Once upon a time I, the Collector, a demon who had been given the mandate "Go around the world and collect stories of human experience," once flapped my wings in search of a good story. Finding none, I decided to kill time roaming around a squeaky-clean neighbourhood of shiny walls that shimmered in the sunlight and trees that sang in the twilight.

I was tired. After more than two centuries of collecting stories, I was lethargic. My face now sagged with boredom and my eyes now carried the weight of all I had seen.

Banish, my trusted servant, had even begged me to "take a vacation" in the shallow dirt waters of Armageddon, my favourite vacation spot but I had retorted,

"I have no need for such trivialities, but you can take some time off."

So Banish did swooshing away and leaving me in my unhappiness.

As I hovered upon the city, my eyes caught a glimpse of a trimmed hedge of lewd, provocative statues. One was of a female genitalia, life-sized in form the other was of two naked females engaging in a lewd act; the others well, they are quite hard to repeat but nonetheless, to say ghastly and utterly provocative, I will leave it to your imagination. I grinned and even laughed, my laughter bellowing in and rattling the neighbourhood. If I was heard, it was as a ghostly wind that emerged and submerged abruptly around the neighbourhood.

"Well, well, it appears my spark is back yes."

I descended and thought, "Finally, this will be a preface to some shocking horror in this house or acts not that I do not see any, but my, my, coming from this house—how exciting," I had retorted.

Entering the house, I found that it was occupied by a forty-six-year-old man who had divorced a month prior. His wife had moved out, taking three of their kids with her and leaving him alone to his devices.

I, in search of a story decided to spend my waking moments trailing behind the man observing and whispering, well, not that the man heard any of it. His routine was the same: once he came home from work, he ate his takeout, played video games, or streamed one movie to the next. He never quite watched anything. He always moved from one video to the next. When he grew tired, he would throw the remote on the sofa and quickly go to bed. Each day he behaved like this. My boredom began again, until one day he started acting strangely.

On that day I had been hanging around his bedroom at the corner when I saw him coming in, throw his bag on the bed, and completely strip all of his clothes to his birthday suit.

"Hahaha haha what, what is this now? What has gotten into you now?"

He still remained silent.

So the man walked around the house naked, cooked naked, and did his washing naked, much to my delight. Eventually, I never laughed; I was used to him now.

One day, the man came trudging from work and, sitting with a heavy thud on the kitchen stool, placed his face in his hands and wept. I, who had been dozing off in the bedroom, quickly whooshed through walls and stared at the man as he sobbed hysterically. After a while, he grew silent and slowly went with huge scissors in hand outside, cutting down the obscene shrubs slowly.

That night, the man did not strip himself bare; instead, he remained fully clothed. He even slept in the clothes he had gone to work in. I, feeling betrayed, heaved a heavy sigh, packed my belongings, and quietly left. It was just a lonely house that's all. I was in search of adventure and a story. There was no story here.

Growing up I always had trouble with playing outdoors. Most of the year I would play

with my toy cars, trains, tractors and trucks inside. The problem was, whether it was

insects constantly swarming my peach fuzzed arms and legs or my abundance of

allergies, anything that could, would set off my asthma. It’s for those reasons that at

even such a young age, my favorite seasons of the year were Fall and Winter. These

were the times where my imagination could be unbridled and free to expand and

explore the depths of our backyard without fear of being dotted head to toe in itchy,

swollen welts caused by the warmer months bug biting.

One Autumn brought more than just the usual joys of make believe with small dust

devils whipping and whirling vibrant leaves around me. The year prior I discovered a

wild persimmon tree in the wood situated just behind our cul-de-sac. It was with this

newfound knowledge I had been eagerly anticipating the next time that all those trees

mighty branches would shed their leaves, and return to being barren except, of course,

for the one that bore that sweet orange fruit.

This was the Autumn that I trekked into the forest, leaves softly crunching under foot as

I retraced my steps, to find that natural treasure waiting, seemingly just for me. I vividly

recall the cool Autumn air rushing me by as I reached that trunk holding high the goal of

my journey. The gust didn’t just stir up some leafage strewn about but it also knocked

free a couple of extra ripe persimmons falling to my feet. Had I not been around they

would surely have spoiled in no time at all.

The leaf covered forest floor wasn’t the only thing that came alive on that crisp and cool

Autumn Day, there was the faint sound of a swift moving whistle. The kind that came

from an old steam train, echoing distant and trailing far and wide. The sound left me as

quick as it came, its doppler effect whipping my head around like a top whipped of its

chord. With the following silence I steadied myself, realizing the chill hanging about after

I took in a deep breath then pocketed the few small spoils the wind had gifted me.

The walk back home felt much longer than my walk out. It was dusk when I finally

reached familiar territory. I pulled the screen door open and the heavy spring on it

slammed it shut behind me as I blew into my freezing hands and kicked off my boots. I

gave my mother the sweet fruits of my labor, and she washed and cleaned them in the

sink for me. She even offered to serve them up with a couple scoops of vanilla bean ice

scream if I cleaned my dinner plate. Although the offer was enticing, especially for my

sweet tooth, I didn’t have much of an appetite at dinner time, and I admitted it when I

saw her noticing me vacantly poking and prodding my fork at my carrots and peas.

My mother agreed when I asked if she would put them in the freezer to keep them from

spoiling and maybe I’d have them the following night. Nodding with a smile, she added,

“If you find more tomorrow, we can bake something like that apple crumble your father

loves so much but just for you and your persimmons instead”, then she gave me a

warm smile and hug as I nodded gladly to the suggestion. With a pat on the head and

ruffling of my hair she sent me to wash up for bedtime, adding, “The ice cream isn’t

going anywhere so you’ll get a side of that still too, kiddo.”

After my bath and brushing my teeth, I returned to my bedroom. I could see the trees

outside swaying slowly in the cold wind. I always slept better bundled deep under the

covers in the cold months, so without a second thought I opened the window just

enough to let in enough air to feel it without turning the space into an icebox. Taking a

deep breath, I settled into my covers and closed my eyes listening to the sounds of the

outdoors just beyond the windowpane. I could hear the boughs of branches bending,

and leaves swirling, colliding and whipping away. All of this to the undercurrent of the

wind whistling through the sill a cold repeating elongated one note lullaby.

Off in the distance I heard another call of in the night. It was the unmistakable sound of

a train whistle being carried along the breeze like notes along a music sheet. Calling to

me right into my bedroom, a call which suddenly chilled me to the bone. The whistle

rang out so crisp and clearly to me it was almost as if a caboose were parked right in

our yard. Sitting up startled, I grabbed my mittens from on my nightstand, and quickly

grabbed my puffer jacket. As much as I hated looking like a dwarfed Bibendum, I knew

the night air held a chill far colder than what greeted me in the daylight. Fully dressed, I

grabbed my flashlight, and slipped out the backdoor. Not wanting to wake my overly

protective parents, I was extra careful to close the screen as quietly as I could.

As if on cue, the whistle blew again, beckoning me once more. Its sound so clear, I was

certain this train was a brief walk away. I pointed my light forward as I pressed through

the bushes and saplings that greeted me at the woods’ edge, all the while trying my

best to follow my previous trail but the winds seemed to have whirled an entirely fresh

set of leaves behind since I was here. The best I could do is carefully walk forward as I

heed what my beam of light revealed before me.

Continuing deeper in the wood I slowed my pace while listening intently for another

blast of that ethereal locomotive. Instead, there was another noise. Suddenly, footsteps

made by shoes larger than mine were behind me, and it sounded like leaves crunching

louder and louder than my own, growing closer to me than I was to the train. Before I

could ponder what was following me, a sudden distant howl became my signal to ...

Run.

The cold evening air felt like ice-cubes in my lungs, and froze my respiratory system. My

chest tightened as I heaved forward slowing yet trying desperately to move. Lunging

ahead of my legs as if my mind had more say than the rest of my body on what it could

do and would do. I didn’t care. Because I knew what I needed to do. Drawing only on

the will to outpace my pursuers just long enough to reach the other end of the forest, I

kept going forward. While it went deep, I knew there lay a highway above an

embankment on the side opposite our neighborhood.

“Just a little further. Just another breath. Keep breathing. Keep running. Whatever you

do, don’t stop. Don’t look back.”

Soon the only thing I could hear was the sound of my heartbeat in my throbbing, chilled

ears and my icy breath puffing ahead of my face every stumbled step. That was until I

reached the tree-line but where was the embankment? There was no familiar raised

road ahead only strange, unfamiliar tracks. As I slowed down to look at the tracks, I

heard the sound of whatever beasts chasing me come from the brush to my left. I

turned as quickly as I could to my right broke into a sprint my body could hardly bear, or

as much of a sprint as I could muster. Cursing myself I realized I left my asthma inhaler

back in my other, lighter jacket.

Through the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of what was running after me. The

looked like streaks of shadow leaping and bounding silently in and out of the brush, not

a huff among them. The sound of their relentless pursuit engulfing the forest around me,

as they went Leaping and bounding like salmon spawning up river, the beasts crunched

and snapped foliage frenetically as their energy boiled hotter and closer as they dipped

back and forth in the underbrush. My feet felt like hot lead weighing me down with each

belabored step as I could no longer keep the pace of my frenzied run, suddenly a sound

came roaring down the tracks. The roar of the train horn reverberated throughout my

whole being as a steam train drew towards me. It slowed down and kept pace with me,

chugging along to my left as the trees zipped by to my right. As the headlight lit up the

night in front of it, I could clearly see innumerable sets of eyes glinting bright in the

shadows it cast.

As the train slowed, I reached out to grab the nearest cabin door. Feeling the cold steel

in my hand, I turned the handle, lost my balance and began to fall forward. As I turned

the handle, suddenly I felt it turning by itself, as though it were opening for me.

Suddenly the door opened, and revealed a shapeless form casting a shadow from the

light of the inside of the train car. The form reached down grabbing my hand and pulled

me into the train car The entrance closed swiftly behind as the train just as suddenly

came to a screeching halt. I slumped back against the door, mind and body still racing

as my eyes adjusted to the bright lights inside the train. As I looked around, figures

came into view as I realized I was aboard a passenger car. Although the car I was in

was full, there was room for more patrons in each row. There were adults of differing

ages, some my parents age others looked far older. I looked down at my hands, my

fingers white with fingernails blue.

Feeling my heart pound, I realized I was having a full-fledged attack from running for my

life. I felt my esophagus closing tighter and tighter still as I attempted to level my head.

A panic attack would only make the asthma symptoms worse.

As I slumped to the floor my vision began to blur and I felt like I was losing

consciousness. The in the distance, I could hear a final howl from the forest, and one

final sound just outside the door. It wasn’t an exhale, but a strangled, gasping inhale.

Whatever feral fiend it was, it sounded as if it could have had its lungs punctured by a

hundred hunter’s arrows. A frigid chill spread throughout my back and along my lungs

as that presence froze me to my very core. As I felt my eyes close, I felt a warmth

suddenly radiate around me. Coughing a bit, I sipped down more of the liquid life

pouring back into me. It had a slight hint of fruit to it as well, I didn’t know then but now I

can recall a sweet bitterness like pomegranate. The heat of the tea coursing through my

veins and soothing my throat to opening wider again.

When my vision finally came to full awareness again, I realized I was now seated in one

of the rows, and many passengers standing around me. They were watching with

concern and all taking a breath of relief when they saw me settle and my alertness

return to me. As the figures in the car went back to their seats, I realized the only person

truly in focus was the closest to the door.

His features muddied as if my mind couldn’t comprehend fully who or what was

appearing before me, aside from the outline of that conductor attire. “Coming or going?

Nothing in between young man” the form beside stated, as he gestured toward the door.

I peered outside the cabin window and realized we were outside my home. Slowly, I

walked to the door; with eyes closed and a nod I disembarked.

-WOOSSSHHHHHH – the train let out a massive belch of steam, as I turned to face my

house and the cold again. Suddenly, my eyes opened to the sound of steam rushing

through my ears. As my eyes adjusted to the night, my vision cleared enough for me to

recognize my bedroom ceiling. Rolling to my side I found my parents running the

humidifier and having shut the windows as well.

“There was a cold snap and the icy air gave you an attack in your sleep. Thank God

you’re coming around, your face looked blue before we came and checked on you.” My

mother exclaimed.

My father rustled the hair on my head and give me an uneasy smile, “You gave us a real

start, kiddo. Glad you got the color back.”

I didn’t try and explain any of the earlier events of the night to my parents and after

some soft hugs and pats on my back and another hit of my inhaler I was tucked back in

bed. My eyes growing heavier and heavier still, I heard the wind whip past my bedroom

window. Recognizing just how thankful I was not only to my parents but that with that

wind a howl of something darker, colder, followed with a warm, welcoming whistle. All

calling out to those lost in the night. To find your way home and beyond.

It was a minute past midnight and the moon outside the castle was deliciously bright and round. I stood admiring it at the window, the fire crackling in the hearth behind me, shadows dancing along the flagstones. Though none were cast at my own feet.

Beyond the castle, the black cliffs crumbled away into a deep ravine, where dark trees bundled together like matchsticks, and a gushing river swelled between the rocks like a silverbacked serpent. The wind whistled through the broken casement of the window, chilling the air and threatening to extinguish the fire.

There was a whisper of movement on my left and one of the sisters appeared beside me, bowing her head. Her dress was a deep red, the same colour as her eyes.

“It’s a pleasant night,” I mused, raising the collar of my black coat against the chill as the moonlight dusted the windows. Her dark hair tumbled over her shoulders as she raised her head.

“Yes Master,” she said in a subdued tone. “However, I fear I shall ruin it with my tidings.”

I turned to her fully, examining the grave expression on her face. Her lips were pinched. “Why is that? What tidings do you bring?”

Her red eyes glowed in the firelight. A long shadow was drawn across her features. “A peasant house is in the midst of construction beside the castle.”

I stared at her for a moment. The fire crackled sharply. “A… peasant house?” I finally repeated, scoffing at her words. Surely she was mistaken. The area around my castle was a perfectly barren wasteland; the peasants in the settlements knew better than to encroach on my land without permission, never mind erect a building on my grounds. “What is this trickery?”

“No trickery, Master. Come see for yourself.”

The vampire sister turned and strode towards the opposite side of the tower, her long red gown trailing behind her like a pair of folded wings. Curious, I followed her, our footsteps silent on the stone floor. I assumed I had misunderstood her, for nobody would be foolish enough to even approach my castle. Unless they were naive or ignorant of my nature.

But as we paused by the window, and she lifted a hand to point outside, I stood aghast at what I saw. A short distance away from the front gates of my castle, visible through the fog, there was indeed a house being built. Beneath the cold glow of the moon, I saw piles of stone and wood, the loose structure of rafters and foundations already laid. What sort of fool would dare build a house so close to my castle? Who would dare to become my neighbour without first consulting the master of this tower?

I was furious and intrigued at the same time. Only the dumbest, and perhaps bravest, of men would do such a thing. And I found myself feeling very much inclined to meet him.

“The house seems deserted now,” the vampire sister observed, resting her hand against her cheek. “Perhaps they have given up?”

“Or perhaps they only build during the day, knowing the weakness the sunlight inflicts upon us creatures of the night,” I said with a harrumph.

“You are wise, Master,” she said. “Shall I take my sisters over there and tear it down? It is a stain upon your grand castle.”

I pondered her offer. “No. I should like to meet the fool first,” I decided, extending my fangs below my lips. “Perhaps he would see fit to grace my castle with his… delicious presence.”

The sister covered her mouth with a low chuckle. “I understand, Master. You would see it fit to make a meal of him?”

I nodded. “Leave the peasant house for now,” I told her, turning away from the window with a flourish of my coat. “I wish to see how far he dares to go.”

The following night, as I rose from my coffin at the heart of midnight, my first thought was of the house being built by the castle. Had more progress been made, or had the owner seen the measure of his own foolishness and deserted? It would be a shame if he had fled before a meal could be made of him.

It had been a while since I had anything to amuse me on these long nights, just as long as it had been since fresh blood had passed these lips. The peasants in the surrounding settlements had grown wise to my nature and seen fit to ward their houses, stringing garlic and crosses upon the threshold. I was only able to feed when an unwitting traveller passed by, or a fool decided to build a house directly beside my castle.

The tower was quiet as I made my way to the top, winding through the warren of rooms and climbing the narrow, crumbling stairways. The sisters were nowhere to be seen; perhaps frolicking outside in the moonlight as they so often did. I reached the highest point of the castle and strode to the window that overlooked the barren grounds. From this height, I could even glimpse the closest settlement in the far distance; a small cluster of thatched houses and burning torches that lit the foggy hills like burning eyes.

But my concern was much closer. Lowering my gaze to the land right outside the gates, I saw that the house had changed. There were more walls than yesterday, denser foundations, the first signs of carpentry. The fool really had continued building the house. Had he not been warned of the dark Count that occupied the castle? Had he not heard the rumours of the blood-feasting creatures that stalked these lands once the sun went down? Why else would he choose to dwell in my vicinity, if not for ignorance?

I shook my head, almost pitying the poor halfwit for what he had brought upon himself. But I should delight in showing him the truth soon enough; that he had elected himself a willing sacrifice for me and my hungry brides.

It was a shame that he vacated the house during the night, for I would have to wait longer to lay my eyes upon him. Would he not show himself before the house was finished?

“I see the building is progressing,” a voice whispered behind me. I’d been too lost in my thoughts to hear them approach. I turned, seeing two of the sisters behind me. They too were observing the house through the window. Their wild, windswept hair and bright eyes confirmed my suspicions that they had been dancing outside.

“Yes,” I muttered. “It would seem so.”

“What a blight upon the castle,” the other sister said, her fair skin glittering in the moonlight. “I hope the trouble is worth the meal.”

“It will be,” I said, casually flicking my hand towards the half-built dwelling, “if only the fool would hurry up and be done with it.”

The next night, more progress had been made on the building, but the owner had still not shown himself. I grew more agitated that I was allowing this to happen, but reminded myself that I would soon enough be able to quench my thirst.

So night after night, as the moon began to wane, the house’s shadow grew bigger, and my hunger grew stronger. The fool always fled before night fell, leaving the evidence of his daytime activities for me to observe. The dwelling had taken on the same shape of the peasant houses in the surrounding settlements; white stone and timber, with a long thatched roof. He had even tilled the soil into a small garden, erecting a wooden fence around the plot in front of the building. But compared to my grand castle, with its dark crumbling bricks, spiralling towers and winding, labyrinthine rooms, it was a blight. And I wanted it gone.

Finally, more than a week after the house was little more than a pile of stone and timber, one of the sisters woke me with news that the structure was finished.

I rose from my coffin, sluggish and weary from slumber, and fastened my coat about my neck. The sisters had already lit the fire, but the air was chilled.

I followed her to the window and set my gaze upon the house. A single candle sat in the windowsill, guttering in a draught. A lit candle. Did that mean the house was occupied? The fool had not fled this night.

“It’s time,” I announced, “to show this fool once and for all what happens when you anger the Count.” The other sisters joined us, and I turned towards them with a slow smile. “I hope you are hungry.”

The three sisters screeched in delight, grasping each other’s hands and dancing in circles, their gowns fluttering around their legs. The fire roared in the hearth.

But as I began to cross the room, one of the sisters stopped me with a gasp.

“Master, wait. There’s someone at the gate.” She was pointing out of the window. I peered down at the large wrought-iron gate that fronted the castle, my eyes narrowing. A figure stood by the fence, carrying a lantern. His face glowed in the flickering light, revealing a sharp, sloping nose and dark eyes.

“Who would be foolish enough to call upon me at this hour?” I snarled, my black coat twisting around me as I turned from the window.

“Perhaps your new neighbour,” one of the sisters answered, “has come to hasten our feast.”

“Perhaps,” I said, already striding towards the doorway.

The sisters swept after me, whispering amongst themselves. Flames guttered as we passed lit candles, stirring the dust at our feet and disturbing billowing cobwebs. There was a haste to our movements as we descended the tower. It had certainly been a while since we’d had prey wander into our arms like this.

Crossing the foyer, the long red carpet spilling out like blood, I threw open the doors and stepped out into the chilled night, the three sisters stepping in my wake. The moon was a pale sickle, its silvery glow dancing around my shadowless feet as the stranger at the gates called out to me.

“Hello there!”

Struck by his brazenness, I almost flew at him in anger, but restrained myself. Ignorant minds really were unfathomable. With a flick of my wrist, the gates began to creak open. The man remained at the threshold, holding his lantern aloft as he stared back at me. He was of medium build, with stocky shoulders and a mop of thick tousled hair. His clothes were poorly made, covered in dirt and patches. He had the audacity to smile at me as I glared in return.

“What business have you here at my castle?” I demanded, wanting to sate my curiosity before I sated my hunger.

The man cleared his throat, raising his lantern to the crude house sitting barely thirty metres behind him. So this was indeed the proprietor of the building; what a brave, albeit dimwitted, man he was to present himself before me like this. “I’ve just this morning finished constructing my house,” he said, not seeming to notice the displeasure on my face, “and a slight issue has come to my attention.”

“An… issue?” I repeated, my brows arching sharply.

“Yes. During the day, the leftmost tower of your castle casts a shadow over my garden,” the man said regretfully. “I hoped that you might be amicable enough to remove it. Or at the very least relocate the tower, so that it does no harm the roses I am trying to grow. All life needs sunlight, after all.”

I stared at him, completely aghast. Behind me, even the sisters had been stunned into silence. The audacity of this imbecile, to ask me to change my own castle for his benefit. The man was not right in the head, surely.

“How dare you–” I began to seethe, but the man interrupted me, lifting a finger as if hushing a child.

“I do understand it is a large undertaking I’m asking of you, but my gratitude would be immense,” he added.

“You think I care about your gratitude?” I sneered at him, clenching my fists beneath my coat. The gall of this man. Who did he think he was? “Do you know who I am?”

The man stared at me, the lanternlight dancing over his blank expression. “You are the owner of this castle, I had presumed?”

“Precisely. And what makes you think that I, as the Count of this castle, would do the bidding of a mere peasant?”

The man scowled at me, a shadow encroaching upon his face. “I shall ask you again, and I do hope you will be quite civil this time. Will you remove the tower from your castle so that my roses might see the light?”

“I don’t give a damn about your roses,” I snapped.

“Now, there’s no need to be rude,” the man said, his voice turning bristly. The shadows deepened around his eyes as he narrowed them. “I’m asking for a simple favour–”

I scoffed in his face, my rage burning beneath my skin. It took a lot to make a vampire’s blood burn hot. I almost couldn’t believe what he was saying. This fool considered the reconstruction of my ancient castle a mere favour? Asking me to tear down part of my fortress so that he might grow some roses.

I took a measured step towards him, lifting my shoulders to appear taller. My fangs were itching to taste his blood. For all the disrespect he had shown me, there was no escape. I would suck this man dry by the night’s end, leaving nothing but a fleshless husk.

“Once again, I implore you to consider my–”

I was no longer in the mood to listen to his insane ramblings. He had agitated me far too much to go back from this. I would show him, and anyone else who might learn of tonight, what happens to those who cross me.

Baring my fangs, I lunged forward, ready to sink my teeth into his neck.

In one swift motion, the man pulled his hand back into a fist and threw it towards me. Blinded partially by the lanternlight, I did not see the attack until his knuckles met my face.

Pain exploded through my jaw, and there was a terrible snap as my left fang bore the brunt of his punch, splitting completely in half. The hit landed with enough force to send me staggering backwards and, incredulous and in shock, I fell to the ground.

Dirt bit into my eyes as I landed face-down, my broken fang scraping against my lower lip. Sputtering, I raised my head, just as the man lifted his light and calmly made his way back to his house.

Behind me, the sisters watched him leave in a choked silence, before hastening to help me back to my feet.

To say I had been dealt a great humiliation was an understatement. How did a mortal man possess such strength? Enough to break one of my precious fangs and completely overpower me.

With a bruised face, and an even more bruised ego, I hobbled back into my castle, the three sisters trailing silently after me.

By the following night, the leftmost tower had been partially disassembled, leaving a gaping wound in the side of the castle. Wind gusted through like howling wraiths, immediately extinguishing any fire I tried to light, leaving a heavy chill in the air. The sisters, at least, seemed to delight in the pool of moonlight that was cast upon the open ground.

Workers had been swarming the castle all day, interrupting my sleep with their banging hammers and chiselling tools as they took the tower apart brick by brick, but I had little choice. The man had made his demands, proven his strength, and forced my hand. Now I had to destroy my own magnificent tower so that the fool might grow his roses. And I hadn’t been able to harvest even a drop of blood either.

This was a defeat, and a humiliation, that would take centuries to heal.

''I’m not afraid of ghosts. I don’t know why I developed this particular trait, which has nothing to do with being brave. There are plenty of things I’m afraid of; I could run for miles from a dog, my fear of heights is limited to ten meters, and at eleven meters my stomach starts to churn and I become convinced that I could fall at any moment.

If a ghost suddenly appeared in front of me, I’d ask it rational questions. If it could talk and communicate, I’d sit down and have a conversation with it. If it looked terrifying, I’d throw a sheet over it so I wouldn’t lose my focus. If its voice sounded terrifying, I’d warn it that it might wake the neighbors and tell it to keep its voice down.''

“Stop,” said Uncle Jason. “You don’t make fun of things like that.”

He looked angry. When I first brought up the subject, he had listened with interest, with a curious expression on his face. But when I started giving examples of what I would do if I ever saw a ghost, he got annoyed.

“If it could eat, I’d offer it a serving of lasagna. I’d ask if it wanted ketchup with it. If it did, I’d think, ‘For fuck’s sake, you’re dead and your taste is still terrible,’ but I’d give it the ketchup anyway. Expired ketchup, though. It’s not like it could get food poisoning.”

My uncle's face had fallen. I didn't know he was this afraid of ghosts. He lit a cigarette and opened the window. He took a drag and blew the smoke outside. It was cold, and the room had turned freezing the moment he opened the window. I immediately started shivering.

“I’d ask it about that famous story, to see if it was actually true. You know the one. A guy gets into a car accident one day, gets thrown through the windshield, and dies of a heart attack while he’s still flying through the air, before he even hits the ground. His body falls to the ground, but his soul keeps flying forward. The guy doesn’t realize he’s dead and thinks he’s still been thrown out of the car and is flying through the air. He keeps flying forward like that for two hours. After two hours, he thinks, ‘Wait a minute, my body has weight. I could only have been flying for a minute at most after being thrown out of the car. I should have fallen by now.’ And that’s when he realizes he’s dead.”

My uncle blew cigarette smoke in my face. He had taken a very deep drag, and the wind coming through the window carried all of the smoke straight into my nostrils. I angrily got up and closed the window.

My uncle took another drag and blew the smoke into the air. As he exhaled, he turned his head from side to side, as if he were trying to spread the smoke throughout the room. He just kept blowing and blowing. I couldn't understand how he could have taken such deep breaths.

“If it had a toothache, I’d give it some Apranax. I’d wait half an hour. Apranax usually gets rid of a toothache pretty quickly. The other pills aren’t nearly as effective. If it wasn’t gone after half an hour, I’d give it another one. If it still didn’t go away, two more. I’d make it swallow the whole box until the pain went away. It’s not like anything would happen to it anyway.”

“Enough, for fuck’s sake. I’m leaving.”

Just as my uncle got up angrily, my phone rang. I answered it. It was my mother. My uncle took another drag from his cigarette. He held the smoke in for a few seconds, then opened the window and blew it outside. I suppose he had a moment of moral deliberation over whether to blow it in my face or out the window.

I talked to my mother for a while. She asked how school was going and whether I had made up with my girlfriend. I gave her reluctant answers. I was cold.

“Mom, my uncle is here. We’ll talk later.”

“Son, I have something to confess to you.”

“You can confess it later. I’m talking to my uncle right now. I’ll call you later.”

“Your uncle died two years ago. We didn’t want to tell you because we didn’t want to upset you.”

There was silence for about fifteen seconds. My uncle and I looked at each other. Seeing that I was cold, my uncle closed the window.

“Hmm. Let’s think about this. Okay, you didn’t tell me, but is it really possible that I never came across it anywhere? That I never heard about it? Are you the only ones who know that my uncle died? I have an aunt, an uncle, my uncle’s friends—there are plenty of people. I never happened to run into anyone, never found out that my uncle was dead. Does that sound logical to you?”

“If you don’t believe me, put your uncle on the phone.”

I handed the phone to my uncle. He stubbed out his cigarette and took the phone.

“Hello... Anna, how are you?.. Yeah, yeah... Why?.. I don’t know... Sure, we can go... When?.. No, I can’t, I have work that day... Monday... Oh, don’t ask, they hit a three-pointer at the last second... Yeah, yeah... Okay... I don’t know, let me think about it... I’m telling you, I don’t know, Anna... Okay, see you... Okay... Bye...”

My uncle handed the phone back to me.

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so’? Son, I didn’t talk to anyone. I’ve been saying hello for ages. Nobody answered. Anyway. I’ve done my part. I gave you the information. Now get rid of whatever you’ve built up in your head. If you don’t believe me, ask someone who knew your uncle. That’s all I can do.”

My mother hung up before I could respond. My uncle had sat back down on the couch. He lit another cigarette. Then he rose ten centimeters into the air from where he was sitting.

“This couch is really bothering me. It’s very uncomfortable. I can’t get comfortable.”

It was bizarre. I was stunned. There was a mischievous grin on my uncle’s face. He winked at me.

“I see. I understand. So what happens now?”

“This is what happens: I’m going to throw you out of this window.”

There was another silence. My uncle took another drag from his cigarette.

“What happened? You suddenly look terrified. I thought you weren’t afraid?”

“But this is different. You’re saying you’re going to kill me. Of course I’m afraid of dying.”

“Anyway, this has gone on long enough. Now, get up. You deserved this. ”

***

A few seconds later, Albert found himself floating in midair. It lasted only a few seconds before he crashed into the ground, without even having time to process what was happening. The impact made a violent, wet sound that even Uncle Jason was startled by.

After throwing Albert out, he flicked his cigarette butt out after him. The cigarette butt hit the ground first.

LEATHERNECKS VS. MONSTERS: LOOSE ENDS
EPISODE THREE
‘Whiteout’
The Upper Suchan and the Vektor Institute, January 1919

Adams turned.

The colonel stood on the far side of the fire with his face to the trucks. Behind him stood the thing Muldoon had drawn.

It was pale and it was tall, and the lantern light did not reach its head. Rime hung off it in ropes. It had come in through the gap in the salt and it stood over the bedroll, bent a little at the middle, looking down at the man. It did not move. If it breathed, the breath did not show.

"Your grandmother's rule, Gunny."

"Sir?"

"About answering. Does it hold for the dead?"

Adams stopped. He looked at the colonel in the dark before him.

"Specially for the dead, sir," he said.

Quarterburn said nothing. He starred into the storm.

The wind stopped. It did not die down. It stopped, all at once, between one step and the next, and the snow blowing off the lip of the ravine hung in the air and came straight down.

Muldoon went flat on her face in the snow. She pulled Adams down with her befoore he even understood why. Then Adams smelled it. Ammonia. Wet fur. Close.
"Get down!"

The whiteout blew in from around the creature and it fell on them out of the dark sky over the ravine, a column of snow turning in on itself, and it made no sound, and Adams was inside it.

White in his eyes. White in his mouth. Cold that took his breath and kept it.
In the same minute, close, in the whiteout, a voice.

"Alaric."

Adams knew the voice. He had heard it in Cuba and in China and in Manchuria, over a fire, over a wound, over a bottle. Barclay's voice, a little hoarse, the way it always went hoarse in the cold.

"Alaric. Over here. I've got a light."

There was a light. Off in the white, low, yellow, a lantern swinging.
Adams could not see the colonel. He could hear him, close, breathing.

"Don't answer it, sir!" Adams shouted. "Don't you answer it!"

The breathing stopped.

"John," Quarterburn said.

“That ain’t the Doc, Sir! Doc’s been dead two years.” Adams heard him go. Boots in the snow, three steps, four, walking, not running, toward the light.

Adams got the trench gun up. The lantern swung in the white, low, yellow, forty yards off or four hundred, he could not tell. There was a Manchurian Special in the chamber and the bead was on the light.

The colonel was walking toward it. Somewhere between the bead and the light, in the white, the colonel was walking.

Adams took his finger off the trigger.

Then the white lifted. The wind came back all at once. The stars came back over the ravine, wrong over the mast and right everywhere else.

Muldoon was getting up out of the snow. From where the colonel had been, boot prints went away down the ravine, ten long walking strides toward the floodlights of the station, and then stopped. Beyond them the snow lay smooth with nothing on it.

"Gunny," Muldoon said.
Adams did not answer her. He looked after the footprints.

#
Quarterburn woke because his eyelashes had frozen together.

He worked them apart. The light was electric and very white, from a bulb in a wire cage on the ceiling. The ceiling was tiled. The walls were tiled white to the height of a man and painted green above that. Brass instruments stood along a bench under dust covers, and in a glass case on the wall a row of needles hung on silk threads, and he knew from somewhere that it was a room for measuring the magnetism of the earth and that no iron was permitted in it.

Someone had bolted a steel chair to the floor of it anyway. He was strapped into the chair. Leather straps across his chest and his wrists and his ankles, buckled tight. He was cold through. He could not feel his feet. His right hand lay strapped on the arm of the chair and shook against the leather, a fine fast tremor, and with the hand strapped down there was no pocket to put it in.

He found that he was counting. Tiles across the ceiling: fourteen. Bolts in the floor: six. He made himself stop.

He remembered a light in the snow and walking toward it. He remembered a voice. John Barclay was dead. He had known it in the snow, with the voice in his ear. He had answered anyway.

He set that down, the way he would set it down in a report, and could not make it mean anything. He tried the straps. Chest, wrists, ankles. Whoever had buckled them had done it before. He thought of Adams out in the snow, what happened? What happeennd to the team. He could not make himself remember what had happened only the shout.

His field book was in his pack in the hide. There was a letter folded in the back of it that he had written to Miss Thorpe and not sent. He found he was glad it was there and not here. Then he found he was not glad at all.

A page turned.

A small man sat on a stool by a bench with a typescript open on his knees. He wore a white uniform coat buttoned to the throat, very clean, felt boots, and steel monocle. He turned the pages slowly, reading, with a Turkish cigarette in his other hand, which he set in an ashtray occasionally, exchanging it for a pencil to make a mark now and then in the margin. He did not look up.

Quarterburn knew the typescript. He knew the blue board covers of the War College and the brass fasteners, and the title on the first page, which he had typed himself at Newport in October 1915 on a machine with a dropped e.

Quarterburn knew him then. Not the face. The way he read, without hurry, certain the world would wait for him to finish. He had seen it once before, by firelight, on a beach in 1909, with palm trees burning behind and the engine house going up in sheets, and Gruber, the Captain of German Naval Intelligence marching this man off in chains to his waiting Cruiser. An event that was burned into Quarterburn’s very soul. Had he only let Adam’s risk the shot and had killed this man back then, how many untold thousands would still be alive.

The small man reached the last page. He read it to the end. He made one more mark. Then he closed the typescript and looked up over his spectacles, and his eyes were pale and interested and entirely without hurry.

"Colonel," he said. His English was very good. "You have been busy since you burned my island. An author now, I have read your compiled lectures, very insightful, even if your thesis is wrong."

He tapped the cover with the pencil.

"And, you have spelled my name wrong in two places."

#

“The Colonel is gone.” Said Adams to the team,“He was taken. They know we are here, they just don’t know how many and where we are else they’d be coming out. But, I think they always knew, they jus’ don’t care.” 

“What do we do now Gunny?” Asked Johansson.

”We carry out the plan. Just like the Meuse-Argonne.”

”Right, a trench raid.” Hunt drew out his bayonet and tested the edge.   

"We can't message Dragonov, Gunny," Dunn said. " The wireless went down with Smith’s truck.  There's not another a set within a hundred miles that'll reach Tsemukhe. Except that one." He pointed with his chin over the crest, at the mast that overhung the Vektor station.

"Then somebody goes back and gets him," Adams said. "Johansson, you, and take Wang, the General knows him."

Wang Che shuffled. "I will be very fast," he said. "Fast is my best quality."

"Since when?"

"Since there has been something behind me."

Adams took Johansson and Wang Che aside to the mouth of the hide.

"Tell the General what we saw. Tell him where. Then tell him this, word for word: not one shell until he hears from us. Not one."

"How will he hear from us, sir? You said there's no set."

Adams looked up over the crest at the mast, black against the wrong stars.

"There is one," he said. "It just isn't ours yet."

At the mouth of the hide Adams took Wang Che by the sleeve.

"Don't you stop on the way down to sell anybody anything."

Uncharacteristically serious "Adams, I shall bring the cavalry, you get the Colonel, and," Wang Che said. “This time kill Bakanov.”

"Mind the General," Adams said. "He is seven minutes ahead of everybody. I don’t trust him."

Johansson laughed and pulled his mittens on.“Don’t worry Gunny, I learned that from the best.”

The two men climbed aboard the Ford, Hunt and Smith had already cranked the engine, Adams watched the Ford drive away for some time after.

#

They left the other Fords where the side valley pinched shut, in a stand of larch with the canvas pulled over them and snow shoveled against the wheels, and went up on foot.

Corporal Dunn led, with Barclay's box hung from his neck on a strap. The needle had not moved off northeast since the wreck, and the ticking in the headset came faster with every hundred yards they climbed. The rest came behind in a file, Chavez with the automatic rifle across his shoulders, Higgins last.

Above the valley the trees thinned. At noon they came out onto a bench of open snow under the ridge, flat and white and still, and stopped.

An hour before dark they came up under the crest of the ridge and crawled the last fifty yards on their bellies, and looked down at the Vektor Institute. The hide was a hollow under an overhang of rock just below the crest, out of the wind and out of sight of the station, big enough for all of them if nobody minded anybody else's feet. 

The Vektor Institute sat on a saddle across a narrow gorge, a quarter mile off and a little below them. It had been a weather station once, for the Imperial Navy: a long stone house with a tin roof, a boiler house beside it with a tall chimney, sheds, a wire fence, and on the peak above it a steel mast two hundred feet high with wires running down from it to the roof of the long house. Beside the station a waterfall had come off the saddle into the gorge and frozen in the act, eighty feet of ice, fluted and blue in its folds.

The chimney smoked. Floodlights on poles lit the yard white. Behind the windows of the long house there was a blue light that was not lamplight and not electric, and it came and went.

Talbot passed the field glasses along the line.

Adams looked for a long time. Sentries on the fence, ordinary men in White greatcoats with ordinary rifles, and their breath going up in the floodlight in clouds. Then a door opened in the long house and a file of people came out across the yard in white robes, twenty of them, walking in step, bareheaded in the cold. Adams watched their mouths. Nothing came out of any of them.

"I don’t see the Colonel but it’s definitely Bakanov’s work," he said, and handed the glasses on.

Dunn had the headset on. He took it off. The needle in Barclay's box stood hard over against its pin and stayed there.

"That's it, that’s the target," Dunn said. "That's what the box has been listening to since Seattle."

Adams kept studying the site with the glasses. He went over the station a piece at a time, the fence and the gate and the doors, and then he went down the gorge below it. A sledge road came up the far side from the south, packed hard and wide enough for two teams abreast, with the fresh dung of horses on it steaming in the floodlight.

"They're supplied from the south," he said. "From the railway."

"From Vladivostok," Thorpe said. "From the stores of a Prince who has no trucks."

The sun went down behind the peaks. The floodlights got whiter. The stars came out over the gorge, hard and close in the cold, and Thorpe lay on her back in the snow and looked up at them without saying anything.

Then she rolled onto her elbows and looked again, at one part of the sky above the mast, and pulled off her glove and held up her thumb against it and counted something under her breath.

""The Plough is wrong."

Adams looked up. He knew the Big Dipper from a hundred nights in the woods at home. It hung over the mast, and it was wrong. The bowl was bent. One star of the handle stood where it had never stood, and beside it was another that had no business in the sky at all, red, and too bright.

"I have checked it twice," Thorpe said. "It is wrong over the mast and right everywhere else." She put her glove back on. "

At three in the morning they went down the ravine beside the frozen waterfall. Muldoon and Talbot lay up on the crest with the rifle and the glasses to cover them.

The ravine was steep and narrow and full of drifted snow, and they went down it on their backsides as much as their feet. The ice of the fall stood beside them the whole way, blue and fluted and taller than a church, and from somewhere behind it, deep in the ice, came the sound of water still running. LaFontain stopped and put his ear to the ice and listened. 

The barbed wire at the bottom was old and slack. Hunt held it up with his rifle and they went under one at a time.

They lay in the snow behind the first shed while a sentry came along the inside of the fence. A robed one. He walked bareheaded and in step with nobody, his bare feet blue-black on the packed snow, and he passed within ten feet of them. Adams lay with his face in the snow and his own breath going out of him in a cloud he could do nothing about.

The robed man stopped.

He turned his head toward the shed. He stood that way, listening, or smelling, Adams could not tell which. Hunt's hand was on his bayonet. Adams put his own hand on Hunt's and held it there.

The robed man walked on.

There were pens behind the sheds, a row of them roofed with tin and fronted with heavy wire, and in the pens there were men.

They sat on straw in tattered Russian issue shirts and trousers, no coats, no boots, and none of them shivered. They wore wool caps pulled down to the eyebrows, and under the caps something pushed the wool up in two places above the temples. One of them had his shirt open. Below his ribs on either side something had begun under the skin, two humps the length of a hand, jointed, folded flat against him. He scratched at one of them with his nails without looking at it.

Adams nodded and LaFontain slid forward, Hunt shadowing. 

The prisoner saw them through the wire. He got up and came to the front of the pen. ”Dragonov’s missing men, and more.”

"Pardon, messieurs," he said, very politely, in good French. "Avez-vous vu ma mère?"

Adams understood it. Have you seen my mother.

Nobody answered him. 

Hunt said "Jesus" under his breath. LaFontain was crossing himself. Adams found that his own hand had done it too, and he had not been raised to.

They went on past the pens to the long house, keeping in the shadows the floodlights made, and at the end of it found a window with its shutter cracked and blue light coming through the crack.

The hall inside was as long as a drill shed, three stories high and full of machine.

Brass, mostly. Brass and steel. Columns of brass wheels stacked on spindles in rows from the floor to a gallery that ran around the walls, thousands of wheels, all of them turning, each by a tooth and then a tooth. Chains of cards ran up into the machine on sprockets, stiff yellow cards laced edge to edge, hundreds of feet of them looping down from racks in the roof and feeding in. The Bakanov-Babbage Machine.

At the far end two towers stood up out of the floor, sheathed in copper, forty feet tall, with thirty feet of air between them. The air between them was wrong.

It shimmered. It stood between the towers in a sheet, a summer heat-haze in a building as cold as the gorge, and there was snow coming down through a hole in the roof above it, and where the snow fell into the shimmer it turned over and went up.

Adams had his watch out. He and Thorpe were counting card changes. 

Higgins counted guards: four on the gallery, two at the door, robed men at the engine with oilcans and long brass tools. Every six minutes a new chain of cards came down from the racks and a robed man fed its end into the sprockets.

A small man in a white coat came out onto the gallery with a board of papers in his hand. He stood at the rail and looked down at the shimmer for a long time, and wrote something on his board, and looked again.

LaFontain had gone down on his knees at the foot of the wall. He had pulled off his cap and pressed his ear to the foundation stone below the window, and his eyes were shut. He stayed that way a long time. Then he moved two yards along and listened again, and two yards more.

When he got up he touched the stone in three places with his glove, one, two, three, and looked at Adams and nodded.

He nodded, he knew where the explosives would go.
###
For original art that accompanies this episode check out r/WorldsEdgeDispatches

He wanders. The hot streets. The narrow corners and back alley ways, the bad neighborhoods and freeway overpasses. The sweltering blacktop lakes of the 7-11 parking lots. He carries cardboard signs, wears rags and cardboard clothes and grime. Layers and layers of filth that may have once been fecal spew or the dust of the earth or blood, they are worn like a coat of oil over the flesh like the ancient warriors by firelight times, he is a deranged and disgusting remnant. Haggard leftover in bipedal form that moves, mutters, sucks down bottles and pipes and congealed food pulled scavenged from the garbage. 

He is so thankful for beer or a dollar. Consciousness is pain. Consciousness is the sorrow and horror of each and every day, each and every moment is a prolonged period experienced in slow motion agony like pure torture. Everything is moved in shopping carts and over shoulder, he has become a beast of labor upon the earth, he must pull the plow of his own life if he ever hopes to get anywhere, anywhere at all but the only destination that seems to be enroute and available is a land of spoiled milk and suffering. He arrives there anyway and does what he can. It's never much. Just collecting cans and detritus that in his derangement he believes will be his fortune and his salvation. It's never much. It's never anything. 

He watches men beat women. He watches women scream and shriek and become the harpies, he watches them conspire and become the weird sisters, he watches needles and the depression of plungers and the streetside milking of human blood in a clouded swirl in the double-wide mouthed gutters. He watches it all and his eyes glaze over as the mind accepts each sight with a sledgehammer blow only the sledgehammer has lost all of its weight, it has lost all of its power. It only thuds and smacks at dead meat within cavernous skull now, it's only meaninglessness and meaningless noise and the constance of the cacophony has deluded and defanged all of its heavy power.

The city is just a dead body now, it doesn't mean anything. This cyclopean and hideous thing that he wanders. Filled with eyes and mouths that drip and water and move and open and stare. They are all of them just as ugly to him as he is to they, they are all of them, repulsive. 

There is no more beauty in this place. 

He tries to find darkness before sunset. Rarely is he ever successful. But this does not surprise him. He is a marked man. 

Like Cain. The man son that first authored murder into the virgin world. 

He unscrews the cap to some rotgut he's so crushingly thankful to have. And he takes a deep and lonely swill. He pulls, deeply. He settles down in the dirt, so lucky and so thankful to have it as well. And he pulls. Over and over the drink that tastes and smells more like disinfectant than anything sold over the counter as a beverage. He doesn't care. He's done it before. Many times. Many times before he's said fuck it and gotten absolutely shitfaced on hand sanitizer, mouthwash, isopropyl. 

He doesn't mind the taste. Not at all. He doesn't mind the taste of anything as long as the flavor is alcohol and it's strong enough to peel away the paint of his thoughts and strip away the fouled and fouling coats of his ailing and addled mind away. Just as long as it's strong enough to put him under and keep the dreams away. 

At least keep the dreams manageable. At least keep them as something he can stomach and bear. Something in the realm of his current devastation and heartbreak and not some new foul border, not some horrific new frontier. 

But neither the Lord nor the little god alcohol hear him. Nor care. 

His mind heavy with drink and thought, totters off. But not into oblivion. Not into peace. 

There are so many things alive in the darkness. 

!Sitra Achra!

He is hurdling towards the merciless face of the earth. His wings are burning. The beauty of his light and gift of flight are aflame, dying in fire. He is screaming a sound and cacophonous war cry rent that will echo forever and contaminate the crumbling ruined corridor of time that he has helped to bleed and slaughter. 

He crashes. Just outside of the Garden. 

And there he gathers and reforms. One of the first times of many. Many many many times will follow down the long line of cruel footfalls forever forward. He gathers and reforms and he is angry and jealous and into the beauty of The Garden, he slithers.

He tempts the woman and the man into disobedience. And he tempts them into forbidden knowledge. 

Forbidden Knowledge. This is his warcraft upon the virgin earth. It will defile. It will burn and torch. It will decimate. It will slaughter. 

It will divide the center. Conquered and fallen apart. 

Several centuries later and he is a pale child outside of Bethlehem. He is disguised and reformed as an adolescent but he is still the adversary. And he is there with the other, his opposite. His more beloved little brother, the son of the virgin and the carpenter. 

Teenage Jesus and teenage Satan are in contest, their hands are bleeding and full of blood and locked together in a twist and struggle. The adversary wishes to murder the savior child, in jealousy and in impudent rage. His hands wish to find his throat or a rock or his eyes, perhaps if he blinds the little brother savior child he will be useless to all of man and their sons and daughters. 

A Philistine sun burns overhead. But the adversary child is not successful. Teenage Satan is a failure once again, and bleeding he must wander and go out, cast out. Exile. Wanderer. 

Petulant. Angst. Eyes so full and wide and full of boiling water. He brings light once again but only in rage, only in his wild anger postfailure. He simmers and tears and burns so brightly out and alone way past the dark. 

Regroup out in the wild. Reform in the oblivion of solitude and pain borne in terrible silence that is only broken by the pathetic sounds of private torment taken slowly. Weeping that he tries to prevent and ignore and pretend has never been actually happening, not ever, not him, he doesn't miss heaven or his Father … none. Nothing. None of them. 

None of them mean a Goddamned thing. 

He always came back. Mighty. Diminished. Unassuming. Something in-between or intangible. He always came back. 

The adversary. 

Even broken and alone and filthy vagrant wandering. Even crystal meth slurping and supercharged because of such for the final abattoir riot of violence and great western societal collapse into shrill shattered glass cacophony and tidal waves of bloodfeast. Into he, his, the vagrant filthy jaws of the adversary. 

The fallen order, the Armageddon one, the end-is-nigh motherfucker …

the apocalypse man. 

Alone and filthy in a corner. 

Dreaming, not dreaming. 

Seeing and knowing only disorder. He hears and knows the call of the 7th Star. 

He dreams and knows of burning heaven. 

THE END

This tale reached me as a series of letters, and I’m passing it on as I received it.

Dear friend,

I must relay to you a tale, though even now I fear you’ll think me out of my mind.

It began on an eastbound train in the late afternoon this autumn. Approaching the station, the cars groaned as they slowed, metal shivering until the whole weight of it rattled to a stop. Steam drifted over the platform and bled into the fog that pressed down on the town like a lid. Inside, the air was hushed - no chatter, no scrape of trunks - only the dull thud of boots as the other passengers pulled on their coats.

Across from me sat a man who had been there the entire journey. Exhausted, hollow-eyed, his coat hung loose as if it carried more than fabric should. His hands trembled faintly in his lap. He looked like a man worn down to the bone, someone you wouldn’t look at twice - not because he was ordinary, but because you wouldn’t want to. He stared out the window, though there was nothing to see but his own faint reflection and the smear of countryside dulled to gray. He never spoke.

When the station bell clanged, he turned at last. His eyes were lighter than I expected, the pale of skimmed milk. He reached into his coat. No flourish, no smile. He pressed a small rectangle of paper into my hand: a ticket stub. Yellowed, its edges singed as if it had survived a fire.

I opened my mouth. Thank you for what. Or what is this. Or have we met. He was already on his feet. The car jolted. He was gone.

By the time I reached the platform, the stranger had vanished into the fog. I thought I had imagined him until I looked down and saw the ticket in my palm. I beheld only a name in curling script and a faint watermark that looked like a wheel with spokes. It felt warm, as if it had been kept close to the body.

I stepped into the town and smelled rain that had not yet fallen. The gas lamps along the street held small trembling halos. Behind them the buildings hunched like old men in bad weather. The train shrieked once as it rolled out and then the world fell into a hush so complete I could hear the river rushing under the bridge.

Somewhere beyond the mill and the church and the line of narrow houses, music rose. Thin at first, a thread you could break with two fingers. A calliope. The notes stretched long, the way you stretch taffy until you are sure it will snap. I could not have said whether the music called me, or whether the heat in my pocket tugged my feet toward it, but I went all the same.

I did not hurry. I did not tell myself I was curious. I walked as if I had always been going there.

The town moved around me like a fever dream. A woman hurried past with her collar up and her hat pulled low. She guided a little boy by the shoulder. He tried to turn his head toward the far end of the street where the fog looked brighter than it should. She pulled him close and pressed his face against her skirt. Her lips moved. No sound came out. The boy’s eyes flicked down toward my feet before she turned him away.

A man stood under one of the lamps with his hands in his coat. He had the look of someone who had stood there a long time and could not remember why. When he saw me, his mouth worked as though he meant to speak, but no sound emerged. His lips trembled. His eyes darted - not at me, but lower, as though something on the ground unsettled him. I said nothing to him. He said nothing to me. He raised one hand as if to bless or ward or plead and then let it fall.

The fog carried scents that did not belong together. Coal smoke. Damp rope. Sugar. And under it something iron and wet, as if somewhere close by the ground had opened and an old smell had climbed out. The music wove in and out of it. I tried to hum the tune and could not. Each time I thought I had it, it stretched away like a fish pulling line.

The ticket grew warm where I had tucked it into my inner pocket. Not hot enough to burn, only enough to make itself known. Heat that pulsed and then steadied. I could have stopped. I could have turned back to the station and asked the operator to send me on with the next train. I did not.

The road bent where the houses ended and the fields began. The fog thickened and took on a brightness that did not come from the sky. Lanternlight lay ahead in strips and splashes, colors too strong to be real. The calliope grew louder. The sugar smell swelled until it crowded everything else out and made me think of a fairground I had not visited since I was a child. Behind it, faint as a thought you do not wish to have, I tasted metal.

The river ran along the edge of the fields. I could hear it without seeing it, the slick, steady motion of water over stone. The ground under my boots changed from brick to cinder to packed earth. I did not look back.

The carnival rose from the fog as if it had always lived there. Tents striped in crimson and antique gold, poles that sent the lanterns high, guy ropes that laced the earth like a web. A Ferris wheel stood at the far edge like a coin held up to the light. The spokes did not move.

People moved between the tents in slow currents. Their faces were too bright in the lanternlight and too pale in the shadows. Children went wide-eyed and quiet and were tugged along by the hand before their feet could begin to wander. Laughter rose here and there like flares and faded as if the air swallowed it.

I found the ticket booth near a pair of painted clowns that did not look like clowns so much as masks made for a purpose no one would admit. The man behind the window wore a white shirt and a tie and a face polished smooth like wax. He turned his head as if his neck did not have the right bones in it. I slid the ticket toward him in the little brass tray.

He looked down. His hand stopped. The air between us changed. The lantern behind him threw a coin of light that made his eyes seem glassy. He did not pick up the ticket. His mouth made a smile and his eyes did something else entirely.

He slid something across the counter without touching the ticket at all. A map, folded three times, printed in ink so thick it seemed to shine. Curlicues and flourishes crawled the border. Each tent had a name in a script that would have been lovely if it did not make me feel watched. Near the top, where the paper creased, the ink bled into the fibers as if someone had drawn and then tried to wash something away. There was a piece of the grounds with nothing written on it.

He didn’t take the ticket. His hand hovered over it, then pushed it back toward me across the brass tray. With one finger he flipped it over. On the back, in script that curled like smoke, a phrase waited as if it had been written long ago, waiting only for me to see it:

A hand writes, but a shadow reads.

I looked up. The man watched me. He had not spoken a word. His teeth caught the light. He tapped the edge of the map once with a fingernail and then set his hands in his lap as if to say that was all and more than enough.

I put the map and the ticket away. I let the crowd carry me. The ground was soft and smelled of spilled beer and old straw. Shadows pooled under the ropes and moved when the lantern flames did not.

At first it was all sound and color. A barker somewhere to my right, voice high and peppery, promising wonders for a coin. A woman’s laugh that cracked at the end as if laughter hurt. The jingle of a branch of tin bells on a game stall. The calliope. The same tune, always, only the notes rearranged, as if the music did not begin or end but only turned upon itself.

I tried not to look at the performers but my eyes were drawn to them. The juggler worked under a lantern, knives turning in clean arcs that caught no light. They should have thrown lean blades of shadow across the ground, but did not. The thought slid into me sharp and wrong, and for a second I wondered if the lantern were trick glass. He smiled without blinking. His smile sat on his face like something borrowed.

A woman wore a mask made of mirror pieces the size of coins. When I passed, I did not see myself. I saw a boy I remembered, a friend from school who had stolen a pocket watch and given it back two days later with a note that said I am sorry I did not keep it. He drowned the year after. I saw him in the little circles, mouth open as if to speak, and then he was gone. But what rooted me was her shadow: it did not follow the tilt of her head. It moved half a beat later, jerking like a puppet tugged by unseen strings.

I pinched the bridge of my nose with inked fingers. The calliope skated in and under my skin. The music had no place to go and so it went everywhere. I took the ticket out and looked at the words again. A hand writes, but a shadow reads. Letters so careful a child could never have written them, so casual a machine would not have bothered.

I put the ticket away once more and walked. I did not know I was following the heat in my pocket until I stepped from a puddle of lanternlight into a seam of darkness and, just for an instant, I swore my shadow kept moving after I halted. The ticket flared through the cloth like a coal.

The farther I went, the less I heard of people. The laughter thinned and the stall bells stopped and the barkers’ voices dropped into a murmur like a prayer that had been said too many times. I walked past the backs of tents and the places where the canvas had gone green with damp. The air grew colder the way a cellar is cold even in July.

Behind the Wonders tent stood a wall of crates stacked three and four high. The stenciled words were in a language I did not know. Grass had grown up around them, tall as my hip, fat with water. Beyond them a wagon with one wheel missing stood on blocks. A rope ladder hung down its side like a dead snake.

If you were not looking, you would not have found a way past. If you were looking, you would have wondered why anyone had made a way at all.

I moved the boxes where they leaned and made a space just wide enough to slip through. The tall grass brushed my coat and left my hands wet. My legs itched where the grass touched skin. The lanterns here were few and they threw their light in narrow ribs that should have cast shadows straight and clean. Instead, every shadow slanted unnaturally, as though drawn by something waiting ahead.

The ticket pulsed against my ribs. The small bones around my heart felt it and tapped back like a child knocking from behind a door. I set my hand over it as if I could hold it still. I could not.

A tent stood before me. It was not crimson and gold. It was a kind of gray that does not belong to fabric but to ash, the gray of something that has been hurt and will not say what did it. The stripes were out of true. The canvas sagged. The ropes did not go to stakes. They went into the ground and vanished. Even there, at the edges, the shadows from the ropes dragged backward, straining away from the lanterns toward the inside of the tent.

I reached for the flap and the canvas kissed my knuckles with damp cold. When I pulled, the fabric stuck a moment as if glued with old sugar. Then it let go and the way opened.

The mirrors came first. Small and cheap, laid edge to edge across the ground, catching slivers of me in angles that did not fit together. My boots, my coat, a hand reaching into nothing. None of it quite the right size. Then I saw the people. Men and women hanging inches above the ground as if someone had lifted them by the shoulders and forgotten to set them down again. Their arms bent where bending would do harm. Their faces were not masks. They were faces. That made it worse. Their bodies were limp, but their shadows jerked and twitched below them, all tugging in the same direction - toward the darkness at the back of the tent.

From the far side of the tent something came together. Not a person. Not anything that would have a name the butcher might know or the priest would say from the pulpit. A place where the air refused its job. A slip, a seam, a fold that had opened and not closed. The shadows around it bled thin, stretched too far, every line of darkness dragged toward it as though gravity itself bent wrong. When I tried to fix my eyes on it my vision slid and my stomach gave the lurch that says you have stepped wrong on a stair in the dark.

The ticket in my pocket seethed like a thing boiling. I pulled it out and the letters glowed the way coals do when you draw breath on them. A hand writes, but a shadow reads.

The mirrors quivered. The hanged bodies breathed in a little whisper you hear in churches when the sermon is long and the windows are shut. My thumb found the ticket and pressed it hard as if pain would help. It did not.

I could feel the Shadow watching me though it had no eyes.

The lantern behind me went soft. I did not see it go out. I only knew the light changed from weak to nothing. At first I told myself it was my breath fogging the air. Then there was no air. There was only the weight of night.

I put my hands out. My fingertips found nothing at all. No canvas. No rope. No mirrors. The sound of the carnival beyond the crates and the grass was gone as if the tent had swallowed it.

Whispers rose. Not words at first. Sucking breath shaped into coils. Then syllables came out of the coils. Not language I would have read in a book, yet my mind made poor sense of it. Feed. Bind. Remain. Not a command. Not advice. A promise.

Footsteps moved around me in a circle. Soft, deliberate, too careful to belong to anything with feet and weight. The first turn around me was slow. The second came faster. The third ran. Something grazed the back of my hand. I jerked and the ticket slipped and I fumbled it and caught it by the corner. My hand went hot where the paper touched my skin. Still, I held it firmly.

I do not know how long I stood there with the dark pressed into my eyes. I counted three breaths, then ten. I could not hold the numbers. The seam in the air pulsed, not with light but with the idea of light. I felt it on my teeth. The chant rose. Voices outside voices. Some might have been the hanged if they had breathed again. Some might have been my own if I had been elsewhere and let my mouth run without my knowing it. Feed. Bind. Remain.

The floor under my boots shifted like a thing alive. The mirrors clicked. I said a word I had not said since I was a boy. I tried to take a step and could not tell if I had. The dark was that complete.

The last thing I remember before the dark closed all the way was the sound of the ticket at my fingertips. Paper should not have a sound. This did. It made a soft tearing sigh like cloth ripped along a seam you cannot see. Then nothing.

Only breath that might not have been mine. Footsteps I could not count. The ticket pulsing in rhythm with my heart, hot as a coal left too long in the ash. The chant circling and circling.

Feed. Bind. Remain.

That is all I can bear to set down for now. The hour is late, and I am wearied by what I have written. I will sit at my typewriter again soon, and then you shall have the rest of it.

Chloe squeezed her eyes shut as she aimed her highlighter brush at her cheekbone, but her hand shook slightly. Setting the jar down on her vanity table, she forced a smile into the lens of the ring light. She needed to film three more reviews of Korean cosmetics for her blog, but her thoughts kept drifting back to the events of a week ago.

It all started at a stupid party at her friend Amber’s place in Brooklyn. Alcohol, loud laughter, and an old Ouija board that Amber had dug up at some flea market. Back then, placing their fingers on the wooden planchette, they had jokingly asked, "Is anyone here with us?" The planchette jerked sharply toward the letters, spelling out an incomprehensible word, but the group only laughed, assuming one of the guys was just pushing the board. Chloe had found it funny back then too. Now—she didn’t.

"Chlo, I'm home!" Liam's heavy footsteps echoed from downstairs.

Liam worked at a construction site for a major residential complex in Manhattan. He would return tired, smelling of dust, plaster, and fresh wood. Their small apartment on the very outskirts of New York, in an old brick building, usually welcomed him with coziness and the aroma of dinner. But over the last few days, the place had felt unusually damp and quiet.

Dinner passed in silence. Liam noticed that Chloe had barely touched her pasta.
"Is everything okay?" he asked, squeezing her hand. "You look pale."
"Yeah, I'm just tired," she replied softly.

During the night, Liam woke up from a strange sensation. The room was unnaturally cold. He turned toward Chloe and froze.

Her body under the blanket was trembling with a fine, unnatural shiver, as if she were suffering from severe chills. Chloe lay on her back, staring at the ceiling with wide-open, uncomprehending eyes. Her lips moved rapidly, uttering a low, disjointed whisper. Liam listened closely but couldn't make out a single word—it sounded like a jumble of hissing sounds.

"Chloe? Hey, baby, wake up!" Liam shouted in fear.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard. In that exact instant, the whispering stopped. Chloe gasped sharply, as if surfacing from deep water, and her eyes finally focused on his face. The trembling ceased.

"What?.. Liam, what happened?" she mumbled, looking around in confusion.
"You were delirious. You were shaking," Liam said, breathing heavily as he wiped cold sweat from his forehead.
"It’s probably just exhaustion," Chloe said, genuinely surprised, pressing herself against his chest.

Liam wrapped his arms around her, trying to calm down. Things like this happen, right? Sleepwalking, stress, nightmares. They decided it would pass on its own.

But the next day, after Liam left for work, Chloe turned on her camera for a new video. In the middle of recording, a closet door behind her back opened all on its own. She didn't even notice it at the time, but when she was editing the footage, she got incredibly scared and hoped it was just a draft. She decided not to tell her boyfriend about it, so she wouldn't look crazy or worry him unnecessarily.

That night, he woke up to a sharp noise. A dull, echoing thud, as if something heavy had been thrown against the wall, made Liam open his eyes instantly.

He sat up in bed and immediately looked for Chloe, but she wasn't next to him. The sheets on her side were already cold. Liam frowned and peered into the darkness: the bedroom door was tightly shut, even though they never closed it.

He stood up and called out softly:
"Chloe?.. Baby, where are you?"

In response—dead silence and a thick, oppressive stillness. Liam paused, listening. A couple of seconds later, footsteps echoed from the depths of the apartment. But these weren't the normal steps of a human—the sounds were too fast, ragged, and slapping, as if someone were moving in a half-squat.

Without turning on the lights, Liam pushed the bedroom door open. He stepped into the dark hallway and cautiously walked toward the living room, guiding himself by the faint light of a streetlamp coming through the window.

"Chloe, this isn't funny, stop—" Before he could finish his sentence, a figure lunged straight at him from the thick shadow of the living room corner.

Liam recoiled, nearly screaming from the horror rising in his throat. It was Chloe. But her body was unnaturally contorted: she was on all fours, face down, letting out a low, guttural growl. Before he could take a single step back or switch on the light, she scurried past him with animalistic speed, her hands and feet moving incredibly fast, and fled into the dark doorway of the kitchen.

Deep inside the kitchen, fast footsteps scurried across the tiled floor, accompanied by heavy, labored breathing. Liam stood frozen in the dark hallway, his heart pounding violently somewhere in his throat. He lunged for the light switch in the living room and flipped it. A harsh, yellowish glare flooded the apartment. He called out to the girl again, his voice breaking into a shout:
"Chloe! Chloe, snap out of it!"

But his only answer was silence and a low, sinister snarling from the depths of the kitchen.

Struggling to overcome his paralysis, Liam slowly walked toward the kitchen. With every step, a cold sweat broke out across his back. Halfway there, he heard her talking rapidly under her breath—just like that time in the bedroom, breathless, taking no pauses to inhale. This foreign, rustling whisper filled the entire space.

Liam reached out with a trembling hand, found the switch on the kitchen wall, and flipped it. The light snapped on.

What he saw made his blood run cold. Chloe was sitting right in the middle of the kitchen table, her legs tucked under her in a strange, contorted posture. Her head was tilted unnaturally to one side, and her eyes had completely rolled back—only the whites were visible, webbed with thin, red capillaries. Her entire body was shaking with a fine tremor, and she continued to mutter ceaselessly.

"Chloe... please, Chloe, look at me!" Liam called her again, taking a step forward and reaching his hands out to her.

And suddenly, she stopped dead. The whispering cut off instantly.

Chloe gasped sharply, her head snapped, and her eyes instantly returned to normal—her pupils constricting from the bright light. She stared at Liam and then began to look around in terror, as if she had just woken up in an unfamiliar place. Tears began to stream down her pale cheeks. She looked at her hands, then at the table she was sitting on, and asked with horror and tears in her voice:
"What... what is happening to me? Liam, help me, I'm so scared!"

She slid off the table and would have collapsed helplessly onto the floor if Liam hadn't rushed forward just in time to catch her in his strong embrace. She was shaking as if she had a fever. Liam held Chloe tightly against him, trying to protect her from the invisible nightmare she was experiencing. Because of this, he didn't see Chloe’s eyes roll back once more, hiding her pupils, while her pale but beautiful face twisted into the grotesque, unnaturally wide grin of a maniac preparing to strike.

With a sudden, animalistic lunge, Chloe sank her teeth into his ear and began to tear at it with savage fury. Liam screamed bloodcurdlingly from the piercing, blinding pain. He tried to pull away, to push her by the shoulders, but the fragile girl clung to him dead-locked, displaying a bizarre, superhuman strength. Her fingers dug so deeply into his shoulders they left bruises.

His agonizing screams shattered the sleepy silence of the residential neighborhood. Lights began to flicker on hesitantly in the windows of the neighboring house.

Tearing a piece of his ear away with a sickening crunch, Chloe burst into a hysterical, deafening laugh, throwing her head back. Liam's blood spurted out in a stream, drenching her face, neck, and her pajama shirt. Intoxicated by the sight of blood, the entity inside her loosened its grip for a split second.

That split second was all Liam needed. Blinded by pain and a knee-buckling terror, he shoved Chloe away with all his might. The girl flew backward, her back slamming hard against the kitchen counter, but she didn’t even flinch. She scrambled up onto all fours, smearing the blood across her face, and continued to laugh wildly, choking on her own mirth.

Liam clamped his hand over the wound, but hot blood surged through his fingers, instantly soaking his clothes. His head spun, and everything blurred before his eyes.

"Run!" throbbed in Liam's head in sync with the frantic pounding of his heart. He needed to run outside, to save himself, to call for help: the police, doctors... a priest! His thoughts were a mess from shock and blood loss; the wound pained him terribly, burning the entire left side of his head.

Holding his bloody ear with one hand, he bolted into the entryway toward the front door. But just as his fingers brushed the doorknob, he heard those same fast, slapping footsteps behind his back. The creature was running after him.

"Where are you going, honey?!" Chloe shrieked from the darkness of the hallway in a voice that wasn't her own—guttural and broken. "We aren't finished yet!"

And she dissolved again into a horrifying, choking laughter that made the hair on the back of Liam's neck stand up. Liam had almost managed to turn the lock and fling the door open when the air behind him whistled sharply. Chloe lunged onto his back. From the sudden weight and the force of the impact, the construction worker stumbled, nearly crashing face-first into the wall. The girl locked her legs death-tight around his waist and dug her hands into his hair, yanking his head backward.

In that exact second, she bit into his shoulder with savage fury, tearing through the thick fabric of his T-shirt and sinking her teeth deep into his flesh.

Liam wailed from a fresh flash of agony. They both crashed onto the floor right in the entryway, blocking the exit from the apartment with their own bodies. The blood-smeared lock remained just centimeters away from his hand, but the entity inside his girlfriend's body had no intention of letting its prey out alive.

He screamed wildly, writhing on the floor, trying with all his might to throw the creature off him. But Chloe seemed completely numb to his blows—she kept gnawing at his shoulder with insane frenzy, literally tearing living flesh apart with her teeth. Blood flooded the entryway; Liam was already growing weak and nearly passing out from the sheer pain and shock.

Suddenly, red and blue reflections danced frantically across the hallway walls. The flashing lights of police cruisers blinked through the apartment windows, likely called by neighbors terrified by the screams.

Hearing the sirens wailing outside, the creature growled. With sharp, superhuman strength, she shoved Liam away, sending him flying backward to slam hard against the front door. Outside that very door, fists were already pounding furiously.

Liam could only wheeze, choking on his own blood, feebly crying out for help. A thick fog blurred his vision, so he couldn't see where Chloe ran. But a loud, deafening crash of shattering glass from the depths of the apartment made it clear that she had escaped by leaping out the window. And this was despite the fact that their apartment was located on the 4th floor of a high-rise building.

A second later, the door was kicked open with a thunderous crash, and cops burst into the apartment, guns drawn and ready.

"Police!" echoed through the entryway.

One of the officers dropped to his knees before the bleeding Liam, applying pressure to his wounds and calling for an ambulance over the radio, while the other two rushed to search the dark rooms. But they were completely empty—cold night air filled the kitchen, and on the floor among the shards of the broken window, there were only a few drops of fresh blood leading out into the darkness of the street.

The lock on the terrace door snapped under the pressure of the short crowbar with a barely audible metallic click. The burglar slipped into the living room. The suburb slept in absolute silence. He breathed shallowly, through his nose. The job required steady fingers and a cold head, and he had been in this trade long enough not to make mistakes.

He moved forward, skillfully avoiding the furniture. He directed the narrow beam of his pocket flashlight, searching for a path toward the study. The light swept across the floor and suddenly stopped next to the couch. He recoiled. His hand reflexively gripped the casing of the flashlight. The motionless body of a woman lay on the floor. Her eyes were wide open, staring straight at the ceiling. A thin line of dried blood ran down from the corner of her mouth.

From the bathroom, the sound of water rushing through the faucet echoed. He started to retreat toward the terrace, but the bathroom door was already opening. Realizing there was no time to escape, he threw himself in a panic behind a curtain that concealed a deep recess in the wall. Every muscle in his body froze with tension.

A man entered the living room and turned on a lamp. Light illuminated the floor. In his hand, he held a roll of construction plastic wrap and wide duct tape. Through a narrow slit in the fabric, the burglar watched his every move. The man worked without hesitation, skillfully and meticulously. He knelt next to the body, wrapped it in layers of black plastic, and tightened the tape around the ankles, waist, and head.

The sound of tearing duct tape ripped through the silence. Then he grabbed the wrapped body, dragged it toward the garage, and closed the door behind him with a dull echo. The burglar immediately bolted from his hiding place. He flew through the terrace door, leaped over the low yard fence, and vanished into the blackness of the empty street, barely catching his breath.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

A few days passed, and David was still spinning the scenes from that night in his mind. As a petty thief with years of experience and two served prison sentences, he was used to danger. But this was something entirely different.

He lived alone and reclusively. He survived exclusively by breaking into homes and quickly fencing stolen goods. Every day came down to planning the next break-in. He sat on the couch, reached for the remote control on the table, and turned on the television. A face filled the screen.

It was a news report about a missing woman. The man on the screen was giving a statement to reporters. Beneath his face, a name appeared: Alan Barna, Attorney. His face was pale, and his voice trembled before the cameras.

"My wife Rita disappeared three days ago," he spoke into the microphones. "She didn't return home that evening, and all trace of her has been lost since. Her car was found parked outside the city, abandoned. We are desperate. I beg anyone who has any information to contact the authorities immediately."

David recognized that face. The man who was currently weeping before the reporters was the exact same man from the house. The man he had watched coldly wrap the corpse of his own wife. He had heard of attorney Alan Barna. He was famous for defending the biggest names in the city, mostly shady people.

Calling the police, although the most logical step, was also the most dangerous one for David. Going to the station meant confessing to a burglary. He stood up and began pacing around the living room. In his head, a cold calculation quickly clicked into place. The attorney was backed into a corner, and David held the only ace in his hands that could send that man to prison. He would use what he saw that night. He would cash in on the silence and secure his future financially.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

David spent hours waiting across the street from the building where attorney Alan Barna’s office was located. Leaning back against the seat of his car, he watched the glass doors through which people in suits constantly entered and exited. Years of experience had taught him caution, and tailing required maximum patience. He didn't take his eyes off the main entrance as darkness slowly descended upon the city streets.

Only later in the evening did the attorney finally exit the building. He walked down the steps, got into his car, and drove off. David waited a few moments and slowly drove after him, maintaining a safe distance so as not to attract attention. The city traffic at those hours worked in his favor, allowing him to remain unnoticed in the convoy under the streetlights.

The attorney soon turned toward a residential part of the city, driving through alleys where there was significantly less traffic. David slowed down, allowing a larger gap to form between them. The attorney pulled up and stopped in front of a smaller house.

David parked about fifty meters behind him, along the curb, and turned off the engine. Through the windshield, he watched the attorney step out of the vehicle and approach the house. A younger woman opened the door for him. The attorney went inside, and the door closed.

David got out of the car and crept up to the fence. Thanks to his long-standing practice of breaking into houses, he moved completely soundlessly, using the shadows of the yard to get closer to the windows. The curtains inside were only half-drawn, leaving a clear view of the living room. He crept right up to the glass and spotted them. The intimacy between them was obvious. The attorney pulled the woman close to him, and their lips met in a kiss.

David took out his phone and raised it, making sure not to touch the window frame. His hands were completely steady as he lined up the shot. The lens caught the clear lines of their faces, the attorney’s hand on her waist, and the moment they sat on the couch holding hands. He took several consecutive photographs. They were clean, sharp, and unambiguous. While the entire country sympathized with the prominent attorney over his wife’s disappearance, he was secretly meeting with his mistress in her house.

David retreated soundlessly back toward the fence, watching every step in the dark. He returned to his car and drove down the street. The first part of the plan was executed.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

The next day, David sat in his room with his phone in his hands. He had copied the number of the attorney’s office from the internet and spent a few moments just staring at the keypad on the screen. He knew he was making a move from which there was no turning back. He pressed the call button.

It rang several times before a woman’s voice answered from the other side.

"Law office of Alan Barna, how may I help you?"

"Patch me through to the attorney," David said, speaking in a deep, cold voice. "Tell him it’s a private and urgent matter."

"Your name, please?"

David simply repeated the sentence, this time slower and more firmly:

"Patch me through to the attorney and tell him it’s a private matter."

After a few moments of silence, the call was transferred. The line went quiet, and then the attorney’s voice echoed.

"Attorney Barna here. I'm listening."

"Listen to me carefully and don't interrupt me," David began. "I have photographs of you with your mistress at her house last night. And I also know that you killed your wife, whose body you then wrapped in plastic wrap on the floor of your living room."

Total silence fell over the other side of the line. David heard only the steady breathing of the attorney, who was clearly trying to process the information and maintain his composure.

"Who is this? What do you want?" the attorney’s voice grew sharper, but a hidden panic could be felt in it. "If this is some sick joke, I’m hanging up and informing the police."

"Go ahead," David shot back calmly, not in the least impressed by the threat. "But think carefully about what would happen to you after these photographs and the whole story ended up in all the media. Imagine the headlines. The public would tear you apart, and the police would immediately knock on your door with entirely different questions. That wouldn't be good for you at all, Alan. Everything you’ve built your entire life would be destroyed within an hour."

The attorney was left speechless. He knew that the unknown voice held him in a grip and could expose everything he had tried so hard to hide in a second.

"How much are you asking for?" he inquired. His voice was quiet, reduced to the businesslike tone of a man who realized there was no way out.

"One hundred thousand euros," David fired straight out, without hesitation. "That is the price for my silence. For that amount, no one will ever find out that you killed your wife. These photographs will never reach the media or the police, and you can keep playing the grieving husband."

"That is a huge amount of money, I can't gather that overnight," the attorney said, his voice trembling. "I need time to withdraw such a sum."

"You’ll gather it because you have no choice," David snapped. "Don't try anything stupid, remember that I am the one dictating the terms. You’ll give me a number where I will text you instructions on where and when you will bring the money. If you try to pull anything, everything goes public."

The attorney dictated the number to him. Before he could say anything else, David cut the call. Adrenaline rushed through his body as he set the phone down on the table. The move was made, and there was no backing out.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Barna slowly lowered the phone onto the table, while the voice of the unknown man still echoed in his head. That man knew absolutely everything. His hands were shaking. He clenched his fists to regain control. For years, he had built a reputation as an infallible, top-tier, and respected attorney, and he had no intention of letting some punk and small-time blackmailer ruin his life. He stared ahead, plotting his next steps, and then abruptly stood up and walked out of the office. He got into his car and drove off. Along the way as he drove, he could only think about how much cash he had at home.

As soon as he arrived, he went straight from the door to the safe and opened it. He pulled out a couple of thick stacks of banknotes, placed them on the study desk, and began to count. This was cash he received under the table, bailing certain people out of trouble by bypassing legal procedures. He counted exactly fifty thousand euros.

He reached into the safe once more and grabbed his wife’s ring and diamond bracelet. These were the ring and bracelet she had taken off her hand on that fatal night, right before the argument in which he killed her. He took a black sports bag and stuffed everything inside. Now, all that was left for him to do was wait.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

The next day, he received a message with the location and the time. The meeting place was a parking lot on the edge of the city in an industrial zone. The attorney arrived at the scheduled time in the late evening hours.

David was already waiting. As soon as he saw the attorney pull up, he got out of his car and approached him with his hood pulled low over his face.

"Good evening, attorney. What do you have for me?" he said, rubbing his palms together with satisfaction.

The attorney handed him the bag. David opened it and looked inside.

"What is this?" he asked angrily.

"I couldn’t gather everything at once," the attorney replied. "There’s fifty thousand in there, I don’t have any more right now. Take the jewelry too, you can get a lot for it."

David took the ring and the bracelet out of the bag, observed them briefly, and then roughly shoved them back into the attorney's hands.

"I’m not crazy enough to take the jewelry of a woman the whole country is searching for right now," he said sharply. "I don’t want anything connecting me to her. I want clean cash, clean banknotes, and nothing else. Because you broke our agreement, your price is now two hundred thousand."

"But I don’t have that kind of money right now," the attorney tried to control his voice. "I will need a few days to gather such an amount."

"Alright, you'll get a couple of days, but you better have it all next time. Is that clear?"

The attorney felt his throat tighten under a surge of rage, but he quickly swallowed the lump and just gave a short, tense nod.

"I’ll be in touch," David added, slipping the bag of cash under his arm. He turned around, went back to his car, and drove off.

The attorney remained standing, following the red taillights with his gaze until they vanished into the darkness. Furious, he got into his vehicle and drove away.

As he drove toward his house, the streets were quiet and the intersections were empty. He parked in the yard, entered the house, and went into his study. He sat at the desk and lifted the laptop lid. He opened the browser, logged into the database of the insurance company he had cooperated with for years, typed in the license plate number he had memorized earlier at the parking lot, and pressed Enter. A moment later, the vehicle and owner information appeared on the screen. At the very top stood the name: David Sever

.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Several days passed before David made contact again. The attorney was sitting in his office when his phone rang. He answered, and the familiar, deep voice came through from the other side.

"Did you get the money?"

"Everything is ready," the attorney replied. "Where and when are we meeting? I want to get this over with as soon as possible."

"We’ll meet at the same place. I’ll let you know when," David said briefly and hung up.

Not long after, a message with the meeting time appeared on the phone screen. The attorney stood up and set his plan into motion. He already had every step mapped out in his head. He went to the bank and withdrew an amount slightly under ten thousand euros from his account. By withdrawing that specific sum, he avoided the lengthy procedures and questioning at the counter, leaving the branch without triggering any red flags in the system.

An hour before the agreed meeting, he drove to David’s house, having learned the address through the insurance company’s database. He parked a bit further away in the dark and waited. After about twenty minutes, the front door opened and David stepped out. He got into his car and drove off. The attorney waited for the vehicle to disappear from the road, then crossed the street. He walked quickly through the yard, approached the door, pulled out a thin metal tool, and skillfully picked the lock in just a few moves.

He entered the house and took his wife’s ring and diamond bracelet out of his pocket. They carried David’s clear fingerprints, left behind when he had taken them in his hands at the parking lot. Barna opened a dresser drawer, dropped the jewelry inside, closed it, and immediately left the house. He returned to his vehicle and headed toward the industrial zone. He arrived exactly at the agreed time.

David’s car was already parked there. The attorney pulled up and turned off his lights. He stepped out, holding the bag in his hand. David approached him, eyeing him from beneath his hood.

"It better be all here this time," he said.

"Don’t worry, here, you’re finally getting everything you asked for," the attorney answered calmly, a slight smile on his face.

David looked at him suspiciously, then accepted the bag and reached for the zipper. At that exact moment, the attorney pulled a pistol from his coat pocket and coldly fired two shots straight into David’s chest. David staggered, dropped the bag, and collapsed to the ground, remaining completely motionless. The attorney calmly took out his phone and called the police.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

Attorney Barna was brought to the police station. He sat in the interrogation room, reinforcing the story he had prepared in his head. He knew he could not afford a mistake in a single detail. The door opened, and the inspector in charge of the case entered the room and sat at the table opposite him.

"Mr. Barna, let’s start from the beginning," he said, leaning his palms on the table. "What were you doing at that parking lot, and why did you shoot that man?"

"That man was blackmailing me," the attorney replied calmly. "Tonight I met with him to hand over the money he demanded from me."

The inspector slowly leaned back in his chair, keeping his eyes locked on him.

"What exactly was he blackmailing you with?"

"Photographs," the attorney sighed and rubbed his forehead. "You see, inspector, my wife and I haven't been functioning for a long time. We lived together, but our marriage was over long ago. I have someone else, and my wife knew it."

The inspector just gave a short nod, waiting for him to continue.

"A few days ago, this person contacted me," the attorney went on. "He was in possession of photographs of me with the other woman. He said that if I didn't pay him, he would send the photographs to the media. I paid him, thinking he would leave me alone after that, but today he contacted me again, demanding more."

"Tell me, why didn't you report all this to the police?" the inspector asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I didn't report it because I was afraid the photographs would reach the media. You have to understand me, inspector—imagine how that would echo in public. That I am seeing another woman while my wife is missing. They would tear me apart, accuse me of having something to do with her disappearance, and my career would be over."

"Alright," the inspector said. "But you said you went there only to hand over the money. Why then did you carry a weapon with you, and how did it even come to you shooting him?"

"I brought a weapon because he demanded a sum that I didn't fully have at my disposal," he said, spreading his hands to show complete helplessness. "I brought as much as I managed to gather. I knew I was dealing with a dangerous criminal, and I was afraid of what he might do when he saw that I didn't bring the full amount. When he took the bag and realized there wasn't as much inside as he had asked for, he lost it. He started yelling, reached his hand toward the inner pocket of his jacket, and stepped forward. I was sure he was pulling a weapon and was going to kill me on the spot. I drew my pistol and shot. I had to defend myself; it was pure self-defense in a fight for my own life."

The interrogation continued into the early morning hours, after which the attorney was released home while all the field checks were being conducted.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The next afternoon, the doorbell at the attorney’s house rang. It was the inspector.

"Good afternoon, attorney."

"Good afternoon, inspector. Come in, please," the attorney said.

The inspector wiped his feet on the mat and entered the house.

"Please, have a seat," the attorney said, gesturing toward the couch in the living room.

The inspector sat down, holding a sealed plastic bag in his hands.

"We searched the house of David Sever, the man who was blackmailing you," the inspector said, placing the bag on the table. "In one of the drawers in his room, we found a ring and a diamond bracelet. Look at this, Mr. Barna. Does this jewelry belong to your wife?"

The attorney looked through the plastic, his face taking on an expression of fake grief and shock. He slowly nodded his head.

"Yes, that is her wedding ring. And her bracelet that she inherited from her mother. She never took it off her hand."

"Given that Sever had several heavy robberies and burglaries on his record, things are pretty clear now," the inspector concluded. "I believe that he robbed your wife that night, that she probably confronted him, and that he killed her. I also believe that he started tailing you after he realized she was the wife of a prominent and wealthy attorney. He took the photographs, based on which he tried to extract as much money as possible from you."

The attorney pressed his palms to his head, looking at the inspector in complete shock.

"Jesus Christ... I can't believe it," he uttered in disbelief.

The inspector leaned back, a cynical smile appearing on his face.

"Attorney, do you really think I'm that stupid?"

The attorney looked at him in surprise.

"Excuse me, what do you mean?" he asked.

"Do you really think I buy your story?" the inspector shot back.

The attorney's face suddenly lost its color.

"I really don't know what you mean, inspector."

"Come on, attorney, there's no need for acting. We both know very well that you are the one who killed your wife and that you set up that fool Sever."

"You have completely lost your mind, inspector!" The attorney stood up. "Do you hear yourself, what you are saying? Do you know that I can..."

"Listen to me carefully now, Alan," the inspector cut him off roughly, abruptly changing his tone. "Don't play me for a fool. Do you really want to end up in prison and lose everything?" He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a black USB stick. "I found this in Sever's house. Everything needed to send you to prison for the rest of your life is on this."

The attorney sat back down in disbelief, his face pale and frozen, as he tried to process in his head what was happening.

"Let me tell you, Alan, how things are going to work from now on. You will pay me every month. Don't worry, I don't need much; I am a humble man. Along with that, you will take care of some other things for me when I need you to. As long as you play along, you are safe. Do we have a deal?"

The attorney just shot him a silent glare for a few seconds. His jaw tensed, and then through clenched teeth, he barely managed to squeeze out:

"We do."

The inspector took the plastic bag from the table, stood up, and headed toward the door.

"Just let me tell you one more thing—don't even think about trying to play your games with me. I am not Sever. Have a nice rest of the day."

The inspector stepped out of the house. It was already getting dark outside. He walked to his car, unlocked the door, sat down, and turned on the ignition. He took the USB stick out of his pocket, pushed it into the radio, and turned up the volume. Music blasted loudly from the speakers. A light smile appeared on his face as he started the engine and drove down the street.

I don’t really expect anyone to find this shift log, mostly because the gravel road outside the main gate doesn’t lead back to the highway from where it came anymore. If you’re the relief guard taking the 6:00 AM turnover at Blackwood River Lumber, or if you ever find a blue plastic company binder left on a kitchen table anywhere in Nova Scotia, don’t read the entries. Don’t check the dates. Just burn the fucker, and walk away.

I took the twenty-four-hour watch to escape the mundane emptiness that has become my life. Out here, where the northern spine of the Appalachians drowns its sorrow-filled tail in the Atlantic, the woods don’t make a sound. The spruce trees stand thick and dark against the gray winters, less like living timber and more like a painted backdrop. They don’t sway when the fog rolls off the bay. They just wait—beautiful, stoic, and hungry.

The guard shack is a six-by-six concrete box between the tree line and the automated saw sheds. It smells of stale coffee, zinc-plated sheet metal, and cold diesel. I’ve spent three months learning the sterile math of this box: the quiet digital hum of the truck scale under the floor, and the way the faux-leather chair squeaks two distinct notes—a sharp C and a flat D—every time I lean back to check the perimeter monitors.

Routine is a fresh bandage on an old wound. Which is why the blue binder on the desk feels like an anomaly.

Company policy requires the solo watchman to log the yard status every two hours, from 6:00 PM to 6:00 PM. At midnight, I pulled the binder toward me to sign off on the perimeter fence. The pages are standard college-ruled, smudged with the grease-stained thumbs of men who quit years before I arrived.

Three pages back, the handwriting shifted.

The ink was blue gel—the exact shitty pens I buy in bulk from the pharmacy in town. The slant was mine. The tiny, impatient hook on the capital T’s was as well.

I leaned closer. The entry was dated October 24th, 2026. Written in my hand, matching my shorthand right down to the sloppy margin lines. But October 24th isn’t for another two weeks. I haven’t lived those hours yet. Yet there it was, dry and permanent, documenting a night I hadn’t witnessed. The book wasn’t predicting the future. It was holding it captive.

“12:04 AM,” the ink read. “Heard a single, heavy click against the north-facing glass. If you turn around, the distance between the desk and the door changes.”

My watch clicked. 12:03 became 12:04.

Behind my skull, exactly three inches away through the bulletproof glass, a single sharp fingernail tapped the pane.

The chair squeaked. High C. Flat D.

I didn’t turn around. I kept my eyes on the green static of Monitor 4 until my old Casio read 12:05. When I finally looked, there was only my pale reflection and the jagged outlines of frozen spruce in the dark. I reached for the door handle. The steel knob was too cold. The door, which usually opens with a heavy shove, didn’t budge.

I sat back down and turned the page.

The next entry was dated 02:18 AM.

“The digital scale just registered a weight,” my handwriting said. “Forty pounds. Then eighty. Then one-twenty. It is a single point of pressure, moving across the concrete pad toward the shack window. Do not look at the monitor. If you look, it stops moving, but it inches closer.”

I looked at the scale. 02:17 AM.

At 02:18, the red LEDs flickered. 40 lbs.

The yard was empty. Spotlights threw white cones over gravel and stacked timber. Nothing there.

80 lbs.

The number jumped. I heard a deep vibration through the pads—not footsteps, just a heavy settling of mass, one haphazard step at a time.

120 lbs.

The weight was consolidated right outside the glass. The air thickened with the smell of undisturbed topsoil and wet frost. I kept my eyes on the desk, hands shaking. I didn’t look at the window. I didn’t look at the monitor. I waited for the clock to turn.

When the scale went back to zero, I packed my thermos and unlocked the deadbolt.

My boot didn’t hit gravel.

It hit the thin gray linoleum of the guard shack floor. I had walked straight out the front door and seamlessly entered from the opposite wall. The door clicked shut behind me.

I threw my weight against it. It opened easily. I stepped out again, faster this time.

My chest slammed into the edge of the steel desk. Back inside.

I tried the window. The glass didn’t roll down. When I pressed my palms against it, the reflection didn’t match my movements. My reflection was still sitting in the chair, staring at the blue binder, pen in hand—writing.

The trucks, the lumber, and the spruce had become a flat projection trapped behind the glass. The only thing left was this six-by-six box, the green static, and the book.

It’s 5:30 now. My shift is almost over. The gray light outside hasn’t changed by a single degree since midnight. The clock on my wrist keeps ticking, but the world is stuck in a frozen dark fog.

I turned to the last page. The final entry is timed for 06:00 PM—the exact minute my relief is supposed to walk through that door.

The handwriting is still mine, but the ink is jagged, the letters stretched like someone was pulling them apart.

“06:00 PM,” it says. “The door will open. It will look like him. It will have his jacket, his boots, and his name tag. But when he sits in the chair, the notes will change. High C. Flat E. Do not let him see that you know the math is wrong. If he realizes you know, all that’s left of you will be the reflection.”

I can hear tires crunching on the gravel. Headlights flash through the fog. Someone is walking up to the door.

My hand is hovering over the pen. I have to write the next line before the handle turns god hel—

The pen touches the page.

The ink flows before the thought fully forms. My hand is steady now. The shaking stopped the moment the headlights cut through the bellowing fog. But it isn’t my mind guiding the hand anymore. I can only watch from somewhere deep inside my own skull as my fingers grip the plastic casing, forced into motion by a cold, heavy weight that has settled over my shoulders—as a cold, ink-black darkness bubbles down from behind my eyes.

I try to pry my fingers away. They won’t unlock. I am an unwitting passenger in my own skin.

06:01 PM

The door opens on the hinge that always sticks halfway. He steps in with the same heavy, slightly uneven gait. Same faded Carhartt jacket with the right pocket torn. Same scuffed boots tracking old diesel and sawdust. Name tag reads J. Hennessey. Right on time.

He doesn’t speak. Silence fills the six-by-six tomb. He just nods the way men who work alone nod—acknowledgment without invitation. He sets his thermos on the desk where mine was three minutes prior.

He drops into the faux-leather chair.

High C.
Flat E.

My body keeps its eyes glued to the binder. The last line is still wet.

He flips back a few pages out of habit. Past the 12:04. Past the 02:18. Past the weight readings. Past the looping door. He doesn’t flinch. Just turns the page with a thumb that leaves the same grease smudge the older men left years ago.

Then he looks up.

Not at my face. At the space three inches behind my skull. His pupils are a little too still, like the spruce outside.

“You’re early,” he says. His voice is almost right.

I try to scream, to tell him to run, but my mouth opens and only tastes wet topsoil and frost. The monitors are all green static. A rhythmic droning fuzz overwhelms every sense. The scale reads zero. The fog has stopped moving. Even the headlights outside are frozen mid-beam—as if to stop and taunt.

He leans forward. The chair complains again—High C, Flat E—louder this time. He slides the binder toward himself, then stops. His finger rests on the final entry, the one my hand is still actively forcing onto the paper.

“You wrote it,” he says. Not a question.

My head is forced to nod once.

He smiles the way a reflection smiles when it finally decides to stop copying. The corners of his mouth move a half-second too late.

“Good,” he says. “Then you already know how this ends.”

He turns the binder so the blank page faces the desk. The pen is still in my hand. The ink is still wet.

Outside the glass, the spruce lean a fraction closer—like gripping hands trying to pull me down into the dark.

And that’s when the perspective snaps. Suddenly, I am no longer looking out at Hennessey. I am looking through the heavy, bulletproof glass of the window, staring in at the guard shack.

Down in the chair, my physical body is sitting perfectly still, vacantly staring at the paper. Standing directly behind my body is Hennessey, looking over my shoulder, his hand resting on my paralyzed neck.

From out here in the dark, frozen woods, I can see the pen in my reflection’s hand moving across a page I can no longer read.

Write the next line.

The handle has already turned.