The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S11E25

Episode Date: November 18, 2018

It's episode 25 of Season 11 - Our Season 11 finale. We have three tales about vexing vagrants, horrifying heritage, and lethal literati. "The Boy in the Alley"‡ written by C.K. Walker and performed by Nikolle Doolin & Jeff Clement. (Story starts around 00:02:50) "The Family Strega"¤ written by Maxwell Malone and performed by Addison Peacock & Nikolle Doolin. (Story starts around 00:25:10) "The Public Domain"† written by Henry Galley and performed by Jessica McEvoy & Atticus Jackson & Addison Peacock & Erika Sanderson & Peter Lewis & David Ault & Andy Cresswell & Penny Scott-Andrews. (Story starts around 01:13:30) Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about The Grey Rooms Podcast   Click here to learn more about C.K. Walker   Click here to learn more about Maxwell Malone   Click here to learn more about Henry Galley   Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone Audio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡ & Jesse Cornett¤ "The Public Domain" illustration courtesy of Jörn Audio program ©2018 - Creative Reason Media Inc. - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This audio program presents horror which is frightening and disturbing. You left us into your mind at your own. The sunlight fades to darkness. The frightful tales creep into your mind. It's time to give it to because tonight there will be. Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. It's the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us.

It's our season 11 finale, and we have three tales about vexing vagrants, horrifying heritage, and lethal literati. As we bring season 11 to a close, I want to remind you that we'll still have episodes in between seasons and season past bonus episodes. But if you're looking for some new shows to tantalize your eardrums, might I suggest a new podcast launching on November 30th? The Grey Rooms is a new horror anthology podcast from creator Jason Wilson. And you'll feel right at home in the Grey Roams as they feature stories from many of our great writers like Gemma Amour, S.H. Cooper and Manon Lyset.

Plus some familiar voices like Graham Rowett, who's featured in the pilot episode, The Great War. That's the Grey Roams podcast. Find it on November 30th, where you're wherever you get your podcasts. And so, a big thanks to the casting crew here at No Sleep as another season comes to an end. And thanks to you, dear listeners, for the wonderful support you give us. Make sure to join us on December 9th as Season 12 premieres. And speaking of Season 12, pre-orders for Season Past 12 will begin on December 1st. And so, for the last time this season, let's get out the old.

VCR. Because the tape is in the machine, the stories are ready, so let's press play. In our first tale, we meet a woman who appears to have made an unlikely friend. As shared by author C.K. Walker, the woman discovers a young man who is homeless and living behind her building. Her attempts to help him don't seem to have much effect other than to create a strong bond between them. Performing this tale are Nicole Doolin and Jeff Clement. So remember to be charitable, especially when you see the boy in the alley. I can't tell you how many times I'd seen him. Maybe a hundred times over the last nine months or so. He was just a boy, much younger than me, maybe nine years old if I was forced to guess. Though he could have been older, that's how malnourished.

he was. I didn't know his name and I never asked. Even though I was sure that I knew him as soon as I saw him, I couldn't possibly have. This boy and I would not have run in the same circles. It didn't really matter anyway. He was just the boy in my head. Skinny, gaunt, runt. His hair looked like it hadn't been washed in months and it probably hadn't been. Maybe not even in years. And the boy, he He smelled, too. Stunk, actually. Still, that wasn't his fault, and I did what I could for him. The first time I saw him was in March.

I owed my friend money for a bar tab from spring break. A bar tab, I might add. It got absolutely out of control that night. We were in Miami for the week. Amanda, three of our other friends and me. I kept taking the drinks, but I wasn't the one ordering them. I didn't even want them. I took them to be polite.

Eventually, I drove home by myself because they refused to leave. I didn't want those drinks, but still Amanda wanted me to pay. It had been her card behind the bar. But luckily, she didn't have my schedule for that semester, so she couldn't stock me on campus. She did, however, know where I lived, and sometimes she'd wait in my lobby to catch me and hound me for her $230. I told her I hadn't even wanted the...

the damn drinks and I had left earlier than the rest of our group. Still, she wanted me to pay. I'd left them stranded at the bar without a car. She was pissed. I told her I was drunk and tired and they wouldn't leave. She said that was no excuse. So I owed her the money. Amanda's family is richer than mine, so I don't understand why she put so much energy into getting the $230, but she did. for that reason, and that reason alone, I started using the back door of my complex. I didn't want to be ambushed by Amanda again. It was embarrassing.

The back door was only accessible from the filthy alley behind the building, but I was desperate. I saw him the first day I used the back entrance. He was sitting against the wall, covered in ratty clothing and staring down at his hands. Andy had a little cup with holes in, it said in front of him. You know, the kind you get from casinos and arcades.

This one said Palm Coast Games on it in dark blue. Such a little cup and so empty. I don't know why the boy wasn't out on Main Street, where people could see him and put money in his little holy cup. Maybe he was hiding from someone. Or maybe he just wanted some respite from the sharp spring wind that snaked through the city, tearing coffee cups and train tickets out of frigid fingers. But for whatever reason, that's where he was.

Against the wall in my dirty alley. Hidden away from everyone, including Amanda. Everyone but me. So there we are. Two stowaways from reality, hiding in the filth. I tried to walk by him without looking that first time. But I couldn't help it. It was such a small, scraggly thing.

The boy caught my eye, and, you know, once they look at you, it's so hard to keep on walking by, ignoring them. So he caught me unaware, made eye contact with me, and then watched as I dug into my purse and pulled out the few dollar bills I had. I didn't carry cash very often because cash is dirty. People don't wash their hands or their clothes as often as they should. There are germs over every dollar bill you see. That's the nature of paper currency.

I prefer plastic, to be honest. so I rarely have cash. See? I wasn't lying to Amanda about that. I don't like cash. I never had any when she came by. Hell, I'd barely had enough on me to get the car out of valet that night.

I dropped the few bills into his cup. He didn't say anything, so I didn't either. I kept walking and went upstairs. I slept well that night. It's nice to do something for someone else. When I came back down, the next morning, I used the alley door again. The boy was still there, but the money in his holy cup was gone. We didn't make eye contact that morning, so I just walked by. The boy wasn't

there all the time, but I always tried to have some coins in my purse to drop in his cup for when he was. Just in case we made accidental eye contact. Sometimes I don't think he even wanted it, because he didn't always look up at me. Some days he just stared down at his filthy, mismatched shoes or his grubby hands. He tried to hide them from me, but I saw. I knew he was embarrassed. And as the weeks went on, I noticed he only looked at me for eye contact when he seemed truly desperate. That made me sad. I put more money in his cup when I was feeling sad. That made us both feel better. We were connected that way. Summer rolled in and my boy took to wearing less clothing because of the heat. I'd still bring him spare change when he caught my eye. It was a

sweltering summer, so I even started bringing him the half-empty water bottles that sat in my car during the hottest months. I think he appreciated that, and it made me feel good, too. One time, I even brought one down from my apartment for him. It's supposed to get over 90 today, so here, take this. I haven't even opened it yet. It's cold straight from my fridge. Thanks. Our first words to each other, I felt that blooming connection between us again. A bond growing. I think he felt it too.

But even with that binding thread, that zing of recognition, he never spoke to me again. He never held out his hand. He never even looked at me for more than a handful of seconds. And I rarely saw him trying to make eye contact with anybody else. I think he was just for me. An insane thought, but one I had. He was my boy. But realistically, I knew he wasn't mine.

I knew because my boy wasn't always in the alley. And when he wasn't there, it would bother me. He left me. Where did he go? Where was his family? Did he panhandle for them? Or was he truly homeless? You probably think I should have called someone

or taken him in myself. First of all, I did call someone. They could never find him. He was avoiding authority, they told me. He was hiding. He didn't want to go home or be put in foster care. Whatever waited for him at the end of official processing, he didn't want it.

And he was clever, so he hid. To your second point, I couldn't take him in. I had a one-bedroom apartment, and my friends frequently slept over on my couch, Ouch. It was no place for a child. And finally, you probably think I should have given him more money. Believe me, I wanted to. I didn't have it.

Why do you think I couldn't pay Amanda for the Miami Bar Tab? I had enough to live on. Clothe myself, eat, get coffee, go to the gym, gas, and make my car payments. That's all my parents agreed to pay for. If I was getting a discretionary fund like Amanda, I would have given him more. I would have. But I was broke. So what could I do?

Classes started in September and the weather turned bitter again. My boy had been in the alley for six months now. I had finally paid Amanda back a few weeks before. I didn't have to use the alley anymore, but I did. Because it was something we shared. And someone had to put coins in his cup. The autumn days grew colder and colder. The wind was starting to slip between the buildings and dumpsters and tear through my boy,

trying to rip him away from me just like those train tickets back in March. It caused him to shake and shudder. Then a thunderstorm came. It lasted two days, and my boy didn't spend them in the alley. I don't know where he went. After the storm, things got even colder in the city. Around this time the boy and I began to make eye contact more often and for longer periods. We started to share knowing looks.

His clothing was threadbare. His scraps of blanket were inconsequential to the dropping degrees. We looked at each other sadly. We both knew what was coming. He wouldn't survive the winter. And when our eyes met, we agreed about that. I brought him blankets. You know I did.

I even skipped getting coffee for three days so I could bring him hot cocoa. He used it to warm his hands, but he never drank it. So I started bringing him hot water instead. And croissants. And sometimes those little cake pops. He never ate any of it, but it made me feel better that he had it. I started leaving the back door to my apartment propped open just a little, just in case he wanted to come inside and get warm.

He watched me the first time I did it. You can come inside whenever you want. Sit on the stairs. It's warmer in here. He stared at me, but he never responded. We shared a deep connection, a recognition. We spoke to each other with our eyes. Until we didn't.

I don't think he ever did come inside to get warm. In the beginning of November, my boy stopped making eye contact with me entirely. It broke my heart. I still put quarters in his cup But he never looked up from his mismatched shoes Never spoke to me Or acknowledged me at all

He started sleeping more I would see him two days in a row And the quarters from yesterday would still be in his cup And then he stopped leaving the alley entirely He was there every time I looked for him even at night Maybe he was too cold to travel Maybe he had nowhere to go or maybe he just wanted to be close to me.

So I gave him more blankets, thick ones. Then it snowed, and it snowed again, and again. The temperature plummeted even more, but he was still there, bundled up in my blankets, not making eye contact, not spending the money I gave him. Maybe he knew it was hopeless. Maybe he knew there was a date circled on some celestial, calendar that said, the boy freezes to death today. We both knew it was coming. I started bringing

him hot cocoa again, but he stopped reaching for it. The circled date ended up being the 11th of December, a Thursday. I checked on him before class, brought him hot cocoa, and adjusted his blanket tighter around his shoulders. He wasn't shaking even though it was freezing. I thought that was a good sign. I smiled at him as I left for my film noir class, but he just looked away from me. I frowned. Was our connection slipping? The day itself was bright and sunny for December. It didn't snow. I wasn't worried about him. Because it was such a nice day, I agreed to go out drinking with my friends from AP Soshe. Amanda was there, having forgiven me for the delay in paying her back and the damage to the rental car from that trip. We tied it on tight. I was dressed in a cute green and white striped

skirt and a red sweater. It was festive and I was repping my Christmas spirit. It really wasn't a warm enough outfit for the time of the year. Had I driven my car so I wouldn't have to walk home in the cold. Yes, it looked hella cute. I hardly paid for drinks that night. Between the shots and the dancing and the body heat, I was warm, hot even. I spun, I gyrated, I flirted, and when it got too hot, I dipped outside for a few minutes to sneak a cigarette with Amanda and a random guy. Oh, it was freezing. I could feel it deep in my bones immediately. The sunny day had turned into a blisteringly cold evening. As I shivered out behind the bar and sucked down that cigarette, menthol, my least favorite.

I remembered my boy, and I began to worry about him. I gave Amanda and the rest of AP Sosch a bullshit excuse to leave. I needed to check on him. She made fun of me just like she did in Miami, and I gave her the finger. I couldn't afford to be polite and drink the drinks I didn't want this time. I had to see him, make sure he was okay. I got my car from the valet, stiffing them on a tip. Those precious few dollars in my clutch were for my boy.

I found street parking easily. It was still relatively early and everyone was out. I knocked into a garbage can as I pulled in, but there was no rental company to get mad this time. I didn't know it right away when I turned down our alley. Yeah, it was ours now. The boys in mine. It was our alley.

But I didn't notice I was alone in it. Not at first. He was huddled into himself as always, but there was something about him that was different. His face was not buried in his jacket. It was looking across the alley at my building's back door, the one I always used. The one I usually propped open for him, the one I hadn't that night. I'd been too excited for my night out. I dropped onto my knees next to him, hissing from the coldness of the ice on the bare skin of my legs.

I stared at my boy, and for the first time since I'd noticed him all those months ago, I thought he was beautiful, absolutely stunning, actually. His greasy hair was now clean, sanitized by the intense freeze blanketing the city, and he didn't smell. Not at all. The cold air was too thin to hold the heavy odors that had drifted around him through the summer and autumn. I reached out to touch him. His skin felt smooth. So smooth I sat down against the wall next to my boy, so I could reach him better.

I leaned against the brick and ran my numb fingers over the smoothness of his cheek. It was hard, like marble, as if his alabaster face had been lovingly carved from a solid block of priceless stone. Carved by a master. Yes, he was beautiful. but it was his eyes that got me. He was looking up across the alley at the back door. His expression defiant, as if he knew today was the end,

and he faced it. His head raised, tilted back, proud. Or perhaps he had just been waiting for me to come through that door, and I never had. My frozen boy was dead. and there was no blood or broken bones, no face twisted in agony. The cold air settled around us, quiet and still, protecting and preserving his beautiful end.

And it was beautiful and tragic. I don't think you can have beauty without tragedy. Every story needs both, and this was ours, his and mine. But I wasn't sad. I'd always known he was familiar to me. We were connected. Always. I dropped my hand from my frozen boy's face and leaned my head against his shoulder,

cuddling up to his stiff body. And I stared at the door like he did. His clothes weren't comfortable to lean against. They were hard, crisp. I stayed with him there in that alley. Just my frozen boy and me, as his body grew more rigid I began to cry

lamenting his circle date on that celestial calendar lamenting that it was this day my boy hadn't been able to rescue himself from this end and I hadn't been able to either the longer we sat the stiffer he got

and the warmer I became eventually I stopped shivering which was nice I cuddled into him tight and then I started to feel a comfortable warmth, like a blanket wrapped around you straight out of the dryer. It was relaxing. But the air around us started to get hotter as the hours ticked by. At first it was a comfortable heat, and then it burned.

It burned so bad I peeled off my jacket and then tucked back into my boy. He was still stiff. As light finally began to streak through the modelled gray clouds above us, the air became scorching. So blazing, I wanted to take my clothes off, feel cool air on my skin. But I didn't want to leave my boy, not for a moment, not even for that. And my limbs weren't responding to me anyway. So I didn't move.

I cuddled closer. I wouldn't leave him. We were connected. My boy and me. Always. He kept looking at my door, and I kept feeling stiffer. I looked at it too, only I suddenly couldn't remember why we were looking at the door or who we were waiting for to come through it. I forgot why I was so hot. I forgot why I was so cold. I couldn't remember where I was, only that it was familiar to me. I knew only that I was supposed to sit here with this boy, that we were in this together, him and I. I just forgot why. One thing I finally did remember, though, was how I knew him.

This boy, he had always been familiar to me. He was there that night in Miami. I skipped out on the bar tab. I stiffed the valet. I drove home tired. and drunk. I hit a little boy on a deserted street, and I didn't stop.

He was dead. I knew he was and I was scared, so I kept driving. But I saw him. It was this boy, the dead one's sitting next to me. But he wasn't there. No one was sitting next to me.

I was alone in the alley, in the cold. I always had been. I felt my brain start to panic. But then I forgot why I was upset. I forgot everything, except the door. And when the light from a cold and distant sun finally made it into the dark depths of our filthy alley, I was frozen and beautiful too. For a pair of sisters being raised by their grandmother from the old country, the strict household rules can be a burden.

As we learn from author Maxwell Malone, one sister is curious about her family's past, about why there seems to be a gap in the family photos, and about why no one is allowed in the attic. Performing this tale are Addison Peacock, Nicole Doolin, and Nicole Goodnight. keep in mind that some family secrets should remain so even ones about the family straga. Our downstairs was humid with spaghetti water, even though it was only 7 a.m. The window panes were steamed, but beyond I could see the storm outside. The rain sluicing off the rivets in the neighbor's siding, the telephone wires shaking from the wind. Nona was stirring the car. contents of a stout silver pot. It smelled of fresh garlic, oregano, the tartness of tomato, the peppery musk of sausage,

and of meatballs. She tapped off the ladle on the edge of the pot and set it down on a plate. What are you looking for out there, Julia? Nothing, just looking. Just looking? She scowled and peered past me, into the living room and out of the living room and I, the front windows. Her eyes searched what she could see of the street.

The red sauce in the pot began to bubble, popping up over the rim and modeling the white surface of the stove. Absent-mindedly, Mynonna grabbed the ladle and stirred the pot. She didn't flinch when the sauce jetted up and splattered her arm. Nothing to see. Call your sister. I moved through the living room, between the rabid-eared television and Minna's hideous floral couch.

Before I could call for her, Georgia was at the top of the stairs, her fists working at her eyes to rub the sleep away. I turned and made my way back to the kitchen, just as Minona pulled a chair out from under the lacquered table. She motioned to it. Sit, eat. I took my place at the table and watched as Georgia entered, still dressed in her nightgown,

her hair and nest of curls springing out in all directions. She swooped to the other side of the table and dragged her own chair out from underneath it before dropping onto its vinyl cushion. Nonna ladled fresh noodles out from the water and drowned them in red sauce. Carefully, she used a spoon to make a well in the very center of each bowl and deposited meatballs, orange with congealing fat. Then, from a small plastic container, she plucked a couple of tarali and placed them. She set the food on the table and wiped her hands on her apron before turning back to the stove.

I ate in silence, only picking at my portion. Georgia speared her noodles and slurped them down, the red sauce smearing her lips and dripping onto her sleeper. When she got up, she left her bowl. I followed her with my eyes until she moved past the window, and then I was staring beyond her at the birds on the power lines. The rain had pushed them together into glistening black masses of feathers. Murders. I imagined how alien I must look to them.

A gangly girl slowly losing my residual baby fat. A face with every inch covered in either freckles or pimples. I was as alien to them as they seemed to me. And I suddenly felt as if I was being watched back. I turned away, plucked them. the bowls from the table and put them in the sink. I started to walk away. Julia, what are you doing?

Getting ready for school, Nona. Not until you wash the dishes. I didn't argue with her. When Nona gave a direct order, I was expected to follow it. I went back to the sink, the one with a wide window above it, and a small window cell

laid in with pictures of the Pope and of Christ, and of framed devotional segments cut out from the local newspaper or the church bulletin and plunged my hands into the soapy water. Nona took the opportunity to lecture me on responsibility. Households only worked, she said, when everyone played their part. When she had been young, she had to wash her whole family's dishes, all seven children's and her parents.

When neighbors ate over, she washed theirs too. responsibilities, even the small ones, had knit them together, had taught them how to rely on one another. I should be grateful, she said, that I was being asked so little. I listened to her quietly until I was finished with the dishes. When Nona went quiet, I went back upstairs and found Georgia in front of the bathroom mirror. She was biting the side of her thumb and pushing her curls to one side of her head and then the other. studying each position carefully. I glowered at her.

You could have at least washed your bowl. I don't have time for that. I don't want to be late. I threw my hands up. I did it and we're not late. And there wouldn't be a chance of us being late if you would just get up on time. Instead, I have to come get you up every morning

and wash your dishes and then watch you slowly get yourself together. You don't have to watch. don't have time for this. I need to get ready. You mean you need to play with your hair more? Fine. I left her as she brought a can of hairspray up and began to tease her curls. I remember sometimes being entranced by our morning ritual, looking in the mirror to see not one of my face, but two. Not one body of mine, but two. Of course there were small differences. Georgia was prettier, I thought, especially in the way her nose didn't droop like I thought mine did, or in how her eyes

were set closer together around her nose, or how her cheeks were sharper. She'd recently started growing out her nails, longer and sharper, more adult, she claimed. When we were younger, I had thought we were perfectly similar, and that we would be forever. We'd never fought then, not really. But now, with mom busy with her new family and dad gone, life was changing. Georgia was changing. We ran the three blocks to the school.

It was a Catholic school, all red and tan brick on the outside, fenced off from the rest of the neighborhood. We could hear the warning bell ring as we were nearing. We shook the rain off from our coats, placing both in my locker because Georgia's was a mess she tried to avoid at all costs. and in response she'd claimed part of mine. We slipped into our desks at the back of the classroom. Then our day began.

This is how life was. Each breakfast was noodles and meatballs and to Raleigh. It never changed. Nona loved us in her own way, an impatient way, and I was left to carry the brunt of it while Georgia made herself scarce. My mother had often attributed this to Nona having been essentially a single mother. Graziella Vitale, the woman who crossed the Atlantic with three kids and no husband.

The woman who raised those three kids in a world she herself did not know so well. A superstitious, devoutly Catholic woman who had sown seeds from Italy in the hem of her dress so she could grow plants she had known in her childhood, who attended Mass at the church less than a block away three times a week, and who was stuck with us because our Aunt Paola and our Uncle Mateo were far away, and our father, Walter, had left, and our mother, Simona, was moving on without us.

Even though Nona and I had a difficult relationship, I wanted to know where it was that she'd come from, where she'd brought my mother and Aunt Paola and Uncle Mateo from. I wanted to know what Italy was like. I wanted to know why my grandfather Pietro had stayed there, why she cried when one of her plants from back home died, and what experience she'd had there that made her so wary of the birds perched to top the power line outside her home.

I wanted to know all of this because I wanted to know her, and my mother, and my family. Maybe that's why she warned me about the witch in the attic, because she knew I would listen. The rain had softened into a drizzle by the time school let out. As we neared Nona's house, we could see the birds, ravens. Huge to me, even now, perched on the power lines and telephone wires around her home. They clustered in lines, their beady eyes hunting the streets below,

their black beaks cracking now and again to elicit a throaty caw, which would then be answered and answered and answered, until silence overtook the whole of the group again. Georgia saw me looking up at them and put her hand on my shoulder. You know you're not supposed to do that. Maybe, but Nona won't see. Sometimes I feel like she sees everything. She's always looking out on the street, but she never leaves the stove.

It creeps me out. These birds creep me out. You're starting to sound like her. When we got up to the door, I pushed it open and heard Nona put her ladle down again. The house was hot and smelled differently now, earthy and doughy, almost sour. Terali.

But before I could make my way into the kitchen to steal a glance at the baking sheet covered in their pale, pre-cooked forms, Nona came out to find me. Georgia was already gone. You left my door open this morning. This is not okay. It was Georgia, I swear.

I was out first. Madonna, why with the excuses? I'm sorry, Nona. Sorry, yes. I'm sorry for looking at the birds, too, hmm? I nodded. You are always disobeying, just like Matteo, just like Maria. Who's Maria?

Nona pursed her lips and was quiet for a moment. Never mind that. Go up to your room. You can come down when I tell you to come down. I thought about raising protest, but the anger in my chest pointed toward Georgia instead. My eyes were growing hot with tears, so I turned and pushed my forearm to my face, climbing the stairs as I heard my Nonna sigh and head back into the kitchen. When I reached the door to Georgia's room, I wiped my face. I pushed the door open. Why do you have to do things like this?

Like what? I could tell she'd heard the conversation. You didn't close the door when we left, and you left me to deal with the aftermath down there. Why the hell can't you just take responsibility? Why does she need to get upset at the stupidest things? I wish we weren't stuck in the shitty house with that old hag. Georgia pushed her thumb between her teeth and bit down.

I felt my face burning. I wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that Nona wasn't a hag, and the house wasn't shitty, and that the only thing that was stupid was how she refused to even try to make our new life work. But I didn't.

I turned. Inside my own room, I set my backpack down, reached beneath the bed, and stuck my hand into the shadows. I could feel the cold of the wooden floor, and then, the sleek cover of a photo album.

It was the latest one of Nona's keepsakes to grip my attention, and I'd had it hit hidden away in my room for weeks, even though I was sure no one would be looking for it anytime soon. I pulled it out from its hiding place and wiped the dust from its black cover. The plastic protectors cracked as I opened it. The photos were all black and white, and they weren't very clear. Some of them were overexposed. The small worlds within them caught in a glow so bright that it had made the lens lose track of the faces it had been fixed on.

Clothes and eyes and mouths were washed out. Sometimes the trees or the hills and the backgrounds were too. Other times, though, the photos were bathed in black. Limbs bled into coats or lawns. Faces melted into typed punctuation. But on the backs of the photos, there were always notes in Maenona's handwriting. New York, 1952, or Chicago Union Station, 1960. Anecdotes or names written beneath.

In them, I could see my nona. Tall, her hair pinned beneath a hat, her body swathed in a dress and a coat and laden with bags. Near her, there would always be my mother, her face stoic, her curls explosive. my uncle Mateo and his bright, brash smile, and my Aunt Paola with her own coat that was far too big for her, and her wavy hair bobbed at her jawline,

just like she still wore it. Picture after picture, I would see the family reflected again and again, four figures against a backdrop, always close, although never touching. I flipped back through the album until I was staring at one of the first few photos. It was dark, although the ink had faded. I could make out my nana, and my mother, and my aunt and my uncle, and a woman in a cop-like uniform. I searched their surroundings, lines of coated people, stately government buildings, a black expanse that must

have been the ocean. But there was more, an object, situated between the world. between my Nona and the Uniformed Woman, bleeding into the dark of the Atlantic. I turned it over and read, New York, Ellis Island, 1951, me, Mateo, Simone, and Maria at the gate to America. I searched the Uniformed Woman's face. Her cheeks were sharp like Nona's and my mothers. Her hair was dark, like Uncle Mateo's. Was she the same area that Minona had mentioned?

Was she a relative? She looked almost as old as Minona. I tried to make out the patches on her uniform, but they were lost in the print. I turned my attention back to the object. It didn't look like a stack of bags. It was too uniform. It couldn't be a person either.

The shape was close, but too angular, too tall, too broad. It was coffin-like. I pushed the photo up toward my face and narrowed my eyes, trying to trace its minute details, where the light caught edges or folds, where the faded ink had added some definition. I dropped the photo album on my bed and swore. I had had to discern object

in the pictures before because of their poor quality, but never something like this. The shape was an enigma. I glanced out the window and, for a brief moment, caught sight of a raven as it lifted its wings, pushed off a telephone pole, and flew up into the storm. I looked back at the photo and realized what I had been looking at.

It was a cage. The object between them was a cage. In an instant, I forgot about my anger with Georgia. I ran from my room to hers and threw the door open. She was sitting on her bed, her eyes closed, her walkman blasting music. I grabbed her shoulder and she jumped. She tore her headphones off, but before she could say anything, I pushed the photo album into her lap and pointed.

What do you think that is? I don't know. A blob? It's not a blob. Try harder. I don't know, Julia. What is it? I think it's a cage. Georgia was quiet. Her eyes searched the picture and then lit up with recognition. Why would they have a cage?

I don't know. Well, whatever was in there, it was big. Georgia picked up her headphones and put them on again. I took this as my cue to leave, but as I walked, I couldn't take my eyes off the picture. George's final word echoed in my head. Big. She was right. The cage was tall.

It was dark, covered in fabric, but toward the bottom, near everyone's feet, the hem of the covering had caught up, and the grid of a cage was unmistakably latticed. something was in there, something they had to hide, and I needed to know what it was. I had to know why it was there. That photo album, one of many, became my favorite. I had looked through all the others many times, but these photos were the most alluring. I would often find myself lost in them, trying to imagine how the sun felt on the streets of New York City, or how the roar of the Atlantic sounded at the Ellis Island docks.

Eventually, though, I'd studied every picture in the album. I knew there had to be more like them. There was a jump in years in the albums that were stacked in the living room, and the missing years had never been accounted for. 1960 to 1972. And the cage? I couldn't find it in any of the other pictures. The albums picked up again only after.

Georgia and I had been born. I had searched all over for the missing pictures, but had never found them. Even when I had stolen into my nunna's room in her absence, it was only when I asked my nana if I could search the attic, that she told me about the witch. She was sitting in the living room, a pleasure she reserved only for later in the evening.

The television was on the local news, and there, with a thimble on her finger and a needle in her hand, She would quietly cross-stitch Bible verses while repeating English words to herself. This was her practice, and I'm sure, a means of knowing what to talk about with the other older women in the congregation when they had coffee after Mass. When she heard me at the bottom of the stairs, she looked up from her stitching. Julia? I studied her face for a moment.

Her curls had all grown white and framed her pockmarked olive. skin in a blue halo when hit by the light of the television. Deep crow's feet splintered from the corners of her eyes and the creases of worry that the years had worn into her forehead were soft, but visible. I could see how her dentures pushed her lips out slightly. I pulled the photo album from behind my back. You've been looking at that? Yes, Nona, a lot. And I've looked at all the others too. And what do you think of them? I love them. I moved into the room and took a seat on the couch. Why do you love them? It wasn't an accusatory question, but a soft one, one that showed a genuine interest in my interest. Because you were in them, and so is mom and Uncle Mateo and Aunt Paula.

It's nice to see them when they were young, when you were young. Things look simpler in those I'm happier. My nonna chuckled. I don't know about simpler, but we were happy. She smiled, but it quickly faded. That was a long time ago, though. I was silent. But you can see that.

She nodded toward the stack of albums. Yes, but there's some missing. Some what? Some years. She was quiet for a moment. Her hands stopped moving. Those years, they don't matter. They were difficult.

We had just moved to Chicago from the East Coast. We left the friends we'd made that your mother and aunt and uncle had made behind suddenly. We had made a life. again and had to leave it again, only for the cycle to repeat because... She choked back the rest of her words. It doesn't matter. The years here are beautiful. All of them.

I nodded, but I want to see the others too. I want to know why they're missing. I've looked for the missing photos, but I can't find them. Mynona sat up. Where have you looked? Her forehead creased with worry. Just down here in the cupboards and cabinets. I checked other rooms, too. I was thinking about going up into the attic and seeing what else I could... Mynona shushed me and set her cross-stitch down.

I could already see the Bible verse she had started. You cannot go into the attic. But why? I want to see those. pictures, I want to see what else you saved. She was silent for a moment. You cannot go into the attic because there is a witch up there. I was already in the middle of formulating another plea when I stopped myself.

A witch? My nana nodded. A witch, an old witch. It lives in the attic of my house. Why would you let an old witch live in your house? Because even witches have their purpose. I'm not sure why I didn't question it more. Maybe it just felt like the true end to the conversation.

An end where my nana didn't have to tell me that no means no and that I was in her house and I had to abide by her rules. But I didn't. Of course, I didn't believe in witches. I was old enough to know that they were just fairy tales. And I didn't believe that even if there were witches, my nana would keep one in her attic. She might have been overly strange about birds, and she did keep a walnut in her kitchen, because, according to her, one less walnut tree means one less lost girl.

But she was also the same woman who prayed before each meal and said the rosary every day. Mynona was an aspiring saint in my eyes, at least in terms of her faith. She would never consort with witches. Defeated, I returned upstairs and told Georgia about the conversation I'd had. She laughed. She told me that it was pointless to dig into Nona's life, that if Nona had to pretend there was a witch in the attic to her teenage granddaughters, then there really must not be anything worth seeing up there.

She couldn't see why the photos I'd already seen weren't good enough. Why the hundreds of photographs chronicling the Ellis Island arrival and Nona's seamstress work and Uncle Mateo's first job as a helper for a bread peddler didn't tell me what I really wanted to know. I listened until Georgia turned her judgments to me and my interests in the past. I left her there alone and returned to my room. I laid in bed, listening to the surge outside, the trees fluttering like wings. There are many leaves like hundreds of ruffling feathers until I was asleep.

When I woke up, Georgia was already awake and standing at my door. Her eyes were dark and hot. hollow looking, as if she hadn't slept at all. She looked sickly, but most of all, I swore that something seemed off about her face. Her nose larger than before, her pores more visible. I heard Nona last night. I rubbed my head and sat up. What? Nona was in the hallway last night. She was moving around, talking about. Talked. to herself. She walked past our rooms down the entrance to the attic. I think she went up there. It took a moment for the connection to make itself apparent. So you think she went in there to what?

Talk to the witch? Sure. Yeah. The witch. Or, you know, maybe just to make sure that you didn't disobey her, to see if she could punish you for caring like she always does. I shook my head. Shut up. Now I've got to find out what's up there. Then let's go. Now, before she knows we're awake. Quietly, Georgia and I tiptoed out of my room. The hallway was creaky and old. Every groan of the hardwood telling us to stop, to turn back, to listen to Arnana, but we kept going. We passed our Uncle Mateo's old room, which had since become storage,

a tomb for old vinyals, boxes of moth-eaten clothes, and broken toys too sentimental to discard. We passed our Aunt Paula's room, which had been mostly cleared, but still housed some larger furniture that Arna didn't want to throw out. Then, at last, we stood beneath the attic door,

its pink chipped face staring back at us, the color of smoker's teeth. Simultaneously, Georgia and I reached for the knob. We placed our fingers on it, felt the cool metal against our touch. We began to turn it. Georgia and I turned to see Arnonna, stomping across the wooden flooring toward us. What do you think you are doing? Did I not tell you that you cannot go up there?

That you are to stay out of the attic. Georgia narrowed her eyes. Why? So we don't find your secrets? So we don't break all that. useless garbage you have up there? Silencio. You are both coming with me right now.

She wrapped her hands around our wrists and pulled us toward the stairs. I moved with her, but Georgia fought, her own nails digging into our Nana's wrinkled skin, her attempts to free herself in vain. When we hit the stairs, Georgia stumbled down them, trying to leverage her weight against Nonas but failing time and again. I knew that the more we fought, The worse it would be, so I stopped, yelled for her to stop, to just do as she was told.

She howled all the way until, at last, we were in the kitchen. Mynana spent the next hour lecturing us about doing as we were told. Georgia raised protest any chance she got, but quieted and winced every time Minona moved closer to us. Nona brandished the metal ladle as though it were a knife, shaking it angrily as she cursed and scolded us. Whatever fantasies I'd had of stealing away into the attic and finding a treasure trove of memories that morning, they dissipated in that conversation.

Georgia eventually stopped talking back. Her eyes angrily fixed on Nona, her nails scratching red marks across her own skin as her fingers compulsively flexed. I apologized to Nona for disobeying her. I begged for her forgiveness. And when at last I'd apologized a hundred times, mine on a side, plated food for our breakfasts,

and then turned her attentions elsewhere. Georgia left hers untouched. I made double shore that morning to do my dish after I ate. And then, after all was said and done, I climbed the stairs to my room to get ready for school. It was only when I reached the top that I saw it, sitting on the wooden floor at the very end of the hallway. A feather.

Georgia had moved into the doorway of the bathroom to talk to me, but when I pointed, she stopped. I walked to the end of the hall and plucked the feather from the floor. Fearing what might happen to us if our Nana caught us in front of the attic door again, we ran to my room and closed the door. Then, in the pale light of the morning, we surveyed it. It was as long as my forearm and almost twice as thick. The quill was the color of old bones, but the rest of the feather was an unrelenting black.

Some of the barbs were matted together, slicked by some natural grease. Georgia and I looked at each other, and then at the feather again. Where did it come from? It was just there at the end of the hall. We need to hide it. Don't tell me you think it came from the attic. Well, where else then? She didn't reply.

I stowed the feather in the front cover of the photo album. Despite wanting to feign sickness from school that day and disobey Nana, I struggled through the morning routine and my school hours. On lunch break, Georgia and I convened at a table and hatched a plan. We would need to let Arana begin to trust us again. We would need to let her think that I had lost some interest in learning more about our family's past and the attic. Then, when she had let her guard down, we would find a way to be in her home while she was away. We would find our way into the attic, and we would find what she was hiding.

The opportunity presented itself later than we expected. We had put Arna in a paranoid state, and she would often check on us every 15 minutes or to make sure that we weren't sneaking around when we were in the house. When she was indisposed or simply wanted to keep an eye on us without moving, she would call us down to the kitchen or the living room and force us to do our homework there. If we had no homework, then we were to read. And if we didn't want to read, we were to say prayers. This was our penance.

But Georgia and I did this and more for weeks. We did it for so long that I feared we might both forget about the attic. and the witch, and what else might be hidden up there. Our opportunity presented itself late one spring afternoon. Nona had retired from her kitchen work early, and, having went to church that morning, discovered she'd earned the right to sit in her living room. When I crept down the stairs,

I found her napping in her chair, her cross-stitch flat on her lap, the drone of basic cable mass mingling with the soft patter of rain outside. I snuck back upstairs and found Georgia in her room. Quietly, we tiptoed down the hallway in silence until we were face to face with the attic door. Simultaneously, we turned the knob, and the door creaked open.

Beyond it were stairs, and beyond them, darkness. We took the first step, and I could smell that unlived-in smell. It was heavy, musty, like the darkness itself was a creature pressing in, its flanks unwashed for years. It was oppressive. Another step, and I could see a small bloom of light. On the third step, my head crested the flooring of the attic, and I could make out a window. It was faced out over the street so that, at my vantage point, I could only see. see the clouds, their tumult rolling off in a gray expanse, coaxing light in through the panes.

The light fell in short diagonals, dust stirred. On the fourth step, I smelled another scent. It was denser than the darkness, a sort of barnyard animal stench, the kind that accumulates in a closed sty, where there are only beds of rotting straw and feces and strewing food. I felt my stomach begin to turn, but I pinched my nose and pushed forward. The fourth step took me almost completely into the attic space. I could see the splintered floorboards. Stacked tight against the slanting corners of the space were steamer trunks and garbage bags, cardboard boxes with like silverware and baby clothes written on them.

Near the aperture I was standing in, there was a tailor's mannequin. all dulled hard plastic conjoined by metal-piped joints without any legs. Georgia shuddered and cursed, but I climbed further. The final steps took me up into the space, and I felt the heat on my face. Between the mixing scents and the heat that had risen from lower in the house, it was stifling. Move forward. I did as she asked. Then, we were standing there in the attic, and we were searching with our eyes.

I could feel the sweat as it dripped down my forehead. My shirt was sticking to my back. Look there. Georgia was pointing to a massive object obscured by a thick, red-brown cloth. The cage... I felt bile begin to rise, but held back the urge to vomit. This was the moment we had wanted, wasn't it? This was what we'd wanted to see.

Something saved from the past, something to fill in those dark years, to encapsulate them in some sort of machination. If photos hadn't captured them, what could? The mind? This cage? Move forward. I did as she asked. carefully we crept toward the cage our eyes transfixed on how the light seemed to end just before it began on how the dust seemed to swirl around it but never touch it my mind began to wonder entertaining different options for what could be inside it

would it be a flock of birds maybe stuffed a giant bird from the mountains in italy that nona had said our grandpa had come from Or would it be something worse? Suddenly, we were beneath it. The cage towering up and over us, the cover like a curtain obscuring a play from our eyes. Pull it off. Let's see what's inside. I gripped the covering. I tugged it and let it fall.

My breath caught in my throat. The cage stood taller than any person I'd ever seen. It was a web of rusted metal. It bowed out near the top and narrowed near the bottom, its door attached to the rest of the structure by six massive metal hinges. But where they'd connected to the latticework of metal, they'd been severed. The slats of metal had been forced outward, twisted,

broken into jagged, dagger-like protrusions that caught the light with malicious edge, like something had been inside, like something had gotten out. Look. She was bent double over an open trunk. When I drew up beside her, I could see that it was filled with yellowed papers.

They were covered in lengthy handwritten scrawl, inked cursive Italian. I pushed through them, and beneath, found the hard cover of a book. And another, and another. I pulled one out and opened it up. The pages were lined with photographs,

not set neatly behind plastic protective veneers, but crudely glued to the coarse paper. The images were dark, darker even than the photos in the album I'd kept beneath my bed, and they were webbed by poor exposure, creased and cracked by repeated folding. At first, the photo of the photo, photographs were only of men, their eyes wide and faces stoic.

It was a father and three sons, all of them clad in coats and overalls, all of them brandishing rucksacks and shovels and picks. Their faces and clothes were smudged with black. Behind them, cobbled streets wound into brickwork buildings and alien, mountainous landscapes. As the pictures progressed, though, there were others. A woman, her face like Maenna's in the pictures from the 50s and 60s, though softer in the chin and the cheeks, stared back. Two young women were stringing laundry on a clothesline with her in one photograph, and in another they pitched over a boiling pot atop a wood-burning stove.

There were pictures of the men and women together, too. Pictures as a family. I realized then that these were images of Maenona's family in Italy. And while there were no notes to follow, I knew they were the remnant catalog of my Nona's childhood. As if in answer to this realization, the next page yielded the first picture of who I could only assume was my nana. She was child, maybe six, and she wore a white dress.

A corona of tight curls fell around her shoulder and down her back. I could see in her face many of the things I saw in my own, the heart shape. space, the keen curve of her nose, the smattering of freckles. But she was not alone. Another girl, almost exactly the same, stood next to her, the fingers of their hands intertwined. Was she the woman in the uniform? Was she Maria? I was possessed. Page after page, I saw my Nana and this double grow older, sometimes by leaps and years. I saw as they looked more and more familiar until finally, my eyes fell on a picture that didn't seem alien at all. It had been taken somewhere bright and wooded, apart perhaps or a lawn.

And the faces that stared back at me were unmistakably familiar. They looked as if I'd known them all my life. They looked like Georgia and I. After this image, though, one of the ones. one of the girls disappeared. The album ended after that. I opened another album, hoping that I might be able to track more of my Nona's young life,

only to discover something more familiar. There was my Uncle Mateo's baby face, beaming back from a dark storefront. There was my Aunt Paola and my mother walking hand in hand down a city street. And then there was my Nona, her arms crossed and hair, standing outside a tenement building, surrounded by a dozen similarly dressed women and their

husbands and their children, all smeared in the act of living. This was it. This was what I had been looking for. The missing photographs. I forgot about Georgia and the attic and the cage more and more as I turned the pages. Here was old Chicago. It's streets alive in monochrome, my family unwitting actors in its history. My nana was never alone in the photographs. Whether the picture was taken on the street or in the cramped interior of an apartment, there were others. Women, her age or older, gazed, firm-lipped at the camera. Younger women, their faces faintly touched with worry, stared into the lens. They all appeared rigid, uncomfortable, placed like dolls. My nana, though, was always alive.

and moving. As the pictures continued and I saw more of these scenes, though, a pattern began to form. There was always only one young woman. She was always dressed in white, always stared at the camera as if seeing a ghost. In many of them, the young women held their stomachs. Their fingers splayed wide, an unmistakable act. They were caressing themselves, and always. And always, in the background, there was an open door, cracked open, just enough to see the darkness beyond. I studied the darkness in the doorways. I followed the faint lines, the ones brought out by the flaws in the camera's capture of the light. And slowly, I realized that the darkness wasn't empty. I saw the leaf-like loops of feathers. I saw the vicious curve of talon-like nails. But most of all,

I recognized a hand. I turned and reached for Georgia, but there was no Georgia. There was only a pair of eyes, full black, but shining like onyx shards in the shadows. Georgia? But then its mouth opened, and I saw the violent curve of its massive black beak, and I heard its throaty caw that was also a thundering scream of old words, ancient words, words that I knew yet did not know, that I felt the meaning of but could not name. The darkness opened up, arms stretching, feathers fanning, talons against wood, and it rushed into me.

It enveloped me. It crushed me. And as it crushed me, I saw the face of an old woman, washed out in the light, and I felt it cut into me, And the glass shattered, and its stench filled my nose. And then the light was gone. My nona was standing over me. When I moved my head, she put her hands on both my cheeks and held me still. Don't move, wait. I tried to reply, but the words didn't feel right in my mouth.

When, at last, I could form a sentence. She allowed me to sit up. I could see the attic, but it had changed. The cage was on its side. The floor, a smattering of massive feathers, and something dark and sticky and iron-smelling. Blood. The solitary window had been smashed out.

Some of its glass strewn near its base. It was raining outside. There was thunder. Where's Georgia? Gone. Where? She was quiet. Somewhere she is needed but not wanted.

Somewhere she can begin her penance. Somewhere with Maria. The house was cold. It smelled like black mold. Beyond the shattered window, the ravens perched on the power lines. Their backs arched toward us. Their eyes following the clouds and the luminescent arcs of lightning, tearing through the distant, dropping darkness.

We looked with them. In Season 11's final tale, we meet a group of friends who consider themselves their town's historical society. And as we discover from author Henry Galley, the history they research comes from late-night visits to derelict buildings and the run-down forgotten parts of the town.

And on this fateful night, they visit the condemned home, of the former town library. What better place to find a good story? Performing this tale are Jessica McAvoy, Atticus Jackson, Addison Peacock, Erica Sanderson, Peter Lewis, David Alt, Andy Cresswell, and Penny Scott Andrews. So be mindful of which stories have a copyright and which ones are in the public domain. The truck ground to a halt and They killed the engine. Everyone had fallen asleep except Lena, who was sitting in the passenger seat with the map.

It was dusk out. Light was fading fast. All right, we're here. Looks like we're finally getting some exercise. Tom groaned from his seat behind Lena and rubbed his eyes. You know, my wife wishes I was just out here cheating like a normal asshole. She probably thinks we'd come to these. places to smoke crack while she's putting Joey to bed.

Fred burst into laughter from the seat next to him. At least your wife thinks you can afford crack. Dan probably assumes a mount here snorting pixie sticks and sniffing glue. Let's just try to stay on task, people. We've got a lot to do. About a hundred years ago, this forest was a public park. If you looked hard enough, you could even find the rusted skeleton of a playground lying among the trees.

You excited? I nodded at Lena. Maybe a little anxious. Why's that? I'm always anxious. It's the only way I get anything done. You've got to loosen up, Carly. This is about as loose as I get.

We could take the rental truck this far, but the thicket had gotten too dense for us to drive the final leg of the journey. Our little expedition would have to make it to the library on foot. Fred and Tom had started stretching, shaking the sleep off. Lena tied her shoulder-length blonde hair into a ponytail, laced up her boots, and threw on a jacket to fend off the cold. I yawned, and that started a chain reaction of yawns between us. Little by little, we became functioning human beings again. My back's fucking killing me.

Yeah, sleeping upright, I'll do that to you. It was Friday night, and they'd all been working just a couple hours ago. I'll take the flashlights and the masks. I walked back to the flatbed and heaved one of the bags over my shoulder. Fred, you grab the cameras. Roger. Tom, bring the overalls. On it.

And Lena, you got the map? Tom and Fred were already mobilizing. Lena, who'd been our navigator on the way over, was folding up the map and sticking it in the glove box. It's a ten-minute walk. We don't need the map. You sure? Tom grunted. trying to lug four pairs of heavy-duty protective overalls. Yeah, it's like a straight line. You can't miss it.

Okay, you bring the crowbar and bolt cutters. Let's roll. We called ourselves the Farbrook Historical Society, Lena Brooks, Tom Cook, Fred Norman, and me. For the last eight years, we'd spent our weekends and days off hanging around in Farbrook's host of derelict, asbestos-ridden shitholes,

documenting the unspoken history of our town. Farbrook was defined by decay. The remnants of disused buildings were less expensive to keep than to bouldos, so demolitions rarely happened. Like a lot of economically declining areas across the U.S., it just started necrotizing, and while there wasn't a damn thing we could do to stop it, we could at least lay it out for the world to see. So, why would the four of us spend our time doing this rather than, well, literally anything else? Tom worked construction and had a wife and kid. Fred was a junior x-ray technician at Farbrook General. Lina had worked at Fernando's Brazilian bar and grill since she was old enough to drink. And to me? I worked in IT

and spent nights working on a fantasy novel that felt like it was going nowhere. We had different friends, different hobbies, different lives. There was one thing we had in common, though. One thing that brought our disparate lives together for a few hours every week. We were all suckers for a good story. And where better to find a good story than a library. If any of you guys are free Sunday, me and Dan are going to watch the game at our place. We'll order pizza.

Sounds like a plan. Same here. Marsha covers my shift on Sundays anyway. Nice. You in Carly? Hmm? Football. Sunday? My place? Oh, thanks, but I've got to finish a couple more chapters to stay on schedule. Surely the great American novel can wait. Would it kill you to take a day off for once, Carl's?

Maybe. In my head, I was cycling through our inventory, making sure that everything was accounted for. We've got the masks, the gloves, the overalls. I listed off everything I could possibly think up. trudging through the thickening mess of ivy and dead leaves around my feet. Everyone bring a phone? Fred and Tom both nodded. Lena remained silent. Oh, come on, Lena, really?

There's no service out here. What about 4G? It doesn't matter. I texted my mom before we left. I wasn't going to bring a $600 iPhone and see it get destroyed if something goes wrong. You can borrow my Nokia. These things are indestructible. It's always good to have a burner.

I usually bring my old flip phone. Easy to break, but if it does, it's not like it matters. Oh, also, I brought my gun. We all stopped for a second and turned to look at him, like he'd proudly told us he'd just shit his khakis. Why the fuck did you bring a gun? I always bring a gun. Wait, what?

Come on, guys, it's not like I've got a friggin' assault rifle. I just thought it might be a good idea to have some insurance in case stuff goes south. He started reaching into his jacket. It's just a little nine millimeter. Don't get it out, dipshit! Fred pulled his hand away like he'd just seen a tarantula in his breast pocket. When have we ever needed a gun before? We've done this like a hundred times, and we've never needed to shoot anything.

Isn't it better to have it and not need it? You guys are burying the lead. If one of us gets injured, John Wick over here won't be able to shoot it better. This is why we all bring phones, okay? I have a permit. Not the point, Fred. Next time, everyone brings a phone. Lena nodded, and we kept moving.

How long, Lena? Couple minutes, Max. Everything was contracting, getting denser, getting darker, like we were approaching the event horizon of a black hole. In this case, our black hole was the long-since-abandoned Far Brook Public Library. opened in 1830, the place was closed down and condemned without any official reason beyond being declared unsafe for the public by the town council in 1910. And yet, they never demolished it. In the 108-year interim, a woods had grown around it, the way a grain of sand in an oyster's

belly eventually congeals into a pearl. See? No map required. For how long it'd be been out here, it was remarkably preserved. A long, gray face of cobbled stone wearing a brown wooden hat wrapped in vines of ivy like varicose veins and covered in rashes of brown moss. Some of the buildings we'd visited were ghosts, skeletons, barely recognizable as anything more than ambitious rubble. The tall wooden doors of the Farbrook Public Library still stood firm, its handles wearing bracelets of rusted chain. Everybody get prepped. We don't want to leave anything to chance.

A couple minutes later, we were wearing matching protective overalls, latex surgical gloves, plastic goggles, and asbestos filtering masks. We looked like we were ready to step into an active biohazard. You'd be surprised how little asbestos it takes to shave a couple decades off your life. Lena passed a crowbar over to Tom. He was the biggest of the group, tall, broad-shouldered, muscular, a physique that came as a fringe benefit

to his manual labor on the construction site. Another side effect of the job was that Tom always had a knack for spotting the weakest link. He shoved the tip of the crowbar into the mass of chains, and in a maneuver too fine to be fully discerned by anyone else,

the chains came loose with a quick, quiet pop. You could have just used the bullcutters show off. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Bond. I'm guessing you wanted to shoot the lock off. Tom grinned, blowing smoke from the barrel of an invisible gun. Lena chuckled, and an involuntary smirk curled up the left side of my face. Fred seemed less amused.

Tom gripped the edge of the door and pried it open with a metallic screech, The hinges sounding almost pained. A wall of stale centenary air laden with a dust and the stink of mildew and rotten paper came storming out of the gap, scattering itself off into the dark expanse of the forest. Beyond those doors, a seemingly limitless void waited to receive us.

We were armed with four compact digital cameras, a set of heavy-duty maglight flashlights, my smartphone, the two burners, and, of course, Fred's handgun. Most people spent their disposable income on leisure activities. We spent ours on urban exploration gear, like perfectly normal, well-adjusted adults. Over the years, we'd gradually upgraded, pooling and spending hundreds on our little hobby. Last one in is a rotten egg. Lena smirked.

She walked calmly into the darkness, her flashlight dispensing a white beam that cut through the gloom of the library. One by one, we followed her. Tom slid the crowbar into his belt to hold the door open behind us. No matter how many times we did this, there was always that sense of sickly anticipation, an unconscious acknowledgement of all the things that could go terribly wrong in a building that experts deemed unsuitable for human habitation. Once we were all inside, our flashlights casting tenuous shafts

of white light in four different directions, Tom stepped in after us and let the door slam behind him. Even wearing the masks, the smell of dusty old paper was stark and overpowering. It felt like ancient hands groping at your face, an otherworldly kind of physicality

as present as a fifth person in the room. The way light bounced and refracted off the dust, almost made it look like we were underwater, swimming in dead history, drowning in it. You know the drill, everybody. I turned the beam of my flashlight to each of them, collecting knots. We split up and started searching. The library's interior was larger than the facade ever suggested.

Stone walls 40 feet apart from end to end with a high ceiling, towering well above the phalanx of nine-foot bookshelves, each filled with countless dusty volumes in various stages of decay. It felt less like a library and more like some kind of book morgue, a grand mausoleum of literature where stories go to die. I scanned the beam across the back of a collection of spines, but there wasn't anything legible there anymore. I snapped a quick picture, the flash painting the image in a split second of garish, bleached out white. Occasionally, I'd hear other flashes going off behind me and see the smattering of white in my peripherals. I've got books. I've got more books.

The further we ventured out into the halls of the library, flanked by those ever-present walls of books, covered in cobwebs and a second skin of thick, The more cavernous and huge it seemed to become. It was almost like an optical illusion, made with the express purpose of drawing you further in, making you want to look that little bit closer until the four of us were just distant islands of light in a vast ocean of black. Somewhere behind me, a flash went off. What the fuck? Everybody, get the fuck over here.

We all rushed over, converging around him with our flashlights pointing outwards. Tom's own flashlight pointed down towards the floor. His eyes fixed with desperate intensity to the glowing screen of his digital camera. Look at this shit. Each of us looked and felt something inside of us puncture and deflate. He'd photographed the length of a hallway, walled in by bookcases, washed out by the a flash. In the far left corner was the leg of a child, wearing white knee socks and dainty black shoes with the faint suggestion of a blue dress darting just out of frame. This wasn't some

blurry smudge enhanced by imagination. This was a little girl. Jesus Christ. No, this can't, I mean, this can't be, this has got to be a... trick of the light or something, there can't be someone else in here, right? Tom just stood there, silent and transfixed as ever, until he wasn't. We need to find her. There's a little fucking girl in here. In this goddamn dusty asbestos death trap. What if she's been kidnapped? Who knows how long she's been in here? Whoa, whoa. Let's hold our horses for a second here, man. Fred put a hand on Tom's shoulder. Tom swatted it away.

If it was Joey, I wouldn't want anyone who found him to be holding their fucking horses, Fred. She's probably confused and scared shitless. Tom, I know you're concerned. We all are, but... Without warning, Tom took off, sprinting down the hallway where he'd just taken the picture, calling out for the little girl. Before we could even think to do anything different, we all started running after him. Tom, get back here. Oh, fuck. Tom was running like a man possessed, breathless, anaerobic.

We could barely keep up with him as he darted and weaved through the maze of hallways, in the belly of the library, getting deeper by the second. Wait, come back. Please, sweetie, we just want to help. We followed the sound of his thundering footsteps in the darkness. The library was miles away from anything. The whole town had practically shifted. to the right once it was built, rejecting it like an unfamiliar organ. It'd taken a whole team of us in a truck to get here and a construction worker with a crowbar

to get in. So how could a little girl do it? All on her own. The sounds of footsteps stopped. First tom's, with an abrupt silence, and then the rest of us, with the quiet screech of skidding rubber on tiles. Then nothing. save for ragged panting through our asbestos masks.

Tom stood before us, back rigid, flashlight trained on what he'd been chasing, a little girl in a blue dress. She looked gaunt, slightly malnourished, with a stare somehow both vacant and focused. Her limbs lithe and stick-like, her skin ashen and pale. I was surprised the poor girl. didn't have rickets, but something else was wrong with her. I knew that for sure. It's okay, it's okay. We're friends. We're not here to hurt you. I've got a son, Joseph, a couple years younger than you. You've made a mistake. Her voice was high, refined, and British. I could have

sworn I recognized her from somewhere, but I couldn't quite place it. That pristine blue, dress, unblemished in this filthy place, those bone-white knee socks, the black ribbon over her golden hair. Tom stepped a little closer. His movements calm telegraphed. He didn't want to appear threatening, despite his imposing size. For reasons I'll never understand. He reached up to his face and took off his asbestos mask. I turned to Fred. I turned to Fred. in Lena, hoping to see complimentary looks of confusion, but instead saw that they'd done the same, their masks now hanging around their necks. What are you doing in here, sweetie? It's dangerous. You could get hurt.

The girl calmly regarded him with her big blue eyes. I can't leave. I'm trapped here. She kept holding Tom's gaze. Why can't you leave, honey? Is someone keeping you here? I can't say it out loud. It's an important secret. But I can whisper it to you, if you like.

There was something strangely old-fashioned about the way she spoke. Her enunciations proper to the point of seeming stilted, like a person caught out of time, a relic, like the library itself. But somehow... Tom, just... He didn't turn around. But he waved a hand to silence. her, demanding focus.

The three of us all shared an exasperated glance. Tom stepped closer and dropped to one knee in front of her. He turned his head sideways, pupils dilating as we trained our beams on him and the little girl. We couldn't see it, but she must have placed her lips against his ear and began to whisper. A soft piercing noise,

the way a dog whistle is piercing. the way dread is piercing. As the child whispered, Tom's face seemed to droop and twitch, expressing an emotion that none of us could place. His lips formed an oh, sucking at the air, his eyes wide, his skin pale, a silent, uncomfortable gasp like a suffocating fish. Lena and Fred looked at Tom and the little girl,

as baffled and disconcerted as I was, and then turned to me, eyes pleading for answers I didn't have, until I did. When something wet and heavy dripped onto the floor with an audible schlop, my memory finally jogged, and a shapeless thought found its way out of my mouth. Alice? The girl's big blue eyes jolted up towards me, except they weren't blue now. Were they? They were a strangled, ruddy purple, then a gleaming claret, an involuntary reaction to the shock of being recognized. She stepped backwards, and Tom collapsed. His body sprawled out over the slabs. A hole the size of a golf ball had been chewed into his temple. Blood streaked

over the ragged edges of torn skin and broken skull and bubbled down his cheekbone. While his body twitched and spasmed, like it was being electrocuted, it was clear that he was already dead. That wound led straight to the brain. We looked up to see Louis Carroll's Alice, her mouth a ruin of blood and teeth, concentric circles of fangs like a goddamn lamprey, occupying the lower half of a human face, a mouth that just seconds ago had been boring into the side of Tom's head, eating him alive. Her red eyes darted between the three of us before settling on me. Do I know you?

There was a slight gurgle to her voice. After all, her mouth was full. Lena screamed, and the three of us started running in the opposite direction. trying desperately to find the hall we came in through. Behind us, we heard the skittering of a little girl's dainty feet, gaining on us, and still picking up speed. Fuck, fuck. I stole a quick glance over my shoulder and saw that red-eyed, leech-mouthed little girl,

clawing her way after us on all fours like a mad animal. Her circular void of a lower face dripping with blood and pinkish brain meat. Even then, it was unmistakably Alice. Curiouser and curiouser. That line from the book kept looping through my mind. I'd always associate it with that gasping look of subdued panic, plastered onto Tom's dying face. We veered off into the nearest gangway between the shelves,

trying to lose the creature in the scramble. But I heard the skittering by. behind me, then next to me, climbing higher. Fred stopped when he heard it, like I did. But Lena didn't, and neither did the skittering. When she finally realized we'd stopped, she turned to us, and we shared a final longing gaze. Her tears gleamed in the light of my flashlight, like crystals against her pale cheeks. Her mouth silenced. silently formed the word, please. There was such a grim sense of inevitability about it, like seeing the train coming and knowing we couldn't get her off the tracks. All we could do

was hope that it was quick. The whole bookshelf rocked with the thrust of Alice's departure as she lunged down towards Lena. But it wasn't Alice that landed on her. It was a large, black mass, a tangible blob of living dark, wrapped in a flowing woolen cloak. A freakish little girl had leapt from the top of the bookcase, but what hit Lena and was pinning her to the ground with monstrous strength was an adult man. He rose to full height, about six and a half feet, holding Lena's thrashing body against his. He was a darkened parody of aristocrat, wearing gothic robes that seemed both regal and gloomy, like what you'd imagine a king would wear at a funeral. But he wasn't a king. He was a count. Sely little children.

His voice was a hoarse Romanian growl, cruel and belittling. You shouldn't have come here. Lina struggled in his grasp, but he wouldn't budge an inch. Fred had taken the gun out from his jacket and trained it on them, but he couldn't take the shot, not without the risk of killing Lena in the process. A man just laughed, a deep bellowing guffaw that seemed to rock the library. Let go of her!

Fred pulled back the hammer on his pistol for emphasis, trying to suppress the tremor in his hand. You cannot threaten me with your toys. The four of you were already dead the moment you entered. His wizened old face was dominated by a gaping, fang-lined mouth with inch-long canines. A thick mustache, caked in blood, sat below a nose pressed up against his face like that of a pig, nostrils dilating to take in our scent. Above that, those same crimson eyes, with a rancel. reptilian vertical slit for a pupil, but they looked far more at home on this face.

Lena shrieked, but he closed a clawed hand around her face and silenced her. Your art, this is mercy. Without warning, he'd clamped his jaws around her throat, biting and tearing at her like a rabid dog, sucking and slurping while Lena's eyes rolled up into her head, and a steady trickle of blood poured out of her gasping mouth. We'd just witnessed our friend getting devoured by Dracula. There was no other way to even say it. While he was still feeding on Lena, I grabbed Fred by his quivering hand and started

pulling him back down the hallway. Of all the members of our group, Fred was the most heavyset and probably the slowest runner. As grim as it felt to leave Lena like this, We couldn't waste any time before putting distance between ourselves and the creature. Tom and Alina were dead. There was no way we could change that. All that we could do now was try to get out and survive, so this wasn't all for nothing. Come on!

I'm trying, God damn it! Behind us, something heavy slumped to the ground, dropped like yesterday's garbage. There was a fleshy slither. noise, a crunch, a shift. Then we felt the wind and heard the noise of tremendous wings beating over our heads in the shriek of something far older than any living human being. In the distance in front of us, the beating stopped and something heavy thumped to the ground. Fred and I stood silent for a second. He drew a bead on the darkness in front of him, his shooting hand still trembling.

Out of the silence, a steady scraping noise, getting louder by the moment, the persistent hiss and rustle of something old and dry being torn open. Then, cheerful whistling to an old tune. Hello, hello, hello. Now, what a repair like you doing here on a night like this, eh? He laughed, sounding like someone chewing on chalk. You ought to be thankful, you two poppets ran into me before anyone else got hold of you. Some of the blokes out here, sweethearts, right, crazy buggers.

Cut your eyes out for looking at them funny. Not me, though, Governor, I ain't crazy. I know exactly what I'm doing. I lifted up the beam of my flashlight and made him visible. He was a stout, filthy creature. His shoulders covered by a tattered velveteen coat and a drooping top hat perched. upon his head. A grin spread across his frog-like face, loose wrinkled skin, harding like stage curtains to reveal a mess of blood-stained teeth. Black liquid dribbled down his bristled chin,

staining the handkerchief around his neck. In his gloved left hand, the figure held a gleaming stiletto knife that he was dragging across the spines of the books he passed, tearing through the leather and old parchment, making that terrible scratching noise. Occasionally, his face would flicker out like an old light bulb, leaving just a mass of undulating darkness, populated by a chaos of eyes and teeth that seemed to call and whisper independently. The name's Bill sucks. Let's get acquainted, shall we?

Without a word, Fred leveled the pistol and unloaded three rounds into Bill's chest. He stumbled back, bleeding dust from the bullet wounds, taken off guard by the sudden pressure of the blast. It was the first time this thing seemed genuinely surprised. Bill steadied himself on the bookcase with his free hand. You cheeky little cunt! He pointed the tip of the blade forward, accusing.

I ought to slip you open like a fucking purse for that. Fred prepared to shoot him again, but with a deft flick of the wrist and a sudden shimmer in the flashlight's beam, Bill's stiletto was buried in Fred's shoulder with a visceral, meaty thunk. Fred screamed. We both fell back from the shock of it, Fred whimpering in pain, as his overalls became dark and heavy with blood. Bill came charging at us out of the darkness, seeming twice his original size. Come here! His voice was somehow deeper, crueler.

I'll whip your throats out. We ran for it, with no direction in mind but getting away from him. Every second was a risk, because the harder his heart pounded from the stress and the exertion, the sooner Fred would bleed out. I'd already lost two friends tonight. I didn't want to go for three. It was my decision to come here. I couldn't let all of this death be on me.

It hurts. God, it really fucking hurts. Take deep breaths, Fred. You're doing great. You're doing fantastic. Leave me, Carly. You need to run. There's no way in hell I'm going to leave you, Fred.

It's going to be okay. Fred was still holding his gun, but as he got weaker from the blood loss, there was no hope of him being able to use it. Not that it even did any good, beyond a momentary distraction and pissing that thing off. We just had to escape from the library and hope that monster wasn't lying when it said that it was trapped. By the time I'd managed to retrace our steps and find our way back to the main corridor, leading straight back to the entrance, the sound of Bill's footsteps had finally ceased. Fred's skin looked pale as marble, his eyes half open.

Lid strooping. The handle of Bill Stiletto still protruded from his clavicle, the muddled wood showing its age. Carly, I'm not sure I'm going to pull through. Don't talk like that. I'm feeling woozy. I just want to go to sleep. Just for five minutes. You know we can't do that.

I'm tired. So tired. Just put one foot in front of the other. We've got to keep moving. forward. They're gone. Aren't they? The others are gone. Tom, Lena, they didn't make it. Please, Fred, you've just got to keep holding on. For me, okay? We can still see the game on Sunday, right? At your place? I was looking forward to it. Fred gave a weak smile. Let's keep going. So we did. We pushed onwards.

trying to compartmentalize the pain and the grief and the terror, because those were all feelings reserved for the survivors. The nightmare wasn't over until we passed through the entrance doors. But when those doors finally came into our field of vision, we saw someone was already there waiting for us. Salutation, fair maiden. Such an honor for us to meet on these lonely midnight paths. allow me to relieve thee of thy burdensome companion.

He was dressed in a Lincoln green wool with a feather in his cap, and on his thin, angular face he wore a roguish grin. He still had those terrible red reptile eyes, staring hungrily at Fred and I, so eager to hurt us. It pulled an arrow from the quiver on its back, and knocked it on the imposing long bow it was holding. Before either Fred or I could react, he'd drawn back, aimed, and released. The arrow struck the right side of Fred's chest, spinning him like a pinwheel.

He collapsed down onto a hand and knee, whimpering in pain. Robin Hood was feeling less like a folk hero right now and more like a murderous psychopath. That thing was intelligent. It knew a shot like that wouldn't kill him because it didn't want to kill him immediately. It wanted to punish Fred first. Get even for every bullet. I fell to the ground myself and tried to keep him upright. He was crying now, falling like a child, half insane with terror.

His face was a red, scrunched up mess against white blood-starved skin. His eyes a pair of leaking black slivers and swollen sockets. He was whispering, gibbering, begging. He grabbed my hand and squeezed. Please, Carly. I'm so scared. I'll acquaint thee with thine heavenly father, you louse-ridden, cur. Knock, draw. The arrow sailed through the air, straight and true.

and planted itself in the center of Fred's forehead. His pale head jerked back like he'd just experienced a car crash. With a final full-body spasm that shook him from my grasp, Fred expired and collapsed to the ground. Consider our debt repaid, good sir. Robin let out another cruel laugh and performed a low bow for his audience of one. It was all just a big game to him. As he came skipping eagerly down towards us to feast on his kill,

I was forced to scatter off into the dark, turning off my flashlight and bolting behind the nearest bookshelf while the creature's attention was still focused on Fred's body. Tears stained my cheeks, snout dribbled down my upper lip. I didn't have time to grieve him. I didn't have time to grieve any of them. For the first time, I saw the creature that was masquerading as Robin Hood shift and transform right in front of me. I sat staring at the whole surreal display from between a pair of encyclopedias.

As the Lincoln Green shimmered and melted into a royal purple, the whole outfit expanding and flowing out into an opulent ballgown. Its facial features blurred and then reshuffled, taking off. on a softer, more feminine quality, as the back of its head bloomed open like a flower, and 20 feet of tree-trunk-thick braid came slithering out, whipping and writhing. The process took about five seconds, and now Robin Hood had become what I could only assume was Rapunzel. Her fair skin had that same as Alice, like old paper, and that same pair of gleaming red eyes. The hair was the worst, though. There was a solidness to it, a girth. It roiled and slithered like an anaconda, the tip fanning open and revealing those same

concentric circles of fangs, a giant, leech-like proboscis. Did it time! She was rubbing her dainty hands together in excitement. The braid latched onto Fred's bloody chest, fangs perforating his skin, and began slurping audibly. It pulsed, throbbed, Fred's skin getting drier and gripping tighter to his bones, until his soon empty torso just caved in under the pressure with a brittle crunching noise, sucked dry. Rapunzel giggled and sighed. Oh, three down. One to go. I know you're a little. I know you're in here, dear, you can fight and run and struggle all you like, but you've seen this play out before, and you know how it ends. If you want it to be painless, you should just submit.

The whole time, I'd been focusing on her face and those awful, malevolent eyes. She spoke with a calm kind of authority, someone who doesn't need to prove that they're in control. With her standing in between me and the entrance, she was holding all the cards, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it, except wait and hope for a golden opportunity. While all this was coursing through my brain like an electrical surge, I hadn't noticed the low hiss of something moving towards me in the dark, with weight and purpose. Suddenly, the encyclopedias in front of me burst out of the shelf, as Ruponzo. Hissel's python-like braid came storming through the gap, growling and snapping at me with its fanged-lined maw, trailing black spittle in the remnants of Fred's blood. That same viscous, tar-like substance was leaking out from between the tightly woven hair, like the sweats of the fleshy creature underneath. A sea!

...up on my feet, my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I looked over my shoulder to see Rapunzel. Now fanged and clawed, crawling across the ceiling, her ravenous braid trailing after me on the ground, jaws gaping open and ready to feed. Run all you like. You're mine either way, just like your friends. There was nowhere to hide from her. I kept running, but gradually the pain began to return and my strength faltered. If I wanted to live, I had to find a way to outsmart her. Isn't it every girl's dream to be in a fairy tale?

Rapunzel was yelling from the ceiling, her braid swiping for me and missing by half an inch. If you stop running, you can be in one right now. I thought of the first time it lunged at me, through the bookcase, and had an idea. Like everything that had been tried and failed since this absolute cluster fuck began, it was a long shot, but I wasn't in a position to pick and choose. I reached the end of a bookshelf and ran a 180 around it. The braid did what any hungry animal would do. It took the shortest possible route to get to me, jamming itself straight through the bookshelf,

snapping like a crocodile on amphetamines, spraying that same black gunk everywhere. Now was my chance. With what was left of my energy, I threw my flank against the shell, feeling an almighty creak and the splitting of rotten wood underneath me. The entire, century-old structure began tumbling over under my sudden application of force. What? No, stop! You can't do that!

The size and weight of the bookshelf collapsed against the break, pinning it to the ground with an inhuman squeal. The slack quickly ran out and tore Rapunzel from the ceiling, tumbling down into the wreckage below, the dust whipped up into a storm around her. I knew that after shrugging off three handgun rounds, this wouldn't kill it,

but it brought me some time to get out of the way and figure out a new plan. Don't you dad go anywhere? You're mine. Her voice seemed almost warped with rage. I sloped off into the darkness of the shelf maze, while the creature tried to free itself from the wreckage, ripping the old wood to shreds with tooth and claw. The monster shrieked again.

It was that same inhuman screech it made earlier when it was flying above us. That screech that communicated unimaginable age and power. I knew I only had a minute, tops. Come back! It's futile to run. The voice faded as I probed deeper into the maze, replaced by the sound of my heartbeat pounding in my ears. Without my flashlight on, I was at least a little harder to detect at a distance, but I knew this creature could probably navigate the entire place from muscle memory by now.

I crept forwards, trying my damnedest not to bump into anything and give myself away, but I just wasn't getting anywhere. All the shelves looked identical. There were no clues, no markers. All I could do was push forwards and hope I got somewhere that didn't smell death. That's when the smell hit me. A kind of musty, rotten smell. A smell like the ghost of decaying meat.

Mostly gone but traces, impressions, still lingering in the stale air. In a more normal situation, I'd try to assume literally anything else. But here, I knew it had to be dead bodies. I shuffled forwards until I was at a wall. What I could only assume was the back of the library and saw the vague outlines of three people sitting next to one another, slumped up against the stones, heads lolling downwards like they were staring at the ground.

With trembling fingers, I reached into my overalls and took out my smartphone, turning it on and pointing the light of the screen in the direction of the three bodies. I don't know why death still had the power to shock me, after seeing it happen to three of my friends, and so nearly experiencing it myself. But the three bodies, each wearing what looked like old-fashioned turn-of-the-century mining gear, their corpses little more now than dust-gathering husks, still managed to provoke a gasp.

Once I'd regained my composure, I saw that the one in the middle, whose skull had been entirely caved in, with large chunks of his forehead and face missing, was holding an old scrap of paper in his skeletal hand. I reached out and took it from him. The paper was worn, dried, yellowing, but under the light of my phone,

I could still faintly make out, a message, scrawled on with a desperate, scratchy handwriting. Burn it all, the note read. There was a brownish splatter dried onto the corner of the paper that I could only assume was blood. I looked to the side, following my gaze with the beam of my phone's monitor, until my eyes rested on a set of six large jerry cans. Just to the left of those, clasped in the bony fingers of a dead stranger,

was an old book of matches. It didn't take long to put two and two together. Someone knew about this place, about this thing, and sent this little arson squad to go take care of the problem. Just like my friends and I, they'd been outmatched. Whoever sent them had just given up after the first attempt had crashed and burned. They wanted nothing to do with this place, just like anyone else who knew the secret of what was waiting.

here. I'd led all of my friends into a death trap. If I escaped alive, I'd have to carry that around my neck until the day I died. I'd have to remember seeing their eyes go cold and glassy, and know that if it wasn't for me, that never would have happened. My fist clenched around the note, my cheeks hot and wet with tears once again. And I began to... to cry quietly to myself now that I finally had time. It felt like a luxury, an indulgence, but I couldn't stop. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I couldn't bring my friends back, but there was one thing I could do.

Make sure nobody else ever set foot in this terrible building again. I'd raise the whole fucking place to the crime. ground. I crept over to the jerry cans and unscrewed the cap on one of them. The initial wave of the stench was heavy and thick, a burning chemical smell that made me recoil a little when it first hit me. I grabbed the can by the handle and tried to lift it, feeling the weight of the incendiary cocktail sloshing around inside. I started unscrewing the jerry cans and tipping them over, letting the stinking puddle expand out over the ground, flowing past the first row of bookshelves.

Can by can, the puddle got bigger, spreading out further until I'd upended the first four. I was just opening the fifth when... Let's not be hasty now, dear. It was a calm, confident voice, sophisticated, and British again. I turned in shock to see a tall, slender figure in a tweed long coat with a Victorian suit, waistcoat, and tie underneath.

He looked around 45, his face thin and intelligent, but with those same demonic red eyes that marked all the creature's other forms. His thinning black hair fell into a widow's peak, and in his right hand he held an old-fashioned walking cane. Just when I was about to start running, He calmly raised an open-palmed hand. Please, let's be civil now. I'm aware that how I've treated you has been unbecoming of a gentleman thus far, and I intend to rectify that. However, in my defense, I haven't been fed in almost a century,

so I'm afraid my hunger overwhelmed my manners, but I've had my fill for now. His reptile eyes turned to the ever-expanding puddle, glugging out of the four jerry cans. A rather potent compound that. Easy to light, hard to put out, and reaches frankly incredible temperatures, an arsonist's ambrosia,

excellent for, say, reducing a library to a pile of smoldering ashes. When I was finally at least somewhat confident that he wouldn't just lunge at me, I plucked up the courage to say something to him. Who the fuck are you? The creature grinned. That depends on your perspective.

If you're referring to the form I currently occupy, then I'm Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, brilliant deductive mind, and credit to the British Empire at your service, madam. Sherlock clicked the heels of his boots together and gave me a courteous nod. I'm too tired to keep playing these stupid games. Who are you really?

Hell, what are you? Ah, that's a more interesting question. You'd make a fine detective yourself, Ms. Jones. I could feel my eyes suddenly widen, and when I saw Sherlock smile in response, I hated myself for playing into one of his cheap parlor tricks. He wanted to unsettle me, to throw me off. I asked the obvious question.

How do you know my name? It's written on the label of your shirt, Carly Jones. Did a relative get it for you? I'm an appreciator of words. They call out to me and I can feel them pulsing like a heartbeat in the dark. So where better to stay than a library? Sherlock gave a knowing smile. Precisely.

You wish to know my true name, Miss Jones, so I'll indulge you because there's something I need from you too. quid pro quo, tit for tat, you see. Then answer my question. I call myself ledger domain. I like the way it feels on the page and on the tongue. I found it here when I was first called, and from that moment, I knew that it was me.

Called? One hundred and eight years ago, the people who made this place, the group, the society, they were in search of forbidden knowledge, of things mankind isn't meant to know, and all that tripe. They thought it would make them powerful,

that it would give them earthly riches. Of course, nothing betrays a smaller mind than that, a lust for money. That's what fascinates me about you humans. You spend all your lives honing an intricate sandcastle, trying to advance yourselves in something that the tide will only wash away later.

If you had any inkling of what came before you and what will come after, then you'd have a greater appreciation, of your own impermanence. You've been waiting to have this conversation with someone for a long time, haven't you? The puddle continued to expand. Oh, Miss Jones, you have no idea. 108 years.

Members of your kind have been born, lived their lives, and died peacefully of old age while I sat in this dismal, loathsome little building, and waited in the dark alone. Those cowards who summoned me, they weren't ready. They grew fearful of what they'd done, the spiritual consequences of summoning me. They reneged on our arrangement and tried to escape. Of course, I killed most of them,

and then they retaliated, tried to destroy me. Do you see how well that went? He gestured to the three corpses sitting behind me. So, ledger to Maine, if you hate this place so much, why do you stay here, huh? Are you not powerful enough to leave? I saw the back of his jaw clench, and his fingers tighten around the head of his cane. I'm being polite with you. I encourage you to do the same.

All this waiting has strained my patience. You killed my fucking friends! You don't get to preach fucking civility to me! There was silence for a moment, save for the steady trickling of the jerry cans. I can make it up to you. The reason I can't leave this building, Carly, is that I need a medium to exist in the physical world. I am numina. This is phenomena, you see.

And the bridge between numina and phenomena is expression. Or, as Algernon Blackwood put it, what one thinks finds expression in words and what one says. happens. Do you follow? So these books, all this writing, you, you need it to exist here. They give you something to become. Alice, Dracula, Bill Sykes, Robin Hood, Rapunzel. And good old Sherlock Holmes. You've hit the nail right on the head there, Carly. Some entities possess flesh, which I find terribly crude. I possess words. I possess words. And the more words I have access to, the more powerful I become.

You humans are storytelling creatures. It's an almost compulsive act for you to form and express narrative, which makes you all perfect for sustaining me. We were made for one another. Then what is it you need from me? Straight to the point. I like that about you. It's why I'm glad you survived.

You see, Carly, I'm dying, in a sense. This library has been here for over a century. The pages are rotting, the words are fading. It was dumb luck that you and your friends arrived when you did. When those writings are gone, Ms. Jones, I'm gone too. And with nothing to bridge the gap between here and another source, I'm trapped on a sinking ship to borrow a rather trite metaphor from my increasingly limited sources.

He lifted a hand to his face, bony fingers touching his temple and forced them through his skin. He grabbed a chunk of it, like old wallpaper, and peeled it from his skull until it hung on a loose flap from the bottom of his jaw. Underneath, an inky liquid void, full of myriad red eyes and gnashing mouths. As you can see... When he spoke, he spoke through both sides of his desiccated face, his voice a mangled mess. My structural integrity leaves a lot to be desired.

I can't maintain any form for too long without degradation. Ledger de Maine shook his head like a dog drying itself off, and once he was done, Alice's ashen face stared back. And even my forms are growing limited. Soon enough, if I don't escape this place. I'll have nothing. Ledger Domain's face split apart down the middle, revealing Sherlock once more underneath, as the two errant skin flaps slithered beneath his shirt collar.

You can see why this is problematic to me. I'd never help you. And besides, I wouldn't even know how to help. You're a lost cause, and you fucking deserve it. Oh, contrary, Carly, you hold the key to my salvation. That device you're holding, I'm not familiar with it. but I sense its power. I sense an almost unlimited number of words.

A perfect passage for escape, a paradise compared to this place. He was staring at my phone. Now, I could have just killed you and taken it from you, but I sense the requirement for a numerical passcode. Four digits, correct? I nodded. I needed him to keep talking so I could think up a plan. That's 10,000 possible combinations.

One can also deduce that device is powered electrically with a portable fuel cell similar to the batteries in this rather advanced torch. Ledger Domain reached into his coat and produced a blood-stained flashlight. He unscrewed the bottom with clinical detachment and allowed the batteries to clatter to the ground before handing the empty shell over to me. So it stands to reason, I'd have to input all 10,000 possible four-digit combinations on the off-chance that one is correct,

before the device loses power and becomes useless to me. After ten attempts, it locks up. I took immense satisfaction in what looked like a momentary flicker of panic showing on the creature's face. You only get ten chances. Ten possible attempts in ten thousand. I don't fancy those odds, which is why I'd prefer for you. to just give me the coat. Get fucked, Sherlock.

You'll have to kill me. His body began rumbling with a subdued kind of anger. His red eyes were pointing in different directions now, facing outwards, while his foreheads seemed to slowly expand and split down the middle.

Why did you come here, Carly? Was it to destroy this place like the people who made it? Was that what your friends died for? A vertical whole sideways mouth with a clenched zigzag of fangs appeared within the divide in his forehead. The metal head of the cane began crumpling like a wad of paper in his hand as he clenched it, claws growing from the tips of his fingers, displacing his fingernails.

I came here because I wanted to find a good story. I spent my whole childhood reading exciting books and thinking, That's going to be me. That's going to be my life. And now I'm in fucking tech support. I looked down at the floor, unable to face even that monster in my shame. I just wanted to escape it for a little while. If you free me, Carly, we can make every story in the world real.

The lines between fiction and reality will cease to exist. The world will be one giant, fantastical free-for-all. You'll never be bored or tired ever again. all the characters you grew up with, you'll be able to coexist with them. Go on the most marvelous adventures with them. As he spoke, his voice became progressively less human. If you unlock your device and let me in,

we can turn Earth into a paradise for both of us. A sudden terror had set in, with the realization of what he could do with it. If Ledger to Maine hit the internet, He'd have access to every person with a Wi-Fi-enabled device in the entire world. He'd have every short story, every novel, every library, every bookcase, every e-book, every script, every blog, every tweet. He could be anywhere, become anything or anyone,

and he could feed on anybody he wanted. There'd be nothing in the world that could stop him, unless we burned ourselves back to the dark ages. He'd have every resource he needed to reshape the world into his idea of a paradise. He'd go global. He'd be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. A monster would become a god. My hands were shaking.

What looked like black tendrils were emerging from Ledger-Demain sleeves. His face had split open into a gaping, fleshy canyon, those concentric circles of fangs again, lined with glowing red eyes. And what if I refuse? Then I'll grab you by the ankles and split you in half down the middle like a wishbone. Your choice. He was getting larger. His skin began sweating that awful black slime.

Dark spines protruded from the fabulous. of his clothes and clawing, scratching limbs awakened in the darkness of his coat. His fingers were getting longer, gangling and spider-like, and reaching out towards me. I closed my eyes for a second, tuned everything out, and sighed. I've decided, it's yours. I'll give it to you. But you'll have to catch it. I threw the phone behind him, off into the dark.

and with a furious snarl he darted after it, a blur of teeth, eyes, and grasping limbs, sloshing against the sheen of flammable liquid that was coating the floor, just as planned. While he was distracted, I lunged for one of the unopened jerry cans. I stuffed the stray matchbook into the pocket of my overalls, unscrewed the cap from the canister, and started running for my life,

splashing a trail of noxious fluid after me, coating the floor and any bookcases I happened to pass, panting, lungs burning, legs aching under the weight of my body, and my arms aching under the weight of the fuel, but unable to stop. Suddenly, the bookcase in front of me exploded into a blizzard of fluttering paper and woodchips with an almighty crash. A great square of sharpened metal, about the size of a car door, had shattered it with a single strike,

splintering it right in front of me. Charlie, you thought it'd be that easy? I looked up to see the glowing eyes of a giant machine, an 18-foot-tall humanoid metal monstrosity, browning with rust, caustic smog belching from the chute on top of its head, a huge, sharpened jaw hanging slack, cruel laughter clattering out of it,

echoing, knocking against the metal. The monstrous tin man raised his axe for another swing. I may be heartless, Carly, but I'm not stupid. The axe came down with another thundering blood, embedding itself into the ground next to me, splitting the slabs with ease. I turned to the right and ran for it, spreading more fuel after me as the enormous homicidal robot

geared up for another swing. Every movement underscored by the twilight. twisting and clanking of 100-year-old cogs. Another bookcase was reduced to splinters next to me, coding my left side in shrapnel. I felt the axe land just behind me right after, shattering more solid concrete beneath it. There was a deafening rumble,

the ground shaking, as Ledger de Main lumbered towards me in his huge metal body, frantically swinging his axe, annihilating bookcases left and right, gaining on me with each unimaginable footstep. I had to make my move now. Throwing the jerry can to the ground, I turned on my heels and whipped out the matchbook.

His burning red searchlights met my gaze, and he paused for a moment, perhaps finally knowing the dread I'd been trapped in since I'd first seen him in the corner of that photo. I forced a smile and struck a match. But it didn't like. And of course it didn't light. They could have been here for as long as a century.

Ledger Domain charged forwards again, seizing his chance. I ducked just in time and missed a blow that cleaved the bookcase next to me clean in half and gave me about a second and a half to get away from the return swing. Boom. A few inches away from me, it shattered stone with ease. I grabbed my Jerry can and carried on running and, pouring. I had one idea left, and I didn't exactly feel confident about it, but it was worth a shot. I bolted for the wall, as Ledger Domain stormed after me, leaving a trail of utter decimation as I left a

trail of that flammable cocktail on the ground. I only managed to reach the great stone wall of the library a scant few seconds before him, and began dumping out a huge puddle of the foul-smelling liquid onto the ground until the jerry can was utterly empty. The roar of the tin man's mechanized nightmare of a body had become deafening. The gnashing of gears as he raised his arm for a killing blow. The moment of truth. You should have taken the deal, Carly. The axe fell. I jumped away, skidding across the slabs and knocking the breath from my chest. I turned my head just in time to see of my last ditch attempt had succeeded. The axe missed me, and instead scraped against the stone wall with an ear-splitting shriek,

tearing into the stone and vomiting an explosion of sparks, one of which landed exactly where I wanted it to. We had ignition. The trail I'd been laying suddenly roared into life, blazing through the library. The bookcases led your domain had been chopping up. became little more than kindling, fueling the flame as it swelled from a single track to an ever-widening blockade of fire. His great metal head was twisting in rage and confusion until he realized the direction of the flame and chased off towards it with a procession of earthquake footsteps,

seeing if he could halt the inferno. I climbed to my feet and sprinted through the library in the opposite direction, wood and paper giving way to clawing tongues of orange flame around me, lighting up the building and exhaling plumes of thick gray smoke up towards the ceiling. And then my trail hit the source, the five jerry cans, four upended and one still full at the back of the library. A wave of heat struck me as the explosion and the resulting ocean of flames spilled through the library, consuming, devouring. The sound was almost deafening, the light almost blinding, the heat almost utterly unbearable, but I kept running.

Ledger to Maine was somewhere behind me in all that burning. I'd found my way back into the main hall. Now everything was illuminated in blowing orange light, those two phalanxes of bookcases falling to the Legion of Flame on both sides of me, Searing the fabric of my overalls and the skin of my face, even at a few feet's distance, the wall of fire advanced on my heels. In the distance, beyond the heat distortion, I saw the entrance coming into focus. I stole a quick breath of clean air, which, as the smoke got thicker, was harder to come by

and made a final mad dash for the door. I saw it getting closer and closer. The oasis, the promised land. But I felt something catch under my feet and tumbled to the ground with a pained grunt. I looked back to see what I'd tripped up on and saw the dried, petrified face of Fred's corpse staring back at me, an arrow still protruding from his forehead, and I let out an involuntary scream. You stupid, insolent human. You almost ruined everything.

Ledger de Main trudged out of the flames, wearing the count, his red eyes half staring and half melting down his cheeks. His skin was blackening in places, with pronounced veins glowing like rubies in the heat, molten. His lower cheeks were gone, his entire face below the eyes a gaping, tooth-lined maw. In his clawed hand, he held my phone. I was being kind to you, Carly. He was wheezing out embers as he spoke. I was ready to give you a gift, but you burned it. Maybe some things are meant to burn.

Silence! You could have given me the code and existed in my world like royalty. But now you'll never see the paradise I'm going to create here. I pity you for that. He lifted up the phone with one hand, and with the other, he extended an index finger. It gradually lengthened and sharpened into a fine point with a razor edge, like a scythe made of insect, Kytton. I'm going to need the coat from you before you die, Carly. Thankfully, there are ways other than kindness to make a person more talkative.

Let me show you. A sudden sequence of small explosions. Bang, bang. A staccato burst that seemed to take him off guard, before he even noticed I was holding Fred's gun. Two bullet holes in Ledger Domain's chest bled dust and embers. But I wasn't aiming for him. I was just a bad shot under pressure,

and it took three tries to hit my target. But in the end, I did. When he looked to the side, he saw what was left of my phone, a mangled ruin of metal, blast, and microchip, bleeding battery fluid into his palm. Crying, panting, I let the gun clatter to the ground. No, no, no, no, you stupid curl. His voice cracked, watching his last chance to escape fall to pieces in his hands. What have you done? Well have you done?

I've closed the book. Story's over. He jerked forwards and back, seizing, spasming. His face falling from his skull like hot taffy, but he grabbed it and forced it back on. One of his arms burned up like lit paper and curled away to nothing on his shoulder. No, no!

No. This can't be happening. With considerable. considerable concentration, he forced the mass of eyes and tentacles out of the stump that formed a grim facsimile of an arm. He shifted and flickered between forms, seeming sometimes like a projected image and other times like the fluid blobs in a lava lamp. There was no permanence, no integrity to his form. He withered and altered and transformed beyond his will. This isn't fair.

You cheated. I'll kill you. for this, you filthy, worthless animal. He rose up from the ground, skin blackening, spitting fire, warped into a mandala of eyes and mouths, a flaming vortex of screaming faces trying desperately to maintain form as his last tethers to humanity burned away in front of him. Behind him, the wall of fire advanced. I row slowly to my feet, picking up Fred's flashlight. What's happening?

I... I can't control it. Please help me. He dropped back down to the ground, a roiling eldridge blob of flesh, darkness, fire, and metal. He rose on four feet and flailed six arms, which became twelve whipping black tentacles, screaming madly from nine mouths,

as more of his appendages seemed to fall away from his body and evaporate in the heat. The body congealed, condensed, squeezing its chaos of errant pieces into a vaguely humanoid shape that stood across from me, its face a chasm of inwards-facing teeth, its black skin rendering it a silhouette against the flame. I stepped over Fred's body to finally face it. I wasn't afraid anymore. Ledger Domain extended two clawed hands, posed like the Boris Karloff Frankenstein, burning with limitless fury, and sprinted at me in one final charge,

hands grasping, teeth dripping with a black drool. Dice! I swung the flashlight with every last ounce of strength I could summon, and connected with Ledger Demaine's head, shattering it clean off his shoulders in a pinck. killer of shrieking ash. His body came apart that instant, disintegrating, exploding into embers and smoke, and scattering into the air until it could be seen no more. Up above, the ceiling had become one huge pall of suffocating black smoke. With every second I spent in this

place, it got harder to breathe. I rushed back to the grand entrance, avoiding the tendrils of hungry flame that spread out onto the gangway and forced my fingers behind the door. I yanked and strained, feeling the muscles in my hands, arms and shoulders begin to ache and burn until I finally managed to budget and a jet of cool nighttime air rushed in to relieve me. With a final, fierce tug, I pulled the door open and spilled out onto the forest floor, hearing the slam of the door behind me echoing out into the night. I was free again. Even in spite of all the awfulness,

after losing my friends, after seeing what I'd seen, I couldn't deny that this felt sweet. When the exhaustion sat in, and it did, far quicker than I'd imagined, I collapsed onto the mud, sprawled out like a corpse, kept warm by the heat of the abandoned library turned raging inferno.

A great tower of black smoke was rising out of the roof, climbing up towards the moon, and I knew that it was carrying what was left of my friends, the three would be arsonists, and the monster that killed them all. Ledger de Maine said that we humans like to build intricate sand castles, and that were oblivious to the approach of, the tide. But that's not true. We're the only animals conscious of the fact that one day,

the world will exist again without us in it. So we leave things behind. We never start with nothing, and we never end without passing something on, some contribution to another person's story. A book, a memory, a nightmare. Nothing ever wipes the slate clean. Lena's mom would never truly know what happened to her. Someone would have to tell Dan that Fred isn't coming back and that it's time to start searching for a new person to split the rent with. Tom's wife would be widowed and never have a reason, just as little Joey won't know what to tell people when he's asked

why he grew up without a father. There'd be stories, sure. Urban legends about what happened the night of the blaze. Everyone would believe what they wanted to. The world keeps turning, and Farbrook keeps decaying. As the library burned, I drifted off to an uneasy sleep on the forest floor, knowing that someone would see the smoke by tomorrow morning and come to find me. And when they did, I'd have one hell of a story to tell them.

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