CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - 4 Hours of SCARY Reddit r/Nosleep Horror Stories to sleep to since this is a pretty long one

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

CREEPYPASTA STORIES-►0:00 "The Soundless Lady" Creepypasta►13:44 "I got a job at a local fast food restaurant, but the nightshift rules are insane" Creepypasta►41:55 "Why I drowned my wife in the bathtub" Creepypasta►1:09:26 "The bottom of the ocean is unexplored for a reason" Creepypasta►1:20:51 "There's a waterslide in the middle of the North Sea" Creepypasta►1:47:33 "I'm working as a night guard at a school. The rules will either save me, or kill me" Creepypasta►2:08:44 "There's a hatch in the middle of the woods" Creepypasta►2:37:16 "My neighbor has become obsessed with digging a hole in his backyard. We can't stop him" Creepypasta►3:14:16 "The Reason I Hate Cruise Ships" Creepypasta►3:34:11 "If you see an ice-cream truck in your neighborhood, go inside and lock your doors" 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"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪-This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only-

This weekend I'm in a while I'm new as I'm not on think. Oh, that dossier that morning off must be more as I'm too

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Maxshot Liquid. Foodingsupplement forcry-mach-mach-to-the-appletiquet. My aunt Rachel practically raised me. After a lengthy battle with terminal illness, she passed last year, leaving what little she had left after the hospital bills were paid. I was to take care of a cockatow parrot, tugboat,

and a collection of 50s cartoon-themed collective plates. Basically, the only two items that couldn't be easily sold at an auction. If you saw the plates, you'd see why. Don't write creepy things. one in particular a plate portraying a young cartoon girl feeding apples to a giant frog it's like the whole

thing was made by two different people the girl looked positively Disney while the frog was more I don't know I'm comfortably unrealistic it was such an odd item that there had to be a collector looking for it somewhere

I was sure of it yet for weeks I couldn't find anyone even remotely interested I posted pictures of the plate on pretty much every social media account I had, along with a few auction sales, but there were no takers. There were no markings or stamps indicating gear or brand, unlike the other plates, and I was starting to think it was custom made. I couldn't stand looking at it, so I put it in a box in the garage. The others went up on my kitchen wall.

My aunt would have wanted it that way. I live in a house not too far from the lake on the outskirts of a small Minnesota town There are a few houses in the nearby area But I couldn't even hit the closest neighbor's yard with a rock if I tried There's only a single streetlight that works outside And that thing is flimsier than our summer weather I rarely have any visitors

As this place can be a bit too out of the way Even for my friends to come by I inherited this place from my mom who passed away when I was younger. I'm one of the lucky house owners of my generation, but at what cost. My aunt's bird, tugboat, fit right in. It was easy for me to fix him in a big cage in one of the back rooms.

When you're living on your own in a place like this, you got more space than you know what to do with. My aunt's funeral was simple. She'd insisted she paid for it herself, so it had to be as basic and cheap as can be. She hated the thought of ever being a burden, and she practically begged me to take care of tugboat. You don't say no to that. You just don't. Besides, that bird was damn near the only thing that kept me saying through the COVID pandemic.

Having lived in an empty house, you learned to identify most sounds around the property. The hum of the fuse box, the buzzing kitchen lights, the noise from the fridge against the backdrop of a TV that's been way too long without anyone watching. This was the only reason I ever really took notice that one night when this all started. I was turning on my electric toothbrush one night, only didn't notice it was completely silent. The motor was running and felt the vibrations. I saw it spin. But there were no sounds, not a peep. Yet I could still hear the TV in the other room just fine.

Over the next few days, there were several of these odd instances. Once the egg timer went off but didn't make a sound, causing me to overboil my breakfast. I thought the ventilation was broken once, but it turned out to have just gone quiet. Hell, at one point I dropped one of my aunt's collective plates. It shattered against the ceramic tiles, yet didn't make any noise. I was starting to think I was going deaf, but the two doctors I spoke to confirmed my hearing was just fine. Still, the mental image of seeing that falling plate and expecting a loud crash only for it to remain silent. There was something eerie to it.

A friend of mine, Patrick, works for the Sheriff's Department. We usually had lunch once a week to catch up, but that tradition teetered off during the pandemic. This time, I met him at the supermarket, but barely even noticed him. I had been having trouble sleeping and getting to work on time, as my alarm clock sometimes. don't stay silent for no apparent reason. My boss wasn't too happy, so I had to start using a vibration alarm. Patrick Elber bumped me in the frucile,

snapping me out of my thoughts. Hey there, he said, grabbing a handful of oranges. You're doing okay? Yeah, sorry, I didn't see you there. These are crazy times, he said. I heard about Rachel. I'm sorry I couldn't make the funeral.

That's okay, I nodded. She never was much for men in uniform. Patrick laughed. We went our separate ways and finished our shopping, only to meet in the parking lot outside. We'd managed to park next to each other without even realising it.

He leaned against the hood of his car. Hey, have he seen any strangers around? After this year, you all seem like strangers. You know what I mean, he chuckled. Strangers, pass-byes. No, sorry, I don't get out much. Some of your neighbours have had problems, you know. Be careful.

Problems? He looked at me, like a deer in headlights. You don't know? There had been reports of a theft. First they thought it was raccoons, but someone had gone through the trash cans, but raccoons don't try to pick locks. They also don't leave food behind

or human-sized handprints on the windows. Some people have reported seeing a woman with tangled hair roam about, but the police hadn't managed to find her. This is what made me start looking more closely at my own property. I had noticed the garbage candle had gone missing, but I hadn't given it much thought. Also, I could have sworn there were handprints in my car one doing morning. I tried to tell myself that it was all paranoia,

but after what Patrick said, it seemed that everything was a clue, or a warning. In my mind, the strange woman was lurking behind every corner. I tried to put it out of my mind. One night, as I heard tugboat sing his interpretation of Earthwind and Vice September, I took an extra long shower. As I was scrubbing my hair clean, my head went quiet.

I could feel the water touching my skin, but it made no sound. Through the door, I could still hear the bird singing his heart out. You'd be surprised how cold warm water can feel when you've got ice in your veins. I rinsed off most of the shampoo and stepped out. There's a small, frosted glass window in my bathroom. The silhouette of a pale face was pressed against it. I screamed, but no sound came out. Tugbo kept singing in the other room, unaware.

I grabbed my robe and ran into the kitchen to call Patrick, but I couldn't hear anyone pick up on the other end of the line. I couldn't hear my own words when I spoke, and there, just outside the kitchen window, was a silhouette of an intruder trying to find their way in. A pair of unevenly sized eyes stared at me, slightly too far apart. As our eyes met, she bolted, probably heading for the back door.

I picked up my keychain. Dougboat stopped singing from the other room as he sensed something was wrong. As my hearing returned, I could hear the comforting sound of a sharp metal from my kitchen knife as I pulled it from a drawer. My pulse was running away from me. It was one thing to think of a home invasion, but to live it violates every thought of privacy and safety you have. It was turning real, fast. There was a large sliding glass door leading out to the backyard,

and I figured if there ever came an intruder, it'd be through there. The same room where tugboat chirped away. But now he'd come quiet. I ran in there, still fresh out of the shower. My knife held in a cramped, forced grip. I almost convinced myself that I was ready to use it. There she was, just outside the door. Pale with unkempt hair, eyes of different sizes, slightly too far apart,

dressed and what looked like a hospital gown. She was malnourished and frail, but something told me she had the strength of a madwoman. Her eyes darted back and full. searching for something. As they landed on me, she opened a wide mouth to scream. Not a sound came out. As a mouth grew to an unnatural size,

I could feel vibrations in the air, like standing next to a concert loudspeaker. The sliding glass door shattered, the shards fanning out towards me. The knife of my hand started shaking, but I managed to hold it. She stepped inside, her bare feet smearing ribbons of blood on the hardwood floor.

She was coming for me, a constant vibration from an unnatural scream tearing through my body. I had to try to call for help and sprinted back into the kitchen. The light bulbs burst overhead, turning the room black. Still, not a single noise. A stray light from the streets outside made its way through the kitchen window, making the room drip with long, pale shadows. my aunt's collective plates rattled on the wall.

Glasses along the kitchen sink were cracking and breaking. Empty bottles spilled onto the floor. Coming a door shaking back and forth, opening seemingly at random. An old recipe book fell from a countertop, the page is flicking back and forth. I pressed myself against the kitchen window, fumbling to get it open. She cornered me. Her mouth was wide open in that impossible scream. her body vibrating with machine-like intensity.

The tangled hair twisting and stretching, as if thrown about in a storm of its own, or in even eyes searching for me, twitching like insects. And still, she didn't make a single sound. There was no humming fans, no buzzing electricity, only a soft breeze outside the window. I couldn't even hear my heartbeat. I managed to stumble out of the kitchen window,

stepping onto the sharp gravel path. I still held under my knife like a comfort blanket. I didn't even bother to see if she followed me. I just ran. There was no time to get in the car. I ran into the woods, following a trail that would lead me to my neighbour. Soon, the rhythmic beat of my feet went quiet,

my breath too. I tried to scream for help, but the sound was swallowed. She was right behind me. Long nails reached for me. fingertips touching the edge of my robe, and all around me, nothing but tranquil nature, unbothered by my terror. I was knocked to the ground, scraping my legs against the undergrowth. I slashed with my knife, trying to fight her, as a dainty hand picked my keys from the side pocket of my robe.

I rolled away, only to see the mess of tangled hair walk away. Her uneven eyes gave me a last look as she turned her back to me. She looked right through me Without a care in the world I got to my neighbour My dirty feet muddied their floor And by the time the police came It felt like a walking nightmare

I made my statement Showered for the second time that night And slept at a nearby motel As the police cleared my house The next day I assessed the damage The house had been searched thoroughly But nothing was stolen Not too much was broken either

seems she was looking for something specific, not trying to steal any valuables. The police were just as dumbfounded as I was, and I didn't report anything stolen. My insurance company would need an explanation, though. It was hard to explain why it looked like the house had been hit by a tornado from the inside without sounding insane. All the collective plates laid shattered on the floor.

Poor tugboat was so traumatized, he since stopped singing. Going through the damages was heartbreaking, but it made me take notice. I have something peculiar. The garage had been searched as well. It was pretty much fine though, at least compared to the house. Among my boxes, I noticed a single item missing. The creepy plate I'd put aside from my aunt, the only one I didn't want in the house.

The one with the young cartoon girl feeding the giant frog. It was gone. I guess I found the single collector. Who wanted it? I recently landed a job at a local fast food restaurant. I of course did not want to work, but my mom kept insisting and nagging me to get off my ass and make a living. I live in a small town in Australia,

and I'm surrounded by dense Bosch. This fast food restaurant is very similar to McDonald's, as in it is a drive-thru and sells burgers. This particular restaurant has a bit of history to it due to the local community not wanting it built for it being on some old site that the town held deer. I wasn't sure what was there because I had recently moved to the area

but all the signs and protests were still carrying on even though it had been four years since the store had opened. After I started working I was promptly trained in all the major areas serving customers running the drive-through, flipping the patties and making a damn fine cup of coffee. I got along with most of my co-workers

and got a date with one of the cute ones. After working for around a month, my store manager approached me and asked me if I was interested in working the night shift, the most boring time of the night, where the store would be closed except for drive-through, and I would have to solo the store all night due to it not being a very busy establishment.

I graciously accepted, as I sort of needed the money to go out with friends and all that, so I was rusted to be put under the night shift the following week, last night. Like any sane person, I slept before my shift. I had something to eat in a shower, before dining the work clothing I had to wear for the next nine hours. I hopped into my car and drove the ten minutes to my workplace and finally got out and stepped inside. The closing staff greeted me before I jotted down my tasks and started getting to work. The list was the following. make the dining area spotless, mop the floor, check the stock of the kitchen and chip station.

It was the usual stuff really, plus the extra tasks of taking out the bins and cleaning the bathroom. I went down to the change rooms, hung up my jacket, put my apron on, and began my shift. I watched as a closing crew left a small building, got into the cars and drove away. I was alone. With a sigh, I went into a little washroom to grab the mop and began to fill it. The slow movement of water began to irritate me as it took forever to fill the bucket. The light in the room flickered, and I swear I saw a figure out to the corner of my eye. I blinked and it was gone.

Must have been my mind playing tricks on me. Once it finished, I went into the dining room and made sure that the doors were all locked. I mean, who wants a random walking into the closed door at night? especially when the area you're in is known to have lots of addicts. As I dragged the mop into the centre of the small dining area, I heard the familiar noise of a printer in the manager's office. As I approached the small window doorway, I noticed that the light in the room was turned off,

but the computer screen was on, casting a faint bluish light into the darkened room. I opened the door. The metal doorknob is cold as ice and turn on the light as I walked into the cramped room. room, office, more like a supply closet. I wasn't entirely surprised to find a sheet of paper, neatly sitting on the print tray. Printed on the paper was a list of sorts in black ink.

As I looked closer, I could see that this list had some form of rules on it. I picked the paper from the tray, which was still warm from the print, and as a paper flopped in my hands, a waft of air pushed toward me, causing strange out-of-place citrus undertones to fill my nostrils. I raised it closer to my face and read the page. Rule 1. If you hear knocking on the doors and windows,

turn all lights off and stay under the counter until it stops. Huh? That's strange. Knocking? Rule 2. If the temperature drops dramatically, check the thermostat. Then, whatever you do,

do not look behind you. Rule 3. If the light start to flicker in the manager's office, cover the window in the door, lock the door and stand still for 30 seconds. Rule 4. If you hear sobbing coming from the bathroom, go check it. If it turns into a whale, it is already too late. Rule 5. If you see a woman across the street, do not stop looking at her until you hear a knock on the wall behind you. Rule 6. If music plays over the PA, hide in the freezer until it stops.

Rule 7. If you receive a phone call from someone you know, do not answer it, or they are next. Rule 8. If you are outside taking out the rubbish and see the bins are open, run back inside and do not leave for the remainder of the night. Rule 9. If you hear light breathing through the headset for the drive-through, turn the headset off and run to the bathrooms. Was this a joke? I thought to myself. Some dumb prank devised by the closing manager to try and see. scare me out of the building of my first night shift?

Nice try, I mucked, looking towards the camera closest and flipping it off. I threw the paper into the bin without a second thought, grumbling under my breath about time-wasters. That took five minutes out of my shift, five minutes less to do my job. I returned to my mop and began to start cleaning the floors. There were caked with mud due to a recent storm, and because people are so inconsiderate as to not wipe their shoes in the glaringly obvious stormats before coming in. As I began to near the bathrooms, I felt as though I was being watched.

You know the drill. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you feel really uncomfortable. I spun on my heels and scanned the room. The pit pad of rain beginning to start up. After looking round for a short while, I just shrugged it off and turned back to my mop, picked it up and continued cleaning.

However, as I approached the door to the bathroom, I began to hear her faint sobbing. It startled me. I wasn't expecting that. This all time, I had thought I was alone in the store. I called out through the closed door, asking if anyone was in the room and received no reply. I asked the gain, and like previously I didn't hear a reply, so I nudged the door open slowly. As I entered the small, one-stall bathroom, I scanned and noticed two key details. The crying had stopped, and...

And... No one was there. Creepy. The rain began to pick up. The sounds echoing off the metal roof, and I left the bathroom, eager to finish my mop and get away from the bathroom for the rest of the night. Something fell off. Hadn't that prank list mentioned something like this?

I raced back to the bin where I'd tossed the letter and fished it out, wanting to double-check the rules it gave me. After getting the paper from the bin, I read it again, and sure enough, there it was. Rule 4. I stepped away from the bin. If this was a prank, it's very elaborate. I called out to the empty store for whoever was messing with me to come out and show themselves, which got no response. I left the paper on the bench, just in case something like that, happened again. I went back to my mop and completed cleaning the store. I could see my face on the floors. I went to the beverage machine and got myself a Coke, a refreshing drink after that

physical work to reward myself for a job well done. As I drank, I looked at my other jobs for the night and crossed off mopping the floors. I chose to take the rubbish out, as it would be relatively easy. As I put my list of jobs back down, drinks still in hand. I began to feel a bit chill. I began to feel a bit chilly. I live in a relatively cold area, so I was used to the drops and temperatures, especially at night. I went to go and put my jacket on, but as I did, I saw my reflection again on the floor, but it wasn't seeing me that sent shivers down my spine. Right behind me where the drinks machine was. A woman. She was wearing a tattered dress and had long hair. She was a light blue color, and through the reflection I couldn't make out of facial features.

I was about to turn around to confront whoever was behind me when I glanced over the notes I had left on the counter next to me. It seemed as though the rules were trying to burn themselves into my mind. Suddenly it hit me. Didn't it get chilly relatively quickly? I hurriedly grabbed the rules list and there it was. Rule 2. I looked where I saw the reflection of whatever was behind me.

It had gotten closer. I jumped and bolted over to the thermostat in the middle of the dining area. I must slip to my floors doing so. And when I arrived, I looked at the temperature. Minus 4 degrees Celsius. Suddenly, as if it had always been there, I could feel the icicored breath of the thing on the back of my neck. Instinctively, my head began to turn,

but I forced myself to stare at the thermostat. I stood there, paralyzed, like a deer in the headlights, until slowly, ever so slowly, I felt a freezing hand snake at my arm. As it reached my bicep, the whispers-off touch stopped, and I could feel the sharp pain of fingernails digging into my skin. I not look at me. The voice came from my left,

and I could feel the caress of its breath as it leaned in closer. You want to see how pretty I am. I am. Was the voice real or in my head? No, I managed to bite out, squeezing my eyes shut as the fingernails went deep into my skin. Then suddenly, it was gone. It felt like forever, until I'd finally mustered up enough courage to turn around again. I checked my arm. To my absolute terror, there was nothing there. No pain, no distinct crescent-shaped wound to my skin. Absolutely nothing. I raked a hand down my face and turned back to the thermostat.

My hand was shaking as I quickly reset it to 23 degrees. How can a thermostat be set to less than 15, let alone minus 4? Turning back to the reassuringly empty store, I was left with more questions than I'd hoped for. Two thoughts barged the way into my mind. What was that? And who set the thermostat? I laughed nervously. Maybe the night shift was getting to me.

I mean, I did mention those addicts before, didn't I? Keeping a lookout for them must be getting on my nerves. It was the only idea that I could cling to that didn't make me feel insane. I checked the time, hoping for relief that I was almost finished, but it was 11 past 11pm. It had only been an hour since I had started. I felt nervous. I needed fresh air.

Didn't I say I was going to take out the rubbish? Perfect I opened the back door and wheeled out one of the three willy bins I walked over to the dumpster my breath visible in the chilly night I opened the dumpster and grabbed a garbage bag as I pulled the bag out of the bin

I swore under my breath some ass hadn't tied the bag properly I'm not cleaning that up I threw the rest of the bag into the dumpster and turn around to grab another that's when I saw it She was back, but this time I crossed the road.

I couldn't make out of facial features, but I could feel a cold gaze dig into my soul. I blinked to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, and when I opened my eyes, she was still there, but this time she was slightly closer. Slowly, having all the time in the world, she raised her hand and began to wave, mocking me. I began to freak out. the hell is going on? As I stared into where I assumed its face was, I was startled by a knock behind me. I spun, only to see that there was a massive handmark on the wall. I quickly turned back around to face the thing across the road. It was gone. I closed the dumpster and ran inside,

leaving the bin out there. I was not spinning any more time outside, at least for now. I began to pace back and forth along the counter. Why was this happening? Who sent those rules to the printer? I took my headset off and placed it on the counter. What should I do? I double-checked again that the doors were locked and not able to be opened. I pulled out my phone and began to call my store owner,

trying to explain that something strange was happening and asking the open manager to come early. Although it was late at night, I wasn't expecting a response. I sighed when the dial-turned by voicemail, telling me to leave a message after the tone. I told the voicemail to call me back as soon as possible and hung up. I looked back at the rule sheet, which was sitting perfectly in front of me. My heart began to race when I saw that rules two, four and five were crossed off.

When I say crossed off, I mean someone had gotten a marker and had angrily ripped across the page, tearing over the neatly printed rules. I gasped at the sight. Who had been able to do this? Before I could contemplate any further, I began to hear a lullaby over the PA system. This lullaby was nothing I had ever heard before and sounded almost malicious. The soft female voice becoming more aggressive the longer the song drone on. I glanced at the rules looking for guidance.

Rule 6. If music plays over the PA, hide in the freezer until it stops. I bolted to the freezer, neglecting to put on one of the warm jackets in front of it. As I stepped into the freezing cold, I felt as though something was standing behind me in the doorway, beyond the closed industrial door. I looked at the temperature gauge in the freezer to check how cold it was. Here, it was minus 20 degrees. I could still hear the faint echo of the song from outside the door, and I'm ashamed to say that I did not have the courage to step outside.

despite the chill that began to settle into my bones. My heart stopped as from even inside the freezer, I could hear it. Someone was banging against the windows. It sounded like someone was throwing all their weight into the window, trying to break it. It was made worse with the lullaby still playing, even more aggressive than before. The list of rules suddenly burst into my mind. Rule 1 at the forefront reminding me that if there was banging in the windows, that I would need to hide under the counter.

But, I was in the freezer, waiting for the lullaby to stop. What am I going to do? Before I could contemplate any further, I had the glass break, and I made my decision. The lullaby had finally receded to a calmer tone.

I burst out of the freezer and ran toward the counter. I threw myself under the counter. I cried in sheer terror, as I noticed that I could no longer see outside, as countless bodies pressed themselves against a glass. I call them bodies, because that is what they were. There is no in hell that someone can tell me that they used to living, breathing human beings. The pale white skin was pulled taut over their features,

but that wasn't what scared me the most. Each one of them, every single last one of them had wide, toothy grins, and none of them had eyes. Yet I could feel them staring at me. I head under the counter for what seemed like forever, the lullaby over the PA stopping and being replaced with white noise. I raised my weary head out from under the counter, fearing what I would see beyond my safe area. I saw nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why is this happening to me?

I slowly crept out from underneath the counter and placed my shaking hands on the bench, trying to stop them from shaking. I looked over at the little piece of paper. Rules 1 and 6 were now crossed off, leaving rules 3, 7, 8 and 9. I jumped as I heard my phone buzz on the countertop. It was the owner. I answered hurriedly and began to tell them what was going on. However, once I finished, the owner began to reply,

Why? A blood-curdling scream followed, and the phone call ended abruptly. The faint beeping of the landline knocking me back to reality. I placed my phone back down, realizing my error, as I watched Rules 7 get slowly crossed off. The ink seeming to come from nowhere. I grabbed the piece of paper and read the last few rules that were left over from the original 9.

The rules that remained unmarked, Rules 3, 8 and 9. I grabbed another drink, trying to calm my nerves, and checked the time again. It was 3.30. I only had to last another two and a half hours. I suddenly remembered that I had left the bin outside in the rain. The urban manager would kill me if the bin was full of water. I opened the back door again and slowly approached the wheelie bin I had left outside.

I'd actually managed to empty before I ran back inside. I left at the lid and closed the wheelie bin, I saw the dumpster was open. Didn't I close it when I went back inside? I closed it again. And, as I turned to move the bin, I heard a horrifying scream coming from inside the dumpster. Oh no. I turned around, but was stopped by the same icy cold breath on the back of my neck. Look at me!

The voice screamed out into the night, a high-bitch while causing my ears to ring. I left the bin and sprinted to the back door. The pit bat on my footsteps on the asphalt becoming faster and faster, quickly followed by even faster feet, the whale becoming louder and louder, never leaving my ear. I got to the back door and slammed it into place, a faint knocking on the other side.

Let me... I collapsed, sliding down the door onto the floor. My heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest, but I couldn't move. The shock was finally settling as my mind began to race once more. There was no way I was imagining this. Why wasn't I want?

that something like this would happen. How does no one else know? What is going on? These three questions kept circulating through my mind. The knocking receded, and I was left with an eerie quiet, as if there was meant to be sound, but there was none. When did it stop raining? I rose up slowly, my shaking hands doing little to help me up.

Creeping slowly, I made my way to the front counter, eager to consult the list. If all the rules are getting crossed off as they occur, I only need to look out for the last few, right? As I approached the list, I felt the temperature of the room drop. Not a gentle drop by one or two degrees, but at least ten, causing the room to feel like a freezer. As I looked at the list, of course, Rule 8 was crossed off. Rules 3 and 9 remained. Drive-through, a manager's office, right?

I wits my head around and look at the manager's office. nothing out of the normal there I looked at the feed from the camera facing the drive-thru nothing there either I breathed a sigh of relief nothing out of the ordinary at least I closed my eyes and chuckled

whispering softly is that all you got monster that was a mistake my phone rang it was the owner again in my haste I forgot the previous call and answered frantically trying to tell them about what had happened.

Once I finished, white noise pierced through my phone into my ear, causing me to drop the phone onto the counter. Within the noise, I heard voices calling to me. I recognised these voices. My grandfather and mother. What was even freakyer was that they were both at home, most likely asleep. Why could I hear them? But then I heard a third voice, which spoke softly.

come to us the fear began to rise as I recognised the third voice it was that woman the one who had been terrorising me all night I picked up the phone and frantically tried to hang it up the voices became louder

come to us come to us come to us come to us then a click I managed to hang up the call I slipped the phone into my pocket I was not accepting any more calls tonight. I sat on the counter and glared into the kitchen.

The UV bug catcher light zapping any bugs that came close. I looked down toward my feet. Seemed like the bugs are having as hard a night as me. I then heard a zap inside the quiet store, then another and another. I looked up at the light again and heard another zap, but no bug was near the lamp. I glanced around the store,

trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. When I looked at the manager's office, the light was flickering. I jumped down from the counter and sprinted toward the door, eager to try and cover up that little window, but I had nothing. I searched around for something as I locked the door, and I looked inside the office.

Why did I look inside the office? Amongst the flickering lights, I saw the thing trying to claw its way. at the computer screen, its face breaking the surface of the monitor and coming into the real world. And

it was staring at me. I broke its gaze and looked around for something to cover the small window. I needed something, anything to cover it up. I looked again and its head was out now. It was now reaching a handout. I managed to catch a glimpse of myself in the window as I was

looking away. I was wearing my jumper. Yes, I took it off and covered the window with it, just in time to hear the loud thought of the computer monitor hitting the floor. I just had to stand here for 30 seconds, and I was safe. Then, I heard it scratching the window. It was slow and methodical, as if it were trying to play out some horrific melody. I threw my weight into the door to try to stop the tune, but it only made it louder. I thought in my head that there wasn't much time left and held

the door shut. Suddenly, I heard a smash as a moment. as a hand reached through the now shattered window and reached for me. Come to us, come to us, come to us, come to us! The creatures chanted as it felt around for me, pounding my face and gripping hard. I pulled away from his grip and jumped back from the door, letting go of my jumper in the process, as I glanced back at the door toward where I just was.

I saw nothing. As I began to calm down, I heard the scratching of paper, which signified that one more rule remained. Rule nine. Saving the best and last is what I thought when I looked down the list. I was delirious. I began to laugh. One more task? Bring it on. I yelled to at the store. And if, like a cruel joke, I heard the ding of someone in the drive-thru. I picked up my headset and slanted on my head and asked, What do you want, you monstrous creature? It's safe to say that the person on the other end was

not at all happy to hear that answer. They drove through after insulting me and flipping me off as they drove past. My first customers of the night, my first chance to interact with someone, gone. I was upset with myself. I slid my fist on the table and exclaimed no short list of expletives. It was all that damn thing's fault. I looked at the last rule again and my mind said, Screw it.

And I decided that if the thing came through, I would confront it. I didn't give a damn anymore. And as if right on cue, I heard faint breathing coming from the headset. I turned on the mic and told the thing to screw itself. I know right, big man.

I grabbed the rules to cross off the last one myself and I was suddenly picked up and thrown across the room into the kitchen. The lights all shut off, only leaving the faint glow of the UV bug light. I saw it then too. as I looked at the rules to see if Rule 9 had been crossed off,

when I saw another rule fade onto the page. It was as if someone had written it in Invisible Link. Rule 10. The rules lie. I glanced up just in time to see the thing come crashing through the front door and rampaging toward me. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything.

As it got to the entrance on my kitchen, I shut my eyes. I lost. The light in the store flicked on, and I shot my eyes open to see the thing had disappeared. I looked over at the entrance to see the store owner, who had a panicked, worried expression. He came over to me and told me that I was safe now and that there was nothing to worry about. I think I blacked out, because when I came to, I was in the back of Mom's car. I sat up and asked her what happened. She told me that the store owner called her to come get me, because I was.

catatonic and that you rushed down to come and get me. We arrived home and short while after, and I collapsed into a heap at my bed. If I hadn't told that thing to screw it's off, I would probably be dead, or worse. And as I finished telling you this, I have to go turn the heater up, as it's gotten really cold in my house. When we got married, my wife had no toes. I'm starting here because with God as my witness

I have no idea how else to begin this That's the thing I don't even know what this is Accounts confession Obituary I had to write something down I've taken photos But nobody would believe she wasn't born

No Stop skipping ahead clarity Benedict clarity Start at the beginning When I married Emily She had no toes I married her because of her eccentricities Her stories and her tall tales

I'd always laughed them off Especially the one about how she'd lost the digits on her feet I'd always seen it as a fanciful way of explaining away a birth defect It never bothered me But Emily grew up in an orphanage And of course kids can be cruel I'd always assume the beachedale Was a way to keep old wounds closed

I realised now that was naive According to Emily She had been walking the beach at Dovercourt A bleak and run down shipping town On the UK's east coast It was before her parents' accident So she can't have been older than four

She'd been digging for shark teeth When she found About a foot below the pebbles and grey sand A sea slug This is where the tale Took one of Emily's usual flights of fancy Because you see this wasn't just any sea slug.

Throughout our marriage, she'd sworn on her parents' graves that the moist creature was the exact size, shape, texture and colour of a human tongue. She even defiantly refused the budge on her assertion

that it moved and writhed in her hands exactly like one too. The emilyism that made me write off the story as fiction for years was what it did after a few minutes of wriggling. According to the wife,

I'd give anything to hold again. The tongue slug vanished in her hands, disappearing into thin air with no sound or commotion. There, one moment, gone the next. You're probably wondering how this relates to her toes, though. Well, the tale of the tongslug ends

when a four-year-old Emily awoke the next morning to find they were missing. Her parents found a screaming toddler in a bed with severed toes and pools of blood nowhere to be found. The flesh of her feet It simply ended, much to a parent and doctor's confusion and smooth, blamishless stumps,

like the toes were never there at all. Of course, for years, I thought the joke was that they never had been. Thinking about the fact that Emily wasn't joking at all still sends shivers down my spine. It started during the last COVID-19 lockdown. Just like Emily's parents, I was awoken by screaming sobs. Emily was on the floor. she had fallen out of bed and I could see why straight

away all I could do was sit up in bed and scream with her her, her calves were missing there was no gaping wound or exposed bone from a grisly severing no no pools of blood or shredded tissue

they were simply gone Emily's knees were now smooth globes at the end of her thighs I can feel them I can feel them I can feel them I can feel them. I have never heard a person yell like that. Her voice cracked and broke

like there was so much panic and lungs that her throat wasn't strong enough to contain it. I clambered down from the bed and sat behind her. I held Emily in my arms for about three, maybe four hours. I only found out I spent that long silently sobbing into her open hair later, though, when I crashed downstairs

on the foal of the couch that afternoon. When you love somebody and they're that terrified, time becomes irrelevant. Any mother sat at a bedside at a neonatal ICU will tell you this. I sat and rocked her across those hours, telling her to focus on my breathing, despite it being far from steady or calm. We got there, though, somehow. She was sobbing throughout me helping a dress. I tried to let her maintain a dignity, do as much for herself as she could, but I found myself overstepping almost every boundary she had.

At one point she actually told me to freak off. Other actual word, obviously. I'd never heard a swear before. She couldn't explain what she meant when she said, I can feel them, until I carried her downstairs and sat her on the sofa. We'd watched the documentary on Phantom Limbs Syndrome once. It's when amputees get hitches they can't scratch on limbs that are no longer there.

Emily made it clear in a plain, a matter-of-fact tone, free of any panic or confusion, that as far as her body was concerned, nothing was out of place. When she had woken up that morning, she thought she or I had wet the bed. From the shins down, all she could feel was warm liquid. The strangest part, the part that had shocked her so much she launched herself from the bed, was when she could feel her toes again. After I came round for my exhaustion nap, we had a long talk. I, begrudgingly accepted no doctors would be phoned.

Emily made the final decision, of course. I begged her to let me take her to the hospital, but she refused point-blank. Her argument was bulletproof. Legs don't just disappear. They just don't. The best case scenario was the doctors couldn't do anything. The worst. Well, we'd both watched enough of the expires to know

people experiencing inexplicable limb vanishing don't spend long outside of military or government captivity. The thought of Emily on a cold steel medical table being dissected by men in hazmat suits was enough to get me to forget seeking professional help. In the end, Emily did make one concession. I called Shane, a colleague and the closest thing I had to a friend locally.

I couldn't tell him the specifics over the phone for obvious reasons, but my Cajun has piqued his curiosity and he agreed to come over. He didn't scream, which was relief. At first he laughed, then he smacked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. Then, finally, once the colour had drained from his spray tan face, he sat down. Can I have a glass of water? He eventually managed to ask. I is not moving from the space where he knew his face.

His colleague's wife's legs had been a few months ago at the Christmas party. Shane, I'd worked with him for years. I should never have called him. He didn't deserve to die. People react to the unexplainable in different ways. Some panic. Others stay calm and take action. Once we'd fully explained our mourning to him, shame had been the latter.

That's why I had to kill him. For once, my absent modernness came in handy. If I hadn't left the hammer on the mantelpiece after putting up the new shelf three days ago, it wouldn't have been within easy reach. If it wasn't within easy reach, Shane would have finished dialing 999.

If he had finished dialing 999, Emily would have been carted away to some test facility, and I would be alone. Frick that. I didn't choose the sharp end of the hammer on purpose, nor did I intentionally drive the wedge right into Shane's temple. I was acting too much an instinct to have planned that thoroughly.

The surge of adrenaline had streamlined my inner voice into a caveman grunt that simply meant hit, kill. I dropped the dripping tool the moment I realized what I'd just done. I fell to my knees and wept. Once again, a five-year-old lost in a supermarket. Emily wasn't sobbing or screaming, or yelling, or making any sounds of distress. She was laughing. Sweet Mary of Bethlehem, Benedict Bockstead,

who thought you had it in you? Then I was laughing too, still on my knees, face still wet with tears, but laughing all the same. Seems messed up now. My newly legless wife and I bent double in near hysterics while an innocent estate agent leaked all over the floorboards. Panicking wouldn't have helped

and the looming despair was so thick neither of us would find a way back if we ventured into it. Laughter was the only sensible option. Lucky Shane was a frick boy, whose family lived way up in Manchester, Emily mused as I wrapped his body in black bin liners. You only called, right? Didn't message? By the time they come and looking for him, there'll be no way to trace it to us.

Just make sure you dump your phone. For all our qualities, Emily wasn't smart. For all my faults, many stem from not being the sharpest knife on the rack. That's why I didn't question this name. now quite obviously ridiculous assertion that no police would come round asking. Even if I had been blessed with a bit more brains though, I was too lost in a barely suppressed panic to notice. That's also the reason I didn't fully register the second time I ever heard Emily not use

the word Frick. Disposing of Shane was a pain in the backside. Emily couldn't help for obvious reasons. A person with no feet isn't much help when dragging the body of a grown man into your back garden. She did sit by the kitchen window after I had the genius idea of repurposing my office chair and a broom handle into a makeshift wheelchair she could punt around on, and I was appreciative of the company as I went about my first art deed of the next few months. The conversation made digging and filling the hole much quicker. Plus, I'd always felt planting flowers was a group activity.

Petunias are better enjoyed with friends. The next week was strange. Emily did one or two Zoom meetings, but eventually signed off sick from a trendy marketing job. The team would cope without a lead. She'd informed her stammering underlings, laptop poised on her shinless thighs. It was on the morning of the next Saturday, exactly seven days from the calf incident, that we took our next step on the descent into madness. I was once more awoken by hysterics from Emily's side of the bed. This time, it wasn't crying, though.

This time it was laughter. The same kind of maniacal giggling she lit loose after I removed shame from the equation with my dad's old hammer. Still half asleep, I rolled over to see what the joke was. The second round of hysterics was from me and they very much were filled with sobs, screams and scramming away from the woman who shared my bed. My wife had no legs.

Her hips ended as the same thing fleshy, perfect orbs, and now vanished knees had been when we'd gone to sleep the night before. To my growing alarm, Emily wasn't at all perturbed by this. Hey, she managed to get out between excited giggles. I did say I wanted to lose weight. She was waving her hand through the air where her thighs had once been. My heart thumped in my chest.

What was happening to my wife, and why did she seem so... happy about it. Still, the change meant I didn't have to carry around the house at least. Without the extra weight of her thighs, her arms, now strengthened by a week of office chair punting, were more than capable of functioning as standing legs. She'd walked around the house and her palms, laughing softly to herself when she thought I couldn't hear. When I asked her once what was so funny, she simply rolled her eyes and said, Don't worry, it's nothing you've done. Something's just tickling the back of my knees. calm the frick down

I couldn't calm the frick down firstly because she didn't say frick and secondly how was I supposed to be calm when my wife's legs had disappeared with no explanation look Benny it's okay I can still feel them it's just phantom lynn syndrome just like that show it took an hour for her to explain properly

mainly because she'd break into more fits of laughter every few minutes It took another two for me to properly calm down. There was no clear reason to. I knew my Emily, and I knew when she wasn't being honest. She didn't believe what she was telling me. To her, this wasn't phantom limb syndrome. In her mind, wherever her legs had gone,

they were still with her, still attached to a solid flesh and bone. After how the next few weeks played out, I'm not sure I'd argue with her on that. if she'd just come out and said it. Not anymore. I spent until the following Wednesday morning trying to make sense of it all. But then, the doorbell rang.

I don't know why I let him in the house. When the 20-something Jehovah's witness asked to come in and speak about Jesus, I was too dazed and quietly terror-stricken to fully realize what I agreed to when I said yes. This time, the Hammerstrike was deliberate. He had been midsarm

when the mental wedge connected with the back of his skull. The O in the word hope prolonged and slurred as he crumpled into emotion, finishing the val as a twitching heap on the floorboards I'd only just scrub the blood out of. The wet thought of the hammer collapsing the suburban missionary's head had been loud enough to bring Emily knuckling down the stairs. At least I wasn't weeping this time.

She found me stood over the quiet calm, cleaning the jar of his winters' blood of the blunt tool with a wet wipe. I was beyond terrified by my own actions by this point, you see. I'd fully dissociated, I think. I was lost somewhere behind my eyes, screaming impotently at reality to stop and reverse back to before I answered the door.

The argument that followed was the worst and definitely weirdest we'd ever had. She didn't want to talk to me through the window this time. I had to dig a second hole next to Shane's flower bed in silence, left alone while Emily sat by the upstairs window to keep an eye on the confused-looking religious door-knockers peering through the front windows all along the street. I could hear her laughing as I dug.

Angry cackles, which she made no attempt to hide. It was all her freaking detour, eh? All the distraction. Pointless prelude. I practically threw the bedroom door open. I'd come in for a glass of water when I'd heard the sound of a shrill ramblings coming from down the stairs. The sounds of distress.

had shaken the kitchen ceiling. No, not distress. Distress was what I started feeling about halfway up the stairs. Emily shrieking shook the walls of the hallway. She was screaming about, I don't know what, laughing hysterically between every sentence. I'll be with you soon, I'll be with you soon. Tell the man in charge I'm coming.

When the door slammed open, she shot upright on the windowsill perch, jumping out of her skin. She looked sheepishly at me, biting her lips to suppress the occasional giggle. Emily? I asked, my voice on shore. Sorry, she mumbled. I dozed off. Must have been having a bad dream. Again, I knew her well enough to know that she believed none of those words. I didn't have the time or courage to confront her, though. My sweaty palms had more petunas to plant. The next few weeks were a paranoid blur.

Well, for me at least. I don't think Emily was aware very much beyond the changes in her body after the Jehovah incident. I decided it wasn't safe for me to take my attention away from her for too long. So, I too took some sick leave. COVID-19 was a great cover-up.

It would have been hard to explain if we both were expected in an office. I spent my nights at the window, taking long vigils with the lights out. peering through the blinds and hoping nobody came to claim the guests sleeping under my petunias. The funny thing is, we think the children are safe. They're the worst of us all. She knew the truth, though.

She wrote it down. They call them every year, and when all said and done, the town's graveyard just gets fuller. The man in charge can't wait to meet me. He's very angry with you, though. No, he's not happy with you at all, Benny. It took me a few days to get used to the dark, unnerving things Emily would holler and giggle into the dark bedroom when I had to head out to use the loo or start the next watch of the window. Trying to hold a stable conversation with her was pointless now. Not that I didn't try.

Um, are you hungry? Hungry, huh? For Thethorax, the eight-armed maggot prince is hungry. The people lost in the pocket dimension of the non-things are hungry. You've never been hungry, Benny. You don't know what hungry is. Even the most basic questions eventually led to incomprehensible babbling. I learned to look past it.

She ate the meals I gave her, after all. What did it matter if I couldn't present them without being paid and mind-curdling titters that made sleep impossible most nights? My legs, my feet, my tail. My legs, my feet, my tail, my legs. My feet, my tail. The next change was too much for Emily, I think. What little sanity had remained was gone

when I awoke on the morning of the next disappearance. The shoulders, breast and head, there were once my wife rattled the same words over and over again, her eyes rolling back in her hair, her expression terrified. She didn't even notice me pick her up and put her into the cupboard. The towel and the kitchen roll I wedged into the cracks of the old door did little to quiet the noise. If we were the kind of couple that owned a ball gag,

I would have used it, but the rolled-up pair of socks would have to do. It didn't seem like she minded as I shut the door, tears streaming down my face. It didn't seem like she was aware of anything but her legs, her feet, her tail. I try not to dwell on that last one too much, while I placed seeds in fertilizer over the Shane and Jehovah mounds.

The petunias were wilting, and wilting flowers raise suspicion, I told myself. Neighbours can be nosy. It was best to be careful. That sensible reasoning was why I hit Shane's mother with a hammer when she turned around to shut the front door behind her. I, of course, had the hammer ready when I opened the door. I'm not an idiot.

My aim was as good as ever. I was also relieved to have something to occupy my time. Upstairs, Emily had managed to dislodge the socks and tenderly planting fresh petunias and my new mound next to Shains was a good distraction to occupy myself with for the rest of the day. The police showed up two days later.

Yesterday, so you have context. I had bigger problems by then, though. When I woke yesterday morning, the room was quiet. It took me a second to realize the gentle lull of birdsong wasn't a welcome event. The fact I could hear it

when the hysterical shrieks and cackles came from the cupboard had stopped. I know what you're thinking. Surely that was a good thing. Well, it would have been if the soft chuckles and whispers that replaced them weren't far, far worse. You know,

I'm so glad I'm not like you, Penny. I'll get to munch, munch, munch, and crunch, crunch, crunch, while I watch your skin melty melts and the stuff in your bowels boils into your burst. When the man in charge meets you, he's going to take your eyes, Benny.

He's going to burn you for a thousand, thousand years, but you'll never die. That's what he wants with all of you, Benny. All your scumlings and filthy smalls and screaming squishes. I'm going to eat them all, Benny. When I get there, I'm going to eat all of them. All the people. I'm going to eat you too, Benny.

You're going to get there eventually with the rest of the underscum. And when you do, I'm going to eat you over and over and over. When your brains ooze out of your ear holes, because I've crunch, crunch, crunch down on your skull, Do you know what I'm going to do, Benny? I'm going to eat you over and over and over. It took me five hours of listening to those sanity-breaking promises before I had the nerve to open the door.

Emily's head sat on a cushion of Auburn hair at the back of the cupboard. A green eyes rolled back, bulging from the sockets. Her cheeks were red as an open blister, brow coated in a thin layer of sweat that matched my own, and flecks of spittle exploding from her mouth as she whispered. I'm ready, and the face of spittle, I'm going soon. I can't wait to meet the man in charge. He'll satisfy me more than you ever have, Benny. She wasn't laughing much anymore. She was panting softly, breaths from wherever

her lungs had gone, or whatever they now were, coming through fast and shallow. The disembodied head of my wife whispering pure nightmare fuel wasn't what made me collapse into the bedroom carpet and farm it, though. No, it was the voice she spoke with, which did that. The whispers reaching my head through unknown mental avenues outside my ears weren't emily's they weren't even human the syllables came from a battery of voices each at least an octave higher than the last all except one the single bass tone almost too low to comprehend that danced in and out of the cascade of degrading noise the language the mother tongue of emily's screeching monologue as it rattled through my skull i did not recognize it was no language of this earth Yet, to my horror, I understood every word. Soon I'll be free, Benny. Soon I'll be free, and you'll see me again in three years, nine months, four days, seven hours, 42 minutes and 17 seconds. You'll see how much I munch, munch, and crunch, crunch, crunch.

See, who was really inside the filthy small you married? The rest happened on autopilot. The subconscious, taunting whispers didn't stop when I picked up the gibbering head. They remained uninterrupted as I carried her into the bathroom and placed a gingerly on a towel I'd placed in the toilet seat. She continued her foul declarations for every minute it took for the ceramic tub to fill up with warm water. That's how I knew I still loved her. I made sure I wasn't too hot or too cold and even added some bubble bath before I picked up her still whispering head and plunged it under the surface. Human beings can only survive with longs full of water for a few minutes.

Emily's lips did not stop moving until she'd been under there for at least two hours. I held her temples, tears falling non-stop from my eyes as they remained fixed to abulging, rolling ones. That is, until they two disappeared. Before the final ten or so minutes, the rest of Emily's head dematerialized. Anady slipped face first into the bathwater.

The open eels of hair warming between my white knuckles vanished. I yelled, brushing some of the rest of the night. the bubbles, only one trace of Emily remained. Plump lips, white teeth, and a wagling tongue, somehow set into a flat piece of skin much shallow than the depth of the mouth it contained, a mouth that was still moving. I ran my fist into it, in the end. I grabbed that tongue and pulled as hard as I could. Anything to stop the whispers, the water did nothing to dull. A deep crimson bloomed underneath the bubbles. The heart biting at my wrist stopped. I wrenched my arm out of the water, holding a single piece of flesh in my grasp.

It was a tongue, a blood-soaked wriggling tongue. Unlike the rest of Emily, there was a wound where it had left the body. The horror at what I'd done slowly dawned on me. I sat alone on the cold tiles, my wife's limp and severed tongue in my hands. And howled. I stayed there, curled in a fetal position next to the tub full of my wife's blood, until the police started hammering at the door about 20 minutes ago. The tongue had gone limp, but hadn't vanished.

The mouth has, though. Emily has gone, leaving me alone and frightened with the police about to break down the door and find me with a severed tongue of my missing wife and three bodies buried in my back garden. The thing is, after the last few months, prison doesn't seem that scary. That's why I was calm enough to write this all out.

I knew I had to tell my side of the story. Let's be real. Once that battering ram I can hear finally does its job, that's it for me. You'll be hearing about me on the news. The talking heads will tell you I'm a serial killer,

a hardboarded psychopath refusing to reveal the location of my wife's body. I'm going to tell them the truth, but they won't believe it. You know, I know better though. You now know, like I do. There isn't a body.

You'll know, as they put me behind bars for life that I'm only guilty of three of the four murders next to my name on Wikipedia. You'll know like I do that I am a 25% innocent man. You'll also know the nagging truth that I think is going to keep me up for many nights that come. Emily had told me when I'd see her again. In three years, nine months, four days, four hours, twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds, that when I saw her, I'd meet the man in charge. That's when, according to Emily, all of a maddening promises will be fulfilled. She could have just been taunting me, teasing me, trying to see just how blatant the untruths she could fill my head with before I snapped.

I don't think that's the case, though. Besides, over the years I knew my wife before I drowned in my bathtub. She told a lot of tall tales, starting with a particularly tall one about a missing toes. I'm starting to think that maybe had tall tails weren't so tall after all I've been technical diving for the better part of a decade something about the ocean and all its unexplored wonder has always drawn me to the deep

an entire uncharted alien world lurks just beneath us just waiting to reveal its mysteries to those daring enough to take the plunge I guess you could say that diving is my passion and it's been my entire adult life Now, I can't even bring myself to go near the deep end of the pool without having a panic attack. It all started when one of my best buddies approached me with the idea to go on a little excursion. Todd had a fairly formidable boat that he carved out a living with by engaging in, let's just say, less than legal activities.

Anyway, some reputable character that Todd helps move cargo into the country had told him about a cave several miles off the coast of his own country. truth be told, no matter how much time I spend in the background of how we found ourselves a hundred feet below sea level, I'll still never understand why or how I agree to such a misguided idea. It hardly matters now. At 99 feet below sea level, the pressure on your body normally felt by the atmosphere is quadrupled. The sunlight feebly attempts in vain to penetrate the blackness. Darkness rules there, and creatures of the dark are all that inhabit it. I check my depth and air pressure gauges and locked up to sea Todd hand signalling me to follow him to the

mouth of the cave. I flutter kick silently forward, floating just above the seaweed and silk-covered ocean floor, taking in as much of the world as my low-profile narrow-lens mask would let me. When we reached the mouth of the cave, Todd dropped to the floor and clipped his line to a formation near the entrance. This is a very important step in cave diving. That line was our only way back out of the system. I held my light on his hands while he worked, but my gaze drifted back to the mouth of the cave. The darkness was just as oppressive as always, but there was something strange. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time. The ominous Blackmore was somehow more intense than it should be. Then I heard it, a low-pitched roar from out the deep. A thunderous

echoes sounded from so far below, it was a whisper by the time it reached us. That's the strange thing about your hearing when you dive that far down. You don't just hear. You feel. You feel it in your chest, in your bones. The noise echoed through me, and I felt my stomach drop. We hadn't come this far for nothing, though, and we dutifully pressed on. Todd held the line and made entrance first, and I followed behind.

my hand trailed along the line as it unfurled. With graceful strokes, we kicked only about 30 to 40 feet into the system before my light caught a silver glint out of the backdrop of the darkness and neutral tone rock formations. Todd signalled that he saw it as well and we stopped. Kicking myself over to it, the narrow beam cast itself onto the object. The eerie silence was broken, only by the soft rhythmic beat of our exhales as they bubbled up to the roof of the tunnel.

The glint revealed itself to be a scuba tank, half buried in the silt. Many cave divers bring along spare safety rigs. The last thing you want when you're 100 feet down and closed by rock ceiling is the run out of air. But who would leave this behind? We clipped it off to our line with the intention of taking it back with us when we made the return trip. Delving deeper into the system, we came across our first fork. Todd signaled to me. He was asking which way I thought we should go.

My light panned back and forth between the two tunnels. It was smothered by the abysmal nothingness, no more than ten feet ahead. The ever-present pressure continued to squeeze me like a python coiling around its prey. It was oppressive. I felt a slight current brush the cold, dark water across my skin. It came from the left tunnel. I gestured to the left and we continued our exploration. We were 110 feet deep here.

Even as an experienced diver, the pressure became taxing. Several kickpaces in, something caught the focus beam of my light. It was... Unnatural. It stuck out like a sore thumb among the rocky staligmites within my narrow beam of vision. I gracefully kicked over to it, careful not disturbed. the silt at the bottom of the cave floor. Once stirred, silt takes a considerable amount

of time before settling again. More time than the air tanks afforded us. If I thought my vision was limited before, a silt storm would mean complete and total blindness. Reaching my point of fixation, I settled and focused upon the thing that had caught my eye. Pulling it from the sun can place in the sand, I found it to be a diver's slate.

divers can't communicate verbally underwater, so what can't be signalled through commonly recognised hand motions, divers will write on a slate and pass it to one another. Shining my narrow beam onto his surface, I made out the hastily written words. Size, refrigerator, smooth black skin, dolphin-like, but some humanoid features, opposable thumbs. Chilled, I passed the slate to Todd, who read it,

and, after glancing roadly toward me, tucked it away in his gear pouch. We pressed forward. As we neared the end of the tunnel, the walls began narrowing until they pressed against my shoulders. At one point, it became so narrow that I had to remove my tank

and pass it through the opening before trying to slither through myself. For a brief moment, I became stuck. The familiar panic set in. I took several slow breaths to calm myself. Then I exhaled every bit of air my lungs and at last managed to become just slender enough to barely push myself through. On the other side of this obstacle, the system opened up. We found ourselves on a small

ledge that dropped off into a large chamber. Shining my light around the perimeter, I noted the horizontal boundaries. Turning my narrow beam down toward what should have been the floor of the chamber, my light was snuffed out by the overwhelming blackness. I settled down to the bottom of the ledge to peer over the edge. The moment my knees touched the sand, I realised my right knee was landing on something. Hard.

Reaching into the sand, I grabbed it and pulled it from his burial place. It was a video camera. Clearly a high-end one too. Whoever made it this far must have wanted to document their expedition. Fumbling with the buttons, I switched it on and positioned my light

on the playback screen so I could see the last recorded video. The video started and I recognised the sight of the obstacle we'd just pressed our way through. The frame reached the end of the ledge we now found ourselves on and then began panning around the room. It's eerie to watch a video underwater. With no sound, it had all the effect of a silent horror film. The deja vu sense I had, seeing the surroundings that I was currently in, didn't put me at ease. The frame then paned down to the bottom of the cavern and back up from the abyss to rest on the figure of a diver positioned next to the cameraman. Clearly, it was the dive body of whoever was shooting.

The diver in the frame looked all the camera, when suddenly a strange dark figure shot across the frame and out of view. At first, the diver appeared just as he was a moment before. Then, wisps of dark red stretched out from around his grip, like malevolent fingers spreading their reach across the dark water. The figure rocketed across the frame again from a new direction and out of sight. The diver's masking regulator were now gone, and so was a large, haphazily torn portion of his face. The camera frame shook in obvious shock as the blood swirled violently, dying the water in view. The still-touching body floated limply forward, and other figure rocketed by again, and, it was gone, dragged down into the black. The frame peered over the ledge until it was smacked violently and the screen turned black.

Out of the silent nothingness, a roar exploded into being. Staddled, I dropped the camera. To my left, Todd, in a clear panic motion to go back the way we came. Kicking with all my might, I made it back to the narrow passageway and began the arduous task of shoving myself through. Barely getting through the obstacle once again, I turned to help. He passed his tank through to me and I grabbed it. He fit his head, then shoulders through in a panicked hurry.

His body filled up the entirety of the passageway, and I could only see his head poking out through the rocks. But before he could gain any more ground, his head jerked in a sickening way. Bubbles exploded from his regulator as he screamed in pain. Blood seeped through the opening and began staining the water around us red. Helplessly, I tried to tug him through. but as I pulled I felt something pulling back

the other way Todd's regulator flooded the chamber with perched air bubbles as its screams of pain propelled them violently toward the roof of the tunnel the regulator dropped from his mouth and his head dropped lifelessly down

horrified I realized whatever that godforsaken thing was was on the other side the lifeless corpse for my friend was the only thing barring it from pursuing me the aquatic roar sounded loudly

as more blood poured into my side of the obstacle. I realized this was my chance. It is with shame, I admit, that I left my friend there, so I would have time to make my escape. My heart pounded as I swam with all my might to the mouth of the cave system. Bullishly, I made an emergency ascent to the surface, not stopping to decompress. It was worth the risk of the bends, just to get the hell out of that dam water. it's been a month since then.

I finally recovered from the bends after spending what felt like forever in a hyperbaric chamber. I could no longer bear the thought of swimming, let alone diving. I can't even explain why. All the proof I had of that wretched thing is buried in that cave

with the body of my friend. I couldn't keep this to myself. I barely cling to sanity as is. I had to tell someone somehow. Hopefully this will be a warning to all those seeking the mysteries of the deep. For some reason, some absolute weapon of a man built a water slide in the middle of the North Sea. Me and the lads on the codrola couldn't believe it when we found it.

There we were, racing ourselves against 40 feet rogue waves and horizontal sleet carried on hurricane-level turbulence 50 miles out of Scotland when we spotted it. An eight-looped baby-blue plastic water slide standing defiantly amongst a building-sized waves and ship-bucking winds. It had a ladder and little white and red flags for a lifeguard and everything. It was Gaz who saw it first. Well, damn, I muttered under my breath. That is a water slide. Is that a bloody water slide?

Old Dave, the captain, abode his head out of the cabin to get a view uninhabited by the fat drops of rain smashing into the viewing window. Bloody hell. My God, it actually is. That's a damn water slide in the middle of the North Sea. He joined the rest of us, running from the wheel under the deck

to lean over the starboard bulwark. Every man on the vessel stood, gorping at the horizontal blue loops. Those steel bars set into concrete, standing firm against a lashing of wind and monstrous waves. Even the tiny lifeguard flags and the tiny bucket they were in seemed unperturbed by the North Sea's race.

This was in stark contrast to the nets and gears on the ship deck, all of which strained at the straps saving them from being lost at sea. The search beam on the roof's cabin swung in the concrete plinth direction, carving it out against the almost unscathed arctic darkness. I turned around, peering to see who had climbed up to direct it. That's when the ship capsized. It happened in three moments. The mother of all surges crashed down.

I was in the air above churning foam. All was black and my lungs filled with ice water. We had life jackets, of course. But in seas this rough, the buoyancy offers little help. Fortunately, this wasn't the first time I'd found myself in the drink. Adrenaline led instinct take charge and I became singularly focused. Swim. Swim and don't look until you reach that damn water slide.

The constant flashes of lightning with my only guide. Somehow, though, I made it to the concrete platform. My lungs burned from inhaling so much of that sub-zero salt water. Those freezing waves still smashed around me as I climbed the steel rungs bolted to one side of the structure. It was when I got to the top that I was allowed a lightning strike snapshot

of our ship's stern, vanishing below the churning surface. The gale was still beating down to me. There were no signs of my crewmates, but I dare not risk standing. to look for them in the roaring black waves. The four to those winds would no doubt have carried me straight back into the freezing waters. Instead, I rolled towards the only thing I could see on the platform besides a blue plastic water slide. A hole, about ten feet in diameter, in the centre of the concrete space.

I was terrified by the time I reached it, but only by the memories of Mick or Benny or Saul's mum's weeping faces when they found out their boys. had drowned. I'd sworn never to do that to my old dear. That's why I only peered into the gaping ladderless hole for a few moments, before deciding this unknown danger was far less than the known certainty of the enraged North Sea. The lightning carved silhouette of a fresh 30-footer bearing down on the platform was all it took for me to close my eyes and throw myself into the yawning void. The Arctic overspill from above fell to the darkness with me. We weren't falling for long.

After about ten minutes, my plummet was broken by something soft, cold and clothed in wet fabric. It crunched beneath me when I landed, despite the distinctly moist squelching nature of the way it cushioned my landing. It took me a few minutes to find a flare in the safety kit of my belt. Even though the echoing from the tunnel mouth on the distant ceiling made the roar of the waves louder than ever before, I still heard the high-pitched scream that could only have come from my own mouth. It couldn't have come from barbeds. Their necks were broken. That's why discovering I'd landed on them, made me scramble as far back into the flare-lit

room as I possibly could. I screamed even louder when Gaz came falling through the hole. Who the hell is screaming? Keith, mate, is that you? What have I landed? Oh my God, is that a big pile of... Gaz? Gas!

Move away from the damn hole! For a man with a moniker that contains the words, big and fast, gas could move fast when he needed to. This is an essential skill for any fisherman, as nobody wants to be decapitated by a snapped line. Another life-saving skill is knowing when to follow instructions without stopping to look around and find out why. It's both of these skills which saved Gaz

from being crushed by the falling frames of Dave and Alfie. Dave landed safely in the pile of sudden corpses. The organic snap which correct the air let us know Alfie had joined them. What a damn storm, Dave grinned at us. Before the grin turned into a scream upon noticing the puddle of blood forming around where a sharp piece of bone protruded from the new unnatural joint in Alfie's neck. Jesus Christ, Alfie, no, wait, is that Bob? Dave, just move! It was Gaz that yelled this time, still only a yard or two from the hole himself. Dave showed the same intuitive response that kept Gaz alive, roll.

from the corpse pile mere milliseconds before the thick boots did to Fred's school what they would have done to his own. I want to go home, Nathan whimpered, upon seeing the red mess of bone and brain on his thick rubber footwear. I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to. He was snapped out of his panic jabbering by his own neck snapping.

Jim rolled off of him and the other bodies, already panicking from the realization of what had just happened. By the time a few minutes had passed since the time. the last that my former crewmates had fallen to the death, there were only four of us standing. Me, Gaz, Dave and Jim. Four bodies lay in a pile, leering at us through dim red light to the flare. The rest never made it out of the waves. Lads, Gaz eventually managed once we'd all stopped screaming. Where the hell are we? What in God's name just happened? We capsized and we all swam for the waterslide.

then we fell down a hole. I heard the words leave my lips, rather than consciously deciding to say them. I was still in shock. I grew up on the fair trembling, and my gaze fighting hard, not to be drawn to the pair of glistening orphaned eyes peering at me from a few feet to my right.

I have no clue why it's here, Dave said slowly, his thousand yards there locked on Fred's mangled school. But I'm so glad we found the water slide. I've been on these ways for nearly 40 years, years. I knew the sea, and I've never seen her this angry. It was a blessing, but still, something isn't right. Well, no duh, Dave, something isn't right. Are you high? Of course something isn't right. You don't just find a water slide in the middle of the North Damned Sea.

Jim was slapping the back of his hand into his palm to emphasize each word of the last sentence. He was the youngest of us, and this was clearly shown in the additional layers of terror present on his face. I wasn't in a state to acknowledge it at the time, but he was doing well, considering he was also dealing with his first brush with drowning. As I said, though, I wasn't exactly in a fit state to recognise this. Shut up, Jim, and show some damn respect. You have no idea what you're talking about. Of the man and boy, the boy was struggling, but the man was very obviously broken.

So was I, though, which is why I ignored my instinct and turned to Dave. So, what do we do? The wide-eyed man, whose kind wrinkled face was usually so warm, was the least qualified at the moment to lead us. We followed him anyway. All I knew was that I was cold, in pain and terrified. Dave's ramblings may have just been lunatic gibberish, but they were with Michael nonsense from an authority I recognized. Had I been a bit more with it, we'd never have gone into the door. marked nursery, strictly no entry.

We'd been stumbling around wide, unlit, concrete corridors for about six hours when we found it. The deep groaning from the metal beams lining the walls constantly reminded us that, outside dark passages, there was nothing except inky ocean blackness and whatever monstrous things it contained. Aside from the pile of bodies, the room we'd fallen into was quite bare. There was a light switch and a bulb hanging from each corner of the sea. ceiling, but despite Jim's frantic switch-flicking, they wouldn't sputter into life. The same went for the switches in the corridors he'd periodically try. Despite Dave's increasingly

aggressive insistence, he'd leave them alone. The floors of the room and hallways were lined with red tiles. I don't know what colour they actually were, but the glow from the flare left them all rendered in a deep, flickering mosaic of scarlet and crimson's. There'd been lines of drains, the kind you find at swimming pools to filter the seawater overspill from the hole in the ceiling. Clearly, there was some kind of power in the facility, as Jim could hear the distance sucking and gushing of a pumping system when he put his ears to one of the plastic grates.

That's why Jim suggested we follow the pipes leading left at the first split of the corridor. Dave disagreed. Dave decided we should keep following the rail. It was hanging from the ceiling, kept in place by thick steel cables drilled into the concrete every few feet or so. The rail started at the very lip of the hole, then ran along the dripping ceiling into the dark corridor that sprawled forth from the room's only exit.

It was constructed from three stainless steel plates arranged in a rigid arc, housing a thick chain exposed on its underside. This quietly clinking and clanking length of equally rusted iron rivets was looped around large wheels, said directly below each ceiling cable. My mind couldn't help but conjure up images of slaughterhouses and abattoirs of gutted beasts turning slowly on meathugs as a conveyor belt rail carried their corpses to the grinder in irregular, shuddering bursts. I think Jim's mind was conjuring similar images,

which is why he didn't stop pleading with us to turn back as we followed the rail further and further from the source of the gurgling water pump sounds. There was definitely power somewhere in the... this place, even if none of the light switches dispelled the darkness. The doors we found at various points were all sealed with electronic keypads whose illuminated fingerprint scanners created small, glittering oasis of false hope as we traversed deeper below the waves. Jim kept trying these keypads until Dave's harsh reprimands grew into threat of violence. It was when we reached the empty lobby or landing and the rail

disappeared into a steel hatch above the door signposted as the nursery, but Dave started to delivering on his promise. Ow, what the hell, man? Jim was looking up at the three of us, a streak of dark red pouring from the nose that Dave had just broken. Dave's blood-covered fist was still shaking when he replied.

I told you, shut the hell up. We're following the rail. The rail will lead us out. Right, Gaz? Keith? Dave's newly wild eyes flickered between us in quick succession. Gaz smirked and nodded furiously. his face and a grin betrayed by his tearful eyes and trembling jaw.

My nod was slow and accompanied by gulp. I don't know whether it was the twitching, the flex of spittle in his grey beard, or the way Dave's tongue would occasionally dart across his lips like a reptile. But he was beginning to dawn on me that I'd backed the wrong horse in the power struggle between youthful ingenuity and old age's wisdom. No, you shut the hell up, you crazy old man. We've been down here hours, and this rail leads us to the damned nursery?

Why would the way out be in a... The rocky trawlerman never got to finish his sentence. The steel-capped toe of Dave's boot smashed into the boy's chin, knocking him sideways into the cement wall. There was a dull crack, accompanied by a jet of dark red, spraying at the impact point where hair, flesh and bone, met cinder block. Jim's head bounced off the wall. He looked up at me, blood pulling from his split skull,

eyes crossing in and out to focus. Keith, mate, please, the lump in my throat rose. The message to step forward and put myself between the helpless teenager and the madman we'd mistakenly elected the lead was only halfway home when Dave responded for me. I screamed for the first time his heavy boot came down. Gas was holding me back for the subsequent two dozen stumps Dave delivered. His aging knee rose up and down.

down again and again, stamping on Jim's head until the dull squelching thuds were replaced by muted cracks and snaps of splitting bones, and then the wet smacks of rubber and blood-slick tiles. Jim's helpless and now headless body had stopped twitching long before Dave finished. What the hell, Dave? I screeched, struggling helplessly against Gaz's pudgy grip. What that actual hell are you doing, you madman? He was just a kid. behind my tear-stained eyes all I could see were panic-fueled visions of Jim's mom of me having to explain

that I'd allow a psychopathic mere pensioner to stamp on his head until his brains were splattered across the rubber arrow for walls of two grown men who should have saved him Oh Keith, do you have the balls now do you? Dave snarled, rounding on me. The wildness in his eyes had evolved

into rogue blemishes around burst capillaries. Funny, I don't remember them when you got back to shore and walked in on your brother screwing your wife. Now, I wasn't just seeing red because of the flare. Before I could free myself and slam a fist into Dave's face for bringing up this known taboo subject, Gaz revealed just how much he also didn't appreciate the comment.

You don't bring that up, Gaz roared. He threw me to the ground, stepping over me, and slamming a paw into Dave's chore with one fluid motion. You know we don't bring that up. That could have been any one of our misses. It still amazes me that Dave breaching an unspoken code amongst men who spent time away from their wives was what snapped Gass out of his panic. He'd seen a young man have their head pulverized and said nothing. As it was, I was too shocked at the sudden ferocity with which Gass sigged himself on Dave to do anything but watch.

Jaw dropped and eyes almost wide as Dave's. For his part, Dave was too busy being repeatedly punched in the face by the obese man sat on his chest to comment on the same. situation. You don't remind us that they cheat, Gaz punctuated each word with a fresh blow to Dave's face. From my viewpoint on the floor, I couldn't see its condition, but by the way, the old man's blood cover boots stopped kicking and flailing, painted a clear enough mental image.

When Gaz eventually stood, and I saw that the truth was much closer to the remains of Jim than I imagined, an irrepressible wave of nausea rose up in my gut. Christ, Keith, don't get it on my boots. Gass was scratched over me, his fat palm hammering my back in an effort to help me clear the last of my vomit. I was about to respond to make some half-terrified whyscracker by the message made with our former captain when a noise made us both yell and look into the deep red shadows above. There was a loud metallic thunk accompanied by the squeak of unoiled wheels and the clink-clank of rusted

iron. The train in the rail was moving. Gas? I stammered, pulling myself to my feet and staring at the hatch above the door, marked nursery, strictly no entry. Gas, mate, we need to go.

When the lobby was suddenly illuminated by a bright light from the space beyond the metal hatch, gas started vigorously nodding in furtive agreement. For some reason, though, our feet didn't get the message Both of us remain rooted to the spot, each waiting for the other to grab us by the shoulder and yank us into a full-pelt sprint away from those parting steel hatch doors. Before either of us had the chance to muster up the needed courage, however, the rail

mechanism above lurched his cargo forward with a screeching jolt. The hatch burst open. I screamed. Gaz started crying. The steel hatch door swung closed with the deafening clon. flung, plunging the room back into near darkness from my last flare. Something was dangling directly above us, hanging from the conveyor chain by a hook, piercing the large fin at the end of its thick, vainy tail.

It looked almost like a warus or manatee, if somebody had decided to turn a warrus or manate's skin inside out and stretch his neck about four feet. Another notable difference was the excess amount of long, bony fins jutting from its bulbous stomach. It had thrice as many as any known species of marine mammal. The spidery flibbers wriggled and twitch excitedly as the scent of the dead men's blood reached the three flown nostrils on its back. At first, I thought it must have been looking my way, because I couldn't see his face in

the almost unpermeated red darkness. When the tip of the fleshy tube that was his neck started to peel back, I realized to my unending horror that I was mistaken. The thick trunk of his neck jutted and spasined, the loose folds of glistening skin on its surface retracting to reveal a long, yellow snout. By the time the wrinkled hood was stripped back, I realized the slowly spinning thing never had a neck to begin with. The quivering neck was actually an elongated head submerged beneath the folds of skin.

Well, I thought he was elongated. Once the vertical slits along its jaundice surface started peeling open, however, I knew I was mistaken. It was flat. I was still screaming and wishing for the kickstart from Gaz that would never come when the flesh petals began to unfurl. For the 30 or so seconds it took for the starfish-sized limbs to prize themselves apart. Our screams were undercut by nauseating slurbs and squelches, which perfectly matched the viscous

mucus dripping from its newly exposed flesh. Our screams only got louder once the face of this monstrosity could be seen in its full glory. Each of the seven trembling face segments had three eyes running along its length. These eyes were round, bright, dancing independently of each other, and they sized up this unexpected meal. They were also distinctly human. They alone weren't what made my legs turn so numb I fell on my ass, though. No. It was the mouths. It had three of them, arranged on a triangle and a flat, tongue-like pad at the epicenter of the writhing 21-eyed gaze. The space between the moors was occupied by an unfamiliar office that oozed a pus-colored substance.

This discharge caused hissing and steamed to rise from the floor tiles by Gaz's feet where it pulled. These mouths, also human and full of molars, knocked all hope of survival from my mind. I wept uncontrollably, shaking in the warm puddle of the other men's blood and my own urine where I lay. It wasn't the look of the mouths that broke me, despite the fact they were utterly horrifying in ways in a way that test my nerve to romeyate on too long. It's the fact. They were talking to one another. What's this? What's this?

What's this? What is it the iceberg us? It is filthy smalls, is it? Aye, I see filthy smalls, yes, yes, yes. They want to play, they does, yes, yes. They conversed in sings-on voices devoid of any dialect I recognized. What I did recognize, the thing that horrified me so much about those understandable, yet unintelligible words, was that the voices that uttered them belonged to human children.

Gass was still standing. I think that's what saved my life. That's why it went for him first. giving me the few seconds I needed to run screaming into the dark corridor away from this living nightmare. Before either of us could move, the air was cut through by a noxious odour.

The stench curled the hair in my nostrils and sent my gag reflex into violent spasms. Working on a cod trawler, I thought I smelled the worst shades of rotten ocean flesh the sea could send. I realized in an instant that I knew nothing of the stomach-empting horrors she could spew forth,

and she was now punishing me for my overconfidence. The punishment, her titan judge, metered out of gas, was much, much harsher. Neither of us had any time to react to the smell beyond starting to gag. The orifice between the mouths had puckered, the air-grade acidic pus leaking from it, now cascading from the pursed hole. I just about noticed the change when it convulsed, opening to spray for the thick yellowish web of phlegm over gas. He started screeching the moment the pus-colored snot touched his skin.

I could see why. As soon as contact was made, his flesh started bubbling, melting away to reveal veins, muscles and eventually bone. The jabbering thing above had landed a direct hit. Gaz just about had time to run in my direction, arm outstretched, his remaining eye wide and full of tears, when the chore he wanted to use to cry for help fell onto the floor. We both watched it for a moment That seemed an eternity long Me with my unrestrained panic

And mouthful of bile Gas with his exposed throat and flopping Jawless tongue By the time I fide my way to my feet His arm had gone too By the time I'd started running down the unlate corridor His corroded body had collapsed under its own weight The remaining eye still darting wildly

In a few seconds before the last part of his head dissolved into foul-smelling organic sludge. I shouldn't have looked over my shoulder. That mental image and its implications will scar me for whatever does remain of my life. I also shouldn't have dropped the flare. If I hadn't been running through the corridor in pitch darkness, the scientists with the night vision goggles

would never have been able to tackle me and drive that syringe into my neck. I've been in the cell ever since I woke up. I don't know what happened to my clothes, They've been watching me since then too. The scientists, I mean. They've been poking and prodding me with the needles for weeks, treating me like a damp incursion while they injects syrims and take samples.

I'm in no condition to fight them. Some of the syringes contain a sedative that keeps me drowsy. They must do, because they always seem especially keen to stick on in me when I get a bit, as one of them put it, restless and screaming. It was the one with a kind of. face who said that, the lady one, can't be older than Jim. I think she's some kind of intern. It's her that brings my admittedly not too bad meals, which are always steak, eggs and beans. She's also the one who brought me the crayons and paper I'm writing this on. She wouldn't let me have a

pen. Too pointy, she said. When she brings my next meal, I'm going to beg her to take this, plead with her to put it out there somewhere so my family knows what happened. I know Hannah left me for Jack, but I still wanted to know. Little Ian deserves to know what happened to his dad. Even if she doesn't get my message out there immediately, I hope the kind-faced scientist takes my advice and stores this away instead of throwing it out, just in case she ever had a change of heart about... Whatever the hell they're doing to me.

I'm going to have to stop writing soon. I'm tired, my neck aches, and I've got these cysts to my sides that I've been there for a few days now. I'm sure it's just the meat diet, but I've been getting big, like gas big. I'm hoping it's nothing to worry about, though. I've got other problems than my health, by getting the hell out of here. Oh, and before I go, I did ask the kind-faced scientist about the water slide. She just smiled at me and said,

Oh yeah, I see what that must have seemed weird. You'll find out soon enough, Keith, but during the rival stages, you can get a bit, um, childlike. We find taking the newer converts up top and letting them go for a swim and use the slide helps them burn off a bit of excess energy. She leaned in closer after she said this. Her face locked in an effort to offer genuine reassurance.

Don't worry, Keith. I know the nursery seems scary, but I'll make sure the others give you a turn on the slide. I recently got a job. as a nightguard at a school in my town. When I saw the job offer online, I couldn't help but apply. I just moved out of the country

and I needed some quick money. The paycheck was really good. Sixty an hour, and being a college student in need of money, I didn't think much about it. I called the number posted on the website and a man with a low and raspy voice answered. Hello?

Hi, this is Jack. I'm calling about the job advertisement, the night guard one. He paused for a second, then answered. Yeah, I'll fill you out with all the details when you get to the address. Meet me there tonight at 8pm. Okay, sure. That's how the conversation went. Jack didn't ask me any questions as to why I want to apply or what my skills are.

It seemed like you just needed someone to take the post. Quick money, right, I thought. I ate a pizza for lunch and then got in my car and drove to the school. When I arrived, I saw a big SUV parked in front of the entrance. Inside, a man was in his 50s, wearing casual clothes and smoking a cigar. My gut feeling told me he was Jack, so I got out of the car and waved at him. He immediately noticed me and opened his rear window. Hey, are you the guy that called me by the job?

Yeah, it's me. Good. I need to ask you a few questions before we proceed. Sure, go ahead, I replied. Can you defend yourself in case someone breaks in and threatens you? He asked in a fast-paced manner. Yeah, I can't. I... He didn't let me finish my sentence. It looked like he was in a hurry.

Fine. Do you get scared easily? Do I get scared easily? By what? I didn't want to annoy him, so I just said, No. Do you believe in God? Do I believe in God? This is getting weird, I thought.

Maybe I should search for something else. But then I remember the pay. So, I just told Jack, Yes, I do, sir. He waited a while before having any sort of reaction, like he was thinking about something. Fine, you're accepted. That's it, I thought to myself.

No more questions, nothing? Well then. Jack looked straight at me. piercing me with his eyes. You should start working tonight. You have everything you need in the security office inside the school, including your uniform and some tools which might come in handy. Your shift starts at 10pm.

You have any questions? Call me. No one else, understood. I quickly replied. Yes. Then Jack gave me his phone number and drove off, leaving me to my duties. I went inside,

and I could notice the classic interior the school had. It gave me a lot of the school had. It gave me a lot of 80s vibes from the look of it. Splendid, I thought. I walked across a long hallway, filled with classrooms on the left side, until I arrived at the security office. I grabbed the doorknop and rushed inside, as I didn't want to be unprepared for my shift.

I checked the locker, and it had a uniform, a flashlight, and a wristwatch. I quickly grabbed all of them and put on the uniform on the watch. Then I stared at the desk. On it, there was a document. which listed my duties as the night guard. Usual stuff. I quickly read through it and I didn't notice anything interesting.

On the back of the document I saw a note. It was stained by coffee but the letters were visible. It read, Rules for the night guard at the school. Rules? This is nonsense I thought to myself. But, at a curiosity, I started reading. I got terrified by what was

written on the piece of paper. This is the set of rules for the night guard of the school. By no means you are to break one of the rules or your life will be in terrible danger. As the hours will pass, you will encounter different types of anomalies. Your shift starts at 10pm and ends at 6am. Be sure to arrive sooner than 10. The more time you have to prepare, the better. We have also provided you with a gun in case of emergency.

It's located in the drawer. Be sure to grab it. Rule 1. Always make sure you are silent while outside the security office. The creatures inside are dormant as long as you don't make any noise above the sound of your footsteps. There are hours when they get active though, so pay attention to the next rules. Rule 2. Always make sure to lock the door behind you when you get in and out to the security office. Oh, and one more thing. After 2 a.m., the door to the security office will be compromised. Do not go inside, as it will prove to be at the security office.

dead end. Rule 3. Constantly check the watch we provide to see the correct hour. Every other watch will be malfunctioning while inside. Rule 4. During 10pm and 11 p.m. start patrolling their school. Nothing will happen during this job if you follow the first rule, but you have to get inside your office before 11. The creatures mentioned before will start to be active and you don't want to be out there with them. If you can't make it to the security office, hide in one of the and pray they don't find you. Rule 5. Between 11pm and 12am, you have to stay inside your office, but you need to pay attention to the surveillance cameras.

You'll see the creatures walking around the school looking for prey. If you see them come close to the security office, turn off all lights from the breaker box and parakeet the door. If you don't see them getting near, just carry on with your business. Rule 6. between 12 a.m. and 2 a.m. You have to make rounds at the school once again. Pay attention for blood on the floor.

If you see blood, run back to the security office and barricade the door. Something will claw at the door, but it will leave soon if you don't make any noise. After it's gone, continue patrolling. Rule 7. During 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. you need to check the basement. Once you get there, the door behind you will be closed until 4. If you hear low growling coming from multiple directions, hide wherever you can. If you cannot hide,

be prepared to run to the panic room. The path leading to it is marked on the sticky note. Rule 8. Once you enter the basement, the janitor will start to follow you until the end of your shift. You will intermittently see clumps of him. Do not let him catch you.

If he gets too close, tap him with the shoulder and say, Not now, my friend. Not now. He will disappear for roughly half an hour, giving you time to gain distance. Notice, you can only do this once. Rule 9. After 4 a.m., the creatures inside will start to hunt you.

Do your best to evade them until 6 a.m. If you can do that, they will return to being dormant again, and you can safely exit the building. Your shift is over. Rule 10. This one never happened to anybody, so that's why I. I left it to be last on this list. While you were inside, you could start to hear a storm outside.

If that happens, look out the windows to see if it rains blood. If it does, you may encounter a pale woman with long dark air named Max during your shift. Max will appear normal at first, but soon after, she will slowly transform into something horrible

and start hunting you until the end of your shift. If that happens, get in the ventilation system and hide there, keeping quiet until the end of your shift. If Max crawls into the vent as well, invade her as well as you can. Your life is on the line. Don't worry about the janitor or the other creatures.

They fear her as well. After your watch, you'll watch her at 6 a.m., she will back away. You can end your shift and exit the school. Good luck. I hope we'll see you alive tomorrow. I could feel my blood run cold in my veins. What did I just read? Is this just a prank to scare the new guy?

I started to panic, though. What if the rules were real? Could I even survive the shift like this? After calming down for a minute, I thought that maybe I should take the note seriously, just in case something is really in here with me. By the time I was done preparing, the watch was showing 10.15pm.

Crap, I should get going. I started to walk across a long and dimly lit hallway. checking the classrooms and bathrooms, everything I could. I could feel the air around me getting heavier with each step, like something was watching me, carefully paying attention to every move I make, thirsty for human blood. I checked the watch and, for a moment, I froze.

10.55 p.m. I don't think I have the time to get back to the security office without sprinting and making a lot of noise. I remember the fourth rule. During 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. start patron this school. Nothing will happen if I follow the first rule, but I have to get inside the office before 11.

The creatures mention of the first rule will start to be active, and I don't want to be out there with them. If I can't make it to the security office, I have to hide inside the bathrooms and pray they don't find me. I just broke the rule, but I can still follow the last part. I went to one of the bathrooms and hid in a stall, locking the door behind me.

Not long after, I heard painfully loud shrieks echoing through the hallways, so loud that I could feel the sound shattering my eardrums. I was horrified and cold sweat started to drip down my neck. I had to calm myself down in order not to hyperventilate and attract unwanted attention. I opened my phone and saw that I had no service. What the hell, I thought. I should have had signal inside as it was before I started my shift. Now, it's gone, and I was there, trapped with those things all by myself. I didn't have much time to contemplate on the situation as I heard something into the bathroom.

It started to crawl around, sniffing for prey. It came in front of my stall and started to scratch the door. I was close to passing out, since I got terrified thinking of what could have been on the other side of the door. I knew it sent something, and it won't leave until it gets me. It started to growl at the door, and that's when I passed out. Then I woke up, and surprisingly, it seemed to have disappeared. I checked my watch, and it was showing 11.30 p.m.

I had to make a run for the office. I slowly exited the stall, and then got out of the bathroom. The next thing I did was very stupid. I ran to the security office as fast as I could, and I drew a lot of attention towards me. Soon I was chased by something and I started to run at full speed. I could feel it breathing at the back of my throat

and smelled its pudrid scent. I didn't want to turn my head around to see what it looked like. That didn't matter anymore. I quickly got to the security office storming inside and locking the door behind me. I heard loud growls, banging and scratching at the door.

I then barricaded the door and turned off all the lights. in the building, just as the rule said. Maybe there was still some time to follow them and escape alive out of this hell pit. Soon after, the sound stopped. I quickly glanced at the security cameras and saw the creatures walking away from the office. They looked terrifying. All of them were black and had a sort of fur on top of their skin.

Their eyes... Oh my God. Their eyes were white and translucent, and you could see the veins inside them. Their claws were sharp, and they left marks on the floor where they passed. All of them had a sort of twisted grin on their face, showing their teeth, with jagged edges hungry for flesh. I kept watching them on the cameras, seeing them move across the hallways and classrooms, looking for prey. Looking for me, I didn't have time to recover, because soon after, the watch was showing 12 a.m., I had to get moving. I grabbed the flashlight and walked into the dark abyss, afraid of what I'd just witnessed.

I knew that my life was in terrible danger, and the only way to survive was to follow the rules written on the note. Chaotic thoughts were rushing through my head. I could see my entire life unfolding right in front of my eyes. I was terrified, because deep inside, I had a feeling that I won't get out of this situation alive. I continued the journey across the endless and dark. hallways, checking all of the classrooms and bathrooms, along with the principal's office and the canteen. I was surprised by the fact that I couldn't see anything messed up while I was

patrolling. It's like they vanished into thin air after the incident from earlier, but I still kept quiet as I could feel something was wrong. I wasn't alone in there. Something was quietly observing each and every move I was making, waiting to find a moment when I'll be weak and tear at my flesh. As instructed, I was paying attention to the floor to see if there was any blood on it. Nothing. Lucky me, I thought. One less demonic thing to worry about. I checked the watch and it was showing 1.30 a.m. In half an hour I had to go check the basement as it was written on the rule set. I slowly made my way near, arriving at the canteen. It was empty and the thought of having a few moments of peace comforted my mind. I could feel my breath getting easier, and then a sudden

sense of hope emerged deep inside me. I had to get out alive. I didn't have much time to think, though, as the watch on my wrist showed 2 a.m. I had to go down in the basement. I approached the door slowly, and I grabbed the handle to open it. It was rusty, as though nobody had gone in there for years. As I opened the door, I show my flashlight into the darkness and descended slowly into whatever place which was awaiting me. I grabbed the sticky note from the rule set and made sure to check the way to the panic room. I'd better be safe than sorry, I thought. As I was walking round the dark abyss, I quickly noticed that someone was following me. After taking a better look, my heart started to beat fast, and I could feel the sense of dread in the air.

My legs froze as I could distinguish his appearance. The janitor. I almost forgot about the rule. Once you entered the basement, the janitor will start to follow you until the end of your shift. You will intermittently see clumses of him. Do not let him catch you. If he gets too close, tap him on the shoulder and say, Not now, my friend, not now.

He will disappear for roughly half an hour, giving you time to gain distance. I pulled myself out of the trance I was in and ran. I did know where I was heading, and it honestly didn't matter at that point. The janitor continued to follow me in a fast pace. Just when I thought that things couldn't get worse, I started to hear low growling. It was coming from every direction, and it got louder as each second passed. I could feel the air around me getting cold and filled with a foul smell of rotten corpses. I booked it to the panic.

room running as fast as I could. As I wasn't paying enough attention to my surroundings, I tripped on something and my flashlight fell from my right hand. My primal survival instinct kicked in and I continued to run as I left the flashlight there on the ground. I didn't even realize that I was close to the panic room until I hit my head on the door. Then, in complete darkness, I prantically tried to find the handle to get inside and I could hear something big crawling towards me. As it was going to be. Getting closer and closer, I finally got inside the panic room and shut the door behind me. Soon after, something was smashing its body on it, trying to get inside.

I could hear terrible sounds coming from outside. I don't even know how to describe them other than demonic. It kept going for a while, and then it suddenly stopped. I sighed in relief. I got my phone out and turned on the flashlight. As I looked around the room, I froze. I forgot all about the janitor.

I felt a breath in my neck and tried to remember the rule. That's it, I thought. I leaned over and touched them on the shoulder or saying, not now, my friend, not now. He led out a loud scream and vanished. I didn't have time to rest, as I checked my watch again and it showed 3.50 a.m. no more than ten minutes

and all of the demonic creatures lurking around the school will start to hunt me I still had the gun from the draw in the security room and that gave me a little sense of safety if I could stay alive for the last two hours I will get out of this hell I could sit inside the panic room until my shift ends I thought suddenly I heard the faint sound

of rain coming from outside This can't be. No, it's impossible. I'm just imagining things. My mind was aggressively trying to suppress my fear. But deep down, I knew I had to go upstairs and look outside the windows. I got out of the shelter I had inside the panic room and made my way upstairs. As I got out of the basement, I could see the terrifying creatures running around,

as if they were trying to find a place to hide from something. As I looked outside one of the windows, I could feel a spine-chilling sensation, freezing in place with fear. It was raining blood. And I knew what that meant. It was written in the rules. If I see blood, that means I may encounter a pale woman with long dark hair, named Max. Max will appear normal at first, but soon after, she was slowly transform into something

horrible and start hunting me under the end of my shift. I'm done for. I tried to make it back to the panic room of the basement, thinking that Max won't find me there. As I was slowly walking back to the entrance of the lower level, a pale woman with long, dark hair appeared right in front of me. I had to get inside the vents before she transformed into whatever bloody things she will. As I ran into one of the classrooms that entered the ventilation system,

I heard bones cracking and loud, high-pitched shrieks coming from behind. I didn't dare look at the thing. I quickly got inside the vent and started to crawl, looking for a place to hide. I could hear Max crawling after me, following me, as if she knew where I was headed. Desperally searching for a hideout, I went inside a tube,

located on the side of the main crawl space and hit there. Then I could hear Max getting closer, her claw scraping the inside of the crawl space. She passed right beside me, and I could get a glimpse of what she looked like. Her limbs are long, with bones protruding from them, and big, sharp claws. Her head is deformed, and her teeth elongated and pointed, like razors coming out of her mouth. Max rushed through the ventilation system looking for me, and I knew it was only a matter of time before she finds me.

I'm trapped inside the narrow core space, having nowhere to go. as I'm writing this I can hear her shrieks in the sounds of her claws scraping the metallic inside of the vents and she's getting close I can feel it it was old

older than God older than the hundred foot pines that towered above it looked like a submarine hatch sitting on a low concrete rise planted firmly in the forest floor it wore a tight beard of pine needles over a rusted wheel handle and bolts the size of apples.

It took both of us to get the handle to turn. Metal grown in protest, screamed as it shaved away the layer of rust that had welded it shut. Together we pulled the lid open. It was heavy, heavier than a house. Then it split back on its hinge with a sigh of stale air. Darkness seemed to spill out to the hatchway,

like it had been bottled up for eons and was now ready to infect the world. It looked as though a great metal mouth had opened up on the forest floor, a predator's mouth, starving and ready to feed. We peered down. A surface elevator of rebar-like rungs descended the dark concrete bore into the great unknown. Hazy overcast sunlight fought the darkness and lost, penetrating the meager five feet before shadow claimed the hole for its own. Sammy found a rock that looked like a cat's head, negotiated it over the hatch, and dropped it down. It whistled off into the darkness.

We waited, two teenagers in the woods of Washington, listening for the sound that never came. That rock hitting the bottom. I was spending a month of summer with my cousin, Sammy, had a grandma's place up in North Washington. It was a grey and unsunny July. I'd only been there a day, but a kingdom of storm clouds had rolled in off the ocean

and pitch camp over our corner of Washington, issuing under it low, endless drizzle that left the woods soggy and awful. But today, the clouds had parted, pulling back in a blast of sunlight. With the weather cooperating, me and Sammy's daily dose of mischief, two purloined cigarettes had led us out through the trees behind Grandma's house. The woods were a wide, primordial riot, not entirely claustrophobic, but dense enough that the massive pines would be warring for root space. We'd followed a thin vein of hiking trail, eventually breaking off on her own in search

of some place suitably grunge the light up. We had been off the trail for no more than ten minutes before Sammy called out to me, indicating the closed hatch that would eventually swallow us whole. We brushed away a thin skeleton of branches, a great bed and moss, a tangle of brush, the finally unearthed the thing that resembled something city workers in bright orange vests might descend to access a gas main. which was odd, because it bore no markings to denote its origin, not even warnings with penal codes that dissuade would be vandals. It was anonymous and disconcerting, like its lack

of designation meant it didn't belong, like it was an interloper. Sammy had asked me something. I looked up at her, what? What is it? She repeated. Curious gaze pinned on the hatch. I don't know, I told her. I don't know what it is. I knew it was old. Older than God. Older than the hundred-foot pines that towered above.

Thatch was open and Sammy wanted to go down. Come on, Lainey, she groaned. It'll be fun. We'll poke around, take some shots for our feeds. I'm not on that stuff. I shot back. Social media is the death of rational thought.

True, she grumbled. But what are we supposed to do? hang out with Grandma all day and watch Rebel Without a Cause with commercials. I took a long, pensive drag on the stale Winston, not wanting to admit that I was kind of... Terrified. Not only was I worried about the hatchlet slamming on us, trapping us in, but the thoughts of climbing down that shadowy ladder of disappearing into the earth's dark, quiet belly, made me want to vomit. Luckily, I didn't have to make any excuses. It started to rain.

Sammy hissed as the first spray a drizzle fell in grey sheets. Help me close it. I don't want it to flood. The rain was a fine mist, nothing more than a sneeze, and I doubted very much that it would flood. But I was more than happy to help us seal off that dark orifice. We did, together, before heading back to the trees, leaving the hatch behind. We were soaked through by the time we made it back to grandmas. She fixed us a plate of hot lasagna,

and we watched James Dean's Everless School in Rebel. The commercials. My grandma's house was not unimpressive. It was a two-story Victorian rising in a collage of faded red and white from a wide lot of crabgrass, the open property hemmed by a wrought iron fence, all of it seemingly weighed down by a hundred years of history. It looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie.

A Gothic manor surrounded by woods, a lone rafts stranded in a sea of trees. I was staying in my dad's old digs, a mess of ancient band posters and records, breezy pink stuff with the gun club and the wipers. Despite all the vinyl, I was plugged into Spotify and Bowie was wailing moonage daydream when Sammy slipped in, face bright with mischief. Come on, she said in an excited, breathy whisper, let's go. It was late, dark and late. I thought she'd gone to bed, but she claimed a spot on the edge of my bed, charged with nervous energy. I lost my headphones and shifted to look at her, her eyes wide and excited.

What, go? I screwed my face into a confused knot. The thing, the hole in the ground. The mention of the hatch, the mouth made my skin crawl. What? I said. No way, it's like midnight. It's atmospheric, she countered. It's pitch dark out.

So, we'll vlog it or something. Record it. I don't know, it'll be fun. I groaned, shook my head. There's no way. Then I'll go without you, Sammy huffed. Into the hole in the middle of the night? Yep, totally alone.

So if I get attacked by sub-dwelling mutates, it's on you, because you're the older cousin and all. Don't be like that, I said, feeling my cheeks flare up. She smiled, a dimple forming beside her mouth, clearly amused at having manipulated me into a stalemate of mutually assured destruction. I was caught. Either I go with her and keep her in check, or I let her go alone and something might happen.

She was 15, only a year younger than me, but impulsive and brash, and it wouldn't surprise me if she got hurt. I could claim ignorance, but if something happened, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. Despite being just cousins, we'd always been close, always been more like sisters than anything else. Sammy could drive me at the wall, but I still loved her,

and I could see in her eyes that she wouldn't be swayed. I blew another long sigh, pushed myself off the bed, shrugged on my black windbreaker. Let's get some damp flashlights, I said. I prayed for the rain I knew wouldn't come back. The clouds had burned off in the moonlight, leaving the heavens bright and clear.

We found a set of headlamps in Grandma's junk drawer and navigated the low woods by the watery beams they provided. I also had taken an old Swiss army knife. It was made of rust and looked like it to survive the Great War, but I took it just in case. I was hoping I wouldn't need it, hoping we wouldn't find the hatch, hoping he would be lost in the right of trees.

But something deep down, a high trickle in the deepest wrinkles of my soul, told me, and we did. Almost immediately. It resolved out of the darkness, a small brutalist platform rising out of the still damp soil. Had it been so close before? It must have been.

It must have. Sammy was recording us with a phone, posting them on Instagram or something. Who knows? My vision had whittled down to a dizzying pinprick and all I could hear was the hot rush of blood pounding through my ears. I helped her tug open the hatch, vaguely heard myself ask if she really wanted to do this. Of course I do, she said with a tight smile as she pocketed her phone.

It'll be exciting. Then she mounted the ladder and started off down the hatch. That sound only could have been made by the hatch lid slamming shot. We had been climbing down the narrow bore for five minutes. each wrung burning with a hot metal freeze that nibbled through flesh and seemed to lick at the bone when there had been a loud metallic report. Dunk We both froze on the ladder, Sammy just below me, panting like a tired dog.

What was that? I whispered, hauling stale air through my aching lungs. Why are... Sammy started in a normal voice before dropping it an octave. Why are you whispering? What was that? I asked again. But I didn't have to ask. I already knew. She did too.

I heard the growling scuffle of her climbing back up the ladder. I started to. One white-out wrung after the next. My palms burning, my heart beating its angry fist against my ribs. The climb was hard. My body seemed to weigh too much, like each limb was encased in lead as I pull myself up, up, nearing what I knew. I'd find. And I was right.

The hatch was closed. I pounded on it, screamed, knowing that the only ones to hear would be us. I chipped away at it with the army knife to no avail. We tried our phones. First mine, then Sammy's, pressing the devices to the lit rough, rusted skin.

No reception. Nothing but... The mouth. No one but us. Two teenagers. her with red hair, me with brown, trapped in an awful ladder with nowhere to go. But down, I don't like this, Sammy croaked. She sounded so young, like a little girl clutching a teddy bear after an especially dreadful nightmare.

I didn't like it either. It was wrong. It was so, so wrong. It was a pyramid of rocks. The climb down the ladder had been impossible. Time fell out of the ladder. way, shifting into a dull blur that didn't much matter. All that mattered was finding your footing as you lowered yourself down, down, down, rung after wrong, step after step. He might have been an hour or ten, but a while later, a long, long while, while, we hit a wide, concrete room. It was about the size of your average backyard.

The ceiling, though, unblemished, spire the circular opening through which the ladder ran, Shadows shifted and danced in black relief as we played our headlights across the dark space. On the opposite wall the ladder stood, a wide, ruined opening. Nothing but darkness beyond it. The massive bank vault-style door that had once filled it sat in a twisted, broken heap nearby, torn free of its hinges by. Something. That was disturbing.

It sent a sudden flood of hot dreadfully my guts like boiling water. But what was worse was the pyramid. It stood in the centre of the room like a terrible roadside art sculpture, a painstaking pyramid fashioned out of countless rocks. I knew where the stones had come from, Sammy did too. They'd been dropped from above by people like us. Hundreds of them, thousands sacrificed to the darkness of the earth, the mouth. I knew, because topping the pyramid like a Christmas tree star was the rock Sammy had dropped earlier. The exact same one, no doubt about it, tucked carefully atop the mountain of stones,

placed there by someone, some thing. A high trembling sound like an animal in a snare filled the room as the reality of the situation hit Sammy. She had started to cry. She was losing it, unraveling at the seams, sitting on the floor, knees to her chest. rocking and sobbing and apologising for bringing me down here. We had to move. My whole body was one big screaming ache,

and if we let exhaustion ease its warm blanket over our shoulders, we'd never get going. I saw it through my lungs and boiled it into authority. We have to go, I said. She sniffled. What? Her voice was nasely. She raised the trembling finger to the correct entryway across the room.

through there? I nodded, struck one of the matches I still had from the cigarettes. The flame wavered, guttered, as a breeze tugged at it. There's a breeze, I said. Airflow, another way out. She sniffled, shook her head. No, no way. I say we wait here.

Wait for someone to open the hatch. No one knows we're down here, I reminded her. No one. But what if? She started, looking at the rock of pyramids. She lowered a voice, a horse whisper. What if the thing that made that is in... There?

Where else would it be, I thought. But I didn't say that. She was close to catatonia, and I needed her in motion. We have nowhere else to go, I said. Nowhere. She looked at me, her face pale and ghostly, and the light of my headlamp. Her eyes were buffy, red, bright with terror.

Then she summoned her courage, like one would, a lung full of air, and nodded. I halted to her feet, and we started off, through the doorway. There's someone following us, Sammy said in a choked whisper. The entryway had fed us into an underground hospital. It was abandoned, left to rot beneath the earth, a maze of scarred Lennonial, Badlinium hallways, moldering gurneys, and thick leather straps, blown out doorways and padded rooms beyond. No, not a hospital, an asylum or a laboratory, a kind of psycho-mixer of both. This construction spoke of a time before technology and the advancement of human rights.

Yellowed walls and popcorn ceilings were shredded, torn to ribbons, like a feral something had been set loose. Rusty smares of dried blood texture the white darkness here and there. It was awful. Each footfall, each pull of breath, all sound seemed to echo. Clang, reverberate through the white walls of this underground labyrinth. It was like a nightmarish estra painting. It was... The mouth.

Up until then, we've been negotiating slowly, rounding corners, finding more shadow-soaked hallways, passing an overturned reception desk, more padded cells, driven forth by terror and primal survival instinct. Then, Sammy had whispered in my ear, her breath hot, a voice hoarse with terror. There's someone following us. I froze. A cold infection of goosebumps when sprouting up over my body.

My lungs were tight, empty of air. My heart was pounding with icy fear. I turned slowly, not wanting to make a sound, afraid that if I did, it might make the someone real. She must have imagined it. There was no one. There was... Then, I saw the eyes.

Two dull, milky pinpricks hovering just outside the light of our headlamps. They were head level, higher than head level, unblinking, hovering and watching. Eyes. Sammy's body was right up against mine. She was wound up like an overtog screw, terror radiating from her in hot waves. I could feel fear beating through her veins. The eyes moved so suddenly that both of us screamed. They searched forward without any warning, rushed at us.

The thing, the something, the awful subterling mutate that would devour our hot intestines while we were still shrieking. I saw his crooked, emaciated silhouette, lumbering and lurching toward us. A tall, broken thing. Its arm's stick-like and so impossibly thin. those glowing blind eyes set into a narrow, malformed head, as moulded and precise as a canine skull. Then the creature hit up all of light, and the eyeballs popped out of thin air,

like the light had banished that thing, leaving only two marbles which clattered down, hit the floor, bounced and rolled to our feet. They stead up at us, pale, seeing, and somehow blasphemous. Sammy and I jerked back and bolted like the wind. My cousin screamed and yanked me back, just as solid ground dropped out beneath me. We had been in a blind rush, a blur of hallways scrolling by, passing by padded cells with shadows that moved within them, when the floor had suddenly stopped being.

Sammy grabbed my shirt and jerked me back, just as I went tumbling out over the sudden chasm. After a good-wrenching second of uncertainty, I found myself on solid ground, looking down at the vast, empty nothingness. There was a 20-foot canyon separating this side from the other, a thin splintery plankboard running across it. It looked like someone had shoveled out a massive crew pit in the hallway of the underground nightmare. We peered down, hauling air through broken lungs, hearts pounding, not sure what we were seeing.

A solid knot of arms and legs, interwoving and laced together, filled out the bottom of the abyss. They were grey, broken, decaying. Torn flesh hung from bone, massive boils filled with hot puss, textured rotting skin. But this wasn't a shallow grave, and they weren't that departed. As soon as our light hit them, they slithered apart, breaking away like a hive of snakes under the burning heat of a magnifying glass. Dreadful heads, pained and dawned in agony, recalled from the light, broken, human-like things forcing themselves off into shadow to reclaim what little salvation they had.

They hissed and moaned and chuckled with insane humour, I condemned souls cast from heaven, forever banished to this pit of darkness for an existence of raw pain. Oh my God, Sammy croaked. But there was no God in this place. It was a great blasphemy born from the sin of the unrighteous. It was awesome and awful. It was.

A low sound came from behind us, tucked into the cacophony of torment. Sammy didn't hear it. Too taking with the pit of the dand. I slowly turned, turned, my heart fluttering with icy dread, my stomach knotting in on itself. But the hallway behind us was empty. I blew a relief sigh.

The giant meat spider exploded out of the darkness with a throaty screech, a blur of limbs carrying it across the scuff ceiling. But they weren't limbs. There were human arms and legs. I gasped. as it rattled down the wall, hissing and pulsing with hideous life as it joined the floor and search forward. It bubbled into the light, a nightmarous set of conjoined twins. Two separate, adrogynous entities melted together, appendages beginning where others ended,

scraps of face in all the wrong places, eyeballs and noses and mouths all scattered about its lumpy, fleshy form. It was a nightmare of terrible industry. And its head, much like a spiders, was bull-werews. and truly heinous. Patches of hair textured its lumpy scalp above rows of eyeballs

and a wide mouth of thick razor teeth. Sammy turned, screamed and stepped back. It was instinctive, a single misplaced move that sent her out over the empty space.

She reached out for me, her fingertips skimming my arm as she issued a surprised Oh. Then she was gone, plummeting into the sea of souls. swallowed by the mass of forgotten bodies. I heard her shriek, heard her wail in bright agony,

as those things tore her limb, picking her apart like a mean kid with a stunned fly. I then looked up, and a fleshy mass of teeth and eyes and hatred was atop me. The meat spider tore me down into darkness. I awoke in a biblical spider web to the reek of death. It was a dark, sticky place, hot with a stench of dead. things. The smell flooded my lungs, burn my nose and eyes. I looked around, my eyes adjusting to the gloomy haze. I'd lost my headlamp. Vibrous white net resolved out into the darkness,

stretching to and fro like an entropic masterpiece. All of it seemingly random and oddly beautiful in its precision, an incredible tapestry of psycho nature. Massive cocoon lumps textured the space, scattered throughout the nest like sleeping beauties. They were prey. And so was I. I couldn't move. I was melted to a wall of webbing by a spray of fiber, not entirely cocooned, but imprisoned in a straight jacket of dreadful string.

I tried to scream, but my mouth was gagged with a shred of webbing. I issued a low, muffled shriek, the sound of despair. Then the entire formation began to tremble with a low vibrational. I heard a tight hiss, saw a dark shape skitter by. The meat spider mounted the nearest cocoon and tore into it with his terrible human-like arms, craning its lumpy head to suck meat from bone. I heard congested slurping, things tearing, flesh and bones snapping apart. It was feeding, and it would come for me next.

I slowly began to struggle, trying to work some slack into my binds. but they held firm. I felt something firm in my back pocket. I patted it desperately. The Swiss army knife. I worked it out. Pop the blade as the noise of the feeding slowed as the awful meat spider

shredded its fill from one of his victims. I eased the rusty blade to the webbing and began to soar. It was like cutting through canvas. The boat behind me instantly began to slacken, splitting apart, losing its tensioners. Oh God. Oh no.

The meat spider lunged, drenched in still hot blood, moving with that deliberate speed afforded only to creepy crawlies. It was coming for me, arms and legs pumping, its misshapen form throbbing with terrible heat. I worked the Swiss Army knife harder, faster, hacking away blindly, hatcheting apart the web holding me captive. And I could smell it. Oh God, the reek of ancient rot, of things dead and decayed and hate, and it was here.

Oh God, it was here. The meat spider lunged. For a terrifying instant, all I saw were eyes and teeth. There was a horrible intelligence in those eyes, an awful cunning that reminded me so much of the dead-eyed stare of serial killers in court. Then the web split beneath me, and I fell. A second later, and I would have. in dead meat. Instead, I was tumbling down, plummeting like a stone, the ground black and solid and rushing toward me. It slammed into me like a freight train, and I crumbled like a bird.

It wasn't solid ground. It was an angry rush of water. A river tumbled and heaved through a rocky canyon, the rapids frost like a rabid dog, whipping me around like a ragdoll in the hands of a brat. I snapped this way and that, barking my arms and legs and brains off the lips of rock that seemed to bite out at me. Water that reed of rotten gasoline and the thousands of dead things that had washed away flooded my mouth, filled my lungs. I choked and fought and tumbled downstream, until blackness expanded. I awoke in a drain pipe to the first light of dawn. It painted strange shapes on the curved concrete bore in which I was delivered. I folded over and vomited a warm spray of water.

A thin trickle ran from the darkness of the pipe, issuing through my hands, hair, flushing me with sobriety. That darkness repulsed me, made my skin ache and crawl with nausea. I staggered toward the light, fought my way out into a rocky shore. Seagulls were hunking angrily, fighting over a scrap of meat on the beach. The other seabirds twisted through the foggy air above gray waters. The ocean heaved at my feet. I looked up at the sky and cried. A trucker found me, limping along the highway like an abused dog.

I didn't strug them when he dragged me to the car. I collapsed limply into his arms and let myself be taken. He rushed me to the nearest hospital. I found out I was 18 miles from grandmas. I'm in a sterile white place now. hospital that reminds me so much of that underground nightmare of things that should never see the light of day. I started this account,

hoping it would bring me peace, hoping it would help me come to terms with a trauma I faced. It hasn't helped at all. The police are still looking for the hatch and for Sammy's body. It's been two days and they found neither. I was hoping normality would return, would burn away the nightmares that have haunted me ever since I've been back. But it hasn't.

When I shut my eyes, I see things. Things I'd seen out of the corners of my eyes in those padded rooms, unspeakable horrors that belong not in this world, but in a place far beyond it. God save them. It's an empty platitude, but it's all I can offer. God save them. Do you want seconds?

Betsy Miller asked, almost startling me out of my thoughts. It had been an unusually quiet dinner within Millers, and so I'd retreated into my head for a moment, but Betty had shook me from my thoughts as I finished the last of my peas. Certainly, that sounds fantastic. I smiled at her as she lifted my plate

and headed towards the kitchen. Hank, the patriarch of the family, sat at the head of the house, the table, biting into his second helping of pork with a frown on his face. Normally, Hank would be the heart of conversation as we discuss sports or current affairs, or his own family matters. But tonight, he sat quietly, savoring his food and leaving the dinner meeting feeling a little tense. To his left sat Timmy, Hank in Bette's only son, a boy of about ten or eleven. He meekly pushed his peas around his plate in an effort to make them magically

disappear, but years of experience had taught me that it never works like that. The walls of the room were covered with family pictures. There was Timmy in his baseball uniform. Hank and Betsy dressed finely on their wedding day, a picture of the family out in a nice restaurant, or a picture of Timmy as a baby. The family's most precious moments stood proudly on display, and I knew Hank was very happy with his family. It was the complete opposite of my house that sat with barren white walls, for I had no real family left, no wife, and especially no kids. Not that it bothered me, but it did become a tad lonely at times, so I was thankful to have met Hank when I moved in next door,

and even more thankful that they would occasionally have me over for dinner. I figured I would broach the lingering question in my mind. Hank, are you feeling okay today? You've been a little quiet, I asked. Hank finished chewing the rest of the pork before answering. Everything's fine, had a bit of a rough day at work, but then I came home and... He trailed off, looking out the nearby window towards the backyard. And...

I asked, hoping he would continue what he started. And... I felt something a little off about the yard out there, like this one spot. It just didn't look right, or maybe didn't feel right. I don't know. hard to put my thumb on it, he said, stabbing his fork into another piece of pork. Oh, the yard looks great, quit being such a perfectionist, Betsy said, entering the room with my second plate of food.

I thanked her, and after that the subject was dropped, and conversation turned to more normal affairs. But the whole rest of the night, I could see Hank's wondering eyes, travelling sporadically towards the window, peering out at the backyard, as if drawn to something the rest of us couldn't see. The next day, when I returned home from work, I noticed that Hank was outside in his yard.

His yard was the definition of pristine, neatly trimmed hedges, bright green grass, and flowers that simultaneously gave the area a pleasant aroma and eye-catching color. It was a bit strange to see that he was digging some sort of hole right in the centre of his yard. It seemed a complete violation of the serenity of his backyard. Hank was working hard, bringing up shovel after shovel of dirt and placing it in an ever-grown pile to the side. I figured he was set out to fix whatever imperfection he had seen the day prior. But, looking at the depth of the hole he had already made, made me think it was not a simple imperfection. I speculated that he must be putting in a tree, or looking for lost treasure, or even... I stopped my mind there, but undeniably there was a feeling of it.

in the air of something amiss, something unnatural. But what is unnatural about digging a hole? I thought it better to ask him what he was digging the hole for. After all, he's always been open and friendly. At least, that's what I thought. I yelled out to him from my own backyard. Hey, Hank, what are you working on over there? A little nosy I know, but curiosity had gotten the better of me.

Hank said down his shovel and wiped his seat down his shovel and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His face was wet with perspiration and his eyes were filled with tiredness. A scowl formed as he looked over at me. The first time I had ever seen the man look so miserable. It wants to come out now, Hank said in a robotic tone. I heard him clearly enough, but the response didn't make sense to me. It gave more questions than answers. What, what wants to come out? was all I could say. At that moment his eyes lit up, as if broken out of a trance. He looked at me for a brief second with confusion, shook his head.

Sorry, pal, long day today. Pal like had to come out here and fix some of this mess. I felt awkward about the whole thing. After all, it looked like he made a bigger mess than he fixed. But I brushed it off. Ah, well, make sure you take a break. Get yourself some water too. He looked pretty tired.

I yelled out as I unlocked the door. to my house. He nodded at me. We'll do, he said as I stepped inside. The next two days were eerily similar. I come home from work and see Hank in his backyard, continuing to dig and dig with seemingly no end in sight. By this point, I could really only see Hank's head poking out of the hole as he tossed dirt behind him.

Jeez, Hank, you're quite the worker. What exactly are you trying to fix? I yelled out to him while approaching. approaching from my own backyard. Hank scowled at me, but didn't give me an answer. I thought maybe he hadn't heard me, so I approached and looked down into the hole. I have to say, it felt hard to me. The once beautiful yard was now blemished by this hole, and the grass, normally trimmed once a week, was beginning to get long and scraggly. The hole was certainly getting deeper, but to what end? Hank was sweating profusely.

His lips were dry and cracked, his clothes stained with dirt and grime. I stood there for a few seconds, thinking Hank would acknowledge my presence, but he instead continued his work, seemingly doing his best to ignore my existence. There was something strange about being around the hole. The air was stale, as if a subtle odor from the hole had permeated into the dull wind, and there was a rising feeling of unease in my chest. Looking for treasure, I asked. saying it loud enough that he would certainly hear me.

Hank threw down his shovel before turning to look at me. His face was coated with a layer of dirt, but had a gross sheen of sweat as well. There was fire in his eyes, and they seemed to widen. It was as if I had asked a violent question. Mind your damn business, he said sternly. I was taken aback. I had never seen him angry or show any sign of hostility towards me.

But maybe I'd cross the line. I shrugged and turned away, walking back to my house as Hank picked up the shovel once again. I tried to ignore and forget about what had happened with Hank. I had other things to do, and if you wanted to dig a stupid hole for no reason, then that really was his business. I tried to distract myself with the usual television shows or books, but my mind kept wandering back to Hank and that hole. I couldn't figure out what he was doing it for

and for some reason it bugged me more than it should have from my living room I could suddenly hear the voices of Hank and his wife but they grew louder and louder until I was certain the two were screaming at each other I raced at the window curious to see what was going on out there I saw Hank's wife Betsy screaming at him

something I'd never seen before I never saw them bicker or argue or anything really. It was a total surprise, and it shattered the illusion of them being a perfect family. Are you not going to eat dinner? It's getting cold. You need to take a break. Betty yelled at him.

Don't you understand how important this is? I don't have time for that right now. Hank yelled back. You've been out this all day. How am I supposed to know how important this is when you haven't taught me anything about it? You need to take a break and eat something. This isn't good for you, she yelled. Got good daylight left to keep digging.

I'm not going to squander. to eat your slop. Now get the hell back inside and don't let me see you out here again. I'd never seen Hank act like this before. He was completely out of character. Was this how he really was? Was his friendly demeanor a facade? Either way, I thought I should try to do something to diffuse the situation. I felt horrible for his wife as I watched the tears rushed her eyes as he ran back inside the house. I grabbed a cool gate raid from my fridge and headed outside to order. Hank. He had deepened the hole to the point he could stand inside it and not be spotted. I could

see he was using a pick now. Each strike to the earth sent small flex of dirt flying up out to the hole. I felt a bit nervous as I approached. If he was going to yell at his wife like that, there was no telling how he'd react to me. But I felt how to try to bring the man to his senses. I stopped before getting too close to him, thinking maybe I can entice him out of the hole with drink. Hank? Come on, man. Why don't you take a small break? Here, drink this gatorade at least. You need to hydrate, I said, holding the gatorade out in front of me. Hank's lips were cracked now, on the verge of beginning to bleed. I don't know how he could keep working like that without taking a drink, but it appeared he was going to take the bait as he climbed out of the hole and

walked towards me. Without saying a word, he snatched the gatorade from my hand, twisted the cap off and greedily sucked down the drink in a matter of seconds. He said nothing to me. His body was beginning to look worn and frail. I guess it had been a while since it had eaten anything substantial. I have no idea how he had the energy to continue working in his current state, but something drove him forward. He licked his lips, now wet from his drink,

before tossing the bottle off to the side, and walking back to his work without so much as a thank you. I followed him back to his hole and watched him climb down into the depths. But when I myself reached the edge and peered down into the hole, I could barely contain an audible gasp. The hole had gotten deeper than I thought, reaching darker layers of earth and laying at the bottom were hundreds of earthworms, wriggling and slithering in some sort of sick congregation. Why had they gathered here?

Why this spot? I felt a trickle of sweat form on my forehead, as dread crept in and sickness set in on my stomach. The flowers had withered under the aura of the stale air and the rest of the yard had overgrown from neglect. I watched as Hank picked up his shovel and chopped through a layer of earthworms. They wriggled madly, small spots of blood forming where they had been bisected. Nothing was going to stop Hank from removing the dirt underneath, but, disliked. Despite my nagging brain telling me to get the hell away from the hole, to let these things be, I instead stood my ground, trying once again to get through to Hank.

Hank? I know it's not my business, but you're starting to scare people a bit. Why do you not want to take a break? What is so important about this hole? I mean, Christ, look at what's happening to your yard. Just look at the flowers and your grass. Hank threw his shovel to the ground in one quick motion and glared at me. Didn't I tell you to mind your business? Get the hell off my property. Don't come near me again. He screamed at me, his face blistering red from anger and heat.

My heart sank as I returned back to my house, feeling deflated. But, in a sense, relieved to be away from that hole. At least I had tried. I kept an iron hank for the rest of the night. He kept digging in silence, making the hole deeper. When it got dark out, he finally stopped and went to the hall. inside. I felt bad for Betsy and his son, having to deal with that, but thought maybe since he went inside, he'd calmed down. The whole situation didn't sit right with me, and I had trouble

sleeping that night. All I could see was worms being sliced in half. The situation didn't improve in the coming days. Hank was out there, day after day, digging that hole. From sun up to sundown, He worked without any signs of tiredness, but his body began to change. He dropped a lot of weight. His lips cracked and bled from lack of water. His skin had been coated with dirt. His face withered into a gaunt skeletal-like appearance. The day seemed to get unnaturally long,

as if the sun cheered him on and lingered in the sky that much longer. His wife continued to try to get him to come inside and stop digging, but he would repeatedly explode with anger, a miasma of hatred seemed to emanate from him. It made the hairs in the back of my neck stand on end, and this aura was only growing as the hole grew deeper. The air was growing worse, now stagnant, almost rotten. I couldn't be the only person to notice.

The feeling of dread seeped into my brain, like a constant pressure that never let up, unless I got away from that hole. The deeper the whole got, the worse everything seemed to get. It was beginning to frighten me, but what power does a hole in the ground have? All hell broke loose one day. Hank was outside digging his hole to nowhere, when he pulled himself up and out of the hole and went inside his house.

Not more than five minutes later, I could hear yelling and screaming, which grew louder as the screams moved outside and into my view. Hank had Timmy's wrist, almost dragging him. Timmy wailed and cried, pleading with his father. father to stop. Hank's wife, tailed behind, also screaming at him to stop, doing the best to get Hank to unhand the boy, but he would push her away, even going so far as the slapper across the face at one point. It just needs a little blood and sweat. Get in the damn hole. You need to be a good son and help you father. Hank screamed, his eyes swirling with anger and delusion. I call the

police. Digging the hole was one thing, but this had gone too far now. There would Never make it in time, though, as I watched the scene escalate. Hank had his son near the edge of the hole. His son screamed and fought, clawing at the ground with his free hand, trying desperately to escape. I ran to my back door, quickly unlocking it and tossing open the door before running down the small steps toward Hank and Timmy. I had to try to stop him, but as I ran over towards Hank, I saw Timmy as he was tossed clear into the hole. It was an echoing cry, followed by a loud thud. There was a moment of silence, and then a scream of pain emanated from the hole.

I was seeing red by now. This man had always been such a family man. How could he have turned into such a monster? Hank studied the edge of the hole, evidently proud of his work, a slight grin on his face. Betsy was crumbled helplessly on the ground, unsure of what to do. Her face red from being struck and the flowing tears. Hank didn't even see me coming as I crashed into him with a heavy tackle. The two of us fell to the floor, Hank hitting pretty hard with me landing softly on top of him,

but the fight wasn't knocked out of him. I tempted to hit him in the face, but he quickly moved his head. I can't say I'm much of a fighter. His eyes turned on me and there was something fierce in them, something animal. You, I told you not to win to fear. Here, Hank screamed at me before throwing me off of him with a force that seemed to defy human strength. I breathed hard as I landed on the ground. I didn't expect such power.

For a man who looked as skinny as a twig, he's sure as hell was strong. Timmy's cries had turned to haunting whales as I tried to bring myself to my feet, but the rotten air was making me sick. I felt weakness as if all my strength was being sat. There was an odd pressure from the hole that rattled my head. head. My head began to echo with pain as Timmy's whales continued to emanate from the hole. I closed my eyes for a second, trying to get the feeling to pass, but this was all the time Hank needed. I felt a sharp pain as Hank's foot connected within my ribs. My mouth open instinctively, allowing the poop to escape under the grass and dirt surrounding me. I tried to crawl away,

but I was so weak. I could barely think, but I could still feel. There was something coming out of that hole. I could feel the intangible slithering of a force as it crawled out of the hole and began to infest my brain. Torrents of pain shot through my head like a thousand pinballs bouncing around within. The pain was terrifying, so much so that Hank's next kick to my ribs felt like child's play. I bugged again, my vision blurring and beginning to blacken. The next thing I saw was two men in blue wrestling Hank to the ground. It's almost out, you idiot.

It's almost out. Just a little more, Hank screamed as the officers cuffed him. They didn't care an ounce for his continuing protests as they picked him up and dragged him to the car. The pain in my head began to subside, and I could once again hear the angous cries of Hank's son from deep within the hole. I pared down into it.

Even with the sun overhead, I could barely see the bottom. I could feel that horrifying pressure again in my head as I looked down. The pain returned, but to a lesser degree. It was manageable this time. Hang on, honey, we're going to get you out of there, Betsy yelled down through tears. It took almost two hours to get the kid out of the hole.

His back was broken, and they had to use ropes and a special stretcher to lift him out. I watched the boy's face as he emerged from the hole, his eyes wide with terror. I felt it from him, the same force that it affected him. me had also affected him, perhaps to an even greater degree. Everyone wondered how so deep a hole had been dug by a man lacking any sort of special equipment.

But there was little talk of the pervasive pressure in the air, or the feeling of malaise that accompanied being near the hole. The closest inkling that something was awry amongst the others was that the two EMTs who had entered the hole had a peculiar look in their face, as if they had felt something rotten. Maybe they had known something of it too. The hole sat abandoned for days after that. It had lost his greatest workman. There was no more digging, no more fighting.

But that strange pressure remained floating, imperceivably in the air around the hole. I didn't want to believe that there was something down there, but I could feel it in my brain, and it had affected him most deeply. Laying in a bed near crippled, his son probably feels it too. The whispers happen at night.

I call them whispers, but they were more like dizzy and chaotic noise. Strange gibberings that wouldn't allow me to drift off to sleep. They compel me towards the hole, beckoning me to go near it. But I pushed them aside, resisted. No good could come from it. Dig, dig, dig. The house next door was most important. vacant. Hank had been taken away for who knows how long. I'd hear the quiet footsteps of Betsy

as she returned home from the hospital night after night, and up in the early morning she would leave once again. The nights began to get long. The hole, still unworked, began to make noises. It started like scratching sounds, like sharp claws ripping against dirt. But soon these sounds became roars, caturril and earthy. They echoed out of the hole and into my ears. I looked out my window. Even in the pitch-black darkness of night, I could still see the hole, as if a spotlight shone upon it. My head hurt, terribly, as if the monster in the ground wanted to escape my brain. It called for me. Dig, dig, dig, dig. Churps, roars and howls, shouts, shouts, shouts, shouts, shook my head as if some sort of primal madness had been unleashed.

My bedchets laid damp from sweat. My nights of rest were now getting shorter and shorter, and my agitation only grew. I knew I shouldn't go near that hole, but it was like an addiction. One not made by me, but one that invaded my headspace I would not seem to leave.

I would watch the hole from the safety of my window. Shadowy tendrils seemed to reach out of the hole, grasping aimlessly at the air. I thought to filling the hole back in. I could grab a shovel and head over there. The dirt was all there still. All I would have to do is push it back into the hole and end the madness. But I feared what I would do instead if I did go over there.

I tried it anyway. This had gone too far. I found myself shaking violently as I went outside to my shed. I could already feel the pressure increasing in my head. The illusory tendrils seemed to stretch in my direction, trying to pull me over. But as I approached the hole, they dissipated. The dirt lay neatly in a pile to the side, and I thought it best, not a delay, as I scooped up a shovelful and made my way over to the hole.

But as it got closer, the pressure in my head increased, until it was doubled over, the shovel and dirt fell to the ground with a clatter. I held my head for a moment. My school vibrated as it felt like scratching from within my mouth. head, but I pull myself closer to the hole until I lay at the edge of the abyss. I show my light down there trying to get a look at what may lurk at the bottom. It took less than a second for my eyes to adjust and get a glimpse of what lay down there. That was all the time it took, for pure terror to set in.

As if skittering legs had crawled across my skin, I leapt back instinctively. I brought myself to my feet, my body filled with adrenaline. carried me back to my home and straight up to my bedroom, my heart nearly bursting from the strain and fear that overtook me. What lay down there was ancient, rotten to the core, a misline mess of parts and ideas that should have never combined. I don't know why it lay here of all places, but it weren't and quaked, stretched and roared at the bottom,

with only a small pile of dirt lying above it. It teetered on the edge of freedom, him. But one had to wonder how a thing of such power could be bound by such a small layer of dirt. Timmy finally came home. He was walking. I watched as Betsy guided him to the front door, as if he was some sort of zombie who had no idea where he was going. He looked like he had lost weight. His skin seemed to be ashen white. He retreated inside and for a time I didn't see him. He never came out, at least not to my knowledge until one day

there was a sudden knock at my door I opened the door almost hesitantly as if some part of me knew who it was and what they wanted Timmy stood on my doorstep his eyes wild his face singly age beyond his ears the two of us stood in silence

for what felt like too long before I snapped out of it and managed to say something you're back how are you feeling feeling. Timmy stared back at me with a blank expression on his face. You know what we have to do, he said. What do we have to do? I'm not sure what you mean. Are you feeling okay?

Maybe it's best you go back inside and get some rest, I said. I knew what he had meant, but I put on airs. I didn't want to acknowledge the whole or the thing within it anymore. I wanted things to go back to normal, so I thought. acting normal might be the solution. But it wasn't. We have to get it out of there. I understand now.

I heard it. It spoke to me so clearly while I was down in that hole. It made me better, stronger. He said, as his eyes began to dilate and go wide, as if they were crazy. We have to do it. I can still hear it now. My dad was right about that hole.

We are so close. If the two of us work together, we can do it. We can free it. "'Go back to your mom and get some rest,' I said as I began to close the door. But Timmy stuck his foot in the doorway before I could finish closing it. "'Please, please!' he nearly screamed at me. I could see tears beginning to well in his frantic eyes, but I was adamant, and so I pushed his foot out of the doorway

and made sure the door closed and locked. I walked away, ignoring the continued sobs and please coming from beyond the closed door. It was a disturbing encounter, one that someone might have done something about had their mind been clear. But when my mind was reeling with grotesque images and ancient noises, it was hard to even keep myself composed. Night came once again, and the sounds grew loud, extremely loud. I laid in my bed, holding my hands to my head, trying to shield myself from the horrific noise. I didn't want to hear those damn animistic noises. I didn't want to be a part of it anymore,

but somehow it drew me to my window, where I could once again see the hole. And Timmy. Timmy stood outside in his pajamas, barefoot, as if called from his slumber toward the hole. Tears rolled down his face, but there were not tears of sadness, for on his face laid an enormous smile.

It was a smile that you'd not see from a boy, even if he were given the greatest riches or the deepest successes that most strive for. The smile was so much as to no longer be a sign of happiness, but a pervasive sign of a demented mind twisted by the thing that lay within the hole. And it was only a moment later, the boy, with his dirty feet, flung himself head first into the depths of the hole,

until a second later it was a loud crack. And then, the noises stopped. The community was devastated beyond relief when they found out Timmy had broken his neck in the fall and died. But none were more devastated than Betsy, who wept loudly in a wild display of grief, screamed and then collapsed near the hall as the emergency workers once again retrieve the boy. This time his body completely lifeless, his head hanging unnaturally to one side. They'd blamed the hole and had put caution tape up around it this time before horribly leaving the sight. leaving the mother to her own devices without an ounce of care. I had to wonder why the men who came to pull the boy's body from the hole

did not bother to fill it in before leaving. But I think they'd felt it down there and wanted no part in dealing with a hole past the minimum. The hole sat quietly and still for days after that. I kept my eye on it, but there was not a rumbling or stir of earth. The unnatural sounds had dissipated and I was able to resume sleeping, undisturbed for the most part, but I was still awake in the night and find myself travelling to

my bedroom window to get a look at the hole in the distance. It had become an almost nightly ritual, one that it felt a strange attachment to, despite the terror and misfortune it had caused. I didn't know what happened to the thing, to the noises, but as I pull myself up out of bed one night to take a look at the hole, I was surprised to see someone standing out there. It was Hank. I have no idea how he'd gotten back here after he was dragged away, but he too, like his son, stood on the edge of the hole, peering down into the abyss. Hank, unlike his son, meticulously crawled into the hole,

scaling down the wall like an expert climber, until he was out of my sight. I could hear digging and scratching for a few minutes. It was louder than natural, but not something I was unaccustomed to. then the sounds once again Start I waited and waited to see if Hank would come out of the hole I expected to see him climb out Maybe even go back inside his house

It had never dawned on me at the time to call the police And report that Hank was here I was too mesmerized by what was going on And so as I watched The beating of my heart grew faster More rapid I could feel something coming And as a shadowy hand

it came out of the hole, I could see that my instinct was correct. My heart hammered hard as the sounds returned to my brain, screeching lines, roaring birds, an amalgamation of bestial noises that had moulded into one cacophony. It wasn't Hank coming out of the hole. It was something else. Whatever was down there, whatever had wanted to be set loose. It had finally found its freedom,

and as my eyes set upon it, The ravening screeching my brain grew louder. It lumbered out of the hole, wobbly, or perhaps moving in a way I could not comprehend. My eyes could barely recognise the figure. It was too alien, too strange, a primordial beast that was not meant to be seen by human eyes. I saw sharp claws and fearsome feathers,

oily snake-like skin, but with dirt-filled patches of fur. It had bone-like growths protruding, that seemed to shimmer in the night. Menacing feelers lashed out of its body, as if tasting the cool air he had longed for. The stench of the thing was absolutely vile, a mixture of all dirt and rot.

I felt sick to my stomach almost immediately, but I couldn't avert my eyes. My eyes were deadlocked on the creature, but my brain that screeched and screamed could only be thankful that the merciful night had seen it fit to cast shadows in the creature so that I could not see it. it to its fullest. Had I seen the thing during the day? I'm not sure what would have happened.

I felt a pressure in my chest, like my heart wanted to leap out, but the feeling dulled as it stumbled off toward the back door of the miller's home. The door flew off its hinges with a loud banging noise. Even inanimate objects seemed to move aside for this thing. It was quiet for a few moments. And then I could hear a scream, terrified to the core, a scream that still haunted. me. I heard another loud bang shortly after that. It came out the front door. I could feel it drawing closer to me, as if it might come inside my house too. Like a child, I ran to my bed and got in, pulling the blankets above my head and trying to know the footsteps, a breathing and all the animal-like noises that seeped into my home. I didn't sleep the rest of the night. There was no way I could.

The monster had eventually lumbered off somewhere, and, as morning dawned, I finally felt brave enough to trek outside. The pressure that emanated from the hole was now gone. The air had returned to its normal pure state, but the back and front doors of Betsy's house were both blown off the hinges and free for anyone to walk in. I stepped inside the home and immediately found myself passing through the dining room,

heading for the stairs. The family pictures that had once hung on the walls were now on the ground, cracked and broken. I stopped and crouched, picking up a picture of the floor. The frame was damaged, but through sharded glass, I could see Tim his smiling face in his baseball uniform. A real smile this time, not the demented one I had last seen from him. I shook my head and put the picture back down.

The kitchen and living room were also in complete shambles, as if a tornado had passed through. I made my way to the stairs. "'Betsie?' I called out as I put my foot in the first step, but I didn't receive any response. I climbed the rest of the steps and peered in all the rooms as I made my way down the hall under the last room lay before me, and I knew this was the one.

I took a deep breath and knocked on the door, but again there was no response, so I pushed the door open. There was Betsy Miller. She was sprawled out in the bed, tear-filled tissues dot to the floor around her. Her fearful eyes were locked on the ceiling. Her mouth hung open as a remnant of a scream. I could see blood pulling around her. There was a hole in a chest, and I swear I could see a heart that lay still and quiet.

In her hand, she clutched one of the pictures that was once downstairs. A picture of Hank and Timmy and Betsy, their smiles shone brightly. I closed the door quietly, shaking my head in disbelief. I headed for the backyard. The hole was still there, and I nervously made my way over to it. The pressure was gone. The air was clear, but still, the very sight of the hole made me nervous. As I peered down into the hole, I knew I was in for one more ghastly sight, as I saw the body of Hank.

He, too, had an enormous. hole in his chest, but his skin had been turned black, as if burned beyond recognition. His eyes were missing, or they'd been completely burned. Bit of his skeleton poked out of his burnt flesh. The earthworm seemed to wriggle around him, revelling in his death. I grabbed my shovel and began to fill in the hole, shovelful after shovelful it went, with tears and sweat clouding my eyes. It took me hours of labour to fill the thing in.

But as I finished, I felt a sense of relief, like I had righted a serious wrong. If only we had all done this sooner, was my only thought. I collapsed to the ground, trying to catch my breath. The tall grass seemed to almost envelop me by this point, and I could feel a lone worm crawl across my arm. I looked over at the flowers. They were completely dead by now, uncared for. The petals had been eaten. by the earth. And now, this house sat vacant, no family within. But the monster still lurks out there.

I can still feel it. I don't know how many of them are infected, so you need to listen closely. This is life or death. Mid-afternoon is when they come. They're boxy-white trucks trowing the neighbourhood streets, a familiar ice cream truck jingle piping out from the roof-mounted loudspeakers and beckoning the neighbourhood kids. If you hear the song, the one everyone knows, plug your ears until you get inside. Once inside, shut your blinds, press yourself small in the darkest corner of your house,

and wait until the storm passes. And whatever you do, don't let your children near the truck. I don't know how it started, or if it'll end. I don't think it will. But all that matters is that you've, follow the rules.

There's an incomplete list. I don't know everything, and I don't want to. But I know enough to make a survival guide that might spare others the ruin that's torn my family to shreds. So, if you want to stay alive, pay attention. One, plug your ears if you hear the jingle. Make sure your kids do too. If they can hear it, the truck will draw them like a magnet.

If that happens, it's already. too late. 2. If your child steps up to the truck, turn and run. They're as good as gone. There's no use trying to save them. It's a cowardly thing, but save yourself. 3. The previous rule holds more importance if you have other family. If you're gone too, they'll come looking and the truck will be waiting. 4. If by some miracle, you see the truck. with time enough to escape, don't look at the driver. Don't try to look at the driver.

If you see it, hurry inside and ignore the jingle. Five. Finally, if your child is taken but you manage to escape, be prepared. The thing that comes home later that night is not them. Ignore it. It'll go away. I learned this the hard way. I guess I sound crazy.

I wish I was. Wish it were also messed up fever dream that I could sweat out in a scalding shower and forget. I get it. My word carries no credence. Maybe if I tell you what happened, you'll actually listen. It was a Friday and it was the end of a perfect summer. The whole world seemed captured in amber. My daughter and wife were off doing a girl's day and my son and I were doing a boy's one.

The kids were both eight, twins, if you're wondering, and still in that phase where hanging out with Mom and Dad was fun. We were strolling back from the park when a familiar jingle peeled out through the neighbourhood. The ice cream man had found his way to our little slice of suburbia. My son, Kyle's blue eyes went wide, a little tug of blonde hair shifting over them as he looked up at me. He didn't even need to ask.

Sure, but, I said with a grin. He bounced with excitement. pounded off down the sidewalk as the boxy white Mr. Frosty's ice cream truck turned the corner and trundled up our quiet suburban tract. It crunched to a stop beside my son, maybe

25 feet from me. I watched as Kyle took his place beneath a little awning, his wide-eyes scanning the menu. I couldn't see the driver. The window was tinted, but there must have been someone inside because the serving window was scraped open.

I shouldn't have been able to hear it from where I was, but I could. The awful sound of abused metal screeching on rusty rollers. The inside of the truck was drenched in shadow, like the slant of afternoon sunlight didn't match that deep, inky darkness in battle. I should have sensed something was wrong. It felt off, about cold all of a sudden, like that truck has sent a chilly wind biting up the street. Up until then, I had been taking my time joining my boy,

leisurely motoring up the sidewalk without a care in the world. Then a chill nibbled through my bones. It triggered something visceral. An air raid siren went howling through my head. Every fibre of my being screaming at me that something was off. And for the first time in my life, I reacted without thought. I don't know why I did it, but I fell into a sprint. A full tilt, blind bottle rushed down the sidewalk.

My chest squeezed tight. My swollen, thundering heart fought with space in a rib cage that was too tiny and full of drying cement. The houses, the upper middle class family homes with white trim and manicured lawns, shifted into a colorful blur as I bombed up the sidewalk. My leg scissorsed beneath me, my arms pumped. My cold breath whipped crack through my shrinking lungs. I don't think Kyle heard me. I didn't yell, didn't scream for him to back away. My throat was full of gloomy breath, nothing more, nothing less.

There would be no sound coming from me, other than the shrill whistle of air soaring through my lungs. Kyle might have heard the slapthood on my sneakers hammering the sidewalk, but I don't think he heard that either. He sensed something was wrong, sensed it with their preternatural ability afforded only the children, the one that tells them when mom and dad are fighting, even when they can't hear it from across the house. He turned, his plund hair whipping in the wind. He looked at me with those piercing blue eyes,

blue like two little oceans cooling off a face of sunshine. And then, the ice cream man took him. The massive spider legs exploded out to the darkness and stuck my son through the window like shrink-wrapped through a vacuum cleaner. He snapped back like a round. ragdoll in the seething tangle of hairy, jointed feelers.

Now I did scream, wailed my son's name. He didn't have time to scream. I heard a whoosh of air from his lungs as the spider legs tore him back by the stomach. He blipped through the window. His head smacked the top of the frame and cracked forward. It lored like a dead thing on his neck as he disappeared into the truck. I ran harder. The world tilted and swayed underfoot.

Like I was barreling up the deck of a ship in stormy waters. My vision blurred, doubled, snapped together, and shot into focus as I lurched up to the ice cream truck. Then, I froze. My lungs snapped like rubber bands and a thin whistle of air escaped my nostrils. My whole body crawled. My heart was galloping through my ribcage like a mile wide herd of bison. The inside of the truck. It was impossible.

It was too big. It was... A dystopian nightmare. Like the truck was a portal to the killing floor of a massive slaughterhouse. The rotting husks of cattle shoots and bloodstained linoonium textured a sprawling plant like the fossils of a forgotten industry. But it wasn't forgotten. It was dark, soaked in shadow.

But I get to their pale, fragile shapes, limping along for slaughter. water. Faces slack, eyes glazed, like broken, violated dolls. The livestock was children. Hundreds of them caked in their own filth, shuffling along shoots, while hulking figures in blitzedain aprons, and USGI cold weather masks butchered them alive. There were no screams. That was the worst part. It was deadly silent. Just a weak shuffle of feet The wet tear of curved knives opening throats

The syrupy slap of blood Hitting the floor The dead were hoisted ankle up On the conveyor system Like I had a dry cleaners Which zip them off to the darkened portal Into the unknown A hot trail of blood

Still spraying from their seven necks I couldn't breathe I couldn't blink I found my stomach churning with nausea A heart rush of vomit threatening his way up Then something grabbed out at me. I jumped back and screamed as the pale little hand reached for his daddy. It was Kyle.

His head pitched at the wrong angle of his broken neck. His eyes were dead. But there was still a little piece of him buried somewhere in there because he said a single word and a voice I would never hear again. Run. Then he slammed closed the serving window. As it cracked shut, I saw the mass of spider legs encircling him from behind, like interlacing fingers. The hairy legs covered his mouth, his eyes, torn backwards and sent him into the slaughter line.

Then the truck was driving off, the ice cream jingle cackling cheerfully from its roof-mounted speaker. It growled up the street, turned and disappeared from view, carrying off my only son for good. I'll never forget the way my wife screamed when she came home when I told her what had happened among the mess of hellish police lights and detectives and cheap suits her face crumpled she dropped to her knees and howled for a son I hugged my daughter and cried into her blonde curls the first 24 hours are the most important in abduction cases but I knew that didn't matter knew what I'd seen

knew my boy was gone for good which, as it turned out, wasn't entirely the case, but I knew it just the same on the afternoon that Kyle stopped for ice cream. I didn't tell the detectives what I'd seen. How could I? They would have thought I was spinning tauntails to disabuse my guilty conscience of the fact that I had hurt my only boy, and they would have slammed me into an interrogation cell as the lead suspect.

So I lied, told them a Mr. Frost's ice cream truck had taken him, They put out a statewide APB. They found... Nothing. Me and my wife, Jessica, didn't sleep that night. Her face was puffy, eyes red with tears. Maya understood what was happening. Of course she did.

Despite being eight, she was smart as hell and quick to catch on. She also knew that Mom and Dad needed to be alone, so she put it off to bed without much fuss. I was numb, my whole body was cold It was a sick lie Giving my wife any hope I knew deep down, deep in the furthest pit to my stomach But our son

Was dead All those children were dead Blindly shuffled up to the murder shoot To those massive things in bloody aprons With their gourdrenched knives And the horrific USGI cold weather masks My wife had said something I looked up at her

What She blew snot into a tissue Crumpled it up Kyle's out there We should be looking for him Trying to find that truck She cut me An accusing glare

She blamed me I knew she did Which wasn't her fault The police said we I stopped mid-sentence My daughter's pale shape gowned in a Pijo onesie, clutching her pink blanket had appeared in the doorway. Honey? I rose and swept Meyer up. She looked at me, her eyes wide, wide with fear.

Of me? No, no, I knew at that instant what she was afraid of. He's home, Daddy, she said. Kyle's home. The thing at the back door wasn't her son. It looked like Kyle. He walked like him. It wasn't him. It was pale, drenched in mud, his eyes cold and dead, not the warm ocean puddles they had been before, but two icy marbles that could freeze with a look. My wife sobbed, wrapped Kyle in an embrace. He didn't hug back.

Those two cold eyes were pinned on me, and knowing smile breaking his face. Why'd you do it, dad? Daddy, he said as we led him to the living room. I could feel Myers' body tense up against me, knew something bad was about to happen. What? My wife asked our son. Why did you try to kill me?

Try to kill me, huh, Daddy? Why? I thought you loved me, Dad. I thought you... His head reared back impossibly far on his neck, and his mouth curbed into a dark o. He made a throaty gurgling sound. His eyes rolled back into the sockets, showing only the whites.

Jessica looked at me, eyes wide, then at Kyle. I don't think she realized she had started backing up. I don't think I did either. We were backed into the living room, Kyle bearing down on us, forcing us back. Maya had started to sob into my shirt. Her tears, warm and salty, were warming my chest. The O of Carl's mouth continued to expand. drawing further and further as he spoke again.

Only this time, his lips didn't move. And the voice, deeper, warped, like the words of a demon from the mouth of the possessed, came hissing out of his throat. Why, Dad? Why'd you do it? You like killing little kids, Dad. Wanna kill Maya? Want to see a pig tails wrapped in brain. Stop.

My voice was weak, thin. The thing chuckled. Carl's mouth continued pulling back. His lips were coated in bile. His teeth were brown and jagged. Jessica's head was on a swivel between our son and me. Her leg hit the couch. The gravity planted her ass on the cushion.

She made her surprised O sound. It was lost in the hoarse voice that had hijacked my son's mouth. Wanna bash her head in? Hammer it until it crumbles and all those little girl thoughts and feelings come spilling out. The corners of my son's mouth tore. River litter blood slidded down his throat. His mouth continued to pull back,

like his head was splitting up on a hinge. Make him stop, Dad, Maya moaned. I couldn't speak. My voice was lost. I fish for it, my Adam's apple bobbing. But it wouldn't come. Kyle's mouth split wider, wider, bone intendant snapping and cracking.

his lower face sobs in blood. Wanna be a butcher, Dad. The voice within my son chuckled. Hack through gristle and vein and the stretch of pink flesh connecting tiny heads to tiny bodies. Feel the warm rush of blood over your hands. Feel your knife's scrape bone as they drain. I saw his throat distend and undulate,

like there was a knot of fingers trying to claw their way out. When I watched the light bleed from their eyes, as a life bleed from their throat, One to Dad, one too. Then, Kyle's head tore back, his cheeks ripping, his mouth forced open in an awful, hellish grin, and the mass of hairy spider legs exploded from his throat. My wife started to scream, and one of the spider legs battered across her face. Her head snapped around, cracked, and she pitched forward with as much life in her bones as a sack of grain.

It galvanized me into motion. I tossed my daughter onto the couch and lurched for the rack of fireplace tools. The spider legs cracked and snapped, they're going around like a nest of tendrils for my son's broken mouth. Maya was shrieking. Her face crumpled in terror. The spider legs lunged for her, shot forward for a delicate little form. I tore the poker free from the fire rack and whipped around,

using my forward momentum to bring the instrument down with as much force as I could muster. I missed. Oh, God, how I missed. Maya had lunged, had lunged away from the spider thing trying to kill her. She had lunged right into the arc of my swing. The barbed end of the poker hit the center of her skull and went boring into a brain. I felt bones snap like glass. I felt the poker ease into spongy folds of her mind.

She felt like she was a puppet and I'd cut her strings. A little sob escaped as she planted face down with a sickening thud. Her hand made a tiny fist, and then she died. The Kyle thing began to roar with laughter. It turned on me, the spider legs flickering and pulsing, snapping in all directions like ten of those dealership tubemen. You like killing kids, Dad. You like...

Kyle lit at a surprise gasp. The spider legs snapped direct, like soldiers at attention, as the animation drained from my son's face. The end of the poker, which I'd wrench free from Myers' broken mind, was now jutting from my son's left eye. His ocean blue eyeballs had deflated. A thin run of pus ran down one cheek. When the tendrils sucked back into his mouth with a throaty gurgle,

and my son pitched forward as dead as the rest of my family, I stood there, misted in my children's blood. And started to cry. I can hear the sirens getting closer. I write this as a warning, I plead and cry for others to listen. I'm not looking for absolution. I'm broken, a man ruined by the ice cream truck that rode in on a hot summer day. I'm sure you'll see my name bolded in the paper,

conjoined with some variation of the term family annihilator, but it wasn't me. I bear blame. God how I do. But it wasn't all me. Please don't make the same mistakes I either. did, and if your kids ask for ice cream, just buy them a tub of the store-bought stuff. Some of many things I disliked about my summers growing up, mom and dad seemed to have direct connection to some reserve of wonderlust that motivated them to constantly be on the move

every free moment they got. Being an only child, with not much else in the way of family, I was dragged along on every trip. Every world-largest whatever, mule ride down the Grand Canyon and one flying crews that caught their eye. I'd have to go along. One of the many annoyances that came with these trips was a lack of self-intertainment. I mean, this was the mid-80s. Nintendo hadn't released the Game Boy yet,

and even if they had, there's no way Mom and Dad would have ever let me have one. They didn't even like television. Nothing new to be discovered on a screen that can't be explored in the real world, Dad would often say, mom nodding along with him. This almost never failed to produce an irritated sigh or eye roll from little me.

It wasn't until a cruise ship when I was 11, but they finally stopped pressuring me to tag along on every trip. At the time, I'd become pretty independent, even to the point where I'd be allowed to wonder a little on my own any time we'd port. Perhaps, in retrospect, allowing me to do so wasn't the wisest choice. I never paid attention to important details, even when my parents expressed how important it was to know these things. Almost never did I know where I was actually porting.

Couldn't remember the actual name of the cruise line we'd taken even. So, surprising to no one, I was eventually accidentally left behind at port. The first thing I did was, understandably, freak out when I saw the entire ship was gone. Tears streak in my suntan face. I was walking around and desperately looking for anything I recognised. It seemed like hours, though probably more like minutes, before my eyes eventually landed on a familiar uniform. It wasn't the same cruise line as the one we were currently taking,

but instead of one we'd taken in the past. She was suntaned as well, likely from a summer spent on deck, smiling nicely at often rude seafaring vacationers. She wore a cropped version of the uniform tea with high denim shorts I lightly tapped on her arm Oh hey there Bean Sprout, are you last? She greeted me with a warm grin on her face That instantly made me feel safe

That small comfort pushed me to tears again As I nodded and tried to explain through catch gasps That I'd been left behind Her name was Josie I'll never forget that This girl, this sweet and incredible girl. She could have rolled her eyes, she could have given attitude or pawn the problem off on someone else. Instead, she walked me around the port for an hour, getting in touch with the proper authorities.

They, on the other hand, did not have much help to offer, as they basically suggested that either I flight at the next port to meet with my parents, or one of the next ships going in the same direction would take us. Besides that, they radioed the cruise ship who eventually eventually. got mom and dad on. More than anything, they seemed a little irritated with both offered solutions, as either one would likely cut our vacation short. Still, without very much thought, they suggested I hop on whatever cruise ship would bring me next, and if we were lucky, we could still continue our grand adventure.

In retrospect, it was a stupid and horrible idea. But what's an 11-year-old kid to do? I blindly trusted my parents and all adults around me So even through many tears I went along with it Josie had already missed her own ship by this point So she joined me in the search for a ride to the next port It was actually her who spotted two employees from another cruise line

Standing near the docking route for the ship Josie ran up to greet them They were much more pale in comparison to some other crew staff I'd met by their point and their demeanour was strange to say the least unfriendly looking back they were tightly wound and formal

much like a soldier or maybe a cop their lightly coloured polos and shorts did little to distract from the distant look in their eyes even at 11 I still somehow caught that look at first they seemed apprehensive one of them claimed that their ship

wasn't currently passenger ready and they were participating in a The other interjected, No, no, we have some passengers, but we aren't officially running. Both of them had mid-western American accents and talked quietly among themselves before the second stepped off to the side to have a hushed conversation on his war key. After a minute the conversation ended and he returned with the news that we'd be allowed onto the ship. The second claimed that the ship's captain had spoken with mine and cleared it.

I had no clear reason at the moment to be apprehensive. Perhaps it was intuition, or maybe it was just my 11-year-old mind, becoming overwhelmed by the situation. But I temporarily shut down. Slammed my little butt on the ground and cried, Nope, I kept exclaiming. I don't care if they either turned the whole stupid boat around. The men seemed irritated with me, but not Josie.

Instead, she knelt down to comfort me and offered to stay with me the entire way. I agreed. We quickly rushed on board a cruise ship that, to me, looked just about the same as any other I'd seen. As we embarked, the men explained that there was a storm advisory in effect. Therefore, we'd have to stay in our cabin. Dinner will be delivered to a door before bed and we poured in the morning. Satisfying enough for both myself and Josie, we hung out for hours.

chatting, her about her life as a young adult, mine, a tag-along only child, careening towards puberty in a mere matter of years. It was easy to open up to Josie. After dinner, the two of us quickly became tired. I dozed off, and I can't imagine Josie was far behind. The sleepiness had hit so hard that it took a good amount of someone shaking me to actually wake me up. The room was dark and the sky outside did nothing to lessen the darkness. I felt drowsy and almost adated. Even having only known each other for a couple of hours,

I recognized Joseph's voice in the dark. Something's wrong. She was certainly right too. Something was wrong. Despite the darkness that prevented any light from coming through and the storm advisory we'd been warned of, the night was silent. The ship was surprisingly stagnant,

were that a single wave to crash against his sides. Josie asked me to grab her hand, and, after a moment of feeling around in the dark, I found it and did so. She led me over to the window and moved the curtain. The night was silent, and the ocean was somehow completely still. And once starry and clear night

was somehow black and yet cloudless. No moon stood in the sky, though somehow I could tell you without a shadow of doubt that it was empty. The sky was truly just empty. The ship didn't move an inch, not even swaying against the water. And then, an ear-piercing shriek shot through the night like a bolt of lightning. There, and then gone in an instant.

There still wasn't enough light for either of us to see each other. And yet, I felt a terrified gaze as she gripped my little hand harder. I squeezed back. An attempt at solidarity in a situation that was not solid. Scary and shifty as the waters should have been. Only a few minutes later did the second sound come. There was another screech, this time triturnal, with high and low octaves, which caused both of us to recall in pain.

I couldn't in a million years explain exactly why our bodies do things like this, but I suddenly felt myself moving for the door. Still holding Josie's hand, I rushed out into the dimly lit hallway. What are you doing? Slow down, she called to no avail. I hit the outer doors, and it was like being hit with a brand new level of gravity. Heavy, but only just noticeably more so than normal, that it'd be unnerving. It was the same darkness we'd seen from the window. It was present, in your face and foreboding, hiding almost all of the now muffled sounds of shrieks,

that was somehow louder inside. Now, you'd think by this point that Josie would be dragging me back into the cabin. There was something in that... presence, though, that instead also pulled her towards a now muffled sounds that rung on and off throughout the ship.

We were quickly standing in front of a door marked, personnel only, and quickly pushed past that warning. From thereon, we wandered through corridors that were dimly lit and yet somehow brighter than the light outside. Pipes run along each wall, which sound constantly reverberated off of,

twisting, turning, and eventually descending into a white corridor that ended in double doors with two vertical rectangular windows. Hang back for a sec, Josie whispered, letting go of my hand and cautiously approaching the window, doing the best not to be seen.

She led out a quick gasp before stifling it with her hand. I quietly crept over as well, the bottom of the window just barely low enough to reach on my tiptoes. The room inside was large, with bare metal walls lined with similar pipes to those in the corridor just outside. In a few of the corners, tons of different clothing sat in piles. I noticed that there were uniforms for a few different cruise lines here and there. There were several large metal drains on the floor, as well as another double door on the left side of the side. the room. But what dominated the entire space was what appeared to be a large cage that sat on the

far wall. A very, very large cage. It seemed hastily made in retrospect, possibly from several shipping containers and some spare steel, huge and looming nonetheless. Inside it looked dark, gravely dark like the atmosphere outside the ship. I felt my body began to sweat and tremble. Josie didn't move. Two men in protective medical gear and gas masks entered from the other door with an older man dressed in khaki shorts, blip-flops and a patterned button up top. He seemed to be in a very sedated state. The boy guy was barely able to stand on his own.

One of the gas mask men held the man steady, while the other stripped him of his clothing. They both let the men go after that and gave him a slight nudge toward the cage. He stumbled and eventually fell forward, maybe two or three feet from the makeshift bars. The man moved a bit and tried without much success to at least get up to his knees before he collapsed onto the floor again. The two gas-mast men took several steps back and saw some form of movement inside the cage. A small, pale hand gripped one of the bars.

Then another hand, and another, and another and another. Moore began to reach out and I started to notice that not all of them were normal. Some were severely deformed, severed, or disgustingly decayed. There were arms that were far too large to belong to a human being and other appendages that were certainly limbs, but not of anything known to man. The darkness within the container had some subsided,

and I could see now that an incredible mass of horrible flesh had pressed itself against the bars. The arms, now dozens and dozens in number, stretched unnaturally. gripped the man tight and lifted him into the air. He'd held him there for a second, until, even sedated, the man let out a scream that is forever imprinted in some of my worst nightmares. The arms pulled the man with such force into the cage,

more importantly, into itself that his body completely broke apart. Blood exploded out into the room for only a moment before the blob's dark gravity pulled it back in. It seemed then that the entire room started to vibrate as the gorse seeped into the blob. Afterward, it retreated into the darkness again and for a moment everything was still. With the horror in front of me,

I hadn't been watching the gas messmen, but in a few moments that passed when I produced a clipboard and was writing furiously, the other had his hands over his ears. He still looked at the cage. The bars now seeming way to the same, too wide for me, not secure enough, not safe. My 11-year-old brain began to process the situation,

and my body trembled harder. I wanted to grab Josie, I wanted to run. The sound that came from somewhere inside the cage that same tritonal, horrible screech from earlier, stopped me dead in my tracks. He was as if the thing was unleashing a thousand horrified death whales all at once, and being that close to it was not just painful, but nauseating and dizzying as well.

My vision began to tunnel out. It seemed that Josie was suffering from the same issue and her knees buckled. She tried to brace herself against the door, thinking it was latched, but it clearly didn't have one as it easily swung open into the death chamber of a room.

There was a second of stillness and shock as the door swung forward and eventually back. The gas mask went, stared at Josie and I, as she tried to desperately get back to her feet. She grabbed my wrist almost too tight as the men realized what had happened and began to give chase. My ears rang and my vision was completely back as we passed through corridor after corridor. She was surprisingly fast and I was grateful when the outer door eventually came into view.

The atmosphere outside was much less imposing than before. The water seemed more natural and there were even some visible stars in the sky. Those factors didn't change the sound of impeding footfalls. constantly behind us as we ran along the deck. Once we reached the dead end, I looked back and noticed the men had taken off their gas masks, revealing the faces of the same men that offered us a ride at the port. Josie looked around in desperation for a moment as they quickly approached before grabbing a wooden deck chair and thrown it overboard.

She then did the unthinkable. Still gripping my wrist, she dragged me to the edge and with one swift movement. She threw me over As I fell I saw her trying to climb over the edge And almost succeed Before being yanked back on board After that I hid the water hard

And it rocked my tiny body enough To knock me completely unconscious I still don't know how I survived I just know that I was found Three days after I'd gone missing from the port Yeah Missing The gas mask men and their captain

had never actually contacted our cruise ship. Mom and Dad had no idea that I'd even left port. They flew back to look for me after they'd arrived at the next stop and still hadn't heard from me. A family on a long leisure trip on this small boat had stumbled across me, unconscious, atop a broken deck chair. Strangely enough, multiple doctors insisted that I'd only been out in the water for 12 to 24 hours,

despite the days unaccounted for. Ultimately, I was properly catatonic the first few days afterwards, and the story I eventually told, the very story I've just shared with you, was said to be the imaginative work of a traumatized child. I suppose the very real trauma, trauma that gratefully discouraged my parents from ever even bringing out cruise trips again, was the ultimate reason that I forgot everything for years afterwards. Well, almost everything. The name Josie stayed with me my entire childhood. I was obsessed and didn't really know why. I named our family dog Josie. I named my dolls Josie,

when my parents eventually relented on their TV and video game hatred. If I could pick a character's name, Josie, always. As I got older, things came back here and there, but it wasn't until young adulthood that a strange coincidence brought it all back, hitting hard like ocean waves. My then fiancé and I were on a road trip,

a far superior mode of travel for vacation in my opinion, and we stopped in a little mom-and-pop grocery store along the west coast. The man who owned the shop, a kindly older gentleman, ran the cashier register while his wife stocked shelves. He began checking us out as he chit-chatted about my fiancée about our travels. I, however, paid little attention

as my eyes landed and locked and an older photo of a young girl that sat on the inner counter next to the register. She seemed so familiar in a way that made me feel suddenly seasick. The order man noticed immediately and grabbed the photo.

Ah yeah, that's our daughter. It wasn't a big case, but we tried her hardest to get her found. I keep this here, so she's always with us. His voice didn't waver. It was clear he talked about it a lot over the years of friendly conversation with customers. She loved the ocean so much and worked for that damn cruise line every single summer. By then, the wife had wandered from her work and joined in on the conversation,

first scolding her husband for cursing in front of customers, and then talking a little more about the daughter, how she left for the summer and had never come back, has she been likely lost at sea somehow? It was all starting to come back to me. when my fiancé said, Oh, she sounds like she was amazing. What was her name?

I think this is when the old couple got a little emotional. The woman turned a gaze away for a moment before the man rested his hand on a shoulder in an effort to comfort her. Her name was Josephine. But she always went by Josie.