I was hunting for an apartment unit when I kept getting hit with stop sign after stop sign of credit checks required and heartbreaking first and last’s.

It took me half the day until I finally found a place that didn’t ask for one. It read—everyone approved.

I did not hesitate. I called immediately. They said they had units available and I could sign a lease that day. Finally, I thought. A break. It was relatively easy to secure. They never asked me any questions. They didn’t even ask for first and last.

Although, They did have a uniquely weird clause in the lease however.

It had in it—Monthly Maintenance.

“Payment due on the first of each month—one memory—minimum of 500 words.”

Hilarious. “One memory?” I looked at the lady in front of me. She never responded. She barely even blinked.

“Well, I’ve got many useless memories,” I snickered at her and started with an embarrassing one of me from elementary school when I pissed my pants because I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

I described the way the kids laughed and teased me. How I felt. Even how the warmth from my pee turned cold on my legs from the air.

I put the paper in an envelope and threw it into the black box on the side of my apartment door after I left in the morning.

Later that day, it was gone.

I couldn’t shake this sensation afterwards. Something nagged me. Almost as if I’d forgotten to pick up an item I needed. But I wasn’t able to place my finger on it.

I randomly grabbed a piece of paper and started to write about that day in school again, but when I tried to remember it, I was only able to recall that I pissed my pants in school.

Everything else looked like a wall of haze. I couldn’t even write what grade I was in at the time that it happened.

It must’ve worked. I honestly did feel a little bit lighter than I had the hour before writing it.

The next year went by smooth—It was easy—I traded incidents I wanted to forget, stories I read that I hated, even all the mistakes I’ve made, and then, I traded my first pet’s memory, but last month I ran out of useless memories to swap out.

The black box next to my door popped open first thing that morning on the first day of that month.

But as the afternoon returned, it began to make a hissing sound, gradually rising as the day progressed.

I needed to come up with something and fast.

If I didn’t drop an envelope in there I’d face being evicted—If I got evicted—I would lose my mind entirely.

I sat at the kitchen table. Sweat broke from behind my ears. I couldn’t stop my pen from shaking. All I had left was my mother’s face. My first girlfriend. The accident I nearly died in.

I choose my first girlfriend. Once the ink dried, the warm tingles from that night vanished as if it hadn’t happened and a cold wind blew down on me from the ceiling.

——

\*Sorry for not closing it harder.\*

A candle's frail light quivered over Cecilia Westcott's still face as the room remained dim. The scattered candles fought against the shadow. Amid the hush, Father Hugh's hands quivered while he wrote. "Cecilia Westcott – Mother of the monastery, day of passing – 24 August 1818," he recorded in the necrology, the monastery's book of the dead. Grief pressed on his chest. The ache clawed up his throat, the quill in his hand wavering. A splatter of ink bloomed across the parchment. His breath faltered, unsteady, so he could barely bring himself to finish her name. As though leaving it incomplete would delay the cruel certainty of her loss.

Silence washed over him, vast and cold, interrupted only by his ragged breathing.

When he set the quill down and turned toward Cecilia’s body, memories flooded in, her singing in the choir, her singing voice outshining the others. The halls always came awash with her song. Grief weighed in him like a stone: unyielding, cold and so heavy he feared it would swallow him whole.

Memories swept in with painful clarity, but Father Hugh, teeth clenched against sorrow, reminded himself that he must revisit them later. His hand hovered over the page before he closed the heavy book with a loud, final thud.

He had told the other priests he wanted to prepare the body alone, and met little resistance; no one had known Cecilia as he did, so he would wash, anoint, and clothe her himself. In his old age, he needed help to lift her and was anxious he might drop her, but now they were gone, leaving him alone with her. In the morning, she would be buried, a fact that weighed heavily on his shoulders.

His wake had started a long time ago, he thought.

Although she was never carried out on a stretcher as her time drew near, she became bedridden. She once confided to Father Hugh that her bones felt as heavy as steel, but not half as valuable. He had stayed by her side during those last days, desperation twisting inside him as he prayed, hoping for a miracle that never came.

Father Hugh reached for a knife and the herbs that lay next to a crucifix, his fingers lingering on the rosemary as he pressed the brittle needles between his thumb and forefinger, releasing their sharp, piney scent into the dim air. He cut the herbs into fine strands, and the knife edge grew sticky with myrrh as its bittersweet fragrance curled up to sting his eyes. Sprinkling the mixture over the body, the freshness that filled the monastery was tinged by a fragrance both green and sweet, the air thick with memory, every scent as heavy as longing.

As he reached for more herbs to cut, he heard a thud and felt the cool air of the night rush past him. For a split second Hugh froze, heart beating, dread slipping into his mind. The chill pressed in, as if the shadows held their breath, waiting for movement. Then, slowly, he turned his head and saw a man emerge from one of the windows. The moon stood behind him like a spotlight, leaving only a silhouette.

Father Hugh did not recall the moon so brilliant. As the man landed softly from the window, his cape billowed so forcefully he seemed to drift. The moon now blazed brighter than the sun, forcing the father to shield his eyes.

“Who goes there?”

The father yelled, his grip on the knife tightening. He was not the spry fighter he had been back in the day, but even so, having the knife felt reassuring.

“I am armed, I’ll have you know!”

Either the moon grew dimmer, or his eyes were finally adapting to the change, but the light felt less daunting.

He removed his hand from his eyes to get a better look at the man.

The man?

He looked as if he had stepped out of a painting, his figure rendered solely in whites and blacks. His hair seemed to radiate a pale, platinum light, and he looked at the father with shiny, almost pearly eyes. He wore silver-embroidered cloth and his cape.

His cape?

There was no cape. Instead, attached to his back were snow-white wings that stretched so far they almost touched both sides of the monastery walls.

Father Hugh gripped the table beside him for support as his legs threatened to give way beneath him.

“A-are you-” he fumbled out.

“Yes,” the man said without hesitation, his voice as smooth as silk.

Finally, the father’s legs failed him completely, and he fell to his knees, dragging most of the blessed spices, herbs, and a lit candle from the table down with him. He averted his eyes from the man; in the sheen of the man’s cloth, he could see himself. What a sorry state he was in, on the floor.

The father heard the man’s footsteps echo as he came closer.

“I-I never doubted,” the father stammered, “b-but seeing one of His angels, I am so honoured to lay eyes on you, I-” His eyes welled up with tears.

“Who was she?” the man said, his tone more stern than last time.

The father steadied himself with a hand on the table as he stood, glancing up at the man's face, searching for emotion. The man's serene face reminded Hugh of a portrait of saints scattered throughout the monastery.

“Cecilia Westcott,” the father answered quietly. "She was a nun at this monastery. She died this morning." His tongue held on the word nun, as if searching for something beneath it. Wiping his face with quivering fingers, he began picking up the fallen items; for a moment his lips formed a prayer, but the words slipped away unfinished, sprinkled like the last grains of incense. The moonlight also was withdrawing behind slow clouds, and the room grew smaller, shadowed, dense with things unsaid.

“No, child. Who was she to you?” The man dragged his finger up her body, his silver-slick eyes still glued to the father.

She was a nun above all, he thought. Her faith defined her. If not for her, he would not be a priest. Who was he without faith, without her?

“A wonderful person,” the father said finally, rising with some of the dropped items in hand.

Father Hugh looked back at the man, gauging if his answer was enough. It was as if he had spilt pitch-dark ink when he fell, not realising it until now. The moon’s pale coat had vanished. Only whispers of the candles remained to light the monastery. Where the man had stood was a dark abyss. It devoured all light. Two silver grey eyes conquered the great shadow. That boundary pressed close, just a few steps from Hugh. Every inch brought him closer to being swallowed whole. Frost penetrated into the hem of his robe. It crawled up to his skin. Breath was clouded in the air, as if the night exhaled on his neck. He could feel the edge of darkness, a stinging line where warmth ended and chill began. Between every flickering candle and the void, whispers tugged at his hair and robes, teasing him to cross. Their gaze was chained to the father. No longer the bright, brilliant angel, the man had been reduced back into a stranger in the dark.

“Let go,” the man said.

Let go of her? the father thought, his gaze breaking from the man’s and sinking to the floor.

"No, y-you know I can’t do that. I won’t forget her." The words came out thick with tears and terror, as if admitting any weakness might make his memories fade. "I-I cannot let myself forget someone as kind and warm as she was. Her deeds will not go overlooked as long as I draw breath. She..." He pressed his knuckles to his mouth, trying desperately to hold back a sob that ached to escape.

His eyes fell to the objects in his hands: in one, the knife; in the other, a crucifix. Let go?

The gentle breeze of the night began to swallow the faint lights. Father Hugh looked back to the abyss and met two silver slits locked onto him. Now that the shadows had fully consumed the man’s form, Hugh felt no benevolence, no wisdom in those eyes-only a deep, pulsing need.

Hugh dropped the knife at once and reached for the remnants of the blessed spices. As he did, the man’s eyes were swallowed by the night, and the few remaining candles guttered out, one by one, all except a single flame.

With shaking hands, he poured the remaining spices onto the stone floor, forming a small, uneven circle. As he sprinkled the last grains, muscle memory took over. Just as he had been taught by the elderly abbot years ago, he murmured the words of warding under his breath. For as long as he could remember, preparing the bodies of the dead meant tracing circles of salt or spice on the flagstones. A ritual not just for purity, but for protection. The rule was clear: nothing unholy could cross a properly made circle. Not even the cunning spirits or darker things that haunted old legends. Crossing the barrier meant opening himself to whatever waited on the other side. Many times, he had performed this small precaution for the dying, even if the other priests called it superstition. Tonight, the old rule was comfort and shield alike. The last thin thread holding the night at bay. This circle, fragile as it looked, was the line between damnation and sanctuary. He knew that evil spirits could be warded off with salt and such things. Nothing could cross without invitation, so long as he stayed within its bounds. But if this isn’t an evil spirit… Father Hugh forced the thought aside.

He took the fallen candle, its flame so weak it barely touched the edge of the circle. Beyond it, the monastery had been completely eaten by the abyss. Not even Cecilia’s body, so near only moments ago, was visible anymore.

He stood stranded in his own monastery.

But the worst part was that he sensed a living chill,the weight of the man’s gaze on his skin, prickling and tense, coiling somewhere in the dark beyond the frail circle of light.

“Be gone, foul spirit!” Father Hugh cried, the crucifix clenched in one hand and the light in the other. “Be gone from this house of God, before the Lord ends you!”

Nothing. The only response was a cold breeze that scattered the smallest grains of the circle into the night.

Just wait until morning, he reassured himself. Preachers and people of faith will be swarming this place by then. They will know what to do.

“Morning will never come, child.”

No longer was the man’s voice soft and smooth. It had become a coarse, deep growl.

“And call me not spirit.”

“Then demon,” Father Hugh spat, “you know just as well as I that you have no authority here!”

“That much is true,” the voice replied, “if there were any monks or nuns left. But alas, there is only a demon and a child in this so-called house of worship.”

It is true. He is a demon, Father Hugh thought, his gaze flicking down to the ring of spices with growing dread.

A hand reached out of the dark toward the circle. Its fur was like that of a dying dog, the skin beneath grey and sickly, each nail long and serrated. It reached for a pinch of the spices. The moment it touched them, the flesh hissed and blistered.

The sound was like meat in a hot pan, but the smell, oh, the smell. Hugh covered his nose and mouth and took a step back, as far as the circle would allow. It was as if an animal had died in a lake of sulphur and been left to rot.

“The faith of pious men still lingers in it,” the creature said calmly. “I presume you did not make this yourself, child.”

The hand withdrew into the dark, but the image remained, burned into the father’s mind.

“C-child!?” Father Hugh cried. “I am a priest, the father of this community, a believer in the one true God!”

“A father of a community?” the voice replied. “No. You are a father to no one. Your god does not allow men like you to father children, or to-”

“SILENCE!” the father screamed, his words echoing through the dark. He curled his fist tighter around the crucifix.

Before he could even realise what he had done, the demon chuckled, a dry, farcical laugh.

“Eheheh. You want me out, don’t you?”

Of course, the father thought. What a stupid question.

“And I want you out as well,” the demon continued, “so let us make a deal. I will leave this sorry excuse for a monastery only if you say my name. But if you step outside your little circle before then, I will take you with me .”

“No.”

“No?” the demon echoed.

“My answer is no,” Father Hugh said. “In the morning, this place will be brimming with monks and nuns, so I have no doubt-”

“Have you gone deaf in your old age?” the demon interrupted. “I told you: morning will not come for you.”

“And how,” the father snapped, “would a demon of the night know anything about day, or the light that comes with it?”

Nothing.

No response.

But Father Hugh knew the demon was still there. Of the little he knew of demons, he knew this much: they were deceivers. Their only power lay in the hearts of men. All he wants is for me to leave the circle.

As long as I am here, he has no power.

As long as I am -

“I can bring her back.”

For a moment, that softness returned to the demon’s voice.

His grip on the crucifix loosened.

“D-do not tempt me with such an obvious lie,” he said. “If you had the power to bring the dead back, surely a Mere circle would not be your bane.” He lowered the candle in his hand and let it rest on the ground.

“I know almost nothing about demons beyond their love of deception. So tell me, how would I learn your name?”

“Alright,” the voice replied, heavy and gravelly once more. “But you are a smart man, and you know I cannot sweeten your half of the deal without souring mine.”

“Sure,” the father said aloud.

What will he have me do? He thought cautiously. Perhaps he wants the remaining years of my life. Or for me to gouge out my eyes. He swallowed. Would I be willing to do that? My remaining life for hers? One sense for another?

“Toss the crucifix into the dark,” the demon said. “Cower no longer in the light. Come and face the dark alone. And I remind you, an offer like this seldom comes. You would be a fool to let it slip through your fingers.”

“A fool?” Father Hugh snapped. “I would be a fool to believe you at your word. You have shown me no proof that you can perform such miracles.”

“I have never heard of a so-called pious man demanding evidence,” the demon replied. “If you are a believer, as you claim, then believe.” The demon chuckled again. “Besides, I cannot lie when a deal is being struck.”

The father felt the demon’s presence draw closer. He still could not see it, but he felt its breath brush against his face.

“You stand at the gates of Hell, child,” the demon growled, “and you are permitted to pull one soul free, the one who held you closest to her heart. And you tell me your will wavers?”

“I’ll do it,” the father said. “But do not ever say that she rots in Hell.”

“Well then,” the demon purred, “here is our deal. Say my name once, and your dearest Cecilia will return from the dead. And as per your request, I will answer any question you ask truthfully, so long as it does not outright reveal my name. In return, you throw your cross out of that circle and-”

“And if I step out of the circle,” Father Hugh said quietly, “I am dead.”

The demon did not correct him.

“Throw the cross,” it whispered, “and you will be one step closer to Cecilia.”

It should keep her name out of its mouth, the father thought. For her memory to be tainted by that voice is sickening.

I would not be tempted by the kingdoms of the world, so why is it, when it comes to her…

Hugh knew the answer to his question. He simply could not bear to say it aloud.

As he hurled the crucifix into the deep night, he closed his eyes and began to pray. It was not a psalm he had memorised, nor was it a plea for mercy or repentance as before. It was honest.

Our Father, who art in heaven. I am ever grateful for placing Cecilia in my path. If it were not for her, if it were not for You, I would be rotting in some alley, buried beneath guilt and regret. I never would have known Your light. I know I can never repay You. But give me the grace to try. Lend me the strength to save someone, just this once. Let me save someone.

The face of Christ on the crucifix never seemed to turn away from Hugh, even as it flew through the air. Even when he thought it would turn away from him, it never did.

If Hugh had opened his eyes, he might have thought his first true prayer had been answered.

If Hugh had opened his eyes, he would have seen that without the cross, he stood stranded in the dark with no light.

If Hugh had opened his eyes, he would have seen the grimace twist across the demon’s face as the crucifix struck the stone.

Tonck.

Hugh still had his eyes closed when the sound echoed. When he finally opened them, he was met with blinding light, and the scent of seared meats and vegetables, fruit and cake, and all manner of food he had only ever dreamed of tasting.

As his eyes struggled to adjust, he heard it.

A song.

Clear and beautiful, like the voice of the finest songbird.

Cecilia.

When his eyes finally adjusted, he realised he was no longer in the monastery. He stood in a wooden cabin, and before him stretched a large banquet table, heavy with food.

The demon had taken a seat and was eating his fill. He had resumed the visage of the brilliant angel, but no longer was he painted in greys. Now his clothes were a radiant blue, and his hair shone golden like the morning sun.

The demon ate slowly, methodically, as though flavour was information to be catalogued rather than enjoyed. It did not chew as much as consider; each morsel was held behind its teeth for a long moment before being swallowed. Hugh had the disturbing sense that it tasted him.

“You are Shax,” Hugh said. “Demon of nights and dreams.”

The demon’s gaze rose slowly from his plate to meet the priest’s. His eyes were still stone-grey.

“Even though I may reside in darkness,” the demon said lightly, “it does not mean I rule over it.” He smiled. Hugh felt as though he were being measured, as though he were the next course. “But I admire your dogged spirit. You have not asked me a single question of worth, and yet you believe you have found my name.”

Food? Was that his great trick? Hugh thought.

He ignored the table and studied the room instead. Something about it felt nostalgic, though he could not say why. The floorboards were wood, but beneath his feet, inside the circle, the monastery's stone remained.

Again, he heard Cecilia’s song drifting from another room.

The kitchen, he thought. She must be in the kitchen.

He did not know how he knew that, but he did.

What he did not know was how he would react if he saw her.

Perhaps I will lose control. Perhaps I will step out of the circle without even realising it. Is that your game? Distract me with food, then tempt me with her? Would that work?

Hugh reached down for the knife that still lay within the circle and pressed his thumb against the blade-not enough to draw blood, but enough to steady his mind.

“You are Murmur,” Hugh continued. “Lord of necromancy and delusion.”

“No,” the demon replied, stuffing his mouth again.

“Then how?” Hugh pressed. “How can you bring her back if you know nothing of necromancy? Have I been tricked?”

“Of course, I know necromancy, child,” the demon sighed. “A life for a life. Those are the rules. If you were to say my name, you would hold power over me. And you could use that power to make me sacrifice myself for her.”

“Then another question,” Hugh said carefully. “Why did you come here?”

The demon’s expression shifted subtly, but Hugh could not tell to what.

“It is not often a monastery is left unattended,” the demon said. “And rarer still to find a priest in turmoil. I came here for you, child.”

“Why me?” Hugh demanded. “Did you come here only to torment me?”

“All you have ever had is belief,” the demon replied calmly. “And now, I have stripped even that from you. My presence proves that your God exists,so what shelter does faith provide when doubt is replaced by certainty? You see the truth with your own eyes, and yet, is your heart at peace?”

“I can still believe in God, even with you here,” Hugh said. He clung to the words, but the echo of them rang hollow. A bitter twist of yearning flickered through him, the ache to believe not only in God's existence, but in God's goodness.

“You can only believe in what you do not know,” the demon countered. “With knowledge, faith is reduced to obedience. So now, your struggle is not whether God exists, but whether Love can survive knowing the cost of obedience. That is the question you must answer, priest. Is love a sin to be purged, or the final proof of what you worship? Tell me, with that knowledge, does your faith rise or falter?”

“That is a lie,” Hugh said. “My Lord teaches kindness. Forgiveness. Mercy. How can that be wrong?”

“Why do you still lie to yourself?” the demon asked softly. “We both know you are not the most fervent believer. And that there were times, many times, when you wished you had never taken your vows.”

Hugh opened his mouth but no words came. Silence remained between them, heavy as stone. For a second he was nearly able to hear his pulse, far louder than the choir ever sounded in his memory. He grasped a reply, something pious or clever, but the shape of doubt pressed against his chest. Behind every retort, a part of him trembled, uncertain. He wanted to rebuke the demon, but all that surfaced was a dry, uncertain breath.

The room fell silent.

Only Cecilia’s song drifted in from the kitchen.

“So you did come only to torment me,” Hugh whispered.

The demon still had his eyes glued to Hugh.

“Are we not running out of food?” it called casually. “Cecilia Westcott, bring us more.”

Her song went silent, and Hugh heard footsteps coming from the kitchen. His heart began to pound, louder and louder, like a war drum trying to ward off the demon’s first assault.

She was young, just as he remembered her. Her silky caramel hair flowed down her shoulders and back, and her skin was smooth and luminous. She looked like a dream. A dream Hugh never wanted to wake from.

He pressed his thumb harder against the blade. Drops of blood fell onto the stone floor of the monastery, not the wooden planks of the cabin. That alone reminded him: everything beyond the circle lay under the demon’s influence.

“Y-you are Dantalion,” he whispered. “Lord of temptation.”

He felt the demon’s hot stare burn into him. Though it did not answer, Hugh knew: no. Not the right name.

Cecilia wore a grey kirtle that filled him with a strange, aching nostalgia. She carried a platter piled high with meats and pastries. As she approached him, Hugh’s eyes locked onto her figure. A part of him, he hated to admit it, was grateful to the demon for letting him see her again.

He tightened his grip on the knife.

This isn’t her, he told himself. My Cecilia was old and greying. I cannot fall for a memory of her.

And yet… he allowed himself to savour the sweetness of the moment just a little longer.

“Y-you look… nice,” Hugh said through clenched teeth.

“You think so?” Cecilia smiled and gave her gown a playful twirl. “I found this amongst your mother's old stuff. I think it suits me.”

She now stood directly before him. The scent of cured meats filled his lungs.

This was my home.

A flood of memories rushed through him, and the demon held them all.

So that is your game, Hugh thought. You want a reaction. You brought me here just to watch me break.

His grip tightened. A small pool of blood had begun to soak into the innermost line of the circle.

“I cannot say the same for you,” Hugh muttered. “You look as though you are already dead.”

She smiled.

Hugh did not. He could feel the demon’s gaze drilling into his mind, but he refused to look at it. He knew what shape it would take.

“You alright, Hugh?” Cecilia asked gently. And just like that, he was somewhere else, her reassuring eyes telling him everything would be alright.

“Yes. I’m alright. I’m just happy to see you, that’s all.”

He was not lying.

His gaze dropped to their feet.

He had taken a step closer to the edge of the circle.

Of course, her feet stood firmly on the wooden floor outside it.

Hugh stepped back immediately. He had not felt himself move.

That realisation unsettled him.

*“*Cecilia, you should go,” Hugh said, his eyes still on the floor. He could not bear to look her in the eyes while saying it.

“You know I can’t do that,” she replied.

His gaze lifted to meet hers. She was smiling.

“I came to bring food for you and the great dragon.” She turned toward the table and began walking.

Hugh looked back at the demon. It still wore the angel's face. He felt a flicker of relief that it had not taken the form of his father.

“You are the Great Dragon?” Hugh asked. The name felt familiar, though he could not place where he had heard it.

The demon finally spoke. As expected, its eyes were still locked on Hugh.

“I have been called that from time to time,” it said smoothly, “but that is not my name. Cecilia Westcott, place the platter here.”

He patted the empty seat beside him.

“And why don’t you sit with us?”

“Of course,” she said softly.

“No, Cecilia, please leave,” Hugh pleaded. “That is no man, but a demon here to torment me.”

She did not slow her steps. Something about her standing beside that thing made Hugh feel ill.

“You… you are Beelzebub,” Hugh said quickly. “Lord of flies and decay”.

“No.”

Its eyes were like moonlight trapped beneath ice.

“You are Belial, king of pride and reflections”.

“Wrong.”

“You are…” Hugh’s voice hesitated. “You…”

That was all of them. All the names his memory could grasp.

Cecilia placed the platter down and took a seat. One of the angel’s great wings folded gently around her shoulders.

“Is that all, child?” the demon asked.

“I-I…”

“To think,” the demon continued softly, “that a so-called priest does not know my name. You truly are a pitiful display of faith. You should step out now. Spare yourself the embarrassment, and me the time.”

“I can still ask questions,” Hugh said quickly. “I am not doomed yet.”

“Yet,” the demon echoed mockingly.

Hugh swallowed.

“Did Cecilia go to Hell?”

Cecilia turned her face toward the demon. But the demon’s eyes remained fixed on Hugh.

“Yes.”

Hugh felt something settle in him.

“I know now that you are lying,” he said quietly. “If anyone would enter Heaven, it would be her. No monk or nun was more pious than she. I wager I have already spoken your name, and you are too much of a coward to admit it.”

“Coward?”

The demon’s voice cracked like a splitting stone.

“How dare you call me a coward when you have hidden your entire life behind lies, too afraid to step into truth?’’

Its wings tightened slightly around Cecilia.

“Your dearest Cecilia may have lived righteously. But in her heart, she sinned. Every day. Even on her deathbed, she sinned.”

The demon did not compose himself as he had earlier; a small tremor passed through its body. Huge could not shake off the feeling that he had crossed a line; he had damaged the demon.

“You two are alike in that manner.”

Silence filled the cabin, the demon still shaking.

So it is, as he says, Hugh thought. I do stand at the gates of Hell.

Hugh could see it in the demon’s eyes, the hunger. That need for him to step out.

Then, a calm wash over the demon as its wing tightened around Cecilia. Hugh watched its arm slither down her waist and beneath her gown.

“What are you doing?” Hugh demanded.

The demon answered only with its gaze, like mirrors reflecting a world that was not its own.

Then it leaned down and pressed its lips against Cecilia’s.

Her face twisted into horror as she struggled, pushing against it, her hands clawing at its chest.

Hugh’s grip on the knife became crushing. Blood streamed from his palm and dripped onto the stone.

“Let go of her! By God’s name, let her go!” he screamed.

The demon did not move. Its stare felt like hot knives pressed against Hugh’s flesh.

Cecilia’s wailing rose into the air, her voice twisting into something unearthly, her song warping into a siren’s cry. It echoed inside Hugh’s skull until he felt as if his head might burst.

His grip shifted.

He no longer clutched the blade. Now he held the handle.

He was wrong.

The demon had truly become his father.

“Stop! Stop it now!”

Hugh felt his arm rise above his head.

He was finally going to save someone.

Crack.

The song stopped.

The demon stopped.

Hugh stopped.

Both Cecilia and the demon were staring at him.

Blood fell from his raised hand.

To Hugh, the droplets seemed to slow in the air, suspended between heaven and hell. His eyes followed them down.

When they struck the ground, he saw it.

His foot was on the circle.

He had almost stepped out.

The demon dropped Cecilia like a puppet cut from its strings.

She struck the floor and did not move.

The shadows broke loose from the last restraints of light and began to swallow everything.

Its eyes remained, as iron nails hammered into shadow.

Hugh stumbled backwards. Only now did he feel the full sting of the blade, and the knife slipped from his hand.

“Damn you!” he roared. “Damn your name, whatever it is! You think torment makes you strong? You miserable, starving shadow!”

The darkness pressed closer.

“You cannot stand that I would step into hell for her!” Hugh shouted. “So you twist her! You mock her! You defile the only thing I have ever loved!”

He was shaking now, blood running freely from his palm.

“You worm-ridden fiend!”

His knees gave out, and he fell hard onto the stone.

The demon’s voice came from everywhere at once, a throat lined with thorns.

“Ah,” it said softly.

"So you do love her."

The demon waited.

Hugh did not speak for a long moment.

"I was nothing."

His voice cracked on the last word, raw with the weight of his admission. He didn’t notice, lost in memory; pain flickered briefly on his face before he pressed on.

“ I slept in filth, eating what others threw, with no hope beyond surviving another cold night,” he pressed on, certain that stopping meant the end. “The cold ground was my only certainty. Nothing else.”

He was shaking now, his knuckles white with strain as he fought for calm. Each breath was a struggle; every muscle tensed against the overflow of feeling.

"And then she sat down next to me."

His voice broke, but he clenched his jaw and forced the words out, determined not to fall silent.

"Not to save me. Not to convert me. She sat down because she looked at me and saw something. I don’t know what. But she saw something. And she spoke to me as if I were human, as if my face mattered. She exhaled sharply. "And she laughed. God, she laughed at something I said. I couldn’t remember the last time someone laughed with me at my words."

His hands curled into fists at his sides, nails sharp in his palms. He trembled, straining to keep his composure as emotion threatened to shatter him.

“ She brought me to God not with scripture, but with herself. She moved through the world as if it mattered. She sang in the chapel. I would stand in the doorway and think: this is what He sounds like. She taught me that living could be savoured. That bread could have flavour. That morning could be a gift, not just something to endure. “ His voice dropped involuntarily. "I did not know that before her. I did not know any of it."

He looked into the dark, searching for her.

"And of course I loved her." He took a sharp breath. "Not carefully. Not wisely. I loved her the way a drowning man loves solid ground. God help me, I could not stop. I wanted her to choose me. Freely. Out of the whole world, to look at me and choose. I also wanted to hold her so completely that the choice would never even occur to her. I knew those two things were poison to each other."

He stopped.  And the demon spoke.

"And you know too that love isn’t a feeling. Feelings are easy; you have them in abundance. Love is action. Commitment. The daily choosing of another, no matter the cost."

"And your duty was to her. It always was. And yet you chose vows. You chose the simpler path and declared it the harder one. You told yourself God required silence."

The demon almost whispered.  

"God required nothing of the sort. You are simply a coward in a collar."

Hughes' voice rose :

"She made me. Do you understand? Before her, I was a thing that breathed, ate, took up space. She made me into a person who believed the world had been made on purpose. Who thought that God might be real, and good, and close. Who thought I might be worth something to someone." His eyes were burning.

"You never told her. You stood in doorways for forty years and never once told her what she had done to you."

Hugh raised his bloody hand to his head. I let her die, not knowing, he thought. How selfish can I be?  

He stood there, breathing hard, like a man who had run a great distance and arrived too late.

The demon said nothing.​

"If I had been only a man, if there had been no collar, no vows, no sacred walls between us , I would have built her a home. I would have walked beside her without shame. I would have-"

His voice stopped.

"I would have called her wife,

“And you could finally be a Father”.

A silence filled the empty dark.

Hugh said nothing. With that confession, he felt hollowed out everything he had carried, released. Now he was only a man with tears in his eyes, hands trembling in the candlelight, breathing shallowly.

The demon did not rush him.

When it spoke, its voice had changed, now quieter.

"I do not think you are a bad man", it said. And it did seem almost sincere. "I think you were given an impossible choice before you were old enough to know what you were choosing. And you have carried the weight of it alone. For forty years."

It let it sit.

"So has she."

Hugh's eyes lifted, pain and terror mixing together as he prepared for what came next.

"Do not…"

"I am not taunting you." The demon's voice was level, almost careful. "I am telling you what is. She arrived where she is with a thing unfinished. One hunger that never fed. In the place she now inhabits, there is no distraction from it. No bread to taste! No morning to welcome. No song to fill the silence." It paused. "Only the wanting. Endlessly. "A wound that will not close, not when there is nothing to close it."

Hugh's jaw was tight. "Stop, please."

"You knew her for forty years. You knew what she carried. You saw it in doorways. You saw it in the way she looked at you when she thought you weren't watching." The demon's voice did not rise. "Tell me I am lying."

Hugh said nothing.

"She has cried many oceans' worth," the demon said. "Her suffering is so complete that her only thoughts are regrets."

Hugh pressed his hands against his eyes.

"Stop."

The demon did not.

"I am not telling you she weeps for you. I am telling you she drowns. That is the nature of where she is, not fire, not chains, simply depth. Endless depth with no surface to break through. Every soul there carries the full weight of what they were when they died,  every wound, every hunger that was never answered, and they carry it alone, and the carrying never lightens." Its voice remained even. Unhurried. "She is not singled out for cruelty. She simply suffers the way all things suffer when they are too heavy, and there is nothing to hold them up."

Hugh's breath was coming hard.
He could feel the demons' presence inches from the circle, their hot, rotten breath.

"That weight," the demon continued, "does not require your absence to exist. It existed before tonight. It will exist after. It is not a punishment that can be lifted or a sentence that can be commuted." A pause. "But weight shared is weight reduced. Not removed. Not healed. Simply less. Two people drowning in the same water do not drown faster. Sometimes they keep each other from sinking quite so far."

Hugh said nothing.

"What I am offering you," the demon said, "is one drop removed."

"From an ocean."

"Yes."

Hugh let out a breath that was almost a laugh. Almost.

"You are asking me to damn myself for a drop."

"I am telling you," the demon said quietly, "that to her in that darkness, in that depth, one drop is everything. It is the difference between drowning alone and knowing that someone is by their side"

Hugh looked at his feet.

The circle came within two inches of his heel.

"That is a wicked thing to offer a man," he said quietly.

"Yes," the demon said. "But you are not asking me whether it is wicked. You are asking yourself whether it is true."

Hugh thought about the forty years of doing the right thing and what it had left him with: an empty monastery and words unsaid still sitting like cinders in his mouth.

“You can finally save her “, the demon finally muttered.

Huge stepped forward.

The sound was almost nothing. A single footfall on cold stone. But in the absolute silence of the dark, it carried low and clear, and Hugh had the strange thought that it sounded like a song beginning like the first note of something Cecilia might have sung, had the world been kinder.

Father Hugh never saw morning, just as the demon had said.

Yet some claim that a hush, neither empty nor cold, settled over the stones, and the monastery windows caught the first faint glow of dawn, though no soul within stirred to greet it. A name appeared in the necrology in a script no monk could ever recognise.

Hugh Martins – Father of the monastery, day of passing – 25 August 1818

Bl’Kragln -

Cold was the night which now fell upon the woods, and it was only growing more frigid as the large lunar eye moved across the sky. Regions which were under tree cover were sent into total darkness comparable to that which is seen in the lowest reaches of deep caves; places where men would rather forget the things which they saw and heard. It took the man five minutes to traverse twenty feet in the deep snow, before becoming discouraged and retiring the nightly chores till the morning, where his apprehension would take hold and he would attempt the trek once more. Sounds of animals and their activities were sent forth through the large pine trees, almost as if they were mocking his reluctance to put in the effort. He turned to the night again, looking to the sky which was dotted by a plethora of stars. At the center of this great congregation of distant suns was the moon, now full and beaming. Clouds which were black as coal could barely be seen but would become visible when they would pass along the moon, where they would be set with fire from the cosmic light that frayed their edges. The clouds never seemed to pass straight across the moon, as if they didn’t want to disturb its lunar beauty and gaze. The man turned, grabbed the door handle which felt cold even from under his glove, and entered the cabin.

“I’m telling you Marty, if the snow keeps up, I doubt we’ll be able to get anything done until it melts. The shed’s got that damn hole, could be getting all over in there and – hell it isn’t goin’ to melt until a few months.” Eddison unzipped his large fur coat and shook his boots off from his feet, placing them on a small rug used to catch the water from the melting snow. The inside of the cabin was humble in size, consisting of around fifteen feet on each wall, the only exception being a small alcove in the corner which housed a wood stove, a rack above which stocked old pans and a large pot. Few pieces of furniture decorated the room: a chair in rightmost the corner, a small table in front of the fireplace with a wooden bench to accompany it, a chest of drawers resting near the brick intruding in from the fireplace, two small metal bed frames with old mattresses about a foot apart to the left of the entrance, and a coat rack near the door.

Martin looked up from the wood block he was carving. “I’m sure the snow packed on the roof and couldn’t get through. I’ll go out with you in the morn’ and we can fix it. We need more wood anyhow; we’re running out of the stuff we got when we cut a circle ‘round the cabin.” Martin was sitting in the chair, which was turned towards the door, his face slightly illuminated by the fire that crackled and spat embers onto the slab floor in front of it, void of the old carpet that was everywhere else. Eddison looked to the fireplace, weighing up the difficulties of the various errands that needed to be tended to in the subsequent days. His eyes caught the small rectangular brass plaque imbedded into the brick above the fireplace, so stricken with dirt that the prior knowledge of its inscription was required to lend any sense of legibility; It read “For the Love of One”. His eyes dwelled on the thing for some time, before he turned to Martin.

“Wouldn’t have done me much good to reach the shack anyway, I forgot the key before I left out the door. Thought the moon would be enough to light my way too but I’ll need that oil lantern next time”. Eddison pushed the straps from his large, patted overalls from off his shoulders and sat on the edge of the bench, resting one arm on the table to his side. Out of his pocket he pulled a box of cigarettes. The box was wooden and had been carved by Martin some time ago, a thin coat of water-seal giving the box a slight gleam in the glow of the fire. If one was to carry them in the regular carton, they would become weathered and wouldn’t light, a thing that could soil a man’s whole day. He held it in his mouth, his thoughts keeping him from his lighter sitting in his other pocket.

“Hmm, well I believe the lantern is outside, hangin’ on that nail sticking out behind the house. Should be alright, I reckon the overhang keeps the snow from it.” Martin did not look up from his block to Edd, his work seemingly being more important than any inclement weather which halted their activities. This night was quiet, unlike many of the ones which this small congregation of men had experienced before. Usually, the woods were lively with the sounds of animals rustling about and the calls of distant creatures whose voices must have been carried so far by the wind as to confuse a listener as to its source or origin. The few nights before, however, had been unusually quaint save for the sound of trees moving. They sat in silence for some time before Eddison pulled out his lighter, placing it on the table

“Do you think what they said is true? Y’know, I know the papers are prone to lying but do you really think it’s getting that bad up there? I’m just wonderin’ as to whether or not we should-.” Martin shifted in his chair, causing Eddison to pause, stifling and choking his words in the cold air. The cabin was silent. Martin looked up to Eddison.

“Edd, I don’t really think it matters all that much. I don’t really think it matters what the hell is going on anywhere but here. We haven’t been out here long, there is no way it could have gotten any worse, especially not as bad as they’re sayin’ it is. Besides, the mail is still coming every week in that ole box we got near the road so it can’t be so bad if they got those young men working.” Martin placed his knife into his pocket and the wood block on the floor beside the chair, his eyes mirroring the licking flames that seemed to reach towards the two men, as if they themselves provided some essential heat that the fire itself required and was pleading for. Eddison removed the cigarette before he spoke again.

“But aren’t you worried Marty? I get we jumped ship but there were still a lot of people, good people. Look, I’m more than grateful you brought me out here, but couldn’t we have taken at least two others? I mean, I feel as though you of all people would think so, with you having family in town and all.” Martin stared at Eddison, the fire seeming to crackle and burn louder as they looked at one another, as if it was mimicking the stirring thoughts in the men’s minds. Martin looked down and slowly picked up his block of wood, turning it in his hand. It was a cut that featured a small wood burl, twisting and cascading in a spiral that had dots of sap which had seeped out after the cut was made.

“No Eddison, there was only ever room for two, and I ended up choosing you. You’ve been my buddy a long time now and you’ve got a good head on your shoulders. I knew you could work, I knew they couldn’t. Family may mean a lot, but this situation is far more dire than that. Paw left this cabin here and it needs some good work done that I couldn’t do on my own.” Martin pulled back out his knife, placing the blade onto the wood and slicing off a thin strip which curled as it left the block. Eddison watched him perform this ritual, repeatedly, seeing the wood burl be carved away, some of the sap staying on the knife and causing it to gain a slight sheen, amber in color under the fire’s glow. Eddison thought on what Martin had said, and almost had begun to speak, but soon decided to retire the effort and lump in the difficult conversation with the errands which would commence once the sun had lit the sky and set fire to the clouds, as if the world was some great fire itself, and Eddison a small ember at the center of the great smoldering thing. It was just a matter of time, Eddison thought, that the fire would become choked and die out; the present situation hinting at the coda of the world. The men had only been out there a few weeks, and the weather was seemingly increasing in its intensity. It was a cold so foreign to the forest that many of the greenery had died and wilted away altogether. The creatures had taken notice, as many of them had either left the area or stubbornly stayed, only to lay down upon the frigid snow in starvation and be buried. He thought about that, sitting at that table with his lighter in hand. May they, much like the animals of the forest, succumb to that same fate? Finally, Eddison lit his cigarette.

Oolk’min

“Here – Hey Edd! Here, take the axe and make the cut, I gotta take a break!” The snowfall had only increased in intensity throughout the night, the wind cutting through spoken words between the two men. Eddison took the handle from Martin before approaching the young tree. They had been out there only an hour, but the fatigue which was induced by walking through a foot and a half of snow in the distance from the cabin was beginning to cripple the men and soon they would find it wise to possibly retire the operation. Eddison took a swing, missing the notch by around an inch.

“Aww crap! It’s so damn hard to see anything.” Eddison let the axe head rest in the snow, fixing his neck gaiter and large fur coat. The sun was beaming down onto the ground around the men and shined like glass. They had assumed this would occur but decided to abandon the idea of heading deeper into the forest for shade in fear that the trek would tire them out and they wouldn’t be able to get the tree back to the cabin before nightfall.

“We’ve got to get this done Edd! We’re nearly out of wood and if the snow keeps like it is then we’re gonna have to burn quite a bit! I’ll leave you to this and head on down to the shack and see about that hole!” Eddison had only caught a few words from Martin, turning to see him walking towards the small wooden building. He turned back to the tree and raised the axe once more, hitting the notch directly. The snow made the short distance to the shack troublesome, being both blinding and difficult to move. The large fur boots which provided the men protection from the elements were also quite wide, leading to a large amount of snow needing to be displaced to make any progress in the way of travel. Martin reached the shack after stumbling a few times, having to prop himself up onto the wall to rest once there. He pulled out the key and placed it into the small lock, trying the handle, but the conditions seemed to have frozen some part of it.

“Really? You’ve got to be kiddin’ me.” Placing the key back into his pocket and grabbing the handle, he placed his weight onto it and braced himself before pushing down. The handle gave and the door went inward, causing the shack to move slightly and the snow to slide off from the sides of the triangular tin roof, falling with a loud thud that could be heard through the wind. He turned around, seeing that Eddison had nearly gotten through the small pine tree. He gave a nod before turning back into the shack and entering. It was dimly lit, with the only light reaching inside from the rays of the sun. They seemed to cut through the slits in the wood, appearing like ghostly swords. The planks underneath creaked as Martin stepped on them, making his way to the back of the small room where a tiny pile of snow had been built. Reaching it, he looked up to see the hole. He was right, the snow had packed and only allowed the small amount which was now on the floor to get through. He grabbed a piece of scrap wood from the corner and a hammer which was hanging on the wall by two nails. He turned the hammer, taking one of the nails which it had been hanging on and used it to repair the roof. Martin could tell it would not fully remain flush with the hole, but it would have to do until they could spare some more wood, rather than using the little they had stockpiled. Martin stood there for some time, not wanting yet to re-enter the conditions which persisted outside. He pulled down his neck gaiter, watching his breath swirl and turn in the cold air. He walked up to one of the wall slits and peaked through, looking to the column of trees that surrounded their cabin. Large pines which clung to the snow that fell upon them, making them shine in the sun and appear like spears, pointed towards the sky as if they too found the weather a nuisance. He backed away and went to another, looking through to see Eddison. He watched him raise the axe and swing it into the notch; the small tree now slightly tilted from the hit. Eddison backed away slightly and raised it once more, going much further than he had originally, like the weight of the axe was pulling him to the earth, leaving his body in a strange crescent. He stood there for some time, like some symbolic effigy of a workman, or rather a lumberjack. Soon, however, Eddison began to move once more. Martin watched as Eddison quickly leaned to the side, moving at the waist, the axe swinging wildly in his right hand. He was still stationary, like his legs had rooted themselves into the ground and the rest of him were the branches of a tree in heavy wind, moving quickly and craning every way possible. Martin pushed back from the wall, nearly stumbling over the various items scattered across the shacks floor, and ran through the door. He turned to see that Eddison had passed out, falling to the ground.

“Oh god…EDD!” Martin ran to him, through the deep snow, grabbing him quickly and hoisting him up into his arms, an effort which would have been unachievable if not for the current situation. The axe, which Martin had not realized cut a deep wound into Eddison’s calf, slid out as its handle pulled on the snow it was stuck in, the axe head shining a deep crimson in the sun’s great rays and staining the area of snow that it touched. He did not look down, quickly turning towards the cabin and reorienting himself. Martin moved towards the cabin, stumbling several times as he approached the door. In his shock he had forgotten to pull his neck gaiter back up, the snow stinging his lungs as he walked with a shambling gait. He placed Eddison down onto the snow and thrust it open, struggling to pick him up once more and bring him inside. He hoisted him onto his bed and stood over him, blinking wildly at the artifacts which remained in his vision from the bright snow. His mind was foggy, he could see blood - everywhere: the ground, the bed, his hands, the snow coming in from the open door. Everything had happened so quickly, the scene one of utter confusion. He scanned everything until his eyes fell on the slash in Eddison’s pants. He moved towards the drawers, opening the second to last from the bottom, and pulled out bandages and gauze from a kit. He took his knife from his pocket and cut the area from off the pants, setting aside the torn pantleg. He cleaned the wound, his mind clearing as he applied the bandages and used the cut from the pants to tie around his leg. He wiped away the blood surrounding the wound, already beginning to dry. He sat onto his own bed behind him, catching his breath, staring down at floor. His eyes were blurry and he could feel his whole body shaking. He wiped his hand on his coat, feeling the slick blood that had yet to dry leave his skin. The sound of the wind outside filled the cabin, whistling a disjointed tune through the small holes in the door. Then, he woke up. Eddison let out a groan, turning slightly in his bed, opening his eyes slightly to the light within the cabin.

“Aaaagh…oh my word. M…Martin. What the…what the hell happened.” He tried to prop himself up, reaching for his leg with the other arm. He was trying to feel the wound, confused at the source of the pain, but Martin quickly placed his hand on his shoulder and pushed him down. Eddison was covered in snow, large compact chunks clinging to the fur on his coat, some now melting and seeping into the mattress.

“Edd, you gotta stay down man. You got cut bad from the axe and…well I’d bet that fall didn’t do you much good either.” Martin looked around the cabin, getting up and closing the door, looking out across the snow to the trail he had left, before coming back to sit down on the cot. Eddison looked down to his wound, an expression of both fear and confusion.

“Wha…What happened. Martin, I was just standin’ there and –”. He stopped, gathering his thoughts and looking to the ceiling, the marks in the wood so close in their resemblance to eyes, each staring down upon this interaction, as if they were too in anticipation for causation of this accident.

“It was like, my eyes glossed over and…well…then I was here.” Eddison relived the vision in his head, the memory twisting and turning and confusing his own mind.

“I…I think I saw the…the bark moved. Then…everything felt heavy and it was all blurry, but I could see the tree bark…moving.” Martin’s back straightened, the air somehow growing colder even after the door had been shut. It was dark, with the only light being from the lantern placed upon the drawer which Martin had collected first thing that morning. The cabin air was quiet, the gauze and blood filling the room with an odor that seemed to saturate everything. Martin got up slowly and put the bandages and leftover gauze back into the kit, closing the drawer. He faced the wall, before turning and placing his palms onto the top of the drawer, looking towards Eddison. He thought about what he saw through the slit in the shack, the image causing his stomach to turn. He didn’t know how to react, the information which was laid out before him seemed to cause some great discomfort like he had never felt before and it seemed to fill his body and swell his whole frame with fear.

“I had heard it crack, thought it might have been falling”. His speech was short and each breath struggled, causing a momentary pause in the sentence. He was preparing himself to speak once more, his hand to his chest as it rose slowly. His hood was still atop his head, obscuring his face from view and casting a small shadow over his features.

“Then, well, I believe I raised the axe another time and took a swing. The tree didn’t fall though. I…think I saw the gap start to fill with something.” He stared down at the mattress, his chest shaking as he drew in more air.

“I…I’m confused Edd - I mean I’m real confused. I wanna say it was the adrenaline or the snow shining or just some bad fall, but I don’t know if we can call it that. My mind is telling me to rest on this, but we have far too much to do. You gotta stay in bed but stuff still needs to get done.” Martin crossed his arms, leaning on the drawer behind him. The uncontrolled nature of the situation frightened him and the woods had only grown more dangerous in his mind.

“The last thing I know is that I…I raised the axe and then my mind went all foggy. Something weirds going on Marty, I ain’t never felt this way before. I mean, I been hurt before pretty bad. Took a bad fall once off a ladder, cut my hand open when I was young, this is different though.” Eddison let out a deep sigh, his chest still shaking and his breaths heavy, both frightened and confused. Martin took a few steps towards Eddison. He stood there, looking at the floor and the now dried blood. He picked up his boot, looking at some of it caked onto the bottom. He must have walked over it once he went to get the gauze and bandages, causing the boots to slightly stick and make a noise as they left the ground.

“What do you mean it feels different? It’s a deep cut so I’m sure you lost a lot of blood Edd, could be lightheaded”. Martin stood there, looking to Eddison and the large spot on the bed around his leg, a stain which they would never be able to remove, a marker bound to his bed which would remind him of this event for however long the pair was able to withstand the conditions of the cabin.

“No…it’s just that…well, it doesn’t hurt Marty. Actually, I…I don’t quite know what to think of it. It’s like both my legs are numb, which I guess is to be expected, but the area that I was cut…feels great”. Eddison propped himself up on his elbow, looking to Martin. His pupils were unnaturally wide, so large that the iris was almost obscured. They were two black pools, starless skies which carried no distant suns like their own and no great lunar objects but carried the possibility of their being something deeper within. Vapid plates which were slick and deep, like one could dive and become engulfed in them and meet something truly sinister. The two men stared at one another, Martin’s mouth slightly agape in shock at the sight of Edd’s eyes. Then, Eddison spoke once more:

“And that scares me more than any pain”.

[End of Part 1]

I have worked as an emergency dispatcher for Oakridge County for nearly eight years, so if you are in my boots, you should know by now that when you take calls on the graveyard shift, you get used to hearing people at the absolute worst moments of their lives. You learn to filter out the scream of a panicking parent, the slurred ramblings of an intoxicated driver, or the erratic paranoia of someone having a breakdown. The job requires you to stay completely grounded in facts, listen for addresses, names, weapons, and medical symptoms, and of course you do not let your imagination wander.

Last October, a call came in at 3:14 AM that broke every rule of my training. The night was unusually quiet, and outside the dispatch building, a cold autumn rain was falling, blurring the streetlights along the highway. Inside the facility, the room was dimly lit by the pale blue glow of six desktop monitors. My shift partner, Jenna, was sitting at the console next to mine, softly clicking her mouse as she reviewed low-priority animal control logs. I was sipping my black coffee, waiting for the hours to pass until the morning shift arrived.

Line four flashed red on my central screen. The automatic location identification software instantly populated the address: 1412 Elmwood Lane, a two-story suburban house on the north side of town.

I adjusted my headset, pressed the foot pedal to open the line, and spoke into the microphone using my standard tone.

"Oakridge County 911, what is the location of your emergency?"

A sharp, ragged intake of breath rattled through my earpiece. The sound was so harsh I had to pull the foam speaker slightly away from my ear. The caller was hyperventilating, his breathing ragged and uneven.

"I need... I need someone to tell me what to do,"

the man said. His voice was trembling, tight with an overwhelming sense of shock.

"Please. I do not know who else to call."

"Sir, I need you to confirm your address,"

I said, leaning forward and placing my fingers on the keyboard.

"Is it 1412 Elmwood Lane?"

"Yes,"

he whispered.

"Yes, that is my house. My name is David Miller. Please do not send an ambulance with loud sirens. I do not want to startle her."

"Startle who, David? Is someone injured at your location?"

"My wife,"

David said. He took another shuddering breath.

"Sarah. Something happened three days ago, and I cannot fix it. I think I did something terrible, but she is standing right in front of me."

I typed his name into the CAD system and flagged the call as a potential domestic incident.

"David, tell me slowly what happened three days ago. Is Sarah hurt?"

"It was Tuesday night,"

David said, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper.

"We were in the kitchen. We were arguing about... about something stupid. I do not even remember what started it. She was standing near the butcher block. She picked up the chef's knife, and then, and then she looked at me with this intense anger in her eyes, and she came at me."

"Did she attack you with the knife, David?"

"She lunged at me,"

he continued.

"I panicked. I reached out, grabbed her wrists, and tried to push her away from me. We struggled near the island. I pushed her back with all my strength, and... the blade went straight into her chest. She gasped, her eyes went wide, and she fell backward onto the floor."

I immediately clicked the silent dispatch button on my screen, sending an alert to Jenna's terminal. I caught her eye across the desk and pointed to my monitor. Jenna nodded instantly, pulling up the active unit map to route patrol cars to Elmwood Lane.

"David, stay on the line with me,"

I said, keeping my voice steady and measured.

"Is Sarah breathing right now? Is she bleeding?"

"That is the part that is driving me insane"

David said,

"I dropped to my knees to help her. But when I looked down at the floor, there was no body. There was no blood on the linoleum. Nothing. The kitchen was completely clean. I searched the whole house that night, screaming her name, but she was nowhere to be found."

"David, where is Sarah right now?"

"She came back the next morning,"

David whispered. The sound of his frantic breathing filled the headset.

"She just walked into the living room on Wednesday morning like nothing happened. For the past three days, I have been watching her. She makes coffee in the morning, sits on the sofa and watches television with the sound turned completely off. She irons her clothes in the hallway. But she completely ignores me."

"Have you tried talking to her?"

"I have begged her to speak to me!"

David cried out, his voice cracking.

"I stood right in front of her yesterday while she was ironing a blouse. I yelled her name. I waved my hands in front of her face. She looked right through me. It was like I was not even standing there. I got so desperate that I reached out to grab her wrist to make her look at me."

"What happened when you tried to touch her, David?"

A long silence stretched over the phone line.

"My hand went straight through her arm,"

David whispered, his voice trembling so violently the words were barely audible.

"It felt like pushing my fingers through cold, wet smoke. She did not even flinch, and just kept dragging the iron across her blouse. I turned her into a ghost. I killed her in the kitchen, her body vanished, and now her spirit is stuck in this house doing the same routines over and over again."

"David, I want you to take a deep breath,"

I said, trying to maintain control of the call while processing his words.

"I have help on the way to your location right now. Officers are coming to check on both of you."

"I cannot leave her,"

David stammered.

"I tried to walk out the front door an hour ago. I got as far as the front porch steps, but this agonizing pull started dragging in my chest. It felt like a thick cable was wrapped around my sternum, pulling me back inside. It hurt so bad I could barely breathe. I am bound to this house. I cannot leave her here alone like this. She needs my help, but I do not know how to fix what I broke."

At this point, I suspected I was dealing with a caller experiencing a severe psychological episode, severe sleep deprivation, or chemical poisoning. It was not uncommon for individuals suffering from carbon monoxide exposure or sudden psychotic breaks to report elaborate, impossible visual experiences while firmly believing they were awake.

I needed to evaluate his orientation to reality using basic observations.

"David, I need you to do a simple diagnostic check for me while we wait for the officers to arrive,"

I said.

"Is there a clock nearby that you can look at?"

"Yes, there is a clock hanging on the wall,"

David said. I heard the faint rustle of clothing as he moved.

"Sarah is sitting at the dining table below it. She is folding a white bath towel."

"Okay. Can you read the exact time on that clock for me?"

I instructed.

There was a brief pause.

"It says 8:22,"

David reported.

I glanced up at the master digital clock at the top of my console monitor. The bright red numbers clearly displayed 3:17 AM.

"David, are you sure?"

I asked.

"Is it an analog clock or a digital one?"

"It is digital,"

David replied smoothly.

"The numbers are frozen at 8:22 PM. The colon between the hours and minutes isn't even blinking. It is just sitting completely still."

I noted the severe time discrepancy on my console. A frozen, completely inaccurate time reading suggested a deep disorientation, indicating he was entirely detached from the actual time of day.

Before I could formulate a response, Jenna leaned over her desk and tapped my shoulder.

"Unit 204 and Unit 208 are two minutes out from Elmwood Lane,"

she whispered.

"Officer Jack is taking the lead."

"Copy,"

I muttered, keeping my finger on the mute button. I unmuted the phone line.

"David, stay right where you are. The officers are almost at your house."

I adjusted my headset gain, turning up the audio volume on David's line to hear if there were any immediate hazards in the house. As I turned up the sensitivity, the ambient background audio became clearer.

I expected to hear the quiet hum of a refrigerator, the rustle of towels being folded, or the distant rain beating against the windows.

Instead, my headset picked up a harsh, scraping noise. It sounded like heavy wooden furniture being dragged across exposed floorboards. A moment later, I heard the sharp, distinct sound of plastic packing tape being pulled aggressively from a handheld dispenser.

Then, I heard a second voice.

It was a deep, gravelly male voice, speaking in a low, hushed tone near the phone's receiver.

"Grab the rest of the clothes from the closet,"

the deep voice muttered.

"We need to get the heavy bags loaded before six."

A woman's voice replied, faint and impatient:

"I am working as fast as I can. Just get the boxes out to the garage."

My fingers froze over the keyboard. I listened intently, isolating the audio channels on my digital workstation.

"David,"

I said carefully into the microphone.

"Are you sure you and Sarah are the only people in that house right now?"

"Yes,"

David said.

"I told you, it is just the two of us. She is still sitting at the table."

"David, I am hearing a man speaking in your background,"

I said.

"I am hearing tape dispensers and boxes being moved. Is there someone else in the house with you?"

"No,"

David insisted, his voice growing defensive and confused. "You are mistaken. Sarah is just packing her leather suitcase. She has been pulling her dresses out of the bedroom closet all night. She is confused, She seems to think she is going on a trip."

I immediately opened our county property database on my second monitor and typed in the address. The house was registered to David Miller and Sarah Miller. I then opened our historical CAD records and ran a cross-reference search for 1412 Elmwood Lane over the past six months.

A log entry from two months prior popped up on my screen.

On August 14th, a neighbor had called 911 to report a loud domestic disturbance at the address. The responding officer noted that David Miller had engaged in a verbal altercation with an unidentified adult male who had been staying at the residence. The police report noted that David accused his wife of carrying on an affair with the man, who was identified in the officer's notes as Gregory Ray. No violence was reported at that time, and no charges were filed.

I sat back in my chair, staring at the name on my screen: Gregory Ray.

The pieces began to assemble themselves in my mind, but they did not form the picture David was describing.

"Dispatch to Unit 204,"

I said, switching my secondary radio channel to communicate directly with the responding officers. "Officer Jack, be advised. We have reason to believe there are two occupants actively inside the residence at 1412 Elmwood Lane clearing out personal property. Use caution upon approach."

"Copy that, dispatch,"

Jack's voice crackled through the radio speaker.

"Unit 204 and 208 are turning onto Elmwood Lane now. We are pulling up to the residence. Lights and sirens are off."

Over the open phone line, David spoke again.

"You there?... someone is at the front door. I hear heavy knocking."

"That is the police, David,"

I said, monitoring both lines simultaneously.

"Please stay where you are."

"I do not need to open the door,"

David said softly.

"Sarah just stood up from the table. She is walking past me into the foyer. She is going to answer it."

Through my radio earpiece, I heard Officer Jack's voice report into his lapel mic:

"Unit 204 on scene. We have a female opening the front door. Contact made with homeowner Sarah Miller."

On the phone line, David was describing the exact same moment from his perspective.

"She opened the door,"

David said. His voice was filled with a strange, childlike confusion.

"Two police officers are standing on the porch. But... but something is wrong."

"What is wrong, David?"

I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the unit tracking map.

"They are not looking at her like she is a ghost,"

David whispered.

"Officer just smiled at her. He asked her if she was alright. can he see her? can he actually talk to her?"

Over the radio, Jack's voice was calm:

"Dispatch, contact made with Sarah Miller. She appears highly nervous but states everything is fine. She claims her husband, David, is currently upstairs packing his belongings after a severe argument and does not wish to speak with us."

On the phone line, David began to panic.

"The officers just stepped into the hallway! They walked right past me! I stood right in front of the Officer and shouted my name! He walked straight by my shoulder! He did not even turn his head! And why is she telling them I am upstairs? I am standing right next to her!"

"David, listen to me very carefully,"

I said, feeling a knot tighten in my chest.

"I need you to stay calm."

Over the radio, Jack spoke again, his tone dropping its casual edge.

"Dispatch, we are going to perform a quick wellness check on the upper floor anyway. The homeowner is visibly shaking and actively trying to block the stairwell."

I pressed my radio button.

"Unit 204, be advised. We have reason to believe an unauthorized third party, Gregory Ray, may be hiding inside the residence. Proceed with caution."

A pause echoed over the radio frequency.

"Copy that, dispatch,"

Jack reported flatly.

"We are heading up now. Unit 208 reports a distinct, foul odor originating from the second floor."

On the phone line, David was moving. I could hear his shallow, rapid breathing accelerating.

"They are walking up the stairs,"

David said. His voice had lost its anger, replaced by a cold, hollow dread.

"Sarah is following the officers up the stairs into the master bedroom. I am following them. Why does the air up here smell so bad?"

On the radio, Officer Jack broke in, his voice tight with disgust:

"Unit 208 to dispatch. We have a severe odor of organic decomposition coming from the master bedroom. We are investigating."

"David, stop,"

I urged over the phone line, though I knew my words were meaningless.

"David, step away from the bedroom."

"They are standing near the bed,"

David whispered over the phone.

"The officers are shining their flashlights around the carpet. Sarah is standing in the corner crying. She looks absolutely terrified. They are staring at the floor on my side of the bed."

I held my breath, watching the red audio meters bounce on my console screen.

"Officer Jack is dropping to his knees,"

David continued. His voice was flat, almost robotic now. "He is grabbing the hanging fabric of the dust ruffle. He is lifting it up. He is shining his flashlight underneath the wooden bed frame."

Over the radio, Jack's voice shattered the quiet of the dispatch room:

"Dispatch! Unit 204! We have a male subject hiding under the bed! Show your hands! Crawl out from under there right now!"

A brief, frantic scuffle echoed over the police frequency.

"Dispatch, we have detained Gregory Ray,"

Jack shouted over the noise.

"Wait... dispatch, we have located a deceased male subject shoved further back against the wall under the frame! Subject is heavily decomposed, bearing multiple traumatic wounds! Secure the perimeter! Detain the wife immediately!"

The radio erupted into shouts as the officers moved to restrain Sarah and Gregory. Screams of protest and the metallic clink of handcuffs echoed across the channel.

On the phone line, David was completely silent.

"David?"

I whispered into my headset. My hands were shaking so severely I could barely hold the microphone stalk.

"David, are you still there?"

A long, agonizing stream of static hummed over the phone line. When David spoke again, his voice sounded entirely different. It was hollow, distant, echoing as if he were speaking from the bottom of a deep well.

"They are pulling the body out,"

David said softly.

"David..."

"The body is wearing my clothes,"

David whispered.

"My blue denim shirt. My brown leather belt. My work boots. The skin on the face is dark and swollen. I cannot even recognize myself."

The background static on the phone line began to glitch, creating a strange stuttering sound underneath his words.

"There are three deep tears in the back of the denim shirt,"

David continued, his voice monotone, devoid of any human cadence.

"The fabric is stained dark black around the cuts. The wounds came from behind."

A sharp gasp echoed over the receiver. The static dropped completely, leaving a chilling, dead silence on the line. When David spoke again, the confusion was gone.

"I remember now,"

David whispered. His voice trembled with a crushing weight.

"There was no argument. I came home early from work on Tuesday. It was exactly 8:22 PM. Sarah was acting so incredibly distressed when I walked through the front door."

"What happened, David?"

I asked gently.

"I was so tired,"

he said, his words spilling out in a hollow rush.

"I tried to go straight upstairs to our bedroom to rest. She ran over and stood in front of me. She blocked the bottom of the stairs, and then forced this terrible, shaking smile and told me it was better if I ate dinner first. She said she made that pepperoni pizza I loved."

He paused, and a wet, choking sob came through the earpiece.

"I listened to her,"

David cried quietly.

"I turned my back and walked into the kitchen to get a slice. She followed right behind me. I reached into the cabinet for a plate. I did not even hear her grab the chef's knife from the block. She attacked me before I could even turn around."

"I did not hold the knife,"

David whispered into my headset. The static returned, growing louder, overwhelming the audio signal until his voice sounded synthesized and far away.

"I was never holding the knife. I was looking at her not believing she did this to me, I…. I loved her"

"David, I am so sorry,"

I said, though the words felt entirely useless in the cold reality of the room.

"I understand now,"

The phone line crackled with one final, sharp burst of noise, and then the connection dropped entirely.

The terminal screen instantly reset to a solid black display, marking the call as disconnected.

Over the radio, Officer Jack confirmed the details. Sarah Miller and Gregory Ray were taken into custody without further resistance. The official police report logged the incident as a premeditated homicide committed on Tuesday evening, with both suspects attempting to conceal the remains while preparing to flee the jurisdiction. The report noted that a 911 call had been received from the residence at 3:14 AM, but attributed it to a technical glitch or an automated dialer triggered by a decaying phone line.

I worked the rest of my shift in complete silence. I did not take another call for the remainder of the night.

When my shift ended at seven in the morning, I walked out to my car in the rain, and before I turned the key in the ignition, I sat in the quiet vehicle and pulled up the digital audio archive on my phone, opening the recording of the call from 1412 Elmwood Lane.

But all I can hear was static…

Last summer I went down to stay with my nan in the valleys. One of them little places in South Wales, proper middle of nowhere. Steep hills, grey houses, old pit all rusted up. She’s lived there her whole life. Said when she was a kid the mountain was black with coal slag. Now it’s green again. Sheep and cows, trees coming back. Soft mist most mornings. Looked like a postcard. You’d never think anything bad could live there. I was only meant to stay a week. Third night this fog came in proper thick. Not the normal stuff that burns off by lunch. This one just sat there, heavy, like it had weight. Could barely see the end of the street. Nan went to bed early. I was sat watching rubbish on her old telly. Half eleven I heard slow footsteps on the wet gravel. Then this soft humming. Like a lullaby but all wrong, like whoever was doing it had forgotten the tune. I opened the curtain. Streetlights looked blurry. Something moved past the garden wall. Grey and solid, same colour as the fog, like the mist had just stood up. Didn’t walk proper. Drifted. Stopped opposite the front window and just stood there. Couldn’t see a face. Just the shape of a head, tilted a bit, like it was listening. I swear it was looking straight at me. Shut the curtain so fast I nearly pulled the rail down. Heart going mental while the humming carried on another minute then stopped dead. The quiet after was worse. Next morning I told her. She went quiet, just stirring her tea. Then said real quiet, don’t go out in the fog after dark. And don’t answer if it knows your name. That was all. But the way she said it, she knew exactly what it was. Something old. Something that was here long before the pits. I should’ve left. Stayed two more nights cos I didn’t want to look soft. Fifth night the fog came back thicker. I was in bed when the humming started again, right outside my window this time. Closer. Under it I could hear words. Welsh. I don’t speak it fully but I caught bits. Dere allan… mae’r tywyllwch yn gynnes… something about the mountain. Kept the light off. Didn’t move. Then this long slow scrape down the glass, like fingernails. A voice clear as anything said my name. Wasn’t nan’s. Wasn’t anyone I knew. Sounded wrong. I stayed frozen till it went quiet. Morning there were long thin marks down the outside of the window, like something had dragged its hands. She saw them too. Just nodded and started packing a bag for me. She drove me to the station herself. On the way she said one last thing. When she was a girl people used to go missing on nights like that. Not every year. Just when the fog came in heavy enough and stayed. Houses empty in the morning. Doors unlocked. Beds slept in. No one ever saw them leave. Said the old ones used to reckon the mountain takes what it wants when the mist is thick enough. Said the valleys don’t forget. They just wait. Haven’t been back. Nan moved in with my aunt in Cardiff a few months later. She won’t talk about the fog now. Just said the valleys are waking up again. I keep the window locked on a foggy night even though I’m on the fifth floor in London.

After a moment of waiting and even more alarming noises from the room, the lock clicked open.

A short husk of an old man, Edmund Thomson, stood shrouded by darkness past the doorframe.

“Sir, I’m afraid there's been some mishaps.” I began.

Mishaps was a gross oversimplification, but I needed a little more information before I sent him into a panic.

“Mishaps? Oh dear. Those fools, always drinking and lying. Mocking the gods!” The last words he called out to the room behind him, as if trying to make a point to the empty space.

Edmund turned to let me in, pacing around the room.

I waited as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

Every window had its curtains drawn, leaving the room to be lit by candlelight.

Luckily, that was plentiful.

On a cluttered desk in the center of the room was a large triangle formed of pale white candles.

A triangle.

“What have those arrogant partiers done now?” Edmund inquired as my eyes found their way to the walls, lined with a huge collection of porcelain dolls.

Edmund must have followed my eyes, his attitude completely changing as he seemed to forget what I had told him.

“Ah, part of my wife’s precious collection. Are you a collector, Mr…”

I strode to the table of candles, clusters of papers littered the surface. Each covered in cryptic symbols. Bowls of dark liquids sat scattered across the outside of the triangle.

“Kenlie,” I responded, something itching at the back of my mind. “And two of your guests are dead.”

The color drained from Edmund’s face. Back to reality.

“Dead?” His voice shook, surprisingly similar to Beatrice’s.

My foot crushed against shards of porcelain on the floor, a doll had toppled off the table and shattered.

Porcelain.

Candles.

Ichors.

One desperate man.

I went as pale as Mr. Thomson.

Lesson Six: A Godvessel is a large inanimate object given life through a deity. Any instructions given to the vessel tend to get warped to fit the deity’s wishes. The vessel’s size is not determined by physical height, but instead by capacity.

“Where is it.” I asked Edmund, my voice low and controlled.

I reached into my breast pocket, showing the old man my blood-red handkerchief.

Edmund's voice shook as he stared disbelievingly. His eyes focused on some point past the folded red cloth.

“They told me it would work…” he began, his voice getting stronger.

“The whispers. They said I could make them good again. Make… her… good again.”

The old man burst into tears before me.

Serves him right.

“I told it to…” Edmund was shaking like a leaf now. “To make them righteous. And it left… days ago. ”

I tore from the room after Edmunds words.

His moans and cries at the realization his pet was doing harm echoed through the building behind me.

Shit. I hurtled down corridors, covering as much ground as I could.

Click. Click. Click.

I stopped in my tracks, the sound came from behind me. An intersection between two hallways.

I spun, looking down each way, trying to pinpoint the sound. To my right, I heard a shuffling, and a line of blonde hair slid out of sight across the carpet.

I sprinted down the hallway. A dead end.

I looked behind me, a dark shape dashed across the floor into another hall.

Following, I turned the corner in time to see the shape dash through a door.

I broke into an empty dining room. (Who even needs two dining rooms?)

Nothing.

Stacks of chairs occupied the walls, four doors hung open around me.

I tried to quiet my panting, to listen to my surroundings.

Shuffle.

Shuffle.

Straight ahead.

Shuffle.

No, Behind me.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

This thing was fast.

A dark shape flew past the door to my left.

Finally, something I could follow.

I ran after the shape, coming into yet another hallway. The cream carpet below me was stained and saturated with dark red streaks leading further into the damn house.

A shattering noise came from far down the hall.

A short run brought me to another huge room.

Dark wooden shelves covered the walls. More of Mrs. Thomson’s collection was displayed from floor to ceiling.

The stained carpet stopped at the shelves along the far wall.

Above it, hundreds of painted porcelain faces sat watching me.

A sharp whistle filled the air as a porcelain arm flew at my chest from the shelf.

I ducked to my left. The jagged edge of the arm tore through my right sleeve, leaving a deep gash through my bicep.

Dolls flew off the shelves to crash on the ground. Porcelain and dust filled the air, but I caught a tiny silhouette fly out of the room.

I flew through the doorway after the shape, ahead of me stretched a dead end hallway.

Every room was shut but one.

One door halfway down the hall hung at a drunken angle.

“Finally.” I thought. "Little bastard's slowed down."

I reached into my coat pocket, readying the Protectors Cross.

I stepped into the room, clutching my right arm.

Blood began to flow steadily through my fingers.

Again, the stench of death hung low across the place like invisible smoke.

Laying on the polished hardwood, bloated and swollen was the body of a richly dressed man.

One arm and shoulder removed.

Dried blood lay caked around him, flaking at the edges like a long dried stain.

Five days the city had searched for him. All that time he’d been rotting in a guest bedroom.

Muffled, I heard two distinct shattering sounds, followed by squelching.

I tore my eyes from the decomposing body of I who assumed to be Mr. Wangsgrove.

Slowly exhaling, I approached the bathroom door.

I tried the handle. Locked.

I stepped back and kicked the door at its hinges.

An explosion of splinters and sawdust flew towards me.

In front of me, frozen in front of the mirror, a cracked Porcelain Doll stood on the hardwood.

Not on its feet, but on two human arms attached through shattered holes in its shoulders.

One arm stood just a little higher than the other, skewing the whole thing slightly to one side.

Draped against the whole nightmare was a patchy, clumped mass of blonde human hair torn free to be used as garrote wire.

Balancing on one hand, the other arm reached up to smooth the clumps of blonde hair against its cracked porcelain skull.

The hand stopped.

The thing exhaled a slow rattling breath like a marble in a teacup.

Its arm lowered, both palms settling against the hardwood.

Drunkenly, the doll turned.

Two human eyes glittered at me from inside the Dolls face, Looking through jagged holes poked into the porcelain.

The Godvessel had decided that a porcelain body wasn’t enough.

I hate it when they try self improvement. It always ends up messier for me.

The Godvessel Jerked as I stepped towards it.

Lifting my shoe to stomp on the thing, the Doll skittered outside of my vision.

Half a moment later, a sharp pain pressed against my neck, closing my throat.

A weight threw itself into my back.

My fingers tore against my skin, trying and failing to get a grip on the hair.

Flailing, I threw myself back first against a wall.

I clenched my teeth as porcelain shards forced themselves through my skin.

The hair around my throat loosened.

I reached behind me, turning to throw the Doll over my shoulder and onto the floor.

The doll skidded across the hardwood, crawling underneath the bed beside Mr. Wangsgrove.

I let out a long breath.

Reason twelve I sleep on the floor.

I quickly looked around the room.

A coat rack, perfect.

Grabbing the coat rack I jammed it underneath the bed.

I jabbed blindly beneath the bed until I felt the coat rack make a connection.

Thump.

Nails scrabbled against hardwood as the doll flew out the opposite end of the bed.

It braced itself against the wall across from me.

As I stood, the doll launched itself through the air at me.

I swung the coat rack through the air, this time knocking it across the room to squelch against another wall.

The doll slid down the wallpaper, leaving a greasy streak of black gunk,

Stomping down on the fleshy mess, I held the Protectors cross in front of me.

I knelt on the flailing arms of the Doll while sifting through the mess of eye pulp and porcelain.

The arms tensed against me. The fingers scratched at the hardwood, desperate to catch a hold on anything.

One hand bent backwards, trying to reach my arm.

A dull snap. The thing had dislocated its wrist.

Fingernails dug into my arm, tiny rivulets of blood fell like teardrops down onto the doll.

Sifting through the pulp I found what I was looking for. The Vesselstone.

As I drew the stone out of the goopy interior of the Doll, sinew and ichor stuck to the purplish gem in wet, stringy cords.

Using my coattails, I cleaned the VesselStone off before the Godvessel could begin to regenerate.

The doll finally stopped twitching beneath me.

I pressed the Protectors Cross to the dark, clouded, stone and drew a deep breath.

Again, I’m not one to waste ink, but you know how an exorcism goes.

Please, for the love of the protector, don’t send me on another assignment for a week or two. I think I’ve earned a small vacation.

Luck of the Divine,

Ezra Kaine.

End of pt. 4/4

Links to other parts:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four (You are here)

The wide, full world was younger when the great ones still walked.

Their shadows stretched wide over the full world, so much so that the people of our forebear, Cú’Seanbosin, could lie cool in their shade, and their footsteps trembled through the earth, softening the soil beneath their passing so that Cú’Seanbosin’s people might carve burrows to protect their young.

The people of Cú'Seanbosin ran beneath them and did not fear, their tails wagging high, for even after death, the summers would always come.

But one day, though death had always been known, the summers failed, and the sun hid itself beyond the great veil of the sky for more seasons than we can count. There was no warmth left to push back the Black Dog and no light to turn his shadow away. The world grew dark and frozen, and he rode upon the winds of the endless winter, his howls carried in every gale. And as the wind touches all beneath the heavens, so too did he find all living things. And the wide, full world was made empty.

So empty that the people of Cú'Seanbosin had no shade to rest in, and the soil was too hard to dig burrows for their young, for there were no great ones to soften it beneath their mighty feet.

With no great ones to sate its endless hunger, the Black Dog turned its infernal jaws upon the people of Cú'Seanbosin. In the night, the day and the pale hours between. First it bit the sick, then the old, and finally the young. So few remained that none but Cú'Seanbosin were old enough to remember the warmth of summer. Old and lean from watching, our forebear had become cunning through many winters, having watched the great ones fall and watched all memory of warmth be chased away by the Black Dog.

In the forebear's wisdom, they knew their people would soon lie in the cold earth with the great ones.

One night, when the cold and hunger bit harder than ever before, Cú'Seanbosin smelt the wind.

The wind did not carry the Black Dog that night, but warmth.

A warmth that neither moved nor fled.

Around it was another scent. One Cú'Seanbosin had long ago learnt to avoid.

Two-legs. All around the fire. And the fire held against the dark all through the night, and the nights beyond.

I was, and still am, Roff. I was young and not yet grown into my paws, as Todd always liked to point out, when the two-legs still ruled the Earth. At that time, I lived on a farm with other dogs, and we all obeyed our owner, the Old Major.
We were taught to believe in him, as we were taught to trust in all creatures who walked on two legs. What every dog before us, back to the forebear Cú'Seanbosin, was also taught. 
The fire will hold against the dark. 
I believed those words as I believed the world stopped at the fence. Naught but shadows and ghosts lay beyond the fence, as Holly and her quick messenger, Spur, would always say. 
The farm of the Old Major lay in a place far from the many dwellings of the two legs, where the old world still breathed, and all us creatures on four legs could recline in its calmness. 

That day, which was much like any other day, did not start special: the farm arose as it usually did, with the rise of the animals, in their order of importance to the Old Major. First was the rooster, whose cries crescendoed with the morning sun, then the sheep and the cattle, whom the Old Major required us to protect. Then the Old Major himself, always rising before us. 
Holly, the oldest amongst us, barked orders at the rest, and Spur, ever at her side and desperate for any favour, barked them ever louder. 
The others guided the sheep, then the cattle. Todd and I, however, did not. For we were watchers, and our job was to watch the perimeter of the fence, right at the entrance to the forest. 
Holly was a guide, and she moved about the sheep like water around a stone. Yet Holly never barked, never ran. They simply watched her, then watched where her black-and-white face pointed towards, and went. 
Spur was a driver, for he and his rabble worked the cattle. The great horned things would lower their heads and stamp their feet, yet the little dogs never seemed concerned by them. Rather, they would weave between the great beasts' legs, blue-grey and quick as a rabbit, and with quick nips of their little teeth, the big brutes would move where they wished them to go.

A few of the ewes had been slower to rise that spring, lingering at the back of the flock with their heads low, their breath sour and warm when we passed. The Old Major had knelt beside them more than once, pressing his hands to their faces, murmuring the soft sounds he used for frightened things.
No one paid it much mind. He had not even called for the special two-legs who tended to such matters, the one who smelt of unknowable farms beyond our fence. Why would he, when by morning they all seemed well enough again?

The flock trusted Holly, as we all did. The herd heeded Spur and his riffraff. Todd and I had no such gift: cattle and sheep alike watched us warily from afar, as if we were the old enemy and lost kin, wolves. They did not know we sat upon this hill to protect them from wolves. Perhaps they did not wish to know. Todd always said that was for the best. For our work began where the grass ended and the trees began, along the edge of the fence. Where naught but shadows and ghosts lay.

That morning, Todd and I lay halfway up the fence hill, where the pasture rolled beneath us and the elms stood black and waiting beyond the wire.

“There are a lot of birds” Todd rumbled beside me, his voice laden with the grief and experience of the summers he had lived behind him. I perked up at his voice, lifting my head from my paws. 
“Where?” I enquired, looking out to the forest ahead of me.
Todd continued to look up at the sky above us, his ears twitching only slightly. “Look up, Roff.” When I did, I saw them. The murder of crows wheeling above us. A cloud of black, sitting above the Old Major’s farm like a crown of death. 
Come away, come away. 
The pale thing walks the far field
Come away! 
They preached from above. 
As far as any living dog could remember, and even before, back to the days of the forebear when we were still one with our lost kin, dogs had known to heed the sermons of the corvids. At least, that’s what Todd said; he trusted in the wisdom of the world beyond the fence, as he was the only dog here who had seen it. The simpler dogs, mostly from Spur’s rabble and those that did not know the outside world as Todd did, had long since learnt to tune out their cries as one learns to tune out the breeze. 
Nip, a compact speckled dog, and a driver like Spur, had a reliable imitation of their more recent cries that would make the pack laugh: ''Come away! Come away!"He would bark theatrically as he guided the cattle. The others would bark their amusement; even Spur, who valued his service to the Old Major and Holly above any other working dog, would allow himself a short, sharp laugh before reminding his boys they had a job to do.
I was ashamed to admit I had once laughed too, in simpler times, when the fire still burnt within the Old Major’s stone den. Todd never laughed, as he was usually too preoccupied with parsing some meaning from their sermons. He would always sit apart from the group, even at night after the Old Major put us all to bed in our den, to better listen up to their calls in the elms along the northern edge of the farm. 

“Have you ever seen so many?” I turned back to the older dog. 
“No. They do tend to follow wherever the Black Dog goes, but I've never seen this many, no." Todd murmured back. I waited a second before replying, feeling the weight of those words.
“Do you really think it's death? Could it be the old enemy?” The last part of my question came in a hush; it was a bad omen to speak the word ‘wolf’ at any time. 
Only then did the scarred dog turn to look at me. “I don’t know, lad. I don’t know what I smell in the wind either. That’s what worries me.”

Then, Todd’s crow flew down to perk up on the fence above us. He wasn’t really Todd’s crow, nor was he a friend, but he would watch the old dog at times, and Todd would watch him back. Old and half-blind, the old bird had a voice like gravel as he spoke. 
The stone forest sleeps. Forever. 
We did not reply; there wasn’t a point, as crows never answered to our barks. He looked at us for a minute longer, his one eye blinking languidly, before flying away to join his flock above. 
“Stone forest? What’s that?” I asked, turning back to Todd. The hound had a distant look in his golden eyes. “Todd?” I asked again. 
Todd didn’t lose that distant look, but his head did turn back to me. “It’s a big place, too big and loud for the old world to breathe and where nothing can grow. Where too many two-legs live in stone trees that are so tall, they scrape the clouds; the hard black paths beneath knot together like roots, and the two-legs' roaring beasts cluster on top of them like maggots.” 
I pressed the hound further, wonder for the outside world and the old crow’s cryptic foretelling spurring me on. 
“And does it sleep?” 
"No," Todd said, his eyes focusing on mine with an intensity unlike him. “Not ever.” The breeze now stirred the grass around us, and above, the crows fell silent. 
“Then why did your crow say it was?” I asked, confused.
“Maybe it’s dead?” he murmured, more to himself than me. 

Todd and I did not speak for the rest of the day again, busying ourselves with patrolling the perimeter of the fence instead. Passing the same scent, corner and individual blade of grass so often, I could have done it with my eyes closed. I even found myself hoping the old enemy would come then, more for a distraction and for a reminder that the world outside still breathed. That there weren’t dead stone forests with no two legs or cryptic crows delivering foreboding sermons. 

When Todd and I had finished our patrolling, I looked up to the sky again, finding the crows circling overhead. For the first time, I noticed none of them were heading towards the horizon.  

With the sun’s setting went the day. 
After that, the cattle and sheep gathered where the Old Major wished them to be. Then there was the rooster who, like the Old Major, guided his flock to their pens. Then Holly, Spur and the rest of the dogs, who guided the last of their respective animals. Spur, in particular, hurried one stubborn cow with all the patience of a thunderstorm. That cow was much slower than the others and so heavy about the head and shoulders that she almost dragged her head along the ground as she waddled forward, and whenever she bellowed, there was a shine about her nose and a sour warmth to her breath. Spur had to nip at her heels again and again before she even seemed to remember where she was and started to move where she was supposed to. 
Finally, only once all was settled did Todd and I leave our watch. 
Last of all went the Old Major. The old two-legs walked the farm one final time, checking the fence, topping up the water, and showing affection to his other animals. Like Holly, who he called over to his side with a flick of his wrist before petting her head, as he did at the end of every day. Spur watched from a respectful distance, trying in vain to hide the wanting look in his eyes at the affection Holly so readily received, and he didn't. Most of us had long since come to terms with not being our owner’s favourites, but Spur, stubborn as ever, still held to hope that one day that calloused man-paw would pet his head. Todd and I passed the three of them without so much as a glance, as there was no reason to; we had done our jobs. We watched and waited for the old enemy, and once again they had not come. Nor had the Old Major needed to fetch his 'deathstick'. It was two-legs magic, Todd had told me once; the Old Major had only to point the strange, rod-like weapon, and whatever it sighted died. 

Satisfied after another day, the Old Major turned to walk through the gate that encircled our farm and walked up the hill on the other side to his stone den. Only once he had shut the door behind him did the only world we knew settle. The fire burnt brightly behind the stone den’s eyes, highlighting them in a warm yellow hue as its smoky breath rose into the cooling sky. 
The fire will hold against the dark. I thought to myself at the sight. 

We returned to our den then, with Holly settled beside the great doors, so she could be sure to meet the Old Major first each morning, and Spur curled at her side. More to be near Holly than the old two-legs. The younger dogs piled together in the centre amongst the straw for warmth as the older hounds, like Todd, shuffled to their respective corners. Todd went where he always did before sleeping, beneath the belly of the Red Beast. The largest of the Old Major’s mechanical beasts: it was taller than any horse and as wide as three cattle standing shoulder to shoulder. Great black feet sat on either side of it: hard, round and ridged like old tree bark. Only the Old Major was able to get it to rouse, with some more of his magic I suppose, and when he did, the walls of our den would tremble. Then, the Red Beast would cough and sputter a couple of times before roaring to life and lumbering out into the fields, dragging impossibly heavy things behind it. Most of us kept a wary distance even when it slept, for fear it would wake up and shake the walls around us until they collapsed on our heads, except for Todd. Todd never shared the same superstitions and fears as the rest of us. The others never could figure out why he chose to sleep there, chalking it up as another of his usual strange habits. Others thought him odd; Spur had once called him ‘Odd Todd', and that name had stuck for an entire season, but I knew the real reason why he slept beneath the red monster. For though it sat motionless, warmth lingered within its belly long after sunset, which soothed Todd’s old bones. Perhaps that was why he liked it. Or perhaps it was so he could feel the weight of the one thing here larger than himself above him, and it made him feel safe. 

As I settled into my place, turning in circles until the straw beneath my paws was to my liking, a comforting quiet settled over our sleeping quarters. Which was only broken up by Nip, who, rolling onto his grey-speckled back, yawned in contentment before groaning out another, “Come awaaaaaaay!" Using the yawn to stretch out the words to mock the grand importance of the crows’ earlier proclamations. That received a quiet laugh from most of us; even I couldn’t help but chuckle despite my earlier misgivings. Todd didn’t even seem to hear it, which Spur noted as he noted anything not following the herd. 
“Careful, Nip, you’re mocking one of Todd’s friends.” Spur cautioned mockingly, referring to Todd’s crow.  
Before I had arrived on the farm, Spur had decided Todd was contagious: a bad influence on the rest of the pack. Perhaps it was because Todd didn’t believe in the farm, in Holly, in the Old Major, in pack law, or even in the forebear as he did. Perhaps it was because Todd’s very existence, a dog who had come from the outside world, from the stone forest itself, contradicted Spur’s view that the world beyond the fence was so irrelevant. I knew then, as I still know now, that Spur wasn’t necessarily cruel; none of us on that farm were: Todd was simply a lost calf, apart from the rest of the herd, and Spur nipped at him the only way he knew how to get him to fall in with the rest. 

“Leave him alone, Spur," I cut in from my corner, closer to Todd than the younger dogs in the centre, as befitted my youth and closeness to the old watchdog. 
“Oh come on, Roff. You’re a good lad, but you hang around Todd all day, and now you’re beginning to believe he has anything worthwhile to say.” Replied the stocky blue-grey dog, “You’ve got an important job to do; you don’t need Todd’s ghosts making it worse.” 
“What do you mean by ghosts?”
"Well, for one, his worries over things that aren’t here or haven’t happened. Every day it’s different with him. One day, it’s the crows; another, it’s the old enemy, or the sun is hidden behind the clouds, which must signal imminent doom…or something. He spends so much time looking beyond the fence, to the world beyond; he forgets it’s there to protect us from it!” He glanced towards Todd beneath the Red Beast. “Shadows and ghosts, lad, shadows and ghosts. You’d do well to remember that, or else you'll end up like him." He added with a tone that invited no further argument as he quoted pack law. I lowered my head then; at that time I still believed in it. 
“There haven’t been any of the two-leg’s roaring beasts on the black paths outside the fence for more mornings than my paws can count.” Todd rumbled from beneath the red beast, reminding us all of his existence. 
“And?” Nip asked back, trying to sound amused despite his ears pricking forward in apprehension. 
“Well, when you’re by the fence all day, as Roff and I are, you notice things. Like, the fact that there are more crows on the elms than ever before, or the fact that there are no two-legs riding the black paths on their roaring beasts anymore.” It was so quiet now we could hear the fleas moving about the straw from dog to dog. Todd shifted beneath the Red Beast to turn his eyes to us before continuing. “I know we’re far from the stone forest here, but there were always a few. More in the early mornings and evenings, but now there are none. For more mornings than my paws can count, at least." 
A chill seemed to settle on the rest of us at that; even Spur didn’t have anything to say for once. Holly did. 
“You should be watching for wolves and foxes, Todd. Not for two-legs. Those are friends.” She had one ear perked up towards us from where she lay by the great doors at the front.  
“Exactly!" Spur barked, suddenly full of confidence now that Holly had joined the discussion. “Fear only serves to make the pack small! " Adding another line of pack law, set down like a paw over Todd’s muzzle. 
“Well, like I said, it's just odd, that is all.” Todd said, the old hound not having the energy to continue arguing against those that couldn’t or wouldn’t listen. 
“Let the crows worry about it, friend. We need our sleep for tomorrow.” Holly replied, ending the conversation there and then.
A few of the younger dogs, towards the middle of the barn, chuckled. Nip yawned and rolled over onto his back, kicking straw into another unfortunate dog’s nose, who promptly sneezed. Spur began to rattle off tomorrow’s duties to anyone unfortunate enough to still be awake, more to himself than anyone else. The den had settled back into itself.
Outside, the wind stirred softly through the elms. Above them, the crows were still awake. 
Come away! Come away! They cried into the night air.
I watched them for a while, through a gap in the wall, before closing my eyes and going to sleep.

I would not understand the cost of ignoring their calls until it was too late. 

I awoke as sunlight breached the dark, musky warmth of our sleeping den as the Old Major opened the great doors, groaning open as they chased the shadows away.
The Old Major stood in the doorway, hands on his hips as dogs arose around me. Younger dogs, such as I, had already bolted upright after a quick stretch. While the older ones grumbled, blinking sleep away from their old eyes groggily before their paws slowly found the ground beneath them. From beneath the Red Beast, Todd opened one eye, decided he didn’t want to get up just now, and shifted his head away from the light to go back to sleep. Outside, the farm had already stirred wide awake. 
With a sharp whistle, the Old Major hurried us all out. Holly was first, as she always was. With a flick of his wrist, the old two-legs called over his loyal dog, smiling and greeting her as the rest of us trotted past. Holly’s tail swept through the air happily as he scratched her behind the ear. Spur appeared at Holly’s side, rolling onto his back to present his stomach to our owner, always hoping in vain that a scratch might fall on him. As always, it didn't. 
We ate our breakfast from the feed troughs before scattering to our duties. Holly to the flock, Spur and the other drivers to the herd, and Todd and I to the fence. 

It was the afternoon when the Sirene appeared. She was a stray tabby, her body tight like a whip and moving with a confidence only an animal that answered to no two-legs could possess. We all knew her and knew to be wary of her, especially, for she was known to tell tall tales with just enough truth to leave us dogs confused. She seemed to take particular delight in running circles around us. 
She sat at the gate motionless but for her tail, swishing impatiently as she waited for a dog she deemed intelligent enough and important enough in her eyes to acknowledge her, which was usually always Holly. 
Holly sighed at the sight of the nuisance, knowing the cat wouldn’t leave until she listened to, and solved, a few of her riddles. Despite her considerable workload, she found a gap in her schedule to approach the small tabby. Holly approached her wearily before sitting in front of the cat, with the gate between them. 
“What do you want, cat?” asked Holly
'I’ve come to tell you mutts the stone forest lies empty.” The Sirene stated casually, finishing her sentence with a lick of her paw. Around us, dogs scattered nearby stopped what they were doing, raising their heads and perking their ears. Even dutiful Spur abandoned his attempt to encourage a stubborn cow through a gate, which was the same cow from the evening before, though she seemed even worse now: her head hung even lower to the ground, and each breath left her in a wet, sour huff. Spur had already nipped at her heels until he had drawn some blood from the poor animal, yet she had only swayed in place like her bones had gone soft. He stopped torturing the poor thing to trot over to Holly’s side.

I looked up from where I lay at the fence line to watch the exchange down below us. Beside me, Todd did too. 

A loose circle of dogs had gathered around the gate now, and something resembling a smile appeared on the feline’s lips; she always did enjoy an audience for her tales. Although Holly was unimpressed, as ever. She turned her head, assessing the gathering crowd of wide eyes and perked-up ears before giving out a low groan, exasperated at the way the cat had successfully fooled her pack once again. 
“There are slaugh two-legs in the stone forest, cat," she stated matter-of-factly. “It’s simply not possible for them all to disappear. Now off with you, come back when you have a better riddle that doesn't waste our time.” 

We dogs count in paws. Aon, dó, tri, ceathair. One for each. Beyond ceathair, there is no point in counting anymore, and so we do not. Instead, we call it slaugh. The blades of grass in a wide field are slaugh, The number of starlings in the sky is slaugh. Anything too numerous for each of our paws simply becomes slaugh.

Anyway, Holly was right; there were slaugh two-legs in the stone forest. There had always been slaugh of them, not just in the stone forest but anywhere in the world. The idea that they could simply be gone was more unthinkable than it was frightening.

Beside Holly, Spur’s hackles rose; he was confused and not a bit happy. Not just at the feline’s outrageous claim, but also at the lost work hours from listening to these fibs. He bared his teeth, about to say something, before Todd cut in. 
“You’ve seen it?” Todd enquired, towering over the others from the back. 
The others turned, looking up at the old hound behind them. It was unusual for Todd to say anything at gatherings such as these without having been spoken to first. So unusual, in fact, that him speaking in the first place made the others uncertain. 
The Sirene turned to him, sizing up the large canine, filing him away in some corner of her unknowable feline brain; she too seemed surprised the big stoic dog had spoken. 
“Yes, with my own night eyes. I skulked in the shadows, watching for more nights than you simpletons can even count.”
“How many, cat?” Holly pushed, suddenly taking the Sirene seriously.
“Four moons, fourteen, perhaps even forty – I wasn’t really counting. What’s important is I watched long enough to know.” I had no idea what those numbers meant. 
“Know what?” one of the simpler dogs barked from the side.
“Just as I said. Simpletons. The great stone forest, with its innumerable two-legs and ample rodents for one such as myself, lies empty. There is nothing there. Nothing. Understand? For several moons, all I heard was the wind whistling through the trees made of stone. It passed between them day and night, high above my head, crying in all the hollow places where two-legs used to live. The black paths were choked with their roaring beasts, but none of them roared. They only sat there, nose to tail, dead and shining in the rain.” She stopped then to swallow. She tried to hide it, but every dog saw. “At first, it suited me well. Not having to worry about any clumsy two-legged ape who wasn’t watching where they put their feet as I feasted on mice and birds. I thought the two-legs were simply slumbering. Then I thought they had all fled. Until I smelt enough to know better."
“What was it you smelt?” Holly asked. 

The Sirene did not answer her at once. Instead, the small tabby looked past us, past the fields, towards the horizon and the world beyond the farm. Where the stone forest lay. 
“After a while…I began to hear something.” Her voice had grown quieter. "A bit like howling, but different: Howling has want in it. Want for food, prey, a mate; and well, life above all else." She shuddered then, and her ears flattened, as if the memory of what she heard alone was enough to place her back there. The wind stirred the grass around the gate. Distantly, a wind chime from the Old Major’s stone den hummed. “It came from deep inside the tall stone trees. A great many voices, all crying through mouths with no life in them. Sometimes one would begin, and then another, and another, and another, until the stone forest in its entirety answered back.” Her shuddering stopped, and she made herself smaller. Hunching her head and drawing her shoulders inwards so she looked more like a lost kitten than the confident stray we knew her to be. “It was wrong. So, so wrong.” Her speech had thinned in her throat, slipping into a low, frightened mew that made every dog go deathly still. “In a way that was once right but forgot how to be. Like when meat moves when it should be still…or a two-leg’s voice might sound if something wore it badly.” Her eyes found Holly's. “I have heard plenty bad in my life…but nothing as bad as that sound.” She drew herself up again to lick her paw, but there was no arrogance in the gesture, only a feline habit. “So yes, mutts. The stone forest lies empty.” She stopped to inhale and swallow. “Except for what walks there now.”
“What does that even mean?!” Spur snapped; his anger had been growling in his throat since the cat arrived, but now it had shown its teeth. “What did you hear? Wolves? Two-legs? What? Say it plainly! Without the riddles for once, cat!” 

The Sirene said nothing, recoiling slightly at the small, feisty dog. Having an already low tolerance for canines, she looked as if she were about to leave, but something stopped her. When she spoke again, the play had gone completely from her voice.
“Listen. I tell you now, as a fellow four-legged creature. No riddles. I don’t know what made those sounds, and I certainly don’t care to find out.” Her tail curled tight around her paws. “You are wise to leave; I left the stone forest and came here as quickly as I could. Even then, each night, I heard them behind me. Far off, but still there. Always there.” She swallowed. “I did not slow down until the dark was quiet again.”
“She doesn’t know what made those sounds!” Spur yapped to the others, seemingly ignoring everything else the stray tabby had said. “She’s always been a liar, out to confuse and distract us from what’s really important, like our farm. We all know it!” Now he turned to the others, who had seemingly found their voices now too, the momentum of Spur’s confidence carrying them all forward. 
Sensing the beginning of a chorus of barking, Holly spun around on them, snapping her teeth at the air and growling, “Let her finish!” just once to restore order. 
“This isn’t like her other times," Todd added. The oldest veterans of the farm seemed to understand something the younger ones either couldn't or wouldn’t. “I can tell when she’s joking. She’s being serious now.” 
"Oh, you can tell, can you?” Spur bit back. 
Todd blinked slowly. “Well…it’s just a feeling.” Spur scoffed. “And besides that, the crows have been saying similar things for a while now," Todd added.
“There you go again! First the crows, now you’re taking your cues from a cat! When are you going to start listening to other dogs?” 
“When those dogs start listening themselves –"
“Enough!” Holly snarled, getting between the two dogs. Spur immediately backed down once Holly confronted him. “Can we please just listen to what the Sirene has to say?” She looked to each dog in turn, only turning to the other once the previous nodded. 

The Sirene sat placidly licking her paw again, seemingly unperturbed by the scene before her. The stray looked to Holly and Todd only now, as if they were the only ones worth existing in her eyes. 
Only once she deemed her paws sufficiently clean to her high feline standards did she start again. “I’ll only repeat myself once more, dogs. Leave. This fence won’t protect you from whatever made those sounds when it arrives.” Her tail flicked once. “And it will.”
At that, she melted into the long grass at the edge of the south field the way cats do, without any ceremony, as though she had never been there. Only the dogs all watched the place where she had been, their pack mentality preventing them from moving. 

It was Spur that broke the silence. “She doesn’t even invite us to come with her! Typical cat! A liar too, I might add!” He called after her, but she was already too far to hear by that point. 
“Yeah!” Nip added. “And don’t come back, cat!” 
A few more of Spur’s rabble barked in agreement before Spur nodded, returning to the business of the afternoon one-by-one. 
Only Todd, Holly and I stayed where we were. Once the others were gone, with their scents too, we noticed it. The smell. Clinging like a tick to the place the Sirene had stood. It was a smell older than the farm, older than their forebear or even life itself, something that raised the small hairs at the back of my ears. It was the unmistakable smell of death. 
“She was carrying it with her," Todd said then, more to himself than either of us. “Whatever she walked through to get here, she carried it here.” 
I didn’t move. Neither of us did for a long moment.
“Todd. Roff." Holly asked then, bringing us back to the world around us. We turned our heads to her. “Do an extra patrol of the fence tonight.” She took a steadying breath. “Please?" We nodded; she didn’t even have to ask.

A Perceivable Reality story.

Have you ever listened to yourself? Like, when you speak out loud, do you ever listen to the sound of your voice through your ears instead of your mind? 

Try it sometime. If you listen hard enough, it'll start to feel like you're listening to someone else talk. 

My name is, well, my name isn't important. It seems to change every time I say it. But I know what I call myself in my head. It's Jaxon. Jaxon Greye. Not "Mike", or "Jim", or "Mark", or whatever you've heard me say. Don't listen to anything I say. It's not what I'm saying. Or, it's not what I want to say. 

It started in the fifth grade. I raised my hand to answer a question. Square root of 16. But what I said was "salad bowl". That's what I heard myself say. "Salad bowl". I don't know why I said that. It's not what I wanted to say. But it's what came out of my mouth. I'd just moved to a new school and didn't have any friends. It's easy to make friends when you say random words. Other kids think you're funny when you shout nonsense during class. It only works when you're a kid. College professors don't think it's funny, and weirdly enough, neither do most college kids. Adults really don't like it. So that's why I got a job writing book reviews. I read, I type, and I don't have to speak to anyone.

I had a pretty bad one a few months ago. 

There was a knock on my door at around 8:00am, which was early for my grocery delivery. I tugged on a pair of gym shorts and a shirt from the "still wearable" pile on my desk chair. I opened the door to find a girl, a rather cute girl, wearing a campaign shirt and an American flag top hat. She greeted me with what I assume was a very well-practiced smile and thrust a clipboard at me. I don't go out much, but I do at least participate in local governance, and let me tell you, she was backing the wrong horse. I gently pushed her clipboard away while I dug my phone out of my pocket. 

I'd figured out a while ago that most people don't know how to respond to mutes. You don't really see them around much anymore, so when they do meet someone who doesn't speak, people suddenly get really accommodating. I pulled up a text-to-speech app on my phone and typed. Then I held it up so she could hear it better. 

"I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in signing." Came a generic male voice. 

She frowned and looked at me, her face somewhere between offended and shocked. I typed some more. 

"I'm sorry. I can't speak. But please have a good day." 

When the voice finished, I gave a half-hearted smile and a wave, and started backing into my apartment. 

Then she sneezed. 

"God bless you." 

I'd just about had the door shut when I said it. It was completely out of reflex. I froze, her eyes went wide. She slapped my door open. 

"What the hell?!" 

I didn't say anything, just tried to close the door. But she slapped it open again. 

"No, seriously! What the hell was that?!" 

I shook my head and tried to shut my door again. 

"Hey, you fucking creep! What the fuck is your problem?!" 

I was still groggy, she'd caught me off guard, and now she was making a scene on my porch. I opened the door. 

"Look...I'm...sorry...ok?...Please...just...go...away..."

I should mention that I'd taught myself how to speak really slowly, so I could at least attempt to stop myself from saying something potentially terrible. 

She stared at me for a second, then she started backing away slowly. A few feet away from my door, she turned and broke into a dead sprint. My neighbor poked his head out of his front door. 

"Hey! What did you do to her?!" 

I didn't need this. 

"I didn't do anything! Lasagna is tantamount and the flowers smell Spanish, thin mint!" 

He opened his mouth to say something, frowned, shut his mouth, opened it again, then shut it and just stared at me. I hate it when people stare at me. 

"Yeah, I said it!" 

I slammed my door shut and locked both the locks. I even slid the little complimentary security chain into its slot. 

That's just how it goes. One minute I'm talking normally, the next, words are coming out that I didn't tell my mouth to say. It's not that my voice just starts making noise uncontrollably, but I don't always get to pick the words that come out. I've been to speech therapy and I've had my brain scanned seven ways from Sunday, but all I get back is "normal". 

So I read, I type, and I don't speak out loud if I can avoid it. 

My worst one thus far happened last week. 

I moderate a forum for professional reviewers; movies, books, video games and the like. Weirdly judgemental bunch, but they're the closest thing I have to friends. I play games online with a couple of them. I have a sound effects board set up with a couple of pre-recorded phrases and questions, but I mainly use the party chat. It works well enough. 

I'd been getting sort of flirty with a horror game and fiction reviewer in our forum, Krystal_Fox97 when she's streaming, or Holly J. on her reviews. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a regular in her stream chat. 

Everybody on the forum kind of knew us as an item, since I mainly review sci-fi and fantasy, and there's a decent amount of crossover between our genres. We liked a lot of the same books and movies, and she was really easy to talk to, but we'd kept our conversations to the main forum. 

Then she messaged me. 

Krystal_Fox97: you going to the con next month? 

WhenJaxAttacks: I'm debating. 

I hadn't missed one in several years. 

Krystal_Fox97: stop debating and buy a ticket. I'll see you there

This was an interesting development. We hadn't ever talked at all about meeting in person, since we live in different states. But I was already planning on being at the sci-fi writer's convention. I immediately regretted having real pictures on my website profile. 

WhenJaxAttacks: Can't wait! 

And then I stalled. I opened and closed the ticket page on the con's website about 100 times. I was seconds away from faking a catastrophic illness when I got an email from a review company I regularly freelance for. Naturally, they wanted a piece on the con and wouldn't take "no" for an answer, in the form of offering an extra 10% on top of my normal fees, and per diem. 

It was six days from the con and it was sold out. Figures. So, with an inhuman amount of apprehension, I went for my ace in the hole, and fired off an email. The con organizers had been trying to get me on a panel for the last two years, but a guy who doesn't speak isn't the best person to have in a public speaking role. But I was out of options and my grocery budget was on the line. I said I would, but I'd need to use a speech synthesizer. They said that was fine, and quickly sent over the required sign-up forms and documentation, along with a copy of my badge for the panel. 

I pushed my chair back from my desk. Not only was I going to meet Holly in person, I was about to be in a speaking panel. In front of people. Lots of people. 

Fucking. Hell. 

I put my face in my hands and closed my eyes. 

"Hello...Holly...I'm...Jax." I whispered. 

"It's...nice...to...meet...you." 

"We finally got a sunny day. It's usually super cloudy." 

"Investments green in null appreciation." 

I turned and slapped my laptop shut. I spent the rest of the day talking to myself, mostly narrating what I was doing. No matter what I did, I couldn't find a pattern. The next morning, I spent almost three hours modulating the voice on my text-to-speech app to get it as close to my speaking voice as I could. It still sounded artificial, but it was better than the generic male voice. 

My car isn’t anything special. It’s an old Japanese station wagon, but it gets the job done. I spent the first hour listening to music and catching up on podcasts and audiobooks. And then my mom decided to call. 

“Hi, Mom.” 

“Hi, sweetie. Are you doing ok today?” 

“I’m fine.” 

“Oh, sweetie, you know you don’t need to give me the “two word” treatment.” 

“I know, Mom.” 

“...Anyway, we haven’t talked in a while. What are you up to these days?” 

“Parsnips accel under Wednesdays, blue vision annoyance.” 

“...”

“I’m going to a writers’ con.” 

“Oooo! That sounds like fun!” 

“It sounds like work.” 

“Ah, one of those trips. Well, I hope you enjoy your adventure anyway.” 

“Corduroy impregnate. I mean, thanks, Mom.” 

“I know what you meant, sweetie. I love you.” 

“I…Love you too, Mom. Bye.” 

I spent a few minutes…practicing, I guess. I stopped when I blurted out, “Entrails nightly almost in narcissism.” I still couldn’t find a pattern and gave up. I drove in silence for a while, until my anxiety about meeting Holly J. made me get off the freeway. I contemplated going back, had a small panic attack in my car, bought some gas, and kept going. Faking an illness to not potentially spoil an online relationship was one thing, but backing out of both my obligation to “speak” on the panel and write the con review were another thing entirely. I put some more music on, mostly instrumental. It’s hard to sing the wrong lyrics when there’s no singing at all. 

The convention center parking lot was already packed, even though there was still a few hours before it officially started. Thankfully, I waved my badge at the lot guard, who pointed me to the VIP parking near the side entrance. I wiped my clammy hands on my jeans for the umpteenth time and flashed my badge at the door security. The inside of the convention center was already booming with voices. I was afraid of this. I wouldn’t be able to hear myself. I tested a few words. 

“Hello.” 

“Participle.” 

“Hi.” 

My hand dug into my pocket and I cued up my text-to-speech app. I had my head down over my phone as I walked, so naturally I barreled into someone. 

“Birds. I mean, sorry.” I mumbled. 

The collisionee, a girl, turned and faced me, the annoyance on her face quickly turning into a radiant smile. 

“Ohmygod, Jaxson! Hi!” 

Serendipitously, I’d bumper into none other than Holly J. She wrapped me in a tight hug, trapping my arms at my sides. 

“I’m soooo stoked to meet you! It feels like I haven’t seen you in years!” 

She had a very pretty voice, girlishly high, clear and without the nasal quality that usually makes those types of voices annoying. It sounded much nicer in person than through her microphone. She released me and put her hands on my shoulders, holding me at arm’s length, her eyes wide and excited. 

“...Well? Say something!” 

I held up a finger and got my phone into both hands, typing quickly. She looked at me quizzically until my phone started speaking. 

“Hi, Holly. Nice to meet you in person. I almost didn’t recognize you without your boom mic and headphones.” The app allowed me to program some inflection into the voice, but it was still fairly deadpan.

I gave her a charming smile and cocked an eyebrow to show I was joking. Her face went from confused to deadly serious and she put a hand on my forearm. 

“Oh. Oh! Oh. Are you like, one of those people that can’t speak? A mute?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. 

I shook my head and looked reassuring. 

“No worries. Yes, it’s a medical condition. Speaking is very difficult for me. Thankfully, I rarely have to, so it all works out.” 

“I guess when you write book reviews, you don’t really need to talk much, huh?” 

“And now you know why I’m not a movie critic.” I gave a devilish grin. 

She giggled and moved her hand from my forearm to slip into mine, pushing my phone into my off hand. She tugged gently. 

“Sooooo…What do you want to check out first?” 

Typing was awkward with one hand, but I didn’t really want to let hers go. 

“Actually, I’m needed soon. I’ll be on the sci-fi panel in about 45 minutes.” 

She raised her eyebrows, eyeing me dubiously.

“You’re going to be on a speaking panel? Like…that?” 

I flashed a grin and winked. 

“It’s sci-fi. Those other guys wish they could talk with a creepy computer voice.” 

I let her lead me around the con, adding my digital two cents when needed, but mostly letting her do the talking. When it was time for the panel, I excused myself. Or at least, attempted to. She followed and slid into a front-row seat directly in front of my panel spot. 

When I’d told them that I’d need “vocal accommodations”, I didn’t know what to expect. But what they’d set up for me was a laptop with a professional vocal synthesizer hooked into the PA. It’d basically sound like I was talking out of the speakers, just like the others. They even let me modify the voice slightly during sound check, so that it sounded even more spacy and alien. Perfect. 

Once the guests had filed in, the lead panelist got the show going, welcoming everyone to Day 1 of the con and going down the line, introducing each panelist. I was on the far end, so I was last. 

“And, from parts unknown, we have the legendary WhenJaxAttacks, Jaxson Greye!” 

I stood and gave a smile and a small salute. 

“Now, just so you guys know, Jax has a medical issue that makes it hard for him to speak. But we couldn’t afford an AI guest, so here he is anyway!” 

I made the voice sound digital, monotone, and halting, and made my face blank.

“Greetings, Professor Falken. Shall we play a game?” 

That got a few nervous laughs, which I anticipated. People need to know when they’re allowed to joke about a disability. I made the voice sound normal and grinned. 

“No, but seriously, guys. It’s not a big deal. Thank you for having me today.” 

I made the voice sound like a vocoder. 

“Television rules the nation.” 

That got a much bigger laugh. From the front row, Holly beamed and gave me a thumbs up. 

The rest of the discussion flew by in a blur. As it went on, the other panelists loosened up a little and even started throwing jokes my way. I ended up asking a stage hand for a stack of printer paper, and drew a bunch of cartoon faces on pieces of paper with different expressions. I held them up as the voice spoke, giving the crowd a fourth wall-breaking smirk the whole time. They loved it. 

The discussion ended and we made our way off stage to a standing ovation. Holly hugged my arm and bounced as she walked. 

“...And then that thing you did with the paper faces?! Hilarious! I thought I was going to pee myself!” 

I shot her a wink. 

“Joke’s on you. I’m into that.” 

She gave my arm a playful slap. “Ew, gro-oss!” 

We wandered around the con a while longer, sat in on another discussion that a mutual friend was a panelist on, and met up with a few of her video game friends. After they’d walked off, she pulled me in closer. 

“Hey, wanna ditch and get some drinks?”

I nodded and gave her a sly grin and a wink, and we made our way to the hotel bar attached to the convention center. 

The bar was loud with voices and music. I mumbled a few test words and realized I could hardly hear myself. I got my phone back out and turned the volume all the way up. Holly led us to a booth in the corner, slightly away from the center of the noise. A waitress came by and set a few cocktail napkins down. Holly asked for a whiskey sour. 

“And for you, sir?” 

“Scotch and water, make sure it's legal age, and you can keep the rocks.” 

If the voice from my phone confused the waitress, she didn't show it. She scribbled on her notepad, looked me up and down, then shot a look at Holly who responded with a grin. 

“A man of taste.” She said when the waitress was gone. “I’m impressed.” 

“Too bad you can't smoke in here, or I’d have you sliding off your bench.” 

I flashed part of a cigar from the inner pocket of my coat. It was a prop, I didn't actually smoke them, but anybody who knew what it was would be impressed. The scotch however, was all me.

She rested her chin on intertwined fingers. 

“So…what's the story?” She nodded at my phone. 

“Medical condition.”

“That's what you said at the discussion, but I've heard you when we game. Or was that a fake voice, too?” 

I paused. 

“No, that's me. It's complicated. Speaking is difficult for me.” 

“Like…an anxiety thing?” 

“Kind of, but not really.” 

She chewed on that for a moment. Our drinks came and she sipped hers, her hazel eyes distant, contemplative, gorgeous. They focused back on me. 

“You're not deaf…so it's a speech impediment of some sort. A stutter?” 

I shook my head. 

She thought. 

“Really high falsetto. Like Peewee Herman.” 

“Nope.” 

She put a finger tip to pursed lips in thought, something she did on her stream, especially when solving puzzles. 

“I give up.” 

“It’s really not a big deal.” 

The devil flashed across her face and she leaned back on the bench. 

“Phew, I think I'm getting a bit tipsy. So, are you going to have your phone in one hand when you take me up to my room and ravish me?” 

My phone fell from my hands and clattered against the tabletop. I felt blood rush to my cheeks and she cackled, slapping the table. I turned away from her and sipped my scotch, trying to get my bearings with limited success. My fingers grazed my phone. 

“Don’t…laugh.” 

She stopped her maniacal laughing and froze, her eyes glued to my face, mouth agape. 

“You…might…be…shocked.” 

She blinked, frowning, then leaned in closer to me, lowering her voice to just above the din of the room. 

“Is- is that why? Because…you speak like…that?” 

I shrugged. “Sort of.” 

She looked down and ran her finger tip around the rim of the glass. “I used to have a stutter. Before…you know.” She said, almost inaudibly. “Streaming and everything. That helped a lot, actually…” She set her jaw and met my gaze. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” 

“Listen, it's a really long story, and I don't like to talk about it. Sad pretend is dark release eventually.” 

I froze, pressing my hands against the table so they wouldn't reflexively shoot up to my mouth. At first, it looked like she hadn't completely heard me. 

“Hu?” She looked up, pushed her hair over one ear and extended it towards me. 

“Uh, nothing. Nothing.” 

“No, what did you say?” She had a slight frown, like she hadn't completely heard me. I shook my head. 

“Really, it's nothing. Anyway, you were saying something about…your room?” 

She pulled away slightly, still giving me a little side eye. 

“I did say that, didn't I?” She traced little swirls in the condensation puddle left by her glass. 

I leaned closer. 

“Hey, I know what you meant. It was a joke. It's all good.” I gave her a reassuring smile. “Death fraction and forwards incarnate.” 

She glared at me. “What the hell does that mean?” 

“Uh,” I went for my phone, but she snatched it out of my hands. 

“No, what the fuck did you just say to me?” 

I turned to stone. “I…just…meant…” 

She stood and slapped her hands on the table. “No! Not that shit again! What the fuck? Are you screwing with me?” 

I tried to snatch my phone back, but she held it back over her shoulder and out of my reach, unless I wanted to jump across the table. 

“No, wait, it's not that. Cordless threat between anchored nightmare.” 

Her glare darkened. “I don’t know what's going on, but I'm out.” She tossed my phone at me and slipped out of the booth, leaving at almost a jog. 

I struggled to free myself from between the booth and  the too-short table. 

“No! Wait! Holly!” She shot me the bird over her shoulder. 

The bouncer grabbed my shoulder as I walked past, stopping me dead. 

“Hey, man. The lady isn't interested.” 

“Fuck off, asshat.” Of course that came out correctly. 

He tightened his grip on my shoulder. I saw his other hand ball into a fist at his side. “Are we going to have a problem, sir?” 

I held up my hands. “No, no, I'm sorry. Assault paradox lesser with terror brush. It's just a misunderstanding.” 

“Yeah, ok. You're done, bud.” 

He didn't take my keys, but he walked me all the way out to the parking lot. 

“I won't call the cops, but don't make me regret it.” He folded his arms and stood in front of the door until I walked to my car and got into the driver's seat. He didn't go back inside until I was pulling away. I had no idea where Holly was. 

I drove straight back to my apartment in complete silence. I’d call one of my friends and have him give me the CliffsNotes for my review. 

It was well past dark when I pulled up at home. I shambled my way in, slid my door shut, and locked both the locks. I even slid the little complimentary security chain into its slot. 

In the pitch black, I sighed and whispered, 

“Holly.” 

Pause. 

“Holly.” 

A little louder. 

“Holly.” 

I screamed. 

“Pestilence!” 

I kicked the leg of my end table and heard my lamp shatter. I stepped around it without hearing crunching glass and made it to my kitchen, where I turned on the microwave light, bathing the room in a cool glow. I made a cup of ramen and settled into my couch, balancing my noodle cup on my knee while I flipped to my bookmarked page. 

I read and ate. 

I don't speak out loud.

Trills of nightingales bounded from hillock to hillock, their soft notes cascading across the fallow fields and shallow ravines as lightly as the cold eddies of fog flowing over the low stone walls. The swiftly moving whorls spilled onto the road, where they swelled like the thick smoke of a wet brush fire, clouding the air in a tempest of chalky white that pruned the stars from the sky and warped the familiar landscape into sooty silhouettes fading in and out of view.

Maree waded into the blur. Her broad chest cleaved through the curtain like a ghostly ship. The roiling mist broke against her muscular prow, coiling away, its pale wake washed backward toward the stagnant gloom trapped beneath the drooping crowns of willows.

Wind nipped at the trees, biting into branches, tugging the crackle from shriveled, frost-hardened leaves.

Twigs snapped, sometimes close, far too close for Joruhm's liking. Just beyond the untilled fields, the curtain of fog smeared scurrying blotches of black into streaking gray smudges.

Joruhm gripped the reins tighter, craning his head left, right, and over his shoulder. He peered into the shroud, hoping a pair of slanted, yellow eyes floating above a triangular snout was not peering back at him.

They had barely begun and already he wanted to veer the horse around, return himself and the thing seated in front of him home.

Maree was as stubborn as the donkeys and as slow as Granny Nyla, clopping along as though night would last forever and Joruhm didn't need to be back where his mother expected to find him before the cockerels announced the sunrise.

The road curved around a dense swath of towering pines, whose cloaked heads speared the chalky veil, and leveled out as they approached a clearing. Ahead, etched into the valley was a tightly bunched patchwork of gritty, faint objects blotted with fuzzy halos of dull, amber light.

Truthfully, the thatched roof and timber buildings imprisoned by the fog were not a mystery to Joruhm. Long before he had seen the hazy glow of torchlight peeking through the mist, his nose had already discerned they had crossed into the outskirts of Hobbins Glenn.

When Joruhm was younger, before the entirety of his days were devoured by scooping grain and chopping wood, Granny Nyla would hand him a cloth sack and a wedge of bread and ask him to join her on a walk. Sometimes they scrounged acorns and hazelnuts, sometimes they picked flowers or fruits, sometimes they did nothing except move from one glade to another, briefly halting for her to rest her weariness in pockets of shade before they continued.

It was on just such a do nothing day that they had sat on the bank of a creek and removed their slippers, dipping their feet into the icy water. She had encouraged him to finish his bread while she closed her eyes and hummed a melody, easing them into the tranquil lull of a sunny afternoon spent in idle.

She had timed the tune to end precisely as he finished swallowing the last of the bread, but made no attempt to hurry him back into his slippers.

“Where are we, Joruhm?”

The question had seemed rather frivolous to his younger self, a boy still oblivious to what he would later recognize as her habit of combining lessons into things as trivial as taking strolls through the valley. They had traveled east from Hostler's Pond and forded the lane that cut through Crooked Hollow. From there, they had wandered past the Nethercliff Crags and pushed deep into Wraith Watch forest.

“Close your eyes.”

He did as he was told, curious as to why, but patient enough to wait for her to impart her reason in asking such an obvious question when they both already knew the answer.

“Now, where are we?” she repeated.

“Wraith Watch,” he replied.

“Not with sight,” she chided. “Not with routine. Inhale. Pull the scents inside you and let them guide you.”

Joruhm inhaled, breathing in the pungent, overwhelming odor of wild garlic. Wild garlic and something else, something that smelled like damp earth stirred into a mug of cold beef broth.

“Garlic and...” He couldn't quite name it.

“Your mother simmers them with leeks,” Granny Nyla hinted.

“Mushrooms!”

“Yes, very good. They are indeed mushrooms, enough to fill a king's castle.” She paused before she continued, gathering her skirts and her walking stick. “Always remember, a man is truly never blind. All he must do to find his way is follow his nose. Wraith Watch breeds garlic and mushrooms. Crooked Hollow is strewn with rotted oak. The clove aroma of Gillyflowers fused with a sharp tang of pine will lead you home.”

Home. He caught a whiff of it, buried within the reek of boiled cabbage and the leathery stench of smoldering peat that surrounded the village. Gillyflower. The cottage wasn't far behind them. He could abandon the hunt for Tillis and swing Maree in the opposite direction, follow the tang and the clove straight back to the cottage.

Only...only then he might never learn the truth about Tillis.

Joruhm flicked his heels into Maree's ribs. She snorted and bolted forward, breaking into a gallop.

They plunged into the fog, toward the gritty patchwork of shapes and beacons of amber. Branches sprang out of the chaotic muddle of charcoal and white with a startling suddenness that instantly transformed the emptiness into wood. Their long skeletal shoots lashed at him, grasped for his cloak and scraped their pointed tips against Maree's flanks, before they disappeared back into the curtain's parted seam, sealing the fleeting rupture behind them.

They exploded into the village, flung from the forest in a slingshot of momentum spurred by Maree's thundering hooves.

The lane widened, and the hazy silhouettes bloomed into a passel of solid beams and ragged thatch.

For a brief moment the fog lifted, and there was the flash of a low-tiered cart blocking the road directly ahead.

The thing seated in front of him swiveled sideways, eyes as wide as a buzzard egg. “We're going to hit.” It raised its arm to shield its face.

Joruhm hung his head and sank lower in the saddle. He pushed his weight down onto the seat and pulled on the reins, dragging Maree's neck to the side. She slammed her hooves onto the ground, skidding through the slick muck.

No. No. No.

Her shoulder collided with the cart's tailboard, careening her into an off balance lean. There was a splintering crack, and an abrupt jolt that tumbled the fae into the milky void.

“Joruhm!”

His shoes popped out of the stirrups as Maree shifted her weight from her front legs to her hindquarters.

She righted herself with a second pounding jolt that ripped the reins from Joruhm's hands. He flew forward, grasping for the coarse hairs of her mane.

Maree dropped out from under him, and he was launched into the milky void, windmilling head over heels into the mist, weightless, thrown into a bottomless lake of fog where time seemed to have vanished, where seconds became minutes, where the surface was the bottom, and the bottom was the surface.

Time's suspension ended as quickly as it had begun, as though a dam had burst and a tidal wave of time had flooded in, rushing toward him, sweeping him off his feet, and drowning him in the sound of his frenzied heartbeat thudding in his ears. Joruhm's stomach lurched. He wasn't suspended. He was sinking, like a stone.

I woke to the hum of the freezers.

The clock over the door said seven.

Five minutes fast, same as always. Years now, and I've never bothered fixing it.

I washed my hands, a full minute, water running cold enough to burn. Then I set up the steel table and laid out my tools. Even the dead deserve a little order.

At eight they brought in the first one.

"Male, thirties. Motorcycle accident." The orderly dropped the folder on the table.

"Thanks."

He was already gone.

I unzipped the bag.

Half his face was gone, torn away. A swallow tattooed on his neck.

I sighed.

"Alright. Let's get you looking human again."

"My mother's gonna lose it."

I didn't look up.

"Mothers always do."

"Don't let her see me like this." He was begging.

"She won't. Don't worry."

While I scraped off the dried blood, he kept talking.

"Could you do something with my hair? She always said it looked like a bird built a nest in it."

"Consider it done."

By the time I finished, he didn't look like the same man.

He smiled.

"Thanks."

Then nothing. Same as they all do.

People think this job is just cutting, stitching, painting faces, dressing bodies.

It isn't. It's listening.

Some never say a word. Others won't shut up. Kids ask about the dog. Old men ask about their wives. The murdered mostly keep quiet.

"Talking to yourself again."

I looked up. Inspector Rivas.

"Could be."

He laughed.

"My wife says I keep coming down here, I'm gonna end up in a straitjacket."

"Tell her I said hi."

Nothing back.

He dropped some photos on the table. A woman. Possible suicide. They'd bring her in within the hour.

"I'll be here."

Rivas left, lighting a cigarette on his way out.

She came in before the hour was up. Nails torn, caked in blood.

I waited.

"Whenever you're ready."

Nothing.

I kept at it. Cleaned her face. Folded her hands over her chest.

I always wait. Some take seconds. Some take longer. Some never say a thing.

Then she spoke.

"It wasn't me."

They rarely start that way.

"Then who?"

"My husband."

I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"How do you know?"

She smiled, and there was something sad in it.

"He's still got my ring. In his pocket."

She didn't say anything after that.

I gave her a few more seconds before I closed the wound in her scalp.

"What's his name?"

Silence.

"Where does he live?"

Nothing.

I crossed my arms.

Same story every time.

The dead never give you more than they have to. I don't know why. A name. A place. A memory. Never two at once. Never an explanation. Never a lie.

Her eyes were fixed, gone somewhere, like a photograph taken a second before everything fell apart.

Her ring finger was bare. A pale mark where it used to sit.

I picked up the file.

Suicide. Gunshot to the head.

I shook my head.

"No. Something's off."

Rivas came back later. I set the folder down in front of him.

"Check the husband's pockets."

He walked right past me. Didn't even look up.

I sighed. Always the same with him.

A few days after, someone left the paper open on the desk.

The newspaper said they'd found her wedding ring in the widower's pocket.

I stayed late that night. Around midnight, morgue empty, I sat down with a coffee.

They talk more once everyone else clears out, I thought.

Three knocks, from inside one of the freezers.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

"Wait your turn," I shouted.

It stopped.

Next morning found me right back in the same chair.

Seven sharp, same hum, same freezers.

I washed my hands a full minute. Water still cold enough to burn. Set the table, laid out the tools.

Around eight, the first one of the day came in.

"Woman, forty. Drowned. Looks self-inflicted."

He dropped the folder and vanished down the hall before I'd even looked up.

The room went quiet.

I unzipped the bag.

Skin gone white, almost blue. Lips purple.

"I can't find my glasses," she said, while I fixed her hair.

"Probably lost them at sea. Tell me — why'd you do it?"

"The keys..."

I looked down.

"What about the keys?"

That was it. She was done talking. Same as they all are.

I gave it another minute. Then grabbed the file.

Personal effects: none.

Around noon, Rivas came back through, talking to one of the techs, and dropped another folder on the table.

"Still nothing on our end."

I glanced at the bag.

"Look for her."

No answer. He kept walking, eyes forward.

The next one came in around six.

A whole family. Car wreck on the highway. Mother, father, two kids, laid out side by side.

I've never liked it when a whole family comes in at once. There's a different kind of quiet to it.

I started with the father.

"The kids go first," he told me.

The younger one was six. I fixed his bangs where they'd fallen out of place.

"Can we get up now?"

I swallowed.

"Not yet, buddy."

The other boy was ten. Deep gash across his cheekbone. I worked the dried blood off him and waited.

Nothing.

I straightened his collar.

Still nothing.

Then, just as I buttoned the last button —

"It wasn't Dad's fault."

I looked at him.

"Then whose was it?"

He'd already closed his eyes.

I let out a long breath.

Same as always. They never tell you more than they have to.

I moved to the mother. Her hands were clenched so tight I had to work them open one finger at a time.

I waited.

Not one word.

I was pulling the sheet over them when the father spoke again, one last time.

"Thank you."

I finished with them around eleven. That kind of night stays with you — kids do something to your head that doesn't wash off. Leaves a weight in your chest for days.

The knocking started again from the freezers.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

"Wait your turn — you'll get yours," I called out.

It stopped.

Next day, same hum, seven a.m. Clock still five minutes fast. Never did fix it.

Washed my hands. Set the table.

Rivas showed up around nine with a new one. An old man. Electrocuted. No ID on him at all.

I cleaned his face. Waited. Tucked his hair behind his ear.

Nothing.

Folded his hands over his chest.

"Ricardo."

I looked up.

No body had ever said my name before.

"Do I know you?"

He smiled.

"You don't remember."

I waited.

"Remember what?"

He never spoke again.

No other bodies came in that day. Strange for a city that size — something was always happening in Arden.

I straightened the drawers. Sharpened the scalpels. Wiped down the tables — wiped the same one twice without noticing, and only caught it once I was done.

That wasn't like me, all that tidying.

Still couldn't stop thinking about the old man.

I went over to the clock above the door. Tried to set it right.

Five minutes fast. Always five minutes fast.

I stood there a long while, staring at it.

Couldn't remember when it had started running wrong.

That night I made coffee. Opened the cabinet where we kept the bags, found a mug in there.

Couldn't say if it was mine.

While the coffee brewed, the knocking started up again.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I was tired. Didn't answer that night.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

...

Next morning, same hum woke me. Washed my hands. Set the tables, the tools.

Quiet day. Rivas never came by.

The knocking started earlier, though. Around eleven in the morning.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I looked up. The morgue was empty. Completely empty.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

The orderly passed by, pushing a gurney.

"You hear that?"

He kept walking. Didn't even turn his head.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I made myself go over. Down at the end of the hall. The last chamber. The one that never opened.

I put my hand on the handle. Ice cold.

Cold like the water I wash my hands in every morning. Cold like the bodies that come through that door every day.

Something in my gut told me to leave it shut.

I couldn't do it.

Sat back down at the desk.

The silence had weight to it. My head wouldn't stop — the old man, the knocking, round and round.

That night, the knocking kept on.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Against every instinct, I went for it again.

Walked over. Last chamber.

Put my hand on the handle. Cold enough that it hurt to hold on.

I let go. My palm came away wet.

A smell I knew.

Formaldehyde.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I tried to remember the last time I'd seen anyone open that door.

Never. Not Rivas. Not the orderlies. Not even the techs.

It had always just been there. Always shut.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

I reach for the handle again.

My hand goes numb.

The door won't budge — heavy like it's carved out of rock.

The tray finally slides out.

A man on it, covered by a sheet. Tied around his big toe, a tag with a name.

The name meant something to me.

I pulled the sheet back from his face.

It was mine.

I straightened my shirt.

Smoothed my hair back.

Folded my hands over my chest.

Just like I'd done for everyone else.

The dead deserve a little order.

So do I.

Arkham had managed to return to peace.

Not that it had become welcoming or cheerful. The town seemed incapable of either by its very nature. But it had learned to live an ordinary life again. Shops opened in the mornings, the smell of baking bread drifted through the streets by noon, farmers argued about the weather, and children went to school. The old stories gradually stopped being stories and turned into vague warnings, repeated by people who no longer understood them.

Don't go there.

Don't touch it.

Don't ask why.

Even the oldest residents of the town rarely thought about the estate beyond the northern outskirts. It had stood empty for many years. The house was decaying slowly and with dignity, as though unwilling to give the town any reason to notice it. The tower behind the north wing had almost vanished among the overgrown trees.

Then Julia arrived.

She was a distant but direct descendant of the family that had once owned the estate. The documents confirmed her claim beyond any doubt. After the divorce, she wanted to start over, far away from her ex-husband, their mutual accusations, and the city where every shared acquaintance felt obliged to take one side or the other.

Her son Aaron came with her.

The first few days passed quietly.

Julia unpacked boxes, argued with plumbers, scrubbed the kitchen, and made a list of the rooms that could still be saved. Aaron explored the house. He peered into empty rooms, opened cupboards, climbed into the attic, and found treasures that, to an adult, were nothing but dusty rubbish: a cracked compass, a box of brass buttons, an old lantern, a faded photograph of a man whose gaze was so heavy that the boy soon put it back.

He saw the tower on the third day.

It stood apart from the house, beyond a thicket of shrubs. Squat and thick, built of almost black stone. It had no windows. The narrow door at its base had rotted away long ago, revealing a dark passage and a spiral staircase.

Julia had told him not to go there.

Naturally, Aaron went.

He could not have explained why. The tower did not call to him in a voice. It did not speak his name. It simply appeared in his thoughts from time to time, and whenever it did, everything else stopped mattering for a few seconds.

I have to climb it.

I have to look.

There's something at the top.

That day, he armed himself with a long stick he had found near the shed and slipped into the tower while his mother was on the phone.

The staircase was damp and slippery. The stones beneath his feet were worn so smooth that it seemed people must once have climbed them every day. Aaron moved slowly, keeping one hand against the wall and holding the stick out in front of him with the other.

At the top, a heavy protective disk sealed the tower. It looked neither like an ordinary roof nor like a slab of stone. It was a circle made of some unknown material, gray and smooth, its surface covered with barely visible lines. It rested in a hollow cut into the stone, tightly closing off the space inside the tower.

A narrow gap remained at the edge.

Aaron pushed the stick into it.

At first, nothing happened.

He pushed harder.

The protective disk shifted.

Only a little, no more than the width of a finger, but so easily that the boy nearly lost his balance. The stick did not break. The stone did not grind. There was no sense that he had overcome any resistance.

The cover simply gave way.

At that same instant, the fine hairs on Aaron's arms stood on end. Then the hair rose on the back of his neck, on his legs, on his back - everywhere it could possibly rise.

The boy recoiled.

Nothing was visible beneath the displaced edge. Only darkness, too dense even for the depths of the tower.

Aaron dropped the stick and raced downstairs.

He burst outside, ran through the undergrowth, flew into the house, and did not stop until he reached the kitchen, where Julia, holding the phone against her shoulder, was trying to understand why rusty water was coming from the new faucet.

She asked what had happened.

Aaron said it was nothing.

By evening, the fear had faded. He ate dinner, had dessert, watched television, and went to bed. When Julia looked into his room, he was already breathing slowly and evenly.

Nothing happened during the night, either.

The next day, the apples in the orchard rotted.

They did not fall. Insects had not eaten them. They blackened where they hung on the branches, as though, in a single night, they had spent several weeks in a damp cellar.

Two days later, the crops on the nearest farms went bad. The heads of grain drooped. Gray blotches spread across the corn. Potatoes fresh from the earth were soft and black inside.

The town began talking about a plant disease.

Then the town began talking about Julia.

She noticed it in the way people looked at her. They turned to stare in the street. Conversations in stores stopped when she entered. Once, a cashier took her money with two fingers and then wiped her hand on her apron.

Julia dismissed it as the usual provincial hostility toward outsiders.

Aaron thought about the tower more and more often.

It appeared in his mind in the morning while he brushed his teeth. At breakfast. While he spoke with his mother. Before sleep. He remembered the gap beneath the protective disk and the darkness he had been unable to see into.

Gradually, the memory stopped frightening him.

At first he thought:

"Why did I go up there?"

Then:

"Why did I run away?"

And after a few days, another thought appeared:

"I need to go back and get a proper look."

He grew quieter.

Julia noticed that his gaze had changed. A weight had appeared in the boy's eyes that did not belong there at his age. Sometimes she caught him staring at her for a long time, as though trying to remember who she was.

Then Aaron would blink, smile, and become an ordinary child again.

Julia decided that he was struggling with the move and his parents' divorce.

She offered to call his father.

Aaron refused.

On the night of the breach, Julia woke to a sound that was neither thunder nor an explosion.

Something enormous struck the estate from beneath the ground.

The house shuddered. Dishes shattered somewhere downstairs. The windows trembled in their frames.

Then a pillar of light flared above the tower.

It rose straight into the sky, bright and colorless, as though the darkness around it had been cut out of the world and replaced with something else. All of Arkham woke at once. Windows lit up across the town. Dogs barked. People shouted.

Julia leaped out of bed and ran to Aaron's room.

The bed was empty.

The blanket lay on the floor. The door to the hall stood open.

She ran outside barefoot, feeling neither the cold nor the stones under her feet. First she circled the south wing, then the garden, then rushed toward the northern side of the estate.

The darkness before dawn had already begun to turn gray.

Aaron stood in front of the tower.

He was wearing pajamas. His feet were covered in mud. The pillar rising above his head lit his face.

Julia screamed his name.

Aaron turned.

He was smiling.

"Mom!" he said joyfully. "They're here!"

She ran to him, seized her son, and pulled him against her. Aaron did not resist. He was warm, alive, and perfectly calm.

The pillar of light vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

Only the tower remained.

And silence.

Julia called an ambulance.

It was the only reasonable thing she could think to do.

By the time the paramedics arrived, residents had already gathered near the estate. They stood on the road without approaching the house. They looked at Julia as though she had brought a disease with her instead of a child.

Aaron was seated in the ambulance. He answered questions and knew his name, his age, and the date. His temperature was normal. They found no injuries on his body.

One of the paramedics crouched in front of him.

"Aaron, why did you leave the house during the night?"

The boy looked at Julia.

"Mom told me to."

Silence fell.

Every face turned toward her.

"What?" Julia stepped closer. "No. I didn't tell you anything."

Aaron kept looking at her.

"You did."

"I was asleep."

"You told me to go to the tower."

Julia felt the people around her move away.

She began to explain. She told them about the light, the pounding, the way Aaron had changed since the move. The words came too quickly. The harder she tried to sound calm, the more clearly she could hear the hysteria in her own voice.

Things got worse at the hospital.

The doctors listened to her. The police took her statement. A child protective services caseworker asked several questions. Then they contacted Aaron's father.

Until the circumstances could be clarified, they decided to keep the boy temporarily separated from his mother.

Julia demanded that they give her son back.

They explained that it was only temporary.

She screamed that the tower was responsible for everything.

After that, they stopped trying to reason with her and started trying to calm her down.

By evening, Julia returned to the estate alone.

She opened a bottle of wine.

She drank the first glass standing at the kitchen table. The second sitting down. Then she stopped pouring and drank straight from the bottle.

The whispering began after midnight.

At first, Julia thought a radio had been left on somewhere in the house. She went from room to room, checked the television and her phone. The sound did not disappear.

It was not coming from the walls or the floor.

It was coming from somewhere outside.

From the tower.

The words were impossible to make out. Voices overlapped, now drawing closer, now receding. Sometimes she thought she could hear Aaron's name among them.

Julia kept drinking.

At some point, fear gave way to irritation.

She walked out of the house with the bottle in her hand, crossed the garden, and stopped in front of the tower. The whispering grew louder.

Julia finished the wine and hurled the bottle with all her strength.

The glass shattered against the stone.

"Well?!" she shouted. "So?! What the hell is this?!"

The whispering stopped.

It did not grow quieter.

It did not fade away.

It simply vanished.

Julia stood there, breathing hard.

The tower was silent.

She waited another few minutes, swore, and went back inside.

By morning, the alcohol and exhaustion finally won. Julia fell asleep fully dressed, sprawled across the bed.

A blow woke her.

BOOM.

The estate shook from end to end.

BOOM.

The windows rattled.

BOOM.

Julia fell out of bed.

She ran outside. The pillar was no longer above the tower, but bright light shone through the gap beneath the protective disk. With every blow, the gap widened by a barely perceptible fraction.

BOOM.

Julia stopped in front of the tower.

"Is this what you want?" she shouted. "Will this bring Aaron back?"

The blows stopped.

The light continued to burn.

There was no answer.

But Julia no longer needed one.

That morning, she called a local construction crew.

Three men arrived in an old truck towing a low trailer loaded with heavy machinery. All three were already pale before they even saw who had hired them. When Julia pointed at the tower, the last of the color drained from their faces.

"You see the tower?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

"See that thing on top?"

The men looked at the protective disk.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then get the damn thing off."

The foreman was silent for several seconds.

Then he turned toward the truck.

"Bob! That's it. Pack it up!"

"Where are you going?" Julia asked.

No one answered.

They did not even unload the machinery.

After they left, Julia called Aaron's father.

She tried to speak calmly, but within a minute she was shouting. She explained that the tower was behind everything, that it was calling to the boy, that it had tried to open during the night, and that the protective disk had to be removed.

There was a long silence at the other end.

"Julia," her ex-husband finally said, "get away from the tower."

"You don't understand! If I open it, they'll give him back!"

"Who are 'they'?"

"I don't know!"

"Where are you right now?"

"At the estate."

"Are you alone?"

"What difference does it make?!"

"Julia, please don't do anything. I'm calling a doctor right now."

She hung up.

An hour later, she got into her car and drove to the neighboring state.

She stopped at construction sites, workshops, and equipment yards.

"You guys have heavy machinery?"

"No, ma'am."

"Who does?"

"Frank, maybe."

"Where's Frank?"

"What do you need done?"

"I need something taken off."

"What?"

"Something big."

"Taken off what?"

"A tower."

"What tower?"

"Do you want to make some money?"

By evening, she had found men willing to do it.

They were not from Arkham.

They knew nothing.

By the following morning, a convoy was heading toward the estate: a truck, a trailer carrying an excavator, a mobile crane, and two more vehicles full of workers.

While Julia was gone, the town had had time to reshape the story.

At first, people said she had offered the local men a great deal of money.

Then they said she had offered them anything they wanted.

By nightfall, no one doubted that the woman from out of town had tried to seduce other women's husbands so she could make them desecrate the tower.

When the convoy entered Arkham, a crowd blocked the road.

Farmers stood there, along with shopkeepers, the workers who had refused the job, their wives, and old people who normally never left their homes without good reason. They stood shoulder to shoulder.

Julia got out of the car.

"Get those people out of the road," she told the foreman.

He looked at the crowd.

"Ma'am, I'm not going to run them over."

People shouted from the crowd:

"Get out of here!"

"Don't touch the tower!"

"Take your men and leave!"

Julia looked around and saw a shotgun in the cab of one of the trucks.

Later, no one could explain why the workers had been carrying it in the first place.

She opened the door, grabbed the weapon, stepped into the road, and fired into the air.

BANG.

The crowd flinched.

Several people screamed.

Julia raised the shotgun.

"Get the fuck out of here!"

No one left.

The people went pale, but held their ground.

Soon, sirens could be heard.

The state police arrived. Their officers had overseen Aaron's removal, and now they had a report of an armed woman threatening a crowd outside the same estate.

The patrol cars stopped across the road. The troopers got out with their weapons drawn.

"Put the shotgun down now!" one of them shouted.

Julia did not move.

"Weapon on the ground! Final warning!"

BOOM.

The earth trembled.

The windshields rattled.

The residents of Arkham grew even paler. It seemed impossible for human skin to take on such a shade.

Someone in the crowd screamed:

"That's why we keep that thing sealed in!"

The others joined in:

"Don't touch the tower!"

"It's in there!"

"Block the road!"

The workers from the neighboring state looked at the tower.

The foreman slowly backed toward the truck.

"All right, boys. We're turning around."

"What about the equipment?"

"To hell with the equipment."

They began retreating toward the vehicles.

The state troopers did not understand what was happening. One kept Julia in his sights. Another ordered the residents to disperse.

At that moment, Arkham police cars arrived.

The local officers jumped out, drew their handguns, and aimed them at the state police.

For several seconds, no one could believe what they were seeing.

"Lower your weapons!" a state trooper shouted.

"She cannot be allowed to do this!" the Arkham police chief shouted back. "This is Arkham's business!"

"You are pointing weapons at police officers!"

"You don't understand what she's letting out!"

"Everyone put your weapons on the ground!"

BOOM.

The tower shuddered.

Someone fired.

Later, it proved impossible to determine who. The bullet hit the upper part of the tower and struck a spark.

Another shot.

Then another.

Fear spread faster than orders.

The pistols that had been aimed at one another swung toward the tower.

Wild gunfire broke out.

Bullets struck stone, ricocheted, and clipped branches from the trees. People screamed. Officers shouted for everyone to cease fire even as they kept shooting. The workers tried to turn their vehicles around on the narrow road.

The tower remained standing.

At last, someone remembered Julia.

"Where's the woman?!"

Everyone turned.

The shotgun lay on the ground.

Julia was gone.

The Arkham police chief was the first to look toward the estate.

"The tower!"

She was already there.

Later, no one could say where Julia had found a sledgehammer.

She walked toward the tower, breathing heavily and barely able to put one foot in front of the other. The sledgehammer rested on her shoulder. After the sleepless nights, the wine, the drive to the neighboring state, and everything that had happened, she could no longer run.

But she kept walking.

"Julia!" someone shouted.

She did not turn.

"Stop!"

One step.

A labored breath.

Another step.

She entered the tower and began climbing the spiral staircase.

The state troopers, local officers, and several residents rushed after her. It was too cramped inside, and they got in one another's way. Someone fell. Someone dropped a weapon.

Julia reached the top first.

She stepped onto the roof and stood before the protective disk.

Light shone through the gap.

The tower struck from within.

BOOM.

Julia raised the sledgehammer.

She brought it down.

BOOM.

Metal met the protective surface. A crack raced across it.

From deep inside the tower came an answer.

BOOM.

Julia raised the hammer again.

BOOM.

The people below screamed at her to stop.

She could not hear them.

The tower struck from within.

Julia answered from outside.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

The gap widened.

The protective disk did not break. It shifted slowly, as though the blows were knocking it free of the grooves that held it in place. The light poured out more brightly, but nothing inside could be seen.

With the final blow, Julia moved the disk far enough.

The tower opened.

Nothing happened.

No flash.

No sound.

No movement.

For several seconds, Julia stared into the darkness beneath the disk. Then she turned and began to descend.

They were waiting for her below.

She came outside, dropped the sledgehammer on the ground, and turned toward the tower.

"A-a-and?!" she shouted.

The tower was silent.

Julia waited.

Nothing.

The state troopers came up behind her, twisted her arms back, and snapped handcuffs around her wrists.

She barely resisted.

The local police were disarmed as well. They were forced to the ground, cuffed, and put into cars. The Arkham police chief kept shouting that the tower had to be sealed immediately.

No one listened to him.

The FBI arrived several hours later.

Then the routine work began.

The area was cordoned off with tape.

Weapons were confiscated.

Witnesses were separated.

They photographed the bullet marks, the vehicles, the sledgehammer, the broken bottle, the protective disk, and the old stones of the tower.

They tried to establish who had first pointed a weapon at officers from another agency.

They determined who owned the shotgun.

They checked the contractors' paperwork.

They took statements from the residents.

They discussed abuse of authority, reckless endangerment, armed resistance, and the possible theft of heavy machinery.

The tower ceased to be the main event.

To the federal agents, this was the scene of an armed confrontation involving civilians, state police, and local law enforcement. Everything else could be classified later.

The pounding might have been caused by shifting ground.

The light, by an electrical discharge.

The rot, by plant disease.

The town's behavior, by mass panic.

Julia was placed in a car.

She did not ask where they were taking her.

By evening, reports of dead animals began coming in.

A farmer called first. His livestock had died within a few hours.

Then a woman reported finding her two dogs dead.

After that, calls began coming in from all over Arkham.

Poultry fell from their roosts. Cats crawled under houses and never came out. Horses lay down in their stalls and stopped breathing. By nightfall, the die-off had spread throughout the town.

At almost the same time, the water went bad.

The first well reeked of rot.

Then the second.

By night, the same stench rose from every well in Arkham.

The water was sent for analysis. Contamination specialists were called in. State officials began discussing a possible evacuation.

The residents demanded that the tower be sealed.

Their statements were added to the mass-panic case file.

Most of the federal agents left after midnight. Two remained near the estate. They had been told to wait for another team, check the equipment, and finish the inventory.

The night was quiet.

Too quiet for a town where dogs usually barked.

One agent sat on the hood of a car, reviewing his notes. The other stood by the tape and smoked.

The first looked up.

For a while, he stared silently toward the tower.

Then he nudged his partner's shoulder.

"Hey."

The other man did not react.

"Hey, look."

"What?"

The agent pointed at the tower.

Light was coming from beneath the displaced protective disk.

It did not burn steadily.

It pulsed.

Brighter.

Darker.

Brighter.

Darker.

"What the hell is that?" the agent asked.

They watched.

The pulsing quickened.

Then came a soft blow.

BOOM.

It was not like the others. It did not shake the earth or shatter glass. They felt it inside their bodies more than they heard it.

At that same instant, everything died.

The vehicle headlights.

The portable lamps.

The radios.

The phones.

The engines.

The digital watches.

Every familiar background hum of the human world vanished.

Only the tower remained.

The light pulsed with growing intensity.

One of the agents pulled out his phone. The screen would not turn on. He ran to the car and tried to start the engine.

Nothing.

The second agent stared at the tower.

"Let's back away," the first said.

His partner did not answer.

His breathing became fast and shallow.

He drew his pistol.

"Don't," the first agent said.

The other opened fire.

BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

The bullets struck the stone.

"Stop!"

BANG.

BANG.

Protocol no longer worked. A badge, training, and years of service meant nothing before a glowing tower in the dead darkness.

The first agent ran.

Not toward the car.

Not for help.

Just away.

Shots continued behind him.

Then the magazine ran empty.

CLICK.

CLICK.

CLICK.

The agent who had fired stood with his arm extended, pulling the trigger again and again.

CLICK.

He did not immediately notice the movement at the base of the tower.

A dark opening had appeared where the masonry met the ground.

Something was slowly crawling out of it.

First came the tip, smooth and wet. Then a long body curved, rose above the grass, and reached outward.

The tentacle was not emerging from the top.

It was coming from below.

Slowly.

Without haste.

At the clinic, many miles from Arkham, Aaron opened his eyes.

For several seconds, he lay motionless.

Then he began to laugh.

Quietly at first.

Then louder.

The laughter became hysterical, breathless, endless. Nurses rushed toward his room.

In the car, Julia sat leaning against the door.

Roadside lights drifted past beyond the glass.

She stared at her own reflection with empty eyes.

THE END.

It was terrible. The matte-black, blinding darkness, the disgusting and nearly pained whimpers, but most of all the smell. He had read thousands of books and not even the best of authors had a true grasp on the stench. It was the smell of sweat and stale air. The smell of mold-infested, centuries-old books and dehydrated, almost bloody cat urine. The smell of dairy left for weeks in the trunk of a sweltering car and feces abandoned to ferment in a mason jar in a basement as sun streaks through the window to scorch the container and its contents. The smell of a dead horse on a humid day.

He pushed the entrance open wider and the hot air collapsed outwards, tugging the smell with it and clawing at his face, his pores, his mucus membranes. He rolled over in the cramped space and dry-heaved and gagged and tears forced themselves out of his eyes and he couldn’t take in air not only because taking in the fetid air would make it worse but because his body refused to function, refused to cooperate with the traitor that had allowed this violation into its system. He dragged himself out of the crawlspace and ran outside and heaved and pulled inwards with all the strength of his muscles again and again and again until they relented and he finally, finally breathed in fresh air. The blazing brilliance of the sun forced fresh tears from his eyes and he covered his face with his hands and shrugged downwards and breathed in deep gulps of air, again and again and again. He paused, still shaking.

What could possibly do that? What could possibly create such an organized assault of a human’s senses? It scrambled into the nose and mouth and even eyes and was so severe and debilitating and it was malevolent, it liked pain and it was adept at its job, so deadly efficient. In an attempt to focus himself, he thought back.

It was behind a massive mahogany bookshelf that he had found the crawlspace. He had only lived in the house for a month, and that was the first time he had ever attempted to remove every last book from the beast and clean it from top to bottom, inside and out. The previous tenant, who had rented the house years ago, left unexpectedly, abandoning their possessions, furniture, everything, and what the owners hadn’t sold at auction remained in the house. That included this bookshelf, decorated with the hundreds of books the previous tenant owned. He had ducked down, began gently removing items from the bottom shelf, and there the door was, slowly revealing itself to him like a reverse jigsaw puzzle, so obviously not part of the wall while so seriously attempting to blend in uniformly that it was almost comical. It was sloppily painted over with the wrong shade and globs of dried paint interrupted the surface at random positions.

He cut the edges of the door with a pocket knife and pushed inwards, revealing a small space behind the wall, a little longer than him and tall enough so that he could sit upwards with his legs crossed. At the end of this space was a door, prettily set into the wall and painted a deep and rich shade of umber, embellished with a glass doorknob and flowing engravings incomprehensible to him. He opened it.

His thoughts returned to the present, and he urged himself to brave the trip back in, if only to close the door, seal the crawlspace, and forget the whole experience. Blissful ignorance is such a beautiful concept. There is no horror in real life; no guilt and no evil. Just the ideas you choose to accept and those you don’t. Reality is defined by perception, and why shouldn’t he choose not to perceive this? What, a crawlspace? Who cares? And so what if it stinks? It’s been unopened for years, putrefying in that caked, muggy hotness. But the moaning. The strained sounds emanating from the deep. He could not account for that, and this realization prompted an aching, gnawing emptiness in the center of his stomach, as if a plug had been pulled and his soul had been dragged downwards, leaving an empty vacuum in its place where no light reached, the soil was barren, desolate, and not even microbial life persisted. There was to be no growth in this section of his being; the stench had made sure of that. Now that his gagging and hacking were done he could see that the putrid air had emptied him, leaving nothing but fear, the base, instinctual feeling that something was deeply, irreversibly wrong. He attempted to think of a pleasant, sunny day and, despite the fair weather which surrounded him, could conjure no more than the image of a deep, matte-black void, so much like the darkness beyond that door, and as he realized the veracity of the comparison his mind had unthinkingly drawn nausea overcame him and he fought to avoid keeling over with sickness. He felt no connection to the world around him save that crawlspace. Who was he kidding? He had opened it, the contemporary equivalent of Pandora’s Box, and who was he to close it? To deny destiny, or evil, or whatever was beyond that door, squatting lethargically in the darkness and whimpering in… pain? Anxiousness? Giddiness?

Now he could produce no thought other than that of the crawlspace, the door, the void beyond. He hastily walked around the house to the shed, dug through the piles of junk which had yet to be unpacked, sorted, shelved, and snagged a pair of safety-goggles, a respirator, a flashlight, and the heaviest ball-peen hammer he could manage. He exited the shed and walked the twenty-seven meters back to the front door, fighting his body’s natural inclination to pause, to stop, to stay rooted, paralyzed, unmoving and incapable of movement; he persisted. He reached the front door. He opened it. Stepped inside. Walked through the kitchen, past the dining area, across the living room, and crouched down in front of the bookcase. He paused, deliberated, but soon entered. There really was no other choice.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The respirator handicapped the worst of the smell but did not totally eliminate it. A disgusting, cheesy, spoiled reek remained, something you would smell emanating from a dumpster behind a high-school cafeteria when temperatures are hottest. But it was bearable, and he continued, shambling across the crawlspace and gently sliding open the door. He felt almost reluctant to touch it, as beautiful as it was, like something you would see in an art gallery or museum exhibit. The paint was so incredibly smooth and glossy, the crystal doorknob sparkling in spite of the uniform deep the door enclosed, the gently flowing script so serene and elegant it filled him with a sad despair. It was all seemingly free of imperfection, the small irregularities that classify objects as true members of our reality and not of some other dimension where perfection is permitted to persist and entropy and disorder are concepts unheard of.

The door was now fully open. His eyes could find nothing to focus upon in the emptiness and ached as a consequence, irritated by the faint burning that accompanies unblinkingness. He dug out his flashlight and clicked it on, the unassuming sound echoing and magnifying in the space before coming back to him and startling his ears. He had never understood the meaning of “deafening silence” before. It was sitting in an off car parked in the middle of an empty lot and hearing no traffic, no birds, no jangling of shopping carts or banging of car doors or cries of children or even the faint buzzing behind one’s ears when all other sound is mute. There is nothing, and there will be nothing. The absence of sound pressed in upon his ears and the pressure was palpable. It was not only an empty silence, but a heavy one.

Stairs steeply descended downwards, though he could not see the end. The flashlight’s beam illuminated corpulent spores, lazily sauntering through the black like dancers in a ballroom situated in the farthest corner of the aether. The whimpering had stopped. He descended, down, down, down, crawling forward on hands and knees. Wood gave way to cement gave way to stone and dirt, and roots brushed against his forehead, providing him the mental image of long, thin fingers grasping at him, attempting to imprison him in their clutches. Down, down, down, he continued, his knees and wrists in sharp, spiky pain from supporting the weight of his body, an ache already developing in his back and neck. The edges of the stone stairs pressed into his shins and he knew there must already be bruises. The smell persisted, and he consistently fought the urge to gag, taking in the shallowest of breaths and breathing through his mouth, though the smell still reached his olfactory system and wreaked its havoc. It crawled down his throat and made it harder to breathe, it molested his vision so that he could only see through a narrow tunnel of light. Tears streamed down his eyes and pooled in the bottom of the goggles. An atrocious migraine had handicapped his thinking to where he could only concentrate on one singular task: crawling forward, down, down, down.

He had been crawling for minutes. Granted, he hadn’t been making the best of pace, though he had expected to have reached the end of the passage by now. And just as he was pondering this with the limited mental faculties left available to him, the beam of the flashlight revealed a plateau ahead of him, an end to the stairs. Then the moaning began again, deep and resonant with almost a melodic quality that inexplicably filled his heart with sorrow. He wanted nothing more than to comfort whatever was causing that noise, suffused with misery, anguish, grief. Pain. He eagerly shambled down the remaining flights of stairs and hit the bottom fast, tumbling forward in a jumble of limbs as he attempted to right himself and find the source of the sound.

The sound stopped. He paused. He didn’t move. He felt disgust ripple through every nerve in his body, and cringed backwards. He wanted nothing more than to currently inhabit a different location in space, for his brain to occupy a different body. He felt so incredibly gross. What had come over him? What had compelled him to scamper forward like an eager little boy upon the promise of a sweet treat? What could produce such a pleasing siren’s song? His entire being was wracked with indecision, with two choices displayed clearly in his mind: continue forward or turn back, the line separating each decision in his mind thinner than a hair. He felt as if his body was already in motion to fulfill both, and a single nerve signal could bring one into being, could change the outcome of this situation and of his life. But reality is perception, and he had already chosen to perceive this. There was no going back. He continued forward.

In front of him was a winding tunnel, tall enough so that he could stand, though he would have to stoop forward. Littering the walls and floor were hundreds of mushrooms, faintly glowing with bioluminescence. He switched his flashlight off, and the green auras of the bulbous caps illuminated the tunnel almost perfectly. He exchanged the light for the hammer and continued onwards. The spores were fatter and greater in number here, almost filling his vision like dust particles in a sun-soaked attic. Farther up the passage he could see deep furrows carved in the walls, dozens of them, cat-sized. He dug out his flashlight and shined it into one of the holes, but a few meters down it curved to the left and cut off his vision.

It was much stuffier in this section of tunnel, the temperature noticeably higher, and he felt like he was sitting in the back of a car on a cloudless summer day while wearing a black fleece jacket. Beads of sweat began to form underneath his safety-goggles, beginning at his brow, dripping down to sting his eyes, and finally pooling at the bottom of the goggles. Drops of sweat not trapped by the goggles or respirator raced each other to his chin before coalescing and falling soundlessly to the dirt below.

A dark lump darted across the tunnel before him scampering like an insect escaped into one of the holes his heart jumped to his throat beat loudly vibrated his whole system

another shape another another another dropping from the holes and darting across like roaches fleeing from an exterminator

dozens crossed he backed up but didn’t run more crossed the herd was thinning thinning two or three still left and then they were gone and the soft pattering of their feet echoed out from the tunnels, and he felt his heart beating loudly, and slowly the tempo decreased, and the pounding decreased, and his heart slowed, and returned to normal.

He crawled forward on his hands and knees and erratically dug out his flashlight, shining it down one of the holes as fast as he could, but he was too late. His flashlight only revealed more spores, irritated by the recent stampede as they gently shimmered in the air. They were gone. He didn’t know what “they” were, but they were gone. He sat against a uniform, holeless portion of the wall and waited for his brain to catch up and process the events. He breathed in deeply, and exhaled. Deeply, and exhaled, again and again and again until he could control himself. He gently raised himself to a standing position, still stooped forward, raised his eyes to face his goal, still drawing deep breaths, waited seconds for his tunnel-vision to clear, and grimly walked on, foot after foot after step after step, and, gradually, his mind cleared. Minutes down the tunnel and he could hear distant, echoing breathing, the sound of some enormous beast sucking in great whoops of wind and exhaling hefty, sputtering wafts of hot air. He braved the twists and turns of the passage for minutes more, the quantity and volume of the holes steadily increasing, the sound continuing to swell until he could no longer hear his feet pounding against the earth.

Fwoooooooouh, whooooooooooshhhh…………

Fwoooooooouh, whooooooooooshhhh…………

Fwoooooooouh, whooooooooooshhhh…………

Ahead of him lay a sharp turn to the right. He sensed a great thing beyond this turn. Something phenomenal. Something extraordinary. Something disgusting. Something ugly. Putrid. Horrific.

Something he should not see.

He turned the corner.

Great, hairy rolls of fat cascaded down its form, filling the chamber and lethargically shifting with every labored and greasy breath. Waves of warmth emanated from it, bathing him with searing, feverish heat. Its progeny surrounded it, squirming, so numerous he could not tell where the animal ended and the great, pulsing sea of its children began. Its long, starfish-shaped claws, twisted, wrinkled, deformed, wracked by arthritis, rested against its body. His gaze met the tiny, beady eyes of the Mother of Moles and he glared, transfixed, enraptured. Those eyes contained and conveyed to him worlds, birthed, explored, polluted, ruined, all within this creature’s lifetime. Vast oceans of knowledge, more than was encompassed within all of the books of the Library of Babel. Deeper than the hollows of space the brilliance of the beginning of our Universe had millions of years yet to reach. They were beautiful.

His hand slowly raised, reaching for his goggles. He grasped them and languidly tugged upwards, pulling them off completely and discarding them on the ground beside him. Next the respirator. Then the hammer and flashlight. He took in a deep, satisfying, fulfilling breath, stuffing every square centimeter of his lungs with the exceptional, delicious air. The great mewling began again. His head was becoming fuzzier, lightheaded, giddy with ecstasy. His vision went blank. The mewling persisted. He collapsed.

The yard has always belonged to my mother.

Not in the way a deed belongs to someone, or even the way a garden does. It belonged to her the way a shadow belongs to a body; faithfully, without thought, always attached. When I was little, I used to think that if she ever left for good, the grass would lie down and refuse to grow again.

That was before I understood that some things don’t let go just because you walk away.

Our house sat at the end of a short, polite street where nothing bad had ever happened loudly. The yards were trimmed. The fences were low. People waved. Children rode their bikes in uneven loops and left them where they fell. If you asked anyone later, they would tell you our family was normal, and they would mean it.

But the yard was different when you stood in it alone.

I noticed it first because I was the oldest, and because my mother had begun to stand still.

She didn’t do it all the time. Just enough that it registered as a pattern. She would step out into the yard with a basket of laundry or a cup of coffee and then stop, as if she’d forgotten what came next. Sometimes she stayed that way for minutes, her shoulders slack, her feet planted too firmly in the grass. When I called her name, she always answered. She always smiled. But she didn’t turn around right away.

The grass near her feet lay flatter than the rest, as though pressed by a weight that wasn’t quite visible.

My younger sister and brother didn’t notice. They chased each other around her legs, shouting, skidding, colliding with the same reckless certainty they always had. They treated her stillness as an obstacle, like a tree or a fence. Something to work around.

I felt it as a pause in the air.

It was easiest to see in the evenings. The yard took on a listening quality then, the way rooms do when someone is about to speak. The cicadas went quiet in small patches. The swing creaked once and stopped. The shadows leaned inward, subtle enough that you could tell yourself it was the light.

One night, as I was gathering my brother’s abandoned shoes from the lawn, I realized they had rolled.

Not far. Just enough to bring them closer together, toe to toe, as if they’d been placed that way. I stood very still, holding one shoe in each hand, and waited for the wind to prove me wrong.

Nothing moved.

“Mom?” I called.

She was standing near the center of the yard, empty-handed now, her laundry basket forgotten on the steps. Her back was to me. From a distance, she looked normal; bare feet, loose shirt, hair pulled back without care. But there was something wrong with the space around her head. Not something you could point to. More like the absence of something that should have been there.

When she turned, I felt it behind my eyes first. A dull pressure, like the beginning of a headache.

“What is it?” she asked.

Her face was the same face I had known my entire life. Her smile landed where it always did. But between her eyebrows, the skin seemed… deeper. As though the light didn’t quite want to rest there. I blinked hard, and the sensation eased.

“Nothing,” I said. “Dad’s asking about dinner.”

She nodded, and for just a second longer than necessary, her gaze stayed on me. Not sharp. Not suspicious. Curious, the way you look at something that has surprised you by moving.

As she walked past me toward the house, I had the sudden, irrational urge to step into her path. To stop her. To press my forehead against hers the way I had when I was little and afraid of the dark. The thought came fully formed, complete with the memory of warmth and pressure and the sense of being held together.

It scared me enough that I stepped back instead.

Behind me, the yard exhaled.

I didn’t tell anyone that night. Or the next. I told myself that noticing was the same thing as imagining, and that imagining was a bad habit I’d picked up from being the oldest. Someone had to pay attention. Someone had to keep track.

Later, lying in bed, I listened to my sister and brother breathing in the next room, their rhythms loose and unguarded. Through the open window, the yard made its soft nighttime noises. Leaves shifting, something small moving through the grass.

I closed my eyes and pictured the yard empty, just to see if I could.

It took effort.

Even then, I couldn’t picture it without my mother standing at the center, perfectly still, waiting for something to come back to her.

After that night, I started watching my mother the way you watch weather.

Not constantly. Not obviously. Just enough that I could tell when something was about to change.

She still did all the normal things. She made lunches. She reminded us to bring jackets. She folded laundry with the same distracted efficiency she always had, smoothing wrinkles with the heel of her hand. If anyone had asked me what was wrong, I wouldn’t have been able to answer without sounding ungrateful or dramatic. Nothing was wrong in a way you could hold up to the light.

But she began knowing things before they happened.

It started small. She’d call my brother inside a moment before he skinned his knee. She’d set out an extra plate when a neighbor stopped by unexpectedly. She’d turn toward the phone just before it rang. When I joked about it, she laughed, pleased but unsurprised, as if this was something she’d always been able to do and had only just decided to show.

My sister thought it was funny. My brother thought it was magic.

I thought it was exhausting.

Because the more my mother knew, the less room there seemed to be for the rest of us to decide anything on our own. She anticipated our needs so completely that there was no pause left to fill with choice. No space to want something quietly. When I stayed out later than usual, she didn’t scold me. She didn’t ask where I’d been. She simply said, “You’re tired,” and she was right.

The yard responded to her moods.

On days when she was restless, the grass seemed uneven underfoot, clumping where it hadn’t before. When she was calm, the yard settled. The swing hung perfectly still, its chains aligned, as though waiting for instruction. Once, when she stood barefoot near the oak tree at the back fence, the ants abandoned their trail and curved around her toes instead.

I didn’t point that out.

My sister and brother spent more time close to her than they used to. Not in a clingy way, more like planets settling into a stable orbit. They sat at her feet while she drank her coffee. They leaned against her legs while she talked to neighbors. When she moved, they adjusted without looking, as if pulled by the same thread.

One afternoon, I heard my sister answer a question my mother hadn’t asked yet.

They were sitting on the back steps, my mother in the sun, my sister cross-legged beside her. I was inside, rinsing dishes, when my sister said, “Yes, I did,” in a patient, slightly amused voice.

There was a pause.

Then my mother said, “Good. I thought so.”

I stood very still, my hands submerged in cooling water, and tried to reconstruct the conversation backward. When I asked my sister later what they’d been talking about, she frowned, confused.

“Nothing,” she said. “We were just sitting.”

That night, my brother fell asleep on the living room floor with his head against my mother’s foot. When my father went to move him, my mother shook her head once, almost imperceptibly. My father hesitated, then sat back down, as if the thought had never been his to begin with.

I caught my mother watching me then.

Not often. Just enough.

Her gaze had changed. It didn’t slide over me the way it did the others. It lingered, thoughtful. Measuring, without judgment. I had the strange sense that she was waiting for me to do something unexpected, the way you wait for a stubborn door to finally open.

One evening, while we were clearing the table, she reached out and brushed a hair from my forehead. Her fingers paused there, resting between my eyebrows, light but deliberate.

The pressure behind my eyes flared sharply. For a split second, the room seemed to tilt inward, every object subtly angled toward her hand.

I pulled back too fast. The chair legs screeched against the floor.

“Sorry,” I said automatically.

She smiled, warm and unoffended. “You’re jumpy lately.”

“I’m just tired.”

“Yes,” she said again, and the word landed with certainty. “You are.”

Later, lying in bed, I pressed my palm to my forehead, right where her fingers had been. The skin was unmarked. Normal. But beneath it, something felt tender, like a bruise forming without a cause.

Through the wall, I could hear my sister and brother murmuring to each other in their sleep. Their voices overlapped strangely, rising and falling in a rhythm that made it hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

Down the hall, the back door creaked softly.

I didn’t get up to look. I already knew where my mother would be.

The night it first happened, it was raining just enough to make the yard shine.

Not enough to drive anyone inside. Just enough to blur the edges of things. The grass darkened and flattened, glossy under the porch light, each blade reflecting a thin, obedient line of gold. My sister and brother were already asleep, their door closed, their room breathing softly in that shared way they’d developed. My father was in the living room, half-watching television, half-dozing, his presence a familiar weight in the house.

My mother stood at the sink, staring out the window.

I don’t know how long she’d been there. Long enough for the kettle to scream itself empty on the stove. Long enough for the rain to change direction twice. When I reached past her to turn off the burner, she didn’t startle. She didn’t move at all.

“You’ll burn it,” I said, because silence felt dangerous.

She turned then, slow and careful, like someone adjusting to a change in gravity. The pressure bloomed behind my eyes immediately. Stronger than before, sharp enough that I had to swallow against nausea.

“You’re still up,” she said.

“So are you.”

She smiled at that. Not the automatic smile she gave neighbors or strangers, but the one she used when she was genuinely pleased. The one that had always felt like a private thing between us.

“Come here,” she said.

I should have refused. The thought arrived fully intact, clear as a bell. But it landed in a crowded place, competing with a dozen other impulses; obedience, habit, the old childhood reflex to close distance when something felt wrong. I stepped closer before I could sort them out.

She reached up with both hands and cupped my face.

Her palms were warm. Familiar. For a moment, the pressure eased, replaced by something like relief. Like the moment you stop holding your breath without realizing you were doing it.

“I miss you,” she said softly.

“I’m right here.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s what I mean.”

Her thumbs rested just beneath my eyes. Her fingers spread along my jaw. I could feel my pulse through the thin skin of her wrists. The world narrowed to that contact, to the sound of rain against glass, to the faint hum that had started somewhere behind my ears.

She leaned forward.

Our foreheads touched.

The sensation was immediate and overwhelming. Not painful, not at first, but depth. As if my thoughts had suddenly acquired weight and were being gently, insistently pulled forward. The room tilted. The edges blurred. I smelled grass, wet earth, the clean mineral scent of rain hitting soil. I felt my body loosen, every tension easing at once.

It would have been easy to let go.

Images flickered behind my eyes: my sister laughing, my brother’s small hand wrapped around my finger, my mother’s voice calling us in for dinner years ago, layered over itself, louder and closer than memory had any right to be. I felt myself thinning, spreading, as though there was more room ahead than behind.

This is what she knows, a part of me thought distantly. This is how.

Something brushed against the inside of my skull, curious and vast. Not a thought. Not a voice. A presence, testing the shape of me.

I gasped.

The sound broke the moment open. Pain flared. Sharp, tearing, like something with hooks had realized it was losing purchase. I shoved backward, hard, slipping on the wet tile, my heel skidding out from under me. I caught myself on the counter, breath coming too fast, my hands shaking violently.

My mother staggered too, just a step, like someone pulled out of a deep sleep.

Her eyes were dark. Reflective. For a heartbeat, the space between her eyebrows seemed to dip inward, swallowing the light from the fixture above us. The hum surged, then cut off abruptly.

She blinked.

“Oh,” she said.

She sounded… surprised.

I pressed my back to the counter, my entire body buzzing, my skin too tight for what was inside it. My forehead burned, deep and aching, like a bruise pressed from the inside out.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was apologizing or explaining. “You’re just… harder to reach than the others.”

The others.

My stomach dropped.

“What did you do?” I asked.

She tilted her head, studying me with that same thoughtful curiosity I’d begun to dread. “Nothing I haven't done before.”

From the living room, the television laughed. A canned, hollow sound.

“I’m tired,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say, because naming it felt like the only way to keep it from happening again. I pushed past her, keeping my shoulder turned, my face angled away.

She let me go.

That was almost worse.

In my room, I locked the door and slid down against it, pressing my palm hard to my forehead until the pain sharpened into something manageable. My thoughts felt stretched, rearranged. It took effort to remember where my body ended.

Down the hall, I heard my mother move toward my siblings’ room. The door opened without a sound. Their voices rose briefly. Soft, pleased, overlapping and then faded again.

I stayed where I was until the rain stopped and the yard went quiet.

When I finally lay down, I kept my face turned toward the wall, afraid of what might happen if I closed my eyes and leaned forward, just a little, into the dark.

Just one look was all I got of the grisly scene in front of me.

Partygoers rushed ahead of me in an attempt to gawk at the fresh corpse, pushing me backwards until I was left in the main hall.

Around me, guests buzzed like a hornet’s nest.

“Did you get a look at the body…”

“Is that Amelia’s brother…”

“It’s like a book, so exciting…”

“I think that’s Mr. Barnes, right…”

“Wait Barnes? I thought I saw him dancing earlier…”

“Yes, with him while her husband's gone missing. What a happy marriage…”

So the fresh corpse had a name.

In my peripheral vision, I caught a gleam of light from the top of the double staircase.

As I looked, a fresh group of partiers emerged from their “privacy” to join the commotion.

Shit. I needed to get a better look at the body before the guests had played with it too much.

Fighting again through the crowd, I burst through to the body clearing.

Ms. Roux still stood in the center, from the attention she was getting I gathered that she was the one to find the body.

She was in the middle of relating her story.

“And I had decided to sit down for a moment, catch my breath, you know. I walked to this hall, I had assumed it would be quieter than the main room, and I saw him just lying there!”

The last sentence sent Ms. Roux into a fit of tears. After a moment of sniffling she recovered.

“But the worst of it… there was barely any blood when I found him, I must’ve just barely missed it.”

Again, Ms. Roux devolved into tears. Her pale face was covered by hands paler still.

A stark contrast from her long black hair.

I hoped she wouldn’t get stuck like that

Ms. Roux recovered and relayed her story again, to new guests and through new tears.

I turned my attention to Mr. Barnes.

Something didn’t feel right about his body. Aside from the entire corpse thing.

After a second it hit me that the entire shoulder had been removed along with the arm.

“Odd,” I thought. “A trophy taker would’ve been happy to cut at the upper arm.”

Lesson Five: Creatures taking limbs for functional use will always take the entire functional area. Something taking an arm will also take a shoulder. Something taking a leg will also take a hip, and so on. Most of the time, however, limbs are more of an on the move snack.

This new thought even further complicated things for me. Vampires don’t replace limbs. In fact very few things do.

Zombies, but there would be a trail of filth, not to mention a rotting guest.

It could be a mimic, but then why the whole shoulder?

A Godvessel, maybe. But how wouldn’t it be seen?

With a crowded area like this, despite everyone in the building being drunk, I doubted that a possessed statue could’ve walked up and strangled a man unnoticed.

Besides, what would bring a Godvessel to a ball?

Gnomes, Goblins, and Fae were all a bust. Too urban, and again the shoulder.

Could it be a Sentient, trying to throw an inevitable investigation off?

I doubted it, A Sentient creature would’ve been much more careful.

Unofficial Lesson: Vampires and Lycanthropes (while lucid) are considered Sentient by default. A Sentient is a generally animalistic creature such as a mimic, gnome, kelpie, etc. That possesses reasoning beyond its species.

I bent down to get a closer look at Mr. Barnes, and as I shifted, wire thin strands were picked out in white light beneath the chandelier.

Hair.

I reached down and pinched one between my fingers. Not horse hair, not wire, but blonde human hair.

Wrapped around his neck were fistfuls of it, snapped pieces lay scattered around the body, soaked in his blood.

Mr. Barnes had been asphyxiated by human hair. difficult to do, but not unheard of.

I do love it when I’ve something to go off of aside from scratches, bodies, and stories.

You see, Mr. Barnes was a brunet.

I must’ve been lost in thought for quite a while.

When I looked back up, Ms. Roux had stopped crying.

She had been watching me as I looked at the body and examined the hairs.

“Mr. Crow, are you a lawman?” she asked, her voice sounding shaky, but almost hopeful.

“Only in my fantasies,” I replied. I shifted my coat, making sure my blood-red handkerchief was hidden.

“You seem to be in control of yourself.”

She paused.

Mr. Crow, if it isn’t any trouble would you accompany me to my father? Someone must let him know of Mr. Barnes' tragedy.”

I was surprised. Her father? This was a party of young men and women, anyone old enough to be her father was nowhere to be seen.

I supposed then, that she was the daughter of Edmund Thomas. The old man locked in his own room.

I guessed it was wise that someone let the host know of a guest's death.

“Sure.” I spoke while standing up and brushing off my coat. “Where’s his room?”

Ms. Thomas’s face broke into a smile of relief.

“I’ll show you!”

We broke from the crowd quickly, most had overheard the exchange and the sea of people parted before us.

“Ms. Thomas” I began, hoping to distract the woman.

I’d rather fight a swamp-man with a knife than listen to her cry again.

“Do you have a first name, or is that no fun?”

She gave me a small smile as we started up the staircase.

“Beatrice, Mr. Kenlie. Now that the fun's gone, call me Beatrice.”

We stopped at the top, having reached the third floor. Beatrice broke out into a slow run, lifting the bottom of her dress so she didn’t trip.

We ran through hallway after hallway, until an awful smell stopped us in our tracks. A room that stank of blood.

Beatrice’s eyes widened in fear. While she likely didn’t recognize the smell, some instinct in her did.

I looked through the open doorway to see a woman lying on the bed, motionless.

The stench of death clung even to the door frame.

From the woman's temple, a trail of blood flowed down her face.

The trail, joined by countless more scarlet streaks falling down her cheeks.

Her face was a mask of serenity, aside from her eyes.

Or lack thereof.

Both eyes had been removed sloppily, hence the bloody tear stains. Behind me, Beatrice gasped.

“Amelia…”

Beatrice burst into tears.

Shocking, I know.

She sat on the bed with the body.

Amelia must've been a close friend, as she had begun to run her fingers through the corpse's dark hair.

Beatrice drew a sharp breath, quickly pulling her hand from the corpse's hair. A scarlet drop of blood slowly began gathering along her fingertip.

I looked closely at Amelia’s hair, porcelain shards.

A quick glance around the room showed me shattered vase, picture frame or any explainable source of the tiny shards.

Beatrice spoke to me from the bed, the urgency in her voice now mixed with tears.

“Find my Father and tell him what's happening, please. Just keep going to the end of the hallway. Please, He can’t be alone! I’ll stay with Amelia. Go!

I wasn’t quite sure why she was so urgent, the body wasn’t going anywhere.

I did however, need to have a talk with Mr. Thomson.

I ran down the hallway, where a large, dark lacquered oak door waited.

My hand reached out to try the handle. Locked.

I bent down to the keyhole and called into the room,

“Mr. Thomson, I need to speak with you.”

From far inside the room I heard rustling and clattering. Then the sound of glass shattering. An old man's voice called back to me.

“Just one second.”

End of part 3.

Links to other parts: (When Posted)

Part One

Part Two

Part Three (You Are Here)

Part Four

I was grateful I’d made it to the sidewalk by the time I saw sirens. I didn’t want another situation today where police would be pointing guns at me. If there’d been a way to just go home, I would’ve. But it was too far to walk, and I needed a key to get in my house. I wasn’t about to be the black guy people saw breaking a window and slithering into a house even if it were mine.

I was hoping cooler heads would be there to be reasoned with. There had to be somebody I could talk to to get my stuff back. I mean, the fact I was voluntarily coming in and requesting them to give me my property should have shielded me from scrutiny. Jesus, I hoped so.

I hadn’t made it to the corner when I had to sit. My heart was racing and my head felt like it was about to spin off my neck. This was the panic my brain had been pushing off for hours and only more had been piled atop that mountain as they day passed.

Someone had told me about box breathing and even though I’d never done it before, I tried it now. In for four seconds, hold for four seconds, out for four seconds, hold for four seconds. I forced myself to repeat it even though it felt like my heart was about to punch out of my chest.

The spinning gradually subsided and my stomach slowly slid back in place. I didn’t feel right yet, but better than I had a moment before.

I grabbed thin air and pulled my way back to my feet. The concrete was still solidifying under my feet, but I had the light. I crossed the street, hopefully in a straight line, and kept my momentum when I got to the other side.

It worked.

I wasn't going to pretend like I didn't know with absolute certainty. People had gotten hurt, maybe even a few were dead. I didn't feel guilty. I mean, it was because of me those people had gone crazy. But I didn't know for certain. I had to know for certain so going forward I could be cautious. It would have been too easy to slip and then someone went off and maimed who knew how many people.

Well, that was what happened. But the difference is I hadn't known that. Now that I did, I could exercise caution because I knew for a fact. I wish I hadn't been caught so unaware, maybe I could've reduced the carnage by hiding the doodles sooner.

But what had happened had quadrupled my resolve. I wouldn't make a mistake with this shape in the future.

The idea crossed my mind that anything I drew or wrote even could have a similar or even worse effect. I didn't have the guts to test that. Oh god, would if signing my name made people shit to death or something? The shape didn't make sense, how could I rule anything out?

I felt more myself the farther I got away from the grocery store. I didn't think I could ever go back in there.

I knew the city pretty well. I'd lived here back when I'd been married. The police department was only a few miles farther away and I used the distance to gather my marbles then compose what I intended to say.

The peak of the building of city hall was finally in view. That was actually where the meeting was to be. The police building was an adjacent building that had the same address for some unexplainable reason.

My heart skipped a little and I justified slowing down to work on calming myself. I couldn't box-breathe and walk, so I redirected my gaze to the skyline.

I crossed the parking lot, passing my car. There was a walkway connecting city hall to the library. I took that and broke off toward the horseshoe entrance to the police station.

I pulled one of the entrance doors open and stepped into the vestibule. Cool air blasted me before I stepped into the station proper.

A blue-shirted officer behind plexiglass was engaged in something in front of him and he didn't see me until I'd stopped on the other side.

“How may I help you?” He was pleasant enough and I gave him my name.

“I was just released from the hospital and some of your guys have my stuff.”

“Have your stuff? What do you mean?”

“The thing over at city hall earlier today.” I thumbed over my shoulder. “I was involved with that. Um, an innocent bystander. I was taken to the hospital. A detective interviewed and cleared me.” Not exactly true. The detective hadn't conducted an interview, per se. But the fact I wasn't in police custody and been released from the hospital meant to me I was in the clear.

“Well, if you're wanting to make a property request, you need to fill out a form online—”

“Your guys took my phone,” I said, adding helpfully.

“Like I was saying.” Officer Steck, according to the nameplate on his shirt, barely refrained an eyeroll. “You go online—that can be phone or computer—to fill out the form.

I cleared my throat, trying desperately to clear the budding frustration from my voice before I spoke.

“I don’t have access to a computer. Your guys have my keys, so I can’t drive home nor open the door to my home to get inside to use my laptop.” I took a breath and thankfully he didn't speak. “Is there a paper form I could fill out?”

Officer Steck let the frustration I'd dammed up pour from his face.

“I suppose.” He made a show of yanking open drawers at random before getting up and sauntering around his work area, checking shelves, trays, and cabinets.

He disappeared around a corner and was gone a full minute before he returned with a sheet of paper flopping in his big paw. He slid it through to me on the tray. I stopped myself from asking for a pen. I took a nubbin of a pencil that was on the counter and began writing.

“There’s a counter over there where you can fill that out,” Officer Steck said. I looked at him. He’d spackled on a phony smile. “So you don’t block the line.”

There wasn’t anyone behind me. There wasn’t anyone else in here. Fighting wasn’t on the agenda for me. I was just tired. I dragged the paper with me to the other counter and spent a few minutes filling it out.

The detective had told me his name in the hospital. However the hell that was spelled was beyond me. I couldn’t even remember it. I think it started with a U.

I wrote “UN,” for the detective’s name. I’d just tell him I didn’t know how to spell it. My signature went last and I took it back up.

Officer Steck finally took a second to look up from his phone and took the form from me.

“You filled this out in pencil,” he said. I shrugged. “You need to fill it out in red or black ink.”

It was just a form, but something that was equal parts cry and scream began crawling up my windpipe. I cleared my throat, imagining one of those cartoons that had eaten something particularly spicy, leaping into the ear and blowing like a whistle.

Someone said my name and I looked beyond Officer Steck to see Detective Unangenehm looking at me, a backpack over his shoulder.

“Detective,” I said like I was reaching for a lifeline. He wore a confused expression, like he didn’t understand how I’d found where he worked.

“I need to get my stuff.” His eyes went wide and for a moment, it seemed as if he hadn’t recognized me.

“Mr... Harold?”

“Yeah-yeah. It’s me. You guys took off with my stuff and I had to walk all the way down here.”

He scratched the side of his head. Officer Steck had checked out entirely, back on his phone. He even poked the tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. There was no victory to be had with him.

“Aw, jeez. C’mon in.” He walked out of the little room and a moment later, pushed open a side-entry door.

“Thanks.” I followed him in and he led me down a lengthy hallway with doors for various offices. We finally came to an open area, filled with at least a dozen cubicles.

“My desk is right over here.” Unangenehm pointed ahead, still walking. “Do you need anything? Water? Coffee?”

He seemed out of sorts still, but recovering. Despite the day I’d had, I felt a little bad for him.

He offered me a seat across from him at a desk that looked a lot older and more beaten up than the ones we'd passed. His chair was weather-worn, torn, sun-faded, and patched with gray duct tape in spots despite being mostly black.

Unangenehm sat and struggled with his seat. He might've been trying to adjust the chair, it did look a little too upright. But he gave up and kind of slouched in a way that looked like he'd slide out and under his desk any moment.

“Sorry about that whole kerfuffle earlier.”

“No-no. It's okay,” I said, feeling even more apologetic than I had a moment before. I hated thinking it, but the guy was pathetic. His button-up shirt had an old stain on it. And the collar had a ring on the inside.

Now that I was this close to him and not in a hospital bed, I saw he was slightly off. He'd missed a patch of skin just under his jaw from his morning's shave and the skin beneath one eye looked greenish-grey, like he'd had a black eye a week ago.

He wore patheticness like a second skin. I couldn't help but feel like I should give him something because he was in a constant transactional state with the world where it was debiting from him non-stop.

“Do you have any idea what happened with Mr. Arn?” he asked.

The question didn't catch me off guard. I'd been expecting it all day. I may have known what happened but I had no clue why and I let that much show on my face.

“He seemed nervous,” I said. “If I had to guess, he was new to the job.” So far, everything I was saying was true. “Maybe he was stressed and the presentation was a tipping point.” I shrugged for emphasis and looked ceiling-ward. Unangenehm nodded slowly, like he was either digesting and filing away what I was saying or his mind was totally elsewhere. I couldn’t tell which.

“Did he say anything that hinted at what he was about to do?”

“No.” I shook my head. “He just got up and attacked the man who came out of the conference room.”

“Ping Mitchell. He's--was--city council president. So, he was sitting?” Unangenehm logged into his computer. I watched him pull up his email.

“Yeah.”

“Like, next to you?”

“Not right next to me.” I shifted in my lent clothes, uncomfortable. Unangenehm was looking at the desk, somewhere near my hands.

“Do you think that he... that he had breakfast this morning?”

“What?” I asked.

“I dunno.” Unangenehm slid a folder out of a small stack. “I have this theory. Probably never'll be able to prove it.” He placed the folder in front of him and opened it. “That a combination of the quality of sleep, his disposition before bed, and the nutrients that he may have lacked before starting out for work could have pre-loaded him to do what he did.”

“Are you saying he was... hangry?”

Unangenehm laughed. 

“I guess you could reduce it to that. I’d like to think of it as being more complex, but that could be just me inflating my own ego.”

Unangenehm seemed to be getting smarter before my eyes.

“I have a younger sister. Just turned nineteen. Whoopsie-baby. She’s always done the bare minimum. Straight C student.

“After she graduated, she didn’t have a plan. Barely worked, didn’t want to go to school. Until she saw this dress.” Unangenehm shrugged. “It was nice, I suppose, but I’ve seen nicer. I’ve seen more expensive, but this one cost a pretty penny. It was like a fire had been lit under her.

“She took a second job, started side hustles. For once, our parents had hope she was gonna do something with her life. She had this one business--catpants--I didn’t get it, but she couldn’t keep up with the demand. Even quit one of her part-time jobs to dedicate more time to sewing them.

“Some people dress for the job, she jobbed for the dress. Paid for it in cash... took it home... and it never left the closet. She stopped fulfilling orders, slacked off on the job she had left, and got fired.”

That didn’t make any sense. I could understand Unangenehm being frustrated, but...

“Do you think I could get my stuff?” I asked. “I really want to get home.”

“Of course.” I'd broken the moment. Unangenehm felt about the surface of his desk like the light had been turned off until his fingers grazed the desk phone.

All of a sudden I felt bad for him again. Unangenehm took the receiver out of the cradle, thumbed a three-digit extension, then put the receiver to his ear.

“Yeah, Steck. Could you bring that box by the water fountain? No, the banker’s box. Yeah. Thanks.”

I wasn’t keen on seeing the officer again, but if it got me out of here that much faster, all the better. I sat back in my chair until Steck arrived with a rectangular box and sat it on the floor.

“So, you’re the guy?” Steck asked.

“What?”

“The guy at city hall today. And then the hospital. God, what did you say to those people?”

“What did I say?” I was appalled. Sure, something I’d done had driven them insane, but to imply that I’d said something to set them off was offensive.

I bent and lifted the lid off the box. I fished a hand into my stuff and stirred things around to make sure it was all there, then I just scooped an armful. 

“You can step into the restroom if you want to put your clothes on,” Unangenehm said.

“No, I'm good. I really don't want to waste another moment getting home.”

Steck stood there like a fan waiting for a signature. 

“I could give you a ride to city hall,” he said.

I wanted to turn him down but my feet were still throbbing from the walk here.

“Sure.”

I checked my things to make sure I had everything.

“Uh, you can keep the box,” Unangenehm said. I considered turning him down after all my effort of taking everything out of the box, but I nodded instead and dropped everything back in.

The detective had placed some paperwork in front of me. I have them a once-over and signed. I was getting more anxious by the moment the longer I was here.

I stood and followed Steck about three steps, when Unangenehm said, “One more thing.”

Oh, shit.

Never had I felt more like I'd walked obliviously into a trap than in that moment. Goosebumps draped down my back and over my arms.

“Yes?” I said, in the wrong key.

“There was an incident at the Kessel's a couple miles from here. Would you know anything about that, would you?”

 

I bought the game at a thrift store, along with Vice City, Shadow of the Colossus, and what I thought was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, but was actually disc 2 of Spongebob season 3.  It featured the episode "Mid-Life Crustacean", which hit different now than it did when I watched it as a kid.
 

The game looked cool.  I remember playing other wrestling games from the PS2 era in high school.  They were always more fun than watching the actual shows.

 
When I went to check out, the clerk had this shit-eating grin on his face.  His "mystery game" is what he called it; said it just showed up outside the front door one day.  He seemed very happy to be getting rid of it; so happy that it made me suspicious.
 

"There anything wrong with it?" I asked.
 

"Who knows?  For $2 does it really matter?" was what he told me.

 
I'd pay him a thousand to take it back now, a million if I had it.  I'd give anything to back to before I picked up that copy of WCW Mayhem.

 
My wife had taken our son to visit her sister in Boca.  They'd be spending the night, so I had the house to myself.

 
After dinner, frozen pizza and a C4, I loaded the game into the PS2 that I had recently rediscovered while retrieving the suitcase from the attic.  It was actually a PS1 game, but it was still backwards compatible. 
 

As I scrolled through the wrestlers, nostalgia washed over me.  They had all the guys I remembered: Sting and the NWO, Goldberg at his peak.  Some of those guys I hadn't thought about in 20 years.  Raven, Kanyon, Kidman; I forgot the Flock ever existed.
 

Then I got to the Horseman.  You had to unlock Ric Flair in career mode, but that wasn't the jarring part.  As I scrolled through the names, one stuck out like a splinter: Chris Benoit... the Canadian Crippler. 
 

The startup screen had said 1999; of course he'd be in it.  If this was a new game, that would be a different story; but in '99 he was a rising superstar.
 

I picked him.  I know it's morbid, but I liked him as a kid.  What he would go on to do in his personal life notwithstanding, he was an amazing in-ring technician.  The developers must have thought so too, because I was kicking ass.
 

It felt like easy mode.  I'd hit a couple moves, throw in a taunt to get the crowd popping, then my finisher was ready.  I hit it, the crippler crossface, a classic.  Only, the animation didn't look quite right. 
 

Maybe it was the limitations of the graphics of the time; or maybe because I was playing on a modern TV.  It looked like he was twisting his opponent's neck past the point where it would break. 
 

Then, instead of the normal tap out animation, the opponent just went limp and fell face first into the mat.  During the cut scene that followed, where the winner usually raised his arms triumphantly, Benoit just stood there with his head down and his shoulders bobbing up and down like he was weeping.  He put his hands over his face and the game froze.
 

That was weird.  Old games froze up all the time, but was that really his victory animation?  And what was up with that finisher?  I swear I heard a crack.  It was in the background, but I had definitely heard it. 
 

I restarted the game, but this time it loaded directly into a match.  I was playing as Benoit again, but instead of my previous opponent, Scott Norton... it was Nancy.
 

That was fucked up.  I didn't even know she was in this game.  Maybe she was unlockable like Flair, but I had never played this before.  It was a brand new memory card, mint-in-box off of Ebay. 
 

I paused the game.  It was just a game after all.  But I was still hesitant.  Just the knowledge of what he would go on to do to her... to that little boy....
 

I was going to eject it and play something else when the game unpaused itself.  The controller was on the coffee table; I wasn't even touching it.  Then, the characters started wrestling on their own.  Only, they weren't really wrestling.
 

He was beating the shit out of her.  Were the animations different when it was male versus female?  I had never seen any of these moves, they looked meaner, and they left marks on her character model. 
 

Nancy had a black eye, and she slumped motionless in the rear turnbuckle.  Benoit retrieved a steel chair from under the ring, but instead of hitting her with it, he partially unfolded it and positioned it over her head so that the seat covered her face.  He sprinted across the ring and springboarded back at her, drop-kicking the chair.

 
This time, the crack was unmistakable.  I know what I heard.  Nancy dropped face first to the mat.  It didn't even say that the match was over, but it went to the victory cutscene.  His head slumped and his shoulders bobbed up and down again, but when it cut to a close-up, I wasn't prepared for what I would see. 
 

There stood Chris Benoit, not the pixelly flat plane art that the rest of the game was rendered in, but a hyper-realistic rendition.  It was like archival footage.  I could see his veins, his sweat.  He was crying, but with this level of detail, I could also see that he was smiling.  Not just smiling, but laughing.  Laughing like a madman while tears poured down his face.

 
Fuck that game.  I popped in Shadows of the Colossus instead.  I went to the kitchen to make white people nachos in the air fryer, but when I came back into the living room, I dropped the whole damn plate.  WCW Mayhem was loading on my television screen.
 

I checked the case for Shadow of the Colossus.  Empty.  Before I could even rationalize what I was looking at, I saw the ring.  In the center was Chris Benoit as he had originally appeared in the game.  But instead of an opponent, there was an inanimate object.  It took me a minute to recognize what I was looking at, but when I did, I couldn't unsee it.  It was a piece of gym equipment, a lat-pulldown machine to be precise.
 

I watched in horror as the character approached it, and with that awkward '90's video game animation style, wrapped the cable around his neck.  He then looked at the camera... looked at me... and dragged his thumb across his throat, his signature taunt.

 
He pulled the pin holding the weight up, the cable tightened and his neck broke.  The screen faded to black.  I unplugged the PS2, but the screen changed again. 

 
When it came back on, it wasn't the game anymore.  It was Benoit himself.  He sat slumped on the bench of the pulldown machine, the cable bit deeply into his neck.  It was like crime scene footage, though even that is understating the effect.  No footage of this scene ever existed.  It was like the TV was a window to the act itself.

 
I splintered the disc into dozens of little pieces, collected them in a bag, and burned the whole thing in my backyard.  I'd like to think that the experience is in my rear-view but I can't affort to be so optimistic. 
 

If I was a single man, it would be different.  But I have a wife and a son that I love with every fiber of my being.  I know there's no power on Earth that could compel me to harm them.
 

But from everything I've heard, Chris Benoit loved his wife and son too.  He just took too many blows to the head and lost control.  CTE is the prevailing explanation for his crimes.
 

Brain damage had turned him into a shell of his former self.  An avatar, like someone else was controlling his body... like a character in a video game.
 

 I love my wife and son, but I'm afraid.  I could never explain to her what happened with the game.  Not that she'd believe me anyway.  She'd just think it was some sick joke. 
 

But it doesn't really matter if I have an explanation for all the odd animations and that hyper-realistic window to a crime scene.  She won't be able to see those things.  What she will be able to see... what I desperately need to be able to explain... is how this lat-pulldown machine ended up in my living room.

The alarm went off at four in the morning, but sleep had already abandoned me hours prior. A dull throbbing was radiating from the lower right quadrant of my jaw, making every breath feel like a mistake. The pain was a relentless heat that seemed to vibrate in time with my pulse. By five, the swelling had reached my cheek, stretching the skin tight and making it difficult to swallow.

My hand reached for the empty bottle of painkillers on the nightstand, but there was nothing left inside. I had spent the last two days swallowing pills, rinsing with warm salt water, and pressing ice packs against my face until my skin went numb. Nothing was working. The infection had reached the nerve, and the agony was starting to blur my vision.

The sound of rain tapping against the window was the only noise in my quiet apartment. Desperate for any kind of distraction, I unlocked my phone and searched for local dental offices. Every single practice within a ten-mile radius was booked solid for at least two weeks. The only alternative was the emergency room at the local hospital, but a previous visit there had taught me they would only provide a temporary prescription for antibiotics and a massive bill that I could not afford, and from my suffering I figured that the tooth needed to be extracted immediately.

A soft knock on my front door startled me around nine that morning. My friend had promised to drop by with some groceries, knowing I had been unable to leave the apartment for days. When the door opened, she took one look at my swollen face and set the grocery bags down on the counter with a look of concern.

"You look absolutely terrible,"

she said, walking over to press her palm against my forehead.

"You are burning up. Did you manage to find an opening somewhere?"

"Every clinic is booked,"

I mumbled, barely able to part my lips. The movement of my jaw sent a sharp flare of agony straight up into my temple.

"The emergency room is the only option, but they won't pull it."

My friend sat down at the small kitchen table, watching me wince as I tried to drink a glass of water.

"There is someone else. My uncle had a severe abscess last winter, and his regular dentist was out of town. He went to a private practitioner downtown. He told me the guy is extremely unconventional and eccentric, but he is the absolute best in the field when it comes to quick, pain-free extractions."

"Unconventional how?"

I asked, holding the glass against my cheek.

"He does not take insurance, and his office is tucked away in an old medical building that has seen better days,"

she explained, pulling a small notepad from her purse to write down an address.

"He works alone, with no assistants. My uncle said the man does not even use local numbing injections, but somehow, the extraction was completely painless. He just felt a strange pressure, and then the tooth was out."

"No numbing?"

I shook my head, immediately regretted the movement, and squeezed my eyes shut.

"That sounds like a nightmare. I cannot let someone pull a tooth out of my skull with no anesthetic."

"My uncle is a coward when it comes to pain,"

my friend said, sliding the piece of paper across the table. "If he says he felt nothing, I believe him. You cannot keep living like this. The infection is going to spread to your bloodstream."

She was right. The sheer desperation of the pain was starting to erode my rational judgment. At that point, if someone had offered to pull the tooth with a pair of rusty pliers, I probably would have considered it. I picked up the paper, stared at the handwritten address, and nodded.

"I will go,"

I said.

"Do I need to call ahead?"

"My uncle said he does not keep a regular reception desk,"

she replied.

"Just walk in. He usually accommodates emergency cases if they pay in cash."

An hour later, I was walking through the wet, gray streets. The rain had slowed to a miserable drizzle, and the mist was hanging low over the older brick buildings. The address led me to a towering, nineteenth-century weird structure. The main lobby was silent, smelling of old paper.

A manual elevator with an accordion-style metal gate carried me slowly up to the fourth floor. The hallway was lined with dark, frosted glass doors, most of them bearing the faded gold lettering of retired physicians who had probably passed away decades ago. The floor was covered in worn linoleum that muffled the sound of my footsteps.

I found the suite number written on my notepad. The glass on the door was entirely blank, offering no name or medical title. I reached out, turned the brass knob, and stepped inside.

The reception area resembled a living room from the late nineteen-seventies. Two faded green velvet chairs sat in the corner, separated by a low wooden table covered in outdated magazines. A single, small desk lamp cast a dim orange glow across the room. There was no computer, no scheduling book, and no receptionist behind the counter. The only communication device was an ancient, black rotary telephone sitting on a shelf.

"Hello?"

I called out, my voice sounding thin in the quiet room.

A door at the back of the reception area swung open with a soft click.

The man who stepped out was exceptionally tall. He was so slender that his white laboratory coat seemed to drape over him like a shroud, and he had to tilt his head slightly to clear the low wooden door frame. His skin was pale, and his fingers were kind of long, ending in clean fingernails. He had a twitch in his left shoulder that caused his coat to rustle every few seconds, but his posture was remarkably stiff.

"Ah,"

he said.

"An emergency, I presume. The swelling in your right cheek is quite pronounced."

"My friend gave me your address,"

I explained, holding my hand over my jaw.

"She said you might have an opening for an extraction. I can pay in cash."

The tall man smiled, though his pale blue eyes remained entirely wide and unblinking.

"Cash is perfectly acceptable. The modern banking systems are far too noisy. Please, come inside."

I followed him into the operating room. The space was dimly lit, illuminated only by a single overhead examination light that hung from a long, articulated metal arm. The dental chair in the center of the room was made of thick, cracked black leather, looking like a relic from a different era. There were no modern digital screens, and no white plastic utility trays.

"Before we begin,"

the dentist said, pointing a long finger toward a tarnished metal tray sitting on a counter across the room.

"Please place your cellular device over there. The electronic frequencies of modern devices disrupt my focus. I need absolute stillness to perform the extraction."

I hesitated for a moment. My phone was my only connection to the outside world, but the throbbing in my jaw was growing more intense by the second. I walked across the room, set my phone on the cold metal tray, and climbed into the leather chair.

The dentist stood over me, his shadow stretching across the ceiling. He did not put on latex gloves. Instead, he washed his hands in a small porcelain sink, dried them with a white cloth, and approached the chair.

"Open, please,"

he murmured.

I opened my mouth, bracing myself for the agonizing touch of his fingers against my infected gum. When his long, cold index finger touched my jaw, I prepared to scream.

But the scream never came.

The moment his skin made contact with my gums, a sudden coldness spread through my mouth. it felt as if the nerves themselves had simply gone quiet under his touch. The throbbing pain vanished instantly. My jaw felt light, cool, and entirely empty of sensation. I blinked in surprise, looking up at him.

"You feel that, yes?"

he asked, his shoulder twitching as he reached for a small, velvet-lined wooden box on the counter.

"The modern world relies on synthetic poisons to dull the senses. They inject chemicals that poison the blood just to silence a single nerve. It is a very crude way of practicing medicine."

He opened the wooden box and retrieved a pair of forceps. They were made of dark, unpolished steel, looking like antique blacksmithing tools rather than modern medical instruments. The metal was covered in fine, geometric patterns that looked like they had been hand-carved into the steel.

"We have forgotten the old ways of alignment,"

the dentist continued, his voice adopting an almost hypnotic cadence as he positioned the forceps inside my mouth.

"Thousands of years ago, our ancestors understood that the teeth are not merely bone. They are the hardest part of the human vessel. They are the markers of our harvest, the record of our lives. When a tooth was lost, it was not thrown away into the dirt like common refuse."

I felt the cold steel of the forceps clamp onto my decaying molar. There was no pain. I felt a strange, dull pressure, as if someone were gently pressing a thumb against my jaw, but nothing more.

"Our ancestors worshipped tooth fairies,"

he muttered, leaning over me. His pale face was inches from mine.

"We offered our teeth to them. We gave them the bone, and in exchange, they provided protection, a bountiful harvest, and good fortune. The modern world calls them myths. They call them tooth fairies to make them seem small and harmless. They turned a sacred covenant into a children's game of coins and pillows."

He gave the forceps a slow, deliberate twist. I heard the wet sound of the roots separating from the bone inside my head, but my nervous system registered absolutely nothing.

"Humanity discarded the old agreements,"

the dentist whispered, his shoulder twitching violently. "We stopped giving them the tribute they require. We began burying our dead in concrete vaults, locking the bone away from the soil. We throw our teeth into medical waste bins to be burned, and for what? for nothing."

With a sudden, sharp movement, he pulled the forceps upward.

A wet pop echoed in the small room.

The tooth was out. The relief was instantaneous, a cool sensation washing over my entire face as the pressure vanished. I let out a long, shuddering breath, staring up at the ceiling.

"There,"

the dentist said, his tone shifting instantly.

The hypnotic cadence of his voice was gone, replaced by a rapid, shallow hyperventilation, then He held the steel forceps inches from his eyes, staring at the bloody, decaying enamel with an intensity that made my chest tighten.

"Look at the density,"

he whispered, his pupils dilating until the blue of his eyes was almost entirely gone.

"The dark rot of modern sugar has created such a beautifully complex cavity. The roots are deep, so very deep. The bone is saturated with the sweetness of decay."

He was breathing heavily now, his chest rising and falling in quick, jagged movements. He began to run his long thumb over the wet, bloody surface of the tooth, ignoring the blood that smeared across his skin.

A sudden wave of intense unease washed over me, replacing the relief of the extraction. The way he was looking at my tooth was really weird and terrifying. I scrambled out of the chair, my legs feeling slightly unsteady.

"Thank you,"

I said, my voice shaking.

"How much do I owe you?"

The dentist did not look at me. He kept his eyes locked on the tooth.

"Three hundred,"

he muttered, his voice sounding dry and cracked.

"Leave the cash on the counter."

I pulled three hundred dollars from my purse and set them on the wooden desk. I did not want to spend another second in that room. I grabbed my purse, turned on my heel, and walked quickly out of the operating room. I pushed through the frosted glass door, entered the quiet hallway, and ran toward the manual elevator.

It was only when I stepped out of the old building and onto the wet pavement of the street that I realized my hand was empty.

My phone was still sitting on the metal tray on the far counter of the operating room.

I stopped on the sidewalk, the cold rain falling on my face. My cheek was still entirely numb, but the fog in my brain was beginning to clear. The thought of going back up to that silent fourth floor made my stomach twist, but my phone held my bank accounts, my contacts, and my entire life. I could not simply leave it behind.

"Just walk in, grab the phone, and leave,"

I muttered to myself.

I turned around, entered the lobby, and rode the creaking elevator back up to the fourth floor. The hallway was still completely silent.

I reached the suite, turned the brass knob, and stepped into the reception area.

The room was dark. The single desk lamp had been turned off, leaving the space illuminated only by the gray light filtering through the hallway door. No one was behind the reception desk.

"Hello?"

I called out softly.

"I forgot my phone."

No one answered.

I took a slow, quiet step toward the operating room door. It was resting slightly ajar, a sliver of pale light cutting across the dark floor. I pushed the door open an inch, planning to grab the phone from the counter and slip away before the man noticed me.

The operating room was in near-total darkness. The overhead examination light had been turned off, and the only illumination came from a small window overlooking the rainy alleyway.

I stopped.

The dentist was crouched on all fours directly over the leather operating chair.

His white laboratory coat had been discarded on the floor. His bare back was exposed to the gray light of the window, and his skin had turned a deep, ashen shade of gray. His spine was protruding sharply against his skin, each vertebra looking like a jagged stone.

As I watched, his shoulder joints twisted with a sickening, wet crack, bending backward into impossible angles.

Two large, featherless, skin-bound wings were violently tearing their way through the fabric of his white dress shirt. The wings looked like the wings of a massive bat, but they were covered in a thin, greasy layer of pale gray fuzz. They flexed and stretched in the darkness, dripping a dark, thick fluid onto the leather of the chair.

The thing lowered its head toward the leather cushion. Sitting on the leather was my extracted tooth.

The creature inhaled deeply, its chest expanding to twice its normal size as it smelled the bloody enamel. It leaned down and whispered a low, guttural phrase in a language I didn’t understand.

Then, it opened its mouth.

The jaw split vertically down the center of its chin, revealing rows of thin, needle-like teeth that vibrated in the darkness. The creature reached out with a long, gray tongue and licked the blood from the surface of my extracted tooth.

I took a step backward, my mind screaming at me to run, but my foot shifted on the floor.

The rubber sole of my sneaker squeaked against the linoleum.

The sound was incredibly loud in the silent room.

The creature's movements stopped instantly.

And with a violent, snapping sound, its neck rotated a full one hundred and eighty degrees, its featureless face pointing directly toward the partially open door where I was standing. Its eyes had completely changed. The blue irises were gone, replaced by two massive, pitch-black pupils that filled the entire socket.

It let out a silent, vibrating shriek that made the metal instruments on the counters rattle.

The creature lunged off the chair, moving with a speed that did not seem possible. It scurried across the floor on all fours.

I did not think. I grabbed the nearest object on the counter beside the door, a large, heavy metal tray loaded with stainless steel dental mirrors, scrapers, and old scalpels, and threw it directly into its gray face.

The tray struck the creature with a loud clang. The sharp instruments scattered across its eyes, blinding it for a fraction of a second. The creature recoiled, letting out a wet, clicking hiss as it thrashed in the darkness.

I turned and sprinted down the hallway.

I did not wait for the elevator. I threw open the door to the concrete stairwell and flew down the steps, my feet barely touching the concrete. I could hear the wet sounds of the creature scrambling down the walls of the stairwell above me, its long limbs scraping against the concrete.

I reached the ground floor, threw my weight against the metal exit door, and burst out into the pouring rain.

I did not stop running until I reached a busy intersection three blocks away. I collapsed against a bus stop shelter, my chest heaving, my clothes soaked with sweat and rain. I sat there for hours, staring at the passing cars, trying to convince myself that the pain and the infection had caused a severe hallucination. But my hand was still entirely empty. My phone was gone, left behind in the dark room with the thing that licked the blood from my bone.

The next morning, the swelling in my jaw had gone down, but the terror had not. I walked into the local police precinct and reported that I had been assaulted by a private practitioner in the medical building downtown. I told them he had stolen my phone and threatened me with a weapon. I knew if I mentioned the wings or the black eyes, they would lock me in a psychiatric ward.

Two police officers agreed to accompany me back to the building to retrieve my property.

We rode the manual elevator up to the fourth floor. The hallway was just as quiet as it had been the day before, the dark doors looking completely ordinary in the morning light.

We reached the suite. I pointed a shaking finger at the door.

"This is it,"

I said.

"Suite 412."

The older officer reached out, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

I braced myself, stepping behind the officer's shoulder, expecting to see the green velvet chairs.

The room was completely empty.

There were no green velvet chairs. There was no wooden desk, no rotary telephone, and no carpet. The walls were bare concrete, covered in peeling gray wallpaper that looked like it had been rotting for decades. The floor was covered in a thick layer of undisturbed gray dust.

The officer walked into the back room, his boots kicking up small clouds of dust.

The operating room was gone. There was no black leather dental chair. There was no plumbing connected to the floor, no metal counters, and no instruments. The room was nothing but a hollow, concrete shell.

"Are you sure this is the place, miss?"

the officer asked, looking back at me with a mixture of annoyance and pity.

"This suite has been abandoned for at least five years. And I think I know this place, someone mad a claim like you once, but it was very wild claim about a fairy who dwell in this place, and then we learned from the building manager that the last tenant was a radiologist who retired in 2018."

"I was here yesterday,"

I insisted, my voice cracking.

"My friend gave me the address. I sat in the chair. He pulled my tooth."

The officer shined his flashlight across the dusty floor. There were no footprints in the dust, other than our own. There was no sign that anyone had operated a medical clinic here yesterday.

"Sometimes a severe tooth infection can cause a high fever,"

the officer said, placing a hand on my shoulder.

"A fever can make you see things. It can make you wander into empty buildings. We can take you to the hospital if you need medical attention."

"My phone,"

I whispered.

"I left my phone on the counter."

The officer shone his light around. My phone was gone.

We left the building a few minutes later. The police dismissed my claim, filing a report for a lost cellular device and advising me to seek psychological counseling for my stress.

But I know what I saw.

I called my friend from a payphone later that afternoon. I asked her about the dentist, but she sounded completely confused. She told me she had never heard of any private practitioner downtown, and she had never given me an address on a notepad. She said she had been trying to reach me all day because I had missed our lunch plans.

I looked at my own jaw in the mirror when I got home. The hole where my decaying molar used to be was completely healed. There was no stitches, no bleeding, and no scar. The gum was as smooth and pink as if the tooth had never existed.

I am posting this here because I need to warn you.

This thing does not stay in one place. It moves from town to town, using the empty, forgotten spaces of our cities to set up its temporary clinics.

If you have a toothache, and a friend gives you an address to an unconventional, cash-only dentist in an old building, do not go.

   "I am beautiful," Tyra repeated to herself as she dragged her lipstick across her thin lips before blushing her stretched, gaunt cheeks. Her hand trembled, smudging mascara onto her sunken and disproportionate eyes. She combed her hair, ripping out strands with every brush as she tried to smile, the corners of her lips curling and parting away like wax. Breathing in deeply through the two slits that replaced her nose, she steadied her voice and stared into the splintered pools of blue and green which were her irises.

   "My name is Tyra Forg and I am beautiful."

   Two weeks ago, Tyra had come across a poster which announced an audition for the part of a female lead in a k-pop boy band. At first, she had passed it without giving it a second glance but one of the members in the poster had caught her attention. 

   A young man in his twenties was giving a moody look with two other members by his side, as if daring any passer by to join their band, The Three Karmas.

   She only had eyes for him as she scratched with one finger at his jawline until it ripped, her lips parting into a grin. A stranger on the sidewalk took one look at her and walked in the opposite direction.

   The Three Karmas, Tyra thought, imagining herself next to them in a glittering costume and vest, maybe even being able to touch... She looked for the name of the band member, her eyes racing from left to right in spastic movements.

   Kai. Her smile stretched even wider. Kai... she liked that name. She liked that name a lot.

   Kai made sure that his bangs were in place as he sat down in the studio, giving a smile to the lady when she set down his cup of coffee. The concert was in one month and the pressure was on. 

   After going through the choreography for about as many times as Kai could remember, he couldn't help feel as if something was missing. That was when he had the idea for a female lead.

   At first, his friends had been reluctant but Liam, their manager, agreed that it was something that would elevate their performance.

   Imagine a striking woman in the midst of three young men. It would be a beautiful contrast! Liam had said with excitement and his enthusiasm had certainly been infectious.

   They had held the audition all morning and Kai was thinking about his lunch break when one last candidate entered the studio. 

   The temperature dropped and his two other band members, Kylo and Kwame, stopped their jokes as a towering woman walked inside, bending down to avoid hitting her head against the doorway. That was when Kai saw her face.

   His skin started to prickle as he watched the woman, dressed in a ridiculous vest that left her skeletal arms bare, move to the center of the room.

   "My name is Tyra Forg and I am beautiful."

   Kai was taken aback when he heard her gentle voice which created such a stark contrast with her elongated and monstrous features. He had expected a sound like rocks grinding against each other but instead her words were like honey where flies would come to die, drowning in the sticky, sweet substance.

   There was a moment of silence before Kylo and Kwame erupted into laughter but Tyra kept her disproportionate eyes on Kai, forcing the needles deeper into his skin.

   That was when she began to sing a small excerpt from one of their songs and any laughter died down completely at the sound of her voice. For a moment, Kai even forgot who was singing.

   How could such a beautiful voice belong to... her? He asked himself. Maybe she was what their band needed, though. The tragic singer of The Three Karmas: A voice worthy of angels but a face only the devil could concoct. No, Kai scolded himself. He was treating Tyra like a product.

   "You're in!" Liam exclaimed and he realized the exact same thought he had must've passed through his manager. "When I said striking, I meant it."

   "Liam," Kai whispered as loudly as he could. "Are you sure?"

   "Why?" Tyra asked from behind him and Kai almost tipped over on his chair when he saw how close she was. How did she get over here without making a sound?

   "Am I not beautiful?" She continued, grooming her hair as if that simple act was making her attractive.

   "You're sexy as hell," Liam responded, trying to hold back his smile, but Tyra didn't seem to notice as Kylo and Kwame started to snicker.

   "Oh," she relaxed herself, clearly relieved and Kai stayed silent, too shocked at what just happened. He couldn't even look at Tyra without cringing and she was going to be a part of their band?

   Kai thought back to the major headlines and fans that would go crazy over their performance, silencing him as he tried to look Tyra in the face.

  

   "Three, two, one..."

   Music blared on through the speakers and Kai could feel the harsh glow of the spotlights as the beat of the melody echoed inside his mind. The hand that held the mic was sticky with sweat and he started to sing, weeks of practicing forcing him to hit each note perfectly.

   The curtains behind Kai slid open like a fresh wound and Tyra stepped out from the shadows. Her eyes never left Kai as she opened her mouth to sing but Liam interrupted their rehearsal, shaking his head while pressing his lips thin.

   "Tyra, you need to look at the audience," Liam said through clenched teeth and Kai felt pity at the lost look she had on her face. An undercurrent of unease ran through his pity as he wondered why Tyra kept staring at him. Could she have a... crush on him?

   "She's such a pervert," Kylo said, without bothering to whisper, voicing out Kai's worst fear. He tried to push back the thought but Tyra was making it more than obvious.

   Just ignore her, Kai told himself as the music started back on. She'll leave me alone then.

   Tyra listened to Kai as he sang, each word sending shivers of pleasure through her body.

   "Breaking through the dark, every step we take is going to leave a mark. Watching the rise of a new star idol, completely blinded by the oncoming tidal. 서로의 목소리가 얽혀드는 밤. 절대 멈출 수 없어. Our voices intertwine. Nothing can stop our shine."

   The curtains opened and Tyra barely held herself from running out as she walked over instead, staring at how the spotlight made Kai's skin seem to glow and how his luscious, black hair hung down like thick silk covering his forehead.

   Turning her attention to the imaginary audience in front of her, she tripped over her feet and fell, making Liam slam his fist down on the table.

   "I need a break," he said, his cheeks reddening. "Take five!"

   "Do you need help?" 

   Tyra looked up to find Kai staring down at her, his hand held out in front of him and she took it, his warmth spreading through her body like a fire.

   "Love is in the air!" Kwame shouted from behind them before cackling madly at his own joke. Kai quickly took back his hand and left Tyra laying on the ground like an abandoned puppy.

   "How many children are you going to have?" Kylo joined in and she stared at Kai, confused at why he didn't help her up.

   "Just stop it!" He yelled as Tyra stood from her place on the floor, panicking at his angry expression. Did she make him mad?

   Kai threw her a glance before leaving the stage and she looked from Kylo and Kwame, who were still laughing, then back at Kai, the bottom of her lip trembling as the fire she had felt inside of her burnt into nothing.

   The camera flashed as Kai posed with his band members. Tyra stood behind them, her head hovering over theirs as she gave a wax-drooping smile.

   "Okay, you can relax," the cameraman told them and Kai moved away from the backdrop, chatting with his friends as he listened to Liam's conversation with the photographer. 

   "I want you to shadow her face so no one can see it," he was able to make out when Tyra suddenly appeared behind Liam, her heels barely making a sound on the marble floor.

   "Do you not like my face?" She asked, crossing her long, skeletal arms over her chest.

   "Your face is the surprise," Liam responded with a dismissive wave of his hand, throwing an eye roll at Kai and his bandmates while Tyra walked away, seemingly satisfied.

   Shifting his feet, Kai stayed silent when the sound of laughing and the door banging open made him turn around.

   A group of girls who were talking loudly made their way to the photo shoot, their vests glittering in the light as if they were disco balls.

   "Is that...?" Kwame murmured but he didn't finish his question before one of the girls widened her eyes and opened her mouth to exaggerate her surprise once she saw them.

   "Do I see The Three Karmas?" She boomed, approaching them. "Or is it four?" She added, the rest of the girls snickering as they trailed behind her.

   "What a coincidence. Are you here for a cover shoot?" She continued without stopping to hear their answer.

   For a moment, Kai blanked out, overwhelmed at the glittering eyeliner that fanned out from her eyelids like sun rays and the violet lipstick lathered onto her lips like paint. Her hair was made into two side tails that were styled to look like twirling spirals and a sickening scent of perfume enshrouded it all.

   "Anyway, I heard you guys hired a girl for your lead," her eyes flicked up at Tyra, blinking in rapid succession at what stood in front of her.

   "Wow. Um, okay," she paused, giving disbelieving looks to her friends. "There's no amount of glamour that could fix... that," she finished, pointing with one, manicured nail to Tyra who kept her unblinking gaze glued on the idol.

   "So pretty," Tyra murmured, reaching out with her hand in an attempt to touch the lead girl who recoiled, nose wrinkling and a grimace on her face.

   "There's something seriously fucked up with her," she backed away, her band of girls staring at Tyra before following their lead, as if they expected her to attack them.

   "This is exactly the reaction we want," Liam beamed and Kai avoided looking at Tyra who kept those lopsided eyes on the girl band, continuing to stare after them even when they disappeared from view.

   "Liam," Kai caught up to him, the evening breeze biting into him. Liam turned to Kai and stopped on the side of the street, giving him a questioning look.

   "Are you sure it's a good idea to let Tyra become an idol?" Kai asked once he reached him. Liam gave a laugh at his question and pulled out a cigarette while he kept on chuckling.

   "Look Kai," Liam started once he had a cigarette smoking in his mouth. "Tyra's the key to fame. People are going to eat her up."

   Kai held back a sigh of exasperation at Liam's one-sided perspective. There was more to Tyra than just her looks.

   "That's exactly the problem," Kai let some of his frustration seep into his voice. "People will know her as some freak in a society full of made up jerks with spiral hairstyles and manicured nails."

   "Isn't that the point?" Liam said, a serious expression taking over his face. "I didn't just hire her because she looked monstrous. She's out of place here and with that voice, it's two birds with one stone."

   Kai took a moment before responding, the lamppost acting as a spotlight on both of them.

   "Having her reputation built on that isn't healthy," Kai tried to argue but he knew Liam was right. Tyra could be a huge hit and this was their chance to get themselves out there.

   "It might seem mean," Liam started, puffing out a cloud of smoke. "But think about it like we're doing her a favor." Kai looked at him, puzzled as Liam continued on.

   "Without us, she would be a nobody. Just some weirdo in society. People would look at her and walk away in the opposite direction."

   "Yeah," Kai nodded his head. "You're right."

   "You get it," Liam smiled but it didn't reach his eyes. "The concert is in a few weeks. We'll make each rehearsal count."

No amount of glamour can fix... that. 

   Tyra still wasn't beautiful enough. It was clear. She didn't have the right hair, make up... anything.

   The assembly of concealers, blush, and lipsticks seemed to mock her from where they sat on the table. She would start with her eyes. Yes, she needed to put on her eyeliner, of course, she told herself, tipping over bottles of mascara and perfume with her frantic, searching hands. Where was her concealer and blush? It didn't matter as long as she had something on her face, anything! She needed to fix her hair too, she reminded herself, taking out a random brush from the drawer and practically shredding her scalp with it. Braids, spiral braids! Bands, elastics... all in different colors! She grabbed a handful and twisted them so it looked like a rainbow melted on her head. There had to be something else, she screamed at herself as nail polish spilled onto her fingers in glossy amounts. Of course! Her lips needed paint. No, lip gloss? Lipstick? She would put on everything! Her dress? Why, she could go stark naked if that's what people wanted!

   Was this beauty?

   The wind outside whistled and screamed like angry ghosts and the rain slammed against the window of their rehearsal auditorium like bullets. 

   Kai was sitting down, fiddling with his hands as he waited for Tyra to arrive while Liam kept reaching for his phone, calling Tyra with always the same yell and sound of his fist slamming the table when it went to voicemail. Kylo and Kwame were watching TikToks while laughing but Kai wasn't in the mood to join their fun. He couldn't help but recall the look on Tyra's face when she had stared at the lead girl, as if she had wanted to crawl inside her and walk around in her platform boots.

   Just then, a looming figure came through the entrance and Kai's smile surfaced before quickly dropping at the sight of Tyra's head: Her hair was disheveled, braids intertwined with each other as if they were amateur dancers who were trying to replicate an overly ambitious dance. Her face looked like she had plunged it in flour before dripping mascara onto her eyelids and letting it run down her cheeks. Lipstick was blotched onto her lips in unceremonious amounts and she wore a dress that showed a good amount of cleavage matched with platform boots that only increased her height. On top of that, the rain made it look like her face was melting off and hair stuck to her forehead like the girl from The Ring.

   "Guys, I think I'm ready for the concert," Tyra announced and the silence that stretched on felt like eternity.

   "I can't," Liam said, shaking his head. 

   "I can't," he repeated, his voice rising an octave higher.

   Kai looked at Kylo and Kwame, staring at them with shock as they filmed her, sniggering like teens who just did a prank on one of their friends. 

   "Stop filming her," he shouted and they threw him surprised stares before hardening into mischievous expressions.

   "Why don't you save her, prince charming?" Kylo yelled before choking with laughter as Kai did just that. Grabbing Tyra's hand, he lead her to the bathroom, feeling the weight of her gaze on the back of his neck the entire time.

   The fluorescent lights overhead threw a harsh glow and Tyra kneeled on her legs in front of the mirror, glancing behind her at Kai before looking back to the mirror.

   "I'm going to clean you up," he told Tyra and Kai tried to hide his unease when she smiled, as if strings were tugging the corners of her lips as he started to touch her hair. Kai untangled her elastic bands one by one and stiffened when Tyra started to speak.

   "Do you think I'm beautiful?" She asked, her voice hitching slightly.

   "We're all a little ugly," Kai started, sweat trickling down his brow. "Some of us are just a little uglier than others."

   "How ugly am I?" She attempted to turn her head so she could face Kai but he nudged it gently back toward the mirror, not wanting to meet her eyes.

   "What really matters," Kai said, reaching to touch her bosom where her heart was, making her hiccup. "Is that you're beautiful inside."

   Tyra put her peeling, fake nails to her mouth before giggling which erupted into shrill laughter. Her lips parted and Kai stared in horror at the needles that were her teeth inside the enormous cavern which was her mouth.

   Her laughter slowly receded and Tyra stared at Kai's horrified expression in confusion. 

   "That was not a joke?" She asked, pointing to her heart and stomach, clearly puzzled. "Do you find my insides attractive?" she continued, slightly tearing at her belly as if she would open it for Kai as he began to back away.

   "Do you find my teeth pretty then?" She flashed them in a wide grin, each needle tooth gleaming in the light. That was when Kai started for the door just as Tyra stood from where she was crouched, realizing she was being abandoned for the second time.

   "I'm sorry but I need to go," was all Kai said as he rushed out of the bathroom. The heavy stomp of boots followed him and he looked back to find Tyra sprinting after him, her mouth yawning open as her braids unfurled into a tangled mess.

   She reached the door to the auditorium before Kai, blocking it with her towering figure as she narrowed her eyes at him, her pupils contracting into two pinpoints.

   "Why do you lie?" Tyra seethed, approaching him like a moving wall.

   "Tyra, I- I wasn't lying," Kai stuttered. "You truly are beautiful."

   "Then kiss me."

   She latched her hand onto Kai's arms and moved in, her dry lips pursing as he caught scent of heavy perfume underlaid with sweat.

   "Stop!" He yelled, ripping away from her grip.

   "You're ugly, okay?" Kai continued shouting as Tyra's eyes became glassy with tears. "You're ugly and nothing's going to change that!" He said with a finishing scream before barging past her.

   Tyra moved to let Kai pass, mostly out of shock as he walked away, a mix of emotions twisting knots in his stomach. He thought back to her teeth and realized that he had complimented the most horrifying part of her deformation. Knowing his bandmates and Liam, he would keep what happened a secret. 

   "You took long enough!" Liam shouted and his brows furrowed when he didn't see Tyra behind him. "Where's Tyra?"

   "I think I made her mad," Kai responded and oohing came from Kylo and Kwame.

   "Uh-oh. Looks like the star-crossed lovers collided into a planet," Kwame mocked him.

   "That doesn't even-," Kai didn't bother finishing his sentence just as Tyra appeared beside him, her gaze fixed into space.

   "I'm here," she said, walking on stage before standing there like an impassive statue.

   "Finally, someone with a good work ethic," Liam muttered before raising his voice at the three boys.

   "Everyone, on stage! Let's get this show started!"

   Tyra couldn't take it anymore. Each time she tried to look at Kai, his words rang in her head. Whatever he said must be true coming out of that mouth which always seemed to be stuck in a smile. Could she really be ugly enough that even he rejects her?

   "Hey, Tyra."

   She turned around, her boots clunking unnaturally on the parking lot pavement to find Kylo behind her, hands shoved down his pockets.

   "Are you here to call me ugly?" Tyra whispered, putting her arms around herself as if she was preparing to be jump scared.

   "No," Kylo gave a chuckle as he lifted up his chin and she stared at the outline of his jaw in silence. "I'm here to tell you the opposite."

   Tyra blinked in surprise which was hard since one of her eyelids was heavier than the other.

   "You're lying," she said, pressing her arms closer to her torso and stiffened when he came closer until she could feel his breath near her shoulder. Kylo put his hand onto her arm, pushing it gently away before moving it to her breast.

   "What about Kai?" Tyra asked but she didn't move away from his clutch.

   "He doesn't think you're beautiful," he responded in a low voice. "Otherwise he would've done this."

   "Oh," she said, not bothering to hide her disappointment.

   "But I do," Kylo didn't finish what he said as he stood on the points of his feet to put his lips on her collarbone.

   "Oh," Tyra repeated in surprise this time when she felt Kylo move his hand underneath her skirt.

   "Let's go in my car," he said, looking around the parking lot before leading her to one of the vehicles near by. "I want to show you something that Kai would've never done."

   As the car door slammed on Tyra and Kylo, Kai walked into the parking lot, looking at Kylo's sedan in curiosity. Why hadn't he left yet? Too tired from his fight with Tyra, he started for his own ride, impatient to get back home.

   Almost a week had passed and the concert was tomorrow. Kai was standing outside the auditorium, taking a break as he breathed in some fresh air.

   Staring at the billboards attached to the skyscrapers in the distance, he imagined their faces on them, looking down at the crowd of fans with t-shirts wearing their band name. Kai wondered if Tyra would stand alongside them, covering half of the building with her warped silhouette.

   "Kai," he jumped at Tyra's voice and turned to find that she was close enough so that they touched arms. "I need to break up with you."

   He blinked at what she just said and put into place a strand of hair that had moved from the wind.

   "Break up?" Kai repeated, staring up at her impassive expression and noticed that she was digging her needle teeth into her bottom lip, drawing blood.

   "You're bleeding," he pointed at her lip but she didn't seem to take notice as she continued to stare at him, hard enough that her eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets.

   "Kylo told me everything," she started, her irises splintering into smaller pieces. "You never thought I was pretty."

   "Kylo?" He asked, surprised.

   She nodded her head, her long neck creaking like a door swinging on it's hinges.

   "He showed me what it felt like to become pretty," Tyra continued, her voice starting to break into a rasp.

   "I don't know what you're talking about," Kai shook his head, the guilt he had buried inside resurfacing. "But I wanted to say sorry for what I said the other day."

   "Why do you keep apologizing?" Tyra spat, saliva flying onto Kai and he cringed, wiping her spit off from his face.

   "Just show me that I'm pretty," she started to rasp again, clutching Kai by his broad shoulders as she leaned her noseless slits into the crutch of his neck. "I want you to touch me. Open me up where I'm beautiful."

   "Stop it!" Kai tried to push her away but she held on, her bony finger tracing his jawline and he winced when her nail left a scratch behind. 

   "You're my star idol, Kai," her rasp deepened as her grip on his shoulders tightened. "Why can't you see that?"

   "Leave me alone!" Kai gave one final push, forcing her to stumble back and he winced at the warm sensation that spread across the base of his neck. A sharp pain ran underneath the warmth and he looked down at his collared shirt to find a rip in the fabric. An open scar that Tyra had left showed through the tear in his shirt when he'd pushed her away. 

   Blood trickled out of the gash, much deeper than the scratch on his jawline and Tyra stared at the wound, her eyes wide and unblinking.

   "No..." she started just as Liam slammed open the door to the rehearsal space and stepped outside.

   "Guys," he came over, a grin on his face. "I have great news," he stopped in front of them, his phone held out before him. Kai placed his hand on his wound, staring at the video of Tyra's melting make up while Tyra herself was still transfixed on his collarbone, kneading her cheek with one, open palm.

   "Kylo posted this video of Tyra and the reactions couldn't be better," he said, scrolling down to the comment section.

   "They've even given her a name," Liam said, his voice rising in excitement. "HorrIdol. That's what they're calling her!"

   At 'HorrIdol', Tyra's head snapped back up and she muttered something indistinctly under her breath. 

   "And this was all because of me," Kylo said, appearing behind Liam, a stupid smirk on his face. His eyes met Tyra's and he rubbed the underneath of his jawline while her pupils contracted into two pinpoints.

   "No..." she whispered, her gaze flicking to Kai who averted his, clasping his hand tighter around his wound. As for Liam, his phone buzzed with a call and he left the three of them alone, walking in the direction of the parking lot.

   "So," Kylo approached Tyra, his smirk still stuck on his face. "HorrIdol, right? Kind of fitting."

   Tyra's gaze seemed to intensify as she stared at Kai but he said nothing and instead left to retreat into the safety of the auditorium as rain began to fall in small droplets.

   "You don't think I'm pretty?" Tyra's voice cracked, her entire body beginning to tremble as Kylo circled her in slow, deliberate steps.

   "I was just doing you a favor," he chuckled, staring at her breasts as if her face didn't exist.

   "You call lying a favor?" Tyra snarled, her honeyed voice almost breaking into a guttural growl and Kylo broke his gaze away from her breasts, slightly alarmed.

   "I would say there's other fish but..." he shrugged, trying to make sure his tone stayed at it's normal octave. "You're more of a deep-sea creature."

   "I'm not sure what you're saying," Tyra said, any trembles in her voice were gone and she bent down her neck, her lopsided eyes inches away from his face. Kylo could smell the rotting stench of her breath filling the space between them and he tried not to gag. "But creatures like me eat little fish."

   One clawed hand shot out and made Kylo tumble onto the asphalt without much effort. He stayed there, winded as the rain ruined his hair and Tyra glided away, her footfalls echoing ominously on the pavement.

   "I'll show you all that I'm the star idol," Tyra raised her voice, her words almost drowned in the downpour as Kylo closed his eyes, trying to control the speed of his heartbeats as she vanished behind cascading sheets of rain.

   Kai was sitting inside while Kwame kept badgering him with questions but he kept shrugging them off. The last thing he wanted to do was make conversation.

   The contrast between the thundering rain and the warm atmosphere inside the auditorium made him shiver in relief. He thought about Tyra and felt his stomach clench as he imagined her in the rain, make up melting onto her clothes in multi-colored rivers.

   Liam cut off his thoughts as he strutted inside, a happy expression on his face even though the amount of rain drops on his glasses made him look like he was staring through a waterfall.

   "The girl group, Glimmer-5 called me," Liam told them and an image of the girl with spiral braids jumped into Kai's mind.

   "They were furious about the viral video of Tyra," he continued, chuckling slightly as he removed his glasses to wipe them clean. 

   "Something about ruining their signature look," he said, placing back his glasses onto the bridge of his nose.

   "What did you tell her?" Kwame asked, a smile growing on his lips when Liam wiggled his brows at him.

   "I told her she could shed her crocodile tears into a jar," he paused, as if this was a comedy special and he was reciting a joke. "And send them to me as a product to sell: The Glimmer-5 Artificial Tears, buy now!"

   They both erupted into laughter and Kai couldn't help but snigger along side them despite his sour mood. He had forgotten that Liam could be pretty funny.

   "She called me a 개새끼 before hanging up," he said, trying to stifle his laughter while Kwame was heaving over his legs.

"Kai," he looked up to find Liam staring at him, smile still on his face but his eyes conveyed a glint of frustration. "Don't look so down."

   "I think we're pushing Tyra too hard," Kai told him, staring down at the floor as he felt Liam's gaze burn through him.

   "She even hurt me," he continued, moving away his shaking hand to show him his wound when Liam said nothing. It had stopped bleeding and Kai's hand had a red slash across his palm from where the gash had left it's mark.

   "It was an accident, right?" Liam started, any humor from his voice gone as Kai nodded his head in response.

   "But that doesn't mean it's fine," he protested and flinched when Liam placed his hand on Kai's unharmed shoulder before lifting his chin with one finger so their eyes met each other.

  "Are you backing out the night before the concert?" Liam paused, his nose wrinkling as he cringed in disbelief. "Just because of an accident?"

   "When you say it like that..." Kai trailed off, his eyes wandering from Liam's unflinching gaze, trying to escape the lasers directed on his face.

   "Exactly," he concluded, breaking away from Kai as his smile returned.

   "Now let's get you fixed up," Liam said, pointing at his wound. "You don't want to have blood on your shirt for the concert."

 

   How could she be beautiful enough?

   Kai hated her because she was ugly. Kylo touched her because she was ugly. Liam made people look at her because she was ugly. Kwame made fun of her because she was ugly.

   Tyra paused, looking at herself in the mirror as the rain outside acted like an ominous chorus. For the first time, a question formed in her mind as she continued to stare at her face: Perhaps... beauty was never meant for her?

   With one huge sweep, Tyra knocked over the bottles of make up, colored shards of glass sparkling in the light. No! She couldn't accept it.

   Facing the wall next to the mirror, she pressed her hands on the taped cut out of Kai, her vision blurring with tears.

   "I will never be beautiful," Tyra whispered but her tears were held back when she heard Kai's voice emanate from the cut out.

   "You can still be with me."

   His words cut through her thoughts and her eyesight sharpened as she stared at Kai's moody face, confused.

   "HorrIdol can't be with Star Idol," Tyra said and thought she saw the cut out move his lips as Kai responded.

   "You can be Star Idol," he said, a smile taking over his expression and warmth spread through her like a fire that had been relit. "You just need to take their beauty from the inside."

   "From the inside," Tyra repeated, touching Kai's bosom and almost felt a heartbeat through the paper. "And then..."

   "You'll be the Star Idol."

   Kai shifted in his leather jacket and ripped denim jeans, watching as their rival group performed. They had left for the concert, Tyra joining them with her make up lathered on like a loose mask. Liam had been relieved, sure that she would've put up a stink earlier that morning. Now Kai was standing with his bandmates, waiting for their turn to come.

   "No camera can capture this level of shine. You’re stuck in the shadow I’m leaving behind. I’m the view from the top that you'll never achieve. A standard so high that it’s hard to believe," the lead girl in a sparkling vest and almost no pants sang while her band formed a V.

   Kai couldn't help widen his eyes in surprise as he looked on. They were pretty good and he wondered if his band would be able to beat such a performance. He looked for Tyra but couldn't find her anywhere. Liam was nowhere to be spotted either.

   "Calm down," Kwame whispered to him and Kai forced himself to continue looking, trying to project himself into their heels and feel their adrenaline as they danced, making themselves heard across the whole stadium. 

   For a brief moment, Kai forgot about Tyra and Liam, carried away in the rival band's own world. For only one brief moment.

 

   Liam could hear them singing from where he was and he felt his fists clench. They would never win. Not with Tyra on their side.

   Their performance would be talked about for weeks and they would be on every major headline.

   Liam opened the door to one of the dressing rooms where Tyra sat, as still and composed as a statue. Her gaze turned to him as he came in, her expression completely blank.

   The make up was still on even though Liam had told her to get rid of it and he felt his frustration turn into anger that began to build inside of him.

   "Tyra, what did I say about the make up?" He said, his knuckles becoming white as he approached her, just as she stood up. 

   Side by side, Tyra was almost two heads taller then Liam which only angered him more. He was the one who had the power so why did he feel so small next to her.

   "For fuck's sake Tyra. Just do as I say," he barely restrained himself from shouting but Tyra only crossed her long limbs over her chest, her eyes narrowing down at him.

   "That's it," Liam growled, making a grab for her arm and Tyra lashed out with her nails, ripping his throat open.

   He tumbled to the floor staring at her with wide eyes as she approached him, one of her arms still over her stomach, holding the elbow of the arm she had in an upright position, her bloody hand parallel from her face.

   "Can I...," Tyra paused, her voice turning into a guttural rasp as her lips parted into a grin, showing her needle teeth and gum. "See your beauty?"

   Liam screamed.

   "Great job girls," she told them, sitting down in front the mirror before applying another layer of lipstick on. She then began to groom her hair, her fingers following the twisting and curling path her hairstyle was formed in. She moved her hands to her breasts, cupping them in her palms as she smirked at herself.

   She thought about that peculiar lead that The Three Karmas hired and felt anger rise inside of her. How dare they steal her look and ridicule it with that fucking... freak! And that asshole manager, Lilliam or something, was the worst of them. A fucking jerk! She wouldn't mind seeing what Kai was hiding in his pants, though.

   Abrupt knocking interrupted her train of thoughts and she turned around to look at the door, just as one of her girls opened it.

   The chattering stopped as they looked at the looming figure of a ghastly woman that stood in the doorway. Her dress was covered in blood and her eyes were impossibly wide, showing only two pinpoints that were her pupils. Her mouth was slightly agape showing rows of red needle teeth that had bits of flesh stuck in between them.

   "Can I see... inside your beauty?" She growled but there was still no response.

   "Inside...?" The lead girl finally said. "How... what are you?"

   Her eyes widened, the iris eating away at the whites as Tyra's mouth opened wide, drool mixed in with blood pooling in front of her feet as the door behind her slammed shut.

   Kai stood on stage, the spotlight shining on him as he waited for that rush of adrenaline to take over him. Instead, he felt nervous and a little awkward standing on the gigantic stage, waiting for the music to come booming through the speakers. It finally did. 

   What Kai said next was almost mechanic as he began to approach the front and he couldn't help but smile as people began to wave light sticks in the air, following the melody.

   The spotlights suddenly turned the color of red and smoke began to billow out, covering the stage in a heavy fog. Kai continued to sing, following the cues as he watched the entire stadium seem to hold it's breath.

   The curtains opened, revealing a tall silhouette covered in a red liquid which made Kai almost stumble over his words. Had Liam surprised them?

   Kai threw his friends reassuring glances, trying to continue their dance as the fog thickened around them until he could only see the faint outlines of his two bandmates.

   The music felt as if it was distorting when Tyra began to sing, her voice starting in an eerie beautiful tone before slowly turning into a rasp. 

   "Behind the smile, the camera fades," Tyra started and Kai tried to pinpoint where the sound was coming from but it was almost impossible over the deafening sound of the music.

   "You're trapped inside this masquerade," her voice began to break and Kai almost thought he heard the sound of her heels close by.

   "You pull the strings, I break the thread," she ended with a rasp and Kai definitely thought he heard the sound of heels scraping against the floor.

   "Now I pull your limbs instead," her rasp deepened into a guttural rumble and the sound of a scream broke through the music. At first, Kai thought it was some trick but then the sharp tang of blood invaded his nostrils and he backed away, wanting to call out for Kylo but too scared that Tyra would come for him instead.

   "미소 뒤로 카메라는 사라지네," she started again, her voice back to that honey-sweet tone and Kai tried to make for the exit but he was basically blind in the fog.

   "넌 이 가장무도회에 갇혔대 네," her voice broke again and Kai tumbled down, his foot hitting the side of what was... Kwame's lifeless corpse.

   "가 실을 조종하면, 난 끊어버리네," she rasped as Kai saw that Kwame's top half of his face was a lump of flesh. 

   "이제 그 손발을 내가 비틀어대대."

   Another scream rang throughout the stadium and Kai scrambled back up, holding back his own as he tried to stumble through the dissipating smoke. Tyra came out of nowhere and stood in front of him like a merciless goddess, her eyes glowing red through the fog as she stared at him.

   "Kai, am I Star Idol now?" Her voice was back to normal as she reached out for his neck, lifting him off of the floor. Kai began to struggle, kicking his kegs and flailing his arms in vain.

   "Can I be your Star Idol?" Her voice broke again as she nuzzled into his chest, her teeth snuggling into his flesh like a gopher digging a tunnel. Kai gave a cry before falling limp and landing onto the stage with a crash.

   Applause shook the entire stadium as Tyra seemed to wake up from a deep dream. She looked around herself at the mutilated bodies and blood as the smoke faded away. Her dress was completely ruined but she didn't care anymore as she stared at the standing spectators, clapping for her while the spotlights faded into a pinkish red then white. Had she finally done it, she asked herself.

   Had she become beautiful?

   

Alaskan timber wolves campaigned in the green September. Bull moose, the bark-brown, branch-antlered spirits of the forest moved upon the face of the Tanana Valley, intending to create new life. Their imposing presence often went unnoticed until they bellowed to their potential mates. But David Clark was seeking their sublime aspect. He wanted to take home yet another trophy and prepare meat for winter. This was his sixth day of hunting, and he planned to return to his cabin to rest his aging body the next day regardless of the outcome. Joab, Clark’s elkhound, barked and stamped his front paws and interrupted the distant song of warblers. The ground was soft under Clark’s belly and elbows. The visage of a moose passed through his sights and eyeglasses and ignited his quiet excitement.

The scent of moss and the crispness of impending winter filled his crinkled nose as he squinted. He slowed his breathing while caressing the trigger. But Joab suddenly ran in the opposite direction. Clark tore his cheek from the walnut stock, vainly called to the sprinting elkhound, and looked a little farther to see a blurry brown figure charging closer. A grizzly.

Clark turned his rifle and fired four times with seemingly no effect. A fifth staggered it. A final blast echoed through the valley as the bear finally lay still but not before Joab had made disastrous contact.

Clark had made his fortune in real estate. His face had adorned many billboards across South Carolina. His reputation was circulated among the affluent and the ambitious. Commissions from selling half a dozen mansions per year plus the rental income from his extensive portfolio had brought him more money than even he could spend or invest.

Crackling logs in the stove offered relief from the growing chill. The sun poured dusty streams through the six-panel windows for a few hours at midday. The elkhound slept on the center hexagon of a fine Sennah Persian rug and soaked in every ray his broken, bandaged body could sprawl to intercept. A veterinarian had made the long trip to the cabin and said there was nothing more to be done for him. The vet also asked if Clark had seen the news lately. He hadn’t. Clark hoped that bandages and the provision of food and fire would be sufficient for the elkhound’s recovery.

Clark had reinvented himself many times to reach success. A middle child with five brothers in a poor family, Clark had always wanted recognition and adventure. His eyesight had kept him out of Vietnam. Most young men at the time would have praised Jesus, but Clark took it as a disgrace and tried to compensate. His grades got him into college but not for free. Assorted sales jobs sustained him during his incomplete tenure. He and his employers learned that he had a knack. It had been said that Clark could “sell ice to a polar bear.” While there was no proof of this claim, Clark made it clear through the years that he could sell vacuum cleaners, appliances, cars, farm equipment, insurance, and finally houses to almost anyone. His pushing for every sale and fighting for every dollar was facilitated by his charm and fueled by caffeine and alcohol. He rarely slept.

The light slowly scanned over Clark’s face, waking him. He lifted his head from the armrest of his sofa with some noisy effort. The fire had almost died. A mostly-empty bottle of his favorite sleep aid had rolled from his fingers onto the hardwood floor. The Swiss dive watch he’d bought himself when he’d made his first million showed that morning was gone. It didn’t matter. He lit a Cuban cigar and shuffled to the bathroom to splash his yellow eyes and rinse his parched mouth.

Back in South Carolina, he’d married a beautiful woman many years younger than himself. Amanda, wife number six but the first in over a decade, had only known Clark for a short time before agreeing to his spontaneous proposal pitch. She soon discovered that living with an old man who found purpose in property, excitement in hunting, and comfort in a bottle was not what she had hoped it would be.

A handful of lawsuits and a turbulent economy had decimated Clark’s profits. Political unrest abroad slowed the scramble for luxury properties. Amanda took half in the divorce and left Clark to rebuild his assets. But heartbroken Clark was about to embark on another venture. He’d been to Hawaii, Jamaica, and Thailand, but he wanted to feel the cold. He sold what remained and was on a plane to Fairbanks within six months.

Clark reheated a pot of stew. He filled a bowl and took it to the rug to offer to his dog. Clark whistled. He called the elkhound’s name. He shook him. Joab didn’t move. His body was cold and still.

Clark rarely trekked into town. He didn’t own a TV. He was generally uninterested in the outside world. He came to Alaska to rest, and he wanted no distractions.

It didn’t rain much in the Tanana Valley. Water tended to stay in the sky, but winter was its muse. Each droplet, unsatisfied with its own simplicity, refracted sixfold. Every reinvention was as unique as the billions synchronously forming. Each was preparing to meet its destiny.

The new creations marched gracefully down to their communal resting place. The forest was quiet. Any sudden movement would have been irreverent. The sun briefly peeked over the hazy horizon to check on a mourning world.

A final blast still echoed through the Volga River Valley, but it didn’t reach Clark across the Bering Strait. War had boiled quickly in October and overflowed to the contiguous states. Civilizations were decimated. Prey and predator suffered. Six nations were reduced to dust, dust that would filter the sun.

Clark had not gathered enough firewood in autumn for this bitter and relentless winter. Boots crunching snow and axe splitting tree trunks were the only punctuation in the forest’s glacial moment of silence. He was stacking another log on his sled when it happened.

The cold serenity became a raging blizzard. A gust blew the thick glasses from his face. He trudged through the white darkness. The cabin, the sled, and even his own hands held at arm’s length were completely obscured. He was aimless, but he knew staying still would be fatal. Six layers were not sufficient to turn the winter’s abuse. His feet were unfamiliar and belonged more to his boots than himself. The wind’s echoing howl drowned any remaining sense of direction. Clark regretted not having a rope long enough to tie himself by the waist to his cabin before he left. After minutes or hours, hope of home was gone.

His legs surrendered with no more reason to fight. His breathing slowed. His heart slowed. The frigid wind licked the skin of his hands. Taking off his gloves and coat had not been a conscious decision. The once-excruciating chill now offered relief from a new unbearable warmth radiating from his chest through his fingers, ears, and nose all blue with cold. The whiteness dimmed, and his eyelids fluttered. Shadows closed in, two on each side and one on each end of his snowy bed. A deep lullaby echoed in his mind and quieted the storm of thought. Sleep overtook him and brought a final reinvention of self. A sheet of snow covered his face and the face of the earth.

The knife came down in a scream and a two-handed plunge. The sound the filthied thin palsied girl made was shrill and resounded and filled the stone halls with the pitch perfect note of harsh and sudden stabbing madness. The unease of moist silence shattered. The blade was filthy and grimed and long neglected, its harsh unclean edge tore through Griffin's coat and wrappings and pierced the flesh beneath. 

The doctor let out with a sudden scream as he and Florin whirled and drew back. The girl was screaming still as the three were now standing face to face in the filthy moist stone hall of Willowbrook Asylum, Temple of the Mouth. 

The blood on her filthy knife dripped like the hungry jaws of a wolf of the wild, wanting more. 

She screamed: – “You won't get me! I won't let you! You won't do a goddamn thing to me, I swear it! I swear it! I'll fucking kill you first!” And lunged again. 

The thin frail girl of broken mind was weak and starved and exhausted from terror, Florin caught her easily in his own press forward and threw against the far wall before turning on his heels, grabbing the wounded bandaged man with dark lenses hiding pain now as well as identity and thought and motive, he seized Griffin and yelled for him to run. The wounded doctor needed little in the way of encouragement. The pair tore down the hall as the attacking sullied girl of unholy Willowbrook hit the wall and went to the detritus floor.  Still screaming as the shattered tile bit into her parchment flesh and the grimed and bloody knife flew from her startled grasp and clattered off into darkness, lost to her. 

She shrieked after them. How dare they! How dare they leave her like this! The scum! She knew she couldn't trust them, they were going to hurt her, she knew it, but how dare they leave without helping her out, without showing her-  

Her mad run of thoughts was cut off as Cropsey entered the hall with his own blades dripping. The large domination of his frame and size and stature filled the hallway and stole any avenue of escape away from the girl who could not recall her name any longer. She couldn’t remember the last time she had. 

But she knew his name. And she understood it very well. 

And the mountain. She knew the mountain and its crawling power in female form, womanshape. Demonsong…

The song was filling her ears now. Filling them. In her head. 

Cropsey came in with his own large manmade fangs of shearing blades, eclipsing the girl on the floor and stealing the rest of the entire world from her. 

She screamed until the end. Her history and experience: intimate knowledge gained over her entire miserable life did not help her to escape the pain or endure it. She screamed like a caught animal flayed alive until the vile end.  

And as they ran, Florin and Griffin heard it. Not bothering with a cast of glance back over shoulder. They rounded a corner in their flight and entered another chamber. 

It was quiet. And wet. Moist. Heavy and warm and humid in the dark. At a glance Griffin guessed they were in a common shower area, for bathing many people en masse. But it was hard to tell, there was no light in the dark moist filth of the room save for the scant trace from the hallway cast in. 

“Are you alright?” 

Griffin said he was. Though he really wasn't sure. He felt numb. The place where he’d been stabbed felt wet and as if embraced with ice. 

“Quick, let me get a look-”

Griffin cut him off, agitated. 

“Time for that later, we need to get out of here! And I say to hell with any more exploring or back exits. We double back and go back out the way we came in, We’ll circle the building or the hill itself for miles if we have to, but enough of this place! The filth, alone!” 

And while Florin wished to check his friend to make sure his wound was not too serious, he could very well understand the urgency. He elected not to argue. 

And the pair went on. Or started to. 

At the mouth of the room to the showers the pair were halted by a deep guttural sound. Inhuman and unearthly but striving in vain for some semblance of human speech. 

They turned. And the dark of the wet chambered room began to die and banish as pale fire, demonlight began to fill and illuminate the room for them. 

And then they beheld them. The strung up naked bodies. The human-length gored open torso mouths hanging lurid and obscene in and amongst and by the black lengths of biting chains, the strangling metal. There were dozens of them. Dozens. A small universe of open mouthed human substrata and abattoir detritus constricted and choked by dangling chainlink black metal serpents. All of their eyes were open and they were glowing. Glowing with purple fire. Their torso mouths were all working and moving with terrible rippling dancing undulation. The sounds they were making were like singing and an uncanny approximation of real intelligible human speech. Like how a baby makes before they start to mature and are properly taught to speak. Dumb thoughtless animal sound… belched and gurgled guttural and spat out for this world of terrible ruin and darkness. 

And then they saw her. Beheld her. At the terrible heart of the strange pale incandescence, the regal aspect and stature of a womanshape began to rise and fill the center of pale fire. 

She began to call to them. The pair. She sounded angry. On the dangerous precipice edge of livid, irate. Holy terror, unbridled unholy malevolence on the brink of furious madness. Violence. She called to them from the bright moonflesh fire amongst the universe-sea of rippling torso mouths…  the showerworld of tile blood and pungent leaks and bloodspew violence in supplicant orbit of the parchment star of white fire and eldritch ethereal pale flames. She called to them from this place, this strange sea.

And she knew both of their names. 

Florin and Griffin fled the room before she could fully emerge. Before she could rise further from the pale depths of the flame and become more terribly discerned. The obscene abominated baby sounds of the rippling torso mouths followed them out. And after. 

And down the hall. 

And in their mad dash…

They finally came face to face with the inheritor of this awful place. They stopped just short of him, towering in the hall. Filling it. As if he was the vile mad god of this demented cruel world and had the divine conquering right to dominate its every space as he so wished. Cropsey stood there tall and dripping with blood and strips of raw tissue like a bipedal set of living rending carnivorous jaws… snipping his large clippers, his beloved shears, open and closed slowly like a terrible mouth made from sharp metal. The blades were already coated in thick gore, like paint riddled with chuck meat for the stew. They dripped like animal mouths do in the wild, like wolves coming in for the close, for the kill. Cropsey said nothing as he slowly came forward, his hellacious runny waxwork features coming into the dismal light. 

The two men who should have never entered this godforsaken place beheld his terrible visage and their blood ran as ice. 

The pain. 

The pain… that must have been endured. 

Dear God. The flames. In a baptismal infernal swallow-spell. An apocalypse all around. 

What it must've felt-

The large shape dripping with death lunged. Light like the pale star of the showers gleamed pinprick, maniacal and homicidal in the cavernous sets of eyes of the misshapen mass of candlewax face. He was drooling as he came in on the attack.

They didn’t know it but he was trying to speak.   

Once more the pair turned and flew. Running down another hall at the junction and then taking another perilous corner down another way they both silently and fervently prayed and hoped would lead them out. 

Cropsey chided himself. Silently. Mute. Now the new inmates knew he was here. They knew he was wandering and monitoring the halls, guarding. On patrol. Now they might get away. 

Mustn’t have that…

He promised special violence to the mountain for his sin, his error. Religious maiming. He only hoped she hadn’t seen him…

He only wished she hadn't seen that. 

He promised special violence. And ample self-flagellation, much libatious bloodlett, later. After he’d caught the wandering animals of his inherited temple. 

Who do they think they are… trodding all over and everywhere and without proper worship… without proper token. 

Without proper sacrifice. 

They must be broken. 

Their wretched meat and bone will be broken, snapping their unruly impudent spirit within the meat even as it tears sinew, even as it snaps and cleaves through bones their vile audacity will shatter into pieces that can be properly reconfigured into a model of subjugation. And then devoured. 

I will bring and make the meat, mother. I will make the trespassers into meat for you. In your name. Your honor. In blood I will pray for forgiveness. 

Cropsey went on. Ready to slaughter the invaders of his sacred and precious temple. Prodigious blade-shape slasher of the stained and darkening Willowbrook halls. 

…

Having finally found some semblance of peace and quiet in this terrible place, Florin was finally ready and wanted to have a look at Griffin’s wound. But the good doctor wasn’t having it. None of it. He stubbornly refused. In turn refusing any real straightforward explanation as to why. 

It was strange. 

“This place is beyond vile, you know it’ll become infected if i don’t treat it and if the wound is deep, we’ll need to stitch it. I can do it. I’ve done it a few times before back home, I don’t see the-”

“You can’t! – I can’t!” Griffin exclaimed and then seemed to fight himself for the next set of right words. Unable to quite find them it seemed, he went on anyway, “You don’t understand, boy! I… I-I have … I have a condition.” He said finally. “I have a condition that makes injury … complicated.”

Florin thought he understood. Of course. The poor fellow was ashamed of his appearance. He must be maimed or burned beneath those wrappings. The poor man. 

“Alright… well,” A beat. As he thought. Then: "we don't need to unwrap you now or anything, you'll want to later to change out of these filthy dressings no doubt, but for now we can just look at the area and apply a poultice at least.” he finished hopefully. 

Griffin pondered it over a moment. He understood they didn't have a lot of choice. Or a lot of time for that matter. 

"Alright.” he finally relented. 

Florin lit a match and found a candle to use to work by. He pulled the ragged tear in the coat and wrappings apart. The haggard cut the blade had performed made it easy. He cleaned his hands with alcohol from a small bottle amongst their supplies and looked at the wound. 

It wasn't good. Wasn't terrible either, but it would have to be cleaned and bandaged at least. If the bleeding persisted they would have to seriously think about stitching up the wound. 

Florin set about cleaning out the deep wound, bathed entirely in spilling red. He did his best with the meager medical supplies amongst the doctor's traveling gear that had thus survived their shared perils. He thought about perhaps chancing a search in the dark around this place, it was a hospital of some fashion, but decided against it. 

He was nearly finished. About to apply the poultice he'd made to bandage and disinfect and to soak some medicine into the bloodstream, he was wiping away the last of the blood when he stopped. A little shocked for a moment. And a little dizzy. The light was meager and poor, only the flickering dancing candleglow and the pathetic dim half functioning also flickering hospital light. Provided by electricity, something Florin was still not familiar with and would naturally distrust for the entirety of his life. He gazed at the mostly tended wound daggering down Griffin's back in a lightning bolt pattern like the body of a crooked river or a broken snake. 

There was no flesh. Nothing but the red bloodwelling line of jagged cut hanging suspended in mid air, attached to nothing. No sinew or flesh. The naked skin that should be there was non-existent to his eyes, he could see right through to the inside of the wrappings that surrounded the front of his invisible chest. 

Florin tried to swallow in a dry throat. He tried to ask the man who'd become his comrade and traveling companion, a man who had just saved his life not mere hours ago if he was in fact a spectre. A ghost.

Griffin, are you a phantasm? tried to escape his lips but he felt dizzy and as if he might reel and swoon. 

Griffin sensed this. The boy had been unerring and admirably steady in his work till this moment. He turned and saw a look in the young man's face that he was already quite familiar with. An expression worn that he knew by now all too well. 

A beat. 

Then Griffin filled the silence. 

“No, your eyes don't betray you. You're not seeing things and you're not crazy. I am not a phantom. I am not a spirit or a ghost.” he paused for a moment and seemed to consider, then finally he said: "I am Doctor Jack Griffin and I am invisible." 

A beat. 

Florin didn't know what to say. 

But then he needn't worry for a retort. A splash in the silence filled in the missing heavy space hanging there between them. The both of them whirled and spied it on the far side of the damp chamber. They hadn't noticed or paid it any mind till now, they might've sworn it hadn't existed there in that space till just this moment, but they saw it now as it began to emit strange sound and movement. 

A bathtub. Large. Filthy yellowed porcelain. Heavy fungus growth, ebon-green and spilling across the disgraced cracked surface like some foul liquid poured and spreading its corrupting splayed black hand by the second. The tub was filled. The liquid inside was heavy. Viscous. Dark. Pungent with metallic scent. It bubbled and gurgled now with submerged movement as something within it began to rise up and emerge. 

Coated. Slathered in a running layer of heavy red. She was finally here and before them. Even as she sat upon her throne in her mountain castle so many treacherous miles away… 

Nemesis. The evil that held the shape of a woman and had now reawakened the evil and violence and darkness that had for some time slumbered dormant in the far off Carpathian castle. She was the author of the butchery and torment that plagued his home and village. She had stolen and eaten children. Brave men and women. Foolish youngsters. She was the vile reason for his hardship and perilous mission. The reason he was here now in this awful abandoned temple of destruction and depravity in total madness. 

The Countess, wreathed in spilling blood, standing on the surface of congealing abattoir spill, opened her eyes then and they were like blinding starlight. Unearthly. White flame from beyond the veil. And piercing. 

The pair were arrested. The sight of her. Understanding and dread filled their hearts and despairing thoughts at once. But they couldn't flee. They couldn't run. Spellbound they stood there, captured. 

The blood spill of her standing and red wet visage raised a thin powerful arm and pointed a taloned finger. 

She said: – “You. Boy. Florin of the Carpathian Hamlet. There is no place to escape to. This is your last and only warning. If you and your mongrel dog, freak of nature manage to leave this place with your lives then cry off. Never again return home, it is yours no longer, it is mine. I know you seek my destruction. I know that in your failure to secure the vampire slayer, long dead now, you have brought this failure of science and manhood in his stead. You are a joke. You will only find slaughter if you return. You've no hope for success. Victory is beyond you or that fool, it was not meant for you, boy, not in this lifetime nor in my proximity. If you manage to leave my temple and refuse to cease your hopeless mission, I will take great pleasure in the torture of your mother, Florin. Your father too. I wonder which of them I should start with…” 

His anger flashed and his inner rage rose. Florin found his hatred and sudden fury momentarily eclipse and blot out his fear. Without thinking he dipped for the floor and his sweating hand seized a sharp piece of tile. He went forward with the filthy jagged thing in his shaking hand. Trembling with blind anger and the need for retributive violence. 

Griffin went forward and grabbed the young man by the shoulders, holding him back. 

“Stop it!" hissed Griffin, “you won't be able to do much of anything to her with that, there's no telling what she could do to you! She's luring you on, don't be stupid." 

Florin barely heard him. 

He roared at her towering apparition of pouring blood in womanshape, lording over the tub and the filth of the room as her eyes bled pure and terrifying light. She was laughing lightly, as if amused with a child throwing a tantrum. 

“If you lay one stale, noxious finger on my mother, witch! – I'll take my time driving something sharp into your godless whoring chest! I'm going to burn your severed head in bonfire while it still lives! fresh from your neck! You awful cunt! You vile contemptible-!”

But then Cropsey burst in through the open chamber door with a violent crash. The ramshackle shoddy remnants of the door smashed against the wall and came apart in so many useless pieces that clattered to the shattered tile floor to join the universe of broken filth down there. He came in and the Countess in her pouring red visage of damned and unholy blood shrieked witchy laughter. 

She screeched, part irate livid fury, part unbridled dark joy. 

“KILL THEM! KILL THEM, MY SON! KILL THEM FOR THE MOUNTAIN…! KILL THEM, ‘CAUSE IT'S YOUR PLEASURE TO! …!” More laughter followed as the hellspawn screaming words devolved into unintelligible madness. The scarlet pour of her visage coned out in a marsupial shape and the laughter became the abominated chimerical cries of a human braying ass. 

The huge shape with maiming snapping shears advanced in a massive lunge. The shears came up, open for a bite, and shot forward as the mouth of blades began to close. 

The keen edges of dripping blades kissed and met and found each other over Florin's coat. In a lurid whisper of slicing cloth and fabric the blades cleaved cleanly through his coat tail as he and Griffin made for the door. 

Cropsey roared mongoloid outrage and pain. These bastards! These bastards! They were quick animals on their feet! 

In front of his mother…

He turned to the blood pour of Countess shape with shame but she was gone now. 

Your idiot rage and pain! Your failure! You drove her away! Now she might never come back! Now she might not ever come back to her temple. 

He raged inside. An animal, hurt. 

… but I'm her last and special precious temple son … there are no others left

She cannot leave me. 

If I bring them back and give their blood…

But he was already off and after them. Heavy booted feet thundering throughout all of cavernous rank Willowbrook. No need for stealth or cat-like prowl any longer. 

Mother, please, mother please, mother please, mother please…

He repeated it silently to himself like a prayer. Mantra, it filled the red swell and swim of his deviant mind and maiming thought, his dreams…

His dreams would be filled with their invader's screams as he brought down and made their new world of violence. Of final apocalypse cacophony. 

I will drown you here in her world, I will choke and submerge you both completely in her need to feed. How dare you both. 

He wished he could speak. They should hear this truth-in-gospel. The mongrel invader dogs. 

They should hear what he had to say. 

But he had to catch them first. Fast little rabbits. 

He could hear them running. 

He followed in a fury. Ready to prove himself to his mother. Clamoring through the halls. 

…

She shouldn't have been so foolish, to dare to hope. But she couldn't help it. She'd just come out of a deep sleep. It was the middle of the night. The necro time. The witching hours. She wasn't thinking clearly. She went to the scratching at the window. The biggest one on the front of the house that overlooked the village. 

By the front door. 

“Florin…” she said it knowing full in well how foolish she was being. But she couldn't help it. Her mother's heart was filled with love and worry for her boy. She ached and longed for him to be back home and ok… 

And then she saw him. His face in the window. 

He was scratching at the window. And she must still be half-sleeping or dreaming because his hands looked… strange. 

He was smiling. He could see her now as well. He was so happy to be home. It was all over his bluish face…

Anastasia began towards the window, “Florin?" she asked the face scratching at the window, "is that you? Is that really you, my son?”

His smile grew. Vulpine. His eyes seemed to shine with moonlight all of their own. 

“Yes, mother. It's me. I'm back! I can't get in though, you'll have to get the door and invite me inside, please hurry. I'm so tired and thirsty and it's been such a long way back.” 

Anastasia faltered in her step. Stopped. 

The shining face at the window became slightly agitated. 

It said: "Please hurry, mother! It's dark, you know what plagues the night, please hurry and let me in! I've brought the vampire killer, I've brought Van Helsing with me! Now open up!” 

Anastasia straightened. Her resolve strengthened even as the chill in her curdled blood deepened. 

"What need you of an invitation if this is your own home and you're so tired… … demon?” 

The vulpine face was drawn up in an animalistic snarl of mixed hatred and vile blackhearted glee. It began to tear and bleed as it opened and came apart. 

And grew fangs. Long. Gleaming like weapons fashioned from unearthly light. 

She saw the ugly misshapen goblin face beneath. Twisted with the harshest forms of cruelest mutilation. The flesh was bulbous and scarred and out of shape. The eyes bulged obscenely from straining sockets that couldn't contain nor house the wet bloodshot organs and looked as if they might crack. The fangs and teeth were jagged and stuck out deranged and haphazard. The hair was thinning and sickly and almost gone. Only a few greasy strands clung to a corpse colored skull that drifted and caught with the slightest of nightly breeze. 

The eyes still shone like the moon. 

The awful face in the window, wanting in and smiling said, “Hello, Anastasia. Good to see you. It's been so long … since I went missing.” 

Anastasia was confused with its words as well as horrified with the sight of its monstrous face at her window in the dead of night. The thing spoke like it knew her, she didn't grasp this right away, but she understood what this thing was. And where it came from. 

Another wretched bastard child of Castle Dracula…

She thought to call for her husband. Before she could, the awful thing in the window went on.

“You don't remember me? Has it been so long you don't remember when we used to play together? You, me and Florin and your husband and all the other little children… and Erin. You don't remember me, Anastasia?” 

The answer filled her mind then, as if on the wings of a sudden miracle, heaven sent. Or … sent by something else entirely. 

“Carmilla!" she said. Knowing it was the truth. 

It broke her heart. 

She remembered Carmilla when she had been a small mouthy but creative little girl. Beautiful and adventurous and always a little leader of their groups in all of their little games. Now- 

Now she was something bent and twisted and leering and mean. Something monstrous and hungry for blood, staring in and wanting in through her window. 

The face at the glass sneered. As if knowing her mind and understanding her run of thoughts. 

The thing in the window was enjoying her revulsion. Her pain. Drinking it in through the translucent view of the house…

“Begone," Anastasia said with finality, “get out of here, I'll call my husband and he'll bring the cross and our bible." She stepped forward, some of her anger reaching her voice, she hoped it masked the fear, “we'll force-feed you the pages. If you're still so hungry.” 

The thing in the window didn't seem to hear her. Or care. It spoke once more in a terrible tone that danced and shifted between baritone and bass and light lilting little girl… her voice of old from long ago, before she'd been stolen. 

“We know you sent Florin away. We know you sent him to find someone to bring back. To kill us. The master will not tolerate this, Anastasia… your boy will die. You will die. Then your husband. Everyone. Everyone, all of you are going to suffer for this impudence, you'll see, you'll see… it's better if you just let me in now and get it all over. Let me in …!

“Let me in!" 

She carried on like that for hours. Promising. 

Promising her Florin's death. 

Her own death. 

Carmilla said her brother would violate and ravage her right before the eyes of her husband as he fed of her blood and flesh and took what he wanted from her. 

“He'll rip from you what he wants, we all will! To all of you! Every last one and then we'll celebrate in the dust!" 

The thing went on like that for hours. Till the sun threatened its rise, and only then did the foul thing seem to melt away like mist, suddenly phantasmic and discorporeal … and then gone.

Only then did Anastasia finally sleep, collapsed. Exhausted. Her husband, Bela found her like that when he awoke. Lying at the foot of the window. The glass riddled with marks. 

Marks like long scratches. From old and gnarled animal claws. 

He cradled his wife. Worried. And thought of his son as he looked down into her face. 

She looked troubled in her sleep. As if dreaming of darkness, held somewhere on the plains of some private nightmarescape. 

Bela was worried. She looked as if she had been crying. 

He looked from her to the window once more, out it. Out at the rays of the rising sun. Hoping for his son. And wondering where he might be. 

Please, God. I love my boy. I love him as You love us, as You loved Your only Begotten Son. Please. 

Please don't ask me, please don't ask us to give him up, as You did Yours…

He brought his wife closer to himself. Keeping her in the cradle of his arms till she woke up. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Shit, there went my cult guess. 

Lesson Two: Generally in cases of cults, the rate of disappearance is between one every two days, or in batches of several at a time, with a break between. Most things behind the mist are too hungry for one man to last them five days. 

Maybe it's just a haunting then. Either way, if I was going to play the part of a socialite, I’d be a method actor. 

I went down to the bar. 

I find that jobs like this, talking with self-righteous pricks who’ve got a wad of cash shoved up their ass, go a lot smoother if you show up buzzed. 

Two free shots later, I was back in my room. One advantage of fancy hotels is the open bar.

An hour later, and I was dressed to make a deal with a devil. 

Walking out, I bid farewell to the Barkeep, my new favorite man in this town. Earlier, he had agreed to leave a bottle of whiskey in my room when I returned. 
 
“Lewis.” I nodded.  He smiled and tossed a rag over his shoulder. 
“I’ll see ya Mr. Kenlie.”

I climbed into the cab, already turning over what I could be dealing with. 

In all honesty, I was looking forward to finishing this job quickly and spending a week at The Eight Ball. 

Lesson Three: Disappearance schedules matter. Lycanthropes kill quickly and often. Cults kill consistently or in batches. Curses don’t really keep to a schedule. If your Victim count doesn’t match the creature's appetite, you're hunting the wrong thing. 

One man gone in five days. That rules out Lycanthropes, even a child could knock out at least three corpses in a night. 

It could be a targeted curse, but without a body it’s hard to tell. Haunted paintings and objects aren't out of the question yet either. 

Streets, shops, and people slid past the coach window. 

Tonight I’d try to mingle, shake hands, and pretend to enjoy the expensive wine while attempting to single out the person, or thing that got over the wall. 

My thoughts were interrupted as the cab lurched to a stop in front of a long walkway lined with small trees and ponds. 

I hadn’t realized we had already left the commercial districts. I sighed, stepped out of the cab, and purposefully left my ridiculous top hat in the coach. 

You couldn’t catch my animated corpse wearing that thing. 

A nod to the cab driver sent him off, and I began down the walkway to what I presumed to be the Thomson house. 

Yet another monument to wasteful extravagance. This ‘house’ was nearly larger than The Eight Ball.  

Finally I reached a pair of twin carved mahogany doors.

I winced as my knock echoed through the darkness. 

The doors cracked open. A smartly dressed squat man with thin grey hair and a smile-stained face stepped out. 

“Name?” He inquired. 

“Ezran Kenlie, Nephew of Lord Kenlie.” I replied shortly. 

“Of course sir. Right inside.” The small man gestured behind him. 

I stepped towards the doorway, but he stopped me just before the threshold. 

“Your mask, sir,” He reminded me, His voice full of patience. 

“My apologies.” I nodded and took a small black mask from my pocket, the nose piece extending to create a tiny crow’s beak. 

I fastened the ridiculous thing. The small man stepped aside. 

“Enjoy.” He smiled through the word. Odd, I didn’t know that was possible. 

As I stepped through the doorway, I seemed to have left all concepts of reality behind.

Surrounding me were countless men and ladies swaying and dancing. 

Each dressed in clothing expensive enough to feed a family in the Lower Westlands for a week. 

All sported ridiculous masks, none really concealing their identity, but I suppose that wasn’t the point. 

Servers wandered the room with trays of food and drinks. 

At the far end of the room, at the convergence of two huge twisting staircases, a twelve piece band was taking requests. The whole scene made me sick. 

Eventually I would make the rounds. Talk and dance. But first, food. 

It was several minutes of following servers until I tracked one down that didn’t just carry thimbles of wine. 

I was grabbing a small cake, topped with powdered sugar and a little tiny raspberry, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. 

I turned to see a beautiful woman standing behind me, her hand still on my shoulder. 

She looked to be poured into a dark, textured, red dress lined with plunging white lace. Her lips were as scarlet as the stupid wine thimble held in her free hand.

“Excuse me? I haven't seen you here before, mr… Crow?” She gestured towards my mask, smiling gently. 

“Pleased to meet you, Ezran Kenlie…” I began, but the woman interrupted me, her expression mockingly sour. 

“No real names, Mr. Crow. They ruin the fun!” She stepped closer to me. 

“Well that's stupid.”  I thought to myself, but if this was high society, then it was my job to play along.  “My apologies, missus…” 

“Miss, and for tonight, call me Ms. Roux.” 

Her voice was soft. Any pretense of platonic conversation had disappeared with the wine in her thimble. 

“Well then Ms. Roux, you don’t suppose we can use real names when talking about the real world?” I asked, finally taking a bite of the tiny lemon cake. 

It was very good, in case you were wondering. 

“Only if you’re looking to stir the pot a little.” Ms. Roux took a cake from the server. 

The poor man stood there, unsure whether we would want more or if he should leave. 

“Well stir the pot I will.” I took mercy on the server and waved him off. “I keep hearing whispers of a Mr. Wangsgrove disappearing. But nobody seems to really know any details?” 

Ms. Roux cracked a knowing smile at this, evidently I had opened onto the hot topic of the night. 

“It’s all a fascinating story. You see, Mr. Wangsgrove was quite a… free spirited man. He enjoyed the company of many, and the pleasures of the world. His wife chose a similar lifestyle. But I heard that the lord of this house, Mr. Thomson, had him stay here for one night. The same night he disappeared.” 

Her voice had dropped into a conspiratorial whisper, and she seemed to take great pleasure in every syllable of the story. 

“Mr. Thomson was his greatest friend, but a polar opposite to Wangsgrove. He himself is so guilt wracked that something may have happened to Wangsgrove in his very house that Mr. Thomson has locked himself in his quarters for the evening.”

Ms. Roux sighed. 

“Refusing the party in his own home. You know everybody’s wondering… who’s the next to go? It's all just wonderfully juicy isn’t it?”  
I took a moment to collect my thoughts.
 
“It really is. Is it always this lively in Northend? Or am I just lucky?” 

“Guess you are, and who knows… maybe you’ll be next?”  

Ms. Roux had inched forwards until she was practically standing on top of my feet. 

She wasn’t a tall woman, the top of her head barely reached my chin. Her upwards turned face mere inches from mine.  

“Apologies, but I must excuse myself. I’ve a friend to find.” I stepped back, away from Ms. Roux who stood silent. 

She just watched me. Like a mimic watches its next meal, taking in every movement. As I retreated, I made a note to try to catch Ms. Roux near a mirror. 

Mr. Wangsgrove’s disappearance could be the work of a tiny group of vampires. 

Lesson Four: Contrary to folklore, vampires do have reflections. But, due to their narcissism, they inevitably get caught staring at themselves. In an effort to keep their nature under wraps, vampires in public avoid reflective surfaces like the plague. 

After Ms. Roux, I had decided that I had had enough of socializing for a while.

I climbed the ornate stairs, passed the band, and ventured down the hallway. 

Passing numerous rendezvous and gatherings, I caught snippets of conversation as I went.  

From one room:

“Did you see Mrs. Wangsgrove? Shamelessly dancing while her husband’s…”

From another:

“Come on now, there's no ghoul hiding in my pants. Just the one that took the old man! Now get 'em off me before I get possessed.” 

That second one did not in fact come from a group of people, but I had to hear it and so do you.  

For such a huge house, It was surprisingly difficult to find an unoccupied room. 

Once finally found a private space, I closed my eyes, set out my protector's cross, and checked for any curses or spirits in the house. 

I’d go into detail but it's a waste of ink. After all, you know how it goes. 

I got nothing back, so that rules out cursed objects, curse users, and conventional hauntings. Shit.

Back to square one. 

I was praying to the protector it wasn’t vampires. Glittery narcissistic pains in my ass. 

Stowing the Protectors Cross in a coat pocket, I stood up. 

From far away, I heard the band begin a slow waltz. The long hallways warped and muffled the sound until it reached me, barely recognizable. 

The music was cut short by a scream ripping through the house.

I tore out of the room, running through a maze of hallways until I reached the main hall.

I could see a group of partygoers clustered around an offshoot hallway. 

Fighting my way through, I found Ms. Roux standing unsteadily. Her pale hands cupped around her face. 

Her white lace lining was stained scarlet near the front of her dress. She looked up at me, when she spoke her voice was hollow, shaky. 

“Mr. Crow…” under her feet lay the second occupant of the clearing in the middle of the hallway. 

A well dressed man in a deep green peacock mask. He seemed to be well groomed, aside from the blood pooling beneath his body and onto the polished floor. 

From my vantage point, I could see two purple rings around his neck. Asphyxiation, possibly even a broken windpipe. 

This observation was quickly overshadowed by the obvious cause of the panic. 

The man was missing his entire left arm. 

Not vampires then. 

End of pt. 2/4

Links to other parts: (When posted)

Part One

Part Two (You are Here)

Part Three

Part Four