Bites Collection: Thirty Bite-Sized Horror Stories
Author: Darcy Coates
Date: 2015-10-30 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Anthologies; Paranormal
Description: The best of award-winning horror author Darcy Coates' Bites series is bought together in this collection of thirty chilling three-minute stories. Psychological horror, ghosts, dark monsters, unexplained phenomenon and visceral terror blend together into an unforgettable experience. Read them late at night... if you dare.
Publisher: Candlebreak

BITES COLLECTION

Thirty Bite-Sized Horror Stories

© Darcy Coates 2015

CONTENTS

1: Footsteps in the Night

2: The Dog’s Grave Digger

3: Flotsam

4: The Last Bus

5: House for Sale

6: Abandoned

7: Radio

8: The Resident

9: Bogrot

10: Beanie’s Fast Food

11: Ghost Town

12: 99 Messages

13: After Closing

14: Bunker

15: What Lives in the Woods

16: Quarantine

17: Room for Rent

18: The Woman in the Morgue

19: Great Aunt Enid

20: Overheard

21: The Cleaners

22: Left Behind

23: Diagen

24: Undeparted

25: Hazard Lights

26: Snow Hunting

27: Host

28: The Empty Church

29: In the Space Above the Wardrobe

30: The Sightless

1
Footsteps in the Night

Denise woke from her dream like she was clawing her way out of a deep, dark lake. Her brain felt sluggish, and she couldn’t immediately understand what had disturbed her. Then sounds filtered through: footsteps, shuffling on the cold tile floors of her kitchen.

Bernard mustn’t be able to sleep. Again.

Denise stretched a hand behind herself and felt the familiar indent in the mattress. It was cold; her husband must have been up for a while. She wished he’d come back to bed; after thirty years of marriage, she found it hard to fall asleep without company.

What time is it? Denise rolled forward to reach the lamp. Her fingers brushed a bottle, knocking it off the edge of the bedside table. The bottle’s contents rattled as it hit the floor. What’s that?

She already knew what it was, though. Sleeping pills. Her mind, still filled with that deep-water sensation, couldn’t remember why she had sleeping pills on her bedside table. She’d never suffered from insomnia. That was Bernard’s quarter.

The footsteps moved from the kitchen to the loungeroom in a path Denise was intimately familiar with. Every night he stalked through their home, searching, perhaps, for some kind of relief from his own mind. He always took the same route. From the hallway to the kitchen to the loungeroom to the hallway to the spare room, then back again. Denise was so used to it that it almost never disturbed her any more.

It’s different tonight, though. He wasn’t taking his usual care to move quietly, and his feet scraped over the carpet to produce harsh shhh, shhh, shhh sounds.

Denise’s fingers found the lamp’s button. The shadows scattered to the deepest corners of the room as the familiar shapes were illuminated. Her bureau, the beautiful wooden table that normally held her trinkets and a vase of fake flowers, was a mess. Someone had scattered the contents to the ground. Denise frowned. Who? And why did I go to bed without tidying it?

A faint, blurred memory rose in her mind. She saw herself sweeping her forearm across the table, knocking off the makeup Bernard had given her, the silver brushes Bernard had given her, even the cherished necklace he’d bought her on their thirtieth anniversary.

Denise bent over the edge of the bed to pick up the bottle she’d knocked to the floor. It was unexpectedly light. She shook it, and found it was only half-full. I’ve been taking them for a few days, then. They must be the reason my head’s so foggy. I can’t remember…

The shuffling footsteps moved through the loungeroom. Denise imagined her husband, his sagging face cold and distant as he gazed out of the full-length window towards the swaying black trees that lined their driveway. He always looked grim when the insomnia had him in its grip. Once, not long after their marriage, she’d asked him why he looked that way. He’d stared at her for a long time, but hadn’t answered.

Shhh, shhh, shhh. Bare feet dragged over the carpet as Bernard’s well-worn path took him past their bedroom. His silhouette appeared in the doorway, too far from her lamp for his features to find any relief, and finally his pacing stopped.

Denise thought he might be ready to come back to bed, but he didn’t enter the room. Shadows obscured his face, but she could make out the shock of thin, messy hair and the outline of his crumpled clothes.

“Bern?”

A strange odour accompanied him. She’d smelt it before, she knew, and recently, but she couldn’t place where.

She still cradled the bottle of sleeping pills in her hand, and she squeezed it as images flashed across her sluggish mind. The flowers, anachronistically bright, laying across the dark, polished wood. That’s what the smell is, she realised. He smells like those flowers.

She saw herself sitting at the bureau and watching the tears run down her face, ruining the makeup, bleeding the black eyeliner and the rouge that had been intended to hide her paleness. She’d been surrounded by the gifts her husband had lavished on her, and it was intolerable, so she’d swept them off the table and watched them clatter to the ground.

Then she remembered standing on a grassy swell, staring into a black hole as the polished wood was lowered into it, and she realised why she’d needed the sleeping tablets. They were the only thing that had been able to bring her rest after the funeral.

After Bernard’s funeral.

Denise turned towards the bedroom doorway, where the silhouetted man watched her.

2
The Dog’s Grave Digger

Rick swerved a fraction of a second too late. His car’s tyres screamed as they left black tracks on the asphalt. Then there was a muffled thump, a jolt Rick felt move through his body, and the car rocked to a halt.

For a moment, Rick didn’t dare do anything except breathe. Then he swore, loudly, and threw the door open.

His car’s high beams sliced through the night darkness, leaving trails of pale gold on the road. He could see the markings from his tires spread out in a lazy loop, starting where he’d first seen the dog and ending three feet too late.

Rick knelt beside his car and looked over the result of his accident. The lumpy, bloody clump of fur was definitely dead—the impact must have killed it instantly, thank goodness for small blessings—and was barely recognisable as a dog any more. Rick grimaced and felt around its neck, but it didn’t have a collar.

A stray, then? It does look thin.

Something about its nose, though, made him think it was a breed dog. It might have been a stray when he’d hit it—and he suspected it was; there weren’t any houses for a twenty-minute drive in each direction—but it had probably been someone’s pet at one time.

Rick swore again and pulled off his jacket. He’d lost a dog of his own when he was a child. The driver hadn’t even stopped. The inhumanity had cut him deeply, and, even twenty years later, he couldn’t imagine leaving the animal on the side of the road. If it had belonged to a child, that child would have wanted its pet treated respectfully.

The body mostly hung together, though one of the legs was only attached by a strip of flesh and a few muscles. Rick carefully moved it into his jacket—good thing I’m wearing the cheap one tonight—and lifted the bundle into the passenger seat.

He hesitated then, halfway through the driver’s door, as he tried to decide what to do with the animal. He could take it to a vet, and hope they disposed of it kindly. Or he could take it home and bury it in his back yard. Or…

Rick put the car into gear, a smile growing across his face as he remembered what he had stored in the trunk. He’d bought a full set of gardening equipment the week before, and hadn’t gotten around to clearing it out of his car. In amongst the shears and spades and gloves was a shovel. And surrounding him was a forest.

Yes, a burial in the woods, where its body will nurture the trees. It’s the best thing to do.

Rick drove until he found a gap in the trees wide enough for him to manoeuvre the car into. He drove past it, then reversed, so that the back of the car would be facing the woods. He was able to get the car about twenty paces into the forest before it became too thick for him to continue. It wasn’t quite far enough to disguise his car if a wayward driver happened to look in his direction, but at least it was more private than leaving his vehicle on the road. He hoped no one would see him. Goodness knew what a passer-by might think if they saw a lone man digging a hole in the woods at a quarter past midnight.

Rick turned the car off, smothering the headlights. The moon was full and bright, and the trees were sparse enough to let plenty of natural illumination through. The fallen pine needles crunched under his feet as he rounded his car and opened the boot. Inside were the tools laying on a tarpaulin. He took the shovel, walked ten paces to a clear patch of ground, and started digging.

The dirt was tightly packed, but not as bad as he’d been expecting. Even so, it was exhausting work, and he started sweating before the hole was deeper than his arm.

It’s got to be deep enough, he thought, so the wild animals can’t smell it and dig it out.

The air was frosty, and his breath plumed in front of his face every time he exhaled. He knew his fingers would have become numb if the exercise wasn’t pumping blood through them so quickly.

A car came down the road, and Rick froze, aware of how guilty he’d look if he were seen. The car was travelling quickly, though, and passed Rick’s hiding place without slowing down.

The road was rural and rarely-travelled, even during the day. Rick hadn’t passed any cars during the last ten minutes of his drive, so he didn’t expect to be disturbed again.

He dug until the sweat stained the underarms and back of his t-shirt, and stuck his dark hair to his forehead. He’d made a good hole, he thought. A little larger than the dog would need, and deep enough that the bones wouldn’t come up for a long time. Everyone deserves peace.

Panting, his limbs trembling from the exertion, Rick climbed out of the hole and turned back to the car. Instead of going to the jacket-wrapped bundle in the passenger seat, though, he went to the boot and pushed the tools off the tarpaulin. Then he grabbed the corner of the blue material and pulled it out of the boot, straining against the weight. Dead weight, he thought, and chuckled to himself as he hauled his baggage towards the hole.

She’d go in with the tarpaulin, of course. A little extra insurance to protect her from being dug up. The tarpaulin couldn’t be traced back to him; he’d bought it two states away at the same time as the tools—a complete set, to ensure there was no suspicion—and paid with cash. As far as anyone knew, the last time he’d seen his wife was that morning, when she’d kissed him on the cheek and left for work. Her car would be found abandoned at the train station the following day.

Rick gave the bundle a final shove and watched as it tumbled into the hole. Then he returned to the passenger seat of the car and drew the dog out with significantly more care. The dog had never cheated on him. The dog had never lied to him. In all likelihood, the dog had never even had a malicious thought. He knelt on the edge of the grave and laid the animal’s body on top of his wife’s, then set to pouring the mound of dirt over the pair of them.

We all need rest.

3
Flotsam

A body lay among the rock pools.

Leisi froze, one hand clutching her beach bag, the other halfway through wiping strands of hair out of her eyes, as she stared at the shape.

The bluff had a good view of the rock-dotted beach and dark, rolling ocean. When she’d left her hotel that morning, it had been a clear spring day. Blue skies, fluffy clouds and a warm breeze had encouraged her to keep her plans for a visit to the beach, even though the café waitress had warned bad weather was coming. The waitress had been right, of course; dark clouds had begun to gather not long after Leisi left the town.

She hadn’t realised just how remote the beach would be. She lived in Sydney, where a hot day meant every sandy cove was packed with sunbathers and families. But this wasn’t Australia; it was New Zealand, and a good way out from the touristy areas. The beach looked like it almost never saw human intervention. She’d even passed a group of seals happily sunning themselves on the rocks a few kilometres back.

Maybe that’s what the shape is: a seal. Sailors used to mistake them for mermaids, didn’t they?

Leisi squinted at the shape.

It was definitely human. There were no flippers or oily skin; but two arms, dragging through the rock pools as the waves nudged at the figure.

Leisi turned to the path that led to the town, but hesitated. It was more than an hour’s walk back. Above her, thick clouds were converting the sky’s cornflower blue into grey as the storm swelled.

The body rocked in a mesmerising cycle as the water lapped around it. She didn’t think it had caught on any rocks; if the tide pulled it out, it would be lost again, possibly forever.

I can’t let that happen.

The incline leading to the rocky shore was steep, and Leisi tightened her grip on her bag before sitting on the edge of the grassy overhang and swinging her feet over the edge. She slid down the slope, regained her feet, and jogged towards the shape swaying in the water.

It was wearing dark blue clothes. Some sort of uniform, Leisi thought, though the fabric was tattered from being snagged in the rocky surf. He might have fallen from one of the freighters that circled the islands, or possibly even a cruise ship.

As Leisi moved closer, the smell hit her. It was intense, making her stomach muscles clench and her throat restrict. She tried to breathe through her mouth, but the odour became stuck on her tongue.

He’d been dead for a while. Under the torn clothes, his skin was bubbling—swelling—as bacteria worked on converting the flesh into gas. He lay face-down in the water, so she couldn’t see his expression, but his scalp had lost a lot of its hair.

Get him onto the beach. Get him secured. Then go for help.

Leisi knelt beside the body. The smell made her retch, and she pressed her right sleeve over her nose as she reached her spare hand towards the corpse.

Thunder cracked overhead. It was close; so close that she’d certainly get drenched on the walk back to the town.

Leisi squeezed her eyes until they were nearly closed, and touched the corpse’s shoulder. The cloth was cold and wet, and felt slimy under her fingers. She wanted to move back, to look away, but didn’t allow herself. Instead, she tightened her grip on the jacket, and pulled.

The body was heavier than she’d expected. Its clothes caught in the rocks and its head lolled, spilling litres of water out of its open mouth and the holes pocking its skin. With the water came more of the smell.

The smell.

She’d never thought decaying human could be so overwhelming. Leisi gagged as she pulled the figure out of the water and dragged it further up the beach. She didn’t let herself stop until she’d reached the curve where the beach rose into the bluff, then she let go and stepped back with a gasp of relief.

The body was missing a leg. Leisi’s heart dropped. She glanced at the water’s edge, where the limb had come free and floated, half-submerged, in the sea-foamed rock pool.

I can’t just leave it there.

Leisi approached the leg. The pants had stayed with the body, leaving the limb exposed. It looked ghastly; grey, bubbling, and eaten away in many sections where sea creatures had feasted. Touching the flesh was abhorrent. It was slimy and spongy, with just enough of the familiar fleshy texture to re-trigger Leisi’s gag reflex. She carried it up the beach as quickly as she could and left it beside the body.

Another crack of thunder deafened her as the sky lit up. Leisi turned to the ocean, where the waves were rolling closer, growing in size, and breaking on the bank of rocks a little out from the shore. A huge, heavy rain drop hit her face.

The waves would sweep into the cove as the storm grew. If the police decided to wait until after the storm, the body might be washed away by the time they reached the beach. Leisi stared at the water-logged corpse. It might have a family. And it deserves a proper funeral. I can’t let it be lost again.

She searched along the shore for rocks. Most of them were too large to lift, but she was able to find half a dozen small stones which she wedged around the corpse to weigh it down.  Will that be enough? What if it’s not? I should find something to bring back for the police to identify the body, at least.

Leisi knelt beside the figure and held her breath while she searched its pockets. If he’d been carrying a wallet, it had been lost to the ocean. As she felt around the jacket something else came loose, and Leisi stared at it for a moment before deciding. That will have to do.

She tugged the item free, then stepped away from the body, stifling her gag reflex, and carefully placed her prize into the beach bag. This way, even if the body’s gone by the time they find the beach, they’ll have something. Something to identify. Something to bury.

The rain had started to fall in earnest. With a final glance at the body, Leisi scrambled up the slope. She reached the path at the top, wiped her wet hair out of her face, and began the long walk back to town, the corpse’s head tucked snugly into her beach bag.

4
The Last Bus

Raj ground his teeth as he leaned his forehead on the bus timetable and tried to read the routes. The twenty-six, twenty-eight and forty stopped there, but it didn’t say which ones, if any, went to Calgary.

He glanced at the houses lining the street. He didn’t like to think their occupants might be watching him; laughing, possibly, at how obviously confused he was. The familiar, tight feeling of humiliation built in his stomach, but he pushed it down.

You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of in this neighbourhood. It’s only two steps away from being a slum; probably half the people who live here are illiterate.

A squeal of tires disturbed Raj. He turned and saw, to his surprise, a bus had pulled up beside him. I didn’t even hear it coming.

He tried to see a direction or a number on but bus’s face, but it didn’t have either. The doors opened with a quiet whoosh.

“Hey,” Raj said, and the driver, a plump, middle-aged man with a pleasantly smiling face, leaned towards him. “Where’re you heading?”

The man laughed. “All sorts of places, kid. Where d’you want to go?”

Raj glanced at the dilapidated houses around him. He hadn’t expected anyone who managed this sort of route to be pleasant, let alone friendly. The driver looked like the sort of person who belonged in comfortable middle-upper class suburbs, managing a private school’s bus, perhaps.

“Uh…” Raj glanced back at the sign’s map. He’d had the vague idea of going to Calgary, where he knew one of his brother’s friends lived, but he could be flexible. More than anything, he wanted to get out of the neighbourhood. “You passing near Calgary at all?”

“Sure am,” the driver said, beckoning Raj aboard. “We’re looping through a few other suburbs first, though, so it’s going to be a long trip. That okay?”

Raj hesitated, one foot in the bus. A long trip meant a lot of money, which he didn’t have.  “How much?”

The bus driver gave him an appraising look, his blue eyes scanning Raj’s stained hoodie and torn jeans. “Kid, I hope I don’t seem out of place saying this, but you look like you’re in some sort of trouble.”

If an alcoholic with a raging temper and peculiar ideas about what fatherhood meant counted as trouble, Raj was in a whole lot of it. He felt his face heat as he gave a dismissive shrug.

“Hey,” the driver said, and the warm smile grew over his face. “We all need a hand-up sometimes. The ticket’s on me.”

Raj didn’t know what to say. He thought he mumbled some sort of thanks as he stepped onto the bus, then the doors drew closed behind him as Raj looked for a seat.

The bus held an eclectic collection of passengers. Near the front was a young, pretty woman with dyed-blue hair and nose piercings. Three rows behind her sat a businessman with a limp paper folded over his hands. A little further back was a teenager a couple of years younger than Raj. Judging by his sickly pallor and the way he shot paranoid glances at his companions, Raj suspected he’d been dipping into some less-than-legal substances. A man who seemed to be homeless lounged against one of the windows, sleeping. Two middle-aged women sat at the other side of the bus, near the back, knitting. And a girl with smeared mascara stared out the window with studied silence.

Raj took a seat behind the pretty girl near the front, and leaned back so he could rest his shoulder against the window. The girl shot him a bright smile as he passed. Raj smiled back against his better judgement.

“All settled?” the driver called as he put the bus into gear. Raj felt a shock pass through him. When they’d been talking, the driver had held his hands in his lap, where Raj couldn’t see them. Now he’d placed them back on the steering wheel, and Raj was faced with the sight of ten long, dark-yellow nails.

It was so bizarre and so out of character for the otherwise bright and tidy driver, that Raj couldn’t take his eyes away. The nails were at least three inches long, and seemed sharpened at the tip.

“Bad day?” a husky voice asked. Raj startled, and turned towards the pretty girl.

“Wha…?”

“You looked pretty deep in thought there,” she said. Her voice was lower than Raj would have expected, and he found he quite liked it. A hesitant smile started to grow across his face, but he squashed it quickly.

“Well, not the best, but, uh…”

“Hey,” a voice barked from further back in the bus. “This isn’t the way to Hyde Street.”

Raj turned to see the drugged-out kid had spoken. He looked agitated, squirming in his seat and stealing glances at the two knitting women who sat opposite.

The bus driver glanced into his rear-view mirror, a sunny smile lighting up his face. “You’re right,” he said simply, then, addressing the rest of the bus, “Think we’ve got enough?”

A chorus of voices answered. “Yeah.” “Good for me.” “Let’s do it.”

The driver took a sharp turn and picked up speed, weaving the bus through some of the darker, lesser-used lanes. Raj felt unease tickle at his stomach. He glanced at the pretty woman, who had turned in her seat to face him. Her large, dark eyes crinkled into a smile. She didn’t seem concerned at all.

Raj turned to look at the rest of the bus. The knitting women and the businessman all looked unaffected. Only the druggie, the teenage girl with the smeared mascara, and the homeless man who’d woken from his doze with a confused snort seemed in any way disturbed.

“What’s going on?” Raj asked, turning back to the driver. He didn’t recognise the area they were in, but it looked industrial; warehouses lined the road, and he couldn’t see any other traffic.

“Just wait a moment,” the driver said, “and you’ll understand.”

Raj didn’t want to understand. He wanted to get off the damn bus with its damn creepy occupants and its damn strange driver with his damn long nails.

“What’s wrong with your hands?” the druggie’s voice rang out again, and Raj turned. The kid was glaring at the knitting women, who both gave him equally polite smiles. Raj leaned forward in his seat to see them more clearly, but both women had their knitted scarves draped over their hands.

Raj felt, all of a sudden, that this was a very bad sign. He found his eyes roving the rest of the bus’s occupants, checking their hands. The druggie’s, the homeless man’s, the crying teenager’s and his own were all visible. But the knitting ladies had theirs covered with their yarn, the business man had the newspaper draped over his, and the pretty woman in front of Raj had hers tucked into her pockets.

“What…” he began, and then the bus pulled to a stop.

There were no streetlights. No houses. No cars. Raj stood and prepared to bolt for the door, but the driver pressed a button and they locked with a quiet click.

“Let’s eat,” the bus driver said, simply. And suddenly all of the hidden hands in the bus were exposed as the knitting and newspapers were put away.

Raj felt a scream build in the back of his throat, but he already knew no one would hear him. The creatures with long, yellowed nails moved with deceptive speed. Both knitting women descended on the druggie, their jaws opening wider than a human’s possibly could as sharp, shark-like teeth extended forward. The motion was almost too fast for Raj to follow, but he caught the abortive, gurgled scream that cut off in a spray of blood. The suited man dropped his paper and leapt over the back of his seat to reach the half-asleep homeless man. The bus driver loped forward, past Raj, his eyes fixed on the terrified teenage girl. A fleck of blood hit Raj’s cheek and he turned, horrified, to find the pretty girl’s dark eyes an inch from his face.

“Sorry.” She was smiling, but her breath was contaminated with something sick and rotten as she extended her yellow claws towards Raj. “Today’s about to get an awful lot worse.”

5
House for Sale

Smile, Pam coached herself. She was watching a young couple walk through the kitchen, noting the damage to the cabinets and where tiles had broken off the walls to expose the dirty plaster beneath. Look attentive but not obsessive. And for the love of all that’s merciful, don’t let them see how much you hate this house.

“Do you think the owner would be open to negotiation?” Paul, the husband, asked. He had huge eyebrows which had greyed before his hair. They reminded Pam of fuzzy caterpillars.

“I’m sure they would.” Pam tried to inject just the right level of warmth in her voice. They’ve got to think you’re on their side. They’ve got to trust you.

Paul was clearly trying not to let his interest show, but it still slipped through in the way he rocked on the balls of his feet and kept glancing at his wife. Melissa, the young bride, clearly had the final say in the purchase, but she seemed interested, too.

This might be it, Pam thought, beckoning her companions into the living room to show off the dusty stone fireplace and scratched wooden floors. After eight years on the market, I might actually sell the Hunt Street property.

The house was notorious in real estate circles. No one had been able to sell it, or get anything more than vague curiosity, since it had been listed for sale. During that time the house had deteriorated and decayed. Stains crept down the plaster walls and water damage peeled up the bases of the cupboards. That wasn’t the main reason the house remained empty, though.

“It would make a great project for anyone interested in home improvements,” Pam said, sneaking a glance at Paul. He seemed the sort of person who fancied himself a handyman, and she wasn’t wrong. His eyes lit up at the prospect.

“It’s going to be a lot of work,” Melissa said.

C’mon, Melissa, don’t nuke this on me. I could really do with the commission.

“I’ve been looking for a hobby to take up on the weekends,” Paul supplied, and Pam beamed at him.

Melissa didn’t answer. Her attention had been diverted to the door at the back of the living room. “What’s through there?”

“The basement,” Pam said, stepping forward. “Would you like to see inside?”

Please say no. Please say no. Please say no…

“Sure,” Melissa said, and it took a lot of effort for Pam to keep the smile on her face. “Absolutely.”

She’d never been into the basement. She’d never had any desire to go into the basement. But, if the newlyweds wanted to see it, who was she to say no?

“It hasn’t been opened in a while,” Pam said, searching through her keyring. The keys were all old, bronze and partially rusted, though they had plastic tags to list which rooms they unlocked. “It might be a bit mildewy down there.”

Melissa’s hand fluttered to her belly, which had the barest hint of a bump.

Aaah, so it’s going to be a family home, then. I’m not sure it’s a place I’d want my kids growing up in, but, if they want to take it off the market, I won’t complain.

Pam had gone through her keyring without finding the tag reading “basement,” so started sorting through it again, more carefully. “Sorry—I can’t seem to find it—”

“That’s fine,” Melissa said, turning away from the door to Pam’s great relief. “Can we see upstairs, instead?”

“Absolutely.” Smile, smile, smile.

They knew the house’s history, Pam reminded herself as she climbed the stairs. The law said her real estate company couldn’t sell the house without disclosing any facts that could dissuade a buyer. And boy, the Hunt Street property has enough facts to write an encyclopaedia.

The steps creaked under Pam’s sneakers, and tiny sprinkles of dust fell from the ceiling. She tried not to touch the railing or the wall. The house had always felt dirty to her. She knew the crime scene cleaning team had been thorough, but even so, the building felt tainted—stained—in a way that no amount of bleach could cure.

Don’t let them see it affecting you. Let them think it’s a nice fixer-upper with a quirky history. If you can make this sale, you’ll never have to think about the house again.

In the top floor, Pam led the couple through the bedrooms as quickly as she could without looking like she was rushing them. “Here’s the master bedroom.” That’s where Mr and Mrs Bellet were murdered in their sleep by an unknown assailant. He used an axe, did you know? Apparently the blood sprayed all up that wall there and dripped off the roof. The crime scene cleaners had to strip the room entirely, and dig up most of the floorboards to purge it.

“Through here is the children’s bedroom.” Pam gave Melissa an extra bright smile and a knowing wink. Little Frankie Bellet’s blood ran through the mattress and stained the floor. Please don’t Google search for the pictures. I did, and I’d give anything to forget them.

“And the spare room.” It was a pretty, airy area. The killer’s message, scrawled in blood across the opposite wall, had been purged and painted over. Sometimes, when Pam glanced at the wall out of the corner of her eye, she imagined she could still see the words there. ‘This house is mine.’

Four years of hunting, four years of failed or inconclusive DNA testing, and four years of the police chasing increasingly flimsy tipoffs had all been in vain. The killer had never been found. That was what chilled Pam the most; the crimes had been terrible, yes, but the potential that they could be echoed in another home, with another family… still, it didn’t seem to bother the newlyweds. They were more interested in the dirt-cheap price and how large and well-situated the building was. The atmosphere, which made Pam’s skin crawl every time she crossed the threshold, didn’t seem to touch them.

Pam pretended to gaze out of the window at the aged elm tree in the back yard while the couple talked in hushed tones behind her. Paul loved the house. His eyes were bright and he was gesticulating erratically, apparently talking about the modifications they could make to turn it into their dream home.

What was more, he seemed to be winning Melissa over. The mother-to-be gave a small nod, and Pam sensed it was her cue to step forward.

“We’d like to make an offer to your owner,” Melissa said, and Pam tried to keep her smile from becoming too wild. Did I seriously do it? After eight years, am I finally getting the Hunt Street house off my list?

“Absolutely,” Pam said, ushering them out of the room and towards the stairs. She was desperate to get outside and away of the toxic aura saturating the building. “How about we go over the details in my office? I’ll make you a lovely cup of tea while we work out your offer.”

As they headed towards their cars—Paul and Melissa into a van that had clearly been bought with the intention of expanding their family, and Pam into her mini that let her park in even the most choked city streets—Pam stole a final look at the Hunt Street property. Its gloomy façade stared back. No, it’s more than gloomy, Pam though. It’s menacing. Even the windows, from the high attic arches to the little square that belongs to the basement, look grim.

The basement window—!

Pam did a double-take, but the window was empty. She felt her mouth open a fraction as her heart rate shot up and sweat built across her palms. I didn’t imagine that, did I…?

“Ready?” Paul asked, and Pam knew for certain her smile was shaky this time.

You’re so close, Pam. Don’t lose the sale.

“Of course,” she said, sliding into the front seat of her car, and trying to erase the image of the sallow, furious face watching them through the basement window.

6
Abandoned

From a distance, the collapsed tent looked almost identical to the dark rocks dotting the snow-blanketed slope. It wasn’t until he was nearly on top of it that Angus noticed the flapping canvas.

Angus paused, his walking stick raised in preparation for his next step, as he stared at the half-buried structure. Mount Onglavia wasn’t a popular mountain-climbing destination, so he hadn’t expected to see anyone else on his weekend trip.

The tent had collapsed and become half-buried by the snow, which didn’t bode well for its occupant. Angus wasn’t high enough for altitude sickness to be a serious concern, but there were still a multitude of other hazards that could maim or kill an unprepared climber. Angus quickened his pace, struggling through the knee-deep snow, to reach the tent. “Hello?” he bellowed as he neared it, even though he didn’t expect any answer. “Anyone hurt?”

Silence. Angus circled around the tent before drawing closer and tugging on the canvas. To his shock, the fabric pulled away in a thin strip. Something had sliced through the tent’s walls, and only the poles and the weight of the snow held the remainder of the structure together.

What’s strong enough to cut through this? Angus examined the frayed edges of the thick cloth. A knife could do it. Or maybe a bear… except there aren’t supposed to be bears around here.

Angus pulled on the fabric, throwing off the heavy layer of snow to see underneath. Any thought that the tent might have been abandoned due to a defect left him. Inside was fully-stocked with food, spare clothes and hiking equipment.

Angus turned back to survey the harsh white landscape. The pine trees, spindly and dark green, were the only life he could see. It would take an average climber more than a day to reach the mountain’s base from Angus’s current location. Whoever owned the tent surely wouldn’t have gone down without his supplies, would he?

A knapsack sat in the corner, half-buried in the snow but still full of clothes and equipment. Angus swiped his gloved hand through the white powder coating the tent’s floor and found the sleeping bag underneath.

Angus didn’t like to think about what had happened to the tent’s owner. Mountaineering was a dangerous hobby, especially when done solo. Angus cast his eyes across the hills, wondering if the mystery climber’s body was out there somewhere. The tent wasn’t too far buried, which meant it must have been set up only a few days before.

Still, a few days is a long time for someone to survive around here.

The strangest part, though, were the slashed tent walls. Angus lifted parts of the canvas to examine the long, jagged gashes. He couldn’t come up with any rational explanation for the damage.

A gust of wind blew a thin flurry of slow across the landscape and batted it against Angus’s hooded face. With the wind came a low, drawn-out moan.

Angus turned towards the noise. He’d never heard anything like it before, but it somehow seemed to fit the bleak environment. He guessed it might have came from air being forced through a hole in a rock, or possibly even a cave. Either that or some sort of wolf, though it sounded like no animal he’d ever heard before. It set his teeth on edge.

Angus lurched to his feet and pulled the walking stick out of where he’d propped it in the show. I’ll tell someone about the tent when I get back to base. They’ll have a challenge finding a body among these rocks, but, if someone’s been reported missing, it might be a little comfort to their family to know their last location.

Angus re-adjusted his face mask and turned to the path that led towards the mountain’s top. The summit was no more than four hours away. Three, if the weather stayed good.

The low, long moan echoed across the icy hills again, and Angus paused. No, don’t start thinking that. Just keep walking.

He turned back to the woods, his eyes scanning the trees.

But what if? What if it’s the camper, hurt and calling for help?

Angus shook his head and swivelled back to the path. The tent’s been abandoned for days. No one can survive out here without shelter for that long.

Are you certain, though? Are you willing to risk leaving a man to die up here if you’re wrong?

Angus turned back to the trees as he tried to figure out where the sound had come from. “Hello?”

C’mon. You’re building things out of proportion. And the sun’s getting low; you’ll need to keep moving if you want to reach the top of the mountain before sundown.

Still, Angus hesitated. The noise came to him again, floating through the frigid air, its tone hollow and hungry and raw.

Angus swore and began jogging towards the woods. He had difficulty moving through the snow at a normal rate; trying to run in it was near impossible. Even so, the sound was fading, and he wanted to find its source before he lost it again.

He squirmed around an crop of rocks, and when he dropped down into the sheltered hollow behind it, his foot landed on something that snapped under his weight.

Angus felt his mouth dry. He stumbled backwards, lost his balance, and fell.

Coiled into the sheltered hollow of the rocks was a human body, its limbs spread out and head lolled to one side. Angus recognised a popular brand of hiking jacket, though it had been unzipped to expose the belly underneath.

Or, what had once been the hiker’s belly.

The body had been eviscerated, its clothing shredded and its insides torn out. The organs were frozen solid on the ground, waiting for spring to thaw the snow and make them vulnerable to birds of prey and wild beasts. The face, perfectly preserved, held an expression of mingled shock and horror. The eyes bulged and the mouth was open, though something seemed to have eaten its tongue.

The wail came from the patch of woods behind Angus, and it sounded far, far closer than it had before. He turned, slowly, and faced the being that watched him from just behind the closest trees.

7
Radio

The car horn blared, cutting through Luke’s momentary distraction. He corrected his ute and refocussed on the narrow, twisting band of road as the car passed him in the opposite direction.

The twenty-minute drive through the mountain pass always left Luke jumpy. A high rock wall rose on his left side, where small, sickly plants struggled to dig their roots into the granite. To his right was a dropoff, segregated from the road by a thin metal rail.

Everyone took the mountain pass too quickly, including Luke. The speed sign said sixty kilometres an hour, but he took it at seventy-five. The faster I get to the other side, the better.

Moonlight, bright thanks to the full orb, flooded the road. It was well past midnight and exhaustion was gnawing at Luke. All he wanted was to get to his friend’s house, roll onto the couch he’d been promised, and sleep until midday the next morning.

The car’s left wheels vibrated as they ran over the rocks lining the edge of the road. Luke swore, and corrected his path again. I’m getting sloppy. We can’t have that.

He pressed his palm to the radio’s button, and the car was filled with the jovial voice of a talk show presenter. Pre-recorded, Luke thought, based on how buzzed the man’s voice sounded. No one was that perky at one in the morning.

The noise helped, though, and Luke let it wash over him as he focussed his eyes on the road. For some reason, there was a second voice in the background of the station, talking a little too quietly for Luke to make out the words.

Did they mess up the recording, or something? Maybe they’re playing two tracks at the one time.

It was both frustrating and distracting, and Luke changed the station. The new wavelength had party music, like they always seemed to play on Fridays. It wasn’t his kind of tune, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

There was something off about the songs, though, and it took Luke a moment to realise what it was. They had a man’s in the background, and it was throwing off the beat.

That’s the same voice that was on the other station. Maybe my radio’s picking up interference?

Luke scanned through four other station, and each time the voice came through, too faint to hear the words, but not quiet enough to ignore. Luke scowled at the radio, trying to figure out what was wrong with it, and a blaring car horn shocked him back to alertness.

Jeeze, don’t lose focus now. There’s only ten more minutes on this road, then you’re back into the farmland. Pay attention.

He’d left the radio on a dead space between stations. Strangely, though, the voice continued through the crackling static. Without other voices or music to distract him, Luke tried to make out the words.

“…eighteen dead… found… from the wreckage…”

Okay, so it’s a news station, then. Luke reached one hand towards the radio to turn it off, but then the static suddenly cleared, and the voice became clear.

“…a private plane was shot out of the sky by Kyle King, who had drunkenly mistaken it for a large bird. The plane’s pilot, Tom Jenner, died instantly. In Wisconsin, USA, a child covered his heater with a blanket before going to bed, which started a fire while the family was asleep. All three died from smoke inhalation. Jon and Louise Hedcliff went scuba diving during their honeymoon in Bali. Louise’s equipment malfunctioned, drowning her before she could reach the surface. In the West Isles…”

The hairs rose across the back of Luke’s arms. This was nothing like any news station he’d heard before. The announcer’s voice was unnervingly even and lacked any sort of nuance or emotion. It was almost as though he was listing facts off of a card. The deaths, a constant stream of them, seemed to have no relationship to each other. They spanned from Iceland to New Zealand, and had a multitude of causes.

“In Cannes, Australia, Paul Favetta suffered a heart attack at his granddaughter’s birthday party. The guests assumed it was a joke, and only called an ambulance when it was too late to save him. In Vanuatu, a…”

Luke hit the radio’s button, silencing it. What a weird station. Maybe it’s a private project. Like some local got his hands on a radio broadcaster and is doing this as a sick joke, or something.

The radio crackled, and the monotonous voice filled Luke’s car again. “In New York, USA, three teenagers were shot in an ally by their classmate, Kendrick Heslop. Kendrick then turned the gun on himself. In Denmark, Mal Broger choked on a fishbone. She lived alone, and won’t be found for five days.”

Wait… won’t be found?

Luke slammed his fist on the dash. Static filled the radio for a second, but couldn’t smother the unrelenting voice. Luke tried pressing the power button multiple times, but nothing stopped the monologue.

“What the hell,” Luke spat.

“In Western Vale, Australia, Antonio Reynolds lost control of his vehicle while navigating a narrow mountain pass. He hit a ute belonging to Luke Guerra. Both died instantly.”

Luke turned his eyes back to the road and gasped.

8
The Resident

Allie shifted the crowbar to her left hand as she glanced up and down the length of plywood boards covering the space below her home.

The crawlspace under the house had been boarded up since before Allie had bought the property. The real estate agent had said it would make an excellent storage space, though. And, with another five months until the weather was warm enough to work in her garden, Allie figured she might as well put the storage space to use and clear up her yard.

Allie approached one of the plywood boards and pressed the tip of her crowbar into the narrow gap above it. The wood had discoloured from years of exposure to the weather, but had held up surprisingly well. It groaned, creaked and cracked as Allie forced the gap wider, then broke free with a loud snap. She pulled the board away and threw it to one side, leaving a two-foot opening into the crawlspace.

She dropped the crowbar and picked up the torch she’d sat on the porch. Allie turned the light on and angled the harsh white beam into the space below her house.

It was larger than she’d expected. While there was only a three-foot-high gap visible from the outside, the ground dipped just past the entrance, creating nearly enough room for a person to stand upright.

It was hard to see with only a small circle of light, but there seemed to be items already stored in the space below her home. She could see something that looked like a broken chair, as well as a pile of bags nestled into the corner. The house’s support pillars blocked much of her view, and Allie, with a final glance at the garden, lowered herself through the gap and into the crawlspace.

It was a tight fit through the plywood hole, but once she was in, the ground dropped away quickly, and she was able to move forward when she crouched.

The air was much cooler than outside. Allie was aware of a smell, dirty and musty and decayed, that hung in the air. She pressed her sleeve over her nose to block out the stench, and towards the plastic bags.

They were all sealed, but several had splits down their sides. They looked like they were filled with garbage. Did the previous owners seriously leave their trash down here?

Allie poked at one of the split bags with her foot, and rags fell out. They looked like they’d once been clothes, but had been worn down until holes developed and seams broke, making them unwearable. Under the clothes seemed to be broken plates and cups and bent cutlery.

A quiet, scratching noise disturbed her, and Allie turned in time to see a rat scamper out of her torch’s light to hide behind…

A mattress?

Allie approached the lumpy shape, trying to breathe through her mouth as much as possible. The mattress had broken down, and several of its springs poked through the fabric, but, strangely enough, someone seemed to have patched it with rags similar to what she’d found in the bags. It was pressed against one of the support pillars, which had hid it from view of Allie’s hole in the plywood.

Beyond the mattress, a hand-made shelf stood propped against the wall. Allie moved towards it, but jumped as her foot hit something, sending it clattering across the dirt. She turned the torch down and saw empty tins—dozens of them—littering the ground.

A voice in the back of Allie’s head had started to panic. It was telling her to get out—and get out fast—but curiosity compelled her towards the shelf.

She turned her torch over the odd collection arranged on the wooden boards. A plate, a cup, a spoon, a fork and a knife. Next to them sat two candle stubs, burnt down to their bases.

On the shelf below stood a strange assortment of toys; a doll, too filthy for use. A pull-toy that had lost almost all of its bright paint. A colouring book had been sat at the back of the shelf, propped upright as though it were an art display. Allie reached towards it gingerly and pulled the cover back. The pages inside had been coloured so thoroughly and so vigorously that she couldn’t see a single inch of white paper. It was almost as though its owner had been over the same pages dozens of times. Even so, the colouring was crude, and in many cases didn’t even try to stay within the lines.

The final item on the shelf was a polaroid camera. It reminded Allie of the camera she’d inherited from her grandfather. She thought she still had it in storage somewhere, though she hadn’t seen it in years.

Nausea was rising in Allie’s stomach. She turned towards the crawlspace’s exit, and froze. A series of photos had been stuck to the pillar beside the mattress. They’d clearly been taken with the polaroid camera, and were clumsy and often blurry, but it was impossible for Allie to mistake the subject.

The photos were of her. Some showed her digging in her yard—that must have been months ago, when I planted the garden—and others were of her leaving the house and locking the door behind herself. A final series, stuck in place-of-pride near the mattress’s head, had been taken through her bedroom window, and showed Allie asleep in her bed. In the closest photo, Allie wore the pyjamas she’d purchased just a week previously.

Allie’s hand rose to cover her mouth. She turned towards the square of light in the plywood wall, her escape, and inhaled sharply. A person—or something that resembled a person—stood in the light. His face was strangely sagged, like his body had been sucked dry. His eyes bugged out of his head with a terrific intensity. Limp hair ran down to frame his cheeks, which housed an unnaturally large mouth.

Then his mouth opened, splitting into a smile, as the batteries in Allie’s light died.

9
Bogrot

Meg opened her purse and began fishing through it. “He wasn’t any trouble, was he?”

Tara, her schoolbooks tucked under one arm, shook her head so vigorously that her hair fluttered around her face. “Nah. He went to bed early, and hasn’t stirred since.”

“Good.” Meg fished out the promised twenty dollars, and added an extra five. She’d been away for nearly an hour longer than she’d anticipated; she could only be grateful that Tara was patient enough to wait for her.

Tara said her goodbyes and hurried to her car while Meg let herself into the house. The building was still and dark. Meg wouldn’t expect her husband home for another hour or two; it was football night for him, and sometimes he wouldn’t come home until the early morning, tired and delighted and smelling of cheap beer.

Meg dropped her car keys and purse onto the kitchen counter, and went to her son’s room. She kept the hall light off and pressed the door open gently, expecting Riley to be asleep. The boy was sitting bolt-upright in his bed, though, and gasped when Meg opened the door.

She turned the light on and went to him. “Hey, honey. What’s wrong?”

His dark eyes, so much like his father’s, blinked at her from under long lashes. “Bad dream,” he said, and his eyes immediately turned to the window.

“Want to tell me about it?” Meg asked, sitting on the edge of his bed. She could hear their dog, Jasper, barking in the yard. Something’s gotten him worked up. I’ll have to check on him before bed.

Riley gave his mother a sidelong glance but hesitated, seemingly uncertain of how to start. “Have you ever heard of the Bogrot?”

Meg quirked her eyebrows up. “Nope. What’s that?”

“Tara was telling me about them.” Riley shrugged and pulled the blankets further up his body. “She says one’s been following her.”

Meg pursed her lips. “She shouldn’t be telling you scary stories, especially not before bedtime.”

Riley’s huge eyes turned back to Meg, desperately sincere in his desire not to get his babysitter in trouble. “Don’t blame Tara, I made her! I begged her and begged her to tell me the scariest story she could. She didn’t really want to, but I made her tell me about the Bogrot.”

Bogrot sounded like exactly the sort of name a young adult would choose for a fictional monster. Meg sighed. “Okay, why don’t you tell me about this Bogrot, and I’ll tell you if I think it’s scary.”

Riley shrugged. She could tell he was trying to look nonchalant, but the way his eyes kept flicking to the window gave him away. “Well,” he said, speaking slowly. “Well, I made her promise to tell me the scariest story she possibly could, and she said this one stopped her from sleeping a lot as a kid. She said there was a monster, which she called the Bogrot, that used to follow her around at night. She didn’t like going outside after dark because of it.”

Meg followed her son’s eyes to the window, where the moonlight came through the thick trees at the back of the yard. Jasper’s barking was becoming more frantic. He’s probably found a raccoon. “And what exactly does a Bogrot do?”

“It makes squelching noises when it follows her. She says it hides in the shadows so it’s hard to see, but it has yellow eyes and really long claws.”

That sounds ridiculous. He’s getting too old to be frightened of monsters. “And it scared you so badly you had a nightmare?”

Riley sensed he was being teased, and bristled. “You didn’t hear the way she described it! Like it could really be there, waiting for me to step outside. Waiting for you.” He shivered, and pulled his blankets still higher. “And I thought I heard you call Jasper from the back of the garden, and Jasper was barking and barking and barking, and then suddenly there was a snap of huge teeth, and…” Riley trailed off, and turned his huge eyes towards his mother.

Meg felt a stab of guilt for teasing her son. Of course an eight-year-old would be disturbed if he dreamed his pet had been eaten. She pulled Riley into a hug and squeezed him tightly. “Hey, it’s okay. The Bogrot didn’t get Jasper. You can hear him barking, can’t you? He’s fine.”

“Yeah,” Riley said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “It seemed so real, though.”

“It can’t have been, honey.” Meg brushed Riley’s golden-blonde hair out of his face and kissed his forehead. “I only just got home. There’s no way I could have been calling Jasper.”

Riley hesitated, and Meg guessed she wasn’t getting the full story. She raised her eyebrows at him, a silent question, and he shrugged. “It’s just the other thing Tara said. She said the Bogrot can imitate human voices. So it could have been the Bogrot at the back of the yard, calling Jasper. And he thought it was you, and…” Riley shook his head and squeezed his eyes closed. “Never mind. I don’t want to think about it.”

Meg sighed. She had no idea what Tara had been thinking, coming up with such a ghastly story. The only comfort was Jasper’s persistent barking. Meg gave her son’s forehead a kiss, then stood and approached the window. The clear moonlight painted over the closer patches of grass, but the trees filled the back of the yard with shadows. A glint of silver caught Meg’s eyes, and she saw a dog tag lying on the ground next to…

Fur. A clump of fur, golden-brown with bloodstained tips, lay next to Jasper’s tag.

Meg raised her eyes, searching the yard for the barking dog, and saw two faintly glowing globes hidden in the shadows at the back of the yard. Then the globes blinked as the Bogrot barked, and barked, and barked.

10
Beanie’s Fast Food

Beanie’s plastic eyes surveyed the restaurant as his wide smile stretched rosy cheeks. Paulie always made a point of tapping the bright yellow button on Beanie’s suit whenever he passed, as though the giant plastic torso could bring him the good luck. He did so then as he crossed to the door at the back of the restaurant, two garbage bags clenched in his other fist.

He could hear Jen, his co-worker, grumbling as she sorted the inventory in the walk-in fridge. She hated the closing shift almost as much as Paulie did. He shoved through the narrow door at the back of the building and used one foot to slow its closing so that it would hit the latch but not lock.

The cold night air bit at his face and ears. The dumpsters were at the opposite side of the carpark, so he jogged towards them, trying to keep his momentum up and reminding himself that he’d be home in another twenty minutes.

Paulie was halfway across the carpark when a bang startled him. He turned, surveying the nearby streets, which were empty, then the parkinglot, which only had three cars: his, Jen’s, and some stranger’s. Possibly a druggie or a drunk who’d forgotten where he’d parked. It had happened before.

Their branch of Beanie’s Fast Food was nestled on the edge of a not-so-pleasant part of town. Train lines ran behind the parking lot, and every half an hour a carriage would whistle past, drowning out their customer’s voices. The slums on the other side of the tracks housed some of the strangest people Paulie had ever met—and he’d met his fair share of weirdos. He couldn’t count the number of employees his boss, Jacob, had fired, and for far more extreme reasons than he’d ever anticipated. Selling drugs over the counter was a common one, but two cooks had been let go for trying to deepfry a rat, and one time an employee had tried to gouge a customer’s eye out. Some days Paulie felt like the three of them—himself, Jen and Jacob—were the only sane people left in the world.

Paulie pushed the dumpster’s lid open and threw the bags inside. Nearly the end of your shift, buddy, he kept reminding himself as he turned back to the store’s sooty back entrance. Then you get to enjoy opening shift tomorrow, too. Hooray.

The streetlamps spaced around the carpark left stark circles of light on the black asphalt. Paulie didn’t like walking through them, and skirted around their edges, eager to get inside the relatively warm eatery.

He hesitated at the door. It was pulled tightly closed. Normally when he threw the trash out he tried to leave it open a crack; it saved him the trouble of unlocking it again when he came back.

Must have been the wind. That could have been what the slamming noise was; the door being forced closed.

Muttering under his breath, Paulie unlocked the door and pushed inside. The back areas were far less orderly and clean than they kept the publically-visible kitchen, but, between himself and Jen, they managed to stop it from getting too disgusting. Paulie could still hear Jen in the walk-in fridge, muttering to herself as she counted off inventory and made a list for Jacob to re-order goods the following morning.

Paulie grabbed the broom from the corner of the room and returned to the front of store, where the floor was permanently in need of cleaning. He raised a hand to tap Beanie’s bright gold button out of habit, but pulled his hand back as he touched something wet.

“What the hell…?”

A red substance had been smeared across the plastic mascot’s neck, connecting one ear to the other in a gory cut-throat replica. The substance had dribbled over the torso, including the button Paulie liked to tap.

Paulie’s mouth felt dry. He stared at the image, too confused to feel proper shock. I was only outside for a couple of minutes. Who could have done this? Not Jen, surely?

As if on cue, Jen rounded the corner, and stopped short at the sight of the defaced statue. Her eyes roved from the red splatter to Paulie’s tinted fingertips, and a scowl settled above her dark eyes. “What the hell, Paulie?”

The shocked indignation in her voice convinced Paulie that she had no knowledge of the vandalism. That was enough to shake him out of his stupor, and he took a step back, feeling revolted. “Wasn’t me,” he said. He pressed his thumb against the red liquid on his index finger, trying to guess its origin based on its viscousness. As he rubbed his fingers together the substance began to dry and tack in the way only one thing could. “Blood…”

“Don’t be an ass,” Jen snapped, moving closer to the mascot. She squinted at the stains, but seemed reluctant to touch them. “I mean, it looks like it, but…”

“I thought I heard the door slam,” Paulie said, as the memory came back to him. “When I was taking the trash out.”

“That wasn’t you?” Jen’s eyes scoured his face, testing his truthfulness, then she swore under her breath and pulled her phone out. “If this is really blood… Jeeze. I’m calling Jacob. I’m not paid enough to deal with this sort of crap.”

Paulie couldn’t stop staring at the mascot. The blood had been smeared deliberately to replicate a cut throat. Is that a threat? Who’d want to threaten us? Could be a dismissed employee, I guess, or maybe a customer who really hated their food…

A strange, haunting jingle came from further in the store. Both Paulie and Jen swung towards it. From what Paulie could tell, its source was somewhere near the back of the dining room.

“It’s the boss’s phone,” Jen said, taking her mobile away from her ear and glancing about the shadowed eatery. “He’s still here.”

Paulie remembered the third car left beside his and Jen’s in the parking lot. He hadn’t taken a close look, but he thought it could have been the Jacob’s.

“C’mon,” Jen said, pushing past her co-worker to cross the dining area. “I’m not going to stand for any sick pranks.”

Her voice was strong, but Paulie thought he detected a note of anxiety hidden in it. He followed her as the haunting jingle led them to the bathrooms at the back of the building.

The ringtone came from the men’s, and Jen pushed in without hesitation. “Jacob?” she called, and, to her credit, only hesitated for a second before striding towards the stalls. “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?”

Paulie froze in the doorway, his nerves on fire and the hair on his arms standing on end. Only one stall had its door closed: the last one in the row. It wasn’t fully shut, though—the door had been pulled to, but not locked.

“Jen,” Paulie said, and the word rasped across his dry lips. “Jen, don’t.”

She either ignored him or didn’t hear him. Just like she hadn’t heard the dripping sound—barely audible above Jacob’s ringtone—or seen the trickle of dark blood running from inside the stall and dribbling towards the drain.

Jen pushed the stall door open, and her scowl morphed into an expression of absolute terror.

11
Ghost Town

“Here she is.” Gary slowed their van to a crawl as it entered the cluster of buildings that comprised Preyor Town. He leaned forward, straining his bulk against the seatbelt, to get a better look at the stone and wood houses. “So this is what a ghost town looks like.”

Beth was huddled deep into her seat, as though pulling back could physically move her away from the deserted buildings. She glared at the dashboard resolutely. “Great. You’ve seen it. Let’s move on.”

“Not just yet,” Gary said in the most placating tone he could manage. Beth shot him a glare. “We’ve taken a two-hour detour to get here, we may as well enjoy it.”

“Two hours?” Beth gasped. “I only agreed because you said it was virtually on our path!”

“Ehhh.” Gary pulled up in the middle of the town and parked the car. “Yes, well, either way, it would be a damn shame not to have a poke around.”

“I swear.” Beth’s voice was dangerously low. “If this makes us late for Sarah’s christening…”

“Course it won’t, love.” Gary risked giving his wife’s cheek a peck, then opened the door and got out. The streets, filled with dust and long-dead weeds, stretched away to either side. He rubbed his hands together and moved towards one of the closer buildings, which he guessed must have either been a large house or a small hotel.

The door opened without protest. Inside was cool and dark, and smelt faintly mildewy. Gary paused in the building’s foyer to appreciate the wooden ceiling and stained plaster on the walls. Like many pioneering towns, Preyor had been built in a rush, and it showed. The wood was rough-hewn and often unpainted, and the carpet was shabby.

Gary moved deeper into the building, glancing through doorways and trying to guess the rooms’ purposes. Much of the furniture had been taken, but larger fixtures such as the desks and shelves had been left behind. It wasn’t until he pushed into a particularly large room and saw a saloon’s bar against one wall that he realised it must have been the town’s hotel. Gary approached the bar and wiped a finger through the thick reddish dust blanketing it, then turned quickly as a chuckle from somewhere deeper in the building disturbed him.

It had sounded like a child, but the noise had been so faint that Gary wasn’t entirely sure he’d even heard it.

Probably another holidaying family stopping off. Gary turned from the room and re-entered the foyer. A staircase sat to his right, the fabric on the steps well-worn and faded. Gary cast a final glance towards the front doors, where he knew his irritable wife would be waiting with the car, then hurried up the stairs. She won’t mind another minute or two.

Halfway to the second floor, Gary froze. He’d heard it again: children’s voices, too faint to make out their words. Only this time they’d been coming from the upstairs rooms…

The stairs opened onto a long, narrow hallway. To the left, a window overlooked the main street. He could see Beth, forced out of the car by the heat, was leaning on their van’s hood. She still had her arms crossed, and he could picture her chewing at her lip like she did every time things didn’t go her way.

He turned back to the hallway and tried the first door. It opened into a classic hotel room and, to his surprise, much of the furniture was still intact. The bed, the mattress, and even the bedside table were still in place. If someone wanted to come in here and haul away the furniture, they could make a small fortune pawning it at a second-hand store.

Laughter echoed through the hallway and Gary swivelled as the shock sent his heart rate up. The sounds were closer than they had before. One of the children seemed to be singing; Gary tried to make out the tune, but he didn’t recognise it.

Suddenly uncomfortable in the deserted hotel, Gary moved back into the hallway. He glanced in each direction, and saw a flash of motion at the end of the hallway. There was a small gap between the door and its frame, and someone had darted past it.

“Hello?”

The giggles intensified, and Gary felt a flush of frustration. Their parents shouldn’t be letting them run around unsupervised like this. Where are their parents, anyway? I didn’t see any other cars in the street.

Against his better judgement, George edged towards the final room. The children whispered to each other, then paused to giggle. There was something not quite right about their laughter, though; earlier it had been merry and bright, but the newer giggles had a malicious edge to them. Like the way children laugh when they pull an insect’s wings off.

Gary stretched out a hand and nudged the door open. The hinges groaned as the wooden board moved inwards. The room was completely empty, except for the ground, which held the marks of small, bare feet in the dust.

Gary licked at his dry lips as he edged into the room. “Hello?”

The voices had fallen silent. Gary looked about, but there was nowhere to hide in the vacant space. Unless they got out through the window…

He approached the frame. The room was on the second floor, and couldn’t see any way for a child—let alone multiple children—to get out without making a lot of noise.

The window overlooked the main stretch of road and Gary saw his car waiting below, the dark green paint standing out starkly against the red soil. Beth no longer leaned against the hood. Gary bent forward to rest his head against the cold glass and squinted. His wife wasn’t inside the car, either. Gary’s insides turned cold. He knew his wife too well to think she’d wandered after him, or gone to explore on her own.

The door behind him slammed, and Gary jumped. Raucous, malicious giggles came from the other side of the door, accompanied by the patter of running feet.

“Hey,” Gary yelled, lurching towards the door. “Hey, what the hell?”

He grasped the handle and tugged on it, but it wouldn’t budge. He pulled and pushed, then shoved his shoulder into the door to no avail, and then tried not to scream as a child’s hand, icy cold, fastened around his neck.

12
99 Messages

Mirko dropped his suitcase on the floor inside his apartment’s front door and sighed. He took a moment to bask in the blissful silence and stretch the knots out of his back. Work had been gruelling, and he was looking forward to running a hot bath and reheating the previous night’s leftovers.

The light on his answering machine was flashing, so Mirko crossed the room to the sideboard and pressed the phone’s button. He untied his shoes and kicked them off as he listened to the mechanical woman’s voice.

“You have… ninety-nine… new messages.”

Mirko hesitated, one foot raised to pull the sock off. Ninety-nine? That can’t be right.

“First new message received today at… eight… forty six… a.m.”

He’d left for work at eight forty five on the dot; he must have just barely missed the call.

There was several seconds of silence, then a voice, oddly crackly, said, “Hello, Mirko. I’m going to start counting now. Are you ready?”

Both socks off, Mirko gave the answering machine his full attention. The voice was silent for nearly half a minute, then said, calmly and precisely, “Ninety-nine.”

The message bank beeped, and the mechanical woman’s voice returned. “Next new message received today at… eight… forty nine… a.m.”

Again, a second of silence, then the unfamiliar voice said, “Ninety-eight.”

Mirko rubbed his thumbs into the corners of his eyes. Is this some kind of joke?

He didn’t recognise the voice. It didn’t seem to have an accent, but spoke in an odd monotone that lacked both inflection and emotion. He couldn’t even tell if it belonged to a man or a woman. Crackles, as though the voice were speaking through a walkie-talkie, accompanied it.

“Next new message received today at… eight… fifty two… a.m.”

“Ninety-seven.”

It’s not serious counting down from a hundred, is it? Mirko glanced at the number flashing on the side of his machine, reading ninety-six new messages. How long would it have taken someone to record all of these?

He mashed his thumb into the button on the side of the machine, deleting messages before they could be played. He watched the number of unheard messages drop from the nineties down to fifty, then twenty, then ten. Once he’d reached the third-last message, he released the button to let it play.

“Next new message received today at… twelve… eighteen… p.m.”

“You forgot to lock your door this morning, Mirko. Three.”

Mirko slowly turned towards the rear of his house. The hairs on the backs of his arms rose.

“Next new message received today at… twelve… twenty one… p.m.”

“Mirko, have you found a weapon yet? Two.”

This is a joke. A sick, strange joke. Mirko turned back to the answering machine, where the number one flashed on the screen.

“Next new message received today at… twelve… twenty five… p.m.”

“Are you ready, Mirko? One.”

A long, loud beep followed as the phone marked all messages listened to.

Mirko turned slowly, swallowing at the dry taste in his mouth. For a moment his apartment was filled with complete, perfect silence, then there was a quiet click as someone fastened the lock on his front door.

13
After Closing

Soren woke with a snort. His neck hurt. The pain radiated down his spine and into his left arm. He sat up, trying to figure out where he was, and bumped his head on something hard.

What…?

He glanced up and saw the underside of a scratched wooden desk. Familiar smells reached him then—paper and disinfectant and the tang from the sickly sweets kept in a bowl on the help bench—and he remembered. The library. I slipped under the desk to have a nap before going home. What time is it?

Soren pushed the chair out of his way and crept out from under the bench. The lights were out and the library was deathly quiet. He’d slept through closing, he realised, with a flush of mingled embarrassment and light anxiety.

There’s got to be a way to open the doors from the inside, right? I won’t be locked in here until morning, will I?

He got to his feet and cringed as pins and needles shot down his leg. He held still, one hand grasping the back of the chair, the other resting on the desk where his schoolbooks were still stacked, while he waited for the bloodflow to return to the limb.

The librarians mustn’t have checked the library very thoroughly before going home. I was well-hidden under the desk, but there was no way they would have missed me if they’d tried to take my books.

A scratching sound drew Soren’s attention. Something was moving near the back of the library. Soren frowned and crept forward to see around the nearby bookshelf. There shouldn’t be anyone else here, not at this time of night.

And yet, there was. As he leaned forward to see around the shelf, Soren caught a glimpse of a small figure crouched near the back of the room. It seemed to be digging through the small bin that was kept in the corner. Soren stared at it, mesmerised and unable to comprehend what he was seeing, as the figure’s dexterous limbs moved. It was bone-thin and naked, and, though it was hard to see with just the backwash of the streetlights filtering through the library’s window, he thought its skin was grey.

The being in the corner of the room suddenly stopped its rummaging. Its head swivelled, the neck spinning past a normal human’s range, to face Soren. He caught a glimpse of red-pink eyes behind strands of long, greasy black hair, then ducked out of sight and pressed his back to the shelf as his heart thundered in his ears.

What was that? It’s not human, that’s for sure.

He held his breath and listened. After a moment’s pause, the faint scratching sounds resumed. Maybe it didn’t see me. Maybe it’s blind.

Against his better judgement, Soren edged closer to the edge of the shelf, and carefully extended his head forward to see the corner of the room.

The bin was still there, but the creature had gone.

Soren’s mouth dried as he pulled back again. Cold sweat built across his torso. I’ve got to get out of here.

He was near the back of the library. The entrance stood two dozen paces away, past the help desk. Soren, moving as quietly as he could, turned to grab his books.

The creature stood directly behind him, within touching distance, its huge red eyes framed in heavy shadows.

Soren froze. He opened his mouth—whether to speak or scream, he wasn’t sure—but no noise escaped him.

The being’s eyes narrowed, and it reached its hands towards him. The fingers were far longer than they had any right to be, with at least five knuckles each. They ended in sharpened claws, and Soren felt like his heart might explode as they stretched towards his face.

He jolted backwards without realising what he was doing and hit the library shelf. His feet skidded out from under him, and Soren grabbed at the shelves as he topped the ground. His weight was enough to pull the heavy structure free from its bolts and bring it crashing down on both himself and the creature.

The books poured from the shelves as it fell, and Soren caught a half-second glimpse of fury blazing in the monster’s face before it was smothered. The bookcase landed on Soren’s leg, which was still numb from when he’d fallen asleep, and he grunted through his teeth.

Get up, idiot! Run!

Soren pulled his legs out from under the books, gained his feet and staggered towards the library’s door. He thought he could hear the skittering, clawing noise again, but when he turned, the room behind him was still except for the settling pile of books.

The library’s doors had motion sensors to open them, but they’d been turned off at closing. Soren tried to wedge his fingertips into the gap between the doors and pull them open, but they wouldn’t move.

There has to be a spare key or something.

Soren turned to put the doors at his back. He could see the fallen shelf’s silhouette in the back of the room, but couldn’t see movement. Is it still there, under the books? Did I kill it?

Soren’s breaths came as thin wheezes as he moved around the help desk and rifled through knick-knacks hidden there. It was hard to see in the shadows, and his hands brushed over paperclips, erasers, pencils, pens, letter holders and a glass still half-full of water without finding any keys.

He swore under his breath, then fell still as he heard the noise again. Like fingers brushing across paper. He raised his head to look over the top of the help desk, but couldn’t see any sign of motion, or of the red eyes. His lips formed another swearword, but he didn’t dare speak it.

There’s got to be keys. Got to be!

Soren turned to look at the wall behind the desk, and that was when he saw it: a door, set between the storage shelves, had been left open. It seemed to be some sort of storage closet, though Soren couldn’t ever remember seeing the library staff use it.

I’d be safe in there, I bet. I could barricade myself inside and wait until morning.

Without a second thought, Soren crossed the distance and stepped into the room, pulling the door closed behind himself. He fished his phone out of his pocket and turned it on to use its light. The glow was too dim to make out details, but what he could see made his heart freeze.

A cot had been set against one wall, with a bucket just below it. The cot had blankets and a pillow, but they were grimy with age. A single chair sat against the opposite wall, taking up the rest of the cramped room.

It… lives here? Why? How? Does one of the librarians own it, and they let it out at night?

Soren backed up against the door, struggling to draw breath. I can’t stay here. Not in its home. I’ve got to get out. Even if I break the glass doors—I could use the chair—

He opened the door a crack and edged out of the room, moving his feet in slow sweeps across the carpet to minimise noise, as he edged towards the sliding glass doors.

The sound—that faint crackle of nails on paper—came again, and Soren stopped, every nerve in his body on fire, every hair on his arms standing on end. It’s not coming from anywhere ahead of me. Not behind me, either. It’s…

He raised his eyes to the roof, where the creature clung to the foam tiles lining the ceiling. Its jaws opened into a vicious smile, exposing rows of sharp teeth, then it let go, dropping towards Soren.

14
Bunker

James frowned as he stuck poked the tip of his walking stick into the soft ground. The last thing he’d been expecting to see in the vast Murrambungee national park was concrete.

He’d gone off-trail to get a closer look at a huge gumtree that had been half-strangled in vines, and from there, it had been all too easy to follow a trail of small blue flowers further into the forest. When he’d pushed through the thick vegetation and into a glade, James had been hoping for a natural clearing, or possibly even a spring. Instead, he found something that definitely didn’t belong so far from civilisation.

The concrete stood a little higher than his head and came out of the ground at an angle, like some misplaced art exhibit. James approached the shape and stepped around it carefully. It quickly became apparent why the structure was sloped: on the other side, which was straight and horizontal, was a doorway. It’s a stairwell, then. But to where?

James glanced back the way he’d come. He could still just barely see the vine-choked gumtree, but he was a good way off the regular trail. It was almost as though the stairwell’s builder had wanted it to stay hidden. And, judging by the moss growing across the door’s handle, that was exactly what had happened.

James didn’t expect it to open, but he tried the door, anyway. The handle, a plain metal shape bolted to the rusted door, felt cold and slimy. He gave it a tug, and was surprised to find the door hadn’t been locked. It was gummed in place after years of neglect, but he was able to worm it open a crack with a few good tugs.

The air that came through the gap was stale and repulsive. It carried undertones of rot and death, and James pressed the back of his sleeve across his nose to block out the smell.

What on earth is this place?

James didn’t have a torch, but he’d brought a camera with flash, so he raised it to the narrow opening and took a picture of the inside. The photo flashed up on his camera, and he saw stained concrete walls and dirty concrete stairs leading downwards. The angle was bad, though, and he couldn’t see the stairs’ end. What’s down there? Is it some sort of military bunker, maybe?

James pocketed the camera and pulled on the door again, trying to widen the gap. Dirt and organic debris had built up around the doorframe, and it ground open slowly. Once it was barely wide enough for a human to fit through, James stepped back, panting, and held his camera inside for another photo.

The new picture was a little clearer, though his efforts to open the door had stirred up long-still dust which became blobs of white in the flash. The stairs continued for what seemed like a long way. It was clear no one had ventured through the door in many, many years—possibly even decades.

James cast a final glance in the direction of his trail, then slipped through the narrow doorway.

The noises inside were magnified so that James’s footsteps sounded like echoing thunder, no matter how carefully he placed them. He stuck to the left wall and ran his hand across the cold concrete as he followed the stairs. The narrow band of light from the outside world didn’t penetrate far into the blackness, so after a dozen steps, James took another photo. It showed twenty stairs more, then a landing.

As he moved deeper, James tried to guess how far down the structure went. I’d have to be well under the forest by now. Possibly even under the tree roots.

The air chilled, and he was shivering by the time he reached the landing. Rounding the corner, he saw the stairs continued. He shook his head, dumbfounded, as he took another photo of the new stairwell. The disturbed dust was too thick for him to see any sort of end, though.

What the hell is this place?

James’s heavy breathing mingled with the echoes of his footsteps as he followed the stairs deep underground. He paused every five or six paces to take a new photo and ensure he wasn’t about to walk into a wall or fall off the edge of a dropoff. At last, after more than a hundred steps, the path levelled out into a corridor.

James took a photo and examined it, struggling to see through the floating dust moats. The stark concrete walls were bare except for at their bases, where dark shapes were set into where the walls met the floor. James knelt and took another photo, and found the dark shapes were actually grates. They seemed to open into an even deeper area, though he couldn’t see inside. Sewerage, maybe? Or ventilation? The grates were spaced ten feet apart, and James tried to count them as he moved through the hallway. With only his camera to show him the way, it was easy to become disoriented and lose track of how far he’d come, but he’d passed at least twenty of the grates before the hallway ended.

James, confused, stared at the photo of the empty wall in front of him. There was no door. There was no anything. The hallway simply ended, as though it had no greater purpose than to exist. James turned and took a photo of the length of the hallway, but he’d disturbed too much dust on his trip down, and couldn’t make out anything except a blur of white.

As he retraced his path up the hallway, James kept one hand on the wall while he held the camera in the other and skimmed through the photos he’d taken. He was cold and eager to get back outside, but, as he neared the halfway mark of the hallway, he stopped.

One of the pictures—one he’d taken to check he wasn’t about to walk into anything—had focussed on the walls rather than the dust motes, and showed the grates a little more clearly than the other images. And in one of the grates was…

No, that can’t be possible. But it looks so much like a face…

James gasped as the bone-thin fingers, having slipped through the grate, fastened around his ankle and pulled.

15
What Lives in the Woods

Tessa flipped her sleeping bag out of its holder and laid it beside Karin’s. They only had a two-person tent, with barely enough room for their bags; when Fel arrived, they’d be like sardines in a tin. Not that she minded. They’d been through worse on their annual long-weekend camping adventures, including one trip where their tent had been blown away and they’d had to sleep outdoors for two nights before making it back to civilisation.

She poked her head out of the tent to where Karin sat beside the fire, turning sausages on the skillet. “How’re they doing?”

“Just about there.” Karin was leaning so close to the flame that the flickering light seemed to make her face glow. She had the excited, almost manic smile she always wore whenever they started on their hikes. Even though the car park was only twenty meters behind them, she was glad to be amongst nature again. “Should be done by the time Fel gets here.”

Tessa checked her watch. “She really should have been here by now. Unless her boss made her stay late.”

“That guy’s a jerk.”

“Oh, he totally is.”

Karin had opened her mouth say something more, but fell silent as they heard what sounded like squealing tires in the distance. “You don’t think that’s—?”

The screeching abruptly stopped, but then, a moment later, they heard what sounded like breaking glass. Karin rose to her feet, sausages forgotten. They both faced towards where the parking lot, which was hidden from them by the forest and the darkness. The two friends glanced at each other, then Karin said, “I’ll go check it out.”

“Want me to come?”

“Nah.” Karin grabbed the flashlight from where Tessa had left it beside the tent and switched it on. “I’ll be back in a moment. Watch the sausages.”

Tessa poked at the splitting sausage skins as she listened to her friend march through the forest. The torch’s light faded before the sound of her footsteps did. Then Karin started calling, “Fel? Fel! Fe-e-el!”

The night air was cooling rapidly, and Tessa snuggled closer to the fire as she waited. The logs, not quite dry enough for a calm blaze, spat and hissed as sap was cooked out of them. Karin had fallen quiet, which Tessa assumed meant she’d either found Fel or had given up.

The sounds of the woods were magnified in the absence of her friends. Tessa gazed at the trees as the isolation started to bite at her. The trunks, dark and rough, stretched high above their camping ground, the leaves blocking out almost all of the stars. She felt like she’d been transported to another dimension—one without other humans. She hated the idea.

Karin should be back by now, shouldn’t she? Tessa checked her watch. Nearly fifteen minutes had passed since her friend had left. The parking lot was nowhere near far enough away for the trip to take that long. Tessa pulled the sausages—which were so overdone they were drying out—off the fire, and stood. “Karin?”

She half expected not to get a reply, but after a second Karin returned her call. “Fel?”

She’s still looking for her, then. Has something happened?

“Fel! Fel! Fe-e-el!”

“Karin?” Tessa yelled, projecting her voice as far as she could. “What’s happening?”

“Fel! Fel!”

Tessa crossed her arms over her chest and waited. Karin’s voice didn’t resume, and she didn’t reappear through the trees. Minutes ticked by. Tessa’s anxiety rose with each passing second, until she couldn’t stand it any longer. She grabbed the second torch from her bag and moved into the trees.

Karin was completely silent now, even when Tessa called to her. Tessa pushed through the thick bushes until she reached the open parking lot. Two cars sat neatly at the tree’s edge; Karin’s and her own. A third car, small and pink, sat in the centre of the clearing. Fel’s.

Skid marks ran from behind its wheels, suggesting its owner had applied the brakes urgently. Tessa rounded the vehicle to look in the front seat, and inhaled sharply. The windshield had been smashed. The safety glass hung together in fractured clumps, but a hole had been forced through it. Tessa cautiously stepped closer and angled her torch inside. Something dark stained the driver’s seat.

“Fel!” Karin called from the trees behind her, and Tessa jumped away from the car. She swung around, her heart hammering in her chest, and pointed her shaking torch towards the trees. She thought she could see a figure about thirty paces away; the pale skin was barely visible in the darkness. She began stumbling towards it.

“Karin?”

Karin said something in reply, but Tessa was too far away to hear. She began moving faster, staggering through the brush and tripping over fallen trees, to reach the figure. Twenty paces away, she pulled up abruptly.

The person in the trees wasn’t Karin. It wasn’t Fel, either. It was far too tall and lean to be either of her companions.

She opened her mouth, but couldn’t find any words. Then the figure, without moving a muscle, said, “What is this?”

It was the most surreal experience of Tessa’s life. The voice was Karin’s, but the body wasn’t. Tessa took a step backwards, and the figure said, this time in Fel’s voice, “Who are you? What are you doing?”

She took another step backwards, and bumped into something hard and cold. Tessa turned too quickly and lost her balance, and landed amongst the bracken in the wood’s floor. Raising her head, she saw another of the shapes looming over her. It was taller than a human and its skin was so pale it almost glowed in the thin patches of moonlight that made their way through the trees. Then Tessa caught sight of its face and a scream boiled up inside of her.

It had no eyes or nose. The skin stretched smoothly from its tangled hair until it reached the lips, thin and blue, that framed the mouth. Its teeth were blackened and pointed, sharp enough to tear cleanly through flesh.

The figure’s lips opened. “What is this?” it said, imitating Karin’s voice perfectly, as more of its companions melted out of the shadows to surround Tessa. “What is this?”

16
Quarantine

The shuttle door opened with a quiet hiss. Ava pushed inside first, and floated in the zero gravity while she waited for Takil to follow her. He’d been unusually slow that afternoon, and she found herself crossing her arms as her partner drifted through the hatch.

“Any time this century,” she said, as he pressed the button to close the door.

She couldn’t see his face under the helmet, but she could imagine the scowl he shot her. “Hey, shut up. It’s not like we’re on a deadline or anything.”

Ava sighed and began typing commands into the control panel. “Yeah, sorry. You’ve just been… I dunno, like you’ve run out of juice. We’ve been working together for, what? four years, and I can’t ever remember having you follow me before.”

The gravity normalised as the centrifuge kicked in, and Ava let her boots drift to the floor. She pressed a second button to check the air levels were safe, then unlocked her helmet. As she unzipped from her suit, she glanced back at Takil, and felt a stab of shock. Her partner was pale and sweaty. He’d looked fine when they’d suited up, but something had obviously affected him during the four hour flight. “Hey, is something wrong? You’re not looking so hot.”

Takil shot her a tight smile. “I don’t feel great, to be honest. My wife was coming down with something this morning. I might have caught it off her. Don’t worry about me, though. We’ll be back to base in a couple hours, and I’ll take the rest of the day off work if I’m not better by then.”

“You sure? I can finish up here while you wait in the ship.”

Takil punched her arm as he passed her, and opened the door to the small biotech room that held the life support systems. “What did I say? I’m fine. We’ll get through this faster if we both do it, anyway.”

Ava sighed and hung her suit beside Takil’s, then moved to the shuttle’s main control board to check for irregularities. It was a routine maintenance trip to an infrequently-used midpoint shuttle, and, if they were lucky, they could solve any issues within an hour and be back to their host planet early in the afternoon.

Her communication pad buzzed, and Ava unhooked it from her belt. Central’s logo flashed on the screen, with her commander’s insignia below it. She pressed the button to answer. “What’s up, boss?”

Mara, her dark grey hair slicked back above her deep eyes, appeared on the screen. Ava wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or not, but her boss seemed a little more frazzled than normal.

“Oh, good, you’re there already. Everything going according to plan?”

Ava glanced behind herself, where the room was quiet and still. “Yeah, no problems so far. The system says there are only three non-critical bugs this time. Should be an easy job.”

“Good, good.” Mara glanced to the side, as though she were listening to someone beyond the screen’s view. Ava tried to be patient. It was unusual for her superior to call them during a routine job unless there was an emergency.

“Uh…” Mara glanced back at Ava, and pushed a determined smile onto her face. “Just wanted to check that you and Takil are doing okay.”

Isn’t that what she just asked? “Yeah, things are fine. Should be out of here soon.”

“Good, good, and neither of you have any sort of… symptoms?”

Ava hesitated and glanced at the biotech room, where she could see the bases of Takil’s boots as he worked on the cabling under the water reclaimer. “Well, actually, Takil’s come down with something. He said he’d probably caught it from his wife before he left.”

“Ah.” Mara turned to the side and spoke in to the person Ava couldn’t see. Her voice was too quiet to hear most of what she said, but Ava managed to catch, “Was she one of them?”

Mara apparently didn’t like the answer she received, because her face darkened. She turned back to Ava, her smile evaporated, and took a deep breath before speaking. “Captain Janes, there’s a potentially dangerous disease passing through the stations. We have the situation under control at our base, but I suspect Captain Shamel may have contracted it before his deployment this morning.”

Ava frowned at her boss, confused by the suddenly formal dialogue. She’d always gotten on well with Mara, to the point of being at first name basis and joining her for drinks on evenings when they had to work late. She wasn’t sure what to make of the suddenly official tone. “So… should we come back straight away?”

Mara paused for a moment before answering, and Ava hated seeing the creases building around her mouth. “No. Your orders are to remain where you are. Move Captain Shamel into quarantine immediately, and avoid any contact with him. I’ll send a medic crew to retrieve you as soon as possible.”

“As soon as possible…” Ava glanced at Takil’s boots, barely visible through the doorway. “How soon’s that going to be? Within the next hour?”

“As soon as possible,” Mara repeated, then glanced aside. This time her companion’s voice was loud enough for Ava to hear the urgent tones, but not the words. “Ava, I have to go now. Get Takil into quarantine, and stay safe.”

“Stay safe?” Ava echoed, but Mara had already ended the communication. Frustrated, Ava clipped the box back onto her belt and scowled at the shuttle. “And where exactly am I supposed to quarantine someone on this heap of junk? Hey, Takil!”

Her companion didn’t answer. Ava approached the biotech room as anxiety began to flutter in her chest. Takil was kneeling on the ground, apparently lost in thought as he stared at the cables, and Ava had to rap her knuckles on the door twice before he rocked back onto his heels and looked at her.

“Jeeze,” Ava said, lost for words. Takil had looked bad before, but he’d degenerated to ghastly in the few short minutes they’d been separated. His hair was plastered to his face, which dripped sweat. His skin, normally a healthy bronze, had turned grey, and his lips were tinged blue. His unfocussed eyes roved the room before settling on Ava.

“Huh?” he said, and a trickle of saliva ran from the corner of his mouth to mix with his sweat.

Ava swore, and covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve so she wouldn’t inhale any pathogens. Is it a virus, though? I’ve never seen any sort of disease move this quickly—

Takil keeled forward, and his hands flopped against his stomach as though to knock away an unpleasant sensation. Ava stared, transfixed, as her partner lurched back, and his stomach swelled under his uniform.

Fear fought through the confusion, and Ava remembered that she’d been supposed to quarantine her partner. She reached for the door to wrench it closed, but was a second too late as Takil’s stomach and suit split open, spilling a series of long, grey, worm-like creatures onto the floor.

A scream rose in Ava’s throat, but choked off before it could leave her mouth. Her partner rocked backwards, his body collapsing against the network of cables, as the parasites that had grown inside him pooled forward, stretching towards Ava.

She slammed the door against them and stumbled backwards, shock turning her limbs to putty. The parasites made wet, sticking noises as they pressed against the door, seeking a way through. Ava skittered backwards as far as the cramped room would allow her, then dropped to the ground and pulled her knees up under her chin. She fumbled the communication unit off her belt and pressed the emergency button, then stared at the screen as the little connection circle cycled around and around without her call being answered. Their phones can’t be that busy, surely? Unless this thing is spreading…

She could hear the creatures moving. Their slimy grey bodies slid across the floor and walls as they searched for a gap to escape through. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if—rather, when—they found a way out.

Please, Mara, send the rescue team quickly.

17
Room for Rent

It was nearly sundown when Henrik slowed his car outside the stone cottage. The unassuming two-story building, with its garden of hardy shrubs and winter-dormant rose bushes, blended into the village’s old-world charm. Not for the first time that day, Henrik wondered if the buildings had been deliberately designed that way to lure tourists.

The BOARD AVAILABLE sign in the window had caught Henrik’s attention. He’d planned his trip across the country with the expectation that he’d be able to spend the night in the remote village, and had been surprised to find it didn’t seem to have any sort of hotel or motel. The next nearest town was four hours away, and he was keen to put it get some food and sleep.

Henrik parked off the side of the narrow dirt road. Unless there was a shed or garage out the back, the cottage’s owner didn’t seem to have a car—just two bikes, propped against the shadowed porch. Henrik cast a final glance back at the town, its gold lights glittering across the hill, then began climbing the steps.

“What’cha doing here?” a voice asked, and Henrik jumped. He hadn’t seen the boy sitting in the old wooden chair at the back corner of the porch, and an embarrassed flush crept over his face.

“Uhh… I need a place to stay the night?”

The boy’s dark eyes darted over Henrik’s face as a cold smile drew his lips apart. “Oh, really?”

Henrik hesitated, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. He was spared answering when the cottage’s door swung open and a heavy-set woman with a wide, reddish face leaned through the frame.

“What, Sam, are you scaring the guests off again?” she asked the boy. He lurched out of his chair and skulked past the woman and into the house. It wasn’t until Sam stood that Henrik realised he’d underestimated the boy’s age; based on his height, he had to be at least in his mid-teens.

The woman turned to Henrik and gave him a sad, apologetic smile. “Sorry about him, luv. He doesn’t mean any harm. Were you looking for a place to stay tonight?”

Henrik hesitated for a second. What’s the alternative? Sleep in the car? “Yes, please. How much…?”

“Twenty for just the room,” the woman said, glancing Henrik up and down as though to assess his worth, “Or thirty for dinner and breakfast included.”

“I’ll take that,” Henrik said, fishing his wallet out of his pocket and sorting through the contents for thirty dollars. “It’s been a long day. I’m Henrik, by the way.”

“Barb.” The woman took the money and ushered him inside with a wide smile. This time, Henrik only hesitated a half second before crossing the threshold.

* * *

Henrik wasn’t sure whether Barb was trying to apologise for her son’s behaviour, or if it was normal for her to spend so much effort on their evening meals, but the dinner table it was so laden with food that he could barely see the surly boy slouched opposite.

“Eat up,” Barb urged Henrik, then, turning to her son, added, “Don’t fuss with your food like that. How’d you expect to grow up properly if you don’t eat?”

The boy cast his mother an angry frown, then settled his attention on their guest.

Henrik tried to focus on the food—which really was delicious—but the boy’s eyes were darker than ink, and felt almost hypnotic as they focussed on him. It was the sort of stare you could feel without even realising you had company, and Henrik’s skin developed goosebumps in response to it. He and Barb managed a smattering of small-talk, which was more for politeness’ sake than enjoyment. Henrik explained that he was travelling through the country to visit family, and Barb told him about how her parents and grandparents had lived in their house for generations. All the while the child—teen, Henrik reminded himself—scraped his fork across his plate without eating any of the food.

“We don’t get so many tourists through here,” Barb said, trying to push an extra serving of green beans onto Henrik’s plate despite his objections, “but it’s always nice when we do. We’re in no position to turn down the money, are we, Sam?”

Sam, unblinking, opened his mouth and exhaled a breathy chuckle. Henrik frowned at him. He couldn’t possibly be suffering from a mental condition, could he? Insanity… at such a young age?

Barb didn’t seem happy at her son’s response, and scowled at his plate. “Eat,” she insisted. “Why are you always so picky about your food? You’ll grow up looking like a skeleton.”

Again the boy’s mouth opened, and this time his laugher, harsh and furious and mournful all at once, rang in Henrik’s ears.

“Enough,” Barb said, dropping her cutlery beside her plate and pulling her son out of his chair. “If you can’t behave when we have company over, you can eat in your room.”

The boy’s face turned murderous, and for a second Henrik was afraid he was about to hit his mother. But then he turned and slouched through the doorway and disappeared into the shadowed room beyond.

Barb sighed and brushed a strand of hair out of her round face. This time she was very clearly embarrassed. “I’m so sorry,” she said, but Henrik waved her apology away as casually as he could. It seemed like it would be an insurmountable task to raise a child with mental issues in the middle of the countryside. They didn’t seem to even have a proper hospital—just a single doctor’s surgery he’d passed near the town’s outskirts.

Barb gave him a tight smile. “Well, if you’ve had enough, shall I show you to your room?”

* * *

Upstairs was dark to the point of being dingy. Henrik placed his suitcase on the end of the narrow, quilt-covered bed and began sorting through it for his nightclothes. The lamps set into the walls were in desperate need of cleaning, and sent heavy shadows about the room. There was at least three months’ worth of dust on every surface.

Barb tapped on the doorway to announce her presence, then entered, carrying a bundle of quilts. “In case you get cold tonight,” she said, settling them beside Henrik’s luggage. She hesitated, then added, “Just so you know, I’ve locked Sam in his room for tonight.”

“Oh?” Henrik glanced up from the luggage to see Barb was facing the bedroom window. She had a sad, drawn look about her eyes, and he turned away, not wanting to embarrass her.

“Yes. He has… problems with people staying here. It’s my fault. We need the money, so I don’t turn anyone away. But he hates it now that he understands it. I forgot to lock his door one night, and he saw me carrying the body out back to bury it. He’s never really been the same since.”

The quilt dropped from Henrik’s hand. “What—”

He didn’t even have time to turn before the garrotte slipped around his neck.

18
The Woman in the Morgue

(Based on a true story)

Frank leaned on the surveillance room’s doorframe and glanced over the dozen screens set up above the desk. “Hey, Lest, how’s it going?”

Lester, chip packet in one hand, swivelled his chair to give Frank a wide grin. “If it isn’t my favourite nurse. Get your butt in here and grab a drink.”

With a final glance at the nurse’s station down the hallway, Frank slipped into the room and relaxed into the spare seat. “Thanks,” he said, taking the offered soda. “It’s been crazy tonight.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, three patients coded, can you believe it? Things have quietened down now, thankfully.” He let his eyes skip over the screens, which showed every floor of the hospital. Frank loved coming into the security rooms during his break or when the nurse’s station went through a quiet patch; he found it soothing to watch the bustle of the hospital without having to be involved . “Anything interesting happen tonight?”

“Not much,” Lester said. “Had a family that tried to get out of the wrong door. They spent at least five minutes pushing and pulling on the handle before a nurse took pity on them and showed them to the right exit. Oh, and check this lady out. I reckon she must be from the psyche ward. I have no idea how she got down there, though.”

Frank leaned forward to look at the indicated screen. “Isn’t that the morgue?”

“Yeah, it absolutely is. She’s not a doctor. I have no idea how she would have gotten in there.”

The woman, dressed in slacks and a singlet, walked up and down the length of the room, pausing to look at the labels indicating which body was stored in each unit. She had her back to the camera, so all Frank could see were her fluttering hands and long black hair.

“You going to do anything about that?” he asked, shooting a critical glare at his friend. “It’s a restricted section.”

“Relax.” Lester shook the chip packet at Frank, who waved it away. “I’ve already sent Paulo to bring her out. He should be there any time now.”

Even before he’d finished speaking, the morgue’s door opened and Paulo, their lanky security guard, ambled inside. He stopped just inside the door, his back to the camera, and faced the woman. She showed no signs of acknowledging his presence. After a moment Paulo unclipped his walkie-talkie and spoke into it. Its partner, which rested on Lester’s desk, crackled, but no noise came out.

Lester swore at the black box as he picked it up. “Piece of garbage is malfunctioning again. Hey, Paulo, I can’t hear you.”

Paulo turned to look at the security camera and spoke again, though the footage was too grainy for Lester to read his lips.

“You’re not coming through, idiot,” Lester said, but Paulo didn’t seem to hear him either. The security guard turned and left the morgue, locking the door after himself. The woman either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and continued to pace, her hands twitching by her sides as she read the labels.

“Why’s he leaving her there?” Frank leaned forward to scowl at the cameras.

Lester huffed in frustration and threw his empty chip packet to one side. “Jeeze, no idea. Maybe she really is psychotic, and Paulo needs one of the nurses to help subdue her.”

“Dibs not me.” Even though his tone was casual, Frank found himself unable to look away from the woman on the screen. There was something disturbing about the way she moved, pacing awkwardly with her hands fluttering about her face, as she glanced at each of the tags. It really did look like she was searching for something… or someone.

Paulo entered the surveillance room, ducking to fit his tall self under the doorframe. “Where’d she go?” he asked Lester.

Lester blinked at him, then frowned. “Nowhere, idiot. Why’d you leave her?”

“What? She wasn’t there. Did she leave the morgue or something?”

Frank tuned the argument out as he stared at the screen. The woman had turned to look behind herself, and in that second of seeing her face, he recognised her.

He’d only seen her briefly an hour earlier, but he knew he’d never forget that face, with its bugling eyes and froth bubbling over the blue lips, as he and a team of two doctors and four other nurses tried, and failed, to save her life.

19
Great Aunt Enid

Jacob sat in his car and stared at the house’s front. Single-story and narrow, it looked like it could only hold three or four rooms. The plants in the front garden were almost entirely dead, save for a bunch of straggling weeds that had survived under the dripping tap. The house’s windows were all blinded with dark shutters, and the walls were stained from age.

And yet it still held hints of nostalgia. Jacob could picture flowers filling the front garden, and how the large, now-lifeless elm tree had once been full of bright green leaves in early spring. He remembered his great aunt, her blue eyes shining behind her glasses, as she held his hand and walking with him to the park.

These twenty years haven’t been kind to the house. What will they have done to Aunt Enid?

Jacob sucked in a deep breath and stepped out of his car. The leaves crunched under his boots as he crossed the road and pushed the ancient metal gate open. It whined on its hinges, and stuck at the halfway point. Jacob skirted around it and followed the blackened pathway to where the house’s front door, tall and faded, sat in the off-white plaster walls.

He rapped on the door and listened for the sounds of footsteps. Instead, a voice, cracked and raspy, called, “Come in.”

Jacob paused before opening the door. He knew almost nothing about his great-aunt, save for a handful of bright childhood memories. Walking with her to the shops, colouring in books she’d bought for him, and being given a handful of lollies when his parents collected him to go home. He knew he’d spent a lot of time at her house as a toddler, but, one day, the visits had just… stopped.

Jacob had almost forgotten about her until, cleaning out his mother’s attic the weekend before, he’d come across a photo of his deceased grandmother and great aunt sitting together.

He’d asked his parents about her, but they seemed reluctant to tell him what had happened. From what he could work out, based on their evasive answers and uncomfortable pauses, there had been some sort of falling about between Aunt Enid and the rest of his family.

“Haven’t heard from her in decades,” his father had said, and his mother added, in an unusually sour tone, “she’s probably still holed up in that house.”

It hadn’t been hard to track down her details; she’d lived in the building for her entire adult life. What had been strange, though, was how isolated she seemed. None of Jacob’s cousins or uncles would talk about her, and if they did, they never said much except that she lived alone and didn’t have friends.

That had struck Jacob as wrong in many ways. No matter what the disagreement had been about, an elderly lady, living alone, should have some sort of company. Even if it’s just a visit from a long-forgotten grand-nephew.

Jacob pushed the door open. It caught on the mat lining the hallway, and he had to shove it to get it to move. Inside the house had a strange, musty smell, with undertones of mildew. A grandfather clock somewhere further in the building ticked. Jacob hesitated on the mat, and heard the voice repeat, “Come in.”

He remembered Aunt Enid’s voice as being melodic and smooth, and with a good, strong laugh. What called to him was dry and raspy.

I was right—she’s not well. I can’t believe my family would leave her here like this. She should have someone check in on her a few times a week, at least.

Jacob closed the door behind himself and followed the hallway. The house hadn’t looked large from the outside, but the hall went on much further than he’d expected until it opened into a sitting room.

His Aunt Enid sat in the chair under the window. At first glance, she looked like a shadow; her black dress pooled around her feet, and her hair, which had once been black but age had converted to steel grey, hung around her face in a long, greasy sheet. She sat immobile, her hands held limply in her lap, her face turned towards the discoloured glass. Jacob cleared his throat. “Aunt Enid?” he asked, and took a step into the room. “Hi, it’s me—”

“Jacob,” she said, her aged, wrinkled mouth framing the word carefully. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

Though her hands stayed limp in her lap, she turned her torso and head towards him, moving slowly, as though her joints were stiff.

Jacob smiled awkwardly. “Uh, yeah. It’s—it’s good to see you again—”

Her eyes were a milky white. Blind. Why didn’t anyone tell me? How can she possibly be living alone like this?

Enid raised one of her hands and indicated to the seat opposite. The hand was curled like a bird’s claw, so aged and stiff with arthritis that it was clearly difficult to move.

Jacob sat in the chair, trying to ignore how dusty and stained it was. He leaned forward, cleared his throat and tried to inject some life into his voice. “I have so many happy memories of visiting you as a child. I’m sorry we lost touch.”

“Hmm.” Enid’s head had followed his movements, even though Jacob knew she couldn’t see him. “Your family didn’t agree with… some of my choices.”

Curiosity gnawed at Jacob. No one had given a reason for the rift, but he knew it had to be dramatic. His family was generally tightly-knit. To outright ignore his aging great aunt… he couldn’t believe it. “Choices…?” he prompted.

She smiled, then, exposing a row of surprisingly straight, white teeth. Dentures, surely.

“Choices you wouldn’t even consider,” she said, and turned back to stare out of the window. Jacob wondered if that was how she passed her days; staring blindly into the yard for hours on end until hunger or thirst drove her into movement. “Choices you wouldn’t even imagine could exist.” The smile again, unnatural, stretching her wrinkled lips until they cracked.

What could she possibly mean? What sort of choices did she have to make? Jacob was starting to feel uncomfortable, so he changed the subject to the main purpose of his visit. It was a difficult sentiment to express, and he chose his words carefully. “Enid, do you have anyone to visit you? Maybe a neighbour who can pop in every few days?”

Enid spoke as though she hadn’t heard him. Her face had taken on a strange, intense expression as she stared at the window, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “It was a different time back then. When you were offered something impossible, you didn't always question it.”

Jacob stared at his clasped hands. “If… if it’s okay with you… I was thinking I could drop by every now and then. I work at a store only about ten minutes away, so if you’d like some company I could come by after my shifts—”

“Jacob,” she said, as though reminding herself of his name. “Do as your family did. It’s no good for you to spend time with those who have bartered with their souls.”

“It’s no trouble,” Jacob said hurriedly as his aunt tried to rise from her chair. “Really, it would be nice to see more of you… and, I mean, if anything were to happen…”

“Ha.” It was a cold, hollow laugh. Enid had gotten to her feet and moved around her chair. She was walking strangely, as though her joints had frozen while she sat. Movement on the floor caught Jacob’s eyes, and he saw fleshy, white objects had fallen from the folds of his great aunt’s dress. They squirmed on the floor. Surely those aren’t… maggots?

Aunt Enid turned her head to stare at Jacob and he realised, with a jolt, that she could see him despite the bleached-white eyes. “No,” she said, scraping towards him laboriously. “You’ll do better to spend your time with the living.”

20
Overheard

“He-e-ey,” Kylie said, flipping backwards onto the couch and kicking her sneakers off. She noticed she had a hole in one sock, and wiggled the exposed toe.

“Hey yourself,” Sarah said from the other end of the phone. “I miss you already, girl.”

Kylie laughed as she stared at the decorative plaster bordering the ceiling. It was fancy. Too fancy, she’d decided. Like the house was trying to seem classier than a rural farmhouse had any right to be. “Nowhere near as much as I miss you. And Jem. And Tammy. I swear I’m going to die of boredom before this week’s up.”

“Ugh.” Kylie could imagine her best friend rolling her eyes as she twisted the phone’s cord around her fingers. “Then come back. It’s not as if the house is going to die if it’s left alone for too long.”

Kylie groaned. “Mum says it’s going to build character. I think she’s hoping I’ll turn into a country bumpkin while I’m here. Plus she says we still owe the Joneses for that time they looked after our dog.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But there’s literally nothing to do here. It’s, like, an hour to walk to the shops, and there’s nothing there except ugly fashion and a really nasty milkbar.” Kylie rolled onto her side to look at the lounge room. She wasn’t sure if the house needed new bulbs or if it had been built by an idiot, but the building never seemed bright enough no matter how many lights she turned on. As soon as evening hit, the shadows clustered in and dimmed the room until she struggled to make out details in the corners and behind the multitude of bookcases.

“Hey, there’s got to be something fun to do there,” Sarah said. A teasing note crept into her voice. “Feeding chickens. Sitting in a rocking chair for hours on end. Sewing.”

“Shut up.” Kylie made a face, even though her friend couldn’t see her. Sarah laughed. In the moment of silence that followed, Kylie thought she detected a noise in the background of the phone. What is that? Breathing?

“Hey, did you hear that?” she asked. The noise was interrupted by what sounded like a fridge door opening, and rustling as Sarah looked inside.

“Hear what?”

“Like, exhaling.”

“Yeah, I do that sometimes.” A thud as a container hit a bench, and the pop of a lid being pulled off.

She’s into the icecream, then. Her parents can’t be home.

“Yeah, but this sounded really… never mind. Has Travis said anything about me?”

“Forget him,” Sarah said, her voice muffled as she filled her mouth with ice-cream. “He’s not worth your time, girl.”

Kylie didn’t reply. In the few seconds of dead air, she heard the breathing again. That can’t be Sarah. You can’t breathe like that with your mouth full.

“Hey, did you—”

“Yeah, I heard it that time,” Sarah said, sounding annoyed. “That’ll be the brat listening in on our call again. Tyler, get the hell off the phone.”

An exhale filled the pause in their conversation, and Kylie sat up on the couch, suddenly feeling cold. It had sounded… sick, somehow. Like a person breathing through a damaged larynx. She’d heard the sound before, years ago, when her grandmother was dying of throat cancer. She’d have been happy to never hear it again.

“Tyler,” Sarah repeated, sounding angry. “I swear I’ll beat your ass for this. Get off the damn phone.”

An inhale this time, sticky and rattling. Kylie wrapped her arms around her torso. “Sarah, are you sure—”

“Hang on, let me go punch some sense into the brat,” Sarah said. “He must be using mum’s bedroom phone. Be back in a tic.”

Kylie heard a click as Sarah placed the receiver on the kitchen bench, then her friend’s footsteps thundering in the distance, accompanied by her yelling, “This is why everyone hates you, you ass.”

Kylie let her eyes rove across the room as she waited. The shadows seemed to be thickening, as though they were seeping out of their corners and bleeding across the room. She had the distinct impression that, if she waited long enough, she’d be entirely swallowed in the darkness. She closed her eyes and tapped her feet together, suddenly keen to hear her friend on the phone again.

Instead, the rasping, rattling breath returned, followed by a voice. It was a sound Kylie knew she’d never forget; cracked and somehow bubbling, like the sounds were drawn through a mangled neck. Despite that, the voice seemed pleased with itself. Almost taunting.

“Hello Kylie,” it said, accompanied by another rattling breath. “You left the back door unlocked.”

Kylie’s mouth opened, though she didn’t make a sound. The receiver clicked as the caller placed it back in its cradle. Two beats passed, then Sarah picked up her phone again, sounding breathless. “It wasn’t Tyler,” she said. “He’s downstairs, playing video games with his friend.”

The receiver dropped from Kylie’s hands as the door behind her opened.

21
The Cleaners

“Jeeze, wow.” Jerry opened the car door to get a better look at the three-story mansion towering above him. He was sure the day had been hot and sunny when they’d left the town forty minutes before, but now thick clouds blotted out most of the natural light and left him feeling chilled. “You’ve been coming here every day for the last week?” he asked, incredulous, as his cousin killed the car’s ignition and undid his seatbelt.

Ash gave him a toothy smile. “And been paid three times what I was making at my old job.”

“How exactly did you get this gig again?”

Ash slid out of his seat and rounded the car to retrieve his supplies. “Craigslist. Put myself up as a professional cleaning company. No one checks your references, and it’s simple enough to fake certificates and letters of recommendation. It’s an easy job, anyway.”

“Easy,” Jerry repeated, staring at the building. “I’d call this the opposite of easy.”

Ash, holding a mop and bucket in one hand and with spare cloths slung over his shoulder, gave Jerry’s back a slap as he passed him. “It’s not that bad on the inside. Just help me out for a day or two until I’m back on schedule, kay? Grab the spare boxes so we can haul some of the junk out.”

Jerry rubbed at the back of his neck, then sighed and retrieved the empty boxes and followed his cousin up the weed-choked gravel driveway. It had sounded like an easy job when Ash had called him the night before. I’m cleaning a friend’s home, but I’m a bit behind schedule. Wanna help out for the day? I’ll pay you fifty bucks.

Of course, he hadn’t learnt until that morning that it wasn’t a friend’s house, but rather a paid job. And it wasn’t a simple de-clutter-and-dust task, either. The elderly woman who had lived in the house has passed away a fortnight before, and her family wanted the building thoroughly cleaned before they put it up for sale.

Jerry swore under his breath and ran up the porch steps to where Ash had propped the door open with a rock. The foyer looked reasonably clean; furniture had been shoved into a corner, waiting either to be sold or carted away in a dump truck. An archway to the right led into an old-fashioned sitting room. Jerry’s mouth dropped open as he turned in a slow circle, amazed at the opulence surrounding him. The gold-leafed sconces lining the walls matched the chandelier, which hung high above his head, and the chandelier in turn matched the grungy marble tiles below his feet.

“This is incredible.”

“It’s sure something, huh? The guy who hired me said it was built in the eighteen-hundreds, when the woman who lived here was a young child.”

“What, seriously? But wouldn’t that make her, like, over a hundred?”

“That’s what he said. I’ve got to finish in the kitchen—I didn’t get through it last night—but it’s a bit two pokey for two of us. Why don’t you head upstairs and pick a room? Just clear out any drawers, carry as much of the furniture downstairs as you can, and vacuum the floors.”

“Clear out… what do I do with it?”

Ash shrugged as he backed towards the sitting room, dragging the mop in his wake. “If it looks super, super important, put it to one side. Otherwise toss it all in the box to throw out. I already asked the owner, and he doesn’t want any memorabilia kept.”

“Right.”

Ash disappeared from view, and Jerry was left facing the curved stairwell to the second floor. He cleared his throat, picked up one of the empty boxes, and began climbing. The steps groaned under his weight, and Jerry couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since they’d been regularly used. If the owner had been over a hundred, she must have lived in the downstairs rooms, surely?

The hallway stretched ahead of him, dark and musty and coated in red wallpaper that had faded with age. Jerry tried the first room, but Ash had already cleared it. The second opened into a bathroom, which he skipped, but the third brought him to a cluttered bedroom.

“Kay, you got this,” Jerry said, clutching the box tightly. The room looked long-disused. A huge wardrobe sat regressed into one wall, opposite a bureau, a small desk, and an empty shelf. Despite clearly being meant as a bedroom, there wasn’t any bed.

Jerry dropped his box beside the bureau and pulled open the first drawer, expecting linen. To his surprise, it was filled with piles of hand-written notes on aging yellow paper. He leafed through a few pages, but the old-fashioned scrawl was almost indecipherable, so he dropped the papers into his box and went back for another handful.

A picture slipped out and fluttered to the floor, and Jerry bent to pick it up. It showed four women, all dressed in heavy Victorian garb and with their hair pulled back into tight buns, sitting in a semi-circle. The picture was small and grainy, but the women all seemed to wear an identical, inscrutable expression as they gazed at the camera.

A shape in the background caught Jerry’s attention, and he squinted at it, then lowered the picture to look at the wardrobe set into the back of the room. They were one and the same. The way the women were arranged around the wardrobe seemed to suggest it had some sort of significance. “Weird,” Jerry muttered, and dropped the image into the box, where it landed on an ink-stained butcher’s receipt.

Jerry moved through the first drawer quickly, dumping its contents into the box after a quick scan for any sort of obviously valuable paperwork. Halfway down he came across a gold-embossed certificate. Awarded to Miss Myrtle Vouchalis for exceptional contributions to the field of cryptozoology.

Cryptozoology…

Jerry had heard the word before, he was sure, though he couldn’t remember what it meant. The certificate looked expensive and important, but, if it had been left forgotten in a room that was never used, he couldn’t imagine anyone still living wanted it.

Into the box you go.

He’d emptied the top drawer, and bent his head to check he hadn’t missed anything. There, snagged between the base and the back of the drawer, was a second photograph. Jerry reached into the bureau and snagged it. What he saw set his heart thundering and sweat developing across his back.

The four women still sat posed around the wardrobe. This time, however, its doors were open. And inside was something Jerry couldn’t even begin to explain. It was huge—taller than a human—and had multiple limbs extending from its elongated torso. Its head reminded him of an ibis bird’s, except it seemed more like a skull than actual living tissue. There were hollows where the eyes should have been, and the long, thin beak stretched down in front of its body. The limbs were all scrawny and multi-jointed, like a spider’s, and, though it was hard to see in the picture, the skin seemed leathery. Its arms had been spread out and fixed to the back of the wardrobe like an impromptu display case.

Jerry turned, slowly, to look at the dark doors set into the wall. He dropped the photograph and took two steps towards the stained wood. “Ash?” he called, hoping his voice would carry through the old house.

“Yeah?” he cousin bellowed from the kitchen below.

Jerry fastened his sweating palms on the door’s handles. “What’s cryptozoology?”

“I know that… isn’t it, like, uh…”

Jerry pulled on the handles and tugged the doors wide open.

“It’s the study of mythical animals, isn’t it?”

Jerry didn’t reply. He was captivated—and shocked—and amazed—and appalled—by the sight in front of him. The creature, standing nearly a foot taller than him, remained in the wardrobe, its limbs still nailed to the wooden sides. Its empty eyesockets stared out of the bird-like head, and its leathery skin sagged about its ancient frame.

Jerry met the skull’s empty gaze, and he could have sworn he heard a quiet rattle as the beast exhaled.

22
Left Behind

Vivian started awake. A very faint light on the horizon was bleeding away the stars, which meant it would be at least an hour before her alarm went off.

She rolled over to see her husband, Alan, still asleep next to her. His hair needed a trim, and it fell into his face and made him look like a shaggy dog. Vivian brushed the hair away from his eyes, but he didn’t stir.

Something had woken her, she was sure, but she couldn’t remember what. Some sort of noise… like an alarm.

Vivian pushed herself out of bed and wormed her toes into her slippers before they chilled in the cold night air. She pulled her dressing gown over her clothes and slipped out of the bedroom.

She glanced into her twins’ room as she passed. Kara slept in the left bed, her wall covered in boy band posters and with makeup scattered across her bedside table. Tara, on the right, was surrounded by pictures of horses and veterinary paraphernalia. Sometimes Vivian wondered how much easier Christmas shopping would be if their interests aligned even slightly.

She moved downstairs to where the grandfather at the back of the hallway ticked quietly. As she entered the kitchen, she caught a glimpse of her neighbour, Mr Richards, standing in his lawn.

He wore only his socks and underwear, and was looking down the street at something out of Vivian’s view. She watched him for a moment, then filled and turned on the kettle. If it had been anyone else, she would have called to him or gone out to check he was okay. But Mr Richards had yelled at her daughters when they’d played in the street the previous month, and Vivian still hadn’t fully forgiven him.

As she waited for the kettle to boil, Vivian fished a bag of coffee out of the cabinet below the sink. She normally liked to grind the beans fresh, but the grinder was too noisy to use while her family was still asleep, and Alan became grumpy if he was woken too early.

The kettle reached its boil, and Vivian went to it. As she passed the kitchen window, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing outside to see if Mr Richards was still there.

He was, and so was the elderly lady from across the street, Evie, and the teenage grandson who’d been staying with her.

Vivian stopped short, one hand on the kettle, as she frowned at them. They weren’t talking. They weren’t even standing close to each other. But they were facing the same direction, and their chins were tilted upwards as though they could see something in the sky. Something that they found too captivating to look away from. Is there a lunar event this morning? A comet, maybe?

They weren’t moving, and Vivian had no desire to go outside, so she turned to the back of the house and went into the laundry room. She emptied the previous night’s washing into a basket and refilled the machine, though she didn’t turn it on. She left the basket beside the back door for when it was light enough to hang it, and returned to the front of the house.

This time her curiosity was too strong to be denied, and she went to the window deliberately.

Half the street seemed to be out of their houses. She recognised many of them, though a few were unfamiliar. They all faced the sky with slack jaws and intent eyes as they watched something out of Vivian’s sight.

Vivian crossed her arms over her chest. Suddenly it didn’t seem so important to let Alan have his extra hour of sleep. She ran up the stairs, no longer trying to keep her footfalls quiet, and pushed into her bedroom. The bed’s blankets had been cast back and the room was empty.

“Alan?”

Vivian moved to the bathroom, but her husband wasn’t there. She turned and saw his slippers were still tucked neatly under the bed.

Rising panic threatened to choke Vivian as she ran to her twins’ room. She wrenched the door open and bit back a choked cry. Two identical beds, both empty. Two very different pairs of shoes laid on the ground, both waiting for their owners to wake up. The twins were gone.

Back down the stairs, Vivian called for Alan, then Kara and Tara—a final, desperate bid to find them still safely inside—and when they didn’t answer, she tightened the dressing gown around her torso and pushed through the front door.

The street was packed. It seemed like everyone in her neighbourhood had gathered on the road at five thirty in the morning, all to stare at the sky.

Vivian looked up. She couldn’t stop herself. She had to know what had captivated them, and compelled them to stand in their underwear and dressing gowns in the freezing cold morning.

The sky, still dark, still spotted with stars, seemed exactly the same as normal. Vivian searched for any kind of aberration or change without success, then turned back to the crowd.

She found Alan easily. He was tall, and stood nearly a head above his neighbours. She couldn’t see Kara and Tara, though; they weren’t with their father, and the gathering had become too dense to find them easily.

Vivian pushed through the crowd to her husband, and shook his arm. “Alan? What’s happening? What are you doing out here?”

He didn’t move his eyes from the sky. He didn’t even blink. But his mouth opened, and he said, in a voice that was very much unlike his usually cheerful tones, “It’s time. Get ready.”

“Alan?” Vivian shook him more frantically, but she couldn’t break his attention. To her shame, she found herself crying, and rubbed her sleeve over her damp cheeks as she ran through the crowd.

Back inside her home, Vivian grabbed the kitchen phone off its hook and dialled the emergency help line. She shifted from foot to foot as the phone rang.

And rang, and rang, and rang.

“Come on,” Vivian muttered, gripping the phone tightly in her sweating palms. “Come on, answer!”

The incessant ringing noise mocked her. Vivian couldn’t stop herself from picturing the police station, its rooms emptied of officers as they filed outside to stare at the sky.

She dropped the phone and ran back to her home’s front door, intent on finding her daughters and dragging them back inside, if nothing else.

The street was empty.

Vivian clapped a hand over her mouth. She stepped onto her front porch and stared up and down the length of the road where, barely moments before, hundreds of souls had gathered. The sun had just barely breached the hill on the horizon, and its golden light spread across the road. Vivian rotated on the spot, staring at the empty street and the empty houses, as she found herself facing the idea of being the last person left on earth.

23
Diagen

Pascoe sat near the back of their small canoe, one hand braced on the side of the boat and the other holding the motion picture camera as steady as he could. Behind him, Guide used a long pole to slide their canoe through the marshy water systems.

It wouldn't be clear in the black-and-white film, but the surrounding landscape was a thousand shades of green. Grey-green lichen hung like giant curtains of lace from the towering, moss-coated trees. Clouds of tiny shimmering insects hovered above the water's surface, setting up a constant drone that steadily worked itself into Pascoe's brain.

"A little to the left," he instructed Guide, and pointed in the direction he wanted to ensure the message got through. Guide spoke just enough English to be hireable, but no more. Communication was so difficult that Pascoe still hadn’t figured out his ward's name. The short, perpetually-smiling man responded to the title “guide”, though, so that was what Pascoe called him.

Guide obediently turned the boat, and Pascoe let the camera pan across the landscape. Details like the scunge floating on the water's surface and the birdcalls wouldn't come across in the theatrical release. Even so, the landscape was dramatic enough to earn him a good sum for the footage, even if he never found the Diagen.

Rumour had it that a giant water creature resembling a crocodile lived in the swamps of Venezuela. The legends contradicted each other more often than corroborated, but all agreed the ancient beast was more than twice as long as a man and had rows upon rows of vicious teeth.

When he'd started the expedition, Pascoe had been thrilled to discover the man he called Guide claimed to have knowledge of the Diagen. Of course, after hiking across the country for three days, Pascoe had realised Guide would have sworn he was capable of flying you to the moon if he thought it would earn him a few coins. Still, the local was pleasant and eager to please, and hadn't tipped Pascoe or his expensive equipment into the water... yet.

Pascoe raised his head from the camera and squinted at a dark shape in the distance. "Guide, what's that?"

"That? Yes, yes," Guide said, misunderstanding his guest and directing the boat towards the dark shape. Pascoe sighed, but didn't bother trying to explain himself. As they drew closer, weaving through the thin, drooping trees, Pascoe saw it was a structure made from rocks, almost like a small mountain rising out of the water. Perhaps there's a system of caves running through it? That would make excellent film.

Pascoe waved his guide to their left, and felt a thrill at the sight of the cave opening not far ahead, its dark rock arching high above the water, and filled with stalactites.

The audiences will love this. I could even claim this was the Diagen's home, and that I encountered the fearsome beast in the darkness.

"Inside," he told Guide, and bent behind his camera to guide its lens over the rock formations and glistening stone. A steady wind blew through the caves, ruffling Pascoe's hair and drying the sweat on his face. He knew that meant the caves likely continued for a long way, and probably had another opening further into the water systems. They wouldn't be able to travel that far, though; the camera could only capture film when there was a certain amount of light. Pascoe had brought a large lamp, but even that wouldn't be strong enough to penetrate through the repressive darkness.

Pascoe let the boat drift deeper into the cave, going further than he knew the camera would capture. His curiosity was gaining on him, and he raised his head in wonder as he gazed at the moss-coated stalactites and stalagmites. The wind blew tiny insects into his face, but he hardly cared.

Guide gasped sharply, then yelled something in his native language. Pascoe turned towards him. "What's the matter with you?"

The short man was gesticulating wildly and speaking in broken English. "Sir! Sir! Air! Big air, comes fast here, goes fast there!"

"What on earth are you saying?" Pascoe leaned one arm on the side of the boat as he frowned. Guide had lost his perpetual smile, and was digging his pole into the water, trying to draw the boat back towards the exit.

Then the cause of his assistant’s alarm struck Pascoe, and he turned back to the cave with mingled shock and incredulity.

The wind's direction had changed. When they'd entered the caves, it had been coming from deep inside the tunnel. But, while he'd been engrossed in examining the walls, it had changed to blow in from the outside. Almost like...

"Breathing." Pascoe turned towards the cave's entrance and saw the stalactites—no, he corrected himself, the teeth – descend to block out the light.

24
Undeparted

Mark started awake and stood, knocking his chair to the floor. His heart thundered from a sickening nightmare, but the details were already slipping away like water through his fingers.

He ran his hands through his hair, pushing it off his sweaty forehead, and looked about the kitchen. Late-afternoon, blood-red sunlight sifted through the curtained windows to cling to the rough wooden furniture. Papers were spread across the table in front of him, but Mark only glanced at them before crossing to the sink to fill a glass with water.

The sunset bathed the fields and bushes behind his rural property with a dim, sickly light. He'd never liked sunsets, and never considered them romantic. To Mark, they boded ill; it was the day’s painful, final struggle to live before the night overpowered and smothered it.

That summer had been difficult. The rains had come less frequently than they should have, and it had left the land parched. Red-tinted dirt blew across the property in thin gusts, dragged along by the hot wind.

The one thing that had never suffered was the billabong nestled behind the house. Even as the water table dipped, the natural lake maintained its rich blue tone and bright green water plants. It was the only soothing colour for as far as Mark could see.

The billabong had been disturbed, though. A strange woman stood waist-deep in it, brushing her fingers across the surface as water dripped from her dark hair and white gown.

Mark dropped his empty glass back on the bench and grabbed the handgun off where he hid it on top of the cupboard. Mark's property was a long way from town, and he didn’t recognise the intruder.

Mark tucked the gun into the back of his jeans as he pushed through the house's swinging door. He let it slam closed behind himself. The crack was loud enough, he knew, to carry across the flat, barren lawn and reach the pond. But if the woman heard it, she gave no indication. She continued to sway gently, almost as though the wind were moving her, as she swirled her fingers through the water.

"Hey," Mark yelled, stalking across the lawn. "Hey, you!"

The woman said nothing, and didn’t turn. As he drew closer, Mark realised she was humming a low, sombre tune. It seemed familiar to Mark, but he couldn't remember where he knew it from.

The hypnotising swaying was unsettling him, but he couldn’t just leave her in his pond. With a final glance back at his home, Mark pulled off his boots, took a deep breath and waded into the lake.

The water felt unexpectedly cold as it swirled around his legs. Far colder than it should have been during the height of summer. It was colder, even, than it felt in the middle of winter. Mark shuddered, but moved deeper into the water, and closer to the woman. She continued to sway, humming the tune that teased at the corners of his memory.

"Hey," Mark said, as shivers ran up his back. "Hey, what're you doing here?"

The woman rotated slowly to face him at last, and Mark choked back a cry of shock.

Her face was ashen white, sallow and sickly. Dark smudges circled her eyes, which stared sightlessly into the distance. The water plastered strands of her dark hair to her face, and dripped down her sunken cheeks.

Mark finally recognised the tune. It was a funeral dirge.

He took a half step back. The corpse opened her pale lips to speak. Her voice was faint, barely a cracked whisper, but the words carried to him as clearly as if they'd been screamed. "Murderer."

"What?" Mark took another half-step back and nearly slipped on a mossy rock. He staggered, splashing water around himself, and the woman swayed towards him. Her eyes were directed at him, but focussed somewhere far behind his head.

"Murderer," she repeated, and her voice had developed an angry, dangerous note. Mark stumbled further back, but his foot became tangled in a water weed. He fell, and the icy billabong rushed over him to envelope him in its cruel embrace. As he struggled to pull himself upright, two horribly cold, viciously hard hands fixed around his neck. The woman’s eyes, maniacally wide and bloodshot, gloated at him.

She was forcing him deeper, pushing him far under the surface, intent on drowning him. Mark fumbled behind his back to where the pistol was tucked, then pulled it free and aimed it at the woman's face.

He could hear the crack even though the water. The pressure on his throat was finally released. Mark lurched upright and exhaled a lungful of water, then gasped in fresh air. The low sun painted the water a violent red. Mark took two steps backwards, staring at the woman's body as it rose through the water to float just below the billabong's surface.

Her face was awfully, terribly familiar. He couldn't believe he hadn't recognised it before. It was the same face he'd fallen in love with four years earlier. It had beamed at him from behind a long white veil. And it was the face that had smile at him, sadly, anxiously, as they gazed at each other above a table littered with final notices and creditor's letters.

A strangled sob escaped Mark’s throat, and he raised the gun, almost automatically, to point at his own head.

Mark started awake and stood, knocking his chair to the floor. His heart thundered from a sickening nightmare, but the details were already slipping away like water through his fingers…

25
Hazard Lights

Maria leaned against the car door and stared through the window at the harsh white lights spaced along the Lane Cove Tunnel. The driver kept trying to start a conversation, but she’d caught a red-eye flight and was beyond exhausted. All she wanted to do was get to her hotel and sleep for a lifetime.

The traffic wasn’t co-operating, though. It had been gridlocked for the last twenty minutes, and, now that they were in the tunnel, it seemed even worse. Maria didn’t think they’d moved more than ten meters in the last five minutes.

“Bad traffic today, yeah?” the taxi driver, a cheerful man with a thick black beard, said. He beamed at her in the rear-vision mirror, and Maria mustered a thin smile.

“Uh-huh.”

“Haven’t seen it this bad in months. Must be a breakdown ahead.”

“Hmm.”

Maria turned to look out of the opposite window, where she could see five other car lanes – two more going in their direction, the other three opposite – all forced to a halt. Every now and then a car would crawl a few inches closer to its leader, as though that would make any sort of difference.

The radio came to life with a crackle, and Maria jumped. She’d nearly fallen asleep.

“We are currently experiencing an emergency situation,” the voice on the radio said, and Maria leaned forward to listen to it. Her driver hadn’t touched the radio, she knew, by the way his face had gone pale; however, as the tunnel dipped below ground to carry cars from one side of the harbour to the other, the control room had the ability to activate the car’s radios in an emergency.

“Remain in your vehicle,” the voice said. He sounded flustered and panicky, though he was clearly reading from a script. “Extinguish all lights and remain silent. Assistance will be sent as soon as possible.”

The radio fell silent. Maria looked to her taxi driver, whose face had lost almost all colour. He turned the key in the ignition, powering the car down and killing its lights. Around her, other cars were also being turned off

Maria swivelled in her seat to look behind herself. She thought she could hear noises coming from deeper in the tunnel. Then the multitude of lights spaced along the concrete walls whined and died, plunging them into darkness.

Someone shrieked, and car doors slammed. A handful of headlights were still on, and Maria tried to see what was happening through the limited glow, but everything was a mess of shadows and shapes.

The radio crackled for a second time, and the voice returned. Its panic had been raised to a nearly hysterical pitch, and he didn’t seem to be reading from a script any longer. “They say you should remain in your cars… but… but… they’re still finding you… don’t run, don’t bother, they’ll catch you. They’re spreading so fast. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this before… oh jeeze, I’m so, so sorry… stay in your cars, stay…”

The voice broke off with a gasp and Maria heard a banging noise in the distance, and what sounded like metal being twisted and torn. The radio clicked off.

Maria sat frozen in her seat as she stared at her driver. A car a few rows ahead turned its hazard lights on, and the flashing red colour reflecting off the driver’s face as he stared back.

Then the screams started.

Maria turned to look behind them and saw shapes – people – running between the cars. It was more than panic; it was pandemonium. Several figures shoved against her taxi as they ran past, making it sway. Maria placed one hand on the car door, preparing to exit and join the crowd, but stopped when she caught sight of other, larger shapes further back in the tunnel.

They were barely visible in the blinking hazard light, but they were definitely not human. The shapes moved on all fours, dexterously climbing over the cars and scuttling along the tunnel’s walls. Their limbs had at least four joints each, and they were larger than an average man.

They snatched up the fleeing humans so quickly that the motions were almost a blur. Maria thought she could hear the crackles and snaps of breaking bones underneath the screams. Glass smashed as the creatures pounded their way through car windows.

“Get down!” the taxi driver hissed, shoving Maria out of her seat so that she was knelt in the footspace. She flattened herself as much as she could, trying to breathe through her mouth to minimise the noise. The taxi driver sunk back into his seat, his eyes wide as he tried not to shake.

Maria’s view was restricted from her position, but she could still see the figures racing past the windows and feel the impact as they bumped the car. Then the taxi shuddered as something large and heavy landed on it, and one of the running figures by her window was pulled from view with a gurgling shriek. Maria pressed her hand over her mouth and held her breath. There was silence for a second, then a horrific crash as the windshield was broken by a long, tough limb.

The taxi driver barely managed half a scream before he was torn out of his seat and pulled through the hole in the windshield. His voice choked off, then, and dark liquid splashed across the window above Maria.

The sounds were changing as the screams faded into the distance. The human cacophony was replaced by steady, loud thuds as the creatures climbed over the cars, and by snapping noises, and chewing, tearing sounds. Maria squeezed her eyes closed so that she wouldn’t have to watch the shadows move past the window.

She kept still until the noises died into the distance, and were eventually entirely extinguished. Her muscles ached from the cramped position. Outside, the tunnel remained dark except for the hazard lights, which continued to bathe the area in intermittent flashes of red. She was surrounded in near-perfect silence. No footsteps, no voices, no thudding limbs, no tearing flesh.

Maria shook as she slowly, cautiously raised herself to her knees. She peeked through the car’s window, between the streaks of blood, to see the tunnel seemed empty. So did the cars. Their human occupants had been stripped from them, pulled through broken windows or holes that had been carved in the metal. Maria alone had been spared, thanks to her hiding place.

I’ve got to leave before those creatures come back. There should be emergency exits placed along the walls. They should be too small for those… things… to fit through easily. If I can just get to one of them …

Maria opened her door slowly and silently. The car’s interior lights automatically turned on in response, and Maria looked out, frozen in terror, as a dozen pairs of reflective, globe-like eyes turned towards her.

26
Snow Hunting

“Hey, check this out!” Max’s boots dug up clumps of snow as he forced his way over the hill. He stopped at its crest and planted his fists on his hips to survey the valley in front of him. “Hah, it’s someone’s holiday cabin.”

Ryan tried to keep up, though he had forty kilos on Max and had become winded hours before. He was panting and sweating despite the freezing temperatures by the time he gained the hill’s top. “Good for them.”

“Wanna have a poke around?”

“What, are you nuts?” Ryan stared at his friend, whose acne-scarred face had the manic grin he wore whenever he was about to get them into trouble.

“Why not? It’s obviously a vacation house, and they’re not going to be living in it off-season.”

“I don’t want to get…” Ryan trailed off, and Max laughed.

“Don’t want to get arrested? Who by, the snow police? C’mon, aint nobody crazy enough to be around here ’cept for us. Let’s have a look in the rich guy’s house. It’ll give us a break from hunting.”

Hunting had been Max’s plan for that day. He’d taken his dad’s gun and given Ryan a knife for the excursion. Ryan had been squeamish about the idea of gutting rabbit and deer, but, after four hours of wildly off-mark shots and creating too much noise for them to have any hope of getting close to their prey, he was starting to think he might not actually need to use the blade.

“C’mon,” Max said, and took off down the other side of the hill in a windmill of waving limbs.

Ryan sighed and followed at a more sedate pace, being careful not to slip in the thick drifts. Max was already at the cabin’s door when his friend reached the foot of the hill.

“He didn’t even lock it!” Max yelled, shoving the heavy wood door open. “He’s basically asking for people to look through his stuff. What a moron.”

“Hey, slow down.” Ryan staggered after his friend, but hesitated on the house’s threshold. The building looked expensive; he could imagine it belonging to one of the suited businessmen he sometimes saw picking up their children after school. He’d always felt somewhat envious of those families; their kids had the best backpacks and shoes, and showed off the latest games the day after their release, and talked about flying to France or Bali for their holidays.

That was, if he was honest with himself, the lynchpin of his friendship with Max. They’d bonded over their hatred of the rich brats, as they called them. Max was erratic, and loud, and pushy, but, Ryan had to admit, Max had made him see and do a lot of stuff he otherwise wouldn’t have. Stealing. Skipping classes. Going hunting.

He sighed and entered the building. Max had dropped his backpack, gun and gloves onto the wooden table that took up nearly half of the living room, and Ryan added his own backpack and knife to the pile. The room was large, richly furnished with furs and antlers, and surprisingly warm after the chill from the outside. He couldn’t see his friend.

“Hey, Max?”

Max didn’t reply for a moment, and when he did, his voice was strangely choked. “Get in here.”

Ryan followed the voice down the corridor leading to the kitchen. A large freezer took up part of the room. Two marble benches and a collection of shelves covered the rest of the walls. It was clearly a hobby hunter’s area to clean, prepare and freeze the deer he’d shot.

Max stood in front of one of the benches. His face had lost most of its colour. Ryan approached him carefully, and slapped his shoulder. “What’s up?”

“What does that look like to you?” Max asked.

Ryan’s stomach flipped as he turned to the marble counter. It was coated in dried blood and some sort of long fur. “Uh… he’s not good at cleaning up after himself, is he?”

Max carefully plucked one of the strands off the bench. He raised it to eye-height. It would have been too thin to easily see except for the dried gore stuck to it. “Ever seen an animal with fur this long?” he asked.

Ryan hadn’t. The strand was easily forty centimetres. “What’re you saying?”

“This is hair.” Max dropped the strand and stepped away from the counter. He looked sheet-white.

Ryan opened his mouth to disagree, but no counter-argument came to him. He raised his eyes from the blood-stained bench to look about the kitchen. It had all of the hallmarks of a hunter’s home; multiple blades hung from hooks on the walls, boxes of plastic bags and wrap lay nestled in the corner, and a large bin sat in the corner. And, of course, there was the freezer.

“Don’t open that!” Ryan said sharply, but Max ignored him. Of course he won’t listen to me. He never does.

Max’s face was blank as he held the lid up and stared at the box’s contents. Ryan leaned forward, afraid of getting too close, but desperately curious to see inside.

At least two dozen plastic bags were neatly arranged in the deep freezer. Ryan could see a lot of flesh, but couldn’t even begin to guess what—or where—it came from. He thought he saw pieces of skin that looked pink, though.

Max reached into the box and picked up one of the bags. He dropped it again immediately, but not before Ryan saw the woman’s head stored underneath. Her lips were tinged blue from the cold, her eyes frozen open in an expression of shock, her long hair painted red by the blood that had run from her severed neck.

Ryan swore under his breath and grabbed Max’s arm. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

For once, they were in perfect agreement. They scrambled down the hallway and back into the living room where their equipment still waited for them on the table.

Max froze partway across the room. Once again, he was struck by how much warmer the cabin was compared to the icy landscape. There’s no way it should be this balmy. Not unless…

He glanced towards the fireplace, where faintly glowing coals still lived in the grate. He tried to swallow, but his throat had tightened unbearably.

“Where’s my gun?” Max said, anger rushing into his voice, but not quite capable of masking his fear. “What’d you do with it?”

“Nothing!” Ryan turned towards the table. Their backpacks and gloves were still scattered over the mahogany surface, but his knife was also missing. A piece of paper had been wedged under his backpack, though, and he pulled it free with shaking fingers.

I’m in the mood for some sport, the note read. You have a two minute head start. Run.

27
Host

Kira muted her television and frowned at the caller ID flashing on her phone. Jessika Kirble. It had been years since she’d last thought of Jessika, let alone heard from her.

She, Jessika and Adelaide had been close friends in school. Just seeing her name brought up a myriad of memories: weekly sleepovers, fights over toys, and, as they’d gotten older, fights over boys. At the time it had felt like their bond would never be broken.

Time had eroded the friendship, of course, as it did everything. When Kira’s friends split up to go to different highschools, she’d found it surprisingly easy to move into new friendships, and forget the old—and seemingly childish—camaraderie.

So how did Jessika get my number, and why’s she calling me now, after more than ten years of silence? If she wants to recruit me to one of those pyramid scheme makeup parties, she can think again.

Kira pressed the green answer button, and held the mobile to her ear. “Hello?”

The voice on the other end let out a relieved breath. It sounded oddly scratchy and distant, but the tone was shockingly familiar. “Kira! Hey, it’s Jessika. From school. D’you remember?”

“Yeah, of course!” Kira forced a note of brightness into her voice. It felt surreal to be talking to her childhood friend, like she’d stepped back in time, somehow. “How are you? Wow, it’s been ages.”

Jessika chuckled. “It sure has. I’ve been great. Though I’ve always felt bad that we didn’t stay in touch. Do you think we could meet up?”

Maybe she does just want to reconnect, after all. “Yeah, I’d love that. Let me take you out for coffee.”

“No, no, I mean tonight. Can you meet me tonight?”

Kira’s subconscious prickled. There was something unsettling about the urgent note in the other woman’s voice.

Jessika picked up on Kira’s hesitation and quickly added, “I know, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ask except it’s urgent. It’s about Adelaide.”

Adelaide Du. The third member of our miniature clique. She was heart-set on being a vet, wasn’t she? “Is something wrong with her?” Kira sat forward in her couch. The muted television had moved onto a commercial break, and an enthusiastic woman was demonstrating how much liquid her mopping cloth could absorb.

“Uh…” Jessika was silent for a very long time. When she finally spoke, a fake brightness saturated her voice. “It’s really something I need to talk to you about in person. Can you come? Tonight?”

The unsettling prickles evolved into an anxious buzz. “…where?”

“We could meet up in the car park by the convenience store in Mendle Street. In Reddington. Is that okay with you?”

At least it’s a public place. Not that I don’t trust her. I just… don’t trust her.

“That’s fine. I’ll be twenty minutes.”

Kira almost never visited Reddington, and had never been to the convenience store Jessika wanted to meet at. It wasn’t a good part of town. Half of the shops she passed were closed, and the other half looked like they were barely hanging on. Houses had tape holding fractured windows together, or cardboard where the windows had been completely broken. Kira hadn’t seen a single other human on the streets she’d passed, though there seemed to be no shortage of stray animals. The streetlights that still functioned did an appalling job of lighting the grime-coated pathways.

The uneasiness was growing with each turn she took. Maybe Jessika’s on drugs and is going to beg for money. Or just straight-up rob me.

Those concerns weren’t at all alleviated when Kira arrived at where the convenience store should have been and found a long-abandoned shell of a building. Part of the roof had collapsed. The only light came from the backglow of streetlamps in the road that ran behind the store.

This is insane. I’ve got to get out of here.

As she coasted past the abandoned shop, she saw a figure standing near the shopping cart corrals. Its pose was, in a strange way, incredibly familiar. The woman—Jessika—stepped forward and waved an arm in an attempt to attract Kira’s attention.

I should go. This place doesn’t bode well.

Jessika was waving both arms. She looked desperate.

…damn it.

Kira pulled into the parking lot and put the handbrake on, but didn’t remove the keys from the ignition. She got out of her car and carefully moved towards Jessika, who was waiting for her by the corral.

“Thanks for coming,” Jessika said, beaming at her.

Kira hoped her shock wasn’t too apparent. Her childhood friend had changed incredibly in the previous ten years. She’d once been plump, with dimples in her cheeks and a bouncy kind of energy. Now there seemed to be nothing inside her except for bones. Her skin hung off her in heavy droops. Deep grey shadows rimmed her eyes, which were bloodshot and not completely focussed. Only the energy remained, and she was expressing it in strange tics and hand flutters.

“How’ve you been?” Kira asked, trying not to look as repulsed as she felt.

Jessika smiled, her pale lips stretching into a shape that looked more like muscle memory than genuine emotion. “Great. Absolutely great. You’re looking well. That’s good. They take so much out of you, you really don’t want to be going into it when you’re already weak.”

“What?” Kira had begun backing up, trying to put more distance between herself and the gaunt woman, but Jessika was pacing forward and closing whatever gaps Kira built.

“It’s really important, though,” Jessika said. The plastic smile had frozen across her face. “That’s what they say, anyway. I don’t really understand it. But then, they don’t want me for my brainpower, y’know? They just need a host.”

Kira, now desperate to leave, turned towards her car. A second woman stood in front of the open driver door. Her face was masked in shadows, but Kira thought, behind the sunken cheeks and hollow eyes and bloodless lips, the bone structure was faintly familiar. “A… A…”

“Yes, that’s Adelaide. She called me first. But now it’s my turn to recruit a new host, and I chose you.”

Kira turned back to her old friend and screamed. Jessika’s face was distorting. Her jaw stretching horrifically wide, and something dark was moving at the back of her throat. Kira staggered backwards, too horrified to look away as small, slimy black insects began crawling across Jessika’s tongue. They looked nothing like any creature Kira had seen before. A multitude of twitching legs and large transparent wings extended from flat, shiny bodies. The wings fluttered open and the insects took flight when they reached Jessika’s lips. Kira turned to run, but two unexpectedly strong arms wrapped around her torso and pinned her in place.

“Open wide,” Adelaide whispered. Kira could feel the other woman’s sagging flesh pressing into her as the vice-like arms squeezed tight. “It will only take a moment.”

Then the small, wet insects began hitting Kira’s face. Their scratching feet felt across her cheeks and dug at her lips. Kira couldn’t stand it any longer. She screamed, and the creatures gladly took advantage of the invitation to enter their new host.

28
The Empty Church

“What do you think it is?” Clara asked, then corrected herself. “Was.”

“Church,” Sam said, nodding towards the cross adorning the steeply slanted roof. “Must be old, though. I didn’t think anyone lived near here.”

Clara turned to glance at the trees behind them. They’d been crossing from the town to Sam’s house, using the Potts Forest as a shortcut, when they’d become lost. Not that being lost in Potts Forest was dangerous; the woods were criss-crossed with hiking trails and roads. All the friends needed to do was keep walking until they came across a pathway, and follow it back to town. Neither of them had been expecting to find signs of habitation in the forest, though.

“Want to look inside?” Sam grinned, and her braces reflected in the low afternoon light.

Clara sighed. “Really?”

“C’mon, yeah. Let’s see what’s left inside.”

The church wasn’t large. It was smaller than Clara’s house, even. Sam was first to the door, and pushed it open, then wiped her hands on her jeans. “It’s slimy.”

“Wood’s rotting,” Clara noted. “Better be careful in there.”

Sam made a mocking noise. “It’s not that derelict. C’mon.”

Inside the church was so dim that Clara had to squint to make out the shapes. Rows of ancient, carved wooden pews faced the front of the church, where a simple pulpit was erected below a stained-glass window. Clara blinked at the image in the glass, but it didn’t seem to be any sort of religious scene. Instead, it showed a gigantic snake coiled in on itself, its mouth swallowing its tale so that it became a circle. The serpent’s teeth pierced its own scales, sending rivulets of blood onto the black ground below it. Clara shuddered and turned away.

A communion table stood at the front of the church, its once-white crocheted cloth discoloured and tatty from age. Clara approached the table and looked over the ornaments. Unlike other churches she’d seen, there were no communion cups or baskets for bread. Instead, a range of ornate, decadently-twisting knives were lined on the stained cloth, and a large bowl stood in the centre of the table. The bowl’s contents had dried during the decades the church had been forgotten, but it had left a black sediment in the base. Clara found herself imagining a congregation lining up to slice their hands and mingle their blood in the bowl, and forced herself to look away.

This place is too weird.

“Sam? Ready to go?” Clara hoped she’d kept the anxiety out of her voice, but couldn’t stop it thundering through her veins as she looked about the room and saw she was alone. “Sam?”

No answer.

Clara crossed her hands over her chest and tried to slow her breathing. She moved to the centre of the church and looked up and down the rows of pews. A door—one she couldn’t remember seeing before—stood open below the stained-glass window. Clara squinted at it. She thought she could hear faint noises coming from the darkness; halting, stumbling footsteps, and shoes scraping across the stone floor.

Clara reluctantly approached the door and held her breath to listen to the sounds. The footsteps mingled with a voice, but the tone was too low for her to understand what it was saying. She glanced down and saw the dust had been wiped off the door handle. Someone had come that way recently.

Clara cleared her throat, but her voice still came out as a whisper. “Sam?”

“Yes, Clara?” Sam’s voice, placid, came from inside the doorway.

“Sam, get out of there. I want to go.”

Silence. Clara leaned into the doorway, hoping to see her companion. The faint light from the church’s entrance and the holes in the roof couldn’t illuminate more than the first few steps, but she could see it was a stone stairwell, leading downwards. Does the church have a basement?

“Sam?” Clara called again, but there was still no response. Clara steeled herself, then stepped over the threshold and into the stairwell.

Almost immediately the darkness pressed in on her, making her feel cloistered and smothered. She tried to draw breath, but it felt like inhaling water. She tried to call, but her voice stuck in her throat. Moving her feet felt like dragging her limbs through mud, but she moved forward, slowly, deliberately, as the blackness pressed in on her from all sides.

Panic rose through her chest as she tried to call again, and found her voice choked. She turned back to find the door, but all was darkness. She couldn’t see the light, she couldn’t see the door, and she couldn’t see Sam. She tried to scream, but the sound was doused before it could even reach her own ears.

I’m suffocating. Even though she was still dragging breaths into her lungs, it felt nothing like any sort of air she’d inhaled before. It was dead and heavy and made her want to retch. She flung herself forward, towards where she thought the door had been, but her fingers grazed only the air. Her feet slipped out from under her as she fell forward. She braced herself to hit the floor, but, instead, she slammed into the door, upright.

Clara took a stumbling half-step back, but didn’t dare take her fingers away from the doorframe. She scrambled over it, searching for the handle, searching for a way out, as she fought to inhale the toxic substance that threatened to drown her. A choking sob escaped her raw throat, but the sound was perfectly smothered. She couldn’t hear a thing; not her heartbeat, not the sounds of her fingernails splintering as she clawed at the door with increased desperation, not the sounds of her hungry, futile gasps. Then the door swung open on its own and Clara stumbled through it.

She was back in the forest, facing the path she and Sam had been following. She drew a desperate, gasping breath, relieved to feel real air in her lungs again. When she turned, she found the church just behind her, its front door wide open.

That’s impossible.

She rotated to see the forest again, and caught sight of a figure near the edge of the trees. She recognised the jeans and slightly-too-large sweater, and stumbled towards her friend. “Sam?”

Sam turned slowly. Her face was sheet-white and coated with sweat, and her eyes, normally a bright brown, were deadened, as though she’d seen things Clara couldn’t even dream of.

“Sam?” Clara repeated, grabbing at her friend’s arm.

Sam blinked at her once and drew a shuddering breath. All she said was, “I want to go home.”

29
In the Space Above the Wardrobe

The rain drumming at Laura’s window nearly drowned out her cat's wheezy breathing. Octavius, the ancient tabby, lay curled beside her pillow. Later in the night, as the temperature dropped, he was likely to burrow under her blankets to leech off her body heat.

"You doing okay, champ?" Laura asked as Octavius gave an extra gurgly exhale. He blinked slowly in response. The vet said he was doing remarkably well for his age, which Laura had interpreted as a gentle warning that she might not have her childhood pet with her for much longer.

She turned back to her phone and continued scrolling as she filtered through her Facebook feed in case anything new had cropped up. It was well past her usual bedtime, and she was procrastinating in the vain hope that the rain might stop so she could have an undisturbed sleep. When it rained at night, her dreams were always erratic and disturbing, and often devolved into nightmares before morning arrived.

Octavius gave an extra deep wheeze, and Laura looked at him. His eyes were fixed on something above her head, and had widened into the perfect circles he usually reserved for when he begged for food or saw another cat on the backyard fence. Laura followed his gaze towards the dark patch above her wardrobe in the corner of her room.

There was only a foot of space between the wardrobe and the ceiling, which meant neither the room's light or Laura's lamp were able to completely scatter the shadows there. Laura squinted into the darkness, but, as far as she could tell, it was empty.

"What's-a matter? Seen a moth?" She gave Octavius's head a brief scratch. The cat showed his front fangs and a low rumble echoed from his throat.

Laura turned back to the corner, suddenly uncertain. Octavius really seemed to think there was something there. Even though she couldn’t see anything, Laura found herself focussed on the area, matching her cat's gaze, as though a shape could appear in the thin block of shadows at any moment.

"Enough," Laura said, shaking herself out of the stupor and putting her phone back on the bedside table. Octavius maintained his stare, and, although she thought his tail might be a little puffed, he was no longer growling. "I don't know what's up with you tonight, Oct, but you'd better get over it. Goodnight."

She gave her cat's head a final scratch—not that he responded—then turned her bedside lamp off and wiggled under her covers. The rain continued to beat at the window, creating a strange symphony with Octavius's thick breathing and the ticking clock. Laura closed her eyes and tried to sink into sleep, but she was excruciatingly aware that Octavious was still next to her, and that his wide eyes continued to focus on the shadowed corner.

Somewhere over the next half hour, between the beating rain and wheezing breaths, Laura fell into an unpleasant, disturbed sleep. She dreamed she rolled over and opened her eyes to see the creature crouched above her wardrobe.

It was entirely black, which allowed it to blend into the shadows perfectly. Water dripped from its moist, leathery skin and ran down the side of the bookcase to soak into the carpet. Its eyes were the worst; they were large and round, with horizontal pupils, like a cat's. They flicked from Octavius to Lauren's sleeping form, back and forth, back and forth, as hunger drew its lips apart to expose the many rows of shiny white teeth packed inside its mouth.

Lauren started awake with a gasp. It took her a moment to remember where she was, and then she scrambled to turn on her bedside lamp and scanned the space above her wardrobe. Empty. She sighed and rubbed her palms against her eyelids.

A low rumble from her side drew her attention to Octavius. He was crouched in the space beside her pillow with his hackles raised and his bushy tail curled around his body defensively. His huge green eyes remained fixed on the corner of the room... the space where she'd dreamed she'd seen the creature.

"There's nothing there," Laura said, more to reassure herself than to calm her cat. She looked back at the corner for the final time.

Something glistened on the side of her wardrobe. Water drops, catching her lamp's light, dribbling down the wood towards the carpet. Lauren opened her mouth, but no noise escaped her.

Lightning flashed through Lauren’s window and dispersed the darkness in the corner of the room. The split-second of sharp white light was just enough to illuminate the leathery flesh, the wide, hungry eyes, and the long, shiny teeth hidden in the darkest corner of the space above the wardrobe.

30
The Sightless

Meaghan sat in the plush armchair beside the window and watched the streets. She’d seen a number of figures pass by within the last half hour. They’d moved out of and faded back into the mist like phantoms, but never lingered. Even though the street was now empty, she didn’t dare relax.

It was surreal to see her town so quiet. There were no more dogs left to bark. No blaring car horns. None of her neighbours got into arguments or started their lawnmowers, even though it was Sunday morning. At least, she thought it was Sunday morning. She was starting to lose track.

Taj approached from behind. He’d shed his shoes in favour of layered socks, and she wasn’t aware of him until he leant over her shoulder and passed her a note.

Is it safe to open a tin?

Meaghan slipped a pen out of her pocket and carefully wrote back,

I think so. Haven’t seen any for a few minutes.

Taj nodded and returned to the kitchen, his padded feet making no more noise than Meaghan’s heartbeat. That was important. In this new world—the world of the sightless—noise equalled death.

No one was completely sure where they’d come from. The earliest news reports—the ones that had made it through before the media blackout—said they’d poured out of mines that had gone too deep. A few people called them aliens, though that was an unpopular phrase, as they’d come from inside earth. Others called them demons, but they had very little in common with the demons Meghan had been raised to believe in. Meaghan and her two companions, Taj and Lisa, called them Sightless.

They couldn’t see and they couldn’t smell, though they somehow seemed quite comfortable navigating through the suburban neighbourhood. The only way they could find their prey—humans—was through sound.

Meaghan didn’t know how many people were still alive in her street. Possibly none. Before the media blackout—before the creatures had rushed through her town like a deadly wave—there had been stories of entire cities being overrun. She hadn’t seen any of her neighbours for more than a day.

She was lucky, she knew. Her parents had been preppers. Not that it had saved them from the Sightless… but at least it had ensured Meaghan’s pantry was filled with tins of long-life food and five-litre jugs of water. It was enough to keep herself, Taj and Lisa alive for a few weeks, at least.

There damn well better be a rescue before those weeks are up.

She had no idea how the rest of the world was faring. For all she knew, the military could be deploying weapons against the Sightless at that very moment. On the other hand, humanity could be all-but destroyed, and reduced to little pockets of survivors like in Meaghan’s house. Not speaking. Walking with silent care. Terrified that at any moment a sneeze or a cough could force their hand.

Meaghan glanced behind herself to where Taj had taken a large can of beans out of the cupboard. Lisa stood leaned on the bench, her long tan hair hiding half of her face. While Taj was a long-time friend, Meaghan didn’t know much about Lisa—only that she’d stumbled into their house on the night the Sightless had invaded, and was grateful to be allowed to stay with them.

Taj eased the can’s ring up, then began tugging the lid free of its seal with slow, gentle motions. Opening cans was always a risk. Sometimes they were perfectly silent, but other times the metal whined. They tried to reduce their risk by waiting until there weren’t any Sightless in the streets, but mist had rolled through that morning and reduced Meaghan’s visibility to less than a dozen feet.

Taj had the lid halfway off when it let out a high-pitched squeal. He froze and his eyes bugged. Meaghan rose to her feet and stared at the window, praying that there hadn’t been any Sightless close enough to hear.

One of the creatures slunk through the mist, its eye-less, nose-less face turned towards her window. A second followed not far behind. Meaghan couldn’t even breathe the swearword that hung on her tongue.

The window had lost its glass on the night of the invasion. Meaghan’s parents had tried to fight back. Their bodies were gone, but the blood would never come out of the walls.

Meaghan took an involuntary step backwards, holding her breath and praying her heartbeat wouldn’t be audible. The first Sightless stepped over the window’s sill easily. Its long, leathery grey legs were as silent as Meaghan wished her human limbs could be. It passed her so closely that she could smell the decaying flesh that tainted its breath. Its mouth, a long gash covering the otherwise empty, tapered face, opened a fraction, exposing the off-white teeth inside.

It moved through the house with deceptive slowness. Meaghan had seen how quickly they could run when they pinpointed a noise. Faster than a cheetah.

The second Sightless climbed over the sill. Meaghan realised its trajectory meant it would bump into her, and took a careful step to her left. For a moment she was afraid that, even with her feet double-layered in thick socks, she’d been too fast and made a noise. The Sightless hesitated for a second, its head tilted in her direction, then continued towards the kitchen.

Taj was sweating and shaking. He’d left the tin on the bench and held his hands at his sides in the pose they’d discovered worked best to stop shifting clothing noises. He stared straight ahead, his lips clenched shut, as the Sightless circled towards him. He was holding his breath, and drops of sweat beaded over his face.

He’s frightened. They’ll hear his heart.

Meaghan squeezed her eyes closed, unwilling to watch, as the Sightless honed in on her friend. Then the silence was broken by shattering glass in a building across the street. The Sightless froze for a fraction of a second, then both turned and shot through the room as grey blurs. They passed so near Meaghan that she felt the wind ruffle her hair. The creatures leapt through the window and crossed the street in two paces as they raced towards the unfortunate soul who had been careless enough to make a noise.

Meaghan finally inhaled, drawing breath into her starving lungs, and turned towards the kitchen. Taj had both hands pressed over his face and was shivering.

As their unknown neighbour’s screams rose into a terrified, agonized wail, Lisa picked up the half-opened tin and offered it, and a spoon, to Meaghan. Meaghan tried to return the grim smile, and scooped a spoonful of beans out. She was practical enough to know there would be no safer time to eat than when any noises were masked by the screams.

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