Creepy - Day 22 - Call of the Void & Red Lanterns

Episode Date: October 22, 2026

Call of the Void (starts at 1:28)***Written by: Deirdre Coles and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***Content warnings: psychological abuse, disordered eating, body shaming***Red Lanterns (starts at 23:59)***Written by: Phil Castle and Narrated by: Joe Stofko***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm John Grills from Creepy, and I listen to the Be Afraid Podcast Network. Creepy presents the 31 Days of Horror, Day 22. Now. This is Creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastures and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

All right, all right, all right. I'm sure that last one wasn't really an instruction manual, so... Hey, stop carving those symbols into the high tops. Now calm down and welcome Danielle up to the stage. I guess before we start, I should preface this with This story is definitely not meant to be instructional either. It's call of the void. All he wanted was for me to look perfect.

I'd never had a boyfriend buy me a Halloween costume before. Technically, I'd never had an actual boyfriend before. But what I understood from social media was that boyfriends always forgot holidays and special occasions. they never planned ahead. And here was David, ordering me a Halloween costume so early before even Labor Day. He had me try it on right away. David's mom was working from home downstairs so I couldn't change in his bedroom. Both his parents and mine were super weird about how we had to keep our bedroom doors open at all times when we were together.

So I ducked into the cramped upstairs bathroom at his house. The package was dark red with a slinky black silhouette on it. The disappearing was written in a fancy Gothic script. The silky material slid through my fingers like cool water. It took me a whole minute to figure out that I'd have to put my whole body in through that neck hole. I started to slide my right leg in, and then hesitated, strangely reluctant to keep going. It was a little like being swallowed by a giant snake. I was sure the thin material would tear, so I was ever so careful as I slipped it on.

but it slid on easily as if eager to swallow me. With the hood on over my head, I could still see perfectly. But when I looked in the mirror over the sink, it was total opaque from the outside. A void where my head should be. There were no full-length mirrors in this tiny bathroom, so I walked out into the hallway and into David's room, where he was waiting for me. He frowned a little. I figured he knew what my body looked like.

Yesterday we'd been hanging out at the lake with some of his friends and I wore a bikini. But now, he sounded unhappy. He said he hadn't realized how much my swimsuit was holding in my stomach. I'd have to work on that. It's just that you dress kind of flashy, he said. Always throwing your hair around in those cheap dangly necklaces and earrings. It's cool to see you like this. The way you really are.

The way I really am. I thought. A shadow. A disappearing. But when I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw that he had a point. My stomach did spill out in a gentle curve, and my thighs billowed into each other. I felt terribly exposed. I told him I was too hot, although I wasn't. The fabric was still cool against my skin despite the hot day. I went back into the bathroom and changed back. I tugged at the hem of my shorts, wishing I had worn long pants today. My legs had taken a beating this summer, as they did every summer, with mosquito bites and scrapes from walking through the woods and wading in the lake. I ran my fingers through my hair to fluff it up. I hooked my earrings back in,

cheap and dangly, just like he said. I didn't feel like I was changing out of costume, just changing into costume number two. David told me it was okay. Everybody gets carried away with ice cream and margaritas in the summertime. I had plenty of time to fix it. I should take the costume with me so I can try it on every once in a while, he said, to keep track of my progress. By the time I got home, he'd sent me links to three Pilates videos. School started and everything sped up.

Ball crashed on to us all like a crusting wave. The trees exploding into burning color. I kept meticulous handwritten notes from my own. my classes, with one notebook for each, plus one more notebook to record my calorie intake and workouts. The peppery breeze of dry leaves and campfire smoke, mingled with the taste of cayenne pepper and lemon juice cleanse I did to start the year. My newly disciplined study habits knit together with my newly disciplined diet, like the teeth of a zipper. My parents made approving noises about how I was really getting my act together, and told my brother Jack to be more like me.

I started numbering my notebook pages and keeping a running index of the topics we covered. I kept a yoga mat unrolled on the floor of my room so I could do a quick workout a few times a day, in between homework assignments. When we went to bonfire parties for the first couple of weekends, David always got me a cocktail made with a diet energy drink and vodka. Negative calories. And if you haven't eaten anything since breakfast, one or two drinks was enough. David wanted me to try the costume on again a couple weeks later.

We were at my house this time. I felt the same hesitation when I started to put it on, like I was standing at the edge of a black underground lake, toes brushing against the surface of the inky water. I had to inch my way in, like I did when I was getting in the pool in the early summer, before the water had really warmed up. The knock at my door startled me.

I yanked the hood on fast and opened the door for David. He folded his arms inside and said, well, I guess it takes time. I asked him what he was going to be for Halloween. He started to answer and then burst out laughing. He said, sorry, I can't have a conversation with you like this. I was weirdly embarrassed, although this was all his idea. I shoved him into the hallway so I could scramble back into my clothes.

At dinner that night, I noticed my mom's eyes tracing the new hollows in my collarbone while I was pushing food around my plate. She was happy enough to put a big bowl of salad I requested on the table each night. My dad and my brother Jack piled on garlicky croutons and gluey salad dressing while I took careful bites of leafy greens, chewing each bite 40 times. While I looked in the mirror after dinner, I ran my fingers over my collarbone. In fashion, they call it the beauty bone. I loved seeing that slender bow shape at the base of my neck.

But I decided to throw on a hoodie over my pajamas before I went downstairs, for breakfast the next morning. No point having my mom get worked up about it and freak out like she did when she thought Jack was doing drugs. Just because there was some dumb rumor sweeping through our PTA group text. The hoodie was comforting anyway, because for some reason, I felt cold, even in my pajamas. But it only took a few days of hoodie wearing for her to get suspicious about that, too. On Wednesday night, she requested, slash demanded, a hug from me, saying I would,

was so busy she had barely seen me lately. I half-heartedly batted her away. She suddenly became really insistent, and it was starting to get weird, so I gave in. She wound her arms around my waist and squeezed. When she let go, her face was obviously relieved. I was back upstairs in my room before I realized she had maybe suspected I might be pregnant. A thought skittered through my mind. maybe if she had hugged me without the hoodie on, maybe if she had felt my ribs like a bird cage straining outward against my skin, she would have been worried for an entirely different reason. No reason to worry.

I was doing better than ever. My parents couldn't fault me for my grades for once. Almost every night I sat at my desk, with my head bowed over my textbooks, like a penit of prayer. But something a little weird happened at school one day when I was heading to language arts class. I put my left foot on the step and found I couldn't go any farther. I grabbed the railing with my hand and pulled upward, but it was like my leg couldn't or wouldn't take my weight.

People were pushing past me until a girl I barely knew said it looked like I was going to pass out. She looped an arm through mine and walked me to the nurse's office. Nurse Roberts told me to sit down and gave me a juice box. I sipped it obediently, but I sat there furiously calculating how to work off the extra calories. I certainly wasn't going to throw up. That was cheating. The whole thing was horribly embarrassing, and then I had to walk into language arts class half an hour late and hand over a pass. It was about that time. I started to haunt myself. Laying in bed at night, I would see a slim, blacker-than-black shape leaning against the wall, watching me. When I went to hang up my keys,

a dark figure whisked past in the background of the hallway mirror. I would jerk awake at night, heart pounding, and see a shadow by my desk, crouching down on narrow thighs. About a week before Halloween, my parents and Jack went out for a lacrosse team family night, and David came over. I wasn't really sure if I wanted him to. Studying to distract myself from eating had turned into studying to distract myself from everything.

The soothing, predictable rhythms as I worked my work, way through a checklist. David came up to my room and started to reach for me, but then he asked to see me in costume one last time before the day itself. He finally approved. I felt like I could relax for the first time in weeks. He slid his hands around my waist, then let go. He was skimming his fingertips over my ribs, over my back, so lightly that I wasn't sure if he was even touching me at all half the time. My skin hummed like my blood was carbonated. I thought of my mom's friend telling us about Reiki, an ancient form of energy healing. She said that when her practitioner's hands hovered over her bad back, she felt warmth flow into her knotted muscles without actual contact. But the best part

was the way he was looking at me. So reverent, so rapt. Although of course he really couldn't see me at all. My art teacher last year was always telling us we needed to tap into the negative space in our drawings. She held up Laura Clark's still life and pointed out how the space between the candle and pear was shaped like a dove. That's what I felt like. A candle flame of negative space. When I came downstairs on Halloween night, my mom jumped and put her hand to her heart. She had her phone out because she said she wanted pictures of me and David before we went out for the night. But as I went to answer the door, she put her phone down carefully. For some reason, her hand was shaking a little bit.

My mom asked if I could actually see where I was going. When I said I could see just fine, she said cars wouldn't be able to see me. No one would. David said, don't worry. I'll look after her. But my mom looked at him dubiously, face troubled. I was giving David a dubious look, too. He hadn't told me what his costume would be, but I expected something epic, something to complete mine.

But he looked like he was wearing a few generic vampire trappings. Black jeans and a cape, drugstore plastic fangs with a little fake blood trickled from his mouth. Something that probably required about five minutes' worth of execution and no thought at all. My mom scooped up some candy from the bowl by the door and tried to press it on us. There had been all of three trick-or-treaters this year. and there was way too much left over candy, she said. I took a chocolate bar just to get her off my back, and we headed for the car. As I strap myself in, David shot a disgusted look at the candy bar and disgusted look at me.

You're not actually going to eat that, are you? He asked as we started driving. I turned my head to stare at him. In the old story, Figmalian carved his perfect girl out of alabaster. When she came to life, did she remember the pain of the... chisel digging out every detail? Did she miss the flakes and shavings that could have been part of her, falling to the studio floor? David had somehow convinced me to carve myself into exactly the size and shape he wanted, and I had gone along with it, thrilling at my newfound powers of self-control,

not really thinking about how it was David's control all along. I found myself glaring at him, but of course he couldn't see my expression. I was crue. crushing the candy bar in my hand, milk chocolate and almonds, that scent so sweet and familiar, twanging the strings of the limbic dinosaur part of my brain with memories of childhood Halloweens. And along with the rising swell of rage,

I felt another sensation that I had been suppressing for weeks now. Something that I thought had melted away, but had actually been building up all this time, like storm surge behind a dam, hunger. I peeled the hood, up and crammed the candy into my mouth. That was the only way to eat it, in gigantic bites that filled your whole mouth, hitting every taste but at once. I felt tears pricking my eyes at how astonishingly good it felt. I was already thinking about how good the next one would taste.

David scowled and shook his head. He said we didn't have to go anywhere at all if I was going to be such a bitch. But we were already almost at the party. There were so many other cars on the street we had to park a couple blocks away. As soon as we got out of the car, we were swept up in the current of people. Laura Clark, dressed as a sexy witch, walked right into me. She shrieked, and then said, I can't even tell who you are. Don't tell me. I'll guess. She looped an arm through mine because she said she wanted to keep me safe from all the idiots running around out here. And then I was swept into the noise and clamor of the party. I caught one last glimpse of Laura, rubbing her arm and staring after me, looking troubled.

Somebody handed me a drink. I didn't want to take my hood off, so I opened my jaws wide and punched a hole through the fabric over my mouth with the straw. I sipped the drink, candy sweet. It hit me so hard I wobbled on my feet, but I didn't fall because it was so crowded. People looked startled when they saw me, some of them replicating my mom's gesture of a hand to the heart.

But then they hooted and demanded selfies. So many selfies. Nobody seemed to actually want to touch me, though. It was kind of funny. They would start to drape an arm around my shoulders and then flinch back, like they were touching a hot stove. I smiled to myself. I thought of planets orbiting a black hole,

or maybe the call of the void, which everybody experiences, but most people don't talk about. that fleeting, intrusive thought that makes you imagine jumping off a cliff. It's a simulation loop that a psychologist would say is the equivalent of your brain snapping its fingers in your face. But a philosopher would say it's a dizzying realization of the scope of your own free will. It's knowing that you can do absolutely anything.

Somebody gave me another drink, and then the crowd moved under the deck, where people were dancing under orange and purple fairy lights. It was all a dizzying whirl. of feathers and fur and velvet and lace, glitter and sweat on fevered faces. I didn't look for David at all. The party toppled downhill in the same predictable rhythm as all the other ones. It got bigger and louder and drunker and more full of screaming. Then more full of people I have never seen before in my life.

And then the police were there, and everyone was screaming even louder and fleeing. poor Jonah Bishop in his glow in the dark stickman costume. Didn't get very far before a policeman grabbed his arm and was shouting something at him. I didn't get very far either. Although, as it turned out, I didn't have to. I tried to head for the backyard, but there was a bottleneck. So I just crouched down and curled up small among the tall bushes at the side of the house. Flashlight beams passed over me at least three times without the police noticing a thing.

And then David was there, crouched down next to me, whispering that we could get out of here if we left right now. I followed along. I was actually pretty drunk by then. That candy, sweet drink had been followed by two or three others, or maybe four. So his grip on my arm helped keep me more or less upright, walking more or less straight. Sure enough, while there were a few police cars with flashing lights on the street, they had come from the west side. We were parked in the other direction. David backed out without turning on his lights. I hope there was nobody out in an all-black attire like me running from the party. Once we got a few blocks away, David turned on his headlights. At the same time, he started shouting at me, real full-throated yelling. I was disgusting. He was so

embarrassed that he brought me. I made a spectacle of myself. What was wrong with me? He should have known better than to give me a chance. While he was bellowing, he was driving faster and faster. I understood that it was meant to intimidate me. He knew that ever since I'd started driving myself, I was a nervous driver and a nervous passenger. A dozen times he had laughed and told me to relax when I tensed up at him driving too fast. But right now, I wasn't scared at all. The party had hit a pause button on my hunger. But now I was daydreaming about food. about how nice it would be to stop somewhere like a greasy diner for a grilled cheese and fries, or dairy queen for a soft-serve ice cream, or even a gas station for a gigantic bag of chips.

Of course, I knew David wouldn't stop anywhere like that, as worked up as he was. So I started to think about what I could scrounge at home, like a big bowl of Jack's sugary cereal and maybe some of his Halloween candy. David floored it and flew through a light that had been read for a solid ten seconds. I yawned. I could feel the fabric of the hood stretching over my mouth, then ripping around the straw's puncture hole with an audible tearing sound. That sent him from white-hot to ballistic. He was roaring now,

and looking at me rather than the road and speeding even faster. So it wasn't really a surprise when he missed the bend in the road, smash the car into and then through the railings, then down, over a slope of jagged rocks. What I did then, of course, was impossible. I drew myself back, inwards and down, deep into the void that I had become. I still existed in that car, but in a form as tiny and dense and unbreakable as a black diamond. When the car finally stopped, I flowered outward again. There was no room for my legs in front of me.

They would have been crushed if I had still been there, just like David's were. His whole body was crumpled and broken next to me in the driver's seat. But still alive, staring at me with burning hatred. He croaked out something about how I had ruined his life. He said he was going to tell them that I caused the accident by grabbing the wheel and steering us off the road. He sounded so indignant. He might even have believed that. himself. I didn't want to try and go and get help. I'd have to deal with the police,

would probably breathalize me, and they'd call my parents and his parents and the hospital. And I'd have David, haunting the rest of my high school years as my implacable enemy, blaming me for everything, winning everybody's sympathy, because he was, in fact, the very much injured party. I didn't just up and leave either. He was pretty badly hurt, but he was probably too full of spite to bleed to death in my absence. So I ate him. It was just as impossible as what I had done at the moment of the crash. It happened because I needed it to happen.

I made the void inside me so big that it swallowed him whole. I climbed out of the car. Nobody had seen me leave with him after all. They'd find a totaled car, some blood, and think that some drunk kid fled a Halloween party and crashed, and then fled the scene of the accident. Probably his parents would look for him. Maybe the police.

I might have to deal with some questions, but if things get too hot, I had a way to handle it now. I started to walk home. I wasn't nearly as hungry anymore, but Jack's Halloween candy wasn't going to eat itself, I thought, and I giggled. I'd been warned a thousand times not to walk alone at night,

but I wasn't scared. And of course, I wasn't really alone. I patted my belly. Me. And my shadow. Okay. Now a special treat.

A local favorite, we are so happy to get up on the stage. Get on your feet for Joe Stopped. Joe? Okay, sit down. It's already past my bedtime. Really great. This one is called Red Lanterns. It's been

more than 50 years since that Halloween. But I still wake up in the lonely hours of the night and ponder the same question, one that fills me with a dread that sinks like a rock to the pit of my stomach and sits there until morning. I realize this is our first session, but you're a doctor. Maybe you know the answer. Where does imagination end and the reality of a universe too vast and strange to comprehend begin?

I have no idea where that boundary lies, but I can tell you what marks it. Lanterns. Red lanterns. I know, because I've seen them with my own eyes. I've seen what their awful light reveals. There, I confessed. That's what these sessions are all about, right? Talking about my relationships, expressing my feelings,

wondering as you sit there with that inscrutable look on your face if you think I'm crazy. I don't think I'm crazy. Of course, does anyone who's crazy think they're crazy? I know I'm tired. tired, tired of worrying, tired of losing sleep, a man my age can no longer afford to lose. If it takes therapy to finally gain some peace, I'll gladly fork over the 250 bucks an hour

you're charging me. I suppose you want to know how it started, the origin of my problem. I'll tell you the story. That's my gift, telling stories. Conjuring horror stories, in fact. Have you read any of them? I'm no bestseller, but I've scratched out a living. What's that Beatles song? Paperback writer?

Yeah, that's me. My own horror story started on October 31, 1971, in the tiny farm town where I grew up in eastern Colorado. To fully appreciate it, you'll need to know a little more about me and my friends at the time. You'll also need a brief history lesson about the tragedy that occurred near my hometown a century before. The tragedy that became a legend

The legend that, for me, became a nightmare. I was in sixth grade in 1971 and the quintessential nerd. You know, the kid who played chess, not football, who watched Star Trek, not sunny and chair. I even wore black plastic glasses with thick lenses. Yeah, you're right. When my glasses broke, I fixed them with tape. I was hooked on the creature features.

I stayed up late on Saturday nights to watch on Channel 2 out of Denver. Boris Karloff is Frankenstein's monster. Bella Lagosi as Dracula. Lon Cheney is the werewolf. My other heroes, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Shirley Jackson, introduced me to sensations I'd never experienced before. I was terrified and captivated at the same time. Too scared to turn the page, too curious not to.

I worked my whole life to evoke that sensation in my horror stories. I'm disappointed to admit I never did. I looked back and wonder if my fascination with horror was a seed that sprouted in my mind and grew into something that made me more receptive to the impossible, more susceptible to the repercussions. You're the authority on what goes on inside the mind. What do you think? My best friends in sixth grade, Ken and Billy, were the same sort of misfits who shared similar interests. Ever read any of those three investigator books about the boys who solved mysteries?

No? Well, we did. My friends and I believed we could be just like them. I assumed the mantle of Jupiter Jones, the stocky. first investigator and mastermind. We formed the secret investigators club, and gathered on Saturday afternoons to, well, investigate. As it turned out, there weren't any distressed clients to help or pressing mysteries to solve. So Ken, Billy, and me rode our stingray bikes along country roads

to poke around abandoned farmhouses. We were damned lucky, nothing happened to us, that we didn't fall through rotten floorboards into dug-out basements or get bit by rattlesnakes. Our investigating amounted to speculating about who had lived in those old houses based on what they'd left behind, as if we might discover a bloody butcher's.

knife left in the back of a closet if we searched hard enough, we wondered what those people were like. Did anyone die there? Was anyone murdered? Of course, the big question arose. Was the house haunted? I don't know if we ever saw anything supernatural or just convinced ourselves we did. But I can tell you stories about bizarre shadows cast on crumbling walls and pale faces grinning behind broken windows. Hell, I made a living at it. Given our enthusiasm, it's little wonder we sought higher mountains to climb. In the little town where I grew up, the Mount Everest of haunted places towered nearby. the site of the Kiowa Creek train wreck.

Now for that history lesson I mentioned, on May 21, 1878, a violent rainstorm filled the creek with floodwaters that washed away the bridge at Kiowa Crossing. Late that night, a Kansas Pacific Railway freight train plunged into the creek, the crew unaware the bridge, was out until it was too late.

The rest of the train was recovered, but the locomotive and three crewmen inside were never found. Swirling water and sand swallowed that locomotive hole, then pulled it into a grave too deep to locate. For a century afterward, locals claimed they could hear the mournful wail of a steam whistle. At night, red lights from railroad lanterns signaling danger appeared along the creek bottom. Halloween presented the perfect opportunity for the Secret Investigators Club to visit Kiowa Creek at night. To hear, if we could, the whistle. To see if we dared, the red lights. Two hours we were expected to spend begging of.

for candy at every doorstep in town afforded ample time to ride our bikes to the creek, explore the wreck site, and ride home before our parents suspected anything. If they wondered why we didn't return with pillowcases full of candy bars and popcorn balls, we could offer what for us was a plausible excuse. Bullies stole them. Ken, Billy, and me met at the American Legion Hall. We stashed our costumes, masks, and pillowcases behind the building and peddled toward the creek. At the Legion Hall, I was confident in our mission and assured of my bravery in the face of whatever we encountered.

As the creek neared, I grew hesitant as cowardly. supplanted courage. A few stubborn cottonwoods that grew along the creek held onto gold and brown leaves, but most of the trees were bare, and their branches reached out like gnarled fingers to grab us. That's when I realized the truth. I was a chicken. My forehead and the back of my neck were wet with sweat, despite the frigid autumn air. My legs were too rubbery to pedal farther. I clenched my teeth to keep the M&M's I'd binge that afternoon from escaping in a technicolor burst of vomit.

We ditched our bikes, crunched through the dry leaves that carpeted the ground between the cotton woods, and slid down the creek bank. I inched onto the dry body, half expecting to blunder into quick sand and join the crewmen entombed in the locomotive. A full Halloween moon burned orange behind the cottonwoods and cast a peculiar light. Deer tracks pocked the sand where a herd of white tails had passed. Tumbleweeds gathered around the rusted remains of a washing machine that had been discarded in the

creek instead of the dump. My vision blurred for a moment. When it cleared, something large and black materialized. Moonlight glinted off what looked like metal. I sucked in a mouthful of air, then forgot to breathe. It was a locomotive. Smoke belched from the flared stack, and light flickered in the large headlamp in front of the boiler. Steam hissed from the cylinders near the wheels. The most fearsome lamentation I'd ever heard reverberated inside my skull. That awful train whistle blew loud and shrill, heralting destruction and death. Three men climbed down from the cab of the locomotive and shambled toward us.

They wore dark denim trousers, loose muslin shirts, and wool vest. Derbies topped their heads and square-toed boots covered their feet. Lanterns swung from their hands, red lanterns. Ken and Billy bolted for the trees, screaming at me the whole way to run for my life, but my sneakers remained hopelessly stuck in the sand. My legs were no more responsive, paralyzed by terror, and an irresistible force that enveloped me. As the men neared, they lifted the lanterns to their heads as if to see better.

I sensed there was a different reason to show me their faces. I wished to God they hadn't. Ragged gashes cut across their foreheads and severed their noses. Hunks of flesh sloughed off their cheeks, white bones glistening beneath. Their eyes were the worst, lifeless and vacant. I knew if you gazed long enough down those deep, dark wells, you'd see eternity. It was an abyss of nothingness. I don't remember anything else other than I somehow got home.

I can only guess my friends escorted me there. I suspect I was in shock, but my parents assumed I suffered from a bad case of the Halloween Willys and sent me to bed. The next morning, Mom asked what happened to my costume and one of her best pillowcases. I wouldn't tell her. Dad had to retrieve my bike from the creek. He was pissed because I wouldn't explain why it was there

or why I refused to get it myself. My friends and I soon disbanded our club and never talked about what happened that night, not to each other. As far as I know, not to anyone until now. I didn't realize it as a young boy, but came to understand as an old man. I went to Kiowa Creek that Halloween night

to see what my 12-year-old mind believed ghosts looked like. I expected some scarier and less friendly version of Casper. What I saw instead was what unimaginable suffering and fear looked like. What the crewmen who died that horrible death insisted on showing me, what they are still showing me 50 years later. The rage they're dead. The resentment I'm alive. I tried to write my way out of my predicament,

to relocate the ghosts in my mind to the printed page. But I could never evict them all, and I never wrote about the crewmen or their lanterns. I couldn't stomach the prospect. Like I said, you're the first to hear the story. Now I'm trying therapy. Desperate times and desperate measures, huh? I swear, Doctor, I can sense their hunger, their ravenous hunger for me to join them.

I don't know how much longer I can hold them off. Whenever I turn around suddenly, or glance out the corners of my eyes, or even squeeze my eyes as tight as I can in the middle of the night, I see them. I'm terrified. Whatever barrier separates us, has grown thin that the veil of death will lift, and they'll pull me through. So tell me, doctor, what's your diagnosis? Am I imagining things?

Am I crazy? Or am I stuck at the entrance to some shadowy land that exists, yet can't be detected or quantified by science? Go ahead. Take your time. I'm listening. Just don't look behind you. Not right now. You might see them, too.

Lanterns, red lanterns. At least I know I'm not crazy. But you're a young man with your whole life ahead of you. You don't deserve my fate. Beware the lanterns. Those damned red lanterns. Joe, what are you doing here? I live here. What are you doing here?

You live here? Actually, that makes sense. Where's John? I don't know. I haven't seen him tonight. Well, next time you see him, let him know I want to talk to him about something. Sure, Joe. Is it important? I don't know. Just something that's been bugging me. Probably nothing. probably.

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