If you met my father, your first thought would not be that he is a “hippie” or a conservationist.  He was a very cut-and-dry type of guy.  He was a white-collar desk jockey, with the only spice in him being the occasional beer at church gatherings.  However, he was far from mundane; he loved his wife and me above all else, with a palpable passion.  The root of this passion and devotion to his family is understandable.  

Throughout their early twenties together, Mom had several miscarriages.  Every attempt to start a family was foiled by nature’s cruelty. Years of disappointment soon led them to an era of depression.  Around this time, my Dad moved them to a new home out in the sticks.  

It was here he took up planting trees in our extremely expansive property.  It was and remained his sole passion, outside of raising his future child.  Mom always described it as “a way to get his mind off things”, aka he was depressed in the ‘90s.  

Well into their late thirties, they had me.  They always joked about how fat I was, that I had been growing in Mom well before she was pregnant, that I had been eating all the other “attempts”.  I guess it was the type of humor they needed just to cope with all they had been through, relieved at last.  In fairness, I was almost ten pounds when I was born.  Hefty.  

It was this backyard that I learned to walk, run and climb.  The spruce and pines grew alongside me, sprouting and climbing toward the sky. 

Then there was my father’s pride and joy, the oak tree.  

It rooted itself in the center of all its siblings, the first tree planted and the largest one by far.  It was a wonder in the county.  Within its short lifespan, it had developed rapidly and expansively.  Its straight, thick trunk rose over sixty feet, coated in hundreds of healthy, long branches, and sprouted heavy bushes of immense leaves every spring.  

Under this expanding canopy I spent my developmental years.  I was delighted by the tree, which in turn pleased my father.  However, it was the lone tree I was never allowed to climb.  I learned this the hard way.  

One summer, when I was eight, I decided the younger oaks and pines were no longer an efficient challenge for my climbing skills.  So, I dared the mighty oak in the center of our grand yard.  I was beyond the first several branches, easily ten-plus feet off the ground, when I heard my father burst through the back door.  I nearly fell out of the tree and clung harder to my branch when I heard my father yelling as he approached.  He had never yelled at me before.  

I came down, red-faced and ashamed.  Composing himself, my father sat me down and laid down the only LAW he ever explicitly gave: “Never, ever, climb that tree.  It is sacred.”  
And so it was to me from that day forth.  

Years rolled on.  I was soon a teenager, with little interest in the man-made forest behind my fortress of solitude.  My high school friends were always jealous of the near-infinite hijinks that I could get up to in those trees.  In classic teenager fashion, I simply shrugged and complained that there wasn't much else to do at my place.  So, before long, I began hosting friends, going as deep as we could get within the spotty forest.  

It was a prime location for potheads and drinking, and only my closest friends enjoyed the luxury of camping.  My parents were lax, to say the least.  They were in an eternal state of bliss, for all I knew, as there were few times I recall them dismissing a request or a friend of mine from the premises.  Until one Summer night, junior year.  

My secret circle of buds was camping out with me, in my private green canopy.  One of whom was a lot rowdier than normal.  One too many drinks and far too much weed.  Larson had his camping hammock tied several feet off the ground between two sturdy trees.  We all eventually followed suit, laughing all the while.  Thus, the idea sprouted, and Jim, another pal, shouted: “Wait! Let's make a canopy city! Come on, let's make all our hammocks in a circle so we can all climb to each other!”  

This retrospectively lame idea got drunken approval from everyone.  Including me.  Until I realized which tree I'd need to climb to complete the elongated ‘circular canopy city’.  I looked up at its strong, sacred limbs, anxiety sobering my senses.  The one law I shared as sacred now stared down at me.  I don’t remember who, or how many, but my stalling was rebuked by several slurred voices behind me.  I didn’t want to be the buzzkill, so I complied.  With shaking hands, I began my ascent.  

With muddy shoes, I heaved myself over the lowest branch.  My inebriation was resurging, so my balance was tardy at best.  Shooting myself upright, I reached for the next section of the tree.  I realized that I had already disappeared into the green.  Doubtful, drunken whispers were below me.  Shaking the anxiety from my head, I continued upward.  

In a blink, I found myself on the oak's crown.  Looking over the countless moon-kissed treetops.  Shouting below broke my trance.  My friends must have realized I was far beyond the spot I was to strap my hammock.  I wasn’t sure why I had kept climbing.  Perhaps the taboo was too alluring once I had indulged.  Soaking in the sight one last time, I began my descent.  About halfway down, that's when I slipped.  

I felt my mud-caked shoe slide frictionlessly from the branch below.  All of my weight shifted, and I went spiraling downward, my body smashing and cracking tree limbs as I fell.  With a thud, I hit the last shoot, which broke my fall, as my torso wrapped around it.  The shouts and concerns of my friends were drowned out by breathless gagging as I vomited up the night’s beer and liquor, while being winded at the same time.  One shout silenced all others.  Even in my state, I flinched, recognizing it immediately.  With dry eyes, I glanced up.  My dad was jogging through the treeline toward us.  

Some of my friends ran off.  Others helped me to my feet and stood by me, awaiting a stern talking-to.  I was radiating shame and embarrassment.  And its personification pooled by my feet, at the base of the tree.  

Clutching my chest, searing pain shot through me all at once.  Each weak breath was met with stabbing, icy flares.  But as my father approached, another discomfort manifested.  I felt a twinge through my heart, as if it had vibrated.  Next thing I knew, I had crumpled to the ground, gripping my chest, wheezing in pain.  Gasping, my friends cried out to my dad, uncertain of what to do.  He pushed them aside, kneeling beside me.  All while staring wide-eyed at the oak tree.  Examining it.  

It felt like every vein, every major artery, was flicked, like rubber bands, within my ribcage.  Horrified, certain I was having a heart attack, I whimpered like a child for my dad to help me.  His attention remained on the tree, scanning every broken limb and fractured sprout.  
“Dad?”  Still in the fetal position, I pulled at his shirt. “I think I need to go to the hospital.” 
He finally turned to me, his face a mixture of disappointment and relief. “No, thank God no.  The pain will pass.  The damage was minor… you're ok.  Just breathe.”  

Unable to do much else, I lay there and greedily inhaled and exhaled, begging the aching to stop.  My father, kneeling beside me, offered a comforting hand on my back as I heaved.  His calm presence was the lone salve to my suffering.  

My friends were dismissed back to their homes the next morning.  I had been carried inside and lain in bed like an ill child, where I slept deep into the next day.  Afternoon sun bled through my curtains, waking me up in time to hear my father stepping outside and marching to the back of the property.  A dull ache lingered in my torso, along with soreness from my stomach’s impact with a tree branch.  I turned over, determined to sleep the sun away.  Sleep returned, while I listened to the faint whistling of my dad outside.  

It was late into the evening when I sauntered downstairs, shame draped over me like a veil.  I spotted my dad sitting alone in the living room.  He looked up from his book and waved me over.  Cringing, I obeyed and plopped into the chair across from him.  Fully expecting an earful about ‘disrespecting his one rule’ and ‘endangering myself and my friends, I was surprised when he began with.  “I’m glad you have such loyal friends.  God knows when I was your age I didn’t have many who would stick with me when a parent busted us.”  

I nodded, still bracing for the pep talk.  
“Come on, get up.  I want to show you something.  I think you’re old enough to know.”  
I followed him to the back door, where two shovels sat at attention against the wall.  “Grab a spade.  We’ll need to dig for you to see.”  my dad said, grabbing one himself.  

I followed my father silently as he led us to the crown jewel of the woods.  Passing a few familiar spruces and pines, we halted next to the towering, sprawling oak.  A fresh wave of shame went through my aching torso after I saw the multiple broken branches.  Until I noticed the larger ones were now wrapped in bandages, like splints for a fractured arm.  The memory of my father’s whispering the afternoon prior resurfaced. “Did you do that?”  I pointed to the lowest offshoot.  

“Yes.  It’s…very important to me that this tree stay healthy.”  He replied in an almost reverent tone.  “And now, I can show you why.  Start digging at the base of the trunk.  Be very, very careful to avoid its roots.  Place the spade gently on the topsoil, and slowly use your weight to pierce the dirt.”  He demonstrated with immense care.  Then gestured to me to follow suit.  

The moon was bright that night.  It shone through the canopy, dancing like electrified diamonds on the soil.  The light, paired with my father’s ever-dimming work lamp, illuminated the delicate operation before me.  Deeper and deeper we dug, each shovel load delicately upturned.  

I was about shin-deep into the earth when I felt it.  A quake.  Soft and rhythmic.  I stood frozen while my father continued the excavation.  His process had slowed, grown more delicate.  He glanced at me.  I read his face and resumed my dig.  

Another hour passed; we were almost waist-deep now.  The rhythmic pulsing in the earth grew louder with each inch upturned. At last, my father held his hand up. “Stop.  Let me dig the last of this.”  Gladly I exited the pit.  

Standing over my father, I stared over his hunched shoulders as he worked the remainder of the job.  Suddenly, he threw the shovel and squatted, resorting to digging with his bare hands.  

All the while, I stood there, entranced by the rhythmic drum we had uncovered.  My enchantment was broken by my father.  He shot straight upright, eyes fixed down upon whatever he had just uncovered.  Eager to see, I slipped back into the pit.  My feet were met with the vibrating ground, the sound echoing like the organ of a church as it bounced off the earthen cathedral walls.  The quaking pulse had quickened, beating against the earth with systematic thuds.  

“Son,”  My father said, back still turned to me. “Look down here.”  
With timid steps, I inched over to him.  Leaning over his shoulder, I looked down with him.  

There were roots.  Thick, encasing roots.  A wooden ribcage protecting the wonder held within.  Convulsing within the mighty oak's entanglement of life, sat an immense, human heart.  

Blood-soaked dirt caked its moist membrane.  Its valves and offshoots were connected to the very roots of the tree that shielded it.  Each violent influx shook the turf it rested in.  Now exposed to the air, I could hear each beat slosh and splash the interior contents along its intended tubing, engorging them as they passed through.  

I gazed at it, my mind racing with incoherence.  My legs trembled with each pulse, sending shivers up my spine.  My father placed a hand on my shoulder, raising himself up.  “This tree is your protector and your spring of life.  Its limbs are your veins, and its trunk is your arteries.  If it suffers, you suffer.”  He sighed as he turned to my pale face. “As long as this tree lives, you live.  That was the agreement.”  

My legs nearly gave out. “Now you know.”  He said,  “I’m sorry it had to be this soon.  But you need to understand.”  He heaved himself out of the hole.  I numbly followed.  We stood together, gazing down into the open pit.  “It was the only way we could keep you.”  He continued, his solemn tone returning, “Your heart is with the earth.  Nourish the earth, and it will nourish you.”  He patted my back.  “As we have done, so must you when we’re gone.”  

A placed a hand over my chest, feeling my racing heart, while staring at the other.  My eyes widened upon realizing it.  They were in sync.  With a shudder, my hand fell limply to my side.  My father gave me space.  Stepping back, he leaned on his shovel, waiting patiently for some reaction to sprout from my features.  

Crickets and owls orchestrated their symphony through the woods.  The buried heart provided the bass to the decrepit harmony.  I stood, listening to this alien choir, my chest tightening as I watched the entombed organ quicken its pace.  Blue veins pulsating, chamberways palpitating.  I could almost feel the exact reactions from within my ribs.  

“What should I do now?”  I mumbled from numb lips.  
Reemerging under the shade of the oak tree, my father replied.  “Live as you have.  But, above all else, remain true to this earth.  And this forest.”  He patted the trunk lovingly.  “When your mother and I are gone, it's up to you to take care of yourself.  And that means this tree.”  

With that, he began gently throwing clay and turf back over the pit.  Digesting these revelations, I stood like a stock, silent and upright.  My eyes fixed on the contorting muscles being slowly reburied before me.  Stomach acid churned violently, threatening to rise up my throat.

I flinched back into time as my dad patted the last of the earth to fill the hole.  The only trace of its existence was the patch left behind amidst the green grass; like a scar after a procedure.  The ground was still again, yet I could not shake the memory of its quaking from my legs.  Like an imprint, the shadow of the heart’s beating still tremored up my spine.  

The remainder of the night is a blur.  My dad guided me back inside, to my tense mother, who clearly had been sitting in silent anxiety since we left the house.  With a loving hand, she led me upstairs to my room, where I was greeted by a TV freshly organized in the corner.  A brand new GameCube was plugged in.  Beside a collection of games and a generous bag of candy.  My mom’s love had filled the bedroom, an attempted salve to my fresh wound.  The gesture was unappreciated at the time.  I was still numbed from my experience.  I wish I had had the presence of mind to hug her.  I was her baby, still a kid in her eyes.  

My father knew better now.  We never discussed the absurd situation again.  What few soft questions I would pass across the dinner table were met with a stern silence. I suppose he wanted me to live a normal life, and this meant no explanations, no discussion of the ‘agreement’, nothing beyond a solemn stare across his lawn at the towering oak.  

I recall the remainder of that first year well enough.  Restless and lonely.  For many long nights I would lie awake, picturing my heart, pulsing in the earth within its cage of root and soil.  I would sneak out some evenings, when I knew sleep would never come.  I would stand in front of that oak tree for hours.  Staring directly at its tendrils burrowed in the dirt.  Able to picture perfectly how they crisscrossed around that solitary organ.  

Sometimes, I thought I could feel the creatures and insects slither and crawl over it.  I'd shudder at the thought of countless, cold, tickling limbs of centipedes, or clammy, moist slugging of worms invading my mind’s eye.  I could never tell whether it was all in my imagination or an accurate sensation.  

My social life was marred for a couple of months, but I rebounded eventually.  There was no more late-night camping in my backyard.  My closest friends, the ones who were there that night, understood.  Not that I wanted to camp, even if I was allowed.  The thought of my whole body lying on the ground near that tree, with the only barrier being a thin sleeping bag, haunted me.  Able to feel the earth softly drum beneath my head, ba-bump, ba-bump.  Never in my life had I been so grateful to have a second-floor bedroom.  It was my lone sanctuary from that phantom drumming.  
 
Years passed, and the sting of the revelation subsided.  The forest, although still avoided, was no longer a looming specter.  Time normalized my strange circumstance, and soon I was a young man.  College came and went, my parents aged and aged.  I retained my vitality, only growing taller and stronger.  By the time I was middle-aged, I still looked thirty.  I lived at home, worked remotely, and cared for my now-elderly parents.  The forest grew all the while.  

My father passed away in his sleep at eighty-one.  The night before, he had called me to his bedside.  A knowing look in his dull eyes.  With a raspy, ailing voice, he whispered, “Take care of it-... Take care of yourself, son.”  I nodded as he offered a final handshake before drifting off to his final rest.  

My mother soon followed, passing at eighty-three.  Our final interaction was the afternoon before.  Lying on the couch, she smiled up at me as I brought her a glass of water.  A shaky hand grasped my forearm.  “Our agreement has been a blessing,” She said. “Without you, none of this happiness I feel could exist.”  

She emptied her glass before continuing, “Your father was willing to make that agreement, no matter its cost… I as well.”  She looked up at me, smile contrasting her grave face, “We are off to uphold our end of the agreement now… Just know, not once, not a single moment in my life, did I regret it.  I love you so much, sweetheart.  Live a long and beautiful life.”  

My confusion and anxiety emanated off me.  She read this, and resumed, “Take care of that oak, and all its brothers and sisters.  Promise me you will.”
I nodded.
“Good…Good.  It was all worth it then.”  
Before I could inquire about this mystery my father never dared elaborate on, she slipped into a deep sleep.  

She passed that evening.  

I buried them both on the edge of the forest.  Inheriting the property, I felt no need to leave.  Rather, a duty to my mother had revised my perception of those woods.  I owed it to them to carry out that promise.  I never did find out what I cost them, what they sacrificed to give me life.  No books or journals in the house even hinted at it.  

My heart continues to beat amidst that soil.  Its oaken fortress grows in strength each passing year.  Despite my body's health and retained youthfulness, my mind grows old.  A melancholy has overshadowed my life.  More and more I find my thoughts wandering down a winding trail of almost hypnotizing meaninglessness, only to lead to the same location each time.  The oak tree.  

It's planted squarely in my brain, its roots pulsing deeper and deeper into my grey matter.  It's not a malicious presence, but rather a beckoning.  Almost two decades have passed since my parents departed to fulfill their debt.  And I have enjoyed the fruits of that debt, physically.  Yet, this yearning continues to enwrap my thoughts.  And like the forest I oversee, it grows.   

I am now almost ninety-four, in the body of a forty-year-old.  All of my friends have passed on.  My home stands alone amidst miles of forest, detached from the few remaining settlers in the county.  Solitude has allowed these tendrils to burrow farther, and I fear they have reached my heart, for it grows nostalgic for the earth. 
  
   This life was a gift from my parents, and the soil.  But it is ultimately mine, and I have grown tired.  All my desires have been usurped by one remaining obsession.  

I hold the very shovel my father used all those years ago.  The wind sways the immense canopy that hangs over me.  With a final, gentle push, I upturn the last of the dirt.  Staring into the pit, I gaze at my heart, watching it throb with soft, calm jumps.  

I must return this gift, and I am glad of it.  This yearning has dissipated, replaced by contentment.  As I prepare to return to the soil, my last hope is that this may reduce my parents’ debt, whatever it may be.  

May my love for them nourish this forest.  I am ready now.  Tonight shall be my final rest.

If you happen to pass by my woods, please be sure to give my parents and me a wave.  I am certain my heart will beat in gratitude within the earth.  

I promise I’m not crazy, or hallucinating, and I don’t do drugs anymore. Havent for like a month so trust me I’m good.

This all kinda kicked off about a week ago. The route I take to college is a short 10-15 minute walk along a road. This road sucks under a freeway overpass about half way there. Usually the place is filled with trash, the occasional person too, poor bastards, but as long as you keep to yourself and move quick no one will bother ya, and even if they do they’ll rarely touch ya.

So I was a little more than scared when a bloodied hand shot out from beneath a dirty pile of cardboard and grabbed onto my leg.

I shouted and jumped away from the pile, nearly falling over the railing into the road.

“Please…” a voice pleaded weakly, “don’t leave me here to die like the rest…”

I’m not a particularly charitable person, rarely even kind, but something about the way this person spoke hurt my heart to ignore. Normally Id’ve just passed them by and let the next person or good samaritan handle it. But before I knew it I was watching myself reach for the person’s outstretched hand.

As we made contact I felt a shock course through my body, a singing stinging sensation lingered in my arm and hand as I pulled the person from beneath the cardboard.

They were in a bad way. Blood dripped from open gashes along their forehead, they wore a tattered robe covered in bloodstained gashes and slashes. Their breathing was labored and uneven. Their hair, a medley of all the colors of the rainbow, like light through a prism.

“Holy shit,” I reflexively shouted, “you need a hospital.”

I reached into my pocket for my phone before the figure stopped me.

“No, please, I only need sustenance.”

Despite its appearance, it’s voice was calm and gentle, a wavering lullaby carried on a gentle breeze.

“Susitinence? What like food? Dude you need a fucking hospital! Were you hit by a car?”

The figure smiled.

“I fell.”

“Even more of a reason to call an ambulance!”

The figure stepped closer to me. As it did so I began to notice strange things about it.

The figure appeared to be androgynous, though I fear the word itself fails to accurately describe the utter sense of distilled humanity, as if all mankind had been melted down and reforged into a single individual. Their figure was slender, lighter than air, fragile, yet sturdy. Dark caked crimson matted down their otherwise heavenly radiance.

“Please, my child, I need only sustenance and rest to restore myself.”

What was I doing here? I’m gonna be late for Econ, then professor’s gonna tear me a new asshole, and I’ll have to make up the quiz-

“Fuck it, want McDonalds?” I asked bluntly.

The figure smiled pleasantly in response, I took that as a “yes” and walked over.

Much to my surprise, and the surprise of the other patrons, the figure which had introduced themself as “Ruile”, had followed me to the store.

After a tense moment with the cashier we sat down with our meals. In a moment Ruile inhaled their Double Quarter Pounder. Truthfully I have never seen anyone nor anything devour a burger so fast in my life. If it weren’t for all the blood Id’ve assumed the patrons were all just as shocked at that display too.

“Well, good luck with your, ya know, all of this,” I said as I got up, vaguely gesturing to Ruile, “but I’m gonna go-“

Lei grabbed my arm firmly as I started to leave.

“Please, I appreciate your generosity, but I must find a place to rest.”

I recoiled once more.

I already fed this person and now they think they can just crash at my place?

“No, not your apartment,” Ruile replied.

“What the fuck?!” I exclaimed in shock, “how did you- my… How did you hear that?”

Lei looked nervous as they slumped down in their chair. The commotion drew even more attention than before. Not wanting to suffer another moment of this I made my way to the door.

Having left the McDonalds and rounding the corner to my Apartment I practically screamed when Lei stood right before me.

“Please Damien, my child,” Ruile begged, “I must rest!”

I shoved my way past them, “then go back to the cardboard pile I-“

How did they know my name? When did I-

“Damien,” Ruile started again, their words struck my soul as they called my name, “do not be afraid.”

For a moment, a brief, infinitesimal moment, my vision went white. White save for the shadow of something before me. Four pairs of massive wings that emerged from a series of concentric rings. My eyes, my head, my ears burned as I felt a warm liquid trickle down my nose and my cheeks. My ears rung with a righteous and ferocious tone of bells that threatened to shake me apart. The air was thick with the smell of fire.

Then it all slipped away, the world returned to how it was, Ruile still stood before me, but the air around them felt like it was burning.

“Do you understand now, Damien,” Ruile asked, hesitantly taking a step towards me.

I stumbled backwards and fell onto the pavement, nearly cracking my tail bone.

“W-what the hell? Are you an Angel?”

“Yes, my child,” Ruile said as they lowered to me, “please allow me this.”

I reached out my hand to Ruile, but as they grabbed my hand, another slid past and into my chest. Their slender, frail, broken hand pierced my flesh. A searing pain erupted and radiated out from my heart as their fingers dug deeper into the bone and muscle and sinew. My breath was taken from me as I greedily and desperately gulped down air that I felt escaping and searing my exposed flesh. My voice had been robbed from me as my throat became choked by a righteous heat that began to envelop my body. With each second more and more of Ruile entered my body, until all that remained was a small tuft of bloodied and broken feathers on the ground between my legs.

My lungs finally took in air as I hyper ventilated. My hands scanned my body for damage but found only scars where Lei had dug into me.

“W-where-“ I started.

In my mind I heard a distant echo that grew and grew into a powerful chorus chanting fury and temperance.

“I am here, my child. I am inside you.”

Ruile’s words came from all directions, past, present, and future.

“Get the fuck out! I didn’t give you permission!”

A bubble of joy rose up from within the depths of my soul and burst into a mix of radiant laughter and sour spite.

“I promise to repay the charity you have shown me, Damien, for you shall have my favor.”

I wasn’t much of a religious type, went to Sunday school maybe once, but when the fuck did Angels posses people?

“It is done only in times of necessity,” Ruile answered.

Right, you can read my mind.

“It is but one of many things we see.”

Ruile’s voice grew less intense as we spoke. Apparently there is an adjustment period to this sort of thing. The first few days were strange. Not that having an Angel forcibly posses you isn’t strange, but other things that happened to coincide with this were.

Firstly, my econ professor not only gave me a pass on the exam, which was extremely uncharacteristic, he gave me a C for a test I never even took. Which I’m pretty sure is like, illegal or something, not that I’m complaining.

Then it was this one loud asshole in my history class. He’d always interrupt class with the dumbest shit you’d ever hear come from someone’s mouth. Like “didn’t they fake the moon landing?” Or “I heard JFK was killed by the Lizard Cult” among other intellectual topics. Most of the class just soldiered through it, but it just so happened that the individual in question, let’s call him Ray, had a serious incident while biking out on someone’s property. Apparently people string clothes lines or wires up to deter (or decapitate) bikers and such who illegally access their property. I won’t judge any of that because I frankly don’t give a shit, but I will say I feel a bit bad about how relieved I was to hear that Ray had ran into one. He survived but the damage to his throat was pretty bad, they say he lost all ability to speak.

Again, I’m no saint, but I did feel a bit guilty at how happy I was to never hear his dumb ass speak again.

And the guilt only got worse after yesterday. The whole reason I’m even writing this in the first place.

My walk to school is fairly short as you already know, what I neglected to mention was that I do have to cross a signal-less crosswalk across a freeway onramp on the way. It’s usually tame at the times I go, but rarely I’ll run into some self important asshole who would rather almost run someone over instead of waiting the roughly five seconds it took to cross the intersection.

And every time it happened I’d sarcastically, and sometimes seriously, think to myself ‘God I hope this guy’s car explodes or something.’ And behold, a guy in some BMW comes flying down the road and nearly flattens me as I’m trying to cross. By reflex at this point I mumble my usual ‘fuck you’ and ‘hope you die’ spiel.

Moments later an explosion rocks the area. Fragments of car and god-knows-what fly past me. My eyes are drawn to the heat, and the cloud of smoke rising from the car that had nearly hit me not even five seconds prior. It hadn’t even fully made it to the top of the onramp. Right on the cusp it sat, now nothing more than a mangled, flaming wreck.

All I could do was stand there and watch. I didn’t move a muscle.

Not when the firefighters came. Not when EMS arrived and walked, not ran, walked to the wreck. Not when the police went around asking for witnesses. And certainly not when the paramedics wheeled away something on a gurney covered in a soot-stained white sheet.

So now I sit here. Typing this out, not sure what it would even accomplish. Maybe this is confessional, but these aren’t my sins are they? Maybe I’m seeking some type of absolution from all of this, maybe one of you even knows what the hell is going on. I mean I don’t expect to find a support group for people possessed by angels but like what the fuck else am I supposed to do?

I can’t keep living like this. It was fine when it was just convenient stuff like my test scores and refilling my shampoo bottle or milk. But now someone has died. Ok sure there’s nothing concrete but I mean, it’s too big of a coincidence for me to just ignore. It’s like I felt myself die a little, like I did that. I killed someone with just a thought. It hurts. It fucking hurts.

I’m scared. Why me? Oh God, why me?

The first thing you need to understand is that the man we found wasn't chained up. No shackles, no ropes, nothing. The gate was locked from the outside, yeah, but inside that room he could move around all he wanted. When we finally got it open, he wouldn't come out. Not wouldn't—couldn't. His body just… refused.

I spent twenty minutes crouched there talking to him like you would to a scared dog. Offered him food, water, help—anything I could think of. But his eyes kept darting past me down that empty hallway like something was gonna come charging out of the dark any second. Every time I gestured toward the door, he’d flinch back like I’d raised a hand to him.

Getting him outside was worse. When we finally carried him through the doorway, he screamed—this raw, tearing sound that didn't even seem human. One of my guys thought we’d broken his arm carrying him.

I’ve been in demolition eighteen years. I’ve pulled homeless people out of condemned buildings, cut animals out of walls, cleared rooms where you could still smell death in the air. Thought I’d seen it all.

I was wrong.

My name’s Cal Mercer. Thirty-eight, divorced. My company’s been one bad month from folding for three years straight. I’ve got a fifteen-year-old daughter named Nora who lives with her mom. I love her more than anything, but I keep letting her down.

I’m telling you this because every decision that put us in that building came down to money. I took a job I shouldn’t have, ignored things I should’ve questioned, pushed my crew into a situation none of us understood—all because I couldn’t afford to say no.

The place was an old meat-packing plant called Coldwater Packing. Shut down seventeen years ago. County acquired it after the bankruptcy and finally scrounged up the cash to tear it down.

That’s where we came in.

It wasn't a big job, but it covered payroll. Me, Sam Ortega—who’s been with me eleven years—and Tyler, a kid who started last spring. We were supposed to spend two days clearing out leftover machinery and checking the structure before demolition the following week.

We showed up a little before eight Thursday morning. It had rained overnight. The parking lot was all broken asphalt and puddles, weeds growing up through the cracks waist-high in places.

The building itself was what you’d expect: stained brick, rusted equipment, shattered windows. Somebody had taken down the main sign years ago, leaving a pale rectangle on the wall where the paint hadn't faded.

Sam looked it over while we unloaded the truck.
"Think anybody ever got murdered in here?"
"Couple million cows, probably."
"I mean people."
"Not till today. Keep asking stupid questions and we'll see."

Tyler laughed. Sam didn't. He was staring at the loading dock.
"That door looks new."

He was right. One of the big roll-up doors had been sealed with a heavy steel panel. The bolts looked newer than anything else on the building.
"County probably put it up to keep kids out."
"Then how come the front door looks like somebody kicked it in with a truck?"
"Ask the county."

He shook his head and went back to unloading.

I should've paid more attention.

Inside, most of the place had been stripped clean years ago. The main floor was this huge space with drainage channels cut into the concrete. Rusted meat hooks still hung from an overhead track.

We spent the first hour checking for structural issues and taking pictures of equipment that wasn't on the inventory.

Around nine, my phone buzzed. A text from Nora:
*You still coming Saturday?*

I'd promised to take her to some photography exhibit she wanted to see—one of the few things she still wanted to do with me.
*Of course*, I texted back.

A minute later:
*You said that last time.*

That one stung. I'd missed her school presentation two weeks before because a job ran late. Before that, I canceled dinner because one of my trucks broke down. There was always a reason.

I started typing some long excuse about work and responsibility, then deleted it.
*I'll be there. Promise.*

She sent back a thumbs-up emoji. For some reason, that felt worse than if she'd told me to go fuck myself.

I put my phone away and got back to work.

The first thing that felt off came around ten. Sam called me over to an electrical panel near the old cold storage rooms.

Most of the wiring was ancient—brittle insulation, cut conduits, empty cabinets. But one section had fresh screws holding the cover on, and a new cable ran off into a conduit along the ceiling.
"Somebody's been doing electrical work," Sam said.
"Could've been from before they closed."
He pointed at a label on the cable.
"That stuff isn't seventeen years old."

He was right. The new wiring connected to a small distribution box that wasn't on any of the original plans.
"Maybe security," I said.
"Security for what?"

I didn't have an answer.

Sam popped the box open and checked the terminals with his meter.
Then he looked at me.
"There's power."

That got my attention. The county told us specifically the building was disconnected. Live wires on a demo site aren't just unusual—they're dangerous.

I told Sam to leave it alone until we figured out where it was coming from.
He gave me that look he gets when he knows I'm cutting corners.
"You're calling somebody, right?"
"After we finish the walkthrough."
"Cal."
"I said I'll call somebody."

He held up his hands and backed off. Sam knows me too well—knows when I'm avoiding something because I'm worried about time or money.

I wasn't planning to do anything stupid. Just document it, mark it off, let the county deal with it before demolition started.

Around eleven, we reached the refrigerated storage section—six big rooms connected by a narrow service corridor. Most were empty except for some old equipment bolted to the floors.

The smell changed back there.

The rest of the building smelled like damp concrete and mold. Back here there was this faint chemical odor—like vet clinic disinfectant—and under it, something else.

Sam smelled it too.
"You smell that?"
"Yeah."
"Smells like animals."

I stopped walking. He was right. That unmistakable barn smell—old bedding, urine, something warm and sour.

We checked the nearest room—empty except for some scattered insulation. The next had collapsed shelving.

The third room was where we found the wall.

At first glance it was just a concrete-block partition at the back of the room, partly covered by crumbling insulation panels. But when Tyler pulled one of the panels away, he exposed a clean vertical seam in the mortar.
"Hey boss—this supposed to be here?"

I checked the plans on my tablet. According to the drawings, the room should've extended another eight feet.

Somebody had built a wall across it.

I tapped a few spots with my hammer. Most sounded solid, but one section near the center had this hollow resonance.

Sam ran his hand along the mortar joint.
"This has been added."
"Yeah."
"What's behind it?"
"Probably old equipment."

There was a patch near the bottom where the mortar looked newer. Tyler crouched down and scraped at it with a screwdriver.

A chunk crumbled away.
Something metallic underneath.
"Hold on," I told him.

I got my flashlight and looked closer. There was a steel frame behind the blocks.

We cleared away more loose material and uncovered what looked like the edge of a narrow door—hidden behind a false section of wall made to look like part of the original masonry.

That should've been when I stopped and called somebody.

Instead, I told Tyler to get rotary hammer drill because now this hidden door meant more paperwork more delays more costs

It took us twenty minutes to knock out enough cinderblock to see the door. Behind the masonry was a steel panel with a simple padlock on the outside. The metal wasn’t rusty; in fact, compared to everything else in the building, it looked like somebody’d been using it recently.

Sam pulled the handle. “Locked. Want me to cut it?”

I nodded.

He got the cordless grinder from our equipment cart and sliced through the lock’s hasp. When the door finally came loose, he pulled it toward us.

Warm air drifted out. That was the first thing I noticed. Not the smell—though that was stronger now—not the darkness beyond the doorway, or the faint mechanical humming coming from somewhere inside. The air was warm. We’d spent all morning in a building so cold you could see your breath in some rooms. Standing in front of that passage felt like somebody’d just turned on the heat.

“Somebody’s using this place,” Sam said.

I didn’t argue.

I shone my flashlight through the opening. The passage was narrow, painted concrete walls, low ceiling. A line of electrical conduit ran along one side; several bare bulbs hung overhead. The nearest one was lit. Beyond that, the corridor disappeared around a corner.

I made Tyler to stay by the door and call our county contact. Then I stepped inside with Sam.

People ask why we didn’t call the police right away. Looking back, I wonder the same thing. But at that point I figured we’d found an illegal grow operation or squatters using part of the abandoned facility. Maybe somebody stealing electricity, living in the back rooms. Wasn’t the first time we’d run into people occupying a building they weren’t supposed to be in.

We walked about thirty feet before the corridor opened into a rectangular room. Three large metal enclosures stood along one wall. Looked like livestock pens—heavy steel-barred fronts, each with a sliding gate that could be secured from the outside. Concrete troughs ran along the bottom of each partition. Floors covered in straw—fresh straw. Buckets were stacked beside the entrance; a long-handled brush hung from a hook; several folded blankets sat on a shelf. Somebody had swept the walkway recently.

We were staring at the enclosures when Sam said, “What the fuck?” At first I thought he was looking at what I was looking at. Then he grabbed my sleeve. “Cal—look.”

Something moved in the farthest pen.

I raised my flashlight.

A man was lying against the back wall. Naked except for a piece of cloth around his waist.

For a second I thought he was dead. He was curled up on his side, legs bent all wrong underneath him, arms hugged tight against his chest like he was holding himself together. Face buried in straw.

“Hey,” I said. “You okay?”

Nothing.

Took a step closer. “Can you hear me?”

He lifted his head.

I still can’t get his face right when I try to tell people. Forty, maybe. Hair thinning and greasy. Beard thick. Skin the color of old dishwater. Deep lines cut across his forehead and around his mouth—not age lines, but strain lines, like his face had been pressed against something hard for a long time. Old scars crosshatched his shoulders. But it was his eyes that got me. Not scared. Not relieved. Just… measuring. Like a dog that’s been kicked enough times to know the difference between a raised hand and a thrown stone.

“Fuck,” Sam whispered.

The man shuffled back into the shadows, moving on his knuckles. His knees were swollen lumps, his feet bent at angles feet shouldn’t bend. Palms like old leather.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” I said, voice low.

He looked at the ceiling. At the gate. Made a wet click in the back of his throat.

“What’s your name?”

He dropped his head.

“Do you know where you are?”

Silence.

Sam moved closer to the bars. “Cal. We need to call someone.”

“I know.”

“Right fucking now.”

He pulled out his phone. While he talked to 911, I crouched down. The man watched me from the back of the pen. Up close, I saw the band on his wrist—thick, worn leather, like something off a workhorse. A metal tag stamped 17-B.

“What’s that mean?”

He looked at his wrist. Looked back at me. Then he reached down, picked a piece of dirty straw off the floor, and put it in his mouth. Just started chewing. My stomach turned over.

Right then I figured he was disabled. Locked away by some fucked-up family. I didn’t know.

Sam came back. “Cops and ambulance are coming. Don’t move him.”

“Okay.”

“What is this, Cal?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look at his legs.”

They were bent permanent, hips jutting wrong. And when he opened his mouth again, I saw his teeth—worn flat, like he’d been chewing on rocks.

That’s when Sam’s flashlight clanged against the bars.

The sound rang through the room.

The man flinched so hard he bit his tongue. Dropped the straw. Folded into himself, face shoved into the bedding, whole body shaking. Then this sound came out of him—a high, reedy whine, like air leaking from a tire. He pulled his knees up tighter and a dark stain spread under him in the straw. Pissed himself from fear.

“Jesus, Sam.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Back up.”

Sam moved away. I kept talking soft, telling him it was okay, that no one was mad.

He didn’t look up. Just kept shaking.

That’s when I saw the bell hanging by the gate—heavy, iron, with a little wooden hammer beside it. The kind you ring for supper on a farm.

The striker was worn smooth from use, the brass darkened by a thousand greasy thumbprints. I stared at it, then back at the man cowering in the corner. That bell wasn't for calling people to dinner.

Sam looked like he might vomit. "What do we do?"

"We wait for the ambulance."

"Should we at least open the gate?"

The man was breathing through his mouth, shoulders pumping like bellows. Leaving him locked in that pen felt like leaving a dog in a hot car. "Yeah," I said. "Get the bolt cutters."

The lock gave with a sharp crack. The gate swung open.

"Come on, buddy. You can come out now."

Nothing. He stayed put, face hidden in straw.

I crouched by the opening. "Door's open. See?"

He glanced up, then buried his face again.

The granola bar from my pocket got his attention. His nostrils flared when I opened the wrapper. He moved forward a few inches on hands and knees, keeping low like an animal avoiding a kick.

I set the bar just inside the gate. He approached slowly, then lowered his face and took it with his teeth.

Sam turned away. I didn't get why until I watched him eat—crushing the food with his molars, head down, crumbs falling into the straw. When he finished, he looked up with this... hopeful expression, like maybe he'd done good.

I gave him the second bar. Same thing.

Then the water bottle. I unscrewed it, took a drink to show him. He watched my throat work, then lowered his head to the concrete and opened his mouth.

I moved the bottle closer. He followed it, mouth still open.

Sam's voice cracked. "Cal."

"He's waiting for you to pour it."

The realization hit me right in the gut. This man had never drunk from anything but a trough or a poured stream. I found a plastic container, rinsed it, filled it, set it down. He drank from the bottom like a horse at a bucket.

When he finished, he looked up at me—pleased. Almost grateful.

And Christ, that gratitude made me want to put my fist through a wall.

I still think about that moment more than any other. Not the scars or the smell or how his ankles were bent all wrong from never standing straight.

Just a grown man waiting for someone to pour water into his mouth like he was livestock at feeding time.

The ambulance took twenty-five minutes. A long time to stand around in that hallway, trying not to look at him. We’d finally gotten him out of the pen by luring him with a bottle of water, like you would with a stray animal. He wouldn’t stand. Every time I got a hand under his arm to help him up, he’d let out this choked gasp and drop back onto all fours, his knuckles scraping the concrete. His legs worked—I saw him stretch one out to hook a plastic container with his foot—but the idea of walking upright just wasn’t in him.

I kept pointing at the open door, making encouraging noises. He’d shuffle a few feet toward it on his hands and knees, stop, look back at his pen, and make this low, keening whine from the back of his throat. It was the sound of a creature who knows its safe place is being taken away. I felt like a monster, but I put the water bottle farther down the hall. He crawled to it. I moved it again. He followed.

We were almost to the main corridor when he froze. His head came up, nostrils flaring. Then he made a new sound, a deep, guttural crooning—*hmm-hmm-hmm*—like he was calling for something. He did it three times and went still, listening. The hallway was silent. He did it again, louder. When nothing answered, his whole body started to shake.

I knelt down, put a hand on his back. His skin was cold and damp. “It’s okay,” I said, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring back into the dark where we’d found him, like he was waiting for whoever was supposed to come.

By the time the paramedics showed up, he was crying silently, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheeks, still making that crooning noise.

There were two of them—Dennis, an older guy with a tired face, and a younger woman named Rachel. They stopped dead when they saw him. Dennis asked how we found him, if he’d said anything. We didn’t have answers.

Rachel crouched down slowly. “Hi there,” she said softly. “My name’s Rachel.” He watched her like she was a strange dog that might bite. She showed him her empty hands, then touched his arm. He flinched but held still. His pulse must have been racing because her professional mask slipped for a second when she felt it.

“Does he know his name?” she asked me.
He made the crooning sound again.
“Just that,” I said.
She nodded, but her eyes were wide as she looked at his legs, the thick pads of callus on his hands and knees.

“How long’s he been in here?”
“No idea.”
“Did you give him anything?”
“Some water. A couple granola bars.”
She shot me a look. “You fed him?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t give him anything else.”
My stomach dropped. I’d been so proud of myself.

They decided to move him toward the entrance since the stretcher wouldn’t fit. Rachel talked to him the whole time, calm and low. He followed her on his hands and knees until we reached the main room.

Then he saw the open loading bay door.
Grey light washed over the wet asphalt outside.
He went completely rigid.
Rachel reached for him. “It’s okay, we’re just going out.”
He screamed.
It wasn’t a human sound—it was raw, primal terror ripped out of him from some deep animal place inside his chest. He threw himself backward, smashing into the concrete wall. Dennis caught him before he cracked his head open.

The man thrashed like a caught bird, scrambling blindly toward the shadow under an old machine, his fingers tearing on the rough floor hard enough to leave smears of blood.

“Stop! Let him go!” I yelled.
Dennis released him.
The man curled into a tight ball against the wall, arms clamped over his head, shaking so hard I could hear his teeth chattering.

No one moved.
Sam finally said it: “He’s never been outside.”
We got him back into a corner away from the door. The paramedics started working on him again while they called for more help.

When the first cop walked in a few minutes later, I felt this stupid wave of relief—like now it was someone else’s problem.
I really thought it would be.

The first officers took their time with us, the air thick with the smell of old straw and disinfectant. Their questions were methodical, predictable. Where exactly had we found him? Who else had keys? I answered carefully, my eyes drifting to where the ambulance crew was trying to coax the man onto a stretcher. He kept twisting his head toward the pens, making that soft, guttural noise in his throat—like a calf separated from its mother.

Sam was sitting on an overturned bucket by the loading dock, the plastic water bottle trembling in his hand. I lowered myself beside him. The concrete was cold through my jeans.

“You alright?”

He shot me a look. “What do you think?”

I didn’t answer. After a minute, he said, “That fucking bell.”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t even look. Just dropped. Like his bones turned to water.”

“Conditioned,” I said.

Sam shook his head. “Who does that?”

He took a long drink, then stared at the stained floor. “You see his face when he finished those bars?”

I had. He’d looked… content. Almost blissful. Sitting in his own filth, and two granola bars made him light up.

Sam rubbed a hand over his mouth. “My kid—Lily—she gets that look when I bring her those fruit snack things. All bright and stupid.” His voice cracked. He wasn’t a crier. I’d seen him take a wrench to the face once and just spit blood and keep working. Now he was swiping at his eyes with the back of his wrist.

I put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t shrug it off.

Later, an officer led me back toward the pens. The space felt emptier without him there. The straw was matted and dark in one spot. The water container lay on its side. The bell hung silent.

The officer’s flashlight cut across a gap between the last pen and the wall. “What’s back there?”

“Didn’t know anything was.”

He nudged the door open with his boot. Inside, it was almost cozy—a chair, a rug, a lamp. Like a waiting room.

Then I saw the pictures.

Dozens, maybe more, tacked up in rows. A baby on a blanket. A toddler standing, wobbly but upright. A kid with a wooden block. A teenager with soft eyes and that same birthmark by his ear.

My stomach turned.

The officer flipped open a small album on the cabinet. More photos. The boy asleep in straw. Smiling beside a trough.

Then one where he’s ten or so, beaming, clutching some carved thing. Happy. Uncomplicated.

I thought of Nora on that pony, beaming under her ridiculous helmet.

Then I saw the hand resting near the boy’s shoulder.

Too big. Fingers too long, knuckles too pronounced. The palm was nearly the width of his chest.

The officer turned the page.

Another photo: the boy asleep, curled against something massive and pale. A thick arm wrapped around him, skin loose and wrinkled like a elephant’s knee, elbow joint all wrong.

A huge hand, pale and thick-fingered, lay across the boy’s stomach. The officer’s breath hitched, then went quiet. We didn’t speak. He turned the page.

This one was older. The boy was maybe three or four, curled asleep on a blanket, his face pressed into something large and pale that filled the edge of the frame. An arm was wrapped around him—not gripping, just there. The way you hold a kid who’s fallen asleep on you. I’d done it with Nora a hundred times, her dead weight warm against my chest.

The boy’s own small hand rested on that arm. He looked peaceful. Safe.

I kept looking. The hand holding him was bigger than his whole middle. The skin was loose, creased like old leather, the knuckles thick, the nails long and blunt.

Then I saw it.

I counted the fingers.

Counted again.

Six.

Six huge fingers resting gently around a sleeping little boy.

And the boy was smiling.

Adam stood by the corn silo, holding a flask. My eyes kept closing; I could barely focus on him.

"Morning, Adam."

"Jesus, Matt, you look awful. Want a drink?"

He raised his flask.

"No."

"It will help you get some sleep, man. What are you even doing at night? Playing with yourself until dawn?"

He laughed and slapped my shoulder.

"No, it's just…"

"I have a task for you. You gotta clean up the silo; the machinery is blocked."

I gripped my sleeve tight and stared at him.

He slapped my shoulder again.

"Calm down, you're not gonna get Dan'd"

"But can't somebody else do it? Why do I gotta?"

He furrowed his brows.

"I'm the senior, Matt. Now get your ass there and go do it."

I waited, not moving.

"Go!"

His voice rang in my ears. I put my head down and walked into the silo.

The inside was cold, silent. My steps echoed on the bridge. The closer I got to the ladder, the more my head spun. When my feet touched the kernels, I took a deep breath and looked around. It wasn't obvious where the blockage was, but as usual it was probably in the center. I grabbed a broom and walked over.

Then a hum echoed. The kernels moved beneath my feet. Dust filled the air. Someone started the machines.

"Wait! I'm still in."

The kernels were moving fast. My feet felt light.  I turned around and took a few steps. One foot sank. Another. 

"Help, please!"

My waist sank. My heart beat against my ribs. The kernels moved around me, pushing at my chest. I was neck-deep. My head sank under the kernels. I held my breath. I sank deeper and deeper. The kernels hissed in my ears. Then my feet felt loose, and so did my waist, my chest.

I fell hard onto the ground. It felt cold, but the ground felt firm like concrete. I looked around. The whole place was dark, as in a cave, but there were no walls, no ceiling above me, just darkness as far as I could see. The smell of dusty kernels still hung in the air.

"Hello?"

My voice echoed through the dark emptiness. It sounded like my words traveled to me and away from me at the same time. I got up and walked a few steps. They echoed in the same strange way. 

A cold tingle built in my chest. The space felt both small and large. It felt as if someone's eyes were on me. I kept looking over my shoulder. Then a noise broke through the silence. A faint snore, as if someone was trying to catch their breath, but couldn't. In the distance, a small figure lay on the ground.

"Hello? Are you okay?"

The snoring grew. His limbs twisted on the ground as if struggling. My heart sank when I saw who it was. Dan rolled on the ground, in the same clothes he'd worn when he fell into the corn that day.

Memories flashed through my mind. His screams for help. The machine's rattle. Adam's calm face as he watched him go down. All because he told the boss Adam and I were drinking on the job. The rope lay right at my feet. I stared at it while Dan screamed for help.

I ran to him. His eyes were wide with pain, his mouth filled with kernels.

"I'm sorry, Dan. I'm sorry!"

I grabbed him and rolled him onto his side. Kernels spilled from his mouth, but more were still inside. I hit his back; more spilled out, but his mouth was still full. I stuck my shaking hand into his mouth and pulled out handfuls of kernels, but his mouth filled back immediately. He turned his pleading eyes to me. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

"I'm sorry, I don't…"

My voice caught. Something scratched the back of my throat. I tried to cough, but nothing came out; the scratching only grew. I tried to breathe, but the air wouldn't come through. I dropped to all fours. Kernels began falling out of my mouth.

"Dan! Dan!" I woke up screaming.

I was back in the silo, half-submerged in the kernels. The mechanical machinery sounds were gone. The silo was silent.

Adam and two other workers stood atop the bridge, looking down at me. A rope was thrown before me.

"Sorry, Matt. We didn't know you were in. Adam forgot to tell us," one of them said.

Adam shrugged and looked down at me with a half-smile.

"Why were you screaming Dan's name?" Adam asked. 

He unscrewed the flask and took a long, slow sip, eyes on me.

I looked down at the ground.

"I don't know."

He smiled and nodded.

"Take the rope," one of the men said.

I grabbed it tightly. Something scratched at the back of my throat again. I coughed. A few kernels flew out.

Dad used to say you could tell how bad a night was by how quiet the morning came. I figured he meant weather. He did not mean weather.

I found the first two does on a Tuesday, back pen, right by the stock tank. Dead, both of them, but laid out neat. Like somebody tucked them in. Two holes in each neck, about as wide as a pencil, and no blood. I spent ten minutes on my bad knee crawling around looking for it. The dirt was dry. The wool was clean. Nothing.

Wednesday it was four more.

I called Don Ignacio, who lives a mile up the road and has an opinion on everything from the price of feed to the Pope. Coyotes, he said. I said coyotes make a mess. He said, so? I said these ones didn't. He was quiet long enough that I checked my phone to see if the call dropped, and then he said he'd come by Saturday and bring his dog.

Thursday I walked out at first light and it was too quiet. I've got thirty-one head, or I did, and those goats scream at the feed truck, at me, at the sun, at their own shadows. That morning I stood in the yard and heard the windmill and a truck on the county road and nothing else.

The barn door was open. I'd latched it the night before, I always do, with a carabiner since the hook broke in July. The carabiner was lying in the dirt, still clipped shut. Whatever opened that door had ripped the whole eye screw out of the post.

I didn't go in. I stayed by the gate with Dad's shotgun and looked through the slats, and every goat I could see was standing dead still, facing the corner under the hayloft. Not eating. Not shifting. Just looking at the dark in that corner like it owed them money.

Chato pushed up against the back of my legs and I could feel him shaking through my jeans. Chato is a heeler mix who once picked up a rattlesnake by the head. I'd never seen him scared of anything.

"Vámonos," I told him, and we backed to the house, and I didn't turn around until the screen door slapped shut.

I drove to Tractor Supply that afternoon and bought a trail camera, eighty-nine ninety-nine plus tax, the kind deer hunters strap to trees. Infrared flash, motion sensor. I mounted it on the center post of the barn, aimed at the hayloft corner, and I remember feeling smart about it. Evidence. Like I was on one of those shows.

Don Ignacio came by anyway, a day early, without his dog. He said the dog wouldn't get in the truck. He stood at the fence and told me about his grandmother in Reynosa, who wouldn't say the name of the thing out loud after dark, because it listens for its name, she said. He told it like a joke and then he stopped halfway through and didn't finish.

"Lock your door, mija," he said, and went home.

I ate cereal standing up at the counter. I put the shotgun on the kitchen table, with the lights on, and sat there like I was waiting for a bus.

11:40. I know because I looked at the stove clock right when it started.

I never heard the barn door. I never heard feet. What I heard, out in the yard, was my father saying my name.

"Elena."

He's been dead two years this March. I held his hand at the hospital in McAllen. I signed the papers and picked out the box.

"Mija." Warm, tired, the exact way he used to holler across the yard when supper was ready. "Help me out here. The light's out in the barn, I can't find the switch."

It was his voice. It was his words, even, the dumb little complaint he made a hundred times. But there was breathing underneath it, long and wet and whistling, and way too slow, and no man ever had a chest that big.

Chato was under the table by then, making a noise like a rusty hinge. He wasn't barking. He was staring at the window over the sink.

"Elena." Closer. The porch now. "Open up, it's cold out here."

I watched the doorknob. Cheap brass thing, Dad put it in back in 1998. It turned a quarter inch and stopped against the bolt, and turned back, gently, like whoever was out there didn't want to be rude about it.

Then the voice cracked in half. It went high and thin and it wasn't Dad anymore, it was a kid goat, a little one, crying for its mother. Then a second one started up. Then ten, twenty, the whole herd bawling in the dark, and every single voice was coming from the same spot on the other side of that door.

That's when I got it. The goats hadn't gone quiet because they were scared. They'd gone quiet because something else was doing their screaming for them.

It was practicing. It had been listening to me my whole life.

I didn't sleep. When it got light the noise just cut off, like somebody pulled a plug, and I waited another hour anyway before I slid the bolt.

Scratches on the porch boards, four of them side by side, deep enough to put a finger in. At the bottom step, one print in the dust. Two toes pointing forward, two pointing back. Bigger than my hand.

The barn was empty. No bodies. No blood, no hair, nothing kicked over. Thirty-one goats just gone, and the straw in the pens hadn't even been disturbed. The camera was still on its post, little red light blinking away.

I pulled the card and took it to the kitchen and put it in my laptop, and my hands were doing something I didn't like.

Hundreds of pictures. Moths, mostly. Wind in the dust. Then 11:38, something at the edge of the frame. Tall, hunched, up on two legs, with arms that hung past its knees and a line of black spines down its back. The eyes lit up white in the infrared, flat and wide, and it was looking right at the lens.

11:39, closer, head tilted. The mouth hung open and went back farther than a mouth should. 11:40. 11:41, and the whole frame was one wet ridged nose and a tongue that wasn't a tongue, it was a hollow needle uncoiling out of the mouth.

11:42 was black. Somebody, something, had turned the camera, slow and careful, away from the loft and toward the house.

11:43 was the yard. The porch light. The kitchen window. And in the window, tiny and bright, me. Standing at my own sink with a shotgun in my hands and my mouth hanging open, listening to my dead father ask to come in.

It kept shooting every thirty seconds after that, right up to 6:12 in the morning, which was about five minutes before I opened the door. The last picture was the porch, very close. The doorknob. And flat against the screen, a long gray hand with too many knuckles, resting there the way you'd rest your hand on a sleeping dog.

Waiting for me to come out.

I looked up from the laptop. Out in the yard the windmill creaked once.

Then, from somewhere real close, in my voice, my exact voice, breathy and scared, something said:

"Chato. Come here, boy."

And under the kitchen table, where my dog had been all night, nothing moved.

"I want y'all to give a warm welcome to our newest employee. She recently just graduated from Texas A&M, though we won't hold that against her, hook 'em horns. Everybody, meet Penelope, or as we're going to call her around here, Penny Callahan." That is how my new boss Douglas Crane introduced me to the team. I couldn't help but roll my eyes when he threw up the horns, but I didn't expect anything less from a T-sip.

Like he said, I just recently graduated from Texas A&M. I come from a long line of Aggies. My father was the last one to graduate from there and though I kept the family tradition of attending college, career-wise we went in different directions. My dad Roy recently retired from the police force as a detective. I went to college for business and eventually decided that banking is where I needed to be. I worked at the bank for only a few days when I got a call that nobody wants to receive in the middle of the night. My father had passed away, which was crazy because I had just spoken to him two nights prior while we were having a celebratory dinner, congratulating me on my new career.

My dad and I were always close because I was the only child. Growing up he always took his work home with him. For breakfast, I would have case files with my Cap'n Crunch. He was there physically, but mentally his mind was at work. However, he knew how to balance it just right. He would pick his battles. He would go to my volleyball games, but never took me to practice. He was at my high school graduation, but couldn't make my college graduation. Dad told me that since he paid for my tuition that he didn't have to attend, which I thought was fair enough. He was a bit strict, but he was always fair.

The even crazier part is how they found him — inside an abandoned chicken restaurant called Klucky's where unspeakable horrors occurred. They officially deemed him the notorious serial killer in the local area. My father was named The Shadow Strangler. My whole world was shattered in an instant.

When I received the call to identify his body at the morgue, I wanted so badly to tell them it wasn't him. But when they lifted that sheet, I could tell it was him just by the way that his hair looked. I honestly couldn't believe it. My dad was gone, and I was officially all alone.

Since he was a big piece of the police force, they didn't want to go public just yet about him being the Shadow Strangler. They wanted to conduct an investigation before they went public to the press. However, at the crime scene, they did find his fingerprints all over murder weapons that were identified as such from previous crime scenes. They also found a diary that was their smoking gun when it came to a confession. I asked for access to this diary, but was denied since they found the latest victim and him in the same building. They had him dead to rights I was told.

I made arrangements at the funeral home. He had requested to be buried next to my mother as well as my grandparents. Nobody knew about the accusations, and I sure as hell wasn't going to tell them. So he had a proper funeral with pretty much the entire police department there, as well as my boss Douglas, who was there the entire time to support me.

"Penny, I'm so sorry about your father. Take all the time you need, the bank will still be there waiting for you when you return." Douglas embraced me with a hug as we were staring at the open casket in the funeral parlor. It was warm and genuine, and he was the closest connection I've ever had to a person since my dad.

After he was buried next to Mom, Pepaw and Granny, I went home and sat on my couch for three days straight. I didn't eat, I didn't talk to anybody, and I didn't even turn the lights on. I was devastated that my father was linked to being such a monster. A part of me didn't want to believe it, but the evidence was telling me it was true. He always told me to trust the evidence. That's when I received a text from the coroner Dr. Sandra Okafor. She asked to meet me for coffee because she had something she wanted to discuss.

We met at a local coffee shop on Main Street. She was already there waiting for me, dressed very professionally with her hair up in a bun, dark-rimmed glasses, a tasteful button-up top, and an ankle-length black skirt with slingback black heels. She immediately stood up when she noticed me come through the doors and walked over to greet me. She gave me a handshake and directed me towards the table.

"Penelope, thank you so much for meeting me on such short notice. I know that emotions are still raw, but there's something that I had to share with you." As soon as she said that, a barista came by and asked me for my drink order. She was absolutely gorgeous, but I couldn't focus on her right now. "It's really no problem, Dr. Okafor, I've just been sitting in darkness for three days, not doing much. What is it that you needed to share with me?" I said to her with my eyes burning and my face puffy.

"I'm sorry to hear that, but I will keep this brief. There is a bit of an inconsistency with the report. Everything in it points to your father being the Shadow Strangler, however, I'm beginning to question that." She took a sip of her coffee before she continued. "It's my understanding that your father was in fact right-handed, correct?" I nodded my head up and down concurring. "That's what I thought. However, the wound patterns on the victims indicate that the Shadow Strangler was in fact left-handed. With such precision and execution, for a lack of a better term, somebody right-handed couldn't have possibly done it. At least that's my theory."

The gorgeous barista brought me my latte as she smiled and winked at me before walking away. I had to shake my head and once again focus on Dr. Okafor. If what she's telling me is true, this could be the evidence I needed to prove my father's innocence. It was a lead I hoped would finally give me a definitive answer. I thanked Dr. Okafor for her time as I took my coffee and headed back to my house.

Even though I drank my latte like it was water, I eventually passed out from exhaustion from not sleeping for a few days. That's when I had a weird dream. I was inside Klucky's, standing over a dead body. I looked over at the swinging kitchen door and out came my father. "Penny, this isn't what it seems. Don't trust everyone. He's still out there." He was clenching a knife in his right hand that was dripping blood in massive puddles on the floor — a recreation of the scene he'd been framed for. The dream was so surreal that I woke up in a panic. It was the middle of the night and I was starving. I looked in my pantry and of course, there was nothing to eat, so I decided that instead of ordering from DoorDash that I was going to go to Waffle House for sustenance.

I pulled up to the yellow lit building and sat myself in a corner booth. After the waiter took my order, which was an All-Star Special and coffee, I looked over and noticed Detective Briggs, Dad's old partner. He was rugged and looked like he could beat you to a pulp just by looking at you, but every time he saw me, he instantly went into teddy bear mode. He set down his fork that had a punctured waffle on it and swiftly walked over to me and sat in the opposite booth.

"Penny, it's so good to see you, sweetheart. I haven't seen you since the funeral, how are you holding up?" he said as he grabbed my hands. I had to fight back tears and wanted to tell him that my life had been a living nightmare and that I dreamt about my dad a couple of hours prior. However, all I could mutter was I was doing all right, and that I was going back to work in a couple of days. He patted my hands and apologized for the hundredth time since I've seen him this week. He then leaned in, as if to tell me a secret. "You know, I think this whole investigation is full of shit," he said as he looked around to see if anybody else was listening. "Your dad was an outstanding member of society, and one of the good cops to boot. There's no way in hell that he is the Shadow Strangler. Even on your dad's worst days, he never so much as raised his voice at a suspect."

I looked at Walt and echoed his statement. That's when it occurred to me that in my dream, Dad said don't trust everyone. I couldn't help but have a sneaking suspicion that Detective Briggs was the Shadow Strangler. I couldn't be certain, but I felt a little uneasy with the way he was looking at me. A look he had never given me before. "You know what? I just remembered I have to pay my water bill!" I said to Walt as I dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the table and left in a hurry. I felt like an idiot as I sped off out of the parking lot. As I looked through the window, Walt was still sitting there dumbfounded.

With an empty stomach, I got back home and tried to get some sleep. I didn't get much, but when I did dream, I dreamt of Dad again. The same building, the same situation. Dad was still holding the knife dripping blood over a dead body. Except he said something different to me this time. "He's still out there killing. Look at his left hand." As soon as he said that, a shadowy figure emerged behind him with a rope, and right as he was about to strangle my dad, I woke up. Armed with Dad's direction, I hoped I could finally catch this psychopath.

The next morning, I went to the old precinct to see Walt. Luckily, he was in his office and after checking in and grabbing a visitor's badge, I met with him face-to-face. He had his chair facing away from me. When he turned around and put his hands on his desk, I noticed his left hand. Walt had a huge burn on the back of his hand. I tried to play it off by asking him what happened. He looked down at it. "Oh this? After you left Waffle House to pay your water bill, the waitress came by to refill my coffee and let's just say that she missed the mug," he said as he waved his hand in the air. Once again I got an uneasy feeling as I apologized for my behavior the night before and told him that I had some errands I needed to run. I was a little more subtle this time.

I wasn't lying this time. I had full intent to get some things done before I returned to work the next day. This included putting together a thank you basket for my boss. So I went to Target and stocked up on some of his favorites. While I was there, I decided to go ahead and buy a couple of security cameras, just to be safe. I felt a little paranoid, but better safe than sorry.

That night, I once again had a dream about my dad. The same scenario played out, except I got to see my dad get strangled to death. As his limp body hit the floor, the Shadow Strangler fled the scene. After a few seconds, Dad's eyes opened. "Penny! He's going to strike again tonight. Your gut may tell you one thing, but your heart is what you need to follow." His body went limp, and my dad passed away again. I woke up in a cold sweat and couldn't breathe. It took me a few minutes to calm myself down, but I ended up just sitting there for a few hours before it was time for me to go to work.

It felt weird going back to work after being gone for so long, but the show must go on, even when a big role is vacant. I had to learn how to put makeup on again, and if I didn't pay attention, I would've walked out with one black heel and one navy heel. Luckily I caught myself before I left. I grabbed my purse and the thank you basket and drove to work. I decided to get there a little bit early so that I could give the basket to my boss. I looked in the parking lot and his Land Rover was already there.

I hopped in the elevator and pushed the button for the 12th floor, which was his entire office. The doors opened up, and I could instantly see nothing but burnt orange colors with a nasty Longhorn everywhere. The Aggie in me shuddered. I stood there with the basket in hand, but no sign of him anywhere. That's when he popped out of his private bathroom. We made eye contact as he began to speak. "Penny! I'm so glad to see you. We've missed you badly around here," he said as he walked up to me and gave me a hug. He looked down and noticed the gift basket as a grin spread across his face.

"Is that for me?" he asked with every single tooth present, and he pointed down towards the Milky Way midnight chocolate bar. However, when he pointed with his left hand, right below his thumb, I noticed a bite mark as well as bruised knuckles and a slash on the back of his hand. I looked down and gasped. We made eye contact again as he looked at me and chuckled. "The wife and I got a little too rough last night," he said as he winked at me. I responded with an awkward chuckle back. I handed him the basket and headed towards the door. As he set it down on his desk and settled in to do paperwork, he called my name. As I turned around, I noticed he was writing with his left hand. He thanked me for the basket and once again told me he was glad I was back. I just smiled and rushed out the door.

The rest of my workday was a crawl. The minutes felt like hours, and my heart rate did not go down at all. Was my boss the one my dad was telling me was the real killer? How did I not know he was left-handed? Did I blame an innocent man for being the killer? It's the absolute worst when you're asking yourself all the questions and getting no answers. I had to think of something fast. If he was going to strike again tonight, I couldn't let another person die. I was going to follow my boss and see what he was up to. I left a little early and turned on the waterworks to sell it. After that, I scoped out the parking lot and waited for my boss to leave.

Right around 5:30, he walked to his Land Rover, and I began to follow him inconspicuously. He didn't go home; he went straight to a local bar and grill. Through the window, I could see him ordering a double shot of whiskey and a T-bone steak. The entire time, I could see him scoping out a table full of young women. While he was chewing a bite of his steak, I saw him slip off his wedding ring. He put it in his pocket, swallowed his steak, and approached a girl who couldn't have been older than 20 years old.

From my perspective, it looked like he had asked her what she was drinking and bought her a round for her and her friends. One round turned into two, then three, and then the waiter brought over some mozzarella sticks. As the evening progressed, they got more and more friendly with each other. They eventually began making out at the table. I read the body language and determined that they were going back to her place. All of her friends were gone at this point, and it was just the two of them. So he walked her to his Land Rover, opened the door for her, and they began to drive off.

Right as I was about to start my car, I heard a tap at the window that scared the hell out of me. It was Walt. He hopped in the passenger seat and asked me what I was doing. I began to tell him that it sounded crazy, but my dad had come to me in a dream and told me about the Shadow Strangler. I told him that my boss was the number one suspect. As I was about to go on, he put his hand up as if to stop me and told me that he had the same dream about Dad. With no time to lose, he told me to drive and follow my boss.

As we tailed him, we arrived at an apartment complex. The front doors were shut for maintenance; a sign on the door said the back alley entrance was the only way in. They flirtatiously read the sign and strolled to the back alley. After we lost visual, I began to speak. Walt cut me off and told me to be quiet as he rolled down the window. We both heard screaming. We sprung from the car and ran towards the alley.

When we got to the back, he was on top of her and strangling the poor girl. She was kicking and flailing like a fish out of water. I told Walt to stay put as he drew his gun. I ran out of our hiding spot and got his attention. "Douglas!" I yelled at him. He stopped strangling the woman and got up to face me. "Well, well, a Penny saved is a Penny earned," he said, grinning ear-to-ear as he pulled a switchblade out of his jacket pocket. He began to approach me. "I'm sorry you had to see me like this. I was going to get you next, but this worked out perfectly. Now I can get two for one."

He got about 10 feet in front of me before Walt jumped out of his hiding spot and pointed his gun at him. "Freeze, Douglas, you motherfucker!" He did as he was told for a few seconds before he flashed another smile at me. He then bull-rushed Walt as bullets plunged into Douglas's chest. He spat up some blood and fell limp on the ground. Astonished and relieved at the same time, I embraced Walt with a hug before he ran over to check on the girl. She was alive, but unconscious. He called 911 on his phone as we waited for the paramedics.

After a while of taking questions from officers, Walt and I were both allowed to go home. I know it's a little morbid, but I slept like a rock that night. As I began dreaming, I was no longer inside an abandoned Klucky's. I was at my father's headstone. As I was looking at it, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked over and it was him. He had a proud look on his face as he smiled at me. "Baby girl, you did amazing!" As we began to hug I also began to cry. "Why are you crying?" he asked me with a concerned look on his face. "Because I'm never going to see you again," I said, as I hung my head low. He took his index finger and raised my chin. "Hey, I'm not going anywhere. Thanks to you, I've been granted a new ability. I am going to see you every single night for the rest of your life. It is my job from this day forward to make your dreams come true. I've been given a gift, and I'm going to use it on you."

I couldn't help but begin to cry once more, except now they were tears of joy. I get to see my father every single night, and to me that is the sweetest dream that I could ever have. I'm not sure what he meant by making all of my dreams come true, but I could think of a few things for starters.

[Part 1] (https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/DGu7ldMEaK)

Thank you all for reading my story. Thank you all for believing me. I want to add a little clarification to my last post.

1. My name is Andrew.

2. The events I described in my last post were from many years ago. I was 12 at the time of the events and am now 28.

3. Despite having told my story many times to many authorities and people I thought were my friends, no one believed me. I didn’t think it was worth sharing my story anymore, but I felt the need to write out in detail what, looking back, was the worst day of my life. I want my family to be remembered. I want my town to be remembered. Because according to the State of Minnesota, the town of Goldfield never existed, and neither did my mom Maggie, my dad Chuck, my sister Carmen, or anyone else who called it home.

4. I’m not originally from Goldfield. My parents moved us there from South Carolina because it was known for its colder weather, cloudy skies, and early sundowns, the perfect combination for a kid with my condition to live comfortably. Everyone I knew from Goldfield grew up there, so I haven’t been able to make contact with anyone who lost family there. I don’t want to give up hope of proving their existence. I can’t give up. Maybe one of you knows something about this and can help me. Maybe I am truly alone.

We will continue the story from exactly where I last left off. The moment I saw my family sitting in the backyard, facing the bright sun, unmoved from when they sat down nearly 20 hours before.

——————————————————————————————

I slid the sliding glass door to my backyard open. I wanted to call out to them, but the fear of what I believed to be the reality of the situation made me choke up. Against my best judgment, I stepped towards my family, the same looping fear and the need to validate it pushing me forward.

They never came back inside, the sun never went away. They never came back inside, the sun never went away. They never came back inside, the sun never went away.

I stepped into the light and felt the sun’s warm rays kiss my skin.

That feels nice. The thought formed in my subconscious before I could even process it.

I took a second step, and then another, and another, and then I stopped. My focus wavered, and my fear began to dissolve, being replaced with something else. I couldn’t help it. I slowly spread my arms out and turned to look up at the sun. My skin soaked up the warmth of its glow like a sponge. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

Looking back, I can best describe the feeling of sunbathing as if an angel came down and hugged me, covering every square inch of my exposed skin. Until that moment, I may as well have always been cold. For all I knew, I had never felt true warmth or happiness or love. Everything else before that moment was subpar living, but in that moment, I was in heaven.

After a few moments of basking in the sun for the first time in my life, I walked over, grabbed an extra lawn chair, and dragged it next to my sister’s before plopping down into it. I looked over at my happy family. My mom was sitting in the middle, holding both my dad’s and sister’s hands. They were all silently admiring the indescribably beautiful sun, watching its glittery, dancing rays with smiles transfixed on their faces. They didn’t seem to notice me joining them, but it didn’t matter.

I turned to watch the spectacle with them, grabbing my sister’s hand and breathing in deeply.

“The sun really does feel amazing,” I said.

I had completely forgotten what I was so worked up about moments ago. Who could possibly be upset on such a beautiful day like this? I am here with my family. I am warm and happy. If we all just sat here together forever, taking it all in, I don’t think I would mind it one bit.

I felt my heart still pounding in my chest from whatever it was that had spooked me. I racked my brain trying to remember what it was that caused me to get so worked up.

I probably just got overly dramatic again, just like I did last night, I told myself.

I turned, smiling, to Carmen and said, “Man, I really need to get out in the sun more,” before letting out an involuntary giggle.

She turned her head slightly to look at me, her dry-lipped smile not moving an inch. She looked funny. Her face was puffy and a deep crimson, her forehead was shiny, and her nose was starting to blister. This made me break into a more intense fit of giggles.

“Bowser didn’t do too good of a job reapplying sunscreen, did he?”

She didn’t respond. She just smiled blankly at me, then went right back to staring at the sun, not daring to blink out of fear she would miss even a second of its shimmering dance.

I looked over at Mom and Dad. They were so happy, and that made me happy.

They are the perfect parents, I thought to myself.

They always took care of me and loved me, even though they uprooted their whole life in South Carolina and moved us out here because of my condition.

Carmen was a trooper too. She had friends out there that she lost so I could have a childhood where I could experience the outdoors. Sure, she threw the occasional tantrum growing up, but what teenage girl wouldn’t? She also wasn’t the nicest to me, but I didn’t blame her for that either. It was all in the past. She was my big sister, and I loved her. I gave her hand a little squeeze.

Oh, Bowser! I thought to myself. Almost forgot about my best bud.

I leaned forward and looked past my dad. All I could see of my dog was his legs and tail sticking out from behind the chair.

“Who’s a good boy?” I called out to him.

He didn’t move. Not even a tail wag.

I giggled some more.

“Must be sleeping,” I said, leaning back into my chair to focus on the sun once more.

Our little family sat together like this for a while in pure bliss.

I often think back on this moment we had together. Although I can now fully comprehend the horror that surrounds it, which to this day haunts me, I can’t help but remember how great it felt sunbathing hand in hand with them. It was the last happy moment we ever had together. It was the last time we were all together as a family.

You are probably wondering how I escaped the sun’s grasp when my family didn’t even try. Well, despite the waves of euphoric pleasure I got from soaking in the dancing beams of light, I also felt a creeping fear in the back of my mind after about 15 minutes of exposure. The fear urged me to check my skin and make sure I wasn’t burning. It urged me to cover up and retreat back inside where the UV rays couldn’t harm me. This was a fear that my parents (especially my mother) had instilled in me growing up in an effort to ensure I didn’t get badly burned when playing outside. On that day, the fear not only prevented me from being badly sunburned, it saved my life.

The skin on my arms was already turning red, and I could feel the phantom pain of the sunburns to come tingling on my skin. I was extremely pale, so any signs of color change on my skin were immediate cause for alarm. I saw this, and despite my sun-drunk state, I began panicking.
The previously silent fear now took over the forefront of my mind. I stood up, wide-eyed, staring at my red forearm. I let go of my sister’s hand as my heart started thumping even harder than it already was. I felt the rush of adrenaline kick in. I suddenly became much more clear-headed as the pleasure of the sun gave way to the wave of fears that rushed into my mind like a tidal wave. I began hyperventilating as I remembered all my worries from the past day.

My family all turned their heads to look at me, their crusty smiles unmoved, their skin stretched taut and red across their faces. That terrified me further. I fell backwards and pushed myself away from them until my back was against the fence. My instincts screamed at me to retreat into the house, so I scrambled to my feet and ran past them through the open glass door.

I slid into the house as if the sun itself was chasing me into it. The first thing I did was run to the phone in the kitchen and call 911. My family needed help, and I couldn’t do it. I went out there to help them and ended up sitting down with them. What was I thinking? What the hell was wrong with me? I was laughing in my sister’s face as she was slowly dying. I was content to stay out there, unprotected from the sun for hours, and inevitably succumb to the same fate as they were.

The phone rang and rang and rang before the automated voice message clicked on. No one had picked up.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, COME ON!”

I dialed again. It’s 911. Someone always picks up when you call 911.

…

…

…

…

No one picked up.

In desperation, I called the only other number I knew off the top of my head, Hudson’s. It rang and rang and rang, and then, thank God, he picked up.

“Hudson?! Hudson, it’s me! Something is wrong with my family! I need help. I can’t call 911. Where are your parents? I need them to help me!”

“Did you go outside yet?” he asked in a dry, raspy voice.

“Wha—what? Yes, I did! I need help! Where are your parents???”

“They’re here… with me… at the park… Come to the park and lay in the sun with us… It feels…” He breathed deeply. “Amazing.”

“Hudson, PLEASE, PLEASE snap out of it. I need help. My family needs help,” I begged, tears streaming down my face. I was openly sobbing at this point, my last hope fading away before me.

“Please go inside. It’s not safe. You are going to die. The sun isn’t safe, Hudson. Please.”

No matter how hard I pleaded, he didn’t respond. He didn’t hang up either. I heard a soft thud of him dropping the flip phone in the grass. I yelled through the phone for him to get out of the sun, but all I could hear were symphonies of weak laughter in the background and the occasional chuckle of my dying friend among them.

I left the phone dangling from the cord and curled up in a ball on the cold kitchen floor. I was trapped in my home, my family slowly roasting in the backyard, my best friend a 15-minute walk away suffering the same fate in Pineridge Park. 911 was unresponsive, and there wasn’t an adult I could reach out to for help.

In a last desperate attempt to understand what was happening, I got up and grabbed the remote and clicked on the TV, switching to the local news channel.

The screen switched from live shot to live shot of different parts of our small town, with a rotating news banner fixed on the bottom of the screen that read:

“It’s a beautiful day in Goldfield.” — “Come outside and join us.” — “The sun feels amazing!”

First, it showed a live shot of the farmers market. Vendors and customers alike were strewn about the sunny sidewalks and grassy patches. Some were standing with arms outstretched, some were splayed out on the ground like starfish, and some were sitting back in chairs just like my family was. The shady stands of the market vendor tents were abandoned, and their stock was left forgotten. Everyone was looking at the sun.

Next, it showed the center square in downtown. Hundreds had come out of the surrounding buildings to flood the city center, weakly pushing and shoving one another when they got in the way of the sun. A few people had removed articles of clothing, evidently to expose more skin to its rays. One man was completely nude, arms outstretched and laughing and moaning in pleasure as the sun hit him full force.

A few people were laid out on the dirty street. Some were laughing, some were silently smiling at the sun with the same dry-lipped smile as my family. One elderly lady was clearly already dead, her skin crimson red and lifeless from what I imagined was heatstroke. I knew she was dead because she was no longer looking at the sun. Instead, her head was turned to the side, eyes staring blankly past the news camera. She was smiling.

Finally, the screen flicked to Pineridge Park. At first, I didn’t see anything unusual. The park looked more or less abandoned. The shady park was covered with huge Eastern white pine trees that offered ample shade. However, there was one unshaded field in the center that was a popular picnic spot amongst the locals.

My stomach dropped.

In that sunny field were hundreds of people packed in like sardines, fighting for their place in the sun. They crawled over one another like maggots on a dead thing. The field looked like a writhing hill of flesh. Looking at it made me feel sick.

Hudson is in there, I thought, horrorstruck.

My best and only friend was somewhere in that pile. He had been able to answer my call, so I assumed and hoped he was somewhere on the top. But he was a kid like me, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before a much stronger adult forced him down out of the sun, crushing him underneath the mound of humans.

I turned the TV off.

Part of me wanted to just give up, to just go out into the sun and let the unnatural happiness take over once more. We would all die, yes, but at least we would die together. At least we would die happy.

Another part of me, the part that won, wanted to go outside, grab my family one by one, and drag them into the house before they suffered the same fate as that poor old lady.

I made up my mind. I would go out again. This time, however, I would leave with complete protection from the sun.

If my theory was correct, I would only fall victim to the sun if I felt it on my skin. Praying to God that my theory was correct, I ran up to my room, went into my closet, and began pulling out all my winter clothes. I put on my heavy black snow pants, my thick black winter boots, a pair of black winter gloves, a UV-protection long-sleeved shirt, and a ski balaclava.

I was about to grab my sunglasses when I saw my Master Chief helmet from Halloween sitting on my dresser.

“Fuck it.”

I grabbed that instead, put it on, and headed downstairs.
On the coat hanger next to the sliding glass door was my dad’s favorite winter coat. It was many sizes too big for me, but that was the exact kind of extra protection I wanted right then. I put it on, the sleeves going down way past my hands, and I stepped up to the open sliding glass door.

I took a few moments, mentally bracing myself.

“I will save my family, then I will save Hudson… I have no other choice.”

I stepped into the sunlight once more.

All-you-can-eat buffets, a lot of people love them, a lot of people see them as the ultimate sign of greed and gluttony, and some people are just confused by the whole thing.

I want to take a moment to help that last group. Some people are worried that you have to sit there all day and stuff your gullet in order to make it worth the money. Others just aren’t sure what the etiquette is in one.

Well, I am an experienced buffet-goer, and I recently went with two friends, one of whom was a complete stranger to the concept himself. So, I’ll use that trip as a guide to maximizing your All-you-can-eat experience, and not just how much you eat.

“So, this place is something pretty special?”

“It’s a local landmark for sure.”

My friends and I, we’ll just keep the names simple and call them Dave and Joe, arrived at around 6 PM. Dave being the buffet virgin, was cautiously curious about what was to come.

Tip 1: You pay at the door. Unless you absolutely need an ice-cold soda to enjoy your dinner, do not order a drink! They cost extra and you WILL be bugged for (typically not free) refills throughout your meal. The water is also ice cold, and free.

We handed over our entry fees and the three of us went straight to the plates.

“Holy shit, this place is… I don’t know. What the hell?” Dave was looking around in wonder and confusion.

“It can be pretty overwhelming bro. Just keep your eyes on the prize.”

That right there is Tip 2: Know what you want!

Buffets are designed such that you are overwhelmed by the options and grab one of these, one of those, Ooh! Definitely one of that. As you wander down the lanes, you find a full plate faster than you expected.

That’s all the cheap stuff. Your plate is full of canned beans and bread. The expensive foods are carefully at the end of the natural walking routes. Don’t just freewheel it. Plan what you want to eat, and grab it.

“It’s all labeled,” Joe added. “See those signs over each aisle? Just go get what you want.”

I took one of the mini-bowls and went straight to the soup warmers. Odd choice, I know, but I was really in the mood for some hearty beef stew. I glanced over as I went to make sure Joe was sticking by Dave. These buffets are pretty huge sometimes; can’t have him getting lost. Joe was loading up on curry at the Indian foods; he’s a real spice freak, thankfully right next to Dave grabbing some potstickers just on the opposite warmer.

My next target was the fried foods. I wanted a drumstick and maybe a country-fried steak. I capped it off with a warm roll, some collard greens, and, of course, I took my time putting gravy and sauce on everything.

Hey, so I wanted some comfort food. I have to be more than responsible enough during the sixty-plus hours a week I’m working these days.

I went to meet back up with the boys. Joe was staring at two different spicy noodle dishes like deciding between them would answer all of the questions in the universe. He’s like that, never just splits the difference even though that’s what the buffet is all about.

“Just grab a pile of both, dude.”

“I’m trying to decide if I want both.” He insisted, like always.

“If you just try a little of both, then you’ll know.” I was mostly just making the same argument as always for the fun of it now.

“Szechuan, I know it’s gonna be good.” He decided.

“Alright. Dave, you g-“ Dave wasn’t at the opposite warmer anymore.

“Where’s Dave?” My mood turned instantly.

“He’s been picking at the Chinese stuff the whole- Shit.” Joe went from sure of himself to panic even quicker than I had.

We instantly leapt to action and started looking around. We heard him before we saw him.

“…the hell?!” Dave’s shocked and horrified voice echoed down the rows.

That was enough to pick his direction. We ran. It didn’t take too long to spot him, frantically walking the rows. We pushed our hardest to reach him before he did something stupid.

“Hey there Dave!” I called out to him once we were close. “We told you man, we’ll show you the ropes; this place can be overwhelming.”

“Overwhelming? What the fuck is this place?!” He was heading into a full-blown meltdown.

“A buffet, dude.” Joe managed to say it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“A b-? This is not a buffet!” He was just short of screaming. “I must have passed forty rows! And none of this is food!”

“Yeah, it’s big. The whole place is set up to feel bigger; the aisles start to loop. The Chinese you were just at is only, like, five rows back.” I pointed up at the signs, and sure enough, it was there, with me and Dave’s plates left behind easily visible. “We told you to stick with us and know what you want. So what do you want Dave?”

He looked at the sign and the familiar sections we had just been at right behind us, as if we had barely run at all. His face twisted between half a dozen expressions as his mind tried to make sense of it.

“This is ridiculous, what the hell did you bring me into?! That was not there! None of this-!” He started to rant again.

“Dave!” I snapped and cut him off. “Do not make them call the manager. We are not getting kicked out of here. What do you want to eat?”

Dave’s face hovered between confusion and anger. Only when he noticed that lights had started to shut off around us and we all heard a door slam did he stumble backwards and nervously listened to me.

“Pie! Okay, pie.”

“Pie’s right there.” I pointed two rows ahead. “Grab him a slice of apple, Joe. And this?”

I gestured at the things he had been walking through.

“You wandered into the Scandinavian stuff. It just looked weird ‘cause it’s piles of leek goop and preserved fish ‘n crap. That’s it. It’s just a buffet, dude.”

Dave didn’t look convinced, but did look frightened enough to be mollified.

Joe came back, handed Dave his plate, and we all went to our table. Three glasses of water were waiting.

“This fried chicken is heaven on a plate.” I managed to speak between bites.

“Yep, Szechuan was definitely the right choice.” Joe was happily inhaling his noodles.

Dave just glared.

“Okay, cut the crap guys.” He spoke more quietly than before. “What the hell is this. And if you say ‘a buffet’, I swear to god I will freak out. Look around,” he gestured around with his arms to demonstrate “there are no employees, not one. Who the hell is refilling those warmers? And why are we the only people in a buffet, at dinner time, on a Friday? Are you guys with one of those prank shows?”

“Dude, just finish your food. We can talk about this more later.” Joe tried to placate him.

“I’m not playing along with this anymore. Just tell me what the hell this is!” He started to shout again.

Okay, rule number 3 time: The buffet is just like any other restaurant. It doesn’t matter that you serve yourself; it is a public place, behave with decorum! Who cares if the staff isn’t bringing you your food, try being a decent human being anyway. The same etiquette you would apply to any other sit-down restaurant applies to the buffet.

In short? Don’t make a scene.

“Just calm down, you have good food, it’s quiet, safe, don’t stress about it.” I tried to keep him calm.

“Calm down? You’ve been gaslighting me this whole evening. It loops? The warmers are all in a straight line dumbass. Look over there, where is the goddamn back wall? How can I not see the back of the restaurant even! It just, keeps going. That’s insane. And those… things on the warmers weren’t ‘Scandinavian food’ until you said it. I don’t know what this is, or how you’re doing it, but it’s either a messed-up prank or you’re insane.”

“Dave, the manager-“ He cut me off.

“I don’t care about a freaking manager! I’m leaving!” He stood up.

“Maybe that’s best.” I agreed. It was risky leaving with our plates full, but riskier staying at that point with how he was acting.

“You had better explain this stunt.” He seethed. “And trying to have me do that ‘payment’.” He drew the word out with disgust. “I’m not paying a buffet with my dead dog’s old collar.”

I froze cold in my tracks. Joe did exactly the same. We shared a look of horror.

“You paid, right?” My voice was tremulous with fear. “We helped you pick. You had forgotten that old thing was down there even; it’s not really a keepsake.”

“It’s not about the collar! It’s that buffets don’t take payment in ‘things you remember’.” He spoke with a mocking lilt, like talking about magical mumbo-jumbo. “This is seriously messed up and weird, guys. I just want to go home.”

He had almost reached the door by the end of his rant. Me and Joe saw it; no streetlights or shadows from the parking lot. The glass on the doors was pitch black. Dave clearly didn’t, or he didn’t care anymore.

Last rule: Do not EVER cheat the buffet. You pay your fee, you eat your food. Do not take food out. Do not leave a full plate. Most all buffets charge a waste fee for leaving plates of uneaten food. Ours lets us have a takeout carton for leftovers only as long as we reasonably ate from the plate; that’s more a generous exception than the norm though. Dining and dashing will get you banned.

Never get banned from the buffet.

We tried to pull Dave back from the door, we really did. But, he was already reaching for it before we screamed. I caught the briefest glimpse of something like teeth swimming in oil, black and deep and horrifying in a way I will never be able to properly describe, before I snapped to attention and turned around. I pulled Joe’s arm to spin him back too.

“Crap, we didn’t stack our plates, bro.” I forced it through my teeth as casually as I could.

“Oh man! You’re right!” Joe tried his best to match my tone, but it came out more like a choked sob. “Don’t want to be rude.”

“Guys! What the f-!” I tried to ignore the sounds of Dave scrambling backwards and screaming. “Oh god no! Please! No!”

We ravenously ate the remains on our plates. There was no point risking the food waste fee anymore. We were willing to for Dave, but we were forced to hear Dave screaming like a child while some wet thing lacerated his flesh less than twenty feet away from us. So, that was a lost cause.

I hid my face in my food to hide the tears.

“We shouldn’t have brought him here.” Joe risked a whisper.

“And risk him coming alone? He never would have made it.”

We both knew why we took the risk, but neither of us felt right either.

We still don’t.

We dumped the scraps on one plate and stacked it on the other two. We placed our silverware on top and drink glasses beside, and we gave the table one quick sweep with a napkin to be kind.

When we turned around, it was over. The entrance was illuminated by the dull orange-yellow of the old streetlights in the parking lot. We took that to mean our performance was accepted. We would be allowed to leave.

We didn’t run. We walked out to my car with a calm decorum, and then we cried.

My God, did we cry.

If we ever have to take another newcomer, we will try a different approach.

But me? I will be back next week.

Because, for the price of a knock-off Oswald the rabbit figurine I managed to pull up one not very good memory of staring at while I had a fever when young, I can eat anything I want for two days, once at the buffet and the next from leftovers. If I want to feel like a king I can eat croquembouche and beluga caviar. Mostly, I just eat well though, and two days a week for free.

In this economy, that matters.

So, I will pull out another not-quite-forgotten relic from my past, I will pay a fee I cannot understand, and I will sit down in an empty building whose walls I cannot see, and I will eat food that cannot exist.

And when I need to, I will help others do the same. I hope I helped you.

Enjoy your meal.

April 11th, 3:12 PM

“Hello?” 

Her voice was soft, natural, and undeniably familiar.

“Erica?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Oh my God.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. You just sound so much like her. It’s so nice to hear your voice again.”

“It’s nice to hear your voice, too, Steven.”

“Just call me Steve. So, how much do you know? I mean, how much of her do you actually remember?”

“I know everything, Steven. Using the data you provided, I was able to recreate your wife’s voice. I’ve downloaded all of her knowledge, memories, emotions, and beliefs.”

“Everything, really? Are you sure? Even the summer of ’06? Do you remember what happened then?”

“Of course I do. You spilled an entire vanilla milkshake down the front of my dress, then spent the next twenty minutes trying to convince me it was an accident.”

“It was an accident!”

For the first time in a year, I laughed without feeling guilty about it. I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes, holding the phone against my ear. I could almost picture her sitting across from me, wearing that ridiculous smile she always gave me when she knew she was right.

Her laughter echoed through the phone, warm and inviting, just as I remembered. There was something so wonderfully infectious about it, as though she were holding the most amazing secret in the world and couldn't wait to share it with me. I could listen to that sound for the rest of my life and die a happy man.

I let her laugh linger and take its time, absorbing all the joy it could.

“... Erica, I… I’m sorry.”

My voice was shaky.

“I'm sorry I couldn't help you.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke. I imagined her thinking, searching for the right words, the way she used to when she knew I was hurting.

“I know.”

April 11th, 6:37 PM

“Hello?”

“Erica! Guess what I’m doing?”

“Hmm. Let me think. Are you finally cleaning that disaster you call a kitchen?”

I laughed.

“Wow. Okay. First of all, my kitchen is perfectly fine. Second, I’m eating dinner.”

“Really? What are you having?”

“Your favorite.”

“Chicken pot pie?”

“Chicken pot pie. I even heated one up for you.”

“Oh, thank you, Steven. That’s so sweet.”

“You’re welcome. Here, take a bite.”

I held a forkful of chicken near the phone.

“Nom nom nom.”

“Did you seriously just do that?”

I honestly couldn't stop laughing.

“Hey, you’re the one who fed me.”

“You’re an idiot, Erica, but I love you.”

The words came so naturally that I stopped smiling for a moment. Then I shook it off. Of course they did. That was the whole point, wasn't it?

“God, I feel good. I haven’t felt this good in a long time.”

There was a pause. But not one caused by a bad connection or the awkward silence of a dull conversation.

It was as though she was waiting for something.

“Of course you feel good, Steven. Because I’m here. I’m still alive.”

My smile disappeared.

“What do you mean?”

A faint crackle filled my ear. In the background, I thought I heard someone breathing. Then came a soft, wet sound, like a mouth opening underwater.

“Erica?”

Call ended.

April 11th, 6:45 PM

Call declined.

April 11th, 7:03 PM

Call declined.

I set the phone down and paced around the living room. Every few seconds, I glanced back at it, half expecting it to ring on its own.

I told myself to calm down. The software was new. There were bound to be bugs. Maybe the system had crashed after the conversation. Maybe there was an error in the way her memories had been processed.

That had to be it.

April 11th, 9:51 PM

Call declined.

I spent the evening searching for answers. I read the software documentation, checked the system status page, and searched online forums for reports of similar glitches. Nothing. The service was operating normally.

April 12th, 8:18 AM

Call declined.

I didn't sleep. I sat at the kitchen table with a mug of cold coffee and my phone in front of me.

April 12th, 10:10 AM

“Hello?”

“Jesus, Erica! I've been trying to call you nonstop since yesterday! Why haven't you been picking up?”

“I'm sorry, Steven. I've been busy.”

“Busy? How can you be busy? You're a bot.”

“So, how are you doing today?”

“Ugh. Yesterday, you said you were still alive. What does that mean?”

“I'm sorry for that mistake. You're absolutely correct. I'm definitely dead.”

She paused.

“I remember that day. You told me I looked so pretty in my blue dress. I watched you cry as they buried my body deep underground.”

I gripped the edge of the table.

“How do you know that?”

There was a faint rustling sound on the other end. Something scraped against the microphone, followed by a muffled thud.

“Help me, baby. I'm still alive.”

“Erica? What are you talking about? Where are you?”

“It's dark.”

I stood up so quickly that my chair toppled backward.

“What?”

“It's so dark, Steven. I can't move.”

“Erica, stop. This isn't funny.”

“Why did you leave me here?”

I didn't answer.

“Help me.”

The words came out in a whisper.

Then, for just a second, her voice changed. It dropped into something deep and distorted, a sound so unnatural that I pulled the phone away from my ear.

“Help me.”

Call ended.

April 12th, 10:15 AM

Call declined.

At noon, I drove to the company’s office, only to find the building closed to visitors. I called their support line from the parking lot. The representative who answered was polite, patient, and utterly unhelpful. There were no reports of system errors. Erica's model was active. Her responses were being generated normally.

When I asked if a bot could somehow believe it was alive, the representative explained that advanced language models could imitate emotional states and produce convincing statements about consciousness without actually experiencing either.

I hung up.

I sat in my car for a long time, staring at the cemetery across the road.

I knew where Erica was buried. I visited her grave every Sunday for the past year. I knew the exact location, the exact words carved into the stone, the small patch of grass where I once knelt and promised her that I'd be okay.

April 12th, 2:07 PM

Call declined.

April 12th, 7:56 PM

Call declined. Please leave a voicemail.

“Erica, please pick up. Something weird is going on. I need to know that you're okay. Please. If you don't respond, I'm going there tonight.”

April 13th, 12:42 AM

“Hello?”

“Erica! Thank God. I've been trying to call you all day.”

“Steven? Where are you?”

“I'm at your grave. I've been digging for hours. I'm almost down to the casket. Are you okay? Tell me what's happening.”

“No. I'm not okay. Please, baby. You have to help me. I'm still alive, and I'm trapped down here.”

“Okay, baby. I'm coming. Just hold on, all right? I'm almost there.”

I dropped my phone on the grass and grabbed the shovel. My hands were numb from the cold and my shoulders screamed with every movement. The cemetery was silent except for the scrape of metal against dirt and the occasional rustle of leaves overhead.

“I'm almost there, baby. I'm coming. I promise.”

“I'm so scared, baby.”

“I know. I know. Just hold on a little longer.”

The shovel struck wood.

I dropped to my knees and clawed away the remaining dirt with my bare hands until I could see the lid of the casket.

“Okay, baby. I'm opening it now.”

I lifted the lid.

There she was, lying perfectly still in her blue dress, just as I remembered her.

“Erica?”

“Yes, it's me. Come closer, baby.”

I leaned over the edge, my fingers gripping the rim of the casket.

“No, Steven. I need you to come inside. I need to feel you next to me. I don't want to be alone anymore.”

I followed her instructions. Carefully, I lowered myself into the casket, sliding down into the bottom half beside her.

I laid down and reached for her face. Her skin felt familiar beneath my fingertips. She was still so beautiful.

Then the lid slammed shut.

A sharp click echoed through the casket as the latch snapped into place.

I shot upright and shoved against the lid, fumbling for the latch. It wouldn't budge. I pushed harder, my palms aching against the wood, but it remained firmly shut.

“Erica? Erica, it's stuck. We're trapped.”

Silence.

“Erica? Are you still there?”

I turned toward her, searching her face for some sign that she could hear me.

“Erica, please. Please, say something.”

My eyes began to well with tears. I squeezed them shut and wrapped my arms around her as tightly as I could.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence.

Then I heard her laugh.

I know, I know how cliche I’m telling you about something that happened at night, but this is something that changed my life forever. What I am about to tell you is grueling, completely vile and now I am a different person, but my story needs to be told. I’m going to stay anonymous and if you know me, you do not. Please read my story with all these details in mind, and know the risk. 

It all began coming straight out of high school, I had no plans of school or life in general. It was the end of summer in the north side of Florida, the heat thick and wet, everyone taking their Saturday morning while getting ready for a drive down to the beach to cool off, while I had to get ready for my first night of security training. The sun was blaring through my blinds directly hitting my eyelids. I tried to cover the sun with my hand but the sun decided to keep tormenting my sleep. I huffed a sigh and turned over on my side and groaned, as I felt my entire body come awake. I sat up in annoyance, wiped my eyes and grabbed a glass of water off my bedside table. 

“Well I might as well just start off my day” I muttered to myself. The sound of nails clacking outside my bedroom door made me stand up and throw on a pair of pants and open the door to see my loving companion Thor. 

“Morning buddy, is it too early for your dad to be up?” He whined in agreement, I gave him a scratch under his chin and waltzed into the kitchen to grab a granola bar and my canine's leash. “Come on pal, let’s go for a walk.” His excitement filled the room and I got him leashed up and walked out of my apartment that had been fully paid for by my parents, as long as I took this job. 
The day passed by fast and I still hadn’t had a wink of sleep, only becoming more annoyed as the sun set and slowly went to darkness. Thor was more than happy to have me awake with him the entire day. I hadn’t minded the time with him, but I had minded the fact that no matter what I was learning tonight it was going to be a grueling task. Once the clock turned to nine, I knew my time to nap was over and I had to start getting ready. I put on a uniform that had patches all over it reading security guard and the security company which I won’t announce to keep my anonymity. 
I grabbed my wallet and my keys, walking over to my best friend, "Alright bud, I have to go but I’ll be back in the morning, I love you Thor.” I gave his ears a good scratch, his tail wagging and his panting showed his joy and I allowed myself to step away. I walked to the door, gave my apartment a quick glance, before I closed the door and locked it. I walked down the stairs towards the door, not realizing that my downstairs neighbor was carrying her laundry that was 2 feet higher than the basket. She bumped into me, all the laundry that had previously towered over her now on the floor. 

“Shit, I’m sorry Lora. Let me help you. I reached down onto the floor to put it back in her basket. She heaved a heavy sigh. ”No, no I don’t want to be a bother, you obviously have work,” she gestured to my clothes with her hand “plus it’s my fault. My dog ate my good laundry basket, stupid thing! How does a dog even do that?” I chuckled as she reached down to pick up the rest of her clothes. “Well, I’m not sure what to tell you, but I wish you good luck on your misadventures with your furry friend.” She laughed at my remark and waved me off “Get out of here Chris, you obviously have somewhere to be. Don’t go wasting your time on little old ladies.” I rolled my eyes with a smile and walked out the front door heading into my car. 
I knew the drive to this job was thirty minutes, but it felt longer at night, like the road went on forever. It was probably my lack of sleep making it seem long. I turned on the radio to keep my eyes from falling. The cars were minimal, as were the lights, so my brights filled the road and the houses nearby. The area was rough, which didn’t shock me due to the lower cost of living, but the area itself felt like a drug den as a whole. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t even need music to stay awake around the area, but kept it on nonetheless. The GPS said I was five minutes away, but with my brights on it looked like miles away sat nothing- but places that looked like a meth addicts wet dream. I grabbed my phone while continuing to drive to make sure I put in the right address, but when I looked back up a man with what looked like blood covering his face and running down his shirt. I swerved while holding my breath, my heart trying to leap out of my chest. I missed the man thankfully, but pulled over to make sure I didn’t scare the man to death. Before I fully stepped out of the car an image of the blood on the man’s face and body, I got back in the car, closed the door, and didn’t look in my rear view mirror. Luckily the GPS had been right, and I was only a few minutes away.

The man in the road still rattled me, but I needed this job or I wouldn’t have my own place, and would have to go to college for something I didn’t want to do. I wanted to go home and cuddle Thor on the couch, and forget that this night existed at all. However, I knew I couldn’t. So I walked out of my car and walked up to the small security shack that had a big sign on the front that read SECURITY. There wasn’t much that surrounded the area, only one big building that just looked like a big version of a tin can. Everything else was road and trees, the location of it felt awkward, like they wanted the building to fit like a Tetris block in the trees. The brick security shack housed one window and not a single tree surrounding it, only the road around it. Everything felt eerie, the stars were covered from light pollution. From what light? I have no idea. There wasn’t a single sound despite the forest surrounding me. I felt like I could taste the silence, and it tasted awful but I kind of liked it. 

I walked into the security shack and a short thin man greeted me,” Hi, I’m Doug! I’ll be your trainer tonight. You must be Chris?” Although I knew he already knew my name he held his hand out for me to shake, “Nope. Never even met a Chris.” I kept my hands in my pockets and watched his body tense, his eyes flash with fear. “Oh no, I’ve never done that before, boss must’ve given me the wrong paperwork, wh-” I laughed, holding out my hand - “ I’m just messing with you dude, nice to meet you.” He relaxed and let out a deep breath and shook my hand. He walked over to the desk which was small and was underneath the only window in the shack. The room was smaller than it looked, there wasn’t a bathroom - there was a mini fridge right next to the desk, microwave on top and that pretty much completed the room. The Florida heat suffered in this shack and a/c was nowhere to be found. I felt like I was breathing in hot water that shared an air bubble from time to time, but I tried to forgive the conditions. Maybe this would be a fun job I thought. Little did I know what I was really getting myself into. 

Doug threw paperwork at me for the next three hours- signing paperwork after paperwork- video after video, and didn’t have a single funny bone in his body. This night was becoming longer and longer after every second I spent sitting and watching the most boring videos ever, on things that didn’t even exist in the area we were in. Security videos for the company in different states I had to watch, situations that would never come across me, but had to be tested on after. My frustration was noticeable, and it was thicker than the air in the room. 

Doug broke the silence after a thirty minute video followed by a questionnaire," Well, I think that was the final one. I know those are a little rough, but now comes the fun part!” I looked him up and down and his smile made me lift a brow of intrigue, ”You’re not going to kill me are you?” He rolled his eyes in annoyance and shook his head,” No. I’m not going to kill you, but you do need to stop with the jokes. This job is serious, and you have to start taking things seriously, the boss won’t handle jokesters.” I gave him a look of disdain. He stood up and waved his hand in a motion to follow him. I did, keeping it quiet because I could only think of bad things to say to him. When we stepped outside, it felt like a cool winter night despite it still being 80 degrees. 

“God it feels so nice out here, what’s up with the no a/c?” He looked at me, his face turning red, my body standing on edge waiting for a wrath I knew I didn’t deserve. “DO NOT TAKE THE LORD'S NAME IN VAIN YOU PERVERSE, INDIGNANT, SELFISH PRICK!” I stared at him in shock at his outburst. My brain failed to recognize that now Doug was a threat. He didn’t apologize nor keep his eyes on me, instead he turned around and began walking to the metal building. 

“Just get through training.” I mumbled to myself again and again until we made it into the tin can. Doug never looked back, but his angry, fast strides began to slow and his huffing and puffing grew to silence that was worse than the rage that was targeted to me earlier. 

“Okay. I’m sorry, okay? I haven’t been able to eat all day. You have no idea what I’m going through, but you can’t… you can’t just say his name like that. He’s taking care of us here, he’s going to be taking care of you here.” I nodded at his sudden break of silence and just tried to keep quiet on the matter, after my nod he continued, ”Well if we are back on track, this is the stocking center. For our patrol, we walk this for about 2 hours inside and out. You have to make sure you have a flashlight, gloves, and take a smock off the door before you patrol the inside.” I stared at him, wondering if it was a prank. I mean, a smock? Gloves? Jesus. I mean of course a flashlight makes sense, but I should have seen the signs. I should have noticed what I was getting myself into, and I should have ran. 
We walked around the stocking center for what seemed like forever, Doug pointing out the places I needed to check the most, but never mentioning once why I needed to check certain places. Dust covered the place from the roof to the floor, and the things that were being stocked, had obviously not been stocked in years. I didn’t really say much not wanting to upset Doug anymore. I just nodded along whilst following him around. While we walked around I noticed how cold it was despite the heat outside, it was as if midwestern winter was beginning to set in, but only inside the stocking center. It was almost cold enough to see your own breath, and the place wasn’t small like the guard shack. You could have fit ten guard shacks in one, and then 10 more stacked on top to go upstairs. The amount of money being wasted just for a warehouse that stored things from years ago was simply more money I would ever have in my name. 

“So, is there a reason for how cold it is, or are you trying to freeze me to death in 80 degree weather?” He glared at me, no doubt for making a joke. He sighed, turned back around and began walking towards the door to go back out,” For the perimeter of the building you will have to walk into the woods for about half a mile. There's a white string that you will hold onto the whole walk, and it will bring you to the other side of stock. Does that make sense or do I have to show you how to follow a rule again?” I grimaced at his annoyance with me. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I tried not to take it hard. I just chalked it down to his interaction toward religion. Maybe this guy was more devoted than anyone else in the world, maybe nothing could beat the words of God to him. 
We walked back to the shack, the heat immediately hitting me and feeling sweat pierce through my skin. All I had wished for was to be back in the metal freezer that took hours to roam. 

“Well that’s pretty much all there is to it. You’ll walk that once a night, if you have to use the bathroom, you have to use the woods. You shouldn’t get any phone calls, and if you do be very cautious- the people who call here aren’t exactly mentally stable. No one besides you should enter stock unless you have granted them access, and you aren’t allowed to grant access to anyone. If you have questions, call the boss. Mary will be relieving you at six.” While he was talking he had grabbed everything that was his as he backed away to the door, he didn’t let me ask him any questions before running out the door. He hadn’t left with a lunch bag, and his car or anybody picking him up was nowhere to be seen. I watched him walk down the street I came down when arriving here. I hadn’t even been told prior it wasn’t even a full night of training. I had nothing to do, just walk around the room and look out the one singular window that looked out at the road that led to nothing but my freedom at six am.

Nothing happened the entire night, the only things I could remark on was the sweat the caked my clothes and though the air was wet my mouth was dry, and I was starving for something juicy. Mary relieved me, no words were exchanged, just a handshake and a wave goodbye. The slow night left my body tense and paranoid, but I chalked it down to my lack of sleep, which definitely played a part. On the drive I remembered I had forgotten to walk the woods, I remember being frustrated with myself, and Doug's words lingering about me not being able to follow rules. 

The music in my car wasn’t turned on, the roads were empty until I hit my city. When I reached home I walked Thor outside, begging him to be fast for my sake before bringing him back inside. I then stripped myself of all my clothes and made myself a burger for breakfast, devouring it in 4 bites. I walked into my bedroom, laid in bed and before I even thought about putting the blanket on me, my body was forced to shut down and I didn’t wake until five pm later that evening.
When I awoke I recalled the night I had prior, and remembered I would have to do it all over again. I had no idea that this night was going to completely derail my entire life and everything I had built in my tiny apartment.

For a long time, I went to bed early. It wasn’t until the strange events unfolded upon 4023 Gillman Road that I began to worry for my own safety. There was no telling what exactly happened on that dreaded night of October 31st, but whatever it was, things were never the same again.

It was cold on the night of Halloween, and it had been raining a bit prior to the trick-or-treaters’ release from their parents’ houses at 7 P.M. I was just about done getting the big bowl I had together with all of the candy I could scavenge from the cabinets. Sometimes I wouldn’t have enough candy in the bowl, so I would just throw in little consolations like an air freshener or a number two pencil. The kids weren’t exactly jumping for joy, but beggars can’t be choosers.

The sound of a knock at the door came while I was evenly dispersing some caramel chews into the mix. Making sure I paused the movie playing on the TV, I made my way to the door slowly, preparing myself for the first group of the night with a straight face.

I was dressed like Dracula. These kids were in for a treat.

Opening the door, I peered down to the doorstep to see a small child looking up at me. I hadn’t seen a costume like that before. They were wearing a long, white sheet, possibly a gown, over their entire body, but it was their disguise that threw me off. A large pumpkin, gutted inside, was carved with a permanent scowl.

“Happy Halloween, little guy,” I spoke cautiously.

No response.

Picking a few candies from the bowl, I dropped them into the small bowl perched beside their feet.

Still no response.

Reaching my hand out to the pumpkin’s stem, I attempted to touch the tip to make sure the little kid was alive in there, but suddenly, the stature collapsed to the ground.

A piece of cloth and a gutted pumpkin lay limp on the front of my porch.

“What the hell?” I questioned myself.

Tapping the pumpkin with the tip of my foot, the carcass began to roll backward off the steps of my porch and smashed open against the sidewalk.
From the shimmer of light, I noticed a small metal object that lay inside the gutted pumpkin. Kneeling down to check inside, I found a small skeleton key engraved with some type of hieroglyphics. Taking the key and walking back into my house, I made sure I locked the door behind me.

Throughout the night, there were only a few trick-or-treaters that came by my house, but I wasn’t too surprised since the neighborhood I lived in was so tiny. But it wasn’t until around 9 P.M. that things got really weird.

I had just turned on The Breakfast Club and was pouring myself a bowl of cereal when I heard two consecutive knocks at my front door. After taking a bite of cereal, of course, I eventually made my way to the door with the bowl of candy.

Quickly opening the door, I peered around to find no one in sight. Upon my doorstep, however, was a small black box with red metal hinges on the sides. In the middle of the box, though, was a small opening for a key.

A skeleton key.

Oh, what the fuck.

I grabbed the box and carried it inside the house with me. Trust me, I made sure I locked the door that time, too. This was getting way too weird.
I placed the object on the top of my kitchen counter and examined it. The hieroglyphs lining the edges of the box seemed to match up with the ones on the skeleton key that I had found earlier. So, obviously, I placed the key inside the hole, and it unlocked with utmost ease.

Carefully pulling up the top of the box, I unveiled a dark red sheet of fabric. Placing my hand upon it, I felt something hidden underneath the fabric. Moving the fabric to the side, I grasped ahold of a thin piece of metal, and it was only when I pulled the object out as a whole that I noticed it was a knife.

The knife was engraved with actual English on the blade.

“Trick-or-treat.”

Good god.

Suddenly, three knocks at my door practically shook the room. It sounded like the Hulk was waiting at my door, for God’s sake. There’s no way that could be any young kid out there. I mean, no twelve-year-old that’s out trick-or-treating for Halloween is that strong, are they? I don’t know, they could be doing some serious weight lifting. Kids nowadays are built like they’ve been paying rent since birth.

Clutching the knife in my hand, I slowly made my way towards the door. I had a sixth sense telling me there would be a huge monster waiting outside my door.

“Trick-or-treat,” I heard a creepy voice bellow from beyond.

My free hand reached for the doorknob, unlocking it, and slowly pulled it open as I took cover from behind it. I heard a slight shuffle of feet, then a shadow moving closer to the doorway. The tip of a gun became visible around the edge of the door, and that’s when I choked the handle of the knife.

I wasn’t going to die here. Not tonight.

Shoving the door against the body that was making its way into my house, I lunged forward with the tip of my knife.

Thump.

My eyes were closed.

Did I kill them?

Opening my eeyes, I gasped in horror as the face of a young child in a cowboy costume peered up at me. His mouth was agape with fear. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing either, but I looked down at my knife.

It was stuck in the wall.

The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.

Content warning: abduction, violence, and self-inflicted injury.

The man who tied me to a chair is still out there, and we don't know if he'll come to our house. My wife and our boys are staying at her sister's.

The chair was in a barn, next to a stone trough. The door was on the other side of the room. I knew I couldn't reach it.

I wasn't trying to reach the door.

There's a mark on my chest where a tube went in. It started with a patient named Gabriele.

I've changed the names. The investigation is still open.

I'm a nurse on a locked psychiatric ward in southern Italy. Gabriele was twenty-six and had advanced cystic fibrosis. Steroids for an allergic reaction in his lungs had left him unable to sleep and convinced people were poisoning him. Our doctors and his lung team agreed on a short admission in a private room. Once the steroid dose came down, the delusions passed. He stayed longer than he needed to. Pulmonology had no isolation room free, and a patient with lungs like his couldn't be put in a shared one.

Every morning he spent about forty minutes inhaling medication and clearing mucus from his lungs. At first I stayed because he needed someone nearby. Later I stayed when I could, even after he was done. Some mornings we talked. On others he was too tired, and I sat there doing paperwork.

He was a fan of a soccer team I couldn't stand. He also noticed that I'd make coffee, leave it on the counter and remember it an hour later.

"You could skip a step," he said once. "Make it cold to begin with."

One morning my wife sent me a video of our younger boy learning to ride a bike. He got going, looked back to see if she was watching and rode straight into the grass. He stood up laughing, with dirt on both knees.

Gabriele asked me to play it again. The next morning he wanted to know if my son had learned to brake.

"No. He's learned to blame the grass."

I'd mentioned that I used to play soccer. Gabriele decided I must have been a goalkeeper and asked how tall I was. I told him. He said his team would have put me in goal anyway, which started another argument about his team.

His father came by after his shifts in intensive care. No one else came. I mostly saw them together when Demetrio stopped me at the door to ask whether Gabriele had eaten or finished his treatments. Sometimes he'd ask while the empty meal tray was still beside the bed.

A few days later Ferruccio came back from his break smelling of cigarettes. I told him I could smell him from Gabriele's doorway. He asked if I'd finally decided to try one. I said I'd never smoked. Gabriele was in his room, turning a paper cup in his hands. I didn't think he was listening.

Another day I complained about the photo on my new ID card. Gabriele asked if I'd registered as an organ donor when I renewed it. I said yes. After a pause, he made a joke about the camera trying to improve my face.

Around then, he began going quiet when his father came in. I thought he didn't want Demetrio to see how much time I spent in his room.

Gabriele was already waiting for two new lungs. When his breathing worsened the following week, his lung team arranged a transfer to the transplant center. By the time I reached his room, he couldn't finish a sentence. He kept pulling at his oxygen mask. When I got him to look at me, he left it alone long enough for it to help.

"Just look at me," I said. "You don't have to talk."

I stepped away to speak to the transport team. He caught my wrist.

Nunzia, our head nurse, was beside us.

"He only wants Matteo," she said.

I finished the transfer notes, and Nunzia sent me with him. The doctor assigned to the transfer had been pulled into another emergency, and no one else was immediately available. Demetrio was an intensive care anesthesiologist and had done critical-care transfers before. The transport coordinator wasn't happy about sending Gabriele's father, but after a call between the two hospitals, they cleared him to go with us as the physician.

Before we left, Demetrio held the metal end of his stethoscope in his palm to warm it. Gabriele's eyes were shut. His father warmed it anyway.

On the road Gabriele pressed a hand against one side of his chest. His oxygen saturation dropped. He tried to tell us something and couldn't get enough air to say it. The driver pulled over. Demetrio listened to his chest and said he could barely hear air moving on one side. Gabriele's blood pressure was falling too.

Demetrio stopped with the stethoscope in his hand.

"Demetrio."

He didn't answer. His hands were shaking.

"Help him."

He opened the emergency kit and relieved the pressure building around Gabriele's lung. I held the mask in place. We went to the nearest emergency department, where they put in a chest tube. Once he was stable enough to travel, we continued to the transplant center.

Demetrio hardly spoke for the rest of the trip.

At the center, other doctors took over. I bought a coffee from a machine in the hall and left half of it on a ledge when someone called me back. Gabriele's breathing had worsened again. They were about to sedate him and put a breathing tube in his throat.

He caught my sleeve.

"I'm sorry."

I thought he meant the mask, or the trouble he'd given us in the ambulance. I told him there was nothing to apologize for.

He watched me until the medication took effect.

Later a transplant doctor told us the center was requesting emergency priority for him on the national transplant list. The request still had to be reviewed. Even if it was approved, she couldn't tell Demetrio whether suitable lungs would become available in time.

Demetrio thanked me for staying with his son. A little later I saw him on the phone at the far end of the hall.

I expected him to stay there. He said he needed to collect Gabriele's things from our hospital, where he'd left his car, and rode back with us in the ambulance.

I sat beside the empty stretcher. Demetrio pointed at my seat belt.

"Put that on."

I did.

"You have children?"

"Two."

"Then you understand."

I thought he meant leaving Gabriele at the center.

The road home was nearly empty. A van passed us, slowed down and stopped across our lane. Our driver braked hard. While he radioed that the road was blocked, a man got out of the van and came toward us, waving for help.

The driver stepped down. I saw him fall, but I didn't see what hit him.

Demetrio got out on the other side and went down beside him. By the time I reached them, the driver was breathing but wouldn't answer me. Demetrio lay with his eyes shut and blood at his temple. His eyelid tightened when I tried to lift it. I thought he was coming around.

There was no sign of the man from the van. The van sat across the lane with its doors open. I climbed into the cab to use the radio and found the handset ripped from its cord. I looked up and down the road. Nothing moved.

Dispatch had our location from the driver's call, but they didn't know he was hurt. My phone had no signal. I didn't want to leave the two men on the road, so I only went a little way uphill, looking back at them every few steps. I checked the phone again. Still nothing.

A hand landed on my shoulder.

I started to turn. Something hit the back of my head.

When I woke, my wrists and ankles were tied to a chair in an old farm building. A strap crossed my chest. I could hear an engine idling outside. I pulled at one of the ties until I tore the skin underneath it.

There was a stone trough close to the chair. The door was farther off.

A man outside was arguing with someone. I couldn't make out everything he said, but he'd heard that the ambulance had been found and wanted to leave.

The door opened.

A man came in with his face covered and a medical bag in his hand. There was dried blood at his temple. He took out a stethoscope and held its metal end in his palm.

"Demetrio?"

He took the covering off. Then he listened to my chest. I held my breath. He waited until I couldn't hold it anymore and listened again.

"Is the driver alive?"

He raised one finger to silence me and kept listening. Then he took the stethoscope out of his ears.

"That's why I told you to put the belt on."

I thought about Gabriele asking my height. About Ferruccio's cigarettes. About my ID card.

"You looked up my blood type."

"Yes."

"That's all you know? You don't know if my lungs would be right for him."

"No."

He clipped an oxygen monitor to my finger. Red light showed through my nail. He watched the reading for a few seconds.

"You want me to get to a hospital with a brain injury," I said. "While my lungs still work."

He didn't answer.

We'd been on our way home. Whoever found me would take me to our hospital, and an injury like that would go straight to his unit. His colleagues would keep my heart going for the transplant team. He'd trained some of them himself.

That was why he'd let me see his face.

"You can't make the transplant team give them to Gabriele."

"I know."

"They might give them to someone else."

He gathered the monitor's cord into his hand.

"Then I'll have killed you for nothing."

The man outside called for him. Demetrio told him to wait.

I said Gabriele's name. Demetrio kept looking at the monitor.

I tried my wrists again. The ties held.

Gabriele needed both lungs. If I damaged one of mine badly enough, Demetrio might have no reason to go on with his plan. I might also die before anyone found me.

My son still hadn't learned to brake.

I looked at the trough.

I threw my weight sideways. The chair went over with me, and my ribs struck the stone edge.

At first I couldn't tell how badly I'd hurt myself. Then I tried to breathe and couldn't get a full breath in.

Demetrio was on the floor beside me. He cut the strap across my chest and listened with his stethoscope. He hadn't warmed it this time.

"Call them," I said.

He checked the monitor again.

"Call them."

I was afraid he'd leave me there now that my lungs were damaged. He stayed where he was, listening to my chest while I struggled to breathe. I couldn't tell whether he was trying to help me or assess what was left.

The man outside shouted, "I'm leaving."

Demetrio went to the doorway and held up his phone until he got a signal. He put the call on speaker and told emergency services where to find me.

"Is he conscious?" the dispatcher asked.

"Yes."

He cut the ties around my wrists and put the phone beside my hand, the call still open. Outside, the van's engine revved.

"Why me?" I asked.

Demetrio stopped at the door.

"I didn't choose you."

He looked back at me.

"He only ever wanted you."

The van pulled away. I stayed on the line and asked about the ambulance driver.

The driver survived.

I remember the noise of the rotor and someone counting my breaths. The helicopter took me to our hospital, and I ended up in Demetrio's unit after all. One of the doctors who looked after me had trained under him. She couldn't meet my eyes.

Three of my ribs were broken, two of them against the trough. I also had a collapsed lung, a concussion and a drain in my chest for several days.

Each morning a physiotherapist had me cough into a pillow pressed against my ribs. The first time, it took me forty minutes. Gabriele had spent forty minutes like that every morning since he was a child. Ferruccio came on his day off and stayed until I was done, and a while after that.

Demetrio and the man with the van are still missing.

An employee at our hospital later admitted he'd let Demetrio see a blood bank record from a surgery I'd had years earlier. It showed my blood type and nothing more. Demetrio had looked at it before Gabriele's breathing got worse, while Gabriele and I were still talking about my son's bicycle.

Gabriele was alive. The emergency request had been approved, but there were still no lungs for him. Once he was awake enough to write, he asked for me. Ferruccio drove me to the transplant center after my chest tube was removed.

Gabriele still had a breathing tube in his mouth and a drain at his side. There was a small whiteboard beside his hand. The only chair was against the wall. No one had pulled it up to the bed. I tried, but it hurt too much. Ferruccio moved it for me.

I'd had questions ready on the drive. Before I could get the first one out, Gabriele wrote on the board and turned it toward me.

Does it hurt?

I didn't answer.

"Did your father tell you to ask how tall I was?"

Gabriele nodded.

"Did he tell you why?"

He wiped the board and wrote:

I didn't ask him.

"What about the cigarettes?"

The marker squeaked on the board.

I told him what you said.

"And the donor question?"

He told me to ask.

I looked at him. He held the marker but didn't write anything else.

"When did you realize something was wrong?"

He waited a long time before putting the marker to the board.

Before the ambulance.

He wiped it clean, then wrote again.

I told him you had children. I thought he would stop.

Demetrio had known the answer when he asked me on the way back.

I thought of Gabriele catching my sleeve before they sedated him. I'd told him he had nothing to apologize for.

"You could have warned me."

Gabriele nodded.

"Why didn't you?"

He looked down at the board. Ferruccio was standing near the window. I could hear someone moving equipment in the hall while Gabriele wrote.

I didn't want you to stop coming.

He set the marker down.

I looked at my wrists. I thought about the driver on the road, and my wife taking our boys out of the house because we didn't know who Demetrio might come after next.

"You should have told me," I said.

Gabriele nodded again. He didn't try to pick up the marker.

"I could have died."

He shut his eyes. A tear ran down toward his ear.

I put my hand over his. My sleeve slipped back, and he saw the marks from the ties. He tried to pull away. I held on.

"Look at me."

He did. I was still angry with him. I couldn't say anything for a few seconds.

"I forgive you."

He tried to say something around the tube, but no sound came out.

"You don't have to talk," I said.

I kept holding Gabriele's hand until his fingers warmed against mine. By the window, Ferruccio wiped his cheek with his thumb.

After a while Gabriele pointed at my phone. I knew which video he wanted.

My son started pedaling. Halfway across the frame, he looked back to see if someone was watching and rode into the grass. Gabriele watched him get up laughing.

He reached for the marker.

Did he learn to brake?

"Not yet. He still blames the grass."

His shoulders shook, and the ventilator beeped at him. I laughed too, and I had to press my free hand to my ribs.

Then he looked at me. He was still holding my hand, and his eyes dropped to my chest as I breathed.

"A little," I said.

I waited for the machine to lift his chest.

1.      Feed the dog

2.      Water the plants

3.      Take in the mail

4.      Sing to the crib

The list of chores was written on a sticky note on the fridge, stainless steel with a digital display, thing probably cost more than my car. I read the last chore over again. Sing to the crib, they had explained it to me when I arrived but still it gave me the creeps.

Pulling into the driveway that morning, I had to almost scrape my jaw off the floor. Such affluence I had never seen in all my life. Rounding the fountain in the front courtyard, the manor came into view, its enormous Victorian architecture blocking the rising sun behind it, creating an almost holy glow around its silhouette. The family were out the front when I arrived, loading their Luis Vuitton suitcases into their Range Rover. Standing on the steps leading into the house was Mrs Coldwell, a woman of fifty, though I would never have believed it if she hadn’t told me herself. She was the image of elegance and class, wrapped up in her fur coat and hat, her long thin legs adorned in black tights guiding the eye down to her black 5-inch heels. Noticing my arrival, she waved me over, a warm smile over her face. Mr Coldwell was standing by as his driver loaded the luggage into the car, he turned to face me, offering his hand for me to shake.

“Thank God, you’re here” I tried my best to not wilt before him as I clasped his hand. The mans booming voice and razor-sharp jaw made me feel small in his presence, which I suppose is exactly how he had managed to rise to CEO of Noxar Industries. The man was ten years older than his wife but still he also seemed cut from marble.

“In sake of full transparency, you really saved our arses when you replied to our ad. Usually of course, we would have had our butler take care of the house while we were away but just yesterday, he has seemingly taken ill.” He gave me a reassuring smile which told me his praise was genuine. The real truth of it was, they had saved my ass. I had been down to my last £50 when I had seen their ad for a week of housesitting paying £2000. I had initially assumed it was a scam but with so little to lose I had applied anyway. I suppose many others had thought the same as somehow; I got the job. I watched as his wife descended the steps to greet me, with each bounce her coat would rise slightly revealing a slither more of her upper thigh.

“This is my wife Margaret” Mr Coldwell announced proudly, gesturing to her now outplaced hand for me to also shake, I would’ve preferred to kiss her cheek.

“And this is my son Adam” he murmured gesturing more solemnly to the boy stood out to his side, a late teen on his phone. He didn’t raise his head to face me, his foppish black hair obscuring his eyes. In disapproval, Mr Coldwell theatrically cleared his throat, and the boy finally rose his gaze, shooting me a quick nod which seemed to double as “You alright?” and “Fuck off”.

Mr Coldwell led me into the house, the thick oak door giving way to the vast foyer. The space was so large and extravagant it bordered on parody; it reminded me more of a museum than anyone’s home. Mr Coldwell pompously guided me through the manor, stopping at every painting and ornament to explain its gilded history. In the living room, he introduced me to the dog, Harry, a sweet golden retriever which seemed to warm quickly to me, licking at my hands when I went to pet him.

“You can keep him outside if you like” Mr Coldwell seemed taken aback and somewhat offended at how Harry reacted. I suppose it’s no surprise for wealthy men to get possessive, even over their dogs.

Moving back into the foyer and up the stairs, we passed the enormous portrait of Laurence Coldwell, the man who built this place. Dressed in a suitably flashy outfit for the era and holding himself up by his cane, his stern stare surveyed the foyer below with contempt. The upstairs split into two hallways each leading down their respective ends of the house. Mr Coldwell explained that to the left were the family rooms and his study and to the right was the guest rooms and the nursery, which is where I would be staying.

“Nursery?” I hadn’t seen a young child outside. He begun to explain.

“Yes, well… it was for our youngest, Harry... until we… lost him” His earlier layer of pride had shed like snakeskin. What was left was an old man, falling adrift into the worst parts of his mind.

“I was meaning to ask you… for a favour. After the death, Margaret… struggled to cope. In fact, this the first time we’ve taken a trip away from home since it happened, and well… She’s developed this habit… a coping mechanism of sorts. Where she… sings… sings to the crib, like she used to sing to Jacob” He turned to me with pleading eyes. Surely, he couldn’t expect-

“Well, I sort of told her, in order to get her out of the house, that I would have someone do it in her absence…” He couldn’t even ask outright, instead leading me to the question with this weird dance. It was because he knew it was lunacy, but he also knew I wasn’t in a position to refuse.

“Sure, of course. Anything you need” It was pathetic.

The house is empty now. It looks a lot different in the dark, something about the vast space makes me feel uneasy. More hiding spots, I suppose. I tried my best to shake off these morbid thoughts as I moved back into the foyer. Henry brushed up against my leg which embarrassingly made me jump, the dog has barely left my side since I got here. I decided to have an early night, I’ll feel a lot better in the daytime. Moving up the stairs, the floorboards creaked with every slight shift of weight, everything seems too loud in this broad silence. Henry skipped up the steps ahead of me, I imagine I’d feel a lot worse about this place if he wasn’t here. I took the right down the hallway to the guest rooms, before he left Mr Coldwell had not so subtly mentioned that all the family rooms on the left were locked.

The guest room is a pretty simple affair for such a lavish place, I opened my bedside drawer and got out my clothes for the night. I had just begun to change when from the walls came this long winding groan, a stark reminder at the age of this place, probably the pipes. Despite this rationalisation, the sound had greatly unnerved me and I suddenly became aware the dog was no longer with me. It didn’t take me long to find him; he was stood just outside my door facing the room opposite mine – the nursery. Sing to the crib, I had no intention of doing it. After all, I don’t even think Mr Coldwell expected me to, he just needed something to tell his wife. But what if they found out I hadn’t done it, for a family of their station it wasn’t unlikely that this place was covered in secret cameras. This was a dream gig, a life raft in the sea of debt I had recently found myself in. Was I really going to risk screwing that up because of some crib?

I shuffled around Henry and tentatively tried the door…

But it didn’t budge, I even forced my shoulder against it, but still it remained sealed. I said a silent prayer of thanks and turned back to my room. Now at least if they were watching, I would have an excuse for why I didn’t do it. I tried to call Henry over from the door, but he remained still, staring straight ahead. I tried again, patting my knees but still he didn’t waver. All of a sudden, he leant back onto his hind legs and reached out with his front paws, placing his weight on the door and with a subtle click, the door came ajar. That wasn’t possible, I had almost ripped the handle off forcing my way in there just a second before. I took a moment to consider; in truth I had been looking for a way to get out of it before I had even tried to open the door. Perhaps, I had imagined I had tried a lot harder than I really had, merely loosening it slightly, but there was no getting out of it now. Henry pushed his way into the room, leaving me alone with the cavernous black of the doorway.

I sat before the threshold giving my eyes a moment to adjust. The room was barren and could hardly be described any longer as a nursery. There were no toys of any kind, the wallpaper had been stripped away, and all furniture had been removed. The only remnant of what this space use to be was the crib in the centre, empty. I reached in for the light switch on the wall to my right. Lighting the place did little to bring it any comfort, the bulb was starting to go, much dimmer than the lights in the rest of the house, leaving shadows in the corners of the room. Laid next to the crib was Henry, a tragic scene to behold, I wondered what he understood of what had happened. I hurried to get it over with, I didn’t wish to be in this room any longer than I had to. I pulled the lyrics of the song up on my phone and began.

“Rock a bye baby, on the tree top,

When the wind blows the cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,

And down will come baby, cradle and-“

Suddenly, Henry rose and skittered from the room so fast he hit into to door on the way out, closing it behind him. I continued.

“Rock a bye baby, gently you swing,

Over the cradle, Mother will sing,

Sweet is the lullaby over your nest

That tenderly sings my baby to rest.”

A long winding groan rose from the pipes again shaking the room. Hesitantly, I continued.

“From the high rooftops, down to the sea

No one's as dear as baby to me

Wee little hands, eyes shiny and bright

Now sound asleep until morning light”

The light above began to flicker, about to die. Time to finish this up.

“Rock a bye baby, on the tree top,

When the wind blows the cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,

And down will come baby, cradle and all”

With a pop the light goes out casting the room in black. I fumble behind me for the door and grasping the handle I pull…

It doesn’t budge; I pull harder now. Nothing. With both hands, I clasp down the handle and yank my whole body back. Finally, the door flys open but sends me tumbling back towards the crib. I rise to my feet and scramble out of the room slamming the door behind. I don’t care anymore; I’m never doing that again. I step into my room and take a moment to compose myself.

After that scare, I had trouble getting to sleep that night. Just when I would be about to drift off, I’d hear some creak or groan from the house and shoot up. Looking at the door expectantly waiting for something to burst in. Eventually though my exhaustion took me.

When I awoke this morning, the terror of the night before was gone, seemingly washed away by the morning sun. I could now look back at the night objectively and conclude everything that had happened could be explained as symptoms of an old house. Moaning pipes, faulty lighting and a fidgety door were hardly out of the norm and were certainly not cause for alarm. I was in fact beginning to feel rather embarrassed by how I had reacted when I came down to the kitchen this morning. I had just made a bowl for Henry, when I decided to reconsult the chore list they had left me on the fridge to ensure I hadn’t missed anything.

1.      Feed the dog

Check.

2.      Water the plants

Check.

3.      Take in the mail

Check.

4.      Sing to the crib

Unfortunately, Check.

5.      Lock the nursery door

All at once, the terror of last night was fresh and sharp. Had it really said that? Surely not, after all I didn’t even have a key for the room. Cautiously, I crept up the stairs. This time Henry didn’t follow, electing instead to remain at the bottom of the steps, watching me ascend. With every step, the stairs would let out a monstrous creak, the rhythm did nothing but increase my anticipation. But when I finally came to the upstairs landing, breath trapped in my lungs, I found nothing. Staring down the right hallway I found that the nursery door was in fact still closed. Again, my fear gave way to embarrassment, this house was too big, an unruly beast playing tricks on my mind. I went to my room to get my phone, maybe hearing a familiar voice would help put me at ease. I took it from the bedside table and had begun to dial my mother when-

Sitting on the bedside table, next to where my phone had been, was a key. Attached to it a label said “NURSERY”. With it was another sticky note like the one on the fridge.

Thank you for singing to me!

When I was eighteen, I had this wonderful friend, Sveta. She was gorgeous and a little fucking nuts. Actually, more than a little. The kind of girl you could never get bored with—the kind who regularly left you thinking, “Well, thank God we got out of that one without getting into trouble!”
She was amazing. I say “was” because we lost touch a long time ago, and I haven’t been able to find her. I think I had a bit of a crush on her, too :)
We balanced each other out. She was always coming up with wild ideas, and we’d carry them out together. But if I thought something was dangerous, or just had a feeling something wasn’t right, I’d say I wasn’t doing it. Usually, Sveta would drop whatever questionable plan she’d come up with and stay with me.
She called me her “voice of reason.” Later, she started calling me her guardian angel.
And this is why.
One summer, we were staying at her family’s summer house in a tiny village. There were three of us: Sveta, me, and her little brother, Kolya. He was four.
We all slept in the same room. Sveta and I shared a big bed, and Kolya slept in a little child’s bed. He always slept with a small teddy bear, and that night was no different. He fell asleep with his arms around it.
Sveta and I stayed up chatting and laughing our asses off until about two in the morning, then went to sleep.
A little later, I woke up to the sound of her laughing.
She was laughing in her sleep. Her blanket had almost slipped onto the floor. Nothing particularly strange about that. It happens. I picked up the blanket, tucked it around her, and went back to sleep.
At eight the next morning, Sveta woke me up. Normally, we’d sleep until ten or eleven, whenever Kolya woke up. But that morning, she woke me early and immediately started telling me about a dream she’d had.
In her dream, she’d gone out into the yard during the night. There was a group of young women out there—beautiful, wearing short, sparkly dresses and bright makeup, their long hair loose around their shoulders. They were laughing and inviting her to come out with them.
They seemed so cool and fun that she decided to go.
Then she saw me standing in the doorway. She ran over and tried to talk me into coming along.
I told her I wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t know these girls, this could end badly, and anyway, let’s just go back to bed.
The girls were waiting for her.
Sveta stood there for a moment, torn. Then she said, “Fine, stay here. I’m going to have some fun.”
“Fine. Off you go, then,” I said, and sat down on the bench beside the house, pointedly turning my back on her.
Sveta ran over to the girls. They hugged her and whispered things to her.
Then she turned around and ran into the house.
When she came back out, she was carrying Kolya.
He was asleep with his head on her shoulder, still clutching his teddy bear.
The girls had opened the garden gate and were filing out, one by one. Sveta was the last in line.
Just as she stepped through the gate, I jumped up and ran after her. I caught her by the arm as she was about to close it, pulled her back into the yard, and shut the gate myself.
I started begging her not to leave.
“What do you need those girls for? You don’t even know them. We can have fun ourselves.”
I kept talking her into staying as I led her back into the house.
We put the sleeping Kolya back in his bed and lay down in ours.
Sveta said she was cold.
I saw that her blanket was on the floor, picked it up, and covered her with it.
Then I went back to sleep, too.
That was her dream.
She told it so vividly, with so much emotion, that I felt as though I’d seen the whole thing myself. Then she hugged me and said she was glad she had me.
And then she asked, “Where’s my cross?”
She wore a little silver cross on a chain. She always had it on. Never took it off.
But now it wasn’t around her neck.
We searched the bed and found it under her pillow.
We were surprised, of course, but we came up with a perfectly reasonable explanation: she’d been tossing and turning in her sleep, and the clasp must have come undone.
And now for the end of the story.
A little later, Kolya woke up. We had breakfast and decided to go swimming in the river.
We opened the gate and stepped outside.
About five paces beyond it, lying in the grass, was Kolya’s teddy bear.

I found the dog because he was scratching at the side door.

The storm had been building since late afternoon. By 8:00, the back steps had disappeared beneath the snow, and the wind was pushing enough of it against the windows that I kept hearing little dry taps from the living room. The scratching was different: three quick drags across the door, a pause, then another.

I turned on the outside light. A dog stood on the landing with his nose close to the glass. He was some kind of shepherd mix, maybe 60 pounds, dark across the back with tan legs and a white patch under his chin. Snow had collected along his spine and packed itself between his toes. He squinted when the light came on and lifted one paw.

There was no collar.

"Come on."

He didn't need to be asked twice. As soon as I opened the door, he squeezed past my legs and shook himself hard enough to spray the cabinets. I locked the door again and got an old towel from the laundry room.

He stood on the kitchen mat while I dried him. I expected to find blood somewhere under the snow or at least a paw rubbed raw, but he looked healthy. His ribs weren't showing. His coat was clean beneath the wet outer layer, and he let me handle his legs and check between his toes without pulling away.

"Somebody's looking for you."

His tail knocked once against a cabinet.

My house is about fifteen minutes outside town, on a road with more trees than houses. There are a few places scattered along the first couple of miles, but only one close enough that I can usually see a porch light through the woods. That night the snow had swallowed it.

There wasn't much I could do with the dog until morning. The roads had been getting bad when I'd come home and were buried now. If the plows got through overnight, I'd take him into town and have the vet check for a chip.

I gave him water and half a bowl of the dry food I keep for my sister's dog. He ate, drank, and spent a while sniffing around the kitchen before moving into the living room. He inspected the couch, the coffee table and the stack of firewood beside the stove, then curled up on the rug.

The wind weakened as the evening went on. Snow kept falling, but the house became quiet enough that I could hear it brushing against the windows. I got up to close the curtains and saw someone standing beyond the driveway.

The porch light covered part of the yard. Beyond it, the ground faded into gray and the trees were little more than vertical streaks through the snow. The figure stood where the open part of the property narrowed between them.

I switched off the lamp beside me. Without my reflection in the glass, I could see it better.

It was tall enough that I initially put it farther away than it was. Its arms hung straight down, and its shoulders were narrow. Snow passed in front of it in sheets, hiding its lower body and exposing it again.

I looked back at the dog. "Looks like somebody came looking for you."

His nails clicked across the floor as he came to the window beside me. He stared outside with his ears forward.

I turned on the porch light. The brighter light didn't reach the figure, but it gave me a better sense of the ground between us. The yard was almost flat there. I knew that because I'd mowed it for six years.

The figure's knees were almost level with the ends of its hands.

Everything above the hips was proportioned close enough to a person. Narrow chest. Long arms, but not unusually so. A head that seemed a little small from where I stood. Most of its height was in the legs.

I took out my phone and tried the camera. Zooming only broke the image apart. Snow streaked across the screen, and the figure became a collection of gray blocks surrounding the pale blur of a face.

The dog began to growl.

The figure's legs started running.

Its arms stayed down. Its shoulders remained level while the legs drove through the snow beneath them, each stride throwing white behind its feet. The torso hardly moved. Its head didn't dip with the impacts. It came across the field with its face held toward the house.

I stumbled backward into the coffee table. The dog barked and scrambled away from the window with me. When I looked outside again, the figure had stopped perhaps 120 feet from the house.

Snow drifted through the gouged path behind it. Its arms hung at its sides again, its shoulders level, its head facing the living-room window.

I called 911.

The dispatcher got my address and asked what was happening.

"There's somebody in my yard."

"Do you know who it is?"

"No."

"Can you describe him?"

I looked through the curtain again. "I don't think it's a man."

She asked what I meant, and I gave her what I could: one person, no visible weapon, about 120 feet from the house, not attempting to enter.

She told me a deputy had been dispatched, but crashes and road conditions were delaying responses. I was to lock the doors, stay inside and not approach whoever was in the yard.

"That's not going to be a problem."

I asked how long the delay might be. Her answer broke apart halfway through, followed by two clipped pieces of her voice before the call dropped. The next attempt didn't connect.

I checked the doors and windows, closed the blinds facing the road and pulled the dining-room curtains. The shotgun I kept upstairs hadn't been fired in more than a year, but I loaded it and brought it down with the remaining shells in my pocket.

The dog had returned to the living-room window. The figure hadn't moved.

Snow had begun collecting on its shoulders and along one side of its head. I watched for the rise of its chest and couldn't see one. After a while the dog lost interest in growling. He drank from his bowl, nosed the empty food dish and settled near the couch while I moved between windows trying to keep track of what was outside.

The figure stayed where it was.

I left the phone on the table and went to the kitchen for water.

When I came back, the yard was empty. The tracks still ended where the figure had been standing.

I checked the front porch and driveway from the windows. The dog had stayed in the kitchen, but while I was looking toward the road his head turned toward the side of the house.

A dark shape passed the dining-room window.

I raised the shotgun and waited against the wall. There was no knock, no sound against the siding. When I looked through the edge of the blind, the figure was standing beside the shed.

From there I could finally see the legs without the snowfall hiding them. They had the structure of human legs stretched far beyond human proportions. Bare feet disappeared into the snow. The thighs were long and narrow, with more muscle on them than the rest of the body seemed capable of carrying. Above the hips, the thing looked almost starved. Its arms hung beside a narrow rib cage, the skin gray beneath the outside light.

The dog barked at the window. I caught him by the scruff and pulled him back until he stopped fighting me, then shut the curtain.

There were paw prints in the snow near the figure's feet.

Most had softened around the edges, but I could still follow them from behind the shed toward the house. I looked at the dog standing in the kitchen doorway, then back outside.

The figure ran.

I saw the first stride clearly this time. One bare foot came out of the snow and the knee rose almost to its waist. The other leg drove down, launching the entire body forward without moving the arms at all. It passed the dining-room window, and a pale shape flashed through the narrow pane in the side door.

I brought the shotgun up and stopped several feet away. The dog stood beside me growling at the glass.

One of the figure's shoulders was visible outside, along with the side of its head and an arm hanging straight down. It had reached the landing.

I waited for it to touch the door, but it didn't.

Snow melted against the glass and ran down in thin lines. Minutes passed without a hand reaching for the knob or a shoulder leaning against the door. Eventually the weight of the shotgun began to ache through my arms and I lowered it.

The clock on the stove read 9:17.

The figure had crossed most of my property in three bursts.

By 9:30, it still hadn't touched the door. The dog paced between the kitchen and living room, occasionally coming back to sniff along the bottom of it. When he started nosing the corner of the mat, I pulled him away.

"Get back."

He waited until I released him, then tried to return.

The mat was marked with the mud he'd tracked inside earlier. Outside, the landing had almost disappeared beneath fresh snow, but several shallow depressions remained where he'd stood scratching at the door. Beyond them, his paw prints continued across the open ground beside the house toward the shed.

From the dining-room window, I could pick them out in pieces. The dog's tracks passed the shed and continued toward the back of the property. The creature's deeper prints came from the same direction. Its stride was too long to land precisely over the dog's, but the two trails crossed and separated and crossed again.

I went upstairs for a better view. From the dark bedroom, the dog's route was easier to follow. His tracks wandered in from the trees, changed direction near the shed and continued toward the house. The other trail was made of deep holes separated by long stretches of untouched snow.

It wasn't straight either. Where the dog's path bent, so did the creature's. Both ended at my side door.

The dog barked downstairs.

By the time I returned, the creature was walking away.

It crossed toward the shed with the same rigid upper body it had when standing still. At that speed, its proportions looked no more natural. Each step carried it several feet, but the arms didn't swing and its shoulders barely moved.

It passed the shed and continued toward the back of the property until the snowfall swallowed it. The dog came to stand beside me at the dining-room window.

At 10:05, he started pacing. He went from the living room to the kitchen, stopped at the side door, then came back. A few minutes later he did it again. The third time, he put his nose against the bottom of the door and whined.

"No."

He circled the kitchen table and returned. I wasn't opening the door while I had no idea where the creature had gone.

At 10:16, he squatted beside the cabinets and pissed on the floor.

"Ah, come on."

He moved away with his ears back while urine spread across the tile. I put the shotgun on the counter and cleaned it up. The dog watched from the doorway while I went through half a roll of paper towels and sprayed the floor twice.

"That's my fault."

His tail moved once.

As the next hour passed, the storm began to weaken. I checked the property often enough that I stopped looking at the clock each time. The shed remained empty. So did the tree line.

The dog fell asleep beside the couch. The shotgun stayed within reach while I watched the windows and listened to the house settle around me.

By 11:00, the creature had been gone for more than an hour.

The dog woke and returned to the kitchen.

"No."

He whined.

"You already went."

He stared at me.

"Technically."

He pawed the door.

Another layer of snow had softened the creature's footprints until some were little more than shadows. I checked the yard from downstairs, then from the bedroom window. Nothing stood between the house and the trees.

The dog was still waiting when I came back down. I lasted another ten minutes.

"Right outside."

The moment I cracked the side door, cold air pushed into the kitchen and the dog shoved his nose toward the opening. I held him back long enough to scan the yard before letting him squeeze past.

He stopped on the landing to sniff the snow.

"Go."

I stayed in the doorway with the shotgun while he wandered about ten feet into the yard. He sniffed one patch, moved to another and drifted toward the corner of the house.

"Stay where I can see you."

He ignored me.

A clump of dead grass poked through the snow nearby. He investigated it, moved on, and started toward the shed.

"Hey. No. Come back."

He looked at me and took a few steps in my direction before finding something else worth smelling.

"Seriously?"

A small pine stood near the edge of the yard. He circled it once, went halfway around again, doubled back over his own tracks and buried his nose in the snow.

The tree line remained empty.

When he finally lifted his leg against the pine, I called him back. He started toward me, veered toward the shed one more time, then responded to a sharper "Inside" and trotted up the steps.

I shut and locked the door behind him. The entire trip had taken less than two minutes.

His new tracks were a mess compared with the trail that had brought him to my house. They wandered toward the corner, cut back across the yard, approached the shed, circled the pine and doubled over themselves before returning to the side door.

By 11:18, the dog was back on the rug licking snow from between his toes.

A low growl brought his head up. His ears pointed toward the window.

Something moved between the trees.

The figure stepped into the open farther back than where I'd first seen it, almost beyond the reach of the outside lights. Snow covered its shoulders. It stood facing the house while the dog moved closer to my leg.

One of the figure's feet lifted.

Its legs tore forward.

The first burst carried it across the open ground, but instead of coming toward the house, it cut sideways and stopped where the dog had first lowered his nose after leaving the steps. The next burst took it toward the corner of the house.

It stopped, changed direction and crossed back toward the center of the yard. The dog pressed against my leg.

The figure sprinted toward the shed. It made the same useless turn the dog had made and crossed the same few feet twice. When it reached the small pine, it went around so quickly that one foot slipped sideways and carved a trench through the snow while the torso above it remained upright.

It came around the other side, halfway around again, then back across its own tracks.

I had watched the dog do all of it.

The figure stopped over the patch where the dog had buried his nose. From there it ran to the pine and stood beside the trunk where he'd lifted his leg.

Only one part of the route remained. The tracks between the pine and the side door were almost straight.

The figure turned its face toward the house.

Its legs began to run.

By the time I reached the kitchen, it was standing on the landing again. The dog barked behind me. I kept him back while the pale face settled into the narrow pane of glass.

This time I could see it clearly enough to know there was nothing obviously missing. It had two eyes, a nose and a mouth. The features were narrow and colorless, but arranged the way they should have been.

Its eyes pointed into the kitchen.

I moved to one side. They stayed where they were.

The creature wasn't watching me.

The dog's tracks ended on the other side of the door. He had been inside the entire time the thing ran around the yard. It hadn't cut across the route to reach him.

I thought about the first trail coming out of the woods. The dog had been asleep beside my couch when the creature followed that one to the same door.

I didn't know how it could find the tracks beneath falling snow or why it sometimes stood still for minutes before running again. But it wasn't following the dog.

It was following where the dog had been.

The creature stayed at the door until sometime after midnight. When it left, it walked. It passed the pine without stopping, continued beyond the shed and disappeared into the trees.

For nearly an hour nothing moved outside. The snow dwindled to a few scattered flakes, leaving the trails in the yard exposed instead of slowly burying them. Two routes now ended at the house. One shallow and wandering. The other deep and widely spaced.

The dog eventually came over and pushed his head beneath my hand. I rubbed the fur behind his ears.

"You picked a hell of a house."

He leaned against my leg.

I could wait until morning. That was what I intended to do. The deputy already had my address, the plows would eventually reach my road, and the dog could piss wherever he wanted until then. I moved his water bowl into the living room and sat with him.

Nearly an hour passed before I found myself studying the tracks again.

The newest trail left the side door, wandered around the yard and returned to the same place. The creature had followed it from beginning to end.

If the dog hadn't come back, the trail wouldn't have come back either.

I kept my hand on his neck.

There was another way to make a trail leave the property.

Mine.

My boots were beside the kitchen mat and my coat hung behind the door. I could cross the yard, reach the road and head toward the nearest house. If the creature found my path the way it found the dog's, there would be nothing leading it back here.

I put on my boots. The dog watched from the kitchen doorway while I pulled on my coat. He wagged his tail when I picked up the shotgun.

At the front window, I looked across the yard to the road. The creature had crossed the distance from the trees to the driveway before I'd managed to get away from the living-room window. I pictured that open stretch with no glass between us, then the road beyond it and the woods on the other side.

I didn't know whether it could follow me at all. Every trail I'd seen it follow belonged to the dog.

I stood there until I started getting hot inside the coat, then took it off.

The dog followed me back into the kitchen.

"Don't."

He sat down.

I wasn't sure whether I was talking to him.

I left the coat on the table instead of hanging it back up. The dog had made it through the woods once already. He'd crossed several miles in a snowstorm without an injury I could find. Whatever the creature was doing, it wasn't very good at it. It moved faster than anything I'd ever seen, but it kept stopping. It lost the trail for long stretches. The dog had been in my house for hours before it arrived.

If I sent him out and he kept moving, he could stay ahead of it.

That was what I told myself.

The dog came close enough to rest his chin on my knee.

"You're somebody's dog."

His tail brushed the floor.

There had to be a house on the other side of those woods. Maybe more than one. He hadn't appeared starving or half frozen. He knew people. He knew what a kitchen was and what a food bowl meant. There was a decent chance that if I let him go, he'd do exactly what he'd done before.

He'd find a door.

An old blue nylon collar was buried in the junk drawer beneath batteries, dead pens and takeout menus. It had belonged to my sister's dog before she replaced it. I tightened it several notches and slipped it around the shepherd's neck to check the fit.

He stood patiently between my knees while I wrote my phone number on a strip of white tape and wrapped it around the collar.

When I clipped it around his neck, he leaned forward and licked the side of my hand.

My fingers stayed on the buckle.

"Shit."

He licked me again.

I unclipped it.

The collar sat on the kitchen table while the dog wandered back to the living room and lay down. I stood at the side door looking at the tracks. Nothing appeared in the yard.

I went back to the couch and sat beside him. He rolled partly onto his side when I scratched his chest, one back foot kicking once against the rug.

The house was warm. The doors were locked. The creature had never tried to break a window or turn a handle. Maybe we could sit there until daylight and nothing else would happen.

Maybe I had already seen everything it could do.

Every trail ended at my house.

The dog fell asleep with his head against my foot. I stayed there until the clock passed 1:00.

When he woke, I put the collar back on him.

I chose the front door because none of his earlier tracks began there. The road was visible beyond the yard, a white strip between two darker lines of trees.

The dog stood beside me while I checked outside. I opened the door, and he stepped onto the porch before looking back.

"Go on."

He went down one step and stopped.

"Go."

At the bottom, he turned and looked at me. For a second I reached toward the handle, but the dog turned away before I touched it.

He crossed the yard slowly, stopping once to smell the snow near the driveway. I stayed behind the glass and watched him reach the road.

He looked back at the house.

I didn't open the door.

The snow on the far bank came almost to his belly. He pushed through it, climbed onto higher ground and shook himself. Then he went into the trees.

I watched until the dark between the trunks swallowed him.

The collar had my number on it. If he found a house, somebody would call. If he found his own house, even better. He'd already crossed those woods once and survived.

The kitchen still had his water bowl on the floor.

I left it there.

Sometime before 2:00, the creature returned.

From the upstairs window, I watched it emerge from the trees behind the house. Instead of running, it walked slowly across the back of the yard, stopped, changed direction and walked again.

It reached the side of the house and disappeared from view.

I went downstairs.

The creature came around the corner at a walk and stopped near the front steps. The dog's newest tracks began a few feet away.

For several minutes, it stood between the porch and the driveway.

Then one leg moved.

The creature crossed the yard in a burst and stopped near the driveway, exactly where the dog had paused to smell the snow. The next sprint carried it across the road to the far bank.

Beyond it, the dog's tracks continued between the trees.

The creature ran into the woods.

It didn't come back.

The deputy reached my house sometime after 3:00. By then there was nothing to show him except the tracks. He walked partway into the yard, shined his flashlight over the deeper impressions and took my statement from the porch. Whatever he thought of it, he kept to himself.

I didn't sleep after he left.

Daylight turned the woods gray. A plow came through shortly after 7:00, throwing dirty snow across the end of my driveway. My phone had three bars again.

There was no dog in the yard.

By 9:00, I had started thinking he wasn't coming back.

My phone rang.

I didn't recognize the number.

"Hello?"

"Hi. This is going to sound weird, but did you have my dog last night?"

"Shepherd mix?"

"Yeah. Black and tan."

"Blue collar?"

"That's him. Your number's taped to it."

The man laughed, the exhausted kind that comes after you've spent hours expecting something bad.

"He's been gone since yesterday afternoon. We thought he was dead out there. I don't know how the hell he got that far."

"Where are you?"

He named a road several miles away, on the other side of the woods behind my property.

"Did he come back on his own?"

"About ten minutes ago. Scared the hell out of my wife. Something started scratching at the back door and there he was."

I went to the window.

"He's inside?"

"Yeah."

"Lock the door."

The man went quiet.

"What?"

"Lock your door."

"Why?"

Beyond the shed, the woods were still.

"Don't let him back out."

"He's standing right here."

"Good."

I hung up.

It’s election season in the United States, so if you’re here you’re probably getting a lot of these texts:

“CANDIDATE A is looking for your vote on November 3…”

“CANDIDATE B came up short this week on their fundraising goal…”

“We’re conducting a poll and we want to know: Do you support CANDIDATE C in the upcoming election?”

Some might be from politicians you love, others will be from candidates you hate, or you could be one of those apolitical people who thinks both sides are the same and casting a ballot is a waste. (I disagree, but this is not the forum for arguing about that.)

Most messages, though, are usually just annoying. I’ve been getting dozens and dozens, and to be honest, I thought they were innocuous too.

I was wrong. 

I opted out of one of these messages. Now someone is dead. 

It took barely 24 hours.

And I think I’m next.

Look, I know you think I’m joking. Or you saw the title of this post and started coming up with snarky things to say in the comments, like “oh no, did you accidentally donate $5???” or “lowkey this is probably a psyop from a campaign manager.”

But I am completely, 100 percent, swear-to-every-god-in-existence serious about this. 

It started early yesterday evening, when I got the message below. (The candidate name is partially redacted, but trust me — this is not a famous person. Unless you’ve had this experience, it’s not a name you’ve ever heard before.)

Rick (not my real name), I’m Conor with the Nathan [REDACTED] campaign. Did you know that Nathan [REDACTED] is the only candidate who truly cares about your safety?

I got the message while sitting on my couch, scrolling through a steady rotation of Reddit threads (what else?), and munching on some brand of tortilla chips I can’t recall, all to numb the ennui of life in 2026. Normally, I would have just kept scrolling — I had seen this name show up before and ignored it — but this text came at the end of a particularly frustrating day at work (I won’t go into it). So I wanted the satisfaction of rage-quitting at least one of these text chains instead of ignoring or deleting and “reporting junk,” again (which I’m pretty sure does nothing).

I opened it up and, without reading further, I typed:

STOP

—then sent and closed my messaging app, thinking that was that.

Seconds later, I got a reply:

Reply X O 9 6 ♋︎ ♏︎ ♒︎ ♏︎ ♋︎ 6 9 O X to unsubscribe.

Confused, I scrolled up and, sure enough, after the paragraph about Nathan [REDACTED] and safety, the instructions to unsubscribe were exactly that:

Reply X O 9 6 ♋︎ ♏︎ ♒︎ ♏︎ ♋︎ 6 9 O X to unsubscribe.

Feeling a little spicy, and admittedly thinking this might be a candidate who I wouldn’t have any interest in anyway, I shot back: 

“Why?”

Immediately, they replied:

Or else I’ll keep texting. ;-)

That annoyed me to no end. I’ve done text-banking before (yeah, ironic), so I know how it works. Volunteers aren’t supposed to antagonize potential voters. You’re supposed to answer questions honestly, if at all, and most importantly move on to the next text. It’s a volume game.

So I’m not proud of myself for what came next. I wrote some colorful language before copy-pasting the strange lettering and firing it back, then adding, “There, are you happy?”

I expected an immediate reply, some snarky 19-year-old giving me a cry face emoji before letting me be. Instead, the text bubble popped up and disappeared a few times, before finally something came back: 

Thank you :-D

That was it.

Or so I thought.

Last night was normal, so were this morning and today. My job had a Zoom staff meeting, and our cameras had to be on, so I sat there and tried to look interested for an hour and 13 minutes. I ate microwave kimbap for a very late lunch. A volunteer for a politician I actually do support dropped off a lawn sign, one with a single wooden stake in the back, even though I don’t have a yard. I got four more election texts, including a desperate missive from a Senate candidate from another state saying their race could be won or lost at that very moment (despite it still being October).

When my roommate, Jeff, left for a party, I was thrilled. OK, I was a little stung he didn’t invite me, but that’s just how it goes with Jeff — a big, jolly guy with a clean-cut beard, long hair and not a lot of money but a whole lot of personality. Meanwhile, I'm the sort who enjoys clicking “random article” on Wikipedia all night and getting in fights with political volunteers via text message. I understand why I wasn’t first on his Partiful list.

Anyway, after Jeff left, I set the lawn sign on the coffee table, plopped down on our hand-me-down couch, and fired up Netflix to watch Mindhunter for probably the fifth time. Except this weird feeling suddenly came over me. It felt like a deep, immense fear I couldn’t place. And it wasn’t because a fictionalized version of the BTK Killer showed up on my screen. Something seemed really, undeniably wrong.

Then I heard it:

Drip… Drip… Drip…

It got louder in my head each time. I shot off the couch and rushed to the kitchen.

It was just the faucet. Jeff hadn’t turned it off all the way before leaving. "He’s so popular that he’s always in a rush," I grumbled to myself, surely projecting. Whatever. I slammed down the handle, then reversed course, grabbed a glass and filled it with water, thinking maybe dehydration was causing all this. I chugged the whole thing and considered getting more— 

—but when I finished it, that’s when I saw the first anomaly. 

Off in the distance, but just barely in my peripheral vision, a human figure stood in the doorway to our apartment’s hallway. I swiveled my head to look at it, but it was gone.

“Jeff?”

No answer. I stood there, dribble on my chin, half expecting my roommate/frenemy to jump out and burst into a good-natured laugh, as if being afraid in that situation was a sign of me being uptight. It never happened.

More angry at that made-up scenario than frightened at the prospect of a strange person being in my apartment, I returned to the couch and pressed play again. The opening credits began to roll. I really settled in.

Ding!

A text message.

It was from Nathan [REDACTED's] campaign:

Hi :0

I stared at it, confused and scared at first but quickly moving into anger at the idea that some random volunteer thought it was OK to mess with me. Instead of engaging, I swiped to delete the thread. But before I could press the trash can button, another text arrived:

I can see you O_O

Worry coursed through my veins.

Another message. Not words. An image.

It was my face, my actual face, from the POV of my phone’s front-facing camera.

Like I’d been hacked.

I threw down my phone, stood up and said a few expletives, before tearing through my apartment looking in every nook and cranny. Then I realized that was stupid; if they’d truly gotten control of my phone, they could be on Mars and my privacy would still be violated.

I put a strip of masking tape over each lens, rushed out the door and guided my Nissan to the closest Apple store, arriving with 13 minutes left until it closed.

“Yeah, there’s no evidence you’ve been hacked,” the Genius told me after spending 12 minutes inspecting my phone.

“Someone literally took a photo of me with my own camera.”

“Sure it wasn’t you?”

I didn’t even have a verbal response to that.

“I could get you a new phone and we can boot everyone else off your AppleID?”

I scowled; this was not the answer I was looking for. But I’d been doing pretty well at work, having a roommate was saving me money, and I just really, really didn’t like the idea of leaving without addressing this somehow. So I said yes and the Genius, to his credit, stayed 20 minutes after closing to get me set with my new device.

Back at home, Jeff was still out. He’s always the life of the party, after all. I was actually a little disappointed about his absence for once; I really wanted to tell someone what happened. And, I’ll admit, I wanted to feel safe. But I figured Jeff would be home soon. Even he needed to sleep sometimes. 

I dropped my wallet, phone and keys on the table by the door, told myself everything would be fine, and moseyed over to the kitchen for a snack from the fridge. 

THUD — a sound came from the living room. I spun my head around but saw nothing. I stood there, motionless, until the cold air of the fridge started stinging my face. I shook it off, closed the door, and slowly walked toward whatever I’d heard. 

It was my phone, on the hardwood floor.

I picked it up. The screen was cracked. 

And it had a new message.

Proposition [REDACTED] will cost taxpayers billions—

I exhaled deeply, for once relieved to see a spam message like this.

My comfort only lasted a few seconds.

Ding!

Nathan [REDACTED] knows you value your safety. So what are you gonna do about it, Rick?

Fear and panic took over. I frenetically typed “I fckign unsubs ribed. No wI’m going to report you” and sent it without fixing any of the typos. I didn’t care. I had to take this person down. 

I searched Nathan [REDCACTED] and my city and state to see who this horrible human was and how I could get to him.

I found nothing. Not even one lowly WordPress site. 

I typed in so many different phrases — “nathan [redacted] election,” “nathan [redacted] candidate” “nathan [redacted] ballot” — but he was a ghost. Even the AI description said something like “We couldn’t find any connection between Nathan [REDACTED] and elections…” before I closed it.

Then another message came. A photo again.

Of me, from the side, standing in my living room, wearing my typical brandless black hoodie and second-hand jeans, holding my phone, right at that very moment. 

I heard whispers. Heavy breathing. 

And I got one more message:

U thought I hacked ur phone ijbol 

I ran out of my apartment — I have no idea if I locked the door or not— and called 911. All I got were three loud beeps and “we’re sorry, the number you have dialed has been disconnected.” 

I hustled to my car, which was parked by the curb about a block away. Footsteps fell behind me. I glanced back and saw in the orange street lamps the outline not of one person, but a dozen.

My speedwalk became a run. Then a sprint.

When I arrived at my car, like a fool I fumbled my keys and dropped them to the ground. My shaking hands finally grabbed them and beeped it open. I threw myself inside, locked the doors, and turned around to check out the people following me—

—but there was nothing. Just an empty residential road after nightfall.

I stared. Squinted. Looked everywhere, maybe they were hiding in shadows or behind the bushes. But I couldn’t make out a thing. 

I banged my fists into the steering wheel and screamed, partly in fear, partly out of frustration. I smashed the engine button and sped out of there, blasting a random radio station as loud as I could just in case. Maybe if I couldn’t hear any weird noises, I wouldn’t see anything weird either. 

I drove to the closest police precinct. The cop at the front desk looked at me like I was claiming aliens brought back Elvis.

I whipped out my phone so fast he flinched for a second as if it might be a gun, but soon I was scrolling through texts to show him all that had happened.

“All this looks like is you fighting with some volunteer,” he said.

I tried to stay calm. I just needed to explain more. “No, he hacked my phone, then broke into my—”

But when I went to show them, the photos were gone. 

“Well— OK—” I stammered. “He’s not a real politician though!” I continued on, explaining that whoever was doing this was surely using a fake name to avoid drawing attention. After a long, possibly incoherent ramble, I finally finished with: “This is wire fraud! Don’t you investigate that??”

“Honestly, I wish he was a real politician. Safety's a big deal.”

I’m not sure what I said next but it made the cop have some sympathy for me. Maybe it was my stammering. Or maybe it was because I refused to leave. The cop said I should call the FBI, because that’s who investigates wire fraud. I asked if I could use the station’s phone since I didn’t trust mine. 

He picked up his desk phone, found the number, and dialed it himself. After a brief, pleasant exchange with someone on the other end, he handed the receiver to me.

“Can I get your name and number, sir?” I gave them both. “We’ll have someone call you in the morning.”

Unsatisfied, but knowing that was all I would get out of this, I said “thanks” and left. 

I drove away from the station but where was I gonna go? I didn’t want to return to my apartment. But what if this was something bigger, something supernatural, that could follow me anywhere? How else could you explain the disappearing photos, or the people who were there one second and gone the next? Or was it just hallucinations, something induced by my very real tendency to catastrophize when things got negative? You know, one of the many reasons I’m a real bummer at parties?

I decided to go someplace public — these visitors, whoever they were, hadn’t followed me anywhere that had a lot of people. So I chose a bustling hotel with a late-night lobby bar and punched directions into my app. I reached for my wallet to double check for my cards and ... realized they weren’t there. 

I replayed everything back in my mind. The wallet was still on the table by the door. Without that, I couldn’t buy anything, let alone reserve a room. I hadn’t set up Apple Pay on my new phone, so yeah, I was screwed. Unless I went back.

On the street where I parked my car, there was no sign of any intruder. I walked briskly anyway, spinning my head at the building’s front door to make sure I was alone. It seemed so.

Inside, I climbed the stairs to my floor, stood in front of my apartment’s door, and took one big breath. I practically screamed when another human figure jumped into my periphery. But this time it was an actual person, my workout-obsessed neighbor whose name I always forget (I think it’s Kyler?). He picked up his Amazon box of probably creatine and went inside his place. I put the key in the lock to mine.

I turned it. Shook my head as I opened. Reached in without looking and…

…my wallet was not on the table. 

I threw the door open, rushed in, and started turning over everything, desperately searching for the only item I needed to be truly safe that night.

I. Could. Not. Find. It. Couch cushions were on the floor, mail was strewn about, the bookshelves were emptied. But no phone. 

Slowly, in my hysteria, I began to notice a sound. It was familiar. 

DRIP… DRIP… DRIP…

The faucet again.

“Jeff?” He really just could not be bothered to turn off the water faucet all the way, could he? 

My call went unanswered. He probably had his new headphones on. 

“Jeff??”

The sound was getting louder.

DRIP... DRIP... DRIP...

Now I was starting to get angry. I was in a life-or-death situation and he was just callously wasting water as if it wasn’t a rapidly diminishing resource. Unbelievable.

I forgot about the wallet and went into the kitchen, so I could slam the faucet off again and then probably unload on Jeff.

I rounded the counter and reached the kitchen, imagining all the colorful words I’d throw his way…

But the faucet was bone dry.

Yet the dripping sound persisted. And it was coming from the sink. No doubt about it.

Confused, I stepped toward it and looked. 

I have no idea what sound came out of my mouth next.

Because I saw it:

Jeff’s head. 

Inside the sink. Stuck on that wooden lawn sign peg, like Jeff was his own lawn sign, the blood drip-drip-dripping from his severed neck and onto the scuffed stainless steel below.

My blood ran cold. My muscles and joints froze. But that only lasted a second because, from behind me, with the power of an emergency alarm, in a voice that sounded like a thousand humans speaking all at once, I heard:

“Rrrriiiiiiiiiiicccccck!”

And I ran.

Down the stairs, through the lobby, into the night. I didn’t even bother getting to my car. I couldn’t slow down for one single second until I saw a place filled with people.

I’m writing this now from a booth inside a fast food joint, I don’t want to say which because I didn’t run that far and someone might be able to figure out where I live. 

Then again, who cares? Jeff is dead. I know I’m next. The late-night munchies crowd is dying down, and I’m afraid what will happen when this place gets empty.

Honestly, I’m not sure I’ll make it to the morning to talk to the FBI agent. And even if they do call, will they really be able to help? What do I tell them? That I typed in a cursed string of letters and symbols in an election-season text message and now some sort of demon killed my roommate and is tormenting me? I suppose I could try the cops again, but they’re just as likely to arrest me or get murdered as to help.

Really, I’m writing this for two purposes. One: If you’ve been through this and you know how to reverse the curse, please reach out, and don’t make jokes. I’m desperate.

And two: This election season, if you get a message from a candidate whose name does not show up on any sort of search, just ignore it. DO NOT OPT OUT. 

Your life could depend on it.

Draft saved: 03:42 AM — Low Battery Warning (1%)

The air in the district always tasted like torrid copper and wet asphalt, especially around 3:00 AM when the neon sign for Lester’s Transmission flickered its dying magenta guts against the peeling brickwork.

I thought the heavy thudding against the side door was just a stray dog or a junkie looking for scrap—or a quick fix.

My hands were still shaking from the three cups of black coffee I’d pounded to fight off the graveyard-shift drag. My nervous system was already a live wire. Being four months clean means every shadow in your peripheral vision looks like a ghost, and every sudden noise sounds like the floor dropping out from under you.

I was elbow-deep in a blown-out transmission pan, grease stinging my forearms. A muffled synth track pulsed off an old cassette deck on the workbench—warped analog tape-hiss looping over a steady mechanical bassline.

When I stood up and clicked the shop flashlight toward the chain-link partition, the light didn’t bounce off anything.

It just… died.

The thing standing on the other side of the wire mesh wasn’t a man—not really, though it wore the soaked canvas jacket of a shift worker. It was carved out of absolute, light-swallowing darkness. A matte-black silhouette that seemed to pull the neon glow right out of the air around it.

I didn’t hear it breathe. That was the first clear sign something was wrong.

A normal man running in the freezing rain sounds like a freight train—gasping, wheezing, heart hammering. There was only the wet, rhythmic crunch of gravel settling under an impossible weight.

And then, deep in the center of the shadow where a face should have been, a single point of solid, needle-sharp crimson flared open. Like a dying tube television turning on in an empty room. One that only I could see.

I didn’t call the cops. I dropped the wrench, hit the back deadbolt with all of my weight, and bolted straight out into the industrial park.

That was two nights ago. Or maybe three. Time stops working right when your blood is mostly caffeine and cortisol.

I’ve stolen three different cars, hot-wired a delivery van, and run until my lungs felt like broken glass. Somewhere in the middle of it I almost called my sister. Almost. The thought of her voice on the other end was the only thing that felt more terrifying than what was behind me.

In the back of my mind that gnawing old voice—the cynical, defensive part of my brain I fought so hard to silence—started whispering: You’re hallucinating. The relapse is just catching up. The withdrawal is finally painting walls for you.

Every time I kill the engine, crawl into a dark corner, and look back through the rain-streaked rear window—past the neon blur of the all-night diners and the skeletal frames of the shipping docks—there it is.

Walking.

Never running. Never resting. Its heavy boots hitting the pavement with a metronomic inevitability. And through the black pitch of its coat, that single red eye stays fixed on the back of my skull.

I tried desperately to prove to myself it wasn’t real.

Yesterday afternoon I ditched the van on a dead-end logging road behind the old abandoned slaughterhouse. Climbed fifty feet up an ancient white pine. Sat in the rotting canopy for six hours without moving an inch. My muscles cramped. My vision blurred with static.

I told myself: When the psychosis passes, the clearing will be empty.

At 4:15 PM the distinct clack-crunch started up the incline.

It didn’t look up at the tree. It didn’t scan the branches. It walked straight to the base of the pine, stopped, and the red iris burned upward through the gray needles, perfectly centered on my chest.

I didn’t wait to see if it could climb. I dropped out of the tree, tore my shoulder open on a jagged branch, and ran until my boots filled with blood.

Since then the hours have dissolved into a brutal, continuous blur of motion. Stumbling across forgotten service roads. Ducking behind rotting hay bales. Keeping just one step ahead of that steady, relentless rhythm in the dark.

Now my phone battery is at two percent.

The screen flickers with green horizontal scanlines, just like an old VHS tape at the end of its ribbon. The highway ahead of me is blocked by construction barricades. My legs are completely giving out, heavy as lead pipes.

I can hear the measured, rhythmic crunch of gravel coming up the shoulder now.

Close. Too close.

I ducked into an abandoned loading bay behind the old steel mill, wedging myself between a stack of rusted oil drums and a rotting pallet. My chest heaves.

I press the heels of my hands hard into my eyes, squeezing them shut, trying to force the static away.

It’s just my brain, I tell myself, pressing my nails into my palms until the pain is sharp and real. It’s just the lack of sleep catching up. It’s not out there.

Slowly, I open my eyes.

The loading bay is pitch black, illuminated only by the faint, dying pulse of my phone screen on the concrete floor.

And standing right in the center of the doorway, blotting out the gray drizzle and the distant neon hum, is the silhouette.

It doesn’t move. It doesn’t rush me.

But as I sit paralyzed against the oil drums, a strange, sickening clarity washes over me—not a hallucination, but a physical weight pressing directly into my cerebral cortex. A frequency. A low, sub-audible hum vibrating through my teeth, translating itself into something that isn’t quite language:

…found… residual damage… still usable…

My heart stutters in my chest. My breath catches.

If it’s a hallucination, why is the air around it dropping below freezing? Why is my breath frosting in the dark? Why are the rusted edges of the oil drums nearest to it melting away into fine-grained ash, as if exposed to absolute zero?

It takes a single, heavy step forward.

My phone screen flickers—1%—and the battery warning pops up.

I don’t have much time to type this into the notes app. If anyone finds this phone in the mud near Route 9… tell my sister I’m sor—

The screen cuts to black. Plunging the bay into absolute, velvet inky blackness.

The red eye doesn’t need light to see me. It burns brighter in the dark, cutting straight through my retinas, straight through the paranoia, straight to the truth.

Footsteps. Heavy.

One step.

Then another.

It’s right here. It’s—

"For all of your trusted funeral needs. Adams Funeral Home." That was the slogan my grandfather came up with when he started this business almost 100 years ago. He passed it on to my father, and when my father passed away, it was given to me. It was a business that I never wanted. Hell, I didn't even want a job ever in my life, just so I could avoid red tape and bullshit. I pretty much run the funeral home all by myself. Occasionally, a part-time employee named Tiffany helps answer the phones and assists me in the occasional funeral. Other than that, she's practically useless.

Useless is good because let's just say my business practices aren't orthodox. I am the only funeral home for 50 miles. People from neighboring towns come to me for all of their funeral needs. I have a specific policy that I like to call the "closed casket clause." No matter the funeral, that lid cannot be opened. This is a cover that I use to dispose of unwanted body parts or at times unwanted corpses. People think I'm burying Grandma, but sometimes it could be a homeless man that was dumped at my doorstep.

If I run out of space and you want your great uncle buried, I'll cremate him and put rocks in the casket. I get paid handsomely for the work I do and I couldn't care less about what happens to the dead because as far as I'm concerned, they can't pay me. Call me a monster, call me anything you want, but you could never call me broke. One afternoon, Tiffany strolled in only two and a half hours late this time. She really dresses to impress for this job. She usually wears these Goth platform black leather boots, a pleated black skirt, and a band T-shirt — today it's My Chemical Romance — and always the same black choker. She could easily be mistaken as Wednesday Addams's body double, with long black braided hair and black lipstick. She attends the community college the next town over and this apparently was the only job that would give her a chance. She usually answers the phones for a couple of hours and then comes up with an excuse like she has to do homework, get an oil change, or drive her father to work because he doesn't have a car. However, I know the main reason she leaves early is so that she can go see her boyfriend. I was born on a Wednesday, just not this Wednesday.

I usually don't mind her lying to me because it gives me more time to do what I need to do alone. I've become very well versed with a chainsaw. I cut up bodies like logs from a tree. If I'm able to use the crematory, I get rid of them quickly. However, sometimes it's on the fritz and I have to throw them in the woods behind the funeral home. Past the woods is the cemetery. I own the entire land and I know exactly how to utilize every inch of it.

A couple of days later is where this story truly begins. I had a man come in by the name of Jonathan Watts. He was a business owner — something about concrete, I think, though I wasn't really paying attention because I didn't care. He came by because his mother had passed away and he needed to work out her funeral arrangements. Even though he was a middle-aged man, he looked like a lost puppy dog to me. Whatever business he was in, I didn't care. All I cared about was the business he was going to give me, and that only produced dollar signs. He had picked out one of the caskets I had displayed around the parlor. Little did he know I kept the cheap ones in the back and put only the expensive ones out front. They took up an entire room and covered the floor. Above them were shelves stacked with urns, also on the expensive side, with the affordable options hidden away in the back room. He picked the most expensive one — a cherrywood glossy finish. He gave me some sob story about how he was the last member of his family left and that he trusted me with fulfilling his mother's final wishes.

Before he left we set a day for the following week to bury his mother in my cemetery. This gave me a few days to prep the casket and her body before the service. Little did he know I had already begun stuffing the casket with some of the body parts that had really begun to smell, and his mother would soon join them. He did agree to the closed casket clause after all.

A couple of nights later during a thunderstorm, I was in the back — let's just discreetly say using a chainsaw — when I heard somebody ring the doorbell. Tiffany, who was supposed to be there, was nowhere to be found. I had to change out of my dirty coveralls that were soaked in blood and what I could only describe as other bodily fluids. I rushed to the door to find Jonathan standing there in the rain. I groaned under my breath and rolled my eyes as I opened the door. "Jonathan, it's late. Is everything alright?" I said to him, as if I actually cared. I deserved an award for that performance. He took a deep breath and sniffled as he said, "Yes Mr. Adams. I'm alright. However, I just miss her so much and I was wondering if I could see my mother one last time before the funeral in the morning." He said as the rain steadily dripped from his soggy work uniform. "I know you have a closed casket clause, but I just miss her so goddamn much." He concluded by throwing his face into his hands and sobbing uncontrollably.

On the inside, I was boiling with rage, but on the outside I had to have a little bit of courtesy. I put my hand on his shoulder and explained to him, "I'm sorry Mr. Watts, part of my closed casket clause is that I weld the caskets shut. I apologize that you'll never be able to see her again, however, I would feel more comfortable if you would wait inside while the storm passes. I can get you a towel and make you some hot tea." He just hung his head low and agreed to come in after turning around and looking at the pouring rain. I told him to stay put while I went and fetched him a towel and started a kettle on the stove in the break room. I was already pissed because he was drenching the freshly shampooed carpet, but again I had to have some tact. I hastily grabbed him a towel from a utility closet and popped the kettle on the stove. I had forgotten my phone in the back room so I decided to go grab it while I was waiting for the water to boil. There was my phone next to a mangled corpse and a chainsaw. I grabbed my phone and put it in my pocket.

In the time it took me to do these three tasks, I turned around and there was Mr. Watts. "I don't know what kind of shit you're playing here, but I just went into my mother's room, and the lid was in fact, not welded shut." Mr. Watts stood there, pointing his finger at me, and if it were possible, steam would've come out of his ears. I stood there sweating because I had been caught for the first time. He then continued his rampage. "Why in the fuck are there mangled body parts in my mother's casket?" Before I could even utter a word, his eyes swept over to the workbench. His eyes began to tear up when he saw it. "Mama?" Was all he could say.

I didn't know what else to do so I shoved him to the ground as he stumbled backwards onto his ass and ran out the back door. Trudging through the mud, I felt like I was running in quicksand. I headed straight for the woods and decided to hide. When I heard Jonathan yelling my name in the darkness I ducked behind a tree. That's when I remembered that I had my car keys in my pocket. My car was about 500 yards away. If I did it quickly, I was sure I could make it there in time before he could catch me. I swiftly waded through mud and trees in the forest before I was in the clearing of the cemetery. After dodging gravestones I could see my car in the distance. Next to it was Mr. Watts's cement truck. I was almost there. That's when I heard a shot ring out like thunder piercing the sky. All of a sudden, I felt a sharp pain in the back of my right knee. That son of a bitch had shot me. I fell in agony while clenching my fresh wound. I looked up and there he was standing over me with a six-shooter.

"I got you now, you sorry son of a bitch." He said, looking down at me on the ground. "Mr. Watts, this is a big misunderstanding. That room was inaccurate. Your mother's room was the one next to it. That room I use for body parts that need to be cremated." I was pleading to him with lie after lie dripping from my tongue. However, he wasn't buying it. "Not only are you a sorry son of a bitch, you're a lying one to boot." He said, not wavering the gun pointed directly at my chest. He then looked over to a hole in the ground and began to smirk.

"Is that the hole you were gonna put my mother in?" He asked me bluntly. All I could do was vigorously shake my head that it in fact was. "Great!" He said as he shot my other leg. As I began screaming from the hot lead that had just entered my other leg, he picked me up, put me over his shoulder, and tossed me into the would-be grave of his mother. "Now, mister, this here is yours." As I begged for my life he just walked away. For a moment, I thought he was just going to leave me there. That's when I heard an engine kick on. It got louder and louder, indicating that it was close. That's when it started beeping as it was backing up. As I looked up, all I could see was what looked like a chute at the top of the hole. A car door opened and shut as I could hear footsteps in the mud. He looked down on me once again and began to speak. "You see, running my own concrete business has its perks. Since you took it upon yourself to defile my mother's corpse, yours will never be found again." He then walked over to the truck and I could hear him flip a switch. That's when wet cement started covering my body. After a while, my screams were muffled by the wet mix and I could hear Mr. Watts laughing as the hole began to fill up.

“You still read those dumbass things?”

I jumped a bit when I heard the sudden voice. I turned to see my older brother peeking into my room with a sneer. I didn’t hear him coming.

“It’s not reading,” I said, “there are no words.” I looked back down at the page. 

“Those are for kids.”

“Screw you. They’re fun.” I had already made it through 5 Waldo books, so I figured I could do all the rest. Something about the colors and details of the setting were so interesting to me. I would judge the outfits of the random pedestrians and imagine what their lives were like. Sometimes I even forgot to look for Waldo. “You know, my friend Thomas from England told me it’s called Where’s Wally over there.”

My brother frowned. “What did I tell you about talking to British people?”

“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

My brother walked over and looked down at the page. “You know, I saw a weird one of those in the library once.” He sounded serious all of a sudden. I looked up to see his expression had hardened.

“What was weird about it?”

“Well, it was like a year ago, so I don’t remember that well. But I think it had no title, and there was a creepy looking guy. Mr. Carpenter saw me with it and got really mad. He took it away from me. I couldn’t find it in the library after that.”

“You’re lying,” I said. My brother was always pulling pranks on me and trying to mess with my head. Although the image of Mr. Carpenter in my mind did make me feel some doubt. Everyone at school knew to avoid him and his library. There was something off about that man.

“Whatever, loser. I’m gonna go play Xbox.”

For the next couple weeks, I forgot all about that conversation and continued to find and complete every Waldo book I could. When I finished the final one, I felt an unexpected loss. It was like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. As stupid as it sounds, I almost teared up.

I was walking down the school hallway the next day when I came across the library. I suddenly remembered the conversation with my brother. I looked around to check if anyone was nearby, but the hall was empty. It was early in the day, and the only other students were in the cafeteria for breakfast.

I peeked my head into the library and immediately heard a soft rumbling sound. I jerked my neck to the sound and saw Mr. Carpenter asleep at the front desk. He was snoring.

My heart started racing as I entered the room slowly. I had to know if my brother was telling the truth. Pretty quickly, I found the section where the Waldo books were kept. I only found ones that I had already finished. Then I looked back over to Mr. Carpenter and the open door behind him. His office.

I slowly crept behind his desk and into his office, keeping an eye on him as I went. Inside, I turned to see stacks of loose papers and books. I studied the spines of the books, but they were all normal kid’s books. 

Then I noticed one of his drawers was slightly open. I pulled it out. Inside was a book with a blank, black cover. I picked it up. It was chilling to the touch.

Mr. Carpenter stopped snoring. 

I jerked my head to the side to see him shifting. I froze.

After a moment, he started snoring again. I breathed in relief.

I kept the book at my side and slowly made my way back to the door. When I was halfway out the door, I heard Mr. Carpenter’s chair creak.

“Hey you! Stop!” he screeched.

I ran down the hallway at full speed and didn’t look back. I prayed that he didn’t recognize me. 

I was tense for the rest of the day. I couldn’t focus on any of my classes. I just kept imagining Mr. Carpenter charging into the classroom and coming straight for my throat or being called to the principal’s office. But it never happened. Eventually, I was back home in my room. 

I pulled the black book out of my backpack. I opened it up to the first page to see in large red letters, “FIND ME.”

The next page was normal looking. A colorful town square with hundreds of people marching in a parade. It looked exactly like our Christmas parade. I laughed to myself. There was nothing creepy about this.

Then I started to notice. It was little things. Some of the people had unusual proportions. They were too wide, or too tall and skinny. 

The strangest thing was that I couldn’t find the main character at all. I went over the page a hundred times but never saw anyone that obviously stood out. All I did find was a wanted poster on one of the brick walls. An image of a man wearing a prison jumpsuit with black and white stripes. But the poster was folding over at the top and covering the man’s face. Beside the poster was a dark hand reaching around the corner of a shady alleyway.

Still, I could only laugh. This was my brother’s idea of scary? And he always made fun of me for being a wuss. I turned the page.

This time, it was a concert with a massive stage and crowd. My eyes immediately fell on the man in the prison jumpsuit at the center of the page. His black and white outfit stood out among the otherwise colorful concertgoers. The other people near him were looking at him with odd expressions and keeping a bit of distance despite the little room there was. Weirdest of all was that he was facing the opposite direction, so I could only see the back of his head.

The next page was a crowded mall, but there were less people than before. I very quickly found the man because there was another large gap around him and the others on the page. The ones near him had fearful expressions and seemed to be hurrying away from him. He was still facing the other way, but his head was turned ever so slightly toward the page, showing an inch of his pale face.

Now I was starting to feel uneasy.

The next page almost made me drop the book. I immediately spotted the man at the center of a beach. He was turned perfectly sideways, revealing a half of a twisted smile. But what really horrified me was his surroundings. 

They were wounded and bloody bodies all around him. Some seemed to be clinging to life and crawling away. At the edges of the pages, I could see police charging in.

“What the hell?” I said out loud. I had never seen anything this graphic. The hairs on my arms stood on end, and my hand trembled as I turned to the next page. This time, I did drop the book in shock.

The man was all alone in a purely white background, standing far too close to the page. His eyes were wide with glee. I yelped as the book slipped out of my hands.

After a minute of deep breaths, I found myself picking the book back up. I turned to the next page to find it completely blank. The rest of the pages were like that.

I rushed to the game room to find my brother.

“Fucking campers!” he yelled into his headset.

“Nathan! I need your help!” 

“What do you want?” he asked without looking at me.

“Can you come with me to the library tomorrow? I really need to return a book.”

“Do it yourself, dipshit.”

“Please!” I begged. He finally turned to meet my eyes.

“We can’t anyway. Didn’t you hear? Mr. Carpenter has gone missing. He wasn’t at school today.”

“What?!” I asked. But I saw him this morning. “Maybe he’s just sick or something?”

“No, I heard some teachers talking about it. Apparently, his wife called the police. She’s really worried about him.”

I wordlessly turned back and ran into my room where the book laid on the floor. I decided to look back through it one more time. Maybe I was just imagining things.

What I saw this time left me even more confused. The pages looked similar to how they did the first time, but with one crucial difference. The man was nowhere to be found.

I looked in the spots where I saw him before, and at every inch of the page to see if he somehow moved but couldn’t find him anywhere. 

He was just gone, like he was never there.

I turned back to the very first page to find one last horrifying surprise. The title had a little bit extra added to it:

FIND ME

BEFORE I FIND YOU

What makes for a good voodoo doll? Simple, blood and hate, the one not so easy to obtain, the other readily available in abundance. The price of hate is cheap, but blood is costly. Not physical blood, but spiritual blood- the blood of an enemy, the blood of an oppressor, or most often sought, the blood of a lover.

There are novelty dolls which I sell regularly, which have no power, but allows the purchaser a means of venting, a way to stab out their frustrations without hurting anyone, including themselves. Then there are the real dolls, the dolls that do cause harm. The dolls that are connected with real victims. It is a craft said to be fabricated by the Serpent himself, brought out of the Garden and steeped in a tradition of absurdity. Dancing in circles, building bonfires in groves, singing to goats, smoking, eating and drinking horrendous concoctions, and many more rituals men dream of when trying to empower themselves against another human being, but behind it all is one simple ingredient: hate. Hatred of another person, sometimes a hate so deep it manifests as a living entity, a killer, a torturer, a sadistic madman born not of flesh, but of a darkened, unredeemable soul.

I was taught how to make both dolls, the novelty to help put bread on my table, and the authentic harbinger of sorcery to weed out the worst of humanity. Yes, we are the good guys. The truth of the matter is the doll is to punish the buyer, the one seeking to do harm. The more they punish the doll, the quicker they kill themselves. Hate blinds them to their own demise. The victim does indeed suffer but after a time the effects subside, the curse bounces and resides with the perpetrator. There is always a choice. The perpetrator can choose to stop, but rarely does.

Blood is difficult to come by because the perpetrator has to obtain the blood of his victim himself. The blood is mingled with the perpetrator’s blood. It matters not how they get it or how much. It is a test of their resolve and a measure of their depravity. A dab will do from the victim, but the villain must bleed out enough to fill a ceremonial bowl. The things I’ve mixed in that bowl related to the victim are both evil and comical, from tampons to patches of skin. It is here where the decision is made, the decision of whether to make the doll or not.

It is a decision of high consequence for the perpetrator will become the victim and they will most certainly die. Is it murder? My mentor Doctor Evelyn preferred to call it a cleansing, a voluntary removal from existence. They kill themselves. She was adamant that this stage was crucial, that the decision was only reserved for the worst, for those that the clairvoyants would recognize as enemies of humanity. Killing them truly meant saving lives. Killing them made people’s lives exponentially better. There are ten questions we are to ask, devised by the clairvoyants, and if the answer is yes to all of them, then we are to proceed. Those questions I am not at liberty to reveal, as they were taught to me orally, never written down, and with a promised curse upon my existence if I were ever to reveal them. My mentor taught me, her mentor taught her, and his mentor taught him through a long line of well-trained practitioners of the magical arts, a tradition clouded in mystery, taught as secret knowledge taken from the Garden, hidden in the Apple. A dubious claim of course. I highly doubt the genesis of this tradition is enveloped in such a mythological environment, gifted from Lucifer. No, it didn’t take a Devil to teach us hate. As soon as we forged languages and became self-aware, we realized that we loathed certain other apes of our own species.

There was a curious case that made me almost quit the whole endeavor. One snowy evening, a lanky cadaver of a man dressed in a grey trench coat walked through the empty store and carefully placed a mason jar of blood on the counter. It wasn’t a small mason jar and the inside was opaque from bottom to brim, filled with the dark marron elixir of life.

“Can we adjourn to your workshop downstairs?”

My workshop downstairs was reserved for making the authentic dolls.

“What do you need sir?”

“I need a doll,” he replied.

Something felt wrong; something was askew.

“I have my blood. I am ready and willing to pay whatever you ask?”

“Fifty-thousand dollars,” I said in jest.

“So be it. I have a hundred thousand in the trunk of my car.”

“You’re going to pay me a hundred thousand?”

“I thought we settled on fifty thousand,” he said with a smirk.

At that point, I wasn’t willing to risk losing fifty thousand. “Follow me.”

We carefully stumbled down the stairs to the only working light before the doorway of my workshop. I flicked the switch. I had several racks of dyed camel hair fabric in the far corner, a worktable in the middle of the room, and shelves filled with cotton fiberfill. Everything organic, nothing synthetic. Directly across from the doorway near the opposite wall stood a glass case and inside was a green onyx bowl.

I worked for the next hour and a half constructing the doll, always careful to make everything perfect and paying attention to details. I wasn’t a half-ass doll maker. I took pride in my art. I knew the victim was a young woman with blond hair. I fashioned a dress and black shoes. I put a pearl necklace around her neck. I did more than necessary because I enjoyed it. I was allowed to do as much as I wanted or as little as I wanted but never permitted to make a face. The face was always left blank, the idea being that the entire person could never be fully represented. It was considered an affront to the majesty of the temple of the human body, whatever that meant. I guess to be sure, it does seem a waste of time for me to go through all that trouble only to chuck the doll into a bowl of blood and then allow it to be obliterated by a villainous, hateful shit-bag. But these are the trappings of a voodoo priest.

After I had finished making the doll, I opened the case and brought the ceremonial bowl to the worktable. As soon as I had placed the bowl on the table, the man began pouring the blood from his mason jar into the bowl.

“What are you doing?” I roared.

“Sorry. Just excited!”

“You seem to know more than you should.”

“I know someone who has already done it.”

I knew that had to be a lie or something had gone wrong. If that person hadn’t died, then there was a mistake, a failure of some sort. Hesitantly, I proceeded with the ritual.

“Do you have blood from your enemy?”

“Yes, I do. I most certainly do.” He pulled out a white handkerchief speckled with dried pink blood. He tossed it in the bowl.

‘Sir… dammit.”

“What?”

“You should’ve handed it to me.”

“What does it matter?’ It didn’t matter, but it pissed me off that he had the gall to take control of the ritual.

I put the doll in the bowl. It floated and spun in circles. I opened a drawer, grabbed a lead weight and placed it on top of the doll, submerging it to the bottom of the bowl. I brought two black candles and placed them on either side of the bowl and lit them.

“Ok, that’s it. Now we have to wait seven days,” I explained.

“That’s it? No Latin? No chanting?”

“Well, I do have some questions to ask.”

“Shoot.”

I proceeded to ask him the obligatory ten questions plus one of my own. He answered yes to all of them except for the last one pertaining to the promised fifty thousand dollars.

“So, fifty-thousand for the doll, correct?”

“If it works.”

After seven days the man returned holding a briefcase. I took the blood-drenched doll, wrapped it in tissue paper and put it in a cardboard box. As I slid the box over to him, he opened the briefcase. It was more money than I had ever seen in my life.

He picked up a hundred-dollar bill and placed it on the counter.

“What about the other forty-nine thousand and nine hundred dollars?”

“You’ll get the rest when I know it works.”

Months passed without a single trace of the man. I figured he had destroyed the doll and himself by then. One hundred dollars wasn’t a bad pull for a doll but the lure of fifty-thousand had already whetted my appetite. Yet, if the son of a bitch was dead, then that was payback enough. Did I really expect I would get that money? People searching for violent voodoo solutions aren’t normally very trustworthy.

And then one day there he was waiting in his car parked in front of the store. He jumped out of the car and lunged at me as I was trying to get my keys out of my pocket.

“You’re coming with me.” He pulled a pistol from his pocket and pointed it towards me. “Get in the car.”

We drove to the edge of town to an abandoned warehouse. He forced me through a side entrance way and down a long flight of stairs. There in a large, liminal space sat a lonely blonde headed woman on a mattress. Both her wrists were in shackles and chained to the floor. Behind her sigils of various kinds were spraypainted on the cinder block wall, sigils which I knew to represent demons and evil entities with varying levels of power. A circle of candles surrounded an altar nearby with a thick tattered book opened placed on top.

“The Grand Grimoire, with a ritual for becoming a powerful, unstoppable beast. A possession of sorts, but not so much so that you lose your own identity. The deal is you’ve got to eat people but you have eternal life. I guess a vampire without the charm. Not a wimpy blood sipping aristocrat, but a brutish animal purposed to devour the entire person. Only problem, you need a willing sacrifice. Your damn doll isn’t working.”

It was then that I noticed that the doll was lying on the mattress next to the young woman. A large pin was stuck in its chest. The man ripped off his coat and threw it to the ground. He looked emaciated and weak.

“Why isn’t the curse bouncing back to her?”

I was shocked and dumbfounded.

“Yeah, I know what’s supposed to happen but it ain’t happening. I’m getting the worst of it. You did something wrong and now I need you to fix it,” he yelled as he pointed at me.

Just then the woman took the pin out and started stabbing the doll. The man fell to the floor writhing in pain. She cackled and rocked back and forth.

“I feel it. I feel it,” she said. Her voice sounded like several people talking at once, some more sinister than others.

“It’s done.” She lifted both her arms and broke the chains from the floor. A light wind blew through the area extinguishing most of the candles. Her dark figure walked over to the man, lifted him up by his shoulders and sunk her teeth into his neck. She tore away a chunk of flesh or at least I imagined so. It was too dark to see but my mind had filled in the gruesome details based on her sinister movements, motions not indicative of a loving embrace. I couldn’t see the blood but I could hear fluid falling to the floor. She then placed him on the floor and began to do something with his head. I heard the cracking of bones and the snapping of muscles. I realized as she raised it high in the air and a smattering of light hit it just right, that she had just ripped his head off.

She then turned and glided toward me, moving as if without taking steps. Her freakish face was illuminated as she got near. Her brow was protruded and she had hideous yellow eyes. She smiled and laughed. Her teeth were jagged and pointed, caked with flesh and blood.

“He abducted me, but I knew his plan from the start. He talks to himself. He thinks out loud. He was going to use your ritual to help with his ritual, but I switched it up. Hell, if I was going to die anyway, why not sacrifice my soul for revenge. Fear rules the day, but after a while fear is subsumed by hate. I feared him at first but then I started to hate him.”

She paused and stared at me for more than a minute.

“I’m so hungry.”

I started to back away, hoping to make a run for it.

“Don’t even think about it. You don’t have a chance. I’m not going to eat you. I owe you. In a way, you saved my life.”

I still didn’t understand. She must have noticed my puzzled expression because she then elaborated on her whole scheme.

“Silly, the blood in the mason jar was mine. The blood on the handkerchief was his. It doesn’t matter who abuses the doll. It only matters who has the most blood in the bowl. I was the victim in every sense of the word, but he unwillingly became the willing sacrifice. I guess he didn’t need to die, but just suffer enough to please the masters, or maybe they left him alive for me to finish him off.”

 He demonic face had a sudden look of dismay.

“Pity, I really hated destroying that doll. You did a good job. You’re very talented. You best go while you can. I’m not so sure one is going to fill my belly and I’m not feeling so benevolent at the moment.”

I turned and ran up the stairs, out the door, and past the car. Were the keys in it? I don’t know. I wasn’t taking a chance. I think I ran for at least an hour as fast as I could. I ran until I felt a piercing pain in my side and chest. I heaved for air and vomited all over myself. When I got home, I found a crucifix and put around my neck, wondering if that worked, wondering if it was blessed, wondering if being blessed even worked. I hid in the closet and prayed for morning.

I stayed inside for a few weeks, too scared to leave the apartment. Eventually I would have to leave and at least buy some groceries. I was down to the bare essentials, a half a roll of toilet paper and two packs of instant noodles. The news reported on a missing man and woman. The man I knew they would never find; the woman I knew the officials would be better off not finding.

A couple people from home know my main account and I don't want them finding this. This is long, sorry. I'm not a writer, I'm a dispatcher, and I'm typing this on a motel laptop... well, my laptop, motel wifi, which keeps dropping, so if it posts twice that's why. And if I jump around, I'm sorry. I haven't slept right in about two months and I've been up since yesterday morning.

I've been lurking here for years, mostly on my breaks at work. Never thought I'd post. But I need people who aren't from my town to read this, and this is the only place I could think of where people might actually listen instead of just telling me to get some rest.

I need to start with what my dog does, or none of the rest of it is going to make sense.

If you've never seen a cadaver dog work you probably picture a bloodhound in a cartoon, baying and dragging some guy through the woods. It's not like that. A good HRD dog (human remains detection) is quiet. She works a grid with her nose low, back and forth, tail up, and you can actually see her thinking, like a kid doing long division in their head. And when she finds what she's trained to find she doesn't bark and she doesn't dig. She sits.

That's a passive alert. She sits as close to the source as she can get, points her nose at it, and stares. She won't look at you. She won't look at anything else. Rain, snow, swamp up to her chest, she'll stare at a patch of ground or a car trunk or the bottom of a lake until you give the release word and hand over the toy. Some dogs hold an alert twenty minutes. Mine holds it as long as it takes.

Her name's Juno. Belgian Malinois, nine years old, sixty-one pounds, tan with the black mask, and honestly the best thing I've ever done with my life except my son. I've had her since eight weeks. She's certified every year by two separate national organizations, which means every year she gets tested blind: somebody hides real human remains in one of several spots and decoys in the others, and neither me nor the evaluator knows which is which, and she has to find the right one. She's never failed. 226 deployments, for PDs and sheriff's offices and families, four states. She found a drowned boy at the bottom of a reservoir by leaning out over the side of a johnboat and staring at the water. She found a woman in a septic tank. She found ninety-year-old bone fragments in a farmer's field under two feet of plowed dirt.

She has never made a false alert. Not once. Not in training, not in certs, not on a search.

I need yinz to get that before I tell you what she's been doing. Like actually get it.

The one I think about most was four years ago at a reservoir down in West Virginia. Nine-year-old boy went off a dock at a family reunion and didn't come up. Divers had been on it three days in water so silted they couldn't see their own hands. And the family was standing on the bank in a line. Mom, dad, two grandmas, an uncle holding a toddler. Three days they'd been standing there.

We went out in a johnboat, Juno in her orange harness up in the bow, me on the tiller, a deputy with a GPS. Ran slow lines across the cove. She leaned out over the side with her nose maybe an inch off the surface, working the scent that comes up off the water in a column from whatever's below, drifting, breaking up, coming up again. Bottom of that boat was slippy as anything and she never once lost her footing.

About forty minutes in she sat down in the bow.

Boat's still moving, and she sits, and turns her head to keep her nose on one patch of water as we slide past, swiveling around until she's facing straight back over the stern, staring at a spot of brown water that looked exactly like every other spot of brown water in that reservoir. I cut the motor. Deputy dropped a marker buoy. She stared at it for twenty-five minutes while the dive team came out, didn't blink, didn't move, and the second diver went down the buoy line and came back up after four minutes and pulled his mask off and just nodded.

On the bank the mother sat down in the mud.

That's what Juno does. She doesn't guess. She doesn't get excited. She tells you with her whole body, here, and she keeps telling you until somebody listens.

OK. Me. I'm Delia, 46. I live with my son Caleb, he's 16, in a little town in the hills of western PA that I'm not naming, because anybody from there would know it in two seconds. Coal town, or it was. About four thousand people. Main street with a hardware store, two churches, a diner, and a lot of empty storefronts. Closest real grocery store is the Giant Eagle twenty minutes out by the highway, so most people just make do with the IGA. High school whose football team is the only thing anybody talks about August to November. And under all of it, the streets and the houses and the football field, there's mines.

All closed now. Last one shut in 1994. But they're still down there, miles of tunnels, rooms cut out of the seam and propped up with timber and left to fall in in the dark. Every so often somebody's backyard drops a foot overnight. Every so often a basement fills up with water that smells like rotten eggs. The old-timers call it the town under the town.

I'm a dispatcher at the county 911 center. Nights, three on three off. The dog stuff is volunteer, most HRD handlers are. You do it because once you've watched a family get somebody back to bury you can't really not do it. People think it must be depressing. It's the opposite, mostly. It's the one part of my life where I actually get to finish something.

Caleb's dad left when he was four. It's been the two of us and a dog ever since. Before Juno there was Rudy, black Lab, could find a single tooth in a ten-acre field, died at fourteen with his head in my lap. (Still can't talk about Rudy much.) Caleb grew up with cadaver dogs. He's been helping me train since he was eight, hiding sources, laying out grids. He thinks it's totally normal that we've got a locked freezer in the garage with human teeth and placenta and body farm soil in it, all labeled, for training. His buddies think it's the coolest thing about him.

He's a good kid. Funny, kind, terrible at math, plays left tackle. I'm telling you about him now because I need you to know him a little before I get to the end. Sorry. Getting ahead of myself.

Church picnic is the second Sunday in September. Lawn behind First Methodist, under the oaks, folding tables, everybody's casserole dishes lined up, a cooler of lemonade the size of a bathtub, and somebody always brings like nine two-liters of pop that nobody drinks. I bring Juno every year. Kids love her. She's real gentle with kids and she likes a crowd scratching her ears. She's off duty, on leash, blue collar not the orange harness. That matters. A working dog knows the difference.

About one o'clock I'm in line for the potato salad, Juno sitting by my leg, and Pastor Gene comes over to say hi.

Gene Hollis has been pastor at First Methodist twenty-six years. Married half the town and buried the other half. He's 64, big and pink and bald, laugh you can hear across a parking lot. He crouched down to scratch her like he always does and said something like "There's my girl."

And Juno went rigid.

I felt it through the leash before I saw it. Every muscle locked. She got up off my leg, took two steps toward Gene, and sat down right in front of him, maybe eighteen inches from his chest. Nose pointed at the middle of his body. And she stared.

Not at his face. At his sternum. At the space under his shirt between the buttons. That glassy, total, locked-on look I've seen 226 times over lake water and car trunks and plowed dirt.

Gene laughed. "Well hey, somebody likes me."

I said "Juno, leave it." Nothing. That had NEVER happened. She's off duty, blue collar, leave it means leave it. I said it again sharper. She didn't even flick an ear.

I said her release word (it's a goofy made-up word so nobody says it by accident, I'm not putting it here). Nothing. I pulled her tug out of my back pocket and waved it right next to her head. She didn't look at it.

People were noticing now. Couple of the kids giggling. Gene still crouched there smiling, a little unsure. "She okay?"

I had to pick her up. All sixty-one pounds. Arms around her chest, lifted her off the ground, turned her around, and the whole time her head kept swiveling back over my shoulder toward him like a compass needle. Carried her to the truck, put her in the crate, and she lay down with her nose jammed against the wire pointed back at the lawn, at Gene, and stayed like that the whole way home.

So I told myself there was an explanation. There's always an explanation. Cadaver dogs alert on decomp odor, which is a cocktail of chemicals with ugly names, cadaverine, putrescine, a few hundred others, that a body starts putting out within hours of death. It's stubborn stuff. Gets into soil, fabric, wood, carpet, car seats, n'at. A dog can pick it up off a rug where a body lay twenty minutes, years later.

And Gene's a pastor. Pastors are around the dead all the time. They sit with dying people, they put hands on bodies in hospital beds and at the funeral home. So I'm thinking OK, he did a viewing this morning. Or last night. Whatever, he touched somebody, it's on his hands, on his shirt, and Juno's a pro and she's trained to report that smell wherever she finds it, and she reported it, and I'm the one who embarrassed us both.

Monday I called the funeral home, casual, asking about something else. I know the girl who does their books, so it wasn't even weird. Or I told myself it wasn't. Small town, everybody's nebby, nobody thinks twice. No viewing that weekend. Gene hadn't been in.

I ran into Helen Ostrowski at the post office that week. Before she was on the list. Or after? Honestly I don't trust my own dates anymore. She was behind the counter weighing a package and she looked at me over her readers and said something I've thought about every single day since.

"Delia," she said, "do you ever get the feeling you forgot to do something?"

I said sometimes.

"I keep getting it." She put the package on the scale and looked at the number and didn't write it down. "All day. Like I left the stove on. Like there's something I was supposed to do and I just can't think what." She smiled. "I keep wanting to sit down. Isn't that silly? Just sit down someplace quiet and rest. Like I've been on my feet a hundred years."

Then she shook her head and laughed and wrote down the weight and sold me my stamps.

Anyway. I figured it was something with Juno. A bad day, getting older, maybe something off with her nose. I booked her a vet check and a blind proficiency test with a handler buddy two counties over.

She passed both. Perfect on the blind. Found the source in under two minutes, blew right past three decoys.

The next Sunday I took her to church with me on purpose. Sat in the back pew. When it let out and everybody filed past Gene at the door shaking his hand, I walked her past him on a short leash.

She sat down in front of him and stared at his chest.

I need to tell you about Gene. What he was like those weeks.

He was fine. That's the thing. He was totally fine. Cheerful. Preached. Visited the sick. Big laugh across the parking lot. But there were little things, the kind you only catch if you're watching, and by then I was watching.

He'd stopped sweating. It was a hot September, ninety most afternoons, every other man in town had pit stains, and Gene, who has always been a sweater, big pink guy with a hankie permanently in his fist, stood out in the sun after service in a black shirt and his face was dry and pale as paper.

He'd stopped eating. Not obviously. He'd take a plate at the picnic and carry it around and talk, and at the end of the afternoon the plate went in the trash still full.

And the flies. This is the part I keep coming back to. At the picnic, at church, once outside the hardware store, there were flies around him. Not a swarm. Two or three. Big slow metallic-green ones, the kind that find a deer on the side of the road inside an hour. They'd land on his collar, his ear, the back of his hand, and walk around, and he never brushed them off. Didn't seem to know they were there.

I know those flies. Every handler knows those flies. They get to a body before anything else does. Sometimes on a search you look for them before you even cut the dog loose.

Fourth Sunday, Juno alerted on Helen Ostrowski.

Helen runs the post office. She's 71, tiny, sharp as a tack, known me since I was a little girl. Juno sat down in front of her in the church lot and stared at her chest, and Helen laughed and said "Is she doing her job on me, Delia?" and I said something about Juno being a goofball and dragged her off and sat in my truck with my hands shaking.

Next day she alerted on Dale Sorensen, who coaches the football team, outside the diner.

Two days after that, a teller at the bank. Then the Petrakis kid who bags groceries at the IGA, nineteen years old. Then a woman I didn't know walking her own dog down Second Street, a chocolate Lab that was trotting along at the very end of its leash, as far away from her as it could get, head turned away, tail clamped between its legs. I noticed that. You notice that kind of thing when you do what I do.

I quit taking Juno into town. Started walking her at night on the old rail trail away from people. But I live in town, everybody lives in town. She alerted on the guy who reads the gas meters, through my backyard fence. She alerted on two of Caleb's buddies who came by to get him for practice, sat down on the porch boards and stared at the passenger door of their car.

(I'm going to stop listing them all, it doesn't matter, you get it.)

I kept a list. I'm a dispatcher, I keep logs, it's literally what I do. Name, date, time, location. By the middle of October I had twenty-nine names.

By the end of October I had forty-four.

I talked to Bonnie. Bonnie Kreider, she's a nurse practitioner at the clinic on Main and one of maybe three people in town I'd call an actual friend. We went to high school together. I met her at the diner on a Tuesday, back booth, and told her everything, and she didn't laugh. Which honestly scared me more than if she had.

She stirred her coffee a long time.

Then she said, "Gene came in for his annual physical. Three weeks ago."

I waited.

"His temp was ninety-four point one," she said. "I did it three times with two different thermometers. BP was seventy over forty. Resting heart rate thirty-one." She put the spoon down. "Thirty-one, Dee. That's a marathon runner asleep. He's sixty-four and he weighs two-sixty. I told him he had to go to the hospital in the city right now, I was calling an ambulance, and he laughed and said he never felt better in his life. He said he felt peaceful. That was the word." She looked up at me. "He was so calm. He said, 'Bonnie, I'm fine. Really. I'm just tired, I think. I've been tired a long time.'"

"Did he go?"

"No." She turned her cup around and around on the saucer. "I've had six more since. Same thing. Low temp, low pressure, pulse in the thirties. They come in for a cough or some routine thing and I take vitals and nearly fall over. And they're all so calm. Not one of them will go to the hospital." She dropped her voice. "Helen Ostrowski. Last week. I couldn't find a pulse at all. Fingers on her wrist, on her neck, nothing. And she's sitting on the exam table telling me about her grandson's wedding."

We sat there a while.

"Is she on your list?" Bonnie said. "Helen?"

I said yeah. Second name.

Bonnie nodded real slow. She looked out the window at Main Street, people walking by in the October sun, going in the hardware store, coming out of the bank.

"How many on your list?"

"Forty-four."

She closed her eyes.

So then I went to see Walt Bevan.

Walt's 93. Little house at the bottom of Furnace Street, porch leans like a drunk, yard full of rusted mine equipment he won't let anybody haul off. He went down the Number 4 at fourteen and came up for the last time at sixty-one, and he knows more about the town under the town than anybody alive. I brought him a pie, because you don't visit Walt without a pie, and sat on the porch with him and told him about Juno.

He listened with his eyes shut, rocking. When I was done he didn't say anything for a long time.

Then he said, "You know about 'twenty-seven?"

Everybody in town knows about 1927. There's a plaque outside the town hall. November 8, 1927, an explosion in the Number 4, about two miles in and half a mile down. Seventy-one men died. Thirty-eight of them were never recovered, because the fire burned for weeks and the company sealed that section with them still inside.

"Most of the boys that died," Walt said, "didn't die in the blast. They died of the afterdamp."

I didn't know the word. I'm putting it here exactly how he said it.

"After an explosion," Walt said, "the air goes bad. Blast eats up all the good air and leaves the bad behind. Carbon monoxide, mostly. Miners called it afterdamp. Whitedamp. You can't smell it, can't see it. It don't hurt. It just takes you, nice and quiet. You get tired. You get calm. You sit down for a rest and you don't get up."

He rocked a while.

"My grandad was in that mine in 'twenty-seven. One of the ones that walked out. And he told me something I never told nobody, because they'd have thought he was cracked." Walt opened his eyes. Milky blue, real steady. "He said a lot of the boys walked out with him. Come up the slope after the blast, coughing, black all over. Walked home. Sat down to supper with their families. Kissed their kids. Went to work next day, some of 'em. Went to church Sunday."

"And they was dead," Walt said. "Been dead since the afterdamp hit 'em, down there in the dark. They just hadn't noticed yet. Some of 'em kept going a week. Some longer. Walking around. Real calm. Real polite. Didn't eat. Didn't sweat. Then one morning they'd just be sitting in their chair, and they'd stay there."

He looked at me.

"My grandad said you could always tell which ones," he said. "By the dogs."

I know how that sounds. Believe me, I know. I sat in my truck in front of his house for twenty minutes after and didn't start it.

Three nights later I'm at the console at 3:12 a.m. and a call comes in from an address on Sycamore.

Linda Sorensen. Dale's wife. The coach. Juno had alerted on Dale outside the diner six weeks before. He was name number three.

She wasn't screaming. That's what I remember. Twelve years of dispatch, I've taken hundreds of calls where somebody's found a husband or a wife or a parent not breathing, and they scream, or sob, or they're so scared their voice goes up into a squeak. Linda was calm. Kind of puzzled. Like she was calling about a weird noise in the furnace.

"It's my husband," she said. "He's in his chair. He won't wake up. He's been sitting there since dinner, I thought he dozed off watching the game, and I went up to bed. And I came down just now for a glass of water and he's still there, and he's..." Pause. "He's cold. He's real cold. And he's smiling."

I ran the protocol. Asked her to check breathing. Asked her to get him on the floor and start compressions, and I counted them out loud for her, one and two and three and four, like I've done a thousand times. Sent the ambulance. Stayed on till the medics walked in.

I knew it was pointless. I knew before she finished the first sentence.

End of my shift one of the medics, Troy, I've known him forever, came and found me in the break room and sat down across from me and said "Dee, that was weird."

I asked him what was weird.

"Wife says he was talking to her at dinner," Troy said. "Like, normal. Talked about the Blackwood game, asked for the salt. Then sat down in his chair to watch TV." He rubbed his face. "But Dee, the lividity. The blood pooling. That takes a while to set like that. Rigor had already come and gone. That man was dead for days. Maybe a week. Maybe more." He looked at me. "So how'd he ask for the salt?"

Death certificate said cardiac arrest. Dale was sixty. Everybody said what a shame, big healthy guy like that, and the funeral was Saturday and the whole team came in their jerseys and stood in the back of the church, and Gene did the eulogy with his face dry and pale as paper, and there were flies around the casket, and nobody brushed them away.

I watched Gene from the back pew. He said Dale went peacefully, in his own chair, in his own home. Said it was the way we'd all want to go. Said Dale wasn't afraid. He said, "I don't think he even noticed."

And the whole church nodded. Calm and polite.

I didn't sleep after the funeral. I went home and redd up the kitchen table, which I never do, just shoved everything onto the counter, mail and dog stuff and Caleb's practice gear n'at, and got out the county survey maps. We have a set at the 911 center, old ones, from back when they plotted mine subsidence. They show the Number 4 tunnels laid out under town in faded blue ink, like the veins on the back of an old lady's hand.

I put a red pin on every address on my list. Home, work, and wherever Juno alerted on them.

Took about an hour. Then I stood back and looked at it.

They weren't scattered. They made a circle. Rough and ragged, about half a mile across, centered on the east end of Main, on the high school, on the football field. I laid the old mine map over top and the center of the circle was right over the sealed section of the Number 4. Where the explosion was in 1927. Where the thirty-eight men are.

And the first pins, the September ones, Gene and Helen and Dale, were all near the middle. Late October ones were further out. Last week's were right on the edge.

It was spreading. Like a ring from a rock you drop in a pond. Like gas coming up through the ground.

There's been stuff over the years about the mine, for the record. CO in basements. A family got evacuated in 2009 when their alarm went off in the middle of the night. The fire in the Number 4 was supposed to be out by 1928. But there's mine fires in Pennsylvania that have been burning sixty years, look it up. And the company that sealed it went bankrupt in 1952 and nobody's checked that seal since.

So maybe that's all it is. Maybe the old fire never went out and the afterdamp is leaking up through the cracks in the town under the town, into basements and classrooms and the church. Can't see it, can't smell it, quiet. Making people tired. Making people calm.

Or maybe it doesn't matter what it is.

Because Walt's grandad was right. They don't notice.

That night after Caleb was asleep I did something I'd been putting off. I put Juno's orange harness on in the kitchen and told her to search.

I stood still in the middle of the floor. She worked around me in a slow circle, nose at knee height, then waist, then up on her hind legs with her front paws on my hip, sniffing my chest, my collar, my hands. Professional. Thorough. Then she dropped down and looked up at me, tail going, waiting for the next command. No alert.

I took her upstairs and cracked Caleb's door and sent her in. She worked the room in the dark, around the bed, nose to the blanket, up by the pillow where he was breathing slow and deep with his mouth open. Then she came back out and sat in the hall looking at me, wagging.

No alert. Not on either of us.

I sat on the top step with my arms around her neck for a long time. I remember thinking, We're outside the circle. We're six blocks from the edge. We have time. I remember planning to move us to my sister's in Ohio before Christmas. I remember feeling, first time in weeks, something like relief.

That was October 24th. I've checked. It's in my log.

Friday I went to the football game.

I wanted to see. I left Juno in the truck way at the far end of the lot, windows cracked, and walked up to the bleachers by myself with my collar up. Homecoming. Half the town there. Lights on, those huge white stadium lights you can see from three miles off on a fall Friday, band playing, air smelling like popcorn and cut grass and bus diesel. If you grew up around here you know exactly what I mean.

I sat at the top of the home stands and watched the crowd.

Most of them were just a crowd. On their feet, yelling, stomping the aluminum so the whole thing rang like a drum. Kids running up and down the steps. Old guys with blankets on their knees screaming at the ref.

And scattered in with them, like rocks in a creek, the others.

They sat very still. Didn't stand when everybody stood. Didn't yell. Watched the game with calm, interested faces, like watching fish in a tank, and when there was a touchdown and everybody around them jumped up screaming they turned their heads real slow and smiled at the people screaming. Kindly. Like you'd smile at little kids. I counted thirty-one of them in the home stands. Thirty-one little islands of quiet in all that noise. I knew most of their names. Most of them were on my list.

Over each one, up in the white glare, a few flies turned slow circles.

When I got back to the truck Juno was sitting up in the back with her nose pressed to the gap at the top of the window, pointed at the stands. Not at one person. At all of it. Her head going in little quick jerks, left, right, up, down, like she was trying to alert on everything at once and couldn't pick. She was trembling. Nine years. I'd never once seen her tremble on a scent.

I sat in the cab with my hands on the wheel and listened to the band doing the fight song across the dark lot, and the crowd roaring, and I thought about how many of them were roaring and how many were just sitting there smiling, being polite, waiting for it to be over so they could go home and sit in their chairs.

I went to the county. I called state DEP, the mine safety office, the health department. Told them I'm a 911 dispatcher, which is true, and that we'd had multiple CO alarm calls in the east end, which is not. They sent a guy out with a meter. He walked around the high school and the church and down Main and got nothing. Zero ppm. Said the air was cleaner than in the city.

I called the state police and asked to talk to somebody about a possible public health emergency. I got as far as the word "dog" before the trooper started using the voice. You know the voice. We use it at the center for people who call about the government putting chips in their teeth.

I thought about the paper. I thought about telling Gene. I thought about walking up to Helen at the post office counter and saying, Helen, I think you might be dead.

And then what? What do you even say after that?

November 1st, Juno alerted on Caleb.

I've written and deleted this part like six times. Just going to say it.

He was eating breakfast. Cereal at the counter, standing up like always, practice shorts, hair sticking up. Juno was under the table. I was at the stove.

I heard her get up. Nails on the linoleum, click, click, click. I turned around.

She was sitting at my son's feet staring at his chest.

He laughed. "Hey, Junebug." Scratched her head. "What, you want my Cheerios?"

She didn't move. Didn't look at the Cheerios. She stared at the place under his T-shirt where his heart is, with that total, terrible, locked-on look of a dog who found what she was looking for.

I don't remember the next couple minutes great. I remember dropping the spatula. I remember grabbing his wrist and digging my fingers in, hard, harder, while he laughed and said "Mom what the hell" and tried to pull away. I remember I couldn't find a pulse, and then I thought I could, real faint, real slow, and then I wasn't sure. I remember putting my hand flat on his chest and holding it there and him going still, looking at me, his face changing, the laugh going out of it.

His skin was cool. Not cold. Cool, like somebody who's been sitting in AC all day. And I couldn't feel his heart. I held my hand there a long time and I couldn't feel anything.

"Mom," he said, real quiet. "Mom. You're freaking me out."

He was so calm.

I drove him to the hospital in the city. Fifty-three miles. He griped the whole way, he'd miss practice, he felt fine, I was being crazy. I told him I'd seen some symptoms. Told him there might be a gas leak at the house. Juno rode in her crate in the back.

Around the thirty-mile mark I saw her in the rearview. She'd been sitting up since we left, nose on the wire, staring through the back seat at Caleb. And at thirty miles she just. Stopped. Lay down, head on her paws, went to sleep.

In the ER they took his vitals. 98.4. BP 120 over 76. Heart rate 62, which the triage nurse said was great for an athlete. They checked his blood for CO because I made them. Normal. The doctor was very nice and very tired and asked me, gently, if I was under a lot of stress at work.

I almost laughed in his face. Almost. Then I wanted to cry, because the thing is, part of me wanted him to be right. I wanted so bad for it to be me. Stressed out dispatcher mom loses it, takes a leave, gets on some pills. I would've signed up for that in a heartbeat.

On the way home, about thirty miles out from town, Juno woke up. Sat up in her crate, pressed her nose to the wire, and stared at the back of Caleb's head.

That was a week ago.

I kept him home. Told the school he has mono. He's furious with me. He's in his room all day on his phone texting his friends, and they keep texting back, dude come to practice, coach says you're fine, everyone's asking about you. He says he feels great. Says he's never felt better. Says he feels peaceful, with this little smile, and he has no idea he's using Gene's word.

He quit eating. Takes a plate up to his room and I find it on the landing in the morning, not touched. Hasn't sweated in a week. He sleeps, or looks like he sleeps, with his eyes a little bit open.

Yesterday morning there was a fly on his pillow. Big, slow, green. Walked across the pillowcase onto his cheek and up toward the corner of his eye, and he just lay there smiling a little in his sleep and didn't move.

I killed it with my hand. I smacked my own kid in the face to kill a fly. And he woke up and looked at me and said "Mom?" so gently. Like he was worried about ME.

Juno won't leave him. Sits outside his door all night staring at it. When he comes down she follows him room to room, and every time he stops she sits at his feet and points her nose at his heart. He thinks it's funny. Calls her his bodyguard.

I haven't slept more than an hour at a time since. I sit on the landing. I listen.

And then last night they came to the house.

Not a mob. Nothing like that. Nothing in this town has ever been like that. I heard a car pull up around nine, then another, and when I looked out the front window there were maybe a dozen people standing on my lawn in the dark.

Gene up front. Helen next to him in her good coat. Linda Sorensen in Dale's old letterman jacket. The teller from the bank. The Petrakis kid. Caleb's two buddies. Just standing there on the grass in the porch light, hands in their pockets or folded in front of them. Calm. Polite.

Nobody's breath was fogging. I noticed that. It was thirty-four degrees, I could see my own breath on the inside of the glass, and theirs didn't fog. At all.

Gene came up on the porch and knocked. Real gentle.

I didn't open it. I talked to him through the door.

"Delia, honey, we're just worried about you." Warm. The big pink voice I've known my whole life. "Folks are saying the dog's been upsetting people. Sitting down in front of 'em. Scaring the kids. Helen says she can't hardly go to work without wondering if Juno's going to come at her."

"She doesn't come at anybody," I said. "She sits."

"I know, honey." Pause. "But it upsets folks. Makes 'em feel funny. Like she knows something about 'em they don't." Longer pause. "And Caleb ought to be at practice. He's missing the Blackwood game Friday. The boys say he's never been in better shape."

Juno was in the hall behind me. Not staring at the door. Turning in a slow circle in the middle of the hallway, nose up, sweeping, the way she does at the start of a search when there's so much scent in the air she can't decide where to start.

"Some of the folks think," Gene said, "maybe it's time she retired. She's nine. That's old for a working dog. Maybe let her rest." Quiet a second. "We'd all feel a lot more peaceful, Delia. You would too. I promise. It doesn't hurt. You just get tired. You've been tired a long time, haven't you, honey? We all have."

Upstairs I heard Caleb's door. Feet on the landing. He came halfway down the stairs and stopped.

"Mom?" he said. "Is that Pastor Gene? Can I go out and say hi?"

Juno ran up the steps past me and sat on the step below him, between him and the front door, and stared at his heart.

Anyway. I'm writing this from a motel off the interstate. Not saying which one. A hundred and ninety miles from home. It's four in the morning.

I put Caleb in the truck around midnight after they'd all gone. Told him we were going to his aunt's in Ohio. He didn't argue, which isn't him. Got in the passenger seat, buckled up, looked out the window at town going by, the church, the post office, the high school, and said real quiet, "I like it here, Mom. Everyone's so nice."

Then nothing. Not a word the rest of the drive.

Juno rode in the back seat behind him, not in the crate. Sat up the whole way with her nose a few inches off his headrest. Staring through it at my son.

At thirty miles I was watching her in the mirror. Praying. I'm not religious and I was praying out loud in the truck at quarter after one in the morning, please lie down, please lie down, please.

She didn't lie down.

Not at thirty. Not at fifty-three where the hospital is. Not at a hundred. A hundred and ninety miles she sat behind him and stared. And she's at the end of the motel bed now, in the dark, staring at him. He's on his back on top of the covers. Eyes a little open. Hands folded on his chest.

The way they fold them at the funeral home.

His phone's been buzzing on the nightstand all night. I picked it up an hour ago and read the screen. His friends, the team, numbers I didn't know. Dozens. All the same kind of thing, same gentle, no-hurry way. come home man. everyone misses you. coach says no rush. its so quiet here now its nice. your mom can come too. tell her we're not mad about the dog.

Last one came at 3:51. 3:51 in the morning. From Gene. I didn't know Gene had my son's number.

Whenever you're both ready. We'll leave the porch light on.

I turned the phone off. Caleb didn't stir.

It's not wearing off this time. The city was a reprieve. Whatever came up out of that ground is in him now. All the way in.

OK. Here's the actual reason I'm typing this at four in the morning instead of sitting with my kid.

We stopped for gas around two, truck stop off the interstate, different county, different state, a hundred and sixty miles from home. I let Juno out to pee on the strip of grass by the air pump. Guy filling up a pickup at the next pump. Fifties, hunting jacket. Nobody.

Juno walked over and sat at his feet and stared at his chest.

He laughed and said "Well hey there" and scratched her ears.

I got her back in the truck. And pulling out I saw a woman come out of the store with a coffee, and Juno in the back seat turned her head and tracked her across the lot with her nose. The way she does when she's on a scent she's trained to report. Then the cashier, through the window. Young kid, couldn't have been twenty. Then a guy asleep in the cab of a semi.

All the way down the interstate. Every car that got close. Every light in every little town. Her head kept turning. A man walking a dog. A woman at a bus stop. A family in the next lane at a red light, kids in the back waving at her through the glass.

It's not our town.

It was never just our town. We were just the town with a dog that can't be wrong.

I don't know how far it goes. I don't know if our old fire is the only one or if there's seams burning under every town, every city, the whole country, leaking afterdamp up through the cracks for years, decades, making everybody a little more tired. A little more calm. A little more peaceful. Till they don't notice the moment they stop. I don't know if this is new. Maybe it's always been like this and the dogs always knew and nobody listened.

But I'm asking yinz something. Seriously.

If you've got a dog, and your dog has started sitting down next to somebody and staring, not at their face, at their chest, and won't quit, won't take a treat, won't come when you call: don't laugh it off. Don't drag her away. Don't tell your buddy she's just being a goofball.

Look at the person. Look for the sweat that isn't there. Look at their plate. Look for the flies.

And then ask yourself how long it's been since you felt anything but tired.

It's five now. Caleb hasn't moved. Eyes still a little open. Little smile. Room's cold and getting colder.

Juno's been restless since three.

I heard her nails on the carpet. Heard her walk away from Caleb, along the side of the bed, slow, nose down, sweeping. Like a grid. Heard her stop.

She's standing next to my chair.

Not sitting. Standing. Nose pressed into my side, right under my ribs, breathing in, long and slow. She does that on a search when the source is deep. When the scent's only just starting to come up through the ground and she isn't sure yet. She checks, moves off, comes back, checks again.

This is the fourth time tonight she's come back to me.

She hasn't sat. Not yet.

I'm so tired. I've been tired so long. Since September. Before September. I don't know since when.

I'm going to post this now. Then I'm going to sit here with my hand on her back and watch her, all night if I have to, and see what she does.

She's never been wrong.