Dr. Creepen's Dungeon - S2 Ep75: Episode 75: Sci-Fi Horror Stories

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

All of tonight’s stories were sent to me via email and are read here with the authors’ express permission.  First, we have ‘The Chronovisor’ by Irving Crane. This is followed by ‘Hindsight’ by Brian Martinez. Our penultimate tale of terror is ‘Experimentum Meum’ by James Colton. We round off proceedings with ‘Oblivion’s Call’ also by James Colton.

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Welcome to Dr. Creepin's Dungeon. Ah, science fiction. Nothing else quite takes us to the places that are far beyond human reach like sci-fi. Meeting loved ones in the past. A robot trying to destroy the Earth. An alien trying to destroy all humankind.

There are some sci-fi films we can watch a million times and still not get bored. Hopefully that'll be the same for tonight's four stories. Now, before we begin, as always a word of caution. Tonight's stories may contain strong language as well as descriptions of violence and horrific imagery. If that sounds like your kind of thing, then let's begin. The Chronovisor by Irving Crane. When you're bad, you get thrown in jail. When you're really bad, you get sent to prison.

When you're unspeakably bad, you get sent to maximum security like third. throw away the key. When you're the devil incarnates, well, nobody really knows what happens to you. Sometimes it's because they don't know what to do with you. Other times it's because they bury you so deep

that only a handful of people know where you are. I got a message from someone deemed to be the single most wanted man alive. And they got him. But he was still wanted even after he was behind bars. His prison

was basically an underground bunker with four or five layers of security clearance. If you don't have business there, you don't know it exists. He had his head down. The hair was blonde and long enough to make you question whether it was a boy or girl. The chin, with its scant beginning of salt and pepper, was the giveaway. He was clad in a special jumpsuit that looked like it could have been one or two sizes too big. This was by design. It was overloaded with sensors that perimeter alarms waited to bounce on.

I adjusted my round gold-rimmed glasses as I sat in the curved grey chair on my side of the barrier. There weren't any phone receivers for us, just holes drilled in the plexiglass. He lifted his head and I was somewhere between the two directions his eyes looked. I held my briefcase in my lap like some sort of shield. I was nervous about this meeting. And it couldn't quite place. Why? Mr. Amos McCarthy.

I said. My cadence almost suggested that I was asking a question. Here was the most wanted man in the world, and I was sitting across from him. The unshorn face bristled into a smile. Howdy, father, he said. I'd rather you didn't call me that, I said. He's still a man of the cloth on the inside, right?

"'What can I do for you?' I said. "'Strate to the point. I can respect that. "'Since you're looking to conserve your minutes, "'I better make sure you know who I am. "'I held up a Manila folder that was thick enough to be an encyclopedia. "'I began thumbing through it, Amos Delmar McCarthy. "'You're a household name across the country and across the Atlantic. "'You're wanted here in the U.S. for thousands of counts of slander, defamation,

leaking of and possession of classified information and intellectual property spanning all levels of government and private corporations, illicit surveillance and espionage. That's just here at home. You're also accused of framing the US for scores of accusations of espionage that have led to immense casualties among officials stationed at embassies around the world, and I stopped talking when I noticed how big his grin was getting. He looked like his skull might split in two horizontal. Pretty nice little resume I got there, eh? You requested a consultation with anyone who was a priest before they were a lawyer. That brings us to where we are now.

What can I do for you? First of all, you can slow your ass up a bit. Even if we trim all the fat, you're still going to be here a minute. I can see it in your eyes. You don't want none of the bad fish smell I got on me seeping into you. You think you'll be on. a mug man just for talking with me, he said, chuckling. I wasn't amused and my face must have conveyed it.

He looked down again. You never did introduce yourself proper like, Mr. Paul Morse. Ah, Morse, there's a name for you. I used to know Moss called by heart. That's been a long time ago. Well, you ain't going to lose enough for nothing, are you? He was right. I wasn't.

There was no way I could represent him in any capacity. He was facing the death penalty, and it was as good as handed down. It would be like an ant standing before an oncoming locomotive. The idea of representing him in court would be ludicrous. He had the scent of someone that wanted to play games, and I wasn't in the mood. Yeah, man, the last name suits you. because I'm reading your signals loud and clear. I'm in no position to offer you any legal help, Mr. McCarthy.

Truthfully, no lawyer is. You've literally teed off the entire world. He threw his head back in a cackle. You all think I don't know that. You really think I don't know why I'm buried down here deeper than an adulterous woman? Yeah, I didn't call you in here to ask you to go on a son. suicide watch for little o me. Oh, sir. I asked you here, because I need to make a, well, a few confessions. I'm not a priest anymore, Mr. McCarthy. I said, barely concealing my mounting

impatience. Ah, you still know how to listen like one. You got the ears of a priest and the options of a lawman. If you pay attention like a good boy, you might walk out of here with the story of the century. It's as fascinating as it is valuable. That's when I began to soften. I wasn't going to tell him that. I just took out my digital recorder, turned it on with a small beep, and set it down on the table. He smiled. Ah, add a boy, law man. So you notice that I'm an international celebrity for better or for worse. Didn't take me long to get there. All these kids that are born into infamy and fortune and have the family reputation by the time they're 13. Me, I was nobody, less than nobody, and treat it like it every time I got out the mop and bucket and squeezed that

sucker from dawn till dust for pennies and a pat on the head. You ever heard the saying that a company is much like a bunch of monkeys sitting in a tree? Well, when a monkey looks down, he sees nothing but smiling faces. When a monkey looks up, he sees nothing but assholes. I saw some real gapers from my station along, and they knew what I saw, and they wore it like a bag. Well, that office was my education in the hierarchy of the rich, and the little people trying to build tree houses in their ball sacks.

Em belco. Heard of him? The boss man on the top floor had two dumb-ass potatoes for kids, and he gave them clipboards and permission to walk around and give orders. went straight to their walnut brains and they hung around whatever floor I was cleaning and made it a point to get in my way and otherwise distract me from the job at hand. I'd go ahead and make a mess at the bathrooms as best they knew how. I started seeing them nipping from a bottle while they were on duty.

They offered me some more than once, and I'd refuse. And they say, good, because you're on the clock. And they'd laugh like it was the funniest thing they ever heard in the whole life. A day came when I could tell they were darn toying with me, looking to fire me. They fired two other maintenance men and had me take over their floors. I was staying ridiculous hours, and they had the goal to tell me that they couldn't pay me overtime, so I'd better find a way to hustle or start working on dressing up for the street corner. Well, their daytime drinking got out of hand,

and they started harassing one of the girls that handled their paperwork. They flat out told her her body was the only thing going to save her job. I don't know if she ever caved into them or not. She was around for months before they decided to let her go. What the hell of it. It burned me so bad. She was a good girl, a good worker. They must have been practicing on her because all the weight and the truckloads of BS they'd put on her was switched over to me.

There was no way in heaven or hell. I could do what they asked in a single ship. I was getting home for just a few hours before my shift would start up again. The threadbare marriage I had fell apart because I was just too stubborn to quit. I told her we needed the money. She told me that my job was destroying everything. I didn't know how right she was until I woke up one morning to see she wasn't around. And then, law man, they fired me.

They waited until there was nothing left of me or my home. Oh, I've known some low human beings that done some low things, but that was a cake winner right there. They was outright subhuman. Don't know how many days I spent passed out with a bottle in hand. I didn't care neither. I was going to spend the rest of my paycheck anesthetized with southern comfort. When I ran out, well, I thought of burning the place down with me inside. Now, maybe there's a gardle.

maybe the girl that got fired put in a good word for me because the phone woke me up one day if they hadn't been so quick to state their business I would have hung up a warehouse was looking for a full-time maideness man they'd be given me a few cents more and all the overtime I could handle

I said yes as much as I wanted to just go back into hibernating it took me a long while to find the place I was tucked away in one of them districts where you don't think you'll find anything I thought I was going to find a bullet in my windshield before anything else. But I found it like it should have had its own zip code. It surely was several warehouses that had been annexed onto each other.

The owner was a little old guy that looked like a vacuum sucked all the extra air out of his skin, what with all those really pointy bones. He was a little too happy to see someone take the job of keeping up the place. Now, lawman, I had never seen so many wooden crates in my life. standing at attention in uniform, rolls and ranks and files. I think they were all perfectly spaced the same and all aligned to an invisible grid. All he wanted was for me to sweep a mop and cover a reasonable amount of square footage day. He didn't ride my ass much.

Just spurbed me a time or two when I wasn't getting quite enough done, but he wasn't hard to please. Never really got to know him, but I got to know how he liked his warehouses clean. Those crates weren't going to gather any grime if it were up to him. The only thing that wasn't uniform was the size and shape of the crates. I didn't ask him what was in them or why he had them, and he never volunteered to tell. Now, the reason you and I are talking started with one day when I was back in the quietest, farthest flung, an eeriest corner of the warehouse, where light barely reached.

shadows kind of moved when nothing else did and it just didn't feel right before i was going to excuse myself for the day i nearly ran into a cradden found the stanza words vatican city inches from my nose it's one of those moments when you really question who you're working for and what kind of stuff they collect i didn't reckon that the vatican light departed apart with anything valuable i stalked around that bobbed like a polar bear with an igloo. I tried to look through any gaps in the boards and shine my phone's light where it might reach. But I just wasn't gonna learn nothing.

Thing was sealed up tighter than a list of pedophile clergyman. What about my business? I kept my eyes open for anything that may be just as curious. But damn it, if that crate didn't start a fire in me like nothing else was gonna put out. Nothing else under that roof was gonna count. that roof was going to catch my fancy like that Vatican crate, oh man, nothing. It took me months to work up the nerve, to find reasons to go back to that dark corner

and I bought the box again. The boss man was going on a trip, and he trusted me to take care of everything, and logged my time fairly, because I'd given him nothing but damn good work. I swear, as soon as he was gone, I was in that warehouse checking out that Vatican box. I halt around it one more time, as if there was still hope of getting in or getting an idea of what was inside without getting rough with it, which, of course, was impossible. I broke down and got a crowbar and was as gentle as I possibly could be. Well, it barely resisted. Getting in was a little too easy. I opened the lid and looked down to see something like an old-fashioned television that had been put. together by a mad scientist.

There were tubes and wires and things I couldn't even place for a function. I removed the side of the crate by loosening the nails. Only when I was inside the thing did I notice that not only was the TV clean, it was connected to wires that ran

outside the crate. It was connected to a power source that all the signs of recent use. Inside were four books. Three were hard-bound and in Latin. The fourth was a notebook. The first few parts of the notebook told me how to turn the damn thing on,

but it was a second part that caught my attention. There were notes on settings for the knobs and dials with peculiar labels next to them. Death of Hitler. Speech of Cyrus the Great. First performance of a mid-summer night's dream. Christ did Calvary. Fitted with the controls a bit until I saw myself on the screen pulling into work. I recognised it as footage from that day, and I panicked for half a sec to think that maybe I'd been on a surveillance camera.

Well, that couldn't be right. For the camera to be recording me, it would have had to have been suspended in air, where there was no pole or wall or nothing. It took a minute to go outside and check my math, and for sure, no camera, no place to put a camera. I diddled around until I got the things described in the notebook to show up on the screen. It was all as the notes described. Nothing the moving pictures said was in English. That's because none of it was movies. It was the real thing.

I was looking at a damn time machine that could look back into the past. I was in denial over it for the longest time, but I tuned in to watch myself go through parts of the last couple. days. I saw myself lay a sleeve for hours with the empty bottles of JD next to me. I dropped my pants in the bathroom and there were the family jewels on display. I know there wasn't no cameras in my home. So, there you had it. I was using a time machine. The controls weren't as complicated as they looked. Looking up the time indexes in the notebook got me used to the way the thing works. didn't take me long before I was thinking about major moments in history.

Seeing Jesus die was educational and all, but wasn't going to change my life in the short term. I wondered. Could I find myself at my last job? I could. I did. Then I wondered. Could I find my last bossy's dumb-ass kids?

Yep, I could do that too. I got to see exactly how they digged off all day. Drinking, looking at porn, and talking about me. Oh, hell, they talked about me so bad. I knew they hated me, but gee, whiz. Then I got around to see him what they did to Lily. They got to have their way with her, and she didn't do it willingly. Oh, she turned them down for days.

One day they had enough to keep them from caring how she felt about their propositions, and they took turns holding her down. They left her a crying half-dressed mess each time like she was a used candy bar rapper. Oh God Almighty, that made me hot. I kind of lost the ability to think about the consequences of my actions for a few hours. I took out my phone and recorded everything they did to Paul Lilly. Then I looked up moments they logged into their emails, and I had my way in, and I send the videos to everyone in their contacts list. their boss man dads their families their girlfriends i mean everyone law man took the time to send it to the police too

after i cooled off i started to worry that they might find out where the videos had come from but nobody ever came calling after the trials and sentences were over i tuned in to see how recent days of being locked up was treating them Well, they weren't exactly at the top of the food chain. Oh, my own boss man was due back in a few days, so I box the thing back up. It looked like I'd never touched it. You talk about being a paranoid dog, Mr. Allman. When he came back, he asked me if he'd missed anything interesting. Of course I told him, no.

Took two or three days for me to notice it. The way he was looking at me wasn't really a... Look, look, of any kind. He just prolonged his gaze at me from time to time. One day he was following me around the warehouse at a distance, not really by my side, but not terribly far away either. At a certain point he put his hand on my elbow and told me that was enough, time for a break. I didn't know where this was going.

He had me leave my cleaning equipment behind. He took me to a painfully small office. where they were scarcely room for one person. He took out of a folder of some papers, and I only thought that was it. He was letting me go for using that time machine. But he took the papers under his arm and reached into a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of champagne and two of them fancy fluted glasses. Sit down, he said as he poured to the top of each glass.

He handed one to me and lifted his up. A toast, Mr. McCarthy. to the first employee who's not stolen from me in my absence. I must have looked like a deer in the headlights the moment after the car turns off the road, just a few feet before the impact. He raised his eyebrows and lifted his glass again. We drank. It was good.

I waited for his expression to either soften or harden, but it never did. It's a delight to know that I've hired someone that doesn't have a lump of call for a heart. He said, But you don't exactly have a harder gold. Here I washed him to see what he meant. Was I in trouble or not? The chronovisor, the time machine that you found at the far end of the building.

I use it often. I checked it to see what you've been up to while I was away. You didn't steal a single thing, and you're the first person I've ever hired to keep your integrity like that. but I did see you use the chronovisor. My head dropped, and I could feel the tears starting to sting my eyes. Please, don't fire me. I cried like a big baby.

Oh, please, I wouldn't dream of it, he was quick to say. But indulge me. What did you use the chronovisor for? I looked up at him, partly with relief and partly with worry. When I saw it was from the Vatican, I couldn't help myself. I tried to forget about it for days, but it got stuck in my head so bad. So when you told me you'd be gone, I couldn't help it.

I had to look, I had to see. So I opened it up, and there it was, and there were the books and the notes that told me how to use it. Once I knew what I was doing, why I had to know if a girl I worked with got her to work or not. She worked for some real bad people, sir And I looked And they raped her But she kept working there Because she didn't have nowhere else to go

And so they kept raping her She was such a good girl And a good worker They made my blood boil And And And you use the chronovizer to bring justice As you understood it

Yes sir Did you get justice? Yes, sir. I know I watched that part too. He poured another glass for both of us. Well, another toast to you, Mr. McCarthy, for your heart being more gold than cold. And you know what?

I think he actually manned it. I don't think there was a bit of sarcasm in his voice. So I took him up on the toast. Well, I couldn't help but notice how he looked really. pleased with himself. You want it? He said. Huh?

beg pardon? I said, do you want it? Do you want the coronervisor? I don't know what I'd do with it if I had to see it every day. The old man shrugged. Well, I've got more yesterdays than tomorrow's. I've used that thing to review all the yesterdays that I really care to see again. His potential is endless.

Well, I'm a collector. You might have. have noticed. He waved his glass all around him at the crates beyond the walls of the tiny office. It didn't take my whole life to amass all this. I was able to use the chronovizer to see the items when they were created and follow them up to where they were hidden. You know why they'll always be looking for the Holy Grail in the East? It's boxed up over and sell H3C2. He gestured off to his left. Now I won't lie. The old man was kindling something bad in me.

Not for material things or treasures, but for something else. I lost track of how many years I'd been a bottom feeder because a bunch of pigs swept me under the rug with their connections and their bank accounts. Oh, I was ten times worse than the disgruntled employer that went back in with a bomb on their back. Instead of blowing their carcasses to bits and letting the media sort out their lives, I shattered those very lives, and they got to watch the whole thing happen in slow motion, and they never even knew who did it. Did I want the chronovisor thingy?

Hell, yeah, I did. And just like that, it was mine. All mine, no strings attacked. I didn't have to stay at my job for long. I was getting my mail at the post office one day when I saw the wanted posters they'd always had up. cash rewards for tips on the suspect's whereabouts. Not exactly the criminals I was looking to take down, but it was the kind that would pay.

Sure enough, I could sniff him out with that machine. That scrawny bank robber, Martin Ridgewell. That looked like a half-breed woodchuck. Yeah, idiot was hiding no further than the edge of the county. Now, that's just plain stupid. Both that he didn't go far and that the law didn't find him sooner. How about that guy with a neck like a cobra that everyone was afraid of? Looked like he could deep throat a whale.

Yeah, marron tips. A neck like that is a fingerprint waiting to happen, so he got pretty far after he left the last body in that barn. He did everything right, lawman. He covered his tracks and left no witnesses to his deeds or his plans. I almost felt bad for nailing him when I got done watching how hard he worked to erase his path. Well, almost. The cash reward for that one was real sweet.

So the money started piling up. I was smart enough to keep from getting too much of a reputation, you know. I laid low when I could and didn't brag about nothing. Accepted the cash rewards, but none of the press. There were a few people that started wondering why I was always the person to find out where these goons were. But what were they going to do? Put me out for too many good deeds? Yeah, the gloves came off when I had enough to live off for a few months.

I never did nothing that it'll be in jail. But somehow I felt when I was bringing in the heads of these men for their bounty, I was really persecuting people much like me. I just hadn't sunk as low as they had. Ridgewell, Tibbs, all of them. They were a product of the exact same arrangement I was. Pearl shied out of the same oyster. We're an irritation, so they gip it.

in the dark and the eventually spit us out into the cold when we get too big for them. Well, I had the answer to that dark. I had that chronovisor. It was like the torch of God. The dark that the establishment depended on to save face and keep power had no hold on me. I hit the bar pretty hard to wash away some of that guilt from turning in those wanted men. Got a few buddies to take a bet with me that the sitting priest at the church up the road would be in trouble for something straight out of line within a week. Quickest gamble I ever won. I didn't have to spy on that priest's pass further than the last three months.

I saw him doing some real nasty things with kids no older than eight. Nasty enough that he had to drug them. The internet saw him doing it too, thanks to me. Ah, you know the rest, Lord, man. I was like fire licking up gasoline. Priests weren't enough. then politicians weren't enough and straight up

friggin' world leaders weren't enough I had the world by the balls and I was squeezing like a son of a bitch and the world was squeezing and begging for mercy and I wasn't given any and then you got caught I interjected dryly caught

hell no man turn myself in I was using that machine to stay one step ahead to everyone after me I could have done it forever. Five minutes ago, it was the past, right? I could tune into what the hounds on my trail was saying and doing with a delay of a few minutes, just like regular talk radio.

Then, why did you turn yourself in? Your charges call for capital punishment in several countries. McCarthy grinned. I know. Remember what I said about being worse than a suicide bomber? I made myself even worse by an additional degree Bomberman goes to his target and boom, no survivors The victims don't get to see the aftermath

And the bomber doesn't have to suffer the consequences Well now Maya Quote unquote victims Have to watch their lives get shredded by vultures I won't be on this earth to face anyone's wrath They can't starve me, beat me, rape my ass, or wherever if I'm dead. Oh, and the fire from the bomb is only going to get hotter.

You see, God made the dog for a reason. There's just some things that are supposed to be screened off from human eyes. Now, that little light of mine, I made it shine wherever I fucking well pleased and I got a bit ahead of myself in the process. Opened a little can of worms that hadn't meant to be opened. Shouldn't come as a surprise, lawman, but I know you still have active connections to the church.

So I need you to go to the storage facility over by the pier. Tell them who you are. They'll give you the key and everything. For what? For the unit that's got the chronovisor in it, of course. I'm giving it back to the church, unless you want it. But that's your call. The important thing is that it's in your possession after I'm dead.

Come on. You know you're curious. I made my fingers into a pyramid and pressed my lips against it. He got me there. I was curious. But I pretended that I wasn't going to take him seriously. He acted disappointed. But when they led him away, he gave me a look.

He knew. We both knew. News of the execution was everywhere, and I'd made up my mind by the time it had happened. I found the storage facility. They indeed recognised my information and gave me a key. It was just the way he described it, like something out of a silver-screen mad scientist's lab. He hadn't mentioned the detail of using a gas generator to power it, because one was hooked up to it, along with a sign that was addressed to me.

Come on, Paulie, give it a woe. It was a diabolical invitation. But he was right. How could I resist? The generator was loud, but my mounting curiosity muffled it. The note left for me a coordinates written on the back, along with the words, Hey, Paulie, view your postcard here. I dialed the numbers in and didn't get much at first.

dancing lights, odd shapes. But then I could make out McCarthy being led along with a group of people. Were they people? Something about them wasn't right. Their legs were too long, or their trunks were too oddly shaped. Then I saw the large hooks embedded in McCarthy's body, and the heavy chains attached to them. Then I saw the burns on his body in the horns and spikes protruding from his companions.

McCarthy looked directly into my eyes from behind the screen and smiled. Then the figures surrounding him did the same. Hindsight by Brian Martinez. I was just 15 years old when I learned monsters were real. That day, a Tuesday, I recall. I was a little later than usual coming home from school on account of joining the science club. I just recently watched Donnie Darko for the first ten. and had become enthralled with the idea of time travel.

As I walked home, backpack weighing me down, I realized I was going to miss the start of my favourite documentary series and had to do something drastic if I intended to change that. There was a shortcut that ran through one of the yards in the neighbourhood, but I rarely used it for fear of being caught. The old man who lived there was generally belligerent, and if he caught anyone cutting through his property, he'd yell and chase them away,

threatening to get his gun. No one had actually seen his gun, mind you, but no one wanted to either. Perhaps I was feeling brave, or the thought of missing my favourite show was too much, but that day I decided the time I'd save was worth the risk. After jumping the old fence, I made my way along the side of the house and into the backyard.

I cursed myself for wearing my Triforce hat and orange vest, as high visibility in outfit as one could find. I was about halfway across the yard when I heard a loud splash behind me, like someone jumping off a highboard. I vaguely remember the old man having an above-ground pool, which he likely never used, letting the water fester and bloom. The idea of old man William splashing around in that fetid water was both ridiculous and disgusting, and yet something was in the pool. I watched the dirty water royle and churn, waves of it flowed. over the sides. It looked as if an animal were drowning, and I stood frozen to the spot, not knowing whether

I should run away from a place I shouldn't have been in the first place, or run forward and help it. Time seemed to be rushing forward anxiously, the late-day sun arcing toward the horizon. The sight of the writhing thing that clawed its way out of the pool changed me forever. One look at its twisted formation of limbs and bones and organ. familiar things twisted into new designs, murdered my innocence in an instant. Its grotesque face, with bloodshot eyes nearly popping out of its broken skull, fixed on me in one chilling instant.

And then it was chasing me, bones popping and cracking, shuffling and rearranging its hideous form. And it screamed too, screamed a single sound at me, a word like, The voice bloody and roar, the word sounding as if it had been turned inside out. My legs, heavy with the flow of cortisol and adrenaline, forgot how to work properly. I only ran a few feet before I got tangled in myself, tripping and falling to the cold ground, dirt and grass catching me, backpack crushing me as time seemed to slow down. I fumbled from my stomach and flipped over onto my back to see the monster bearing. down on me, a manoeuvre that felt as if it took a month to achieve in the new flow of time.

I prayed for the monster to be gone, a prayer that went unanswered. The creature was still stumbling and crunching after me, each moment twisting it into new and increasingly painful configurations. Each anguish step it took slowed down the seconds even further, until it was nearly on top of me, and I swore time was going to stop all. together. It only gave me more time to stare at its disgusting form, to take in the tragic details for its painful existence. And then, it was gone. Like a blink, it vanished from above me, nothing left but a wisp of black ash carried off by the breeze. Took me a minute to gather myself and stand, but when I did I noticed the sun was lower, moving toward the damp

chill of night. Hey! Someone shouted, and I jumped, afraid the monster was back. But it was old man Williams standing in the back door of his house. I ran from that place so fast I didn't even hear his threats.

I was so happy to be alive. I took my punishment for coming home late with a hidden smile. It took two years to see another monster. And so much had changed in that time. From the divorce of my parents to the loss, of most of my friends. I'd been politely asked to drop out at the Science Club, following my third attempt to recruit my fellow students in risky experiments. One of them, involving lasers

and a gas-powered generator, nearly blinded my formed friend Paul in one eye. Over time, my experiments became one-person jobs, either because no one wanted to risk getting hurt by being around me, or because their parents forbade it. High school graduation was a strangely emotional time, for my fellow students, a reaction I never quite understood. They were either sad to be leaving each other or excited to be moving on, and sometimes both at the same time. I saw it for the necessary step it was. I've been accepted to Stanford, and, other than looking forward to using its state-of-the-art laboratory for advanced materials, I knew that one place was the same as any other. The only brief sadness I allowed myself that day was when I learned my father wouldn't be attending the ceremony.

My mother assured me it had to do with a delayed flight on his return from a business trip, but a quick search of his flight information told me the truth. The plane had arrived on time. He simply didn't want to attend. As I sat through the valedictorian's mind-numbing speech, the afternoon sun baking us in her dark red graduation gowns, I recalled the principal speech to me as we sat in a her office, explaining why I hadn't been chosen to be valedictorian despite my higher grade average. She nervously explained the other students' various accomplishments, including everything from event planning to community outreach, and I sat patiently through it all. She was relieved when I told her it meant nothing to me that my parents either didn't know

or didn't care. After the ceremony, it took me 15 minutes to find my mother in the crowds. She was wrapped up in her conversation with one of the gym teachers, and she seemed surprised to see me, as if she'd forgotten why she'd come in the first place. I told her I needed to use the bathroom. She wasted no time returning to her conversation with a man who hadn't said three words to me in four years. Only a few people walking around inside the school, mainly teachers gathering their things, or janitors preparing the building for summer break. The boy's bathroom was empty, which I very much appreciated on account of my shy bladder. I picked out a urinal at the far end, hiked up my graduation gown, and prepared to unzip my dress pants.

My hair stood on end before I got the chance. Time slowed to a crawl as the toilet store behind me came alive with a noise of something struggling inside, something with popping bones and twisting flesh. It screamed in agony. Before I knew it, I was running again, running from the things that haunted me. With each step, time moved faster and faster until it felt like a blur,

a gushing river carrying me out to the bathroom and down the half-empty hallway, back to the beating sunlight, where the river slowed and returned to normal. The crowd was gone. All my fellow students and their families, everyone had left and gone home, including, as I soon found out, my mother. I walked the twelve blocks back home, looking over my shoulder, checking every shadow, every corner, and swimming pool for twisting, deforming shapes. My mother and I didn't speak about my disappearance, or much else for that matter.

Each time I encountered one of the creatures, I became more sure of their effect on time. The closer they were to me, the slower time progressed. The further I ran, the more distance I put between themselves and I, the faster the seconds moved, until eventually they returned to normal. This wasn't some subjective experience based on my fear response, but a legitimate phenomenon, corroborated by the time on my watch, as if it was a subjective experience based on my fear response, but a legitimate phenomenon, corroborated by the time on my watch, as if time itself were bending around the creatures. For years I thought about nothing but the creatures and their strange influence on time.

I became convinced they were either from another time or existed outside of it, and so I learned everything I could about time and one's potential traversing of it. Black holes, wormholes, curved space-time, infinite cylinders, I left nothing untouched. When most teenagers were in a parking lot drinking beer, I was in my room reading Carl Sagan. When they were arguing about whose football team was better, I was arguing about the Novikov's self-consistency principle or the Blinnovitch limitation effect. I breathed Einstein and devoured Hawking.

Time spent in anyone else's company was time wasted. In Stanford, I had my first breakthrough with a rudimentary tachyonic, anti-touching. telephone, though the machine melted before I could reproduce the results. The resulting fire got me expelled from the university outright, no matter how much I argued and pleaded for the sake of the research. It wasn't the first time I being kicked out of an organisation, and it wouldn't be the last. By the time I transferred to Caltech, my father had died, leaving me a substantial college fund, which was helpful since my mother no longer wanted me at the house. I ended up staying in one of the dorm houses, not the best environment for study,

though it did offer the advantage of being a five-minute walk from the math and physics hall. My roommate, I didn't catch his first name, but everyone called him Eakins, was an environmental engineering student with an interest in oceanography and watching horror movies at high volumes late at night. One particular night, as he was blasting a Spanish language movie about a man with bloody bandages around his face, he told me I'd probably like the movie if I paid attention to anything other than textbooks that he practically had to shout for me to hear what he was saying over the film.

I looked up from my textbook to tell him there was nothing worth knowing a movie could teach me, especially a horror movie. But just as I did, as I opened my mouth to speak, a face appeared inches in front of my own. It wasn't just mutated, but in fact still mutating. Like a puzzle box it shifted and snapped. The mouth contorted into an impossible angle, an angle that led out a single sound.

A pained, gurgling, red. I screamed, and the sound slowed down in pitch and length until I could hear and feel each reverberation of my vocal cords. A moment later the disfiguring face disappeared, blinked out of existence like it had never been there. My scream modulated back to normal pitch, and I found myself screaming directly at my horrified roommate. Ekin stared at me.

What the hell is your problem? He asked. My heart-funded adrenaline through my veins. Eyes dilated and sweat beating on my face, I stared back at him. I don't think it's a problem, I replied after a moment. I think it's a puzzle. Just before I was kicked out of my third and final. University, this time from MIT for disruptive outbursts. A classmate stopped me after class and

told me she'd very much enjoyed my argument with our particle physics professor. He doesn't know what he's talking about, I told her flatly. I think he knows what he's talking about, she said, but not as much as you do. She smiled and suddenly I realized she was very pretty, beautiful even. I offered to walk her to her next class. which she accepted. She told me her name was Yvette, and as we walked we discussed some light quantum theory at her suggestion. Energy disperses, objects equilibrates, she said, because of how elementary particles become

intertwined when they interact. Entalgament, I replied. Exactly. When two particles interact, they can no longer be described by their own pure states. They almost become as one. like two people talking i pointed out or even kissing as suddenly as i'd realize she was beautiful that was how quickly i realized what she'd done she'd baited me into speaking about entanglement so she could flirt with me she was clever and cunning and i knew in that moment as we stood smiling at each other in front

of the library that she would be the one i would marry I asked her for a phone number. Why, I had heard people do. To my surprise, she took out a pen and paper, wrote the number down, and handed it to me. I glanced at her hand as she did, and noticed a bit of string looped around her finger. What's that? I asked her.

She glanced down, then back. Oh, that, just a reminder about something I have to do later. You've never tied a string around yourself before. Her word struck me hard, like an apple falling on my head. In that moment an idea was born in my mind, fully formed and raging to be free, an idea that would push me toward the brink of discovery.

It was an idea so electrifying, in fact, that I almost didn't notice the mass of bloody limbs running towards us, the humanoid creature stumbling and slipping across the great lawn that stretched out in front of the university library, screaming in the daylight. the seconds racing by like a panic attack. I didn't look this time. I didn't want to see it.

Tah! It screamed. The voice slightly more human sounding than before, yet no less anguished. Do you see it? I asked Evette. My voice tight in my throat. She looked, scanning the lawn with a concerned expression.

See what? I grabbed her arm to pull her with me, to take her away from the danger lurching across the grass. She stiffened. The fear pooled in her eyes. By the time I looked at the great lawn, scared to see how close the creature had gotten, it was already gone. The seconds returned to normal, but the air had changed. Yvette looked at me differently now.

She waited for an explanation, waiting to give me the benefit of the doubt. But all I could do was leave. "'I'm sorry,' I said, running off to the university lab. "'A future with a vet had become an impossibility. "'But something greater was waiting for me ahead. "'The idea that was born in my mind that day "'became the new focus of my life, "'brought about by something as simple and elegant

"'as a string tied around a beautiful girl's finger. "'A reminder from her past self to her future self, "'a bridge between them, cosmic strings. narrow tubes of energy left over from the formation of the cosmos. They contained huge amounts of mass, and therefore could warp space-time around them. I'd tried them before, looking to the stars for double images of background quasars, knowing I'd find a cosmic string joining them. If I could just accelerate atoms fast enough to outrun a light beam around a cosmic string,

well, the theory went, I could outrun time. The problem was no one had found one yet. They existed only in the realm of theory. But I had a new theory for where I might find one. A different kind of cosmic string located slightly closer than 8 billion light years away. And so I started building my machine. It went through so many versions I stopped numbering them. Variation after variation after variation.

I borrowed and spent every dollar I could get my hands on, using up my inheritance and my credit in the process. I secured funding from the kind of people you don't make the mistake of not paying back. If I was successful, I told myself, I would have more than enough money to pay them back. If I wasn't successful, nothing would matter anyway. When the machine was finally done, I found the scrap of paper I'd been saving in a draw and dialed the number written on it. Yvette? I asked. Yes, who's this? It's Alex. Alex from particle physics. There was a pause on the line then. Hey, how have you been? Working. You? Are you still at the university? Another pause. Alex, I graduated two years ago. Right, right, of course. Time had gotten away

from me. If she graduated two years earlier, how many had it been since I'd seen her? Three, four. Did you switch schools? I lost track of you after her voice faded out. Oh, I'm on my own now. I couldn't stand having to answer to people who didn't understand my work. She laughed softly. That sounds like you. You're far too smart for your own good, you know. I didn't. I didn't. I'd never been a skill conversationalist, nor was I won for indirectness. Since I didn't know what the decorum was for this sort of situation, if the situation had ever come up before, I decided to be as blunt as possible. I need you, I said, your help, I mean, with an experiment. Asking her for help was a long shot, but she was a fellow scientist, a seeker of truth,

and we'd shared a connection once. That made her her. my best choice, even if it was my only choice. What kind of experiment? She asked, sounding curious. I'd rather talk about it in person. Are you still in Massachusetts? Can you come tonight? I'm only an hour or two south, but Alex, it's two o'clock in the morning. Time. It had a way of getting away from me. After we finished our conversation, I sat in the dark for some time, going over the calculations again and again. Just as I turned off the computer, ready to find my mattress and get some sleep,

I felt the hairs on my arms and neck stand up. I didn't look. I closed my eyes as the creature materialized behind me. I didn't have to see it reaching out for me. I could feel the delation of time as it did, seconds becoming minutes, becoming hours, as it cried out in its inside-out language, I come to know so well, cried out a painful and haunted syllable, a bloody choking.

Ooh, my eyes opened. They had to see it, the reflection in the darkened computer monitor. It looked almost human, a twisting silhouette of wet, snapping bone reaching out in the dark, reaching out with rearranged fingers, and then it was gone. I work through the night, preparing the machine. Human beings move through time like an arrow. I believe that, as we do, we gather time-space energy around us, not unlike a static charge gathered from carpeting. In doing so, we form a string through time that should, for all intents and purposes,

act exactly like a cosmic string loop. I turned to face my guest and added, I call it a time string. Yvette stood in front of the machine, admiring its simple design as I explained how it detected topological defects. I appreciated not having to simplify the science or be too succinct, as she had a firm grasp on the subjects and, in fact, asked all the right questions. But do you really think you can find an anomaly as small as a proton? she asked. Not to mention, once a loop is formed, it's essentially doomed. It oscillates, radiates gravitationally, shrinks, and... eventually.

Evaporates, yes, but if my theory is correct, they should behave more like vortons. She pondered at a moment. A stabilized loop? Correct. She looked from me to the machine. It looks pretty cramped in there, she said with sudden finality. I hope you're not claustrophobic.

There's no room for phobias in science, I replied. I built the machine to my exact dimensions. nothing other than my physical body can be allowed inside. I paused, not even clothing. She nodded, understanding my meaning. Well, I guess there's no room for modesty in science either, she said with a smile. I shared her how the operating program worked, taken the time to explain every command and function as we sat in front of the computer.

I told her what to do in case of an emergency, however unlikely. As I did so, I tried not to think of the reflection in the monitor that night before. Then I undress completely, laid my clothes carefully on the floor, and ducked inside the machine. Seeing it that way, about to be powered up with me standing inside, made me see the machine as if for the first time. A hundred dark panels were aimed directly at me, each one containing a thousand sensors running a hundred million scans. The machine was like the child of an MRI machine and a deep space telescope,

oh, a masochistic one, as an electric current was required to hyper-excite the energy field. I attached the adhesive patches to my body as Yvette watch from behind the computer. Maybe after this we can revisit that conversation about entanglement, she said. There's going to be an enormous amount of data to process, I replied, then, realising what she meant, added, But yes, I'd like that. I talked her through the start-up sequence once more, then told her to close the machine door.

There was no room in the design for an interior handle. She walked over, gave me another smile, and gently shut the door. I gave her a thumbs up through the observation window. Then, a few seconds later, the sequence began. The only sound I could hear was the hum of the generator as the sensor panels powered up to fall. A chill moved through my body.

I thought it might be the unexpected effect of an oscillating magnetic field coursing through my nervous system, though I was aware that the much simpler explanation was nervousness. The fear response was an unwelcome, though, nevertheless predictable factor in self-experimentation. As I stood shivering inside the cramped machine, waiting for the current of electricity to be introduced to my body, I was overcome with the strangest sensation. The dark panel surrounding my body suddenly felt like a hundred eyes staring back at me. Pitched black irises of an unimaginable being, passing judgment on me. Naked, shivering, I was lay bare under its intent, some blinking gaze. I pushed the thought aside, ascribing it to the effect.

of the electromagnetic field, a fear cage stimulating my mind, and then prepared for what came next. The generator was pushed to its limits as the next phase of the sequence began. An energy transfer of nearly one and a half gigawatts per second core through the machine's energy cells, drip feeding the current down the wires and into my skin, a carefully measured, non-lethal shock meant to act like time-space tracer ink. My system was flooded with electricity for just a few seconds, but it was enough to send me into agony. Every muscle tensed at once.

My jaw locked shut and my body stiffened. Knuckles and knees popped from the intensity of the squeeze. And then it was gone, and I could breathe again. My head swam and my eyes closed. I felt a rising ball of flame in my gut, and then a sensation like fire ants crawling through my veins. I became aware of distant screaming, and I considered whether it might be my own cries

until I realized it was a woman's voice. I thought then of Yvette. Why would she be screaming when it was me disoriented and riddle with pain? It made no sense. I opened my eyes, opened them to utter darkness. had the fuse is blown? Were the machine and the lab beyond it experiencing a power failure? This was a confusing development.

The generators had fail-safes in place to avoid such interruptions from occurring. So what other explanations were left? Had I gone blind, lost all sense of sight? Had I done to myself what I had nearly done to that childhood friend so many years earlier? But then I became aware of a shape in the darkness just ahead of me blocking a source of light. There shouldn't have been anything there except a wall of sensors. Then the shape moved, letting me see the light source.

It was a computer screen, my computer screen. I glanced around and realised with no lack of confusion that I was standing on the other side of my lab. The shape in front of me, sitting at the computer. Was it a vet? As I reached out to touch it, the skin, on my fingers peel back, as if they were being punished from moving closer to the shape. It felt like I was dipping my hands in flames.

Then my arms began to peel back to, the fire spreading across my body as the flesh curled and tore away. I tried to scream, but the sound lodged in my throat. Then the screen went dark, and I saw the image in it, the reflection of the shape in front of me. My own face, terrified of the sight of me, locking eyes with myself. I was back, back in the night before. In one terrible moment I realized the truth.

The explanation for the monsters that had been visiting me throughout my life. I knew what they were. I had to warn myself away. the experiment. Tell me what was waiting the next day. I gathered my breath and opened my bloody lips, already feeling the teeth shift and the jaw dislocate. Do! Blinding light attacked me. I stumbled forward, slipping on the grass, my feet wet with my own blood. I was in front of the University Library at MIT. Across the Great Lawn, Yvette was

talking to me, me of a few years earlier. Not, I screamed out in the daylight, though I could see the look of terror on my face that I wasn't going to look. A moment later the sunlight cut out, and I was looking into my own younger face, sitting on my college dorm bed with a book in my hands. I felt my body mutating, reconfiguring like a puzzle box shifting and snapping into new unrecognizable angles. With my mouth contorting, I struggled to keep speaking, to warn myself. I let out a gurgling, turn, as my younger self scream back at me. Then he was gone, replaced by a dirty metal wall, locked inside a toilet stall. My arms and legs were crushed and reshaped like crumpled paper, an origami animal.

of popping bones and twisting flesh. And I knew, knew I was out there, my younger self, wearing a graduation gown and a look of terror. It! I screamed in agony, my insides erupting out of me. And then suddenly I was choking on dirty water, drowning in its, oh, I thrashed to be three, fighting to reach air. I burst free of the rancid water and clawed my way out of the out as best I could with my new, twisted configuration of limbs and bones. With bleeding eyes, I stared out at myself. A boy of fifteen standing across the yard in an orange vest, scared for his life, had to finish it, finish the warning. I ran after him, me, the boy, my bones popping and cracking, shuffling and rearranging my form,

every nerve alive with pain, and I screamed. screamed a single sound at him. On! He, me, the boy, fell to the ground, backpack on top of him. I took the last few steps, barely able to move any more, as he fumbled from his stomach and flipped over onto his back to look at me to see the monster bearing down on him. A terrified boy prayed for me to be gone as I stumbled and crunched toward him.

Toward me, each step a new torture on my breast. broken body. Then I was nearly on top of him. I looked down in his young, innocent face, taking in the tragic details of the painful existence that waited for him. And then I felt it, felt my body erasing, an error corrected, the covering up of a path not meant to be taken. The pain was gone first, then any feeling at all. Sites and and sounds drifted away, back to the void, the nothingness, the never-ending darkness. Like a blink, I vanished, nothing but a wisp of black ash, carried off by the breeze. Experimentum Mayum, by James Colton. I have never experienced the supernatural, but I know someone who has.

Isn't that always how it goes? Well, in my case, it was a friend named Curtis. Curtis is a bookish fellow, by which I mean he's the only person I know to have thoroughly exhausted the offerings of his local library. In fact, it was precisely this trait that led him into the following experience. Worker kept Curtis late one Thursday evening, which would have been no great nuisance except that he had in his possession a library book which was due back by eight o'clock that very night. The potential embarrassment of a late fee would have been enough for Curtis on its own, but he also dreaded the boredom that might arise from returning to his apartment without fresh reading material. Therefore, that Thursday evening, found Curtis running through

town. He entered the library sweaty and breathless, with just ten minutes to spare. The librarian, a small young woman seated behind the massive front desk, peered at him over the cover of a novel she was reading. A bit late tonight, aren't we? Ah, work kept me. Curtis said, as he deposited his book into the return bin. It was a well-worn volume he'd checked out many times before. I won't be long. We close at eight, the librarian reminded him as she returned to her novel. Curtis surveyed the library, a large single floor,

occupied mostly by tall shelves, so one had to wind their way through a narrow maze. On busy day, it almost wasn't worth the hassle, negotiating both the cluttered layout and the other patrons trying to navigate the literary labyrinth. Tonight, however, the building seemed empty. Just Curtis, the librarian, and the books. Curtis passed most of the hours without a glance.

He knew what books they contained. He'd either read them or wasn't interested. No, tonight he wanted something new. The library was divided into three distinct sections. The front, where most patrons spent their time, had recently been renovated. Everything was bright and clean and crisp. The larger middle section, through which Curtis now walked, was dated.

It had the feeling of something that had once been new, and still thought of itself as new, unaware that time had moved on without it. And then there was the back section. The front was new, and the middle pretended to be new, but the back had no pretense. It was old. It knew it was old, and it wallowed in its age. No plastic or metal here. The walls were stone, and the shells were solid wood monoliths

that wore their coatings of dust like imperial robes. Curtis had never ventured far into this section. Much of it was reserved for reference material, dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, and the like. Volumes that had largely been rendered obsolete by the advent of the Internet. But, like the shelves on which they rested, these books seemed to know their place. Their time was over, and so they hugged their dusty cloaks tightly about themselves and watched the rest of the library change around them, proud in their own immutability. Perhaps it was Curtis's desperation for something different, something unfamiliar,

that drew him to the back of the library that night. While he had no interest in encyclopedias, maybe there were other things hidden away back there. forgotten things, things to excite a fantastical mind. Curtis wound his way through the aisles. The light grew dimmer as he ventured farther from modernity, farther from the careful attentions of the maintenance staff. Now and then he spotted something, an interesting spine nestled between series of atlases.

Upon pulling it out, it invariably turned out to be just another dusty reference volume, mis-shelved long ago and never discovered. nothing as exciting as Curtis had hoped for. He eventually reached the very back corner of the library, a dead-end aisle. The shelves here were bonded to the stone wall by thick co-webs. A single lamp overhead was dimmed to near uselessness by the same. Curtis scanned the titles on the shelves, moving from top to bottom. When he reached the end of the bottom shelf, he sighed.

Nothing of interest. He was about to turn and head back toward the more modern sections of the library when something caught his eye. There down in the farthest back corner where shelf, floor and wall all met, there behind the very last book on the shelf was a dark gap. A suspicious gap, Curtis thought, since none of the books next to it had tipped over to fill it. It was dark in that corner already, and as Curtis knelt down to investigate the gap, his shadowed. made it darker still. He reached in blindly and pulled back with a gasp as something tickled the back of his hand. A spider. Curtis flung it away, then watched it crawl across the floor to be lost in the gloom. When it was gone, Curtis turned his attention back to the gap, for in the brief moment

his hand was inside, he'd felt something else. He reached in once more, and, yes, there was something. rectangular form a leathery texture softened by dust. Curtis pulled it out, and there in his hand was a small black book. Wound tightly about the middle with a delicate silver chain to hold it shut. Curtis's heart beat swiftly as he stood to gain some better light. This was exactly the sort of thing he'd been looking for. He turned it over in his hands, but could discern no title on the spine or cover. Next, he moved his attention to the chain and began to unwind it. As he did, he thought briefly of the time. The library would be closing soon, but Curtis couldn't have been there more than five minutes yet.

And besides, he thought he heard someone talking a few hours down, so he wasn't the only patron visiting the library so late. He still had time to investigate his discovery. His discovery, which now lay open in his palm. A silver chain dangled between his fingers. The pages were yellow and ragged. Some threatened to come loose from the binding. The text was handwritten in black ink,

but Curtis couldn't read any of it in such poor lighting. He carefully flipped through some of the pages, and then paused. He had come across an illustration, which seemed to be of a human figure, but again the dim light made any detail impossible to discern. He appeared only as an indecisement, an indistinct outline, like a shadow burned into the centre of the page. A noise caused Curtis

to look around. What was that? Someone coughing, or laughing, both of them together? An odd sound, certainly, much like a... No, it couldn't have been a scream. It was too quiet, and why would someone be screaming in a library of all places? Perhaps something outside. But now Curtis became more seriously aware of the time, and of how little the lamps in this part of the building aided in staving off the evening gloom. They seemed to generate more sound than light, filling Curtis's skull with an awful buzzing noise. He shivered, closed the small black book, and rewound the chain, then made his way back toward the front of the library. It became very quiet as he walked. The place seemed emptier somehow than it had when he'd first arrived. He came to the front desk and handed his

discovery, along with his card, to the librarian. As she checked him out, Curtis looked back toward the old section of the building. From here at the front, where the sun still shone in a golden haze through the large windows, the back corner seemed like an alternate world, impossibly distant, set apart by an invisible paw. Then something caught his eye. Something in the middle section. A sensation of movement along one of the aisles. A shadow passing behind the shelves, behind the books. Indistinct as of yet, but about to step out of the aisle in interview.

It took you long enough, said the librarian, handing the book back to Curtis and pulling his attention away from whoever it was. I was about to come and fetch you. What do you mean? asked Curtis. I can't leave until all the page. are gone. It's past eight, you know. You're the last one. But surely I'm not, Curtis began. But he trailed off as he glanced back into the library. An illusion must have been, a passing car intervening between sun and window. Never mind. Sorry to keep you. Good night.

The wind picked up as Curtis left the library. Clouds flap through the sky like rags, set alight by dying flames as the sun fell from sight. Curtis hurried home, although he had no reason to hurry. He only felt that he had to move quickly, that something, perhaps it was just the cold wind at his back and the excitement of discovery that drove him. Still, he couldn't help but glance over his shoulder now and then. At times during lulls in the traffic,

Curtis fancied he heard a second set of footsteps close behind his own, but whenever he looked, he saw no one. Only the shadows that swelled and deepened as the sky darkened to a crimson shade filled with tattered black shades. By the time Curtis reached his apartment building, night had fully closed over him. He hurried inside, up to his apartment, and heated a quick supper before finally sitting down to properly examine the book. First he unwound the chain that bound it shut. It wasn't a little bit of the same. It wasn't as tight as he'd found it in the library, nor was it sealed by cobwebs. He slipped off easily, and Curtis set it on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Then he carefully lifted the black

leather cover. The first yellow page showed only a title and byline, handwritten in faded blacking, Experimentum Mayum, Luther M. Dreher. Curtis turned the page delicately. The paper seemed ready to crumble beneath his fingers. The first centre of the book. The first centre was read thus, Whitaker is dead, and so my experiment may begin. It was a novel, Curtis surmised as he continued reading, written in an epistolary format.

It seemed to take no small inspiration in subject matter from Mary Shelley's seminal work. The prose was poor, the pacing was dreadful, and in some places it seemed the author had neglected to include some crucial details. Yet one thing Curtis had to commend. The same clumsiness that degraded the writing also lent the story an air of credulity. If not for the nature of the anonymous narrator's experiment,

Curtis would have believed he was reading the lost journal of a real scientist. The gist of the story can be understood from the opening line and a few select passages. The materials are prepared, and he'd only steal my nerve for the process itself, which I shall perform tonight. This is no mean task. I've wondered for several nights now if the process is strictly necessary, for at times I fancy you. But these are exactly the thoughts I must banish. I must not lose heart during my work tonight, for that would prove most disastrous.

The moment has passed, and I am left wandering. Certainly something happened. I felt it in a chilling of the air, and yet whatever it was, it was not what I expected. I wonder if I should have brought a medium into my confidence. No, that would have been too dangerous. I believe deep down that my experiment was a success. Perhaps I must give it more time. He walks the house after dark.

As yet I have not seen him, but I hear his steps. And then Curtis came across the illustration he glimpsed in the library. It was a human figure, although better lighting did little to clarity. The centre of the form was black, and the edges were hazy, as if intentionally smudged while the ink was still wet. What Curtis hadn't noticed before was the faint caption beneath, the reason I locked the door to the library each night. The story then continued for a few more pages. He will not communicate with me. Tonight was most infuriating. I interrogated him for as long as I could stand. but who can bear to remain long in the presence of such a thing.

My courage failed me in the end, and I... Did I remember to lock the door? No more. I've tried all I can to undo it. The chain seems to help, but I still cannot rest. Each night is blacker than the one before. I must get rid of it. Somehow I must. Perhaps fire.

But if destroying it doesn't. work. What then will I do? What then could I do? I must try. Nothing else has worked. Fire. Yes, that might just... The sentence ended mid-page. Curtis stared at it for a moment, then turned to the next. Blank. Was that the end? If so, the whole work barely covered a quarter of the book. There had to be more. Curtis rifled through the pages but found nothing but sheet after yellowed sheet of blank paper. And then something fell out of the middle of the book, tumbled free and came to rest scattered on the floor at Curtis's feet.

Curtis bent down to see what it was, a small pile of grey, grainy dust, curls and wisps of dark hair, pale, translucent crescents that Curtis could not at first identify. then he recoiled with a gasp. Fingernail clippings. Curtis's eyes darted from the uncanny collection of his feet to the book from which it had fallen, the book that still lay open in his palm. The page was blank like most of the others, save for a few dark brown spots in the centre. The rough texture of the cover's dusty black leather now felt to him like an unwholesome thing.

Curtis threw the book down in disgust. In the minutes that followed, as he sat there on the sofa, wondering what exactly he discovered in the library, Curtis became aware of a noise, a noise from somewhere in his apartment, a shuffle, the whisper of something dragging against the carpet. Now and then a heavy impact.

Curtis leapt to his feet and spun in search of the noises source. From his post in the living room, he couldn't see anything. The sounds came from down the hall, down near his bedroom, but slowly coming closer. Curtis's mind flew first to the book, to its hazy illustration,

to the caption, the reason I log the door to the library each night. Then a shadow, cast by the hall lamp, eased into view. A formless patch on the carpet that gave no clues to the shape of its owner. Curtis, shivering, remembered that moment in the library, the impression of movement hidden

behind rows of bookshelves. The shadow advanced, stretched, reached around the corner. Any moment now, the owner would step into view. But Curtis threw himself down behind the sofa. Icey fear gripped his chest, a deep buzzing filled his ears. and beneath that still this shuffling, thumping tread of something crossing the living room, approaching the sofa. Curtis's eyes met the macabre a pile of hair and fingernails on the floor next to him. Then the book, lying face down on his other side. Driven more by instinct than reason.

Curtis scooped up the pile, then reached for the book. He could hear his unseen visitor shuffling closer. The buzzing in his skulls swelled, became painful. He placed the dust, hair and fingernails onto the stained page. Shut the book, and he looked up toward the coffee table, where the silver chain lay in lazy coils. The footsteps were so close now. Curtis knew he must be exposed, but still he dared not to turn to look.

He rose to his knees and reached for the chain. In that brief moment, Curtis saw his own hazy reflection in the glossy finish of the coffee table, blurred beyond recognition into a flesh-coloured cloud, and behind him, looming up and over and all around, something utterly black. Curtis wound his hand furiously around the book, pulling the chain tight, wrapping round and round until there were no links left to wrap. Only then did Curtis turn. the apartment was empty the footsteps were gone the buzzing in his head had stopped curtis returned to the library the following morning after apologising profusely to the librarian he paid the lost book fine and went on his way

to this day Curtis refuses to tell me what exactly happened to the book but he insists that it was the best bit of money he ever spent Oblivion's call by James Colton. Roy's hand dripped over the chalice. Crimson drops made black in the dimness, echoing as they mingle with the blood of everyone else who had preceded us. What the? I began, grabbing for Roy's arm to pull him back. But he shoved me away.

I don't even feel it anymore. Besides, it's a small price to pay for what you're about to experience. The black glove. that squeezed Roy's wrist finally let go and withdrew behind the ebony curtain of the ticket booth. Roy produced a cloth bandage from his pocket and expertly tied it around his hand. "'Dud,' I said, "'if that's the price for admission, I don't want anything to do with these guys.' Roy threw his arm around me and ushered me through the doors of the auditorium.

Don't say that until you've at least heard them once. Trust me, it'll change your mind about it. everything. I'd already seen enough, that lightless ticket book, those velvet-gloved hands reaching from behind the curtain, the knife. When Roy had first told me about oblivion's call, I was barely interested. I only gave in when Roy assured me that the first three concerts were free, and that I had nothing to lose. But after the ticket booth, I was done. Free or not, this was too messed up. I tried to break away from Roy, but he caught me and steered me to our seats. This is the only one, I said. I don't care how good their music is. Roy smiled as he settled into his

seat. We'll see about that. The stage was hidden behind a very heavy black curtain. I couldn't look at it without imagining those hands reaching out. I closed my eyes and shook my head. Roy nudged. Roy nudged. me. It's starting. Reluctantly I looked up. The curtain swayed, parted. All the lights went out. The darkness was absolute. My heart thudded. I held my breath, waiting. The silence grew and grew. I looked around but couldn't even find an exit sign. It was like someone had tied a black sack around my head. I waited longer. The growing silence felt like a balloon, inflated to the point of bursting. I tensed in my seat, expecting something loud, something painful. I almost imagined I could see the darkness swelling out from the invisible stage toward me. I nudged Roy. Is something

supposed to be happening? He didn't answer me. I couldn't tell if he was ignoring me or just oblivious. I threw myself back in my seat, crossed my arms and waited for the lights to come back on. A blood toll for two hours of silence. Was this some kind of a joke? A black market blood drive? I thought about just getting up and leaving, but I'd never be able to escape the theatre in this darkness. And then a shape twisted through the darkness in front of me. I sat forward.

The lights came back on. On the empty stage answered none of my questions. I turned to Roy, but he seemed too enraptured to do anything but grin as he led me out of the auditorium, past that repulsive ticket booth. The chalice was gone, and out into the night. The cool air seemed to snap Roy out of his reverie. So, that was the biggest two-hour waste of my life. You didn't hear anything.

No. You didn't see anything. Nothing? Nothing worth mentioning. I shook my head. Roy shrugged. There are next concerts in a week. Are you kidding me? I don't care if it is free. I have better things to do with my Friday nights. You think so now, said Roy. They all do. I'll see you then. Same place, same time. The absence of a questioning tone infuriated me. I won't be there. But Roy simply waved goodbye and vanished into the night.

Where were you Friday night? asked Mallory. I tried calling. You remember Roy? I said. She nodded slowly as if trying to pull together hints of a memory into something cohesive. He came back out of the blue and invited me to a concert. Hey, have you ever heard of Oblivion's call? No. What kind of a band are they? I snorted.

band Oh, you have to actually play something to be called a band I told her about the concert About the darkness and the silence A free admission though That's generous of them at least Yeah but you get what you pay for Mallory pondered for a moment

Then asked If Roy paid him blood What did he get? I remember when Roy first encountered Oblivion's call we were just hanging out when he got this worried look on his face i asked him what was wrong i got a call the other day some guy i used to know wanted me to go to a concert with him his band i'd never heard of he stopped there but his worried expression didn't were they any good he jumped like he'd forgotten i was there i'll give him another shot first three concerts are free so i'm told I didn't see much of Roy after that. Ran into him a few times throughout the year, but we never got together. Just said, hey, now and then, an occasional, we should do something sometime that never bore fruit.

He seemed thinner. Then he called me one night and asked if I wanted to go to a concert by this group he'd been following. Oblivion's call. I should have said no. I thought as I lay in bed Tuesday night. four days later and I still couldn't get over the absurdity of it who in their right mind would let some veiled stranger slice their hand open just so they could sit in the quiet dark for two hours i fell asleep Tuesday night thinking that perhaps Roy needed to see someone in a lab coat I woke up Thursday morning thinking that maybe I needed to see someone as well I remembered lying awake in my bed it was dark

I couldn't see anything except my curtains. They hung still around a window I could only guess was there, a window thrown open to an expanse of silence. A whole world where nothing stirred in a night that never ended, where whatever denizens survived did so without eyes. And although my curtains never swayed, I was constantly trying to blink the impression of movement from my vision. Something swimming, either in the fluids of my eyeballs,

or in the air of my bedroom or in the outer darkness beyond. A shape neither pale nor dark, a shape that I couldn't confirm or deny seeing without feeling like I was lying. And I thought of oblivion's core and their absurd concert of sightless silence. Of that moment at the end, when it felt like my eyes seemed to open a second time and the lights came on. What had I see? By Thursday night

I'd waved it off as a dream Roy was cracked So was everyone else in the auditorium that night It made me wonder if there was something on that knife Maybe Roy and the others were drugged Maybe they thought they heard music Maybe they saw bright lights and wild colours Where a sober mind saw nothing

Nothing I'd seen nothing I woke Friday morning from a dream of a memory A memory of lying awake in my bed staring out the window into nothingness. A dream corrupted memory of a voice. A voice, not as I lay in bed trying to sleep, but as I sat in a dark theatre trying to see and hear and understand. Yes, I'd sat in that auditorium next to Roy, and I had heard something. A song that looked like a ghostly shape floating in the darkness.

No, I'd sat next to a crazy drugged fanboy And seen only what my light-starved eyes invented Heard only the ambient breath of an expectant crowd There was only one way to know for sure What did I have to lose? The first three concerts were free Roy held out his hand and let the knife slice him open How do they know? I asked Couldn't anyone just walk in and come?

claim it was their first or second they can't keep track of everyone who comes roy bandaged his hand and shrugged i know has anyone ever tried he wrinkled his nose like he'd just sniffed something bad i think anyone who comes back for a fourth time is more than happy to pay their share we found our seats and waited everything was as i'd remembered the heavy black curtain shrouded the heavy black curtain shrouded the stage. Just as it started to pull back, the lights faded away. A sigh rippled through the audience. Next to me, Roy added his own voice, like a man settling into a warm bath after a long day. I get my eyes fixed on the darkness of the stage. My ears were alert for the slightest sound. I noticed more than I had a week ago, throats clearing, body shifting in their seats.

sniffles, sighs and creaks. But these came from around me, not in front of me, not from the invisible stage. From there came only silence. If I heard anything from that direction, it was only the whistle of air through empty space, through channels unseen. Funneled through constricted openings to produce the impression of a voice, but nothing I could call with any certainty a song. And my eyes, unblinking, saw only the static one seized behind closed eyelids.

Through the pain in my forehead, I tried to picture that amorphous shape. But it was gone from my memory. I could only conjure facsimiles that moved about the stage, bubbling like black tar beneath a moonless night sky, pacing like jungle panthers behind a screen of black vegetation. I squinted against the sudden light. The theatre roared with shuffling feet and laughing voices. I followed Roy outside.

Was it better this time round? He asked. I couldn't formulate a response. Did I hear more? Did I see more? No answer seemed adequate, real or imagined. I couldn't tell. And did it matter?

If I experienced it, did that make it real? Had I experienced anything? I looked back at the theatre entrance. Could I still hear their last notes echoing? No, there had been no notes. That was in my dream, in my sleep. I was awake now, in the real world, and there was no song, no beautiful voices.

The third concerts. Next week, I says. I won't come. This is ridiculous. It'll change your life, man. I like my life the way it is, thanks. A way of goodbye and walked away. I only got a few steps when I heard of thump and turned to look back.

Roy was picking himself up off the sidewalk. He staggered for a moment, then wandered off in the opposite direction. They really are drugged, I thought. I watched Roy a while longer, just to make sure he didn't veer into the street and get run over. He looked like a stick figure draped in clothes. Once he was out of sight, I walked home. You went again? asked Mallory. I thought you said the first one was a waste of time.

It was, I said. This one too. I guess I just got curious, wondered if I'd missed something. The way Roy talks about them, you'd think they were the greatest act ever to grace the stage. It could be Roy's just She tapped her skull and whistled like a cuckoo You got that right

Anyway, I'm free next Friday If you want to do anything I don't know Crazy or not You've got me curious Oh no way I said I'm not going back again

It was a mistake to go the second time I won't be suckered into a third I was never one for singing Not even to myself in the shower On Wednesday I found myself rubbing my throat, trying to massage away a soreness that came on with no explanation. I hadn't been sleeping well, but I wasn't sick. Then, as I heated a cup of tea, I realised I was humming. Not a song, just a single, continuous note, low and quiet.

If there was a melody, it was only because of my wavering vocal cords. I stopped myself and the soreness abated. I called Roy on Thursday. The night before, as I tried to fall asleep, I stared out the window and saw him staggering down the sidewalk, weaving left and right, slipping close to the curb before careening in the other direction. He was a shade of himself, withered and twig-like.

I caught out to him, but in the dream he couldn't hear me. His voice on the phone was a welcome relief. If he'd gotten into an accident on his way home that night, I'll see you tomorrow night, yeah. I hesitated. No, I told you, I'm not wasting another evening. Come on, man, just one more. Just one more concerts.

If you aren't an oblivion's call fan after that, I promise I'll never speak to you again. What? I said, come with me tomorrow. a night and if you aren't convinced i'll stop bugging you about it i thought you said deal deal he hung up it was my new ritual lying in bed alone staring through those motionless curtains out into the eternal dark a line between wakefulness and sleep was a liquid thing bleeding out on either side thursday night as a watched and waited for something to move between me and the stars, I heard someone whisper next to me. My mattress was suddenly made of needles. All my muscles felt like lead beneath skin that had gone as hard and as cold as porcelain. I could only lie on my back, staring ahead

at the window, no longer waiting but dreading the moment when some dark thing would blot out the stars. Someone whispered from my other side. I could tell, neither age nor gender, and the words were lost to me. Just babble, a dark language from some cold and empty country. It's starting. I couldn't help but turn toward that one English phrase. To my left I saw Roy sitting next to me in the auditorium, erect in his seat, gaze directed forward at the stage. He wore a hooded sweatshirt so I couldn't see his face. The whispered babbling grew as theatre filled. Dim figures appeared in the seats around us, all hooded, all transfixed by the darkness I refused

to look at. Their voices were a dull buzz in my ear, painful, like ice at the base of my skull. My throat was dry, so dry that when I asked Roy if we could leave, no sound came out. Thirst, desperate thirst. The pain in my ears grew, nearly. unbearable now. Tears swelled in my eyes. Roy turned toward me. He had no face beneath the hood, just an empty void, utterly black. My ears rang as I climbed out of bed, squinting against the sunlight. It was like someone had struck a tuning fork, and its pure note lingered in the air like

a sublime fragrance. It was the voice from the concert, the one I'd heard last night. No, there hadn't been a concert last night. That was last week and no, again, I hadn't heard anything.

It was all in my head. The result of my subconscious trying to make sense of all that darkness and silence. Too bad because it was a beautiful voice. The fabricated memory of it made me thirsty for more. thirsty like I was lost in the desert, thirsty like I'd never been before or even imagined was possible.

So I'd meet Roy tonight. It was just one more concert, and it was free. What do they look like? I asked as those gloved hands with their bloody knife withdrew behind the curtains of the ticket booth. The metal stink of the chalice stung my nose. "'Look like,' echoed Roy. "'You mean their outfits, their faces?' I nodded and waited for him to answer,

but he just walked into the auditorium and sat down. I joined him, still waiting, but he seemed to have forgotten all about the question. He stared straight ahead, and I shivered as I remembered my dream from last night. The theatre filled in around us. No one wore cloaks or hood. no one whispered. I could see their faces plainly as they waited in rapt attention for the curtains

to part and the lights to dim. I wondered how many were first time, second time, third time attendees. Was anyone in this audience as uncertain as I was? Was I alone in my confusion? The only one here who hadn't given themselves over completely to the mystery. The smell of the chalice still clouded my sinuses, and for the umpteenth time I questioned my sanity. Roy was a framework of a human being, a scarecrow. I'd once thought of him as chubby, but now his pale skin stretched transparently over his skull. I noticed they took deep, shuddering breaths, excitement, or illness. I reminded myself that the knife that collected emission fees might be drugged,

and also wondered for the first time if it was thoroughly sanitised between attendees. If not, Roy could be full of all kinds of diseases. The more I paid attention, the more I realised that nearly everyone in the theatre was panting like Roy. Beneath the metallic scent of blood from the chalice, I picked up the sour breath of a hundred strangers all gasping for air. The lights went out. As it had the first time two weeks ago, my heart pounded, but harder this time. The gasps of the audience seemed to gather close around me, rasping louder in my ears.

I gripped my armrests and recoiled at the feel of someone's cold hand. No, it was just the polished wood. Decorative grooves carved into it so it only felt like fingers. And then the singing started. It was that same note that had filled my head these past few weeks, drawn out of my nightmares and into what I could only assume was my waking life. This was real, wasn't it? It made me dizzy.

My seat seemed a hundred feet below me as I drifted up toward the invisible source of that voice. But Roy's rattling breath reminded me very suddenly that I was still anchored by gravity to the floor. And it wasn't just Roy. everyone was whimpering, wheezing, sighing. The sound brought to mind a room full of children, having the life choked out of them. And above it all, constant, droned that angelic note. But its sweetness was noxious, less like music and more like a cry of despair. Cry born on a wind of blood and decay.

I peered ahead into the darkness, crushed back in my seat, loving and dreading the sound, begging for it to be over. I couldn't bear to look at the darkness any longer, couldn't bear to close my eyes. I came here tonight to see something, but I didn't want to see the mouth that uttered that abhorrent note. But when I did see, there was no mouth, no face, hardly a form at all that I could recognize. It stood there where the stage might have been, tall, and still. Something that might have been a human, shrouded in a floor-length black sheet.

No, it couldn't be human. How long had it been uttering that single note, uninterrupted for breath? And what breath could escape that shroud without stirring it? Although my mind interpreted the vision as cloth, it may have been stoned for all it moved. Yes, that had to be what it was. a statue and then the statue raised its arms and the groans of the audience were agony to me

for a moment I could see them there was no light but as with the veiled figure on the stage I could see them in sketches of charcoal hands clamped over their ears fingers clawing at their own throats mouths agape in desperate bids for air then the lights were on they sat around me

peaceful no sense sign of discomfort. Many even smiled as they wrote and filed out of the auditorium. The stage was hidden behind the curtains. I hadn't seen them close. There was no sign of the shrouded figure. When we were outside, Roy asked, well, has it changed your life? Well, has it changed your life? I stared dumbly at him for a full minute, hating his expectant grin. I'm going to try very hard, I said, to forget these past three weeks. His smile shrank, but only a little. Not everyone gets it, but he promises a promise.

I won't speak to you again. You mean you won't bother me about these stupid concerts? He renewed his smile, turned his back on me and walked away. That night, I didn't dream. I woke Monday morning feeling hollow. I'd heard nothing from Roy since Friday night, and had slept soundly every night after. My mind was quiet, but something didn't feel right. After pondering over breakfast, I decided it was repressed curiosity.

Since the third concert I'd made good on my promise to forget Oblivion's call, but as I crack that door open, I realized I still knew nothing about them, or their music or their uncanny sway over Roy and his fellow fans. And once that door was cracked, I couldn't shut it again. I stopped by the theatre that afternoon. It was closed, but I could see a janitor mopping the floors just inside the lobby. I knocked on the glass door. The janitor glanced at me, pointed at the close sign and went on mopping.

I knocked again. He scowled at me, but left his mop in its bucket. to unlock the door. Can I help you? I was wondering if you could tell me anything about Oblivion's call. Who now? Oblivion's call. They're performing on Friday night.

He wrinkled his face in annoyed confusion. There's no concert Friday night. Nothing scheduled until next month. What about last Friday? They were here then and the week before. The janitor peered at me through squinted eyes. nobody's performed here no one will until next month but i was at the concert on friday i don't worry you now i looked around the lobby there was the ticket booth no curtains empty i shook my head and left

and the janitor locked the door behind me my phone rang i answered without checking the number and my stomach tightened when I heard Mallory's voice. I tried calling you on Friday night. You did? I swallowed and tried to come up with an explanation. Hmm, that's weird. I'm not an idiot. You went to that concert with Roy.

I... You said it was a waste of time, but I guess that's only if you went with me. Do you know how long it's been since we went on a date? um almost a month that's right ever since roy any stupid of oblivion's call or guess what since you like them so much you can go see them every friday i don't care i hope it's worth it because you won't be seeing any more of me before i could reply she hung up i stood across the street from the theatre watching people disappear inside i had no intention of joining them or offering my hand to the blade and sitting through two hours of silence and darkness,

I only wanted to confirm my memories. The theatre wasn't closed. The janitor was either mistaken or lying. Well, that meant I wasn't crazy. I'd gotten what I came for, but now I couldn't make myself leave. That repressed curiosity. No, I wouldn't go through those doors. I wouldn't join that insanity for a fourth time. But I had to know. Who was oblivion's call? How did they cultivate a following so loyal they'd offer their blood just for a concert?

Across the streets. Avoiding eye contact with everyone else on the sidewalk, I made my way around to the back of the building. Found a door. Found it was unlocked. Slipped inside. The back doors of the theatre were dimly lit. The air buzzed.

with flickering, sickly light. Aside from that, the only sound was my own footsteps, echoing off concrete floors and cinder-block walls. I tried several doors on my way toward the stage. Most were locked. Most that weren't were maintenance or storage closets. One opened onto a room so dark I couldn't see more than a couple of feet. I immediately regretted opening it. The side of such solid blackness sent my heart pounding toward the back of my wrist. I ribcage, my very soul was trying to run from the darkness. There you are. I jumped at Mallory's voice and spun to find her marching down the corridor. Waste of time is it? Yet here you are, back for a fall. What are you doing here? Mallory rolled her eyes. After everything I've heard,

did you really think I could stay away? If nothing else, I had to see what was so interesting that you blow me off and lie to me in it. This one hasn't paid the toll. I thought it was in my head, but Mallory had gone silent and was staring at the air above and behind me. The hairs on my neck went rigid. A free offering, hissed a second voice. Or maybe it was the same one, whispering and androgynous. I couldn't make myself turn to look.

Mallory's face, twisted and gaping, was all I needed to see. A dry, frigid breath brushed on me from behind, as a third voice said, We don't get those very often. All the lights in the corridor went out. I became thoughtless, save for the one overpowering thought that I needed to get out. What of the other? It owes us nothing yet. It saw our faces.

Then we must. Mallory screamed. Her shrill voice was overpowered and cut off by a deep growl and a heavy crunch. In the silence that followed, I heard a steady dripping. I needed to run, make my iron legs move and run. Before I could take a single step, my arms were seized in a grip that felt like winter branches. I thought that maybe I could break the twigs if I tried. but at their sharp touch I could not move.

Another hand brushed my forehead, ran its knotty fingers through my hair, and then pulled. My head was jerked back. We'll sing well tonight. Always better this way. Ah, fresh and undiluted. A line of fire burst across my exposed neck. I heard splashing around my feet. Something like three sheets of tattered, wrinkled paste.

began caressing my throat. I went limp, but those impossibly strong hands held me upright. Pain gave way to dizziness, dizziness to a deeper blackness. As I faded from existence, my mind was filled with the most beautiful singing. And so once again, we reached the end of tonight's podcast. My thanks as always to the authors of those wonderful stories and to you for taking the time to listen. Now, I'd ask one small favor of you. Wherever you get your podcast from, please write a few nice words

and leave a five-star review as it really helps the podcast. That's it for this week, but I'll be back again, same time, same place, and I do so hope you'll join me once more. Until next time, sweet dreams and bye-bye.