CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 3+ Hours of CHILLING Horror Stories for a cozy Autumn night

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00 "The Emergency Alert System Played a Message Just for Me" Creepypasta►34:13 "Don't Click This If You Like Sleeping" Creepypasta►57:31 "My Dad ate meat from a deer that walked on two legs. Now he’s acting kinda strange" Creepypasta►1:39:43 "Don't Play The Whistle Game" Creepypasta►2:09:08 "I’m A Cave Rescue Diver. We’re Trained For Bodies, Not For This." Creepypasta►2:43:23 "I’m a Wildlife Biologist Tagging Polar Bears. One of Them Has a Collar From the 1800s" 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...SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"-    • "I wasn't careful enough on the deep web" ...  ►"Personal Favourites"-    • "I sold my soul for a used dishwasher, and...  ►"Written by me"-    • "I've been Blind my Whole Life" Creepypasta  ►"Long Stories"-    • Long Stories  FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter:   / creeps_mcpasta  ►Instagram:   / creepsmcpasta  ►Twitch:   / creepsmcpasta  ►Facebook:   / creepsmcpasta  CREEPYPASTA 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

I clocked in a few minutes before midnight, same as always. I swiped my badge, watched the light turn green, and walked into the half-lit lobby where the vending machines buzzed louder than the lights. I set my thermos down, tab the monitor to wake it up, and started another shift guarding a building that never saw traffic. Technically, I worked security for a research facility on the edge of the industrial district. What kind of research? I couldn't tell you.

They don't breathe the night guards. My job is simple. Walk the halls every hour, check the doors, monitor the cameras, and call it in if anyone tries to sneak onto the property. No one ever does. Honestly, I think the whole place is a shell company. There are labs and conference rooms, sure, but I've never seen more than three or four people in the building

during the daytime turnover. The lights stay off in half the offices. Most of the server racks hummed to keep themselves busy. Once in a while, I'll see a crate in the loading bay marked hazard, but it's always empty by the time my shift starts. The boredom is what gets the most guys. Not me. I don't mind the lack of action.

There's a comfort in routines that never change. I keep a radio on the same. the desk, one of those weather alert units that doubles as an emergency broadcast receiver, wired to receive work notifications that never came. Only the occasional emergency alert would pop through, never important to me, but something to break up the monotony of the shift. Usually, it just loops weather updates or dead air. Tonight, it huns softly, tune low enough to ignore, but loud enough to notice if something serious happened. Outside, the wind pushed against the security glass.

I sipped lukewarm coffee and flipped through the incident report log, already knowing it would be empty. The camera feed showed still hallways, a broom leaning against the janitor's closet, a copy room no one used. The red light above the exit sign blinked at its usual pace. I sat back, let the chair creak under me, and settled in for another shift, watching nothing happen. I'm good at being invisible.

I don't ask questions, I don't get in the way. I do the job, fill out the forms, and keep my head down. Most people forget I'm even here. The shift had settled into that quiet dead zone between 2 and 3 a.m., where time stretches and the brain starts the drift. I was halfway through a stale protein bar and watching the cursor blink on a blank incident report when the emergency radio crackle to life. Three sharp tones, the standard ones.

I didn't react at first. The emergency alert system runs regular tests once or twice a week, always the same canned message, usually about weather conditions or missing children three states over. I kept chewing, waiting for the usual script. This is a test of an emergency alert system. My ears perked up at the authority of the voice. This is a message for...

There was a pause. Richard James Summerfield. My full name. Not just the one I use for work. The full thing. The one from my birth certificate, middle name included. Please remain indoors and do not engage with a noise outside your perception. Estimated test duration, one hour.

The message ended there. No explanation, no origin. The radio cut back to low static. I sat up, the protein bar still in my hand, half chewed. I fiddled with the radio, expecting it to play the last message again. Nothing. timestamp logged, no saved segment. I tried to convince myself it was a prank broadcast, some local station playing games, a coincidence. Maybe someone hacked the system and fed in a custom

message to mess with people. That didn't explain the name. It didn't explain where the warning felt so specific. I started out by saying it was a test. Maybe it was some new system there piloting, one that pulls names from local databases to make it feel personalized, a mistake maybe. I sat back down, suddenly aware of how quiet the building had become. The only sound was the wind brushing against the high windows and the low, steady static, humming through the emergency radio. I spent the next few minutes trying to shake off the message. I kept telling myself it was nothing, just some road test broad.

Still, I couldn't stop glancing at the radio. It hadn't made a sound since. Just a soft hiss of static, steady and quiet. I thought about unplugging it, but I kept it on in case something important came through. I made another round through the halls. Everything looked exactly the way it always did. Dead screens, humming fluorescence, the distant echo of my own footsteps,

When I came back to the desk, I checked the log, tapped through my camera feeds, and started filling out some paperwork just to keep my hands busy. That's when the tone started again. Three quick pulses, followed by the same voice. This is a message for Richard James Somerfield. You were 11 years old when you refused to visit your mother in the hospital. My fingers stopped moving. You told your brother it didn't matter that you wouldn't remember. You said it to hurt him.

I stared at the radio, unable to breathe for a second. You were wrong. There was a pause, no static this time, just silence stretching for two beats longer than it should have. You will attempt to check the loading dock in 35 seconds. reconsider. The radio clicked off. I didn't move at first, just sat there, heart-knocking against my ribs, hands cold. I hadn't spoken about that fight in years, maybe ever. The words it used weren't quoted, but they were accurate enough to know. Whoever, or whatever was speaking, understood the shape of it, knew the guilt that still curled up behind my teeth. Part of me thought

this had to be a setup, maybe someone trying to make me believe the broadcast was intelligent, alive, could be a deep data scrape, old emails, recordings, an elaborate hoax. But another part of me was already walking toward the back hall. I didn't plan it, my body moved on its own. I scanned my badge at the service door and followed the concrete corridor past the janitor's closet and the old vending machine. The dock was at the far end. I reached the metal door and pulled it open.

The dock outside was empty. No trucks, no footprints, just when moving through the chain link fence. Still, I stood there too long, longer than I needed to, waiting for something else to happen. By the time the third message came through, I was more irritated than rattled. Whatever was going on, I figured someone had too much time and access to things they shouldn't. It didn't help that nothing else had happened. No follow-ups, no intruders, no evidence anyone was watching me, even though something clearly was. I kept running mental checklists. It could have been a test, a psychological experiment, maybe someone at the

company had wired in a new kind of behavioral monitoring. But if that were true, why start dragging my personal life into it? Still, I wasn't scared, not really, just tired and annoyed and ready to finish my shift and go home. I was walking the northeast corridor when it started again. No tone this time, no build-up. Do not turn around. I stopped mid-stride. I didn't breathe. Something in my spine locked. The hallway behind me had no lights.

I hadn't noticed it before. I could only tell by the darkness in my peripheral vision, but it was completely dark, not dim, just gone. I waited five seconds, ten. My body refused to relax. Then, against better judgment, I started to turn. Slow at first, just a glance over the shoulder. That was enough.

The far wall to my left rippled, my vision warped around the edges. Collars bleeding into one another, angles stretching wrong. My left eye went cloudy, my right started the tunnel, and under it all the sound began to rise. Glass shattering, nails on tile, teeth clacking too fast to be human, breathing from too many mouths at once, screams that never open their throats, the kind of noise that makes your insides want to curl away from your skin. I stopped, didn't finish the turn, didn't look into the dark, just stood there, half pivoted, jaw clenched tight.

Then I face forward again. It all stopped instantly. The lights returned to normal, the sounds vanished, my vision cleared. But when I turned to look down the hallway again, not behind me, but ahead, the corridor had changed. A rolling cabinet now blocked the path I was heading towards. A steel door appeared where there was none before. emergency lighting outlined a new path branching left where there hadn't been one ten minutes earlier. I didn't try to force the old path open.

Instead, I stared at it, realizing something important. Whatever this was, it didn't want me to go back. It had rules, even if I didn't understand them yet. I didn't have a destination at first. I just wanted to find the front entrance again, or an exit, maybe the main stairwell, maybe the fire doors, somewhere that didn't feel like it had been rewritten behind my back. The building wasn't the same anymore. Corridors I'd walked a hundred times were suddenly too long or too short. Some ended in blank walls, leading me into doors that only led to mystery.

Others turned corners that shouldn't exist. I passed the mechanical room that I knew was supposed to be on the third floor, but I was still on the first. The elevator didn't work, the cameras were frozen, and the maps on the wall were blank, scrub to white. Still, I kept moving. My best chance now was memory, using approximate landmarks no matter how distorted

to try discern where I really was, trying to find an anchor point so I could try and navigate to it, a way out. But more often than not, I found myself just randomly navigating based on whatever options I had ahead of me. That came with its own danger. If I followed a path that led to a dead end, I couldn't just spin around and go back. I'd learn that the hard way. Once or twice I flinched let a sound behind me, footsteps where there shouldn't have been, a door slamming shut at the far end of a hole, an instinct took over. I'd start to turn, always just a little, always just enough to catch the start of something wrong, a ripple in the air, that shrieking, layered noise

bleeding through again. And always, I caught myself just in time. It was becoming reflex, forward only, no matter what I heard. That was when the voice returned. No warning, tone, just there suddenly, woven into the air like it had always been speaking. Root correction in effect, please proceed to the observation zone, avoid interior mirrors. I stopped walking. The hallway head dipped slightly before curving to the right. I hadn't been down this way in months. I was pretty sure it only led to storage, not any place labeled observation zone. The voice didn't speak again. Just the one line delivered in that semi-human tone.

I kept going, choosing a side path instead. It should have led past the central IT server room and back toward the lobby. At least they used to. Halfway down the corridor, I spotted a round security mirror mounted in the corner. From where I stood, I could see myself in it, blurry but centered. That wasn't what stopped me. What stopped me was the blackness behind my reflection. Pitch black, like everything behind me had been cut out of the frame,

even though I knew there were lights on. I stepped closer. When I stood beneath it and looked up, the reflection was gone. The surface of the mirror was now just glass dark. No light, no shape, nothing reflected at all. Every reflective surface I passed after that behaved the same way. At a glance they showed my silhouette and blackness behind me. The moment I got close, they turned to dead glass.

I stopped checking them after a while. At that point, I wasn't just avoiding the path the broadcast wanted me to take. I was actively working around it, trying to stay ahead of whatever route it was building for me. I didn't trust it. I didn't trust any of this, but I couldn't afford a mistake. If I wandered into a corridor with no other way out and the walls behind me decided to erase the path I'd come through,

I'd be stuck. Or worse, I'd be forced to turn around. And I was starting to believe that something was waiting for me to do just that. I was moving faster now, not running but close to it. My heart had settled into a low, steady beat just above normal. I kept my eyes forward, scanning for changes in the layout, watching the walls for fresh seams or strange signage. My flashlight flickered once, then came back strong.

I tapped the battery gauge, still full. That was when the broadcast cut in again. It didn't wait for me to stop, no set up. The voice spoke as if it had been listening the whole. whole time, which I now suspected it had. You are checking the battery level. My chest tightened. I stopped walking.

It knew what I was doing. Then it added one more line. Avoid the next intersection. You won't listen. We are sorry. I stood in the center of a long, low corridor, the overhead lights buzzing above me in rhythm with my pulse. The radio shut off again,

nothing but the quiet hum of old fluorescent tubes. The line echoed through my head as I moved again. Slower now, eyes gnarring as the hall opened into a crossroad. There at the intersection, I heard it. Not loudly, but it was there. Sobing, faint, choked and slow, like someone trying not to be heard. And underneath it, another sound.

Breathing, ragged, wet. Then a single, mechanical click. I stopped at the threshold, one foot still in my hallway, the other just past the corner. The crying sounded closer. I didn't move for a while. I stood frozen, thinking about the voice,

about the exact wording. You won't listen. So, what did that mean? That I was already choosing, that I had already failed the test it mentioned? I tried to trace my thoughts to see where the decision had started. Was I truly choosing anything here, or was I reacting, following a trail already laid out? If I went toward the crying, was that compassion, curiosity, or a script I was meant to follow? And if I didn't, would that be real defiance or another programmed branch?

The hallway around me remained empty, the floor beneath my feet stayed steady, but my head swam with the idea that no matter what I did, I was already inside someone else's plan, that the system didn't need to control me, only predict me. I looked toward the direction of the crying, Then I turned the other way and walked, fast and straight, until the sound disappeared behind me. The lights began cutting out one by one, not all at once. It started in the west corridor, then the break room, then the hallway just outside the server cages.

A silent collapse of function, wing by wing. I heard it before I saw it. the soft flick of breakers flipping in sequence, leaving behind nothing but the hum of backup lighting, and the sound of a low siren I'd never heard before. It wasn't blaring, not urgent. It pulsed slowly, steadily, as if reminding something to stay awake. Then every screen came to life, monitors I hadn't touched in hours, tablets still plugged in and locked. The emergency radio.

All of them glowed in perfect sync, showing the same cold white text over black. Subject deviation confirmed. Sequence collapse in 12 minutes. Manual override required. You are not authorized. Proceed. There was the first time it mentioned collapse. The first time it told me, openly, that this whole thing was breaking down.

though I had no idea what that truly meant. I didn't stay in that hallway. I kept moving, heading for the central spine of the building, hoping that if I stayed in motion, I could find some edge to all of this. But the layout had changed again. The ceilings dropped by almost the foot. The air vents had vanished.

Hallways had grown tighter, sharp turns where smooth curves had been before. I passed the supply room that looked identical to one I'd seen earlier. Same chairs, same desk, but the desk was on the left this time, and the wall clock ticked backwards. The floor creaked under my boots in a way it never had before. Soft, hollow, the weight of the building had shifted. Behind me, the sound began again. Clicking, but slower this time, deeper, metal tapping on the wall.

tile. It echoed from far down the corridor, bouncing and multiplying until I couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. The air behind me pressed against my back, not wind, just pressure, heavier than it should have been. My footsteps started replaying themselves. I would take a step, then hear it again half a second later, sometimes in sync, sometimes not. I heard voices too, ones I didn't recognize. They whisper things that didn't match my memories, but they sounded familiar

anyway. I turned a corner. I stopped breathing, didn't move, didn't speak. I didn't turn, not even a glance. But the edges in my vision began to twitch. Not black, but movement,

flickering just beyond where my eyes could land, shadows stretching without a source, a curl of something sliding along the ceiling tiles above me, never visible, always near. The clicking had stopped. It wasn't following me anymore. It was waiting. I pushed forward. I reached for a door I didn't recognize. Heavy steel, no markings. It opened with a small creek into a small room. A halogen strip flickered from above. There was no furniture, except for a metal table bolted to the floor. The room looked like it was used for experiments that were currently absent.

On the table sat a mounted radio unit and a single folder. The cover was grey, stamped in red with a warning that read. Pattern violation manual, do not issue. I opened it. Every page was blank. except one in the center typed in plain black text

if in doubt turn around I closed the folder and I didn't turn the corridor was waiting for me despite all the directions I took I ended up back same length

same lights same intersection it hadn't changed since the last time I'd come to the crossroads Except this time, a crying started before I even got close. It came from the far corridor, low at first, wet and staggered, the sound of someone trying not to be heard but failing. A woman may be, young, or something trying to sound young. It echoed off the walls in slow pulses. Then came the radio.

Turn around, comply, reset. Turn around, comply, reset, over and over again. I stopped at the intersection. My eyes burned, my legs ached, I felt hollowed out, like every room I had passed through had scraped something away without asking. I stood still, not because I was afraid, but because I was furious. I said nothing out loud, but my mind screamed. I've followed your rules, I've broken them, I've walked your paths, avoided your traps, I've done everything, but this.

What if this is it? What if this is the only move left? What if the test was never to obey, but to disobey at the right time? I turned toward the corridor where the crying waited and stepped inside. The temperature dropped instant. my ears rang, the walls tightened around me. The deeper I walked, the louder everything became. Screeching metal, whispers that knew my name, breathing behind my neck. Every noise layered on top of the next until there was no space between them. My vision narrowed, not completely black, but close to. The edges began to glitch, filled with static and flickers of color, as if the

The world behind me was being erased frame by frame. Something moved inside the walls, shapes pressed through drywall. Outlines are people, but wrong. No features, just stretched skin where eyes and mouth should have been. Arms folded the wrong way, fingers too long. They clawed softly at the air, not reaching for me, just twitching in rhythm with a noise. I didn't blink, I didn't speak. I kept walking.

My heart felt too big for my ribs. Every breath rattled. The floor dropped slightly beneath my feet, like the hallway was being pulled downward. Then, everything stopped. One step, just one, crossed an invisible line. And the world snapped silent. The air warmed, my vision cleared, my ears rang in the absence of noise. I stood in the main lobby of the building.

fluorescent lights buzzed calmly overhead. The front windows were intact. I saw dawn breaking through the glass, faint orange lights spilling across the floor. Then a door behind the desk burst open. Dozens of people in black tactical gear poured through, sweeping the room, rifles drawn, helmets down, no insignias, just armoured suits and mirrored visors. Behind them came medical staff, scientists, techs with wheeled carts and blinking cases.

They moved with urgency, but not panic. They knew this scene. They had trained for it. I turned slowly, looking over my shoulder, subconsciously grappling with the idea of being able to see behind me now. Where I just emerged, stood static. Not a wall exactly, more like the edge of a dome. It shimmered faintly, air trembling with digital interference.

I could see through it, but the colours were wrong. Shapes moved inside, soft, slow, echoing my memory of the corridor I had just walked. As I stared, a hand closed around my arm, firm, gloved, real. I turned. A soldier stood there, face hidden behind a matte black visor, already steering me away from the dome before I could speak. I spun to face the soldier. The man wore a full tactical helmet, visor down, not a slit of skin peeking through.

What is this? I demanded. What the hell happened? Who are you people? The soldier didn't answer. He gripped my arm tighter and pulled me across the lobby, past rows of gear being unpacked, past medics shouting into headsets, past equipment I couldn't identify. I got glimpses of heat sensors, portable servers, hitting tanks with red seals broken open. Everything buzzed with urgency. None of it explained. They had set up a temporary close. Gordon using collapsible barriers and lighting rigs. Inside the makeshift zone, I saw others.

Three, maybe four. All wore lab coats, scorched and torn. Some stained with ash, some flicked with static burn scoring. One woman sat hunched in the corner, cradling a cracked tablet to a chest as if it were a wounded animal. The soldier shoved me inside and stepped back. I didn't move, just stared. One of the scientists looked up, a man in his 50s, pale, wide-eyed, his face hollow with exhaustion.

You walked out, he asked, his voice broke halfway through. You got out on your own? His shock emphasised how big of a deal this was, but without context. I still had no idea how to feel about it. What happened in there? What's going on? I asked. Finally, I got some answers. This facility has been running for a few decades.

Whatever you think is cutting edge, looks like gears and sticks compared to what's done here. Another scientist, a co-worker maybe, shot him a look to shut him off. It seemed he couldn't reveal exactly what they were doing here. He stood slowly and crossed the space between us, lowered his voice to a hush, barely above a whisper. You were inside the test field, he said. That wasn't real.

It was a prototype construct, an artificial cognitive environment. A simulation meant a study recursive decision-making and besetive. ellipial looping. It was never supposed to activate. He glanced toward the dome, still pulsing softly at the far end of the lobby. His eyes twitched. Something went wrong, he continued. It started responding to observation, growing, feeding on recursive feedback. The more we watched, the more it changed. We lost two teams trying to extract the workers. He paused, breathing heavier now. But you, you weren't tagged.

You weren't supposed to be there. You walked into the active field by accident. And somehow, you made it through, alone. Behind us, a claxon burst life, a different tone than before. Sharper, faster. I've always shouted from one of the workstations. field integrity dropping, 50% and falling. I could see more teams running in, charging into the unknown.

The scientists grab my shoulder. If the containment fails, he said, it doesn't stay in there. Each person running in will probably die. We just have to hope one manages to shut it down. I had nothing to say. all I could do was watch with the extracted scientists as these brave soldiers ran in

to die like ants numbers versus odds legions of deaths happening beyond the veil until eventually the static dome dissipated with a screech and a lone soldier stumbled out torn almost to ribbons It started with nostalgia.

I hadn't read horror in years, not the internet kind at least. No sleep, creepy bastard, that whole era. I was deep into it in my late teens. Something about the stripped down storytelling, the way people wrote with urgency instead of polish, hit different back then. They felt human like a friend telling you about this strange week. I used to read them in bed. Ear butts in, lights off.

Not because I wanted to be scared, but because it felt good. Like being unsettled was part of some weird ritual before sleep. A few weeks ago, I decided to chase that feeling again. It was late. I was bored and feeling nostalgic, so I figured it would be harmless to revisit some of the old classics. There was something oddly comforting about it. The stories had aged, sure, but enough time had passed that most of them felt new again.

I remember just enough to feel familiar, but not enough to spoil anything. I tore through the big hitters. Ben drowned, the Russian sleep experiment, pen pal. I even found old screenshots from defunct forums of some of the classics, pasted into blog spot pages by digital hoarders. Stories before the time of named authors, when people posted anonymously to create an air of authenticity. That comfort didn't last long.

Once I ran out of the old stuff, I dipped back into R-slash-no-sleep to see what people were writing now. I wish I hadn't. Everything felt off. The tone was too smooth, too neat. You could tell half the stories were written to hit a certain word count, or hit trending, or just a water-distance. down version of a popular horror movie.

They were either ultra-formulaeic or bizarrely disjointed, all rhythm and no voice. AI stories, I muttered at my screen, staring at the end dashes and robotic tone of the latest posts. I searched for the authors I remembered, the Stephen Kings of Reddit. However, their activity had dwindled. I looked up what they had done recently and saw a barrage of stories. removed on the subreddit for arbitrary reasons, reasons that would have had the great classics removed if the rules were about then. Even the comments were neutered. Every other post was some flavor of

great story, O.P., or, you should expand this into a series. Nobody talked about how it made them feel anymore. Nobody argued whether it was real. That used to be half the fun. So, I went looking. Not in the main channels, I knew better than that. I dug through old blogs, weird side forums, abandoned link trees, anything that looked dusty and unmoderated. A lot of it was trash, stories written in all lowercase, pasted from wordpad, half of them ending with, and then I woke up. Haunted dolls, glitching mirrors, forest disappearances, plenty of recycled garbage. But every now and then, one of them hit.

Not because it was written well, or because it was scary, just because it felt off in the right way. Like it hadn't been written to entertain, but to unload something. There was that sincerity to the tone that made this subgenre are special. That's what kept me going. Then I found it in a forum that looked wholly unmoderated, a thread with a title, Don't read this if you like sleeping. It was wedged between two stories about haunted TV static and an abandoned zoo. The username just said deleted, and the timestamp was from over a year ago.

A dead thread with no comments, No upvotes, no tags. I remember hovering over it, thinking it was probably another throwaway. But then again, some part of me, the part that used to fall asleep with creepy audio echoing through my headphones, wanted it to be real, just for a moment. So I clicked. The page loaded in plain text. No formatting, just a slab of words stacked in.

an unbroken block. The tone was cold, detached, not trying to impress or scare, just reporting. It told the story of a man who stumbled onto a strange piece of internet folklore, a girl in a yellow raincoat. She would appear have to read about her. First in the corner of your room watching, motionless, her face hidden beneath the hood, eyes never visible. but you could feel them on you. She never spoke, she never blinked. She just stood there, dripping wet. The story didn't build tension.

There were no jump scares, no deaths, no payoff. It simply explained that the girl showed up once you knew about her and that she would keep showing up. Each night she came closer. The fear fed her. And when she's gotten her fill of fear, here. She gets you. However, there were no accounts of what she did, as no one who has gotten that far survived. The more you fear her, the wetter she gets, the text said. That line made me roll my eyes.

The final line stuck out, only because it was bolded. If you reach 3.41 a.m. and she's at the foot of your bed, it's all. already too late. I snorted. It felt like one of those chain emails from the early 2000s, the kind that said, you die in seven days unless you sent it to ten people. It was so tonally flat, it had to be ironic. I backed out of the thread and closed the browser. That was enough for the night. I was hoping to end on a good one, but it was already getting late. That night at two I am, I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I heard something behind the door. A soft knock just once.

I froze, the toothbrush hummed between my teeth. I turned off the tap, waited. Nothing, just the creak of the ceiling vent. I opened the door, the hallway was empty. I was halfway back to the sink when I know. noticed the carpet by the threshold. Damp. I stared at it for a while, then shrugged it off.

I figured I must have spilled something while brushing, or maybe I'd tracked in rain from earlier. I couldn't remember. I shut the bathroom light and went to bed. I woke up to the sound of my own pulse. No noise in the room, no nightmare to shake off, but my heart was pounding like I'd been running. I didn't move at first, just stared at the ceiling and waited for the feeling to pass.

Eventually, I glanced at the clock. 3.41 a.m. A weird chill ran through my chest. What were the odds? If a million people read that story, at least one was bound to wake up and see that time, and I just happened to be that one. That was the only way I could explain the coincidence. I sat up slowly, eyes adjusting to the dark. The room was still.

No creaks, no humming electronics, no cars outside. Just silence. But I felt watched. Not scared exactly, more unsettled, the kind of uncomfort you felt when someone's reading over your shoulder. I didn't see anything out to place. The window blinds were shut. The door was cracked open. Nothing stood in the corner.

But the carpet by the door was wet. Again. I got up and checked it, running my hand across the fibers. Damp, no question. Not enough for a leak. Just enough to feel wrong. Back in bed, I pulled my laptop over and opened the browser.

The forum was still up, still ugly, still ancient. I went to the thread. It was there, still titled, Don't read this if you like sleeping. No comments, no upvotes, nothing added since I clicked it. I checked the user profile. Deleted. No way to send a message.

I checked the mud list, but there was only one listed, and they hadn't been on about as long as the dead thread I had read. Still, I made an account and posted a reply to the thread. Was this a joke? Anyone else read this? A few minutes passed with nothing. I refreshed once, twice. On the third refresh, I gave up hope. The forum was barely active as is.

To get an instant reply would be unlikely, let alone from an old thread that wasn't noticed. At some point I drifted off. I don't know how long I was asleep, but something pulled me out of it. Her feeling, sharp and immediate. My eyes opened and went straight to the corner of the room. She was standing there, small, motionless.

The yellow raincoat clung to her in wet folds. Her hood was up. I couldn't see her face, just the shape of it tucked deep in the shadow. Her head was tilted slightly, not naturally, just enough to feel wrong. She didn't move. I screamed and snapped the light on. The corner was empty, just an impression on the carpet, a dark shape in the fibers where water had soaked through.

The next few nights were a blur of broken sleep and mounting dread. She always came at the edge of waking in that space where the room feels too still. The first night after the scream, she stayed by the door. Same place, yellow raincoat soaked sleeves, hood pulled low, no face visible. The next night she stood in the corner. Closer, still silent, still unmoving. I kept the lights on, slipped in shifts, slept during the day. But each time I opened my eyes, she was a little nearer.

I stopped screaming, but adrenaline kicked in each time. By the third night, she waited in front of my closet. This time, I could see more of her. Her raincoat was old, still whole but weathered in a way that felt impossible from normal use. The plastic was bubbled and misshapen in places, stained with dirt and streaks of something black. Her arms hung stiff at her sides, fingers barely visible beneath the cuffs. The water pooled under a bare feet now, even though the hardwood should have soaked it up. She never moved while I was looking at her, and she never showed up on camera. I tried to catch her with phone

recordings, laptop webcam, and even an old handheld I found in storage. Nothing. The footage was clean every time, but reflections. That was different. I first noticed it in the bathroom. There was nothing behind me when I turned, but in the mirror, her figure filled the hallway, skirting the edge of the bathroom light. I backed out slowly, never turning my head.

After that, the mirrors stayed covered. I stopped trying to reason through it and started researching. If this was a curse, I wanted to know how deep it went. If it wasn't, I needed to know the rules. The forum was a dead end, but I dug deeper. Archived blogs, dead web rings, screenshot compilations from old horror spaces. I started pulling from sites that hadn't been done. touched in over a decade, Usenet threads, live journal entries, MySpace bulletins, even

BBSs. She was there, always the same pattern. A story, a sighting, then nothing from the poster ever again. Most were deleted, missing context, or scrubbed clean by spam bots. But one entry stood out. Dated 2006, a username Lockjaw Mile had written a short post titled Narrative Leach. It said, she is a parasite that spreads through narrative. Once you learn her, she learns you back. She feeds on the fear she creates. Your thoughts give a shape.

I read it three times. It didn't make sense. And yet, it explained everything. I stopped sleeping, not just from fear, but my body simply rejected it. Every time I started to drift off, I jolted awake, heart pounding, lungs empty. The girl was always there, waiting in the static behind my eyes. I boarded up the windows because I couldn't stand seeing her in the refurb. reflection of the glass, I stripped the apartment bare, mirrors, screens, anything that could

show her during the day, gone. But this did little to save me from the night. The light stayed on around the clock. Every ball I had. When one burned out, I replaced it instantly. My friends thought I was losing it. I stopped answering calls, ignored text. one of them came by and knocked for 20 minutes.

I didn't move. I heard them mutter something about a wellness check, but no one followed through. I didn't care if they saw me like this, a broken mess, but I worried about them learning about her, cursing them to this fate. It didn't matter what I did, though. She kept coming.

I never saw a move, but she always. always got closer. Each night it shaved inches from the space between us, first across the room, then almost at the foot of my bed, then beside it, the hem of a soaked raincoat was dripping inches from my mattress. The water spread with a cold, heavy, wrong.

It warped the floorboards, lifted them at the edges, not in a way that looked rotten, but in a way that made me think the building itself was trying to reject her, reality pushed back. But she always won. I kept searching obsessively. I had to believe there were others, someone else who had seen her, named her, fought her, survived. I dove through dead subreddits, password-locked blog backups, and defunct link hubs. Every horror story felt close for a moment.

A ghost in the hallway, a drowned girl, a warning about mirrors. But none of them lined up. None of them ended with anything but silence. Too many copycats, too much noise, creepy past the clones laid on top of each other for 20 years. I started thinking, maybe that was the trick. Maybe she built herself. out of all of it. A single fear stitched from thousands of half-remembered posts. I was losing time. Whole days vanished in front of screens. My body ached. My eyes stayed blood shut.

Sleep was a trap now anyway. A slow roll toward my demise. And then, without warning, a message appeared. Same forum. An icon. at the top showing a private message was received. I stared at it for a long time, dreading what it would say. The username was a string of numbers, no profile, no history. The message read. I was the one who originally posted the story. She came to me after reading about her, same as you.

But I survived. For the first time, hope dripped. into my heart. I read on, hoping for a way out. Based on when you left your comment, you don't have long left. I wrote the story and the forum moderator must have read it. He deleted my account, thinking I was the one haunting him. But he got it wrong. It wasn't me. It was the story. She is fiction incarnate. Write her story and pass her on. The implication was daunting. I messaged back instantly, begging for more information, hoping there was another way.

To pass on what I was going through sounded like a cardinal sin, murder with intent, but was quietly dying a better alternative. No activity afterward. Just the message sitting there waiting to be believed. I sat back from my screen. For the first time in weeks, I wasn't just reacting. I was thinking,

not just about what she was, about what I could do. This wasn't about surviving the night, not anymore. This was about ending it. The decision sat on my chest heavy than any nightmare she ever brought. I had the message,

I had the rules, I knew what had to happen. Still, I hesist. If I posted this, if I wrote it clearly, if I told her story right, someone would read it, someone would think about her, imagine her, picture the yellow raincoat, the water, the way she stands so still with a face tucked deep into the dark. And that would be enough. They wouldn't mean to invite her in. they'd just be reading a scary story before bed, chasing the same rush I once loved. But she'd come, and I'd be free.

I sat at the desk for hours. The apartment around me was silent, lights dimmed to a soft amber glow. My body was shaking, but not from fear, from the weight of the decision. I had written every word carefully. The thread was ready. Every detail was here. The sightings, the rules, the message, the choice. Everything someone would need to understand her.

And maybe, just maybe, escape. But the truth was sharp. Someone else would suffer. That was the cast. That was the shape of her hunger. A curse not lifted, but passed to another. One sleepless mind traded for the next. I kept telling myself, I wasn't damning them.

I was giving them the same chance I was given. More even. I put in the information to get out. If they were strong, maybe stronger than me, maybe they'd find a way to end this. Maybe they'd be the last. But the guilt didn't fade. The cursor blinked over the word post.

my finger hovered above the mouse. Behind me, the air changed. The temperature dropped. My skin prickled. I didn't turn around. I didn't need to. I saw her in the monitor's reflection, distorted slightly in the black glass,

a wet smear of yellow standing inches from the back of my chair. Her hands twitched at her sides, dripping onto the floor. The smell of stagnant water flooded my nose. I glanced at the clock. 3.41 a.m. I clicked. The party was two weeks ago. I stole a few beers when the adults weren't looking

and shared them with Lucy Sitkins away from the crowd. She drank hers greedily as we sat beneath a bow of a low tree, speaking low so no passers-by could hear. Every time we whispered, we tilted our faces a little closer and closer. There was a moment when I thought she was going to rest her head on my shoulder, as she told me about how she wanted to be a vet, and my heart skipped as I debated putting my arm around her waist. It was all cut short when a father, Larry, stood in front of everyone in the party

and forced the beer can down his throat. I didn't see it. I only heard the cries that had us both sitting upright beneath the branches. By the time we got back to the party, the adults were escorting the kids away, and ambulance sirens were fast approaching. Dad was there, and he told me to take my little sister home. The grim and frightening look on his face made me forget Lucy and the smell of beer on her breath. I try hard to remember if she ate from the barbecue.

Sometimes I think she didn't. Other times I swear I can picture her biting into a burger And it's so vivid I think it must be a memory It's moot either way I'll never see her again I felt a little gross when I went into school the next day And asked around if the stories about a dad were true When my father got home the night of the party

He hadn't spoken to me or mum He just went to bed and didn't tell us what happened Come morning, I saw some of the older kids by the school gates and overheard them talking. The details made my stomach churn, but I wanted to know more. I didn't want to act all excited about something terrible, but this felt like the kind of thing people would be talking about for years. Larry Sitkins had swallowed a beer can. Shuffed it down his throat like a damn bo-o-o-ckel.

in strict wreath in an egg. At least that's how one kid described it to me. There was more, of course. He'd praised Satan before slitting his own throat, gotten drunk and fallen hard onto the ground while chugging a beer, tried to catch the can mid-air. Someone had punched him mid-sip. There were lots of variations on what happened and how,

but there were only theories that got turned into rumors. A lot of us were just trying to make sense of it. Larry was a pretty run-of-the-mill guy. He was a landscaper who made lame jokes at kids' birthday parties. It was about as nondescript as they came, at least as far as a bunch of teenagers were concerned. We got halfway through the day before Mr. Straub shut the bleachers on his neck.

It was in front of the cheerleaders. There were ambulances again, crying girls and boys, and even some of the teachers. Most of them just looked confused, except for Mr. Straub. I managed to catch a glimpse of him as I jogged over to find out what all the screaming was about. He looked empty of all thoughts and emotions, and his head sat at a crooked angle. I figured that was how people must look when dead, but apparently he'd been like that during the act.

He'd walked up, perched his neck between the slatted benches, and hit the remote button to slide the bleak. just closed. Whole time, he was just slight-jawed and stupid-looking, even as the metal mechanism crunched vertebra in cartilage. I later learned Larry had been like this too, when he killed himself.

He was getting ready to pop the tab on a fresh beer when he simply stopped, looked up to the sky, then forced the whole thing down his throat in a single world-shattering moment. I didn't know it back then, but there were others just

like Larry had missed the strobe. A barista in a coffee shop steamed half the skin on her arm while keeping eye contact with the guy in the drive-thru. A doctor at the local clinic used a biopsy needle to inject air straight into his own heart.

Lots of people shot themselves, but not one of them aimed for the head. That's a weird touch if you think about it. These people obliterated their torsos or limbs with high powered rifles at point-blank range. No reason offered.

Just a vacant expression as they deleted bits of their bodies and left nothing but ragged stumps. There was no school the next day, which was the only real clue I got about how panicked the local authorities were. Wouldn't be long before the national authorities joined in on the panic too, but that would come later. That morning, my parents left the house at 9.30 for a meeting at the town hall. and they dropped me off at my grandmas on the way. I waited for them to leave before I told Grandma I was heading out. It was a hot day, and she only nodded her approval, and she sat reading with my sister.

She hated seeing me play video games, and always encouraged me to go make my own adventures outside. I had no plans, didn't even want to see any of my friends. I thought a lot about Mr. Straub's face, as I crossed empty farmer's fields and walked into the woods. I'd be into an open casket funeral once. It was for Father Dennis who'd christened me as a baby. Not that I remember anything about him,

except his stony face resting gently in the soft white folds of his caskets interior. That seemed so long ago, and so sterile that the thought of it was a bit sad, but not a whole lot else. But Mr. Straub's face had frightened me with his swollen lips and bulging eyes Alive one moment and dead the next With only pain to separate the two And yet he looks so bored hanging there from his own broken neck

Still wearing those ridiculous red shorts he always had on No matter the weather It took time to recognise that seeing a dead body had freaked me out I felt like it shouldn't have messed me out up as much as it did, and I guess that's why there was a little bit of anger mixed in with all those thoughts in my head. It's also why I pushed on through the woods until the trees began to thin, marching in the humid summer heat until my t-shirt was soaked and my legs ached. I wanted to feel tired, wanted it, so the only thing I could think of were my throbbing

hamstrings and sunburnt forehead. It ended when I reached the tracks. Shaggy rocks and boulders rose steeply on the opposite side. Only other ways to go were left into town or right into a dark tunnel, its mouth bristling with ivy. At least the air coming from it was cold. So I took a second to stand and catch my breath, feeling the sweat cool and evaporate as the wind billowed gently out of the darkness. I wasn't stupid though.

I paid close attention in case I heard the sound of any passing trains. And when I didn't hear one, I raced off the tracks as quick as I could. It honked as it came past. Another day I might have worried that I was going to get in trouble for playing on the rails, but all I could really think of was the thing I'd seen lying by the tracks. It had been lit up by the train as it came roaring out of the tunnel, not far from the entrance. In the strange silence after the train had gone, there was only the dim light of the setting sun to see inside the tunnel, and everything looked the same. All with clothes, broken bottles, discarded crates, trash strewn around wherever it found space.

But I knew what I'd seen in the harsh white light of the train's passing beam, and it was a hell of a lot more than garbage. I'd seen a man He was lying face down There'd even been a hand Bright and pale Like the moon in the night sky I was sure of it I didn't know what to do

Not right away I was afraid and didn't want to go inside But I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen anything either I tried shouting to them If someone down there heard me They gave no sign of it Wasn't until I stepped into the darkness and let my eyes adjust that I confirmed there really was a man lying down in there.

He was draped across the tracks and he didn't have any legs and judging by the way the bloodstains had turned the colour brown. He'd been there for a while. Hell, half a dozen trains must have gone right over him thinking he was just an odd bit of cloth or something. That's if they saw anything at all. In that time it dried out a little. He wasn't a mummy or anything, but the blood on his stumps and coming out of his mouth looked more like jelly than corn syrup.

I was sobbing by this point, crying hard as I tried to make sense of what I was meant to do, while also feeling like all of this was terribly unfair on me. There was a moment where I could almost feel myself wanting to be a kid again, a proper one, little, one who doesn't have to do things, one who can get upset and scream and run away. I'd only just started to appreciate how badly I'd been messed up by seeing Mr. Straub, and then God went and dropped that kind of nightmare into my lap. Teeth stained black with blood and open eyes that looked at nothing. It felt like a nightmare, not just a moment with a body, but everything else too.

Everything since that beer beneath the tree had felt like it wasn't part of reality anymore, but nightmares end. I was outside, gasping, vomiting, crying my eyes out. When I heard something shuffle in the tunnel I'd just run out of. Part of me thought that a sound must mean someone was alive and close by, and that meant I wasn't alone. Another part of me thought something else entirely. It was the part of me that took over and stopped me crying and making any more noise. My mouth turned dry as a desert and all of a sudden I was no longer hot all over. But cold, freezing cold, and my legs were backpedaling away from the tunnel with short, quiet steps.

The noise persisted. It was the shuffle of something getting dragged over gravel, an old plastic bag, It had a rhythm to it that was slow. The word that springs to mind is one I got taught in biology class a long time ago. Locomotion Something down there was moving. It was moving towards me. It sounded slow and broken and feeble.

But that didn't matter. Somehow, even though I knew it wasn't completely insane, I just knew what was going to come out of that tunnel. I knew it the way the rabbit knows the wolf or the ant knows the spider. But still, when I saw him crawl out of the dark and into the light, I screamed so loud I'd have a sore throat for the next few days. It was the man from the tracks, and even though he moved, he was not alive. I tried telling him I said,

that he couldn't have been dead because only living things move. But that was nonsense. He dragged his bloody, legless torso with one working arm, while the other lay dislocated across his back, the fingers of both hands curling as he heaved himself along. And that face. That same empty gawking expression, just like Mr. Straub's.

He wasn't alive. He was a dead thing. and that made him some kind of impossible monster. I turned and ran screaming through the trees. The whole time I could only think of the thing that was behind me and was trying to close the distance. It didn't matter that it was slow, didn't matter that I ran for over an hour,

didn't even matter that I wasn't sure if I knew my way home or even running in the right direction. All that mattered was putting one, foot in front of the other until there was nothing left inside me. Time turned funny. Seconds moved into strange staccatoes until eventually I collapsed on legs made of rubber. Then I dragged myself into an old hollow tree to hide. And that was where I lost all consciousness. When I woke up, the sun had set and it was dark. I vomited some, then found my way back to the beaten path and stumbled achingly through the cold night air back to my grandma's farmhouse.

Dad was sick. My grandma screamed something to this effect at me as she held down his right arm while my mother tried to grip his head in her blood slick hands. He resisted with dumb determination. My little sister cried, watching the scene like a shell-shocked soldier. There was grunting and sobbing, and suddenly, a bang. Then a puff of plaster rained down onto my head, and everyone began to yell and shriek a little louder. Dad? Had a gun. That was what my grandma was trying to wrestle out of his hands.

She held a knife, and that's why there was blood. But I didn't know whose it was. I wasn't sure what she was planning to do with it, until she tried to use it to cut his trigger finger off. The scuffle resulted in another bang and a window exploded outwards. I finally ducked and grabbed my sister, rushing her into another room, but there were three more explosions and each one broke something inside me. By the time I heard my name being called,

I was half deaf and twitching at things that weren't there. My sister pleaded for me to come back, her pink fingers grasping for me as I put her down. but my mother was shouting for me to come help and I wanted to keep my family safe. She told me to get something to tie that up while she and my grandma used both arms to pin each of his wrists to the ground.

His hands bled weakly as my grandma used every inch of a strength to simultaneously pin him and stop the flow. He thrashed beneath them, his movements languid and easy, but I could tell it was a struggle for them to keep him down. As I ran to the garage, I saw the gun on the ground with dad's severed finger nearby. I kicked it out of reach before returning shortly with the rope my grandma used to tie the garage door open during hot summers.

Mom tied the knots. My grandma tried talking to my dad, and it was one of the few times in my life I saw her as the woman who'd once changed his diapers. She was so soothing and tender, and her constant muttering that, everything would be okay. Seems so fragile. She was scared for him. Mom just did everything in her power to wrestle some safety out of the moment. Only once his arms

was secure behind his back and she was confident he wasn't breaking free did she stand back but her hands behind her and then immediately hunch forward and sob. Call an ambulance, my grandma told me as she walked into the

other room to get my sister. Before I got on the phone, I briefly hugged my mom who didn't seem to notice. I risked the glance at my dad who didn't look at anything at all. Dead eyes glazed vacantly at nothing as he fought to free his arms. When he finally looked at me, it was no different to how he looked at the floor or the wall. I didn't go to school the next day either. Some men from the government came to take Dad in the morning and Mom ordered me to my room when they arrived. She asked them a thousand questions, but their replies were short and stern.

All I managed to overhear were a few muffled phrases. Please stay put, ma'am. Someone will be in contact with you shortly. When I ran to my window to look at them walking down the drive, I saw that they all wore masks. One of them saw I was staring. I thought he was going to wave, but he didn't. There was a biohazard symbol on their clothes.

After they left, Mom focused on making dinner and looking after my sister. She kept me close the whole time, barking anxious questions whenever I tried to leave the room. Where are you going? Just the bathroom? Oh, okay then. It felt like she was painting normality into tissue paper, desperately afraid of breaking it. I tried my best to seem like I was okay. Last thing I wanted was to feel like some kid who needed his mommy.

We mostly just talked about mundane things, but it was hard for both of us. The only time the atmosphere seemed to change was when she asked me something strange halfway through dinner. did your father when you both went hunting a few months back what did you do to the meat I don't know I shrugged Dad took care of all that

Why The men who took him Asked a whole bunch of questions about it Then with a fragile smile Have you done your homework They told me your teacher would send you some assignments online Just like that The thin pretense of normality came back, but I was left with a wriggling feeling in my stomach.

It didn't go away as the evening marched on. In fact, it only grew worse until I found myself in bed rolling from side to side and thinking about mum's question. The men who bundled Dad off hadn't seemed like the kind who messed around. They must have had some idea of what was going on. So why ask about the meat? On some level, I knew the moment she'd asked me why it was relevant. Dad loved to hunt, and he always brought meat to parties and barbecues. Wasn't it obvious?

He'd brought something back from the woods, hadn't he? I hadn't gone hunting for a long time, nearly three months. Every time he'd asked, I'd refused, and I think he knew why. On the very last trip, Dad shot three deer, but we only took back two. One for us, one for the town barbecue. The third he shot, but we left it on the forest floor, because by the time it had died, I was pale and shaking, and even Dad couldn't keep the tremor out of his voice. Neither of us had expected the deer to stand on its hind legs and walk towards us like a man.

its gate a heavy broken thing as it lumbered over the forest floor and it had kept coming even after dad shot it six more times one of the rounds struck it in the head but still it shambled forward on two misshaping legs as his brains painted the ferns in pestilent grey when it finally fell even dad had gone pale and in the silent aftermath i had to go off and be sick in a bush After that, we cut the trip short. Dad walked me gently back to the truck where the two deer we shot and trust earlier that day lay waiting in the pickup. I don't think either of us even remembered they were there until later. He'd still asked me if I wanted to head out with him each weekend, but he never seemed surprised when I made some excuse.

The only time we talked about it was not long before the barbecue you when he drove me to school one day. He didn't deal with it head on. He skirted the topic. Sometimes deer gets sick, he told me, a little like old folks do. Remember Grandpa? He got real scary towards the end, didn't he?

Well, deer gets sick too. But we don't have to worry. Same way you couldn't catch what Grandpa had. Well, we can't catch what the deer have. Us humans are safe. Just an uncomfortable part of nature. It had come out of the blue, or at least it seemed like it. I figured it was Dad's way of trying to get me back on board with hunting.

I knew he liked me going with him. I'd liked it too, at least until I saw that deer walk toward me on two legs. But lying in my bed that night, after Mom had gone to sleep, I started to wonder if maybe he hadn't really been trying to convince me. Maybe he carried a little doubt in himself about something he was going to do. What if he'd been trying to convince himself? It was okay. Too dear.

I tried remembering what they'd been like. I hadn't shake them after we got in the truck. Why would I? Seemed as normal as any others as we'd tie them down. But I hadn't really been paying attention either. I'd been hunting since I was seven. helping Dad was automatic to me. And to top it off, I hadn't known what I was meant to be looking for.

I squirmed beneath the sheets and tried so hard to remember every detail of that trip. Most of all, I tried to remember what the first two deer Dad had shot were like. They'd gone down so quick. They'd seem normal. But Grandpa had been sick with Alzheimer's a long time before he got scary. and I had to figure the same could be true for those deer. Who was to say the one on hind legs was the only sick creature in the woods that day? I couldn't have forced these thoughts out of my head with a crowbar.

At some point, I accepted I wasn't getting any sleep that night, and I settled down to torture myself some more, until I realized it didn't have to be that way. Dad had an old freezer in the shed, and he sometimes kept meat in there. Not for long, and usually not for eating. He'd use it for things he'd wanted to skin or tried to make a trophy out of it, which he rarely did since Mom didn't like that kind of thing in the house. But if the deer weren't in the freezer in the kitchen or the garage,

then they might be in the shed. And if I did open up that chest and saw two deer bodies in there, that meant whenever was going around and making people hurt themselves, couldn't have come from our little hunting tree. trip. I snuck out of my room as quiet as I could. Mom was on the phone with my grandma and she was crying. I stopped briefly by a door and listened to see if maybe they knew something I didn't. But after she started talking about how scared she was, I just felt bad and moved on. At least it meant she was too busy to notice me creeping down the stairs. I never liked

the shed at the end of the yard. It was rarely used, even by my dad, who was, who kept the lawnmower and some old junk in there. It wasn't the kind of place he kept food, but I had this feeling he didn't keep these deer with the rest of the meat he got from hunting. As I opened the back door and looked over the shadow-covered yard, I found myself thinking about the tunnel

and what I'd seen back there. With everything that had happened since, I'd done a good job I convinced myself it had never really happened. The man with no legs who dragged himself out of the, darkness had become little more than a half-remembered nightmare, a moment out of time that was incompatible with all logic and reason. But suddenly, it was back with me, all the emotions

and thoughts that raced through my head as I'd stared at his rotten flesh and glassy eyes. The walk to the shed wasn't easy. I fought the urge to turn around the entire way there. Each step was like walking on feet made of lead. At the door, I paused with my hand poised by the lock. The house seemed so distant behind me, and I became painfully aware nobody knew I was alone and out in the dark. Inside was nearly pitch black.

My phone helped me light it up a little, but I didn't touch the nearby switch in case Mom saw it from a window. Cobwebs hung low from the ceiling. and shadows crawled across the floor and walls as I moved closer to the freezer. The entire time I kept expecting something to happen. I even imagined that deer rising from beneath the lid, pushing it open to stand unnaturally tall on its hind legs

where he looked down at me with the same dead eyes I'd seen in my father. The thought scared me so bad, I nearly hyperventilated myself straight into a panic attack. But before I had time to really worry about any of that, I found my hand on the freezer's latch. I pushed it open and looked inside. The misty vapors cleared to reveal a pile of meat and fur encrusted with ice. There was only one head visible,

but I so badly wanted confirmation that there were two animals in there that I took a deep breath and reached in to try pry some of it loose. Some of it came away from the sides with a sound-like duct tape, but no matter how deep I rooted in that mound of bone, antlers and rock-hard flesh, I couldn't see a sign of the second deer. Her dad really served everyone's sick meat. Was that why Larry Sitkins and Mr. Straub and all those other people had killed themselves? The thought made me feel ill.

I slammed the freezer shut and walked back to the door in a daze, trying with all my might to swallow the painful weight that that. settled in my gut. I had one foot outside when the freezer door rattled against the latch. The entire world spun around me. My heart sank and my skin froze in a sensation that was growing increasingly familiar. I turned to face the sound, both hands braced against the door and watched as the latch slammed into the lock once more. The light inside the chest came on for the briefest moments, and I glimpsed thrashing fur and teeth. Then it happened again and again, and each time I saw bits of hoof and bone and strange

musculature that frightened me so deep I fell down onto my ass and didn't even realize. When the latch finally gave way, the lid flew open and stayed there. Light poured out of the box, and I waited, breath held. for that thing to emerge, to come roaring out of sight and bear down towards me on unnatural legs. But nothing happened. The silence stretched on for what seemed like an eternity, until at last there was a crash louder than any before, and the entire freezer rocked back and forth and slowly fell over.

The deer, or parts of it, fell out with a hard, wet thump. bits of his chin and face shattered on the hard-packed ground, sending little shards of meat and bones skating across the floor on melting streaks of blood. Some of them even reached my feet. The thing inside moved with the sound of snow crunching beneath your feet, its thick neck and broken head twisting side to side, scanning the shed's interior with faulty eyes. I've never seen anything move like that. not before or since. This was worse than the man in the tunnel, worse by a thousand times. The deer was still mostly frozen, but some impossible force was making the crystallized water in its own cells,

and the result was skin that rippled like tissue and muscle that cracked and crunch as they tried to flex and contract. It lifted its head and tried to scream, the breathy sound that left its fuzzy body, black lips, may my heart start skipping beats while my bladder entered. I couldn't help it, couldn't stop myself. And when I looked down and saw pieces of melting flesh starting to rife and wriggle, I tried with all my might to stifle the cry building up in my throat. But it escaped as a desperate, high-pitched wine. The deer turned its head towards me with a violent swing, another breathy shriek and then it began to thrash its stiff

and frozen legs in a terrifying attempt to get closer. To say it had a predatory look would be inaccurate. Anyone who's seen a predator in action knows that nature is mostly indifferent when it kills. A bear tears into its prey with the same dull look of someone opening their McDonald's. Predators don't hate the things they're hunting. But this thing

I could feel its hatred, its malice. It was nothing like what I'd seen in my dad's eyes or even the eyes of the man in the tunnel. But it had spent months in that box, hadn't it? This was the disease when you skipped three months ahead. Anger, hatred. Geez, I couldn't even say if it was going to eat me. That's what you think when you see a zombie, right?

It's going to try and take a bit. big bite out of you. But this frozen clump of hair and meat and braying lips dragged itself across the floor with an expression like murderous rage. The luck of someone ready to beat another living thing to death

using its own hands if it had to. Unable to face it a moment longer, I dragged myself back onto my feet and fled, shutting my eyes as I entered the cold night air. I made it three steps. before I slammed into my dad.

It was like I'd run full speed into a tree. I bounced back and hit the earth, pain flaring at my coxics as my father loomed over me. He'd felt cold for the brief moment where we made contact. My mind blocked out the sound of something hideous scrambling in the shed behind me, and the entire world narrowed until it was just the face of the man who raised me,

looking down with pale, dead eyes. Dad? He swallowed and briefly examined his hands. I think I'm dead, he muttered, almost as if he was talking to himself. When did I die? I pulled myself up and grabbed his hand. He was cold, but his pulse was still racing. I could even see the veins in his forearms throbbed sickeningly.

Dad, are you okay? Dad? Dad, are you okay? They told me I'm sick, he said, his eyes gazing vacantly at the empty space behind me. I think they're right, but there's more. He looked at me, the intensity of his gaze so powerful that I let go of his hand and took a step back.

For the first time in my life, I was scared of him. I'm not alone in here, he said, his voice pleading for help. Slowly, his expression twisted into a grotesque mask of agony and desperation. Oh, geez, it isn't just me in here. I tried to move, but he was a big man, and his arms wrapped around me like steel bands. Dad! I cried, struggling to pull myself loose as he sobbed louder and louder.

Dad, geez, you got to. Let go, there's... The shed door burst open. I managed to turn around just enough I could see what came out, and I felt an urgent terror crawling on my flesh. The deer had pulled itself loose from the freezer, and now it stood in the doorway and two legs.

Its body looked all wrong in that posture, like when you twist the limbs around on a doll, probably not far from the truth thinking about it. Dad didn't react, but I began to scream as the nightmare coalesced around me. My father gripping, holding me in place as that horrible thing lurched towards me on two legs. It moved like claymation or a puppet show gone wrong,

but it was quicker than I feared. As each step brought it closer, I found myself losing what little control I had. I started to scream, started to shriek, I beat at my father with my fists, but he didn't budge an inch. My clenched hands just bounced off his strong shoulders, and it was like I was trying to hurt a punching bag.

I started to swear to, started to scream things I thought were bad, then worse, then so bad, I'm not even sure I can blame other people for putting those words in my head. I told my dad I hated him, called him the worst names under the sun. All that commotion got the attention of others.

Neighbours light started coming on, my mum emerged from the back door, wrapping a robe around herself, and she squinted at us in the dark. What the hell is going on? She cried, and she stumbled towards us. But when she saw that deer, she started screaming too. I don't know why, but I thought that other people appearing would help somehow. That as two, three, half a dozen people came stumbling into open lawns appearing. over waist-eye fences, it had stopped the slow but inevitable onslaught of that monster. It did no such thing.

I had to listen to their confused shouts and cries, or gesturing and begging for help. The entire time, the sound of the creature over my shoulder getting closer and closer. Meanwhile, my hands tried to pry away my father's thick arms, but each time I got leverage, he simply flexed and his grip tightened around. me. He was muttering something the whole time, but I couldn't hear it. Finally, my mom screamed and ran swinging an old rake at the space behind me. I heard the impact, the splintering of the wooden handle. Then she stumbled backwards, and I had to twist to get a look at the deer that was now just six or seven feet away, the spokes of a rake still sticking out of its face.

A monster looked right at me and opened its mouth And I swear to God it was gonna talk But right then someone shouted For the love of God Alice get away from that thing Alice was my mother's name and she fell to the floor just seconds Before an explosion broke the night Silencing all voices and shattering the deer's head like a crystal ball hitting the ground My heart race so

fast, I thought for a moment I was going to die. Then I looked down at Dad and finally heard what he'd been mumbling this whole time. It's in us and it wants us. It's in us and it wants us. It's in us and it wants us. There isn't much left of Dad these days. I got to visit a couple of times. Fat lot of good it did.

As far as I'm concerned, he died that day in the kitchen when he first tried shooting himself. They're treating us in this special hospital. Mom was real upset that visitations are limited, but I think it might be for the best. Her and my sister tested clean. Most people did. I didn't. Mom snuck me this phone a couple weeks ago, and I've been using that to write. Funny thing is, one of the orderlies saw me on it a few days ago and just laughed. I think that may be. the government aren't too worried about this story getting out. At first, I didn't really get why, until I started actually putting all this down into writing. Got to the part where that half man came out the tunnel, and I realized, no one's going to believe me.

Still, I got a try, partly because I want to protect people. Whatever this disease is, it's a hell of a lot more than some twisted prions, and I think I think the government knows that. Dad certainly did. Most infected did too. That's why they killed themselves. They want it out. The voice that comes with this illness is like...

It's like if your brain is just words in a book and then someone dip that book in a full kind of used motor oil. You just want to give in, hand it all over. It wants your body so whatever you do, you don't fight. That's worse. worse, give it up. In hindsight, we should have let Dad kill himself. What he went through was, well, it was probably a lot worse than the others who got to die. I sometimes think about going into his room with a pillow, but security is pretty tight around him. As for me, infection is still

in its early phase. It takes everyone differently, and for me it's taking quite a time. It's taking quite a time. They think it's because of my age. Still, I can sort of feel it under there, growing. I think it's why I'm writing this. It wants me to. This sickness, it lives out in the woods, way, way out, in parts of the soil where the sun hasn't shown in millions of years. It's old enough to remember a time you could walk from Appalachia to what's now called Glasgow. and it's been fumbling around out there in the brains of deer and other things. The sickness tells me this, tells me it's learning about this new world, tells me about how mine tastes.

But most of all, it tells me, it's getting closer. Camp Grinlow shut down the year after our last summer there. I remember the envelope arriving at the house, the way my mom read it twice before setting it down. That was it. No more summer. I met Max and Annie there. We were cabin three our first year, packed in tight with five others,

none of whom we talked to anymore. We weren't friends right away. Max never shut up. He had a comment for everything and laughed hardest at his own jokes, which I found annoying. Annie was a nerd. She knew all the counsellor's names by day two.

One night, Max and I snuck out during rest hour to pull a prank on cabin seven. Annie caught her slipping out and followed. We got halfway there before a flashlight being caught us across the clearing. Max bolted. I froze. Annie stepped in front of me and said she had dropped a bracelet somewhere near the trail and we were helping her look for it. The counsellor bought it, and we didn't get written up. Then, we became close friends. After camp, the three of us kept in touch, we borrowed our parents' phone, sent letters, and eventually got our own phones.

For a while, we barely saw each other. Then we ended up at colleges close enough to take a train. After that, it just stuck. found a clip of drone video of the camp on a hiking channel and sent it to our group chat. The place looked gutted. Most of the cabins were collapsing and the docks were reduced to their frames. My stomach dropped. All the things that made the place feel alive.

Campfires, night hikes, the games we played. We're gone. My phone buzzed with a message from Annie. I kind of missed it. it. He missed cold showers and sunstroke, Max replied. I miss what it was like being there, she wrote, with you two. The chat went quiet after that. I typed something and deleted it. A few minutes later, Max replied with, we should go. Annie replied, seriously? Yeah, why not? One night, camp like we used to. I thought Max was messing around.

then I thought about it and didn't hate the idea. We'd had fun there as kids, so why wouldn't we now? Going back as adults felt strange, but also kind of exciting. Can we just do that? I asked. Yeah, why not? We've still got tents, still know how to build a fire. Bring some marshmallows, tell stories, play the old games, he replied. There was a long pause, then Annie sent.

Fine, but if it rains, I'm sleeping in the car. And that was that. As I pulled up, I noticed Annie. Her car was already pulled up off the gravel loop when I arrived, parked just far enough from the overgrowth to keep her tires clear. She was out of the car, arms crossed, lips pressed. I waved through the windshield. parked beside her and stepped out.

The air was cool, and there was a slight breeze that blew through. You're late, she said, not looking up. You're early, I grinned. She gave a half-smile. Maybe I just won the race here. The trees are crept in closer than I remembered. The old sign that used to say, Camp Grinlow in thick green letters,

was just a frame now, dangling splinters. Annie strolled over to the pit where the bell used to hang, poking at the weeds with her foot. You check the cabins yet? I asked. She shook her head. By myself, no way. I figured we'd do it together. Ten minutes later, we heard the crunch of tires and Max's car rounded the bend. He parked crooked and got out, already chewing gum and wearing a huge grin. Took the scenic route, he said, slamming the door.

And by scenic, I mean, I stopped twice because I thought I saw a bear. One was a stump. One might have been a bear. He brought the tent, right? And he asked. He patted the trunk. And snacks and an old speaker. He looked around, nodding slowly. Weird how it feels smaller. It's not, I said.

We're just bigger. Speak for yourself, Mack said, adjusting the waistband of his shorts. I peaked in eighth grade. We know, Annie joked. We started toward the fire pit, catching up on each other's weak. The trail was still there, but the trees leaned in low, branches low enough to catch his shoulders. Annie walked ahead of us, eyes on the ground, stepping over roots. To the left, the mess hall looked worse.

The windows were gone and it was missing a door. It was strange seeing it all like this. When we were kids, this place felt permanent, like it would always be waiting for us, just as we left it. But now, the buildings sagged under their own weight, paint stripped by years of weather and abandonment. When we reached the fire pit, it looked almost untowulfed. touched. The benches had sunk a little, but were still there. The stones were scattered but

familiar, scorched black the way we remembered. Still here, I said. Max dropped his bag beside a bench and stretched his arms overhead. Not bad. I thought we'd be pitching tents in a field of used needles. We stayed silent for a moment, letting it sink in. Max broke the silence first. Max First. All right. Who's up for some marshmallows? He pulled a bag from his pack and tossed it on the bench. I dug out some skewers we brought and passed them around.

And he knelt near the fire pit, clearing away old ash and leaves. And we got the fire going fast. The wood was dry enough, and the smoke drifted upward in lazy streaks. We roasted in silence at first, letting the heat take. the edge of the air. Max burned his first one entirely black and proudly ate at him two bites. Annie laughed at him

and methodically turned her over the flame until it browned perfectly. You guys remember that game? I asked. Statues and songs. Max's mouth was full but he mumbled something that sounded like a yes. Annie nodded, her eyes were on the fire.

I don't remember who made it up, I said. Oh, Councillor Reid? And he piped up. Of course you still remember his name. Max rolled his eyes. The rules started coming back in pieces. One person stood at the end of the field with their back turned, humming a tune. Everyone else had to move toward them.

If they caught you moving when they turned around and the hummed ended. You were out. You used to cheat, Annie said, jabbing a skewer into Max's arm. Please, I played to win, Max said. It's called having tactics, pushing people, tripping them, whatever it takes. You pushed me, twice, she whined. Both times you deserved it. You were getting cocky. I was eight. Exactly, you needed humbling. You didn't win, though, I added.

I won once. No, you didn't, Annie and I said in unison. Max held up his hands. Look, just because my brilliance wasn't appreciated, doesn't mean it existed, Annie said. We laughed for a second, and it was like we'd never left. The fire crackled low, dipping into the quiet. Max leaned back, looking up at the darkening sun.

sky through the trees. Annie picked at the edge of a marshmallow bag, folding and unfolding the plastic in a lap. Then came a familiar tune. But this time, it was a whistle. Annie sat upright. Okay, I know you hit your speaker, Max. Max tilted his head. You're kidding, right? That's not me. Seriously? I asked. You didn't cue something up on your phone? He held it up. Battery's almost dead. Been saving it.

We all turned toward the trees where the sound had come from. The tune came again, the same rhythm we'd been talking about. Max gave Annie a look. You didn't rig something, some timer or remote thing? She scoffed. Do I look like I brought a fog machine too? You brought back up marshmallows. He said,

anything's possible. He looked from one to the other, then grinned. All right, when are you planned this? Fess up. Annie snorted. If I went to that much effort, I'd be filming your reaction.

Then it's you, Mack said, pointing at me. You've been quiet. Not me, I said. I figured it was you. We stood there for a moment, the whistle drifting through the trees again. "'Shall we play?' Mac said with a smirk.

"'We might as well.' Annie raised an eyebrow. "'You're serious? What? Are you scared?' he grinned. "'No,' she huffed, brushing past him. "'I just don't want to humour your prank.' We stepped into the clearing. It hadn't changed much. The same wide circle that funneled into a straight part, into the trees.

It was marked with half-barried stone. grass pressed low in patches. Max rolled his shoulders like it was warming up for a race as we walked forward toward the sound off in the trees. Then the whistling stopped and we froze in place, grinning like idiots. Annie glanced over her shoulder and mouthed, still got it. Max had one foot lifted in the air. This is weirdly fun.

A second later, the whistle started again, and this time we sped walked. Max bumped into me while trying to get ahead. Annie was already a few strides ahead of both of us. Her braid bounced off her back with each step, arms pumping like she was taking it way too seriously. Max laughed and tried to catch up. She's going to win, I said. Not if I reach her, Max said under his breath, speeding up to get her. get behind her.

Grinning, Max reached out and shoved Annie just enough to throw her off balance. As she tumbled forward, the music stopped, and Max froze with his arms stretched out. Max, she screamed, stumbling forward as the whistling cut out. Her body seized, her knees locking, neck jerking upright. Her spine twisted so violently, we heard it pop. Her vertebrae bulged against the skin. Her arms flung outward like she was being yanked, and a wet crack snapped through the air.

Her body fell limp on the ground. Annie? I called out, horrified. Max remained frozen. The grin on his face melted. I didn't push her that hard, he stuttered, eyes frantic. Then the whistle started back. up like nothing had happened. We both rushed forward, dropping to our knees. Her body was

curled unnaturally, one leg twisted onto the other, arms spayed out ahead of her. Her face was frozen mid-breath, eyes wide, mouth half open. Max's hand hovered near her but didn't touch. She's not, I started, struggling to find my words. What the hell is happening? Max sputtered. I leaned over, pressed my fingers into a neck. But there was no pulse. I didn't know what I was expecting. She's dead.

The words felt like they didn't belong to me, as if it wasn't real. Max backed up, shuddering. Maybe she... Hit something, he said, looking past the body, scanning the dirt for a rock or a branch or any. anything, desperate for anything to prove he didn't hurt her.

She didn't hit anything. I looked at Max, felt my throat tight, and you pushed her too hard. His head snapped toward me. It was a joke. No, it wasn't, my voice shook. You killed her. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. I watched it land on him all at once.

The guilt, the weight of what he did. His jaw clenched. He looked down at her again and backed away, like distance would undo it. You always had to win, I spat. Even now, the whistling stopped again. We both froze instinctively, breath stalled halfway in our throats. Annie's body was inches away, broken and bent. I couldn't look directly at her.

I could hear Max swallow hard, chest barely rising. his hands were clenched at his sides, knuckles pale. The air buzzed with pressure. I felt it in my spine, in the tension creeping up my neck. Every second stretched longer than the one before. Then the whistling returned. Same melody, same distance, carried on the wind like none of this had happened. My breath came out sharp, and Max broke.

He took two steps back, fists in his hair, eyes wide, like they were trying to blink away what we were both seeing. No, no, no, no, no, this can't be real, he began. His voice pitched higher than I'd ever heard it, words spilling out faster. She was fine, I swear to God, I just, we were messing around. I didn't push her that hard. He turned from me, walked a short circle, then split her. spun back. His mouth moved like he had more to say, but nothing came out. His shoulders dropped. Then he hit his thigh with the side of his fist so hard and made a dull thud.

She laughed when I burnt the marshmallow. I was going to give a grief for it later. He looked at the clearing, then at me, and then up into the trees. We were supposed to hang out this weekend. That's all. Not this. He swallowed, wiped his face roughly with both hands, and took one glance at Annie's body. Then he turned and said, Screw this, I'm not doing this. Max? No, he snapped. I didn't hurt her. I swear!

He turned and started walking back toward the campfire fast. Just as he stepped over the stone edging, his body arced hard, like something yanked upward from his spine. The twist was fast and his feet lifted from the ground as his back contorted violently. There was a low crack, then a snap. Max's arms flailed once, then dropped. His legs folded in on themselves. He hit the ground. I screamed, still crouched over Annie.

He landed face down, limbs crooked. From where I sat, I could see the bottom. base of his neck bent too far. I blinked hard, stared to the flickering light at the edges of the fire where his body lay, crumpled in slack, and realization washed over me. He hadn't killed Annie, the way she fell and twisted. There was no way that he did that, especially since he met the same fate as soon as he left the game boundaries.

Fear sent pinprigs of electricity through me. my body and an ominous feeling washed over me. Whatever this was, it wasn't natural, and it had something to do with the game and the whistling. If I wanted to survive, I had to play. My hands, my back, my legs, all of me trembled. When the whistling started back up, it scraped across my nerves. I could still hit and his voice in my head, Max's laugh. The bodies weren't even cold, and I was already thinking like I was the only one left. I pressed my hands into the dirt and begged myself to keep breathing.

This was real. This was happening. And I had to finish it. I held my stance. Every part of me wanted to run, to curl into myself, to scream. but the rules were clear. I couldn't move. It stopped and it felt like the paws dragged out.

My knees were tight. I blinked once, slow and dry. Then the whistling started up again. I forced myself up and started to take shaky step after shaky step. The distance between me and the whistling shrank. I could make out a figure in the dark. distance, its arms hung low and close to its sides. The space between us was still wide. I didn't know how many rounds there would be, or how close I had to get, but the thought of making

it all the way forward, reaching out and placing a hand against the thing's body, felt impossible. But that was the rule. You reach the host and touch them. That's how you won. That's what I had to do. The rhythm carried me forward again. I moved with it. One step at a time. Every shift of weight deliberate. Every breath matched to the space between each whistle.

I was getting closer now. The thing ahead had shape. The dim glow of the campfire passed through uneven slits carved deep into its chest, casting faint beams into the undergrowth. Every time it had occurred. A thin column of air passed through those holes, and the whistle came with it. I felt it scrape along my spine. My eyes kept drifting to the lines of its body, the exposed ribs, the stiff posture, the way it stayed fixed in place, like it was waiting for me.

I tried not to think about the final rule, that I'd have to touch it. Then my hill struck something, maybe a root or a stone, buried just enough to catch the edge of my foot. My balance pitched, my arms shot forward, but I was too slow. My ankle rolled underneath me and I landed hard on my knees and hands. Pain searched up my leg, the ground pressed into my palms. The whistle cut out. my vision blurred my ankle throbbed in sharp pulses

but I stayed frozen arms shaking from the fall dirt and rocks pressed into the raw skin of my hands every second that passed made my chest tighter I could feel the pulse of my neck hammering against the stillness

I started to imagine my death if I failed what part would break first would it twist my head like Max's, or tear through me the way it had Annie. And then what? Would anyone find us here? Would it be days later, after the cars sat too long in the gravel pulling? Would the ranger's office even bother to look past the sign?

I thought about my parents. I thought about Annie's mom. I thought about the three of us walking to the mess all on our first day. All of us sunburned and trying to act cooler than we were. Max had carried a plastic lightsaber in his bag and pretended it was an accident. Annie had rolled her eyes and corrected the names of all the counsellors when we got them wrong. That first week, we had barely spoken, but somehow we'd ended up here, years later, together. And now... they were gone.

The whistle started again. I clenched my teeth and tried to push myself off. A spike of pain ran through my foot, white-heart and deep. My ankle had twisted in the fall, badly. I put a little weight on it and felt the strain in my joint. I would have to limp the rest of the way. I'd have to keep perfect rhythm, stay completely still, and make it to the thing on a busted ankle.

I blinked the sweat from my eyes, swallowed hard, and started forward again. The pain made it harder to time my steps. Each paws left more weight on the ankle than I could stand. But I kept moving. I had to. The distance between us was maybe 30 feet now, maybe less. Every whistle came with a fresh jolt of dread. But it also meant I was still playing, still alive.

That counted for something. I kept my eyes low, trying not to. look at it again, the way it stood so still, waiting. Each breath it took, dragged through his chest like wind through loose pains. A few more rounds and I'd reach it. If I could hold my balance, if the ankle didn't give. I moved again, half step, wait, another. The whistle stopped. I froze with my heel halfway up, struggling to settle it flat. without shaking. The muscle in my leg seized. I could feel it trying to twitch, trying to collapse under me. I let my heels sink gradually, waited for the whistle to return. The sound of my pulse

louder than the crickets of the wind. The whistle came again. I moved. One step, then another. My ankle buckled slightly, but I caught myself. I was close now. Ten feet, maybe less. The shape stood tall, still, arms set close to its sides. Every breath it took pushed another note into the air. I stopped, weight on one foot, and stared. I could almost see its hands, long fingers curled slightly inward. My hand was slick with sweat.

I wiped it against my jeans, braced myself, and stepped forward again and again. Five feet, three, close enough to see the seams between its ribs, the way the skin held taut around the frame. There was a smell like warm metal and moss. I felt it in my throat. One more step. I didn't want to see it any clearer than I already had,

didn't want to remember its shape when I closed my eyes later. I kept them open one last breath, then shut them tight, and reached. My fingers landed on something solid, and the whistle stopped. I stayed frozen, hands still pressed forward, every nerve wound tight. My chest hurt from how hard my heart beat. The pain in my ankle flared, steady and sharp. passed with no sound, no whistling, but I kept my palm planted where it was, resting against it. But finally, I grew impatient, curious, so I peeled my eyes open. The thing was gone,

and I was touching a tree. It took a few seconds for it to register that it was just a trunk, tall and rough and solid, nothing strange about it, no gaps in the wood. At first I hoped I had imagined it all, but my ankles still screamed, hot and deep, and when I turned around, limping slowly, dragging the way to my body behind me,

I saw the truth. The fire still burned low, the shadows flickered, and the bodies are my best friend, were right where I'd left them. Annie's twisted spine, Max's bent limbs. The firelight danced over their skin like it didn't care what had happened,

like this was any other night. I collapsed just outside the circle, legs giving out beneath me. All at once, the emotions I had shoved into a corner to stay alive came crawling back, flooding my chest and throat, too fast to stop.

Then I sobbed from the terror, from the pain, from the sick throb of loss that settled into the center of my chest. I cried for Annie and Max for the marshmallows we didn't finish, for the game we never should have played. I cried, because I lived. I'm a cave rescue diver. Most people hear that and pictures of some Discovery Channel documentary, dramatic music, divers swimming gracefully through crystal clear water. That's not what it's like, not even close. What it's really like is crawling through a stone throat that's barely wide enough for your body,

hundreds of feet underground, with water pressing in on you from every angle. The ceiling scrapes the tank strapped to your back, the rock squeezes your shoulders until they bruise, and if your light dies, You can't even see your own hands in front of your face. Just black, thick and total, the kind of dark that makes you feel like you've already been buried. We go in because people get stuck down there. Amateurs, weekend thrill seekers.

Sometimes tourists who thought a guided tour meant they could just keep going once the rope ends. If they're lucky, they panic and turn back early. If they're unlucky, I get called in. I've had grown men claw at my mask in blind terror, ripping out their own regulators because they swore they were drowning, even while they still had air. I've had to haul limp bodies out by the harness.

Lips blue, lungs full, their face is so swollen with water. It's like they were trying to scream the whole time. I've even found one bloated and wedged in a rock fissure, so tight, it took two hours just to free him. skin peeling under my gloves as I pulled. That's the job. That's the reality. You breathe slowly, you move slowly, and you pray that nothing goes wrong.

Because in those passages, even the smallest mistake can kill you. But all of that, the panic, the corpses, the claustrophobia, feels like child's play. Compared to what happened last night, the call came to. just after midnight, a group of amateurs had gone missing in a limestone system about 30 miles out of town, a place locals already whispered about, because people had a habit of vanishing there. Some caves swallow you with depth. This one, they said, moved you around. When we pulled up, the rangers were waiting. They looked like they had already given up hope, having seen too many unrecoverable missions in the area.

One of them, an older guy with a face like dried leather, told me the cave was breathing. I laughed at first, thinking he meant air vents or the usual weird acoustics you get on the ground. But then he explained it. Currents that shifted back and forth like tides, sucking you in, then pushing you out. No river fed it, no sea connected to. to it, the cave itself exhaled. I'd never been to this particular system, but it was good to know about the strange flow. We used the dealing with anomalies, whether it was due to human failure or natural phenomenon,

but the thing that made me pause was the distress call. They'd managed the patch it through to us. Static, heavy, muffled by stone and water, but unmistakably human. three static voices crying, gasping, begging. Then a fourth, sharper, almost frantic. I'll never forget the words. Don't bring it back out with you. At the time, we thought they were delirious.

Now, I'm not so sure. Our crew was smaller that night. That's how it usually is. Less people, less risk. My team lead, Commander Harris, had been in the game longer than I'd been alive. He was a former military diver with a thick neck and a square jaw, all bark, but not as much bite unless you really screwed up. He had the kind of calm that annoyed you because it made you realize how rattled you were by comparison. Then there was Leon.

He was a good diver with plenty of hours logged, but this was one of his first real rescues, and that's a whole different world. Recreational dives don't prepare you for dragging bodies out of cracks or sharing air with someone clawing a mask off in a blind panic. Leon kept fiddling with his weight belt and asking for his tank to be adjusted higher or lower every few minutes. He wouldn't admit it, but I could see the nerves eating at him. For communication, we used full face masks fitted with radios,

something Leon was still adjusting. to after years diving with a standard regulator. Each of us also carried a spare mask and an octopus set up in case we found survivors, or had to share air with someone trying to claw their way back to the surface. A couple medics were on standby up top. They hovered near the gear crates, whispering to each other and throwing us uneasy looks like they were hoping to never actually have to work tonight.

We gathered around Harris while he ran through the plan. The entrance was tight, barely enough space for one diver at a time. About 40 meters in, it opened into a submerged tunnel that twisted like a corkscrew before spilling into a chamber the locals it nicknamed the maze. That's where the missing group had last been heard. Stay in the line, stay in your body, and keep an eye on your oxygen and depth. Harris said, voice clipped like it given this speech a hundred times. If visibility drops, stop and wait. Don't wonder blind.

If you lose the guideline, call it, and we'll regroup. Leon nodded like he was trying to drill it into his brain. We lowered ourselves into the water. One second, the world is wide open. Sky, trees, voices from the surface. And the next, it shrinks to a tunnel of stone during controlled descent. The limestone swallowed me fast. My light barely cut ten feet in front of me,

just enough to paint jagged rock walls and the swirling cloud of silt stirred up by my fins. The ceiling pressed low, close enough that my helmet scraped once, twice, the sound grating in my ears. My tank banged against the rock when I turned too sharply. Every clang was a reminder that there wasn't a centimetre of space

to waste. I slowed my breathing, long, careful intakes. If you let your pulse spike down here, you'll empty your tank in half the time. I counted the bubbles as they rose, each silver sphere flashing against my light, before vanishing into the dark above. The guidelines stretched ahead, taught and reassuring under my gloved fingers. Wionn was behind me, Harris bringing. hanging up the rear. We moved like a chain, slow, steady, deliberate. The entrance funneled

down until there was barely enough space for me to slide through. I slits of rock, sharp and unwelcoming, just wide enough for my shoulders if I turned sideways. I pushed in and immediately felt the cave close around me, stone pressed on both sides of my chest, the ceiling scraping the tanks so hard, it rang in my ears. My knees dragged, my belly ground against the floor. There was no room for my arms to move, just one hand forward, then the other, pulling myself along the guideline. Halfway through, my fin caught, a sharp tug stopped me cold. I tried to kick gently, but it only wedged deeper. For a moment, I was pinned. My whole body jerked, and, and and the tank banged against the ceiling.

That's when the panic tried to rise. The thought hit hard and fast. If I get stuck here, I'll die here. No room to turn, no space to back out, just stone pressing from every direction and a tank slowly running dry. I force myself to exhale, slow, controlled. My chest shrank just enough to wriggle forward.

scraping raw skin against the limestone. My movement caused the silt out. My light vanished in a choking brown cloud, and the squeeze turned into a blind coffin. No up or down, just black water and rock crushing in. My heartbeat filled the mask. And in that dark, with my body locked tight, something touched me.

A smooth drag across my shoulders. It wasn't rock Something moved For a second I thought Leon had caught up reaching out to steady himself But Leon was 30 feet behind me Harris was farther still

No one else could have been there The squeeze spat me out into a chamber Big enough that I could finally stretch my arms Without scraping bone My light cut across black water and pale stone the air above just out of reach, trapped in small pockets that clung to the ceiling. For a moment, I let myself breathe deeper, grateful for the space. My shoulders ached from grinding through the tunnel, and my mask hissed like it was mocking the relief.

I swept my beam across the chamber, tracing the walls. That's when I saw them. Gouges, long, curved lines carved deep. into the limestone. I thought they were natural striations, erosion maybe, but the edges were too smooth. They looked fresh, marks you'd expect from metal dragged hard against stone. Harris, Leon, I've got marks down here, I said into the comms, my voice tini in my own ears. Static swallowed the channel for a moment before Harris's voice came back, calm as ever.

Copy that, could be old, keep moving, stay sharp. I wanted to believe him, but the gouges looked too clean. I tried to reason it out. Maybe old dive gear had scraped against the walls, a careless fin, a tank valve banging around. But we were too far in. Recreational divers never made it this deep. You don't get gouges like that in a place only rescue teams ever reach. I drifted closer, my fingers brushing the nearest mark.

It was wide enough to fit my thumb inside, the stone cool and strangely polished at the edges. Then I heard something. Knock. The sound was sharp, deliberate, like stone on stone. It echoed across the chamber in a hollow rhythm. Knock, knock, knock. I froze. My light cut circles through the water, searching for Harris or Leon.

The line was still taught in my hand, no sign of movement behind me. The knocking came again, slow, even. It took me a moment to realize the sound wasn't coming from the walls at all. It was coming from beneath me. I followed the line deeper into the chamber, the beam of my light cutting narrow, tones into the dark. The water was cold here, still and heavy, where the cave itself was holding its breath.

Then, I saw him, the first of the missing group. He was jammed half into a fuchsia in the wall, body twisted unnaturally. Helm angled sideways as though he tried to force himself into a gap too small to escape through. I drifted closer. careful not to stir the silt, and the details hit me all at once.

His mask was flooded, his eyes stared white and swollen, lips peeled back over his teeth, but it was his suit that froze me. Deep scratches tore across the neoprene, dozens, long, reeking grooves that cut all the way through the fabric underneath. His helmet, too, was scoured with the same marks, carved across the visor in jagged arcs. I've seen panic divers claw themselves bloody trying to escape. I've even seen the desperate scrape off fingernails on stone

where someone tried to wedge themselves free. But these weren't frantic scratchings. They were too deep, like it'd been seized and dragged backward into the dark. I swallowed hard and forced myself to work. You don't think down here. You just act. Command, I've got one body, I said into the comm's voice flat.

Static rassed back, then Harris's voice cut through, low and measured. Copy, secure him if you can, otherwise mark and move, survivors first. I pulled the body back from my back and slid it open, fingers numb inside my gloves, as I maneuvered him out of the fissure. He was limp, heavy. One arm floating grotesquely behind him like he was waving. That's when I felt it. A sudden sharp tug at my fin, hard enough to yank me half around.

My light swung wildly across the chamber, hoping it was Leon, not in control of his strength because of his nerves, but catching only stone in black water. No one was there. Just silt stirred up from movement. I left the body for the rear to handle. Being lead, I was the one who had to push forward and scout ahead. The chamber funneled upward into a narrow shaft, and I followed the guideline until my light caught the silver shimmer of air above.

I rose carefully, breaking the surface with a hollow splash. The space was barely big enough to fit me. A bubble chamber, no more than four feet across, jaggedy. limestone pressing in from all sides. The air was foul, sharp with minerals, sour with a stench of rot and stagnant water. My headlamp haloed the low ceiling in a dull circle, illuminating beads of condensation that trembled with every ripple I made. I hit the perch valve on my mask and let the stream of bubbles spill into the chamber.

The sound echoed in the cramped pocket like a sigh. My lungs burned from the squeeze. I let the stale air fill them again, slow and deliberate, before biting the mouthpiece back in. That's when I heard it. Breathing. Not mine, not the steady hiss of my tank, but the ragged drawer of lungs straining for air.

Soft, wet, coming from the dark corner of the bubble where my light couldn't quite reach. Hello? My voice was muffled to the mask. I lifted the lamp higher, beam trembling against the rock. For a moment, I swore I saw it. A thin bloom of fog on the stone wall

like someone else had exhaled just ahead of me, a human breath frosting the rock in the stale chamber air. I shifted, heart hammering. Survivors sometimes wedge themselves into pockets like this. I'd seen it before, clinging to the last gasp of oxygen, half dead, but alive enough to save. I leaned closer, straining to hear, hoping it was just another lost explorer. But the breathing didn't answer me.

It only grew fainter, moving away. I followed the line down from the bubble chamber, the passage widened again and this time my light struck something huddled against the rock movement I kicked closer breath catching when I saw the pale skin

the mask pulled halfway off hair drifting like weeds in the current not another body this time a man alive he was wedged onto a little ledge just beneath a larger air pocket his head bobbing weakly in and out of the surface. His lips were blue, his face chalk white.

He trembled so violently I thought he might shake himself off the ledge. But his eyes were open, wild, staring right at me. Relief hit me so hard and almost buckled my knees. This was it. This was the breath I'd heard, the fog and the rock. I'd found him. He was the reason I'd come down here. I lifted my lamp higher, signaling,

trying to coax him forward. He flinched away from the light, pressing back against the stone. His teeth chattered so hard they made a dull clicking sound against his mask. I surfaced beside him, mask off. You're right, I said, trying to sound calm. I've got you. We're getting you out.

He shook his head furiously, eyes rolling. His lips moved, at first too soft for me to hear over the dripping. Then I caught his words. It followed us in. His voice was a rasp, broken and wet. It doesn't let go. Don't take me back out. A shiver ran through me.

Half hypothermic, I told myself. delirious. That's what happens when you're starved of warmth and oxygen. The brain eats itself. You can't take the words at face value. But the way he stared at the black water below us, the way his hand scrambled against the rock, as if bracing against the current only he could feel. It was too much like the scratches I'd seen on the body, too much like the shape I'd glimps slipping into the dark. I could tell myself he was raving. but I couldn't leave him there to die. I pulled the octopus and spare mask and handed it to him.

His hands trembled so badly I had to adjust the straps myself, tightening them against his skull. His eyes darted everywhere, never meeting mine, fixed always on the water behind me. Breathe steady, I said. We're going back, follow me. The moment I eased him into the water, he tried. right to twist away, kicking weakly toward the ledge, as if he'd rather starve in that pocket than leave it. I had to grab his harness and yank him along the guideline, forcing him forward. He thrashed once, twice, and his limbs faltered, too weak. His movements turned sluggish,

exhausted, and at last he floated behind me, tethered to my grip like a dead weight. I kept us moving, hand over hand on the line, one slow kick at a time. My breathing sounded too loud in the mask, every hiss and exhale bouncing in my skull. The survivor's regulator rattled in his teeth. I wanted to believe we were alone that I'd gotten him out of the worst of it. Then something hit me. Not hard, but a long, smooth brush across my side, glancing my tank. and sliding along the survivor tethered to me. It felt rubbery, like the drag of a thick rope pulled across flesh. I whipped my light around, beam cutting through the murk.

Leon? My voice cracked across the comms. Harris, you back here, no answer. No flash of a lamp. Just the black water behind me. Empty, except the faint shimmer of the line. I held the survivor tighter, pulling him close. He was shaking so violently, it felt like he might tear himself free.

His eyes were wide, white glaring in the dark mask, bubbles erupting from his mouthpiece and sharp bursts. There was no current. That was something alive. We moved slowly, following the guideline, our only salvation. Then the water around us erupted. A surge of silk poured upward, as if something had raked its hand through the floor of the chamber. My beam vanished in a storm of brown and black, visibility collapsing to nothing.

The survivor thrashed instantly, wrenching his head side to side. One trembling hand shot up to his mask, nails raking against the glass as he clawed to pull it off. I grabbed his rest and pinned it down, shaking my head hard, forcing my lamp into his face, so he could see me. His pupils were blown wide, white foam bubbling at the corners of his mouthpiece. I dragged him forward, dragging myself forward, each motion blind. My hand clung to the guideline as if it were the last solid thing in the world. And then, light caught motion.

For just a second, my beam sliced through the silt and revealed something sliding across the rock. Slick, pale, the shape of a limb bending wrong, gone again before my mind could give it a name. I swung my light the other way, another glimpse farther off, something gliding fast, skimming the wall just out of reach, too big to be a fish, too fast to be a diver. My chest seized, my brain wanted to call it a trick of the silt, a hallucination born of panic. but the survivors muffled scream vibrated through the water, and I knew he'd seen it too. It wasn't just following us.

It was circling us. We pushed forward, hand over hand along the guideline. The survivor sagged heavy in my grip. He wasn't helping anymore, just dead weight dragged behind me, shuddering with every breath. That's when my beam caught the wall. white shimmer of another mask ahead. Relief surged through me so sharp it hurt. Leon, he must

have come in after me, ready to haul the first body back while Harris stayed at the entrance. His silhouette hovered by the line, one hand braced against the rock as if waiting. Leon, my voice cracked across the combs, roar with adrenaline. I've got one alive. No answer, just static. I poured closer, heart pounding, until my light fell full on his face, and the relief snapped like brittle glass. Leon floated there in the line of my beam, mask half-flooded, eyes clouded, mouthpiece slipping from his lips. His suit was raked with the same gouge as I'd seen on the first body. Long, tearing scratches that cut deep across his chest and arms.

He looked fresher, not yet swollen, like it had only just happened. It was reminiscent of the state I found the first survivor, only more raw. The survivor saw him too. The moment his gaze landed on Leon's body, he booked hard against me, thrashing so violently, the spare mask nearly tore free. I clamped down with one hand cursing into my comms, and then, knock. The sound rolled through the chamber, sharp and hollow, beating against the stone. Knock, knock, knock.

Each one in perfect rhythm with my pulse. The survivor lost it. He clawed at me, his scream bubbling from the mask in a high-pitched wine. that stabbed through the water. His panic was like blood in the water. It drew attention. The darkness moved. Something slick and pale surged past,

fast enough that the water shifted around us. The survivor jerked suddenly, yanked half out of my grip, bubbles exploding from his mouthpiece as his body snapped toward in the current of something pulling. I lunged, grabbing his harness, fingers slipping on the wet nylon. My lamp cut wild arcs through the silt, catching only fragments.

A curve of flesh, an arm-like shape bending wrong, long fingers brushing stone as it circled back. The knocks kept coming, louder, closer, hammering in my chest, until I couldn't tell if it was the cave or my own heart about to burst. We had to move. I kept one hand locked on the guideline, and the other gripping the survivor's harness. He fought me at first, kicking, thrashing, just enough to stir the water into choking cloud of silt.

My light cut through nothing but mud-brown haze, every beam swallowed whole. We moved blind. One hand, one rope, a thin nylon line was all that tethered us to the world outside the cave. I forced myself not to think about what would happen if I lost it. The survivor clawed at me again, half pulling free. His eyes were wide, pupils brown, every muscle in his body trembling.

Then, slowly, the fight left him. His limbs sagged, his kick softened. By the time I felt the current shift around us, guiding us toward the wider entrance shaft. He was limp in my grip, dead weight trailing in the gloom. Relief punched through me when my headlamp finally caught the shimmer of daylight filtering down. We were almost out, almost safe. I hauled him along, long screaming for open air. The line pulled toward the exit.

My fingers clung to it like a lifeline. Then, I glanced back. The silt was still thick behind us. but it wasn't brown anymore. It was red. A cloud of blood hung in the air, thick and roiling, and at the centre of it, the survivor's body dangled slack in my grip. His chest and arms were shredded, carved into ribbons,

limbs missing chunks or gone entirely, like he'd been dragged through a man-sized blender. For a second, shock froze me. I'd been so focused on getting out I hadn't even felt him go The red cloud shifted suddenly Rolling outward as if stirred by something huge A slick pale mass twisted inside the crimson haze

Too fast to catch more than a glimpse It wheeled sharply Then shot back into the cave with a force That made the water around me heave Skimming the edge of the daylight Slipping back into the cold darkness of the cave. Gone.

All I had left was the survivors' ruined body in my hands, and the blood cloud blooming like a warning. My instincts screamed to kick hard, to bolt for the surface. But I couldn't. Fast as sense killed divers as surely as anything in that cave. Lungs over-expand, blood foams, the bends hit you before you even break daylight. So I forced myself to slow down. Eyes focused upward.

Looking back would only be a reminder. My hands clamped around the survivors' shredded harness. I began the climb, inch by inch, breath by breath. The dead weight dragged behind me, body torn to ribbons, limp as a doll. His head lulled, bubbles dribbling from the regulator, as if he was still breathing. My light caught flashes of him with every kick, shredded neoprene, pale skin through the rips, blood still feathering into the water like smoke. Every pause felt like a punishment. I counted the seconds, listening to the pounding in my ears and stared into the black below, half expecting another pale limb to search out of it.

Only when the depth gauge finally crept into the green did I allow myself to. ascend the last stretch. The lights of command glimmered above, blurry through the water, close enough to touch. I hauled the ruined body with me, lungs aching, and prayed nothing followed us the rest of the way. I broke the surface screaming into the comms, not calm procedure, just everything at once. Leon was gone, the survivor was torn apart, another was already dead, something in the cave was moving. By the time command dragged me onto the bank, I was still spitting water,

slipping blood from my dive suit. Middicks tried to haul the survivors' remains away, but there wasn't much left to take. The higher-ups didn't believe the details, not the hand I saw in the dark, not the knocks that taunted me, or the pale shapes circling us in the silt. But, they didn't.

have to. The blood cloud and the bodies told their own story. That cave was a death trap. By morning, the order came down to seal the entrance. Every connected shaft in that limestone system was marked for closure. Too dangerous, they said, too unstable. I didn't argue. The part I can't explain. The part no one talks about. is Harris. He followed me in after Leon, but never came back out. No body or signal. Just gone, swallowed whole.

Officially, they've got him listed as MIA. Unofficially. I know better. I still work in Cave Rescue. It's all I know. But things changed after that night. In the future, if I see deep, It gouges carved into the walls if I hear current shift without reason and knocking I can't explain.

I won't push forward. I won't call for backup. I'll call it in as a lost cause and pray in the dark that the ones inside can find their own way out. The first dart sank clean into the bare shoulder. We'd gotten lucky. The wind had dropped, the snow crust was firm, and the animal had wandered close enough to the coast for us to approach without risking thin ice. Five months into the season, we'd all developed the same quiet rhythm of professionals who'd done this too many times to get nervous. Dart, dose, weight, move in, measure, collar, release.

Routine Only this one wasn't routine. The bear swayed, shuddered once, then lay down without a sound. Its bulk flattened the snow, steam rising faintly from its fur. I gave the signal, and we crunched forward on snowshoes, our breath loud in the still air. Up close, it was a healthy male, big paws, clean coat, thick with fat for the winter. Textbook specimen. I'd already pulled the kit bag open when Amara crouched by his neck and frowned.

Uh, guys? At first I thought she was pointing at scar tissue, maybe a healed wound. Then I saw the band of metal half buried in fur. The bear already had a collar. And it wasn't one of ours. This was old, brass gone green with corrupt. erosion, pitted and scarred, as if it had been on there a long time. The edges weren't machined.

They'd been hammered into shape by hand, uneven but strong, riveted shut in a way that looked impossible to remove without breaking the animal's neck. And there, etched into the metal, was a date. 1847. Beneath it, scratched deep enough to cut through tarnish, was a spiral. Not the kind you draw on a bored afternoon, but a shape that made your eye want to look away. The lines overlapped in ways that shouldn't have worked, turning back into themselves, forming a loop that wasn't closed, yet had no beginning. I stared too long and felt motion sick.

God damn, one of the others whispered, this has to be a prank, right? Some trappers joke. Yeah, Amara said, forcing a laugh, because Inuit hunters in the 1800s were hammering out brass in their free time. I didn't laugh. None of us did. We finished the examination in silence. We scanned its teeth, checked blood samples and noted vitals. Everything was normal, except the drugs. They should have knocked it out for at least an hour. After 15 minutes, the bear's eyes flicked open, slow, deliberate. I froze, dark guns still hanging limp in my hand, still needing to be reloaded,

a process that would take too long if the bear just stood up. The animal should have staggered, fighting the sedatives. Instead, beyond reason, it just stood. Not even a stumble, just up. on its feet watching us with that deep, unblinking black gaze. We backed off, hands raised, no sudden movements. The bear didn't follow, but it didn't leave either. It simply stood there, massive and silent, as we retreated to the skidoo and drove away.

Amara broke the silence on the ride back to camp. Maybe it led us to it. She said. It sounded ridiculous, but we also couldn't refute it. That night, after gear was stowed and data uploaded, I dug through the digital archives of expeditions north of Ellesmere Island. I scrolled past whalers, Royal Navy Lugs, early Soviet surveys, every scrap I could find.

The coastline was mapped in 1818, but it wasn't explored until 1852. Not one expedition had ever reached this far in 1847. The thing about Arctic field stations is that you have plenty of downtime once the day's data is logged. Most people stream whatever satellite internet can handle. Amara digs. She has a thing for records for turning footnotes into rabbit holes. That night, while the rest of us played cards in the mess, she was still hunched over a laptop, scrolling through grainy PDFs of scanned expedition logs.

If no one was here in 1847, she muttered, then why the hell does the collar say otherwise? At first, she came up empty. I was half convinced the whole thing was a fluke, maybe some eccentric trapper had engraved the date for a laugh. But then she pulled up something strange. not a published survey, nothing official. A letter archived in the basement of some Royal Society library, digitised only because an intern scanned the wrong folder. It was barely legible, the ink smudged, the script leaning between copper plate and panic. Attached was a folded map, hand-sketched, the paper crumpled and stained with oil.

The author identified himself, as Dr. Thaddeus Knox Royal Arctic Surveyor 1847 Except there was no Knox in any expedition roster no mention in whaling logs

Naval Commission, nothing the man didn't exist in official records yet here he was sketching out coastlines that shouldn't have been charted until decades later and right in the center of the

Amid sigils, inked in careful spirals and crosshatched patterns, was a mark. Umbra Transitio, shadow crossing. Beneath it, Knox had scrawled a note. The gradient holds, the white king endures. None of us knew what that meant. Did we even want to? But when Amara overlaid the coordinates onto modern charts, The result was chillingly precise.

It matched the stretch of flatsy ice we'd flown over a dozen times. Featureless, empty, nothing but wind-scoured snow and pressure ridges. I asked the obvious question. If this place is just ice, why mark it at all? Amara didn't look up from a laptop. Maybe he wanted someone to come back. The next morning we packed light, just emergency gear, food rations and a couple of sled-mounted drones. The plan was simple.

Quick flight out, confirm the site, and if it was a bust, we'd have wasted nothing but fuel. The mood was sharper than usual, though. No one said it out loud, but we all felt it. That sense you get before a storm when the air hangs heavy. Every time I glanced up from my pack, I caught Amara watching me as if she were gauging whether I'd back out. When I stepped outside to secure the equipment cases, I froze. On the horizon, half a mile out, a dark shape sat on the snow. Massive, motionless.

The same bear, the collar gleamed faintly in the dawn light. It didn't move as we loaded gear, nor when we hauled the sleds to the strip. But as the propellers roared to life and the plane nosed upward, I looked down one last time. The bear was still there, unmoving, its head tilted back, eyes fixed on the sky. The coordinates from Nox's map dropped us into what should have been nothing, just flat sea eyes stretching to the horizon, white on white, until sky and ground blurred. From the air, it looked like we were chasing a ghost. But as the plane dipped lower, Amara leaned against the window and swore, there, look at the shadows. I didn't see it at first. Then the sun hit at just the right angle,

and the surface betrayed itself. The ice folded inward in long, concentric ridge. each step curling in on itself like the grooves of a shell. From above the pattern was invisible, a trick of geometry smooth as a billiard table. But if you looked hard enough, the spiral was undeniable. We circled twice to be sure, then found a stretch of flat ice half a kilometer away and brought the plane down on its skis. The engines roar faded into silence, leaving only the groan of wind across the fuselage. We unloaded sleds and gear, then set out on foot across the snow, the spiral drawing us in step by step.

The spiral was not a natural formation. The depression sloped gently downward, circling around a centre point perhaps 50 metres across, and at that heart, reaching through the ice, as though the earth's, itself had grown tired of hiding it, lay a block of stone. Nothing natural to the area, something stranger, black green like oxidized copper, but polished smooth, almost oily. Its surface shed the snow as if it rejected it. Every other patch of ice within sight was frosted over, yet the platform remained bare. A seamless plug set perfectly in the spiral center. We approached cautiously, dragging sleds behind us. The closer we got, the more

wrong it felt. The ice didn't crunch underfoot. It whispered, thin layers shifting, reluctant to carry our weight. The air itself felt heavier, though the instrument showed nothing unusual. Stone like this doesn't exist up here, muttered Lars, a geologist. He knelt, gloved hand brushing the edge where ice met block. This isn't glacial drift. This was brought here, none of us replied. The idea of placement of someone hauling this slab here so long ago was too large to say out loud. We made camp at the edge of the Depression,

tent set against the wind. I tried to write notes that night, but found myself staring at the platform through the fabric of my tent. It looked smaller by day. At night, beneath a shifting green wash of the aurora, it seemed immense, like the spiral wasn't carved around it,

but rather out from it. That was when Amara called softly from outside. The bear was back, It stood on the far side of the depression, higher up on the spiral ridge. Still as a statue, watching us, its brass color caught the aurora's light, gleaming faintly green. I felt my stomach lurch. We had flown nearly 40 miles from the tagging site. Bears often wonder the icy plains, hunting or resting.

For it to be here meant it followed us directly. No rests or stops. It's obvious to say that isn't the normal behavior of a polar bear. It's the same one, Amara whispered. Her breath steamed the cold air. It didn't just find us. It came here on purpose. No one argued.

We all felt it. The bear didn't move or charge. It simply watched, patient as the ice. Then a second shape joined it on the ridge. Another massive silhouette, broad-shouldered, breath misting. Then a third. Silent. Watching.

At camp, the first problem came immediately. Batteries drain faster than they should have. The drone controller lost signal twice, even before we launched. Compass needles jittered like they'd been set on spinning plates. Lars cursed over the instruments, insisting the magnetic anomalies didn't make sense. But none of that scared me, like what a mara spotted just before dusk. Another one, she said, pointing at the ridge. Another bear stood watching us.

This one was larger, his fur mottled with age, muzzle scarred. It didn't even twitch an ear. It just watched. and then 20 minutes later came another that was when unease turned into something sharper polar bears are solitary hunters two together is unusual but that many sitting at a distance like centuries

silent and patient wrong it went against all our collective knowledge of a species we were experts on They're surrounding us, muttered Daniels, voice low like it was afraid the animals might hear. Geez, they're actually surrounding us. I caught myself running numbers in my head. Distance to the plane, distance to the rifles we'd laid by the sleds, the average sprint speed of a polar bear. Every calculation ended badly.

If they wanted a charge, we wouldn't have a chance. But they didn't. They held their ground. Their presence weighed heavily on us. Every time one of us looked up from a task, there would be a white shape at the edge of vision, unmoving, patient. It didn't feel like hunger. It was like we were being herded. To distract ourselves, we pushed ahead with the drone, using what power it had left.

We found a narrow seizure at the spirals' air. a crack that led downward into blackness. The machine dipped inside, its camera casting a cone of light. For a moment, we saw impossible things. Angles folding into themselves, stones shaped but melted, structures that seemed to have been carved or grown. Layers of hexagons fused together in a lattice that looked disturbingly like bone. Then, the feed stuttered.

The last frame froze on something curved, ribbed, too organic for architecture, and the drone went dead. Daniel snapped. He swore, grabbed at the rifles, and declared we needed to leave right then and there. This is insane. So many goddamn polar bears watching us like prison guards. Equipment dying, drones going to hell. I'm not dying out here for some stupid map. Amara didn't flinch.

She just looked at him, her voice calm. They're not stopping us. If they wanted us gone, we'd be gone already. Don't you see? They're leading us somewhere. No one argued. We couldn't. However, their true intentions were still unclear.

That night, none of the bears approached, none charged. They stayed exactly where they were, each on their wrist. bridge outlined against the aurora. But in the morning, when we woke, the snow told a different story. Their tracks circled. The camp. It happened fast.

One second, Lars was edging along the spiral's rim to get a core sample. Next, the ground gave way with a sound like the world tearing open. The snow sagged, then dropped. Two figures vanished into the ground. the white spray, Lars and Daniels. The rest of us lunged for the edge, but it was too late. The crack widened under our weight, forcing us back. Rope, get the ropes! Amara shouted, already on a knees, notting on line to the sled anchor. We peered into the split. It wasn't bottomless, just steep, a funnel sloping down maybe 20

meters, unnervingly smooth, like it had been carved by something other than water or weather, the kind of surface no crampen would bite into. Daniels was already scrambling to his feet, cursing, his parker torn at the shoulder. Lars lay half buried and drifted at the base, clutching his ankle. Not broken, he gasped when we reached him, but it's bad. His face was pale, jaw-tied. A sprain may be worse. He could hobble, but if we needed to move fast, he'd be left behind.

The shaft walls reflected our headlamps strangely, light bouncing too far, as if the ice was deeper, thicker than it had any right to be. We rigged a ballet line and descended one by one. The silence deepened as we went down. By the time my boots hid the floor beside Lard, I realized I could no longer hear the wind, no creek of ice, no groan of shifting snow. The world above us was gone, sealed by silence. It was like stepping into a vacuum.

Amara glanced upward. Sounds should carry down. Why can't we hear anything above? No one answered. We drag Lars to a hollow in the ice, a natural alcove just wide enough for four of us to huddle, a concave wall curving like the inside of a rib. The air was stale, colder than the shaft itself.

It would do for shelter, just enough time to rest, then we'd haul Lars back up in the morning. Daniels sat apart from the rest, staring up at the shaft. Who was watching? he whispered. I turned. What? He looked at me like he regretted speaking, but the words kept spilling. When you guys descended, before the snow closed, I looked up.

One of them was at the rim, the collared one. He didn't move, just stood there, looking down. And then, I asked, Daniel swallowed. Then it walked away. No one spoke after that. We lit the stove, made tea, tried to ignore the way the alcove walls glittered with frost. The glow of the flame cast strange shadows,

stretching them into angles that didn't belong. Lars grown quietly, ankle packed in snow to keep the swelling down. Sleep became thin and uneasy. When I woke in the dim light of my head, headlamp, I noticed it first. The alcove wasn't the same shape. The black wall had shifted. A jagged crack split down its center, just wide enough to fit a hand. And through it, blackness yawned, a tunnel. The crack widened as we chipped at it with axes, each blow echoing dull inside the alcove.

The ice fractured reluctantly, shearing in long vertical strips until, with a final snap, part of the wall gave way. A hollow space opened beyond, dark as a throat. None of us spoke. We simply looked at each other,

then clipped headlamps to our huts, and went in. The tunnel was narrow enough that we brushed both walls with our shoulders. Its surface wasn't natural eyes. At first I thought it had been carved, but the grooves weren't the marks of tools. They ran smooth, symmetrical, curling in arcs that defied any Mason's hand. The whole passage curved slowly downward, every angle just a degree off true.

It made my head swim if I stared too long, like walking inside the geometry that wanted to slip out of comprehension. We hadn't gone ten metres before Daniels bent and picked a boot sole from the frost. Its leather had gone stiff with age, the nails at its heel hand forged. A little farther on, we found the rest of it, collapsed into powder at his touch. Soon there were more. Rusted chisels, a split pickaxe with a handle wrapped in strips of hide, a scattering of cloth fragments that might once have been bare pelts.

none of it seemed dumped or discarded. It was arranged along the walls in a deliberate, curated order, as if left intentionally. Knox, Amara murmured. Her voice was flat, as if naming him, explained, and condemned the scene all at once. The passage opened into the first chamber. I had to stop in the threshold and catch my breath. The space wasn't large. but it was dense.

Stacked in precise rows with slabs of the same black green stone we'd seen in the spiral above. Each was the size of a coffin lid that surfaces smooth, polished. No carving off words or images, but arranged. One leaned against another

at a subtle tilt, another rotated a degree off centre, a third propped diagonally across them both. It was deliberate, architectural thoughts expressed without language. Lars ran a hand over one, muttering about mineral composites, but I barely heard him. The arrangement gave the impression of meaning,

like someone had been trying to think in stone, to hold onto an idea too large for words. We moved on, unsettled. The next chamber was worse. It appeared to have been hollowed directly from a single mass of glacial, Asia ice, a dome that gleamed like glass beneath our headlamps. But the light didn't behave properly. Instead of scattering evenly, it bent, walked and converged to points as if the walls were

prisms, beams curved along arcs, overlapping in ways that created after images in the eye. When I blinked, I still saw the room glowing. Daniels muttered. feels like we're walking inside a lens. We pressed deeper. The air grew colder with each step, unlike the kind of cold we knew. This was layered, dense, a cold that filled the lungs until every breath dragged heavy.

My eyelashes frosted, our clothes stiffened with rhyme. The silence deepened until I could hear the throb of my own pulse, in my ears. The tunnel curved one final time and widened into a chamber so vast my headlamp beam vanished into the dark before I could find the far wall.

The air was different here. Stiller, denser. Every breath crystallized in my throat. It felt less like we had descended into a cave than into a vault. A pocket sealed away for a millennia by the shifting bones of the earth and natural cryosync, locked by tectonics and pressure, untouched until now.

And at its heart, pressed against the front edge of the ice wall, was a hand. Not human. It dwarfed us, larger than a skidoo. Each finger longer as a body, each nail a curved ridge of horn worn smooth by unimaginable time. The skin was pale, leached of color, ridged with pressure cracks that splintered through the ice. The edges of the hand blurred back into shadow, swallowed by depth, as though the rest of whatever owned it stretched far beyond the walls we could see. We never saw the hole, only the hand. That was enough.

The ice around it was different from the rest, solid, no bulb-and, or pockets of air, wet, veined with trickles that gleamed under our lights. Drops ran slowly down the fissures, beading on the chamber floor. The glacier was holding, but only just. Daniel swore softly. His voice broke the hush like glass dropped in a church. The closer we stepped, the clearer had became that people had been here before. The floor was littered with remnants.

splintered scaffolding half-encazed in rhyme, the bent frames of lanterns, the skeleton of an old tripod drill. Some of the gear was modern, corroded aluminium, battery housings warped with cold, but others were older, chisels, timber braces, and a cracked oil lamp with a crest of the Royal Society. Amara crouched by a rusted brace, running her glove across the corroded metal. Different expeditions, she said quietly. Different sentries. Near the base of the ice wall, half buried in frost, was a brass plate, green with corrosion. We scraped it clear enough to read.

The letters have been punched deep, uneven but still legible. It is not dead. It is cold. The earth must not thaw. I stared at the world. until my eyes blurred, until the cold sank into my bones. My mind kept circling the same thought. What kind of thing needs to be kept cold?

A sudden noise snapped me back. A soft crackle, wet and sharp. The ice beneath the hand had fissured further, a black seam running like a wound. From it leaks something darker than water, thick frost spreading upward, staining the chamber wall in chagued. ragged black veins.

It's moving, Daniels whispered. It isn't, Amara shut back, but a voice wavered. I took a step closer against all instinct. I couldn't see movement, but I could feel it, a heaviness radiating from the thing beyond the ice, no vibration or sound, just presence. Amara had gone silent, She was kneeling by the side wall, brushing frost away with a mitt.

When I joined her, I saw what she uncovered. More collars. The same brass collars we had seen on the bear. Row after row of them, embedded deliberately in the ice, stacked like bricks in a wall. Each one etched with spirals, each frozen into place, as if hammered into the glacier itself. It was Amara who found the satchel.

Half-rotted leather wedged between a fallen scaffold, brittle straps fused with ice. She cut it free and started searching for answers on top of the piling questions. Inside were notebooks, their pages warped and blurred by centuries of frost. Alongside them, a spool of microfilm cartridges sealed in wax, the kind used in the early 20th century for long-term archives. We passed them carefully between us, reading by headlamp glow. The words were fractured, sentences lost the smears of mould, but the fragments that remained were enough.

Not a god, but inversion. The hand of reversal, the undoing of order. It must not warm, it must not wake. Each journal circled the same truth. The thing locked in the glacier wasn't alive in any sense we understood. It was a force given shape, a presence that gnawed at the fabric of structure itself. It wasn't creation nor destruction. Reversal.

And always the bears. They weren't predators or accidents of nature, but guardians that defied nature. The collars were brands binding them to the task, a duty impressed upon them, passed down in ways no science could explain. They've been here since Knox, Amara whispered, holding one of the journals close to the glow of the headlamp. Maybe longer. Daniel shook his head. That's not possible. Bears don't live a century.

They do, Amara said, though. her voice shook. These do. It's why they don't attack. It's why they wait. They've outlasted every expedition, every storm, every year since this place was sealed.

They're still keeping watch. The thought chilled me more than the air ever could. The same colored sentinel we tranquilized, alive when Knox carved his notes in 1847, alive now, leading us here. I thought of the, collar bear we tagged, how it hadn't resisted, how it seemed almost expectant. Was it even sedated when we tried to tag it, or was it just pretending?

The spiral depression too was explained, not in clear language, but in implication. It wasn't a law, no is it some mystical sigil meant to invite discovery. It was a warning mark, carved into the ice, to be seen only from the ground. ground, a sign that said, here lies a lock, tend to it. The bears could guard, they could lead, but they couldn't repair. For that, hands were needed, human hands. I felt the weight of that realization settled in my chest. We weren't trespasses here, nor did we discover something.

We'd been summoned to a duty, long abandoned. They brought us, I whispered before I even realized I'd spoken. The others looked at me, uncertain. They could have killed us a dozen times over, I went on. But they didn't. They drove us here. Every time they pushed us closer, because they can't do it themselves. But someone has to.

The silence that followed was heavier than the cold. Each of us looked back toward the wall with a colossal house. and pressed against the thinning ice, its blurred outline stretching into blackness. The frost beneath it cracked again, a bead of water running down like sweat. No one needed to say what we all felt, that this place had been tended once and then abandoned, that the guardians had endured without their stewards, that duty had lapsed. Amara closed the notebook, her gloves trembling. If this fails, she said, if the ice goes, it isn't just us that dies.

No one disagreed. We had seen enough. None of us said it, but the silence between us carried the decision. Lars could barely put weight on his ankle. Daniels wouldn't stop shaking, and I felt a sickness in my bones that went deeper than cold. We had to leave. We packed the journals. the satchel and a handful of collars chipped from the wall.

But then came the sound. A crack, sharp, splitting, echoing through the vault like thunder under ice. I turned. The fissure beneath the enormous hand had widened further, where skin pressed against thinning of frost, a patch had broken fully free. For the first time, a fraction of the flesh of the thing was exposed.

It wasn't dead flesh like we'd hoped. The pale skin shimmered with a slick translucence, veins pulsing faintly like trapped rivers. Steam rose in slow curls. And from that tiny breach, the chamber began to change. Black frost raised up the chamber wall, crawling across scaffolds, shattering metal into flakes.

One of the journals curled in on itself, pages crumbling to powder as if centuries had passed in seconds. We panicked, scrambling ropes, dragging lars, shouting over each other, until Amara stopped us. Wait, she held one of the notebooks open, her breath fogging the page. Look! Scroll diagrams filled the margins, sketches of ice rigs, annotations in Knox's sharp script. Layers, barriers, freeze, retreat, repeat.

Words blurred, but the meaning was plain enough. They had fought this same fight before. They didn't just leave, Amara said. They sealed it again and again. We can too. We tore through the remnants, gathering anything that could help. Rusted drills, fractured piping, frozen tanks of long-spent chemicals. useless, but beneath the scaffolding we found something stranger.

A cluster of iron cylinders, thick walled, capped with brass fittings. Ice-hauling tanks. Primitive refrigeration gear, the kind expeditions once used a store harvested ice. The seals were warped but intact. When Amara pried one open, a draft of air hissed out so sharp it crystallized, on a glove. Even after all this time, the old technology still bit with cold. It wasn't much, but with what we had left in our packs, fuel, coolant, a working pump, it was enough. The plan was insane. We threaded the hose across the fissure, primed the pump, and fed our last reserves

of fuel into the engine. Melted snow sloshed through the line, spraying in a thither thin sheet across the crack. Immediately, we opened the antique tanks, forcing their breath of ancient frost over the surface. The effect was violent. Water seized the brittle ice almost on contact, a skin spreading jaggedly across the wound to force a new layer of cold. All the while, I saw the colors of life returning to the once dead exposed flesh.

the behemoth straining to grasp onto what little freedom it was allowed. I could see moisture beading on its ridges, drops pattering against the floor like falling stones. Where they struck, the ice sagged and bled black. We worked until our gloves stiffened, until our lashes frozen shut, until Lars collapsed against the wall, whimpering through clenched teeth.

And slowly, unbelievably, A new layer formed, thin, brittle, translucent as glass, but a layer all the same. The chamber quieted, the black frost halted, trapped beneath the skin we had forced into place. The hand loomed, blurred once more behind a veil of ice. None of us spoke. We knew it wouldn't last. hours, days, a season at most, but not forever. That was when we saw that the way back was blocked. At the mouth of the shaft, bear stood shoulder to shoulder, silent and unmoving,

their colors gleaming with frost, a living wall of white. Daniels raised his rifle, hands shaking. We're not getting out of here. he whispered. But they didn't advance. Their posture was docile. They simply waited. It was an aggression.

It was an expectation. Amara's breath hitched. They want one of us to stay. The words landed like stones. We all felt the truth of them. This place had been abandoned as human stewards had vanished. their duty broken. The bears had guided us here, not to witness, but to decide.

Lars tried to stand. His bad ankle gave way, and he crumpled again, cursing. Daniels pressed the rifle harder into his shoulder, teeth bared. I'm not dying here. I looked at Amara. She was already watching me, calm despite the tears freezing on her cheeks. I'll do it, she said simply. No, I started.

But the bear shifted, their massive bodies leaning just enough to block the shaft further. Their silence was deafening. The Mara touched my arm. You'll go back, you'll tell them, maybe they'll listen. There was nothing to say. We hugged through the stiffness of our suits. Lars clutched the hand with both of his. his lips trembling too hard for words.

Daniels turned away, shoulders heaving. When we moved, the bears parted, just enough for three to pass. I looked back once, just once. Amara stood at the base of the ice wall, headlamp beam casting her shadow against the colossal hand. She raised the collar in both hands and pressed it to the frozen surface, as if completing a circle. The bears stayed with her, and we climbed.

We didn't look back as we climbed out of the spiral. None of us could bear to. The silence was crushing enough. No last words. Just the hiss of our own breathing in our masks, the creak of rope, and the endless white above. By the time we reached the surface, a storm had begun to close in.

The crater blurred in drifting snow, the black-green platform already half-buried, as if the world itself wanted to erase what we had seen. The bear still waited on the rim, a silent guard of honour. The plane took us south, Amara remained behind, sealed in that vault of ice with her impossible duty. The weight of it pressed on me more than any silence could. We completed our original mission. and returned to command. The debriefing was tense, back in a windless room

that smelled of coffee and stale air. Lars gave his account, Daniels gave his. I followed, words tumbling out as if on autopilot. We said Amara had been lost in a crevasse collapse. Conditions made recovery impossible.

She was MIA, unrecoverable. Tragic, but not unprecedented. During the debriefing, I had the words in my throat. I imagined standing in that sterile room and telling them everything. The hand, the vault, the collars, Amara standing sentinel at the base of the ice wall. Her warning, if the ice goes, it isn't just us that dies here.

But I didn't. Not because I was afraid they wouldn't believe me. because I was afraid they would and they'd come back with drills and charges and cameras and the lock would fail I signed my name on the dotted line ink scratching a cross paper

and with that the truth was buried deeper than the white king itself I didn't want it that way but I was scared it was better a single name marked lost than the whole world undone.

Months past, the routine came back. Field work, reports, assignments. I told myself I was fine that she had chosen her path and all I could do was honour it by keeping quiet. But guilt doesn't soften with time. It hardens, sharpens until every quiet moment cuts. I couldn't shake the memory of it. her last words. You'll go back, you'll tell them, maybe they'll listen. I didn't, not yet.

Winter returned, and with it another mission. Not the same sight, but the same latitudes, same ice, same silence, same endless sky. The Arctic doesn't change, it only waits. One night, hold up in a weather-tube-tube-time. while the wind clawed at the canvas. I found myself staring at the shortwave set we'd brought for contact. Its dial gleamed faintly in the lamplight, the metal pitted from years of use. I hadn't touched that frequency since the day we left her,

but my hands moved before I could stop them. I tuned the dial slowly and deliberately to the numbers we'd used in our previous mission. Static roared, then thinned, then, hello? Her voice, crackling, faint, distant as if dragged across miles of frozen air, but hers. My throat locked. Amara, are you, are you okay? There was a long pause, the hiss of static filled the tent, the wind outside shrieking in chorus.

Finally, her voice came back, thin but steady. I'm here. I pressed my hand to my forehead, dizzy with relief. How are you surviving? Food, heat. Another pause, longer this time. The bears provide. I stared at the radio.

So many questions swam through my head. I wanted to ask what that meant, what they brought her. what bargain had been struck, but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I asked, And the seal, the fissure? Static swallowed half a reply, but I caught the words that mattered. It's holding.

For now, the signal crackled, faded. I twisted the dial desperately, searching for again, but only Static answered. I sat in the dark long after the wind died, her voice circling my head like the spiral in the ice. It's holding. For now.