The Dark Somnium - You Saw Something You Shouldn't Have

Episode Date: June 16, 2024

This Creepypasta scary story is from the nosleep subreddit, written by Brandon Faircloth, This is part of his interconnected universe of stories. Make sure to check out the authors original post and show them some support!Checkout the authors pages:Website: https://verastahl.com/Books: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Brandon+Faircloth&ref=is_sSubreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Verastahl/Youtube:  @verastahl7669 You Saw Something You Shouldn't Have: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/8475c3/you_saw_something_you_shouldnt_have/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I work as in-house legal counsel at a medium-sized, pretty profitable real estate company based in the southeast. I've been an attorney for nearly 10 years, and the closest I've come to a courtroom is when I go to the courthouse to do land title searches. I've been married for eight years, and we have a four-year-old little boy. I say all this to you so you have some idea that I have a good but pretty ordinary life. I don't have strange hobbies or friends. I don't typically go outside the normal boundaries of my day-to-day existence to meet odd people or experience dangerous things. But last Tuesday, I woke up to a strange text message.

My alarm was set for 7 a.m., but my phone buzzed at 6.40, and it stirred me out of sleep enough that I checked it. It said, you saw something you shouldn't have. Being half asleep, I kind of stared at it for a minute, trying to figure out what I had seen before the overall weirdness of the message dawned on me. First of all, the sender was blank. No name, no number, no symbols, no indication that there were blank spaces like someone had hit a space bar repeatedly, and did it take in the input as characters. I couldn't even highlight anything in the sender space. Second, the font on the message was different. Not like a different

font than normal, but there were several letters that shifted noticeably higher or lower than the letters around them in a given word. Third, I haven't seen anything. Aside from going to work, a parent-teacher conference, and out to pick up a pizza, I can't think of anywhere I've even gone in the week prior to that message. And I sure haven't seen anything weird or criminal or whatever. I show it to my wife, and she just laughs it off, says it's probably some marketing thing or maybe a wrong number.

That seems like a reasonable possibility, so I push it aside. Two nights later, last Thursday, I started having bad dreams. When I was little, I used to have night terrors. I'd wake my brother up screaming my head off, and it got so bad that even though my parents couldn't really afford it, they took me to a sleep clinic for a few days when I was eight. I don't remember what help they really gave me, but I know it stopped or I grew out of it. And, aside from the occasional normal nightmare, I never had any problems since. But this dream, while it was unpleasant to some degree, didn't feel like a nightmare or even a dream.

It felt very real and strangely mundane. I was at a dimly lit library, going through old books, and while I can't say what I was looking for, I know I felt a growing sensation of frustration and unease that it wasn't there. When I woke up, instead of feeling relieved, I felt panicked, and in my sleep-addled stupor, I tried to force myself back to sleep. But, of course, that never works. After a few minutes, my phone buzzed. It was another message in the one-sided conversation from the mystery sender.

You saw something you shouldn't have, and you need to stop before your life. The message stopped there. But there was a photo attached. It was a dark picture of a man squatting down in an eye. aisle, peering intently at a row of faded books on a low and dusty shelf. The heavy metal bookshelves and long aisle made it clear that it was a library, and while the picture was at a bad angle and poorly shot, I could tell it was me. Not me from any library I'd actually ever been in, but me from my dream.

I felt sick as the idea bloomed and took root in me, and I considered waking my wife to show her, but something in me resisted the impulse. Maybe it was fear that she would look at me with worry or worse sadness and fear in her eyes. I don't know, but I haven't told her yet. I haven't told her about the last of it either. The dreams have continued. Me at some strange place I consider home in the dream. Me at a restaurant.

Me walking through some unknown town on a stormy afternoon with patches of hail coming down intermittently, thudding against an umbrella with a heavy, wrought metal hamletters. All these things seem real, and I wake in a strange panic. No more messages for the last few days, though, and while I've grown to dread and hate my phone when it buzzes, my hope was that whatever strangeness has been happening was fading, and would eventually take the dreams with it. This morning I found a coin on my nightstand. I call it a coin because it is a small flat disk in the shape of a coin, and with a heft

as though it was made of metal. its surface is not metal. It seems to be some kind of modelled grey leather or scales, almost like shark skin. But it is solid and sturdy, and it has some kind of embossing. But it is hard to make out due to the thing's color and texture, and it's probably my imagination, but it feels like it's warm. The message buzzed through a few minutes later. You saw something you shouldn't have, and you need to stop before your life is consumed. I think I need help. I just don't know what kind.

Has anyone experienced anything like this before? I don't know what's going on, and I don't think the message is finished yet. Please respond if you know anything. I appreciate the responses, both public and private. Some helpful insight and suggestions. I've considered trying to text back, but I didn't at first out of concern it was a fishing scam, and later because I was honestly scared and wanted to ignore it, hoping it would go away. Worried it might provoke a reaction.

But it is good advice, and I will try. My wife is taking our son to her parents tomorrow, so I'll wait and try it when I'm alone, just in case. I do know I'm not imagining the text, though. Both my wife and a guy I'm friends with at work read them too. I haven't shown them the coin yet. I don't know. Anyway, thank you again. And I'll post an update in the next few days.

My son is gone. I don't know how else to say it or how else to start this. And I don't know what the point of any of this is at this point. But I also feel like this is the only place I can really talk and not sound crazy. Even if it's just because everyone here thinks it's just a story I'm telling. When I say he's gone, my beautiful, smart, funny boy Luke, that is what I mean. Not kidnapped, not run off, not missing. As far as I can tell, he has been obliterated from this world entirely.

After my first post the other day, I took to heart some advice I received and decided I would try responding to the text messages. I was going to wait until Thursday because I knew my wife and son would be leaving to spend a few days with her parents. Not because of all of this, you understand, just a visit that's been planned for the past few months. The trip is five hours and to another state, so it doesn't happen often. but I saw no reason for them not to go this time, especially when no strangeness had seemed

to touch them yet, and I was about to do something that might provoke some unknown response. So yesterday morning I woke up at 6.30, thinking I'd get up early and have breakfast with them before I went to work, as they would have already left before I got home that night, and I wouldn't see them until Sunday. When I stepped out of our bedroom, I saw Loops' door closed. This was strange because we never closed that door. so that we can hear him and keep a better eye on him. But I figured he'd just shut it and was either playing or still asleep.

I knocked and then opened the door, but it wasn't his room. It was the same room, but with no sight of Luke in it. Where his bed had been, there was an elliptical machine with clothes hanging off of it. Instead of a collection of armymen and tanks on the floor, there were boxes of books and an old TV. The room was not full, but there was no sign of recent movement of objects. to or from the room. I even thought and looked at the walls for thumbtack holes where Luke's posters had been hung, but the walls were unmarked and covered with old faded paint. You need to understand that two weeks ago I would have left the room immediately, assuming

I had made a mistake or was going crazy, and would have sought the right room or some kind of help, but now I'm already fearful I'm going insane or that something large and terrible is coming for me. I take more care to look and consider, to see if reality is consistent with what I'm perceiving, so it was only after I went through the room thoroughly and found no sign of my boy that I checked the others, and it was only after I searched everywhere upstairs that I began looking for my wife. It seems odd to me in retrospect that I didn't think she would be gone too.

Maybe I had some dim animal sense of her presence in the house, or maybe I was just too overwhelmed to process any more at the moment. In any case, there she was, eating a bowl of cereal at the bar that divides our kitchen and living room. She gave me a sleepy smile at first, but it quickly faded as she saw my expression and heard what I was saying. Where's Luke? Who?

Luke. I tried to keep my voice even, but I could hear my fear and rage creeping in. Luke, our son, where is he? What happened to his room? Why are you looking confused? I swear she looked genuinely concerned as she stood up and came towards me. Honey, you need to calm down. I think you had another weird dream.

One where we had a child, I guess. We don't have any children. At least not yet. I was already shaking my head as she spoke. No, no, no, you're lying. You're under someone's control. We have a child. His name is Luke.

He's going to be five in June. He's... I started crying at that point. And when she reached out to hold me, I didn't pull away. We kept talking for the next couple of hours, during which she showed me photo albums, social media, emails that all either contained no trace of Luke or actual references to us not having kids yet.

I agreed to go to a psychologist immediately, and my wife began making calls. But the quickest I could be seen on a non-emergency basis was this coming Monday. And I got her to agree that making this an emergency was jumping the gun, especially with what it could do to my career or bar license. She said she needed to go into town in the afternoon, and I told her to go, that I was okay, that it was probably just stress and bad dreams. In truth, I needed her to go, so I had time for what I needed to do. It may be that I'm crazy, but I'd just like to be sure before I commit to that path.

If I got medicated or worse, committed, it may be too late. So she leaves. me waving and assuring her I'll stay right there. And ten minutes later, I'm in my car. I'd like to say that I lied to her to protect her, and that is true, but it isn't the whole truth. I also didn't trust her entirely, and I wanted to verify Luke's existence without her. So I headed to his school.

I talk first to his teacher, and then the administration. I do it in that order intentionally, because I know I'll never get to talk to the teacher if I've already been asking strange questions at the office. I try to ask my questions calmly and with some subtlety, but that's hard to pull off when you're asking about a child that has either been erased or never existed. Both the teacher in the office said Luke was never at the school. They also acted like they didn't even know me.

When I have memories of going to the open house, two conferences and the Christmas program, I sat out in my car afterward for a few minutes, crying and trying to reconcile what I knew and felt with the world I'd woken up in. I was close to giving up and going home before I was missed when something occurred to me. I knew that teacher. Aside from related to Luke, I'd never been to that school or met that teacher. Yet I knew her name, her face, where her room was and what it looked like.

Whatever was happening, it really was happening. Or I was so far gone that I was lying to myself and creating facts. as needed to sustain the delusion. In either case, I made the decision to pursue it further. I texted my wife, apologizing for leaving, telling her not to worry and that I'll be back the following day. I have a long trip ahead of me. Luke was born in the same county my wife is from, the same place I thought they would be

heading to today to visit his grandparents. I had already rejected trying to confirm his existence with my wife's parents for several reasons, but I did want to check the birth records at the county probate court. It was one of the few official ways of verifying a young child's existence, and my hope was that if there was some kind of manipulation going on, maybe it wouldn't go that wide or deep. And yes, I know I sound paranoid and insane at this point, and will more so later on. After sending my wife a long text, I finally sent a text to the unknown number. What happened to my son?

I probably typed and erased 10 different messages before settling on that one. Not too vague or specific, not overly emotional or confrontational. I waited for 10 minutes for a response, but none came. Setting the phone down, I headed out. There was no way I would make it to the probate court before it closed for the day, so I drove slowly, using the time to think. At one point, I stopped and got something to eat at a fast food place, going inside just to get out of the car for a little while.

I sat inside after forcing myself to eat a few bites of a burger that I didn't want when an idea hit me. I had brought that strange coin with me. I didn't really remember picking it up, but I was in a frenzied rush when I left the house. I went back up to the condiment bar in the restaurant and got five packs of sugar, emptying them on the table and spreading them in a thick but even circle a little bigger than the coin. My idea was that I could try pressing the coin into the sugar to see if I could tell anything from the imprint it left behind. I did it on both sides, and on one side there were strange shapes and what might be words

along the edges. But they were faint and nothing I recognized. On the other side, it seemed like there was a picture of something, possibly a whale. I tried to take pictures with my phone, but the flash washed it out and no flash was too dark. I gave up and went on the road again. By 10.30, I was close to the area and was going to look for a place to park for the night, having found the idea of getting a room with my card somewhat terrifying, as though someone would find me and capture me in my sleep.

I had already gotten money out of the ATM before heading out that afternoon, and it needed to last me a while for food and gas, but speaking of gas, I needed some. I'd been so preoccupied that I'd let it get down to the fuel light, and the only gas station within the next 30 miles was lit up, but closed. The sign on the door said back by midnight, and while I had no guarantee it was true, my stupidity had left me with a few other options. So I sat and waited. The attendant did come back a few minutes before midnight has promised, but something else happened before she got there. I'd gotten out of the car a second time to stretch my legs and wake myself up, pacing the lit parking lot of the gas station and peering out into the surrounding dark.

In the distance, I could see the dim, shadowy shape of a couple of houses, partially lit by three amber streetlights that seemed to have been haphazardly placed to poorly light this spot of the road. Everything was so still and quiet. It felt like I was the only thing living in some dead or frozen world. Then I saw movement in the distance. It was at the edge of the pool of light thrown down by the farthest streetlight, dipping in and out of the dark. I couldn't see much, and my first thought was.

that it was a large plastic bag of some sort being blown by the wind, except it didn't move right. And there was no wind. I would just catch glimpses of it, light and dark, shiny and rippling, several feet above the ground and bobbing like an obscene balloon tugged by an invisible child. I ran back to my car and locked myself inside and was ready to leave gas or no gas, but when I looked again, it was gone. When the girl came and unlocked the door, I thrust $40 at her and pumped the gas as quickly as possible,

getting back out on the road too fast but maintaining control of the wheel. I didn't stop until I reached the courthouse, and I parked nearby for the night. My plan had been to sleep in the car, but there was no sleep to be had at this point. I kept watching for that shape and recording this. If I'm able, I will post this today, which is Friday. This has become a journal of sorts for me, and I said, still hold out hope it may lead to help, but at least it will be a record if nothing else. I've had a lot happen in the past few days. I'm currently using the Wi-Fi in the lobby of a motel I

stayed at last night, and I've been aimlessly wandering since Saturday, never staying at the same place more than one night, but I think that's over. It's not accomplishing anything, and I'm very tired. I looked back at what I had posted last, and it was all accurate. The last few days have made me feel sure that I'm either so insane that I'm likely in a padded room right now, rocking in my own piss and shit, dreaming all this up, including recording this for all of you, or it's real. If it is real, I think there's a very good chance that I'm in hell. In which case, would that make it real or just an imagined torment?

I don't know, but I find the semantics of it pretty funny at this point. But back to the story, right? Gotta tell the story. And I do. I feel compelled, and when I'm getting it out, I feel more at peace than any other time. Like I'm lancing a boil. Enough of mine whining. On with it.

I went back into the probate court that afternoon and met with Miss Mercer, who was pleasant and helpful enough. Though she had no real help to give. She said that the paper records were all transferred into their database back in 2002, which, of course, covered Luke, who was born in 2000. No sign of him. I tried every search parameter, but no luck. So then I start asking about doing a search of the physical records. Even when they put those records into the computer system, they have to keep the originals

of vital records in most states. The woman was again as helpful as she could be, saying that I was in luck because she had records going back to 1982 in the courthouse. Though they were about to transfer everything up to 2015 to an off-site story. facility in the next few weeks to make more room. After that, paper copies from the originals would take a written request and a few days' turnaround, but again, she pointed out, unironically, today was my lucky day. She led me into a cavernous room filled with deed books and landplats, which made me realize I'd never even called into work the day before or today.

Pushing the thought aside, I followed her through another door to a smaller, more densely pack room full of file cabinets. She showed me how the filing system worked and offered to help further, but I told her I could work on it myself. I planned to be thorough, so I made up a more elaborate story that I was doing genealogical research, and Luke was a distant cousin. This made it easier to explain that I would need some time to look through records for not only him, but any other lost relatives. In truth, I just wanted to be alone with the records and make sure it was not misfiled if I didn't find his birth certificate right away. Miss Mercer nodded cheerfully and meandered away,

heading to a nearby break room where another woman was apparently eating some variety of office birthday cake. I began searching, and it took little time to see it wasn't there. No sign it ever had been. I expanded my search to the entire drawer, then the two drawers before and after, going through each certificate individually. It was monotonous, But as I searched, I began picking up on pieces of the conversation between Mercer and the cake lady.

They were talking about the funeral Mercer had been to that morning. It was for a man who had run a local barber shop for a number of years. A man who Miss Mercer clearly thought a lot of, and had even dated briefly when they were both just out of high school. There was some wistful talk of him being kind and handsome, but what caught my attention was their tone of voice as they spoke. It carried not just sadness or regret, but it carried not just sadness or regret, but a thick cord of fear.

At first, I didn't understand, as it was in Congress with what they were saying. Then they started discussing how he died. The man had been found out behind his barber shop one morning earlier this week, having apparently been attacked the night before. No one knew what had attacked him, but his entire head was riddled with tiny holes, face, scalp, even under his jaw. The cake woman, whose brother was apparently the local coroner, said that they were like teeth marks, but long needle teeth, and from all angles, and from nothing he had ever seen.

In any case, the damage done had been extensive. His head had been crushed and punctured severely, and this last part had not been discussed publicly. While the injuries would have killed him, he had actually died fairly slowly from suffocation, possibly while still being bitten. At that time, the woman looked out at me, and I realized I had stopped sneaking glances and was just staring at them. I smiled and nodded, pretending to go back to my search.

But after whispering to each other for a moment, they headed back up to the front. After they were gone, I pushed the story from my mind and headed back into the drawers. After an hour, I gave up on finding Luke. I wanted to cry, but I felt too hollowed out and tired to actually do it. Turning to head back up to the front and away from the courthouse, I had a thought. My wife was born in this county too, back in 1984. I didn't know why I felt like I needed to check her too until I did. There was no birth certificate for her either.

I searched the entire drawer, a new wellspring of panic rising in my chest. Trying to catch my breath, I pulled out my phone. First, I checked my text messages. She had sent me three the day before asking me to come home, but each time I had sent a text back just saying I was okay. and I would see her when I got back. But since then, nothing. I'd assumed she had just given up for the moment, but now I wasn't sure.

I called her cell phone three times and the home phone twice, but there was no answer it either. They just rang. I almost ran from the place, but got control of myself, and waited long enough to ask Miss Mercer to run a computer check for my wife before I left. Again, nothing. I already felt myself growing numb. Thanking her, I left the office. The trip back home was uneventful, and I honestly don't remember most of it.

My head in a dull fog. I felt like I was waiting to read the report saying I had terminal cancer after the doctor had already given me the bad news. My wife was gone. Anything further was just going to be confirmation. I pulled up at the house and felt a rueful lack of surprise that there was no sign of my wife's car. My key worked.

The house was still mine, apparently. But there was no sign of my family or their belongings. I checked the house thoroughly, more out of some need for completeness than out of any real hope, and found nothing. Two hours later, exhausted in every sense, I passed out on the sofa. I found myself in another one of those two real dreams. I was walking down a dark alleyway in some unknown rain-soaked city. my face cold as wind whipped past me, bringing with it the spicy scent of old decay. I was headed towards the bright spot in the alley, a neon sign hanging above a door that

appeared to belong to some kind of bar or club. There was a bouncer at the door, a thick-necked man with a collapsible baton held casually in his meaty left hand. Without thinking about it, I pulled a coin from my pocket, holding it in my palm for him to see. It was the strange coin I had found, or its twin. In the dream, I saw and felt it pulse and shift on my palm slightly, though my dream self did not scream or throw it away. After a moment of studying it, the bouncer nodded and let me pass through the door. I woke up suddenly at that point, and I saw it was still dark.

My phone had gone dead, but after charging it for a few minutes, it told me it was actually Saturday night around 9 p.m. I had slept for over 20 hours. There were no missed calls or texts and no signs of anyone coming in while I was out. I was alone. I took a shower, hoping it might clear my head and tired of my growing old sweat stink. I was still numb, but I could tell that I hadn't eaten in over a day. And so I microwaved some soup and sipped on it as I looked out the French doors that went to our back patio and the yard beyond. I stood there, staring for a few moments, before I saw the thing floating there.

It was the same thing I had seen at the gas station, or something like it. There was very little moonlight that night, but we have a security pole light that illuminates the backyard very well. I could see the thing coming toward me slowly, still 30 yards out, but slowly undulating back and forth as it lazily crossed the distance. I've thought a lot about how to describe this thing, and I still still. don't know. In some ways, it reminds me of a giant pale jellyfish. In other ways, it looks like a semi-opaque dry cleaning bag given obscene life. If it has a head, it is the roundish

mass that moves it forward, a ball of pale and largely translucent flesh that floats in the air. At the center of this mound is a riving ball of darkness. It reminded me of pictures I'd seen of a ball of snakes mating. If this thing has a center, a nucleus, a face, this cancerous core is it. But that is not the entirety of it. Trailing back from it, partially hanging, partially floating by some unknown suspension, are more long strands of the same pale, glistening meat. Like a comet's tail, it slowly follows behind the mound, shifting on unknown currents

as smaller strands occasionally dart out as though tasting the air. I stared at it for at least ten seconds before I was able to move. I found myself wondering if it might be filled with long, needle teeth. Then I ran. It was moving extremely slowly towards the house, so I took half a minute to put on shoes, grab my wallet, phone, and keys, and get my jacket from where I had dropped it when I came home the day before. Then I was out the door, in my car, and heading away. I looked in my rearview mirror, but I never saw it follow.

That was five days ago. I've been running ever since. Motel to motel, having given up any pretense of not using cards or worrying about being tracked, just trying to stay away from whatever that thing was, whatever it might want. I called my job once, and to my lack of surprise, they didn't know who I was. Yet my cards still worked. All my online accounts, everything that does not rely on people's. seems to be purring along just fine.

I've been largely on autopilot these past few days, but that changed last night. I saw it again outside my motel, only for a moment, and it didn't come closer. But I knew that it knew I was there just the same. So I give up. I'm going home. It'll either get me, or it won't, or maybe, I'll go ahead and kill myself if I can get up the stomach to do it. Actually, it'll probably depend on how scared I get, because despite everything, despite feeling

utterly used and hollowed out, I'm still terrified. This will probably be my last entry. If I survive somehow, I'll post again. If I don't, well, you'll know. Thanks for listening to all this. I feel so alone now, and it means so much to be able to talk about this. Even in such a strange format, even if it amounts to screw. dreaming out into the dark.

Thank you. By the time I got home Thursday evening, I had decided I wanted the thing to come. Whether I wanted it to come back to finish me or so I could attempt to kill it would change moment to moment. But the idea of fighting back had built slowly throughout the day and remained a constant. I was tired of being a victim to whatever this all was of having things taken away from me. Thoughts of suicide faded more and more, in no small part due to the word. of encouragement I've received here. And while I was still resigned to the fate that I was likely

going to die, I decided I still had a little more will to try and resist left in me. So, of course, nothing happened that night. When I arrived home, I checked the house again thoroughly, and it was untouched since my last visit. No sign of my family or their belongings. Now, beyond the initial shock of all that had happened and slightly better rested, I had more time to study the pattern left behind by their erasure. Not only were all their belongings gone, but there were other things gone or different, too. My son had done a handprint in clay back in October for a school project. He had given it to me, and since then it had been displayed in the kitchen, up against the back splash on a small stand meant for a photo or a baseball card or something.

It and the stand were gone. I had a long, waxed raincoat that my wife had given me two years ago, Very expensive and nice, though I rarely actually wore it. I checked our coat closet, and it was gone as well. Even things like furnishings were different. If it was something I had bought or we bought together, it was still there, but other pieces of furniture or hangings that she had bought alone or had before we were together were either absent or replaced by something unfamiliar to me, as though to fill the hole left by the other object's absence.

My bank account was another strange anomaly. As I had previously mentioned, my job apparently no longer exists, and I have no indication of some other job that had taken its place. No business card, no strange contacts in my phone, etc. So I looked on my account to see how much money was left and where it was coming from. I had plenty of money in there, more than I usually do, in fact, and when I look at the deposits, It shows a direct deposit of close to $7,000 once a month for as far back as records go online. The name attributed to the deposits was just a sequence of letters, numbers, and symbols,

which, if they have some meaning, don't mean anything to me and could well be random. I considered calling the bank the next day to try to learn more about my benefactor, but just the idea of it seems exhausting. I'm ready to be done with all of this, so I set aside my phone, pick up the softball bat I had recovered earlier in the same closet that was now missing my fancy, rarely worn raincoat and go to the backyard. For the next hour, I roam around outside and in, calling out to the terrible thing that is haunting me, demanding that it confront me.

I can feel some ever-shifting mixture of fear, anger, and despair coating my tongue in my words. By the end, I am more begging and pleading than anything else, but nothing. Fine. It'll come in its own time. I go back in, eat something, and then go to sleep. I can't bear to sleep in our bed, or even stay in our bedroom for any length of time. It's too sharp a reminder of my wife's absence or non-existence. So I set up on the sofa again downstairs, and before long, I'm deep asleep. I have long, strange dreams that night, and while they bore the same texture of realness as the other dreams,

since the text had begun, I don't remember any details of them. What I remember instead is the sudden and sharp pain in my right hand that woke me. I tried to sit up in shock of the pain, but my hand was immobile down near the floor, so the result was a protesting flare of pain in my shoulder as I spun and fell off the sofa onto the carpet. I caught myself on all fours, my gaze at a good level to see what was eating my right hand. It was another of those things. I don't know what to call them, but this one was much smaller.

The small, glistening bulk of its body was spread across my hand like a glove or mitten up to just past my wrist. At the time, I was in such pain and terror that very little cohesive thought was occurring, so bear with me. As much of my description is based upon restructuring these events upon reflection. The dark ball of snake mass I had seen on the larger one was here too, but spread out over my hand, like an inner layer to the whore that was trying to consume me. Looking at it now, I guess that's where all the teeth come from. There were so many teeth, needles boring down into

my flesh, plucking at my tendons and scraping at my bones. As bad as that was, the overwhelming sense of pressure was somehow worse. And though the creature was competing with itself as to what method would destroy my hand first, when I looked at it for the first time, I swear it paused and considered me, though it had no eyes or face I could see. Then it went back to work, and I began to scream. I couldn't move my hand because it had wrapped parts of itself securely to one of the legs of the sofa, and my first attempts at pulling a freeze just caused fresh pain with no progress. I looked around for a weapon, but saw none within reach. I did notice where I had left the strange, leathery coin on the coffee table, however. The coin had burst open from the inside while

I slept. Apparently, this thing had been inside the entire time, but that information wouldn't help me now. I needed to kill it. My hand was beginning to go numb, and I knew I had little time left to save it. If it could be saved at all. Straining with the effort, I partially stood and began moving towards the kitchen, because while the thing couldn't be dislodged from the sofa, the sofa wasn't attached to anything. As I began pulling it and the sofa along slowly, it bit down and crushed my hand more, and I felt sure it would just burst, leaving me with a bloody, ragged stump. But I kept pulling, my screams having died out in my concentration and effort. I made it across the living room, then into the edge of the kitchen. I thought about the

knife, but I was afraid I would just hurt my hand, or it would just dislodge and crawl up the knife to my left hand before I could drop it. I began pulling out drawers and found an old trigger lighter that I sometimes used on the grill outside. Saying a frantic prayer, I pulled the trigger. Nothing. Again, and a small flame appeared at the end of the lighter. I held it tighter and stuck the flame to the creature's flesh. Dark gray smoke began trailing up from the side of the flame, and there was a terrible smell that made me gag. But that was all. No reaction from the creature at all. The pain was fading away now, but that somehow made me more afraid, not less. I cast my eyes around for some new weapon, but saw nothing other than a small cow salt shaker

that must have been one of the replacement objects, because I had never seen it before. I suddenly thought of garden slugs, and having no other ready options, I picked up the shaker and turned it over. Salt poured out, and this time the reaction was immediate. The milky flesh turned black where the salt landed, seeming to stick and burn the creature as it began trying to release my hand. I put my right foot down on it to hold it in place as I shook out more, rubbing my hand along the floor to catch salt crystals that missed their mark initially.

The creature gave a violent shudder and then went still, aside from the continued withering of its flesh. I slid my hand free from its carcass and continued to shake salt with the other, until it had melted into a small black wad of flesh that began to crack and crumble into flakes before my eyes. I sat, staring at the remnants of the monster for what seemed like five minutes. minutes, making sure it did not somehow reconstruct itself before turning to look at the hand I was holding cradled in my lap.

There was no blood or leaking fluid of any kind. Instead, my hand looked slightly swollen, but otherwise normal aside from the hundreds of small holes that now adorned nearly every millimeter of my flesh. Even the skin on the sides of my fingers had holes, as well as multiple holes through each fingernail. In places where I could clearly see veins, there were holes there as well, but still no sign of blood. And no pain. No feeling at all, actually.

My hand just flopped limply on its wrist without even a tingle or some phantom sensation. Trying to decide the best course of action, I looked at my phone and realized it was 2am on Saturday morning. I had been asleep for close to 30 hours. I considered going to the emergency room for a moment, but hesitated. I knew when the state I was in, I would likely seem strange at best, and totally insane at worst, and for the moment I seemed okay physically, unless it had injected me with some poison, which a hospital likely couldn't help anyway.

Ultimately, I decided to just go to the doctor the next day, unless things got worse. While I slept no more that night, my hands stayed the same, and nothing else happened. This morning I went to the doctor. Since it was Saturday, I wound up having to go to a doctor. emergency wound clinic across town instead of my normal doctor. If I have a normal doctor anymore. But apparently my insurance card still works, and within half an hour I was back in a room getting examined.

The doctor on call was a pleasant young woman who seemed very knowledgeable, but was also very curious about how the injury occurred. Rather than try to make up some elaborate lie that would probably seem implausible, I just told her that I didn't know, that I woke up outside my house and my hands. was just like that. This led her to check to see if I had some head injury or blood pressure spike that had caused me to pass out. But ultimately, she couldn't say much beyond that it appeared I had severe nerve damage,

which she called neuromysis. Based on my clinical signs and the wounds I had, she took x-rays, and she saw a small fracture in my ring finger that she splinted. But she said that anything more in depth would need to be done at a hospital. I told her I didn't think I needed a hospital. but I would follow up with my doctor soon. She protested, suggesting that such a strange and severe injury should be checked more thoroughly than she could accomplish at the clinic, and right away.

I thanked her and left. I drove home, trying to avoid looking at my right hand, both because it looked disgusting and because it was a constant reminder of the night before. When I got inside, I wrapped it in a bandage, not because it needed it, but just to avoid looking at the pockmarked skin. My goal had been to stay away most of the day, monitoring my hand and watching out for another attack. In spite of myself, by noon I had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When I woke, my nose was assaulted by a terrible, rotten stench. I immediately looked at my bandaged hand, which was soggy and laden with some brownish green bile. Stifling a wretch, I ran to the kitchen sink and pulled off the wrappings. Running my hand under the water there, I saw there was no sign. of anything oozing from my hand. It was as though the holes had been turned on like some filthy faucet and then turned back off again. I washed my hand several times and then dried it carefully, feeling new panicked sadness at the wrongness of it dangling at the end of my arm like such dead meat. I felt tears coming to my eyes and I moved back to the living room, noticing the pen

and paper on the ground for the first time. It was an old legal notepad that seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't recall from where or when. Sitting nearby was a ballpoint pen of the type we kept around the house to make notes or write checks. Both had light drying smudges of the same icker that had been seeping through my bandages, and the pad had writing on it. I recognized my handwriting, and I'm right-handed. Based on that in the smudges, I feel sure I wrote these words with my dead hand while I slept.

I don't know what it means, but what I'm right-handed. What the notepad said was this. The magpie song. There's a flock of magpies round me, round me. They soar as high as you see, you see. They took my eyes, but fairly paid, for I rest in their eyes as even trade. Spanning the land and the sea, the sea,

There's a flock of blackbirds in flight, in flight. They move to and fro every night, every night. They took my ears, beak sharp and rye, but it favors me with each sobbing cry. Found in the spaces away from the light, the light, there's a flock of crows crying loud, crying loud. They cast shadows great as clouds, a shroud. They took my tongue and so my voice. By then I was strong, they had no choice.

It's with their pink darts I taste the tears. The tears, there's a sky full of rooks, and it's me, it's me. See the remains in the field I used to be, used to be. But now I move free, still young and hungry, still reaching out into the void. I see you, shining there, your spirit unaware. As I finished reading it, my phone buzzed. It was a text message. It said,

You saw something you shouldn't have, but now you will see and tell much, much more. I will plan for this to be my final entry, at least for now. If I post further, it will be due to some major change or update, or if I have some new writing I need to share. God, help me, but I don't know if telling such things is a good thing or not. I need time to think. Thank you all for your support. I hope this post finds you well.

I've started dreaming again. Since my hand was attacked, I sleep more and more. At first I would sleep for abnormally long periods, but it would be offset by long periods of wakefulness. Over time that is changing, and I am losing more and more time. The only potentially positive side effects of this is that I'm dreaming again, and I feel these dreams are key to something. I don't remember much of them, just spending time in a world that are similar to ours, but in very different at the same time. As I walk there, I see cities, people, the features of a modern world, but I see dark and strange things too. I remember the alley bar from my earlier dream. I think my dream self visits there often. It's an odd and lively place with trappings of this mysterious

other place all around, symbols on the doors, strange mutterings from a group hunched at a corner table and music that sounds like something that would be playing at a cat diner in hell. But in the end, a bar is a bar, and here I can tell people know me. Most seem to respect or fear me, even though I am wholly ignorant as to why. But it feels real, and compared to my waking life recently, it feels good. I sat up at the bar, order a drink from the short, grinning bartender who approaches and decide to make most of this profoundly lucid dream. That's when the good-natured buzz of the crowd died.

Sensing, as much as hearing it, I turned to see an older man entering the bar. He was unremarkable at first, well-dressed, but not flashy, nodding to people as he entered, but sang very little as he threaded his way to a booth in the corner. Yet I felt the room tense as he moved through it. I tried to discreetly study him for the reason why, but it wasn't until he was. he was moving out of my field of vision that I saw it. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see something much like the head that had attacked my hand floating behind him, its tendrils wrapping tightly around his limbs and head. I had to fight to keep from crying out, slowly turning back to my drink

and trying to breathe. The thing was much larger than the creature that attacked me, or even the one I had seen in my backyard, and rather than being largely translucent and flowing, it was a dark, smoky, gray, with sharper edges at irregular intervals along the flesh of its bulbous core. Thinking about it now, I think those might have been more teeth from its dark center, grown so long they pierced its own skull. I sat paralyzed for several moments, analyzing the glimpse I had and trying to decide what to do next, and that's when I woke up. For the first time in days, I wanted to go back to sleep to try and see more.

Right or wrong, I've grown to think. feel that my dream place is as or more real than this life, and that some part of myself is fighting to show it to me, rather than having me decay in some dreamless slumber. But sleep was gone for the moment. I checked my phone and saw it had nearly been 26 hours since I was last awake. The strangest thing about my increasingly odd life is that there are no real rough edges. As I've mentioned before, I have money deposited in my account from some unknown source. I knew has either been erased or doesn't know me anymore.

I still eat and drink, but even if I sleep a whole day, I never see signs of soiling myself or being overly hungry or dehydrated when I wake up. I feel like everything has been pruned away so I can primarily sleep and sometimes write these strange things with my corrupted hand. I worry there will come a time when I don't wake up at all. So I go out, I go to the store, trying to avoid the strange looks my glovering. hand receives. It would be easier, if not for the mild distaste I see when people encounter me, like they smell something rotten, even before they see my hand, even when I know it's clean.

I dress largely the same, and I'm not poorly groomed, yet I feel like some dirty vagrant who is unwelcome as I push a shopping cart down the aisle. I don't even think they know they're doing it. It's like some deep animal part of them knows I'm wrong now. I go to the park sometimes, and that's better, especially when it's empty. I have figured out that I can stave off sleep a while by staying in a public place. I think the dead hand doesn't want me passing out in public, but if I stay too long, my normally limp hand will begin to throb painfully and with increasing urgency until I go home and go back to sleep.

I feel like a prisoner, but I haven't given up. I'm trying to find any connection between what has happened to me and the writings my hand produces. So far, what I've managed to learn is that there is a tattersall security, some low-profile outlet that does mainly government contracts, so that might be a connection with FM Rider. And based on some forum discussions I found, there has been a strange increase in the amount of door graffiti in certain parts of the southern and central U.S. And out of the few photo examples I found online, several looked like what was described in

It's not a window, it's a door. Finally, I haven't found another writing yet, or at least not a narrative, but two days ago I did find something I had done, or the hand had done, while I was asleep. It was a drawing of a cave, or that's what it seemed to be at least. Below it was just one word. Mystery. I don't know what any of this means yet, or if I ever will, but I will keep trying. And I wanted to update you on things during the brief window of wakefulness.

I have. If I can, I will write again, and I hope this finds you well.