Creepy - She Will Come To Brood

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Written by: Timothy G. Huguenin and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***Bonus Episode: "The Fog" written by Joseph K.***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. She will come to brood, written by Timothy G. Hugnan, and narrated by Daniel Hewitt. Who would believe the things I've seen? Even if I had friends on whom I could unload my heavy thoughts. My estrangement from normal society is the reason for the confessional and emotional tone in my reports. Stop chiding me for that. Or fire me already.

I know the department won't permit a personal diary, for fear of its discovery. Yet, who wouldn't assume it was fiction? I ask this seriously. So my case reports will have to do for both our needs at once. Edit out what commentary you find superfluous or subjective, if it means that much to you. There is no hotel in Augustus Valley. Marie, an older widow who lives in a... a humble trailer on Broad Street, took kindly to me on my first assignment here.

Now Marie keeps a cot ready for me in her sewing room. In fact, I'm in my room as I type this. She now refers to it as my bedroom, rather than her sewing room. And I can hear her snores through the decrepit mobile homes paper-thin walls. I have become very fond of the cute old woman. I feel a little guilty that she still believes that I'm a staff writer for the Golden Seas. seal. She's even subscribed to the quarterly magazine and places issues prominently next to her rocking chair in the living room. She must not read them, since she hasn't yet asked why my byline never appears. Of course, I still keep my badge locked in my car's glove box and hide my snub-nosed revolver the best I can, though women's fashion isn't well suited to conceal carry. These folks can

spot law enforcement, like they can pick out a dough and thick cover at 100 yards. Sometimes I feel like they can smell the department on me, even though they don't know it exists. The closest thing to a coffee shop in this town is the Exxon's convenience store. A few tables crowd the corner with an everlasting pot of burnt coffee and a noisy cappuccino machine. Just two years ago, they installed a wireless router, and it's the only spot in town with free Wi-Fi. Three days ago, needing a break from Marie's well-intentioned nosiness, I was at one of those tables to work over some details from another current investigation. After some time, I stood to rest my nearly crossing eyes and refill my coffee. Setting my styrofoam cup in a quarter next to the

register, I looked around for the cashier. Hello, Brittany, I said. Getting a refill here. I was alone. The cashier stood outside. Her four-year-old Nevea's tiny hand swallowed in one of hers. Her other hand hung loosely at her side. Smoke curled up from a cigarette between two fingers. A few high school kids also stood around. All staring up at what I first assumed was just a flock of birds flying low in the cloudy October sky.

But posters blocked a clear view out the windows. And I knew this had to be something stranger than a bunch of crows to go. command such attention. I joined the group outside. The temperature had dropped at least 15 degrees while I was inside. I zipped up my jacket all the way and blew on my hands. Brittany stretched her free hand up and out, pointing the smoke end of her cigarette toward the spectacle. It was indeed a flock of birds, but not all of the same kind. However, what had aroused their curiosity, and mine, now too, was not the diversity of species,

but what they carried. Bundles of sticks, thistles, vine lengths, and various pieces of trash. A few turkey vultures dangled long pine bows from their talons. A pair of blue herons worked together to suspend an American flag.

I can only assume, as unlikely as it sounds, that they ripped to them. it from a pole. For the short, starry end hung in strips and fluttered in the wind. Ironically enough, a bald eagle also flew among the motley flock. But instead of the flag, it grasped a scarecrow by its flannel collar. Since I know of no farms in Augustus Valley, it must have been previously decorating someone's lawn for the harvest season. Detached from any kind of backbone, its drooping, straw-stuffed limbs swayed, pressing on me the image of a

dead man being carried away. The last threads fixed to its lolling head gave out as we watched, and down fell the painted sackcloth face into the tree's orange hands. Though hindered by their payload, these birds flew steadily and stone-faced over the river, toward the mountains on the other side. Obviously, these weren't common migratory habits. I retrieved my binoculars from the Jeep and scan the sky. The birds flew to a treeless outcropping eaten out by a blanket of Kudzu. They circled as one swirling avian cloud, lowered to deposit their various items in a heap, then scattered to find more refuse for the pile. I knew it would be dark before I could reach that clearing.

As hard as it would be to find in the daylight, it would be impossible without the sun. I internalized some visual markers in order to locate the area in the morning. Well, Brittany said, finally breaking our silent trance. There ain't a lot of things I've seen or places I've been in this world. But I reckon ain't nowhere else I would have seen something like that. I rose with the sun. Marie doesn't own a coffee maker, so I dropped a bag of Earl Grey into my thermos

and wrote her a note while I waited for some water to boil. She was used to me leaving and then reappearing a few days later. But I still like to give her a heads up. Gone camping. We'll be back in a few days. I first drove to the Exxon and took another Ghand through my binoculars. It had rained softly the night before.

The wind blew the clouds away. Now the air was crisp and dry, clear of fog, and I had little trouble spotting the sight. What yesterday had been a nearly unnoticeable heap of branches and trash now astonished me. It was hard to scale it from where I stood next to the gas pump, but I reckoned it to be at least 50 feet tall, being more cylindrical instead of the lumpish shape I had assumed. My heart jumped when I thought about approaching this curious artifact.

I oriented a top-o map of the valley and spread it out on the jeeps hood, hoping Brittany wasn't watching through the window behind me. Sipping my tea, I compared the map to the mountain's contours and marked where the pile was with an X. Just beyond the south end of town is a one lone concrete bridge over a narrow portion of the Augustus River. From there, the map showed County Road 3-2 heading north again and climbing the Valley. It wouldn't lead me directly to the site, but it was a start. I folded the map and got

going. CR3-2 is a deeply rutted gravel road, and as usual I found myself grateful for the department's unmarked Jeep Wranglers, which are better suited to off-road travels than what the state troopers drive. I bounced along looking for a convenient place to start hiking. I was about to park when I noticed a long abandoned logging road, cutting up the mountain. I stopped and checked the map and found no indication of it, but it was headed in the general direction of the Kudzu patch. I followed this wide, grassy, leaf-littered trail for a half a mile, until a large fallen tree forced me out of the vehicle.

All further progress would be made on foot. I down the rest of my tea, strapped on my backpack, full of camping gear, and some food I'd taken from Marie's house that morning. and checked my compass bearing with the map. Amazingly, the road trail was still pointed almost exactly toward the site. I climbed over the fallen tree and began hiking. Excessive windfall, as well as steep grades, slowed me significantly.

But as I had been able to drive most of the way, and had gotten an early start besides, I didn't let those obstacles frustrate me. I knew from the map that I had parked only a mile from the site. As you well know, I've trekked to locations much more remote than this. See previous case files, RE, Bigfoot Activity, in the Monagalea National Forest. I still don't know why we couldn't bring the BFRO in on that one. Often, I have documented my own feelings of nervousness

and or existential dread that escalates as I increase in physical and or mental, psychic proximity to an investigation subject. I've learned to trust, counterintuitively, Some might say, that revelation is closest at despair's climax. So far, that rule wasn't proving true. Elation rather than fear rose with the elevation. And with this arose my doubts. However, I kept on, knowing also that human emotions are fickle,

prone to all sorts of misleading chicanery. My heart charged heavy from exertion, and my hair clung to my sweaty neck, but I didn't stop. I had gotten past all the windfall. Not 20 yards away, the land leveled off and hit itself from me. I hustled on nearly giddy with anticipation. The structure seemed to grow out of the ground as I neared the hillcrest. When I stood at last on level earth,

I shouted in surprise and something akin to rapture, at its magnitude. The way the trail leveled and bent around the mountain, it seemed from that vantage, as though all trees and vegetation had been strangled by the merciless kudzu. even though the patch was no more than 30 yards at its radius. As the first frost hadn't yet come to wither its leaves, the green cover made for a stark contrast to what towered at its center. Branches, trash, reeds, grasses, shrubs,

all layered and joined in a massive brown pillar. It was much larger than I had first guessed. Even now I'm not sure how the birds found enough materials and built it in a single night. About 20 feet up I spotted an entire, uprooted rose bush interwoven into the structure. Below it, the old red, white, and blue skipped like a thread through the sticks. There was the scarecrow's flannel shirt, his straw guts infused into the pillar, his blue jeans stitching down its side. I was shocked to find his

burlap face. A bird must have gone back to the riverbank and picked it out of the trees. I felt unreasonably joyful in its presence, and I'm embarrassed to know. note that I spread my arms out and opened myself to it, like a toddler motioning for her parent to hold her. A sharp wind whipped through the clearing, and though it chilled my sweaty body, I hardly noticed. The pillar was singing to me. I had forgotten to check my watch when I arrived, so I don't know how long I stood there gaping at it. If anyone had come by at that time, they may have thought I was experiencing an absence seizure. It is possible. That was indeed the case. Suddenly, I sensed that the sun had moved and my teeth were chattering from cold.

It finally occurred to me that whatever force had caused those birds to build such a thing could also be manipulating my emotions. I tried to regain a detached objective perspective by focusing on data collection. By pacing out a certain distance and comparing my compass's clinometer reading, with the trigonometric table in my notebook, I was able to calculate its height to be roughly 87 feet. Its base circumference I paced out at nearly 90 feet. I used my phone to take some photographs of the site and structure, which I will attach to this document, though you should already have access to them in the cloud.

That strange mania had not quite left me, and I retreated to the woods for a while, hoping to escape whatever influence the pillar had over me. Not wanting to set up camp on the steep trail that I had already traveled, I hiked around the bend beyond the clearance. the trail narrowed and climbed again but not as steeply as before i found a fairly level spot just off the trail and far enough from the clearing that the forest slightly obscured my view of the pillar or the pillar's view of me for i knell felt as though it stared down at me like a snake charming its prey finally i had found my trusty sense of gloom there was little to note the rest of the day by recording my observations for brief periods then withdrawing again to my tent to settle my thoughts and emotions, I managed to keep the nest from muddling my wits to the point of

uselessness. I had already come to refer to it in my notebook as the nest, even in my ignorance of what would follow. These periods began as 15-minute stints, followed by 15 minutes of rest in the tent. But by the evening, I was able to watch for nearly a half an hour at a time before noticing the nest's effect on me. I was about ready to call it a day around 1840 hours. The sun was low, I was hungry for dinner, and frankly, I was bored out of my mind. I had already replaced my normal jacket with my down puffy, but sitting on that cold, hard rock had put my butt to sleep and made my shivering joints feel full of rust. I stood, set my notebook and pen down on a rock and did a few jumping jacks.

I walked a few circles around the nest, then looked out across the valley. A monstrous old house with too many gables, poked up from a clearing in the mountains above town. almost directly opposite from the nest in me. Locally known as the Mallard House, this is the same place in which that nefarious quack psychiatrist were researching, set up practice back in the early 90s. The sky above had darkened into a deep navy,

while the sun squashed itself in the western ridge. The Mallard's house old gables darkened and became one with the mountain's shadowed side. The cudzu around me glowed with the sunsets last hurrah, and I turned to see the nest in almost unnatural deep red. It was beautiful. Long shadow fingers played across the tent

when I woke up later. I panicked for a second thinking I had slept through until morning. My cell phone had died and I had indeed forgotten to set an alarm on my watch. However, it was only zero one four or five hours. My body had automatically awakened itself. The brightness that I had mistaken

for morning twilight came inside from the moon. already clothed and armed. I needed only my notebook and a pen before going to check on the nest. So I turned on my headlamp and rifled through my backpack. A noise froze me. Something was right outside my tent. I turned off my light, drew my revolver, and listened as my eyes readjusted. Branches creaked and swayed above me.

A wind gust howled around the mountainside. My night vision returned. I again saw the shadow on my tent seat. ceiling. They had grown bigger and darker. I unzipped the tent door and exited, crouching low and leading with my gun. But I encountered neither crypted nor spirit. The creatures that stared down at me from the branches were all well known to mainstream science. Silhouettes of various birds, indigenous to the southern West Virginia blackened the canopy. I identified most as raptors. But surely, many smaller birds easily hid themselves, like the hundreds of spiders that were

go unnoticed in the forest until your flashlight catches their eyes. Though I don't usually feel threatened by even the largest of birds, I didn't holster my firearm. I didn't like how they all had perched in surveillance of my tent. They didn't flee when I waved my gun in their direction and shoot at them in a loud whisper. Fine, stay there then, I said. I have work to do.

You better be gone when I get back. I headed for the nest, remembering that I had left my notebook on that rock. My legs wanted to run, but I did my best to appear calm and unconcerned with the eyes on my back. I compromised with a speedwalk, telling myself that the quicker pace was only to keep warm. All that cudzu surrounding the monolithic nest looked like an alien landscape in the silvery moonlight. I smiled, grateful for it, loving it, soothed by it. You can see that I wasn't as immune as I thought at the time. The nest had so captured me that I almost didn't notice the old man standing at its base.

His skin and hair were as white as the moon shining on them, giving his gaunt frame a skeletal appearance. He was completely naked. Afraid he might be high on meth or crack, I wanted to make my presence known, while there was still a considerable distance between us. I shouted a, Hello?

But he didn't acknowledge me. his eyes were trained on the ground in front of the nest. A gesture, I think. Of subservient deference. Without a word, he turned up his palms and raised them to his shoulders. Then he shuffled slowly, head bowed, and kept moving his feet ever faster in the most soulful, flat-foot, clogged dance I've ever seen. As though the wind itself played a hard-driving fiddle tune. Indeed, the wind intensified as the dance went on.

I almost joined him, but I was stopped by a strong sense that this was a sacred, solitary act of worship that I dare not disturb. At last, he finished his jig and grabbed some branches protruding from the nest. I almost screamed. After such a reverence, it seemed an unquantifiable profanity for him to lay his hands on it. But lightning didn't strike him down. He raised his gaze and he began to climb. The danger he was in broke the nest's spell over me. though in part I still might have been motivated by the offense of desecration.

I shouted, holstered my firearm, and ran for him. He climbed with tremendous speed. By the time I reached the nest, he was 15 feet up at side. I yelled at him as turkey vultures circled in the sky directly above, but no amount of shouting would turn him back. I don't think he was at any time aware of my presence. I considered climbing after him. In fact, I wanted to.

and I didn't think that I only wished to save him. But say I caught up with him at the top, then what? I don't think we could have communicated in any way, and I couldn't bring him safely down against his will. Unsure of what to do, I retrieved my notebook and then stood below the nest, watching to see if he would fall, jump, or come to his senses and try to climb down. Upon reaching the top, he disappeared from my view. I half expected the vultures to descend on him at this point and tear the meager flesh

from his bones, but they flew away like nothing had happened. The wind stilled lulling me into a false sense of safety. I never considered going for help. I'm sure this pleases the department, but it certainly weighs heavy on my conscience, even though I realized that my negligence was more of a symptom of the nest's enchantment, rather than any loyalty to the department's soulless non-interference preferences. I returned to my tent, the bird's unblinking stare missed nothing as I fumbled with the door zipper, nearly ripping it when I shut myself inside. I woke up every few hours to check on the nest, but I saw nothing else that night. I tried to convince myself that the man had climbed down and escaped, while I slept between shifts.

The next morning and afternoon are a haze. All I can say about that day, before the sun went down, is that I wrote some exceptionally strange things in my journal. Awful, artless poetry that was both saccharine and bleak. Long, senseless stream of consciousness mumbo-jumbo. As always, I've uploaded images of all handwritten journal entries to this server and attached them to this document. I cringed as I reviewed those awful notes. If at all possible, I beg of you.

Don't bring them up in any later debriefs when I get back to Charleston. Again, I failed to set a midnight alarm and I again woke up at 0145 hours. My tent still surrounded by the birds. I was still wary of them, but this time I didn't pull my gun. A gathering of crows is called a murder. Owls sit in parliaments. Fulcher's circle in a kettle. Power walking to the clearing.

I wondered if there was a name for such a unified collective of so many diverse species. A teenage girl stood where the old man had been the night before. She was also naked. In contrast to the man's ghastly and malnourished appearance, This girl's form was the epitome of youth and pure, unadorned beauty. While I am healthy and moderately fit, nature has stuck me with a wide, blockish frame that doesn't conform to popular aesthetic convention. Even in her peril, I envied this girl for her smooth, dark skin and fluid curves.

However compromised my mind was at the time, alarm bells still sounded from some deep, untouched place. Maybe the guilt I had felt over my responsibility for the man had weakened the nests hold on me. My heart raced, my mouth went dry. This time, I would intervene. This time, I would be a savior instead of a stenographer. I would run at her as she danced, get her out of this place, even if I had to knock her unconscious. I prepared to run. Did I just take one deep breath, too? Did I wait there for a full minute before acting? Did jealousy overrule my compassion so that I wished her demise? Or was I intoxicated by the sight of that tall monument? Did my mouth water

an anticipation of the girls' worship? Envious not of her physical form, but of her destined union with the nest. She had no dance prepared. Instead, she raised a small rectangular object above her head. The wind howled. She hesitated, but only for a second before she found her resolve. She threw it at the ground and stomped on it, then she knelt. Vultures began to circle. My legs finally started to move, but it was too late. The girl was an even better climber than the old man. Come down! I screamed. Please! I don't know why I bothered, and I admit this only for the sake of full disclosure

in documenting these strange happenings. I was glad I hadn't stopped her. The vultures flew away as she disappeared over the apex. I searched the ground for what the girl had trampled. Her offering was nothing so mystical as a dance. It was just a cell phone, now smashed into pieces. I'm not doing my job. My sleeping bag was fully zipped, and its hood was cinched down so that only my nose and mouth were exposed.

The department pays me to observe and record. Everything. Clostrophobia overcame me. I thrashed, fumbling inside for the drawstring. I reckon I looked like a catapet. killer, struggling uselessly, against a wheelbugs attack. I found the string, forced my head through, but I hadn't loosened it enough, and it caught around my nose for a second. When it got wide enough to let out my shoulders, I hastily ripped the bag's zipper open and sat up. Great clouds of my

breath filled the tent and condensed into thousands of droplets on the ceiling that came together and dripped back down on me. The cold immediately made my upper body ache, and I wished my cocoon hadn't cause me to temporarily lose my mind. I haven't recorded everything yet. My watch read 0.3-2-8 hours. Not that long since the girl had ascended. I haven't observed from the top. I grabbed my notebook and cell phone, forgetting that it was dead.

The moon remained bright and unobstructed in the clear sky, so I left my headlamp in my coat's pocket. The birds were not congregated as thickly above my tent as before. Instead, they lined the trees along the path's edge. My brisk walk broke into a jog, which escalated into a sprint as my excitement swelled. Nobody was at the nest space but myself. It seemed to lean over me as I gazed up at its crown. I remember jotting down a few notes, but what you'll see in the attached images are just idiotic, senseless scribbles,

like a kindergartner, pretending to write in cursive. Despite the supposedly scientific motivation guiding my ludicrous actions, I dropped both pen and notebook to the ground. then at some level remembering and believing my pretense, I picked them back up, putting my pen in my pocket and tucking my notebook into the back of my pants. My clothing suddenly felt repulsive, and I considered stripping down completely.

I sensed that my euphoric feeling would increase if I conform to the ideal previously witnessed. But I didn't. I reckon that this rebellion was due to my ingrained, guiding, distrust of positive feeling. Though this unfortunate result of my continued employment at the department has aborted more potential relationships than I care to think of, it kept me alive that night.

Still clothed, then. I found holds and closed my hands on them. The wind picked up. The wood was smooth and felt surprisingly warm in my palms. My eyes rolled back and I closed their lids as an electric prickle coursed through me. I opened them again. I was doing this to observe after all. and saw the vultures circling.

I wasn't as fast as the girl, but I was quicker than the old man. My weight seemed to decrease as I rose. My hands and feet never struggled to find secure holds. I paused only to peck a kiss on the scarecrow's rough-painted skin. There was no fear of falling, no sense of the wind or cold, no longer any thought of my duty toward the department. I'm not sure I even thought of my destination. There was only the climb.

The ground below shuddered. The universe ebbed and expanded. Reality spun around the nest as its axis. The top nearly within reach, I grinned. One more step up and my elbows were over the edge. I leaned forward, swung my leg up, and tumbled onto the concave top. Five giant eggs sat in the nest with me. Each was at least as big as the girl who sat next to them, curled in an upward fetal position. She was shocked, still and held her hands loosely around her knees. Hello. I waved my hand in front of her face.

Are you okay? Her corneas looked like frosted glass. Hey. Nothing going on. I poked her arm. She had taken on a semi-solid consistency so that my finger penetrated her flesh a quarter of an inch. A white, crusty substance curved under her feet and buttocks,

containing a clear, viscous fluid up to its edge. It was impossible to understand, but it wasn't hard to guess what was happening. The girl was rapidly reverting to an embryonic state. Soon she would fully be encased in her own shell, like the rest. I wondered which of these was the old man. Who had been the others who climbed to this nest as I slept? Typing up this scene made me so nauseous that I had to go sit in Marie's bathroom for a half an hour before returning to the document. But up on the mountain, these things did.

didn't bother me. All of this, the massive eggs, the nest, the vultures still circling ever faster overhead. It all felt like the most natural and correct experience in my life. The vultures. Previously, they'd flown away as soon as a person reached its haven. Yet there they were, flying now in impossibly fast circles. Something's wrong, I thought, and I felt the notebook still in my pants and realized my grave mistake. I hadn't left. left my offering below. I hadn't thrown off my impure human garb. I had profaned the ritual.

I placed my left hand over my mouth. My touch was slimy and soft. I jerked the hand away. Four of my fingers had transformed, but not to anything resembling these eggs. Instead, they were black, wet, wiggling earthworms. Drunken bliss melted away into disgust and terror.

I broke off a piece of the girl's shell and sliced off my wormy fingers. I shrieked in pain. Despair formed a pit in my stomach. My mind was finally clear. Then the first vulture dove. It came too fast for me to think, but my instinct saved me. Before I knew it, I had drawn my revolver,

and just as the bird's white-hooked beak was almost near enough to tear my face apart, I fired point-blank into its belly. Feathers and guts blew out its back as the slug exited and knocked the carcass through the air. I heard it thumped to the ground below me two seconds later. Now the others stopped their circling and hung almost unmoving in the sky. Of course, I couldn't pick them off with my gun from where I was crouched, but I could take each of them on like I did the last, assuming they'd attack one at a time. But they didn't.

Two came next from either side. I dove forward and turned, slamming my back painfully into one of the eggs. Something cracked, and I hoped it wasn't my spine. The vultures collided with each other, and I easily dispatched them both in their confusion. The last two and the kettle were nearly on me as soon as I had finished with the others. I had no time to dodge them. Fortunately, they took me on in single file. My first shot missed, but my second took them both out.

I took a moment to catch my breath. There were no more vultures. But I remembered all the other birds in the trees not so far away. No bullets left. Even given limitless ammunition, I wouldn't have the stamina or luck needed to withstand the coming onslaught. I had to climb down. Fast, and when I took a sorrowful look to my left hand, I was amazed to find out that my fingers had grown back. Or had they never been severed at all? I doubt I hallucinated that, since my pain at

cutting the worms from my knuckles played a major role in restoring my focus. As I reversed myself over the edge, I faced the egg that I ran into before. A large vertical crack bisected the shell. I couldn't help but watch it split entirely open. I think it was the old man. or had been. A hideous, unfinished creature slumped from the broken casing onto the nest's floor as goose spilled and seeped into the twigs. I scrambled recklessly to the ground. Only a body saturated with adrenaline could have gotten down so fast without injury. Grateful now for the headlamp in my pocket, I put it on and ran for the Jeep. The windfall that had slowed me before was hardly a problem after climbing down that nest. Safe at Marys, I crashed on the cot and slept

until about 1345 hours. It is now 2158 hours. My tent and the rest of my gear are still up there. I'm in no rush to go back for any of it. I haven't stepped foot outside since my return last night, so I don't know if I should predict any further interference from the birds. So far I haven't noticed anything out the windows. I think I can handle going on with my original investigation, though it may take a few days to work out the jitters from this recent episode. I will continue surveillance of the nest through my binoculars only. I hope that isn't a problem. Honestly, I'm at a loss as to how I should further handle the situation.

But I reckon it warrants sending at least a hazmat team along with some serious firepower. I would call this in over the phone, but to be honest, I'm not ready to actually hear myself voice any of these things I've written. Instead, I've labeled this email with a high-priority indicator, so that you'll read my report immediately. I shudder to think of those eggs and to imagine what beasts will hatch from them, or what creature might soon come to brood. Notes follow from the investigator's handler. A team was dispatched to the site the morning following the receipt of this report. Upon arrival, they found that the described structure had been built over a large cavity of unknown origin,

and the ground had collapsed under its massive weight. The investigator later admitted that she had not continued visual surveillance as she had promised and could not ascertain as to what hour the collapse occurred. Our team repelled in without incident and successfully retrieved all necessary biological remains to be transported to the lab for further study. Four human fingers were found in addition to the other specimens. DNA testing confirms the investigator as their source,

though she is missing no fingers on her own person. All necessary evidence secured, the cavity was filled in. So far, no further abnormal animal or human activity has been observed. following their proper archival. All photos were deleted from the investigator's devices, and her notebook was burned and replaced, according to our protocols. Unfortunately, the investigator failed to obtain digital images

of either the specimens prior to the metamorphous or the intact metamorphic encasing. After undergoing extensive psychiatric debriefing, the investigator was given a week's paid leave, after which she resumed her prior investigation. For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents Fog

Written by Joseph K. If you're reading this, then I'm dead. And you're standing aboard a derelict cyclone class patrol ship, the USS Mistral, with our engines dead and our electrical systems non-functional. I am, was the exo of this vessel,

Lieutenant Commander Ryan Simmons. Please read this carefully. If you're an officer or enlisted man in the United States Navy, this is in order. Scuttle this vessel immediately. Do not finish this letter. Get off the missile at once and send her down. Consider this a quarantine scenario. All hands are likely dead.

God help you if they're not. We're eight days out of Kirkwall, tracking an intermittent and scrambled distress call from what appears to be an Icelandic fishing vessel, the Magnus Otter, deep in the no-fishing zone of the North Sea. We found the vessel, or rather, we found a mile-wide streak of oil and fragments,

the largest of them still burning. The night before, the enlisted man on watcher report seeing a flash of light on the horizon. The Magnus' daughter's crew was in order to be found. except for one lone fisherman, unburned and floating at the far end of the debris field. He'd been shot in the forehead with a small caliber revolver. When we fished his pale blue corpse from the frigid water,

he was still clutching a fishing knife in one clamped hand. What were able to piece together from the fragmented and confounding evidence was that for reasons unknown, the crew had been in a conflict, resulting in the murder of at least one sailor and the eventual sabotage and destruction of the ship. Visibility was only a few hundred feet as we spent the next day drifting silently among the debris in hopes of finding a survivor.

The crew was already visibly shaken by the discovery. The grim dread of the fog and lone smoldering pieces of the magnus thotter that collided with our hull unsettled even the most seasoned of us. We'd expected an easy cruise. and the simple retrieval of a dozen thankful Icelandic fishermen. What we got at first was a silent and oil-slip-coated sea,

a single corpse, and more than a few nagging questions. The mistral had just been serviced, after an extended tour with the Atlantic Fleet in Bahrain, before transferred to the North Sea. She was in good running order, so I can only assume that the initial and mechanical failure There was an act of sabotage or some external force. It happened the first night, when our final sweep event completed,

and we returned to the site to the Magnus' daughter's first transmission. There was nothing initially remarkable about the spot, a cold and lonely set of coordinates and little else. I was in my cabin, just settling down when the call sounded from the captain, offering little information, just a stern order to meet him on deck. Dressing quickly, I emerged from my cabin into a cloud of palpable unease and fear. The enlisted men and the junior officers were coursing through the ship towards a deck, like panicked rats.

No one made eye contact or spoke. There was none of the usual gallows humor or camaraderie that bubbles up in situations of limited information. Just a grim inertia that pulled us out in the Arctic night. On deck the night was unnaturally clear and cold, and the bright of the stars burned in the frosty air. Around us in every direction, just a few hundred yards away, the fog and clouds world, as if held at bay by our presence. The captain was at the railing, leaning over along with the men on watch. I approached him, suddenly desperate and panicked to know what had happened. when I saw it.

The light flooding up from beneath us. The sea was flat, like the surface of a mirror. The water was black, reflecting the pale pinpricks of the stars. But beneath the surface, something glowed with a cold light, pulsating shapes of violet green and deep cobalt blue shone from beneath. They flowed and merged and shimmered silently, deep below. at the glassy sea. We stared.

Two dozen men and women struck dumb and horrified by the sight. There was a sense of scale that emerged from the fluid movement of the lights. They seemed to be many fathoms beneath us, which would make them terribly large and impossibly fast.

There were no solid shapes and no disturbance of the water, just a deep field of liquid flowing light. We watched for what seemed like ours, entranced by the mesmerizing ballet of cold light, a mere reflection of northern lights. When it ended, abruptly, there were three almost simultaneous events. First, the light seemed to contract, each moat freezing in place and collapsing like the

iris of an eye in bright sunlight. Secondly, there was a tremor in the air that first raised the air. hair on the back of my neck. As the ghostly lights winked out of existence, it rose in intensity until I thought my eyeballs might shake their way out of my head. Through the fog of sudden pain, I heard a noise rise above Arctic wind, a humming vibration from the mistral herself that matched the electric shuddering in my skull. It was as if every light bulb aboard the mistral suddenly flushed with power, flaring,

and buzzing noisily in their housings. And when the wine had reached a fever pitch, they began to pop and shatter among a shatter of sparks. From start to finish, it lasted less than two seconds. And we were left floating silently in the dark waters, beneath the starry sky, on a dead and crippled boat. The damage was invisible, without any obvious cause and total. Nothing aboard the mistral worked.

Each carefully crafted system of multiple redundancies had crumbled. Every light was shattered, and even the replacement bulbs, and the small flashlights we all carry had held fused and useless filaments. Satellite phones, shortwave radios, all means of communication were useless bricks of plastic and wire. Every battery was dead. Every stereo system was silent. We were adrift, without sail or engine,

isolated from the world by a hundred miles of black and silent sea. The crew moved through the ship that first night like moles, fumbling through dark corridors with only a few pale green chemical lights to check each system. They relayed each disheartening message like a fire brigade through the darkness to where the captain and I stood on the deck, trying to make sense of the senseless. At last, when nothing else could be done, I fumbled my way back to my cabin and tried to sleep. the darkness feeling like an oppressive, many-fingered hand, slowly gripping my chest. The next morning I again took stock of our situation, hoping for some fragment of hope we'd pass by in the night.

The damage was total. We'd have to find a way to send a distress call and hope that we hadn't drifted too far from our last known coordinates. The men may not have known the full details, but it was clear from their high. haunted visages that they knew how dare the situation was. The first death was that afternoon. The sounds of screaming brought me above deck and into a thick, heavy fog. High in the gloom, I could see bright burning specks of light, descending slowly. My stomach turned.

It was two signal flares drifting uselessly through the haze. Some damn fool had fired the signal flares. I burned with an unfamiliar and foreign rage and rushed through the fog to the foredeck with hatred in my blood and my fist clamped tight. The scene that emerged from the fog broke me from my stupor. The enlisted man, a flare gun still in his hand lay broken in a pool of blood. The captain stood over him clutching the railing, driving the heel of his boot repeatedly into the broken mess of the boy's skull. I realized then that the screaming I heard, the high-keaning wail was coming from the captain, his face in a rictus of animal rage.

Around them was a small crowd, standing motionless and silent. Watching, like sentinels, the captain turned to see me and dropped into a crouch, his fingers wrapping around the flare gun and he raised it level with my eyes. We stared for a long moment at each other. Our eyes locked as he panted heavily. His face slightly splattered with blood. The only sound was a wet gurgling exhales of the enlisted man's death rattle. A bubble of blood forming on his ruined face.

I had served with this man for nearly a decade. This was not the man I knew. This was a hollow simulacrum filled with violence and terror. I spoke to him then in a soothing voice. I asked him to hand me the flare gun. He said nothing at first, and then spoke. His voice a tiny trembling sound that was swallowed up by the thick gloom around us. He's murdered us, Ryan.

The fog! The flares will never... He shook his head and clenched his eyes tight, as if he were trying to shake himself from a dream. Then he shuddered once, violently, his back arching like a seizure. The still fuck has killed us. He choked out, the flare gun wavering in the air, and I took a step closer, reaching out for him. He opened his eyes and I froze again as we stared silently at one another.

You're going to die here? He giggled quietly. I always wanted to watch. you die. You fucking coward. He tilted his head back and laughed. One hyena-like bark to the gray sky. And then put the flare gun in his mouth and fired.

The last flare igniting and temporarily bathing his head in a halo of magnesium orange and smoke. He tumbled back over the railing. If there was a splash when he hit the water, it was swallowed by the fall. I stood for what seemed like a very long time. It slowly dawned on me that I was alone, the silent audience having melted away below decks, no doubt taking the grim tail with them.

I feared for morale, an absurd concern I realized now, but could not move from the spot, as if sheer force of will cause the sea to regurgitate this moment, man, my friend, the first gunshot broke me from my reverie. In the emergency lockers, I found a handful of flare guns remained, and I stuffed one into each pocket and entered the dim passageway to blow deck. Over the hollow retort of gunshots, other muffled sounds began to emerge, the choking

sobs, the screams of pain and anger, all bringing the faint impression of the copper smell of blood, the dark was oppressive and thick as my heart rose in my chest. The pale, fading light of the chemical glow sticks that hung irregular intervals illuminated the bare corridor, and I moved slowly toward my cabin. It had been sacked, and my service pistol was missing. The next two cabins held the corpses of the junior officers. Their broken forms still in their bunks. Skulls open like blossoming flowers.

under the point-blank shots. I felt the distinct and irrational desire to run on deck and leap overboard to swim away from the boat into the unknown sea. I gripped a flare gun and held it out ahead of me, less like a weapon

and more like a talisman, and began to pace slowly down the corridor to the enlisted bunks. The door was wide open and the smell of blood and feet, Fear and shit was nauseating. As my eyes slowly adjusted to the dim, I saw a field of bodies, torn, shredded, and scattered by bullets and makeshift clubs.

A few of the men still moved, twitching slightly. I watched in frozen terror as one man. His face a mask of blood and rage turned up his head to regard me, and with a weak cry of rage began to drag himself with his arms, trailing a broken and shattered leg towards me from the shadows and other form pounced on him, about digging into the wounded man's back with a wet cracking sound. I recognized the attacker's face in the green chemical dim, a quiet and bookish young man. Like the captain, this was not the man I knew. knew. This was a beast that wore his skin. He reached down and grabbed the wounded man's jaw,

thumb slipping into his mouth. The wounded man growled, feral, mindless sound, and tried to bite down, but his attacker gripped tight and pulled. The jaw came off with the sound of tearing tendons and a yolating shriek that vanished into the air. I was no longer breathing, holding silently at the entrance. But the attacker snapped his head up to see me, nostrils flaring. The jawbone hit the floor with a meaty sound, and he lunged towards me with silent animal grace. I fired the flare gun, and it hit him square in the chest.

His shirt caught fire, and all air escaped his love. lungs with a sudden forceful exhale, but impossibly he continued on towards me. As I passed through the portal and slammed the door, the fire had climbed into his hair and he was squealing now. His clawed hands still outstretched toward me. I felt him impact against the door and saw that nightmare visage wreathed in fire through the small portal. Lips already burnt away to reveal two rows of perfect teeth. He wailed and began to smash his burning form against the door. Once, twice, three times, and then,

silence, I raised my eyes to the porthole and saw only the faint image of the burning shape as it disappeared into the darkness. All conscious thought evaporated, and I fled from that charnel house, I've barricaded all entrances to blow deck now, and I've doomed myself to slow death at the hands of the enveloping cold. I can still hear the living ones down there,

screaming and banging on the doors. They are not the men I knew. I console myself with this thought as I leave them in the dark to starve or murder each other. If you have read this far, and have not fled these waters, or, God forbid, are still aboard the mistral, then I beg you again, leave now well you can. Do not look below deck.

There are none of us left to save, and certainly none worth saving. It's cold now, and the fading day surrendering the wan gray light to the dark. There are no stars this night, nothing but the heavy blanket of night. If I could get below, I would find some way of destroying the mistral, like the brave man of the magnus daughter, but it's too late. The most I can make of my last moments, as all feeling flees my extremities, and writing becomes impossible, is a warning.

Please send us into the deep. Tell no one you found. us and never return. There are things and primal desires older than man and forces beyond the grasp of our simple minds. And they dwell here beneath the frozen sea. For more information on this podcast,

including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at CreepyPod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through Creative Commons share-a-like licensing or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.