The Dark Somnium - These Are The Rules To Follow To Stay Safe

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

This scary story is from the nosleep subreddit, written by ChristianWallis, make sure to check out the original story and support the author  "I’ve been squatting in a condemned high rise, These are the rules to follow to stay safe" https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/xyx284/ive_been_squatting_in_a_condemned_high_rise_these/--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/darksomnium/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm not homeless. I have a home. I just don't own it. But it's mine, and I work to keep it. Every city has its fair share of abandoned buildings to squat in, but usually you got to deal with either cops or shitty neighbors. The Andale Highrise was neither. Police stay away, so did the locals. As a stranger from out of town, I stumbled across the place on my first night in the city and thought it a little strange. strange that a 20-story tower block had been left to rot. Every window black, every light in the courtyard smashed. No cars in the lot, no booth for a guard, not even barbed wire on the fence, barely half a mile from a playground filled with shouting drunken teenagers, but none of them strayed in the direction of Andell. No fires or music or bottles hurtling through the air. It was silent.

Inside, I found that the lobby had been torn to shreds. Double doors ripped open and left that way for what looked like years. Easy access for the curious, but I was the only one there. Most of the first story was collapsed. Waterlog ceiling tiles turned to mulch by shitty British weather. I know water is invasive, but it had practically colonized the place so bad that algae was growing up the walls. Even the elevator shaft was flooded.

flooded. My own reflection, looking back at me as I peered through the brackish water and caught a glimpse of the old rusted carriage just a few feet below. I couldn't help but think about standing on top of it, waist high, and reaching down to pull open the emergency hatch. It's only natural to wonder what was down there. A little metal box soaking in pitch black water for years and years. I thought about pressing the button and calling it up and seeing the elevator arise in spite of all logic. An image I still think about from time to time. Meanwhile, the empty shaft loomed above, cables whistling in the wind. I've learned not to linger by it. If you look up, you'll sometimes see something ducking out of the way, pulling its head through the doors

before you get a good look. It finds it awfully funny, even tries to make a game out of it, like Peekaboo. Play too much, though, and it starts to pop out elsewhere. Any open door becomes an invitation. Sent more than a few people running for their lives in the middle of the night, but bad news for them. That thing is more than free to leave this place if it's part of a game. If you ask about Andale, most people just shrug or laugh. Kids talk about it the same way they talk about any haunted house. Difference is, no one dares anyone to go up there.

No one uses it to get drunk or high. No one sneaks into the basement to have risky sex. No one hides their stashes there. It has all the hallmarks of your classic urban legend. Only people actually stay away. They'll laugh and joke and tell scary stories, but they'll treat the soil it's on like it houses a radioactive leak. And the council, I'm surprised they haven't knocked it down, but they, out of everyone in the city,

have the most to lose by talking about it. They built it in the mid-50s as government houses. Only a lot of young mothers who moved in there found their children's health taking a turn for the worst. Started with newborns, babies that wouldn't wake up after a peaceful night's sleep. The kind of deaths that got written off as neither negligence or abuse. Screaming teenage girls hauled off to prison on the word of doctors who didn't give a shit. It's always the mother's fault in some people's eyes, and these girls had no one to stand up for them. Two in the first year, four in the next, and they kept on coming for every year until it closed.

It wasn't until 1982 that someone traced the source of deaths to tainted water storage on the roof, and toxic metals leaching into the supply, not enough to kill an adult, but bad news for anyone with weak immune systems. 38 women had been imprisoned by then. Another 23 had killed themselves before they could be sentenced, and those are just the ones accounting. for. Not all the deaths were from the water. Andale has a way of being bad for any child's health, no matter the circumstances. More than a few toddlers starved to death as their parents rotted in the tub from an overdose. Even more were lost when they found their parents' stash. Little bodies racked with agonizing fits as their panicked mothers screamed for help. One tripped down the elevator

shaft because the doors opened as if the carriage was right there. And those are the ones who were found. Plenty more went missing, written off his runaways. In the end, Andell's reputation as a cursed place got so bad that the only way out was to shut down the whole thing. Boarded up, erase it from the records, pretend it never happened, and just forget. But Andell kept on killing even after the doors were officially shut. If anything, it only got nastier. I talked to a cop who told me he found a guy dead from sepsis on the sixth floor a couple years

after the place was shut down. No one could believe it. They reckoned this guy scratched himself on a nail and caught gangrene like it was the 1800s. Never went to the hospital, just laid there and died slowly and painfully as the infection spread, but not before he took every last bit of furniture in the room and shoved it against the door. Strange enough on its own, but it was the flag he'd made out of his own clothes that freaked everyone out.

He'd scrawled help on it, like he wanted to get someone's attention down below, even though the lock was on his side. He could have left any time he wanted. The cop I spoke to said he was there when they kicked on the door. Still remembers the look in dead man's eyes. He was glaring at the door two days after he'd passed. White knuckled fists gripping a blanket. that smelled sickly sweet from all that infection.

There were others, too. Lots of people falling. Many of them, without good reason. Got so bad they brick the roof door, but by the time I arrived, someone had cleared it all away with a sledgehammer. I still don't hang out up there, not after I first went up there and saw pale fingers gripping the ledge, like someone was hanging off it and holding on for dear life. I reckon a lot of people see something like that and think a person needs their own.

help, they go rushing over to offer a hand, but when I saw it, something about those grimy nails set off alarm bells in my head. Fingers looked all wrong. So I took my coat off and used a broom handle to move it closer to the ledge. Sure enough, those ugly hands snatched at the coat and ripped it out of my hands, sending it hurtling to the parking lot below. I've thought about taking a closer look from time to time, but I got a thing about heights and could never bring myself to investigate it much further.

You'd think I'd leave, but it's my home. I own it as much as it owns me. People even refer to me as the caretaker now, like they forget I wasn't always here. The police treat me the same. Can you believe that? Any reports of a break-in, and they call me on my number to go take a look, like I'm some sort of official. Only other guy who was in here as long as me was the philosopher. The only other guy who was here as long as me was the philosopher.

I don't know his name. I just call him that because of the books he left behind. He came here back when the block was still just a place to live, and he stuck around for a few years after its closure. Lots of notebooks in his flat, talking about child sacrifice made to gods who don't like being named, along with pictures of strange things frozen in ice and medical photos that looked fake.

At first, I thought he came to document the curse. He had dozens of books just recording all of the strange things he saw, like birds with too many wings or milk that turned to clotted blood in the bottle. But after going through everything he owned, I found letters to a wife who died in childbirth. He kept her death certificate way at the back of an old-looking box filled with letters he'd kept writing her long after the date. Another box, just a row over, had the letters she'd written back. Awful things scrawled on random scraps, shit and blood for ink. He dated them himself and sometimes wrote notes about how they came to him, delivered by a rat that was cannibalized in front of me,

pulled by my dentist from a cavity in my mouth, written in the web of a spider with 14 legs. Anyway, he gives away the real reason he moved to Andale in one of the letters, says that Andell was the key to helping her, that he was weeks away from figuring out how to open the door, told his wife he'd bring her back, told her he knew how. I've never figured out where he went next or what happened to him, but his apartment was locked when I found it and likely would have stayed that way if the key hadn't turned up inside my pocket on the first morning.

Now I live in his old place. It's safe in there. He's written things on the wall that keep everything well behaved. Symbols that I don't understand, but which are easy to trace, so that's what I do. I go over them every couple of months, and so far you've kept me safe and sane. Because you do need protection in Andale. I don't know when in its history the curse went from something mundane. to something very real and very dark, it wasn't all just bad luck or poverty, not by the end,

and certainly not anymore. You can't just go strolling around Andale, certainly not at night. It's dangerous. For one thing, it attracts a constant rotation of the deeply unwell who are likely to attack on site, if you're lucky. They usually turn up dead in the halls come morning, although sometimes it's just a little bit of Just bits of them I come across. Strips of skin floating on the brackish water that floods the basement stairwell, or bloodied

fingernails embedded in the ceiling plaster. Weirdest one was a single tooth in a light bulb, bloody gum still attached to the root, the glass all around it somehow intact. Many of them come here with business, something little like the philosophers, rituals, bargains, things like that. It's not a good idea to interrupt them, or to give them even the slightest hint you might be a problem. Every night, I lock my door and wait for Andell's business to finish, and come morning,

I do a sweep, floor by floor, and clean up whatever's left of the tower block's strange pilgrims. Most of the rituals don't look real to me. In fact, I reckon a lot of people who come here just end up as victims of something or someone else. a lot of reasons to stay out of Andell at night, and most of its visitors strike me as a little naive. Most of what I see looks like it got stolen from a bad death metal album. I once found a book called Satanism and witchcraft in the 21st century. It's hard to imagine that the

secret inner workings of the universe can be found in something with an ISBN number and 3,000 Amazon reviews. Of course, not all attempts at exploiting Andell's energy are so hackneyed. I had one guy turn up at my door and pay me three grand in cash just to show me the darkest corner in the building. I wasn't sure what he meant at first, thought he meant light and shadow. Uh, sort of. He replied when I explained this to him. Darkness like that can be part of it, but I'm looking for a corner. Has to be a right angle, or more cute. Ideally, more cute. You understand that term, right? He seemed arrogant, and that last sentence confirmed as much.

Good-looking guy in his late 20s. Nice suit. Looked like the stereotypical banker. Acted like one, too. There's plenty of places like that. Lots of funny rooms in Andale. People trying to make the most of limited space. Sometimes the walls meet at tight angles, sure, but I don't know what you mean about dark.

There's the basement. It's flooded. Can you think of anywhere darker than that? He bit his lip and hesitated for a second or two, as if he was actually contemplating it. Not a bad suggestion, actually, but no, too difficult to reach. And I don't just mean dark as in the absence of light. I mean dark like under the bed, dark like that one chip and a wall that leads to a hollow space between the bricks. And as a child, you can't help but wonder what lives there.

somewhere that just inexplicably feels like it's not got as much of God's attention on it as everywhere else. I thought about this for a second. His words were vague, but damn if I didn't know what he meant. A corner, I asked. Has to be an acute corner. He nodded. I think I know the place. I said, and he smiled like a real creep.

I took him to a flat on the eighth floor. It was run down like everywhere else, but. there was still enough of its old furniture lying around. You could pull open random drawers in there and still see the cutlery people once used. There's even an old analog TV on an old stand. You can perch on what's left of the sofa and stare at that TV and get the feeling that you knew who lived there once. Run your thumb over the dials on the toaster, the handle of the fridge, or the yellowing plastic of a light switch, and feel an aching loss that creeps up on you out of nowhere.

Look up, and you'll see that that light fixture has been torn out of the ceiling, like something had tried swinging from it. Not a big place, by the way, three rooms, a bedroom with a double bed all rumbled up, a living room slash kitchen, and a tiny little spare room that looked like it had once been used for storage, or a washing machine maybe. If you were single and childless. A sliver of space. A triangle carved out of whatever room was left over when the...

other, more important walls, had been put up. That sofa I mentioned, the TV, they were all placed so whoever was sat down could always keep an eye on that room and its contents. You see, they'd put a cot inside it, and it's still there, blue bottle flies circling overhead. You can't see inside the cot, not unless you went in and actually pulled the blankets out, but it's been decades, and no one has managed it yet. It's dark behind those old boxes, a heavy shadow that dissuades a closer look, like there's something in there no one needs to see, and it spent a long time sat there, eating whatever

little light there was. Even with the window in that room, daylight doesn't really filter down. Perfect, the businessman said when he saw it. He gazed around the flat, one detail at a time, his head pausing for a moment, and a smile creeping across his face as he laid his eyes on the broken light fixture, and the cot, the sight of it, the flies that still circled above faded Winnie the Pooh blankets. It made the breath catch in his throat. Oh, this is it. Yes, this is good. He told me. Dark like under the bed. You've earned that money. I could have had a dozen men sweep this place

and they wouldn't have understood the brief as well as you have. Uh, thank you. I replied, even if that wasn't really how I felt. Quietly, the man sat down and began to unpack his leather satchel. No pentagrams to be found, although he did unpack seven strange-looking candles. He caught me looking at them and smiled. Home-made, he said. Each one shaped by my hands. I'm not a good artist, but it's the effort that counts.

Took forever to rent the wax. Of course, that was the easy part. The hard part was getting the fat to make it. Did you know there can be a surprisingly high level of security around a hospital's medical waste department? I didn't, I replied as he took out some flimsy bits of wood and a few small nails. He oh so carefully began to nail the splinters of wood together in what looked like random shapes. Oh well, he sighed after a few moments, his nails nimbly gripping the tiny hammer as he tapped away. Already he'd put together at least six of the strange little wooden polygons, and with each

new one I felt a strange sensation. Would you like to stay and watch? He asked. Absolutely not. I answered. He stopped tapping and smiled once more. Oh, you're clever. He said.

That's the correct answer, by the way. And if I'm to respect it, I should inform you that now is the safest time to leave. I made my way to the exit just as he lit the first candles, but not before I looked towards the cot one last time. I was surprised to see a hollow blackness that extended beyond the doorway, like a curtain had been draped across it. Only there was depth to it that drew the eye. The businessman paid it no attention, but after a few more seconds he eventually looked up

at me expectantly. Can I ask what it is you want? I said. Everyone who comes here, I don't get the sense it ever works out for them. I'm looking for a new kind of afterlife. Do you need one? We all need one. He said.

But only those of us willing to take a few risks will get a better deal. Everyone else. He grimaced. It's worth the bother. But look who I'm speaking to. He looked to the darkness that enveloped the doorway. Shapes could be seen floating past. You should leave now.

I pulled the door shut, and, noticing that the sun was rapidly setting, ran to my apartment where I knew the walls would keep me safe. When I returned the next day, the man's satchel was still where I'd last seen it, propping against one arm of the sofa. The candles had burned down to the very ends of the wicks and left a lingering smell that's still there all these years later. And of the man himself, well, in the room with the cot, which still has blue bottle flies orbiting overhead, there is now a shadow burned into the wall. It's blurry and diffused, but vaguely

recognizable as a man on his knees, his head pressed to the floor in a gesture of supplication. I've known it to occasionally move, to turn its head and look towards me, at which point my temples throb, my ears pop, and the darkness begins to encroach upon the edges of my vision. I never exactly considered that flat to be Disneyland before, but now I avoid it like the plague. Still, it could be worse. Not every ritual ends so cleanly, and at times I've had to personally intervene, something I hate bitterly. If people want to go poking around in the universe's undercarriage, that's their business.

It's one thing if I've got to sweep up what's left of them afterwards, but at least that's a one-and-done job. Sometimes it isn't so clean. One guy turned up and told me he'd be a new resident, my neighbor, and we'd get to know each other, a bumbling old man with the look of a professor who was down on his luck. He set up in the room next to mine, and no matter how little I spoke to him, he never really got the hint and kept trying to act like a good friend. A few times I did initiate conversation. It was to tell him that the place he'd chosen didn't have much in the way of protection. He pointed to some funny little rashes and told me they were his protection. Over the next few weeks, I'd bump into him from time to time, always on his hands and knees,

scraping some dank corner or moldy pile of bumpy growths. He collected fungi, told me on the first day, and I'd often see him wiping his samples onto petri dishes that he'd whisper quiet words to whenever he thought I wasn't around. I didn't think he was sane, but he probably wasn't completely crazy, because he lived long enough to get a sense of Andale and only come out in the day. Meanwhile, his apartment filled up with a growing collection of chittering terrariums and pickle jars, their specimens hidden by murky fluids. All over, he planted and cultivated strange mushrooms and molds.

He encouraged them to soak up the darkness of Andel and set them to grow in the darkness of Andell and set them to grow in the rife conditions he cultivated. Towards the end, his living room had mushrooms growing out of the walls, plaster crumbling beneath microbial armies until there was only concrete and rebar. And even then, mold continued to grow and thrive. A few times, I peered in and found him feeding meat to the frilly growths that exploded out of the old furniture. During this time, the symbols on our shared wall would often grow hot,

And I found myself having to replace them on a nearly daily basis as he tinkered away on the other side. I asked him once or twice to tone it down. This is important work. He growled in unseen darkness creeping into his voice. I'm not some ditsy crackhead trying to summon Bafflement. I'm not looking to get high. This is science. Progress.

That is what I'm working towards. Yeah, well, your progress is trying to eat its way into my feet. flat, can you ask it to stop?" He stopped, froze in mid-gesture like I'd said something either profoundly stupid or insightful, or likely a bit of both. He looked at the rashes on his arms that had, by now, started to sprout some of their own strange fruit. When he finally spoke again, it was sly.

This fungi. He said. They had samples of it in the university for thirty years. Can you imagine? They never even realized what they had until I found it and unlocked its potential. Now I've finally found the source and I can do things no one else thought possible. This entire time, my thesis has depended upon the idea that the fungus has a capacity for information processing way beyond anything we've considered before. And your idea is a good one, you know.

Asking it might just be an option. He scuttled off without another word, and for the next few days he set about the building like a furious little honeybee in spring, poking and prodding, setting trap after trap and and cleaning them vigorously of any rats or mice he caught. When I did my morning sweeps, I'd found him hovering over Andell's latest victim, scraping what was left of them into transparent bags for his own purposes. Don't mind me, he'd mutter. It's worthless to you, but these poor souls can help me achieve great things.

This persisted for another month. He no longer scraped mold or mushrooms off old apartments. He became interested only in meat. And by the time it came to an end, I can confidently say that I have never smelled anything worse than the prickly, musty odor that wafted it out from under his locked door. It became so bad that I began to wonder if I might have to ask. Ask the police for help and have him removed when finally he simply disappeared from Andell's halls.

One morning he was there, annoyingly shewing me out of the way as he lowered jars into the flooded basement. And the next, he was gone, and Andel's halls were silent once more. But that didn't mean he moved out. Far from it, actually. It took two days before I decided to go ahead and break his door down. I kicked at it with a short, sharp blow only. To find my leg had immediately disappeared through the wood that had the text-triff's sodden cardboard. I freed my foot and tried a different tactic, grabbing the handle and pulling so hard that it simply popped right out of the rancid doorframe.

Free to move, the door swung open with an eerie creek as fetid air, hot and damp, blew out of the room. Inside, I found that the men's specimens had gone wild. Terrariums had shattered, their contents spilling outwards, Frogs as large as footballs glared at me from behind furry fronds, and insects with human eyes scuttled away before the amphibians could snatch them up. In one corner, rats had built a hive out of old cardboard, their backs covered with fungal growths that resembled human fingers and other appendages. In another corner, something that looked like a little black rubber sheet slapped furiously at passing vermin, and it took me a few seconds to realize it was a slime mold.

When it finally caught something, it dragged the strange creature squealing into the dark corner where it grew and constricted around its meal like a fist. I stared at it horrified until one by one black orbs unveiled themselves from within the strange mass, and I realized it had eyes to stare right back at me. It was a cacophony of god-awful terror, so gripping that it kept me from hearing the muffled noise of a human struggling to speak. Eventually, it did reach my ears, and I used my flashlight to light up the far wall without having to actually step inside.

I found the scientist half grown into the wall. Algae and moss coated him head to toe so that he was no longer recognizable, but I had to assume it could be no one else. Wide eyes glared at me with terror and pain as nasty little creatures nibbled away at what was left of his shins. Meanwhile, strange tendrils prodded at his ears and head, never resting for a moment. He kept trying to speak, but the algal growths kept driving their way into his mouth until, one by one, they pushed too far, and something snapped.

His eyes went wider still. His squeals became hysterical, and his jaw slowly slid further down his chest until it hit the floor with a sodden thump. Finally made contact? I asked. An awful idea, if I've heard one. What would a mushroom have to say even in the best of circumstances, let alone one that was grown in the ruins of Andell?

I can only assume you never got around to telling it to stay off my wall, did you? No. You probably had your own reasoning for doing all this, and that's what took priority. That made me wonder what it was he'd asked for. As the thought entered my head, I took a quick look around and tried to see if anything in particular stood out to me. Something was growing on the sofa and looked strangely human. It might have been just my imagination, but in the dark, it seemed to turn towards me.

Meanwhile, the scientists continued to shiver in agony, his eyes focused on me and begging for help. I'll see what I can do. I said before slamming the door. Something about that strange pile on the sofa had deeply unsettled me. I put the word out. Asked for a gun, but got a crossbow instead a few days later. A nervous-looking, 16-year-old boy ferried it to my door. I was surprised he'd entered the building, but who knows who'd ordered him to do so.

I've acquired a strange sort of respect among the locals, and it comes in handy. This boy looked like he would have stomped on my head and robbed me blind any other day, but when he spoke to me, he did so with more respect than I ever imagined I deserved. I thanked him and took the crossbell, spent an afternoon, practicing with it, and then used it to kill the scientist the next morning. Took a few hits, but in the end, one thumped into his forehead and shut down his whimpered moans. I didn't see anything on the sofa this time, at least not anything human-shaped, which I guess I was thankful for.

After that, it was a simple case of calling the police and beginning a long chain of events that ended with half a dozen men in hazmat suits, spraying the room with noxious chemicals. For a while there, I'd been worried that they'd find a corpse and ask questions, but by the time anyone actually entered the room, there was nothing left of the scientist, save for a splotch on the floor. I never did figure out exactly what he was after, although it is not uncommon for my morning sweep to turn up a body, or part of, covered in fungal growths, and I've been known to occasionally catch glimpses of a strange person lowering themselves into the floodwater of the elevator

shaft. Of course, I might actually just be making connections that aren't really there. All sorts of things live in that water. The entire level is flooded, and if something was down there, it'd have free rain over quite a large space. It's a strange world down there. I should know on account of one visitor who gave me a very bad time. I'll call him the fisherman since he came to Andell because of the flooded basement,

I saw a photo that had been circulating around for a while now, if you know where to look. God knows who took it and how, but it shows the flooded stairwell leading to the basement and beneath the brackish surface is a hand that's all out of proportion. Fingers splayed with perfect symmetry like a starfish. It is reaching out of the depths and resting gently on the third step below the water. When I first met him, he was sitting happily with his feet over the edge of the flooded shaft, water up to his knees, with a rod and line set beside him. It was quite a surprise at first, seeing him there with a little fly fishing hat, a chubby

but healthy-looking man in his forties, with an egg-meo sandwich in one hand and a phone playing candy crush in the other. I called out to him as I approached, because, in my experience, startling someone in Andale is bad for your health, no matter how sane the visitor appears. He looked up when I caught his attention and smiled amiably. Hello. He waved with his sandwich. You're the caretaker?

Yes, I am. I answered. And you are? Just a tourist. He smiled. Care to join me? The sun had risen only moments ago. You weren't here when it was dark, were you?

I asked more than a little suspicious. Oh, no, you've only just caught me. Been here barely ten minutes before you showed up. I was told you'd be. willing to help in exchange for a small fee. What sort of help? I asked. Oh, just give me a nudge if any of the lines start moving.

He said, while pointing to a rod, he'd set up beside the basement stairs. The door was propped open, and the line led down into the darkness below, water gently lapping just out of sight. Another line had been set up in a corner of the lobby, where the floor had been torn away, revealing a hole straight down into the basement. I can't keep an eye on all of them at once, you see. I have bells ready, but, well, two heads are better than one. What is it exactly you're hoping to catch down here?

I asked. Are you familiar with the primordial ocean? He said. The abyssal waters that God split into light and dark and all that. It's not a physical location, per se, but it does connect to certain bodies of water, depending on the time and place. The last recorded manifestation was in a glass of old whiskey underneath a forgotten bar in Mexico City. Some poor fellow knocked it over and didn't notice until the following day when half the bar was suddenly underwater,

quickly rectified, but some of the things swimming in that water were something else. And all from the bottle of glass, no wider than my wrist. Imagine what can be done with this. He said, gesturing at the water by his feet. You think there could be fish alive down there? At least. I'd be willing to pay for any reliable information, of course. Do you have any idea of what might be down there?

Not really, I shrugged, but I guess it wants to be left alone. Hmm, yeah, you might be right there. He said, while looking at his other rods. I didn't exactly put down any old lure, you know. He reached into his pocket and took out a strange tuft of fur and ivory, holding it up for me to squint at. A tooth from a man who drowned in the sea. A drone collected it off a shipwreck near the Norwegian coast.

The fur is actually red algae that was found growing on his bones. I have plenty of these and, well, other things that might appeal to what's on the other side. My research is thorough and expensive. Come on, take a seat. Flat fee, $1,000. Just sit here until the sun starts to set. I just have to sit? I asked.

And let me know if you hear or see anything. I groaned and sat beside him, folding my legs instead of letting them dangle in the water below. Despite my reticence, we stayed like that for several hours. He'd brought lots of food, good homemade stuff, along with plenty of cold beer. We sat there and spoke very little, but we did eat and drink a tremendous amount. Not the kind of thing I do normally, but I was being concerned. paid to be there, and I didn't really have anywhere else to be. It was, all in told, very pleasant afternoon, until I fell asleep. When I awoke, it was with a terrible gasp. My chest

was tight like something had been sitting on it, and judging by the terrible giggling and scampering feet I heard running off into the darkness, it might not have been just a feeling. Already, panic was setting in as my eyes darted to the open doors and saw that the The moon was out and had been for hours. I fumbled for my light, and turning it on, I saw that there was no sign of the fisherman. All his stuff had been left behind, yet all that remained of him was his hat that still floated on the water. Even as I watched, a smooth, glistening shape curled beneath the water and plucked it

off the surface. I recoiled and crawled and crawled away from it as fast as I could. This was bad. I knew deep in my heart that I'd never been as at risk as I was in that much. moment. The open doors that led outside were tempting, but just beside them were the stairs that led downwards, and I swore I could hear something approaching. I couldn't help but picture the fungal man I'd seen in the scientist's flat. Then again, the basement was huge, and who knows what lay down there. I decided to go for the stairs. The entire time my heart

was in my chest. I'd never been caught outside my room at night, not since my first night when I'd slept in the lobby with my coat pulled over me. You don't get lucky twice, not with Andal, so I knew I had to be careful. I had to be quiet. My only hope was to go unnoticed. I took to stealth, climbing out each floor in perfect silence, hiding in well-known spots at the slightest hint of footsteps, human or otherwise. Andell comes alive at night, whispered mutterings from strange children who descend from

air vents, living there for God knows how long. Other times I saw apparitions, including a toddler, the sight of whom made my stomach growl with an insatiable hunger that hurt just to contemplate. She stared at me with pleading eyes as I slunk away from her open door. I might have been tempted to help her, were it not for the sight of the moon peering through her translucent image. And yet, despite all of this, I somehow made it to the 14th floor alive. Only, you know, it was there at the final hurdle. So close to safety that I came across something out of my worst nightmare, a woman stood outside my apartment door, silent, pale, dirt-covered fingernails. It was all too often I'd open my door and find muddy impressions on the floor made by bare feet.

Now I knew who left them every night. I couldn't see her face from where I hid, but something about her seemed profoundly familiar. When she finally turned towards me, I remembered. I recognized her, even though most of her face was missing. It was the philosopher's wife. He had succeeded, it seemed, but I couldn't imagine at what god-awful price, because the woman who stared at me had clearly weathered some years in the grave. It was only the poor lighting and her long hair that covered up just how bad a state she

was in. A lipless grin stared back at me below sunken cheek. bones and hollow eye sockets, and yet I could tell that in another life she had been beautiful, which only made the sight all the more gut-wrenching. My darling! She whispered, and there was something about her voice that I found hard to stay sane in the face of. I don't know why.

Over a decade in that place, and I'd bore witness to living nightmares, but it was this walking corpse that pushed me to my limits. The inescapable feeling of loss waved me down, and without realizing it, I found myself taking steps toward her even as my knees buckled. By the time I reached her, I crawled until I could clutch her grimy, icy leg. That was the last thing I remember before I woke up in my bed the following morning. Everything seemed normal, so completely undane that I could have written the whole thing off as a bad nightmare, but there were footprints leading from my bed to the door.

And later on, I found the fisherman's things as much as he left them. Although, when I finally reeled his line in, I found the loaers gone and replaced with bits and pieces of a man who'd first set them up. I threw it all into the water below and decided it would be best to forget him. Every now and again, of course, I can't help but check my peephole at night. I never did that before, but now I do. I see her every single time. She looks sad.

It hurts me to think of her out there. It ought to be terrifying, but it's more like someone's ripped out my stomach and heart and let all my insides fall out of the bottom. Each time I see her, I wonder what exactly it was he did to bring her back. He leaves only one hint, a final letter, I think. It's not like he dated them. In it, he says he would give everything to have her in his arms once more. only his life, but everything he has already lived.

Every sunset, every good dream, every nightmare, every victory, every loss, every little memory that makes him who he is, he'd give it all up just to save her. Sometimes I wonder about him, figuring we'd probably be about the same age. I'd like to think back and imagine what it would have been like for the two of us to meet as young men, but for some reason whenever I try to remember what my life was like before before I came to this city, before I woke up with that coat pulled over me? Well, I don't know. It's just hard.

That's all. It's almost like there's nothing there, like something reached in and took all the years away. I guess it's just one of those things I'm better off not dwelling on.