CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 2+ Hours of SCARY r/nosleep Horror Stories to count down to the Christmas Holidays

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00 "If you ever find a message in a bottle, think twice before you open it" Creepypasta►10:59 "There's A Halloween Song We're Forbidden From Singing. I Found Out Why" Creepypasta►22:33 "Death of the Cosmonauts" Creepypasta►47:44 "I'm About To Take A Bath Please, Someone Stop Me" Creepypasta►1:13:25 "I swallowed something while running. It was not a bug" Creepypasta►1:42:12 "My old neighbor took a kayak to the middle of the lake every night" Creepypasta►1:58:31"I've been blind for nearly 30 years" CreepypastaCreepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY►Rick Bui: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2x...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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and let me find out of the way. Start today not your gratis proof period on Shopify.b.b. That is Shopify.B.E. of adventurous tales and the romantic idea that surrounds finding a message in a bottle, washed the shore by the winds and waves. I also just happened to be a part-time history nerd. So, when I found a parchment-filled bottle on the seashore in real life, you can imagine my

excitement. When I encorked it, though, I discovered no old-forgotten love story or new discovered chapter of history. What I found was a truly disturbing answer to the unsolved fate. of a ship and its crew. The bottle contains several pieces of yellowing parchment, covered in hastily written cursive. The writing scratched across the page. The time it had withstood made it difficult to read, but nevertheless a large portion of it is still legible. The translation of what can still be made out is as follows.

Sancta Salpador June 15, 1556. Strange events have befallen the Sancta in the past days after leaving the island. I write with haste because I fear that I may suffer the same fate as the rest of the crew. We set sail from the island several days ago and all was well until our ship's quartermaster, Diego, came down with a fever one eve. He was quarantined to his bunk, thrashing about in his sheets like a madman. The agonizing expression on his face was highlighted by the sweat of his brow. Blood-tinged phone gurgled from his lips when he screamed, and he seemed to worsen with each passing hour. The strangest part of the condition, though, was that he kept scratching at his eyes.

The corners were reddened, almost bloody, from his constant scratching. Sailors are a superstitious lot, and the most devout practitioners of the old ways went to the captain in concern. These crewmates seemed to believe Diego was suffering from the early stages of. This bit is unreadable on original parchment and has been omitted from transcription. The captain disregarded the idea as absurd. and ordered nothing to be done. Later that night, a terrible storm descended upon us. The sea surged beneath the ship.

Waves crashed over the bow, washing even the strongest of our men off their feet. It was in vain that we attempted to keep the lanterns lit as gusts of salt-filled air snuffed them out of existence, plunging us into darkness, so we toiled in the black, pummeled by the mighty rage of Calypso until dawn. The rising sun brought calmer seas,

and it was the early morning light that revealed Diego's bunk to be abandoned. The surprise caused accusations to fly, and the crew has been on edge since. Some say perhaps he took his own life to escape the torturous suffering of the sickness. Others believe someone cast him overboard in the dead of night. Out of fear, his condition may be unnaturally connected to the raging seas. Alas, a thorough search of the ship left us without an answer. A deep sense of her knees gripped the crew that in terms. entire day as we sailed. The men were already yearning to reach our home country shore and the

event of the night did not help. That evening, I was awoken from my hammock below deck by a scratching sound. Soft, high-pitched scratching that would continue for a moment and then fade back into the ever-present swaying sound of the seas. Annoyed at the thought of a rat's nest in the crew quarters, I swung myself down from my hammock and grabbed a lantern. The sound. The sounds stopped. I waited, motionless, and the sound started back up again. Holding my lantern up to appear down the rows of bunks, the ship hit a swelling wave which caused the lantern to swing. Its light cast in an arc from floor to ceiling. In the brief moment the light hit the fire under the room. I thought I saw a shadow. It looked almost like the hunched over silhouette

of a man. Unsure of what I saw, I saw, I saw. I saw. stepped forward. It wouldn't get groaned under the weight of my foot and the scratching stopped once again. Then a new sound echoed to the night air. It was a quickened, panicked scampering, followed closely by a muffled sliding sound as if a sack of potatoes were being dragged along the deck. I strained to hear over the white noise of the rocking seas, but I could not identify the source. I crept down the hall toward the sound.

As I neared it, I heard several dull thuds. as if whatever it was was now bumping down a flight of stairs lurking forward in pursuit of the strange noise I crept down into the darkness of the lower deck, careful not to creak the worn wooden steps as I descended Once below I strained ever hard to listen

The sound was coming from the far corner of the gun bay A scratching, gnarling sound I could feel my heart quicken within my chest As I dared to inch forward slowly raising my lantern the beam of light revealed the shadow bathed figure of a naked man

but it wasn't quite right his proportions was somehow unnatural he hunched over something his backbone and an impossible arch almost piercing through his skin like a reptile his hands were plunging in front of him and then raising to his mouth in a ferocious

animalistic repetition his back blocked my view so I slowly started to wheel to my left, holding my light ever so carefully. I stepped out with the caution of a mouse, but my heavy deck boot padded into a warm plank that creaked alarmingly as I shifted my way down. The creature's head jerked around to face me, and that's when I saw. Too empty, bleeding, eyeless socket, no longer filled by human eyes. Blood trickled out of the soulless black circles,

staining red streaks down his face. But the worst part was when I saw what he was feasting upon. Only recognizable by his uniform, one of my fellow sailors lay in front of the beastial thing, his eyes torn from his own socket and his belly ripped open. Half-consumed entrails piled onto either side of the corpse. The creature led out of blood-curdling, bird-like shriek that cut through the crashing waves like a dagger and began charging at me on all fours.

I am not ashamed to say that I turned and ran with all the strength my sea legs could muster. As I reached the top of the first flight of stairs, I wheeled about to take the next flight and caught a brief glimpse of the creature scuttling in a rage of the first few steps. The light of my lantern still showed the lower deck, and out at the corner of my eye, I saw the creature was joined in his pursuit by another figure. The corpse of the sailor was pulling itself along by its arms alone, haphazily dragging its inside along behind it, leaving a trail of blood and pieces of entrails in its wake.

I made for the deck, intending to raise the alarm, but when I reached the open night air, I was met only with a sight of carnage. A half-dozen sailors were combating similar-looking beings. The ship's spell began to echo into the night, its persistent ring beating regularly into the violent scene. Cutlaces hacked at eyeless men who were unshaken by the wounds. I watched in horror as several men were overtaken, the screams pierced into the uncaring night.

In a moment of quick thinking, I changed course to the captain's quarters. Reaching the hall it lay within, I saw the captain engaged in single combat with one of the creatures. Deathly dodging an ape-like swing, he plunged his steel deep within his chest. The creature, oblivious to the cutlass, embedded within his body, gripped his mangled hands on either side of the captain's head. The creature slid forward along the blade, impaling the weapon deeper into its own chest as it dragged itself closer to the captain. Panic filled his eyes as the creature's thumbs plunged into his eye sockets, tearing them from his head as he screamed in agony. Seeing my opportunity, I raced down the hall, nimbly evading the distracted pair. I reached the captain's quarters and slammed the door.

I right now barricaded from within these same quarters. Last I was aware, we were set at full sail for open ocean. Unmanned, the ship hasn't long before it capsizes, especially with the rough waters we've been sailing in. I write this now with the intention of bottling it and casting it into the seas. It's a long shot, but someone must know the true fate of the Sancta and its ill-fated crew. I regret that I could not give a better warning for whatever this monstrous thing is. but I never paid mind to superstitious sailors talk

With any luck I'll be dragged into the depths with the ship And this godforsaken thing abroad it So it may never see the light of day again Perhaps it was an awful folly after all Because in my years travelling the high seas I have no earthly explanation for what I have witnessed Be warned anyone who might find this message And never forget the Sancta Salvador

End of transcript When I began transcribing this draft My intention was to make this tale accessible via an online post As horrific as it is Historical study is just a hobby of sorts for me And unfortunately I only have the opportunity To work on it after my shift

On my first read of the document I was shocked and a little doubtful I did some research into the Sancta Salvador And not much is known about why it wrecked Maybe someone looked up an old ship and thought they'd play a joke. Or at least, that was my first thought. It's been several days since I began working on it. And strangely, I've been feeling a little unwell.

Tonight, as I finished the last several lines, I believe I've come down with a fever. I have the strangest pain behind my eyes, like they're too big for their sockets. I can't stop scratching at them. It's too distracting to it. edit this draft, so I think I'll just post it as is, and turn in for the night. It is late, and it seems a storm is brewing anyway.

Hopefully, this will serve as an interesting read to all the other horror and history buffs out there. And please, let it be a proper enough warning to anyone curious enough to open a message in a bottle. In 1981, at the height of the Cold War, the Russian government launched a low-orbit spacecraft under the guise of scientific exploration. The vessel was, in fact, militarised and equipped with two nuclear warheads. Its purpose? A dead man's switch in the unlikely event that the Motherland and her arsenal of nuclear submarines were compromised.

The Russian government, however, lost contact with the spacecraft shortly after it breached the atmosphere. After eight weeks of radio silence, it was considered lost the space. Then, in September of this year, a mangled ballast of debris crash landed in the Nevada Badlands. Neither the nuclear warheads nor the two cosmonauts bodies were recovered in the wreckage. One thing, however, did survive. This journal, found in a blast-proof box, provides a haunting glimpse of the cosmic atrocities living just beyond the light of our world. Its transcript, obtained and translated by me, is seen below in full to preserve its integrity. Its opening page bears no names, no dates, no times.

It reads simply, death of the cosmonauts. My Cossack sensibilities betray me. I know the shadow men who swim through the stars must only be a figment of my tired mind, because none of God's creatures are born to survive, the great crush of his magnificent creation, the cosmos. But now, after the death and revival of my comrade, faith evades me. The shadow men are true. They move like snakes and speak in voiceless tongues. Some are bigger than others, but I hear them all without rest.

The words curl and writhe through the hum of thrusters, rattling into my skull and weary mind my hot pokers from a burning hearth. I miss my comrade. He watches me through the porthole as I write. Even now, his face torn into a distended grimace, so much like munches the scream. A dreadful smile that fills my stomach with pain. His teeth are black and thick fluid the colour of dead stars gurgles down his ruined socle. I can see a shadow man beneath him, wearing his expired body like a husk. When I look at him, his haunted and blinking eyes, his forehead wrinkled in forgotten agony.

I see fingers clawing up from beneath his skin, stretching it like dough under Babushka's hand. I don't have long now. For the final hour upon me I find myself alone Alone without the voice of my lord Or my comrade to quell the agony But no No

I'm not alone I know he's with me The false god I thought I knew But no not at all They're also with me Them The ones who drive the shadow men across the plains of time Like cattle in an American western film

The Forgotten Creators I cannot tell you the details of our ship That would constitute treason But I will tell you it operates like a shuttle With an array of vestibals that serve as our rest and recreation quarters The launch was elementary A rocket carried us through the sky And into the black beyond

Dispatching us like a payload before returning to Earth Leaving us the drift through the inky chasm That lines our world like a blanket The malfunctions began almost immediately starting with false readings, low fuel thrust the damage, and ending with total loss of communications. We found ourselves alone,

with no downlink or uplink, we found ourselves stranded to the stars, left to float voicelessly to the great unknown like men shipwrecked in a child's dream. We spent a week doing maintenance, manual readings, but since communications had yet to return, we made a mutual decision to abort the mission

and return to Earth. That's when the silver disc came into view. As big as a planet it was, not floating, no, simply hanging in the stars ahead. It took not the appearance of a solid object, but a portal, as if God himself had punched this silver hole through the fabric of space. We watched from the command module as it grew on the horizon, grew like a foul sun barreling toward us. My God, whispered my comrade, as the unlikely vision roped us into his vacuum.

Then it all went rotten. We fell back on our training, using expelled pressure to try and pull the ship away. Sweat fell in hot pints, pulses rose, a panic climbed to a fever pitch as false light, cold silver light flooded the command module. But I think, especially now, that it wasn't light at all, for light is silent, and this was not silent. It was deafening. A high-frequency scream, the unbearable cry, her dog must hear from a silent whistle,

rode the awful light, needling at my eyes, picking at my ears. It filled my lungs with fluttering dread, turning my insides into a cloud of dead leaves, whipped into a frenzy by the wind of fear. I clawed at my head as the wine built, built. The heavens were one great thunder, and our ship rattled and shook and crushed the silver void into, I blinked and saw only red, a hellish carmine like hot blood from a severed neck. It surrounded us. It was dreadful and something jumped into my ribs and I yelped, the sound of a small dog with his tail in the door.

I looked over and saw my trembling comrade, his body twisted and convulsing, hands torn into rigid claws, eyes showing only the whites as a bib of red foam curled down his jumpsuit. I cried out, not his name nor a word, merely a frightened syllable, and reached out for him. Then I saw what surrounded us. We were no longer in the stars. That place, the bleeding place, was the devil's nightmare, and the horrors it bred, the things living in silent tandem beside our world were just now waking up. I dragged my dying comrade out from the command module and into the medical station. Blood roared from his eyes, ears, nose. He had sprung a deathly leak, and if I didn't apply medical attention, he would surely.

He sat up on the padded bed with a sudden strangled gasp. The overhead lights were out, and in the reddish pollution, he was now a vision of terror. A dreadful nightmare from the religious fresco depicting the underworld. His eyes still rolled into his brain, had blossomed with the red of a dozen blown capillaries. His lips drew back as if pulled by invisible hands, pulling into a crooked sneer. Darkness is the only comfort, said a jagged voice that was not his own. His lips did not move. The words seemed to scrape through his chest.

I stepped back, the joints of my legs creaking like a rusty door. My heart was pounding sickenly, a hollow thumping ache in my chest. Darkness is what all things find come the end. continued that snarling, foul voice. Eternal light and glory was a lie all along. An amusing lie meant to trick mortal fools. There is nothing but frozen darkness. There is nothing but the wicked gods.

Two black arms exploded from his mouth. Hands the color of pitch grouted at his jaw, his head, trying to claw the rest of themselves out, as if his very soul was trying to escape his corrupted body. The choked cry I fell back. slamming the command module door as the man who was my comrade changed into something else entirely. Something clawed and scraped, pulling back my comrades bleeding flesh like an expired skin. Blood misted the window. Spraised her brain splattered the wall.

A thing, the colour of darkness, faceless, featureless, appeared in the port-hole window. Behind him was a bloody husk, a mangled, fleshy suit folded limply on the ground. a puddle of gore expanding from it like a red halo. The shadow man spoke, spoke in my mind. I ignored his voice, cruel and cold, and collapsed into one of the padded chairs facing the panorama window. What I saw beyond drove through me like a flaming arrow. I sat, silent, stunned, shivering with roar, screaming terror,

and stared at the horizon. Shadowy giants, the size of galaxies, floated. through the red abyss by condemned souls. Planets, they were not planets at all, but infallible, rotting skulls, hung like gruesome ornaments. Smaller planets, sallow and opaque, ringed by belts of umbilical famed fetuses curled up in utero, in massive, incredible forms pulsing with terrible life. It was a grand masquerade of horrors, of things moving like liquid to the dreadful cosmos. I drifted toward it all with my chest tightening, tightening like it was being

talked to the breaking point. I felt my soul weaken. All at once, something swept into view. A dark curtain as big as the sky itself. The ship shuddered in shock as a face made of darkness filled the horizon. A face bigger than a planet, bigger than a monster has any right to be. It was a giant and its mouth slowly broke apart like a curtain at Showtime. I looked back at the portal. A shadow man, a mere homunculus compared to his brother, wore my comrade's bleeding skin. I stared at the window as the giant swallowed me. I found my voice, and I screamed.

We were vanished into static, devoured into a space that screamed with flickering snow, as if we've been swallowed by a polytune television. Looking out on the horizon, may my teeth ache, may my eyes drop with icy pain. It was unbearable, a cold, lifeless place, a thing in between places. Was I in the digestive tract of the universe, in the belly of all creation? Either way, I knew, knew in the deepest wrinkles of my soul that this place was rotten. So, I primed our payloads for detonation, a final light show, courtesy of Mother Russia. Then I wrote, casting my tail in inkum paper.

It ends as it ends. Maybe as God, if there is such a thing beyond those massive horrors intended. Maybe not. Maybe this ending, my ending, was written by me and only me, when I left behind the earth and search of heaven. It doesn't matter now. This is my deliverance. This is the death.

of the cosmonauts. From world-wide topmerken to entrepreneurs that net begin. Milliooning, on Shopify. Vercoop online, in your winkel, on Instagram, TikTok, and more.

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your gratis-profperiodo on Shopify.b. That is Shopify. When I signed up for the national teaching program, I imagined I'd be sent to the Chicago inner city or the deep south, not this quaint, quiet New Hampshire town. I just couldn't understand why the place struggled to keep teachers, or any other out-of-town professional for that matter. There were always vacancies, even though there's virtually no crime, friendly people, and most of all, beautiful countryside. When the colours change in fall, the town looks like a postcard, better than a postcard, because no flat image could capture the vibrant yellows, flaming oranges and rich ruby reds that cover

every hillside. Tourists drive for miles just a stroll through the colourful rain of falling leaves or snap pictures in the morning mist rolling through apple orchards and barnyards. As a lover of pumpkin spice, Halloween, and all things fall, I was in heaven. Starting at the beginning of October, elementary-aged students decorated the classroom with paper cutters of ghosts and cobwebs, and carved pumpkins bobbed for apples, and read the legend of Sleepy Hollow. To my surprise, I got a lot of positive phone calls from parents, praising the work I'd put into my classes, and telling me how much their children had enjoyed them.

Principal Harris even pulled me aside to tell me how impressed he was and mentioned that if I'd keep it up, he'd pull all the strings he could to get me. a permanent position. Everything was going great until the day of the Halloween sing-along. I ordered a CD of spooky but kid-friendly songs and on the chosen day we turned out the lights, put lit candles inside the pumpkins we carved and sat in a circle to sing. I could feel the children's anticipation build as I turned the CD player and hit play. After a few creepy sound effects of fluttering bats, screams and witch cackles, the first track began. Have you seen the ghost of John? Long white bones with all the skin gone.

Ooh, wouldn't it be chilly with no skin on? As the second verse began, I looked around the classroom. Something was very wrong. The children who usually loved to sing was silent, except a few who were crying. Most of them had plucked their ears with their hands I'd expected the songs to be spooky But this Running footsteps announced the arrival of Principal Harris

He sprinted across the classroom and turned off the CD player Like someone disabling a bomb at the final second Are you nuts? He panted I We can't have a talk about this after your class Don't ever play that song in this town again Understand

Give them I don't know some notes to study or something. The afterclass meeting with Principal Harris was awkward, but I wasn't sure if it was worse for him or for me. He kept picking things up from his desk and setting them down again, looking out the window and sighing. Finally, he cleared his throat and got to the point.

As you know, Harris began cautiously. This is a very... Old town. We even have one of those. George Washington slept here, B&Bs. Can you believe that? He tried to force a laugh. It died in his throat.

Anyway, old, small towns like ours tends to have a lot of superstitions. They might seem silly to outsiders, but they're very important to us. It was clear who the outsider was in this situation. Seeing my day dream of a bright future in this town disappearing fast, I cleared my throat and replied,

If I've done something offensive, I'm sorry. It wasn't my attention, and I appreciate you letting me know so that it won't happen again. Do a lot of people in town have a religious objection to Halloween? Or is it more like, no, no, nothing like that. Harris scoffed. We're not a bunch of Bible-thumping hillbillies up here. It's that specific song. And that specific story, in fact, that I need to ask you to avoid.

What, you mean that old folk song? The Ghost of Jop? Yes, that one. No need to say more. Let's just not mention it again, all right? You're doing great work here. I'd hate to see it cut short because of a silly misunderstanding. But why?

Let's just drop it, okay? Harris was almost pleading. It was like even discussing the song was too much for him. I think I've said all I'd need to. And you need to get back to class. Ha. Another fake laugh. Look.

Just one other thing. You can expect some, um, negative reactions around town when the children tell their parents about class today. Try to take it in stride. Remember, this is a very, very sensitive topic for us. I left the ugly, fluorescent glow of Principal Harris's office with a bad taste in my mouth and a burning curiosity. What could be so bad about a song, especially one that was hundreds of years old? I went through the rest of the day on autopilot and bolted for the library as soon as I could. The storied old building, this red brick and shadow white columns, was one of my favourite places in town.

I spent hours there reading, preparing material, or just chatting with the librarian, Sarah Newman. Hey, Sarah, I waved to the frizzy mass of hair at the reception desk. How's it going? Hello, Mrs Newman replied curtly. Can I help you? I was put off by my friend's reaction, but I wasn't about to stop now. I wanted to ask you, I'm afraid I'm very busy. Sarah Newman cut me off, adjusted her glasses, and went back to furiously stamping library books.

But I noticed that she glanced up at me again, with a twinge of sympathy in her eye. If you want to learn about town history, I suggest you check the newspaper archives, specifically the October issues from 1989, 1972 and 1958 should do nicely. The rubber stamp resumed its pounding. Our conversation was over. Soon, I was reading the headlines from October 1989. October 1st, students to sing about local legend in Halloween chorus.

October 8th, protest against curse sing-along are our children in danger? October 15th, a spooky success, Halloween chorus placed to a full house. October 22nd, local children abducted, police suspect the worst. October 29th, five students found dead, details inside. October, 1972. October 1st, New York folklorist has studied local legend. October 8th, a stranger in town, an interview with folklorist's James Hatterwood.

October 15th, quote, Stay out of our grows, Hatterwood's investigation sparks controversy. October 22nd, New York folklorist James Hatterwood, missing, volunteers needed.

October 29th, an unfinished tale, Hatterwood disappearance remains unsolved. And in 1958, October 5th, Good Time Girls and Hooligans and look inside a teen motorcycle craze. October 12th, miscreants or misunderstood,

local councils aband teenage bikers. October 19th, angry greasers adopt local legend as the mascot, council concerned. October 26th, accident or foul play. Parents weep a tragic biker club pile up. The newspaper room was in the basement and a chill run over me as I read the articles. It wasn't hard to imagine what the local legend must be. The ghost of John.

I didn't believe in ghouls or curses, but it was easy to see why the legend was a sore spot for the locals. I resolved to never mention it again. As I climbed the dim, creaky stairs, a loud buzzing made me nearly jump out of my skin. I had dozens of missed calls. I listened to the voicemails as I drove home. each one was worse than the last.

Parents who only days before had been calling me a blessing, or my child's favourite, were now screaming at me, threatening my life, ordering me out of town, and in a few cases, all three. It brought me to tears.

These were the people who baked me cookies and showed me around town. How could a simple song have made them so thoughtlessly cruel? By the time I got home, my sadness had turned. turned to tight-fisted anger, or at least that's what I tell myself to justify what I did next. None of this was fair. How was I supposed to know about some dumb superstition? I was still sniffling and wiping my red, coffee eyes, when I got out of the car and waved to the

Volcker's, my neighbours across the street. The two Volker children left their toys on the lawn and went inside without saying a word. Their parents followed them, turning out the porch light as they went. More hot tears stringed down my cheeks Without thinking twice I pulled out the CD of Halloween songs And jammed it into my car CD player With the doors and windows open

I skipped through the tracks In search of one particular song When I found it I played it at full volume I watched as one by one Porch Lights went out And people enjoying the autumn evening Scurried back to their houses

I was left alone in the driveway of my rented house, sobbing pitifully into the smoky October twilight. When I awoke the next morning, I had a few happy, quiet moments in my warm bedsheets before I remembered what I'd done. When I did, however, the anger and shame hit me like a punch to the gut. My morning coffee did hula hoops around my stomach. I dreaded what was coming when I got to school. To my surprise, no one mentioned anything.

It was like the day before it never happened. Sure, my co-workers suddenly seemed more guarded around me, but there were no red-based parents looking for a fight, dismissal letters, or hordes of sobbing children. The closest anyone came to mentioning the song was a boy in my second period class. Hey, aren't we going to finish the song? he asked. Shut up, Clayton! The girl next to him jammed an elbow into his rib. What? Clayton shrugged.

I liked it. Just because our parents are all freaked up. Clayton, we can't. Another girl hissed. The class began to murmur. I had a teachable moment here. It was time to decide whether I was going to support the local superstition or encourage the kids to think for themselves.

I made a mistake playing the song yesterday, Clayton. I replied sweetly. It bothers a lot of people and we need to respect their feelings. I felt like a coward, but I didn't care. All I wanted was to put this whole thing behind me. I wanted to go back to how things were when I was first walking around town, coffee in hand, watching the leaves fall. A few quiet days past, I was beginning to think that I'd survive the first major classroom

scandal of my teaching career, a little wiser, a little sadder maybe, but mostly unscathed. I decided to celebrate. I'd clear my head by visiting some of the kitschie tourist attractions in the small towns nearby. As I drove, however, the weather took a turn for the worse. The misty morning clouds became a weird, yellowish grey, and fat raindrops began to fall. Even with my wipers gone full blast, it was hard to see. There was something wrong about this weather, something unnatural that put me on edge. That's why I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a loud revving behind me.

Who would be riding a motorcycle in this weather? way the black riders appeared out of the rain made me think of the headless horsemen, but the logo on their jackets referenced the different legend. Even in the pouring rain, I could read the bone-wet letters around their skeletal mascot, The Ghosts of John. There was music playing above the sound of the rain. Was that? Elvis? Shake, rattle and roll? Six motorcycles had closed in around me, three on either side,

and soon I couldn't even hear the rain over the rain over the way. the rumble of their engines. What did they want? If this was a joke, it was in very bad taste. If this was meant to scare me, it was working. I gripped the steering wheel tightly, but felt like my wheels were already hydroplaining on the wet pavement. The mysterious bikers surrounded my car, the rain-ragged shadows drawing closer and closer on each side. Their bodies, or long white bones, were hidden by black leather, and behind their scarred helmets, their faces, with the skin all gone, were completely anonymous. I couldn't maneuver without their permission, and they knew it.

It was getting harder and harder to see. The rain was a grey sheet that covered even the dead branches of the roadside trees. As the road curved, I noticed the cyclists around me were pushing me, forcing me to make sharper and sharper turns to avoid hitting them. I would have even risked it if I wasn't sure that hitting one of them would make me of an accident myself. I don't know how long they kept it up, the cheesy 50s music, the deafening engines, the knuckle-widening head games. It was meant to break me for what came next. The Ghost of John began to slow down.

They wanted to force me to stop, to make me face six of them, alone on a stormwash country road. My heart pounding, I skated to a stop with them in a gravel pull-off. They shut off their engines. Without that roaring, the only sound. was the wind-lashed rain. In unison, the dark figures dismounted. Slowly, one turned to me, reaching for his helmet, about to reveal what lay beneath. I stumped on the accelerator.

The riders had left a gap in their wall when they dismounted their antique cycles, and I took it. Although, whether I passed through the line because I got lucky or because the bikers was something otherworldly, I couldn't say. I swerved madly on the slick, windy roads, and nearly quite. crashed to the guardrail of a bridge and into the roaring waters below. Maybe that, I realized, was the point. I drove home as fast as the wretched weather would allow. I'm not sure if it was the damp, the stress or something else,

but my experience of the dark riders put me into bed with chills and a fever. Sleeping and waking, dreams and hallucinations blended so easily that I was unable to tell the difference. Like the man who I saw and heard, hastened to the house, lost in thought. He had a long ball cut and a beard of 70's style and the suit jacket elbow patches of a college

professor. When my eyes would flicker open, I'd sometimes spot him at my desk, scrutinizing yellowed manuscripts. The pentasmal professor's presence was almost comforting. As time passed, his behaviour became more and more erratic,

swinging from ecstasy to plate-smashing rage. I'm sure I imagine the next part, because no huge human could have survived it. I woke in the depths of fever sometime in the lost hours of the night. I dragged myself to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

When I returned, I saw the professor, plain as day, backlit by the lamplight. He was surrounded by dangling skeletal figures, like puppets. They hung from every available surface.

In front of him was an antique wooden trunk. He held a bow-knife in his hand, and He was laughing. Of course, of course, I thought I heard him giggle. So simple, why didn't I see it before? Cheerfully humming the song, the professor peeled away thick, juicy cuts of his own flesh. He kept going, in fact, until there was nothing left.

When he'd finished, he put the skin suit in the chest, sealed it and carried it off, still chuckling to himself. I blinked. The hideous vision disappeared. I slipped back beneath the sheets and sipped my tea, wondering what my feverish brain would kick up next. By Monday. I felt better. The hallucinations and bizarre dreams had stopped,

but I was still left with more questions than answers. I decided to visit Sarah again at the library. The moment Sarah saw me walk to the door, however, she scurried off. I finally caught up to her in the stacks, trying to look busy. You're avoiding me, I accused her. Oh, I have no idea what you're talking.

I did the research she suggested. I even played the song again. At this, Sarah stopped speaking and went pale. She looked to both ends of the narrow shelves, as though she expected monsters to come and carve us up. You shouldn't have done that, the librarian muttered to herself. The more you play it,

The more you talk about it, the more you think about it, the worse it gets. Her eyes darted from side to side again. It's too Tim back here. We're alone. We shouldn't even be discussing this. But how did it start? I wondered aloud. I mean, if it's even real, then surely there must be a way to stop it.

If it's even real? Sarah hissed. I can see in your face that it has started happening to you too, and you dare doubt it. If you've played the song, you know. to your life this far and you're still alive. I do not want to tell you. Get away from here and forget about it. If it isn't already too late.

I'm not talking about this. I told her about the bikers. She looked miserable the whole time. Half wanting to cover her ears. Half dying to know more. Leaving town is out then, she muttered to herself. It'll get you on the roads.

I told her about the professor. It's in your house already then, Sarah frowned. it is too late She gave my shoulder a little squeeze I'm sorry Hurrying off she turned one last time And we did not have this conversation

I was expected at school the next day Back among my pile of sheet music and childish instruments I barely remembered where I'd left off But it didn't take me long to find out It warns my heart how the students welcome me back And even helps me find my place in their lessons To them, of course, I'd only been out sick. They had no idea of the nightmare I'd been living since I played the song.

The older ones waved to me with toothy grins, and the younger ones gave me those headbutting hugs that small children seemed to specialise in. I just needed to distract myself, I thought. So I did something I'd sworn I'd never do. I played Christmas music in October. The kids were a little shocked, but the change of season,

did me good. In the classroom, singing jingle bells and learning the history of St. Nick, it was easy to pretend I'd never heard of ghosts, hauntings or Halloween. Outside the school building, however, the late autumn air seemed eager to remind me. Instead of crisp white snowdrifts, dead brown leaves swirled beneath the bare skeletons of the trees. Instead of colorful lights and holly, houses were decorated with fake cobwebs, wooden tombstones and other reminders. of the long hand of death. Instead of ice skaters and carolers, the streets abounded with children in costumes

that, for the first time, struck me as grotesque, twisted and wrong. When the trick-or-trees jumped out from behind hay bales or pumpkin piles, their masked faces frightened me far more than their intended targets, who ran away shrieking gleefully. What was fun for them had become, for me, deadly serious. I realized how much I've been affected when I looked out the kitchen window a few nights before Halloween.

I screamed silently when I saw the long white bones of a skeleton beneath a twisted apple tree in front of the house. It was watching me. I don't know how long I stood, staring into the black pits of his eyes, at his hideous, bony grin, its dead intensity. But finally, I realized that it wasn't moving.

With a kitchen knife in my trembling fist, I crept outside to face it. I saw the string. I gave the skeleton a shove. Plastic. I was still laughing at my own pathetic fate. When I felt a tug on my elbow made me turn. A child was there. Was it one of my students?

Excuse me, miss, the child rest. Can I have some... of your skin? What? I was sure I misunderstood. Can I have your skin, miss? It sure is chilly with no skin on. That was when I realised

the child wasn't wearing a costume. The thing before me was draped in a simple blanket like a mortuary sheet. There was stained red. It was the kind of stain that might come from a small body with all of its flesh flayed off, I thought. There were no other. your mouth holds for the child to breathe the blood-soaked fabric and it held only a single tallow candle for light.

I backed away slowly. I didn't start running until four other identical shapes drifted out of the gloom. Candles flickering on their faceless wrappings. Despite their small size and inability to see, they pursue me quickly through the cracked bracken, mud and heaps of leaves. They come between me and my rented house, and like a panicked animal, I bolted dead ahead. head, and straight into the woods behind my house. Soon the only light came from the candles held by the five child-sized figures that pursue me through the damp and foggy darkness.

Tripping and slipping over gnarled roots and rotten logs, I understood with horror that I was being herded. The destination was clear. A silvery clearing dominated by a single dead tree. Now that I've stood in that clearing, I say, that I have, indeed, seen the ghost of John. Oh yes, we all have. A five student singers, Professor Hatterwood, the town's first motorcycle gang, other figures

too old to name, and still others who walked in those woods before names even existed. We have all seen those long, white bones. I don't know why I was allowed to leave the clearing. Perhaps the ghost once it sung and story spread, or perhaps it knows that. that I'll be back before all Hallows Eve. You see, where the haunted child touched my elbow, a grey spot began to grow. Little by little, the flesh around it grew pale

and crumbled away like dust. Most of my left arm is bone now, and the change seems to be growing faster. It sure is going to be chilly, with no skin on. I never imagined myself as a homeowner, like a lot of people in my generation. I saw having a house on my own as an impossible pipe dream.

And besides, I didn't want to get tied down or take on even more debt. But the house on 242 Mortuary Lane changed all that. Of all the cringy, cliche things I did after my last breakup, the only one that doesn't hurt to think about was applying for a job in a town on the other side of the country. It was a Hail Mary. But all I wanted was to get out of the toxicity. mess I was in and into a place where I didn't know anyone and nobody else knew me. A fresh start.

The video connection must have been bad enough that the interviewer couldn't make out my hungover eyes or hear the quaver in my voice because I got the job. Although I was intimidated by the high paying responsibility, I took to it better than I'd hoped. My new co-workers were kind, quirky people who helped me to meet people and come out of my shell, and soon I'd fallen to in love with the town we all called home. I was so sure about my new life that I started looking for a house to buy after only one

year. I soon discovered that rent is astronomical in this ideal little Pacific northwestern town and real estate prices are sky high. Even with my high salary, I doubted I'd ever be able to save enough for a down payment while also paying rent,

bills and my student loans. Every place I found was either so expensive or so shoddy that it became a sort of dark game among my co-workers to see you could find the worst house for sale. When I first saw the ad for the Morbury Lane House, my first thought was, Okay, what's wrong with it? The split-level ranch house with a white siding

and a hard-wood deck was located in a semi-forgotten neighbourhood sandwiched between the more developed parts of downtown. Nothing suggested that crime was a problem, and the price was so low that I was sure someone had forgotten a decimal point. I booked a walk through immediately. The place was solidly built and spotlessly clean.

The friendly agent explained that it had stood vacant for a few weeks since the death of the former owner, an older woman who lived alone. Apparently there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding a death. She had simply drowned in the bathtub. I wondered if that was the reason for the spotlessness of the place. It was as if the cellars had, had wanted to scrub away every last memory of the former occupant and her death.

There, on the back of my neck, stood up as I peered into the darkness of the bathroom. Would I really be okay living in a place where someone had died recently? I told myself that I was being silly, that in my countless moves from apartment to apartment, I had surely shared a space with the newly departed dozens of times. Suddenly, I wasn't so sure about all this, until I walked out the door and turned around to look at the place

one last time. I imagine myself walking in the door after a long day of work. Only golden lights spilling out from the wide windows maybe a dog or a spouse to greet me at the door. The agent grinned

and held out the paperwork expectantly. He already knew. A few weeks later I was moving in. My finances were pushed the limit, signing for my first mortgage, felt like signing my soul away to the devil, with slightly worse consequences if anything went wrong. But as my pen hovered above the dotted line, I reminded myself that I'd never find an opportunity like this again. It warned to my heart that several of my co-workers

volunteered to help me move in before I even got around to asking them. Like big kids, we skidded down the vacant hallways in socks, built stuff with my heaps of cardboard boxes, and shared pizza while we stared at the bare living room wall and joked about how I could redesign the place. With a hot slice in one hand and a cold beer in the other, the laughter of friends reverberating to the empty rooms.

It felt like all was right in the world. I'd finally made it. Dude, my manager exclaimed, wiping his hands on his pants. I think he might have a leak. He'd just come from the bathroom. Frowning, I followed him back down the hallway. Sure enough, a steady, drip, drip, drip,

resounded from the bathtub faucet. No matter how I fiddled with a knob, nothing happened, until finally the dripping stopped of its own accord. I resolved to call a plumber in the morning, and before long I was leaving my friends out the door from the first party in my new home. Exhausted from the tension and effort of the day, I collapsed under my clean sheets,

without even getting undressed or taking a shower. Contentment washed over me as I drifted to sleep in the blue night, watching the ceiling fan spin in slow circles above. A light was on in the bathroom. How strange. I went to investigate, my footsteps echoing down the long corridor. It was the dripping again too. But this time the drops sounded like they were splashing in water.

I pushed the door open. The bathtub was half full of beautiful, clean, aquamarine water. It looked so pure and warm. A light steam rose from scrubbed white surface of the tub. Forgetting my concern about who or what had turned on the light, I reached down with my hand. The water was perfect for a bath. The fat, wrinkled hand that grabbed my neck from behind

was bloated to twice the size of what a normal human hand should be. With irresistible strength, it jams my head beneath the surface of the water. The more I splashed and fought, the more oxygen I lost. Until finally, I was taking deep gulps of bathwater. The hot liquid was pouring into my lungs. I awoke with a start. The house was silent. No lights, no drips, no horrible dead hands.

Just me, with my hands on my chest, soaked in sweat. I went to the kitchen for a glass of water, trying to shake the horrible dream from my mouth. mind. The sweet, crisp liquid was delicious and brought me back to my senses. It was normal to have nightmares in a new place, especially after I made such a big deal that by the previous owner's death. I was letting my own head mess with me. After another cool glass of water, I returned to bed and fell into a dreamless sleep. It took me about a week to realize I was subconsciously avoiding my own bathroom. I usually worked out at the gym across the street from work and showered there.

I brushed my teeth in the shortest time possible and took care of other necessities in the smaller toilet and sink only bathroom on the lower floor. I didn't think that I was still having nightmares about it, but maybe I just didn't remember them. Maybe I didn't want to remember them. Something had to be done. I went to the local store and bought the gorgeous, most garish stuff I could find. A hot pink shag rug, a lime green shower mat, a cow-themed fluffy towel set, and for some reason, a bunch of tiny cactuses. Once I decorated, I drew myself a hot bubble bath and sank blissfully into the warm water. I closed my eyes and sighed. If this was facing my fears, it wasn't so bad. I splashed around in the bubbles until I got bored, then went to drain the water.

As my eyes opened, I swear I glimped something grey and swollen, floating just beneath the bubbles. When I swore them away, however, it was gone, whatever it was. I tiled off, content with my conquest. I was feeling so confident, in fact, that I'd hopped back under the dating app I'd give it up on a wall back and set a few messages. To my surprise, I soon had a date. After a few beers and a long walk around downtown, we ended up in bed at my place. I'd never had anyone stay the night at my home before, and even though we just met, it felt good to fall asleep with them, nozzled up against my chest.

I woke some time in the night, however, to find them gone. I brought myself up on one elbow and scanned the blue dimness of my bedroom. Had they just left? I crept to the window and opened the blinds, peering out into the lush, lamp-lip suburban street. Gricking floorboards made me spin around. A shadowy figure leaned against the doorway. Hey, my date purred. Hey, yourself, I gasped.

You scared the hell out of me. You could have told me your grandma lives with you, you know? They mentioned as they came back to my bed. My blood turned to Weiss. What? I whispered. Yeah, they snorted. I almost walked in on her in the tub.

My eyes locked on the blackness beyond the open bathroom door at the end of the hall. A shape, somehow darker than darkness itself, oozed out from the doorway. Although it made no sound, it looked and moved like a crawling, bloated human corpse. Eyes like pale bulbs glared at me, full of hate, before lumbering off down the stairs.

You're all right, my date asked, oblivious to the horror behind them. Yeah, I murmured. Just a little spout. I quickly shut the door. I pulled the covers up high, snuggled close to my date, and closed my eyes tightly like a child, afraid of what I might see if I looked again. In the morning, the floor outside the bathroom was soaked. When my date left, I did too.

I didn't have it in me to stay home alone with a shadowy hallways and nothing to break the silence except the sound of dripping water. Instead, I went to the library. I'd always looked down on the crazes who believed in exorcisms and psychics. Now I was looking them up online. First priest I asked about an exorcism laughed and hung up. The second told me I was paying a just price for a life of sin. The third, an older man with an Irish accent,

was much more kind. He suggested I put up a crucifix, place a Bible under my pillow, and pray each night before bed. And if that didn't work, call him back. Most of the psychics, oddly enough, had busy or disconnected numbers. One wanted payment just to talk to me,

another promise that she could cast out the demon without leaving a trailer, if only I'd mail $200 to a Pio box. Once again, the third time was the charm, chanting and bird song were in the background sounds on my next phone call. I could practically smell the incense to the phone. The pleasant young woman had a smooth, reassured voice and promised to meet me the same evening for a reading of the house.

If she couldn't solve my problem, the visit would be free, she said. Apart from earth-tone clothes and some tasteful jade jewelry, there wasn't much of the stereotypical psychic about the woman waiting in my driveway when I returned from the library. She looked more like a professional art instructor than a hunched crone in a shawl who played with crystal balls. With a smile, she shook my hand.

Her name was Amy. We took a seat on the stoop while I told my story. Amy was a good listener. I've never been around bad ones to know the difference. She seemed to be taking mental notes as I spoke. I was neither too judgmental nor too believing in responses. When I'd finished, I stood, went inside and held the door open for my new psychic friend.

It was eerie, the way Amy stood perfectly still on my porch, like she was preparing herself for something. She took a deep breath, and the shadow of her hair hid her face as she stepped inside. So, the bathroom where all this started is right upstairs. I began, leading the way up the carpeted steps. When I turned, however, Amy had frozen. again, like she was a statue in the middle of my living room. I sighed, then waited. Amy? I asked finally.

There was no response. I trudged back down the stairs, worried that she might be having some sort of attack. Her eyes were closed. It was difficult to tell if she was even breathing. Amy, I bingered again. I reached out to touch her arm. The screen felt loud enough to shatter glass And it kept going

Long after Amy should have worn her throat raw Or run out of air Tears roll down her cheeks from wide open eyes I shook her, slapped her And when that didn't work, dragged her out of the house The moment Amy's feet touched the porch Her face returned to normal She backed away, tripping from my open doorway

I'm sorry I'm sorry, she whimpered. I can't. Amy, what's going on? I called after her, alarmed. What happened? I can't. She shook ahead, walking dizzily toward a car.

She locked herself inside and started the engine. You need to get out of this place. Greyish black smoke poured from the exhaust of Amy's second-hand car, and she peeled out, clearly eager to get as far away from me as possible. I was left standing helplessly in the driveway of my, apparently cursed, or haunted or something else. Fear turned to anger when I went back inside and walked through my empty rooms. This was a good house. That psychic's freak out was probably either a joke, a scam or a bid for money.

What I needed to do was surround myself with light, noise and people I trusted. I suggested a party in my place that very night in the same. chat group I shared with my friends and co-workers. I tied it up and ordered some pizzas, glaring defiantly at the bathroom more often than not. If the ghost thought that he could handle my drunk office buddies, it was welcome to try. I was surprised and heartened by how many people showed up, but I noticed that a lot of them gave me these lingering, worried stairs. Maybe all this business with my new house and its unwanted guest had affected me more than I thought. Carol, my boss, pulled up in a pickup truck with a football table in the back.

DeMarcus brought karaoke. Before long, I was less worried about the dead old lady and more worried about a noise complaint. Clattering, curses and tone-deaf voices brought the house to life. And yet, I was filled with a feeling of foreboding. I drank more than I should have. The wall I leaned against was smooth and cool beneath my hands. Why hadn't I always walked like this? But the hallway swayed, the bathroom felt like an infinite distance away.

The bathroom door was closed, but the lights were off inside. I opened it with my body and plunged through the darkness for the toilet. I ran right into wet, bare skin. I shrieked, jumped back and threw on the light. I think Carol and DeMarcus caught half-naked in the middle of their children. trist were more scared than I was. We all blushed and stood in awkward silence, until I raised a hand to my mouth to hold down a wave of vomit and pointed out.

The bedrooms down the hall, I groaned. I'm gonna. When I woke up, someone had laid me on my side on the couch. My mouth tasted cut and dry and sour, and the darkness seemed infinite. The digital clock flickered in the blue night. I heard the sound of running water from the kitchen. I staggered in to find a Marcus bent over the sink, drinking water straight from the tap. Have you tasted this stuff? he garbled. It's delicious. Once you start, you can't get enough.

I grunted. Without looking back a second time, I opened the fridge and chug some whole milk, a cure from my college days. It was probably just a myth, but I was counted on the placebo effect. The tap was still running. The tap was still running. when I went back to sleep. The next thing to wake me was a piercing scream. Clutch in my head, I stumbled over the kitchen and the source of the sound. Carol had a hand over a mouth, sobbing. Demarchus, or what was left of him, was still drinking water. His belly was hideously distended.

The good feces covered the floor around him. But his dead lips were locked in a vice grip around him. my foreset. Even so, the water that escaped ran down his bloated body to join with a lake that used to be my kitchen. Then, it was my turn to scream. Carol was already in the phone with the police beside me. She even stayed with me when they arrived, and during the brief interrogation, Mitch might have been what saved me. I was in shock and could barely even answer their questions with a yes or no without a help. I won't go into the details of the cleanup, the investigation, or how I took some vacation

to visit my parents for a few weeks. I barely remember it anyway. The only thing I remember clearly is seeing to Marcus' twisted, waterlogged body each time I closed my eyes. Terrified as I was by the presence of my house, I had to go back. It was that, or declared bankruptcy and lose the life I'd worked so hard to build. With everything that had happened, I'd accidentally ghosted, for lack of a better word, my date from the app. I'd had a lot of sleepless nights the thing since then, and I realised that the date,

they were the only person who had actually seen the presence in my house. With that in mind, I sent them a long apology message explaining what had happened, and asking for their help. I knew that I had no right to expect a response. But I got one anyway. Call me, the message said and included a contact link. Alex wasn't the name they'd given me on the app, and the number on the app wasn't what I remembered either.

But the photo was the same. I was impressed. Alex agreed to meet me at the house when I arrived. It felt good not to walk into that cool, shadowy silence alone. I looked around nervously as we sat down on my couch. The place reeked of industrial cleaner I could swear I heard a dripping noise But the truth was that I was afraid to leave the room

And go in search of whatever was making that sound At first I only thought it was targeting me Or that it would go away over time I admitted But after what happened to DeMarcus Drip What was that I wondered Alex held her chin

thinking, We're both in a lot of danger, they finally said. If you brought me over here thinking I could get rid of whatever this is for you, you're going to be disappointed. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,

but I do think it prays on people when they're alone, when they're vulnerable. I figure it got your pal de Marcus while he woke up drunk and thirsty in the middle of the night. It tried to get me while I was half asleep

going to the bathroom. So, maybe if we face it together, that drip, drip. Are you hearing that? I blustered. Hearing what? Alex asked. You're really freaking me out now.

I stood and stormed over to the stairs. That sound, like water droplets. I pointed an accusing finger at the second-story bathroom. It's coming from in there. I didn't dare go alone, and Alex knew it. They held my hand while we walked down the hallway. The dripping became louder and louder with each step I took until I thought I'd go crazy from it,

but Alex clearly heard nothing. Eyes shut tight, I gave the door a push. The bathtub was full of pristine, crystal clear water. One by one, droplets made ripples in the glittering surface, which seemed almost a glow with its own soothing light. As soon as I saw it, I knew that I had to play. my head into it. The cool, clear liquid would wash all these bad thoughts. It would leave me

pure and clean and innocent, like a cherub. In the perfect porcelain beneath the water, there were no shadows. The next thing I remember, I was dragging myself on the hallway carpet, soaked from the waist up. I was fighting, screaming, doing anything to get back into the bathtub, and Alex was doing all they could to stop me. "'You're drowning yourself!' he screamed. As I finally came back into control of my body. For a while, we both lay there, panting, the open door of the bathroom looming hungrily at the end of the hallway. Finally, Alex broke the silence.

Dude, have you thought about just getting rid of the bathtub? That was exactly what I did. I had to go into even more debt to do it, but... by that point, I was willing to pay any price. I found myself hovering around the workers as they did their remodeling, full of guilt for what I hadn't told them, and what I was afraid might happen. Night I spent at Alex's place,

we started seeing a lot more of each other since they'd saved my life. Shows I took at the gym. The way water blasted from the showerhead that swelled down the drain, still filled me with the kind of nameless dread, but the racket of the locker room and the presence of other people helped. So did, shutting my eyes. When I did, it was harder for my brain to imagine a grey, bloated female corpse standing right behind me in the shower box. Finally, the job was done. The workers hauled everything to some scrapyard when they left, leaving no trace of the room where the former resident had met a sorry

end. Life returned to something resembling normality. And while I continue to shower in the gym, I've been able to come to terms for the strange events at 242 Morby Lane enough to write about it. Until this evening, I thought I put it all behind me. Around sunset,

a junky-looking pickup truck pulled up in front of the house. I could hear its rattling exhaust from the kitchen. The driver and a few ragged passengers got out, pulled a tarp off of something and started unloading it onto my yard. It was a bathtub Her bathtub.

With horrified glances at the thing they just dumped, the trespassers sped off. I don't know if they bought it, stole it or scavenged it. I don't know how they came to know its origin. But it's back. I find myself looking over my shoulder, out the window at it while I type. The darker it gets, the more shadows seem to flood from the top toward my front door. and I'm afraid of what I'll see in my window

if I look away too long. A swollen, drowned face, round and rotten as an old pumpkin, a mouth bleeding and endless flow of water. Now that the moonlight is touching it though, there's something beautiful about that old tub. The way it sits there, bone white on the lawn. It looks so peaceful.

I think I'll go light down. In it, feel the pale light to my skin. After all, it's been such a long time since I've had a proper bath. From worldwide topmerken, to entrepreneurs that just begin, millioner vertrawe on your winkel, on Instagram, TikTok and more. Allers from out one platform.

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That is Shopify.b.E. Running releases endorphins in the body, dulling pain. It also produces endocannobinoids that can pass through the blood and brain cellular barrier. It is these endocanabinoids that are likely the cause

of the so-called runners-high, despite popular belief ascribing it to endorphin. I do not use drugs. Running is my drug. I use it to get by. The euphoria and karma get afterwards. I'm a junkie for it. But it's not just that. I've come to enjoy the pain quite a lot. I live in a big city and work in a big building downtown. I've been experimenting across different legs of the city, far away from my workplace, searching out more difficult pieces of sidewalk and road shoulder. The greater the incline, the greater the pain, the greater the high. If an area is a little

more secluded than the rest of the city, it's for the better. I do not like to make eye contact with people while working out. I found an area for running with a wide but very sharply angled sidewalk and hardly any traffic of pedestrians for the city. I thought it was quite the find. I discovered it because my propensity to drive around the city after work in my June clothes, listening to motivational gurus on audiobook, chanting there, take every step like it's your first and last mantras, while keeping my eyes peeled for a good run sight.

It was, however, in the shadow of a chemical plant. Its smokestacks jabbed the air, blooms of smoke like pus coming out a wound. I wondered if that plant was the reason for so few people in the vicinity. I didn't reckon it could be dangerous to run around out there, not in this day and age, where there were so many restrictions and seeing I was just only technically outside the city limits.

Nothing was roped off other than the plant itself, which was gated. There wasn't much else in his proximity, a couple of apartment buildings, a gas station. I parked in a lot of an abandoned movie theatre nearby and chugged up and down that bad boy, probably the steepest, baddest hill I'd ever run, like the little engine that could. I felt like that thing was a toenail of Mount Everest.

Arms and legs on fire, gut-taking from cramps and nausea, I came two miles shy of my regular quota, and my lunch from earlier that day sprayed out into the correct pavement. But screw it, at the end of that, I'd never felt more alive.

The gated, tree and circle chemical plant loomed above me like the proverbial castle on a hill. I sucked air and tasted salt in the euphoria, the sweet sickness blooming in my blood-engorged brain. Three days later, I swallowed something while running up that hill. I thought it was a bug. How many of you runners out there have swallowed bugs all running?

Not to mention those who swallow while we sleep. happens too often to count. More protein, right? I took it in stride and kept on running up that hill, even though I couldn't shake the feeling that what I swallowed had been oddly fleshy, fleshy but airy at the same time, almost too light to be a bug.

The next day I was sick with strange symptoms. I didn't have a fever. To go with a more ordinary nausea, shakes and shivers, my depth and spatial perception would mess with, up in a way that made me think I had some neurological issues going on. Sometimes, when I reach for things like cups on my wallet or keys, I came weirdly shy of them, like my arms or hands were shorter than I remember. Or like those objects had been moved away from me when I hadn't been looking.

I'd hear weird sounds coming from my stomach, not the usual digestion or stomach growling-type noises, but something almost like human speech. muffled so that I couldn't be sure. It would wake me up in the middle of the night. At times, it also felt like something was literally moving inside me. Immediately, I thought of the bug I'd swallowed while running. But how could it still be alive? I went to the doctor and had them administer tests,

and I even asked for some brain scans that took a bit to set up. Those and the abdominal x-ray scans came back negative. Nothing of concern, according to the nurses and doctor. Blood tests were all good. The doctor said it might be stressed and prescribed me some anxiety medication, which I told her I didn't need. More running was what I thought I needed if it was stress-related. I increased my intensity out there.

I didn't want to move from that hill because it was good to me. It hurt me too good. I knew I need to move to a new location sooner or later to confuse my muscles. but I was relishing it while it lasted. The symptoms, however, got worse. New ones joined the others, such as the sensation of floating away from my body and vivid mental images I kept getting of that chemical plant.

There were close-up shots of the plant, as real as photos, and areas of it I obviously had not seen. So, one day, I stayed up near the top of the hill after my run. I climbed up another mile or so to the plant, There was a security guard hut out there with a barrier gate. I started to approach it, intending to ask the guard some questions. But I began to feel weird about it all.

I stopped about 10 feet away and just stood there. It seems silly. If I asked him about the chemicals that plant worked with, if you even answered me, what good would the answer do? Would that knowledge really help me on my next doctor visit? I decided I'd come back another day if the symptoms continued. As I was walking away, however, a car that had been outside the gate parked so inconspicuously under some trees

that I hadn't noticed it before, pulled onto the road and followed me down the hill. When I turned around, the car sped past me. It was a dusty, old station wagon. His windows were so tinted by dust that I couldn't see inside. The following day I saw the same car idling outside my apartment. Someone was waiting on me. He got out, a middle-aged man in a tweed wool hat, an oversized sports coat and baggy jeans. Other than his clothing being too big for his body, he seemed like an ordinary sort of person.

You were out near the chemical plant, I said at a distance. Did I drop something out there? I knew I hadn't because I never run with anything on me other than my keys, which were in my hand. But I just couldn't think of any reason why this person would be parked outside my apartment. He walked closer. I fell back a few steps. It's all right, he said. I'm not with Puck Industrial or any associated party. I thought you might be at first. My name's Everett. I did some digging on you after following you out to your address.

Maybe you don't mind. Not to worry, just a freelancing journalist looking to crack a case. What brought you to book Industrial yesterday? Did you use the work there? I wanted to tell him that I did mind and ask him where he got off, thinking it was okay to follow some stranger out to his place of residence and do digging on them, whatever that digging entailed. But I was hung up on my symptoms. Maybe he knew something about what was going on at that plant. Maybe they were connected.

you interviewed the people that worked there i said yeah a few of them they're lying above the table it's one thing but below the table it's another i think i might have swallowed something i said maybe something chemical related floating out from that plant that's why i was hanging out near the front i've been sick doctor visits haven't helped much this case you're looking to crack what's it about You swallowed something At first I thought it was a bug It was solid, meaty Now I'm not so sure I've been running up that road towards the plant Because I like the incline Chemical hazards be damned

A bug He said Yeah, maybe it stung me when it went down my throat And I'm still reacting I described some of my symptoms I even got into this floating away from my body sensations and flashes of that chemical plant in my head in case it was relevant to any chemical exposure.

Everett grabbed to my elbow, pull me close. Do you know where West Egg waffle is? That diner across from that Presbyterian church? Meet me there when you get off work today. I started to tell him when I usually got off work, but he was already entering his vehicle. That evening, I encountered Everett's unsmiling, grizzled mug staring at me through the glass of the diner. I wasn't sure if you waited on me for hours, or if you'd knowed exactly when I was getting off work. Either way, I was relieved that we were in a place with a lot of people.

I went inside and sat down across from him. He asked for more coffee when the waiter came. I asked for a glass of water. My symptoms aside, I didn't think I'd be in the mood to eat. Ever heard of M.K. Ultra, Everett said. He took a couple packs of sugar between his fingers and began shaking them. M.K. Ultra. Wasn't that something to do with LSD and mind control? He nodded. He began to pour the packets of sugar into his fresh cup of coffee.

During the Cold War, he said, the CIA wanted to know how easy it was to use drugs like LSD to control the human mind. They thought that to do this, they had to carve away the mind that was there and put another in its place. Before NK Ultra, Project Bluebird and Arta choke paved the path. These programs use drugs like morphine and LSD, as well as hypnosis and advanced torture techniques, all in the name of finding the means to control people before the enemy did. MK. Ultra director Sidney Gottlieb got the U.S. government. government to pay about a quarter of a million dollars back in the 50s to bring all the LSD in the world to this country.

That's how serious they were. This path led through Project Stargate in the 80s categorized as having been beyond top secret. There, the CIA strove to use mind powers of psychics for espionage. Mind powers? I asked. You know, psychokinesis, telepathy, astral projection, remote viewing. They plan to use those abilities. if they were real for spying,

but assassination was also on the table as a possibility. The CIA was no strange as it trying to use drugs, toxins and poisons to alter the behaviours of and assassinate enemy agents as well as foreign leaders. So why not use psychics for those things if they could be employed in such a fashion? That's crazy, I said. Oh, it gets crazier. 1985 Enter Project Hawthorne

LSD, psilocybin, mescaline and more experimental drugs were used in aggressive combination with genetic manipulation and torture to induce and heightened psychic abilities That might have been a culmination It clearly wasn't the end however You told me why you're out there at the plant

Now let me tell you why I was I've been on this trail for a while My uncle lost his mind not from bipolar disorder but because of the treatment he was administered on behalf of one of those programs he was also a criminal theft and assault

so they really got to have their way without their bosses peering too hard but despite his faults some of which were beyond his control my uncle was a good man they transferred him to a special hospital there they used isolation sleep deprivation and shock

treatment to name a few then gave him mega doses of stimulants to bring him out of it. They'd shock him directly after administering the stimulants. It was like a hellish roller coaster of drugs and electrocution. I know these things because he tried to tell my father about them before he lost his mind. The CIA spent many years figuring out how best it destroyed people's minds, but they had a harder time attempting to install new ones. I'm sorry, I said.

He waved his hand That was back during the 1960s Towards the end of MK Ultra I was little then Just getting started in grade school But the affected had of my father His brother was profound and lasting You are probably wondering

How this all relates to you The facility you've been running near At front as a chemical plant It has long had some mess of stuff going on underground So far off the books it might take a century to dredge up completely into the light, unless something is done. Just what is going on out there, I said.

He took a few cups of coffee, and he glanced at the doors before meeting my gaze. We're talking about decades of genetic engineering. Drugs, torture and psychic phenomena wrapped up into one small package. Sometime between the 1980s and now, they created something diminutive, invisible to the huge. human eye and most technical equipment, and deadly as hell. We're talking about the ultimate weapons are bear in Cold Wars,

the kind you can't detect or trace. What we're talking about is the we folk. The we folk, I said. The we folk, elves, fairies, the fay. I was thinking this guy is absolutely insane. I'm sorry about his uncle, but damn. I'm pretty sure that they go back a long ways in folklore, before LSD and all that other stuff.

Of course they do, he said. Don't know the project's name, but I know enough. I just need more evidence. From what I do know, those things aren't as tied down by time as we are. I'm not certain if it was intentional, so that they could be sent backwards or ahead to other eras, or if it was an unhappy side effect. Regardless, those things aren't exactly material organisms.

Along with their human and other genetic material, they got psychic substance to them. They're small, but not so small that they can't be seen by the naked eye. It's my understanding that is their psychic material that makes them invisible. It's their psychic material that also lets them step out of the noose of time. Maybe they can travel through it as easily as, Why? I asked. Why would they want to do that? because they were directed by the CIA

because they want revenge so that they can get away from the prying gaze of technology because they can who the hell knows maybe those little buggers went back in time and created our asses closed loop and everything a couple of burly looking guys came through the front door of the diner and settled down into a booth next to ours they were rigid and silent only breaking that to place their orders

when the waiter came over They wore casual attire like outfits and costumes, probably a coincidence, but they got even me a little antsy, and I can only imagine how the conspiracy not across from me felt as he too looked over his shoulder at them one and only one time. Jepetto, Everett said to me in a low, even tone, created a puppet that he could not control. It was a puppet that might be more real than him. Everett brought something slowly out of his pocket and for a second I thought it was going to be a weapon It was a pen

And with it he scribbled something onto a napkin An address He took out a water bills and slapped them down over the napkin It was nice seeing you again Everett said I'd like to run with you sometime Good for the health All right

I said And drank my water the waiter took the money. I stared at the ruts in the table between locking at the napkin. And about ten minutes after Everett had gone, I'd left the diner. I'd left the napkin behind,

but I'd memorize the address. I could say here that I thought it more prudent to wait a day before going to that address, even though hadn't seemed to have had anyone tailing me. This was the official reason I was planning to give Everett. But that wouldn't be.

honest. The honest truth was that I thought the guy was too nuts to deal with. I wasn't sure if I could believe an ounce of what he told me about his uncle. I'd memorize the address in case I needed it. The reason that I went to that address later was because the night symptoms had become markedly more severe. Some of it might have been mental. From the quaint little conversation I'd had with Everett about government conspiracies and the jumping fair is created from drug-induced psychic phenomenon and human DNA, but I was fairly certain by then that something was moving around inside me. My nausea and chills had grown more comprehensive, like a vile flower spreading its petals.

Head over the toilet, I jabbed a finger deep into my throat to induce vomiting. I was hoping to expel whatever it was, even so many days after it should have been digested. The symptoms persisted, waxing more. than waning. More frequently than before, I was sure I heard a muffled voice talking, but could no longer pinpoint the source. Sleepless, I played hockey from work that morning, and went straight to the address at about 9 a.m. It was an old apartment building, only a few miles shy from where I'd been running at. The door to his apartment was ajar. Already, it didn't bode well.

I found Everett hanging upside down in his living room By wires from the light fixture With his tongue, throat and lungs ripped out And placed in the crimson leg beneath him Written on the wall in blood With these words Never speak ill Of the wee folk

I spent maybe ten minutes brain dead on the spot Like I'd been one megadosed With opposite drugs and electricity convulsed at the same time My mind tried to fold itself around that scene. It could not. I don't even remember leaving. At some point I was driving down the road, and then I was back in my own apartment.

I didn't call anyone, and it wasn't really that I was afraid I'd be blamed for it. I was afraid that the government might be connected. Maybe they had killed Everett for leaking top secret information, and that was what was meant by, never speak ill of the wee folk. The more logical explanation was that a deeply troubled person, like Everett, but much more dangerous, had killed him in such a way. Probably it was even someone he crossed paths and conspiracies with.

I did plan on going to the authorities, but first I had to figure out how to do so without ending up like Everett. Needless to say, I was freaked out. The nausea I had from whatever was inside me was magnified many times over. Between puking while trying to shut up in my own apartment, I took in as many nutrients and liquid as I could, so I still avoided a hospital visit. I woke up with terrific pain in my left eye. I got up and went to the bathroom, swaying. The pain was so intense that I collapsed at some point and crawled to my knees to the bathroom. I forced myself up and flicked on the light switch.

In the mirror should have been my ordinary, everyday face. but my left eye was bulging out of his socket. I screamed. I felt something there behind it, trying to press my eyeball out. It was fighting against the organic wiring behind my eye to get the job done. I realized at the same time that I was only able to look out on my other eye.

For all the pain and horror that swept over me in that moment, I was afraid of this one thing more that I would somehow get a glimpse and what was pushing my eyeball out? What if it was no longer invisible to me because I'd swallowed it? I wasn't sure if it was my thought or had originated from somewhere else.

I took my thumb and shakily pressed it into my bulging left eye until it was back snug in its socket. Then everything returned to normal. I could see out of both eyes again. The secession of my pain, however, was short-lived. Agony blazed across my head. I'd heard of others with the severe migraines comparing their pain to childbirth. I felt in that moment that something was trying

to rip itself free to be born from my brain. I howled sobbingly like a lion with all this teeth pulled out. I'd often caught a pain while running, but this was too much. I grabbed the keys and flung myself out of the door. As I did so, images of the chemical plant began flickering my head like an old, acid-eaten film. With each flicker was a fresh dose of pain. I whipped out my apartment and around the corner, got into my vehicle in the lot, and hauled ass in the direction of the facility. I threw up into my cup holder, swerving around hunking vehicles all the while. I thought maybe if whatever it said was true

there was a lab somewhere in or below that plant and they'd know how to deal with me I was willing to sacrifice my body and freedom just to stop what was going on the pain in my head zipped down to my throat and something giggled there like a child going down a water slide

but then I realised it was the sound of me gurgling out blood it fountain down my lap and dribbled against the floor mat I greased my sandals and caused them to slide against the gas and break pedals. I kept telling myself, I just had to hang on until I made it to the facility. I knew it was probably a lie, but I latched onto that anyway in order to stay focused. Once at the facility, my car ploughed through the barrier arm and rents beside the automatic gate before it had fully opened.

The security guard's shout quickly receded. I wove in and a half a little bit of a little bit. out of the roads of the facility, tearing past chemical plant speed signs that read 7.5 miles per hour. I nearly crashed into a forklift as my car careened into the opening of a larger building. When I finally stopped the car, I opened the door and fell to the ground. I was covered in vomiting blood. I got back up and ran. I called out to confused-looking workers in hard hats and coveralls.

I called out to the strangers that I'd swallowed something for. from the lab that was making a mess inside me. I was facing in and out while running. I ran past shocked eyes, past lumps of machinery and canisters of fluid, deeper into the belly of the building, not knowing exactly where I was going. At some point, my wet feet slipped out from under me, and my head cracked against the floor. I crawled, weeping in the direction I'd been running. The last thing I remember is being stung in the arm, and shortly out of the end.

after lifted onto a platform, possibly a gurney. Ages later, I was awake. I called out from the hospital bed. No one came. I was in a hospital gown. I felt along my sore body. I found such as, and sick and only deep aches all over me. There are some gashes across my shaved head.

How long ago and how deeply are they operated, I wondered. They'd done some major digging around. looking for that thing. IVs were stuck into me for nutrients, fluids and no doubt drugs. But whatever drugs they'd been pumping into me had seemingly run out.

I bore them free with weak shaking fingers and I fell hard against the floor. More pain washed over me like a cold river. I welcomed it. I tried not to think about the damage I was doing to my body.

There was no one else in the room owning medical equipment and beds and ordinary trappings of a hospital room. But it was not a hospital. I was surprised the door was unlocked and met my way out into the hall. Although I didn't see anyone up first. Before long, I smelled something horrible. It was coming from an open doorway ahead. Inside was a large research laboratory rather than a hospital room.

electronic equipment, old and new, was bashed and battered and mixed in with laboratory equipment in a vortex of destruction. But it was the bodies that gave off that stench. The scientists in that room were dazed dead and reading the message on the wall helped me discern the sores of their wounds before my frayed mind could put it together. Bloody words spelled it out.

Never mess. were the wee folk. It was reproductive organs this time that were laid out near the corpses. According to Everett, human DNA had gone into making those things. I stumbled out of their dry heaving. Nothing came out.

At the end of one hallway, elevator doors shone like the proverbial waters of an oasis under a desert sun. It was bright in those hallways, nowhere for shadows. But It was scary I kept thinking something

Little and Invisible Or maybe not so invisible If I was especially unlucky Would attack me before I made it to the end of that run Run Is exactly what I did As soon as I saw those elevator doors My body, a damp,

Broken Animal and ran like hell to the elevator I was gasping by the time I got on My hospital gown was soaked in the blood of open incisions. I pressed the button, among too many buttons for ground level. The elevator went up. I gassed like I'd run many miles more than I usually did. The elevator continued to go up.

It gave me a lot of time to wonder, whatever thing I'd swallowed hadn't gotten out of the facility. What if? It had been trying to. trying to get in. It happened a long time ago when I was just a kid. My parents and I had just moved into our new house and I spotted her neighbor for the first time. Absolutely the oldest man I'd ever seen.

In reality, he probably wasn't really that old, maybe in his 70s, but to a 10-year-old at that time, he seemed ancient. I remember wondering if his skin would fall off of his arm and onto the ground. beneath him. I even imagine that his skin actually did come off and he kept having to replace it. Looking back, I think his children own the house he stayed in and they would

come by every once in a while to check on him. But for the most part it was just him and his nurse. His age isn't the only thing I know I've exaggerated in my mind. Both of our houses sat at the edge of a massive lake so big that you couldn't see the opposite shore.

The water was always calm, like the lake was sleeping. The story of us moving in is pretty boring. Basically, all the typical fighting that happens between adults when they have to move cardboard boxes. I got tired of listening and snuck out of the house. They didn't notice. I purposefully went down the dirt road the opposite way of the old man's house just because I was already a little nervous about being near him.

There was another house less than a quarter mile away. that I planned to just stroll past when someone called out to me. Hey there, I heard an odd voice. In my mind, I thought the old man had already found me. Thankfully, it was another one that didn't seem quite as ghostly. Hey, I said. You and your parents just moved into that next house, he asked. Yes, sir.

Welcome, welcome, he said. Your parents are about the first. people to really even think about buying it, I bet. I didn't say anything, but it's like he heard the question I wanted to ask. Oh, of course, I guess they might not know. But then again, how couldn't they? He said, isn't that what parents are supposed to do? Make sure their children will be safe.

What are you on about? I asked. You haven't heard the stories? He laughed. Well, I'd say go on home and ask a daddy. but if y'all moved in, he probably didn't hear them either. What stories? Your other neighbour, he said. His proclivities.

You'll see tonight if you stay awake. Just keep an eye out your window. I ran home. My parents are still going at it over a box labelled kitchen. That should have said dining room. The rest of the day went by quickly, and the mystery of what the other man had told me, rattled around in my head for hours.

Finally, it was night-time, and I never left my window. I could only assume that whatever I was supposed to see, it had something to do with the lake. It didn't take long. I caught a glimpse of a light moving slowly across the water. A small light headed out from the shore to what I imagined was the centre.

It had a slight rhythmic pattern, like it was pulsing over the water instead of sliding at a constant speed. I went outside, and although it was still dark, I could finally just see the light for what it was. A small boat, a kayak, and the old skeleton man, nearly as thin as the paddle,

moving out into the lake. On the back of his boat, a lantern hanging just above the water. His pace was painfully slow, and it took ages for him. to move the paddle from one side of the boat to the other. I couldn't imagine the strain he felt, pushing it through the water.

I thought it would be hard for him to even push it through the air. I watched for a while. As slow as he was, he was steady. He came to what I guess was the centre of the lake and stopped, hovering over some unseen goal, the paddle placed across his lap. The boat settled, and the last ripples of his final.

The final strokes reached the bank of my feet. Then the water was calm. The lake had fallen asleep again, ran home. I don't know why. I felt like I was about to see something I didn't want to see, and it became a little too much too quickly. I imagine anyone would be a little scared, standing at the edge of the lake in the dark by themselves.

I also felt like I needed to tell my parents. The next morning, I tried to do little detective work. first he asked have you heard anything strange about our neighbor the old man he asked I nodded and he sat there for a minute with a strange look in his face you should have told you he said your mother and I talked about it for a long time and decided that we shouldn't but we probably should have what is it I asked my dad shifted in his chair and and when he spoke again it was almost a whisper. People think that he killed his wife, he said.

They said that he kept her in the house, cutting away at her, and each night, piece by piece, he took her out to the lake. Mark! My mom only yelled my dad's name when she was really mad. Why are you telling him that? she said. My dad laughed and kind of shrugged to me. My mom came around the table. table. Don't listen to him, honey. He's just trying to scare you because he thinks it's funny,

she said. I would have usually thought it was funny too, but in this particular case, I didn't. Is that true? I asked. My parents looked at each other, and my dad could finally hear in my tone that the jokes were landing poorly. That's what some people say, honey, my mom said. They really don't know what happened to his wife, but your father and I are sure that he had nothing to do with it. We actually met him before we moved in. We talked with his nurse. We wouldn't bring you somewhere that we weren't absolutely sure you'd be safe. I felt better. But even if there wasn't some dark purpose, I still wanted to know what was happening. My parents had a kayak of their own. It was way too big for me, but I at least knew how to use it. I figured if the frail

skeleton man could operate one. Surely I could too. The second night came quickly at our new house. My parents had still been arguing over all the great complexities of the cardboard boxes. It seems like when they're exhausted, the day goes by faster. Once they were down and out, I made my way towards a lake shore with my family kayak. I was nervous but excited. I couldn't remember doing anything like this in the past, and I think deep. deep down, everyone wants to solve some kind of mystery. I waited for the arm had to do what he had done the night before. He moved out into the lake one stroke at a time, until, after a long time, he came to a rest.

I slid my kayak into the water and moved towards him. I had still been debating on whether or not I should call out or sneak up. The latter option felt strange, so I just settled for paddling loud. so that he would know I was coming. I was secretly proud that it didn't take long for me to reach him, and he didn't say anything to me when I arrived. Excuse me, I said, realizing that I had deepened my voice when I said it.

He didn't even look back. I thought he would have been looking up at the stars, but he was looking down, straight down, over the edge of his boat, down into the water. I glanced down, but I couldn't see the lake at all. What are you looking at? I asked. Listen, he said.

Try to keep your boat still. This was the first time I had heard him speak, and he had a strangely strong voice. It didn't have the wispy quality I'd expected. I steaded my boat and tried my best not to move at all. We sat side by side on our kayaks for a few minutes. The water had turned into black glass on all sides of us. No ripples or any noticeable motion whatsoever. Sleeping.

Okay, he said, that's good. Can you feel it? Can I feel what? I asked. The lake is talking to us, he whispered. He slipped his hand down the side of his boat gently into the water. He looked at me for the first time, and motioned with his head. I quickly conjured up plenty of images in my head

at being dragged down under by thousands of tiny hands, but I dismissed them. I slid my hand into the water as well and waited. You'll feel it, he said. I did feel it. The lake was humming. It felt like energy was passing through my hand, always there, but stronger at some times than other.

others. It had a beat, but it varied. Here comes the big one, he said. Suddenly, I felt my hand move, and a boat shook slightly as a small ripple moved out across the lake, starting from a point right between us. I pulled my hand out of the water. It was numb. What is that? I asked. I told you, the lake is talking to us, he said. He talks to me every night. You're the first person that's been out here with me in a long time.

What did it say to you? What? What did it say? I don't know. I just felt some vibrations in the water or something. I don't know what it said. Oh, he said. I think you can't hear it yet.

What did it say to you? He smiled. It told me a story that I really liked. he said. We sat in silence for a few minutes, and then he actually did look up at the stars. What was the story? I asked. About 40 years ago, I actually lived in that house with my wife, and we took little boats like this out here all the time, almost every day. He looked back towards the house.

I was a bit of romantic in those days. I wanted to surprise her, so I brought some of it. air mattresses, maybe like six of them. I blew them all up while she was away at work and built a raft of them, covered in blankets. It was so janky. I was surprised that it could even float. When she got home, I told her we were taking sail. We stayed out in the lake all night long. We woke up around morning and pedal back. Probably have stayed even longer if my wife didn't have to poop. He laughed on his own, then his voice trailed off, and he just sat there. She died, he said to me and to himself.

I just come out here to remember and hear the stories. His hand drifted down into the water, and he closed his eyes. Honestly, I'm surprised he came all the way out here. I'm sure someone told you by now that I killed her. he said. Did you? I asked. No, he said.

And I believed him. If you ever really want proof, he said, you can ask the lake. The lake remembers everything that's happened out here. And I'm sure it'll remember tonight too. I placed my hand back in the water and could feel the hum again. He sat there together for a while. Him listening to what I imagined was another story. while I tried to hear anything at all.

I think you're not old enough to need memories yet. One day, I think you'll be able to hear it, he said. Okay, kid, you'd better get home. I'll probably stay out a little longer. I didn't say anything, but listened. When you get older, make sure you come back here. The lake talks, and you can talk back to it. If you believe that, then you also have to believe the lake needs someone to talk to, just like me and you.

Make sure you come visit, even if it's just to say hey. I gave a little wave and started my way back to shore. I didn't know if I believed anything he had said. Everything that happened kind of felt like a dream. When I was in my room again, I could see the little lantern out over the water and surprisingly fell asleep quickly. I had a short dream about being an air mattress salesman. When I woke up, both of my parents were in my room. My mom was sitting on my bed.

What is it? I asked. Honey, something terrible's happened, she said. I knew what it was. I ran to my window. On the shore of the lake was a handful of police officers and medical staff. They were looking out over the lake and pulling some kayaks and canoes towards the water. I looked further out.

The Allman's boat was still in the centre of the lake. Empty. It looked like it hadn't moved since I left the previous night. But he was gone. The children of the old man eventually sold the home and another family moved in. We stayed there much longer than I think my parents originally intended, right up to when I left for college.

I remember the old man, but honestly, I think I forgot most of what had happened that night, until I found out my mom was sick. It happened quickly, and right before I graduated, she was gone. During that time, I thought of little else besides her and the lake I grew up on. People say they wish they had more time, but I think what people really want is to truly remember the time that they had. From each moment I remember with my mom, I'm sure there were thousands of others I can't recall. If I could remember them now, isn't it the same as getting to see her again?

That's why I'm going back to the lake. I remember the old man. And I think he just wanted more time with his wife. I just hope that it talks to me. Like it talked to him. From worldwide topmerker, to entrepreneurs that net begin

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When I was a child I lived with my parents in a beautiful mountstop country cottage in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It wasn't a big house, but it was a paradise for a small child who loved the outdoors. I spent all my time out in the hills, baking in the summer sun. The mountaintop was a small, tight-knit community, and my parents wouldn't bat an eyelash if I would leave the house at first light and not come home until after dark.

They knew I was safe, and frankly, we're probably glad to have some peace and quiet in the house. house. My childhood days of adventuring came to a sudden end a week after my 11th birthday. That morning, over our breakfast cereal, my dad had torn me the circus had come to town, and overnight had erected a massive red and yellow tent just outside of the baseball field in the valley below. My mouth hung slight jawed over my rice crispies. Chattanooga was a decently sized town, but outside of the baseball field, the aquarium and the great outdoors, there wasn't much for a kid to do back then.

So, when my dad offered to take the family to the circus that weekend, as part of my birthday celebration, I couldn't believe it. I made sure the hug I gave to my dad every morning lingered for a few seconds longer that day before I ventured out into the mountaintop forest. I ran through the forest, lakes pumping like pistons. I was so excited. The circus! How lucky was I to have such a good dad.

I finally reached my destination. A tall pine that rested on an overlook but jutted out over the valley below. I was going to get a glimpse of that circus tent. I don't remember anything else that day. I still wonder if I ever got a brief glimpse of that tent. From what I was told, a branch snapped and I fell about 35 feet onto the rock outcrop below,

knocking me unconscious. When I didn't come home that night, my parents called the police. Eventually, they found me, broken and blooded and still unconscious. A few days after that, I woke up in the hospital, and a few moments after waking up, I realized I was blind. I hit my head and that rock outcropping in just the right way to knock loose something in my brain. And, just like flicking a switch, I lost my vision. My world that was once filled with green trees, brown dirt and blue skies, was now enveloped in a complete and utter blackness. The next few years were hard, very hard, but like all things, you get used to it.

You adapt, you learn new things, you find new passions and carry on with life. I say all of that to tell you, I'm 40 now, I've been blind now for most of my life. I've grown and adapted, and after several years, I finally feel like I'm able to be happy with my life. I have a job, I work at a school for the blind, several friends, and I live alone in a house that I have finally been able to buy after years of saving. Things have been going well for me. Really well, actually. After all these years in the dark, I finally feel like my feet are back up under me. I finally feel at peace with my life and the circumstances I've found myself in.

I finally feel like I'm back in control of my life. I'm a completely capable adult. Or, I felt that way. Until this week, it all started on Monday. I had a bad day at school, a real stinker. Kids were assholes, my boss was an asshole. The weather sucked. Just an all-around bad day.

We all have them. As soon as I got home that day, I was going to get into bed and go to sleep just to put this day behind me. And that is what I started to do. I walked in, drank a glass of water and crawled into bed. But it didn't feel right. Something was off. I laid there for a few minutes when it hit me.

My bed was warm when I crawled in. Only on one side, as if someone had just gotten out of bed moments before I walked into the room. My mouth went dry, and I laid in silence for several more minutes, listening. I decided I was just imagining things, got another glass of water, and went to sleep. The next day, after work, I came home and plop down on the couch to watch TV. Yes, us blind folk do that sometimes. Some shows you really need eyes for, but with modern accessibility features, scenes are described for us. It's pretty cool

It's like having a robot Rear screenplay for you Kind of weird to get used to But it's better than sitting in silence So I'm sitting there Not really listening to the TV More zoned out than anything When I notice

I'm feeling heat Nothing too intense Just a low steady heat Is coming from my right side It took me a minute to realise It was heat coming from a lamp on the end table right next to me. I don't turn on light to my house, ever.

Why would I? I have lamps and light bulbs screwed into the sockets, but I never use them. Friends use them when they come over, but that's about it. I haven't had anyone over at my house for probably a month at that point, and I definitely would have noticed the heat from this lamp before now if it had been on that long. I sit in the spot next to it nearly every day.

I turned off the lamp and put it behind me. I didn't have an explanation for it, but why worry myself, right? Full disclosure, besides being blind, I'm also an idiot. I listened to another episode of NCIS, might wave some dinner and decided to head off to bed. I left the kitchen, took four steps down the hall as usual, turned to walk right through my bedroom doorway, and bam, down near broke my nose on the bathroom door. This is when I got a little bit freaked out.

I never closed my doors. I'm blind and I live alone. I don't need the hassle of feeling for a doorknob every time I enter or leave a room. Someone had been in my house. I'm not going to lie to you. I was scared witless. I haven't been that scared since the day I woke up with the hospital, in Chattanooga, knowing my entire life had just been changed.

I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket to call 911, but my hands were shaking from the adrenaline and I dropped it. I heard the phone bounce off the carpet and hit the baseboards of the wall, so I dropped my hands and knees and started feeling around for it. Five seconds later, I still hadn't found my phone. Had it bounced further away? I swear, I heard it hit the baseboards right at my feet. I slowly expanded my search, crawling my way down the hallway,

my arms spayed out in front of me, trying to scour as much as the carpeted floor as I could. Nothing. Tears were beginning to well open my eyes. Lame, I know. But like I said, I was having a bad week, and I was really scared. I sat for a moment, calm myself, even my breathing out, and restarted my search. I only had a few square feet of sleep.

space left to search, just the space in front of the laundry room door and the guest bedroom door. It wasn't a long hallway. I army crawled down the hall, scraping my arms across the carpet, when the very tip of one of my fingers brushed up against a solid object in the middle of the carpet. Finally! My army crawled a few inches more and let my hand fall where I'd felt something solid. There was nothing there. Confused, I crawled a few more inches and tried to get it.

again. Nothing. I crawled a few more inches and reached my hands out again. My right hand fell on something. Too big to be a phone. I gently rubbed my hand across its surface. It felt cold and dry, almost fleshy. I realized what it was when it moved out from under my hand. I had grabbed someone's foot. I screamed and threw myself backwards, struggling to regain my feet. My legs had turned into jelly. I collapsed onto the ground and listened. Legs pulled up to my chest, ready to kick out at any noise within striking distance.

I'm not sure how long I was on the ground. It felt like forever. After a while, I slowly got back up to my feet. I stood still and listened to the air. I couldn't hear anything but the wind blowing through the trees in the backyard and the hum of my air conditioner. But I could feel someone staring at me. I knew that less than 15 feet from me, someone was standing in the doorway of my guest bedroom, barefoot and holding my phone. My mind conjured ahead of wild hair, torn clothes and dirty hands that wrapped around the handle of a butcher knife.

I slowly backed away, feeling along the wall with my hand, searching for my bedroom door, so I could place myself within my house and plan my escape. The air tasted electric, and the silent house held an enormous tension that felt ready to explode. Any moment, footsteps would launch themselves forward towards me from the hallway, and I would feel a knife plunged deep into my chest or neck or my useless eyes. My breathing was getting heavy again.

Was that my breathing? My mind was racing through the possible outcomes, and years were straining to pick up anything in the silence. Finally, my hand brushed against the doorframe of my bedroom. My hand wrapped around the doorknob to steady myself, and I used the next quarter-second to formulate a plan in my head. Turn around 180 degrees. Take four steps.

Turn left. Take five steps. Door should be there. Unlocked door, leave house. stand in the middle of the street and scream my head off until a neighbour or a passerby stops to help me.

Solid plan. Just as I was about to turn around and put my plan into action, I felt the door knob to my room rotate under my hand and pull itself away from me opening the door. I felt one hot,

smelly breath in my face and I bolted. Turn 180 degrees, take four steps, turn left, turn left, left, take five steps. Bam, I ran into the kitchen island. I was panicking. My strides were longer when I ran. Too bad I'd never sprinted around my house before to learn what this would be like. I reached onto the island and grabbed my knife block and pulled out the first knife I could find.

I put my back to the kitchen counter and swung my knife wildly in front of me. I shuffled my way around the kitchen island, feeling my way towards the door. when I felt a finger poke me in the forehead and muffled laughter as I slashed the air wildly around me inching closer and closer to the door. I found the doorknob and pulled the door. It was locked. Damn, I'd forgotten about that.

It wasn't a problem, but I delayed my exit by another two seconds, just long enough to hear a knife slide out of the knife block on the kitchen island. I exploded out of the house and ran into the street scree. I can't remember if I was screaming for help, or if I was just plain screaming, but it wasn't even a minute before a woman's voice called out to me. Sweetie, it's okay. Drop the knife. It's okay. I can help you. The woman sounded like she had just smoked about three packs of marlboroughs, or her throat was filled with gravel. It's okay. Sh, she cooed. I lowered the knife and listened to the woman as she approached. I've been my mind. blind for nearly 30 years. I know what things sound like. I can tell what kind of cars are on the road by the sound of the tires. I can pick out and isolate specific sounds in a loud room.

I know what it sounds like when people walk with shoes or sandals or boots or bare feet. This woman walking towards me had bare feet. I started screaming again, slashing the knife wildly in all directions and had the woman's scamper off back towards my house. In the end, one of my neighbours called the police. Not about my situation, but because there was a total psycho screaming and waving a knife wildly in the street outside her house. I don't blame her. Either way, it got the police here.

They found two people in my house. They had been living in the guest room. I probably would have found them in there if I ever went in there. The police said they'd probably been there for about two weeks. A couple of meth heads looking for a place to squat and figured they could just live in the house of a blind guy and as long as they were quiet they wouldn't have any issues

I guess they just figured I would think my house was haunted or something It makes me sick knowing these people were in there for so long watching me from the dark corners and laying in my bed I probably walked right past them a few times or cooked myself dinner while they sat on my couch and watched me Before I hit the post button on this, there is one more thing that I'm still worried about. I'm typing all of this out through a Dictation app.

You know, those apps where you just talk and your computer will type it out for you. They're essential for us blind folk. Anyway, I'm sitting here in my room, talking this out. And I swear to God, in the breaks when I stop to think, those little pockets of time when my house returns to that deathly silence of a few nights ago. I swear I can hear someone breathing in the room with me. I think the police might have missed one. I still don't think I'm alone in this house.

You're not.