CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 2+ HOURS of SCARY REDDIT r/Nosleep HORROR STORIES

Episode Date: January 17, 2021

LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00 "If the screen of your Nintendo Switch cracks, stop playing" Creepypasta►21:11 "The Door With The Ivory Handle" Creepypasta►46:30 "I responded to an online classified ad. What I got was a lot more than I bargained for" Creepypasta►1:01:14 "I live in a small town in Northern Maine. Something strange is coming out the ocean" Creepypasta►1:35:43 "II thought I'd found my Doppelganger, but the Truth was much more Terrifying" Creepypasta►1:54:01 "Issue 237" 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. CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY- Adnan Ali: ►https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Pm...►https://www.instagram.com/addu_art/SUGGESTED 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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B'E I decided to download Links Awakening for the Switch a couple weeks ago. I had had the game as a kid on Game Boy, but I don't remember getting very far. I think I mostly cut grass in the starting area until I found enough money to buy all

the items. The remake looked cute though, and nowadays I could just look up a guide if I got stuck. The game downloaded while I crept upstairs and migraved myself a burrito. My upstairs roommates were working from home. I was still going out on the front lines every

night. We'd settled in to a kind of half-ass quarantine system. I snuck around during the night like some kind of ghost living in their basement and they didn't try to find me. The microwave clock, after I heated up my food, said it was close to seven in the morning.

I'd finished my shift about an hour ago, came home and known as soon as I got an into the shower that I was looking down the barrel at another sleepless night. I was tense and twitchy, a band of not quite pain pulling my back muscles tight.

The warm morning, had done little to help, even when I turned it to scolding. So, I pulled my switch out from where it was charging under my bed and blew $60 on a remake of a game I could have emulated for free. Now I took my burrito, wrapped in a paper plate, back down to my room. I pulled the blankets up around me one-handed as I stepped into the bed with my food held high. I heard a clatter and grimaced. I put the burrito down on the corner of the bed and knelt over the side.

Yeah, I'd knock my switch to the floor. I picked it up and turned it over. I wanted to say that I barely noticed the crack, but it was unmistakable, a web of cracks around the area of a housekey in the bottom right corner. The screen was still lit up and working just fine, though. I tapped the crack with my thumb, and it didn't seem to crumble or electrocute me.

Still, I snuck out of my room again and found a roll of clear tape in the kitchen drawer. I returned to my room and cover the crack in tape. Good as new. The download was only half finished. Paranoid about little shards of glass sticking to my fingers, I washed my hands and shook my sheets out after setting the switch carefully back onto the floor.

Then I got back into bed and read news on my phone while I ate my room temperature burrito. The game finished downloading as I was chewing the dents of a wadhoff Tortilla that signifies the ending of any microwave burrito. I picked up the switch and ran my finger over the tape. At least it wasn't a big crack. I started up the game and soon found I was able to forget about the crack. It's kind of a weird game I found out.

Most of the surreal stuff and references to other games was the flown over my head when I was a kid. It wasn't quite as hard as I remembered though. I got through the first dungeon easily and played through to somewhere near the end of the second dungeon, where I finally hit a miniboss I wasn't able to instantly destroy. The sun was bright around the edges

on my blackout curtains by this time and I was finally starting to feel tired. I cleared out a room on the way back to the minibus and left Link facing the next door while I went to go brush my teeth. I'm sure I left him facing the door at the top of the screen. When I came back to make one more attempt on the miniboss

before trying to get some sleep though, I found him facing down. His little cartoon face pointing up at the camera. It must have been an idle animation, I thought, and picked up the switch without pressing any buttons to see what he would do. Instead of kicking up his feet

or stretching, though, Link lifted a hand, pointed straight at the camera, and screamed. I watched, fascinated. Was this a cutscene? A special enemy? Had the game seen me die a bunch of times and then stopped playing, and this had prompted an event?

Link's scream used the same sound effect as when he fell down a hole. A short clip, but he was playing over and over as he pointed and screamed. After a solid minute of this, I started to feel creeped out. I'd hit a glitch, I realised.

I was sure of it when none of the game button seems to work, and Link kept screaming at me. The home button still worked, and when I pressed it, the room was suddenly quiet of Link's repeating screams. I closed the game and powered off the console,

hoping it had saved. my progress. In the dark of my room, only glints of light from outside dance across my ceiling. I lay in bed, unable to sleep, barely able to close my eyes. I awoke to my alarm that night. I almost trampled my abuse switch, which I sat down on the floor the night before, getting out of bed. I shook my head and plugged it in. My eyes were burning and my tongue was dry. I went through the motions of getting ready for work, putting on my uniform shirt and a company jacket. I still felt groggy, so I decided to wash my face before leaving. When I turned on the bathroom light, it was overwhelmingly bright. I squinted my eyes closed

and warmed up the water, then scrubbed it over my face, willing myself to wake up enough to drive. Gradually, my eyes adjusted to the light. When I finally opened them, I looked down into the sink to see that the water running off my face had a pink tint to it. My gaze whipped up to the mirror and I realized I had some kind of split lip. Right at the corner of my mouth a trail of bloody water dripped down.

I grabbed a dark towel and wiped it off checking my clothes for stains before I checked my face for the extent of the damage. I thought my lip had just cracked from the cold overnight. A scab opened up by the water. But when I brushed my finger oh the split, I felt something small and hard.

On the tip of my finger was a tiny glass shard. I stuck my head under the faucet, trying to flush out the wound as much as possible. I felt my mouth with water and spat it out about eight times, probing every inch with my tongue to find glass in my mouth. I didn't find any more pieces. Eventually, my second alarm started playing from my phone and I had to leave or be late for work. I drive myself off thoroughly awake now I leaned in toward the mirror and looked at my lip

It was a pretty bad split Branching off along my cheek and still oozing blood At least I would be wearing a mask at work I took some toilet paper to keep dabbing at it as I drove When I got to the gas station I saw my co-worker through the lighted window anxiously checking the darkness outside for my arrival I put on my cloth mask

and tossed the bloody wad of toilet paper into the trash before I hauled open the door and went inside. My co-worker heaved a sigh of relief upon seeing me, breath fogging up his glasses. He was already clocking out on the computer by the time I reached the counter. You're good, right? He said, eyes on the screen.

I gotta go. Greg's in the back. The franchise owner hated customers. Hopefully he would stay back there and let me handle them all night, for all our sakes. Yeah, fine, I said, tonguing the corner of my mouth under my mask. It still stung. My co-worker was out the door in seconds. I clapped in and pulled up a stool to the register, hunching over my phone.

We would get another hour or so of late commuters, then I get started on cleaning up the shelves and mopping. Greg stepped up once to check on the shift change, grunted at me, and disappeared again. I almost fell asleep in my stool in between customers. just as I was about to step out into the store to clean the bell rang again A man and a child came in Almost identical Except that he was wearing a hoodie and jeans

And she was wearing a little pink coat I settled back onto the stool And called the greeting The man dropped into the back towards a call of beer And the girl hopped over to a candy display Closer to my counter I watched a slap a palm onto every pack of candy she could reach Like she was playing the final level in a rhythm game

with 20 buttons. She stopped with her hand on a pack of M&M's squeezing it. Then she looked at me. I was lifting my hand to wave at her. When she screamed at the top of her lungs, an ear-splitting scream that shattered the quiet at the store. But still heard the rattling of a case of beer falling to the ground as her father rushed over to her.

What's wrong, baby? He asked, voice raised over her continued screams as he picked her up in his arms. She pointed, straight at me. All I was doing was trying to will my ear drums to stay intact. The man opened his mouth, gaze turning to me, but he didn't say anything. He seemed to stop short, eyes wide, bewildered. He opened and shut his mouth a couple more times, but never managed to say anything. He pushed through the door back into the night,

carrying the screaming child out of the store. After the door thumped shut, it was quiet again, and I cautiously lowered my hands. What had that been about? I didn't look that bad, did I? What's all that then? Greg called from the back room. Nice to know that he would leap into action in the event for an emergency. Just a kid thrown a tantrum, I yelled back, but I was shaken. If it hadn't been for the half-remembered glitch in Link's awakening, I could have shrugged it off.

I touched my face, wondering what the girl had seen, and my hands. came away sticky. The blood was bright against my palm. Oh God, my mask was completely soaked through with it. I pulled it off and looked at it, repulsed. How had I not noticed the cut of my lip bleeding so much? He must have split open again. I checked out the window for approaching cars,

and when I didn't see anyone, I stole the way to the bathroom to rinse the mask and wipe off my face. Forget about the little girl. I almost shrieked when I saw it. saw my face in the mirror. Taking off the mask had left me with blood smeared over one half of my cheek. I started to wipe it off with wet paper towels and realised with a hiss that the cut had spread, branching over my cheek along several stinging lines.

Worse, I found morbid to glass, tiny and sparkling in the yellow light of the bathroom. I cursed under my breath, handshaking. How could this happen? I was sure nothing had come off of the switch screen I took several breaths trying to make them deep ones I would make sure when I got home I would clean everything and put more tape on the crack screen After buying the game

I didn't think I could afford to pay someone to fix the screen until my next paycheck But maybe I could get a kit and try it myself The blood was mostly cleaned off my face But my white mask seemed like a lost cause It was stained and splotched pink and red even after all my efforts with the warm water. I hesitated for a minute, then squeezed it dry and pulled it back on.

I told myself it would just look like tie-dye, instead of gruesome. The rest of the night passed in a painfully slow crawl. I kept a stack of paper towels under the cast register and kept wiping off blood under my mask as my network of cuts continued to ooze. I barely cleaned, straightening the beard display and making a half-hearted pass with a mop over the floors. I was watching the clock, and I punched out and left as soon as my relief stepped through the door, brushing past her, head down so she wouldn't notice what was wrong with me.

The sky was turning from black to grey when I got home. The house was silent. All my roommates still asleep two floors up. I threw my stained mask away and washed my face again. I was hungry and thirsty, but the thought of swallowing anything made me bulk, so afraid of more shards of glass. Eventually, I managed to drink a few mouthfuls of water from the bathroom faucet after sticking my whole head under the stream and rinsing my mouth out several times.

There was a black towel in the bathroom closet, and, after I changed my clothes, I draped it over my shoulders as I took my next steps. First, I slathered more tape over the switch screen, covering the cracks and the surrounding two inches and cloudy tape. Then I tore every bit of linen off my bed and dragged it outside to shake it out until my head spun. I hiked it all upstairs and shoved it in the laundry machine on a double-inch cycle. Finally, I took my roommate's vacuum from the upstairs closet and vacuumed every single thing in my room, including the blinds and pillows. It probably woke my roommates up, but I couldn't wait. I was left with a clean room and an exhausted body.

I lay down on the bare mattress with a towel between my face and the pillow. I slept fitfully, uncomfortable and anxious. The light through the curtains always seemed to cut through into my eyes just as I was drifting off. My roommates moved around on the floor above, talking, laughing, playing music, coming and going. I could usually tune it all out,

but now every footfall pounded into my bones. I lay there with a towel draped over my face and waited either to die or to fall asleep. I woke with a start in the dark of the night confused and panicked that my alarm hadn't sounded. It took me too long, looking at the calendar on my phone, to remember that I wasn't scheduled to work today.

I had the night off. The bare mattress woozed as I dropped flat onto it. So, I had the night off. Why wasn't I more happy about that? I could hear my roommates thumping around upstairs. I dragged myself to the bathroom and rinse the clots of blood from my face, picking more shards of glass out of my skin, almost routinely. I dumped the black towel into the basket and dug out the rattiest replacement for it I could find.

I returned to my room and sat with my back against the wall, reading articles on my phone, as I listened to the sounds of my roommates upstairs trail off and quiet. I would wait a while more before going back up and drawing my sheets. Maybe I could even bring myself to eat something. My switch was on the floor near me, and my resolve to pointedly ignore it was waning. I'd bought the game I wanted to play it Finally I put down my phone

and picked up the switch Looking it over suspiciously for flakes of glass My tape seemed to have contained it But then That was what I thought the last time too I turned it on and started Link's awakening The game seemed normal Except for the big foggy area

On the third of the screen covered in tape Despite that I managed to beat the second dungeon While sitting on the floor in my room I stood up and scratched at the cuts of my face, still dripping onto my new towel and wandered around in the game a little more. Trying to explore the map, I started to run into problems

with a taped-up screen obscuring things. Looking at the ceiling, then at my phone, it was past one. The house was silent again. Before I went upstairs, I put the switch into sleep mode. I didn't want to see any more glitched out idle animations. Then I walked slowly up the dark stairs,

alert for any sign that one of my roommates was still hanging around. But all the lights were off in the middle level. I went to the living room and removed the switch there from its dock, replacing it with mine and sliding a controller out. I sat on the couch, feeling as though I was getting away with something. It took a moment to find the remote, stuck between the cushions of the couch. I fished it out and turned on the TV, squinting against the sudden light of the switch home screen there.

I turned the volume down. and resume my game. I zoned out playing, forgetting my laundry and my hunger. I made a fair amount of progress before I had to return to the village area and everything went to hell. As soon as I entered the town,

I got a weird feeling. The music wasn't playing. I could tell even with a lowered volume. And as I ran a link past the NBC's, the NBC's stopped and turned towards the screen. All at once, each one of them raised a hand to point at me. and screamed.

The volume wasn't quiet anymore. The screams were as loud as the little girls in the shop had been. Every single MPC I ran past did it. In a panic, I made a link run past them. I ran to the north side of the town, but there wasn't an exit to the village, and there were more MPCs screaming at top volume there. I entered the house there as lights started turning on upstairs.

The TV was mercifully quiet. The house had an MPC in it that was a woman holding a baby, and she wasn't pointing or screaming. One of my roommates had started coming downstairs, and the dialogue box popped up. It said, Hey, what's going on? My roommate said from the bottom of the stairs.

I told my gaze away from the TV to look at her. What? I said. She was standing on the bottom step, holding the railing, clearly half asleep. A girlfriend was following her down, and our other roommates were on their way. I could hear them. A sound effect and a new box popped up on the screen.

Are you okay? It's nothing, I said. Just as my roommate said, are you okay? I was already pulling the switch out of its stock. I'm fine, I said. I could see the blood on the towel of my shoulder. I could feel it itching as it dried on my face, even as more dripped down my chin.

It's fine, I'm sorry. I fled, leaving them all standing in confusion in the light of the stairway. I closed myself in the basement bathroom and saw myself wide-eyed in the mirror. The whole side of my face was cracked and bleeding, all the way up to my eye. The switch was still on, and sounds indicated more dial-ed boxes were popping up. Are you okay? Are you okay? Or was that then? What's wrong, baby? It's nothing, it's nothing. I turned on the shower and climbed in, still in the oversized clothes I'd worn to bed. I dug at the cuts of my face, feeling the grain and bite of glass there.

I looked at the pink water pulling around my feet and then back of the switch on the edge of the sink. There was a stopper in the drawer there and I dug it out and plugged the drain. The tub started to fill. What's all that then? Just a kid thrown a tantrum. It's nothing. It's fine. It's fine.

When there were several inches of water, I stepped out, took the switch and peeled the tape off the cracks. It's fine. It's fine. Just like it thrown a tantrum. It's nothing. I load the switch into the water by one corner. as it continued to ping with a sound of new dialogue popping up. Tiny bubbles floated up from the cracks in the ports. What's the wrong, baby, it's nothing, it's nothing, it's fine.

I dropped it and gripped the edge of the tub, kneeling on the floor. In the moment before the screen went black, I thought I read. I'm sorry. I sat there and watched the tub, full of bloody water and ruined switch for a long time. I dozed there, head pillowed on my eyes, arms, but snapped awake every time. I didn't die, or catch fire, or spontaneously start coughing at water. I didn't dissolve into a bloody heap.

My cuts are getting better. I've thrown everything away I couldn't get the bloodstains out of and scrubbed every inch of the basement bathroom. My roommates never asked me anything more about that night. The switch is still in my room, wrapped in a garbage bag under my bed. I wonder if I'll ever bring myself to get rid of it. I don't know which is worse. Someone else getting it and trying to use it,

only for the same thing to happen to them, or the rest of the screen getting crushed in a trash compactor. As my face heals, I know this will seem stupid and superstitious, so I made myself sit down and write it all out before I convinced myself I made it all up. I don't know if it was just my switch. I don't know if what happened to me

was some weird combination of a defective screen and a glitchy game, or something harder to explain. Whatever it was, I'm still afraid to look at myself in the mirror. I hesitate before I wash my face, afraid to feel the grit of glass embedded in my skin. It's strange how someone can have an impact on your life without being around. For me, that person is my grandfather. I never knew him, never even laid eyes on him,

and yet his absence in my family cast so large a little. shadow, it was almost a presence in itself. We would see him in my mother's stiffened face whenever we asked about him. We would hear him during my grandmother's long silences, twisting a wedding ring in endless circles, staring into space. We would feel him in the walls of his great house, built from the fortunes of his antiques empire, his collection hidden away or shrouded from view. He did not feature in any of the empty photo frames, and yet, even as a child, I knew it was still his house. My grandmother just lived in it.

His employee still worked, hustling and bustling with deliveries. Items bought and sold in his name still brought money to my family. But there was a hole inside that house, and within our lives, a silence that screamed of betrayal, abandonment and unanswered questions. Ran off with some young lass, I overheard one of the movies say one day. He grunted. as he lowered a chest of drawers, blacked oak shimmering in the afternoon sun. My sister and I were playing hide-and-seek, and so they had no idea I was eavesdropping.

I stayed in my hiding place, peeking between ruffled dust sheets. There was a soft thunk as a leg settled on the polished wooden floor, and the men let out a sigh of relief. That's what I reckon anyway. Nah, said the other voice dismissively. You do that, you take your money with you. my ears strained away through their accents. I knew exactly who they were talking about, and this sort of gossip was far more than I was ever likely to hear from any of my family.

So, what do you think then? Asked the more well-spoken voice, the new boy most likely. I had something of a crush on him. Some are dodgy, said the dismissive voice. Another grunt, another thud. Where do you want this one? Over by the grandfather clock, please. There was a pause and the new boy lowered his voice.

What do you mean, dodgy? Come on, lad, heaved the dismissive mover through gritter teeth. They shuffled across the floor until I could barely see them and plunk down the cabinet. You don't get this kind of cheddar without doing something rotten. Ted thinks he were murdered, said the first mover, resting a hairy arm on the cabinet as he caught his breath. In my hiding place, I held me. breath and shifted, trying to get a better view. Despite the July heat, their conversation made the air feel so very cold. I shivered and hugged myself.

By who? asked the new boy. Then, after a pause, added, take this one and... the celerate over there. Well, he was stealing from the Chinese, paying bribes of the Russians, uncutting the Americans and dodging taxes over here, said Ted, as the men moved back into view. and that's just what we know about him. Mark my words, lad. We'll open these crates one day and find what's left of him, stuffed inside. Just bones and teeth. I closed my eyes and kept my tears silent.

I broke laughter burst from the two gruff men, and at first I feared they could see me. But when I peeked back at them, they were watching the new boy, struggling with a cargo crate. They effortlessly plugged it from his arms and set it down on the trolley. Leave the lifting to us, lad. Ted said as they carted the stock out of the room, you just tick them boxes.

Their chuckles faded from the room, and even when they were gone, I didn't cry out loud, just clutched my knees and felt tears trickled down my cheeks. When Misey found me several minutes later, I was still there, but I didn't feel like playing hide-and-seek anymore. Why are you crying?

She asked quietly, tilting her head before shuffling over to sit next to me. She was three years younger than me, and was always such a tender soul. She leaned over and kissed my head softly, as though it would make me better, like our mother would when we fell over and scraped our knees. I didn't tell her, of course. I was far too protective for that. If I told her why I was crying, she would cry too.

I wiped my tears away and flashed the smile. Let's play something else. There were plenty of games to play when we visited. did our grandmother. In a house of that size, with countless treasures and mysteries, even an adult could lose hours exploring and perusing. Two little girls could play forever.

We could dance in the empty rooms or listen to our echoes in the cavernous hallways. We could live a million lives amongst vintage furniture, trying on dusty top hats while having sword vites with silver-capped canes. We could drape ourselves in dust sheets and pretend to be ghosts or birds or airplanes,

running around with our flapping cloth cloaks trailing behind us, but new stock brought new guessing games. Hidden under the sheets that cover them were antiques freshly brought, ready to sell or ready to be restored to former glories. It would be years before I learned the intricacies behind the business, but as a child, it was close to magic. Most objects were easy. The sheets barely hid their outline, but a bluggie shape that looked like a table could end up being a stack of paintings, a freestanding chessboard, or a sealed crate with yet more mysteries lurking inside. We made our way through the fresh inventory, but I let my sister pull off the sheets,

and barely guessed, lost in thought. What if our grandfather was still in one of these boxes, desperate to get out, trapped in the dark? Why are you going? I heard Misey ask. My eyes focused and I realised I was. was halfway out the door, staring down the corridor, towards the door with the ivory handle. Grandmother didn't have many rules for us to follow. Don't break anything, don't irritate the staff, but the one she always insisted on was don't go into the room with the ivory handle. She never explained why. She simply forbade it, quick and clean. I'd always figured there were

valuables in there she didn't trust the children. The door wasn't locked, and I'd seen the staff go in there a few times, but only the most senior staff were allowed through this corridor, senior staff, and family. I glanced back at Misey and nodded for her to follow. She followed, and together we made our way down the corridor, empty photo frames hanging ominously above us. I always wish they just put something in them, photos are my mother, morose, landscapes, art, anything really. Even taking them down would have been better than leaving them empty. like gilded tombstones. Approaching the door, it was impossible not to feel small.

The black panel door towered over us and had a way of looking heavy. Without having ever so much as touched it, somehow my mind knew the weight of it. With dry lips, I reached out to the handle. My fingers hovered, afraid it might burn to touch. Footsteps made me snatch my hand away and I turned on my heels, babbling nervous gibberish to my sister. Lucille, my least favourite administrator stalked past, her heels click-clacking. She ignored us completely as she passed. I don't think she cared for children, or not for us at least.

I always thought she looked shriveled up, like a piece of fruit left out in the sun. Are we going to get in trouble? whispered Misey after Lucille had left our view. No, I said with a smile. Of course not. But I knew it was too risky to try was the start. staff was still here. In a couple of hours they would finish, and it would just be us and our grandmother.

So I race Micey to the gardens and we practiced cartwheels. But even in the summer sun, I couldn't get the image of my grandfather out of my mind, pressed in tight, clawing at the wooden inside of his box-shaped grave, pleading for us to find him. The staff left at 5 o'clock, and we had dinner with our grandmother. Afterwards, we usually sat and did puzzles or drew pictures. but because the sun was still shining, our grandmother said we could keep playing outside if we wanted to. We did, but only until she took her eyes off us.

Then we took off inside, sneaking towards the door with the ivory handle. The house was a different place with the staff gone. Even in full daylight, it somehow felt larger and more foreboding. Mises fingers found my hand and held it as we walked. The ivory handle glistened, as if inviting us, Looking closely, I saw it had golden leaves snaking around the outside and curling along its edges. Misey squeezed my hand tight as I reached out and opened it,

letting the door swing open with a drawn-out creek of rusty hinges. There were no windows, and though I tried the light switch, the only light that triggered in was creeping remnants of daylight, bouncing off the corridor behind us. It made the shadowy shapes within the room look dark indeed, like a nightmare version of the guessing game we played. Misey stood at the door as I crept inside. She squeaked and I turned to see her pointing to my left.

A hulking figure draped in a white sheet loomed over us and peeking out from between the sheets with shaggy brown hair and giant curled claws. Heart leaping, I braced for the monster to attack, but nothing happened. After a moment, I plucked up more courage than I knew I had and slowly tugged at the dust sheet covering the monster. It fell away, and I saw teeth and fur, and my blood ran cold, if only for a moment. It was a bear, stuffed and unmoving.

Behind me, Misey giggled. She must have been emboldened by my display of temporary bravery, and she stepped to my side and joined me in unveiling the shapes within the dim room. Dust leapt into the air, swirling and making us splutter. One by one, the extravagant shapes were revealed. Patterned vases, golden toy soldiers, intricate galleons somehow placed within glass bottles. I could see why we weren't allowed in this room. Everything was fragile or delicate and seemed like a toy to the eyes of young children.

The thrill we got from unveiling such bizarre objects even overpowered the melancholy mood that had hung over me like a black cloud, and I joined Myzine smiling and giggling. We began to guess what the next shape was. before our eyes strained through to make it out amongst the fading light. One in particular caught my eye. It's a statue, I said. A statue of a person. It's too little to be a person, said Misey.

They're sitting down, look. I pointed at what I thought was the head, nose, ears, mouth. My fingers traced the air, curving around the folds of fabric, draped over whatever was hidden underneath. The way it hung made me convinced. A statue or a short mannequin, a large doll maybe. The head and shoulders were a giveaway. Misey was right though, it was too short.

But the way the dusty sheet also covered a blocky oblong beneath a person made me think of a park bench I'd once seen, with a statue occupying one seat and the other empty. I stretched out my hand, and, just as my fingers settled on the fabric, whatever was underneath, shifted. I flinched back, snatched me. my hand away and stumbling, my foot getting caught in the trailing sheet. It snagged me,

and some of the dust sheets slid away, the rest getting tangled around the object underneath, half revealed, barely lit by what little daylight trickled to the open doorway. It was a sofa. My mind barely registered it, my eyes locked and what I had thought had been a statue. Most of it was still wrapped in tangled sheets, but enough had been removed to show a trouser leg and polished black leather shoes. Misey stepped forward to pull off the rest of the sheet, thinking it was another toy, like the bear, but I shot out a hand to stopper.

It had moved. If it was a statue, it looked very, very real, and it had definitely moved. Don't, I whispered to Misey, but the moment my words left my mouth, they died. The vaults of sheets twisted, the head of whatever was beneath snapping suddenly to face me. Mysey froze like a startled deer.

We both watched the figure on the sofa, and it watched right back. Now I was looking closely, I could see breathing, the sheets around its shoulders slowly rising and falling. Not daring to blink, not daring to speak, I gripped hold of Mises' dress, forcing it backwards with me as I stepped slowly and carefully out of the room, never taken my eyes off the figure. It was so horribly, painfully clear to me now. It was a person. There was somebody hiding in my grandmother's house. The head followed us, glacially slow, and I desperately swallowed the instinct to sink down into a ball and cry.

The dust sheet ripped and a section near the waist folded as whoever was underneath grabbed hold. They began to rise to their feet, dust sheet enveloping them like a spectre. I didn't stop to watch. With strength I didn't know I had I physically lifted Misy off the ground and ran Both of us screaming and crying so hard I could barely see where I was running

I didn't close the door but turned back to look I didn't stop running until I found my grandmother Didn't stop screaming and shouting until my mother and father And some of the staff showed up Didn't stop crying until I fell asleep They didn't find anybody of course They searched the house nothing. No signs except disturbed dust sheets, all of which were blamed on me and my sister.

Our mother and father had ended their night early to collect us, and whilst they were glad we were unharmed, we got the biggest telling off of our lives for going into the room with the ivory handle. It was a long time until we were allowed to play unsupervised at my grandmother's house. When we went back, we were told the door with the ivory handle was going to be locked from now on. They said it as though they were trying to reassure us, but I heard the truth loud and clear. They didn't believe us. Misey was happy though.

She said she never wanted to go into that room ever again and refused to even look at it, sometimes going around the house rather than walking past it. I wasn't satisfied though, and as the terror of the events slowly faded, I began to consider another possibility. What if that person, wasn't a stranger

hiding amongst the old relics What if it was my grandfather Still alive, still visiting us And our grandmother That would explain what the house Always felt like his He was still living inside it I tried explaining this demise

But it just made her upset She was still scared of that room So I knew if I was to go back It would have to be alone The staff might have locked that door but they didn't lock the room where they kept the key, and it didn't take too much searching to find it. The next time our parents went away and left us with our grandmother,

I was ready to explore again to find my grandfather and meet him properly. He hadn't tried to hurt us after all. He just stood up and we'd gotten scared and ran away. I stole the key and hid it beneath my pillow. When night came, I waited until Mizey fell asleep, sneaking out of my room into the hall, My grandmother was watching television, facing away from the hall, and it was easier to creep past her and down the main stairwell of the house. I was walking barefoot, and the floor was icy cold on the bottom of my feet, tiptoeing past boxes of new stock in inventory.

I made my way down the corridor, eyes locked on the black door and the white ivory handle, shining like a beacon in the faintest echoes of moonlight. I'd taken a torch, but I didn't need it. need it. As the door creaked open, an instinctive flick of the light switch revealed the staff had changed the broken light bulbs before locking the door. The sudden artificial light was almost blinding. The shrouded shapes were identical to my previous visit, though they weren't nearly as ominous without the shadows to ensnare them. It was reassuring, and the light made all my nerves vanish. More than ever, I was convinced, tonight I was going to meet my grandfather.

As I stalked between the sheet-covered shapes, somewhere familiar and recognisable from before, I noticed only one difference. The blocky shape of the sofa was vacant. Searching the last hidden space as the room, it quickly became obvious. My grandfather wasn't here. The room was empty, apart from the hidden treasures. A crushing weight settled over my shoulders, and I shook my head slightly, trying to ward off stinging tears.

I was just a silly little girl, up past the bedtime chasing ghosts. I walked back towards the sofa, wanting to sink down and go to sleep right there. But, a hissing voice stopped me before I took my final steps. What are you doing? Misey was at the doorway,

rubbing sleep from her eyes. I didn't see the point in lying. I was looking for Granddad, but he's not here. nobody's here. As if the check, Mises eyes drifted to the vacant sofa. I expected her to nod and turn to leave. But instead, her eyes went wide and her lips began to tremble.

She pointed, and I turned to look. An insect or something was crawling beneath the dust sheet right across the sofa cushions. It was the size of a small animal, like a rabbit, but the way the sheet moved, was too spindly and angular. The sheet shifted and twisted around the shape of whatever was underneath. It could almost have been a spider, but each leg joint that poked under the sheet was as thick as my knuckle. If I had a dare to move, I would have smashed it with my torch

and kept hitting it until the dust sheet stopped moving. Frozen as I was, all I could do was watch. It crept forwards on the sofa, and, as it went over the edge, it didn't fall. The sheets rippled, and it continued, walking downwards at the same steady pace. Whatever it was, I'd soon find out. He was walking straight towards me,

and was about to emerge from beneath a sheet. The sheets wafted gently as though stirred by a breeze, and something drifted out, elegant and smooth. Fingers Clean, perfectly manicured fingers. A youthful woman's hand peaked out, each finger painted with red fingernail polish, The hand was so leisurely in its movement, floating above the ground, arm disappearing back beneath the sheets.

And yet there was no shape beyond the totally draped fabric. There was nobody on the sofa. No way somebody could contort themselves to fit what little void existed between cloth and cushion. I gauped, mouth unable to close as the hand slowly rotated and took hold of the sheet, raising higher and higher to reveal the floral patterned sofa and pinewood legs, as though it were a woman hitching up a skirt. The colours of the sofa

was so vivid and vibrant it was hard to believe that we hadn't noticed it before even in the near darkness. The flowers looked so real you could almost see the morning dew forming on the petals almost feel the sun's reflection

glittering in the tilt of windbrush leaves. Before it rose above the cushion seats the hand released the dust sheet and beckoned me. It withdrew slowly disappearing beneath the sheet, and the shape of the arm slithered away.

The way it curved and twisted made me shiver. Even as young as I was, I knew no human arm could bend that way. Whatever was underneath that thin layer of fabric, it moved the way a snake did, writhing and uncoiling. The sofa was dazzling. It appeared pure white behind the flowers, but it couldn't have been. It was too bright. white somehow seemed two duller color to describe it

he was almost blinding to look at yet I couldn't stop myself Misey was at my side and we both stared and blinking at the fabric and flowers and this new colour our eyes had never seen before birds fluttered into the room with silent flapping wings humming birds dozens of them

hovering and sipping from the flowers of the fabric it took me a long moment to realise they weren't in the room at all they were just another pattern stitched into the fabric of the cushion and yet they were moving one by one they zipped beneath the covering

following the hand and for a moment I wanted to follow them I took a step forward and stopped myself Misey had made the same step forward at the exact same time we turned to look at each other peeling our eyes away from the sofa

that was enough something deep and primal told me I shouldn't sit down. Yet somehow it was easier to stop each other than stop ourselves. We didn't speak, but together, my sister and I left the room, gripping hold of each other and never breaking eye contact. When we reached the door, I flicked off the light and shut the creaking door with all my strength. As the room with the ivory handle vanished from view, I saw for one brief moment. A man.

He was barely visible in the darkness, but he sat on the sofa, hands on his knees. His cold eyes met mine, and even the half second before the door closed was too long. The moment the door was shut, I locked it. We never went into that room again. Neither me or Misey have ever spoken about it, to each other or to anyone else. She might not even remember. Perhaps I would have been able to dismiss it as childish fantasy, if it wasn't for the thing I saw yesterday

my grandmother passed away last year her ashes were kept in an urn but during the house sale and all of the moving somehow the ashes got lost they found the urn which never left the house but the ashes were gone obviously my family was devastated a few people who probably didn't deserve it got fired

but we never found out who was responsible or what happened. During the final weeks of the house sale, all of our grandfather's vast fortune and old treasures got divided amongst the family. All of our grandfather's vast fortune and old treasures got divided amongst family, friends and loyal employees. Of particular interest the most were several items locked behind a door with an ivory handle.

Mise and myself avoided that particular day of exploration. But, as I said my last goodbyes to the house, I couldn't help but notice a familiar shape amongst the others, draped beneath dust sheets, the blocky outline of a sofa, with something placed on it, something with a head and shoulders, the vague outline of a person perched on the sofa with room to spare. At the very bottom, peeking beneath the sheets, was the trim of a faded green dress, and matching green buckled shoes. my grandmother's shoes

Whatever was wearing them shifted slightly beneath a dust sheet Turning to face me And patted At the empty seat Browsing the classified ads Was always a hobby of mine on board days I liked to go to garage sales when I was younger

But nowadays the online ads have far more selection Sometimes I have a specific item in mind But on one particular day I was just browsing through the items for sale in my city skis, TVs, gaming systems, record players, bicycles, even cars and apartment leases. You name it and you could find it on there. And often, for a lot cheaper than you'd expect. I've bought a few items from those websites for less than half the price of what they would cost in a store.

The apartment I live in and the car I drive were all bargains I found browsing online classifieds. And I've also sold some stuff that wouldn't have fetched half as much in a pawn shop if I'd brought them there instead. This particular ad caught my eye right away. The next generation game system I had been wanting to buy was listed for sale. $800, willing to take unusual trades, the ad read. I couldn't believe it. The consoles were coveted where I lived. You literally could not find them anywhere right now,

and I actually had received a windfall of cash that enabled me to purchase it. I ignore the second part about unusual trades, since I figured maybe they want some vintage gaming system or whatever instead. I just had cash. I've always loved video games, but find myself missing out on entire generations of console systems. Usually when friends talk about the new games they're playing,

I'm left sitting out of the conversation. I decided I really wanted to get this one with everyone else and be a part of it this time. I immediately sent a message to the person. Hey, I saw you. ad for the game system for sale, and was wondering if it's still available. I was surprised when the guy responded immediately to my message. Yeah, it's still available.

Lots of interest, but if you have the cash today, it's yours. I have the cash right now. Where can we meet? I'm disabled, so you'll have to come to me. Can you be at my place in 20 minutes? He gave me the address. My common sense was quickly outweighed by my urgent desire for next-generation gaming capabilities. I'll be right over, just need to stop at the bank.

Since I live in a small town, I didn't think the guy could be trouble. It's the sort of place where everybody knows everybody. And, although I had previously been very cautious about these sort of things, after doing transactions on the website multiple times, I'd grown sure of myself and less concerned with the potential problems. After taking the cash out at the ATM, I proceeded to the address. It was a little ways past the city limits, and I saw farmers filled along the way

where crops have been harvested and freshly fallen snow was accumulating between the rows. I turned onto the side road and then another side road, this one gravel and no longer paved. It was late afternoon by that point and the sun was already beginning to glow orange as it made its descent towards the horizon.

The gravel road went on for a while and I double-checked my GPS. It was coming up soon and I slowed down to really, the number and the blue address sign out front by the road at the end of the driveway. There it was. Pulling the car over to the side of the road, I got out. Something occurred to me and I pulled out my phone to send a quick text message to a friend

saying I would check back of them after going inside, remembering a bit of wisdom I had heard once. Then I walked up to the front door and knocked on it briskly. The man who answered was in a wheelchair, but I could tell he was tall and brought. broad-shouldered, wearing a stained white tank top, with hair poking out of the chests and armpits. A smell wafted out of dirty laundry and spored food. He didn't say anything. Just waited for me to speak. Hi, I talked to somebody named Rich about a console for sale. They said to come here to pick it up.

Oh, right, definitely. Yeah, come on in. His demeanor changed immediately from gruff and unwelcoming to friendly and jovial. He had a warm grin, which he disarmed me with when I was about to rebuff his invitation inside. Uh, sure. He closed the door behind me and locked it. Wheeling back towards the kitchen, he waved at me to follow him. You got here just in time. Somebody else was saying they were going to give me 900 for it, but I told him I had already made a deal. Still, I was starting to think twice. But hey, I'm a man of my word. I told me. I told him that I'd already made a deal. I told him, I was starting to think twice. You told you 800, so 800 it is.

Right on. Thanks, mate. I appreciate it. Ah, don't worry about it. You're doing me a favour. How's that? Well, it's kind of hard to explain. Come on down the hall and I'll show it to you. You got cash, right? I was following him down the hall cautiously now, wondering what he was getting at. The whole situation was starting to seem peculiar to me for some reason.

I had a dawning feeling of wrongness that made me go queasy in my stomach. As he entered the room at the end of the hall, I followed him, despite my better judgment. It's difficult sometimes to follow your instincts, but I'm beginning to realize it's usually the right thing to do. The room I entered was similarly filthy as the rest of the house, and barren of much except for garbage and a bed. This is Reg. The guy in the wheelchair told me. A man was in the room waiting. He gave me a cold stare as I approached, and I realized they looked similar, like brothers.

You're here for the system? I was suddenly becoming scared. What had I gotten myself into? Yeah. Good. You brought the cash, right? Despite my hesitation and grown concern, I nodded. Well, I'll tell you what.

Just put it away. We don't want you money. We're more interested in trades. What did you have in mind? I don't have anything to trade for it. They looked at each other and the man in the wheelchair nodded at the other guy. He left the room and came back with a garbage bag.

Then he left and came back with another. Then another and another. The bags looked heavy. Four bags, four dumpsters, four different cities. You go to each dumpster and throw a garbage bag inside. You do them all. tonight after midnight.

I considered this. Can't I just give you the money? I don't think I want to know what's in those bags. We're hunters. Sometimes we just go over our limit a bit. This time we went over by a lot. Wasted meat. It's a shame.

For first time offenders like yourself, they would just let you off with a warning. But for us, well, let's just say this will be our third strike. He opened up one of the bags and showed it to me. Inside was a fuzzy, decapitated, deer body. Milky white eyes stared up at me from a slack-faced doze head. Why all different cities then?

Why don't just dump them at one place? That's not important. Just do like we ask and you keep the thing free and clear. How's that sound? They held the gaming system out towards me, wrapped in cellar fame and with the exorbitant price stickers still attached. Don't ask me why. but I took it.

Do it just like we said. No messing around. Four cities, four dumpsters, all tonight after midnight. We will know if you don't do it exactly like we told you. They told me to go wait in my car and pop the trunk. Then they proceeded to bring all four garbage bags out and they put them in the back of my car. I could feel the weight of them causing the suspension to sag.

It would be a relief to have them out of the car. I went home, and instead of playing the new console like I'd been anticipating, I ended up putting it in a closet in my back room and nervously watched TV, and it seldom else until midnight. At 12 on the dot, I got up and walked to the door on shaky legs. I nearly forgot my keys and wallet, remembering them just as I was about to walk out the door. The car smelled like old meat when I got inside, as well as the coppery smell of coagulated blood which permeated it.

If I got pulled over, the car would be searched for sure, I thought. I rolled down all the windows and started to drive. Part of me just wanted to dump all the bags in the first bin I came across, but I had a feeling that was a bad idea. Somehow, they would know. I left town and drove to the nearest city using the freeway, driving the speed limit the whole time, hoping I wouldn't come across a drunk driving checkpoint somewhere.

The first cast station I came across in Browell, Brentville had a green dumpster around the side of the building in a shadowy area where I couldn't see any security cameras pointing. I parked the car next to the bin and hopped out to make my first drop off. My heart was thumping hard in my chest as I grabbed the bag out to the trunk. It was so damn heavy I could barely lift it. The guy back of the house must have been strong as hell, I realised. Using all my strength, I managed to get it over the lip of the dumpster and rang back to the driver's door of my car and hopped to. speeding away like a criminal, which I guess technically I was, since the sign of the dumpster said,

No dumping of household trash. Not that this was your typical household trash. I drove to the next nearest city and found a supermarket with a similarly poorly lit dumpster around the back. I parked closer this time and lined up the car for a quick escape. I jumped out and repeated the same steps, pulling out the heavy black garbage bags from the trunk and struggling to push it over the top of the wall of the dumpster. As I lifted it, I couldn't help but notice the sloshing sound of the body parts and blood inside the bag, getting jostled around. I heaved it over the side as it got stuck on the edge. I found myself really hoping that they had used heavy-duty garbage bags.

The bundle of body parts and bodily fluids hung over my head, swaying back and forth precipitously, and I winced, giving it one more shove. It finally rolled over the lip and made a heavy, wet thud as it landed on the other side. The next town had a fast food restaurant on its outskirts and I pulled up next to a dumpster beside the grease disposal bin. I was about to get out of my car when one of the workers came out the back of the restaurant carrying a couple trash bags and heading quickly towards me.

Terrified, I drove off, hoping they hadn't noticed my license plate. I was starting to really wonder about this. Why hadn't I asked to look in the other bags? What if they weren't all dead deer? But some other dead things in those bags as well. I pictured dead people, hacked up hookers and dismembered men in suit suddenly, instead of the animal parts I had seen in the bag at the house. Finally, I came across another building with a dumpster that looked safe. I pulled around back and parked next to it.

Bag number three. This garbage bin was behind a strip plaza and the whole place was closed for the night. It was secluded and I could tell I was alone with little chance of anyone stumbling upon me back there. I went around to the trunk again opening it I looked at the final two garbage bags they were marked with a white X which I hadn't noticed before

when we were inside the house feeling emboldened by the privacy that the dimly lit parking lot afforded me I opened up one of the garbage bags in the trunk and looked inside I nearly fainted

my vision went shade of yellow then red and nearly black as it filled with spots. At the last second, I regained my focus and looked down again at the face staring up at me from the garbage bag. It was no longer the whitered eyes of a dough, but the brown eyes of a man

that stared up at me from inside the garbage bag. His face was covered in blood, but the resemblance was unmistakable. The face belonged to the man from the house. It was the exact same. But how the hell was that possible? Terrified, I tied the bag up again and pulled it out of the trunk. I lifted it over the lip of the dumpster and pushed it in.

Thump! It landed on the pile of refuse inside with a loud noise. I immediately went back and grabbed the other bag. Screw this, I said to myself. I just wanted to get rid of the bags at that point. I was terrified of being caught with a garbage bag full of human remains. This would not look good if I was discovered. as I lifted the final bag over the side of the garbage bin

it caught on something the bag ripped as I pushed it over the lip and half of it came spilling out onto my side splashing over me and raining dismembered body parts and bodily fluids down on me from above the stench was horrifying and overpowering I was covered head to toe and coagulated blood and body parts were littering the ground around me

another human head looked up at me from the ground and I saw it was the first of the first face of the other man from the house, the one in the wheelchair. They were both identical to the two men at the house. I remember thinking that they'd look like brothers, but two sets of twins. That didn't seem likely. My mind struggled with the possibilities. Had the two men been replicated somehow, replaced by aliens or clones? Had I been charged with disposing of the real bodies as the imposter took over their lives? Suddenly, My cell phone began to ring.

It rang and rang, but I was afraid to answer it. I couldn't help but think of what he had said back at the house. Four dumpsters, four cities. We will know if you don't do it exactly like we told you. Maybe. I should have done, as they said. I don't know if this message will reach anyone, but I can hear them outside already.

There are more of them coming every minute, and I feel like I can't think straight. It's probably too late for me, but if this makes it out, if these things are spreading, maybe somebody else will be able to use what we learned to stop them. I'll start from the beginning when I first started noticing

that something was very wrong in this town. I came back home from my first semester of college a month ago for November break and was informed that soon after that, due to the climbing number of positive cases, we wouldn't be returning until the second semester. If then, I'd stopped for gas and Macias on the drive home, and had felt the cold November wind claw at me, or my numb fingers held the pump handle. When I got out of the car in my mother's driveway, my mother tensed an anticipation of the cold sting of the air.

I instead stepped into the humid grasp of what felt like a warm spring day. I crunched up the gravel driveway, my gym bag swinging awkwardly at my side, already feeling overheated from my layers of winter clothes and the exertion of carrying. my bags. My mother had spoken frequently during our conversations over the phone about how unseasonably warm it had been this fall. Intermixed with the jokes, questions about how I was doing an unsubble probing to see if I'd found a girlfriend. She'd mentioned a series of odd occurrences that had occurred as the fall turned to winter. People in the town had begun to talk uneasily about a strange shimmering substance spotted occasionally in the ocean. An invasive new growth of seaweed that could grow so fast it's

seemed to almost move. She told me there'd been an unusual number of missing pets, leading townsfolk to fear that rabies or some similar disease was on the prowl. The Watson's family dog, the sweet old lab, had gone missing for several days and returned snarling and foaming at the mouth. The Watson's had been forced to put it down after it had bit Miss Watson when she ran to greet him. Apparently, the episode had really affected the family, as they'd left town soon after, without

saying goodbye or even fully winterizing their house. Others had been abruptly leaving without warning as the winter wore on. Ever since the mill close for good in my junior year of high school, the town had been losing population, but the swiftness and abruptness of these departures was surprising to my mother. I had only half listened to these small-town foibles, as relayed by my mother, too busy trying to navigate the confusion of my first semester at college in the middle of a pandemic. I had been so excited last year at the thought of leaving Malasumis behind me,

I've trading in my life in the middle of Noah's small town, Maine, for one in Boston. A life where there was more to do than to snowmobile, drink, and talk about snowmobile and drinking. It hadn't been anything like I expected. Hold up in a small dorm room alone, interacting primarily with faces on my computer screen. I'd miss my home and my friends. I'd missed hearing the crash of waves and rocks at night and seeing the stars fill the sky. I'd even miss drinking and getting high and cold. cold hunting cabins by flickering candlelight, talking mainly about other times we had drank

and got high in cold hunting cabins. I felt like I didn't fit in at college. I'd made a few friends, but felt distant from them. Like any moment they would realize I didn't belong, that I didn't know the right codes, get the right references. If the social life had been less dazzling than I hoped, the coursework was worse. I'd been used to being treated as the smartest person in our small school and feeling out of my depth and confused as alienating. I mostly kept quiet during Zoom discussions where the other students easily pep their conversations with wry cultural illusions and dropped references to international trips and vacation homes. I had been unwilling to admit to myself how happy I was to be home,

to be returning to the familiar comfort of my small bedroom. But now, feeling the warm warmth in the air, entirely out of place from Maine in December, I felt a creeping her knees crawl my spine. I could smell the ocean, but it did not bring the familiar clear tang of salt and spray I was used to. Instead, it smelled sulfuric and tangy, like something spoiled. Despite the off-putting smell, I nevertheless felt, on Biden, a curiously powerful desire to turn, get back in my car, and go to the water. I shrugged it off and continued on the worn pathway to the small trailer where I'd lived for the past 18 years. The seasonable heat should have been good news.

It would make it easier to catch up with friends outside, thus avoiding the need to carefully navigate the newly visible fault lines between those who accepted scientific consensus and public health measures and those who did not. Fault lines, which had been starkly revealed this summer, and became only more entrenched as time wore on. I was aware that most of my friends who, unlike me, hadn't felt the need to leave Malsumis,

population 11113, to see what else there was out there, who hadn't felt a burning desire to experience different ways of living and thinking and seeing the world, were probably on the opposite side of those fault lines, always faintly visible, but now impossible to ignore. The warm weather should have been good news, but it was not. The air felt thick and smelled fetid, like something long trapped underground was bubbling out of the deep through unseen vents.

My reaction wasn't steeped in reason. It wasn't like this summer when the happiness I'd felt after yet another warm day, perfect for diving off Sibor Point, into the clear green of the Atlantic, was tempered by the realization that this string of barmy days was probably a potential of a future of runaway carbon emissions and cataclysmic climate change. It was instinctual, a creeping feeling along my shoulders, like a small mammal crawling into a hole looking for safety, and hearing the hiss of scales against the earth,

realizing it is not alone. This summer had been full of minor mysteries. The temperature readings of the two closest towns, Mackayas and Jonesport, displayed in the morning news, were consistently five to ten degrees lower than what we experienced in Malasumis. The halls from the local fishermen had returned unusual numbers of fish and lobsters with mutations,

extra limbs, extra eyes, lobsters of extreme size. Species of fish never observed in these waters before appeared in nets and traps. The seaweed was curiously bright green and grew at unprecedented speeds within the confines of the harbour, sometimes clogging motors or sinking

poise. People murmured about the odd behaviour of the catches too. Fish that had teeth longer and sharper than the species were supposed to. Fish that appeared to not flop aimously on the floorboards, but to seek out the hand that hauled them from their watery home to die gasping under an alien sky.

Creatures that would, if they could, return an arm for an eye, striped for a stripe, burn for a burn, a life for a life. And first, the fisherman joked about this, about angry fish and nipped fingers. But as the summer wore on, the jokes began to die out. I noticed less raucous laughter coming from the tables at the Jones diner, where they gathered after a day at sea, and more men sitting alone, staring into beer bottles with a distant expression in the rise.

After the spirit of the pen-up scup went out to harvest boys in the late June, and it and its crew did not return, the joke stopped entirely. As the long warm summer drew to a close, I noticed fewer and fewer fishing boats drawing close to the cove where Mal sumas was nested against the sheer black cliffs, as if those from nearby towns had, consciously or unconsciously, decided to steer clear of our waters. The curious finds and odd behaviour of sea creatures near our town had been the subject of a few scattered local newspieces, but, understandable in a year in which the pace of breaking stories felt unrelenting, tales from locals about weird fish had not garnered much interest.

I opened the door to my house, and my mother rose from the couch to greet me. Momentarily, I forgot my thoughts of poisoned air and mutated crustaceans, hugged my mother, and realized I was close to crying. I'd missed home. I'd missed her. When my mother held me at arm's length, though, I had the same. let out an involuntary hiss. Her skin was shallow and her eyes were red and watery. It looked like she'd aged three years, not three months since I left.

Mom, I... I began, but she simply laughed, her familiar throaty laugh and swatted at me. Well, isn't that a nice way to greet your mother? You look like you're staring at a frog, not your darling mother, who only raised you and cared for you your whole life. Her voice was thick With a familiar litting jaulness Of a down-eastern accent The words delivered loosely And without any apparent felt obligation

To attach ours to words Which customarily had them in different parts of the world Have they been feeding you properly up there You look skinnier than a stick Come here and get some food Her accent sounded thicker than I remembered Almost a parody of a main accent I wondered momentarily

What my friends from school would think of how she sounded what would they think of this little trailer with his kitsy decorations? A cross hung prominently on the wall and red hot dogs seeping in boxed macaroni on the stove. I pushed the thought away. It felt like a betrayal to see my mother and her home through their eyes, to consider the unthinking condensation with which they would view her. The same condensation I engaged in

when we would laugh together about flyover states and people who considered the Big Bang Theory of the height of comedy. I grabbed to my mom and hugged her again and we spent the evening watching the evening watching. watching network TV and eating red francs with macaroni. She laughed along with a studio audience, and so did I. It was a good night, the last good one we had, I think. As November rolled into December, the cold snap I anticipated never came.

I had expected I would be relatively busy being back home for the first time in several months, going to Ellsworth or Bangor to see the lights and go Christmas shopping with mom like we did every year, catching up with high school friends and revisiting old haunts, but things were much different than I expected. The town seemed even more eerily deserted than normal, which, if you're familiar with small coastal main towns in the winter, it was a high bar to clear. My mother seemed to feel sick every day, and would merely reply with a waned smile, and maybe tomorrow I'm not feeling myself today, when I asked if she wanted to do anything. She looked sick, too. Every day she seemed to get paler. She seemed less responsive, a voice slowed and slurred.

My friends, likewise, seemed disinterested in socialising. A few times we did meet up, I was acutely aware of how little we seem to have in common now. We met in the field behind a rock quarry in mid-December, a place where we'd often have bonfires, shared drinks, and stayed up into the night, talking before we would pass out in our cars or under the stars. We were carefully concocted schemes to tell parents we were staying at different houses, only to frequently watch these, so carefully laid out plans of mice and men, be easily swept aside by a museum. parental encounter in the grocery store, a stray phone call or the simple fact that our parents had themselves once been teenagers and knew well their ways. This bonfire was stilted and awkward. My friend's faces looked drawn and pale in the warm firelight, warmth which was welcome, but unneeded, as the temperatures didn't dip below 50 degrees at night. They seemed slow and

sullen, with newly vapid expressions and newly apparent thick rural accents. Our conversations dragged. carefully avoided sensitive political topics, probing gently around them like one chewing a meal carefully, to avoid injuring rotten and sensitive teeth. They'd all seemed to take up smoking cigarettes or chewing dip, and, as we stood around the fire with little else to talk about but previous times in which we'd had more fun, I could feel our connection slowly fraying like a rotted rope, trying to tether two ships taken by different currents. I began to realize that if I didn't entirely feel at home in the elite coasters of my private college, I also no longer was able to feel like I belonged here. It wasn't just them. The whole town seemed wrong, diseased, like a tree being

eaten out by invasive worms. I had had plans to drive up and down the coast on my break, seeing as much of the familiar jagged, rocky and wild coastline as possible before returning to Boston. After a few days, Musumus, however, I began to feel less and less like leaving. I go tired, lethargic, and often felt too unmotivated to do anything but lay in the familiar comfort of my childhood bedroom. Being home felt it once too small and constraining, and also comfortable and familiar, a place where only the expected happened, and one's long-settled beliefs were in no danger of being challenged. I spent a lot of time aimlessly driving the town's backroads, noticing what seemed to be an unusual number of missing pet posters plastered on the telephone poles.

I would frequently find that these drives would end with me being at night, standing at the water's edge, grappling with a confusing but powerful desire to slip into the dark ocean water. I felt like there was some half-heard song coming from the depths which was calling me home. Throughout my stay, this pull continued to build, an incessant, nagging idea that I should head toward the saltwater, like a bird driven by some internal compass to head south. I found myself spending a lot of time with the Duplicea brothers, David and Aden. They were among the few who had, like me, left Malasumas for college. Although unlike me, they had only gone so far south as Aronaut to attend the University of Maine,

the place most every teacher expected us to go when they did speak of going to college, which was not often. We had been good acquaintances, but not particularly close in high school. But I found myself gravitating toward them, Realising I could have conversations with them like those with my new friends in Boston conversations that did not avoid sensitive political subjects or abstract academic ones but could dive deep into them enthusiastically. We talked about how different the town seemed, how strange.

It felt good to talk with people who didn't see wearing a mask as risable as a feminine expression of fear, who didn't believe that their ignorance on complex topics was as entitled to a consideration as another's expertise. We bonded quickly in the way that people who grew up in the same place, but are no longer able to fully consider it home often do. On the evening, I realized that something was truly wrong. The brothers and I were driving through town.

I was following the dark shape of their car, aimlessly, listening to music over my phone. The sun was going down behind the cliffs, burning a thin orange band over the horizon, and illuminating the dark clutching branches of the trees against the sky. The ocean to our right was emblazoned in orange And the white caps riding on its dark swells Shown in the fading light We cruise slowly through the downtown The few storefronts that were not in disrepair

With windows broken or covered in cardboard Was shuttered for the night Unusually early even for a town like Malsumas I watched the clothes mill drift by The few lights placed around its fence perimeter Illuminated its hulking and rusted form A sleeping metal giant attested both to the very reason this town existed at all, its fatuantistice placement next to a natural harbour and source of waterpower from the Aristook Falls, and its current statement as a vestigial remnants of a different era, a place which no longer had a coherent reason for existing, where people did not intentionally choose to be, but merely remained like a piece of driftwood cast on the shore to be bleached white and desiccated by remorseless and impersonal forces beyond its control or understanding. We pulled into the public access lot,

Our headlights throwing the dark rocks jutting over the ocean like decaying teeth into sharp relief. I took a final track on the spliff I'd been smoking, and we got out of cars with scrapes of shoes and gravel, and the loud reverberating slam of car doors echoing in the sudden silence after engines are turned off. The smell of the ocean hit me in a wave. It did not smell of salt and cold air, but it was wet and ranted, like thick mud and salt, and something old and long dead. The waves below us hissed into the many caves and tunnels carved in the rocks below, sounding like the heavy breathing of some long slumbering monster,

which might awaken at any minute. I suddenly wanted nothing more than to get back in my car and leave, and nothing less than to step into the splinter wood staircase to climb down into the dark rocks below. But Aidan was already descending the stairs behind his brother. His back framed briefly at the mouth of the stairs, a six-back of narrow-gancet beer dangling from his hands. I followed.

The rocks below was slippery and the sound of the waves loud. We ranged ourselves in a semicircle around a large flat rock pressing against the back of the dark cliff. This was a popular spot for locals to congregate at night and charred remnants of aluminium cans within ad hoc fire pits surrounded by squirrel graffiti stood as a testament to their prior presence. We scraped out the bright aluminium shards

and assorted debris and started a small fire in the blackened circle. The three of us sipped our beer and talked aimlessly for a bit. Aidan rose and wondered outside the small circle of light to go to the bathroom, while David brought out a stubby, poorly rolled joint and began smoking it contemplatively, afraid ember ends scattering in the wind. Guys, come look at this. Aidan's voice cut through the warm wind, his voice high and excited. David and I rose soundlessly and strode over the wind.

to stand beside him. Aidan was looking down at a narrow seam in the seapucked rock that had little to distinguish it from the numerous other holes and chasms dotting the area. As we drew close, I understood the reason for his excitement. Thick hot air was spewing from the crevice, like heat from an open furnace. It hit me like a wet slap, fetid and nauseating, with a smell like rotten eggs, driving me to my knees and causing me to rich. Dude, what the hell? Why didn't you warn me? I gasped, still struggling to contain the contents of my stomach.

What do you think it is? Aiden's eyes were wet as he was staring at the cavernous opening with sick excitement. I don't know, but it smells disgusting. Let's get back. David flicked the glowing tip of his joint away as he spoke and grabbed Aidan's shoulder, staring him away. I could see Aidan hesitate and see him for an instant ready to protest before allowing him to be led away. The smell was still invading my nostrils, pounding inside my head, and yet I too felt strangely drawn toward the opening, like some inner magnet was urging me

closer. It was like the familiar pull I'd been feeling toward the coast since arriving, but magnified to almost an overwhelming degree in close proximity to the fumes being emitted from this crevice. Back at the fire, Aidan began talking quickly. I knew something strange was going on here. It's been so warm. Do you think that's why? Like some geothermal vents around here have opened up or something? I don't know, replied David. It's smell like crap though. It can't be good. There's definitely something going on, said Aden. His voice rising as he spoke. The other day I was driving and just felt like I needed to stop and get out to the boat launch. I don't know why. When I walked down to the water, I saw like hundreds of crabs and fish

and things crawling out of the water. They were all coming out of the water and they were all coming out of the water and heading up toward the town, even the fish. It was weird, like they were possessed or something, or like there was something of the water they were running from. Why didn't you say anything about this before? asked David. Aidan looked down. I don't know, I just didn't.

Seemed too weird to explain. I thought maybe I imagined it. I found myself understanding what he meant. I had also been seeing strange events since arriving. Excessive amounts of dead fish. crustaceans far up land from where they should be, thousands of dead fish that seemed to faintly glow at night in the water. An image glimpsed briefly framed against the fading sun as I ran at the corner of Route 1, of several human figures seemingly wading into an open sea, arms outstretched.

I hadn't mentioned it either, unsure of what I'd really seen. It hadn't helped that, since I'd arrived, my mind had grown increasingly foggy, like my thoughts were being protested through thick water. everything had begun to seem slightly surreal and far away. So what? You think there's something causing this town to heat up and also driving fish crazy? David asked more than a hint of scorn in his voice. But I thought underneath the bravado,

there was something darting and fearful in his eyes. Well, Aidem began, but I didn't hear him finish as something glowing and bright caught the corner of my eye. And before I knew what I was doing, my feet were bringing me toward it. I found myself standing beside a circular eddy of black ocean water, slowly rising and falling in rhythm with the waves,

entering through a narrow opening between the rocks. I looked down at the glowing, luminousant mass. Oh my God, I whispered in an involuntarily breathy exhale. Floating below me, bobbing in the gentle swell of waves, was the body of James Materson, one of the four crew members of the pride of the pin-up scot that had gotten missing earlier this year. He was covered in a fine glowing scum, a seaweed-like substance.

It was entwined over his head and matted through his thick beard, which was spread out and floating in the water. The glowing seaweed stuff seemed to move, twisting slowly over his body. The eyes sunk deep into the gummy pale face suddenly flew open. They were bright green and cloudy, the same colour as the glowing mass that covered his body. I opened my mouth to scream, but only. a faint scratchy sigh escaped. A large, meaty hand,

swollen grotesquely around a thin metal wedding band, grabbed the side of the rock with a wet slap. The hulking figure began pulling itself from the ocean, water slowing off it in rivulet, leaving the green strands, which encased the body swaying and dripping. I turned to run, but my legs collapsed beneath me,

and I fell from the lip, overlooking the dark pool of ocean, weightless for a second before I hit the jagged rocks below. my teeth claked together and I tasted blood. Some distant part of my brain was aware that if I was not pumped full of adrenaline, the fall would have caused intense pain. I stumbled to my feet and began to run,

finally able to feel my lungs and yell, doing so in a raw, wordless scream that tore at my throat. I saw David and Aidan turned to look at me, their faces forming mirror images of white oes of surprise. Seeing the glowing form lumbering after me, they turned and fled. Aiden slipped on the wet rocks and fell in a tumble of arms and legs which I narrowly avoided. White-hot panic grinned me like a vice.

I could hear the thing that used to be Mr. Madison behind me, clambering over rocks with a sickly squelching sound. I didn't stop. I looked over my shoulder and saw David helping Aiden up. His face contorted in fear. Feeling my entire being rebel against the decision, I turned back to help. The glowing form of Mr. Matterson reached out, and grabbed David's shoulder with a wet hand.

He opened his mouth wide and injected a mass of glowing green lichon. It hit David with a wet slap, coating his face and neck. Without thinking, I scooped and picked up a jagged black rock, and, in a single fluid move, struck Mr. Matazzen in the face. Globs of green seaweed flew from his chin, splattering the dark rocks as he staggered back, momentarily stunned. We ran toward the stairs,

David frantically wiping his eyes clean. Aidan and David hit the wooden stairs first, and began thundering up them, the frame swaying ominously. I followed behind, blind panic seized me as I heard the wet slapper footsteps on the wood below me as I felt, or imagined, the grasp of swollen hands my pant legs. Climbing the stairs two at a time, I cleared the top of the stairs and saw Aidan and David frantically clambering into their car. The engine started with a roar, and I flung myself inside, my legs trailing on the ground as the car started to reverse in a spree of gravel. I poured myself fully under the backseat and looked up from between the headrests, the top of the stairs momentarily framed in the headlights,

and saw only darkness between the rails before we were on the road and accelerating away. I walked over to the window and looked outside. There are more of them out there. They're just standing there now. I don't know what they're doing or how long I have. I don't know where my mother is. I hope she got out. I hope somebody, anybody did.

The next day, Aidan and David picked me up and we drove to get my car. We didn't talk much on the drive. It was like we didn't want to talk about what we'd seen. Like that would make it more real. I had an ear-splitting headache that was making it difficult to think. The world felt muffled and far off, and felt like I couldn't even be sure last night had really happened. Like it was a dream or a distant, half-forgotten memory.

David coughed a sick, racking cough for the whole drive. Later that he said, evening, I drove to their house. The parents were upstairs, not feeling well. Like my mother. Like the whole town. Half the stores were closed as I drove through town. I stopped to get gas and coffee at the Circle K,

and had barely recognised the cashier. Stephen Rawlson, although he had been in the grade above me. He had but in weight and his face looked swollen and bovine. His skin, a sickly green pole. His entire body shook when he coughed thickly. I hurried out without speaking. to him. Aidan helped David onto the couch. His face was drawn and his breath short, exhausted from the short trip to the kitchen and back to make a drink. I saw his hands shake as he raised it to his lips.

The corners of his lips had a greenish tint, as did the corners of his eyes. I looked at Aiden and barely saw a restrained fear in his eyes. What should we do? I asked. Do we tell someone? David let out a weak laugh. Tell him what? That we saw a zombie mistake. Mr. Madison, that he tried to attack us? The police would laugh, think we were high, or messing with them. Well, we have to do something, Aiden offered quietly. Look, said David, we don't know what we saw. It was dark. We've been drinking and smoking.

It could have been a crazy homeless person on PCP or something. Isn't that the most likely explanation? Well, said Aidan, I took some biology classes this semester. We had a section on parasites. They're wild. They've been around since the earliest first of the first. forms of life, and we've been in a constant biological arms race with them. There's one that can infect the brain over a wasp and control it, direct it where to lay its

eggs, or take control of it to spread the parasite to other wasps. Other ones can low insects right to them, using pheromones or something. I forget. Do you think... Here, he paused, considering his words. Do you think something like that could be happening? Haven't you felt like you're... Wanting to go toward it?

Like there's something in there calling to you. you. We were all silent for a moment. I didn't know what to say. The air felt heavy and I couldn't think, but Aidan was right. There was something. It felt like an omnipresent humming, urging me toward the water, shimmering through the bare trees outside the window. It was growing stronger. Okay, said David finally. It's getting dark outside. Let's meet tomorrow, early. Go back and see if we can find anything there that will, I don't know, help us decide what is going on. I feel like hell right now. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel better. David spoke calmly, but his face was covered in a sheen of sweat. I wondered and saw that he wondered too, how likely it was that tomorrow he would

feel better. It seemed like kind of a bad plan, but so did all the options. Aiden simply nodded weakly. I got up and left, looking back over my shoulder and seeing the two brothers framed in the window, sitting on the couch together in silence. I felt like turning back, like we were missing something or making the wrong choice somehow, but my head was splitting and it was difficult to think. I just wanted to crawl into a dark bed and sleep or slip into cool water. I thought rose unbidden in my head, and I pushed it away in revulsion, like shaking away a many-limbed insect found unexpectedly in the hand. On the drive home, I watched the thin, silver side of the moon float in the dark water. I thought about parasites. I thought about the name of the town

Mal sumis, a Wabanaki term meaning evil spirit. Like so much of this country, the violent history behind our presence was revealed only in the stolen names we still lived with. The pen-up-scot, the Androscogging River, Piscarraway and Strait. Gadahog counties, our state was a graveyard of words spoken by dead and robbed peoples. I remember researching our town for some middle school project and learning that the Wabanaki peoples had avoided this spot. They called it Malsumis and considered it cursed. I wondered if there was some ancient, ancestral memory behind that designation, a long-remembered memory of something dark and dangerous that slithered out of the water and night to eat. Like the long dormant sections

of her genes, where old mutations remained as a testament to ancient battles with invisible viruses and parasites. Old enemies that we hoped but could not know were not to return. I almost drove past my house, almost just kept driving until I met the on-ramp for Interstate 95, pointed my car south and drove without stopping. But my mother was in the house and she wasn't feeling well. I pulled into a driveway and got out of the car. The trailer was dark and quiet.

Mom, I called, stepping into the darkness and reaching for the light, feeling a sudden irrational fear that an arm would stretch out and grab my hand before it hit the switch. She was gone. I stood in a room, looking at the depression on her bed where she'd been laying for the past few days, feverish, her eyes growing milky and cloudy. I knew at some level that she'd left a walk down to the water, that I was too late. My phone rang into the silence, making me scream shortly. It was Aden. He sounded breathless and scared.

Mike, please, come quick, it's David. He's gotten worse. I heard crashing in the background and the line went dead. The hairs in my arms were standing up and I felt a cold line of sweat traced down my back. I sped to the Depliceous house. I did not encounter a single car on the drive. The windows and the houses I passed were dark. I pretended not to see the dark figures

slipping through the trees toward the water or the glowing forms walking away from it. At the house, the doors open and a lamp lay in the floor, casting crazy shadows over the walls. David and Aden were gone, but I saw a pair of footprints leading out the back door and trailing away in the wet grass

that sloped toward the coast. The footprints glowed faintly with a sheen of bioluminescence. Glowing tendrils started to detach from the impressions an inch towards me. I fled out the open door, silently and involuntarily uttering, No, no, no, no, no. Three faint glowing figures stood beside my car. I recognised Miss Harriet, my third-grade teacher,

and the mycords who ran the small grocery in town. They smiled together in perfect unison and reached out toward me, tendrils of glowing seaweed trailing from between their fingers. I had taken several steps toward them before I realized what I was doing. The green in the rise called to me, with a low thrumming hum that I felt reverberate through my body. I turned, feeling like I was physically ungluing myself from their pull, and ran up the concrete steps to the house, slamming the door behind me.

They have remained standing beside my car for the last five hours, and others have joined them. I can see them, waiting, glowing in the darkness. When I peer through my window, my headache has been growing steadily worse, and the constant low hum has been building in pressure. I can feel it vibrating in my teeth. There is a constant pull to open the door and go outside. I feel like a fish fighting against the cold iron of a hook sunk deep into the gills.

The pull of the line implacable and relentless. I'm typing on the desktop computer in the Dupliceous house. I dropped my phone when I ran inside. The internet connection has been coming in and out, but I hope I can still post this. I feel like there must be something I can do to call for help. Something I could think of if I wasn't so tired. If I didn't feel like I'm trying to think through a thick fog.

I believe I see my mother at the window. She's smiling at me. I think I'll go outside and be with her soon. Doppelgangers aren't like what you see in the movies. They aren't interested in holding you captive and stealing your life. They aren't linked to you by some supernatural bond either. The only part that interests them is your taste. There, easy enough to spot if you know what you're looking for, but letting you a guard down for even a moment can be a deadly mistake. That's something my family had to learn

the hard way. It was around 6pm when I first realized something was wrong. I sat on the couch, head in my hands. I typed out a text message about a half hour earlier, but still couldn't find the strength to hit send. I picked up the phone from the coffee table and after staring at it a moment, put it back down again. I'd done this so many times I could swear there was a phone-shaped indent

in the wood. Come on, Paul, I mumbled to myself. It's just like ripping off a band-aid. Again, I picked up the phone. After taking a deep breath, I finally pressed enter. The message was simple. It's over.

It didn't take long for Stephanie to answer. Well, you said that last week. I furrowed my brow. I'm serious. I'm telling Wendy everything. I saw her start typing, stop for a long moment, and then start again.

She'll leave you, you know. You'll never see Henry again. This wasn't news to me. I'd spent countless nights agonising over that thought. Even so, seeing it in a text hit me hard. She always tried to get in my head like this, but for once I didn't take the bait. And I'll deserve it, I said. I powered my phone down before she could respond and shoved it in my pocket out of sight.

I suddenly heard the rumbling of Wendy's car coming into the driveway, which immediately made my heart rate spike. The keys begun turning in the lock. Like a band-aid, I thought again. The door opened and I steaded my breath. Hey, sweetie. Do you think we could talk for it? Her voice was buzzing with excitement. Hold that thought, babe.

I have something special for you. I just blinked and stared at her, dumbfoundedly. I, uh, great, what is it? She thrust a pink paper bag into my arms. Open it, she practically shouted. I hesitantly pushed my arm into the bag and fished out a box. Inside was another smaller box. I gave her a look and she just smiled.

Keep going. I did, as I was told, and discovered my present. Inside of the box, it was a positive pregnancy test. I instantly felt my resolve melt away. She looked at me expectantly, and I stretched my face into a wide grin. This is, I struggled for words. Amazing. She wrapped her arms around me.

I know right, Henry will be. so excited. What were you saying before? My mouth went dry. I don't really remember. She let go of me and headed for the hallway. Let me know when you think of it. I just stared at the floor. I had already partially come to grips with losing Henry.

This reopened the wound. I entertained the possibility of telling her eventually, but in the back of my mind, I knew I'd never be able to go through with it. Not now. I was considering all this when Wendy said something that gave me pause. I'm getting Henry. We're going out to celebrate right now. I raised an eyebrow. He's not with you. I thought you were picking him up today.

She stopped and turned around. Oh, did you forget already? You called me and said that you'd take care of it. Now, I was genuinely confused. I'm forgetful, but I've got a couple more decades at least before dementia starts setting in. When did that happen? About a half hour ago. After thinking a moment, I remembered something weird. But my phone's been missing a week, remember?

The phone I'd used to talk to Stephanie was a secret burner phone. I didn't even have Wendy's number on it. She smiled and raised an eyebrow. Well, someone left me this message. She quickly produced the phone and played back the voicemail. The voice I heard was my own, clear as crystal. Hey, sweetie, text me anything you want from the store, and don't worry about Henry. I'll pick him up on the way back.

This message startled me. Was I going crazy? When Wendy saw the confusion in my eyes, her skepticism gave way to concern. Who else would it have been? I frantically threw in my jacket. I don't know, but whoever it is, they're on the way to Henry's school. I rushed out of the house and into the car. As I sped down the empty street, terrible possibilities played on an endless loop in my head.

By the time I screeched into the elementary school parking lot, this missile was already well and away. I scanned the sea of faces for any sign of Henry, but it was hopeless. I was on the cusp of a full-on breakdown when I spotted a crop of familiar orange hair a few yards away. A second later, I caught a glimpse of Henry's face and relief washed over me. However, when I called him, the sound was drowned out by the screams and chatter of the crowd. As I pushed through the sea of parents and children, I saw that Henry wasn't alone. A man was holding his hand and quickly leading him toward the road. I gave another desperate cry.

Henry! This time he turned around. Henry looked puzzled after seeing me and kept looking back and forth between the man and I. Daddy? The man yanked him violently, and that seemed to snap him from his trance. Henry slipped from his grasp and dove into my arms, bearing his face in my chest. I wiped moisture from my cheeks and realized I'd been crying.

Please don't ever do that again. Henry pointed at the man, but he looked like you. I looked up and caught a glimpse of the stranger right before he ducked into the car. Then he was gone as soon as he appeared, speeding down the street and round in a corner. After checking every inch of Henry to make sure he wasn't hurt, I led him back to my car.

Listen, buddy, I said. Before you leave with someone, you need to be absolutely sure they're me, okay? Henry's face grew sullen. I'm sorry, I won't do it again. And you're sure he looked exactly like me? Henry squeezed his eyes shut and nodded emphatically. I sighed. It was all so impossible.

I kept expecting myself to wake up on the couch and a cold sweat. How would I explain this to Wendy? I gasped. Wendy. She was back at the house all alone. I told myself, I was just being paranoid, but it didn't stop me from pressing down the accelerator. The two of us made it back to the house in record time.

Henry started unbuckling his seatbelt, but I stopped him. Stay here, no matter what, I said. I crept up to the door. and found it covered in bootmarks as if someone had been trying to kick it open. Looking down, I discovered muddy prints leading to a smashed window. Ignoring the alarm bells sounding in my head,

I unlocked the door and slowly swung it open. The sunlight did little to illuminate the dimness of the living room. With what little light there was, I could make out a toppled bookcase and a few scattered papers. Not good. Eventually, I found Wendy, lying in the kitchen, sunk over like a puppet with no strings. A bruise was blossoming under her eye, and there were several bloody cuts on her face and arms.

The sight of her simultaneously broke my heart and filled me with rage. I reached out to her, but she recalled from my touch and shrieked. Calm down, I whispered. It's just me. I'm... I was cut off by a banana hitting me on the forehead. I blinked. Wendy was throwing anything within arm's reach at me. I know exactly who you are. Just get the hell away from me. Apparently, out of roots to the throat, she grabbed a nearby kitchen knife. My eyes widened and I put my hands up defensively.

No, just listen. Whoever attacked you wasn't me. Henry almost went off with a stranger today. He said the guy looked exactly like me. She lowered a knife, but didn't drop it. Where's Henry now? In the car, we need to get him out of here quickly. She eyed me hesitantly.

I racked my brain for a way to prove it. When he attacked you, was he wearing this? I asked, indicated my outfit. She looked me up and down before shaking a head slowly. I guess not. And you must have fought back. I motioned at the blood under her fingernails. I don't have a single scratch on me.

Listen, I know how insane it sounds, but I think some guy's been running around pretending to be me. Remember how my phone got stolen? He was the one who took it. He was the one who left you the voicemail. and he was the one who did this to you. I slowly held out my hand for her. You have to trust me.

After a moment, she finally put the knife down and finally let me help her to her feet. Henry screamed suddenly pierced through the quiet of the kitchen. Wendy and I looked at each other before rushing into the living room. Henry stood in the middle of the room, pale as a ghost,

and staring at the door to the basement. When his voice was frantic, what happened? Henry pointed a shaky finger at the door. Daddy's face was backward. What do you mean, sweetie? I took a hesitant step toward the basement door. It means there's someone down there.

Henry grabbed my sleeve. Don't go, Daddy, he's bad. I juggled quietly. I know he is, buddy. Stay close to Mommy, okay? I creaked open the door and took a step into the inky darkness. As I descended, my mind raced with possibilities of who might be waiting for me down there. Backwards face, what the hell did that mean?

By the time my feet landed on the cold cement floor, I was shaking, almost uncontrollably. The room was veiled in a wall of darkness, but I could just make out a figure at the other end of the room, perfectly still. As my fingers probe the wall for the light switch, my eyes stay glued to the thing in the corner. As I slowly adjusted to the darkness, I realised it was sitting. What was it crouched? My hand finally found the switch, and I flicked it up frantically. The room was filled with light, and my eyes met the figure that had been watching me. At first, I didn't know what to make of the bloody pile of skin and hair that sat in front of me.

Although it was ragged and mangled, I could make out arms and legs, like an empty Halloween costume from hell. The face held dark chasms with the eyes. eyes and mouth should have been. I edged a few inches closer and confirmed what I'd suspected. It was a face. It was my face. Mingled with the blood was greyish blue fluid that formed a trail along the floor. I followed it until it eventually stopped in an open laundry chute. After a moment of thought, I realized something that made my heart drop. The chute led straight to the living room. The living room my family was standing in.

Spinning on my heels, I began bolting up the stairs. Dred seized my body. While I was in the basement playing hero, my family might have been up there getting torn to shreds by that thing. Throwing open the door, I was met with an empty living room. I peered through a window, hoping to see them

waiting for me outside, but they weren't there. Realising they must be somewhere in the house, I began making my way into the dark halls. As I passed by fallen family portrait and broken vases, and I couldn't help but fear the worst. I tried opening the door to Wendy's bedroom, but it had been locked. Open up, it's me, I whispered.

After a moment, the door creaked open, and Wendy quickly dragged me inside. Thank God you're here, she hissed. It wasn't until I entered that I saw the condition Wendy and Henry were in. To my shock, they were both covered in a network of criss-crossing scratch marks. Wendy was cleaning to a fire poker Something she no doubt picked up Or trying to fight off whatever was in the house I quickly locked the door behind me

What happened to you both She blinked back tears Something attacked us It wasn't a person but it wasn't an animal either I know it's dark But I swear whatever it was didn't have any Any Any what

Skin She put her head in her hands Does that sound crazy? I shook my head and told her about what I'd found in the basement. After her I was done, she said something that caught me off guard. What do you think it looks like now? I shot her a puzzled look and she continued. Well, it made itself look like you.

What if it looks like someone else now? I thought for a moment. I guess that's true, but wouldn't it be long gone by now looking like another host? She held Henry a little tighter. I guess. I stood up. Well, come on. Let's get the hell out of here.

She didn't move. Why do you think it didn't attack you? There was a long, ugly pause. It was already gone by the time I got there. Now, can we please get out? I'm not going out there with me? With that creature! I took a step toward her, and she raised her hands defensively.

One of them still holding the fire poker. Please don't get any closer I sighed Wendy I get it You're scared I am too But but you have to trust me She seemed like she was easing up Until Henry threw me a curveball

Look He shouted pointing at my pocket Daddy found his phone After some brief confusion I realised he was talking about the burner phone I pulled it out and they didn't seem to tell the difference It took Wendy only a second to realize the implications.

She raised the shaky finger at it, nudging Henry behind her. How do you get that? I tried to sound innocent. What do you mean? She took another step back. It was stolen, remember? It's what that thing used to send me that fake voicemail.

How do you have it? No, this isn't the same phone. It's just a... I stopped myself. If I told her it was a burner, she'd know about the affair. She raised a fireboke. slightly. Just a what?

I edged the order. Listen, Wendy, I'll tell you. Just give me the fire poker. She swung in at me. More as a warning. Get back. Answer the question. Just what? We were about five feet apart,

her back nearly against the wall. I desperately tried to make my voice as soothing as possible. I promise I'll answer all of your questions as soon as you give me that thing. She swung again, a little harder this time. I wanted so desperately to just tell her and end this, but I couldn't do it.

I wasn't ready to lose her. I wasn't ready to lose my family. And I wouldn't have to if I could just get that damn fire poker. I grouted for her, but it whizzed through the air in an instant, slicing through my hand. I cried out and inspected the wound. Growling with anger, I made a lunch for her. She shrieked and blindly thrust the fire poker forward. I twisted my body to avoid it and tackled her to the ground.

I'd almost pinned my arms down when my breathing became ragged. Before I knew it, I doubled over. After some confusion, I looked at my chest and realised what happened. The fire poker had hit its mark after all. Through slightly blood vision, I watched Wendy push herself onto wobbly legs and scoop Henry into her arms. I breathed in shakily and weased. Burner. She gave me a bewildered look.

What are you talking? talking about. It's not my phone. It's a burner. After a brief coughing fit, I continued. I had an affair. I couldn't tell you. Oh my God, she screamed at me, her eyes welling with tears. You idiot, why would you wait until now to tell me? I just stared at the window. Strange colours were dancing in front of my eyes. If the creature isn't disguised as you, Then where is it? I barely considered her words at first, just letting them wash over me. Then I realized something that made my eyes bulge.

I tried to tell her, but I broke into a coughing fit. As Wendy tried desperately to decipher what I was saying, Henry slowly opened his mouth, revealing row upon a row of tiny, needle-like teeth. I have acquired Kazaar, Issue 237 to be exact. And it scares the hell out of me. I'm a collector, you see, of rare comics. Well, not really a collector. I never keep them for very long, you see.

I prefer to sell rare comics and mundane comics for a profit. I buy them from Goodwill, garage sales, estate sales, anywhere I can buy cheap and sell high. I mean it for the profit, pure and simple. But today, I may have found something I wasn't meant to own. Briarcliffe Estates was having an estate sale and I knew there would be some interesting pieces there Mr Briar had died at the ripe old age of 103

and he was said to be a notorious pack rat his wife and son had died years ago both under mysterious circumstances and Briarcliff had gained an air of mystery ever since it was said that his house was full of things everything from antiques and collectibles to downright garbage and I wanted to have a look. The sale was even grander than I expected.

There were holes cluttered with antique furniture, shelves full of books, antique kitchen appliances, Persian rugs, strange art, and odd articles from around the world. All the trash had been cleared away, and all the items for sale had been tagged and were displayed. A large crowd had gathered, I saw, and I was more than a little interested in some of the books for my shop. The auctions seemed like a total waste of time. right up until the last lot. The antique furniture went first, then the old cars from the garage, then the rugs, the appliances, and strange antiquities.

Some of them were pretty grisly. Apparently Mr. Breyer had been a world traveler in his youth, and he had picked up things from Africa, Russia, Germany and China, with an eye towards the occult. I actually found myself bidding on a wand made of pure ivory, something my Harry Potter fans might pay a lot for, but a stuffy old man in the front row shelled at 100, grand for it, and I sat down and shut up.

He had long white hair and an imposing beard that hung down past the waist of his immaculate grey suit. He was a char in comparison to the tote-faced guy with all the dark hair oiled to his head on the other side of the hall, and they seemed to know each other, no, and hate each other. They had several hard looks for each other as they held long and complicated bidding wars, and their battles bled over into the books as well. They snapped up most of the books, with old, moldering things with hard to pronounce names, and my bids were mostly shouted over as these two dueled for the remaining tones.

Most everyone else had gone, seeing that these two meant to have the lot, so when the last lot came up, and it was a box of comics, I immediately threw out a bid of $25. I hadn't expected to see any comics here, my focus being the antique books, but this seemed to be the only two things that these two weirdos didn't want. The bid went once, twice, and then sold as the two glared at each other from across the room. I took my box of dusty old comics and scuttled off before either of them could realize I had been there. I didn't realize what I had until I got home. I took them to my office and said to work. First a shower, then a change of clothes. All comics can be finicky and I like to be comfy when I appraised them.

Then the gloves came on. I have a nice set of reusable ones, latex, washable and thick, that usually serve my purpose. I put on a hairnet too. Can't be too careful with old comics. After I was set, I opened the box and had a look. I was not immediately impressed. Mr. Breyer, it appeared, had a thing for old Hanna-Barbera comics. There were some yogi bear issues, about ten Huckleberry hound issues, some Tom and Jerry comics,

and a few Wacky Racer comics I had never even heard of. I set those aside, and a barbaria comics never retail very high unless you have some of the rarer pieces. They were all in bags though and looked in pretty good shape, so at least I could ask asking price for them. Next was some old Johnny Quest comics that looked well used, and they also went to the side. Next came some, oh damn, old detective comics that looked like they were from the early 40s run, that were bagged and looked to be in great shape. I sat those on the desk by my computer It looked like my purchases wouldn't be entirely in vain

There were some other things in there Some well-loved action comics A few Batman issues from the late 60s And a single issue of a comic series I'd never heard of Sitting at the bottom of the box In a plastic sleeve that looked to be caked with dust And maybe soda, I guessed

Was a copy of Khazar the Amazing Issue 237 I had never heard heard of Kajar the amazing, and he appeared to be some sort of magician detective or something. I was also unfamiliar with Keystone Comics and decided to do some research. As I brought it over to the computer though, I felt a strong urge to drop it and just walk away. The comic felt weird, even through the gloves, and the bag was tacky in a way that soda usually wasn't.

I don't know how to describe it. It was like... like the comic didn't want to be held. I shrugged it off at the time, but I can feel it now, too, as it sits on the nightstand beside my computer. It still doesn't want me to touch it. I looked up Kajah Zah and found out that it was part of a debut series from Keystone Comics. Kajar was, in fact, the only comic series they ever put out,

and it had a very limited run. Lessened 500 issues of each comic ever came out, and they were extremely rare and not often seen at auctions. Issue 237 was actually the last issue ever printed before Keystone Comics burned to the ground in 1975. The fire was supposedly investigated and ruled as an accident, despite four people having perished in the blaze. Chuck Landstar, the owner and writer of Kazaar,

his assistant, Mike Dre, and the illustrators who worked on the comic, Jug and Dale Treblow had been killed in the fire. The series had never seen the light of day again. Apparently this issue had less than the usual number of runs. Even in its kind of ratty state, it was worth well over a thousand dollars. Kuching! $25 for a thousand dollars seemed like a great deal to me, and who knew what kind of bidding were I'd get on this thing?

I gingerly removed it from the bag and threw it away, as no customer would want it in that state. The comic itself was ragged. the spine bent and some page corners damaged or missing. The pages themselves looked pretty good, old but good, until I got to a spot near the back. Towards the end, Khazar appeared to be casting some kind of spell to summon some ancient deity. He stood in the middle of a circle laid with etchins and stones and ruins, and I could see quite a few bodies lying around as well.

Some of them seemed intricate and embellished enough to make me think that these might be main characters he'd sacrificed, but I knew nothing of the series, so I could only speculate. There was a dark-haired woman in a slinky dress that barely contained her, assets, a blonde guy with a loincloth and a skull helmet, what looked to be a kid in a red cloak, and some other, less-buckedum redhead that seemed to have died holding hands with a kid in the cloak. They were all laid out around the circle, and their deaths did not seem to have been kind. Kazaar was kneeling, resplendid in his yellow and green.

robes as he made his request before a towering form in a horned helm. Its eyes were cold beneath the visor, and its green armour was stained with ancient blood. It sat atop a bone-white horse, steam curling from its nostrils, as it brandished the sword at Khazar that looked big enough to cut him in half. Khazar was making a request, but the words had been smudged. That figure on the horse didn't sit right with me. Even through the page, I could feel his regard. It was like he was looking at me, judging me, weighing my worth.

I closed the comic. No sense getting spooked by some old comic, I told myself with a laugh. I took pictures next, showing some of the damage, and put it back in his protective bag. I uploaded the pictures to Comic Squire, the service I used to sell comics, and sat back to wait. I pulled some of the other comics I'd piled up towards me and started looking them up so I could post them as well. One of the detective comics was worth about $40, cool, and another was worth about $30, excellent, and... I heard a ding from my computer and looked up to see that Khazar had an opening bid of $500. I typed a message to the buyer, someone named Nilrim, the E was a three, informing him that I was firm on 800 and went back to my other comics.

Two of the detective comics had so much hamster cage lining, but I said, them aside so I can put them with a ball clot. Two more were worth $30, and I had just started looking at the seventh, and my computer dinged again. I looked up to see that the same buyer was offering $800, the price listed for it, and I nodded and turned back to my work.

The bid would sit on the site for an hour, allowing others to bid if they wanted, but I figured that this guy would get it, and I'd be $800 richer. I had barely gotten the seventh comic out of the bag when my computer had dinged again. A new bid had come in for $1,000. I checked the buyer,

and this time it was a new user by the name of Morgul. He was also offering an extra $50 to pay for overnight shipping. That made me raise my eyebrow, but I suppose he wanted to make sure it arrived undamaged. After all, this was a rare comic, and I sent him a message accepting his offer should he win. I'd barely send the message when Nilram came back with a $12,000 bid.

This went on for the next few hours, and as the bids went up, the bidders began to message me. This is when it got bizarre. From Morgle. Dearer, the user Nilrim is trying to purchase your wares under false pretense. He is my rival, and merely wants to own this comic so I cannot.

I implore you to award the sale to me and ship with all haste. From Nilrim, I must ask that you not sell this piece to Morgle. He wants it, Not for its scholarly endowment, but for the power it would bring him. I must have this item so he can be sealed away from those who might use it for ill. Thank you. I furred my brother this one.

Sealed away from those who might use it for ill? It was a damn comic book. From Morgal. I see that you have not awarded me preference in this matter. As Nilrim offered you something more in return for this item, I assure you I won't match whatever he makes, no matter the cost. That took me by surprise. These guys were clearly serious collectors, or weirdos, and they would likely pay big money for it.

I didn't have to do anything. All I had to do was stay quiet and let these do drive at the price on their own. Simple economics, I had it, they wanted it, and suddenly this ratty comic was looking like a cash cow to me. Even then, I hadn't realised the real value of the piece. From Nilrim. Please, I implore you not to be swayed by my own. Morgles boasting. If he gets that tome, it'll be devastation for our world. I implore you to sell it to me. Money is no object. Name your price and I'll pay it. I sat there through my teeth.

My small pile of potential profits forgotten. This fellow had basically written me a blank check. How much would be too much? He had said money was no object, but there was always a limit. I looked back at the sale and realised Nillrem had just placed a bid for $50,000. Morgal quickly counted with 60, and the two went right on, sparring as I watched. I pulled up Nelrum's message again, and that was when I realised that his profile had a picture attached. I clicked on it and realised that this guy was the same one from the auction today. His picture was of a grandfatherly looking man, long white hair, and a beard that was downright Gandalfesque. He was in his profile in the picture, just his head and shoulders, but I was willing to bet it was the same guy.

This Morgal character was likely the other man, the one who looked like a toad and had been afflicted with all that greasy black hair. They were just continuing their antics from the auction, and I was surprised they had any money left after all the crap they had bought earlier. Another message from Nilrem came in, and it had a link at the bottom to a new site.

From Nilrem. This must end. Morgan must not be allowed to own this spell. See what it wrought last time he was unleashed upon the world? The link brought up an article about the Briar Clever Estates. Four bodies have been found on the ground nearly 20 years ago. They had been arranged in the garden, the photos looking very similar to the ones in Karzah, minus the bodies.

Those have been replaced with taped outlines, but their placement was undeniable. Briar's wife, teenage daughter, nephew and brother, had been killed in what appeared to be a cold activity. Briar had immediately been the first and only suspect, but some combination of money and a number. alibis given out of fear had cleared him. Still, his reputation

in the community seemed to be well-earned. Had Briar made a deal with that horned demon? Had Briar possibly discovered something that led him to fill his hallways with junk in an attempt to insulate himself from whatever might confer him? I saw I had a message from Morgal, but his final offer was much less informative

than Nilrems had been. The link in his message was of a Google Maps location. It was my address. His last message was much less formal and much less pleasant than his others had been. I'm coming for what's mine. See you soon. I've been sitting in my office, writing all this down for the past hour. I've locked the doors and called the police, but they don't seem to be taken this very seriously.

The numbers in the bid haven't gone up in an hour. And even though Nilrim had won, I'm afraid he's never going to get what he paid for. I can see someone moving in the yard outside my window. But, when I tried to call the police, it just rings and rings. I don't know what to do. I can almost feel this comic watching me, even as whoever is outside keeps moving around out there. The sun will be down before long.

I wonder if they'll find my body here, or by some circle, in a garden somewhere.