Creepy - The Lost Boy

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

The Lost Boy***Written by: JT Johnson and Narrated by: Joe Stofko***Disk 8***Written by: Ridge Jolliff***Inside the Igloo***Written by: A.M. Symes and Narrated by: Nichole Goodnight***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Title music by: Alex Aldea 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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I recorded this part a bit in advance because, well, I don't really sleep much this time of year and wanted to make sure I didn't forget to thank everyone who listens and to welcome new listeners. October is always a massive effort, and it takes a lot out of me. So I really do hope that you all enjoy what we have for you this year. Sorry, excuse me. I haven't been sleeping very well lately. I think I should go talk with someone about that. Now, this is creepy.

A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling, and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened, or not simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. For your first story this evening, a man recalls a time when, as a boy,

he ventured into the woods to fish with his brother, only to return changed and with the knowledge that the conductor is always hungry. Creepy Presents The Lost Boy Written by J.T. Johnson and narrated by Joe Stoffco. It was a hot day.

Summer had only just arrived and so I had not yet begun to hate the very heat I had been thoroughly enjoying. Winter had been a harsh one, filled with cruel ice storms and relentless snow, that kept us either locked inside, suffocating in our own stink, or forced to venture outside to

then suffer the cold that seemed to seep right to the bone. My mother, who at that point in my life, I had still called Ma, had said it was a punishing winter that we, or someone, must be atoning for their sins. The wooden shit-splat box of a house we lived in, could barely be justified as a home, though it did have a fireplace and a kitchen, so in that respect we stayed mostly warm, and if the food were there, so did our bellies. Back then, most had the luxury of indoor plumbing, but on our little plot of land, we still had to take to business out yonder near the jagged tree line, where a patch of of unruly pines divided our land from the unclaimed woodland.

Now, about that patch of pines. When you looked at it head on, you'd think that patch of trees and underbrush were no larger than a kiddie baseball field. You could almost see the edge of the border on the other side if you squinted one eye and turned your head just so. You'd assume that desolate patch of what wild pine and weed had simply been missed when the fancy men in their fancy suits came and demolished

the woods and fields to make way for farming country. The trick of it was when you walked inside of that shaded slice of nature that had gone untouched by man, the shape of it, the size of it would change. Suddenly, when you had once been able to see the other side clearly enough, you no longer could. It was like you were walking into the belly of something, and once inside, it just went on and on. At the time I was what I would call fresh, so new to the world that I had not yet realized there was more to life than chasing and teasing my baby sister or running like hell for my big brother. Those days were hard. We went to bed and woke up hungry. The kitchen stayed bare, and Ma had seemed to age faster than she should have. It was the year my daddy

had left us, just simply vanished one day when he had announced he was going hunting. He'd taken our one good rifle with him, and the last thing I ever saw of him was the broad side of his back, the autumn sun glinting off the rifle, and a sack of sandwiches bouncing on his hip. That winter had been especially hard, but we managed with what little provisions we'd had, and we simply learned to be all right going to bed with nearly empty bellies. The task of finding food, be it hunting or foraging, had been handed off to Louis and myself. When spring at last broke through the heavy blanket of snow and ice, and the first whiff of onion grass rode on the warming breeze,

we were able to try and catch our supper in the narrow creek that ran through those unruly pines. Despite its strange way of growing, the patch of pine, had been a place of play for Louis and I back then. We could fish the creek as deep as my shoulders were tall, and in the heat of summer those pines offered refrave from the blistering sun with their cool and continuous shade. On that first hot day Ma had tasked me and my brother to go off to the creek and catch us some fish for supper.

She'd been hanging up clothes on the frayed rope that strung from one tree to another. Small beads of sweat had formed across her brow, and baby's sister had been toddling along, carrying the basket of old wooden clothespins. The image of her in her thread-worn dress, the way the fresh grass had danced about her bare ankles, the sweat-dampened curled of one piece of hair dangling over her face, as she worked. She'd looked up, eyes the color of honey, meeting mine, and had told me to be safe, had scolded Louis to keep me out of trouble, and had given me one quick kiss on the cheek.

Her memory burns inside me even now, though the sound of her voice, or her laugh, or the harsh whip-smacked sound of her scolding, those are all lost to me. me. We'd ventured across the field of onion grass and dandelions. Even now I can remember the gentle swishing of the blades against my palms, the feel of the warm dirt under my bare feet, as I followed Louis dutifully through the grass, to where the pines were. I would never admit it to my big brother, but I had a sort of fear about those pines, not necessarily how the they shrank and grew, but more so about the strange tracks that ran through them. Children are often drawn to the strange and bizarre, and oftentimes the old tracks were

the focal point of school-yard conversations. Rumors and story-spinning of how they came to be and why would be whispered from one ear to the next. While I knew them from the patch of pines across the field from my wooden box of a house, others knew them from where they popped up in random fields. The tracks could be found through cornfields and bean fields, popping up in random cowpins, and even running through the backyards of some of the children who lived closer to what could barely count as a town. It had been Louis, who had put the fear in me for those old rusty tracks, telling me on countless trips into the pines, stories of the lost conductor, and railwaymen who haunted the tracks, lurking and groaning

in the darkest times of night, searching for more lost souls to add to their railway. The tracks and all the ghosts that seemed tethered to them occupied his face in my mind that kept a cold chill in my spine as I followed Louis, the sun beating down on me with relentless heat. "'Last one there's a rotten egg!' he'd shouted over his shoulder, his long legs, bolting him forward with ease as he tore through the grass and flowers, leaving me there crying out to wait for me. Louis was always doing things like that. At the time I thought the only thing that made Louis happy was bringing me as much grievance as he could. I'd let out a long shout, a baby wine maybe, and had gripped down on my pole and tackle-box

and started chasing after him. I had watched him through jarring steps, as he looked back at me once, his eyes squinted against the sun that shone behind me, raising one middle finger to me, before dipping away into the thick shadows that came from the trees. That was the last time I saw Louis alive. His memory forever tainted by that crude gesture and mean smirk plastered across his sun-tanned face. I'd let out several shouts for him, threatening to tell Ma,

threatening to go back and leave him with all the work, threatening whatever I am. could to make him stop and come back. I hated being alone in those pines. Even if Louis was the meanest kid I knew, I would have rather been in his abrasive company than alone in the shade and the trees. I remember tearing through the underbrush, old needles and twigs cutting into my bare feet, my lungs aching as I doubled over, gasping for air that couldn't seem to reach my lungs. I had been shouting at him between gulps of air, my hands pressing into my knees as sweat blurred my eyes. I could hear the quiet lapping of the creek, the bird song high in the trees, and the first screams of the cicadas.

All at once the songs of the pines had gone silent. I think even the breeze had stilled, and I had readied myself for Louis's return. most likely in the form of him running up to scare me, which he did quite often. Instead, when I at last stood straight, my eyes lifted, and it was not my mean brother I saw. He was leaned against one of the trees, a pale-faced man with a mouth much too wide for any normal person. His eyes closed as he turned his face. up towards a stray strip of sunlight that had broken through the clustered tree-tops. I had stood frozen, my mouth dry, and hands gripping my fishing pole, the tackle-box heavy

in my hand, as I looked on at the stranger, resting idly against the towering tree. He moved in a peculiar way, his head slowly dropping, until it was leveled at my direction. his eyes opening with a sleepy sort of blink. Snake eyes, that was what I had seen, the man's thin pupils slicing across the color closer to blood than any other color I could have thought of. I felt my pole slip out of my fingers, then my tackle box both making quiet hushed thumps against the ground

as I stood frozen. no better than a baby calf who had not yet learned how to move its legs. I remember feeling confused and scared, wondering if this was somehow Louis doing, still waiting for the return of my brother and the mean jokes he'd bring with him. Louis did not come. Instead, that strange man craned his neck, his head dipping in a sort of gesture of, of greeting, before his wide mouth opened, exposing broken and crooked teeth the color of

tea stain might be. "'Hello there, boy,' he said in a voice that was everywhere and nowhere, somehow outside of my head and inside. "'Are you a lost, boy?' I was no more capable of talking than the tree I stood beside, of fear I had never felt before or since had taken root in my jaw and left me mute. My knees knocking together so hard, you could almost hear the sound of my bones bouncing into one another. Don't you know it's impolite to not answer a question, boy? My stomach twisted as I forced my voice out of my bowels

and up my ever-tightening throat. What came out was little more than a whisper. The words hardly audible, yet he had heard them. No, sir, I'm not lost. He had straightened, running a bone-thin hand over the dirty and torn front of his jacket, drying my eyes away from his pale and sunken face, and to the brass buttons winking at me in the sunlight. A new fear began to spread through me as I took in the old tattered conductor's coat he wore.

The buttons jarringly clean compared to the rest of him. The stories I'd heard for years came pebbling into my mind, all of them narrowing back down to the fable tale of the conductor and the things that haunt those terrible tracks. Time and time again, Louis had tried to drag me down the tracks, snickering and cackling, about leaving me for the conductor to get. He'll find you, you little snot, and when he does, he's going to take you to the train. Don't worry. I'll put up a gravestone for you. It will say, here lies Henry, the world's biggest whiny baby. I had stared in horror at the man before me with the terrible teeth and the brass buttons

and the conductor's coat that sort of hung off his body the way it might have hung from a hangar. He's the conductor, my young mind whispered, and he's here to take you to the train. I had wished in that moment that Louis would come, that he could burst out of the trees to try and scare me. I didn't care. I needed him to come back to save me from the terrible man. Had I had the ability, I would have screamed so loud maybe God himself would have heard. But God did not answer my terrified prayers that day, and I sometimes wonder if that stretch of pine held such darkness to no light of God could reach, not then, and surely not now. The man had started. The man had started towards me, his long legs gliding through the weeds and pine needles, his snake eyes fixed on me

with a predatory amusement. If you are not a lost boy, then why are you alone in the wood boy? He had stood over me, though the word loomed might be better, and I had to crane my neck back all the way, to keep to see his face. I can remember clear as day the coldness that had slid into my veins, the way I could taste copper on my tongue, and feel every hair on my head slowly stand on end. You have a ma. He spoke with a slow, serene tone,

eyes half-closed in an almost cat-like expression. You have a baby sister. and I do believe you've been praying awfully hard. A big brother would come and save you, am I correct, boy? I had been struck with a terror that cemented my mouth shut. How did this strange man with his terrible eyes know of my ma, of Louis and baby's sister? My skin had iced over, my stomach twisting into a painful knot as he

watched on with his snake eyes. Stories of little red and the big bad wolf flitted through my mind like wind-blown picture-book pages, images of wicked witches and candy houses, and giants crunching children into their teeth, making my chest burn. I had wondered if all along those old stories read before bedtime had never been stories at all. But, poorly constructed warnings that had been mistaken for silly little books. I swallowed. My chin had started to shake a terrible way, and my voice seemed to vibrate. Yes, sir. The man nodded once, looking around us expectantly, before lifting his narrowed shoulders in a tight shrug. I see no ma. I see.

no sister. I see no Louis. He leaned down, his elbows spaying out, wide as his hands pressed into his knees, until he was eye-level with me. Close enough I could see the pale gold streaks in his snake eyes, see the way his skin seemed like a shallow shade better fit for a corpse than a man walking in the woods. you may not be a lost boy but you are an alone boy which is to say not much different from a lost boy is i tried to shake my head my word still trembling out of my copper-coated mouth i'm not i'm not lost the man shook his head side to side slowly back and forth is our own eyes never leaving mine, and not once did I ever see them blink. I have a job for you, lost boy. Come with me.

He stood then, his hand moving down to grasp mine, his fingers nearly wrapping around my hand twice, and I remember looking in horror at how long and thin his fingers were. No, no, no, I need to find he had already been. begun walking, pulling me along, as if I were nothing more than one of those baby toys you tugged on a string, his strides equal to ten of my hurried and aching steps. Don't worry, boy, Louis is already there. I had felt confusion and alarmed then. My thoughts racing as I tried to understand how this man had already gotten to Louis.

He pulled me along, unbothered by my screams and shouts that I could sometimes manage to let out, ignoring me when he pulled me through thorn thickets and vines that left my legs oozing with blood and sap. I could hear the soft babble of the creek, could hear the hushed wind rustling the leaves, could feel the warm sun burning down on me when it could break through the treetops, but not once did I hear a bug or animal as he pulled me through the woods. Horror had encapsulated me when I realized we had begun to follow those awful tracks, my tugs and attempts to break free, proving useless against his iron-like grip on my aching hand.

We had walked a while, longer and deeper into the woods than I had ever gone, ever the while I had watched those hidden tracks with wide and screening eyes. The moss and onion grass eventually gave way to thick, clay-like mud. Then even that was gone, and no longer were the tracks hidden by the earth. We are going to the train, I had thought, with wild terror. We are going to the train, and he is going to kill me. He never spoke once as he walked, his pale head shining in the sunlight like a hard-boiled egg, little blue veins webbing up around his neck and jaw, like thread-thin spider webs.

He was the scariest thing I had ever seen. Even then I had questioned how a phantom could take hold of a living person, yet my questioning thoughts never led to much more than, than more confusion and fear. It had occurred to me that perhaps he was no phantom at all, that my luck had truly run out, and I had fallen into the vices of one of those terrible men who killed children. I had heard Ma talk of it in hushed whispers to someone over the phone, her voice stomping altogether when she thought I might be listening. It had been the first time I had ever understood that not all grown-ups were kind and looked out for the well-being of

children, that sometimes grown-ups were, in fact, the scariest thing a child could come across. Alone, my mind shivered. Sometimes adults are the scariest thing to come across when alone. By the time we came to a stop, my bare feet were blown. bloodied and blistered, abused by the harsh ground that had never been intended to be tread on barefoot. He had stopped us at the wide squat opening on the side of a hill I had never known existed. The tracks continued on into the dark mouth, and I realized with silent wonder and horror that we were standing in front of one of the abandoned coal shafts. been found on any other day in the company of any other person, I would have been struck with

awe that that sort of spooked curiosity children get when faced with something that feels just paranormal enough. What I felt standing locked in the grip of the man with the snake eyes much deeper into the wood than I had ever been, and utterly alone, was a sort of defeated despair. He is going to kill me, I had thought. And he will shove my broken body into that coal shaft, and Ma and Louie, and anyone else will never see me again. Do you know what this is, lost boy? I had looked away from the dark maw of the coal shaft.

My heart now too high in my throat, so high I thought I could feel those pulsing beats against my tonsils. The coal mine, sir? The man had knelt down again, sharp knees to his ears, elbows jutting out much too far as he folded himself down until those eyes were leveled with my face once more.

No, lost boy. This is what all the lost boys and girls live, see? Lost things don't stay lost. Sometimes lost things are found things, like you. With this, he reached out one of his hands. His fingers I could now see look more bone than flesh. I found you, and now you will be a found thing, see. And you will live in these tunnels with my other.

found things. Good things, bad things. All my things I have found, I put deep in my tunnels. Would you like to go inside now? I had known if I went into those tunnels, I was dead, more than dead, yet I didn't know what such a thing as more than dead could be. Only knew in my young racing heart that if I went into this strange man's tunnels, I would be more than dead. I'm not a lost thing. I had whimpered. No better than baby's sister after taking a tumble.

I have a ma and a brother and... The man jutted out his thin bottom, his bottom teeth poked out like broken headstones as he made high-pitched whining cries and mockery of me. I have a ma'er. He crooned. I have a sister. Because you are going to bring them to me. No.

I had interjected, still so terribly frightened. Yet the idea of my sweet ma or my baby. baby sister anywhere near this terrible man made something inside me what a rise up and thrash the snake-eyed demon. You can't have them. He had moved then so quickly. I hadn't even registered it. All I knew was one second his hand was on his knee. The next it was pinching at my face, those long fingers stabbing into my cheeks with needle-like sharpness. He had a little like sharpness. He had leaned closer, so close I could smell his rancid breath, see the thin splinter-lined cracks along his awful brown teeth.

"'You are my lost boy,' he growled, and you will help me find more lost things, won't you, boy? You will go into these tunnels. You will sup with my other lost things, and when you emerge a new boy, a better boy you will fetch your ma and your sister and you will bring them back to me yes boy his face had contorted then a look so evil it was as if i was looking directly into the face of the devil if not the true one then surely one that belonged to his ilk Rip from my mind was the assumption of monstrous-faced creatures with horns and fire flicking out of their mouths. Standing there in the painful grip of that man, I knew what I was looking at was the closest thing to the devil I would ever see, and he wore not a face that was contorted with strange and animal-like features.

No, the thing before me was the most terrifying thing. I could have ever seen, and his face was that of a corpse. Only beneath that rotting skin lay something much more wicked than my human eyes could ever comprehend. I could only just see the touch of it, writhing beneath his sunken features, a hint of the true horrors beneath his already chilling face. I know it was at that moment a part of me had given up. my body going heavy as I gave one small nod whatever fight had been left in me draining away he nodded his lips slowly folding back over his teeth and with that he straightened looming over me once more before gesturing into the mouth of the old coal mine go he had smoothed the things thin hand over his coat front, those terrible buttons glinting spotlessly. You'll know when it's time to fetch you or mine, your sister.

My legs moved of their own volition. Or that is how I choose to remember it that day. Had I said no, had I simply refused, what then would have become of the young boy I had been that day? the day I quit being a boy at all. For who went into those tunnels, and who emerged some long time after, were not the same boy. Not a boy at all.

The tunnels were cool and damp, the earth slick and smelling like something foul as I moved through the darkness. I made my way through the collapsed tunnels, aware of the strange noises beginning to surround me. Slithering sounds and wet mucking noises seemed to chase at my heels, my hands brushing cautiously across wet and bumpy things

that scuttled away from my touch. I had begun to cry, wanting more than anything to be back with Ma and baby sister, my chest squeezing tight, as my eyes began to adjust to the darkness pressing down on me. I saw them then, those lost things the conductor had told me of, as well as the very thing I had been tasked to eat.

The broken and twisted shapes on the ground were surrounded by more of those things, some squirming in like bloated maggots, others skittering on long and mangled limbs, their eyes wide and black as they looked up at me with almost human-like acknowledgement. I watched as they all bore open mouths, speckled with tiny sharp teeth as they wolfed down on the thing on the ground. The sound of skin tearing and bones crunching filled my ears, my stomach convulsing as the need to run pushed inside me. I think I had intended to run away. I might have even tried, had one of those horrible things not latched onto my leg, black eyes gleaming as it opened its mouth and sank those teeth

down into the tender flesh of my calf. They were on me suddenly. The way you see water rise up to take away a sinking boat, that is what those terrible things did to me. Their hands and claws pulled me down, until I was pressed into the earth, the pain of hundreds of tiny little teeth sinking into my skin, sending scream after scream from me, until my throat was so hoarse, all I could do was let out soundless cries. I had turned then, eyes landing on the figure beside me, at the sun-tanned skin, making up a mangled and half-eaten face.

I knew the face, knew the hair, and the constellation of freckles that danced across the blood-spattered cheeks. I knew the one I left behind, the color of honey, and no longer gleaming at me with cruel humor. They drank from me. Not once did they chew away my flesh and muscle as they had my brother, but rather pulled me from every last bit of life that filled my terrified body. I think I had been sure I was on the brink of death when one of the ugly things scrambled over me a hot, slick mouth, pushing down over my soundless scream. There had been a sudden and hot pressure slam into the back of my throat,

a vial and acrid surge of something putrid and pulsing. I felt it fill my mouth, unable to stop it as it seemed to swell down my gullet with blistering pain. It had filled my stomach, a sloshing royal of hot bile that sent my body shaking and convulsing, the terrible taste coating my mouth unbearable. Eventually the toxic taste was gone. Taking its place had been a strange ache, gnawing at the back of my throat, my stomach no longer churning with nausea, but to my fading confusion a hunger for more. It was then that I felt the many teeth slowly eased,

out of me, the sound of little mouths tearing away from my skin, mixing with the ragged breaths now ripping out of me. I had needed more of that once putrid but now tantalizing taste, my eyes wide and seeing clearly in the dark and terrible tunnels. I looked to Louis with my new eyes, eyes that saw not my brother's. but a meal I had missed. My teeth gnashed together, my hands curling into the mud and blood as I watched the writhing and wiggling creatures

slowly sink back into the walls, the floor, the ceiling of the old tunnels. I had asked them for more, had begged them as I clawed viciously at the earth, my ears itching as I heard, the quiet breaths lost in the soil, I had turned, a voice filling my head, promising me there was more to come, reminding me I simply had to go and bring them. I had went into those tunnels a boy with a ma and a family, and out from the tunnels was something else entirely. I was no longer a boy,

but a thing wearing the skin of a child. When I clambered out of those tunnels, a hunger like I had never felt before bearing down on my very being, my eyes moved quickly to the terrible man. Go fetch your ma and your sister boy, the man said softly, his eyes now closed, his face turned up to an evening sign. that no longer shone through the treetops,

but rather splayed out along the trunks and the horizon behind them. I did as he bid, something I would continue to do time and time again, pushed forward by the endless promise of helping ease the hunger, taking root deep inside me. When I emerged from those pines and into the field of onion, Indian grass and dandelions, I did not pause to take in their quiet beauty. I did not stop to admire a milky blue sky giving way to dusk, nor did I stop to think perhaps what I was doing was wrong. All that mattered was the tantalizing promise of stopping this hunger. I walked across the field into the house

where Ma had been sitting, a worried and wild look on her drawn and tired face. Baby sister had been on her lap, her knee bouncing idly as it always did when she held her. I heard her the way you might hear someone with your head under water, her voice distant and muffled as she exclaimed with worry and relief that I was home. I did not feel the warmth of her lips when she showered my face with kisses, when her fingers ran dutifully over my hair, my arms, my ruined legs and feet. It was as if I were in a dream, a dream where I was no more than a puppet on an incredibly long string, a dream where I had only one purpose in life, and that was to fetch my

and sister. She had asked about Louis, had sobbed into my neck her worries from me and my brother, who was long dead and broken in the tunnels, I would soon call home. I think I had spoken,

I'm sure I had, and in that sort of dream-like fog I had been in, I took her hand and led her out of the door across the field and into the pines. i took her through the wood following the faithful guide of those tracks leading not to a train with ghost and conductors but rather to a tunnel with things much worse than apparitions i told her when we reached the mouth of the coal-mine that where my older brother was was inside there i had pointed then to that endless black tunnel and what i saw

saw a flicker in her eyes was fear. There came a sound after that, even to my new ears, I thought somehow Louis had come back to life. I watched Ma go in then, hiking up the frayed hem of her dress, baby sister wriggling on her hip, as they vanished into the mouth of the tunnel, Louis' distant cries, continuing to lure her in. that was the last time i saw them alive and the last piece of my humanity fed directly to the monster who made me what i am to-day it was in those tunnels that the terrible man supped on my ma and my sister leaving to me and my new kin the scraps i fed the raging hunger quieted only a little

the need for more still thrumming deep in my veins, I did not think of what made those squirming maggot things them, and me, me, I did not consider if one day I too would become like those left deep in the soil to remain hungry until fed. We emerged, that terrible man and I from the tunnel with bellies no longer howling, with a hunger that did not belong to any human. The sky had turned a deep purple, the last of daylight gone beneath the tree-thick horizon,

the evening song of frogs and insects humming deep into my skin, so long as you do as I bid. The conductor, for I had no other title to give my new holder, spoke in a thick and heavy voice. I will keep you bed. You are my lost boy now. His pale hands dabbed away the flecks of red along his wide mouth, those snake eyes looking to me with a menacing glare.

But should you stray away from the tasks given, you will be no better than my other lost things. You too will sit. in the stink and rot of the ground until I see to it that you eat. A shudder had moved through me then, followed but what I can only describe as a physical zap, stunning my eyes, giving me sight into thoughts that were not my own. I could see them all, my kin beneath the ground, writhing and screaming, their mouths wide and gaping the way a baby bird might be while it waits for its mama to return with a worm.

For a moment, I felt their endless hunger, much worse than mine had been the few moments I had felt it. Their bodies riddled with pain and a coldness that went much deeper than I ever thought possible. The thoughts were gone then, leaving me reeling, as I looked up at the conductor with wide, terrified eyes. I learned that summer of what it was my tasks would be, along with the knowledge that my body was much more connected to the ground and the evil within it. I learned the conductor's reach went much farther than that web of finds,

spanning into fields and tiny clusters of towns and woodland. The conductor is the visionary, and I am merely the one who builds and sets the traps, forever tethered to his arduous appetite and tasked to lure in those he deems worthy of his meals. It is a life of horror that I live, pushed on by the ever-present hunger that reminds me why I must do his bidding.

The air has at last eased from summer's blistering grip, the leaves turning a deep shade of red as I stand at the end of a narrow broken street. It's the eve of October now, and I have a house to wake up. For your second story this evening, a young man's planned night of snacks and horror movies is interrupted by a movie. he's never seen before, one with eerie similarities to real life and terrifying consequences. Creepy presents. Disc 8.

Written by Ridge Joleth. Levi stopped on his way home from work to drop off Gabriel's final paycheck. Gabriel had been fired from Circuit City for dubbing the audio from a porno over the opening scene of the Lion King and playing it over every screen in the store. The Lion King had played on a loop every day for five months. Gabriel wasn't a pervert. He was just tired of hearing the circle of life. Levi found Gabriel in an empty two-car garage behind his parents' house.

He was putting the finishing touches on the haunted house that had become a moderately successful attraction over the last couple of years. Gabriel expected to make more tonight than he would in a month at Circuit City. He made Levi promise to stop by between movies. On the drive home, Levi decided that he'd probably blow it off. In exchange for picking up his paycheck, Gabriel had stopped by the basement to feed Chui and load the DVD player. Levi's Apex 8-8 disc DVD player with Dolby Digital 5.1 output and karaoke features was his most coveted possession. He didn't consider Chui to be a possession.

He loved the DVD player so much he decided to name it. Her name was Dorothy. Every night Dorothy was stalked with eight movies. Levi and Joey would watch at least two of them. Levi selected the next movie by pressing a shuffle on the remote and watching the first movie that played. There was only one rule. A movie could not be taken out of the changer until it was watched until the end.

When Levi had dropped off his paycheck, Gabriel had given no hints about the movie he'd added to the rotation. All he said was that Levi did. Definitely hadn't seen it, and that it was perfect for Halloween night. Levi came down the basement stairs with Chewy on his heels. He dropped two grocery bags on the couch and began assorting their contents on the coffee table. A 20 pack of cheesecracker sandwiches, two bags of 3D Doritos, double-stuffed Oreos, Scooby-Doo fruit snacks, four Wonka bars,

a two-liter of original Mountain Dew, and another of the brand-new iteration called Code Red. Also, a bright yellow bag of pizza-flavor beggen strips. Chewy's curly tail waved when he saw them. Levi sank into the couch and unbuttoned his khakis. He picked up three remotes, and in succession, turned on the TV, the stereo, and Dorothy. A barely audible hum filled the air as each of the electronics turned on. He pressed shuffle, and after several moments of whirring and clicking, a green FBI warning with blocky white lettering appeared on the screen.

screen. He raised both hands and clapped twice. In the corner of the room, two red dots lit up on the clapper, and a moment later, the room went dark. Chewy walked circles on the other side of the sofa and curled up with his head resting on the armrest. He blinked at the screen. Inside the DVD player, the changer sat at Disc 3. The 1984 horror classic A Nightmare at Elm Street spun over the scanner. West Craven's breakout film earned over 3,000% of its budget and single-handedly rescued New Line Cinema from insolvency. The script was a masterpiece, and the practical filmmaking technique still held up almost 20 years later. Levi would never forget the first time he saw the blood-gushing bed scene. Chewy let out a huff as soon as he saw Robert England's

feet. He'd always been terrified of Freddy Kruger. Luckily for Chewy, the screen went black before they saw the revolutionary prosthetic scars on his face. Levi felt around the cushion beneath him, wondering if he was sitting on the remote. Chewy lifted his head and looked at Levi. The lava lamp in the corner of the room sent shades of green bouncing off his whiskers. Upstairs the doorbell rang, and Levi heard his mother's footsteps gliding to the front door. Trick-or-treating had already begun. Dorothy's LED display lit up with shuffle.

All three remotes sat on the coffee table out of Levi's reach. The tiny motor across from Impurred, and the black strip at the center of the DVD player read, Bisk 8. This was an unprecedented anomaly. Levi and Chui have been comforted when the changer had landed on a quintessential slasher, which they knew well. It had offered no risk of disappointment. But they didn't pick the movie.

Dorothy did. Levi was curious about what Gabriel had put in slot 8, so he let the movie play. There was no anti-piracy warnings, no previews, no titles screen, no studio logos, no opening credits. The film started abruptly with a textbook cold open kill. It had been shot with a shaky handheld camcorder, definitely digital, but at least 24 frames per second. A middle-aged man was strapped to a steel trolley in front of an incinerator. The footage was from the killer's point of view, standing over the man in the restraints. He was sweating and crying, and his face was red from the heat of the flames.

He wore a gray polo with a circuit city logo over his heart. Levi let out a soft chuckle. No wonder, Gabriel, I'd enjoyed this movie. The man strapped at the trolley bore a striking likeness to Brian, the first shift supervisor, the guy who had fired Gabriel. The man slid through the window of the incinerator. The screams were instantaneous and feral. The camera pant left, and the man's thrashing body could be seen covered by a fire that was blue at its base and orange at its tip.

The lens zoomed in slowly. The 50-inch square screen was filled from top to bottom with dancing flames that reflected off Chui's coffee-colored face. The surround sound speakers popped with a crackling fire. The basement door opened and a stampede descended the stairs. Levi picked up the remote and pressed pause. He clapped twice. The red lights on the clapper flashed and the lights turned on. Heather, Jill, and Casey came downstairs. They were dressed as the girls from coyote ugly. Heather's hair was wavy and she wore a leather vest and jeans. Jill had dyed her hair blonde and was wearing a white Harley-Davidson tank top with a sheet of print pants. Casey wore a black.

bra with fringe hanging from the cups and a tiny red skirt. These costumes had apparently been so well received last Halloween that they were worth repeating. Heather, Levi's older sister, apologized for the disruption as she crossed the room behind him and went into her bedroom. Casey followed her closely, complaining about the cost of her tuition. As Jill passed the couch, she draped her arms over Levi's chest and dropped a bag of candy corn in his lap. Her hair smelled like bleach. He reached behind him and pushed Jill into the

direction of Heather's room, smiling. Levi watched the girls walk into Heather's room and close the door. If Heather was in a horror movie, she would be the untainted final girl who stabbed the killer to death after delivering a punchy one-liner. Jill and Casey would die early in the film, probably thrusting their chest out while being stabbed from behind. When he looked back at the TV, the screen was blue. Dorothy had turned herself off. He shoved a handful of candy corn in his mouth with his left hand and pressed the power button with his right. After a short delay, the DVD player buzzed into life.

The mechanical whirring and clicking commenced. Dorothy's display read, reading disc. Heather, Jill, and Casey passed through the room. Heather asked Levi if you wanted to come with them. Jill brushed her long nails through his hair as she passed. Casey closed the basement door behind her

and Levi clapped twice. The room went dark except for the green and blue glows of the lava lamp and the TV screen. Once again, the movie had no previews or title menu. A gigantic vehicle floated through space. Below the TV, the display of the DVD player lit with the word.

Disc 6. This was a burned copy of Alien, which had not been released on DVD. This was one of Levi's favorites, but Chui had never cared for it. He thought Sigourney Weaver should have left that cat to die. At this rate, it would take all night to finish two movies. Levi picked up the remote and pressed the button for discate. He held fast forward, and the man zipped into the incinerator to be swallowed by shuddering tentacles of flame. As he pressed play, the flame slowly faded from the screen.

The crackling of the fire was replaced by a soft drone, an empty room with beige walls and a white tile floor. The air conditioning filled the room with white noise so loud Levi had to turn the volume down. This was also filmed with an SD camera. The ceiling's floor and wall filled the entirety of the TV screen, and the brightness made Levi squint. The camera began to pan right at its screen. such a slow pace that the movement was almost imperceptible.

It turned 180 degrees and finally landed on a window. The camera hovered across the tile. When it reached the window, it looked down over a dark alley. Three college-aged girls ran into frame. Two blondes and a brunette, all in cowboy boots. They heaved panicked breaths and ran on their toes. They took turns looking over their shoulders. A shadow appeared behind them.

them, and they each let out blistering screams. The girls reached the end of the alley and ran out a frame. For the first time since the opening scene, the camera cut. Now the girls were directly in front of the camera. They whined and whispered at one another as they tried to catch their breath. Getting a closer look at the girls, Levi laughed. It was impossible not to make the connection. The girls were dressed almost exactly like Heather, Jill, and Casey, and the actresses had removed. remarkably similar bone structures. Heather had a mole under her right eye instead of her left, and Casey's hair was shorter than in real life. But the resemblances were uncanny. Their voices even sounded the same. Heather's local ganger locked eyes with the camera and let out a piercing

shriek. Her friends looked over their shoulders and each of their eyes watered as they gasped in horror. They held hands and ran away from the camera. The girls ran until they approached. approached a festival at a nearby park. Just before they left the darkness of the street, the camera cut to a shot directly in front of them. The camera lurched toward the actress who looked like Jill and froze at an extreme close-up of her forehead. She backed away with a deep wound in her abdomen. Blood spread quickly across her white tink top.

She held her stomach as the other two girls dragged her to the safety of the festival. The screen went blue again. Chewy howled at the ceiling. Levi clapped his hands together with force and the lights turned on. When Dorothy powered back on, Levi agonized over what to do next. He was intrigued by the film in slot eight, but it seemed to have a playback issue. He took a sip of soda and swished it around in his mouth as he stared at the shiny black screen in front of him. He contemplated going to Gabriel's and offering to cover the haunted house while Gabriel came to fix the problem with the disc.

This sounded like a lot of work. Although it felt sacrilegious, he decided to press eject. He crouched in front of Dorothy and turned away as the disc tray shot out, trying not to see the movies in the other slots. He ran his fingers over the plastic and tells index finger grip the hole of a DVD. The film had been downloaded onto a blink disc, which was not a surprise. Most of the DVDs he got from Gabriel were pirated, even before he lost his employee's discount. There's no title written on the top of the disc. The bottom was completely clean of scratches. He wiped the disc on the edge of his polo and blew into the loading dock for good measure.

After reinserting the disc and returning to the couch, Levi wondered if the movie night ritual remained sacred. There was only one way to restore the purity of the night. He picked up the remote, turned on Dorothy, and pressed shuffle. After the ceremonial warring and clicking, The display read, Disc 1. Levi knew he had made the right decision as soon as he heard John Carpenter's legendary theme song, Halloween 2, quite possibly the best horror sequel of all time. The continuation of the most famous night and scary movie history. He tossed chewy a treat and ripped the package off a king-sized candy bar.

He clapped his hands. The lights on the clapper flashed. The room filled with the orange light of the screen. The boogeyman had just stolen a knife from a kitchen when Levi heard the basement door fling open. He clapped his hands and the lights turned on. Unsteady footsteps descended the stairs, then a loud thud as a body collapsed and limbs flailed at the railing. When he turned around, his stomach dropped. Jill slid down the stairs with the dark red stain permeating the center of her white tank top.

She tried hopelessly to keep pressure on her midsection. Levi stood up, frozen with panic. Jill called for him. He scooped her up and carried her awkwardly to the couch. There were tears in her eyes and she breathed in massive gulps. He pulled up her shirt and ran his hands over abdomen and trying to find the wound. Her skin was unblemished. She let out a snort and pulled his head into her neck as she convulsed with laughter.

Levi looked around, still uncomprehending. Heather descended the stairs. scolding Jill. Casey and her boyfriend, Kelvin, entered the room stifling laughter. Jill embraced Levi and kissed him on the cheek. He pushed her away and wiped it his shirt. There was a deep stain just beneath the Circuit City logo on his chest. As Jill headed for Heather's room, she said that a kid in a zombie costume had collided with her, smashing a packet of fake blood on her shirt. She asked Heather what she could borrow. shaking his head, Levi went upstairs to put his shirt in the wash.

When he came back downstairs, Heather, Jill, Casey, and Calvin were gone. The room was dark. Matthew Lillard was on the TV, wearing rectangular glasses. Dorothy's display read, Disc 5. Levi shrugged and sat down. Thirteen Ghosts was a campy remake of a paranormal film from the 60s. Levi had just seen it in theaters over the previous. weekend and I loved it so much had been determined to get a bootleg in time for Halloween.

The acting was so bad it was good. The lore was captivating and some of the ghosts were actually kind of terrifying. Chewy scooted closer to Levi's side of the couch every time a character went into the basement. An hour into the movie, the screen went black. Green blobs of light squirmed across the ceiling from the lava lamp. Dorothy clicked in word. the letters on the display read Disc 8

Levi let out an exasperated sigh He said fuck it out loud Chewy watched as he grabbed the remote To have the coffee table He pressed the button for disc 5 Inside the DVD player Disc 8 continued to spin Levi pressed disc 5 again

The display still said disc 8 He pressed disc 1 Then disc 3 then shuffle then stop, then power. He waited for one of the buttons to register. Disc 8 continued to play. He grabbed the TV remote, removed the batteries, and swapped them for the batteries in Dorothy's remote. He pressed disc 1, waited several moments, pressed menu, waited again, pressed stop, then pressed power, then pressed disc 4.

Too lazy to get up and turn off the DVD player manually. he grabbed his plastic cup of soda and watched the screen. The girl who looked like Heather was back, the audience still hadn't learned her name or the names of her friends, or any of the character's names. Levi had come to think of the protagonist as his sister. Heather was walking slowly through what seemed to be an abandoned house. She walked out of a living room full of dusty, moth-eaten furniture.

For reasons unclear to Levi, she walked right past the front door. This was the classic third-act trope of the Battleworn scream queen finding the bodies of her friends stashed throughout the house. First she found a muscle-bound football player with spiked hair propped up in the closet. When she opened the door, the body collapsed onto her and she allowed it to fall to the floor as she yelled. The camera zoomed in on the boy's frozen face. He looked just like Kelvin. In the kitchen, Heather opened the refrigerator and found Casey's side.

head, Levi wondered why she would open the fridge in the first place. Suspensful music played as she climbed the stairs at a frustratingly slow pace. She found Jill in an upstairs bathroom, bleeding out in the tub. Heather hugged her tightly and sobbed as she took her last breath. Levi noticed that Jill's shirt had changed and laughed at the continuity error. Just as Jill expired, Heather looked up to the camera towering over her. She screamed for what seemed like the hundredth time and climbed the bathroom window to the balcony. The camera followed her onto the roof, where she struggled to keep her footing until climbing back inside through the attic window. She hid beneath an antique piano.

Her clavicle bounced up and down with her quick breath, still covered in Jill's blood. The invisible killer was about to leave the room when her knee bumped one of the pedals, letting out a soft hum. The camera slowly circled the piano, and the girl screamed again. When Gabriel appeared next to him, Chui leapt into Levi's lap, and Levi led out an involuntary shriek. Gabriel was distraught, wide-eyed, and speaking too quickly to be understood. Levi stood up, paused the movie, and turned down the lights. He told Gabriel to sit down. Gabriel was wearing a dark green polyester fighter pilot costume.

He had a thin black mustache and a strong quivering jaw. He looked paler than usual. Levi wore khakis in a white t-shirt. His bangs covered his forehead and peach fuzz covered his cheeks. Chewy wore nothing but a red collar with a bronze tag. After a few moments of panting, Gabriel explained that he'd gotten a call from Aaron, who'd been working the second shift at Circuit City. Someone had set fire to the storage room and the store had burned down.

Brian had been covering for Mike, the second-shift supervisor. He'd gotten trapped beneath some fallen shelves. Aaron had heard his screams from outside the store. Gabriel had closed the haunted house and come straight to Levi's. Premeditated arson had been committed at the store he'd just been fired from. The manager who had fired him was dead. His hands trembled as he poured himself a cup of Mountain Dew. Levi assured him that running a popular haunted house,

house was a rock-solid alibi. He said that Gabriel was being paranoid. After Gabriel had calmed down, Levi asked about the movie in slot eight. He asked if Gabriel had made it himself, and why there's no title on the disc. Not that I care, but looking at the disc is cheating, Gabriel said. No, of course I didn't make it myself. It's Donnie Darko. It's barely in theaters. Levi told Gabriel about the movie in slot 8, the unsettling nature of the filmmaking in the opening kill scene, how the victim had looked almost exactly like Brian. Gabriel laughed. And I'm the one who's paranoid?

Levi looked at the blank TV screen and took a deep breath. He sat down on the other end of the couch and shooy sat between them. Levi picked up the remote and pressed his gate. He left the lights on. The movie started on a new scene, a dolly shot of gravel moving quickly beneath the camera. It tilted up to a merry-go-round that was completely empty. The sun beat down on a funnel cake truck with no one in line. It was a fall festival, not unlike the one that took place every year in Levi's town.

Except it was deserted. Levi turned to Gabriel and asked if this looked like Donny Darko. Gabriel said he must have downloaded the wrong movie. On the screen, the camera arrived at a dump machine. The tank was blue. The target was a deep red. There was a chain-link guard mounted on top of the tank. Behind it, sitting on the seat above the tank, was a young man with short black hair.

There were heavy chains fastening his arms and legs together. He was wearing a dark green fighter pilot costume. A baseball rocketed out from behind the camera and narrowly missed the target. It smacked against the backstop and fell to the grass. The man above the tank whimpered. Gabriel looked at Levi, his mouth hanging open and then back to the screen. Another ball shot at the target, missing wide right. The man screamed from within the cage.

The next ball hit the target dead center. The man plummeted to the bottom of the tank. His temple pressed against the window as he fought to gain footing. The chains were too heavy. and he fell on his back. Levi heard a gurgling sound coming from the opposite end of the couch. He felt Chewy sit up. He looked at Gabriel.

The vein in his neck was bulging. His arms were affixed at his sides and water was spilling from his mouth. Levi and Chewy leapt from the couch and looked at Gabriel. He thrashed from side to side, arching his back but unable to stand. Streams of water continued to flow from his mouth and nose. On the screen, the man floundered at the bottom of the tank. Levi crouched in front of Dorothy and pressed the power button. He held the button down for several seconds, then pressed pause, then stop, all while listening

to Gabriel's wet, smothered chokes coming from behind him. He crawled around the entertainment center and ripped the plugs from the walls. The movie continued to play. Levi rose to his feet and went to Gabriel. He grabbed his shoulders and tried to lift him. him, but his weight was immovable, and his limbs were plastered to his sides. He laid him down on the couch and lifted his feet as high as he could manage. The endless outpouring spewed from his mouth soaking the carpet.

He continued to choke and gyrate, and eventually his eyeballs rolled into his skull. The water stopped, and Gabriel lay still. The man on the screen was frozen and a ball at the bottom of the dunk tank. Levi stood over Gabriel's lifeless form. panting. Chewy sat in the corner, howling. Levi's t-shirt was damp. He lifted Gabriel's shoulders. It was much easier to move now. Levi sat him up on one end of the couch, closed his eyes, and rested his head on the cushion behind him. Levi sat at the opposite end and looked at the TV. The screen had gone blank. He pulled at his hair, thinking of Heather, Jill, and Casey.

and how the girls in the movie had looked so similar to them, even wearing the same outfits. He heard the doorbell ring upstairs. His mother shuffled to the door, opened it, and projected admiration of the costumes she saw. Levi looked at Gabriel, pale and gleaming with fluid. He imagined explaining Gabriel's death to his mother, to the police, to Gabriel's parents, to his sister,

to the former employees of Circuit City. He rose to head for the stairs. But instead, his astonished body carried itself to the back of the TV, plugged the cords back into the wall, and sat back down on the sofa. He picked up Dorothy's remote and pressed shuffle. Disc 7 played, The Blair Witch Project, The Mother of Found Footage, the scariest movie Levi had ever seen until tonight. He clapped his hands.

The room went dark. Chewy leapt under the couch next to him. They waited for discate to come back on. When it did, the camera was speeding through a dark cemetery, shaking violently, as if the operator was running at full speed. There was a cool blue filter over the lens. Moonlight lit the path between rows of headstones. The subject of the shot was the dark silhouette of a chocolate golden doodle. A tag hanging from its red collar jingled throughout the graveyard as it ran from the

camera. Next to Levi, Chewy Wind. Levi rested a shaky hand between his dog's ears. He moved his other hand slowly and furtively, as if the movie was watching him. He grabbed the remote and pressed disc one. The display across the room lit up with, no disc. He pressed disc two. No disc. He pressed Disc 3, then disc 4, no disc. Disc 5, 6, and 7? No disc. Tears filled his eyes. On the screen, the dog changed directions maniacly as the camera gained ground.

Levi pressed eject. The display read error. He pressed power. Error. He tried to stand and was choked by the collar of his shirt. He twisted his neck a look at his shoulder. The fabric of his clothes stuck to the sofa as if welded the cushions. On the TV, a wooden bench came in frame.

The boards were glowing orange like the hot burners of a stove top. There was a figure sitting perfectly still at one end of the bench. The dog darted to the right and out of the shot. Chewy leapt from the couch and bounded up the stairs. The camera left the dog and slowly pushed in on the bench. A wax statue sat with its left arm on the armrest, just as Levi sat on the sofa. It was cream-colored with long pants and a t-shirt. The moonlight shone over tiny indentations on the face that could have been peach fuzz.

The orange luminescence filled the basement as the bench emitted a soft, heat-conducting purr. Liquid wax leaked from the bottom of the bench. The hips of the statue collapsed. Levi felt his ears save like melting ice cream. He looked down and saw his midsection being swallowed by the microfibers of the couch. The feet of the statue rose high above the seat of the bench, and Levi's legs did the same, slowly eaten by the cushion beneath him. Soon all that was left of the statue and of Levi were shoulders and a head,

the eyebrows dripping onto the cheeks like tears. The screen went black. From behind Levi came two claps. The lights on the clapper lit up. The lights turned on. Levi saw the reflection of his face and neck on the TV screen. Hands clapped again, and the lights went out. Scattered claps began to fill the air building to a resounding applause.

The clapper lit up and the lights flashed on and off. Behind him, ten people stood. Brian, Kelvin, Casey, Jill, and Gabriel, all standing next to the actors who had played them in the film. They held hands and smiled as they took a synchronized bow. The darkness came and went in strobes. Levi watched his face melt away in flashes until he saw nothing but blackness. The applause stopped abruptly and the lights remained on. The figures behind the couch disappeared.

The phone in Heather's room rang. Footsteps walked to the kitchen, stalled for several moments, and then came down the stairs. Levi's mother cried into her cordless. Her jeans blue and high-waisted. Her hair blonder and shorter than her daughters. She saw Gabriel's clammy corpse and nearly collapsed. She blubbered into the phone like Drew Barrymore in the iconic opening scene of scream. Then she hung up and dialed 911.

She searched every room of the basement and found no one. Then she went upstairs. Inside the DVD player, the disc and slot two glowed green from the light of the scanner. Kujo, the 1983 adaptation of Stephen King's bestseller about a rabbit dog on a killing spree. Chewy would have barked if he was in the room. He loved this movie. He always rooted for the dog. Halfway through the film, Levi's mother came back downstairs and cried with her face and her hands as paramedics removed Gabriel's body.

After they left, she searched Heather's in Levi's rooms again. She went back upstairs. The movie ended. Dorothy made a whirring and clicking sound, and her display set Disc 4. Jody Foster ran through foggy woods as crickets chirped around her. Levi will call this the best scary movie of all time. The only horror movie to ever win best picture. The Silence of the Lambs played from beginning to end.

Just as the movie ended, Heather and Chewy came downstairs. Jill's blood still covered Heather's neck and chest. She looked at Levi's bedroom door. She couldn't bring herself to look for her brother. She had seen enough people go still tonight. Warring and clicking came from. from the shelf of the entertainment center, Levi's DVD player lit up with the words,

Disc 8. She sat on the edge of the coffee table and watched the screen. A girl in jeans, cowboy boots and a leather vest, sat inside an empty movie theater. The girl was beautiful, blonde, bloodstained, and crying, just like Heather. She sat at the center of the theater. Her green eyes glued to the screen.

Eight fingers appeared around her neck. and she was strangled from behind. Heather felt a tight grip around her throat. She leaned forward and clawed at the invisible force crushing her windpipe. Falling to her knees, she crawled toward the screen. She ripped the DVD player off the shelf and the screen went black. Her lungs filled with air. She caught her breath and stood up.

The electronic home of the television filled the room. She held the DVD player high above her head and smear. smashed it into the carpet. She stomped on it with the heel of her boot. Chewy barked at the ceiling. Inside the DVD player, every disc shattered, except for one. For your final story this evening, grieving her grandfather's burial, a woman crawls into an igloo for solace, only to find out she isn't alone.

As the walls close in, she must make the most difficult decision of her life. Creepy presents, inside the igloo, written by A.M. Sims and narrated by Nicole Goodnight. Mary trudged through her yard as the sun rose, dragging her boots through the deep, ice-crested snow. The wind slept back at her face when she looked back at her house to make sure her daughter wasn't following her. She loved Isabella, but the girl was a Velcro child, and Mary needed a moment alone. With the coast clear, she hurried to the back of the yard. tucked between two pine trees was an igloo that the neighbor kids built. She bent down to look through the frozen opening.

It was built for kids, but Mary was thin enough that she could squeeze inside. She got down on her hands and knees, but she was still too tall, so she lay flat on her stomach. She stuck her hands out in front of her like a swimmer, then shimmied forward. The packed snow forming the tunnel into the igloo scraped along her jacket and fell down her back, melting into her flesh. There was no changing her mind once her waist was inside. The space was too tight to turn around. When her hands reached the edge of the tunnel, she hooked her fingers and pulled while she inchwormed her body inside.

The igloo was smaller than she expected. From the outside, the top rose to her elbows, but inside was dark and shallow. The walls were thick, and thick meant heavy. You kids didn't build this very well, Mary said. Her voice slapped against the snow and thudded back at her. She maneuvered into a sitting position, her head bent forward as her hair scraped the ceiling, causing an icicle to fall. If she stuck her legs down the tunnel, she had a little more space. Her brain was already failing to form an escape plan

once she was done hiding from the world. Mary took her gloves off and dug her fingers into the snow. The igloo blocked the wind, but it wasn't much warmer inside. Her teeth chattered, echoing in the space as if hundreds of teeth were falling down in an icy cave. She shivered, but she didn't care that she was cold. At least she was feeling something. A blackness sat heavy in her chest, so she reached her arms out to make sure

there were walls and she wasn't actually falling into nothingness. She twisted, running her fingers along the pack snow, covering her legs in a white dusting. She relished in the vibrating pain as the cold sank deeper. An old but familiar voice asked her what she was doing there. Mary jumped, smacking her head on the ceiling and breaking a layer of snow off. The frozen wall to her left glistened as the impression of a person began to form. It was a humanoid shape with no clear features, like looking at a plastic doll before a face was painted on. But only one person called her Mur, and that was her grandpa, who was dead. With a heavy crunch, the snowman popped out, filling what little space was left in the igloo. Mary was nose to frozen nose with the figure.

Grandpa? She whispered. The voice repeated the question. How are you, but you're... she stammered. He waved her off with an icicle hand as a flurry of rancid snowflakes hit her. He told her that states of life and death were just semantics. But he was dead. They buried him yesterday. She'd watched his stainless steel casket with the point-setta wreath-tapper slide down the frozen dirt walls with a hole in the hole. She had watched until a layer of wintry mix covered it. That was when the left side of her chest broke and her heart was replaced with the black hole her grandpa now resided in.

He regarded the igloo asking who had built it. He ran his frosty fingers along the wall, causing a blizzard to swirl around the space. I hope it wasn't you. I showed you how to build a better igloo than this. Mary wanted to run back to her house, where her parents and all seven of her mother's siblings were currently in her kitchen, along with her husband and daughter. But the igloo wasn't big enough for her to turn around, especially with a complete snowman blocking the tunnel. She considered screaming for help, but that required a lungful of air, and she hadn't taken a full breath since Grandpa died on New Year's Day. Well, am I talking to myself? he asked.

locking his white snowball eyes on her. Tears froze to her eyelashes. I miss you, she managed to eke out. He nodded an acknowledgment. Another flurry of snowflakes spun through the space, then sucked into Mary's body making her bones quiver. She shimmied down, sticking her feet down the tunnel so she could lie flat on her back.

Grandpa, her real, grandpa, was in a hole about the same size as her igloo hideaway. He was surrounded by even more snow and ice. She tucked her hair. up underneath her head as a pillow, then closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. He gave a little chuckle that sounded like shattering ice. Grandpa was in the same pose, albeit with a silk pillow and a silk-lined coffin. Her frozen eyelashes started to melt.

You didn't even want silk! She screamed into the snow around her. You wanted to be cremated! Tears poured down her cheeks, frozen to salty icicles, and fell into the blackness. Grandpa had one request when doctors told him the blood infection was going to kill him. He didn't want to be buried. And because Mary was too weak to stand up to her aunts, who demanded a proper burial in a stainless steel casket,

now Grandpa was locked in a box that wasn't even going to disintegrate for him to be one with the earth eventually. He told me that he never wanted to be trapped in frozen ground. But Mary's aunts were quite persistent. I should have stopped them, Mary cried. A hard pile of snow broke off of the roof and hit Mary's face. Warmth spread across her left cheek. She turned and watched the white frost turned black as she bled into the snow. The sky was visible through the crack for a brief moment before the light was sucked away.

He told her that she was a good kid, adding in secret that she was indeed his favorite. The snow wall over the tunnel shifted. How am I supposed to raise Isabella when I couldn't even help you? She asked. The glacial enclosure contracted as a little. her grandpa lay down next to her. The crack smashed shut. Most of Mary's body was iced to the ground. When she tried to lift her arm, the wall to her left squeezed in. If she squirmed, the walls condensed. He instructed her to take care of Izzy, patting her hand and leaving a pile of snow on her arm.

The walls were going to give out, and Mary knew she would be awake and well aware of what was happening. She would suffocate and suffocate slowly under the weight of the poorly made igloo. She realized Grandpa was in the same position. buried under six feet of dirty frozen snow in a graveyard instead of being released into the wind over the prairie as he wanted mary stopped squirming what was the point of trying to escape she closed her eyes and would just wait to be crushed it's what she deserved she chose to crawl into the shoddy iglo she literally squished herself into the makeshift ice coffin maybe the crushing weight would feel comforting for a few seconds after feeling empty then she heard the small voice of her

daughter calling outside. Her instinct was to answer, but her voice hardened in her throat as she heard her call out again. Isabella doesn't need an ice mother, Mary whispered. Her grandfather's parting words were that if she were gone, her child would carry the same pain that she had. She turned to look at him, but all that looked back was a dirty pile of snow. No, she couldn't let that happen. In here, baby, Mary called. Isabella's voice was closer. Inside the igloo. Little feet crunched through the snow, then the air shifted inside the igloo. Isabella yelled down the tunnel asking her what she was doing. Mary knew what she had to do.

She had to keep her daughter away from the hollow pain. Crawl in here. Isabella argued that she said igloos weren't safe. Trust me. Come in here. Mary felt her daughter crawl up the tunnel, wiggling over Mary's frozen legs. Isabella was so warm that Mary wondered if the walls would melt with the heat. She asked her why she looked like a snowman.

Snuggle in here, baby. Isabella curled up between Mary and the snow pile. She tried to lift Mary's arm around her, but Mary's arm was frozen to the ground. A large sheet of snow toppled down, cutting off the tunnel. Isabella whined, but Mary cooed her. It's okay, baby. I want to show you how much I miss Grandpa. The snow began to collapse around them.

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