CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 2 HOURS of Scary r/Nosleep Horror Stories to listen to under the covers so your parents can't hear

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00 "Have You Ever Wondered What's Inside Those Ugly Buildings Alongside The Highway? "Creepypasta►16:54 "I suffer from terrible migraines. My uncle wants to drill a hole into my head" Creepypasta►40:51 "I Bought a Creepy Painting on an Online Auction. There's Something Wrong with it" Creepypasta►1:03:20 "I'm a firefighter. What I saw beneath the burning woods was so much worse than fire" Creepypasta►1:26:17 "The Memetic Symbol" Creepypasta►1:40:55 "I work in a store that sells haunted objects" 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►Andy Chin: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Oy...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-

Oh, my young, that I'm in three days. I'm all moor as I'm more on think. Oh, that to seeer that morning off must. I'm all mooh as I'm just on tomorrow. Oh, this is I'm all moor as I'm on thinking. Have you it mollick at home to come? Give you yourself then a boost. With biocure maxhot liquid.

Three up-puppendant plants. Magnesium, Izer. An energy booster, to get in right again to come out. Biocure Maxshot Liquid. Foodingsupplement, In high school, we learn that stories have a beginning, middle and end. Ati just told us that the end of a story has a resolution, a lesson that can be learned,

or a meaning that can be analyzed. This isn't one of those stories. This is just a few hours from a single night in the life of my high school friends and I, a night when we bumped into something that I still don't understand, and probably never will. driving through rural America you will see a lot of buildings that don't seem to have a purpose

surrounding by dead fields or gravel parking lots they just blend into the landscape the structures themselves are nothing special concrete silos corrugated warehouses bow brick buildings painted white they seem abandoned no one goes in or out

but the structures remain like a riddle without an answer September of my senior year my friends and I decided to throw an impromptu party in one of those buildings. There were only three of us, but we had a stereo, some clothessticks and a video camera. All we needed was booze and a way in. Ryan, who was probably the oddest member of our little trio, showed up with some bolt cutters. While he had them, I still have no idea.

My buddy Derek snagged a couple of six-packs from his dad's basement freezer. Derek's old man was so deep in the bottle, he just figured he drank them in his. himself. Of the three of us, I had the least broke down car, so I drove. The building we'd chosen resembled a warehouse. We'd passed by it every day on our way to school, and we never seen any lights, people, movement, or even cars parked around it. There was no name, mailbox, or any other indication of what the place might be used for. It was surrounded by an overgrown fence and barely visible from the road. We parked around the back, where two bare metal doors, sealed with the train, waited like a warning.

The crisp autumn air filled her lungs as soon as I stepped out of the car. It was hard to believe we were all 17 already. It was even harder to imagine what we'd all be doing next summer. The sky was orange with the last rays of sunset and fog was forming over the damp ground. I wondered how many of these excursions the three of us had left before our lives took us. in different directions. You're okay, man, Ryan asked as he snapped open a beer. You got this look in your face, like you miscounted your balls or something.

Yeah, fine, I tried to laugh. I'm just wondering what the hell is in there. Only one way to find out, Derek grunted, cutting through the chain. It slid to the ground like a rusty snake. Armed with only flashlights and glow sticks, we walked into the darkness. It was disappointing, to say the least. The floor was a bare concrete slab. The walls were a corrugated metal.

It was one huge room, every bit as dull and featureless as the rest of the place. Ryan hopped boardly on his skateboard and rode from one side of the building to the other. I wish I could say there was the end of it, that we had a few beers, messed around with the skateboard and glow sticks, and went home. Whoa! Ryan grunted from the other end of the warehouse. Guys, check this out. Ryan had rolled over a manhole cover,

like the kind sewer workers used to access the world of tubes and tunnels that's always beneath our feet, but that we rarely think about. But this was no ordinary manhole cover. It was made from some high-tech metal alloy and had a folded down handle in the center that Derek and Ryan hurried to pull up. When I saw what they were doing, I almost shouted at them to stop.

At the time, I wasn't sure why. Something about that futuristic-looking, thick metal hatch waiting in the empty darkness filled me with a sense of unease. But curiosity soon got the better of me, and once my friends got the hatch open, I too bent my head to look inside. Rungs of rebar led down to the pitch blackness below us,

which seemed to swallow the beams of our cheap flashlights. Oh, dude, Ryan gasped. So, who's going in first? Derek giggled. By that point, we're all on edge, but no one wanted to omit it. A sound, like scratching, came from the roof above us. We all jumped. It took us a few seconds to realise that it had started raining outside. Everyone deals with fear in their own way.

Ryan's way was dropping an empty beer can into the darkness. A metallic clatter came from far below. I think we should close this back up, I half whispered. I, uh, actually think you're right, Derek backed me up. Ryan rolled his eyes, but grabbed the handle to push the hatch down to its original position. It didn't budge. No matter how we heaved or strained, the hatch stayed open. It was more mechanically complex than we'd imagined at first,

and apparently it would take industrial force to seal it up again. We all looked at each other, shrugged and walked back toward the far wall of the unlit warehouse. I found myself looking over my shoulder and shining my dim flashlight back toward the shining metal of the hatch. Sure that something horrible was about to crawl up from below. Derek and Ryan were as nervous as I was, but it had become a sort of challenge now. They didn't want to let the wrongness of the place beat them. If Ryan hadn't skated over that damn hatch, I'm sure we would have gotten bored. and left long before midnight.

The crackle of static behind me made me jump. Derek had set up the portable radio, and after trying and failing to find a station, popped in a black Sabbath CD. Ryan polished off his third beer, and even though I was the driver, eye shotgun just to calm my nerves. It tasted like warm cat pee,

and didn't make me feel any better. My eyes stayed fixed on that point in the darkness where I knew the open hatchwork, Ryan grabbed some clothes sticks and Derek recorded him with a video camera as he rode around the dark doing tricks on his skateboard. My stomach lurched when he jumped to the open hatch. Looking at the video, I was grudgingly impressed. The spinning clothes sticks did make the whole thing look kind of cool. The problem was that Derek wanted to try next, and we all knew he wasn't the skater that Ryan was.

Like his dad, he drank a lot to impress people. and when he had a few, there was no telling what he might try. Derek rolled tipsily off in the darkness. As soon as I saw his set up, I knew he wasn't going to make the jump. The board hit the hatch with a sickening crack and fell down into the blackness of the pit. Derek started to go with it. He barely caught himself, his arms slipping on the smooth concrete. Guys, he weased, guys, please!

I never felt so helpless. There was no way he was. make it to him in time. Somehow, though, Derek found the rungs of the ladder behind him and managed to heave himself up. Holy crap, Derek gasped, sweat dripping from his long black hair. Dude, Ryan charged over, angrily. My bored! Yeah, I know, I know, Derek mumbled.

I'll go down after it. I'll buy you a new one, I interjected. It's probably broken anyway. Ryan stared daggers at me, and I insured. regretted my words. Ryan's mother had been killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan, and that skateboard was a last gift to him. I don't care how busted it is, Ryan hissed through his teeth. We're getting it back. Let's all go then, I sighed, not just Derek. Are you kidding? Ryan laughed. What if some cop or whoever owns this place shows up and closes the hatch while

we're down there? I hated to admit it, but he had a point. Being locked in that dark hole, With no food and light sources running out was the stuff of nightmares. Look, Derek added, that hole creeps you out, right? So stay up here and keep watch. Ryan and I will go. I mean, it can't be that deep, right? Nobody dared to answer him. Ryan was already lowering himself into the dark.

Derek gulped, and I realized that he was as scared as I was, if not more. I'll go, I'll rest the words out before I could think. Come on, it was my fault, said Derek. Relax, man, I faked a grin. You will probably break your damn neck trying to go down that ladder. I hadn't really meant what I said to Derek. But as I started down after Ryan, it became clear that the pit was more dangerous than it seemed. It curved ever so slightly inward, meaning that I was sort of hanging out over the emptiness below.

Gravity tugged on the back of my neck. One false move. The beam of my flashlight swung wildly, and I occasionally caught glimpses of Ryan far below. The metal runs continued one after another, endlessly, but I preferred staring at the bare concrete wall in front of me, than risking a vertigo-inducing glance downward. After what felt like forever, the pit became more like a pipe or a tunnel. I was practically hanging from the ceiling when the ladder ended, and I lowered myself under the concrete, In the glow of Derek's flashlight, the exit above me was dime-sized.

In front of me, the seamless six-by-six tunnel stretched onward. There was no sign of my friend or his skateboard. Ryan, I whispered. There was no answer. My flashlight flickered. I smacked it against my thigh a few times before continuing into the darkness. Ryan, I tried to rationalize my situation as I walked. The tunnel had a sharp downward slant and curved slightly to the left,

so it wasn't impossible that Ryan's skateboard had kept on rolling. Come to think of it, though, I hadn't heard the skateboard hit the floor of the tunnel. It was almost as if something had caught it. Up ahead, I finally saw Ryan. He stood motionless with his back to me, swaying. I frowned. What the hell was he doing? I wish I could see better.

my flashlight seemed to be getting dimmer and dimmer. Ryan, I shouted. The movement stopped. Ryan's head flopped backwards, much further than should have been possible. I saw the red gash where it had been disconnected from the rest of his body. I saw the red tendrils of Ryan's veins and arteries, and the gaping cartilage of his severed throat. And just as my flashlight's batteries finally died, I glimpsed the glittering eyes of the thing. I was eating, my friend.

Everything went black. If something was chasing me as I fled, I couldn't hear it over the echoes of my own pounding footsteps. The steep slope exhausted me by the time I reached the ladder. My sweaty hands kept slipping, and more than once, I almost plunged backwards into the abyss below. I had no choice but to wrap my arms through the metal rungs until I found my balance again and dragged myself up, panting.

Derek! I gasped as I neared the exit. Derek! What, man, what? Came a stunned response. We got to get out of here. There's something. I was seeing spots.

I didn't have the air to continue. I heaved myself up on the concrete and rolled over onto my back, hyperventilating. What the hell? Where's Ryan? Derek yelled. I weised and pointed toward the pit. Even if Ryan wasn't getting my message, at least it was clear to him that something had gone south.

He was running around like a bit. headless chicken getting our stuff together for an unexpected departure. Something down there, I gasped as soon as I could finally breathe again. I groaned as I dragged myself to my feet and staggered toward the door. My blood ran cold when I patted my pockets and didn't find my car keys. Then I remembered I'd left them beside the stereo. Get keys, Derek? Laughed

Whatever reaction I was expecting It wasn't that I stopped in my tracks Nice one man He really had me going He strolled casually toward the pit No really Where's Ryan? Does that go down to the sewer or something?

Ryan Gone Clutching my side I rummaged around beside the stereo Until I found my keys Derek had reached the hatch opening And was shining his flashlight down it. I call BS, Derek juggled. Ryan's right here. Derek, get away from there.

Derek hesitated, unsure of what to do. He backed slowly away from the pit as Ryan climbed out of it. In the beam of Derek's flashlight, I could see my former friend's jerky movement, badly sealed wound and swollen neck. He was bloated like a drowned corpse, and I realized with horror that it was because something. was wearing his skin. Derek finally noticed this well. The moment that the Rhine Thing's head twisted to look at him, he started running for the door. But he was too close to the pit.

The last thing I saw before I burst out into the night was Derek clawing at the concrete as he was dragged backwards door that awful hole. I flung myself into the driver's seat and silently begged my engine to start just one more time. As soon as it sparked a light, I peeled out and skidded back onto the main road.

I stumped on the accelerator, hardly paying attention to the road, and not even noticing that, like a panicking animal, I was heading for home. Just outside of town, flashing blue and red lights appeared in the rear view. The police paid little attention to my mad, rambling story, even less so when I failed a breathalyzer test. As far as they were concerned, I was just another spoiled teenager, drunk driving, trying to get out of trouble.

My parents were furious and refused to bail me out, so I stayed in jail, terrified that things from underground would come to kill and impersonate everyone I loved. To make matters worse, no one would tell me anything about Derek and Ryan. In my darkest moments, I feared that I might be charged with murdering my friends.

The situation resolved itself much more neatly than I'd imagined. Maybe too neatly. I faced heavy punishment for drunk driving, but the police assumed that Derek and Ryan had just skipped town. They figured my beer story was meant to cover for them. Ryan had been in foster care, and Derek's dad was in no condition to press the issue, which meant that was the end of it.

Unless I continued to investigate. It took me a long time to build up the courage to drive by the place when my friends had been taken, just driving on the road again. made me grip the steering wheel and my knuckles went white and set my heart thundering in my chest. When I reached the turnoff, however, I saw that the building was gone. I felt 20 years older as I stepped out into the frigid winter morning air and looked through the bare branches at the empty lot. The truth about whatever happened to my friends had been paved over with a thick layer of concrete.

I just hope that the nightmarish thing we discovered is still down there with them. It had taken over a year of drawn out court cases and relatives who didn't want me around after the death of my parents before I was finally accepted and sent to live with one of my uncles. Uncle Stephen was someone I'd not seen for years prior. He was a big man, strong from his farm work, with dark black eyes and a few strands of hair on his balding head,

that he always covered with a grey cowboy hat. His nails were dirty and his favourite red flannel shirt stained with years old mud. But he still exuberated the same friendly, joyous personality as he helped me unload my luggage onto his truck. The last time I remember personally meeting him was at my 12th birthday party. My dad didn't like him around because it was always weird, but he was fun to be around and he still wrote me a card through the mail every birthday. It was no one. It was no surprise, he was the only one of my stingy relatives to take me in. Even so, despite him being the better choice than any of the other idiots that I had to call my family, I had a deep nervous feeling when his truck pulled into what he called, his homestead,

and through the grimy dirt speckled windscreen, I saw an old, run-down wooden farmhouse. The brown paint on its walls were faded, the windows were caked with dirt and sand, and parts of the roof had fallen in and were hastily patched up with boards. Fences made of rusty metal surrounded the house through overgrown grass and weeds, and wires hung haphazily leading towards the house and the various nearby sheds. Only about half the lights strung up seemed to be working. Now only a four-star hotel, Uncle Stephen chuckled as he saw my expression. I gave him a nervous grin in return. Well, it wasn't the best place, but I would probably get used to it eventually. Uncle Stephen gave me a quick tour of the house, through the kitchen,

filled with shelves of jars of nuts and seeds and various other foods, the bedrooms, which seemed all right, and the mouldy toilet, which made me regret my existence. He then brought me along to the outside, the wooden rotten floor creaking as we walked, and showed me the shed where he sought most of his tools and equipment needed for farm work. From the shed emerged a tall but thin young man in grey clothes, staring at me with beady eyes and licking his crooked teeth. You must be Jennifer. He stretched the hand out, which I shook. His hand was bony and cold.

This is Junior, one of my nephews. I took him in when his parents abandoned him, and now he suffers here too. Uncle Stephen grinned, with Junior shaking his head in his aspiration. Giving him a goodbye wave, Uncle Stephen quickly. brought me down to the trailer about 200 metres from his farmhouse. I was surprised to find it in relatively good shape. It was rusty and one of the windows was cracked, but it had been freshly painted white and green.

The lights were all in working condition and the grass around it was trimmed. This is where their neighbours live. They're all nice people, Uncle Stephen told me. Mr Sullivan was a small, hunched man, obsessed over Confederate Civil War models while Mrs. Sullivan was a tall Mexican woman who looked like she could bench press me and glared at me in silence the entire time.

So, I seriously questioned Uncle Stephen's definition of nice. They had an elderly mother, face cracked and wrinkled, who sat motionlessly in a wheelchair facing the television, not even registering my presence. Lastly, I met the daughter, Adriana, a cute young woman my age, with piercing's brown eyes and rough,

hard, warm hands that I shook. Uncle Stephen whispered to me that she did half the work of the family, noticing the worn boxing gloves hanging in the door to a bedroom I made a mental note not across her. We left the trailer as the sun was setting, casting a gorgeous orange backdrop

to a series of dilapidated houses and trailers in the distance, corrugated metal and rotted wood strewn in piles from collapsed walls and supports. Uncle Stephen's nose wrinkled when I asked him what it was. Where people used to live. Never go in them.

It's unsafe. Why is it unsafe? Can't you see how bad it looks? The roof will drop in your head. He had a point. They looked as stable as a house of cards. Once we reached the farmhouse, Uncle Stephen gave me the rundown of rules.

The usual, no going out at night, no drinking unbored water, like I would. No television at times he wanted to watch them. And occurred. few. But then he pointed at the set of rusty padlocked basement doors at the side of the house. No going in there, ever, he warned. He got some corpses in there, Uncle Stephen. I raised an eyebrow. Yes, yours, if you go down there. He ran a finger across his neck. I laughed and nodded to his

demand. Sure, everyone needs secrets. It took me a few months to really adapt to a more rural life. but it wasn't really too bad. I wasn't doing well at school anyway. Not really my thing. My fear was simple. The internet connection was annoying, but still functional. Work was hard. I mostly did whatever Uncle Stephen wanted.

But thankfully he was right, and Adriana and him both did a large portion of what was to be done, leaving me a lot freer than when I was studying for college. Dinner around the bumpy metal table with Uncle Stephen and Junior was filled with jokes and jazz. from the former had everything under the sun, from politics, the sports, to us, and strange little comments about government cover-ups from the latter. Sometimes we would all watch the air-frequent television together, if there was something

interesting on. Junior, like the History Channel a lot. If there was one issue, it was that the new environment didn't help with my migraines like I'd hoped it would. Every week or so, I would wake up with a terrible pulsing pain on the left side of my head. It took all I could not to scream as I hid from the light, and hammered away at the side the hurt and futile efforts to release the pain. My arm would get numb from the effects of the headache, and I would just curl up into a tortured

ball on my bed, blanket thrown over my head, praying it would stop. Gosh, it made me want to bash my head open or drill a hole in it just to stop the pain. Due to the mornings I spent curled up in bed, Uncle Stephen had assumed I wasn't a morning person and would prod me about it. Finally, one day, when we were in the tool shed, I had had enough and asked him if I could go to the nearby town and get some aspirin. When I mentioned he was some migraines, his jovial face suddenly darkened as he slowly turned towards me.

Jennifer, we take headaches very seriously here. They're not just nerve pain. He said, staring a little too closely at a pair of garden shears on the wall for my liking. I mean, it's just pain, I tried to reason. No, look, it's not as simple. When you get these headaches, it's the brainbug that has crawled into your skull. He walked closer to me, fists clench, and eyes staring and blinking. It sits there and slowly feeds off your cerebrospinal fluid, then on your brain. Then it eats its way out, Jennifer. Come on, Uncle Stephen, if brainbooks cause all headaches, not every. Some.

Fine, if they cause some headaches. We would have known by now, with all the tech hospitals have, I pointed out. Do you go get an MRI every time you have a headache? Oh crap, that was a good point. He sighed. And I know about medicine. Didn't you drop out of med school? That means I'm half a doctor.

I need to show you something. A little grin crawled back on his face from the joke, and he walked out of the shed, beckoning me. to follow. He led me right to the forbidden double doors of the basement, where he withdrew a green key and unlocked it, grunting as he pulled away the rusty metal bars that prevented it from opening. He had to get Mrs. Sullivan to help him pull the stuck doors open, which she did with surprising ease, causing a spray of brown dust in the air. Mrs. Sullivan glared at me wordlessly before walking back to the trailer, and I nervously followed my uncle as he headed down the stairs

into the basement. The basement air was stale and a layer of dust that settled over the bare concrete and wood floor and table. But then here lay several old medical jars containing grey ashy powder. The light on the ceiling flickered on and off intermittently, so my uncle just switched it off and grabbed a flashlight from one of the shelves after blowing the dust off of it. He led me to the far end of the basement, both of our boots causing echoes in the silence. More shelves lit up with dusty and unopened packaging for surgical gloves, masks, sterilisation kits and the like. Bizarre, but nothing that I saw that would make me banned from entry. Then we reached the far wall, and I screamed.

I don't usually scream, but the sight of the illuminated shelves with a dozen human schools placed neatly on them was enough for that. The faces were destroyed, as if a bullet had shut them from the back. and exploded out the front, with deformed misshapen bones rising out, surrounding an epicenter around their eyes or forehead. But of course, there was no entry wound on the back. Victims of the brain bugs. They lived in these houses, now abandoned. All got migraines, the lot, complained incessantly.

And then he got them, killed them. I tried to help them, to treat them. I prayed to God for strength and precision. But it wasn't enough, and they passed. I tried to get out of their heads in time. His hands were shaking, and his breathing was getting heavier. I leaned in closer, observing the deformed skulls. Something was wrong.

They all had at least one hole in the top of their skulls. What with that hole? I chatched my finger towards it. I had to make one to try to get the bug brain out, Jennifer. He said, almost nonchalantly. You had a hole in the head. heads while they were alive? I gasped. It's called trepination. People survived it all the time. I just had to do a rush job version of an emergency like this. He tapped his head with a finger,

looking directly at the top of my head, pressing my fingernails directly into my palm in an attempt to steal my nerves and try to find a counter-argument. I've had migraines before this for most of my life. Sure, and then you got him when you came here. Did you drink on board water? Well, no, I said. At least, I didn't remember doing it. It could just be a regular headache. Tell me if it continues, and I'll do an early operation if it does.

You mean you could a hole in my skull? I said. He only gave me an affirming nod. Okay, this was getting ridiculous. How could he, a med student, believe things like this, and drilling a hole into my head? I started to get unnerved by the prospect of what really caused the deaths of those

poor schools on the shelves behind me but Uncle Stephen really wasn't the kind of guy who would kill someone he seemed sane and he was friendly to everyone why would a killer be like this and how did the skulls erupt from inside those thoughts plagued my mind as I stepped outside with Uncle Stephen giving me a reassuring smile

as he closed the doors behind me and locked it back up the next few weeks I was forced to keep my migraines a secret. Without meds, the pain was unbelievable. Advice I squeezed in my temples. Vision blurring. The feeling of stabbing agony in my skull all sent me crawling under my bed.

There was a figurine of Jesus hung up on the wall, and I prayed to him for it to stop. No time to be an atheist with migraines. Uncle Stephen's attitude to me was back to usual, with the exception of some occasional frowns being shot at me when he didn't think I was looking. At night, when getting a drink in a quick attempt to avoid the dull pain in my head from expanding, I sometimes heard him in prayer inside his bedroom. Let your mercy save young Jennifer from having to endure the brain bug, and if she does have to, give me the strength to do what's right for everyone.

One more time, he would say, among other things, I headed up the stairs back to my room, tiptoeing up the creaky stairs. then I paused. The thought of suddenly waking up in the middle of the night to find Uncle Stephen drilling a hole into my head flashed into every foresight of my mind. No, I should talk to someone about this. But who?

Junior seemed like the exact kind of person to advocate for this. At least I could go for a walk to clear my head. The one thing I found absolutely stunning about living out in the middle of nowhere was the stars. Millions of jimps. gyms and jewels dotted across the night sky, the breathtaking clouds of the Milky Way cutting through the sky. As I walked down the worn dirt road, I noticed the silhouette of Adriano

walking out from the trailer, a flashlight in her hands, and a roll of cloth in her other. She walked a distance down the dusty road before she noticed me and beckoned me over before on rolling the cloth onto the grass beside it and laying down. I walked up to her, glancing down. Good night for stargazing, she pointed up. Come, lie down with me. I could feel my cheeks getting a little hot as I laid down on the cloth beside her,

staring up into the sky. Adriana reached out, pointing out the stars to me, naming them, drawing out consolations that I struggled to spot. We talked, and thankfully my migraine was fading away this time, rather than flaring up. That would certainly have ruined the mood, but Adriana she seemed reasonable

out of everyone there was Adriana what do you think migraines are just asking I turn my head over to look at her my heart sank as her expression dropped as she stared right into my eyes

Jennifer do you have one right now no no no not at all I hurriedly lied you have to be careful with a brainboat that's why Abuelita can't move, she said. That didn't fit with what I saw with the skulls. Her grandma's face hadn't exploded, evidently.

Adriana must have misinterpreted my internal confusion as disbelief because she climbed her feet and stretched her hand down. Come and see, your Uncle Stephen saved her. I took her hand and she pulled me back up. She picked up the cloth and together we trudged back to the trailer, motioning for me to be silent. She pulled the door open and flicked the flashlight on. The trailer's lights roll off, and I could hear Mr. Sullivan's disproportionately loud snores

through the thin walls. We walked to the main sofa, where Adriana shone a light onto a grandma who was lying down asleep on it. Sure enough, her face seemed fine. She was going to be killed by the brain bug, but your uncle intervened and pulled the bug out from her head, saving her life. The bug had caused too much damage already. So she's like this.

Adriana whispered, her face shrouded in darkness. Adriana, did you see the brain bug yourself? No, but Mama and Papa both said they have. I slowly reached my hand out to grab the flashlight, tucking added gently to let Adriana know I wanted it. She let go and had quietly shone it on her head. White hair covered it in bushy tufts and all seemed normal. But there it was.

A circular, bold spot on the top part of a scalp. No way, Ango Stephen actually stabbed a hole in a skull. My finger moved in quickly and lightly prodded the bold spot. For a split second, I felt a nauseating feel of skin,

depressing with no bone underneath. Adriana's constricting grasps clenched around my arm. She wasn't happy. Adriana, I whispered, there's a hole in her head to a brain. That's how he got it out.

He helped her, she insisted. I breathed in deep in exasperation and horror. This was too much to handle tonight and carefully stepped my way out of the trailer and back down the dirt route. Adriana watched me from the trailer door for a while before she shut it. Over the next few days,

I spotted the Sullivan's and Uncle Stephen whispering to each other from behind the shed lot. It was just a week later when I felt the dull pain starting in my head, accompanied by the foreboding feeling of pain in my shoulders and neck. Always a sign of a disastrously bad migraine. Okay, maybe this time it won't be that bad. I just need to go eat breakfast.

That would make me feel better. After washing up, I headed down the stairs to the dining table where Uncle Stephen and Junior were having discussion. Look who's up late again, Uncle Stephen laughed. Any longer and I would have given your breakfast the junior. I sat heavily down on the wooden stool, trying to control my breathing, as the pulsing pain began above my left eye, radiating across my head. I scarf down the eggs and toes as fast as I could, too focused on getting rid of the pain

to hear whatever topic my two other family members were discussing. It was no use. The pain didn't dull for a second, and the pressure began sharpening on my left temple, piercing pain like that of a red-hot drill blowing into my skull. The vision in my left eye began to blur, and it felt like it was getting slowly sucked into the back of my head. I grabbed my head in my hands, squeezing hard where the pain came from, but it was no use. I was only dimly aware of Uncle Stephen suddenly getting up and rushing out the front door, as I began to moan, punching myself in the head in a futile attempt to dull the pain.

I staggered to my feet, during your watching and confusion. The sunlight streaming in the way, windows seemed to be like searchlights. Even the shuffling of my feet and the creaky wood was magnified. The pain only spiked. A figurative metal rod was being jammed inside my skull and grinded. The overpowering feeling of nausea rose up, and it took everything I had to stumble to the stairs and not throw up. That was when Uncle Stephen arrived with the Sullivan's. He had a chisel and a large ladle in each hand. Jennifer, we have to help you, he said as he walked in the front door.

A sudden spurt of adrenaline got me to push past the pain for just a few seconds as I scrambled up the stairs and into my room. I could hear thudding footsteps behind me, the distance closing. I slammed my room shut, but before I could lock it, the doorknop twisted and Junior pushed it open. I led out a guitar or scream and punched him right in the nose. sending him falling over. But before I could slam the door again, Uncle Stephen shoved it open.

Jennifer, this is an emergency. I'm going to have to save your life. God has promised both of us saved you from the brain bug. Get the hell away from me! I picked up the glass of water on my bedside table and flung it at him. Uncle Stephen ducked under it, where it collided into Mr. Sullivan, and he came tackling me to the ground. The pain in my head disoriented me.

It felt like half my face was numb. and out of commission. Soon they came to pin my limbs down, with Junior and Adriana holding my arms down as Uncle Stephen got behind me to put my head on his leg. The Lord will heed my prayers, Jennifer. He'll be safe soon.

Before I could yell anything out once more, he placed the chisel at the top of my skull and began slamming it in. Piercing torment erupted from my tearing scalp as he began pushing the chisel further in. I screamed at the top of my lungs, shaking and squirming at every opportunity. Adriana, stop him.

He's killing me. But she only held me down harder, squeezing my left hand and staring into my face with a determined expression. This is for your own good. This is for your own good. We're helping you get better. Just helping you to get better, she repeated. The shooting pain of the migraine only worsened with every motion of the chisel, cracking into my head.

Then he would scoop school fragments out with a ladle and go again. Warm, sticky blood poured out to my rips scalp, flowing down the left side of my face. I fought and kicked, but they held through every moment. I know it hurts, but we're helping you, Jennifer. Stop being so aggressive. Uncle Stephen smiled down at me. His tone like he was chiding a naughty kid. I pulled my right arm up, and as Junior struggled to pin it back down,

His hand got too close to my face, and I immediately lashed out, snapping my jaws down on his fingers. He held in pain as I felt his fingers snapped like twigs under my teeth. The migraine in my head worsened. It got to the point where I realized the chisling into my skull was fading away into the sheer torture the migraine was bringing. I finally let go of his fingers as the nausea swelled up and I vomited the hot yellow chunks of undigested food all over myself. My eye felt like it was about to explode. Stop, stop, please, please stop, please. I begged uselessly, tears wang up, before I began to sob in terror.

Almost there, you'll be better soon, Uncle Stephen said, and everyone except Junior began to coo at me. Better soon, better soon. I let out one final scream as Uncle Stephen stabbed his chisel into my head, and the radiating pain of the migraines pushed out towards my eye. and then it stopped. There was the sharp pain where the chisler had pierced, but it was almost non-existent

as I felt the migraine just dissolve away. Before my stunned eyes, I watched as Uncle Stephen lowered in front of me a fat pink worm, slick with fluids, bits of my brain in its jaws. See, you're safe now. I've always loved creepy stuff.

It started off with horror books, reading goosebumps in elementary school, later graduating under Stephen King, Shirley Jackson and a myriad of others. Eventually, I started writing my own scary stuff, mostly because I wanted to create stories that I would want to read myself as a horror fan. After about a decade, I got to be marginally successful, and now it's how I pay the bills. I never thought my life would turn into a horror story, though. How ironic is that

Some people decorate their houses With colorful vases stuffed with flowers Normal rock or paintings Knickknacks and crystal sculptures of dolphins and fairy princesses I prefer to cover my walls with freaky drawings Paintings and Prince of Artworks by Francisco Goya Anthony Christopher and Salvador Dali

The wierer and darker the better I like my art the same as I like my novels Horrifying and unsettling So, when my friend Marcus sent me a text with the title, Check out this painting of a creepy old lady! I laughed and clicked the link without too much thought. I was redirected to an obscure foreign site where old and new paintings were being sold

in a never-ending online auction. I hadn't heard of the auction company before, but that didn't stop me from pulling out my credit card as soon as I saw the image that had been shared with me. A woman's hypnotic and bizarre face stared back at me, looking lifelike and yet utterly surrealistic, not to mention terrifying. Her pupils were too big and too black, her smiles stretched too wide like a Dr. Zeus drawing, but devoid of any kind of good humour. It was a portrait of an elderly woman who

appeared to be in her 70s or 80s. She was dressed in dark, monastic-looking clothing, which I guessed to be a couple hundred years old. I figured it was a reproduction of an older painting since the price tag was only $50. The style, similar to Renaissance painting, the brushstrokes well hidden, her face photographically realistic, as if painted by an old world master. The woman in the painting was sitting

on an antique wooden chair with embellishments carved into the post of the backrest. Her eyes seemed to follow me, and looked back at me maliciously. The impression I got was that she was a real person staring back at me through the portrait, like glancing through a window

and seeing the face of an unknown stranger standing just outside. I felt as if she could reach through the screen and grab hold of me if she wanted to. Without hesitating, I put in my credit card details before somebody else could buy it. The thing was just too weird to pass up.

After a week or so of waiting, the parcel arrived on my doorstep. I had semi-forgotten about it by that point since I had been busy with other things. But as soon as I saw its distinctive flat, rectangular shape wrapped in brown parcel paper, I remembered my impulse purchase and brought it inside with giddy delight, happy to unwrap it right away. As soon as I had opened it, my heart dropped and I felt sick.

I had rarely felt by his remorse, but I definitely did when I looked at the woman's face staring back at me. She looked alive, and she looked undeniably evil. I couldn't explain why I felt that way, but I did. The idea of hanging the thing in my wall repulsed me. Just touching it felt like picking up a handful of maggots. It made my skin crawl. After putting it down, I wanted nothing more than to get rid of it.

But it felt wrong just to throw it in the garbage. I've never been that type of person, especially with art. It didn't matter how creepy it was. Someone had put a lot of time and effort into it. it, yet it was far too disturbing to hang up on the wall in the living room where I'd see it all the time. More than just disturbing, I seemed to be having a physical reaction to it like I never felt before, a growing knot in my stomach and a rising sensation in my gorge. I went into the kitchen and took the oven mitts from on top of the fridge, picked the portrait

up with him, and held it out in front of me as if it was radioactive. I brought it down to the basement of my house and set the giant frame down. against the wall of the floor, thinking I would leave it there for a while, until I get used to it, telling myself out of sight, out of mind. There was no way to get it out of my thoughts, though. I kept seeing the woman's face every time I blinked, her glassy black eyes and two-wide grin. I couldn't sleep that night, thinking about her down below me in the basement. I felt like I could almost hear her moving around down there, the gentle creek of a footsteps stepping quietly across the floorboards.

But that was impossible, I told myself. Those things were impossible. Still, I didn't sleep. Not even for a second. The following night, I went down to the basement to do laundry. After building up the courage all day to go down there, and I walked past the painting. The woman's stern black eyes seemed to follow me as I went by.

Her entire body was cloaked in shadow, the gloomy details of her face barely visible in the portrait's low light. It was late at night, and I lived at home, so I was more than a bit freaked out when I heard something loudly topple over when I turned my back to her, causing a shiver to run up my spine.

I dropped the laundry basket and spun around to look. She was staring at me from her place in the portrait. She had not moved, and yet her eyes seemed to be following me. The faintest movement barely noticeable by the naked eye, There was something else too.

A box had toppled over, spilling its contents on the chair beside the painting. And yet, I had not stepped anywhere near enough to disturb it. The woman's smiles seemed to have grown wider as well. Crooked teeth started to beak out from underneath her broken, bloody lips. Had those looked like that before? But maybe that was just my imagination. I decided not to look closer. I imagined her suddenly climbing out of the painting as I leaned in to inspect it, crawling out of the frame like the girl in the ring, and racing towards me quickly in all fours.

Shaking that image out to my head, I picked up the bin again and reluctantly turned away. I quickly put the laundry in the washing machine and turned it on, then walked past her again on my way back upstairs. There was no mistaking it. Her grin had stretched wider, and... Beneath that, I saw a long row of teeth, dirty, crooked, and utterly inhuman. I was very sure it hadn't looked like that before. Was I seen things due to my lack of sleep? I wiped my eyes and blinked, examining the painting again.

No teeth. And yet, I'd been so sure a second earlier. Unable to stand looking at it for one more moment, I decided to do something. My heart was beating rapidly. my chest and my hand was shaking as I reached down and flipped the painting around so that it faced the wall. Her smile seemed to shrink a little bit. Her eyes following my hand, brows furrowing, as she looked up at me, reaching over to grab the top of the picture frame. My skin crawled when I touched it. I fought through the urge to wretch and spun it around quickly, as if it

would burn me if I held onto it for too long. When she was facing the wall, I felt no better. only more uneasy, as if I had turned my back on a deadly enemy. Again, that night, I heard someone in the basement moving around, walking from room to room. I was just glad she didn't come up the stairs, but I had the feeling she would, and soon. That whole night I stayed awake, listening for the footsteps. Every so often I would hear them, and every so often there would be a titter of muffled laughter, bemused and unsettling. The next morning I called a friend over.

I needed someone else to look at it, to make me feel less alone, I suppose. I was hoping the presence of another person would make things better somehow. But, I was wrong. My friend Brent came by, and I brought him down to the basement immediately. He took one look at the painting,

which was now mysteriously tipped over, facing upwards. Then walked straight out of the room, saying, Nope. He went back up the stairs and out the front door of the house, much to my amazement. I followed him and stood with him on the front steps. Brent was out there with his hands on his knees, bent over and looking oddly out of breath.

But then I realised he wasn't just short on breath. He was completely terrified. Where the hell did you get that thing? He asked. His speech fast and stuttering. You can't keep it. You can't. It's evil, possessed.

He looked right at me. How can you sleep with that thing in your house? Brent hadn't stuttered since back in elementary school, except the odd time when he was really stressed out. He'd seen speech language experts for years, and he had eventually cured himself with that speech disorder. It only came out when he was really upset. I...

I haven't. I haven't slept a wink since I got that. that thing. He looked me dead in the eyes. Get rid of it. I told him I would, with every intention of throwing it in the trash or burning it after he left. But for some strange reason, I couldn't. I decided I had to do something with it first. I had to find out some answers. The next day, after another restless night of tossing and turning, I brought the painting out to my car. We were going to go for a little drive together. I'd wrapped it up in a blanket and the portrait was covered up so nobody could see it, mostly because I didn't want to look at it, especially while I was driving.

There was an art expert about a two hours drive away from my house. I looked him up online and found he was a well-established authority and all things creeping disturbing. It had taken a while to find someone with this reputation, the better part of the previous day, in fact. While I drove, I looked back at the painting in the rearview mirror occasionally. From underneath the blankets, I could have sworn I saw subtle movement. The bend and ripple of the sheet kept catching my eye and distracting me from the road ahead. It could have been the wind. But it wasn't.

I was certain of it. You've got yourself quite an antique by the looks of it, the man said, beginning to pull back the blanket to reveal the gilded frame. I realized I was holding my breath, closing my eyes, waiting for his reaction when he saw the horrifying woman in the portrait. But when he finally gasped in astonishment, I realized it was not a fearful sound, but one of admiration. Remarkable.

Opening my eyes, I looked at what he was seeing. The face of the woman in the portrait was not the same. I did a double take and wondered for a moment if he had switched them out while I wasn't paying attention. But no, it was the same frame, the same woman in the portrait, only her expression had changed remarkably. Instead of the horrifying smile, she now wore a benign look on her face,

a passive, good-natured smirk that I was unaccustomed to seeing on her. Magnificent, Kiaroscuro, that's a technique which involves heavy-handed use of shadows and darkness with little light, in case you aren't familiar. But the brush strokes, my goodness, utterly invisible, he said, holding up a loop to examine it closely. It looks as if she's alive. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make this.

Do you have the provenance? The pro what? I should have known the word. Did, in fact, but was far too tired to remember what it meant at that moment. I'd now gone nearly four full days without any sleep I was dead on my feet. Any idea of its origins, or its age?

No, sorry. I got it online at this site, I said, pulling out my phone and trying to show him. But the website no longer existed as far as I could tell. Weird, I guess it's down right now. I'll send you the URL. He thought about it for a few minutes, going over the painting with various tools and magnifying lenses.

Ah, here's something, he said excitedly. What's that? I asked. Damn, I can see only part of the signature. I'll have to take it out of the frame. Can you leave it with me until tomorrow? I agreed, unsure of how to explain to him the situation, other than to say. Be careful with it. The art expert didn't pick up the phone the following day,

and I thought maybe you just needed more time with a piece. But instead, I knew something was very wrong already. I'd slept for the first. time in four nights though, no longer hearing the footsteps creaking on the floorboards beneath me anymore, and I wanted one more night of peace before hearing the truth for the man I'd left the picture with. Selfish, I know. In retrospect, I was just terrified to go back there. Who knew what I would find? After one more night of rest, I called the art expert again, and once more I received no answer, no call back. Getting worried for the old guy now.

I got in my car and started driving first thing in the morning. I didn't eat breakfast, feeling like I would throw it up if I did. Despite the lack of food in my belly, it felt like there was a cinder block sitting inside of it the whole drive there. I just hoped he was okay. When I arrived at the man's studio, I found the front door was unlocked. I entered the small foyer and found it dark and empty inside. He did not come out to greet me this.

time, and the sense of dread I was feeling continued to grow and swan inside of me. With slow, careful steps, I began to walk through the foyer towards the door where his studio was kept. That was where I'd last left him, and I hoped that I would open the door to find him standing there working on something. I no longer cared about the painting. In fact, I hoped he had destroyed it in my absence. That way, I wouldn't have to do it. The last two nights had given me a clearer mind, and the sleep had afforded me perspective and insight into the situation. The thing had to be destroyed, but it had some power over me which had prevented me from doing so. I had been tricked into hanging onto it and showing it to more and more people.

Pushing open the door marked studio, I went inside the next dark room. Hello? I called out into the blackened space. A soft gurgling noise responded. It sounded bubbly and wet. I reached over to turn on the light, but found it no longer worked. The room stayed drenched in darkness. And then I heard the same familiar titter of laughter I had heard from my basement. Her.

My heart now pounding in my chest, I swallowed a dry lump in my throat. Reaching from my phone, I pulled it out and tried with trembling fingers to turn on the flashlight app. My hands were shaking so badly I dropped the phone. I went down to pick it up and heard movement in the darkness. It was getting closer. There was another sound as well, a soft, drip, drip, drip, drip, like a leaky roof, only coming from several different places. Picking up the phone from the floor, I managed to unlock it as I felt a presence move past me in the darkness. The air around me suddenly felt cold as a winter's night, and I found myself shivering and shaking even more as I finally got to be.

the flashlight turned on. The light came on, casting the room in its harsh white glow. Kiera Skuro. A grotesque sort of art exhibit had been created in the studio, but not by the resident art expert who I had met two days prior. No, he had not made this monstrosity, but he was certainly part of it. The whole room was filled with his entrails, strung up and down and across the perimeter like party streamers. He was at the centre of it all. His body had been disemboweled and his guts had been pulled out

and wrapped around the room. His limbs had been removed as well, but were nowhere to be seen. That was when I saw the most horrifying part. He was still somehow alive. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, his skin partially missing from his face, revealing stark white bone beneath.

ligaments and tendons. Came from his mouth, and I noticed his tongue had been removed as well, and blood was pouring out, causing him to cough and choke occasionally. The walls have been painted with his blood, which was everywhere. Various symbols which I did not recognize

were on every inch of the room, ceilings, floors and walls. They looked druidic and ancient, their meanings unknown to me. As I looked around, I remember the noise I'd heard by the door. I spun and saw her standing there in the darkness, the woman from the painting.

She was dressed in a dark robe and a grin was wider than ever, large and open with silent laughter. Blood was smeared around her mouth. In her hand, she held the painting itself, only she was no longer in it. The background was black and empty, now missing its subject. Realising suddenly what was happening,

I noticed that her entrancing eyes were coming towards me. She was coming towards me. How long had I been standing there, zoned out? The only thing which snapped me out of it was the gurgling screams of the art expert, sounding desperate and terrified. She held the picture frame out in front of her as if to capture me in it. My heart beating fast, I did the only thing I could think to do. I shone the flashlight straight in her eyes, hoping he would be a weakness.

A creature born of the shadows and of the darkness. I thought maybe the light would do something to stop her. It worked. The second the glare hit her eyes, she put her hands up to shield her face, covering it with a picture frame. But her hands continued to burn and sizzle like a vampire in the sun. Still, she continued moving towards me.

Terrified, I backed up, tripping over a chair and falling to the floor. The phone fell from her hand and clattered away in the direction of the art expert. His face was lit up, looking at me in his harsh glow. Vah, schmitch. He yelled, struggling to speak without a tongue, looking close to death from blood loss.

He was looking at the wall, and I could see a light switch there. Struggling to my feet, I saw she was nearly on top of me, and I heard her quietly whispering some sort of prayer or chant under her breath. I took away, just as she brought down the way. the portrait where my head was a moment before. I had the feeling

if I hadn't gotten out of the way I would be stuck inside that painting now just like she had been. In the dull light I managed to find the light switch on the nearby wall with my hand and flicked it on, casting the entire room in harsh white artificial light.

The woman in the painting screamed, her skin boiling and steaming in the glow of the fluorescence. Boils and blisters bloomed and burst on her skin. Puss in blood running out in rivulet. Covering her face with the robes, she ran to the door and fled, just as she was about to catch fire, judging by the looks of it.

I hope she would leave, but she didn't. Her footsteps stopped just outside the door. She's still out there in the foyer, waiting for me in the darkness, waiting for the sun to go down, waiting for me to try and leave. I can hear her pacing as she was. waits for me to come out, the next subject for a painting. The art expert is dead now. He stopped breathing a few minutes ago.

It's just me left, with his blood and guts strewn around the room and strung up like a giant intestinal spider web all around me. The drip, drip, drip, begins to slow down as his blood coagulates, and the blood-painted symbols on the walls begin to move and shift and morph as the one working for the resting bulb in the room flickers and suddenly goes out. I really wish I just burned that damn painting.

The world was on fire. Walls of flame crushed in, sending 100-foot trees toppling to the ground like slain giants. The air was screaming with heat. It rippled off the encroaching circle of flame in great shimmering waves, highlighting burning trees, brush, flocks of sparks that flew upward into the night sky that was deeply black,

choked of galaxies by a kingdom of smoke. And it was deafening. The crackle of heat devouring wood, the hiss of things dying in the millions, the whistle of flames as they spread like disease. Through the death choir, I couldn't hear the crash of metal on metal as Sandy pounded away at the bunker door with his red-tiped service axe.

I was on a defensive attack, putting wet stuff on the red stuff, in an attempt to buy my only ally enough time to hack us the safety. We were soldiers, stranded in the enemy's belly, surrounded by an army of flame that would not stop until it had melted the meat from our bones, and our bones to ash. Suddenly, hands grabbed me from behind,

and before I could react, Sandy was dragging me down into the bunker. We hit concrete stairs that stacked down, descending into the unknown, and for a minute I thought I saw, Then the metal door slammed shut behind us and the world was bandaged in darkness. After all that's happened, I wish we'd stayed upstairs and let ourselves burn. It would have been better like that. It started as a routine night.

The sirens had sounded just past midnight, sending a dozen of us falling down poles, into flame-retardant suits with oxygen tanks and sealed masks, and then into the red engines which would carry us off to fight the burn. Like D-Day soldiers in a landing raft shooting through sheet of salt water, we rode in a heavy silence. It was comfortable that way, and it had become a superstition. We didn't speak until boots hit the ground. It had been like this all year. In the Ozarks, some junkie was always ashing down their Meth-Lab trailer home.

And since our firehouse serves as a stretch of Missouri, that contained no few number of breaking bad fans, we were always getting woken up to douse a drug fire. I figured tonight would be the same. I thought we'd just be wrestling another prosy at chemical burn with a dozen redneck unknuckers howling at us in despair. But I was wrong. God, how I was wrong. Even before I saw the eerie red glow polluting the midnight sky,

the dispatcher crackled in over the radio to remind us. This was a Class F wildfire. The sky was burning as Sandy broke our rule. Oh my God, he muttered, eyes wide and bright. Oh my God. A small patch of the Northwesterns, a splatter of mountains, crinkling the horizon, was on fire. I could see trees crumpling, falling, as an army of flames charged the sprawler suburbia between us and it. A disembodied voice spoke.

Air support on route, ETA 20. It took me a moment to realize this was the dispatcher. It didn't take nearly as long to realise that 20 minutes was far too long for support of any kind. The burning trees were separated from the housing tract by a long ribbon of highway. A blistering stretch of asphalt that made our engine bump and sway like a galley fighting stormy waters. We were all grateful for that road. It would make laying a defensive line that much easier. We all piled out of the engine with our hearts hammering our throats.

Some guys from fear, others from excitement. It was a rush either way, a mainline kick of adrenaline soaring through your system, powering up each step under £75 of equipment. Kozik, your typical beefy, war-stashed firefighter was the company officer and ordered me and Sandia on anchor point. We couldn't protest if we wanted to. The great rush of heat was roaring closer to the road with every passing second. It was maybe 200 yards from reaching us.

While the team went to work, Sandy and I grabbed our gear and fell into a tortuous uphill jog, up into the woods. We pushed out a fireline, hoping to prevent a flank by the rapidly spreading army of flames. The woods were burning ahead of us, and to the right, not giving us enough time for comfort, but more than enough to finish our duty without any major wrenches. Then, it all went to hell. I don't remember it clearly. It's caught in my memory, memory like a series of broken snapshots. Random stutters that I can't exactly place.

I remember staggering back as the flame shot forward and gobbled through our defensive line like it was dried out kindling. I remember the hollow whipsaw sound of air hauling through my lungs as the fire swallowed my horizon on four sides. I remember screaming to Sandy that we'd need to route before it was too late. But then it was too late. I remember dumping a haphazard defensive attack in an attempt to bias enough time to to what?

The next thing I knew, like trees crumbling around me like Feldguards, Sandy, was dragging me down the bunker hatchway, the one that would feed us into the hive. Our comms didn't work down there, and the concrete stairway to hell. My head set cracked and spat static until I finally clicked it off. We staggered down in silence, guided only by the beams of our hazy flashlights we kept just in case. The stairs were narrow, the ceiling low, a concrete tunnel that forced me to stoop, and even then I sometimes heard my helmet cracking off the low roots that had forced their way in. The sounds of flames battering the metal door receding behind us,

bleeding off into a low whistle that eventually faded altogether. Then it was just the sound of our ragged breath, our heavy boots pounding down as we went in a daze, unspeaking and single file. The only thing that mattered was finding the next step. The next step, the next step. I didn't have time to consider what might meet us at the bottom. It was a tunnel, but it looked like a wasps nest. The wall, grayish and wrinkled, bore hundreds, thousands of tinypox,

an awful vesporey, a tripophobic nightmare. Sandy had asked me something. I looked up at him, his boyish face drawn and pallid beneath his visor. What? I asked. What is it? he repeated. I didn't know. I didn't want to know. Looking at the mass of tiny hives, like so many dreadful eyes, made my skin crawl. I would have told him not to touch it had I seen his hand reach out,

but I didn't see until it was too late. I turned as his outstretched finger prodded the wall, which was sponge-like and fibrous, and watched with growing dread as the holes around his fingers puckered and expanded with dry rattle. No, I started. The holes tightened and released a spray of thick black fluid. Sandy was splattered and fouling

before he had time to react. Gubs of it misted his chest and helmet. I knew he was acidic almost instantly. Beneath a goo, his suit began to disintegrate, hissing smoke and a fetid reek that breached my suit and stung my eyes. In a daze he tried wiping it off. It was like an awful vaudeville skit,

Sandy desperately wiping at his chest, arms and helmet, which did nothing more than spread the acidic discharge to his gloves. Then he started to scream. He was like melting wax. As the suit dripped away from him, so did his flesh, falling off in waxy ribbons. He melted through his visor and then his face, pulling the skin from his flesh and the flesh from his bones.

By now, he was more gore than suit. Great streaks of tissue and bone fell apart, as blood drip, drip, dripped onto the dirt floor beneath our feet. It filled his visor and overflowed in a red sheet. He stopped screaming. He couldn't anymore. He was drowning on his own flesh. I hadn't moved.

I couldn't, even if I wanted to. I was drunk on exertion and fear. My heart was hammering my rib cage hard enough to bruise. Finally, after a wrought of a bruise, an eternity of listening to the sickening splat of my melting friend hit the ground, he pitched forward and bubbled apart into a puddle of human goo. What remained of his suit deflated as he flooded out of it in a sizzling wet mess. I backed away as the pool of meat liquid crawled across the ground toward my feet. It was a hindbrain reaction, step after step, unaware that I was

making them, until something thumped into my shoulder. A dry rattle filled my helmet as I turned to the wasp wall, which was expanding and contracting around me. I staggered back, bumped into another wall, turned and bumped another. The tunnel around me pulsed with awful industry. It rattled, hissed, puckering up to blow acid. I turned and ran as a wall of black ink sprayed out from countless faucets. I was gripping my haligan tool as I stumbled out of the tunnel and into the white forest. The Halligan is a fireman's best friend, a pickaxed crowbar love child that can open just about anything, including heads, and after what I'd seen, I wasn't taking chances.

I looked around and felt my heart some sort of nauseatingly. I was... outside? No, that wasn't quite right. As I'd fallen out of the tunnel, the walls and ceiling had flown away to accommodate this place. This white forest. Mountains of naked trees, gnarled and bone white, rose and fell against the sky that was impossibly black, like squid ink. Milky light splashed down from a jagged sliver that was too long and narrowed to be the moon.

It looked like a gash in the heavens that had filled with light instead of blood. A giant cave, like a hungry mouth, was borrowed into the earth mountain nearest me. Darkness seemed to spill out like smoke, awful, suffocating darkness. I knew deep down that I needed to avoid that cave at all costs. I swallowed and took a careful step forward. Glass cracked under my boot. I winced. I was too loud.

Too loud. I lifted my boot and looked down. A broken human skull looked up. My eyes went to the forest, the white forest. And I saw not a maze of tortured wood, but one of bone. twisted and moulded into impossible tree-like shapes. It made my stomach weak and my eyes feel like powders of squirming insects. I swallowed and a chill ran through my body.

The feeling of eyes crawling over my neck. I turned to look at the cave, snarling at me from the side. Looking at it made me feel dizzy. Something dreadful was buried deep within. Move. The little voice in my mind forced my limbs into motion. I walked slowly, surely, weaving through the detritus of death, rotted corpses draped in mouldering flesh, broken bones from things long forgotten.

The cave receded behind me, and so did the feeling of eyes of my flesh. I gripped my halligan tightly as I wound through the bone forest. A while later I found the river, the one that ran through with a lame trickle of water that reeked of corruption. That Where I saw The woman She was hunched over the riverbank Drinking

I couldn't tell from where I was Her back was to me Soft white flesh Beneath a silky dress And he was hitching up and down As I drew closer I realised She was crying

It was like music The sound of her pain It flooded my ears like honey and vanilla calming my raging heart. I didn't realize I'd move closer until I was standing right next to her. Her hair was like flax, smooth as glass,

and she was beautiful. I couldn't see her face, but I knew she was. Ma'am, I said, not realizing I'd spoken until I heard the word in my helmet. She stood up, not yet turning to face me.

Ma'am, I said again, softly panting my free hand on her shoulder, her. I felt a sudden revulsion crawl at my fingers and through my wrist, slowly trickling up my arm like an eight-legged horror. I tore my hand away and watched with grown terror as she turned to face me. My stomach knotted up, forcing sour bile at my throat. I tried to step back, but I couldn't. I was frozen with terror. A face was torn into an impossible grimace, distended into an awful silent cry beneath hollow eyes and hair that was black straw, hair that was drenched over a lumpy, malformed scalp like a dead spider.

Her skin was made of wrinkles and disease, wrapped over sharp bones that looked like nothing but wire hangers beneath the roadkill rag she wore. I thought of the scream as her awful pain-wrapped face filled my visor. And then, she screamed. It carved through my stomach like a hot dagger. It filled my lungs with icy pain and needleed my ears like a hive of insects. Curtains of darkness fell over my vision as the banshee held. My legs gave out and I crumbled down, falling into blackness with a scream still ringing through my soul.

I heard singing before I opened my eyes. It was lovely. It was in a language vaguely foreign, but it was warm and made me feel... I opened my eyes and looked around the dreadful wax museum. It sounds silly, but it's the first thing that sprung to mind. We were in a massive cavern, incredible towers of rocks spiraled up and down, splitting the space into sections, guttering torches through jagged shapes over the wax men melted into the walls.

They were vaguely human mounds of wax fused shoulder to shoulder around the wall of the cave. They were completely sealed over, spare nose holes and eye holes. Beyond those I saw living eyes. They watched me, washed with terror, from beneath their waxy cocoons. As I slowly looked around, I figured all the wax figures were not figures, dead or otherwise, but living things forever imprisoned to the banshe's cave. Suddenly, the singing was horrible, like something in the back of the fridge turned rotten, laced with a foul taste that made me feel dizzy.

I was glad I couldn't see the banshee. I was afraid that if I did, my stomach would fold and he vomit on my throat. I tried to sit up, but I couldn't. I was bound to something. I felt like a rock, but it was warm, pulsing with slimy heat. The singing was getting closer, moving through the cave, ricocheting after strange acoustics, but no doubt getting closer. Then it was right behind me, inches away, right to my ear.

The singing stopped. I froze. I tried to make myself small. Dread turned my bladder to jelly. I heard bone crackle and snap as she shuffled into view. And I breathed to sigh of relief. She was beautiful once again.

Beautiful. I blinked and she shifted like a reflection on water and beneath her beauty I saw rot and repulsion. I couldn't look away. even as she stepped up to one of the wax men and pounded a tree tapper through his chest. I heard a muffled moan of agony.

The banchie settled a wooden bucket beneath a spigot and watched as yellowish fluid rang from the waxman's chest and splattered into receptacle. I looked away, horrified. Out of the corner of my vision, I saw her disappear deep into the cave. I heard the crackle of flame as she started a fire. I had to look. I had to confirm what I already knew.

I cramed my head. Coarse rope ground my throat and mouth, tearing away the skin as I forced myself to look deeper into the horrible nest. Vaguely, I saw her standing over a massive cauldron, stirring with a paddle. A smell, sweet and strange, funneled up and out as the fire grew beneath it. The smell of melting wax. A bolt of terror laced through my insides like I had.

hot needle. I looked around the wall of prisoners and they looked back at me. What's worse than death? I swallowed. I struggled against my binds, coarse rope bit into my flesh and burned. I could see my gear lying a few feet away. My mask and oxygen tank coiled up like a dead thing. As the banshee stirred the massive part of wax on the corner of my vision, an insane and totally dangerous plant took shape in my head. My hands were bound by the small of my back. back and I desperately patted down my back pockets for the bick lighter I used the smoke. A firefighter who smokes.

There's got to be something to be said about that. I thought, crazily, as I felt. There. My hands found a hard lump in my back pocket. I could see a shadow growing on my periphery. I fumbled out the bick and flicked it on. My flame hissed up and licked my wrists. I stabbled a cry as my skin screamed with heat,

blistering against the tiny flame that nibbled through the road. binding me. The shadow grew. I had slight footsteps carried on the sound of bone cracking. Hot tears ran down my cheeks as the rope frayed and split under the tiny flame, until throbbing warmth settled in over my fingers and wrists as they hardened under fire. Then the lighter went out, and the banshee was here. I couldn't look at her. I could see her in the corner of my eye, horrible and broken, face was. ripped apart by that silent grimace, eyes hollow black sockets, arms too long for a body so narrow. I blinked and she was gone. I slowly turn my head. Slowly, slowly, slowly, her face was inches from mine,

shredded with silent agony. I screamed. God how I screamed, and she wrapped me in a hug, and I felt a flesh, slimy and awful, over a pincushion of bones. They made my skin crawl and my toes curl with disgust. All at once I wanted to die. I didn't want to escape gallantly and ride off on a white steed. I wanted to fall into the cold abyss of death where things didn't burn or scream or live in shells of wax. I inhaled sharply, pulled a lung full of thick, foul reek, and kicked backward.

I think the only reason I broke free of a grasp was that I caught her off guard. Suddenly I was weightless, tumbling toward the king, here that was supposed to save my life, that would end it in a heartbeat. The ground drilled into my side, and I kicked and wormed toward the oxygen tank sitting two feet away. I gnashed my teeth over the tubing that fed clean breath into my mask and tore it out of the small black tank. Compressed air hissed out. The banshees crooked shadow fell over me. My heart flooded twice and ignited the bick, which caught the oxygen and rowed it like a wave.

Don't remember much about the explosion. There was a flash of light, but it wasn't a blinding snapshot or a hellish belgier flame. It was a warm expansion, like a rose blooming in light. Heat, searing and suffocating heat sucked me into its boiling belly. The world shook as I burned and laughed and danced through blooming light. My life ended in fire, which is oddly poetic if you think about it. It began again in a riverbed, surrounded by woods that were blackened from a nighttime burn. I awoke to the first light of dawn

with a thin trickle of ice running down my face Water I was in a river It tasted like ash It tasted wonderful I sat up and looked around My suit was scorched My stupid, clunky, anti-flam suit

I was the only thing that had spared my life I was under open sky In the aftermath of a great fire Everything was black, hazed with smoke and ash. Closses of brush still smouldered here and there, but the fire had died with the night. I looked at my hands. They reminded me of roadkill.

Tired treadmarks of a splattered gut that had baked in the sun for months. I started to scream. I've been in the hospital for longer than I can remember. Sandy's mom came to visit me. She cried into my bandages. They never found his body, which is why I think I started this tale. Maybe to give a closure, maybe to give it to myself. But as I reached the end of my recount, I don't feel any better.

When I shut my eyes, I still see her. Her, the banshee, whose face was torn by pain. Even as I come to the realization that nothing in this world, God can pierce the hopelessness that ruined every stimulus I can still come upon. I find a reliable sense of wonder when imagining how patient it has been. Its origins and its creation, its nature and its effects. This always makes me shudder with a palpable sense of despair mixed with awe of my strange fate.

I have regressed into sympathizing with it, into turning to its titanic lack of mercy and all-encompassing design in order to feel anything. is the only real thing, I guess. The only thing with a purpose left in it. I used to be a studier of memetic theories, a band sociology with a specialisation in all things information technology. I had written some well-respected studies on general behaviour on the internet, the spread of ideas, the way people communicate depending on the subject matter.

Two girls one cup, but with more analysis, detachment, and looking at how quickly things get attention, and how it is related to man's creation of culture. I decided to turn to what out lies next, the fringes in the corners of the internet. Lost information. I scout for obscure P2Ps and used extensive programs to make my investigations go faster. I simply looked for anything forgotten. Useless, half-cooked, unique, empty, alone, or downright useless on the internet.

I figured it could become a book, a study or a decent hobby. When I found it, there was one thing that called to my attention. The channel name. I was using any and all ways to access any kinds of IRC there was, trying to see what stood out. Where I saw it, I have long since forgotten. But what I saw was exactly what I was looking for. The name of the channel was skewed at an angle,

rather than a smooth line of text with a designated box. Rather than text, it was designated by a symbol. and not the kind available through any Unicode or any script I knew of. Yet, upon examination of the site's code, there was nothing indicating an image rather than a script. In fact, there was nothing indicating the channel could even exist. The script didn't allow for more than a few channels, and the one with a symbol made one too many.

The next day, I took my hard drive to the garage and then prepared to hook up my spare with a trusty screening keyboard. Upon connecting, I noticed something that made my face lock and prickly moisture form underneath my eyelids. The letters, arrows and other symbols on the keyboard had been... Usurped, absorbed, eaten. The symbol had taken every spot. On the screen's frame, the name Phillips had been replaced with a row of seven symbols. A bag of snacks lying on my desk had met the same change, and only the symbols could be

read. Stunned as I was, my mind didn't take work until I accidentally glanced at my watch and saw that I was late. The more profane sheltered part of my brain won me over, declaring the whole thing an impressive prank designed by a pair of friends noted for that odd humor and knowledge of my new hobby. It even assured me that they could have made the snacks bag simply to test their commitment. I took the bag and everything affected along with a hard drive and with a flash of instinct I threw them into a rocky ditch on my way to work

work went easily and a quick phone call to my girlfriend who usually lived with me but was on a conference assured me that she would be home soon eager to hear of the amazing joke the infamous pair had pulled this time by lunch I'd made up my mind for takeout

and drove to a sandwich diner I entered, placed myself in line opening a newspaper lying abandoned on a nearby table surveying the menu, I decided upon something grilled first and then felt the visual equivalent of a sucker punch as I saw that symbol sitting innocently in place of the word mayonnaise With what must have been unsettling concern

I asked the person behind me whether he saw the symbol on the menu I can't recall the person's gender but I do remember the look It was as if my question broke a rule The face of the person twitched As if I jumbled his mind to mush just by asking The twitching hastily stopped And was replaced with the look of the most complete lack of understanding All this apparently unremarkable to the person

In the closest line who had seen the whole thing I rounded on the cashier asking for my order And with a deep sense of foreboding Asked for some mayonnaise in the side A young frame made a strange quivering motion That seemed to involve for every single one of her muscles, and then simply looked at me, her face normal, say, for an awkward lack of understanding, as if I had asked for something with a foreign name,

or at least the kind of condiments she had never heard of. I waved my demand away, took my order, and, by now, forgetting any sense of inhibition or proper behaviour, bolted out of the place. I rushed for the first deli I saw. I looked in every aisle, drawing worried or disapproving glances, as I surveyed every square inch for mayonnaise, asking every shopper I met whether they knew what mayonnaise was, only to be given the same dumb stare. When I did happen upon the place where mayonnaise should be found, the shelves were stacked with small statuettes, featuring the symbol in perfectly grey stone upon small grey dyes. Remarking upon this to the nearest shopper, created the same spasms, followed by a look, I myself have given to those asking for something in a foreign tongue.

I directed the gaze towards the symbols, and then I watched and fascinated horror as the spasms took over them. I wanted to leave them turning the gaze away, looking towards me with a look of inquiry, suggesting my request had been completely unintelligible. The memory of seeing the symbols had glanced off, or perhaps being received and then forgotten, may be erased the instant they were seen. To this day, I wonder how. even as I spend most of time whispering,

Why, why, why, why, why? I find a bookstore, scoured dictionaries for the word, only to find the haunting symbol in every copy. Cookbooks show the same replacement, even in recipes where no real substitute for mayonnaise could exist, and where the dish would suffer. I knew by now that this was no prank or unique hallucination on my part, and, in the last bid for sanity,

I asked the first person I came across to indulge me by reading the recipe out loud. He tentatively took the book, shot me a curious look and read the list of ingredients. I had no real sense of hope, but I did feel my mind jettisoning all its notions of reality and convictions about the paranormal when he started to have uncontrollable spasms the minute he was to pronounce the symbol, only to proceed with the next ingredient as if nothing had happened. I asked him what you got if you mixed egg yolks with vegetable oil, vinegar, salt, mustard and pepper. He simply said, Sounds as if it would taste funny, but good.

Still eyeing me with bemusement and suspicion. You get mayonnaise? I said. And then the spasms overtook him. He angled his head as if he had not heard me and then said, Sorry. I dropped my shoulders and said, You get

Kesev, a Russian paste Make it fluffy Kesev Sounds tasty with tuna By the time I'd come home I was deathly nervous Having bought a dictionary And look impatiently through it

With a permanent film of sweat upon me I scrutinized every page I trembled at the thought Of what effects the symbol could create next A knocking at the door I left the dictionary open on my desk and opened only to find my living girlfriend beaming back at me. Her eyebrows stuck between concern and amusement and my no doubt Harriet Eyre.

I explained myself as having come back from a jog and embraced her happily. She responded in kind, and I hoped to brush over the spreading sense of being at the mercy of this symbol by asking her about a journey while I prepared her some dinner. Having recently read of the dangers of red meat and its many tasty by-products, our household. was recently swearing by chicken, and I was preparing some fajitas for us

while she detailed the conference. She is... Was, an employee had a company selling risk assessment for other companies interested in investing in third world countries. Apparently, the war launched by New Carthage and not to say in critical problems to the poor citizens in the remains of the Ottoman Combine.

The place was now quickly been invaded, not by troops sent to kill their dictator, but rather people hoping to make a lot of people hoping to make a war. buck and gaining a footing. The conference would mean her company had busy days in the future. I asked her about the journey back as a place chicken breast in my special marinade. I can still remember the gottle sounds as a body repelled the word, normal.

It grew at an exponential rate after that. Time and time again, I showed my girlfriend the symbol that had taken the place of normal in the dictionary on the internet, in writing and, presumably, in speech. Every time she would have the same paroxysms, only to ask me, look at what? Exasperated, as well as worried about my frightened weeping. I tried to keep her with me for as long as possible. I wanted her comfort and humanity while I still could.

Yet, at the same time, watching her represent the same deconstruction all other humans felt tore at me so badly I could barely keep a straight face. not even to make her happy. It was like watching an amputee keep working on as if the amputated part had never been there. Working around the absence, as well as she could,

only to spasm and forget as soon as a mind turned to the thing that would have been there before the symbol. But it wasn't just the word. It was its very substance, meaning, concept and form that was replaced.

Things the humans of my dimension dictated to be, Statues turned into those brooding great effigies one day. Then, the other day, the word nails was gone, and buildings collapsed en masse, while my girlfriend, along with all other humans, had her fingertips covered with the symbols. I stayed with her until the day I awoke to find a pair of symbols where her eyes should have been.

She flailed for me as I left. She wasn't in panic. She didn't even remember she once could see. She just saw darkness. But she remembered that I used to be with her, and now I was not. I strangled her. What else could I have done? Compared to what met the others, it was a mercy.

Even before everything thought to be eyes was exchanged with the symbol. People had been rendered pathetic and unstable by the unfelt absence of words like strong, pyramid, particle. Yes, any imaginable word. disappeared, only to leave, the symbol, I guess. The words, as well as what they represented, disappeared. Soon, the night sky had an enormous symbol instead of the moon, and naturally the tides became erratic, flooding the blinded people who lived by the shore, even as they fought

starvation, trying the best at talk in between themselves, trying to understand why it was they could not see things. As for a cruel play, humans lost the concept of soul. sight and vision weeks after their eyes became replaced with the symbol. Of course, soon dehydration and hunger killed those not dead of accidents, and I was glad their mouths disappeared, as quickly as they did, freeing me from hearing their broken pleas for help. I watched in a mixture of complete sorrow and detachment as skyscrapers, lampposts, trees, dogs, cats and so on, turned into great simple statuettes of varying sizes.

Why did it leave me? Why do I have a field around me in which I could store whatever foodstuffs I've been able to find before it was replaced? Maybe it sought to play with me, punish me, or even thank me in its own little way. It matters not. As I wrote this last part on a paper and pen

I've successfully managed to keep in my little pocket of safety and meaning, most of the elements in the earth and its crust has turned into the inert and nameless element the symbol is and represents. Perhaps this cancerous element is made up of countless smaller symbols. I do not know. The Earth's magnetic field is waning and soon all will cook. Unless the stars and her sun with it turns into Titanic symbols before that, of course.

Perhaps my entire universe will turn into one great symbol. Piece by piece it has, after all, sought to cover every single. element, concept, and whatever else comes to mind. It will become everything soon. Perhaps it is lonely, the symbol. Perhaps my message will come across your dimension once I've given up. Perhaps it will not. All I know is that I remain safe.

And while the ruination of my universe does not stir any emotion in me, the thought of the symbol enveloping another dimension, all of them, like a tumour, feels like a moment. me with dread, even while nothing else can. They weren't parlour tricks, or a scam, or just an outright lie. They were actually haunted, accursed, possessed, and we sawed them in spades. I'd never wondered where my brother got them. Evil books and rings and mirrors that showed dead women, dolls that moved on their own,

and Ouija boards that did that too. He'd always brought them, sourcing them from all over, and I'd always distribute them, first online, then in our brick and mortar shop in New Orleans. We had done well for ourselves, better than well. Then he brought me the talking Teresa doll, the one that spoke not of being pampered and having a diapers changed, but of death and blood and raw, pulsing horror of what lies beyond. I wish I'd listen to Marcus,

wish I'd never pull that dull string and listen to a scream and scream. I'm serious, Anna. Marcus was saying, as he regarded the blonde-haired blue-eyed Teresa doll in a pink dress, This one is? He trailed off, looking at the spotlighted doll, crumpled ominously on the work table, which hemmed one of our cramped stockroom. I looked up at my brother, who looked so much like me when his face screwed up into a tired knot. I'd always resented him for taking all the good jeans two years before I was born.

He was nearing 40, handsome as ever, tall. strong, with a firm sculpted face beneath a jet of black hair. I was slightly puffy, my face more moon-like than Greek sculpture, and whereas his was tamed and everlessly cool, my hair, a frizzy, insane mess, did me no favors. Marcus blew a sigh, corkscrewing his fists into tired eyes. When they came away, I saw just how burned out he looked. His eyes were shot through with red, his cheeks were gone,

hollow and he badly needed to shave. He looked like hell. Which was odd. My brother never looked like hell. Just don't toy with it, he finally said. Put it up out front and leave it alone. Our stock had never scared me. Our messy store, more a busy psycho antique shop than anything else,

was chock full of haunted things. Cramped shells of dusty wares, all exploding with haunted history, filling our small, claustrophobic store. At every twist and turn, you were met with an odd something that clipped a bolt of cold dread through your stomach that made your skin crawl and your hair rise and your legs dissolve into jelly.

But that was usually the extent of the haunted things potency. Never did they levitate or burn you with a touch or shift you when you were looking. If only. It only ever happened behind your back. Things were always moving around. disappearing, but I was used of it by now. I didn't mind staying after dark, rearranging shelves, updating our web store.

It just never bothered me. And it never bothered Marcus, until now. He looked stricken. His eyes, bleary and severe, regarded me coolly, waiting for me to say, Okay, sure, I'll leave it alone. Which I did. Visible relief took his cord posture. and eased it of tension.

He nodded, smiled, pulled me into a hug. Thanks, Anna, he was saying, you're not such a bad sister after all. I laughed and playfully thumped his shoulder. He mock winced, rubbing his arm as he headed out, leaving me alone with the haunted, talking Teresa. I didn't pull the string. Not at first.

It was evening, bloody sunlight straight through the front pacing windows, painting our menagerie of the weird and awful in inky shadows. I tucked the talking Teresa onto a shelf that house that dozen of dolls and toys before taking to my nightly duties of closing up shop. The clock tick-tocked as the last customer came and went as darkness settled in over our corner of the world, as street traffic dwindled and died

and the cicada army took to their song. At seven sharp I bolted the front door, they were up there, sorry I would close sign, and issued a long sigh that indicated I was alone. But no, that wasn't right. I was never truly alone. The air was always charged, alive, shifting and swirling like slimy black water,

thick with the awful feeling of eyes crawling up your back, of heinous things judging you with insane hatred. But like I said, I was used to it, inoculated, immune to the icy fear that hijacked the atmosphere like a parasite. but that night something was different I don't know what I was thinking

don't know what compelled me to the Isle of the Dolls curiosity maybe the same curiosity that killed the cat that would nearly kill me I'm not sure why I ignored my brother and hauled the talking Teresa down off the shelf don't know why I pulled the string beneath a dress but I did

and for the first time in a while I felt terror. The doll's abused voice box crackled and hissed as the pulled string were attracted like a snake. I waited, breath shallow, heart crash pounding through my chest, waiting for her to... Silence slapped me in the face and I flinched. The string had withdrawn to its idle position

and the doll had not spoken. The silence was suffocating. It seemed to fill my lungs and force out all the air. air. It filled my ears with a rush of hot blood. Teresa's dead, glassy eyes regarded me with indifference. A smooth, moulded face turned up at me. But behind her eyes was something, something shifting and flowing like a river of fog. I thought it might have been.

Teresa screamed so suddenly that I jumped. A high, ear-splitting wail of agony issued in a tiny burst from the doll's voice box. I joked back and dropped her, covering my ears. She crashed to the ground, her porcelain, child face, crumpling inward like a human skull under a sledgehammer. The scream decayed as a terrified voice, distant, hazy, spliced with throaty static, growled out of the doll's ruined face, filling the shop. At first, I couldn't decipher the words out of the garbled syllables. It was an incoherent mess of torment that filled my throat with bile. Hello

Hello-hm Hello-hmm Hello-hmm She was chanting Over and over and over again Her ruined shattered face glaring up at me With animal violence

Aloham Hello-m I took a step back As the world began to shake As the shelves in my shop trembled And the objects atop them Thundered and vibrated And began levitating in unison

rising off their beds of wood as talking Teresa chanted, her three-syllable interment again and again. Allo-hm, allo-hm, allo-hm. Everything was floating. Books, dolls, pendants and keychains, all of them hovering in the air, vibrating with impossible and hardly restrained power, rage and torment radiating out of them in frozen waves. I staggered away, my heart screamed. streaming through my ribs, my chest too tight and empty of breath. The air around me thick with a reek of corruption of dead things,

and the smell of haunt, of existence beyond death, of... Allo-hm, allo, hmm. It punched me in the face. I understood what she was saying. It drilled through my chest like an arrow, spared my heart to the back of my ribs, flooded my chest cavity with frozen dread. She was saying

Follow him Everything exploded Great sprays of splintered wood And flowered metal And tufted stuffing erupted in silent detonation As if all the haunted things in the world Had been vacuumed into space And crushed into non-existence

By the great black nothing I hauled air through my chest And boiled it into a scream Then I was buried alive Under a mountain of haunted shrapnel And I screamed no more I awoke in the hospital with my brother by my side. I was fine, unharmed, spare a few superficial lacerations.

Otherwise, in an easy convalescence, I would see me at home and in bed by the morning. Our store on the other hand. It's all gone, Marcus grinned. All gone, everything, our life's work. He was troubled, disturbed, his eyes puffy. I'd saw he'd been crying. He buried his face in his hands, grumbled something into them. All I could do was think about talking Teresa.

Follow him. The doctor signed me out an hour later. Marcus drove me home. He never asked if I was okay. In my driveway, Marcus told me he'd be taking a trip to a dealer in Alabama. Told me we need to start rebuilding our collection. He was leaving tonight to make it there by morning. and that I should stay behind and clean up the store.

I hugged him, told him I loved him, and watched him drive off down the street. I hurried inside and grabbed my lucky pendant. I supposedly haunted crucifix Marcus had bought to the thrift store and given to me nearly 20 years before. It had always brought me comfort, good luck, it always protected me.

The crucifix in my pocket, I dove into my own car and followed my brother, not to Alabama, but to the alien-like bio that drowned out so much of our great state. The drive was long and dark. I glided over a black highway, following the two red eyes of Marx's car. Concrete jungles were replaced by real ones, willow trees dangled sheets of fuss out over the road as we headed into marshland.

I turned up the AC as the ripe stench of swamp invaded off the bio, through which the highway ran. A while later, the sky is still black and tank. dead of light, Marcus turned off the highway and joined an abandoned dirt road. I idled at the turn, counted the 30 before following. He led me to a fishing shack. We were deep in the swamp. It was like a planet from Star Wars.

A thin dirt road extended an artery of solid ground to the bubbling, stagnant waters of the bio. Strange growth textures and dark environment. Incredible trees with furry branches, 10 jaws of vine like great brown snakes, massive gaiters sluicing through black waters like Soviet submarines. I doused my lights early on, navigating only by the stray bar of moonlight that fought through the hazy canopy.

I had lost Marcus. I saw no light. I saw. I slammed the brakes as moonlight winked off the windscreen of Marcus's car. A second later, and I would have rear-ended it. It was stopped in the road directly, ahead of me. It was dark, quiet, no doubt, empty. I killed my engine and stepped out. The air was thick with mosquitoes and the song of insects. They descended me in buzzing waves.

I looked around, lost, confused, wondering what in the hell could be. Then I saw the fishing shack hovering out of the water. A rickety wooden dock ran to it from the dirt road, extending a finger of land out over the bio. The shed itself looked like a tumour, rising from the swamp, like an ugly grey malady born from slimy waters. It was sagging and repaired, its windows muddy and throbbing with faint light. They reminded me of dumb, blind eyes. The familiar hum of a generator carried out across the marsh, beckoning me, telling me to, follow him. I hesitated. Follow him. I sucked air, the taste made me dizzy, follow him. I started up with the fishing dock which creaked and groaned with each step.

I followed him. Brother wasn't in the shed. A girl was. I crept around the side of the building and wiped a clean circle in the filthy pane. I peered in and my heart bulged and throbbed with bitter terror. Yellow light issued from an ugly overhead bulb douse the room, lending it a hazy, disheartening appearance. I saw the floor first,

a rusty, blood-stained drain gate tied together in a slipshut job of sheet metal. Above that, the walls, raw timber, were warped and bulging and stained with gore. Heavy workbenchers wrapped the perimeter, the surfaces displaying an ensorment of torture tools, knives, pliers, scalples, razors. And then there was the centrepiece,

The brown-haired girl, bound and gagged in a bolted-down chair, her forehead knotted and bruised, hair crusted with blood, brutalised face lolling limply on a slender neck. She couldn't have been a day over 19. And my brother. Follow him. Hey kiddo, Marcus said. I looked up. The feral beast that had once been my brother towed above me. eyes wild and rabid, lips drawn in a tight pain raked us. He didn't look like the man I knew so well. He looked like a predator.

His fist collided with my skull before I could respond. A light ball popped behind my eyes. My legs gave out and I crumpled into darkness. The spray of mist in my face woke me up. I groaned as curtains of darkness pulled away and the ground me world slowly resolved around me. I was handcuffed to a little. chair, found and gagged in the sickly fishing shed.

The browned girl was looking at me, her eyes bright with terror, reminded me of an animal's just before slaughter. But it was too late. A neck was a great ruin, a jagged red grin. Blood roared from a severed throat to the beating of a dying heart. It drenched her like a warm, wet bib. Blood splattered down, draining in thick black puddles. through the grate in the floor.

I heard it chuckling as it joined the bio-water beneath us. I couldn't see my brother, but I could feel him, watching from behind me. Then the girl was dead, the light leaving her eyes. And I saw it, a thin whisper of energy,

join a daintyum-maker wristwatch on one of the tables. It drilled through my stomach like a gut punch. My brother didn't source haunted objects. He made them. Beautiful, isn't it? He asked as he stepped into view. He were a leather apron, the kind of yellow gloves you might use to wash dishes, and clear plastic goggles.

He held a straight-edge razor. His blade caught the bulb and screamed red light. It was drenched in gore. He smiled at me before turning his back. He stood over the workbench, wiping blood from the metal, and took him. Most of us take souvenirs, a pair of panties, a pendant necklace, a lock of hair. I'm no different, but my souvenirs are special, trapped souls, retained energy. Who knows how or white happens?

It just does. Started with the first one, Becky Lane, who in that Crucivix you're so fond of? My heart galloped ahead, hiding my movement. I soptitiously reached from my back pocket. I was lazy at first, he continued, taking strays, lots of lizards, cutting girls who hitchhiked hither and ho. I got smart, found this place. The gaiters take care of the bodies. It's self-sustaining.

I felt the crucifix in my back pocket. My fingers skimmed the chain. Couldn't get a grip on it. My brother turned, leveling the razor. He was going to cut me. That was bad. But what was worse was the picture in the table behind him. He showed us as kids, the one he always carried around with him.

He saw me looking. I would never lie to you, and I won't now. It won't be pleasant. You'll be trapped in there forever. At least I like to think so. He settled up to me, forcing his right leg between both of mine, so that his knee was riding up my crutch. It won't be pleasant, he said again.

raising the straight-edged razor still warm with the other girl's blood. I'm sorry, Anna, I really am, but you always loved haunted things so much, right? I guess being one might not be so bad. Rupert's eyes gleamed with animal hatred as he brought the razor down. The bolt of adrenaline forced my hands further. The handcuffs dug into my wrists. I felt blood, warm and sticky trickle out. I grazed Becky Lane's tiny cross.

strained harder, gripped it, and jammed it into the handcuff keyhole. The handcuffs fell apart, just as the razor invaded my periphery, soaring in on my jugular. I grunted, forced life into my arms, and plunged up the handcuffs ratchet, the sharp serrated edge that had been securing my left hand through my brother's left eye. It went in like a toothpick through a blueberry. His eyeball popped, releasing a hot rush of fluid, slimy and awful, over my hand. Marcus shrieked and reeled off, losing the razor.

It clattered to the floor, landing in a puddle of blood. The shed was filled with my brother's howls. He was wailing, clawing at his face, blindly groping for a weapon. I grabbed at the razor, but it was just out of reach. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my brother find a giant cleaver. The blade rusted and scarred and lurched toward me. I screamed and threw my eyes. forward. I caught him in the midsection, heard a whoosh of air from his mouth as I sent both of us

slamming down. He fell back, his hands pinwheeling for leverage, his ruined eye bulging from its socket like a squashed frog. Then gravity sucked him down. The back of his head clipped off the edge of the work table under the full force of his body's dead weight. His head snapped forward on his neck with a sound like popcorn in a pan. It was like a switch was thrown, with frightening clarity and speed, life left my brother's body. It exploded out of him, filled the air like an exiled vapour, swirled and darted forward, before the picture of us sucked it in. His body, empty of life, of breath, felt like a rag doll, landing and loose pile of limbs

and meat beside me. I looked at him through a blur of tears and saw that my brother, serial killer and maker of haunted things, was now a haunted thing himself. I just got home, poured myself a scalding hot shower, and watched blood and filth swirl down the drain. As steam pooled and boiling water hissed, I thought about the scores. Hundreds of objects that had passed through our store over the last two decades. All those people, trapped and forgotten.

The photo has helped me cope, the one I added to my mantle. As I feel the world crushing in I look up at the framed picture of my brother and I as kids I stare at it and hope he's trapped in there forever