Creepy - The Three Sister Festival

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

The Three Sister Festival***Written by: EM Otero and Narrated by: Rissa Montanez***Feral***Written by: J.D. Carlile and Narrated by: JV Hampton-VanSant***Anaphylaxis***Written by: Christopher David Adkins***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.

No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastures and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Hey, everyone. Hope you've all been doing as well as you can.

I've been hard at work trying to tie up some loose ends and getting a little bit more used to having what most people would consider a traditional job. Sure, working at a radio station might not exactly have the same interest or appeal to anyone in 2026 versus 1996. But hey, I've always been a little behind the curve anyway. If that's even a thing. I guess I've come to the mindset that we all take on things we take on when we're ready for him. Unless that's how it seems to work out for me. Some of you may know I practiced Brazilian jiu-jitsu as a hobby,

and there were times I used to think, man, I wish I'd started this in high school, even though that wouldn't have even been an option. But then I realized that I wouldn't have been mentally prepared to get my butt kicked all the time. For podcasting. I started podcasting well before Creepier's Small Town Horror because I finally felt like I had something to say. Granted, I'm still waiting for the time when what I have to say feels important or intelligent,

but I've also found patience as the ears tick on. As far as working in radio or radio station, I honestly kind of like it. Sure, the industry's long past its heyday, but because of that, I'm literally surrounded by history. And I'm not just talking about the Eddie Grave stuff I played for you a little while back. There's literal storage rooms here filled with things that people forgot about not long after they happened. I can't wait to get into him a little bit. A lot of them seem like old Orson Welles plays that I think you'll really dig. But I need to spend a little more time sorting through them for that.

Anyway, let's get... Oh, crap, the patrons. Can't forget the patrons again. So, quick thank you to new patrons. John Hockenberry, Heather Kentor, A. Hawk, Alexandria Ponce, Richard Wright, Kelly Schmidt, Brandon Messinger, Mack Smith, Twisted Fox, and Tony Blanchard. Find out how you can get rewards like immediate access to, I don't know, something like

2000 Patreon exclusive stories by checking out the donation tiers at patreon.com slash creepypod. Okay, on with the show. First up, a travel vlogger visits the secluded town of five streams to film its quaint local celebration, rumor to have pagan undertones. What begins as a harmless exploration turned sinister with something as simple as a carved pumpkin. From writer E.M. Otero and narrated by Rissa Montanez, creepy presents the Three Sister Festival. I have a travel vlog about small towns. Every single one seems to have its own strange, defining thing. Some have the giant yarn ball or good high school football teams. Others have unique food and histories.

But the small, quaint town of Five Streams has a truly unique festival. Most towns have some kind of fall fest. It's a big thing for rural towns. They sell corn, crafts, apple cider, confections, and all that. Only, I have heard some strange things about this town. Things that don't add up. The Three Sisters Festival sounds like a typical fall fest with indigenous undertones, but a person who used to live there contacted me claiming they had observed yearly satanic,

sacrificial rituals. I told this person, Satanists like the ones in movies, aren't a thing. There were no secret cabals of black-robed individuals sacrificing virgins to befomit or Beelzebub. This Five Streams expats said, If it's not satanic, then it's something worse. And by interest peaked. They're insistent that they observed a sacrificial ritual And I feel even if it was symbolic,

It would still be an interesting vlog piece. Urban legends, accusations of the paranormal and other strange activity Are things that move a location to the top of my list for visits. An hour later, I book an Airbnb, have a route laid out on my GPS and I pack bags. After all, if I want to be there for the fest, I have to leave soon. It started five days ago, and I want to find out all that I can. The first thing I notice as I leave Binghamton and head north on Route 12

is that the usual urban sprawl of even small cities falls away drastically. There isn't a gradual decline. There is a single hill that, when I drive over it, transports me to another world. There is a rundown bar called David's Saloon that, that has Confederate and Nazi flags displayed. And further down the same street, the buildings look bombed out. And they have sat empty for decades. The folks sitting out front smoking tell me these derelict buildings are inhabited.

Being a travel vlogger, I see a lot of neglected places. The in-between, I'll call them. Places like between couch cushions or the space between the stove and the countertop. These locations are the cracks in society, where all the dirty, unwanted, and forgotten things end up. There are more than most people think, and I like to include them. It's a part of travel, and often these places have a history of their own, and occasionally there will be a diamond worth pointing out.

I will have to check out this history for this other one. I have noticed, though, the in-between places may not have a post office, a fire station, or even a school, but you can bet they have a dollar general. As I enter Shenango County, the in-between changes from derelict buildings to sprawling farms, which is far more pleasant on the eyes. I drive through a town that looks like something out of a hallmark movie and see a sign. Five streams, eight miles. The road rises and falls with the hills and valleys, giving me picturesque views.

The hills are ablaze with color so bright and beautiful it nearly brings tears to my eyes. Then I see it. A sign that reads, Welcome to Five Streams. As soon as I enter the town proper, I am met with a mixture of beautiful old homes, quaint storefronts, and a lot of pumpkins. On nearly every flat surface where there could be a pumpkin, there was.

Every step on the storefronts, along the sidewalks on pillars, randomly sitting around the park. Dozens, if not hundreds, of carved pumpkins. Tens fill the park in the center of the town, blocking off the roads that surround it. I park at the gas station, a small distance away, and walk over. I pan my camera over the entire scene, noting the pumpkins, the decorations, and all the folks selling their crafts and other things.

For a town that I almost certainly would classify as being an in-between town any other time of the year, five streams was hop in. I keep my camera going, capturing the essence of the place, knowing that I can just do a voiceover after. The park has a large fountain, a small gazebo state area where musicians were playing, and other small structures. Beyond this, it stretches from the center of town out and borders a fiery forest of old growth trees. Then I stop, noticing something peculiar about the pumpkins. The carvings are expertly done and not in the traditional way where someone cuts open the top, pulls out the guts, and puts holes in for eyes and a mouth.

This, like nearly all the other pumpkins I have noticed, is cut in relief. Where many of the others are caricatures and cartoonish faces, this one is different. It's a portrait done so well that it became plainly obvious that the face depicted in the orange flesh is mine.

The carver captured not only my mouth shape, the arch of my brow and my jawline perfectly. They even carved in the beauty spot on my cheek and my nose ring. The nose ring I bought just before I took the trip here. A woman gently touches my shoulder and asks me if I'm okay. I realize at that moment that the pumpkin I am staring at is on a table for a booth. I apologize for standing there transfixed, and I notice what the booth is for.

It's the Shenango County Historical Society, and the woman is selling books about the town's history. I buy the one about the Three Sisters Festival and about the town itself. I spend the next few hours talking to the locals about their wares and what the town means to them. Most of them are fourth or fifth generation residents and have no plans of moving. One thing I find quite surprising as well is that it is remarkably diverse. Usually, rural towns are a sea of white folks, but there is a representation of many, cultures, and even a kick-ass taco truck. Seeing my face on the pumpkin, though, never fully

leaves my mind, so much so that I avert my gaze from any of the other pumpkins as I pass them, and then a figure walks by, significantly taller than anyone else around them. Even if they didn't stand nearly seven and a half feet tall, the pumpkin on their head would make them stand out. I follow, camera on the looming figure, until he sits on the steps of a gazebo with a small table in front of him. The table has a simple wooden sign that says, the King of Gord's pumpkin carving. When the King of Gords, I presume, turns around, I take in the full view. The person is wearing a long coat with a simple black button-up shirt underneath, with dark orange stained jeans, and and workboots. The pumpkin head is a simple jackal lantern with a wide Cheshire grin,

and it cuts like a gash in someone's neck, and two triangle-shaped eyes. Even in the bright afternoon, I can't see the face inside. The eye and mouth holes are pits of darkness that almost seem to leak out and darken the world around them. Like a halo made of shadow, and within the umbra of this darkness sat the king of gourds silently the man plucks a pumpkin larger than my head with one hand and sets it on the table using a tool attached to his long fingers he carves the orange flesh is cut away quickly and in the flash of movement i realize that there are no tools in the man's hands he is carving with his fingernails the crowd hushes and watches in silent awe as the pale orange reveals a face.

I feel a pit in my stomach as the man turns the carving around to reveal it to the crowd. It's me again. It's my face. Except this time, I am in mid-cry of agony. My mouth is open wide, my eyes are shut, and I can feel the fear emanating from that pumpkin, like it's a focal point of an emotion summoning into reality. I look up at the King of Gords, his pumpkin face unreadable, but I know he sees me.

The crowd claps and cheers at the amazing feet of skill, but my blood pumps ice. I know that behind that pumpkin, the man smiles. I leave directly after, nearly running to my car. I keep trying to tell myself that I am reading way too much into it, that the face wasn't exactly mine, that it just happened to be similar. that he wasn't looking directly at me, that I was imagining his glare. I feel the goosebumps rise on my arms, and I decide I should check out of my Airbnb. To my surprise, it's an actual bed and breakfast, and I share a bathroom with three other guests. The room is cozy, but where the day before the pumpkin decor would have excited me,

now is just giving me the creeps. I can still see the man there, with his pumpkin. The pumpkin head and the radiant dark plate behind him, the penumbra darkening the day all around him. I decide to research the King of Gords and start with Google. Unfortunately, the name only brings up video game stuff with the character of the same name. I keep searching and decide to add pumpkin carving to the search. And that's when the videos emerge. The same man with a slightly different pumpkin on his head doing the same demonstration.

only this time when he turns the pumpkin around. It's not my face, but another person's. Then the person taking the video turns the camera around. And at first glance, I can tell that the carving is here. More videos of the carvings, all of them photorealistic likenesses of people. I head over to the local library to supplement the books I bought and to search for local history. Thankfully, there is an entire section. since the town historian is apparently very passionate.

I glance at one book from the Historical Society and search for anything about the King of Gords and actually find something. It opens with the preface that these accounts were taken from the Native Americans who reside in the town and whose ancestors were here before. The history starts with the falling of Attenzik, also known as Sky Woman,

who dug up a tree in the upper, world and saw water below. She fell in, but aided by animals, landed on the back of a giant turtle. Muscratz and other animals bring mud to her, and she creates earth. She then gives birth to twin boys, whose names are translated to Flint and sapling. Sapling was born normally, but Flint burst from Atahensic's side, killing her. Sapling created the sky and and sun with her body. But Flint created the dark of night to drown out the sun. So, sapling created the moon and stars, and had them protect the night. Then with the rest of her body, he planted her in the earth, and from that soil grew the three sisters, squash, maize, and beans.

There is an entire section on cultivation methods and the importance of these plants being planted together that I just skim. Pages pass, and I find what I am looking for. This story is only told by the natives of the Five Streams Valley. Flint, angry and jealous of sapling, steals part of Sky Woman's body, and grows his own dark versions of the three sisters. Cultivated in darkness and fed with hate, Flint's grotesque monstrous children are born.

The farmer of black corn that prays of black corn that prays of, on gluttony, the uncontrollable shadow of the bean vine that spreads when you're not watching, and the oldest sibling, the King of Gords. I skip the entries of the first two and go right to the King of Gords. The most powerful of the three, also the easiest to appease. Given bribes of land, bibles, and offerings, the King of Gord spends most of the year sleeping, fat on the gifts of others. Then every year he returns, wanting more and more.

I knew legends like this could be very regional, but one that is limited to only this valley is exceptionally strange. I walk back to the bed and breakfast, going over the notes I have taken on my phone, when I nearly step on something. I barely miss it, but being someone whose nose is always in their phone, I have exceptional peripheral vision. The object I nearly stepped on as a small pumpkin the size of a softball. It's strange that it is left in the middle of the sidewalk.

So I pick it up to find a new home for it when I noticed that it's carved. Not like a standard jack-o-lantern, but in relief. I turn it fully around to see the carving in its entirety and drop the pumpkin to the ground. A crack forms from the ball, bisecting the aspect. carved into the flesh. It looks up at me, and I meet the eyes. My eyes, sculpted in orange. I walk away quickly, trying not to think about the small pumpkin that is now broken on the sidewalk. I can't help but glimpse another pumpkin resting on a person's steps leading to their house. My face again, and this time it looks as if I am pleading for mercy from someone looming over me.

I keep walking, but I keep feeling the gaze of the surrounding pumpkins. Every door has one next to it, standing guard. Each porch has a row lined up like a firing squad, and on each of them I see my countenance in a rictus of pain or horror. It has to be a trick of the mind, a cruel form of peridolia where, instead of me seeing faces in the whirls of bark, It's making me hallucinate my face into every pumpkin. They're everywhere.

I count them only to stop after reaching 20. I see them not only in the typical large orange pumpkin, but in the white ones, the small multicolored ones, and in squash. When I get back to the bed and breakfast, I notice a pumpkin at the edge of the walkway that has obviously been there for a while because of the dark spots growing along the carved face.

It had to have been there for weeks, and when I get closer, I see a face carved into it. I freeze about five feet away, unable to look at anything else. The face carved into the pumpkin, which was obviously carved long before my arrival, is my face. How could this have been there so long? I'd never heard of this place or even known anyone from here. I remember the King of Gords turning that one pumpkin around, showing off my face on it. I thought it was some trick, that he made a pumpkin so generic that he wanted to spot someone that was blank enough for him to create a likeness with just a few quick swipes.

This was impossible, though. How could he know? I hadn't talked to anyone before coming here. I walk inside and ask the owner about the pumpkin, and they confirm it has been there for nearly a month. I returned to my room with slow, shuddering steps, and when I open the door, I spot something that shouldn't be there.

On my bed is a pumpkin the size of a basketball staring at me, with all too familiar eyes. The manager wasn't really concerned. She said that the king brings his pumpkins everywhere and leaves them for all. He is very generous that way, and if it really is my face on the pumpkins, it is a significant sign, since that is how the offering is chosen. The wording of choosing an offering gave me flashes of human sacrifice and other dark deeds. I try to pester her more about this whole offering thing, but she blows me off, saying that it's just a festivity and that I should watch it.

The next day, I do more research and interview people about the town within the festival. Only I am distracted. Every pumpkin glares at me with my face. While the concept of having my face carved days and weeks ahead of time was beyond terrifying to me, everyone else in the village thought of it as almost a kind of divination. After talking to nearly two dozen people, I find out that this King of Gords is a local artist. and I narrow my research on him.

The person isn't a tall, brooding figure, but a normal-looking guy with glasses, a trim beard and a ponytail. He looks like a cool professor at a college. This didn't align with the hulking seven-and-a-half-foot figure I witnessed. As if summoned by my thoughts, I see the orange of his pumpkin head towering over everyone as he walks, just walking through the crowd like a shark through a school of him.

fish. I am drawn to him, a morbid fascination that came with my journalistic instincts. As I get closer, he stops the gazebo, which is already filled with my likeness in orange. Then, as of sensing my presence, he turns, at first with his pumpkin head. It's disconcerting, because it's not how a person wearing something on their head would move. He moves like it's a part of his body, like it's his actual head. I still can't get over how the normal man in that photo somehow turns himself into this looming, massive figure. I stare into the void of the pumpkin's face, unable to see anything in that dark, even in the bright of the early afternoon sun. Then I see he is cradling something in his massive long arms. Another pumpkin. With my

face on it. This one almost looks exultant in its countenance of horror, like she is seeing God, and is both amazed and terrified. I don't say a word and walk away, back into the crowd. The entire time I do, I feel those empty sockets staring at me. I spend the rest of the night writing my script for my vlog and narrating over some videos I took before uploading them to my socials. Comments roll in about how quaint the town is and how beautiful it is.

I don't talk about the pumpkins that have my face and I try not to include any footage of them. I'm not exactly sure why, but it doesn't feel okay. The sound of a truck with exhaust issues wakes me in the morning and I am pleasantly surprised to see the explosion of my socials. I breeze through the comments and I'm quite happy with it until I see one message that simply says,

leave now. It gives me the gut-bubbling anxiety I try to suppress. I know I can't leave. This is my livelihood. And I built up the entire trip and the special Halloween traditions they do here. So I ignore it and after breakfast, I head back out into town. Immediately, it feels different. It's Halloween and the anticipation is palpable. Kids roam giggling about the costumes they're going to wear, and adults are grabbing the

last-minute candies from the store to appease the little extortionists. The smell of fall, natural and artificial, combingles in the center of the town. Pumpkin spice, coffee, roasted almonds, moldering leaves, damp earth, and of course, the smell of freshly carved pumpkins. People crowd around one end of the park, and I know what, who is there? I am pulled there, not by the crowd or even by my own morbid curiosity, but seemingly by a will outside my own. Enthralled, I moved to the front of the crowd until I'm, I am at the edge, watching as the king of guards cuts into a pumpkin. Instead of carving tools, he is using the claw-like nails of his far too long, off-colored fingers.

I am caught in a trance, hypnotized by the movements of his hands and the falling orange flesh. It gathers in ribbons around him, and even though his focus is on the pumpkin in front of him, I can still feel the abyssal gaze of those empty pumpkin eyes. Then he slowly turns the pumpkin around and I see myself. I'm not surprised or even afraid at this point. It's just a simple small-town tradition. I am the offering. And what could that mean?

It's the 21st century. Things like human sacrifice don't happen. People can't just. just disappear with all these witnesses and not make the news. My gut clenches, and I feel fear boiling in my stomach like an overflowing pot. I take a step back, but the crowd's arms are on me and push me towards the king of gourds. He gently grabs hold of my arm and says that I have to go with him. The voice is soft and distant, like spoken at the bottom of a well,

and I don't hear a word of what he is saying. That's when I see that the woods behind him have shifted and changed over his shoulder. Where there had been rolling hills of colorful trees, there was now a dark, desolate place where the trees looked long dead, covered in vibrant leachin. A castle looms over the woods, a monument of despair. I force myself free and run. But the king is too fast.

grabbing me before I have a chance of escape. The massive clawed hands descend on me, knocking me to the ground. Those long fingers wrap around my ankle, and he drags me from the park, from civilization into this realm. The air changes from an unseasonably warm October day to cold, dark, and damp.

Rotting pumpkins cover the ground on either side of the path I am being dragged on, and they each have an unfamiliar face carved in great detail, now distorted by rot. The aching thought of how many times this had happened before flows through my head. I look back, thinking about my escape, but the entire town of five streams vanished.

I have only been dragged a hundred yards, but there was nothing for miles behind me. The thin and porous veil of Sowan has closed here. The path turns from packed dirt to stone as we arrive at the castle. I kick at his powerful hand, and those desolate pumpkin eyes turn on me. He picks me up as if I am just a doll, standing me upright and pushes me up the stairs and into the massive wooden doors. The smell of rotten meat fills my nose, and I nearly vomit from the powerful odor.

I enter, forced forward by this strange looming figure, and too afraid to run. As I enter the room within the castle, I notice the number of tables and chairs. The space is a massive hall, meant for the feasting of hundreds, but each seat is the resting place of a long, rotted corpse. And on the table sits an entire feast of rotten food.

Then my eyes are drawn to something at the end of the table, auspicious, because of how high it is raised, but unnerving in its aberrant form. Only as the king sits upon this throne, I recognize what it is made of. Skulls and bones intertwined in a morbid lattice, fortified by petrified pumpkin vines. I sweat and my mouth goes dry at the thought that dozens,

if not hundreds of bodies, had been torn apart to create this horrible thing. The eyes, the eyes of the king of gourds now glowed with a radiant darkness and he raised his hands in a gesture of exaltation the desiccated bodies around the table all shift accompanied by grotesque pops and cracks to look at me chair scrape against the stone floor

and the corpses rise I am frozen, my feet unable to move, and my jaw agape. The King of Gorge chuckles and says in a voice made of bark, go ahead and scream. No one can hear you here. And next, a series of dated entries were counts of roommate undergoing a quiet unnatural transformation, blurring the line between fear and disbelief. As the days pass, observation gives way to horror, and the narrator's certainty about everything begins to collapse.

From writer J.D. Carlyle, and narrated by J.V. Hempton, Van Sant, Creepy presents. Farrell. The 23rd of June. My roommate began to grow fur that day. That terrific day, the last oblivious day of my life. No, I suppose I'll have to slow myself. and do not dismiss my tortured writings just yet as disturbed ramblings. You may do that, if you wish, later, after you're fully convinced of my insanity.

The fur, coarse, barbed, and deep black, I did not at first see on him, but rather in the manner of a bundle of strands behind the bathroom counter. They were quite prickly when I picked them up off the ground. I had to shake them off like a piece of tape. I thought it was strange for a moment. But a few short minutes later, I had forgotten it for the rest of the evening and night. Strangely, I commend my blindness, for it allowed me my fickle happiness for just a few days longer. The 27th of June. I was beginning to suspect something quite strange was happening to him by then,

and my sympathy had not yet turned to fear. Howard was a good man to many, though personally, I never became deeply familiar with his nature or memorized his many mannerisms. He spent most nights with friends at one odd place or another, though those friends were often different. He was never adverse to striking up a hollow conversation with me, but I must admit I seldom feigned interest. Though I suppose his irritating endless charms did not go unused.

For while I brought it away with my creations in the quiet seclusion of my room, he, charismatic and youthful, was climbing a ladder at some large, hogwash business-speak institution? Howard was sharp, and he found the rungs had a nice grip. He now, however, in the shadow of the summer sun, was secluding himself to darkness, drapes drawn, and only exited that old door, now terribly unused, in the dark hours of the morning. The creek of opening and the harsh kitchen light spilling in through the frighteningly large gap below my door never failed to wake me. Many nights, he would rummage through the pantries, and the following day, I would find it a true mess. Countless packages, cans, and jars were opened and strewn about,

with only small pieces of food actually taken. There was also, on more than one occasion, a vile substance in the kitchen sink, giving off a detestable scent. There was much more fern now as well. He did not attempt to hide it. The 2nd of July. This was the date on which sprang the beginning of my beliefs pertaining to the insanity of either I or the world. Now, I suppose sprang is a bit too, over-excited. It was more of a terribly gradual affair, so God could be sure I had ample time

to bask in the terrible nature of it all. He sure seems to enjoy such things. I found that by then, I was sequestering myself away more often and for longer than Howard himself, because the truth was, I feared him. The state of things had moved from notable peculiarities to personal fits of existential nightmares. Howard was changing into what? Well, that's what I feared most. I was sure, however, of one thing. It was unnatural, terrifying, and surely, deeply evil. My evidence consisted of this. Morpher, of course, appeared in the the bathroom. Howard had been shaving it madly, however, the dark strands began to stop appearing

on the first. Secondly, and more terrifying, there was a growl, low, always rumbling from behind his door. It happened sometimes in the day and always in the night. It was distinctly unhuman. There was also an even quieter noise in the night, itself muffled by the growl. It sounded like weeping, or at least an imitation of it. It continued relentlessly throughout those endless nights, in which I began to fear for my safety. My room seemed to be in a cold pocket on a hot summer night. Every creek of the floorboard, every stir of a nightbird, my heart sank into a cold pool. It was torture of the cruelest kind.

The 5th of July I was quite sure my life couldn't get much worse than the hell I was already living in every time the sun came down. I would imagine, always, his brain being swallowed up by way. ever terrible affliction had befallen him. And he would smell me, reeking of sweat and terror, deciding then what he would have for dinner. But he never did. And I managed to avoid any sight of the man

and kept myself out of his sight. At least, for the most part. The next part of my collection is utterly hazed, held behind a wall of fuzziness, I know now that what I believed to be true then was surely correct. But at the same time, the line between dreams and reality was fading, and I could barely differentiate the two. Their horrors were quite similar. This event occurred one night between the second and the fifth. I was delirious enough to work up the curses.

to risk a peek through the crack in my door, while Howard was stepping across the floorboards in the night. I had talked myself into it over several hours, and was now sitting on the edge of my bed, waiting for it to come. Time had passed while I sat there, though how much I was wholly unsure. Finally, however, in some dark hour of the morning, what I feared most, what I knew, would occur, did. Howard's door swung open lazily on rusty hinges, squealing into the dusty quiet. My door was slightly ajar, just an inch, and in that crack was my cold brown eye twitching as it observed the night. At first, I could see naught but black, and contemplated abandoning. my task entirely, as I was not sure my heart could endure the pace.

Suddenly, however, my eyes adjusted by a small degree, telling me there was no return. His door had been opened completely, directly across from mine, and I was staring directly into it. The silence was terrible. It turned every sound in. to an explosion in an echo chamber. I looked into that deeper black for a time outside myself.

The feeling of which I was becoming strangely accustomed to. There was no movement at all for a long while. At last, I noticed something that had always been there. Breathing. Rough,

labored, and barely loud enough to hear, here, even in dead silence. My heart stopped for a significant time after I began to hear it. I could not dwell, though, for Howard decided it was time to leave. The silhouette, suggesting the figure of a man whom God had since abandoned, shuffled in the shadows across from me. My skin clenched and sweat, both hot and cold, ran down my face. The floorboards creaked beneath his feet as he stepped outside his door, and the low breathing grew louder. There was no turning back for me.

Closing the door would bring about a sound that he might pounce upon. I had a terrible thought, that lock doors would, in all likelihood, not pose a problem. not pose a problem for him. As his figure became clearer to my view, the more of its awfulness was revealed to me. He had shrunk and developed a terrible hunch. His face was in a peculiar shape, more twisted than that any disease might give you.

He had also grown thinner, but in what manner I could not see clearly at the time. Something sharp and straight poked out behind him, and while he stood in front of me, I saw him attempting to stuff it down the seat of his pants. All my terrible suspicions I could only hope to be untrue before were proving themselves to me before my eyes. Howard clumsily put on a cloak, clambered awkwardly out of view and left. I noticed then, as my heart settled yet still pained in my chest, there was another piece of the silence I had not noticed.

The smell of meat, raw meat, hangs in the air. The scent was small, but nauseatingly pungent. The 7th of July Of the accuracy of the following events, I am utterly unsure. Perhaps I was in a terrible dream, and in it I remain as I scrawl these horrific things. That belief is what I cling to. This day, the seventh, contained the minute in which I was first forced to gaze upon the beast in daylight. To my surprise and horror, it did not burn ashes in the sun.

I had imagined any real beast would, especially one that secluded itself so often in darkness. My greatest hope before that day had been that the monster would make a mistake one day, dissolve in the face of the light, and I would be free. but what I have learned now is that hell and destiny have no escape. I had some food and drinks stocked in my room over the last week or two, but I had run dry and had gone without either since the evening two days prior. The pain had been slowly growing as my body noticed the lack of these things, and it had gotten to be purely unbearable.

By then, the stench of meat had wafted into my room and lingered there, smelling even more foul in the harsh heat. However, even the rotten stench of this meat caused me to salivate. The beast had been gone for some time, which was completely strange. He would never before trek out during the day, and I assumed he must be prowling in the shadows somewhere. He could return at any moment, pounce and rip me to shreds before I even knew what happened. But the cloud of pain obscured my thoughts. I opened the door only slightly at first, similar to how I had when I had looked upon the beast at last.

My twitching eye darted around but saw nothing. I pushed the door further open and jumped at the creek. Though nothing but me was here, I still crept as if a resting bear was asleep beside me. I had managed to make no sound whatsoever, though I thought that you might be able to hear my heartbeat through my chest. The cabinets had already been torn open, and food was everywhere. So I looked around for things to take. I filled bottles of water at the sink and pocketed a few unopened cans before I stopped completely and instantly.

A noise at the door. A scratch. Many of them. The only thing moving was my heart, which was near bursting. The scratching turned to a clicking as the beast tried to twist the crystal handle. My eyes peeled away from the countertop and towards the door, though I did not want them to do so. My thoughts were perfectly black, but everything inside of me was screaming in terror. The beast's paw, at last, grasped the handle and turned it with some difficulty.

The door swung. I did not see it all at once, for the door was horizontal to me. Instead, it slowly revealed itself as it stepped inside. It was no longer hunched. Instead, it was reduced to crawling upon four limbs. Howard had become something trapped between human and dog. It was a true, true horror to behold. There was some skin left, but most had been replaced with smooth, inky black fur.

His face retained some human qualities in one of the eyes and part of the cheek, but the rest had been completely changed into the face of a devil dog. Its muzzle was covered with a cloth, that looked like it was torn from a dusty flannel workshirt. His body had also been changed, everything but one hand and one foot. He still wore clothes, but two of his limbs had turned fully into dog's legs,

and the claws were sharp. The unchanged parts looked disfigured, and they were darkened. I could not scream. I could only stare on as I wept, and the cold tears dripped off my frozen face. The beast had stepped slowly into the apartment. It turned to me and glared into my eyes, stopping my heart.

Its half-human face contorted into anger, and it growled at me. A guttural growl. I had my first thought then. I was going to die. But it did not approach. Instead, it made certain I was deathly frightened, turned, and walked in slow, unnatural strides to its room, claws clicking on the floor as it went. Sometime within the following months.

It is night as I write. And I have decided the date is unimportant. The years and months elude me. Everything that has happened within my life is slipping in and out of reality and memory. And it all feels a thousand years away, the future and the past. Earlier this morning, the beast had fully taken Howard, and its transformation had been finished. There was nothing left but the dog, the devil dog, frighteningly large with red eyes and teeth so long and sharp it was unnatural, even for a canine. Soon after,

an event too awful for this plane, too awful for my thoughts, and never to be recorded, took place on the third floor of the main offices of the company at which Howard once worked. In my life, I am constantly reminded of the lesson that happiness cannot exist without ignorance. I woke this morning feeling nothing. Perhaps my mouth was dry, and my arms were suffering from a low yet sharp throb, a symptom of the torn up skin on my arms. Other than that, however, there was little else. The dog was still coming in and out of the place all of the time,

but fear had faded into deeper tunnels of my mind. I believed for a time that nothing would ever come back, but I happened to learn quite soon that I was still capable of experiencing horror. I still avoided the dog, but no longer out of fear. Now it seems I avoided him on only the instinct to survive. Perhaps then, it was this lack of fear which made me do that terrible, idiotic thing. My hollow mind decided that the dog should be followed. After all, it left constantly, and only sometimes did it return with meat.

I should mention another change that has occurred since my last entry. The dog was no longer afraid to go out during the day. He did it before, yes, but now, whatever day it is, his outings are exclusively during the daytime. I suppose I was curious and had forgotten that curiosity leads to destruction. I crept out after it in the early morning when the sun had not yet broken through the slate gray sky. I never dared to come within ten feet of it. But that's not what my mind rested on.

I wanted to know, most of all, how it hit itself so well in the shadows, how it was able to go out every day and not attract the eyes and blades of everyone who came within range of smelling its rotten air. So, you can imagine my utter shock and horror when I came to find that it did not hide itself at all. It stepped onto the street and began to trot, like any laborer walking to work. The dog, this devil dog, so uniquely evil,

towering over most children and some small, smaller men, attracted no eyes from anyone but me. I followed the thing the entire way to its destination, a tall building that held some offices. But only once he entered did that final piece of slanted glass fit into place, shredding my chest in the process. Howard's old building. The workhouse for tie-werews. wearers wanting to die. I was, by then, beginning to feel that old dread seep into me,

desperately wanting to turn and return home. But something dragged me in there. Something wanted me to see it. I followed it up two flights of stairs and found myself in a large carpeted space, filled to the brim with white shirts and black ties shuffling about, and a low, sickening murmur echoing against the walls. It was behind a glass wall just in front of the entrance to the stairwell. The dog was standing in front of the glass. The dog charged into the glass, and it shattered completely. Some looked, some didn't.

Those who did had not looked for very long. The dog walked intently to the center of the room and began to wait. Soon after, the doors to the only two enclosed offices opened. Dogs came out. Devil dogs. One's fur was another deep black, and the others was silver. They came quickly to the center. and howled in unison. It was not a howl of man nor dog.

They wasted no time after their heads descended to look at each other once again. They all pounced on the man closest to them and killed them quickly. The crunch of bones that became brittle under their maw echoed throughout the space and endlessly in my mind. gallons of blood stained the carpet. They only took a few savage bites before moving to the next, and then the next.

One man, after dying, his neck an explosion of flesh, looked directly into my eyes with his glassy own as he lay upon the floor. Not one broke their gaze with their work. Not one screamed in fear nor pain. The only sounds that came were thumps of bodies on the floor and the growls of the devil dogs as they feasted. And finally, Dr. Martin Perry, a respected botanist returns from abroad with a mysterious fabled plant, and soon his behavior and very life begins to change. From writer Christopher David Atkins, creepy presents, anaphylaxis.

The death of Dr. Martin Perry, Ph.D. was remarked upon and mourned in many quarters. But most of all, his academic community at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He was a botanist by trade, profession, and passion. Wherever he went, he was remembered as a kind and forthright man who made valuable contributions. His specialty was carnivorous plants. But he'd done a bit of theorizing about xenobotany for NASA as well, and had advised dozens of doctoral candidates. While he was alive, he was a highly visible member of the University of Florida community, taking leading positions that he felt were of, in his own words,

a necessary ethical bent, a valued, important member of the University of Florida family, who brought a sense of honor and dignity to his position, which, of course, makes the particulars of his death so deeply unsettling. For some time before his death, Perry had been working on a new project which he disclosed very minimal details about, a new plant with fascinating qualities that grew in the treacherous reaches of Baltistan, a very isolated part of Pakistan,

which he had apparently read about in some esoteric material that had been deposited near to a hundred years earlier at the U.F. Library. He took a paid sabbatical to study it, with hopes to publish a paper on it, and spent some weeks traveling and staying, in the Pakistani city of Gligot at the beginning of 2010. Exactly what the plan was, taxonomically and chemically and so on, has yet to be determined. And no follow-up investigation was ever allowed by the university. More likely it was because word got out while later happened to Dr. Perry.

The events surrounding his death, which has led many to assume some things are too dangerous in the shadows, to have searching lights thrown upon them. What notes of Perry's that survive reference a chapter about the esoteric botany found in the 1896 volume of Culta de Gules by the Comte Gellet that was in the University of Florida's rare book collection. Evidently, the plant Perry was searching for

produced a nectar tray terrible that would grant prodise Malavu de la Vie cryptically described as On Arab sur la plateau de Lung Where Lung have problematically been understood To mean a vast area encompassing Tibet, Far Western China, and the Kashmir

Being the materialist that he was, Perry may have sought to debunk any mythical properties of the plant And explain whatever was, Tré Terrible, in purely naturalistic terms, While at the same time describing a heretofore forgotten piece, of Asiatic botany. But here the trail grows cold, because if he recorded how he triangulated exactly where to go and exactly what to find, it has not survived.

Perry came back stateside with a plant that he had indeed managed to acquire the last week of January 2010. He'd informed nobody of where he had been or what he had been doing. Where he was in Gilgut was not well remembered by locals there, and his past passport stamps showed nothing unusual, Orlando, Dubai, Karachi, and returning the same way. But immediately, his inner circle knew something was wrong. Many remarked that he was not even the same man. He seemed furtive, curt, short-tempered. When he returned, plant ready to cultivate and study, every witness that saw it agrees that it was a kind of grass that grew on a plot

in his backyard outside, not oddly inside, his greenhouse. It seemed to contain an overabundance of unusual crotonids which gave the individual blades a striking bright scarlet color, very much like blood. How he got it through customs is not known. One theory by law enforcement, what little information they're willing to give, was that he bribed the relevant officials, while others presupposed the grass looked totally harmless until he planted it, whereupon it acquired its morbid and unwholesome color. His neighbors soon noticed that Perry had seemed to have picked up some nameless ailment while traveling, or maybe right

after he returned. He looked and acted very unhealthy, quite really ill some mornings, like he'd been throwing up a lot, pale, listless, withdrawn. As the days went by, he seemed sicker and sicker. He canceled a spat of classes, saying he didn't. not feel well. But exactly why? Never. Thereafter, he was very rarely seen, staying indoors except in the morning when he would come out and look over that red grass, like a farmer looking over his prize crop. He stepped in it, more than one person noticed, so to test it, and when he did, the grass would spurt something, something red. The whole time he was walking with the shaky gate that got more and more unsteady every day.

So that near to the time he died, he looked from a distance like a lame old man. He had developed a cough that sounded wet and full of mucus, in between muttering to himself. Always wheezing, like he was always out of breath. Those that could hear it were sure whatever language he was speaking wasn't English. The way he dressed now is even more off-putting. He'd taken to wearing a large black overcoat, and only, only this particular overcoat to cover his entire body. In the last few days, he looked prematurely aged, fully 30 years older.

But worst of all, was his face. Thick veins and arteries, pulsing on his head, raised and livid, threatening to burst. And all the while there was a faint odor, always coming faintly from his house, strong to the point of being unbearable when Perry would come outside. What exactly the smell was like is a matter of some dispute. All agree it would hang in the air and be dispersed at the breeze, and all agree it was highly disagreeable. This went on for some weeks.

The neighbors watching Perry, mute, wearing that black overcoat that eventually looked disgusting from never getting cleaned, shambling around, coughing softly and mumbling to himself with the veins pulsing. First one and then another. as though independent of his heartbeat. It didn't take long for some talk in the neighborhood to coalesce about calling the authorities, and a community action group was formed. Because, tenured professor or not, Dr. Perry's behavior, sickness, and smelly house

were all clear and dangerous nuisances. Worse came. At night, the most terrible noises came from Perry's property, moaning and groaning and sometimes the sounds of pain. painful vomiting and retching. Some nights there was a pounding noise, like he was hitting the wall with his fist. Neighbors looking out the window swore that the patch of red grass seemed to glisten yearly in the moonlight, as though reflecting it back up to the sky. Then one evening, just as the sun was beginning to set, Perry took a trowel and dug up a small piece of the plot of the

red grass, scooping up something small and whitish, but a rather sickly shade, like sopping what tissue paper. With a shaky hand, he took a long, silvery needle from the pocket of his unkempt overcoat and pierced the thing that he had dug up. He fled back into his house, the noxious, indescribable smell following him, the thing that he had pierced gushing black, greasy fluid, and witnesses swore, making a horrible, high-pitched noise. A scream. After this, he had pierced, he had pierced, whatever it was, the neighborhood had enough, and the police were called at last. The policemen entered the house by force, as no one responded when they knocked and announced their presence. The entire cul-de-sac, and many from down the street gathered to watch,

but they would all be disappointed. The only thing the police would ever say they found was Dr. Martin Perry himself, dead, his corpse seeming to have undergone an amazingly rapid putrefugeful. That is the story that has been repeated, not a detail deviated ever since. Certainly something under a covered sheet was carried by a hazmat team, but not a soul saw what it was, or could have been. There were calls of alarm that the house had been contaminated with something. What that something was never got discussed publicly, but it was repeatedly inferred to be one of Perry's experience. experiments gone horribly wrong. Then there were a swarm of agents from a federal agency that would not give out its identity,

widely assumed to have been the EPA. But did the EPA drive armored cars and wear face masks? Whomever they were and whatever they found, whatever the police told them that they would find, if they found anything at all, has never been made public. Full in the face of Dr. Martin Perry's own stated desire to be buried with an orange tree sapling so that his body could nourish something beautiful and bountiful. He was cremated, and in urn fashioned to be the centerpiece at his well-attended funeral service.

This was a gauche, even heartless thing to do to the man that had done so much for the University of Florida over his long career. So why was it done? Even if whatever had killed him badly disfigured his body, they could have still had a closed coffin. but ashes were all the remained of the man. The ashes were scattered in a small little ceremony in the Ocala National Forest, and that was that. And just as Dr. Perry was reduced to ash, so was his house.

Very soon after he was declared dead, his house caught fire, burning the whole thing right to the ground. Nothing left, not even the yard or greenhouse. house, the whole half-acre, leaving behind a true eyesore, a charred crater, even a month after. They were repeated and harassing interviews from law enforcement of Dr. Perry's neighbors, colleagues, and his extended family, having no children of his own. All of them tried in vain to determine who, if anyone, would have a vested self-interest in the deliberate arson and destruction of Perry's house and his uncollected work. The fire marshal was, in the meantime, never able to determine a cause for the fire,

eventually worn out by nearly everything about this ongoing travail. The Homeowners Association voted to have the property paved over and turned into a small but convenient access road for golf carts, getting to the fairway on which the house sat, with a tasteful row of palmettos planted on either side. Now it is though the house never existed. the not quite secret wish of too many people who lived through this ordeal happily granted. The memory of what went on that strange season of 2010 is still fresh. The neighborhood, a gated community in suburban Gainesville, saw its property values plummet.

And many who were present for the decline in death of Dr. Perry moved away, leaving houses vacant in a down market for almost two years. Whatever really happened before and during and after can only be pieced together from several eyewitness accounts, all of which, to a one, are routinely hushed up by a vague lawsuit threatened by the University of Florida. Police records are sealed and are unlikely to ever be unsealed. Hospital files are very hard to request and be seen by the average person.

It is the word of powerful organizations against a handful of rattled rich people who would just assume the entire thing never be spoken of again. And so, maybe it never will be. But a few lingering facts persist, things that do not fit, that have undoubtedly kept many of the people who lived those awful nights and days up in the dark, small hours, when sleep, ruined by coincidences and unanswered questions,

remains elusive. It is true, maybe a little too true, that nobody saw Perry's corpse, and it is also true. Again, maybe a little too true, that the ashes scattered at his memorial smelled faintly of wood, smoke, and charcoal, and not human remains at all. Nobody questioned it, of course, because that would have been grotesquely insensitive, but many people thought it, and not a few whispered of it later. And though, of course, Perry's house no longer exists, the covered sheet. that they took out of it was never lifted. No autopsy report was ever released. No cause of death

given out except for heart failure, which Perry was not known to have had trouble with. Four months and then years afterward, neighborhood children frightened each other with tales of a boogeyman that shambled about the bushes, a monster that looked like a plant but walked like a man, with long, shaky arms that made weird and spooky noises. They were hushed up quickly by their parents, who exchanged nervous knowing glances. Very recently, a plaque was installed in a tasteful gap between two palmetos that hem in the access path where Dr. Martin Perry's house once stood. It honors him as a pioneer who fought racism and ignorance,

who stood for decency and kindness, and who made advances in his beloved field of botany, a role model to whomever he reached. It is easy enough to portray a man as a crusade. sating ethicist and brilliant scientist, far easier than it is to tell the truth, that he had lived out his final days, and maybe lives still yet, as a deformed, diseased, shambling monster, having found that terrible nectar that reveals prodigious marvels who wishes ever for a merciful death that will never, ever come.

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