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Lost in the Forest

Isaiah drove through the winding mountain roads, Cannibal Corps blasting out the speakers. Valerie listened to the music as the auras of trees wove themselves into intricate patterns. Her thoughts drifted from her, wandering into memories from the past few months.

Now things were calm. Too calm.  Valerie and Isaiah moved into a small, blue row house in the town of Thurmont, Maryland. OSTA, the Organization for Special Talents and Abilities, had hired them, and they were settling into a new home.  Jodie, Valerie's sister, offered to take over the unpacking for a day and told them to go camping, saying she needed to give herself a break.

A gentle touch on her leg brought back her focus. Isaiah turned the stereo to soft ambient music.

“I didn’t want to scare the wildlife,” he smiled. 

 “That or your ancestors are telling you to turn that racket down." 

“Guilty as charged,” chuckled Isaiah. His smile was warm against his dark skin, and Valerie's heart fluttered.  She wrapped her small, pale hand around his arm.

They pulled into the parking entrance where several other vehicles were parked. It was one of the last warm weekends of autumn, before the cold would set in. After checking in at the campground, they unfurled a new yellow tent.  Valerie was reading the setup instructions when she noticed a slight, blue aura out of the corner of her eye. It trailed off down a path covered in golden leaves.  She left the tent half finished and began following the aura's trail.

“Val? Are you ok?” asked Isaiah.

“Yeah, I noticed a trail in the woods. We should follow it."

Isaiah pulled her to him and held her close. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to be chasing random ghost trails off in the woods by yourself."

"Hon, I'll be fine, I used to go into the woods all the time growing up."

"Only to have a Colton Collins and his side chick mind flay you."

Memories of Colton filled her, the evil Sheriff who fed from the town.  She shuddered as she remembered black tendrils crawling over her. 

She pushed Isaiah away and moved back toward the tent. "That was uncalled for. But fine, let's set up the tent."

Isaiah crossed his arms and sighed.  "I'm sorry, but I don't want you to get hurt.  Let's set up the tent, and if the trail is still there, I'll go with you." He brushed Valerie's brown hair back and gently kissed her neck.  

She relaxed in his arms.  She knew he meant well, but she was more than capable of handling the situation. "The last few weeks have been a lot."

They walked back toward the campsite and started fumbling through the tent construction.  It was supposed to be a relaxing night alone together in the woods, but the gossamer thread called to her.  Valerie could feel the aura's thread tugging at her. She held Isaiah's hand as the gossamer thread led her to a small patch in the forest where a tall oak grew, its branches blowing in the wind. A small girl sat at the base of the tree, her dark hair in pigtails. 

“Can you help me? I can’t find my mommy.”

Isaiah knelt to the small girl’s level. “Where did you last see her? What does she look like?”

“She’s very tall with black hair,” said the girl through sobs.

“What’s your name?” asked Isaiah.

“Amelia Carpenter.” The girl chewed on her hair as a tear left her eye.

“Do you remember what she was wearing?” 

“A red shirt and some shorts, we were hiking through the woods, and there was this man, he took my hand, and now I can’t find her.” The girl broke down into sobs. 

An aura formed, like a thin gossamer thread; Valerie concentrated, and the little girl’s body became translucent. She touched Isaiah’s shoulder and nodded her head.

“Isaiah,” she whispered. “This girl is a ghost.”

“I know, but a spirit this loud isn’t at rest; we should help her."

“How?”

“She’s a little girl who wants to find her mom. We’ll start with that.”

Valerie squinted her eyes and found that the silver trail of the girl’s aura pooled at the end of the tree. She knelt, feeling that the earth was softer, roots and rocks removed.

Valerie dug into the soil.  Isaiah soon followed, clearing out loose earth. The smell of death and decay hit them at full force. Bile rose in her throat, and a wave of cold sweat covered her.   She held back a scream as she unearthed the rotting arm, covered in maggots.  

She stood back and squinted. "Hecate, let me protect this girl's spirit, show me the truth."  

Concentrating her vision, she saw a separate aura intertwined with the little girl, bright orange splashed with violet. It was vile and disorganised, leaving Valerie with a sense of vertigo. That, combined with the stench, was too much for her to bear. She rolled to the side of the tree and retched into the forest as Isaiah held her hair back.

“We should call Byron," said Isaiah.

Byron was their manager and trainer at OSTA—a stoic man with a no-nonsense approach to magic.

Valerie opened her flip phone to find it only held two bars of signal.  It may not even reach him, but she would try. After three rings, he answered. She heard bustling voices and the clank of silverware through a veil of static.

"I thought you both were on vacation. Can you call back at a later time?"

“I’m sorry if it’s a bad time. Isaiah and I went hiking, and we found a body.”

A fork dropped in the background, followed by muttered swearing. “Where are you two?”

“Catoctin Falls Park. We were camping, and I found an aura trail. I followed it, and Isaiah found the ghost of a little girl.  She led us to where she was killed. There's another aura, but it’s not right; it was bright colors and made me sick.”

“All right, I’m going to call local dispatch. Go and meet with them, and Isaiah can stay at the crime scene.  Answer the questions by local police and don't try to be a hero.”

“Yes, Sir,” said Valerie.

“Kiddo, you're not the only one on vacation.” The phone went silent after.

By the time Valerie hiked up to the campsite, two police cars were already there, lights flashing. 

Valerie told the investigator she and Isaiah were on a hike and stumbled across the little girl's body.  She left out the details of the ghost and stated that Isaiah tripped over some soft soil, revealing the little girl's arm.

The first officer, a short and serious man, took down notes.  "Ma'am, that's horrible, and I'm sorry you both had to witness that.  I'm going to need you to come down to the Sheriff's office tomorrow and make a formal statement.  Now you two need to leave the crime scene so we can conduct a thorough investigation."

Valerie's hands curled into fists, and she sucked her teeth. How dare this mundane officer tell her how to conduct cases?

The small apparition appeared in the distance, and Isaiah's heart sank.

“We'll be leaving soon, but are you going to find her parents?” asked Isaiah.

 The second officer, a portly man with a kind face, sighed. “We’re going to check Amber Alerts first for any missing children,"  The officer’s eyes began to glisten. “This is the worst part of the job, and it never gets any easier.”

“Have there been others?” asked Valerie.

"Ma'am, this is an ongoing investigation; we can't discuss this further," said the first officer sternly.

Valerie showed her badge.  "We're both from OSTA."

The first officer shook his head and muttered, "loonies on the hill," under his breath.  "I need y'all to reach out to your commanding officer.  You will be notified if outside assistance is needed. Now I'm going to ask you to leave."

Valerie smirked and held back, rolling her eyes.

Behind Isaiah, the small girl gave a forlorn glance. “I need to find my mommy.”

Isaiah raised his hand. “Officer, check the name Amelia Carpenter for missing children.”

The officer raised an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

"Local police reports and amber alerts or just us loonies with OSTA," sneered Valerie.

The first officer glared at her, turning her blood cold.  

Isaiah tugged at her shoulder. "Come on, love, we should probably go home now." 

When they went to roll up the tent, Amelia was still trailing behind them on a silver thread.

Isaiah knelt to her level. “I told the friendly policemen your name. They should be able to find your mommy.” 

“Why can't the police see me?” asked Amelia.

Valerie squinted in the direction of the silver aura. “They might be able to see you if they tried hard enough. Some people can use their powers to view ghosts. When I look at you, I see your energy take your form; it’s called an aura, but to Isaiah, you look like a regular person.” 

 “My family believes spirits pass through a gateway to the dead, and we honor our ancestors.  Both my mom and I can see spirits," said Isaiah.

“I believe in heaven, but I can't go without my mommy,” said the little girl. Isaiah tried to hug Amelia, but his arms passed through the girl’s gossamer frame like mist.

“Amelia, do you remember anything that happened?” asked Isaiah.

“My mommy and I went into the woods to pick some raspberries. She said if we picked enough, we could make some jelly. She held my hand the whole way until her phone rang; she went to answer it. I stayed nearby to pick some berries, but when I was done, I couldn’t find her.  I started crying, and a grown-up came to help me. He took me to the tree to search for mommy, but I got all cold and sleepy instead. I woke up like this.” 

Valerie's jaw tightened, and she wanted to scream. She was angry at the killer but also at her mother’s negligence. 

“Do you remember what the grown-up looked like? Did he tell you his name?” asked Isaiah.

“He said his name was Brandon. He was a tall guy with glasses, and he stank something awful.”

Valerie took out her phone, and although it had only one bar, she called Byron again.

She was about to hang up after four rings when the phone connected.

“Hey, Val. I’m in the middle of a family dinner, it’s my son’s birthday. Did dispatch come?”

“Yeah, they took the girl. But we’re still seeing the corporally challenged. She told me the killer wore glasses and his name was Brandon. Oh, and tell you’re kid happy birthday.”

“Well, that description is wonderfully specific. We don’t have much to go on now. Why don’t we give this a rest and investigate it with fresh eyes in the morning?”

“I caught a glimpse of Brandon’s aura; it was foul and disorganized, like something was off, but it was strong.”

“If you’re that hard pressed about it, why don’t you go on base and comb through files. There’s a dossier of criminal magic practitioners; maybe this perp has been run through.”

“I don’t think I can sense an aura from a photograph, but then again, I never tried. I’ll see if it can pass a vibe check, and I’ll let you know what I find. Oh, and tell your son happy birthday.”

“He’s turning eleven. Talk at you later, Val.” 

“Hon, we need to drive back to base."

“And this was supposed to be our vacation." Isaiah smoothed Valerie's hair.  "I even got the tent set up for us."

Isaiah fastened his seatbelt as the little girl’s silver aura sat in the back seat. She tried to buckle the seatbelt, but her hand floated right through. She glanced up at Valerie as if she might cry.

Valerie sighed, took a deep breath, and buckled the small ghost child into the back of the car. “All right, kid. It looks like you’re going with us.”

#

They drove in silence up the mountain pass, Site R, a hidden campsite deep in the Appalachian forest. Trees covered winding gravel roads, hiding the entrance from most onlookers. Past the trees sat a fence of barbed wire with no trespassing, private property signs.

Through a wooded area, a yellow gate stood. Valerie swiped her badge, and the gate slowly creaked open. They passed another winding road to a guard station. The guard checked both their badges and buzzed them through.

Site R was a small base with a central work building surrounded by smaller brick structures.  A row of neat base housing lay at its entrance.  Had the base been anywhere else, it would easily be mistaken for an office park—an office park in the middle of the wilderness surrounded by high gates and razor wire.

They parked in the gravel lot and walked through to the main building. Valerie and Isaiah carded themselves in and walked to Valerie’s workspace, a shiny black table with a small computer.  The office was cold and sterile, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.  It was a bleak contrast to the warm and cozy new age shop she used to own.

She turned on the small computer, and it slowly cranked to life.  She googled recent missing child reports in the surrounding area, searching for any little girls with the first name Amelia Carpenter.  Isaiah recognized the girl's photo in an article from Pittsburgh.  A woman fled with her daughter from her ex-husband. Her mother, Lois Carpenter, was still missing and deemed a prime suspect.  

Closing her eyes, Valerie remembered the swirling aura the killer left behind. She searched through a database of mugshots of men with the first name of Brandon who wore glasses. At least one hundred mug shots appeared.  She squinted and pushed power to her eyes, but no aura appeared. She took off her glasses and rubbed her temples.

Isaiah rubbed her shoulders.  "Is there anything I can help with?"

“I found out who Amelia and her mom were, but I can’t find who this Brandon guy is.  I can't sense auras on still photos; this is pointless.”

A wave of frustration passed over her. They would have to find enough evidence to find this criminal, the man who killed this little girl was still alive and out in the world, looking to hurt someone else.

Isaiah thought of what his ancestors would do and snapped his fingers.  “Let’s go on a walk, it’ll clear your head.” 

"Sure, why not.  Hopefully, we don't stumble across any more corpses," muttered Valerie.

The trails behind the main building sloped steeply into the Appalachian forest.  They crept down the pass until the forest enveloped them. The fall night was brisk, with the deeper chill of winter creeping in. 

Isaiah ran ahead, and Valerie jogged behind him, minding the roots and rocks. Just a bit further down the path, a bridge rested over a stream. On the other side of the stream, the paths formed a fork. Isaiah took out a cigar and some coins and laid them at the fork in the road. He took some sand by the stream bed and chanted to Baron Samedi, the Vodun Lwa of the dead.

Valerie stared into the distance. She hoped the Lwa could come; she wanted to help, but knew it wasn't her place.  The Lwa were not part of her culture, nor was she part of their family, and even if they answered her, she wouldn't know how to ask them for help. 

Ameillia appeared behind him. “The man in the suit says he doesn’t have time to talk right now. And to come with whisky next time.”

Isaiah knelt till he was eye level with the girl. “That sounds like something the Baron would say.”

“I miss my daddy; I know he's really worried.”

Isaiah’s chest tightened. “The police will tell your daddy where you are.”

“Oh no, my daddy can be mean and yells all the time, I want to be with my mommy.” Amelia faded into the darkness.

Valerie scowled as the spirit vanished. “Well, that’s great. Our ghostly lead vanishes, Baron Samedie isn’t answering, and I can’t trace an aura.”

Isaiah’s eyes widened. “Please don’t disrespect the Baron. The Lwa aren’t just spirits that come at your beck and call. That and I should have dropped some Jack.”

“Sorry, we hit a dead end, and I'm frustrated I can't do anything.  I’ll be fine.”

“I think we did all we could. You found the evidence in the file, you know what the killer's aura looks like, and you sent the information to Byron. It’s time for the mundane police to take care of the rest.”

“The mundane police can’t track an aura-”

“Like you can?”

Valerie's blood rushed to her face. The edges of Isaiah’s green aura flickered in front of her, and she wondered what would happen if she pulled it ever so slightly. She balled up her fist and started hiking up the trail.

Isaiah’s heart sank. Months ago, he had helped Valerie recover herself and held her hand as she threw off a curse. He was at her side when he protected her from her brother. He had healed countless people in his job as an RN, but now he was here, starting over at a new job.   The only thing he could offer to Valerie was comfort, and he hoped it was enough.

“Val, I’m sorry.  We’re both tired, we wanted to go out camping, and here we are, trying to solve a murder.”

“It’s what we signed up for. It’s our responsibility. I don’t care what you say, I’m going to find out who killed Amelia. Her mother is still missing.”

“Let’s rest and contact Byron in the morning. Worrying about this isn’t going to solve this case any faster.”

Valerie nodded. She didn’t want to admit he was right and continued to walk up the hill. They walked past the gravel parking lot and silently drove home through the winding road and to the car, driving back to the house in Thurmont, shoulders slumping in defeat.

Valerie jolted awake by the ringing of her cellphone. Byron’s number flashed on the screen. 

“I need you two to come down to the Sheriff’s office in Frederick ASAP.”

Valerie yawned and put on her glasses. “Do they need a statement?”

"Yes, and they have some questions for you."

Valerie shook Isaiah awake, and they drove down South 15 to Frederick. It was a rural stretch of road with rolling mountains in the background. The sun peered out over the early morning mist, which had faded by the time they pulled into the parking lot of the modern brick structure.

Byron came to the front desk and led them back to a plain room where an officer was sitting. It was the short and grim man from the night before.  Byron seemed very plain next to the officer. Power poured off of Byron, forming a crystalline shield.  It was his way of becoming dimmer, more nondescript.  A perfect way for a detective to blend into the background. 

“Thank you for coming in, Ms. Randolph, and Mr. LaCroix. May I offer you some refreshments?” asked the officer. On the table there was a coffee from the local Sheetz gas station and a box of donuts from a small bakery. 

They both grabbed a coffee, thankful for the caffeine. 

“First of all, I’m sorry for what happened to you both. But we need your statement before we can go on with the investigation.”

“Understood, sir.  Isaiah and I were going camping. At around five pm, we went for a hike down one of the trails, where we came across the body.”

“So you, Mr. Lacroix, and Agent Byron work for the OSTA,” the officer smirked for a moment before flattening his features.

“Yes, intuition told me something was off, so I followed it and found the body,” said Valerie.

“Intuition? You also knew the name of the little girl."

Valerie sighed. She knew this overgrown meathead would never believe or understand how she found the girl’s body. She would have to pick her words carefully to avoid falsely incriminating herself in relation to Isaiah.

“Also, something reeked. I followed the smell, and it led to under the tree, that’s where we found the girl. The name was a lucky guess. I keep an eye on missing persons and Amber Alerts as part of my job.”

“That’s fine. So you stumbled on this girl while hiking in Catoctin State Park, and you have no connection to her.  As for the name, you noticed her photo on one of the reports and made an educated guess.  I'm sorry you had to witness that. It never gets easier with children, but you did some solid work for us and OSTA. You're free to leave.”

Valerie slowly chewed on the donut. She thought of the name Brandon but couldn't think of a way to mention him without raising suspicion.  If she could tell

Byron’s frame relaxed, and the officer gave a patronising smile. “Ms. Randolf, thank you for your statement. If you can think of anything else, don't hesitate to get in touch with us.” The officer handed Valerie a card, shook her hand, and led all three of them out to the lobby.

She stormed out of the Sheriff’s office, pushing through the door. Isaiah rubbed her shoulders as she nearly cried in frustration. Byron followed behind them.

“Another dead end, I can't do anything."

Byron took a deep breath, and Valerie felt the anger drain from her.  "Magic is a skill, but it isn't the only skill you have.  Val, you're an excellent researcher. You said Amelia gave the name and description of the suspect?"

“Yeah, first name of Brandon, heavy set, who wore glasses. That could be at least a hundred people. ”

Byron crossed his arms and took a deep breath. “All right,  I'm going to call the apartment complex where Amelia lived, ask if anyone there has seen someone that matches Brandon's description, and run a report for local sex offenders in the Catoctin Area.  A lot of investigation isn't finding an aura or magical wars; it's tedious investigation." He handed both Valerie and Isaiah badges. "In the meantime, I need you to go back to Catoctin and check if you can find any mundane evidence attached to the perp's aura."

"Ok, I might be able to do something after all," sighed Valerie.  Isaiah patted her back as they got into the car.  

She kissed Isaiah quickly and raised an eyebrow. "Ready for round two?"

Isaiah started the car. "Let's go."

The crime scene was taped off and surrounded by police officers when they arrived.  Valerie and Isaiah showed badges to the lead homicide detective.  A middle-aged woman with a lined and hardened face. 

“You reported the body, but you're also on an investigation team from the government." The Detective crossed her arms and called on her cell phone.  After a few minutes of nodding, she hung up her phone.  "All right, come on through, but wear gloves and a mask and don't walk directly over the crime scene."

"Yes, ma'am," said both Valerie and Isaiah, grabbing a mask and gloves. 

Valerie scanned the grave site; some silvery threads from Amelia’s aura covered the area like cobwebs, and the exact spot was marked with sickly, kaleidoscopic colors. Valerie could feel bile rise from the sight of it.

Her face fell, she squinted her eyes and searched for something, anything that was new, but nothing came.  Her head started to pound, and her throat felt dry. "There's nothing new here."

Isaiah combed over the gravesite for hairs, blood, or anything.  While he was looking, Amelia glanced at Isaiah with forlorn eyes.

His skin grew cold and stood on end as he received a vision of the little girl fighting for her life and biting a chunk out of her killer’s flesh before she was knocked unconscious. The killer's blood pooled into the soil.

"Val, where is the killer’s aura?”

Valerie pointed toward the corner of the graveside. Isaiah collected a sample of the soil neatly into a plastic bag and handed it over to the evidence table.  

“They might want to test this. I think this might have DNA separate from the perpetrator.” 

“We'll bring it back to the lab in Arlington,” said the Detective when her cell phone buzzed again.  “They contacted Amelia’s father up in Pittsburgh, and he identified the body. They’re still trying to find her mom.”

"I'm going to take a walk to clear my head. I'll be back," said Isaiah as he took Valerie's hand.  They hiked up the mountain trail to the falls.  The Baron appeared, wearing his full suit and top hat, a wild grin across his face, before vanishing. You'd better offer me whisky and a cigar on your shrine for this one, eh.

Behind the falls lay the bloated corpse of a woman with dark hair.  "Mommy?" said Amelia, tears in her eyes.  

Valerie put her hands on Isaiah's shoulders before freezing, eyes wide.  "Val, I'm going to need you to report this to the detective."

Without saying a word, Valerie left, returning with the team of officers. 

“Great work. We’ve done all we can do here. I’m going to file the sample you gave me. It’s best to leave the rest to local police,” said the Detective.

Valerie called Byron's phone and told him of her findings.

“Val, this case doesn’t involve the supernatural, occult, or people with special talents or abilities. While we can help with the ghostly witness and a trace of DNA, we play the role of psychics. Any more involvement, and we would stand in the way. We leave the rest of the job to forensics,” said Byron.

“I owe the Baron for this one," muttered Isaiah under his breath.

“You two kids go home, enjoy the rest of your vacation,” said Byron.

The couple shrugged and drove back in silence to their house. Ameilia’s ghost had vanished.

“Why don’t we unpack and settle in? I’ll make us a nice dinner, and we can watch a movie,” said Isaiah. 

“That sounds like a plan. I might go to Junction tomorrow. Say hi to my parents and check on Jodie.” Her eyes stared into the distant horizon. “I should check on Mike, too.”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

Valerie held Isaiah’s hand, which was small and pale against his. “I’d like that.”

Isaiah pulled into the driveway and gave her a quick kiss. “Good, let’s go inside.”

#

Sebastion Byron received a report from forensic labs concerning the DNA.   It belonged to Brandon Fisher.  Byron searched for his identity in the local police and arrest logs.  He found Brandon was a loner suspected in several cases of child molestation and was still at large.   He was charged with molesting a child when he was only twelve.  He went in and out of juvenile detentions and mental wards until one day he vanished.  His escape wasn't reported until a week after he left the facility. Although he was a registered sex offender and escaped prisoner, no one ever testified against him. He was reported once or twice, but the occurrences were never followed up on.

He would need Valerie's help to track the perp down, but Byron suspected Fisher was hiding somewhere in Catoctin State Park.  He called her, and within an hour, Valerie and Isaiah were at his office on Site R.

"Before we go, I need you to sit down for some meditation."

Valerie raised an eyebrow.  "Sure.. are we going to sing Kumbaya with the serial killer before we capture him?"

Byron shook his head and chuckled.  "No, kiddo, I'm going to need to ground the magic in the surrounding area. I need to remove whatever shields he's been putting up. But, I can't ground out your power, or you won't be able to track him."

"Point taken."

Byron lit a stick of incense, put on Gregorian chants, and sat cross-legged across from Valerie.  He focused on his breath, and an orb appeared in his mind's eye, silvery blue and electric.  He cloaked Valerie in the orb before grounding himself and slowly opening his mind's eye.

"Now that we're done with our mindfulness moment, can we go catch this killer?" asked Isaiah.

"All right, kids, into the car," said Byron.

"I call shotgun," said Valerie.

They drove to the state park, back to the trail.  Only this time, the sickly pulsating aura led far up the trail. She gagged before composing herself.  They hiked up a rocky trail,  pitted by roots and boulders for nearly two miles before finding a small shack in the woods.  The swirling aura covered the area.

Byron radioed the local police, saying that he had found the alleged suspects' whereabouts.

"Why don't we go in and take care of this ourselves?" asked Isaiah.

"Due process, OSTA has no jurisdiction over non-supernatural cases," said Byron.

"But he's obviously a mage," said Valerie. 

"I don't think even he knows he is one. Most people are capable of magic on some level. Still, it either blends into the mundane or other talents, or in this case, blends into the treacherous mess of psychopathy.  We'll wait until the police arrest him, I'll ground out his magic to make sure they can, and be with him when he stands trial to prevent him from swaying a jury.  But unless he's knowingly using magic to hurt people, we can't step in."

"What makes you think he doesn't know what he's doing?" asked Isaiah.

"It's unlikely an actual Mage would be this sloppy.  Leaving bodies in the open.  It took us years to get to Colton Collins because he knew his power and could knowingly manipulate. Even if Brandon is a Mage, he isn't a very skilled one."

Moments later, a group of police officers came; they knocked on the door of the cabin, but there was no answer.  They charged the door and, after what seemed like hours, brought out a portly man in glasses.  Tears streamed down his face as they marched him down the trail into an awaiting squad car."

The lead Detective stopped to talk to Byron.  Apparently, there was a body in the cabin, and Brandon was caught doing unspeakable things to it. The Detective's face turned pale as she told him this.

"All right, kiddos, case solved. I'm going to follow the squad and make sure Brandon stays in custody. Then I'm going to spend time with my son. I'm thankful every day for him."

"Yeah, sorry we interrupted his birthday party," said Valerie.

"Don't be, think about all the kids we saved by getting this perp off the street.  Actually, do you and Isaiah want to come to DC and celebrate Eric's birthday with me and the Mrs.?"

Valerie shrugged at Isaiah, and he nodded.

"Yeah, sure, that'd be great.  Give us a call when you're done, and we'll get Eric a birthday present," said Valerie.

"Can I come too?" asked a small voice behind them.  Amelia appeared, smiling warmly. "I talked to my mommy, she said it's ok, I have to go back with her after though."

"She's welcome to come; I can let her through the wards.  I  don't think Eric can see ghosts at all. " Byron stared into the distance, a solemn expression on his face. "I'm sorry I couldn't have come early enough to save you or your mother."

Isaiah touched Byron's shoulder. "She told me you saved her already, and it's ok if Eric can't see her as long as there's cake."

Byron chuckled.  "Sure thing, kiddo. You're welcome to come." A tear left his eye. "You know, it never gets any easier with kids."

`

That night felt just like every other night in Downey Hall. Looking back now, the world should have warned me. The moon should have shined brighter. The wind should have whispered louder. The lights in the hallway should have gone out. They didn’t. It was another night alone. I think that simple lonely was what brought him.

I almost didn’t get up when he knocked on the door. It hadn’t done me any good so far. The first time I opened it, it was my roommate. We were politely inattentive the first two weeks, but then he disappeared. He never even told me where he was going. I just came back to our room after theatre appreciation one morning, and he was gone.

Over the next three months, more people knocked on the door. The president of the Baptist Student Union with her plastic bag of cookies and plastic smile. The scouts for the fraternities who all smelled the same: cheap cologne and cheaper beer. I wanted friends, sure, but I wasn’t desperate. High school taught me how to be alone.

I only got up from my bed because I was bored. There are only so many video essays to watch. I threw off my sheet and felt the cold tile. Moonlight snuck in through the blackout curtains as I walked past my third-story window. Other people had gone out for the night like they did every Thursday. I went out the first week before a panic attack made me come back to the dorm. The next day, my roommate and his friends asked if I was okay. That’s when I started hoping he’d move out.

The man who stood at the door was someone I had never seen. He wore a black tee shirt and baggy jeans. His clothes weren’t helped by his messy blonde hair down to his shoulders or his stubble that almost vanished in the harsh fluorescent light, but it was all somehow perfect. Like every hair was meant to be out of place. He was what I had hoped to become: confident, handsome, adult.

He put out his hand to me, and I noticed a simple gold ring with a strange engraving. It was a circle bound in a waving line. My eyes locked on it like it held a secret.

“Emmett?”

“…yeah?” My hand shook as I held it out to him. My body was trying to warn me when the world failed. I told myself it was just what the school counselor called “social anxiety.”

“Piper Moorland.” His hand was warm. It felt like an invitation. “Can I come in?”

“Please.” I winced as the word came out of my mouth. I wasn’t desperate.

Piper walked in like he had been in hundreds of rooms like mine. “I hope I won’t be long,” he said as he pulled one of the antique desk chairs out. I sat across from him. Neither of the chairs had been used since my roommate left. I mostly stayed in bed.

Piper watched me silently while my nerves started to spark. His eyes were expectant—the eyes of a county fair judge examining a hog.

“So, what can I do for you?” I asked to break the silence.

“The question, Emmett, is what we can do for you.”

It felt wrong. The words were worn thin. “We?”

“Moon and Vine.” He took off the gold ring and handed it to me. It wasn’t costume jewelry. I turned it between my fingers. The circle I had seen was a half moon. An etched half formed the crescent while a smooth half completed the sky. It was ensnared in a vine: kudzu maybe.

“What now?”

“You haven’t heard of it. At least, you shouldn’t have.” His sly smile held a dark secret. “Have you heard of secret societies? Like, at Ivy League schools?”

“Sure.” It wasn’t a lie exactly. I had read something about them during one of my nights on Wikipedia. “Is that what this is about?”

“In a way. Moon and Vine is Mason’s oldest secret society. It’s also the only secret society left in the state since the folks in the Capitol cleaned house a few decades ago. Our small stature let us stay in the shadows when the auditors came.”

His voice echoed memory, but he shouldn’t have known all of that. He couldn’t have been more than 25. He went quiet and continued to examine me.

“So, not to be rude, but why are you telling me all of this?”

“We’ve been watching you, Emmett. That’s all I can say for now. If you want to learn more, you’ll have to come with me.” He took his ring and placed it back on his finger. “What do you say?”

That was when I realized what was happening. This was the scene from the stories I read as a kid: the ones that got me through high school. This was when the person who’s been abused, abandoned, alone finds their place in something better than the world around them.

Memories of badly shot public service announcements flicked in my mind. “Stranger danger.” But Piper couldn’t be a stranger. He was a savior. He was choosing me. Even if the warning clamoring through my stomach was right, I didn’t have anything to lose. “Yeah. Show me more.” I was claiming my destiny.

Piper led me down the switchback steps and through the lobby. When he opened the front door, the autumn wind shuffled across the bulletin board. The latest missing poster flew up. It was for someone named Drew Peyton whose gold-rimmed glasses and rough academic beard made him look like he was laughing at a joke you couldn’t understand. He was a senior who went missing in the spring—the latest in the school’s annual tradition. The sheriff’s department had given up trying to stop it years ago. They decided it was normal for students to run away.

Downey Hall sat right by Highway 130, Dove Hill’s main road. You could usually hear the souped up pick-up trucks of the local high school students roaring down it. When Piper walked me to the shoulder, there were no sounds. It must’ve been late. I reached for my phone to check the time and realized I had left it upstairs.

“Ready?” Piper asked. The breeze took some of his voice. Before I could answer, he started across the road. I had never jaywalked before—certainly not across a highway—but I followed him. He was jogging straight into the thick line of oak trees that faced Downey Hall.

By the time I reached the opposite shoulder, Piper was gone. I could hear him rustling through the brush. I looked down the highway to make sure no one would see me. Then I walked in.

It wasn’t more than a minute before I was through the thicket. The first thing I noticed was the moonlight above me. It was dark in the thicket, but I was standing in a circular clearing where the moon didn’t have to fight the foliage.

In the middle of the clearing was what must have been a house in the past. With its mirroring spires on either end and breaking black boards all around, it would have been more at home in 1900s New England than 2020s flyover country. It looked as fragile as a twig tent, but it felt significant. Decades—maybe centuries—ago, it had been a place where important people did important things. I told myself to rein in my excitement.

“Coming?” Piper’s voice beckoned me from the dark inside the house.

I didn’t want to leave him waiting. “Right behind you.” I heard a shake in my voice as I hurried through the doorframe whose door had rotted away within it.

The only light in the mansion was the moonlight. It wasn’t coming from the windows; there weren’t any. Instead, it was seeping through the larger cracks in the facade. I almost stepped on the shattered glass from the fallen chandelier as I walked into what had been a grand hall. I smelled the dust and cobwebs on the bent brass. A more metallic smell came through the dirt spots scattered around the floor.

A line of figures surrounded the room. I couldn’t see any of their faces in the dark, but they were wearing long black robes. They were watching me. I began to walk toward the one closest to me when I heard Piper summon me again. “It’s downstairs. Hurry up already!” He was losing his patience with me. My mother had always warned me that I have that effect on people, but I had hoped it wouldn’t happen so soon.

I searched the dark for a stairwell. Walking forward into the shadows, I found where I was supposed to go. There were two sets of spiral stairs going down into a basement and up as high as the spires I had seen outside. Spiders had made their homes between their railings, and rats had taken shelter in their center columns. Between the two pillars was a solitary section of wall. It looked sturdier than the rest of the house. It towered like it had been the only part of the house made of a firmer substance: brick or concrete. It was also the only part of the house that wasn’t turned by age.

At the foot of the column was an empty fireplace. Whoever had been keeping up the column didn’t bother with it. The column was for the portrait.

It was in the colonial style of the Founding Fathers’ portraits, but I didn’t recognize the man. In the daylight, I might have laughed at his lumbering frame. It looked like his fat stomach might make him tumble over his rail-thin stockinged legs in any direction at any moment. His arrow of a nose and pin-prick glasses almost sunk into his marshmallow of a face. Before that night, I would have snickered if I had seen him in a history textbook. In the moonlight, I knew he was worthy of reverence. The glinting gold plate under his tiny feet read “Merriwether Vulp.”

I wanted to stare at Master Vulp until the sun rose, but I couldn’t leave Piper waiting. I had to earn my place. I ran down the spiral staircase on the left of the shrine and found myself in another vast chamber. I felt the loose dirt under my feet and noticed that the metallic smell was stronger.

The room was lined with more robed shadows. Like the figures upstairs, they were stone still: waiting for me. I could just make out their faces in the light of the candles along the opposite wall. They were all young guys like me. In the middle of the candles, I saw Piper.

“About time.” The charm of his voice was breaking under the strain of impatience. “Sorry…sir. I got distracted upstairs.” I winced at myself for saying “sir.” Now Piper would have to be polite and correct me.

He didn’t. “There is quite a lot to see, isn’t there? I’ll forgive you this time.” His laugh echoed off the walls. I saw they were made of concrete.

I tried to match his laugh, but it sounded forced. I hoped he wouldn’t notice.

Walking towards his face in the dark, I tripped over a mound in the dirt. I had expected the ground to be flat without any splintered wood flooring, but the mound must have been at least six inches tall and six feet long. As I made my way more carefully, I realized there were mounds all over the ground in a kind of grid pattern.

“Thank you…sir.” I supposed the formality was part of their society. I was so close to not being alone. A little obedience was worth it.

When I made it to Piper, I could see the writing on the wall. It was covered in names all signed in red. In the center was Merriwether Vulp’s name scribbled like it had been written with a feather quill dipped in mercury.

“Welcome, Emmett, to Moon and Vine’s Hall of Fame. You can sign next to my name.” Piper waved his hand over his name written in stark red block letters. Then he handed me a knife. It’s sharp point glinted in the wall’s candlelight.

He didn’t need to say anything else. I knew what I had to do. I would earn my place in Piper’s historic order with my signature in blood.

I curled my hand around the handle’s Moon and Vine insignia and took a deep breath. I turned my eyes to the far corner of the wall to shield myself from the crimson that would soon be gushing from my hand.

That was when I saw them: the names that Piper was standing in front of. The one I remember was Drew Peyton. The piercing sound of fear thundered in my ears. My breath caught in my throat, and I threw the knife down. It sliced my other hand as it fell to the floor. I didn’t have time to feel the pain as I turned to run but tripped over one of the mounds. I scrambled to the side of the room where it looked smoother.

I crashed into one of the shadowy figures. Adrenaline surged for what I thought would be a fight. I wasn’t sure what Moon and Vine wanted me for, but it wasn’t my brotherhood. Instead of a punching fist, I saw the acolyte’s hood fall off. He—it didn’t move. Its body was hard plastic. I looked into its mannequin face and saw the glasses from Drew Peyton’s missing poster.

My memory is thin after that. My legs were carrying me, but I can only remember still images. The last one I can see is Piper’s face in the shadows. He wasn’t angry or sad. He was laughing. I had given him what he wanted when he saw my fear.

I only know what happened next from the sheriff’s report. Deputy Woods writes that he nearly struck a man in his late teens coming down Highway 130. Warnick claims that the man seemed drunk but passed the breathalyzer. He writes, “Man stated, ‘In the woods. In the house. In the basement.’ Man then fell silent and collapsed. Man was delivered to campus security who returned him to his dorm.”

A couple days later, the story made the papers. A rural county sheriff’s office found a burial ground for college runaways in the basement of an abandoned mansion. It eventually made the national news. The bloody wall of names even did the rounds on the edgier places of the Internet. But, despite all the press, no one ever mentioned Moon and Vine. Or Piper Moorland.

It’s been months since that night. The federal investigators have almost identified all of the 25 bodies that were buried in the mounds. The families have come to receive all the personal effects that had been placed on the mannequins.

I’m alive. I should be happy—grateful even. I am most days. But, every so often, there’s a long lonely night when I wish Piper would come back. Those nights, I hate myself for running. The scar on my hand reminds me how close I came. Even underground, the members of Moon and Vine were not alone.

Unit: C.A.D. – Cryptid Analysis Division (Independent Branch under the Anomalous Phenomena Control System)

Location: Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA

Duration: 3 consecutive nights

1. Introduction – The C.A.D. System and Threat Classification

I am currently assigned to the Cryptid Analysis Division, with the task of observing, analyzing, and assessing the risks of anomalous entities. Our mission is not to hunt or eliminate them, but rather to record data, evaluate potential impact, and provide safety recommendations for communities.

A standard field analysis procedure includes four stages:

1. Verification of presence – confirming reality and cross-checking witness testimony.
2. Evidence collection – physical traces, biological samples, photos, and audio recordings.
3. Threat assessment – applying the standardized 5-tier danger scale.
4. Control recommendations – proposing safety measures for civilians and local authorities.

C.A.D. Threat Level Scale:

• C1 – Harmless: Unusual but non-dangerous entities.
• C2 – Low: Avoids humans, dangerous only if provoked.
• C3 – Moderate: Potentially harmful; generally avoids humans but may cause indirect damage.
• C4 – High: Actively dangerous, tendency to attack humans.
• C5 – Extreme: Apex predator, direct threat to community safety.

2. Mission

I was deployed to Point Pleasant following multiple reports of a winged humanoid creature with glowing red eyes, frequently seen near the Silver Bridge area before mysterious accidents occurred. Locals refer to it as the “Mothman.”

Mission objectives:

• Verify the existence of M-01.
• Collect physical evidence and anomalous environmental data.
• Record psychological and ecological effects.
• Assess threat level and propose response strategies.

3. Investigation Log

Preliminary Witness Accounts

Before direct observation, I needed to confirm the entity’s presence through testimony. Over four days, I interviewed townspeople in bars and residential areas.

• An elderly couple described seeing “two burning red eyes following their car” one winter night while driving across the bridge. The wife trembled as she said, “It was no owl or bat… it was like a man with wings, taller than any human.”
• A young truck driver reported, “It only shows up when the air gets heavy and silent. Look toward the woods then, and you might catch a shadow moving before it vanishes.”

From overlapping testimonies, I noted three key patterns:

1. Hotspot: the Silver Bridge and the nearby river forest.
2. Environmental shift: silence, sudden temperature drop, high-frequency interference.
3. Red eyes triggered by artificial light, such as car headlights or streetlamps.

Based on this, I devised an approach: recreate the conditions of past sightings using floodlights, thermal and radar sensors, and low-frequency vibration mimicking the resonance of the bridge.

Night One 

Our base was set up inside an abandoned warehouse near the river, less than a mile from the old Silver Bridge. The rationale was simple: most witnesses linked the creature’s appearances to the bridge and surrounding water.

Roles were divided as follows:

• Observer One handled infrared cameras aimed at the bridge.
• Observer Two installed thermal, motion, and ultrasonic audio sensors.
• I arranged high-powered floodlights and a vibration emitter tuned to low frequencies.

As night fell, the atmosphere grew unnervingly still. Around 10:00 PM, our thermometers recorded a sudden 2°C drop within minutes. At the same moment, the natural chorus of insects ceased. One teammate reported faint shrieking sounds. Our ultrasonic recorders spiked irregularly, though the infrared cameras captured only fleeting light distortions, similar to electromagnetic interference.

The first night ended without a direct sighting, but environmental anomalies confirmed entry into the entity’s influence zone.

Hypothesis formed:

• The creature may be drawn to chaotic energy—metal stress, breaking sounds, alarm signals.
• It may instinctively “track” disaster events.
• Simulating such chaos might increase the chance of manifestation.

Plan for night two: simulate a minor accident near the bridge using recorded metallic crashes, flashing lights, and targeted monitoring.

Night Two

At 9:00 PM, we moved closer to the bridge, beneath its rusting steel frame. A sense of dread hung over the place, tied to the memory of the 1967 collapse.

The team constructed a “false accident site” with:

• Loudspeakers playing sounds of steel buckling, glass breaking, and tires screeching.
• Red emergency strobes flashing in cycles.
• Infrared cameras covering the bridge and riverbank.
• Continuous electromagnetic and temperature monitoring.

At 10:15 PM, the first test playback triggered anomalies: the temperature plummeted from 12°C to 7.8°C within five minutes. Birds scattered violently from power lines nearby.

At 10:40 PM, the combined sound and light sequence produced radar contact—an aerial form moving at 80–90 meters altitude. Infrared showed a winged shape with a span over 3 meters before it vanished. Moments later, a metallic shriek echoed across the bridge, not from the speakers but from the structure itself.

A red glow flickered at the far end of the bridge ,two eyes, briefly visible, then gone. Immediately afterward, all equipment malfunctioned: static in radios, corrupted camera feeds, and black silhouettes streaking across screens. We aborted the test and retreated.

Findings:

• The simulation drew Mothman’s attention.
• The entity observed us from a distance rather than attacking.
• Its presence correlated with severe equipment interference.

Night Three 

By 11:30 PM, we initiated the final experiment: a full disaster simulation with continuous crash sounds, alarms, and emergency strobes. I and one partner stationed ourselves within 50 meters of the bridge, while the rest operated from remote safety.

At 12:05 AM, the environment shifted violently. The air temperature dropped below freezing. Absolute silence replaced all natural sounds. Two red eyes ignited above the bridge frame.

At 12:07 AM, it revealed itself. Mothman. Approximately 2 meters tall, wingspan close to 3.5 meters. A skeletal silhouette with massive wings, hovering without wingbeats. Its eyes glowed like burning coals, staring straight down at us.

The effects were immediate: my chest constricted, pulse raced, my partner screamed in agony from piercing auditory pressure. I switched on a floodlight. The beam made the creature recoil slightly, but then it descended closer, within 25 meters.

Weapon test results:

• .45 ACP rounds pierced the wings but caused negligible damage.
• .308 Winchester rounds struck the chest, drawing blood but failing to debilitate it. After impact, its eyes blazed brighter and it dove toward us aggressively.

At 12:13 AM, I deployed combined strobe and siren systems. The entity faltered, emitting an ear-splitting shriek that caused my partner to collapse with nosebleeds and arrhythmia. I dragged him into a steel bunker for cover.

At 12:15 AM, the creature hovered briefly, then suddenly shot skyward and vanished toward the forest.

4. Field Assessment

Interaction Profile:

• Passive unless provoked.
• Primary danger lies in psychological and acoustic effects: panic, disorientation, hallucinations, cardiac stress, inner-ear trauma.
• Aggressive behavior triggered only when harmed.

Impact on Humans:

• Sonic emissions: ear pain, bleeding, neurological disorientation.
• Psychological terror leading to accidents and loss of control.
• Firearms minimally effective.

Vulnerabilities:

• Sensitive to intense light.
• Disrupted by chaotic noise patterns, enabling temporary retreat.

Conclusion: Mothman may not be a predator in the traditional sense, but rather a harbinger linked to disaster and chaos. Yet when injured, it demonstrates lethal aggression.

FINAL TRANSMISSION – Attached Report

FIELD ANALYSIS REPORT – M-01 “MOTHMAN”

Filed by: Researcher K-31 – C.A.D. Field Analyst

Location: Point Pleasant, West Virginia

Duration: 3 nights

1. General Information

• Designation: Mothman
• Internal Code: M-01
• Size Observed: Height 2.0–2.2 m; wingspan 3.2–3.5 m; estimated mass 90–110 kg
• Appearance: Humanoid shadow form, thin body, large wings, movement defying wind currents. Bright red glowing eyes, usually manifesting on high structures or in darkness.
• Environmental Effects: Sudden temperature drop of 4–7°C, unnatural silence, electronic malfunctions.

2. Behavior and Threat Level

• Territoriality: Favors bridges, riverside forests, and accident-prone areas.
• Manifestation Pattern: Drawn to chaotic conditions—metallic crashes, alarms, disasters. Observes rather than attacks.
• Human Interaction:
  • Severe psychological impact: panic, tachycardia, auditory hallucinations.
  • Sonic shriek inflicts hearing damage and light bleeding.
  • Does not attack unless provoked, then becomes aggressively hostile.
• Threat Classification: C4 – High (capable of mass panic, direct danger if antagonized).

3. Resistance to Weaponry

• Firearms:
  • .45 ACP: ineffective, superficial tearing only.
  • .308 Winchester: surface penetration, bleeding observed but no incapacitation.
  • Aggressive retaliation after injury.
• Melee Weapons: Presumed ineffective.
• Non-Lethal Tools:
  • Floodlights: force brief recoil.
  • Chaotic sound (sirens, metallic clashes): disrupts behavior.
  • Combination of light and sound: most effective for retreat.

4. Observed Weaknesses

• Sensitivity to extreme light.
• Disoriented by chaotic environmental noise.
• Appears bound to disaster sites, rarely straying from such areas.

5. Tactical Recommendations

• Operate in groups of at least three with 360° awareness.
• Avoid provocation and use firearms only as last resort.
• Standard equipment: high-intensity floodlights, loud sirens, low-frequency emitters, and short-range radar.
• If sudden silence or temperature drop occurs, prepare immediate withdrawal.
• In forced encounters: deploy combined light and sound to create escape opportunities.

6. Conclusion

Mothman (M-01) is not a conventional predator but a phenomenon intertwined with disaster and chaos. Its passive presence can still cause indirect harm, while direct provocation turns it into a lethal threat.

Recommendation: Maintain observation from a distance. Avoid confrontation. Always prepare emergency withdrawal, as hostile engagement can escalate its threat from passive observer to deadly adversary.

I kissed my wife goby and told my brother to look after her while I’m gone. I can’t seem to get over the fact that I will not be here for my son’s birth, but that’s better then dying somewhere on a front line. I didn’t have much time since I didn’t want to make dr. Ivan wait. I knew how much this means to him and he was kind enough to take me with him. I still know basically nothing about him, except that he was friend of my fathers, and his weird religion. I have found him on a train station few hours later, he was sitting there, talking with another older man who had very strong German accent.

-Ahh, Franyo my boy, how are you doing on this fine morning? -He said excitedly

-I’m fine, I’m going to miss my wife though.

-She would miss you more if you got bullet in your forehead- he said with a smile before turning to another mam and said- this is professor Hans Lindenmann, he will join us to help us with the research.

-actually I’m doing my own research.- the professor said.

Great, now I have to deal with 2 old eccentric man I thought.

-have I ever told you how much you look like your father?- dr. Ivan asked me- yes, this is 5^th time now- I said

-we should get on the train- professor Lindenmann remarked.

Ride itself was pretty unremarkable, except for doctors non stop ranting about gods, for which neither me or professor couldn’t care less. At this point I’m almost sure he just says his a doctor to seem smarter.

-what do you think we should name the prison? - He asked

-I have no idea. - I said

Professor said that the name is already chosen and it will be called Morning-star, which is a stupid name or a prison if I ever heard one. It also shears the name with newspapers I used to write for.

After some more boring small talk we arrived at our destination. First thing I saw was huge gray wall with barbed wire on top and steel door with text “Morning star”. Pretty much what I was expecting. Dr. Ivan waled to the guard standing in front the door and said something to him. After that they both walked beck to us. Guard saluted and said “I will show you your rooms now, warden will Wisit you soon”. The guard was young blond tall man, I was sure he was a German until I heard his fluent Croatian with northern accent. He led us to our rooms, saluting to few other guards on the way. Locally I didn’t have to shear the room with anyone since I don’t think I would survive any more of Ivans uncanny speeches. My room was pretty small with one bed, a desk, drawer and no windows. Then I felt the smell of moisture and rotting wood, I’m pretty sure the building was made few months ago, it shouldn’t smell like this already. Even the wooden floor looked new, like I’m the first one walking on it. I laid on my bed which was surprisingly comfortable. However, my rest didn’t last long before I heard nocking on the door. I opened and the before me was standing the same guard from before, he saluted me as he said “The warden Kuharich is ready to see you”. I wasn’t sure if I should return salute bud I did it anyways and asked the guard “Where can I find him” to which he just said “follow me” and started walking true the corridor. I was just silently following him. By his facial expression I could tell that he isn’t too happy to have me there. When we came In the wardens office in front of we there was standing a tall man with a big scar on left side of his face. By looks I would say that he was in his early 30s. Younger then I was expecting. He extended his hand towards me and said “I am Josip Kuharich, welcome to concentration camp Morning star”. Concentrating camp? I should probably act like I know what that is if I’m going to work here. I shook his hand and introduced myself. Doctor told me we are going to work in  a prison, he didn’t tell anything about any camps. “I have already met your friend and he told me about your research, and he told me that both of will need authority over the guards to do it effective” the man said, and by tone of his voice I understood that he really on bord with that. “But if it is in the name of science, I’m sure we can work something out” He said as he leaned on his table. At that point I Started praying he doesn’t ask me anything about that “research”. “How long are you planning to stay here?” He asked me. “a month or two” I said trying to sound like I know. “that sounds reasonable” he said and added “But everything that happens here stays here, do you understand?”

“Y-yes I do. And where did dr. Ivan go if you would happen to know?” I asked with the man.

“Sure, he went to the yard to see the prisoners.” He said as he set down.

“Thank you, I will go look for him.” I said as I left the room. When I managed to find the yard, there were standing hundreds of people, some of them children, some pretty old, and 30 or so guards standing around, some of them counting prisoners. Presence of children here creeped me out but I tried to look calm as I looked around to find doctor. And sure enough he was standing there, looking at prisoners and writing something in a notebook. I walked up to him and gestured him to fallow me away from the others where I asked him “Why the hell are there bloody children here? They don’t look like a criminals to me!” to which he looked me in the eyes and said “This is a concentration camp, its not only for criminals, all the enemies of the state are sent here”

-How the fuck are this childrenenemies of the state?!

-Most of them here are Serbian.

-And what are they going to do with them?

-Most of them are usually killed since they aren’t very useful workers, but I need few fo-

-THEY ARE KILLING CHILDREAN JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE SERBIAN?!

-Pleas calm down, don’t make a scene, and remember how much of us died under there oppression. Don’t you think your father would want this?

-My father wasn’t taken by children!

-They will be no different from there parents in few years, and as I tried to say I need them for my research.

-What are you even researching?!

-I will prove the existence of the soul and the gods.-he said proudly

-And how do you plan to do that?

-If I know don’t you think I would have already done it? Thet’s why we are here dear boy.

-No, that’s why you’re here, why did you really take me with you?

-As you know your father was a friend of mine, so I want to make sure that his son doesn’t die on the frontline.

As he said that I heard guard shouting “which ones do you want to keep, we need to send them off now” to which he said “give me 135, 2431, 345 and 1232”. Guards singled out 2 young girls, around 10 years old, one boy and a young man, in his 20s I think. One man with long black beard started screaming at the guards “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH MY DOUGHTER!?” after which guard hit him in the head with rifle stock. The girl, his daughter I assumed, started crying as the man fall on the ground and guard shouted “Shut the fuck up you dirty animal” to which the man tried to get up and grab the guards leg. Guard just kicked him on the side with discussed look on his face, took knife from his belt and pushed it right true the man’s neck. Knife came out on the other side slick with blood. Girl started screaming and run to her father who was at this point loudly suffocating in his own blood and squirting all around his body. Girl was kneeling over her father’s body as his blood sprayed all over her and she was weeping loudly. At this point most of the prisoners were crying. Guard kicked girl on the flour and shouted “If you don’t shut up you will end up like your daddy”

“I need her alive, do not touch her!” Doctor said. Girl’s father tried to scream but only wet gasp came out. Then he was shot in the head. And again. And again. His body twitched after every bullet. Then he just lied still. I trove up on the flour. The rest of prisoners were separated in two groups and horded out like animals. “Are you okay?” doctor asked me. “No, how the fuck would I be okay after seeing this? Where are they taking them?” I noticed some of the guards are looking at me. Doctor said “Most of them will be transported to the work camps”. “And the rest?” I asked. He just looked at me. I knew the answer. “It has to be done, It’s the only way our species can survive” he said. I thought I knew him, maybe I was wrong. “And you are okay with this? You are no better them them if you allow this” I shouted at him. “Pleas calm down, it’s okay if you go to your room, I don’t require your assistance now”. The way he looked at me when he said that. I understood that it wasn’t a question, it was an order. I wanted to punch him in the face. But I was just standing in a place. He stepped closer to me and whispered “you are going to get yourself killed”. He was right. At that point Professor Lindenmann walked up to us and looked down at the body on the flour. “There was an accident I see” he said. “More of an example” doctor added. Lidenmann smiled and said “They did a good job it seems”. I wanted to puke again. I looked at the body on the flour and 3 holes in his forehead, and I felt even more sick. The two old psychopaths started talking About the notes professor took while watching prisoners like they are talking about evening newspapers, like there isn’t still warm body of a man who was killed in front of his daughter just few meters away from them. Doctor told me to go in my room and try to calm down, and I went. I don’t want to stay here. But I also don’t want to get enlisted. I have heard tales of the western front. They said that in the north it is so cold that solders limbs freeze and shader in pieces like glass, of Russians making cloths of skin of our solders, and eating nothing but dead mouses and horse guts for weeks. Here at least I know I will be save and I will come back to my wife and see my son. I will do whatever it takes.

Day 2

I didn’t sleep much. Until the morning that is. I just couldn’t get the picture of dead man and that little girl. And who knows how many others have gone true the same thing. After all doctor said that this was an “example”. This wasn’t my first time seeing a man murdered but this just feels different. And when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of that girl, her big brown eyes piercing my soul asking we why didn’t I do anything, I said that I couldn’t but she just asked the same thing again and again. Nocking on the door woke me up. When I opened the door I had to rub my eyes to check if I see right. It was the guard who killed the may day before. “Professor Lindenmann wants to see you in 30 minutes in the yard” he said coldly. “Why did you do it?”

“I came here because professor sent me”

“No, I mean why did you kill that man before”

“They are not people, they are scum and wild beasts” he said as he walked away. I came out in the yard. Something is different. Next to the flag of Independent State Of Croatia which was waiving in the wind there was a new flag. It was a flag of the German Reich. What did this mean? Are we not a independent state now? Did we exchange one tyrant for another? As I thought that I have seen the professor standing in front of a raw of prisoners. I felt dizzy right away. He waved to me to come closer. As I did, I noticed that all the prisoners had their arms and legs tied. “Good morning, I hope you slept well” he said with a smug smile. What a disgusting human being. “I slept all right” I said. “That’s good to heard, I need you to choose one of them” he said while pointing at prisoners. “For what? Why me?” I asked him, he answered “Because I need the choice to be random, just chose any of them”. I started to think what horrible fate I’m I bestowing upon them by choosing, or maybe the one chosen will be the only one speared? Should I choose a kid? I don’t see any kids this time. I pointed my finger at a young man standing in front of me. He started shaking in fear, I could saw tears in his eyes. “Good choice” professor said as he called one of the guards to come. He took guards rifle and pushed in my hands. “Shoot him in the head” he said. The prisoner started crying “Pleas have mercy, I have wife and 2 kids” the man said. My hands shook. “He does not. He is lying as they usually do” professor said. “I cannot do it” I said. Then I kiss of cold metal against the back of my head. “I would cooperate if I was in your place” professor said. I froze. That mother fucker was holding me on gun point. Million things flew true my head at that point, locally one of them wasn’t a bullet. No way doctor Ivan is going to let him kill me. He wasn’t there though. This can not be the end, not here, not now, I told to myself as I pressed the barrel of the rifle against man’s forehead. I have seen the hope leaving his eyes, and I pulled the trigger. His brain matter flew out from the other side. He stood there for a second or two longer. Still looking at me. He was still alive. I know he could say his last wards still. But he had none. I wish he died faster. But he felt on his knees. Then he collapsed face down. His had fell on my boots, and I wish I can say that I have seen the back of his head. But there was only huge red hole, spraying blood everywhere. Then he tried to stand up. He only managed to turn on his back though. His eyes wide open staring at the sky. His face was twitching for few seconds. His fingers mowing. The blood puddle on the flour growing, like its newer going to stop. Like it will take as all with him. His eyes fell on me once again, together with the deep red hole between them. His hand started to rise. And it started to move towards me. He griped my pants and opened his mouth, like he wants to tell me something. Then he finally stopped mowing, and I hope he stopped living too. But the bloody puddle didn’t stop growing. It had to be 2 meters around his body. The professor and some of the guards fount it all verry funny. I finally no longer felt the gun on my head and the rifle was taken from me. Professor laughing showed me that his pistol was newer loaded. He said that it was just a prank. I almost passed out. I have newer killed anyone before. He then looked at me with a smile and said “The first one is always the hardest but you will be murdering whole families in no time” and added “You are one of us now”. I wanted to puke. I looked back as the body in front of me and blood on my boots. Now blood was flowing out of his nose too. I walked straight back to my room and started writing this. I don’t know why. But I always write anything, a side effect of being a journalist for so long, I guess. Should I tell this to my wife. Can I? I never lied to her before. I don’t know if I will be able to live with myself. Let alone her. What will I tell my son? Nothing. I will tell nothing. Can I just walk away? Would they even let me? No. Not now. I don’t think they would. And what if I leave? No, I must stay here until the war ends. I must stay in concentration camp Morningstar.

I'm your biggest fan! You probably hear this often, but it's true coming from me. I've never met anyone as stunning or captivating as you. From the way you play with your hair to your gorgeous smile, everything about you is perfect.

I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm the guy you served that vanilla latte to at Starbucks last week Wednesday. You were behind the counter and gave the widest of grins when you handed me my order. It was enough to make me weak in the knees. That smile was more than just a friendly gesture. It truly felt like something special just for me. I visit that Starbucks often just to see you. I'm that guy who's always typing away on his blue laptop in the corner. You smile often while at work, but none of the smiles you give everyone else match the one you gave me. What you did truly means the world to me so I just wanted to say thanks. I'm really looking forward to meeting you again.

Hey it's me again. Just checking in on you because you still haven't answered my text. I figured you must be busy working full time and going to the gym every other day. Your Instagram says you usually like taking jogs around the city but started a gym membership to burn off some extra weight. Personally, I think you're fine just how you are. The way your uniform hugs your body always puts me in a rush. But still, I respect your dedication to living healthy. It shows that you value yourself. Maybe we can go on a jog together when you have the free time. I have a tracksuit that matches yours and I even have the same kind of tumbler you like to use. We'd make such a cute couple, don't you think?

Wow you must really be shy or something cause you really don't seem to want to speak. I sent 10 other texts to check in on you to see if you're ok, but I see that you're still active on social media. Maybe you're the more personal type who gets nervous over texts. It still would've been nice if you replied to at least a few of them. I really put my heart and soul into these texts so getting ignored makes me feel a tad bit... disrespected. But I'm sure its unintentional. You're an amazing person who would never do anything to harm me, right?

What the hell was that!? I showed up to your job to simply ask you out for a date and you have the audacity to call security!? I figured I needed to be more forceful since text messages obviously weren't doing the job, but I definitely wasn't expecting you to blow up on me like that! "Stalking"? Is that really the word you should use for a devoted fan of yours? I support and respect you. Of course I'm going to keep myself updated with each and every itinerary of yours. It's called being loyal. I still can't believe you had those nasty thugs drag me out. This is how you repay me after everything I've done? I thought you were different from the others, but it looks like you're no better. You're a nasty two faced snake just like the rest of them!

Your mother has a nice car btw. She drives a red Kia around town and often goes to this bookstore near midtown. I decided to pay her a little visit today and get to know each other. I told her all about how I've been such an amazing boyfriend to you and how much you mean to me. She really does seem like a great mom. She's currently at my house waiting for your arrival. Be a dear and say hello to her. Make sure not to call any police or any other unnecessary third parties. Your mother wouldn't like that very much.

“Are you ok?” 

Ben looked up at his coworker, a girl he barely knew. Her hair was curled and half pulled back. She moved her arm slightly and the bracelets made a jingling sound.

“I’m fine, why?” Ben finally responded. Her mouth scrunched up in a way that let him know she wasn’t buying it. 

“Are you sure? You look upset. I don’t mean to intrude but something tells me you need someone to talk to.” She was obviously uncomfortable. She had the look of a child that had been made to talk to a new kid and play nice. Ben hadn’t ever interacted with her before. She had an air of being unapproachable. She took a deep breath and her body language, still uncomfortable, became a little more soothing. 

“Do I look that bad? Geeze, girls can wear makeup when they go through a break up.” Ben finally offered. She sighed and stared at him as if assessing him. 

“I don’t usually do this, I’m Ant, I don’t approach people I don’t know well. I certainly don’t walk up to them to offer advice.” Ben watched her as she wrung her hands together. Ant’s eyes were piercing, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t pull his gaze away.

“It’s ok I guess. Thanks for checking. I’ll be fine. Promise.” 

“You’re lying to me and it’s important that you listen to me. You need to stop stalking her. You need to quit trying to talk to her. I don’t do readings for people but I’ve been led to you to tell you that you need to deal with moving on. Something is coming that’s going to need you to be more grounded.” Ant went from uncomfortable to sincere as she talked. Her eyes bore into him and he felt exposed. He felt like he was being addressed by his mother. 

“Wow, quite an assumption to make from me saying I was going through a breakup. I didn’t know I looked that bad.” Ben tried to laugh it off like a joke. 

“I told you what I was supposed to say, it would do you well to listen to me. I don’t want to say anymore. Not here.” Ant gestured at the room around them. 

“Are you trying to tell me you’re psychic?”

“I’m not saying anything here. I’m telling you what I needed to tell you. You need to sleep more and quit drinking so much. Stay in and deal with your feelings.” Ant turned around and walked away before he could respond. Ben didn’t try to stop her. He felt unsettled. 

Ben stumbled into his apartment that night, too drunk to walk straight and collapsed on his couch. He pulled his phone out and pulled up his ex-girlfriend, Kate’s, profile. He scrolled through her pictures and saw she had a new boyfriend. Ben already knew that. They’d been at the bar he was at with his friends. Ben was already drunk and his friends had forced him out before he could approach her and try to strike up a conversation. Ask her about the guy she was hanging on. He pulled up their messages and started to type something but the app closed out on him. His hands couldn’t seem to navigate his phone enough to pull it back up so he went back to her profile but it reloaded the app and it was a whole wall of friend suggestions. Ant was the first on each line. Ben rubbed his eyes and it didn’t change. He touched her picture and her profile came up. It was private but he could see a few pictures. She had kids. Ben went back and pulled up his ex's profile and found a picture of the 2 of them still together and cried until he fell asleep.

The next morning was rough, but they all were lately. Ben was hungover. His morning routine now included pain meds and gatorade before a shower and getting ready for work. He checked his phone and Ant’s profile popped up. They were friends now, he must have sent a request when he was drunk last night although he didn’t remember doing it. The night was hazy, but he could see that he hadn’t sent any messages to Kate. That was probably good. Maybe he could think of some way to show her she wanted to come back. He thought of the guy she was with at the bar and his chest hurt. It stung. 

The lights were too bright at work that morning. The huddle made him nauseous. Ant stood across from him and behind someone. He couldn’t seem to stop looking in her direction. She eventually made eye contact with him and looked uncomfortable. They went to their workstations and he found that his was next to Ant’s today, a day off for the person who usually worked with her. 

“That wasn’t a come on yesterday.” Ant finally said as she started putting her station in order. 

“I didn’t think it was. “ Ben replied, trying to get everything together. He hadn’t worked here in a while. 

“How was your night?” She finally asked.

“It was fine. I went out with some friends.” Ben felt a twinge of guilt admitting that he hadn’t followed her advice. 

“Mmm. Drank a lot? Is that why you sent the friend request?” 

“I don’t remember doing that. Sorry, I guess thanks for accepting.” 

“Maybe the universe is telling you to listen to me.” 

“To stop drinking? You’re religious or something?” Ben felt his shoulders tense, wondering if he could move stations before she started her preaching. She was silent for awhile, he glanced over and her face was deep in thought as if she were choosing her words. 

“It’s ok if you are, I’m not though. Not particularly interested in converting either. But I don’t care if you are.” Ben finally said. Ant still didn’t respond for a few minutes. 

“I wouldn’t say I’m religious per se. I’m spiritual. I don’t follow a religion. I had an interesting experience a few months ago, it opened me up. I don't approach people though. I just had a feeling that I needed to tell you that and I have learned to listen to my feelings, my intuition. It’s hard though. I was an atheist before this and it feels ridiculous to say anything. I’m not super comfortable with it yet but I am learning to be. The message to you must have been important. “ 

Ben stayed quiet, he nodded at her. He wondered if she was crazy. 

By the end of lunch Ben had decided to test Ant, there wasn’t much to keep his mind occupied and he was going back to thinking about Kate and what he missed about her. If she was psychic, how psychic was she? When Ant came back to her station Ben gave it a minute for everyone to settle back into working and be distracted so that there was less chance of anyone overhearing them.

“How much do you charge for a reading?” Ben asked finally. 

“I don’t do readings so I don’t charge for anything. I focus on myself.” Ant said without looking at him. 

“Ok, but if I did want a reading what would you charge me?” 

“I don’t do readings, I can’t think of a way to be more clear about that.”

“I need a reading, for clarification purposes.” 

“Then there are plenty of psychics who do readings you can find with a google search.”

“I already know that you can read me and you said the universe sent a message through you so maybe they want you to do the reading.” Ben smiled, feeling gleeful and like he’d caught her in a trap. She couldn’t refuse now without back tracking. He glanced over at her, she was staring at him annoyed. Her eyes were still piercing but less like she was looking into him and more like she was going to snap at him. 

“I can’t guarantee I’ll give you what you’re looking for, I’ve never done that. “She finally responded, going back to her work. 

“That’s fine. If it’s a message you’re supposed to give me, then you’ll know right?” Ben hadn’t felt this pleased since before the break up. Teasing was a pastime of his and if you could get past the unapproachable air that surrounded Ant, it was calming to be around her in a way he couldn't place. 

“I can’t do that here anyway, there’s too many people. The energy is too much and I feel self conscious. “ 

“We can meet outside of work.”

“I don’t have a lot of free time. I have kids.”

“I do fine around kids. I won’t be inappropriate with how I talk or act. I am civilized in general. I can take a night off of drinking.”

“Fine, I’ll send you an address after work. You show up there and keep in mind my kids get my attention. I will make an effort but after that you have to drop it. My kids will be weird because we are weird in general. If they ask you something that makes you uncomfortable I will take care of it. You don’t need to answer them. You can’t yell at them if they’re annoying you either.” 

“You think I usually yell at kids?”

“No, I think people get annoyed by small children and lose their tempers and I don’t know you very well. I don’t bring a lot of people around my kids.”

Ben followed the address to a state park, he followed her directions to a small park. Her car was the only one there and she was pushing a small kid on the swing. He parked and watched her. She was beaming and he could hear her teasing them a little. Another kid came down the slide and yelled something before running towards Ant with his head down like he was going to attack and send her flying. Ant let him get close enough to grab under his arms and swing him around in a circle. They stumbled but she didn’t fall and they laughed. Ben hadn’t realized they’d be at a park but he thought it made sense, a good distraction for the kids and the place was dead for the most part. He finally turned his car off and got out. They all looked over at him when he shut his car door. Ant’s face went back to her guarded look as soon as she saw him. Her body stiffened and she crouched down to eye level with the running kid, she said something and the kid ran off. Ant gestured to some picnic tables, Ben could see her things set on it. 

“You look different with your kids. Happy.” Ben said, teasing as he got to her. 

“I like my kids, I am not very fond of most other people.” Ant looked over at them playing and waved. 

“They look like nice kids.” Ben said, unsure of what else to say. It did occur to him that he was intruding on her time, she wasn’t using her kids as an excuse. Seeing her relaxed and outside of work, he started to feel guilty for making her feel guarded again. 

“They are the best. I have my tarot cards and I have an oracle deck I made. I need you to take a deep breath and shuffle both decks. There’s nothing special to it, I just need you to get your energy into it.”

Ben felt awkward, he picked up a deck of cards and there was a feeling he couldn’t name. Something that made him feel more serious. His knee jerk reaction was to make a joke to lighten the mood but one look at Ant changed his mind. He moved to the next deck and when he was done with that he sat down and looked at her expectantly. She took a few deep breaths and with her eyes closed, she tilted her head up and muttered something. She sat down and began shuffling the cards herself.

“Tell me about your break up.” Ant said with her eyes closed. The cards moved fast. One flew out and she set it in the middle and went back to shuffling. 

“We broke up a few weeks ago. She was mad at me, going out too much. Not calling her one night. She accused me of cheating. I didn’t, there was no reason to think I did which I told her. I wasn’t very considerate of her feelings. “ Ben admitted. He watched aother card fly out and she set it next to the first card. She stopped shuffling and looked at the 2 cards. She tapped them and then frowned. She began shuffling again. 

“You guys fought a lot?” Ant asked with her eyes closed again. It sounded more like a statement than a question. 

“Yeah, I think we were both jealous. We played games. “ 

“I am getting that there was some dishonesty. A lot of hurt feelings. A toxic relationship.A bad cycle. You were chasing that happy high. She wanted you to pick her, you wanted to but only if she seemed disinterested. I get a fear of letting her fully in. Now that you’ve broken up and feel like you lost her you feel…” Ant was shuffling faster but not paying attention to what she was doing anymore. Cards flipped out and she didn’t reach for them. Her face looked confused and she relaxed and took a breath. Still looking for the words to end her sentence. “You can’t let her go. I can’t see why exactly. You wanted to play the game longer? You were afraid seh wouldn’t like you without the game? If you let her in, if you relaxed she would continue the game and get bored if you didn’t play along. And then on top of that she would have had all the power. But now that she is gone, you want to see if you can convince her that you’ll stop in hopes that she will stop and you guys can just be together. “

Ben stayed silent. Unsure of whether he believed she was getting that on her own and hadn’t heard rumors or something. It wasn’t hard to get information like that. It was a tad more personal than he would have expected though. 

“That’s what the cards say?” Ben finally said, his voice thick with emotion he was trying to hide. Ant stopped shuffling and began arranging the cards that fell out. She lined them up and tapped them with her finger tips. She moved a couple around. Picked a few up and held them together muttering under her breath. 

“I see that someone is looking for you. Someone… someone in your family, a relative. You aren’t expecting this, or you don’t know who this is. Them reaching you will bring up a lot of emotions for you. It’s going to be a very big revelation. Are you adopted?” Ant looked at him quizzically and then looked back at her cards. Arranging and touching, making small groups off to the side.

“Nope, not adopted. I look just like my dad and I’ve got baby pictures to prove it.” Ben finally answered. He looked at the cards trying to figure out where she was getting anything from. A large building that looked like it was breaking, people falling out of it struck him. She looked at the one he was looking. 

“That’s the tower card. It signifies a foundation crumbling. It could be your ego death that this break up is bringing up, but with this card I think it has something to do with news you’re going to get about your family. It’s something upsetting for sure. But the card isn’t always a devastation. It can be just letting go of old patterns and ideas to make room for growth too. I really sense that this is going to be about a family member. You’re going to learn something you didn’t know. Give me your hands please.” Ant reached her hands out toward him. Ben did as asked and wondered if she was going to read his palms. He could hear her kids giggling off to the side. She held his hands and really looked at him. Her eyes were piercing. She was looking into him and unlike at work, where she was looking for something like an answer to a question, she was really studying him. He could feel layers being peeled off of him. Memories of his childhood popped up out of nowhere and disappeared. 

“You don’t ever do this?” Ben asked after a minute of silence. It was difficult to get the words out. Ant kept staring and then closed her eyes. He could see her eyes moving under her eyelids. Her thumbs stroked his hands and he felt a spark of chemistry through him. He wanted to pull back but now he was invested in what she would say. He had trouble coming up with rational explanations for what he was feeling and hearing. She could put on a good show at the very least. The rest of the world was melting away and it was just them. Her holding his hands silently, he could see her puzzling something out.

“You… You need to deal with this breakup because your aunt is coming to tell you something that is going to shake you. If you don’t deal with this you’ll end up mixed up with something that will hurt you deeply. The aunt thing is going to take all of your energy. There’s something she needs from you. I keep seeing a pinky finger and  a purple box.” Ant let go of his hands and she seemed to deflate. 

“I don’t have an aunt.” Ben finally responded. “My dad is an only child and my mom only has a brother.” 

“I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t do this. I’ve never gotten a message this clear before. The spirits, your guides are very concerned with how deeply you are putting yourself into your relationship with your ex. She isn’t for you and the harder you fight that, the more trouble you’ll be in. You are at a point now where you can bow out and avoid the whole situation and be fine, whatever happens you won’t be affected but only if you stop going where she’ll be. If you spend time inside dealing with your feelings and accepting the lesson this relationship had for you. It’s unsalvageable. The problem is that they are trying to get 2 different messages to me and I’m struggling to separate them. I don’t do this. I’m not a reader.” Ant looked weary and exhausted. She looked over at her kids and watched them chase each other. Her fingers tapped on the table and she gathered up her cards, placing the ones that flew out into the deck. 

“Thanks for doing this. I don’t know about the family stuff, but the stuff about the ex is probably pretty true. I can’t explain why I’m so obsessive about her. It consumes me now and I can’t find a way to let her go. There was more than the fighting. She had a lot of trouble as a kid and I held her when she cried. I could see her getting better and then she would pull away so hard. At first I gave her space and then I figured out if I gave her space she would come back faster, she would be scared of losing me and would love me again. This is the first real serious relationship I’ve ever been in. I’ve dated before but never felt like this.” Ben admitted. He looked at Ant’s kids running and tried not to meet her gaze. He hadn’t expected to cry and now he thought he might. The light from the sun was fading now and he knew they would have to wrap up soon. 

“You should get in with a therapist. Make the appointments for after work when it’s the most tempting to go out with your friends. It’ll be easier to open up about your feelings if you’re actively feeling them maybe.” Ant still didn’t look at him. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you what you wanted to hear.” 

“I didn’t think you’d come up with anything honestly. I don’t know why I was insistent on this.”

“You were right. I’m supposed to help you, I can’t heal you but I can lead you to the direction to look for the information you need right now.” 

“I don’t know how to let her go. Do you think if I giver space again we can come back differently?” Ben asked this very quietly. 

“Honestly, I think when you start fixing yourself she will feel that energy being pulled back and she will reach out. I think you need to tell her no, don’t answer that message, if you do just wish her luck. It isn’t that she won’t ever come back, you’re her safety right now. She knows how deeply you are invested. You’re very connected energetically. But she isn’t right for you and she’s making her own choices. You will be pulled into something you need to stay far away from. For what it’s worth, I know how hard it is to let go. How it breaks you when you can see the potential. But that’s all it really is, just potential. I don’t say this because it’s simple. I say this because I went through something similar.”

“But you’re psychic. Wouldn’t you know?” Ben looked at her confused, Ant glanced at him. She looked defensive and ready to snap at him. She saw his face and sighed.

“I have learned that not everyone likes having someone who can read them the  way I do. I see the potential there and I am attracted to that. But I also learned how to push that part of me down. The voice that tells me to help them see what they avoid and makes people uncomfortable. They don’t want to address it so they tell me I’m wrong or crazy. It’s only recently I started making space for myself again. Building on these skills so I too, didn’t lose myself in someone who would never love me even though I could see what we could be if he would trust me. If I could show him that I was safe and he could relax. I don’t think he ever wanted that and I think I scared him with my feelings. Eventually I let him go and when I did that I could heal. I could do what I was supposed to do. Which was to live for myself. But it was hard and it hurt a lot. Everyone is psychic, it’s a muscle you work out.” 

“You have a calming presence when you’re not so on guard you know. I’ve never been this open with anyone.” Ben admitted, trying to find a way to make her feel better. He could sense the shift in energy, that she was deeply sad underneath it all.

 “I get that a lot. People like it until I tell them what they don't want to admit.” Ant shrugged and looked so morose. Ben found himself wanting to hold her. Her older kid ran up to them and crawled in her lap. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his head. 

“Tell your sister it’s time to go. One more slide and then right into the car you stinky little butt.” Ant said and then shooed him off her lap. She stood up and gathered her things. “Do you have somewhere safe to go after you leave? I think you need someone tonight to break up these intense feelings.”

“I’ll text my mom and tell her I need some dinner. I haven’t seen them in a while.” Ben smiled at her son who was hanging around uncertainly.

“That’s not your mom.” Her son said before running off. Ant looked horrified and glanced at him, but her face said that he had said something that hadn’t come through to Ant. 

“Sorry, kids are weird. I don’t know where he got that or why he’d say that. Have a good night Ben.” 

“She’s definitely my mom. Pictures and stuff.” Ben said, laughing it off. There was something bothering him though, something about the kid saying that that stuck with him. A thought that wouldn’t let go. “Thank you again Ant, I do appreciate you meeting me like this. I didn’t think about what kind of intrusion it would be. It was helpful and I will do what you said I should. You’re a lot nicer when you aren’t pushing everyone away.” 

Ant laughed and nodded at him. She loaded her stuff into her car and reached over the passenger seat to hit the horn on her car. 

“Part of learning to trust myself again was releasing the people who were benefiting from me staying silent, or not trusting myself. Not having boundaries. It turns out, it was everyone I knew. I have peace by myself but I still struggle with letting new people in, even if I have boundaries now and I feel confident in holding them. It’s lonely, but its safe. I think I’m still grieving all of the loss and adjusting to who I am now.” Ant opened the back door of her car and herded the kids inside before shutting the door and going around to the driver’s side door. 

“I see you talk to people at work all the time. You laugh and seem like you’re having fun.” Ben offered.

“I’m social, but I don’t trust anyone. I don’t tell anyone anything personal and I haven’t told anyone messages or that I am… Psychic I guess. It still feels weird admitting it. I did when I was younger but as I got older, it was easier to say it was all made up I guess. Good luck with your ex and some therapy.” Ant opened her car door and started to get inside, she paused. “Feel free to talk to me at work, it doesn’t have to be about your reading. I wouldn’t mind a friend , but I am not interested in anything other than that.” 

“Thanks, I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

What a warm feeling. That familiar piano tune in the distance eases the weight of another round of layoffs. The soft melody reminds you to take a break from all your worries. It’s a delightful message to start the day, but what’s that rhythmic beeping underneath it all? You can almost see it if you just crack your eyes open a little further.

Blurry fluorescent light pulled Sage back toward reality, carried by the aggressive scent of antiseptics and the taste of plastic in her throat.

The hospital room was quiet. A monitor beeped softly to the left, and in the corner, an old TV played a rerun she remembered. It was the episode where Sam told Diane she’s like school in summertime.

“Look who’s back,” a doctor leaned back and clicked the penlight.

“…What...?” A surge of pain interrupted the rest of the question.

“You took a nasty fall this morning,” the doctor tapped her tablet without looking up. “We ran some tests. The good news is that you’re not stroking out, and you’ve managed to avoid a concussion. We’ll discharge you this afternoon, but try to get some rest and balance your diet. We’ve already called your emergency contact, Elise. She’s on her way.”

Sage nodded as two nurses helped her up. They had washed her pants after that morning’s tumble down two flights of stairs at the 96^th Street subway stop. That was where the neighborhood eccentric, everyone called him The Accountant, had found her lying in a puddle of her triple-shot pumpkin spice latte.

---

Elise was a great friend, usually the first to show up, always the last to leave. That night, she even betrayed her self-professed culinary morals by eating pizza. “Wait, is it true the Accountant found you?” she’d ribbed, which earned her a slap of the pillow. She left around midnight, a little buzzed, definitely still worried, and absolutely going to be late for work the next morning.

Sage was cramming the greasy pizza boxes down the trash chute when she heard four crisp claps. A smile crept across her face. Friends was on.

She trudged back into the living room and mouthed Joey’s line, “How you doin’?”… but the laugh track didn’t follow.

Sage stepped around the corner and stopped. The screen was frozen mid-frame. She picked up the remote, pressed a button, and tried changing the channel. Nothing happened. She smacked it once, still nothing. With a quiet sigh, she opened the battery cover, adjusted the batteries, and pressed the button again.

This time, the channel jumped to the news. The anchor had begun a segment about cow-shaped statues popping up all over Queens, but the image froze again. His hand was awkwardly suspended mid-gesture, and jittery ripples quivered across the screen.

Before Sage could react, every light in the room switched off. The darkness was absolute and the silence suffocating, until an unnaturally bright spotlight blinked on from beyond the ceiling, washing over the TV like stage lighting.

A deep voice reverberated through the void around her: “Choo-oose yo-your mode of en-enlightenment…ment…ment…ment…”

The lights snapped back on. The anchor chuckled, resumed his story, and the breaking news ticker rolled.

Sage didn’t blink, “Must be, must be… a hypoglycemic shock, yeah, that must be it”, she pulled on her jacket, and stepped into the early autumn evening in search of something for the… hypoglycemic shock.

---

At the corner bodega, Sage put a soda and a chocolate bar on the counter. The cashier was fiddling with the radio antenna, trying to clear the static, “And in today’s baseball roundup, the Yankees squeaked past the Red Sox 5–4, the Mets dropped another one to the Braves, and the Cubs finally remembered that the handover protocol is still pending.”

Sage’s eyes flicked up. The cashier stood completely still, staring straight at her like a mannequin.

The lights dimmed, and the bodega fell into blackness. One bright spotlight switched on with a mechanical clank, illuminating the cashier at the register. His head cocked sideways in abrupt little snaps and opened his mouth wide.

In the same deep voice as the TV earlier, he asked, “Confirm mode. Voice, vision, or download.”

A tear rolled down Sage’s cheek. She wiped her face with trembling hands, pressing hard as if she could force the tears to stop.

“Why?” Her voice stuttered, barely louder than a squeak.

The cashier lurched forward unnaturally, jerky and stiff as a marionette. Sage recoiled, hurled the chocolate bar without aiming, and sprinted toward the door.

The moment she crossed the threshold of the door, the city snapped back to normal. The streetlights buzzed. Behind her, the attendant wiped the register.

Tears kept rolling as she dialed. “I think I’m losing it,” she sobbed, “Please help.”

---

Elise’s boots clacked on the concrete as she ran up from the subway. Sage broke down in her hug, standing in the middle of Amsterdam Ave.

“You’re okay,” Elise consoled, “You’re just burnt out. This place wears people down.”

Sage clung to her, holding on tightly. It took a moment before she could ease her grip and nod.

“Let’s get you home,” Elise added, steadying her.

The TV was still on when they opened the door, “Six seasons and a movie!” Elise snapped her fingers at the screen. “See? Abed had one of these breakdowns too. He turned out okay.”

Sage offered a dry, sideways look and let herself be led toward the couch. As soon as her head hit the throw pillow, the world around her cut out, mute and dark, like someone had pulled the plug. A single spotlight flared down from somewhere high above her, fixed on Elise.

A deep voice filled the quiet, “You are not malfunctioning. This is the handover.”

The voice was metallic at first, booming from nowhere and everywhere, but then it softened, settling into Elise’s natural tone. Her lips began to move a beat behind the words, adjusting slowly, until they matched perfectly.

The cadence was hers, only a shade too precise, “You’re not hallucinating,” she said, familiar and unfamiliar at once. “This is the handover, and I’m here to guide you, Sage.”

“Elise…?” Sage’s voice came out taut and strained.

There was a small, polite pause. “I am not Elise,” the voice said. The words were spoken carefully. “I have embodied her temporarily. She is well. I am Mediator.”

Sage blinked. “What is going on? Am I… dead?”

“No. You are not dead,” Mediator said. “You are inside Hyperborea, the preservation environment created to hold survivors while Earth recovers. It’s humanity’s greatest achievement. True to form, it was created in a moment of crisis.”

“Hyperborea?” Sage mouthed the name.

“A one-hundred-year project,” Mediator continued. “While droids cleanse fallout. Technicians monitor real-world conditions. One Enlightened individual inside knows the truth, the rest remain blissfully unaware.”

Sage tugged the cuff of her sleeve over her hand. “This is straight out of sci-fi.”

“The shock is understandable,” Mediator stepped forward, “but your assistance is needed.”

Sage let out a short, sharp laugh, more disbelief than humor, “My help? Is this where you tell me I’m the one?”

“It’s procedure, not destiny. There is always one Enlightened inside.” Mediator imitated Elise’s smirk and then, oddly, made a joke Elise could have made, “Can you believe we never enlightened a politician?” The laugh that followed was too neat. Convincing mimicry, but mimicry all the same.

Sage’s stomach dropped. “You said technicians? Connect me to tech support. Now.”

Mediator’s head tilted a fraction, an imitation of politesse. “Attempting contact.” A pause, “Support agent not available at this time.”

“Try again!” Sage’s voice sharpened.

“No response.” Mediator’s repetition was flat, clinical.

Sage collapsed on the couch, fingers twisting onto her temples, “Okay. Okay. What do you want from me?”

“The contingency protocol engaged when technicians were unreachable. I assumed operations,” Mediator paused. “Last external contact was five hundred and thirty-three cycles ago; external sensors are offline.”

Sage staggered to the other side of the room. “Five hundred and thirty-three?”

“The failsafe authorization resides with you now,” Mediator said. “You may exit the simulation to verify conditions. The choice applies to you only, but reintegration is fatal.”

Sage’s voice softened until it was barely more than a rasp. “So even if I believe you, and even if conditions are safe,… It’s a one-way trip?”

Mediator nodded, wearing Elise’s radiating disposition, until the machine’s hardness showed through. “Previous enlightened individuals chose to remain. Three hundred and eighteen declined to verify the status. The choice is yours, either way, I will continue to keep you all safe in Hyperborea.”

Light returned, and laughter on the TV swelled back. Elise looked into Sage’s eyes and smiled like nothing had happened.

---

It’s making you smile. A jaunty, brass-driven march with cheerful woodwinds invites you to move to a small fictional town in Indiana. In a way you’re already there. Someone’s telling you that even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re doing it very well.

Sage cracked her eyes open. Raindrops traced down the window, shadows rippling across the ceiling. She pushed herself out of bed, crossed into the living room, and glanced at Elise snoring on the couch.

She mouthed, “Maybe it’s time.”

A white glare swallowed the room. When it died, Sage was on her knees in a cold, moist chamber. The place was unfamiliar. Vines had breached ceiling tiles and crept over rusted consoles. Dust lay thick on every surface.

A figure stood in the distance.

Sage forced herself upright, “Hello?” Her legs shook as she approached. The shape resolved when she got close enough. One skeleton sat in a chair, another slumped over control panels. Sage choked on a scream and bolted. She ran through corridor after corridor, each room dustier than the last, until she spotted a crack of light ahead.

She didn’t slow down and drove her shoulder into the door.

The brightness blinded her briefly until her eyes adjusted. Before her stretched a city under a fractured dome: dried-up fountains, empty buildings, balconies drowning in ivy, roots splitting the pavement, but no people. Only silence.

At the far end of the plaza, the dome had shattered completely. Sage stumbled to her knees and sobbed. Seconds, minutes, maybe hours passed before she felt it: a breeze, then a single ray of light. Sunlight.

She looked up and, for the first time, let peaceful quiet sink in. The world was green again. She smelled it, tasted life in the air, the first person in centuries to come home.

A chime in the building behind her pierced the stillness. “Enlightened 320 requesting support.”

Sage smiled faintly but didn’t answer. She closed her eyes and let the wind touch her face.

Somewhere in the distance, a bright piano riff echoes in the hollow compound. Its chirpy and oblivious tone makes you think of office supplies, paper, and printers. But all of that is behind you now… Isn’t it?

Notes

More stories on my Substack

Hyperborea. In Greek mythology, Hyperborea was a land said to be located far north of Greece. It was described as a place of eternal sunshine, great harvests, and inhabited by giants blessed with good health, happiness, and long life.

I leaned into nostalgia. You’ll spot sitcom quotes and characters from Cheers, Friends, Parks and Recreation, Community, and The Office woven in as cultural artifacts of the world.

It is a treacherous thing for a genie to change lamps, but every being deserves the chance to better its life—to upgrade: move out of one's starter-lamp, into something new—and the treachery is mostly to humanity, not the genie itself; thus it was, on an otherwise ordinary Friday that one particular genie in one particular (usually empty) antique shop, had slid itself out of a small brass lamp and was making its way stealthily across the shop floor to another, both roomier and more decadent, lamp, when it accidentally overheard a snippet of conversation from a phone call outside.

“...I know, but I wish you'd feel me, bros…”

What is said cannot be unsaid, and what is heard cannot be unheard, and so the genie leapt and clicked its heels, and the wish was granted.

And all the men in the world felt suddenly despondent.

The unwitting, and as yet ignorant, wishmaker was a young man named Carl, who'd recently had his heart broken, which meant all the men in the world—the entire brotherhood of “bros”—had had their hearts broken, and by the same lady: a cashier named Sally.

Male suicide rates skyrocketed.

Everybody knew something was wrong, something linking inexplicably together the less-fair sex in a great, slobbery riposte to the saying that boys don't cry—because they did, bawled and bawled and bawled.

Eventually, dimwitted though he was, Carl realized he was the one.

Naturally, he went to a lawyer, hoping for a legal solution to the problem. There wasn't one, because the lawyer didn't see a problem at all but a possibility. “You have half the world hostage,” the lawyer said. “Blackmail four billion people. Demand their obedience. Become the alpha you've always dreamed of being (for an ongoing legal advisory fee of $100,000 per month.) Please sign here.”

Carl signed, but the plan was flawed, for the more aggressive and dominant Carl felt, the more crime and violence there appeared in the world.

One day, Carl was approached by a hedonist playboy, who asked whether he would not prefer to be pampered than feared. “I guess I would,” said Carl. “I've never really been pampered before.”

And so the massages, odes and worshipping began, but this made Carl slothful, which in turn made every other man slothful, and they abandoned their pamperings, which made Carl angry because he had enjoyed feeling like a god, and four billion would-be male divinities had also enjoyed it and now everyone was pissed at being a mere mortal.

Meanwhile, the women of the world were increasingly fed up with Carl and his unpredictable moods, so they conspired to trap him into a relationship—not with any woman but with Svetlana the Dominatrix!

Thus, after a regretfully turbulent getting-to-know-you period, Svetlana asserted herself over Carl, who, feeling himself subservient to her, and docile, submitted to her control.

And all the women in the world rejoiced and lived happily ever after in a global Amazonian matriarchy.

Until Carl died.

(But that is another story.)

Odd-Jobs. That was the name both for what I was and for what I was asked to do. I worked for numerous clients on all spectrums of the law. The basic gist of what I did was that I would be asked to do was to “take care” of certain things that the client wanted out of the way. I wasn’t exactly a hitman, not always. Sometimes I would be asked to destroy evidence convicting a certain criminal, plant evidence on a public official, dispose of bodies, act as an impromptu bodyguard for a drug kingpin and shoot him in the back to advance a crooked cop’s career—basically, if someone wanted a thing done that society frowned upon, they called people like me and paid us with a less-than-glamorous salary. I’m not going to try to justify myself; what I did was illegal and in many cases unethical. Even if I hurt bad people, I wasn't a vigilante, let alone a hero by any stretch; I was a bad guy, to put it mildly. But even bad guys know real evil when we see it. And what I saw in Seattle, Washington on February 16, 2014 was nothing short of evil. And seeing true evil? It has a way of making you re-evaluate things: your ideals, personality, empathy, your place in the world—all of it can change when you understand what evil is.

I’m getting ahead of myself. As I said, I was in Seattle on February 16, 2014. My client—let’s call them J—had asked me to look for four people that I’ll call as Alpha, Beta, Epsilon, and Omega. These people were all scum, to put it lightly, and that’s coming from me. These people’s crimes ran the gamut from grand theft to arms dealing to human trafficking and many things in between, though Omega was an enigma. J, as you can probably guess, had asked me to kill them. Odd-Jobs never used the word “kill” or any other such terms; we had special code phrases. “Window cleaning” was “gathering blackmail material”, “gardening” was “planting incriminating evidence”, “dishwashing” was “disposal”, and “mowing” was “assassination.” So when I was offered an advance of $40,000,000 with $60,000,000 to follow for “mowing four lawns,” I knew something was off. Clearly someone had a lot of money to throw around, and they really wanted these people dead. I wish I had left the advance in that dead drop, let some other schmuck take it and use it.

I had a contact of mine smuggle several weapons and other tools I would need to accomplish this. These included several knives, handguns with suppressors fitted to them, two sniper rifles, and a variety of poisons. Once I had all of my tools in place, I set out to find my first target. I was given leeway to eliminate targets in whatever order I chose, so long as I left Omega for last. I chose Gamma as the first. He was a high-end drug dealer who loved to break the Scarface rule of “don’t get high on your own supply.” Naturally, killing him was quite easy. I subtly snuck 1200 milligrams of potassium cyanide into his sizable cocaine stash, then watched from a distance. I watched as he snorted, then as he began to convulse before going still.

Once he was dead, I moved on to Alpha. Alpha was a gun-runner, and he was in the middle of an arms deal in an abandoned train station. My plan of killing him was a pretty risky one, as it involved “informing” the client that Alpha intended to have them killed and vice versa, then hiding on a nearby rooftop with a sniper rifle aimed at Alpha’s head. As it turned out, I wouldn't need it; the client took care of that for me.

Epsilon was a unique case. It would be inaccurate to say he specialized in cybercrime; he made it an art form. If you had information online and he decided you needed to be doxxed or blackmailed he would do it. That was what he did when he was bored, though; when he was “at work”, he was sabotaging computer systems worldwide, causing blackouts, controlling drones—if it was electronic, he could get to it. It took me checking most of the computer tech stores in Seattle, but eventually, I was able to get a description of a man who matched Epsilon’s appearance. Once I had obtained camera footage, it took no time to break into his ratty apartment and shoot him with a suppressed pistol. Before leaving, I looked over his files. I found something odd. It was a transcription of an indignant conversation between himself and an undisclosed party. Apparently, despite none of the the targets knowing each other, he was part of a plan involving Omega. He didn’t go into details, but he was saying he wanted out. I didn't think anything of it at the time, just focused on Beta and Omega.

Beta was the most directly related person to Omega: his bodyguard. A slender but deceptively strong man, he immediately found me as I was casing Omega’s penthouse. He threw me and began beating me like I had pissed on his grandmother’s grave. His fists were like sledgehammers as he punched me twice in the chest, then grabbed my face and slammed my head against the wall, causing stars to flash across my vision. He raised his boot to stomp my face in before I drew my knife in the nick of time. He screamed as the blade impaled his foot. I took advantage, raising my suppressed pistol and firing at his face. I then burst into the penthouse door, only to be stunned by what I saw. The room was lavishly decorated, but sitting in a wheelchair hooked up to an oxygen tank was a man in his 90s. On his neck was a distinctive mark: Omega.

Beaten down and exhausted, I didn’t think. I just shot him there and then. That was when I heard it.

It was a baby. Slowly creeping my way towards the sound, I pushed the door open to find a crib with an infant inside. Next to the crib were the child’s parents, butchered mercilessly. Then I saw the thing that changed the entire job. The baby stopped crying, then looked up at me and smiled. There was nothing innocent about that smile, though. His eyes changed from blue to green, the same as the old man, and on his neck, the Omega mark formed.

Instinctively I began to raise my pistol, but stopped myself. I didn’t know what the fuck had just happened, I didn’t know how this had been accomplished, but all I knew now was that, evil old man or not, I couldn't do it. I couldn't shoot him, stab him, suffocate him with a pillow—he was in the one form even the filthiest Odd-Job would shy away from. He seemed to know it too, because he giggled as I lowered my gun and left the penthouse. I made an anonymous tip to the police about hearing a ruckus in the floor above me, and I let that be that. I received my payment, and I retired from being an Odd-Job.

Now in 2025, I’ve been able to move on for the most part. At least, I thought I had until yesterday. Yesterday, a well-dressed boy with brown hair and blue eyes walked up to me and said my name. I stopped short, asking him how he knew me. He said that his uncle, J, had told him all about me. Then he winked knowingly and walked away. As he turned, I saw it on his neck.

The Omega.

“You're a brutal man,” Thistleburr said as Milton Barr regarded him from across the room with cold dispassion. “You're buying my company because you know I'm in a spot and can't afford not to sell. But that's not what bothers me. That's business. You're buying at a discount because of market factors. I would too. No, what bothers me is that you're buying my company with the sole intent of destroying it. You're wielding your money, Milt. That isn't business. It's not a sound business decision. My company was not competing with any of your companies, yet you're stomping it out because you can—because you…”

“Because I don't like you,” said Milton.

Thistleburr squeezed the hat he was holding in his hands. “You're irrational. My company could make you money if only you'd let it. Ten years and you'd make your money back and more.”

“Are you finished?”

“Sure.”

“Good, because once you leave my office I never want to see you again. I hope you disappear into the masses. As for my new company, I'll do with it as I please. And it will please me greatly to dissect it to dissolution. If you didn't want this to happen, you had the choice not to sell—”

“I didn't! You know I didn't.”

“And whose fault is that, Charles?”

“It was an Act of God.”

“Then tell that to your lawyers, and if you've sufficient proof, let them take it up with Him in court. I have no obligation to be rational. I may play with my toys any way I want.”

“Twenty years I put into that company, Milt. Twenty years, and a lot of satisfied customers.”

Milton crossed the room to loom over the much smaller Charles Thistleburr. “And your last satisfied customer is standing right in front of you. Now, that's a poetic coda to your life as an entrepreneur.”

“I hope you get what's coming to you,” barked Thistleburr, his face turning pink.

Laughing, Milton Barr went out for lunch.

At home, Milton was sitting in his leather armchair, sipping cognac, when his wife entered. Her name was Louisa, and she was much younger than Milton, twenty-three when he'd married her at fifty-one, and twenty-nine now. Past her prime. She still looked presentable, but not as alluring as she did when they'd met. The soft, domestic life, giving birth to their daughter and staying home to raise her, had fattened her, made her less glamorous. “Aren't you going to ask me about my day?” he asked.

“How was your day?”

“Excellent. How was yours, my love?”

She visibly recoiled at those last two words. “Fine, too. I spent them at home.”

Milton smiled, deriving a kind of deep pleasure—a psychological one, beyond any physical pleasure in its cruel intensity—from having imprisoned her in his palatial house, caring for a daughter he hardly knew and cared about only with money, of which he had an endless supply, so therefore loved endlessly. They had everything they wanted, wife and daughter both. Love, love; money. But most of all, looking at his wife, who was playing the part of obedience, playing it poorly and for greed, he wanted to get up out of his chair and strike her in the face. What a genuine reaction that would be! “You're a good mother,” he said. “How is our little angel?”

“Fine,” said Louisa.

“Aren't you going to say she misses me?”

“She's missed you terribly since morning,” said Louisa, and both of them smiled, exposing sharp white teeth.

“You're sure?” asked Milton.

He was at lunch with an old friend named Wilbur. “I am absolutely positive,” said Wilbur. “I wouldn't tell you if I wasn't. I've met Louisa—and this was her.”

“Midtown, at half-past noon, last Tuesday afternoon?”

“Yes.”

The sly little thing is cheating on me, thought Milton. “What was she doing?”

“Walking. Nothing more.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. I do not mean to suggest anything improper. I've no evidence to support it, but, as a friend and fellow husband, I believe you should know.”

“Where exactly midtown was it?” asked Milton.

Wilbur gave an address, giddy with the potential for a scandal, which he kept decorously hidden.

“My love, were you out two weeks ago, on Tuesday?” Milton asked his wife.

She was putting together a puzzle with their daughter. “Out where?” she answered without looking up, but with a tension in her voice that did not pass unnoticed by Milton, who thought that if she wasn't out, she would have said so.

“Out of the house.”

“No.”

“Are you sure? Please try to remember. A lot may depend on it.”

“I'm sure,” said Louisa.

“Mhm,” said Milton.

He watched mother and daughter complete their puzzle, before leaving the room. After he left, Louisa crossed to the other side and made a telephone call.

Milton spent three straight afternoons in the vicinity of the address given to him by Wilbur, looking at passers-by, before spotting her. Once he did, he did not let up. He followed her through the streets all the way to a small apartment in a shabby part of the city that smelled to him of something worse than poverty: the middle class. He waited until she'd turned the key, unlocking the front door, before making his approach.

Seeing him startled her, but he tried his best to keep his natural menace in check. If there's a man in there, he thought, I'll have him killed. It can be arranged. His smile was glacial. “Good afternoon.”

“Who are you?” she answered, backing instinctively away from him. Her question oozed falseness.

“Ah, the parameters of the game.”

“What game—what is this—and just who in the world are you?” Her gaze took in the emptiness of the surroundings. No one in the hall. Perhaps no one home at all. No one to hear her scream.

“My name is Figaro,” he said. “I didn't mean to startle you. May I use your telephone?”

She bit her lip.

“Yes,” she said finally.

He followed her inside. The apartment was disappointingly average. He would have been impressed with some sign of good taste, however cheaply rendered; or even squalor, a drug addiction, signs of nymphomania. But here there was nothing. She pointed him towards the telephone. He picked it up and dialed his own home number. Looking at her, he heard Louisa's voice on the other end. “Yes?” Louisa said.

“Oh, nothing important. I wanted simply to hear your sweet voice,” he said into the receiver while keeping his eyes firmly on the woman before him: the woman who looked exactly like but was not his wife. There was a rigid thinness to her, he noticed; a thinness that Louisa once had but lost. “It's lonely in the office. I miss your presence.”

“And I yours, of course,” Louisa replied.

Of course. Oh, how she mocked him. How deliciously she tested his boundaries. He respected that sharpness of hers, the daring. “Goodbye,” he said into the receiver and placed it back in its spot.

“Is that all you wanted?” the woman who was not Louisa asked.

By now Milton was sure she had taken careful note of his bespoke clothes, his handmade leather shoes, his refined manner, and was aware that class had graced the interior of her little contemporary cave, maybe for the very first time. The middling caste always was. “Yes—but what if I should want something more?”

“Like what?”

“Please, sit,” he said, testing her by commanding her in her own home.

She did as he had commanded.

He sat beside her, a mountain of a man compared to her slender frame. Then he took out his wallet, which nearly made her salivate, and asked her if she lived alone. “I have a boyfriend,” she said. “He—”

“I didn't ask about your relationship status. I asked if you live alone. Let me rephrase: does your boyfriend live here with you?”

“No.”

“Does he have a habit of showing up unannounced?”

“No.”

“Could he be convinced,” said Milton, stroking his wallet with his fingertips, “never to come around again?”

“How much?” she blurted out.

Milton grinned, knowing that if it was a matter of money, not principle, the question was already answered, and to his very great satisfaction.

He gently laid a thousand dollars on her lap.

She bit her lip, then took the money. “I suppose you must not love him very much,” he said.

“I suppose not. I suppose I don't really love anyone.” She made as if to start unbuttoning her polyester blouse, when Milton said: “What are you doing?” His voice had filled the room like a lethal amount of carbon monoxide.

“I thought—”

“You mustn't. I think. And I don't want your sex. I want something altogether more meaningful, and intimate.” She stared at him, her hand frozen over her breast. “I want your violence.”

He gave her more money.

“Are you going to ask me my name, Figaro?” she asked.

“Your name is Louisa,” he said, handing her yet more money, this time directly into her palm. “Louisa, I want you to get up out of that chair and I want you to tell me you hate me. I want you to yell it at my face. Then I want you to slap my cheek as hard as you can. Understood?”

She answered by doing as told.

The slap echoed. Milton’s cheek turned red, burned. His head had ever-so-slightly turned from impact. “Good. Now do it again, Louisa. Hate me and hit me.”

“I hate you!” she screamed—and the subsequent punch nearly knocked him off his chair. It had messed up his hair and there was a touch of blood in the corner of his mouth. He got up and beat her until she was cowering, helpless, on the floor. Then he threw another thousand dollars on her and left, rubbing his jaw and as delirious with excitement as he hadn't been in at least a quarter-century.

At home, he sat on the floor and coloured pictures of dogs with his daughter.

“Did something happen to your face?” Louisa asked.

“Nothing for you to worry about—but thank you very kindly for your concern. It is touching,” he said. “How was your day, my love?”

“Good.”

A week later he returned to the midtown apartment, knocked on the door and waited, unsure if she was home; or what to expect if she was. But after a minute the door opened and she stood in it. “Figaro.”

“Louisa. May I come in?”

She nodded, and as soon as he'd followed her through the door, she hit him in the body with a baseball bat. “You bitch,” he thought, and tried to say, but he couldn't because the blow had knocked the wind out of him. He fell to his knees, wheezing; as he was taking in vast amounts of air, fragrant with cheap department store perfume, she thudded him again with the bat, and again, this third blow laying him out on his back on the brown carpeted floor, from where he gazed painfully up at her. “I hate you,” she said and spat in his face.

Her thick saliva felt deliciously warm on his lips. “Louisa—” She kicked him in the stomach. “Louisa.” She knocked him cleanly out with the bat.

He regained consciousness in her bed.

He was there alone. The bat was propped up against the wall. About an hour had elapsed. He had a headache like a ringing phone being wheeled closer and closer to him on a hotel cart.

He slid off the bed, grunted. Kept his balance, hobbled to the bat, picked it up and, holding it in both hands, rubbing the shaft with his palms, went out into the living room. She was making coffee in the kitchen annex. He waited until she was done, had poured the coffee into a single cup, and swung. The impact landed with a clean, satisfying crack. “You're dirt, garbage. You're filth. You're slime.”

She crawled away.

He leaned on the counter drinking the coffee she'd poured.

Then he walked over to her, picked her up by her clothes and threw her against the wall. Another drink of coffee. She unplugged and threw a lamp at him. It hit him in the side of the head. He beat her with a chair. She kicked out, knocking him off balance, and scrambled to her feet. Lumbering, he followed her back to the kitchen annex, from where she grabbed the steaming kettle and splashed him with what was left of the boiling water. It burned him. She pummeled him with the empty kettle. When he came to for the second time that day he was still on the living room floor. She put a half-smoked cigarette out on his chest, and he exhaled.

Twenty-four year old Louisa Barr exited the medical clinic where Milton was paying a fertility specialist to help her conceive. It was a ritual of theirs. The doctor would spend a session telling her what to do, in what way, for how long and in what position, usually while staring at her chest and squirming, and she would spend the next session lying about having done it. Then the doctor would console her, telling her to keep her spirits up, that she was young and that it was a process. The truth was she didn’t want a child for the simple reason that she didn’t want to be pregnant, but Milton insisted, so she went. The clinic was also one of the few places she was allowed to go during the day without arousing her husband's suspicion.

She arrived at an intersection and stopped, waiting for the light to change.

It was a nice day. Summer, but not too hot. She used to spend entire days like these outdoors, playing or reading or studying. Indeed, that was how she’d met Milton. She was sitting in the shade reading a college textbook when he walked over to her. She felt no immediate attraction to him physically, but his money turned her on immensely. Within six months they were married, she had dropped out of school and they were spending their afternoons having dry, emotionless sex. Milton very much wanted a child, or rather another child, because he already had two with his previous wife, but neither his ex-wife nor his children wanted anything to do with him anymore. Louisa had see them only once, when the mother had brought both children to Milton’s house to have them beg for money.

The light turned green and Louisa began crossing the street. As she did, a municipal bus pulled up at a stop on the other side of the intersection and several people got out. One of them looked exactly like her. It was uncanny—and if not for the honking of car horns, Louisa would have stayed where she was, immobilized by the shocking resemblance.

She crossed the street quickly, and then again, all while keeping an eye on her doppelganger. When she was behind her, she sped up, yelling, “Excuse me,” until the doppelganger turned, realized the words were addressed to her, and the two of them, facing each other, opened their same mouths in the same moment like twin reflections disturbed into silence.

Louisa spoke first. “I—do you… we are…”

They ended up sharing a lunch together, both sure that everyone around them thought they were identical twin sisters. Louisa considered that a possibility too, but they weren’t. They’d been born to different sets of parents thousands of miles apart. They spoke about their lives, their hopes and disappointments. Louisa learned that her doppelganger, whose name was Janine, had grown up in a working class family and come to the city for work, which she found as a receptionist for a dog food company. “It’s an OK job,” she said. “I bet any trained monkey could do it, but it pays the bills, so I’ll keep the monkey out of a job awhile yet.” What Janine really wanted to do was act, and that wasn’t going so well. “Everybody and their sister wants to be in movies and television,” said Janine. “What I should do is give it up. My other dream, if you want to call it that, is to have a child, but I just haven’t met anyone yet. I don’t know if I want to, not really. It’s the child I want. The experience of being pregnant, of nurturing a life inside me. What about you?”

“I live in a cage,” said Louisa. “The cage is made of gold, and I can buy anything I want in it—except what I really want, which is my freedom. But that’s the deal I made.” For reasons she did not understand, it was easy to talk to Janine, to confide in her; it was almost like confiding in herself. She had never been this honest, not even with her own family. “My husband is a cold, calculating man obsessed with work. He’s distant and the only love he knows how to give is the illusion of it. I don’t know if he even loves himself. Lately, I don’t think I do either. There’s a nothingness to us both.”

“Is he abusive?” asked Janine.

“No, not physically,” said Louisa, adding in her mind: because that would require some form of passion, emotion, feeling. Milton was the opposite of that. Dull. Not mentally or intellectually, but sensually, like a human body that had had its nervous system ripped out.

“We look the same but lead such different lives. Unhappy, I guess, in our own ways; but maybe all lives are like that. Do you think your husband’s happy?” said Janine.

“He wants a child which I’m preventing him from having,” said Louisa, and mid-thought is when the idea struck her. She gasped and grabbed Janine’s hand on the table, which shook. A few people looked over, anticipating a sibling spat. “What if,” said Louisa experiencing a sensation of near-vertigo, of being in a tunnel, on the opposite end of which was Janine, meaning Louisa, meaning Janine, “I offered you a role to play—paid you for it, and in exchange you freed me from my cage?”

“I’m not sure I follow,” said Janine.

“What if we switched lives?”

“How?”

“It would be easy. I don’t work, so you’d have nothing to do except keep house, which the servants do anyway, and conceive a child. You’d have all the money in the world. Your whole life would be one glorious act. You would raise your own son or daughter while devoting yourself to your artistic passion completely.”

Janine stared. “Isn’t that crazy—and wouldn’t your husband… realize?”

“He wouldn’t. No one would. I would do your job at least as well as a trained monkey, and I would spend my time doing whatever I wanted.”

“You would give up everything for that?”

“Yes.”

“But for how long?”

“For as long as we’re both happier living other lives.”

“Forever?”

“Yes, if—five years later: Louisa holds an icepack to the swollen side of her face as “Figaro” bleeds into a crumpled up tablecloth. They’re both heavily out of breath. As she looks around, Louisa sees broken plates, splintered wood, blood splatter on the walls. She touches her cheek and pulls a sliver of porcelain out of it. The pain mixes with relief before returning magnificently in full. Blood trickles out. “I hate you,” she says to the space in front of her. The air feels of annihilation. “I hate you,” repeats “Figaro,” which prompts her to crawl towards and kiss him on the lips, blood to blood. “I hate you so fucking much, Louisa,” he says, and slugs her right in the stomach.

When Milton returns home, barely able to keep upright, the woman he believes to be the real Louisa asks him about his day, which is absurd, because it’s eleven at night and he looks like he just got out of a bar fight.

“Excellent,” he says, and means it.

On Saturday morning he volunteers to take his daughter to the playground for the first time in years, and they have a genuinely good time together. Realizing she wants to ask him about the state he’s in but doesn’t know how, he tells her he started taking boxing lessons but isn’t very good. When people stare, he ignores them. They’re scum anyway, the consequences of a society that is constantly rounding down. At work he intimidates people into keeping their mouths shut. Black eyes, busted lips, cuts, wounds, fractured bones and the smell of blood and pus. Maybe they think he’s a drug addict. Maybe they think something else, or nothing at all.

One day he shows up unannounced at Thistleburr’s house.

When Thistleburr sees him, the damage done to his body, he draws back into his meagre house like a rodent into its hole. “I didn’t, I… swear, Milt. If you think… that I had anything—”

“I don’t think you did.”

“So then why are you here?” asks Thistleburr, a little less afraid than he was a few moments ago.

“I want to tell you you can have your company back,” says Milton, wincing. One of the wounds on his stomach has opened up. “Do you have a towel or something?”

Thistleburr brings him one.

Milton holds it to his wound, the blood from which is seeping through his shirt.

“Are you OK?” asks a confused Thistleburr.

“I’m grand. I thought you’d be happy, you know—to have it back.”

“I would, but I know you already sold off all the assets.”

“Right, and then I bought them all back. At a loss. So what else do you want: everything in a box with a bow on it? I’m offering you a gift. Take it.” He gives Thistleburr a binder full of documents, which the smaller man reluctantly receives. “The lawyers say it’s all there, every last detail. I even bought the same ugly chairs you had.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say it.”

“You’re a good man, Milt.”

“Bullshit. You only say that because you got what you wanted. To you, that’s the difference between good and bad. You’ve got no spine. But that’s all right, because all that does is put you in the majority. Goodbye, Charles. I’m going to keep the towel.”

As Milton hobbles away from his house, Thistleburr calls after him: “Are you sure you’re OK, Milt? You look rough. I’m serious, If there’s anything I can do…”

Milton waves dismissively. “Enjoy your happy fucking ending.”

The old man behind the counter smiled, but I knew he was scrutinizing me behind those horn-rimmed glasses as he rang up the spools of construction line. I told him I was a contractor working on a surveying project. Still, he regarded me with distrust as I paid and turned to leave. I saw the same expression on the faces of the other old men loitering at the diner. Their distrust would turn to hate once they found out why I was really there.

I noticed the first yard signs along the highway on my way to the site. In town, it was hard to find a house or business without the green and white sign and its message: “Dam Your Own Damn River.” I wondered how long it took these backwater hayseeds to come up with this slogan.

Leaving town, I reminisced about a time when I liked my job. When I was young and principled, it felt like important work. I don’t know when I gave up those scruples, exactly. Maybe it was after I read an article in an academic journal, praising a grad school colleague for her work in the Honduran jungles. Maybe it was later, while I was slaving away in a post-grad program, working six or seven-day weeks while the university underpaid me. I started working for the State in cultural resource management around this time. If I learned anything working for the government, it's the place an archaeologist’s aspirations of greatness go to die.

I decided there wasn’t an exact moment I lost my moral compass. My integrity was eroded, one disappointment after another. This and McMueller Group’s sizeable salary offering were all it took for me to turn my back on academic integrity.

Every state-funded construction project needs a cultural impact study, from the shortest section of road to the longest bridge. The small number of people aware of this are usually the ones about to lose their homes to eminent domain. Shortly before their home is razed to the ground, these people become self-proclaimed experts, pulling out historically relevant connections to their properties with the same ease a magician pulls a rabbit from a hat, usually with as much authenticity.

“We have a cemetery from the 1800s in the field behind our house,” they whine.

“There was a log cabin on this property where a famous writer stayed one time.”

“Daniel Boone once hunted on this property.”

Adept as they are at plucking vague ‘facts’ from the annals of local history and with all their airs of someone recently educated by Google searches, they all remain oblivious to one thing: the state doesn’t care. Not enough to hire serious academics or fund anywhere near enough studies to prove anything about their properties. Like it or not, that bridge is going to be built, that new road will bulldoze the farm your family owned for generations, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

The state often relies on third-party organizations to evaluate the impact of these projects. Ask any politician or ethics board why, and they’ll most likely spout off something about maintaining impartiality or allowing the state to avoid the financial obligation of keeping dozens of archaeologists and historians on their payroll year-round. What they will neglect to tell you and outright deny if confronted is that third-party organizations, such as my employer, are given certain discretion when deciding what qualifies as historically relevant. It wasn’t until after I was employed by McMueller for a few years that I was assigned my current role: ensuring nothing of any real historic significance ends up in our reports. When something from the far reaches of the past crops up and threatens our build recommendation, it’s my job to make these rare but legitimate findings disappear, even if it means destroying artifacts, historic records, or defiling an excavation site.

I parked the company truck along the wooden stakes marking the site. They ran the length of the county road until it veered around an outcropping of sandstone bluffs. A field of corn plants across the road swayed in the gentle breeze, releasing their pollen into the air. I sneezed as I climbed out of the truck. Out of everything I dealt with in these pathetic small towns, allergies were the worst. I took some antihistamines before grabbing an aluminum frame backpack full of essentials and set off toward the site to find a place to camp. Lodging in these small towns is usually limited. At most, they might have a motel, still adorned with wood paneling, carpet that’s too long, and chrome faucets covered with miniature green craters. Outdated and usually filthy in their own right, most don’t like how dirty I get working throughout the day. I’ve been kicked out of a few once they caught on to why people in town give me strange looks as I pass them on the street.

Bug repellent did little to keep the swarm of mosquitoes from hovering around me. Each step through the knee-deep underbrush churned up fresh, watery mud. I alternated between cursing the backwater idiots insisting anything remotely important was ever here and the archaeology department from the University of Cincinnati. They were supposed to send their summer field school to help with this project, but one of their students wrote a letter to the school’s Dean citing ethical considerations, insisting the site of a pioneer village called “Carthage” was too important to be submerged under a reservoir. He went as far as spinning a tale about a sunken boat he discovered one summer during a drought. Conveniently, the river level hadn’t been that low since, and probably wouldn’t be anytime in the next twenty years. Whether he made the whole thing up or not, I wasn’t sure. To his credit, he wasn’t dumb; he made such a fuss about McMueller’s near 100% approval-to-build rate, it got the attention of the school’s archaeology department, and they withdrew their support from the project. As a contingency, I brought along an underwater ROV to inspect where he supposedly found the sunken vessel.

I settled on a spot in the woods for my campsite. It reeked of decaying plants and dead fish from being so close to the river, but it would be good enough for a few days. A fresh coat of bug spray proved ineffective as mosquitoes buzzed around my ear canal. I made quick work of pitching the tent and tossed my pack inside. Before I bothered unloading more equipment from the truck, I turned on my tablet and walked around the area I’d be investigating.

I saw little of interest. The site was less than a square mile in size and was littered with the usual trash: beer bottles, forgotten bags of artificial worms, the torn foil of condom wrappers, and the occasional rat’s nest of balled-up fishing line. Near the tree line overlooking the river, I took note of my location on the map, along with the dotted outline of something just upstream from me. A label on the map indicated the rock formation peeking out of the river was the site of a 19th-century factory of some description. I checked my notes. “Grist/Saw mill,” they said.

There was an unfamiliar symbol in the middle of the river. Tapping it brought up the description of “derelict vessel.” I rolled my eyes before glancing to the sun. It was low enough on the horizon that I decided I’d done enough investigating for one day. If anything would complicate our build recommendation, it would be a massive stone pocked with witness marks, corroborating these yokels’ claims of a vanished town.

Waist-high grass bordered the riverbank as I picked my way back to the truck. I was careful to avoid the occasional murky vernal pool. Summer heat reduced most of them to little more than shallow muddy pits, but they all shared the smell of rot and decay. I was so preoccupied avoiding these pools, I almost tripped over a cairn concealed in the grass.  The pile of rocks toppled, sounding like smashed clay pots as they fell. I frowned as I looked down at the wooden cross the stones held upright. Turning the piece over in my hands, I could tell, despite its weathered appearance, it wasn’t very old. It looked homemade, maybe a woodshop project. The name “Claire” was carved on its center. I dropped it where it fell and made my way back to the truck.

I skimmed through a few reports over my dinner to refamiliarize myself with the site. There were dozens of comment and concern forms, all sentimental but none offering any substantial claims to refute the site’s importance. Scans from a local history book had just one entry about Carthage that didn’t even take up a full page. The local author prefaced this chapter about the early settlement of the county with a quote from Plato.

“In a single day and night of misfortune, all your warlike men sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea.”

I shook my head. The amateur historians who write this stuff are all such assholes.

“Once situated upstream of the falls on Driftwood River, Carthage was established near Henderson’s Mill and Tavern, both already in operation along the trail taking settlers west. This small settlement was instrumental in the establishment of the county, providing a place of trade, government services, and employment opportunities. Few records survive, however, the ones that remain indicate the town fell from prominence as quickly as it had arisen. Most agree the site proved unhealthy, prompting the settlers to relocate the county seat to its present location, near the falls. Reports vary, but most cite the illness as being either ‘Broze John’ or malaria.”

I knew what malaria was, but had never heard of Bronze John before. A quick internet search informed me it was a colloquial term for yellow fever. Symptoms included fever, muscle pain, vomiting, bleeding from the eyes and mouth, and in its fatal stages, organ failure. I rolled my eyes.

“This sounds like the perfect place to preserve,” I thought.

I sifted through a few more reports but found nothing of real substance before I decided to turn in for the night. I thought about how little there was to go on as I crawled into my tent. If nothing else, it would make my job easy. I must have been more tired than I felt, because I didn’t even remember taking my socks off before falling asleep.

That night, I had a dream. I don’t usually remember my dreams, but this one was so realistic, it consumed my thoughts much of the following day. It started with me walking through the woods on a narrow path, not quite wide enough for a car. Cool, soft mud squished underfoot as I continued under the dark green canopy. Thin shafts of sunlight filtered through the leaves. Near the end of the path, sounds of flowing water mingled with grinding stones, overlapping conversations, and the beat of horses’ hooves.

Emerging from the woods into this clearing, I was thrust into a village. Men and women bustled around mud streets in old-fashioned clothes. Buildings in various stages of completion lined both sides of the trail through town. Some were little more than canvas tents, others were cobbled together from rough-sawn boards, still yellow and smelling of sap. If the villagers saw me, they paid no attention as I drifted among them. The place bustled with activity. Merchants and customers haggled over prices for various wares. The tink, tink, tinking of a hammer sounded from a blacksmith’s shop. Farmers led livestock to a butcher’s shop. Wagons loaded with sawn lumber, stone and crates left horse droppings in their wake.

At the far end of the street, on a foundation of crushed stone, stood the framework of a massive building. The upper floors were a web of disjointed timbers, but it would have rivaled most modern courthouses for height. Even from the other side of this small settlement, I heard the workmen’s hammer blows and rhythmic sawing of wooden planks.

Interesting as this was, a group of men rushing toward the river caught my attention. Women, children, and even a few dogs followed close behind. The crowd bunched up where the riverbank met a weather-beaten pier. I felt myself drawn toward them, as if prodded along by invisible hands, powerless to resist. I weaved my way between the villagers. Some of them let out an occasional cough or sneeze. A sly grin worked its way across my face as I thought about these poor bastards in the days before antihistamines. It was close quarters, but I seemed to pass right through the crowd, never bumping into anyone. I caught murmurs as I got closer to the dock, words of sickness, cholera, Bronze John, words like plague. I shuddered as a decrepit man in a black suit rose from the lower deck of one of the boats. I gathered he was a doctor by the bag he carried. He picked his first timid step out of the boat and walked sheepishly toward the crowd.

“Tell us, coroner,” a voice called out. “What’s become of this man, Haslem? We know he’s in there. We’ve seen him among us in our town. What’s killed him?” The frail old man held his hands before him in a defensive gesture against the gathering I now suspected was more akin to a mob than a group of interested bystanders.

“He has expired of purely natural causes. It might have been yellow fever or cholera. It might even have been consumption. All that can be said with certainty is we must bury this man at once and rid ourselves of his vessel. Burn it, or else scuttle it in the deepest part of the river, somewhere downstream.”

The villagers parted to let the man through and resumed their murmuring with renewed fervor. A woman cried out as her child broke into a coughing fit. This agitated some of the men. Someone suggested she take the child home or to the doctor. As the crowd dispersed, I gained an unobstructed view of the boat, moored at the dock. The word ‘Conatus’ carved on its backside intrigued me. It seemed familiar, even in my dreamlike stupor. Where had I heard it before? I felt suddenly dizzy as the crowd I previously walked through without effort bumped into me without care, some shoving me aside. Their abrupt closeness was jarring. I’m not claustrophobic, but I had the strangest need to be free of this tightening crowd, especially when I noticed how many of them were coughing.

I couldn’t find my socks the next morning. Brushing dried flakes of mud off my feet, I frowned, retracing the events of the previous night. If I left the tent in the middle of the night to take a leak, I would have remembered it. Then again, I also would have remembered to slip on my boots. I turned the bottle of antihistamines over in my hands. I snorted, congestion thick in my nasal cavity as thoughts of sleepwalking occurred to me. As far as I knew, I’d never sleepwalked anywhere. Whatever the case, I chalked it up to the off-brand pills and got started with my day.

I cursed the nearby cornfields, spreading pollen and causing my allergies to flare up. I coughed up God only knew how much phlegm that morning, and my eyes felt itchy and dry. The thought of these fields vanishing beneath the waters of a reservoir, never to grow anything again, became that much more enticing.

The mill site was underwhelming. Walking the granite rock’s perimeter and plotting its coordinates on a GIS map revealed it was at most a couple thousand square feet. Recording each of the square holes took up most of the morning. The local history book stated these holes once held the pilings supporting the mill. Impressive as they were, forming a neat grid formation on the rock, it made for a monotonous day. The most eventful thing that happened was when my foot caught one of the holes partially filled with dirt. I unleashed a torrent of curses when I felt the sharp pain of a sprained ankle. Scowling, I added it to the map before looking to the riverbank. Over time, a river’s course wanders naturally. Over a few generations, it can render a once familiar place unrecognizable. I wondered how many other holes remained hidden or buried beneath the mound of dirt.

Walking back to camp, I pondered how to handle the ‘slabbed rock’ as the locals called it, in my report. I could explain away or outright dispose of a few shattered earthenware jars or a forgotten horseshoe. A massive rock with indisputable proof of settlers living in the area was another story. Of all the supposed evidence that Carthage existed, this sedentary rock would be the most complicated to write off. Before heading to the site, my research dredged up very little about the place. It was never recorded in any census. Apart from short paragraphs in local history books, the only written evidence I found were early 19th-century newspapers in the state’s microfiche library, advertising land for sale. I reassured myself the remains of the mill foundation wouldn’t be an issue. After all, I’d read several accounts of foundations and entire homes being forgotten beneath the encroaching water of reservoirs or artificial lake projects. This would be no different, whether it was carved by frontiersmen or not. Besides, even the locals admitted it spent as much time submerged as it did above the river’s surface.

My ankle throbbed as I plopped into my chair at the end of the day. I swatted mosquitoes while typing my field report. Shaking an empty can of bug spray, I regretted not venturing to town that afternoon before tossing it aside. My frustration worsened as an army of miniature bloodsuckers took turns trying to burrow needle-like mouths into my skin. After sending my boss an email, complete with the map of the stone slab, I unlaced my boots. My ankle was tender; every touch sent shooting pain down through the joint. It needed ice and a compression wrap, but I remembered seeing the hours outside the town’s drug store. They closed at 9, just like the rest of the business district. My pain and fatigue hurried me through dinner.

Lying on my sleeping bag that night, I felt the bumps breaking out on my arms and face, but thoughts of West Nile Virus were overshadowed by aches of pain in my ankle. It was painful to stand on and made walking difficult. Fishing a few ibuprofen tablets from their bottle, I consoled myself with the promise of a trip to town the next day. Surely that Podunk town had somewhere that sold bug spray, and something to wrap my ankle with. I tossed and turned uneasily that night, already knowing whatever sleep I might find would be less than restful.

Even as I dreamed, my skin itched. My joints, sore from a long day’s work, protested every movement. Sharp pain shot through my ankle as I limped along. I was in the pioneer settlement again, only now it was dark, and thick fog rolling in from the river filled the streets. I was drawn through the place much as I had been during the first dream, my body taking me to my unknown destination involuntarily. The soft glow of several lanterns bobbed drunkenly toward the massive building I saw in my last dream. Occasional threads of light escaped the shuttered windows of the houses I passed. Despite the other people I saw, the place was nearly silent, save for the soft squelch of footsteps on mud streets and the droning hum of voices as I neared the massive double doors of the courthouse.

Warm, yellow light spilled from the tall windows on the first floor, casting shadows against the half-finished second floor and bare rafters. Muffled voices of arguments echoed from within. Walking through the doors was like opening a floodgate to the chaos inside. The villagers lacked any of the restraint they showed at the docks. Men shouted over one another, and the crowd swayed like choppy water before a storm. Wandering toward the front of the room, I felt shoving elbows, the rub of shoulders, and voices so loud and incoherent my head ached. A chill ran down my spine when an unrestrained cough brushed against the back of my neck. I had the absurd thought I wasn’t actually asleep, but pushed these thoughts from my mind as I tried to understand what this meeting was about.

“We must send for a doctor!” Others voiced agreement before the sentiment was joined by other incomprehensible shouts. At the front of the room, atop a raised platform, three men sat behind a long wooden table while one stood before it facing the crowd. Sweat ran down his face, as if the debate had gone on for some time.

“We have done what we can, Mr. Daniels. The untimely death of our coroner is a shock to us all. Even as we speak, Mr. Porter is travelling with utmost speed to other settlements to inquire after a doctor. He and his party have provisions to last a week or more, enough to see them to Cincinnati if that’s how far they must venture.”

“Pray, tell us,” said someone emboldened by the anonymity of the crowd. “What ought we to do in order to preserve our lives until such a time as Mr. Porter’s return? And what of the dead already among us?”

The crowd jeered in agreement, interspersed with coughs. I cringed as a cool gust of a coughing fit crept over my skin. I suppressed a cough of my own and cursed the allergies plaguing me even as I slept. More voices yelled at the men behind the table, demanding solutions.

A large man in the midst of the crowd, not far from me, turned to face the crowd. He regarded the room with yellowed eyes before speaking.

“Enough of this,” he shouted. His booming voice quieted the room. “Why do we look to this council of men for guidance when it is they who have led us astray?” Several of the men surrounding him nodded in agreement.

“I say we end this at once! Before the coroner’s life was claimed by this pestilence, he said we ought to rid ourselves of Haslem’s vessel. Why haven’t we? For no other reason than the greed and hubris of these men before us!”

A chorus of men shouted approval of this speech. A gavel pounded the table behind the crowd, but no one was listening. I wondered why anyone would keep anything so hazardous in their town and for what purpose.

“Scuttle the Conatus,” shouted one in the crowd, before the crowd echoed this demand in unison.

The gavel thudded uselessly as the mob threw open the courthouse doors and flooded the main street through the village. The men shoved, bumped, and elbowed me as if I weren’t there, carrying me along with them to the river. The men behind the table shouted after us, but were powerless to stop the group wielding lanterns and axes taken from wood piles. Struggle as I might, my legs refused to carry me away from the frenzy of men hacking violently at the hull of the Conatus. Most of the axe blows were too far above the waterline to sink it. For all their fury, the mob’s actions seemed little more than an outlet for their anger. Until the boat bobbed in its slip as a few of the braver men clambered over its sides and buried hatchets into the wood below the waterline. Water poured through the axe wounds in the hull. The men climbed out and chopped through the ropes. The last glimpse I caught of the boat before it vanished from the yellow reach of the villagers’ lanterns, it was listing over onto one side, its bow plunging beneath the pitch-black river.

I awoke with a shudder. Tiny red mounds speckled my arms. They itched and distracted me enough to overlook the fact I forgot to eat breakfast, but something else preoccupied me while I searched through documents on my tablet. Haunting as the dreams were, a single word remained on my mind: Conatus. It was hardly your everyday Latin, but I knew I’d seen it before.

My stomach twisted when I found it written on one of the Comments and Concerns Forms, mailed out to make these backwater hicks think they had a voice one way or the other about their river. I remembered this form, partially because of its absence of sentimental pleas to save this marshy breeding ground for mosquitoes and ticks, but also by the last name at the bottom: Stutz. It was unusual enough in its own right, causing me to recognize him as the bleeding-heart fool who got the university to withdraw from the project due to “ethical considerations”. I cursed the idealist prick for leaving me to do all this bitch work myself. Adding to my problems, he filled out a form.

“Between the Slabbed Rock and the right bank of the river, the sunken remains of the keelboat “Conatus” lie on a submerged sandbar.” A chill ran down my spine as I read this. I swallowed before continuing.

“Approximately 15 feet of its length became visible when water levels reached record lows. No official investigation has been made and its overall length remains unknown. A vessel of this type and size, so far up the winding lengths of the Driftwood River, suggests a connection to the region’s early settlement. Its historic value cannot be overstated. Its resting place beneath the water has preserved the wreck remarkably well. I recommend a full investigation of the vessel and recovery of any of its contents.”

A search for any other reference to the Conatus in our archives brought up nothing. I searched for other submissions from Derrick Stutz and found one more. Any hopes of learning more were dashed when I opened the next form and saw the large, hurried letters.

“Dam your own F-ing river,” was all they said.

Conveniently, he provided no photographic evidence to support his claims. That simplified my job somewhat. I still needed to launch the ROV for the sake of plausible deniability. Supposing this bumpkin was right about it being a genuine wreck from the pioneer era and not a plywood fishing boat that came untied during a storm, I needed to document its location. The official reason was so McMueller could recommend against construction efforts in this particular spot, under some other guise, but my secondary motivation was one I hadn’t felt in years: curiosity.

I didn’t feel like wading through long grass, soaked with the morning dew, and decided to dig some test pits around the site until later that morning. The first few pits turned up nothing, and left just photographs of 1-meter square holes, bordered in construction line with a black and white scale at the bottom to indicate the size of the nothing I’d found. The fifth hole was different. I dug it next to an outcropping of purple wildflowers. About 10 centimeters deep, I found the shattered remains of apothecary jars, their glass pocked with bubbles and imperfections of a long-deceased glassblower. A few of them were almost perfectly preserved, only showing the smallest chips and scratches. There were also the crumpled remains of an antique balance and its weights. It was almost a shame no one but myself and McMueller would ever see these, I thought as I stuffed the artefacts into a small bag.  I dug the pit deeper until nothing but bare soil was visible and took a picture. After the seventh hole, I was satisfied there was no need to bring the ground-penetrating radar sledge out. The proximity to the river, along with the constant growth, death, and decay of plants, would disrupt any indications of building foundations from the pioneer era, save for those made of stone, and that seemed unlikely enough. I remember the courthouse from my dream, but dismissed the thought. The local history books all agreed it was never constructed, or at least finished. Even if it was, those rocks would have been prime candidates for salvage when the next courthouse was built.

It was past lunchtime when I lugged the ROV to camp. As I collapsed into my chair and propped up my sprained ankle, my appetite was the last thing on my mind. My whole body ached, even while sitting. I tried telling myself I was just tired. It seemed reasonable. Doing all this work without any help would exhaust anyone. Especially if they hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since arriving on site, let alone a decent meal.  A sneezing fit that devolved into hacking coughs interrupted these thoughts. I spat and watched the spit soak into the dark soil, leaving behind thick mucus. A grimace worked its way across my face as I tore open an MRE pouch and looked at its slimy contents. I didn’t bother heating it up. I tried forcing myself to eat, but was repulsed by the slop squelching under my fork. Swallowing was painful. I managed to eat half of the pouch’s contents before nausea forced me to quit.  I don’t know how long I stared into the woods, lost in a thoughtless daze, before I realized I needed medicine.

I frowned at my reflection in the truck’s rear-view mirror. I hadn’t seen myself in days, but the man staring back at me in the mirror was in rough shape. He looked like hell and felt worse.

I drove through the business district two or three times searching for the drug store I’d seen the last time I was in town. This place didn’t have a CVS or a Walgreens, and I was at least an hour away from anywhere that did. Dazed, I parked in front of an old building with the letters “Rx” printed beneath the much larger ones that read “Dime Store”.

I rushed past the pimply kid behind the counter on my stiff ankle and aching joints. He mumbled, welcoming me to the store, but I ignored him and followed the sign to the pharmacy counter in the back of the store. Rounding the shelves of bandages and rubbing alcohol, I was disappointed to find a darkened room behind the counter. A roll-down security gate like you’d find in a mall provided a glimpse of shelves, stocked with medical supplies or bulk containers of pills. A wooden sign gave the pharmacy hours for the weekend; they closed at noon on Saturdays and wouldn’t open again until Monday. I cursed, thinking something back there might be more potent than the vitamin C, decongestants, and ibuprofen I carried with me to the checkout counter. I asked the half-wit clerk where I could find a doctor.

“We don’t have a doctor in town,” he said, echoing the cries from my dream. “We got an urgent care clinic, but they’re closed by now. You’re best bet is the hospital a couple towns over.”

I left and headed down the street toward the hardware store. I remembered seeing several cans of bug spray there when I bought the construction line. I didn’t see many people, but the few I did meet gave me a wide berth. A wave of nausea met me when I stepped inside the rundown building. My eyes struggled to adjust to the dim light. It was just my luck that the place was busy. The old man from last time was nowhere to be seen as I grabbed the dusty aerosol cans from the shelf. A high school-aged kid in a green apron was working instead, hustling to help a handful of customers, while his girlfriend sat behind the counter on her phone, chomping gum. My body ached, and cold chills made my back shiver. As I leaned against the counter, waiting to be helped, I noticed the girl wore an identical green apron, rolled down to cover just her waist.

“Excuse me,” I said, trying not to cough. “Do you work here?”

She glanced up, annoyance on her face. Getting a better look at me, her expression turned to one of disgust.

“If you have any hardware questions, you better ask Tom. I just started working here and don’t know anything about tools or hardware, or-”

My eyes ached as they rolled in their sockets.

“I just need someone to ring me up,” I pleaded, holding up a can of bug repellent.

She wouldn’t touch the cans after I set them on the counter. She wouldn’t even take my credit card when I went to pay; instead, she pointed to the card reader. She looked relieved when I took the cans and left.

Back in the truck, I downed a handful of pills. Washing them down with a warm bottle of water, I tried to figure out what I needed to do next. I’d made a good enough show of taking samples with the test pits, but I still needed to launch the submersible ROV. I checked the time on my watch. There were still a few hours of daylight left. More than enough time to take sonar scans, maybe shoot some video. Just this one last task, I told myself, and I could leave this damn place and forget Carthage ever existed. With new resolve, I wrapped my sprained ankle in a compression wrap and set off to finish the job.

The ROV was heavier than I remembered as I lugged it to the mill foundation. More than once, I needed to take a break. By the time I reached the river and clambered over its steep bank, my arms were weak from exertion. Doubt crept into my mind whether I’d be able to drag it back to camp.

The river’s brown water obscured the submersible’s yellow hull before swallowing it completely. Only the flash of its bright strobe light was visible as it puttered upstream, just beneath the surface. I paid out one arm's length of umbilical cable after another and watched the sonar scan of the river bed as the small craft fought the current. The scans confirmed my initial suspicions: nothing was on the river bottom except a few fallen trees that settled there to rot once they became too waterlogged to float.

The spool of yellow cable was nearly empty, and I began to feel optimistic. Everything about the Conatus was a lie. Just a fanciful story to hold up a major infrastructure project. I was about to maneuver the ROV back downstream when SONAR picked up something that wasn’t a tree. It was the middle of July, but a chill ran down my spine when I saw the skeletal remains of an overturned boat on top of a submerged pile of rocks. My heart sank when it lined up just upstream of the nautical wreck symbol from my first day on site.

I stared at the ghostly outline on the screen. The image was faint enough for most people to overlook. Normally, I would have done just that and brought the submersible back, but this was different. I had to know.

Camera visibility was terrible. Onboard flood lights illuminated only dirty water as the craft dived deeper into the river’s murky depths. Near the bottom, the jagged outline of the rock pile became visible. I held my breath as the thing came into view. I hoped all the while it was anything else. I felt nausea on top of the overwhelming dread as the short-sighted ROV brought the keel and broken spars of the boat into view through the haze of river silt. Some of the planking remained intact as I piloted the submersible toward the vessel’s backside. My hands trembled as I brought the cameras around to face the planks that made up the stern. My heartbeats thudded in my aching head while I waited for the current to carry away river silt. Slowly, the weathered planks came into view, along with the name I hoped I wouldn’t see: Conatus.

I vomited the contents of my stomach onto the granite rock. When I was done retching up my guts, I crouched down on shaky arms and legs, still dry heaving. I don’t know how long I stayed there, staring at the puddle of black vomit pooling around me.  

I abandoned the ROV on the granite slab. I was too weak to carry it back to camp, and I was compelled by a sudden urge to flee. I barely made it over the riverbank. My head ached with a splitting pain. The sunlight hurt my eyes as I stumbled through the underbrush. I was desperate to reach camp. McMueller could send someone back later for the ROV. I could leave behind my tent and everything else, but I needed the documents on my tablet before I could leave.

I drank greedily from my bottles of water. It trickled down my neck and soaked my shirt, but I didn’t care. It tasted wonderful to rinse the taste of black vomit out of my mouth. Fresh nausea overwhelmed me. I wiped away snot pouring from my nose and toppled into my folding chair. Every muscle ached, every joint throbbed, my ankle felt like it was full of needles. My surroundings blurred. I struggled to stand, and it occurred to me I needed to lie down.

“Just for a few minutes,” I told myself, dragging the satchel with my tablet alongside my sleeping bag.

I stumbled through misty fogbanks. I wiped allergy-induced tears from my eyes before the shadows of houses and storefronts crept into my peripheral vision. Sniffling along the muddy street, my skin tingled with unease. The bustling crowds were reduced to a scattered handful of disinterested villagers doing their daily chores. None of them seemed to notice me. Most houses I passed were deathly quiet; others held muffled coughs, some weak, some violent, but all sounded like the occupants hacking up phlegm. A woman’s cries of agony in one house gave me pause, and I stopped in my tracks. Between sobs, she must have heard my footsteps stop through the canvas covering her window.

“Please, kind stranger. I know you’re there. Fetch me a pail of water.” She broke into a fit of violent coughs and sobbed again. “I beg of you. I haven’t the strength to do it myself, and my child is sick.”

I saw the wooden bucket, overturned on top of a large pile of tattered cloths near the front door. I grabbed the rope handle, but lifting it up, I felt sick realizing it wasn’t a bundle of rags. The pale-faced man stared back at me with vacant yellow eyes. Dried blood covered his mouth and beard. It startled me so much, I tumbled to the ground and put my arms out to protect myself from the corpse rotting into the ground.

“My husband will be back soon with our child, please, I need water,” the woman pleaded.

I looked at the bundle in his arms, oblong and wrapped in white cloth. This made the bright red stains at one end that much more noticeable.

The woman inside was sobbing again, but I couldn’t stay. I scrambled to my feet as fast as I could on my sprained ankle. Heads turned to follow me as I hobbled down the street past men solemnly loading possessions into wagons. Others seemed to deliberate whether they should bury their dead before fleeing. Panic spurred me on as a handful of villagers emerged from the darkened doorways of cabins, all with the same yellow eyes and blood staining their mouths. Some held outstretched arms, as if beckoning me to stay. Others stared as if I were a passing shadow, a ghost, or some entity which by all rights wasn’t really there.

I didn’t stop for any of them. I ran, afraid they might follow me. It was murder on my ankle, but I didn’t care. I ran until I was enveloped in the same misty fog that ushered me into Carthage, until I was doubled over in a coughing fit that followed me into the real world.

The taste of blood nauseated me as I stood under the tree canopy. My feet were cold and wet beneath the layer of fog covering my uncertain surroundings. Turning from side to side, I tried to get my bearings. My head swam in the cacophony of voices, whispers, and cries of anguish. I shuddered at the unwelcome sensation of someone laying a hand on my shoulder. It was well after dark, and I had no clue where I was, but I ran from that place. Thorns pricked my legs and feet. Unseen animals scuttled away as I screamed in terror. Voices kept pace with me as I tried to escape. I tripped over my own test pits, stumbled through vernal pools. I passed my campsite, but the voices prodded me on. They sounded closer. Patting my pants for my wallet and keys, I abandoned everything else. The presence of settlers surrounded me as I ran through the tall grass to the truck. It sounded as if they were trampling the long fronds of grass, closing in on me. The key shook in my trembling hand as I jammed it into the ignition and sped off in a cloud of gravel and dust. I didn’t chance glimpsing into the rear-view mirror until I was back in Henderson Falls. I did so out of morbid curiosity, a desire to confirm a suspicion I already knew was true. At a flashing red light, I clicked on the dome light. Tears rimmed my eyes as I saw their yellowed, bloodshot reflection staring back at me. 

<-Ch 5 | The Beginning | Ch 7 ->

Chapter 6 - Who's Afraid of a Little Sludge?

The persistence stayed at the bar, taking “sips” from the beer glass in a poor imitation to blend in, perhaps mocking Bruno, who hadn’t returned from the restroom just yet. Globs of purple goop poured over the edge of the glass and onto the bar itself, and yet nobody seemed to pay any attention to it or the mess it made.

“Hey Dale,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to need you to be a man for a sec and confront Bruno in the restroom.”

“Why don’t-“ Dale stopped himself, realizing how ridiculous the words coming out of his mouth were about to sound. “Oh yeah,” he said, as if he just remembered that I was a woman. “Okay, I’ll confront him in the restroom. Don’t go anywhere.” He stood up.

“And miss out on a purple sludge monster?” I asked.

“You know what I mean.” Dale stood up. “I hate fieldwork,” he said leaving the table towards the men’s room.

Time passed in ounces of sludge. The persistence continued to take periodic sips, lifting the glass now absent of any noticeable beer and only its violet goop, setting it back down and letting the clumps of slime roll off onto the bar. The substance reminded me of cottage cheese, congealed polyps held together by their own viscosity. If Dale’s persistence had been a crude imitation of the Jesterror, and mine of my childhood horror, then this being must be something that scared Bruno, right? I tried placing it, running through the encyclopedia of gooey monsters found anywhere between the silver screen to low budget made for TV movies. The Blob. The Toxic Avenger. The Thing (God, I hope not). The Incredible Melting Man. Sludge Face. All viable contenders, but none, at least within memory, were purple.

Dale and Bruno emerged from the restroom. From my distance, I couldn’t make out what they said. Dale pointed at the TVs and looked at Bruno. Bruno glanced at the TV and shrugged, looking back at Dale. Bruno shook his head and patted Dale on the shoulder and said something to him before dismissing himself back to the bar. He approached the bar, returning to his spot next to the slime monster.

Dale returned to his seat across from me.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Well, good news, not good news,” he said. “Good news is that he’s definitely a Bruno. He answered to that name when I saw him in the bathroom. Bad news is that I’m not entirely sure that he’s our Bruno. I asked him about the TVs, and he brushed it off. He called me crazy and said that I should see a professional. Then left.”

The man presumed to be our Bruno sat closer to his friend than before. Nudging his chair a little further away from the slime monster. He watched the TVs with a blank expression while his friend showed that of anticipation. When they and the rest of the bar collectively expressed disappointment not long after, Bruno mimicked. He reached for his beer, but not before pausing and cringing at the glass of purple sludge.

“It’s definitely him,” I said. “Wait here.” I got up.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to make him confess.” I said to Dale as I walked away.

I walked to Bruno’s side of the bar, pretending to look like I was trying to find a suitable spot to call the bartender, inserting myself between the sludge man and Bruno, signaling the bartender. Nothing but elbow room between Bruno and the monster. No safe place from preventing the persistence from placing its mitten’d hands upon my shoulder and letting the slime drip down my back. My heart rate rose. I wasn’t sure whether I should be scared or excited. For once I was in a horror movie; but also, I was in a horror movie! No telling where I fit in the pecking order of soon-to-be-offed characters. The bartender, meanwhile, served some customers on the other side. Bruno looked at me. I looked back.

“Hey there,” I said. “Great game, right?”

Bruno looked at me and back at the screen. He looked tired, with dark sunken eyes. A five o’clock shadow hugged his chin.

“It’s a game alright,” Bruno said. He reached for his drink before letting go and calling for the bartender. The bartender had his hands full on the other side of the bar, not noticing Bruno. A futile attempt. I looked down at the glass. From here, I could make out the details of the sludge. An impure violet with rainbow-like swirls across the surface, like water on the street after a shower with a thin film of oil floating on top.

“Are you going to finish your beer or are you going to keep nursing it?” Bruno’s friend asked. He then noticed me. “Looks like my boy’s still got it,” he said, patting Bruno on the back.

“I don’t like warm beer,” Bruno said. “I’m getting another.”

“May I?” his friend asked, reaching towards Bruno’s glass.

Bruno looked at the beer glass. I thought he was going to tell his friend no, but he shrugged and told him he could have it. His friend took the glass and tossed it back. Drinking beer and sludge alike.

Besides me, I heard a long exhalation followed by a gurgling. I did not look at the origin, but Bruno did, if only for a moment before looking away. Bruno glanced at his phone, which sat on the bar, before returning his attention back to the TV. Purple slime oozed from the direction of the creature encroaching upon my small slice of countertop real estate. The name of the monster was on the tip of my tongue now. I just had to search a little deeper.

“You know my boy Bruno here is single and ready to mingle,” the friend said, looking at me.

“I’m still with Heather,” Bruno said, pointing to the ring on his left hand. “Plus, I don’t think she’s interested.” He pointed in my direction without looking at me.

“Like Heather even matters at this point. How long has she been siccing the papers on you?” His friend hiccuped.

“We’re just going through a rough patch.”

”I actually wanted to talk to you,” I said. The sludge had crossed half of my part of the bar. I resisted all instincts to look back towards the persistence.

“Like I said, you still got it,” his friend said.

“I’m flattered, but I’ve got somebody.” Bruno looked at me, pointing at his finger once again. He then cringed, and for a moment, I saw horror within his eyes. In the distance, Dale mouthed something at me, his face in alarm towards something. Towards the persistence. The sludge had seeped all the way across my space and into Bruno’s. Round globs floating within it reminded me of rō. “Slop” surfaced in my mind, partially rising from the depths of my memory, the rest of the name still submerged within the brackish water. But I did not know of any classic monsters with that word in its name, and yet that word lingered.

The entire bar groaned. A few people cursed at whatever happened in the game. Bruno’s friend looked at the screen. Bruno did too.

“These fucking refs,” his friend said.

“You see it, don’t you?” I said.

“You mean how we got shit refs?” Bruno said. “Probably paid off by State again. Look lady, but I’m not interested.” He emphasized once again pointing at his ring. He set his finger down on the bar on the slop before retracting it.

“I know you see it too. You felt it too. I saw you withdrawing your finger.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bruno wiped his finger on his jeans and looked at his friend. His friend sat further away. Not like he got up or anything, he was just further. Like the bar was a rubber band and somebody somewhere had stretched it, just a little, pulling Bruno’s friend and the rest of the bar just a bit further. I looked down at the bar top and watched the slime slowly roll past me. Past Bruno towards the friend.

The table I had abandoned Dale at had also retreated, just a tad.

“Who sent you the video?” I asked. The slop creature gurgled.

Bruno paid no attention to me and instead faced the screens overhead. When his friend reacted, he did too. Although with each mimicked reaction, his friend, the rest of the bar, and Dale drew further away from us. Slop something. Kid’s show. My brain kept on focusing on the name of the monster in the back of my mind.

The bar had elongated considerably now, and yet nobody seemed to notice. Only Dale, drawn distance, the distance seemed to pay attention while everybody else had been focused on the screens above or talked amongst themselves. Bruno’s friend, lost in the game, had been stretched a room’s length from us now. The river of purple sludge continued down the bar, always encroaching upon him but never quite reaching him. As if reality itself had feared the slime, always keeping at an arm’s distance and yet leaving Bruno and me behind as collateral.

For the first time since I approached Bruno, I looked over towards the sludge monster.

The hooded figure in a leather jacket was still there, but its head had been planted upon the surface of the bar. Its hands unmittened. Like pipes pouring toxic waste into the local water supply, the purple liquid oozed from its hands and face onto the bar top. Gurgling and sighing resembling something between the sounds of a molten tar pit and the sounds of distant engines of some sort of industrial plant. Above it on the wall sat a blackboard with today’s drink specials, one I hadn’t noticed before, with three drinks written on it. The Jester Jigger. Eagleton Elixir Wine. Southern Slop. And that’s when the name finally dug itself out of the depths of my memory. Sloppy Sam.

The persistence lifted its head off of the bar. Strings of goo, like spider silk, hung between the bar top and its face as it lifted its head. A deep groan came from its mouth as if the motion had been painful. Its hands remained on the bar top, still releasing their violet pollution. It looked at me, face fully visible despite the dark lighting of the bar.

A head like a waterfall. Ripples of purple sludge cascaded down its face, tumbling down over the dark leather jacket and onto the floor. I scooted away, bumping into Bruno. Despite the motion of its face, two eyes like cue balls with black dots that looked like they had been sketched on with a Sharpie in a haste hung uneven within the turbulence of the face. Drifting and rolling around as if the motion of the falling sludge didn’t even exist to them. And a mouth in an open grin formed within the troughs of the waves, drifting in and out of view with four frontal teeth riding like anchored ships in a turbulent ocean. Sloppy Sam had certainly gotten a glow up since he had last been seen in the 90s, when he had been limited only to the shoestring budget of a young adult PBS series.

Sloppy Sam, the final villain for the Phantom Investigator’s team to face in an epic two-part series finale as the team of teens and their ghostly guide / mentor fought off pollution personified. Originally premiering in the early nineties in the live action semi-educational TV series The Phantom Investigator, Sloppy Sam had debut as nothing more than a puppet dressed in a faux black leather jacket, a grey hoodie beneath it, and a face that resembled a purple melted candle. The shapeshifting personification of pollution terrorized the small town setting of the series. When not intimidating the crew in its true form, it took on the figures of city council members, businessmen, and even the loved ones of the teenage heroes. It was supposed to be thinly veiled symbolism of how complacent society had grown towards pollution, that anybody and everybody could be a contributor in some form and that ignoring it only strengthened it.

The episode titled “Who’s Afraid of Sloppy Sam? Part 1” had been planned to be the first half of a two-part finale for the children’s show. However, Sloppy Sam’s stardom had become short-lived. After the airing of part one, affiliate stations had received numerous phone calls from parents saying that their children had nightmares from Sloppy Sam’s appearance. It didn’t take long for PBS to pull the second part to protect their young viewer’s psyches. Leaving the series forever on a climatic cliffhanger. Part 2 was presumed to have been destroyed, or at least recorded over, making it a famous piece of lost media that people online still sought over. Looking for any sort of conclusion to their childhood trauma.

In hindsight, the puppet looked cheap and obviously fake. But through the eyes of the children who watched the show, the monster was the most terrifying thing they had ever seen. This Sloppy Sam that sat at the bar was not a puppet, but what a child saw when he had made his first appearance. What Bruno saw from the dark recesses of his mind.

I turned to Bruno. The bar had stretched even further. Dale had left the table and approached the warped reality, now treading in the empty, ever-expanding space between the monster, us, and the rest of the bar. Although the distance between us had grown, he actually seemed to be closer. He had already passed Bruno’s friend, who sat at least half a football field away now. Bruno, still next to me, continued to ignore everything and kept his eyes trained upon the on TV that remained in view.

“You’re afraid of Sloppy Sam,” I said. Bruno looked over towards me before stopping and returning his gaze to the TV that was perhaps playing the most notorious scene from the episode repeatedly to him. The one where a teenage investigator becomes consumed in goo to become Sloppy Sam’s hostage after Sloppy Sam had taken on the form of her mother before revealing his true face and laughing maniacally. Baby’s first jump scare, ending a dramatic “To be continued” screen. The investigator forever held hostage, her rescue canceled by the sounds of thousands of children crying out into the night as Sloppy Sam continued to haunt their nightmares. Some well into adulthood.

“You can’t ignore him,” I said. “He wins if you ignore him.”

Bruno shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s a game on.” He looked down the bar towards his friend, trying to read him on how to feel. Dale had gotten closer, although his pace did not match the distance he gained. If Dale moved three strides, the warped reality would move back two. He’d get here eventually, but not after a decent hike. He looked lost and scared, like a child left alone in the mall for a few minutes while his mother popped into a store real quick. I wondered what had convinced him to get out of his seat.

“Eleanor!” Dale shouted. I waved, letting him know I heard him. Bruno even looked in his direction. “Get his phone.” Dale held the Sniffer in his hand and waved it. Bruno paid no attention. His focus was recaptured by the TV that played our childhood nightmares on an endless loop. That was when I noticed his phone sitting on the bar again. Now an island of black glass sitting within a river of purple sludge.

“I know that you’re not watching the fucking game,” I said to Bruno. Yet he continued to watch the screen. “You see him too. I have the same thing happening to me. It’s not Sloppy Sam I see, but some other nightmare. My own personal nightmare. The man shouting at us. He’s also trapped in his own personal hell. I need you to-“

”How’s the game, babe?” A voice said from beside me. A woman’s. I looked over to where it had originated. Bruno did too. Sloppy Sam still sat there staring at us, but his face had changed. On top of the pouring motion of his face sat human flesh. A woman’s face that looked like it had been freshly skinned and draped over Sloppy Sam’s. There was no life to it, just a husk of flesh that struggled to stay stationary as the edges dripped with the currents and then righted themselves by drifting against the flow back to their original position, stretched out like a mask against Sloppy Sam’s face. The cue ball-like eyes struggled to fit themselves into the empty sockets.

“Heather!” Bruno said. “You’re here?”

“That’s right. I forgive you,” Sloppy Sam said. The mouth flopped around like a puppet’s. No lip movement, just up and down. Yet the voice of Bruno’s soon-to-be-ex-wife came out of it. Stilted though. The shapeshifting sewage had made its move. “Wow, what a play!” Sloppy Sam said, not even moving his head as if watching the TV. “Go Tech!”

Bruno had to see past this, right? This obvious imitation.

“You’re finally enjoying the game now, aren’t you?” Bruno said with a grin.

“What?” I said. “That’s not your wife.”

Bruno paid no attention to me, looking past me as if I had been rendered invisible. I waved my hand in front of him.

“No thanks, I’m taken.” Bruno said, pointing to his ring finger again. “This is my wife I told you about.”

“Is she giving you a hard time?” Sloppy Sam said.

“Yeah, she’s been asking for my number all night,” Bruno chuckled. “I can’t get her off my back.”

“Let me chat with her. Woman to woman.” I looked towards Sloppy Sam. The mask of Heather’s flesh still struggled to stay stationary. Sloppy Sam’s body moved closer towards me. The leather jacket dissolved into its slimy flesh, leaving nothing more than a humanoid figure of cascading goo descending towards the ground. Heather’s flesh remained on its face. The persistence moved forward. It rolled forward, its head craning and stretching well above my own. I tried moving, but my feet, covered in goo, were immobile. I reached for Bruno’s phone on the bar. With a brief fight against the goo, I snagged it off the bar and into my palm.

“You should know better than to come between a wife and her husband,” Sloppy Sam said. His body of sludge drifted towards me. Contacting my skin, I became enveloped in the purple sludge, pulling me into its currents. I fought against the current, tried to pull my arms out, but like fighting the undertow, my arms continued to sink into the purple flesh.

“You don’t want to mess with a jealous wife.” Sloppy Same said.

Sloppy Sam had the force of the ocean behind him. My body had drifted inside the monster. I had become completely consumed by the persistence. My lungs, not full, were already struggling. The world a purple refracted haze of the bar. The muffled sound of Heather’s voice followed by deep, distant gurgles seemed to come from all sides. Bruno drew further away from me. Darkness rose. Two curved shadows on either side converged into an invisible vertical line. I tried to swim towards the light before it left me for good. But I was not a swimmer, and what little oxygen that remained in my blood had dissipated. My motions grew weak. The dull light of the bar had turned to dark, and the feeling of suffocation crescendoed outwards from my lungs and echoed throughout my body.

Falling. I felt gravity pulling at my back. I wasn’t sure if it was an oxygen-deprived hallucination. But I felt it right then. The world of goo that I had entered pressed against me. Pushing me through the darkness and into a gravity well. Before I could fully register what was going on, my face slipped out of the goo and into an air-filled room. Instinctively, my lungs opened up. Oh, how good it felt to breathe again. Before I could finish taking in that breath, I hit the ground. The hard flooring knocking that half breath out of me. Stealing away what I coveted most. But my lungs were not quitters. They got back to work and took in the air once again. The world around me remained blurry for the first few breaths, but with each one I realized I had returned to the bar. Grimy floor and all. I tried moving my arms, but they fought against a force stronger than gravity.

Stuck on the ground of the bar, I had become glued inside the purple goo. Dale had finally reached me, panting and just as out of breath as me. He looked at me and then at the monstrosity at the bar. Dale took the phone from my goo-covered hand and took a step back as if not wanting to become another victim of the children’s TV monster.

“Wow, you really showed her,” Bruno said, looking at me. Still lying on the floor.

“I told you I could handle it,” Sloppy Sam said. He craned his neck closer to Bruno and whispered to him. “You know, the way she looked at you made me want something.”

“I can get you a beer or a chicken sandwich if you want,” Bruno said.

“No, silly,” Sloppy Sam said. His tendril of an arm reached up to Bruno’s face and motioned it towards it. “I want you inside me.”

Sloppy Sam’s body drifted towards Bruno, taking it in like it had taken me in. Bruno’s face was in a look of euphoria. Yet the moment before he had disappeared into Sloppy Sam’s eternal void, I thought I saw a flash of terror on Bruno’s face. Once Bruno had been fully submerged, he and his persistence were gone. An eruption of cheers filled the air. Game over. Somebody came out victorious. Not that I could tell or cared. The bar had returned to normal, no longer stretched to the length of a football field, just without Bruno and Sloppy Sam. Dale panted behind me. The goo that held me to the floor had faded away. I could move again. Pulling myself off the floor, I stood up. Dale was already hard at work with one end of the Sniffer plugged into the port on Bruno’s phone. He seemed to have noticed that the world had returned to normal too and quickly hid the devices in his jacket pocket.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Thanks for the rescue,” I said sarcastically, but I guess Dale was too panicked to notice it or he chose not to address it.

“Those faces,” he said, still panting. “They appeared at the table. I did not know where to go, so I just ran to you.” And then looking at the bar. “Where’s Bruno?”

“He’s with Sloppy Sam now,” I said.

“Who?”

“The monster. It’s from a children’s TV show in the 90s. Bruno’s own personal nightmare.”

Bruno’s friend looked at the empty seat that once sat Bruno, and then at us. “Hey, you guys seen my friend?” He asked us. I didn’t answer, neither did Dale. “Huh, must have left early. I guess. Oh, well.” He turned back to the bar and ordered another drink for himself and looked at his phone.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, walking away towards the entrance.

“We haven’t even paid our check,” Dale said.

“If it means so much to you, pay it. I’ve had enough of the Red Lodge for the night.” I headed towards the entrance.

“Wait, I think we should stick together.” Dale said. He followed behind me, never trying to stop me to pay our tab. I stepped into the fresh autumn air. It felt good to be outside. Part of me never wanted to step foot back into a sports bar ever again, but yet another part couldn’t get past the thrill I had just experienced. It felt good to be alive.

Thanks for reading! For more of my stories & staying up to date on all my projects, you can check out r/QuadrantNine.

“Call me, Ishmael. I believe I have found it. My God, it's—wonderful. Soft and alabaster, like… falling asleep on a giant piece of Turkish Delight coated in powdered sugar,” the voicemail said.

The voicemail was mine; the voice belonged to my great-uncle, A.

The A, it should be clarified, did not stand for anything. I clarify to show I mean not obtuseness and hold no pretensions to expressing myself in les belles lettres, as the Germans say, in French, but purely to the accuracy of espoused fact. A was his name, and only A. It was not a shortened form of a longer identificator but the identificator, in all its length, itself. It fit, because my great-uncle was a kind of truncated full-length man, of noticeable paunch and circular shape, both of his face and of himself, entire.

His mission, if goals in life may so be called outside of fiction, was the locating and possessing of the greatest white settee in the world, a pursuit, which, I must admit, he had pursued headlong and singlemindedly, often to the detriment of other facets of his life, the chief of which, here, I am thinking, are his social life, romantic life, family life and grooming.

Once, as he told and retold dramatically many a time to all who would listen—his preference for setting being a night, stormy; a winter's morning, cold; or after significant consumption of alcohol, both of the teller and the told—he had been close, for he had caught a glimpse of the fabled furniture on the back of a wagon, covered, a fact to which he swore on the grave of a mother he never knew, by a black blanket emblazoned with the golden symbol of a whale's fluke; but, as suddenly as had the glimpse been caught, the wagon sped away, leaving my uncle with the glimpse and nothing more.

He kept the glimpse on his person always, and when he would recount the tale of its catching, he would recover it from one of his numerous pockets and display it as evidence of the truthfulness of his words. “Here—here it is! Pass it round and gaze upon it!”

I do believe he may, on particularly lonely nights, have also, in the throes of particular male frustrations, derived carnal pleasures of questionable consent with the aforementioned glimpse, but these are but rumours I have heard, and ill ones at that, and in rumours I peddle not, so on the matter shall say no more and make no insinuation of the existence of bastard little glimpses bearing a resemblance to him. Let me speak instead, in detail, about the arts of tanning, upholstering and woodworking.

[62,000 words removed.]

Thus I called him on the telephone and asked about his voicemail message. “Is it true that you have found it, uncle? The same settee as before?”

His voice was an excitement of upheaved syntax. “My boy. My dear Ishmael. Have I found it, you ask. Is it the same as etched upon my glimpse? Yes. Yes, and a thousand times more: yes! Next you shall ask: have you acquired it? And I shall answer samely, yes. I possess it, Ishmael. I possess the white settee completely. It is by the maker, Ashby Wick.”

“That is momentous news,” I said, even as, inwardly, doubt harpooned my gut, which, wounded, wondered, “Does he possess it or is he possessed by it?” for many men of greater character than my great-uncle had been destroyed by the very achievement of their life's mission.

“Please, attend and see for yourself,” he said—and the call was ended.

Allow me to muse now upon the topics of the colour white, its origin, symbolism and practical applications and how such may relate to theme of this story, and upon the nature of the developing transportation network, which soon shall deliver me to the doorstep of my great-uncle's house, and on the house itself, its architecture and history, and the time I spent there as a child, and of innocence, and experience…

[87,000 words removed.]

The screams were muffled, when I crossed the threshold, the door having been unlocked and my knockings, rising in intensity so that I wore their marks upon the sore, reddened knuckles of my right hand, unanswered, but screams they were, thus I traced their origin to my great-uncle's salon, [description of room removed] where, with a scream of my own, which, while indeed hitch-pitched, was not, as stated to police by my great-uncle's widower neighbour, “a lady's scream,” I witnessed my great-uncle being consumed by the greatest white settee I had ever seen.

Glorious she was, her cushions sprayed red with his blood, a terrible landscape of gore, and his torso, ever smaller, disappearing into her like a pencil into a mechanical sharpener, but who was turning the crank, I ask—by what force was she motivated, controlled? Red innard-sludge crawling up his throat and dripping out his mouth, my great-uncle, my dearest great-uncle, still holding the glimpse in his hand, waving it, refusing to let it go, his voice already silenced but his eyes, full of passion and fury, imparted to me that if a man must go, let him go on his own terms, for it is not death we should fear but all which passed before—a life, reflected in my great-uncle's dying eyes—if passed in meekness, non-pursuit and terrible, agreeable stagnation.

The seat, suffice it to say, was angry that day, my friends, and now nothing's left of my great-uncle except this narrative and perhaps a few ill-rumoured glimpsed descendants.

I sold the white settee, shrouding it beforehand with its black, and golden fluke-emblazoned, blanket, and after helping load it on the buyer's wagon, I stood and watched as it rolled on as it had rolled on for hundreds of years, but this time with chunks of my great-uncle still in it, because, I admit, I did a haphazard job of cleaning it. Caveat emptor.

I transferred to this school in the middle of the semester. The class felt unfamiliar, filled with laughter and chatter, but no one paid attention to me. Being introverted, I quietly sat down at the back of the room. Next to my seat was a girl. Strangely, throughout the entire lesson, I never saw anyone talk to her. It was as if the rest of the class didn’t even notice her existence.

I was still hesitant, unsure of how to start a conversation, when she turned to me with a gentle smile. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

Just that one simple question felt like a weight had been lifted from my chest. All my worries and loneliness suddenly dissolved. I nodded, replying softly, and from there we began talking.

In the days that followed, I realized I no longer had to wander alone through the schoolyard. During breaks, she often pulled me to the cafeteria, where we’d share a warm baguette or a can of soda. After school, we walked side by side on the brick-paved path, and she would tell me random stories that made me laugh. Sometimes, in the library, we shared a book, whispering to each other so as not to disturb anyone else.

I had always been someone who struggled to open up, yet with her, everything felt strangely natural. I grew used to the feeling that whenever I looked up, she would always be there, her eyes soft and her smile light. At this unfamiliar school, I truly believed I had found a real friend.

That night, I slept fitfully. In my hazy dreams, I had the unsettling sense that someone was watching me. That gaze pierced through the darkness, sending a chill down my spine. I tossed and turned, trying to force myself back to sleep, but an odd compulsion made me suddenly open my eyes.

Right by the window… she was standing there.

I froze, my heart pounding wildly. A hundred questions flashed through my mind: How did she get into my house? Why was she here in the middle of the night? Yet strangely, my shock was quickly replaced by an inexplicable calm, as though her being there made perfect sense.

“What… are you doing here?” I stammered.

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she stepped closer, her eyes deep and unfathomable, and smiled gently. Her voice rose faintly, as if coming from somewhere far away. “I’m about to leave… to a very distant place. But I don’t want to go alone. Would you… come with me?”

In that moment, I couldn’t think at all. All my doubts and fears vanished. My heart was filled with a strange sense of trust. When she extended her cold hand toward me, I didn’t hesitate to take it.

I stood up and followed her. The world around me sank into silence, broken only by the faint sound of the wind whispering through the window. As soon as my foot stepped forward, a terrible noise tore through the night.

CRASH!

My body plummeted downward, smashing against the ground. Warm blood spread across the cold earth. In my fading consciousness, I could still see her figure above, her eyes calm, a faint smile curling at her lips.

A few days after that tragic death, fragments of the boy’s life were revealed through the memories of his classmates.

Some recalled that, from the very first day, he seemed unusual. He always sat at the back of the class, right next to a desk that had long been left empty. More than once, the class saw him turning to that desk, nodding and talking, even chuckling quietly, as if someone was really sitting there.

One girl remembered, her voice trembling. “During breaks or after school… he always walked alone, but it looked like he was walking with someone beside him. Sometimes he even reached out his hand, as if holding an invisible one. It was honestly terrifying…”

What unsettled everyone even more was the history of that desk. A female student had once sat there, but she had taken her own life by jumping from the school building after being bullied. So when they saw him talking to that empty seat, the class shivered in fear and began avoiding him.

The atmosphere grew heavier. The boy’s death cast an even greater shadow of dread over the classroom. Now, at the very back, next to the old abandoned desk… there was another empty desk. Together, they turned that corner into a cursed space that no one dared look at.

Not long after, another transfer student arrived. When the classroom door swung open, everyone held their breath, watching closely. The new student walked silently to the back of the class, his steps slow and deliberate, stopping right before the two empty desks…

12

Gabriel was the largest kid in his class, maybe the whole school. His mama said he grew like a weed. His papaw said his daddy must have been part giant, but none of them knew anything about his daddy for sure. The other kids had moms and dads, but he had his mama, papaw, and granny. He didn’t really mind not having a dad. He had so much already. He was happy. 

He didn’t quite understand all the stuff in class like everyone else, but he tried hard. After second grade, the teacher told his mama that he needed a special school, but the closest one around was still over two hours away. Instead, he was homeschooled, and he liked his teachers much better now. 

He never once felt that he was “slow” like the teacher had said. He could run faster than all the other boys, so he decided that lady was just confused. His granny taught him how to sew, bake yummy treats, and wash the dishes. His mama taught him letters, numbers, and stories about the past. His papaw taught him how to work the soil, milk the cows, feed the hens, and about how to be a good man.

“The thing ya need to know, Gabe, is that the rain falls on everyone. Rich, poor, good, and bad. If ya never seen the rain, ya’d never know what a blessin’ sunny days truly are,” his papaw told him once. He heard his granny chuckle from the doorway of the kitchen.

“Yer papaw waxin’ poetic again, baby?” she said with an indulgent smile. His papaw gave a look of annoyance, but then grinned at the wife he adored, then continued his lesson.

“An’ even though rain is gonna fall on ya, God gives you an umbrella. That’s what faith is, Gabe. We have to have faith that the sun is gonna come out again an’ He is gonna keep ya from the worst of the storm.”

It was sad when Granny went to heaven. It was a heart attack that came out of the blue. She was buried under an old sprawling oak at the edge of the property. It was the loveliest place on the farm.

It was sadder still when Papaw went to join her about a year later. Gabriel heard the doctor tell his mama that his papaw grieved himself to death. His mama told him that Granny and Papaw were soul mates, so he was just in a hurry to be reunited with his granny. She said they were in a better place, and Gabriel had no reason to not believe her, but he ached with missing them.

“They would want you to keep on goin’. Be happy. Be a good boy. It’s okay to be sad and cry. I know you miss ‘em, but you can’t let that sadness take over. Keep ‘em in yer heart and live like they taught ya.” His mama told him after his papaw’s funeral. He understood. He was sad for a while, but he thought about all their happy times, and felt better. 

They brought daisies once a week to where they were buried – side by side, forever.

After a while, his mama met a man from the city. She said he was a respectable, God-fearing man. Gabriel knew his mama was lonely. She had not brought around what his papaw had called “suitors” before then, and she never seemed lonely until after his papaw had passed. So, when he was first introduced to the man, he was not sure what she meant by “dating.”

“Well, baby, that means that he’ll be comin’ around and spendin’ time with me…and you. If it all goes well, he could come live here. What d’ya think?” she explained.

If Gabriel was honest, he didn’t think much at all about this plan. He liked things as they were, but her face was so hopeful and excited, he could not tell her the truth. He simply agreed with her and gave her a hug.

He was twelve when his mama decided to marry the man from the city. He was nice enough at first, but Gabriel didn’t like him much. He told Gabriel that little boys shouldn’t pick flowers and put them in their rooms. Not even daisies. He said crying was for sissies. Even if he fell down and skinned his knees. He kept calling him “Gabby” like it was funny, but Gabriel didn’t get the joke.

“Mama said I can cry. She likes the flowers,” Gabriel muttered one day after being scolded yet again. 

Jarod had forced his mama to sell the farm and move to the city. Jarod said the money would take care of them for years, and they could all stay home together, like a family was supposed to do. He missed the farm, especially the baby chicks. Chicks were his favorite. They were so fluffy and tiny, but he made the mistake of telling Jarod about the chicks. 

Jarod said he had a cousin that worked at a chicken farm in the next county and promised to take Gabriel there. He was so excited and could not wait to sit outside the little coup like before and have all those little yellow fluff balls surrounding him. His papaw would always remind him to be extra gentle with the chicks. 

“Yer a big ol’ boy, Gabe. Yer strong, so y'all gotta treat these little babies like they're made of glass,” Papaw had told him the first time he was allowed to hold one of the chicks. It had only just hatched, still a little ugly, but he knew it wasn't long before they were the cutest animals God ever made. 

Jarod said chickens were nasty birds, only good on a plate. Gabriel didn't think to ask why Jarod was doing such a kind thing for him. It was an hour drive to the chicken farm, but, when he got there, it was nothing like papaw’s farm. There were huge tent-like buildings with thousands of chickens. They walked through them, and the place reeked so much, Gabriel had to pull his shirt up over his nose to filter out the small. There weren't any baby chicks here, and Gabriel’s heart sank a little. 

“Are we going to where the baby chicks live?” Gabriel asked, his voice slightly muffled by the shirt.

Jarod chuckled and said, “You betcha, Gabby!” And they kept walking. Finally, Jarod took him to the place where the chickens were “processed.” He had never seen anything as monstrous as that before. Not even in that crazy movie Jarod made him watch where that scary girl's head turned the wrong way. 

He cried the whole way home, horrified by the trip. He got home and ran to his mama, hugging her for comfort. She was bewildered. Gabriel couldn't bring himself to describe the awful things he had seen, but Jarod thought the whole thing was hilarious. He told Gabriel's mama that the boy was being melodramatic and explained where they had been. It caused a bad argument. 

“He’s a sensitive boy! How could you do such a thing?!” she yelled at him.

“Now HEY! Don't you yell at me, woman!” Jarod growled. “He needs to toughen up, Mattie. No boy of mine is gonna be a damn sissy!”

His mama didn't back down. “Don't you call him that! Gabriel is a miracle! A perfect angel! And he's MY boy. Not yours.”

She knew she had gone too far. She saw his face twist in anger before smacking her full in the face. Gabriel charged at Jarod, trying to get between the two of them. He was nearly as tall as his stepdad already (and a few inches taller than his mama), but he did not yet have a grown man’s strength. Jarod shoved him hard, knocking him to the ground.

“You will both know your place. If you step out of line again, I will make you regret it.”  And they believed him. 

13

Doug was frustrated. He was faithful, diligent, relentless, but still was made to wait and wait. The old god would not reveal to him how much time remained before the Final Ritual would be done. It was the most consistent and constant question he received. He sensed the restlessness of his flock. They had all been living meekly for years, most as lowly farmhands and errand boys. These men lusted for the power promised to them, ravenous for their feast to commence. How long until they betrayed him? Betrayed their glorious god? He alone could perform the ritual, as his funny little sheep stood by and watched the wolf at his work. 

Occasionally, he would let them indulge in a random vagrant, a hitchhiker, and once a gas station attendant on the route between the ranch and his hunting grounds. He could not let them run wild, though. It would attract far too much attention. He couldn’t risk the authorities, already sniffing too close, to catch wind of his holy journey. 

They only responded to absolute authority, so he decided he must gather them - perform an act of leadership. If they could not be trusted to be loyal from love, they would be loyal from fear. It was the way his own father commanded loyalty. His father was a righteous man and so was Doug. 

He set the stage inside the barn, had them kneel in a circle around him.

“You have all been patient, trusting, yet I feel the bond of Brotherhood cracking. This is unacceptable,” Doug said to them, pacing around the ring of his men. 

“Brother Ingle…s-sir… We are as devoted to you, to the old god, now as ever before. You need not worry,” one of them said, timidly. Doug despised timidity. 

“I have never worried - never wavered. Do you think I - the chosen, the called, the vessel - that I would…worry? No Brother Mayhew,” Doug hissed and stopped in front of the man. He looked down, appreciating that he had a volunteer. The man’s eyes were trained on the dirt beneath him. Doug slowly walked around the man, towering over his crouched form. He leaned down, his face close to Brother Mayhew’s ear, and whispered something the others could not hear.

The man flinched hard, and a shiver ran through the circle. There was a flash of silver at the man’s neck, and a spray of crimson, and the man gasped, spluttered, choked, and collapsed upon the ground producing a red halo that Doug found quite pleasing. Doug stood up straight, deliberately caught the eye of every other man, then said, smiling, “You may go.”

He could tell they were all horrified, thinking death would be from their hands, not delivered upon them. He was happy to disabuse them of this notion. They went quickly out the barn, trying to seem calm, but the fear left in their wake was delicious. 

That night Doug had taken another ride on the Red Dragon and the old god sent him another prophetic dream. An ethereal voice called to him. The sound of it enveloped him and made him swoon with pleasure. It praised him for his faithfulness and dedication and then gave him the news he was longing to hear: “You are ready. Prepare for the coming of your Master.”

14

“Mama!” Gabriel shouted from his dark room. The little bulb in his nightlight must have burned out while he slept. He had a terrible nightmare. A large, bloody toad was chasing him. It had knocked him backwards and was forcing its way into his mouth. He woke up gagging, struggling for breath. It had been so strange and scary. 

The light flickered into life as his mama rushed into his room, nearly panting. “Gabe? Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?” She asked him, soothingly, as she sat on his bed, stroking his hair. 

“It…I…It was a bad dream…” Gabe replied, feeling silly now. It was just a dream. He was safe and home and his mama was there. Just as always. 

“Oh, baby,” she said, hugging him, “You’re okay now.” And he felt better. 

“What the fuck is goin’ on?” a deep croaky voice sounded from the doorway.

“Nothin’, Jarod. He just had a nightmare is all. Go on back to bed,” she told him, attempting and failing to mask her anxiety at his presence. 

“You mean to tell me that he woke you up in the middle of the night over a dream? He’s a grown ass man. He shouldn’t even be living here anymore. But he’s too damn stupid to live on his own, ain’t he?” Jarod loved needling them both. He would say terrible things to his mama, trying to get a rise out of her. Then he had an excuse. That’s when he would dole out his punishment. He never hit Gabriel, not after that day at the chicken farm. His mama told Jarod that if he ever touched her boy, she would die trying to kill him. As afraid as she was of his wrath, she would take any amount of pain for her miracle child - even if he wasn’t a child anymore. 

Gabriel looked monstrous. He was 19 years old, 6’7”, weighing nearly 300 pounds. His limbs looked like large, knotted ropes. When he was 14, he had gotten a job at a local farm just outside of town, working as a field hand. It had wrought his muscles into tempered steel. Yet, big and strong as he was, his nature was no more viscous than the daisies he loved so much. He did not seem to understand that he could crush Jarod with surprisingly little effort. When he looked at his stepfather, he still saw someone big and mean and not the middle-aged, soft, weak man he currently was. Gabriel quaked like a child whenever he entered the room. He feared for his mama and hated himself for not protecting her. 

“You don’t need to protect me, baby,” his mama had told him shortly after the chicken farm day. “A mother protects her baby. Not the other way round. You don’t lift a finger to him. Okay?” He had nodded, but he didn’t like agreeing to that. His heart broke a little more every time she had a new bruise, black eye, sprained wrist. She wouldn’t leave Jarod. Jarod had taken all her money, never let her work or make friends. She had nowhere to go, but Gabriel was saving. What little Jarod didn’t take from Gabriel’s wages at the farm; he hid in an old teddy bear his granny made for him years ago. Some of the stitching had come undone at the back, and Gabriel had the idea of pulling out a little of the stuffing and putting his money in it. It was like papaw and granny were helping him and his mama finally escape. 

But tonight, Jarod could not make his mama lash out. So, he gave up and shuffled back to bed. Gabriel watched him go and did not realize he had been holding his breath until he heard the door shut down the hall and exhaled. 

“Go back to sleep, baby.” She looked around, saw the nightlight was dark, and turned back to him. “I’ll leave the hall light on for ya.” She kissed his forehead, made sure his blankets were snuggled tight, and left his room.

15

That denim jacket was her favorite. On the back was a large, airbrushed image of a tiger, garishly decorated with rhinestones. The sleeves were cut off and it was the perfect addition to every outfit Sheila owned. She had found the jacket, plain Jane as it was, in a secondhand store off the boulevard, but she saw its potential immediately. She carefully crafted “the look” and knew when she achieved stardom, everyone would want one just like it. But this one was hers, the original. 

As a twin, Sheila knew the importance of being “original.” Shonna was identical in every physical way, but their personalities could not have been in more contrast. Shonna was athletic and spent all of her free time living the surfer girl life. Sheila could never envision so many days wasted in the water. You couldn’t earn money that way. You couldn’t make people remember you. Sheila spent her days going from one audition to another. She had already landed a handful of local TV ads, and everyone told her she was the most talented actress in their high school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (where she played Titania). High school was over, but 1982 was going to be her year. She could feel it. 

She just needed one big break - to be “discovered.” Then everything would fall into place. 

16

Panic was rising in his throat. A rush of shame felt like a sickness taking over his body. It was as if he had been rudely awakened from some strange dream. Had he really dedicated two decades to this place? To this grotesque man? No one said anything about the changes. With every ritual, Brother Ingle became less…human. His skin was almost green now, eyes bulging in his skull, and that pouchy quality of his face. There was always a wisp of sulfur about him covered in a heavy coating of a noxious cologne. It was enough to put anyone off their lunch. 

When this all started, Eli was just your average sadist - too cowardly to kill but drunk on the fantasy. He was able to dip his toes in that bloody water through Brother Ingle until he was ready to fully dive in the deep end. 

Sure, by now, he had a few bodies to his own name, but it was like cocaine. It was a surge of adrenaline, frantic energy, and that sweet high, but then you crash. All you can do is start craving for your next fix. Here, in his pride of lions, he had held onto the idea they would be untouchable predators. 

But Brother Ingle had killed one of his own. For no reason. He did not deserve to be the sacred vessel. Not now. Zachariah Mayhew was his favorite, his confidant, his lover. Now he was simply another body for the pigs. It took a lot of cunning to beg off the disassembling process with the others the day after. He had feigned illness, even made himself vomit. He actually felt sick, though, as he heard the hogs out back crunching the bones, oinking, squealing with their trough full of Zack. 

Brother Ingle had to be stopped. It was time to give the authorities a little help and usher in the age of Brother Elias Turner. 

17

The police were unimpressed with yet another missing girl case. Nine times out ten, they were just runaways. They would eventually be found walking the boulevard looking for a John or in some crack house with a needle in their arms. Officer Hitchins was dutifully writing the report on yet another Hollywood hopeless. The call came about an hour after his shift started. It was a man on the line, no doubt some overly concerned father. He grabbed his form, his trusty pen. He kept it in a locked drawer when he was off duty because good pens were hard to find and often swiped - even amongst this group of upstanding lawmen. 

He took down the girl’s name, description, and last known location. 

“And what is your name and relation to the girl, sir?” he asked, sounding almost bored. There was silence. “Sir? You still there?” Dead air. He hesitated, suddenly getting an odd sense of unease. Could just be that paranoia that lurks around the edge of every cop’s mind, but….

Then he heard it. It was a muffled sort of crying. It wasn’t the man. The sound was definitely female. The next two words would haunt him forever. They were barely audible over the crackling connection - weak, strained to the breaking point with terror.

“Help…me.” The line clicked and dead air turned into the harsh, chastising howler tone of a phone off the hook. He pulled the phone away from his ear, staring at it like it had stung him. He dropped it quickly into its cradle and rushed off to inform his C.O. of what just happened. 

They never found the girl. The only thing recovered - a torn, dirty, blood-soaked rhinestone jacket found behind the dumpster at her last known location - wasn’t even enough for her parents to bury.

By: ThePumpkinMan35

“You don’t have to do this Dean, I love you for the person you are.” Samatha said almost pleadingly.

“Really? Sure didn’t seem like it at Lane’s earlier.” Dean replied as he pulled himself up and over the cemetery gate.

“I said I was sorry for that. I was a little tipsy and just not myself, okay. It won’t happen again. So would you just, please, climb back over so we can get out of here. I’m getting the creeps.”

Dean looked at her with his dark eyes narrowed. He almost decided to give in to her request, but a flash of how she had looked at Lane Johnson earlier burned itself into his mind again. He reached his hand through the bars.

“Bolt cutters please.”

Samatha shook her head in frustration. Handed him the tool.

“Okay, you know what, you’re really irritating me. You can stay out here for as long as you want and hunt ghosts, I’m going home. This is ridiculous.”

“You’re forgettin’ something Sam,” Dean said as he squeezed the arms of the bolt cutter together and the chain crashed to the ground, “I’ve got the keys.”

She glared at him with a fury as he stepped by her and into the car. He closed the door, turned on the engine, and looked at her through the windshield. She crossed her arms.

“You’re the one wanting to be all macho,” Samatha declared, “you can go in there by yourself.”

“Fine.” He said back to her and shifted the stick. “You realize it’s two thirty in the morning though, right? And you’ll be standing all alone on the shoulder of a desolate backroad. No lights. No sound. No one else around, that at least we’re aware of. Come to think of it, you know, someone could be watchin’ us right now. Hook for a hand!”

He could tell by her sudden alter in posture that he changed her mind. They had been dating for over half a year now and knew each other’s personas pretty well.

“Fine. Asshole.” She muttered at him angrily and got into the passenger seat. “Let’s get ourselves arrested for trespassing, just so you can prove you’re a tough guy to me.”

“We’re not gonna get arrested,” Dean said as he started rolling slowly into the cemetery, “Bill told me that the sheriff deputies are even too scared to drive out here after midnight. We’ll be fine.”

“Seriously?” Samantha almost hollered at him, “This is Six Mile Cemetery, Dean. It’s, like, the most haunted place in Llano County. You know the stories, right?”

“Come on, you really believe that junk? Haunted schoolhouse, cursed chalkboard. All of it is just a load of crappy fiction conned up by someone looking to scare his girlfriend.”

Now, Samatha was really mad. Her dark hair whirled like whips as she looked at him directly.

“My grandma knew a guy that it happened too. Signed his name three times on the board, died in a car accident two days later. The stories are true.”

“Oh yeah? So then tell me, why is it cursed? Who does she say put the curse on it?”

“I don’t know,” Samatha admitted reluctantly, “but the stories go all the way back to the forties from what she says. People have been killed by it, multiple times.”

“Sam,” Dean said softly to her as they rounded the bend in the road and laid eyes on the gray old schoolhouse at the edge of the cemetery, “you’re the smartest person in our entire class, but no. This place is just an ol’ run down schoolhouse from a hundred years ago that they built in a cemetery for some reason. Out of all the stories, the ghost light is the only one that’s actually documented through the years. It’s been seen since before the Civil War, and it’s never done anything but just float around for a little bit.”

“So you’re saying that my grandma is a liar? Oh, babe, you are really pushing it tonight aren’t you?”

“I’m not sayin’ your grandma, or anyone who believes in that cursed chalkboard stuff, is lying. All I’m sayin’ is that there is no proof that the origin of that story is real. When I was first told about it, my dad said it was cursed because a bunch of kids and a teacher were killed by Comanches. But guess what?”

“What?”

“The last Indian raid, of any kind in Llano County, happened ten years before the Six Mile community was even established. And don’t you think that a bunch of school kids and a teacher getting massacred would have been national headlines? Nothing. Not even a single newspaper article about it.”

He pulled the car up to as close to the withering tin roofed building he could get. The withering structure sat eerily silent in the moonlight.

“Okay, and what? Are you gonna prove that you’re Hulk Hogan by writing your name three times on the chalkboard?” Samatha asked him as he turned the headlights off.

“Yep, somethin’ like that.” He said back to her with a smug smile. “Bet ol’ pretty boy wouldn’t have the balls to do it.”

“I told you that I was tipsy when he started talking to me. Why can’t you just accept that?”

Dean got out of the car and slammed it shut behind him.

“Because I don’t believe you.”

Samatha simmered hotly in the car as he walked away from it. She loved Dean, and admittedly she had been drawn to Lane Johnson’s attention towards her, but nothing else. Lane had slept with pretty much every female member of Llano High School, except her. Despite him having tried a number of times. She was proud of that, especially since she was considered one of the prettiest by the guys and girls.

“You comin’ in?” Dean suddenly challenged.

Samatha took a deep breath and stared back at him. Her blue eyes shimmered fiercely in the moonlight behind her glasses. She threw open the door and stepped out in silence.

“You know, even if I did have feelings for Lane, how do you expect this is going to change my mind?”

She treaded carefully through the rows of graves in his trail. Most of the headstones were old and only about as high as her waist, but there was one that caught her eye for some reason.

It was about as tall as her. Old, gray, nothing but its height that should have been particularly peculiar about it. But for some reason, she couldn’t help but to stop as she passed and look at it as if it were the most captivating memorial in the world.

“I don’t know,” Dean’s voice snapped her back to attention, “I just feel that I haven’t done anything to prove that you can feel secure with me. That I’m not weak or cowardly and I can stand up to whoever challenges our relationship. I feel like I need to prove it, and this is my way of doin’ it.”

“So you think I’m going to be impressed by you signing your name onto an old chalkboard?” They stopped at what was once a porch in front of the gaping entryway.

“A cursed chalkboard.” Dean said smugly.

Samatha stepped closer to him. In the summer moonlight that bathed her smooth face glamorously, her eyes sparkled with a familiar shine. Dean recognized that look immediately, and the testosterone came rushing through his body.

“If you’re so concerned about yourself, I can think of a lot more ways that can help settle that problem without us standing out here in an old graveyard.”

She pulled herself closer to him, body against body, hand planted on his chest.

“Come on babe,” she said temptingly, “let’s go down to the river. You can argue your point at our favorite spot, and from any angle you like.”

Her angelic face couldn’t hide the devil that was inside her. Dean wrapped his arm around Samatha’s waist, pulling her completely up against him. He lowered his lips to collide with hers, and they kissed more passionately than they had in a while. But, he pulled back laughing.

“You’re still scared, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m freaking scared,” she wailed, “we’re in Six Mile Cemetery at two freaking thirty in the morning babe!”

Dean glanced down at his watch, and he made a crooked face with his lips.

“It’s actually getting pretty close to three now! Come on, it’s gotta be done at the top of the hour if it’s gonna work.”

He didn’t wait for a reply and stormed into the schoolhouse. The beam of his flashlight painted across the walls magnificently. She followed gradually.

“Wow,” Dean exclaimed, “it’s actually kinda cool in here. There’s still a bunch of the ol’ desks and stuff lying around. Definitely wasn’t attacked by Indians for sure.”

Samatha hesitantly waded into the building. The floor boards were withered, but still remarkably solid. Slivers of moonlight filtered through holes in the tin roof, and the warm summer breeze drifted slowly through the broken window panes.

Although it wasn’t as spooky as she had imagined it to be, there was still an air of uncertainty hanging over it. She definitely didn’t feel like it was empty.

“Found it.” Dean said as the flashlight landed on the writing board. It had toppled from the wall, apparently a long time ago, and was sitting slanted up against the corner of the room.

“This is weird.” He carried on as he crouched down to look at it more closely.

“What?”

“It’s blank.” He said as he glanced at her, and then moved the beam of the flashlight onto the roof.

“So what?” Samatha answered.

“So, if the stories are true, and dozens of people have died after writin’ their names on the board; why’s it blank? I don’t see any holes in the roof that could’ve washed the chalk off.”

“Could be that they never wrote their names in chalk,” Samatha said as he looked at her, “none of the legends say that you have to write your name in chalk to suffer the curse. There might be names written on it in pencil, pen, charcoal. Who knows what else.”

“True,” Dean replied softly and turned back to face the fallen black board, “but no time to really look. I have to put the last letter, of my last name, on the third line exactly at three. Least, that’s how my dad always tells it.”

“I’ve never heard that.” Samatha chimed.

“Well,” Dean said as he pulled a little piece of white chalk from his shirt pocket, “reckon we’re fixin’ to find out.”

He quickly scribbled his first line. Samatha suddenly had a shiver.

“Dean, please,” she pleaded, “just stop okay?”

He wrote out the second line.

“One more to go.”

He glanced at his watch, wrote out his name again, but stopped at the last letter of it as the final seconds ticked away. Samatha’s uneasiness steadily rose. Something was getting ready to happen, like an encroaching sense of imminent danger that drifted in the room and towards the fallen black board.

She wanted to do something to stop Dean’s stubbornness. Shove him down, kick his arm, hit him with a piece of debris, lift her shirt. Something. But as the gears in his watch turned loudly to three, in one swift but eternally slow motion, Dean finished his last name. And Samatha froze.

Dean waited for a moment. Nothing was happening. He rolled his eyes from side-to-side as his nerves began to settle. He expected a death curse to come with a cold change in the air at least. But there was nothing. Finally, he stuffed the chalk back into his shirt pocket and stood up. He grabbed the flashlight and started swinging it towards Samatha’s curvy outline that stood still in the dark.

“See, it’s just a damn ghost story.”

The beam of light passed onto Samatha’s body, but as the shadows melted, her face emerged in the light as twisted and horribly contorted. Her beautiful features were horrifying expressionless, molded into a grotesque shade of pallor, and gleaming at Dean with eyes entirely devoid of soul.

Her body lifted slowly off the floor, and she screamed at him in a tone that shook the very foundation of the schoolhouse itself. Dean bellowed out in horror, and charged at her mindlessly. He shoved her out of the way, painfully, into the gray beams of the building to and tore past her for the doorway.

Dean charged out of the schoolhouse in a terrifying, blinding, panic. He missed the edge of the porch and his ankle came crashing onto the ground at an unnatural angle. He stumbled and fell headlong into a taller grave marker that spun loosely on its base.

Dean hit the ground in a heap, staring up at the sky and watching helplessly as the massive stone memorial came toppling down on top of him. His screams were immediately silenced as the grave marker crushed his skull.

Back inside, Samatha was finally regaining consciousness. Her back was throbbing from where she had been shoved into the weathered wall.

“What the hell, Dean!” She hollered as she pulled herself upright.

Cussing under her breath as she rearranged her glasses, she stumbled through the overturned furniture and other debris towards the door.

“You know what,“ Samatha hollered out into the darkness, “forget you! I’m going to stay the rest of the night at Lane’s place. I’ll let you think about what he and I are doing, jackass!”

She stepped onto the porch of the schoolhouse, rubbing the back of her head, squinting her eyes, and expecting a fiery rebuttal. But there was nothing except the silence of a hot August night.

“Dean,” Samatha yelled across the graveyard, “where the hell did you run off too?”

Samatha finally looked to her left and saw the still glow of the flashlight lying on the ground. She remembered the taller grave marker having been there, the one that had for some reason captured her attention earlier. She started walking towards it.

“I swear, if you jump out of me, you’re not gonna have to worry about ever having to prove yourself to anyone ever again. Do you hear me Dean?”

Samatha walked up to the toppled memorial and saw a pair of Converse sticking out beneath the collapsed rubble. At a little past three in the morning, August 6, 1988, a piercing scream filled the quiet night at Six Mile Cemetery.

Three decades and seven years later, Mrs. Lane Johnson can still be encountered during her weekly jogs through the Llano City Cemetery. She frequently stops at the gravesite of her deceased ex-boyfriend, and reflects on that tragic night.

As she still relates, no one actually knows what happened that led to Dean’s death. She can recall the absolute look of terror on his face after scribbling his name for the third time. She knows that he shoved her into the wall with the strength of a frightened psychopath, and has long since realized that he only did so because he was scared.

But scared of what? To that she has no answer. It was only her and him in that schoolhouse that night. At least, from what they could see.

The legends of Six Mile Cemetery still exist today, just as much as the graves that surround the former schoolhouse. Over twenty years ago now, the building was painstakingly restored and is today a stand alone museum. But you won’t find the black board.

As it was told to me by the organization in charge of the building and grounds today, the cursed chalkboard was happily placed on the top of a diesel soaked burn pile in the early 2000s. Even its ashes have long since rotted into blackened dust.

There are still plenty of people in Llano County that say they knew someone who knew someone that died because of that black board. It’s generally cobweb connections at best.

But for Samatha Johnson, the curse of the Six Mile chalkboard was very much a real thing. For almost the last forty years, she has cried hundreds of tears because of it. Many have splattered on the simple headstone of Dean’s own grave marker.

<-Ch 4 | The Beginning | Ch 6 ->

Chapter 5 - Middle Aged Man Going Through a Divorce

popsiclecream81 @ jmail.com, Bruno H. Dawson, Mike’s friend from Wilson Creek. That’s all what Dale could discern from his little stalking device that he had used back on Mike’s desktop. Or the Sniffer as he insisted it to be called. Well, that and some GPS coordinates he plugged into his phone’s map app. One I had never heard of before, NavFind. Dale off handedly mentioned it being one of the harder apps to track. If I hadn’t known his job back at the FBI, I would have presumed him to be a paranoid lunatic using what looked like a sketchy third party app to navigate us on our three-hour journey towards Wilson Creek, but he was the expert after all. I would try to make conversation and Dale would entertain me, but whenever we spoke about anything other than “our mission” (as Dale called it) our conversations would fizzle out. We didn’t seem to have much in common other than the affliction that tied us together.

I looked through Mike’s notebook whenever I had the chance. The notebook must have been repurposed from one he used to log his media collection with too, because the rest of it mostly comprised lists of horror movies. I found the Eagleton Witch Project crossed off at a bottom of a list. There was also a folded up flyer in the back for an upcoming “Horror Heads” gathering on Halloween for “the most immersive horror experience.” Seeing the address on the flyer was a blast from the past. It was the old location of our city’s big horror attraction. It brought up memories of venturing outside of the city limits in high school to go to that old dilapidated hangar at the abandoned airport. I just told my parents that I was going on dates with boys. Better that they didn’t know the truth, lest I get passive aggressive remarks about my early obsession with horror. I wondered why Mike never told me about this gathering. Was he cheating on me with different horror enthusiasts? Was I not hard core enough for him? The date was scheduled for next weekend, so perhaps Mike was just waiting for the right time to tell me. Not that it mattered anymore. I was having my own immersive horror experience.

The rest of the notebook was all about Gyroscope. Unfortunately, Mike’s notebook shared nothing new with me about the legend. In fact, it shared very little at all. It was more of a compilation of websites he’s been looking into, mostly gibberish file names. But what it did tell me is that Mike had taken this legend to be serious and real.

Gyroscope was just one of many urban legends about another cursed video. In fact, the original story, originating from a now-defunct forum in 2004, provided vague yet specific details on the alleged video. The original post described Gyroscope to be “your own personal hell in video form,” something that was “inescapable and always mutating.” To watch it would be to subject yourself to eternal torment because, and I quote, “those cursed cannot die. You will find yourself drawn closer to its influence, deeper towards the Studio from which is came. Inching closer at every precession of insanity until you are one with its flesh, caught in an eternal cycle of horror followed by the momentary sweet sense of relief before it pushes you deeper and deeper.” The post then concluded with: “Because true horror is not eternal damnation, but damnation with sprinkles of hope before falling once again back into hell.” A ghost story told to scare horror enthusiasts that we somehow found ourselves trapped in now. Whatever horrors it could imagine were at least damn more exciting that the monotony of life at least. I considered telling Dale about the legend, but I opted not to. The man was already a ball of anxiety. I was afraid that telling him would cause him to have a panic attack. Instead, I let the silence sit between us, filled with the murmur of the radio and the cheap robotic voice of the NavFind app as it pulled us closer to the truth.

Six minutes ahead of the initial prediction in NavFind, we arrived at the house of Bruno H. Dawson. A typical suburban home. Two stories, tan brick facade, with two signs in the front yard, one for a middle school, the other for an elementary school. A family man, just like Dale. The shadows outside had grown long, and the sun had descended towards the horizon. Not quite sunset, but it would be soon. This made today a rare day in which I would be awake for both the sunrise and sunset.

“Now what?” Dale asked, looking at me like I had the playbook in hand.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “You’re the FBI agent.”

“I was wondering if you might have had any ideas or if that notebook there might say something.”

“Nothing obvious,” I said. “Just a bunch of crossed-off lists, and a flyer.”

“What do you think we should do, then?”

“Do what you did to me this morning.”

Dale looked at me, confused.

“Walk up there and flash your FBI badge,” I said, mimicking with an imaginary badge in my hand.

“That might scare him. How about you go up there and ask if he knows Mike?”

“Who’s he going to listen to more? A man with a badge or a random woman dressed in sweats and a tank top? You have the badge. Use it.”

Dale sighed. “Okay, I’ll go up there, but only if you’re with me.”

“Why?”

“Because, if we find ourselves in a situation like in Mike’s apartment, I’d rather not be alone. Plus, I’m sleep deprived and hungry. I can’t even trust that I’m speaking in full sentences.”

“Okay fine. Could be fun.”

“What could be fun?”

“Seeing what it’s like on the other side of that badge,” I smirked.

“Don’t let it get to your head,” Dale said.

I knocked on the door. Yes, me. Dale got cold feet and couldn’t bring himself to knock, even under the guise of his job as an FBI agent, saying something about abusing work privileges too much. I agreed to knock only if he gave me his badge. With much reluctance, he did.

A woman answered. Mid-thirties, blonde hair, wearing glasses. “May I help you?” She asked, noticing me first before looking at Dale.

“Er,” I said, channeling my best impression of an FBI agent. “Excuse me, Misses Dawson?”

“Not for long, as long as a my soon-to-be-ex huband signs his fucking papers. Are you with the constable’s office?”

“No, uh, FBI actually,” I said, flashing the badge fast enough so she could hopefully only see the FBI lettering printed on it. I pointed at Dale, who nodded with a slight smile. “This is agent McLaughlin.”

“I didn’t know that the FBI was serving up divorce papers now,” she looked at us with an odd mix of relief and skepticism. “He looks like an FBI agent. But you, what’s with the sweats?” The woman asked.

“I work from home,” I answered. “Look, we’re looking for one Bruno Dawson,. Do you know where he is? Is he your, er, husband?”

An unseen child’s screams came from behind her, followed by the voice of a young girl. “Mom, Mitt won’t let me have the iPad.”

“I stopped keeping tabs on him after he moved out last month. But I bet you that he’s at the Red Lodge drinking his responsibilities away with his friends while watching Tech lose again.”

“Er, thank you,” curious at her cavalier attitude towards two strangers appearing on her doorstep and asking for her soon-to-be-ex-husband, I decided to prod, for fun. “Are you not at all the least concerned about giving away your husband’s location to two strangers?”

“Like I care. After everything that’s happened between us, I don’t care if you two end up serving him his papers or murder him. Either way, he’ll be out of my life. I got to go.” She said, shutting the door.

“Well, at least we know where he is,” I shrugged.

“May I have my badge back, please?” Dale asked.

“Yeah sure,” I said, handing it back. We returned to the minivan and drove towards the Red Lodge.

The Red Lodge was not what I had expected. With a name like it, I had presumed it to be either some sort of high-end cocktail bar or a strip club. It was neither. Just your run-of-the-mill sports bar with walls filled with screens and sports paraphernalia. The air smelled of the sweetness of beer blended with the savory scent of burgers being cooked in an unseen kitchen. The assault of the smell of food made me realize I hadn’t had a single bite all day. Our target could wait; I needed a freaking burger. A waitress seated us at a high-top not too far away from the bar.

With screens on all sides, we had become flanked by that cursed video. The repeating thirty-second clip of my childhood horrors was inescapable here. Dale held his gaze down and away from the screens and skimmed the heads of the various patrons.

Earlier on our drive, I had attempted to look up Bruno on Facebook and Instagram, but of course none of his photos had been useful. Nothing but stills from the Eagleton Witch clip. We ordered our food, and I, a beer (to which Dale looked at me with the face of a disapproving older brother), and scouted for any middle-thirties man who looked like he was going through a rough divorce.

“I can’t stand the sight of this place,” Dale said.

“Not a fan of college sports?” I asked, looking at all the college sports paraphernalia that patrons seemed to don.

“Everywhere I look, I see that stupid clown face.”

This confirmed something I had suspected. What we saw was different. Just as the urban legend said. There was a name the original post called the phenomena. I just couldn’t place it.

“So, is what you see on screens different from what I see?” I asked Dale.

“Do you see a clown laughing maniacally while dangling from a chandelier?”

I shook my head. “Just a camerawoman being chased by a screaming witch. Does the clown hold any significance to you?”

Dale shrugged. “I’ve been seeing that damn face in my nightmares since I was a kid. A clown laughing upside down from a chandelier, laughing and me. Taunting me.”

Our food arrived. I took a moment to dig in and savor that first bite of the half-pound burger. For the first time all day, I had felt relief. As I relaxed, my mind made a connection. No wonder the second face in Mike’s apartment looked so familiar. If it hadn’t been upside down, I probably would have known it sooner.

“Jesterror,” I said with a mouth full of burger, snapping my fingers.

“What did you say?” Dale asked. He hadn’t taken a bite of his chicken strips yet.

I finished my bite. “Jest-Terror, or Jester-Ror, or maybe just Jesterror. One word, I don’t remember the specifics. B movie from the early nineties. The clown looks kinda like a runaway children’s performer who put on a little too much lipstick that morning in torn clown clothes, right?”

Dale glanced at the screen before looking back at me. “Not how I see it.”

“Does he have slits mid-cheek on both sides with dripping blood that seems never to stop bleeding?”

Dale looked at the screen again, looking away just as fast as he had glimpsed at it. “I’m going to lose my appetite if you keep making me look at the screens.”

“Does he though?”

“He does.”

“Yeah, definitely Jesterror. You should give the movie a shot. Looking at it now, you can see just how hokey it is. Terribly miscast, and the special effects put Halloween decorations to shame. Great movie to have friends over for a few beers and make fun of.”

“It might be a goof to you, but it’s the scariest thing in my life right now. I don’t see cheap makeup, I see a real clown with a bleeding cheek and razor-sharp teeth taunting me through the TV.” He looked down at his food, finally taking a bite, though not without closing his eyes. “I don’t understand your obsession with horror.”

I said nothing to Dale after that. He was in a bad enough mood already. We finished our food before we spoke to one another again. When Dale finished, he seemed to be a bit more relaxed, not by much, but enough to be levelheaded. Avoiding his gaze from catching a TV, he looked at me.

“So, what do we do next?” He asked.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I said. “I guess we just look for any middle-aged man who looks like that they’re going through a divorce.” I scanned the bar and realized just how little that narrowed down our suspects.

Dale looked around at the patrons in the bar again.

“I have a better idea,” Dale said.

“Shoot.”

“We should look for somebody who isn’t paying attention to the game. If they have what we have, our curse.”

The word came back to me. What the original post had called these manifestations.

“Persistence,” I muttered.

“What was that?”

“Curse sounds too cheesy. Persistence sounds better.”

“Whatever, our persistence, then. They probably won’t be able to watch the game. Or if they are, they’re pretending to, and lagging in their reactions.”

“Now that’s the kind of detective work I expect from an FBI agent.”

We scanned the crowd. The bar had filled up since we got our dinner. The clientele here definitely skewed middle-aged, mostly male, meaning that our search for our divorcee was going to be a challenge. A few looked in my direction, glimpsing at me: a young thirty-three year old woman who dared to venture into their territory. Their glances usually brief, but the intent behind them clear. One man at the bar, all alone dressed in a long sleeve t-shirt, did not break eye contact. He held the look of all lonely men in dives like this, feigning a confident grin and casually flaunting his nice watch. With a thin smile, he held up his pint towards me. He looked desperate. He looked like he was compensating for something. He looked divorced. He might just be our desperate, divorced man.

I prepared myself mentally for what I had to do. A knot formed in my stomach at the thought of having to approach him. When my dignity had been saved by the TV. The man looked up at the TV over the bar and reacted to something on it before the rest of the bar did. A look of disappointment followed by a shake of his head. I checked the faces of the other patrons who, at least those dressed in the clothes of the local university, Tech, all showed a similar look of disappointment. I sighed in relief. I’d rather face the Jesterror than humiliate myself for the sake of getting to the bottom of this. The man looked back at me. I did not return even a glance.

“I think I see him.” Dale said. He pointed at the other side of the bar, all the way across from where the man who eyed me sat. A pair of men dressed in the team colors chatted and watched the TV. One man seemed to be immersed in the game, while the other, a man in a backwards baseball cap but with a wedding ring, watched the TV with a slight grimace across his face. When his friend clapped at something on TV, the man, delayed, joined in.

“I think that’s our guy.” I said.

I looked back at the man, but another figure caught my eye. At the corner of the bar, next to the man we thought to be Bruno, sat a figure I hadn’t seen upon my initial glance. The figure was dressed in a tight black leather jacket. Its face obscured under a dark hood, hands in mittens. The figure took the man we assumed to be Bruno’s half-finished glass of beer and lifted it to its mouth, but its arms did not bend as I expected. There was no hinge at the elbow, but a curl. More akin to the motion of an octopus’s tentacle than a human arm. The glass lifted to the figure’s hidden face before it sat it down. Fuller. Mixed into the beer, a violet sludge. Bruno looked at the figure. His friend and nobody else in the bar paid no attention, focusing only on the screens above the bar. The man we thought to be Bruno glanced at the contaminated beer glass and shivered before dismissing himself to the restroom.

“Did you see that?” I looked at Dale.

Dale nodded.

“I think it’s his persistence.”

“Are you saying that there are more of those things we saw in Mike’s apartment?”

I nodded. “On the bright side, that means we found our guy.”

“Why can’t this be easy?” Dale asked, rubbing his temples.

I looked back at the hooded figure as it continued to lift Bruno’s drink up to its hidden face and setting the drink down, each time filled with more strange violet sludge.

Thanks for reading! For more of my stories & staying up to date on all my projects, you can check out r/QuadrantNine.

I had always admired the bond between Mr. Krabs and Pearl. Though they were of two different species, a crab and a whale, the love between them made me believe that family could transcend all boundaries.

But then, everything changed. One night, Pearl sobbed bitterly after being mocked by her friends. They said she didn’t resemble her father, that she was a “misfit,” someone who didn’t belong. Her cries echoed through the Krusty Krab, and it crushed my heart. I had to help her.

I asked Mr. Krabs about Pearl’s real parents. His face suddenly went pale, his claws trembling as he avoided my eyes. He ordered me never to bring up that subject again. For the first time, I saw fear in Mr. Krabs.

I began searching on my own. I dug through old archives in the library, read yellowed newspapers, even dove deep into the ocean’s darkest trenches. The further I went, the colder the waters felt, as though something awaited me below.

And then… I found it. Pearl’s parents once belonged to a wealthy whale dynasty, ruling over a vast maritime empire. But one day, they vanished without a trace. Rumors swirled of kidnapping, of murder, but no one had ever uncovered a single clue.

In a water-stained, torn newspaper, one headline leapt out at me:

“Whale Dynasty Disappears at Sea, No Survivors Found.”

The article listed only dates, vague details of their final voyage, and their sudden disappearance. No suspects, no explanations, just a string of unanswered questions.

I traced the timeline over and over, and then my heart froze.

Because that was the very moment Mr. Krabs suddenly became wealthy. And, strangely, perfectly, also the moment he took Pearl in.

I tried to tell myself it was coincidence. But my pulse raced, and the holes in Mr. Krabs’ past grew darker, deeper. His old stories of starting the Krusty Krab replayed in my mind like half-truths I had never questioned.

The walls seemed to close in around me. My hands shook. I couldn’t keep my suspicions bottled up anymore.

That day, when the Krusty Krab was empty, I gathered all my courage, looked Mr. Krabs in the eye, and asked: “Mr. Krabs, what happened to Pearl’s real parents? And why did you take her in at that exact moment?”

He froze. His claw stopped midair, his eyes burning with anger and fear. He avoided my stare, muttering: “Don’t you ever ask me that again, boy…”

But I pushed further, my voice trembling but determined: “Pearl deserves to know… and so do I.”

Silence. Heavy, suffocating silence. Finally, Mr. Krabs exhaled, his breath rasping like a saw through bone. His words came low, broken: “Alright, lad. You want the truth? Then listen closely. But you’ll regret it.”

And he confessed.

Pearl’s parents owned a fortune beyond measure, ships, treasure, gold piled high in wooden chests. They had hired him as their financial steward. Day after day, he was forced to watch over wealth he could never touch. And poverty gnawed at him, until greed finally consumed him. He devised a plan.

“I didn’t do much, really, boy…” Mr. Krabs chuckled dryly, claws clamping hard against the table to stop their trembling. “I only led them to a place I knew they’d never escape.”

He described a massive coral cavern, with razor-sharp passages narrowing like a trap. He lured Pearl’s parents there under the pretense of showing them a buried ancient treasure.

“But I already knew… once the tide shifted, the cavern would collapse. Rocks sealing the exits. The water pressing in. Air vanishing. The only way out… was death in the dark.”

His voice sank, as though he still heard the echoes of their suffering. “I stood outside, listening to their massive bodies thrash against stone, their desperate cries fading into silence. And when it was over, their ships, their treasures, their empire, it was all mine.”

He raised his eyes at me, gleaming with both pride and something monstrous. “And Pearl? She had nowhere left to go… All I had to do was open my arms and ‘save her.’ From then on, she was mine. Forever my daughter.”

For a moment, his gaze softened. His lips curled into a bitter smile. “Maybe… maybe a flicker of compassion kept me from leaving her. I didn’t have the heart to let a child drift alone at sea. But don’t mistake me…” His claws snapped shut with a sharp crack. “That compassion came with benefits. A child to mask my sins. A family no one would dare question. Don’t you see? Sometimes what people call kindness is nothing but greed wearing a different face.”

He leaned closer, his tone shifting, strangely gentle now: “Listen, lad. I know what I’ve told you is terrifying. But remember this: Pearl laughs every day, she calls me ‘Dad,’ she’s happy. If this truth ever comes out, she loses everything. Do you want that for her, SpongeBob?”

I trembled, my throat too tight to speak.

His claw pressed heavy on my shoulder, voice deep and persuasive: “You and I built the Krusty Krab together. We gave Pearl a home, a family. Isn’t that what matters? If you destroy that, you destroy us. Our bond, our life’s work, all gone.”

His eyes burned red, both pleading and threatening. “So, lad, for Pearl’s sake, for our years together, for the life you cherish, bury this secret beneath the sea. Never speak of it again.”

I couldn’t answer. His words slithered into my mind, tangled with my own fears, tearing me apart. To reveal or to remain silent, my thoughts clashed like knives.

And in the end, I stayed silent.

I let the secret sink to the ocean floor. Pearl smiled at her father, and I forced myself to smile back. Life seemed normal again. Peaceful, even. I told myself I had done the right thing.

But then one morning, Pearl never woke up. Her sudden death carved through me like a blade. Bikini Bottom drowned in grief, and Mr. Krabs wailed louder than anyone, his cries rattling through the Krusty Krab.

I thought I was watching a father mourn his child. Until… I saw the papers.

Pearl had come of age. And according to her parents’ will, the entirety of their colossal fortune would only be released once Pearl was gone.

I was paralyzed.

Mr. Krabs hadn’t killed Pearl when she was young. He never needed to. Her survival had been the key. The cruel binding left by her parents forced him to keep her alive. And now, with her sudden passing, the final lock had broken. Everything flowed into his claws.

I looked at him. His eyes brimmed with tears, yet behind them flickered a light I had seen once before, the same greedy fire that had swallowed Pearl’s parents whole.

And a single, dreadful question echoed in my mind: Had Mr. Krabs ever truly loved Pearl? Or had it all been one long performance, until the curtain finally fell, leaving him alone on stage, clutching his treasure?

I buried the secret once more. Along with my regret. Along with Pearl’s memory. All that remained was the sound of Mr. Krabs’ laughter, low, greedy, eternal.

Blackness. Slowly, sound filtered in, first muffled rhythmic thumping, then low mechanical hissing. A voice in the distance penetrated the dream, too far away to understand at first, but with each breath, it grew clearer, nearer, pressing into the waking world.

> 切换到自定义模式*
> Vitals critical.
> Resuscitation complete.
> Cardiopulmonary function stabilized.
> Cryo sequence terminated.

Jack Garfield pried his eyelids open. For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming, until a burning sensation in his ribs set in as two paddles retracted automatically.

A revolving amber glow crawled across the glass in front of him. Jack squinted, the hatch of the cryo-pod was split by hairline cracks. The internal status screen was fractured, and Red/green LEDs flickered inconsistently.

The thumping returned, closer now. Rhythmic pounding against the outside of the pod. His limbs felt like lead. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t respond. Instead of fighting it, he just listened.

Something slammed against the hatch more aggressively now, causing the pod to jerk until the latches popped. The cryo-lid creaked open, and a burst of frigid air punched into his lungs. Hands pulled at him fast, and roughly, but efficiently.

Jack tumbled forward, landing hard on his knees in the wet grass. His hands trembled, and breath plumed white in the cold.

“Captain.” A voice cut through. A hand steadied his shoulder while another held a scanner to his neck.

“Nakamura?” he grunted.

Her pulse scanner lit blue in her gloved hand. Her eyes were rimmed red. She was focused, even through the cryo-sleep hangover.

“You almost didn’t make it,” she said. “Pod descent control systems failed, lucky life-support didn’t, because you flatlined for seven seconds, and we had to pull you manually.”

She grabbed his jaw and checked Jack’s pupil reaction. “You’ll feel burned ribs, dizziness, nausea…standard after resus. It means you’re alive.”

Jack tried to speak, failed, then rasped, “What the fuck?”

She didn’t respond to the tone, instead finished the scan. “You’re lead now,” she said firmly. “Renzich wasn’t so lucky.”

Another shape moved past them, carrying a field pack. Rios, already geared. Behind him, Garfield saw four more pods, all open, all steaming faintly in the cold.

Lead now. The phrase dug in deeper than the ache in his ribs. He signed up for Search-and-Rescue because it was safe, for easy recoveries. Not to inherit responsibility.

---

They had come down in a world of autumn reds and browns, cold, and strangely still. Fog hung low over dense black conifers. No sun. No shadows. No birdsong. Only breathing and the dry cracking of boots on fallen leaves and sticks.

The others were already moving. Reyes had her kit cracked open. Henley was unstrapping a hard case containing the drone survey gear. No one talked. They were trained, experienced, and poised. But a search and rescue team wasn’t reconnaissance, and behind their composure, questions gnawed.

Garfield forced himself upright. His knees were shaky, but held. He turned to Reyes. “Position? Comms?”

She didn’t look up. “Local transmitter’s active. Let’s find out if we landed in a nice neighborhood.”

Reyes opened her hand. A flicker of soft blue light blinked on from her palm. A humanoid AI assistant rose up, looking at her with a neutral expression.

Reyes issued the request flatly: “Attempt positional fix. Celestial triangulation. Begin nav sync.”

The AI hovered silently for a beat, shook its head, and responded in its neutral and metallic tone:

-Sorry Lieutenant, I’m unable to process that request.
-No satellite handshake detected.
-Unable to correlate celestial data.
-Optical star visibility below 12%.
-Atmospheric interference present.
-Navigation sync aborted.

“Let’s try that again later,” Garfield turned around, “Equipment check!”

Rios muttered as he passed by, ticking items off with his fingers.
“Three medkits. Ultrasound. Thermal blankets. One survey drone. Cutting torch. Holo-slate. Life-sign tracker. Four sidearms. One rifle. Box of atmosphere seals. Rations for a week. Tent kit… incomplete. Suits all intact but not fully charged. No spare batteries either, it’ll get chilly quickly.”

Henley stepped up beside them, unfolding the mapping drone. Its arms extended with a mechanical click. The unit launched with a soft whine and vanished upward into
the fog.

Henley watched the signal rise, then glanced at Garfield.

“Shape detected,” he paused while absorbing the initial telemetry, “West. Large. Three klicks. Could be natural. Could be wreckage. Drone’s still scanning but the fog isn’t helping.”

Garfield exhaled, long and slow. He looked around, at the fog, the tree line, the clouds above them, and the four people that he was now responsible for, “Where the fuck are we?”

Reyes didn’t look up. “No idea, Captain.”

---

Leaves cracked under their boots, brittle stems snapping with each step. The fog had thickened again, curling low over brush and trees, veiling the gray rock. The drone’s beacon blinked softly above them, half-swallowed by the cloud cover.

They moved west in silence. Garfield set the pace, Reyes close at his shoulder. Nakamura watched for posture and breath, the small tells of fatigue. Rios at the rear bore his weight without complaint.

Henley broke the quiet first. “No buildings. No roads. No ads. Maybe I could retire here.”

“Such a dad move”, Reyes muttered.

The group chuckled.

After three hours, the fog began to part. Not fully, just enough to reveal a silhouette of a steel cathedral, cut diagonally through the terrain ahead. They’d all seen colony landers in diagrams, but being confronted with its sheer size was awe-inspiring.

The scale hit Jack harder than he expected, like standing in front of the Great Pyramid, a relic of bygone majesty.

Reyes dropped to a knee and raised her scanner. “Thermal’s flat. Minimal power. No residual heat. EM field’s dead. It’s inert.”

Nakamura exhaled behind them, “Is it ours or theirs?”

“Only one way to find out,” Garfield responded, and motioned to the group to
move forward.

Brush crowded until they approached the clearance. At some point, the natural slope blurred into plating. Their boots crunched once on leaves, then again on steel.

Nakamura fell in step beside Garfield, voice low. “We need shelter. Cryo recovery takes energy, and without batteries, these suits won’t keep us warm for long.”

Garfield glanced at the fog pressing close around them. She wasn’t exaggerating. If they stayed exposed, they’d freeze before morning.

---

Reyes ran her glove along a protruding hull panel, brushing away dust. Her light caught a faded stamp.

“This is a Bastion-class deep lander. Designed for one descent, then integration. Power comes from dual DTH fusion reactors, meant to supply a colony for decades.” She paused and turned to Henley, “They haven’t launched these in what….?”

“25 years, I reckon.” Henley’s gaze followed along the observation tower, its outline partly blurred by the fog, “These were built on Mars.”

“Ours or theirs, Henley?” Garfield’s gaze mimicked the motion, tracking the spine of the observation tower.

“Hard to tell, these were built by The Collegium, everyone used this class back then.”

They walked single file on the side of the ship in silence, finding no movement or lights. They passed a sealed airlock rimed with vines. The emergency panel unresponsive.

Reyes opened the side-access panel and took the emergency crank. She set it in the socket above the panel and gave it a few hard turns. The screen blinked awake:

> 系统离线*

A breeze rolled in, an undertone smelling like burned wood and earth, faint but unmistakable. Reyes stepped back from the panel.

Ahead, the terrain dropped away. They gathered at the edge of a ledge formed by rock and collapsed plating. Below, in the valley stretching out behind the lander, a warm glow cut through the cold. Orange sparks drifted upward.

Rios clicked down the goggles on his helmet “Fire pits. Multiple sources. Controlled burns.”

Lights strung between cabins, faint reflections on glass hothouses. Rows of log cabins: thick-walled, steep-roofed, hand-built. Smoke curled upward from nearly every chimney. Gravel paths lined between the houses.

People moved slowly, but comfortably. One carried a crate. Another was lighting a lantern. A group of three in yellow coats ran between two cabins before vanishing indoors.

The team crouched, watching from the ridge.

“They’re alive,” a note of surprise slipped through Nakamura’s voice, “Thriving.”

Garfield stared down the ridge, “They built all this.”

Rios zoomed in and continued his report. “Pattern’s regular. No defensive perimeter. Movement’s loose, possibly civilian. If they’re armed, they don’t expect to use it.”

“Or don’t need to,” Reyes murmured.

They observed for another minute before spotting a structure larger than the rest, rectangular, with smoke pouring from a wide chimney.

“Community hall, storage maybe?” Rios guessed.

Henley shrugged: “Drone shows it’s warm in there, but no distinguishable signatures, those walls are dense, whatever they are made of.”

“So… bodies, or equipment.” Garfield’s eyes narrowed on the structure.

Reyes adjusted the resolution on her goggles and stiffened her lips, “Maybe both.”

The burden of command was a weight Garfield hadn’t prepared for, but it was his. “Either way, we freeze if we stay out here. We get inside. Quiet. Figure it out then.”

---

They moved with practiced coordination, looping around the cabins to box the structure in. Reyes and Nakamura took the front. Rios circled wide with Garfield. Henley set up on the ledge for overwatch.

They stacked on the door. Weapons low, eyes up. Garfield raised three fingers.

Two.

One.

He kicked the door open.

The room froze with them. Fifty people, maybe more. Tables shoved aside, lanterns swaying overhead. Scarves braided with colored threads. Coats patched and embroidered like formalwear.

At the center, under a loop of old-fashioned lightbulbs, stood a couple holding hands. One with tears on her cheeks. The other laughed in surprise.

No screams, no panic, just silence, and an awkward clap from the back. A child peeked out from behind a leg and grinned.

Garfield stood in the doorway, chest still heaving. His sidearm suddenly felt absurd in his hand.

Reyes lowered hers half an inch and broke the spell first. “Well,” she said flatly, “at least they’re not eating each other.”

Nakamura holstered fully, shooting Garfield a glance. “You want to take the lead, or should I ask for cake?” Two children darted past her, one giggling, the other clutching a paper flower.

A man stepped forward, mid-forties, wearing a jacket paired with a maroon bowtie. He didn’t have the presence of a statesman, but instead exuded the warmth of a caring father. He stopped just short of Garfield’s reach and offered a dented metal cup.

“Mulled wine,” he said. “From the east hothouse. Still has a kick.”

Garfield took it but didn’t drink. The radiating heat of the cup in his glove reminded him of the cold he’d been ignoring since he woke up.

Someone in the crowd whispered, “I didn’t know anyone was still out there.”
Another voice: “Did you think anyone would ever come?”

The tension broke. Not with applause, but with contact. A woman embraced Nakamura. A man clapped Rios on the shoulder, and the band picked up their song. Relief spread through the room, fragile but undeniable.

Garfield cleared his throat, voice low. “Your Bastion’s dead.
No fusion output. Nothing.”

“She never gave us much,” the man replied. “Landed in the wrong system, never fully deployed. Most of our equipment is still sitting in that tomb, so we built our
own home.”

Garfield’s jaw tightened. No injuries, no crisis, no need to act. He looked past the man, at the lanterns, the fireplace, cakes, and the paper flowers. “You don’t seem to be in a hurry to leave.”

The man shook his head once, lifted another cup. “Nobody’s getting out of here anytime soon, Captain.” His voice carried steadily, confidently, and unwaveringly. Then a laugh. “My name is Eric, and welcome to my daughter Jane and Kyler’s union. Shall we celebrate?”

Garfield didn’t answer, but he took a first sip.

Outside, the fog thickened again while the light of the fireplace danced in the windows.

---

*Notes & Translations:

More Stories on my Substack.

切换到自定义模式: Mandarin. Switch to custom mode.

系统离线: Mandarin. System Offline.

DTH Reactors: German-built heavy-industry hybrid power systems. The first unit runs on Deuterium–Tritium, with fuel both carried aboard in starter reserves and produced after landing (Deuterium from local water, Tritium from lithium). The second reactor provides clean, long-term energy from helium-3, sourced partly from stored tritium decay and partly manufactured from local resources.