CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 4+ Hours of SCARY Reddit r/Nosleep Horror Stories to sleep to if that's something you're okay with

Episode Date: August 5, 2023

CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00 "I'm an underwater photographer tasked with documenting some deep sea ruins" Creepypasta►42:14 "I worked for the Department of Unknown Cases" Creepypasta►1:22:50 "As kids, we solved little neighborhood mysteries. Our last case haunted me for life" Creepypasta►1:45:35 "I work in cybersecurity, and my latest investigation into the deep web broke me" Creepypasta►2:21:24 "Something in this cave is hunting me" Creepypasta►3:14:06 "The Unnatural Wildlife of the Arctic Mire" CreepypastaCreepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- • "I wasn't careful enough on the deep ... ►"Personal Favourites"- • "I sold my soul for a used dishwasher... ►"Written by me"- • "I've been Blind my Whole Life" Creep... ►"Long Stories"- • Long Stories 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

My name is Oliver Stubbs. My whole life and identity are inextricably entwined with my camera. And to say that I make a living behind the lens would be a monumental understatement. Ever since I was a child, I've been fascinated by the power of photography, the ability to freeze time, to immortalize a moment. At an early age, I discovered a knack for capturing more than just images, but stories, emotions, and life itself. Though, looking back, my pictures weren't all too impressive as a child.

But, as I grew older, my fascination turned into a burning passion. I studied photography at the prestigious University of Arts in London, and became known by my peers from my evocative storytelling through images. I had the unique ability to capture the unseen, the unheard, the unsposed, the unspoken, the soul of a scene. My distinctive style was hailed as revolutionary. My work spans a range of genres, but my underwater photography has become particularly renowned within my small community. The unseen world beneath the waves, teeming with life, captivated me, and I devoted myself to capturing it in all its vibrancy and mystery.

photos, full, vivid detail, and the uncanny ability to transport viewers beneath the surface into the heart of the underwater world. And at the age of 30, I was awaiting the dreaded burnout my friends had all complained about. I was a natural choice when the renowned historical and marine research organisation, the Sea Past Society, decided to take on the ambitious task of finding and documenting Reverend Sirrod, Britain's own Atlantis. They needed someone who could document the submerged ruins in a way that showcased their historical significance and capture the mystery of a town long lost to the sea,

a challenge that I knew was perfect for me. Dr. Catherine Howard, the head of the Sea Past Society, was a well-respected marine historian, contacted me personally. She believed in my unique talent for visual storytelling and thought I could bring the sunken town story to life. She felt my photos could inspire a global audience, stir their imagination and allow them to connect with the past submerged beneath the cold waters of the North Sea. Naturally, I was thrilled and honored to be selected for such a significant project. The chance to dive into the mysterious depths and uncover the sea. secrets of a lost town was a dream come true.

And although I had done similar projects, something just felt different. My flat in London soon became a frenzy of activity, cluttered with new high-tech underwater cameras, powerful lights for illuminating the dark ocean depths, and all manner of equipment for preserving my gear against the corrosive effects of saltwater, all funded by the Sea Pass Society. But amid the chaos, there was an undercurrent of palpable excitement. Beneath the exhilaration was a thin layer of anxiety, like a dusting of frost on an otherwise warm window pane.

It lingered there, never once stepping into the light, but ominously hovering in the room's dark corners. The task ahead was daunting. This was not a recreational dive into a well-explored reef but an expedition into a town lost to the depths six centuries ago. Unease did not overshadow my enthusiasm. It fueled it. The chance to tell the story of Raven Sarod

to breathe life into its submerged and silent streets was a thrill like no other. I relished the challenge. Before long it was time to travel to Yorkshire. I was introduced to my... dive buddy, a man named Callum, a burly Scotsman with a twinkle in his eye and a jovial demeanour. But beneath his light-hearted exterior was an individual of impressive expertise and meticulous attention to detail. Dr. Howard had assembled a unique team of historians, marine archaeologists and technical experts.

Most of them were to stay above the sea and watched through another camera broadcasting to the the boat. Callum was the Sea Pass Society's Health and Safety Coordinator, a veteran diver with an impeccable track record. His task was to ensure the safety of the divers as they explored the undersea ruins. An eye was to be his primary responsibility. Callum was hired, not just for his expertise in dive safety, but also his ability to remain calm in a crisis. His warm personality put me at making me feel safer about the dive. In the days leading up to the dive, Callum and I worked closely together.

We conducted practice dives, tested our equipment, and developed a dive plan. His attention to detail and uncompromising approach to safety impressed me. He was careful and cautious, but also open to the spirit of adventure that this exploration held.

The excitement and nerves within me swirled like a tempest. The idea that I was soon to explore a piece of history untouched for centuries, about to uncover stories that have been silenced by the sea, kept me tossing and turning in my bed at night. The day finally arrived. Our vessel was a massive state of the outboat, stocked with all the equipment necessary for the dive, including cutting-edge sonar equipment, robotic submersibles and a plethora of diving gear. There was an undercurrent of tension in the air, a static charge that prickled the skin

and raised the hair in the back of your neck. I noticed hushed conversations among the crew, quick sidelong glances that hinted a concern. Was it the enormity of the task that caused this? Or perhaps they were wary of a new face? I shook it off. I had a talent for overthinking things, especially while stressed. Callum meticulously checked my gear, ensuring every piece was functioning correctly.

His diligent inspection was comforting, a touch of solidarity amid a sea of anticipation. We ran through a final checklist, emergency signals, the navigation route, the ascent and descent points. as we finished our preparations, the moment we'd been waiting for was finally upon us. With one last nod of reassurance from Callum, we plunged into the icy embrace of the North Sea. The sudden chill was a shock, biting through the thick neoprene of my diving suit.

But it did nothing to dampen my spirits. If anything, it heightened my senses, focusing my mind and the world we're about to enter. As we descended, the remnants of Raven Sarad slowly emerged from the gloom. The water had eroded much, but what remained for a spectral reminder of the bustling town it once was.

Buildings, streets, the outlines of what might have been a town square, all blanketed in a shroud of decay and encrusted with marine life Intricate stonework, long worn away by the constant current, was now home to vibrant corals and anemones, creating an eerie fusion of man-made and natural beauty. The coral had claimed these structures, using them as foundations for their colonies, transforming them into organic, living artworks that swayed gently with the ocean's rhythm.

It was a haunting sight, a tableau of life abruptly halted and presented. served beneath the waves. Statues stood guard over their underwater realm. Their features softened by centuries under the sea. The stony gaze meeting mine through a veil of tiny bubbles that streamed from my regulator. A fish darted past, a flash of iridescent colour that stood out against the greystone and green blue water. I was caught between two worlds. The ancient human past and the earth.

teeming marine life of the present. It was simultaneously humbling and thrilling, a testament to nature's uncanny ability to reclaim and repurpose. With my camera at the ready, I eagerly started documenting this hauntingly beautiful underwater world. Calam and I navigated through the labyrinth of sunken streets. Each building was a monument to the past, offering a unique glimpse into the lives of those who once called Reverend Sarad home. While I concentrated on capturing the visual essence of these ancient structures, other team members avoided us and engaged in their own tasks. They meticulously scraped away at the encrusted stone walls, collecting samples to further understand how the sea had affected

the materials over the centuries. Though this underwater world was extraordinary, it wasn't entirely alien. I'd spent years exploring and documenting similar sites, yet each site had its own unique character, a singular atmosphere that made every dive a new adventure. My previous major project had been an exploration of the underwater ruins of a Second World War shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea.

That was a poignant journey, a testament to a grim period of years. human history. But despite the historical significance and the eerie beauty of the coral-clad wreckage, the experience was different, perhaps because it lacked the element of human life that Raven-Sirad held. Once a mighty symbol of naval power, the decaying hole now lay silent and broken on the ocean floor. Raven-Sir-Rad was not merely a relic of an ancient era, but a snapshot of everyday life, frozen in time, and lost to the ocean depths. It had once been filled with people, their hopes and dreams, their daily routines.

This tangible human element made this dive so much more thrilling. I felt like an interloper, peering into a time capsule of lives lived centuries ago. I was careful to capture every significant structure, Every suggestive detail that hinted at the lives once lived here. I photographed the decay, the rich marine life, and the profound contrasts between human architecture and natural adaptations. Each click of my shutter felt like a tribute, a way to immortalize the town and its untold stories for posterity.

The underwater world was a curious way of warping one sense of time. Minutes stretched into hours, and each moment is amplified in the silent stillness of the ocean depths. Before I knew it, our dive time was up, and the team began their gradual ascent back to the surface. As I started to swim upwards, I felt an unaccountable tug, like an unseen current pulling me back towards the sunken town. It was as if Raven Sirard was reluctant to let us sleep. go, whispering silent pleas for us to stay and listen to its muted stories a while longer. Mistaking it for my thirst for excitement, it was a mistake. A few days later, I found myself in the Sea Pass Society's dedicated photography lab,

surrounded by the familiar hum of high-end development equipment and the sharp, confidence scent of photographic chemicals. Developing photos was always a ritual of anticipation and discovery for me. The way an image gradually emerged on the paper felt almost like magic, a portal opening up to a frozen moment in time. As the first of the underwater images began to materialize, I was thrilled to see the haunting beauty of the sunken town coming to life once more. But as I went through the developing photos,

unease started to creep in. I first noticed it in one of the shots of the town square. It was a shadow that didn't align with the underwater light reflection, a blur that felt out of place. I thought it might have been a technical glitch, perhaps an equipment malfunction or an error in the development process. But as more photos developed, the anomalies kept appearing. patches of darkness seemed to move across the sequential shots, undefined shapes lurking in the corners of the frame, and odd distortions that seemed to warp the scenery.

They were subtle and could easily be dismissed as flaws or artifacts of the photographic process. But something about them made me feel uneasy. I reviewed the images over and over, trying to find a logical explanation. But the more I looked, the more inconsistencies gnawed at me. It felt as though the images were hiding something, something that lurked just beyond the edges of perception. It was as if the quiet town of Raven Sirard had secrets who was reluctant to reveal,

secrets that I had inadvertently brought back with me to the surface. In some sort of sickening denial, I laid out the images before me. My mind teetered between disbelief and fear. Something was wrong, but I couldn't discern whether it was a simple mistake on my part or something more profound. This was my work,

and the anomalies, however bizarre, had emerged from my own camera. I wanted it to be my error. It had to be, right? Doubt seeped into my thoughts, creating a whirlpool of uncertainty. Had I overlooked something in the underwater conditions, had I mishandled the equipment,

was there something wrong with my camera? I was well respected in my field and known for my precision and attention to detail. A mistake like this felt uncharacteristic, but I couldn't ignore the possibility. And then, there was the question of whether to reveal these anomalies to my... superiors. I found myself wrestling with the implications. I was not one to be easily

intimidated, but the thought of jeopardizing my position unsettled me. Despite my accomplishments, the all too familiar feeling of imposter syndrome set in. I found myself questioning my abilities and whether I really belonged here. Despite this, deep within me, a quiet resolve began to form. As much as the prospect of uncertainty unnerved me, the idea of not pursuing this anomaly felt even worse. I've always been driven by a hunger for truth and understanding. I had to find out if I had messed up.

If not, what was causing the distortions? Raven Sirard had presented me with a puzzle, and I could not resist the pull. to delve deeper. I approached Dr. Howard with a carefully considered proposal. I had crafted an excuse, one that was rooted in genuine scientific curiosity and made to cover my ass if it turned out to be my fault the entire time. I suggested we needed a more detailed visual record of the site, a series of panoramic images that could be digitally stitched together to provide a 360-degree view of the underwater town. This could enhance her understanding of the spatial layer of the town, Doctor, I argued,

maintaining an air of professional concern. Imagine being able to virtually navigate through the streets of Raven-Syriad. It could reveal architectural patterns, structural relationships, aspects we may have missed during the first dive. I chose my words carefully, knowing that the proposal would appeal to Dr. Howard's keen interest in experimental archaeological techniques. A prospect of contributing a unique method of documentation to the field was too enticing for her to disregard.

To my relief, she agreed. That sounds like an excellent idea, Oliver, she nodded, a spark of excitement in her eyes. Prepare for another dive and make sure this time we document every inch of the that town. With a go-ahead secured, a new wave of anticipation swept over me. I was going back. I found myself relieved, yet something still sat deep inside of me. In the days leading up to the dive, I found myself spending more time with Callum. Our shared passion for ocean exploration had naturally drawn us together, but our contrasting personalities solidified our bond. With his infectious enthusiasm and easygoing nature, Callum was the perfect counterbalance

to my more focused and often intense demeanor. Callum had a knack for putting people at ease. He was full of stories about his adventures from all around the world, from wild encounters with marine creatures, to the time that he got lost in a coral maze off the coast of Australia. His tales were always told with a broad grin and a glint of mischief in his eyes, leaving anyone within earshot in fits of laughter. One evening, as the sunset bathed the sea in hues of orange and red, Callum and I found ourselves sitting on the company dock, just minutes from our temporary accommodations.

He had brought two hot cocoa mugs, a comforting drink perfect for the cold evening. Callum turned to me as we sipped the sweet beverage and watched the sun sink below the horizon. You know, Ali, diving isn't just about the adrenaline rush or the sense of adventure. He said his eyes reflecting the dying light from the setting sun. It's about connection. It's about understanding our place in the grand scheme of things and how we, as humans, interact with the world around us.

He spoke his words rich with his accent. His words resonated with me. It was comforting to know that someone else understood and shared this sentiment. It was this shared sense of connection, the shared appreciation of the ocean's magnitude and mystery that had drawn me to this profession in the first place. As the night deepened and the stars shone brightly above, I hesitated, weighing.

my words carefully before speaking. Callum, I began, my voice barely above a whisper. There's something about the last dive that I haven't told anyone. Callum turned to me, his usually cheerful expression giving way to concern. What is it, Olly? The photographs from the dive, there are anomalies. I confessed, watching his feelings. faced nervously for any sign of ridicule or disbelief.

Anomalies? He echoed, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. Yeah, I nodded. Shadows that don't make sense. Blurs that seem to... Move. It's as if something was there with us. As island stretched between us,

filled only by the distant lapping of waves against the boat's hull. Callum's face was thoughtful. Momentarily, I feared I had crossed the line. Finally, he broke the silence. Ollie, we were diving into a sunken town, a place that held life, history, probably secrets too. He began, his tone measured. Let's not forget, we were deep underwater, but light behaves strangely, and visibility can play tricks in your eyes and the camera.

I nodded, knowing his rationale made sense, but also knowing that my concerns weren't mere illusions. It's more than that. The photos, they feel wrong. I can't explain it, but it's like the town was trying to tell us something. Or warn us, Calam regarded me for a long moment, the lines on his face deepening. as he processed what I just shared.

Then, with a firm nod, he clapped a hand on my shoulder. Ollie, you're one of the best underwater photographers out there. If you say something was off, then it was off. We'll keep her eyes open on the next dive, together. His reassurance brought a wave of relief, and I found myself smiling at his words. His support and willingness to believe my concerns made me feel better about the upcoming dive.

There was a moment of silence as Callum finished speaking. Thank you, Callum, I finally said, my voice filled with gratitude. I know it sounds odd. I just needed someone to know, just in case. In case of what? He asked, his eyes searching mine for answers. I paused for a moment, staring out at the, endless expanse of the sea.

I'm not sure, I admitted. But whatever it is, I have a feeling it's tied to Raven Searod. This is different from my other dives. It feels like something more than just a sunken town. Callum continued to look at me, his eyes reflecting concern and curiosity. It was clear that part of him didn't believe me, but he remained silent. Well, he said, after a considerable pause, we'll face it. As he said, this is about more than just the town, whatever it is.

I nodded, feeling a sense of camaraderie in his words. Yeah, I agreed, taking a deep breath as I turned to face the sea again. The following morning dawned bright and clear, the crisp blue sky, starkly contrasting the enigma that awaited us beneath the surface. As we prepared for the dive, I couldn't help but feel a mix of anticipation and unease. It was a silent tension in the air, like the stillness before a storm. Callum once again meticulously checked over our equipment. His attention to detail a welcome source of comfort amidst my apprehension.

Every buckle, valve and gauge was. inspected, every aspect of our gear was scrutinized to ensure maximum safety. As we began our descent, the familiar coolness of the water enveloped us, and my senses heightened. This time, however, the thrill of the dive was tinged with an undercurrent of uncertainty. As the town of Raven Cirard came into view, and our sensation settled over me. It was as though the town was somehow aware of our presence. There was a whisper at the edge of my consciousness, a sense of being observed from the shadows.

The closer we got, the more palpable this feeling became. It felt like we were intruders in this lost town, disturbing the peace of its long-forgotten inhabitants. As we began our exploration, I continued to notice fleeting shadows at the edge of my vision. faint movements caught in the corners of my eyes, seemingly disappearing as soon as I turned to look. My heart pounded in my chest as a chill ran down my spine, but I forced myself to stay composed and focused on the task,

determined to fulfil my promise to Dr. Howard, I set about capturing the panoramic images of Raven Cirard. I methodically swam from one building to the next, with Callum following close behind. I captured every detail of the sunken town. The remains of the harbour, the ancient sea wall, and the collapsed roofs of the houses are all immortalised in my camera. Yet, with each shutter click, the sense of unease grew.

It was as though the very act of photographing the town was disrupting something. And with each disruption, the uncanny sensation that we were not to be. alone intensified. It felt like the sea had a heartbeat, a thrumming rhythm that pulsed around me, seeping into my bones. The feeling of being watched became stronger as we swam through the main square

where a tarring statue, ravaged by time and water, stood as a testament to the town's lost glory. As my flash illuminated the worn stone, I could swear the statue gaze was locked onto us, the cold eyes of stone holding a cold glare. I shook my head, trying to dismiss it as a trick of the light, but Callum had noticed too. The murkiness of the water seemed to thicken around us as we continue to the outskirts of the

town, the once vibrant coral that adorned the buildings, appearing pallid and ghostly under our torchlight. Occasionally a fish would dart away, its silvery scales shimmering briefly, before disappearing into the blue abyss, leaving us in solitude once more. Examining the town more, I noticed each structure held its own tail of decay. Houses, once filled with a hum of life, now stood desolate, their skeletal remains encrusted with marine life. The town's church, with its toppled spire, lay half buried under the sand. I captured the eerie beauty of the forsaken town etched in each frame. As we neared the end of our exploration, the sensation of being watched peaked.

The water around us seemed to ripple with an unseen presence. Suddenly, a gust of underwater currents swept past us, an inexplicable chill that froze my blood. A dark form darted in the corner of my eye, but when I turned, there was nothing but the ancient ruins and the haunting darkness beyond. My heart pounded in my chest

as I watched Callum signal our ascent. His eyes wide with fear. A dark shadow darted towards him from the corner of my eye. A surge of adrenaline rushed through me as I turned to look. But, it was too late. An unseen force struck Callum, pushing him with a violent current into the decrepit wall of a nearby building below.

His regulator was knocked free, bubbles bursting from his mouth in a panicked rush. Yet his training prevented him from breathing in water. "'Callum!' I screamed into my regulator. My voice muffled and carried away by the water. Frantically, I swam towards him, my heart pounding in my chest. His eyes were wide in shock, and his hands desperately grappled for the regulator as he struggled against the new, unseen current. I grouted him, anchoring myself, and fighting the force battering us, I swam down, and,

holding onto Callum with one hand, I grabbed his back-up regulator and shoved it towards him. He took it, jamming it into his mouth. He purged the water out of the mouthpiece and his panicked eyes softened slightly as the life-giving air flowed once more. I turned to face the town, a sense of anger burning inside me. Whatever was lurking in the forgotten depths of Raven Sirod

had shown itself not just as an uncanny presence but as a threatening force. The water seemed to pulsate with sinister energy the town's ruins casting ominous shadows in our torchlight. I could feel it, watching us, pressing against us, making his displeasure known. I signalled in a centre callum, who nodded, his eyes wide but resolute. He kicked upwards, each stroke taken us further from the menacing depths of Raven-Sirad.

As we rose, the water grew lighter, the pressure eased, and the sense of the center. sense of dread began to dissipate. Just as we thought we were clear, a sudden force pulled us back down, even stronger than before. It was as if the entire ocean had become an invisible hand dragging us back towards the malevolent town.

I screamed into my regulator again as I saw him get pulled away from me, his form disappearing into the murkiness. Desperate, I tried to see. from towards him, but the force was too strong. Then, suddenly, my grip and my camera slipped, and it began to sink. It's attached light flickering like a falling star into the watery void. I watched, horror-stricken, as it fell into a crack and deeper into the abyss.

I cried out, my voice lost in the aquatic emptiness. That camera was my lifeline. Not just for my profession, but now it seemed for our survival. It sank rapidly, swallowed up by the eternal darkness of the ocean. Whatever was targeting us was weak, as if it needed us to be closer to the town to fully overpower us. As I was about to dive after it, I felt a hand gripped my arm. I turned to see Callum, his eyes wide with fear and confusion, but alive. He shook his head.

He was right. Going after it spelt more danger than either of us could imagine. We ascended again with nothing else to do, hoping the loss of our evidence calmed the town. The effort was physically taxing, the cold seawater churning around us as we battled to ascend. Each kick and each push felt like we were fighting against relentless tide. My muscles screamed in protest, but I forced myself to keep going,

pushing past the pain and exhaustion. Calam was ahead of me, every sinew in his body straining as he too fought against the pull. Determination was etched on his face, yet he kept his eye on me. Slowly, painstakingly, we began to gain distance, the pole of the town lessening. I could see the lighter waves above us, the sun's rays penetrating the deep blue, beckoning us towards safety. We broke to the surface and found ourselves clinging to the side of the boat. Our breaths ragged and our bodies exhausted. Our crew helped our heavy bodies aboard, their faces, masks of concern and confusion.

We exchanged no words. The terror of our experience had left us. momentarily, speechless. As we docked back at the mainland, Dr. Howard was there to meet us. She looked troubled, eyes scanning Callum and me,

noting her bruised and battered bodies. We were a far cry from the enthusiastic team that had embarked on a journey to chronicle the sunken town. Oliver, Callum, she began, her voice, a mixture of concern

and something else. Something I couldn't quite place. What happened out there? I exchanged a glance with Callum before turning back to her. Taking a deep breath, I recounted the inexplicable experiences, the unseen force,

the threatening shadows. And the attack, Dr. Howard listened, her face paling as we described our encounter. As I mentioned, the loss of the character. I saw a flicker of disappointment across her face, but it was quickly replaced by a serious expression as I continued. I know this may sound impossible, I concluded brace myself for a reaction. But something is down there, Dr. Howard.

Something that doesn't want us there. For a moment, there was silence. Dr. Howard seemed to be processing what we told her. Her gaze distant. Then, to my surprise, she nodded. I believe you, Oliver, she said quietly. In fact, I hear you both an apology. She took a deep breath and then began to explain.

Teams before us had reported the same strange feelings, the same sense of being watched. But it was more than that. that. After their third dive, members started returning with inexplicable injuries. Those who were brave enough to attempt a fourth dive, they never returned at all. I had hoped, foolishly perhaps, that capturing photographic evidence would help us understand what was happening, Dr. Howard confessed, her voice wavering slightly. I didn't want to believe that the town itself could be dangerous. While we were gone, Dr. Howard admitted that she had examined the photos from our

first dive. She also admitted to noticing the strange phenomena I had. Ghostly figures, inexplicable shadows, things that didn't make sense. But she dismissed them, attributing them to light or damage to the camera. But now, hearing your account, I understand that there's something more at play here. she admitted her eyes reflecting her deep remorse. I should have warned you, should have stopped the dives, but my desire for discovery overrode my caution. Her confession left us shocked, the realization that she had known,

at least partially, of the potential danger but had not shared it. It stung. Yet, looking at her, seeing her genuine remorse, I could only feel a deep sense of sadness. I shook it all away. As Dr Howard's confession hung in the air, a deep sense of betrayal began to coil in the pit to my stomach. Anger, hot and quick, started to rise within me,

searing away the icy dread that had gripped me since the dive. I stared at Dr. Howard, my mind, a whirlwind of disbelief. My chest tightened and my heart pounded in my ears. The woman who had entrusted us with an assignment of a lifetime, a woman we respected and admired, had knowingly led us into a trap, a trap that could have costed us our lives. We had trusted her, relied on her,

and she had betrayed us. The pressure built inside me, a physical weight pressing against my chest. The corners of my vision growing red with rage. The sting of betrayal cut deep. A flash of memory. The cold, unforgiving waters. The threatening shadows in the deep.

Callum's terrified eyes. The invisible force that had almost claimed us. All came crashing down, feeding the fire of my anger. You knew? My voice was low and harsh, carrying the weight of my bruin anger. You knew and you still sent us down there. Dr Howard tried to respond, her voice placating, but the words were lost on me. The anger was all consuming now, blotting out any reason.

We could have died, Howard. Callum could have died. The words tore from my throat, raw and furious. At that moment, I felt a sudden urge to leave, to pot as much distance between myself and Dr. Howard as possible to escape from the bitter taste of betrayal. But instead, I stood there. My fists clenched, my body trembling with unspent rage. My career, my love for the ocean, and the trust I had in those I worked with all felt

like they were sinking. A shiver ran through me, a mix of anger, and something else. A deep, echoing sadness as profound as the ocean itself. I walked out after that. In a rush of adrenaline, I packed away my belongings, leaving behind the new equipment tainted by the darkness of the project. And left, I hope, whatever inhabits that town, stays there. Let's consider some hypotheticals.

Let's say you got yourself a master's degree. Let's say you got a job at a small branch of state government. Let's say you work there for the better part of your early adult life. You built everything around that job. Got an apartment, moved in with your girlfriend, had an orange cat with seemingly a single brain cell. Life is good, right? Hypothetically.

Then comes along this man, says he works in conjunction with the federal government and the private sector. The guy reeks corporate, got a suit with a custom cut, no labels on his clothes, tells us that we're going to be working closely with a small department

that has recently got a boost. Apparently, there's a need for expansion, and some people from my branch will be moving on up. Let's say that one of those people is me. Hypothetically. All right, I'm going to stop with that. Sorry.

it still gets to me. You can safely presume that I've changed a couple of details to make myself less recognizable. I gotta get through the filters. I had moved from Milwaukee up to Superior. Sarah and I

tried to make it work, but she couldn't leave the city behind. It came down to a choice between me and the rest of her life. It made sense for her to stay. Kind of annoyed me she kept the cat though. That thing I loved. I started working at the DUC in September of 1998. At first I didn't even know what the acronym stood for. It wasn't a matter of secrecy,

but they had these stupid sayings plastered along the walls that people followed to a tea. For example, water of a duck's back. This was the standard operating procedure. Don't ask too many questions. Let your questions and worries drift right off, like water offer ducks back. They displayed this proudly in the lunchroom, with a picture of a duck peacefully sleeping by a pond. We worked in collaboration with other agencies

in Michigan, Iowa and Minnesota, mostly Minnesota. I helped them develop software to codify reports of invasive ecological species. It would break down verbal reports with the bare bones' text-the-speech program, which in turn is transcribed and separated into categories.

Categories were measured, analyzed and turned into probability reports. Once information had been categorized, the most prominent reports will be sent to the department lead. Seems simple by today's standards. But back then, It was cutting-edge stuff.

It was November 1999, when we finalized the first version of our system, lovingly named Daisy. Hours before the launch party, the department lead took me to his office, closed the blinds, and sat quietly across from me for about two solid minutes.

This man, the department lead, was Thomas Rubin, a 67-year-old, extra sergeant with a penchant for the dramatic, kept his head as bold as his lies. Having worked there for over a year, I thought I had a foot in the door by then. Turns out, I was still on the outside, until that very moment. Thomas poured me a shot, mint shnapps. To a job well done, he said, raising his glass.

I accepted the invitation and down the shot. What the hell, right? Do you have reoccurring nightmares? He asked. Seeing something strange at night, those last few hours before the sunrise, do the shadows gain a peculiar tint? No, sir.

You're not a very haunted man, are you? I'm not, sir. I can work with that. He bored me, another drink. I can get you working on the real deal, he said, but you're not going to like it, you're not going to like it one bit. That sound like a party to you. I took the glass and studied it,

little sugar crystals swirling around, backlit from a lone computer screen. I downed a second shot, and Thomas smiled. Imagine a lighthouse, he said, and whenever someone thinks about the lighthouse, it lights up. You're with me so far. Yes, sir?

And this lighthouse draws in all kinds of things from far and wide. Traders, smugglers, warships, everything. But you don't want that. The beach is closed and these ships are bad news. What do you do? We turn off the lighthouse, sir. Ah, but it comes right back on whenever someone thinks about it. Even when you do.

We demolish the lighthouse. the lighthouse, sir. Same thing. Pops right back once you think about it. Try again. We forget about it, sir. You can't unknow something. Then you'd have to go after the people that know about it,

and you'd have to be careful not to learn anything about it yourself. And that's what we do, said Thomas. We turn off the lighthouses. Thomas elaborated over the course of three more shots. What he was describing was an invasive ecological agent, something that literally grew from the ground. Its very presence acts as a sort of go-ahead for other more dangerous entities, but thinking about it too much causes it to appear.

Not immediately, but slowly over time. the more you knew and the more intimate your knowledge about it was, the stronger the connection would be. I was safe, though. You had to know the details to trigger it. Thomas gave me the example of a red lily. You couldn't just know it was red or a lily. You had to know both these things to imagine it clearly.

Once you did, there's a chance it starts appearing more and more in your everyday life until it takes physical form and by then you've opened an express highway to something far darker and far worse. The DUC

or the Department of Unknown Crisis was founded to combat these entities in a way that doesn't endanger the general populace. We were preventative, mostly. The software we made

scrubbed all details and simply stated an address, sometimes a person, and the likelihood of there being at least one physical manifestation of the invasive species present. As the system was automated, there was no way for us to know the details. Only the computer knew. According to Thomas, there was a time when these things had been completely eradicated. Right before the start of the Second World War, there had been a concentrated effort to remove them. The methods they used was later adapted in creation of the DUC. Turns out, those things can't ever be truly removed.

There was an author who documented these ecological entities to such a degree that it could be used as a gateway. While he passed away in 1926, possibly as part of the containment, his diaries were discovered in the 60s. Since then, the invasive species had free reign with no one to stop them. There'd been some loose efforts, mostly from the private sector, but it took the creation of the DUC to start the work on a larger scale, and there we were. From that point forward, I started to work with more specific field equipment.

Since being able to imagine the object is something that triggers it to manifest, we needed a way for field agents to physically remove them without putting themselves in danger. We came up with something we called the blur guard, a full headset that removes all color, dampened sounds, and mildly blurs your vision. Going back to the example of a red lily, the blur guard turned it from a red lily to some kind of flower.

That's not enough detail to trigger a manifestation, and thus deemed safe. Since our software knew what to look for, we incorporated a camera and basic image recognition. There'd be a little green light showing up whenever what we were looking for was in view. From that point, our field agents could play hot or cold until they found what they were supposed to remove.

And when it came to people, well, we can't kill them or have them unlearn something. So instead, there was a targeted effort to herd them into place where we knew this problem was prominent enough to go unnoticed. The DUC had done it for decades. These were personalized, targeted efforts, maybe sending a particularly juicy job offer,

enticing a target to move, things like that. We focused on two main sites, a rural town in Minnesota and one in West Virginia. There were talks of one up in New England, but that was a separate department. These places have been absolutely scrubbed. To this day, you can't even find them on the map. Our colleagues in the private sector

brought out pretty much everything there is to own, giving the DUC close to full control. It might seem cruel. but most of these people had no idea they'd been manipulated. They lived good lives. We did our best to turn off as many lighthouses as we could. But in a town like that, some were bound to pop up eventually. Let's skip ahead a couple of years.

In the summer of 2004, I had been on rotation assisting the development of new equipment. I was also regularly updating both. Daisy and the Blurgard. We had implemented generalized search filters looking for the trigger words that Daisy could use, increasing our information input tenfold. Hell, about 90% of forum infrastructure could be breached the sense of descriptions of the invasive agents if needed. We had basic bots prowling most major discussion forums to contain eventual spread. One night, I'd taken my work home with me to work on a camera light. Some field agents had mentioned image recognition issues in low-light areas where the camera refused the work.

So I figured an extra light source would go a long way. I was blasting my worktime playlist on my laptop, sipping on my second rum and coke. If I was going to do extra work from home, I might as well make an event out of it. Just short of midnight. It was time to try it out. I turned off the lights, put on the helmet, and checked to see if the camera light auto-activated as instructed. It did. Strange thing, though.

I was getting a green marker. The helmet was recognising the invasive element right in front of me. I know my own apartment top to bottom, so I know exactly what I was looking at. Blurred helmet or no. I'm obviously not going to describe it to you, but it had the appearance of a household plant. Quite large. I had it in my window for years.

For the sake of storytelling, let's call it a red lily, like in Thomas's example. Suddenly it dawned on me. Now I knew what the invasive agent was. I couldn't unlearn it. From that point forward, I was going to be a threat to the department. This was an invitation for red lilies to pop up out of nowhere,

possibly making everyone aware of them. But first and foremost, they'd be a lighthouse for other things to come. I pulled a lily out of the pot, roots and all, and shoved it down the garbage disposal. I swear the damn thing screamed. The empty pot was left on the window sill. Moments later, my phone rang. Turns out my blur guard was actively connected to the daisy system.

It probably sent out a report to the department lead with my name and address the moment it recognized the species. I held my breath trying to calm down. This was going to spark a series of events. There'd be a report, an investigation. I'd most likely lose my job and be before. forced to relocate. No, worse. This was unprecedented.

As expected, the call came from Thomas. What's going on? He asked. I'm working on the internal camera light. I think there's a malfunction. We got a positive match on your location.

I know, I know. It's not a big deal. It's nothing. We're going to stick the protocol on this one, said Thomas. expect three field agents on site within 15 minutes. Don't go anywhere. I pulled my hair.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. I usually get the shakes when I'm losing control. I figured I better remove all traces of the plant. Whatever parts were stuck in the garbage disposal and whatever remained in the pot. Except when I looked back up, there was another red lily growing from the pot, almost exactly the same, like it had never left.

I can't stress this enough. You can't unlearn things. You can't unremember something. I tried not to think about it, but that just made me think of it more. I fetched the ruby's cube from my desk to focus on something else, but as soon as that colour showed up, my mind sank back to thinking of it. I got a garbage bag and through the last, whole pot in, along with the rest of the garbage. There'd been nothing left. I went room by

room looking for anything remotely resembling it, but there was nothing. So I left the apartment, intent on throwing it all away. But see, there's this communal garden project outside my apartment building. It was filled with these things. There were dozens of red lilies. My mind blanked, and I could feel my pulse rising in my throat. This entire neighborhood could be compromised, possibly more. I couldn't, for the life of me,

remember if the leaders had been there earlier that day, or if it was a reaction to my realization. These things were insidious. They not only appeared when you think about them, but they made a conscious effort to pop up when they at least expected, or wanted.

I called my landlord Jerry. and started pulling up lilies from the community garden with my free hand. Some of them screamed. It was like a tiny whale from a baby. Some of the lilies clung to the dirt, digging their roots deeper. Others came willingly. One of them withered in my hand, giving up completely. When Jerry finally picked up, I was out of breath.

I need to ask about the, um, communal garden project. I said. I work with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. There's a bit of an invasive species growing here, and I need to establish a, uh, time frame as to when they appeared. All right. The, uh, red lilies, the community garden lilies. They're actually a, uh, dangerous and invasive species.

Do you have any idea how long they've been here? Red lilies? Oh yeah, we've had those for a while. How long? There was a silence on the, other end. Maybe he was thinking about it. I didn't have that kind of time. How long, Jerry? I... Look, I don't know. Eight, maybe nine years. I grouted my hair and pulled. The pain in my scalp forced me to concentrate. A handful of hair gave way. Thanks, Jerry. If you see these,

throw them away immediately. I'll do that. And don't tell anyone. We don't want to... Ah... want to alarm people. I hung up. I was flailing, breaking protocol left and right. I was breaching waiting to be sealed. I was on my knees in the dirt, pulling up red lilies by the handful. One of my neighbours walked past, and I could hear a dog whining at the sight of me.

Or maybe it saw something I didn't. There was no telling what this could mean. Most breaches we'd encountered was one or two of these things at most. They were usually contained to the Minnesota side of operation. Them having skipped the state line and latching onto me was alarming. This could prompt a whole new level of response. I knew Thomas held a level black response, where termination of lives would be necessary to contain the threat,

but we'd never employed it. Not yet. But looking around me and running the numbers, This might be it. This could be the first time they'd have to kill people. And I'd be the first in line. The field agents would be there at any moment. My hands were red and raw from pulling up lilies and stuffing them into the garbage bags.

I was so frantic that I grabbed everything that even remotely resembled them. Anything red, anything lily shaped. I tore up more than half the community garden in ten minutes flat I could hear a car coming I couldn't take any chances I looked over the garden again couldn't see any of them and sprinted to the garbage cans the moment I'd thrown it all away

I saw headlights turning the corner I recognised them I brushed my hands off the best I could and shoved them in my pockets A white hatchback with government license plates pulled up and three people got out. I tried to stay calm. I tried not to think about red lilies. I tried to smile.

I could tell that I was looking at Agent Estevez, Young and Owens. I'd worked with these people plenty of times to prep them for excursion. Never to this extent though, and never on this side of the states. They all fixed and activated their blur-guard helmets. Rough night, asked her stevers. Yeah, yeah, I nodded. Working on an update, the helmet kind of, you know. Sure, sure, we'll just check out the apartment and be on our way.

You mind waiting down here? No, that's fine. They turned on their image recog, synced to their comms, and gave me a pat on the shoulder. We'll be in and out. said Young. Sorry about the trouble. I watched them ascend the stairway while I stayed out by the garden.

I was going to make sure nothing popped up. If the agents just up and left, I could come up with a plan. I tell Thomas eventually. But I had to be clever about it. I had to assess the damage and spread to make sure I could trigger a quarantine rather than an eradication-level response.

Still, looking around the event, apartment complex, there were probably hundreds of people living there. These things could have made their way into every single household, opening the way for pretty much anything, not that I had the slightest idea of what that might be. I was lost in thought for the better part of half an hour. What the hell was taking them so long? Had they found one?

I walked up the stairway and put my hand on the apartment door. It was quiet It shouldn't be quiet I got this sinking feeling Like my body heat was leaking out of my feet My mind started to brace with possibilities Maybe they left Went to the wrong apartment

Maybe they're watching TV in my couch Having a beer Burning a red lily in the bathtub Whatever they did They wouldn't do it quietly And this was quiet. I pushed the door open

and was met with a chemical smell like a moist mix of methanol and iron. It was strong enough to taste. Estevers? I coughed out.

You guys in there? No response. I stepped back out gasping for fresh air. The smell burned my nose hairs. My eyes teared up as I tried not to sneeze. I didn't want to go

back in. I knew it was bad. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. Still, I didn't have a choice. I stepped back in and shut the door behind me. I turned on the lights. I turned on the lights. They'd been torn to pieces. There was blood dripping from the ceiling. Two severed arms on the kitchen table, an armless, legless torso resting on the couch. the blood sinking into the cracks in the leather. The floor was covered in gore, torn straight from their bodies and left in the open. Muscle, sinew, vital organs, all splayed out on the floor and furniture. There was a single red lily in a brand new pot resting on the windowsill.

There was a bright red handprint on the bathroom door. I gently pushed the door open, only to reveal. the severed heads of estuvers, young and Owens, unceremosely thrown into a pile on the floor of my shower cabinet. I don't know how long I stood there. My mind went completely blank. I could honestly not tell if it was real or a nightmare. For a moment, I was awash with this intense relief.

It had to be a nightmare. It didn't make sense for something so terrible to happen so suddenly. It took me a while to realize. that there was something looking at me from the bathroom mirror. I turned to it. My face wasn't there, just the dark space where my face ought to be. It was like staring into a hole, vaguely shaped like a humanoid. It followed my movements as I leaned my head left and right.

We looked at one another in silence, hearing only blood dripping from the living room ceiling, A trembling whisper burrowed into my spine. This was one of the things Thomas had warned us about. This was one of the ships that came to shore following the lighthouse, one of the countless entities invited into my world, drawn by this thing, that thing that ought not to be. I hate calling it a red lily.

I want to scream what it is and have them torn apart. but I can't describe them or they'll spread out of control the longer I stared at the thing in the mirror the more I understood it was one thing to know about the red lilies it was a hundred times more potent to know exactly how they worked

for an average person to know their appearance might invite a few to pop-up but to know them at the level that I did that was an entirely different league. To these things, I was precious cargo. I could light a hundred lighthouses, a thousand. They perceived esteveres and the other agents as a threat and disposed of them immediately. I was the equivalent of a carrier, patient zero. I was stuck in the eye of the storm and everything around me would be torn to shreds. I ran a hundred scenarios in my head,

destroying myself was the obvious choice but that would be the nail in the coffin that would force Thomas to take violent action on this entire apartment complex without context he wouldn't know how to contain it losing personnel was the final criteria for a black lever response however if he was attributed to a breach of protocol

or faulty equipment I could bring it down to a quarantine there was hope but I had to explain it. I had to stay alive. As I pondered my options, I heard a running motor outside. I stepped out of the bathroom and out into the walkway. Another two white hatchbacks had pulled up. I'd lost track of time. No one in Estavis's team had reported an all-clear or anything. This had prompted a standard backup response. If these teams found traces of anything, our entire field division would be called in. They'd probably put people all the way down in Des Moines

on high alert within the next 15 minutes if there was no de-escalation. There was already new red lilies growing in the community garden. They wouldn't let me speak. Talking was a hazard, since I could verbally describe what they were looking for. I could yell out, they look like red lilies, and the entire squad would be compromised. Up until this point, we'd never had to worry about that kind of willful exposure and there was no plan for it. The DUC didn't have enemies in the active sense.

We were preventative. There was no way they'd let me talk or leave, not with three human remains in my apartment. At best they'd gag me and burn this place to the ground. At worst, they'd shoot me and then do the same.

I scurried along the walkway, turning left to the road. the far end. I took the fire escape to the ground floor, hugged the wall of the building, and circled back to the parking lot. I burst into a sprint for my sedan. Luckily, no one noticed. At least no one that cared. As soon as I got on the highway, I called Thomas. I had trouble staying in my lane. My hands kept cramping up. Thomas picked up. I could hear him opening a door, putting on a jacket. You got to tell me what's going on, he said.

Where are you? I had to go. I had to. The place is infested. So let's deal with it. I didn't know what to say. There was no good place to start. I leaned back in my seat,

tried to keep the car straight, and took a deep breath. There were flashes of red by the roadside. Could have been lilies. The back seat was dark. dark enough to hide a possible shape. I thought I saw an outline in the rearview mirror, but it might be my mind playing tricks.

Stay where you are. I'll have someone pick you up and we'll deal with it. I can't, I said. It's bad, Thomas. It's real bad. How bad are we talking? We're talking a... Quarantine, breach a protocol, at least three casualties.

Thomas took a deep breath. He held the line for a few seconds. I could hear him get into the car. You know, don't you? Yeah. That's... I'm sorry. They're everywhere.

I can't stop seeing them. Don't tell me anything. Nothing. I shouldn't be talking to you. He was right. Talking to someone like me, who knew, was like trying to pit a rattlesnake. It could be over in a snap. We gotta bring you in.

What are you gonna do? Did we lose people? Estabas's team, I said. Something came through. Jeez. Are you saying you're causing manifestations? I don't know. But you do know.

You, if anyone knows. So tell me, looking back in the rearview mirror, I knew there was something riding along. something that had caught onto me, something that had stepped into our world following the light of the red lilies. There was no point in denying it. I'll figure it out, I said, I'll deal with it.

Before Thomas got the chance to object, I turned off my phone and chucked it out of the window. I drove for the better part of an hour before a familiar sound snapped me to attention. Whatever surface level plans I'd made in my head dissolved completely. I heard the sound before I saw the flashing lights. A siren. I was probably swerving left and right, trying to keep the car straight.

No wonder I was being pulled over. This could get real bad, real fast. I thought about booking it and hoping for the best, but that had just drawn more attention to me. Instead, I found a secluded spot and pulled over. It was only as I pulled the handbrake that I remembered I'd been drinking early that night. I'd had about two rum and coke's. I'd completely forgotten about it.

I tried to consider my options, but there was no time. I was told to turn off the engine, roll down the window and place my hands on the dashboard. There were two officers, and men were. man and a woman. I could barely hear them over my pounding heart. To them, it was a routine stop, but I was trying to save lives. They had no idea what kind of trouble they were in. I tried to wrap my head around it, to come up with something plausible that they'd understand. I could tell them I had a bomb strap to me, or anything, but there was no time. I hadn't even heard them asking for my license and registration.

I could feel a flashlight shine in my face, but I barely registered it. They asked me three times. Then they changed tactics. Sir, we need you to step out and place your hands on the hood of the vehicle. I fumbled my response. There's something in the car, I said. You, you gotta be careful. Sir, is there currently a weapon on your person?

Something that can puncture a wound. my partner, a pencil, a knife, a sharp set of keys. No, listen, you... You got to step back. There's something it... My thoughts blanked. There, by the side of the road, I saw one. A red lily, clear as day, growing through the cracks in the pavement.

Sir, I needed to cooperate with me. The officer insisted, have you been drinking tonight? I couldn't take my eyes off the red lily. It was like a reminder that this was already over, that my fate and theirs was sealed the moment we met. Dead men walking. Please, I whispered, let them go. For a second, I thought that it might do it.

I was willing to listen, to give in, if that's what it took for these people to live. The Red Lily knew. I know it knew. But, like a light, house, it can't help but to shine and bring ships to shore. And with that, a familiar tremble rose in my stomach. Hello.

There was a flicker as one of the light posts went out. I closed my eyes, trying to keep the tears in. The officer to my left started screaming. I heard a gunshot but muffled as if firing into something at close range. I heard fabric being torn, then flesh than sinew in arteries. No one ever told me it was possible to discern the sound of marrow separating from breaking bone, but now I can't stop hearing it.

Hello! Primal animalistic screams, a program response in a biology to alert other humans to stay away, to run. Splotches the blood rain down on the concrete and the hood of the car. I could feel something warm, splatter across my face, and run down my cheeks. The screams stopped. I'd sunk to my knees. I looked like a crying older boy, praying for it all to stop.

When I finally forced my eyes open, the world was red with blood. In the flicker of a dying light post, I saw something vaguely human drop the sundered remains of a torso. It followed my head like movements, left to right, mimicking me. I could tell it was proud, like a dog bringing back a stick to its master. Hello! I stumbled to my feet, leaning against the car to steady myself. The concrete was slippery with blood, and I kept stepping on something indiscernible.

I tried to look straight ahead as to not look at the entity too closely. It was just standing there in the middle of the street, looking at me, waiting for me to say or do something. I looked straight ahead, pretending it wasn't even there. The car took a few turns of the key to start. The steering wheel was slippery with blood, but I managed to steer back on the road. The windshield wipers smeared the gore into a thin red veneer. I had to go away, far away. way, and there was only one place I could imagine.

As I mentioned earlier, the DUC had certain contaminant areas. Previously, these were spaces where they simply moved people of interest. But with me there, they'd have to leave it alone. It'd be too dangerous to interact with. They'd have to trust that I wouldn't interfere as long as I kept to myself and out of the way. I burned my car in a field and walked nine miles I washed myself off in the river This was a town designed to keep people comfortable enough

Not to ask questions So having a stranger wandering off the streets wouldn't be a problem And everywhere I looked There were red lilies They were in the windows of every house By the roadside in every garden Hell, they were even used as a logo. I'd seen that logo a hundred times. Maybe they had no idea what it meant. I've stayed

in that rural Minnesota town ever since. I've seen more horrors than I dare to count, but they seem to ignore me. They treat this place as a nesting ground or a staging area. Considering how many of them there is, I'm astounded that anyone is still alive. The UC has declared. The UC has declared this entire town a hazard. I've tried getting in touch with Thomas again, but all my attempts at communication with the outside world has been censored. If this, by some miracle, gets through the filters, I urge the DUC to get in contact with me.

I want to be an asset. I want to help turn off the lighthouses. And, as for everyone else, the best thing you can do is stop asking questions. Don't question the armed men with strange helmets. Don't look too closely at the strange plant in the community garden. Don't look for anything abnormal. And if you see something, try to consider it might be artificial.

Don't dig too deep into this. If you're not involved, consider yourself lucky and stay out of rural Minnesota. It was my best friend Luke's idea to form our own detective agency, inspired by the shows we loved watching together. We lived on Brook Street in a small town in Oregon, so we called ourselves the Brook Street Sleuths. We advertised our services on the community board in Elmer's Market, which usually cost 25 cents a week, but Mr. Elmer kindly allowed it for free. We worked on various cases in the space of a month or so over one summer. Who's been taking the blackberries from Miss Jacob's brambles? Solved.

Almost everyone who passed by and lots of chipmunks. What made the small hole in Lowery's Front Yard? Solved? A chipmunk. Yeah, we had an abundance of chipmunks in town. But not all the mysteries involve the little critters. They were clearly not mysteries to the adults who hired us, but the best thing about living in that kind of community

was the willingness of our neighbours to contribute to our idea of fun. Luke and I were rewarded with many sodas and candy bars for our sleuthing skills. Despite our success rate, the Brook Street sleuths was a short-lived agency. Our last ever case began with a very real mystery. Where is Mr. Page's dog? Frank Page was a retired widower and happened to be my next door neighbor. His dog, Milo, a Yorkie, was what Frank referred to as, a pain in the proverbial. Milo was an expert escape artist.

He was always getting out of the yard and causing mischief in town, but would usually come back home with his tail wagging after an hour or two. evening, we could hear Frank calling for Milo from the doorstep. It escaped as per, but it had been several hours and he still hadn't returned. My dad offered to drive around the neighbourhood to look for him, but had no luck. The next morning, I helped Frank make a missing poster. We stuck a photograph of Milo on a sheet of paper using a glue stick, and I neatly wrote the details underneath in black marker, as to do.

dictated by Frank. Then we went to Elmer's market to use the photocopier and made ten copies. It should have cost us a dollar, but Mr. Elmer said there was no charge and wished us luck in finding him. Frank bought me a cola as a thank you.

You're a good kid, Ricky, he said, patting my back. I could hear he was upset. We'll find him, Mr. Page, I said. The Brook Street's sleuths are on the case. He chuckled.

He's a piece of work, but I'd be lost without him. I'll go knock for Luke, just as soon as we've put up these posters. We left one on the board in Elmer's, then stuck the remaining posters on telegraph poles, and the two bus shelters in town. I asked Frank if I could keep hold of the original photograph of Milo. That way, I could show it to the local residents

during our investigation. Before I knocked for Luke, I went back home to tell my parents. Don't wonder too far, Ricky, said Mom, and stay out of the woods. I don't like the thought of you boys in there alone. It was a woodland area that lined the back of town. I absolutely planned on looking in there.

I told my mom I wouldn't, though, of course. I grabbed my bike and rode to Luke's to fill him in on the details. There, we rode around town and knocked on doors, asking if they'd seen Milo. It was mostly unsuccessful, but one lady had some potentially useful information. Now that I think about it, she said on the doorstep, I did see a little dog sniffing around the brambles on Maple Road yesterday. Thank you, ma'am, said Luke. We discussed it as we retrieved our bite.

from the end of the driveway. There are two houses on Maple Road with brambles in the yard, he said. Miss Jacobs, I said, and the Deans. Why did it have to be the Deans? The Dean family were not known for their warm community spirit, especially the oldest son, Tommy. He was a senior and notorious troublemaker who had caused Luke and I a lot of grief. The family also had a much bigger, meaner,

dog, that would probably treat Milo as a snack. We'll go to Miss Jacob's house first, said Luke. If we're lucky, we won't have to go to the Deans at all. We left our bikes on the sidewalk and knocked on Miss Jacob's door. Well, she said warmly, if it isn't the Brook Street sleuths. Hello, Miss Jacobs, we said in unison. What can I do for you, boys? We're looking for my neighbour, Mr. Page's dog, I said, showing her the photo.

He went missing yesterday afternoon. Oh no, she said. I'm familiar. I sometimes see him in the yard by the brambles, but I haven't seen him for days. Thank you anyway, Miss Jacobs, said Luke. Of course, she said. I'll keep my eye out. Oh, and help yourselves to Blackberries.

As we walked down Miss Jacob's pathway, we looked at each other with concern, knowing we now had to visit the Deans. We took the opportunity to eat a few of the ripened berries before braving it, then wheeling our bikes to their house. The yard wasn't as Kempt as the others in the neighbourhood. It was overgrown, and there were scraps of metal from various vehicles dotted around like a junkyard. We slowly walked up the path As soon as we knocked on the door They came loud barking from inside that made us jump Followed by shouting

The door flew open and Mr. Dean was standing there Holding back their monster of a dog by the collar Who just barking at us like crazy Shut the hell up He yelled down at it It quietened down but growled under its breath What do you want? Hello, sir, I stuttered.

We're asking around to see if anyone has seen my neighbour's dog. I took out the photo. He went missing yesterday. What makes you think I had anything to do with it? He snapped. It's not like that, sir, said Luke. We're just asking if he's seen him, that's all. He sometimes wonders around the neighbourhood.

Who do you think you are? He said. Colombo or something. something. Luke and I turned to each other like it had been a bad idea. I'm sorry to have bothered you, sir, I said, turning to leave. Believe me, he said. If that rat had been anywhere near here, Cain would have sorted it out.

The dog started barking again, and we hurried back down the path. I don't want to see you boys on my property again, he yelled after us. I won't hold him back next time. He laughed loudly as we quickly rode away, my heart beating hard. We stopped around the corner to catch our breath. Then we started to laugh uncomfortably. God, I hate that family, said Luke. We heard the roar of an engine and a rust bucket of a car came hurtling around the corner,

its tires screeching on the road. It was Tommy Dean behind the wheel. When he noticed Luke and I, he gave us the finger and sped away out of sight. So suspicious, I said, but maybe too obvious? Luke shrugged. They're assholes, but I think we need to investigate more first. When it felt like we'd exhausted all avenues in town, I suggested we look in the woods.

Luke was apprehensive, as, like me, he was forbearable. bidden from the woods without an adult. But it seemed logical that a dog would be drawn to the woods, especially with all the chipmunks that chase. If we do find Milo there, I said, we'll just pretend we found him someplace that won't get us in trouble. We looked around for an hour or so, shouting Milo's name from time to time.

He got to the point where we figured if Milo was somewhere he could hear us, he would have made himself known by now. Before we left, we both confessed to needing the bathroom badly. So, we went in opposite directions to find a secluded spot to pee. Ricky! I heard Luke scream after a few minutes. I quickly finished and retrieved my bike.

Where are you? I yelled, my nerves on edge. Over here! I saw him standing in a small clearing and rushed over. What is it? I asked out of breath. He didn't know. answer. Luke had found what looked like the sight of a sacrificial ritual. There were strange

symbols drawn onto several tree trunks and what appeared to be blood. In the center was a slab of stone with a chalk drawing of three triangles, all pointing the same way but overlapping each other. In the center of that was a severed animal paw. It had the same urban color fur as Milo's. Oh my God, I said quietly. I really want to leave now, said Luke in an enormous whisper. I nodded. Yeah, come on.

As I went to pick up my bike, I saw a small satchel sitting by a log. I walked over to it, Luke spotting it too. Leave it, Ricky, he said. It's evidence, I said, about to pick it up. but then I remembered not to contaminate it. I used the stick to lift the flap open and peek inside. There was a pack of cigarettes and some school textbooks, senior biology and math. Student, I said.

I found a large leaf and used it to cover my fingertips, opening the first page of the biology book. Written in pencil in the top right corner, Tommy Dean. A shiver went through me, as I told Luke. We got on a bikes and rode like the wind, heading straight to the sheriff's office. We burst in and both started yelling. Whoa, fellas, said Deputy Campbell from behind his desk. Calm yourselves. Now, what seems to be the problem?

We explained everything. Luke and I were escorted back to the woods to show the deputy what we had found. "'Sweet Mother of Jesus,' he said, calling it in. It was a search conducted at the Dean's house. Inside Tommy's bedroom, they not only found an ancient book of the occult containing the very symbols found at the scene, but also Milo's collar. Apparently he protested his innocence as they took him in for questioning. I heard all of this through the walls as my parents talked about it.

that night, having been banished to my room. Poor Mr. Page was devastated. The disturbing nature of it rocked our sleepy community. But Luke and I were commended for our help in the investigation.

We both received honorary badges from the Sheriff's Department, making us feel like real investigators. After a couple of days, Miss Jacobs required our services again. My mom was reluctant for me to carry on playing detective as she called it,

but my dad talked to her around. Luke and I went to visit Miss Jacobs late afternoon and were greeted by a wonderful smell. Take a seat, boys, she said. I baked you a blackberry pie. Call her to thank you for your services to the community. Thanks, Miss Jacobs, we both said together, excitedly sitting in the dining table

where a warm pie sat in the centre. She cut two slices and plated them up, handing us one each. Bon Appetit, she smiled, taking a seat as we started tucking into the delicious pie. Well done on your investigation. That must have been quite a shock discovering such a gruesome scene. Luke nodded.

It was scary. Wasn't it, Ricky? Yeah, I agreed. But we handled it like professionals. She chuckled. I'm sure you did. I always knew that Tommy Dean was a rotten apple. I can't help but wonder what it was all for, though.

Why sacrifice that little dog? We looked at each other and shrugged with mouthfuls of pie. And those symbols, what did they mean? My dad said it was devil worship, said Luke. I'm sure he's right, she said. To think, I'd only seen that poor dog a few hours before Tommy took him. I can't help her think I could have done something to help. You couldn't have known, Miss Jacobs, I said, it's not your fault.

She patted my hand. Thank goodness you heroes found those schoolbooks of his other scene. Imagine what else he could have. done if it weren't for you. I dread to think. Luke and I looked at each other and smiled with pride. Excuse me a moment,

she said. I'll be right back. We're heroes, I juggled when she'd left the room. We found a villain and saved the day, Luke giggled. As we kept tucking in, I couldn't help but feel like something wasn't quite right.

Then it hit me. Wait, didn't Miss Jacobs say she hadn't seen Milo for a few days when we were investigating? He shrugged. Yeah, so? But she just said she saw him a few hours before Tommy took him. His brow furrowed. Oh yeah, she's an old lady though, Ricky. My grandma is very forgetful.

I contemplated it, but it still didn't feel right. my eyes widened The sheriff's department didn't release the evidence I said quietly How did she know about the books Luke's eyes widened to match mine As Miss Jacobs came back into the room Well you look at that

She said You've almost finished your pie Let me cut you another slice No I said clearing my throat It was delicious but very filling Very well, she smiled. Let me take this dish away then.

When she lifted the pie dish, Luke and I both stared in horror, scratched in the wooden table, with three triangles overlapping each other. Oh yes, she said. There was a mystery for you to solve, a mystery ingredient. I wonder if you've got the detective skills to work it out.

Luke looked at me like he was about to cry, and I felt exactly the same. He coughed a little and put his fingers to his mouth, pulling something out. What is it, Luke? she said. He covered his mouth like he was about to puke. Hair. Clue number one, she said. And you, Ricky? I shook my head. We'd like to leave now, Miss Jacobs.

Nonsense, she said. She took my plate away and put the pie dish in front of me. Go on, have a look. I looked at Luke, who was clearly terrified. My hands were shaking as I picked up the fork and pulled pieces of pastry away. As I searched through the thick, dark purple filling, my fork made a clink sound. I picked it out with my fingers.

and could instantly feel what it was. A long canine tooth. I threw it across the table and pushed myself back, grabbing Luke's arm. As we made a run for the door, it slammed shut, and the light that had been coming through the windows dimmed. The symbol on the table began to glow as if it was drawn in embers. Luke and I had her arms around each other as we sniveled, not being able to comprehend what was happening.

Miss Jacob smiled from across the room, her hair flowing as if caught in a breeze. What are your findings? she asked. The Brook Street sleuths must be able to figure it out. You killed Milo, I shouted, and, and... The thought of it made me sick. Bravo, she clapped. Make the sacrifice, feed the innocent.

But why? screamed Luke. I am far older than any human should be, she cackled. That takes a bit of dark magic to maintain. She grabbed Luke and I tried to pull him away from her. But with a flick of her hand, I was forced against the wall. She threw him down onto the symbol, and he screamed out as smoke began to rise around him. It burns, he screamed in pain.

Leave him alone, I cried. But she turned to me. The features that made her Miss Jacobs faded, revealing something ancient and decayed. Blue skin hung from visible bones, empty sockets, wispy strands of hair, teeth surrounded by split leathery gums. You're next, Ricky, she yelled, deep and demonic.

Her mouth opened wide, and she took loose whole head inside. His arms and legs began to kick about, as I could hear muffled groans coming from inside her. There were snapping sounds, as part of her, dislocated like a snake to swallow him whole. Before long, his shoulders could no longer be seen. She made greedy, guttural noises, as she forced his body down her throat. I was paralysed against the wall, forced the watch. as my best friend was eaten alive. I could feel my mind snapping like her ancient bones.

Luke's legs were still kicking as she reached his knees, and her long bony fingers gripped around his ankles to push the last bit of him inside. There came a loud bang, something that startled her as well as me. The door to the dining room flow open and three officers burst into the room led by Deputy Campbell. Jesus, he yelled, taking aim at what was once Miss Jacobs.

She wretched, and Luke's whole body slipped out of her, collapsing on the table in a cocoon of translucent goo. I fell from the wall and hit the floor hard as the officers opened fire on her, forcing her back with a multi-laid scream. The window shattered and natural. Natural light poured in, making a scream even louder as if burned by the rays. I ran to Luke and pulled him from the table, relieved when he was still breathing. The glowing symbol was fading, and with a final shriek, the former Miss Jacobs became a cloud of smoke that was seemingly sucked into the symbol.

Then, everything went deathly silent for a few seconds. As it happened, Tommy Dean had managed to convince the sheriff to investigate Miss Jacobs. He insisted that he had seen her on his property, and that his satchel couldn't be found afterwards. Thank God he did, because Luke and I would not be here today if it wasn't for him. We carry the mental scars, but we live. Suffice to say, the Brook Street sleuths were no more after that day. I've spent the better part of a decade as a cyber security analyst for Trident Cybersecurity, or TCS for short, a highly regarded private agency whose name is whispered across government halls and boardrooms.

Our client list ranges from powerful conglomerates and discrete billionaires to governmental bodies looking for invisible defence lines in the current digital hellscape. Over the years, I've worked on a myriad of complex cases. I helped take down an international ring of hackers, intent on disrupting the national power grid, of unearthed digital scams, hidden in the most intricate labyrinth of code. My work with Trident led to the arrests of some very dangerous people you will never hear of, who have alluded international authorities for years. I am naturally an introvert,

prefering the company of a glowing screen and encrypted data to people. My colleagues often joked that I could talk to computers. If patience, diligence, and the uncanny ability to find patterns in chaos are characteristics you'd attribute to a conversation with computers, they might have been right. When I was handed the case labeled Deep Web Anomalies, I rolled my eyes. I'd seen a hundred similar files. Authorities who can afford our services scared of the Deep Web's reputation,

thinking every glitch or system hiccup was a malicious entity or person from the darker corners of the internet. However, it's either just them unable to explain an online behavior in getting spooked, or someone hitting sites at random to test funerabilities or just cause chaos for fun. Just another day at the office, I thought, ready to explain away the smoke and mirrors surrounding whatever tricks they were seeing. As I began the investigation,

I traced the incidents to an obscure message board, a niche digital hotspot where internet users exchanged experiences and data about purported paranormal events. The board was a melting part of the uncanny and unexplainable. The stories ranged from inexplicable system crashes and strange apparitions on video calls to personal accounts of spectral whispers through headphones. Even some were claiming that AI personal assistants had started speaking in tongues.

Just imagine the X board on steroids. This board, however, was more than just the usual conspiracy theories. the sheer number of incidents, the sporadic nature, the detailed accounts of ticks have users, failing to find an earthly explanation. It made me pause. A flicker of unease threading through me. The paranormal has always been an interesting, albeit abstract, concept to me. I'm not dismissive of it, but I've always found comfort in the logical, the explainable.

While sifting through the digital chaos, a particular thread titled, The Shadow Codex peaked my interest, a thread teeming with frantic narratives and vague cautionary tales penned by a user-named Cortex Phantom. Among the clutter of posts, one stood out, a cryptic encrypted file ominously titled, Damon's Whisper. I've encountered countless clandestined files during my tenure, each hiding keys to the locks of my investigations. The Damon's whisper seemed like it could be one such key, maybe an encoded message or a hidden breadcrumb to lead me to the source of these anomalies. I let out a low sigh as I stared at the encrypted file.

Downloading files from unknown sources was never without risks. It always set off a quiet alarm in the back of my mind, reminding me of the potential digital landmines I could be walking into. But as part of my job, I had learned to weigh the risks against the potential rewards. The careful dance of curiosity and caution was a familiar one. I remembered a case from a few years back, where a similarly obscure file led me to a worm that had been slowly eating away at a corporation's security infrastructure. Despite the inherent risks, my foray into the digital unknown had been vindicated. I decided to take the plunge,

encased within my virtual machine, a fortress of firewalls and isolated sandboxes. With a series of deft keystrokes, I set all my security options to the highest, prepping for potential digital fallout. Each click closer to the download felt like a step deeper into an unexplored cave. At that moment, I believed I was simply unearthing another piece of this complex puzzle. I thought the Damon's Whisper would be another mysterious yet manageable obstacle. But I was wrong. As the decryption software did its job, the file unraveled, not into a clue, to my perpetrator, but into a haunting phrase that would soon seep into every corner of my reality. Shadow dwells within. It was far from the solution I had anticipated. I devoted the next few hours

to examining Dame's whisper. My screen illuminated the room as I traced through the intricate web of code, dissecting each line twice over. At the surface, it was a complex. yet seemingly harmless array of encrypted data. As I delve deeper, peculiarities emerged. Recurring snippets of nonsensical data, obfuscated commands, sequences that seem to replicate themselves in a bizarrely organic fashion. Despite the oddities,

I couldn't pinpoint any concrete threats or leads. The file was just a maze of riddles layered with digital noise. Frustrated, I concluded it was simply a cleverly designed decoy to mislead curious minds like mine. Unresolved mysteries have a way of gnawing at your psyche. As fascinating as the file was, I knew keeping such an unpredictable element in my system was unwise. As I hover the mouse over the delete button, I was momentarily frozen by a fleeting sense of disappointment. All that build-up was a dead end. With a reluctant sigh, I clicked delete. A strange sensation washed over me as the file vanished from my drive. The room seemed colder,

the hum of my computer louder. I shrugged it off, attributing it to the late hour and the ice strain. But then, my screen flickered, displaying what looked like snippets of the same code from the deleted file. A cold dread prickled at the back of my neck. I frantically ran a system diagnostics check, but it came back clean. The screen returned to normal as abruptly as it had glitched. Then in the eerie silence, my speakers crackled to life, whispering a distorted echo of a phrase from the file.

dwells within. My heart pounded as the words lingered in the air, a sin as the serenade that threatened to shatter my composed demeanour. I swiftly muted the speakers, staring at the now silent machine in disbelief. A chill swept over me as if the room itself had taken a deep, cold breath. I sat there in the computer screens glow, fear creeping into my veins. I could rationalize the system glitches. But this? It was as if the digital entity had manifested itself in my very workspace. I simply made myself believe it was a coincidence or a trick of my mind scaring itself.

I dismissed the claims of the abnormally inclined users on the message board. But now, I was the one sitting in a dark room, feeling the tendrils of the inexplicable encroach upon my reality. I was afraid, confused, and in deep waters that my knowledge of code and cyberspace hadn't prepared me for. The sun of a new day brought no respite. Strange occurrences now followed me

beyond the confines of my workspace. Digital devices I own began acting oddly. My smartphone screens sometimes flickers, showing glimpses of the same strange code I had encountered. My smartwatch would vibrate randomly, displaying nonsensical strings of data instead of time. Even my smart home system seemed to be in the grip of this digital haunting. The thermostat fluctuating wildly, lights flickering on and off at their own accord. At first, I tried to rationalize it.

Perhaps it was a newly made worm or virus that had made its way through, my devices, new enough to bypass all my current era security. But the nature of these disturbances felt less like malicious software and more like a presence. The digital world had been my playground for years, but now it felt tainted and hostile. The familiar hum of my computer was now a haunting reminder of the inexplicable. The boundary between my professional and private life began to blur, replaced with a mounting dread that made my home feel alien and unfamiliar. To my growing horror, these occurrences became more frequent, more intrusive.

More distorted whispers would echo from my speakers. The chilling phrase, shadow dwells within, now a regular, unwelcome intrusion. I would fire my computer on in the middle of the night, the screen pulsating with the eerie glow, of that nonsensical code. Sleep became a luxury. Each waking moment dominated by an oppressive sense of unease. My mind would dart to each digital display, anticipating the next bizarre occurrence. Anxiety clawed at me, replacing the analytical calm of my professional persona with a man living on the razor's edge of fear.

But, as disturbing as the development. were, a part of me remained stubbornly defiant. I refused to be intimidated by what seemed like a digital poltergeist. Driven by fear of mix and determination, I decided to dive back into the murky depths of the shadow codex. The thread was still there, exactly where I found it. Equipped with a new resolve, I meticulously gathered every information I had, cryptic message and anomaly. Each clue was a lifeline back into the abyss,

a breadcrumb on the path to my unseen tormentor. On the message board, Cortex Phantom's posts took a more ominous tone. Re-reading them felt like descending into a dark well. The words a spiral into madness. The thread was a digital relic, a testament to the silent, chaos that the Codex had apparently unleashed on others before me.

When I first re-encounter the haunting phrase, shadow dwells within, my blood ran cold, but fear was now my fuel. With each repetition of the phrase, I felt less like a victim and more like a hunter, closing in on its prey. Hours turned into days. Each instance of the phenomenon,

pushing me further down the rabbit hole. It was a battle of attrition, me against the abstract horror lurking in the depths of cyberspace. The shadow codex was an enigma, a digital wraith that defied definition. As the lines between my work and the creeping terror blurred,

so did the boundary between my mind and the digital. I started seeing the haunting code in my dreams, the patterns weaving themselves into the fabric of my nightmares. Every digital flicker, distorted whisper and chilling message were all signposts to my slowly eroding sanity. By the end of the week, I was a shadow of my former self. My once pristine workspace was now a storm-ravaged landscape of discarded coffee cups and scattered notes. My reflection in the dark screen was a haggard, haunted, haunted face, eyes wide with terror that had become my constant companion.

I was adrift in a sea of digital horror, a lone sailor battling a storm that defied understanding. The code was no longer just an anomaly in the digital realm. It was an eldridge entity, a relentless force slowly eroding my reality's edges. The seemingly random sequences started to make a twisted kind of sense in my subconscious, forming a grotesque pattern that invaded my every thought. Yet, when I tried to formulate these thoughts, they would quickly lose sense. It was like known the definition of a word, but not being able to name it. The codex was reaching out from the digital realm into my mind, reshaping my sanity into its own terrifying image. As the toil of my descent into the codex became increasingly tangible, the once familiar digital landscape had transformed

into an abstract nightmare. The culmination of the horror was not just the code, but the creeping realization of my own insignificance, my inability to comprehend the depth of the abyss I had stumbled into. I was losing myself piece by piece, my sanity slowly succumbing to the darkness of the pits I was delving into. By the time I looked away from the screen, my surroundings were painted with the echo of the horrific code. I was now a prisoner in my own home, the walls whispering the chilling chorus, shadow dwells within.

As I descended into a darkness that was both digital and psychological, one thing was clear. The shadow codex wasn't just dwelling within my memory. machines. It was in my mind. It had become a part of me. Each day, my reality became a hellscape of twisted code and creeping shadows. The codex dominated every waking moment. The anomaly there was now a leviathan consuming my life. My mind felt like a battleground, a storm-tossed sea in the grip of a monstrous entity. Driven by desperation, I threw myself into my work, hoping to find a solution, a way to rid the codex from my reality. I spent countless hours pouring over every line of code, every fragment of the bizarre sequences, trying to discern some pattern, some key that could unlock the nightmare I was trapped in. But every attempt to decipher the code was met with failure. It was like trying to comprehend a language from a long-dead civilization,

its meanings obscured by the sands of time and the vast void of cyberspace. The more I tried to decipher it, the more my mind was consumed by its eldridge patterns. Sleep became a forgotten luxury. My meals were consumed in front of my screen, my appetite overtaken by a hunger for answers. Every personal boundary, every sanity preserving routine, was lost in the wake of the Codex. Even the simple act of leaving my workspace filled me with dread. Every time I stepped away from my computer, I was assaulted by the echoes of the Codex.

My once safe haven was gone. Each failed attempt to rest control from the Codex only deep. deepen the darkness swallowing my reality. Yet, paradoxically, the closer I inch towards madness, the more determined I became. A part of me clung to the belief that I could make it to the other end of the tunnel, that this was my way to fight back. It was a beacon of hope in the sea of despair, a desperate lifeline in the face of ever encroaching darkness. But, with every failed attempt, the Codex's grip and my reality tightened. My mind was now maelstrom of digital horrors.

My sanity reduced to a fragile thread dangling over an abyss of madness. I was caught in a perverse dance with the Codex, each step dragging me deeper into its shadowy realm. The boundary between my mind and the Codex was becoming increasingly blurred, my thoughts echoing with its haunting patterns. My once rational mind was now an echo chamber of a monstrous entity. My sanity slowly being eroded by the ceaseless whisper. It was no longer just a digital anomaly.

It was my reality, my nightmare, my inescapable fate. In a desperate bid for sanity, I finally decided to do it. the unthinkable. Disconnect from the digital world. I switched off my computer, my smartphone, and every device that linked me online. The hum of the technology. Once a comforting presence, now sounded like the ominous drone of some unseen beast. The silence that followed felt like a gasp of fresh air after being submerged in a dark, turbulent ocean.

But my respite was short-lived. Even devoid of the digital manifestations, the Codex's influence was not gone. The silence was not the comforting void I had hoped for, but a stark, cold reminder of my isolation. My home, once my sanctuary, was now a prison of silence and shadows. Without the hum of the machines, Every creek of the house, every rustle of the wind outside seemed amplified. My mind so used that the digital chatter now started playing tricks on me.

I saw patterns in the grain of the wood floor and the plaster on the walls. The ordinary and mundane were twisted into grotesque reminders of the codex. The physical world was not a refuge. It was just another canvas for the codex to paint. its horror on. Shadow dwells within. The phrase had followed me out of the digital world, insinuating itself into the very fabric of my existence.

The patterns in the wood, the whispers of the wind, and the play of shadows in the corners of my vision, all echoed the haunting mantra. As the sunset, casting long, menacing shadows around the room, I missed the computer screen's eerie glow. The real world was no less terrifying than the digital. Each shadow seemed to pulse with a life of its own, as if the codex had extended its reach from the digital realm into the physical. The darkness around me seemed to throb with an unseen presence,

the codex perhaps lingering at the edges of my perception. The creeping sense of my perception. horror was more profound and more intimate in the real world. It was no longer a threat lurking behind a screen, but an all-encompassing entity that had split into every corner of my existence. In the depth of my despair, I reached out to the only place that seemed to hold any semblance of understanding. The message board where it all began.

trembling hands and a mind teetering on the brink of insanity, I reconnected to the digital world, back to the humming chorus of machines and the eerie glow of the screen. The fear was tangible, but my desperation pushed me past it. A grim sense of nostalgia washed over me as the familiar forum loaded on the screen. This was where my nightmare had started. And maybe, just maybe, where it could end. I poured out my story, every detail of my encounter with the Codex, the bizarre happenings, my subsequent isolation, and the profound terror that now consumed my life.

The words came out in a disjointed, chaotic stream, and madman's rambling to the void. I didn't sugarcoat my fear, didn't hold back my despair, I was beyond caring about sounding crazy or desperate. If anyone could understand, maybe offer some insight or help, it would be these fellow dwellers of the digital shadows. And then, I waited. Every passing second stretching into agonizing eternity.

I stared at the screen, the harsh light stinging my eyes, the silence of the room amplifying the pounding of my heart. I waited for a reply, any reply, a lifeline in the endless digital sea. The notification ping startled me, breaking the oppressive silence. My heart pounded in my chest as I opened the response. Two words stared back at me, their brevity more chilling than any verbose response.

too late. A chill ran down my spine, the finality of the words echoing in my mind. It was like a death sentence, the crushing weight of my doomed fate. They held no sympathy, no offer of help. Just a cold, hard acknowledgement of my plight. I was truly alone, left to face the monstrous codex and its terrifying grip of my reality. A sense of profound dread washed over me. This wasn't just a fight against the digital anomaly anymore. This was a battle for my sanity, my very existence, against an entity that had already claimed victory.

The codex wasn't just in my computer or my home. It was in me. And according to someone who had managed to look past my ramblings as insane gibberish. It was already too late. As the days bled into each other, my life became a relentless cycle of dread and despair. The Codex's haunting echo never left me,

persisting in my every thought and sense. I was trapped, lost within my own mind, and there was no way out. Each sunrise was not a new day, but another deceit. sent into madness. I stopped trying to track time, days, hours, minutes. They lost their meaning in the face of the all-consuming horror. Food lost this taste, sleep became a fleeting memory, and my once cherished solitude became a tormenting isolation. Each day was a test of endurance,

a struggle to hold onto the last vestiges of my sanity. The house seemed to take. on a life of its own, the walls whispering with the echoes of the codex. It was no longer a haven, but a haunting reminder of my entrapment. I could see the codex's patterns in everything, the way the dust particles floated in the sunbeams, the way the shadows played on the walls. It was as if the codex had woven itself into the very fabric of reality. I was living in its shadow, life a twisted reflection of its nightmarish design. I started to fear sleep, knowing they would only bring more terrifying visions. But staying awake was no better.

Every waking moment was filled with a creeping horror of the Codex. The outside world became a distant memory. I couldn't remember the last time I'd left the house, seeing another human face, heard of voice other than my own. The Codex had effectively isolated me, cutting me off from the world. My life reduced to a terrifying echo of the digital nightmare. My once robust spirit was breaking, my will eroding under the ceaseless onslaught of the Codex. The shadows grew darker, the silence more oppressive, and my despair deeper. I was losing myself, my identity being swallowed by the monstrous entity.

I could no longer tell where I ended and the Codex began. Its patterns had etched themselves into my thoughts, its influence seeping into every corner of my mind. I was not just a victim of the Codex. I was becoming part of it. And in the cold, heartless world had a creation. I was utterly, alone, and the worst part, the silence, the isolation, the creeping terror. They weren't just a result of some demonic entity or a malevolent ghost. They were a product of my own making, the consequence of my journey into the abyss.

Shadow dwells within. The phrase had become a cruel prophecy, a chilling truth. that was impossible to deny. Through lucid moments of clarity, I kept digging, my mind clawing from the deep depths it had sank. I am a digital splunker lost in the abysmal depths of the shadow codex, its endless chasm drawing me in with an irresistible pull.

However, the more I tried to understand it and decipher its language's cryptic patterns, the more I was consumed by it. Despite this, the pulsating symbols on my computer screen had become my obsession. In a trance-like state, each moment, each hour was consumed by the pursuit of comprehension, the tantalizing possibility of a breakthrough, despite where that had leave me in the end. It could be salvation, or it could be my demise.

It'd be an end regardless. I labored over intricate patterns woven through labyrinthine forums, drew and redrew cryptic symbols seeking connections, finding none. Yet, with every pattern I unraveled, every theory I spun, and every code I broke, I found it harder to remember who I am. Memories of my life before the codex, before this haunting dream, become as elusive as the solutions I was seeking. Faces and names blurred into obscurity,

replaced by the mesmerizing patterns of the codex. I was losing myself in this digital abyss, feeding the very beast I was trying to slay. Each deciphered code leads to another, a never-ending maze of horror, resisting understanding, and I realized the terrifying truth.

My futile attempt to conquer the Codex wasn't a path to salvation. It was a death march into oblivion. I understand the full scope of the Codex's monstrous design with chilling clarity. This isn't a war I can win. With every step I took to fight back, I was simply sinking deeper into its clutches.

And thus, I descend. Not fighting, not resisting. Just falling. Falling into the endless, inky depths of the Shadow Codex's realm. The futility of it all was crushing, finding myself to be a pawn in a game I cannot understand, let alone win.

And finally, my mind snapped. I fell into a rhythm, dance with insanity and the unknown. The message board becomes my canvas, my stage, my confessional. I spell secrets of another realm onto the page, ideas beyond comprehension, names that no human tongue has uttered, descriptions of entities so foreign,

so otherworldly, they defy our reality. Alien landscapes that extend into endless twilight. Creatures formed from impossibilities, names that ring with an ethereal echo. Each post is a chilling sonnet to the codex, a testament to my fall. These aren't just symbols or coded messages. They are whispers from the abyss,

confessions from the edge of my sanity. Every time I hit refresh, my posts, my mad ramblings, they vanished, devoured by the digital void. Each disappearance, echoes the femurality of my sanity. But it doesn't matter.

I keep posting, and I keep pouring the madness onto the screen. I am driven, not by the hope of salvation, but a need to express, to expel the Codex's influence, even if only momentarily. Then, finally, I resurface. The madness, the chaotic symbol, symphony of the incomprehensible thoughts recedes like a passing storm. I find myself sitting in front of the computer screen, fingers poised over the keyboard.

My last post, an amalgamation of cryptic symbols and alien words displayed on the screen. I hit refresh. The post disappears, as it always does. A familiar post catches my eye in a refreshed list of threads. The original thread of the Shadow Codex, the digital Pandora's box that began my descent into this never-ending nightmare. Compelled by a sense of dread, I click on it. There, highlighted in the dim light of my room,

is a new comment on the thread. It's from the original post. poster, the unknown harbinger of my ordeal. The message is as simple as it is chilling. The Codex has been updated. Whatever I did, it seems, it's ready for the next person to download and add to the annals of their sacred texts. Fish ox, a penny from 1971.

Something bent and warped, too light to be valuable. A bit of old jewellery, perhaps, smashed against the rocks. Why am I doing this? I must like standing in the rain. I must like the heady smell of seaweed and salt. The crisp sound of wet sand beneath my feet. The inevitable feel of it between my toes, despite the sturdy shoes and thick woolly socks that I wear.

This beach is littered with cheap tat and nothing else. I've been coming here for years, drawn by the excitement of a silver coin found in 2008. Since then I found the odd musket ball, but nothing of any real value. Most of the time when I get down on one knee, I anticipate disappointment. yet. Here I am, still scanning the sand and rocks, looking for another one in a million find with my detector, but there's nothing here. This place has been combed thoroughly, not by competing hobbyists, but by myself, slowly and painfully over a process of years. This is hardly a place for sunbatheers. The sloping cliffs rise overhead as I

I pick my way along what little sand lies between the rocks and the ocean. Seagulls coast lazily in the sky. But down here on the ground, the wind is fierce, and so is the sea. White horses race furiously towards the land, breaking not far to my right, folding themselves to pour lazily at old clumps of rotting seaweed and stubborn rocks. I am alone, standing at the feet of giants. For a moment, I take my headphones off and look around. My senses battered by the wind.

Eyes stinging, I scanned the way back. When I began, there was an old man going for a walk, but is nowhere to be seen now. Not long and the tide will erase the way back. This isn't a popular beach, not with families. Nudists sometimes come here during the winter to go racing into the waters,

screeching and giggling, titillated and thrilled. Those nude retirees visit this place for much the same reason I do. It's not good for bathers, swimmers, surfers, or much else. The rocks are dangerous.

Riptides, funneled by powerful geography, have claimed more than a few lives, lives. It does well to do your research before going for a dip. But if you're prepared, you can be safe and the tall cliffs make for an attractive privacy barrier. Only those who know the area can find the rocky path that leads down to the sand. Most don't even know it exists. One of the world's forgotten little corners. I wonder why I'm still here when I've wasted the afternoon looking for nothing so far from comfort and warmth. It is a long way back to the car.

I picture the feel of a cup of tea held in both hands, the sound of wind buffeting my house and wheels, and I'm ready to finally call it a day and go home. When something catches my eye. It glitters on the sand not far from me, and I approach it expecting a piece of litter, a foil wrapper perhaps. I pick it up and trace its shape with my fingers. My mind moves at a glacial pace.

It is a gold coin. It is cold to the touch, handmade pre-Saxon. The ancient head stamped into its metal is strange, warped with time. It resembles a man with the mouth of an anglerfish. It is beautiful. It is everything I've ever wanted. Solid gold and thicker than a smartphone. Six months rent in the palm of my hand.

Didn't even have to use my metal detector. It was right there on top of the sand. It must have come from the water, placed there by those rapid waves. My mind conjures the image of a sunken shipwreck a mile or two off the coast. Its waterlog coffers filled with coins just like these. Clusters of jewels gilded with silver and gold. An ancient treasure that has finally broke loose after centuries of tidal warfare. That might mean there's more.

I look around, but there's only shale and sand. hundreds of metres away where the rocks become hard to navigate something else shimmers in the sun but that could easily be a rock pool catching the sun I should go back I tell myself as I scan the beach once more the sea is coming behind me the sand is narrowed to just 10 metres I know from experience it will disappear faster than seems possible Then there will just be water and cliffs.

If I get caught, the best case scenario is that I'll be able to scamper up to safety somewhere and get rescued by a helicopter. My humiliation paraded for all to see on local papers. Happens at least once a year. But the stakes are higher than you might think. Another coin would make a year's rent. Again, that image of a sunken chest full of treasures flashes into my mind. Absurd, I tell myself, a child's fantasy. But I'm holding the evidence of it in my hand.

A gold coin. How often in my life has a fantasy come true? I dig my fingers into the gold as hard as I can. I want to make sure it's real. How often does a fantasy need to come true? Just once, I mutter, my words lost to the wind. It isn't easy. The rocks here are sharp and treacherous.

As a child, when my mother first brought me to this beach, I imagined myself walking across a giant's fingerprint. Back then, I glided across stone ridges, pivoting the arches of my feet like a spinning top, moving effortlessly across the strange landscape. Some of the gaps are three, four feet deep. Falling would have hurt. But I didn't fall.

I was young, nigh invincible. It isn't like that now. It might be my knees, it might be the fear, it might be the nerves. But I wobble each time I lift my foot. My body, struggling to balance ridges as thin as a pencil. I fall twice and the second time it hurts like hell. Ripped jeans, ripped skin, blood. A gash that takes 30 seconds for the pain to reach consciousness.

I grip my teeth, determination floods me. I look back and realize that the sand is no longer there. Turning back now means wet socks and shoes. ankle high water, I'd be humiliated. I look down at the cut of my leg, watching the blood flow thinly into salt water until it turns a pinkish yellow. There's another gold coin. All thoughts of turning back dissolve as I fumble for it in my fingers. I want more. I want the coffer. I want to run my fingers through gold like it's

liquid, I want to submerge my arms elbow deep into the treasure. I can't stop picturing. But the tide is coming. The tide is here. Furious waves falling just a few feet short of my position. This will have to do. Two coins, a year's worth of rent. I accept this compromise and begin to turn back. A wave hits me. It is worse than any punch. No boxer has ever hit this hard. Here is a force that shapes continents, and it has me firmly in its grip. I can't tell you how long this next part lasts. There is salt, spray, foam.

I am tossed about in a way that I've never been before, like a roller coaster without the tracks. A rock smashes my ribs, another my ankle. Something breaks. There is darkness, there is light. I'm dying, I'm sure of it. When I awake, it is to the feeling of my lungs fighting for air while I lie on my back. For a second, I'm just an animal and loving it. Then the rest comes flooding back.

The tide, the beaches, the coins. I lurch upwards and stare at my pocket. arm clutched so tightly, I have to will the muscles to open. Sure enough, the gold coins are still there. I laugh, but the movement hurts. And even worse, it starts something. In just a few short seconds, I am forced to reckon with three terrible facts. First, my ribs are broken.

Second, my ankle is broken. Third, I'm going to be sick. The salt burns, but it is nothing compared to my ribs and ankle as I struggle to roll over. I cannot help but cry as I vomit. I've never known pain like this. I managed four pitiful heaves of seawater and bile before collapsing in a breathless fit. My chest feels full of gravel. After a few long breaths, I sit up, secure the coins in a pocket with a zipper and look around.

I realize how strange the world has become. I am lying on a flat rock at the mouth of a cave. I must have been deposited here like one of those coins, and I count myself lucky. I want to look outside. I want to take register of how far I am along the coast and how much. low the sun has fallen, but I cannot stand and movement is beyond difficult. The best I can manage is a crawl, and I soon realize I'm going to need all my energy. A gentle lapping of water reaches my feet and soaks my legs and ass.

I haven't even managed to catch my breath to contemplate the jagged ruin of my ankle, already the tide is catching up with me. It makes sense, I suppose. The sea put me here, so of course it isn't far behind. Damn, I hiss out loud. For the first time since finding the coins, my mind snaps back into what feels like a normal speed. I am in incredible danger, and it's still not too late for that look to run out. I pat my pockets.

My phone is broken and unresponsive. My only light is a waterproof torch I keep in my keychain, a Christmas gift from my mother. She likes that I have a hobby. She says it makes it easier to shop presents for me. I turn the torch on and almost cry at the serendipity of it all. Until now, I've never used it. The cave ahead is roughly waist height, and it goes deeper than my torch can reach.

The ocean is rising behind me, furious at losing its catch. Thankfully, the cave slopes upward a few meters in, so I begin to crawl seeking higher ground. I drag myself off the flat rock and further into the cave. I make slow progress across the collection of eroded gravel and random crap the water is deposited here over the years. Fish and tackle, old knits, driftwood, a cat skull. I cannot help but stop at the last one. Hollow eyes glare back at me like a warning. I shake the feeling off and move onwards.

I am losing the chase I realize as the water catches up to my belly. Damn it, damn it, damn it. I dragged myself elbow over elbow like they do on those army adverts. Be the best, I think, over and over, as my ankle catches on the stones and my ribs grind in my chest. I haven't cried like this since I was a child,

but I don't stop. The water is at my chest now. The cat's skull is floating somewhere behind me, void by the rising sea. I don't want to join it. At last, I make it to where the ground begins to rise. The darkness makes for an ominous saviour, but here is my only chance of survival,

and I cling to it. I ignore the caveman inside me. He is terrified of this place and is banging every warning drum in my mind that he can reach, but I forward to him. my way ahead regardless. Arm over arm, my progress is slow, maybe a meter for every ten minutes. I cannot say for sure, I'm no athlete. When the rising tunnel becomes too steep for my elbows

that offer much traction, I dig my fingers into cracks in the stone and pull myself along that way. Meanwhile, the water climbs still. I feel its icy touch, reach my collarbones and let out an audible cry. I don't want to die. It terrifies me, the thought of it. The pain most of all. How painless is drowning, I wonder. Less painful than this. I want to weigh up the pros and cons of letting go and sliding back into the water, but my brain won't let me. It's all or nothing. instincts older than the continents propel me. Fighting to hold my chin up as the water reaches my bottom lip,

I failed to notice the ground changing direction. A sudden downward tilt that leaves my hands flailing. I want to pause and gauge the way ahead, but it's far too late. I am carried over the top by a mix of gravity in the water's currents. for a moment and then there is total darkness for the second time that day I pass out

when I awake I am on my stomach and in so much pain that I am actually able to register a glimmer of anger at the world around me this is starting to feel personal and that spark of frustration is what gives me the strength to lift my head up

and try to gauge where I am. Luckily, my torch stays strapped to my wrist, and I use it now to see that I am in a head-height cavern. Nearby is a crack in the rock, and from there the water drains. Lucky for me, or else I would have surely drowned. Behind me lies the way I came. It is a nearly vertical wall of rock,

10 metres high and slick with algae and eroded smooth by millennia of waves I have no more chance of climbing it than I do the Empire State Building I watch as another wave crest the top and strikes me like a thrown bucket nearby that crack has begun to fill backwash lapping eagerly at my feet if I stay here

I will likely drown in less than an hour. But this isn't a death trap. Not yet, anyway. The cave carries on, another tunnel, chest height, big enough to crawl through. It bends gently out of sight, and something about the darkness beyond makes my stomach curdle. For all I know, it terminates after a metre. but I have no choice except to try.

I persist, crawling onwards around the corner. It seems safe at first, but then the tunnel begins to narrow. I try not to let it worry me. I'm on my stomach and there is room to spare as the ceiling gradually lowers from six to five to four feet. When it starts to grace my shoulder blades, I have to suppress the need to hyperventilate. Then, it's not just the ceiling that's getting closer.

The walls on either side encroach my arms and the panic becomes very real. I keep hoping they'll widen any second. But they don't. They just keep pressing closer and closer. I want to turn back already. I can feel water reaching my knees. I tried to turn back and find I can't. This realization seems to drain the world of all colour

But I try not to dwell on what it means I keep going Without realising what I'm doing I leave my arms out in front Until the walls narrow so tightly I can no longer bend them at the elbow I'm forced to move entirely on the motion of two wrists And one functioning ankle

If I thought progress before was slow this was a thousand times worse. Time crawls to a halt as I struggle against my own entombment, and I spend what could be ten seconds or ten hours staring at a single bit of rock, the fingers of my right hand working furiously, or my left foot tries to push me forward. I move no more than a centimetre at a time. Without warning, the panic hits me like a hammer,

blow. I can't move. I try to thrash an anger, but it's more like a seizure. My wrists and ankles flicker left and right looking for leverage. But there's nothing.

I should try to think clearly, but most of my mental energy has to go to fighting panic. My emotions reach breaking point and I begin to sob out loud and curse. Soon I become hyper aware that I cannot breathe in fully because the tunnel is compressing my ribs.

There's no budge in the stone. It is so unyielding. Every breath is limited. And so they start to come faster and faster in a desperate bit to chase away the ever-growing sense of suffocation. I just want one deep breath. One deep breath. But I can't. The more I struggle, the more desperate the knee for oxygen becomes.

I'm trapped in a downward spiral that feels like it is killing me. This is the worst-case scenario I realize. I was better off drowning. Nothing can possibly be worse than this. I want to pass out. I want to die. Neither happens. The world goes out.

a bit woozy. I'm overcome briefly by dizziness. But there's no changing this. Instead, I am forced to face my fear, and while I cannot beat it, I can at least observe it. I don't really have much of a choice. Neither the cave nor I are going anywhere. So, I pay attention to the lightheadedness. The pain in my chest, the weightyed. of the earth above and below me. My heart races so quickly, it feels like it might just seize up and stop. I focus on its rhythm. I count each beat in the tattoo. Slowly, without meaning to, this heightened awareness causes some of the panic to ease up. I can describe it only as a sort of out-of-body experience, except I never leave my body.

I'm inside it, painfully aware of every constraint and bondage and every ache and pain. At last, I noticed something new. If I breathe out, the rock is no longer squeezing me to death. If I exhale and keep the air out, the feeling of constraint becomes almost tolerable. It is the only physical sensation of relief I have felt since this. began. And just like that, I'm back in the driver's seat. It is so obvious in hindsight I want to laugh. I exhale and keep the air out of my lungs and wiggle my foot. My body moves. I try it again, and this time I inch forward. I do it maybe 50, a hundred times. All in all, I travel a meter,

I think. And then the rock gives way. I weep like a baby. I can breathe, a full breath, and the tunnel keeps widening. Before I know it,

I have my arms back at my side and I'm using my elbows to drag myself forward. Soon there is no tunnel scraping my shoulder blades at all, no rock to bang my head against. I merge head first and drag myself.

myself out of the tunnel and drop a few feet onto a rocky floor below. I roll onto my back and let rip a laughter. It is howling and mad and like nothing I've known before. Weeping with utter joy, I look to my left and right, ready for the next step in this nightmare. There is a man smiling at me. Jeez, I squeal, scrambling upwards and away, without meaning to.

I kick him in the face and his head loves backwards like he's trying to laugh. I see his mouth in a bloody ruin. His eyes and teeth are gone. He isn't smiling at all. He's dead. Something has torn his jaws open

and removed his teeth. The result merely looks like a joker-esque grin. Terrified, I shuffled over and briefly flick a hand out to touch him. A quick shove to the shoulder. He does not react. It takes another three or four pokes before I finally convince myself

is a nerd. Reality asserts itself with a kind of numb dread. This really is a dead body, I tell myself. His face is pale in the glare of my torch, but a quick hand to the, forehead tells me he's still warm, and that windbreaker is awfully familiar.

I rack my mind and summon an image of that old man on the beach. He'd been wearing a jacket much like this one. But it can't be him, I decide. It simply cannot be him. This place is a nightmare, I think. A real-life underworld. I look around and try to imagine how this body came to be here. There are strange things bundled against the far wall.

I approach and go through them, but their effect is similar to the gold coin. My thoughts become frozen and sluggish. I inventory them like some idiot, unable and unwilling to see the bigger picture. Six coats, 15 shoes, countless hats, and gloves. All of them torn or ripped in some fashion. Three backpacks, exercise books from a school, paper turned to mulch long ago. A pencil case stuffed with soft pencils and broken pens. I dropped the last item to the floor and swivel my light across the room behind me. I don't like this. My mind races with possibilities. Suddenly, I'm scanning this small chamber like my life depends on it,

desperate to answer a question that supplants all others. Maybe. I should have listened to my caveman thoughts, I think. I may not be alone down here. There is writing on the wall. I cannot recognize the language, but it frightens me. Paragraphs of it scrawled in neat blocks, one after the other.

Occasionally, it is broken up with simple pictograms of ships and spearwielding men. If it tells a story, I cannot make heads or tales of it. Something about the scene is getting to me nonetheless. The body, the pile of forgotten things, an ancient language. I stopped myself sinking into another full-blown panic by remembering that these, are all irrelevant details. I need to leave this place no matter what. There are several tunnels leading out of this cavern,

all much larger than the last one. I pick one at random. Hopefully it is more reliable than the last I crawled through. Fighting the pain, I rise onto my knees and hands. It hurts like hell, but it lets me leave swiftly and quietly. I scamper along, offering only one last sad glimpse of the body. The old man is looking at me.

He is still grinning, and I am glad to take the light away and put distance between us. Whether or not this path leads out, I appreciate that it at least stays wide open. At points, it is even large enough for two or three people to walk abreast. I've never been thankful of this kind of room before. Just the day ago, this would have felt like a crowded elevator. Now, it's like an empty stadium. It lets me stop and catch my breath. Let's me race ahead and make progress.

Either can happen on my terms. Minutes slide away in the dark where time has no meaning. For long periods, I turn the torch off and navigate by sea. sound and touch, relying on my echoes to tell me when the tunnel takes a sudden change in direction. This is something that if you had asked me this morning, I would have told you I could never imagine. But it is surprisingly easy. More than once, I detect the change in what is otherwise uniform soundscape and stop, lighting up my torch and seeing a sharp bend right or left. I am acquiring a competency that gives rise to a flickering hope.

This confidence fades when I come to a fork in the tunnel. For a moment, I'm caught by indecision. But then something familiar catches my eyes. There is a gold coin. Another, pristine, just like the one on the beach. This time it does not exhilarate me. No images of sunken chests come to mind, only the leering grin of the pallid corpse I left behind

and the grim words etched into stone. The world is heavy, weighing down from above, and I am so small and alone down here. The darkness so complete as to suffocate. I stare at the coin and its position, in a tunnel that takes a hard left turn out of sight. I don't like it. I don't like its placement.

Taking it would place me right at the threshold of the unseen. I'm certain of nothing in this underworld, possessing only the risk-averse instincts of a prey animal. But I decide that coin is a trap based only on those instincts. It is almost arrogant, unsubtle. I'm wide-eyed with a smell of blood still fresh in my nose. A twitching hair, ears raised.

I have a feeling that whatever set that trap is near enough to hear my every breath. I am separated from death only by the gossamer thin limits of my perception. It's right there, and it expects me to take the bait. I realize, with some disappointment, I already have. I'm two coins deep into this nightmare. This whole thing, a carefully laid trap from the start.

My only hope is that I'm no Highland heir. I can think beyond action and reaction. but I have to be quick. I weigh up my options. If something is there, do I really want to let it know I'm aware of it? I suppose every ambush, sooner or later, has to release itself. Better to be in control, I decide.

I find a rock. There are plenty of them. Slowly, quietly, I back away from the fall. and find a ridge in the stone walls that I can hide behind. It is small and offers little shelter, but it's the best I have, and I hope it'll work anyway.

I thumb the switch and my light goes out. I throw the stone in my fist and squeeze myself back into my hiding space and hold my breath. Just in time, the stone smashes into the wall, of the right-hand tunnel. This is the one without the coin. There is silence for what might be five, ten seconds. And then there is only the gentlest of sounds, the touch of something soft against the stone.

What a far cry from the synthetic world of engines and buzzing motors I am used to. I have spent my life training myself to ignore the those kinds of sounds, barely perceptible scuffles, a cat's footfall, a bird's wings, a scurrying rat. But down here, the sound is like thunder. It makes my blood run cold and the hair in my scalp stand on edge. A part of me had thrown the stone, convinced I would only prove myself wrong. But now the terror is so wrong.

terror is so real that I can almost reach out and touch it. It is as tangible as the wall I'm trying desperately to dissolve into, as real as my own flesh and blood. I am being hunted. Whatever was in hiding has seemingly taken the bait. The sound of its movements disappears down the right-hand tunnel. Thank God for that caveman. He remembers the plan. Acting uninstinct and painfully aware of the ticking clock, I force myself to peek around the rocky outcrop and turn on my torch. There lies the fork again.

And if I had any doubt about the trap before, it is thoroughly beaten down when I see the gold coin has disappeared. I waste no more time and scramble on all fours down that turning, pausing only briefly to consider if my hunter has employed a double bluff. Oh well, I think, it's too late now. Around the corner I go and find nothing but darkness. I could try and perform some mental gymnastics, convince myself there was never anything there in the first place.

but on one of the walls, I spot a streak of something reddish-brown. There was just enough time in passing to be sure that it is blood. And then I'm gone, desperately crawling further into darkness. Occasionally, I stop and check over my shoulder for signs of something giving chase. If it took the bait and followed the wrong tunnel, who's to say it didn't quickly realize and is now barreling down on me, or that the tunnels don't intersect down the line.

If something lives here, it must be incredibly familiar with a layout of these sprawling caverns. I am merely a tourist in the shadows, hopelessly lost and ill-equipped for this kind of survivalist nightmare. But each time I look, there is only empty space, a frighteningly sterile landscape, brutal and haunting, looming over me on my hands and knees.

Rock walls, curved and jagged, ribbed and rippling, a concrete colon where light can only reach so far. Each time I look, I have to force myself to break eye contact with the darkness and resume my journey. I do this 16 times. I do not know how long elapses between each glance. I only count the number until at last, the everlasting tunnel takes a break, and I am deposited in yet another cavernous room. This time I am almost blinded by the light it emanates. For a moment, I turn my head upwards, expecting to see a bulb. Instead, there is a hole in the roof, and only the faintest glimmer of sunlight makes its way down.

But after hours in pitch-black darkness, it felt like staring right at the sun. It is too far to see the way out, or to get any real hint of the sky beyond. I can't say if it's night or day up there, but I know the sky must be close. So close. The hole itself isn't far above me. And using my light, I can spot a kind of ancient rusted light. ladder embedded in the rock. It won't be easy climbing it, so injured, but given my limited choices, I'll have to manage.

For the first time in hours, I stand on my two feet. Reaching upwards hurts everything from my chest to my toes. Broken ribs grind, a swollen ankle pulses pain through deaden nerves that, seconds ago, reported nothing but hissing static. I swear it is so bad my heart stops, or at the very least, it misses a beat.

This must be the kind of stress that can kill healthy men, and I'm not even healthy. My elbow doesn't even get past my shoulder when I'm forced to gasp for breath, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

I fall back, and even that hurts more than I can imagine. Suddenly, I find myself questioning if I really have it in me to climb that pitted, rusty ladder, something screams. It isn't far away. This room, like the others before, has many ways in and out. It is writing on the walls, too.

Pigtograms of something strange, with a head of angler being worshipped. by men the size of ants. My torch flashes across the mall and makes nightmares of the shadows. But nothing yet leaps out at me. I realized this is it, the only chance I'm getting. How many chances do I need? I ask myself. Only one, I mutter.

I force myself upright, and before my nerves have time to register. the landslide of pain ready to collapse me, I hop on one foot. It is all I need to reach the ladder with one swinging arm. Then the other, so that I'm there, clinging on for dear life, feet barely an inch off the floor, with tears streaming down my face. This already feels like too much. But before I have time to give up and fold into myself, there comes another scream. This one is so close, I cannot help but imagine that whatever lies in the dark is excited to finally catch up with me.

That last thought tempts fate, it seems. Still swinging, eyes darting to and fro from the several tunnel holes, I catch a glimpse of something. It is racing towards me. It is human, vaguely, in the way that the monsters in our knowledge. nightmares often are. I led out my own scream or something like it. It's a staccato sort of yelp because, whether I realize it or not, my muscles have kicked into gear and I'm somehow doing a pull-up. My legs kicking furiously, I drag my way up until the first rung is at chest height and I am able to grab another overhead. The pain in my chest retreats to a dull throb.

I try foolishly to use my bad ankle to climb and realize there aren't enough endorphins in the world to let me put weight on a broken bone. I let out another cry and switch tactics. I have to use my arms to lift myself and rely on one good foot as a stabilizer. This would be difficult, but manageable if I had all the time in the world. But with the memory of that thing bearing down on me, It is akin to torture. I am flooded with a sense of futility, of pain and needless suffering. But if I've learned anything in the last few hours, it is that the human body runs on

its own firmware and it is enslaved to your brain. My arms move at their own accord, my body rises one rung at a time, too fast for common sense. injuries abound, grazed skin, a bumped head. Each step up has me clumsily bashing or banging some sensitive part of me into the barely visible rocks. Instinct may be in the driver's seat, but it's happy to leave me with the consequences of its recklessness. I feel every ache and pain, every stinging wound embedded with grit, every ligament stretched to breaking point. Oddly, I don't mind this arrangement.

I want to live. I am glad there is a caveman inside me to take care of moments like this, especially when I glanced down between my legs and see pitch-black eyes glaring up at me with thoughtless glee. I cannot get over how human that face is. I expected something insectile, maybe even arachnid. Whatever is below me, whether it's some hybrid or mutant, it is vile and fast approaching.

The vibrating in the ladder tells me it is climbing too. I try to climb faster, but I really am operating on all cylinders right now. There's nothing left to spare. I don't want to, but I look down again. and there it is even closer. It is smiling with a rubbery mouth full of glassy teeth. I hate it. I lash out with my bad foot without meaning to and hurt only myself.

The pain is so severe I force to stop climbing and sob. And it is in that moment I feel claws sink into the hot swollen flesh of my calf. I let out a hell of a noise. It empties my lungs and burns a mark deep into my being. I will remember the way this scream feels until the day I die. It is the moment in time where I give into despair, where I lose all hope as my nervous system gives into a pain-induced seizure that sees my fingers go numb and my limbs go limp. The last thing I remember as I fall is the sight of an iron grate overhead, only ten,

twenty meters away. A man I think is standing there and shining a torch straight down. He says something I cannot hear. I tell myself this is a hallucination, nothing more. I enter free fall, my head hits a rocky outcrop. me, something crunches, darkness. I come too in a hospital bed with a feeling in my chest that makes me think of war. I lash left to right, grab a hold of a table and jerk it across the floor, ready to

wield it like a club. The nurse in the corner is afraid. She doesn't realize it, but I'm fighting for my life, or at least I think I am. Slowly, I blink the halogen glare away and take in my surroundings. The battleground fades. I realize where I am. I tried to hold back tears. It doesn't work.

Within seconds, I am bawling. Arms embrace me. I don't know who they are, and I don't care. I embrace them back. I seize them and clobiles. under their unfamiliar body with such severity they mutter words

there's someone nearby along the effects of ah geez it's hurting me more rust movement a needle I'm asleep again hours maybe days later I awakened to find

my mother and a policeman nearby this time my senses return in time to stop panic I am finally given the story of my rescue They were looking for me the entire time And by chance they heard me near the old storm drain They came rappling down no more than a few minutes

After I hit the ground And found me lying there Bleeding and broken Strangely they say I had no real injuries from the fall itself A bumped head and a broken wrist on the wall itself A bumped head and a broken wrist on the way down, but from that height I should have broken my neck.

Something cushioned my fall, I think, and laugh uproarously. My mother looks worried. She must think I've gone insane. Who can blame her? I was down there for over 24 hours, although it didn't seem like it to me. I explained this to them, the elasticity of time in the dark. and they nod like they understand. But of course they don't.

Somehow, it takes me another hour to realize I'm missing a leg. This perplexes them as much as me. Indiscrepancies in the nature of the wound. An expert stands to the side and explains as much to me, but the words are a distant drone. I'm taken aback by the sight of the stump, all neatly bandaged. Apparently, it took a lot of surgery to needn up.

Despite everything, I am angry. I thought I was dead. This should be a small price to pay, and yet the knowledge that a part of me went to feeding that monster makes my stomach churn. I want to be sick. A piece of me is down there somewhere, dissolving in stomach acid, waiting to be excreted in some foated corner of the monster's lair. When I start to cry and shout in impotent rage, they have to sedate me once more. They assume it is simple shock, but there is more to it than that.

I am consumed by a deep hatred that is hard to explain. Months later, I find myself recounting this story to try and purge that hateful feeling. All this time, I cannot escape the sense of unfinished business. Every time I mess up with my prosthetic, slip, stumble, momentarily forget it is there. I feel the anger burning inside me. Every night I spend hours in agony from phantom pains. trying to soothe a wounded brain using a mirror of all things. Sometimes I think I would have rather died if it meant killing that thing.

All my weight, such a steep drop. I picture myself crushing it and leaving it a gory, broken mess. I've never felt this kind of enmity, evidently. I'm not alone. One morning, a knock on the caravan door. It takes me far too long to get ready. I am not yet practised with the limb, pointing it on, taking it off. Takes me nearly 20 minutes to get myself together.

My mood has darkened since my rescue, and I practically kick my door open with a roar, ready to curse out anyone who disturbs me. I find no one there, only silence, and another gold coin. In my final year at MSU, I was invited to take part in a research expedition to the Zionia wetlands in northern Sweden. It was part of an exchange through the AWC, Arctic Wellness Cooperative, funded by members of the Arctic Council and private actors in the area. Me and Roger Rodgerson took a flight in early May.

During the 55-minute layover at Arlanda, Stockholm, we met up with Helena Angermark from the Royal Institute of Technology. When we arrived at Umao Airport, we met up with the last member of our expedition. Camilla Osteamo from Lleur University. From there, it was just a long drive north. The Sionia wetlands are enormous. We're talking about 700,000 acres of Maya and wetland just above the Arctic Circle. In optimal conditions, and excluding factors such as sleep, food, terrain and weather,

it'd take about 11 days to walk across. In my head, it conjured up images of the dead marshes from Lord of the Rings, but Helena assured me it was nothing quite as dramatic. Roger and I had no idea what to expect. We'd gotten our equipment pre-purchased. The Swedes were in charge of everything practical on site, excluding our personal equipment. We were scheduled to spend four days in the actual mire, and four more days accounted for travel.

And sure, we had wildlife and camping experience, but you can't prepare for something like the Arctic Myers. May is a strange time in northern Sweden. While technically spring, it can still dip into sub-zero temperatures. The weather can range from blazing heat in the afternoon to frost in the early morning. so while we had a variety of clothes we still had to be flexible enough to change throughout the day

there's no one thing fits all up there the further north we drove the more things started to look the same long stretches of road through the wilderness that seemed to go nowhere nothing but moss undergrowth and sprinkles of spindly trees I was chewing on my last slim gym when Helena brought up a laptop So we have eight designated sites Where we need to do some sampling

She said But Camilla and I have been talking And we think we ought to get at least one further in We have to go a bit Off Road to get some reliable results When do you talk about this? I asked Gotta read the group chat said Roger

I told you to get in on that. I'm in, I'm just not getting notifications. Then you're not in. I'm telling you, I'm in. Either way, said Helena, if we take a detour north after sight three, we ought to get some reliable samples before we reach four. It should work with your schedule.

You're the locals. You got this, said Raj. I'll leave this to your judgment. We're not locals, said Camilla. I'm from Lula. That's like a four-hour drive. Stockholm is like a 12-hour drive from there. So we're going in blind?

I asked. None of you have been there before? That's kind of the point to get acquainted with it, said Camilla, to get something for the next group to compare when they do another expedition in five or so years. All about long-term cooperation. smiled Helena, like it says on the website. Raj leaned over and patted me on the shoulder, holding up his phone.

I just checked, and you're not in the group chat. We were stuck in that car all day. We reviewed our notes, plans, equipment and route. Much of what spurred the expedition to begin with were reports of wildlife changes. The indigenous Sammy people had moved their rights. reindeer herds north, claiming that their animals were getting sick from the soil. There'd also been reports of reduced fish population and increased bird migration in the southwest. We were there to measure possible toxins and soil changes to, if possible, determine a cause.

But first, we needed samples, which was the meat of the expedition. This started to pop up little villages along the forest road. Well, maybe not villages. More like loose collections of houses within view of one another. Red houses with white corners and metal roofing. How anyone could live that isolated was beyond me. Still had great phone coverage though, somehow. We passed through a town with a name and won't even begin to pronounce or spell.

Too many vowels. It was our last stop before we were. we got to the wetlands, so we made sure to stock up. Camilla got us some extra batteries. When we finally arrived, it was dark. We'd been following a gravel road for the past 40 minutes. There were six houses in a semicircle along the road, one of which we'd rented for the night. The rest were abandoned.

Camilla dragged her stuff in and collapsed on the living room couch. Helena took the downstairs guest room. There was a second bedroom upstairs with three smaller beds for me and Rodge to occupy. I was asleep the moment my head hit the pillow. The following early morning, it was all hands on deck. Helena was preparing sandwiches in the kitchen while Camilla checked her equipment. All batteries charged, all containers properly marked and sorted. She was meticulous, and at 5.30 a.m., we were ready to go.

I took a moment to soak up the atmosphere. The smells felt alien, yet familiar. The air was buzzing with insects. I could hear nestling birds in every direction. Despite the four of us being the only people in the area from one, miles and miles, it felt very much alive. It was a vast forest without a canopy, with the waking sun cazing down on us from an endless sky. Helena took lead, with Raj following suit.

Then there was Camilla, and finally, me. There were paths marked with orange flags showing us the intended way. Anyone know any good songs? asked Eleanor. You could teach us some, said Rodge, preferably something we can pronounce. As long as we make noise, said Camilla, it keeps the bears away. We began our rendition of Smyard Grodner

as we trotted along the path, going deeper into the wetlands. Minutes later, it was clear to me there'd been no way to navigate the mire without those little flags. everything looked the same the same trees the same bushes the same moss

and no clear paths to follow we weaved and bobbed through the mire we all wore those tall rubber boots and pants along with backpacks that only reached halfway across our backs there'd be spots where we'd have to wade through water that could reach over our knees so we had to keep as dry as possible

It was a pain to walk through, and I could feel a rash growing on my thighs within the first 15 minutes of walking. We reached our first sight at 7 a.m. Camilla brought out the testing equipment. She and Roj took turns, calling out what kinds of samples they were getting, while Helena recorded it all on her laptop. I cataloged and stored everything. Took us about 30 minutes all in the time. and all.

As we packed up and moved to the second sight, Camilla pointed out something in the undergrowth. Lots of animals here, she said. Look, she pointed at the ground, but I saw nothing. I shrugged. How do you say it? Shortrun, Helena. What's that in? Cloudbury.

Right. There should be cloudberries here. See the petals? What the hell is a cloudberry? Chuggled Rodge. Never heard of it. Makes great jam, added Eleanor. Maybe we'll see some further along, said Camilla, where there's less animals.

It took us another four hours to get to the second sight. We spun around in circles for a while and had to get the sat nav to find our way back. Standing out there with water up to my knees, looking for those orange flags, It was scary. Camilla seemed confident though. At worst, we'll just go straight south-west, she said. As long as we can see the sun, we can navigate. True enough.

When we got to the second site, there was a stretch of dry ground where we could rest. We stopped for lunch. Helena set up a portable stove to make us some coffee. Well Camilla and Roj got the samples. Soil, water, vegetation, all kinds. Still nothing, said Camilla, poking around the moss with her feet. No shirtron. Cloudberries, Rodger added.

Right, cloudberries. All gone. Is that strange? I asked. Sort of. Reindeer usually don't go this far out. We finished up and moved to Site 3. We were finished just after dinner time.

We had a few more hours until sunset, so we decided to move north. Camilla and Helena had mapped out a place where we could get more reliable samples, and it had just be a few hours off the trail. There'd be plenty of dry land to set up camp as well, so it didn't mess with our schedule too much when we stepped off the trail and left the orange flags behind.

I got this itch along my spine, like I was stepping into something out of my control. Those little flags were the only trace of civilization left. Without them, we were in the deep wilds, and still, no cloudberries. We set up camp around 8pm. The sun was getting low, but we had plenty of flashlights with us. We changed our clothes, set up our tents and crawled into our sleeping bags.

Camilla read an article on erosion, and Helena uploaded the best images to Instagram. Even now, we still had great coverage. Roger has taken notes and double-checking our batteries. I twisted and turned back and forth for hours. But I just couldn't get any shut-eye. My eyes kept popping back up. Long after the others were asleep, I was still up. It was useless to keep trying, so I decided to walk it off.

I stepped out of the tent and wandered around for a while. The horizon was blood-red and the sparse trees cast long gangly shadows across the camp. A thought hit me. We'd forgotten to set up the mosquito lights. This place ought to be flooded with mosquitoes. But there was nothing. It was all quiet. Not a bird, not an insect, nothing.

Just creaking branches, carefully swaying in the wind. Compared to what we'd felt when we first stepped into the mire, This It was dead It was almost midnight When I saw something in the distance There was this long stretch Of ankle-deep moss water

Next to our campsite I looked out across it for at least ten minutes Before I realised That one of the trees wasn't a tree It was a reindeer The thing had been standing perfectly still not even moving its head I'd mistaken its antlers for branches

I sat there looking at it for at least half an hour and in all that time it didn't move a muscle not a twitch of the neck nothing never seen anything like it eventually I got back in my tent

I barely got any sleep the reindeer was gone by morning. I told Camilla about it and she insisted that they were skittish creatures. They'd stay away from us. Maybe it was just curious. We got the extra samples early in the morning and started to move east towards our main route.

By then, we all had soggy feet and a sour mood. Camilla and Roch had a long and intense discomfort. about the preservation efforts and e-regulations while Helena kept stopping to take pictures. Around 9 a.m., we all heard something in the distance. The discussion died down as we all tilted our heads and listened. At first, I thought it was a wounded animal. There was this rising and falling squeak, like a big bird call. It took us a few seconds to realize that it was a person.

A monotone scream over and over, the exact same pitch and tone. This desperate, heart-wrenching death scream. Help, said Helena. Someone's calling for help. We circled back and tried to locate the sound. But it just seemed to get fainter and fainter, as if whoever called for us moved further away. We tried yelling back, but they didn't seem to get any closer.

After about half an hour, we couldn't hear them anymore. Roj was visibly shaken, his cheeks flushed and eyes watery. We were all a bit uneasy about it. Camilla tried to make sense of it, saying it might have been an animal. but we couldn't figure out which one. Still, it had to be an animal. Had to be. As we made our way to site four, we shared our thoughts.

There were a lot of things out there that didn't add up. No birds, no insects, no animal droppings or markings. It fell off. We found our way back to the main route with the orange flags. following them we spotted something that would come to haunt us forever on the path ahead

was this large overarching tree much larger than others in the area and from the tree hung no less than four reindeer carcasses they were seemingly placed there the antlers tangled into the branches dry and tattered flesh dangled like sick fruit,

hooves gently tapping against one another in the mild breeze, like a nightmare wind chime. Helena put away a phone and Camilla stared, slack-jawed. Roch looked at me for reassurance, but I had none to give. Camilla tried to say something, but lost the words along the way. Composing herself, she gave it another try. Sometimes the bears, they hide their prey.

This isn't hiding, said Raj. This is full display. I don't know what to tell you. We looked around, spotting strange markings in the bark, mostly hoof marks. But also, something else. We were all shaken after seeing it. It haunted me.

I could almost imagine hearing the dead hooves if I stopped to listen. Helena had gotten her phone back out and didn't look up from it. We got the sight for at 1pm. Same procedure as always. Camilla and Roj got the samples. Helena took notes. I catalog and stored it. We had a late lunch, but couldn't find anywhere to set up the kitchen to make coffee.

We were going deeper. We were going into the deeper mire and dry land was getting sparse. Following the orange flags, we had to stop several times to navigate. We were coming up on what should be a large lake, but there was nothing there. I slope into more moss with no trees. If anything, it looked like the water had been drained. Helena took some pictures, but Camilla was convinced we were off track. There was no way a lake would disappear on its own.

We had to be going the wrong way, no matter what the Satnav was telling us. Still, we followed the flags, and just past 2pm we got to this enormous open space with a tree spread out. We could see for miles ahead. And somewhere out there, we heard it. Again, someone calling for help. The same monotone scream, the same pitch. This time, we didn't call back. Instead, we just stood there listening.

We identified at least two sources, one to the northeast and one to our west. The screams were coming from two different directions. It has to be a bird, said Camilla, a mating call, or a... That's not a damn bird, whispered Helena. That's a person. What's more likely, Helena? asked Camilla. A pair of identical twins are following us and calling out to us, or that we're hearing the echoes of a nesting bird.

I don't think anyone here is an ornithologist, said Raj, so we can't tell for sure. But yeah, I don't think that's a person. It's saying help. Birds can't pronounce L or P. Say what you want. But that's something else. We went through Site 5 and stopped for the night halfway to Site 6.

I was getting nervous. I kept imagining that repeated call for help out in the mire. I thought I saw Antlers. among the dead trees a few times. I was getting paranoid. Site 6 was our furthest point before we started to circle back, but this was dangerous territory.

One sprained ankle could mean aborting this whole expedition. The orange flags had stopped some time ago. They didn't reach across our whole route. We were on our own from this point forward. Camilla was confident though, and with only three more sights to go, we were ahead of schedule. There was barely enough dry land for us to set up our tents, but we made it work. The ground was moist, and I had a puddle of something cold next to my feet.

It was uncomfortable to say the least. I collapsed into an uneasy but welcome sleep. Roch gently shook me awake sometime in the middle of the night. He held a finger to his lips and motioned his hand to his ear, as if telling me to listen. There was that scream again, and it was much closer. I dressed myself and got out of the tent. Camilla and Helena were already up. We all huddled together at the edge of our camp, looking out across the mire.

It was too dark to see, but the screamer couldn't be far off. Camilla held up a flashlight and gave us a nod. We nodded back. We had to see what this thing was. She turned on the flashlight. There were a dozen reindeer, about 60 feet ahead of us, all standing at the exact same angle, looking directly out of us.

us. No one blinking, moving or recoiling from the light. We all froze, not wanting to make any sudden movement. These were supposed to be timid woodland creatures, but something was off. One of them slightly opened its mouth, stared at us and called out a perfectly human. Help! Helena covered a mouth, holding back a scream. The reindeer, one by one, called out to us. All were the same mechanical movements, an identical voice. Help! It was eerie. Rudge decided enough was enough and got up.

He tried to make himself big, stretching out his arms and waving them up and down. He huffed and yelled, trying to scare them off. they didn't react in the slightest. That is, until the reindeer at the very front turned its head to look directly at him. It slowly raised its front legs and leaned back. In a matter of seconds, it was standing upright, like a human. The others coalesced around it, circling like a school of shark, all while screaming out over and over calling for help.

Don't, don't provoke it, whispered Camilla. They're sick. They look sick. We should go, said Helena, right now. No one argued. Camilla stood guard or the rest of us packed up as quickly as possible. All to the sound of constant screams for help. We were sloppy.

But considering the panic I had building in my chest, it was a miracle we got anything at all. Roger and I were halfway through stuffing the tent into its bag. When we heard something, movement in the woods, another scream for help, this time from the west. Roj got another flashlight and checked it out. As he turned it on, I could see a dozen more eyes looking back at us. They were much, much closer. They're everywhere, gasped Raj. It's a herd, said Helena.

Missami, they used to move herds through. She was interrupted by another scream. This one by a reindeer right next to us, within arm's reach of Camilla. But the scream was lower, drawn out, and much clearer. The upright deer in the middle of the mire was still standing there, staring at us. As the scream died down, we all held our breaths. No one wanted to move. No one wanted to act.

It all hung on a threadbare balance and anything could tip the scales. Hooves came trampling through camp. These massive 300-pound creatures running completely. completely wild, knocking into one another, crashing through bushes, running headfirst into trees, stumbling over rocks and roots. They were like frenzied sharks, smelling blood in the air. One of the reindeer reared up and bore down on Camilla over and over again. I could hear her chest snap as all air was pressed from her lungs.

A flashlight tumbled out of her hands, rolled into the mossy water, and was swallowed by the dark. Raj took off running, but didn't get far. One of them bit into his arm as he tried to get past, sending him reeling onto the ground. From there, they had no trouble pounding him into a pulp, heavy hooves, breaking bones like they were dry past her. It was absolutely dreadfully morbid. I crawled in all fours, trying to keep out of sight. There were so many of them, but they only seemed to attack what was directly ahead of them. Still, one might stumble over me and decide to kill me,

but I was running out of options. I kept to the ground and moved slowly, my hands sinking into the, the inch-deep moss, the ice-cold water floating to the surface. My veins ached. There was screaming all around me, and somewhere in the torrent of whales, both Roj and Camilla had gone silent. One of them almost tripped over me, giving me a mild kick to the chest. I say mild, only because it didn't kill me, but I'm pretty sure it was.

bruised a couple of ribs. Another step to my thigh, ripping open a two-inch long cut along the side. Still, little by little, I made it out. I kept going forward. No matter the sound, no matter the pain, I kept going. As the sun rose, I couldn't hear them anymore. I'd collapsed in the moss, panting like I'd just run a man. marathon. There were no songbirds, no insects, nothing. Just me, the sun and the mire. I used the elastic band from my underwear to make a mate shift bandage, using dry moss from a tree to soak up the blood.

It wasn't a deep cut, but it could easily get infected. I could still stand, but I felt this sting of pain in my chest with every breath I took. I could see a deep bruise forming, going straight from blue to a reddish purple. I was lost. I was in the middle of nowhere, with little to no equipment. I have never been so freaked out in my entire life. I screamed and cried. I don't know for how long. One moment I wanted to lie down and just wait for someone to find me.

The next, I wanted to run blindly straight a head. head. After a while, I composed myself. I thought about what I'd learned about the area and what I'd seen. I knew there were flags put up along safe routes. I could also use the sun to navigate. If I went straight southwest, I should stumble upon flags again. From there, I'd just had to follow them. I'd either pop back out where we started or on the other side of the wetlands. Still, either way would be a long walk, and there were no guarantees that I'd make it. But I had to try. I tried not to think, not to reflect. I focused on the road ahead and the position of the sun. Everything else was secondary, but every flash of what happened that night

felt like a cut in my stomach. The way Camilla's flashlight disappeared, Rogers screamed with her first bite. The only one I couldn't account for was Helena. I hoped against hope that she got out, that she had the same idea as me. Maybe I'd meet her down the line.

If not, I could tell the police there was at least one person unaccounted for. They'd have to send a row. rescue party. I must have walked for hours. It is surreal to walk in a space where all you hear is yourself. There's usually some sort of external sound. A car passing by, a squawking bird, a humming motor.

Something, somewhere off in the distance. Out there, there was nothing. Just the ever-present crackling sound of dry brown. branches snapping under my heels as I limped forward step by step. I lost all concept of time and swayed back and forth between single-minded purpose and scatterbrained despair. But in a moment of clarity, I stopped to listen. The screams again.

They were ahead of me, so they weren't following me. were merely in the area. I flinched as I saw branches move in the wind. My reptile brain thought they were antlers. I hunkered down and listened. Helena. This scream wasn't like the others. It wasn't the same sound over and over.

They were different and irregular. She wasn't screaming for help, but in pain. She was alive. Now, I had two choices. I could try and keep moving until I found the flags and just hope to get out somehow. Or, I could try to find Helena and her things. She had the sat-ner last time I checked. It was a battle between my instinct and my reasoning.

I'd be putting myself in danger either way. But if I could help her, I had to try. At the very least, I could try fetch some supplies. I followed Helen as screaming. She was heading straight north, deeper into the mire. She was on the move. Slowly but surely, I measured the distance. After a while, she stopped screaming.

I figured she passed out. It took me about an hour of searching before I found something. There was a young tree that had been stripped of leaves and covered in blood, like someone had grabbed the bottom of it and dragged the hand along it. There were clear red stains across the leaves. There was no trail to follow. But I could hear something moving to the north. Maybe more reindeer.

Maybe Helena. The ground started to get muddy. There were algae and reeds drying in the north. the sun. I could hear screaming in the distance. Not like Helena, not like a person, just those creatures pretending to be people. But there were more of them now, so many more. I could hear dozens of them screaming back and forth, screaming for help. I pushed on. I had to see, to know. There was something up ahead

and I needed answers. There was a small hill and after that a sudden drop. I crouched at the edge looking down. There was this dried out lake with a deep crack in the ground

going down the middle revealing parts of a dark underground cave through the mud and debris. I could smell the moss drying in the sun. It must have been midday by then and the sun was casting harsh shadows across the mire. There were hundreds of reindeer, hundreds. Some standing up, others shuffling along on all

fours, all moving in a circle around the crack in the ground where something massive moved. Some of the reindeer were dragging things along. Pieces of flesh, dead birds and fish. I could have sworn one of them was dragging parts of Camilla's tent. They were neatly lined up and took turns dumping whatever prize they had into the crevice. Those who had nothing to contribute stayed on the sidelines, eating. Everything looked so different in this light. I could have sworn most of the moss and flowers they ate looked strangely blue. And there, among the debris, was Helena. Her unconscious body was being unceremoniously dragged to the mud and dumped in front of the crevice. I could see her head moving, struggling to regain consciousness.

I could hear her mouth moving, but there was no way to hear her over the wailing screams of the creatures. But for a short moment, I could have sworn she saw me. Just a moment of recognition. Then, without a sound, something emerged from the crevice. A long, bone-white hand, large enough to wrap its fingers across a chest, carefully dragging her into the dark. For a moment, the reindeer got quiet. An awful crunch echoed through the makeshift clearing, and seconds later, the reindeer made

a new sound. This time in Helena's voice, a tired, barely conscious voice. Come down, it said, help me. These four words were repeated over and over by all of them, in her voice, in all constellations and combinations. Come help, help come. Down, help, help down. The horrid screams, replaced by a dying whisper. A whisper intended for me. I was too afraid to move. I stayed there, looking down.

Every now and then, that large, bone-white arm would emerge. Sometimes to put away something inedible. Sometimes to grab a hole of a reindeer to drag it into the deep. At one point A white finger touched the forehead of a reindeer Making it stand up on its hind legs like a humanoid Those who stood up Seemed to be of great importance

And the others circled them But there was no one to save And there was nothing left for me to gather All that was left Was for me to leave And never look back I kept going south Every now and then I'd hear them

A whisper of Come help me Making its way through the sparse vegetation Come help me These things were everywhere And they were looking for me Rain deer have a great sense of smell So I took a short dip in stale lake water

To hide my smell My lake would definitely get infected I limped my way through the undergrowth, stopping only to listen for clues and what paths to avoid. By nightfall, I still hadn't found any flags. My leg was in such a burning pain that I couldn't lean on it anymore, and my muscles ached. I was constantly out of breath, not wanting to draw too much air into my lungs. But I had to keep going. There was a good chance that I'd die out there if I had to spend the night in the open.

Temperatures could easily dip into freezing. Once the blood-red sunset started to gleam in the distance, I knew I was short on time. My hands were shaking, and I could barely stand. I could barely move. Everything in me wanted to just sit down and hope for everything to be okay in the morning. It was so easy to trick myself into doing so. But I just kept going.

I stopped. There was something up ahead. I caught a glimpse of eyes reflecting the setting sun. For a moment, they locked onto me. And a second later, it burst into a sprint. I thought I was done for. I had no fight left in me. I turned to run,

but I only made it a few steps before I tripped. Then, a gunshot. The reindeer collapsed next to me, those big black eyes meeting mine. It struggled to breathe. Help me, and whispered in Helena's voice. Come down, come help me. I didn't understand what it was saying. It was just noise.

But there was something there. And as that reindeer opened its mouth to speak again, I caught a glimpse of it. Something thin and bone white lingering far down its throat. Something vaguely humanoid. A second pair of eyes looking up. Then another gunshot. I was blinded by a flashlight.

There were three men all speaking Swedish. all dressed in some kind of logging company jackets with trucker caps. They all had these yellow reflective vests on them. I told them I didn't understand, and they changed the heavily accented English. British, American? One of them asked. American, I said. We, there was, I...

Attack, yes. They attack. He nodded. We know, we know. Come, the three men dragged the reindeer away, tied a rope around his antlers, and made a great effort to hoist it up a nearby tree. Just like the tree I'd seen with the others just days prior. Keeps them here, said the man who helped me. Makes a good uns.

Borda? Like a warning? I added. Yes, like a warning, he nodded. They understand. We looked up at the dead body, hanging from the tree. They... smarter here. No more. I was taken back to their base camp.

About eight people living in caravans. They gave me fresh clothes, hot dogs, beer, and warmed me up by the fire. They disinfected my thigh and stitched me up. While I tried to sleep off my upcoming fever, they called the police and the embassy and Stockholm. And the next day, I was on a plane back to the States, like nothing ever happened. The aftermath has been pretty much... Nothing. It was classified as an animal attack and dismissed.

I talked to a few people from the AWC about it, and they called it a sincerely regretful incident. and asked me to remain discreet as to not discourage future climate change studies. The AWC still operate in that area, by the way. I've gotten no answers as to what they've done with the soil samples, or if they ever looked into what I saw in the mire. All I know is that no one wants me to talk about it. The only people have gotten answers from were the hunters. They were eager to share their stories,

claiming that the government refuses to listen. I'm still in email contact with some of them. And there's... A lot to unpack. But in short, there was a quake in the mire. Something came out of the lake. It did something to the wildlife in the area. It stole hundreds of reindeer from local Sami herds.

It seems to be expanding, stopped only where it finds immediate and violent resistance. And over time, it seems to learn.