"Today we have a somewhat historic weather report for you all. It seems summer wanted one last goodbye before the start of the cold season. Tell us about it, Jason."

"That's right, folks, 85 degrees," he chuckled. "85 degrees Fahrenheit, no wind, and a cloudless, sunny sky is the weather here today in Ely. This is a historic high for November in Minnesota, so put on your bathing suits and get outside to soak in the sun while you can. This is a real treat from Mother Nature. My name is Jason Sweatman with Northwood News 8, reporting live that the sun feels AMAZING."

The weatherman stretched out his arms and looked up at the sun, smiling widely, before they cut back to the anchors and finished the rest of their segment. I picked up the remote and switched to Cartoon Network.

"That explains why I woke up so hot last night," my sister said, not looking up from her phone.

Dad chortled and pointed through our sliding glass door to the backyard. "Bowser sure seems to be enjoying the weather."

Sure enough, the dog was rolling around in the grass like he always did at the start of spring when the snow finally melted.

My mom finished washing the dishes, patted her hands dry, and said, "Well, I am going to get my book and some sunscreen and join Mr. Bowser out there."

She kissed my head as she walked past and went up the stairs.

"Me too," my sister said, getting up from the table and slapping me on the back of my neck as she followed Mom.

After a minute my Dad put down his newspaper and said, "Well, I think I ought to join the ladies, bud. You going to be okay in here by yourself?"

I rubbed my stinging neck and said, "Yeah, I will just play some video games or something."

There is this condition called Xeroderma Pigmentosum where you really can't be exposed to sunlight for long at all because your skin will begin to blister and burn. I have that condition, so a day like this basically meant I was confined indoors. I didn't really mind. I am more of a homebody anyways, plus I had just gotten an Xbox for my birthday two months ago. The prospect of playing Modern Warfare 2 all day while my family didn't bother me was, in my opinion, the perfect way to spend my Saturday.

I called my buddy Hudson to see if he was already on the game.

"Nah, man," he said. "We all went to Pineridge Park. There are, like, hundreds of people here. I wish you could see it. The sun feels amazing."

I told him to let me know when he got on the game later. We had been playing video games every Saturday night since I got my Xbox, so I knew he would be.

After a few hours of grinding team deathmatch, I got hungry and went downstairs to see what Mom made for lunch. To my surprise, no one was in the kitchen or living room. I looked out the window to the backyard, and sure enough, there they were. All three of them were sitting in the lawn chairs facing the sun. Bowser was lying on his back next to them, panting lightly under the heat.

I opened the sliding glass door and called out, "Hey, Mom, are you coming in to make lunch soon?"

"Uhh, no, honey, but there are leftovers in the fridge from last night, or you can make yourself a sandwich," she said without turning around.

"Are you guys not going to eat lunch?" I asked.

"No, we are enjoying the sun," my sister said as if it were the most annoying question ever.

"It really does feel amazing out here, bud. Come sit with us for a little," Dad said.

Mom reached out and slapped him on the arm. "Oh, you know he can't do that, Chuck."

"Five minutes wouldn't hurt!"

Whatever, I thought to myself, sliding the glass door shut as they bickered. I knew I had no frame of reference for how good the sun felt on your skin, but I struggled to imagine what would make anyone want to spend more than an hour out sunbathing at a time. I made myself two PB&Js and went back up to my room.

I played more team deathmatch, checking my phone between each round to see if Hudson had tried to call me to tell me he was getting on, but I still had zero notifications. Once my eyes started to hurt from the strain of staring at my TV, I finally turned my Xbox off, leaned back into my chair, and checked the time.

"What the fuck?" I said, staring at my clock.

The clock read 7:52 PM. Had I really just played Xbox for five hours straight? I peeked through my blackout curtains, and sure enough, it was as sunny as it was when I woke up. I assumed my clock was broken and went to check the time on my phone. 7:52 PM.

I stepped out of my room and called out to the house but got no answer. I went downstairs to the kitchen and looked at the time on the oven. It said 7:53 PM. It didn't make sense. It couldn't possibly be that late; it was still so bright outside.

Looking out the sliding glass window, my heart sank a little; they were all still out there. In fact, from what I could tell, they hadn't moved an inch since I last came down for lunch. I slid open the door, and to my surprise, all three of them were in a fit of giggles as if one of them had just told the funniest joke of all time.

I called out to them, "Have you all been out here the whole time?"

My sister burst out laughing, and my dad turned around to look at me.

"There he is!" He started laughing too, but what I was seeing was far from amusing. His face was deep red, clearly badly sunburnt.

My mom turned around, smiling ear to ear. "Hey, baby! Come sit with us, just five minutes. The sun feels amazing!"

She reached out a burnt-red arm in my direction, beckoning me to join them.

I stared at them in horror. My own mother, who was always so particular about ensuring I didn't get exposed to the sun, had just tried to get me to come outside.
"Jesus fucking Christ! Have you guys not been back inside yet? Have you been using sunscreen at all?" I said, fear swelling in my chest.

"Woahhh, language!" Dad exclaimed.

"Don't worry," my sister said through fits of giggles. "Bowser has been reapplying it on us."

All three of them howled in laughter. I was so confused and uncomfortable. Were they drunk? Stoned?

I looked over at Bowser. He was panting hard now but still splayed out on the grass exactly where he was ten hours ago. I called for him to come to me, but he didn't. He opened his eyes and looked at me, wagging his tail, but didn't make any effort to stand up.

I called him again and again, offered him treats, and said all his favorite words, but nothing moved him. He just looked at me upside down and wagged his tail. The more I pleaded with Bowser to come inside the house, the harder my family laughed.

Finally, I became so humiliated, scared, and angry that I boiled over and yelled at them, "STOP FUCKING LAUGHING AT ME, YOU GUYS ARE BEING FUCKING WEIRD!" and slammed the sliding glass door shut as hard as I could, causing the glass to crack.

My sister called out, "LANGUAGE!" in her best impression of my dad's voice, before howling in laughter even harder than before.

I ran upstairs, completely forgetting about the fact that it was supposedly 8 PM but completely sunny outside, that we were supposed to have already eaten dinner, and that I was supposed to play Xbox with Hudson any moment now.

I slammed my bedroom door shut, jumped into my bed face-first, and began to cry. I cried and cried and cried, expecting at any moment that my mom or dad would come into the room to console me. Eventually, I passed out from exhaustion, and with tears still in my eyes, I fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning I immediately felt guilty about my outburst. I had cursed out my entire family and then slammed and broke the sliding glass door they had just gotten installed last summer.

I lay in bed staring at my ceiling, contemplating yesterday's events. I convinced myself that they were probably just drunk and enjoying the nice, sunny weather, two things they did every summer anyway and that I had never experienced. How could I know what that was like, how great it was? It was probably pretty great as an adult, like their version of playing Modern Warfare with Hudson.

I was disappointed with myself. They all worked so hard each week, and the one time they got to unwind with nice weather, I had thrown a fit. My own fears of the sun and the odd timing of the weather had caused me to exaggerate the details of yesterday's events. Of course they had come back into the house. Of course they had made sure to apply sunscreen (my mother was a freak about sunscreen given my condition).

The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous and guilty I felt. I crafted my apology and headed to the kitchen to make it.

No one was there.

The oven clock read 5:36 AM. But the sun was already out, so I had assumed it was later in the day.

Everyone is still asleep, I told myself.

I went over to the glass door to inspect the damage from yesterday's tantrum. Sure enough, there was a big, splintering crack along the pane.

"Damn, goodbye Xbox. Dad is going to kill m—"

I froze.

Outside, sitting motionless in their three chairs
facing the sun, were my mom, dad, and sister. Lying next to them, stiff as a board, was my dog. In that moment I knew that they never came back inside the house, I knew that they never would. 

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

[Part 3]

[Part 4]

[Part 5]

The day after CATALOGUE left, nothing happened in my house. For weeks there'd been talking radios, moving reflections, and new things on my workbench. Now there were forty-one objects gone. The dresser, the tank, and the portrait were still waiting on a transport crew. I checked the wardrobe repeatedly that night, listening for creaks or voices. 

I had a lot of time to think this week, and I want to be honest that I hated it.

I hadn't touched a drink in nine days. Not since that night with the radio. I still thought about Alicia's voice coming from it and how I'd sounded answering her. I'd spent so long telling myself our arguments had gone differently that hearing them again felt like being caught in a lie. Maybe the radio had invented some of it. But I remembered enough to know it hadn't invented everything.

I wanted a drink more than once that week. I didn't have one.

On Wednesday, I finally met with the family lawyer I'd been talking to for months. After depositing CATALOGUE's money, I called from the bank parking lot. For once, I could afford to retain him.

We spent an hour going through my situation. He didn't sugarcoat anything. My visitation record was poor, and asking for full custody would get me nowhere. But he said there was room to negotiate, provided I could demonstrate that I was taking things seriously.

He helped me put together a proposal for Saturday's mediation. More time with Toby, a gradual move away from supervised visits, and a review further down the line. Nothing guaranteed, but it was a start.

I walked out with a folder under my arm and, for once, something resembling a plan.

On Thursday I went to see Henry.

Since the sale, we'd only spoken by phone. I blamed his rehab appointments, but that was a lie. I stayed away because I was afraid of looking him in the eye. 

I found him in the last room of the rehabilitation ward trying to open a pack of crackers.

He was using his right hand, and you could see him trying to fight it. I didn't step into the room immediately. He had the packet pinched between his thumb and fingers, trying to yank the corner open. His hand curled partway, slipped, and dropped the corner. He muttered something nasty and passed it over to his left. My heart sank. His left hand had never been much use for delicate work.

Then he got the corner between his teeth and pulled hard. The packet split down the side. Crackers went everywhere, into his lap and onto the floor.

“Shit,” Henry said, with real feeling, and looked up.

I was waiting for him to get embarrassed or hide his hand, but he just gave me this crooked grin, the same look he used to give when he lost twenty bucks on a game. 

“Should’ve told the nurse I needed help with the bag,” he said. “I keep forgetting my hands don't work like they used to.” 

“Let me help.”

“No.”

“Henry.”

“I mean it, Ian.” He started picking crackers out of his lap with his left hand. “If you start opening my stuff now, I’ll be asking you to do it every time you come over. Grab a chair and sit down. You're making me nervous standing there.” 

I sat on the edge of the bed. The room was small and clean, and an orange dolly strap was hanging off the bed rail. I looked at it for a while.

Henry used to take the heavy end of everything. I'd once watched him carry an oak wardrobe up three flights without stopping. Now he couldn't open a packet of crackers. 

“Stop doing that,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Spinning out in your own head. Give it a rest.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“I know that look. You did the same thing while they were loading me into the rig.” He swallowed a piece of cracker. 

“So how’re you actually doing?” I asked.

“Me? I’m golden. Physio says I’m making progress. Give it another couple of weeks, and I'll be carrying your sorry ass up the stairs again.”

“Henry, you can barely open a pack of crackers.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not planning on opening crackers for a living.” He tried to flex his right arm, but the elbow barely hitched before his face went tight. He sucked air through his teeth and let it drop.

“Jesus, take it easy,” I said. “You’re going to rip something.”

“I’m fine.” He leaned back into the pillow, a shade paler, but still grinning. “They’ve got me on the stairs now. Six lousy steps and I felt like I climbed Everest.”

He could barely manage six steps. We spent half our days carrying furniture up stairwells, sometimes four floors at a time. Even if his back healed, there was still his arm. I wondered if he'd ever work again.

Worse, I wondered if he'd started asking himself the same question.

“Anyway,” he said, brushing a cracker crumb off his chest. “How’s the garage holding up without me?”

So I told him.

Henry had this half-smile on his face the whole time, waiting for me to say I was pulling his leg. When I didn't, the smile faded. 

“Jesus.” He put the cracker down. “So it’s real real. It’s not us.”

He was quiet for a second. 

“I had myself convinced it was just us,” he said. “Two dumbasses who bought the wrong storage unit. You can make sense of that. This other shit? This is something else.” 

I told him about the lawn chair photograph, and he looked at the window for a while and didn’t say anything.

“So can they still hurt anyone?” he said finally. “The things you’ve got left.”

“They’re contained.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“The wardrobe’s wrapped. The dresser and the tank and the painting are waiting for a crew. Henry, they sprayed everything. It was like…” I didn’t know how to describe it. “Like watching them put down a dog.”

“And you’re still staying in the house.”

“It’s my house.”

“Ian.” He leaned toward me. “When we got the chair, what did you think?”

“What?”

“When you saw it, the first time. You thought it was your chair, the one that went missing. And then I sat in it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m not trying to get at you,” Henry said. “I’m just telling you as the guy who found out the hard way how fast things go wrong in that room. If the crew isn't coming till the weekend, stay somewhere else. Grab a cheap room, or take our couch. Rachael’s been waiting for an excuse to reach out to you anyway, even if she won't admit it.” 

“I’m pretty sure she hates me.”

“She’s scared of you, but she’ll come around eventually.” He picked up another cracker, then set it back down. “Tell me about Toby.”

I’d been dreading the conversation since I got off the elevator. I told him what I’d told Marshall, blurting it out in a rush. 

Henry took a long time to answer.

“I don’t know, man,” he said. “I’m not calling you a liar. That missing scar is weird as hell. But Ian, I’ve known that boy since he was in diapers. He used to come down to the depot and sit in the cab of my truck for hours, pretending he was driving. He even made me a stupid little card with a crayon dinosaur on it; I’ve still got it framed on my desk at home.” He dragged his left hand down his face, looking exhausted.

“Has he done anything?”

“What?”

“I’m asking whether he’s done anything. Has he said anything unusual? Has he hurt anyone?”

“During my supervised visit, he asked about the closet,” I said. “He wanted to know if it opened.”

“Why would a kid ask that?”

“Maybe it had something to do with the wardrobe.”

“Right,” Henry said, staring down at the bedsheets. “Maybe he's just spooked, Ian. I mean, wouldn't you be?”

I felt the old heat rise in me, the defensiveness I’d been catching in the half second. I let it pass.

“You’re so focused on figuring out what he is,” Henry said, his voice quiet. “Look, I get it. I’d be losing my mind too. But did you ever stop and think about what that kid went through? He got trapped in the dark, and when he came out, you were screaming at him like he was a monster. That’s terrifying for a little kid, Ian. That doesn't mean he’s not your kid anymore. You just scared the hell out of him.” 

“Alicia thanked me for apologizing to him,” I said.

“Good,” Henry said. “You should have.”

“I didn't, Henry. I was in my garage.”

Henry went quiet for a second, then shook his head. “Then Alicia said it for you. She saw you were losing your mind, and she told him you were sorry to calm him down. That’s what parents do.”

“That’s not what she said.”

“What do you mean?”

“She didn’t say I told him you were sorry. She said Toby says we talked. That you told him you were sorry.” I heard how steady my voice was, and it scared me a little. “Toby told his mother that he and I had a conversation I wasn’t part of.”

Henry didn’t answer right away. I watched him searching for an explanation. He was good at that. He’d been finding the angle his whole life.

“That’s weird. But it’s not enough, Ian.” He didn’t sound sure anymore. “It’s not enough to decide who or what he is. Ask him when it’s safe.”

Henry wanted me to be wrong. He had enough to deal with without worrying about me losing my mind. 

I exhaled.

“Maybe you’re right,” I muttered. “Maybe I’m just seeing ghosts where there aren’t any.”

Henry let his shoulders drop, visibly relieved to hear me say it. “I’m usually right when it’s about you. You’re exhausted, Ian. Stop acting like an investigator and get some proper sleep.”

I said it so he’d let it go, but the second the words left my mouth, I felt like a liar. He could rationalize Alicia’s text all he wanted. But you don't just sleep off a missing scar. 

“I want to put some money toward the rehab,” I said. “The payment was more than I’d expected. It covers my lawyer, and there’s enough left.”

“No.”

“Henry, come on.”

“I’m the one who chose to sit in the chair, Ian. If you hadn't pulled me out, things could've been a hell of a lot worse.” He held up his left hand. “I’m not taking money from you because you feel bad.”

“I want you to be able to afford your physical therapist. You’re my friend, and you need help. That’s the reason.”

He studied me for a while.

“Okay,” he breathed out. “But don’t spend all of it. I mean it. Don’t go giving away the whole envelope and eating canned beans because you’re making amends.”

“Deal.”

I left half an hour later. At the door he called my name, and when I turned, he held up a cracker in his left hand like a toast.

“They’re good crackers,” he said. “Don’t let them tell you otherwise.”

Alicia called that evening. 

We'd texted all week about Saturday's mediation and the investigators from CATALOGUE who'd visited my garage. We weren't on good terms, just too exhausted to fight. 

“I need to ask you something,” she said.

“Okay. What's up?”

“Toby’s been in his room a lot.”

“Is he sleeping?”

“He’s fine.” The phone rustled. “It’s about the toy chest. Do you remember the wooden one? The one I bought off that woman in the next suburb, when he was two?”

I remembered the faded blue pine box. I'd carried it upstairs myself.

“He’s suddenly become obsessed with it,” she said. “After the weekend, he started going in there every single day, dragging things out, piling things back in. I actually thought it was a good sign. He was so quiet and withdrawn when he first got back. I just thought, thank God, he’s finally playing again.”

She paused.

“There’s stuff in there I never bought him,” she said.

I slumped down right on the kitchen floor, my back against the cabinets.

“An orange plastic toy truck,” she whispered. “I think I’d remember buying something that ugly. And that little yellow giraffe he broke months ago. Ian, I threw that out in May. I know I did.” 

Her breath caught. 

“I asked him where he got them. He said a friend gave them to him. I asked who, thinking it was some kid at school. He just looked at me and said, ‘He likes making things.’”

“Did he tell you his name?”

“No. That's the problem. Every time I ask, he just says it's his friend. I've asked him whether it's someone from school or even someone he's met online. He won't tell me.”

She went quiet for a moment.

“Ian, I've been thinking about calling the police.”

“The police?”

“What am I supposed to think? He's six years old. He's suddenly getting toys I didn't buy him from someone he won't tell me about. I've checked the locks and asked his teacher if anyone's been hanging around school.”

“Why didn't you tell me sooner?”

“Because I thought he was making it up. An imaginary friend, something he'd picked up at school. I didn't want to make a big deal out of nothing, especially after everything that happened at your place.” I heard her swallow. “But the toys keep showing up, Ian. And he won't tell me where they're coming from. I don't know what else to think.”

“Alicia, listen to me. I don't think this is somebody giving him toys.”

“Then where are they coming from?”

I thought about the things that had appeared on my workbench. The chair that had replaced my own. The wardrobe and the pale thing I'd seen crawling out of it.

“I think it might be happening again.”

“You mean the things in your garage?”

“Yes.”

We went quiet.

“Those CATALOGUE people want to run tests on Toby. I told them no, not without your say-so. But let me go through that box first. I just want to see what's in there.” 

There was a long pause.

“I’m not putting him through another investigation,” she said, her voice tightening. “He’s finally settling down, Ian. I am not letting some stranger sit him down in a room to grill him about what happened. He’s six years old. He’s had enough.”

My breath hitched, and the line fell silent. 

“I’m not asking you to take my word for it,” I said. “I’ve got the videos and the emails. I’ll print every damn thing out and hand it to you. If you read it and think I’ve lost my head, I’ll walk out the door and never bring it up again. Just let me look in the box, Alicia. Please.” 

Alicia sighed. I thought she'd tell me to stay away. 

“Tomorrow after lunch,” she said, flatly. “You can come over and look at it. That’s it.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Her voice dropped into that sharper tone she used when she meant business. “Don’t scare Toby, and don’t go tearing the place apart.”

“I won’t, Alicia. I promise.”

“I don’t care about your promises, Ian. Last time you had him, he came home frightened and barely himself.”

"I didn't mean for any of that to happen."

Alicia laughed bitterly over the phone. “You never do. I’m doing this against my better judgment. Don’t make me regret it.”

My tongue felt like sandpaper. “I won’t.”

“You’d better not,” she said, and hung up before I could answer.

I hadn’t been inside the old house since the day I moved out.

I stood on the porch the next afternoon feeling like a trespasser. There was a new potted plant beside the step. Life was moving on here without me. 

Alicia opened the door before I knocked.

Toby’s sneakers sat by the mat, laces untied. There was a row of his drawings along the refrigerator. I was drawn to the picture of three stick figures labeled MOM and ME and DAD, with DAD a little apart from the others and the biggest of the three.

I stared until Alicia said, “He made it last month.”

“It’s good.”

She didn’t reply. Just turned around and walked back toward the kitchen. The table was covered in unopened mail and a half-eaten bowl of cereal. My place didn't have clutter. I’d spent weeks telling myself I was staying tidy. Looking at her table, I realized it was really just empty. 

“I read your emails,” she said, without looking at me. “The ones you forwarded to me.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with them.” She sat. “Show me the video.”

I played the recording. She watched for ten seconds, then frowned.

“What am I looking at?”

“Just keep watching.”

The thing unfolded from the wardrobe, its long, pale limbs bending in ways they shouldn't have. Alicia stared at the screen, then looked up at me.

“Ian, is this some kind of joke?”

“No.”

“Because if you've edited this—”

“I haven't touched it, Alicia. Just watch.”

She looked back down. Her thumb hovered over the screen. Then the thing reached for the toy, and her expression changed.

“Wait.”

She dragged the recording back a few seconds and watched it again.

“That's Toby's dinosaur.”

I nodded.

She stared at the screen a moment longer, then slowly raised her free hand to her mouth. Her eyes drifted toward the hallway, up the staircase to where Toby was playing.

“That thing was in the house?”

“Yes.”

“With him?”

“I don't know what it did or if it even did anything at all. He was in the wardrobe for maybe half a minute. When the door opened, he seemed fine. That's all I know.”

“Jesus Christ.” Her voice sounded hollow, like all the air had been knocked out of her. “Do you think it did something to him?”

“I don't know, Alicia.”

She looked down at the frozen image, then handed the phone back to me. Her fingers were trembling.

“Okay,” she said quietly. She swallowed. “Okay. Let's go see the chest.”

I saw Toby first.

I’d asked for ten minutes. Alicia took a long look at me, then went to make tea, and Toby came tearing down the stairs the moment he heard my voice. I caught him around the middle and nearly lost it.

He smelled like crayons and cereal, and he said, “Dad, Dad, you want to see?” and dragged me toward the stairs. His room was small, with a bed covered in dinosaur sheets. The toy chest was against the far wall. He’d laid out his toys on the carpet in two rows: a fleet of cars, a menagerie of rubber animals, and a plastic knight with a missing arm.

“These are the new ones,” he said, pointing.

I got down on the floor. 

“They’re great. Where’d you get them?”

“My friend made them.”

“Your friend. Which friend?”

“The one who makes things.” He held up a toy car.

 “That one’s pretty good. Some of them aren’t. He gets them wrong sometimes.”

“Wrong, how?”

Toby laughed. It was a real laugh, and my chest hurt. “There was a truck with the wheels on backwards. And a dinosaur that couldn’t stand because his legs bent the wrong way, like this.” He folded his arm at the elbow and then back the other way. “He fell over every time.”

“How do you know they’re wrong?”

“Because I know how they go.” He gave me a look of deep disappointment.

“Dad. I show him. I roll the truck on the floor. Like this, see?” He pushed the red car across the carpet with two fingers, wheels turning. “And the dinosaur stands up. So he can see how they work.”

“Where do you show him?”

“Do I have to say everything?” He slumped back, tired of explaining. “It’s obvious.”

I nodded, trying to keep my breath even. 

“Where did you meet him, bud?”

Toby fiddled with the toy car. “When we played hide and seek.”

My stomach dropped like a lead weight, and my fingers pressed into my palm hard enough to hurt. 

I’d been pounding on that wardrobe door, screaming his name. I still remembered how raw my throat felt. I remembered the door swinging open all by itself and Toby just sitting there cross-legged in the pitch black, blinking at the light. 

“In the game?” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. “When we played at my house?”

“Yeah.”

“Was he...in the wardrobe with you?”

“Toby!” Alicia was at the door with the tea tray. “Dad’s here to look at the chest, remember? Let’s not make him wait.”

Toby jumped up, losing interest in the conversation, and ran to the foot of the bed to fetch a stuffed rabbit. I stayed on the carpet, hearing my own heart thumping. Alicia looked at me, and I shook my head. Not now.

He'd met his friend inside the wardrobe. But Toby had been missing for less than a minute, and he'd claimed he'd been waiting for me for ages. How long had he really been in there? What had happened to him?

I pushed the questions aside. Something from that wardrobe might now be in my son's bedroom, and I needed to know whether it was dangerous.

The painted pine chest had a heavy lid and familiar scrapes from Toby dragging it. 

Alicia stood beside it with her arms folded. I knelt, examining the brass hinge.

I remembered repairing that hinge myself, back when Toby was three. The lid had started sagging, so I'd bought a little packet of brass screws and tightened the whole thing up. I even remembered stripping one of the heads and swearing about it while Toby watched from the doorway.

The hinge was still there. But the screws weren't. Where the heads should have been, the metal didn't end. It was a seamless transition from brass to pine, as though the two materials had grown together. I ran a thumbnail along it. The surface was smooth and faintly warm.

“Did anyone repair this?” I asked.

“No, nobody’s touched it. The most I’ve done is clean it up a little.”

“There was a scratch on the lid, along the left side. It’s gone.”

Alicia crouched beside me. We both looked at the lid, painted so fresh it seemed wet. “I’d have noticed that,” she said, in a small voice.

“It’s what the other objects were like in my garage,” I breathed out. “Neglected things. They come back...newer.”

“It’s not sitting around forgotten,” she said. “He uses it.”

“Maybe not lately,” I said. “It sat in the corner for months, Alicia. Before the weekend. Before—” The words died in my throat.

I opened the chest. Toby’s old things, and among them were things that weren’t his. I lifted out the first one, and it was a teddy bear.

I say a teddy bear because the shape was bear-like. It had two round ears, button eyes, and a little black nose, but everything underneath was grotesque. Its torso was too long, with a second belly bulging beneath the first, and its arms had too many joints. One of them bent backward when I picked it up. The fur was soft and clean, but the thing had an unpleasant weight to it, as though the stuffing was wet.

I squeezed its middle. Something pulsed under my fingers, and a low, wet gurgle came out of its mouth. It went on for several seconds after I'd let go.

I dropped it.

“What is that?” Alicia whispered.

“Looks like a stuffed toy,” I said. I barked a short, nervous laugh. “If Cronenberg made it.”

I picked up the others, careful not to press too hard. Some were total butcher jobs. Others were so clean I had to check twice. A yellow rubber duck had a seamless, molded-shut beak and mismatched eyes. I was turning it over when Toby appeared in the doorway.

“He’s working on that one,” he said, pointing at the duck in my hand. “That’s an improved one. Do you like it?”

“It’s good,” I said. “It’s very good.”

He came in and sat cross-legged by the chest. He pulled out the jack-in-the-box.

It was the kind you’d see in any toy store. He turned the handle. The tune was almost “Pop Goes the Weasel.” 

Then the face came up.

Rather than popping out, it rose slowly out of the box. The face had no features, only a smooth, grinning curve in the shape of a smile. It stopped at the top of its stem and swayed.

Toby clapped. “That’s a good one.”

Then he dragged something out of the corner of the chest. A long string of white segments, linked end to end, and he held it up by the string so it swung. I'd mistaken it for a toy caterpillar. As Toby walked it along the floor, the segments clicked softly. I looked at it a moment longer and realized that the segments were the exact size and shape of vertebrae.

“Put it down,” Alicia said stiffly.

“But Mom, it’s one of the good ones.”

I made myself ask the question gently. “Toby. Does your friend come into your room?”

He frowned, puzzled. “I don’t see him in here.”

“Then how…” 

“I put something in the chest, and I close the lid, and when I open it, there’s something different.” He shrugged. “Like a swap. It’s a game.”

“What do you put in?”

“My broken stuff, or things I don’t want.” He hesitated. “Or sometimes I put in a drawing.”

Alicia looked at me, and I could see the worry on her face. She glanced at the door, then at Toby. Was she thinking what I was? How many times had she walked past this room while he was playing, without knowing what he was playing with? 

“That’s enough,” she said. “No more. Not until we understand this. You don’t open that chest again, Toby. Do you hear me?”

“But he’s not finished!” His face crumpled. “He’s still working on some. He gets sad if we take them before they’re done.”

“Bud, I need you to wait in the hall for a bit, okay? Just while Mom and I look.”

“I want to stay.”

“I know. Just a few minutes.”

He went, slowly, dragging his feet, and left the door half open. I could hear him on the other side trying to listen.

I felt the edges and knocked on the bottom panel.

The timber was solid. There was no wear on the hinges or scuffs in the paint. But when I leaned over and looked down at the toys, the bottom of the box seemed to stretch farther than the outside frame allowed.

“It’s just a trick of the light,” I said, but my hands were shaking. 

“Is it?” said Alicia.

She was leaning over my shoulder, looking at something buried near the bottom of the chest.

“That’s the pony,” she said.

“What?”

“The plastic one with the pink mane. He broke it in the spring, and I put it in the bag for the bin.” She reached. “If it’s the original...”

“Alicia, don’t.”

But she’d already put her arm in.

She leaned into the chest from the shoulder, her fingers closing toward the pink plastic, and her hand went past where the bottom panel should have been. Her wrist disappeared, then her forearm.

She made a small, surprised sound.

“I can’t see the bottom.” Her voice sounded strange. “There’s...Ian, it just keeps going.”

I looked. Past her shoulder, where the bottom of the chest had been, there was only darkness, full of objects packed tight with junk: chair legs, a rusted lamp, a pram wheel, all wedged at impossible angles. 

Alicia tried to withdraw her hand, but it was stuck fast.

“My sleeve’s caught on something,” she said, panic edging into her voice. She pulled again. “Ian, I can’t...”

Then she cried out.

Her whole body jerked toward the chest, and her knees hit the edge of it. Something inside had taken hold of her. I saw her wrist tighten under the cuff of her sweater, as if invisible fingers had closed around it.

I got both hands around her upper arm and pulled.

It was like trying to haul her out of deep water. I pulled her backward, but her arm kept traveling deeper into the wood. The box itself didn't move an inch; it was the space inside that was collapsing, the whole interior tightening down on her arm like a throat swallowing down food. 

“Hold on!” I shouted, which was a stupid thing to say given the circumstances.

The lid began to fall.

It came down slowly as though someone were lowering it by hand. I caught the edge and held it open and felt my muscles shake. Alicia got her free hand on the rim, bracing, and her arm was pulled in nearly to the shoulder.

Henry.

It was all I could think. The chair snapping shut, the sound he made. I had no way to get my fingers into it, because everything I knew about furniture was useless in that moment. I looked for a seam, a joint, a place to pry. There wasn’t one. The whole chest was one continuous surface, and the lid kept coming down.

“Alicia, look at me.”

“It’s pulling—”

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

Deep in the dark, something moved. A piece of the clutter shifted, and from underneath it came a hand.

It was pale and long, bending in places that made my own fingers ache. The fingers uncurled one at a time and reached, not for Alicia, but past her, toward the plastic pony.

It didn’t look like it was trying to hurt her. That’s what made my blood run cold. It was just reaching for that toy like a kid reaching for a dropped spoon. 

Alicia saw it.

She recoiled, and the whole space convulsed. The pressure around her wrist increased. I heard something crack, and she screamed in pain.

“Get off her!”

I screamed straight into the dark. The fingers jerked away for a second, startled by the noise. Then the space contracted again. It wasn't giving up. 

I remembered the garage. It had shrieked when I looked at it and hid behind its hands.

If I frighten it, it just holds on tighter.

“Toby,” Alicia gasped. “Toby, no...”

He was in the doorway.

He'd come at her scream and stood pale-faced, staring at her arm disappearing into the wood.

“Go,” she said. “Toby. Go. Please go.”

He didn’t move. His mouth hung open.

I tried to steady my voice. “Bud. Stay back. It’s okay.”

It wasn’t. The lid pressed against Alicia’s shoulder now. I wedged my forearm underneath it and felt the whole weight come onto me. I thought about the hammer I’d swung at the wardrobe and how the wood hadn’t even splintered. I didn’t know what to do.

“Stop it,” Toby said.

His voice was small, then suddenly booming. He ran into the room, and I tried to catch him and missed, and he planted himself at the edge of the chest and shouted into the dark with everything he had.

“Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting my mom! Stop it, stop it, that’s NOT how you play!”

I don’t know how else to say it. The pressure didn’t ease, but it held like bated breath. The hand in the dark went still. I couldn’t tell whether it had recognized his voice or had only been startled by the noise.

“Please,” Toby said, and his voice broke. “Please. She’s my mom.”

The hand withdrew slowly, dragging two of the malformed toys with it into the dark. Then a violent scraping sound came from somewhere beyond the chest, and I felt the box shudder.

The interior collapsed to its ordinary size all at once, and Alicia’s arm came free so fast that she flew backward into me. We hit the carpet together, her elbow in my ribs, my head slamming against the bed frame. Toys tumbled out of the chest, and the lid slammed shut with a sound like a gunshot, hard enough to splinter a strip of the surrounding wood.

The room was silent.

I rolled onto my knees. “Alicia. Alicia, look at me.”

She was curled around her right arm. Her wrist was already swelling; the skin beneath her sweater was a dark, shiny red, and a lump had risen under it. When I touched her hand, she hissed in pain, and her fingers didn’t move. She was struggling to breathe, and her left hand pressed against her ribs where she’d struck the edge.

“Don’t move,” I said. “Don’t move it.”

“I’m okay,” she said, through clenched teeth. “I’m fine. I’m...” She started to cry.

Toby stood a few feet away with both fists pressed against his mouth, eyes wide.

“He wasn’t trying to hurt her,” he said, through his hands. “He wasn’t. He didn’t know.”

A wave of heat rushed right up my neck. He was defending it. My wife was clutching a broken wrist on the carpet, and my kid was standing there covering for the thing that did it, treating it like a friend who didn't mean any harm. 

I opened my mouth.

I looked at Toby.

His face was wet and blotched, and there was snot on his lip. 

I closed my mouth. The anger dissipated.

“I know, bud,” I said. “I know. It’s okay.”

I took out my phone and called emergency services. Then I sat on the floor with Alicia’s head against my shoulder and my other hand on Toby’s back, and the three of us stayed that way until the sirens came.

The paramedics asked me what had happened, and I told them that Alicia had gotten her arm caught in the toy box. The younger woman with the ponytail looked at me warily, and I knew she was wondering whether I’d done it. 

“He’s telling the truth.”

I looked over to Alicia. She was strapped to a stretcher, a splint on her wrist.

“Her wrist’s fractured,” the paramedic told me. “Probably her ribs, too. We’re taking her in.”

On the way out, Alicia caught my sleeve.

“Why was it in my house?” she said, low and hoarse, so only I could hear. “Ian. Why was it in my house? And why did Toby recognize it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said they took everything. You said it was over.”

“I thought it was.” I swallowed. “I’m sorry. I was wrong about the whole thing.”

She stared at me for a long second, and I knew she wasn’t forgiving me. But something had shifted between us. For the first time, Alicia didn't have to take my word for it. I wished she still did. 

“I’m not done with you,” she said. And I knew she meant it.

Alicia's younger sister Rebecca arrived twenty minutes after the ambulance left. Alicia had asked her to stay with Toby instead of going to the hospital.

She wasn't thrilled to find me there. She'd supervised a few of my visits before, and we weren't particularly close. But Alicia had apparently told her I was staying, so she didn't argue.

She went into the kitchen to call the hospital, leaving me sitting in the hallway with Toby. The mediation was tomorrow, and now Alicia was in hospital with a broken wrist. I'd have to make some calls. For now, I couldn't bring myself to care.

Toby sat on the bottom stair with a stuffed rabbit in his lap and one of the malformed toys in his other hand, a plastic horse or a cow. I thought about taking it from him. I thought about how it’d play out: his face, the yell, the whole ugly mess. I didn’t want another scene. I sat down on the stair beside him and said nothing for a minute.

“Are you scared?” I said at last.

He shook his head. 

“I didn’t think he’d hurt anybody,” he said.

“Has he ever scared you? Before today?”

“No.” A long pause. “He gets things wrong sometimes. That’s all. And I show him how. I show him, and then it’s better.” He looked up at me, and his eyes were enormous. “Why did it hurt Mom? It’s the same game.”

“It wasn’t the same.”

“But it was.”

I searched for the right words.

“Sometimes people don’t mean to hurt someone,” I said. “But they do anyway, because they don’t understand what they’re doing. That doesn’t mean they’re bad. It just means you have to be really careful around them. Even if they’re your friend. Especially if they’re your friend.”

He considered this. For a minute neither of us moved, and the whole world felt very small.

“Is Mom going to be okay?”

“She’s going to be fine. She’s got a broken wrist, that’s all. They’ll fix it.”

“Promise?”

I wanted to say yes. I wanted to tell him she'd be home tomorrow, that everything would be back to normal, and that there wasn't anything left to be frightened of. But I'd made enough promises I couldn't keep. 

“I promise we'll do everything we can to help her,” I said. “And I'm staying right here with you until we know she's okay.” 

He leaned against me, and I put my arm around his shoulders. 

I'd spent months trying to get more time with him. I'd paid a lawyer, sat through meetings, and rehearsed what I'd say on Saturday. And now here I was, sitting beside my son in the house I'd once called home, while his mother was in the hospital because of something I'd brought into our lives.

I would have given anything for him to be somewhere else. Somewhere safe.

I didn’t push him. None of it mattered right then. There’d be time later to ask the questions burning in the back of my mind. I just sat there on the hall stairs next to my boy. 

Hours later, I called Priest from the porch. Rebecca was inside with Toby, watching cartoons. My hands shook so badly I misdialed the number Marshall had given me.

She picked up on the second ring.

“It’s Ian from the garage.” My voice cracked. “I need to report something.”

“Go ahead.”

I described the altered chest, Alicia's trapped arm, the pale hand, and how it retreated when Toby shouted.

“Stop a moment,” she said. “When you say the interior was deeper than the exterior. Are you certain you weren’t looking at a Return with a manufacturing flaw? Some of the later ones have false depth.”

“It took her arm.”

“Yes, but...”

“It pulled her down into the wood, Priest. It had a hand, the same one from the video.” 

A pause.

“Understood,” she said, and her voice had changed. “I’m writing that down. Go on.”

I told her about Toby's friend, the hide-and-seek, and swapping drawings through the chest. She stopped writing.

“He’s been exchanging items with whatever’s inside?”

“That’s what he says.”

“Has he seen it?”

“He says he doesn’t. He says it’s...a friend that likes making things.”

“And the Ephemera he's been receiving. Are they all toys?”

“The what?”

“The objects he's been receiving. Are they all toys?”

“Wait. What did you call them just now?”

“Ephemera,” she said. “It's our general term for them.”

“That's a new one. Marshall never mentioned it during our conversation.”

“No, I suppose he wouldn't have.”

Something about the way she said that bothered me.

“What's it mean?”

“It's a reference to their transient nature. They appear, disappear, and turn up in places they shouldn't. The name stuck.”

“Right.” I shifted the phone against my ear. “And that's all?”

There was a pause, just long enough for me to notice.

“It's a classification, Ian. Nothing more.”

She sounded irritated, though she'd happily explained every other strange term.

“Okay,” I said. “Yeah, they're mostly toys.”

A silence on the line. I could hear a keyboard faintly clacking away in the background. Then Priest said, very evenly, “Ian, I need you to keep him away from that chest. Don’t let him open it, don’t let anyone else open it, and don’t move it. We’ll send a team as soon as we can.”

“Is it the same one?” I asked. “The creature from my garage. Did it follow him?”

“I can’t say that.”

“You can’t say that, or you don’t know?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “And I won't speculate just so you can turn my guess into a certainty. There may be other reasons it’s here, reasons that have nothing to do with it tracking you from the site.” 

“The chest was abandoned for months. And the toys only started after Toby went back to it. That doesn’t fit what you told me. You said it was related to neglect, the things nobody used.”

“I noticed that discrepancy too. I’m not dismissing it.” There was a faint creak, as though she’d leaned back in a chair. “We don’t have every answer, Ian. You’ve been told that already.”

A week ago, I'd have accused her of hiding something. Now I wondered if thirty years of studying these things had only shown CATALOGUE how much it didn't know. Still, I couldn't shake the way Priest had reacted when I asked about Ephemera. 

“If you take the chest away,” I said, “will it be safe? Will her house be safe?”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’d need to establish whether the chest has become an Interface itself, or whether it’s a Return connected to an existing manifestation.” She hesitated. “Removing a Return doesn’t remove whatever produced it. If your chest is a door, then closing it only closes that door.”

For weeks I’d been so sure that the danger was in my garage, in the wardrobe under its grey sheet, and that if I could just get it all out, the thing would lose its hold. But I couldn't get how the creature had clutched that toy to its chest like a terrified child, saying I didn’t mean it. And how it stopped the second Toby opened his mouth.

I don’t know if it sees Toby as a person. I don’t know if it’s hunting him or if Toby’s the one pulling it closer. 

What I do know is the wardrobe had never been in Alicia's house.

The only thing connecting those two places was Toby.

And through the window, I could see him sitting on the couch, talking to something that wasn't there.

My grandpa passed away recently and as such I had been drafted by my parents to help remove his personal effects and items from his home. I was tasked with starting in the attic and working my way down.

When I got up there it was as you'd expect an 86 year old man's attic to be, filled with clutter and junk from decades gone by. I started with hauling the larger items like bulky boxes of clothing, some jewellery containers, an old-timey sewing machine and such.

Whilst moving a particularly heavy shelving unit I knocked some clutter off the top of it and with a thump, an ornate wooden lockbox rolled to a stop at my foot. Normally I'd have kicked it to the side and continued hauling but something about this box caught my eye. Something drew me towards it in a way I haven't felt before.

I picked up the box and as you'd expect, it was locked. One thing I noticed right away though were deep scratch marks all around the keyhole which typically I would chalk up to years of a key being shoddily pressed in at the wrong angle, but they grooves were deep, too deep for a key scratch.

This is where things start to get weird. I took the box to my parents and asked if they knew what it was and upon locking eyes with it, my fathers face turned white as a ghost. He held his composure as he lied to my face about having no idea what it was, so I chucked the box into my hoodie front pouch so I could study it later.

I'm a lock pick enthusiast so it wasn't very hard to gain entry. Sat at my desk I opened up the box and was greeted with a red velvet inlay with two items within. A leather-bound journal and a brass pocket watch. Both looked stained and dishevelled.

I picked up the journal and flipped to the first page.

Oct. 9th, 1878. Cheyenne River.

"Came upon a dead man in a dry wash, not a mark on him, and the coyotes wouldn’t go near. Found a watch in his vest, stopped at five exactly. I ain’t gonna set down what I seen when I took hold of it. Next I knowed I was layin’ in the dirt and the damn thing was tickin’, and I never wound it. Nobody had to tell me the terms. I knowed ’em like I know my own name: five in a year, or I go under and five more with me, and not a one of ’em will ever know why.

Walked off a good half mile and found it in my fist. Traded a skinner at the fort for this book, so I aim to keep a tally here and not lose count. I’ve took to eyeing the men in camp different. That watch runs quieter when I do.

E. Varney"

Then the second page had 3 names on it with crosses through them along with this passage.

"Feb. 2nd, 1879. Fort Pierre.

Three of ’em now. I’ll not set down how. Walt, Ezra, the widow. I wash my hands till the skin cracks and I can still feel the warm of it. I was a soldier once and thought I knowed what it was to be sick over a killing, but this is a different sickness. This one don’t pass.

I said it out loud last night so’s the dark could hear me: no more. Then I took the watch and went down to the river with a notion of settling the matter my own way, and ending it where it started. I’ll not write what I done there. I will only say I woke on the bank at first light with the cold in my bones, breathing, and the watch ticking in my fist like it had been waiting on me. It ain’t done with me, and I reckon I know now what it meant by five more. I can’t even leave it the cheap way without the debt going to somebody else.

It’s took to ticking louder since. Yesterday I looked at the cook a long while, and I liked what I was thinking. That’s the part I can’t abide. Not the doing, but the liking. I put the watch in the river Tuesday and this mornin’ it was in my coat, dry, and the hands set to five 'o' clock.

E. Varney"

A final entry.

"April 12th, 1879. Fort Pierre, in the jail.

The judge read it out as four, and he had it right. I never argued. I hang Friday at sunup. I do not fear the rope.

What I fear most is the count. The watch asked for five and I fell one short, and I have never heard of a debt that dies with the man who owes it. I do not think it will let me go. I think I will be left somewhere between, neither under nor risen, still hearing it tick. I tried to take the watch with me once and it would not be taken. Now I wonder if it was only waiting for a better door.

Amos, I am leaving you this book. I have no land to give you and no name worth carrying, only this. Do not touch it and do not let it be touched.

E. Varney"

The pages after contained various old news clippings, one of which detailed the day Varney died.

"THE PIERRE WEEKLY SIGNAL
Saturday, April 19th, 1879

“THE FIFTH-HOUR FIEND” MEETS HIS END AT FORT PIERRE

Elias Varney, styled by the territorial press “The Fifth-Hour Fiend” for the hour at which the bodies were invariably found, was hanged at sunup yesterday before some two hundred, for the murders of four persons in this vicinity. He mounted the gallows unassisted and declined to speak. The physician pronounced him dead at seven minutes past six. The prisoner’s pocket watch, held by the sheriff, was heard by several to cease ticking the very instant the drop came, and has not been heard since. His effects are to be forwarded to a son, one Amos Varney, near Deadwood, the county declining to keep them."

It's safe to say this set my mind racing. I stared at the watch resting on my desk. There are so many questions unanswered such as how did a western pocket-watch make it's way to my grandfathers attic in London? Did the Sheriff become cursed after contact? What does my father know? Is it reversible in any way?

Unfortunately though, I haven't been entirely honest in my retelling. You see, in the excitement of picking the lock, the journal was not the first thing I picked up...

It's currently set to 5 'o' clock and won't stop ticking...

Hello, my name is Amanda Smith and if your reading these note, I can only presume you made the same choice I did and now, face the same consequences I face.

I won't beat around the bush, twenty years ago I sold my soul to a demon, I was a young, impatient fool. I wanted to fulfill my dream of being an actress but didn't believe I had what it took, there were all these famous, beautiful women already claiming the most desirable roles and I could barely get an unspoken part as a background character. They didn't see my value! So, when I was approached by the most handsome man I had ever seen and offered a taste, a role as the main character in a short horror film, I took that chance. It was the most splendid feeling ever, seeing myself on the big screen, being the center of attention for once! In that moment it confirmed that this is what I wanted to do! I wanted to be a STAR!

However, the glory was short lived, within a few months, the fame died down and I failed to achieve any big acting roles, I was beside myself, I was a tragedy. I thought that all the fame I deserved had been stolen by the latest one willing to sleep with the directors for their own gain. So, I went back to the area I had first met the man, a bar in a small, unknown part of the city and waited.

I went back to that bar every night for a week, finally he arrived, he came to me like before, but he didn't offer me just one small role, he offered me every perfect role I wanted, every role I deserved. In exchange, I would have to give him ownership of my soul once I died and, in my desperation, and desire I agreed. I was young, I would say I didn't know what I agreed to but the way his eye glowed fiery red, told me everything I needed to know. Yet I still said yes.

By the next day, I had been called for twelve main roles! by the end of the month I was a famous actress and as time continued my fame only grew. Yet, the good things can not last forever, on my 50th birthday, I was stabbed to death by a crazed fan. The curse of stardom I suppose. However, I was not met with fire nor flames, I was greeted by a single hotel room, number 305 and received note of my own, from the previous occupant of this room.

You see, the demon is busy, he cannot afford to continuously go back and forth from hell just to drop his latest souls off, so he gathers them all here in a sort of purgaury. One room for one soul, five hundred rooms and once this hotel is filled, he takes us down to hell. The hotel could take years to fill or even decades, for me, it been about twelve years in this limbo.

It hasn't been so bad, the tv replays repeats of your life and only occasionally glitches to fire and screams, you will always have neighbours and occasionally the demon himself may pay you a visit. He is visiting me as I write this, mostly because, he is here to take me and informed me that it is my job as the occupant of this room to prepare for your stay here.

As long as you don't cause trouble, this place can be a place of peace before damnation, just remember these three rules.

• He sees everything.
• He can punish us here.
• You are his.

Have a nice day and I will see you in hell 😄

(Please be nice, first post)

‘You get what you pay for’ doesn’t even come close to explaining my last apartment. It was cheap, but it was still almost more than I could afford. A top floor apartment in a run down building, nothing glamorous, pipes hissing and bumping around, thin walls, an unreliable elevator, but still manageable. It was my new home. It was good, for a while. 

For the first couple of nights, I was passed out on my bed from hauling and rearranging what little I owned, but after that, I started hearing something strange. 

Footsteps. 
Above me. 

Not creaking from the building settling, not bumps from branches hitting the roof once or twice, clear enough steps moving around on what could be the attic or something. The first day after I noticed it, I was able to trace it to my living room. They seemed to be making circles around the room above, slow steady footsteps, not stomping, simply walking in a circle. When I asked the landlord about it, he seemed confused too. “No workers are gonna be up there that time of night. You're on the top floor. There's no sixth floor. There's a little maintenance space above part of the hall, but nothing over your apartment. I’ll ask the super.” 

Shrugging it off, I assumed that was it. The super or janitor were just weirdly moving things around or maybe had zoned out. Not a big cost for living on the top floor, I planned to just ignore it and move on, maybe turn up the volume when I vegged out on the couch. After a couple of nights of hearing that, I decided to go up and check it out, maybe I’d make a new friend and get some extra help around the house if they were already up. 

Finding the stairs up, I went to check on the space above me, but it was locked. It also looked like a half-floor or something. Not enough height to fully stand up, with a narrow door. So the new friend idea was a bust. That night, they started moving heavier things around. It sounded like furniture, maybe a couch or some shelves? Every night for the next week, I heard some scraping or shuffling, step after step that seemed to start around midnight. Then the routine started changing when I turned up the volume of the tv enough that it could block out most of the noise. The footsteps moved from just the living room. They started moving in another pattern, from above my living room, to the kitchen, the hallway, the bathroom, ending above my bedroom, then back again. A new pattern, with the footsteps sounding a bit more solid, but not like stomping…yet. 

After a week, the landlord finally got back to me via text. He told me no one had gone into that room in weeks, maybe months. That couldn’t be right. I texted back that I heard someone the night before, and every night for the past 2 weeks or so. Since just after I moved in! He didn’t believe me, said it might be an animal stuck up there or something, and that the super would go up there to chase it out. 

Frustrated by the lack of concern over a possible homeless person or madman squatting up there, I decided to record the noise that night. Every time I tried though, my cellphone didn’t pick up anything. It had me thinking that I really was just imagining it all, but it sounded so real. Annoyed that I couldn’t prove it, I decided to ignore it for a while, and it seemed to work, the footsteps went back to their shuffling more than full steps. 

Eventually it seemed to calm down again. I decided to have a friend over after work, we’d both had a long week and needed to relax for the weekend. 

They heard it too. 

They confirmed that it sounded like someone was taking slow steps every few seconds. I had told them about it over work after I moved, and they thought it was something like a ghost story to freak them out before I invited them over. After turning off the tv and looking up to listen more clearly, they looked a little freaked out anyway, “Why does it sound exactly like your apartment?” 

I hadn’t really noticed it before, simply thinking it was cluttered, but it DID sound like they were following the same floor plan. We decided to turn the tv back on at a much louder volume and try to ignore it again. The night was pretty much over after that, they decided to split after finishing a movie and it seemed like they definitely wanted out of there asap. 

The following day, I tried the landlord again, waiting until I could talk to them face to face. This time he got visibly uncomfortable. He asked me, “Have you responded to it?” Which got me really confused. 

“What?”
“Knocked back. Banged on the ceiling. Said anything?”

When I told him I hadn’t he got this relieved look on his face and just said, “Good, keep it that way.” before walking away. I stood there, confused and wondering what that whole interaction was about before realizing he hadn’t answered any of MY questions…or maybe he did. 

Feeling even more weirded out, I returned home and tried ignoring them again. It sounded like the landlord knew something, but didn’t want to share. Maybe it was an illegal apartment, maybe a family member was staying without paying or something. Either way, I was going to ignore it all. I was. Really. That was the plan, until the footsteps stopped one night. Right. Above. My head. 

Then they knocked three times. 
Whoever “they” were. 

I tried to resist the urge, I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help letting out a quiet, “hello?” No response other than the footsteps moving on again, more clearly this time. It annoyed me, but I thought nothing more about it. Maybe they were just happy to be acknowledged? 

That’s what I thought, until I returned from work the next day. In the elevator there was a new button. I was supposed to be on the top floor, 5, but now there was a button with a number 6 on it, just above mine. I stood there for a long time before texting the landlord to come and see it. The landlord arrived after a few minutes and saw the button. He immediately went pale, told me not to press it and just ignore it. The next morning it was gone again, and the panel was smooth, like it never existed. I wanted to press it last night, but the landlord stayed in the elevator the whole ride up. Going to the stairs, I went back up them to see if the door was unlocked now or something, but the door was gone. The stairs ended in a fresh plastered wall now. 

That wasn’t the end of it though. Even more strange things started happening. One morning, I woke up and saw a vent near my kitchen wall, it looked brand new, but I hadn’t heard any cutting or installation work last night. I even smelled some fresh cookies coming from it. From above. Another day, I heard water coming down from above. Not rain water, but water from a sink or something else. Then they turned on their own tv, I could barely hear the muffled sounds coming from above, sometimes a show, sometimes sports, but they seemed to settle on one channel a night. It was getting louder now, and the footsteps were still continuing, regardless of any other changes. 

Since the landlord was ghosting me now, I decided to check up online, see if I could find any records of the building, maybe some old tenants of the same floor. I found a picture from when the building was first completed. It had five floors. There were some articles about the building changing hands every few years, then an article about a fire on a sixth floor. Another about reconstruction up to the fifth floor. Then another article with the full six floors. Again and again, back and forth, until the last articles I could find were all mentioning the reopening with only five floors. 

After that, I noticed something else. The footsteps, they stopped moving in their usual circle. Now they were following me. A few steps behind, every time, stopping when I stopped, and continuing when I started again. I would go into the kitchen to make dinner, open some cabinets and close, then I would hear the sound a few seconds after, the cabinets slamming shut, almost like they wanted to make sure I heard them closing the cabinets too. I would get out of the shower and they’d have their own still running. The footsteps started around 10 seconds behind me. After a few days they were around 5 seconds behind, clattering plates and noise from the kitchen getting closer behind me every day, until one day I realized they were matched up, even when I cut a shower short, or stayed longer than I would have. 

At that point, I was almost ready to throw in the towel, looking up new apartments and thinking of taking any penalties for breaking my lease early. The night I heard them catch up, I lay awake in bed long after I should have. That’s when I heard it. Whispering above my bed, or maybe they were just that muffled, but I could finally hear a voice coming from above. They seemed to be talking to someone, maybe on the phone, but when I strained my ears to hear it more clearly, I ended up wishing I hadn’t. The voice I heard above my bed was my own. My voice. Talking about something I couldn’t catch clearly. I heard a few things about new apartments I’d looked up, work, and finally, hearing clearly for a second; 

“There isn't an apartment below mine.”

Nope. Nope nope nope. I went to stay over at a friend’s home that night. I started texting my landlord about moving out, even if I had to get my things shoved into a storage locker before finding a new place and couch surfing until then. I still had to get some things for work out of there, but when I did, that time I saw the button for the sixth floor in the elevator. Tapping it, nothing happened, so I went the other way. Checking the stairs again, I saw that there was a sixth floor landing now. With a door and everything, but I was NOT going to check that right now. I just grabbed some things and left again. 

At least, that was the plan. 

Turning around to walk down from the landing, I heard someone crying inside. They didn’t sound like me, instead, it sounded like someone younger. I know I shouldn’t have gone in, but if someone else had been lured up here for some reason and I left them there, I would’ve felt awful. I would have been like the landlord, ignoring the problem in front of me to protect myself. Psyching myself up, I tried the door and found it unlocked. Taking the first step into the apartment, I was stunned by what I saw. 

It was MY apartment. 
At least, at first glance. 
Same furniture arrangement.
Same dishes.
Same photos.
But subtly wrong.

Walking up to one of the pictures, I was standing next to a woman I didn’t know in one picture. Another had me visiting a landmark, some giant dinosaur. 
There were a few others, all with strangers or in places I’ve never gone. 
Walking into the kitchen, I checked the fridge, and all of the food inside had strange brands on them. Close enough to the ones I bought, but…not. 
I walked into the bedroom and found a closet of different clothes. My size for sure, but nothing in my style. 

Walking around the apartment, I saw another door, leading to a staircase that kept going up. Shutting that door quickly, I realized that the crying sound was gone. It had been gone since before I saw the pictures, and now I heard footsteps again. Below me. 

They walked from the living room to the bathroom, to my bedroom, and stopped there. I heard the bed creak a little as something dropped into it and got comfortable. I started rushing out of the apartment when my cellphone buzzed again, ringing with a call from the landlord. Picking up with trembling hands, before I could say anything I heard his tired voice on the other side, “You weren't supposed to answer it.” I shouted at him, demanding to know what the hell lived on the sixth floor, and he replied with no emotion in his voice, “Nothing. That's the problem. It builds itself out of whoever notices it.” 

Rushing out of the apartment, I started running down the stairs. I had to get out of there. I had to not think of it anymore. 

Running down.
Five.
Four.
Then, at the next landing, I saw Five again. 
Running down the next. 
Six
Every visible landing had a “Six” now

Every floor said the same thing. 
Then the knocking started. Behind every door. At the same time. 

I was freaking out too much, I looked for the fire escape and rushed down the stairs there, the alarm blaring after forcing the door open. Stumbling out of the door, instead of the alley I was in a forest. Looking around confused, I heard the knocking getting closer, coming from the other side of the fire escape’s door, so I started running. 

Moving through the woods, the knocking kept coming, from the trees, from branches, from the ground close to my feet. Turning away every time the knocking got too close, I eventually saw an orange glow in the distance, like from a Campfire. Crashing through the last bushes, I almost fell into the clearing, and saw several people turning around to see me. Normal people and none of them looked like me. I started babbling, trying to tell them what happened, why I was there, “There was an apartment…” One of the people said, “Above yours?”
 
Knock. Knock. Knock.

It was coming from the air above the clearing, 
Only I looked up. 
The others didn’t.
Nothing but stars.
 
An older guy in a green hooded coat held up a hand, “don’t answer.” He waved me closer to the Campfire, “Stay where you can see the fire.” When I asked why, he turned back to the tending the fire before responding, “Because if you wander far enough away tonight, you'll find your hallway.”

(Part 1)

Update: I stayed awake but it didn't matter.

I said I'd stay awake and I meant it. Coffee at 11, at 1, at 2:30. Three alarms set for 3:00, 3:05, 3:10, all different sounds. I sat on the couch facing the front door with my keys in my hand, because I had this idea that if I held the keys she couldn't take them.

At 2:47 I was awake. I checked the time and thought, twenty-five minutes, I can do twenty-five minutes.

Then it was 5:04 and I was in bed. Covers pulled up. All three alarms dismissed. My phone was on the nightstand, plugged in, which I never do. My coat was on its hook and the hem was wet. I don't remember getting up. I don't remember any of it. It's not grogginess, it's just gone, like someone cut those hours out and pressed the edges together.

The camera had the clips. 03:12:33, door opens, coat, key, gate, left. 05:01:48, back up the walkway, key, deadbolt, knob. Same as every night.

But this time I watched differently. I wasn't looking at her face, I was looking at her hands. They're empty. Every clip, all seven nights, her hands are empty. She's not carrying anything. She's never carrying anything.

I went to the bridge yesterday afternoon. I told myself I was just going to look at the mud, confirm what I already knew. The white caliche was on my shoes within ten steps of the embankment, chalky and pale, exactly like what's been on my coat.

Under the bridge, where the concrete meets the dirt, there's a trench. Shallow, maybe six feet long, the mud piled neatly to one side. Like whoever's digging plans to come back and finish the job.

In the trench there was my lamp. The brass desk lamp with the green shade, the one stolen off my step three weeks ago. Clean. No rain on it. Set down carefully, like someone carried it there with both hands and placed it.

I stood there a long time. Here's what I kept coming back to: her hands are always empty in the footage. She's never holding a shovel. She's never carrying the lamp. So she didn't dig that trench, and she didn't put the lamp there.

Something else did. Something that wanted me to find it.

I've been thinking about the Sunday clip, the one where she looked into the camera and mouthed something. I said I couldn't tell what she was saying. That wasn't true. I knew the first time I slowed it down and I didn't want to write it.

She said my full name. Not the name I go by. My birth certificate name, three syllables, the one nobody's called me since I was a kid.

And here's the thing. It wasn't her mouth. I know how I look when I talk, I've seen myself on video calls a thousand times. The way the mouth moved, slow and deliberate, like sounding out something unfamiliar. That wasn't me trying to say my name. That was something wearing my face, saying my name the way you'd say the name of someone you've been waiting for.

When I was nine I walked out of the house at night and my mother found me two streets over at the edge of the ravine, barefoot. She told me I was sleepwalking. She told me the scar on my arm was from an accident. She never said what kind of accident. She put up a fence and we never talked about it again.

I called her yesterday. I asked what really happened that night. She went quiet for a long time and then she said, "You were awake, but you weren't you." She said I looked right at her and didn't know her. She said she grabbed my arm and I fought her, and that's where the scar came from, her nails. She said she's been afraid every day since that if she ever told me the truth, it would hear its name and come back.

I've lived by that freight line for six years. I've always known what time the 3:12 came through, in my body, before I ever saw a clip. The train goes over the bridge and the whole ground trembles. I think that's when it wakes up. I think that's when it calls.

The trench is six feet long. It's almost finished.

Tonight I'm going to follow her. I'm not setting alarms. If she gets up, I'm going with her. I'll update when I can.

I used to love Halloween. It used to be my favorite holiday. I looked forward to it every year, and I would always become melancholy when November 1st rolled around and the festivities had finally come to an end. Now November can’t arrive soon enough. Now I despise Halloween, and everything that comes with it. It fills me with a heavy sense of dread that only becomes worse the closer we get to that cursed day.

And it’s all because of the Trick-or-Treaters in my town.

They aren’t like regular trick-or-treaters. Where in most places trick-or-treating ends fairly early, usually by about 8 or 9pm at the latest, in my town it lasts all through the night. Trick-or-Treaters can and will show up from before sunset until the crack of dawn, and you better have somebody at the front door with a candy bowl ready to greet them all night long. Work in shifts if you need to—just make sure that somebody is there. God forbid you make it to the door too late, or, even worse, run out of candy to give to them. Making them wait might annoy them, but you can usually get back on their good side if you give them a few extra sugary treats in apology. Getting caught without any candy in the house is a different story. You never know how many will show up on any given Halloween—I’ve had as few as four visitors one year, with as many as over two hundred another—and it’s for this reason that folks around here like to stock up early. Not too early, mind you—you still want to make sure you have a good stash of Halloween-themed goodies for the more picky visitors who wouldn’t eat a regular Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup to save their lives—but it’s not uncommon to see all of the stores in town picked clean of candy well before we even make it into October. And when that happens, good luck finding anything sugary  in town until November. If you find yourself low on supplies for the upcoming night, then you will likely need to drive pretty far out  of the way in search of sweets, and you had better hope that there aren’t too many other people in the same boat.

More strange than their unusual visiting hours is the fact that Trick-or-Treaters in my town don’t wear costumes. No stores in the area even bother selling any for that very reason—it would simply be too poor of an investment to do so. In most other towns, no costume means no candy, but that simply isn’t the case here. I don’t care if a Trick-or-Treater walks up to you in a white T-shirt and a pair of pajama pants—if they say those three magic words, then you had better give them their reward. In a similar vein, most towns have an age cutoff for trick-or-treaters that candy givers like to enforce. We do not. Sure, most Trick-or-Treaters who come through here certainly look young enough to pass for children, but there are plenty whose size and face would get them turned away at the door for being too old in any other town. We don’t turn anybody away here. It’s incredibly unwise to do so. Every visitor gets a treat—or else they get to perform their trick. Trust me when I say that you’re better off not being stingy with your candy.

Another oddity in my town is that the Trick-or-Treaters don’t behave like normal children. Sure, they may resemble herds of eager kids at first glance, but any amount of keen observation allows you to easily see beyond this facade. The visitors don’t talk or laugh or joke around as they move from house to house. They move about in complete silence, and with a complete lack of any sort of enthusiasm. The only words they speak are those three spoken by every trick-or-treater upon arriving at a house, but even then, there is no life behind their voices; no energy behind the things they say. It’s as if this is merely a chore to them—a task to complete each Halloween night. If this is the case, then I wish somebody would tell them that they don’t have to do this every year if they don’t want to. Maybe something compels them to do it; maybe they don’t have a choice. I do not think I will ever know the true reason for their strange behavior, but I would gladly give up the possibility of such knowledge forever if they would simply stop doing this every year. This is just wishful thinking, of course—I know such a thing is never going to happen. The Trick-or-Treaters are here to stay, and we simply have to live with that fact.

Nobody else goes trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Everybody is too busy prepping for the long night ahead to indulge in any festive activities, but even if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be able to partake in the night’s main event. Trick-or-treating is only for the Trick-or-Treaters; to encroach on their yearly ritual is an even worse infraction than not having candy to give them when they come knocking. Nobody but the Trick-or-Treaters have trick-or-treated in this town for generations. If they have it their way, nobody else in this town will trick-or-treat ever again.

I can still remember our first encounter with the Trick-or-Treaters. We had been so unprepared for them back then. I won’t ever let us be unprepared again.

My wife wasn’t happy when I told her the bad news. My job was about to relocate our family for the third time in five years, even though they had promised me that things were finally going to be stable for a while. It is for this reason that, although my new office was in a rather large city, I quickly gave in to my wife’s demands to move to a small town over an hour away from work. To call this place a town honestly feels like a stretch. It’s home to one or less of every type of business—doctor, plumber, grocery store, etcetera—and the only chain establishment for at least ten miles is a single outdated McDonald’s where most of the local teens tend to work their first jobs. The town is about as remote as it gets while still being a reasonable distance from my job, which is exactly what my wife wanted. Moving there brought her a glimmer of happiness during a very stressful, tumultuous time in our lives, so I was more than willing to give that to her.

We had moved into town in mid September. By this point folks were already well into their preparations for Halloween, and most of the stores were already beginning to run low on candy. Our daughter had been getting to know the neighbor kids, who were also her classmates; they seemed to have hit it off pretty well. By the time the beginning of October rolled around, they were already formulating plans for sleepovers. As the early days of autumn droned on and we drew closer and closer to October 31st, our daughter naturally asked her new friends about trick-or-treating plans. She was disheartened when her new friends told her that kids in our town don’t get to go trick-or-treating; they never have, her friends had said, and they never would.

That was the night she told my wife and me about the Trick-or-Treaters. She relayed the same warning to us that she had received from her classmates, which emphasized the important points that I have already discussed regarding Halloween night: always be prepared for the arrival of visitors, always maintain an ample supply of candy that you will give out to any guests who ask for it, and never partake in trick-or-treating.

Naturally, I didn’t believe a word of it. My wife didn’t either. Now I wish that we had.

My daughter, on the other hand, was a different story. She believed everything their new friends had told her about the Trick-or-Treaters, and she was absolutely terrified of them. This, combined with the fact that we were unable to find her a costume at any store in town, is what ultimately led her to abstain from trick-or-treating. We tried to convince her that her classmates were simply pulling her leg, but she wouldn’t have it. Looking back on it, her decision probably saved her life.

The night in question arrived quickly.  Much like with the Halloween costumes, my wife and I struggled to find any candy in town, but I managed to pick up a few bags on my way home from work one evening thanks to my long commute. The candy sat in our pantry for a few days until the 31st finally came, and it could at last be put to use.

Our daughter spent the night dejected in  her bedroom, feeling upset that she wasn’t out trick-or-treating, but also too afraid of what she had been told to actually want to do it. My wife and I tried to get her to come downstairs, but when that failed, we wound up spending the evening on the couch watching a movie without them.

The beginning of the night was quiet, to the point where I began to wonder if we were going to be seeing any trick-or-treaters at all. It was nearly an hour after sunset when our doorbell rang for the first time. I got up from the couch, leaving my wife to keep watching our movie as I made my way to the front door. Upon reaching my destination, I picked up the bowl of candy we had left on a table in the foyer and opened the front door before immediately offering our visitors my first “Happy Halloween!” of the night. What I saw standing there turned my lips downward into a confused frown.

Three figures resembling children, ranging in age from about eight to eleven years old, stood in front of me. They all wore plain, everyday clothing without a single costume between them, and none of them met my gaze as I offered them my greeting; instead they stood by indifferently and stared past me into the nothingness that waited there.

“Trick or treat,” they all said in unison as they held out their jack-o-lantern candy buckets.

“Shouldn’t you kids be wearing costumes?” I asked. My mind flashed back to my daughter’s warning, which my wife and I had ultimately chalked up to being unfounded—a tall tale created by a group of kids to frighten the new girl that unfortunately had done its job. I was beginning to have my doubts about this conclusion.

They all remained silent for several seconds; none of them seemed to react to my question. After a short while they simply repeated their mantra. “Trick or treat.”

My frown persisted, but after a few more moments I ultimately chose to relent. “Well, alright,” I said, offering them the bowl, “but next year make sure you’re wearing costumes, okay?”

None of them reached their hands into the bowl; none of them even looked its way. They merely kept their eyes forward as they held their buckets in the same direction. “Trick or treat.”

A sudden, inexplicable pit in my stomach told me that I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I made them repeat the phrase a fourth time. I hastily dug my hand into the bowl and produced three pieces of candy, which I placed into each bucket. Once their prizes had been received, they simply turned around and disappeared into the nighttime darkness without so much as another word.

I retreated back inside and returned the bowl to its chair. As I walked back to the living room, I once again thought back to the warning my  daughter had been given.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, “but they actually weren’t wearing costumes.”

My wife frowned. “Wow,” she said. “I seriously thought that was a prank.”

“Me too,” I agreed. “And if it was just a prank, I highly doubt if any of the other kids at her school would have gone out tonight without a costume just to drive it home.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of strange cultural thing in this town,” she said. “Some small towns have weird stuff like that.”

I shrugged. “I guess it would explain why we couldn’t find any costumes in the local shops.”

We were confused by this revelation, but we chalked it up as a piece of that same strange culture that can come with small, tight-knit towns, and we decided to let it rest.

More trick-or-treaters began to stop by our house as the night continued on. My wife and I passed treat duty back and forth for a while, with each of us handing out candy to a seemingly endless procession of visitors. On one of my turns, I opened the door to see four visitors that reassembled children standing with what looked to be a single adult in their late thirties or early forties. All five of them held out their orange jack-o-lantern buckets, and they all offered me the usual “trick or treat” as soon as I opened the door.

I placed candy into the buckets of all four children, but I hesitated before the lingering bucket of the adult. “Aren’t you a bit old to be trick-or-treating?” I said.

“Trick or treat,” the adult said again.

I frowned. A familiar unease filled my stomach with the second uttering of the mantra. “Insistent, aren’t you?”

“Trick or treat.”

That unease grabbed my stomach and twisted, forcing my hand. “Alright, fine,” I said, reaching into my bowl and producing a piece of candy. I briefly noted that the bowl was already getting low as I placed the candy into the bucket.

The five trick-or-treaters turned and walked away without another word.

I told my wife about the encounter, who did her best to brush it off. “I guess it can’t hurt if an adult wants to trick-or-treat with their kids,” she said. “Maybe a bit weird to be so insistent, but mostly harmless.”

I ultimately decided to agree with her, despite my reservations, and we allowed the night to continue on.

The hour grew late as we finished our second movie of the evening while munching on a few pieces of candy, and as the clock struck 11pm, we finally decided to call it a night. We went upstairs, checked on our sleeping daughter, and made our way to bed, where we expected to remain until morning.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when I was suddenly awoken by the sound of our doorbell in the middle of the night.

I shot up in bed, my brain still hazy with sleep as I looked at the clock. It was 3:02a.m. Confused, I glanced over at my wife to see that she was still asleep. The doorbell chimed again, prompting me to struggle out of bed and make my way across the cold hardwood floor to our bedroom door. I grumpily proceeded down the stairs and toward the front door, opening it just as the bell rang for a third time.

Four childlike visitors, cloaked in the darkness of the 3 o’clock hour, stood on the other side of the threshold. Their words, spoken in unison, were almost baffling enough to knock me off my feet. “Trick or treat.”

“Do you kids have any idea what time it is?” I said, more than a little annoyed. “It’s 3 in the morning—well past trick-or-treating hours.”

“Trick or treat,” they said again. That familiar knot immediately returned to my stomach.

“Alright, alright,” I said quickly. “Just give me a second.”

 Temporarily retreating inside, I found the candy bowl sitting on the nearby table and immediately brought it outside. I began handing out candy before they could speak again: one piece, then two, then three, and finally—

My hand scraped the bottom of the bowl. I realized with an odd degree of dismay that I was short one piece of candy. Looking at the final trick-or-treater, I frowned. “Sorry, kid,” I said. “I’m all out.”

“Trick or treat,” the fourth child said. Its words exacerbated the already dense ball in my gut, twisting it like a stiffly tuned guitar string.

“I told you I’m out,” I stammered quickly, not sure why I was suddenly so nervous. “I’m sorry. What else do you want me to say?”

A long silence passed between the trick-or-treater and me, during which I dreaded hearing that phrase again. I felt as though that string of twelve letters would be enough to send me to my knees in an instant. All the visitor would have to do was say those three words, and I would collapse like a house of cards in the autumn breeze.

Instead, the visitor lowered its jack-o-lantern bucket, turned around, and walked away. Its companions remained still for a brief moment before they followed after their friend.

I immediately stepped back and closed the door behind them, breathing a deep sigh of relief. After taking a few moments to compose myself, I returned the empty bowl to its table, moved into the kitchen to drink a quick glass of water, and made my way back upstairs. I had almost reached the master bedroom when I suddenly saw my daughter step out of the gloom. The sight of her almost made me jump out of my skin.

“What are you doing up, honey?” I asked, trying to hide how startled I was.

“My friends told me what happens when you run out of treats,” she said, her wavering voice indicating that she was on the verge of tears. I waited for her to elaborate, but she instead turned and walked back into her room. I attempted to follow after her, but she quickly closed the door before I could. I heard its lock click shut a moment later.

I asked if she would open the door, but I received no response. Concerned, I made my way back into the bedroom and approached my wife lying on the bed.

“Hey,” I said quietly, sitting against my wife’s side of the mattress. “Are you awake? I think something is wrong with—”

I paused when I realized that my wife’s spot was empty. She was gone.

“Honey?” I said, turning on her bedside lamp. “Where are you?”

I glanced around the room in search of her, which is when I spotted the open window for the first time. The cool fall breeze drifted in through the aperture and gently tossed the partially pulled curtains. I approached the window in order to close it, which is when I quickly discovered two things. The first was that the window’s screen was missing. The second was that there was a jack-o-lantern candy bucket resting on the sill.

I stared at the bucket in stunned silence for a few moments before finally mustering the courage to reach inside. From it I pulled a single empty candy wrapper crumpled up into a loose ball. I opened the wrapper, which is when I discovered the single word scrawled on the inside that made my entire body go numb.

Trick.

The wrapper leapt from my trembling fingers and floated away on the cool November wind.

Looking back, it began with a single piece of paper posted in the campus commons.

Having made up my mind that I wouldn’t be returning in the fall (of course, my grades had sort of decided that for me), I had gone by to close out my student mailbox. I was making my way out, trying to avoid making eye contact with anyone, when two words printed on a standard piece of paper in a large, red print caught my eye: HELP WANTED.

God knows what might have happened had I simply ignored it and kept walking. Might have spared myself a whole lot of heartache. Instead, something (probably the attractive blonde girl in the red bikini smiling underneath the red text) spurred me on, and I walked over for a closer look.

”Are you Red Cross certified? Looking for a summer job? Riley Estates is now hiring lifeguards for this summer!

• Competitive pay

• Onsite lodging

• A welcoming community

Interested? Call the number below!”

I had lifeguarded the summer before and hated every minute of it. Unfortunately for me, with my future now in flux, anything was better than trying to avoid my parents and their questions about my next steps. So, rather than studying for a final I had no chance of passing, I found a quiet spot and called the number on the paper. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for me, they answered on the first ring.

“Who is this?”

“This is Luke Sullivan. I was calling about the lifeguard job posted at Salem Commons?”

“Oh- yes. You’re Red Cross certified?”

“Yes.”

“And will you require lodging?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds good. How soon can you start?”

“…tomorrow?”

“Perfect. We’ll pencil you in for orientation at 10am.”

The woman hung up.

I decided to hold off on telling my parents for the time being. After all, there’s no good way to inform the people paying for your college education that you’ve just effectively burned $30,000 at the stake.

——

I arrived at 9:45 the next morning to a guarded gate.

“Here for work?” asked the guy at the gate. Stocky, medium height. Looked about my age.

“Yep. Lifeguard training.”

I’m nearly certain he winced, because he tried to play it off like nothing had happened.

“Straight ahead. Take the first right. They should keep you busy.”

I thanked him and drove ahead. Found the pool easily according to his direction. Fortunately, the door to the clubhouse was open, with a whiteboard propped outside reading “Lifeguard Orientation” leaving no questions as to where I should go next.

The door opened into a small foyer. Locker rooms to the left - the only way through to the pool deck. Straight ahead was the guard office, with a window counter to check guests in. I noticed it had blinds for some reason. There was another larger, wraparound window on the far wall of the office, facing the pool. The main room, where orientation would be held, was off to the right.

There were four people already in there - three at a white folding table at the front, and another guy standing next to a large flat screen on the wall. Underneath the flat screen was a fireplace, with a mantle atop which rested two very old looking shotguns.

The man - Vitaly, according to the name stitched onto his Riley Estates polo shirt - handed me a packet and invited me to sit down next to the other three - a very pretty blonde girl, a lanky guy with glasses that looked like a high schooler, and a dude who looked around my age.

Vitaly stood looking at the clock for another five or so minutes, then walked over to the TV and turned it on before pressing a few buttons on his phone.

A man appeared on screen. Older, early 50s. Graying hair. Fit. He wore a navy blazer and a striped shirt.

“Hi. I’m Craft Dunn. Welcome to Riley Estates and thank you for serving our community. We are confident you'll have a fun summer if you follow a few rules.

1. All of you will take at least one overnight shift a week. Our pool has been fitted with an innovative cleaning system that runs overnight. Contact with it is fatal. You will watch the pool from the guard office and make sure no one gets in.

2. Riley Gospel Church rents our clubhouse for weekly services. Saturdays at 11pm. Whoever is on shift will let Pastor Josiah Patterson in to set up, and clean once the service is over. The church is invitation only, so please do not ask to attend."

The video ended. Vitaly turned off the TV.

"Fill out your sizing and banking information. You start this afternoon."

I raised my hand.

"Lodging is the guest house across the street," he said, before I could ask. "The HOA has graciously waived rent. Food is your responsibility."

He left to get our uniforms, and the rest of us introduced ourselves. Cody was a rising sophomore at Boston College. Viktoria, mid-twenties, worked for the same pool company in Macedonia as Vitaly. Ricky was a rising junior who'd repeated a year; his parents had effectively kicked him out for the summer.

I had a feeling we'd get along just fine.

______

After getting our uniforms - white shirt, red trunks, and red hoodies for us guys and a red two-piece for Viktoria (it occurred to me that she looked very similar to the girl on the flyer) - we collectively made our way across the street to the house we would be staying at for the summer.

Vitaly had made it clear that, due to employee dress codes, any non-provided clothing was strictly off limits, with a 3-strike rule for offenders.

Cody, who had guarded last summer, waited until Vitaly was out of earshot.

"A guard got his third strike last year. Craft took one of those antique shotguns off the mantle and walked him into the woods out back. I showed up right as it happened. He said he'd pay my tuition at BC if I kept quiet."

He glanced around as he said it. I assumed he was joking. Viktoria, who didn't, punched him in the arm.

"Don't say shit like that, Cody! He seemed like such, how you say, a grandpa!"

He shrugged and winked at me. "Just telling the truth." I stifled a snort.

Ricky chimed in.

“What’s the deal with the deep end? It’s hella hazy. Like you can’t even see the bottom.”

Cody snapped back at him, surprising us all.

“How would I know? I’m not the one cleaning it every day.”

I think Ricky could sense something like incredulity in his tone, like he couldn’t believe Ricky could ask him such a stupid question, because he didn’t press it any further.

But it wasn't annoyance in Cody's voice, it was defensiveness. I was almost sure of it.

He'd guarded here last summer. What did he know?

_______

We spent the afternoon moving in, then an hour on Ricky's Switch, where Viktoria, who swore she'd never played Mario Kart, destroyed all three of us.

We arrived 10 minutes before the pool opened to an annoyed Vitaly. While the pool did actually clean itself (how this happened was never elaborated upon, and when we asked him how, he grew tight-lipped and refused to go any further), we needed to arrive no later than 15 minutes prior to the pool opening in order to set everything up.

After clocking in, we entered the pool deck for the first time. There were only two guard chairs, so we’d have more than enough time to relax and reset between shifts. Vitaly had already started setting up the chairs and umbrellas (which, as he had already remarked several times, he did not like doing), so the pool was already halfway done. He assigned us different areas of the pool to take care of.

Perhaps it was just my luck that I was told to take care of the deep end.

____

Ricky’s “Hazy” didn’t do it justice.

It almost looked like it was filled with static. Like something was off about it. The depth marking next to the pool said 5 feet, and yet it looked as though it quite literally didn’t have a bottom.

When a hand slapped my back, nearly startling me out of my skin, I realized I had been staring at the deep end for the better part of five minutes. Or had it been holding me? Looking back, I’m not 100% sure.

“Jesus, man!” I let out a startled laugh. “I could’ve fallen in!”

“Shit.. sorry bro.” Ricky grinned sheepishly. “You were just…staring at the pool. I wasn’t sure if I should say something.”

“Nah…you were good. But you’re right…it’s super foggy. Like, hasn’t been cleaned in weeks.”

“For real. Must be some super high-tech shit if it’s gonna be cleaned when this place opens in…a minute. Shit.”

Fortunately, there were only a couple chairs in that section, so we finished relatively quickly.

The first shift was, by all means, uneventful. A couple runners. But, overall, pretty boring. It had been a long day, though, and we were all pretty tired. So, we got a rather unwelcome surprise when Vitaly announced at the end of the night that we would be drawing straws for the night watch on the first shift (he had some administrative matters to take care of and unfortunately couldn’t do it).

I volunteered to go first, thinking it would be the best way to maximize my odds.

I pulled a straw. Prayed it would keep going. It didn’t, and as the others sighed with relief, Vitaly smiled awkwardly and took the cup from me.

“Thank you, Luke.”

“…yup.”

I watched the others pack their things and walked with them to the gate to see them off.

“Sorry, bud.” said Cody, a guilty look on his face.

I shrugged. “Nothing you could do about it. Just shit luck on my end.”

He nodded.

Ricky slapped me on the back. “Promise we won’t get down to too much fun without you.”

“Mhm.”

Viktoria hugged me. It lasted a second longer than a thank-you hug needed to, or maybe I just wanted it to.

“Thanks for taking one for the team, Luke.”

I followed Vitaly to the gate, where he slipped me a gold credit card.

“Didn’t want the others to see this… but since you’re taking the first overnight, I wanted to give this to you as a thanks. Anything you want tonight, my treat.”

I looked at him, slightly confused. “Shouldn’t this be an easy shift? Why is everyone acting like I’m making a huge sacrifice?”

“…well, it should be an easy shift. It’s just the first overnight of the summer, and I know you’re tired, and I feel bad that I can’t be here to do it myself. So, snacks and drinks tonight on me.”

I thanked him and watched him get in his car. Wandered into the guard office. Plugged my phone in. Settled down for the long night ahead of me.

___________

An hour later, I was looking through restaurants in the area for delivery options when there was a knock on the door of the clubhouse. I walked over to open it, assuming it would be Vitaly in need of something.

It wasn’t Vitaly.

A man in a suit stood there with a bag in hand. Close cropped black hair. Glasses. Looked like an accountant that was just dropping by for some laps after work. Nothing unusual.

“Hi, sir. We closed for the night about an hour ago. So sorry.”

“Oh, I’m not here to use the pool.” He smiled politely and stuck out his hand. “Josiah Patterson. Pastor of Riley Gospel Church. I’m here to prepare for tonight’s service.”

“It’s Monday, though. You meet on Saturdays, right.?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve been coming down from an illness, so we had to change schedules this week. Were you all not informed?”

“…No.”

“Well, I’m most terribly sorry to hear that, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now... if you’ll excuse me, I just need to go prepare the clubhouse for our service tonight. I would absolutely love to invite you to join us - the Good Shepherd is always accepting new members to his flock - but due to…extenuating circumstances we unfortunately cannot accept any new members at this time.”

I nodded understandingly. He was so polite I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was a cradle Catholic to my core and hadn’t been to church since before the pandemic.

“If you wouldn’t mind…please leave the front door open. We have it arranged with the HOA. My parishioners will just let themselves in. I promise we won’t be a bother.”

“Absolutely.”

"Oh, and one last thing. If you wouldn't mind keeping those front blinds shut? Some of my parishioners are rather...shy."

A little... odd? But I wasn't in a position to question things. "Of course."

“Thank you so much. Have a pleasant evening.”

I propped the door open. Walked back into the office, shut the door, and as asked, the blinds, and settled on a burrito from Abuela’s Cantina, a Tex-Mex joint down the road.

__________

It was about 30 minutes later when I realized I hadn’t heard a peep from Patterson or any of his supposed parishioners. No footsteps to signify arrivals. No preaching. No singing.

It was then that I realized as well that the blinds on the pool had been drawn the entire time. Vitaly must have closed them against the afternoon sun. I somehow hadn't noticed and had spent an hour and a half doomscrolling instead of watching the pool.

I got up to open the blinds. That was when the chanting started - not from the next room, like Patterson had said.

It was outside, right in front of me. By the pool.

Loud, guttural chanting that, as it went on, made me realize that it was in a language I had never heard before. The hair on my arms started to stand up. I had attended a service at an evangelical church for a religion class in the fall, so I had a vague understanding of what speaking in tongues sounded like, and it wasn’t that either. I also knew, just knew, that I wasn’t being duped.

Whatever was going on was real, and, as it continued, I became more and more certain it had no connection to any of the thousand existing sects of Christianity I was aware of.

My hand was on the cord, about to start raising the blinds, when the keening started, freezing me in place. It was muffled, like someone was moaning in anguish. I knew I needed to pull the cord and open the blinds, to make sure no one got in, but the noise was so...awful I couldn't make myself do it.

I had this gut instinct that as soon as I looked, I would find whoever was participating in whatever what was going on outside standing at the poolside window, staring blankly at me, as though they had been standing there the entire time.

My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden, heavy splash. The keening stopped, but the chanting continued, and I remembered what Craft had said earlier. “Contact with the pool is fatal.”

So, instead I just sat there. Frozen. Watching the clock tick as I wondered what, exactly, was going on outside? And what had been tossed in the pool?

I had gotten the last tube on at Warren Street heading for Brixton as I just got done finishing work, it was around 00:28 and I was absolutely exhausted from the day, so i found a seat and put on my headphones. The train had stopped at all the usual stops until we left Stockwell, I started getting up and grabbing my belongings as I knew we were going to pull into Brixton in about 2 minutes, but those 2 minutes turned into 5 and then 10. by the 10 minute mark I began getting confused as to why we're still in the tunnel and haven't arrived at Brixton as we would've been there by now. I started looking around at other people who had a confused look on their face, checking their phones, frantically texting and a few were looking towards the windows as if they expected to see something different. The train was still moving at what felt like its usual speed. There was no sign of it slowing down, and no announcement explaining what was happening. I sat back down in my seat and went on my phone to see if there was any issues on the Victoria line but when i checked TFL's website the only line that had issues was the Bakerloo and Central line with minor delays while it showed "Good service on all other lines"

At that point i started checking all other social medias i could think of, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, news apps, anything I could think of to see what was going on but nothing said anything unusual was happening on the Victoria line, Meanwhile, we were still hurtling through a tunnel that seemed to have no end. I asked the man opposite me if he had any idea what was going on and he just looked up from his phone and said "That's what im trying to figure out mate, we left stockwell ages ago. So when the hell are we arriving at Brixton?" I then hear a loud banging and i look to my left and it was a man frantically banging on the driver's door "Can you hear me?, What's going on? Why haven't we arrived at Brixton??" yet no answer on the other end. "Oi! DRIVER!" He banged on it a few more times before stepping back and looking around at the rest of us. A woman sitting nearby shook her head. "I've checked TfL. It says there's good service. There's nothing about a train being stuck." I said to the man. 
"Well, clearly something's wrong, isn't it?" another passenger snapped. "Trains don't just drive around in tunnels for half an hour!"
"Maybe we've been diverted?" someone suggested from the other end of the carriage.
"Diverted where? This is the Victoria line!"
A few people started talking over one another. I could hear someone trying to call their partner, another person repeatedly refreshing the TfL website, and a man near the doors telling everyone to calm down. 

While everyone else was freaking out, i looked into the other carriage and could see people panicking as well. another person from that carriage opened the door and came to bang on the drivers door again "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WHY HAVENT WE ARRIVED AT OUR DESTENATION?" he shouted at the door before a man sat near him said to him "Someone else already tried that, no answer on the other end." He then looked at the man confused before saying "Well we got to somehow figure out how to break this door down or something"  a woman sitting across from them interrupted. "That's a good idea because what if the driver is unconscious? What if there's something wrong with the train?" A few other passengers began gathering around the driver's cab. One man suggested pulling the emergency alarm, while another insisted that someone should try contacting TfL again.

I decided to speak up.

"Guys, why don't we just call 999?"

A few people turned to look at me.

"999?" the man standing by the driver's door repeated.

"Yes! The police, the fire brigade, whoever can help us. We've been travelling for ages, we can't get hold of anyone, and the driver isn't responding. Surely someone needs to know what's happening!"

"He's got a point," the older gentleman said, reaching into his pocket for his phone.

Within seconds, several passengers were dialling 999. I did the same, holding my phone to my ear as it began ringing.

For the first time in what felt like hours, I thought we might actually get some answers.

Then the call connected.

"Emergency services. Which service do you require?"

"Police, please," I replied quickly. "I'm on a Victoria line train heading towards Brixton, but we've been stuck in the tunnel for-"

I stopped.

We weren't stuck. The train was still moving.

"Sorry, we're on a Victoria line train. We left Stockwell ages ago, but we still haven't arrived at Brixton. The train won't stop, and we can't get a response from the driver."

There was silence on the other end.

"Sir, could you tell me which station you got on from?"

"Warren Street. We went through all the usual stops. We were supposed to arrive at Brixton hours ago."

Another pause.

Then the operator asked a question that made my stomach drop.

"Sir, are you certain you're on the Victoria line?"

"Yes! I'm looking at the destination display right now. It says Brixton!"

I heard faint typing in the background.

"Sir, I'm going to need you to stay on the line while I check something."

I waited, watching the other passengers staring at me expectantly.

A few seconds later, the operator spoke again.

"Sir, according to our information, there are currently no Victoria line trains operating between Stockwell and Brixton."

I looked at the man beside me.

"What do you mean, no trains?"

The operator didn't answer immediately.

Then she said:

"Sir, the last train to depart Stockwell towards Brixton was reported as having arrived at Brixton 1 hour ago."

I felt my blood run cold.

"That's impossible," I whispered. "I'm on it right now." 

The Operator then asked me if there was anyone else on the train to which i answered yes. "Can you see any station signs or identify your current location?" she asked. I told her no and that we've just been travelling through the tunnels for god knows how long now. I then heard the operator speaking to someone in the background, although I couldn't make out what she was saying. "we've received several emergency calls from passengers aboard a Victoria line train this evening. However, all of those calls appear to have come from the same location which is Stockwell station. Officers and Station staffs have confirmed that there's nobody on the platform at all and that every single tube is in the depot" 

"THEN WHERE THE HELL ARE WE?!" I shouted at the phone, i was confused but scared at the same time.  

Then the call disconnected, I tried calling them back but the Phone kept ringing over and over again. I've texting my friends, co-workers, parents about what's going on, they're confused and are doing everything they can to help me. Other passengers have tried breaking the window, breaking the driver's door and even suggested tried leaping out via the walkway but everyone is too scared to try that. It's been 5 hours since and im relying on my power bank to keep my phone charged but i know it's going to die eventually as well as my phone. Honestly im posting here because im scared and confused as to what's going on and just don't know what to do.

A couple weeks ago I began to notice a decline in the insect population around my house. Months of hanging up fly paper and cleaning my home vigorously had done little in the way of curbing the infestation. It seemed to be a yearly occurrence at this point. Summer would begin to set in, followed by a mass migration of creepy crawlies trying to find a cool, shaded place to hunker down. I have little tolerance for squatters and, last time I checked, none of these bugs were paying rent—so they had to go. 

At first I thought that the sudden scarcity of unwanted guests had been brought upon by my own skillful use of bait, traps, and chemical sprays. I’ll regretfully inform you now that this was not the case. 

My first causes for concern were the exoskeletons. I should have been more clear before. When I said that the insect population was declining, I meant the living population. Since about two weeks ago I’ve been finding these—shells in various corners of the house; dead bugs that seem to crumble apart like dried leaves under small amounts of pressure. I almost jumped out of my skin the other day when I heard a dry *crunch* sound come from beneath my foot. I had just stepped out of my bedroom, and when I looked down I was met with a small pile of dead beetle remains. While this was an odd phenomenon to say the least, it paled in comparison to my next discovery.

I found it in my dresser.

It happened early in the morning while I was getting ready for work. I was running late and desperately trying to make up for lost time by eating breakfast on the go. With half a bagel clenched between my teeth, I remember opening up one of my dresser drawers to grab a top. As I reached down towards a neatly-folded shirt, my eyes locked onto a small, dark form and I immediately drew my hand back and let out a shriek—which was only slightly suppressed by the bagel ejecting from my mouth.

There, sitting on one of my shirts, was a large brown spider.

Its legs, nearly the same diameter as a golf ball, twitched slightly as I scrambled backwards. Almost tripping over my bed, I grabbed a dirty shirt from the top of my laundry basket and bolted out of the room. Spider be damned, I wasn’t going to be late for work again this week. I’d have to deal with it later. 

However, when later came, the eight-legged intruder was nowhere to be found. I spent about twenty minutes creeping around the house, expecting to catch a glimpse of the arachnid in a dark corner or on one of my walls. The search turned up nothing. Feeling defeated and sufficiently fatigued from the eventful day, I gave up the search and decided not to let it ruin my evening. Out of sight, out of mind. 

The next morning, about four days ago now, I awoke dangerously close to noon. Sure, it was my day off, but I’m not the type of guy to sleep half my day away for no good reason. Groggily, I sat up and wiped the sleep from my eyes. I rolled out of bed and began to stretch, but paused a few seconds after my bare feet made contact with the floor. 

It was a weird feeling. Somewhere between a light tickling sensation and an itch. I looked down as I felt the sensation travel from the top of my foot to my ankle. When my eyes locked onto the cause, I felt all of the blood drain from my face. 

It couldn’t have been the same spider as before. No. This one was nearly twice the size of that one. It had stopped moving upon my discovery and now laid flat against my leg, just below the knee. I could see the late morning light reflecting off of its three pairs of eyes. It was a horrifying sight.

I made a sound that’s about as hard to describe as it is to replicate. Shaking my leg like a leaf in a hurricane, I grabbed my phone, took off out the door, and didn’t stop running until I was standing shirtless on my front porch. I took a moment to catch my breath, then dialed the number for my local pest control company.

After three or four rings I was answered by what sounded like a middle-aged man. I asked if he could come by my house today to take care of my spider problem. He claimed that his whole crew was booked out for the day, but assured me that he would come by personally first thing tomorrow morning. I begrudgingly accepted his offer and hung up. I can survive another day, right? It was just a spider after all. The little monster would probably be hiding away until the exterminator showed up. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.

For the rest of the day, I kept my head on a swivel. I checked every doorway before entering the next room and made sure to inspect all items closely before picking them up. Something about knowing this thing was in the house somewhere had brought upon me a paranoia that I had never before experienced. Every dark corner was a potential lair. Every crevice was a possible trap. My safe haven had been violated and I doubted I could relax until I knew the threat was removed.

That night was a restless one. I kept picturing spindly appendages feeling their way over the side of my bed, waiting for me to make a sudden movement. I felt like prey. Even the few times I managed to slip into unconsciousness, it would be a brief respite followed by sudden wakefulness and subsequent panic. How many were there? There had to be at least two of the things. I pictured thousands of small, brown masses moving between the walls. Gritting my teeth, I attempted to blink those thoughts away.

When morning finally came, I felt like a wreck. My eyes were puffy and my mouth was dry. I almost didn’t notice the sound of my doorbell ringing. I made my way to the front door as quickly as my tired body would allow. The man standing on my front porch looked exactly like expected: Average height with a receding hairline, five o'clock shadow, and belly that his button-up shirt must have been seriously struggling to contain. I welcomed the man inside and gave him a quick tour of the house while explaining my situation in further detail than our brief phone call had allowed. As we made our way through the dining room I noticed the man kneel down and reach towards the floor. He brushed his hand around one of the dining room chairs while mumbling something under his breath. When I asked him what he was looking at, he pointed out a wispy little web. I met his eyes with a puzzled expression. 

“Fiddleback.” He stated.

My confused silence prompted him to elaborate further. 

“Fiddleback.” He repeated. “It’s what we call those little fuckers from the Sicariidae family. They’re pretty common in this part of the country, but they’re not the type of spider you want to be messin’ around with.” He continued while stooping down to look under the dining room table. 
“Most folks just call ‘em recluses. They’re ugly and quick, and if you’re not careful they’ll leave you with a nasty bite.” He turned toward me and held up one of his hands for me to see. It was then that I noticed the pinky on his right hand had been amputated down to the first knuckle.

“A spider did that?” I choked out in stunned horror.

He nodded. “But thankfully my doctor chopped it off quick enough to keep the toxin from spreading. I could’ve lost half my damn hand.”

My eyes widened and my throat went dry.

“But there’s no need to worry,” he said. “They’re pretty shy by nature, and don’t usually bite unless provoked or–” He stopped. “What the hell–” The man slowly withdrew from underneath the table, holding something in his hand. I nearly vomited when I saw what he was holding. 

Thin and almost translucent in color, it appeared to be the molted exoskeleton of an abhorrently large arachnid. Nearly eight inches across. 

I excused myself and beelined it to the front door. I walked across the driveway, got in my car, and began driving away. After my breathing had returned to normal, I called the exterminator and told him that I would be spending the night in a hotel and would not set foot in that house until it had been purged of everything with more than two legs.

“I don’t care what it takes! Gas the whole fucking building if you have to! I’m not coming back until that–that thing…and any other thing like it is dead!” I hung up.

It’s been three days since that call. All of my attempts at reaching the man have gone to voicemail.

I moved into my apartment at the beginning of the year. It was an older building with six apartments on each floor and pretty thin walls. Hearing footsteps, conversations, or doors closing in the hallway was normal. None of it bothered me until someone started knocking on my front door in the middle of the night.

The first time happened around 2 AM. I was watching something on my laptop when I heard three quiet knocks. I checked the peephole, but nobody was there. I assumed someone had knocked on the wrong door and left, although I hadn't heard any footsteps. A few nights later, it happened again. Three identical knocks. I reached the door almost immediately, but the hallway was empty. I even opened it and checked the stairs and elevator. Nothing.

Over the following weeks, the knocking continued, always between 2 and 3 AM. My neighbor across the hall hadn't heard anything and suggested teenagers might be playing tricks. It sounded reasonable, except I couldn't understand how they disappeared without making a sound. Eventually, I started wondering whether the noise was actually coming from another apartment.

I decided to record it using an old phone and a voice recording app. For two nights, nothing happened. On the third, I woke around 2:30 AM to the familiar three knocks. I stayed in bed and checked the recording the following morning. The knocks were clearly audible, but there was something else. About ten seconds before them, I heard a faint scraping noise, like something being dragged across the floor. Strangely, it sounded much closer to the phone than the knocking did. I listened repeatedly, but couldn't identify it.

A few days later, I was brushing my teeth when the knocking started again. I reached the front door within seconds and looked through the peephole. Nobody was there, and the hallway light was off. That seemed strange because the motion sensor usually activated whenever someone walked past my apartment. Then I heard another knock, just one, much quieter than the others. I was standing right against the door, but the sound seemed to come from somewhere near my knees. I looked beneath the door, expecting to see someone's shoes or a shadow. There was nothing. Then someone whispered my name. It was barely audible, and I couldn't tell whether the voice belonged to a man or a woman. I stood there for several seconds before backing away and locking myself in my bedroom.

The following morning, I spoke to the building manager about security cameras. Unfortunately, there weren't any on my floor. He suggested contacting the police, but I had no idea how to explain what was happening without sounding ridiculous. That evening, I pushed a small chair against my front door. I knew it wouldn't stop anyone from entering, but I figured I'd hear it move if someone tried opening the door.

I went to bed around midnight. At 2:46 AM, three knocks woke me up. I sat upright, staring toward my bedroom door. A few seconds later, I heard that same scraping sound from the recording. This time, it sounded exactly like the chair being dragged across the floor. I waited, barely breathing. Then came three more knocks. But they weren't coming from the front door anymore. They came from my bedroom door, only a few feet from my bed. I knew I was alone in the apartment. I hadn't heard the front door open, and there was no reason for anyone to be standing outside my bedroom.

I immediately switched on my bedside lamp and stared at the closed door. I couldn't bring myself to get up, so I grabbed my phone and messaged a few friends. Two of them stayed awake talking to me while I sat there, watching the door. Nothing else happened that night. When morning came, I finally gathered enough courage to check the apartment. Every window was closed. The front door was locked. Nothing appeared to have been touched. And the chair I'd pushed against the entrance was still standing exactly where I'd left it.

I didn’t cry the day my husband was cremated.

At the Universal Funeral Parlour in Hung Hom, I greeted relatives, answered calls, and checked which folder held which documents.

People took my hand and told me how sorry they were. I nodded and thanked them.

I heard the same words so many times that, eventually, I stood up automatically whenever anyone approached.

In his funeral photograph, Jayne was wearing that blue shirt. When I took it, I’d told him he was grinning like an idiot.

“I’m looking at my wife. What do you expect?” he’d said.

Now everyone said I’d chosen a lovely photograph.

I hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in days. There were things to hand over at his company, funeral arrangements, insurance forms, calls from the police, and court appearances I’d already been scheduled for. Everything needed an answer from me.

I’m a prosecutor with the Department of Justice. I’m used to dealing with problems.

That day, I kept dealing with them until GIGI tugged at my clothes.

She stood beside me, holding her stuffed rabbit in her other hand.

“Mommy, where’s Daddy?”

The relatives nearby fell quiet.

I crouched and straightened her collar. There was nothing wrong with it. I just needed something to do.

“Daddy’s gone away on a business trip. Somewhere very far away.”

“When’s he coming back?”

My hands stopped.

“Mommy doesn’t know yet.”

She thought for a moment, tucked the rabbit under her arm, and reached for my handbag.

“Then let’s call him.”

I gently caught her hand.

My phone was in the bag. His number was still in it. So was the voice message I hadn’t been able to listen to.

I didn’t know what to say.

Someone called from behind me. There was a document I needed to check. I stood, held GIGI’s hand, and told her to sit with Grandma for a little while.

She didn’t make a fuss. But after a few steps, she looked back.

I lowered my eyes to the paperwork and pretended not to notice.

Later, when the last relative asked if there was anything else they could do, I opened my bag and checked everything again.

As if finding one unsigned form would mean he wasn’t completely gone yet.

But there was nothing.

Everything was done.

Four-year-old GIGI fell asleep in the car on the way home. I carried her to bed, took off her shoes, and went to sit in the living room.

I only meant to rest against the sofa for a moment. I hadn’t even put my phone down. But my eyelids grew heavier, and once they closed, I couldn’t make them open again.

I don’t remember when I fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes, my head was resting on a school desk.

There was a scratch in the surface. I remembered it. Part of a math test lay beside me.

Someone picked my jacket up off the floor and draped it over my shoulders.

I looked up.

Jayne was sixteen.

He startled, looked away, muttered that he’d just been passing, and hurried off.

We weren’t together yet. Back then, he could barely manage a whole sentence while looking at me.

I watched him walk away and couldn’t help smiling.

Then someone pulled at my hand.

“Mommy, I’m hungry.”

I woke up.

The living room had gone dark. A gray blanket had been tucked around me.

I assumed GIGI had put it there.

The fridge was full of food he’d portioned out: marinated pork chops, ground meat, chopped vegetables. Every container had a date on it in his crooked handwriting.

Jayne used to say I treated the kitchen like a crime scene. I’d take everything out and forget to put any of it back. So he prepared things ahead of time.

He’d told me to check the dates. Once something was past its date, I was to throw it away. No feeling bad about wasting it.

I stood in front of the fridge and suddenly couldn’t remember what day it was.

The pork chops had three days left.

He didn’t even have tomorrow.

After we ate, GIGI and I sat together in the rocking chair in our little garden. The moon was full. She rested her feet across my legs.

“Daddy comes home when the moon is full,” she said.

I stroked her hair.

“With Daddy away, you’ll have to help look after your clumsy mommy. You even put a blanket over me earlier. What a sweet girl.”

She shook her head.

“It wasn’t me. Daddy did it.”

“Yes. Daddy used to help Mommy with lots of things.”

She looked at me as if she wanted to say something else. Then she just leaned against me.

I didn’t ask.

I wanted her to be right so badly that I couldn’t let myself believe her.

A sentencing hearing in a manslaughter case had already been fixed. It couldn’t be moved. Before I’d had time to recover from the funeral, I had to return to the High Court as scheduled.

The defendant had pushed her husband during an argument. He’d fallen down the stairs and died. She had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and accepted all the facts.

After the defense made its plea in mitigation, I stood. I only meant to add one thing.

“He was already trying to walk away. Why did you have to keep pushing him?”

“I’m guilty,” she said, looking down.

“If you’d just listened to him—”

“I’m guilty. I’m not making excuses.”

I stared at her. My chest felt unbearably tight.

“Did you ever think about the fact that he would never come home again—”

“Counsel.”

The judge’s voice cut me off.

Defense counsel was already standing. The junior prosecutor beside me was watching me, too.

“The relevant facts have been established,” the judge said.

I lowered my head and sat down.

The hearing continued. I stayed on the same page of my file, never turning it.

Afterward, my junior reached for the case papers.

“Please, take a few days off. You’re exhausted. We can handle things.”

I wanted to say I was fine.

In the end, I just let go of the file.

The second dream came a month later.

I was studying for my university exams.

Jayne sat beside me, keeping me company. He was already nodding off. I told him to go home. He insisted he wasn’t tired.

In the dream, I went to the bathroom.

When I returned, he was taking apart the lid of my insulated cup, fitting a little rubber ring into it.

That cup had been leaking for ages. I’d always thought it stopped because I’d finally learned to screw the lid on properly.

When I woke, the lid of the cup I’d been using for years had been fixed.

The tools were at the far right corner of the dining table, the screwdriver resting on a tissue.

That was how he always left them.

GIGI said Daddy had spent a long time fixing it the night before. He’d told her not to touch the tiny pieces.

I checked the locks. I called my mother and asked if she’d been over.

She hadn’t.

I still thought I might have done it myself.

You can forget things when you’re that tired.

The third time, I dreamed about an argument I’d forgotten years ago.

We’d only just started dating. I was refusing to speak to him over something trivial and gathering my things to leave.

He wrote an apology on a scrap of paper, folded it into a little shirt, and slipped it into one of my shoes by the door.

When I bent down to put my shoes on, I saw a corner of paper sticking out.

I pulled it out and couldn’t help laughing.

“Are my shoes your mailbox now?”

He stood beside me. When I finally spoke to him, he smiled too.

The little shirt had a corner missing from its left sleeve.

He’d folded it wrong the first time. After that, he kept making it the same way, mistake and all.

It became our private agreement.

Whoever wanted to make up would leave a paper shirt in the other person’s shoe. Whoever was ready to forgive would move it to the window.

When I woke up, there was a little paper shirt on the table.

No writing.

A corner missing from the left sleeve.

GIGI was eating cookies. I asked who had folded it.

“Daddy.”

“You saw him?”

She nodded.

“He made two. The first one wasn’t very good.”

There was another, badly folded piece of paper in the wastebasket.

I sat there for a long time.

That argument had happened before our daughter was born.

We’d never kept any of the shirts. I’d never told anyone about them, not even my closest friend.

I started checking the calendar.

All three dreams had happened on nights with a full moon.

I remembered what GIGI had said.

“Daddy comes home when the moon is full.”

At the time, I’d thought she just missed him.

Now I was beginning to think she might be telling the truth.

I wanted to find out for myself.

On the next full moon, I asked my mother to keep GIGI overnight.

She assumed I needed some rest and didn’t ask questions.

I put the paper shirt in one of my husband’s shoes.

They were still by the door. I’d never been able to put them away.

Standing there, I felt ridiculous. By day I demanded evidence in court. By night I was talking to an empty pair of shoes.

Finally, I said quietly, “If it’s you, you remember what to do.”

I hadn’t been drinking. I hadn’t taken sleeping pills.

I sat on the sofa and waited.

Eventually, I fell asleep.

In the dream, Jayne sat beside me. He was the age he’d been during our marriage, wearing that old T-shirt with the stretched-out neck.

I asked why he wouldn’t speak.

He just looked at me.

When I woke up, it wasn’t light yet.

The paper shirt was gone from his shoe.

It was by the window.

I ran outside. The garden was empty.

But the rocking chair, which had been still, moved a little.

“Jayne?”

No answer.

I went closer and touched the back of the chair.

It felt warm. I didn’t know if that was just the warmth of my own hand.

That was when I finally cried.

I said so much. Whatever came into my head. I repeated some things. Others I couldn’t get all the way through.

I told him the washing machine was broken and I didn’t know how to fix it. That when GIGI had a fever in the middle of the night, I’d sat in the car downstairs for ten minutes with my hands shaking. That his clothes were still in the wardrobe. I hadn’t moved a single one.

Then I talked about the day of the accident.

We’d argued.

I’d just finished work and was too tired to talk. He called to ask about dinner. I snapped at him for asking me about every little thing and told him to stop calling.

Half an hour later, I regretted it.

I texted him to come and get me.

He never arrived.

The time the police later gave me was exactly when I’d been standing downstairs, waiting for him.

“If I hadn’t asked you to come, it wouldn’t have happened.”

I knelt beside the chair.

“If I could go back, I wouldn’t be with you.”

The wind stopped.

“Then you wouldn’t have to die.”

The chair stopped moving too.

Before dawn, I heard a faint sound from the side of the house. Like someone walking past.

I went after it.

There was water on the steps from the night before. I didn’t see it.

After my foot slipped, all I remember is the moon sliding out of sight.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed.

My mother sat beside me.

She was much younger.

She scolded me for not watching where I was going, even as she touched my forehead and asked if it still hurt.

“Where’s GIGI?” I blurted.

“Who’s GIGI?”

I stared at her. Before I could answer, I noticed the date on the television news.

I threw back the covers and rushed into the bathroom.

A teenage girl looked back at me from the mirror.

I froze, then leaned closer.

That face.

Wasn’t that me, years ago?

I touched my cheeks. My fingers were trembling.

My mother followed me in, saying I’d just had a fright and should get back into bed. I stayed where I was, staring at the mirror.

How could I be back in the past?

If it really was 2003, Jayne was still alive.

But what about GIGI?

Where was my daughter?

That night, I sat in the hospital bed and wrote down everything I could remember. My husband’s name. My daughter’s birthday. Our address. The date of the accident.

When I wrote about the rabbit GIGI slept with, I cried until the paper was soaked.

I didn’t know how to get back.

But perhaps if I could save her daddy first, everything would be all right.

The solution seemed simple.

Don’t fall in love with him.

When I returned to school, I changed seats.

Jayne stopped in the aisle with his books in his arms. He saw me sitting on the other side of the room and said nothing.

I avoided the activities we’d once done together. I took a different route home. I refused the things he offered me.

He didn’t follow me around asking why.

When I made it clear I didn’t want him near me, he stepped back.

But sometimes I’d look up and catch him watching me.

That look hurt.

I knew it too well.

I’d seen it from the kitchen doorway. Outside the delivery room. In the middle of the night when he tucked our daughter in.

For years, I kept avoiding him.

I’d thought that if we never dated, if we never married, there would be less to lose.

Then one day I saw a blue shirt in a shop window and stood on the pavement crying.

I knew I still loved him.

So I decided to find him someone else.

My closest friend was willing to have dinner with him. She thought Jayne was a lovely person. I arranged several meetings and always asked what they’d talked about.

Eventually, she refused to go again.

“You’re the one he likes.”

I said that wasn’t possible.

She looked at me. “Every time you ask about him, you look more miserable than he does. What are you trying to do?”

I asked Jayne to meet me.

I was cruel that evening.

“Jayne, listen to me.”

“You can’t fall in love with me. Don’t even think about it.”

“You and I are never going to happen. Do you understand?”

He listened without interrupting.

I turned to leave.

Behind me, he asked, “Did GIGI tell you Daddy comes home when the moon is full?”

I stopped.

People were walking past. Traffic was loud.

Suddenly, I couldn’t make out any of it.

I turned around.

The young Jayne stood where I’d left him, his eyes red.

“I never thought you’d come here.”

I asked him so many questions.

The blanket. The cup lid. The paper shirt.

The things I’d said in the garden.

He knew all of it.

At last, I touched his hand.

It was warm.

I held on tightly, afraid that if I let go, he’d become that funeral photograph again: the blue shirt, that ridiculous grin.

He told me that after he died, he could go home on nights when the moon was full.

GIGI could see him. When I was asleep, he could come closer and do a few of the things he used to do for me.

The rest of the time, he came back here.

To our past.

He didn’t know why. He didn’t know how long he could stay.

“You knew who I was from the beginning?”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He looked down at our hands.

“You said you didn’t want to be with me.”

I wanted to argue. I couldn’t get the words out.

“I wanted to see,” he said, “if you’d really be happier without me.”

I hugged him.

He hugged me back.

After so long, I could finally hear him breathing beside my ear again.

I told him I only wanted him to live.

He said he’d chosen to come and get me that day.

He’d wanted to make up too.

“Asking me to come doesn’t mean you made that car hit me.”

Friends and relatives had said that to me before.

This was the first time I heard it.

We got together again.

I still studied law. I still did the work I wanted to do. He never asked me to give it up, and I didn’t give everything up to prove I loved him.

But some things changed.

He stopped saying everything was fine when it wasn’t.

Once, when I canceled a date at the last minute, he told me he’d been waiting downstairs for a long time. That it really did hurt.

I went back to see him.

When we argued, I stopped hiding in my work and waiting for him to come and make things right.

Before we married, he folded another paper shirt.

I teased him for still not being able to get it even after all those years.

He showed me carefully.

Leave a little corner missing from the left sleeve.

Give the right one an extra fold, like the floppy ear on GIGI’s rabbit.

At the mention of our daughter, we both went quiet.

Later, in this life, she came to us again.

The first time I held her, I cried so hard at the sight of that familiar little face that a nurse thought something was wrong.

I knew there was another four-year-old GIGI waiting for me in the world I’d left.

I couldn’t stay here forever.

But the days passed. There were meals to cook, a child to pick up, work to do. We still got tired and impatient. We still argued over little things.

Living those days once already didn’t make them matter any less.

One night, I came home late from work and found them both asleep at the dining table.

Jayne still had the unfinished food labels in his hand.

I didn’t wake them.

I finished writing the dates, put the food in the fridge, and draped a jacket over his shoulders.

Half asleep, he caught my hand.

“You’re home?”

I told him I was.

2026 arrived.

The closer we got to that date, the more frightened I became.

Once, I reached for Jayne’s arm. I was sure I’d touched him, but my fingers closed on nothing.

I froze.

He turned and took my hand. His palm was still warm.

I told myself I was too anxious. I’d simply missed.

On the day of the accident, we didn’t go out.

We turned off our phones and put the car keys in a drawer.

GIGI drew pictures in the living room. He and I sat at the dining table.

I kept looking at the clock.

The time of the accident came and went.

He was still there.

Another hour passed. He asked if I was hungry.

I laughed through my tears.

That evening, for the first time, I told him we should get a wider rocking chair when we were old. One big enough for us.

He said we would.

A few days later, my hand closed on nothing again.

He was sitting right beside me. I reached for his hand, and my fingers landed on the armrest.

I tried again at once. His hand was solid in mine.

“What is it?” he asked.

I shook my head and said nothing.

Then, one night, moonlight fell across his hand, and I saw the grain of the table.

Through his skin.

I switched on the light.

The wood grain disappeared.

His hand lay on the table as it always had.

He looked down at it too.

Neither of us spoke.

But it kept happening.

Sometimes, when he stood by the window, I could see the frame through his shoulder. Then he would turn, and there would be nothing to see.

I started leaving the lights on all night.

Eventually, even the light couldn’t hide it.

He sat in front of me. I could just make out the back of the chair through his clothes.

“Yan.”

I didn’t answer. I reached for his hand.

This time, I could only feel it if I held it very gently.

“I think this is as far as I can go with you.”

I shook my head and tightened my grip.

My fingers closed on air.

He was still sitting there, looking at me.

Slowly, I loosened my hand and tried again.

This time, I could feel him.

I didn’t dare squeeze.

The accident hadn’t happened.

But I finally understood that he still had to leave.

On the last night, he asked if we could sit in the garden.

We went outside together.

The moon was full.

He sat in the rocking chair and asked if I regretted it again.

I knew what he meant.

A long time ago, I’d knelt beside another chair and said that if I could go back, I wouldn’t be with him.

I shook my head.

“I’d still choose you. Even if I had to do it all again.”

“Good,” he said.

I still cried.

Living those twenty-three years again hadn’t taught me how to let him go.

But I no longer wished those years away.

He told me not to shoulder everything alone. To ask for help when I needed it. He reminded me that GIGI could put on her own shoes now. I didn’t need to crouch down and do it for her every time we were rushing out.

He always remembered things like that.

I held his hand and said I would.

As dawn approached, his hand began to fade in mine.

I curled my fingers around it. There was only air.

His outline grew fainter.

Through him, I could see the back of the rocking chair.

Then the chair was empty.

I didn’t reach for him again.

I sat there until the sun came up.

The next time I opened my eyes, I was back in the hospital.

My mother was older again.

She held my hand and said I’d finally woken up. That I’d frightened her terribly.

I asked where GIGI was.

At home, she said. Being looked after. Then she scolded me for still not watching my step at my age.

I listened to her scolding and cried for a long time.

Twenty-three years hadn’t passed here.

When my daughter threw her arms around me, she was still four.

Back home, I found a little paper shirt by the window.

A corner was missing from the left sleeve.

The right had an extra fold, like the floppy ear of a rabbit.

It was the fold he’d taught me later.

I put it somewhere safe.

That night, I finally played the last voice message my husband had left while he was alive.

It was only ten or so seconds long.

He asked how much longer I’d be. Said the pork chops were marinating. Reminded me to eat them the next evening.

When it finished, I didn’t delete it.

GIGI and I still sit in the garden.

Sometimes she says Daddy came by. That he helped her find her rabbit, or told her not to leave cookie crumbs in bed.

I don’t interrupt her anymore.

On the last full moon, she sat beside me, looked up at the sky, and said it again.

“Daddy comes home when the moon is full.”

I pulled the blanket over her legs.

“Yes,” I said. “He’ll watch over us, just like the moon.”

She leaned against me and kept telling me about kindergarten.

After a while, she stopped and looked at the empty chair beside us.

“Daddy says you remembered the blanket this time.”

I didn’t turn around.

I looked down at my daughter and tucked her bare foot under the blanket too.

Then she kept talking.

And I kept listening.

“You need strong arms and a stomach for the smell of puke.” That’s how Gustav hired me.

After my sister’s accident, I dropped out of university and badly needed money and a distraction. A friend gave me the number of Gustav, who ran the biggest tent at the Wiesn (that’s what we call Oktoberfest here in Munich), and put in a good word for me. And as a waitress at Oktoberfest, you get exactly that: lots of money and lots of distraction. I mostly worked the evening shift, which paid better, and I quickly learned the unwritten rules of the tent. Walk the extra lap instead of spilling precious beer. Give drunks (mostly men) clear orders. Only switch to flirty waitress mode when you’re sure they won’t misread the signals (I want your tip, not your number). It’s a bit like being a zookeeper in a monkey house. You also need a feel for the room. Which table is about to blow up, so you’d better call security? Which guest is so drunk that you have to make sure he doesn’t puke on your dirndl (the traditional dress)?

Most guests, tourists and locals alike, were fine. Except for one man who came every Wednesday. He wore worn-out leather pants, a faded red checkered shirt, a beaten-up felt hat with a broken brim and a huge feather. His shoes caught my eye right away. Big, shapeless leather shoes, with thick wool socks pulled up to his knees. He showed up at the same time every Wednesday, ordered a Maß (that’s a liter of beer) and drank it while watching the party around him with a strange smile. His look was arrogant, as if he secretly judged people for having fun. When he finished, he paid with old D-Mark bills (our old currency, from before the euro) and disappeared. The first time, I refused to take the money, but he said nothing and just grinned. His teeth were yellow and he stank like rotten eggs. Gustav pulled me aside, rough and fast, and told me to stop making a fuss and take the money. Money is money, he said, and he could easily swap it for euros at the bank. I wanted to know who the man was, but my boss gave me a look as if I had said something forbidden. “Just do your damn job and cash him out.”

The strange man came every year, every Wednesday, drank his beer, paid with D-Mark and vanished as quietly as he had appeared. The staff had all kinds of theories. Some said he was a time traveler, maybe even the founder of our tent, who jumped into the future every Wednesday to enjoy his life’s work. Others thought he was an alien. The sensible ones among us said he was just an old man with a pile of D-Mark bills at home who had found a fun way to get rid of them.

It was the second-to-last week of the festival, so I decided to find out who he really was. My sister always said my curiosity would kill me one day. But I never could help it. He came, I brought him his beer, and when he wanted to pay, I took the D-Mark bills with a smile and wished him a nice evening. I followed him when he got up. He didn’t head for the main entrance. He took a side door that led past the kitchen to the offices. He walked down the hallway whistling, hands in his pockets, and stopped in front of Gustav’s office. He went in without knocking, as if it belonged to him. I crept up to the small window above the door, climbed carefully onto a beer bench and tried to peek inside.

Gustav and the old man were arguing.

“Can’t we sort this out another way? I ... I can talk to her!”

“We’ve played this game before.”

“Please, I ...”

“You know exactly what happens now. We have a deal.”

Gustav sighed, sank into his chair and stared blankly into the corner.

My eyes fell on the man’s beige socks. They had slipped down a little, and I saw thick, black hair on his legs. No, it wasn’t hair. It looked more like ... fur. Black, shiny fur. His worn leather shoes started to crack, and something strange pushed through. Something hard, glossy and dark yellow. Far too late, I understood. Hooves. Gustav looked away, clamped his hands over his ears and whimpered, as if his whole body hurt.

But all of that was nothing compared to the man’s gaze, which hit me like a bullet. Suddenly every positive thought (and every neutral one) vanished from my mind. Only the pain was left. Everything bad that had ever happened to me was suddenly right there. My parents’ divorce when I was eight. My gym teacher’s hands on me when I was fourteen. My sister’s tragic death two years ago. Until now, a filter had softened every negative feeling and thought, so that I could survive at all. His stare and his grin tore that filter apart. All the misery of the world hit me like a focused laser, with so much force that I fell over backwards. As soon as I broke away from his eyes, I felt instant relief.

I ran down the hallway, past the kitchen, and pushed open the door. Instead of the tent, there was another hallway. How was that possible? That was clearly the door to the tent. So I turned around and ran past the kitchen on the right side this time, to reach the tent from the other direction. But when I went through that door, I ended up in the storage room. That made no sense at all. The storage room is outside the tent, on the opposite side. How did I get here if I never left the tent?

I turned around again and ran toward the kitchen. This time I ended up in Gustav’s office. Gustav wasn’t there, and the strange man was gone too. My sister stood there instead. She looked exactly like she did on the day she died. Torn jeans, the thigh bone sticking out, the shoulder twisted, the neck broken, so her head hung sideways off her shoulders, like a doll with a snapped neck.

I screamed, but I knew instinctively that nobody could hear me.

“Why did you ... do this?” my sister groaned.

The door I had come through was suddenly gone.

“Why did you give me your car?”

“I didn’t know!” I screamed and shut my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at her.

“You knew. You sent me to my death on purpose.”

“No, no, no.” My voice was hoarse and raspy.

“I didn’t know the brakes were damaged. I swear.”

My sister took a step toward me, dragging her broken leg behind her.

“Stop lying! You always hated me, because Mom loved me more than you.”

“Stop it, please stop!”

“I got the love you always wanted.” I covered my ears and turned away from her.

“You were happy when I was finally gone.”

I shut my eyes and shook my head, hoping she would disappear.

When I opened my eyes again, I saw a door that hadn’t been there before. And when my dead sister took another step toward me, I ran past her and out of the office. Past the kitchen, and suddenly I was back in the tent. Everything was where it belonged again.

The hallways, the doors, the guests.

And the filter was back. The bad feelings slowly faded, and I only felt them dimly now. I remembered everything and I was still scared, but I wasn’t so close to it anymore. With every minute, I gained more distance. The shield built itself up again and protected me from the harmful memories. It worked so well that I even finished my shift that day. I told no one about what I had seen and lived through, not Gustav, not anyone.

For the next few days I slept badly, but I recovered and was my old self again. A week later, it was Wednesday again. And the old man came back to the tent. I brought him his beer and cashed him out when he was done.

There’s only one thing I never did again: look him in the eyes.

Hey y’all, It’s been a minute.

I wish I could say I have good news, answers to all the mysteries, bring closure to this chapter of my life and the lives of the other souls on Flight 411.

But I don’t.

Every time I think I’ve come close to a major break through, close to finding any sort of answers, I’m just met with another rabbit hole.

The black box was deemed unsalvageable. So the CVR, the FDR, all of it’s just scrap. The wreckage was in a pretty bad way too. Only about half of the plane had been recovered, and one of the engines. The FAA are reaching the limit of what they can learn from the crash. Hell even with a living, breathing, witness they couldn’t find anything useful in my testimony.

Speaking of, that’s where I’d been the last little while. In and out of closed hearings with the FAA and some other politicians on some committee. We went over every detail of the flight from the pre-flight route planning and paper work, to my last moments on Flight 411.

We came to the conclusion that my survival was nothing short of a miracle, an act of god maybe. No doctor has been able to adequately explain my two weeks of memory loss. No expert had been able to explain how I ended up on a beach back home after surviving a near Mach 1 crash into the middle of the pacific. Nobody could find any fault in myself or my copilot. Nobody was able to concretely identify the cause of the crash based on the pitiful amount of wreckage recovered.

Nobody in that room came out with answers, just more uncomfortable questions.

The FAA closed the case. Based on the totality of the damage, and the blessing that was the media’s ignorance to my survival, they ruled that the accident was, to the dismay and anger of the general public, an act of god. That is, an accident that could not have been avoided. I found that pretty strange, seeing as how the FAA tends to stray away from saying such a thing to preserve the safety of commercial aviation. I assume it’s due to the public scrutiny, that a shitty answer is better than no answer.

Given that, while I was found innocent of any wrong doing despite having only my word to go on, the FAA had expressly prohibited me from ever flying commercial aircraft again.

I was crushed.

Flying was the only thing I really had going for me. Without it I’m nothing. I got to keep my private license, but it’s not the same. I don’t have the money to rent a hangar or maintain my own aircraft, doubly so without a job, and no offense to the general aviation folks out there, but a Piper Cub doesn’t rile me up the way a 737 does. Even a 717, no slander, but those babies were designed for short hauls. I’d be content if that were all I was permitted to do, I just missed the whining of turbofans.

Guess I’ll supplement it with my own whining then.

The man in the blue polo hasn’t been around since the DMV. Maybe it really was just a coincidence. Or maybe I’m still being watched.

I searched my emails for anything relating to this “Gemini” memory I mentioned. Nothing. Web searches were useless, Gemini is such a vague yet specific name that I’d have no way to confirm what I was even looking for.

Truth be told, it feels like this is all getting swept under a rug. Usually I’d expect the government to be in on it, maybe we got shot down by a fighter or something like that Korean Air flight back in the 80s, but I’d argue they’re just as in the dark as I am. Cautions for sure, lots of red tape, but none of it felt like they wanted to hide what happened. More so that they wanted to keep tight lipped to stop rumors and misinformation.

Begs the question then, if not the G-Men, then who? Or what? And why?

But I keep asking those questions, sending it out into a universe that I pray to for answers. Oh how naive I must be to believe this universe cares enough to answer. It gave me a second chance at life, maybe I should be grateful for that.

Maybe I should leave all of this behind and just try to make some sense of whats left of my life.

Maybe I should try to just forget about all of this and move on.

Maybe I am dead, well not ME me but you know, the Captain of Flight 411. Maybe he died on that flight and “I” survived. Maybe I’m a different person, not a pilot, maybe something else. Something different.

Hah, I feel like an imposter wearing someone else’s skin.

Maybe I am.

Part One-The Body

The sea was flat the morning we found the body. Not calm, it was eerily vapid. No gulls to be seen, singing their familiar songs. There was no sea life in the tide pools off the Kuril‑Kamchatka Coastline. A stillness that would make even the strongest mind wander with its faint whispers in the air.

I was in the dive bay checking the hull seals on the Calyptra when I heard the voice of Dr. Kovac over the intercom. “Chavez, we got something on the hydrophones, might be the drone,” she said, voice tight with slight uncertainty. Her voice would seem tense when she was unsure or saw something unusual. Without committing to actually saying the word weird. This was her way of keeping composure, but we all picked up on it. I’d taken many dives into the trench, enough for me to catch the subtle nuances in my team's words, be it calm or frantic. I stepped out onto the catwalk overlooking the water. The Orpheus research facility sat on the cliff like a steel barnacle. Its rails rusting and accumulating random passengers, unable to let go. Below, the dive bay opened directly into the trench. Deep and dark, swallowing the morning light that shone above.

 
Kovac met me at the console, arms folded and eyes fixated on the screen. A pulsating waveform emitted from it, in perfect metronomic rhythm. “That’s not the drone,” I said. “No,” she agreed. “But the drone’s last transmission came from at the same depth. Six thousand meters. Near the shelf.” She didn't say the rest, but I put it together, and this sound was not there yesterday. Leaning in from behind us was Charles Brooks, our captain. “Could be a vent, or maybe a landslide.” “No, it’s much too rhythmic, steady; it’s too regular,” Kovac said. I put the headphones that were hung on the side of the console onto my ears and listened. KATHOOM. KATHOOM. This wasn’t something mechanical, not seismic; it was something different. Captain Brooks sighed deeply and said, “Chavez, Tanaka, suit up. You’re taking the Calyptra down to recover whatever’s left of the drone.” Miku Tanaka was one of my oldest friends; I’d known her since college. She was my partner in crime. I wouldn’t do any dives without her. I loved her, and despite having the fearlessness to venture into the maw of the deep, I never dared to tell her how I felt. I nodded, peering over to Miku for approval. She confirmed with a smile. We helped each other put our suits on and made our way to the docking bay. 

“Vessel comms check, Kovac to Calyptra, do you copy?” Kovac said in our ears. “Calyptra copies Kovac, loud and clear.” “Station comms check, all stations report in.” Crowley, our seismologist, came over the intercom, “Copy, all systems operational. Testing emergency signal ping. Calyptra, send ping when ready.” “Sending emergency signal in 3…2…1… Sent.” Miku replied. “Confirmed, signal received,” Crowley said. “Testing system hull pressure,” I said. “All systems check out ok,”  Brooks replied. Once all checks were completed, the Calyptra slowly and softly released, and we began the descent into the water. As the vessel began to move, the lights cut on and the steady cones of light surveyed our seascape. It didn't take long until the light of the sun faded behind us; only a faint crackle from the static of the radio remained. 

At around three thousand meters, the water turned pitch black. A vast void of nothingness, nothing to be seen on either side of us, or below. At four thousand, the temperature dropped dramatically. Luckily, our suits had internal warming modules for this purpose alone. At five thousand, the trench wall came into view. The jagged face of the cliff dropped below, into nothing, only what the imagination could muster. “Approaching the last known coordinates,” I said. “Copy that,” Kovac replied. “Chavez, we’re getting a bit of interference on your feed, recalibrating.” Static was singing from the radio; the lights on the sub flickered. Then I saw it. The drone lay on the edge of the basalt cliffside, twisted and mangled, like crumpled foil. But that’s not what made my breath hitch. There was a figure that lay beside it. “Miku, are you seeing that?” I said. “Yeah, try to get a bit closer if you can. What is that?” As the craft crept forward, we were able to get a full glimpse of it. Sat beside the remains of the drone was a human body, upright, hands folded in its lap. “Control,” I whispered. “We’ve got…We’ve got a body.” The sound of static extended our shock. “Uh..Come again, repeat that?” Brooks said over the line.It’s a person, no suit, no gear.” Miku said. I crept even closer; the lights swept over the body’s smooth and white skin, unblemished, eyes open, staring straight ahead. There were no signs of decay. No bloating, no marks from the occasional passerby searching for a snack. It was there, just waiting…For something. “Chavez,” Kovac said shakingly, “that’s impossible.” 

I took the manipulator arm and reached out towards the body, hesitating before touching the body’s shoulder. The moment the arm touched its body, an oscillating pulsation was sent from the tips of the robotic arm back into the hull. It made my own pulse stutter in the moment.  A faint and familiar feeling washed over both Miku and I. “Was that…?” she whispered. “Not sure, let’s get him up to the surface before we draw any conclusions.” “Bringing the body back up, standby,” my voice slightly choked as I announced our next move. I fastened the cupped robotic arm around the figure's waist and closed its metal fist. As we pulled it inward, no change to its upright position. As if gravity and pressure did not affect its anatomy. 

The ascent upward seemed to take five times as long as the descent. My imagination began to flip through various scenarios and situations that might have led to our friends placement and location. Miku seemed to be in the same headspace, her eyes moving frantically. Obviously thinking similar thoughts. “Hey, you ok?” I asked in concern. Any time she got into this mode, it was hard to get her back to reality; that much has never changed. “Yeah, just thinking,” she said quietly. “Of? Come on, what’s going on in that head?” “I’m just confused how, for one, a body got that deep in the first place, and two, how was the body in near perfect condition, unmolested by even the undercurrents?” “Yeah, same here, and I for one can't think of any reason. I’m sure Doc Kovac has an explanation of some kind,” I assured her. “You’re probably right. Just weird, right?” “Absolutely.” 

As we approached the surface, there was a throbbing sensation emanating from my chest in perfect sync with the pulsing heard on the hydrophones. Like it was some sort of heartbeat-like drum from miles below. When the Calyptra broke the surface, the sky above was dark and foreboding. Clouds rolled in from the east, blanketing what was left of the sun's warmth, swallowing the horizon. Brooks and Crowley dragged the body from the arms' grip onto the platform, awe-struck. Kovac stared at the lifeless body, as if afraid to blink. “No signs of decomp,” she murmured, “no signs of rigor mortis. No lividity. Skin temp is…Normal?” Brooks glanced at me and said, “You ok, Chavez?” “Yeah, fine,” I lied. Because I could still feel it, the constant beating. 

The wind was picking up on the bay platform; rain began to fall on the metal lining of the overhead like fingers tapping in nervous tempo. Kovac sprang up from her knees. “The storm’s approaching fast; we need to get inside before it cuts us off.” Miku and I took responsibility for our find, and each picked an arm and began to pull the body into the lab. We heaved the man onto a nearby gurney. Before we proceeded with his inspection, we scrubbed up and put on protective gear. He had been down there for who knows how long with no interaction. We needed to be somewhat careful with handling him. “Based on his clothing, I'd say he was from the early nineteen hundreds,” Kovac deduced. “How is that possible? There is absolutely no way a body could survive that kind of depth unaffected by the elements or pressure. The parasites and scavengers would have picked his body clean in a few months, much less a damn century.” Miku chimed in rebuttal. “I get where you’re coming from, Tanaka, but the evidence is clear. Just look at the clothing. They’re tweed and wool knitted suspenders for Christ’s sake,” the doctor exclaimed. “Who have you known that has worn something like this besides your great-great-great-grandfather?” Miku lowered her head, pondering what Kovac had mentioned, agreeing mentally. “The clothing is the least of our concerns anyway; take a look here at its skin. It’s milky white, with a slight sheen, and a layer of thin mucous-like substance attached to it. Possibly why it was preserved so well.”

The doctor poked and examined further, checking other areas for discoveries unknown. She took her pen, pried open one eye, and dropped the lid as soon as she opened it. “My god!” She shouted. “What?! What was it?” I asked in concern. “Take a look for yourself.” I took the pen and slowly opened the eye once more; beneath the eyelid was another, covering the entirety of its ocular globe. “What..The…Fuck…” mouthing silently. I wasn’t someone who would be put easily in unease, but this was a rare occurrence it seemed. After regaining her composure. Kovac continued her examination, writing and noting what she observed on her notepad. “What are we looking at here, doc?” Brooks asked, with a certain stoicism. “This is a first for me, Brooks. I’ve never seen anything like it in all my 63 years.” I scanned the body slowly and closely, trying to catch something unnoticed and unobserved by our studious leader. Some things seemed out of the ordinary. Like how his skin felt. It was so smooth, unnaturally so. No hair on either arm or legs. His pupils were incredibly large, as if permanently dilated. Washerboard markings on either side of his neck. The goopy, slime-like coating stuck to my gloves; I shook it off my hands in disgust. In the middle of my visual probing, a stray arm came into view. It was Crowley; he had a metal probe and was prodding the arms and legs like a child. “Crowley, what the fuck are you doing?” I yelled, “Put the prod down, you idiot; we’re all professionals here, act like one.” Crowley was undeniably green; he was fresh out of school. The only reason he got on this team was due to his grandfather being a large investor in our work. We needed all the help we could get, since our grants were running scarce. 

It was closing in on an hour since we hauled our shiny friend to safety, and we could hear Mother Nature’s anger on the other side of the facility.  Waves began to roll over the shore, as if trying to reclaim what we took. Thunder cracked on the horizon in retaliation. Within the hour, the storm advanced in full swing. Once at its peak, we lost all radio communication to all nearby towers. Satellite uplinks went silent as the waves crashed like fists onto the lab’s carapace. We were stranded with no line of communication to the outside world, normal for weather this fierce.

We gathered in the dining hall while Brooks went to spring life into the emergency generator. “God damned storm,” he muttered from down the hall. “Hmmm, now where is that blasted kerosene?” I could hear him rummaging in the maintenance room, pushing aside old boxes and bottles of half-used cleaners. “Aha! Got ya, ya little bastard,” he said, triumphant. When he stood with the can gripped tightly in his hand, something dripped from his nose. Slow and thick. He wiped it away without a second thought, smearing the viscous fluid across the back of his hand. A powerful tremor shook beneath him, KATHOOM. KATHOOM. He braced himself against the wall. “Storm must be right on top of us,” he said, voice shaking ever so slightly. “Gonna catch a cold in this weather, just my damned luck.” By the time he made it back to us, he looked almost defeated, as if the walk back took a lot out of him. He dropped into his chair with a soft grunt, rubbing his nose again. “You good there, Brooks?” I asked. “Never did like storms on the ocean,” he said. “Feels wrong, like two forces of nature fightin’, competin’ for dominance.” I glanced at Miku clattering away on her laptop, most likely logging the day’s events. Kovac was staring out the darkened window, listening, waiting for something she couldn’t name. Crowley was sitting, legs crossed, fixated on his phone. Everyone was doing something different; none of us were really present. We were cold, tired, and locked inside with something we didn’t understand. Whatever we managed to bring from the deep…It hadn’t come alone.

I work in fast food. No one in this line of work wants to admit to it, even though it’s not particularly damning. Lots of people get paid to sit on their ass and click a mouse a few times a day. Lots of people get paid to shuffle papers around. Well, I get paid to make sure the fries get thrown away every seven minutes and that nothing we serve falls into the “temperature danger zone.”

I’ve learned a lot about temperature and danger zones in the last 24 hours.

Call me Jules. Not my real name, but close enough. I want to say I’m a writer, but my self-published romantasies and smut books haven't been exactly a gold mine. Overall, being a fast-food manager isn’t the worst gig. You meet every type of person at this kind of job. High school kids, college students, parents trying to give their kids the best possible life, stoners, retirees, twenty-somethings just trying to keep their heads above water, hoping this job is only the stage change between the great set pieces of their lives. People like me.

I won’t tell you the name of the company I work for. You’d know it if I even identified the meat we sell. We’re a tiny franchise location, directly across from a suburb, and nothing but forest behind us for miles. Nothing glamorous.

This all happened last night. I’d come in at 11 AM and it was verging on 11 PM. I had two call-outs; we were getting slaughtered, at least a hundred transactions over projection; one of the trainees put a foil-wrapped sandwich in the microwave; and I was ready for a beer.

Mike and I were the last people left in the store. I had just finished my nightly paperwork, and Mike, an angel, had shut down the fry station and the kitchen.

He was currently wiping the tile walls. “Go home, Mike,” I said. “Day shift can deal with that.”

Mike turned and smiled. He was a good guy, worked harder than anyone else. Almost triple my age and in a just world would be retired by now. He wore thick glasses, had tired, sunken-in eyes, and a face dappled with liver spots. But even though he was clearly deep into his sixties, his arms were corded with muscle, and he towered over me. I’m not an athletic guy. Mike could probably snap me in half. He wiped the sweat from his brow. “But there’s still boxes in the freezer I gotta break down,” he protested.

“Fuck the boxes. I got them. Your wife is going to kill you for getting home so late.”

“She’d kill me if I was home. But if you’re trying to shoo me away…” He waggled his hands.

“I am. Go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You’re opening, right? It’ll be like you never left. Might as well sleep here.”

I snorted. I’d get five hours of sleep tonight, if I was lucky. But I’d get off at three tomorrow, so I didn’t mind. “Don’t remind me. Get out of here, Mike!”

“Good night to you too!” He winked.

I can remember this conversation so clearly. I replay it in my head, over and over, like someone tumbling a stone in their hands. Did I miss a double meaning to his words? Was there a shadow moving behind Mike in the kitchen I didn’t see? Something in his eyes?

I can’t remember.

He clocked out and I adjusted the labor hours accordingly. I pretended not to see him slip into the walk-in (probably to grab a bag of shredded cheese or something, but hey, you help me, I help you), and I looked over the day's sales summary. I sent the summary to my district manager and then I remembered the boxes in the freezer.

I should’ve left it for the morning. Hell, I’d be there in the morning. I could do it myself bright and early at seven. But I don’t like leaving things undone. Just a couple of boxes. I could get it over with on my way out. I had to lock the freezer anyway.

Mike’s car was still in the parking lot, but I didn’t care. He was always there when I left. At first, it confused me, but then one of the kids let it slip that Mike liked to stay late when I was here, just to make sure I got home okay. I found that sweet.

We had a detached freezer, a little white building directly across from the back door, which meant the fryer person had to go out in the rain or snow to get their fries. A combo lock hung off the latch because we kept at least a grand's worth of chicken patties and fries out there. The digital thermometer on the outside read six degrees. I didn’t look at it very hard. I was ready to go home.

Would you believe it if I told you there were only three boxes in there to break down? Three? I’d brought my box cutter for the job. Checked my watch. 11:20. My chances of getting any serious sleep were certainly dwindling. I tucked the boxes under my arm and twisted the doorknob.

Nothing. No give.

My heart fluttered, but I tamped it down. I tried twisting the doorknob the other way. Maybe I was so tired I had gotten my directions crossed or something. Nothing. I pressed my shoulder up against the door. Threw myself against it until my shoulder ached. The cold was starting to make my face hurt. The door didn’t budge. I might as well have been slamming myself against a vault wall.

“Mike?” I called. This is a somewhat common prank, especially among the teens. Ask someone to go in the freezer and then lean against the door. Wait for them to start screaming and then fling the door open. As a teen, I’d been both the perpetrator and the victim of this prank many times. I forced a laugh. I was too old for this, and losing time to sleep. If I was lucky, I’d be asleep by twelve and up at six. I’d feel like shit tomorrow. “You got me! Mike?”

Nothing. I fumbled for my phone, but phones didn't work in the freezer. I knew this because any time I put the truck away, my audiobook would cut off as soon as I stepped past the door. Like usual, ‘no signal’ crawled along the top of the screen.

Now it was time to start screaming. And banging. I was wearing a black polo and khakis, and my clothes were starting to cling to my skin. The sweat. I was gross after scrambling for the past hour to close everything. My cheeks were already hardening with cooling sweat and grease.

My eyes darted around the freezer. Mist from the fans made everything foggy. Metal shelves lined the walls, piled with ten- to twenty-pound boxes of fries, tenders, nuggets, and slabs of meat. I screamed my throat raw, and then whatever was left of my vocal cords allowed me to sputter into a laugh. I was so panicked I’d forgotten the safety release, a big crank beside the door.

I pulled it, hard, my teeth starting to chatter.

I’m boiling. I’m in a soup. It’s so hot my skin’s starting to melt off.

Would you believe me if I told you that didn’t help?

The door moved—and then stopped. It didn’t open, didn’t let in even a breath of outside air. I kicked the door so hard in my flimsy no-slip shoes that the pain shot through my foot and up to my shin. This wasn’t possible. I’d pulled the safety release, but—

The lock. Someone had locked the freezer.

My eyes slashed to my watch. 11:24. It was so cold that even time had become sluggish. I pounded on the door with both fists now. I called Mike’s name so many times the word lost meaning. I even threw in a few ‘Michael’s for good measure. He wasn’t going to save me, and I’d lost my voice.

My mind pinwheeled. I lived alone. No one would notice I wasn’t home. No one was due in to work until seven. My teeth chattered, and I was shaking. I wasn’t going to make it to seven. I’m no scientist, but with my body reacting like this, I knew I had maybe a couple of hours at most. And ‘at most’ was being generous.

I checked my pockets. My phone. My house keys with a Hello Kitty charm. My box cutter.

I flicked the blade out and hacked at the hinges. My fingers were stiff and painful around the blade. The sun. You’re standing on the sun. You’re rotating on a spit. You’re incinerating. Maybe a few metal chips fluttered down. There was no way I was going to saw through those hinges. There had to be a safety shut-off button, but where?

I looked behind me at the tubing on the wall. There was one, wrapped in black foam, zip-tied in about a thousand places. Despite visiting this freezer almost every day, I didn’t know much about it. If I hacked through the tubing, would that shut off the fans and save my life? Or would it flood the place with coolant and noxious fumes? I wasn’t sure and I couldn’t risk it.

I had to try to find the emergency shutoff. It had to be hidden behind one of the shelves, maybe on purpose, so no one would bump into it. I climbed the shelves on the back wall and hurled a half-empty box of onion rings to the ground. It landed with a heavy thud. I had to stop between boxes to rub my hands together, wasting more time. When the shelf was finally empty, I snatched the shelf’s metal bars and hissed as the cold surface bit into my palms. It took three heaves to pull the shelf even a few inches off the wall. Nothing but smooth plastic behind it.

I would’ve screamed, but I was tired of screaming. I probably couldn’t have screamed if I tried. I moved to the next shelf, but the boxes on top were pushed so far back I had to climb, my hands now bright pink and trembling. I stretched as far as I could to reach the farthest box, but no dice. I lifted my knee to build momentum, and I must’ve kicked something because the shelf teetered forward.

I had less than a second to drop down and roll to the side. Boxes smashed and dented on the ground, frozen chicken everywhere, and the smell of blood. First the smell, then the pain. The shelf had come down hard on my leg and split the meat of my calf. Mist rose from the pooling blood, not quite steam, but the byproduct of nearly a hundred-degree liquid hitting a frozen surface. Before I could stop myself, I rubbed the warm blood all over my hands and face, anything for a little extra warmth.

I don’t know when I started crying. I was going to die here. Buried under fucking chicken tenders. I was squinting against the pain, the blood and tears rapidly cooling to my skin and caking on my lashes. I was going to die coated in my own blood, sweat, and tears at my shitty job. How poetic.

I lifted my head, pushed the crust out of my eyes, and focused on where the shelf once stood. There was a little green button. Maybe it wouldn’t save me, but it might buy me just a little more time.

I pushed myself up, but the shelf's weight still pinned my leg. The bleeding had staunched a little, but the pain throbbed through me. I was going to die, but I had to try. I thought of all my half-finished stories and then thought of my cat. I inched forward on my elbows, found the wall with my fingertips, and just barely reached the button.

The whirring of the fans stilled. I breathed out a sigh, but the cold leeched in through my clothes and my blood was still pooling on the ground. My hands had turned sticky, and the image of me being stuck to the ground with my own blood shot through my brain. Even with the shut-off, I might be in worse shape than I was even a few minutes ago. I checked my watch. 12:02. I couldn’t afford to wait.

In the fall, one of the shelf’s legs had bent, the one that had pinned my calf. I thought of Percy again, my cat, his sleepy green eyes blinking at me as I tapped away on my laptop. I thought about all the books I hadn’t read. I know, I know, silly stuff as motivation to live. I even thought of pan pizza with extra pepperoni and a cold can of Miller Lite, though cold wasn’t exactly enticing right now. I lifted the shelf with a soundless scream and tore myself free.

‘Hurt’ is an understatement. ‘Exhaustion’ is just a word. For a moment, my head was empty, no words, no thoughts at all. Nothing to describe the cold and the pain and the crushing, horrible hope that propelled me forward. Hope is at the bottom of Pandora’s box, after all.

I sawed at the dent in the shelf’s leg with my box cutter. It felt like hours; it must’ve been minutes. When that snapped, I dragged my injured, trembling body toward the door. From the corner of my eye, I could see the trail of blood I’d left. The bright red was already fading to a scary rust color. Probably something to do with the temperature.

I squeezed my makeshift weapon so tightly that its ragged edge sliced into my palms. Under normal circumstances, I’d be worried about tetanus, especially because with every swing of the shelf’s leg, the edge buried itself deeper and deeper into my skin. But I was so filled with adrenaline, and so numb from the cold, that it didn’t even cross my mind.

I must’ve swung at least a hundred times. I lost myself in the motion, my life reduced to the freezing cold and the arc of the swing. The first hinge clattered to the ground, and I didn’t even pause to gather myself. If I stopped, I knew I would lose the momentum. I’d slump against the door and that would be it. I bashed in the second hinge. The third was too high. I pushed with all my strength and caught a crack of darkness. The latch held the middle of the door firmly in place, but the bottom….

I laid on my stomach, the cold leeching in through my shirt from the floor. I beat and beat and beat at the kickplate on the bottom of the door. This was my last chance. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs, and I could barely open my eyes against the blood that crusted on my lashes. The door lurched forward another inch, sending a breeze of fall air that felt like tropical heat. But it wouldn’t be enough. I squirmed my hand through the opening and fumbled with the lock.

I was dizzy and could barely remember the numbers. The code was simple. 333. When Vera opened it, she only flicked each number left once: 222. But Dave was more thorough. Dave scrambled the lock. No matter how hard I searched my memory, I couldn’t remember the numbers on the lock when I entered the freezer, or even who opened today. I prayed, though I don't know what I prayed to, pushed each number one digit to the right, and pulled.

***

You’ll have to forgive the line break. I’m a writer, and it felt appropriate.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I must’ve passed out from exhaustion the moment I crawled out of the freezer. Dave found me curled up outside the busted freezer door, clutching a length of metal like a teddy bear.

I’ve gotten a lot of stitches today, four in my palm and six in my leg. Percy is sniffing at them experimentally as I type this, and I have to hunt-and-peck the keys with my left hand, so it’s been slow going.

When I woke up this morning, Dave was standing over me. He’s the type that talks with his hands, so he might as well have been signing at me. “Do you want extra hours? Mike’s in the hospital. We found him on the walk-in floor. Don’t know how he’s alive; his brains are everywhere. We might have to open late today.”

Dave paused and scratched his stubble, his shadow lengthening over my body. “You alright, Jules? You look like shit. You want me to get you a coffee? We got a lot of work to get done today!"

Do you guys know about anything strange or even paranormal down in the Ozarks? I’ve had to dive in head first recently, and something just doesn’t sit right with me. 

I never really knew grandpa John. He was only around for the first couple years of my life, before I was old enough to really form any memories of him. Mom says he never really seemed that interested with me or anyone for that matter. I guess he would come over with Grandma sometimes to play with me a little bit, likely out of obligation, but after an hour or two he always ended up just staring blankly at the empty space in front of him, shaking, like the temperature inside our house was below freezing. 

One day, by the time I was four and Grandma passed, Grandpa apparently had some sort of meltdown, leading him to go prepper crazy. I heard he moved out to a cabin deep in the midwestern jungle that is the Ozarks, and no one heard from him ever again. He never even shared his address with anyone in the family. He was worried about “Losing himself,” his words. We tried to find him for months after he moved away, but no one could, and eventually everyone kind of just acted like he died with Grandma. 

I’m in my thirties now, and I’ve long since accepted that Grandpa is just an urban legend, joining the ranks of Bigfoot. Knowing all this, I’m sure you can understand my surprise when an almost completely unmarked, dingy letter showed up in my mailbox one morning, way before the mailman had even come for the day. The front of the thick yellowed envelope was covered with four giant, nearly illegible words, 

“To Eric From Grandpa.”

Taking the envelope inside, I sat on the couch and studied it for a long time, just turning it over in my hands. I wanted to open it right away, but frankly, I was afraid. I didn’t even think Grandpa was alive anymore, much less than capable of hand delivering me a letter.  No one had seen or heard from him in years. How did this even get to my house?  It was all just a little too intriguing, though, and the sense of curiosity eventually won me over. I carefully tore open the envelope, removing the chaotic stack of papers within.

Searching through the pages was extremely tedious. In short, none of the papers were folded the exact same way, so I went through one at a time, straightening each page’s creases and crumples out one by one. I would check the contents of each page as I sorted, but every page I got to was just blank, and there were hundreds of them. Blank page after blank page.

After a couple hours of nothing but reverse origami, I was a hair away from giving up and tossing the envelope in the trash when one page, about two thirds deep in the giant stack, finally caught my eye. A small red circle was drawn onto one of the top corners of the page, like someone was testing a pen to make sure it still had ink. I pulled at the page, separating it from the rest of the stack, and worked at straightening out the particularly intricate folds.

It quickly became apparent that the page was covered in countless, illegible scribbles. Each one was in a different orientation on the page, too. Some sentences were written normally, but most were pure chaos. Words were upside down, sideways in the margin, some of them even started on one side of the paper before wrapping to the back. Both sides of the page were absolutely covered. I don’t think I could fit another word on that page no matter how hard I tried to squeeze it in. At least all of the words were written in the same red ink and with the same chicken scratch handwriting, providing a tiny bit of consistency to work with.   

I tried deciphering the scribbles myself at first, using multiple different search engines and methods, but everything online came up blank or errored out. It didn’t matter where I looked or how much money I paid to different services, nothing ever worked. I began to think I was holding a page full of some made up language Grandpa made, which didn’t sound too out of character based on the stories I’ve heard.

I must have spent hours trying to understand that piece of paper, and I never got any closer to that goal. In a sort of last ditch effort I sent a message describing the thick envelope full of blank pages to my mom. I included a picture of the scribbled-on page and asked if she’s ever seen Grandpa write anything like this. It was late in the night, so I likely wouldn’t hear back until the next morning. I remember passing out on the couch, covered in a blanket of those blank sheets of paper, Unsolved Mysteries reruns playing on the TV.

I was woken up early the following morning by my phone vibrating against the back of my head, where I must have left it in all the mess. Still groggy and a little sleep deprived, I sat up, rubbed my eyes open, and grabbed the phone. There was a reply from my mom. She was surprised and, understandably, a little skeptical at the letter. No one had seen or heard from Grandpa in years, but Mom was willing to tell me what she knew. Unfortunately, she had no idea what my letter said, but she sent a few pictures of various letters Grandpa had written back before I was born, hopeful that I could use them to solve the puzzle. She ended the call reminding me how crazy Grandpa was and to be careful with this project.

I took turns staring at each letter. It may have been a bit of a reach at first, but eventually I saw the resemblance. The early letters weren’t neat by any means, but they were just barely legible. Looking at the older letters side by side with this new letter I was sent created a little timeline demonstrating the devolution of Grandpa's handwriting. Finally, I had something to work with. Slowly, I mapped character to character, rewriting the ramblings on the letter I was sent, hoping to make the ravings a little more clear.

It took most of one of my precious weekend days and what felt like three trees worth of paper, but I was eventually able to recreate the letter in my own handwriting. I couldn’t clean it up too much, so there were still sentences in different orientations and directions all over the page, but I began to read what I could, starting at the top of the page.

“34: turn east on elm road”

“22: take the interstate south”

“4: wait for the cover of night, when the road changes”

It was obvious at this point that I was looking through a set of disjointed directions. I combed through the steps, looking for step one. I found it scribbled in the top left corner of the back of the page:

“1: Start at Eric’s house in Chicago.”

I didn’t believe in the paranormal then, and I’m still not totally convinced, but I still get a shiver down my spine reading that first step. I didn’t understand and I’m still not sure I do to this day. How did Grandpa, assuming this was from him, know my address, and, more importantly, why send this to me?

After letting step one sit with me for a little bit, I roused myself from the stupor I was stuck in, brought back to reality by a neighbor’s dog’s barking. I spent the next chunk of the day searching through my recreation of the letter, picking off each step in the directions and reorganizing them until they were all in order. Sure enough, the directions sent me southeast, deep into the Ozarks, deep into the miles and miles of federally-owned land.

I still don’t know why I went, maybe I wanted to know more about the Grandpa I never really got to meet, maybe I wanted to check and see if he was still alive, or maybe I just wanted to see the crazy doomsday setup he must have deep into the dense forest, but I felt the letter pulling me, compelling me to follow those directions.

Work was very accommodating, giving me plenty of time off on short notice after I pulled my Grandpa died card. I didn’t know for sure it was true, but it was the sanest explanation I could give. I told them the funeral was in St. Louis and I would be gone for a couple days. 

I spent the next few hours packing up my SUV.  I checked my maps app, and it didn’t show any roads for the last little stretch of the directions. I’m an avid camper, though, even backpacking occasionally on trips to the mountains, so I had everything I needed to rough it a few nights in the Ozarks, if required, until I got to the end of the directions.

I waited for sunset, like the letter suggested, and I was on the road, written directions in hand. The first few steps in the directions felt pretty pointless. I was driving in circles through different neighborhoods, constantly retracing roads I had already driven, trying to lose some sort of unseen pursuer. Finally, after one last turn, I was on i35 South, heading towards the Ozarks, Towards Grandpa. 

It was pretty late by the time I reached the interstate. At that point I had been piecing this list together all day, and my brain was worn down, but I couldn’t give up now. I’d spent too much time and money working on this stupid cryptic list of directions. I had to drive with the window rolled down and the AC on max just to stay awake, and it was a blessing when the occasional car passed me, headlights shocking awareness back to the front of my brain.

It would be lying if I said I wasn’t starting to doubt this whole excursion I took essentially on a whim, but, like I said, something just didn’t sit right with me. No one had heard from Grandpa in years and years; we all thought he died somewhere in that giant forest. Moreover, he would be about ninety years old today, which seems a little farfetched for an old man living in total isolation in the woods. Still, though, somehow he, or someone close to him, found my address and hand delivered this list of directions to me, only me. It just didn’t make any sense, and I hated nonsense with a passion. Back then I was under the strict belief that everything had a purpose or ‘sense’ behind it. Why would anything even exist if it didn’t make sense in some capacity? 

Hell, even if those directions didn’t really lead anywhere it would be a fun little camping trip; I hadn’t been camping in months, and I definitely needed to decompress. The Ozarks were beautiful that time of year, too. Fall was in full swing and the different trees made a warm-colored rainbow canopy to drive under. 

The towns got smaller the further south I got, each one further from a city, increasingly isolating. The yards of the run-down houses in each town were full of scrap, a trademark of rural America; you just never know when you might need something, and a city with anything other than a dollar store was over two hours away at this point. 

I remember constantly checking the directions in between the rural sightseeing. I had never been out that way, and there was an east-bound turn coming up pretty soon. I didn’t want to miss it in the dark and add even more time to the hours-long trip.

30: Turn Left at the dinosaur

Hopeful this would eventually make sense, I kept driving south, weaving through small town after town. The forest grew closer, denser on either side of the road, creating a little tunnel to drive through. Only a tiniest bit of moonlight broke through the leaves and made it down to the road.

I was in another town, Camdenton, I think, when green lights emerged on the horizon. Getting closer, I eventually saw a small billboard for Sinclair come into view, its trademarked sauropod adorning the sign. This was the first gas station I came across just sitting along the highway, and sure enough, there was a road just past the billboard, barely visible in the darkness, to turn onto.

31: Take the twenty-fifth curve and follow it off the road. There will be another small dirt road to turn onto

The new road was much more rugged, and I never saw another car. Thankfully there was still gravel to drive on as I winded up and down and all around the forest, trying my hardest to count each curve in the near pitch black darkness of the night. I didn’t have any trouble staying awake on that wooden rollercoaster of a road, constantly turning, jostling me in my seat, and forcing me to scan the sides of the road for overly ambitious deer.

I was deep in the forest now. There weren’t any more houses or towns to pass by. It didn’t take long at all to reach twenty-five curves, all that road did was curve like a snake in full sprint (or slither?). I didn’t see anything when I first approached the curve, so I pulled the car over and got out to have a closer look at the dense forest surrounding the road. It took a while, but buried in the brush, I could just barely see two ruts in the dirt, defining the road I needed to take. The road was almost totally overgrown, though, and there was no way I was getting the car any further. 

I looked down at the directions. There were only a few steps left, and it seemed possible to make the remainder of the journey on foot. I had the supplies to pitch a tent for the night too if needed.

It only took a few minutes to prepare to hoof it the rest of the way. I pulled the SUV farther off the gravel road and covered it with a few branches I found lying around, doing a pretty good job at blending it with the rest of the forest. I wasn’t anywhere illegal necessarily, but I didn’t want to take any chances, and something didn’t feel right all the way in the back of my head.  Shaking away the concern, I grabbed my filled hiking backpack, 12-gauge, and a few extra lights. 

Wide awake and on just a bit of an edge at that point, I was soon pushing through the brush, starting down the dirt road, directions in hand.

32: Turn west at the bowl. Take care to keep your bearings

The directions seemed to make less and less sense the closer I was getting to the end. I couldn’t drive down the dirt road like they said, and how the hell am I going to find whatever “the bowl” is in the pitch black darkness surrounding engulfing everything just a foot or two away from my light? It was all getting just a little too nonsensical, and I was getting increasingly frustrated. 

The deeper I got into the forest, the more I was starting to regret my decision to follow these directions to begin with. Maybe Grandpa was just crazy and this was one of his delusions. I never even knew the guy, and I just took the mess of his letter at face value. I just couldn’t see him living all the way out here by himself. I was so busy gazing up at the canopy, lost in thought, that I didn’t notice the massive hole in the middle of the road, and one step too far was all it took to send me tumbling down.

I landed pack-side first, cushioning me from most of the fall, but I had a few scrapes and cuts from hitting the jagged rocks jutting out from the sides of the hole. My flashlight was under me, and I was stuck on my back like a turtle, so I didn’t see anything when I heard a series of branch snapping sounds coming from the woods behind me. Unclipping the pack so I could stand, I quickly grabbed a back-up flashlight from my pocket and pointed it in the direction of the snapping, trying to see as far over the hole as I could, but there was nothing there. I was a lot more rational then, able to easily shake away the red flags. There are all kinds of animals out in the Ozarks, and I was carrying a shotgun, so I wasn’t too concerned and set about picking my stuff up and slowly having a look around. 

I was in the middle of some kind of crater, and there’s no way it was man-made; it looked too chaotic. It’s like God punched a hole straight into the drywall crust of the earth here a long, long time ago. If you’ve ever seen any pictures of meteorite impacts it looked kind of like that but a little deeper and not nearly as wide as others. The forest had reclaimed most of the impact site, too, and undergrowth covered a lot of the rocks. I’d never really seen anything quite like it in person. That had to have been The Bowl.  

Getting out wasn’t easy, but I found a little natural staircase made from the exposed rock around the sides of The Bowl. It was narrow and uneven, but it was a staircase. I had to push my pack up first, but I was able to scramble out of the hole and stand back up where I was walking before I crashed down. Using a compass to find my bearings, I continued west, looking at the next step in the directions.

33: Take a sharp turn south at the black fork. Eventually you will find an abandoned road.

Hoping the fork would be as obvious as the Bowl I kept moving, keeping one light pointed at the ground to avoid another tumble. There were branches snapping and leaves rustling on either side of the forest around me as I walked, but I was never able to catch anything with my light. They were probably just deer, or turkey, but I picked up the pace regardless, not quite wanting to set up camp like I originally planned. 

After only five minutes of walking, the road just sort of stopped, and at the end of it was a giant, burnt oak tree. The wood was flaky and kind of petrified at the same time. I always heard stories about trees being struck by lightning and the potential omens surrounding them, but I’d never seen one in person, much less a giant like the one in front of me. It was no small bolt that killed this one, and I was kind of awestruck. 

I was slowly moving my flashlight up the tree when I just barely caught two small yellow circles among the branches as they quickly faded from sight. I circled the tree a couple times but didn’t see anything. Still, I was rationalizing, maybe out of necessity at this point. Sure, deer don’t climb trees, and I couldn’t imagine a bird would be caught dead nesting in such an exposed oak, but maybe there was an owl perched up there, looking around for dinner. I’m pretty sure there are owls in The Ozarks.

After confirming that the tree was empty, I shrugged it off, and I took a turn south and headed for the abandoned road mentioned in the directions. It was only another few minutes of walking, but the forest grew exponentially more sinister as I continued. Dead trees started appearing in the surrounding forest, and giant hollowed out trunks often covered the way forward. Once I was over an especially big trunk, the trees opened up a little bit, and I could barely feel reclaimed gravel underneath my feet.

This road was in roughly the same condition as the last one, overgrown as hell, but it gave me something to follow. 

34: Turn on Elm Road

I was pretty exhausted at this point, but I was so close to the end, not to mention inexplicably unnerved, so I just kept pushing. I had to see what was on Elm Road. As I walked down the “abandoned road” the condition quickly improved. Nature retreated back to either side of the road, and I was even walking on some pavement after a while. Notably, the creepy forest sounds I was hearing before had abruptly stopped, but I wasn’t complaining.

After a few miles of following the now fully developed road, containing sidewalks, streetlights, and everything you’d expect, I came to a four-way stop sign, two street signs intersecting above the red octagon. The one parallel to the road told me I was on Pine Street. If I took a right turn I would finally be on Elm Road.

Notably, there were no houses along what was quickly becoming a full network of neat neighborhood roads. It was a little strange to me, even then, but there are tons of abandoned towns across the country, especially in the Midwest. Maybe the money for this one just dried up before houses could be erected.

Elm Road kept going for a handful of blocks, and I passed a few more intersections on my walk down the street before the road ended in a giant cul-de-sac. Just barely from where I was standing, I could see a small cabin hiding behind a couple trees at the far end of the asphalt circle making up the end of Elm Road.

As I got closer, I could tell the cabin was in rough shape. The wood was rotting. Broken window frames looked hastily boarded up, and there was a big hole in the roof of the cabin. I don’t know why, but I walked up to what remained of the front door and knocked like someone was going to come answer me. The door bounced against the frame with my knocks and slowly swung open in a recoiling response. It was a lot darker in there, and I switched to a propane powered gas lantern, one of the brightest I could find.

The cabin was clearly abandoned, but it almost seems like that move happened recently. There was some old food sitting on a counter, and the floors were remarkably clean considering the state of everything. A mug of dark liquid sat on an end table next to a sagging couch. I even found an old sleeping bag on top of a bed frame in the one bedroom the cabin had. Walking into the dining room next, I quickly saw what Grandpa, or whoever sent me this letter, wanted me to see. Somehow, a dim overhead light was shining down on a box full of books. There were a few classics in there, Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, etc., but half of the box was full of handwritten books. A clean, leatherbound book sat on top of the pile, embroidered with gold lettering, “JJ,” and small silver lettering underneath the initials “John’s Journal”     

I instinctively grabbed the journal and opened to the first page right as I heard a crash, followed by growling. The sound was coming from right outside the cabin, and it sounded big. My 12-gauge suddenly felt ineffective, and my head spun around as I looked for a place to hide. There was a small door in the kitchen with a set of old, rotting stairs leading down into a basement/pantry. I heard the front door of the cabin crash off its hinges right as I closed the basement door behind me. Scrambling down the half-broken staircase, I dropped my pack and looked for a place to hide. In the back corner of the room there was an old wardrobe, surrounded by boxes of random junk like scrap metal, seasonal decoration, and old antlers. 

I remember clambering over the boxes when I heard the growl again, right outside the basement door. Heart pounding, I ripped open the door to that wardrobe, and there was a public bathroom on the other side. Confused, but still panicked, I rushed through the door, slamming it closed behind me. I turned back to try and barricade the door with a hand towel rod I found on the ground nearby, but there was no door to barricade, just a bathroom wall. I felt all around the wall for a hidden seam, but there was nothing there, it was just a bathroom wall.

I was completely at a loss at this point, and my pack, including the gun, was back in that cabin. The only thing I had was the leather journal in my hand, the gold lettering reflecting off the fluorescent lights above. Rattled and unsure of myself, I cautiously crept towards the bathroom exit. Barely peeking out, I saw a… gas station? Green trim ran along the ceiling, and a dinosaur mural was on the far wall. I have no idea how, but I was back at the Sinclair.

A little more comfortable, I strode out into the middle of the station and took a look around. Everything looked like a normal gas station to me. The register was unoccupied, but there was a sign reading “Out for Supplies, be back soon, leave money on the counter.” 

After a long overdue moment to catch my breath, I went out the front door of the station and saw a billboard, the same billboard I turned by on the way here. That meant my car was hopefully only a couple miles down the windy but in-service road. The sun was just starting to rise, too, which gave me a lot more confidence. I steeled myself for one last walk and set off down the gravel road. The forest was still claustrophobic and unnerving, but the sound of birds and crickets waking up helped put my brain at ease.

I lost myself in the confusion of everything while I was walking down that road. Just replaying the events in my head didn’t make sense. I walked down a barely visible dirt road, bushwhacked past two ancient landmarks, and ended up in a suburban neighborhood with no main road leading in or houses along the streets. Taking the disbelief further, there was a recently abandoned, rotting cabin standing alone, and it had Grandpa’s stuff. 

I’ll never forget the growl, either. There are black bears around the Ozarks, but that thing sounded a lot bigger and faster than a bear or even a mountain lion. I had to do a quick scan around me just thinking about it, but I never saw anything.

I’m not even sure how I ended up at the gas station. The door to the wardrobe I went to hide in was just that, a wardrobe, but somehow it led me into the gas station with no way to retrace the recent steps back to the cabin. 

Soft rustling in the leaves off to my right pulled me back to the present, but it was only a deer, running deeper into the trees, as scared of me as I was of seeing that giant bear.

Ahead of me, a pile of branches, much less inconspicuous in the light, covered my car just like I left it. I was quiet the entire drive home, really just at a loss thinking about it all. I mean a magic wardrobe is literally the kind of stuff you see in fantasy movies. It didn’t make sense, I couldn’t rationalize the senseless, and that is what really terrifies me. 

The drive home was uneventful and I never felt better crashing onto my couch than I did that morning, sleeping until the late afternoon. I woke up with a sense of unease. Something was off, but I couldn’t place my finger on it.

I’m going to take a look through Grandpa’s things I ended up with and see if that yields any answers to ease the panic, but I wanted to ask here too. Has had anything similar or even just generally weird happen to them down in the Ozarks?       

I worked overnight reception at one of the less popular hotels in REDACTED,Alaska. I’ve been at this job for a year now, and until yesterday I thought everything I experienced was just your typical run of the mill small town weirdo hotel stuff. Most of the population is older folks, people who had lived here for years. Same with the ones who visited. I’d always had an affinity for older people, I was raised by my grandparents.

At first the incidents didn’t freak me out that much. One night about a month after I started, it was about 2:00am; and I had 6 more hours left to go. It has been an uneventful shift so far, a couple phone calls asking for more ice, people needing to replace a room key. Typical. The lobby had been empty for hours at this point.

I remember the phone ringing, it showed room number 44. After I finished giving the typical intro speech, I was met with the sound of heavy breathing. When they finally did answer they spoke in a dry hushed voice.

“Don’t let him in.” And then the line disconnected.

Before I had a chance to press redial I heard a loud banging coming from the fire exit door. With every second it got more intense, until I heard a voice call out “let me in please, it’s cold out here.”

We were a cheap hotel, we didn’t employ a security guard, let alone have any security cameras, and I was not about to go out there and check who it was. As far as I knew every guest was accounted for.

The voice eventually petered out just like the banging had. It wasn’t until the next day I realized, we didn’t have a room 44.

You may be thinking why I would stay on after that. To tell you the truth I didn’t have much of an option. Jobs here are extremely limited, and unless I wanted to commute 2-3 hours to the next big city, I was out of luck.

There were a couple other unsettling things that happened after that, phone calls from guests that weren’t actually staying here, wet footprints in the lobby when I hadn’t seen anybody walk by, and every now and then I would experience something I could only describe as time loss.

At first I thought that I had dozed off. But then it kept happening when I was obviously awake. I’d go to the bathroom and come back and a whole hour had passed, and I had no memory of that hour.

When I would talk to my boss about these things he chalked it up to sleep deprivation, or kids playing pranks. Which I had accepted, until yesterday.

The shift started off somewhat normal, working at a hotel things are rarely ever truly “normal.”I got in at 10:00pm, caught up with the dayshift receptionist, Amy, and downed whichever cheap energy drink I had picked up at the gas station on my way here.

“Just so you know, there is a woman that keeps coming down asking for ice. I’ve given her like 4 buckets already. So don’t be surprised if she asks you for more.”

“What room is she in?”

“I have no idea, she won’t tell me. I tried telling her that there is an ice machine on every floor, but she insists on coming down each time”.

Like I said, the guests here can be a little weird. But nothing to immediately set off any alarm bells.

Amy had been long gone, and I had totally forgot about ice women, when I heard someone clear their throat. I had been sitting at reception that whole time, doing some admin stuff on the computer.

I didn’t hear her footsteps come down the hall, or even the elevator open. It’s as if she just appeared.

“Is-is Amy still here?”

I told her Amy had left and asked if I could help her with anything. She seemed off put for a minute, before a look that I could only describe as a mixture of fear and desperation came over her.

“I’d like a bucket of ice please.”

Looking back I should’ve just given her the bucket of ice, it was way above my pay grade to investigate. But I couldn’t help myself, I kept pushing.

“Ma’am, we have already given you four buckets of ice, and there is an ice machine on every floor. Is there a reason you need all this ice? What are you using it for?”

She looked like she was about to argue, when she visibly withered in front of me, and said in a voice that had long given up,

“He needs it. He prefers the cold”.

People can be weird. I couldn’t imagine what they were doing with that ice. So I asked her what room she was staying it. She opened her mouth to respond and then froze. She was staring straight ahead, looking at me, but it really felt like she was looking through me.

For a second I thought she had had a stroke, I walked over to put my hand on her shoulder. It was icy to the touch and leather hard. She jolted at my touch.

“Ma’am, what room are you staying in? I think you may need medical help.”

“Room 44.”

My mouth went dry and I couldn’t swallow as I was processing this information. When I finally spoke again it took a tremendous effort.

“There is no room 44.”

She merely looked at me, and said “He would like to see you now.”

She gestured to the bucket we used for ice sitting in the corner, and for me to follow. Complying felt easier than arguing at this point, I suddenly felt exhausted. Everything took effort.

The bucket of ice banged against my shins as I followed her into the elevator. She pressed the button for the 4th floor and we started moving slowly. I was looking at my feet, I could feel her eyes burning into me. I didn’t want to meet them.

The ding of the doors opening brought me back to reality, and we stepped into the hallway. I immediately sensed something wasn’t right. The fluorescent lights were flickering, some completely disconnected. As we started walking down the hallway the floor was damp, sticky, and smelled like mildew.

Everything seemed yellowed, whereas before it was a bright clean white. As we slowly passed by each room I started taking account. The hallway didn’t seem any longer than usual.

37,38,39,40.

And then we somehow turned a corner, when it should’ve stopped, and there in front of us was room 44. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. As long as I had worked here there had been 4 floors, with 10 rooms on each floor.

The door itself looked exactly like all the other doors on the floor. Dark green, brass handle, pretty standard.

As we approached the door I could feel the temperature drop. It felt like I was standing outside. The carpet here was drenched.

“Come in, take the ice to the bathroom, and whatever you do, don’t let him touch you.”

I don’t know why, but I walked into the room. It’s almost liked I was pulled in there. The mildew smell increased tenfold. All the blankets were stuffed into a corner and the bed has been pushed directly under the open window. The door to the bathroom was ajar, and water was seeping out. My footsteps crunched under me as I walked up to the bathroom. Frost.

“Oh hello, I’ve been expecting you. Thank you for bringing me ice.”

An ancient looking old man covered in a towel lay in the bathtub, covered almost to his chin in water that had visible chunks of ice in it.

“Before you add any more ice would you be so kind as to hand me another towel, I’d like to use it as a pillow for my neck.”

His request seemed so simple and innocent that my body reacted before my brain could. As soon as I leaned over the tub to hand him a towel his arm shot out and grabbed my ankle yanking me to the floor. An icy pain shot through my leg as I fell.

I tried to pull away but his grip was too strong and I kept slipping on the slick floor. The old man seemed to grow and started to loom over me, his skin spitting in half like a cocoon as he stood up. He kept pulling me closer, trying to drag me into the tub with him. I frantically reached around for anything I could use to defend myself.

My hands met with a hair dryer that had fallen in the scuffle. The hotel provides one in each bathroom. I remembered what the woman told me in the lobby, he likes it cold.

With a last ditch effort I plug it in and turned it on full blast directing it towards what was an old man, but now was a black mass stretched tightly over a skeletal figure. Where his eyes were, now stood hollow voids. No mouth visible, yet it was making a sound like it was laughing.

As soon as the heat touched its “skin.” It recoiled letting go just long enough for me to jump up and start running.

I slammed the bathroom door behind me and sprinted across the room. Screeches following me, the lady didn’t even try to stop me, her eyes just followed me with a pitying look.

The elevator doors closed just in time for me to hear footsteps coming after me. I didn’t breathe until I was on the road driving home, and even then I kept checking my rearview mirror to make sure nothing was following me. As soon as I got home I took the hottest bath I could, texted my boss “I quit”, and passed out in bed.

It’s the next day now, I’m writing this wrapped under a bazillion blankets, drinking tea at the hottest temperature I can stand. I just can’t seem to get warm. Maybe I’m getting sick? Any advice on how to get as warm as possible without hurting yourself? Thanks in advance.

I originally posted this in r/AskReddit, in response to our creepiest experiences. I have tried to refine this, but this actually happened/still happens to me.

I must say, since I have been a children I developed the ability to analyse the dream I am in, and actively change the outcome of it.

What that means is, if the dream starts to go off the rails, I can realise it is a dream. This was very handy when I was younger as I used to have very vivid nightmares except for a very specific dream in which I am murdered... (perhaps a story for another time).

One way for me to change the dream is to just "fly away" (quite literally levitating and flying off somewhere else). From that point onwards, I tend to enjoy the dream, even if it started as a nightmare, because I know I can control the dream. Like a wizard controlling the environment for their own protection.

... that was until a nightmare I had about two years ago.

The dream was very mundane. I was at home, either cleaning or cooking, it doesn't matter, I was doing something when I heard people rushing pass our apartment's front door. I wanted to know what the kerfuffle outside was; walked to the front door, opened it, just to find the hallway outside my apartment with haze and my neighbours running out of the building, and I could smell the smoke. There was a fire upstairs and the fire was expanding down through the stairs.

First thought through was, my wife and kids are in the bedroom, reading books as they usually do. I wanted to get them out of the building. I turned to run to the bedroom when someone, from outside the apartment, grabbed my arm firmly, then they pulled it, trying to drag me out of the unit.

I turned once more to see who is pulling me out... and I don't know how to properly describe it, but the person standing outside was less a person and more like a tear in the fabric of the space. Each inch of it was swallowed by heavy, midnight-black cloth that seemed to drink the ambient light rather than reflect it. Where a face should have been, it was a sort of void with two pale grey orbs for eyes, but no mouth to read, nothing else to lock on, it was devoid of warmth. It was like a fully 3D existence of a shadow, there, reaching out to my arm.

It spooked me, I pulled hard, but its grip tightened harder, painfully. Then a voice that was more like a whisper projected into my mind said - "Let them go... let them die"

I tried pushing the person away demanding to let me go, but the pain in my arm shoot up contorting my face.

Then I thought about the fire, I tried to remember what I was doing before cooking, about the person in front of me... this can't be real... sounded in my mind, and I focused on my feet, to levitate above the ground, to regain control over what was happening, but the shadow squeezed my arm and said - "You can't escape me."

It pulled my arm so hard, I stumbled outside to the hallway and fell on the ground. The fire now had consumed the entire floor above my apartment. A loud "clunk" banged inside the lift chute, it opened the elevator door as the elevator plummeted down engulfed in flames.

I headbutted the shadow... stupidly, because I don't fight all the time and my forehead hurts now, but it was enough for me to stubble back and crawl back away from the shadow.

It stood up quickly, and pounced on me. I pushed it away with my legs, but it gripped my legs and we rolled to the side. It clanged to my whole body, pushing me down, pressing me would be the better description. I was struggling to breathe in.

I wanted to scream, but it felt like I had not air inside to even do that...

... and I woke up... panting... rolling to the side of the bed...

My wife was sitting right next to me, reading a book. I began to tell her the awful dream I just had, about the fire, about how I can't remember falling asleep right next to her and that the dream felt so vivid... and she was completely unresponsive, sitting there starting at the pages of the open book in front of her. It was like she was awake but she couldn't hear me, or I wasn't talking.

I waved my hand in front of her, but nothing. My heart pounded, and sweat ran down my back. I felt like I was about to freak out, decided to take a deep breath and a glass of water, before coming back to the bedroom.

I stood up, and looked at the bedroom door... it was opened. We almost never leave it open because my wife says the room gets colder when the door is open, but maybe one of the kids came in the bedroom and got out. I stepped outside, into the passage between the bedrooms and the living room, and from there I could see the silhouette I was fighting in my nightmare sitting on my couch.

I froze, but the shadow stood up and charged at me, clinging onto me. Again we stumbled forward into the kitchen and onto the flood. We struggled, pushing and pulling in the narrow space between the fridge and the dishwasher. It grabbed my face and pushed me against the edge of the dishwasher, banging my head again it...

... And I woke up again... panting heavily... running the back on my head where it had met the edge of the dishwasher... and right next to me, my wife was reading a book.

I said - "Honey?..." - but she didn't answer. I felt a chill running down my back. Looked at the open bedroom door, and my heart is about to come out of my mouth.

I hopped off the bed, stepped slowly towards the door frame, and there it was... the shadow seated on my couch, staring at the door. It stood up and charged at me, again.

This scene was a cycle that repeated three or four times. I woke up, talk to my wife without getting and answer, stepped outside, struggle with the shadow, got injured with something in the kitchen and the pain would be the trigger to waking up again to the new cycle. Each cycle was slightly different to the one before, my wife would be reading a different book, I would hit my head, or crushed my arm, or bent my knee...

... And then I woke up, except this time it was dark outside. I pulled my phone out, it was 4am... and I was panting, drenched in sweat. My wife is sleeping right next to me, and I don't know if I should wake her up... would she even wake up?

I looked at the bedroom door, and it is opened.

I was exhausted... I sat at the edge of the bed, staring at the open door and the little bit of the wall of the passage connecting the bedrooms to the living room. I sat there listening if I could hear anything outside, if there was a ruffle of the leather couch, or steps... anything...

I sat there waiting for the arsehole to show up, running towards me, to tackle me and start the fight again. I am not sure any more what is a dream and what isn't.

Then my kids came in, asking for a glass of water. I gave them a hug, hoping they wouldn't disappear in a puff of air. Maybe, I am not dreaming any more.

​

I work night shifts at a small hotel in Manchester, England. Most nights are boring. I check guests in, answer the telephone, clean the reception desk, and watch the security cameras until morning.

I've worked there for almost two years, and I know the building well enough to notice when something changes.

That's why I know what I saw on the CCTV wasn't normal.

It started on a Wednesday night in October. I was alone at reception, drinking instant coffee from a chipped white mug. The time was 9:55 p.m., and rain was hitting the glass entrance doors so hard that I could barely see the empty car park.

I was checking the cameras when I noticed a man standing outside Room 214.

He was wearing a black coat and dark trousers. His head was lowered, and his hands hung loosely beside him.

I assumed he was a guest who had forgotten his room number.

I switched to the camera covering the second-floor corridor. The man was still there.

I watched for a minute.

He didn't move.

Then I checked the hotel's booking system. Room 214 had been empty for three days because of a broken shower. Nobody should have been anywhere near it.

I called the maintenance manager, who told me the room was locked and advised me to check the corridor in person.

I didn't want to leave reception unattended, so I used the intercom to speak to the night cleaner, Daniel, who was working on the second floor.

"Can you check the corridor outside Room 214?" I asked.

"Why?"

"There's someone standing there."

Daniel told me he was nowhere near that room. He said the entire second floor was empty.

I returned to the CCTV.

The man was gone.

I felt embarrassed for making such a fuss. I blamed the poor lighting and went back to my coffee.

At 10:23 p.m., the reception telephone rang.

"Good evening, Ashford Hotel," I answered.

A man whispered, "Could you tell me what time checkout is?"

"Eleven in the morning, sir."

"Thank you."

He hung up.

I checked the telephone display. The call had come from Room 214.

I stared at the screen for several seconds.

Then I checked the booking system again, hoping I'd made a mistake.

The room was still empty.

I called the room from reception. It rang six times before someone answered.

"Hello?" I said.

At first, there was only breathing.

Then the same man whispered, "You shouldn't be looking at me."

The call ended.

I immediately contacted Daniel and told him what had happened. This time, he didn't laugh. He came downstairs and stood beside me while I checked the cameras.

We reviewed the recording from 9:55 p.m.

The corridor was empty.

We checked the recording from 10:23 p.m.

The corridor was still empty.

But something else caught my attention.

On the camera covering the reception desk, a man was standing directly behind my chair.

He was wearing a black coat and dark trousers.

His head was lowered.

His hands hung loosely beside him.

I turned around so quickly that my chair struck the desk.

Nobody was there.

Daniel stepped away from the monitor and told me to call the police if I saw the man again. He then went to the staff room, saying he needed a moment.

I remained at reception with every camera displayed on the monitors.

At 10:41 p.m., the lift doors opened on the second floor.

Nobody stepped out.

The doors closed.

A few seconds later, the lift appeared on the ground-floor camera.

Its doors opened directly in front of reception.

The man stepped out.

I stopped breathing.

He looked exactly like the figure I'd seen earlier. His coat was wet, although the entrance doors hadn't opened since midnight.

He stood beside the reception desk, facing the wall.

I could see him clearly on the monitor, but when I looked up from the screen, the lobby was empty.

I grabbed my phone and called Daniel.

He answered immediately.

"He's downstairs," I whispered.

Daniel said nothing.

"Daniel?"

Then he asked me a question that made my stomach turn cold.

"Which camera are you watching?"

"The reception camera."

He took a long breath.

"Listen to me carefully. Don't turn around."

I froze.

"Why?"

"Because I'm watching the reception camera from upstairs."

His voice began to shake.

"You're sitting at the desk. There's someone standing behind you. He's leaning over your shoulder."

I stared at the monitor.

The man on the screen slowly raised his head.

For the first time, I saw his face.

It was my face.

Same eyes. Same nose. Same small scar beneath my chin.

But the man on the screen looked much older, as though he hadn't slept in years.

He leaned closer to the camera.

His lips moved.

I couldn't hear him, but I understood the words.

"Let me out."

Every monitor went black.

The reception telephone rang.

I didn't answer it.

It rang again.

Then my mobile phone lit up with an incoming call from Daniel.

I answered without taking my eyes off the dark screens.

He was crying.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I thought it was a glitch in the footage. I've seen him on the cameras before. I never said anything."

"What are you talking about?"

He didn't answer immediately.

Then he said, "I'm looking at an old recording from the archive."

I felt the blood drain from my face.

"Which recording?"

"One from before you started working here."

He sent me a video.

My hands shook as I opened it.

The footage showed the reception desk at 10:41 p.m. The date was eleven months before my first shift at the hotel.

A man sat in my chair, drinking coffee from a chipped white mug.

He looked exactly like me.

He checked the monitors, glanced toward the lift, and then suddenly turned to face the camera.

His expression was terrified.

He mouthed something before the footage ended.

I watched it several times until I finally understood what he had said.

"Don't let him take your place."

The lights came back on.

Every camera showed an empty corridor.

The man had disappeared.

At 7:00 a.m., I left the hotel and never returned. The manager accepted my resignation without asking a single question.

I still have the video Daniel sent me.

I wish I could say I deleted it, but I haven't.

Because last night, almost a year after I quit, I received an email from the hotel's security system.

It contained one new CCTV recording.

The timestamp was 9:55 p.m. that Wednesday.

The reception desk was empty.

The lift doors opened.

A man stepped out wearing a black coat and dark trousers.

He walked to the desk, sat in my old chair, and looked directly into the camera.

It was me.

Except this time, I was smiling.

The desk phone rang. The display read ROOM 214.

The man who looked like me picked it up.

"Checkout is at eleven in the morning, sir," he said, still smiling at the camera.

That's when I understood the whisper. He hadn't been asking about checkout. He'd been asking when he could leave.

And underneath the video, the system had automatically generated a caption.

STAFF MEMBER DETECTED: CURRENT EMPLOYEE.

I haven't worked there for eleven months.

I thought quitting meant I'd refused. I think it only meant the chair was empty.

So who, exactly, is the hotel letting into the building every night?

Halloween is the one night of the year you get to dress up as anything you want, and no one has to know who's under the mask or make-up; it's perfect. 

I'm the most introverted person there's ever been. If you do meet me, you won't. Unless you're a family member crossing my path in a grocery store which obviously doesn't count. I'll give you a made-up name, job, and find a way to get out of the conversation. I'll make sure that I don't see you again or, at the very least, make sure you don't see the other fictionalized version. In my life, Halloween is every day. No one ever has to know who I am. Whether or not I stay in character, it doesn't matter.

It started with me getting ready in my bedroom, trying on all the new costumes I'd gotten. I already had hundreds and hundreds more from childhood that my mom made me keep; she felt the opposite about Halloween. Kids have obsessions and mine was being someone else.

Even being 20 years from then, it still consumes my waking hours, constantly finding who else I can be. Having my own studio apartment and disposable income working from home, I like to say:

“I’m a kid at heart, stuck in a 30 year old body.”

The TV blared loudly behind me with music and when whatever song was playing faded out, a deep voiced man declared:

"I'm tired of looking the way I do," he said. His voice and look carried a sadness similar to Eeyore.

"Well do we have a fix for you!" A supposed doctor said at a violent volume, causing a ringing in my ears for a split second after. I shook it off and glared intently at the screen by the time I registered the word "fix."

"Introducing Mixobarboxetine! The state-of-the-art anti-anxiety and sleep medication! Side effects may include-"

A phone number popped up on screen, and I immediately scrambled for my phone to start dialing, not paying attention to the rest of the ad. Impatiently, I waited through every ring while pacing to the tone. Voicemail. I never call twice, but I was desperate. Pacing faster now, I was interrupted before the first ring to meet the same fate.

"Become whoever you desire, TODAY!"

While I set the phone down disappointedly, the doorbell rang. I was upset, but the night had to go on. I shut the TV off and headed to the kitchen for the trick or treaters bucket of candy, but I noticed two things. The ad and number I had just called had burned itself into the TV display and a generic bottle of pills sitting on my breakfast nook.

I had more than a few concerns about what had just happened. The doorbell rang out twice more, beckoning me to hurry up and decide between my lame costume, or whatever wonderland was held in the orange container. The contrast in color to the rest of the room made it impossible to ignore, engraving its image into my mind’s eye. I quietly walked to the door and peered through the peephole, I instantly knew what I had to do.

I opened the door to three little boys with, what I assumed was their single father. It was three of the four ninja turtles with their Master Splinter. 

“Well hello kids! You came to the right place, your leader is here!”

Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael all stared blankly at me. Master Splinter looked at me with a tinge of anger and fear. There was a long silence before the dad nudged them and simultaneously all said, “Trick or treat” in the most monotone and disinterested voice possible for such blissful ignorance. I dropped 3 pieces into each of the boys’ pillow cases and they slowly backed up and continued around the complex.

“What just happened?” I said out loud to myself. Kids are full of glee this night of the year and they all acted like they just saw disabled Freddy Krueger in their dreams. Did the pills work?

I looked in the mirror beside my bed and saw that what I became wasn’t what I wanted at all. Bubbling and oozing green flesh covered my body, a turtle that had been thrown into Chernobyl to survive on its own. I was about a whole foot taller and I hadn’t even noticed. I pulled my phone back out to look at the picture of Leonardo I had googled and really tried my hardest to look exactly like him, but nothing. Still just a mess of a viscous and clay-like substance, pooling on the floor. Pondering my options, I decided to turn back to myself and looked at just about the only picture I had of myself from a few years back, back when Mom cared more. Then it hit me.

Looking back into the mirror once more, I noticed I was back to being just as young in the photo. I was perfect, no more oozing or bubbling, I was just me. The younger, happier me. I was no longer who I was moments before the abominable tortoise. Even beyond the physical form I had taken on, I was just as happy and carefree as I was when the picture was taken. Thankfully I didn't have any others from recent times. 

These next couple hours, I decided to do some testing on the limits of this drug while also trying to scare the visitors I had every so often. I tried looking like Jack Sparrow, Jason Voorhees, Hannibal Lecter, Jack Torrance, and so many others to no avail. The same exact thing would happen as Leonardo. So, I started thinking outside the box more: Jack Nickelson in character in The Shining, Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, and so on. They all worked exactly as I thought. The fictional version of them doesn’t exist, but the actors, their stage direction, and characters while filming do. I even gained their acting skills.

The kids and parents alike were impressed with my “costumes” after that realization. I knew most of them thought I was a former Hollywood make-up artist, it made me feel human again. The effects started to wear off and much quicker than I had imagined. I felt myself grabbing the bottle more and more often, it seemed endless. With an intense rush of adrenaline and dopamine flooding my mind, I knew the drug didn’t completely change me, but even going ten minutes without it after wearing off, I felt the heavy withdrawals. That was until I decided to take things further. Everytime I took it, it felt like I was putting on another sweater in an ice storm that only worsened. 

I peered through the door to see what was clearly 3 adult men under bedsheets with holes for the eyes. So, I decided to give them a good scare for the lack of effort. Ed Gein was the best thing I could think of. The second I switched, I knew it was a mistake.

“H-hey folks, want some-” my voice trailed off, I saw the most beautiful blonde woman I had ever seen, costume or not. The timidness of my demeanor and sudden speechlessness made them question the validity of my disguise. The validity was there; I had unexplainable urges. The real me and real Ed fought internally with a sort of cohesion like Newton’s cradle, back and forth and back and…

“What are you guys up to tonight?”

“Uhh… What dude? It’s Halloween, what do you think we're doing? Trying to get some free shit tonight.”

“Ah, right right,” Ed said sheepishly. “Well I can give you free stuff, try one of these.” Ed walked back in my apartment and quickly grabbed the orange bottle. I was a passenger in my own body. I had no control and I had an ache in my stomach telling me I just had to wait it out like a bad magic mushroom experience.

“What is it?” The woman questioned

Before Ed could answer, I felt our hearts thud faster against our ribcage. “Lets just call it ‘the nice drug.’”

“Hey man, we’re not taking it if we don’t know what it is! That shit could be laced and I’m sure as hell not taking it.”

“What if I said it’ll be the best time of your life?”

I felt a hard slap as soon as Ed finished the sentence and peeked out, watching them all walking away down the complex balcony. Ed had disappointment and rage flowing through him. I felt the rusty gears turning, contemplating what to do next. He wanted that girl from before, but not with those men around her that would beat him senseless. He saw a child with their parents below in the common area and an idea popped in his mind. He grabbed a knife from the kitchen.

I fought and fought to gain back control before he grabbed the mother dressed as a basic vampire. I couldn’t do anything, I just had to watch. He slit her throat and drug her body next to a dumpster and started fileting her flesh, stuffing the bits of meat into his pocket. He quickly rushed over and he had transformed into the woman he just killed. His thoughts started to clash with mine, how did he do that?

“Hey honey, sorry I had to use the ladies room,” she said in a sweet, motherly tone. Ed became aroused, and mixed my horrified anguish, it felt like the world was a spinning top at ten thousand RPM.

“That’s alright, I think it’s time to head home anyways,” the father said. 

“Aww, no way! My candy bag isn’t even half full!” The small girl stomped her feet while beginning to cry.

“You know we have church tomorrow morning. We have to be up early for that.” The mother said reassuringly, “After, we’ll get you all the candy you want to fill it up to the very tippy top!”

The girl's face looked up excitedly to reveal sea blue eyes that stood out even in darkness.

“Oh! I forgot something in the bathroom, I’ll catch up!” The father turned and gave a wide smile back, still thinking this was the love of his life.

She went up to my apartment in a hypnotic state to see that the main room floor was covered in Tic-Tac looking white pills. She picked two up, walked out, left the door open behind her, and hurried back to her family.

“Let's go have some candy!”

Getting back to their home, I felt the effects start to wear off. The sludge that was forming her face and body started to blister and form to gravity. I felt every acceleration of the car speed up the process of decay. Walking drunkenly through the front door, with the husband and kid just behind, they knew something was wrong. Following her, keeping a safe distance, they watched as a naked me appeared through the grey slime that was once this child’s mother and I fell to my knees. The withdrawals mixed with the freedom of having control over my own thoughts again, created that horrible mix of hangover and peace.

“Mommy? What are you?”

I turned around and watched the fear grow in the father’s eyes, pick up the child, and turn to run. I felt around the sludge and saw that the pill had multiplied to four. I instantly popped one in my mouth and swallowed through the dry desert that was my throat, weakly sliding down into an empty pit. The surge of adrenaline had me chase after them and I had to force one down each of their throats.

The anger, jealousy, and lust had my thoughts lost on who the real me was. I ran faster than I ever had, even through the melting, and now painful popping of my oobleck flesh. My melting scalp drooped over my eyes blocking my sight, but I still caught up to the father carrying his daughter, causing him to fall hard onto his knees and catch himself before putting his full weight on her. They tried to get up to run but my now slug-like form got their legs, trapping them like tar. 

“Man… what a night. You’re fast!” I said to them, surprised by my real and enthusiastic voice from the past, like it had been ages since I last heard it. I felt the pills slide out of me and a hand-like appendage stretched out to force open their mouths. Through their crying, my mind was at peace again.

I didn’t care about the remorse I would feel. The pills were an infinite fight towards the dragon I’d never be able to catch. At least, I’d never have to me again.

Going back into the grand house that was once this family’s, I grabbed the candy bucket beside the door. I tossed the remaining candy out and put a single pill inside. I watched as they multiplied their matter with amazement.

I heard the child and father start laughing and peered outside. They were as quickly hooked onto the pills as I was and started morphing into each other, back and forth, seemingly forgetting had just happened moments before. When they also both seemingly forgot who’d they really were, mirroring each other, became the same person, they morphed together as one. What I imagine as a black black hole, formed between them, sucking them in, and creating a pile of grey dust as if their bodies were cremated together. This made me smile, of course only on the inside, my real smile was more of a post-fat loss journey of loose skin, denying the muscle of creating any shape.

When the bucket was full, I walked back out into the street and yelled, “Free candy!” I watched as the swarm of men, women, and children alike, scrambled for the infinite mysterious pill. Now, the world would forever be in a purgatory of infinite cycles of being someone else until they found their identical twin. 

My addiction was, in reality, my own best friend. I live in a beautiful house that isn’t mine, without a name, without a job, and without responsibilities. It’s forever Halloween, and I don’t regret a single thing because of one simple reason:

It was never me who did it.

I was five when the man in the wolfman mask scared the shit out of me. No, he didn’t eat me. No, he didn’t kill me. He just gave me one good Halloween scare. 

I didn’t see the man in the wolfman mask out in the woods or even at a local haunt. Rather, my encounter happened at six o’clock while the sun was still out. My father took me to Brunswick, Georgia’s Halloween festival at Mary Ross Park which was located downtown. I was dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and the festival represented a precursor to the trick or treating that awaited me when the sun went down. Mary Ross Park was located right by the river so the autumn breeze was stronger than usual when daddy and I made our way through the crowds gathered out there. I had already helped myself to the candy being offered at all of the booths set up by the dock. The beaming sun illuminated the many families, the many costumes, the Liberty ship replica, and even the city’s rusty pot of Brunswick stew monument. My father’s laughter was constant but it was the Halloween playlist I heard from the gazebo speakers that I still recall so vividly all these years later. We heard Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller,’ ‘Mr. Sandman’ by The Chordettes, and yes, even Warren Zevon’s ‘Werewolves of London’.

My pumpkin bucket was half-full of candy by the time dad guided me up to the pavilion. We passed a table full of carved jack o’lanterns as I heard the carefree laughter of kids in Power Rangers costumes running toward the playground. Yet I felt a chill in my bones the closer we got to the pavilion’s white stairs. If I went up the stairs, I’d reach yet another booth, one that offered plush animals in addition to Reese’s cups. The only problem was the dark coffin placed on the pavement by the staircase.

Not even my dad’s warm chuckles could comfort me. Nor could ‘Blue Moon’ by The Marcels which was beginning to sound so far away given my rising dread. My eyes stayed glued to that coffin from sheer primal fear as my dad led us up to the pavilion stairs. Despite my dad’s encouragement, I found myself trembling in my ruby red slippers and found myself sweating despite the autumn breeze. My gaze locked in on the coffin which somehow looked even longer the second we approached the pavilion’s very first wooden step-

That was when the coffin lid burst open. I didn’t have time to hear the lid slam to the side much less have time to react before the tall, muscular man emerged from the darkness within. He was wearing wrinkled jeans and a flannel shirt but it was the mask that most disturbed me. The wolfman mask had long stringy gray hair. It had a latex snout and fangs. The slits in the mask were too small for me to focus on anything but its painted red eyes. The man in the wolfman mask moved swiftly and jumped up out of the coffin with the dramatic gusto of a jester leaping out behind a curtain. His deep voice let out a growl that made me jump. The way he lunged forward with the rabid force of an animal and the way he held out his bare hands toward me with the brutal passion of a deranged man made me scream and drop my bucket.

I fell on the hard pavement while the man in the wolfman mask towered over me. Those red eyes, the long snout, the fangs, the entirety of the mask stared down upon me…

I try not to think about that Halloween anymore. I try to tell myself I wasn’t traumatized by the man in the wolfman mask. I later on graduated from college, I have a job. I also have my son Ivan. But every Halloween, I think back on that man in the coffin.

I suppose this Halloween is no different. Ivan is now five years old. He’s the same age I was then when I first went to the festival at Mary Ross Park… And now Ivan wants to go.

So Ivan put on his Spider-Man costume. I even gave him my very same pumpkin bucket. I also gave in to his request and wore my Wicked Witch of the West costume from last year (though I didn’t apply the green make-up today). I drove us down to Mary Ross Park. To my surprise, nothing much had changed about the festival. Then again, nothing much had changed about the park itself after three decades. Needless to say, it was still crowded and the local businesses all proudly offered candy at their booths. There were still jack o’lanterns smiling at me, I still stumbled into the occasional fake cobweb. About the only differences I recognized now were caused by time itself: I saw QR codes on small business cards rather than multi-page brochures, the Halloween playlist serenaded us from small bluetooth rather than bulky portable speakers. But none of these changes comforted me from what I suspected hadn’t changed over the course of several generations in Brunswick: deep down, I didn’t suspect but I knew the coffin was still here.

For a few blissful minutes, Ivan allowed me to escape the unease I’d been feeling all evening. Together, we went booth to booth and collected candy. His laughter and joy proved brighter than the Georgia sunshine. As we walked by the dock, I felt myself even relax with a smile-

Until I saw him. There was a tall man wearing a mask with a long snout and long gray hair. The snout stuck out from afar. I froze in fear and acting on motherly instinct, I snatched Ivan’s hand. I heard his cries of confusion but my focus stayed on the man who now stopped by the Brunswick stew monument. That was when I saw he had on a dress and not a flannel shirt. I then saw a laughing little girl wearing a red hoodie grab the hand of a man that I now realized was dressed as nothing more than The Big Bad Wolf.

“Come on, mom,” Ivan gently said to me. “Don’t be scared.”

I relaxed. After taking a deep breath, I heard ‘Mr. Sandman’ playing on the speakers. But not even the bad memories could deter me from smiling down at Ivan. “I know. Let’s get some more candy.”

We went to a few more booths. But it was at the one set up by the SoGlo Theatre that I caught another chill from the wind. My gaze drifted off toward the playground as if on instinct-

A tall man stood by the swings. So tall was he that his shadow spread out all across the empty playground. His arms were at his side and he stood completely still. I cupped a hand over my eyes to try and block out the sunlight but even still, I couldn’t tell if this man wore a flannel shirt. Much less, I couldn’t see his face even as I could make out his long white hair. And when he turned his head suddenly, it sure looked like he had an extended snout…

I screamed on the inside but I didn’t move. The same paralyzing fear I felt at five years old returned with a vengeance. ‘Mr. Sandman’ faded away behind me as did the excited chatter of the crowd all around us. I couldn’t look away. Nor did I when the man turned once more to stare straight ahead and I knew he was staring right at me-

“Mom!” Ivan cried. His was the only voice that could distract me from what may have been a confrontation with my biggest childhood fear. I looked down toward Ivan who waved his bucket at me. His eyes looked even bigger beneath the Spider-Man mask. “Let’s go to the next one!”

I felt the wind increase to the point where it nearly knocked off my black witch’s hat. The force sent me staggering back but I used the broom I held to keep myself upright while my other hand clenched tighter to Ivan’s shoulder… But I had to look. I glanced back toward the playground-

The man was gone.

Now I heard Ivan’s chuckle. I heard more laughter. Then Warren Zevon’s ‘Werewolves of London’ interrupted my silent dread. I let Ivan lead me away in much the same way my own father guided me through Mary Ross Park thirty years ago. Yet I couldn’t escape the unease. I readjusted my witch’s hat but couldn’t even feel my own footsteps. All I felt were the shivers elicited by the October breeze and the October chills I felt from the man I had just seen. As Ivan led us onward, I looked all around us: I saw superheroes, Anime characters, and even someone dressed as Jason Voorhees. But I didn’t see the wolfman anywhere.

“Come on, mom,” Ivan pleaded.

The spirit of his voice pulled me away from the anxiety momentarily. I now looked toward where he was leading us and just like that, the anxiety returned to sink its fangs deep into my flesh:

There was the pavilion. Outside of a fresh white paint job, it hadn’t changed much. The stairs led right up to a booth sponsored by The Bookery… And that was when I saw the coffin.

The long coffin was still there by the stairs. The. Same. Exact. One.

And there was Ivan charging ahead of me. I held on to his hand but he was careening toward those stairs, my little boy completely oblivious of the evil lurking in that coffin. “Ivan, wait!” I yelled, unable to hide the panic in my soft voice.

“Come on, mom!” he said back to me with a smile.

I did my best to pull Ivan back but the fear had weakened me and his enthusiasm proved to be too strong. Even when I stumbled in the grass, Ivan’s grip kept me upright. My eyes stayed on the coffin that now only grew bigger the closer we got to it. I couldn’t turn around and leave my own son behind. The music felt louder. Ivan was a little bit ahead of me and put his foot out toward that very first step. I felt my heartbeat increase to impossible levels when I realized he was now right next to the coffin.

“Ivan!” I cried. I kept my eyes on him and tried to stop the two of us-

“Roar!” snarled a deep voice.

The sound made Ivan and I come to a stop. We looked up to see a tall man standing at the top of the stairs with his bare hands raised up to intimidate us. But my fear subsided. After the initial surprise, I felt the rush replaced by a grin. A grin I was glad to share with Ivan. I figured this is what a fun scare must’ve felt like.

Because the man before us was a wolfman, alright. Only the face of his cheap mask was plastic. The tufts of hair attached to the mask were a fuzzy brown. The cartoony mask looked like it belonged to a children’s television show rather than at a Halloween haunt. Neither Ivan and I were scared: we were amused. Ivan looked toward me and I hugged him close. Though I did steal a glance back over at the coffin to make sure it was still closed.

“Were you scared, mommy?” he said.

We then heard the man’s light laughter behind the mask and over the playlist. I smirked and pulled off Ivan’s Spider-Man mask to plant a kiss on his forehead. “Not at all.”

The coffin lid popped open. Both Ivan and I looked on in shock. Hell, we looked on in fright. I saw the lid collapse to the side in slow motion and then in a most horrifying slow motion, I saw the man in the wolfman mask emerge out of the coffin’s staunch darkness. There was the flannel shirt fluttering in the breeze. There was the mask that hadn’t aged a day. The blood red eyes marked me, the rubber snout and all of that gray hair swayed from the startling speed with which the man leaped out of the coffin. This was the real werewolf. The one of my nightmares.

The man’s deep, eerie snarl erupted over the music. The unsettling sound sent chills down my spine and shattered the tense silence between me, the man, and the terrifying memories flashing through my mind.

But when the man in the wolfman mask lunged forward, I felt the maternal instincts take hold. Protective, maternal instincts that only further intensified when the man’s bare hands and his fangs went for my son.

“No!” I cried.

“Mom!” I heard Ivan yell out.

I pushed Ivan behind me and lunged at the man. The attack didn’t happen in slow motion: it was over in seconds. I swung the broom over and over again into the mask, each hit smashing into its squishy rubber. The snout and fangs sunk into the latex before popping back out again. I was on top of the man and my own strength and the ease with which I dominated the man even surprised me. My hits were constant. I managed to knock the man back into his coffin. Crying out, I hopped in there with him. The sweat I felt was no longer from fear but outright exhaustion. “Die!” I yelled before giving the man another frantic thwack. Then I tossed my weapon down.

The Halloween playlist returned: I could hear TLC's 'Creep' off in the distance. I could hear voices. Multiple voices. Breathing heavy, I looked down at the man…

But all I saw was the mask. I saw the flannel shirt and jeans. But that was it. “What!” I cried. The bad kind of adrenaline took over. I dug through the coffin, my hands ripping through the dark interior… But all I felt was the cold touch of the rubber mask and the soft fabric of the clothes. There was no body. There was no man. “No…” I said. Tears formed in my eyes. I may as well have no longer been dressed as The Wicked Witch of the West: I was now dressed as that scared little girl from thirty years ago. I certainly felt that same sense of helpless despair in this moment. “No…” I trembled out. “No. Where are you…” I leaned in closer, my pathetic attempt at a search leading to the same results: I was alone in the coffin. Well, alone with the mask and attire that had dominated my nightmares since childhood. I felt my arms fall at my side. A single teardrop slid down my cheek.

“Mom,” said a worried voice I was all too familiar with.

Moving weakly, I looked over. First, I saw Ivan’s Spider-Man mask lying on the ground and staring right back at me. Then I saw legs. Lots of legs.

“Mom,” Ivan said as he choked up.

I struggled to move. I stumbled slightly in place before I looked up to see where many of the other adults and kids now stood beside Ivan. They were still in all those superhero and Anime costumes.

All I could see were their eyes. I saw their eyes behind rubber wolfman masks. The same one that was lying there in the coffin with me. The wind accelerated to blow the stringy gray hair around each of their masks but all of these people stood completely still. I could hear their deep breaths. I even heard a deep roar. Their painted red eyes were unwavering. They were watching me.

“Are you okay, mommy?”

Sobbing, I now confronted Ivan. He stood there in the Spider-Man costume. Only my son’s beautiful face was hidden by that grotesque mask. A mask that was a little too big for him and seemed to swallow up his entire head and shoulders… Only it wasn’t big enough to hide my Ivan’s wide open eyes. Before I could utter his name, Ivan lunged forward. He raised his bare hands out toward me.

In this house, Halloween is a religion; my wife and I its benevolent gods, our two children our acolytes. Every year all the leftover craft supplies from Lauren’s teaching job are “sacrificed”, and we scatter the remains in the front yard in the form of homemade decorations and little games for trick-or-treaters. Hell, one year I turned an old wire spool on the side of the road into a “Wheel of Doom” for kids to spin for various candy-related prizes. We go hard in the pumpkin. 

Even this year, we managed to scrape something together despite moving to our new house the first of this month. I repurposed some old fishing gear and a kiddie pool full of red-dyed water; Lauren painted gills on the kids’ necks and green scales on their faces, and we were ready for our first Halloween in our new neighborhood. 

“Hey, did you see the house across the street?” I asked my wife.

“Yeah, no way that’s real paint, right?”

“I hope not,” I said, chuckling. “Probably something that’ll wash off whenever it rains.”

“What is it?” Olivia, my youngest, asked. 

Lauren and I looked at each other for a moment longer than we needed, reading each other's expressions. Olivia sensed our tension and fidgeted with her hands. We turned to her and motioned for her to step closer, to lean in. As she got within arm's reach, we both grabbed her and yelled, “It’s blood!” while tickling her. 

Not ten seconds of giggling later, Olivia's older brother barreled down the stairs to protect his sister. I managed to catch and lift him clean over her, at the expense of my lower back. He’d be too big to lift and swing around soon, especially when he was so adept at flopping about like a fish in my arms.

“C’mon, Oliver, we gotta get ready,” I said to him. 

“Finally,” he said, “I’ve been ready forever!” 

“You too, missy,” Lauren said, taking a still giggling Olivia into her arms. “Pond stocked?”

“As it’ll ever be,” I replied. Oliver did his best to unbutton every pocket he could find on my fishing vest as I carried him out the front door, including the clip holding my keys, which landed in a soft patch of dirt. An unusually warm wind carried a dozen or so dry leaves into our home through the door behind me. “Ah, shit.”

“Shit, shit, shit!” the kids chanted in unison, sharing whatever telepathic ability kids have to know when they shouldn’t repeat a word. Lauren shot me a look and attempted to hush them both. 

Outside, the sun just barely hung above the horizon, the first sign of a pink sunset highlighting the few clouds in the sky. I’d seen the neighbors setting up their decorations as the weeks passed, but it was still a shock to see them all in full bloom. Every property on the street, in either direction, had some sort of elaborate, creative Halloween setup. In comparison, our dingy kiddie pool of blood and candy looked like macaroni art set between a dozen Picassos. 

The house next door had blood-splattered walls, and three bloody cars in the yard, each with fake limbs poking out from underneath them. One home down the road had a skeleton two stories tall made of what looked like paper mache, and another had a massive stretch of fake webs sprawling between each of their trees, complete with spiders made of thin metal wire. I think I even saw someone with a whole corn maze in their yard, somehow. 

A few little ghouls and vampires prowled the streets already, with the smallest ones followed by their parents or an older sibling. While I made sure the fishing poles were set with their magnets, Lauren gathered the kids and let each of them pick some candy as payment for their work. Half now, half later, just like every year. Whatever candy we didn’t give out tonight, after the dad-tax, was all theirs. 

“What’s that?”  Frankenstein's monster asked, walking up our driveway. His mother waited at the end, watching with a gentle smile.

“’Tis a fishing rod, matey. Take it, and catch yerself a bite, if ye dare…” I said, shooting for my best Captain Ahab impression. Likely I sounded more like Captain Hook. 

Lauren and the kids were still chatting quietly a few feet away as the trick-or-treater stepped up to grab the rod. With a mighty heave and roar, he swung the rod as hard as he could. The tiny magnet on a string swung clean over the pool and landed in the grass.

“You have to get it in the water, sweety,” the woman at the end of our driveway said.

“Oh,” the kid said, a faint shade of red visible under the green face paint. Instead of reeling the line in, he started walking backwards until he dragged the magnet through the grass and over the edge of the pool. With a soft plink, it dropped in the water and connected with one of the magnets inside.

“Aye! Ye got a bite, lad, now reel it in!” I said, making the motion with my hands to show him how. 

Looking down at the rod in his hands, he frantically started cranking the reel. Out of the red water of the pool, a small Ziploc bag with a candy bar and a small magnet emerged. The little monster started hopping and laughing as his mother recorded with her phone. By this time, the sun was dipping behind the houses in the distance, and a few other families were wandering the street. 

“What a catch, lad! Let me unhook ‘er for ye.” I unstuck the two magnets, pulled the chocolate out of the bag, and handed it to him. “Hark! Step forward, lads and lasses, if ye dare!”

A few parents chuckled at my accent as they nudged their kids forward. Oliver and Olivia ‘swam’ around them, guiding them to the fishing poles and making whatever it was they thought were fish noises. Lauren walked between the parents as I helped the kids fish, passing nips of sweet booze, hand warmers, and pricier chocolates to any accepting adult.

As expected, it didn’t take longer than fifteen minutes for a line to get tangled. Some Batman who didn’t pay attention started crying as I took the rod from him. Lauren and Olivia entered damage control mode right away, consoling the kid while I turned around so no one could see me pulling a knife out to cut the line. Oliver continued to be a fish.

Restringing the rod and tucking the knife into my belt, I said, “Look, me matey, good as new! The White Whale’ll be yers, yet!”

Sniffling, the kid accepted the rod with a confused look. I motioned with my hands once more, guiding him to fling it into the water. As soon as he saw the king-sized peanut butter cups he reeled in, the tears vanished. 

“Look, Dad, it’s me!”

I turned with a smile, expecting to see Olivia standing next to another fish-person. Instead, I saw a little girl wearing a mask that looked like my daughter's face. 

“What the fuck?”

Every parent present, including Lauren, looked at me with shock and disgust. Apparently sharing the same trait as my own kids, a few children exclaimed, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” repeating after me. One of them was the girl dressed as my daughter, right down to the pink jacket with a fake-fur hood.

“Can you watch your language, please?” one parent asked. The girl walked up to me and wordlessly outstretched her hands for a fishing rod. Lauren and I stared at the girl, looking over her dark brown hair, faded blue jeans, and pink Skechers. If it weren’t for my daughter's face paint and the girl's bulky mask, the two could have been twins. 

Lauren didn't look pleased about my swearing, but she was still visibly uncomfortable. Apparently, we were the only ones who found it weird. Seeing mob mentality at work, Lauren returned to handing out treats to the parents. I passed the rod to the girl and heard her giggle as she stepped to the pool. It sounded just like when we’d tickled Olivia.

“And who might you be, little lass?” I asked, struggling to maintain my accent.

She turned to me and exclaimed, “I’m an Olivia!” 

“An… Olivia?”

“Mhmm!” she responded, twirling the rod. The magnet landed in the pool with another plink. She slowly reeled the line in, feeling it connect with another magnet. Without instruction, she cranked the reel, slowly dragging out a baggie holding a box of chocolate-covered caramels. The girl looked back to her father at the end of my driveway, holding the candy on the line like a trophy catch. 

“Oliver, can you help her out, please?” I asked. He made a few glub glub noises and swam over to take the candy out of the bag for her. I walked over to the father I saw her showing off to, hoping I didn’t look as mad as I felt.

“Hey, man,” I whispered so the kids couldn’t hear me, “what the hell is that?”

“What’s what?”

“Your daughter! Why is she dressed like mine?”

The man looked offended at my question, and the parents beside us stepped back. “She said the new girl at school looked pretty, so she wanted to dress like her. I’m… sorry? I guess?”

An irritatingly reasonable answer. “And the mask?”

“3-D printed it at the library.” The man raised an eyebrow at me, like I was acting strange. He motioned to a family down the road and said, “Not sure about that kid, though.”

I looked down the road and saw a small family of skeletons, two parents and a kid wearing the Spirit Halloween special. All except for their youngest son, who was wearing a mask bearing a striking resemblance to my boy. Complete with a navy blue sweater, cargo pants, and Crocs, the resemblance was uncanny. 

“Hey Dad, help!” a young voice called. I turned, and only after a few steps did I remember she was not my daughter.

I turned to look back at the girl's father, but he just shrugged and said, “I think she means you.”

“I’m not her dad.”

“Sorry, man, but it’s Halloween. Can’t you just play along for a bit?”

Accent long forgotten, I grumbled all the way to the girl. Olivia had wandered over and was currently playing a game of tug-of-war with the girl wearing her face. Oliver was helping the two kids actually dressed for Halloween, taking their candy from the fished-up bags and handing it to them, before refilling it with new candy and tossing it back in the pool. I saw him try to sneak some candy in his pockets, but I didn’t have time to call him out on it.

“Olivia fished this, so that means it’s mine!” my daughter said, tugging on the bag. The plastic stretched between their hands, red-dyed water dripping onto the grass. 

“Dad, help, she’s stealing my candy!” the neighbor’s girl exclaimed.

“Olivia, drop it, you know it’s just a costume,” I scolded. Olivia let go with an exaggerated sigh, and I turned to look at the girl in the mask. “Sorry, lass! I guess you-”

I stopped talking. Through the mask's eye holes, I saw the kid's eyes underneath. A shade or two darker than my daughter's, and wet with tears. She sobbed gently, like she was trying to hide it, and ran back to her father, candy bag in hand. He met her with open arms and leaned down to hear her say something in his ear. 

For a second, I thought he was going to walk over to me, like I had done something to her, but he just whispered into her ear and led her away. Trick or Treat was in prime time at this point, the street full of kids running around excited to visit the “good” neighborhood, the one with full-sized candy bars. Lauren walked over to me, her basket finally run empty.

“What’d he say?” she asked, nodding her chin in the direction the father walked off with his fake Olivia.

“Some bull about his daughter thinking the new girl was pretty.”

She scrunched her face. “And him?”

Oliver was currently admiring the mask his lookalike wore before loudly challenging him to a wrestling match. “No idea.”

“Freaky ass neighborhood…” I heard her mutter as she walked to our porch to restock her basket. 

I made my way back to the pool. As sure as I was that my son could kick his fake’s ass, I was not about to let it happen in front of the entire neighborhood. I tried not to look at what costumes the new kids were wearing, and paid attention to the ones fishing for candy. The accent, refilling the bags, untangling the lines, it all went well for a while. The moon was almost full tonight, lighting the small crowd in a silver glow so haunting and beautiful I was sad to see the street lights turn on.

Lauren maneuvered the families like the professional she was, used to the demanding needs of parents trusting the care of their children to another. Two dozen-ish parents and older siblings formed a horizontal line across our yard, and as she worked her way down it, I dropped the rod I was holding. I saw them before she did, and I stood gawking in stunned silence. Nobody else seemed to care that an entire family was dressed like us, as she stepped in front of a man and woman dressed exactly like her and me, with a little Olivia and Oliver standing beside them.

My body moved unconsciously, taking a step forward. As the man stretched his arm out to shake, I swear, unmistakably, the chatter of the crowd died. Even the children stilled, as if they too wished to listen. I heard the man clearly introduce himself to my wife as me. Then the crowd picked up again, the children resumed their laughter, as if I’d only imagined the silence.

I took long strides over, anxious to reach them. A hole felt punched in my gut, not dissimilar to the feeling of getting a call from school while I was at work. As if I was anticipating something dreadful and irreparable, when in reality the situation was likely much plainer. Lauren, ever coy, took his hand and shook it firmly. 

“Why, it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir. What lovely children you have!” she said. 

“Aren’t they?” the woman dressed as my wife said.

I stepped beside my wife, uncaring of the scowl I wore. Every second that passed, I could feel my blood pressure rising. He was still gripping Lauren’s hand. The man looked at me, only releasing her when we made eye contact. She stepped back, behind me. In the yard, I could still hear the drag of fishing line cutting through children's giggling. None of us spoke for a moment, but if the parents surrounding us noticed the tension, they didn’t care. I puffed my chest a bit and did not stop staring into the man's eyes. The knife clipped in my pocket felt noticeably heavier than usual.

“Trick or treat?” the fake Oliver asked.

“Ahh, I’m so sorry, we’re actually running out of candy. It’s getting a bit late, I think we’ll be calling it a night soon,” Lauren said behind me, tugging on my sleeve. 

“Oh, already? It’s not even eight yet,” her double said. Both the kids, as well as a few others in earshot, groaned with disappointment. 

“Yep, sorry. Long day today, early morning tomorrow. You know how it is,” I said quietly, bluntly. The man stayed silent, maintaining eye contact.

“Of course, we’d hate to be a bother,” the woman said. “Moving can be so difficult; you must be exhausted. We just wanted to say welcome to the neighborhood, right, dear?”

I was almost surprised to see the mask's mouth, my mouth, remain still as he spoke. “Absolutely, sorry we haven’t had a chance to pop in to say hello yet. Welcome to the neighborhood, I’m sure you’ll love it here.”

Then, with not much more than a grumble from their kids, the family left. A few others who heard our conversation left with them, leaving our yard still half full. 

“Why don’t you go inside with the kids, babe? I’ll take care of the rest,” I said. 

“Thank you,” she whispered. I kissed her on the cheek and gave her hand a squeeze, but she sucked in a sharp breath. “Ow!”

Her pale hand had obvious finger marks across it, as if the man who shook it did so with an iron grip. She shook it out and gave me a thin-lipped, placating smile. “I’m fine, I promise, just a bit freaked out. I’m opening a bottle of wine; want a glass?”

“Please, a full one. I’ll be inside in a few.”

Lauren walked over to our kids, whispering in their ears that the night was over, likely telling them it was time for their candy so they didn’t put up a fight. I walked over to the kiddie pool and, unceremoniously, lifted it to spill its contents into the grass. 

“Look, get it while you can!” I shouted, pointing at all the bags of candy. For a minute I stood by and made sure no one got hurt fighting for the sweets, before waving at all the parents watching and shouting, “Have a great Halloween, everyone, and good night!”

Lauren and the kids had already grabbed the massive bag we had been restocking the pond from and brought it inside. Guess Oliver and Olivia would have a hell of a haul this year. I followed them inside and shut the door behind me, turning off the light on our porch. Universal trick-or-treat language for “go away.” After that, I could see from the glass pane in our front door all of the families slowly wandering off our yard, and I breathed a heavy sigh. I locked the deadbolt and, ignoring the fragments of dead leaves scattered in our foyer, stripped my fishing vest and shoes. I could clean tomorrow.

“Honey, you okay?” I asked, stepping into the living room. The little fishes were haggling with each other on the floor, trading candies like little brokers. Lauren had two glasses already on the coffee table, both full to the brim with Pinot Noir, the bottle already visibly empty. 

She stood and wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug, taking a shaky breath. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks for finishing up. I can clean the yard tomorrow.”

“You have work in the morning,” I said, chuckling. I leaned back to brush some hair behind her ear. “I have off; let me take care of it.”

“Fuck that,” she whispered, before stepping away to pick up her glass. “I already texted my boss I can’t make it tomorrow. I need an us day.”

I leaned in for a kiss, but felt a tug on my pant leg. Olivia looked up at me with her bulging, painted fish eyes and asked, “Weentown?”

Groaning, I said, “Again, sweetie? You watched it twice yesterday.”

“Hotel Transylvania!” Oliver yelled, raising his arm like he was in class. 

“We can do Halloweentown first, then Hotel, okay?” Lauren said. “Daddy needs a shower, so he can skip most of Halloweentown.”

She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and said, “You are absolutely covered in red dye.”

“That works, join me?”

“And let them eat candy until they throw up? Maybe tomorrow,” she said with a wink. 

I smiled and lightly smacked her ass while the kids were busy fumbling with the TV remote. “Keep my glass safe for me.”

Our master bedroom had its own master bathroom, away from the sickly sweet stench of bubble gum-flavored toothpaste and no-tears shampoo. One of my favorite parts of our new house, honestly. Not having to close the bathroom door, or even not having to bring clothes in with me, is an oddly liberating feeling. Even if I did have to shut our bedroom door. While the hot water ran over my body to the tune of Halloweentown quietly in the other room, I still couldn’t get the thought of that family out of my head. 

Seeing Lauren freak out in front of our kids set off some kind of fatherly instinct in me, like I had to remain calm and cool, but alone in the shower, the pit returned to my stomach. No one, not a single person out of the dozens who visited our house, thought it was odd. No, apparently I was the weird one for even noticing.

For the past month it was picture-perfect. Upper middle-class suburbia, exactly what we’d been saving our money for. No HOA, good schools nearby, close to Lauren’s mom but not so close she’d visit often, nice lake for fishing down the road; it was great. But tonight, Lauren said it best. Freaky ass neighborhood. 

The water running over my feet faded from a dark red to a dull pink as I scrubbed as much of the dye as I could from my skin. My hands would be blush for days, and I’m sure if it weren’t for her stress, my wife would gladly remind me she had warned me to use gloves. I stayed under the hot water as long as reasonable, enjoying the peace, before turning it off and stepping out. Hopefully Halloweentown was almost halfway over, at least.

Completely nude and mostly dry, I started digging through the dresser for some sweatpants. That glass of wine was calling to me, but not as much as the second I’d have when the kids went to bed. I stopped. The movie wasn’t playing. Paused? Bathroom break, maybe? If Olivia had to go, she’d demand fiercely that the movie be paused. No matter how many times she’s seen it, she wouldn’t want to miss a moment. 

I stuck my ear to the door to listen. Not a peep. Even left alone, Oliver was seldom quiet. Had Lauren put them to bed? I knew I was psyching myself out for no reason, but maybe I was more rattled than I realized. I tucked a towel around my waist and cracked the door open, bracing myself for the kids to leap out and scare me. Nothing. No creaking of floorboards, no crinkling of candy wrappers. Dead silence.

With a painful paranoia, I grabbed the knife from my dirty pants pocket and stepped outside the room. The hallway attaching all three bedrooms to the living room was still with anticipation. I walked down it, straining my ears to each room I passed. Nothing. I could see half of the TV from the hall. The movie was paused. 

The living room was devoid of activity, my children and wife gone. My full glass of wine was spilled, staining Oliver's pillow sack full of candy a deep, deep red. The kitchen light was on, flooding the living room with a pale yellow sheen. A yellow light with a small shadow obscuring it, wiggling and squirming out of sight. Silently. I crept towards the kitchen, pocket knife cold in my clammy hand. 

“Lauren?” I called out. Nothing. 

I tried and failed to convince myself they were just waiting to scare me, to leap out and pay me back for earlier today. But Lauren, freaked out as she was? Spilled wine? Something in me found it hard to believe she would want to pull a stunt like that, not after today. I walked to the kitchen, as stealthily as I could, and as I walked, I finally heard something make a noise. From down the other hall, inside the foyer, I heard the crunching of leaves under someone's shoe. 

I whipped around and strode forward, looking towards the front door. Standing awkwardly in the foyer, leaves underfoot, was Olivia. At least, she looked like my daughter. The girl wore pink pajamas and a porcelain smile. A mask. This girl was not my daughter. 

Before I could shout out at her, rapid footsteps approached behind me and kicked the back of my knee. I dropped immediately, and a hand wrapped around the side of my head. It bashed my temple into the wall once, twice, again and again. I waved my arm widely, desperate to catch whoever was behind me with my knife. I felt the blade scrape and catch something before another hand grabbed my wrist. The hand was wet, sticky, and with blurred vision, I think I saw it was red with blood. 

“Hold still,” the man holding me said before pressing his weight on my back and pinning me to the ground. 

My ears rang and dark spots coated every other inch of my sight. The floor underneath me felt like a carousel, careening far too fast for me to hold the contents of my stomach in. In a dizzy haze, I retched, and the man holding me lifted my head by my hair and slammed my face into it. The scent of bile mingled with the copper aroma of the blood pouring from my nose. 

With one hand holding my head and the other holding my wrist, the man held me down while the fake Olivia scuttled over and began to peel my fingers away from the knife. I wasn’t able to put up much more of a fight. I felt his knee dig into the small of my back as he leaned down into my vision. Somehow, I was unsurprised to see my own face meet my eyes.

“You ready?” he asked. It was impossible to focus; his mask was swirling around two or three duplicates as my brain struggled to process what my eyes saw.

“What?” I mumbled.

“Are you ready?”

“Where are my kids?” I slurred. “Laur-”

The man slammed his fist between my shoulder blades, sending an electric shock of pain through my limbs. I yelled out in pain, gurgling through the contents of my stomach stuck to my lips and nose. Wrapping his arm around my neck, he tucked it into the crook of his elbow. I pushed, feeling adrenaline course into my wobbling limbs, driving me back onto one knee. It was no use. He flexed his bicep and pulled my throat in close, and after a brief struggle, everything went black.

I gasped for air, coughing as I inhaled drops of blood and stomach acid. He loosened his grip, dragging me back to reality. Into my ear he hissed, “Are. You. Ready?”

“Ready… for what?” I managed to squeak out. The girl wearing Olivia's face giggled, twirling the knife like it was a toy.

Maintaining his arm around my neck, he dragged me to my feet. My legs shook, and I almost fell with every step as he led me to the kitchen. On the cold tile floor sat my family, bound in rope. Each of them wore a mask of themselves on their face, and a heavy set of earmuffs over their ears. Standing behind them, backs against the stove, were the woman dressed as my wife and a little fake Oliver. Waiting, patiently, for me to come.

“We’ll let you go,” the man holding me said. “And you can take one.”

My heart beat so fast I thought it would burst, and I’d drop dead before I could respond. The room still spun, and without consciously thinking of doing it, I leaned on the man wearing my face. I opened my mouth, feeling the sting of a split lip slowly oozing blood. Then I closed it, opened it again, and closed it once more. I was in shock.

“What?” I managed to mumble again.

“You can leave, and we’ll let you pick one to take with you,” fake Lauren said. My wife's kind smile mocked me, hiding the woman's cold eyes. 

“I don’t… I can’t… why?” 

The man's arm was still around my throat, and I felt his hand bleed onto my bare shoulder. At the sight of my family, my beautiful wife and children, bound on the floor, the fight left my arms. Once more, the man whispered into my ear, “Don’t need to know why. You just need to choose.”

I couldn’t choose; I didn’t want to. How could I? I heard Olivia sniffle under the mask obscuring her face. Could she see me? Did she see how weak, bloody, and beaten her father was? Oliver was trying his best to put himself in front of his sister, to obscure her. The faint line of his chin, barely visible under the mask, was wet with tears. Out of all three, he was the only one with visible blood, running down the middle of his shirt. Lauren was still as a statue, and twice as quiet. Of the three, she sat with her back held straightest. The only one of us with fight left.

The man dropped me in a heap on the floor. I coughed and sputtered as they watched me grasp my bearings. For half a second I considered turning around, attacking again, defending my family, even if it cost me my life. Hell, I did turn around. I took one step and crumpled again. My head pounded, and I saw the man wearing my face grip my knife tightly in his hands. I could die fighting, or I could hope they really were letting me go, with one of my family. I was gutted, ashamed, downright humiliated. I made the most painful decision of my life. I decided to trust the people I was sure were about to kill us. I saw no other option. 

“I’ll take Ol-”

“No, no no, wrong,” the man interrupted me. “Don’t tell us who you’ll take. Take the earmuffs off, talk to who you won’t.”

Stunned, I stared at him. If his face changed expression under the mask, I couldn’t see. The four of them stood steady and unmoving, waiting for me to act. With my head sunken into my shoulders, I crawled on my knees to my wife and took the headphones off her ears. 

“Bill?” she hissed.

“Yes, honey, I-”

“No, no, no, no! The kids, you have to take one of them!” she cried, thrashing her body against her restraints. 

“Shh, shh, Lauren, I am taking one of the kids,” I croaked.

“Wh-what? But they said…”

“They told me,” I said, through tears, “to talk to the two I’m not taking with me.”

Lauren’s body relaxed, like she released all her tension. “Thank God, Bill. They just said they’d let you take one of us; I didn’t know if… Please, won’t you take this mask off? I want… I want to see you again.”

I looked at the invaders, and when they did not move, I reached around her head to take my wife's mask off. Underneath, she seemed aged. Worn and tired, like the only thing she wanted in the world was to sleep. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. The tears flowed freely, and I wasn’t sure which of us shed more. She said to me, “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Lauren. I love you so much,” I said. She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against mine. We kissed, one last time. She tasted like salt and iron. When I pulled away, the woman wearing her face leaned down and picked up the mask, holding it out to me. She didn’t speak, but I understood. Taking one last longing glance into my wife's eyes, I placed the mask back over her face and the earmuffs back over her ears. 

I took a long time to make my way to my kids. They sat next to Lauren, only a few inches away, but the journey felt like a marathon. The throbbing pain in my head was gone, replaced by a deep ache in my chest. I’d love to say it was a difficult choice, to say I didn’t play favorites. To grant some insight into what should have been the hardest decision any man could ever face. I have none. In spite of how deep it cuts my soul to admit, I was never going to take Oliver with me. It was always going to be his sister. I lifted his earmuffs and mask, and faced my son. 

“Dad?”

I said nothing at first, just pulled him in close. I kissed the top of his head and pressed him into my chest. His nose was more crooked than mine, wet blood still trickling down it, and the skin around his eye was dark and swollen. My son's resolute pride crumbled as he sobbed into me, and I told the hardest lie I would ever tell. “It’s gonna be okay, Oliver. You’ll take care of your mother, won’t you?”

“Is she okay? Olivia?” he asked, muffled by my embrace. 

“Of course she is, buddy. Her big brother protected her, didn’t you?”

He didn’t respond. My son sobbed and heaved into me, wailing with a mourning no boy should possess. I let him, for as long as I was allowed. After the longest minutes of my life, the man behind me leaned down and picked up Oliver's mask. He held it up for me to take. 

I pushed Oliver away. He tried to lean in harder, to stay with me, to cry into my shoulder more, but I knew we were out of time. I pushed him away. He looked up, seeing the man wearing my face, before shutting his eyes hard. I placed the mask and earmuffs back over his head.

It was almost over. That’s what I kept repeating to myself, that it was almost over. I turned to Olivia and saw she was shaking. That tremble that runs through a child's body when they’re trying their best to hold back feelings they have no business carrying. As I reached for her earmuffs, the man stopped me, grabbing my wrist. 

“Pick her up.”

Nodding, I got off my knees and onto shaky feet. From underneath her armpits, I lifted her up and into my arms. I hoped she somehow knew it was me lifting her. Told myself she didn’t struggle not because she had no fight left, but because she knew the feeling of her father's arms. As I was guided out of my own house, I kept telling myself that. Somehow, Olivia felt lighter than usual. Like I’d left a part of her behind.

Outside, gilded by moonlight, was a small crowd of people. Adults and children alike, all dressed like my family. They were pin-drop silent, watching me with the devout attention of a Sunday church service. The whole neighborhood formed a line, single file, leading directly to my car. Someone wearing a mask of my face held up a set of keys, my car keys.

I took the mask and headphones off Olivia when we were a few miles down the road, out of sight, but she still never spoke a word. She curled into a ball in the passenger seat as I drove, sobbing quietly to herself. I didn’t speak either; I had no idea what to say. I doubt any words at all could have helped us. Lauren’s mother wasn’t home, and I had nothing on me but the towel around my waist and some emergency cash in the glovebox.

About four hours later, around one in the morning, I stopped at a motel a few cities over. I was too tired to drive further. Olivia had fallen asleep long ago, and I struggled to keep my eyes open. Countless times I fought with myself internally. Go to a damn police station, I told myself. Get help!

But I just kept driving. My head felt like it was full of every thought I’d ever had, crowded and struggling for dominance all at once, and yet I couldn’t focus on any one of them. All I felt was tired. So, so tired. Not like I expected help from the police anyway. The entire neighborhood's word against mine, right? No, I needed sleep first. I carried Olivia into the motel room and set her on the bed. I lay next to her, refusing to let her out of my sight for even a moment, like she would disappear if I wasn’t looking. But the silence was painful. I refused to be left with my thoughts, not tonight. I turned on the TV, just in time to see an emergency broadcast.

“-eved to have murdered both his wife and son before escaping with his daughter. He is suspected to be both armed and dangerous. If you see this man, please call the police immediately.” The news splashed a photo on screen, a photo of me. Taken from my front yard, it showed me, wearing nothing but a bloody towel, pressing my daughter into my bare, vomit-stained chest. Seemingly cropped so the masked neighbors in my yard were out of frame. The only mask in the photo was the one my daughter wore, of her own face, in stark contrast to my own bare visage. I looked like a beast, coated in wet blood, with the eyes of a wild, desperate animal.