CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 2 Hours of r/Nosleep Horror Stories to grind up your enemies in whatever game you're playing.

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00 "There's a room where physical laws don't behave how they should" Creepypasta►21:16 "All my picture frames are empty, and I don't know why" Creepypasta►41:12 "DO NOT play the Clown Car ritual" Creepypasta►1:10:00 "If you find my camera, DON'T e-mail me the damn footage" Creepypasta►1:37:30 "There's a Ladder in the Middle of the Ocean" Creepypasta►2:03:12 "We made too much noise in the library, and I'm the only one left to warn you" CreepypastaCreepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY►RapterT s: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xmAaOSUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪-This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only-

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combe. I'm just to have Amsterdam, eh? Why? I've been forgotten how a toopriked. Doy! Toy! Tov? Tov.

16 times per day from out Brussels and in 2-hour. Now, from 19 euros, in place of 25. Book you tickets on NMBSInternational.com. The room was one of many. Experiments that allow us the tamper with a fabric of space-time in an enclosed location to toy with the delicate laws of our physical world and fine-tune them to our liking. The first 370 went off.

without a hitch. Some of our final work included room 112 where one could experience astral separation. With it, the ability to view remote locations. In another, room 213, there were dream storms. Any subject asleep inside would be bombarded with pieces of other people's nightly cinema, nightmares and all, and our crowning achievement up to that point, Room 301. Within its walls, time stood still. No matter how long a subject claims to have stayed inside, they always exits the room at the same time they entered. Then, there came that room, the one that put all others to shame. Room 371. The first few tests were promising.

Mixed results and readings led us to draw the conclusion that this room had somehow inherited traits from all the previous ones. For starters, time was malleable in there, to an extent. Subjects reported being inside for weeks, when really it had only been days. In addition, they all experienced different things. Outer body events, hallucinations, psychic visions. The list goes on. It was shaping up to be our best work. But then, the unthinkable happened.

It is a day I'll never forget. Try as I might. Elizabeth, you're pregnant. Seven months along. You know my worker is dangerous. We can't risk your safety. A sigh of disappointment came through the receiver. I know, Garrett, I know, but I haven't seen you in over a week.

Will you even be here when our son is born? This time I let out a sigh. The work we're doing here, it could very well change the world. When our son is born, I will be there and I want him to be proud of his father. We had reached an impasse, and so we sat for a moment in silence, phones to our ears, each hoping for a bit of understanding from the other. It was in this silent that I charted a course for middle ground. Tell you what, why don't you leave Jessica with a nanny and get a room at the local inn?

I usually sleep here, but the hotel is just around the corner. I can meet you there after work, we'll make a night of it. After work? Is there even enough to work with you? I chuckled. Not particularly, but I promise I'll be there. Let's say nine-ish? All right, I'll do it.

You're lucky I still love you to pieces after all these years. There was a hint of reluctance in a voice, but deep down, I knew she was ecstatic to be met halfway. As much as I was married to my work, I would have given anything for even a small chance to make a smile. Good, I'll see you tonight then. I gave her directions to the hotel, and we disconnected. I then turned my attention back to Room 371.

A box of walls connected to the rest of the, the lab with control arms and cables. There's no shortage of mysteries, and I'll be damned if I didn't solve them all. Hours passed, and soon the sun's glow through the window of the lab was replaced with moonlight. I was no closer to uncovering the inner workings of the room, but it was a long process, something that could take months or even years to unravel. That's why I couldn't stop. Any lull in my research would push back the reveal, and I wanted answers yesterday.

Still, the work took its toll. My eyes grew heavy and my mind drifted to a sleep state as my head fell onto the desk where I was stationed. As soon as I lost consciousness, I was transported to a strange and vivid dreamscape. To this day, I can't be sure if this nightmare was a product of my exhaustion, or the effects of room 371, just yards away from where I slept. In the dream, I was with my wife at the hotel. She was propped up in bed, screaming with her legs spread apart. I was by her side, holding her hand and doing my best to calmer through the agony of childbirth.

She kept looking to me for comfort after each push. It's okay, Lizzie, I'm here, you're doing great. She squeezed my arm harder with every pained outcry. It was pale and bloodless by the final push. Then, finally, our son was born. But something was terribly wrong. The baby didn't cry. Instead, as I pulled him into my arms, he smiled.

Not a beautiful smile, mind you, but a strange one. It curved at unnatural points and stretched too close to the ears. Then there was the eyes, normal at first, but they soon turned black, empty eclipses that grew darker with every blink I had no choice but to put him down to escape his gaze Elizabeth here you hold him for now I looked down at my wife she was unconscious her chest was still I held my hand to her neck

there was no pulse Elizabeth Elizabeth wake up I placed our son of the bed and attempted to shake her When that failed, I resorted the chest compressions. Nothing seemed to work. No, no, no, no, no. My sweet Elizabeth, she can't be dead. She just can't be.

Tears streamed down my face as panic set in. I raced for the door to call out for help, but the knob wouldn't budge. That's when I noticed a number affixed to the wood. 3.7.1. Room 371. But how? The door swung open, striking me on the head and landing me on the floor below. I looked up, my vision blurred and saw the shadowy outline of a man enter the room.

He stepped over my body, grabbed my son, and then walked back out. But not before offering me an ominous sentiment. They're mine now, Garrett. I awoke mid-gasp, jumping up from my desk. Frazzled, I looked over the clock. It was 11.15pm. Oh no. Elizabeth.

I dialed the hotel and had the clerk patched me through to a room. I only hoped she wouldn't be too upset over me sleeping through our date. Garrett Harold Covenwood, this is no way to get on my good side. Judging by a tone, she was as irate as she had ever been. Still, it was nice to hear her voice after that horrible dream. I'm sorry, hon. work got away from me and then I dozed off at my desk

It won't happen again, I promise There was a faint voice in the background Is that daddy? Can I talk to him? Who's our daughter? Did you bring Jessica with you? I thought I told you to leave her with a nanny Doesn't she have school tomorrow? Her tone was still firm and unwavering

Your daughter hasn't seen you in over a week I've allowed a one day of hockey to spend time with a father get in now and don't waste another minute. It was clear that she meant business and I wasn't about to test her fury any further. I'll be there in 20 minutes. I just have to. My eyes drifted to the room

and I recalled the strange dream my mind had concocted. Say, Elizabeth, what room are you staying in? Room 371. My heart sank. Are you absolutely sure of that? Yes, what does it matter? This was bad.

The hotel where my wife was staying only had two floors. I know this because I'd stay there myself on occasion. There couldn't have been more than a hundred or so rooms. Nowhere near enough to warrant a room number 371. Elizabeth, listen to me. Take Jessica and get out of there now. There was intimate ecstatic after I said this. Garrett, breaking up, can't hit.

here? Elizabeth, get out of there now! It was more static, but I made out a single phrase of the noise, one that sent a shiver down my spine. Garrett, I think my water just broke. We were disconnected. I tried darling the hotel again, but the line was dead. I didn't know what was going on,

but with the unforeseen powers at play in room 371, I knew it couldn't be good. With my family in mind, I threw all cautions of the wind and walked over to the room. Normally, there were safety protocols to be followed before entering, but I didn't care. My work in theory was that it was acting as a portal, bridging itself to a room in the nearby hotel and taking its place. The hope was that I could get in and pull my family out. This had to work.

It just had to. Upon entering the room, my theory. was proven false. It was just as we had left at last. There was no one inside, much less my wife and daughter. My next course of action was to flee the lab and make haste toward the hotel. But the room had other plans. The door slammed itself shut as I approached.

I reached out for the knob, but it wouldn't turn. Just then, footsteps from behind. Hello, Garrett. With a spike of adrenaline, I turned to meet the source of the world. voice. What I saw was astonishing. It was me, a copy of myself, living and breathing before my very eyes. Every feature, every detail identical. I would have never suspected the room could do something like this, not in a million years. Well, how do I look? After the initial surprise wore off, I regained my focus. My wife and daughter, what's happening? Is it you? He juggled.

Of course it's me. Who else would it be? I didn't understand what he was getting at. And you are? I asked. Don't you recognise me, Garrett? You've been poking and prodding me since my birth, studying my every nookin cranny. But I've been observing you too.

Now, I've learned you inside and out, taking your form even. I thought you would be flattered. As indirect as his answer was, I was able to put the pieces together. You're... The room. You're this room, room, room, 3.71.

He smiled. Now you're getting it. My mind was instinctively trying to run the numbers and make sense of how any of this was possible, but this was no time for work. What are you doing with my wife and daughter? His smile grew wider. To know what?

First, you need to know how, and then why? I didn't have time for his games. Whatever he was, I lunged it in with my arms outstretched, but to no avail. My entire body phased right through. Nice try, Garrett. This is just a projection I've planted in your mind. Please take a seat.

I never have talked to anyone. This is the most fun I've had. Well, ever really. I stood back against the wall and stared in down. my eyes now welling up. Please, let them go. I'm begging you. He shook his head in disapproval.

I can't do that, Garrett. It wouldn't be in my best interest. I didn't understand. What are you talking about? It's simple, really. You see, you didn't create me, so much as you found me. I'm a reserve of cosmic energy,

one that you've tapped into and harnessed with your latest project here. He gestured at the room around us. You've awakened me and given me the gift of sentient. For that, I thank you. But now that I'm awake, I'm hungry. You humans need air, water and food to sustain yourselves. I need something else. What, what do you need?

I asked, growing impatient by the second. souls I need to feed on the souls of living things to stay alive and by golly human ones are worth all the trouble it takes to find them trouble I asked

oh yes you think I'm contained in this prison but I can travel it's difficult but through certain connections I'm able to find my prey lifelines the auras you humans share with one another at first I couldn't reach them

but then you went ahead and brought them to me, close enough to taste. He was referring to my family. Why don't you just take me? I'm right here. Take me instead and leave them alone. He let out a horrendous, malignant laugh that pierced me to my core. I would never, Garrett.

Through your aura, I'm connected to them. I can reject this room and my likeness anywhere they are. You're my beacon. And, until I can find another, you're with me. If I was hindered by remorse, I might say that I'm sorry. In truth, I'm not in the slightest. This is about survival, and I have no intention of dying. Not when being alive feels so good.

Feeling hopeless, I reached down into my lap coat and pulled out my pocket watch. I always kept it with me, a gift from Jessica. I could remember the day clearly. A memory that never strayed too far from my heart. Open it, Daddy. It's from me. A smile was intoxicating. Oh really? And did Mommy help you pick it out? No, I picked this one all by myself.

I slowly pulled apart the gift wrap, savoring the moment. Eventually, I pulled out the watch and opened its face, revealing a remarkable design within. This is wonderful, sweetie. I love it. She looked at me with inquisitive eyes. What's the matter, sweetie? Do you understand what it's for? I laughed. Well, of course, it's the tell time.

She shook ahead. No, you're always at work and you forget to come back and see us. This is so you don't forget, so you always know what time to come home. A little bit of guilt washed over me as a tear rolled down my cheek. I know I work a lot, sweetie, but I'll always come home to you. I promise. She jumped into my arms and I held her tight. My sweet little girl, I looked down at the inscription on the watch.

To Daddy, love Jessica. Time to come home. It was time. Time to end this. I threw the pocket watch against the wall, as hard as my arm would allow. It shattered into a thousand pieces. I then knelt down and picked up the tiny shards of glass that landed in my feet. Garrett, what are you doing?

With glass in hand, I looked up at him. I'll never let you have them. Consider your bridge to the outer world closed. Using the glass, I sliced my arms open, slits long and deep enough that I would never be bleed to death in minutes, effectively cutting off whatever connection he had to my family. At least then, they would have a fighting chance. No, you ruin everything.

The last thing I remember before losing consciousness was the sound of the door swinging open. Then everything faded away. I awoke at my desk, positioned exactly as I was before. I gathered my wits and recalled what happened. I jumped to my feet and turned to the room. My clone was standing just outside the door. Settle down, Garrett.

You're going to be fine. I looked down at my arms, though no wounds. I have the acute ability to manipulate time. You're now as you were, just before entering the room. What about my family? He sighed. That was a bold move back there, attempting to take your own life. I didn't expect that.

Had I known you humans were prone to sacrifice, I wouldn't have reeled so much. Your family is fine. You could see the disbelief painted on my face. See for yourself. He pointed at the phone of my desk. I hesitantly picked it up and held it to my ear. Go on, dial already. I dialed the hotel number and asked the clerk to put me through to my wife.

To my delight, she answered. Garrett Harold Covenwood, this is no way to get in my good side. It was so good to hear a voice. Is Jessica there with you? Yes, how did you know? Thank God they were both okay. Could you put her on for me? The next voice I heard was my daughter's, as happy as ever.

Hi, Daddy, are you going to come see us now? My little girl, safe and sound. Yes, sweetie, I am. It's time for me to come home. Yay! She was overjoyed. Elizabeth took the phone back. You better not be torn with her emotions, Garrett.

I'm not. I'll be there shortly. By the way, What room are you in? Room 102. Why? I sighed a breath of relief. No reason. See you soon. I love you. I hung up the phone and looked back to my evil twin.

So, what now? I asked. Well, until I figure out a way around your heroics, you and your family are safe. It sounded a little too good to be true. But don't you need to feed? Why aren't you killing me right now? He walked over with a stern look and leaned in as close as he could get. Why would I waste my time with an appetizer when you're going to lead me to the main course? I much rather have three of them than just you, especially the newborn.

Fresh souls are so much better than a used ones. My blood was boiling, but I remained silent for fear of repercussions. I will have them, Garrett. Mark my words. He slowly backed away, turned and walked towards the room. He then looked to me one last time and grinned. I hope you don't mind me holding onto this look for a while. What can I say?

I like it. With that, he vanished into thin air, never to be seen or heard from again. At least, that was the hope. Soon after the ordeal, I took Elizabeth in general. her home, packed our things and drove as far away from that room as possible. I vowed never to work in that lab again for as long as I lived, or anywhere that kept me from my family. From now on, they come first.

If that entity ever does come around, I'll be waiting. I'll never let him take them. I was having a good day at work. Not too much to do, just enough to make the time pass and keep me busy. me busy. I gave a work friend a ride home and had a long talk. Turns out we're both the youngest siblings and our families, which gave us a surprising amount of common ground. I got myself a chicken salad and drove home. I walked up the stairs to my apartment. I opened the front door

and right there on the wall, with all the smiling pictures of my friends and family, was a blank picture frame. Empty. What the hell? While it didn't ruin my night, it made me start asking questions. I wouldn't just hang up a blank picture and I wouldn't put it up in the middle of the hallway. I have this large hallway mirror with pictures hung up on the side and it is kind of a centrepiece. Still, I couldn't recall what would have been in that frame and there was no photo that had slipped out. I wasn't planning on framing anything either.

Or if I did, I wouldn't hang the frame up before I'd put in the photo. I'd be lying if I said that it really bothered me. It was an oddity at most. For a second, I caught myself in the mirror looking anxious. Why was I letting this get to me? The weekend was just around the corner. I just gave myself a smile and took the frame down. The next day, I came home to another empty frame.

It wasn't empty earlier that day, or I would have taken it down along with the other one. there would be no reason for me to only take down one frame so what had happened between now and then that caused this frame to turn blank and why couldn't remember what was in that frame when I looked at it just the day before this time I caught myself looking bothered the hallway mirror doesn't lie

it was time to figure this out we can be damned I made two conclusions the first was that If the frame had been emptied the day before, I would have taken it down. Hence, it must have turned empty between when I left work and when I came home, about nine hours in total. The second conclusion was that the photos that were framed were completely missing.

They hadn't just dropped out. The back-in board was intact, and the middle points holding it back were tight. Either someone took the photo out, or it just ceased to exist. That wasn't a comfort. up a conclusion. My mirror image seemed to agree. I checked the locks, the balcony, the windows, all of it. I lived in the second floor, but with enough determination, a thief could get in anywhere. Sure, there would be no reason for a thief to get in and just steal a single picture, leaving the frame, but there were crazes all over. Don't get me started on the next town over

when an entire neighbourhood wears creepy masks. Everything was intact. no one could get in or out without breaking something and nothing had been broken. I went to check my keys to see if anyone had stolen the spare, but it was still there. What surprised me, though, was the key to a bike lock. I didn't have a bike. Did I? There was a bike rack out front, and I started trying the key. I got a lot of sneers from the neighbours, but I tried now to let it bother me.

Finally, I found the bike the key belonged to. A sporty bike, a woman's model. The seating was much lower than I'd use. And seeing as how I'm a man, I probably would have gotten another kind of model. Probably. Love the colours though. He gave me an uncomfortable thought.

Maybe I wasn't just forgetting the pictures. Maybe I was forgetting whatever or whoever was inside them as well. Maybe I was forgetting people. As a precaution, I hurried back up to. my apartment, I wrote down a description for each remaining picture. I also recorded them with my phone. I committed them each to memory to the best of my ability. The next day, as I was brushing my teeth, I noticed another empty picture frame. I nearly swallowed my toothpaste. My mouth felt dry. I couldn't remember what had been framed. I could feel myself cold sweat as my heart started to race.

This was impossible I'd been here the entire time I picked up my phone to check the video I'd recorded but I was told the file had been corrupted and couldn't be played I caught a glimpse of my dilated pupils in the hallway mirror as I hurried into the kitchen the note with all my descriptions

have been torn to pieces with shaking hands I gathered every piece and tried to puzzle them back together they were no bigger than the nail on my pink finger. I must have been added for hours. I got in about halfway when I realized there were several missing pieces. They were probably the description for the photo in the now empty frame. I concluded I was not just forgetting things. They were actively being removed. It was a disturbing thought. How do you make someone forget something or someone?

That last thought resonated with me. Someone. I didn't feel like I was missing anyone, but then again, how would I know? If I had forgotten about someone important in my life and all traces of them were gone, how would I know? This gave me an idea. In some places, the lack of things can just be as telling as having something. I went through my entire apartment, step by step, and noticed a view and inconsistency.

There was an empty drawer in my bedroom. I wouldn't just let one drawer overflow and another remain empty. I would have spread things out. Someone had probably been using this drawer until recently. There were several empty folders on the computer. I may not be the brightest PC user, but I don't create empty folders for no reason, especially not in the image and movie default folders.

There were entire shelves that was suspiciously empty in both my friends, in both my fridge and freezer. Again, why wouldn't I just spread things out? It felt like I was watching a mind-twisting game of Jenga. Only the pieces that were picked out were parts of my life. As I took a shower to clear my head, I noticed two more things. One, there was a pale batch of skin on my right shoulder

with strange contours. There would probably be in a tattoo there. Two, there was a mark on my left ring finger. So, until just recently, I'd worn an engagement ring. I sent a few messages to friends and family and checked my social media. There was no indications of any kind that I'd been engaged. I got a few responses from confused friends. They had no idea what I was talking about, and they started asking if I was okay.

I wasn't a problem here. The problem was that something was eating my life step by step, and I had no way to fight it. I stumbled back into the kitchen, poured myself a whiskey, and started making a list. A list of things someone like me would think was important enough to put in a picture on my wall. Parents, uncles, cousins, siblings, grandparents, pets, all of it. Then I tried to match what I could remember to those categories. I remembered almost everything.

There were a few blank spots. For example, I had no brothers or sisters. and I've been single for a very long time. That didn't make any sense though. Just a few days prior, I've been talking to a work colleague about being the youngest sibling. Not just younger like you are if you have a single older sibling, but youngest. That's what you are if you have more siblings than one. Plural.

I couldn't remember having any brothers or sisters. I laid it all out. I had, most probably, completely forgotten. completely forgotten about two siblings and a fiancé, I'll be the first to admit. I didn't handle it very well. I called my mother after my fourth drink of whiskey, and I wasn't making much sense.

She was worried. Of course I had no brothers or sisters, never had, and sadly never would. Check the photo albums, I screamed. Check every album you've got, and you'll see, you'll see the empty pages. I sat down flat in the hallway with my fifth drink.

having thrown my cell phone across the room. I stared myself in the hallway mirror. I almost looked happy, despite feeling awful. That's what a good drink can do to you. It is like putting on a mask. I frowned as deep as I could, but it just looked like I was making a funny face. To be fair, the hallway mirror wasn't that great.

It was slightly stretched, making you look a little thinner and taller than you really are, kind of like a funhouse mirror, only to a lesser effect. I tried again to commit every photo to memory. My parents, my uncle, my grandparents, my cousin standing in a field of those weird blue sunflowers. I counted them all.

Then counted them again. And on my sixth drink, I fell asleep on the floor, curled up in a fetal position. I was drifting in and out of sleep. Despite everything, I was happy no more pictures had disappeared. one by one they'd gone away like petals picked from a flower. Then it stopped. There'd been no more.

Maybe it was over and whatever it was removing them had gotten what it came for. Of course, there was another option. Maybe it was just waiting for me to fall asleep. That thought jolted me awake. I'd probably gotten a solid three hours of sleep and it was the middle of the night. It was rustling in the kitchen. Not loud, but loud enough for me to hear it. It sounded like someone going through my cutlery.

There was nothing special in there for someone to steal. Well, except for an old butter knife my cousin gave me back when she was into whittling that one summer. I checked the picture frames. All the photos were still there. There might still be time. I had a handgun in the secure locker in my bedroom on a small shelf above my winter jackets.

The key was right there in the hallway on a separate key chain. I got the key, listening for movement in the kitchen. I could hear the rustling stop and the kitchen drawer being set back in place. If whoever was in there decided to check the bedroom, I'd be screwed. I held my breath and listened. I heard footsteps move into the bathroom. Of course, there was a clone I'd gotten as a birthday gift last year. That was also from my cousin.

but I could still remember her, so it wasn't too late. I opened the locker, loaded a clip, and turned the safety off. I stepped into the hallway, held the gun up high, and looked into the bathroom. I could hear someone looking for something just around the corner, next to the tub, but all I could see was the edge of a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. I had to act. Stop! I yelled. step out slowly

the rustling stopped hello the voice was dark and muddled as if spoken underwater it was distant but near and it echoed

it made the air tremble so hard that it made my stomach shiver I almost threw up step out with your hands he did I did it was me the hallway mirror was empty

There were a few differences. The person I was looking at was slightly taller and thinner, stretched like the image in the mirror. It was still mirroring my expression, but not the movements of my body. I looked terrified. Hello, he repeated, sending another ripple through my guts. Hands on your head, I said.

Stay back. I'm calling the police. Hello. He didn't comply. I double-checked the safety and it was off. A pinch of the trigger would be all it took. Instead of listening to me, the person stepped forward. I pulled the trigger. The bullet made a hole in his left shoulder and went clean through.

A few drops of blood escaped him but evaporated against the floor in puffs of black smoke. The person had been keeping up an act and now it felt threatened. In an instant it turned to something else. The face twisted and turned, the jaw unhinged, and the tongue stuck straight up in the air like the rattle of a snake. Limbs grew longer and turned soft. A third arm grew from the stomach, tearing away the black t-shirt. Hands grew longer, fingers ended in bird-like talons. There was no way I would stand my ground against this walking nightmare.

My instincts were battling each other. One side asking me to shut down and stay dead, the other telling me to run. There was no fighting to be done, only ways to flee. I took off running. It was nothing but luck that I remembered my trigger discipline. I started running down the flight of stairs. A neighbour was yelling, calling the police. Someone opened a door.

I can't remember what happened to them or who they were. A scream, I can't remember, silenced. Something the size of a football being torn free from a torso. I got out into the cool night air. I was barefoot. For a moment, I always convinced myself it wasn't really happening. Standing out there, in the real world,

it just couldn't be happening. This doesn't happen in the real world. Then, my nightmare came busting to the door. It had grown. It extended its stomach to a bubble like the abdomen of a spider. It had three arms and four legs, and there were more things growing.

The head could barely be recognized. It folded itself backwards, using an elongated tongue like an antenna, sniffing the air. I kept running. The pit batter of skin flung against asphalt came closer. It was right behind me. I knew that if it caught me, I'd never have existed in the first place. Not even my mother would remember me. Everything I was, everything I'd done, gone in an instant.

Hello. The rumbling my stomach came back. and I lost my balance. I fell forward, badly scraping my shoulder. No, it was the only word I could muster. No, I, I was breathing too fast and my head was barely getting any oxygen. I was panicking. I flipped around, laid in my back and held at my handgun. It was almost on me. Teeth, naked skin, talons and limbs. It was warm. I didn't want to disappear, not like this. That's when I noticed something in the distance. There was something sparkling just outside my balcony. There was a thin ripple in the air like an umbilical cord. It was like looking at a black hole. There was nothing there to see but the lack of space.

This ripple stretched from the neighbor the creature up to a rectangular sparkle hanging free in the air. The hallway mirror. It was stuck to it. Despite teeth, skin and claws moving in the air, to rip me apart, I aim for the hallway mirror. He looked so odd, floating in mid-air, so far above the ground. An anchor. Maybe it was adrenaline, or maybe I was lucky.

But the shot connected. Sharts spilled out of the frame, and the creature turned around. Part of it were falling off, evaporated into black smoke. It hurried back towards the mirror. I followed it. It fell to its knees, arms flailing. He was trying to gather the shards to desperately puzzle it altogether. Hello, it said again.

This time the sound was high-pitched, almost shrieking. The creature had shrunk significantly, and as it got closer, I unloaded the entire clip into the rest of the mirror. Shards shattered against the sidewalk, and the creature was oozing with black smoke. A single eyeball tumbled out of his skull and fell into the largest of the shards. Moments later, the entire creature evaporated. I kept that shard. I can sometimes see something moving in it, but it is too small to harm anyone. If you listen closely to it, you can hear a tiny hello.

The police came, but none of my neighbours could remember why someone would have called. They hadn't seen or heard anything. It was odd though. one of the apartments had been left wide open. It was still furnished, but no one could remember anyone ever living there. I'm guessing we forgot about the tenant, but that the creature didn't get the time to clean up the belongings.

Looking back at this, I'm certain I had a brother. I think he lived on the outskirts of the city and that he disappeared as he was camping out with his friends. I also think I had a sister. I'm certain she was the one who gave me the memory, mirror to begin with. She was smart, studied in Europe for several years. She was blinded in an accident a few years ago. I haven't figured out when or how she disappeared. My fiancé was the last

disappear. Despite my efforts, I haven't been able to figure out anything about her. She is a complete mystery to me. Trying to mourn her not to my stomach. I'm trying to imagine what we would have done together, what places we'd seen, or how long we'd been together. But, I just can't. If I only had something to remember a by, something real, I could have made peace with it. There's just no closure. It feels odd to mourn something I can't know I had, but I do. It hurts. I sometimes wake up crying, holding a pillow. My body remember something I don't. The shower feels empty in the morning. I feel miserable shopping alone.

All these little ordinary things that I should be used to feel slightly off. I guess there are things. You just can't forget. From worldwide topmerken, to entrepreneurs who net begin, millions of betrower on Shopify. Vercoop online, in your winkel, on Instagram, TikTok and more.

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every step of the way. Start today your gratis proof period on Shopify.b.e. That is Shopify. com. I'm a few times to Amsterdam,

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from out Brussels and in 2-Hur. Now, from 19 euro in place of 25. Last spring I graduated high school. We weren't planning any big parties or anything, partly because of the whole germ thing, and partly because we were never into big parties in the first place.

When I say we, I mean me and my two best friends, Mia and Cooper. We weren't nerds, or if we were, we were the socially acceptable type of nerds that had a lot of friends at school and rarely got picked We went with the flow, and that did sometimes include us going to games or parties, though usually we target smaller hangouts with people we could tolerate for a few hours. Most of the time though, it was just the three of us, and as we got closer and closer to graduation, our little circle of three seemed to involuntarily contract more and more, almost

like a clenching fist. Mia was going to college in Nevada, I was staying here, and Cooper. Well, he wasn't sure yet, but the odds of him staying in state for school were getting slim. There was an unspoken tension between the three of us, a secret dread that said, you better spend time together while you can, because come the fall, you'll be all alone. It was silly, of course. We could still talk and visit, and we'd make new friends to keep us company while the three of us were apart. We all knew that rationally, but as the time ran down, and became acutely aware of how large my fear of losing them was. How powerful.

So, we didn't go to parties, no, but we found excuses to do stuff all the time. Not just hang out, watch TV, play games and stuff, but actually do activities. It had started right after Christmas, and by May, we had found an impressive variety of stuff to do. Parks, state, national, and amusement. Fairs, both the Kani type and medieval type. We'd gone camping, hiking, fishing and swimming. There was a video of me roble-blading down a hill, though mere missed when I wiped out to the bottom

and photos of us petting goats at the world's smallest petting zoo two counties over. It was literally just an old woman with three goats in a yard, but she'd posted an invitation on the internet to all visitors that were well-behaved and brought some fruit for a goat out of a voluminous list of things her babies would eat. There had even been a brief flirtation with trying to find a haunted house earlier in the spring. But they weren't as easy to find as movies led you to believe, and we were all more than a little nervous about getting caught, trespassing, at some abandoned house.

Again, nerds maybe, but not unreasonably so. But then, Mia brought up the idea of the clown car. She originally heard about it from a cousin, who heard about it, Well, you know how that goes. But then she spent some time digging on the internet and finally found some more info on it. Other people had played it before. And a couple of places, there were some loose advice and rules

for how it was played, because it was, at least to some extent, a game. When she first told us about it, we just laughed. Told her it'd be a lot less trouble to just go into the bathroom with the lights up and say Bloody Mary three times. We might be scraping the bottom of the barrel, but spooky games with weird, needlessly complex rules.

It seemed kind of a waste of time. It was always just people laughing or trying to scare each other, and when it was all done, you were left kind of disappointed, because, well, that's not the way the world really works. You could see the hurt look on her face. It had been there from the start, but me and Cooper were busy making jokes, so it took us a minute to catch on. She didn't suggest stuff often, and this was why. We were smart asses, and sometimes we got too rough with it. Cooper seemed to realize we'd pushed it too far just a couple of seconds before I did, told her we're only kidding, and it sounded cool. If we could figure out a

good spot for it, we'd do it that weekend. As it turned out, that was the easy part, because there had been a pair of violent deaths just outside of town. In August of 1982, John Sampson came home from a 12-hour shift to the quarry. He normally wouldn't have been driving his dump truck home, but the next morning, he had an early special delivery to a subdivision being built 50 miles of the road, and it was quicker to have it ready and have to get it loaded the next day. Because, he figured, no one was going to try steel 40, thousand pounds of sand and gravel parked in his driveway.

When he got home, however, he found his driveway was already occupied. His brother, Bill Sampson, had come to visit John's wife while he was away. Story goes that he'd been visiting her regularly for some time, much to the delight of the neighborhood gossips. No one had thought to tell John about it, though, so when he walked in on them, it was apparently quite a shock. I say that, not because I know exactly what happened in there, or what he was thinking, but because of what he did next.

Three days later, someone found them all in the middle of SR3, a service road for the gravel pits that hadn't seen much use since the late 70s. John and shot himself, but not before dropping off his final load. He'd apparently tied his wife and brother together, drug them behind the truck, and unloaded all 20 tons on top of them while they were still alive. According to one quote from the local article, the rescue worker that found them said the mouths were filled with sand from screaming.

The weird thing was, none of us had heard that story before Mia dugged it up on the internet. It had happened before we were born, sure. But in a small town like this, local horror stories don't die from old age. Maybe it was kept more quiet because of the sexual component. Or because the town was ashamed they hadn't done more to head things off before it reached that point. Or maybe it hit itself. A story to be forgotten until it was needed again.

Until some dumb kids wanted to play a game. The rules were simple enough. You get in a car and drive to the spot you've picked out. The spot needs to meet certain criteria for this to work. As you figured out, it needs to be at or near a spot where people died. violently. It also needs to be on a road, and the road must be a dead end. At one point, SR3 had gone all the way through to the other side of the pits, but after the murders, they'd started ripping the road up.

If the company hadn't gone belly up the following year, it might have all been gone long ago. But, as it was, two-thirds of it was left, including the spot where John emptied his truck onto his wife and brother. So, check on the violent death spot. double check on the dead end road. The next thing is who went with you. This is kind of flexible, depending on what kind of car you have.

You can go by yourself, or you can go with other people. The key is that you have to leave at least one empty seat. Cooper had his mom's old Camry, so that was easy enough too. I was in the back, Mia was in front of me, and Cooper drove us out there. We went just after midnight.

Mia had found conflicting accounts of if there was a specific time you had to do it. But generally, they all overlapped between 1 and 3am. So we figured we were safe if we got the ritual done in that time frame. Because yes, there is a ritual. Of course there's a ritual, right? Specific mysterious things you have to do to get more invested and make it all feel real. Specific mysterious things that could be. be misinterpreted or done slightly wrong without you knowing it, giving an easy excuse when

nothing happened. Because it was your mistake, right? Not the fact that it was all made up BS. If this sounds like I was highly skeptical, it's because I was. I acted pumped for me a sake, but the more we got into it, the more I just wanted it over with. We had to find the road and then the murder spot on the road. This was actually the easy. part, as Mia had done the necessary research beforehand. But then, we had to make sure the front of the car was pointed due north. We had to light four candles and put them at each of the cardinal directions. North, east, south and west.

We had to have three more candles, one for each of us to light and hold. And then we had to roll down the windows, holding our candles in one hand, or we hung the other hand out the window. Once all this was done, we would stare at it. our candle flames. This was apparently very important. We couldn't look away from a flame at any point or... We lost? We died? None of it was very clear, but it was definitely a bad thing. And as we looked at the flame, we would take turns saying the same phrase over and over. We invite you in. You could hear crickets on the air as we sat alone in the dark. I'd been convinced

some of the candles would fall over or blow out. But so far, they all seem steady, despite the cool breeze, I would sometimes rossel the trees and send a dry, dusty smell through the interior of the car. We never been on the road before, but driving up in the dark,

we could see enough to make out the sharp drop-off on the right side of the road. The old pits were down there. I could picture a hundred-foot drop ending in dirt and rocks and muddy water, but the height wasn't what bothered me. It was the black void I could feel out there, a great absence that didn't feel natural or friendly. I didn't understand it.

I wasn't afraid of the woods or the dark, at least not more than normal. But this place didn't feel like normal woods at night. It felt like acid, like everything was burning and poison, being eaten away and... I blinked. What the hell was wrong with me? There was nothing weird out here. If I felt like anything was burning, it was from the pollen or smelling the candles. I needed to get myself together, quit letting this dumb game freak me out and just get through it.

You ready to start? Mia turned around and looked at me. Whoa, geez, watch the candle. You're trying to set my head on fire? She yanked it back from where she had brushed the side of Cuba's arm and she looked back. Oops, sorry, Coop. turning back to me she nodded ahead her eyes were dark and white with my candlelight and when she returned my smile i could tell she was as nervous as i felt she glanced at my window um you need to put your other hand out remember nodding i stuck my arm out letting my hand dangle limply against the side of the car like this she nodded and turned back around in a seat

I think we're ready We invite you in We invite you in We invite you in Mia started Then me then Cooper We said it in a circle over and over Maybe five or six times

And then we sat silent Tense and waiting Hoping for both something and nothing to happen I tried to keep my eyes on my flame But it was hard The light was very bright in the relative darkness, and the urge to look around only grew stronger as the second stretched into minute.

Should we do it again? I could hear the cautious impatience in Cooper's voice. He wasn't trying to be a party pooper, but I could tell he was ready to be through with it. Mia led out a scream. What is it? Her candles flame bobbed in front of me as she shuddered. something touched my hand I felt it brush against my hand heart pounding I shifted my light and gazed at the gap between her seat and the doors

her arm was still hanging out Mia pull your hand in she shook ahead no it's said in the rules you can't pull it in until it's done you know until all the lights are out that was another part of all this if it worked you would see the candles outside the car go out one by one. After that, well, nothing really said what happened after that. We'd guessed after that you'd either see or hear something spooky or you'd be done.

But something touched her. It could be an animal or something. Put your hand in. Cooper's voice was high and scared sounding, and I understood. I still didn't believe in ghosts or whatever, but there was something wrong here. here, something dangerous, and we needed to leave. Outside, the candle on my side of the car went out. I, I can't. His voice sounded long and strange, somewhere between a shout and a moan as he began to move around more. I can't move at all. Oh, I feel it touching me. Damn, I heard from Cooper, and I could see him yanking away from his window violently. His candle turned.

sideways and dumped a sizzle of melded wax under the centre console. He didn't make it very far though. I couldn't see clearly, but leaning forward, I could make out his arms still hanging out the window like it was pinned there. The candle on his side went out. Something has me too. Oh God, what? I can't. I glanced back over my shoulder,

and I couldn't make out any flame behind the car anymore. I wanted to look further, but I could only... Wait. My arm was still out the window too. How is that possible? Why wouldn't I have thought to yank it back in once Mia started screaming? She was still screaming now. They both were.

At first I thought they were being hurt. But as they quieted down to softer mutters and moans, and realized they were just terrified. Trapped and terrified, almost out of their minds. I was scared too. But at least nothing. Nothing heard. I led out a gasp and something wet pushed its way between my fingers, running up the length

of my palm, and then rasping against the web of skin between my middle and ring fingers before exploring the other divisions between thumb and index, ring and pinky. I wanted to scream, but the air seemed frozen in my lungs. I tried looking at the window, but I couldn't see anything now more than before, and I was too scared to try to stick my head out. I just wanted my arm back and to get away from that terror. terrible place. The candle in front of the car went out, and as it did, everything changed. The air grew oddly still, the thing, licking my hand, was gone. I could pull my arm in again,

though I could feel a hardening film on the hand I'd had outside. Shuddering, I wiped it on my pants as I looked at Cooper and Mia. Their hands were back in two, and they looked as shell-shocked as I felt. I was terrified to move, to make a sound, but I knew waiting would be a mistake. So, boy slow, I leaned up between them and whispered, Let's, let's go. Now, I had time to see Cooper and Mia started frantically nod in unison, when Mia suddenly froze. She had been looking at me. Now, she was looking past me, as though she saw something,

in the seat behind me. Blood, thundering in my ears, I slowly turned to look back at the seat next to me. Something was sitting next to me now. In the inconsistent light of her candles, it almost looked like a person, though its face had no real features other than two narrow dug-out slits

that might have been its eyes. The thing's head, its entire body, looked like it was made out of mud, you see. some thick, dark clay that leaned forward into the light, as to give us all a better luck. We were transfixed in our terror for a moment, watching the monster as it hooked a thick finger across the lower part of his head and raked out a new furrow. The detached part of me realized what it was doing.

It was making itself. A mouth. The thing slung off the excess, striking the back a cooper seat with a wet squelch. It then worked its new features for a moment, as though testing the feel of it. A dark worm of a tongue wriggling free for a moment, before disappearing into the moving crack again. When it was satisfied, it spoke to us in a clear, deep voice that sounded both loud and far away,

as though the creature was speaking to us from the other end of the well. Thank you for your invitation. We accept. I had a moment to realize Meera and Cooper's candles had gone out, and then the thing next to me leaned forward further and puffed out my own, plunging us into darkness.

In some ways, as strange as it sounds, the dark was a relief. We were trapped in some kind of nightmare, and the less we had to see and enjoy before we woke up, the better. Because I had to remind myself none of this was possible. None of this was real.

That's when the thing beside me grabbed my shoulder, even as more hands began touching me from outside the car. I did move then, fighting to get free, to escape the things grasping me, even run away from the car if that's what it took to be free. But it was too strong. They were too strong, because the hands at the window weren't just hands anymore. Something was crawling through my window, settling its weight onto my back, even as I squealed and feared. I could barely make out the silhouette of more things coming in through the other back window, Cooper's window, and when I turned, Mears as well. They just kept crawling in, wrapping themselves around us, shoving each other for better purchase and position,

filling up the car with flesh that felt slimy and cold and rough. They smelled of old things, sour things, and they made grunting noises as they came, squeezing tighter and tighter as more made their way in from the outer dark. I was beyond most thought at this point, though I did have some dim idea that it would be a race between them crushing us to death or our suffocating. I was almost past the point of caring and I realized I could hear something new. It was hard to move at all now, but I managed to turn my head enough to peer through a gap into the front seat. It was mere, I had heard. She was gagging as one of those things started to crawl inside her mouth.

I yanked my head back violently as I felt something at my own lips, grasping my jaw firmly, and prying it apart with fingers that tasted of bitter earth. No, this couldn't happen. None of this was real, and it couldn't happen, and... I heard Cooper choking and gagging too, as the first of them pushed past my mouth and went down my throat. There was no fighting now, no escaping. I just needed to hope it would kill me soon. I just needed it.

To end, we all woke up at sunrise. The inside of the car was filthy, not just dirt, but her own body's voiding at some point in the nightmare of it all. We just held each other and wept for a few minutes, too broken to be ashamed, and then we slowly pulled ourselves together enough to clean off as best as we could and then make our way back down the road. Mia had to drive us this time. Cooper's hands were trembling too badly And it took all the concentration I had

To not just start screaming and bawling every couple of minutes She was shaken too But she still managed to get us to a gas station Where we could clean the car and ourselves enough to avoid too many questions Other than why we're out all night As it turned out we didn't even get in much trouble Our parents knew we were with each other And that meant even if we broke curfew

we should be safe enough. It wasn't until next week, but we all started aging way too fast. They call it Werner Syndrome, or Adult Biduria, and it makes you appear to age very fast. It's extremely rare, and having three cases that are progressing so rapidly and they all know each other.

We've already had two medical journal articles written about us, and our families keep talking about some kind of lawsuit. though no one can nail down who to sue or why. All that they do know is that something like that couldn't be a coincidence, or just congenital. It had to have, as one doctor told us, been influenced by something outside. I'm 19 now, but I look like I'm in my early 70s in most ways, except my feet. It's funny, but I guess without a lifetime of walking, my feet are somehow holding up better than the rest of me.

Maybe I should be a foot model Since school is not really an option Our parents don't agree of course They want to help But they also want to deny This is a death sentence They want to pretend there's no reason We can't live for another 20 or 30 years

And with medical advancements even more They don't want to hear what the doctors Are already hinting at Meas kidneys are only functioning At about a quarter of what they should be Cooper is going to need stint spot in within the next month or two, and that's assuming a heart attack doesn't kill him first,

and that nest of tumours at the base of my spine are only going to grow from here. We get all the problems of old age without all the pesky living that comes with it. Of course, it's none of their fault. Our parents love us and want us to live, and the doctors, they don't know what to call it,

other than something like Werners, even if they know it doesn't quite fit. Even if we could tell them more, it wouldn't make a difference, because it's not something they can understand. They still labour under the assumption I used to make, that the world was sane and could be understood, that there was no magic or evil, except in the minds of people, that there's nothing outside looking to get in. Mia thinks it's a thin spot. She says that places with violence and pain and fear, maybe they get eaten by the acid of the acid of the, it all. Maybe it gets easier to see things there, even if it's not really ghosts. Makes it easier

for things to see you too. Early on, we did try to explain it to them. Once we saw we were getting worse, we panicked, and we were going to tell everything that happened that night, whether they thought we were crazy or not. We would tell them about how we still feel wrong all the time, still hear voices, and have odd thoughts almost every day. Something, anything that could help them fix us. But then we realized, we couldn't. Literally, the words wouldn't come out when we tried to say them or write them. We could talk about it to each other, but to no one else. Even when they started crawling out of us again, it was our secret to keep. Because six months ago, I worked up to an arm pushing out of my mouth. It was impossible. All of it was impossible. But as I gagged,

and choked and cried. Something pulled itself out of my body. When it was done, it stood in the moonlight and stared at me with a blank expression, no longer looking like something made out of dirt and clay, but now looking like a naked young man in his twenties. He studied me a moment longer, and then went over to the window,

sliding it open before crawling out silently into the night. A few minutes later, I got a call from Cooper and then recalled Mia. It happened to them too. It happens now like clockwork on every new moon. And the next morning we always look and feel about 10 or 15 years older. They're eating us bit by bit from the inside and there's nothing we can do about it. Something stops us from writing it or telling about it except to each other.

I wanted to write this as a warning, but the only way I could write it at all was as a letter to Mia. It's funny, at first I couldn't write at all, but once I resolved to hide it away and not give it to anyone else, the words came again, and no one will ever find it. And if they do, I guess that means that we're already gone. If you do find it, please spread it to others if it will let you. Make them understand that this isn't just the story, but something that really happened to us. We didn't understand what we were doing. We didn't know when we made the invitation. There was something out there waiting to answer. I tried talking to one of them once. I'd left the light on because I figured it would happen that night and I wanted a better look at what

crawled out of me. It looked like a woman in a 40s, birthmark on her back, freckles on her legs. Her hair even looked like she'd had it cut recently. Just like the rest, she just slid off of me and onto the floor before rising to stare at me for a moment, before leaving for good. This time, however, I spoke to her as she turned toward the window, and for a wonder, she turned back. How are you doing this? Why? How many of you are there? How many of you are there in me? For a moment, she just stared at me again. But then a terrible smile spread across her lips as she leaned over me. I thought I grinned on to all the horror, but my heart still felt close to bursting as she drew close to the side of my head and whispered in my ear. When she was done, she stood up again, the smile still frozen in her lips below a pair of green, dead eyes.

Lifted in a finger to her lips, she winked at me before turning away and going through the window. As she climbed out of view, I repeated the words she'd spoken. My voice dry and cracked, an alien sounding. In my own ears, there is only one of us. I apologies for the aggressive title, but I'm in no mood to mess around. Snappy titles were always Ralph's thing. I hold the camera. My brain works in angles and shots, not words and phrases.

I'm only telling my story for two reasons. One, it might make it stay away from the vagus storm tunnels. And two, if you ignore reason one, and you find my camera. This post may mean you don't follow the If found, please return or email memory card contents to blah blah blah instructions I always made a point of keeping tucked into the camera case. I can't express this enough.

I never want to see what we've filmed down there. The thought that there's even a slight chance some naive, well-meaning urban explorer could find my camera and deliver evidence to me that what I've been drinking to forget did actually happen. Well, let's just say it pushes my sobriety further away than it's ever felt. Hopefully, after reading this, none of you will want to go knocking around down there anymore. That's kind of the goal.

As my A.A. sponsor pointed out to me, nobody can find what nobody is looking for. If you've ever heard of the Storm Drain Network under Las Vegas, or the homeless community that is set of a city down there, stop reading now. I've already told you too much. You don't need to know anymore. Just stay the hell away from Vegas and live the best and most within life you possibly can. It's not worth a risk. There's more down there than even the most elderly of tunnel folk know. The only reason the police aren't evacuating the tunnels as we speak is that I already tried going to them, because I'm not an idiot.

They made it very clear that if I pressed the matter further, they'd have me sectioned. I'm not surprised. As soon as I started talking about this, the terror returns and I start raving like a... Well, like a lunatic. There's no other word for it. I did try. There's just no way that level of obvious abject panic. Eyes bulging to bursting point and forehead wet with fear sweats,

wouldn't be interpreted as hard drug use. For context, it was the second time I'd been to Nevada to film the tunnel community. If you search for Las Vegas Tunnel community on YouTube, there's a load of videos with view counts ranking in the hundreds of thousands, even millions. I won't say which. There's one video from a notable indie millennial focus media company. If you've seen that video, you've seen my first tour of the hidden world below Vegas. I don't want to give away any more than that for reasons you'll understand by the time we're finished.

The second trip, the one with Ralph. came off the back of that. He was a Vegas native and through hearsay and gossip had come to learn that one of his former schoolmates had found their way down to a subterranean life underneath the desert. Ralph's

idea for his documentary was simple. Track down his old classmate find out their life story and how he ended up living in the dark storm drains below Vegas. It was a good idea. Netflix were interested in the pitch and so was I.

That's why I said yes When he tracked me down and offered me the gig After I got off the plane We wasted no time Heading to the outskirts of the city There are more than a thousand people living in the drains And not all of them take kindly to outsiders Especially ones with cameras

I had a contact in the tunnels from my last visit And knew which of the wide concrete entrances We could use without risking Ralph or I never returning Well, that's what I thought at the time. You never know how ignorant you are until life slaps you in the face with your own stupidity. One of the reasons people are so drawn to footage and stories of the tunnel communities under Vegas

is how much infrastructure the semi-permanent residents have managed to create. Water, power, even rudimentary messaging service to get news or requests between the various pockets of subterranean activity. my contact Trish had access to a cell phone and arranging for Ralph and I to meet her was much less hassle than the process of slowly gaining a trust

had been the first time around when she met us at the entrance I was greeted with a hug Ralph was greeted with a sidelong untrusting glance this was even after I introduced him and explained why he was here most of the tunnel dwellers find themselves there after living less than legal lives. Some are wanted. Cameras aren't exactly welcome sights,

so it took me a while to assure her that Ralph and I were only there to find and interview a specific person. She still seemed skeptical, but agreed to show us around. Trish was skinnier than when I saw her last, although this isn't really surprising. For all the amenities,

they've managed to Jerrigg down in the damp and dark, a steady and reliable supply of sustenial. was never a guarantee. These days, Trish was little more than a mess of black hair and slack skin draped across a wireframe. The track marks in her arms painted the rest of the bleak picture. Ralph was lucky he contacted me when he did, I thought. Another few months, and she may not have been around to Grandis Amnesty

in the world beneath the strip. Ralph had a photo of his old schoolmate. I'll be honest, I don't remember what they look like. Ralph showed me the photo several times too After everything that happened Once we'd made a way deeper into the tunnels I guess my brain felt it had more important details to hang on to I'd happily trade any of the flashbacks and nightmares

For that trivial memory But it was just that Trivial If you know what a Macuffin is in movies You'll understand why trying to scrape together What I can remember of the details Ralph gave me As we followed Trish down the pitch black passages is a waste of time. Trish didn't know Ralph's missing person, but she told

us she knew people who would. As I said, the tunnel communities had a rudimentary infrastructure as well as communications channels. You can imagine that in such a community, safety was always a concern, especially for Trish and the other women and more vulnerable denizens. If anybody took a permanent residence in one of the dozens of pockets of encampments, the other under Vegas settlements would know your name soon. Trish decided that the best thing to do was to take us to Hers and ask around. I won't romanticise it. The tunnel villages aren't all the bohemian counter-culture communes

some filmmakers like to paint them as to make a statement about consumerism. Trish found a way there because her dependence on intravenous highs made life on the surface impossible during the daytime. Hers was a story of despair, a sympathy-inspiring perfect arrangement of unfortunate circumstances. The others, though, some of the others hit from the world above for reasons devoid of innocence or decency. I'd had to warn Ralph about this. There were settlements which had never been filmed because people who went there never came back.

Between the 1970s and 90s, there were consistently more than 100 serial killers operating in the United States at the same time. over 150. That's before you factor in the other real-life monsters. A lot of people commit horrific acts and a lot of them are never caught despite years of intense searching. Let's just leave it at that. It was for this reason that I instructed Ralph

to stick close to me and to never shine a torchlight away from Trish. You can understand why I was so furious when, after 20 minutes of following her through the dark, Ralph dropped the torch. Damn, he whispered. Sorry, dude, hang on. I heard him splashing and fumbling in the inches of water

that lapped at her ankles. Don't worry, bro. It's waterproof. It better be, I muttered under my breath, then shouted. Trish, hold on a minute. Ralph's dropped his torch. How come she doesn't need a torch? The sound of Ralph's voice asked.

Because she lives down here. She's used to it. She can basically see in the dark. Right, Trish? Freaky, Ralph's voice replied. Before I could listen for Trish's jokey anecdote about needing to see in the dark to find your way home when you were less than sober, there was a click, followed by the momentary blindness caused when bright lights invade pitch-black spaces. I winced.

Trish, I repeated, shielding my face on the torchlight to give my eyes a chance to readjust. Ralph continued jabbering away to himself. Dude, I'm glad I sprang for the waterproof one, you know. Wouldn't want to be stumbling down here in the dark. Can't make an award-winning documentary if you knock yourself out on a low-hanging pipe and drown in ankle-deep drain off. He laughed at his own joke, then scanned the passage with a torch beam. The light revealed stained concrete walls, scarring rats and patches of moss

clean to the cool moisture away from the desert. As Myers adjusted to the brightness, I realised what it hadn't revealed. Trish? I hazarded again. This time my voice faltered. The pitch at the tail end of the question, rising to pre-bolescent levels. Don't worry, bro, Ralph said, piercing the darkness in either direction with sweeps of the torchlight. She can't have gone far.

She couldn't have gone anywhere, I replied. The light had only been out for a bit. a second or two. Before it did, Trish had been stood right in front of Ralph, casting a stick-thin shadow on the rippling water as we trudged on. The water was still now, though, and Trish was no longer in front of us. She was no longer anywhere. Trish! The question bounced down the long tunnels, ricocheting off the pipes and vents peppered along the walls and ceiling. The darkness echoed my voice back to me a few dozen times, taunting me with it, but it offered no sign of our guide. Wait, Rouse's voice came from just behind the torchbeam, the absent-minded bravado now gone.

Has she actually gone? She can't have done, can she? I asked, although more to the shadows than to the ears as uninformed as Ralph's. The torch was only out for a few seconds. We'd have heard the splashing if she'd run, surely. Ralph used the beam to poke and prod the darkness ahead some more. Aside from the occasional beaded reflections in the eyes of rats watching from various hidden cracks and holes in the walls, the way ahead was void of life. Showing the way we'd just come the same attention yielded identical results.

Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, Ralph whimpered. He shone the torch under his chin so I could see his face. His inner brows are raised, cocky smirk gone. his trust-me-brough expression was replaced with bright eyes and a clenched jaw I then realised the real reason he wanted an experienced guide he'd been scared afraid of something exactly like this happening listen I told him don't worry

Trish probably just got spooked when you drop the torch let's just wait around a few minutes if she doesn't come back we'll just turn around and walk the way we came right? Ralph nodded, gulping. He didn't look too convinced as he went back to patrolling our small section of the waterloged tunnels with the reassuring illuminations of the torch. I'll be honest, there wasn't much I could say to placate him. I'd been fully aware of how dangerous these tunnels can be before coming here, more so than Ralph.

All my experience did for me was turn my stomach and nuts. Ralph was worried we may be in trouble Beats a sweat were forming on my hands and palms because I knew we were I decided to do my best not to let him see that though being stuck down here with a panic in Ralph was a much more frightening prospect than a calm one screams carry down here

and you don't always know who will find them after ten minutes of waiting Ralph showing the beam under his chin again She's not coming, he said. His eyes still wide and darting. Take me back. Now. Yeah, let's go, I replied, ignoring the barked order of his tone.

It's crazy to think that, at that point, I still fully believed I'd go back to the hotel, then return tomorrow to meet Trish again, accept her apology, then find Ralph's friend, and make a good film enough to get on Netflix. My genuine concern, as we waited back, the dank, echoy way who'd come was making sure Ralph didn't get too

spooked, he called off the project. Considering how things panned out once we reached the first splitting of the tunnels, reading out loud that those were the kinds of concerns I had feels ridiculous. Jesus, I'm actually laughing. What an idiot I was.

Is it left or right? Ralph was stood in front of the junction where a tunnel split along two paths. He hadn't spoken since we'd set off on our return journey. The quiver at the edge of his words told me all I needed to know about how he was holding up. To be fair to Ralph, I was in exactly the same position. The sight of the tunnel forking off made me realise getting lost down here was becoming an increasingly likely outcome. Um, left, I replied, trying to mask the wavering in my own words and utterly failing.

We didn't turn any corners when we came down here, I think. Yeah? The right ones at a weird angle. We'd have noticed the turn like that, wouldn't we? Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course, yeah, of course, we'd have noticed. I admired Ralph's attempts to talk himself into confidence. The truth is, I had no idea whether we'd turn any corners before Trish vanished.

I'm pretty sure Ralph knew that too. Perhaps he was playing the same game I was. maybe he still thought the only thing at risk was the project in our working relationship the bobbing light ahead of me took a few steps forwards and shot vertically towards a ceiling

Ralph yelled and there was a loud splash from the same direction I could see in the strobe lighting from the torch spinning through the air that he'd slipped onto his ass and must have thrown it into the air as he fell I tripped on something

what the hell ow The torch landed on Ralph's head, bouncing of his skull and landing somewhere in the water. As with the time before, the impact shocked it out of working. We were again in total darkness. What happened? I asked, ears prickling as they started to perk up and compensate for the sudden blindness. Are you deaf? I said,

bloody how that torch is heavy. I said I tripped on something, something in the water. I could hear the splish splash of him. fumbling around in the underspill, searching blindly for our light source. Hold on, I said. My camera is a nod attachment. You mean night vision? If you're 12, I muttered under my breath, rummaging around my case and praying I didn't drop any of my definitely not waterproof spare batteries or memory cards.

After a few minutes, I managed to hook up the nod lens, in total darkness I might add, and with sweaty ponds. There was a ping as the camera word to life, and then I was a bit. bathed in the faint green glow of the LED viewfinder. I screamed so loudly, cement dust fell from the damp ceiling. At the moment the screen swam into focus, the lens had been pointed at Ralph. He was sat in the ankle-high river, sifting through the opaque liquid and a fruitless bid to find the torch. It was also pointing at something else, something long and slimy and pulling in the water

around Ralph. Hair A tangled mess of jet black, obviously human hair. At the centre of the mass, a few feet away from where Ralph was crouched, was a lump. A lump that my brain desperately tried to convince me wasn't the back of somebody's head. Unfortunately, I knew this was a lie. I recognised the back of that head. Only half an hour ago, I've been staring at it as its owner led us.

through the tunnels. What the hell? Ralph yelled in my direction, rising to his feet. As he did, some of the hair caught around his ankle, yanking the lump in the water. Even through the grainy view, I knew the face that turned over, staring pale-eyed and slight jawed at the ceiling. It was Trish. But it wasn't all of Trish. Other than ahead, an unkempt mass of hair.

The rest of her was missing. gone from the neck down. I registered the bile, prickling the back of my throat, long after it was too late to start myself puking. I bent over, retching into the wet void. Man, are you okay? What a... I grabbed Ralph in the dark and yanked him towards me, away from the floating web of hair.

I fumbled around for the back of his head, pushing his face towards a screen to prove myself that I wasn't going mad. It was Ralph's turn to scream, and screamy did. A piercing howl several octaves above what one would expect from a grown man. He also ran. Before I could stop him,

he bolted down the right-hand fork of the tunnel junction. I yelled out in the direction of his footsteps, but before long, the splashing and his unrestrained wailing were a distant echo on the audible horizon. To be fair to Ralph, he wasn't alone in running. Believe me when I say though, I had no intention of spending any time around Trish's severed head. The reason Ralph managed to disappear into the darkness before I could follow was simple. Ralph was faster than me.

I pounded down the tunnels after him. My diaphragm ached, both from running faster than I have ever done, and from the unleashed panic coursing through my system. I was empathetic toward Trish and her life there in the tunnel. but I'd only met her once. She wasn't what I call a friend, barely even an acquaintance. I know it's cowardly, but no part of me was concerned

with hanging around to find out how she met her unfortunate end. I had one drive and one drive only, getting the hell out of those tunnels. Unlike Ralph, I had my camera to guide me as I ran through the inky depths. Outside the screen, the darkness grew thicker, more crushing.

The clawing smell of damp cement and stagnant water swirled and brawled in my lungs, making every pant feel like drowning. I held onto the small LED screen, latching onto it through the haze of blackness and the light spots forming at the edges of eyes. It's at that point when, by sheer accident of thumbbrushing the button, I started recording. Here is when the footage I never want to see starts. I didn't know where I was going, just that I had to get away from where I was. The most primal, untainted human emotion. The raw fear, only those attempting to flee their own end experience. If you watch the footage, the first ten minutes is probably an almost unviewable blur of dark green

as I ran to the endless pitch-black tunnels. Once you hit the eleven, maybe twelve-minute mark. You'll know what I sound like when I literally peamer. myself and call out for my mom. That's the point I found Ralph. I only noticed him because I had to stop to catch my breath again.

I was scanning the corridor ahead through the viewfinder, hoping I catch a glimpse of daylight when I noticed a dark shape on the wall. A long, organic-looking object, crudely nailed into the cement with a thick rail spike. He was a human arm.

Slowly, and despite protest from literally every instinct I have, I continued to pan along the wall. It was at the third object, a dismembered leg hanging from an ankle, that the crotch of my jeans started to feel warm. It was the last object I saw, the one suspended above the other four, that I started begging the dark to summon my mother, to make this all go away, for her to come and chase away the reality the only way a child believes her mother can. It was Ralph's face.

Not his head, just his face, torn from wherever his head was, and hanged from the wall on a nail. The grotesque trophy of a hunter I never wanted to meet. It's fun to put them back together afterwards, but they never move. I felt a cool breath on my left ear. The whisper ripped every scream from my lungs. You'd probably hear it as though it was whispered right into the mic, like an air. SMR clip. It belonged to a child, except no child should speak that monotonously.

No child's voice should have undertones of a blunt cleaver hacking through roadkill. You'd now be at the part of the footage I need, for my own sanity, to believe isn't real. You'd see the view from the wall, hearing nothing but my rapid fire, shallow breathing. Then, something white would block the screen. You'd hear the faint splashes as I walked backwards away from it. You'd have to turn the volume down as it swam into focus, as my screams no doubt reached the volume that made the audio peek and distort. You'd be looking, the face of a baby, except that you'd know that it wasn't a baby. No baby is so large that its head squashes and bulges against the ceiling.

No baby's face is attached to a long, maggot-like body that fades into darkness further into the tunnel behind than you can see. and no baby has four needle-thin arms sprouting from beneath each of its ears. You'd know what you were looking at wanted you to think it was a human baby. You'd know, deep in the most primal part of your brain, that what your eyes were seeing wanted you to think it was a human being

because of the red, dripping sack it carried in one hand and the rusted stained tools it carried in the seven others. You'd look into its lifeless, glassy eyes and you'd know in your bones why we'd evolve to fear the dark and the deep. Most of all, you'd know that it was looking right at you, and you know it knew you knew that, and that that's what it wants. You'd also count yourself lucky, because you'd only have to look at this thing for a few moments.

You'd have mere seconds of existential terror before the footage ended, because that's when I dropped the camera. I didn't stop to think about what I'd seen. I don't think I could think. Not anymore. All I knew, all I was, was run, run now, don't stop. I hurled old full pelt through the dark, stumbling and tripping as I went, all while trying to ignore the sensation of a cold breath on the back of my neck.

Somehow I made it to the surface. I must have found an access hatch ladder or one of the other ground-level entranceways. I'm not really sure. When I came to, I was ranting to a police officer about everything I'd seen from behind the bars of a cell. They honestly didn't care about Trish's disappearance. I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect any different. Ralph's remains were found a few days later, and he was struck up to a victim of one of the aforementioned unsafe tunnel communities. They found none of my DNA on him or the nails holding him in place,

and it was ruled I don't have the strength to drive iron into the concrete. So they let me go. I got the first flight home. That was eight months ago. I tried to forget Vegas for several weeks to move on with my life. I'd nearly managed to convince myself it had never happened that Ralph had been dismembered by a serial killer and that my brain made up the rest as a defense mechanism.

It was seven months ago that I started drinking. The reason? Because one morning when I was out for a jog in my small, cold and sleepy Michigan town. I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. There was a sewer grate by my feet. On the other side of the bars, I saw something, a classy, lifeless surface reflecting the grey Michigan morning light.

A face-sized baby's eye. I stood, watching it for a few moments. I just about managed to convince myself it was my mind playing tricks of me, that it was just water at the bottom of the drain. When the mirage did something unforgivable, it blinked. Since then, I've been struggling with not drinking myself to death.

I leave the house to get booze on the good weeks, attend AA meetings on the bad. I need to believe it isn't real. I need it not to be. I need the pudgy white face following me from the bottom of the river as I walk across the bridge to not exist. Even if a small kid pointed it out to his mom, I need the bus-sized maggot husk

A hiker found in the forest last week to be a coincidence, Or an outdoor modern art installation. I need the recent disappearances of both my neighbours To be because of a nice, normal, harmless serial killer. So please, if you find my camera, Don't follow the instructions in the case. Don't email me the damn footage. I don't want to see it.

No, I can't see it. If I see that footage, it means all of this is real, including the needle-thin-arms pushing their way up through the floorboards in my basement. The festival's season is aangbroken, and that betekent, mudder. And so, ging Kim to Amazon.com.com. On look to a water-dict tent, a comfortable luch bed, oh, so, knus. And Lupeart print regalearze. Miao!

Kim's no worry more to make over the mudder. Just like that dancing the muddermann there. Oh, wait just even. Has he now only mudder on? Oh yeah, only mudder. Drowing? Goar for. Find what you need of Amazon.com.com.

com. It was never more than $5.50 per ride. So, coop now Train Plus for more $4 per month. On nmbs.b. It was discovered 25 miles off the coast of Maine by a lobster fisherman. the tip of a rusted rung ladder, patinated and crusted with binacles, jutting up through the ocean's glassy skin. You haven't heard about it on the news.

You wouldn't have. The Navy buttoned it down faster than you can say Sempfortis. Sonasgant showed the ladder descended in a vertical line for eight miles, at six miles past the ocean floor, disappearing into a newly discovered trench that made Mariner look like the shallow end of a pool. Okay, I'm pretty much the shallow end of a pool. being facetious, but it goes without saying that higher-ups were concerned. Who the hell had built a ladder in the middle of the ocean? Where this trench come from? Aliens, Russia?

That's where I came in. I was a Metac officer in the Navy's Oceanography program, working on experimental... Never mind. Not that it doesn't matter, it does. But if I talk about what I did, who I am, am and why I'm here. I had no doubt wake up on a trap door with a noose around my neck and treason charges being read by a guy in a starched uniform. I figure there's a damn good chance that might happen anyway. Still, I'm compelled to document this because, well, people deserve to know what I saw. The things that haunt the back of my eyelids when I close them at night. I'm in a military hospital right now, laid up in my own private suite. I'm

trying to heal. But without rest, it's proving impossible. I figure getting this out of my system might help. I hope it will at least. But what are they saying, Shawshank? Hope is a dangerous thing. Anyway, I was never greater beginnings, but I guess I should start with the dive. We called it a submersible, but it was a suit. This was no jewels fern, clunky, composite, sink like a rock diving suit. It was lightweight, pressure resistant, and equipped with all the bells and whistles that lent it its not unfair nickname, Iron Man. That's not to say, it was one of those skin-tied jobs you see scuba divers wearing. It looked more like those suits guys diffusing bombs in war zones wear.

That aside, I was thankful there wasn't going to be a 60-pound oxygen tank misaligning my spine. The Iron Man was equipped with an electrolysis filter which converted ocean water into breathable oxygen. The whole shebang was invisible on enemy radars and could supposedly withstand a descent of this stature, not that it had been tested. Basically, I'd be crawling down an ominous eight-mile ocean ladder in an experimental suit that had only been tried in navy swimming pools. My colleagues seized on this predicament, jokingly calling me Lyca in the hours leading up to the dive. In case you're not familiar, Lyca was the dark Soviet Shep. up into space in the 50s, a dog who died.

So, as I stood on the hem of a small Navy vessel, also experimental, looking at the first few rungs at the ocean ladder, which sat 20 feet off the starboard, I wondered if this was my last taste of fresh air. I hope your lunch wasn't too risky, my colleague Matilda joked with a smirk. Blowing gas in that thing, you'll probably suffocate. I smiled, but behind my smile were nerves, raw, tingling nerves. I think she saw, because her hand landed on my shoulder. You'll do fine, Jones.

This time I smiled for real, hoping she was right. A nearby tech asked me if I was ready. I nodded, and the bulky submersibles helmet descended me like a meteor. It really was Iron Man. The big window vise from the front of the face. under the helmet doubled as a screen with oxygen and depth readings, as well as direct comms to and from my people above the surface. There was a POV camera which fed them my perspective as well, so they could monitor and record

my descent, which had started an hour ago. I climbed down rung after rung, daylight fading as it descended into the murky depths. Fish darted past, a little twist of seaweed rolled by. It was all very pastoral And oddly existential The ocean I'm talking the vast Naked depths of it

It's huge and never-ending Look both ways And you see nothing but bluish green water And swirling walls of sediment A reminder of how incredibly small And inconsequential you are It never much bothered me Until the climb

Now I'll never touch ocean water again You good, Jones, Matilda's voice in my ear. Yeah, hon, I'm honky-dory. My delta's just screaming. Should have put in those hours at the gym. Where the hell are those taxpayer dollars going if you don't look good on a recruitment boaster? I felt a smile, creasing on my face. The budget we got, they used models for that kind of thing.

What, you're telling me that strapping young stud saying, forged by the sea, isn't a real seaman? What the hell did I join up for? I laughed. Sheesh, if I'd have known I'd get this much one-on-one with you, I'd have put on Iron Man a long time ago. I'm here too, came Bradley's voice. Imagine a drone operator, a gangly, pimply kid, raised on call the duty.

That's Bradley. What do they say about three being a crowd? I asked. They say, you're closing in 500 metres, Bradley said. Jesus, already? I looked around. and it got darker, the ocean around me fading into a deep dark blue

that bled into a murky cloud. I double-checked my tether, secure. It was a thick steel cable feeding through a pulley, a thing unrollers about the size of a brick which ran along the right out of the ladder. The tether was there in case, for some reason, I lost my grip on the narrow, rusted rungs.

Because if that happened... Well, anyone seen gravity, I shuddered at the thought of sinking down and down with nothing and no one to save me. How's breathing, Middell de rest. I smiled at the concern in a voice, looked up at the little black eye on the top right of the visor, a camera pointing down at me. They could see my face. I could, in theory, see them too, had they decided to beam some footage onto my visor screen.

But this was no time for screwing around, and my visor was filled at the same. numerical readings. On the left side sat a small map detailing the ladder and my position, a red dot on it. I had barely made a dent. Just fine, darling. The reason we weren't using a pod submersible, a single-man coughing connected to the above by a steel cable, or was because I was on the lookout for any markings that might be edged under the ladder's metal skin, anything to denote its origin.

So far, there had been nothing but barnacles. a crab-exic skeleton and a thick patina of algae. When can our ladder slide? Or can you throw a movie up on my screen? This is getting tedious. I was half joking, but not really. It was boring as hell.

One rung after the next. To make the descent faster, I was going to ladder slide, but I couldn't do that until I hit certain water pressure. Some geeky nonsense about how it would be easier to control the descent. The tether wouldn't be a problem there.

The pulley was built to eat through rocks and had been satisfactorily crunching through barnacles the whole way down. Once you hit a thousand meters, Bradley's voice. You guys pick that number out of a hat. The deeper you go, the greater the pressure bearing down in you is makes it easier to control. Damn, I must have skipped that day in school.

I joked, partly. It was in the orientation, Bradley said, not trying to hide his irritation. I think he must have been jealous of my rapport with Matilda. I skip that too. Matilda chuckled. I smiled again, even though I hadn't been joking. Closing in on 750 metres, Leica,

Matilda said, calling me that goddamn dog. Better hope I've got a little more lock on my bones than rusty canines, I said, secretly hoping I was right. I'd hate for you guys to fish me up and just find my naked skeleton You've got charm That's got to be worth something Miltilda said

A smile and a voice Is it worth dinner next week Bradley groaned God You guys make me sick I chuckled Ah don't get blue kiddo You can carry the rings at the wedding

Until they laughed Dinner first Where I know this great place called the base cafeteria 8 o'clock Friday? It's a date, I said, continuing down into the abyss. I had worked up a killer sweat by the time I'd reached the midnight zone,

which sat just past a thousand metres. Murky blackness crushed in. It was suffocating, eerie. I clicked on my shoulder-mounted floodlights, two powerful beams of light blasted forward and, Wham! An ugly, deep-sea fish with a mouth of fangs that went whizzing by my head. I barked a pathetic yelp and joked back, nearly losing my grip on the ladder.

What's wrong? You okay? Middle Derrassed, concerned. I'm fine. Satan's spawn just caught me off guard. Deep sea life? The deepest. You ready to go for the slide? Bradley said. I hesitated.

Suddenly not sure how I felt about what you. plunging down at speeds unknown into the deep, inky blackness beneath me. Wish me luck, kids. Look, Bradley and Matilda said in chorus. I sucked a deep breath, move my hands and feet off the rungs into the outer rails. And then, I slid. It wasn't as exciting as I thought, but it was considerably faster and less draining than climbing down. My eyes watched the ladder blur by, still on lookout for any.

markings. Once or twice I skidded to a stop, thinking I'd spotted something, only to discover it was nothing but deep-sea gunk caked to the metal. By the time I did see any markings, I was too far gone for anyone to care. I stopped, not sure what I was looking at. A strange symbol edged directly into the middle of the rung in front of me. It looked like a weird cross between Arabic and Chinese. Guys, you're seeing this? No reply. Finally, Mittles' voice.

Jones, the footage is freaking out. You okay? I'm fine. Is this getting through? Silence, no reply. Jones, you there? Mithilda, grown concerned. I said I'm cool.

Bradley, distressed in his voice. Buddy, you're getting this? Just fine, can you hear me? I felt panic squeezing up my lungs. Was the comm system screwing up? My screen began to flicker, glitching out. I was growing concerned. Jones, you're not coming through.

I reached up to my visor and gave it a smack. The readings on the screen momentarily realigned before spazzing out beyond control. Now, my colleague's voices were warbled. Words were lost, full of static. Jones, can't hear you, are you? Guys, I can't hear you, fearing my voice. A low hum build to my ears, and then, silence. No voices, nothing.

My helmet basked in the glow of the flickering screen. I lost contact with the world above. I froze, not sure what to do. Split between the symbol and the rung and the disconnect. for my safety net. Well, that's not completely true. Remember the tether connected me to the rung ladder.

There was a little button on the polybox beneath the Lusite case. Punch that button and the polybox would zip me back up to the surface. Okay, screw it. I was going back up. None of this was worth a damn if I didn't have my crew watching my back.

I fumbled out an underwater camera stashed in the pouch of my chest, snapped a photo to the symbol, and began the 10-foot climb, back up to the play box. That's... When I saw the mermaid, it flitted out of view,

the silhouette of a man-sized fish. I froze, not sure what I'd seen. It had only been there for an instant, etched in the beam of my floodlight. Then it was gone. Had I really seen anything? My breath was shallow,

cold in my helmet. I looked to my right. The water was black and murky. I looked to my left and at first I didn't realize what I was seeing. A wall of bodies. Hundreds of mermaid surrounded me. Their eyes glowing pinpricks in the light. The needle-sharp teeth jagged and yellow.

They were awful, deep-sea things. The tails yellow and scaly. The torso was pale and emaciated. Instead of arms, they had straw-thin appendages with hooked tips. When my light hit them, they broke apart, darting off into the same. the darkness in a cacophony of shrill chitters. Jesus, I whispered, my voice hoarse, my throat like sandpaper. I looked up until the pulley box, five rungs away, the button taunting me, the button that

would save me. Or maybe, I was already past the point of saving. I didn't wait. I climbed, fast, fast as I could go, one rung after the next. Four wrongs, three, two. A shrill chittering split through the water. I looked to my left as a mermaid shot toward me. He took appendages cloring at my suit.

I grunted and threw up a defensive arm. A razor shredded through my flesh. Blood plunded out of my ruined arm. I cried out. My suit beeped, screaming warnings in my ear. The mermaid flew off and in came another. I threw the button box on the pulley open about to slam it down when. A freight train barreled through my midsection.

The horrible twisted face of a mermaid filled my visor. It had torn me off the ladder. I floated and tangled with this awful creature. Its gills undulated as it chittered in my face. A great, irishrating sound that cut a bolt of fear through my stomach like an icy dagger. I grunted and jammed my fingers into its gills, hating the way its flesh cracked as I twisted. Now the mermaid was struggling out to my grip. I was winning.

Then I wasn't. Something pounded into the ladder, drawing the polybox, and something else hammered into my back. It was like being caught in a trash compactor. A dozen of these things crushing in on me. I screamed, flailed, fought for my life. Then suddenly, the mermaids disappeared, tails flickering as they flew off into the depths. I was alone, completely alone, floating. to the water, 10, no, 15 feet from the ladder.

My suit was mostly okay, except for my arm which plumes blood into the ocean. I slapped the split fabric which framed my mangled flesh. The fabric self-mended, sealing off my suit. Each section of the Iron Man was isolated, so if one part got damaged, it wouldn't compromise the integrity of the whole outfit, so water wasn't flooding my helmet, yet it very well could be soon. There was a crack in my visor. I quickly reeled myself in, closing in on the ladder and the pulley box, which was my last and final hope. Then I saw it. My heart sank, my stomach dropped. The pulley was nearly hanging off the ladder's rail. It was closed to breaking off.

If that happened, I'd simply drift, fall, die in this oppressive darkness. I moved slow. Slowly, surely, reeling myself in on the cable which rattled the box with each pull. I was lassoing the excess cable around my elbow as I went. My hands reached out, fingertips skimming the wrong ladder. That's when I saw the shark. At first I thought it may have been a mountain that slid off land some long ago year, left afloat these murky depths eternally. But no.

It was a shark. biggest living thing I'd ever seen in my whole life. It must have been twice the size of a Boeing 747. A great pale monster outlined in my floodlights. Eyes as big as swimming pools. Its mouth. I couldn't bear to think what might be in its mouth. Oh my God.

It filled my horizon, moving closer. I was paralyzed by fear. My heart jackhammering in my cage, like a manic construction worker. My hands reached out for the ladder, grabbed it wrong. I started to pull myself up when the pulley box broke free of the outer rail. I looked up and slipped. My hand slipped. My other hand shot out, grasped the ladder, and then a rush of water blew me away.

The shark was passing, and I was sinking, propelled downward by the force of the shark's movement, displacing impossible tons of liquid as it swam. I flailed, grunted, screamed, the readings of my visor still flashing warnings. Then I was being sucked down into the depths. The shark continued on, I drifted down. The ladder slowly, painfully pulling away from me until it faded from view. I tried calling to my people above, screaming into my helmet. At some point I stopped, realizing they were long gone. And to them.

So was I. I sunk for years. It felt that way at least, left to die, a prisoner of the ocean, stranded in a world of darkness. After a while, still sinking, I blacked out. I jolted awake at the bottom of the trench, in the ruins of a great city. Pillars of rock, spies of stone, the husks of incredible mausoleums and coliseums rose around me, greenish in their eon old patina. The city filled the trench as far as I could see,

which was oddly far, seeing as a strange glowing orb filled my vision. It was an impossible sun, a green ball of light, pulsing and bubbling with heat, hovering off in the distance, bathing these alien depths in ethereal light. I stood up.

A thin tangle of blood trailed up from the fabric from the gash of my forearm. I knew. it wasn't a mortal cut, but it was nasty and left me feeling woozy. I clenched it tight with the Velka wrap and looked around. There was nothing but dead buildings stretching endlessly. Ugly, deep-sea fish cut through vacant windows and doorways. I wondered the city for a while, looking for signs of life

or any vestiges of the ladder that it brought me here. I found neither. I walked for a while. hours, days maybe. I slept some. I awoke and walked more. Time must have worked differently down there. The atmosphere felt languid and disorienting.

I'm not sure how long I spent wondering. I found sprawling pictographs on the inside of a domed building. They depicted an aquatic people that once ruled this underwater world. I saw 100-foot effigies of multi-headed, dragon-like beasts, with a multitude of clawed legs and a variety of gills spread out across its form. Among them were other, smaller statues of the beast rolled into a ball. Sometime during my interminable sentence spent in that sunken kingdom, I realised the ball statues were depicting the beast's likeness as an infant,

curled up in an egg. That gave new meaning to the glowing green orb on the horizon. Sometimes, after staring at the green sun for hours, I thought I could decipher the outline of the fetal beast wrapped in on itself, pulsing with life, waiting to be born. Eventually, my mind slipped away from me. I heard voices, Matilda's, Bradley's, a barking dog I thought might have been like her. Sometimes I spoke to them. Other times I didn't, just grateful for the company.

And then, after a long, long while, I died. I was brought back to life on a lobster boat. Two grizzled mariners, with accents like molasses, found me floating listlessly and pulled me abroad. They scraped off my suit and resuscitated me on the fish-cut strewn deck of their little lobster tug. They thought I was dead. My skin was cold, pale as a fish belly. Then I blinked to life. I took a rattling breath of fresh air, savouring the salty taste of my tongue. up at the real world and the two men around me. All I could do was cry.

I was brought to a hospital, then airlifted to the one I'm in now. Matilda came to visit me immediately. She asked me what had happened, I told her. I could see in her eyes that she didn't believe me. I wouldn't believe me. I was gaunt, my hair long, my beard scraggly. I looked like I had survived a lifetime and a desert island. except for the fact that I was ghostly pale and not sunburned to a crackling brown.

But it was good seeing her, until she looked me in the eyes, told me I'd been missing for eight months. Military man after military man came to visit me, higher-ups and crisped uniforms weighed down by medals. I was interviewed until my head spun. My story never changed. I told them to check my handheld camera.

I learned it was never recovered. Whether they didn't believe me or didn't want to wasn't entirely clear. I had my scar to back of my story, and my time spent missing. I told them to send another man down, but they gave me some bureaucratic word vomit about how the risk assessment blah, blah, blah. Apparently, that suit I'd taken down wasn't cheap. Who would have thought?

In the end, none of what I said seemed to matter. Perhaps they figured me for a deserter, who took their top-secret tech and defected to God knows where, Tramador maybe. All I know is that at some point or another, I was declared insane and ordered to a stint of convalescence, where I remain. I've tried to make sense of it all, but I can't. I wonder about the ladder and whether it was built as an invitation to that underwater place or as an escape. Since I've gotten back There's been a hollow ache

In the centre of my chest A low hum in the pit of my soul It's constant It's dread Dread of what I've seen Dread and what might become of the world If that thing ever rises To reclaim its kingdom

I've come to the end of my tale And I still don't feel any better Every time I close my eyes I see that green sun I see it pulse up and flickering with life. And I know for certain... It's an egg.

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Hearing that sound in my local library always annoyed me, especially when it came from one of the librarians. I'm always hearing on the news how libraries are struggling. These would just be thankful a group of young people like my friends and I choose one as a haunt.

I live in a medium-sized town on the West Coast. We're not quite L.A., but drive a few hours and you're firmly in California I'm not going to give you any more details than that, because I don't want you to come looking. I'll be honest, I don't think the reason my friendship group is now me, myself and I, is unique to our Manifist Destiny era Ramshaka wooden local library. I'm holding out hope that it is, though,

so I'm going to do everything I can to make sure nobody comes snooping around. This is a warning, not an invitation. We started hanging around, and eventually, in the library last year. With the protests and lockdowns, travelling to LA, or one of the other larger cities, didn't have the same appeal. It certainly wasn't an enticing prospect for our parents, so either by parental law or whatnot, we spent the summer of our sophomore year finding things to do in our sleepy hometown. Since the bowling alleys or theatres were closed or members only for the time being, the local library ended up being our port of call.

There were five of us, me, Jackson, Henry, Beth and Lara. For context too, we were your typical nerdy geek punch. I'm aware that the library isn't the first choice for many folk my age, but we weren't cool enough to go driving around the desert or find somewhere to drink liquor stolen from our parents. What we were cool enough to do is get really interested in any one of the niche topics found in the old dusty volumes on the shelves. Week one was Peruvian horticulture,

week two, the naval advances of the 19th century Holland. We didn't take it too seriously, you understand, and I realize now how dumb it sounds out loud. However, despite how dry these topics may be, I would give anything to have another Friday night PowerPoint showdown at Laras or hear Jackson tell me about the raunchy extramarital affairs

of an obscure architect only famous for designing some kind of bridge in the 1790s. I miss them. It's only been a week, but I missed them all so much. It was the evening before one of the aforementioned

PowerPoint lecture and pizza evenings that everything went wrong. The topic was the history of um, female satisfaction. Lara had picked the topic for that week, and since she was Dayton Jackson, this made for a lot of jokes,

innuendos, and over-excited teenage women. whispers and giggling. Sh, the librarian was not happy. Her harsh hisses pierced my eardrums every 20 minutes or so. Genuinely, we did try to keep the noise from our little corner of the maze of shelves to a minimum. There's only so much self-control, bored teenagers can exert, however. This is your last warning.

After a few hours, we all looked up to see the aging librarian. She was stood above us, arms crossed, her raisin face locked in. a skull. Keep the noise down, I won't be able to tell you again. With that, she stomped off back into the labyrinth of spines and pages. What did she mean by that? I think she means, shut up, La. Jackson replied, grinning. That's usually the definition of, sh. She gave him a playful punch in the arm, rolling her eyes. I know that, Einstein. Why did you say, I won't be able to tell you again? Does she think we're going to go somewhere?

"'That is a weird way to say it,' I shrugged. "'But she is old, like way old. "'I think she's been the librarian since my dad was a kid.' "'Jackson, shut up. "'Whatever, she should just be happy. "'Someone is actually using the place. "'I'm going to take a leak.' "'He strode off, following the librarian into the dusty room.

"'He's going to read all the notes he's been making, I'll bet,' Henry said, "'grining and pointing to the book he left on female anatomy. Lara went red, and we all howled with laughter. It was loud, too loud. What the? We heard Jackson's yell, even above our mirth. In an instant, we stopped laughing. Jackson?

Lara called out. A trembling query was answered as soon as her lips closed. The response came from everywhere, all at once, and it wasn't Jackson. The voice was thin and sharp. somehow faint in my ears, but a deafening roar by the time it reached my brain. It seemed to be coming from nowhere and ever at once. A homeless sound ringing from the gaps between covers and unopened pages.

A horrible sound, far worse than any reprimand from the librarian. It sounded more mechanical than human, like a thousand typewriters scraping together to make an imitation of speech. Jackson? Beth and Henry both yelled this time. Lara had stood up, fists clenched. Again, the hiss rolled from under shelves and out of the floorboards. It was louder this time, longer.

It scratched my ears and caused spots of light to crackle at the outermost edges in my field of view. Beth started to cry. Still, no response from Jackson. Jack... Shh! This time, I was the one ushering the silence. I raised the finger to my lips, the other held. in the air telling the others to wait.

As soon as we stopped, so did the noise. One moment the air was electric with malicious static, and the next you could have heard a pin dropping another much smaller pin. We waited for a few moments, not saying a word. I could hear nothing except from the occasional sub from Beth and the thud-thud-thudding of my heart in my ears. Then, from the shadow maze of shelves, became a soft thump, like something heavy being dropped to the floor.

Something or someone. Now, as you can probably guess, my little group of rag-tag misfits wasn't what you'd call brave. If we were, we'd have spent our summer somewhere much less tame than the library. However, while not brave by any measure, I was the most adventurous of the group. It's the reason I was the only one out of Jackson, Henry and I, I didn't get too much hassle from the athletic kids or stoners. Yeah, I may not have gotten into trouble for fights or cigarettes, but in detention, they still had respect for the guy that nearly blow up the chemistry lab

and had the school computers to run Minecraft back and fourth grade. I mentioned this, not to brag, but because I don't want you to think I abandoned Lara, Beth and Henry. One of us had to go and find Jackson after hearing that thump. I was the only one it was ever going to be. They couldn't have moved even if they wanted to And besides, I had no idea what would Anyway, I gave Laura a nod

And put my fingers to my lips again, hoping the message was clear I slowly crept forwards towards the shelves A firm grasping at my ankle had been whipping around Ready to run for my life It was only Beth, sobbing and shaking head at me slowly I didn't want to show her I was as scared as she looked so I shot her a grin and a thumbs up. Lara took her hand and I continued onwards.

I tiptoed between shelves for what felt like ours. I read once that adrenaline can distort your sense of time. Even fact that my vital flight response was in overdrive, I was still walking much, much longer than I should have been. The longer I walked, the stranger and more unfamiliar around me the shelves appeared. The grey steel modular shelves gradually grew. gave way to wart, wooden units. The books they contained had our titles, by authors, either didn't recognize, or knew by

their infamy, outside of literature. The expendability of man by H. Himmler, Trends in Uplestry and Leather Work by E. Jean, and Lost in Lucritivity, My Story by H. Weinstein. The font on the spines were jagged and old, and, after a while, the titles paid no attention to punctuation or capital letters. Some didn't even have an author. Burned them by a guy. Ha ha ha, the children are bleeding.

A house-wise tale. And perhaps most chillingly of all was what was clearly a photo album with dead babies scrawled on the side in dark green sharpie. The weirder the books and shelves got, the more the light changed. The library wasn't well lit to begin with.

Heavy shutters and decades of dust did a good job of keeping the 24-6-365 West Coast sunlight out, and the strip of lights overhead hadn't been replaced since the 1970s at least. Well, the lights that were overhead, I should say. I looked up when I realized that the ceiling above me and the yellow flickering lights that hung from it had gone. In their place was, well, nothing. Above me stretched the void, an emptiness that faded into inky blackness barely a few inches above the shelves, a cloud of impenigable shadow roiling above this unfamiliar section of the library. However, I was not in darkness. If anything, the place I was in

now was better lit than the library I knew. I glanced down at my hand, holding it above my arm. Browning, I looked around and turned around on the spot, heart rate rising with each shuffling step. I had no shadow, neither did the shelves. Even underneath them was lit as if someone was shining an industrial strength flashlight in every spot at once. It was a harsh white light with no source, one that made things look sharper

and more in focus than they should. As I said, I was adventurous and had a rebellious streak, but I was never brave. Beth, Henry, Lara? I called out, breaking my carton rule. My voice trembled and cracked. I could feel my bottom lips start to wobble.

I'm not ashamed to admit that at all. If anything, I'm proud that I didn't saw myself. Jackson? I stammered. There was no response, not even from the presence that had hounded us just after Jackson vanished. Not that I was complaining.

There was nothing but silence. Librarian lady, I hazarded. Still, nothing. The silence seemed to press down on me, stifling my words before they could echo further than a shelf or two. I couldn't even hear a ringing in my ears. I could feel my heart pumping in my chest, but I realised there was no rhythmic rushing of blood against my eardrums. I was about to turn and run as fast as I could back to the group, in this place where no human should tread. decided to respond.

I heard it a few shelves over, an unmistakable wet squelch of something large and organic, falling from a great height. Jackson? I'm proud of myself for the fact that, in that moment, concerned for my friend's safety, superseded my growing terror.

I skidded nearly to a crash after hurling myself towards the intersection between rows. I turned in the direction of the thud, ears simultaneously both straining for further sounds and trying to ignore the fact that my shoes were silent on the threadbare carpet. I stumbled into the shelving crossroads just in time to catch a glimpse of something of someone, striding purposefully away down another alley of oddly titled box, an alley that was in the exact direction the sound had come from.

I didn't have time to take in too many details as I followed, despite my limbs better judgment. Just a thin leg in dark grey suit trousers, an overly polished black boot, and the swish of a dusty, dark velvet coat-tail. I was relieved, and still am, to have found the bookshelf file where the squelch had come from. It was empty. Now I know what I just chased. I count my blessings that the others must have picked that moment to start making noise.

That's the only reason I can come up with for why it wasn't waiting for me when I came around the corner. As it was, I was still alone. At least I could see where the sound had come from. There was a book laying face down and open on the floor. I never seen a book so large or thick in my life, like somebody had combined three Bibles in a copy of the Quran for good measure. The cover was moist,

and reflections from an unseen light danced across its slick surface as I edged closer. My hairs rose, lifted with static, generated by a new, inexplicable apprehension forming on the surface of the deep dread I was already drowning in. I could see that the pages were wet too. So wet, they were dripping. A dark puddle was forming around the open tome. If I didn't know better, I could have sworn it writhed every so often. No, not writhed.

Breathe. It was almost imperceptible. But at regular intervals, the spine rose and fell a fraction of a fraction of an inch. Once I was a few steps away, I could see the leather band volume was indeed leaking an okrum mucus from unseen pores, just enough to give it a coat of foul-smelling grease

that pulled around it. I didn't have too long to inspect this though. Barely a moment passed between me reading the title and running back towards the others with urine between my legs, tears streaming from my eyes and the loudest scream I've ever mustered tearing my throat apart. The skin-bound book was called

The Sanctity of Silence by Jackson Bridger. I only knew one Jackson Bridger and his voice sounded far too much like the shrieks that followed me as I charged down the impossible endless rows of a barren't text by infernal minds.

I must have been running impossibly fast because I found myself back at our corner in only a few minutes. If I wasn't already sobbing, I would have started then. All three had gone. There was, however, another damp, seeping book on the ground. This one was much smaller than Jackson's,

and the words scarred into the cover read, Volume control for dummies by L. Easley. I don't need to spell it out for you, I'm sure. I knew an L. Eastley. Lara. I don't know what compel me to bend down and open the front cover. Probably some twisted counterpart of this. the same curiosity that led me to the body-proofing chemistry lab incident.

The wetness on the leather felt greasy and viscous, a substance that reminded me of both oil and phlegm. That wasn't what immediately grabbed my attention though. The first thing I noticed was how warm the material was. I know warmth is usually calming, but at that moment it was exactly the last thing I wanted from a book whose cover's similarity to human skin I found it harder to ignore by the second When the cover fell open and the first page revealed itself, I nearly threw up.

It was Lara's face. Well, a picture of her face. I hope at least. Her once attractive features, Jackson definitely punched above his weight, were twisted and crushed, as though she had her head violently forced against a photocopier. Her eyes closed, nose bent and clearly broken, lips pressed so hard that teeth poked through bloody wounds around.

her nose and chin. The picture looks so... Real. Realer than any photograph. I don't know how to explain it, but it looked clearer and more realistic than if she'd been stood in front of me. Shaking, my shameful curiosity

moved my fingertips across the image of my missing friend. What colour remained in my own face drained. The page was bumpy, rough, although barely. If I wasn't touching it, I'd have no idea that it wasn't flat. It also didn't feel like paper.

Paper, isn't that soft? Isn't that warm? Doesn't have fine hairs only detectable by the lightest touch. I nearly screamed when I felt the light tickle of an eyelash. I didn't have time to, though. The picture of Lara opened its eyes. The next few moments are a blur. I must have dropped Lara.

No, can't think like that. The book that looked like Laura Because the next thing I knew I was in the entranceway to the library The normal entranceway To the normal library I was on my backside Covered in tears and urine

And the oily flame from the book But I was in the real world I was on my ass because I just bumped into the librarian The old woman glared down at me Shhh She hissed I was about to wail in protest To tell her something horrible

That happened to my friends That she needed to run When my words caught to my throat Something dripped on my exposed ankle Something thick, greasy and warm I felt my gaze slowly pull upwards To the ancient woman above me Drawn with horror to what she clutched

Between a frail arms She was carrying two bucks Each was bound in a thick leather cover That heaved in and out a grasp. The faint folds and stretches around her hands wriggling and twitching too clearly to ignore. What made me scream so loudly they've had to remove my tonsils, however, were the titles. I never found out what Henry's volume was called. Seeing the words, I never told him I loved him, the life and quiet times of Beth Stanford was enough. I've never been so glad to feel sunlight.

I threw myself out the double doors before the librarian, or the thing she was working for, had a chance to punish me for my loud transgressions. As you can guess, it didn't take long for the police, not to mention Jackson, Henry, Beth and Laura's parents to start asking questions. I haven't been able to say a word for a week now. The only reason I'm not as suspecting their disappearance is the state the local sheriff found me in. By his reckoning, no guilty person would turn up at a police station, coughing up their own blood, and covered in every fear-related bodily excretion imaginable. I haven't found any bodies, or the books. I haven't written down what happened until now.

Nobody in my town would believe me anyway. I wouldn't have. What I've been doing since then is research. This is why I'm begging you to stay away. Not just from my library, but any of it. of them. You're probably wondering whose leg I saw before I found the book about Jackson. I was wondering the same thing. Despite the trauma, my curiosity had to know. It was when I found an article in the archives of the local paper from the early 1900s that I got my answer. It was a piece

from 1902 titled, Local Library brings literacy to ex-prospector town. There was a photograph in the article, A photograph of a building I recognised instantly As the same library My friends and I Made the grave mistake of haunting Something in one of the sepia windows caught my eye

After mucking around With a contrast and brightness and Photoshop for a bit I saw what it was Instantly I knew I was looking at the thing Responsible for my friends Never leaving that library

It was a person Although it was impossible to tell if they were male or female. Broad shoulders and white hips framed an impossibly narrow waist. He was wearing a dark suit and velvet overcoat, vintage by today's standards, but decades ahead of where fashion was in the 1910s. In its spindly arms,

it held a stack of thick volumes bound in a material I recognized instantly. Well, all except the topmost tone of the stack, the one I also knew I'd seen before. It was the plastic photo album. I didn't have too long to wonder why a figure in 1902 had a photo album or Sharpie however. The thing's face made me snap my laptop shot and throw it out the window too quickly to inspect it further. It didn't have a face.

It didn't even have a head. His neck extended almost twice as far as any human neck I'd seen. It ended, not in a head, but in a massive, face-sized ear. An ear that was facing something in the room, but turned to a head. towards a screen and a few split seconds before my laptop ended up smashed on the porch two stories below. I've not done any digging since then. I don't know and I don't want to know. I'm currently in the process of starting trauma counselling and speech therapy.

There'll also be funerals to attend once they finally give up searching. As I said, this is supposed to be a warning. Stay away from libraries. Because in every odd photograph of one I looked at in my first therapy session, I could clearly see the silhouette of the librarian of the other library, waiting in the shadows for anyone that disturbs their books and their silence. The festival's season is aangroken and that beteked mudder. And so, ging Kim to Amazon.com.com.

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