with whatever lies under the ground.
I call it the mouth, the deep, the listener. It
doesn't matter what name you use. He swallowed hard. We
promised it a life every twenty seven years, just one
chosen willingly through the vote, and in return, it left
the rest of us alone. Something horrible was happening to
the settlers, something so horrendous it wasn't even recorded. The
deal was the only way to survive. My stomach twisted.
You're telling me that this town has been sacrificing people.
He didn't flinch. Willingly, Yes, always with consent, always someone
who accepted it, a quiet death, a clean one, And
the vote stayed sealed. I must have made a face,
because he added, you think they wanted to make a deal,
that they didn't try leaving. He shook his head slowly.
People did leave in the early years, whole families packed
up wagons and tried to outrun it. Didn't matter wherever
they went, something followed. Things would start to happen. Their
crops would rot, the ground would go dry, children would
get sick. And then he held up one trembling finger,
one death, always one, something final like the mouth, needed
to remind them you can't cheat hunger, you can only
feed it. He leaned back, jaw tight. That's why they
settled it in eighteen ninety, not to keep people in,
but to keep something from following them out. I shot
to my feet and shock. I know what it sounds like,
he snapped. I know, but you weren't here for the
years when the vote didn't happen, when people doubted, when
they resisted. His eyes had gone distant. Those years were hell.
I paced the room, trying to process it all. So
what happened this time? I demanded? Why did the firemen die?
Why are people disappearing? What changed? My dad leaned back
and stared at the ceiling, as if the answer was
written there. This year, he said, quietly, nobody could agree.
I stopped moving. The council argued for months. Half the
elders died off. The younger generation doesn't believe. They think
it's all folk tales. He let out a bitter laugh.
Turns out belief doesn't matter, responsibility does. Then softly, there
was no vote, no selection, no name offer. I felt
my mouth go dry. So the fireman was taken. Dad said,
but it doesn't count. It wasn't a willing offering. He
leaned forward, eyes burning. It has to be chosen, not
just to death. The words sank into me like hugs,
because suddenly the pattern made sense. The random vanishings, the crash,
the way the air felt charged and wrong. The fact
had been broken. The vault was hungry, and there was
no offering to stop it. I sat back down slowly.
He watched me something unreadable in his gaze. Okay, I whispered,
So what now? If the sacrifice wasn't made, what does
the vault do? For a long moment, he didn't speak.
Then he inhaled, sharply, like the next part heard to say,
then it's up to the collector. I frowned, What does
that mean? He didn't let me finish? He looked at
me with an expression I had never seen on his
face before. Terror, grief, and something like an apology. The
collector isn't a person, he said, It's a roll passed
down a bloodline. Every generation has one. His voice cracked,
and if the town won't choose the sacrifice, the collector
must A cold precious settled behind my ribs. No, I said, no,
you're not saying. He closed his eyes, and then he
said it, voice barely above a whisper, the words I
didn't want to hear, it's you. After my father left,
I didn't sleep. I sat at the kitchen table thinking
about the name etched into that rusted iron plate, Walter Morecraft,
my father, the previous collector now passed on to me,
And I couldn't stop thinking about the way he'd looked
at me, like I was something he was sorry for,
not something he loved. I knew he hadn't told me everything,
not even close. So I broke into the locked foot
locker he kept under the guest bed. He always kept
it bolted shut, like he thought someone would try to
steal his old hunting gear. But I knew the combination,
same one he used for everything inside, not weapons or tools,
just journals, stacks of them, weather walked and yellowing, page
after page, and my father's tight, careful handwriting. Most of
it was nonsense at first, where the reports council meeting
notes obituaries with names underlined and circled. He'd been tracking
every cycle since I was born. But then the language changed.
He stopped writing like a man and started writing like
a witness. One page read it speaks in symbols, now dreams.
The hum in the trees isn't the wind, It's waiting
for its name to be spoken. Another. When the collector
is called, the chosen cannot offer themselves. The collector must choose.
This is the fact, the old way, and by death,
by right. The words collector and vault mouth appeared again
and again, sometimes capitalized, sometimes underlined in red, and next
to them crude diagrams of the vault, the shaft, the spiral,
the concentric rings of trees around it, marked with strange glyphs.
Some look like runds, others like teeth. One diagram showed
a person standing at the edge of the vault with
arrows pointing inward, as if their presence activated something open. Something.
Then came a section I hadn't expected, returning back to
the style of a journal, detailing tape beats, of a
tense time in the town. It spoke of apocalyptic symptoms,
the lake changing color, the sky casting strange shoes, and
the wildlife losing their minds. People disappeared and families were
torn apart, all because Walter, my father, could not choose.
It mimicked the current time, the council not choosing, and
the decision falling to the collector, an impossible choice of
life and death. One to die for many to live.
That night, the vault came to me again in dreams,
but this time I wasn't inside it. I wasn't falling.
I was standing above it, at the edge, looking out
at a crowd of people, kneeling, hands clasped, heads bowed,
whispering something I couldn't hear. I was speaking, My mouth moved,
my voice was not my own, and the vault opened.
It started with the birds. Every morning, my poor trailing
used to be dotted with crows, the smart, spiteful rascals
that lined every wire in the town like little black judges.
Then one morning they were all just gone. That same day,
a field of cows in the west end of town
was found standing in perfect formation, heads lower toward the ground, unmoving.
Every single, one of them dead, bloodless organs, folded inside
out like paper crafts. Two nights later, I heard something boil,
but not from the kitchen, from outside. I looked out
and saw it was the lake, an entire body of
water roiling like a pot left on too long wakes pond,
the old reservoir where he used, the swim where we
were kids, steamed for ten hours straight. The water turned
thick and red fish floated to the surface, split open.
The air changed after that smelled wrong, sweet but spoiled,
like rotted peaches or burnt teeth. Something was opening, and
I wasn't the only one who noticed. The few remaining
town elders, the one who still remembered how this thing worked,
called a secret vote. They held it in the old
stone house outside Mill Creek, the kind of place built
with no insulation and too many locks. Only six of
them showed up. They tried to vote, They tried to
choose a name, but the vault didn't care anymore. It
had waited, being ignored, denied. It's due now. Who wanted me,
not as a meal, as a mouthpiece. I didn't hear
this second hand. One of the elders, a retired judge
named Hulvessa came to my door at dawn. His eyes
were bloodshot, his knuckles scraped, like he'd punted something harder
than he expected. He sat on my port, swing hands
trembling as he lit a cigarette. We failed it, he said.
I didn't speak. You're the last stop, you understand. I
just stared. He flicked ash onto the ground. The collector
exists for a reason, in case of breakdown, when the
people can't choose, the blood must. You're not a sacrifice.
You're the priest can name with intent. That's all you
have to do. If you need suggestions, I can. I
told him to get off my property, told him I
wasn't killing anyone for a town too cowdly to face
its own history. You're offering that's different. I slammed the door,
but the ground kept humming. That night, it got worse.
The sky turned the color of old bruises. The clouds
spiraled low and fast, like water being sucked down a drain.
My neighbor's trees bled sap that smelled like iron. Dogs
stopped barking. In fact, dogs stopped moving. A low bell
began to ring from nowhere. No visible sauce just there,
vibrating through the soles of your feet. Something was uncoiling.
The vault wasn't sealed anymore, not fully. At three twenty
one a m my phone lit up with a message
from an unknown number, just one line choose. By morning,
Dolorous Kint was dead. She had been found in her bed, peaceful,
no wounds, no trauma, but her face was smiling, hands
folded like in a church pew, and between her palms
a yellowing card had written, addressed to me, name the chosen.
I knew where they kept the records. It wasn't a secret.
The room was beneath the old town Hall, not in
the modern wing, but in the original limestone foundation, with
a smell of mildew soaked into your tongue, and a
light bust like an insect was trapped behind your eyes.
It was still unlocked. They hadn't even tried to hide it.
Maybe they wanted me to find it. The Selection Ledger
was a thick, cloth bound book that looked like it
belonged in a court house or a church, heavy frayed,
smelling of dust and smoke and human oil inside. Names
page after page, each handwritten in loop incursive, some dated
over a century ago. I flipped forward to the most
recent year, this year. The first few pages were normal,
just names, birthdays, occupations, handwritten summaries of each candidate's community standing,
financial status, and family size. Then I started seeing the
red circles, suggestions for choice, a short list for them
to vote. Alongside them were stern judgments marked with phrases
like approaching end of life or minimal surviving kin or
historically low civic contribution. And then added on were notes
not from the elders. No, their handwriting was farmer, direct
be younger handwriting, softer language, correctional. Even Marlene Gillard eighty four,
she still tutors at the library. Her great granddaughter just
got accepted to college. She brings hope to the family.
This would destroy them. Thomas Harvey, fifty eight, disabled VET
still teachers would working mentors troubled kids as PTSD wouldn't
be ethical. Alicia Norris forty one, chronic illness, started the
Grief Circle after the ninety nine death. Still manages the
town website. Would send the wrong message to others with
chronic conditions. George Amblin, seventy one, ex convict he served
his time, runs the food, pantry. His death would confirm
every stereotype the town's trying to grow past. Every single
name was paired with a counterpoint, Every sacrifice was dismantled
by empathy. The deeper I read the angry I felt,
not at them, but how familiar it was, How easy
it is to rationalize in action when action feels monstrous.
This wasn't corruption, It wasn't blood lust. It was compassion.
They had tried to be better, but better didn't stop
the vault from waking. Better didn't boil the lake. Better
didn't spare Dolores. Or was it ignorance? A new wave
of leaders who wrote off tradition as ignorance, something to
move past. The final page wasn't even finished, just a
handful of names with redd inks scratched through, like someone
had grown furious and thrown the pen across the room.
In the margin, one line of newer handwriting, there are
no perfect deaths. Another in pencil. Then maybe we stop
pretending it's worth choosing, and under that scrawled in dark
pen pressure piercing through the paper. Then we died together.
I closed the book. The Vaults was right, This wasn't
a sacrifice anymore. It was a failure. That night, I
dreamed of the spiral again, only this time I descended.
No ladder, no rope, no footing. I just fell, as
if the air below me had turned to water. The
stone walls pulled away as I went, becoming ribs, then roots,
and rows of open mouths, all breathing together in rhythm.
And at the bottom, where sounds should have vanished into nothing,
there was light, soft, living, like a heartbeat under skin.
I didn't hear anything, but I felt it behind my eyes,
in my gums, in the marrow of every bone. The
town agreed to the cost, it said. I turned, and
around me were reflections, other towns, other timelines. Each one
was different, and in all of them the vault had
gone unsealed. One showed sparrows of fire coiling up into
the sky, turning birds inside out in flight, a town
square full of kneeling people, mouth sown shut with golden thread,
trees grown backwards through their skulls. In one, the vault
was gone, not sealed, but absorbed, as if it had
eaten the land around it and kept growing. They were
all worse than anything I could imagine, and every one
of them had something in common. No choice was made.
I woke up with my pillows soaked in sweat and
my tongue heavy in my mouth, like it had been
speaking without me. Despite all I had seen, in what
I could call more a vision than a dream, I
still couldn't pick one name. I didn't call a meeting,
but there came anyway. One by one, the elders farther
into my living room. Some looked resigned, some looked angry,
some looked like they hadn't slept in days. And behind them,
the younger council members slunk in with a sting of
guilt in their faces. No greetings or small talk, just expectation.
Judge Vesser was the first to speak. It has to
be now, he said, we've run out of time. Another
miller ran a hand through a hair shaking. You've studied
the list, You've seen the sky. You know what happens
if we don't. My throat tightened. I'm not choosing, I said,
not one, not any of them. A long silence. Then
something changed in the room. The faces of the younger members,
those who had written all the gentle notes in the margins,
all the reasons why each circled names shouldn't be chosen shifted,
the sympathy drained, the humanity dimmed. A man named Devlyn
stepped forward, jabbing a finger at the ledger on my
coffee table. Just pick someone from the marked list, he snapped.
Anyone Marlene is old, nor is sick, Elroy's basically retired.
It doesn't matter, Just choose. These were the same people
had written. She's a pillar of her family. He volunteers
more than anyone. She gives hope to the community. Now
they spoke like a countance balancing a ledger. It's between
them or us, Develin said, don't act like it's complicated.
Something inside me curdled. I shoved the ledger away, sending
it skidding across the floor. If you want a name
so bad, I said, through my teeth, pick one yourselves.
We can't versa whispered he won't listen to us any more.
It only listens to the collector. Well, then you're all screwed,
I said, because I'm not playing priest for a monster.
The idea of getting blood on my hands to save
these people, ready to condemn another with the responsibility I
didn't ask for, was too much. The room went dead quiet,
Everyone stared at me like I'd just set the house
on fire. But nobody said a thing. Nobody argued or moved.
They just stood there, waiting, hoping fear would make me fold.
And then the door exploded inward. My father stormed in
with the force of a man who had been running
for miles, eyes wide, hair slicked with sweat. His voice
hid the room before he did. You stupid boy, he roared.
You think this is a joke. You think you get
a refuse. I thought he was just going to yell,
maybe shove me, maybe tried to scare me into it.
I did not think he would tackle me to the floor.
My head hit the hard wood so hard stars burst
behind my eyes. Before I could breathe, his hands were
on my collar, dragging me up and slamming me back
down again. Say a name, he barked, Just say the
goddamn name. At first I thought he was bluffing, losing
control and panic. With the weight on my chest didn't
lift and his fists didn't stop. My vision blurred white
at the edges, my teeth rattled with each blow. Behind him,
the elder stood frozen, not intervening, not helping, watching things
play out. Not knowing which side to take. Some horrified,
some relieved, watching action they must have dreamt of doing,
but didn't have the guts. My father leaned close, breath
hot on my cheek. You're supposed to keep it sealed.
You're supposed to be better than this, he snarled. I
had to do this too, Just do it another blow.
My skull screamed, No wonder your mother left, no wonder
I left. You were always weak, always a disappointment, Just
like now. He wasn't trying to scare me any more.
He was trying to kill me. My ears rang, blood
filled the back of my throat. The world tilted sideways.
I felt myself slipping, Consciousness slipping, dissolving like the vaults
was already tugging at me. And in my delirium, one
thought surfaced. I didn't have to choose from the list.
I could choose the one trying to kill me. My
lips moved before I fully realized what I was saying,
I whispered my father's name, barely audible, cracked, broken but true.
The second the consonants left my mouth, the weight vanished, gone.
My father wasn't sprawled over me anymore, A soft death,
like a heart attack or stroke. He wasn't in the room,
he wasn't anywhere. A moment ago, he was beating me
into the floor. Now there was only air and silence.
A few of the elders gasped, One crossed himself. Another
woman looked away, trembling. No one said a word, because
they knew what I had done, and worse, they knew
what it meant. The room emptied a minute. No good byes,
no reprimands, no condolences, just fear. They fled like they
expected the house to collapse. The second they crossed the threshold.
I was left lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling,
my heart beat hammering in my teeth. Eventually I stood,
walked to the window. The sky was clearing, the clouds unraveling,
colors returning, the hum in the earth finally quiet. It
was over, Just like that. My father was the sacrifice.
The town was safe for now. The town healed fast.
That was the strangest part. In the weeks that followed.
Life returned to a rhythm. Not the same rhythm, maybe,
but something close enough to pass for normal. The sky
lost this bruised hue. The trees stopped leaning in the
power lines stopped whispering, People got up and went to work.
The butcher reopened, the school held a bake sale. The
lake was still red, but no one talked about that.
The selection committee resumed their meetings quieter, now, fewer members
and fewer words spoken. When they left those rooms. Once
I used to see them as elders, guardians, wise men
and women holding ancient truths. Now they looked like exhausteds
of ice. I was scared of what might come next.
I never went back to their meetings. They never asked
me to. But there was one thing left to do.
One door I hadn't opened. My father's house sat just
off the main square, tucked between two identical ranch style homes.
I'd driven past it a hundred times without thinking. I
don't know what I expected, but when I stepped inside,
it was exactly what I'd feared. Sparse furniture, a sink
full of old dishes frozen in a stack like bricks
in the freezer. A recliner with an ass groof too
deep to undo facing, a TV tuned permanently to the
sports channel. It was a life half lived, lonely, mechanical gray.
I stood in that room for a long time. It
smelled like dust, coffee and a man who didn't know
what to do with silence. And then I saw it,
A folded piece of paper sitting on the coffee table.
My name was written on the front in my father's blockie,
stubborn handwriting. I opened it. If you're reading this, then
I went through with it. I'm sorry you had to
see it. Sorry you had to be a part of it.
I didn't want that for you, not ever. That's why
I left, but I had to make sure you'd do it.
I couldn't risk you freezing up the way the others did.
I know you, I raised you. You were always the
good one. Even when you were little. You gave away
your Halloween candy to the kids who were too scared
to trick a treat. You used to cry when you
saw road kill. That's the kind of heart you have, big,
honest kind. But a heart like that won't save this town.
It never has. I said things I didn't mean, did
things I never wanted to do. You have to know
that I needed to make myself into the enemy. I
needed to give you someone worth condemning. If you hated
me enough to speak my name with weight, then you'd survive,
and the town ward too. That was always the deal.
One name spoken with intent. That's how the mouth knows
the offering is real. It had to be me. I
was already half way gone anyway. I've been watching the
sky for years now. I could feel it, the teeth
behind the clouds, the pressure of my bones. It was coming,
and you were going to be the one it turned to.
So I gave you something to aim at.
Speaker 2: Me.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of you, not because he did what I wanted,
but because even after everything, I think you hesitated. Don't
let this town break you. You're not like the rest
of them. Keep being the kind one, even if it hurts.
Oh my love, Dad. I sat down in his chair.
He didn't feel right, didn't fit me. But I sat
there anyway, and I cried harder than I had in years.
Not because he was gone or because of what he did,
but because I understood, and I hated that I understood.
I record nature sounds for a living. I don't make
them for merging royalty free soundscapes found online. I mean literally,
I haul gear out into the wilderness, set up field recorders,
and capture eight hours of wind through trees or frogs
in a swamp, or whatever someone wants in their ear,
but at two a m. To sleep too. A few
weeks ago, I hiked out to a stretch of forest
in the Pacific Northwest. It was far from any road
or town to avoid sound pollution from passers by. There
wasn't even a foot trail, just trees, ridge lines, and
a stillness that misses with your sense of time. I'd
scout to the spot online. There was minimal wildlife and
no nearby power lines to cause interference. Perfect for what
I needed. I set up the rig just before sundown,
a shotgun mic on a carbon tripod, paired with an
unintended recorder tucked into a pelican case, all wired for
battery life and max sensitivity. I set it a run
overnight and hiked back out with my overnight pack. The
next morning, I picked up the gear, packed everything up,
and drove back to the cabin i'd rented for the week,
standard routine. When I dumped the files onto my laptop,
it sounded clean, real clean. You could hear a soft
wind tugging through the pines, some distant wood creeks, a
lone owl. It sounded like something i'd barely have to
touch in post, no clipping, no signs of animals are interference.
It still needed scraping in case a low hum of
an aircraft ruined a segment, so I slowly scrubbed the
whole thing. But then I hit three P forty one am.
I didn't catch it the first time. I was playing
it at four time speed, but even at high speed,
something about that section jarred, so I went back played
it in real time. That's when I heard it. The
whole atmosphere buckled inward like a vacuum pop as sharp
in hail, followed by a deep groaning creek like wood
twisting under strain. Then nothing, All sounds stopped, the wind died,
insect ceased in unison, no underbrush rustling. I've heard forests
go quiet before when a predator moves through or a
storm's on the way, but this wasn't that. This was
dead silence. Even in a perfectly quiet night, your mike
still picks up something ambient hiss, high end drift gear noise.
But here there was nothing for exactly sixty three seconds,
like the world forgot how to make a sound, And
then just as suddenly it came back. There was a
faint crack, like a tree stretching. Then the wind returned,
the chorus of night bugs a creaking canopy. I marked
the section in my door and cut it out of
the final mix, labeled it three forty one anomaly, and
saved it with the raw files. I figured it was
a bizarre environmental event, maybe a weird pressure drop or
a shifting fault line under the soil. At least that's
what I told myself. I couldn't stop thinking about the
three forty one anomaly. The silence wasn't a recording issue.
The waveform didn't flat line, it just dropped into a void,
the environment stopped generating sound, and that inhale it hadn't
come from the mic. So two nights later I went back,
same trailhead, same clearing, but a different set up. This time,
I swapped the shotgun mic for a parabolic dish with
a matted stereopair, new recorder, fresh cables, no chance of
interference or hardware glitches. If the anomaly happened again, I
wanted to rule out bad gear. I set everything up
before dusk, hiked out, and repeated the routine back at
the cabin the next morning. I scanned through the files again.
The waveform jumped out at me before I even press play.
At exactly three forty one a m same shudder, same
sucked in static, same sixty three seconds of total silence.
For this time, there was more. The creaking noise was
slightly louder, like something massive and straining was close to
the mic. After that, a new noise, just barely audible,
but it was there, something grinding, like roots twisting on
a dry soil, or teeth. I checked every logical explanation
I could think of local size activity. Nothing on the
USGS feed whether perfectly still, not even a pressure dip.
And besides, neither of these would repeat so perfectly like
I had seen. I ran it past an engineer I
know she thought it my BRF interference from military aircraft.
Or she said, you record a caught bigfoot scratching his
back on a cedar tree. I laughed. Then I uploaded it. Well.
I meant to upload the cleaned version, just the gentle
forest ambience with the YDD sixty three seconds cut and
cross faded, but when I packaged the files, I must
have left the original by accident, the raw take with
the three forty one segment left intact. I've god and
my fair share of weird listener emails over the years,
people claiming to hear voices in waterfalls. Someone once swore
raccoon whispered Bible verses in their sleep track. Ambient audio
and overactive imaginations go hand in hand. For this one
felt different. The message came from a guy named Nolan,
who was a short email, no pleasantries or emojis, just
this subject your latest upload. Need your opinion. I use
your app to sleep with Tinatus played your new far
As loop last night around three point thirty. I woke
up gasping, no nightmare, just this pressure in the room,
like something leaned on my chest. I checked the audiophile
to see if anything caused this and found this screenshot attached.
Let me know if you see it too. He attached
the spectrogram screen grab from his player a frequency waterfall
of the three forty one segment. Right in the center
of the silence was a shape. It wasn't obviously human,
but it was symmetrical, made of low, barely besetable frequencies,
hollow at the center, with long vertical streaks running from
top to bottom, almost like arms or legs. For far
too long. I stared at it for a long time
before I closed the tab. Just audio paradolia, like seeing
faces in tree bark, I told myself and moved on.
But the following emails were harder to ignore. Someone and
Oregon reported that their power cut out for exactly one
minute at three forty one a m. Somehow attributing it
to my video easy to dismiss as bad timing. Another
said their dog bark to the speaker, then refused to
enter the room where the track was playing. One woman
saw all four of her houseplants were dead the next morning.
They didn't just wilt a bit, they were fully blackened, crispy,
like they'd been flash dried. I still didn't panic, but
I got curious. I reloaded the raw file and reaper,
this time pushing deeper noise reduction, spectral isolation, half speed playback,
then reversed. I tried every witch angle. There was more
under the distortion than I'd realized. A single deep knock
and then wet footsteps, soft spaced, far apart pineedles crunching
under something that walks like it didn't need to. I
froze the way form the pattern. Was there a gate
something with weight. I pulled up Night one's raw file
at the same time stamp the same silence. I overlaid them.
The knock was identical, but on Night too, the footsteps
started sooner and they were closer. I didn't go back
to the forest because I'm brave. I went back because
my name was on that file. People had started commenting, messaging, accusing.
One new supposted a TikTok claiming the track gave their
boyfriend seizures. Another said their sister collapse while it played
and hadn't woke up since. Some said it was a hoax,
others a curse. What even called me a murderer. So
I packed the best gear. I owned a parabolic mic,
a battery recorder, and a preamp with real time monitoring.
I brought my field laptop too, so I could listen live,
not just hope I caught something after the fact. I
also brought a flashlight, three back of batteries, and a
hunting knife I'd never actually used. I arrived just after
two a m. The clearing looked exactly the same, the
pine spirals still there, like the trees had grown in
deliberate concentric rings. No animals, no signs of people. I
set up the tripod, calibrated the mic, and began recording.
At first, it was peaceful, crickets, faint wind, occasional owl
hoots drifting from the canopy, clean audio, nothing strange, but
I kept my eye on the clock. Three forty fifty
nine seconds, three forty one gone. All of it sound
just ceased to exist. The lydm I recorder flickered once,
then held steady. The wave form of my laptop froze
into a flat bar. I tapped the mic, nothing, not
even a pop. The only thing I could hear was
my own breath, louder than it should have been, sharp, exposed,
like it didn't belong in this stillness. What the hell?
I muttered? The words felt intrusive, wrong, like I just
shouted during a funeral. Then crunch a twig directly behind
me close. I spawn flashlight up and that's when the
noise came back. But it didn't return the same. It
surged in like a recording played through broken speakers, echoing
and unsinked. The trees creaked underlay, the wind hiccoughed, and
something was moving not straight toward me, around me, circling fast.
I whipped the flashlight left and right, catching glimpses of
limbs between trunks, slender, too long, moving in bursts, blurring
between shadows. Then I saw it ahead, upside down, hanging
from high in the trees, like it was suspended by
its legs, wide, black eyes like oil pool reflections, stringy
hair clinging to a crumpled gray face, skin like soaked paper, wrinkled, smiling.
Its mouth was too wide. Then her hand began to
reach slowly. The hand approached and never stopped. The limbs
stretched slowly, impossibly, the shoulder never moving from the tree,
elbow bending the wrong way, fingers lengthening by the inch.
Despite how high up the thing was. I was in shock.
I couldn't move, stunned by the abnormality of what I
was witnessing. It reached toward my neck and brushed the
leaf beside my collar bone. That was enough. I ran. Branches,
tore up my arms, roots caught my boots. Every few seconds,
I nearly trip, catch myself and push harder. I could
hear it behind me, above me, so fast that I
couldn't pinpoint where it was. It wasn't chasing on the ground,
it was moving through the trees, something heavy, thudding from
branch to branch, like a gorilla made of wood and tendon.
Every impact sent down a shudder, a sound that wasn't
just in my ears, it rang in my teeth. I
didn't scream, I couldn't. My breath was fire in my lungs,
my chest locked tight. I just ran. That was all
I could focus on. I didn't want to be led astray.
I had one goal in mind, locked on, and speed
was my only chance, because trying to outmaneuver this thing
would only push me into unknown territory. The trees started thinning.
I saw the glint of moonlight on glass my car.
I vaulted over a stump, skidd it onto the gravel,
and yanked the door open so hard it cracked the hinge.
Leaving it unlocked was my only saving grace, Knowing there
was no one around for miles. The keys were in
my coat pocket, of course they were. I scrambled, fumbled,
hand shaking, then bang. The hood buckled under the impact.
A single hand slapped down onto the windshield, long fingers, bone,
white skin, unkempt, black nails, dragging screeching lines across the glass,
like it was trying to peel it open. Its face
leaned in, neck so long it had to twist a
few times. That peer in inverted, grinning, eyes like oil,
pulled over bone. The keys hid the ignition. The engine coughed, thin, caught.
I slammed it into drive and hit the gas. Gravel
exploded behind the tires. I clipped a tree as I
peeled out. The thing blurred past the rear view mirror,
arms trailing like ropes of wet muscle. I didn't lock
in the mirror to see if it followed. I just
drove fast, stupid fast. The trees a blur of black
and silver, the trail nothing but instinct. I didn't breathe
until I saw the welcome sign for the next town.
When I got home, I locked the door behind me,
dead bolt chain, even with a chair under the knob.
Then every window, one by one. I knew it was pointless,
but it felt like doing something, like I still had control.
My laptop was still on the kitchen table. I opened
it as I walked past, booting up the file system
before I even kicked my boots off. The plan was simple,
pull the upload, scrub it from the app, maybe even
write a warning, something vague that wouldn't get me laughed
off the platform. But then I saw the notifications, dozens
of emails, subject lines in bold. Something was in my
hallway last night. I saw her. She watched me sleep.
It knocked until three forty two. Then it started climbing.
My hands went cold. One message had an attachment, a
blurry phone photo, the edge of a blackened head, blurred
from movement, too familiar to dismiss, sixteen floors up. I
sat there, staring at it. This was my fault, not
because I recorded it. That was a fluke, an accident.
But I'd uploaded it, I'd left it public, ignored the
early one. I doubted myself because the alternative was accepting
something I couldn't explain. I should have pulled it days ago.
Now I had my chance. I didn't know if deleting
it would undo anything. Maybe the damage was already done,
maybe whatever this was had already spread. But if I
left it up, more people would hear it, more people
would see it, more people would bring it back. So
I made the call. I pulled the file from the
content manager, sent takedown requests to mirror sites, deleted the
roarer uploads from the appcue everywhere I could find it,
I wiped it. It was over. I sat back in
my chair. My phone lit up in the dark. I
reached for it with shaking hands. New notifications from listeners.
Whatever you did, thank you. It's quiet again. The notifications
kept coming in, all from people who'd messaged before, the
ones who'd said they were being followed, stalked, haunted. Relief
washed over me, feeling like I at least selvaged something
good from this whole thing. But my night was just
getting started. I didn't sleep, I couldn't. Instead, I stayed
on the hallway floor, legs cramping, back pressed against the wall,
every light in the apartment blazing. I kept the laptop
open on my knees, the inbox still flooding with new messages.
Strangers thanking me, telling me the knocking had stopped, that
they were finally safe. But inside my own apartment, something
was beginning to stir. It started subtly, like a change
in barometric pressure. The temperature dipped, the buzzing from the
fridge stuttered. I heard a soft creak in the ceiling
above me. It wasn't a pipe or settling joist, with
a deliberate sound of weight shifting across all the wood.
I froze for minutes, nothing, Then a whisper of motion
against the far wall, the sound of something just brushing
the paint with the tips of his fingers. When the
tapping came, it was so faint I almost missed it.
Tick tick tick. I turned toward the sound, and my
stomach sank. It was coming from the living room window.
I stood cautiously slow, just enough to catch a glimpse
through the frosty glass, just a faint impression of movement,
like someone had passed by a moment earlier. I backed away,
heart hammering. The tappings shifted, now coming from the back door,
then from the ceiling hatch. Every surface of the apartment
seemed to carry the sound, like a tuning fork, as
if something were circling inside the walls, growing bolder by
the second. Testing the house for the weakest point of entry,
The lights dimmed, as if the apartment itself were exhaling.
I couldn't tell if it wanted to come in, or
if it was already here. That question answered itself A
moment later. The lights above me dimmed again, not in
a flicker, but in a slow, deliberate pulse like the
apartment was breathing somewhere deep in the walls. The plaster
shifted with a muffled thud, and then another, each one
closer than the last. Something large was crawling its way
toward the center of the room. I stayed perfectly still.
Then the dry wall to my left bulged outward, just slightly,
a shallow swell, like someone was pressing a hand against
it from the other side. I stared as the bulge
drifted along the wall, dragging down toward the floor. Something
ran his fingers across the baseboard, slow and lingering, tracing
the shape of the apartment. A soft hiss followed the
unmistakable sound of breathing sliding from behind paint. I packed
up until my spine hid the opposite wall. The thing
in my home shifted directions, scuttling up toward the ceiling.
The plaster bowed overhead, dust drifting down in thin gray streams.
Whatever it was, it wasn't bound to floors or gravity.
It moved like a spider through insulation and beams, pushing
against the structure, testing how thin the barriers were. The
ceiling vent rattled, then the metal grill bent outward. Long
fingers had hooked into the slats and was prying them apart.
One slat snapped, another warped. A black knuckle shaped silhouette
pressed through skin, stretched thin over something too sharp to
be bone. I scrambled across the floor, hard, timmering so
hard I heard it in my ears. The vents split wider.
A hand slid out, long, gray wrinkled nails like splinters
of obsidian. It curled slowly, searching the air, the way
someone might test water before stepping in. I rotated toward me,
knuckles cracking, reaching, and then it stopped, frozen mid motion,
because it was listening the same way it listened to
the silence in the woods. I covered my mouth with
both hands, shaking so hard my teeth clicked. Then a sound.
It wasn't from me or the thing, but from the table,
a sharp ping. My phone, still face up near the door,
lit up with a notification. The sound cut through the
silence like a siren. Instantly, something shifted, a blur of
motion too fast, A process shot across the room. The hand,
or part of it lashed out from the dark and
struck the phone with surgical precision crack. The screen shattered
inward like it had been struck with a mallet. The
phone skidded across the floor, buzzing once before dying. I
covered my mouth with both hands, paralyzed. Then another pin
from the laptop, an email. It shifted again, the thing
in the walls. I saw the hand jut out once more,
just inches from the keyboard, now fingers twitching, hovering for
this time, it didn't strike. It paused, almost curious. The
same force that crossed the phone in a single blow
now hovered in silence, tense, with restraint. There was a
recognition in the stillness. The hand flattened, its palm on
the ground. I didn't dare move, scared to even just
stir the air. Once flat, the arms swept around in
wide arcs around the room. It was searching, large motions,
sometimes far away, with suddenly inches from my heel. If
it were death, I could have jumped rolled away with
good timing, but I was still frozen to the spot,
and soon it bumped into my body. On contact. It
went frantic, sweeping motions over me, mapping me until it
figured out who I was. My angle on the floor,
the direction I was locking. It latched unto my wrists tightly,
but didn't crush my limb like I expected. It pulled
a taut motion that gave me no choice but to follow.
Less like a dog in a leash and more like
an escalator. I couldn't leave unwilling, leading me to what
I was curious about before my laptop. All the while,
thoughts swam in my head, piecing together context from this
absurd situation. It hadn't come when I uploaded the audio,
not when people listened to it, not even when they
started writing to me terrified. It only came after I
took down the video, when I broke the chain, when
I tried to stop it from spreading. That's when it
noticed me. I looked over at the laptop now glowing
in front of me, and for the first time since
this all started, the idea of dying didn't seem like
the worst option. If this thing could be stopped by
ending the transmission, by letting it and with me, maybe
that was the answer. Maybe it was worth it. But
the moment passed, survival dug its claws in I sat down,
and the moment it felt that it released its grip
on my wrist, but horverd near my head in a
threat that was easy to read, upload or die. Fingers trembling,
I opened the app dashboard. The deleted video was still there,
sitting quietly in the recycled bin. I hovered over the
upload button, then I clicked it restored all the metadata.
The upload bar crawled from the wall behind me. I
heard another creak, louder, now closer. I didn't turn around.
I kept my eyes on the screen. As the progress
bar climbed thirty percent, fifty seventy two. The air around
me felt like it was pressing inward. It was still here,
It knew, it was waiting to see if I go
through with it. Ninety four percent. A pause, then complete.
The video went live, and in an instant, everything stopped.
No more tapping, no more movement, no more pressure in
the walls. The lights brightened, as if a film had
been peeled away from the bulbs. It was gone, and
for the first time in what felt like days, sound, beautiful,
living sound. I exhaled, really exhaled, like I hadn't in days,
and I hated how relieved I felt. Life went on,
people forgot, moved on, slept again, but I didn't, not really.
I still wake up every day and open my laptop
it's automatic now, muscle memory. I don't check emails, don't
check socials, just the view count three eighteen, three twenty two,
three thirty eight. Every number feels heavier than the last.
I don't see them as just numbers. Each one is
a person, a victim. I still record sometimes to keep
my self saying short trips close to the town, never
at night, and I never upload the roar audio. I
listen to every second. I triple check the wave form.
I scrubbed the background for anything that doesn't belong. And
when the clock hits three forty one a m. I
make sure I'm in bed, ear plugs, in lights on,
eyes shut tight, because I know now it's not the
silence that gets you, it's what follows. The call came
on a Tuesday morning, just after I poured my first coffee.
It was an unknown number with the rural area code.
I didn't recognize. I almost let it ring out. Nothing
good it ever comes from a stranger calling before nine
a m. But something in me picked up anyway, it's
this Ethan, A man asked. His voice was steady and official. YEA,
I said, who is this? It's a sheriff Talbot Redwood County.
I'm sorry to contact you like this, son, we've recovered
a woman's body in the state forest. Your sister. You're
listed as the closest next of kin. I actually laughed
one short, confused breath. You've got the wrong guy. A pause.
Then Page's rustling. Her name was Sarah Morecroft, my last name.
I sat down a little too quickly. My coffee sloshed
over the rim. Okay, well, that's definitely not me, I said,
I don't have a sister. I've never had a sister.
He paused for a moment. Your mother was Angela Morcroft? Correct? Was?
I said? She died three years ago, and your father alive,
but he lives in Nevada. Now we don't talk much.
Talbert cleared his throat. Well, sir, I understand this is difficult,
but our office already ran a preliminary DNA test. The
state Lab sent the results thirty minutes ago. The deceased
woman is a full biological sibling match ninety nine point
nine nine percent. The room tilted for a second. I
thought the sheriff might have misread something, mixed up files,
contaminated samples, or maybe there was a glitch in whatever
software they used. Look, I began, trying to keep any
panic from my voice. I'm an only child, always have been.
My dad would have mentioned something like this, like a
dead daughter, my mom. I cut myself off. She wasn't
here to clarify anything. I understand. Talbot said, but the
state doesn't normally get these things wrong. I'm afraid will
need you to come down and formally identify the next
of kin. My brain snagged on the phrase like it
was written in another language. Formally identify the next of kin?
How was I supposed to identify someone I didn't even
know existed? Identify her how? I asked quietly in person.
He said, when you see her yourself, we'll know more.
His words stuck with me long after the call ended.
When you see her yourself, we'll know more. The implication
was and subtle. Whoever she was, whoever I apparently shared
blood with, they thought I would recognize her. I drove
six hours to Redwood County. It was a nowhere town
that didn't even bother with a welcome sign. It was
surrounded by forests, littered with gas stations, and a stretch
of road that looked like they'd been forgotten by time
and funding. The sheriff met me outside the building. It
was an older guy with a drooping mustache and a
wrinkled face that looked like it had been whittled out
of pine bark. He nodded and led me through a
side entrance into the coroner's suite. I'd expected it to
be like what you see on TV, with high tick
equipment and bright white tiles, but instead I was greeted
with a concrete floor, the loneium walls, and the smell
of preserved meat and bleach that assaulted my She's in
draw six, the coroner said quietly, a woman mid fifties.
Maybe her badge read Dr. Elkins. I followed her to
the wall of refrigerated units. She glanced at me like
she was waiting for me to give her a reason
not to do this. I didn't. She pulled open the drawer.
The moment I saw the body, my stomach turned cold.
She was about thirty maybe thirty five, skin, pale, lips
drawn back, dark hair, brittle and sunken around a jaw.
There was something about her face that wasn't quite alien.
If anything, it was worse than that. She looked like
my mother, close enough that I instinctively took a step back.
Same nose, same curve of the cheekbones, same slightly offcenter
parting of her hair. But there was something wrong beneath
the familiarity. Her frame was frail, like she gone years
without proper food. Her ribs rose like piano keys. Beneath
her skin, fingers bone thin and curved, like they'd been
clenched for too long, and a skin grayish waxy, was
marred by little patches of what looked like hardened scarring
around the nose and mouth. Elkins noticed me staring calcified
scar tissue in the lungs. Probably longtime exposure to mineral
heavy dust could be a fungal build up. Honestly, we
haven't seen anything like it outside of old mining accidents.
She paused. Do you have any idea how this happened?
I shook my head. I had and even known she
existed a few days ago. Sorry, she said gently, didn't
mean to push. The sheriff stepped closer and handed me
a sealed evidence bag. Inside was a small, water damaged polaroid.
It looked like it had been clutched tight for years, creased,
torn in one corner, yellowed at the edges. I turned
it over. It was me, five years old, bowl cut,
missing front teeth, standing in the grass somewhere with a
toy plane in my hand. Next to me, it was
a girl about my age, smiling, holding my hand like
we'd done it a hundred times. The background was a
blur of summer, the corner of her house I barely recognized.
I didn't remember taking that photo. I didn't remember her,
but there we were, like siblings, like we belonged together.
I told myself a hundred times I was going to
sell the house after Mom died. I even had a
reel to and stand by keys in a manilla envelope,
business card paper clip to the top, but I never
followed through. Every time I tried, something in me locked up.
My chest became heavy, and it was like I was
abandoning my parents, my childhood, everything that used to feel solid.
It wasn't logical. I knew she was gone. I knew
the house couldn't hold on to them, not really, but
some part of me still believed that as long as
I had the keys, as long as the furniture stayed
where they left it, I hadn't lost everything. So when
I got back from Redwood County. That's where I went.
The house was still how I'd left it, sheets over
the furniture, a faint trace of Mom's perfumes still lingered
on the carpet. Every room carried a memory, like wallpaper,
But now that wallpaper felt thinner, brittle, like if I
peeled back the right corner, something else might be underneath.
I started in the living room. Her storage tubs were
still stacked behind the couch, labeled in neat cursive X
mess important papers, Ethan's school and photos. That was the
one I grabbed first. I sat cross legged on the floor,
a plastic tub between my knees, and flipped through album
after album, baby pictures, birthday parties, school photos, smiles and
crown drawings aneast the basket. But somewhere around age three
the timeline blurred photos were missing, Whole pages had been
ripped out, slices of times gone without explanation, No photos
between Halloween of ninety three and the summer of ninety seven,
just blank spots, torn stops where glue once held something real.
I checked three more albums, same thing, Age three to
seven erased gone. I had to wonder had my mum
done this? Was she trying to hide something? Or had
it been Dad? I could almost hear his voice in
my head, annoyed, impatient. Why tick up the past? Nothing
good comes from there. The thing is I wasn't digging,
I was remembering moh trying to. It was nearly midnight
by the time I finished tearing through the boxes and albums.
I didn't want to stay the night. The house didn't
feel like mine anymore. It was still the same layout
I grew up in the same walls and corners, but
without them there it felt hollow. But I hadn't slept
much since the Morgue, and the highway back to the
city was all curves and blind turns. I didn't want
to risk it, not with the rain starting to spit
and streak the windows, so I stayed. The air mattress
I kept rolled in the trunk was still there, along
with the sleeping bag and a half dead flashlight. I
inflated it in what used to be the den, hardwood floor,
high ceilings, and the dusty ghost of where the couch
used to be. The smell in the house had turned
damp like wet cordboard and neglected drains. I had to
wipe the floor down with a dish towel, just to
make room. The silence pressed in. Once I lay down,
I left the hallway light on just in case. I
don't know when I fell asleep. I just remember waking
to a voice. It whispered my name, faintly, softly, almost playful,
coming from somewhere down the hall. I froze for a moment,
holding my breath to listen out, but there was only silence.
I sat up, reached for my phone to take the time.
It was three am. That was when I saw them.
There were bare, muddy footprints tracking across the wood floor
from the kitchen, leading from the back door. They were small,
too small to be mine, too wide apart to be
a child crawling. They ended at the edge of my
air mattress, right at the corner where my head had
been moments earlier, and there were no prints going back.
I stood slowly, not breathing hard, smashing my ribs, and
backed into the kitchen. I flicked on the overhead light.
The back door was locked, dead bolt in place, no
windows broken, no wind, no creaking. I pulled out my
phone and opened the app for the old security cameras
I'd installed them right after month passed. They were cheap,
motion sensitive ones, just enough to spook off any squatters
or drifters. The house had sat vacant too long, and
I didn't trust people not to take advantage. The feed
from the backyard loaded first at two fifty a m.
The camera glitched for just the frame. Then the back
door opened, slowly, no one in sight. Then something entered, small,
crouched low like an animal. Its outline shimmered like heat
on pavement, and then the feed glitched again, static blooming
across the screen, and the door was closed. Nothing else.
I screwked back and forth, pausing at the exact frame
where the things stepped through. There was no shape to it,
but there was a shadow, and the shadow reached out
to touch the doorframe like it was routine. I turned half,
expecting something to be standing in the room behind me, empty,
except the footprints were try now crackling like they'd been
there for hours. I went still, whisper came again, closer,
this time you've forgot me. I spent most of the
morning sitting in the same chair I used to eat
cereal in as a kid, staring out the window like
I expected the trees to spell something out for me.
When I finally dialed, I already knew what he'd say,
but I needed to hear it. He picked up on
the third ring. Yeah, Dad, I said, it's me. I pause.
So everything okay? No, I said, not even close. I
could already hear the defensiveness loading behind his silence. I
need to ask you something, and I need you to
tell me the truth. No nonsense, he sighed heavy through
the receiver. It's about your mother's house again. No, I said,
it's about my sister. That word landed hard. I heard
it hit him. Something shifted in the way he breathed,
but his voice didn't break when he replied, you don't
have a sister. There was a body found in Redwood County,
a woman I was listed as the closest necks of kin.
The state ran a DNA test. She was a ninety
nine point nine nine percent sibling match. That's not possible,
he said, instantly, too quick. It's a mistake. They mix
things up all the time. You know they don't, and
you're dodging. I'm not dodging anything. He snapped. There was
no sister. There was no other kid. If this is
some scam or some prank. I don't want anything to
do with it. I forced myself to stay calm. Then
explain the photo, I said, the one she was holding,
it's me five years old with her and all the
photo albums in the house of the same years ripped
out like someone wanted to erase her silence longer this time. Then, jeez,
you sound like your mother, he muttered, digging into things.
I don't matter. She was always like that, making stories
out of shadows. He was unraveling. Dad. I said, just
tell me the truth. I am telling you, he said louder. Now,
there was never a daughter, just you. That's it. You
understand me. I opened my mouth, but the line went dead.
He hung up. I stared at the phone in shock.
Part of me hoped he would call, but he didn't.
I opened my laptop and started digging. The county clerk's
website was a mess, but with the right filters and
an address I'd memorized decades ago, I found what I
was looking for. It was a public record dated twenty
seven years ago, filed under Angela Morecraft report type missing
person minor name redacted, juvenile protection relation daughter age five,
case status closed withdrawn by father, child safety accounted for
signed Richard Morecraft. Time elapsed forty eight hours. She tried
to report it. He made it disappear, just like her.
Around sun, I heard a small, sharp tap from the
back hallway, then another, then a third closer, like someone
drumming their fingernails along the wall while they walked. I
rose and listened, but there was nothing. Then there was
a whisper, so faint. I wasn't sure if it was
my imagination, hey soft, curious as if testing the air.
I grabbed my keys and went straight to the front door.
Twisted the knob, but it didn't budge. I threw my
shoulder into it. Nothing, not even a rattle. Cold crept
up my back. I tried the back door, then the windows.
I even hauled a dining chair and smashed it against
the largest pane. The chair just bounced. The glass didn't
even tremble. On the final impact, the room exhaled a low,
vibrating groan from the walls that felt disappointed. That's when
the house went quiet, a sealed space, quiet, like someone
had wrapped the place in cotton. And then came the
second whisper. Closer, don't leave yet. I backed into the
living room chest tight. The lights dimmed, and that when
everything started. More taps, faster, sharper, scratching, racing along the
walls in erratic loops, then pounding, pounding hard, like fists
beating from the inside of the walls trying to break out.
The lights flickered with each strike. I stumbled backwards and
something cold wrapped around my ankle. I screamed and fell,
kicking instinctively. Nothing there but the imprint stayed, a perfect
child size handprint, pale against my skin. I scrambled under
the couch, panting, clutching my shirt. Then the ceiling above
me began to weep, water, thick drops falling hard enough
to splatter against the floorboards. The metallic smell hit me instantly.
I gagged through the dripping. I heard something else beneath
the floor, sobbing, her child's sobs, muffled but unmistakable, shaking
the wooden planks beneath my feet. I didn't want to move,
but the house forced me to feel it. Suddenly, the
back door creaked open. It wasn't forced open by anything,
just wide open, like it had been waiting for me
to notice. I didn't think.
Speaker 2: I ran.
Speaker 1: The yard was still wet with rain. Grass slickened my
shoes as I cut toward the shed. It was pure instinct,
some half formed belief that if I got outside, she
couldn't follow, as if ghosts respected thresholds behind me. I
swear I heard her footsteps match mine. I ran too,
She whispered. The footsteps kept pace, so I changed tact
and looked for somewhere to hide. I remembered my old spot,
the place I go to when I was overwhelmed as
a kid, the shed. I threw open the shed door
and slammed it. Shot behind me, latched it, even though
the wood was soft from water damage like that would
stop anything inside. The air was thick with rust and dust.
Everything smelled old and sour. I tried to catch my breath,
but she kept speaking. I hid too, she said, I
thought it would keep me safe. Something in me recoiled.
I was running on pure instinct, but according to her,
I was doing everything as planned, following a route she
had as a child. Outside, the footsteps returned slow, deliberate,
circling the shed. If I was being predictable, then I
needed to throw things off. As a kid, the tool
closet was my go to spot big enough that you
could sit in there for hours and out of the
way for anyone not looking too hard. It was the
first place i'd run, so I made sure to dart
past it. He was relentless. The game would stop if
I asked, but this time he was determined to catch me.
The footsteps paused at the door. I scanned the shed.
There were crates along the wall, old reinforced toolboxes. I
moved toward them, desperate for something, anything that might buy
me seconds. If I was still a kid, i'd fit
in with ease, but it took me a few attempts
to squeeze in. I slipped the lid over and held
my breath. I thought I was being smart when I
avoided the tool closet. We always used that spot when
we were desperate. In total black, my heart raised. I
felt like there was nothing I could do to avoid
this predetermined path. Forced into following her steps before her demise,
he walked in called my name. I didn't answer. The
footsteps softened. I couldn't hear where she was. Then bang,
a strike rang out across the wood. I felt like
my heart would stop from the shock. Thinking it was
her way of saying I got you, but then another
bang sounded on the crate, then another. I didn't know
what was happening until she carried on her tail. He
said that's better, She murmured and started sealing me in
the reality of what she was doing kicked in. When
I felt the tip of a poorly placed nail dig
into my side. I screamed and threw my shoulder against
the lid. It didn't move. I kicked, pushed. The crate
wouldn't budge, no give, like the walls were holding me down,
not that I could get much perge with how cramped
the crate was. I begged, She whispered. I told him
I'd be I told him I'd be quiet. He didn't listen.
The crate shifted, tilted, then lifted. I was moving, jolted
across the shed floor, the world tilting. He drove me far,
she said, I don't know how long. I couldn't scream anymore.
My voice was gone, tears blurred everything scraping from inside
the crate, something that wasn't me, something with too many fingers.
I felt the little space I had in the crate
fill impossibly with something that felt like skin ice cold
against my face. And the voice that I had only
been hearing muffled from outside the crate spoke clearly from inside,
so that I could feel the cold breath. I knows.
When I couldn't scream, I started dreaming, and when I dreamed,
they heard me. It's hard to say how long I
was in the crate. Time didn't pass normally. In their
second stretched hours collapsed. I started counting breaths just to
keep my mind from breaking, but I lost track somewhere
around five hundred. The air went stale, my knees ached
from being folded too long, Sweat soaked through my shirt,
and every few minutes, something inside the wood would twitch
or creak, not like old wood settling, but like it
was breathing with me. Please stop, I begged. The voice
that came back wasn't sympathetic. That's what I said too.
Before I was buried. Her voice croaked, speaking low, an
inch from my ear. The weight above me got heavier.
I could hear the shifting of packed soil, the sound
of roots pushing in through cracks. I started to cry quietly, bitterly,
and somewhere in the grief, the truth settled in. My
sister was buried alive by her father, and no one
had come for her. I had lived a normal life,
birthday parties, road trips and a decent college. She had
died in a box, forgotten by every one, and now
I was in her place. And the worst part, I
couldn't even say she was wrong to put me here.
That's what gutted me the most. You didn't deserve this,
I whispered, none of it. The crake creaked. You're just
a kid. I should have known, I should have remembered.
I paused, tried to swallow the lump in my throat.
My chest was shaking. But it wasn't me who did
this to you. It was him silence, but I could
feel her listening. It should have been him inside this box,
not you, not me. The darkness held his breath. You
want someone to suffer for what happened, Fine, so do I,
I pleaded. I waited. A long silence passed his He's
still alive. The voice came from just above my head. Clear.
I hesitated, Yes, Another silence, and then the weight started
to lift. The pressure above me eased. Her presence dissipated
from the crate. I could feel the top of the
crate were just blowing inward from the pressure easing. Then
I'll make you a promise, she said, I'll let you
live if you give me him. I paused. Even with
everything I'd been through, some small part of me still
clung to the idea that I was betraying my father.
But then I remembered the missing child report, the photo albums,
the sound of nails being driven in, and the silence
that followed. He's in Nevada, I said, Desert Ridge, using
the name Edward Fox. I'll even give you the address.
The crate split open, just opened. Corn night air hit
my face like a slap. I gasped, crawling out into
the damp grass under a sky I hadn't seen in
what felt like days. No one was around, but I
knew she'd heard me. When I pulled myself out, I
expected to see the backyard. I didn't. I was in
the woods, deep enough that the trees blocked most of
the sky. Wet leaves clung to my shirt. My knees
buckled as I stood, legs stiff and shaking from being
culled up so long. For a minute, I just stood there, breathing.
I was alive. I turned slowly, taking in my surroundings.
That's when I saw the yellow police tape, fresh still
tied to the trunks. It sagged between two trees like
a cautionary whisper. There was a shallow pit nearby, half
filled with disturbed earth. This was it where they found her.
She hadn't taken me to some memory or symbolic grave.
She'd brought me to the exact place her body had
been unearthed, and somehow she'd made the journey feel like
a memory instead of miles. She'd retrace the path. It
took me hours to hike back to the road, longest
still to find someone willing to give me a ride
into town. Every step I took I thought about him,
my father. Part of me hoped she was already there,
that it was done that The next time I checked
the news, i'd see a report about a man found
dead in his trailer in Nevada, cause unknown. But part
of me didn't because he was still my father, and
even if he deserved it, I needed to understand why her,
Why bury her? Why make me forget? I borrowed a
phone from the gas station clerk. It took me three
tries to dial the number. He answered on the second ring.
His voice was groggy, probably drinking, maybe sleeping. I didn't care. Hello,
I said nothing at first, not knowing what to say.
Then I simply decided to be blunt. She's coming silence.
What the hell are you talking about? He snapped? Who
is this? You know who?
Speaker 2: This is?
Speaker 1: Another pause, a rustle of movement, like he was sitting
up straighter. Look, you never had a sister drop this nonsense.
Do you understand me? You're being manipulated. I could hear
the panic under the anger. Now you can tell her
that yourself, I said, flat, she's on a way to you.
The silence that followed didn't stretch. It snapped. Jeez, he whispered,
It didn't stop. I didn't say anything. He started breathing heavier,
not scared for himself, but scared of something bigger. Listen,
I didn't kill her, he said, not really. I tried
to stop what she was becoming, what she was bringing through.
He spoke like the dam had broken, like he'd been
waiting to say this for years. She was born wrong,
he said, not formed or something genetic, just off, like
her eyes saw something the rest of us didn't, And
when she talked in her sleep, the walls were sweat.
Do you understand water condensation? Like something was breathing on
the other side. At first I thought she was just disturbed,
maybe even gifted. But the older she got, the worse
it got. Bird stopped nesting near the house. Mirrors walked
around her. She stopped aging for almost a year. I
felt the blood drained from my face. She told me
things she had no way of knowing. She started to
whisper names at night, names that weren't real, not in
this world. They weren't even pronounceable. And one night I
checked the baby monitor and his voice broke. Something else
was whispering back down on the curb outside the gas station.
The world felt suddenly too big, like it was pressing
in from all sides. My grandfather left.
Speaker 2: Journals, old country stuff. He always believed some people could
act like like doors, not possessed, just born open, not
even on purpose.
Speaker 1: Sometimes something just slips through. She was one of them,
a breach. I tried everything, prayers, locks, psych wards, but
she kept getting worse. And then one day she just stopped.
He paused. I could hear him swallow. She came to me, calm, smiling,
she said, it's ready. I couldn't risk it, not the world,
not you. So I dealt with it and it worked.
I felt hollow until I told her where you were,
I whispered. He let out a sharp, shaking breath. You
don't understand, she said, That thing needed closure, a story
that ends. You gave it what it wanted. It doesn't
end with me. I'm just the final ritual, the finishing
nail before she begins. If I die, it's loose. There
was a single crackle of static on the line, and
then he said something I'll never forget. It wore your
sister like a mask, but it's not her anymore, and
it's not done with you. Click. The line went dead.
The trip home felt like a punishment. I walked for
miles before I found a bus stop, then another hour
before anything came. Transfers, delays, cold benches, paper coffee cups
with films skimming the top, no phone, no way to
check if it had happened yet, if he was still alive,
if he had won. Each hour that passed pulled me
in two directions. Part of me prayed it was over.
Part of me prayed it hadn't started yet. When I
finally reached the house, it was nearly three in the morning.
The place looked the same, unassuming quiet, like none of
it had ever happened. I opened the door with shaking hands,
stepped inside, and quickly closed it behind me. I was
afraid of what might follow. The silence hit me first, waited, silence,
like the kind in old churches and deep caves. I
found my charger plugged in my phone. The screen took
longer than usual to wake. The battery ikenpulsed red like
a dying heart. I waited when it powered on. I
opened the call log. No new calls, no texts, no
mist voice mails, just blank space and times stretching too long.
I sat down on the couch, phone balancing in my
palm like I might summon an answer. I stared at
the screen waiting for it to light up, waiting for
a message that said I'm okay. I stopped it everything
will be okay. But all I got was static pings,
old notifications, junk from apps. I never used a weather
warning from a county. I wasn't in any more, and
in the stillness I noticed something else. The air was damp.
I touched the wall beside me, wet, not the usual
humidity dripping, the same slow weep I remembered from the nursery,
from the crate, from her, and in the awful, heartsick moment,
I realized I wasn't watching my phone for news anymore.
I was watching it for the reflection, because the glass
on the screen was the only place I could see
the window behind me without looking directly, and something had
started to whisper again, soft, high, sweet, almost a lullaby
in reverse, like something humming a song that hadn't been
written yet. I turned the phone just slightly, angling the
reflection toward the far wall, and there she was, just
outside the window, smiling. Her face didn't move like a human's.
Her skin looked brittle, like porcelains, stretched too thin. Her
mouth was smiling, but her eyes warmed. They were watching me,
not in a malicious way, not fully, just patient, like
she'd been waiting her whole life for this moment. My
brain clung to a hope because I made a deal,
gave her what she wanted, thought I'd be free. But
I also remembered what Dad said, when I die, it's loose.
It's not her any more, and it's not done with you,
and now it's my turn. They sent us to the
ass end of the Kazakhs. Stands step a bleak, unforgiving
stretch of wind scoured land, where rusted fences lead nowhere,
and the horizon buzzed like a tuning fork. The wind
still bit through two layers of thermals. The roads were
barely roads at all, just tire gouged scars in frozen soil.
No birds, no herders, no villages, just empty land and
silence for miles. When satellites fall, they're supposed to burn
up in the atmosphere or land in the ocean, far
away from anything that matters. That's how they're designed. But
sometimes things go wrong, a miscalculation, a failed thruster, or
a misfire in orbit. When they come down on land,
it's our job to make it go away. We're contractors,
a clean up crew that logged the telemetry, recover anything
that didn't vaporize, and flag what might belong in a
black box. Most of it's worth a slag by the
time it hits earth. Once or twice we've pulled out
something interesting. Sensitive usually gets taken off our hands before
we can even ask what it was. This mission standard
eight of us were assigned with two trucks, falled out tents,
portable uplinks, satellite relays, a drone, and a ground penetrating
radar unit. The site was flagged by orbital trackers. Something
had come down hard and fast. We expected towards wreckage
and a couple long days shoveling sand and mud, maybe
a bonus if anything survived intact. But something was off
from the start. The telemetry was jittery, GPS would lock
then drift, the terrain didn't quite match the coordinates. It
was like the maps themselves didn't want us here, and
it was quiet. We got to work anyway. Carson, our
team lead, oversaw the equipment, set up, the text calibrated
the radar. I was helping drive rebar stakes when the
beacon came through. It wasn't a dead ping. It was active,
short burst, compressed repeating on a tight interval, stronger than
any beacon i'd heard on a recovery job. That got
everyone's attention. Usually those signals stop the moment the burns,
but this one it was transmitting. We thought maybe a
hardened core had survived. Black box guidance unit, who knows.
But the signal didn't triangulate at surface level, we ran
a GPR scan. The data came back clean. Beneath the
top soil, maybe ten meters down was a structure, possibly
a shattered hunk of metal, not just scattered debris, but
maybe a whole chunk of fuselage. That's not possible, Carson muttered.
The signal was coming from inside it. Whatever it was,
it had survived orbital descent, impact and burial. The surface
showed the usual debris scatter, squads, paneling, shattered fin A
few fragments walked beyond recognition, all standard stuff for a
satellite crash. But beneath that buried deeper than expected, was
something big. The text figured it had to be a
telemetry core, or maybe a reinforced payload container, the kind
that designed a survivory entry in case of failure. That
would explain the signal too. Maybe it had been programmed
to ping even after a crash, to make recovery easier. Well,
maybe we'd get a salvage bonus. So we started plotting
the dig. First, we measured sole density, Then we checked
the frost layers and run off paths. The permafrost was
thick here. Excavating it would take time and precision, especially
if we didn't want to crush whatever was buried beneath us.
We'd be digging by hand or close to it. Slow work.
Then mid conversation, Jacob's radio flared up. A burst of
static broke through his head set, followed by a strained,
stuttering voice. Is anyone up there? Hullo? Please? I'm trapped.
I don't know where I am. Everyone froze. We stared
at Jacob's then heard each other. He looked as surprised
as the rest of us. Carson took over, immediately checking
the frequency. Say again, identify yourself. A pause, then I
can hear you. Please, Dick HiT's dark. I'm alone. Help me.
The blood drained from my face. That satellite wasn't manned.
No satellite ever is. They don't send people up in
those things. They're too small, fragile. That wasn't their purpose.
Even the military ones are remote operated. There's no room
for a cockpit, no reason for a crew. So who
the hell was talking to us? Recycled frequencies. Check the relays.
The signal wasn't bouncing from anywhere else. It wasn't interference.
The origin point was right where the beacon was ten
meters underground. We tried asking more questions, where are you from,
how long have you been down there? What's your name?
But the voice never answered directly. It just kept begging,
please help me, please dig it's getting harder to breathe.
At one point it sobbed. It didn't ask who we
were or ask how we'd found it. He just begged
to be free. Carson called it. In protocol, any anomaly,
especially one involving unexpected transmissions, had to be logged immediately.
We huddled around the portable satellite uplink, the signal cutting
in and out as he explained the situation to the
contact rep and the client's end, some mid level handler
for a private aerospace firm whose name I couldn't even pronounce.
He kept a professional calm, said the beacon was still active,
that the internal casing might have survived impact, and then,
almost like an afterthought, added, there's been a voice on
the radio claim someone's alive down there. The reply came
back after a pause, a dry chuckle, then a sigh,
like he'd just been asked the dumbest question in the world. Yeah, no,
that's not possible. The unit was unmanned all of them.
Are you should know that. We checked the sauce, Carson said,
the signal lines up with the buried object. The voice
on the other end turned slightly sharp. Radios bleed. You're
hearing feedback crossover. Maybe who knows what kind of interference
you're getting out there. We asked the direct questions, Carson said,
it answered well, The rep said, his tone already checked out.
Get the telemeture, core, tag the wreckage filey report, leave
the ghost stories out of it. The lion went dead.
We stood there for a while, just looking at each other.
Nobody said it, but the unease had started to spread.
If it had been static, we could have ignored it,
or if it had been nonsense, we could have blamed
the radios. But the voice was clear, panicked, and human.
We tried to reason it out. Maybe it was bleed
from another channel for someone nearby using this same band.
It could have been a prank, some ham operator screwing around,
but that all of this was unlikely. In the middle
of nowhere, Carson finally broke the silence. All right, we
keep moving. We have a job to do. Officially, we're
recovering materials, that's it. And unofficially someone asked. Carson didn't answer,
but everyone knew. Some of us wanted to get the
job done and go home. The rest of us, we
wanted to know who was down there. That night, the
wind picked up, the temperature dropped hard and fast, like
something had sung its weight into the air. I sat
in my bunk, trying to sleep. The low murmur of
radios carried between tents like distant breathing. Then mine lit up,
just for a second, a flash of static, a voice
no louder than a whisper. You heard me, didn't you.
By the next morning, the crew had started to split,
not outly, just subtle shifts in tone. People stood in
small clumps, now muttering over breakfast, side eyeing the radio set.
Some of the team were convinced someone had to be
alive down there. Had to be. They couldn't shake the voice,
the cadence, the fear. It didn't sound artificial or like
a recording. You don't fake the way. Someone choke back
as sob. But others weren't buying it. The rational ones
maybe are just the scared ones in disguise. They said
it was interference, that even if it was real, even
by some cosmic fluke. A person had ended up inside
that thing. There was no way there'd be alive after
the fall. No food or oxygen on a satellite. No
explanation could reasonably explain what we heard. Carson tried to
keep things grounded. He was a buy the book's kind
of guy, and by the book, we were here to
recover orbital debris, not perform search and rescue missions from
possible voices, whether it's a person or a beacon. He
told us flatly, We're here to dig get to it.
So we did. The GPR scans came back with more detail.
This time. The object wasn't just a dense cluster or
some tangled core of junk metal. It had shape, defined edges, corners, symmetry,
and technicians squinted at the readout and said, half laughing,
looks more like a room than a chunk of fuselage.
Nobody laughed. Lucas started acting strangely, quieter than usual, twitchy.
He was one of the older guys, wore his faith
like a second skin, always had a rosary looped around
his wrist even when running cable. When the scan came through,
he just stared at it, lips moving, but no sound.
Coming out later, someone overheard him saying, it wasn't a
crash at all. It's a demon, he muttered. When pressed,
he shut down completely, wouldn't explain, just shook his head
and returned to work, but slower, now, twitchier, mumbling prayers
under his breath. Whenever the radio crackled. That night, I
couldn't sleep again. The window died, but the silence somehow
felt louder than ever, like the world itself was un mute.
As I passed Lucas's tent, I heard his voice, low
and shaky. Don't talk to it, he whispered, Don't look
at it. It's not stuck, it's waiting. The digging was slow,
the ground didn't want to give, even with the right tools.
It felt like you were scratching at something that didn't
want to be found. I took my break past the
camp perimeter, just outside the flagged boundary. The air was
sharper out there, more open, the quiet that makes you
feel like you're being watched by the land itself. I
was stretching my back when I heard it. Her voice
lo muffled, careful. I followed the sound around one of
the supply trailers, quiet as I could. That's when I
saw Kyle crouched behind the tires, hunched over a handheld
short wave radio. He was whispering into it as if
it were a life line. I know I miss you
too soon, O kay, I promise? He jumped the second
I stepped around the corner and spotted me, fumbled the
radio off like a kid caught smoking behind a gas station. Jeez, man,
he said, too loud. Y's get the hell out o me.
Who are you talking to? I asked. He gave me
a crooked smile. My wife missed our checkin last night.
She gets anxious when I'm off grid. I looked down
at the radio, short wave, no satellite link, no repeater access.
It wasn't even on the same band we were using.
You can't reach anyone on there, I said. He shrugged
like it didn't matter and stood. Yes, I got lucky,
he said. Then he walked off, casual, like it wasn't
the creepiest thing I'd seen all day. That night and
I couldn't sleep sometime past midnight, just as I was
slipping between thoughts, the radio on the shelf above my
bunk came to life, just the soft click, like someone
picking up a line they shouldn't have access to. Then
a voice, calm, familiar, but not quite. You're tired, it said.
I sat up slowly, didn't answer. You don't have to pretend,
not out here, not with me. There was something soothing
in the cadence, like the voice of someone you'd known
for years, softened by time. I know what you've lost.
I swallowed hard, but said nothing. The wind outside pushed
against the tent in slow, steady pulses, like a heart beat.
The pain you carry, I could take it from you.
I pause almost the breath, not eraise it. Just hold
it for a while so you can sleep, so you
don't have to keep walking up with your jaw clenched
and your hands shaking. I never told any one about
the panic attacks, the insomnia. Not even Carson knew. I
kept my personal out of the professional I don't want much,
he whispered, Just help me out. My hand hovered over
the radio's power dial, but I didn't touch it. You
wouldn't be the first, it said, softly, and you won't
be the last. But you you listened better than the others.
Then silence, like it new, it had said enough. By
late afternoon, the soil had begun to shift. The upper
layers were dry and crusted, but now we were hitting
compacted earth, dense loam that cracked in slabs as we dug.
The resistance had changed. It meant we were close. The
g PR confirmed it. The full shape was now visible
in the scans, a large object, maybe ten eats long,
half buried one side, jutting up like a broken tooth.
It didn't look like any satellite component woud ever pulled.
It was too whole. We were close, but darkness was settling,
which meant another night before we could fully uncover it.
Dinner was quiet, Most of us were too frozen to talk.
The wind had picked up again, blowing grit into every
fold of clothing and crease of skin. Kyle, the one
I caught whispering into the shortwave, was sitting near the
mess tent entrance, grinning to himself. He looked like a
man waiting for someone special to walk through the door.
Every now and then he glanced toward the crater and
smiled like he just remembered a private joke. Lucas didn't eat.
He stood near the mess tent wall, arms folded, eyes down.
He looked like some some one trying not to throw up.
That night, back in the bunk tent, I lay staring
at the canvas ceiling while the wind rattled through the
steel pipes. The day was starting to weigh on me,
not just the fatigue in my body, but somewhere deeper.
My thoughts kept circling around the voice, around the shape
under the ground. I didn't know what I believed anymore.
I was just starting to drift when I heard something boots,
careful steps. I eased out of my cut and followed
the sound through the flap. The night was moonless, only
lit by the amber globe of the perimeter lamps. A
figure moved along the edge of the excavation pit, hunched
and deliberate. It was Lucas. I called out to him
in a whisper, and he spun around, eyes wild. In
his hands, he clutched something. At first I thought it
was a crowbar, but then I saw the edge sharpened, improvised.
We can't leave it in there, he hissed. We can't
bring it out either, you understand. I took a step closer.
What are you doing, man? His hands were shaking. They
think it's talking to them. Maybe it is, but it
lies that's all it does. I looked at the weapon,
then hat his eyes. There was madness there, but also
conviction stopping him would be dangerous. He was committed to this.
You really think it's dangerous, I asked. He nodded slowly.
It's not a person, it's not trapped. It wants to
be found. That's not the same thing. I looked at
him for a long time, then said the only thing
I could think to say, Well, not my monkey, not
my circus. He stared at me like he was trying
to decide whether I was worth arguing with. Then he
turned and walked off into the dark, down toward the
edge of the crater. I didn't follow, I told myself
I didn't care, and went back to bed. The morning
felt off. Before we even reached the crater, Lucas was
nowhere to be found. He hadn't returned to his bunk,
hadn't shown for breakfast. I figured he was laying low,
maybe hiding out in the equipment truck until things blew
over once we saw what he'd done, or maybe he
was ashamed. I wasn't the only one tense. When we
arrived at the site, we all stopped short the crater
looked wrong. The soil we'd fought against the days was
now loose, uneven, he looked, freshly turned. The marks from
our excavation, careful layers carved out with heavy tools were gone,
replaced by an uneven, sunken sprawl, like the earth had
shifted overnight. No one spoke until one of the new
guys muttered, did a storm come through? Another said, no,
win that strong last night. Carson didn't waste time on theories.
If it's loose, we'll count ourselves lucky, he said, slapping
a glove against this thy let's get it done. We
grabbed shovels and picks. No need for the power augers.
Now the ground peeled away like dry skin. Only a
few minutes in someone hit something solid. It wasn't just
another scuortch, fragment or support strut. It was smooth, rounded,
a faint gleam under the grit. We worked around it, carefully,
clearing layer by layer until the shape came into view,
a long curve, then another. The lines connected forming a
capsule or pod, fused into the chunk of satellite fuselage
we've been chasing all along. Except this didn't look like
any satellite module we'd ever seen. The material caught light
in strange ways, like it wasn't one surface but several
folded into each other. Part of it looked engineered, ribbed paneling,
beveled edges, even what resembled cooling vents. But between those
features were smooth organic forms, soft iridescence beneath the grime,
veined like tissue. You look at one corner and swear
it was molded titanium. Blink and it was cartilage. It
was seamless almost then someone pointed it out, a faint
line running along the side of the structure, about four
feet long, thin as a wise shadow. I seem it's
not latched, someone said, hushed. The air felt still. We
didn't open it, not yet. We just stared, and for
the first time I realized we were all hoping it
was empty. No one spoke at first. We just stared
at the seam like it might blink back. Eventually, Carson
stepped forward, brushing the dirt from his gloves. We're too
far out to wait for anyone, he said. We open it,
log it, report what we find. I glanced at him.
That wasn't true. We had uplinks emergency priority channels. If
this was truly alien, or even just anomalous, a dozen
agencies will be salivating to send a team. But Carson
didn't want oversight. He wanted to see what was inside.
Maybe it was valuable, maybe he just couldn't help himself.
No one volunteered. Carson turned to us someone, he said,
forcing casualness in his tone. It's probably empty, might not
even open. But the air said different, and so did
the silence. No one moved. It was in defiance. It
wasn't consensus. None of us were opening that thing. If
he wanted it open, he'd have to do it himself.
His jaw flexed. I could see the calculation behind his eyes,
how it would look if he didn't step up. He
looked back at the pod, then down at the seam.
Then he sighed, deep and shaky, like he was psyching
himself up for a dive. All right, he muttered, I'll
do it. We all backed up fast, ten feet, then fifteen.
Nobody wanted to be near it when it opened. Even
the ones who'd scoffed earlier were watching like it might explode.
Carson stepped up to the pod with his shovel in hand,
slid the edge into the seam, just in off the leverage.
Dirt shifted off the surface, falling in slow trickles. The
sun caught the damp sheen of the hull. He hesitated,
then twisted. With a soft metal clunk, the hatch flicked open.
Carson stumbled back, catching himself with a shovel. He didn't speak,
just stared. Nothing came out, no smoke, no light, no movement,
just stillness. After a long moment, the rest of us
etched closer until we could see what had stunned him. Lucas.
His body was slumped inside the pod like it had
grown around him. His limbs were twisted, broken in ways
that didn't make sense. One arm was culd tight around
his chest, the hand still clutching what looked like his
makeshift weapon. No One spoke for a long time, confused
by what this meant. Finally I stepped forward. I saw
him last night. I said, my voice felt dry, feign
in my throat. He was sneaking out, said he had
to stop it, that we weren't taking it seriously. Someone
asked what I meant. I hesitated, then told them everything
about Lucas's rant, his fear, how he believed whatever was
inside was evil and the thing he said right before
walking off into the dark, it can lie, That's what
it does. The silence was pure dread. Lucas had gone
down thinking he could stop it. Maybe he thought it
was a demon, Maybe he thought it was a test
of faith. Either way, he tried to fight it and last.
But that wasn't what made my stomach drop. What made
it worse was the realization we all arrived at silently,
almost in sync. Whatever had been trapped inside that pod
was no longer there. It had escaped. Every word it
said to us, every promise, had been a lie to
get out. And Kyle, who'd always been the most eager
to dig to defend it, to whisper into dead radios,
now looked like the air been sucked out of him.
His mouth opened once, then again, but it told me.
No one answered. Carson didn't even pretend to report what
really happened. He stood a few paces from the pod,
pale and shaking, and keitha sat uplink. The sight is compromised,
he said, on no materials present, possible contamination or national
security breach. I can't elaborate overcomes request Emergency response ASA,
he didn't mention Lucas or the voice. He didn't have to.
You could hear it in his voice. Something was wrong
and it wasn't just debris. It took hours, but they came.
At first, there was two men in plain black vehicles,
know insign just questions. They arrived expecting radiation leaks or
experimental tech. They left red faced and calling in reinforcements.
Then came the flood, hazmat suits, drones, surveillance trucks, people
flashing badges. None of us recognized every agency you could name,
and a few you couldn't. Just as one group claimed jurisdiction,
another would come in and supersede them. The entire digsite
turned into a battlefield of departments. Our camp was torn
down and replaced with pop up tents and gated perimeters.
We were herded, interviewed, separated, reinterviewed. Some of us were interrogated.
Some departments weren't sharing information, so we were made to
tell the story dozens of times over. Only after exhaustive checks,
psych evaluations, chemical swabs, hours of surveillance footage did they
seem to accept that we were just workers. We'd been
caught in something much larger. They didn't thank us. They
gave us papers the sign heavy NDA's. We were told
we'd be monitored indefinitely. Whatever we saw didn't happen. Lucas
died in the ground collapse. There was no part, no transmission,
no voice. We were put on planes and sent home
one by one. I haven't seen Kyle since Carson's number
is disconnected. A few of the others still anter texts,
but no one talks about what happened. And me, I
moved switch jobs, different name on the ID badge, now
still work remote sits nothing satellite related. I thought if
I kept moving, kept my head down, maybe I could forget.
But sometimes, in the quiet hours, just before sleep, I
wonder what was it? What had been locked in that pod,
twisting its voice to match what we needed to hear,
What had waited in the dirt, whispered promises, manipulated a
team of hardened workers until it was free. And more
than that, what now? Because it's out there and it
spent a very very long time learning how to lie,
it said. Our town was founded on an unspoken promise.
It's the kind of place that looks wholesome from the outside.
Meet fences, tidy lawns, church bells on Sundays, curfew that
people actually obey. But underneath it all, it's a current,
something old, something everyone feels but doesn't name. That's where
the box comes in. In door Vale, when you turn eighteen,
you get a box on your doorstep at sunrise, always
the same hand carved word, smooth as bone, no latch
or lock inside is your role, the word that tells
you who you are. Now it's not symbolic. You don't
get a say. Once the box names you, that's it.
Everyone says it fits that the box always knows. My
cousin got caretaker. Now she runs the infirmary, even though
she used to faint at the sight of blood. My
friend Leo got stone layer, even though he couldn't hammer
a nail straight, but now he restores gravestones like an artist.
They say the box finds the path you were meant
to take, that it doesn't make mistakes. I wanted to
believe that, But as my eighteenth birthday crept closer, something
in my gut twisted in apprehension, worried that I'd somehow
be the only one it gets wrong, or sent on
a path I would lead my life into misery a fear,
I'm guessing a lot of people have. At dinner the
night before, my parents acted like it was a graduation.
My dad grilled steaks, my mom made that awful potato salad.
She thinks I like they kept smiling too much. Afterward,
I met up with some friends around the fire pit
near the lake. Everyone made predictions, cracked jokes. Said I'd
be a brewer since I always brought the best drinks,
or maybe an archivist because I kept a dream journal
when I was twelve. Then someone I don't remember who
raised their cup and said, just hope it doesn't say shepherd.
Everyone laughed, Even the adults who were passing by smiled
as if it were an inside joke. Yeah, someone else
added with a grin, if you get shepherd, you have
to go to the clearing. More laughed a little forced.
I smiled too, but the jokes stuck in my teeth
like a seed I couldn't swallow. We don't have sheep
in door Val. No one farms, and as far as
I know, there is no clearing. But everyone knew the joke,
played along like it had been passed down with the
same care as our lullabies and town ordinances, a tradition
missed in my household. That night, lying in bed, I
stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about it,
about the word, about what it would mean if the
box made its first mistake at home. I brought it
up to my parents, but they brushed it off. The
way they saw it, it was a legend at this point.
It was a warning given in case shepherd came up,
but no one had gotten it in decades, so it
was thought to be a relic of the past, a
job no longer needed in the town. In bed, I
kept thinking about it. I imagined opening the box to
find something normal, manifesting market like my dad, maybe, or
chef like my mom, something safe, something people would nod
and smile at, something that would let me fade into
the background. At midnight, I heard I had a soft
thud on the porch. I waited five minutes before opening
the front door. The wind smiled like damp earth. The
street was empty and sitting neatly on the welcome mat,
with no signs of a deliveryman, no tracks in the frost.
Was the box. It was hand carved, polished, smooth corners,
slightly rounded like It had been passed down for generations,
exactly like it had been described, no hinges, lock or markings.
I brought it into my room and placed it on
the desk. Sat there for a while, just staring at it.
I was alone. My parents knew it would be here,
but opening your box is a special and private moment.
People knew to leave you in solace. It was nerve wracking.
My hands didn't want to touch it. I thought back
to the fire bit, to the laughter, to the way
every one had grinned when they said, if ye get Shepherd,
ye have to go to the clearing, like it was
a game with a way to lose. I lifted the lid. Inside,
on soft red velvet was a single folded piece of paper.
I unfolded it. One word, Shepherd. Everything in me went still.
It fell like all the air had been sucked out
of the room, and I could feel my heart hammering
in my chest. I read it again, just to be sure,
same word, same tight, ink, printed, clean, centered. I closed
the lid and hid the box beneath my bed. The
next morning, I didn't say a word. My parents didn't ask,
but my mom watched me too closely. Over breakfast, her
fork barely moved. Her eyes didn't leave my face. She
must have thought I'd gotten something I hadn't expected, but
deep down it felt so much worse. It was common
to let someone process what they've received. It's sometimes a
shock for the fact that it was always right gave
parents a credence not to push. Nothing makes a situation
worse than making someone defensive. I packed my bag like
a normal said I was going to school. I didn't.
I cut through the edge of town where the woods
started creeping back in, past the old feed shed, past
the berry thickets that no one picked from. People of
this town never venture far. Hiking trails only circle near
the edge of town as water close the fish. It
drilled into everyone not to go far into the thickets,
a warning that worked here. Part of me felt like
it was delusional to financeers out there, But nothing I
saw while raised in this town matched the idea of
a clearing, so it had to be out there. Eventually,
the GPS in my phone froze, then shut off entirely.
After hours of searching, at the end of a forgotten trail,
I found it, the place I was never meant to see.
The trees opened into a clearing. Animal bones littered the
grass in tangled spirals. I don't know what I expected
to find in the clearing. What I didn't expect was
a man. He stepped out from behind one of the
crooked trees, slow and deliberate, like some one long unused
at being seen. His skin was dry and colorless, eyes
yellowed the edges, thin, trembling hands held nothing, but still
twitched like they were used to carrying weight. He looked
surprised to see me. You lost, he grumbled, No, I
don't think so, I stumbled back. This was true. Though
I didn't know what I was looking for, I knew
I was looking for something, and I could only guess
that I'd found it. He paused at this, weighing what
I'd meant, maybe even doing some threat assessment. He looked
like he hadn't been around any one in years. I
could have stood there trying to ramble in explanation, but
instead I reached slowly into my pocket and pulled out
my note. Once he saw what was neatly written in
the center, he sighed and sat down on a stump,
like standing took too much out of him. You weren't
supposed to be chosen, he said, not yet. I asked
him who he was. He gave me a look like
I should have known. I'm the shepherd, he said, or was,
or still am. Technically that didn't make sense. I never
seen him before in my life. He explained, he has
the role. It's not like any ordinary job in the town.
Only one can have it. Most people assumed he left
town after his box arrived, but he didn't leave. He'd
been hiding, skirting the boundaries. He looked at me with
a kind of grim curiosity. If you got your box
and I'm still breathing, he didn't finish the thought, but
I got it. Whatever force governs the boxes, whatever makes
them accurate, infallible, it shouldn't have chosen me, not until
he was dead, And yet it had. He didn't speak
much after that, just led me through a twisting animal
path behind the clearing, deeper into the woods than I
thought they went. The trees here were old and gnawed
like fists. The sky disappeared above us. Everything smelled like
copper and wet ash. We reached what it looked like
a collapsed shack tucked into a hollow. This disgusting place
is where he lived. I tried to imagine calling that
place home, but the idea sickened me. Inside, buried beneath
the top and stacks of mold, darkened crates, was an
He set it on a stone, opened it to the
first page. The pages were warped, some torn, some stuck together.
The cover was stained with something reddish brown and long dried.
I didn't ask what it was. Maps, names, drawings, instructions,
a lineage of entries, different handwriting, dates, going back generations.
This is the shepherd's record, he said, your job now.
He flipped to a marked section, a diagram of the
town perimeter, covered in strange symbols and notations. Beneath it,
a short, tight sentence scrawled in angry strokes maintained the boundary.
I asked him what that meant. He didn't answer that directly. Instead,
he turned the page showed me a list dozens of entries.
It detailed a busy schedule. Every day there was an entry,
sometimes two or three. The details were cryptic, only listing
an amount of tasks completed, nothing on what happened. But
pressing inferensas proved fruitless. All that was stressed was the
importance of the job. Was this it living alone and
working every day some thankless job in the middle of nowhere.
I would have preferred to be a janitor. At least
then I'd be able to see my friends have a
social life. But if I ignored the role, the boundary
would apparently fail. Whatever that meant if I left, the
town would somehow suffer, and if he died, if anything
happened to him, it would fall to me. No back
up or replacement, a life of solitude, just me. He
gave me some parting words for me to figure out.
If you see one, come to me. I left dissatisfied
with what I was hearing. My curiosity turned sour, making
me want to see if I could somehow change my roll.
That night, I woke to a sound like leaves being
raked across the porch. I got up and looked outside.
There was something standing in the yard. My fingers stiffened
against the sill. My tired eyes slowly adjusted, my mind
desperate to make the shape into a tree or a shadow,
but it remained as it was, of bright, pale with
a huge grin. It stood there as still as a statue, watching, waiting.
The longer I stared, the more I became aware of
the fact that I was standing directly in front of
a little window. If it hadn't noticed me yet, I
was giving it every chance. I backed away from the window, slowly,
trying not to make the floorboard speak. When I finally
reached the bed, I eased myself under the covers and
stayed perfectly still, my heart thooding so loud it felt audible.
I lay there staring at the ceiling, listening for any
shift outside. By dawn it was gone, no signs that
something was rummaging in the yard. I ran back to
the bearing. The old shepherd was already awake, waiting at
the fire pit like he knew i'd come. I think
I saw one, I said. He nodded slowly, then grabbed
a canvas bundle from behind a tree. Inside rusted tools,
something like a branding iron and a long iron steak
carved with cymbals I couldn't decipher. He seemed to be
able to track it like a bloodhound. We found the
things skulking near the edge of the woods. It was
still in the shape of someone almost human, same size,
same build, but its knees bent wrong and its eyes
were all pupil No white It smiled when it saw me,
spoke in the voice of my childhood best friend, a
girl who moved away years ago. Hey, it said, wanna play,
she added with a smile. Her cadence was just like
how she sounded many years ago, my blood friend cold.
The old shepherd didn't hesitate. He charged, drove the steak
straight through its gut. Its shrieked, curled backward like a
snapping twig, but didn't die. I don't want to go
home yet, it whined, twisting its neck toward me. Please
just a bit longer. It laughed as the old shepherd
pinned it to the ground, an elation that didn't match
what his body was going through. Despite what he was saying,
its actions didn't match. Its hands clasped over the shepherd's,
pulling the steak further in like it was welcoming death,
thrashing death throes that looked painfully stronger than a hum
in that's eyes. It took two four minutes to stop moving,
catching the shepherd a few times, causing a few nicks
and bruises. We burned it. The smoke smelled like copper
and roses, but even that acted strangely instead of billows
and clouds, pushed around by the wind, It rose like
a thin pillar into the sky until it dissipated. I
was done pretending this was normal, I demanded answers. Okay,
what the hell is going on? I yelled. The sheep
usually move as a flock, but sometimes a lamb gets astray.
He retorted, like that somehow answered my question. Tears whirled
in my eyes, overwhelmed by taking in so much. No
enough with being cryptic. This is insane. Why did she
sound like my old friend? Am I connected to this?
I jobbed? This seemed to catch his attention. He turned
to me. You knew her, Yeah, we grew up together,
played every other day until she moved away. I answered,
moved away classic, he muttered, Just explain, I demanded. She's dead,
died a while ago. By the sounds of it, I
guess you were too young for your parents to tell
you straight. But she didn't move on, he replied bluntly.
I was stunned, soaking in what he said. The body
was a shambling husk, but it held what remained of
my old best friend, something which we excited into smoke
that moved on into some unknown after life. If what
he was saying was to be believed. I just stared
at the embers, at the reality of the situation. I
didn't sleep after the whole ordeal i'd witnessed, not even
for a minute. Every time I closed my eyes, I
saw the things. I had no way to process, nothing
earthly I could relate it to so I could comprehend
the gravity of what was going on. I kept telling
myself it didn't make sense that this was insanity creeping
in my mind snapping after opening the box. But deep
down I knew better. I remembered the creature's voice, the
way it smiled, like it had teeth behind its teeth. Still,
I was resolute, I'm not doing this, so I decided
to leave no packed bags, just a coat, my ID
and a lie to my mom about heading to the library.
I walked to the gas station on the highway where
the delivery truck stopped, found a guy loading his flat bed.
Asked for a ride to the next town. He barely
looked at me, just said sure, hop in. We drove
in silence. Ten minutes out of town, the tree started
the thin and I saw the county line sign her head.
I actually smiled. I was going to make it out.
Then the driver made a weird noise, a kind of
sharp choking hiccough. He leaned forward, fingers twitching, and the
wheel hey. He made a gurgling sound and slump sideways,
foot pressing the gas hard. We veered onto the gravel,
then off the shoulder completely. The truck slammed into a ditch,
flinging me into the dash. I blacked out. I woke
up in the town clinic, same flooral wallpaper, same scent
of antiseptic, an old paper, a place I'd been to
a few times as a child. My head throbbed, my
shoulder was bandaged. A nurse leaned over me, pressing a
cold cloth to my cheek. You're lucky, she said, gently,
only a mild concussion. I tried to sit up. She
placed a hand on my arm to keep me still.
You don't get to leave, she whispered. You've already been
written in. And just like that, I knew that whatever
path I was forced on to, I was locked in.
After the crash and waking up in the clinic, I
was sent home the same evening, no follow ups. No
one from town asked if I was okay, only if
I was ready whatever that meant. I tried to pretend
everything was fine, that I could still choose a normal life.
But that night I heard something outside, a knock, slow, deliberate,
repeating three times, then silence. I peeked through the curtain
and froze. No one was on the porch or the street,
but just at the tree line, black against the sky,
a figure was waving. The next day, he came limping
up my driveway, the old shepherd, gaunt and twitching, cuts
along his face, shirt torn, like had gone through thorns
or worse. You need to listen, he said. His voice
was different, now, no longer cryptic, no longer in control.
He looked scared. I need your help. I found another
one wondering the tree line. Figured it'll be another easy catch,
but it turned on me. It attacked. They've never done
that before, I demanded he explain all of it. I
was sick of being left in the dark for so long.
He wiped blood from his cheek and slumped down on
my porch step. This job is uneasy, but if you
were chosen, I guess I have to accept you can
handle it, he resigned. Around the world, death is commonplace.
People die, move on and that's it, But here it's
a bit thin. The veil beyond is in always one way.
Sometimes things slip back. I nodded, curious to what he meant.
They wonder aimlessly, clinging on to relics of their past life,
old routines, nostalgic areas. But they can't stay here, they
can't find peace, So we help them move on, shepherd
them to where they need to be. I was breathless
at this. Despite the absurdity of what he was saying,
it kind of made sense. It's not easy. Sometimes you
froze up the other day, recognize de friend. That will
happen a lot. People you love, people you grew up with,
will pass, and sometimes they'll linger behind. They will recognize
you and greet you like an old friend. But the
routine never changes. No matter how hard it is, you
have to do what's necessary. This made my heart sink.
A stranger I could maybe deal with, but someone I know,
a friend or a family member, would tear me apart.
It made sense why he chose to live alone. Fewer
connections meant fewer attachments, able to dispatch them with more ease.
Despite what they say, they don't fight back. Ever, you
saw with a husk. Its mind wanted to wonder, but
his body knew it had to move on. All we
do is guide them there. But I started, not knowing
how to ask, looking at his banged up body. Yeah,
I know, but I wasn't lying. They don't attack. I
think they just, for whatever reason, rejected me. He looked
at me directly, with sincerity in his eyes. I need
you to finish my task. When I found near the
tree line. That's all just one time and I'll take
back over. I stared at him, weighing what he asked.
It still felt too much for me, but a one
off I could maybe do, and seeing how banged up
he was, knowing that, he tried I again. If I didn't,
I felt like I had no choice but to say yes.
I set off for the woods. Before I left, the
old shepherd pressed two objects into my hands, A short
wooden steak, scorched black and edged with sigels I couldn't read,
and a sealed satchel tied shot with waxed twine. He
held eye contact too long before letting go. Stay on
the marked path, he said, don't speak first, don't run,
and don't ever lie to it. He didn't elaborate, just
turned and left. I was left alone, facing the tree line,
the sky behind me turning red. I stepped deep into
the forest, further than where the townsfolk walked. The trees
were close together, crooked. The air changed fast, damper smelled
like turned soil and copper. As I walked, I started
noticing carvings, jagged spirals, and almond shapes like stretched eyes.
Some had shallow notches across them like lashes. Finally I
reached a hollow, a sunken depression in the earth, maybe
thirty feet wide, with a stone basin at its center.
Next To it was an emaciated looking figure, a husk
of a person, slapping his hand on the stone. When
I got closer, I could hear him saying something, last
two balls of pairs, last two bowls. He was saying
it like he was running a market stall. There was
about to close when I remembered mister Martin, who passed
away a number of years ago. The old man was
part of my child. He used to give free fruit
to kids to quote make them grow up big and strong.
I approached slowly, trying not to make any sudden movements,
but he carried on like it was still doing business.
When his hollow sockets locked onto me, recognition spread across
his face. Ah, dear boy, did you want an apple?
The fresh he beamed, just like he used to when
he saw me as a kid. My eyes welled as
I slipped out the steak, heart beating in the highest gear.
My breathing picked up as I stopped in front of him,
Unsure if I should go through with a grim task
I was given. I stared at the stake, willing it
to move on its own. The idea of driving it
into something that appeared living was beyond what I felt
capable of, let alone the familiarity of them. The seconds
droned on in two minutes as he continued slapping the
rock like his old market stand. I can't do it,
I muttered to myself, readying to leave. It wasn't causing trouble.
What was the harm in leaving it there until the
shepherd got better, I thought to myself. But before I
could leave, the thing snuck up on me. Its hands
clasped over mine, hard, gripping the steak I still held.
Pointed forward. Or would you prefer a banana instead? He muttered,
but his voice didn't match his actions. He stepped towards
me while pulling my arms in, driving the stake partly
into his chest. Shark froze me, but as soon as
the adrenaline pumpt I follow through, pushing forward as hard
as I could. The husk fell backward, pulling me with it,
and I straddled it, keeping the stake's position true until
I could drive it deeper. One last time, it thrust
around before finally falling still. I rolled off it, breathing
so hard I thought I would pass out, but compose
myself before getting back up. I slowly unrouted the satchel
to see what was inside and recognized the contents. It
was what the shepherd used to start the fire to
honor mister Martin. I set it on the stone he
seemed to perceive as his market stall and lit it.
It didn't take long to roar to life, and with
some effort, heaved the husk onto it. Watching the smoke
pillar seep into the sky, I paused for a moment
to silently remember mister Martin before cleaning up and heading
back home. I made my way back to town under a
sky that felt different lower somehow, even the stars looked
like they were watching me. People passed me on the street.
But something else caught my attention. The rooftops, the shadows
between buildings, the gaps between street lights. In those spaces,
I saw them figures, tall, narrow things, just watching. Their
eyes didn't glow, but I saw them anyway, like impressions
burned into my vision. I didn't know what was happening.
I wasn't ready for this. Why were there so many?
I needed answers? So I went to the old Shepherd's house.
I knocked nothing. I waited, and still nothing. But I
couldn't walk away. My skin itched like something wanted me
to understand. So I opened the door. The house was dim,
smelled of dust and cedar. I called out, but there
was no reply. I found him in the back room,
slumped in a worn arm chair, peaceful, pale. A single
candle burned low beside him, almost out, he was gone.
I don't know how long I stood there. I don't
know what I said, or if I said anything at all.
My stomach was hollow, not sad, just stripped, worried that
all the answers died with him. But as I looked
around the markings and the walls, the dozens of steaks
lined neatly by the door, and I saw the scattered journals,
flicked through some and everything was in there what he
told me, and more, the scale of the task, the
targets that aim for, and the eyes seeing all those
who remain. And it clicked. He had seen the figures too,
saw them while I was naively worrying about the one
that I had seen. He knew the scope of the job.
That's why he didn't take me in, not wanting to
burden me with this monumental task. And now he was gone,
I walked home without trying to hide anymore. I met
the town's eyes when they glanced up. I saw the
way the shadows shifted behind their curtains. I heard the
slow rhythm of something breathing beneath the dirt. And for
the sake of this man who had thanklessly done this
job for decades, working so long that this role was
only a rumor in my generation, I decided then that
I would be the new shepherd for this town.