The Dark Somnium - These Are Some of The Strangest Encounters I've Ever Had | A Compilation of Scary Stories

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

The Worst Party in Ten Thousand Years A strange Night In The City of Angels  Well, That Was Weird Advice From The End of Eternity  A Letter From a Demon To Whoever May Find It Be Careful Hiring Hitmen on The Dark Web  A Man Has Been Standing in The Middle of Our Street for The Past 4 Days  The Tapping Man, On My Sleeper Train  When It Rains In The Woods  Did Anyone Play The Bath Game The Su*cide Engineer  An Illegal Investigation of Ballintully Springs Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I don't like him." Jerry whispered. He's weird. I looked at the guy sitting alone on the couch in the corner. Lanky, pale, brooding. He seemed out of place. I wondered if he was someone's date who'd gone forgotten. Don't judge a book by its cover, I replied.

Haven't you seen that credit card ad? She rolled her eyes. Fine, but I don't want you to be around when he starts shooting up the place. Jesus! I hissed. What's wrong with you? This is a party, Kay. People are supposed to be having fun, not being miserable.

So then why are you acting like such a miserable twat? I responded and walked away, heading toward the guy in the corner. You've got some fucking nerve. I heard her complain. I sighed and ignored her. Hey! I said, sticking my hand in front of the weird guy. I'm Kay.

The guy glanced up. I was surprised to see tears in his eyes. I guessed my date gone forgotten theory might have been accurate. "'Devin,' he replied, slipping his palm into mine. It was warmer than I'd expected. "'So what brings you here, Dev? Do you know Shana and J.P.? Devin shook his head.

"'No, I don't know anyone here.' "'Party-crasser, huh? I dig that. You're missing out on some good food, though. Want to come get some lasagna with me?' "'No, thanks. I'm not hungry.' "'That's cool.

That's cool. Can I get you a drink?' JP made a batch of Manhattan's that'll strip the enamel off your teeth. I can't drink. I acknowledged, wondering why he crashed a party thrown by people he didn't know and whose food he refused to eat and whose booze he wouldn't drink. I plopped down on the couch next to him and surveyed the party. The industrial-style loft shared by Shauna and JP was cavernous and well-appointed.

How they were able to afford a place like that was beyond me. fit the 30 or so party-goers with room to spare. I peeked over at my idiot friend. Jerry had a cocktail in each hand and was unsubtly twerking against a guy who was dancing with his boyfriend. Classy as always, Jer, I thought. Devon said something in a low voice, ruckus laughter and joyous shrieks and the din of background conversations over the pulsing music made it difficult to hear what he'd said.

Come again? I asked. I'm not going to shoot the place up," he repeated. I turned bright red. Did you really hear a say that? I asked. Devin nodded. It's okay.

I know I'm weird. I turned to face him. His long black hair was obscuring half of his gaunt face. The tears in his eyes had dried. He looked at me with a startling intensity I had never experienced before. It's all good, man. I reassured. We've all got our things.

Yeah. Yeah. He paused. Kay, can I ask you a favor? Sure. For the next 15 minutes, don't leave this spot on the couch, okay? I shot him a quizzical glance. Okay?

Any reason? Yeah. I waited, but he didn't elaborate. I knitted my brow, trying to figure out what the dude's deal was. He fidgeted and trembled, but not in a way that made me worry he was about to lash out. He seemed intensely anxious. I wondered if me being there was to help him manage his stress. Sure, I'll hang out here.

Thanks. The two of us watched couples dance and singles flirt and drinkers drink. I let my mind wander. Devon wasn't bad looking, not at all really. I hadn't seen him stand yet, but he seemed tall. Over six feet. It looked like he had great teeth too, but I couldn't be sure until he smiled. I didn't expect that to happen though, which was a very big.

A shame, I'm a sucker for nice teeth. A weird disruption of the background noise brought me back to earth. It was hard to identify like all the sounds happened at once or something. No one else at the party appeared to notice. What was that? I wondered aloud. Devin didn't answer. He stared with blank intensity as if he were trying to see through the wall on the other side of the room.

Hey, Dev, did you hear... I began, but then it happened again. This time I was paying attention. A single word rang throughout the room. Yes. Was said by every person at the same time in all the disparate conversations. Devon leaned over and whispered, It's okay.

Into my ear. Just don't get up. Please. A cold wave of discomfort passed through me. The rest of the partygoers weren't aware of what had just happened. I stared into Devon's dark eyes. They were wet again. A single tear leaking down the side of his face.

Devon, what is happening? He turned away and faced the party. I crossed my arms across my shivering body and stared at the scene in front of me. Nothing was out of place. It was another word said in unison by the crowd. Not a single person noticed the synchronicity. Five seconds later. Cycle.

Another five. Renews. Cycle renews. Oh my god, what's going on here? I choked and went to get up. Devon's left arm shot out and pushed me back onto the couch. Please, Kay, don't. Just, don't.

He was sobbing. Renews. The partiers danced and laughed, kissed and chatted, drank and boasted, oblivious to their shared words. Hold heads high. Cycle renews. Cycle renews. That time, the entire series of words was announced in an unbroken string.

The conversations continued as if nothing had happened. Jerry scowled at me from the bar and gave me the finger. If she could see how frightened I was from the expression I was certain I was wearing, she couldn't care less. Dev, is this some kind of prank? Like, did you and Jerry and the rest of the guys plan this out to fuck with me? If you did, but Pralvo, seriously, you got me. Just stop, okay? Enough.

Hold heads high. Cycle renews. Cycle renews. I peered into Devon's eyes. They were bright red and puffy. If it was fake, he was an incredible actor. It's almost done. He whispered.

What's almost done? I demanded, glaring at him. Tell me, man, because this is fucked up. The conversation ceased. The music stopped. The room went silent. I whipped my head back to the party. The whole room was staring at us.

My breath caught in my throat. Death? I whimpered. Jerry? Holds, heads high. Cycle. Renews. Cycle, Renews.

Everyone aside from me and Devin lifted their chins and peered at the ceiling. Hold heads high. Cycle renews. Cycle renews. Stay where you are, Kay. Don't leave my side. Devin's voice was strong and insistent. I obeyed.

Around us, the walls shook. Bottles fell off the bar and plates crashed to the floor. A few partiers dropped to their knees, but they never stopped staring at the ceiling. Feeling, hold heads high, I thought to myself. The floor groaned as if it were about to collapse. My vision spun and I realized I'd been holding my breath. I let it out in a series of racking sobs. Cycle renews.

Something shimmered across the floor. I gasped. The room spun again, but I'd been breathing as normally as I could. I squinted at the shimmering forms, only to have the room dim and a jolt of hideous nausea grip me. Devon, what am I seeing? I gasped, staring at my knees as the sensation of sickness waned. I tried to look at things again, only to have my stomach lurch in reply.

I turned my gaze toward Devon, who was watching the situation unfold without any apparent discomfort. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shimmering mass of shifting forms shudder and rise from the floor enveloping the partygoers. Cycle renews. One by one, each enveloped person blinked out of sight in a puff of vile smelling steam, their clothes and personal items falling to the floor in a heap. The swirling chaos of shimmering arms and tendrils and mouths focused on the last person.

Even though I wasn't able to see directly, I knew it was Jerry and her magenta top. Fighting the nausea and the dizziness, I turned to face her. Hold heads high. Cycle renews. Cycle renews. She breathed. Her face tilted upward, as if in prayer. The monsters converged on her, in the brief instant before her disappearance, I saw her

flesh, bubble, and char. A second later, nothing was left but two whiskey glasses, a magenta top, shorts, sandals, and a cell phone. Cherry! I whispered as hot tears cascaded down my face. It's done, Devon said and finally stood. He towered over me. I had underestimated his height.

He was easily seven feet tall. Maybe more. Are they dead? I asked, knowing the answer. Devon nodded. I'm sorry, but there was no avoiding it. No avoid. But what happened?

What the fuck happened? My voice was rising as my fear and disbelief shifted into indignation. It needs to happen once every 10,000 years. I have to watch to make sure it all goes through. Ten thousand years... I parroted. What the... Thank you for being kind to me.

Devon said, No one ever is. He gazed at me with deep sympathy and gratitude. I'm sorry you had to see it, but the alternative was, well, he gestured at the steaming pile of personal effects. And that's it? That's it. And with that, he was gone.

And I was alone. The war had been over for about three months. For me, that meant trading the pot-marked and blood-stained feet. fields of France for the no less unsanitary streets of Los Angeles, my home. I was fortunate enough to have been on sick leave during the deployment of my company to Japan, on account of a shrapnel wound, courtesy of the Panzer Division I came across a few miles away from Berlin. As it was, by the time I was healthy enough to fight again, the whole mess was over, and I got

shipped back. My brother had passed away during my time abroad whilst in the throes of a bar brawl with some other draft dodgers, or so I'd been told via telegram. My parents were as disappointed as ever with their progeny, a medical school dropout, and a dead layabout branded a traitor by the authorities. As such, the only thing to greet me off the boat was the prospect of trying to find a job that might accept invalidated GIs as prospective employees. ended up tending a bar at a dead-end joint somewhere near Chinatown.

The place was a dive of the sort that made Normandy look like a palatable place to drink, but the owner had a soft spot for returning army hacks, and paid comparatively well as a result. By the time those three months had crawled past, I'd settled into a life at home relatively well, and I even had a steady string of dates going on with the local broad I knew back before getting dragged into the war. The night still got to me, though. Sometimes, not all the time, I'd wake up drenched in more sweat than was normal, even for trying to sleep within the clutches of typical LA heat.

The damnedest thing was that I couldn't remember why I'd woken up once I found myself fully conscious. All I knew was that it wasn't about to stop simply on account of me wanting it to, so I started to work the long night shifts at the bar. figured that I could make something of my time that my head was forcing me to remain awake through. This night in particular saw whatever it was scratching particularly hard at my skull. Whenever I stumbled onto the cusp of knowing what it was, I'd be thrown into the depths of a fit of unease that tore me away from an atmosphere of sawdust and sweat

and into one composed of corday and screaming. The fact that the place was near dead that night didn't help me any. And I spent most of the evening pacing up and down the bar between bouts of chills that ate through the humidity that smothered everything else. I knew that the government shrinks were rounding up all the disturbed veterans on their return home, but the last place I wanted to be in was the presence of a doctor. I knew that I'd seen enough medical paraphernalia to last me a lifetime and a few more besides. I was running out of options though.

I knew that much. The hours ticked wearily on, and I became more and more resolved to pay the local veteran's office a visit once the sun decided to crawl back into the sky. By about midnight, what little patronage the place had managed to lure in from the streets had bled back out into the city. Sailors and Marines on shore leave regularly stumbled in and out as the consequence of the place sitting on the warpath between the clubs and back streets of Chinatown. Occasionally, a regular or two would materialize at the bar, sometimes in conjunction with

some flusie procured from any number of other holes that dotted the neighborhood. As it was, midnight saw both groups noticeably absent. They had been around earlier on, of course, but the ebb and flow of the night had replaced them with a single patron. Amongst wrestling with whatever monkey had set up residence on my back and serving the regulars, I had noticed him gravitate closer and closer to the bar throughout the evening. With the place empty, it was plain to see that he had finally completed his journey as he sat atop a stool by the far end of the tabletop.

Though I was tired, I knew any sleep I could wrap my hands around would promptly escape my grasp and leave me sat bolt upright as per so many nights before. So instead of throwing the guy out and shutting the place up, I went over to him and asked for his order. I'll take a brandy. Straight up, if you please. He spoke with something of a familiar tone, but it was one that I couldn't place for the life of me.

Maybe it was just one of those voices that everyone just knows. Patriarchal in a way. In the blood. A grandfather, perhaps, a voice that says, relax, trust me, regardless of what words literate. I gave him a nod and fumbled with a bottle of the cheap stuff that riddled the racks up on the back wall. Once I turned back, I noticed that he had changed his seat so as to be at the center of the bar.

He had a look about him that belayed a certain something, I don't know, sadness maybe. No. A lankly would be a better ringer for it, but that still doesn't do it justice. Whatever it was, it nod at me enough to ensure I took extra care in setting down his drink. For a moment, I didn't think he had noticed, but then he looked me square in the face and gave me a nod. Much obliged, friend. Again, his voice seemed to have something of an ethereal quality to it.

It almost echoed, despite the fact that the place was about as small as a couple. I returned the nod and set myself against the wall. My arms crossed over my chest in expectancy of a conversation that I wasn't sure I wanted. The man took a few shallow sips of his spirit before setting the glass down on the bar, followed by hefting a satchel up next to it. He couldn't have been more than twenty, and yet his face had the kind of haggard look to it that only age ought to punish a person with. It was the same one I had myself.

as did almost everyone else I knew once they made it back from France or Japan or Italy, if they came back at all. His hands disappeared into the battered leather bag that he had laid on the bar top, and yet he kept his eyes fixed on me for the duration of their absence. They had a deep-set hazel nature that spoke the same story the premature lines of his face did. Needless to say, they did nothing to put me at ease. After this standoff persisted for what felt like the entire night and several more, he withdrew a wallet from the satchel and eased it onto the bar with a dry snap. It appears that I don't have enough to cover the drink.

Perhaps I can offer you an ear instead. The warmth of his previous tone had become submerged beneath something uncertain that was becoming rapidly goddamn terrifying. All intonation had drained out of his voice so that I became reminded of the steady scratching of a record left to spin long after concluding. Sleep and profit marchants be damned, I thought. I wanted him gone. And yet there was something so bizarre about him that I couldn't let him simply slip out into

the wilds of the darkness outside and never to be seen again. It's on the house, but what do you mean about, before I could even finish, he interrupted with the same monotone as before. An ear, my friend. Someone you can confide in. You were in the war, yes? I nodded to the affirmation. I have an eye for these things, you see.

I was serving myself. Perhaps you'd like to hear about myself before you start with your own tale. Thankfully by this point, the monotone had given way to the more agreeable voice of before. Again, all I could do was nod my head. He replaced the wallet back to the confines of the satchel in which it had appeared and finished off what liquor remained in his glass. I was a chaplain, enlisted what seems like a lifetime ago. I ministered to the men from Sicily to Eogima.

It was difficult work to be sure, but then any work worth doing always is. And surely there is no task greater than that which is appointed by God. He shuffled around a little after he finished. drifted from wall to wall for a few seconds until I felt compelled to break it with my own contribution, if only to expedite the lone drinker's departure. Something about his overall demeanor, combined with the newly learned fact that he was a preacher, began to ruin any mystique he had in favor of beginning to irate me. I was a medic myself, only ever saw action in France, thankfully.

What's with the drinking, then? I thought you types weren't allowed to do that. He shifted again on his seat and set his eyes into a dark stare that trailed off into nowhere. I said I was a man of God, friend. The war is over now. I have no other duties to attend to, though they might still be under his purview. They don't require as much regulation. A chuckle punctuated his clarification, a sound that I'd rather not hear ever again.

Do go on about your own time in the service, though. I hadn't had the opportunity to talk about it much till then. I figured that if I kept quiet about it, then the insomnia would stop. Maybe I'd be able to forget. Maybe I just didn't talk about it because there was nobody to talk to. For whatever reason, I decided to comply with his request. Did a year or so of medical school then dropped out to sign up. It could have probably gone in as a doctor rather than an orderly, but I wanted in as soon as I could.

My folks weren't happy about it. Still aren't. I know I did good, though. We saved a lot of lives. I'm not sure how much of that I believed at the time, but it seemed to interest the man of God. The blank expression he had warned for the entirety of our conversation shifted into one of approaching brief concern. And your greatest failure?

Sorry? We all have them. Times when we think we should have done better. yours is?" I scratched at the back of my neck an expectation of catching on to the palpable sense of dread that was building there, but felt only clammy flesh to which I had become accustomed. There was a patient I couldn't save. A kid, probably about the same age as me at the time.

He'd taken some gunshot wounds from a German sniper nest near a road a few miles away from Normandy. The self-proclaimed retired chaplain listened. and intently before I took a few moments to compose myself. I'm not saying we never lost guys before then, or hell, afterwards either, but this one could have gone differently. If we had the right tools, we could have gotten the bullets and patched him up. He took three rounds to the leg, not typically a fatal wound if you can get the right medical

attention, but I guess we weren't good enough. The wail of a siren etching through the night filled the void that we were in the void that followed. I didn't have anything else to say to the priest, and it appeared that he didn't have anything for me either. Eventually, I had to speak up, just to placate my own sanity. What about you, Padra? What's your greatest failure? A wry smile stretched out across his face before he nudged his glass over to me. I regret the fact that I couldn't minister to more soldiers before the war ended. You see, a majority of my duties were related to giving the dying their last rights.

Only rarely was I able to assist those who weren't on the cusp of death. Many men made it through the war alive only to be returned home with demons like yours. I wish I had more time to exercise them before their return. His pointed remark aimed squarely at me hit too close to home, and I realized that enough was enough. I took his glass and returned it beneath the bar before leaning on the counter. Well, I'm sure they're getting along just fine without you, Padre. If you don't mind, I'd like to close up now."

Tapping on my watch seemed to help the situation sink in with him, and he responded by standing up and apparently readying himself to leave. But before he did, he plunged one of his hands back into the satchel that clung to his waist. Shortly thereafter, he withdrew the same hand and dropped a handful of items that clattered onto the bar. It appears that I have enough to cover my tab, after all. People often forget that it is the duty of a chaplain to pray for both the souls of the

departed and the living alike. With that, he turned and strode out into the balmy night. I breathed the sigh of relief and leaned with all my weight onto the bar for fear of collapsing. Eventually, I lifted my head back up and went over to where the handful had dropped. An assortment of coins lay on the surface, adding up to exactly the cost of the brandy that the Knight's final patron had ordered, despite the fact that I never told him how much he owed. And amongst the familiar glint of silver coins shown ruddy brass glow that I hadn't seen since coming back home, the faint glow emanated from three discharged bullet casings.

Hey dude, do you remember the first time we met? asked my friend. friend Ryan with a huge smile stretched across his face. Hell yeah, man. It was, um, we were at... Well, that was weird. I couldn't remember it at all. In fact, I couldn't actually remember anything about Ryan. The only things about him that I could bring to mind were that his name was Ryan and we'd

been friends ever since we were kids. I could remember the basic outline of our story, but not a single detail. No, I don't. Damn dude, neither do I. Ryan laughed. That's fucking weird as hell, man. He was right. That was weird.

That was very, very weird. What the fuck, Ryan? Why can't I remember anything about you? I have no clue, my dude. Ryan laughed. I sank down into my chair, burrowing deep until only the top of my head was left barely poking out from between the cushions. Ryan was laughed. laughing pretty hard, which was annoying, but what really bothered me was that I couldn't bring

up a single memory from my past. It felt like I had simply been conjured into existence two minutes ago, and only given the cliff notes of my life's history. Maybe my strange memory loss was because I was tripping on shrooms? I've done shrooms with Ryan numerous times before, so it was a possibility. I felt a flicker of hope at the remembrance of past events until I realized that a I didn't actually remember ever doing shrooms with him. I knew that we'd done shrooms several times before, but I didn't actually have any memories

of doing them. It was like reading a plot synopsis on Wikipedia about a movie you'd never actually watched. Ryan was laughing so hard that he was gasping for air. It was really pissing me off. Didn't he realize how fucking serious this was? He probably did, and that's why he was laughing so hard. He was laughing at me. My mental state was in ruins and he found that hilarious.

I probably had a psychic alien brain parasite from hell squirming through my gray matter, feasting on my memories and he thought it was funny. That really pissed me off. God damn it, Ryan, shut your fucking mouth before I rip your fucking throat out! Without even bothering to wait for a response, I leapt out of the couch and charged to him like a bull. I tackled him to the ground and plunged my thumbs into his eye sockets. I started slamming his head against the hardwood floor over and

and over again, feeling his skull crack and shatter as his brain fell out onto the floor, which I promptly smashed into a puddle of goo and started shoveling into my mouth. Oh yeah, that's good. Wait. No, I didn't. I'm not sure why I thought I brutally murdered Ryan and ate his brain, but I didn't. In fact, I hadn't even gotten up from the couch. That was weird.

Ryan wasn't laughing anymore either. He was staring at me with a look of concern. Are you all right, dude?" He asked gently. Yeah, of course. Okay, you had me worried. That was some pretty hardcore brain surgery you had this morning, and the doctor said it could take ten to fifty years before you feel normal again.

Did I undergo brain surgery? I don't remember having brain surgery, and I feel like brain surgery is something that would be hard to forget. I decided to play it safe by pretending that Ryan was was telling the truth. There's no point in poking the bear. Ah, yes. The brain surgery, of course.

Uh, what was the brain surgery again? I don't know, dude. I'm not a neurologist. I think they removed your cerebral cortex or something to help you quit smoking. I smoke? Not anymore. It was a very convenient story. It perfectly explained my memory issues and why I wasn't smoking a cigarette at that exact moment.

It wrapped everything up in a neat little package with a bow on top. Oh yes, it was a very convenient explanation. Very, very convenient. It was far too convenient. That's how I knew it was a lie. But of course, what a splendid explanation, Ryan. What you just said is definitely true and I totally believe you for sure. Yep, yep, yep, no doubt about it.

I said, trying to play it off smooth in order to convince him that I believed his obvious I was pretty sure he bought it. Hey, dude, do you remember the first time we met? asked my friend Ryan with a huge smile across his face. Oh, hell yeah, man. It was, ah, we were in Vietnam? Well, that was a weird question. Ryan had been my squad mate in the trenches of Vietnam ever since he saved my life from

a German sniper. We've been best friends. I remember that day like it was happening right now. It's something I'll never forget for as long as I'll never forget for as I'm I live. I was honestly outraged by his insinuation that I could ever forget that moment. I'm only alive because he risked his own life to save mine. Damn, dude, I totally forgot we were in Nam.

Ryan laughed. That's fucking weird as hell. He was right. That was weird. That was very, very weird. What the fuck? Ryan, how did we serve in Vietnam when we were born in the 90s? I have no clue, my dude.

Ryan was laughing so hard that he was gasping for air. It was really pissing me off. I saved his worthless life in that trench and he's just fucking forgot? Maybe I should have let him die. Something about this whole situation was off. There was something wrong that I couldn't put my finger on. Things weren't adding upright. Hey man, did we take any shrooms?

What kind of stupid-ass question is that? Ryan laughed, barely able to choke out the words through his wheezing laughter. Are you fucking retarded or something? Yeah, it was a pretty dumb question. I've done shrooms several times and it's never been like this. This was something else altogether. I lit a cigarette and pondered this situation. The most obvious explanation is that I was dreaming.

That would make the most sense, but it didn't feel like a dream. I decided to test my hypothesis by pressing the lit cigarette against my wrist. The agonizing burn was proof that I wasn't dreaming. Pain that intense couldn't happen in a dream. It's possible that I was good old-fashioned crazy, but isn't questioning your own sanity proof that you're sane? A sane person would never realize that they're insane, so would never question it. I'm pretty sure I read that on Wikipedia.

So then what? Hey man, what the hell's wrong with me? I asked Ryan. When I didn't receive a response, I realized that Ryan wasn't there. Well, that's weird. I knew that I'd been deep in contemplation for a good one. while, but I still should have noticed him getting up. He was probably just taking a shit, but I wanted to check anyway, if only for peace of mind.

I went to put out my cigarette when I realized I wasn't holding one. That's right, I don't smoke. My grandpa had died of lung cancer when I was nine, and even though he wasn't a smoker, I swore to never touch a cigarette for as long as I lived. It's honestly kind of weird that I thought I was smoking. I've never smoked and I never will. I tried to stand up when I realized I couldn't. Thick, heavy chains were draped across my lap and chest, securing me to the couch.

What the hell? I struggled against them but couldn't move even a fraction of a millimeter. If anything, the chains were tightening and threatening to cut off my breathing. I tried to scream for Ryan, but my jaw was squeezed far too tight for me to open my mouth. My only option was to go down, deeper into the couch. Not only was that a safe place to hide, but it gave me a greater range of movement. I burrowed deep into the gray folds of the couch, both to hide from whatever was haunting me as well as to search for Ryan.

The couch had to lead somewhere, and it seemed logical that it would eventually end up in the bathroom. If Ryan was taking a shit like I suspected he was, he'd definitely be on the toilet. I've never known him to shit anywhere else. I squirmed my way down through the couch until I reached a long, twisting tunnel about 6 feet wide and 20 feet high. The floors and walls seemed to be made of the same gray material as the neon sign that read C. C. C., which I assumed meant currently the crapper over top a large door.

I walked through it and found myself in my bathroom. Ryan was sitting on the toilet like I figured he was. It was time to finally get some answers. Yo, Ryan, what's that man? Just taking a demon shit. Nice! So, um, what the hell is going on? Something is clearly not right.

Brain parasite. Eating away at your brain, dude. A brain parasite? How the hell would I get a brain parasite? Is that even a real thing? Seriously? Yep, they're doing surgery right now. Brain surgery.

Well, how that fuck did I get a brain parasite? Pork, dude. I told you not to vacation in Vietnam. Sure, everything's cheap as fuck, but they don't have the same quality assurance when it comes to handling of livestock. Look it up on Wikipedia if you don't believe me. Seriously? All of this because I ate some bad Vietnamese pork on vacation?

What the fuck? That kinda pisses me off. As I looked around trying to make sense of everything, it dawned on me that this couch seemed awfully familiar. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the walls and floors looked like a brain. Likely my brain. So is this my brain?

Am I literally inside my brain? Well, not literally. You're probably literally in a hospital bed or something. I mean, how could you literally go inside your own brain? That doesn't even make any sense. Think about it. Of course he was right. If I literally went inside my brain, that would mean that my brain was inside my brain like some

sort of brainception. That would be ridiculous. Huh. So then, what is the point of all this? Am I psychosomatically trying to fix the problem? or something? Like, if I defeat the parasite in here, will that kill it in real life? Nah, dude, that's just dumb.

You're probably in a coma and you're hallucinating or something. I mean, you do have a parasite inside your brain, so you've likely suffered brain damage after all. Or maybe a near-death experience. Hell, maybe you're already dead and this is hell. Fuck do I know. I'm not a neurologist. He was probably telling the truth, although I couldn't remember anything about Ryan.

He didn't seem like a doctor. He just wasn't really the doctorly type. I wasn't getting that vibe from him at all. So why are you here? I get why I'm here, seeing as how this is my brain and all, but why do you keep showing up? Me? I'm eating your brain. That's kind of my thing.

It's literally why I was born. It took me a few seconds to process what he said. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you the brain parasite? Did you seriously just now figure that out? I thought you were Ryan. Why the hell would Ryan be inside your brain?

My name is Taniusoleum, by the way. Then who the fuck is Ryan? No fucking clue, my dude. Well, that's weird. Aside from Tiniusoleum being a pretty stupid name, it still didn't explain much. Why did I think he was Ryan? Actually, I still didn't even know who Ryan was, let alone remember the first time we met. So are you like some kind of psychic brain parasite from hell or out of the same?

space or something? Nope. I'm just your standard cyclophilid cestoid of the family, Tainidi. I was just an egg when you ate undercooked pork with my mom inside it. I hatched in your intestine and then made my way into your cerebral cortex to start a family. Taini's a sillyam is a really stupid name, by the way. I didn't choose it, he said with a shrug. This was all pretty hard for me to process, I have to admit.

It didn't much matter because I woke up in a post-surgery hospital bed. The doctors managed to explain the situation a lot better than Taney did. I had indeed gained a brain parasite, so they had to operate to remove the brain cysts and insert a shunt to drain fluid buildup. Even years later, I can remember the hallucinations vividly. Even though I know that it was all in my head, I can still visualize it like it actually happened. The doctor said the hallucination was likely a result of the anesthesia.

If I had suffered any brain damage, it was minor. I had to take pills for a good while just in case there were any stray parasites lingering inside my body. That's my biggest fear. That another one will end up inside my brain and I'll have to return to that nightmarish place. I obviously no longer eat pork, even if it is FDA approved. I was able to go back to a normal life pretty quickly thanks to the support of my mom,

my girlfriend Amy and Ryan, the real Ryan, not the parasitic hallucination. The memories from my recovery are a bit fuzzy, and I'm still not sure why Teani manifested in my mind as Ryan, or why he was so concerned about the first time we met. I'll admit that it took me a while to feel comfortable around him again. The image of him as Teani was so strong in my mind that just being around him made me nervous. I told him all about what happened, and we managed to work through it. It wasn't long before we were hanging out like we used to. pizza, beer, pro wrestling, just like the good old days.

That's why it caught me off guard when we were hanging out at my apartment, having a few beers while watching Monday Night Raw. I had a nice buzz going and was feeling pretty good when he turned towards me with a huge smile stretched across his face. Hey dude, do you remember the first time we met? asked my friend Ryan with a huge smile stretched across his face. Hell yeah, man. It was, um, we were at...

Well, that was weird. Dying for the first time is pretty jarring. One moment you're lying in a hospital bed and counting the number of holes in the ceiling of your room and wondering when the doctors will finally give you the green light to go home. The next, you're hearing the beeping of the machines and your vision is going black at the edges, and the new pain in your chest radiates to all of your extremities before you pass out. But wasn't the jarring part, of course, because everyone's felt pain. What was jarring is when your vision came to and you see yourself on the operating table.

Chest opened up in a last-ditch attempt to keep your clogged heart pumping blood. Or at least that's what happened to me. I have no idea if anyone else will go through the same thing. I don't have any proof that's what's going to happen to any of you. Despite watching the last hydrogen atom collapse into corks and glue on. I still don't have any answers to anything. But at the very least, I can give you some advice. Let's start with the first time I died.

I wasn't the healthiest person in the world. I ate junk food that tasted good. I smoked cigarettes that made me feel good. I drank caffeine that allowed me to get through the monotonous workday until I got home. I'm guessing it was these habits that finally caught up when the heart attack took me for the first time back in 2016. What I was the first time around doesn't matter very much, as that's not the person I am now, and at the end of this piece of advice, you'll know none of it matters.

Like I said before, like I said before, when I died the first time I was in the hospital operating room, floating above my now lifeless corpse, and watching the surgeons and their assistance in their futile attempts to revive me. I watched for what felt like forever as the doctor took off the doctor took off. their surgical gloves and washed their hands in the sink. To their benefit, they did look sad about the fact that they couldn't save me. That five seconds of them staring into the mirror, not knowing that I was floating directly behind them, invisible and incorporeal, but watching nonetheless, told me so much about

this person's humanity. But there's always another patient to save, another life to pull back from the brink of death, and another patient to lose to that inevitable death. The first thing I tried to do when I finally realized my situation was to try and make any kind of change in the world. I tried to fog every single mirror in every single room of the hospital. I tried to extend some part of myself, whatever of myself there was now, into every single piece of electronics that I could find. But no matter how hard I tried, nothing happened. I felt nothing, and consequently nothing I ever did changed anything.

If I remember correctly, forgive the forgetfulness, it's been a while since that happened, it was somewhere around the 2020s when I finally decided to try leaving the hospital. Despite what most ghost stories would tell you about being attached to a place, I found out that at the very least I had no such limitation. The first thing I did after finding this out was look for my son, despite my bad habits and the lack of love for their mother. I managed to keep a working relationship with him for most of his life, and wanted to know that he was doing okay.

An admirable thing to do, I thought at the time. Living tissue has a built-in acceleration limit. The most acceleration a human has ever experienced was 46.2 G's, and that was only for a few seconds. 65 Gs is enough to make you go unconscious, and will kill you quite quickly. The toughest creature on Earth, the tardigrade, can withstand 16,000 Gs without dying. One second I was staring at the hospital, and the next I was several thousand miles away watching my son attempt to stay awake at a station on the USS George H. W. Bush. I sat there and watched as the boat landed in port.

I watched as he got drunk with his friends. I watched as he struck out with women after woman. I watched as he got drunk on duty one too many times. I watched as he managed to get kicked out with a dishonorable discharge. I watched as his drinking got worse. I watched as he died in his 50s. Time when you have no biological clock of eating, sleeping, and shitting to go by feels like a dream.

You can focus on a second for what feels like a year and watch a decade pass by in a proverbial I blink. My son died unmarried and unloved. His mother never got those grandchildren she wanted. After I had no family left, I started to see the state of the rest of the world. It was like getting out of a very good movie that you had all your attention wrapped in, and you stepped back into the real world. One second, I was in South America watching riots break out because of the lack of food.

The next I was in the Florida Keys as a beach house was smashed to pieces by Galeforce I saw the first bombs launch and the last ones fall. I watched the last civilized society form, peter out over the course of centuries and die with a whimper. I saw the last meal of the last human on earth, a small child biting directly into an uncooked rabbit with cancerous tumors growing all over it. I watched her become sick moments later. Soon after that, I watched her die. The last man-made thing, a plastic piece of a water bottle buried tens of feet under the earth, dissolved some time after. I watched wildfires burn entire landmasses. I watched as those landmasses recovered in new greenery and new life that no one could imagine.

Species adapted over time, then died when they couldn't adapt fast enough. I watched entire continent's shift. I watched the last life on earth, a single-celled organism who had managed to adapt to to adapt to the sudden lack of water on the planet, burned to a crisp as it finally succumbed to the increased solar radiation from the orange sun hanging in the sky. I watched as our red giant consumed the formerly blue marble called Earth. I watched that same red giant pulse brightly, screaming against the dying of its own light, before finally falling back on itself into a white dwarf.

I watched as that white dwarf, one by one, lost all of its planets. and then itself, as it collided with another star over the course of a billion years. The pattern repeated itself again and again, new bright stars forming when enough of them collided. I watched them grow, watched them stabilize orbits of planets of their own, and just like my child, and the last child of man, I watched the last stars pulse their last lights out to the world. I watched the last complex matter break down into its base components. And eventually, I watched the last piece of matter peter out and disappear.

That blackness, that nothingness, did not last long. The next thing I heard was laughter. The first thing I saw, light. Light so bright it burned my eyes. The eyes I suddenly had. I felt wetness on my skin. I felt oxygen rush into my lungs as I took my first breath. I felt it for the first time in eternity.

I was so happy I started crying in an unending wail that was eventually stopped when a blur held me closer to her chest and spoke softly to my new ears. I was alive again. I didn't waste any time with this newfound life. I used the memory of a previous lifetime and a previous eternity to graduate as early as I could. A child prodigy, it turns out, is easy to confuse with someone who's already lived once. I used my knowledge to gain every advantage I could. I was a millionaire by the time I was 20, a billionaire by 30.

I used that money and put it into every charitable thing I could that would push humanity to the stars. I had already come to the conclusion many millennia ago that I couldn't save the human race, but at the very least I could preserve it for as long as possible. I funded denuclearization campaigns. In my lifetime, I replanted half of the Amazon rainforest with my life. money, I funded private space travel, and I watched myself die again. I watched the corporate empire I built keep going with the people I trusted in charge.

I watched them run my efforts to keep the human race alive. I watched silently as they put the first humans on Mars. I watched as the colonization efforts began. I watched the next century roll by as the first interstellar ship was launched. I watched as that ship was torn to shreds by a micro-metier's. meteor storm. I watched the last human die again, this time in a shelter underneath the now unlivable land. His last meal was a decades-old can of beans that had unknowingly been tainted with botulism. The plastic dissolved, then the earth, then the sun. After

the blackness overtook everything, I heard the laughter again. It wasn't for long as it was replaced by the light and feeling and consciousness of a newborn baby. I spent the time again to build an unbelievable life. That time I even managed to get to space myself before dying to a genetic ticking time bomb at 78. In the blackness of eternity again. Laughter. Then light.

I've seen the end of everything more times than I can imagine. I've seen the surface of every star and every planet in every sky of every world. I've watched humanity peter out and die every single time. I've heard the same laugh, the same chuckle every single time, the second before I come back. I ran the human race like a silent dictator and put every piece in place innumerable times, yet nothing I do, no matter how big or small, can extend the life of our species more than a couple of centuries. Sure, there's other life out there, but what can you do with that knowledge besides

watch them die like the rest of us? So here's advice from the one person who's seen eternity. Nothing you do matters. Everything you create will turn to dust. Just enjoy your life because the beginning of everything, the beginning of existence, it's the punchline of a joke. One morning after mowing the lawn, I found a strange crimson velvet envelope between the cracks and the ground, surrounded by an eerie pink reddish glow.

It was mesmerizing to look at. I felt drawn to it, almost like it was placed there on purpose for me to find. I always was a firm believer in the supernatural, but I never got a chance to experience it. I thought this might be a unique opportunity to see once and for all if there's something more to it. I thought I could finally get the answers I've been searching for my whole life. I always thought about it, and my mind was provoked by this question, by this never-ending string of dark and twisted enigmas that have always filled my soul.

What were heaven and hell like? Was there a purgatory also? What if all we ever knew was fake and not according to the reality that was beyond the veil of human perception? The more I looked at the strange envelope, the more it began to take a hold of my spirit. This energy that started flowing through my body was something evil, I think. That's how it felt at first. A strange sensation of the purest evil, indescribable in human words, was dropping needles

in my soul like it wanted to perform a voodoo ritual on it. My mind, body, and spirit all became weakened by this amazing and crushing force that was coming from the envelope. So I gave into it. I let it take over. I didn't even try to fight it. My desire to see and feel the supernatural transcended my will to live. It was at this moment I knew I could find something.

bigger than me, bigger than humanity itself. The envelope was sealed in blood. It was signed to you by an old demon. I started feeling scared, fear clouding my mind, its poisonous arms reaching within the very dark and cold abyss of my consciousness. Right under the seal, it said, pour your own blood over the seal to open this letter, written in minuscule letters. This raw, powerful energy was taking over me, replacing whoever I was with something anew,

with something powerful and evil at the same time. But there was something else I was feeling then. Some sort of guilt, sadness of not belonging, but they were not mine. The letter was emanating them. I could feel that. I bit my finger and let the blood fall on the seal. I felt displaced, lost in time and spent. face forever.

The letter was short, and I don't know how, but I remember it word for word. Dear human, I didn't want you to ever find this letter, let alone read it, but yet here we are. I'm sick of it all, yet I still have to do it. It's too late for you, dear host, but I think you'll be the lucky one, the luckiest of them all. I want it to be my final time doing this. I want to wither away, to die.

I want to be destroyed, obliterated into the infinite pitch black, and I will let you live after taking over you. Those before you never had this chance, simply because the process corrupted their mind and soul in a way that never allowed them to live again. You will see ugly and evil things. You will experience pain and fear you have not. fear you have never experienced before. Call this letter a curse for those who find it. But you... You will live.

You will live because I will die. Before this process is complete and insanity will take over you, I will be dead. This has been going on since before I can remember, since your kind started walking the earth. I don't exactly know its final purpose, nor did I even ever bother to understand it. Simply, my kind has to do it to your kind. It's always been this way and always will be. I know you're afraid. I know your hands are shaking while reading this. You know this is not a game, and you know there is no escape from this. All you have to do is bite your finger and pour few drops of blood on the page. Let me show you something new. With sad,

madness and all deep. I felt more and more empowered by the evil things the letter emanated. I knew this was not a joke. I signed the paper with my blood. It caught fire, its pinkish flames slowly engulfing me. I screamed in pain, but not because I was burning. It was a pain coming from the fact that I was being slowly taken to another plane, bit by bit.

I faded to black in a way. I was still aware, though, and when I opened my eyes a bit. A large glass tube was all that I saw. The tube seemed infinite and the black smoke that filled it was not damaging me physically, but when that cleared, I saw twisted faces of evil beings, their shiny teeth bleeding acid spit on the glass tube. They were everywhere. Their sharp claws were scratching at the surface, trying to break in and feed.

I could see the hunger in their eyes, hatred fuelling whatever they held inside their minds and bodies. The deformities howled and screeched a ravenous desire to eat me. That was my last memory of being inside the tube. Right after seeing those horrifying creatures, I passed out completely. I don't know how much time I spent inside that tube. Time seemingly wasn't a thing inside it. It was just endless, infinite, darkness all around me. Coming back to my senses, I found myself in a small room, although it was dimly lit by the a flickering yellow light bulb. It was very dark. Right in front of me, there was a chair. It was wrapped in the exact same red velvet that the envelope was made of.

Please sit down. The baritone voice said, making the room tremble as if the eons the past suddenly had a voice, a voice expressing all kinds of existential terrors and horrors that this owner had witnessed with the passing of this strange man-invented construct, time. I felt fear licking my brain and its awful embrace kept me in place, rendering me unable to move. The fear that built up inside me was life-threatening. I knew that in the medical sense of things, a person could be scared to death. My opinion was that it wouldn't take me long to get there. Whatever was in that room with me, whatever presence loomed in the thick, damp, and heavy air made me fear for my life.

The room started shaking and I sat down on the chair. The voice told me to close my eyes. In the darkness behind my eyelids, red flashes started running before them. I heard a door opening, then closing shut. There wasn't any door when I first came here. Yet again, I was absolutely positive that the natural laws, the ones we guided our lives after, did not work here. More so, this wasn't anything natural.

Open your eyes. The same voice once again told me. A wave of shock and horror pierced through my heart. It split my soul into halves, never to be repaired again. My mind shattered into thousands of small shards. I was no longer me. Fear took its throne inside my body. The war raged on between what I thought before and what stood in front of me now.

A fiend like shadow, its eyes burning a bright red hue, fixated me. It was impossible to look at, yet here I was. The monstrosity stood before me, as if it knew me from my child. even from before I was born. The smoky shadow let out a sigh, then a sad smile revealed its shiny teeth. The way its face contorted into something that revealed a dark, endless, and timeless sadness hit me so hard. The first thing that came to mind, the way I could picture this sadness that I was seeing,

was a barren wasteland with dark clouds in the sky. Just that. Endless clouds being carried away by a worn-out. Weary wind above the wastelands of the fiend's former self. Don't be scared, child. I will not hurt you, I hope. The demon fiend said, I stood aghast, static buzzing through my skull. I always wanted to experience things like this, but not in a way where fear would invade

my whole body like a leech from hell. You will be the last one for me. The last human I will possess before I end my soul. I can't take it anymore. I choose you because you always wanted to see something that pertains to the supernatural." The demon said, I just want to talk to you a little before we do this. I nodded.

Shivers ran down my spine, and everything I thought I knew before was obliterated by this new experience. This place. This place is called the Hollow. It is the antechamber to hell. You heard that door opening and closing, yes. What lies on the other side will make you lose your mind, and it's not even hell itself behind it."

He sighed, a deep, dark sadness escaping his mouth. I nodded. The fear that was reigning supreme inside me didn't let me speak yet. The hollow was a place where all soon-to-be possessed people go. they could sit face to face with the demon that would take over their body. Some of them would just tell secrets and forbidden knowledge. Others would say nothing at all. They could show you other worlds, or just mock, hurt, and eventually possess you like you were nothing. I think the common thing for all people who have been inside this room was fear, a deep, unending, seething fear.

I need you to help carry me to a place where I will kill myself, where I will find Find a pool where I will drown because I am tired." The demon said, I finally got my voice back. I was fearful, but yet again, this is not how I wanted to find out about the existence of the supernatural. I didn't want my first experience with it to be me being a vessel for a suicidal demon. The hollow started to tremble, and the demon told me we needed to hurry. The process will be painful, and fear would probably leave eternal marks.

and scars on my mind. Are you ready, child? The demon asked me. I nodded, tears filling my eyes. He crashed into my chest like a rifle had just been emptied into me. The pain was an eternal flame of hate, a superior being that transcended everything I knew before. The fiend spread itself across my whole body and took over me.

Soon he dictated all my motions and movements. My train of thought wasn't my own anymore. I became a prisoner. her. The purple door appeared in front of me. I let out a scream inside my own mind, only for it to be swallowed whole by the demon's voice. I will shield you from the insanity. You will be all right.

Let's go to the pool. He finally said. The door opened and a black long corridor was revealed. It was similar in a way to the tube in which my travel here was done. Men and women were plastered all over its walls. The demon told me that its higher-ups sometimes. got off on gluing sinners to the walls, especially murderers, rapists, and pedophiles. Their never-ending screams would echo into the eternity of which they had been condemned.

Cries for help and screams of anguish filled the corridor, the absence of light was not a problem for me. I could see through the demon's eyes all the way to the end of this black, horizontal place fit only for beasts and former human psychopaths. What made this new sight special was that it looked like I had a fire. in my eyes. Don't know how to better explain it, like when you look through a fire and see something on the other side.

That's exactly what this was. We need to hurry. He knows something's happening. The demon screamed inside my brain. Who knows? I asked, fear breaking my mind's voice. You know who? He said.

I started running, although I was not in control anymore. I ran and ran and ran. It felt like an eternity. We reached another door. It was ancient and the wood was. was cracked. A howl, followed by a deep groan, echoed throughout the corridor behind me, silencing every scream that came from those sinners trapped in the walls.

I heard the behemoth rampaging towards me, and not even for a second did I dare to turn my head around and see what or who it was. I didn't because deep down inside I knew who he was. I opened the door and a bright white light hit me in the face. I was temporarily blinded by this powerful beam, but soon came back to it. Run! The demon cried. A circular construction made of stone was taking shape as I was approaching it.

Water filled it, colored black. It moved unnatural as all things were here. Droplets of dark water rose in the air, dancing under the silvery sky above me. A dark red sun split into four was bleeding its core into the air, regenerating itself infinitely. Skeletal birds were flying in the sky. There screams of hateful spite making my soul shake. Trees made out of teeth were chattering when touched by the infernal winds of this place. This is a demon graveyard.

The ones who die are buried here. The water over there is sometimes used for healing. Other times for inflicting pain upon those who do not follow orders. White is for healing. Black is for pain. The demon said. He told me to part my skin because the dark water needed blood. The crimson liquid was caught, almost like it was eaten by the floating dark water droplets.

Then they collapsed into the pool, hitting it like a giant rock was dropped from the hell's heavens. A sort of maelstrom was formed. I looked inside but saw no end. It looked like a bottomless pit. I saw only dead bodies, crotesque skeletons and horns filling the void, floating around in the endless space like discarded carcasses of evil. We need to jump. You'll be back to your world safe. I want this to be my grave, my eternal home. I felt him leave my body, almost like something from the void pulled him out of me. He was floating, still alive.

Thank you for your help. He said, his final words carrying feelings of relief and regret. Two long arms extended from the blackness and kept him in place. They ripped him into two. An explosion of bright light filling the void for a second. It blinded me and I fainted. I woke up back on the steps of my house. A ringing sound filled my head and I could still hear the screams of those plastered people from the dark corridor. The mark on my hand was still there. The bloodied scratch still showed.

I think about it even to this day. What I experienced was borderline insane, but it was only a small part of the things we don't know. I got my wish fulfilled by fulfilling a demon's wish. The things I saw, though, will haunt me forever. The subsequent fear emerging from those events is eternally embedded in me like a tattoo made of darkness. I wonder what else is out there that we can't see. There hadn't been a murder in Frensburg for over five years, not since Old Manweathers

killed his wife over a monopoly match gone sour, and a marriage gone even more sour. Up until last week, that was. Now I've got three different files sitting on my desk with three different victims. They stare up at me, accusingly, saying, solve us. I pull out my bottle of Glenphitic from the bottom drawer and find a halfway clean glass, blowing in it to get rid of any dead spiders or mouse turds. I fill it up a third of the way, then decide to hell with it and make it a double. The strong smell of it wakes my senses and burns my tongue a little at first, but in a good,

familiar sort of way. I admire the brown liquid in the glass for a minute, and then open one of the folders and begin to leaf through it for the umpteenth time. Each murder was spaced a couple days apart, and the killer had managed to sneak in and out of the victim's homes undetected. All three of them had their throat slit with a very sharp blade and were hung upside down in their respective residences. Their wrists and ankles were tied with thick, coarse rope.

They had been left like that for hours, as if someone had been waiting for the blood to drain out, like cattle or pigs. But nobody knows where the blood went. How the hell does something like that happen in my little town? Something flares up in me momentarily, and I realize it's wounded pride. has been in my town and has been killing my people under my nose and without leaving a trace of evidence. Maybe you just can't find the evidence because you're an amateur, a hack.

Probably. I questioned a lot of people, as one does, started with those closest to the victims and worked my way outward, trying to make connections. But murder isn't something I have a lot of experience with. Liars, though. Liars, I can tell from a mile away. When you've been a cop long enough, you can pick them out easy enough. It's an acquired skill.

The victims were young in their 20s. People kill people they know. So who knew all three victims? Who had a motive to kill them? And how did they do it without getting caught? The first question requires some digging. It means interviews with people who don't want to talk. I visit each victim's closest friends and family members.

I find out that the three were all loners. with very few friends, at least not in real life. Not only that, but they knew each other. My suspicion that the murders are connected became a certainty. I looked deeper into their lives, sussing out any details I can find. They were all gamers, professional ones, apparently. Not something I had thought possible. To my surprise, when I ask about the details, the answer is always the same.

victim was obsessed with a computer game called League of Legends. More questions lead to more answers, and eventually, after a lot of puzzle pieces come together, more questions lead to more answers, and eventually after a lot of puzzle pieces come together, I figure out how the victims were all connected. It turns out they were all in a clan together, which means they played the game together as a team. The teams in League of Legends are made up of five people, so that leaves two more people out there who are either potential victims or potential murderers.

I have to find the other members of the clan. The two are like missing pieces from a jigsaw puzzle, and without them I can't see the whole picture. So I track them down. Sarah Green is the first. She seems pleasant enough. After inviting me inside for coffee, we talk for almost an hour, and she responds candidly and with concern for her deceased friends, but gives no useful information. Can I get you another refill, detective?

She asks after I drain my second cup of coffee. No, it's all right. I think I've imposed on you long enough. She walks me to the door after that and says that she hopes I'll be able to find some answers. I thank her, still unsure of what to make of her, and move on to the next interview. Terry Wentworth is a chubby man with a ponytail and thick glasses. He has a patchy goatee which attempts unsuccessfully to hide a double chin with an unfortunate. But-looking cleft running down the center of it.

I find myself trying not to look at it as if to do so would be rude. What can I do for you, officer? He asks, looking annoyed. I understand you played a game with these people, I say, showing him pictures of the victims. He cringes slightly. A computer game called League of Legends, is that correct? Yeah, so what? I played with him.

Something is off already. I can tell he is more nervous, more defense. offensive than he needs to be. But then again, some people have bad social anxiety. Maybe he's just the anxious type. Any infighting in the clan, Terry? Problems between members? No, no.

I don't think so. His palms are sweating heavily, and he wipes them on his pants, leaving huge damp spots on his upper thighs. I decide to take him down to the station and make him sweat a bit more. It works. After an afternoon in the hot box, the bastard starts talking. Sarah, it was all her idea. I didn't even do it, it was her.

This is after hours of coaxing and threatening. His shirt now completely drenched in sweat, his hair dripping with it. I mentioned Sarah again, saying that he was probably going to kill her next, and the guy finally cracks and turns on her. But I just found out about it, and I couldn't stop her. It was already too late. Everything had already... Slow down, take a deep breath.

Just calm down for a second and tell me what happened. You said it was her? She killed them? He takes a deep, trembling breath and goes out. No, no, she wasn't capable of that. Neither was I, but we weren't going to make it anywhere in the tournaments unless she could bring on a couple new pros. Real talent, I mean, not just the friends who happened to play.

The two of us were top-notch, but we couldn't carry the clan anymore. We kept getting knocked out early in the big tournaments. You mean you had them killed over a video game? It's not just a game, there's thousands of dollars up for grabs, man. You've got no idea, millions if you're world-class. And we could have been, if not for them. But like I said, it wasn't my idea. She set it all up.

I didn't find out until later when I asked her. Asked her what. Where the hell everybody was? They all just started disappearing and new players started showing up to practice. First it was Lisa, then Graham went permanently AFK. Finally, she told me Wayne wasn't cutting it either, that he'd have to disappear next. So what did you say? I pretended to go along with it.

That's what I do sometimes if I want to find out how far gone somebody is. I don't know if you've ever tried it, but if you ever start talking to somebody and they say something really rotten, just agree with them for a minute and see what sort of depravity their mind really contains. It's kind of astonishing. Yeah, it's also called Police Work 101. I want to say, but don't. All right, I'll buy it.

So you tell her you love whatever she's doing to clean up the team. You just want in on it. You're curious and want to help, so she tells you. She found a hitman on the dark web, she tells me. Some guy who'll practically do it for free. You have his name? A way to contact him? I try hard not to show my hand, but I'm getting excited at the prospect of catching this

guy, and my questions come a little too fast, making him bristle momentarily. Man, I can't tell you that. If she finds out I said anything, she's coming after me next. Listen, kid, I say in my best friendly cop impersonation, You're doing the right thing here. Let me follow up on this and I'll make sure she goes away for a long time. You didn't do anything, you say, right? So you've got nothing to worry about, but you have to tell me the truth.

Everything. Now who is this guy? He looks at me darkly and seems to brood on the question for a while, but eventually he answers. He explains to me how to contact the hitman and how it was all arranged. Shortly after that, we arrest Sarah and bring her to the station. After letting her sit in the interrogation room for a while, I decided to see if she was ready to talk. I entered the room and placed a laptop on the table in front of her.

We need you to show us how you came into contact with the hitman. I say as I stand over her. She sits quietly, staring at the computer screen with a sad look on her face. He's going to kill all of us. Who is, Sarah? She looks at the blank screen. Dark. Empty.

Him. A shiver runs down my spine and my skin breaks into goosebumps. We can protect you from him, I say. No, you can't. She sighs and turns the computer on, waits for it to boot up. Within a few minutes, she's on the Tor browser and is in some chat room. She types something into the window and waits. I hold my breath without meaning to.

Suddenly the screen goes completely dark. The chat window disappears. Despite the heat of the day, it feels cold in the room, then freezing. I exhale and can see my breath hang in the air. My teeth began to clack together and chatter. Who is he? The voice is like a thunder crash coming from the computer, and I understand immediately why she was so scared.

It was a wonder the speakers didn't blow out. My ears are ringing, and I feel like the room is still echoing and reverberating with the sound of it. There's a presence watching us. I can feel it. I don't know how else to explain it, but it feels like when you're walking down the street and you sense someone watching you from behind, like eyes are tickling your neck, and you turn and see that there's someone staring at you from the window of their house.

I feel that now, but all over, like there are eyes in the walls, ceiling and floors all watching me. My skin tingles and I shiver. That's Detective Slate. She says in a monotone voice. He wants to catch you. I told him that's silly, but he doesn't listen. The young woman's face is visible in the reflection of the monitor, and I see her eyes staring

far off into the distance as if she's hypnotized. Then that deep voice begins to speak again, and I find myself unable to do anything but listen. Look into the darkness, Detective Slate. Don't you want to experience it for yourself? Don't you want to sleep, Detective? Aren't you tired? Suddenly, there are five men grabbing me and wrestling me to the floor. My heart is beating out of my chest, and I'm stunned to see that my service revolvers clenched

tightly in my hand, yet I have no memory of removing it from its holster. The coldness of the barrel touches my temple and my fingers on the trigger, trying desperately to pull it, despite my terrified brain pleading for it to listen, to stop, to relax. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. and yet my index finger continues to squeeze down on the trigger as if possessed. My old partner, Steve, who has gotten there first, is wrestling with me desperately and finally manages to pry the gun from my hand.

Later I tried to explain to them that it wasn't me. I didn't want to do it. Something made me do it. He made me do it. I look up and see Sarah is now banging her head down hard against the steel table, as if she has no control over herself. She brings her face down again and again and bloods. The blood begins to spray.

Parts of her face shear off, exposing the muscle and bone beneath, and still she doesn't stop. Her teeth break and chip pieces fly and scatter everywhere. What the hell? Another officer is saying, letting go of me and rushing over to her. Then he makes the mistake of looking at the screen as well. In a rapid motion, too quickly for anyone to stop him, he pulls his pistol from the holster, cocks it and holds the gun to his temple.

The blast is deafening in the small cement walled room. It echoes, piercing my ears and turning me deaf for a while, then making them ring. It feels like needles are stabbing into my eardrums, and I clap my hands over them protectively. But then my eyes betray me, and I find my gaze drifting back to the beckoning blackness of the computer screen, as if the siren song for that sense is calling me to stare at the darkness of that empty black rectangle. One officer who had been watching everything with wide eyes from the doorway runs in. He was not at an angle where he could see the door.

the screen and seems to be unaffected by it. He slams the laptop shut, then picks it up and throws it hard to the floor where it breaks to pieces. He then brings his foot down on it hard. He crunches it beneath his polished black shoe and looks up at us with a sweating, anxious face. I'm sorry, boss. He says to me, looking worried for his job, on an ordinary day he would have been very

right to, but today is no ordinary day. I had to. I had to. Don't apologize. You just saved all of our lives. Thank you. We look around the room and take in the bloodbath which surrounds us. One officer dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

A suspect, witness, dead while in our custody from repeated blunt force injuries to her face, also self-inflicted. Officers begin to crowd the room from where they were stationed at their desks when the gunshot went off. People are asking a thousand questions and I don't even know what to tell them, or what I even believe myself. The captain sends me home without pay, pending an investigation. It doesn't matter how many people vouch for me, how many saw the madness for themselves.

It matters how it all looks. And there's no way of explaining what happened to a rational person. Even I can hardly believe it, and I witnessed it myself. I tried to catch a dark web hired hitman and discovered that he was no ordinary hired gun, no simple mercenary. The thing Sarah hired to kill her fellow clan members was something else, something we as humans don't have a word for yet or any understanding of, something that is spilling over into our world from another and feeds on our flesh and blood.

Somehow, I have to stop him. I awoke to the faint sound of sobbing in the distance. At first, my tired mind associated the sound with one of our kids, with my mind barely lingering on the edge of consciousness. But the longer I lay there, the more I started to realize just how off it sounded. The sobs were too dark, akin to those of a grown man, and they were coming from outside our home. Can you check on the kids, please?

My wife mumbled where she lay next to me, still partially asleep. It's not the kids. I whispered back, more annoyed than anything. Upon peeking out the window, I quickly confirmed my suspicions. As I thought, there was a man standing in the middle of the street, just sobbing. Even though the ancient street lights outside barely illuminated him, something was clearly wrong about his presence. He stood perfectly still as he sobbed, not even appearing to breathe as he let out

the broken calls that shattered the silence of night. the street, I could see some of my neighbors' lights turn on, as Moore had clearly been awoken by the sounds of distress. Shut up, will you? A man screamed from down the street, but he received no response. Though my first instinct was to check if he needed help, something about his appearance locked me in place, frozen from fear and leaving me unable to logically plan out my next move. He was tall, with only a few strands of gray hair emerging from his otherwise bald head.

He was facing me, but due to the poor lighting conditions, I couldn't get a clear look at his face. About a half an hour had passed before I realized I hadn't moved an inch. I had been transfixed and only broke free once my wife properly woke up to ask what I was doing. I don't know. I stuttered. There's a man standing on the street. I think he needs help.

Joanna joined my side at the window. Even in the dark, I could tell her face had turned. completely pale by the mere sight of the man. What's wrong? Call the police. Don't go outside. She said with a shaky voice. Why?

What did you see? I don't. I don't know. Just don't go outside, please. She begged. I grabbed her hand and gently pulled her away from the window. Something about the man had put us both in an undeniable state of panic. But, apart from his unsettling look, there wasn't an explainable reason for the fear we felt.

Joanna, go check on it. the kids, I'll call the police, all right? I half ordered, half asked. As I dialed 911, I wondered what I could possibly say to convey the threat of a seemingly harmless man just standing there and crying. Still, left without any other options, I turned to the police. 911, what's your emergency? A woman asked on the other end.

Sorry, my name is Zach Larson. There's a man standing in the middle of the street, just crying loudly. I don't know if he's drunk or what, but he's scaring the kids. I can't really say it's an emergency, but something is definitely wrong with the man, I explained. All right, sir. We'll send a patrol car to check it out. Could you confirm your address, please? She asked.

I confirmed my details and the conversation ended. Due to the quiet night, they estimated that a patrol car would swing by in just under ten minutes. That, I felt like my civic duties had been completed, and once Joanna returned to tell me that the children were fast asleep, I calmed down ever so slightly. After closing the blinds, the two of us headed back to bed, confident that the police would handle the situation. And I wish that would have been the end of our story. I truly do, but as fate would have it, things would only get worse from there.

There I lay, too unsettled to fall asleep. I just stared at the ever-ticking clock as an hour passed. The man kept crying, producing unrelenting sobs with each passing second. Then two hours passed, and the police still had not appeared. By then, I considered checking out the window once more, but the mere thought of him standing there kept me from even parting the curtains. At around four in the morning, I had come to assume that I'd suffer through another sleepless night, but as the first rays of orange sunshine hit the blinds, the world around me fell

dark, forcing me into a dreamless slumber. To my horror, the sobs wouldn't cease even then. Hours passed while I remained in an uncomfortable state, somewhere between full consciousness and true sleep. Once I finally awoke, I was met with little more than total darkness coming from outside. During the summer, I'd expect the summer. sun to rise around six, and since the time had been around four the last time I checked, I knew I couldn't have been under for more than thirty minutes. Despite that logic, my body felt beyond broken. I was excruciatingly parched, and my bladder was on the brink of rupture.

I rolled out of bed, weak and broken, still hearing the sounds of the crying man. Meanwhile, my wife still slept peacefully, seemingly unbothered by the ungodly noise. Then I picked up my phone and checked the time. It read 12.3 a.m. an impossible hour, considering it had been four mere moments ago. I stumbled over to the window, still petrified, but determined to figure out exactly what the hell was going on. He just stood there, unmoved since the last time I laid eyes upon him. Down the road I noticed an empty patrol car with the lights blinking, but the officers themselves

were nowhere in sight. What the hell is going on? I mumbled to myself. As before, the sight of the man put me into a short trance, one that was only broken once I heard a tiny voice coming from behind me. Why is the man crying? My son asked. Hey, Alex, where's your brother?

I asked back. He's in his room. He wet the bed. He said, matter-of-factly. Stephen was only five, but I'd assumed his bed-wedding day. were a thing of the past, considering the last accident, had been over a year earlier. Before checking on him, I decided to give the police another call, but before I could dial the number, I noticed the day.

It was Saturday, which meant we'd been asleep for almost 24 hours, skipping over Friday entirely. Alex, go back to your room. Daddy has to make a call, then I'll come check on you, all right? In shock, I jotted the information down to a broken calendar and called the point. the police once more. Alas, to my absolute horror, I didn't have a single bar of signal. Oh, God. We slept through the entire day? How? My wife called out in confusion and embarrassment. She just rolled over herself to check the time. I don't know. I responded meekly. It doesn't

make any sense. And that guy is still crying? Where's the police? Their car is out there, but they're just gone. As the minutes went by, It dawned on me that we actually had missed an entire day. That's why Stephen had wet the bed and why my own bladder was on the verge of exploding, because we'd somehow been sedated. We'd been forced to sleep through the day, only to suffer the horrors of night. But as parents, we had an incredible ability to reevaluate our priorities. Regardless of the situation, we'd deal with our kids first.

We headed over to clean up Stephen's bed, all the while we tried to try to try to. to come up with an exit strategy. We tried out each and every phone, hopelessly calling for help. When the phones failed, we tried the internet, which turned out to be just as futile. Try the television. Joanna suggested. Upon turning the ancient device on, we were met with little more than a staticy mess. It was a screen of snow mixed with just barely intelligible images. Based on what we could guess, the image showed the outline of a man standing in front of the camera, Overlaid only by a single line of text that read, Come outside. How is it doing that?

Joanna asked in a panic. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure going outside is a fucking stupid idea. I blurted out, momentarily forgetting the kids were there. Sorry, I didn't mean to say it that way. Joanna and I moved to the window, ordering the kids to stay away. On the other side of the street, one of our neighbors stumbled out, seemingly disoriented. He was wielding a bat. I'm gonna fuck you up.

He yelled. I pulled the window open, ready to yell at him to get back inside. No sooner had our neighbor reached the crying man than the air fell to a deafening silence. A second passed. Then the sobs were replaced by a maniacal laughter that increased an intensity for each passing moment. Though we all knew the laughter came from the man, it simultaneously sounded like someone was standing inside our own house.

It was the loudest thing I'd ever heard, enough to knock us to the ground in absolute agony. Close the window! I quickly did as commanded to no avail. Despite our efforts, the laughter remained as incessant and loud as ever. Then as suddenly as it had begun, it just stopped. What was that? Alex cried as Joanna grabbed both him and Stephen in a tight hug. Shhh, it's okay.

She said as comforting as she could. Just stay away from the windows, all right? By the time I could stand up to assess the situation, our neighbor had long since vanished. All that was left in his absence was a trail of blood and guts that led up to the monster of a man who'd promptly returned to sobbing relentlessly. He's gone, I let out in merely a whisper. The next hours were spent in absolute silence. All we could do was wait for sunrise and pray for a hopeful escape.

We kept the television on should any news appear. Our kids, while worried, were too young to fully grasp the gravity of the situation. In a way, I envied them. They saw us as their ultimate guardians, able to protect them from any harm in the world. But based on what we just witnessed, I didn't believe that to be true. We moved to the kitchen to grab some food, counting down each minute until daylight. But as I noticed the first orange hue appear on the horizon, I once again felt my leg legs give up beneath me. In less than a second, darkness had enveloped me, and I fell unconscious

on the floor. Once again we awoke around midnight the next night, meaning yet another day had come and gone. But that time we didn't have any phones or computers to tell us the date, as the batteries had long since died. All we had were a couple of wristwatches to tell the time. Still, the sobs persisted. It had gotten ever so slightly louder since our neighbor got killed, but despite the obvious calls for distress, there wasn't a single hint of sadness portrayed in the broken cries. The more we listened, the less we believed the man to be human. Let's turn on the lights.

That thing is creeping me the hell out. I flicked the switch, but nothing happened. After futilely checking every power source in the house, including the circuits, I realized that the entire neighborhood had gone dark. That's when my wife asked a question that truly caused all hope to abhorpe to abhorpe to abandon my body. Why haven't they come to help us? I didn't have a good answer, nor could I muster up any believable words of comfort.

I could only do my best to protect my family from the horrific threat looming over the neighborhood until I myself finally succumbed to it. That night we witnessed another three of our neighbors exit their homes in attempts to confront the man. Each time that sickly laughter would ring through the air and another friend would be dead. They didn't even resist their deaths. They just walked over without showing a hint of emotion, willingly meeting their agonizing demise. It wouldn't be until the third night before I finally began to understand why people walked

outside. We'd been forced to sleep through the light of day, only to be left without any source of light during the night. Having nothing else to do, we could only listen to the crying man. His sobs that had started out as panic-inducing noises had somehow turned sympathizing. The emotion resembled a twisted version of Stockholm syndrome. I wanted to desperately go out and meet the crying man, but I couldn't leave my family behind. Maybe he really does need help.

Joanna suggested. I think. I think it's time to go outside. Her words were so void of emotion, monotonous and cold. She stood up to leave, but I grabbed her before she could even approach the door. The shock seemed to briefly bring her back to reality. Think about the kids. I begged her.

They need us. The words seemed to break her free from her trance, if only temporarily. I know. I know. I don't understand what I was even thinking. I wasn't myself. She cried. But her brief lucidity wouldn't last, because as I packed away the leftovers from the previous

night, I heard the front door unlock. The kids had already fallen asleep, and I knew I was about to follow suit. Still, I rushed over, only to see my wife getting ready to leave. I'm sorry. Were the last words she spoke to me before she left the house. Darkness would cover my eyes before I got a chance to react. The sickening laughter would be the only sound that accompanied me as I fell into a forced slumber. By the time I awoke, Joanna was just gone.

The only trace of her existence was a trail of coagulated blood glistening in the light from the streetlights leading up to the man. I didn't even have to call out for her. I knew she was dead. Which brings us to now. Four days have passed since the crying man first appeared on our street. We have enough food to last another week, but I fear we'll all be gone long before then. I've seen most of my neighbors meet their demise, and the only things keeping me from doing

the same are my kids. But they too have expressed a desire to go outside, and I don't know how long I can keep them safe. I'm documenting this as my last words before we depart this world. I've used an almost empty power bank to record this message. I don't really have any signal, but I'm hoping that it somehow gets through. People need to know what happened here. If you're hearing this, please send help.

I don't know how long I can keep resisting the cries. I sat back, intrigued. He was tapping on the corners of the table. Right, left, right, left, right, and perfectly spaced intervals. It was almost hypnotic. It wouldn't have caught my notice, if not for the look of utter concentration and anxiety on his face, as he tapped carefully with the two fingers of each hand on each corner. I put my shades on so that I could observe undetected.

I'd bought mirrored shades just for this reason. I'm not a creep. I'd just like to watch what others do, the quirks they have, and the little details in their actions. Well, okay, I realize that still sounds kind of creepy. Well, it's people watching anyway, and nothing more. I find human behaviors fascinating. The door to the train carriage slid open, and the noise of the tracks and buzz of conversation

crowded in. I looked at the passenger opposite me, still dedicatedly tapping on the table's corners, but now with an increase in the intensity of his frown. Hi there! A chirpy young lady was at the door. Her presence poured into the room, energetic, lively, unstoppable. I contemplated pretending to be asleep. Then I saw the distress rolling on the tapers face as he tried desperately to keep his beat going,

determinedly ignoring the lady. I sighed and then plastered a bright smile on my face to match her sunshine vibe. Hey, we've got the bottom bunks. I hope that's all right. Both top bunks are free for you to choose. Great, thanks. She smiled at me. Then her gaze drifted to our fellow carriage bunker.

She looked confused, then concerned for a moment. She opened her mouth, and I immediately spoke up again. Let me help you with your stuff. I grabbed hold on one end of her heavy backpack. That did the trick. She shifted her attention back to me and grabbed hold of the other end of her backpack. We heaved it onto the upper bunk. She looked back at the tapper, but this time she didn't try to say anything.

She just raised an eyebrow, then turned to climb up the ladder to her bunk. I looked back at the tapper. He was now saying some words in time with the taps. Each word spat out with the tap in a curt, almost frantic manner. I couldn't help it. I wanted to look away, leave the carriage, give him some space to do whatever it was he needed to do. But I was getting really curious about the tense words he was expelling under his breath.

So instead, I shifted from my comfortable space at the end of my bunk and sat at the table opposite him. I put my head down on my side of the table and pretended to take a nap. I could now make out some of the words. Do not ever. I couldn't tell what the rest of the words were. He was pronouncing the words in slightly varying ways. as if attempting to say them in the perfect way, enunciating every phonem the words held.

I kept my head down, just listening to his words and taps, and, without realizing it, somehow drifted off. I don't remember what I was dreaming about, except for the last scene. I was walking down some steps and realized that the ground wasn't there. I walked off the last step and fell. I jerked awake. I must have startled him. He stopped his tapping.

He looked at me as if registering my presence for the first time. We stared at each other for a moment or two. Then he looked down at the corners of the table. I could already see it happening, him getting distressed about his tapping ritual being disrupted and falling back into a frenzy of tapping and chanting. Hey, it's nice to meet you. I said before I could think it through. He looked at me with a tinge of surprise.

In the bunk above him, the lady. He turned to her side and looked curiously at our interaction. Hey, he said softly, looking nervous and uneasy. Where are you headed to? I kept my tone light, pretending not to notice his hands clutching the corners of the table. End of the line. Oh, that's a good two days away. Yeah, he said, nervously running a hand through his hair, then immediately

gripping tightly onto the corners again. Hiya! The lady was climbing down the ladder to join us. Great to meet you guys. She chirruped. Her enthusiasm seemed to physically repel him. He leant away from her while still holding on to the table's edges. Hey, you're up.

It's nice to meet you too. She gave me a wide grin, which faltered a little when she turned to him. He did not meet her eyes. His tension and anxiety were palpable. Well, I'm going to have an early dinner. Check out the food at the dining car. You guys want anything? No, thanks.

Let me know if the food's good. I kept my voice upbeat, matching her energy. She smiled and gave me a thumbs up, then left the carriage, closing the door behind her. There was a long silence after that. He seemed stiff, unsure what to do. I was pretty sure he was fighting the overwhelming urge to tap on the table corners again. It's important to you, tapping the table edges in saying the words just right. I kept my tone as nonchalant and non-judgmental as possible.

He looked up at me with a mixture of surprise and anger, which quickly dissolved into puzzled wonder as he realized I was not making fun of him. Yes, I need to say it, just right, I need to tap it, just right, I need to do them both, just right. I wanted to leave it at that and go back to my relaxing journey to my next destination. It was, after all, a year-long break from me, my epic vacation, but my professional instincts took over. Why do you need to do them just right? I... I just need to. He stared resolutely down at the table. What would happen if you didn't do them just right? He seemed discomfited by the very

thought. He shook his head. That's not okay. It won't be good. What if you didn't do them at all? I could almost swear I saw the color drain from his face. Bad, bad things would happen. What kind of I don't know, but bad things. Very bad things. I know it." I nodded. It's a terrible feeling. You know something horrible would happen. You stop. You refuse to do it. And you can feel the dread in your body. This inexplicable, paralyzing fear. It builds up until you snap and do whatever it is you need to do to ease it again. He looked at me with the first signs of actual interest since our journey began. Yes, exactly that. I nodded again, then added. I was that way with lights, too. I had to switch my lights on and off, on and off, until I was thinking exactly the right

thought in the right way while the lights went off. Otherwise, I was convinced horrible things would happen. I smiled gently at him. But one day it got too much for me. I didn't want to live my life repeating my actions over and over to ward off some unnameable event. So I just stopped. I switched off the lights while thinking a bad thought, sat down, felt the fear comes crashing down on me. I felt like I was suffocating with fear, with horror, with this intense dread that convinced me that I would deeply regret not getting things

just right, that I had somehow caused some horrible destruction. I looked up at him. His expression was unreadable. But nothing happened. I continued. Everything bad happened, even though it felt so real, felt like it was going to happen. He stayed silent. I cleared my throat nervously. I'd worked with others, too, who had these issues when I was a psychologist. They felt these things, too, the fear, the terror, the urge, the need to do whatever their fear was telling them to.

I trailed off. His expression was becoming a familiar one. He was frowning. He seemed to be finding the right. words to say. You're describing OCD. I know what I have seems like OCD. I have been diagnosed with OCD.

It's not OCD. He began tapping again. I'm sorry. How is it not like OCD? I'm sorry. I didn't want to jump to any conclusions. I just wanted to understand what's going on. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, all the while still tapping.

It was a long while before he spoke. When I stopped tapping, bad things do happen, or they do begin to happen, but I've always stopped them in time by tapping again. Could you tell me more? At least he wasn't back to spitting out those words. I've tried to stop before. Of course, I've tried to stop before. You think I don't know how I look to others?

You think I want to live my life enslaved to these acts? I want to hang out too. I want to talk to others. I want to be normal, but I can't. I've got so fed up. I've tried to stop so many times, but every time I do, something happens. I didn't speak, just waited for him to continue. Weird things happen, strange things I can't explain.

His breathing was quickening. He was obviously terrified by his recall of the past. I tried it once at home when I was still a student. I fought it when the urge came, when the fear hit me, and I knew that it was time for me to tap again. I knew I needed to do it. I tapped for a bit on the sides of my bed, then I stopped. It felt wrong, all sorts of wrong. I felt terrified, but I refused to tap anyway.

Then the room just started creaking. The floorboards did. My cupboard, my desk, everything was creeping. Then my textbooks fell off the table. I had to start tapping again. Something horrible was going to happen. I knew it. I started tapping again.

And it all stopped. I kept my face neutral, unassuming. I nodded. I tried another time when I was dating this girl, and I just wanted to be normal, to have a proper relationship, to not have to run away to do my stupid rituals when the urge is hit. Then we started hearing footsteps. We didn't know where they came from, just footsteps near us, though there was no one else. The footsteps got louder, closer, and I had to go.

I had to leave. I ran off and found this lamp post. It felt right. I started to tap on the sides of it, and it stopped. The footsteps stopped. I was starting to feel a bit unnerved. That must have been terrifying. It was tough enough for me to stop.

Having those things happen, it must have... No wonder you couldn't stop. My words seemed to hit him hard. He started blinking away tears. It was really tough, but I want to stop. I want so badly to stop. I want everything to go away. I want to be normal.

I want to be free. I want to be able to have a conversation with my trainmates. I want to walk to the dining car, have a meal, and not be stared at like a freak. The tears kept spilling from his eyes. I felt a tingling, salty sensation at the back of my throat and a heavy pull on my heart. Do you want to try? Here, with me here? We could face it together.

His tears gave way to proper sobs. I didn't know what to do. I just sat there looking at him silently. When his sobs subsided, he lifted his reddened eyes and regarded me for a while. I do. I do want to try. Please, maybe it'll be better with someone else around. I let out a small sigh of relief.

I was hoping he'd be willing to try. I couldn't deal with the thought of him going about his life, living the way he did. I just want to point out another thing that could help us along," I said. He watched me expectantly. It can really help to think of what's the worst thing that could happen, then compare it to your life as you're living it now, and be okay with the worst thing that could happen to rather face that possibility than live as you're living now. He seemed uncertain, scared.

For me, it worked. I thought, well, the worst thing that could have happened would have probably been somebody dying, the world ending, severe injuries and whatnot. And I realized I'd rather just let it happen, get it over and done with, than to keep doing these gestures, these repetitive actions, being slave to my fear. I needed to be done with it, whatever the cost. He considered my words with a grave expression. Then he nodded. I'm willing. It's been too long. Too long. It's not allowed me to have a proper life. I smiled at him.

Then let's do it. He looked at me, still tapping the sides of the table. Then his jaw tightened, and he nodded. A few moments passed before he stopped tapping. He put his hands flat on the table. We waited. The first few minutes seemed to take an immense toll on him. His face was pale, and cold sweat beat at his face.

His breaths were shallow and quick. More time passed, and he seemed almost ready to relax. Then the lights in the carriage flickered. He seemed to almost jump out of his skin. He reached out his hands to the corners of the table, but I grabbed them and placed them back on the top of the table. I pressed down on them for a while, then let go. He had to do this himself.

The lights went out. I took a few deep, calming breaths. This was a coincidence. I knew it, logically. This was a highly unfortunate. coincidence, but that was all it was. And if I could help him through it, he could be free from these obsessions and compulsions for the rest of his life, or at least be less controlled by them.

I grabbed his hands to make sure he didn't start tapping in the dark. He whimpered a little. He couldn't see my face, but I smiled at him nonetheless, hoping that I could send him some reassuring vibes. Then the train juttered to a halt. I began to feel the cold pricks of sweat on my own face. I realized my face was tensed up, my grip on his hands tight. I forced myself to relax.

He grabbed onto my arm once I lessened the pressure on his hands. Despite my fear, I felt heartened. He was determined not to tap, no matter what. We sat in the dark silence, ignoring the aura of doom and fear that had settled around us. Then we heard the breathing. Something was breathing heavily on the bunk above him. A cold needle of fear pierced my heart. We stayed incredibly still.

The breathing came downwards. Whatever it was right next to him now. We could hear the rough wafting of air as it breathed onto his face. I heard his breath quicken as his hands clamped painfully on my arms. He still wasn't tapping. I felt a deep respect for him even as I could. contemplated my impending doom. Then the raspy breaths of whatever it was shifted. It was by my right ear now. I could feel it. It was strangely cold. Every time it breathed thin, there was a wet

rattling sound. When it breathed out, my ear was grazed by a sharp, cold gust. It stank. It had a horrible, rotting stench about it. But still, we grabbed hold of one another's arms, refusing to let go, refusing to tap. I don't know what came over us. What made us so emboldened as to continue resisting despite the insane things going on in our carriage. That was a mistake. Its cold, mocking voice slithered into the quiet of our carriage. You will suffer.

I was beyond convinced at this point that this was anything related to OCD. Are you willing to pay the price for your insights? It hissed. Do you accept credit cards? The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. My blood froze in my veins as the possible repercussions of my stupidity struck me. Then the carriage was flooded with light. The lady was back, our savior.

Hey, guys, the food was great. She took in the scene of us clasping each other's arms and death grips. Oh, wow. Okay. You guys sure bonded without me. A cold, heavy air began to disperse. A light whisper caressed my ears. I'll be back for you.

Then it was gone. Its presence ebbed away just like that. He looked at me with shock and relief on his face. Yeah, we did it. He said, smiling at me in gratitude, a pure joy began to light his face. He looked like a whole different person. I smiled back at him, shrugging off the disquiet I felt. We did.

It's raining again. To be honest with you, I'm terrified of rain. I never leave the house when it's storming outside. But to give myself some credit, I never used to be like this. I used to love watching the rain fall from outside the windows, but now I always have my curtains pulled tight across the edges of the window sill. I wish I could show you what made me the way I am, partly to warn you, partly to verify myself.

But I can't. I can only write out my story like a lot. it's some sort of fantasy, as if it's just another bizarre story on the internet that deserves to be forgotten in a week. If you see it like that, then that's fine. I won't forget. I'll never forget. In 2012, I was a 21-year-old college student. I was basically madly in love with nature and all things wild. I had spent my childhood roaming up and down tree lines, fantasizing about mythical creatures and fantastic monsters. Now, there I was in 2012 as an adult, studying forestry with dreams of defending those tree

lines and fantasies I held so dear. I was absolutely ecstatic when my professor announced an opportunity for some extra credit. He suggested that we spend a few days of our upcoming break, walking along some trails and paths, to remind ourselves why we are doing what we're doing. As an avid hiker, I knew a hiking trail a few hours from our town, the U.S. offered plenty of room to walk with very little crowding. The only ones who really walked more than a few minutes down the trail were the park rangers, and the chances of seeing one of them on the ever-winding and expanding trails of the forest

seemed small. Hey, Lily, want to take a trip down to the preserve with me? I asked as the school day came to an end. The girl next to me, Lily, was a quiet and sweet girl. She had long brunette hair that stretched just past her shoulders and gentle green eyes. She was the type of person who people admired from afar, beautiful but silent. A passing joke or a compliment would make her smile, but she'd very rarely comment back. To most, that'd make them move on to the next person.

To me, that made me want to be closer to her. We'd been friends for a while at this point. Whether or not any sort of romantic interest was had between us, I couldn't say. We just knew we connected on some sort of level. Yeah, of course. Just tell me when. She looked into my eyes with a soft smile on her face. I smiled back at her.

I hoped this trip would turn out well. A few days passed. Lily and I spent more free time in stores gathering food, supplies, and tents together. Soon enough, we were all packed up and ready to head out. We took my small car with our bags tied down on the roof and took the highway a few hours east. By the time we got there, it was mid-afternoon. Still plenty of time to walk, but also a bad time to walk. find parking. There were plenty of people walking their dogs, setting up lunches, and walking

the paths. I thought you said it'd be quiet. Lily asked with a slight snicker. I rolled my eyes in response. I'm sure these kids are just planning on hiking a few days in. It'll get quiet, I promise. I spun around and began taking our large packs off the roof of the vehicle. For as big as they were, they were surprisingly easy to carry. Lily slipped the straps over her shoulders and waited for me to start heading toward the park. As we approached the trail's entrance, we saw a ranger loosely standing guard. You guys heading in? He asked. There was no hostility or caution in his tone. He was just merely asking a simple question. Yeah, that's all right, right? I questioned with the fit middle-aged man.

Of course. Just let me know your names and take my card. If you need anything, call down to the station. There's a couple of rangers shacks deeper in. Feel free to use them if you need to. Just make sure to to clean up. The Ranger gave me a welcoming smile and handed me a small business card for the local ranger station. Thank you. Oh, my name's Max and this is Lily. Lily gave a small nod at the Ranger and he nodded back respectfully. Well, Max and Lily, you enjoy yourselves out there. We'll be patrolling around so if you see us. Don't be scared to say hi. With those words, the Ranger backed away from the entrance and we began our trek. We spent half the first day slowly walking in quiet appreciation. There's something so liberating about walking with no time limit. It's like all the

world's stress slides right off your back, and the only thing you have to worry about is yourself. In that exact moment, you're all that matters. No bills, no studies, no cares. Just avoid snakes and strange plants, and you're all set. It wasn't too long into our journey before the sun began to nestle itself behind the trees and the warm, but steadily dropping temperature of the late afternoon winds began sweeping under our sweaty clothes. Let's find a clearing to settle into. Lily said, her head tilting from one direction to the other, looking for a place to set up. I nodded in approval and saw a small opening further down the path, and clearly made by others

who took a similar trip. It only took a few minutes to set up our tents in the clearing and start a small fire. After all that walking and hard work, we were finally ready to get off our feet for a while. Lily plopped herself down on the opposite side of the fire. fire I was sitting at and pulled out a granola bar to eat. I felt a rumble in my stomach and pulled out one of my own. "'This place is really beautiful,' she said, taking a large bite out of the bar. "'Yeah, haven't seen any animals yet, though. I unwrapped my food and placed it on my lips,

ready to take a bite. I quickly glanced over at Lily and froze. In the increasingly darkening forest just off the trail, just behind Lily, was something about the size of a football. It was cloaked in the darkness, but I assumed it had to have been some sort of small critter. I began to squint my eyes, trying to focus on it, but whatever it was seemed to fade out of existence, coming straight into the ground. Everything all right? Lily asked. I realized I must have seemed like I was staring at her with food half in my mouth.

I laughed and shrugged, shaking my head softly. Yeah, sorry, I thought I saw an animal or something off in the woods. It was small. It could have just been a rabbit or something. It must have burrowed into the ground, though. My friend peered over her shoulder into the silent woods and looked around. I knew she wouldn't see anything. Whatever it was left as quickly as I caught sight of it.

We ended up finishing our meal, extinguishing the fire, and climbing into our separate tents. I slept like a log. All of that walking put me out like a light. It wasn't until the morning that I woke up. I stumbled out of the tent, nearly tripping on the small fabric ledge at the exit of my portable shelter. The hot and humid summer morning hit me like a pile of bricks. Just so you know, I think we need to watch out for snakes.

Lily said softly while I was wiping my brow. I looked over at her to see her undoing the tent supports from the forest floor. Did you see one? I asked, bending down and following suit with the camp cleanup. I think so. I heard something rubbing on the bottom of my tent last night. I opened my eyes and the indents on my walls look like a pretty thick snake trying to wiggle its way in. She didn't seem bothered by the potential late-night visitor, so I kept her warning in my mind,

but continued on. As our journey went on, we realized that every step we took there was another blotch in the sky. Somehow a storm was brewing overhead that none of the forecasts we had watched had warned us about. How much longer until it rains? Lily was interrupted by a large thunder clap nearby in the clouds. I felt the earth tremble below us before a few raindrops began falling from the dimly lit. sky. Thanks, Lily, I said, arching my head towards her direction. She scoffed and I laughed. The rain was little more than a small drizzle at the moment, but it was clear it was going to get worse. Let's hurry and find

a place to set up. I watched as she began to increase her pace, slowly moving from a walk into a jog, heading deeper down the trail. I followed suit right next to her. For a while, it seemed like we weren't going to find a clearing any time soon. We were already on the verge of being considered undoubtedly drenched. And to our luck, at that exact moment of thought, another strong explosion of thunder erupted from above. This time the floodgates were opened. Rain began to fall with a purpose and with enough force to erupt on impact, splashing everything nearby with the drops watery contents. Hey, right over there! I heard Lily yell out, just barely audible through the thunderous rain.

She was running off the main path down a small side trail nearby. I looked at the little I looked at where she was heading and saw a small cabin. I ran off the path with her. With each step, more and more mud thrust itself against my legs. I increased my speed, hoping to catch up to my light-footed friend, but something caught me off guard. The tip of my foot slid underneath something, and my momentum carried me downwards, face-first into the mud.

For a few seconds I was dazed, just laying down in the runny muck pit. I eventually looked down to my feet and saw what looked like a thin tree root. also caked in dirt erupting out of the ground. But as my eyes kept on the root, those initial assumptions fell to the wayside. The shimmering of the mud was what made me realize that whatever this object was, it was moving just beneath the mud. Then it clicked in my head. The snakes Lily had brought up. I had just tripped over one of them. I felt a shiver cross over my back as I bolted up to my feet and continued on my path, abandoning that snake behind. Without another incident, I made it to the cabin door and busted inside, finally free from the hurricane-like storm.

Wow. A familiar voice rang out in the shack. I looked over to see a drenched but otherwise clean Lily staring at me with an amused smile on her face. Decide to have a wrestling match out there? Funny, I said looking down at myself. Mud was dripping off just about every part of my body. I think I met one of the snakes you mentioned out there. It decided to give me a little trip. Oh, really?

Lily said, as she grabbed me and turned me around, searching the pack on my back for something to help me clean up. You were right. They're pretty thick. I wonder what kind they are. I can't imagine them being venomous with them being that wide. I felt the hands of my companion yanking out the fabric from my pack. I took some time to look around the cabin as Lily pulled the towels free.

It was wooden, old, and completely empty. There was a cooking stove off to one side, but other than that, it looked very strong. sparse. Clearly, it was only meant for a quick one-night stay. Here, get yourself cleaned up. I turned back around, and Lily handed me a bundle of towels. I immediately wiped off my face and brow. The dirt was already starting to dry and stick to my skin. Thanks. I replied to her as she began setting up her things. I put my pack down against the door and walked over to a window, still wiping myself down.

I watched as the rain continued its assault on the earth, the dirt running like rivers down the valleys and trails, both natural and man-made. It looks terrible outside, I remarked. I heard a small groan of acknowledgement come from behind me. I let my eyes trail over the forested wetland over to the path we took to get up here. My body locked up when I saw something right where I tripped. Something was protruding from the ground like a small pillar. I rubbed the inside of the window fruitlessly to clear off the fog and obstructing rain.

I could barely make out what looked like a thick, partially submerged branch, broken off on one end with small twigs splintering off skyward. Hey, come look at this. I called out to Lily, who was still fondling around with her bags. Is it the snake? She asked, rising to her feet. I don't think so. It looks weird, though. I watched the mud-coated object get hammered by rain as Lily approached and peered outside.

Is that a broken tree root? She suggested. I could only shrug. Whatever it was wasn't moving. Wait. Lily chimed in again. Look at the color. As more and more of the rain ran its way down the object, the less obstructed by mud the object became.

I narrowed my eyes, pushing past the raindrops on the window and noticed exactly what Lily was talking about. Whatever was under that mud was a pale shade of gray. Oh my God. Lily gasped and grabbed her mouth. What is it? I turned and looked at her. My eyebrow upturned in confusion. Look at the end of it. She said, holding her breath.

I turned my gaze back outward and focused in. I felt my heart drop. Fingertips. It was an arm reaching out of the ground, still as the grave. Oh my God. My voice wavered slightly. We should call the Rangers and get them out here. Where's their card?

She asked. Hand extended towards me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a wet. but legible business card. Without hesitation, Lily snatched it out of my hand and began dialing the number in. Hello, I'd like to report something on one of the trails. She paced back and forth on the squeaky cabin floors. I turned and kept my gaze on the hand. It looked petrified in place, fingers eagerly reaching toward the sky, letting the water rush over it. We're at... She began to stutter.

We're at... uh... I heard the voice on the other side of the phone chirp up, and Lily nodded. Hey Max, can you take a step outside and tell me what numbers are next to the door? I peeled my eyes away from the hand. I felt an increasingly oppressive air pressing its way inside the cabin. I shook my intuition away and walked to the door. I opened it up and stepped outside. I peered toward the arm and could see it more clearly without the blurry window between us. It was hairless, smooth, and the fingernails seemed clean and trimmed.

The water that gushed over it almost seemed to vanish on impact. as if it was some sort of sponge. I had to force my eyes away to view the number on the wall. 17. I took a deep breath, repeating the number in my head before the sound of a loud clap echoed off behind me. I jumped slightly on edge. I turned back toward the direction of the arm and saw nothing in its place.

Just the mud quickly running down the trail. I swallowed hard and rushed back inside. The number is 17, but I think the arm fell back into the mud. It's not there anymore. Lily's eyes went wide as she relayed the information over to the dispatcher. It wasn't too long until she pulled the phone away from her ear and hung up. They told us to stay put and that this storm's not going to pass anytime soon. They said they've got a ranger on the way and the police have been informed,

but it might take them a while to reach us out here. I bit my lip and looked outside towards the empty path. I hope it didn't get dragged away by the current. I mumbled. Lily came up right beside me, joining me at the window. I'm sure they'll be able to follow that mud slick down to wherever it goes. On the bright side, the rain cleaned you up a bit. She gave a reassuring smile, and I looked down at myself.

My clothes were still riddled with mud, but the rain on my skin seemed to have washed away most of the dirt. I guess that's always a plus. I said stoically. Come on, Max. Let's make ourselves at home, at least. I'll just lock the door in case. Well, you know. Her voice trailed off.

In case there's a killer out there, I mumbled at her as she walked over to the door and flipped the lock. She turned around and averted her eyes from my gaze, choosing instead to continue her mission of getting set up. After a few minutes of silence, we had our food laid out in front of us. We had agreed that once the ranger got here, our little expedition was over. We had seen more than enough in just the past two days than we could have in a lifetime. Let's eat and try to get some rest. I said, chowing down on some extra rations. Lily nodded and joined in on the feast.

With full stomachs, we set up for bed. I noticed my friend kept looking out toward the darkened windows. I could feel tension in the air. Everything all right? I asked. Lily shook her head dismissively. I just feel weird. Like I'm being watched.

I'm sure it's nothing but just to be safe. She ripped off her pillowcase and then mine before walking over to the windows and draping. them over the glass as makeshift curtains. I just don't want anything looking in at us while we sleep. I don't blame you. I made my way to my bedroll and caseless pillow before lying down and trying to get comfortable. Lily did the same. It was a few hours into the night before I heard Lily's hushed voice.

Max, Max, wake up. Do you hear that? I opened my eyes, less groggy than I expected and met Lily's gaze. She was staring at the wooden door of the cabin. I spent a few seconds watching the door before I saw the hand on the door jiggle. Someone was trying to get in. What do we do? Lily asked.

I was speechless. Maybe it's the... Our whispered conversation was interrupted by a loud knocking coming from the other side of the wooden door. I jumped to my feet. It's got to be the cops. I began my slow, meticulous walk to the door. Who's out there? Silence.

Hello? I yelled again. abruptly the banging started again, loud enough to drown out my voice. I took a step back from the door and kneeled close to the ground. Each impact on the door rocked the wooden frames of the small cabin. I watched as one of the pillowcase curtains began to slowly slip off the window. Lily whispered, tears in her eyes. I rushed over to the window just as the fabric fell and was met face to face with the darkness outside.

The banging on the door stopped suddenly. I very carefully kneeled down and grabbed the fabric in my hands to toss it back over the window. Appearing out of the darkness was the palm of a hand. It slapped the window with heavy force. I could only see the pale palm in the shroud of blackness outside. I quickly threw the pillowcase back on the window and backed up to Lily. She was shivering, her eyes wide with fear. That was the hand, Max.

That was the hand that was outside earlier. I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I wrapped my arms around Lily for as much as my comfort as hers. The wet palm of the hand kept slapping against the glass. I could hear ripples of cracks spreading along the window pane. I squeezed onto Lily as she bawled up and kept my eyes focused on the pillowcase covering the glass, hoping it wouldn't fall and expose that lifeless arm again. With one last thud, it stopped.

A light shone through the fabric of the window mere seconds after the attack halted. I could hear the struggling sounds of weird. wheels rolling up toward the cabin. I let out a sigh and a prayer that the rangers had finally made it. With the sound of the wheel stopping just a few yards away, I finally heard a voice call out from the void outside. Lily? Max?

You in there? The voice sounded familiar. It was the ranger from the day prior. I slid to my feet, dragging Lily with me. Yeah, we're inside, but someone's out there. I yelled. I rushed over to the door and opened it to see the rangers standing stiff off in the middle of the small opening in front of the cabin.

He was facing us, but the light from his rover, coupled with his hat, covered his body in intense shadows. His body seemed rigid. Come out of that box and we'll get you home. The ranger said, his voice seemed different this time, disjointed from his body. I stayed quiet. Something was very wrong here. Step out of there.

Now. The voice grumbled, unrecognizable from earlier. Are you all right? You are right? I called out a little more than a whisper. Of course I am. Can't you see my smile? The Ranger tilted his neck backwards.

His hat slipped off his skull, which allowed the light from behind him to illuminate his face. His eyes were wide and full of both pain and fear. His lips were quivering in shock. I backed up more into the doorway and watched as two impossibly long fingers trailed their way from behind the Ranger's head and made their way across his cheeks to his mouth. They slid inside with little resistance and began pulling his lips outward in a mockingly gruesome smile. Then they kept prying. I watched as his lips strained with the force of the fingers inside of his mouth.

His lips became white with the stress placed against them before a shower of bread erupted from his mouth, parting the centers of his lips like sliced meat. I'm so perfectly happy. called out from just behind the Ranger, its voice thick and unnatural. I looked for the source and froze. There, right next to the Ranger's feet, was a half-submerged human face dug deeply into the mud. Its black, cold eyes shone from some unknown source. Whatever this was was a monster of the strictest definition. Its gaze was so vastly separated from humanity that there was no common ground between us. As I locked eyes with this thing, human in shape and devil denies, I saw the ranger fall into the mud.

Just behind his head was a long spider-like arm stretching out of the ground, seemingly changing its size and shape as if it only faintly followed the laws of this reality. The ranger's body twitched and spasmed on the ground as more and more lifeless hands began to slither out from the mud, wrapping their hands around his body. I was so thirsty. But now I am so very hungry." The submerged head called out unblinkingly towards me. Without another warning, the ranger's body was ripped under the earth and devoured by the mud. The ground where he was shifted and bubbled over like a small eruption.

The creature's eyes stared at me with a deadening gaze. It was observing me. I let out a small chirp from my mouth. Without changing expression, the head effortlessly started gliding through the earth to towards the cabin, fingers and arms popping out from the earth around it like fins from a shark. I'd stored enough courage to slam the door shut and lock it before running back over to Lily, who saw the whole thing. What is that?

She asked, her voice trembling. I shook my head and slumped down next to her. I don't know. We sat in silence until the sounds of scratching came from below the floorboards, hundreds of fingers tearing away flesh to the bone, trying to burrow their way upward. All we could do was sit in the corner furthest away from the window and pray they didn't get to us. That night we watched as the floor pulsated upwards and downwards, as the foundation began to crumble. Those arms were going to drag us and our wooden coffin downwards into the earth.

I didn't know what to do. I sat there as the floor creaked open and mud crept up through the seams of the boards, like blood flowing from a vein. I sat, waiting to die, but Lily had other plans. She grabbed my hand and yanked me up to my feet. She stared at the door for a split second before sprinting off with me and tow. She burst open the door and ran towards the ranger's vehicle. Luckily for us, the ranger was never shut off before the earth took him down.

We both hopped in and zipped off down the path toward back where we'd come from. I hazarded a glance back toward the cabin to see it crumbling into the ground, but there was something else there. Still half submerged on the path mere yards away from us was that unblinking head. Its black eyes shone dead set and emotionless on our escape. We kept driving for God knows how long until we hit some other Rangers who were on a scouting mission up to us and our missing comrade. We told them everything we could, but the looks of disbelief said enough to us. We were labeled as emotionally distressed and unreliable witnesses.

The powers that be listed the disappearance of the Ranger and the Caval. cabin as accidental by a case of mudslide. Now, every time it rains, I wonder if somewhere out in the woods a single head pears out on the trails, waiting for someone to pass by, a million hands waiting just below the surface to drag them down into the earth. Okay, let me get straight to the point. I do not believe for one second that no other child played the bath game growing up. I'm convinced my friends are trolling me, but they're not responding to the first.

my messages, and so I'm left with little choice but to bring my question here, hoping someone will know what the hell I'm talking about. I was around five or six when my babysitter introduced the idea of the bath game to me. She said it was a fun way to engage the imagination, and that I could find something truly special within the water. I didn't question it, even then, because she was the boss and I thought she was pretty. I didn't want to make her mad by refusing or refusing. risk having my Nintendo taken away if I was disobedient.

So when my mom told her to bathe me one night, I was excited to try it. Her instructions were pretty simple, and I'd come to write them down, because with any game, there has to be rules. 1. You must do the bath game alone. These instructions can be given, but you have to be isolated for the game to begin. 2. The tub should have some sort of thick bath soap that includes a lot of sun.

suds and a dark liquid. Ensure the top of the water is obscured and the sides are caked in it, including the handles to get out. 3. Only hot water. No cold and no resistance upon getting into the water. If it hurts, it will pass as your skin gets used to it. Ignore any reddening on the skin.

4. Take a deep breath. Make sure it hurts a little and know that you will not be coming back up for a while. 5. dive in and don't look back or rise up. Allow the current to take you and keep your eyes open. 6. Your vision will blur, but it will eventually clear and you'll see something in the plug hole.

Go to it. 7. Trust in what you see. Let your body relax. 8. When you meet the sea emperor and the lights above the water go out, you've won the bath game and you can come up for air. The babysitter was so excited she could barely contain it.

herself, bouncing around and eyes wide, a thick liquid flowing from her eyes. She didn't even bother wiping it up, content to be sharing in my submersion by proxy. I stood there in my bath, pal, expecting her to follow me in, but she shook her head, nostrils flaring. Only you. Rule one, remember? She beamed, and I felt my face grow hot. She was so pretty when she stared at me like that, I'd have done anything.

You're special. I can't wait for you to win and get your prize. What do I get? I was eager, but I had to know what kid doesn't love prizes. Her lip twitched, and she took a moment to answer, but I remember her expression never changed, not once. Her teeth chattered as she said one word. Freedom!

I had no idea what she meant, but in my mind I assumed like any child it was gaming all night, eating what I wanted and no school. What kid wouldn't want that? I went in and noticed the bath was already running. A thick black soup I'd used to give myself foam beards was caking the entire tub, save for one spot to safely get in. The water was so hot that it was steaming up the mirror and making my body sweat. Rules two and three were taken care of, it seemed.

A little freaked out, but unperturbed, I took a couple of practice breaths before, for inhaling deep, feeling the pressure mount and slowly stepping into the tub, careful not to let my feet slip. Even at that age, I knew I could easily hit my head on the faucet and cave my skull in. Nothing was going to stop me from winning this game. The water looked inviting, but murky. The thick paste had covered the top in a layer of foam with small patches of black liquid poking through.

bottom obscured and creating an illusion of depth. As my feet touched the water, I felt the searing heat ripple through my skin, threatening to tear at the flesh, but you'd be amazed how determined a child can be when a prize is up for grabs. I decided in my infinite wisdom that I'd brave it in one go. I exhaled and let my body up to my neck sink down, the pain enough to make me yelp and try to get out, but after a couple of moments I took in one full of the first of the final deep breath and pushed on, submerging myself fully.

Eyes burned and senses dulled in the inky, hot blackness. It felt like swimming through tar, but as the rule suggested, ignoring it was the only way forward. My stomach pushed in protest and my muscles began to burn, but I focused on letting the current take me, not even questioning how a current was a thing in a bathtub, but I did wonder, was it always this wide? and deep. I focused on the sinkhole and saw long, scaled hands protruding from either side. The nails sharp and cracked, soft flesh flapping in the water, coming off in small chunks.

It started pushing at the edges of the sinkhole and widening it. My body steadily being pulled towards it as the light above darkened and the burning in my chest became less of a problem. In fact, everything in my body relaxed, and all I had to do was float. I saw into the sinkhole, and it took many years of reflection with an adult mind to figure out what I experienced as a child. Words still fail me thirty years later. They're inadequate and unable to capture the beauty below. A sprawling obsidian city meshed into coral reefs, the pulsated colors I recognized and many

I'd never seen before or since. The further I descended, the more blinding the eyes got. as if they were guiding me to land. Further down, at the entrance to the city, two large statues loomed on either side of a grand throne. They're imposing, pilot lights swinging on their skulls, orbs for eyes and mouths in places they shouldn't be, one holding the tip of a sword with several spikes running the hilt, the other a grand hammer. It's when I see the throne that I feel the burning in my chest return and something pulling

me back and up. It's empty, and yet it's not. Something is sitting upon it, but it isn't. A flickering image, or perhaps my eyes deemed it too much to bear full witness to, but I felt it in that moment. It knew I was disobeying the rules and saw fit to punish me. It craned its horrific skull up towards me, and as it smiled, the eyes blinded me, filling my body with such agony that my ribs felt as if they They would snap under the pressure, the eardrums burst and skulls split open. I felt as if I was dying. The next memory I have was being in a hospital bed, unable to speak and a tube down my throat. I was beyond terrified to be hooked up to machines and even more scared that I'd let down

the babysitter, that the creature in this sinkhole was coming for me. I thrashed around until my mom's concerned face came into focus and she soothed me. My ears stained my face, and I was faced with the long recovery, both physically and mentally. Therapists came and went. None of them believed the bath game was real. Every single one of them told me without fail that my babysitter was simply mentally unwell, had tried to manipulate me, and drown me. The all I'd seen was my oxygen-starved brain. But I knew better. Even when she was sentenced to a mental institution and apologized for deceiving me, I was. I knew better.

I never deviated from that one pervasive thought that burrowed into my brain like a parasite. I'd failed the game. I bring this all up because I know someone has experienced this. They have to have seen it. It's too specific for one person out of seven and a half billion to have gone through. Does nobody remember the way the tub expanded when you dove in? The widening sinkhole with great hands. weird, indescribable lights of the coral reefs beneath the tub, the fishermen statues holding

artifacts of power, the sea emperor that resides between realities. Everyone in Sturgeon says I'm crazy. They don't believe me, but I'll have proof for them soon. I tried recreating the game myself over the years, but maybe my failure was simply too egregious, and the emperor simply won't allow me to retake it. I've caught glimpses in the steamed-up mirrors, though, promises of what could be if I just show the resolve to go there again. Thankfully, my son can do it for me. He's so excited, having grown up on the stories of what lays beneath the sinkhole in the bathtub.

I made him wait until he was older to undertake the game. I had to ensure if he told others they wouldn't think him too young. I sent him in about a half hour ago. I can only hope the fact he hasn't returned is proof he met the sea emperor, but he You shouldn't be there much longer, right? I want to go check on him, but because I lost, I don't think I'm permitted to interfere. I even stood outside the door, ready to pull on the handle, but my legs won't stop shaking. I feel my throat close up and sweat run down my head.

Perhaps it's a sign not to interfere. Please, someone, anyone, tell me I'm not crazy, that I'm not alone. Everyone has to remember the bath game, because as my mind wanders and fear creeps in, all I can think of is the prize my babysitter promised, the prize my son has been promised. Freedom. I am a friend of Andrew Talbot, the man that sent me this recording. I recently received an email from Andrew that contained a recording of his podcast that, to my knowledge, never aired.

There was no explanation as to why. he had sent it to me. There was just a request that I distributed. When I tried to call him to find out what was happening, I was unable to get through. The call didn't go to voicemail, it just beeped twice and hung up each time that I tried. Over the last few days, I've called multiple times and have gone over to his house twice, but I haven't been able to reach him. Whenever I would try to upload the podcast to a website, as he requested, there would always

be an error message. No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to properly upload. Because of this, I decided to make this video. I'm hoping that if I just play the audio here, that it'll work. Andrew, if you're hearing this, please let me know that you're all right. On April 18, 2022, Carol Blake committed suicide. Her body was found when her downstairs neighbor reported water leaking through the ceiling. Thinking that there was a burst pipe, the landlord had knocked on Carol's door for nearly 20 minutes to try and gain access to her apartment. It was easier to go through her floor rather than through the complaining tenant's ceiling. She didn't answer, and after checking with his lawyer that this qualified as an emergency,

allowing him to enter without permission, he unlocked the door using his master key and went in to perform the repair. The landlord discovered her body in the bathroom. She was lying fully clothed in the bathtub with her wrist slit. The water had been left running, and it poured over the side of the tub like a waterfall as it drained into the floor vent, and soaked into the floor and wood trim. I didn't know, Carolyn. It's a small town, so I may have passed her in the store or bumped into her in a restaurant,

but I don't remember if something like that did happen. I'd like to say that her death had an effect on the community, maybe people holding a memorial or asking the town council to improve the way mental health programs were handled. to help prevent this sort of thing from happening again. That's what I'd like to say. What actually happened was, well, nothing. Carolyn's death was just a blip on the radar that the vast majority of people didn't even register. One of the exceptions to this was Ray Carston.

I had known Ray since first grade, and while we had never been particularly close, we had always been on friendly terms. When he called me three days later, after Carolyn's suicide, I quickly agreed to him. to meet him at the same Denny's that a large group of us had gone to after every home baseball game in high school. Shit, I think... Mm-mm. Okay.

Maybe not. It might have just been... Ray told me that he had known Carolyn for a few years. They worked in the same office and had grown particularly close while working on a project that had been assigned to them. One thing led to another, and they began a relationship. The problem was that Ray was that Ray was... was married, happily married, as he put it.

I have my doubts about that, since in my experience, happily married people don't tend to have long-term affairs, but that's what he told me. Because of this, he was worried that she might have left something behind that could expose their affair and get back to his wife. At some point, she had introduced him to her mother, and he had convinced the elderly woman to let him help her go through Carolyn's things and get the necessary arrangements made. This had also allowed him to rummage through her late lover's possessions with impunity. Her mother had been grateful for the assistance and thanked him profusely for it, if you can believe

it. Ray had managed to check everything except for Carolyn's cell phone. It was password protected, so he wasn't able to find out what was on it. That's why it came to me. I started this podcast about electronics and technology. I never thought that it would lead to old acquaintances asking me to go through dead people's phones. That's what Ray wanted me to do, though.

He didn't just need me to unlock the phone. That would only have gotten him so far. Carolyn had frequented multiple social media platforms, and she used dozens of different apps that he knew of. What he needed was for me to go through everything and make sure that all mentions of the affair were removed. At first, I refuse. I was polite about it, but just the thought of doing what he was asking disgusted me.

He kept pressing. told me that he had already wanted to end the affair and had planned to do so. But she took her own life before he was able to. He said that if the relationship was exposed, it would not just hurt his wife, but also their two children, and they didn't deserve to have that happen to them. I eventually relented and agreed to do what he asked, under the condition that he gave me the phone and not be present while I worked. I had already started to rationalize things in my head.

We're all exceptionally good at doing that when we know what we're doing isn't right, aren't we? I convinced myself that since Ray wouldn't be seeing anything, I would be protecting Carolyn's privacy as much as possible. That's a load of bullshit, obviously. I would have actually been protecting it if I hadn't agreed to break into her cell phone in the first place. I don't know if I'm about to confess to a crime here. Is it a crime to break into a dead person's phone?

Whether it is or not, I'm not going to pretend that what I did wasn't. It absolutely was. It's just not what's important right now. It wasn't hard to unlock the cell phone. All I needed to do was hook it up to a computer and use a program that's free and easy to find if you know where to look. Most people would be surprised at how unsecure their supposedly secure phones are. That goes for most pieces of technology in this day and age, but you're not here to listen

to a lecture on proper tech security and I'm not here to do. give one. I wasn't sure where to start looking, so I opened the calendar and began to check appointments and reminders. I didn't find anything that had to do with Ray. I moved on to the Notes app and once again came up empty. It wasn't until I started digging through her emails that I found something of interest. I probably should have realized that something was off when the inbox was completely empty.

Carolyn had been dead for three days. that uses their email for everyday use can tell you that at least one or two spam emails will get past your filters and wind up in your inbox over a three-day period. At the time I didn't think of that. I was so preoccupied with hurrying up with what I had agreed to do that my critical thinking skills didn't have time to catch up. When I checked the trash folder, I found hundreds, if not thousands, of automated notifications that had been deleted.

They were from all corners of social media and content. sites, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and many, many more. Every notification was marked as having been read. I did a bit more digging, and I found that they had all been sent within the span of a week. I picked one at random. The notification was for a new comment on a video that Carolyn had posted, and it wasn't flattering to say the least. The poster, screen name YRL girl, had gone on a rant about how bad the video was,

and that they were going to unsubscribe from the channel because of continued poor content. That's greatly cleaning up the language that was used. The entire post was phrased in such a way that it read like a personal attack. There was a link to the video in question. I tapped on it and watched the first minute or so of the video. It was a makeup tutorial that Carolyn had posted. It wasn't something that I was interested in, but, judging by the number of views it had and how many followers she had, it was definitely something.

that many others enjoyed. Now that I had seen the context, I scrolled down to the comments to locate the post by YRL Girl, to see if other people had replied to it. I found the post, but it wasn't anything like the notification had said. It was instead a glowing review that went out of its way to praise Carolyn and the content that she provided. That was odd, obviously, but I figured that there had been two posts and the negative one had been deleted. I began to doubt that theory as I went through more of the notifications. All of them were bad, with many of them bordering on hateful. When I would check the platform they were supposedly hosted on, though, I would always find a positive post.

Something very odd was going on. I came to an email that was a response to a complaint that Carolyn had filed with a site administrator about a particularly disgusting comment. The administrator had sent back a response saying that they hadn't found any evidence of harassment and that they had checked to make sure that the comment in question hadn't been deleted or edited. They didn't come right out and say it, but it was strongly implied that they believed she was making the entire thing up. She had attached two items in her original email. The first was a copy of the original notification that she had received.

The second was a screenshot she had taken of the comment. The image included a number of other comments as well, all of which were negative. When I tracked down those comments, however, none of them contained the same message. I wrote on Facebook about how she was feeling down after the onslaught of negative comments. Her mother and a number of friends replied to the post, and all of them basically told her that she had become both a whiner and a disappointment in some extremely colorful language. The messages were long and intense, and I felt myself growing more and more sympathetic towards Carolyn.

Nobody deserved the amount of abuse she was receiving, especially from the people she was closest to. I took a break for about an hour. At some point during the process, I had begun to care less about helping Ray weasel out of his affair being discovered, and more about figuring out just what caused this avalanche of hatred towards Carolyn. One of the pieces, especially the comments, seemingly to magically change between negative and positive, seemed to fit into a coherent image.

I questioned whether I should listen to it, but I figured that I'd already come this far, so I clicked on the voicemail and almost immediately wished I hadn't. What followed was a nearly five-minute-long message from Carolyn's mother berating her daughter. It tore into every aspect of her life. There didn't seem to be any line that the woman wouldn't cross. At one particular horrible point, she stated very matter-of-factly that the only reason Carolyn had been born in the first place was because she wasn't able to afford to terminate

the pregnancy after becoming pregnant from a man other than Carolyn's father. I only managed to get through half of it before I stopped the playback. I couldn't stomach any more of that. The second voicemail was from Ray. She had received it less than an hour after getting her mother's voice. If the first message sickened me, this one made my blood boil. In a very condescending tone, he proceeded to talk about every flaw he saw in her in great detail. He tore into everything from her intelligence to her looks, to even her love-making skills.

It was brutal to listen to. It was almost a relief when he finally declared their relationship was over and hung up the phone. I was reaching for my own phone before the recording had even ended. Friendship be damned, I wasn't going to help someone that could be that cruel to another human being. The number was entered and my thumb was over call when I thought made me pause. Ray had told me that he was getting ready to break off his relationship with Carolyn when she had committed suicide.

According to the voicemail he had left, though, he had already done so. Why had he lied to me about that? There didn't seem to be any point to it. Had he been feeling guilty about his message having possibly contributed to her taking her own life? I thought back to the mysteriously changing online messages. I started to think that maybe... And I found that Carolyn had downloaded an audio file the day before her death.

A woman's voice, quiet and level, played from the phone speakers when I tapped on the file. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was listening to an autonomous sensory meridian response recording, also known as the much less taxing to say, a. For those that don't know what it is, it's basically voices and sounds that are recorded in such a way as to elicit a physical response from people. You know that odd tingling sensation that you get sometimes in your head? ASMR recordings are supposed to trigger that.

A lot of people, a lot more than you probably think, use ASMR videos on YouTube or audio recordings to relax and even fall asleep. They don't work for everyone, but many people swear by it. them and use them as part of their everyday routine. After the stress that all of the sudden negativity in her life must have caused her, it was no wonder that Carolyn had looked for something to help relieve it. Rather than try to explain the recording on her phone, I'd like to play a portion of it. A quick warning, there's some questionable content in it, so if that sort of thing bothers

you, I'd recommend skipping ahead until you're past it. If I'm able to get this posted, I'll try to leave markers on the timeline. and so you know when it's over. Here it is. I'm not going to reveal the name of the person or who made it or the source it was downloaded from for reasons that will be extremely obvious in just a little bit. Sometimes we need to ask ourselves what we would do if we didn't have those incredibly important people in our lives.

Imagine how lonely that would be if everyone in our life. had turned against you. What would you do? I think that if everyone was turning against me, I'd need to take a good, hard look at myself. All of those people couldn't be wrong. What did they know that I didn't? What was so wrong with me that it invited such disdain and hatred? There would have to be something for everyone to act that way. How about you? Have you ever experienced all of your friends and family turning their backs on you? If so, did you look deep inside yourself and figure out why you're so repellent to others? I think if it was me, I would have to decide if the people I cared about were better off without me in their world.

After all, is my one life more important than happiness? Is my one life more important than the happiness of all those other people? No, of course not. I love my family and friends. I want them to be happy, much more happy than I want myself to be. If my being gone was what would make them happy, Then wouldn't it be better for everyone if I was just dead? There's more, a lot more, but I'm sure that you get the idea.

I'm also sure that you know where this is leading. I tracked down the site that Carolyn had downloaded the ASMR recording from, and when I played it there, it was nothing like the version she had downloaded. It was instead focused on something called Reiki, which I'm not familiar with, but was clearly not something sinister. In the downloads folder, I also found a copy of a recent bank statement from her online account. It showed that the account had contained a decent savings until a week before Carolyn's step. At that point, it had gone to zero.

The change in balance was listed as a teller withdrawal. It was a lot of money to have been taken out in a single transaction. Because of everything that I had come across so far, I was immediately suspicious. I went through the phone's call history for the date that she had downloaded the document and discovered that she had made a call to the customer service number at the bottom of the statement. The call had lasted for over an hour. It seemed to me that Carolyn hadn't been the person that emptied her account, and when she checked her account and seen that it was empty, she had called the bank to get it corrected.

In her final days, Carolyn had been under assault mentally, emotionally, and financially. It must have been hell. The assault had obviously been engineered. I just couldn't see how that would have been possible. Online posts on major social media platforms that appeared one way to someone, but completely different to everyone else. Audio recordings that were magically different for one download, and the bank withdrawal had been a teller withdrawal, meaning that someone had gone into the physical bank location

and taken the money out of the account. How could that have happened? That wasn't even getting to the voicemails. As someone who has to regularly do a lot of research in the tech industry, I knew that the message and recording changes should have been impossible. It would technically have been possible to target a single system like that, in this case a cell phone, but to do it in real time? That's where it crossed into the realm of fantasy.

Even if there was a way to do it, it would have required a lot of manpower. A huge conspiracy against a single small-town government employee didn't make any sense. One by one I went through all the apps on Carolyn's phone. I had completely abandoned the original plan of getting rid of references to her affair with Ray. Instead, I was now solely searching for other signs that her life and well-being had been tampered with. There were a number of things that I found that I would have dismissed as unimportant if I hadn't specifically been looking for oddities. For example, her latest Instagram post had significantly less interactions than the previous ones had. to the point where there might as well have been nothing at all.

The same went for her TikTok account. Most concerning was that I started to see a pattern emerging on non-social media apps as well. All of her content suggestions on Netflix and HBO were depressing stories or contained characters that committed suicide. I tried clicking on a few of Carolyn's previously watched movies and shows that weren't these suggestions, But each time an air message would pop up saying that the content wasn't currently available and to try again later. The suggested shows, however, would instantly start to...

After that, I finally ran out of apps to check with the exception of one. I had been purposefully avoiding it. During the hours that I had been going through Carolyn's phone, I had been invading her privacy. As I've said already, it wasn't right, and it's not something that I'm proud of having done. The last app would take that invasion of privacy one step further. It was the feed and recordings from her home security cameras. I forced myself to click the app. There was no doubt in my mind that Carolyn had been targeted and pushed over and over again

until she had finally taken her own life. I needed to collect every bit of evidence that I could and turn it over to the police. I'd probably get in trouble for what I'd done, but it was worth it to have the authorities look into whoever had done this to her. There were only three camera footage recordings listed on the app. Each one had a time and date stamp, and all of them were listed as having been captured when a motion sensor was triggered. All of them were within a few days of Carolyn's suicide.

Taking a deep breath, I started the first recording. It showed a woman in her mid to late 30s walking towards the camera. The shot was at an odd angle, and it took me a couple of seconds to realize I was watching footage from a doorbell camera. I recognized the woman as Carolyn from her social media pictures. She stopped a few feet from the camera and dug around in her pocket before producing a set of keys. As she did so, her face tilted at an angle that allowed me to see the dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted. She found the key that she was looking for and inserted it into the lock. When she went to turn it, however, she struggled to do so. She fought with the

the lock for a minute before stepping back and looking at the key she was holding. It was now broken. She stared at it blankly before her face twisted up in anger and she threw it to the ground. She leaned forward and placed her head against the door. It was hard to tell from the angle, but I thought that she was crying. I felt horrible for her. She was being put through so much and it was clearly wearing her down. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to go through something like that. The second recording was completely black, and it was impossible to see anything on it. I assumed that there was some sort of air, but there was still audio. Either the camera hadn't properly recorded, or it was just too dark for the camera to illuminate. I could hear

a series of odd whispers that were too faint to make out words. There was also a humming noise that I couldn't identify. If you're still with me to this point, I hope that means that you understand that this isn't some sort of elaborate joke or prank. I get how all this sounds. It's about to sound a lot worse. If you already think I'm crazy, you're about to hear something that's going to set that in stone in your mind. If you don't think that, you probably will soon. The third and final recording was from a camera in the hallway. It was angled so that it was pointing through an open doorway. This was Carolyn's bedroom. The bed could be seen on the right side of the opening, and to the left was a small table or desk with an open laptop on it. The image was that odd,

black and white that you get when a security camera is in night vision mode. According to the stamp, the recording was taking place at 254 a.m. the morning of Carolyn's suicide. The thing came into view from the left side of the bedroom. It leaned down from the top portion, and at first I thought it was extremely tall. That wasn't the case, though. I'm going to try to describe it. I'm sorry if I don't make a lot of sense while I'm doing so. Every time I've tried to do so, it feels like the limits of the English language make it impossible

to do so properly. It was being lowered by thins. sinuous tendrils. The creature itself was, shit, how do I put this? It was only a few inches wide, but was the height of a person. It was like the head and body were just a mask in covering, being manipulated by the tendrils rather than an actual figure. Three arm-like appendages reached out towards the bed, each ending in thin, delicate strands

that acted his fingers. Because of the circumstances of the recording, with it being so dark and the low resolution of the camera's night vision, it was difficult to make out any further details. I was thankful for that. The creature slowly pulled the blanket off the bed. It released its grip and allowed the cloth to fall to the floor. One of the appendages slowly stretched out through the open door and into the hallway. The fingers touched the thermostat attached to one of the walls and turned the dial all

the way to the left. The appendage retracted, and the creature pulled back up and out of sight. Minutes passed as the recording continued. I started to wonder if anything else was going to happen when a pair of legs swung out over the side of the bed. Carolyn got out of bed. Her arms folded tightly over her chest as she visibly shivered. She went out into the hallway and checked the thermostat, turning it back to where it was before the creature had adjusted it. She put a hand on the wall and leaned against it for a moment. She looked like she was about to collapse from exhaustion. She gathered herself and went back into the bedroom, picking up the blanket before getting back

into bed. The recording ended. I watched it back. I don't know how many times it was. I just kept replaying it over and over again. No matter how many times I watched it, I just couldn't force myself to accept it. Not really. I'm trying to figure out how to put this in a way that really a really.

explains how I was feeling. It was like being in a car accident. When it happens, you know intellectually that you were just in a collision. The evidence is right there in front of you, the twisted metal, the broken glass, the smell of smoke. Even when you're staring right at the wreckage, though, there's this weird disconnect that doesn't allow you to grasp what just happened to you. That was what I was experiencing while I watched the security footage on Loop.

I'm not sure what viewing I was on when I began to question why it was even happening at all. Why was this creature pulling off a blanket and adjusting a thermostat? It seemed juvenile. Something on the same level of a college prank. I probably should have put it together faster than I did, but my mind was still reeling. It wasn't the actions themselves that were important. It was the result. The creature was depriving Carolyn of sleep.

That was the last component it needed to push her past her. her breaking point. The creature had made sure all roads led to her taking her own life. I'm not sure what to do. I haven't taken any of this to the police. That was my original intention, and I would have if I thought that it would do any good. The problem is that none of this can be corroborated. I have, what, some screenshots that the sites themselves said weren't accurate and a couple

of grainy videos? From their perspective, I would just be the nut job podcast. podcast host that's using a tragic event to drum up interest in his show. This is where Carolyn Blake's story comes to an end. It's unfortunately not where the story as a whole does. 24 hours ago, I found that Ray Carston committed suicide, a single gunshot wound in the right temple. The moment before the trigger was pulled, he was there, and the moment after he wasn't.

I called his wife to offer my condolences. We got to talking, and I don't know. I don't know if it was the grief or some need to get it off her chest or what, but she told me that the day before he died, a woman had showed up at their doorstep while Ray was at work. The woman had presented her with a stack of pictures and email recordings showing in great detail that Ray had been having an affair. That same woman had then identified herself as Carolyn Blake. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together.

The creature from the security footage had gone after Ray. it had once again been successful. This morning I woke up to a text on my phone, alerting me that my checking account was overdrawn. Thousands of dollars were just gone. I also received a notice that my podcast is currently suspended while it's being investigated for violating the terms and conditions of the hosting site. It's my turn to be targeted. I'm hoping that because I actually know what's happening, I will be able to get through

what's about to come my way. That's what I hope. There's no way of knowing what plan the suicide engineer has for me." Ten minutes ago, Tom took a left off the R445 dual carriageway and found himself on an unknown back road that sloped down sharply at first, but gradually leveled out after about a kilometer. There was a stark contrast between the two roads, and as paranoid as he knew it was, there was something oddly discomforting about traveling for nearly a hundred miles on roads lit by orange streetlights, only to suddenly travel down one where the only lights provided were from the

driver's headlights, and the cat's eyes that darted along the middle of the road. The car radio had finally lost signal, leaving Tom with the monotonous friction of the car's tires on the unkempt gravel, the only soundtrack for the rest of the journey. Keeping his eye on the road, he stretched out his left arm and began feeling around for the directions he had printed off from Google Maps, while steadily maintaining his right hand on the steering wheel. When his hand planted down on something slimy, he decided to pull over to have a more thorough look. Tom brought his car to a slow stop. The headlights switched off, and his soundtrack came to a halt, leaving him in eerie solitude in the dark, quiet countryside.

The shadowy displays of the many thick, lush forest that shielded both sides of the road all disappeared out of sight from the windshield. He flicked on the compartment light just above him, making him feel secure again. He realized the oxymoron in that, feeling more secure from doing something that makes you easier to spot out alone in the middle of nowhere. He saw his sheets of directions buried under many empty red bull cans and empty sandwich packets that littered the floor of the car and picked them up. Just as he was studying the directions for the second time that night,

his phone began to ring. It was his boss Mark. Hey, uh, what's up? Tom, hello? Well? Tom? Yeah, Mark? Jesus Christ, Tom. I've been trying to get through to you for the past 15 minutes.

Where are you? Signals gone, man. I'm in the middle of nowhere. What do you want anyway? I'm just checking in to see if you're safe. You had me worried there, Tom. I thought you'd been found out, or worse, bailed on me. Bailed on you.

What do you take me for? Oh, well, here's an interesting question for you. What do you have to be worried about exactly? I'm the one here sticking my neck out, not you. Please enlighten me to the exact risk that you're taking here. Besides, it's only a water spring. Quit acting like it's Area 51 or some shit. Hey, you speak to me in that manner one more time.

I'm cutting you down to 10%. Are we clear on that? Mark had never threatened Tom before. It wasn't that it was an empty threat, though. Mark nearly always came well on his promises. Tom had never heard him issue a bad one before. He just couldn't take him seriously because he was such a square. The first time that Tom had met him, he was sitting in his office and was wearing a checkered,

red and white shirt that was two sizes too big for him, along with this really short, horrific, fluorescent green tie. Covering his face were wide, thick glasses that enlarged his beady little eyes to three times their size. He had badly receding hair that was greasily slicked back, with little curls that flicked up uncontrollably in different places. However, the one thing that Tom would never forget from that moment was when he laid his eyes on the framed poster of Magnum P.I. just above his desk. That, and the very first thing

he ever said to him, I'm an Aquarius, before pointing to another framed poster of star constellations on the far wall. After that encounter, Mark earned the behind his back nickname of Aquarius, something which Tom was certain he was still unaware of. Tom imagined him to be the very very very last person he'd be doing something illegal with. All right. All right. I'm sorry, man. I'm just a little on edge about this whole thing.

Don't worry about me, though. You know you can count on me. At the moment, I'm just parked up on the side of the road, about maybe five minutes from the spring. I think there's three right turns coming up. Yeah, three. I'm just trying to find out which one it is. Okay.

I printed out directions a few days ago as well, now that I think about it. I don't know where they are at the moment, but I'll look them up on my phone anyway. As far as I can remember, though, it's the first right. Yeah, man, the first one sounds just about right. Tom flicked over the page. Yeah, the first one. Okay, you're doing great so far, Tom. I knew that I could rely on you.

Remember, all you have to do is get there, take a video, a few pictures, find whatever you can, and then just get out of there. I wish it was that easy, but thanks anyway. And tell me, why am I not allowed to use? a proper camera? The video has to look amateur. Use your phone only, Tom. Nothing professional. Just capture the footage for me, bring me your phone, and then I'll do the rest.

Okay, okay, sounds good. See ya. Wait, Tom. One more thing, if I may. When you didn't want to hear it, Mark's voice seemed more intimidating than annoying, with Tom expecting the latter. Don't mess this up for me. The hang-up click was the most supportive thing Tom had heard all night.

All right, see ya, asshole. He uttered, not before checking the phone to make sure he was gone. Tom slid his back phone into the pocket of his trousers, stretching the denim as wide as it would go with his thumb and index finger. He turned around to walk back to his car, having mindlessly wandered a few feet forward while on the phone with Mark. He fixed his gaze on the compartment light, still emanating brightly from his car, each step shifting his vision of the light up and down in the vast pitch-black surroundings, almost

like he was approaching a light at the end of a tunnel. Another oxymoron, Tom thought to himself. The hardest part of his unwanted assignment still lingered ahead of him. Tom reentered his car, leaving the light above him on. From the cup holder, he picked up the sample bottle of water he brought with him and drank the last gulp of it, leaving only a dribble in the bottle. He watched the same dribble, slide down the inside edge and break into smaller drops when it hit the bottom. He sloshed the water around in his mouth. for a few seconds before swallowing it, shuddering at the overwhelmingly dull taste it left in his mouth.

Like death itself is descending my throat, he thought to himself. Like water with the same taste, but one that doesn't refresh. Like it was spiced with the driest clay from an old cemetery, having it sit in the warm car with the lid open hasn't done it any favors. Ballantile sport. Tom read the label quietly to himself. It was such an unbelievably generic name for bottled water, but what else was to be expected from a supermarket brand.

Tom always had this stuff in his press back home, and many of his colleagues had brought this same water to work with them every day. It was an odd morning, though, and nearly everyone there, including himself, had all noticed and then complained about, at nearly the exact same time, just how badly the bottled water had suddenly tasted. at the source of Ballintilly Springs. He continued whispering. Tom pinched the cold, jagged metal of his car key, using it to drag his whole set across

the dashboard. The key rings made a strange warping sound as they slid down the curved edge, then briefly jingled while they were dangling mid-air before eventually steadying. Just as he was about to flick the compartment light off again and sat out on the rest of his journey, a loud rustling from the bushes caught him off guard and locked every muscle in his body. The horrid taste of the spoiled water returned. Tom kept the switch locked between his thumb and index finger and turned his head so slowly he could feel the muscles in his neck loosen again. As he was lifting his hand back down from the light, the mysterious rustling returned,

only this time it was louder and longer. The source of the sound shuffled around and changed in volume, like whatever was making it was thrashing around in a struggle. Tom jammed the key into the ignition when the sound got closer for the third time and turned the key when it eventually quieted down again. Tom's roaring engine breathed life into the vast, quiet countryside around him, and almost as quickly as his engine had filled that void, a thin, high-pitched screeching burst out from the bushes, so loud that it punctured the sound barrier of his car, forcing Tom to quickly grasp both of his ears from the pain and fright. Tom shrieked from the pain, fixing his eyes on the shaking red bull cans, which he had to be able to get him.

he could feel clattering around his feet. Realizing that the unexpected screech had sent Tom into an immobile reflex stance, he shot back into action, twisted the key planted in the ignition, and smacked both hands down on the steering wheel. He clasped desperately for the gear stick and slammed his foot down hard on the accelerator. When his beaming headlights lit up the country road that accelerated toward him soon after and the intolerable wailing quickly dissolved into silence, relief washed through Tom's quivering body. Tom reconnected with his surroundings after a few seconds, having succumbed to the surrealism of what he had been through. He only realized then just how dangerously fast he was actually traveling. He lowered his speed and tried to steady

his focus, something he found difficult with his heart pounding into his ribcage and his ears ringing themselves numb. He continued down the road. His thoughts so occupied with what he had just heard that he nearly missed the first right turn for the springs. He hit the brake suddenly, bringing the car to a burning, screeching stop. He turned right and continued down this road for a few minutes, his speed varying by how deep he had drifted off into his own thoughts. After a while, he came to an entrance. It was a gap in the hedges, which consisted of a small trapezoid patch of large gray pebbles that separated a small wooden fence away from the road. He drove onto the pebbles, his rubber tires popping and crackling them noisily under the weight of the car.

Tom turned on the headlights to get a better view of the field behind the fence. Why didn't I bring a flashlight? He thought to himself. Initially, the field looked very basic, just like a regular acre of grass for raising cattle. This can't be. He thought to himself, where's the valley? Tom approached the fence with caution. His headlights reflected a small plastic sign that was attached to the fence with black cable ties. This premise is protected by Kennedy Security, it read. When Tom reached the fence, he spotted a small valley that sloped down a couple of hundred meters to his far left. Ballin till he springs. He was now certain that he had found them. Tom pulled his phone out from his pocket and

rang Mark. Hello, Tom? Mark answered after two rings. Hey, I found it. The Springs? Mm-hmm. Good. Now remember our arrangement. You get in there, picture and video, and then you find whatever you can and get out. And please, try to be as quick as you possibly can. However, having said that...

Tom noted a threatening change in his voice. You are not able to come back to me empty-handed. If you do, you are done. Not just with this assignment, but with this company, too. It's as simple as that. Are you serious? You're putting way too much pressure on me here, man." Mark paused for a moment, then let out an impatient sigh.

All right, Tom, you listen to me, and you listen to me closely. I'm really serious about this, and I'm starting to think that you can't quite understand just how serious I am. Mark was beginning to really frighten him. The sudden venom in his tone had completely whitewashed Tom's preconceptions about him. All right, all right, please, just calm down, man. You do not tell me what to do. I wasn't telling you, I was just...

You do not tell me what to do. He repeated, roaring into the crackling phone. And you definitely do not interrupt me when I'm talking to you. You do very well to know where you stand with me, you ambitious, less dead-end, slacking imbecile. I will spell this out for you just one more time, and you better make goddamn sure that you let me drill this into your skull. I'm the one giving the orders here.

I'm the one who tells you what to do. You do not tell me what to do. In fact, you don't even tell anybody in my company what to do. It's me to you. You stumble in late for work. You look like something a rat dragged out of a ditch, and you half your day away twiddling your thumbs, contributing nothing but speculative drivel to this paper. If this was any other way, I still wouldn't be the slacker who was way out on some lonely

back road carrying out every order that has barked at them on the phone. You know what, Tom? I will gladly sit here and listen to whatever reasons you can come up with to try and whisker yourself out of this one. Go on. Please. Entertain me here. If Tom was not convinced that Mark could hear him shaking over the phone, he would

thought he was as silent as the night was cold. A long, wordless few seconds passed before Mark's book again. That's what I thought. You do not tell me what to do here, Tom. You are the one who works for me. It isn't the other way around and it never will be. Tom remained speechless. He could almost feel Mark's heavy, wet breathing coming through the speakers and sprinkling his right ear. He brought his phone down parallel to his chest and held it tight in his hand, feeling a dizzy mix of blind rage and confusion. Slowly, he lifted the phone back up closely to his ear. What is your obsession with this?

He asked softly, trying his best to compose himself. Don't you get it at all, Tom? He replied, sounding more condescending than angry this time. The foul-tasting water and how all these people are getting sick from it. The weeks and weeks and eventually months of investigations only for them to come up with nothing. Not even a trace. All that hard work that has been. been put in only for them to find no detrimental cause. People out here have been doing all this hard

work, but they've been doing it all wrong. What do you mean? You do know I'm talking about the Bal until he's scandal, right? He asked mockingly. You know, the case you're currently working on? Of course. Tom replied, progressively finding it harder to suppress his temper. Hey, what do you know? He actually got something right. Mark paused for a moment after he said that. Tom remained silent. Think about it, Tom. All those investigations that were conducted at the filtering plant, all for nothing. The answer has been floating around in front of everyone this whole time, but they've all been too busy with wondering why not instead of reaching out, grasping it, and finding out what is. Mark, I mean no disrespect to you here, but you're just telling me stuff I already know. I want to know what the deal is with you. Tom, why is it that when we began this, the immediate assumption was that the company is at fault? What about the actual source of the water?

Why has nobody thought that maybe, just maybe, the source of the water, the springs, are what the problem is? It's fascinating to the extent which people have just conveniently ignored it. Convenient. I say convenient because it plays right into our hands, but I'm not going to risk us letting this go unnoticed any longer. Eventually, we are going to be beaten to it. We have the opportunity here to grasp on to something that will make us big. We're going to break this scandal right open, Tom, and the public will be in disbelief at how blind they've been. Think about it, Tom.

It'll be hailed as a landmark moment in journalism history, and the two of us will be at the center of it all. Over some scandal at the Mineral Water Company? I know that it doesn't sound like a big deal, and to be quite honest, it really shouldn't be. But the media, the public, the mystery surrounding it, and the failure to find any concrete evidence to support what is going on. All of that together has blown this story way out of the proportions it should have never been in in the first place. When we reveal the answer was so simple all along, and that nobody up until now has even thought to look a little more closely at all the details, it'll be talked about for weeks, months on end.

People will remember this story for years to come, but most importantly, they'll remember us, the ones who revealed it overnight, and the ones who brought a common-sense approach to the over-complicated, incident, the ones who actually decided to try to get the full story instead of all the rest who just went along with milking a cash cow dry. We have a chance to make that history, to make big names for ourselves. You should not deny yourself of that, Tom.

And I will be left out and hung to dry before I even let you deny me that as well. I'm beginning to understand. Tom lied. I'm sorry, Mark. I should have known better. Although, man, there's something I got to tell you about. What is it, Tom? Just a few minutes ago there, something really messed up happened.

Just as I was about to drive off after our call, I heard this loud rustling from the bushes. Then when I was about to drive away, there was this real loud screeching. It shook the whole car, man. Everything on the ground just started shaking. It messed with me big time. I was pretty shaken up about it. Are you sure it wasn't just a badger or something? Often when something happens out of the blue to somebody, their mind risked.

I'm telling you, Mark, the whole car just started shaking. How can that be just a badger? I don't know, Tom. This really isn't any of my concern, and it shouldn't be any of yours either. You're wasting valuable time here worrying about little things, and you're wasting mine as well. I need you to focus for me here, Tom, and I need you to make sure that there's a sensible head screwed on tight between those shoulders of yours.

Can you do that for me? You know I can. I'm just worried as all. Okay, good. Is there anything else or can I go now? Just one more thing. Try to make it snappy. All those things you said about me, if you really believe them, then why you got me going down this for you?

Why are you trusting me to do this for you if you think I'm such a pathetic slacker? Mark remained silent for a moment. Tom, you're a really clever young man, and I can see that in you whereas many others can't. I rejected many wonderful, hardworking journalists the opportunity to work for me because I chose you. and I chose you because I have realized your potential. I have put faith in you at times when other managers have called you hopeless. They said I was making a mistake putting any faith in you. Please, Tom, prove to them that all of that faith I put in you was justified.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here, though. You lack motivation. You lack ambition. And to be blunt, you're really lazy. You lack confidence and you lack willpower. But, Tom, I have seen what you're capable of. I clearly remember when you showed me your dissertation during your induction, and I clearly remember you showing me all of the research that you put into it.

I realized then that you have something really special, that you have mountains of potential, potential to be a groundbreaking journalist. But most of all, why you are here tonight, out on the field working for me, you are discreet, and you know when and when not to show your hand. And for an assignment that is this confidential, you are the only one that I can trust. Tom's mouth was hanging open when he was greeted with the hang-up tone for the second time that night, and remained open while he mindlessly listened to it for nearly two minutes. Mark's words repeated in his head, and he stood still for a few seconds, trying to piece together

what he was saying. Despite all the praise Mark had heaped on him towards the end of the call, Tom still hung on to his outburst, finding himself beginning to distrust him. No matter how much he tried to be on the same pages, Mark, he just could not see the logic behind his thinking. Why do I have to trespass on a property for some evidence? Why not just open up an inquiry or release this information to the public? Surely that way he could still get the recognition he so desperately craves. In Tom's head, none of it simply clicked into place. Tom climbed the wooden fence, wary not to get any of the rips in his jeans caught in the wires.

He remembered how at the beginning of the night he had Mark pinned and he had Mark pinned and as this quivering, spineless no-neck, who he thought he could have no problem coercing. In just less than an hour, the rolls had reversed entirely. Like something a rat dragged out of a ditch, the words stingingly replayed in Tom's mind when his feet hit the grass. The dew seeped through Tom's shoes and socks, and his feet became damper and damper with each passing step across the field. After nearly three minutes of walking, his steps began coming down harder and faster, meaning he was beginning. his descent down the hill. He stopped for a moment to observe his surroundings.

He looked at the ripples in the barely visible pond reflecting the cold night sky. He took his phone back out of his pocket just one more time, opened the camera, and activated the flash for a clear view. The flash lit up his entire side of the slope, so bright at the top you could see the individual droplets of dew on each blade of grass, but faded down the hill into a dim glow which just about reached the shore of the pond. It's brighter than I thought it would be, much brighter. Tom thought to himself.

Tom resumed his walking, trying not to slip, something he found difficult, wearing canvas shoes while going downhill on cold, wet grass. The shoreline slowly started to become more visible. Tom looked at the repeated process of the thin seeps of water oozing out from the pond as he trundled down the slope, one foot in front of the other. It moistened the pebbly young sand, before receding for a moment, then oozing back to the shore again. When Tom could see a few feet across the pond and felt the scrunch of grass and the crack of tiny pebbles under both halves of his left foot, he opened up the video recorder. Tom stood still, knowing that when he had to move, he would have to creep along the shore slowly and quietly.

He concentrated his senses on the silent, rippling pond for a while, anticipating some form of sense. sound or movement that he hoped he could trace. The ripples were heavy and traveled southwest for unexpected lengths before they perished out into shallower water. That's when something hit him. The night was mute, and the cool air was absent of even the lightest of breezes. Tom kept directing the shining light across the pond, like a searchlight traveling through a midnight sky.

He kept it still for a moment, studying the ripples as they crossed through the light before disappearing back into the surrounding shadows from which they emerged. He sidestepped slowly to the right, trying to move silently, hoping that it wasn't a creature causing the ripples, or at least one that wouldn't get spooked if it heard the slightest of sounds coming from a far-off distance. Tom meticulously controlled every muscle in his body, making sure not to make any sound that could scare away whatever it was causing the rippling. He sidestepped with total focus, doing so for what felt like a couple of seconds.

looked at the ground around his feet for any obstacles, and then back at his phone. When he looked at the time on the top of his screen, he noticed that three minutes had already passed. As strange as it was, the time had just seemingly glided by. What had really worried Tom was how his battery had plummeted from 57% to 23 since he had left his car. He dismissed his worry, though, and looked back to the lake, having made sure that there was nothing ahead of him that could make a sound if he suddenly hit it. He focused on the light, noticing that the ripples now crossed into the light at faster speeds, and were starting to become more circular.

I'm getting closer, Tom thought. Tom suddenly hesitated when he caught a glimpse of a much fainter light at the far right corner of his eye. He could feel his eyes shifting right through to the back of his skull, keeping the camera light fixated in its current position. He watched the mysterious glow shift deeper under the surface. for around a minute. There were hundreds of tiny faded white particles, all fizzling upwards quickly before burning out. But the ball of light itself was fixated in a single position and remained

on a continuous path, rising slightly up and trickling to the right very slowly. Tom moved the camera light around, searching for the area of the surface that the ball of light was moving under. He discovered a small circular section where the water bubbled and lightly splashed up like a miniature geyser and saw the ripples emitting outward from around it. He watched it, dumbfounded by how silent it was. He tried listening to it intently, but all he discovered was that the silence of the midnight countryside had all of a sudden become more uncomfortably haunting. He placed both hands on his phone, trying to keep them both steady, following the ball of light

as it very slowly made its way across the pond. He tapped the video record button on the screen of his phone. as the dimmer part of the camera light edged itself into the dense forestry on the right-sided bank. The ball of light became taller, and the top of it ceased to fizzle upward, becoming brighter and more consistent. It was like watching the reflection of the moon gliding across the pond and fast forward. The glow kept edging closer to the surface, approximately at the same rate that it was edging to the right-sided bank. Tom felt a hard lump develop in the bottom of his throat as he continued watching the fizzling lights from the bottom, watching them evolve into a solid figure as they

approach the surface. A feeling of morbidity struck him when they began to resemble something that was vaguely humanoid. What the hell? Tom whispered to himself, the sound of his words augmented by the dead silence of the vast springs. His vision became directionless and unfocused, and his phone began shaking between the tight grasp in his two hands, causing the camera's light to violently pulse around the pond's surface. He breathed heavily in disbelief when he began to make out what looked like long, thick, shaggy dreadlocks that swayed slowly up and down below the inexplicably rapidly bubbling water. The humanoid light stopped just before the bank of the pond. It remained there, perfectly still, its only movements being its bending body from the ripples, only seen

through Tom's eyes. Tom desperately wanted to run, but the risk of triggering Mark's temper again with incomplete footage, frightened him more than the mysterious glow from the pond. He felt like a caged mouse. Tom watched it remain stagnant, managing to control his hands so the light could remain more still. He kept the camera focused on it as still as he could, hoping it would soon dissolve, fizzle out, or all the particles would collapse to the bottom of the lake and simply disappear. He had hoped that if he came back with something like that, it would be sufficient enough for Mark to piece together a story.

The light suddenly shot upwards out of the water without even so much as a hum, the momentum sending thousands of tiny droplets into the air and spreading them all around like debris from a blast. Tom, startled by the unexpected movement, tried focusing on it again after flinching, still feeling shaken up. When the drops of water all came falling down again, they fell back to the lake without making a sound. Tom froze when he fully analyzed the light.

His unadjusted eyes only saw a faint glow. shaped like a cylinder. When his eyes attuned after the shock caught him off guard, he was finally able to make it out. He made out bumpy, long, thin feet that pointed straight down, making its long, thin leg look like stilts. Then he saw its long, torn dress, and followed that up to its wiry, cadaverous arms, that dangled from the weight of its pusillanimous hands that bore long, sharp, jagged fingernails. Up and up, he followed it, to its shaggy, clumpy, waving hair that crowned a head that hung

at such a low angle, it looked like the top of its spine had been slowly bent and then suddenly snapped, flinging its head so quickly forward that it opened cracks in the soft decayed flesh on the unkempt skin of her neck, like a rubber that had been stretched outwards from a child trying to push the two ends together. The camera began violently bouncing around again. Tom tried to reason with himself, but her outward intrusion drained all logic out of his mind. The only thoughts Tom could muster were the racing thoughts of the light's physical appearance. He watched the glowing being levitate through the footage he captured on the camera.

Like her, Tom was frozen still and was trying for the second time that night, for different reasons, his very best to not make a sound. The being remained completely still, levitating above the pond, with gradually less and less drips, still mutely tapping into the pond as the seconds dragged slowly by. Tom continued to watch the motionless being through the recording video, peculiarly curious as to when it would finally start moving again, but terrified by the thought that it was going to start hovering towards him. He felt a shrill breeze caress his skin, feeling the stimulation of goosebumps prickle

all down his arms and then all over his torso. His face and neck, the only parts of skin unsheltered by his clothing, felt like they were being sprayed lightly with water from a bottle and then swiftly frozen over. He continued to gaze at her on the screen of his phone, but the being only remained still, hovering in its fixed position above the water. Its head slumped down to its chest, her crown pointing towards the dense cluster of trees on the right bank. Tom tilted his head up slightly and tapped the top of the phone to check his battery life.

That's when he noticed there was a pale, inward crescent of light sheltering the peak of his vision. A sensation of doom fully consumed him. He looked back down at the camera, seeing the bright white woman was still floating above the water in the same position just off the bank. Even through this tense ordeal, he felt an ironic slight relief. When he lifted his head fully and looked up, the brightly lit face of a young, decomposed woman met him face to face. Tom screamed, stumbled a few feet back while scrambling the phone between his hands, before dropping it onto the sand a few feet to his right. He crawled backwards as quickly as he could, overcome with debilitating fear and uncertainty,

trying to alter his brain in an approach where he could ostracize these endangering feelings. He grappled the sand with his shaking hands, trying to push himself onto his feet, but lost balance and fell flat onto his back again. When he attempted this for a second time, she had edged closer to him and then. made further eye contact. He accidentally studied her being, seeing her warped neck that caused her head to jut forward like a praying snake. Her scarred, gaunt cheeks, her vacant lidless eyes, and her inverted sideways mouth, everything bright white, all outlined in thin black lines. Tom found his balance again as the woman's vacant eyes slowly began to shade themselves to orange,

and her inverted lips cracked open sideways, revealing her oversized, triangular teeth. She levitated on the ground only a few meters away, towering over and quickly approaching him, keeping her fiery orange gaze fixed on Tom's transfixed eyes. He could feel them burning an invisible thin line right through his eyes, piercing his delicate skull and shooting right through to the center of his head. Tom came to his senses, turning around and leaving his phone on the shore and began sprinting back up the hill. He felt the heat returned to his body when he ran further away from her, like warm currents of life that refueled his icy veins. Seconds after Tom had started running, the woman let out a long, screeching whale that Tom felt

vibrating his bones, left a sharp ringing in his ears, and gave him such a morbid feeling of death that his insides felt like a rotting core of an apple. Tom tried his hardest to ignore her wailing, taking tremendous strides up the hill and pushing himself to his limbs to keep a lengthy distance away from her. He was unable to hear the sound of his feet hitting the wet grass through the ringing that clogged both of his ears. Within a couple of seconds, his hearing had been rendered useless, leaving him unable to tell if she was still wailing or even following him. Just before he reached the top, he could feel the goosebumps prickle up again on his back. He turned his cold neck back around, keeping the rest of his body racing forward, and he saw

her enraged face, her fiery eyes staring right into his back. Feeling them stare right into his soul and turning it into black, powdery ash. Tom reached the top of the hill, his body becoming colder and colder as he sprinted aimlessly in the pitch black, looking for the fence he had climbed at the beginning of the night. Something was different, Tom realized through the storm of his panic-stricken mind. Though he was full of doubt, he continued to sprint, his body becoming heavy with fatigue, his lungs unable to keep up with the demand of his survival instinct. His entire body shivered from the freezing sensation that encapsulated him.

He kept his speed up, and when he squinted his eyes as painfully as he could, struggling to cope with the pressure of the being rapidly catching up with him, he finally managed to locate the fence straight ahead of him. Tom continued sprinting, panting heavily, bargaining in his own mind with whatever higher force may exist that he wouldn't run out of steam before he reached the fence. It continued coming closer and closer to him, though. parked car just behind it, and for a moment it had looked like Tom's desperate begging had paid off.

Something still wasn't right. He repeated to himself in concern. What was it? He continued sprinting on, though, both rows of teeth clattering off one another, making use of all the energy he had to reach his car. He eventually approached the fence, hopping on to the second ledge with both of his feet, jumping right over it and landing hard on the other side, sending shots of pain right up both of his legs. He limped as quickly as he could away from the fence and scrambled his hand

around in his pocket to search for his car keys, turning around to look out for her as he did so. He saw her floating motionlessly behind the fence, eyeing his every move, a look of contempt engraved onto her face. Tom didn't pause to think about why she had stopped following him, or why she wasn't hovering over the fence after him. All he knew was that once he was in his car and out of there, he would be safe, and he would never have to look back at this event ever again. He clicked the open button twice on his car keys to get into his car. No response. He planted his palm on the window and tried again. No response. He jammed the key into the hole, opening the car manually. He opened the door, jumped onto the seat, and shoved the key into the ignition,

staring out the windshield while doing so as she started to burn through his head again with her fiery orange stare. When he twisted the key, the car made no response. Come on, come on! The thought sped through Tom's frantic mind. He tried it again, no response. He kept trying and trying and trying, but got the same result every time. He froze. When he was running back across the field, he had noticed something was off.

The field was dark. Way too dark. The headlights on the car weren't on. He left them on when he climbed the fence for the first time that night, and trudged through the cold, wet field. He had left the lights on, and the battery of the car had died. In a desperate attempt of a quick escape, he had abandoned his phone on the shore. He stared at the steering wheel in horror and disbelief, Mark's words reiterating in his mind.

As if their minds were synchronized, she rose above the fence and into the air and levitated forward until she was out of sight from the windshield, and her glow emanated just above the bonnet. She thumped the roof of the car. She thumped again and then again. With the fourth thump, there was an ear-wrenching, splitting noise, and her shining white hand and long sharp fingernails broke through the steel roof of the car. Her other hand then followed, and then using them, she bent the steel back in twisted, jagged lines like they were soft strings of cheese.

Tom stared up at her glowing orange eyes, her inverted mouth opening sideways, revealing those gruesome, long, sharp teeth. A string of saliva dripped from her mouth and onto Tom's cheek, instantly freezing and stinging him. Her hollow cheeks sank inwards as she breathed out a freezing breeze from between her jagged fangs. Tom's eyes filled up uncontrollably with tears as she let out one final, earth-shattering wail. The car began to shake, and Tom quickly became deaf within In seconds, Tom stared into those burning, empty, orange eyes as she pulled herself back up towards the night sky. Tom shifted his head lightly to the side and saw drops of blood fall onto the seat from

what he presumed was one of his ringing ears. His boiling hot tears stung his face as badly as her cold saliva had, but when he tried to lift his hand to wipe it away, he found his muscles had been frozen solid. When he felt nothing for a few seconds more, he slowly rolled his neck. to the left and looked back up at her. And as quickly as he had caught sight of her one more time, she let out one more earth-shattering, unheard scream. She sped down, still screaming with her sideways mouth as she flew towards him at momentous

speed. The last thing Tom felt was her cold screech painfully peeling back the skin on his face, and his quickly fading vision seeing her sharp, jagged teeth protruding out from her mouth as she blurily soared towards him. Thank you.