CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 3+ Hours of CHILLING r/Nosleep Horror Stories to push your last braincell into oblivion

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00 "I have been caring for an old soldier with a secret past. Here's his story" Creepypasta►17:00 "My village was ravaged during a war, but it wasn't due to any human army" Creepypasta►46:07 "An Army is Gathering on The Dark Side of The Moon" Creepypasta►1:06:17 "All I Want For Christmas..." Creepypasta►1:19:56 "The Christmas Krampus" Creepypasta►1:54:38 "If you find a VHS tape from 'Ғылыми қондырғы', destroy it" Creepypasta►2:11:55 "My mother uncovered some Hungarian ruins that were used for disturbing reasons" Creepypasta►2:39:13 "I've been stalking a monster called 'The Wheel'. It's unlike anything I've ever seen" CreepypastaCreepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY►Peter Ocampo: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Nx...SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪-This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only-

I was born into a middle-class family and had a comfortable upbringing. I did well at school and saw a bright future for myself, definitely involving a university, probably after a gap year spent abroad. I was shy around girls, but in my heart of heart knew this was change. Shortly before my 18th birthday, this future was torn from me. I don't remember the weeks before my nervous breakdown. I'd messed up a couple of exams and was spending more and more. time on my own in my room.

But then, that blank in my memory cuts in, until one morning where I walked into the breakfast room. My parents were there, and my dad asked me a question. When I replied, it was like my voice came from somewhere distant. The edit of my life

then had another bit missing, because the next thing I remember was that I was in an ambulance. I was struggling, being held down. My dad was next to me, tears running down his face. I'd never seen my dad cry before and that image is still one of the clearest to this day many years later

The ambulance brought me to a mental health unit Where I was sanctioned Looking back I've always been grateful for the care I received And know how lucky I was There are a lot of people who don't have the safety net of healthcare And a family with a time and resources to support them So yes, over time I came out of the other side of a horrible illness

and was able to restart my life. It was not the same though. I was in my mid-twenties by this point and my confidence was very low. I did start a university degree, but soon dropped out. The thought of travelling made me feel panicky. I just wasn't up to it.

Maybe, just maybe. It was then I might have slipped backwards. I was once more withdrawing into myself than one of my parents' friends. I had very few of my own age, suggested voluntary work. A few weeks later, I was visiting a home for the elderly on Monday and Thursday afternoons and chatting to the residents. That was all, and I loved it. As one season drifted onto the next, I started helping out in the kitchen as well.

Shortly after, I began evening classes. I took and passed basic modules that could have led toward qualification as a social worker. I did not need these to fulfill my growing ambition of finding a paid job as a carer, but it was all part of me building myself back up of becoming a person I once again liked and trusted. I turned 30, beginning a probationary period in the sprawling care home for the elderly on the edge of my hometown. It was here. I met John. He was in his 70s and physically sprightly.

My tasks kept me busy, but. I was determined to always make time to sit and talk to the individuals I was helping look after, even if that meant starting early or staying late. I also moved into my own apartment for the first time in my life. My parents divorced not long afterwards and both moved away. I think I understood, though I had rarely thought up to that point of the toll my illness must have taken on them and their marriage. I felt sad that they were no longer close and immersed myself in my own. even more in my work.

It continued to be rewarding, and I got to know the residents better, John in particular. At times he seemed to bristled with frustration. I often found him sitting with his fist clenched and locking into the distance that it struck me, only he could see. On other occasions, though, he was chatty, and I found out as the months passed that he was an army veteran, a widower, though he and his wife had never been blessed with children, as he phrased it. I asked him once which conflict he had fought in, and he simply shook his head and would not talk to me for the rest of the day. I wouldn't have pressed anyway, and felt bad at even raising the subject.

So I was especially pleased the next day when he said my name as I passed by on the way to fetch some clean towels. I paused, smiled. He looked me in the eye and asked in a cold. quiet voice. Have you seen a ghost? I sat in the chair next to his. I was troubled by his question, not because of any concerns over supernatural matters. The existence of ghosts was neither here nor there as far as I was concerned, but because John had always been very down to earth up until then. I wondered if this was an early sign of illness. I chose my words carefully. I... I... haven't. Why do you ask? His face was set in a serious expression and his blue eyes clear when he

answered, because I have. Then he exclaimed, ha, and slapped his knee. I knew it. I knew you'd think I was losing my mind if I told you. And look at your face. It's as clear as clear could be. I'm sorry, I said, genuinely meaning this. I hated the way some of the other staff patronised the residents, sometimes even making fun of their foibles and weaknesses behind their backs. I felt I had just treated John without respect. A hand on heart, I went on, I've never believed in ghosts, but I want to believe you. He sat back in his chair. I guessed he was deciding if he could trust me. Finally, he said, I want to show you something.

He reached into the inside pocket of the waistcoat he was wearing. I haven't mentioned up to now, but John was a dab-looking gentleman as well, and produced a battered-looking silver cigarette lighter. He held it up so I could see it clearly and told me. The ghost I saw left this by my bed this morning. I scratched my head, and after a moment said, How about I go broke some coffee, and drew my break anyway, and we settle down and you start from the beginning. How long you got? he asked. I replied,

as long as you need. Ten minutes later, the steam of our coffees rising into the air, John began to explain. I was not in the army that you see marching in parades or having medals pinned to their chest, though I salute those brave men and women. No, I was in an army that operates in the shadows. Even if I was allowed to, after all these years, and believe me when I say that I am not, I could not tell you where my last tour of duty took place.

It was hot as hell and somewhere where every damn insect had a taste for blood, and do not even know whether we were sent there as part of a legal war. More likely it was a squabble over minerals or borders or whose face fitted in the presidential palace. We did out of duty though. The unit I was a part of, and I trusted every one of those men with my life. And I was seriously mad.

We all were. when new troops were flown in to join us. There were dozens of them, all strangers, all tight-lipped. It was one of those men whose ghosts I have seen. He reached out to raise his coffee cup to his lips. His hand was steady, his voice calm as he went on. We saw action within hours of them joining us, a nighttime assault on an enemy stronghold.

The dozen newcomers were ordered to lead the attack. We were to follow, and I thank the Lord that we were held back, because no sooner had they breached the building, and it was ripped apart by an explosion. It was a goddamn trap. But he survived? The man you think you've seen here? I asked.

Have seen? He snapped. I get my voice steady as I could. He survived, and now he is here, and you've seen him. Sometimes the work can seem a small place. He shook his head. No. No one could have survived that.

I know. I was there and saw it with my own eyes. So how? I began to say. He cut me off. None of us boys were happy to have the newcomers with us, but I knew it would be best if we could become buddies, so I lent one of them my lighter just before they went in.

I assumed it was lost, melted in the pocket of a corpse. Until this morning. It was around 5.30 a.m. and dawn had just begun to scrape away at the darkness, when I heard movement outside, with nothing but trees on the doorstep here, and wondered if it was a bear looking for scraps. I lay still and waited, and it was then I saw him. The man I had given my lighter to, the man who had entered that building and been incinerated. He came closer and put the lighter on the windowsill.

Then he backed away, and the last thing I saw was him retreating into the cover of the trees. the ghost bringing back my lighter after all these years he closed his fingers over the lighter they were twisted with arthritis and I knew he could not wear his wedding band because of this but he held that lighter firm and when I looked up at him I saw that tears were running down his face we sat in silence

eventually John took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes then said I have to find him will you help me in my heart I knew what my answer would be straight away there was a fine summer's day

and there was nothing unusual about a resident going for an unaccompanied walk so I fetched John's jacket from the room and we set off now I had no idea where to begin but as we made a way

into the woods at first following narrow but well-treaded paths I realized John did. After a short while, we left anything resembling a path. I was constantly pushing back branches that were catching in my face. John was quietly focused. Are you tracking him? I asked.

He waved at me to be quiet. I decided not to argue. The soldier that John had been was clearly back in charge. I had lost track of time when we reached the clearing in the woods. The ground was littered with gasoline cans, empty tins, crates and cigarette ends. A little further and we passed the Jeep, its army green paint was cracked and disappearing beneath rust.

Then I saw the wall of a building, a squat, crude construction. John turned and placed a finger to his lips. He need not have worried. I was so unhaged by this point, I could barely breathe, let alone speak. He crept forwards. I fell into step behind him.

A door hung up his hinges around the far side of the building. John stepped inside. I wished he hadn't and really did not want to go in as well. I did not want to be on my own more. So, I followed him. It was dark, musty smelling, and I could see nothing, not even John, until there was a click and a flame appeared from the lighter. John was right next to me

and a few feet to our left was a hideously injured man His skin was red, raw In places it was simply not there Scraps of a uniform clung to his ravaged body His fingers were stumps They looked like what remains of a candle When it's almost burned out He cowered from us in the flickering light

My mouth was dry The blood in my veins felt like it had turned to ice I thought at any moment my legs would buckle and I would fall. Pure fear had possessed me. By my side, John slowly raised his arm and saluted. The man stared at him. His eyes shone and I realized that he was crying. John walked forward, knelt and put his hand on the man's shoulder.

So this was his ghost. The man looked at me and said, Who's the civilian? A friend, John answered, much to my relief. My nerves were still screaming at me to flee, but I needed to stay, to try and understand, to listen as the man spoke.

My name is Michael. I was a sergeant, part of a small band of men who had volunteered for a top secret program. We were each given a series of injections, without a word of explanation of what we were being given, or what it would do to us, then shipped out to join up with a unit already on the ground and sent into action.

It was a nightmare, as the enemy position fell in flames around us. Our flesh caught fire and the blinding pain began. I crawled out on my hands and knees and lay there, still burning. I should have been dead. There was no question. But I dragged myself to my feet and began to walk away. And it was then I started to start to. to understand. The injections had turned me into something that was more than human, and less than human. I had been turned into a soldier who could not be killed, a man who could not die.

He began to cry again, and I saw that he had no eyelids, saw the shiver of pain passed through his body, even from the gentle progress of tears against his damaged flesh the nerves exposed beneath. John spoke to him His words too quiet for me to hear Before Michael composed himself And he was able to go on The others never came back They had slipped away before they could be rounded up

They must even now roam the distant jungle Named demons perhaps by those who have glimpsed them I was brought here and locked away At first men came to study me And then others cruel, hard-faced people who took pleasure in taunting me. Finally, they too

drifted away. There is only me now. He lifted his face, looked at me and said, Once I was the future. Now, I am a forgotten past. I moved to his side.

I did not know what to say to this man, this old soldier. Come on, John said, and got to his feet. I don't want to to take any chances, they might come back. Let's get away from here. He helped Michael to stand and the two of them headed for the door. Wait, I said, I'm coming with you.

That was a decade ago. The place we found deep within the woods to build a shelter remained hidden and we passed our days untroubled by the outside world. But there is no reason now to keep hiding. No reason why. I cannot reveal the truth. This morning, I carried Michael out of the shelter. He had increasingly needed to rely my care,

and I'd gladly devoted myself to his. We passed the simple wooden cross-marking where we buried John two winters ago. He died peacefully in his sleep after a short illness. We were by his side. Michael was too weak to walk or speak, but I saw him lift his head as we passed the cross and mouth a silent farewell.

We went deeper into the woods before I laid him on the ground. Leaves drifted down as I dug a shallow grave and placed him in it. He smiled at me as I covered him with a dark, fertile soil.

Then I walked away. The earth will take him now, make his ever restless remains part of its cycle. Of rebirth. earth. Here, your new mittens are done. These others serve you well after yesterday's snowstorm left the entire countryside covered

in snow. You'll have to bundle up well if you want to go play outside." My aunt as sister said, right after she finished knitting me a pair of mittens. Knitting clothes had been a speciality for as long as I could remember. I'll never forget the time she grabbed a pile of spare wall and crafted an adorable sheep costume for me to wear in our village's Madagra costume party. In fact, knitting clothes and selling them on commission or at the village's market was one of our family's main sources of income.

And by our family, I only mean my older sister and I, since we were the only ones that were left, being 19 and 9 years old respectively. During its great extent, our household had consisted of five people. My father, my mother, my older brother, my older sister and I, the youngest child and second daughter, and I would see it gradually shrink before my eyes across my nine years of continued existence. My mother was the first one to go. My father and her attempted to bring another child into the world when I was only two, but something went wrong in the process, causing her to fall terribly ill and pass away a few weeks afterwards. My father was the next one.

He left home when I was seven years old, alongside a large number of other men, as our emperor had called them all to go to Russia, and he never came back. Lastly, my 16-year-old brother had left us only a few months ago. Not unlike my father, he had also been called by our emperor. Only this time, it was to join him on a daring campaign to defend our country from an impending invasion by a coalition of other nations we were at war with. So, I bundled up by putting on my new pair of mittens, as well as a thick and fluffy fur coat that covered my entire body

from the top of my shoulders to the end of my legs. And lastly, a long-wollen scarf which my sister had also knitted for me in the past that I wrapped around my head, covering it as well as my ears and neck. After getting properly dressed to face the low temperatures, I joyfully said goodbye to my sister and stepped outside my house,

ready to spend the chilly December afternoon having fun in my snow-coated, humble little village, took away at the edge of a relatively dense and remote forest. I loved playing and roaming around my village and its surroundings, especially now that the first snowfalls had arrived and had blanketed everything in a dense layer of white snow that made the environment twice as beautiful. My favourite place to spend my leisure time in

was the forest right beside the village. It had such a magical feeling to it, a bustling sea of towering trees teeming with life, wonder, beauty, and endless possibilities for fun and adventure, practically begging to be explored from top to bottom by children such as myself. I happily roamed the woods playing in the snow, trying to count how many wild animals such as hares or birds I could spot

and skipping around while pretending to be a fairy. After about an hour of aimlessly roaming around and enjoy myself in a plethora of different ways, I eventually decided to follow a narrow trail that I had never explored before and that had led me deeper and deeper into the forest until I stumbled upon something that left me puzzled. It was a tunnel.

A man made one made out of stone bricks and concrete. What was a tunnel doing in the middle of a forest? It was about 15 metres long. The other end of the tunnel could barely be seen from where I was standing in, but the space in between the two extremes was shrouded in darkness. It didn't seem to lead anywhere, as the only thing that could be seen on the other side as just more woodland.

According to my grandpa, the ruin should be nearby, said an echoing voice as I was still perplexingly staring at the mysterious tunnel and theorising about its reason for existing. It sounded like the voice was coming from inside the tunnel itself. The voice from the tunnel was soon joined by the sound of continuous footsteps and other murmuring voices that were getting increasingly louder and clearer

with each passing second. It was clear that the sound of the sound of the rest of the same thing. It was clear that people from the tunnel were getting closer. Three silhouettes emerged from the shadowy tunnel. They appeared to be children. Two boys and a girl, to be exact. All of them looked to be about the same age as me. But as the mysterious kids and I simultaneously and silently stared at each other for a few seconds,

I couldn't help but notice several details about them that felt rather off, mainly concerning their appearance, and the clothes they wore. I recognised their outfits as winter gear, coats, scarves, hats and gloves. However, the material and textures and overall design of their clothes were unlike any I had ever seen. Is that a girl? One of the boys whispered to the other two kids under his breath, as I quietly stared at them from a few feet away without moving a muscle.

Yeah, I think so. What's she doing here, though? and what's I deal with her weird clothes? The other boy replied. I don't know, maybe we should talk to her, the girl of the group suggested. It was then when I noticed yet another oddity, the way they spoke.

I could understand them well enough to recognise their language as my own and hold a conversation with them with relative ease. But still, their mannerisms and vocabulary contained several words and expressions that were completely foreign to me. Hi, are you lost? The girl said to me, taking a step forward and waving with a gloved hands at me.

Hello, no, I live in a nearby village and I visit this forest quite frequently, as a matter of fact. I uttered back, thinking it through for a couple of seconds. Excuse me, but has anyone in your village ever heard about fashion? No offence, but you kind of look like an old lady with that antiquated fur coat you're wearing. and that oversized scarf he got wrapped around your head. Have you ever posted a picture of yourself dressed like this to social media? Because you would gain quite a few followers for sure, one of the boys exclaimed.

I wanted to reply, but ultimately decided to keep silent after processing what the boy had said and realizing I'd only understood the part where he had called me an old lady and had made fun of my clothes. But as for the rest of things that had left his lips, I hadn't understood a thing.

social media posting pictures of myself gaining followers what in the world was he talking about who were those kids where'd they come from come on guys don't be so rude it's okay i think you look great i'm emily and these are lewis and mathis do you want to be our friend the girl comforted me and she put a hand on my shoulder i'm juliet i introduced myself and accepted emily's friendship proposal as odd as they were there weren't many children my age I could play with at the village so it was nice to finally have someone I could spend my afternoons with I came back home later that evening feeling quite rejoiced

as my new friends and I had had plenty of fun playing in the forest as odd as I had initially found them to be they turned out to be pretty nice once I actually got to know them so much so that we had accorded to meet the following day at the same spot we first found each other

that ominous tunnel they had come from in the middle of the woods. But, right when I approached our bed, as my sister and I slept together in the same large bed that had once belonged to her parents, I noticed an odd piece of paper under the pillow, which I identified as a note upon closer inspection. Be wary of those who have slipped through the tunnel of time, for they are potential sources of chaos

that will be put down without mercy if necessary. Signed, tunnel keepers. the note read. What are you reading, Juliet? My sister asked upon entering our room. A note I've just found under the pillow, I replied. A note? Has our brother finally sent us correspondence from the front?

My sister asked again, briefly letting out a smile of pure joy at the thoughts of hearing from my brother for the first time in months. I shook my head and her expression briefly changed to one of disappointment before morphing back into one of intrigue.

It's not from her brother. It's from some strangers who apparently called themselves the tunnel keepers. Here, you should see it for yourself. Should I be worried? I said to her before handing her had the note. The tunnel keepers. I honestly have no idea who these people could be. I'll look into it tomorrow, Juliet.

But now it's time to go to bed. It's pretty late already. Good night. My sister replied after reading the note, seemingly sweeping it under the rug rather quickly, as she fell asleep in less than ten minutes of laying in bed. But I certainly didn't. As the thought of that note,

its mystery and its implications persistently refused to leave my mind and let me sleep. Could those so-called tunnel-keepers be related to the mysterious tunnel I'd come across in the middle of the woods? Could they be related to Emily, Lewis and Mathis? I was unsure of the latter, but their name made their connection with the tunnel from the forest seem almost obvious. Still, it was clear I couldn't come to any substantial conclusions just yet,

as I needed more information in order to be able to formulate valid hypothesis. After spending the whole morning in the villagers' market selling pieces of cloth alongside my sister, and after having lunch, I headed to the forest in order to meet Emily, Lewis and Mathis, just as we had accorded the previous day. But with the added feeling of lingering uneasiness, product, of the ominous note I had found in my bed. This, only present disturbance, only increased

once I came across a fallen tree right in the middle of the narrow pathway that led to the tunnel, actively blocking my path, which was odd, since it was the only tree that had fallen among the dozens of trees that surrounded that narrow trail, and the other trees did not show any signs of damage either.

Only that one tree, which just so happened to have fallen in the right position, so as to represent an opposite, in my path to the tunnel. I stared at the fallen tree and thought about it for a few seconds. But then I remembered Emily,

Lewis and Mathis were waiting for me. So I kept the memory of the fallen tree in the back of my mind, jaunt over it and pressed on towards the tunnel. Juliet, we're over here! I heard Emily, Lewis and Mathis excitedly shout from right outside the tunnel.

Hello again. What game do you want to play today? I joyfully asked as I approached them. Actually, We wanted to do the thing that we wanted to do when we came here yesterday, but we never ended up doing because we found you and forgot about it. You see, we originally came to the forest because we were looking for the ruins of an abandoned village that several grown-ups we know have told us about.

According to the local stories, the village used to be located somewhere near these woods. Some people speculate that his residents abandoned it due to a war, but no one really knows for sure what happened to it, Emily explained. An abandoned village near the woods. forest? How come I've never heard of it before? The village I live in is located right next to the woods, but it's not abandoned. I live there. My sister lives there and over 200 people live there. I can show it to you if you want, I said. And thus, Emily, Lewis and Mathis and I headed to my village, bypassing the mysterious fallen tree along the way. To say they were impressed by the village

would be a severe understatement. They followed me across the village. all the while carrying facial expressions of complete wonder as they fixedly stared at everything around them. And they weren't the only ones, as practically every villager we'd pass by would also stare at my friends with the same fascination. Noticing this, I decided to discreetly lead them to my house and let them clothes that had once belonged to my older sister and older brother back when they had been my age, in order for them to not draw as much attention to themselves. Oh, by the way, I also wanted to show you this. I found it under my pillow yesterday. I told them, as I showed them that weird note from the previous day, written by those so-called

tunnel keepers. These tunnel keepers, I bet they're related to that tunnel in the forest, Lewis said. Well, duh, I'm more worried about the people they talk about, the ones who slip through the tunnel of time as they put it. I think they're talking about us three, Mathis replied, as Lewis and Emily started to get visibly worried. But what do these creepy strangers want from us? I'm getting scared, guys. Maybe we should go home already. It's almost in the time, Emily suggested.

Everyone unanimously agreed. And so, Emily, Lewis and Mathis left my home and village and headed back into the woods where they had come from, as I was left alone to think about the mystery of the tunnel keepers for a short while before my sister finally arrived home from the village's market. As my sister and I were getting ready to have dinner, I found a small familiar piece of paper randomly laying on the floor right under the table. My heart rate started to go up as I slowly approached it and picked it up, just as I was dreading. Another note.

You led the sources of chaos in, and now you've become a source of chaos yourself. Therefore, we'll proceed to what must be done. We'll make sure those who you've recently sent home shall not cross the tunnel alive. signed tunnel keepers wait juliet where are you going don't you want to eat dinner my sister asked in confusion as I frantically bundled up and rushed outside it was a shame because my sister had made fried onion for dinner and I loved onion I loved onion fried in oil because it tasted good I'm fine I'll be back in a moment I promise I exclaimed to her before I sprinted to the forest determined to help my friends and save them from whoever those tunnelkeepers were. Juliet, Juliet! Emily shouted as she ran towards me.

Her eyes soaked in tears. Emily, what happened? Where are Lewis and Mathis? I worryingly asked, noticing her despair. We were about to enter the tunnel and go home, but then a group of monsters came out of it and Hannah ran, but Lewis and Mathis didn't react quick enough

and they ate them. The tunnelkeepers, they jumped at them and swallowed them both right in front of me. They're coming. They're coming for us, Juliet. Emily uttered in between sobs as she broke into tears. It didn't take long before I spotted them in the distance. There are at least 20 of them. They elongated bodies swiftly dragging themselves across the forest, while staying low to the ground with the help of a pair of long, thin extremities that spotted two huge claws each. A pair of pointed protuberances on their heads looked to be their ears. As for their faces, they had two bright,

glowing yellow eyes and nothing else. They seem to have no mouths or nose to speak of. Emily and I rushed back to the village as the tunnel keepers crawled towards us. They seemed to be slower than us, allowing us to reach the village with a slight time margin we could use to warn everybody. But they kept pursuing us relentlessly nonetheless. Monsters! Monsters! Help! Emily and I shouted across the street.

The commotion caught the attention of the village's small garrison of Imperial troops. which came to us to find out the cause behind our sudden warnings. They're coming to the village, we're in danger, we need to hide, I nervously told the soldiers. Easy there, kid, who's coming? An enemy army? Is it the Russians or the Prussians or the Austrians, perhaps? I need more information, young lady. The garrison's captain replied, they're not humans, they're monsters, big, scary and dangerous monsters. I'm telling the truth, I swear. I clarified, feeling so tense, I could almost feel my blood boiling inside my veins. The captain responded with a silent and smug-smirk, clearly not taking my words seriously,

but he admitted he had nothing to lose for playing along, so I convinced him to pull out a spyglass and check the forest out from a distance. His facial expression of mockery instantly turned into one of utter shock and horror once he spotted the horde of timekeepers emerging from the woods. My god, I can hardly believe it, but I'm afraid the kid is somehow or right, we need to tell all villages to dig in and prepare themselves for an attack. I have no idea what in the world those disgusting creatures could possibly be, but we must have courage and defend our people. We'll gather in the main gate and deny them entry to the village by all means necessary.

Understood? Now go, long with France, long with the emperor. The captain exclaimed, as he rallied his small force of 50 soldiers, mostly made up of young conscripts, much like my older brother. They were almost certainly just as terrified as Emily and I were. and rushed to the village's main gate to intercept the tunnel keepers. The garrison outnumbered the monsters and did not hesitate to unceasingly shoot volley after volley of musket balls and grenades at them. But they seemed to inflict no significant damage,

as the creatures aggressively pounced at the line of troops, catching 15 soldiers at once and consuming them by slowly and painfully absorbing them, as if the creature's enormous bodies and skin suddenly lost consistency and solidity and became something akin to quicksand, swallowing their poor victim's hole as they screamed and helplessly struggled to liberate themselves. To no avail. Their desperate cries for help being abruptly silenced

as they vanished into the tunnel keeper's stomachs in a matter of seconds. Never to be seen again. Upon witnessing their comrades' demise, the garrison captain immediately ordered a retreat as his line disintegrated into a chaotic mob of horrified and traumatized young men fleeing for their lives.

The tunnel keepers swept through each street one by one, effortlessly crushing the few brave souls who were dared to make a stand behind the numerous improvised and extremely rudimentary barricades scattered throughout the village. Most villagers, including Emily, my sister and I, gathered at the village's square and hid inside the church. The square was, by far, the most well-defended area of the village, with a line of trenches reinforced by wooden fences and parapets made out of piled up sandbags. Among the defenders were most of the village's adult male population, alongside what remained of the imperial garrison, including its captain. Despite literally throwing away the lives for our village, the defenders only managed to hold the line for less than two minutes before the trenches were overrun,

and most defenders were consumed by the tunnelkeepers, as the women, children, and the battered remnants of the force that attempted to defend the trenches could do nothing but cower inside the church, which the tunnelkeepers besieged as they climbed up its walls like spiders and shattered its windows. As a last resort to preserve the village's most valuable lives it was agreed to evacuate all the children

through the church's back door as every man and woman that could hold a gun would make a final stand to distract the tunnelkeepers and buy enough time for the children to escape safely. Don't cry my little sister I'll always be watching over you as long as he never forget about me right dear my sister confided me as we gave each other one last hug with our faces soaked in tears i love you i shouted at her as emily and i left the church and my sister picked up a musket laying on the floor and armed herself like the other adults preparing to sacrifice themselves and engage the tunnelkeepers head on

the tunnel we need to get to the tunnel and cross through it emily said as we both ran into the woods i briefly looked back at the village only to to find a pair of tunnel keepers had abandoned their peers and were now chasing us across the forest of full speed. Run faster! I exclaimed to Emily as we approached the infamous tunnel. We entered the tunnel without a second thought with the tunnelkeepers on our heels. It was so dark I couldn't see a thing. Not the other end of the tunnel. Not Emily running right beside me. Not the tunnel keepers pursuing us.

Nothing. It was all pitch black. but I could still hear everything very clearly. Emily's footsteps and heavy breathing as well as my own. And of course, the tunnel keeper's heavy footsteps that intensely reverberated across the tunnel's walls and ceiling. I could hear them getting closer and closer and closer. Then, Emily screamed as the sound of her footsteps

in coordination with mine abruptly ceased. It happened so fast I didn't have time to fully process it. so I kept running, exhausted as I was, without slowing down, without locking back. I needed to reach the exit of that hellish tunnel or die trying. As I desperately gassed for air and dropped to my knees after finally having reached the other end of the tunnel, I was overwhelmed by a sudden and uncomfortable silence. The tunnel keepers that had been chasing me so relentlessly did not come out of the tunnel to continue to pursue me and vanished without a trace.

The distant screams coming from the village had also ceased. Everything had mysteriously stopped. I was suddenly all alone in the middle of the woods, surrounded by nature, peace and quiet. That didn't really make me feel peaceful at all. After spending a considerable amount of time, thinking about what I should do, I ultimately decided to head back to the village, in hopes of finding any survivors and finding my older sister specifically. Instead, the sight I was met with upon reaching the place I used to call home

left me with such a feeling of inner emptiness and devastation. I can hardly put it into words. But, to put it simply, that place was not a village anymore. An extremely deteriorated wall or two, as well as the outline of the foundations, barely visible in the ground, was all that remained of most houses, with some having completely collapsed and having become nothing more than a pile of rubble. The pavement on the streets had been buried under several layers of mud, moss and weeds,

and the town's square and church had been almost entirely taken over by brambles and bushes. Was that a dirty, withered musket hidden behind the tall grass? With those bones and skulls scattered inside the overgrown derelict church? Was that a pine tree surrounded by debris and a couple crumbling walls growing in the same exact place my house used to be? It was apparent that tunnel keepers alone could not have been responsible for the village's current state. It did not look like a village that had been raided and deserted less than an hour prior.

It looked like a village that had been completely abandoned, forgotten and rotting away for a really, really long time, to the point that it had been enveloped by vegetation and assimilated into the forest itself. I aimlessly trudged down a long road I had come across after exiting the woods and what was left in my old village. Traumatized, fatigued, cold and homeless,

as tears poured down my eyes like waterfalls and my teeth began to chatter due to being exposed to the frigid winter air out in the open in the middle of the night. I was suddenly blinded by an intense light that emanated from a pair of glowing orbs belonging to a creature that advanced towards me at an alarming speed.

At first I thought the tunnel keepers were back. but I was wrong. That thing was an entirely different being I had never seen before. It emitted a constant roaring noise as it rolled down the road with wheels similar to that of a carriage, but it moved autonomously

without being pulled by any horses or any animal whatsoever. It also seemed to constantly release an odd gas of some kind. My brain instructed me to run away, but my body had already been physically and psychologically pushed to its absolute limit. I couldn't

take it anymore, so I responded to the new threat by dropping to the ground and losing consciousness. When I woke up, I was no longer in the same place I'd fainted in, no longer in the middle of the road out in the open, but indoors, laying on a bed, inside a room mostly painted white, and filled with all sorts of strange appliances I did not recognize. Oh, you're awake. Hello, how are you feeling? said a young woman wearing a white coat as she walked into the room. I did not answer her. Instead, I just silently stared at her, raising an eyebrow and confusion.

It's all right, sweetheart. You're in a hospital, and I'm the nurse that's been assigned to take care of you. My name's Anne. It's wonderful to meet you. A truck driver brought you here. He said he found you alone in the middle of the road, and that he nearly ran you over. Thankfully, he was able to react in time and hit the brakes at the last second.

But you fainted right afterwards. So he decided to collect you and bring you here. You've been unconscious for about two hours. Why don't you tell me a bit about yourself? What's your name? Where are you from? Is there any grown-up you know and trust we can reach out to? The nurse said, after noticing how lost I was. My name's Juliet.

And I have no clue where I'm from. I used to know it, but that was a very long time ago. My home is gone. my family's gone my friends are gone everything i've ever known is gone i don't feel like talking about it right now i faintly and sobbingly uttered using what little energy and willpower i had left i see don't worry juliet you're tired and cold but you can take all the time to recover you need i'm here for you and replied in a cooing motherly tone before she wrapped me in a blanket and started feeding me a hot bowl of soup What followed was several minutes of silence, during which Anne fed me a spoonful of soup after another, as I curled up to her, swaddled from top to bottom in a bulky white blanket. Neither of us saying a word. My mind was too busy processing all I had been through that day to talk. The more I remembered, the soggy my eyes got, and the harder it got to contain my urge to burst into tears.

It's completely all right, dear. You can cry all you want. don't hold back and gently whispered to me. It was then when I let everything out and I cried on a lap like I had never cried before as she wrapped her arms around my torso in a long, confident embrace for what felt like ages. I cried for my sister, for my village, for Emily, Lewis and Mathis. I cried because they had also died 200 years ago and they were never going to come back. I cried because the tunnel keepers had taken everything.

from me. A lot has happened since I first crossed the tunnel, a faithful evening of 1813, and emerged in 2013. I've since grown into a teenager that's more or less gotten accustomed to the modern world. I've gotten a new home, a new

family, new friends, the chance to go to school, to learn foreign languages, and to dream of someday going to college and becoming a historian. All thanks to Anne, who I now have the joy to call my adoptive mother. But still, Still, the feeling of dread has never fully disappeared.

I'm aware the tunnel keepers have not gone away. I can still feel them. I can feel the nightmares and hear the villagers screams every time I go to sleep. I know they still see me as a source of chaos that has slipped through the tunnel of time. Because deep down, I know that's what I am, and I know they'll come for me. Restoring order is their duty. It's just a matter of time before I find the next note

under the pillow. After all, they have all the time in the world. I don't think it's any surprise to learn that the government lies to us all on a regular basis and probably about something new

every day. I've been thinking more and more lately about the fact that I'm now part of one of those lies, a lie that stares down at earth every night, from 384,000 kilometres away. They say we never returned to the moon,

that we never went back after leaving the service nearly 50 years ago. Hell, some people don't think we ever got up here at all. But really, we've been living up here for quite a while, watching you from above. As far as everyone knows, Apollo 17 was the last mission to the moon. It broke all sorts of official records. The longest spacewalk, the longest lunar landing, and the largest samples ever return to Earth. The most lunar orbits, 75, and the most time orbiting the moon over six days.

The crew returned after all that effort to find that nobody really seemed to care all that much anymore about space travel. They had other things of their mind. The moon landings, NASA, and the heroism of astronauts were suddenly old news. It was like after all the time spent trying to get to, there, people had suddenly become bored of hearing about the place. Of course, there was another problem as well. There had been too many accidents, too many disasters. It was getting to be too risky to visit our orbiting neighbour, or to send astronauts into space at all.

Capitalising on this indifference, the shadow government began planning for a different sort of lunar operation, one that would set up a base in secret on the surface of the moon, in a subterranean layer that could not be spotted by telescopes from Earth. It would operate in secrecy and would serve as a spy operation and a bunker in the event of total annihilation on Earth. It was the era of the Cold War after all.

The top secret moon base was stocked with the supplies and two men and two women were chosen as the team for each annual rotation. To serve as a contingency plan should all else fail on Earth. Generations of us have served now, up here on the moon. When the Cold War ended,

everybody thought it would be over, that the base would be abandoned. But the powers that be kept it going, citing the position of the doomsday clock still so precariously close to midnight. Up here, we rotate every year so that nobody dies of radiation poisoning, cancer or bone deficiencies.

Still, we're all taking a decade or more off of our lifespans just by living up here. We do it though. It's just part of the job Who else can claim to have been to outer space To have touched the surface of the moon To have lived here I couldn't turn down the opportunity

I tell you one thing You can't beat that view from the surface Earth really does Just look like a shiny blue rock from up here So small and insignificant You can't help but feel awed Humbold We don't go out on the surface very often

only on rare special occasions to take samples or to do experiments. That's why it startled me so badly when I woke up and found the bunker empty. Brian, Jess, Sarah, I called out after removing my earplugs. I could never sleep without them. Anybody? No one answered. It's not like the place was very big. There was nowhere for them to really hide, but all three of them were gone.

their space suits too. It was obvious they had left, but it just didn't make sense. There was no spacewalk scheduled for today, I thought to myself. The risks of going out on the surface could not be understated. We went out there sparingly, often staying inside for weeks at a time, and we never went out altogether, only in teams of two. That way, if something happened, the mission could still continue. We were walking, talking,

living contingency plans for each other, and for all of mankind. We weren't permitted to take risks. I called Homebase, but there was no response. It was like the connection had been severed. All I was getting was fuzzy, blaring static. There wasn't much else I could do, but sit and wait for them to come back.

There was plenty of food and water at least, so I wouldn't starve, but I couldn't say the same for them. It didn't look like they'd taken anything with them. No food, water, nothing. Days passed by, and my mind wondered aimlessly, thinking of all the possibilities. Cut off from Earth, I had no idea if the worst had happened down there as well. A global catastrophe of some kind that resulted in a communication disruption crossed my mind.

EMPs, nuclear bombs, plagues, floods, global warming, bloody zombies, even the rapture. All of these things ran through my mind as I paced the small living quarters. I just remained there, waiting and waiting, unsure what would happen. The resupply mission that would also relieve us from our duties was several months away, and who knew if they would even show up now? I had no way of knowing what was going on or what news I had missed. As the days turned to weeks, I came to grips with the ones.

the fact that I was truly and completely alone in every way. No crew and no communications. On a life raft by myself, far out in the never-ending ocean of space. I was too scared to go outside, so I just waited and waited, terrified. Alone on a rock, hundreds of thousands of miles from home. It was deathly silent in the Hab Unit, except for the sound of my own breathing as I paced and ate rations, slept, drank and waited endlessly. Then, suddenly, as I was fast asleep, the communications array started back up again.

Lights began to glow red and green, yellow and blue, and alarms began to sound as the systems woke up from their long slumber, and I arose with them, blinking my eyes in disbelief. And then, something even more impossible happened. The air-like door alarm sounded. someone was entering the HAB unit and not just one person there were three of them all my crewmates were miraculously back

weeks after they had left the crew that I had written off as dead came into the airlock from outside they marched inside with stiff movements as if they were very cold and waited for the room to depressurize the faces were blank and expressionless as they came into the habitation area a few minutes later

Now, out of their suits, they remained silent and said nothing to me as I stared at them. My blood turned cold in my veins, as I saw their eyes were completely black now. I spoke to Sarah, my partner, first. Overcome with emotion, I didn't even really think about the utter impossibility of it all, all the strange changes that had affected them. They shouldn't have been alive. I had already determined it was impossible. They brought no provisions with them after all.

Three days without water up here and you're done for, seven days without food, but they'd been gone for weeks with neither one. The thing is, when you've been alone like that for so long, you lose track of everything. All you feel is loneliness, and you desperately crave any sort of human contact, as essentially as air, water of food. Nothing else mattered when I saw them, especially Sarah. I embraced her fiercely, holding her so tightly I worried from her. moment, I'd perhaps hurt her with my bear hug. She did not hug me back, but instead felt cold and limp in my arms. She just stared at me, her eyes blank, looking through me at some place far distant.

Sarah? I shook her and held her face in my hands. My heartbeat was pounding in my jugular faster and faster. The first thing I noticed was that she was cold. frigid like ice when I touched her What's wrong with her? I asked My face looking back and forth between Brian and Jess

Hoping desperately for an answer My face is stared back at me Just as blankly Seeming not to see me But to look right through me Where have you been? I've been here by myself for weeks I couldn't get a hold of anyone back home And I didn't know what the hell was going on

I was weeping as I spoke overcome with emotions. Bryant's pale face snapped around to look at me. Like an eel, he looks slippery and pale, a thin sheen of sweat clinging to his skin in fine droplets. We are sorry for that, he said robotically. We have found something outside. You must come to examine it with us.

You must hear the sound it made for us. So, that was it, I thought. Now I had at least something to go on. there had been some noise that had driven them out there like the sirens in Homer's Odyssey. No wonder I'd been unaffected by it. I always slept with earplugs, while the rest of them had been exposed to it. There's no sound on the moon though, so it would have to come over the radio. I imagine the scene vividly in my mind. The whole crew fast asleep,

when a sound suddenly crackled over the speakers in the comm system. A frequency from some other species had perhaps been calling to them. And to me, only I'd miss the transmission due to my sound-dampening headphones. What if I don't want to hear the sound, Brian? I asked as he roughly took hold of my arm and they marched me towards the airlock. The song of darkness is for everyone. You will find it soothing, he said, his voice cold and distant. I didn't like the same.

sound of that one bit. I began to struggle and fight against them, but it was no use. Brian's grip on my arm was like a steel vice and there was no breaking free from it. They forced me into a spacesuit and marched me out the doors and up to the surface, cramming me into the back of our moon rover. We were soon off driving and I was left in the silent, lonely void of my own spacesuit. The voice crackled to life in my ear and began to speak. I realized it was Brian talking once more, as if he was their spokesperson. You must see what we have seen. All will see, but we are fortunate enough to be a louder glimpse of what is to come before all the others.

And what is that, Brian? What am I going to see? And what is it going to do to me? He hesitated momentarily, but then spoke again. Not to me this time. Chignu-hatzifat, he said flatly, or something like that. Dirk fig regas-speck. Whatever language they were now speaking, I had never heard anything like it before. They said a few more things back and forth, and then was silent for a very long time as we drove and drove for what felt like ours.

If not for my terror, I might have drifted off, but I didn't care, knowing essentially well that our air supplies would only last for so. long out there. I tried to breathe sparingly and savored every breath. Finally, the moon rover turned down a steep embankment and we were rolling down a hill toward the entrance of what looked like some kind of natural cave. It was a black hole in the moon rock which gaped open like a mouth as we drove towards it. It seemed to open wider as we approached and then everything became dark as we entered the cavern on the surface of the moon. We stopped inside the blackness of the tunnel and I saw eyes were staring at us from the darkness. They reflected like purple mirrors in the dim space.

The others had gotten out of the vehicle now and I could see them in the dim light of the cave, bowing before the things with the purple eyes. A voice spoke suddenly in my ear and I could hear it clearly through the radio. It sounded like broken glass scraping across a chalkboard. You were not among your companions when they came the first time.

Why? I thought about this, and then simply replied with the truth. I woke up and they were gone. I didn't know I was invited to whatever this is. Whispers could be heard in my mind as my former comrade spoke to each other in that strange language once again.

After a few minutes of debate, the voice in my ear like broken glass spoke again. I tried not to scream at the sound of it. We cannot give you the same gift we bestowed upon them. There are forces at work which even we cannot control, and we use them as we are able, but only as they allow. We will, however, grant to you another privilege. What is it? I asked, suddenly becoming even more afraid,

which I hadn't thought possible. We will show you what we are capable of, so that you may never tell your kind what we will do if you resist. You will be a messenger for us. My three former crew members stood up suddenly and began to march towards me in the dark space, grabbing me roughly and pushed me over to stand in front of the largest of the pair of purple eyes. Watch and listen. The creature suddenly began to emit a sound like a purring of a large cat, but then it rose suddenly in pitch until it pierced my ears,

and I felt blood began to dribble from them. My three former friends were suddenly lifted up into the air as the room filled with a dull purple glow, and I saw the things which had affected my crewmates. I finally saw the creatures which were hiding in the cavern on the dark side of the moon. In the dull purple glow of their power, I saw that they were huge jungle.

cats, black like jaguars, but they had many more legs, reminding me of a giant spider mixed with wildcats. The purple eyes reflected back at me as they watched them passively and effortlessly, as my friends hovered and levitated in the air in the middle of the cavern room. Suddenly, the space helmets were lifted off their heads, and I screamed, knowing what would happen to them in the vacuum of space. But nothing did. They breathed the non-agerness.

exist an air and looked quite content, still for a few more moments, as if the creatures had created a little ecosystem with a livable atmosphere in this cavern somehow. Then, Brian's eyes began to weep dark, almost black-looking liquid. It ran down his cheeks and his flesh began to peel and melt from the top of his skull. Skin sloughed off and dropped from him to the floor. His connective tissues seemingly disappearing as his bones and body fell apart from themselves, scattering everywhere as he fell lifelessly to the ground. Jess went next,

her skull suddenly there, and then an instant later, gone, like a piece of fruit that had been left out to rot, viewed and fast forward. She came apart at the seams. The warm vital fluids splashed my suit and covered my visor and gore,

which I wiped away as I screamed, knowing one more person still remained. Sarah, my partner, my lover, my... As I looked into a dead black eyes, she stared back at me, and I thought for an instant I saw a glimmer of some sort of recognition in her eyes, as if maybe for a moment she had remembered her life together. She opened her mouth as if to say something, and then her tongue fell out from her mouth, looking black and dark and dead. Her teeth fell out from her mouth as she

aged a thousand years in an instant and likewise collapsed dead to the floor of the couch. The purple glow went dim, leaving the room almost in blackness once again. I was left alone, staring at the cave full of darkness again, with the purple eyes of terrifying creatures surrounding me on all sides, watching me from the shadows. This is what you will tell your people, back on earth, the voice said in my ear, these are the ones we gave favour to, and look at what we have done to them, to see. set an example to you. Just imagine what we will do to the rest of you.

If you disobey. I backed away, stumbling over rocks as I race toward the moon rover. More of them were coming out from the shadows. Smaller creatures were the same reflective purple eyes. Hundreds of them, thousands, coming out to feast on the fresh meal. Tell your people that we are coming. Tell them they have two children. choices, to listen to our song and submit to us, or to become our minions, or they can become

like these ones are, food to our young. Tell them to choose wisely. I jumped in the moon rover and took off, racing back to the halved unit, locking myself inside. I prayed for rescue, hoping it wasn't too late to get back, to warn everyone. It's been a few months since all this happened. I'm back on earth now and have yet to tell anyone about what I've seen. Until now. As far as my supervisors know, my three crewmates never came back after disappearing. I figured it was easier to leave it that way for the time being. They aren't very open-minded, my supervisors, and I didn't think my boss is as Space Force would understand, or if they would think I spent too many hours in low gravity. After hearing a story like that,

For all I know, they might have been their deaths on me. So, I kept it a secret. I know I'm a coward. But I didn't want to face the consequences, and the best case scenario would have been a cover-up. That would mean shipping me off somewhere. When they want to get rid of somebody, often they'll send them up to some far remote northern radio base

to listen to foreign signals, they say, but mostly just to send them somewhere unpleasant. I don't want that to happen to me. I try to avoid the radio these days. I'm a little afraid of what I might hear playing on it one day soon, so I keep the volume down. And I always sleep with my ear plugs in. I've asked the nurses not to play any holiday music in the ICU.

They tell me that it's a decision from management and that it's out of their control. But an orderly finally took pity on me and brought me some earplugs. Better than nothing, I suppose. At least they make the trembling stop. I'm still too weak to move from the bed. I'll have to tell my story through talk to text.

But first, I have to decide where it begins. Did all this start with the anonymous gift, perfectly wrapped in gold paper and red ribbon, the notes and candle that it contained? Or was it even earlier, when the holiday shopping season began in the more gift shop that I used to manage. We sell knickknacks,

speciality cards and seasonal decorations, jewelry, stuffed animals and scented candles. I'm sure you know the place I mean. Unsurprisingly, the holiday season is the busiest time of year for us. I needed all hands on deck to decorate the shop on the last weekend of October. It could have meant all our jobs if we couldn't get the store numbers into the black, and if I had to be there, then so did my employees.

We were a team, and being part of a team sometimes means you have to give up your Saturday off to come in and hang decorations. We all have to make sacrifices. Still, there was a lot of grumbling among the employees, setting up fake snow in the store window and preparing the collectible ornament display. I reminded them that I was paying a whole dollar more than minimum wage, 8.25 an hour,

and that we had an at-will employment. If they weren't happy in my franchise, they were free to go somewhere else. I hear most of the others pay less, but at least I got things back on track, at least until transportation costs screwed my budget. If you don't believe me, just take a look at shipping costs a year ago compared to now. The only way I was going to make it was if I cut hours and added some nice incentives, like free gift wrapping. I get that being alone in the store is no cakewalk.

look at the long hours that I work and sure wrapping packages perfectly isn't easy but that's what work is you show up and do what you're told why couldn't my employees see that that was when some of them started to call in sick

maliciously I think and against my clear instructions since we were short-staffed no one could be out for any reason I mean I don't offer any health insurance and there's no way they were actually going to see a doctor as if the unexpected illness weren't enough, people actually started to quit.

Good riddance. There were always more where those came from, and it was a good chance to cut away dead weight. I mean, if they weren't even loyal enough to come in when I called, if they couldn't be cheerful for the customers while wrapping gifts, if they couldn't deal with a little cold or some overtime, then they deserved to be jobless, as far as I was concerned. The silliest thing at the time was the reason some of them

gave for quitting. It wasn't what I expected. It wasn't even something I thought about. My employees just didn't want the store to play holiday music anymore. Impossible, I told them. Those songs were what got the customers in the mindset to buy. And besides, I gave them three different CDs to rotate each day. I wasn't being unreasonable. At least one of them gave me a parting gift, even if it was anonymous. At first, it seemed much nicer than the inappropriate words I found carved in the staff bathroom. The gift was a small box wrapped in golden paper and tied with a red ribbon. The wrapping was immaculate.

I'd written up enough people for shoddy wrapping to know the difference, and the gift inside was a candle from my very own store. I didn't recognise the smell or the label, but it came with a tiny card. All I want for Christmas. It read, It's you. That was nice, I thought. A little weird, but nice.

It was about time someone showed a little gratitude to the guy who signed their paycheck. The ex-wife had the kids for the weekend, so I lit the candle, set it on the coffee table in front of me. He did up some dinner in the microwave, and settled into my recliner for a James Bond marathon. Make my wish come true. All I want for Christmas. I recognised store CD music before I began to wonder about where I was or how I got there.

The last thing I remember was the intro to Doc to Know. I must have dozed off. It was hard to breathe. I was paralysed. I couldn't move my arms or legs. I'd been wrapped, mummified in gift paper. I just want you for my own more than you could ever. ever know.

My ears were splitting. I hated loud music. I winced at every high note. I had to make that awful sound stop. But how? I couldn't see. Even squirming like a worm was a huge effort. It made me sweat,

then panic that I wasn't getting enough air. Long before I became a successful franchise manager, I'd been a Boy Scout. We went caving once, and one of the chunky boys got stuck in a tight squeeze. We'd all laughed at his predicament, helpless, wriggling, buttons flying off, even wetting himself in his panic. He should have just skipped a couple twinkies, I remember thinking. But that was then.

It was a lot less funny when it was me who was unable to move with empty lungs and a full bladder. The paper was wrapped so tightly that I could taste it on my tongue. If I forced my neck up and down, I could weaken the stuff a little, but the effort for even such a tiny movement was exhausting. More lyrics played. I don't know how long I kept at it. Soon the CD track started skipping, making me cringe even more. I passed out several times from the effort and the lack of air,

just to wake up shivering in my own urine, sweat and drool. The room was freezing. It must have been hours before I could crinkle the paper enough to breathe properly. Then days before I was able to free my arms and legs by twisting them against the rapping until they blared. When I pulled the gift wrap from my head, it was still totally dark, except for the blinking light of a CD player,

taunting me. As soon as I could move, I smashed it. Overhead, blinding lights came on, and then the music started. I don't want a lot for Christmas. This is all I made. Asking for... It came from everywhere.

There were probably speakers hidden in the walls. I thought my ears would bleed. I wish they would bleed, because that might muffle the sound, at least a little bit. I held onto my ears and took in my surroundings. It was a kind of holiday hellscape. The fake snow on the floor came up to my knees in places, and there were enough plastic trees to fill a shipping container. Cardboard boxes were stacked up to the bare,

concrete ceiling. I don't care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree. In front of the forest of plastic was a small package, wrapped in gold paper, tied with a red ribbon, just like the candle. My fingers shook as I tore into it. Deck the halls, read the anonymous Christmas card inside. Beneath it was a piece of cake, the kind I got for the employee's birth. party parties because it was always on sale. It had gone stale days ago,

but I hadn't eaten in at least that long. My stomach rumbled, and the tiny dessert did nothing to sate my hunger. There's no point in going into the details of all my attempts to escape from that nightmare of a room. It's enough to say that they all failed. The music and ASEE blasted out from all sides. It was so, so cold,

but I couldn't even hear my teeth chattering over the festive songs. In the end, I had improvised clothes from the sword wrapping paper and insulate it with fake snow. I found Santa suits in one of the boxes. Even when I put them on over my ridiculous wrapping paper suit, I still shivered. It took me a long, long time to realize that there was only one way to get more cake.

Deck, the halls. It's not easy to decorate. Christmas trees with shaking fingers. It's even harder when every time an ornament falls or isn't placed properly, a buzzer sounds. Then the music volume goes up and the room gets a little colder.

That's how I figured out that someone was watching me work. A kind of sadistic Santa watching over the trembling elf. More lyrics played. Sure enough when I finished the tree, a slot open in the wall. I ran for it yelling as loud as my horse throat would

permit. A chunk of stale cake flew through the slot, along with a cold cup of coffee that splattered across the floor. It was slammed shut before I could even force my frigid fingers through. I collapsed on the cold concrete. I cried. Two days later, two days of that hellish music, two days of icy work to make the tree absolutely perfect, and this was all I got. One piece of cake and some spilled coffee that had to lick from the concrete like a dog. It was sickening, but I needed liquids. There was a whole room full of trees to go. I'm just gonna keep on waiting underneath the mistletoe.

It was tinsel, ornaments, endless strings of lights, stars, angels, pine cones, candy canes and collectibles. Each time the decorations weren't spaced just so, or I, I wasn't working fast enough. I got it. The buzzer, the increased volume, the blast of cold air. If I really screwed up, the pathetic chunk of cake got even smaller. More lyrics blared. By the end of the first week, I'd finished about half the trees,

and my health and hearing was permanently damaged. Night or day, the music never stopped. The blazing white lights overhead never went out. The cold, noise, and light. made it impossible to sleep until I collapsed from sheer exhaustion. If I slept too long, I'd get the usual punishment.

I'd no way of knowing, but too long seemed to be any longer than several minutes. Then it was back to work. I wasn't getting any nutrients. Each day I became weaker and weaker. It must have taken more than ten days to finish the second set of trees

to my taskmaster's satisfaction. By the time I placed the final star at up the final perfect tree. I could see my breath in clouds around it. My fingers around it looked blue. I wobbled back, waiting for something, anything to happen. But the CD just played on. Like not even the end of the world would stop it.

I... Lost it. I don't remember the next part too well. But when I came to, I was laying in a pile of destruction. Plastic pine needles and smashed ornaments were everywhere. And based on what was around my neck, I tried to hang myself with Christmas lights. It was like whoever had put me here had forgotten about me. The cake and coffee was disgusting, sure, but it had been keeping me alive.

The buzzer didn't sound. The slot didn't open. There was only one explanation. I'd finally been left. To die, what more can I do? All I want for Christmas is you It was several days later when the police kicked in the door to rescue me Apparently the disgruntled ex-employer who kidnapped me

Had been stopped for a routine traffic violation On his way to the abandoned basement where I was being held He had a list of prize And when he realised the cops weren't letting him go for a long time He confessed where I was He hadn't wanted to kill me, he said. He just wanted me to see what it was like. I guess you could call that my own little Christmas miracle.

The nurses tell me that when they dragged me out of there, I was near hypothermia and barely conscious. I wouldn't have lasted a day more. And yet, they tell me I was singing long. Every year around the Christmas holidays, magical things always seem to happen. Some things are marvellous and joyful, like visits from Santa or a snowman coming alive.

Many people say they can feel the Christmas magic in the air or around them. Some things aren't so joyful. Around Christmas every year, kidnappings, murder and suicide rates go up drastically as well. Even when horrid things like this happen, people often feel, yet rarely do they admit, that they still feel the kind of holiday magic behind it, although be it a dark magic. One example comes from a Christmas demon, known as the crampus.

The crampus is well known in countries like Germany and Switzerland for taking naughty children in the dead of Christmas Eve night. Here is one such account. December 6th, 2013. My name is Eli Rockford. I'm currently seven years old as I write this. I confide in this journal, something I can't tell my family because they would never believe me.

I'm often told that I'm very smart for my age because I say and do things that most kids my age don't. But if I tell a strange story, no matter how hard I get them to believe me, my parents and siblings say it's just my imagination. Today I looked out my window into the street by a house and saw a man who looked like a shadow with horns. His eyes glowed orange and seeing him,

him scared me a lot. He was ringing a bunch of bells for something, but I just tried to ignore him and sleep. Then I heard a knock on the door. I went down to see who it was for Mommy and Daddy, but when I got to the door, someone stuck a card through our mail slot and ran off really quickly. The card had a picture of a monster who had bull legs, a tail, and horns on a scary-looking goat head that looked half human. I was so scared that it was the thing.

in the street, but I didn't know what to do. I think I know what it is, but I hope I'm wrong. The bottom of the card said, Gros van Krampus. Daddy says every year, Krampus punishes bad boys and girls on Christmas, but Santa gives good boys and girls toys. So, now I'm not so scared. I always get toys on Christmas, so I must be a good kid. I still didn't tell him about the thing on the street.

December 24th, 2013 My parents will be gone for most of tonight and Christmas morning tomorrow for some stupid work thing they both have. We usually have Christmas at six, but we have to wait for mommy and daddy to get home first. Mom told Brad, my oldest brother, that we would have a babysitter because she didn't trust him to watch all five of us by himself.

Mom often let Brad watch us, but we had broke a lot of things the last couple of things. times we were left alone. So, Mom said she would get Rebecca to watch us. Rebecca came to the house at five. She was very pretty, and Brad couldn't stop staring at her. Mommy and Daddy left a couple of minutes after Rebecca got here. This was the first time Rebecca had watched six kids at the same time before, and I don't think she knew what she was getting herself into. My younger sister, Molly, who's three, threw a tantrum after our parents left. Levi and Garrett, my younger twin brothers, who were both five, started fighting.

Brad talked to Rebecca most of the night, and Rachel spent most of the night in a room. Mom and Dad said we would still get Christmas gifts tomorrow, but we had to wait to open them until they got home. We made hot cocoa, with a cocoa maker his broke, so the hot chocolate burnt our mouths, and we all got candy canes too. Rebecca started to put us the bed at 8 and finally succeeded at 9.30. Even though she was clearly exhausted and frustrated with us, she told us she had fun and that she wouldn't have spent Christmas Eve any other way. I awoke in the dead of night at about 11 to see a crimson moon casting a dim, red glow on the winter snow.

I looked at my bedroom window and saw a red object coming towards her house. fast. It was hard to make out, but it looked like a red sleigh being pulled by reindeer. I instantly recognised this as Santa's sleigh and ran to hide on the stairs and waited for him to come down the chimney anxiously. Out of the window to the right of a fireplace, I saw the sleigh fly overhead and heard many hooves trotting on the roof. I made sure to remain perfectly still and silent as a mouse. I waited for what felt like an eternity while soft footsteps, echoed on the roof above me, getting closer to the chimney. I heard scuffling as ash and dust started falling from the fireplace.

Soon, two black boots landed. Then the rest of jolly old St. Nick came through the fireplace with a bag of toys on his back. Without speaking a word, he went straight to our tree. He took gifts from his bag and scattered them under our little plastic evergreen, then started on the milk and cookies we left for him. I felt that I had held my breath the entire time I was hiding on the stairs. I couldn't believe I was spying on the real Santa Claus in my own home.

Eventually, he made his way over to our stockings and started putting various knick-knacks and candies in our stockings, starting with Molly. When he got to Levi, he took out a small, black rock, and eyed it sadly, before placing it in Levi's stocking. It took me a second to realize that he could, gave Levi coal.

I tried to stifle a laugh to the best of my abilities, but a small squeak escaped my lips anyway. Santa turned around and scanned the room. I remained as still as ever. He turned back to the stockings, this time keeping his back to me, and put a piece of coal in Garrett's stocking too.

He put a candy cane in Brad's stocking, along with a pocket knife. Rachel got a new phone and some Kit Katz. Finally, he moved to my. stocking, which is always the furthest to the right, even though I'm the middle child. He began rummaging through his sack, and I leaned forward excitedly to see what presents I was getting. Santa pulled out a large, jet black piece of coal, and stuffed it into my stocking.

I felt a wave of anger, sadness, and regret all at once. I almost stood up right then to tell off the jolly old elf, but when he turned around, I saw tears in his eyes. He looked as if he was filled with similar emotions as I was, like he didn't want to have to give bad kids call. It was for this reason that I remained quiet as Santa

climbed back up my chimney, got into his sleigh and flew away. I watched out my downstairs window as the slave flew from the roof and into the black abyss of Christmas night. I sat there, still in place for a very long time, pondering

how it could be a better child next year. when I spotted something out of the window again. It looked like the same figure I'd seen before, but this time the sleigh looked as if it was black. I wrote this off as it was really dark outside, except for the moon's red glow. I wondered why Santa would come back. Maybe he forgot something.

Maybe I wasn't naughty, and he was on his way back to fix this mistake. My mind was racing from one thought to another as I began to hype myself up for all my possible Christmas. presence. I stopped watching the window and it began to daydream about the next morning, until hooves on the roof interrupted my thoughts. I heard loud, heavy clacking this time as he got closer to the chimney. Ash began to fall down the chimney, creating her dark cloud around the fireplace, as what I assumed to be Santa began coming down and landed with a loud clash.

My final thought before seeing what came next was, how has no one noticed all of this? through the cloud of thick black ash protruded two large horns with stripes of red and white like those of a candy canes. As the dust settled, the rest of the figure was revealed. His skin was a pale, icy looking blue. His beard was like Santa's, except it was black and came to a point. His nose was long and his face looked grizzled, but more human than I thought. his horns looked like they could touch the ceiling if he jumped

his body looked human in shape but animal in appearance his legs were twisted and ended in hooves like that of a ball he had a long tail his torso was contorted and everything but his face and palms were covered in fur he had broken chains around his wrist and what looked like a heavy red Christmas ornament attached to his tail by another chain his ears were pointed and so were his yellow teeth

teeth. Despite his horrid, outlandish appearance, the most noticeable thing about the creature were its bells that it wore, and the basket on his back that had the limp arm of a child hanging from it. The stories were true, and so is Crampus. I couldn't believe my eyes. I'd seen slays go by, magic reindeer fly overhead, and had even seen Santa Claus himself. But none of that could have prepared me for the beast that is crampus. He moved around the room with such speed that I was caught off guard. This thing looked about eight feet tall without its horns, and with them he towered over everything in our large home.

He made his way to the fireplace and took the coal from Levi's stocking. He rolled it around in his long, bony fingers for a moment, then took the coal from Garrett's stocking, then finally mine. He studied the coal for a moment. A wide smile full of pointy, yellow teeth beamed across his face. Nauty little children, I heard it say in a cold, raspy voice. A shiver ran at my spine as he. It spoke. I was paralysed in both fear and awe at the creature that roamed my living room beneath me.

I thought he was moving towards the tree, but it walked past it and started going down the hallway into, into Levi and Garrett's room. I remember the things my father used to say about it, that he whips bad kids, takes them away, sometimes he eats them, sometimes he shakes them and scares them into being good. All these horrid thoughts and more dance through my head as the monster creeped into the twins' room.

I tried to scream with all my might, but no sound would escape my mouth, as I finally was able to choke out, Levi, Garrett! screams had already filled their room. Levi came running out of his room, screaming his head off as Garrett followed suit. The creature's long, twisted arm reached out from the room and grabbed Garrett's leg, pulling him back into the room.

I stood up from my spot on the stairs and motion for Levi to come to me. Garrett's screams fell silent. The grampus emerged from the room alone. His nose seems shorter now, his face even more deformed now. I gripped Levi's hand tightly and we ran for Brad's room. I wailed on his door again and again, but he wouldn't come out. I would have tried harder to get his attention, but I could hear it coming up the stairs as each hoof hit each step.

I took Levi to the laundry room and told him to hide in the laundry chute. Once he was inside, I began lowing the laundry hamper, so he could get downstairs without confronting the monster. Before he was lowered out of sight, I told Levi to go start the hot cocoa maker because I had a plan. He nodded, and once he got to the bottom, I felt the hamper get lighter as he climbed out. I heard the hoof footsteps getting louder and closer to the laundry room. I began pulling the laundry hamper up and climbed in just as the door was violently flung open, despite the locks on it. The beast licked his lips with his long, skinny tongue, and he slowly approached my trembling

body inside the hamper. I began to bounce myself and rock the hamper. as crampas got closer and closer. The hamper wouldn't fall, no matter how hard I rocked it, and the creature was nearly upon me. I felt its breath on me as it excitedly panted, getting further. I expected its breath to be hot like that other dogs, but instead it felt like the coldest winter chill caressing my skin. I shook the whole hamper as savagely as I could, before it finally budged.

The hamper fell, and before I knew it, I was on the first floor. I crawled out of the chute and ran to the kitchen as the demon rampaged upstairs. As I came into the kitchen, I noticed no signs of my little brother, but I did see that the hot cocoa maker was on. The stomping of the creature upstairs continued, but didn't seem to be near the stairs, so I focused on finding Levi. He wasn't hiding in any cabinets, and he wasn't anywhere in the living room. I decided that he might be in his room,

so I quietly creeped to it slowly but steadily. The twins room was trashed entirely, and Levi wasn't there. There was blood on the wall. I shuddered to think that it once belonged to my baby brother. A small bloody handprint was smeared on the wall by the door. Dread was all that I could feel in that moment. Dread for misbehaving all year. Dread for what had become of my little brother.

And dread for the silence that fell in place of who, stomping around upstairs. I quickly and silently made my way back to the kitchen and took out a large coffee picture of scalding hot cocoa. As I crept out of the kitchen into the living room, I had an ominous feeling of dread as if I were being watched. I could barely see in the dark of the night, and I couldn't locate our light switches.

The only source of light I had was the dim, eerie glow of the lights from the Christmas tree. As I scanned all entrances to the dark, dining room. Something moving caught my eye. The chandelier had began to start swinging as if something had bumped it or hit it. There was a soft thudding that accompanied the squeaking of the rocking corona. As I looked around to make out another vague shape in the glow of the Christmas lights, I saw what bumped the chandelier. The monster was crawling on my ceiling like a large, twisted spider. His arms were bent in excruciating looking ways to grisement. the ceiling and watched me with his eyes that burn like fire.

I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs at the very sight of it, but instead I held my ground. A cool smile spread across the face of the creature who was stalking me. He undug his fingers from the ceiling and landed on the floor in front of me with a thunderous crash, mere inches away from me. This was his mistake. I threw the entire picture of the picture of the world. of burning hot cocoa on his face, and the beast immediately started writhing in agony.

He took his hands off of his face as it began to melt and peel off, the bits of flesh and blood melting away to reveal his horrible skull, with its eyes still in their sockets. It froze for a while, and for a brief moment, I was happily assured and content that the crampus was dead. But then it only started cackling and awful and disturbingly malevolent laugh. It pierced my ears like knives and loomed over me to instill as much fear as it could. It was working. Before my very eyes, the muscles around the creature's skulls started to grow back, and in seconds its new face had formed.

It looked more like a goat with pointy teeth than a human, but you could still partially see it in there. Its beard was still as long as before, but now it looked almost out of place on the demonic beast's head. I turned and ran behind the Christmas tree, avoiding the abominations lanky arms as I ran by. The crampus immediately started coming towards the tree, intent on harming me. I pushed a large plastic evergreen on the monster

and ran back upstairs to find my little brother. I wailed on my other siblings' doors, but no one would wake up, no matter how hard I pounded on their doors. Everyone locks the doors to their room when we go to sleep, so we're not bothered. But the doors are also heavy. and not much sound get through them. I began to shout for Levi as loud as I could, hoping he'd respond.

Then Levi appeared at the top of the stairs. We stared at each other. He looked terrified and sad. I started to walk towards him, when suddenly my baby brother was impaled by the crampus's horns. His body was thrusts up and thrusts around by the savage creature as he convulsed and shook spastically on his horns. I've seen people die in TV before, but watching it in real life is entirely different.

No one should have to go through it. My brother didn't deserve that. No one deserves that. Santa and Christmas are about love and cheer. Crampus made Christmas about hatred and retribution. I watched helplessly while the thing ripped my brother's shaking body from its horns and dropped his lifeless body into the basket on his back. The demon began to strut towards me with malicious intent.

So I ducked into mom and dad's empty room and opened the top right drawer in my dad's dresser. I wasn't told enough to see what I was reaching for, but when I felt it, I pulled out my dad's pistol. I opened the other dresser and had put two bullets into the pistol by the time the creature burst open the door. I shot twice and hit it both times, but it was unfazed by the bullets. The loud noise clearly hurt both our ears and the monster clawed at his ears while squirted screaming in pain. I began to quickly crawl towards the window until something long, thin, tight and slimy gripped my right leg and began pulling me back. I looked behind me to my terror to see the crampus was using its incredibly long tongue to pull me to its mouth full of sharp,

jagged teeth. I began to breathe in and out quicker and quicker and began panicking as my foot got closer to its mouth. I lifted my left leg and kicked it in the face twice. before his tongue finally loosened. Before I could breathe, Crampus picked me up and began shaking me wildly. I kicked him a second time, this time with my right foot, and he flung me into the hallway

where I began limping away. I had reached the end of the hallway when I heard a loud, popping crack sound. Moments before feeling a sharp sting all across my back. I looked back and saw that the holiday devil

had whipped me with a whip like an iron tamer would use. I felt the warm ooze onto my back as a new pain started setting in. I started to limp away to safety when I was picked up by crampers again. His long, cold fingers wrapped from my back and stung my cut even worse. He looked at me right in the eye before lifting me behind him and dropping me onto the birch basket on his back. On the outside of the basket, it looked like he could only fit a couple of kids inside,

but the inside was massive. I fell into a mountain of bodies. There were hundreds or thousands of kids in that one basket piled on each other, not all alive. Where you couldn't see the other kids which made up the trembling ground, you saw only darkness. No sounds could be heard from inside or outside really either. Kids would scream, mutter, shout until their throats clearly hurt, but no sounds came from their mouths. Every time I thought the situation couldn't get any worse, it got way worse. I waited what felt like a millennia to escape, as new kids would fall in and join the confusion

to show how much time passed. Eventually, the crampus reached into the basket and began to pull out another child. His arm became larger as he reached in the basket and stretched out to a panicked girl. I grabbed onto a leg and let myself be carried to salvation. When we were pulled from the basket, I let go of the kid and fell behind Crampus. He didn't notice I escaped. He was too focused on the girl. He looked at the small girl for a second, before biting into a flesh with his large, sharp teeth.

I never knew the kid's name before the creature devoured her, but I owe her my life for helping me escape. I backed away slowly from behind, as Crampus feasted on fellow children at its dinner table. I had no idea where I was now, but it was dark and it was cold. I think it's where the creature lives. After the monster was finished eating, he picked up a small wooden box, opened the top and spat something that glowed a bright green into it. He then took the box over to a rusted dufer that he opened, entered, then left a few minutes later without the box.

He then left the room, leaving the child remains on a large platter and a rusty door to my curiosity. I opened the door to see dozens of more wooden boxes. I also saw many creepy-looking porcelain dolls and other creepy toys. The door behind me closed and I was emerged in total darkness. I got out my phone and used it to barely light my way. I walked past a jack in the box with a scary face. I walked past a baby doll that looked withered and old.

I found a sack doll that looked like a creepy rotted. skeleton too. I thought it was like Santa's rejected toy shop, until I found the word, misfits, smeared in red paint next to a clown with a skull for a head, blue eyes in its sockets,

and big, fleshy hands. I was terrified someone else was caught in that room before. When I got closer to the clown, they jumped towards me and yelled, When I play? I got scared and jumped back as the clown led out a scary laugh.

I heard. scurrying and tiny footsteps of other toys from all around. I started catching the dolls and gingerbread men turning their heads as I ran along the walls, trying to relocate the door. I found another message on the wall. Why can't we die? Was scratched into the wall by something. I wanted nothing more than for this night to end.

When I located the door, I bolted for it as soon as I saw it, but was tripped by a toy soldier with realistic. Stig burns on half of his face. I kicked the tiny hunk of plastic away, moved closer to the door, when a deformed baby doll appeared from the darkness and sank her teeth into my leg. I felt a surge of pain and fell to the ground.

I furiously punched the doll's head repeatedly until it unlocked its tiny teeth from my flesh. The boss and atrocity screwed off as other terrible toys danced around me in the darkness. More and more of them kept popping up and coming out of... out of the boxes, like the one that crampers spat the glowing thing into. The toys began muttering words, but I couldn't make out what they were saying.

The muttering got louder and louder until I understood some of the words. Feel our pain. He killed us, but not entirely. He gobbled me up and spat my soul into a puppet. Kill us, let us die. The things they said were dreadful to say the least. I got up and started to make my way to the door as a doll's chanted more obscene things to me We're going to eat you alive like he ate us

I'm going to rip out your eyes Although they continued to chant None of them came towards me again As I moved around the dark room I saw a small toy skeleton in Santa's clothes With a beard moved by A puppet with many now sticking out of its wooden head Was strung up to the ceiling

Moving and wrestling with its strings I spotted a stool that was pulled up to workbench with tools and a teddy bear on it. The teddy bear had real bear claws sticking from his paws and real human teeth in his mouth. I reasoned that this was Cranfus' demented toy shop and decided to leave before he was too late. I walked past the bench to the door and started pulling on the rusty metal handle. The door was extremely heavy but slowly budged and started opening as I pulled back with all my mind. light. Light began to bathe the room and the misfit toys dashed to the shadows to avoid the light. I ran from the dark room, closed the door behind me and leaned on it for a while to catch my bearings.

I looked around at the only other room in this place that was familiar to me. I went by the long table the monster ate the nameless girl at, trying not to think about it, trying to think of something else. Anything to distract me from the horrors I've bared witness to on the most unsuspecting and happiest time of year. I walked to an open door and poked only half my head out to scan the perimeter of the room. It led to a large room that had various whips, sores and other torture devices. I crept in and kept to the wall. I spotted three dark wooden doors amongst the darkness and concrete walls. I also found a window and the snow outside was falling so slowly, so peacefully. Two doors were on one

large wall opposite of the window, and the other was on the wall to the right of the window. I first tried one of the doors on the long wall, but it decided beforehand to go to the door on the right of the window, thinking it would leave me closer to a door out or something. The walls were lined with racks, and the racks were lined with hellish masks. Some had horns, some had long serpent tongue sticking out, some had teeth, some had patches of skin, some had antlers. One was a weird skull with antlers. and the antlers had lit candles on them.

It was so strange. The room was so large. The other door led to the same room. I left without moving the door in fear that closing the heavy door would create noise and would lead the creature to me. I walked alongside the wall to avoid the equipment straight to the only door I had left.

I opened the door slowly and with caution. The first thing in the room I noticed was a strange tree that looked like an upside-down purple Christmas tree. The trunk was on the bottom, but the pines and branches looked upside down. The tree was decorated with red and green lights and small bones. There was another window in this room,

but it was on the same side as the last. It was an open doorway that led to a hallway that teed off and two signs labelled the directions. The right one said, surveillance room, and the left one said, stables. I went to the stables, thinking I might be able to find a reindeer to fly out of this place with. It seems like a silly plan now in hindsight. I opened the stable doors, and awful

smells invaded my nostrils immediately. There was frost on the floor as well. There were eight stables lined up along the wall to the right, each with demonic reindeer heads sticking out. Below each head was the door to the stall, each with pendants of names in them. I read the names out loud as I started down the row. Each reindeer was grotesque in their own right. One or two had exposed skulls. Each had jagged teeth. Some had manes and others had dried blood on their fur.

Seven other eyes glowed red. Slasher, I said as I passed the first one. Wrathful, Gorgon, putrid, Cyclops. Cyclops was missing one fiery eye. Rabies, goner. The last monstrous reindeer looked like a hellish Rudolph. His head held flames that dance from its gnarled snout to the back of its main, between its sharpened bloody antlers, furiously flicked bolts of electricity.

Blitzkrieg. I decided riding one was out of the question and began searching for an exit. I realized the only door to the room was the one I came from. I looked all over the room, looking for some other way out, and saw the reason for the cold. The top crease and upper part of one of the walls was missing, and thereed outside. It was far too high to reach. I left the stable room and went into the surveillance room.

The handle felt icy cold as I slowly opened the door. The room, like all the rest, was large. One wall was covered with monitors. The bottom middle monitor stuck out more than the rest and had a keyboard below it. The chair was also pulled up to it. Each screen had various kits on it, some in dreadful conditions, others minding their own business. No sound came from the monitors, but I started to notice. I was hearing a ticking noise.

A clock above the door I came in read, 5.45. Christmas Day didn't start in my house until 6 o'clock. The opposite of the monitors had many names scratched into it. I wondered if the dead girl's name was scratched into the wall, a door that read Ered Eighty-O'clock. a door that red exit was to the right of the monitors but the computer said search name I sat in a large chair

and typed in Garrett Rockford A nutcracker that had two bodies attached from the size of his head popped up Each body seemed to be trying to yank away from the other Its face looked like he was in pain And it had the same colour of eyes as Levi And Garrett

I looked up Levi Rockford and the same thing popped up. I sat, frozen in awe for a moment. Tears filled my eyes and ran down my cheeks. The ticking of the clock seemed to turn into clopping as I sobbed. I was crying more than I ever cried before. I cried so hard I began hearing a ringing. Then the chair I was in spun around.

And I was face to face with crampus. He looked menacing and insidiously sinister. His horns were partly covered. in blood, his long fingers looked sharp, and his eyes burned like never before. He waved his long, sharp, bony finger at me, and tisked. Nauty, naughty, he said cruelly and mockingly. He licked my face with his incredibly long tongue, then began to wrap it around my throat. He started constricting his tongue and choking me. I was gurgling and coughing, and struggling did close to nothing. I started feeling weak and weaker as my head heated up and my lungs screened for air.

My vision even started to become blurred. Then I knew if I didn't do something quickly. I was going to die. I punched him in the face with all my might and knocked him back for only a brief moment as his tongue recoiled into his mouth. I utilised my time and ran toward the exit. I felt the ground shake directly behind me as heavy hooves shook the floor violently in their way. I pushed the door open and ran into the freezing cold as my pursuer followed suit.

I ran until I was knee-deep in snow, until a lanky hand gripped me and started dragging me back. The dark sky slowly lit as the sun started to emerge from the bottom horizon. The crampus stopped dragging me. He dropped me and stared briefly at the rising sun. I'll come get you again, he said as he dropped to my legs. and retreated to his lair as I lay in the snow. A silhouetted figure came from a distance. I closed my eyes for what felt like seconds.

But when I opened my eyes, the sun was higher in the sky and the figure was closer. I could make out that he was wearing red. Then I passed out. I opened my eyes to see an outstressed hand with a black mitton on it. He belonged to a fat, bearded man with a silly hat. "'Santa?' I inquired. "'Sh, child,' he said in a soft, soothing voice, "'I'll take you home.'

The next thing I remember was waking up in my bed at home. Wey and Garrett were kidnapped in the middle of the night. I found out from Rebecca, Brad and Molly, who already told her parents and the cops. I tried to tell them what really happened, but no one believed me. They only got mad when I tried to try to. explain it to them. So I gave up on trying to tell them. And that's how I spent my Christmas.

In the basement, right by the washing machine, I have a little cardboard box that I visit whenever I need a break from reality. Collecting offbeat VHS tapes might seem like an offbeat hobby, but I've always taken some amount of pride to marching to the beat of my own drum. After all, there's a section of the population out there that likes to keep it. deadly snakes and poisonous insects as pets, wouldn't say that what I do registers as particularly weird in the grand scope of humanity. I've always thought of my hobby as something harmless I do to take the edge off, as a means of injecting a sense of mystery into my day-to-day life. Yet, as I sit here trying to make sense of the tape I watched this afternoon, my quirky hobby

feels a lot more sinister than it usually does. Weird doesn't even begin to cover it. Shaman tape B1 I bought the tape during one of my eBay shopping sprees months ago but I kept his contents for a special occasion a time when I could really take a break from my regular life that time came this afternoon calling my wife a dog person

would be an understatement just about every ounce of a maternal instinct is laser focused on her two-year-old cocker Betty Laura shows that dog so much of that I occasionally feel like a third wheel in their relationship. My wife also marches to a different drumbeat. Hers just happens to be the beat of an excited sausage tail hitting the kitchen cupboard when lunch is being cooked.

She tolerates my VHS tapes. I tolerate her obsession with the dog. Usually, it works out. Usually. Laura was meant to have a weird dog friends over with their weird dogs for some weird dog socialization party. The whole morning she kept complaining about how Betty has been misbehaving over the past couple of weeks. Her lengthy over-analysing of the dog's behaviour usually doesn't bother me.

But this morning, she decided that I was the reason why the dog doesn't listen to us. Apparently, I've been feeding Betty too many treats and spoiling her. Laura did not take kindly to my suggestion that the dog might just be spoiled from her treating it like a toddler. By the time the weird dog people started to arrive at our house, I was already hidden in the basement. I was still amped up from the argument, but the cool air and the gentle smell of laundry detergent can't be soon enough. Upstairs, strangers were baby talking to animals in horror pictures, but by the time the ancient television flicked on, I was already in my happy place.

I picked out the shaman tape almost instantly. It was as if the words on the labeling really, reached out to me, as if they were taunting me with their mystery. Shaman tape B1. I pushed the tape into the VCR and prepared to see something weird. Blank spots at the start of the tape have always been marks of quality for people with my taste. It means that the tape is not meant for public consumption. It means that we are not the intended audience.

In a media landscape where every bit of content is laser focused on reaching its desired demographic bubble, a VHS tape of something you're not meant to see is worth its weight in gold. The waves of static drifted across the monitor like an infinite digital ocean. I was no longer in a house filled with dogs. I was on a journey to see something forbidden. A lit up stage flashed into existence on the screen. The footage was grainy and mute, suggesting a film reel from the early 20th century. But the man who stood on stage felt timeless.

He wore a tall feathered headdress and a long unkempt beard. In front of him he had a little drum that he would absentmindedly tap from time to time. He wasn't focused on his instrument though. His attention was elsewhere. He was looking directly into the camera. As grainy as the footage was, the shaman's stare was unavoidable. There was a suffering melancholy in his eyes. It was as if he was lying on the same.

scene of a car crash, and was looking up at someone who could help, but decided not to. It felt like we were in the same room. He was gazing deep into my soul. We stared at each other. There was a screen between us, and even beyond that screen, there were decades of technological advancements, but the shaman from the film reel was looking straight into my eyes. For a couple of seconds, we just stood there two men divided by media and time holding uncomfortable eye contact then the shaman

started to sing the tape had been silent until that point and the volume of the television was turned down to a whisper but I heard the shaman song loud and clear a steady low drone came from the depths of the man's throat and echoed through my skull his hands started to tap against the drum and rhythm.

This is why I watched these tapes. For a moment, I was elsewhere. For a moment, I wasn't in a house filled with dogs. I was in an empty auditorium, staring off with a sad mystic. I was somewhere weird. But then the barking started. A short burst of growls escalated into frantic yelling. Something was happening upstairs.

I wasn't in the air. midst of a mystic experience anymore. I was just some dude watching a VHS tape beneath a weird dog party. Ryan! My wife yelled from upstairs. Ryan, come here. What is it? I yelled back.

Ryan, come upstairs. It's serious. Begrudgingly, I got off the couch and walked up the stairs. Laura was holding the dog by the collar, scarcely managing to hold her balance under the animal's excitement. Betty's mouth was wide open and her eyes with darting from side to side. The dog was eager to play. She got into a fight, my wife hissed, straddling that fine line between yelling and a whisper. I told you there's something wrong with her. Who's

over-sensitive now? I shrugged. Past the dog-field chatter from their living room, I still heard the shaman's song echoing in my head. I was eager to return to the basement. What do you want me to do. Take her with you so she doesn't start up again and check her for bite marks. We put them off each other right away, but look, just make sure if you see any blood. Call me. She hooked the dog's collar around my hand. The animal was clearly just excited, but my wife looked as if Betty had been diagnosed with something terminal. I'm going to go calm everything down, but we need to deal with this after the party, Ryan. This isn't how a regular dog behaves. Betty needs a therapist. She just seems excited, that's all.

Laura did not find my counter-argument worth responding to. She just stomped off to a weird dog friend. Betty was irritated when I didn't let her follow my wife. But by the time I let the dog into the basement, she was back in good spirits. As soon as she jumped off the stairs, she was running circles around the couch, panting with pent-up excitement. As I made my way down the stairs, however, my attention quickly shifted away from the dog. The flickering screen dimmed everything else in the room.

A small crowd of people in battered clothes stood behind the shaman. They sang some sort of miserable hymn and looked just as tortured as a throating mystic, yet their expression differed in one unavoidable aspect. They weren't watching me. The shaman was, past the screen of my bulky television, past the film grain and the years between,

us. The shaman was looking straight at me. His eyes followed every movement I made down the stairs. In the depths of my soul, I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to understand. He wanted me to comprehend the suffering so clearly painted on his face. I sat down on the couch, ready to be sucked into the mystery of the VHS tape. The rest of the universe fizzled out. I was fully committed to listening to the shaman, to understanding his pain, to indulging in the forbidden tape. But then, Betty jumped on my lap. She sat there for a grand total of half a second, and then leaped back onto the floor, and started racing around the basement like a wild animal.

I tried turning my attention back to the shaman and ignoring the frenzy dog. But when Betty nearly knocked over my television, I knew something had to be done. Betty, I yelled. She didn't listen to me. Instead, she grabbed one of my slippers and jumped around, challenging me to chase her. Betty, I yelled again, this time taking a treat out of my pocket.

The slipper dropped to the floor. In an instant, I had the dog's complete, undivided attention. Please don't be annoying, I said, and threw the bribe. It was one of those rubbery bones that advertised. with a pearly-toothed labrador. Chewing on the treat would occupy her for a good couple of minutes. Satisfied with the dog snoring,

I turn my attention back to the shaman. He continued to hold his low, throaty note and tap his drum, staring deep into my soul. The crowd around him grew. Between the flickers of the screen, as if spliced into the film reel itself, new gaunt faces started to appear

on the stage behind the sovereign mystic. There would always be a moment of shock when they found themselves standing by the shaman, but soon enough they all joined the chorus, accompanying the mystic's performance. Betty was chewing on a dental treat next to me, but the dog snarling was drowned out by the haunting him, bleeding out of my television. I did not understand the words that the chorus sang, but I found myself mouthing along. Adam Ashkashan Kater al-Mai-di.

The room grew even dimmer, dragging all of my focus towards the television. A wave of static washed through my ears like a gust of wind. I found myself shivering. I found myself numb. A damaskashan Kata al-Maidi. A concerned growl came from next to me, but Betty was gone. The world beyond the television was impossible to focus on.

My body was starting to grow faint. The Shaman's eyes were begging me to join him on the screen. Adam Eskoshan Kata al-Maidi. I accepted his invitation. The reality of my basement drifted apart like dying smoke. For a mere moment I felt Bettis paws press into my lap. Before her weight disappeared off my body, she let out a single, anxious bark.

It was as if she was saying goodbye. I found myself standing somewhere incomprehensible. The air was heavy and cold. the universe before me existed in shapeless suggestion. From the blurry outline, I could tell apart the swaying of the shaman and his tired chorus. But there was someone else in the room with me, someone who stood next to me. His mustache was well trimmed and he wore a clean lab coat, but his eyes were just as miserable and piercing as the shaman's. Leave, the scientist said, his voice stretched in a foreign accent.

You do not belong here. leave now or you will be trapped forever leave now or you will forever sing I open my mouth to ask about the nightmare I was stuck in to understand where I was but no words came from my lips the sudden realization that I was not in control of my body hit me like a crumbling brick

I opened my mouth again in an effort to ask for a way out to demand escape from the steadily sharpening image of the shaman and his chorus This time words came from my lips but they weren't the ones I'd intended to vocalise Hadam Eskoshan

Keta al-Maidi I'm sorry friend The scientist said I'm sorry you have to share our curse And then he too Started to sing Before me

I could see the shaman He was no longer in a universe of film grain He was a real man standing in front of me in the flesh. Looking into his pale eyes, I finally understood his sadness. I understood that he was trapped inside of the VHS tape. Adam Eskoshan, Qatar, al-Maidi. I understood that I would be trapped to them until the end of time, singing that horrid song.

Adam Eskoshan, Qatar, Almighty. Thought to the woman that I loved of a dog. of the weird friend she kept. They felt like distant memories from a warm, detergent-centered universe I would never see again. I knew that I would spend the rest of eternity singing words I did not understand

in an inescapable tortured chorus. Madame Eskoshan Keta... Eternity came to a close with a crash. I was back in the basement. Before me stood an overactive cocker spaniel. A little sausage tail was beating against the side of my broken television. The loud crash brought a premature end to the weird dog party.

As soon as my wife saw her fur baby standing in a mess of broken glass, she kicked all of the weird dog friends out and spent the rest of the afternoon checking Betty's paws for shards of glass. She yelled at me for not looking after Betty properly, but my wife's anger didn't last long. She was more concerned about getting her dog behavioural therapy. she checked the annual's pause for the umpteenth time, she decided it was time for Betty to get a trainer. I didn't argue. I was too preoccupied, thinking about what I'd seen on the VCR.

I didn't tell Laura about the tape or the shaman. For starters, I didn't want her questioning my mental state, but I was also still making sense of what happened. That hasn't changed. I'm still trying to comprehend what I've witnessed in the basement. My VHS tapes help me unwind And they give me that glimpse of a bizarre corner of the universe Which I so desperately crave But the footage from this tape

Has been far too much Even as I tap out these words on my screen A shiver travels up my spine At the mere thought of what I had witnessed There's no way that I am ever letting go of my hobby But if I ever come across anything to do With these tapes of my late-night eBay shopping sprees I'll be sure to look for my forbidding kicks elsewhere.

Usually, Betty follows my wife to bed and sleeps at her feet, but tonight my wife sleeps alone. Betty has been obsessively tailing me ever since she tipped over the television. It's like she knows that she saved me from an eternity of misery behind the screen. It's like she's expecting her reward. I give the dog another treat. As soon as the faux bone is in Betty's jowls, she runs to the bedroom to churn her prize.

I sincerely hope that the dog's snarling doesn't wake up my wife. The last thing I need right now is another argument. Outside of the dog snoring, the only other sound in this tranquil suburban night is the hum of our fridge. Underneath that mechanical purr however, there is something else. Hidden within that familiar buzz,

I hear something foreign. The shaman's low, throaty song Still echoes through my soul For a moment I tried to listen to it I tried to understand it But then it stops The mustache scientist was right I don't belong in the demented realm of the shaman's tape

I belong in my bed Next to my wife with a misbehaving dog at our feet I should go get some sleep Started with a library book As I'm on my way to the bathroom when I happened to look down at the display shelves. What was my mom's picture doing on a hardcover? She was wearing a yellow puffy-shouldered 80s pantsuit

with golden earrings and a hair in a perm. But it was mom all right. Any doubts disappeared when I saw a name, listed as author beside the letters, PhD. Fascinated, I stooped down and leaped through the thick, academic volume. Hungarian castle architecture of the 14th to 16th centuries the title read If my mom was a professor I suddenly wondered Why did she work in a shipping warehouse?

I remember feeling a lump in my throat as I scrambled to the library computer to do more research I was 11 that year and it hadn't yet occurred to me that maybe parents too kept secrets Those were the early days of the internet but even so the search results were clear my mom was or at least had been a pretty well-known archaeologist a daring prodigy was how one website described her who sudden fade into obscurity has been a loss for the entire field

that lump that tense and nasty feeling of wrongness stuck with me the rest of the day at the dinner table that night I couldn't hold it in any longer "'Mom?' I asked suddenly. "'Were you like a professor or something?' My parents froze, their forks halfway to their mouths. They gave each other the look, the one that meant I'd said or done something I shouldn't have.

"'What makes you think that, honey?' My mother asked innocently, but a face was pale. "'I saw a book you wrote,' I exclaimed. and I think my mom cursed under a breath. Why don't you write anymore? I kept prodding. It wasn't for me, my mom said flatly. Then both my parents suddenly became very focused on their peas. As far as my parents were concerned, that was the end of it.

I knew better than to bring up the topic again, but I investigated myself in secret. It was thrilling to think that. my parents had a hidden, adventurous past, just waiting to be uncovered. Sifting through articles and press releases, I felt like a spy. I didn't understand most of the big academic words, but the pictures were more interesting anyway. Ruin towers on jagged Carpathian peaks, excavations that expose maize like stone walls, marked up like crime scenes, dim close-ups of slimy dungeon walls. And in all of them, mom, where in work

clothes or suits, surrounded by colleagues, everyone's sunburned and smiling. It definitely didn't look like this wasn't for her. Life, however, went on. Volleyball, boy bands, and cruising them all just seemed so much more important than all that dusty old stuff. Before long, I'd forgotten all about my family's mysterious past, until I received the first drawing. Like most kids, I felt my blood run cold when I was called to the

office unexpectedly. I was still wondering what I was going to be blamed for when the secretary handed over the square envelope. Your uncle dropped this off for you, dear, she added. I frowned. I didn't have an uncle. For me, are you sure? I muttered. Why wouldn't I be sure, dear? The secretary drummed a long fingernails impatiently on the desk. Um... I flipped the envelope over and saw my first name in big block print. No reason. A phone rang. I darted away to open my letter.

I wasn't expecting a huge piece of paper so tightly and perfectly folded, or the image drawn on it. A white circle surrounded by blackening scroll, creating the effect of light at the end of the tunnel. It wasn't any less mysterious. There was no note. I should have told someone. I realise that now.

My parents, a teacher, anyone. But at the time, I just stuffed the drawing away in my backpack. I was worried, but unable to say why. For a few days, nothing happened. Although I did find myself slipping away to peer at that strange image. There was something disquieting about the tiny faraway light surrounded by menacing endless darkness. It wasn't long before I received another.

envelope from my uncle. This one was gates, like the kind that covered the sewers and the walk to school. Hundreds of them, from all different angles. Although it was a two-dimensional sketch, it gave me the sensation of being trapped

underneath one of those gates, sticking my fingers through the bars, desperate, unable to get out. I crumpled it up and threw it away. You need to tell your uncle that he needs to find a different way to drop off letters. The school secretary told me the next day,

I can't be calling you down here every day. She scrutinized my word face as I took the third envelope. Is everything okay, dear? He's not my uncle, I whispered. I don't have an uncle. I was told to keep still while the secretary fetched the principal. In the tiny Avey closet there was the security office, a crowd of adults huddled over me.

Their faces told me that, whatever was going on here, it was serious. No matter how many times I rewound the grainy black and white footage, however, I didn't recognise the man who was dropping off the letters. A middle-aged white guy, clean-shaven, with black hair and glasses, not too fat or too thin, too short or too tall. He'd asked for me by my full name and grade, and I'd never seen him before in my life.

The administrators had tried to open this third, envelope somewhere I couldn't see, but it was easy for an 11-year-old to peek around their big, clumsy bodies. The paper had been meticulously sketched over in black and grey, creating the effect of a narrow, lightless, waterlogged hallway, or maybe several. Looking at it made my eyes hurt. My parents were called in right away. They too claimed to have never seen the man and denied any knowledge about what the weird drawings might mean. School security wanted my parents to pick me up, but the 12 other shifts they both worked to keep food on the table made that impossible.

Instead, I was told to walk home with friends. The problem was that I didn't have any friends. Not close ones anyway, and the acquaintances who were forced into walking me home didn't understand what was going on. Not that I was pleasant or a talkative companion. I spent most of the walk biting my lip, scanning the trees, a looking back over my shoulder. Every time I had the ominous rumble of an engine, I got ready to run.

My nerves were shot. I slept fitfully when I slept at all, and my dreams were full of tight, suffocating stone tunnels and distant, unreachable lights. One night in particular, I was woken by the sound of whistling wind and drumming water droplets against the window pane, eerily similar to the sounds from my nightmares. With a yawn, I stood up to get some water. Something, however, caught my attention to the window behind my bed.

I was already awake, I might as well check out the storm, I thought. The moment the blinds opened, I was confronted by that awful stone pit, or tunnel, or whatever it was. The slick, wet stone and claustrophobic darkness was so realistic that for a second I thought I was still dreaming. It was another one of those drawings, stuck to my bedroom window. My scream woke my parents, and the next thing I knew, the three of us were running outside.

Where was the rainstorm? I wondered sleepily, and around to my window. The greasy prints in the window suggested that the dripping water droplets I'd heard had been the drumming of someone's fingers, probably the same person who had whistled the sound of the howling wind just from behind my pillow. I started shaking, and not just from the cold. My dad gripped my waist so tight it hurt, and for the first time, I noticed the shiny, black piece of metal in my mother's hand. A pistol.

With one hand, she tore the sketch down and destroyed it. I slept in my parents' room that night. My father hugged me in the saggy old queen bed. My mother, who had to be at work in a few hours. kept watch with a pistol and a cup of coffee. No one would tell me what was going on. The next morning, my dad prepared a to toaster breakfast of frozen waffles before dragging himself off to work, yawning.

As soon as he was gone, my mom made a phone call. I lay my ear against the warped plywood of my mom's bedroom door. I could hear a quavering, terrified voice on the other side. I don't know how, Roger, She whispered, I don't know how it's possible, but he's here. Several hours later, my mom introduced me to Dr. Roger Farmingworth, who was going to keep an eye on things around the house.

They greeted each other like old friends, with nothing more than a quick goodbye and a worried look over a shoulder at me. My mom rushed off to work. Creepy happenings are no. We still had to pay rent. Dr. Farming'sworth was a big man with sparse hair, a scraggly white beard and round glasses.

He had to squat down to shake my hand, and I could tell right away that there was a powerful build beneath that pudgy Santa Claus exterior. It was in the little scars, the glint in his eye. Who was this guy, I wondered, and how did my mom know him?

Farming'sworth checked the doors and windows, made himself some coffee, and sat down in the living room with mom's pistol and a pile of papers the grade. He whistled while he was, worked. I sat on the couch beside him, watching Nickelodeon until I finally worked with the courage to ask him. What's going on? I gushed. Why is everybody so scared? Farming'sworth stopped whistling. He seemed to think something over for a minute. Well, he chuckled.

I suppose it must be because your mother killed someone, or tried to, apparently. I stared. I stared. Don't look so surprised. You were bound to find out eventually. I suppose you already suspect something similar. No? Actually, I hadn't. This was about the last thing I would have imagined. Although we lived in rough and gritty conditions,

my parents had done everything they could to keep my life neat, clean and far from evil. The woman who took me to the playground and danced in the kitchen while she made grilled cheese sandwiches. A murderer? Well, perhaps not, the professor leaned back. He'd clearly been waiting to tell this story for a long time, but never been able to, for obvious reasons. We were on a dig in the Carpathians, 89 I think it was. Iron Curtain had fallen, unexplored territory, ripe for the taking, you know.

I didn't, but I nodded, not wanting Farmingworth to get off topic. There are whole cities out there, covered by dirt and time, just waiting to be found. Thousands of them. Who knows how the inhabitants of those places thought and lived. Their ways are not our ways. And you went to one of those places with my mom, and she had somebody there, I pushed.

We were a crew of three, your mother, Dean and I, plus the Hungarians, of course, but they don't really count. He waved his hand. we followed rumours to a fort from the Ottoman wars what was left of it anyway just a couple mouldering walls where the local teenagers went to drink but underground

there was more oh yes a lot more your mother is a specialist in medieval architecture and even she couldn't divine the purpose of most of the structure we found and then there were the lower levels completely untouched by time

so you guys are like like Tomb Raiders. I crossed my legs and leaned in, fascinated. Heaven's no. Researchers, Farming's worth clarified. Those were happy days. We pitched our tents right beside the dig site. It was almost like Boy Scout camp.

Your mother had Dean and hired my local girl. We'd sit around the campfire with a bottle of schnapps. But something went wrong, didn't it? I cut in. Like I said, Dean and your mother were Together They both had a passion for history, a hunger for frame And a willingness to bend the rules

They were the toast of the university Dean's speciality was the psychology of spaces You understand I nodded pretending like I did He studied how man-made environments impacted human minds and vice versa Your mother was sure that the constructions we found with structural supports or storage spaces.

But Dean had a different idea. He thought that they were used for psychological torture and execution. Kill people with a building? I scrunched at my eyebrows. How? The first dungeon was a huge stone room with a slick stone floor slanted sharply toward a pit. Dean's idea was that the unfortunate captive was left in that room,

growing weaker and weaker each day until they were no longer strong enough to resist the slide downward to the pit entrance where they were stuck until they starved enough to slip through the narrow hole the pit itself was curved like a stone corkscrew so that the fall alone wouldn't cause death

instead there was a maze of tunnels down there half flooded with filthy black water the only thing they all had in common is that they got narrower and narrower tighter and tighter as they went Dean argued that there was no way that it wasn't intentional. He had other evidence too. The dragging fingernail marks in the angled pit room, for instance.

For the grooves in the walls at the bottom of the pit, he claims were made by prisoners attempting to gnawet slime and lichin, just to survive a little longer. And then, of course, there were all the bones. That's horrible, I whispered. I imagined, sliding slowly down, toward a lightless pit until it was impossible to hang on starving until I looked like a skeleton then sliding even further the stone walls closing in until finally I shuddered that's what your mother thought but Dean was obsessed I don't know what happened to him after we lowered him down into the pit but he didn't come out the same man

Dean used to be charismatic. He had magnetism, you know, so passionate about his subject that even hung a refreshman on Friday morning sit up and pay attention. But after a while, he was spending all day that hall. He starved himself.

I suppose to study how long it would take a person to become so thin that they sank to the bottom. He barely slept and he started getting... Aggressive. Aggressive, how? I asked, not sure that I wanted to know the answer. I should have seen it coming, Farming'sworth sighed. He suddenly seemed a lot less enthusiastic.

I was afraid he might clam up. Dean just wasn't the same man, screaming at the workers, hitting your mother. He hit Mom? It seemed like just a little domestic dispute, you understand. Farming'sworth reambled helplessly. Just a little tiff. I didn't want to get a little bit. involved. Then one night

he destroyed your mother's research. Didn't want any competition for his theory, I suppose. He went back into the ruins. Your mother followed. When she tried to stop him, he broke her arm and she shoved him. Dean slipped backwards.

Into the pit, I finished. Farmingsworth nodded. What was I supposed to do? Turn your mother in? I needed a research for my book. If I didn't publish, I was going to lose my grant, you know. A murder seemed a lot more important than all that.

But I kept my mouth shut. I didn't want Farming'sworth to stop talking. If Dean escaped and charged your mother with assault or something, it would have destroyed a life and my career along with it. So, you left him there, I murmured, in that hole. Dean was mad. There was nothing more to be done. Farmingworth seemed to be pleading now. Your mother was in a state of shock.

I told the Hungarians that Dean had left early. Not that they asked too many questions and arranged things for our return journey. Your mother fulfilled her obligations and helped me finish my book. But it seems she lost the taste for academia after that. Tragic, he sniffed. To lose two such promising young minds.

I... I have to use the bathroom. I brought a hand to my mouth. I felt ready to puke. Farming'sworth nodded, apparently unperturbed by the story, I went back to grading papers. Meanwhile, I was clutching the toilet bowl and dry heaving.

Maybe that was why I didn't see the dark shape that dropped down from the ceiling tiles behind me. A black leather glove that smelled of mould and damp closed over my mouth. Another pinched a nerve in my neck. I couldn't even struggle as I was dragged soundlessly out of the bathroom, through the kitchen and toward the back door. As my captor opened it soundlessly with his foot, I could hear Dr. Farming'sworth whistling away with his essays and exams. Just before I was dragged out into the backyard, I heard the front door swing open. Mom was home.

Despite the blinding pain in my shoulder, I squirmed, desperate to knock over a pan, kick a cupboard. Anything to no avail. Roger, my mother demanded. Where is my daughter? Bathroom. Dr. Farmingworth chuckled. I told her something that disagreed with her. Don't tell me, Dean, Hungary, the pit. Tell me you didn't. I am afraid I did. She'll be safe now that she knows the whole story and will be safer too. This wasn't why I asked you over here, Mom hissed. If I had known... I didn't hear the rest.

I was being carried with all speed to all the undeveloped woods behind our house. It was twilight already, and the gloom behind the trees smelled like damp, mouldy earth, as I was dragged away from the lights of home. I thought about my school's dare program, how the officer warned us

that like 90% of kidnapping victims taken to a second location don't survive. Our low-rent neighbourhood backed up to a swampy gully beneath the highway overpass. A sewer ran through it, and I realised with horror that the ugly concrete square that gave access to it

was exactly where I was being taken. No matter how hard I struggled, the grip of the dark figure behind me would not yield. I couldn't turn enough to see, and maybe that was for the best. In the darkness of the sewer pipes, sight was useless anyway. My captor, however, navigated the pipes easily, making me wonder how long this presence had been living in these reeking tunnels spying in my family by night.

I'd never experienced anything like the absolute blackness that surrounded me then. Unable to use my eyes, my other senses seemed to heighten. I had the rush of unseen water and my nostrils were filled with rotting vegetable odour of slime and decay. A turn left, then another, a cool air current of a larger pipe, a right turn. I soon lost count. My captive flipped me around, still gripping my wrist, and pushed me into a narrow tube. I was allowed to scream. Down here, it didn't matter.

Filthy, cold water soaked through my shirt. I was pushed helplessly onward. The concrete tube twisted, got narrower. Even if I escaped now, how would I find my way back? No sooner had the thought crossed my mind when the grasp holding my wrists stopped suddenly. I heard the sound of crawling, moving far too fast and should have been possible in such a cramped space. Hey, I cried. Hey, wait.

No response. I shivered. It was cold in the sewers and only had my slime-soaked t-shirt to keep me warm. I squirmed on my elbows and knees, headed back the way I came. It couldn't be that difficult to find my way out, right? Something scurried across my hand. I squealed. I'd heard my fair share of rats in rough spots where we lived,

but these sounded different, bigger maybe, hungrier. I forced myself to keep crawling. At the first intersection, I hesitated, sure that we come from the left. I caught forward with my right hand and sank into foul-smelling muck up to my elbow. Ritching, I pulled back and headed the other way, sure that I'd already made a mistake.

With every squirm forward, I was sure I'd feel my scratched palm out over empty air, lose my balance and plunge into some awful pit. Instead, I ran into wall after wall of chill, mildew concrete. Our dare aviser had never warned us about anything like this. I wish that he mentioned how long it took to dive hypothermia. Finally, I felt something colder than stone. Water or rat tiles. Metal bars? a ladder.

With a hoot, I scrambled upwards just to find myself in another tunnel. At least I could walk hunched over instead of crawling. I was getting used to this, used to the darkness, used to moving by feel and trusting my sightless senses.

A few hours later, when I finally saw a pinprick of light above and grasped the bottom rung of my way out, there was parts of me that wanted to stay. Even the dim street lights seemed blindingly bright. It took several near-missers with hunking screeching cars for me to realize that I'd clambered out into a busy intersection.

And it wasn't until a concerned police officer screeched up beside me, sirens wailing, that I remember the situation that had put me here in the first place. Once we were safely out of the street, the officer raised a skeptical eyebrow to my story of Hungarian pits and sewer stalkers, but I guess he considered that my bedraggled, filthy appearance and state of shock at least deserved some sort of investigation. The lights were out when we pulled up to my house. The officer and his partner left me wrapped in a blanket and locked in the back seat

while they moved slowly toward the door. I kept imagining irresistible hands, black and rotted, shooting out to drag them from the dark house the moment they knocked on the door. Nothing of the sort happened. After a long while, too long, the officers left the house by the same open door they'd walked through. Both men were very pale. They left it to the station psychologist to explain to me that my mother and Dr. Roger Farmingworth had both died of suffocation.

Before long, I was released into my father's custody. We moved far away to the coast. We both wanted to leave those memories behind like a dark forgotten pit. If only it were that easy. But I never stopped receiving those strange drawings. At first, they terrified me, made me feel sure that I was going to be taken again. In some ways, I've gotten used to finding them in the mailbox,

and the windshield was slipped under the door. But even now, right before I go to sleep, I wonder if I'm going to make up with a mildewed black glove clamped over my mouth. They also make me wonder what happened that evening. so many years ago. Was I dragged away by a vengeful entity, or a mortal man, desperate for revenge? Whenever I see unexplained deaths from drowning or suffocation,

I wonder if my one-time captor is still out there, taking revenge on the world for his suffering. Frightening as it is to live this way, I focus on a tiny, distant glow of hope. Dean, or the spirit, or whatever it was, could have killed me at any time, but didn't. In spite of the suffering of that pit, in spite of the awful methods humans have designed to make each other suffer,

I was given a chance to survive. In a way, these memories are my own personal dungeon, but like a prisoner at the bottom of a dark hole who hasn't yet given up, I do my best to focus on the light, I've been watching the wheel for a month now. That's the name I've given this monstrosity. The wheel. I saw it for the first time on one of my night walks with my dog, Benny,

beyond the edge of town and out down by the fields and the forest. It was hard to see at the beginning. In the darkness, I mistook its body for a fallen tree at the edge of the woods. Benny noticed it before me, anyway. Or felt it at least. He stopped and stiffened, tensed and focused. Benny made the mistake of investigating the nest of a hive of a yellow jacket wasp once. He got an awful sting on his nose, and he developed a hatred of anything even slightly resembling that nest that we find on our travels.

His reaction here made me first think that he found such an object. What is it, boy, I murmured to him, but he wasn't looking down at the ground. He was staring right out. out into the field, growling softly from the back of his throat. I remember this feeling of... Of cold, just slithering sickly over my skin. I remember crouching by the hedge and peering through, looking out on the farmland and following his gaze, at what I first thought was this fallen tree, stuck in the ground

at an unusual angle with branches outstretched and overlapping. I remember a feeling of terrible, icy dressy, and it. I'd drop like a stone into my stomach as the fallen tree shifted and adjusted his branches on that cool, windless night. My eyes grew used to the darkness and the moon drifting out from behind a cloud, and the thing was washed in a faint, silvery light. I could see it a little clearer. Massive, you must understand, the size of an elephant, I guess, though far more scrawny and spindly. I still shiver, thinking about seeing it that first time. watching it rise up onto all fours.

It sickened me then, and it does now, even before I knew what it was capable of. I didn't dare speak, but I kept a warning hand on the back of Benny's neck. Stay, boy, stay low, and stay quiet. How to describe the wheel's body? Picture the werewolf, if you can, from Harry Potter and the prisoner of Asgaban.

My nephew loves that movie. A bizarre reference, perhaps, but that's the best way I can think to describe it. Large, hunched and hairless, stretched over animalistic bones, though more metallic looking. I don't know, rusty almost. And its head.

The creature's head, its namesake. The monster's head is scarcely ahead at all. Imagine, if you will, a huge, layered wheel. Again, metal-looking and ringed with dozens of miniscule little amber light. Ben and I watched as the creature crept to the night to the edge of the farmland. We watched as it leaned back on its haunches with a low creek and looked up to the nearest tree. A pine, I think. We watched as the great wheelhead began to spin.

Slowly at first, then faster, with a sound like a rising wind. The wheels within the wheels began to rotate round and around till there were nothing more than a blur. The lights that ringed it burst into a fire. fiery intensity, and the pine tree found itself caught in the beam of brightening orange light. I stared in confusion and awe, heart pounding as the tree began to grow, rapidly, right before my eyes. And up it went. Up into the air, the branches creaking and cracking with duress as they sprouted with surprise

from the sides of the trunk. As the pine needles burst from their ends and fell onto the floor in the constant rain, ever growing and ever falling. and still the tree climbed taller. Up, up, it went, far up, high beyond its brothers. The trees groans and cracks grew louder and louder, but the wheel scarcely adjusted his position. I remember watching the monster's ribs shift,

its silver stomach bulge as his head spanned round and around. The tree grew upwards for about a minute, before it grew no further, and not long after that the needles stopped falling too. No new leaves were cool. groan, and the wood began to rot and the bark began to split, though still the wheel held the tree in its gaze. The branches drooped and dropped from the trunk. The tree began to stoop and waver, groaning under the stress, until at last its roots gave out and tumbled to the side,

crashing loudly into its neighbour, and resting there, dead, and its base began rotting away. Only then did the wheel's head begin to slow. The lights dimmed and the creed. And the creed, and the creature took a measured, careful step back. It waited perhaps a moment or two more for the spinning to cease and the lights to fade. And then, that was it. I watched as it looked around and then bound away across the fields on heavy feet, disappearing into the shadows at the edge of the forest. That was all it took.

All it took for me to become obsessed, obsessed with the beast. How could I not be? Benny always knew where to go. He seemed to sense which of our walks would be, wheel-hunting walks beforehand. His whole demeanour was always totally different. He's normally such a happy and carefree guy, but the nights we went after the wheel,

it's like he could sense their importance. So, just under a week after this incident and several sleepless nights spent attempting fruitless research, we found the creature again. Penny and I, a few miles south of its previous spot, at the edge of a field filled with sheep. The moon was not so bright that night. The air was still at first, but I still recall the sudden fright I felt at seeing the shadowed rim of the wheel rise up from the ditch at the edge of the field. Merge for a second with the shadows of the broken wooden fence, then climbing up and above, clambering over and into the night, its limbs long,

that circle of light brightening and slowly starting to spin. Then, faster and faster. It's right, Benny, stay low, boy, I murmured in a wavering voice as we watched, crouched from our position nearby. Most of the sheep awoke and fled, bleating as they bounced clumsily across the field. But one poor creature did not. Caught in the beam of the wheels brightening light and frozen in place, we could only watch as the light grew stronger still,

as the wheel spanned faster and faster, and the monster drew hungrily closer. We watched as the wall began to burst from the sheep's body, graying and billowing out as the creature's ears began to droop, and its horns grew out from its head at an impossible rate. We watched as a sheep was enveloped in its wall, and eventually collapsed to the ground, down into the dead grass it fell as a pile of wall and bones.

And only when it was little more than dust did the wheel pull back and allow the spinning of its head to slow. I ducked instinctively as it seemed to pass its gaze over our position in the strawberry. It's difficult to tell where the creature is looking. The only clue is that circle of lights. It didn't come after us, though. It seemed to enjoy the sheep more than the tree, as it went after three more that night before disappearing.

It came back the next night too and took some more, though on the third night, I found myself warned away by, an angry farmer, two of his vehicle was positioned in the field with floodlights blaring. Benny and I didn't see the wheel that night, or the night after that. But then, at the end of the week, Benny caught the wheel scent yet again. All our walks were in pursuit of the wheel by this point. I was losing sleep over the monstrosity, but I had to see it again. Get some proper footage or something.

My phone doesn't record so well in the dark, but I have an always. camera that might do the trick. I swear it had a setting specifically for night. So, out we went. Out into the night. We didn't leave the town this time. Just to the outskirts. We walked for the better part of an hour

and passed a homeless man leant against the side of a building. Bare feet stretched out over the cobblestones as the drizzle began to patter down all around us. Evening, he nods to me and I nod back. I pause at the sound of a north. from the far end of the street. But it's only a group of kids.

Teenagers, I guess. Drunk and stumbling home from one of the local bars. Benny stops beside me too, though. Fur risen and ears pinned back. And the homeless man seems to notice. They're not a bad group of lads, you know, he chuckles. They often have money left over at this kind of time. It's why I'm still awake, after all.

Nothing to be afraid of. In fact, quiet, I hissed to him all of a sudden. Then, sorry but please shh the man raised an eyebrow at me but does as I say as I suddenly dropped to the ground

peering out down the street from behind a nearby bin what the hell he mutters following my gaze as a lad's shout and laugh the way up the street behind them clambering down the side of the building in the rain

is the wheel avoiding the direct glare of the street lamps it creeps its way over the road like an enormous spider watching his prey down below. I'm telling you, mate, I could have banged her. One of the guys blurts out as his friends start laughing. His speech is slurred and one of them still carries a bottle in his hand. She has a boyfriend, mate.

Didn't you see that guy at the bar? Another manages to choke out through laughter. Though the laughing stops the second the wheel's shadow falls long and dark across the stones and puddles before them. What the? The sound of the wheel spins. rises swiftly and suddenly, like a wind. The head of the beast becomes a quick blur, and the lights around the rim begin to brighten.

The lads look up. Jesus, what the... In a frenzy panic, they start stumbling and staggering in different directions off the road. Chaos sets in. I can feel the tension of both my dog and the homeless man tightened beside me. The shock and sheer disbelief. I remember what I'm here for and start fumbling with my camera. Johnny!

One of the lads shout above the sound of the wheel and the wash of the rain. But the boy in the middle, the one with a bottle, is caught in the centre of the road and the amber glare of the creature's beam. His eyes are bright and terrified with a light's reflection and his mouth open. It looks as if a scream is caught in his throat. Help! He stutters before his jaw is locked in place. I struggle with the camera. We got to help him, the man beside me mutters, hand on my shoulder.

But what could we do? What is there to do? One of the boys' mates sprints off into the night. The other shouts and panics, hands on his head, but the wheel has its prize. I watch as the lights brighten and the wheel spins faster, as the boy grows a little taller and fills out. I watch as hair burst from his head, and I watch as creases and wrinkles appear across his face. The skin on his arms start to loosen, and the colour of his hair begins the grey. His jaw trembles.

He looks as if he's trying to speak as a tear rolls down the side of his face. The crow's feet aside his eyes deepen and darken, and he is forced to stoop as the rain falls. Sir, please, what can we do? The homeless man hissing me. But I don't respond. There's nothing we can do. We can't help this boy now.

A sop escapes the victim's throat, caught in the sounds of the rushing wind, and he closes his eyes one final time. His friends have all gone now. I don't know where to. I watch as he exhales and collapses to the ground with a crunch. And still the wheel draws his energy. His body convulsing and twitching until he has crumbled to a skeleton.

And then, as with the sheep to dust, already washing away across the stone in the rain. The lights of the wheel start to fade. it spinning slows and the targeting beam fades away. Silence, but for the gentle patter of the rain. The ancient camera at last is finally roused a life. Da-da-da-ding, it proudly proclaims, a digital jingle, loud in the strained tension of the street. Too loud, actually.

Far too loud. Benny jumps to the sound and he's not the only one. To my otter horror. The wheel, still balanced between the buildings and perched above the street, swings round his monstrous head right towards our position with a terrible creek, and the lights reignite. Damn. Benny barks, the homeless man swears and staggers back up against the wall,

splashing in a puddle that he has formed beside us. Terror strikes me. Run, I shout, and with Benny at my heels, we run down the street and race around a corner, sending up great splashes as we do so. Help, wait, the homeless man cries out from behind me, and as I round the corner, I shoot a look back over my shoulder. I watch in dismay as he falls to the ground and thuds against the stones with the grunt. I watch as he is caught in the beam.

His eyes meet mine, and I hear the terrible whirring, both eerily metallic and yet natural at the same time. The rising wind. I see the shadow of the beast creep into the position from around the corner, Don't leave me, mate, the man pleads in a horse voice, but it is already too late. He reaches out of hand to try and lift himself off the ground, then suddenly he freezes. The air above and around him shimmers in orange. I watch as he starts to shake, as his eyes roll back and a tooth loosens from his gums,

falling to the stones with a clatter as his fingernails lengthen and hands become wrinkled and spotted. I'm sorry, Gemma. he whispers before his lips crack still A moth flutters into the beam and disappears before my eyes into powder Benny is barking and I become aware that I've stopped running I'm standing and staring and gassed as the man on the ground takes his final ragged breaths Benny bites in my sleeves and pulls and the spell is broken I watch as the man dissolves into bones with a quick sad sigh

and I turn tail and run Running through the streets Round corner after corner As far away from the wheel as we can Heading roughly back in the direction of the house Back to my lane Back inside Slamming the door shut tight

I claps against it Falling to the floor with my head in my hands Jesus Oh hell oh hell What do I do What the hell do I do? It's been a week now since our last encounter With the wheel

and I see that night in my dreams the crumbling and disintegration of the people in the street the glare of the monster Benny rests his hand on my lap looking up at me with those big eyes of his and I scratch him behind the ear you know don't you boy you're ready to go out again

he barked softly and I rise from the desk I grabbed from the side my latest purchase a high intensity LED floodlight a massive thing and the white weight of a brick, but it's bright all right. It's bright as hell, and the creature hates the light. That's what I've assumed at least. I need to stop jumping into these situations so carelessly. I need to think more, be a little more rational, have a bit more of a plan. I fasten on my coat and crouched down to my dog. You ready, boy? He looks at me, panting, and with a deep breath

I lead us out into the street. I'm nowhere near as confident walking at night as I used to be. Benny leads us through the deserted street, sniffing his way through the darkness. A faint mist hangs unwanted round the edges of lampposts in the distance and clings to the base of the buildings. As we head further and further through the town, I find myself startled by every shifting shadow, every miscellaneous noise. Come on, I muttered myself. get it together. But it won't be far now.

Benny's gotten so good at following the subtle trail of the wheel weaves behind. Benny stops and winds a little, and quietly I lead us to a nearby skip to use his cover. A moment or two later, a figure, a shadow at first, then more clearly a girl comes walking out from the mist and down the street. She has her headphones in,

walking alone, her footsteps falling in time to some unheard signs. This will be the wheels target. Benny has begun to growl, and I see the collapsing bodies of the boy and the homeless man in my mind's eye. My heart rate increases, and I start to sweat, despite the chill. It's all going to happen again. I hear the man's voice in my head. We've got to help him.

Sir, please. What can we do? And I realise I have to do something. What's even the point of these exhaust. midnight excursions if I'm not going to do something. Hey, I call out with a hand cup to around my mouth. Pst, hey! But the girl can't hear.

She walks right by on the opposite side of the street, humming quietly. She hasn't even seen me. Nor has she seen the looming shape through the shadows behind her. A towering behemoth, rising up and out of the mist. A long limbs stretched out far to grab a hold of a nearby building's emergency exit staircase. creeping as it did before, hungrily watching its prey. Though it moves with less care this time, it makes more of that creaking, metallic noise as it clambers. Has it grown less cautious in its hunts, more feverish for the taste of a human life?

My voice catches in my throat. I can't call out now. I just can't. It'll hear me. It'll take me instead. The lights around the rim of its enormous head starts to intensify. It's happening. My eyes darts from the head of the beast to the oblivious girl,

alone and foolish on a late-night walk. The wheel tightens his grip on the side of the building right by me, and dust crumbles from between its claws to the street as its namestakes starts to spin. Faster and faster, and the whirring grows louder. The girl finally noticed something as a miss as a shadow multiplies and splits right beneath her feet. She turns to look up and behind her.

in confusion, and her mouth falls open in horrified shock. The orange of the fiery glare of the wheel is caught in her eyes, and she is trapped. The wheel leans hungrily down towards her as she begins to age right before my eyes. She grows in height, right through her twenties, as dark circles appear beneath her eyes, creases deepened between her eyebrows as she stares with horror at the source of the light, and a light of my own ignites with a burst of dazzling sun, A white, bright beam swung round up to the face of the monstrous wheel.

I would have thought of something badass to say, had I not been literally shaking with fear as I burn the floodlight into the wheel. Its own lights falter at once, and with the head still spinning, it disengages its target and scurries backwards. A low in disturbing metallic shriek echoing from its head as the girl, now woman, crumples to the ground, moaning. Get back, get back! I bellow, finding my voice at last as it knocks chaotically into the nearest wall, sending shards of crumbling brick raining down. On heavy feet and claws, it staggers back and turns, hastening away into the night, away from the intensity of the beam and into the safety of the shadows. Still trembling and not daring to turn off the floodlight's glare, I go to join Benny, already sniffing around the girl in the street. Hey, I say to her,

Hey, are you all right? We've got to get out of here. She raises her head at me, and, propping herself up on her arm, she shakily takes off her headphones. What? What was that? She murmurs. Ben seems surprised at the sound of her own voice. I feel...

I don't know. She clears her throat, distressed. Something's off. She winters as she climbs to her feet, looking down at her hands. her fingernails reach out from the far ends of her fingers, though she broke a couple in the fall. What the hell is going on? She whispers, and my heart goes out to her. How old is she now?

How much time has been taken from her? I'm sorry, I mutter. And what else is there for me to say? What do you say to someone in a situation like this? The sound of the whirring is returning. I can't see it, but I can hear it. Benny barks and growls. It's all right, Benny.

It's okay. I grabbed the woman, the girl, by the color of a coat. You have to go, all right. Get the hell out of here. If it catches you in its light, it ages you. You hear me? It takes years from your life until you're nothing but bones. It, what?

She looks down at her hands again, turning them over. It ages you? I give her a startling shove as a shadow creeps around the roof of a nearby building. I swing the floodlight up towards it and it disappears for a second time slinging back into temporary shadow. Go!

And to her credit, finally, she does. I hold out until she has finally vanished from sight and then I break too. I retreat down a nearby alley, panting and waiting, listening close. I don't want the wheel to know where I am

so I switch off the footlight, blinking as I tried to force my eyes to readjust the darkness. It's here that I catch my breath. It clouds and fogs before me, as I listen as intently as I can for the sound of the wheel. What's even my plan here? Keep it out in the open till sunrise? What am I expecting to happen?

Where does it go during the day? We have to keep following. We need to know where it goes, where its hideout is. So, mustering all my courage, I leave the relative safety of the alley and continue on down the street, keeping close to the shadows. Benny leads me through the town and now back to the fields. We walk for most of the night, he and I, and I can tell he's getting tired. Hell, I am too, but we have to know where it goes.

Benny seems to lose the scent a few hours into our quest. I check my watch with tired eyes. 4.35 a.m. Damn. We're out by the fields. Not the same ones as before. No sheep here. Just a rusty old scrapyard and a disused barn.

It's morbidly tempting, but I refrain from checking the barn tonight. I just can't bear it. So, resolve to try again tomorrow. Come on, boy, I say, stifling, a racking yawn. Let's go home. I'm back in bed. once the sun has risen and the birds have begun their morning chirps.

Benny and I sleep until late afternoon, and I awake feeling groggy and exhausted. I can't keep going on like this. I push myself through a day of work, grimly trying to recoup the lost time before it gets noticed, but my thoughts are all on the night, on the next night, on scoping out that barn,

and drawing attention to the monster and driving it out for good. I found myself doodling in the margins of my notes, watching the hands on the clock tick by. The slow, crawling passage of time. I will it to go faster, waiting for the sun to set and the night to fall. Come on, hurry up. Why can't the time go just a little bit faster?

As it always does, however, the day draws to a steady close. I've been ready for hours, but when midnight strikes, I'm out the door in an instant, camera around my neck, floodlight held in one hand. Come on, Benny, I say, there's a good boy, and we go out, out into the darkness. I want to head straight to the field, straight to the barn, but Benny has other ideas. He keeps barking and trying to lead me back to the scene of the attack last night. Come on, boy, no, we're heading back to the barn.

But he won't budge, and eventually I relent, following along as he hurries back across the cobblestone streets and between the buildings to the road, with a wheel struck the girl. What are we doing here, Benny? I murmur, as Benny comes to a stop walking out over the street, tail wagging. I squint and see at the far end

a figure stood beneath one of the street lamps, her silhouette. Carefully checking around for signs of the wheel, though emboldened by Benny's relative chill, I walk out down the street and toward the figure. As we draw closer, it turns to us, and I recognise her at her

once as the girl from the previous night. Thank God, she mutters as she marches towards me, taking me by surprise as she grabs me by the collar and stares angrily into my face. Benny barks at her, but she ignores him. Her eyes. Her eyes are the same, but the face that I look back into now, the face I see clearly in the light.

It's of a woman in the late 30s, maybe early 40s. What, Happened to me, she shouts. And already, the tears start to fall. She loses her composure, arms at once, and releases me, crying softly into a sleeve. How do I go back? What do I have to do to go back? I run a hand through my hair with pity. I'm sorry, I tell her. I don't think there is a way back. She sniffs and wipes her hand across her face.

She looks back at me. I've had literally the worst. for my life, you know, she says. I say nothing. All the problems I was faced with yesterday? Whether or not my boyfriend likes the other girl, what I'm going to study at college, lyrics for the song I was trying to write,

and the gift I was going to get for my mother's birthday. She pauses a humorless laugh. All meaningless now. My friends and family don't recognize me. And why would they? I would kill to go back to the problems I was dealing with yesterday. But yesterday is gone. She looks at her hands again.

It's not fair. I feel so much older. It's just not fair. I want it back. I want to go back. Benny nudges a leg and she smiles sadly, scratching his head. She sighs. He's a nice dog.

What's his name? It's Benny, I reply. And she nods. I'm Celia, by the way. It's nice to meet you, Celia. Ben. Ben? That's right.

She talks ahead at me. But isn't that your dog's name? No, his name is Benny. She laughs for real now. It's a nice sound, though it's broken by a snort of amusement. You named your dog after yourself? What kind of person does that? I didn't name him after myself, damn it.

I got him from a shelter. He already had the name when I found him. Ah, I see, I see. She grins down at Benny, his tongue lolling happily. still very funny though hmm she scratches his head a little longer so enough to chat

how do we kill it ben how do we kill the monster kill it listen this thing is the most dangerous she cuts me off do I look like I give a damn I have nothing left you hear I have nothing left

her eyes shine in the light of the street lamps so I'm telling you now I'm here to kill it whatever it takes and so with a sigh I gesture her to come with us and Benny now leads us the way I expect him to sniffing the stones and taking us out to the edge of the town

towards the fields and the abandoned barn I tell her what I know the wheel that's what I've been calling it it seems like it has to stay more or less in the same position while it eats and it takes a moment or two to warm up too

but once you're in that light you're caught, you're stuck. What's its weakness? I don't know about weakness, but it hates the light. Other than its own, obviously. It avoids the street lamps and the sun, and it hates this thing. I left the footlight. That's how I was scared it off last night.

Is that it? Just light? Anything else you've learned, at all? What is the light, do you think? The light the wheel makes itself. I shrug as we leave the town behind us. It's another silvery moonlit night. I don't know.

I'm sorry. I don't know much at all, really. It can eat trees and plants as well as animals. Insects too. Trees, plants? She repeats. Insects? Yeah, same method.

It just focuses the beam and takes a life of its target. She rubs her chin in thought. So it targets. its insects and plants? Well, no, they just got caught in the beam. Grass around the feet of the sheep, a moth that flew into the light, that kind of thing.

Her eyes light up. So the beam isn't all that focus then, is it? If it kills anything caught in the light? I, consider this. We climb the fence at the edge of the dark field and carefully, quietly,

make our way across the grass towards the barn, and Benny starts the wine, ears pinned back. All right, she whispers to me as we approach. I have a plant, but I never get to hear it. From behind us, from the scrapyard

nearby, there comes the sound of twisting metal and creaking machinery. Benny near enough jumps out of his skin with a yelp and I do essentially the same. Light rises up from the cluster and a long, silvery arm reaches out to provide leverage

as the body and head of the wheel rise up from the wreckage. It wears with menace as the lights blink into life and the great head starts to spin. It clambers down the hill of junk towards us with a sickening speed I had not yet seen from the behemoth. Benny races forwards to face it, barking loudly and angrily, teeth bared.

Benny, I call out in a panic. My companion's shadow sent out long and dark across the grass, now illuminated orange. Benny, heel, come back. The wheel raises itself up, angling its light down to Benny, and I sprint towards him, all fear temporarily forgotten as I rush to grab him up. He's not a little dog by any means, and I grunt with exertion, but I haul him up and fling him out into the side, to the safety of the shadow as I find myself caught in motion, a flying resin,

eyes wide. My body stiffens, and I'm just about able to turn my head to look up to the wheels on my gaze as it starts to draw from me my life force. Paradoxically, everything slows. Is this it then, I think to myself? I feel the passage of time as water, rushing swiftly over my body. Waves of warmth and ice wash alternatingly across my skin, as I feel it tighten in places, loosen in others.

My wisdom teeth ache with sudden throbs of pain as they push themselves through the back of my gums. The joints in one of my hands start to seize. I can feel my fringe growing long down my face and into my vision. Did I lead a good life? Did I do enough? Is this all my fault? My obsession has done this.

It has taken my time from me. Time I can surely never recover. But my thoughts are interrupted by a sudden shriek from above, and I catch a blur of motion through the darkness. Celia leaps from the roof from the barn, and, like a mad woman, down under the wheel's back. I cannot see what it is exactly that she holds, but it is sharp, and his metal,

and she hacks into the monster's neck, eyes wide and burning with fury. The wheel creaks and cries out with a metallic distress call, the lights faltering, and with a crack it tears away its gaze, leaving me gasping in the darkness, clutching my chest and looking down to my hands. How much did it take?

A decade perhaps, or a little more. I look back up. Benny is barking and gnawing at the wheel's leg. The monster itself swings its head around from side to side, furiously trying to shake off the attack on its back. I return to my senses and grab the floodlight, switching it on with a blast of light and aiming the beam at the monster. It recoils with frustration,

but alas, Celia is knocked from its back and down to the ground. She immediately grabs a hold of one of the wheel's legs, stabbing a weapon in it as deep as it'll go and keeping a firm grip on the handle. The wheel in his rage looks down to his feet. The great spinning head starts whirring round and around, and Celia is caught in the intense orange glare, as indeed is the wheel itself.

He or Benny, I call out, and this time he does, running towards me, but still looking back at the scene in the field. Celie's hair starts sprouting from her head, greying and thinning, falling to the ground. Her lips start to wrinkle, the lines aside her eyes become deep and many. But still, her bitter grip persists.

She will not let the wheel go. The wheel makes noises I've never heard before. The whirring of its head starts to grind. Rust and dust falls from his joints. Its posture becomes more hunched, and the colour of his body begins to lighten and pale. Unaware of what it is doing to itself, or perhaps too caught in the frenzy to care.

Celia, I call out, aiming the floodline, as best as I can, but it isn't enough. At last, her grip is lost, and she tumbles to the grass. The wheel screams with rage, drawing everything from her, until she's nothing more than a cloud of dust to be lost in the wind. The wheel staggers away, limping, and away it goes, slower than before, far slower, out to the darkness and retreat. He looks back at me and erase my own weapon.

I catch it in the fire of my own light, aimed right into the centre of this horrible, monstrous head. Go to hell, I mutter, as a flood-like buzzes with power, and the creature collapses. Down it goes onto the grass. And there, it disintegrates. Its body falls apart, as if it were a toy dropped from a great height. A black, oil-like substance spills under the grass as the wheel and all the wheels within simply disconnect. They break apart, some roll around a little before they drop, but drop they do into nothing more than another pile of junk in the field.

Silent, still and lightless. I dropped the floodlight and race to join Benny, but there is nothing here but dust blown out across a patch of dead grass. She was here, and in the blink of an eye, she was gone. I'm sorry, Celia. I murmur sadly into the night. I inspect the corpse of the wheel. If indeed, it can even be called a corpse.

Earlier, I likened its body to a werewolf from afar. But now, up close and deceased, it looks like a discarded art project. Just a wreck, a great pile of... Nothing. Substanceless, really. Come on, Benny, I say to my friend. Let's go home, pal.

I get more sleep. these days. I still do my research, don't get me wrong. Regarding the wheel, about whether there might be more like them out there. There are important questions that remain unanswered, but you'll be pleased to know I do allocate my time more carefully. There's nowhere near as much of it to waste. I have a little less of it than I did before after all. And ain't none of us. Getting it back.