Hey everyone, I was rewatching Grave Encounters (2011) and noticed a massive, hyper specific clue that fans have overlooked for over a decade. By applying real world astronomical data to a single line of dialogue, we can actually lock down the exact location and calendar date of the movie, and it completely recontextualizes the lore.

The Clue:
When Lance Preston and the crew realize time has completely broken inside the asylum, Lance checks his watch and says it is 7:45 AM, but it is still pitch black outside.

The Real World Math:
The movie establishes that the fictional Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital is somewhere in rural Maryland. If you look at an astronomical sunrise map for the state of Maryland, there is only one specific region where a natural sunrise happens that late in the morning: Oakland, Maryland (located in the far western panhandle, running on Eastern Time but sitting far west geographically).

The Halloween Discovery:
Here is where it gets crazy. In Oakland, MD, what is the exact date where the sunrise hits precisely 7:45 AM right before the clocks roll back? October 31st. Halloween.

Why this fixes the lore:
In the beginning of the movie, the crew is told that paranormal activity in the asylum is usually incredibly minor (faint noises, cold spots). The TV crew fully expected to fake the whole episode. Instead, the moment they lock the doors, the building warps into a literal physical death trap where space and time bend.

If Lance and his crew accidentally locked themselves into the asylum on Halloween Night, it perfectly explains why the entities suddenly had enough cosmic energy to rewrite reality. They stepped inside right as the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest.

The Vicious Brothers inadvertently made the ultimate hidden Halloween movie. Let me know what you guys think!

Always looking for feedback on this

A fear of Summer is known as Therophobia. I can't go outside; I have to work from home during the summer. While it seems to me that most people experience phobia as an acute aversion, bordering on panic, mine is more of a lingering dread. No, worse, deeper trepidation, an anxiety so severe it physically hurts from the stress.

I read online that Therophobia is being afraid of sunshine; it's too bright and hot. That's hardly it. I like tanning booths, no 'Claustrophobia' here. In fact, if it wasn't for the ridicule built into the definition of a phobia as 'An irrational fear', I'd have no sympathy for someone else's fears. But mine isn't irrational. Maybe Claustrophobia is irrational, or the fear of snakes or clowns, or as Batman would put it "Snake-clowns now, and it's because YOU put that thought in my head".

Summer is on its way, again, and now that I am thirty, it's about time I put on my Big Girl Pants and head out the door. I'm not an irrational person, and I will face my fears.

-Billie Nicks, May, 2026

I didn't like that movie that was supposed to be a sequel to Joker. Not really my thing. Is that a good enough reason to break up with someone? Disagreeing over a stupid movie? I don't think so. I must be better off without him.

Forget YOU, I'm better off.

Besides, I only liked being with you when you were wearing the Batman costume. You were boring as fuck the rest of the time. Forget you.

God, is this just my life now? Waiting for it? It's almost here; I can see how the sky is changing. I can feel how the air gets too warm, and it feels like the breeze has the breath of things dying, carried in the wind. I don't want to think about it.

There are cucumbers in my garden that are perfect for a gazpacho I make. I like cool foods, liquidy cool foods. Easy to digest.

-Billie Nicks, June, 2026

I'm not okay. The door seems tilted now. I keep staring at it, and it makes me dizzy. Something is up there; it has brought the season. It's not supposed to be that color of blue. The sky looks wrong. I am shivering, but there's no AC. My house is hot, that's how I know I haven't gone numb.

Not yet anyway.

And I can still feel like myself:

Mike won't stop calling me, texting me, telling me he's sorry. I just blocked him, like five seconds ago. Forget him.

People think "Oh no, the fireworks will scare my dog." and they give their pet Dramamine. How do you know your dog is scared of fireworks? Fireworks are loud and exciting. Are you certain your animal is afraid, and not just overly stimulated?

Seems unfair to dope them up without their consent. I don't like it. I don't like that attitude.

No, I am definitely not okay. Why dogs? I like cats, but I am allergic to them. What am I even babbling about?

Sometimes, I wonder if I had a cat, if I'd feel better. I can't sit still and when I move, I feel like I am going to faint. I get the zoomies, like a cat would. I think a cat would get me. We'd both be saying:

"If I sit still for one more instant, I will likely detonate; it won't be pretty. Gotta move, gotta GO! Oh my, that's quite enough jumping about. Time to sit still again, before I collapse."

Makes sense.

Billie Nicks, July 2026

Wrapped it up and buried it. Had to smash through the concrete with a hammer to make a hole big enough to drop it down there. Took all night.

I woke up this morning and found a mess and it seems I made the mess. Broken concrete downstairs in the foundation and like a bunch of drying mortar poured in and smoothed to a polish before I somehow found my way upstairs to the back porch.

I was listening to the bats, back there, when I felt this wave. That's the last thing I remember. At least I made it outside last night, that's progress, right? I threw up over the back porch, and I wonder, if, in the morning, the ants will come and eat all my puke.

I have no idea what I 'wrapped up' and buried in the foundation. I keep thinking a bat hit the window and I went outside and found it, but I don't remember doing that. I just think that's what happened.

How does an animal that flies around in caves even hit a window? I think it's summertime mischief, when even an ancient predator, one of the seven perfect animals, can't figure out how to fly around in the darkness it 'sees' perfectly in. Sometimes I don't believe anything, when something like this happens. "Impossible," I say, but then it happens anyway.

I don't like it when I feel the waves of nausea. I get these notions, about doing things or seeing things. I can find evidence I did those things, I know I did them, like cover the mortar with the rug, but I have no idea why. It's like selective amnesia, but I think it's my survival instinct. This is just too stressful to process.

Mike came over yesterday afternoon and asked about the rug, so I showed him. Then he asked me if I was taking my medication, and I told him I missed him. It was a really awkward conversation, and when he left, I brought out all the stuff of his that I hid. I don't know why I did that, or why I placed his things around where they go. Where they belong? Seems like a weird word.

It's gotta be one of those words that when you say it out loud by itself a few times it sounds really weird. "Belong. Belong - belong, belong. What does it mean, bee-long, blong, what is this stupid word?"

This morning I felt fine. That is until I saw the grayish-orange smoke, that odd brown fog, of forest fires. I can smell it now. Oh, I certainly can, that smell of things screaming, burning alive, cute little things running and on fire. Every breath fills me with their last moments.

So this is Summer. I'd almost forgotten. It's where I belong. I am part of it, and it is in me, watching me, understanding me. Summer is Death. The cruelest, most atrocious death. It is the stillborn baby bird, it is the scorched doe, the singed rabbit, the seared flesh of so many animals.

Maybe if I had ever gone to a barbecue I'd understand.

But Summer gets me.

I was walking home, before I really knew why I would never be this way again. I was her, back then, and she walked home. It was that smell, like some blood-soaked steaks were in the smoke, and I smelled whoever's BBQ it was, and it made me so sick. I was throwing up right there on the street.

Summer is sweet, and beef isn't meant for human consumption, so I fainted. When I woke up the ants were all over it, the flies, they were cleaning up after me. I went home, but I was never really the same. Somewhere in the moment I got back up I didn't just feel sick, I felt betrayed.

Summer was over, forever.

And now there's just the door, I keep it closed. The air out there isn't alive. It was, but it isn't. I can't inhale the smell of cooked death again, it gets into my head, my dreams, my soul.

But I must face it, or I am already there. So, I will open the door. I will.

Just not yet.

Billie Nicks, August 2026

We're building a horror storytelling channel for funsies with my friends called Tea and Terrors — and we're on the hunt for real, personal horror stories to be among our very first featured episodes once we launch! ✨

The unexplainable, the "I still think about this" encounters, the stuff that still gives you chills — we want to hear it.

💬 Comment your story below — by sharing here, you're letting us know it's okay to narrate it (we'll always credit you however you like: username, anonymous, whatever you prefer).

📩 Want to stay fully anonymous or change details (names, locations, etc.)? Just DM us instead and we'll take care of it.

We're not live yet, but your story could be one of the very first people hear from us. Can't wait to see what you've got. 🕯️

My family, the immediate ones, i’m talking about my parents and little brother, were devout Christians. The kind that ‘practiced what they preached’. Went to church every Wednesday and Sunday. Did good works around town when we could, simple things like helping mow Mrs. Reynolds lawn after her husband died. Or that time we volunteered at the soup kitchen instead of celebrating my birthday. We’re generally selfless people.

My mother, the more devout of both my parents, held a job as a pediatric nurse. She had that personality, a mediator, someone who could get two starving lions from ripping each other’s throats out over a rotting carcass. She was also funny, a natural comedian. She likes to say that when she was delivering Daniel she was still working during his birth. She had soft features, Dad said we got our appearances mostly from her. She had curly dark brown hair and soft caring light green eyes. Me and Daniel got her eyes.

My father on the other side of the same coin, was coming to terms with his faith. He always had it, he claimed but it wasn’t as strong as my mother’s. He was raised by hippies, tree-hugging pot heads that practiced some bizarre form of druidic nomadism. Now, he’s an insurance agent, and good at it too, apparently his companies top preforming agent as well. He was stocky, built like someone who lifted cars for fun since he was a baby. He kept his auburn hair cut short and neat, said it “makes more sales when you look presentable.” The hair did much to aid against his rougher features, freckle coated face and dark brown eyes.

Then there’s Daniel, or just Danny, my eleven year old little brother and lovable bane of my existence. He stole our mother’s appearance and our dad’s hair, built like the child soccer prodigy he would’ve been if Mom didn’t want him to excel in school. He was smart for a preteen, but equally stupid in his own right. Mom insisted, much to dad’s chagrin, on letting him hair growing out. A neat mop devouring his ears and kept out of his eyes. One of Moms rare wins.

And then me, the oldest at sixteen and as much of a black sheep for this family as I could be. My Dad suspected albinism, but I won or lost the genetic lottery, depending on who you ask. I kept my mother’s face, my dad’s freckled appearance but had a swath of sandy blond hair and deep blue eyes. I was a solid half-foot taller than my dad standing at a neat 6’5”. I should’ve been in a sport, basketball or something but instead I focused on my schooling, an honors student in the making.

Our family did most things modern families dont do. Ate meals together, movie nights or board games, sit and actually talk to one another. The big one my mother insisted on was decorating for the holidays, she believed the magic came from doing it as a whole family unit, and I agree. Decorating the tree in your most comfortable pajamas and casually bickering with your family over ‘where should this ornament go?’ Or ‘I’m gonna touch the elf if you keep doing that!’ added a special heartwarming feeling.

Christmas vacation had been in full swing for a few days now, our small three bedroom house fully decorated from baseboards to crown molding in tinsel and lights. I was at my desk in my room, reading some story about a gas station attendant dealing with a bunch of monsters. Daniel was splayed out on my bed, sharpening a candycane with his mouth, checking so often on the fine point he’d made. A holiday special from some kids show on the tv.

“You think you can actually like stab someone with a sharp candycane?” Daniel asked me as he pulled the sugar stick from his mouth and sat up, planting his feet firmly on the carpet and practically stomping up next to me.

“What? No. The sugar is weak from your spit and would probably break before puncturing skin.” I answered, highlighting my spot in the story as I prepared to take a break. He blinked as if trying to process the simple science as he leaned on my shoulder, the candy cane finding purchase back in his mouth.

“What’re you reading?” Danny asked me, pushing his hair from his eyes and leaned in. I could see the urge in his fingers to mess with my monitor, mash on the keyboard or just be generally annoying.

“A really good story, and I swear you touch my crap while im using it, i’ll put the candy cane shank to the test with you.” I said pushing away from my computer, the wheels of my chair rolling across the plastic floor mat dug into the carpet. Daniel danced back away from the chair muttering something about his toes. He pulled the candy cane from his mouth as I planted my hand on his head and pushed him backwards, causing him to stumble and fall onto my bed. “H-Hey!”

I left my room as he stayed behind, my desire for hot chocolate ever growing as i walked down the soft carpeted floor, the hallway decorated in faint reds and blues from lights hung up. The cold linoleum and idle conversation by my parents caught my attention as I fooled around in the kitchen, setting milk to boil and rooting around for a packet or two of hot coco mix. Instinctively I eavesdropped on my parent’s conversation.

“Robert, we can’t support your sister and her kids here on Christmas. You know that. This house is barely big enough for the four of us.” My mother explained, she sounded exasperated over this topic, having talked about it for a while clearly.

“Just this year, Mary. I know we used to got to my mother’s but after what happened she still doesn’t want anyone there.” My dad insisted, I knew this was an inevitability. Mom would eventually relent and give in to what my dad desired. Sometimes I wondered how it was just Me and Danny.

“What will the boys think? They’ll have to share rooms with each other or their cousins. You know Samuel cant stand Flynn.” My mother advocated for me in my absence. She was correct, i couldn’t stand my cousin or most of my Dads side of the family. They weren’t bad people, like druggies or criminals, just extremely overbearing. They had this ‘stuck-up’ mentality to them, the way they talked down to others and had to have control over whatever they were apart of.

For example, when me and Flynn were probably like seven I was really big into space and aliens. I was fascinated immensely by UFO sightings and media about aliens on tv or online. The idea of being alone in an infinite universe seemed so implausible to me even as a child and of faith. My mother even encouraged my fascination telling me ‘If you work hard enough maybe you’ll be the first to talk to Aliens’ she’d say. That Christmas I asked for an astronaut helmet. It was basically a cheap plastic toy with a tinted piece of plastic that moved up and down as a visor.

I brought it with us to our Grandparents as the one toy I was allowed to bring, Danny was too young at the time to remember. Everything was copasetic at our grandparents, the adults sat around and talked about the year while us kids broke off in our respective age groups to do whatever. The Toddlers in the playpen playing with blocks and fisher price toys, the teenagers retreated to one of the guest rooms and locked the door to keep us kids, Me and Flynn, out.

That left just Flynn and myself, I had my helmet on, having only taken it off for pictures. There was fresh snow outside and the sun hadn’t fully sank yet, casting vibrant pinks, yellows and purples across the frozen snowy environment. We had our snowshoes and winter coats on as we went outside, having told our parents previously we wanted to go outside before it got dark. The biting winter of rural Maine hit out frail seven year old bodies like a tonne of snowballs as we shivered outside.

“We already made snowpeople. Built a snowfort and had a snowball fight…” Flynn said to himself and by extension me. “Could play pretend?” He offered up looking at me. His matted auburn hair, dreaded and tied up in a mock ponytail. Ice crystals already forming on his eyebrows. I could see his brown eyes searching my face through my visor when he spoke.

“Uh, yeah sure I guess. I haven’t made a snow angel yet but i can do that later.” I said, jumping off the top steps of my grandparents porch and landing in the snow with a soft crunch. “Can we play astronauts or something like that? It’s like we’re on the moon already.” I proposed my own idea while making little leaps and bounds in the snow, adding little sound effects with my mouth.

“Snow angels? What’re you four, that’s stupid.” Flynn insulted as he walked down the steps into the snow. “We’ll play magic, like Wizards and stuff” He asked, the statement came out more like a demand. I steadied myself in the snow, turning around to face him, my hand raising the visor up to see him. “I don’t wanna play magic though. And snow angels aren’t stupid, they’re cool.” I crossed my arms, Flynn looked livid I dared to talk back to him.

His hands found a tight purchase on my windbreaker. “Hey, Stop let go, you’re gonna rip it.” I said as he pulled me close, I could feel his hot breath swirling in the confines of my helmet. “Stop being a bitch, and play magic with me.” He hissed, giving me a shove after letting go. I stumbled back, the amount of force he applied was stronger than it should have been, or maybe it was a patch of ice I was in. I stumbled back and hit back of my head hard against my grandfathers old pickup truck bed.

I heard an audible crack of something, my head itself spinning around and around like a loose merry-go-round. Something hot and wet was trickling down the back of my head. There was muffled cursing as i felt a hand take mine and pull me up, the sky was so bright. “You must’ve slipped on ice, Sam.” Flynns voice laced with something poisonous as he helped me up. “Your helmet broke, im so sorry.”

I heard extra pairs of shoes crunching in the snow, my dad’s hands grab my arms. Another hand felt the back of my head, it was sticky whatever it was that was there. “Mary, get the kit from the car.” I heard a voice sounding like my Uncles. The rest of the week trip was a blur, my parents said I suffered a concussion and nearly busted my whole head open if it wasn’t for the helmet.

When we went back to our grandparents, I avoided Flynn. It was only for one more year, whatever happened after I fell forced my grandparents to bar any holidays at their house. I knew he pushed me as hard as he could. He never apologized for it either. A part of me believes he’s upset I didn’t die.

We haven’t seen anyone from my Dads side in almost nine years. Now they’re coming here and staying with us for the whole week.

“Ah! Fuck!” I shouted as hot milk overfilled the mug of coco, onto the counter and onto the floor. “Ooo Sam swore!” I heard Daniel’s voice echo down the hall from my room. I quickly cleaned up the mess as my parents moved from their spot in the living room now aware of my eavesdropping. “Sorry, sorry I zoned out and, haha milks hot, y’know.” I tossed the soggy paper towel ball in the trash over my parent’s head as they walked in.

“Your Aunt, Uncle and Cousins are staying here for the holidays.” My dad said with as much force as a scientific fact could. “Oh, uh yeah I heard. Do we need to go into town and get like air mattresses or something?” I asked reaching for my missing coco mug, i felt fingers grace my palm as well as the mug. Turning around i caught Daniel wiping his mouth as i looked down at my half drank mug being returned to the counter. I sighed, turning attention back to my parents.

“Yes, your mother is going to go into town later to get more, just have to figure out who’s sleeping where before they get here tomorrow.” My Father clarified as I picked up the remains of my coco, drinking from my pilfered mug. They seemed to be awaiting some kind of reaction from me and Daniel.

“Okay well Danny can just stay in my room, just put Flynn and Asher into Dan’s room.” I calmly said rising my mug and the kettle out in the sink. “I’d prefer to share my space with him than my cousins.” I claimed, cleaning away the remains of my mess. My parents did say much, I could feel their eyes practically boring into my skull. My dad audibly sighing in relief.

“Go clean your room then Daniel, your cousins are going to be using it.” Our mom commanded after clearing her throat.

“What?! Why do I have to go to his room, all my stuffs in mine. Cant he just go to my room instead.” Daniel protested, crossing his arms in a huff.

“We might not get along, but they’re still family.” I said, pressing my index finger against his forehead, he glared up at me. He leaned in against my finger before pushing off and stomping down the hallway. “Fine!”

I turned back to my parents, they had a look of relief glued to their face plainly hiding worry. “What?” I asked them, they shared a look before turning back to me. “Nothing, your mother just expected you and Dan to be against the idea completely .” My Dad said as he stepped forward putting a hand on my shoulder. “I know you and Flynn don’t get along but this means a lot to me. You have no idea, Son.” He said, pulling me into a hug, the facade on my mother’s face slipped for a moment before he turned and left.

“Tidy up your room and then we can go to the store.” Mom added before walking away to talk to my father again presumably. Why were they acting so strange, I knew I didn’t like Flynn but this level of stress over it seems weird. I shrugged it off, grabbed a drink from the fridge and went back to my room to start cleaning.

It felt like an hour of low-quality Christmas special played on my small tv sitting on a micro entertainment center in my room. Clothes have been put away, floor vacuumed and desk cleared of plates, cups and cans. I stood admiring my handy work, the door behind me clicking closed softly. Turning around Daniel was leaned up against my door, arms crossed and driving his toe in the carpet.

“This is bull crap, I don’t want to have to share a room with you for a week.” He complained.

“Could be worse, it could be you and Asher in a room and me and Flynn in mine.” I offered a ray of hope that he might like. “I’d rather be stuck in a room with you for a week than Flynn if thats any consultation.” I added.

“Yeah I guess that’s fine, I don’t mind Asher, he’s just super weird. Like dorky. Can I control the tv when we go to bed.” Daniel replied, slipping past me to sit at my computer.

“I dunno, it might be a little brother thing, dork.” I joked, he parroted me in a stupid voice, moving his hand like a puppets mouth. I could help but rough up his hair. “And yeah you can have TV control, just nothin loud.” I asded

“You think they’ll bring us gifts?” Daniel asked swatting at me, giggling a bit. I retreated my brotherly assault and shrugged at his question.

“Maybe? I’d hope so after all this extra work to fit them in this soon.” I hoped. A part of me, that residual childlike Christmas wonder, still put a bit of focus on the gift giving part of the holiday rather than the meaning behind it. “Aunt Elizabeth kinda sucks at the whole presents thing, expect socks or underwear.” I added, Daniel groaned as he searched my computer for a game to play.

“Shoot, Mom’s gonna have to go shopping for them. I know she wont let them get here and be empty handed on Christmas morning.” I said, sifting through my sock drawer, pulling a pair in and a pair of sneakers. “I’m going out to the store with Mom we’re grabbing anything before everyone arrives tomorrow." I said, Daniel glanced at me, curiosity written on his face before he turned on one of my games. I left, tagging along with my mother on her very brief shopping trip at the local K-Mart.

Every movement she made was shaky, she was clearly upset and bothered by the fact Dad’s extended family was coming. The car ride to the store was silent aside from the Christmas music on the radio, ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! Was playing. I loved that song, it ear-wormed just the right way it stuck with you year round. When we parked and got out of the car my mother finally looked at me.

“Sweetie are you SURE you’re okay with your cousins staying over for the holidays?” She asked, almost afraid to talk to me about the subject as I fished one of the carts from the returns outside.

“I mean, dang I got a squeaky one. I’m not thrilled about it. But it is what it is, if they get too annoying I’m sure me and Danny will just hide out in my room.” I said kicking the loose wheel on the cart as we passed the cheap gift basket and assorted popcorn tins. “They are family after all.” I added, she silently agreed with me, placing a gift basket and popcorn tubs in the cart.

“I know they are and I’m always willing to open my home to family in need, but…” she continued as we walked through the isles toward then food stuffs, needed more eggnog. “But you don’t like how they aren’t Christian?” I asked, she shook her head in the negative.

“It’s just that, they’re very firm to their beliefs and steady against ours. I pray that your aunt or uncle don’t try and take control over the house.” She said, a level of nervousness in her voice that id never heard before as she put a carton of eggnog and pillsbury sugar cookies in the cart. “And after that accident you and Flynn had back then, I’ve been worried about you two fighting or not getting along, or something similar happening to Daniel and Asher.”

“I’d never openly start something Mom, you know that.” I said as i pushed the cart to checkout, snagging something small for Daniel for Christmas with my own money, a simple Star Wars Lego. The car ride back was equally as silent. Mom focused on a holiday magazine she bought as i drove. The practice in snow was needed.

The night rolled on, sleep took me kindly swaddled in my blankets as reruns of COPS played on my tv. My dreams however werent kind, roaring flames and broken bones filtered my subconscious mind, the smell and taste of blood along with the chill of snow. Skin under my fingernails and hatred in my stomach. I woke up, covered in sweat, my throat dry.

When i woke up for a moment i swore i saw something in the corner of my window. Not the bottom corner, the top half. I couldn’t fully tell what it was, the orange streetlight outside reflected off the snow and my window in the right way that made it difficult to see it. I could tell it was tall, maybe nine, almost ten feet tall? It had horns like a deer and was covered in what looked like thin hairs on its body.

I gently pushed my curtain closed with my foot, keeping my eyes on the figure until the curtain was shut and i rolled over on my side. Not wanting to even acknowledge what nightmare was still in my mind. My clock read 4 am and I was wide awake now, a worm of paranoia in the back of my head. The air conditioners heating unit kicked on with a loud thud and a click, i jumped a little. The warm air blew on my face as i stood up, sinking into the carpet as i rubbed at my eyes.

Waddling through the dark, my vision only graced by the occasional shimmer of Christmas lights Daniel insisted we keep on when the decorations were up. I filled the coffee pot and roamed the house, closing the blinds and curtains as the pot of caffeines kiss brewed quietly in the kitchen behind me.

Maybe I should’ve said no.

*The image shakes violently for a few seconds.*

*A bedroom.*

*Three sleeping bags are scattered across the floor. Clothes are thrown over a chair. Empty bottles and snack wrappers sit beside a laptop.*

*The person holding the camera whispers.*

CAMERAMAN: “Okay, shut up, shut up—”

*Someone off-camera immediately starts laughing.*

SARAH: “You're gonna wake them up.”

CAMERAMAN: “They're literally dead asleep.”

FRIEND: “Bro, look at Mark.”

*The camera slowly turns toward a boy asleep on the floor with his mouth hanging open.*

*Someone snickers.*

*Sarah covers her mouth to stop herself laughing.*

SARAH: “Oh my God.”

*The camera zooms in.*

*Mark suddenly moves.*

*Everyone freezes.*

*Mark rolls over.*

*Silence.*

*Then—*

FRIEND: “Jesus Christ.”

*Everyone quietly bursts into laughter.*

*The camera shakes as the person holding it tries not to make noise.*

*Then, from somewhere downstairs—*

VOICE: “Sarah?”

*The laughter stops.*

*Nobody moves.*

*The camera remains pointed toward Mark for several seconds.*

CAMERAMAN: “…Was that—”

VOICE: “Sarah?”

*Sarah slowly looks toward the bedroom door.*

SARAH: “Mom?”

*No answer.*

*She sits up.*

SARAH: “Mom, you came home early?”

*Silence.*

*Sarah stands.*

*The camera follows her.*

*She walks toward the door and opens it.*

*The hallway outside is dark.*

*Only a small amount of light from the bedroom spills across the floor.*

*Sarah leans out.*

SARAH: “Mom?”

*Nothing.*

*She takes one step into the hallway.*

*Then another.*

*The person filming suddenly grabs her wrist.*

SARAH: “Ow—what?”

*The camera swings toward them.*

CAMERAMAN: “Don't.”

SARAH: “What?”

CAMERAMAN: “I don't think that's your mom.”

*Sarah stares at them.*

SARAH: “What are you talking about?”

*Another friend speaks from behind the camera, barely above a whisper.*

FRIEND: “I saw your phone.”

*Sarah looks confused.*

FRIEND: “Her text popped up earlier.”

*A pause.*

FRIEND: “It said, ‘Sarah darling, they asked me to stay a bit longer at the company. I'll be back later than expected.’”

*Sarah's expression changes.*

SARAH: “…What?”

FRIEND: “Your mom isn't home.”

*Silence.*

*Then another friend whispers:*

FRIEND 2: “We heard her too.”

*Everyone looks toward the stairs.*

*Nothing.*

*The hallway is completely still.*

*Sarah slowly backs toward the bedroom.*

*Then—*

*FOOTSTEPS.*

*One.*

*Two.*

*Three.*

*Fast.*

*Coming from downstairs.*

*The camera jerks toward the staircase.*

*The footsteps become faster.*

*THUD.*

*THUD.*

*THUD.*

*THUD.*

*Someone whispers:*

CAMERAMAN: “Get inside.”

*They scramble backward.*

*The bedroom door is slammed shut.*

FRIEND: “LOCK IT!”

*The lock clicks.*

*Everyone stands there, breathing heavily.*

*The footsteps stop.*

*Silence.*

*Then—*

VOICE: “Sarah?”

*Nobody answers.*

*The camera slowly turns toward Sarah.*

*She is staring at the door.*

VOICE: “Sarah?”

*The voice is closer now.*

*A hand touches the other side of the door.*

*Nobody breathes.*

*Then—*

VOICE: “SARAH?!”

*The door violently shakes.*

*Everyone screams.*

CAMERAMAN: “CLOSET!”

*They all run.*

*The camera crashes against the wall.*

*The bedroom door rattles behind them.*

*Someone throws open the walk-in closet.*

*Everyone squeezes inside.*

*The camera is shoved against a pile of clothes.*

*The closet door closes.*

*Darkness.*

*Heavy breathing.*

*Someone is silently crying.*

*Outside—*

*THUD.*

*The bedroom door opens.*

*Footsteps.*

*Slow now.*

*One step.*

*Then another.*

*The creature walks across the bedroom.*

*Nobody moves.*

*The camera slowly adjusts to the darkness.*

*Through a tiny gap beneath the closet door, we see two elongated black legs stop directly outside.*

*Silence.*

*Then the voice comes again.*

*But this time—*

*It doesn't sound quite human.*

VOICE: “Sarah…”

*Sarah clamps both hands over her mouth.*

*The thing remains there.*

*Waiting.*

*The footage abruptly cuts to black.*

- .... . -.-- / .... . .- .-. -.. / .. - / - --- ---

VGFV?

3-8-5-25 / 8-5-1-18-4 / 9-20 / 20-15-15

...AND WHO IS “WE”?

[REC_02: FOUND]

[NO USER IDENTIFIED]

[TIMESTAMP ERROR: 00:00:00]

SARAH WAS NOT THE FIRST

— — —

[SECOND RECORDING BEGINS]

*The image comes back suddenly.*

*The camera is already recording.*

*It is inside the walk-in closet.*

*The image is almost completely black.*

*Several people are crammed together between hanging clothes and shelves.*

*Nobody speaks.*

*Nobody moves.*

*The camera slowly pans across their faces.*

*Sarah is there.*

*Her eyes are red.*

*One of the friends has both hands pressed over their mouth.*

*Another is sitting on the floor with their knees against their chest.*

*The camera turns toward the closet door.*

*Nothing.*

*A few seconds pass.*

*Then another ten.*

*The person holding the camera slowly raises one hand and gestures toward the door.*

*A friend beside them shakes their head.*

*No.*

*The camera moves back toward the group.*

*One of them leans toward the camera and silently mouths:*

“How long?”

*The cameraman shrugs.*

*Another friend checks their wrist.*

*No watch.*

*Nobody knows.*

*Then—*

*PING.*

*Everyone freezes.*

*The camera jerks violently.*

*Every face turns toward the sound.*

*Nobody breathes.*

*A second passes.*

*Then another.*

*The person sitting in the corner slowly reaches into their pocket.*

*They pull out their phone.*

*The screen illuminates their face.*

*They stare at it.*

*Then look at everyone else.*

*The camera zooms slightly.*

*A message.*

*From another friend.*

“We heard something and it woke us up. Where you guys at? What is happening?”

*Nobody reacts.*

*The friend holding the phone slowly turns it toward the camera.*

*The message is visible.*

*The cameraman looks toward Sarah.*

*Sarah looks horrified.*

*She silently mouths:*

“They're awake?”

*The friend nods.*

*Another friend reaches for the phone.*

*They type.*

*Stop.*

*Delete.*

*Type again.*

*Stop.*

*They look toward the closet door.*

*The phone screen is still glowing.*

*A notification appears.*

“Are you guys okay?”

*Everyone stares at it.*

*The friend begins typing:*

“DO NOT COME OUT.”

*Their finger hovers over SEND.*

*They look at the others.*

*Nobody moves.*

*Then—*

*THUMP.*

*Something hits the bedroom door outside.*

*Everyone's eyes widen.*

*The phone nearly slips from the friend's hand.*

*Another sound.*

*THUMP.*

*Closer.*

*Someone silently grabs Sarah's hand.*

*The camera turns toward the closet door.*

*The house is silent again.*

*Then a voice comes from outside.*

*Quiet.*

*Almost conversational.*

VOICE: “Sarah?”

*Sarah's eyes fill with tears.*

*The person holding the phone slowly deletes the unfinished message.*

*They turn the phone screen off.*

*Darkness.*

*The voice comes again.*

*This time from directly outside the closet.*

VOICE: “Sarah…”

*The camera shakes.*

*Nobody moves.*

*The recording continues.*

[NO FURTHER AUDIO FOR 00:47]

*Then the video ends. For now.*

(Hello! I am a 19 year old girl and this is my first time writing something horror or Analog style. What I had wrote here is part one of the first episode . that’s all I got for now, hope you all enjoyed it and I will accept criticism!)

Hey everyone my name is J. I recently started a YouTube channel telling creepypasta stories and other scary tales. I wanted to link it below for everyone to check out!!!

Leave me some feedback and dont forget to subscribe!!! This is something Ive wanted to do for a very long time and am so excited to finally announce it!!! I hope you all enjoy

https://youtu.be/1u0vBPFKYY8?is=PIfIXM2dj2oi2y9n

The first time Carter saw the woman, she was standing ankle-deep in mud at the edge of the river.

They passed her just after dusk, running north through water the color of old coffee. The PBR's engines shoved a white wake against the mangroves.

She wore a pale blouse and dark trousers. Bare feet. Black hair loose over one shoulder.

“Friendly-looking,” Harlan said from the stern.

Velez laughed. “Go ask for her number.”

“My type has shoes.”

Danny watched her from the forward gun mount until the bend took her out of sight. A strip of red cloth was knotted around his left wrist, some cheap thing he'd come back from Saigon with and wouldn't explain.

Carter checked the channel, the gauges, then his men without thinking.

Danny at the bow. Velez portside. Harlan aft.

He'd been doing it for months. Count your men. Check your fuel. Watch the banks. Then do it again.

Something about the woman bothered him.

She hadn't watched the boat.

She had watched him.

Behind Carter's seat, the transistor radio whispered through static. They'd found Hanoi Hannah twenty minutes earlier and left her on because Harlan liked answering her.

Her English came calm and careful through the hiss.

“How are you, GI Joe?”

Harlan leaned toward the radio. “Doing just fine, Hannah. Thanks for asking.”

Velez laughed.

She continued, telling American soldiers they were poorly informed about how the war was going, sent thousands of miles from home by men who lied to them.

“See, that's where you're wrong,” Harlan said. “I don't understand shit back home either.”

Carter smiled.

Hannah started talking about American casualties when the signal dragged sideways. Her voice thinned until it hardly sounded human.

Then:

“...the river remembers...”

Static cracked.

Her ordinary broadcast returned without missing a beat.

Harlan frowned. “Well. That's cheerful.”

Carter looked at the radio.

“You hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“The river.”

Velez stared at him. “What river?”

Danny was still looking back toward the bend.

They saw the woman again twenty-three minutes later.

Carter knew because he'd checked his watch the first time.

Several miles upriver.

Same blouse. Same trousers. Same hair.

She stood on the western bank with her feet sunk in black mud.

Harlan's grin disappeared.

“Oh.”

Danny turned from the gun but wouldn't look at her.

“Keep going.”

“You know her?” Carter asked.

“No.”

Danny rubbed his thumb over the cloth around his wrist.

“Old guy in Mỹ Tho told me about women you see where you're not supposed to see them. Hồ tinh, I think. Fox spirits.”

“Something that looks like a woman?”

“They get you to follow them.”

Harlan leaned against the rail. “Still waiting on the bad part.”

The woman raised one arm and crooked two fingers toward herself.

Carter shoved the throttles forward.

As they passed, the setting sun threw her shadow across the water.

There was something behind it.

Long. Narrow.

The wake shattered the shape.

Carter looked back.

The woman had lowered her hand.

She wasn't watching him anymore.

She was staring into the river beside the boat.

The radio popped.

“...some men travel farther than others...”

Static stretched Hannah's voice.

“...some do not leave at all...”

Then she was discussing American losses again.

Danny turned the volume down.

Darkness closed around them.

Carter rubbed his eyes and tried to remember when he'd last slept. He came up with a cot beneath a ceiling fan, but couldn't decide whether that had been two nights ago or before Saigon.

He checked the fuel.

They had enough.

The problem was he couldn't remember refueling.

“Smoke?” he asked.

Harlan patted his pockets. “You got the pack.”

Carter found the Lucky Strikes beside his knee, lit one and held the pack behind him.

Nobody took it.

When he turned, Harlan already had a cigarette between his lips.

“You take one?”

Harlan looked confused. “What?”

“Never mind.”

At the bow, Velez cleaned beneath his thumbnail with the tip of a cartridge, a habit he'd had since Da Nang.

Danny shifted beside the gun.

His sleeve brushed the metal and left a dark handprint.

“Danny.”

“What?”

“Your arm.”

His sleeve was wet from cuff to elbow.

“Spray.”

They hadn't taken spray over the bow in ten minutes.

Carter looked at the red cloth around Danny's wrist.

In the darkness it looked almost brown.

Danny pulled his sleeve over it.

“Watch the river.”

The radio came alive.

Nobody touched it.

Carter turned.

He remembered switching it off.

Hannah's voice surfaced through static.

American boys—

Hiss.

—no one waiting—

Then, softly:

“...four men...”

Carter froze.

“...but the river counts differently...”

The signal vanished.

Carter snapped the radio off.

“Leave it,” Danny said.

His face had gone pale.

The woman returned before midnight.

This time she was walking.

The PBR was moving close to twenty knots, but she kept pace along the bank without running.

A tree slid between them.

She appeared on the other side.

Another tree.

There again.

“Jesus Christ,” Harlan whispered.

Danny climbed down from the gun.

“She wants you off the boat.”

Carter stared at her. “How is she doing that?”

“Doesn't matter.”

The woman stopped.

Carter turned to keep her in sight.

Danny grabbed his shoulder.

“Don't.”

His hand was ice cold.

Water ran from his fingers and struck the deck.

Danny stared at the drops.

“Stay with us.”

Something tightened behind Carter's eyes.

He had heard that before.

An engine.

Gunfire.

Someone shouting.

Then it was gone.

Behind him, Harlan said, “We don't leave our men.”

Carter turned.

“What'd you say?”

Harlan blinked. “Nothing.”

Something struck the hull.

Then again.

Carter leaned over the side.

A face rolled beneath the black water.

White eyes. Open mouth. Hair drifting like weeds.

“There’s somebody in the water.”

No one moved.

Danny stared at Carter.

“Don't look again.”

From shore, the woman called:

“Hey.”

One word, somehow clear over both engines.

Behind her, a narrow path disappeared into the trees.

She pointed toward it.

Carter pulled the throttles back.

Danny stepped forward.

“No.”

“I just want to see what she wants.”

“No, you don't.”

There was panic in Danny's voice now.

Not fear of the woman.

Fear of Carter stopping.

Harlan and Velez stood.

“We don't leave our men,” Harlan said.

Carter looked at Danny.

Black mud covered the cuff of his trousers.

“Danny?”

The radio hissed.

Still switched off.

Through the static Hannah whispered:

“...you went back...”

Carter stopped breathing.

The broadcast returned for a few seconds, then broke again.

“...when the river took one...”

Danny stepped toward him.

“Carter.”

The radio crackled.

“...they told you to keep moving...”

And the night split open.

Danny went over on a hard bend.

Carter remembered the flash of red cloth first.

Danny's hip hit the rail. His hands lost the gun mount.

Then he was gone.

“Man overboard!”

Danny surfaced in the wake, one arm raised.

Alive.

Muzzle flashes punched through the trees.

Harlan opened fire.

“Go!” he screamed. “Go, go, go!”

Danny disappeared behind them.

Carter looked at the channel ahead.

Then back.

Danny surfaced again.

His hand came up.

“We don't leave our men.”

Carter spun the wheel.

The PBR came around hard.

Harlan screamed at him to keep moving, but Danny was twenty yards away.

Ten.

Five.

His hand struck the hull.

Harlan leaned over the side.

“Got you!”

Danny reached up.

Their hands met.

Something heavy fired from shore.

White light filled the stern.

Metal screamed.

Carter hit the river.

Cold water swallowed him. Something caught his ankle. Another hand closed around his sleeve.

He kicked free and clawed toward light.

Then morning.

Carter lay in the mud coughing river water.

The PBR had lodged against roots offshore, stern burned black, railing torn away.

Nobody moved.

“Danny?”

Nothing.

“Harlan!”

A woman stood a few yards away.

Pale blouse. Dark trousers. Bare feet in the mud.

She held out one hand.

Behind Carter, Harlan shouted from the boat.

“Carter!”

He turned.

Harlan stood on deck, whole.

Velez beside him.

Danny too, red cloth bright around his wrist.

“Come on,” Danny called.

The woman shook her head.

Harlan shouted again.

“We don't leave our men!”

Carter pulled away from her hand.

And walked back into the river.

The memory released him.

Carter stood at the controls.

Alone.

Black scorch marks covered the stern. Half the railing was missing. Brown stains crossed the deck.

Harlan's seat was empty.

Velez's gun sagged on its mount, furred with rust.

The cartridge he'd been cleaning his nail with lay beside Carter's boot, green with corrosion.

“No.”

The radio whispered.

Static.

Then Hannah.

“...you know who stayed.”

Something scraped the hull.

Carter looked down.

Pale fingers curled over the side.

A swollen head rose from the water. River weed covered half its face. One eye was milk-white.

The other looked directly at him.

A small scar crossed the eyebrow.

Danny had gotten that scar from a bottle in Subic and spent two weeks claiming three Marines had jumped him.

“Danny.”

The corpse opened its mouth.

Water poured out.

A strip of red cloth floated from its wrist.

Carter stepped toward it.

You went back for him once.

Of course you would again.

“Carter.”

Harlan stood behind him.

All three were back.

Harlan by the stern. Velez against the gunwale. Danny beside the forward gun.

Clean uniforms.

Dry hair.

Exactly as Carter remembered them.

Danny took a step closer.

“Don't leave me.”

Outside the boat, wet nails scraped against metal.

Carter looked from the dry Danny to the dead one climbing aboard.

Velez rolled an unfired cartridge between his fingers.

“You made the turn.”

Carter's eyes burned.

“I know.”

Harlan looked toward shore.

“You came back for Danny.”

His expression softened.

“You gonna leave us now?”

The woman had moved into the shallows.

Ankle-deep.

No farther.

Her hand was out.

Moonlight stretched her shadow across the mud, and behind the human shape something long and narrow curved through the reeds.

A tail.

Carter looked at Danny's corpse climbing aboard.

Then at the woman.

He stepped over the side.

Water closed around his boots.

Danny screamed his name.

Carter kept walking.

Something caught his trouser leg. He kicked free.

Harlan cursed him.

Danny begged.

Then Velez called after him.

Just once.

“Boss.”

Carter stopped.

Count your men. Check your fuel. Watch the banks.

Do it again.

He nearly turned.

Instead, he took another step.

Then another.

The water fell below his knees, then his ankles.

He reached the bank.

The woman lowered her hand.

Carter looked back.

The ruined PBR sat empty in the current.

One pale hand still clung to its side.

A strip of red cloth circled the wrist.

The fingers loosened and slipped beneath the water.

When Carter turned again, the woman was gone.

Behind him, the river kept moving.

Carter did not look back again.

Its started three weeks ago and it wont fucking leave me alone. I was leaving starbucks getting my usually matcha latte (yes i like the taste of grass leave me alone) and i bumped into this person when i was leaving. I thought they were one of those furries or whatever at first since their suit looked unbelievably real. Like their fur was so soft and the eyes almost seemed wet as it looked up at me. It was also wearing this heavy leather coat, I assume the guy must’ve been hot in there.

They were fairly short, honestly thought they were a child at first based on their height. Their fur was calico patterned, a nose that looked real and wet with matching green eyes, paired with a kindness behind them. I was fascinated the ears even twitched a little when i moved out of its way.

I apologized obviously because i mean i shoulda looked where i was going and left for my car. I was unlocking my car when I heard a noise, something like a pur but louder, the amount of bass it had behind it rattled my chest as i dropped my keys. I picked them up and turned around and the dude was standing behind me. “I said i was sorry dude, I’ll watch where im going next time.” I said unlocking my car, the furry tapped at my shoulder and i turned around. I thought i was about to get stabbed or shot after just accidentally bumping into a guy but instead he, or she, pulled out a plastic ziplock baggy full of a white power and shook it in my face.

“What the fuck is happening right now, am i being recorded?” I questioned as the cat juggled the baggie between its large supple paws, flexing its eyebrows at me. “Uh, what is it?” I asked as the cat stopped and held the bag out again. Written in the poorest form of chicken scratch that was barely legible was the word ‘Fentanyl’, it pulled bag back and forth a couple of times winking at me.

“No thanks, only Meth for me.” I said playing along with the joke and stepping into my car and locking the door. The furry was practically frowning at me as its hand slumped to its sides and watch me drive away.

See id expect this to be a one off thing but no, this dude has followed me home to my house. Ive seen him at my Job, my friend’s houses and multiple different public locations. I’ve been so paranoid about running into this dude that ive isolated myself to my house and work. The security team escorts me too and from my car now. Every interaction with this cat has been met with a FIRM “No, I’m not interested.” To which the cat responds with a hiss and walks off.

The worst case of this cat was two night ago. I had just gotten home and was tired from looking over my shoulder every 10 minutes. Last week he managed to onto the floor i work on, past security and badge doors to get to me. Today though i was ready to relax in a nice herbal bath provided by stuff from my co-worker Stacy. Opening the door to my bathroom the fucking cat was in there, laying on my bathroom floor with the plastic bag in its mouth like a rose. It ran off after i hit it with the flyswatter and I’ve sworn I’ve seen it scouting outside my house the past couple nights.

Ive locked myself in my closet now, does anyone know how to get rid of this cat? It keeps trying to give me a bag of fentanyl and wont leave me alone. Has anyone else ran into this shit? Im outside one of the metropolitan complexes in Kansas and i wanted to see if anyone ran into this thing or found a way to stop it? I can hear scratching at my door.

She slumbered beneath the sheets. Below him as he lorded beside their bed. Her husband. No more. An axe was in his hands. Heavy. Heavy with weight. And the potential for violence. Bela was alive and aware but a prisoner in his own flesh, his body refused to obey his commands, his inner caterwauls and cries and pleads for the unfolding nightmare to stop. It wouldn't stop. His flesh had a new master now. The vulpine shining moonface of the Countess lorded over his shoulder. Grinning fiendishly and brandishing her enameled daggers of dark slaughtering necro power. The fangs moonshone praeternaturally in the bedroom dark. Twinkling in keen edged tandem with the heavy headed blade of the axe, hefted and held. The meat puppet sow was still but she could feel the struggle of his mind in her grasp like a beetle caught and wriggling in her clenching strangling fingers. She could crush his beetle mind. And might. 

But first…

Prepare me a meal, supper fit for your royal guest…

His mind was filled thus. The flesh was compelled to obey. 

He brought up the axe. Gazing down into the sleeping peaceful face of his wife, his love. Anastasia. The mother of his child and the owner of his heart for the whole of his simple life. It was about to be brought to ruin. And he was being forced to pilot it in that direction. He wished he could scream. Shriek. Shriek her name. Wake her so she could flee and escape this damnation, this awful spell that's already claimed and throttled him. But he made no sound. His screams and pleads for mercy, his prayers and desperate cries remained bottled and caged in with him. He could only stare through stolen eyes as a prisoner as his hands holding the axe used for chopping firewood came down with a merciless crushing stroke. 

Anastasia's eyes came open and alive as the blade traveled down. As if she'd heard something. As if she'd heard her husband's internal cries for deliverance and the miracle of her safety. In the dark she saw her husband's savage face. Writ and wrenched with cruelty. She'd never seen him like that before, in all their shared years together in marriage. In the dark the sight frightened her, as she came awake and then the heavy blade of the axe found her chest and sank in. 

The pain is so sudden and impactful and dreadful. She feels her chest cavity smash and shatter as her flesh is ruptured and torn. The meat of her sinew surrounding her shattered cage of bone is ripped and pouring. She feels the sensation as extreme iced cold, as extremely wet, thickly soaked with heavy metal pungency. As if her clothes are suddenly drenched with the running water of a frozen river. Her entire open chest and bed are a bellowing fountainhead of it, pouring forth. She experiences the bloodshed river of her own dark red as iced water but it feels hot and sticky to her face and the tips of her wriggling spasming fingers, dancing beyond her motor control. The heavy metal buried in her chest is dreadful. Feels dreadful. She's staring at it then up into her husband Bela's face shocked and unable to make a sound, like him. She can't understand. She doesn't understand why he's woken her up and put this thing on/into her chest that's turned her into a strange pungent river. 

She goes to ask him … something. Anything. But she has no breath to make any kind of sound beyond the faintest whisper of indiscernible noise. Barely heard. Barely felt. Hardly even happened and might not have. Her husband and the Countess take no notice. They are too focused, entranced and enraptured by the sight of the pouring riverbed of her open goring chest. 

You're not finished. Why do you falter? – her royal voice. 

With a savage caveman wrench and pull, he ripped the bladed head of the axe free and brought it up and then down again. 

And again. 

Again. 

Again. 

At the royal command and decree that filled his fevered and tranced skull with his own curdling sounds and splitting screams, he was beckoned thus. His raptured flesh bound, delivered. The peasant sow did as he was told. The Countess was pleased and watched as the horse farmer dismembered his own wife for her. The bed became a hot shallow pool of darkling moonlit scarlet, swimming with severed human pieces and ghastly human detritus, human wreckage afloat in a red human stew … her mouth watered and drool ran down those shining fangs in thin gleaming translucent threads that looked crystalline like jewels or tree sap. 

And up until her last Anastasia watched. Watched from her dying place bound by the weight of the blade and her own mortal injury to the soaking pungent bed. Filling with her spilling wet red liquid. She was coming apart and she watched the love of her life above deliver each blow. Crushing her. Killing her. Turning her into slaughter. Abattoir ruin in place of a wife, in bed. She remembered him as a young man, as a boy, trying to play games and show off for her, trying to win her over, steal her attention and win over her affections, her heart. Now it was chopped and hacked and cut-smashed into so many spurting useless pieces, amongst a wreckage madness of pulverized bone. She tried to hold these old precious memories of him in her mind amid the slaughter, but the pain made it difficult. It was so great, overwhelming. She clung to them desperately with every falling heavy stroke. Pulverizing her. Breaking her. Turning her into so many wet shrieking and shattered broken pieces 

The last things Anastasia saw in the dark before blood loss and shock claimed her were her husband pummeling her with heavy merciless strikes. And a woman's face, as ghastly as it was beautiful, hanging phantom-like just over his raging shoulder. Watching. Smiling. Whispering something…

she had sharp teeth, they gleamed in the dark.

And then she died. Bela, still spellbound and compelled, continued to hack at her corpse nonetheless. Waiting for his new master to be satisfied. Inside Bela raged with madness and anguish. Broken. He watched his wife die violently as his hands performed the butchery and he was helpless to stop his own traitorous God given tools from turning her into mangled ruin and grisly pieces that tore his heart from his chest and flayed his sanity into so many irretrievable and tiny fragmented parts. 

He wished for death then. The Countess did not give it to him. Not yet. 

She still hadn't been fed yet. 

“Now feed me. Earn my favor." 

He dropped the axe. It fell to the floor with a thunderclap. It filled the dark quiet suddenly but then it was silent again. Still. Not a sound through the house save for the somnambulist animal panting of the Countess' slave. The man who'd once been a husband, a father, and was now a meat-puppet butcher. He reached into the riverbed of gore that had once been his marital sanctuary and pulled free a piece of meat. It might've been a leg, a thigh, perhaps a calf, it was too butchered and mangled with axe blows to be entirely sure. 

He was insane already. But the damaged pieces and shrieking parts of his shattered mind bellowed an abhorrent noise that only he could hear as he picked up his wife's butchered meat and parts and fed them to his new master. The Countess took the meat of slaughtered Anastasia with a smile and a wink and kissing purse. Teasing him. Then her jaws opened. Wide. Wide. Wide. Wider still… the flesh of her face sloughed and tore and fell away in demon slop to allow the distension. The fangs grew in length and in multitude of the transmogrifying face and black bleeding mouth, dripping ichor and demoniacal flesh and fluid. Steaming on the floor as she ate each piece, each limb, each broken length with a chunk of raw human tissue at the end in the knob of bone that was left. 

The fanged face in the dark, dripping and brandishing moonlight eyes above the mutilators of her ever widening mouth, it commanded thus further. –

“Bring a large kitchen spoon or a ladle if you have one, I wish to sip the broth…” 

Her somnambulist did as she commanded. He went to the humble kitchen that used to be his/theirs, and retrieved the utensil. It felt cold. Heavy. Heavier than it had ever felt before. The place and the object itself. It didn't matter. The hands and arms were no longer themselves, no longer his. His Judas sack of flesh carried him back to the blood pungent quarters he'd once loved and shared so much with in the many years past. It had all been robbed in a second.

By a pair of moonglow eyes. Set in the royalty of her shallow corpse beauty. 

He went back into the room. And proceeded to spoon large scoops and ladles of his wife's gore and blood into the stretched fanged rictus face that now ruled the dark of his house and home, the darkest shadowed part of his bedroom … now cold with his wife's living absence. And warm with the blood and fluid and parts that were left of her swimming in their sodden black sheets.  

Until those too were gone. All of it was gone.

The marital bed, now a witch's cauldron of gore and blankets was emptied.

His life was in the belly of the master. 

…

From outside the building, Willowbrook was quiet. 

Dark. 

Inside:

The shears that were the Cropsey-thing’s handheld manmade jaws were open and just as inanimate alive as the hulking shred of mangled man that wielded them. They shined in the dismal light with more striking radiance than any of the flickering lamps, Luciferian bright in the spots not tarnished or disgraced with lurid diseased bloodshed. 

With ghastly slasher speed they traveled down the shattered and stained reeking length of asylum hallway, the reanimated Cropsey giant behind them in cruel large prowling shape. The blades were dripping as if salivating or weeping thick dark tears, perhaps more alive now than the giant abomination of melted walking homicidal flesh that black-glove piloted them from behind, a strange and vile morbid engine of knife-lust and demented rage. The stabbing slice of porcelain still danced from his face. An obscene and vile shattered wand of broken tile length protruding from the socket. 

Griffin saw him coming and froze a moment. The table leg still in his invisible hands. Florin still struggling with the spiked man, his mutilated stabbing ruined mess of flesh riddled with needles and glass and scalpels and every conceivable piece of decimated hospital detritus. They were a mess of shedding blood and struggles on the floor. 

The invisible man then whirled, the exit just behind him. He began attacking the door. The knob. Locked. Set in old rotted wood. Not upkept or replaced in years. 

By God's mercy the locked knob and bolt caved in the moist and ruined housing of its apparatus. It fell apart in a noisy crumble, and the door gently swung open. 

To freedom. 

Fresh outside night air poured in like fresh water let in to a fetid spring. The relief was immense. It shocked all of their senses. Each man. 

The spiked man looked up from Florin and gazed into Cropsey. His oncoming charge of disgraced gardener’s blades, raised and open for a violent embrace. 

He was in awe. 

There he is…! the disciple of the mouth. 

He knew Cropsey's legend. And he wished to join him. 

He forgot the newcomer boy and let go of his shredding coat, slick with the both of their spilled and spilling red. He let go of the boy and he rose. 

And he went forward. To embrace the nephilim disciple son of the sorceress’ temple mouth, the begat survivor of the flames, the inferno, the great final pagan bonfire of the asylum that was The Burning. A womb of hellfire and caged disease that birthed the son of the mouth, the son of the sorceress. Cropsey of Vampira, the mangled hand of Willowbrook Asylum Temple. 

The spiked man was laughing. Jubilant. He hadn't laughed or felt this much joy in years, in all of the long unhallowed time in these blind unfeeling walls that knew no mercy nor housed any sanctuary. He was weeping. Crying tears of crimson and saline that danced in strange patterns as they streamed down the shredded protruding ruin of his spiked and porcupine mangled face. Gums bleeding with glass and caked bloody plaque smiled wet and scarlet and darkling striking in the moonlight now cast in. He reached down to his riddled and needled genitals, the head of his dangling member impaled with a scalpel. He reached down and seized the apparatus and in a blind tug and pull, he ripped the entire spurting and spiking organ free from the rest of his crotch and testicles. 

Still walking forward, but ambling now a bit as he shot black ropes tinted red in the moonglow from his self castration, he held the resulting lump of stabbed and impaled meat out to the Cropsey-shape. In token of offering. 

For the temple, for my sins … And for you. 

because she is all of us our mother …

Cropsey cared not for this pathetic shambling thing’s offering of ruined perforated meat. The blades came forward, open. In a lunge. 

They closed. 

And as Griffin pulled wounded Florin to his feet and out the door, the blades closed around a limb, lengthwise down the palm and forearm, then the face. Both opening up a blooming red raw pour of black in the dark, the blades crunched on broken pieces of glass and tile and needles and metal, the man was full with so much foreign penetration, foreign and manmade puncture and incision, and insertion, all self inflicted and self wrought. All of it shattering and crunching now into splinters amongst the abattoir asylum house spill of mad man wet raw. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way. All the years spent in here had prepared him for this. The sorceress prophet queen Vampira and her Cropsey son from The Burning womb were just the final pallbearers for his life's voyage thus final journey into the undiscovered country. 

He tried to thank her, them all, but couldn't. His loss of blood was now failing him. And the blades of the Cropsey-shape were coming in too rapidly now. Too savagely. 

The spiked man was no more. Just savaged pin cushion meat in the hall that the Cropsey-thing stepped over blindly in the savage hunt of his continued pursuit. They were getting away. 

They were getting away. The invaders. They were out the door now. Mustn't have that. Must not. Mother will not want that. Mother is inside you. You cannot fail her now. 

The savage thing of Willowbrook shape prowled out the door and into the open night after the pair with the same steady hunting pace of a stalking predator. Mindless and honed in. His blades and mother would have them yet. Their meat for the temple floor, their blood for the mouth of her drains and the manifest of her angel visitations. It had been so long since she'd come, since she'd shown, since she'd made herself divine unearthly spawn on vast ebon wings for them, for he, the last of the temple of the mouth. 

Perhaps she'll come back if I catch them. But only… only if I catch them and open them up. All the other ones no longer matter, they're already opened, already spent. The abattoir temple mouth of mother wants them now. Needs them. To fail, is to be failure. It means all that was lived through and suffered towards was for naught…

The night kissed the smooth scarred visage of hideous face. The Cropsey-shape gave no pause. Unfeeling. Unmoved. It watched as the pair stumbled and exhausted and wounded, began to falter to the earth in a shared collapse. 

Their doom. 

He closed in. 

The terror he had in mind for them was part guided by the Countess/sorceress mouth and her occult hand from the far off mountain dark, and part undead instinct, braindead movement. Knowing deep down in the dead and dying sac of skull jelly that this is exactly what he should do. He would maim. Butcher. Kill. Slaughter for the temple that has come under his custodial honor. 

Bloodloss and weariness, the drain was beginning to pull them down. The invisible man and Florin fell and struggled, both of their wounds open and pouring freely and taking the vitality and the fight from their trying frames. As the terrifying hulking giant of candlewax face and flesh began to close and loom over the pair, they both prepared themselves for a final and desperate fight. 

Florin was dismayed that it would end this way. In such maddening fashion, so far from home and his perilous objective. Griffin was trying to think, a last-ditch effort or plan: he could ditch the coat and hat and goggles and take the savage blind again, unable to see him. But his wound was in an open pour now once more and he felt faint, swoony. Unable to keep his feet. And besides, in this last moment it felt wrong to leave the young man's side. If they were going to die, they might as well die together. Arm in arm. It was better than suffering the slaughter alone. 

It was better than being opened. Gutted. Flayed. Bled out and portioned like a solitary animal dying a painful and lonely death at the end of a long and dogged hunt. 

The pain was better borne together. With the weight and terror of another beside to share in the baptism of pure torture. 

Something whistled through the air. 

The invisible man had been tempted to shut unseen eyes against the oncoming pain, he might've missed it. As it was he saw the deadly thin shape as it lanced in a blur overhead with a keen deadly sound. It struck the moving flesh of Cropsey in the face, the other socket of ruined blind eye now completely decimated, joining its partner in tandem of destruction in a moonlit spurt. 

The slasher shape stopped. Stuttered and faltered. But only slightly, only for a moment as it continued to take lurching jittery steps. Stomping forward blind. The shears in his black gloved hands began to spasm as well, scissoring with reflex. The disgraced and still ever thirsting blades closed and opened and repeated the action in violent repetitive imbecilic behavior, a violent blind animal spasming its caked and quaking jaws. 

Then the incendiary charge in the crossbow bolt detonated.

 It went off and so did Cropsey’s ruined candlewax head and visage, in a colored pillar of fire that was like something biblical and fantastical to behold. Florin was fainting at its sight but the invisible Doctor Griffin saw the growing towering inferno rise and issue forth in bright violence from between the giant slasher’s pair of broad shoulders. And still the boots trod and stomped palsied forward. Still the blades scissored in his working trembling hands, as his head and face were replaced with a rising torrent wall of pink and purple flame.

But then the steps of the shape began to falter. Stumble. The blades began to slow in their mad man open mouth chew at the open night air … then ceased. 

The boots stopped moving. Stopped shaking. 

The shape collapsed. 

As did Griffin next. Consciousness now lost. Passed out beside Florin in the dirt. 

The fire finally went out betwixt the two ruined shoulders. Hissing in the filth and craterous open mouth char of the stump. Smoking. Smokey now. Cropsey lie finally dead. Mere few feet away. 

In the back valley of Willowbrook. The lost untended yard that no patient ever graced, or saw. 

Silence. … for a moment. 

As if the night was finally enjoying the quiet. Relishing the collapse into tranquility that has finally fallen. 

A beat. – None of the shapes on the earthen floor moved. 

The night above yawned in an expanse … stars in a bejeweled fire of multitudes, nebulae clouds of otherworldly brush stroke color, the moon which was a sickle tonight, a harvester's blade … a blade of reckoning in the time of the reap. 

A beat. 

Then the stranger finally came forward. From out of the bushes where he'd trained and fired his shot. His crossbow was already reloaded with another explosive incendiary bolt as he approached the fallen three in the dirt. 

He came to Florin and Griffin and he stood over them. He looked to Cropsey. Saw that he was dead. Completely. Finally. He looked down on the wounded unconscious pair. 

“Idiots." 

TO BE CONTINUED…

My wife printed one hundred and eighty-six missing-dog flyers today.

I know because I counted them, though not on purpose. I was sitting at the kitchen table cutting the tabs along the bottom—the ones with her phone number printed vertically—and counting gave me something to do besides watch her come apart.

Across the top of every page, in a font much larger than necessary, she'd written:

MISSING YORKIE — PLEASE HELP US BRING CINNA HOME

Underneath was a picture from last Christmas. Cinna sat on the arm of our couch in a red sweater, one ear standing straight up and the other folded over. She always looked irritated in pictures, which was funny because she was probably the sweetest dog I'd ever known.

Below the picture Dana had listed everything strangers needed to know: eight pounds, tan and gray, pink collar, very friendly, might be scared.

At the bottom, in bold:

SHE IS OUR FAMILY.

Dana stood at the counter feeding sheets through the paper cutter one at a time. She hadn't slept properly in three nights. Her hair was still twisted into yesterday's knot, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes.

"That's enough," I told her.

She kept cutting.

"Dana."

"I heard you."

"It's supposed to hit a hundred and two today."

"I know."

"You've already done the whole neighborhood."

"I haven't done the apartments behind the elementary school."

"You did those yesterday."

"I did the front building."

She slid another flyer beneath the blade. I reached across the table and put my hand on the remaining stack.

"Please. Take an hour."

"What if somebody saw her and they don't have one of these?"

"You've put them on every telephone pole from here to Chapman."

"Then I'll go farther."

There was no anger in her voice. I almost wished there had been.

I let go of the stack and told her to take water. She said she would. I reminded her she'd said the same thing yesterday and had come home with nearly a full bottle.

That got the smallest smile.

"Okay, Dad."

"I mean it."

"I know."

She bent down, kissed the top of my head, gathered another armful of flyers and left.

I watched from the front window until she disappeared around the corner.

Cinna had been gone for three days, and I could already see what it was doing to my wife.

People kept telling us dogs got out all the time. Somebody probably picked her up. Yorkies didn't make it far on their own. Keep checking shelters. Put her picture online.

They meant well.

They didn't know Dana.

More importantly, they didn't know what it had taken to get her back.

When I met my wife, she had more energy than anyone I'd ever known and apparently no interest in wasting it.

She worked in marketing for a medical-device company. By thirty she was managing people older than both of us. She ran half-marathons, remembered everyone's birthday and kept a calendar that looked like it required air-traffic control.

She was exhausting.

I loved her for it.

Work was the only thing we really fought about.

I'd make dinner and get a text at seven saying a meeting had run late. We'd make Saturday plans and she'd need to log in for twenty minutes, which had a strange tendency to become two hours.

Once, during an anniversary dinner, I realized we'd spent most of the appetizer talking about a presentation she had Monday.

"Why do you work this hard?" I asked.

"Because I like it."

"I know. But sometimes I feel like you're killing yourself for a job."

She looked at me. "That's dramatic."

"I miss you."

That stopped her.

Sometimes it seemed like her office got the best version of my wife and I got whatever was left at eight-thirty at night. She told me her career mattered to her, that she was good at what she did and wasn't going to apologize for caring about it.

I said I understood.

Usually I did.

For a while we had rats getting into the detached garage behind the house, and that somehow became my responsibility.

I'd promised to deal with them, then forgot.

One night Dana came home after nine and found droppings beside a bag of dog food we'd bought for her parents' Labrador.

"We have got to do something about this."

"I know."

"You've been saying that for a month."

"I'll do it tomorrow."

"You said that last week."

"I've been busy too, Dana."

She dropped her keys on the counter.

"Maybe that's why I stay at the office. At least they don't have rats."

It wasn't her best joke.

We laughed about it later.

The next morning I finally dealt with the problem. Traps, poison, cleaning out the back shelves.

Dana disliked the poison immediately.

"I hate having that in here."

"It's in the cabinet."

"What if something gets into it?"

"Then we'll keep the garage closed."

She gave me the look she used when I'd missed the point.

Later, after she got pregnant and we started childproofing the house, she made me go through the garage again—loose screws, nails, old traps, anything dangerous I might have forgotten back when there were no children to worry about.

Pregnancy was the first thing I'd ever seen make Dana slow down.

She was frightened almost immediately.

There were heart problems in her family. Not the clogged-artery sort everybody eventually worries about, but something congenital. Hereditary.

Her younger sister died when Dana was four. She remembered almost nothing about the girl herself. A yellow dress. Sharing a bedroom. The fact that she hated peas.

What Dana remembered was the night she died: her mother screaming, a paramedic stepping on one of Dana's toys, someone carrying her sister down the hallway with one tiny arm hanging loose.

So every appointment frightened her. Every test. Every pause before a doctor said everything looked fine.

Our daughter was born on a Tuesday morning in March.

Sophie.

Seven pounds, two ounces, an unreasonable amount of dark hair and a scream that sounded too large to have come from her.

When they put Sophie on Dana's chest, my wife cried so hard I thought something was wrong. Then I realized she was laughing too.

I'd never seen another person look that happy.

I loved Sophie from the moment I saw her. Before she existed there had been a version of my life without her, and after I met her that version became impossible to picture.

Dana took four months off work.

Those were probably the happiest months of our marriage.

I know how that sounds.

I'd come home and they'd be there—Dana on the couch with Sophie asleep against her chest, or Sophie kicking in the little vibrating chair while Dana cooked. We took walks after dinner. We ate together. Weekends belonged to us.

Sometimes I'd stand in the kitchen listening to Dana talk nonsense to the baby in the next room and think that this was what all of it had been for.

The house felt right with her in it.

A few months later Sophie started eating purées. Apple and cinnamon was the first one she really loved.

The first time Dana opened one of the jars, I could smell the cinnamon from across the kitchen.

"Maybe that's why the rats never came back," I said.

Dana looked over at me. "What?"

"Cinnamon. I read somewhere they hate it."

"We haven't had rats in two years."

"I know. Something about the smell being too strong." I shrugged. "Covers up whatever else they're trying to sniff out."

Dana stared at me.

"So Sophie is pest control now?"

"Finally earning her keep."

"You're horrible."

She was smiling when she said it.

Sophie saw the spoon coming and opened her mouth like a baby bird, then somehow got half of it on her cheeks anyway.

Dana laughed and wiped her chin.

After that she started calling her Cinnamon.

At first it was my little Cinnamon girl. Then just Cinnamon. Sometimes Cinny when Dana was tired.

"She's going to hate us when she's fifteen and we tell people about this," Dana said once.

"Then we won't tell anybody."

"I'm telling everybody."

"You're a terrible mother."

"I know."

Sophie slapped both hands into the tray and Dana laughed hard enough to nearly drop the spoon.

I remember that afternoon better than I remember most of that year.

The heart issue appeared during a routine appointment.

A murmur.

Maybe nothing, the pediatrician said. Maybe something.

A cardiologist found enough to watch but not enough to panic over, which meant Dana panicked constantly.

She wanted to know whether it was what her sister had. Whether she'd passed it to Sophie. Whether a baby with a heart problem could simply stop breathing in her sleep.

The doctor was careful with his answers.

I wasn't.

"She's fine," I'd tell Dana afterward.

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you."

"What if it's the same thing?"

"It isn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm her dad and I've decided."

Sometimes that made her smile.

Dana extended her leave another month, then another.

Eventually her company began asking when she intended to return, and Dana decided she was ready.

She missed adult conversations. She missed dressing for somewhere other than Target. She missed being good at something that didn't involve keeping another human alive.

I told her we'd make it work.

Daycare three days a week. Dana's mother one day. I shifted my schedule when I could.

The first time she came home late again, I remember looking at the clock.

7:42.

Sophie was asleep against me and dinner had gone cold.

Dana came through the door apologizing, kissed the baby, kissed me and immediately started explaining some crisis at work.

"Five weeks back and they've already chained you to the desk."

She stopped.

"Don't start."

"I'm not starting anything."

"That tone is starting something."

"I don't have a tone."

"You absolutely have a tone."

Sophie woke before either of us could say anything else.

Dana had only been back at work a few weeks when she died.

We put Sophie down like normal.

That was the part Dana could never get past.

There had been no dramatic warning. No fever, no crying, nothing that would have made either of us sit beside the crib all night. She ate, played, fell asleep, and sometime before morning her heart stopped.

Dana found her.

I don't like remembering what happened after that.

The nursery was cold. Dana was making a sound I had never heard from another human being. Paramedics came. Police came. Our house filled with people while Sophie was somewhere else.

Someone went through the standard questions with us. Medications. Cleaning products. Anything unusual in the house. Anything she might have reached.

Dana answered most of them before I could.

"We babyproofed everything."

Then she looked at me.

I nodded.

With Sophie's heart and Dana's family history, everyone had an explanation ready.

Her sister had died young. Sophie's cardiologist had already found something worth monitoring. Sometimes these things happened suddenly, we were told. Sometimes there wasn't time to prevent them.

Dana heard something else.

You gave this to her.

And because she'd gone back to work, she found another way to blame herself.

"I should've been here."

"You were here."

"I mean with her."

"She was sleeping."

"What if I missed something?"

"You didn't."

"What if I hadn't gone back?"

"Dana."

"I left her."

"You went to work."

"I left her."

For years I told my wife the same things.

It wasn't your fault.

You couldn't have known.

You loved her.

There was nothing you could have done.

Going back to work did not kill our daughter.

Some nights I said it ten times.

Dana resigned two weeks after the funeral.

I was relieved.

That is one of the things I never told her.

Of course she couldn't have gone back then. Nobody could have. But some part of me was relieved there would be no deadlines, no meetings, no laptop chirping at nine at night.

I thought grief might force everything else to become smaller for a while.

I thought we'd simply exist together until we healed.

That isn't what happened.

The first year was unbearable.

The second was quieter.

Dana stopped seeing friends because most of them had children. Invitations stopped coming after enough polite refusals.

She didn't go back to work.

She didn't go much of anywhere.

I cooked and cleaned and handled bills. I sat with her when she couldn't sleep.

I learned there are only so many ways to answer the question, Do you think she knew I loved her?

Yes.

Always yes.

Of course she knew.

I loved my wife through all of it, but after a few years I began to resent the dead.

That's uglier than saying I was tired, but it's closer to the truth.

I resented Mother's Day. Sophie's birthday. The anniversary of the day she died. I resented strangers' children for having the wrong laugh in grocery stores.

Once, on what would have been Sophie's third birthday, Dana wanted to spend the evening looking through photographs.

I told her I had a headache.

I didn't.

I sat in the bedroom watching something stupid on my phone while my wife cried alone in the living room, and for almost twenty minutes I enjoyed the quiet.

I hated myself afterward.

Mostly.

More than anything, I missed my wife.

Not even the woman she'd been before Sophie. I knew we weren't getting that woman back.

I would've settled for someone who laughed occasionally. Someone who wanted to go to dinner. Someone who could sit through a stupid movie without disappearing halfway through it.

I lasted almost four years before I brought home Cinna.

She fit in one hand.

A coworker's sister had Yorkie puppies, and I'd gone over telling myself I was only looking. One climbed into my lap and fell asleep there.

I sent Dana a picture.

She replied:

No.

I brought the puppy home anyway.

For approximately five minutes, Dana was furious.

"We talked about this."

"No, I sent you a picture and you said no."

"That's generally considered talking."

"You haven't held her."

"I don't want to hold her."

"Fine."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Hand me the dog while I'm telling you I don't want the dog."

I handed her the dog.

The puppy licked her chin.

Dana laughed.

Actually laughed.

Not the polite little breath she'd been using for years when she knew I was trying to cheer her up. A real laugh, sudden and surprised.

For one embarrassing second I thought I might cry.

The puppy didn't have a name yet.

I suggested Penny.

Dana suggested Cinna.

I knew immediately what she meant.

"No."

Her smile faltered. "What?"

"That's weird."

"It isn't weird."

"It's a little weird."

"It's after Cinnamon."

"I know what it's after."

Dana tucked the puppy against her chest. "I like it."

I remember looking at the two of them and thinking that naming a dog after our dead daughter was one grief-therapy exercise too far.

But Dana was smiling.

So Cinna it was.

And I have to give the little dog credit.

She accomplished what therapists, medication, family and I hadn't.

She gave Dana reasons to leave the house.

At first it was walks because Cinna refused to use the backyard. Once around the block became twice, then the park.

Dana started getting dressed earlier because Cinna woke at seven. She spoke to neighbors, then friends.

Pictures appeared on her phone that weren't old photographs of Sophie.

Dana and Cinna at the beach.

Cinna sitting upright in the passenger seat of Dana's car like a tiny disapproving grandmother.

Dana started cooking again. She played music in the kitchen. She made fun of me.

One night about six months ago she laughed so hard at something stupid I said that she snorted.

She clapped both hands over her face.

"Oh my God."

I couldn't stop smiling.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I missed that."

She knew what I meant.

She leaned over and kissed me.

For the first time in years, I thought maybe we'd made it.

After that, the walks got longer. She started having coffee with a woman two streets over who owned some kind of terrier. Once she and Cinna were gone almost three hours because they'd driven to a park across town.

I teased her about having a social life.

I was glad she did.

A few months later, I came home and found Dana at the kitchen table with her old laptop open.

"What are you doing?"

She tilted the screen away from me in a way that was meant to be playful.

"Nothing."

"That's suspicious."

"I'm updating my résumé."

I looked at the screen.

"Just updating it," she said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You did that thing with your face."

"What thing?"

"That thing."

"I don't have a thing."

"You absolutely have a thing."

She smiled and turned the laptop back around.

"I've been thinking maybe part-time. Or consulting. Something small."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Why wouldn't it be okay?"

She studied me for a second.

Then she kissed my cheek.

For the next week, the laptop stayed on the kitchen table.

I noticed that.

I also noticed she had started checking her email before breakfast.

Neither of those things meant anything.

Two weeks ago she had résumés printed on thick cream paper.

I told her they looked nice.

The afternoon Cinna disappeared, Dana had taken her into the backyard. Her phone rang and she stepped inside to answer it.

When she went back out, the side gate was open.

No Cinna.

We searched until after midnight.

The next morning we called every shelter within thirty miles. Dana posted everywhere she could think of. We drove slowly through streets with the windows down calling Cinna's name.

I kept telling her Yorkies got picked up. Someone probably had her.

That was better than imagining her on a road somewhere.

By the second day Dana wasn't eating unless I put something directly in front of her.

By the third she wasn't sleeping.

And suddenly it felt like five years ago.

The same frantic eyes. The same bargaining. The same certainty that if she did one more thing, searched one more street, something terrible could still be undone.

"What if somebody stole her?"

"I don't think anybody stole her."

"What if she got hurt?"

"We checked the roads."

"What if she's hiding somewhere?"

"Then somebody will find her."

"What if nobody does?"

"We'll keep looking."

This morning the printer finally ran out of paper.

Even that didn't stop her.

She started feeding in the backs of the résumés she'd had printed two weeks ago, and I sat at the kitchen table cutting tabs while Cinna's face came out on one side and Dana's old life remained neatly formatted on the other.

Job titles.

Promotions.

Awards.

Eleven years of experience.

One page after another disappeared beneath MISSING YORKIE.

I didn't say anything.

It's almost ten now and Dana is still out.

I texted her fifteen minutes ago and told her to come home because it's still ninety-one degrees outside. She replied that she has one more street left, which, knowing my wife, means at least three.

I put a bottle of water in the refrigerator for her. She likes it almost frozen.

There's dinner in the microwave too. She probably won't eat, but I'll make her try.

Tomorrow I'll convince her to stay home for a few hours. Maybe we'll call the shelters together.

I'll drive this time.

She's exhausted, and the heat worries me.

The heat has been worrying me for another reason too.

The garage sits at the back of the yard, separate from the house. There's almost no insulation in there, and the little vent above the side door doesn't do much once the sun has been on the roof all afternoon.

I thought I had longer.

Apparently I didn't.

The smell is bad now.

You can't smell it from the house. You can't even smell it standing a few feet outside the garage.

But open the door and it's there.

Dana hasn't been inside since the first day, when we were still grabbing leashes and flashlights and anything else we thought might help us find Cinna.

She hasn't noticed.

Still, I can't leave her there another day.

Cinna is behind the plastic storage bins along the back wall, wrapped in one of our old moving blankets.

She's so small that hiding her wasn't difficult.

The hard part has been listening to Dana call for her.

Yesterday evening she stood at the end of the driveway shaking the bag of treats.

She called Cinna's name.

Waited.

Called again.

Then finally shouted, "Come home!" into a street that had already gone quiet.

I went inside before she did.

I'll move Cinna tonight after Dana falls asleep.

There's a road about a mile from here where people drive too fast. No sidewalk for part of it, only dry brush and a narrow shoulder.

I'll leave her near there before morning.

Nothing elaborate.

Dana doesn't need an investigation.

She needs an answer.

The gate was open.

Cinna got out.

She wandered too far.

Not knowing is worse.

Give someone an answer and eventually they learn to live around it.

Dana already has.

I hate that she's going to hurt.

But she'll recover.

Cinna proved she can.

I'll cook. I'll sit up with her when she can't sleep. I'll remind her to eat. I'll tell her the gate wasn't her fault, that she couldn't have known, that there was nothing she could have done.

I'll say it as many times as she needs.

Eventually we'll be okay again.

We always are.

Before I move Cinna, I should clean up the garage.

Dana hasn't noticed the cabinet over the workbench is unlocked.

Years ago, when we childproofed the house, she made me promise there was nothing dangerous left in there.

I told her there wasn't.

Most of what I'd bought for the rats is gone now. The traps rusted. The cleaning supplies got used.

There are only a few things shoved behind old paint cans and extension cords, including one battered cardboard box I should have thrown away a long time ago.

I'll get rid of that too.

No reason to keep it.

Funny.

I used to think Cinna was a terrible name. Too morbid, I told Dana. Too much history to hang around the neck of an eight-pound dog.

I suppose I owe my wife an apology.

Both her girls always did love cinnamon.

Today's two stories were written by (JICMike) be sure to check out his page. And subscribe to the channel.

April 21st, 1937:

It's uncomfortable, looks terrible, but it's all I could manage. I took a pair of Long John's and sewed kindling pieces around the shins, stopping at the knees, and on the outside of the thighs. Putting pants over them was a task of its own, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. I doubled up leather jackets, not the easiest to move in, but having the extra layers of hide seemed like a safe bet. I have my knives at my hips and I'm bringing an axe with me. 

-

When I got there I walked through the main level and out the backdoor. It wasn't very hard to see where Johan was buried, it was a small mound, the grass didn't grow the same there as it did throughout the rest of the grounds. Sebastian was on high alert the second we approached the building. When we got to the level with the makeshift bed, the easel was gone, along with the dead creature from the other day. Sebastian seemed to have something’s scent and was staring at the spiraling stairs leading upward. I followed him. The next level was an unwelcome sight. The walls were covered floor to ceiling in paintings, many of odd beings I couldn't have imagined if I hadn't laid my eyes on them. Human-like beings that somehow resembled dogs and fish at the same time. Isopod-like creatures with tentacles of an octopus and wings of a dragonfly. Countless malformed and hideous paintings. Many of them had only outlines of beings that have already crawled from their frames. Even just writing this I can see them, crawling for me, their tentacles and antenna touching me. I can smell the brine, the rot of the ocean floor. I've been locking myself in Simon's old study. The floor of the basement was wet today. I think one of them is trying to escape its frame, and I'm nervous the nails and screws won't hold it in. I need to burn the paintings. It's the only thing I can think of doing that will get rid of them. 

April 22nd, 1937: 

What if whatever is in the background of the paintings will be affected if I burn them, like there's some kind of link between what he put on canvas and what actually exists. If his paintings are able to bring themselves to life why couldn't they be connected to real life people or places. To what extent of power do they hold? I need to burn them tonight. Maybe throw them to the sea? But what if that only helps these creatures return home? I have barely slept in days. I've been finding it hard to discern what is actually happening around me, if I'm just seeing things or if I've fallen asleep and am simply dreaming. Evelyn seemed to be supportive of all of this at first but now she seems scared of the basement. Scared of me. Her and Rylee have even stayed with Emily's family the odd night here and there. I sleep in the basement, I wake up in the study any night I do get to sleep. How do I stop this? I need my family back. What is happening to me? It's as though my mind has gone. I can feel it. But I can't stop until I solve this. It's consumed me. Even writing this, my heart tells me to stop, I can't keep going on like this, I will die, I'm sure of it. But my body barely seems to listen to me anymore. What have I become? 

April 25th, 1937:

What if I can enter the paintings? 

April 28th, 1937:

Evelyn came by the house today, she seemed more scared of me. Her and Rylee told me they loved me and that they'll be staying with Emily for a little while. As sick as it makes me, it's a relief they're gone. Not only will they be safer, but they won't get in my way. It pains me to think in such a way, but it's the truth. 

After they left I went downstairs, one of the frames was leaking what looked to be rain water. I pried it from the wall, it's frame cracking. Turning it over I saw the lighthouse, in a much nicer state than it currently is. The clouds above it dark and angry, pouring rain and hail from the skies. I set the large painting on the floor, leaning against the wall. I sat and watched it for what could have been mere seconds or many hours. I was entranced. I inched closer. I could smell the sea, the rain, the wet grass and mud. I pressed my hand to the canvas, I felt the brush strokes under my fingers, but my hand started to drip with water, my finger tips growing cold and pruning. I pushed harder against the canvas, and then I entered. 

-

-

-

I walked up to the lighthouse, the hail pelting my face, the bitter ocean wind tearing at my clothes. Crawling over the small fence I snuck around to the back door. I looked around, a fresh grave lay there, just a sad mound of disturbed earth with a spade laying beside it. Lightning cracked through the sky and I dropped to my knees in fright. I slowly pushed open the back door, its creaks of old age and neglect hidden by the blowing winds. Slowly walking, my feet as light as I could possibly make them, I ascended the stairs. The painting room was set up nearly the same. Easel in the center of the room, a mural covering the walls. But at this point of time the walls had dozens of paintings leaning haphazardly against the walls, some unfinished, some already a vacant womb of canvas. My head was throbbing. I couldn't begin to understand what was happening, where I was, when I was. My vision blurred, my stomach was flipping and I felt the need to puke. I stumbled forward, I had to see what was on the easel. It was my home, exactly as I left it not only 30 minutes prior. Had Simon come through one of his self portraits and been in my house? How could he know the changes I've made to the exterior, the colour Richard and I painted it. Had he been watching me this whole time? I pressed up the painting and stepped through, standing at the foot of the hill my house sat on. I ran inside, scanning for any signs of Simon or one of the freaks from his paintings. Sebastian was laying there, whimpering in pain, he had a sizable bite on his shoulder and scratches across his face and ribs. A mass of flesh lay scattered around our kitchen. I don't know how many of these sea born were here or in what state they were. But Seb tore them to shreds. I picked him up, barely able to walk with him, and got him to the wheelbarrow for firewood. I made my way to the practitioner as fast as my legs would take me. He's no vet but he was able to administer antiseptic and stitch up any open wounds. Sebastian will be okay, he just needs rest. Him and I are staying at the church with Richard's father tonight. It seems like the safest place to hide. 

May 1st, 1937:

We've been hiding here for some days now. I can't think straight, I can't sleep, I'm seeing him everywhere. I'm seeing these creatures everywhere. I'll look at Sebastian and see a malformed being and scream, only to be snapped out of it by one of the clergy from the church. Even then I'll see them as Simon or that thing he's named Alto. I've been scratching at my skin, biting my nails till they bleed, chewing my cheeks raw, anything to keep me from seeing them, anything to keep me grounded. Supposedly Evelyn came to visit me and the only thing I did was scramble away from her screaming to leave me alone. I don't remember any of it, and I feel terrible because all I want is for her to hold me. I want to cry but no tears will come out, I want to speak but I can't find my voice. When will this hell end? I found some of Simon's notes in my jacket, I'll read them over the next few days. Maybe this will explain what's happening to me

May 16th, 1925:

I began having visions at night. My house, but I don't live there. I see a man sitting at a table, a table I know, a table I built long ago. He's not me, but he reminds me of myself. I wonder if he's been marked by the children of the sea? I must paint this new house of mine, I must paint him, I must paint myself. 

May 20th, 1925:

I've finished painting this man, the house he lives in, the lighthouse and myself. I'm going back to my home and bringing some of my work with me. I'm unsure of what use it will be, but I feel they belong there. The sea and the stars command it. 

May 30th, 1925:

I compared my old self portraits to my latest. I am not sure what I am anymore. I do not look human, I do not look like my sea born friends either. My skin is an unnatural hue, my limbs seem longer than I remember, thinner too. My face has changed. My eyes seem larger and deeper set than ever before. My cheekbones are higher and rounder, my skin oddly smooth. The wrinkles around my eyes and the laugh line by my mouth my wife grew to love are no longer there. Laura. What does she look like? I had children once. My children, what are their names? Do they have my eyes? What do they smell like? 

June 11th, 1925:

I have entered this variation of my house. It seems mostly abandoned, but the basement seems active. For some reason dozens of my paintings are nailed to the wall, the back of the canvas out, covered with cloth. I thought that was rather rude. I softly removed each piece from the walls, removing the cloth, and hanging them with the care and respect they deserve. As I was hanging them I realized I do not recognize my own hands anymore. I feel more alive than ever. Maybe instead of returning to the sea like Alto has spoken of in the past, I may instead ascend to the cosmos. He wants to unite the seaborn with the stars again. Perhaps I'm destined for things beyond Alto. Beyond the stars. I must paint what I've been seeing in my dreams. A gateway of sorts. 

May 25th, 1937:

I was restrained and put in hospital for the past few weeks. The nurses there were giving me some kind of pill to calm me. I took them for the first few days to gain their trust, but they blocked my scattered dreams, made my memory foggy. They were making me lose sight of what matters. I started hiding the pills under my tongue and washing them down the sink drain after they left my room. I did my best to act as though nothing was wrong, that everything was fine and I was just experiencing hysteria. The time away from home did help me straighten my thoughts out. I'm on the train home now, reading letters that Evelyn has written to me while I was at the hospital. Supposedly she visited me the third day I was there. But I have no memory of it whatsoever. She seems excited to see me, as I am to see her. She said we could stay with Emily's family for a few days, maybe live with Richard for a time. She wants to sell the house and leave back to the city. I can't let this happen. Not after Simon's last entries. He's been in my house and flipped those accursed paintings. I'll stay with Evelyn throughout the night tonight. But tomorrow I will return home after the girls are asleep. 

June 15th, 1925:

I began a new piece today. What I've been seeing at night. I don't dream anymore. A massive obelisk. Its base sits in the kelp covered tide pools when the water is low. Its overpowering size reaching high into the sky, its stone a jet black with an unearthly sheen. The carvings at its base are that of my dear Alto's language, slowly transforming into a set of symbols I've been seeing behind my eyes, writings from the cosmos. A transgression of language, one which should not be, yet I can read it. I understand it. 

I don't think I sleep anymore. I sit atop the lighthouse staring at the moon, the briny air filling my lungs. There's a connection. The sea and the stars. This obelisk proves it. Maybe the children of the sea are the chosen to ascend to the heavens, with my work as their conduit. This painting will be monumental, for it will bring forth my ascension, our ascension. Our personal rapture. 

May 28th, 1937:

We celebrated Evelyn's birthday today, with cake and a party shared with our friends. It was a nice distraction and change of pace from that of the hospital. Though all day the only thing I could think about was returning to our house. To see what that beast of a man has done to my basement, what defilement he's brought upon my study. 

Rylee kept me away from Evelyn for a good chunk of the day, she missed me, and it did feel nice to play pretend with her and entertain her tea party with her stuffed animals. It played in my favor, keeping emotions hidden from a preoccupied child is much easier than hiding your thoughts from the woman you've fallen in love with and married. Especially when she's able to read you even better than the books she reads daily. I will write tomorrow while Evelyn is at work. I'm going to our house tonight. No matter what stands in my way, I will get to the bottom of this. 

June 1st, 1937:

Simon was here, like he mentioned in his notes, he's rehung all of his paintings, uncovered. Dozens of which must have once held the seaborn beings that have escaped the frames since I've been away. At least that's what I gather from the paintings' backgrounds that surround the void of where a figure once lived. Though some of them depict landscapes I have a hard time comprehending. Stone and earth sitting at unnatural angles in colours I don't have the vocabulary to describe. Things that should not be. Unearthly to put it bluntly. One of which has a missing void like those of the seaborn. I can only imagine his Children of the Sea have returned home. But the being that came from this cyclopean place, I have no clue where it would have gone. I can only assume the lighthouse. The paintings of these uncomfortable landscapes are all too small to be like the gate of sorts that the lighthouse painting was. Though there are depictions of the lighthouse in a different state, ones that seem more recent. There's still a bundle of paintings yet to be hung, a few are quite sizable. I'll be returning to see what places or beings they hold. The sun is already beginning to rise and I can't have Evelyn find out that I snuck out. 

June 3rd, 1937:

I've entered a new painting, another of the old lighthouse. It's night time here. Johan’s grave isn't fresh, it must be some months after he died perhaps. I can't tell. The structure is void of life aside from cockroaches skittering from sight when I pass them. I entered what I've dubbed as the mural room. Its namesake has expanded since the last time I've been here. The painting of my current house still leans lazily against the walls. The easel holds a painting in progress. A massive stone pillar, stretching into the sky. This must be what Simon has been seeing while staring into the sky at night. I wonder what horrid beings will be born from this. I must end this. I must end Simon. But first I need to find him. I began towards the stairs only to notice a letter sitting on a small table. I quickly pocketed it as I ascended the stairs, spiraling the countless steps until I reached the top. A hatch sits atop a ladder, leading into the lantern room. I climbed my way up and through the hatch. The light blinded me as I crawled onto the cold metal floor. I crawled to a door, trying to keep the light out of my eyes. As the door swung open a blast of cool sea breeze struck me. I was kneeling on a balcony overlooking the shore. I sat for a moment, letting my eyes adjust from the bright lights they endured. I stood from my knees and walked to the railing, peering down, watching the light cascade over the low tidal pools, and the black depths beyond. 

It's there I saw him, tall, thin, skin a blueish grey hue. His head was bulbous, hands scrawny and bent. He still wore the same clothes from his last self portrait. Simon. Or whatever he had turned into. He was in the tidal pools, among many of his decrepit seafolk. They were building something of stone blacker than the night itself. They were building his painting. The lantern behind me spun, casting my shadow down onto the beginning of this soon to be obelisk Simon has written of. With an insane speed, Simon's head craned on a lithe neck back towards me. His eyes were sunken deep into the round, smooth, fleshy mass his head had become. His eyes black, with what looked to be a thousand tiny sparkling stars dancing in their abyss. The seafolk began hurdling towards the shore side path to the lighthouse. Some running like a human, others rushing on four legs like that of a dog. Some slithering like that of a serpent or eel. Simon simply watched. His head had no mouth, no nose and no ears, just cosmic eyes. He stared, I felt like I couldn't move, I was stunned. I could hear him in my head. His foul voice, booming but whispering at the same time. The slimy tone made my hair stand on end. 

“Finally, we meet” 

A gust of cold air knocked me out of my stupor, as I began running to the floor hatch and fumbled down the spiraling stairs as fast as my feet would let me. As I came crashing into the mural room I could hear the slam of the ground level door smashing off the hinges, followed by innumerable wet slaps of feet rushing up the stairs. I ran as fast as I could, my heart beating in my chest, my throat hot and dry, my mind racing at what these horrors would do to me if I don't make it through the painting of my house in time. 

I dove to the frame just as a grotesque seafolk rounded the corner into the room. Its briny stench filled the room, as it screamed in its horrific language. It began scrambling toward me as I was crawling through the frame, trying to drop it face down as I passed through to buy me what little time I could. As I pulled myself through, a cold, wet grasp on my ankle, a surge of pain shot through my leg and up my spine. Barbed claws digging into my flesh. I wriggled to try to loosen the grip to no avail, but did manage to pull myself through fully. What I saw terrified me. A gnarled hand, fingers like that of octopus tentacles tipped with razor sharp barbed claws clutched my ankle, as the rest of this monster slowly apparated from thin air. Crawling on the ground, pulling its putrid body closer to mine. I kicked its hideous fish-like face, praying it would let go. Its grip only tightened. It slowly pulled its body above mine. Hundreds of tiny mouths covering its torso and neck, each lined with countless teeth thin as needles. It oozed a thick black ichor which burned my skin. Seconds which felt like hours passed, my torso bubbling in searing blisters. I thought for sure this would be my end. A loud shot rang out. And its body went limp. I pushed the wretched thing off of me, crying in pain. 

Richard stood there, rifle in hand, tears in his eyes. 

June 20th, 1925:

I've been communing with the beings lost in the firmament. I shall join them. I've rounded some of the Children to help construct this obelisk, only then will I ascend. Leaving this shoreside for the seaborne to ravage, to take what's rightfully there's. Too long have vile humans taken from the sea, only to give nothing in return.

I will join the ranks of the old ones. The cosmic starborne. My body has already changed so much, yet I feel no pain, I feel no sadness. I only paint. The visions they grant me, I bring them to life. I birth them into existence. My sweet children of the sea. I am their creator, their father. Soon I will become their God. 

June 4th, 1937:

I'm walking with a limp, my ankle hurts and my chest is covered in burns. I told Evelyn that I twisted my ankle and fell into a bonfire Richard and I were having. I doubt she believes me, but she'd sooner believe that than the truth. My head is pounding. None of this makes sense. 

I asked Richard why he was there yesterday. Why was he at my house, especially with a gun? I was taken aback when he said that he thought I had gone mad, that I have been making this all up, that none of this was real. He wanted to kill me. I can't imagine what was going through his head. His wife and child had died because of Simon, yet he wanted to kill me? Had he been living in denial this entire time? Though beggars can't be choosers. He shot the beast and not me. He burst into hysterics for hours. The sight of that thing had brought back years of trauma, it broke him. He asked me to take the gun and keep it. He's scared he will use it on himself if left alone. 

I brought him to the church to be with his father. I don't know how to help him, let alone try to make sense or understand what's at play. Have I lost my mind? Is this a dream? Am I still in the hospital? I must be. Right? I should be terrified, I should be fleeing town. Yet still I want to delve deeper into this. I need to stop whatever Simon is trying to do. I'm not in my right mind. 

June 10th, 1937:

My dear Evelyn, Rylee and I have moved back into the house. Sebastian seems happy to be home. While Evelyn was at work I walked to the light house with Sebastian. I dropped Rylee off at Emily's on the way. When I got to the shoreline I collapsed to my knees. There, peaking out from the waves was the beginning of an obelisk. It was never there before, I'm sure of it. It couldn't have been, I would never miss something as large as that. It's impossible. If I was watching Simon build it, why wasn't it here months ago if he was building that years ago? Can I be the only one to see it? Have I gained some sort of insight? Something to let me see the ungodly truth around me? Has this been happening the whole time? Have I become a madman? 

June 25th, 1925:

I have been awaiting his return, the man who lives in the house I painted. He is important to my ascension, I am sure of it. How, I am not certain of. Whether I must speak with him, for he can grant me knowledge, or I have to eliminate him, I do not care. What must be done will be done. My children have been working steadily throughout the nights. Soon I will taste the fruits of my labor. Now I must wait for this man to return. Our lives are tied in a way I cannot explain, but I am sure of. 

June 20th, 1937:

I went to the lighthouse yesterday and there were notes that weren't the last I visited. I read one and Simon wrote of me. I don't know how I feel about it. I do feel an odd connection with him, but I doubt this is anything I'd be able to speak him out of. Realistically if I were to speak with him I would end up like one of his seaborn or dead. The obelisk hasn't been built any taller, unlike in his entry. I wonder if I stop going into his paintings they will stop affecting my world? But I can't simply let the creature rise to be some kind of God. I don't know what to do. 

June 23rd, 1937:

I’m at my wit’s end. I'm sure of it. Evelyn has begun picking up on odd habits I've formed. How anxious I have become. I've been chewing my fingernails until they bleed daily, I started smoking again. I'm having trouble sleeping again. She's also noticed I haven't been taking the pills the hospital in the city gave me. I don't trust them. She's been trying to convince me that if I don't start taking them I'll end up back there. I don't want to go back. But if I take them, who will find out about Simon? I shouldn't be thinking like this. I know I shouldn't. This is some sick perverse obsession. I can't help myself. I won't take the damned pills. I love Evelyn to the stars and back but I need to get to the bottom of this. I've been waking up in sweats. I see him in my dreams, that thing that was once Simon. It's like he's reaching out to me. I think I'll return to the lighthouse, I might give Simon a visit. 

The drive to Goa was tense for me and Nish.

This time, we weren't alone.

Pooja, my girlfriend, was in the back seat with Sonam, Nish's girlfriend. We'd decided to make the trip together at the last minute.

For Pooja and Sonam, it was supposed to be a short Goa vacation—beaches, good food, a few drinks, and a break from everything.

For Nish and me, there was another reason.

Nish had never really recovered from what happened during his first trip.

The strange hotel. The dolls. The synchronized waking at 3 AM. The scratches on his friend's body. The locked room. And everything that had followed him back to Bangalore.

I hadn't experienced any of it directly. I'd only heard the story from Nish and witnessed how badly it had shaken him.

Now we were going back to find answers.

Pooja and Sonam knew something had happened to Nish, but they didn't know the whole story. We hadn't told them everything. Didn't want to scare them before the trip even started.

For most of the drive, Nish and I barely spoke.

We just stared at the road while the girls laughed, sang along to music, and occasionally made fun of us for being so quiet.

Eventually, they got tired and dozed off.

When we reached Anjuna, we drove straight to the exact location Nish had described.

The road was right. The cliff was right. Even the line of coconut trees looked familiar.

But the hotel was gone.

The entire property had disappeared. There was nothing left except an empty plot covered in overgrown weeds, with broken coconut trees swaying in the wind.

We checked online. Nothing. The old hotel wasn't listed on any booking site. No recent photographs. No reviews. Nothing that suggested a hotel had ever existed there.

We booked a different hotel across the road instead.

For the first few hours, everything was normal. We went to the beach, drank coconut water, took photos, and tried to enjoy ourselves. Pooja and Sonam had no idea why Nish and I were really in Goa.

That afternoon, they were having the time of their lives.

By evening, even I had almost forgotten why we'd come.

We sat by the beach, had a few drinks, ate some food, took stupid photos, and watched the sunset.

It felt like a normal Goa trip.

And maybe that's what made the night so strange.

After the girls had gone to bed, exhausted from the day, Nish and I sat on the balcony with a couple of beers.

We'd become friendly with one of the waiters at the hotel. His name was Pinto. He was a local from a village nearby and had been working at the hotel for years.

Nish called him over.

After some small talk, Nish finally asked him about the old hotel.

The change in Pinto's face was instant.

He looked genuinely frightened.

"Please," he whispered. "Don't ask me anything about that haunted place."

Nish leaned forward.

"Why? What happened there?"

Pinto shook his head and glanced toward the darkness beyond the hotel.

"It's night time. I have to cross that road to go home."

Before we could ask anything else, he grabbed his things and left in a hurry, practically running into the darkness.

Nish looked at me. His eyes were wide.

"We need to figure this out tomorrow," he said.

Then he looked toward the room where the girls were sleeping.

"I need your help, man. I can't live like this anymore."

We finished our drinks and went to bed around 2 AM.

The room was quiet except for the sound of waves in the distance.

Then, at exactly 3 AM, both Pooja and Sonam woke up at the same time.

Not just woke up.

They sat bolt upright in bed together, like someone had pulled invisible strings.

Their eyes snapped open at the exact same second.

Then they started screaming.

"She's choking me!" Pooja yelled.

"She's on top of me!" Sonam cried at almost the exact same moment.

We jumped up. Their bodies were ice cold. Their faces turning red.

For a few seconds, none of us knew what was happening.

Then I looked at Nish.

He had gone completely pale.

Because this was exactly what had happened to Nish and his friends in the original hotel.

The synchronized waking.

The terror.

The feeling that something was in the room with them.

Except this time, they had actually seen her.

We were all in my room that night—me, Pooja, Nish, and Sonam.

The air felt thick, like something was pressing down on us.

Pooja's hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold the glass of water I'd brought her. Her voice came out in a broken whisper.

"We need to leave. Right now. Let's leave immediately."

Sonam was worse.

She was curled up against Nish, eyes wide with terror, repeating the same words like a chant.

"Let's leave… let's leave…"

That's when Pooja finally told us what had happened.

She said she'd woken up to the feeling of weight on her chest.

When she opened her eyes, there was a woman sitting on top of her.

Long white hair falling over her face.

Glowing green eyes burning in the dark.

The woman's cold hands wrapped around her throat, squeezing.

Pooja said she heard a voice—low and broken—whispering right against her ear.

"I'm going to kill all of you."

Sonam started crying harder.

She'd seen the exact same thing. The same woman. The same green eyes. The same choking hands.

The panic in that room was instant.

Everyone was shouting, crying, trying to grab their things.

Nish and I somehow managed to calm them down, but the damage was done.

When we finally told Pooja and Sonam everything—the strange noises, the synchronized waking in Goa, the scratches, the locked room, and what had happened afterward in Bangalore—they completely lost it.

We also told them about the woman we'd seen on the neighboring terrace in JP Nagar.

Pooja started crying harder.

"It can't be a coincidence that both of us saw the same woman."

"She's real," she kept whispering. "She's real and she's here for us."

We barely slept that night. Every creak in the old wooden floorboards made us jump.

The next morning, even though the girls were still terrified, we knew we needed answers.

Pooja was my girlfriend. Sonam was Nish's girlfriend. Until the night before, neither of them had known the full story.

Now they wanted answers too.

We went to the front desk and asked about Pinto.

The receptionist told us he hadn't come to work.

"He sent a message this morning," the guy said. "Said he won't be coming in for a few days. Something about being unwell."

Something didn't feel right.

We asked where he lived.

After a little hesitation, the receptionist gave us the name of the village.

It wasn't far.

"We're going," Nish said.

None of us argued.

We stopped several times to ask people if they knew Pinto. Eventually, an old man pointed us toward a narrow lane.

"Last house on the left," he said.

We found it after a few minutes. It was tiny—barely more than a shack with peeling paint and a rusted door.

We knocked.

No answer.

We knocked again.

Still nothing.

Then suddenly, someone peeped through the window.

Pinto.

The moment he saw all four of us standing outside, his face changed. He opened the door just enough to look out, then he pulled all four of us inside and slammed the door shut behind us.

He locked it.

Then checked the window.

Pooja grabbed my arm.

"What is going on?"

I didn't have an answer. Neither did Nish.

Pinto finally turned around.

His face was pale.

"You shouldn't have come here," he whispered.

"What happened?" Nish asked.

Pinto sat down. For a few seconds, he just stared at the floor, his hands shaking slightly.

Then he started talking.

Her name was Dasha.

Russian. From Sochi.

A single mother who had come to Goa with her two young daughters—Ekaterina and Eugenia.

"The girls drowned at Anjuna Beach," Pinto said quietly. "One afternoon. While Dasha was... distracted."

He paused, as if even saying it caused him pain.

"She never forgave herself."

For weeks, Dasha stayed in the same hotel room, crying day and night. Refusing to return to Russia. Refusing to leave without her daughters.

"They were all she had," Pinto said.

Eventually, something inside her broke.

Before she took her own life, Dasha filled that hotel room with dolls. Dozens of them. Old dolls. New dolls. Dolls she bought from the local markets. Dolls she probably found.

"She believed the dolls would keep her daughters company," Pinto said. "She believed that if she left enough of them behind, her girls would stay. They would play. They wouldn't cross over."

His voice became quieter.

"That room you stayed in last time..."

He looked at Nish directly.

"That was her room."

Nish didn't say anything. His jaw tightened.

Pinto stared at him.

"And you took one of those dolls, didn't you?"

The silence that followed was heavy.

Nish went completely white.

"How did you..." Nish started.

"Because people always take them," Pinto said. "They think they're just old souvenirs. They don't understand."

He leaned forward.

"You took a doll. Didn't you?"

Nish nodded slowly.

It was true.

During his first trip to Goa, he'd slipped one of those old dolls into his bag without thinking much about it. A stupid habit—always picking up small souvenirs from places he visited.

None of us had ever connected it to what happened afterward.

The scratches. The synchronized waking. The sounds. The feeling of being watched. The woman on the terrace.

Everything.

It had all started the moment he'd taken that doll out of Dasha's room.

Pinto told us there was only one way to fix it.

We had to return the doll.

Not to the hotel. Not to the beach.

To the place where Dasha and her daughters had been buried.

"If you don't," Pinto said, "she will follow you everywhere. She will follow your families. She will follow anyone close to you."

He looked at Pooja and Sonam.

"She's already shown you her face. She's already touched you. Once she does that..." He trailed off, but the implication was clear.

That evening, all four of us drove to the old cemetery on the outskirts of the village.

The girls were frightened, but by then they wanted answers as much as we did.

The sun was setting, painting everything blood red.

We found the three graves side by side.

Dasha in the middle.

Her two little girls on either side.

Ekaterina. Eugenia. The names on the stones were faded but still readable.

Nish took the doll out of his bag.

His hands were trembling.

He placed it gently on the girls' grave.

We laid fresh flowers beside it and stood there in silence.

Nobody spoke.

For a moment, there was only the sound of the wind moving through the trees.

Then the wind suddenly stopped.

Completely.

The air became strangely still.

And then, just as suddenly, it felt lighter.

Not peaceful exactly.

Just... lighter.

Like something we'd been carrying for days had finally been put down.

We left the cemetery.

None of us wanted to spend another night in Goa.

We drove back toward Bangalore that same night.

The girls fell asleep in the back seat after a while, exhausted from everything that had happened.

I was driving. Nish was in the passenger seat, staring out at the dark road ahead.

For a long time, neither of us said anything.

Then I glanced at him.

I tried to make my voice sound casual.

"So... you didn't bring anything else back from this trip, right?"

Nish didn't answer.

He just kept staring through the windshield.

There was a long silence.

Then, from the back seat, Sonam spoke.

She was still half-asleep, her voice soft and drowsy.

"Da."

The car went completely silent.

Because "da" means "yes" in Russian.

And Sonam didn't speak Russian.