This eld vessel sails westward
Across the eerily cold silver waves
Into the low-hanging aurora
Until the horizon finally disappears

At the threshold stricken by lightning
My effigy is engulfed by four luminous wings
Until the light became sarcophagal
Yet it may never reach me
Because the hands dragging my carcass
Were never there

Now lying on the extinguished pyre
Almost buried under the piling snow
While my heart remains somewhere
Behind the curtain

I’ve been dead for four days. I know the people around me don’t understand because my heart keeps beating out of sheer mechanical inertia, but the process is already over. There is no oxygen in what I breathe; only dry air goes in and out. My stomach stopped processing food on Tuesday, and the skin on my hands has lost its tone. When I move on the bed, I can’t feel the weight of my bones against the mattress. Lifeless flesh has no weight. It’s a simple biological matter: the organism shuts down, but some muscles take longer to catch on. I only go out into the street because dust gathers on my skin and being locked up in here only accelerates the stiffness.
I walked down the building corridor toward the exit. The landing lights were on, but the light brought no warmth to my face. When I reached the bottom, the ground-floor superintendent opened his door before I could touch the front door knob. He had a strange grimace on his face and was holding a yellow envelope.
“Joel,” he said, taking a step toward me. “I’ve been ringing your doorbell for two days. Your brother came by yesterday looking for you because you’re not answering your phone.”
I didn’t stop, but he placed a hand on my shoulder. The pressure of his fingers felt distant, as if he were touching me through a thick blanket.
“There’s nothing to talk about, Troy,” I replied without raising my voice. My voice sounded flat, scraped dry from disuse. “The phone no longer serves any purpose.”
“You’re pale, kid. You look like a rag. Your brother left this for you.”
He held out the yellow envelope. On the front, written in blue ballpoint pen in my brother’s hurried handwriting, it clearly read: For Joel Brennan. Troy waited for me to take it, but I left my hands hanging loose at my sides. Seeing that name on the paper did nothing to me. It was just a label stuck to a container that was already empty.
“Joel Brennan doesn’t live in this apartment anymore,” I said, looking at the wall behind him. “That name belonged to the person who occupied this body before Tuesday. What’s left here is just waiting for the process to finish.”
Troy took a small step back. His expression shifted from annoyance to a mix of confusion and alarm.
“What the fuck are you talking about, Joel? Stay right there, I’m calling your brother right now.”
I didn’t wait for him to pull out his phone. I pushed open the street door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.
The morning air hit my face head-on, but my skin didn’t react with its usual twitch. I walked slowly along the sidewalk, keeping a steady pace. Around me, people hurried off to their jobs, swerving past me. As they crossed my path, some discreetly averted their eyes and quickened their pace; others stared straight into my eyes with a mix of disgust and caution. I know perfectly well why they do it. A body entering the decomposition phase emits imperceptible signals that the instinct of the living detects immediately. They sense the lack of heat and the stench of stagnant matter coming off me, even if they can’t put it into words.
Halfway down the avenue, I went into the small corner grocery store. The place smelled of ripe fruit and dampness. At the back, behind the cash register, the owner was placing a row of cans on a metal shelf. Hearing the door chime, she turned to greet me, but froze as soon as she saw my face under the white fluorescent lights.
“Good morning...” she said slowly, lowering her arms little by little. “Mr. Brennan, are you feeling alright? You look terrible. Let me bring you a glass of water and a chair.”
Nobody wants to accept the evidence when it’s right in front of them. She spoke to me in that measured tone people reserve for the sick or the injured, expecting a coherent response that would fit into her framework of how things work. She doesn’t understand that there is no water or rest that can revive an organism whose primary systems have already stopped. They think it’s just dizziness, a drop in blood pressure, or a bad night’s sleep.
“I don’t need water,” I told her. My throat scraped as I spoke, dry like a pipe no longer in use. “I only came in to grab one thing.”
I walked over to the wooden counter where a broken fruit crate sat. Between the pine slats was a thick piece of glass, part of a broken green bottle that someone had left forgotten there. I picked it up with my right hand. The sharp edge sank slightly into my fingertips without causing me the slightest discomfort. The woman took a step back, her eyes wide open and her lips tightly pressed together.
“Please put that down on the counter,” she whispered, timidly stretching out her hand. “Don’t do anything strange.”
I held her gaze. I needed to end this misunderstanding once and for all.
I drove the piece of glass into my left palm until it touched the bone. The cut opened the skin into two thick flaps, but I felt absolutely nothing. There is no pain when the nerves have already rotted away. A thick, viscous stream began to flow from the gash, the stagnant residue left inside me. I stood there looking at my open hand, waiting for the tendon to give way completely to prove to the woman behind the counter that the body no longer responds. She began to scream hysterically, grabbed my wrist tightly, and pressed a white rag against the wound. The rag instantly soaked up the liquid dripping down my forearm, staining her fingers a bright red. She still doesn’t understand. She thinks she’s trying to save my life, but she’s just dirtying her hands with something that no longer works.

TERROR OF THE NIGHT

Albion’s journal

Entry number 70.

This is another case I had to write about, for this patient’s story became partially my story as well.

Perhaps I have not mentioned this before, but I do psychiatry work outside the Parkhorst asylum as well. Sometimes clients visit me at the asylum in my office, on rare occasions I also visit them.

One day, I was deeply stressed after one of the patients threw a fit and tried to kill himself, I simply went to my office and wanted to relax a bit, but in my life, every time I try to relax even more things come up, I don’t even know why I bother trying that anymore.

My assistant came to me saying that there was a man that needed my help and it was life and death. Typically they all say that, but when the man named Don peeked through my door, he might as well been dead already by the looks of him. He was in his thirties. but looked to be sixty, his face carried an imprint of horror, the very definition of the word. Don had the largest black bags under his eyes I have ever seen, a tremendous redness inside his pupils, top front of his head was balding and rest of the hair was half grey, his face was pale and long, his lips have lost their color and looked like a dead rose. Don scratches his neck and constantly pulled skin on his fingers, all at the same time as he was shaking his legs. Even after so many years in the profession I could not help but feel his monstrous anxiety rub of on me.

I asked Don what the issue was and it took him a few minutes to start, as if he was scared to say something, Finally, he spoke of “her”, something that tormented him at nights and he could no longer take it. I asked him to describe his tormentor and how it happens. Don said that she comes at around 2am every night, although he has never seen how she appears,  his body becomes paralyzed, although he can still feel pain, she scratches him and cuts him with her long nails, he cannot look away for she forces his eyes open, she screams into his face. He described her as green without legs. Don took of his shirt, he was covered in cuts.

Usually I’d contribute something like this to deep trauma, and due to cuts I would keep someone here because they were a danger to themselves, but for some reason my intuition told me otherwise and I never go against my intuition.

This man came to me because he still had hope.

Hope for the best no matter what the circumstance is the most remarkable human quality.

At least in my opinion, so I agreed to accompany this miserable man to his apartment that night and stay till 2am.

I let my assistants know that I would only be back around 3am. They looked confused. but made no comments, I liked that about them. Not nosy rats.

Don came in small beat up car. As we drove back the night has sat in and Don’s driving became hectic. He was looking out into the darkness on the side of the road and freaking out! I ordered him to stop, the rest of the way I drove.

When we arrived at the place he lived, I have to tell you, it was a dismal view, worse than my asylum. These apartments were run down, broken, cheap, ugly, tiny and depressing. How could anyone sleep here and not have night terrors?

We went inside and since we still had four hours left, Don made us some tea. It was by far the most atrocious tea I have ever had. Did he make it out of dirt? Oh poor man. Around midnight he lay down to sleep and I sat in the chair next to him. A silly thing, but I fell asleep, after a while I heard a creak in the room and woke up, I quickly glanced at the watch. It was just a few minutes till 2am. I heard the creak again, it came from the tall old mirror that stood next to the door, and then I felt my heart rate rise rapidly as I tried to calm my breathing, for a green transparent hand emerged from the mirror, then the rest of her, a hideous, dried out witch, with a large mouth and long sharp nails. She floated above the bed and I saw Don’s eyes open in horror, he tried to look at me but immediately they went back to her, I attempted to move my hand, but I too was paralyzed. I tried to talk, but I couldn’t open my mouth, then to my horror she turned her hideous face to me and brought a sharp fingernail millimeter from my eye, she laughed in a demonic voice and then I could hear screaming inside my ears that almost erupted my eardrums. The only hope I had at this point is the idea that this experience will soon end, but I was wrong, the screams, nightmarish images implanted in my brain and her scratching agains Don’s body continued all through the night, until the first light came. Don’s eyes were shut then and she floated back into the mirror. This poor man! How has he endured such a thing!?

The moment my body was released from paralysis I shook Don and he could barely open his eyes. I told him that I was going to get father Lucas, the exorcist, immediately. I hoped that Don understood me and I ran to his car and drove to the church. After seeing the state I was in, father Lucas came right away. I drove through the streets like a madman.

Once in the room I saw Don still in bed, he was staring at the ceiling. When I explained to father Lucas what happened he stared at me like I was some kind of imbecile. I still remember him saying that one phrase with tremendous disdain.

“You destroy the mirror, and bury it.”   

It was such an obvious thing, I almost felt like his tone of voice suggested that I was a bastard for being so ignorant.

Father Lucas smashed the mirror and took with him in a bag without looking at me or saying goodbye.

I came up to the bed, Don was still staring at the ceiling. His lips were constantly moving, he was whispering random senseless things.

He was completely insane and now he has become one of the asylum’s patients. What a sad thing that he waited too long to seek help.

I almost went mad myself, just from that one time. For weeks I could barely get sleep and had to take anxiety tablets and sleeping pills.

Interestingly, whenever I saw Don in the asylum, his eyes looked rested, with hope in them.

I could say that I’ve been through stranger things, but then I would be lying to you.

The Count was eating cabbage stew with potatoes in his shabby tenement apartment overlooking the street where workingmen and their tired horses pulled tovar to and from the manufacturies all day—the crampiness of the place a merciless reminder of the once-great estate he had been forced to sell to satisfy his debts; the family estate, with its magnificent portraits of distinguished forebears under whose gaze he would now feel small, undignified and ashamed—when he happened to scratch his ear and his ear fell off (...splash...) into the stew.

Hungry, he ate it.

Then he bandaged his head and went to the doctor.

The doctor was an old friend.

“Sasha,” said the doctor, “how are you?”

The Count showed the doctor where his ear used to be. The doctor examined him. “Sasha, you are suffering from poor health,” the doctor concluded.

“Don't I know it—but what is wrong with me?” said the Count.

The doctor explained that “the poor health” was a specific condition. “Your body is decaying. It is rejecting the state of being destitute. For your own good, make money, Sasha.”

“How?” asked the Count.

However, the doctor was unable to provide an answer, Sasha remained poor and his body began to fall apart, piece by piece.

History marched on.

Anarchists set off bombs, socialists agitated against the established order with western ideas, and a revolution broke out, led—and increasingly dominated—by a party of Marxists.

Without one arm and with his skull showing through sections of his missing face, the Count decided to beg for their mercy.

“I need money,” he implored the local peasant-faced leader. “It is a matter of life and death. I have a disease, you see…”

“What happened to the money you had?” one of the party members asked.

He would perhaps have cringed at the Count's appearance, but the experience of the revolution had hardened him against the grotesque.

“It was lost,” said the Count.

Another party member, a sneering woman in a suit, said: “Surely you meant ‘money inherited after centuries of ruthless exploitation,’ comrade Pavlovich.”

“Indeed, that is more accurate,” said the leader.

(Months later, he would be accused of contact with foreign enemies and exiled, and she would take his place as leader.)

“But I have read your books,” said the Count, “Your principles, they are egalitarian, noble. ‘To each according to his need.’”

The party members laughed.

The laughter was cold.

The street was cold, and the Count shuffled along it with what was left of his head cast down. He was wrapped in scraps of fur and rags.

Like a leper he existed, at the very edge of society, forgotten, consuming rodents and refuse, physically declining—diminishing—a limbless skeletal wretch from whom even the other impoverished dregs averted their eyes. Thus, he was consigned to the dustbin of history...

The boy knocked on the door again.

“Anybody home?” he said.

It was the 1990s.

A babushka opened the door—widowed, most likely; devout—and eyed him with a century's worth of suspicion.

The boy smiled.

He held out money.

“Has the voucher come in the mail already?” he asked politely.

“What voucher?” the babushka asked.

The boy described what it looked like. “The new government is giving ownership of the old, broken state enterprises to all citizens. But, because everybody gets it, everybody gets only a little.” He paused to let that sink in. “Tell me, what is the use to you of owning a tiny fraction of a factory, a malfunctioning power plant? Wouldn't you rather have money instead?”

After dark, he returned to the apartment where he was paid and left the bag of vouchers he'd collected.

He took his pay off the kitchen table.

Usually, the doors in the apartment were all closed.

Today, one was open.

He peeked in:

A woman was inside. She was naked, moaning and she was holding—caressing in a way that made the boy's guts want to invert themselves—a football-sized lump of hairless human flesh: a lump of flesh with an eyeball in it, an ear, a nose and lips, which commanded suddenly: “Shut the door!”

The boy was not invited back after that.

He fell tragically from a window.

The small, quiet drones drifted in peaceful horizontal lines before releasing molten thermite on the protestors below.

His purchase of the port at Klaipėda had recently been announced.

Elsewhere, the construction of the new, southerly pipeline was proceeding as planned.

The war continued.

The data centres on the vast, deforested Siberian lands hummed with artificial intelligence.

He switched off his infoview, returning him to where his body was: his country estate, where the Chinese cyberneticist had almost finished upgrading his bionic memory capacity.

That said, it was no longer accurate to say he was here—or anywhere.

He was everywhere.

Seated, he felt limitless within his osseointegrated beta-titanium endoskeleton. If he wanted to, he could have killed the cyberneticist at the snap of a nitinol tendon, with the superhuman strength of his electroactive polymer musculature. “Alexander,” he “heard” somebody say. “Yes?” he silently replied. The cyberneticist applied the final touches. It was the European President speaking. “Winter is coming,” she was “saying,” “and we've yet to agree how to reroute the gas to avoid running afoul of our sanctions.” It was amusing, he thought, to still be so theatrically staging the appearance of a rule-based global order in this era of pure power…

Later, he strolled through his estate alone, all comms silenced, considering the portraits of his ancestors on the walls. Each generation is capable of everything, he thought, except imagining its own obsolescence.

Then he sat down to dine.

Cabbage stew with potatoes and a human ear. Not his own, of course, but the power resided in the symbol. The game may be played always into the future, but one must never forget one's origin. Tradition was often the boot on the throat of the present.

After a slow start, it was truly shaping up to be a magnificent millennium.

It is not strange for cats to go missing in our village. With almost no natural predators, everyone's cats are outdoor cats. They sometimes wander off or get run over, but when the fifth cat disappeared, people started asking more questions and keeping their cats inside. Even I started letting my precious orange cat Gingy out less. She didn't mind much; she already spent most of her time purring on my lap inside.

Some suspected wolves when a deep, unnatural animal growl began echoing through the village at night. People stopped letting their cats out at night, and barely let them out during the day.

I stopped letting out Gingy too. She loved running through our yard at night, chasing fireflies and meowing at other cats. I could see her bright green eyes staring at me each time the sun set, but I knew it was for the best. 

After a while, Gingy got used to staying home at night watching TV with me, but when the growls came, her whole behaviour changed. She'd perk up her ears, run to the door, and meow at it. It would always take at least 10 minutes of pets and a treat to calm her down.

Some time later, after the growls appeared, the first death came. Mr. Harlow was an older man who had a few chicken coops and a nice garden. He always waved when you passed and stopped to talk about your day.

One morning, his neighbour came to visit. Mr. Harlow's fence was broken down, the chicken coops were empty, and his body was full of scratches and bite marks. Not even a feather was left behind. 

People stopped going out alone even during the day. More and more cats disappeared. The growls came more frequently. Gingy now meowed at the door all night, and even treats couldn't quiet her.

Around this time, another attack came. While patrolling his yard, Mr. Harlow's neighbour saw a few of the missing cats on the roof, watching him with their glowing eyes. Then the growl came, closer than ever. All the cats stopped and turned their eyes to him. He stood frozen. Something jumped at him and scratched him. He tried to turn, but a few other animals jumped on him. He fired his gun into the ether. The animals were gone before he got off the ground, and the cats disappeared too.

One night Gingy sat on my lap, purring, when the growl came again. Gingy perked up her ears, shot her eyes to the door, and ran to it.

"Gingy, not again."

The meows. She scratched at the door with her paw.

"Gingy, please!"

She let out the most bloodcurdling meow and got up on her hind legs.

"Jesus."

I got up and went to the kitchen for a treat, even though it probably wouldn't work. I opened the package. She went silent. Then, through the silence, a door creaked. I looked back. Gingy hung from the door handle with her front paws as the door slowly opened.

"Gingy!"

She jumped down and slipped into the night. The treat dropped to the floor. I opened the door and rushed out after her. The outside air was cold. The growls were so loud outside. The streets were empty; only the lamps shone down. Gingy ran in the middle of the street toward the forest. 

"Gingy!" 

She got off the road and ran into the tall spruce trees. I took a deep breath and ran after her. The trees swallowed the light. I couldn't see Gingy, but I could still hear the growls nearby, and I was sure she was heading there. 

The deep growl echoed to my left. I crouched down by a tree and slowly looked there. All the village cats sat around a strange creature; its large silhouette towered over them, its huge glowing eyes stared at them, and it let out another deep growl. The cats turned and began walking toward the village in unison. 

My heart beat against my ribs. So many cats, and the thing was so huge, but my Gingy was among them. I swallowed and let out a silent pst pst, the one she'd always listened to. Gingy stopped and looked my way. I gripped the tree bark and pst pst again. She let out a silent meow and walked toward me. I was scared the other cats would turn, but they kept heading toward the village, their leader at the back.

"Gingy, come."

I reached for her soft, ginger fur. Her eyes looked into mine, but no recognition passed through them; they looked empty.

"Gingy?"

She let out a loud hiss and jumped at my hand. Sharp pain shot through it. She scratched and bit it aggressively.

"Gingy, stop!"

But she kept biting. I hated it, but I had to punch her to make her let go. Warm blood trickled down my hand. Gingy ran back to the cats, and they all stopped and looked my way. Panic ran through me, but the large thing let out another growl, and they turned back toward the village. I turned and bolted through the empty forest. The twigs hit my face. My feet slipped in the dewed grass. I kept expecting the big cat to jump on my back at any moment, but before I knew it, I was out in the village next to ours.

They bandaged my hand and called the police. When the policeman arrived, the whole village was quiet. The doors hung open. Everyone from my village lay in their houses in a pool of blood, with scratch and bite marks all over their bodies. The police found nothing but a few whiskers and soft, orange fur on the floor.

They let me go the next afternoon once the houses were clear. I was barely able to function. Out of habit, I reached for Gingy's bowl. Then I saw my bandaged hand.

I came awake. Not all at once, more of a one sense at a time kind of thing. At first, I felt something in bed with me. Like when I’d been living at my old apartment with my old cat. He would always join me in bed sometime in the night and I would always wake up just enough to know he was there. Occasionally, I’d even roll on my side so he could snuggle up in my semi-circle. I guess he trained me to do that.

But this was different. Not because those tiny padding paws were doing anything Pedro hadn’t ten thousand times, or because I’d had to put the old guy down five years ago and hadn’t seen fit to replace him. It was like whatever it was in bed with me was trying to sneak.

My sleeping mind had been on the verge of declaring what was happening a dream anyway and putting that sense of touch back on “Ignore” before those tiny padding paws padded toward my face. Pedro had only done that a few times to my recollection; back when he still had a large amount of feral in him. Back when he never came out in the daytime and only investigated me when he knew I wasn’t awake.

I opened my eyes. Maybe it was a mix of poor vision and a mostly sleep-caked mind, but there was no panic in me. Whatever it was, was cat-sized and dark. Two blurry orbs recessed in what I assumed was its head, pointed in my direction. It stopped in its tracks for a moment before dipping its head and bringing those silvery eyes just about level with mine.

The only surprise in me was that I wasn’t panicking. I felt my breathing, still long and deep, like physiologically I was still asleep. My ears prickled as I strained to hear something to corroborate what my weak eyes were informing me was in front of me.

Perhaps, I could catch it. I felt the muscles of my arm and back tense before I’d made the conscious decision to move, to trap it. But that had been enough to make the cat-thing skittish, and it turned its head as quick as a laser, racing for the edge of the bed. I felt those padding paws trace down the inside of my thigh, the thought coming too belatedly to grab for it.

I never felt the cat-thing again. Saw or heard it, either. It was like it was a ghost or something that conjured from my dream. Except I was awake. And even though I didn’t know what it was, I knew something was in bed with me.

Before I could sit up, something pulled from my face. It didn’t hurt and there was no pressure as if something had been on my face and was then gone. It just felt like something had been there that I’d never felt and only from it being removed was I ever aware that it had been there at all. Kind of like that thin plastic layer on the screen of a cell phone that you could either peel off or leave on and the phone still worked perfectly fine.

I swung the covers off and swiveled on my butt to place my feet on the floor. Again, no panic that whatever that thing was was under the bed waiting to scratch me. I knew without knowing it was gone, like my body had a sense of how much air was supposed to be in the room and none of it had been displaced by a ten-pound animal waiting somewhere inside here with me.

Interesting that I’d thought “waiting” instead of “hiding.” But on the off chance my internal alarms weren’t working properly, I reached for the light switch over my nightstand. I expected to squint against the light, but my eyes were already adjusted. I got done on one knee and then all fours before peering beneath my bed. There were a couple pairs of slippers under there, two dumbbells, a composition notebook, and a box of tissue I must have forgotten about and kicked underneath without realizing. But no cat and nothing that looked roughly cat-like. Definitely, nothing alive.

I keep my bedroom door open, so it could have run out, but the head of my bed is by the door. The thing had run toward the foot. If it had come in that way, surely, it wouldn’t have forgotten and run the opposite way.

The door was the only way out, though. My only guess was it had found some spot in here to hide. I grabbed a pillow from the bed and pulled the case off. Odds were, I wouldn’t be able to catch it in here, but I’d rather have something I could use to protect my face in case I cornered it and it decided to attack.

My closet door was closed, so there wasn’t a need to check there and there was no room to hide underneath my dresser. It wasn’t flush against the wall on one side, so my guess was it was either there or hiding behind the television. I stood long enough to cautiously step close enough to see there was nothing behind the TV before getting into a crouch, stepping cautiously around my bed as I crept closer to my dresser.

I don’t know why there wasn’t anything in me like fear in those moments. The thing could have been rabid for all I know. Or it could have tried to eat my face. But just before peeking around the edge of the dresser, I realized either way it wouldn’t be something I couldn’t handle.

But whatever the animal had been, it wasn’t being now.

It was a relief, but not that much. I spent about five more minutes searching my room and then made a half-hearted sweep of the rest of my one-bedroom apartment. There wasn’t a lot of furniture and not any hidey-holes I could think of. Getting back to bed was more of a priority, so I called it quits.

I made a pit stop in the bathroom and as I washed my hands in the sink, I looked at my face. No sleep puffiness, no restless red eyes. It hadn’t scratched me and whatever had come off my face hadn’t left a mark. I splashed water on my face anyway and traced my fingers down my brow and over my eyes and cheeks before meeting at the point of my chin.

Some didn’t feel right.

I opened my eyes and stared at my reflection. Nothing looked off. I turned my head from side to side and didn’t see anything weird. But when I felt my face again—I couldn’t tell what—something was wrong. Very wrong.

There was a sample-size facial cleanser in the shower that I’d gotten from the dermatologist’s office. I splashed more water on my face and worked up a good lather in my hands and really worked my face over. After rinsing the soap off, I felt my face again, and dammit something was still wrong.

I looked at my hands. Maybe there was something wrong there and it only felt like it had been my face. Nothing looked wrong and when I felt each hand in turn, everything felt right to the touch. It was specifically my face.

I washed my face twice more for good measure before feeling like my senses returning to me. This was stupid. I’d just had a fright from an animal—hell, maybe a hallucination—waking me up in the middle of the night and my mind’s way of processing was probably sensing something else that wasn’t there.

Except I had never been afraid. And poor vision or not, I knew I’d seen something. Felt it, too.

Sleep was the priority, though. I’d been awake for maybe twenty minutes, and I had a meeting at 8:30. If I got up at eight on the nose, I’d have a little less than seven hours’ sleep. That is if I could conk myself out in the next five minutes.

I flipped the light off and got back under the covers. A little box-breathing slowed my heart rate and helped me clear my mind.

The quiet-empty of outside slipping in the room with me. In a few hours, passing vehicles and children between the ages of eight and sixteen would be one story down, just outside my bedroom window talking—all of which I’d slept through countless times. But right now that quiet-empty filled my bedroom. It expanded like a parade float, covering the air, settling over me, crushing the air out of my lungs and filling me back up with more quiet-empty—

“Stop it.” The sound of my voice chased the quiet-empty away. I could feel it at the corners of my room, waiting for me to relax so it could infiltrate again. I couldn’t stay vigilant all night. At some point, I had to get back to sleep.

But I continued flexing some foreign part of me, like I was trying to balance myself on a tightrope that ran the length of me. Like it was just under my bedsheets and if I teetered too far this way, I would fall.

Into what, I couldn’t imagine. As I lay there, though, helpless and sharp-minded, wary and exposed, a question became clear to me.

How the hell do I get back to sleep?

The heat in Lowell Grove, Florida, doesn’t just sit on your skin.

It presses into you like a damp, suffocating weight. Out here, the humidity makes the air feel thick enough to choke on, carrying the stagnant scent of swampland, rotting palmettos, and old secrets. However, the air isn’t the only thing that suffocates me anymore. It’s the eyes.

Every single time that I step outside my aunt Jessica’s house, the eyes find me. They track me from front porches, from behind the cash registers at the gas station, and through the rearview mirrors of passing pickup trucks.

They look at me as if I’m a ticking time bomb. As if I’m a monster wearing a human mask.
Everyone in Lowell Grove treats me like a freak now. I can’t blame them, I suppose. It’s hard to look at someone when you know exactly whose blood is pumping through their veins. They look at my face and they don't see Sadie Ross, the quiet girl who used to read paperbacks in the back of the library. They see him. They see the man who tore this town apart.

Two years ago, when I was fourteen years old, I didn’t warrant a second glance from anyone. I was a textbook shy bookworm. I spent my weekends hidden behind thick fantasy novels, trying to disappear into worlds where the monsters were easily defeated by magic swords. 

I wore oversized sweaters to hide my frame, I kept my head down in the hallways of Lowell Grove High School, and I let my parents, Bob and Muriel, do all of the talking for me. Back then, my biggest worry was whether I’d pass my chemistry exam or if I’d ever muster up the courage to speak to the boy who sat next to me in my homeroom class.

Then came Halloween night. The night that fractured my life into a permanent "before" and "after” picture.

To understand what happened, you have to understand Hugo Brennan. If you had asked anyone in Lowell Grove before that night who Hugo was, they would have smiled. He was a solid, dependable, fiercely friendly pillar of our community. He ran the local hardware store, volunteered at the annual autumn festival, and always helped the elderly neighbors clear their yards after a tropical storm. 

Hugo had this deep, booming laugh that made you feel instantly safe. He was the kind of man who always knew exactly what kind of tool that you needed, exactly how to fix a broken hinge, and exactly how to hide a rot so deep and psychopathic that it defied human comprehension. He was a master manipulator, wearing a smile for decades while a ravenous, violent void grew inside of his chest.

When Halloween arrived two years ago, Hugo finally let the mask slip. Or rather, he traded his human mask for a different one.

When the sun went down, he dressed entirely in heavy, void-like black tactical gear, and over his face, he wore a scary, polished red chrome mask. The mask was terrifyingly smooth, devoid of any human expression, reflecting the streetlights in a distorted, bloody crimson smear. 

Later, during the investigation, the police found his journals, explaining the twisted logic behind his choice of costume. Hugo believed that the town of Lowell Grove was stagnant, rotting from its own hypocrisy. The red chrome was meant to act as a literal mirror. He wanted his victims' last sight to be their own terrified faces reflected in the blood-red veneer of their executioner. He wanted them to see their own fear, warped and magnified, right before he took their lives. It was his twisted way of forcing the town to look at its own hidden ugliness.

Hugo's killing spree was systematic and ruthless. He moved through the foggy, humid night like a shadow, taking life after life with a heavy, custom-forged hunting machete. By midnight, he had slaughtered nine people. He killed the teenagers parked out by the old pier; he killed the elderly couple who lived at the end of our street; he even killed a deputy who pulled him over, leaving the cruiser's red lights flashing against his metallic mask.

Then, Hugo came to my house.

I remember the smell of iron and copper filling our living room. I remember the sound of the front door splintering open. My dad, Bob, tried to fight him off. He grabbed a heavy brass lamp, but Hugo was a mountain of a man, driven by a manic, unstoppable frenzy. I watched from the stairs, paralyzed by a fear so profound that I couldn't even scream, as Hugo cut my father down. Bob died trying to protect us, his blood pooling on the hardwood floor that we had waxed just days before.

Then Hugo dragged my mother, Muriel, into the center of the room by her hair. I scrambled down the stairs, weeping, begging for him to stop. I was wearing my Halloween costume—a white dress and a pair of feather-and-wire angel wings which I had spent a week crafting. I must have looked pathetic, a trembling, fragile angel trapped in a house of slaughter.

Hugo stopped. He didn't strike my mother down immediately. Instead, he reached up with his gloved hand and tilted the red chrome mask upward, just enough to reveal his eyes and his mouth. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and gleaming with a sickening, possessive pride.

"Look at her, Muriel." Hugo whispered, his voice incredibly calm, completely devoid of the booming friendliness that he used to fake at the hardware store. "Look at our beautiful girl."

I froze. My brain couldn't process the words. My mother was weeping. Her face was pale, and her chest was heaving. Hugo gripped her jaw tightly, forcing her to look up at him.

"Tell her, Muriel!" Hugo commanded. "Tell her why I'm doing this! Tell her why I came home!"

There, in the bleeding heart of our destroyed home, the truth poured out like venom. Through choked sobs, my mother confessed everything. Fourteen years ago, long before I was born, she had felt trapped in a passionless marriage with Bob. She had turned to the charming, helpful Hugo Brennan. They had a brief, intense affair. When my mother realized that she was pregnant, she panicked. 

My mother knew that Hugo was different—she had glimpsed flashes of his terrifying possessivity and volatile anger even back then. She broke off the affair, returned to Bob, and raised me as Bob’s daughter, keeping the secret buried deep in her chest to protect me from the shadow of Hugo's true nature.

Hugo had discovered the truth only months prior to Halloween. When he confronted my mother in secret, demanding to be a part of my life, demanding that she leave Bob and give him his daughter. My mother utterly rejected him. She threatened to go to the police, to expose him, and to take me away forever.

That rejection was the catalyst. It shattered the delicate, carefully constructed dam holding back his lifelong psychopathic urges. If he couldn't have his family, and if the town was going to keep his bloodline from him, he would tear the town to pieces. He would cleanse Lowell Grove in a river of red chrome reflections. He killed my mother right there because she dared to keep his own flesh and blood away from him.

"You're mine, Sadie!" Hugo said, turning those wild, bloodshot eyes toward me as my mother's body fell limp. "You carry my fire! We're going to leave this pathetic town together!"

Hugo dropped my mother and stepped toward me, raising the heavy, blood-slicked blade. He would have killed me too. I saw it in his eyes—the sudden, erratic realization that if I didn't come willingly, he would rather destroy his creation than leave it behind. He lunged at me, the red mask gleaming under the ceiling light.

Unfortunately, the shy bookworm died in that exact second. A raw, primal survival instinct exploded within me. As he swung the machete, I ducked beneath his massive arm, the wire edges of my angel wings scraping against his tactical vest. He overextended, stumbling slightly on the blood-slicked floor. I didn't think. I didn't hesitate. I grabbed a heavy, iron fire poker from the hearth next to me and swung it with every ounce of terror and adrenaline coursing through my veins.

The heavy iron struck the side of his knee with a sickening crack. Hugo roared in pain, dropping to one knee. Before he could recover, I lunged forward, grabbing the hilt of his own dropped machete from the floor. As he threw his head back, his red chrome mask reflecting my own blood-spattered, angelic white dress, I drove the blade forward.

I killed him. I killed my own father in self-defense, burying the steel deep into his chest until the light finally left his monstrous eyes.

When the police arrived, they found me sitting on the front porch, covered in the blood of my parents and my killer, my white feather wings stained a horrific, deep crimson.

In the aftermath, the trauma didn't leave. It settled into my bones. I moved in with my Aunt Lilly, my mother’s sister, into a small house on the edge of Lowell Grove. The media caught wind of the story, and because of the gruesome irony of my costume, the press and the local townspeople gave me a nickname: "The Angel of Lowell Grove." They painted me as a symbol of pure innocence overcoming absolute evil. To some of them, I was a tragic hero.

However, heroes don't stay heroes for long in a town built on grief.

The plot twist of my existence didn't stay hidden in the ruins of my living room. The truth eventually clawed its way into the light, and that is exactly how the townspeople found out that I am Hugo’s daughter. When the FBI and state investigators processed the crime scene, they recovered the red chrome mask, the weapons, and Hugo’s personal vehicle.

Inside the glove compartment of his truck was a sealed manila envelope. Inside that envelope was a private DNA paternity test that Hugo had secretly conducted months prior, using a discarded hairbrush of mine he had stolen from our porch, compared against his own DNA profile. The match was an undeniable 99.9%.

Hugo had left a final, digital contingency plan on his home computer. He had recorded a manifesto detailing his motives, explicitly naming Muriel, exposing the affair, and proclaiming me as his biological daughter and the sole heir to his legacy. When the prosecution finalized the closed investigation files, a local journalist leaked the unredacted documents and the video manifesto to the public.

Overnight, the narrative flipped. The "Angel of Lowell Grove" was rewritten in the minds of the townspeople.

Now, the grieving families of the nine people whom Hugo slaughtered don't look at me and see the girl who stopped the monster. They look at me and see the monster’s legacy. They see the genetic blueprint of the man who tore their families apart.
 
They look at my eyes, my jawline, the way that I walk, searching for a trace of Hugo’s psychopathic fire. They treat me like a freak because they know that I carry the DNA of a serial killer. They fear that the blood of the red chrome butcher will one day wake up inside of me.

Sometimes, when I look at my own reflection in the mirror, watching the shadows shift in my dark eyes…I wonder…if they're right.

The End.

The moment I began to hear the voice was the moment I knew that I was going to follow the same fate as my sister. And by that point I didn't care anymore. I didn't care about these people who were supposed to have helped me. I didn't care that it was going after their families in the same manner as it went after my sister. I didn't care that I heard their screams in night, amplified through it's damn supernatural abilities so I would hear it all in an attempt to haunt me with supposed failures of my actions. And that's where it was playing into. The empathy of man. Trying to appeal to it so I would rush out and do something for people that didn't do anything to help me.

But then again it knew I had no mercy for this town or it's people. It knew I wasn't empathetic yet it was stringing out that part in me with the screams and flashes of the vicitims faces because it wanted to kill that part of me entirely.

It knew the hunger I had.

It was on a hot summer day in the spruce trees with no-seeums by the mass as I had found her because of them gathered around her broken body. It was on a hot summer day with the sun highest in the sky as I had picked her up and began to carry her towards our home as tears sprung down my face. That summer day that would forever be burned into my mind as the day everything was fucking ripped apart with claws and teeth and strength of a being that came from the void of Hell itself.

It was there in the treeline watching me as I had carried Joan home, ensuring it's violence would have witnesses. I heard a soft whistling but I didn't look back to see it. I didn't dare to.

I just remember the feeling of a lightheadedness that was wrong. I shouldn't be feeling like that. But it was there trying to see if it could lure me in like it did my sister whenever she spoke about the voice calling her into the forest.A mellifluous and sweet cadence with an underlining of raw rage beneath those sickly sweet words.

But I kept moving as I had cried for my mom and uncle and they came outside and they saw the thing whistling first before looking at me carrying my torn sister in my arms as best as I could with tears in my eyes and blood pooling everywhere. They rushed to get me and Joan and after that, after father got home in a rush it was the same shell shock as me amongst the remaining family I had. But then the old familiar rage of my lineage began to take over in my father. He went to the law enforcement in town and about one business day later they assembled hunting parties. They covered the area behind our house to make it look like they were doing their job on purpose, Ostaka Police Department. Then they covered area farther and farther away from where the original location was.

My father and two of his friends had caught this and when they were pushing too far, asking too many questions, seeing what they weren't suppose too, he had come home brutalized enough to be a shell of the man he was. They made sure he survived through the hospital they brought him too and made sure the staff didn't pry into what exactly happened to a man with five cuts to his neck to frighten him into thinking he was going to get decapitated. His two friends had been found in a ditch all cut up into pieces with bite marks scattered all over their pieces.

He saw it. They saw it. They were exposed to the creature itself because the OPD brought them to it.

That's what my father told me on his last remaining day on earth before taking his own life. He told me he was sorry and that Joan and I and our family deserved better from a stronger man. My father didn't remember much of the creature he saw but he remembered the teeth, the claws, the way it moved unnaturally to spike a fear strong enough to break his will after he forced to witness it brutalize his childhood friends. But most of all, he wanted me to understand that I couldn't trust anyone in this town except outsiders. Not the police. Not the city council. Not even my own family voices because it would use them to try lure me in.

What is it, dad?

If you know it's name it will come after you, boy. But it's going to anyways so there's not much point of hiding it anymore. Some people call it a wendigee. Others think that they're skinwalkers. But here in our town it's called Kushtaka, Gavin.

There's more?

Yes. But not like ours, Gavin. They know how to leave people alone enough to make them disbelieve everything about what they are. If they even exist. But the Kushtaka doesn't care because it know it's protected...it's protected by a pact the Indians had made here long ago to try to stop the White man. They sold the future, the soul of this land, and it's honest people to a thing they didn't fully understand because it hunted them too, Gavin. It ate their little bastards like it tried to do to your sister, my boy.

Why did it go after us, dad? We didn't do anything-

We didn't have to, Gavin. It's our blood. Our blood type is intoxicating to it. Something about O negative drives it wild. Makes it more ferocious and predatory.

The memory begins to surface with a ripping ache in my heart as I catch myself touching her phantom blood on my shirt.

GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!

That's it, my boy. You hold that rage close. You hold that need for vengeance close. That's retribution. That's your manhood in your need to kill it.

He gripped my shoulder and looked in my dead Azure Blue eyes with his own darker irises as they came to life in this moment and I almost felt alive again at witnessing this.

You will kill it for the sake of this rage you carry. I always wondered what and who it would be used for as it was passed down in our lineage and now I know it was waiting for you, Gavin. This moment, I want you to understand that you will rip that fucking bastard apart like it did to your sister, like it did to your mother, like it did to your uncle. You fucking swear that to me, boy, or by God i'll come back from Hell itself to haunt you till the day you die.

I swear, dad.

He looked in my azure blue eyes that I knew were coming to life again and he grunted in an affirmation before hugging me close to him as the last of family was here on this aging porch threatening to be overtaken by the weeds.

It was the last moment in the years to come that I would feel this alive with another person.

I found him hanging in his and mom's bedroom in the morning and cut him down. There was no one I could count on. No one I could rely on. No one I could trust within this town except the outsiders. But I didn't need them for this as I carried him out of the dilapidated house to a place I could only think of. A place where mom and my uncle and my sister were buried and hoping to Christ that their bodies would be left alone.

Six years later

In the span of six years the first two were of blind pure rage accumulating itself in my workouts. Getting physically stronger as I bought up the weapons I needed from the inheritance I collected and getting by on that. Watching the unmarked police vans driving by where I lived and sometimes parking where they thought I didn't see them. I learned all their names by the end of the first month of those two years as I built myself up. And during those first two years, there had not been any reports in local media of any animal attacks, maulings, or deaths. There was nothing from the Kushtaka those years because it was sated on my family. Or more likely it's protectors were helping cover up anything it did.

In year three I got a job as a hunting guide as I began to take the hunting more seriously than before. During that third year there was one and only one report allowed for the press to report as an animal attack that caused two deaths. A couple getting high out at Termination point with no weapons on them. I know because I lured them out there with the promise of a party in the hopes of finally seeing the Kushtaka. It was in the hot summer months with the sun highest in the sky as I had waited, hidden in the foliage and down wind of the site.

I watched the couple for as long as they waited into the night. Desperate for their fix. Which is why I picked them. I knew they would wait this long. All the way from mid day to dusk and well into the night with waxing gibbous moon high in the sky. The no-seeums were thankfully not in swarms as there had still be wind enough to keep them away as I sat perched on the tree branch and as still as a polar bear waiting for the seal to come up for air in the aglu.

"Well this was a fucking bust," The male junkie whined into the night to his female companion.

Before I heard something else as they talked, something so familiar as I felt that wrong sense of light headedness. Not like a sense of passing out but the sense of a comforting soothe from the whistle that was softly emitting from somewhere in the woods as I looked around desperately for it. I pulled back the charging handle and a round ejected from the port on my already waiting SCAR battle rifle in an almost excited panic as I realized and let the rifle hang by it's sling and took out the night vision binoculars as I looked around desperately again with them.

The junkies screamed in the exact moment I heard a sickly sweet voice say "I'm up here,"

I snapped my head from the binoculars and saw it in the air. It was in the air silently flapping it's arms like a bird with small flaps of black skin emitting no sound at all.

I really didn't care for that at all as all my attention was caught on it's appearance.

It looked like a man but that's where it's semblance of humanity ended as it landed in the clearing before the fear paralyzed junkie couple. It was not like any wendigo, any skinwalker, description i've read. It resembled none of that bullshit at all. It looked like a demon straight from Hell itself with it's black and crimson striations marking it's muscular body. It's arms still out like a bird attempting flight as the flaps of skin retracted back into it's body. It's long clawed fingers stretched wide in a flex before curling into fists. And it's eyes hung loose by it's strands like dead weight, like it ripped them out itself for some reason beyond human standard or belief before they suddenly began to float up on those strands on it's own seemingly free will. It's irises were a crimson X surrounded by stygian black voids as it looked up at the paralyzed junkies and then up to where I was perched in the tree.

It raised a fist and a clawed finger began to extend to point at where I was and I immediately jumped down and began to fire blindly at it as I ran backwards before turning and immediately running into a sprint as a cacophony of hellish screaming and overlapping moans began to fill the forest air.

It brought back the memory. It brought back the dread of turning to look back it or I would lose my mind at the sight of it.

Only my bloodline wouldn't dare allow such a thing to happen as I began to slowly stop hyperventilating and the tears began to dry.

Only my bloodline was more important than the fear that was threatening to overwhelm me to the point of going catatonic like my father had.

Not like him. Three repeated punches at the horn and the horn blaring as a warning into the night.

Not as weak as him. Roaring into the void of the car as I raced past those still out at night.

When I got to where I lived rushed inside and was a hurricane of violence as I lifted the front of the couch and tossed it against the wall hard enough to crack it and then break my fists against everything that I saw. Which wasn't much. Not enough to sate me as I ejected the empty battle rifle magazine and then slammed a fresh one in and raised it towards the roof and let it fire away as I roared "MOTHERFUCKER!"

Sometime during the night as I sat in only non broken chair in the kitchen, I waited in the dark for the inevitable visit for this first encounter with it.

"Gavin?"

It was officer Hillstrand without a doubt and I was proven right as he thought he was safe enough to dare peak his head around the corner.

"I come in peace Gavin. And you know why," He said as he dared to step inside the kitchen to meet me glaring at him.

"You finally saw your family's killer tonight face to face and I know you're angry. Hell maybe even-,"

A .45 ACP hollowpoint grazed his cheek as he immediately stood still as a statue. A loud ringing perturbed the destroyed kitchen arena.

"Say it and see what happens, Marcus,"

"I won't. I'm sorry. But just listen to reason, Gavin. Please?" He held up his hands.

I held the .45 pointed towards him as I only glared.

"You can't kill it. Don't think we haven't tried all these years, Gavin,"

"Bullshit! All this technology and all this fire power and you can't kill some fucking demon?!" I suddenly shouted in rage," There has to be somebody with the fucking balls to kill it, God damn it!"

"I told you we tried and we tried-,"

"You're protecting the fucking thing! ALL OF YOU!"

"Because we have to, Gavin. We need to because some fucking shamans wanted to play God and failed. I'm sure your daddy told you about that because we told him and he still wanted to fight it just like you. Just like me and everyone else here. We weren't the ones who harmed your father, Gavin. It wanted to see him and we have to do what it says or-,"

"Or you end up like my family," I finished for him bitterly.

"Yes. And we did our best to try to stop it. We tried to contain it but it smelled your blood. It drove it wild and it couldn't be reasoned with by the point it went after Joan, Gavin,"

"You...you tried to reason with it?" I stared blankly at Marcus.

"Yes. You saw a glimpse of it's intelligence tonight alongside it's appearance and unless you want to die like your father did, please just leave it alone Gavin. It's not worth your life,"

I stared blankly at him for a long moment, hearing nothing else at all before quickly peeking out the window at the driveway to see a lone cruiser.

I dumped his body in pieces at the doorstep to his home. He was lucky there was only his aging wife there.

I knew they would have suspicions but I also knew they would blame the Kushtaka which is why they finally printed in the media about two separate vicious animal attacks the next day. For the rest of the year, there was no other reports of this. Fish and Game was the only department brought into the fatal animal mauling of officer Marcus Hillstrand. There was a blurb about the junkies, one having been found dead and the other reported missing. No further details on either and especially when Fish and Game left.

I would know because of my hunting job. They asked me to help look for the animal to which I declined as I looked past the two wardens to the officers giving me death stares behind their backs.

"Why not, sir?"

"I'm still new to this and I wouldn't want to lead you folks on a wild goose chase. Plus I don't think i'd have the guts to chase an animal like that,"

I looked from one pale perturbed face to the other. They knew alright.

"Dangerous animal alright. I figure you have enough help with these young men and all their up to date technology," I clapped Warden Tennison's shoulder as I met his gaze before smiling at the even more perturbed officer's faces.

"Well damn it. I was figuring you would help-,"

"You figured wrong, sir,"

"I guess I did, Gavin. You have a good day now,"

I knew they only wanted my help to pull the same shit they did with my father.

Once I dealt with that bullshit for now, it was turning back to the whispering I was starting to hear. It was starting as a soft sussurration for now. The same way it started with Joan as I sat in the silence of my room with my SCAR in lap, trying to discern the words as it came and left in sporadic and random moments. I was marked now just like her. And bringing back the memory of her, I realized I shouldn't be listening to this shit as I dropped the on the bed and fell down to the floor and did pushups until my muscles burned. If I didn't know any better at that moment, it was trying to set it's hooks deeper into my mind. Which I know it did when I saw what it looked like because just like that fateful summer day, it was burned and trying to burrow it's way into my amygdala to ratchet it's sense of fear and awe. That wasn't going to happen one fucking bit as I cranked out another twenty pushups with grunts as I began to vary the position of my hands from flat against the floor to closed fists.

Every time I closed my eyes I would see those evil black and crimson striations. I would see the impossible way it floated down unlike anything i've read or seen. Worse of all I would see those God damned malevolent eyes staring at me. Not hanging loose. Perfect set like a person's should be in their skull. I would see those eyes in the darkness. I would see them in the daylight. I would see them in my most private moments. I would see them in the midst of a crowd.

Everywhere I went. The apparition of those eyes would be there to haunt me.

I was marked just like Joan.

But unlike Joan, I was learning what it was to kill it.

There was no escalation from OPD during the next year but there was from the Kushtaka. During year four, I began to train harder in the gym. My bench press went up from 315 to 335lbs for four sets of six. My barbell curls went up from 185lbs to 225lbs for four sets of eight. It only took me four and a half months as I dealt with the whispering now growing to a clear and soft voice.

"Gavin Krycek,"

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 - Current

I always wanted to be an astronaut, but I didn’t have the mind made for physics, nor the body built to endure. Makes a lot of sense where I ended up. Mining isn’t as glamorous; you don’t get all the fame and recognition of travelling to space, but we are pioneers in a different way. While astronauts strive to understand our universe , we strive for the understanding of our home. I like to think of us as geonauts, for we are explorers of the dirt.

The detonation chord traced a path I didn’t recognize. We passed through countless secondary chambers branching from the main. Some even had tertiary tunnels that delved deeper, leading to God knows where. In another life, I would’ve loved to explore them all. My memory of this time is a blur, but from the quick glimpse my light granted, I could’ve sworn I saw egg sacs hanging from the ceilings of some of those secondary chambers. We paused briefly to take samples of one of the sacs, its substance sticky and pale white. There was something else here too.

Carvings. 

Not just the pockmarked surfaces we saw earlier. They looked like they had meaning behind them, intelligence. Etched directly into the stone face we saw depictions of what looked like people. Crude, yes, but people. Standing in a circle, their arms raised to the sky. Whether they were made by that thing, or the people dragged below, I couldn’t be sure.

We eventually made it to the blast site. It was silent in the caves throughout our journey back, save for the occasional sound of a distant rumble. Now that we arrived; however, that noise grew louder. It was getting closer.

“How’re we lookin’, Wilson?” I asked, my voice unsteady, my eyes never leaving the cavern entrance.

“Just about there, I only need to... there, got it.” He was hunched over the detonator for what felt like hours. Each second that passed felt one step closer to the inevitable. I admired his handiwork. Once we set off the trigger, this entire section of the shaft would collapse. I glanced down at the detonator hesitantly. He caught my look.

“Hey, Cole, they’re gone already. We need to do this. Once we’re clear of the blast radius, we’ll grab John and get out of here.”

“I know, fuck I know. What will we tell the company?” I asked.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m done. I’ll sign whatever NDA they put in front of me, but after that I’m done.” He said with finality.

Sucking in a deep breath, I turned and offered a hand to help him up. That’s when we noticed the noise. Above the hum of the overhead emergency lights, a low shuffling sound. It wasn’t the rumbling noise we’ve grown accustomed to. Throughout our journey back, we periodically heard what we can only assume to be that giant creature rummaging through the caverns below. But this was different. It was like something being dragged.

Then we saw it.

From the direction of the elevator shaft, our only exit, came a figure.

“John?!” I yelled in a half-panicked, half-relieved cry.

John looked ragged, like he’d just been through a paper shredder. His body was covered in pockmarked holes, feverishly scratching his face. His suit was in tatters and I wondered as to how he survived this long with it so damaged. Whatever the reason, we rushed over.

“John,” Wilson said as we ran up, “what are you doing here? You should be...”

He looked up at us, his eyes vacant and bloodshot. We attempted to sit him up, but I noticed his legs were gone from the knee down. Exposed bone and tendons were all that was left. He coughed; blood trickling down the sides of his mouth.

“It knew,” he intoned. “The whole time, it knew we were here and it wanted us to come. The only thing we did was give it a path. We sowed our own graves.”

He coughed once more, blood and bile spilling onto the ground, and slumped over. I finally noticed the legs. Thousands of tiny, waxy-white legs partially dissolved in his gastric acid. His last word both confused and terrified me.

Scolopendra

Wilson and I exchanged worried glances.

“John...?” Wilson asked.

Suddenly, with the eerie resemblance of a cornered animal, he launched himself at us. I stumbled back and actually managed to put some distance between us, but that left Wilson to take the brunt of the attack. John tackled him, and after a brief struggle, pinned him down. Crawling out of every available orifice were hundreds of centipedes. His skin sloughed and slithered, with more of the little insects below the surface. 

Holding Wilson down, he vomited the creatures onto his suit. It didn’t take long for them to puncture it and wriggle their way inside. I will hear the sounds he made for the rest of my life. I had to do something; had to end this.

Moving without conscious thought, I hefted a pickaxe and, lifting it up, buried it deep into John’s back. He let loose a high-pitched wail, and something down the endless caverns responded in kind. But he didn’t stop, it didn’t even slow him down. Pulling the pick out I drove it into him once more. Again and again I buried the pick deeper and deeper until John was a lumpy pile of blood and viscera. Only once he stopped moving did I throw the pick down. The remaining creatures quickly scurried off into deep cracks in the rocky substrate. I stumbled back and looked down at my own bloodied hands. I was trembling, tears rolling down my cheek as my helmet fogged.

Wilson gagged.

I rushed over, carefully rolling John’s corpse to the side. I lost count of the number of centipedes half-embedded in Wilson’s face and abdomen. He was coughing fitfully, the creatures still squirming down his esophagus.

“Wilson...Wilson!” I yelled, shaking him violently. “Please, please oh fuck!”

“Go.” He managed, coughs sputtering out between each breath. “Get to...the elevator.” He pointed to his left, and my eyes followed.

The detonator.

“Get...out of here”, he rasped. “When I see it, I-I’ll set off the explosives.”

I looked into his eyes for a moment. Wilson never seemed the self-sacrifice type. Over the few months I’ve known him, I’ve actually grown to hate the man. But looking at him here, now, all I could feel was guilt and pity.

“Don’t, don’t look at m-me like that. J-just run.”

“Fuck, fuck. Okay.” I sighed. Grabbing the detonator, I placed it into his palm and wrapped his fingers around the trigger. He tilted his head up, eyes locked on mine, but not seeing me, “Maggie, I-I...”

I pushed up to standing. Wilson threw off his gloves, already scratching frantically at his face and neck. I only walked a few feet when I heard a boom from just within the first cavern.

I took off like a shot, pausing only briefly to make sure my suit wasn’t damaged. The last thing I needed was to tear it and experience what I can only imagine a turkey feels on Thanksgiving. I stumbled more than once making it back to the collapsed ceiling. It felt like days since I was last here, clearing the debris with Wilson to execute our makeshift rescue plan. I was the only one left now, but I didn’t ponder too long on the fact. There would be time enough for survival’s guilt later.

Squeezing into the small tunnel, I wished we had the foresight to make the opening bigger. I needed to be quick, but I could only move so fast within the tight space. Flashes of those giant pincers danced across my mind and I could almost hear the venom singing the rock behind me. Without light, it was hard to focus on anything else. I reckoned that I was nearly out of the blast radius when I heard it.

BOOM

The ground shook, the walls vibrated, and the last thing on my mind was to move slowly. Best case scenario, the partially collapsed roof would fully entomb me, at least my death would be quick. I thought back to Wilson’s last words, ‘When I see it, I’ll set off the explosives.’ I didn’t need to be an expert to know that that thing was somewhere off back the way I came. Somewhere close. With any luck, it died in the explosion, but I knew luck wasn’t on my side today.

I cleared the passage with no room to spare. The debris immediately collapsed in after, maybe luck was on my side. I didn’t stop to think about it though and took off running once again. I ran like my life depended on it, no longer caring about overexertion or the integrity of my suit. I wanted out. I wanted it more than anything in my life. But the final obstacle wasn’t one I’d easily overcome.

The elevator shaft.

Huge boulders sat atop the entrance, leaving a tiny space near the top to crawl. I saw through the opening that the suspension chord still seemed intact. I looked around the corridor. There was blood everywhere. John’s blood. The memory of repeatedly brutalizing him with the pick raced through me like an electric shock. I didn’t think I'd ever find peace again. There was something else here though. Boxes of never to be used equipment, and sitting atop it all, a length of rope and a carabiner. 

A plan was beginning to form. I grabbed the rope and tied it around my waist, then clipping the carabiner to my belt, I made my way to the elevator. Scaling the fallen rubble, I took one last glance towards the mine. Suddenly I heard a noise nearly as deafening as the explosion. Those tunnels, the ones further down than our maps went, I knew they couldn’t be manmade. Until now, I thought it was a previously undiscovered cave system, but now I was certain what made them. Of course, I thought. It burrows.

Moving as quickly as my body would allow, I fastened the carabiner to the suspension chord and immediately began my ascent. It was hell walking up the wall. With gravity wanting nothing more than for me to plummet to the closest resting position, it took nearly all my strength to just remain still. One foot in front of the other, that’s what I kept repeating in my head. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. It became my mantra. I can’t die down here I can’t, not when so close to salvation.

After only a hundred feet or so the shaft plunged into darkness. With my headlamp drained of battery, I began to panic. Then, soft at first, an iridescent glow radiated from below, bathing me in a rainbow sea. I had the sudden urge to look down. I wish I hadn’t. Through the vibrant display I saw a pair of long, threadlike antennae thrashing about in a graceful sweep. They peaked out of the crevice that I’d just emerged from moments ago.

I stopped. The muscles in my arms and legs screamed at me but I remained motionless. I wouldn’t move, couldn’t move. It took all my willpower to simply be. Slowly, the antennae retracted and there was a moment where the only sound was my own heavy, rapid heartbeat.

All at once a cacophony of unbearably loud screams echoed out from the opening. What sounded like the death throes of a dying animal reached my ears in a fever pitch. The chittering wail of something I could hardly understand, let alone believe that the natural world could conjure such a creature.

The elevator shaft erupted into motion as a swirling mass of disjointed arms and legs with too many bends clambered over one another to see who could get at me first. I saw faces between the twisting appendages—some I recognized, some I did not. My brain turned off. In one swift motion I grabbed the rope with both hands, beginning my climb once more. My arms and legs moved in tandem, gears to a greater machine with a grander purpose.

Left foot right foot.

I threw all nonessential items off my person; headlamp, scanner, samples, everything except for what kept me alive. I tore at my suit, trying not to damage it, but every little item torn was more weight taken off. Every impact eliciting a scream from that terrible amalgamate; the circling mass of bodies sent to do the bidding of something even more terrible. The fleshy, hollowed out appendages trying desperately to grab me and drag me down; into that deep, dark grave.

Slowly, I was gaining distance. I don’t know how long I was climbing in that claustrophobic nightmare, but after what felt like an eternity, a light appeared. A dim glow that, at first, barely illuminated my hands, grew to expand my entire being. I was close.

Depth: Two miles; 10,560 feet. Rock Temperature: 115.4°F; Ambient Temperature: 85°F

Breaching the top of the shaft should’ve felt divine, but the nightmare wasn’t over. Hauling myself to the top, I looked around for something, anything to bury the encroaching doom. There wasn’t a person in sight; the tunnel had been evacuated in a hurry. But, there were minecarts full of rock and ore. Rushing over to one, I unceremoniously drove it off the edge. It didn’t take long to hear a shrill scream, but I didn’t stop. I kept launching carts until there were none left. I could still hear motion though, so I did the one thing I didn’t want to. I should’ve done this from the beginning, but there was a small part of me that thought my colleagues were still alive in there.

I cut the elevator chord, causing the headframe and counterweight to topple over. The screaming came to an end in a blissful quiet. I stood there, staring into the endless void of darkness for sometime. Eventually, I heard movement once again, but it was growing faint. That thing was still alive, but it was moving further away. My fight was over.

I took my suit off, and for some reason neatly folded it, and left it at the edge of the shaft. Maybe to signify my victory, or maybe to remember those who lost their lives in the dark. Here lies Johnathan Leads, Wilson Adler, Robert Sanchez, and the many more, forever immortalized in a tomb of stone. I made my way back to the first elevator, and, hitting the button to ascend, fell to my knees and lost consciousness.

-

They said I have a concussion. There was more to it, but that’s all I was able to hear through the dull ringing. I was hysterical. Inconsolable to the staff of on-site doctors. They didn’t believe me, a story about monster insects and zombified workers; who could blame them. But someone must have thought that at least part of my story was true because, shortly after they found me in the elevator, they flooded the mine. Apparently there are bigger concerns than profits.

I was fined, of course, for “Irreparable damage to the mining equipment and hindrance of future profits”, a sum I’d never be able to pay off. I could try to fight it, but what would be the point? I was let go too, for whatever legal reason they could think of. They could bankrupt me, discredit me, or throw me in jail; I didn’t care. How could I? To this day I still hear it. Whether it’s driving to whatever dead-end job I managed to hold down that month, or lying in bed unable to sleep. A faint rumbling, threatening to rear its head.

By the time you’ve heard something, it’s already too late.

Some look to the stars for answers, some look ahead, fewer look below. I went searching for fame, for glory. A deep-seeded need for recognition. In a way, I guess I found it. I know what’s beneath our feet. Somewhere in the deep, dark crevices of our unexplored planet, it lives. I will never walk below the surface again, for I know what’s down there: Scolopendra.

The stalks of corn on Jeremiah Duskwood’s farm didn't look like plants anymore. In the dying, orange glare of the Halloween sunset, they looked like a million skeletal fingers clawing their way out of the dead dirt. 

The air smelled of rotten pumpkins, stagnant river water, and the dry, choking dust of a harvest left to decay. I stood at the perimeter of the field, my fingers gripping the strap of my digital camera so tightly that my knuckles turned the color of the pale moon rising over the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

I am seventeen years old, and even though my friends thought that this was just another thrilling high school dare, every instinct in my body was screaming at me to run back to the highway.

"Look at the size of this place!" Lucas said, his flashlight beam cutting through the gloom, illuminating the perimeter of the outer rows. He adjusted the collar of his denim jacket, shivering as a sudden, icy wind swept down from the hills. "You could hide an entire army in these stalks and never find them!"

"We aren't looking for an army, Lucas. We're looking for him." Nadine said, her phone already held high, its camera app open and ready. She turned back to look at me, her eyes bright with a dangerous, teenage bravado. "Come on, Eve, stop lagging behind. If we get a clear shot of the scarecrow on Halloween night, everyone at school is going to lose their minds on Monday. We’ll be legends."

"Nadine, this is a terrible idea." I muttered, my voice shaking as I looked back at the empty, two-lane road that we had left behind. "It’s trespassing on the oldest property in the county. My parents told me stories about this place. People don't just go missing here; people avoid this entire side of Duskwood for a reason."

"Your parents are superstitious, just like everyone else in this dynamic little ghost town." Oscar chimed in, tossing a small rock into the darkness of the corn. A dull, muffled thud echoed back, followed by the dry rustle of corn silk. "Jeremiah Duskwood has been dead for over a hundred and fifty years. What's he going to do, haunt us with a hoe?"

Everyone in our town knew the name, Jeremiah Duskwood. He was one of the original founders who mapped out the valley in the early nineteenth century.

To the casual historian, he was a philanthropist who built the first grist mill, funded the town hall, and saved Duskwood from a devastating famine in the 1840s; but the older families—the ones who remembered the dark blood in the soil—knew a different story. 

They believed that Jeremiah was a master of high witchcraft, a man who had made a pact with an ancient, subterranean entity to ensure that his crops always grew, no matter the weather.

 In fact, many people believed that he was the one who originally unleashed all of the evil in Duskwood—the curses, the missing persons, the anomalous horrors—as a calculated, twisted way of coercing the town into relying on his protection and his resources forever.

The secret journals of the town council recorded that in October of 1856, a group of frantic, terrified townspeople finally uncovered his basement altar. They hunted him down like an animal, chasing him into the absolute center of his massive cornfield. They executed him right there, hanging him from a makeshift wooden gallows constructed directly next to his prized, towering scarecrow. 

According to the legend, Jeremiah’s spirit never left the property. It was believed that his black soul had crawled inside that very scarecrow, waiting for the veil between the living and the dead to wear thin enough for him to finish what he started.

"I’m with Eve." Lucas admitted, his flashlight flickering slightly in the damp air. "The atmosphere here is completely wrong. Let's just go back to the car."

"Oh, don't be a coward, Lucas." Nadine scoffed, grabbing my arm and pulling me forward over the property line. "Five minutes. We find the center of the field, we take the picture, and we leave. I'm not going back without proof."

Under the weight of Nadine's intense peer pressure, my resolve shattered. We stepped off the safety of the gravel shoulder and plunged directly into the first row of corn.

The transition was instantaneous and terrifying. The moment that the dry stalks closed around us, the distant sound of highway traffic died completely. 

The air grew rapidly colder, our breath turning into thick, white plumes of vapor that drifted through the leaves like tiny ghosts. The corn grew to an unnatural height—nearly ten feet tall—completely blocking out the horizon and the fading twilight, leaving us in a claustrophobic maze of green and brown.

Owen led the way, using his phone's flashlight to guide us down a narrow, muddy path that seemed to wind aimlessly deeper into the interior. 

"The old legend says that the execution happened at the exact center, where the four main drainage ditches meet." Owen muttered, his earlier confidence sounding a bit more strained now.

We walked for what felt like miles, the rustling of the leaves above us sounding horribly like a thousand tiny, whispering voices mocking our intrusion. Every time that a stalk brushed against my shoulder, I jumped, expecting a withered, straw-filled hand to wrap around my throat.

"Look!" Nadine breathed suddenly, stopping so fast that Owen nearly collided with her.

The narrow path suddenly opened up into a massive, perfectly circular clearing in the absolute center of the field. The dirt here was different—it wasn't the rich, brown loam of the outer rows, but a dark, greasy black that smelled faintly of copper and sulfur.

Right in the center of the clearing stood the scarecrow.

It was far larger than any normal agricultural decoy. It stood nearly eight feet tall on a crude, cross-shaped wooden frame made of rough-hewn oak. The body was stuffed with dark, rotting straw that protruded from the tears of a tattered, colonial-era wool coat—the exact type of clothing a wealthy founder would have worn in the 1850s. Its hands were made of sharpened, rusted iron pitchfork tines tied to the wooden sleeves with thick hemp rope. 

However, the head was the most horrifying part. It was a heavy burlap sack, stained with grease and age, with a mouth and two wide, hollow eyes crudely slashed into the fabric with a knife.

"Oh my god." Lucas whispered, backing away until his jacket hit the wall of corn stalks behind him. "That thing is hideous. Look at the face."

"It's perfect." Nadine whispered, a manic grin spreading across her face. She raised her phone, aligning the lens with the monstrous entity in the center of the clearing. "Get ready to smile, Jeremiah."

The phone’s flash went off.

The sudden, blinding burst of white light illuminated every single stitch of the burlap face, casting a long, monstrous shadow across the dirt; but the instant that the light faded, the silence of the cornfield was broken by a sound that made my heart stop.

SNAP.

The heavy oak beam supporting the scarecrow’s weight splintered cleanly in half.

The eight-foot monstrosity didn't fall to the ground. Instead, its wooden spine straightened with a series of loud, unnatural cracks that sounded like a barrage of small firearms. The crude, slashed mouth of the burlap sack stretched open, revealing a hollow, absolute blackness inside, and a sound erupted from its chest—a deep, rhythmic, rattling hiss that sounded like thousands of angry locusts trapped inside a box.

"Run!" I shrieked, dropping my digital camera into the mud.

Unfortunately, it was already too late. The scarecrow didn't lumber or stumble; it leaped forward with a terrifying, spider-like agility, its long wooden limbs moving in a blur of impossible physics.

Before Oscar could even turn around, the scarecrow materialized directly in front of him. The rusted iron pitchfork tines of its right hand shot forward, driving deeply into Oscar's chest with a sickening, wet crunch. The force of the blow lifted him completely off his feet. He let out a brief, strangled gasp before the entity hurled his lifeless body into the corn stalks like a discarded rag doll.

"Oscar!" Nadine shrieked, her phone slipping from her hands and shattering on the ground.

The scarecrow turned its hollow burlap gaze toward her, its head tilting at an unnatural, ninety-degree angle. With a sudden, sweeping motion of its left arm, it swung the jagged wooden beam of its frame. The heavy oak struck Lucas directly across the side of his head, the impact killing him instantly before he even hit the dirt.

"Eve, help me!" Nadine sobbed, her legs giving out from pure, unadulterated terror as she collapsed into the mud.

I tried to reach out for her, to drag her toward the exit path, but the scarecrow was a force of absolute, unshakeable malice. It stepped over Lucas's body, its heavy straw-filled boots crunching into the earth. It raised its rusted iron hand and drove the tines directly into Nadine’s back. Her screams stopped in an instant, replaced by the awful, rhythmic rattling hiss of the entity celebrating its kill.

Three of my best friends were dead in less than thirty seconds.
Paralyzed by a primal survival instinct, I didn't look back. I spun on my heel and bolted down the first path I saw, tearing through the sharp, dry leaves of the corn stalks. 

The leaves sliced into my face and hands, drawing thin lines of blood, but I didn't care about the pain. Behind me, I could hear the constant, terrifying sound of the scarecrow pursuing me—the heavy, rhythmic thud-crunch of its wooden legs snapping the corn stalks as it ran, accompanied by that ceaseless, buzzing locust hiss.

I ran blindly, completely losing my sense of direction in the claustrophobic maze, until the stalks suddenly gave way once more.
Emerging from the inner rows was an ancient, dilapidated structure sat right in the interior of the field. It was a two-story colonial farmhouse, its dark timbers completely blackened by time and weather. 

The reason why Jeremiah Duskwood’s home was built deep inside the cornfield rather than near the main road was immediately obvious to anyone who knew his history: he wanted his private sanctum to be completely insulated from the prying eyes of the townspeople, allowing him to practice his forbidden rituals in total secrecy, surrounded by a living wall of ten-foot corn.

The front door hung slightly ajar. I scrambled up the rotting porch steps, threw my weight against the heavy wood, and slammed the door shut behind me, shoving a heavy, iron-bound oak latch into place just as something slammed violently against the exterior with a concussive force that shook dust from the ceiling beams.

The interior of the house was pitch black, smelling of centuries of dust, dry rot, and old parchment. I stood in the grand foyer, my chest heaving as I listened to the scarecrow tearing at the exterior wood of the front door, its rusted pitchfork hands scratching against the oak like rats.

Knowing that the door wouldn't hold forever, I ran deeper into the house, looking for a weapon or a hiding place. I entered a large, circular room that must have been Jeremiah's private study. In the center of the room sat a massive stone altar, surrounded by faded, geometric lines carved directly into the floorboards. Atop the altar lay a massive, leather-bound tome covered in a thick layer of dust.

Curiosity overpowering my fear, I turned on the small flashlight keychain on my house keys and shone the beam onto the pages. It was a book of high witchcraft, filled with archaic, elegant calligraphy and disturbing anatomical diagrams.

As my eyes scanned the final entries, dated October 1856, a cold, paralyzing realization washed over me. The urban legends hadn't just been stories; they were a documented record of a horrific, successful ritual.

The final page detailed a spell called The Transmigration of the Black Soul. Before the townspeople could hang him, Jeremiah had deliberately allowed them to trap him next to his scarecrow. Using a horrific sacrificial incantation, he had bindingly transferred his own consciousness and life essence into the fabric of the scarecrow at the exact moment that his physical body died. The spell text was explicit: to break the wooden frame and walk as flesh once more, the vessel must harvest the vitality of four living souls upon the night when the veil is thinnest.

Four people. He needed four victims on Halloween night to achieve total resurrection.

He had already killed Nadine, Oscar, and Lucas. Three souls. I was the fourth variable. I was the final sacrifice that he needed to become human again.

CRASH.

The front door of the house finally gave way, splintering into a million pieces under the monster's supernatural strength. The heavy, rhythmic thud-crunch of its wooden legs began to move down the hallway toward the study, accompanied by a louder, more frantic locust hiss.

Panicking, my eyes swept across the altar, looking for any way to disrupt the spell. At the bottom of the page, written in a frantic, trembling script, was a postscript note from Jeremiah’s apprentice:

“Should the central hearth of the sanctum be purified by flame before the fourth harvest is finalized, the vessel shall be permanently bound to the earth, unable to move or shift.”

The central hearth. I looked across the room and saw a massive, stone fireplace filled with ancient, dry tinder and old scrolls.

The scarecrow entered the study, its eight-foot form blotting out the doorway. Its hollow burlap eyes ignited with a fierce, malevolent crimson fire as it saw me standing by the altar. It raised its rusted pitchfork hands, preparing to leap across the room to finalize the ledger.

With a final, desperate scream of survival, I flicked the small plastic lighter which I kept in my pocket for emergencies and threw it directly into the dry tinder of the stone fireplace.

The ancient wood and parchment caught instantly. A massive, roaring explosion of bright, orange flames erupted inside the hearth, sending a wave of intense, blistering heat radiating through the room.

The instant that the fire ignited, the scarecrow let out a piercing, agonizing shriek—a sound that was no longer a locust hiss, but the unmistakable, cultured scream of an old man. The crimson fire in its burlap eyes flickered violently, and its joints locked into place with a series of loud, rigid snaps. 

It froze mid-stride, its long wooden arms suspended in the air, its body completely paralyzed as the purification of the hearth permanently severed its connection to the supernatural energy of the field.

It was immobile. It was just a harmless, oversized decoration once more.

I collapsed to the floor, sobbing hysterically from pure exhaustion and relief. My hands shaking, I pulled my phone from my pocket—and to my absolute shock, now that the supernatural aura of the entity was suppressed, I finally had a single bar of cell service. I immediately dialed 911, screaming my location into the receiver before collapsing against the stone altar, staring at the frozen monstrosity across the room.

Within twenty minutes, the flashing red and blue lights of a state police cruiser cut through the outer perimeter of the cornfield. A gruff, reassuring officer named Deputy Norton broke through the back door of the house, his flashlight drawing sweeping arcs through the dust as he found me huddled by the fireplace.

"It’s okay, kid, you’re safe now." Norton said, his face softening with pity as he saw my tear-streaked face and the thin lines of blood on my hands. He looked at the frozen, eight-foot scarecrow in the center of the room, shaking his head. "What a sick joke. Some pranksters left a display here. Come on, let's get you home to your folks."

He escorted me out of the decaying farmhouse, walking me back down the narrow path toward the main road. The corn stalks seemed quiet now, their menacing whispers replaced by the normal, empty rustle of an autumn breeze. We reached the shoulder of the highway, where his police cruiser sat idling, its spotlight casting a long, clean beam over the asphalt.

"Sit in the back, and clear your head." Norton said, opening the rear door for me. "I need to radio the station to get a cleanup crew out here for your friends' bodies. I'll drive you home right after."

I climbed into the back seat, wrapping a heavy wool blanket around my shoulders, my eyes closed as the tears finally began to dry on my cheeks. I had survived. I had beaten the legend of Jeremiah Duskwood.

Norton shut the rear door, walked around to the driver’s side, and climbed behind the wheel. The heavy engine roared to life, and the cruiser slowly began to pull away from the gravel shoulder, its headlights aligning with the long, empty stretch of highway leading back toward the center of Duskwood.

"Thank you, Deputy Norton." I whispered, leaning my head against the cold glass of the window. "I thought that I was going to die out there."

The driver didn't answer.

I frowned, looking up at the rearview mirror to catch his expression. The interior of the car was completely dark, but as the cruiser passed beneath the last streetlamp near the property line, the amber light illuminated the driver’s silhouette.

The neat, blue uniform of Deputy Norton was covered in a fresh, dark smear of crimson blood across the chest. The officer’s hat was pinned perfectly into place, but as the man behind the wheel slowly turned his head to look back at me, the breath completely died in my throat.

It wasn't Deputy Norton.

The skin on his face was pale, smooth, and entirely human, but his features were sharp, archaic, and aristocratic—the exact face of the wealthy founder from the 1850s oil painting in the town hall. His eyes weren't human; they were two wide, unblinking spheres of polished, glassy onyx that caught the ambient dashboard light, reflecting a cold, knowing smirk back at me.

Jeremiah Duskwood had achieved his final harvest. The scarecrow had killed Deputy Norton while I was walking to the car, completing the requirement of the fourth soul before the purification of the hearth could fully destroy his anchor. The entity was flesh once more.

Before I could scream, and before I could claw at the locked handles of the police cruiser, the man behind the wheel turned the steering wheel sharply to the right.

The car didn't accelerate down the safe, open highway leading toward my home. Instead, the heavy tires crunched back onto the gravel, smashing through the wooden perimeter fence, and drove the vehicle directly back into the blinding, towering rows of the dark cornfield, leaving the light behind forever.

The End.

“Here’s your change, Sir.”

Mervyl grumbled a response, dropping the handful of coins into the ashtray.  He’d dig the silver out later for the cherry machines.  When she handed him his bag he shook it.

“Feels light,”  he drawled.  “You didn’t short me my slaw, did ya?”

“Everything’s there, Sir.   Thank you for visiting HunkaBurger.  Come again.”

“We’ll see,”  he growled as he pulled away.  “Better have my GD slaw in there.”

He tossed the bag into the seat beside him, dug out a smoke, and tapped the radio on in a series of fast, practiced motions.  He flicked his Bic and took a deep draw that ended in a wet, rattling cough.

“Cheap ass lighter.”

“WROP.  We play the beats that keep you awake in your seat.”

Quick drums, smooth guitar, and a familiar bassline filled the cab of Mervyl’s pickup and he began to hum along, drumming his fingers along the top of the steering wheel in almost perfect time.  Cigarette ashes flew everywhere as he was carried away with the song.  Radar Love was one of his absolute favorites.

Mervyl’s raspy caterwaul drowned out Barry Hay’s energetic lyrics.  The truck wove across the lanes like a squirrel in a hawk’s shadow as he bobbed his head and shoulders with the song.  A pair of headlights blinked up ahead in the dark and the tires squealed as he swerved hard to right the old Ford.

“Damn bright-lightin’ idjits.”
  
Something rustled inside the bag in the seat next to him.  

His eyes widened as he drew out a fresh coffin nail and stuck it between his teeth.  Surely the bag was just settling from his quick correction.  His thumb struck the wheel of the lighter, producing a flame just as the greasy paper bag crackled again.  The lighter fell into his lap.

“What in the blistered shit was that?”  

Mervyl reached over and grabbed the bag, pinching the folded top with two nicotine-stained fingers.  He lifted it up to eye level and almost dropped it when it twitched in his hand.

“Nuh-uh,”  he tossed it out the window and heard it land in the bed of the truck.  “Fuckin’ rat.  Damn things are everywhere."

He sparked his new smoke and ate up some miles.  He was only thirty minutes from home, and good Lord willing the old lady might get her a drilling.  Mervyl chuckled at his own wit and his daddy’s old words.  It had never occurred to him that his old man had been talking about his mama when he said that.  

Mervyl wasn’t much for hidden meanings.

Something tapped the back glass pulling him out of his Skynyrd song.  Several rapid scratchy tinks followed and he almost went into the ditch.  When he heard it on the roof he grabbed the window handle and started turning it.  He held the wheel with his knee and banged his fist against the headliner.

The window was almost up when a crawling nightmare the size of a healthy rat or a sickly cat pulled its flat body through it.  It was long and likely mean and covered with more legs than a Kentucky Fried buffet.  Mervyl shrieked and batted it away.  The horrible thing flew across the cab taking his two lesser fingers with it.

“Lord, Sonny Jesus, and all the saints!”  he howled.  “It’s a goddam scorpion cat.”

It scuttled up the door in a flurry of furry chitin and onto the dash.  He watched in horror as a fingertip vanished into its terrible four-way split mouth.  The skittering terror crouched low and hissed at him.  

Mervyl growled back at it, raising his bloody fist and driving it down onto it with a satisfying crunch.  He leaned all his weight into the attack, sending the truck sliding onto the gravel shoulder.  As he pulled his maimed hand away from the tiny beast a few legs fell away from it.  They snailed down the front of the glove compartment on long gray slimy trails.

“Yeah, you sneaky shitwrangler!”  Mervyl tried to flip his fuck finger at it but only his thumb remained.  He looked at its crushed body and saw his ring and bird hanging out of its mouth.  The creepy little hellbug slurped them down like the world’s worst spaghetti.  Its body crackled and throbbed as it pulled itself back up on its remaining legs.

“Oh, you want another’n?”  Mervyl waved the chunk of useless meat that used to be his fist threateningly.  The creature wasn’t scared though.  It leapt at him, causing him to jerk and stomp down hard when it landed on his chest.  The last thing Mervyl saw before he passed out was the guardrail in front of him as the old Ranger flipped over it and went airborne.

He woke up facedown in the ditch a short while later.  His chest hurt like a son of a bitch and his clothes were soaked through. Mervyl rolled over onto his back and checked his front.  There were bits and pieces of the thing stuck in his flannel shirt.  Deep gashes covered his chest where its legs had dug in.  

A thick spatter of blood landed on his shirt and he followed the line of red spittle up to his mouth.  Most of his lower lip and several bottom teeth were missing.  He spat out a mouthful of what tasted like a mixture of blood, motor oil, and canned salmon.

Mervyl stood up on shaky legs and appraised the wreckage of the truck that had served him well for over thirty years.  If he had a hat he would have taken it off for it.  He’d flipped the odometer on it twice and it still ran true.  Well, that was before he’d rolled his luck on a cup of takeout slaw.

“Fuckin’ Hunkaburger.  What a hunk of shit.”

Mervyl clambered up the embankment to stand on the shoulder and waited for headlights.  He reckoned a thumb was the only finger he needed in his present condition.

END

My mother-in-law asked to read my vows on our wedding night. I said yes. I was so happy I would have said yes to anything.

I’m typing this with my left hand, because my right hand is no longer allowed to write anything that isn’t theirs. I don’t have long before someone comes to check on me, so I’ll tell it in order.

I met Julian two years ago, at a funeral. Not his. A coworker’s. He was a friend of the family and stood at the back, and when I started crying at the guest book he handed me a handkerchief and said, “You don’t have to be okay here.”

I didn’t have anyone. I should say that early, because it matters later. My parents were dead. I had no siblings, no cousins I spoke to, and a job I could do from anywhere. When Julian asked about my family, I told him the truth, and he went very quiet and said, “That must have been so lonely.” I remember thinking, *he sees me.*

His family saw me, too. That’s the part I still can’t get past. They didn’t just accept me. They *collected* me. His mother, Delphine, sent notes. His aunts called me “our girl” before we were engaged. Every Sunday I was at their long table in the big house on the hill, with the good wine, with six women asking about my day and writing nothing down, remembering everything.

When Julian proposed, they all cried, and Delphine held my hands and said, “You’ll never be alone again. I promise you that.”

I believed her. God help me, I would have married the whole table.

There’s one custom in the family. They told me about it early, warmly, like a quirk.

*The vows are kept.*

You write your own. On a strip of old linen, in your own hand, in ink they provide. You read them aloud at the ceremony, and afterward the linen goes to the mother of the groom, who keeps them safe for the marriage. “So they’re never lost,” Delphine said. “So you always have someone holding your promises for you.”

I thought it was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard. I wrote for three nights. I wanted them perfect.

I wrote that I would give him everything I had. That I would never keep a part of myself from him. That I would stay, whatever came, and never leave him lonely. That I would trust his family as my own, and do what they asked as if I’d asked it myself.

I used those words. *Do what they asked as if I’d asked it myself.* I thought it was romantic. I thought I was being brave.

I wrote it in my best handwriting, in black ink that smelled faintly of iron, and I read it out loud in front of a hundred people, and Delphine wept openly and folded the strip into her sleeve.

On our wedding night she came to the suite.

Julian let her in. He was already sitting on the edge of the bed in his shirt, looking at the floor. Delphine was carrying a small leather case, the kind a doctor carries, and a lamp with a green shade that she set on the nightstand.

“We just need to seal them,” she said, smiling. “It’s the last part. Then you can sleep.”

I was drunk on champagne and joy and eleven hours of being adored, and I remember saying, “Seal them how?”

She took the linen strip out of her sleeve. She took a needle out of the case. It was long and curved, and the thread was thick and dark and shining wet.

“Julian will hold your hand,” she said.

I looked at my husband. He wouldn’t look at me. He took my hand in both of his and held it so tightly it hurt, and I understood in that moment that he had done this before, to someone else, and that I had been a very easy one.

I want to tell you I screamed. I didn’t. I didn’t say a word. I let her unbutton the back of my dress, and I let her lay me on my side, and when she touched the needle to my ribs I made a small, embarrassed sound, like a woman at the dentist, and then I let her go on.

I’d said I would do what they asked as if I’d asked it myself.

I didn’t know I’d *meant* it until I felt myself obeying.

I won’t describe the pain. It wasn’t the kind you describe. It was a long, slow pulling, like a zipper drawn beneath my skin, and with every stitch I felt something go quiet in me. Not numb. *Quiet.* A voice I’d had my whole life, the small one that says *no,* and *wait,* and *this isn’t right,* grew fainter with each pass of the thread.

When she finished, she lifted my arm so I could see.

The words ran along my ribs from my armpit to my hip, in a neat dark line under the skin. My own handwriting. I could read every word of it, backward, the way you read a tattoo in a mirror. *I will give him everything I am. I will never keep a part of myself from him.* The thread sat just below the surface like a vein, and the skin around it was pink and tight and strangely clean.

*Do what they ask as if I asked it myself.*

That one was at the bottom, the last line, sewn closest to my hip.

“There,” Delphine said, kissing my forehead. “Now it can never be lost.”

I need to tell you what it’s like, living with a promise you can’t break.

It isn’t force. Nobody holds my arms. It’s smaller than that, and worse. When Delphine says, “Be a dear and put the kettle on,” the words reach me like my own thoughts, and I’m halfway to the kitchen before I realize I never decided to go. When Julian’s aunts want the guest room cleaned, I’m already in it. When they say *come, sit,* I sit. If I try to refuse, the stitches begin to tighten, slowly, along my ribs, like a hand closing, and a warmth rises through my chest that feels exactly like shame.

Then I do what they asked, and the warmth turns into relief, and the relief feels like love.

That’s the trick of it. It makes obedience feel like being held.

By the third month I stopped trying to refuse. By the fifth I stopped noticing I wasn’t. I never called my one friend back. I never went to work. I told myself I didn’t need to. I was so *tired,* and the house was so warm.

Then, in the sixth month, I found the attic.

I’d been sent up for a box of tablecloths. It was a long, narrow room under the roof, with a sloped ceiling and one small window, and along the whole length of the far wall hung rows of black picture frames.

Inside each frame was a strip of linen.

Each had writing on it in a different hand. Different inks, some faded to brown, some still black. Under each frame, a brass plate with a name and a year. *Adele, 1951. Margit, 1963. Ruth, 1978. Simone, 1990.* Eleven of them. The last plate was blank.

I read the first one, Adele’s, because I couldn’t help it.

*I will give him everything I am.*

The same sentence. I read the next. The same. The next. *I will never keep a part of myself from him. I will do what his family asks as if I asked it myself.*

Every bride had been steered to the same promise. Every one of them had been lonely, and kind, and alone in the world, and had written the words they’d been so gently led toward, and had never realized they’d written them in their own handwriting for a woman who was only waiting to collect.

Then I saw the frame at the end, the one with the blank plate. Inside it was *my* linen strip. The original. Delphine had kept it.

I stood in front of it with my whole body shaking, and for one clean second, the stitches went slack along my ribs.

Just one second. Long enough for me to know what I was.

I wasn’t a wife. I was a *deed.* Their money came from the wives. The house, the vineyards, the six women at the long table, who never had to ask anyone for anything because every bride they brought into the family signed herself over, in her best handwriting, and the family could do whatever they wanted with a woman who’d promised to give them everything.

Whoever she’d been, she was worth more as a promise than as a person.

I opened my mouth to scream.

And I heard my own voice, calm and loving, say from the back of my throat, *“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”*

It wasn’t my voice. It was *mine,* but it wasn’t me. It was the voice from the linen.

I went downstairs with the tablecloths. I laid the table for dinner. I smiled at Delphine. She smiled back, and she said, very softly, “Did you find everything you were looking for?”

And I heard myself answer, “Yes, thank you.”

Last week I found something else.

It was in the bathroom, under the good light, while I was changing the dressing on my side. The thread isn’t only along my ribs anymore. There’s a second line beginning under my left breast, thin and new, running toward my sternum. A few words had already surfaced.

*I will give him everything.* And then, newer, in handwriting that is not mine at all, small and tidy and patient:

*...and what comes after me.*

I don’t know when she did it. I don’t know how many nights I lay still while she sat beside me with the green lamp.

I’m four months along. I haven’t told anyone. I haven’t had to. When I came down to breakfast yesterday, Delphine put a hand flat on my stomach without a word, and her eyes filled with tears, and she said, “Oh, my girl. You’re going to be so *good* at this.”

Then she kissed me, and for a moment I felt so loved I forgot to be afraid.

It’s evening. They think I’m resting.

Julian’s youngest cousin Annika got engaged on Saturday. She’s twenty-four, a nurse, the last of her family. Her mother died in the spring. She came to dinner and sat beside me, and she kept touching her ring and glancing at me with big, hopeful eyes, and when the aunts all went quiet and looked at me, I felt my mouth start to move.

“Would you like to see how I wrote mine?” I heard myself say. “I could help you with yours. It’s so important to get them just right.”

Annika lit up. She said, “Oh, would you?”

I’m writing this on the back of an envelope, with my left hand, in the bathroom, with the water running. My right hand is already folded in my lap, waiting. I can feel the thread beginning to tighten along my ribs. Delphine is knocking, very gently. She says, “Sweetheart? Annika’s here. She’s brought her pen.”

Whoever finds this, don’t let anyone read your vows to a woman who asks to keep them. Don’t write the sentence she hopes you’ll write. And if someone kind tells you that you’ll never be alone again, ask them what they’re promising to do with you.

I have to go. I’m going to teach her to write them beautifully.

I’ll be so happy to.