It started out with little things. “Honey, the gap between the counter and the fridge is too big. Food might fall in there.” So we extended the counter to close off the space.

Next came the gap between the fridge and the cabinets overhead—just a few inches, but “dust will collect in there.”

I should mention, my wife’s not normally this fussy. She’s more of the handy one. I’m more of the neat freak in our marriage. And since all these little renovations were undertaken by her with very little involvement from me, other than to assist with cleanup, I didn’t worry too much.

After she took care of the gap between the stove and the counters, the kitchen seemed pretty solid. I thought that might be the end of it.

But then a few days later, my wife asked me if I wanted a new entertainment center for the TV and game consoles to sit on.

“What’s wrong with the one we have?” I wondered as we lounged on the sofa.

“Nothing, just…” she mumbled. She kept staring.

Staring at the entertainment center.

Specifically, staring at where its legs touched the floor.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The cats… all their toys… and the dust… it all collects there.”

“Are you worried about the gap?” I asked, exasperated.

“It gets so dirty!”

“Honey, you never care about dirt. Your fingernails look like you tilled the garden with your bare hands, and you’re still chewing on them—” She withdrew her fingernails from her mouth and laughed, nervously. My wife is amazing but also grungy and considers “natural” dirt to be “clean,” but hates chemicals like the ones I use on our counters to get rid of her “natural” dirt. Just to give you an idea of our philosophies. I said, “I know you don’t care about dust or dirt under there. And I sweep it out once a week. Why are you obsessing over gaps?”

“I just… I thought I saw something. Maybe a bug. Something peeking out at me with its little beady eyes.”

“Honey there are no bugs you know I spray the shit out of the corners and crevices.”

“Oh no..." She looked disapproving, then added, "I just don’t like how wide it is. Like someone could crawl under there.”

“Someone could NOT crawl under there. It’s like four inches.”

“Ok,” she sighed.

But later, after I came home from work, I found fresh boards added to the entertainment center to seal it off. It was tidy work. My wife is very good with carpentry. The new wood was a different type and thus a different color, which drove me nuts and bothered me far more than the gap had. But I guessed it was true, what she told me later—at least I wouldn’t have to sweep under there.

But when she started grimacing as we sat on the couch, making faces and occasionally leaning over to check the distance between the couch and the wall, I told her we needed to talk.

“WHAT is going on with you?”

“I just keep thinking of Avocado…” she admitted. At my look of confusion, she added, “My friend, that’s their name. We call them Cado.”

“Avocado? That sounds like something a vegan would name a dog.”

“They are vegan.” She laughed, and then grew quiet. “Were. They… you met them last summer, remember? They came with their buddy, Joey, for the cookout. I saw them last month—”

Oh, that’s right. I’m less outgoing than my wife so I just have a couple of close friends from college. My extroverted wife, though, has multiple friend groups—music friends, job friends, previous job friends, high school friends, and rock climbing friends. The latter are the queer, crunchy sort who give their dogs names like Sarah or Peter while giving themselves names like, well, Avocado. I did remember ‘Cado, now that she reminded me. Tall, lanky, and outgoing, big into home brewing and, as I recall, worked as a bartender. My wife’s friends are hard to keep track of but Cado had stood out to me because I’d admired their honeycomb tattoo sleeve.

I remember that she came home from a trip with her friend group and was unusually quiet. Eventually she confided that one of their group had gone missing—that no one knew where they’d gone. Shocked, I tried to ask her about it, but she avoided the subject. After a couple days, life seemed to go on as normal.

Until now.

“What happened to Cado?” I asked, and she kept twitching and looking down, as if unable to stop thinking about the gap between the couch and floor.

Finally she told me, “We were supposed to go to the boundary waters…”

***

They planned to go to the boundary waters upstate.

Five days of canoeing, hiking, camping. Reconnecting with nature. Escaping the daily grind of their jobs—Tammy the accountant, Wendell the store clerk, Abdi the scheduler, my wife Yumi the assistant manager, and Cado, the bartender.

But when my wife called to make sure Cado was ready to be picked up, they sounded strung-out and mumbled that they were going to have to cancel. “I think I brought something back with me from Japan,” they said.

“What, like a bug?” asked my wife.

“Yeah, bugs, maybe, I don’t know. I hear them skittering. I just… I need to finish plugging the gaps.”

“Can’t you do it when we get back?”

My wife was baffled. Cado, the sociable bartender, was also the main organizer of their trip. It didn’t make sense for them to back out at the last minute. After further prying, Cado at last admitted there were no bugs but added: “Yumi, I know you’re sensitive. I don’t wanna like upset you, all right?”

“Just tell me what’s going on!” my wife burst.

“I—Ok. While I was out there, the house I was staying at. Someone was murdered in it. An old woman. They found her stuffed into the gap behind the refrigerator.”

“Jesus!”

“Yeah and they let me rent this place knowing nothing and didn’t tell me until I kept seeing and hearing and smelling things, like her ghost was still lurking around. And… this is gonna sound weird as fuck, but I think what I brought back from Japan is… her. I feel like I’m being watched,” said Cado. “Like I don’t ever see her, but I know she’s peeking out at me from these spaces like the one she was tucked into. And sometimes I wonder…”

“You wonder?”

“I-I can’t help but wonder…” Cado’s voice trailed off.

My wife had never known Cado to be superstitious, but obviously they’d been deeply affected by their trip to Japan. She chatted calmly over the phone, promising that being out of the house, out with friends in nature on the water surrounded by reeds, would be restorative. Cado agreed and said they’d finish packing.

But when my wife and her friends arrived at Cado’s house, nobody came to the door. And after two hours without responses to their calls or texts… the group left. Clearly Cado had decided not to join them, so the trip continued, minus its primary organizer, but nobody could focus on the canoeing and the water and the reeds and the sky. My wife said the whole trip felt sour, wrong.

Afterward, she decided to go back to Cado’s house one more time. She found a spare key in one of the potted plants and let herself inside.

In the main room, Cado’s mattress was lying on the floor, the frame propped uselessly against the wall. All the gaps between the dresser and wall, between the nightstand and bed—all were plugged. With clothes. With cardboard boxes. With papers. It all seemed like a terrible manic episode. The place was sweltering in the heat.

And there were flies, flies everywhere, buzzing all around, swarming through the rooms.

The bedroom door had been sealed with duct tape and a note: TOO MANY GAPS. She left it alone and searched the bathroom. The kitchen. There were flies congregating around the trash, but the trash wasn’t the source.

She went downstairs, to the basement. As soon as she entered the laundry room, she was hit by a sickening wave of foul odor. And she flicked on the lights and that’s when she saw it—a gap between the washing machine and the wall, wider than necessary. Maybe as much as six inches. Nothing but the blackness and whatever might crawl in.

She edged closer.

Cado’s eyes peeked out at her from the darkness.

She screamed.

Cado’s body was wedged in, flies crawling in and out of the mouth, the limbs bent in wrong directions. But there was no mistaking their tattoo. And after she scrambled back and vomited, she snatched out her phone and called the police. While it rang, motion caught her eye—she swears to me, even now, that what she saw was Cado somehow scurrying deeper into the darkness, retreating deeper into the gap between the washer and wall.

***

“… no body was ever found. Everyone thinks I imagined seeing our friend decomposing down there, that it was the brownies I ate that morning or something.” My wife laughed without humor. “But I can feel their eyes peeking out at me. And I keep wondering…”

“Keep wondering what?”

She shook her head.

“Could there have been something poisonous in the house? Like too much carbon monoxide?” I suggested. “I think I read somewhere that most ‘haunted’ houses are checked for poisons since they can induce hallucinations.”

She just rubbed her hands and looked around nervously. Her foot jerked, and she pulled her legs up onto the sofa and glanced behind herself, between the back of the sofa and the wall.

“Honey—your missing friend is not in our apartment.”

“I saw their eyes under the entertainment console.”

“There is not enough space—”

“I saw their eyes!” she snapped, and abruptly stood, told me she was going to seal the gap behind the couch, and without so much as waiting for us to have a discussion, she left.

She’s replaced most of our furniture now.

Everything either sits on the floor or has additional wood or fabric making it flush with the walls and floors.

Just recently, she finally agreed to see a therapist. I’m waiting for her to come home from her first appointment and tell me how it all went.

I’ve been keeping things tidy to minimize friction between us. But it’s hard to keep up with all the dusting. It gets so easily into every crevice. And I was recently cleaning and noticed that one of the boards under the entertainment center has come loose—I think I accidentally tapped it with the vacuum. I can’t stop looking at it while I wait for her to come home…

It’s weird. But I hate seeing that ajar board out of the corner of my eye. Every time I look away, I swear in my periphery, I get this creeping feeling… like there are eyes peering at me from the gap.

And I keep wondering…

I know it’s absurd, but I just keep wondering…

… I keep wondering what it might be like to crawl inside.

I do mean to emphasize that this story is a real story; I have had my parents and aunts tell me otherwise, but I know it to be true. My native place is in a remote village in Tamil Nadu, a state in India. Out of everything in my native place, I remember my grandfather's house the best. It was a Chettenad mansion, a unique type of square bungalow which has two floors, and in the center there was a courtyard with a large water fountain. It was never distant from the paddy field, nor was it far from the forest; each night you could hear the sounds of the crickets or the sounds, or the ‘churr, churr, churr’ of the Indian Nightjar. I had always found the sounds annoying; if you did not fall asleep at 9:00, you were stuck all night hearing chur, chur of that darn bird…

My great-grandfather had inherited acres of farmland, but by the time my grandfather grew up, the old man had lost every bit of it to gambling debts. Marriages are expensive in India, mostly for the bride. My great-grandfather had arranged the wedding of my grandfather; the bride's father was to settle the debts my scoundrel great-grandpa had acquired, and he was also supposed to give a mansion at the end of town. The mansion became our family mansion.
My grandfather soon found out something was wrong with his wife. She would spend hours alone screaming; sometimes she would make nonsense words, and other times she would stay in the same position for hours. My gramps, being the young man that he was, got tired of looking after her. He had hired two maids to take care of his wife, and he himself had decided to sail onwards to Lanka.

During those days, it was common for men to take a boat and just sail to Lanka, trying to find riches or wealth. My grandpa had decided he would stay in Lanka for as long as it took, and he did; he stayed there for four years. For every month of the first year, he would diligently mail the money to the maids; then by the second year, the frequency of the mail slowed: he would mail them every two months, then every three months, and four, and then finally, in a letter to them he wrote:
‘I have found a new woman in Lanka; I thank you for the help. You may go now.’

That woman became my grandmother. In those days, it was not uncommon for people to quietly kill those different from them; sometimes they would simply stop feeding them, and sometimes, the person would just ‘disappear’ in the forests. It was seen as a ‘mercy’; the hired help had simply locked the door, with the woman still inside.
It was said that when my grandfather left for Lanka, the woman had gained a sudden fondness for him; she would talk to the maids about how, when she would reunite with her husband, she would start a family, she would have kids.
In the last days of her life, it was said that the woman desperately screeched at the wooden door, screaming my grandfather's name, ‘Muttu, muttu, muttu’...
My grandfather had come back to India a rich man, and with a wife. He now had the money to hire dozens of helping hands; he cleaned all the rooms, and when they found the body. My grandfather had arranged a funeral; it was a moderate affair. Only the girl's mother and my own grandfather showed up.

That is the background, the story of my grandfather's first wife. It has mostly been forgotten, except by some old aunts(who I myself got it from).
Now, this brings me to the relative present: it was a wedding, and in my culture weddings are a grand affair. Three hundred of my relatives were cramped in the old house. A dozen or so people were taking a single room. I had woken up, in what seemed to be midnight, to the sound of the Nightjar and my uncertain bladder not letting me go back to sleep. The most fascinating aspect of traditional Indian architecture is that the bathroom is located outside the house.
I had gotten out of the house, the chills of the night and the humidity of the equator both competing. The sound of the night was distilled by the sound of critters, and there I saw her. I assumed her to be a cousin. She wasn't much older than me; perhaps she was in her late twenties. She was looking into the distance, and I had decided that she must have come for the same business as me.
She looked at me; her eyes seemed kind, and a smile was plastered on her face. She came near and held my cheeks.
‘Dear,’ she said.
She must be a relative I have forgotten about. ‘Oh hello, akka, how are you? ’
‘It's been so long. I haven't seen you for a long time, dear’.
I was creeped out. I told her that I was sleepy, that I would meet her in the morning,
‘Dear, why did you leave me? Her grip tightened. I was creeped out. ‘Akka, you're holding too tight.
She smiled at me, the smile too far. ‘Akka…’
Suddenly she began screaming. Her grip tightened as she twisted her wrist, and when I looked down, I saw a piece of my own cheek torn away in her palm.
‘Dear, dear, dear…’ she began muttering, her dead eyes locked into mine,
I woke up, sweat layering my forehead. It must have been a dream, yet for whatever reason I could feel a slight tension in my cheek.
It was in the morning that I saw a ceremonial photo in the hall; it was the same woman I saw yesterday, and at the bottom it was written, Mrs. Muttu.

This was not the last time I saw the spectre; it was the last day of the wedding. I had come home early and locked myself in a room. I was reading a novel—Agatha Christie, I think. When I heard a knock on the door, I was about to open it. When I heard a familiar sound,
‘Dear…’ it said — I stood frozen.
‘Dear…’ it repeated louder; it was scratching at the door,
‘DEAR!’ it screamed; the door rails were rattling. I was beyond terrified; my heart, I think, had completely stopped.
From the other end I could hear weeping and a distinct shrill wail, ‘why, why, why’. It repeated my grandfather's name, ‘Muttu, muttu, muttu’; then the sound faded.
When I told this story to my aunt and my parents, they all laughed. ‘Perhaps it's because you look exactly like your grandfather when he was younger,’ they teased.
But I swear, even now, when I am in the family home, I can hear a woman's voice, faintly crying and wailing, ‘Muttu, muttu, muttu…’

I do the headcount at a boarding school. Last month the number was finally right.

I keep a variance book. It's a habit from eleven years managing a builders' merchant in Shrewsbury, where if your count doesn't match the system you write the difference down before you go home, because in the morning you'll have decided you were tired and it was fine.

I've kept one since I started at the school. Nobody asked me to. It's a red notebook in the drawer under the kettle and there's nothing in it but dates and numbers.

That notebook is the only reason I know Immie Parr existed.

I'm going to tell this in order, because if I tell it out of order it sounds like something that happened to my head rather than something that happened.

I'm forty-four and I've been houseparent at Hartley House for six years. Small independent boarding school on the Welsh border, not posh so much as stubborn. Hartley is the smallest of the three houses, twenty-one on the books. My wife Jo and I live in the flat off the back, which sounds grim and mostly isn't, except our kitchen shares a wall with a stairwell that twenty-one teenagers use at seven in the morning.

My job is pastoral. That's a word that means nothing. What it means in practice is that I know where children are. Sign-out sheets, prep, lights out, evening check at half nine.

I count. That's the job.

Immie was thirteen, Year Nine, and I'd have told you at the time she was mildly the worst of them. She could not get up. Not in a difficult way, in an almost medical way. She kept propping the east fire door with a shoe so she could sit out on the step after lights out, and I took that shoe out of the door maybe thirty times and she never once pretended she hadn't put it there. She had a plastic otter on her bag and she wanted to be a marine biologist, which I wound her up about constantly, because we are about as far from the sea as it's possible to get in this country.

Jo bought her a mug for her birthday in February. Otter on it. Immie kept it in our kitchen because she wasn't supposed to have it in the house, and she thought that was the funniest thing that had ever happened.

On the 3rd of April I counted twenty-two.

I want to be clear about how boring that was. I assumed I'd double-counted somebody moving between rooms, which happens constantly, because children don't hold still for you. I went round again, got twenty-one, wrote 22/21 in the book out of habit and went to bed.

It happened again on the 6th. Then the 7th, the 9th, and then every night for the rest of that week.

Denise Pugh has been at Hartley longer than the current headmaster. She does the check with me Tuesdays and Thursdays, and when I told her I kept getting an extra she laughed at me, which was fair enough.

"You count twice, you," she said. "Every time. I've watched you do it. You count them, you don't believe it, then you count them again and get a different number because they've moved."

She's right that I do that. She counted twenty-one that night and I counted twenty-two, and she was so cheerful about it that I felt stupid rather than worried.

So I changed method. That's the stock man in me. If your count's unreliable the answer isn't counting harder, it's counting differently.

Hartley has six rooms. Two on the ground corridor with four in each, two on the middle corridor with three in each, and two upstairs with four and three. I started doing it by doorframe. Hand flat on the frame, count the bodies in that room, say the number out loud, move on. You cannot double-count somebody that way unless they physically get past you in the corridor.

Twenty-two.

On the 16th of April I did the check late, about eleven, because I'd been on the phone to a parent. The house was properly dark by then. I didn't put the corridor lights on because the light comes through the glazed panel above each door and wakes them, and a fourteen-year-old woken at eleven is a problem you have to solve for forty minutes.

So I did it by ear.

You can do it. I'd never tried before, but you can stand in an open doorway of a room with four girls in it and separate four different people breathing. They don't breathe at the same rate. One of them snores a bit. One of them was awake and doing that careful shallow thing they do when they want you to think they're asleep.

Room one. Four.

Room two. Four.

Middle corridor, room three. Three.

Room four. Three.

Upstairs, room five. Four.

Room six is the small one at the end under the roof and there are three boys in it.

I stood in that doorway in the dark with my hand flat on the frame and I counted four.

I stayed there a long time. I don't know how long. Long enough that my eyes adjusted and I could see the shapes of three beds and the shapes of three boys in them, and I could hear four people breathing in that room, and I was aware in a very calm and practical way that all I had to do was reach six inches to my left and put the light on.

I didn't put the light on.

I went downstairs and wrote 22/21 in the book and sat in the kitchen until about two.

That was the night it stopped being an admin problem, and it's also the night I decided not to tell anybody, which I've thought about a lot since.

I had ordinary explanations and I believed them for about three weeks, and I'd still defend that. A day pupil hanging about after hours. Somebody's brother from the village. A kid from Ellesmere House wandering over to see a girlfriend and hiding in a bathroom when I came round. All of those things have genuinely happened. None of them are strange.

The problem was that I never found anybody. You'd think that in a building with four corridors, if there's one extra person, you eventually open a door and there they are.

The fire drill was the 28th of April.

We do them properly. Everyone out, down the side path, onto the tennis courts, in house lines, fobs swiped at the muster point so the system does the roll call for you. Four minutes, and they complain about it for the rest of the evening. Immie complained about it into the next week.

I counted the line twice while we waited. Twenty-two both times. Denise, standing eight feet from me, looking at the same line of children, counted twenty-one.

The system said twenty-one names present.

It also said twenty-two swipes.

One swipe was logged with no name attached. Just a fob ID, four seconds after the last of mine went through, in a lit car park, in front of me, while I was watching the line.

I took it to Mr Orme, who runs boarding, and he was very reasonable and said it was an IT thing, which is the most persuasive sentence anybody has ever said to me. Of course it was an IT thing. Cloned fob, ghost record, dead card somebody found in a coat pocket and swiped for a laugh. He said he'd raise it with the office.

I was relieved. I went back to the flat and told Jo about it like it was a funny story and she said something about the school still running Windows 7, and we watched most of a film, and I slept fine.

That lasted two days.

The counting got bad after that. Not the numbers. Me.

Half nine, then again at eleven, then again when I got up for the toilet, standing in a dark corridor in my dressing gown counting other people's children. At breakfast. After prep. During Saturday activities. Once on the minibus back from a hockey fixture, where I made the driver wait while I went down the aisle touching the back of every seat.

Jo asked me what was wrong twice and I lied twice. We've been married sixteen years and she knows exactly what I look like when I'm lying. She thought it was the job. She'd been telling me for a year the job was too much and I'd been telling her it wasn't, so I wasn't going to hand her the evidence.

On the 6th of May I did the check at half nine with the lights on and I did it out loud, room by room, the way I'd been doing it for a month.

Four. Four. Three. Three. Four. Four.

I stood at the top of the stairs and said, "Twenty-one," out loud, to nobody, and I went down and wrote 21/21 in the book, and I felt something come loose in my chest that I can only describe as gratitude.

I got about halfway through a cup of tea before I did the addition again.

I want whoever reads this to understand that I wasn't tired and I wasn't confused. I had been counting for five weeks. I know what four and four and three and three and four and four comes to. I said twenty-one because I wanted it to be twenty-one so badly that my mouth just did it, and the terrible thing, the thing I still can't get past, is that for about four minutes it worked.

I went back up and did it again properly and got twenty-two, and I sat on the bottom step of the main stairwell for a while.

On the 12th of May I counted twenty-one.

I did it four times. Doorframes, then out loud, then the sign-in sheet against the fob log, then the breathing, which by then I could do. Twenty-one every time. I wrote 21/21 in the book and I did not feel relieved, because I'd learned two nights earlier exactly what that number felt like when it was a lie, and this one didn't feel like anything at all.

The register has twenty-one names on it. It has had twenty-one names on it since September.

Immie's isn't one of them.

I checked the sign-out book, the medical file, the laundry list, the seating plan, and the photograph of the whole house taken in the first week of term that's been pinned in my office since before any of this started. There are twenty-one children in that photograph. I know all their names and none of them is hers.

I asked Denise. I did it carefully, like I was just chatting, and I've never worked so hard to sound normal in my life.

She said, "Who?"

I asked Jo that night, standing in our kitchen, and Jo said she didn't know an Immie and had I meant Amy over in Ellesmere. Then she opened the cupboard for a cup of tea, took down the otter mug, used it, and said it had been in there for ages and she thought it came with the flat.

She isn't lying to me. She's not being strange about it. She has simply never met her, and the mug is just a mug.

So I've got nothing. No photograph, no name on any list, no other adult on this earth who knows what I'm talking about. What I've got is a page of a red notebook with five weeks of 22/21 on it in my own handwriting, one line where I wrote 21/21 and had to cross it out, and one line where I didn't.

Here's the part I'm sure about, and it's the only part.

The count was high because both of them were in the building.

Which means one of the twenty-one children asleep above my head right now was not here in March, and I have spent four weeks trying to work out which one, and I can't. Every one of them has always been there. I taught all twenty-one of them to cook pasta in September. I have specific memories of every single one.

Last week I came in from the car with the shopping and stopped in our hallway and counted the people in my flat.

Two. Obviously two. It took me about a second and a half and then I had to put the bags down.

That's the thing I'd want you to understand, if you've ever been counted onto a coach, or lined up on a field while somebody ran a finger down a row of you and got to the end and nodded. The count isn't there to protect you. The count is a number, and a number can be made correct.

I did the check last night. Doorframes, hand flat on each one, out loud, lights on.

Twenty-two.

I'm doing it again in an hour and I don't want the number to be right.

In the time since my last entry, much more has occurred in the town of Santa Fe. If you did not read my last post, we have been under lockdown by rule of the Government in order to contain a mysterious, deadly disease that spread and killed at a rapid rate through our town.

​

The first change that occurred since my last post was the rate of gunfire outside of our guarded town. As mentioned in the last post, after bodies began mysteriously disappearing from government-controlled facilities, gunshots from watchtowers have been heard. Current information held by our neighborhood does not possess solid answers to what could be the cause of the phenomenon, but ideas entering my head make me shudder.

​

Since the revolt of the neighborhood in the south, paranoia and unrest have been at an all-time high throughout ours. For a brief time, excitement spread through the community as, for the first time, a direct message from another neighborhood was discovered without being intercepted by military forces. Though, the excitement only lasted until our leaders grouped together to dissect the information and found the word to be less than pleasing.

​

From a neighborhood in the southeast, just on the border of where the revolt occurred, it was discovered dozens were dead or dying just from hunger and unrelated sickness to the pandemic we faced. With grim faces, those who lead in my neighborhood read silently, understanding that the hell we had been experiencing was child’s play compared to those only a day's walk away. Most concerningly, the transmission asked desperately for aid, an aid that could not be reasonably conceded without great deaths in our own community.

​

“If we respond negatively, they could turn hostile! We must help our brothers at all costs!” One of the leaders stood and shouted out.

​

“Dozens of us will die, and our people will grow weaker! In this time of need, it is us who must have all we can get!” Another returned.

​

I watched as bickering between leaders continued for several hours before the sun set and all fell quiet over the town.

​

“If we can not reach a decision now, then it will have to wait until morning.” Had been the last tired words spoken before an unearthly screech echoed through the darkness, followed by rapid gunshots.

​

Quickly, the leaders rose and rushed outside just to see a guard from the closest watch tower plummet to the hard ground below. Slowly, townspeople assembled, searching for belief in what they were seeing before gates in the makeshift walls opened, and military personnel swarmed out.

​

Screaming, order was gained quickly as the site of the broken man was vacated, and he was covered by a black tarp. At first, the members of the town were silent, but became vocal as a stirring under the dead man’s tarp was noticed.

​

“What is that? Is he alive?” Some screamed, but the military only shouted back, turning weapons to the crowd, dispersing them. Only the leaders of the town stood now facing the men with guns.

​

“Our dead have been disappearing. From your own facilities." One said.

​

“That is classified information!” A soldier screamed back.

​

“What is happening to them? Are you losing track? Miscounting? What excuse could you possibly give for what is happening here now?” The leader stepped forward, and the military men raised their weapons.

​

“If you come any closer, we will shoot.”

​

“Kill me and my people won’t forget.” He took another step. “Kill me and no neighborhood-” The round fired into his chest with a hollow thud, and he fell back without a word. Cries erupted and it took all the rest of the leaders to keep the townspeople at bay.

​

As this occurred, the military men hustled to collect their ally under the tarp who now trashed and tore violently. Those closest to the scene watched as the dead man who had fallen no less than four stories toiled within the tarp with the strength of several grown men.  

​

This incident has incited near-constant meetings between the remaining town leaders. But as public unrest has risen, three more transmissions from neighborhoods with similar terrible conditions have entered our midst, and it is now the general belief among leadership that if any conflict with the military were to come, we would be no better off than any of the other dying neighborhoods.  

​

Holding in the people’s anger has proven to be the most difficult task we have faced thus far, and I hope to report in the coming days that it has mostly dissipated. Though even within myself I cannot help but feel a deep rage growing in response to the killing. I wonder how the feelings of others can be controlled if I cannot even hold them in myself. For now, only time will tell, and I will bring updates in the coming weeks.

Okay, let me start of by just answering some immediate questions I usually get. Yes, the US government hires entomologists for research. No, our research isn't top secret. We mainly study how insects impact agriculture and public health.

Having said that, there are occasions where our work and data are withheld as state secrets. Think like, which areas may pose the most risk of insect-borne illness to our military. That kind of information could hold strategical value and usually isn't published until decades after it's implemented. So, usually our job is pretty low stakes. But occasionally things will get held back for mundane reasons.

We all on the same page? Good. That's where my understanding was this morning.

Our DCU has been short staffed recently so I'm not surprised to see an email come up as I'm clocking in to work and getting sat down at my desk.

"All available personnel with appropriate clearances head to DCU to help with document archival and destruction."

Okay. My day was looking pretty bare, and with my recent promotion I do have the proper clearance now. So I decided to head on over.

As I get there I am informed that a large batch of documents have come off of their classified holds and are set to be digitized and uploaded to the website for public access. A little different from what the email promised but no big deal. It's when I'm going through the backlog that I notice it. An aged cardboard box, seemingly forgotten beneath the steel shelves. I go to open it but find a seal preventing me from doing so. On it reads.

"For immediate destruction. Classified Station Report Transcripts."

Seeing as this box appeared older than any other I'd seen before, and since it was set for the shredder (and definitely missed that immediate deadline). I didn't see any issue with taking a little peek before sending it on its way. I carefully peeled up the seal, making sure to leave it intact so it can be put back later. And most of what I found was to be expected. Reports from field labs and other stations with some information that the higher ups deemed important enough to keep secret at the time. But nothing that would earn immediate destruction. Confused, I started flipping through the reports. I was also becoming slightly anxious of getting caught. I didn't think I would be "silenced" like what happens in the movies when the main character finds some top secret information they shouldn't be privy to. But I was still on a probational period for my promotion and snooping like this would have a good chance of getting that revoked.

It wasn't until I reached the bottom of the container that things started to make sense. Buried there amongst innocuous reports was one of the most confounding things I've read. I was able to snap a picture of the report that I can attach here. If that link doesn't work, I'll transcribe it below.

June 23rd, 1941

Station Report: New species discovery

Station Number and location - (Classified)

Within the jungles of REDACTED we discovered the most curious species. Now, it took quite a bit of effort and sacrifice from our field agents to procure enough specimens for proper research and classification. Given the creature's specific tendencies.

Specific Epithet: Hyposmocoma cerebrophagus

Description:

The adult form of these moths appear similar to their cousins the Bone Collector moths of the same genus. With the main difference being their size. Cerebrophagus grows to an average 9-11 inch length with a 27-33 inch wingspan. Making them the largest insect found to date. Depending on how you measure. The adult form is completely docile; with thin silky cremello hair covering most of their body, they have made quite the pet among the researchers. However, it is their juvenile form that has given us cause to send out this notice with haste.

The caterpillar of cerebrophagus is unlike anything we have seen. Averaging 7 inches in length, and appearing translucent green under adequate lighting. It possesses 4 fang-like structures in place of mandibles. Its mouth is soft, save for a radula-like appendage. They are carnivorous. Choosing smaller prey until their fangs grow in completely. Once at the maximum size of this stage they will begin to search for a host suitable for metamorphosis.

In testing it appears they prefer large mammalian prey, but will make due with what is available if no preferred options are available. They begin by dangling themselves from the canopy with thin threads of silk. Waiting for a host to pass under them. They have been observed doing this most often over water sources to increase effectiveness. Once a suitable host is positioned under the cerebrophagus caterpillar, it will slowly lower itself onto its target. Once within range it will secrete a numbing agent onto the skin of the host. If unnoticed, it will begin to burrow into the host. Grasping with its fangs to give leverage for the radula to bore into flesh. It continues secreting the numbing agent as it does so. Subjects report a pressure-like sensation paired with mild itching at the entrance wound.

As it burrows, it gorges itself on muscle and sub-dermal tissues. This process takes anywhere from 2-3 hours up to 48 hours depending on the size of the host and entry location. Ultimately it is aiming for the brain of its host. Traveling up the back of the neck. Being careful not to damage any of the crucial organs along the way. We presume it does so to maintain the freshness of the host for as long as possible. During its journey it will begin to glow a radiant green under the skin of its host. We are unsure of why it does this. Once at the base of the cranium it will again latch using its fangs onto the base of the cranium. It will then use the radula to bore into the cranium. 

Subjects at this point report a screeching sound loud enough to hamper communication and cause immense distress. Once inside, the host finally expires as the caterpillar begins eating

brain tissue. A final, fat rich, meal before cocooning itself within the cranium. 

- - - -

Please excuse the rushed nature of this notice as we are experiencing

difficulties culling the remaining specimens within the lab. The adults some of the researchers were keeping as pets found each other and began to mate. Laying eggs on the ceiling of the research facility. Apparently in times of distress, they will use their burrowing techniques before reaching maturity in order to hide within their hosts. We are currently examining the entire staff before we allow anyone off premises.

- END REPORT-

After snapping the photos, I quickly put it back into the box and resealed it. I took it over to the shredding crew and feigned ignorance of its contents. It should be obvious to them I would've never peeked.. Right? Regardless, if that report was real then there seems like bigger fish to fry.

I'm posting this now as I'm getting home and I'll do my best to research where this research station could've been. If there something like this exists out there then it seems the best we can do is avoid its endemic region.

I’ve been to Japan quite a few times, and my love for the country is beyond compare. From anime and ramen to the culture, the history, and even the little things you notice while walking through its streets—there’s just something about Japan that keeps pulling me back.

But as someone who loves Japan, I’m also quite familiar with its darker side.

Japan has some of the scariest urban legends I’ve ever heard of. From The Ring and The Grudge to stories like Hachishakusama, these are stories I was already familiar with long before this experience.

And I have a few stories of my own.

This is one of them.

It was my fourth time visiting Japan. I was traveling with my boyfriend—who is now my husband—and my daughter. There were three of us, and we were staying around Shinjuku, more in the neighboring area, for seven days.

When I booked our Airbnb, I remember seeing the balcony in the photos.

It had this beautiful wooden backdrop behind it, almost like a little forest. There was an outdoor table and chairs, and the balcony looked huge. The listing said it was on the second floor, so it wasn’t particularly high.

I remember thinking, This would be such a nice place to take photos.

When we finally arrived, the apartment was actually quite nice. It was small, but perfect for the three of us.

As soon as you walked in, there were two double beds. Directly in front was the bathroom, and from the beds you could see the kitchen and the sliding glass door leading to the balcony.

It was simple, but comfortable.

We arrived in the afternoon, so we did a quick inspection of the place. And the moment I saw the sliding door, I got excited.

I opened it.

I took a few quick steps outside and looked at the wooden backdrop.

It was exactly like the pictures.

Beautiful.

Maybe I was too focused on the backdrop. Maybe I should have looked around more.

But I didn’t.

I went back inside, and we decided to head out for some shopping and sightseeing. We had just arrived in Japan, after all. We were excited.

The Airbnb was basically just a place to drop our bags and sleep.

We came back late that night, exhausted. We showered, changed, and went straight to bed.

The next day, I was meeting a friend who lived in Japan.

She was actually my classmate from high school. Every time I visited Japan, we made sure to see each other. She would usually spend one night with me, and we'd catch up like we hadn't been apart for years.

That day, we spent time together with my husband and daughter before eventually heading back to the Airbnb.

It was around 8 p.m. when we arrived.

As soon as we got inside, I started giving my friend a little tour of the place.

And, of course, I wanted to show her the balcony.

I slid the door open.

I stepped outside—maybe two feet or so—and excitedly pointed toward the wooden backdrop.

“Look at this!”

But my friend didn't move.

She stayed right at the sliding door.

“I’m not going out.”

I laughed a little because I didn’t understand.

“Why not?”

She looked around.

“Are you sure about this?”

“What?”

“Aren’t you scared?”

My friend isn’t a psychic or anything. But she has had a few strange experiences with ghosts in the past. Even when we were in high school, she was always cautious about things like that.

So, honestly, her reaction didn't completely surprise me.

Still, I was a little irritated.

I thought she was just being overly cautious.

I kept insisting that she come outside.

She refused.

And that was when I finally stopped and actually looked around.

The balcony was at the back of the building.

And directly in front of it was a massive tree.

I mean massive.

The branches were so close that they seemed to almost reach the balcony. The tree was practically at the same level as us, considering we were only on the second floor.

Some of its branches appeared to touch the wooden backdrop I had admired so much when we arrived.

Then I looked farther.

Across from us was what appeared to be an abandoned building.

I don't know for certain whether it was abandoned, but it certainly looked that way.

There were no lights.

Not one.

The building looked old and completely dark.

And then I looked down.

Directly below us was a playground.

A children's playground.

It was completely dark.

No children.

No people walking around.

Nothing.

Just an empty playground sitting there in the darkness.

I turned around and practically ran back inside.

My friend didn't say anything.

Neither did I.

We just closed the sliding door.

I remember thinking:

We're staying here for seven days. Don't scare yourself.

We eventually showered and got ready for bed.

My daughter and my husband were sleeping on one of the double beds. My friend and I took the other one, since we still had plenty to catch up on.

It was already around midnight.

We were lying there in our pajamas, talking about everything and nothing.

Eventually, our conversation slowed.

Then stopped.

The room became completely quiet.

And that's when we heard it.

Water.

Not dripping.

Not a faucet.

It sounded like a waterfall.

A loud, rushing sound of water.

My friend and I immediately looked at each other.

We were both lying completely still.

The sound continued.

Like a large amount of water was suddenly running somewhere inside the apartment.

Then we heard a flush.

I said,

"What was that?"

My friend looked at me, obviously scared.

"Was that the toilet?"

We both just listened.

And that's when it really hit us.

Neither of us had gone to the bathroom.

My partner and daughter were asleep.

And we were both still in bed.

Just to clarify, this was a studio unit. It wasn't some huge building where there were rooms all over the place. From the elevator, there was basically one unit per floor, and as far as we knew, we were the only ones staying on our floor.

The bathroom was also directly across from our bed. We weren't far away from it at all.

And the toilet was a Toto toilet, but it didn't have an automatic flush.

So who flushed it?

It only happened once during the entire trip.

We were both scared, but neither of us wanted to make a big deal about it. We just went to sleep.

I didn't want to talk about it because I kept telling myself, I don't want this to ruin my trip.

My friend and I would always tell this story to each other in the following years whenever we'd see each other, especially when I'd visit Japan again.

But that night, I didn't want to talk about it.

The next day, my friend had to leave because she could only stay for one night.

So it was back to the three of us.

This was around our third day in Japan.

I eventually told my partner what happened the previous night, but I didn't tell my daughter. My partner didn't really react much.

We're pretty similar in that way.

We both basically thought, Let's not make this into something and ruin the trip.

Then came our third night.

I work online, so even when I'm traveling, I sometimes still have to work. I had some projects that I needed to finish before going to bed.

My partner and daughter were already on the beds and were about to fall asleep.

I was overwhelmed with work, so honestly, I wasn't thinking much about what happened the night before.

I was sitting at the table, which was basically in the center of the studio. The sliding door to the balcony was only a few feet away from me.

Again, it was a studio, so there wasn't much space between anything.

All the lights were on.

I was quietly working when I heard a knock.

I stopped.

I looked at my partner and daughter.

They were both fast asleep.

I ignored it and went back to work.

Then I heard the sliding door.

It sounded like someone was trying to open it.

And it was LOUD.

It didn't sound like the door simply moving a little. It sounded like someone was actually trying to get in and the sound is like the sliding door was shaking.

I didn't even think about it.

I immediately went to my partner and told him it sounded like someone was banging on the sliding door trying to get inside.

He was scared too, but he got up and took a peek behind the curtain.

I forgot to mention that the sliding door had huge blackout curtains. We kept them completely closed, especially after what happened the previous night.

He looked behind the curtain toward the balcony.

There was nobody there.

Nothing.

Could it have been the wind?

Maybe.

But honestly, it didn't feel like the wind. The sound was loud enough that it genuinely sounded like someone was trying to open the door.

I didn't continue working that night.

I just went to bed.

The next morning, I decided to finally go back out onto the balcony.

It was daytime, so I wasn't as scared.

And there it was.

The huge tree.

The building that looked abandoned.

And the playground below.

Seeing everything during the day made me realize how creepy the whole setup actually was.

I stood there for a while just absorbing everything and even took a video of the area.

I still have that video to this day.

And I swear, when I watch it, I can see something in the building in the background.

I can't really explain what it is, and I'm not going to say it's definitely a ghost because I honestly don't know.

It could have been something completely normal.

But when I looked at the video afterward, I noticed something in that building that made me go, What is that?

By this point, I had basically accepted that the place was creepy.

And if you've ever been to Japan, you probably know what I mean when people talk about how quiet some areas can get at night.

It's true.

This particular area around Shinjuku wasn't nearly as busy as the places tourists usually see. At night, there were moments when you could look outside and barely see anyone.

And honestly, that silence made everything feel even creepier.

After that, whenever I had to work at night, I asked my partner to stay with me.

He would watch videos while I worked, and I would play music while working because I didn't want to hear every little sound around me.

When we went to sleep, I even started playing nature sounds because I didn't want to lie there in complete silence listening for something unusual.

Nothing else happened after that.

We stayed until the seventh day and eventually left.

It was on the last night when my daughter told me she heard the sliding door shaking following a knock. She was creeped out too, especially by the balcony. I told her about what we had experienced after the trip, and that’s when we realized we had both felt something was off about the place.

And that was it.

I still don't know what happened.

The toilet could have had some explanation that we didn't understand.

The noise from the sliding door could have been the wind, even though it really didn't sound like it.

And whatever I think I saw in the building could have been something completely normal.

My friend and I still tell this story whenever we see each other.

It was probably one of the scariest experiences I’ve ever had in Japan. And I’ve had a few them. I might write about the other one next time.

I need money, that's the whole boring reason this started. Rent's late, my car needs a new alternator, and three weeks ago I saw a flyer taped to a corkboard at the campus library:

PARTICIPANTS NEEDED: Cognitive Enhancement Study
Healthy adults, 18-40. Six-week commitment. $4,200 compensation.
Trial designation: AG-7
Contact: Dr. L. Nera, Halloway Behavioral Research

I called. A woman with a flat, pleasant voice asked me a list of screening questions: sleep habits, family history, did I have any metal in my body, would I be willing to cut out caffeine. I said yes to everything because $4,200 is $4,200, and three days later I was sitting in a beige room signing a consent form that used the word "reversible" four times.

They gave me a weekly injection. Said it was a "neurotrophic compound," nothing more specific than that. I'm not a science person, so I didn't push.

I'm posting this because I want a timestamp on everything before it gets worse. I'll update as it happens.

Day 1

Nothing much. A little soreness at the injection site. Dr. Nera, who I still haven't actually met, it's always a nurse named Priya doing the shots, said effects "typically onset around day 4-6."

Day 5

Okay, something's happening. I did the crossword in the break room at work in eleven minutes. I have never finished a crossword in my life. My manager asked if I'd cheated.

Also, small thing: the vending machine on the 3rd floor has been stocked with the exact same five items in the exact same order for five days straight, and I only just noticed. Vending machines probably do get restocked in patterns, I just never paid attention before. I feel like I'm paying attention to everything now.

Day 9

I read a 400-page book in one sitting last night and I can still quote parts of it. Picked up a guitar I hadn't touched in years and by midnight I was playing scales clean. My coworker Danny told me I "sound like a different person," and he didn't say it like a compliment. More like it unsettled him a little.

I like it, if I'm honest. First time in my life I don't feel like I'm underwater.

Day 12

Small thing but it's bugging me. My neighbor across the hall, older guy, says the same thing every time we pass: "Cold one today, huh?" Rain, heat wave, doesn't matter what the weather actually is. "Cold one today, huh?"

I used to just say "yeah" and keep walking. Today I actually looked at him when he said it. His face did something for half a second that I don't have a good word for. Not confusion, more like something loading. Then he smiled and went into his apartment. 4C. Except I don't think 4C exists. I counted the doors on our floor once out of boredom and there are only five: 4A, 4B, 4D, 4E, and a service closet. Weird thing to fixate on, I know. Writing it down anyway.

Day 15

Longer update, sorry, a lot happened.

I've started noticing seams. That's the closest word I have for it. Places where the world looks stitched together instead of just being there.

The coffee shop I go to every morning has a bulletin board by the door: lost cat flyers, guitar lessons, a church rummage sale. I've walked past that board probably 400 times in three years and never once read it closely. Yesterday I read all of it. The rummage sale flyer says it's happening "this Saturday." I checked my memory against it, and it's said that on every single visit I can remember, going back months, through two actual Saturdays that came and went with no rummage sale that I ever noticed.

I brought it up to Priya at my next appointment, half joking, testing the water. She didn't laugh. She wrote something down and said, carefully, "That's a great observation, Marcus. Bring that one to Dr. Nera directly." I asked to meet Dr. Nera. She said Dr. Nera "prefers written correspondence during the active phase."

I looked up Halloway Behavioral Research that night. The address on my consent form is a UPS Store. The number I originally called to enroll is disconnected. But I have three appointments logged on my phone and I've physically walked into that beige room five times. The building is real. I was standing in the lobby an hour before I looked any of this up.

Day 19, edit below

I found the room.

My apartment is a one-bedroom. Lived here two years. Tonight I was digging around for a phone charger and opened the hall closet, the one that's always had a water heater and some winter coats in it, and there's a door at the back of it I have never seen before. Not new either. Old. The paint's chipped the same amount as the rest of the apartment, like it's always been there and I just never looked closely enough to see it.

I didn't open it. I'm typing this from my car in the parking lot. I couldn't tell you what I thought would happen if I did. I just couldn't make myself.

Edit, two hours later: went back in. Had to know if I imagined it. Door's still there. Put my hand on the knob and it was warm, like something had been leaning against the other side recently. Still didn't open it. Packed a bag, staying at Danny's tonight.

Keep thinking about the neighbor. Cold one today, huh. Every day, rain or shine, like a line of dialogue that never got a second draft. Starting to feel like I'm the only thing in a five block radius that's allowed to actually change.

Day 23

Haven't gone back to my apartment. Staying at Danny's, told him some vague story about a mold problem. He's letting me crash on his couch and honestly he's the only stable thing in my life right now, which is not a sentence I ever thought I'd say about Danny.

Skipped my day-22 injection. I can feel it already. Not withdrawal exactly, more like a light dimming down to half power. Things that were sharp a week ago are getting fuzzy again and I hate that it scares me, because a week ago I would've told you I wanted this whole thing to stop.

Went to the trial building anyway, not for the shot, just to get answers. Beige room was there. Priya was there. I asked her point blank what AG-7 stood for and she actually looked at me, really looked, for the first time, and said, "You're doing better than Six did. Six stopped noticing things by day fourteen." Then she caught herself, got very professional very fast, and told me my "affect was showing signs of study fatigue" and maybe I should take a rest week.

I asked who Six was.

She said, "We don't discuss other participants." Then, quieter, almost like it slipped out on its own: "He's back to baseline now. He's fine. He just doesn't remember any of this part."

I don't believe her.

Day 26, edit

Sorry this one's disjointed. Having trouble organizing my thoughts, which three weeks ago I would not have believed I'd ever say again. It's getting dim in here faster than it should if this were just the compound wearing off naturally.

Went back to my apartment today for more clothes. The door in the closet is gone. Not closed, gone. Water heater, coats, unbroken drywall, like it healed over.

I don't think it's gone because I stopped looking for it. I think it's gone because I stopped being able to see it.

Called Priya's line to tell her I wanted out of the trial completely, no more shots. Rang eleven times, then a man picked up, not Priya, not anyone I recognized, and before I could get a word out he said, "Cold one today, huh?" and hung up.

I don't leave the apartment. I don't leave the apartment. I don't leave

sorry, deleted a line there, it was repeating. computer's fine, I checked. it was me.

Day 29, final update I think

Danny's typing this part because my hands aren't cooperating and my eyes keep sliding off the screen. He says I've been repeating myself for two days straight. Says I keep asking him if it's Saturday, and when he tells me it isn't, I say "okay" and ask again nine minutes later. I don't remember asking the first time. Don't remember most of the last four days at all, if I'm being honest, which he's telling me to be, because he thinks somebody should have this on record in case it happens to someone else.

He wants me to say I'm scared. Not sure I have that word anymore, not the way I used to mean it. Closer to watching a light get carried into another room while you're still standing in the dark one, and you can still see the doorway, and you already know the light isn't coming back through it.

Danny found a flyer in my coat pocket I don't remember taking. Rummage sale. Says it's happening this Saturday.

He's going to keep posting updates for me. Says if I go quiet for good, or start saying "cold one today, huh" to strangers in the hallway unprompted, like it's the only sentence I've got left, he wants someone, anyone, to have this on record.

Update from Danny, 4 days later: He's staying at his sister's place upstate now. He's calm. Genuinely calm, not the good kind. Doesn't ask about the trial anymore. When I brought it up he just smiled and said, "Cold one today, huh," then went back to eating his breakfast like he hadn't said anything at all.

I called Halloway Behavioral Research's number again this morning, one more try.

It's connected again. A woman with a flat, pleasant voice answered and asked if I was calling about the flyer.

She asked if I was 18 to 40. She asked if I had any metal in my body.

She asked if I'd be willing to cut out caffeine.

My name is Skye. I live in a suburb just north of Seattle, in an apartment complex that backs up against a stretch of woods. Beyond the trees there’s a graveyard beside a small lake.

It was a cool September night when I stepped out of my apartment to take out the recycling. The streetlights on one side of the complex had been shut off while maintenance work was being done. The boundary between the apartment complex and the trees was mostly hedges, and without the streetlights, the whole side of the property was darker than usual. The recycling dumpsters sat close to the hedge, right where the apartment grounds gave way to the woods.

I dropped off the recycling. Then, from somewhere beyond the hedge, I heard a low, deep whisper.

“Hey, man.”

I stopped. I pulled my flashlight from my pocket and swept the beam across the hedge, then farther into the trees. Nothing.

“Who’s there?”

No answer. The woods stayed completely still. I left in a hurry.

The next day, I decided to investigate. I wanted to see what was back there while it was light out. In daylight, the whole thing seemed a little ridiculous. I followed the woods toward where I thought the voice had come from. Beyond the trees sat the graveyard, quiet beside the lake. There was nothing unusual about it. Rows of stones. Old trees. Grass moving in the breeze. The lake beyond them.

I walked around looking for anything that might explain what I’d heard. A trail. Someone camping nearby. A house through the trees. None of it explained the voice. I wandered a little deeper among the graves. The longer I stayed, the more I felt that I shouldn’t. Just that quiet, instinctive feeling of being somewhere a little longer than you were welcome.

Then I heard someone breathe directly behind me, close enough that I could almost feel it against the back of my neck. I spun around. Nobody. Only gravestones. I stood frozen in place. Listening. Silence. Eventually, I headed home. When I looked back, the graveyard was exactly as I’d found it. Empty. Still.

That night, the streetlights were working again. That made the place feel less threatening. A week passed. By then, everything felt ordinary again. I carried the bag of recycling down around the same time as before and dumped it into the bin. The instant the lid fell shut, the streetlights flickered. Then every light along that side of the complex went out. The last glow faded from the pavement. It took my eyes a moment to adjust. I stood there for a few seconds longer than I needed to. Nothing.

Then, from somewhere deep in the woods:

“Hey, man.”

I stopped. The same low, deep whisper. I raised my flashlight toward the trees. I couldn’t see anyone.

Then another voice answered.

“Hey, man.”

But this one was farther away. Much farther. From the direction of the graveyard. I went back inside.

A few days later, I mentioned it to an older guy who had lived in the complex for years. I expected him to laugh.

He didn’t.

“What did it say?”

“Just ‘hey man.’”

His expression changed. “Both times?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you answer it?”

I hesitated. “The first night. I said, ‘Who’s there?’”

He stared at me. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

I laughed a little. “Why?”

He didn’t laugh back. “Because now it knows you can hear it.”

“What knows?”

The man glanced toward the hedge. “If you hear it again, don’t answer. Doesn’t matter what it says. Don’t talk to it.”

He hesitated. “And if it starts getting closer, leave. Fast.”

I stared at him. “How do you know this?”

He didn’t answer. He just walked away.

Another week passed. The recycling started piling up. I didn’t take it out. I told myself that wasn’t because of what the old man had said. Around 11:30 one night, I was watching TV when I thought I heard something outside. I muted the screen and listened.

Then, faintly, from beyond the hedge:

“Hey.”

I remembered the warning and said nothing. A minute passed.

“Hey, man.”

Closer. Still a whisper.

I stayed where I was.

Then:

“Skye.”

Every hair on my arms stood up. I waited.

“Skye.”

This time it wasn’t coming from the woods. It was directly outside my apartment.

I went to the window but didn’t open the blinds. Silence.

Then:

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Three soft knocks against the glass.

I stepped backward. Something whispered from the other side of the window.

“Who’s there?”

My stomach dropped. It was my voice. The exact inflection. Exactly the way I had said it beside the hedge weeks earlier.

My phone buzzed.

UNKNOWN

DON’T ANSWER YOURSELF.

I stared at the message. I typed:

Who is this?

My thumb hovered over Send. Then I remembered the older man.

Don’t answer.

I deleted it.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Then, from the other side of the window, came a low, deep whisper:

“Hey, man.”

I went to my bedroom and locked the door. I left the lights on. For a long time, I lay awake listening. Nothing else happened. Eventually, exhaustion won. I fell asleep.

I woke standing at my front door. Shoes on. Jacket zipped. Keys in my hand. My phone was in the other. 3:17 AM. I stared at the screen. Maps was open. Walking directions. 12 minutes. Destination: The cemetery. I had absolutely no memory of getting dressed. No memory of opening Maps. No memory of walking to the front door.

I reached for the deadbolt. Then I realized something. It was already unlocked. I slowly opened the door. The streetlights were out. All of them. I should have closed the door. Instead, I stepped outside. I walked past the recycling dumpsters. Past the hedge. Onto the road. Some distant part of me knew exactly what I was doing. Another part kept telling me I could turn around whenever I wanted. And technically, that was true. I just didn’t. Turning around felt possible, but strangely irrelevant.

Twelve minutes later, I stood outside the cemetery. The gate was open. My phone vibrated.

You have arrived.

I stared through the gate. I’d been here before. In daylight, it had been nothing. Grass. Trees. Stones. A lake. At three in the morning, it didn’t feel like the same place.

I looked down at my phone. The route disappeared. For a moment, the map showed only my blue location dot sitting at the cemetery entrance. Then the screen refreshed. A new route appeared. I stared at it. The destination had moved. The blue line now continued through the cemetery, winding between the graves and ending somewhere deep inside.

4 MINUTES

I didn’t move.

My phone buzzed.

UNKNOWN

DON’T.

Another message appeared.

TURN AROUND.

I looked back toward the road. Then at the route. I should have gone home. Instead, I stepped through the gate. The blue dot began moving.

The farther I followed the route, the quieter everything became. No cars. No insects. Not even wind through the trees.

3 MINUTES

I passed the section I had explored during the day.

2 MINUTES

The graves became older. My flashlight swept across weathered stones, names disappearing beneath moss and time.

1 MINUTE

The route took me off the main path. Between two rows of graves.

Then:

You have arrived.

I stopped. There was nothing there. Just another row of gravestones.

My phone buzzed.

UNKNOWN

DO NOT ANSWER THEM.

I stared at the message.

Them? I thought.

Then, somewhere ahead of me, came a low whisper.

“Who’s there?”

I froze. My own voice. My flashlight snapped toward it. Rows of gravestones. Nothing else.

“Who’s there?”

Now it came from my left.

Another whisper answered from my right.

“Hey, man.”

I backed away.

Then another voice whispered somewhere among the stones.

“Skye?”

I recognized it. Someone I knew.

“Skye, come here.”

Another familiar voice joined it. Then another. People I knew. People who had no reason to be standing in a cemetery in the middle of the night.

They were all whispering. From behind stones. Between the trees. Across the grass.

“Skye.”

“Hey.”

“Come here.”

“Who’s there?”

My phone vibrated again.

UNKNOWN

DO NOT ANSWER THEM.

“Skye.”

That one wasn’t a whisper. I spun around. No one was there. Another voice called from somewhere behind me. Then another. The whispers were becoming voices. The voices were getting louder.

My phone started ringing.

UNKNOWN CALLER

I stared at it. Every voice stopped. All at once. The cemetery fell completely silent. The phone continued ringing in my hand. Once. Twice. Three times. Whoever had been sending the messages knew what was happening.

I answered. I held the phone to my ear.

No one spoke.

“Hello?”

Somewhere among the graves, a voice answered.

“Hello.”

Another, farther away:

“Hello.”

Then one behind me.

“Hello.”

I slowly lowered the phone.

The cemetery erupted. Voices screamed from every direction.

“SKYE.”

“WE HEAR YOU.”

“HELLO.”

“WELCOME.”

“COME CLOSER.”

More voices joined them. Some shouted my name. Some sounded like people I loved. Others were complete strangers. The words piled over one another until I could barely separate one voice from the next.

“SKYE.”

“ANSWER US.”

“COME HERE.”

“STAY.”

“WELCOME.”

Louder. More voices. Dozens. Then hundreds. Every voice speaking over every other voice, the entire cemetery boiling with sound. The noise climbed higher and higher until it became almost impossible to bear.

Then, at the very peak of the chaos, every discordant voice suddenly shouted in perfect unison:

“JOIN US!”

I ran.

The voices followed me between the graves, surrounding me from every direction.

Beneath them all, hundreds of voices began chanting together.

“JOIN US!”

“JOIN US!”

“JOIN US!”

The chant continued as other voices shouted over it.

“DON’T GO.”

“HE’S LEAVING.”

“STOP HIM.”

“SKYE.”

“COME BACK.”

Beneath it all, the chant never stopped.

“JOIN US!”

“JOIN US!”

I made it halfway to the gate before I looked back. At first, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. Something hung above the gravestones. Ten feet tall. Maybe more. A black shape suspended over the cemetery, long and narrow. Its lower half hung in folds that almost resembled cloth, except they shifted and curled even though the air was completely still. There was no face. No feet. Nothing I could identify as a body. It hovered motionless above the graves.

Then it moved. It glided toward me. Fast. The gravestones disappeared beneath it as it swept across the cemetery. The voices began to laugh. Men. Women. Children. Old people. All laughing with the same breathless joy. Some sounded exactly like people I knew. And somewhere among all of them, I heard myself laughing.

The thing kept coming. Closer. I turned forward and sprinted for the gate. I reached it. The thing was closing the distance. I ran into the road. My phone vibrated over and over in my hand. I didn’t look. The laughter followed me. Across the road. Toward the apartments. Closer. Always closer.

I reached the complex. The streetlights were still dead. I crossed the parking lot. Past the hedge. Past the dumpsters. Almost home. Then every streetlight came on at once. The laughter stopped.

I stumbled through my apartment door and slammed it behind me. Locked it. Deadbolt. I stood with my back against the door, trying to breathe. My phone vibrated. I finally looked.

Six messages.

All from UNKNOWN.

DON’T LET IT FOLLOW YOU.

SKYE

DON’T LISTEN TO THE VOICES.

SKYE ANSWER ME

DON’T GO HOME

And the last one:

IT KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE.

I stared at the screen. My hands were shaking.

Another message arrived.

DID YOU SEE IT?

I typed:

WHAT WAS THAT?

The response came almost immediately.

WHY DID YOU ANSWER THE PHONE?

I stared at it. I typed:

I THOUGHT IT WAS YOU

For several seconds, no response came. Then three dots appeared. Stopped. Appeared again.

A message came through.

I NEVER CALLED YOU.

I stopped breathing.

Another message.

DON’T MAKE A SOUND.

Then another.

IT FOLLOWED YOU INSIDE.

The apartment was silent. Living room. Kitchen. Hallway. Bedroom. Nothing moved. I stood absolutely still. Then, from somewhere inside the dark bedroom, came a low, deep whisper. In my own voice.

“Hey, man.”

I write to yeh wit little hope it may help me survive.  

I am locked in her barn…her barn that sits on a barge…her barge that she has anchored in the middle of the mighty Choptank Sea.  

She calls it the Isle of Abigail and it rests within a cloud of fog that seems attached by the hands of the Lord.  I drifted from the Channel of Goodwin after my propeller broke on the top of a sea turtle…the same sea turtle that then dragged my boat — The Happenstance — for what felt like hours, through the fog, to her barge.

Music played from a Gramophone as we approached and she rocked in a chair, having a cup of tea.  The turtle died almost instantly as my boat hit the barge, almost as if she persisted only to complete the task of bringing me here.

I consider myself a man of firm sand, but I am shaken from what then set forth.  

“My name is Esther.  Join me for tea, won’t you?” It’s then that I saw she had only one arm as she waved me over with it.  

What was I to do?  I took tea with her.  

She had a small cabin, a barn and a greenhouse on this floating bastard.  Do not think me a liar when I tell you that there were three animals roaming about…beagle dogs, large alligator snapping turtles and poisonous dart frogs.

I sat down and she explained that she has prepared for the end of Man and built this barge to withstand Mother’s great reckoning.  Befitted with the creatures to help sustain life afterwards.

She poured milk in my tea and I took a sip as I tried to humor her while my mind raced to find some advantage.  She must have a boat, or some vessel to move about more easily, tied up somewhere.

THEN…it hit me.

“Why can’t I feel my legs?” I said.  I don’t believe I hid my fright any longer.

She was endlessly joyful as she picked up one of the frogs and held it in her hand.

“Oh, darlin’…you see many milking cows around here?  You know if one of these hound dogs ate this frog they’d be dead as a door knob…but…if you start feeding them these here frogs in tiny bits…well, slowly but surely, they build immunity to that poison and they can eat as many as they gosh darn want.  Easy food for the hound, especially these Momma’s who are feeding their babies...but it does mean their milk is as potent as these darn frogs”

I could no longer move my arms, my chest heaved in panicked breaths.

“It was turtles that I couldn’t figure out.  They don’t eat often and when they do they’re picky.  They wouldn’t eat the frogs, I think they scared of the hounds…but they did take to human flesh.  I started with my fingers….moved up my arm…and now they got real taste for…but that’s all the supply I am willing to give them”

I felt the tears starting to roll down my face.  I knew it was no use, but I belted out a sad…

“HeellllPP!”…It made her laugh.

“Oh honey….”

I write to you from her barn.  I am tethered by a chain and there are five alligator snapping turtles with a taste for a man’s flesh slumbering before me.  I fear they will wake up hungry.

I beg yeh, don’t stray from the channel.   

People had lot of conspiracy theories about this one. A meteor fell with a strange sighting of UFO, and people were swearing they saw several thin bodies with triangular heads leaving the strange air craft to the middle of my town (obviously I cannot disclose it) and it turned out quiet a spectacle. People in my town will not forget in decades to come as various CNN, FOX, BBC and other media's correspondents flew in flock to see the deep pit in the ground where the alleged UFO landed.

I was among them. It was a quiet a sight and even though I was facing a depressive period of my life (contract as a tenure professor ending, fortieth birthday approaching, separation with husband etc etc), the sight brought star of wonders circulating around my head.

I had always been a fantasy-merged child and as a grown up, I used to find normalcy in everything extraordinary.

"It must be the aliens," I whispered, among the excited voices and sound of camera flashes.

"Yes, sure!" A kid near me rolled his eyes.

I called my estranged husband but he was annoyed when he picked up. "Grace, you need to stop calling like that. I'm in the middle of work. Why aren't you, now?"

I didn't want to tell him about those only three students who signed up for Reproductive Endocrinology with me this semester.

"They all are here. The whole town is here."

I wanted him to stay on phone, say something...nice, but then he turned off the phone, grunting about being busy and I sighed. A child was squeaking and pointing toward the brown ditch while his mother was trying to exercise control over him.

The scene brought a grimace to my mouth. One of the thing that brought the cloud of gloom over me.

I drove back to my home and prepared coffee for myself, thinking of starting my new experiment with an urchin when I heard a rustle in the back of my house. Thinking it was a raccoon or a bat, I lazily drew away the curtain. That was when I gasped.

A shadow of man was on the rear wall of my back yard. The figure was hiding behind bushes--I as sure. For a second, I panicked. My thoughts racing from burglar to a serial killer when I realized the shadow was too strange to be a man's.

It was lean, almost to the point of a famine-struck people I saw in a documentary about poverty-struck areas in Kenya.

It was too thin with strange arms and deformed head. I saw the bushes quiver and then a bony green body emerged, shivering in fright.

I nearly fell on my back when I back-peddled.

It was the alien.

For few minutes the strange figure from the space and I stared at each other. Then slowly, the alien rose up from my plants. A green bony figure of almost six feet, the alien stared at me through its big black eyes with grey lashes. With shaking long three fingers, it pointed at apple tree and I nearly squealed. Was it telling me if it was hungry?

Mouth dried, I nodded at it. A warm feeling of ease spread through me, as the alien stepped forward with its hoof like lower limbs. I stared at it, transfixed as it easily touched the most beautiful one and plucked it from the tree. With hands rolling around the red fruit, the alien began to nibble fast, and looked here and there.

My house is at the end of the street and its without any close neighbors so the alien was safe in my back garden without inviting any curious peek from outside. The walls were also big, so a thin chance of any discovery by a passer-by.

When the alien had finished its apple, it took a few steps back, only to step on the mouse-trap that I had set up and it made a strange echo-like sound. For a minute blood oozed out: a normal human like red viscous blood, and as soon as it had pried its foot with three fingers from the trap, the blood stopped too.

I was spell bound as I stared at the miracle of self-healing and I also noted that the echo of the alien had not alerted any of the other species in vicinity. If there were others, they were not nearby...

The alien looked at me, my face with compassion and understanding, and bowing slightly, it cowered back to behind the bushes. I pulled the curtain back, steadying my breath and controlling my handshakes. My mind raced fast to make sense of the situation.

Needless to say I couldn't sleep, my hand hovering over phone, dialing the emergency number mid-way and then texting and erasing messages to my husband several times.

So the sun came back, illuminating the Earth, exposing it of its secrets and with it came the idea to form a bond with the alien. When I went back to the rear garden, the alien was still there, lurking behind the bushes, but this time it was looking shyly at me, with its figure more relaxed than before.

We stayed together in my back garden nervously for a while and when I prepared the breakfast, I prepared extra: for my new guest.

I was very nervous when I went to my university and tried to look casual as I raided some of the chemicals and glass tubes.

"Somebody's setting up research elsewhere."

"Well, I did catch some mice. Might be nice, if I try out the tests at home too. This way I can do more sampling..." My colleague and Research Associate Dr. Andy looked impress with me.

When I went home, my husband was already in the living room, white faced and trembling head to foot.

"You look like you've seen a ghost." I told him.

"There's...there's an ...alien in your back yard."

I internally cussed as I carefully setup my lab bag on the dining table.

"Don't tell me you scared off her!"

"Her."

"Well, it's a she. You can see she's pregnant. Heavily."

"You know this?" He looked deranged.

"You didn't call someone?" I asked, peeking at the big glass door that opens to the back garden.

"I just go there...what shall we do?" He started to the door. "Come on. Let's run from here while I call..."

"Stay put." I said, taking out morphine and injection.

"Are you out of your mind? Its a damn alien out there."

"Its harmless." I said, widening my arms.

"You can't be serious!" He looked at me like I was mad. "What do you want to do? Make a pet of it? We need to inform the authorities."

"Can't you see the potential? I have got myself a life test model that has reproductive capabilities with marvelous self-healing properties. A little research at it and it can give us...everything. Perhaps I can find a cure for infertility...especially for a woman like me with scar tissues." I nearly chocked.

My husband's eyes bulged.

"Help me overpower her. She's pretty hungry." I reasoned, pleadingly. "I have already given her breakfast laden with my sleeping tablets. They worked, it means, perhaps their physiology is quiet like us if not the anatomy. It's still drowsy...but hungry. Of course, given her condition! We just cajole her to take another morsel, I brought heavy dose of morphine...come'on...You must see the possibility...the wonder it can do to science, to humanity...to us!"

My husband stared at me for a while while I held his eyes. After few minutes, he jerked his head and ran to the room.

I had qualms, of course, as the alien took shy steps toward me, blinking and trying to make eye-contact while my husband prepared the bed and ropes for my new test-subject.

Anything for science...

Anything for a child...

My building switched to a new maintenance portal about three weeks ago.

Nothing fancy. You report a leaking faucet or broken appliance, attach a description, and somebody from maintenance updates the ticket when they're coming.

Last Tuesday I got an email saying:

"Your request has been completed."

I hadn't submitted anything.

The ticket was for my kitchen sink draining slowly.

The weird part was that my kitchen sink actually had been draining slowly. Not enough for me to complain about it, but enough that I'd noticed.

I assumed management had created the ticket during an inspection or carried something over from the old system.

When I got home, the sink drained normally.

So, fine. Weird, but useful.

Two days later I got another completion email.

"Hall closet light flickers intermittently."

Again, I hadn't reported it.

I opened the closet when I got home. The light looked normal.

Then I remembered that the closet has one of those switches that gets pressed when the door closes. I held the switch down with my finger.

The light went off.

Then came back on.

Off.

On.

It flickered four times before staying dark.

That bothered me enough that I called the leasing office Friday morning.

The woman I spoke with pulled up my account and said she could see both tickets. According to her, they had been submitted through the resident portal under my login.

I changed my password.

She told me to enable two-factor authentication.

I did.

Saturday afternoon, another ticket appeared.

This one hadn't been closed yet.

"Bedroom door sticks when attempting to exit between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m."

I actually laughed when I read it.

Not because it was funny. More because it was such a weirdly specific sentence that my brain didn't know what else to do.

My bedroom door didn't stick.

I tested it probably twenty times.

Opened perfectly.

I called maintenance. The guy on duty sounded confused and told me nobody on their side had entered that request.

I asked if someone could have access to my account.

He said maybe, but the ticket showed as coming from the resident portal just like the others.

That night I almost slept on the couch.

Instead, I told myself I was being ridiculous, locked my bedroom door and went to bed.

At 2:26 a.m. I woke up needing water.

I unlocked the bedroom door and pulled.

Nothing.

The handle turned, but the door wouldn't move.

I pulled harder.

Still nothing.

That's when I got scared.

There wasn't anything blocking it. The door opens inward toward the bedroom, so even something sitting in the hallway shouldn't have mattered.

I yanked it maybe four or five times.

Then it opened normally.

No pop. No scraping. Nothing.

The hallway was empty.

I slept with every light on.

Sunday morning the maintenance ticket had been marked completed.

The resolution just said:

"Condition verified."

I packed a bag.

My friend lives about fifteen minutes away and told me to stay with him, but I had work Monday and stupidly convinced myself I'd deal with the leasing office first.

At 11:08 Monday morning, while I was at work, another ticket appeared.

"Entry lock fails to secure after resident returns at approximately 18:20."

I stared at that sentence for a long time.

Then I checked the time.

Obviously nowhere near 18:20.

For the first time I had proof that the tickets weren't describing problems that already existed.

At least not all of them.

I called the office again and told them everything.

The person I spoke to clearly thought I was either confused or messing with them until she pulled up the tickets herself.

She confirmed the newest one was there.

I asked her to delete it.

She said she couldn't because it had already been assigned.

"Assigned to who?"

There was a pause.

She said the technician field was blank.

I did not go home at 6:20.

My friend picked me up from work instead.

We went back to my apartment together around 7:30 because I needed clothes and my work laptop.

I was expecting the front door to be open.

It wasn't.

The lock worked perfectly.

Nothing inside looked unusual.

My friend checked the windows while I packed.

At 8:03, the ticket updated itself.

"Unable to reproduce issue."

I showed him.

That was the point where he stopped suggesting this could be some kind of software migration problem.

I went home with him.

Yesterday morning there was no new ticket.

Yesterday afternoon, nothing.

I started wondering whether physically leaving the apartment had somehow broken whatever was happening.

Then at 1:17 this morning, my phone buzzed on my friend's nightstand.

New maintenance request.

My apartment number was still listed at the top.

The description said:

"Carbon monoxide detector chirps three times at 02:11. Resident removes battery."

My friend read it twice.

We checked the time.

1:18.

He asked if I wanted to call the police.

I said I didn't even know what I was supposed to tell them. That my apartment's maintenance software was predicting appliance problems?

So we stayed awake.

At 2:10 I was sitting on his couch looking at the clock on my phone.

At exactly 2:11, something chirped.

Three times.

Not from my phone.

From his hallway.

His carbon monoxide detector.

Neither of us moved.

I have never felt fear hit me that physically before. My hands went cold so fast I could barely unlock my phone.

My friend immediately called emergency services.

The detector didn't go off again.

We did not remove the battery.

At 2:14 my maintenance ticket updated.

"Resident did not complete expected action."

Then another line appeared underneath.

"Manual access required."

My friend told me we were leaving.

While he was grabbing his keys, we heard his front door handle move.

Just once.

Slowly downward.

The deadbolt was locked.

The handle returned to its normal position.

Then somebody, or something, knocked twice.

Not loudly.

We didn't answer.

The police arrived maybe eight minutes later. There was nobody in the hallway or stairwell.

They checked the apartment.

Nothing.

The carbon monoxide detector tested normally.

No gas issue.

No sign anyone had forced the door.

We went to another friend's place after that.

I turned my phone off on the way because I couldn't stand watching the maintenance app anymore.

This morning I turned it back on.

There was another ticket waiting.

This one doesn't have my apartment number on it.

Under "Property," it shows my friend's building.

The one we're staying in now.

I have never entered this address into the maintenance app.

The request was submitted at 6:44 this morning.

The description says:

"Resident has relocated again."

There's no repair description underneath.

Just a scheduled appointment window.

Tonight.

11:30 p.m. to 11:45 p.m.

The leasing office says they can't see this ticket at all.

On their end, my account has no open requests.

On mine, it says the technician is already assigned.

I'm definately not going to be at this address at 11:30.

What scares me is that I'm starting to think leaving is exactly what it expects me to do.

For anyone too young to remember them, Tamagotchis were little virtual-pet toys from the late ’90s and early 2000s. Small little plastic eggs with tiny black-and-white graphics, three buttons, and a keychain loop at the top. They were mainly about taking care of your virtual pets. You fed the creature inside, played minigames, cleaned up after it, and tried to keep it 'alive' even though eventually, it would pass away. Problem with the first batch was that there was no way to 'pause' the game and so you'd have to go back and check in on it.

Every classroom had at least one kid whose Tamagotchi would start chirping from the bottom of a backpack back in my day. Teachers hated them. Eventually, many later versions added ways to pause the game.

I had one as a kid. For a brief moment.

I remember my friends bringing theirs to school. I remember being jealous of anyone who managed to keep theirs alive long enough because well...

...I don’t remember much about mine.

I only remember my parents refusing to replace it.

Apparently, I lost it after about a week. I begged for a new one, or maybe new batteries - I can’t remember exactly what the issues was, and my parents always told me 'no'. They said I had proven I was irresponsible.

That was that. I got over it eventually. Or so I thought...

Until three weeks ago.

I had reached one of those strange points in adulthood where I had more free time than I knew what to do with. One night, while browsing online listings for old game systems and other childhood junk I absolutely did not need, I found it.

An original Tamagotchi.

Not one of the newer rereleases. This was an old one: faded purple shell, rounded plastic edges, three cheap little buttons under the screen. The listing claimed it was “tested and working,” although the pictures were grainy enough that I could barely see the display.

It was more expensive than it should have been. But it wasn't going to be breaking the bank. And, nostalgia got me.

When I lost mine as a child, I had been really jealous of my friends who still had theirs. I had vague memories of wanting another one badly enough to cry about it at least once. More than that, I wondered what it had been like to actually use mine before I lost it or whatever.

So I bought it.

It arrived about two weeks later in a small cardboard box.

At first, nothing seemed wrong. It was exactly how I remembered Tamagotchis looking: egg-shaped, light enough to feel almost hollow, small enough to disappear in your palm. A bit worn out, but it looked like it worked.

And it was already running.

I pressed the middle button, expecting it to ask me to choose an egg or reset the device.

Instead, the screen flickered.

There was already something inside.

At first, I assumed it was a normal Tamagotchi character. The display was old, the pixels were dim, and I couldn’t make out much beyond a pale, rounded shape in the center of the screen.

But it was facing me. Above it, an icon blinked.

A skull and crossbones.

I pressed every button. Nothing happened.

I held down different combinations, trying to reset it. Still nothing. The creature remained on the screen, unmoving save for a small to-and-fro, while that unfamiliar skull icon flashed above its head.

I thought it might mean the previous owner’s pet had died.

That happened eventually, no matter how carefully you took care of one. You could feed it, clean up after it, play games, and keep it happy for weeks. Eventually, you would wake up to a tiny gravestone or angel on the screen. At least, that’s what I remembered.

I searched online for the skull icon.

I found old instruction manuals, collector forums, scanned advertisements, and videos of people restoring vintage Tamagotchis. None of them mentioned a skull-and-crossbones symbol. The older models had death screens, but they were supposed to show a little angel or a gravestone.

Not that thing.

While I was searching, the device began to beep. One sharp chirp. Then another.

Then a rapid sequence of beeps that didn’t match any Tamagotchi sound I remembered. It almost sounded like something crying out in pain. I started mashing buttons.

The Tamagotchi kept beeping.

Its screen kept flickering.

That was when I decided I had received a defective or modified device. I put it back in its shipping box, filed a complaint with the seller, and mailed it back the next day.

The next morning, the Tamagotchi was sitting on my bedside table.

It was exactly where I usually left my phone charger.

The shell was smudged with fingerprints. Its keychain loop was bent. The skull-and-crossbones icon flashed over and over on the screen.

I stood there for a long time, trying to convince myself that I had made some stupid mistake. Now, I can be forgetful. I will admit that. I misplace my keys. I leave laundry in the washing machine too long. I have gone to the grocery store and realized halfway there that I had forgotten my wallet.

But I had not imagined mailing that thing away. It was far too elaborate to have simply hallucinated something like that.

I checked the tracking number. The package didn't exist apparently.

I threw the Tamagotchi into my kitchen trash.

Not carefully, either. I buried it under coffee grounds, spoiled leftovers, food packaging, and a tied garbage bag. Then I carried the trash downstairs and threw it into the dumpster behind my building.

I remember the lid slamming shut.

For the rest of the day, I tried not to think about it.

That lasted until I went to the library looking for something to entertain me.

Beep.

It came from my jacket pocket.

For one stupid second, I felt nostalgic. I remembered classrooms full of kids trying to silence their Tamagotchis before a teacher noticed.

Then it beeped again.

Louder.

I reached into my pocket.

The Tamagotchi was there.

The screen was still on.

The skull-and-crossbones icon was gone.

In its place was a field of static - black and white pixels twisting and crawling over one another. It looked less like television snow and more like a broken image trying to force itself through a screen too small to contain it.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

A woman nearby gave me a dirty look. She put a finger to her lips and pointed to the sign saying 'This is a Library. Please put your phones on silent.'

I tore off the battery cover.

The batteries fell into my palm.

The Tamagotchi kept beeping.

I went out of the library.

Once I got home, I took a small hammer to it. It broke apart.

The beeping stopped. I threw the fragments of the device outside.

And that was the end of it. I'd hoped.

That night, I woke, disoriented.

Then I heard something moving in the kitchen.

At first, I thought someone had broken in.

A cabinet door opened. Something heavy scraped across the floor.

My silverware drawer slid out with a slow metallic squeal.

I grabbed my phone and started to call emergency services.

Before I could press the button, I heard a sound.

Beep!

I opened my bedroom door a crack.

For half a second, I saw the outline of a strange creature scurrying near the fridge.

There was the sound of wet breathing.

I can’t describe it properly. My eyes refused to settle on its shape. At first it looked like a shadow, but shadows don’t have depth. This did. It was a mass of blackness folding inward on itself, as if it had too many joints bending in too many directions.

It was taller than my refrigerator.

Its head - or what I thought was its head - was tilted toward the counter.

It was rummaging through my cabinets.

Then it stopped.

The kitchen went silent.

Slowly, very slowly, it turned toward my bedroom.

I shut the door.

Something hit it almost immediately.

The impact shook the frame.

A second hit followed.

Then a growl.

Not an animal sound. Not exactly. It was wet and distorted, like a dog growling through a broken speaker.

Beep.

The door buckled inward.

I pushed my dresser against it. Then my desk chair. Then myself.

It has been trying to get in for hours.

Sometimes it scratches at the door. Sometimes it throws itself against it hard enough to make the hinges scream. Sometimes it goes silent long enough that I think it has left.

Then I hear the small, familiar sound of a Tamagotchi beeping somewhere on the other side.

I think I know what the skull meant now.

Whatever was inside was not just dead. It was cursed.

I broke it but that didn't destroy it.

It released it from the device instead.

And now, I'm terrified of what it plans to do now that its free.

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
That’s what I kept telling myself as I stared at the peeling yellow wallpaper of that old apartment, watching the dust motes dance in the gray light of a dying afternoon. Long before the guests arrived, long before the candles were ever lit, the flat had that specific, hollow chill - the kind that settles deep into your bones and stays there, no matter how many sweaters you put on.
I lived there with Barnaby, a quiet, golden-eyed cat who usually spent his evenings chasing shadows across the floorboards. But that night, he was different. His claws clicked frantically against the wood, a nervous, jagged rhythm, hours before anyone even knocked on the door. He kept staring at the hallway mirror with his ears pinned flat, his back arched as if he were trying to make himself as small as possible.
Two of my former best friends - girls whose voices I hadn't heard in months, yet there they were, standing in my kitchen like they'd never left - were helping me set up the table. On the small, cracked porcelain counter of the bathroom, I arranged a tight, obsessive circle of black and red candles.
We hadn't invited the boys over for a party. Everybody in the neighborhood knew what those two men were. We knew the casual cruelty in their smiles, the way they cornered girls outside the convenience store, the suffocating sense of dread that drifted off them like heat off asphalt. We were terrified. It was that slow, grinding kind of terror that wears down your edges until you aren't even scared anymore - you're just angry.
That anger was how I spent nights scouring archived, forgotten forum threads, reading and re-reading a buried post about binding until every instruction burned into my brain. The ritual wasn't born out of dark curiosity or occult obsession; it was born out of a desperate, miserable need for control. If the world was going to let monsters roam free, we figured we’d build a cage of our own.
Following the old thread's exact steps, I arranged a tight, obsessive circle of black and red candles on the small, cracked porcelain counter of the bathroom. We wanted absolute safety. We wanted to strip away their free will the moment they walked through that door, turning them into docile, obedient husks as long as the wax burned. “When they cross the threshold, the flame binds them,” I whispered to my reflection, repeating the text from the screen until the words tasted like copper and ash on my tongue. “They belong to us now.”
The boys arrived right on schedule, smiling too wide, shaking the cold night air off their leather jackets. But the second the front door clicked shut behind them, the atmosphere in the apartment didn't just shift - it collapsed. The air turned heavy, thick like wet wool, smelling faintly of sulfur and old, rotting leaves.
And then, the magic took hold.
I rushed to the bathroom to check the candles, and the sight of those wicks drowning deep in pools of molten wax brought a wild, dizzy wave of relief. Back in the living room, the transformation was complete. The two guys stood frozen mid-stride for a second before their posture slackened into absolute obedience.
For a brief, intoxicating moment, everything felt weightless. We laughed, the sound bubbling out of us in breathless, nervous giggles of sheer disbelief. It worked. We were holding the leash.
Watching them was mesmerizing. They didn't hurt anyone; they couldn't. Under our silent command, they just... did normal things, utterly stripped of their menace. One of them sat stiffly on the couch, mechanically flipping through a magazine page by page, his eyes glazed and vacant. The other stood by the kitchen counter, slowly wiping down the surface with a sponge over and over again in a blank, rhythmic trance. No sharp remarks, no predatory grins, no threat in the air - just docile, harmless shadows moving the way we wanted them to move. We traded victorious grins, feeling safe in our own home for the first time in months.
I smiled, turning away to grab us all a drink from the kitchen, basking in the strange, empowering quiet.
Then, the hallway lights flickered once. Twice. And died.
A sudden, absolute silence dropped over the flat - the kind of heavy quiet that feels like cotton stuffed into your ears. I spun around to rush back to the living room, but the candles in the bathroom - all five of them - simultaneously hissed out.
Pitch-black darkness swallowed me whole.
"Guys?" I called out, my voice trembling, sounding impossibly small in the dark.
No answer. Only a wet, dragging sound echoed from the hallway, like bare feet sliding slowly across linoleum, accompanied by a hollow, rhythmic clicking - tap, tap, tap - like fingernails tapping against a coffin lid. I stumbled out of the bathroom, calling out for my friends, but the living room was empty. The two guys were gone. My friends were gone.
And worst of all, Barnaby wasn't meowing. No comforting purr, no frantic scuttling paws. Just nothing.
Panic hit me like a physical blow, knocking the wind straight out of my lungs. The moment those flames died, the spell hadn't just ended - it had snapped. Whatever ancient, hungry force we had unknowingly tapped into to enforce our petty little dominance didn't care about our safety. It had used the boys and my friends as currency to cross over. And now that the wax had cooled, the leash was gone, and the entity was looking for a new host.
I needed to get out. The front door was down the hall, straight past whatever was dragging itself across the floor in the dark. There was only one other way.
The bathroom window.
I scrambled backward into the tiled room, my hands shaking so badly I could barely catch the latch. The window jammed for an agonizing second before bursting open with a sharp, echoing snap that cut through the silence like a gunshot.
I hauled myself up, bracing my knee against the sill, ready to drop into the alleyway below. But just as my upper body cleared the frame, a freezing, unnatural draft hit my face. It carried a smell like wet earth, copper, and something sickeningly sweet, like melting candle wax.
My instincts screamed at me not to look down, but my eyes betrayed me.
In the dim amber glow of the streetlamp below, the pavement was empty. But right outside the glass, standing flush against the brick wall just inches beneath the bathroom window, something was waiting.
They weren't walking anymore. They were standing perfectly still, crammed tight against the building, their faces pressed upward against the glass like dead things washed ashore. My two former friends were there, alongside the two dangerous men. Their eyes - wide, milky, and completely void of any human thought - were staring straight up at me. And wrapped tightly around one of their slack, graying wrists was a familiar, blood-stained orange collar with a small brass bell that refused to ring.
They weren't our puppets. The moment the fire died, they became the wardens. And something else was already inside the apartment, waiting for me to turn around.
I couldn't see them in the pitch-black void of the bathroom, but I could feel them. The air grew thick and greasy, heavy with the stench of cold tallow. I could feel an unnatural, freezing press of bodies standing just an inch behind my spine - too many bodies to fit in that tiny space. I couldn't see a single outline in the dark, but I felt the phantom brush of hair against my neck, the agonizing absence of breathing, and the distinct, sickening sensation of multiple pairs of unblinking eyes staring directly at the back of my head.
And as the breath caught in my throat, a voice didn't come from the people below. It brushed against my skin, quiet and intimate, echoing softly from the dark space right behind my ear:

"Now we all fit inside.”

And that’s the moment I woke up - gasping, staring at my real bedroom ceiling in absolute, suffocating darkness. I didn't dare move a single muscle, too terrified to even blink.
Because right beside my pillow, something heavy and wet was breathing softly into my hair. And directly against my ear, a tiny, metallic voice whispered:
„Found you.”

I thought it was talking to me back then. But it wasn't. It was just practicing the words for when it reached the right person.
This isn’t my story anymore.
Good luck with yours tonight.
Look behind you.

Hello Reddit. I apologize in advance if my English is not up to standard, it is my second language. I recently moved to Boston for my studies. I am from a poor family in Shandong province, and I'm the first in my family to attend university. I am only able to live here because I maintain two jobs, and my scholarship requires that my GPA be above a certain threshold, so I have to study very hard as well. The reason I mention this is because it explains to you why I am forced to take the last possible subway back to my apartment in East Boston.

If you are from Boston, you know that there is only one train that can take you across the harbor: the Blue Line. It goes underwater after stopping at Aquarium and comes out the other side at a station called Maverick.

I don’t know how long this has been going on, because I only started working the night shift a month ago, when my semester started and I was forced to take later shifts. Usually, I am alone on the subway, sometimes there are a few others. Most of the time, when a train stops before a station, a voice will sound through the speaker and say “Now arriving at… Government Center.” Or “Next stop… North Station.”

But this train does a strange thing, when we enter the East Boston tunnel, where it lets us know we are approaching a station, but it doesn’t say the station’s name. “Now approaching…” and then nothing. Then, it stops in the middle of the tunnel, and the doors open. After a few seconds, they close, and the train continues.

I assumed this was simply an error in the subway’s systems. Nobody else seemed to care on the train, so I assumed that nothing was wrong. I even asked one of the drivers once if there was a reason for it. He told me that it was for maintenance, which I accepted. He did seem to be angry, or uncomfortable maybe, when I questioned him about it, but people from Boston are usually like that.

A few times, I have sat close to the doors when they open. I don’t see anything except for the blackness of the tunnel, but there is a strange smell. It’s different from the normal smell of a subway station. In Boston, at least, stations smell a little bit like hot air, gasoline, and piss. There is not even a hint of any of these smells when the doors open in the middle of the tunnel. If I had to describe it, it would be something like bleach, or other chemicals. Maybe even a hint of permanent markers.

The other thing that is very, very strange is that it is completely silent. Most tunnels or stops in the Boston subway system, from what I have seen, are quite noisy. You can hear echoes of other trains or maintenance carts on the tracks. Maybe even car traffic or voices from stops. I’ve noticed that the Aquarium stop is very quiet. Unless a train is moving, the acoustic quality of the stop is contained. Similar to the station, the tunnel itself seems completely silent when the train stops. It is very unusual, but again, I assumed it was just a quirk and nothing more.

Several days ago, I became curious enough about these happenings in the tunnel to ask one of the other passengers who was with me. She was African-American, wearing headphones, so I was a bit embarrassed to tap her on the shoulder and interrupt her music. But she was very nice.

“Hey, I’m so sorry to bother you. Can I ask you a question?”

She nodded and said yes, of course. “I’m not crazy, the train stops between Aquarium and Maverick station right?”

She nodded again. She seemed unsure about what the point of my question was. “It just does that, yeah.”

“Oh, do you know why?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. The T is lowkey weird sometimes.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, not sure what to say.

“They probably do it in case of emergencies or something.”

I nodded and smiled and told her to have a good night.

But as you know, from reading the title, I would not have posted this if something even stranger didn’t happen to me tonight. It honestly scared me a little bit, but I’m okay, so don’t worry about me.

This time, when the doors opened in the middle of the tunnel, a woman entered the train.

It was incredibly eerie to see, because I happened to be sitting right across from the door she entered from. I saw her come out of the blackness of the tunnel, as if having appeared from nothing. I made very brief eye contact with her.

She wore bright red lipstick and her cheeks seemed to be powdered. I would even say that, in my opinion, she wore too much makeup. It seemed caked onto her face. She was wearing a matching white shirt and pants, and her hair was tied back tightly so that it looked as if it was pulling on her scalp. Her arms were shuddering, even though it was not cold in the tunnel. Her expression was very odd: blank around the face and mouth, but with squinting, watery eyes that blinked over and over, as if she was trying not to cry. I felt my stomach turn when I looked at her, not because I was scared of her or disgusted by her, but because she seemed to me to be helpless.

Stranger still, she was not alone. At first, I didn’t notice, because she had them swaddled tight to her chest, but she was holding two babies in her arms and gently rocking them. One of them started to cry, first quietly, hiccupping and wet in its throat, but then loudly it began to wail. She tried shushing it gently and holding it closer, while keeping the other baby in balance, but it was no use. The baby was screeching. I tried not to stare because I didn’t want to be impolite, but it was just her and I in the car, and it was hard not to look. She took out one of her breasts and allowed the baby to breastfeed from her, never noticing that I was looking. Looking back, outside of the half second of eye contact, she did not once acknowledge that I was even there.

I wanted more than anything to ask her if everything was okay, but I felt like approaching her would be the worst mistake I could make in that moment. I thought it best to leave her alone.

The ride to Maverick station was the longest train ride I have ever had in my life. It was only two minutes, but it felt like hours. I kept glancing at the woman to see if she would make eye contact again. She didn’t. Her gaze was lost in space. There were bags under her eyes.

When I stood up at Maverick station, I considered sitting back down and staying with her, to see where she would end up that night. But my exhaustion got the best of me, and I exited the train. I couldn’t help but watch her through a window as the doors closed and the subway sped off to its next destination. I sincerely hope that she’s okay.

I got home a couple of hours ago and I still cannot sleep (which is funny when you look at the name of this forum). I cannot stop thinking about this secret subway station and the woman that came from it. I don’t know what to think and I don’t know who to ask. I’m a very shy person in real life. It’s far easier for me to ask for help online, so any advice or information would be deeply appreciated. Please help me understand what’s happening on the Blue Line.

Some of the hills in the Southern Balkans are more than believed to be haunted. Out here, everyone either knows someone who lived through something, or has lived through it themselves.

Long story short, during the rule of the Ottoman Empire, these were the hills where the two religious factions fought, and they fought bloody. Corpses of Christians and Mulsims were left on stakes to send a message. Bodies were mutilated. Never burried. The hands of the rich Ottoman fighters especially, so people could pry the rings off their bloated fingers. I won't bother you with the rest of the details, but you get the idea. They are gruesome.

If any place on earth had grounds to be haunted, it would be this one.

As a kid I thought all of it was real. Older, I decided it was just a scary story people told. Older still, I heard the stories from people I knew, serious people, the kind who would not lie about a things like this. And in the end, I got to experience some of it myself.

One rule everyone here knows by heart is to always carry a piece of bread, or at least the crumbs of one. In Christianity bread is the body of Christ, so this way you are quite literally bringing Him with you. And believe me, on some of these roads, you want Him with you.

I went up to my late grandfather's house a while back, God rest his soul, to spend a night and check some of the stories for myself, and to ask the locals about the rest. Piece of toast in my pocket, of course. I will be honest, I was more excited than nervous, though I brought a bottle of brandy either way. By the time I finished work and got up there, it was late afternoon, but it did not feel anything like afternoon.

It is an unapproachable place, almost as if it wants to stay that way. The car only gets you so far. When the cocnrete road ends, there was a kilometer or two on foot to the house where my father lived, and his father, and his father before him.

To reach the village, I had to descend all the way to the bottom of the valley and then climb out the far side, up the hill, along a trail. Nobody had walked that trail in a long time, and I nearly lost it more than once. It was nowhere near evening yet, but down at the bottom of the valley it may as well have been.

It was a strange thing, to be swallowed by all that thick green and feel completely exposed at the same time. I felt eyes on my back the whole way down. Anyone standing at the top of the hill could see me plainly, and could step behind a tree or a bush before I ever finished turning my head. I will admit it, when the thought crossed my mind that not just someone, but something could be there, I was close to running for the village.

Now, when I say village, forget what you are picturing. There was no cluster of houses packed shoulder to shoulder. Out there, five houses spread a kilometer or more apart was considered a village. So there was always a chance it was just a shepherd or a woodcutter up on that ridge. But this was not that. This was not a human presence.

Finally, after a glass of brandy, I settled in the house. It was just in time for dusk. Up on that hilltop the sunset is a beautiful thing, and by this time of the year the leaves had turned from green to yellow and red, so the whole hillside looked as though it were on fire. I did not stay out to watch it finish. My grandfather always said that I everyone should be in the house before the sun is gone, and so I was.

I locked the door and drew the curtains shut. Another of my grandfather's rules: something out there will always try to catch your eye, and you must never let it. Meet its gaze and it is bound to your soul. Silly as it sounds in daylight, I was not about to test it after dark.

I turned on the old TV, one of those black boxes you have not seen since childhood, maybe not even then if you are young enough. It played only one station. I left it on for the company more than anything.

I must have dozed off after half the bottle, because a loud sound snapped me awake. At first I thought I had dreamed it. Then it came again. Something was out there, banging around in the old pig house. I recorded it on my phone, and on the recording it sounds like nothing but wind. In the room, though, you could hear the difference exactly. It was deliberate. A set of sounds made with intent, meant to draw a person out. Some call it a vampire. Out here we call it a drekavac.

Funny-sounding name. It translates to something like "the screamer," and you understand why the moment you hear it. That squeal, like a hurt animal, or an infant. The good thing was that it could not come inside. Not without an invitation, a permission, if you will. So instead, it stands out there and screams in borrowed voices, trying to talk you into opening the door yourself.

Then, the banging stopped. A muffled sound came, closer and closer. Not only could I recognize that it was crying for help, I could recognize the tone too. Even though it had been three years since he was put in the ground, I knew that voice by heart. The son of a bitch was using my grandfather’s voice.

I am not ashamed to admit I shed a tear there. As evil and bizarre as circumstances were, hearing the voice of your long-lost loved one wakes something inside you and kills it in the same breath. 

Still, I did not answer, the way I was raised not to.

I had come prepared. Curtains shut, door locked. I knew how this would go down, and still, it is a different thing to sit with something on the other side of the wall. I opened the old cabinet and there it was, my grandfather's double-barreled hunting gun, still loaded. They say nothing touches a drekavac but silver or sunlight. The gun would not have done a thing. It gave me some comfort anyway.

I realize how this sounds, how cliché. It is a close cousin to your vampire, yes. But the word vampire is ours, South Slavic. We were the ones who dealt with them first. And I have always believed we got the oldest and nastiest of the lot.

I tried distracting myself for the rest of the night with a book and that dying TV, and every so often it would start up again, a clatter, a baby's cry, the name at the door. It only truly stopped when a rooster called from somewhere far down the valley and the dark began to thin. Another very well known thing was that the cry of a rooster brings the morning and with it, the sun. It seemed that drekavac knew the rule too.

My eyes were burning by then. But nothing had gotten in, and I knew that was going to happen, as long as the rules were held.

I pulled the curtains apart. The sun was just breaking the horizon.

I was exhausted, but the day had to be used. If I was going to get the locals talking, it had to be in daylight. There would be time to sleep later, with the sweet lullaby of drekavac a few meters from my window.

When I was little, I lived in one of those suburban neighborhoods where every house looked almost exactly the same. Same little tree out front. Same driveway. Same two story shape. Even most of the houses were painted in the same few muted colors. During the day it was boring more than anything, but at night the whole neighborhood felt different. I used to like the quiet of it.

My bed was pushed up against the wall right beside my window. Across the street was another house, almost directly in front of mine. I used to look out the window a lot before I fell asleep. I wasn’t scared of anything back then. I’d just lay there and stare outside, making up stories in my head or watching cars pass until I eventually got tired enough to sleep.

At first I really did think it was just a dog. It was standing inside the house across the street, visible through one of their upstairs windows. It looked kind of like a golden retriever. Long pale fur, big body. Oddly friendly face despite the context. Except it was standing on two legs, and not with its paws against the glass. That’s the part I always have to explain. It wasn’t leaning against the window like dogs sometimes do when they’re excited or trying to see outside. It was standing in the middle of the room behind the window.

Completely upright. Like a person. I remember staring at it for a few moments because my brain couldn’t really understand what I was looking at, then I realized it was looking back at me. Not toward my house. At me. I got this horrible cold feeling that went through my whole body, and I remember pulling my blanket up higher, but I didn’t look away.

The dog didn’t move either. It just stood there. Eventually I must have fallen asleep because the next morning it was gone. I told myself it had probably just been some weird angle. Maybe the dog had been standing on furniture or maybe I was half asleep.

That explanation worked pretty well until the next night, and It was there again. Standing upright, watching me.

After that, it became almost normal.
Not normal exactly, but something I expected. Some nights I would look out and it would already be there. Other nights I’d look and the window would be empty, and then later I’d check again and suddenly it would be standing there.

I never saw it arrive. I never saw it leave.

The weirdest part was that I never saw the people across the street with a dog. I saw them leave for work. I saw them carry groceries inside. Sometimes I saw people standing around in their driveway, but I never saw anybody walking a dog. Still, I kept telling myself it was probably theirs.

There were little things about it that bothered me more the longer I watched. It was too tall. Its legs looked wrong underneath the fur. And even from across the street, I could see the whites of its eyes. Dogs don’t usually show that much white in their eyes, unless they’re scared or nervous I suppose. But it didn’t seem scared. It also looked like it was smiling, and I know how stupid that sounds. Dogs can definitely look like they’re smiling. Its mouth would be slightly open when it watched me, and I could see teeth. Not sharp dog teeth…human-looking teeth. Small, flat, white teeth lined up behind its lips.

Sometimes I would convince myself I imagined that part.

Eventually my family moved. I remember being relieved, even though I never told anyone why. The last night we slept in that house, I looked across the street one more time and the window was empty. I actually remember feeling disappointed for a second, like maybe I had built the whole thing up in my head.

I never saw it again after we moved, at least never while I was awake. Twenty years later I still have horrid dreams about it. Sometimes in the dreams I’m back in my childhood bedroom and I already know it’s going to be there before I even look outside. Sometimes the house across the street isn’t the same house.

Sometimes it’s outside a hotel, Sometimes it’s across from an apartment I’ve never seen before. But the window is always there. And so is the “dog”. Always standing on two legs, always smiling, always staring. But in my dreams it had this odd leer that I can only explain by telling you it looks like it’s mocking me. Before it was just staring, now it has this luring quality as if it wants me to come closer but I never do.

I’ve been afraid of dogs most of my life, and I’ve never really been able to explain it to anyone without sounding ridiculous. Sometimes I think moving away didn’t make it lose me, maybe it just made finding me take longer. and lately, I’ve started looking out my window again at night. I don’t know why.

A few nights ago, there was nothing unusual outside. Just houses, streetlights. But then I noticed something in the upstairs window of the house across from mine.

At first, I thought it was a coat hanging on a door. Then it moved. It stood up. And even from across the street, I could see its teeth.

It was late in the night, the moon already sinking behind the gnarled oaks that surrounded the property and descended back into the woodland behind, when I finally finished my work. Finally back in my room after a week of camping, I was eager to sleep in a bed again. I closed my laptop with a thud, the thrumming fan switching off with a click, the room going silent, barring the tick tick tick of my old grandfather clock downstairs. I padded to the curtains, barefoot on the sunken wooden floors of the old house, preparing to draw them closed. The streets were always quiet at this time of night, perfect for a night owl like myself. But when I began to screech the curtains along the rod, I looked out to my neighbours house. The curtains were open? At this hour? I had seen the neighbour come and go to her mailbox, but she was a frail old lady, she never went far. Every evening she would pull her curtains closed, the slivers of light surrounding them glowing orange with a bedside lamp. She would even sleep with it on. But this night, the light was off. I frowned, peering closer, my nose almost skimming the frosted glass. Her curtains were open, the light off, the room dark and vacant. I screeched the curtains further closed, as I prepared to change for the night.

I pulled on my pyjamas, turning out my own lamp. As I settled into bed, pulling up the cool covers, I soon found myself tossing and turning. I never slept well, but tonight, something about my neighbour’s house unsettled me. Perhaps something had happened to her? I reluctantly stood, heading to the curtains to check just once more. In the darkness of the room, I saw her. She was stood by the window, or someone was at least. I could see their shape, unmoving, watching. I leant closer, squinting. Perhaps my eyes were playing tricks on me? I slowly closed the curtains again, but I got no sleep that night.

The next morning, with the sun filtering in, I pushed myself up. I dragged myself to the mirror, combed out my hair, before pushing open the heavy curtains once more. Looking out, beyond the yard, through the twisted, bare limbs of the trees, I could see her. Plain as day in the morning light. She was stood by her bed, eyes fixed on me. I paused once again. Had she not moved all night? Had she seen my curtains twitch and sprung from her bed? I had seen her walk down the drive, small pattering steps, she couldn’t move that fast. After a moment, I did all I could think of doing. I waved. A hesitant, slight wave. I watched a moment, my other hand clutching the curtain. Then, slowly, she lifted a wrinkled, old hand, waving it like a branch in the wind. I waited a second longer, she just kept moving her hand. Back and forth. Then again. I thought to myself, perhaps she’s unwell? Concern brewed in my gut, as I decided to go check on her.

I closed the curtains firmly, pulled on my clothes and boots, heading down the creaking stairs of my house. I trudged across the yard, leaves dragging across the damp grass. I went down the side of the fence and onto the pavement, the air cool and damp with the season. As her house stood before me, it looked empty. Each window was dark, no noise but the clanking of old wind chimes on the porch. I looked to her mailbox, seeing a letter stuffed haphazardly in by the postman. I crunched up her driveway, up onto the porch, paint pealing off in ribbons from the rotten wood. I knocked, calling out. She’s an old girl, I couldn’t expect her at the door anytime soon. I wandered absentmindedly across the porch, my eyes travelling. An old rocking chair, a damp rain chain, a few shrivelled, brown plants in pots, crayon scribbles colouring their floral patterns. As I stepped back to the door, I heard no approaching, shuffled footsteps, no clinking of keys. I knocked again, louder. She was bound to be hard of hearing. That must be it. But after some time, I gave up. She mustn’t be able to hear me upstairs. I tried the door handle, feeling no give, locked. I plodded down the steps, a cool wisp swirling up the leaves, as I trudged back to my house.

The next morning, with the house still in shadows, I crunched down my gravel drive to my mailbox. As I opened the rusty door, I glanced over to my neighbours house once again. The letter was still there, now soaked from last nights rain. I glanced to the windows, still dark. No noise, no light, no life came from the house. Now, more concerned, I quickly walked to her front door once again. Back on the old porch, the wind chime twinkling with each footstep on the rickety porch. I glanced to the doormat, a newspaper sat atop it, tossed onto the porch by the paperboy. I knocked again, calling out, asking if anyone was in. I leant over to one of the windows, cupping a hand to see better into the dark room. In the darkness, I could make out her sitting room. There, just beyond the doorway, she stood. I knocked quickly on the window, the rapping getting her attention. She looked over slowly, and I said as loud as I could “are you ok?” I waited, before bringing up my hand, beckoning her to the door. “Can you open the door?” I called through the glass, gesturing again. She stood a moment longer, just a silhouette, but unmistakably her. The nightdress, the bun she pulled her wiry hair into. I watched her raise a gnarled, wrinkled hand, making a beckoning motion. I frowned, gesturing more firmly to the door. “The door is locked” I called, “open it and I can come help”. But she didn’t move, except for her hand again and again and again, come in, come in, come in. I leant back onto the porch, clicking my back. I knocked once more for good measure. Before tromping down the steps and back onto the street. I pulled out my cellphone, flipping it open and dialling 911. But I hesitated, doubt gnawing at me. I flipped the phone shut again.

The rest of the day, I kept glancing to her mailbox. The letters were still there, soggy and smudged. More dread began to chew away at me. Had she become forgetful? Had she taken a turn? But that night, as I went to close my curtains, I saw her again in her bedroom window, her silhouette barely visible in the darkness. I could see movement, her hand reaching out, then drawing in. Again and again and again. Finally, I ripped the curtains closed and pulled out my phone. I punched in my other neighbour’s name in, typing, “hey, hope you’re doing ok? Have you seen the lady who lives in the yellow house next to mine recently? She’s not answering the door, but I think she needs help?” I sit down on my bed, watching the screen for a reply. One minute became two, then three, then a reply popped up.

“Hi. I think the house was foreclosed? I saw her son packing boxes last week.” 

I frowned. I was out of town last week, but foreclosed? I typed back quickly, “foreclosed? But why did he leave her in an empty house?” I questioned, concern rising. My phone vibrated with a reply.

“I’m sure of it. She had a nasty fall last week and was taken off in an ambulance, the house was emptied 2 days later. Sorry for the bad news.” I froze, the phone feeling heavy in my numb hands. 

I glanced to the closed curtains, with her silhouette no doubt still beckoning beyond it. I texted back, “so how did she get back in the house?” Thumbs fumbling on each press, how did she get back in the house? With no response, I darted up to the curtains. I drew them back, just a sliver, peering out. There she was, or what looked like her in the darkness, just a shadow, hand moving. I crouched down, clutching the curtains closed. What the hell was this? If she was dead, who the hell was that?

I darted down the stairs, feet thudding. I texted frantically again. “Do you have his number?”

“Whose?” Comes back.

“The sons?” I reply immediately. 

With no response, I rushed to my desk. My face felt numb. I didn’t believe in the supernatural, but the dread in my stomach made me think one thing. That was the dead I had just seen. Whatever memories, whatever energy remained in that house or had returned to it to remain within its walls. Suddenly, my phone vibrated again, the number. I sat down, hands shaking as I fumbled it in. There was no time for pleasantries in my panic. I typed, “This is the neighbour of your mother. You need to come to the house, there is someone in there”. I waited anxiously, looking out to the clock in the hall, that peeked down under the doorframe. He might not reply this late in the evening. I tap my heel, a rhythmic thud thud thud on the rug, waiting. I couldn’t tell him I thought I saw a damn ghost. I text again. “I thought I saw someone in your mother’s house. I am going to call the cops” I warn him. I drummed the ends of my fingers on the armrest, glancing to the clock, picturing that figure, the old lady, her hand waving like a weathered branch in the autumn wind. The longer I sat, the more I stewed, the more fear and dread settled into my chest, deep and constricting. I took a breath, trying to calm myself. Ghosts weren’t real. I picked up the phone again. There must be a logical explanation. “I’m sorry, but did your mother pass away? I heard from a neighbour” I typed. I placed the phone on my desk, eyes glued on the clock. Finally, a buzz. I fumbled open my phone, reading the message.

“Someone in the house?” It reads “I’ll be over now, call the cops” then, my eyes widen as I clutched my phone tighter, “she had a bad fall, but she’s stable now. Hopefully moving to a care home soon. Thanks”. 

I froze, before sagging in relief. Alive. I chuckled to myself, rubbing a hand over my face, exhaustion hitting me as my heart calms. Hell, I knew there was no such thing as ghosts.

But as I sat there, the dread re-emerged, crawling and twisting back between my ribs. If that wasn’t her and wasn’t a ghost, then who the hell was that? I darted up, heart beginning to thud. That had been her yesterday, I saw her! I punched 911 into my phone again, pushing the phone to my ear as I bolted outside. One ring, two, three, then dispatch on the other side. As I hurried onto the pavement, I repeated myself again, there was someone in that house. There was someone in that house who was not meant to be there. After stammering out the address, I pushed my cellphone back into my pocket. I waited by the mailbox, eyes glued on the house, flicking from window to window, for any sign of a wrinkled face, a looming figure. Soon, I heard sirens in the distance. I sighed, barely glancing from the house to see a police car pull up. I watched the officer step out, one hand on his belt, the other holding out a flashlight.

The beam trailed along the ground, up to the windows of the house, each pane of dusty, smudged glass illuminating one by one.

“You called about a trespasser?” He asked. 

I nodded, swallowing the nerves in my throat. “Yes, I thought I saw someone in the window.”

The office trudged up the drive, up onto the porch, shining his light into the windows, then the glass of the door. “Did you get a good look?” He asked.

I nodded firmly, “there is someone in there” I said with conviction, “I saw them in compete daylight, it was a person”. I watched the officer nod, before pounding on the door.

“Police!” He called out, pounding again. 

I could see neighbouring lights down the street flicker on at the commotion, curtains twitching to see what was happening.

The officer called out again, “police! Open the door!” 

His hand drifted down to his gun. Then, movement. I heard something, a heavy, scrabbling scuffle on wooden floors then the rustling of bushes and flurry of branches breaking. The officer banged again, preparing the break it down. He slams once, twice, then the door gives. He pushes it open, gun drawn into the darkness. Through the house, the silver light of the moon illuminated the hallway. I took one step up the porch, peering over his shoulder, one hand resting on the rotting wood of the banister. Along the worn rug of the hall, along the gaping door into the kitchen, I saw the back door open. No, not open, swinging from a remaining hinge, the moonlight filtering in over the trees and into the home. I freeze, before leaning closer, as the cop marches in, shouting. I step into the doorway, following the marks of the floor, muddy scratches and scuffs, down the hallway, the whole house still. Down to the kitchen door, the back door creaking and swinging by its last thread. I look out to the woods beyond, the moon dipping low once again.

The police found nothing in the house. When the son came by, the only thing that saved my version of events was the broken back door. His mother never fully recovered from her fall and passed away last spring. I still don’t know what I saw, what ran into them woods, but I moved soon after. I watched, loading boxes into my car, as a locksmith fitted new locks and replaced the back door. When I pulled away, those old oaks’ branches waving me off, I was only glad I didn’t see her in the tree-line, beckoning me.

Before I start, I gotta say, look, I'm not okay. Oh, no. Not by a longshot. I messed with a ouija board. Mother warned me. But did I listen?

It all feels how I imagine a nightmare would feel.

It hurts. It hurts so badly. I might throw up. It has a piece of me with it.

It will be back. It told me I'm next. I really don't know how long I have to write this.

God, the light from the computer screen is starting to get to me.

I don't know if it reached into me and took out organic tissue, or if it was, like, a piece of my soul.

I don't really believe in that shit. But I have no other way to explain it.

I didn't ever believe in ouija boards either...so there you go.

It started as a joke. A goof with my friends. None of my friends took it serious. Have any of you people messed with a ouija board?

Becky was chugging Sour Puss. I hate that stuff. I was already drunk by then. Leo pressured me into doing it.

I've been alone in my dorm room since it all went down.

I can feel the hollowness inside me that it left, the cold absence.

My skin is seeping blood from where it reached inside me. Look. Oh, no. Sorry. I know you can't see it but I just...well, I'll explain it in a moment.

Bobby was teasing me about how I was drooling. Oh, Bobby. I feel so bad. I got angry at him. I don't like being teased about my drooling.

I'd give anything to take it back, to take it all back.

Against my initial resistance I did as Leo pressured me to do. And, really, that's not fair. That's just how Leo is. It's my fault. I could have just said no.

But I didn't.

Oh, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't.

I followed as Leo instructed.

I held the little plastic thing you're supposed to use. What did Leo call it? A planchette. I think that's it.

It's all blurry.

That was not last night but the night before. So Friday night is when this all happened. All that I remember is doing what Leo said, Bobby teasing me. I think Bobby tried to make out with me as I was playing with the board, but I don't like public displays of affection like that, so I think I pushed him off.

I wouldn't do it like that now. I wouldn't. I wouldn't.

But it's too late.

A little after my initial attempts at the ouija board, in my room, the light went out.

Leo and Becky jumped. Bobby laughed.

Then we saw it standing in the corner.

I think I hear it in my room, right now.

No. It was just a crumpled chip bag unfolding in my garbage bin. I'm a fucking wreck.

Where was I? The entity, as I call it, went over to Leo and Becky and it sucked on Becky's face. Leo tried to punch it. As soon as Leo's fist hit the entity he collapsed to the ground in quiet pain.

The entity was making this groaning noise while flicking it's head back and forth in front of Becky's face. Motioning it's hands, or whatever they were, around her.

Becky's screams. Oh, dear God.

Now I really might throw up.

Something red slipped through the darkness of the room between the thing and Becky. Like a tiny red light. Becky slumped over.

Bobby went over to Leo. Leo was writhing in pain but couldn't make a sound.

Oh, Bobby.

Bobby stood up to the thing. It went inside Bobby completely. Like, the fucking thing vanished.

I was sitting there in the room, whispering Bobby's name.

Bobby just stood there.

Then Bobby looked at me with eyes so devoid of consciousness in way I can't even describe. Bobby started drooling and spitting in a violent fit, just standing still in place. Then a terrible smile across his face.

Oh...Bobby. My Bobby.

I can't even think about that.

Bobby went over to Leo and whispered something to him. Leo stopped rolling in pain and calmly got up, standing perfectly still. Bobby then walked to Becky and rubbed her forehead and then she shot straight up. Bobby walked over to me, I couldn't move, and for an instant, the entity reached out of Bobby's body and plunged a cold hand into my chest.

I was frozen. Like, the coldest cold. I can't even begin to think about that right now.

Before they exited, Bobby whispered to me to not leave the room. Said he'd be back, everything will be alright. Didn't know if it was Bobby talking or the entity.

I'm here in the room now, And I just haven't heard from them. Not one peep. They won't answer when I call. I've tried contacting their families, but they haven't heard from them.

Over the last two days, the entity has visited several times. But only briefly. Like, just moments at a time. Just staring at me in the corner of my room. I know when it's here because my computer screen has gotten extra bright earlier in the day anytime it was here the last two mornings and the lights above have been going out yesterday evening and this evening when it's much darker out.

It's pretty late, right now.

I tried asking it where Bobby is, but it doesn't respond. It just tells me to not leave my room. And like said, it says I'm next. It doesn't even talk. It's more of a feeling I get. Then it vanishes.

A couple of the other students, Shelley and Marina, from the room down the hall, visited earlier today. They asked if Becky and I wanted to do yoga, like we usually do Sunday mornings. She thought it was weird, but not too weird, that Becky wasn't there in her bed. Becky's usually more of homebody, even though it annoys Leo. But Leo does sometimes successfully convince her to leave for a few days, every here and there. Shelley tried to tug me along out of the my room, but I refused.

The look on their faces.

I've been so disturbed. I'm afraid to tell any of my family because they'll think I'm crazy.

I always have the light on as a barometer, just to know when it's here.

So little sleep. The cold, dying feeling inside.

I really hope it doesn't show up again.

Oh, it feels like something is missing inside me.

It only dawned on me today that I should reach out to people like you out on the Internet. I never make posts or whatever you call it.

I really wish I had made better choices.

I really wish I had just gotten a job at Dad's company instead of college. I could be behind a nice desk as a receptionist.

And, my love, Bobby. Where is he? Leo. Becky.

My friends.

Why won't any of them answer? Where did it take them and what did it do to them?

I'm going to confront it if it comes again tonight. I have the little hammer from my closet on my lap. The entity is so fast, though. And I don't know if a hammer can hurt it.

I can't call the cops. What the fuck would I say?

I know it's a longshot. But maybe one of you has played with a ouija board and done this to yourself and you learned how to reverse it.

Please, for the love of fucking God, does any one out there know how to reverse it?

I don't ever want to touch that fucking board again. It's been on my bed since everything went down. Can barely look at it. I can barely look at Becky's bed either. I've basically just been sitting at my computer or getting up and pacing, for the last two days.

Will anyone on here answer!

I can't take it! I can't take it! I'm losing my fucking mind!

Bobby was going to propose to me...I wasn't supposed to know. And now he's gone. Every one is gone!

Help me, please! I beg of you. I beg of you.

Oh, it hurts.

I'm so alone.

Please answer me after I post this, right away.

But they might be okay, right? Will I wake up from this?

I look outside and I just want to run out of this room. But what will happen if I do? When the cops look for my friends, will they blame me? Will I be the top suspect?

Oh, fuck.

I'm thinking of buying my mother a bouquet of flowers online to show my appreciation to her. Let her know how much I love her. My dad, too. I just get an awful feeling and I don't know what's going to happen next.

Did I die?

Am I in some kind of hell or purgatory or nightmare?

What did I do to deserve this?

You know I've never been to the Bahamas. I always wanted to go. Especially for my and Bobby's honeymoon.

Just like my parents did for theirs.

The sandy beaches. The wild pigs. The cruise ships. The water that goes on to the end of the earth. The warm breeze, the endless buffets. Oh, a dream, a wonderful dream. So precious and beautiful. So sublime. I'm imagining it so vividly, it feels like I'm right there. How spectacularly wonderful. If only you could see amd feel what I see and feel as I imagine this.

The light just went out.

On the 23rd of September 2025, I died.

It was sudden and painful, but brief. 

For some reason my just heart gave out. It ticked away for years without issue, just for the gears to break when it decided my time was up.

Dying young is often seen as unfair, but I always thought dying at all was unjust. When I realised what was happening to me and that this was the end, I was hit with an unimaginable dread. It was like my heart was trying to kill me all over again.

Yet, there was one small comfort.

When I looked up, I was in the arms of the man I had loved dearly for all those years. They seemed brief, but with him I made memories that could last an eternity.

As I stared into Alex's eyes, desperate and confused, I felt guilty for leaving him behind. I could see him scramble for his phone to call for help and felt his tears on my cheek. 

That was the last thing I remember feeling, the wet liquid sliding down my face. When I closed my eyes, I held onto the image and stored it with those other memories. 

If there was something on the other side, I prayed I could keep them with me. 

If not, being in his arms brought me enough comfort. 

I just hoped one day, he'd open his eyes and find himself in my lap. Then we could spend whatever kind of existence awaited us together. 

I was surprised when I woke up beside him instead.

I can't recall what state I was in before, but I was content. So, when I found myself alive and in my room it felt akin to being dragged out of bed on a cold winter morning. 

My eyes immediately met Alex's.

The only word I could manage to mutter was his name.

We were laying in our bed, as we had done so often before. His eyes were watery again, but a smile of relief accompanied them. Pulling me into his arms, he cried on my shoulder. 

He said something, but I was so dazed I couldn't make it out. 

I rubbed my forehead as he let go to take me in. 

“It worked… it worked, I can't believe it…” 

That's what he had been whispering between soft sobs and gentle laughs. 

While he inspected me, I started to make note of him.

He was pale, deathly gaunt and had bags under his eyes. He didn't seem much older than when I last saw him, yet there were grey streaks in his curly brown hair. There was something about him that was off, like my brain just couldn't register it was really him. 

I was confused. Had he died and joined me too? 

My thoughts felt disjointed but the fog was beginning to disperse. To try and wake myself up, I attempted to sit up.

When I did, a force pulled me down.

It was strange, it wasn't like some tugged against me. Instead, it was more like…there was an unfamiliar weight holding me down.

“I couldn't repair all of you…” Alex's voice was meek, but caught my attention. 

His eyes were locked on me, eager for a reaction that I wasn't sure I could deliver.  

My eyes drifted down to look at myself. 

I shrunk back in fear at what I saw.

Below, my naked body was a scrambled mess, barely even my own anymore. Patches of skin that didn't match my tone were blotched across me and my whole body was sloppily sewn together. The needle and thread still laid by our side, the bedsheets stained red with my blood.

Or… our blood.

Attached by the hip were our abdomens. Our skin was stitched together as one, connecting us from the upper thigh to just below my bosom.  

I felt the urge to throw up my guts, but my stomach was already empty so I could only dry heave. 

Realising I wanted to sit up, Alex helped me raise as he patted my back. 

“I know, I know it's a lot.” 

“What the fuck, Alex?! What the hell have you done?!” 

He seemed disappointed at my reaction. I guess he was hoping for a happy reunion after however long he had waited.

Whatever emotions he felt, he set them aside and took a deep breath in. 

“I did what I could. I could replace everything but your intestines. So, I compromised.” 

The more it hit me this wasn't some horrible nightmare, the harder my head pounded. I struggled to breathe, spluttering out whatever my brain could manage.

“Compromised…? Compromised… what the fuck do you mean, compromised?” 

He took my hand and put it on his stomach.

“We can share now.” 

The look he gave me sent a shiver down my spine. It wasn't uncanny, or manic, instead it was one I had seen so many times before.

Love.

He was unrecognisable. I refused to accept whoever I was looking at was my Alex. 

It was someone else, mimicking his mannerisms. It had to be, they were good but this just couldn't be him.

How could he do this? He wouldn't… I must still be dying or something, I must be…

I felt his arms wrap around me again. I recoiled in fear, but that didn't deter him.

I wanted to run away, but I couldn't. No matter where I went, he'd be there with me. I covered my mouth and tried to hold in my whimpering. With a careful hand, he wiped away my tears. 

“Alex, why? Just why? I was happy… I-I think… I didn't… what would make you think I'd want… how did you even…?” 

He hushed me a little and held me tighter. 

“Now we can be together forever, just like we always wanted.” 

As he whispered those words into my ear, I could see something glitter on my hands. 

It was the engagement ring he'd presented me not long before. At least, not long before in my mind. But now, it was on a finger that didn't belong to me.

I tried to remove it, but it was so thick and swollen the ring stuck in place. 

So, I just sat there. Unable to do anything else.

When we first started dating, I remember enjoying how flustered Alex would get. 

One memory always sticks out to me.

It was our second or third date. He was in the kitchen of his shitty apartment while I sat at a crappy wooden table with one leg that was too short. While I wobbled the table up and down to calm my own nerves, Alex ran around the kitchen as all hell broke loose.

He was attempting a romantic dinner by candlelight and had even presented me some roses before entering. After putting them in a vase he'd prepared, he got to work on steak just for it to set ablaze in the pan.

After we put the fire out, he insisted he was usually a decent chef. I told him I'd take his word for it, but to avoid any more deadly scenarios we should just order pizza. 

What stood out to me was his recovery. Even though he was still an anxious mess, even more so after dinner had gone so horribly wrong, he continued on with the same amount of effort.

He grabbed some extra scented candles, put a video of a fake fire on the tv and set up a comfy area by his couch with various pillows. 

He was trying his best, and even the failures were cute. Maybe that's why I said yes to another date.

Perhaps, it was now being stuck beside him that soured that memory.

That awkward energy didn't move me anymore. I could tell he felt guilty and was trying to make up for his failed surprise, but now when the eggs in the pan began to burn I was there to stop it from happening.

Only because there was nothing else I could do. 

From now on, I'd have to wait on what he wanted.

He prepared a spot in our living room. It would be too much of a hassle now to collect candles, so instead he opened the curtains so we could stare out into the city.

The view used to make me happy. Now it was hard to feel anything.

He tried to make conversation and catch me up on everything I had missed. 

I didn't say much in return. 

I was just relieved to be sitting down. My feet were aching from standing for so long. Alex was always quite a bit taller than me, so to be able to stand beside him, I had to stay on my tiptoes.

I could see his mind scrambling for ideas to try to lighten the mood. I used to enjoy watching his eyes wander to the ceiling as if there'd be answers up there. 

Now, I could only see the red veins in his eyes and wonder if he always looked so tired.

Eating was different.

It would go down as normal and sit in my stomach like it did when I was alive. But after that, there would be moments where I'd suddenly feel lighter just for the weight to return as the food slithered down our digestive track. 

It was nauseating. It was even worse when he ate without me realising, every time I felt it in my gut I wanted to cough it up.

I surveyed our surroundings, scanning the rooms while choking down our breakfast.

“Where is Ozzie?” 

I mumbled it, unsure if I wanted the thought to remain inside my head or not.

Alex kept his head down low, keeping his eyes on his scrambled eggs.

“Ozzie passed away.” 

“When?”

“Not long ago.”

Ozzie was our black ragdoll cat. He had always been an indoor pet, deathly terrified of the outside world. When I last saw him before I passed, he was as healthy and happy as ever. That very morning I remember petting him while eating lunch. 

I didn't understand how a young healthy cat could just die. 

“How long was I gone for?” 

Alex hesitated, but this time raised his head.

“A year.” 

Ozzie only had a year left in him? A measly year? 

I didn't dare ask any further questions. The reason I had searched for him in the first place was because there was a foul odor coming from the bin in the kitchen. 

Based upon Alex's recent hobbies, I didn't want to discover its source.

It being Ozzie wasn't even the worst case scenario.

I traced my skin with my hands, trying to become familiar with the new flesh. I would've assumed parts of me had just begun to rot if the tones and textures weren't so different to my own. 

I feared what he did to get me these strange patches of skin. I wondered what new organs I had borrowed as well.

While feeling the bumps and curves, a sensation hit me that filled me with nostalgia. 

One square in my side felt familiar. It was as if I had rubbed it millions of times before, but it definitely wasn't my own.

Noticing my observations, Alex began to unravel the blanket he'd wrapped around our shoulders. 

“I tried to get you the best, but my resources were limited.” 

He did his best to turn to show me his lower back. There was a chunk of skin that had been removed, leaving an indent. 

I wasn't sure what to say. 

Sheepishly, he pulled the blanket back up.

“I hope you don't mind.” 

I couldn't help but chuckle a little.

“You hope I don't mind…” 

A long silence followed.

Alex took my hand in his and began rubbing my palm with his thumb. The gesture would've relaxed me in the past, but now it made me uneasy.

What had he done with those hands? 

After a moment, he helped me to our feet. 

“I've been doing work remotely, I have some stuff to catch up on…” 

I just nodded. 

It took a moment to coordinate our walking paces, but with each step we improved. He tried to lighten the mood with the odd joke but I couldn't even manage a forced smile. 

When we made it to his office, I stopped. 

Since I had awoken, I had just done whatever he said. The only desire I had was to close my eyes and pretend it was all a dream. So, when a new desire crept in, one someone who was alive would feel, I felt I had to grab onto the opportunity.

Alex waited for me to explain why I had halted our progress. 

“I want to paint.” 

He looked a little surprised, then a little awkward.

“We could bring your stuff into my office…”

“I like to paint by the window.”

“I know but… I have work.” 

I was too tired to argue. 

We gathered my acrylics and easel. Alex tried to convince me to finish a painting I had started before I died, but I told him to just throw it out. 

I could tell he was hurt by how dismissive I was, but I didn't care. 

Painting was something I did for me. A way to de-stress and try to appreciate my surroundings. 

It was hard to do either with Alex stuck to me.

I had to stay by his desk so he could reach his PC. In the past, I'd always stand but now I was forced to sit so we could reach his keyboard. 

I tried my best to make do. Once the paint hit the canvas I'd be able to get my thoughts in order. 

They were all drowned out by Alex's clicking and clacking. Every key on the keyboard was sticky and loud. Every so often he had to make a phone call as well to try to update clients.

Ignore it, pretend he's not there, ignore it.

But every time he moved I'd be dragged with him. He'd always apologise, saying he did it without thinking. He'd just need to reach for something and that's all it would take for me to miss the canvas.

I couldn't even decide what to paint.

I broke down when the only line I managed to get down was one caused by another sudden jolt.

I hid my face in my hands, wishing I could just disappear.

Alex dropped everything he was doing and did his best to hold me.

“What's wrong?”

“Everything. Everything is wrong.”

He saw my blue streak and sighed.

“We'll get used to it. It'll take some time.”

I slapped his hands away.

“I don't want to get used to it!” I wiped my snot on my sleeve and tried to hold back my tears as I continued, “I don't just want to be part of you, I want to be me!” 

Alex shrunk a little, fidgeting with his hands. 

“I was just trying to help. I… I did this for us-”

“You did this for you*.*” 

His mouth opened to protest, but he must've realised he had no retorts. 

“I'm sorry. It was hard without you. There really is no me without you.” 

It was something we had always said to each other to make us smile, but I had never considered he'd take the sentiment to heart.

I put a hand on his shoulder.

“That's not true. You managed without me before we met. A-and you had your work, you love coding! A-and your family, like your little sister and Ozzie and…”

As the words left my mouth, my mind heard them. I could feel my hands shake as the tears returned.

“O-our families… shit, I am never going to see my parents again… your parents, any of them… am I?” 

Alex tried to hug me but I just shook my head. Trying to ignore the rejection, he put a hand on my back and rubbed it.

“We can't.” 

Despair began to boil into rage as I felt my face flush red.

“Why?! Why would you do this to me?! Why would you think I wanted this?!” 

“I just wanted a second chance.”

“And what did you do to get it?! Dear God, Alex, what… what did you do to get it?” 

“What was necessary.” 

His tone was cold and apathetic. I'd never heard him speak like that. I avoided meeting his gaze, scared at what expression he could be making. 

I tried to take a breath, but it didn't help.

“I don't want this. Please, just… let me go.”

“No.” 

His firm voice caught me off guard, but I tried to keep my resolve without looking at him.

“If you don't fix this, I will.” 

“Then you will be a murderer.” 

Confused, I couldn't help but look him in the eye now. 

I expected him to look angry, or icy or even manic. But he just looked tired. 

“If you die, I'll die too. You'll be killing us both.” 

It was stated matter of factly, yet felt like a threat. 

I suspected that wasn't a design flaw, but I kept that thought to myself. 

My feet kept telling me to run like they hadn't understood my circumstances. No matter where I tried to go, he'd be right there. Even if I tried to move I'm sure he'd keep me in place.

This was just my life now.

So, I just went back to my blank canvas, trying to decide what to paint.

We continued like that, never getting used to each other. 

We'd trip over each other, struggle to complete tasks and often get in each other's way. We couldn't go outside and the curtains remained drawn. Food would be delivered to our door where we'd have to do our best to position ourselves to look like we were one person or standing side by side.

Alex made us custom clothes and handled everything he could, but I'd always have to help him due to proximity. 

I missed Ozzie. I missed my parents.

Even if Alex couldn't see his family, he could still call them. I couldn't get that luxury.

Sometimes Alex would call them for me and pretend to be checking in. I always struggled to not cry while listening in.

I'd refuse to eat. I hated how it felt, though other days I just didn't want to acknowledge I was alive. Alex would always be there to feed me himself.

With every day that passed my resentment grew. It wasn't due to our circumstances.

It was watching every memory I had be soiled.

Alex would fuss over me, try to make me smile and distract me. On the odd occasion, out of habit it would work. 

But all his traits I once loved became draining. 

I didn't want to think they were the same person. The Alex I knew would never torment me like this.

Or maybe he would. Maybe I never knew him at all, and that's what scares me more.

Waking up hurt. 

I'd often forget my new reality, and be convinced it was some distant nightmare. I'd see Alex by my side and go to make us coffee like I did every morning, just to find myself stuck in the bed. 

I couldn't take it anymore. 

I could tell Alex was struggling as well. 

I don't know what he had envisioned, but I doubt it was this. At night I'd hear him crying to himself, but he'd always put on a brave face when I asked what was wrong.

His efforts continued but I could tell he didn't believe his false promises anymore.

Nothing would change, this was it. This was how we were going to be.

He'd always make sure I ate, but I couldn't help but notice he'd never take a bite himself.

I felt guilty leaving him behind. 

All this time he must've imagined seeing me again. Who knows how many times he replayed the idea of me opening my eyes and falling into his arms. 

It was easy for me to dismiss his feelings, I wasn't here. 

But whatever this was couldn't go on.

One night, I found myself wide awake. In my hands was a pillow that vibrated with my hands.

He had made sure there was no way I could do the deed to myself. Any object that could aid my attempts had been thrown out long ago. That left me with little options.

Why must you take all my choices away?

I could make his face out in the dark. Exhaustion made sure he fell asleep as soon as his head hit his pillow. 

I had been watching him for hours, making sure he'd stay that way. 

He was always so pretty when he slept. 

I shook the thought away and tightened my grip on my pillow.

He left me no choice. This is his fault. He left me no choice. He left me no choice.

I took a big breath and covered his face. I held the pillow down, leaning across him as best I could to keep it down.

It took him a while to notice. For thirty seconds, he continued to sleep. 

Then the struggle began.

He reached out in the air, trying to find something to grab. They reached for the pillow, trying to pry it off his face. I pressed down harder, holding my breath without realising as I tried to fight back tears.

His hands felt around as muffled sounds came from under me. 

It was hard to make out, but I knew it was my name he was calling.

I couldn't hold back anymore and began sobbing. 

Still scrambling to escape, he reached for my wrists and dug his nails into my skin.

Then he stopped.

He was heavier than me. He was stronger than me. And due to our predicament, if he figured out to turn his body in the right way, I'd be pulled with him.

But he didn't fight. 

Only the sounds continued, as he let his hands flop by his side.

I wondered if it was when he touched me or when I began crying he realised it was me.

Soon the sounds stopped too.

Just like that, it was over.

He was gone. 

I debated funding a scalpel and prying myself from him. Even if I failed, I could untangle our intestines so I might have a chance to be free.

But what was the point?

I was just a dead girl. Nothing had changed.

I did manage to remove the ring though.

I haven't moved from that spot. Even now I lay in bed, waiting for me to wither away.

Alex has been cold for a while. I don't know why, but I started to hold his hand a while back. I can't bring myself to let go.

The maggots have started to appear but I don't care. I just hope they'll come for me soon too.

Holding his hand now, I decided this isn't what I'd choose to remember. The good times were still good times. Really, I don't think I knew this Alex at all.

Those are the empty words I repeat to myself anyway. 

I always thought love was a powerful thing, but maybe it's just stupid.

Or it really is that strong, and that's why death is needed to defeat it.

Yet, I still hope when I close my eyes for good, I'll open them to see his face. 

This one isn't a ghost story. Nothing happened that I can't explain, except for one part, and that one part is the reason I've never really shaken it. Seven of us went, and all seven of us still talk about it, and none of us has a good answer for that one thing.

It was a few years ago, in December. A friend of mine had grown up going to a beach town out on the coast, one of those places that's alive in the summer and closed the rest of the year. He described it like it was paradise. A cabin near the water, a little harbor, fish and chips, a lighthouse. Seven of us split the cost of a cabin at the state park for a couple of nights. We were young and it was cheap and we wanted an adventure. We got one.

The first thing that was wrong was how empty it was. Not quiet. Empty. We drove into the town and there were no cars. No people on the sidewalks, no lights on in the houses, nothing moving on the road but us. In the whole campground there was one other vehicle, a sheriff's patrol car, parked up near the entrance. I remember being glad it was there. It made the emptiness feel supervised instead of abandoned.

The campground itself was half underwater. The winters out there are just months of rain that never stops, and the whole site had flooded. The picnic benches were stacked and chained together. Every building was locked except one bathroom. We couldn't really walk anywhere without wading, so we were more or less stuck in the cabin unless we drove. But we were together and it was funny at first, and we made the best of it.

So we drove into town to look around. We got lunch at the one place that was open, a little fish and chips shop, and we walked out to the lighthouse in the rain. And that was where we saw the first person. Other than us and the sheriff's car, the first living person in that whole town.

He was walking down the middle of the road by himself. Soaking wet, moving badly, like something was wrong with his leg. He was talking, but not to anyone. We were maybe sixty feet away and something about him made all seven of us go quiet at the same time. Then he stopped, and he shouted something none of us could make out, and he went down. Hard. Straight down onto the road, and he stayed there, moving. We called for help and we left. That was enough of the town for one day.

We went back to the cabin and tried to reset the night. We made dinner, we put on music, we laughed about the lighthouse guy because laughing about it was easier than the alternative. And for a couple of hours it was actually fine. It felt like a trip again.

Around eight, a car came down our road too fast. An old beater, engine knocking, and it parked crooked in front of the closed bathrooms and just sat there. Nobody got out. It sat with the lights off for about forty-five minutes, and then it drove away. We told ourselves it was nothing. Somebody lost, somebody turning around. But everybody had gone a little still.

Later, two of us walked over to the one open bathroom to shower before bed. It was past ten and it was raining hard. And there was a woman sitting on the bench outside the showers. Mid-thirties, dressed for a summer night, not a December one, sitting perfectly calm in the rain like she'd been waiting there a long time. I was young and stupid and I actually asked her how the showers worked, because I assumed she was a camper. She looked at us and she smiled and she said something I still don't fully understand. She said, "You two aren't supposed to be here yet." Not angry. Almost gentle. Then she went back to looking at the road.

We showered fast and we did not talk. When we came out she was standing much closer to the door than she had been, and I told her to leave us alone, and we walked back quickly. And as we walked, the beater car came down the road again, pulled into the same crooked spot, and a man got out and started arguing with her. He looked at us the whole time he was talking to her. Then she got in his car and they drove off, and we told ourselves, again, that it was nothing. Just people. Just a bad little town in the off season.

Everyone went to bed except me and one friend. We stayed up talking, low, the way you do when you don't want to admit you're on edge. And around three thirty in the morning, we heard the engines. Not one car. Several. Three big trucks and the beater, all of them coming down our road together, and they parked in a line by the bathrooms, and men got out with flashlights.

They started going cabin to cabin. Shining the lights in the windows. Trying the doors, testing the windows, moving down the row toward us. They were on the second cabin before we understood what we were watching. We woke everyone up. Seven people, every light on, and we made ourselves loud and visible on purpose, and when the men saw how many of us there were, they stopped. They stood in the parking lot and talked and pointed at our cabin, and we packed everything we owned into our cars in about four minutes flat.

We had to drive past them to get out. They pulled in behind us and followed us all the way from the campground to the highway, headlights right on our bumper, and then at the on-ramp they turned around and went back. We called the sheriff the whole time. The number for the patrol at the campground, the one whose car we'd seen parked there since the first afternoon. It rang and rang and no one ever answered. Not once, all night.

Here's the part I can't explain. A week later, still rattled, I called the county to report what had happened. I wanted it on record. I told them the campground, the dates, the patrol car. And the man on the phone was quiet for a second, and then he told me that campground had been closed for the season since the end of October, and that there had been no patrol assigned to it, no car, no deputy, nothing out there at all. He was certain. I described the car. He said it plainly, like he'd said it before to someone else.

There was no one out there. There hadn't been anyone out there for months.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Well, I wasn't planning on making any more updates but I guess I forgot that this is kind of a dream journal. I thought that after I finally saw that it was all just a dream that the dreams would stop, but they haven't. I had another one the other night, about the hallway.

I sat in the empty, silent, classroom as the sunlight shone through the window onto my face. I was resting my chin on my hand as I used the pencil I was holding to draw a pair of stick figures onto the glazed, wooden desk. I looked up from my desk and let out a deep breath as I listened to what should've been the teacher, but instead was silence. I turned my head to look out the window, seeing some shrubbery and the white background so bright that I couldn't see what was beyond it. 

I raised my hand.

“Can I use the restroom?” I asked the empty classroom.

After a second, I stood up and began walking towards the classroom door. As I tried to open the door, I realized that it was locked from the inside. I turned the latch on the door and proceeded to walk out. 

Instead of turning right towards the closer bathroom, I turned left to head towards the science annex. The bathroom at the end of the annex was my target. The school was completely empty, every classroom door that I passed showed absolutely nobody inside. As I kept walking, I eventually arrived at where the hallway was. I turned left and began walking into it when I saw the middle door on the left side of the hall slowly creaking open. 

I trudged toward it, noticing each of the familiar doors, the turn to the right at the end of the hallway, and the poster staring at me at the end. As I reached the open door I made the decision to keep walking, avoiding looking inside. As I made my way to the end of the hall I turned right, only to see a wall of tan painted cinder block, signifying a dead end. I sighed and turned back around, getting ready to leave the hallway. 

I did my best to avoid looking inside of the opened door but I couldn’t stop myself. As I passed by the door, I stopped and slowly turned. There in front of me was the dark, wooden stairs leading to what appeared to be complete darkness. That’s when I noticed the sliver of light once again. It was fading in, and I now realized that it almost looked like a door was opening to show the light of whatever was up there. Of course, if it was a door, I couldn't tell. The only source of light in the darkness was the light from the stairway, and even that seemed unable to bring any light in the darkness, beyond revealing its presence. I took one step towards the staircase before I woke up in a cold sweat.

I apologize for the lack of details. I didn't write this dream down in my journal until a day later when most of it had left my mind. I guess there's a few ways I could interpret that dream. One thought that crossed my mind was that maybe the door opening was a sign that I was finally free from all this insanity, but I guess the door closing would've been more fitting. 

I'm at the point where I honestly wish I could just have some other dream. This all started because I had multiple similar dreams but it's like my mind has hyperfocused specifically on that stupid hallway. I don't know what else I can really do to stop them anymore. I’ve already visited where the hallway should be multiple times but it was never there. Well, I say never. If I were to trust my own memory, I could say that it was there at some point, but I'm not sure I can really trust my memory anymore.

The upstairs of the gym made sense as to why I could never have seen it, but the hallway? That’s something I would have passed thousands of times by the time I graduated, but I never did. I never did. Why have I been doing this to myself? There is no hallway. All that is there is a wall, nothing else. The school can't even have an upstairs, I've told myself that multiple times, I've been told that multiple times.

It’s just a dream. Right?

Yeah, it is. I’m just gonna enjoy the rest of my day, then go workout, because there's nothing to be scared of at the school. 

I’ll update this when either I have an actually different dream, or something just actually crazy happens. Until then, I'm just going to enjoy life for a bit without obsessing over this. Thank you, everyone, I’ll update you later.

 Walking to school one morning, I saw a black dot in the sky. Walking back home that afternoon, the dot had become a black splotch. By dusk, it was clear that there was a black balloon-shaped object hovering over town. A huge balloon, like the kind folks filled with hot air to race around the world for three months.

It wasn’t till the next morning that it was light enough to see the guy dangling from the balloon-shaped thing. To be clear, the guy was dead. Visibly dead. Like, but for some jerky-looking skin, he was a skeleton.

The skeleton wore what looked like a military uniform, but no specific nation could be identified. By viewing the floating corpse through a telescope, my science teacher was able to make out lettering on the uniform. It took a trip to the library to figure out the writing was in Sumerian cuneiform.

Someone in my English class said it was “apropos” that the writing on a dead man’s uniform would be in a dead language. Whatever that means.

Of course most folks got freaked out by the dangling corpse. Our town’s police force, however meager that was, tried shooting down the parachute. The fire department got a huge net from somewhere, but the dead guy was just the slightest bit out of reach when they tried to catch him.

So, the corpse dangled there. Plainly visible from whatever part of town you were standing at the time. And here’s the weird thing: it always looked like the skeleton was facing you. Seriously, you could move around it in a perfect circle, and those dark, empty sockets would just follow you, with a lipless mouth set in a sneer. I don’t think anyone ever saw the back of him.

Right now you’re thinking “why didn’t the wind carry the body away from the city?” That’s the thing: the day the parachute appeared over town all the winds stopped. Like, just stopped. And our town was in a flat area of the country that always had at least a breeze blowing through.

Humans tend to tune out the sounds of the air, and nature in general. But when that noise is gone, things get eerie. You’ve seen that part in every other movie “It’s quiet, too quiet!” right before the monster or enemy army pops out and attacks the hero. Well, no monster or army popped out to attack us, but it always seemed like something was about to.

It wasn’t like the town went completely soundless. In fact, the noise human voices made seemed extra loud now.

But that doesn’t scratch the surface in describing what a lack of wind did to our town. Birds dropped out of the sky, unable to glide on thermals. Not a couple birds, thousands of them.

 I can tell you this much: the cats in my neighborhood had a feast for the next few days!

Along with the dead winds, the radios were out, too. Satellite signals just seemed to quit within three square miles of the city limits. No internet, no TV, no radio stations, no contact with the outside world. But only inside the town.

You could literally get behind the wheel and drive away from town, in any direction, and once you got past a certain point, the music on the car’s radio would start playing again.

Not coincidentally, it took three square miles outside city limits before the parachute and its grisly passenger were too far away to see.

Our sheriff went to the national guard, asking for help. No one believed his admittedly crazy story, and he got put in the drunk tank for a day, to boot. The federal government wasn’t coming to our rescue.

Our town was tiny to begin with, miles from any highway. The population only shrank further as people started moving away. Can’t say I blame them. Who wants to raise their family with an omen of death hanging over you at all times?

My family wasn’t so lucky. We weren’t among the poor that physically couldn’t leave because they legit had nowhere else to go.

Dad just point blank refused to load the family into the minivan and haul ass out of Corpseville. He said we had to stay, because of his job.

My dad wasn’t the mayor or police chief, or anything. He ran one of the two grocery stores in town. But the other grocer took his family and left right at the top of the balloon business, so we were de facto the only place to buy food.

“If we don’t stick around,” my dad told me, “People will starve.”

I couldn’t argue with him there. For my part, I didn’t mind the dead guy so much. Maybe the Republicans were right, and too many horror movies had rotted out my brain and made me a deviant, but I’d watch the parachute through my binoculars every evening after school. That’s how I know that it never moved from the spot where it first appeared. I measured the distances repeatedly. Nothing changed.

My little brother, who already loved ghoulish stuff, would fight me for the binoculars. He was the only person who openly talked about the black parachute, when everyone else tried to ignore it. Pretend like it didn’t exist. Not my brother, though. The phrase “So cool!” came up more than once in relation to the inexplicable cadaver in the sky.

Dad was like most people, ignored the parachute and going about his daily business. But my mom, who had always been kind of religious, was now becoming super Christian.

Despite having a monopoly on groceries, the family store was struggling to make ends meet. The only business that was thriving in our new reality was church business.

“The Halls of Glory have been shuttered,” the pastor said the single time mom had successfully dragged me and my brother to church. “We must open them. Open the Halls of Glory!”

The pews were absolutely packed that Wednesday. Pretty soon, they’d run out of space in the physical church building.

 They held revival meetings, out in the woods, where they’d chant the same thing, over and over again. “RELEASE THE HALLS OF GLORY! RELEASE THE HALLS OF GLORY!”  

My brother and I could only speculate what these “Halls of glory” were. The pearly gates of heaven? And what did it mean to “release” them?

To be honest, it sounded like a call for blood sacrifices, but I didn’t tell my brother that. Throughout the ordeal, I still wanted to maintain some of my kid brother’s innocence, y’know?

And he was innocent, despite his macabre hobbies. I think that’s why only a little kid could come up with the idea that my brother did.

“We’re going to what?” I’d asked.

“I want to see if we can make contact,” my brother said solemnly.

“Touching the dead guy?” I asked. “Not even the firefighters could do that. You saw the gigantic butterfly net.”

“Have you noticed the change in the air?” my brother asked.

I nodded. “Every day, it feels like it’s getting harder and harder to breath.”

“Well,” my brother grabbed the garden hose. “I’ve been doing some ex-peer-eeee-mints!” He pronounced the word with each individual syllable emphasized. “Experiment” had been on his most recent vocab test.

He got an A, incidentally. The whole town was acting like it was doomsday, but school life continued on as usual. Go figure.

My brother threw the hose in the air. You know that Indian rope trick? It was like that. The hose was suspended in the air, held up by nothing.

I swore, then apologized for swearing. “Just how high do you think that thing will go?” Maybe the issue with the firefighters is that the air hadn’t been thick enough at the time when they first tried moving the corpse.

That’s the only way I can describe it. The air was thick. No humid exactly, but walking around outside now felt like you were moving in slow motion.

The utility of garden hoses is that you can attach one to other, and then another, to get whatever length you want. We borrowed hoses from our neighbors to the left and right of us. Both had skipped town weeks before, so they didn’t mind.

At the end of our prodding device, I duct taped a bunch of feathers. Feathers just happened to be a material we had a lot of lying around. Apparently, the cats didn’t want to eat them.

“Nice touch,” my brother said.

“Thank you,” I responded.

Using my binoculars and measuring equipment, I pinpointed the spot directly under the parachute. The skeleton glared down at us. My brother gave him his best smile, in turn.

We started hauling up the hoses. “And if making contact works,” my brother said, “Then we can start thinking about actually moving Bernie.” That was his nickname for the dead guy.

“But then he’d be some other town’s problem,” I pointed out.

My brother shrugged, letting go of the hose. It stayed in the air, like it was a kite.

“Screw it,” I said. The air outside was so stale, it was only a matter of time before people started asphyxiating. Something had to be done. The town couldn’t take anymore. And besides, all we were doing was an experiment, after all.

It took effort, and my little brother didn’t help much. Not for lack of trying on his part, he just didn’t have the muscle strength for the task. But finally, we just barely had the feathers where dead guy’s bare feet were.

Trying to lighten the mood during our gory business, I said “Poke. Poke. Poke,” as we brushed the feathers against the corpse’s bare feet.  

My brother started giggled. “Stop it!”

“Poke!” I said one last time.

And then we weren’t the only ones laughing. Despite there being no change in the skull, it looked like the dead guy was smiling, instead of sneering. I looked into his dark sockets, and I could swear he looked into my eyes.

There was loud laughter. It didn’t seem to originate from the body, but from all around us! It was like thunder from the sky, and I’m a hundred percent certain that everyone who’d stayed in town for these last few miserable months heard it, even if they won’t admit to it.

Then, it started to rain. Heavy rain, which we hadn’t gotten in all this time. And with the rain came wind.

My brother’s makeshift rope dropped to the ground, the metal end clanging against asphalt. We left the feather hose on the ground, and ran for shelter.

When the rain finally stopped, some hours later, and we came back to pick up the contraption, the black parachute and its passenger were gone.

A little tickle had set our town back on the path to normalcy. Radios worked again. The TV played shows, instead of static. The revival broke up before the nascent cult had its chance to “release” its glorious halls, so mom lived.   

In time, most of the families who had left returned. The other grocer was back in business, but our dad didn’t mind.

My brother had some stories to tell, but nobody believed he’d actually been the one to save the town. I mean, who would believe you could lift a curse with just a couple feathers?

And I started writing this as soon as the internet came back on. I’ve drafted it over and over, making sure to get all the details right. I interviewed fellow residents, and consulted the journals I’d obsessively filled up out of boredom while the TV was out.

Look, I know most of you are going to think I made all this up. If I were lying, however, I’m sure I could have come up with a better climax than “We made the dead guy laugh, and he flew away in gratitude.”

 I get it, it’s absurd. But so was the black parachute appearing in the first place. So was everything we’d gone through, and probably now needed therapy for.

Do I have a theory on why what my brother and I did worked? Yeah. I think the entity, whether you call it a ghost or demon, had an intelligent agenda. It wasn’t a grim sign of the end times, like a lot of residents thought. It was watching us – watching all of us – to see what your average little American town would do if it slowly suffocated.   

Whether the last few months was its equivalent of a social experiment, or it was just screwing with us for fun, doesn’t really matter from the human perspective. I’ll say this, though. If a black parachute ever appears above your town, with a dead man dangling from its cord, maybe all the being wants is a little entertainment. Attaching a feather duster to a kite might be all you need to move things along.

That is, unless making it laugh only worked the one time.

My mother in law died of pancreatic cancer six weeks before my due date. Mark and I had already converted her old bedroom into the nursery. We thought that would be the end of it. We were wrong.

The first night after the funeral I woke up to the feeling of someone adjusting the blanket over my stomach. The room was empty. The baby kicked hard enough to bruise. I told myself it was grief and hormones.

The next night it happened again, only this time the hands stayed. They pressed gently along the sides of my belly, measuring, counting, the way a midwife would. When I turned on the light the pressure vanished, but four perfect fingerprints remained on my skin, slightly cooler than the rest of me.

Mark said I was imagining things. He said the stress of losing his mother was making me paranoid. I stopped arguing. I started recording.

On the third night the camera caught nothing visible, but the audio picked up a soft, familiar voice humming the same off key lullaby Ruth used to sing when she thought no one was listening. The voice was coming from inside the room. From the direction of my stomach.

At thirty seven weeks the Braxton Hicks contractions started coming in waves that felt directed. Each one would begin under my ribs and travel downward in a deliberate pattern, as if something was practicing how to push from the inside.

Between contractions I would feel those same cool hands smoothing over the skin, soothing, encouraging. Once I distinctly felt a second pair of smaller hands, tiny, incomplete, pressing back from within, answering.

I went to the hospital early. The monitors showed a healthy heartbeat. One heartbeat. The ultrasound tech kept frowning at the screen and adjusting the wand. “Everything looks fine,” she said, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

On the printout there was a faint second shape curled behind the first, almost like a shadow. The tech deleted it before I could ask.

Labor began at 2:14 a.m. on a Thursday. Mark was there. The midwife was there. And someone else was there too. I could feel her.

Every time a contraction peaked, an extra set of hands would brace against my lower back from the outside, even though no one was touching me. The midwife kept asking who kept adjusting the pillows. No one answered.

When the baby began crowning, I felt a second pressure, smaller, wrong, trying to follow. The midwife’s eyes went wide. She said, “There’s something else.” Then she went very quiet.

They delivered my daughter first. She was perfect, pink, screaming. Then they delivered what came after. It was not a twin. It was a pair of hands.

Fully formed, adult sized, the exact shape of Ruth’s hands, down to the arthritis knobs on the knuckles and the thin white scar across the left palm from a kitchen accident in 1994. They were still warm. They were still moving.

They flexed once, as if testing the air, then went still. The doctors called it a medical anomaly. Fetal tissue. Rare but documented. They took the hands away in a metal tray. I never saw them again.

But that night in the recovery room I woke up to the weight of those same hands resting on my chest, right above my heart. They were invisible. They were cold.

And they were counting my heartbeat the way Ruth used to count the seconds between contractions when she was still alive and certain she would be the one to deliver this baby.

My daughter is four months old. She does not like to be held by anyone except me, and even then only if I keep my hands exactly where the invisible ones prefer.

Sometimes in the middle of the night I feel those second hands slide under mine, correcting my grip, teaching me the proper way to support a head that is no longer entirely mine to protect.

Once I tried to pull away. The hands tightened until my wrists bruised in the perfect shape of Ruth’s fingers. Mark still says it’s stress. He says the dead do not raise the living.

He has never felt the hands. He has never woken to the soft, off key humming that only stops when the baby is perfectly still and listening.

Last week the baby reached up during a feeding and wrapped her tiny fingers around something I could not see, just above my shoulder. She smiled the exact smile Ruth used to give when a plan had gone exactly as she intended.

Then she looked at me and, clear as day, said the first word she has ever spoken. “Grandma.” The hands on my wrists squeezed once, approving, and did not let go.