Snook - Creepy Reddit Horror Stories

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

These were some Creepy Reddit Horror Stories! From a terrifying tale of someone going missing to strange creatures found in a national park. My favorite was the third one! That one was just so creepy! Would you like to see me make similar videos in the future? Leave your thoughts down below in the comment section, and make sure to like and subscribe! Credits! Go give some support to these talented authors! faithkilling - https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1o2zldf/my_wife_is_convinced_that_ive_been_replaced/ Ncubed02 - https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1jb5yrb/i_lived_completely_isolated_for_almost_a_year_and/?share_id=C7A7uYndtBNh7-j4b8qim&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&utm_source=share&utm_term=22 this_chemical13 - https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1jl2pxn/my_son_keeps_drawing_a_man_weve_never_met_i_think/ j*zzblossoms - https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1pdp72h/i_crossreferenced_the_missing_persons_map_with_my/?share_id=aiGJAEehn8KVKqlX2IVUQ&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1 BoxGoblin - https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1kpt7uu/i_was_a_law_enforcement_ranger_for_a_secret/ BoxGoblins' Substack - https://substack.com/@codypearcewriter Saturday - https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1hz4cva/i_was_dead_for_30_days/?share_id=F1HGhvo-_PSUQVM9cVY-u&utm_content=2&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1 I was granted permission to use all of these stories. Make sure to check out all of the original authors.Make sure to subscribe to the Patreon for early access videos and many more perks! https://www.patreon.com/SnookYTAlso! Go follow me on Spotify and Instagram!Yes, my voice is human. The channels subscriber goal is 1 million, so subscribe! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, what's up guys and welcome back to the channel. And today we're getting into some creepy Reddit horror stories. And we have some amazing stories to dive into today. They're scary. They're weird. They're disturbing. And like the title says, they are creepy. So you want to stick around.

I appreciate you stopping by. Meads the World. Please like the video and subscribe to the channel. And comment down below. And let me know if you'd like to see more videos like this in the future. But yeah, this video will be long enough already. So sit back, relax, grab a drink. Grab a snack, and without further ado, let's get into some creepy Reddit horror stories.

My wife is convinced that I've been replaced. Please help me. I don't know what to do. Yes, it probably sounds insane. I should start with the backstory, but God, how hard is it to remember the simple, happy times before everything that happened. I met my wife, Catherine, when she was 24 and I was 24. We lived in a small town in Kentucky. You'd have trouble finding it even with a map and the population was tiny.

Everyone knew each other. I'd worked as an electrician all my life. First at a factory, then I started my own small business. Repairs, wiring, private jobs. My love life had never really worked out until I met her. She worked as an elementary school teacher, smiled at every child, was kind and polite to everyone. my Catherine was the only ray of light in the darkness around me.

I loved her for her simplicity. She could find joy in the most ordinary things. Morning coffee. The smell of wet grass. A cheap movie on the couch. We didn't have much money, but we had peace, a home, a dog, and that feeling that everything was right, that everything would be fine.

I spent evenings fixing things while she wrote lessons, plans, or knitted. Sometimes we'd sit in silence, listening to crickets, or stay up all night talking about everything and nothing, thinking about children and what we named them. Back then, it felt like life had finally found its meaning. The problems began maybe two months ago. At first, small things. She started to have trouble sleeping, then began looking at me strange. strangely, as if something in my face disturbed her.

I asked if everything was okay, and she laughed. Sorry, just tired. The kids at school are driving me crazy. Gradually, though, I can't even say exactly when it got worse. She slept less, not because she had insomnia, but because she was afraid to sleep. I asked her what was wrong, but she said she was fine. Still, when we lay together, she'd suddenly get up and go into another room, returning only at dawn. She started having nightmares, but never told me what they were.

One day, I lost my temper. You have to understand, I was just worried about my wife. From the lack of sleep, she started to look worse, dark circles under her eyes, red eyes, pale skin. She lost weight, and every time I tried to help, she pushed me away. So I sat her down across from me and directly asked what she was dreaming about. She was silent for a long time, trembling and glancing at me furtively, as if she was afraid. And then when tears began to roll down her cheeks, she whispered, There's a man in my dreams.

God, I, I'm scared, Tom. I went to hug her, and when I reached for her, she flinched. as if I'd frightened her. After that, things seemed to get better or so I thought. How wrong I was. She used to ask how my day went, but now she just stared out the window. With each passing day, she spoke to me less and less,

her words short and dry, and then she'd go to the bathroom or kitchen for some errands, closing the door behind her. And it wasn't just the silence her eyes had changed. if before they were green, emerald-like, full of life and love, now her gaze made my spine go cold. There wasn't anger or hatred there. No, it was something closer to mistrust, weariness,

as if she was seeing me for the first time. Over the next week, I began to feel anxious, a strange burning under my skin, as if something was wrong. But I couldn't tell where the crack was, until I realized. She was studying me. When I drank coffee, I could feel her eyes on me. I'd look up and she'd immediately turn away,

pretending to slice fruit, but her fingers trembled and the knife froze halfway to the board. I'd step outside for a smoke, and when I turned around, I'd see her peeking through the curtain, then she'd instantly close it. When I showered, I'd catch her watching me, studying my body. Then she'd run away.

She started doing it even while I slept. She almost stopped talking to me, instead riding something in a notebook and hiding it as soon as I entered the room. Photos began to disappear from their frames. She talked on the phone with someone but hang up the moment I came in. I made an appointment with a psychologist for us, but she refused and said she was afraid to be near me. It all happened so quickly. It seemed like just yesterday we were stargazing in a huge. other's arms and now this the strangeness grew every day sometimes she asked me to sleep on the couch

i agreed hoping it would calm her but it was useless her paranoia only worsened it got to the point where when i tried to hug her she screamed don't come near me and flinched as if i'd hit her after one of those nights i decided i had to find out what was really going on even if it meant taking her to the doctor afterward. I pretended to be asleep when she stood in the doorway. Then she slowly approached soft, careful steps. She stopped at the foot of the bed, and for several seconds there was a dead silence, broken only by her uneven breathing.

I could feel her watching, not just watching, comparing. That's when I became truly terrified. A cold dread twisting inside me as my wife became something. something I couldn't recognize. Then the bed shifted slightly down as she sat down on the edge. The air grew heavy. I could feel her stare physically, like pressure on my skin. Then her cold fingers gently touched my wrist, held it for a few seconds, then quickly let go, as if it burned, and whispered, pulse faster than Tom's. My heart clenched so hard I nearly twitched. She leaned closer. I could hear her breathing against my face, short, shaky. She smelled of lavender and something

sour that made goosebumps crawl down my back. Her lips barely moved. I remember clearly. Tom had a small scar right there. She touched my cheek, but you don't. I clenched my teeth to keep from gasping. Those few seconds of silence lasted in eternity. What scar? I never had a scar on my cheek. I'd know if I did. I wanted to sink into the ground and scream all at once, but I kept lying still until I heard a choked sob and her fading footsteps. The door slammed.

I opened my eyes, my heart pounding furiously. I didn't sleep for the rest of the night, too afraid to close my eyes. In the morning, I went to work early, dreading the hours until my shift ended. That evening, over dinner, I said, Kate, we need to talk. What's going on? She gripped her fork so tightly, her knuckles turned white. Then looked me dead in the eye.

Tom, you, you've been acting strange. What do you mean? I don't know. Sometimes you look different. Sometimes your voice sounds wrong. You even smell different. I didn't know what to say. My head was chaos and somehow I just laughed.

Kate, maybe you're just imagining things. I don't know, Tom. My eyes fell on the knife rack. There was a clean strip of dust where the largest kitchen knife should have been the one we used for everything. Bread, meat, anything. I distinctly remembered it being there before that night. My heart slammed into my throat with a primal panic. I looked at Kate, and she was staring right at me.

I wanted to speak, but couldn't. It hit me, then my wife might be planning to kill me. The next morning, she left for work, and like a caged animal, started searching the house. I hadn't slept in nearly 48 hours. I know I should have just left or taken her to a hospital, but she's my wife. I love her. She has to see that I am me. I tore through the apartment.

frantic, desperate to find something, anything that would help me understand what was happening to her. And I did. After about an hour, in the back of the closet behind a pile of sweaters, I found her wooden box. Old, slightly cracked. The lid was a jar, and when I opened it, a thick notebook fell into my hands. It smelled of coffee and sweat. Her initials on the cover, written in her neat cursive. My heart froze as I realized it was the diary she had been hiding from me. The paper bent under my fingers, her handwriting familiar, but this time jagged, shaky, the page stained with what looked like tears. He's sleeping.

I stand by the bed and watch. He looks like Tom, but he's not. Tom had a scar on his left hand. From that accident by the river. This one's skin is smooth. He smiles. but the smile doesn't reach his eyes. Something replaced him.

I keep counting days, marking steps. If the real Tom, my husband, is alive, where is he? A wave of nausea rose in my throat. With each page, her handwriting grew more erratic. I tested his speech. He says, I love you in the same tone,

but without warmth. Not like before. Tom smelled of, vanilla, but this one smells of dust and cheap cologne. I couldn't believe what I was reading. My knees trembled. The air around me tightened like a noose. I flipped to the last page. I can't let this thing stay in our house. It wears his smile, his name. I tried talking to it, begging, but it just smiled and said all the right words. It didn't defend itself. Maybe because it isn't afraid.

It's right-hand twitches when it lies. I could have killed it today, but for some reason I couldn't. I know I have to. For Tom, I won't let some monster wear his skin. My hands were slick with sweat. My whole body was sweating, even though the room was cold.

I placed the diary on the bed and sat down, trying to process everything I just read. An accident? God, she was exactly. exaggerating. All that came out of it was a concussion and some Bruce Ribs. I stayed in the hospital for about a week. Yeah, seven days. Then my phone rang, making me jump. It was Sheriff Martin, a kind old man I'd known for years. Tom, everything all right over there. Catherine called, said someone's living in your house pretending to be your husband. I froze. What did you say?

Says you're not you. I've known her for years always seemed stable. Domestic quarrel? Huh? No, just stress. She's tired. Evening came slowly. I sat on the couch, elbows on my knees, looking at an old photograph, the one that used to sit on our mantle, before all of this.

Catherine and I sat by the lake, smiling. Her arms around me. The sun so bright that day we had to squint. I stared at us. At the little details. Her blonde hair catching the lights, her hand around,

mine, the green shimmer in our eyes. It felt like a lifetime ago. When the door creaked open, I nearly jumped. My wife's, if I can even still call her that, steps were slow and tired, her bag thudding softly to the floor. She looked exhausted. Her eyes red, her hair, a mess. I stood holding the diary. Kate, we need to talk. She looked at me warily. She looked at me warily. like a trapped animal sensing a snare. What's that in your hand? Her voice was even, but something trembled in it. I found this.

I need to understand what's happening, I said, showing her the diary. Catherine froze. For a moment, I thought she'd break down crying, but instead she slowly stepped closer, looking straight into my face. Her cold breath brushing against my skin. So, what did you figure out, Tom?

That I'm crazy? You think I've lost my mind, don't you? No. You wrote that I've been replaced. That I don't have a scar. She turned away, her lips pressed highly. Tom had one. We even joked it, made him look tougher.

Listen, sweetheart. I took a step closer. A strange knot tightening in my gut. I'm the same man. I remember everything. How we met. The candles at our wedding. How you laugh when we watch comedies.

What you said about that stupid show when we finished it. I remember everything, Catherine. It's me. She stared at me, unblinking. Her shoulders trembling as if she were freezing. I looked into her eyes and there was something there. Pain and horror mixed together. As if I stood before her as someone.

both familiar and wrong. You say it like you've rehearsed it, she whispered. Because it's true. I stepped closer. My voice cracking into a shout. What do I have to do for you to believe me? What? Catherine said nothing.

Just breathed heavy like she was finding herself, staring into my eyes. Then she suddenly backed away, step by step toward her bag. I didn't realize what was happening. at first. She bent down, as if for a handkerchief, and in the next moment, I saw the glint of metal, a knife, the missing one. Kate, I breathed, disbelieving. Catherine, put it down. Stop. Stop pretending, you monster. I managed half a step toward her. She raised her hand. At first, I thought she was only threatening me.

Panic tightened my fist. I wanted to yell to grab her shoulders to make her listen, but then a strike. Burning pain slashed through my chest. Everything went white. The last thing I saw was her face so familiar. Twisted by terror and despair at once. She stood over me, her hand trembling. Her lips whispering something like, Tom.

Where are you, my love? and then everything went dark. I woke up in a hospital. At first, nothing but fog. Then the smell of antiseptic. The faint beep of a monitor. Unfamiliar voices. I tried to move my head.

Pain shot through my body. The doctor explained I'd lost a lot of blood but somehow survived. The knife missed my heart by an inch. Catherine. Catherine had run away. I listened, not believing any of it was real. A couple of days later, Martin came by. I told him everything about the knife, the diary, her thinking that wasn't me.

He listened, frowning, taking notes. When he finished and was about to leave, he turned back. Didn't expect this from Catherine. Don't worry. We'll find her. When you're discharged, come by my place. I got some Cuban cigars from a friend. We'll relax a bit. Without thinking, I said, I don't smoke.

He frowned, about to say something but then just nodded and left, closed in the door behind him. For several minutes, I lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to come to terms with everything that had happened. Then I noticed a small mirror in the corner of the room. I looked at my reflection and froze. My face was pale. My lips dry. But that wasn't what comment. my attention. Interesting. Can eyes change color from green to blue? I lived completely isolated for

almost a year. It never knew. I'd worked to construction for the better part of my 20s before the accident. I never had the know-how to get into engineering school like my parents wanted for me, but I preferred to work with my hands anyhow. Jobs came and went, contracts ended, but ultimately I always had a site to work or a building to put up. When the Whitlam Hawthorne Group offered me a foreman position for the construction project of their new headquarters, I accepted in a heartbeat. Job security from my company like WHG, with a salary I'd only dreamed of and benefits to match, I thought it would be stupid not to accept.

The foundation had barely been poured on the site when the collapse happened. No one knew who exactly was to blame. whether it was the surveyors, the engineers, or just some freak accident. But those of us caught in the rubble only had the parent company to point our fingers at. Three men dead and 13 injured was apparently a serious enough legal threat that Whitlam Hawthorne opted to offer us such a generous settlement outside of court. You can judge all you want that my silence was bought, but six zeros on a check would buy yours too. In addition, they also offered me a systems job.

I'd be able to work from home. And even a reduced renter's rate at one of their apartment complexes. In a unit that would accommodate the wheelchair, I'd be confined to the rest of my life. Until then, I didn't even know that they owned any residential properties. But the complex looked decent enough on the pamphlet they sent me. After all, I certainly couldn't live alone in my current fourth floor apartment anymore. I moved in near the beginning of February last year. I won't lie.

The adjustment to everything at once hit me a lot harder than it should have. Overnight I'd gone from working outside every day to being restricted to a wheelchair I had no intuition for using and being stuck inside all day long. My hard hat and boots swapped for a work laptop and a filing cabinet. The depression caused by my new situation was only worsened when I got settled in. It was embarrassing how little I owned that would still be practical given my new lifestyle. So it didn't take long for the movers to bring everything over. I was moved in

less than a day after I got out of the hospital. The apartment was a first floor unit for obvious reasons. The second and third floors each had units with patio balconies that extended an outcrop over my miniscule fenced-in yard. As a result, the already tiny windows in my living room barely got any sunlight during the day. Off to the side of my living room, I had a kitchen with lowered countertops and extended storage space on the lower shelves. My bedroom was spacious,

with a wheelchair, accessible closet, and a roomy attached bathroom. I wish I could say I was thankful, but the accommodations only reminded me that I never live the same life again. Please don't get me wrong. I'm absolutely not one of those guys who sees disability,

as something that makes someone lesser. My aunt was a wheelchair user when I was growing up, and I had an older brother with special needs. Both of them had my respect for as long as they'd lived. But both of them had died because, in one way or another, they depended on something that couldn't be provided for them. In her old age,

my aunt fell out of her chair at home one day and didn't have the arm strength to crawl back up to reach the phone. The medic said that her pets had begun to eat her, even before she died. My brother committed S word because my parents refused to get him the help he needed. I still won't talk to my family for that. And now, after almost 30 years of independence and ability, it seemed as though every one of my prospects was ripped from me.

And I was entirely dependent on the company that had caused it. In short, I was very, very bitter. In June of that year, it was as hot as it had ever. been in my state. By then, I'd settled into a dull routine. Wake up, do a few arm exercises before I showered, eat breakfast, and then try to get some work done before lunch. What I did could barely qualify as work, but it seemed like the company thought it would be better to have me under NDA and payroll than risk me suing. Once lunch came around, I would check my fridge for groceries and add what I was running low on to my weekly mobile delivery order. It was so much easier to

have someone else leave groceries at my front door than to find a way to actually get to a supermarket. I found a routine where I honestly never had to leave the apartment. I avoided human interaction those days, so it was easy to stay inside. The only voices I heard for months were my neighbors. From what I could tell, I lived underneath a married couple that never stopped fighting. And in the unit next to me, there was an older woman with at least a couple more cats than our lease allowed. On one particular morning, mid-June, as I got out of the shower and dried my head, I opened my eyes to find that the power in my apartment had suddenly gone out. It was inevitable.

Everyone on the block had to have their AC units on blast. I finished drying off and for the first time since I moved in, rolled over to the curtain sliding door attached to my living room, and went out into my small yard, where I knew I'd find the breaker box. The outside air was hot and heavy. and as I watched my toes brush against the grass that they couldn't feel, I noticed that without the noise of the AC units running outside, it was very, very quiet.

Not even the sound of insects or birds filled the morning air. And for a moment, I let the morning sun rest on my face before it would rise behind the patio, overshadowing my yard. For as short as it lasted, the peace that overwhelmed me was blissful. The silence was interrupted by the sound of a sliding door from above, creaking wood and the sound of footsteps, followed by the familiar arguing voices I had grown painfully accustomed to. If you don't want to fix it, then I will.

The wife's voice grew louder as she moved above me. I never said I wouldn't do it. I said, give me the damn minute to put my shoes on. Why do you always? I zoned out as their arguing continued above. Even the briefest joy was fleeting. I thought as I opened my own fuse box and flipped the brake, I heard my AC unit word alive from outside my fence, muddy in the soundscape once more with

its mechanical wine. At least it drowned out the arguing above. As I struggled to figure out how to wheel back over the lip of the sliding door, I heard the arguing stop. And the couple's sliding door slid shut and closed above me. I managed to get back inside and hoped I wouldn't have to go out again anytime soon. I'm ashamed to admit that was the last time I was the last time I went outside for months. I'd gone no contact with the rest of my family years ago and what few friends I had lived out of state. I had no reason to go out anymore. So the summer's heat paired with my depression only forced me inwards. Wake up, shower, eat breakfast, work all day, sleep. Even the arguments upstairs in the occasional meow from the unit next to me became

monotonous. I drowned as much of it out as I could. the same voices, the same fights, the same cats misbehaving, day in and day out. In fact, as much as I tried to ignore it, sometimes I couldn't help but listen in. The woman who lived above me, whose name I gathered to be Claire, was seemingly unemployed. She rarely spoke unless it was to accost her husband for a wrongdoing or to complain. Her husband, whose name was Jackson, Jason, maybe. He seemed to have some anger issues, but seemed more defensive than aggressive, cold and distant, paired with irritable and sensitive. A perfect storm.

I never gathered the cat's lady's name. Instead, I became very familiar with Greta, Priscilla, and Tom. Every day, the woman would try to quiet Tom for crying too loud for food, and sometime in the afternoon, she would accost Greta and Priscilla for fighting over a nap spot in the Sunday. beam, having natural sunlight entered the room sounded like heaven. The voices were my only human connection. It was mid-September when I attempted to

clear my throat of my developing allergies, that I realized I hadn't heard my own voice in months. I cried myself to sleep that night, feeling more alone than I'd ever been. By October, the isolation became unbearable. I

found myself listening to the voices more than I ever had wanted to. quieting my apartment as much as possible, just to catch them when I could. The same fights, complaints, meows, they became my friends, my comfort. One night, out of some sense of desperation or maybe just a form of entertainment for myself, I started responding. It wasn't much at first, just a quiet whisper in response to Claire's complaints. When I heard her hiss, you never listen to me.

I whispered. I'm listening. When Jackson or Jason or whatever his name was, sighed and muttered, Christ, I can't do this. I chuckled and started out of quiet. Me neither. I don't know why I kept it up. Maybe just to hear my own voice.

Maybe because in a pathetic way it made me feel like I was connecting with someone. I knew it was stupid and illogical, but it made things feel just a little less. empty. It became a kind of a game for me. Each night I sat in the dim light of my apartment, sipping from one drink too many, and I listened. I let their words become ours. The fights, the meows, the mild chit-chat. When Claire snapped, you never take me seriously anymore, I whispered, of course I do. When the old woman called out to Tom, scolding him for knocking something over, I grinned and mumbled, bad cat. It was more than a game. It was all I had.

Then about a week after I'd started, I noticed it for the first time. Claire had just shouted, for once in your life admit that I might be right. I responded instinctively, why should I when you're wrong? Before I could finish my words from above, her husband's voice exclaimed back to her, but why should I when you're wrong? I paused. For a minute or so, I sat intently listening. I knew her words had sounded familiar, but had I heard them,

have that same argument before? I brushed it off at first. Of course it sounded familiar. I've been listening to their fights for months. I'd probably heard them bring up the same talking points a hundred times, often enough that subconsciously, I probably just knew what he was likely to.

say. But then, the next day, it happened again. Is it that hard to get your, my car's registration done? I've been overdue for almost a week, Claire snapped, and I knew for a fact that I had heard that before, not just something like it, those exact words, in that exact tone, in that exact order, that in itself could have been explainable, except the first time I noticed it had been in August. Her registration had been expired for a week at this point. It had almost been two months. I turned off my AC and listened harder. My heart thumped against my ribs.

If it's no big deal, why can't you just go out and get it done for me? There. She'd said that part two, I thought. I swallowed and realized my mouth had gone dry. My palm was beginning a cold sweat as I grappled with the feeling that they'd done this all before, many times. Coincidence. That's all it was. Maybe their fights really were that predictable. I told myself to ignore it, but I couldn't. That night, I lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, my ears straining to pick up what was being said above me. I tried to convince myself I was

just being paranoid, but something felt wrong. That next day, I kept notes of what little I could here around me on my computer. In the past, I paid little attention to what was being said and when. But on that day, I was meticulous. I kept every fan off. I didn't run my laundry. I skipped my shower. I did everything in my power to keep my home as quiet as possible to maintain the ability to transcribe every word being said. From the old woman next to me, 8.15 a.m. Oh, Tommy, Tom, Tom. Be quiet. I fed you already. from upstairs 8.17 a.m. Claire on the phone. Yes, he left for work. No, it'll just be me here until he comes home for lunch. 1232. Upstairs again. Jason, I told you to not slam the front door when you come in. You scared the hell out of me every time.

All throughout the day, anything that I could struggle to make out, I made note of. The next morning I awoke earlier than usual. I had my note. notes and I had some time, so I showered and made my way to the middle of the apartment to listen once again. I sat eagerly waiting, checking my watch and waiting for signs of life. Then, from the apartment adjacent to mine, at exactly 8.15 in the morning, the woman began to speak. Oh, Tommy Tom, Tom, be quiet. I fed you already. 8.17. Yes, he left for work. No, it'll just be me here until he comes home for lunch. and more.

All morning long, I listened in awestruck silence at my entire day's transcription being reenacted word for word minute by minute. By the time 1232 rolled around and Claire complained about the door slamming, I was sicken to realize that on neither day nor any other had I actually ever heard their door slam shut. As if the same script was being read over and over, just muffled enough. and just faint enough to keep me from noticing. I needed air, so I did something I hadn't done in months. I left my apartment.

I struggled to wheel out into the complex's courtyard, squinting against the sunlight. The fresh air, strange but refreshing against my skin. The apartment building wrapped around in a neat, uniform U-shape, with a mirroring building just across the narrow parking lot. The second and third floor balconies of each building were stacked like dull concrete shelves above my head. I looked up at the couples unit just above mine. The small windows all had their blinds wide open,

but I couldn't make out movement inside. I wheeled, turned around to look at the unit next to mine, where the old woman lived. Blinds open, but the same. No movement inside. I realized quickly that every unit in my building, in the building across the way was the same.

Blinds open. No signs of life. I sat there for nearly an hour. Watching. Not a single shadow moved behind the windows. No doors opened. No one entered or left the building. The silence pressed against me

as I realized that not only were there no people visible to me, there was no movement at all. No birds. No passing cars. no distant voices from other tenants, just the wind and the faint mechanical hum of the AC units. Living isolated will do strange things to your mind. It'll make you keep track of things that societal norms would normally remind you of.

But it also makes you ignore glaring truths right under your nose. It wasn't until I sat there. Utterly confused that I suddenly realized that I had never seen my neighbors. Not once. Not leaving their doors. Not in the parking lot. Not on their balconies. Despite hearing their voices out there almost every night.

I hadn't even spoken to anyone in person when I moved in. I'd filled out all my paperwork online and I'd been driven here by a company vehicle when the mover said they'd brought everything over. A sick feeling crept into my stomach. I'd lived here for eight months. Eight months of hearing these people argue. of hearing the woman behind me, talk to her cats.

And I had never once seen another human being in the flesh. The implication had barely begun to set in when, almost in reaction to my realization, the blinds in the apartment next to mine suddenly closed shut. They were followed only a few seconds later by those belonging to the unit upstairs. And in almost a cascade, all of the open blinds for every unit in the building

were closed. I moved faster than I had ever had in my chair. I wheeled quickly out of the little courtyard and into the parking lot street. Surely there had to be a leasing office somewhere nearby. As I reached the lot, I looked both ways and saw only rows and rows of identical buildings.

The blinds on each slowly closing. The movement rippling away from me for what seems like miles of units. I had never realized these scales. of the complex. As I hustled to find any building that stuck out, I noted that I still saw absolutely nobody. Empty cars parked in lots, bicycles leaned against fences, varying patio furniture, even children's toys left on sidewalks as though they'd been returned too shortly. All signs of life, but without any life at all to be seen. After about 20 minutes of searching for

any indication of an office, I returned to my home. My arms were exhausted from moving more than I had in a long time, and I knew I couldn't keep searching forever. I made it back to my unit not long after, with the surrounding windows blocked from view by obtrusive blinds. My home felt bleak, solitary among the rest of them. It didn't help that. I knew that somehow I really was the only one here. I made it back inside and closed the front door behind me. Not one second later, as I took it.

turned to go to my room, a chime startled me, and I realized that my doorbell had been rung. I immediately turned back to reopen door, but outside there was nowhere to be seen, just my weekly grocery delivery sitting neatly on my door mat, impossibly waiting where it hadn't been only five seconds prior. The following days were a blur. Had there actually been anyone outside to look at my apartment, they would have seen me wildly going from window to window. paring through blinds like a tweaker waiting on a package. For about a week, all of the arguing, the meowing, the idle conversation that had repeatedly permeated my walls went absolutely silent. Whatever was going on, it caught wind of my curiosity and stopped, as though to gather itself and prepare.

And prepare it must have, since when the sounds of human voices and interactions reappeared a week later, they changed. New arguments, new discussions, even a new cat supposedly added to the bunch. The second day that the voices were back, I noticed that they were different from the day before. The conversations were new the next day as well, and the day after that. For seven days, I almost allowed myself to believe that maybe I've been imagining things. I even began to hear the occasional car outside, slowly creeping past. Maybe something I somehow hadn't noticed before. On the eighth day of the return of the noises, however, my heart sank.

Repeat phrases, returning arguments, and interactions that had already hastily taken note of one week prior. The next day followed suit. They learned, but only a little bit. Whatever loop was being played for me was now a whole, weeks worth of audio, not just a day's worth. Even the passing cars returned exactly at the times I'd remarked a week prior. But now that I was looking for them, I could tell that they were driverless. Two weeks had passed since I left my apartment, and a thought occurred to me. What would happen if I tried to interrupt the routine? I checked my notes of the prior two weeks

and began to prepare a plan. The next day, the old woman would chastise her cats for ganging up on the new kitten at exactly 9.13 in three seconds. However, I would knock on her door at 913, hopefully forcing whatever charade was about to be performed for me to have to adjust. The next morning, I prepared myself. I shaved for the first time in weeks, and I made sure I looked as presentable as possible. I couldn't give them any reason or excuse to not open the door for me. I waited in front of the door for about two minutes. My eyes locked on my wristwatch and my ears as alert as they'd ever been. The very second my little Cassio turned 913, I knocked as loudly as I could without sounding aggressive and was sure to stop knocking in less than the three seconds it would take for her to

start speaking. I waited with bated breath. Far longer than I think I should have. Three seconds felt like a minute, and by the time an actual minute rolled by, hours had gone by in my mind. I was satisfied enough with my ability to interrupt the cycle, and as I returned my chair to return back home, something spoke to me from behind the door. Who is it? Three words. Three new words spoken undeniably in response to me, but whatever was speaking to me was not an old woman. I don't know if I could even call it human. The words felt disjointed, as though stitched together from another phrase and disorded in a rush attempt to sound coherent. I barely had enough time to collect my thoughts before the voice called out again.

The words, the same but the cadence and tone shifted, attempting to emulate normal human speech. It sounded more natural, but it was still undeniably inhuman. Who is it? I'm your neighbor from next door. Who is it? The voice called once more as to my horror, the door cracked open. I braced myself to see something horrible waiting for me inside. Some mockery of a human being waiting to lunge at me from the darkness.

But darkness, inky black and concealing, was all that greeted me from behind the door. The door opened in full, and as what little sunlight that could have poured inside, there was absolutely no one inside. Absolutely no movement. No sign of life save for a voice that called out from the doorway, now in perfect form. Who is it? I peered my head inside the doorway, and as I did, I felt myself through a threshold, icy and cold. worse was the feeling of loneliness that seemed to inject itself into my veins. In all my months of being alone, I had never felt it quite so intensely as when I crossed

through that door. As I entered the living room, only one thing about the otherwise unremarkable home stood out, a wheelchair, fallen over onto its side lay in the middle of the floor. I couldn't see anything around it, but it was surrounded by sounds of slow, methodical, chewing in the occasional tearing of flesh patterned with a hungry meow. I left immediately. After that day, the pre-written schedules changed more often and far more spratically. Sometimes I would go days without hearing anything.

Sometimes entirely new arguments would appear in days I thought I documented. And occasionally, the cards I would pass would make a turn they hadn't before. Every action was hollow though And every voice was attached to nobody real I knew that much for certain I started to review my options I hadn't seen another human being For the better part of a year by now

And I doubted that were to change Unless I somehow got out of this complex But where would I go There was no one to come and pick me up I hadn't opened my work laptop in weeks And I knew no one in whatever city I was in Did I even know where I was at? I vaguely remembered the offer after the accident and the company men coming to get me from the hospital and my mind struggled to remember the actual order of events that led me to living there.

The more I puzzled it over, the less it made sense. As far as I could piece together, I had been in the accident and some suits has visited me in the hospital when I woke up. They explained vaguely what happened and that the company wanted to avoid legal troubles. So they passed me over the check and the new job offer, as well as the pamphlet for the apartment. I remember signing my leasing information online from the hospital and then. And then I remember being brought here directly from there. Had it been that immediate? Had I been in such a days I didn't recognize the strangeness of the situation?

My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at my door. Not a doorbell, a knock. Three solid knocks. Echoing through my apartment. A chill ran as far down my spine as I still had feeling, and I slowly began to wheel myself towards the front door. I stopped in the kitchen to grab a knife on my way. Who?

Who's there? I asked. My voice tinged with panic. There was no answer. for a moment. Then softly and meticulously from the other side, I heard my own voice, broken and stitched together, call back to me. I'm your neighbor from next door. I flung the door open, brandishing the large steak knife out into the open air. I couldn't see anyone in front of me, but I knew that something was there. I sat, wildly swinging the knife in front of me, and the voice called again from right in front of my face.

I'm your neighbor from next door. There was a shimmer in the air, a glint of sunlight, a distortion outlining a shape that was unambiguously humanoid, and it was entering the threshold of the door, slowly creeping towards me. This was my only chance.

With all the strength I could muster, I hurled the knife towards the no-one in my entryway, and as it passed through the glimmering shape I knew, so could I. I pushed myself towards the no one, and as they entered its form, a cold I'd only ever felt once before shot through my veins. The icy sting sought to freeze me in place, and the empty solitude that pressed in around me should have taken all this steam out of me. But I didn't let it. I could feel it now.

It was real. It could be escaped. I made my way through the form, and as I looked back as it turned towards me, it's non-existent, unbeing, making haste to attempt to swallow. me up once more. I was faster than it, though. And as I turned the corner out of the courtyard into the street, I forced myself to ignore the burning of my arms and kept pushing myself onward. As I rolled as fast as I could, I looked at the identical building surrounding me. Through every blind, through every crack door, there was nothing and no one watching me. I felt eyes, hungry and jealous, piercing me from all sides. No one was trying to keep me here.

but I wouldn't give it the satisfaction. I caught glimpses from my peripheral vision of glimmering nothings, clambering out of doors and emerging from parked cars. I felt chills run through my body once more as I must have passed through a group of them. Their arms outstretched attempting to grab me. Whatever they were or weren't, I don't think they could touch me, but I could feel them. More and more of them piled out of the front doors, sprinting towards me, The air around me began to ripple as they amassed in numbers.

It reminded me of waves of heat emanating from the roofs of cars under the summer sun. No one's fingers clotted me as I pushed through thousands of them. Voices crackled, warped, stitched together nonsense, surrounding me with their fractured cries. After what felt like an eternity, through the shimmering crowd that wasn't there, I saw what I've been longing for. The end. I had reached the edge of the complex. It wasn't anything special as far as I could tell. No barrier or wall that would hinder my escape.

I pushed myself harder and faster than my exhausted arms should have allowed. But every icy claw that passed through my blood renewed my vigor. The moment I crossed the threshold, the screams collapsed into silence. The air behind me felt full. No empty, frozen fingers. no warped voices, no nothing. I didn't dare look back, though. Not yet.

I looked out ahead of me and had never been more relieved to see a shitty Dollar General in my life. I cried sweet tears of joy when I laid eyes on a struggling jogger, fat, sweaty, human. I rolled over the crosswalk and came to rest at the bus stop across the street.

I finally let my aching arms rest, and they collapsed to my side. I sat for a moment, tears rolling down my cheeks and reeking of sweat and body odor. I must have looked insane even to the scraggly homeless man that sat on the bench, but I didn't care. He would never know it, but I loved him simply for being there. I eventually found my strength, and warily turned my wheelchair towards the complex that had entrapped me for a year of my life. I don't think I'll ever be able to explain what I saw.

Before me lay an unassuming dirt lot, not larger than a football field. Unattended construction equipment lay dormant, and a port-a-potty lay toppled and vandalized in the back corner. Surrounding the perimeter of the lot was a chaneling fence. A land development sign stood at the perimeter. Its red letters crisp and clean, as if freshly posted. beneath an artist rendering of a sleek new building. The words. Coming soon.

Whitlam, Hawthorne, Research Complex. My son keeps drawing a man we've never met. I think he's real. Written by This Chemical 13. My son Alex has always loved drawing. Crayons, markers, whatever he could get his little. hands on. At first, it was the usual stuff. Dogs, stick figure, family portraits, the occasional scribble that only he understood. But last month, his drawings changed. It started with a man,

a tall figure with no hair, hollow eyes, and a stretched, two-wide smile. The first time he showed it to me, I felt uneasy. Who's this buddy? I asked, keeping my tone light. Alex grinned. That's Mr. Threads. The name made my stomach twist. Where did you hear that name? He told me,

Alex said simply, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He stands in my doorway at night. I almost dropped the paper. At first, I chalked it up to a child's imagination. Kids invent imaginary friends all the time, right? But the drawing, didn't stop.

They got worse. Every day, Alex brought me a new picture of Mr. Threads. The same elongated smile, the same hollow eyes, and every time Mr. Threads got closer. One drawing showed him at the end of the hallway, another in the living room, then standing behind me. The night I found a picture of Mr. Threads standing next to Alex's bed, I didn't sleep. Last night, I heard something. It was past midnight, and I was getting in a glass of water when I heard Alex talking in this room.

Soft, hushed whispers. I pressed my ear close to the door. But you don't have to be mad, Alex was saying. I told her about you. She believes me now. A long silence. Then, in the quietest voice I have ever heard my son use. Okay.

I'll tell her. I burst through the door. Alex was sitting up in his bed, staring at the open closet. Who are he talking to? I demanded. He blinked, like I had just woken him up. Mr. Thread says you should sleep with your door open tonight. My stomach dropped.

Why? Alex's lower lip trembled. So he can come in? I slept with the door locked. This morning, Alex wouldn't look at me. He just kept scribbling furiously. His crayon scratching against the paper. When I finally coaxed it out of his hands, my breath caught in my throat.

It was me. Sleeping. And behind me, looming over the bed, Mr. Threads. I grabbed my son's shoulders. Alex, tell me the truth. Have you actually seen him? He didn't speak. Just gave a tiny, reluctant.

nod. His little hands gripped the fabric of his pajama pants, and he bit his lower lip. I tried to steady my breathing. When? Every night, he whispered. I thought I might be sick. What does he do? Alex hesitated, then pressed his hands over his eyes. He watches, but he doesn't have eyes, so sometimes he borrows them. A sharp chill ran down my spine. what do you mean borrows them Alex shuddered Sometimes I wake up and everything is blurry And my eyes hurt

His voice wavered That's when I know he's using them My hands started shaking I ran to the bathroom flipping the light switch And studied my son's face His pupils were dilated Like he'd been staring into pure darkness for hours

I turned his head gently to the side checking under his eyes, dark circles. So deep they looked bruised. Relieving, I said. My voice barely above a whisper. That night, I kept every light on in the house. I let Alex sleep in my bed, keeping him tucked close to me. His small fingers gripping my sleeve like he was afraid I'd disappear if he'd let go.

I didn't blame him. I felt the same way. Sleep didn't come easy. Every shadow in the room felt like it was stretching toward us. reaching. I kept reminding myself that it was just in my head, just my own paranoia turning shapes into monsters. Then, at 307 a.m., Alex gasped awake. I bolted upright. What is it? He trembled violently, clutching at his face. Mom, my eyes, I can't see. I grabbed his shoulders. It's okay. It's okay. I'm here. You're safe. But even as I said it, I saw these shift in the room.

The light flickered just once. Then again. And the temperature dropped. I turned slowly toward the bedroom door. It was open. A long shadow stretched across a floor. Alex sobbed into my chest, his tiny fingers curling into fists. He's here, he whimpered.

I didn't look. I couldn't. Instead, I pulled Alex into my arms, stood up, and back toward the furthest corner of the room. My heart slammed against my ribs. Every instinct screaming at me to run, but I didn't know where to go. Then the whisper came. You see me now. I snapped my eyes shut.

It was right there. I could feel it. A presence looming over us. Stretching, growing, filling the room with something cold and unnatural. My breath came in shallow, rapid gasps. I felt something grazed my cheek. I ran. I don't remember getting to the car.

I barely remember buckling Alex in. my hands fumbling as I tried to steal my shaking fingers. All I remember is driving, tearing down the street at 3.15 in the morning, refusing to look in the rearview mirror. Alex sobbed quietly in the back seat. He knows where we're going. I didn't respond. I just kept driving.

That was three days ago. We're at my sister's house now, staying in her guest room. Alex hasn't drawn anything since we left. He still wakes up in the middle. middle of the night, gasping, clutching at his face, shaking uncontrollably. I don't know what to do. I don't know if running was enough. Because last night, I woke up to Alex standing by the window.

His hands pressed to the glass. He's outside, he whispered. He wants to come in. In this morning, I found a drawing crumpled under his pillow. a sketch of my sister's house with Mr. Threads standing at the front door. I was dead for 30 days, written by Saturday. It was an eight-hour drive back home. I'd been visiting my dad for his birthday, but I had to get home.

I hadn't been able to get time off work the next day, so it was going to be hell and a half if I didn't get there by morning. The weather wasn't on my side either. What started as a mild wind had escalated to an incessant howling, rocking my car with gusts of wind that nearly knocked me off course. I could barely hear the radio over the raindrops knocking on my sunroof. I was six hours in when I came across a fallen tree. Another car had stopped ahead and called it in.

But I didn't have time to stick around. I took a detour onto a smaller road. It was rural Minnesota. What's the worst I could happen? The road was more pothold than asphalt, but my GPS was still on point. It showed a 20-minute detour, but I figured it'd still be quicker than waiting for that tree to be cleared. I rounded a corner and came across a long stretch of road overlooking the countryside. There was a wheat field to the left and a pine forest to the right.

It was dark, so I couldn't see anyone up ahead. No lights. I kept going straight, leaning back in my seat. all of a sudden, a car. It was parked by the side of the road. I swerved, but I ended up smacking it and cracking a tail light. I came to a full stop about 20 feet further down the road. Looking back, I bit my lip. I could keep going, and that'd be that, or I could leave my insurance information.

I dug around in my glove compartment and found a slip of paper, tucked it under my jacket, and got out. I made my way to the parked car. It was a dark beige sedan that looked like it'd been dug out of the 90s. I didn't want to pry, but I couldn't help but see something odd. There was at least three duffel bags in the back seat. I got my papers out and slipped them under the wipers, along with a $20 as an apology.

I was walking back to my car when I noticed someone approaching. I noticed a couple of details. They had a dirty shovel. flung over their shoulders and were holding another duffel bag that made it four in total i had this uneasy feeling i was looking at something i wasn't supposed to this person had been digging something up in the middle of a rainstorm i couldn't imagine they wanted someone to see them do it i got out of the rain and into the driver's seat i put the key in and fired up the engine it made a bit of a huffing noise, as if wanting to stall, but it didn't. Then someone knocked on my window.

I could have put my foot on the gas, but I didn't. Instead, I turned my head, only to see a stern-looking man in his early 50s. He had a thick mustache and a black baseball cap, a look that made me think of someone trying their best to be forgetable and neutral. He was holding a gun. He made a rolling motion with his hand. Let's have a short conversation before we go off running, he said. It'll just be a couple of minutes. I rolled down the window. It was dawning on me just how bad this could get if I wasn't careful. We were alone on a small, non-descript road during bad weather, and no one knew I was there, and he didn't look like the type of person who was eager for a rational discussion. Sorry about the tail light, I said. Mind lowering that pistol there? He forced a smile.

I would mind, yes. He reached his arm in through the open window and unlock the door. Opening it, he mentioned for me to step out. I looked back at the steering wheel, not sure what to do. Maybe I could get away if I did something sudden. I wouldn't do that, he said. It'll get messy. I didn't see anything, I assured him. I'm just passing through. I'm sure you didn't. Now step out. Looking down the barrel of a gun, I was inclined to listen.

I stepped out. My mouth went dry as my sense is heightened. I could feel the blood rushing to my head. I don't know what you think I saw, I said. It was just a duffel bag and a shovel. I don't even know you. Just step right this way, he said. pointing me to the side of the road.

I didn't see the license plate. Hell, I can hardly see you. It's raining too much, you know? Fair enough. He pointed at something up in the pine woods. Can you see that? He asked. I leaned in and looked closely.

There was nothing up there. Just pine trees and rain. Then I realized what he was doing. He was making me stand still. I didn't have time to turn my head before he fired the gun. Now, a lot of stories would have ended there. That would make sense.

Even though I barely knew the guy or what he'd done, he wasn't taking any chances. He shot me point blank in the head. I had no idea what happened next, but I figured out a couple of things. He pushed my car into a lake, and he buried me in a shallow grave just east of that road,

in a field, right up a hill. Well, riding it out like this, it seems almost detached. Like it didn't really happen to me. Like it happened to someone or something else. But I can't say it any other way. He killed me and I didn't even understand why. In terms of time, it felt like blinking. One moment there's a flash and a bang.

The next, I'm inhaling dirt. I almost choked then and there. A first sour breath. bitter with the salt of the earth. I flailed around until the air touched my fingertips. Then I dug. I gasped for breath, but all I got was mud and grass. Finally, my face broke the surface.

I weezed, sucking in the night. Only then did I realize that my heart was still beating out of my chest. I was still surprised by the loud sound, the gunshot. The rain had seemingly cleared up, but it was late. I was out in a field. It was a small glade in the middle of a pine forest, where I was surrounded by these strangely colored sunflowers. They were probably white, but they looked kind of blue in the moonlight.

I just had the clothes on my back. He'd taken my phone, my car keys, my smartwatch, everything. He'd buried me alive, I thought. But the strange thing about it was that right where I'd been lying, there was a cross. It was crude, a couple of broken two-by-fours nailed together. It looked more like a plus. But what the hell kind of murderer leaves their victim alive and marks their grave?

That's when it hit me. He didn't leave me alive. He'd shot me in the back of the head. I touched my skull back to front, but there was nothing wrong with it. Not even a bruise. Physically, I was fine. but that just didn't make any sense. What the hell had happened?

How could I be okay? I had no idea where to go. So I just picked a direction and hoped for the best. It was dark, but the moonlight helped a little. Looking back at that weird glade, I couldn't help but feel watched. As if those creepy sunflowers were all turning my way. First things first, I was going to go get the police.

This man was a menace. I had the time and a clear description in my head. The rest would work itself out. It took me about 20 minutes to make it to the road. The same road where I'd run into them, I figured. Or maybe that's just what all roads look like in rural Minnesota. In two hours, only a single car passed me on that road, and they weren't eager to stop for hitchhikers.

I could see why the guy had picked this spot. It was the middle of nowhere, that had ended up there just by bad luck. Wrong place at the wrong time, apparently. Astronomical odds. I've been following the road for longer than I care to admit when a couple of headlights slowed down behind me. Looking back, I could see a middle-aged woman driving a pickup.

You lost? She called out. Sort of, I said. Turning my pockets inside out. Robbed. Are you okay? she asked. Not really. Are you on drugs?

I wish. She's scum. off at me and leaned over, opening the passenger side door. Get in. My eyes went heavy the moment as that down. I felt the heat of the car melting my bones, turning my body into butter. I almost nodded off then and there. Looks like you've had one hell of a night, she said. Where are you headed? The police, I guess. I said. Can you call them? I can, but there ain't no one around until morning, she said, unless it's urgent. it's kind of urgent look you're not on fire and no one's hurt they're not coming out here till morning

that's all i'm saying i wiped some dirt off my face and nodded nearest motel then nonsense she smiled you can have my kid's room just for the night appreciate it her name was mary ann she worked at a water treatment plant not too far away and was coming home from a night out with her work friends. As a single mother to a now-grown kid, she didn't mind leading some emptiness space out to a stranger in need. I feel like between Marianne and the man who shot me in the head, I'd managed to find the two kinds of people you might run into in rural Minnesota. I got to borrow a room next to her garage for the night. I took a shower and threw my clothes in the washer. Marianne didn't have much food to share, but she microwaved me some leftovers. Lazzania. We talked a

about what happened, but I didn't have much to say. It was so hard to describe. I couldn't just babble on about how I'd have crawled out of a hole in the ground, so I said I'd been mugged and had my car stolen at gunpoint. It was an uneasy sleep. It's like my heart wouldn't settle down. No matter how comfortable I was, I kept feeling like I was on the edge of bursting into a sprint,

like there was still an immediate danger. It was like I kept hearing the click, of the gun, anticipating the painful flash of the bullet burning past the hairs on my neck. The following morning, Marianne made breakfast. She was chatty and making breakfast, brought out the people person in her. That road is trouble, she said, but I guess you're not the worst thing we found there. Oh yeah? Yeah, she continued. Did you see the, uh, hold on. She wiped her hands on a towel and let me her phone. She had a social media post up. about a dead man.

I recognized him. It was the man, the one who shot me. There wasn't a lot to it, a small post talking about how he'd been a couple weeks from turning 71 and how he'd passed suddenly in his car. There were dozens of posts talking about how much they were going to miss him

and how great of a guy he'd been. I figured they hadn't known much about his extracurricular activities. Good people don't shoot other good people in the head. before I handed her the phone back, I noticed something odd. Right there. By the time. The date. 31 days had passed.

I almost choked on my orange juice. This was beyond explanation. And it didn't make any sense. 31 days? I handed Marianne her phone back. I mold the options over my head. I wanted to call my mom, but I couldn't remember her number. it was saved on my phone, which was gone.

Besides, what would I tell her? Again, you can't just tell people you've crawled out of a hole in the ground. I figured I could do a little research, try to figure out what happened before I went to the police. Maybe there was a logical explanation for all of this. Maybe I just missed it. If so, a little research was a small price to pay to not sound insane. Thanks, I said.

You know where this guy lived? You know him? She asked. Sort of. said, an acquaintance. I mean, yeah, I can show you his place if you want. I had to know more. There were too many questions in the air right now, and I had to get a couple of answers before I started to untangle it. If I could figure out why this guy had shot me in the head, maybe I could go to the police with something concrete. How the hell 31 days had passed would have to wait.

Marianne drove me downtown. I don't remember the name of the town, but it was small. Basically, just a collection of houses by the side of a quasi-busy street. It'd gone from late autumn to early winter in those 31 days, and it showed. The morning frost was just melting off the sleeping trees. She turned on to a small road just off Main Street and up a hill. The house we looked for stood out like a sore thumb, the only white house with red detailing. It looked like a big shed had swallowed a candy cane. Hideous.

It was clear that no one had been there in a while. Some kids had broken the windows. A couple of trees in the yard cast long shadows over the bare dirt, as sanctuating the Midwestern morning sun. There was that small town smell in the air. Mud, melted frost, diesel. I thanked Mary Ann, and she handed me 50 bucks. There's a motel just down the street, she said.

It ought to be a couple of rooms there if you need some space. God bless that woman. As she drove away, I walked up to the front door. The lock was broken and there were a couple of spray tags on the side. The door was barely holding onto the hinges, having been rocked back and forth by harsh winds. The inside was pretty lackluster. The guy was clearly a loner. No pictures on the walls, no pets, barely any decorations,

a couple of polite postcards from acquaintances piled up in the hallway, empty plates on the kitchen table. Checking the fridge, there was half a six-pack and a jar of pickles. That's it. It was empty. If this guy was turning 71, there were no signs of a long life. In fact, there were no signs of anything. You could tell there had been people going through the place.

Furniture had been moved and broken. There were scratch marks on the floor where someone had tried to break the floorboards. There was also some cigarette smoke. Maybe the guy was a chain smoker, but the place didn't smell like it. I wandered around, not really knowing what to look for. I had this feeling that knowing why he tried to kill me might shed some light on the things. But it really didn't. It's like the post said.

He just tipped over and died. It was hard to accept that maybe, just maybe, I'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. maybe I'd never know for sure. Still, the guy had it coming. Whatever the reason, you just don't kill people in cold blood. Leaving that house behind, the question remained. Why me?

What I do? There was no point in grinding it over and over in my head. I figured I'd get a room of that motel, get in touch with the police, and get back on the road. My family had to be worried sick. I felt a little bad for spending this much time running around with this nonsense, but it bothered me to no end.

You don't forget waking up in a shallow grave. You just don't. I followed Marianne's directions and came across a gravel path, a long winding path over a hill and through the pine woods. I spotted a peculiar tree in the distance, a dead leafless oak. I decided to stop there to rest my feet for a bit. It had a route that curled around itself. making it's an excellent seat i sat down to ponder my options but see i do this thing when i'm in

deep thought i scratched something over and over with my left index finger there's something about the sensation of running your finger over something textured that just numbs my mind so as i sat there and considered my next move i did just that i scratched a bit right in that exact spot something had already scratched the bark off. I pulled my finger back, sticky with sap. Someone had been sitting here, just like I was. They'd been scratching that spot, just like I'd done. Odd. Following the trail, I ended up next to two buildings down by the main road. There it was, the motel and a supermarket. There was a woman outside the motel smoking a cigarette. She kept looking my way, so I waved at her. You here to pick up your stuff, she asked.

What? Your stuff, she repeated. I'll throw it away if you don't. No, yeah, I'll get it. Sorry. I had no idea what she was talking about, but she clearly intended to talk to me. There was no mistaking it. She'd seen me before.

She was very comfortable in that fact, so much of it that it made me question if we had history. I joined her outside the motel and waited for her to finish her cigarette. I got a stern talking to about leaving things behind. Apparently, there was only so much space in the loss and found. I apologized, which eased the tension a bit. Maybe she was expecting some kind of entitled to big city folk talk from me. She said she'd give me 20 minutes to clear out the room and handed me a key.

I hurried down the hall and up the stairs. Standing outside that room, I didn't know what to expect. I'd never been there before. I'd never seen this woman, and yet she seemed to know me, or at the very least, she'd seen me before. When I entered, I could tell someone had been living there. There were some clothes and a couple of items scattered across the nightstand. It didn't take long until a chill crawled of my spine. The clothes in that room were my size.

There was a toothbrush and a green plastic case in the bathroom, just like I always keep. I'm a bit squeamish about bacteria. which begged the question. Had I been there before? I decided to do a test. If I had been there before, my phone would be tucked away and hidden near the bed. I'd had some bad experiences with staff stealing my electronics in the past,

so I leaned over the bed and fumbled around for a bit. And there it was. I found my phone nuzzled between the wall and the bed, but more than that, I found something hidden underneath, a black metal box with a four-digit code. I tested the first four-digit code that came to mind, and voila, it popped open. In it, I found a gun, six bullets, a stack of about $4,100 bills, in a notebook.

There was a knock at the door before I could explore a little further. You finished? The lady asked. Sorry, I said. It's going to be a while. You staying? Would you mind if I did? You paying? Of course, yeah. All right then. I sat there for a moment, taking it all in. How could I have known it would be there? And how would I know the code? How could I have been in that room without remembering anything about it? It didn't make sense. But I was holding the proof in my hands. There had to be answers. I paid for a couple of days and locked myself in that room. I gathered all clothes and checked all the corners to make sure there was nothing else hidden in there. It felt strange, like I was following in my own footsteps.

But I'd never been there before. I'd woken up in that field like no time had passed. What was I missing? I kept the TV on in the background just to fill the empty space. I checked the phone. There were a couple of outgoing calls, a few of them short, a couple of them a little longer. Some of them were dated from about 10 to 15 days after I was attacked. In the empty space I couldn't account for.

Those were 30 days of my life that were just gone. But something had happened in between. There were a couple of texts too. Most of them were just people being worried, asking if I was okay. There were a couple of replies sent from this phone, but just a few. They were short, just saying, I'm fine, but one text, stood out. It was from my younger sister. Why are they saying you're dead? She wrote. There'd been no response. Dead? I immediately tried to call her, but my phone was disconnected. Either the service

was discontinued, or I hadn't paid my bills. Either way, I wasn't getting through. I decided to check the notebook. The pages were all dated, starting at about 21 to 22 days after, my supposed death. It mentioned waking up in a field of blue sunflowers, disoriented and looking for help. It mentioned getting a ride to town from an old man in a blue van.

Other entries mentioned talking to people about my assailant, only to find out he'd already died. It seems that my first instinct was always to find the guy who killed me and always finding out that he was gone. These notes spoke about an experience

that was almost identical to mine. about waking up, about getting to a motel, about looking up the house of our attacker. Apparently, that's where they'd found the gun and the money. Maybe it had been kids messing up the place. Maybe it was me. The notes also mentioned a letter left behind. It just said that he was sorry. The note read.

There were more notes, dates, connections, so I flipped to an empty page, grabbed the pen and tried to put it all into a coherent timeline. It seems that after about 10 days after getting shot in the head, I had woken up in a field for the first time. I tried to find the man who did it, but he had already died more than a week prior. According to the notebook, the man had died either the same night that I did or the day after.

Then on day 20, I'd woken up in a field again. I'd made my way back to town to find the man who killed me, but he was already dead. For the next few days, I'd been locked up in this very motel, trying to figure out what was going on. I'd made numerous calls, sent texts, and a couple of emails, only to be told that I'd been declared dead. Apparently, I'd walked into the police station on day 19 and fell over. Dead.

Complete organ failure. according to the coroner. The notes warned me about contacting friends and family, telling me I'd just cause harm and confusion. For all they knew, I was gone. Talking to them would open up a lot of questions that I couldn't answer. But I wasn't dead. I was right there reading that notebook.

From all I could gather, there seemed to be a pattern. Every ten days, I would wake up in that field as if nothing had happened. I would believe I'd just gotten killed by that man, and I'd seek to either get help or revenge, but he was already dead. The world had moved on. But the notes didn't speak of me having seen any other versions of myself, so what exactly happened to every version? Did they all drop dead? The final entry hinted at an answer.

It simply read, I can feel my heart slowing down. I haven't been able to relax for over a week, and now it's getting hard to move. I have to prime my fingers open with my teeth. My toes have turned black. I'm seeing things. I see the one before me. I see you reading this.

I know what is about to, and to prove it, I will put a cross on that spot. It'll be the first thing you will see. The cross. The old man, hadn't been the one to put that up. I had. This was the working theory.

Every 10 days, I would wake up in that field, and every 9 or 10 days after that, I'd die, only for a new me to wake up, repeating the cycle. I couldn't wrap my head around it. I turned everything in that notebook in and out looking for answers. There were a couple of notes about checking the library, talking to people about local legends, mentions of those strange sunflowers,

but there were no real answers. It was all dead ends and vague nonsense. I didn't know what to do. The first version of me had fumbled around, confused and scared, and died. The second version had tried to figure things out but was still gone. What the hell could I do that those two didn't?

And did this mean I was going to die in about a week? Every idea that I had was in, that notebook. It was already there, and it had failed. I'd check the soil in that glade. I talked to the locals. I'd researched similar myths and legends. I tried burning myself in that soil again, as if I could go back somehow. But no, I'd been killed and buried among those flowers, and they refused to stop bringing me back, and it did so about every 10 days. I wasted that entire day, trying to piece it all together. I fell asleep somewhere about nine in the evening, still holding that notebook.

I kept falling in and out of sleep, having these uneasy thoughts. I kept imagining that first breath as I breached the surface, digging myself out of a shallow grave, the confusion, the ringing in my ears from that gunshot. But there were other things in that dark of my dreams, the sound of my feet rushing into the house, desperately digging through a home only to find a gun in a letter, scaring off a few kids, making them drop their spray cans as they fled. Then there was a sound of people crying and screaming in my ear, questions I can't answer, desperation on all ends. Building into this tight knot in my chest that no comforting word could untangle, then a lake, aching joints, a final swing,

as my bones fossilized and decayed. I was at peace, knowing I was about to go, and I chose to do it in a way where no one would be bothered. And now me, here, alone in a motel, trying not to hear the ticking clock, try not to think of what happens when my 10 days were up. The next day I sprang into action. I watched the cold sweat off my brow

and decided to answer what questions remained in that notebook. I would do anything. There had to be a solution. Things always work out, one way or another. Checking or recently used apps, I found out that my previous iteration, the second copy, had to use a map.

They'd search for nearby lakes. There was that one lake called Frog Lake nearby, and they just walked into it. That must have been the way they chose to end things. Out of sight, out of mind. But the biggest question remained. Why had that old man killed me to begin with? I fell into a vicious cycle of anxiety, desperation, and failure.

I tried to find his car, but it'd been destroyed. I tried to find any of his relatives, but he had none. All who had posted had been acquaintances and friends he'd made. I messaged a couple of them using the motel Wi-Fi, but they either didn't respond or had nothing to say. I tried to check for prior convictions, and he had none. I tried to find out something about his gun, but it was unregistered. And the serial number had been filed off.

I couldn't even find out where he got the bullets. And why had he apologized? Why leave me money? The only thing I could think of were those duffel bags of his and his digging. There had to be a reason. The nights were getting worse. I was seeing little glimpses of things that had been, crying in the motel room, rushing into the police station,

tearing out notes from the notebook and clawing out my face until it bled, frustration, hopelessness, and desperation. And with every glimpse, every dream, I started to realize how futile this was. Every idea, every thought, everything I tried, I'd already done it. I was just repeating patterns. I was in a race against myself and nothing would change. On day five, I made my way back out to that glade.

Retracing my steps, I found that it was surprisingly close to where he had parked his car that night. Most of the ground there was gravel or rock, but the soil in that glade was soft and malleable. To me, the only thing that made sense was that he'd been digging for something up there. The cross was still up there. I couldn't stop looking at it. What had I thought as I put that up? Did I still have hope? That night, I started seeing other things, not just things that had been, but things that were to come.

Years from now, waking in that same glade, the cross long since. withered by age. A little bag left by the side, a welcome package. The sunflowers would still be there. The cars would look different, quieter, cleaner. Over time, the roads would deteriorate. The sun would be warmer. I'd draw thousands upon thousands of the same first breath over and over. I'd ask myself the same questions. I'd try the same things, and I'd come to the same conclusions. I forced myself awake before I went too far. I didn't want to see. I didn't want to know.

The clock was ticking. On day six, I had completely given up. I just lay there in the motel room, watching daytime TV, eating stale trips from the supermarket across the street. I juggled 10-minute naps with bouts of existential panic, feeling my heart race through my chest as my lungs tightened. I could hear it in the back of my mind, that ticking clock.

It was almost over, forever. I tore my hair out. I crawled into a fetal position, laying in the shower until the water turned cold. But whenever I closed my eyes a little too long, I'd hear myself drawing that first breath again and again. Coming to that same horrifying realization. And before I knew it, it'd be over. and it'd be over and over and over and over. And I'd never really know what had happened until it was too late.

By the night of day six, I might as well been dead. I just laid there naked on the floor, disassociating. I don't want to talk about day seven. They got worse and I did a lot of things I wasn't proud of. so I'm skipping head to day eight. On day eight, I took a walk downtown. There was a corner pub where I decided to have lunch. By happenstance, two police officers walked in.

They were having a discussion, and I couldn't help overhear it. That doesn't make any sense, one of them said. How can the guy have his own bones in the duffel bag? That's the thing, the owner said. He must have had a twin. They were identical. So all these years, they've... Just been two of them, and no one knew?

It's like some parent trap shit. The officer laughed. Can you imagine? Bones? Duffel bag. There was something there. They had to be talking about him. I hurried back to the motel.

My killer had been digging the night he killed me. He left his gun and bullets in a box, telling me he was sorry, along with some money. Nate found bones in his duffel. bag that were identical to his own. But what if they weren't an identical twin? What if they were a copy of him? Or maybe he was the copy?

I bought a shovel of my own and made my way to that glade that same day. Checking the soil where I'd been buried, I dug and I dug deep. Maybe there was a reason I've been buried in a shallow grave. Maybe there was something else further down. I dug until my muscles ached and my lungs burned. I dug all afternoon in different places, and finally, I found something. About five foot deep. There was a body bag.

It was covered in chemicals, but the smell was unmistakable. There was a corpse in there. I knew what I'd seen before I even opened it. The zipper struggled, but it rolled open, challenging every sensation in my body. It's a strange feeling to hold your own face. to see your own closed eyes, to stroke your own hair and comfort, the little quirks and scars that only you know of,

except for that one thing, a bullet hole. I collapsed my knees. I'd figured it out. From a stray thought mentioned by a passerby, I figured it out. There was a reason that that man had such a bare bones home, why he looked 50, although he was 70.

He'd gone through this. He'd been in the cycle before me, killing me and having me take his place in the ground. Must have broken the cycle. There was an end to it. That's why he apologized. That's the reason he just killed a random person by the side of the road.

It wouldn't end until someone took his place, if not me, then someone else. So that meant that I had two options. I could go through this nightmare over and over. over or I could end it. I could cut those who would come after me out of the equation and spare them the horror I'd felt.

I could do that. Now I had options. That night, after I'd washed the dirt from my hands and knees, the dreams were different. I felt myself drawing another first breath, only to wake up under a starless sky, where the sun had gone dim and the moon hung closer than ever. I could hear rumbling earth as towering monolithic beings reach for the horizon sky. I'd see vaguely humanoid shapes roam a desert wasteland, stretching towards the heavens, crying for death, crying for an end of the cycle, like me.

But there would be more first breaths. Ones where I'd wake up in a firestorm only to be burned to death. ones where I would wake up choking under solid ice, ones where I would be pulled up by inhuman scavengers, only to be torn apart and eaten, farmed and cultivated, like wheat. And the cycle would continue, turning life into a grotesque broken mirror image of what I've been told it would be. Lies and hopes made manifest by church, states, and peers,

this was real life. uncompromising, uncaring, raw. And then there'd be no air. Then there'd be no soil. There'd be black. An impossible cold would snap across my crystallized in skin. My eyes would be open, but there would be nothing to see. No sound to hear but the popping of my own eardrums.

I'd failed to draw that first breath of air once every 10 days. again and again and again. I woke up screaming on the ninth day. I had no choice. I had to break the cycle. Someone had to take my place in that void. I could see why he'd done it, and I would do so myself without hesitation.

I grabbed the gun, the bullets, the shovel, and made my way to the glade. While the old man had just been bones, I had a whole body to take care of. It didn't matter. I could leave it out in the open and it would make no difference. By the time it mattered, I'd be gone, and the cycle would be broken. So I waited by the side of the road, like he'd done.

My body had been dug up and was ready to be moved. I didn't want to do it in the daylight, though, but time was running out. I didn't even care that I was going away. I just had to avoid that thing that were to come, the infinite awakenings that followed. A lot of cars passed by me. Some honked at me. Others went out of their way to splash me with water, collected in the many potholes.

It wasn't until dinner time that a car slowed down to help. A good Samaritan. A pickup truck. Marianne. No. I muttered under my breath. Just keep going. Not you.

But it was getting late. Could I risk waiting for someone else? She rolled down the window on the passenger side, smiling at me. Her radio clicked off. You back here, she laughed. What kind of trouble are you looking for? I'm fine, I said. You can keep going.

Fine, she scoffed. You're right back where you started. Don't tell me he got robbed again. Not this time, no. So why are you here? I had my hand on my gun. There was no one. else around.

She was leaning forward, and I had a clear shot to her head. I'd just raise my hand, click, and that would be it. It was simple. Would I risk missing this chance just for her to get some more time? In the grand scheme of things, what would it matter? And what if the next copy of me came to the same conclusion? What would stop them from pulling the trigger? It was either me, now, or me later.

And if not her, then someone else. Did it matter who? I wouldn't be around to care. I could barely keep it together. My hand trembled. She leaned over, looking out the passenger side window. Her brow furrowed a little. I could tell she was concerned.

Look, she said. I won't pretend to know your business, but I can see you're not doing well. You must have come across something real bad friend. She continued. I get it, but you know what I do when I feel bad? She patted the passenger side of her pickup. I do something nice.

It does all the difference in the world. If you can't help yourself, then maybe you can help someone else. Does the heart good, you know? A thought crossed my mind. I hadn't figured this puzzle out if it hadn't been for me just, sticking around. It wasn't being smart or strong or suave. It was a stray bit of luck, presented by two cops having a conversation. So maybe it didn't matter if I couldn't see a solution here and now. There could be a solution elsewhere at another time that I just hadn't seen yet.

And maybe I wouldn't see it, but maybe the next me would. Also, by knowing what was to come, who was to say I couldn't stop it. This outcome could be completely pretty determined or else I'd have told myself about it in that notebook. I had to believe there could be a better way, that there could be a solution and a beautiful ending. Not just for me, but for everyone. I took my hand off the gun.

I'd just got to get something, I said. Can you give me a couple minutes? Sure, she smiled. Don't keep me waiting. I rushed back to the glade. and nailed a note to the cross. The next me would get a welcome package. I followed Marianne back to town,

but she offered to have me stay in her son's room again. I couldn't decline. I borrowed his computer, and that's why I'm here, writing this down. I need to spell things out in a way another me will understand, and I think this is the way to do it. So if I'm reading this, hello.

I'm glad you, saw the note. I hope this shed some light on things and maybe you can make it better for the next one. My joints are growing stiffer and my heart is slowing down. It's actually sort of pleasant. The worries start to fade, but the cycle will continue. I'll be gone before long and I'll make sure Marianne won't find me. I've called the motel, telling them I'll be back soon and to keep the room. I have the money for it, at least for a while longer. It is so easy to despair and so easy to forget our view.

We can only see so far and we can only hear so much. What feels like an endless darkness today can be a warming light by the morning. Sometimes all we have to do is hope, to hold on, to do the best we can, and trust in the way things unfold. We don't even have to be smart about it or strong. Sometimes we just got to be at the right place, at the right time. I don't know how many hours I have left. It's strange to count yourself in hours.

It's nice not to know for sure. I'm going to go for a walk and see how far I'll go. Take a deep breath, as if it's your first. you have all the time in the world. I cross-referenced the missing persons map with my local caves. I wish I hadn't. Written by J-I-Z-Z Blossoms. You've probably seen this map too.

It pops up on Reddit every few months, usually on R-S-Creepy or R-slash maps. It shows two images. One is a map of missing persons, and the other is a map of America's subterranean cave systems. The overlap is practically identical. The caverns match the disappearances almost one to one. Most people look at it and go,

Huh, creepy, and scroll past. I used to too, but this time I zoomed in. I live in a rural stretch of Kentucky, deep in the foothills. I noticed a dense cluster of red dots right in my county, sitting directly on top of a minor cave system called the Blackwood sinkholes. It wasn't a tourist trap like Mammoth Cave. It was a jagged scar in the woods that even the locals didn't bother with. I showed it to my girlfriend, Jess.

Calling Jess outdoorsy would be putting it lightly. She's the kind of girl who owns three different types of hiking boots and thinks a weekend without dirt under her fingernails is a wasted one. I'm the opposite. I stay up until 3 a.m. reading about unsolved murders and just generally being a vampire. It's a match, see? I pointed at the screen.

Nobody goes missing here because they get lost. They fall in or I waggled my eyebrows. Something pulls them in. Jess rolled her eyes but grinned. You want to go ghost hunting? I want to go debunking. I corrected. We hike out, set up a cam near the sinkholes,

cook some actual food and drink, some bourbon, and see if the mothman shows up. It was supposed to be fun, a mix of her love for nature and my morbid curiosity. We packed the Jeep on Friday, tense, sleeping bags, and a heavy cooler filled with marinated short ribs and ice for the whiskey. The hike to the Blackwood sinks

was only about three miles from the nearest launch. road, but the terrain was brutal. The trees grew thick and wrong here, the roots twisting over the limestone ground like arthuric fingers. By the time we found the main entrance, I was ready to drop dead. The cave mouth was a horizontal slash and a limestone cliff face, about 10 feet high and 30 feet wide. It looked like a mouth held open in a silent scream. A step cold breeze float out of it, smelling of wet rock and old copper. Creepy. Just noted.

Dropping her pack? I can dig it. I love this girl. We set up camp about 50 yards from the entrance. Just far enough to avoid the draft, but close enough to stare into the darkness. I got the fire going while Jess prepped the grill grate over the coals. We were doing this right. Slow cooked sticky ribs,

in a spicy bourbon sauce, heat from gentle coals, licked at the meat, and the smell was intoxicating. Anyone who loves barbecue knows what I'm talking about. Smoke, fat, sugar, and char. Jess was walking back from the tent with the drinks when a down draft caught the smoke, pulling the plume low across the ground and sucking it into the mouth of the cave. Feed in the beast, Jess showed. while handing me a solo cup half filled with Knob Creek. Hopefully like ribs, I laughed.

We ate as the sunset turned to twilight and then drank as Twilight gave way to pitch black. Jess put her hand on my shoulder. I was thought I was going to get lucky, but then she told me to shush. That's when I heard the silence. All day, there was a symphony of crickets, cicadas, and rustling leaves, but now the silence was thick, heavy and oppressive. It felt like the forest was holding its breath. And then the cave moaned.

At first you could probably mistake it for the wind. It was too low and too long for a groan to come from any human lungs. Then it got louder and closer. Jess whispered low, did you hear that? And it took me everything I had to not tremble. She showed her flashlight toward a cliff.

The beam cut through the darkness, but the cave mouth swallowed the light. Probably a coyote or a bear. We should pack up the food tight. I murmured back, more to myself than her. That didn't sound like a bear. That sounded congested.

We started scrambled. to clean up. I was tossing the bones in trash bag when the sound changed. It wasn't moaning now. It was a wretching noise, a wet, hacking cough that echoed from deep within the rock. Then a voice, or something trying to be a voice. Come. Maybe it wasn't English. Maybe my mind was trying to find meaning where there wasn't any. Just dropped the cooler lid. What the hell was that? I grabbed the hatchet I'd use for firewood. We're leaving now.

The tent, leave it. The smell hit us before we saw them. It wasn't the lingering sweet smoke of our barbecue anymore. It was a wave of rot, rancid meat, ammonia, and something muskier, like a wet dog that had been dead for days. From the darkness of the cave, they came. They weren't human. They were wrong, elongated. That's the only word for it.

They looked like humans who had been stretched on a rack. Pale skin pulled tight over bones that had too many joints. Their eyes were milky white, useless and blind, long rot-stained teeth, chipped and broken and jagged, stuck out from low-hanging jaws that were too. too wide and too loose, and there were three of them. Two have crawled on the ground, and the third one limped in a jerky motion all like an insect. They went straight for the grill.

One of them grabbed the scorching hot grate with a bear clawed hand. It didn't even flinch as its skin sizzled. It brought the metal to its face and groaned, licking the grease with a tongue that was too long and too black. Don't move, I whispered. terrified that the sound of my heartbeat would give us away. The creature let out a chittering sound, dropping the grate. It turned its head.

It wasn't looking at us. It was blind, I could tell, but it was looking for us. It tilted its head, sniffing the air like a hungry dog. It was smelling for us. And then it arches back and wailed. It was a nails on chival. talkboard. Teeth grinding, bone-chilling screech that shot my ears and prickled at something in my gut. It opened its two wide mouth and I saw my death. Meat, it rasped. I threw the bag at him.

It was instinct. The bag hit the screecher in the chest, spilling rib bones and paper towels. The distraction worked for a second. The three of them fell upon the ribs and garbage in a frenzy. I could hear them snapping the bones with audible crunches. Run, I screamed. We sprinted through the dark woods. We tripped over roots, slammed into saplings, and tore our clothes on briars. Behind us, the snapping of bones stopped, replaced by a high-pitched, utilizing shriek that sounded like something between a coyote and a sobbing child. I could hear them crashing through the brush behind us.

They were fast, so incredibly fast. We burst onto the logging road just as I threw the key, to Jess. We dove into the Jeep. She slammed the locks just as something heavy slammed into the rear window. The glass spider-webbed but held. I looked back as Jess peeled out, dirt and gravel, spraying everywhere. In the red glow of the taillights, I saw them. The tree line was filled with them. Some were standing in the middle of the road, dead still, just watching. There were so many. We drove in silence until we hit the highway. We didn't report it. Who'd believe us? We told our friends we got spooked by a cougar. But I went back to that map today. I looked at that cluster of red dots in my

county and I looked at the timeline. Most of the disappearances happen in the summer. Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, holidays. Holidays. Holidays where people go outside, where people light fires, where people cook meat. I thought the maps overlap because people fall into holes. It's not. I thought these sinks were just holes in the ground. They aren't. They're ventilation shafts.

And when we play and laugh and cook barbecue, we're ringing the dinner bell. I was a law enforcement ranger for a secret national park. This is what I can tell you about its unique wildlife, written by Box Goblin on Reddit, and check out the author's substack linked in the description. When the current administration started cutting National Park Service jobs, my old post at the Everglades abruptly ended. They sacked almost everyone, leaving us with barely enough severance to cut. cover the next month. I was surprised. I was pissed. I was devastated. But my supervisor had already

lined up another gig, and he was able to bring one more L.E. Law enforcement, Ranger with him. A week after my dismissal, he called and asked if I wanted to go out for a cup of Joe. He've always been there for me. No matter the situation, Bruce said over a steaming mug of black coffee, my supervisor was a bear of a man bushy beard 6-5 240 pounds built like a lumberjack

I trusted him like a brother there's nothing more important in this line of work than loyalty and out all the rangers at that godforsaken swamp you were the most devoted thank you I said unsure of where this was going sensing my impatience Bruce launched into his offer

look I've got some friends in the BLM. There's this wildlife preserve. It's contract work. Six months, but there's an opportunity for extension. Are you? Yes, I am. Bruce said. You good to move to Northern California? I didn't have anything time made to South Florida at the time, but the distance caught me off guard. This was clear across the country, and I wanted to know where I'd be spending the better half of the year. Is it Golden Gate? Visions of the majestic San Diego. Visions of the majestic San Francisco. Francisco Bay flash before my eyes. The location's classified, Bruce said.

It's not a park with visitors. Oh, that sounded ominous. Is it military? Look, all I can tell you right now is it's easy work. The easiest job you've ever had. Oh, and the pay is triple what you made in the glades. Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, that sounds great, I said. it's probably in the Bay Area I thought

the cost of living there is much higher Bruce slid a nondescript Manila folder across the table I reached out to open it but he kept his meaty hand flat atop its cover there's just one thing I need to know before we go any further I lean back

suddenly aware of how quiet the coffee shop had grown is this is this some kind of drug thing I whispered I knew about a lot of of marijuana grow operations in NorCal. Bruce fixed me with a steely gaze. Crystal, he said.

I spit up my cappuccino. Whoa, I don't know. But Bruce erupted into a rumbling laugh that was Park growl. I'm just fucking with you, dude. The size is restricted due to environmental concerns, and you just have to sign an NDA before I tell you anything else. Oh, I let out a sigh and opened the folder to an 80-page document of boilerplate legalese.

My new post was a wildlife preserve called McNeely Pines. I arrived a few days after signing my NDA. I flew out to Sacramento, then drove for a few hours through winding up mountainous roads with Naree Town or Gas Station site. I left all traces of civilization far behind and entered the pure, untrammeled wilderness that westward settlers centuries ago came across.

The sun had just set when I finally arrived at the Ranger Station. It was an old timber-built hunting lodge, repurposed by the government, two stories tall, with a series of radio antennas sprouting from its roof. There was something off about the place, but it took me a while to realize that. It wasn't until after I'd moved into my room upstairs, taking a nice hot shower, and settled into bed that I noticed. All the windows were reinforced with metal bars. Bruce gave me a tour of the property the next day. It was just the two of us work in the park.

Cell reception was spotty, but we had a high-tech comms room in the station for communicating with the outside world if needed. The preserve encompassed 10,000 acres of mountainous forest full of towering pines whose expansive canopies blocked out most sunlight, even in the middle of the day. The forest looked pristine. No trash, no roads, plenty of wildlife, but it was inaccessible.

A 15-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire surrounded the whole area. No one was allowed inside except with express permission from the federal government. Before my arrival, Bruce said the location of the preserve had been quarantined, but I never imagined it would have been like this. What'd they have in there? You and grizzly bears? I asked, as the two of us drove along the perimeter in a park-issued ATV. Deer mostly, Bruce said. It's not just to keep the animals in, but also keeps the people out. Now that I was on the site, my supervisor could explain the whole situation.

Apparently, a railway runs through the McNeely Forest Wildlife Preserve. It shut down now, but for decades, it serviced freight trains. Most carried simple goods, food stuffs, lumber, sheet metal, but occasionally they transported hazardous materials. One such train was carrying over 200 tons of toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride, ethanol glycol, ethygol, ethical, ocklite, and butyl oxyright. When it derailed in the middle of the forest five years ago, the resulting spill covered much of the land.

Fortunately, there was no civilization nearby, so the story didn't garner much news outside of a few small articles in local newspapers. After the initial cleanup operation, the EPA ordered a quarantine of the whole forest for at least 20 years, subject to further restrictions if testing didn't improve. Our job is making sure no one except the EPA enters or leaves the forest, Bruce said. The fencing had one. gate located next to the ranger station. Bruce and I were the only ones with the code to open it. Bruce was right.

The job was easy. Outside of handling the main gate, I managed a series of trail cameras placed every 100 meters or so along the perimeter fence. The cameras faced both inside and outside the preserve. If I caught anyone trying to break through the fence, I was to arrest them on site. That was it.

The government covered lodging and delivering. free groceries every other week, so I was raking in pure profit for almost no work. It was perfect. Still, it left me with a lot of questions. Why did we need so many trail cams? There were literally hundreds watching every inch of the park. I'd never seen so many before, even at larger parks. And this was on top of the daily patrols Bruce and I made in the park ATVs.

Furthermore, when I first checked the cameras, I noticed the fencing had odd markings. Nothing major. Just this faint script. You could only see it when you're right up against the fence. There were these little scribbles etched into the metal chain links. It looked like some kind of riding, but I couldn't make out any of it. I asked Bruce about it one night. He said the etchings were a company signature.

The park service hired a special company to make the fence extra strong, and resilient against the elements, anti-rust and whatnot. Jesus, they've spent a fortune on this quarantine operation, I thought. Each evening, I'd upload all the footage from the trail cams and review it for any anomalies. The cameras only captured images if there was movement in the frame, so most of it showed branches swaying in the wind or a squirrel running by the lens.

Occasionally, a deer or raccoon would approach the fence from within the quarantine zone. The preserve had a surprising amount of wildlife given its toxic backstory, though the animals never appear to look or act abnormal. With all the hazardous shit in there, it's a miracle anything's alive. I told Bruce one night as we drank whiskey and watched old episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond. The lodge didn't have internet access, but it came with an expansive collection of DVDs. I don't know, life's pretty resilient, I guess, he said, no matter what the world puts it through.

What we put it through, I said, referring to the toxic spill. Bruce nodded. Still, I have to put them down if you manage to break through the fencing. Yeah, I said, I didn't relish the thought of shooting mutant deer. The first couple of months were monotonous, checking trail cams, maintaining the ATVs, watching too many episodes of friends. and every so often letting EPA officials through the main gate. Each week, two black SUVs would arrive at the station, and a half-dozen men and women in pristine white hazmat suits

would pile out carrying nondescript equipment boxes. They weren't much for conversation. Just running more tests, one of them said. It was the longest sentence any of them had ever spoke to me. I'd input my gate code in the guard. group would disappear into the seemingly endless forest, sometimes for 30 minutes, sometimes a whole day. Neither Bruce nor I ever accompanied them. What if they need protection, I asked him? Thinking about potential animal attacks? They can handle themselves, Bruce replied. The hazmats

are enough. I suddenly became aware that neither of us had worn so much as a face mask while patrolling the forest for hours each day. And here were these people in full body suits. Should we be wearing anything? Nah. The spill sites far, far in the interior, Bruce said. We're well outside the range of anything dangerous. That's what they tell us, at least. I said, chuckling. Yeah, true. Bruce laughed. What do you think they do in there for so long? I don't know. soil samples, a bonfire rager. Who cares so long as our checks clear? Bruce said.

I nodded, but something still felt off. The EPA officials were so deadly serious whenever they arrived, and they always seemed to days when they returned from their testing. It was like they'd been through the ringer in there. Their blank expressionless faces reminded me of someone in shock. One day I noticed a, syrupy red liquid leaking from one of their equipment boxes as they exited. I almost asked what it was, but the officials quickly scrambled back into their SUVs

and wades goodbye before driving off. It has to be blood, I told Bruce later that night. There's nothing else it could be. Are they killing animals in there and bringing them back to some lab for testing? Look, Bruce said his whiskey down. It's best if you don't dwell on it so much. His demeanor suddenly changed, as if I were bringing up a taboo subject, but this was our job. Don't you want to know what's going on, I asked?

I mean, the clean-ups the whole point of this place. Quarantine. Clean up the mess. Reopened the park to the public. I never said the park would be reopened to the public, Bruce said. What? My supervisor just stared at the flames in the lodge's fireplace. The logs popped. and crackled.

Then he downed the rest of his whiskey and started up the stairs. I'm going to bed. Make sure you put the fire out before heading up. I'd known Bruce for years, but I'd never seen him like this. Everything was hunky-dory for weeks. We were cracking jokes about toxic deer with superpowers, but the moment I brought up the blood-soaked equipment container, it was like I touched a raw nerve.

He became standoffish, even a bit sad. At first I thought my hypothesis was correct, and he was angry about the EPA killing animals for testing, but Bruce was never much of an animal lover. Hell, he ate beef almost every day, so he couldn't be that upset. It had to be something else. Something he wasn't telling me.

Wouldn't tell me. Or maybe I was overthinking things. things. There's only so much to occupy your mind in the middle of nowhere. Only so many old TV episodes to watch, so many dusty books on wilderness exploration to read, my job was monotonous, repetitive. In such situations, the mind tends to search for meaning, especially when there's a mystery, this intriguing. I started my investigation in the comms room. As I mentioned earlier, a big, part of my job was reviewing trail camera footage, which I uploaded to a bulky government-issue desktop computer. I was only supposed to review the previous days footage, but after some digging,

I found a folder containing the trail cam archives. There was footage going back to the establishment of the quarantine zone, years before I had arrived. I started with the earliest images. There were no signs of a train crash or fire, but some of the nighttime footage showed human figures staggering out of the forest. They appeared bruised and bloodied, walking in a daze. There were only a couple of them at first, but that number soon expanded to six. Then a dozen. Then dozens.

What are you doing? I minimized the screen and spun around in my office chair. Bruce had just entered the comms room. Re-reviewing footage from last night? It's 6.30. Time for evening rounds, Bruce said. Oh, yeah, right. I closed out of everything and logged off the computer.

Bruce stared at me as I left the room. He knows something's up, I thought. He'll see that I assess those early files. I wanted to say something, but I figured out asked Bruce about the footage later that night after he'd had his nightly whiskeys. Maybe that would finally get him talking. When I entered the garage to get the ATV, I noticed a massive pair of bolt cutters hanging from a tool shelf nearby.

Bruce said they were for EPA emergencies only, such as if the gate wouldn't open, and we needed to cut an exit for the hazmat. I'd never taken the cutters with me on patrol before. What would be the point? I wasn't going to rescue some mutant deer dying from toxic shock, but that night, I don't know what it was, but something compelled me to grab the tools before heading out. They were heavy, much heavier than normal bolt cutters. I noticed they bore the same odd scribbles as the chain link fence. After grabbing the cutters, I hopped in the ATV.

My patrol was to drive the entire park perimeter and check for any. anything suspicious. There was a service road that ran alongside all 14 miles of fencing. I flipped on the ATV's headlamps. The sun was about to set, and the whole forest was covered in a thick blue gloom. Not quite daylight. Not quite night. A half light. I drove along the service road at 10 miles per hour, scanning the area as I went. The air felt thick. The four sounds were muffled, almost as if everything was underwater. It was an eerie atmosphere, unlike anything I'd ever felt since arriving at McNeely Pines. I soon found out why.

Halfway through my patrol, I heard a voice call out. Help! I stopped the ATV, shining a spotlight around the service road. Hello? Who's there? Help, please. The voice was coming from with. within the fence. I turned my spotlight to reveal a gaunt figure amid the tall pines. It was a man.

Mid-forties, skeletal, ragged clothes barely clung to his emaciated frame. He looked shocked and confused as he staggered towards the fence. Help me. My God, I whispered. I got out of the ATV, my hand on the holster of my taser gun. The man looked like a a crystal addict I'd encountered in the Everglades once, unpredictable, and much stronger than normal. How'd you get in there? This force is restricted. They're keeping us, the man said.

His skin was so sallow and pale, it almost glowed. We can't leave. They're horrible. Oh, God, they're horrible. Who's keeping you? The demons, the man said. Drule spilled from his lips. Demons everywhere. Stay right there, I said.

I'm going to get you help. I returned to the ATV and clicked on my shoulder-mounted radio. Bruce, come in. I'm at mile marker 12. There's a man inside the fence. Says he's being held prisoner. Looks like he might be on something. Keep him there, but don't engage, Bruce said.

Don't talk to him. Don't even look at him. I'm coming to assist. Copy that. Who's that? Who are you talking to? Don't let him come here. The man had walked up to the fence,

almost close enough to touch it. sir it's going to be okay i said what's your name they don't give us names the man said only numbers okay look just remain calm okay help is on the way no that man will help he'll he'll kill us i sighed there was no use arguing with this madman he's probably some druggie backpacker who wandered a bit too far off the trail and somehow climbed over or dug his way under the fence. Hopefully, he didn't have any exposure to toxic chemicals. I made sure to keep my distance. We're not supposed to leave the facility or the demons will punish us, the man said.

The demons in white. Uh-huh, I said, staring at my phone. The Ranger Station was roughly six miles away. It would take Bruce less than half an hour to arrive after he started up his ATV. please sir you have a kind face the man said i know you'll help us what's your name us i looked up to see two more emaciated people standing beside the gaunt man one was a woman in her early twenties and the other was a scared little girl no more than six years old help us please she cried tears stained her cheeks with all three of them they I realized they were all wearing similar outfits, plain beige shirts with matching beige slacks. They didn't even have shoes, only cheap flip-flops, like the kind you'd wear to a public shower. Jesus Christ, I said. This was not just some random tweaker. This was something more serious.

Where did you all come from? From the facility, the woman said. What facility? We just want to go home. It was a little girl. Please, sir. She held out her tiny arm. A small, homemade bracelet hung from her bony wrist. Just a piece of string

with a few buttons as ornaments. Are you all together? We're a family, the got man said, pulling the woman in child close. This was insane. I radioed Bruce again. Uh, Bruce.

I've got a whole family here. There's a woman and a kid. Just don't engage in them in any way, Bruce said. I'll be there as soon as I can. He sounded out of breath. I heard a faint buzzing sound. Was that the ATV engine? Bruce, you still there?

The radio only crackled in response. Forget it. He's not going to help us. The woman tugged on the man's shirt, pulling him away from the fence. No, I can see the empathy in his face. The man fought to remain where he was. He kept staring at me. I could feel his bloodshot eyes boring into me even as I looked down on my cell phone. It was 8.15 p.m. What was taking Bruce so long?

A sudden gurgling sound drew my attention. Then a woman's scream. I looked up. The little girl had collapsed onto the levy ground, seizing. Her eyes rolled back as she struggled to breathe. breathe. No, she's going into anaphylactic shock. The woman grabbed a stick from the ground and shoved it into the girl's mouth. Drul spilled from her lips. She's going to die. The man looked at me, pleading. Do you have a first aid kit? I did. A part of me wanted to radio bruise one more time, but the girl's condition was getting worse by the second. Her tiny body racked with violent convulsions. I need to act. Now. I rushed at it. to the backseat of ATV, grabbing the first aid kit and bolt cutters.

Seconds later, I knelt beside the fencing and started to cut. Snip, snip, snip. Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Snip. I cut the last chain link and a large section of the fence fell away. As soon as it did, an incredible whoosh of air radiated outward. It was a shockwave that knocked me flat on my ass. my head spun, my consciousness flickered like a static TV signal.

But in those fleeting moments of lucidity, I saw the family rush through the opening. We're forever in your debt, the man said before he and his family disappeared into the gloomy woods beyond. I vaguely remember more figures running through the exit afterward, a throng of pale, long-limbed bodies with scythe-like fingers. then everything went dark. I woke in the dirt late the following morning. My mouth was dry and my head was groggy. What?

I was still lying beside the fence, which now had a gaping hole. The section I'd cut open was pushed outward as if something massive had squeezed through the gap. I got up. My ATV was still there, but it was dead. The battery juice ran out from running the headlamps. all night and all the gas had burned away. I clicked my shoulder-mounted radio. Bruce, come in, Bruce. There was no response. Where the hell is he? I ended up walking back to the ranger station. I kept radioing my supervisor every two minutes, but only received errant static in

response. I knew something had gone terribly wrong. And my decision to cut open the fence was almost certainly the cause of it. Who were those people asking for my help last night? What was the facility they kept talking about? Were they all on something? Was I on something? Was the whole night some toxic-fueled hallucination brought on by the chemicals in the forest?

All I knew for sure was that I'd fucked up big time. I'll probably lose my job over this, I thought. When I finally arrived back at the lodge, the front door was ajar, and a few of the windows had been broken open. The iron bars covering them were pulled apart. Only someone powerful could do that. Someone or something. There was an awful stench in the air.

Flies buzzed everywhere. I pulled out my service revolver and stepped inside. The place was a war zone. Furniture ripped apart. Glassware shattered. tables and desks overturned and blood splattered everywhere. In the center of the room was all that remained of Bruce. His body had been torn apart, limb severed, chest cavity ripped open.

Something had eaten his internal organs while he was still alive. My former supervisor's face was frozen mid-scream. His glassy eyes wide with terror. Now I staggered backward. Bile rising in my throat. This was too much. But it was about to get much, much worse. That's when I saw what Bruce clutched in his cold dead hands.

A blood-stained government report. Highly classified. After grabbing some pliers from the toolshed, I pried open his rigor mortis stiffened fingers to access the document. Its contents were somehow more sickening than the carnage that surrounded me. There was no train crash. That was just a cover story to quarantine the area and keep any hunters or tourists out of the woods. The EPA agents I led inside the fence each week were military scientists.

They worked at a top secret research facility deep within McNeely Pines. It didn't even have a name. The report only listed it as, the facility. The document had numerous grainy, black and white photos. They showed men, women, and children in barren cells, head shaved, emaciated, terrified. There were pages of data detailing horrific experiments. Tests involving exposure to experimental neurotoxins.

The scientists would monitor each person's degradation to, learn just how long it took for someone to go blind, for their teeth to fall out, for their heart to stop. I threw the document across the room and discussed. That's when I saw The Shredder. A pile of chewed-up pages lay beneath it. There must have been dozens of documents all cut to ribbons, more evidence of the facility. After researching the rest of the lodge, I realized that the report I'd thrown across the room,

the one Bruce clutched as he died, was the... the last bit of hard evidence of the facility left. He destroyed everything else. That was the buzzing sound I heard last night. I went over and picked up the bloodstained document, placing it in my satchel. Then I left McNeely Pines for good. I drove all night until I found a cheap roadside motel near Yosemite.

Once secured in my room, I pulled out the document and photographed each page, uploading them to my Google Drive in case someone burst through the door right then, shot me dead, and burned the document. I needed to make sure this last bit of evidence would remain. As I finally read through the entire report, I noticed that the military had moved on from chemical weapons to arcane ones. The last pages detailed a program involving an ancient Sumerian tablet.

There were images of odd scribbles. The same writing etched on the chain link fencing and bolt cutters. The scientists had performed some sort of blood ritual on one of their subjects, a man in his mid-40s. A grainy black and white photo showed his face. It was the same man who came to me the other night, begging to be let out. The document's last page detailed a procedure

where they drained all of this man's blood into a basin made according to. to ancient specifications. According to the report, a figure rose from the bloody pool an hour later. It was tall and gaunt and incredibly strong. I'm in that motel room now, debating whether or not to release the full document to the press. It will have to be soon. It won't take long for the government to realize who let their precious assets loose. I wish I could say that I regret what I did.

those things will likely wreak havoc once they find civilization. There will be more casualties, perhaps even innocent ones, but I can't get the images of that frightened family out of my head, pleading for help. No matter what, I know there's still some humanity left inside them. As I drove away from McNeely Pines, I saw one in its true form, 10 feet tall, long-limbed and hairless. with skin like a shark's hide.

It smiled at me in recognition, flashing a mouth full of dagger teeth. Then it waved as I drove past. A tiny bracelet hung from its wrist. A string with a few buttons. And all right, guys, that wraps up some creepy Reddit horror stories. I hope you enjoyed today's video. I mean, I loved today's video.

I thought all these stories were just amazing. These were honestly some of the most. intriguing and best Reddit stories I have ever read. So I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did. And if you did enjoy the video, please like the video and subscribe to the channel. Follow me on Instagram and follow me on Spotify. It helps more than you know. And if you enjoyed this video, I'm sure you'll enjoy other videos on the channel. So go check out those. And thank you so much for watching to the end of the video. This was a long, long video. So props to you for sticking around the whole time.

And yeah, thank you so much for watching. And this was Snook. and I'll see you next time. Bye.