The Devil's Playground, Vol 2.: 20 Tales of Terror to Keep You Up at Night
Date: 2024-02-25 00:00:00+00:00
Description: Welcome to volume two of The Devil's Playground, an appalling collection of horror stories that will make your flesh tingle and your imagination sizzle. In these 20 tales of terror, you will encounter things best left in the dark — things that go bump in the night. You’ll find paranormal entities, evil incarnate, and human horrors too dire to dwell on. You’ll meet characters who go to the very edge of sanity as they gaze into the darkness at the heart of the universe. From monsters lurking in the shadows to savages among us wearing human flesh, The Devil's Playground will take you on a journey
Publisher: Independently published

The Devil’s Playground, Vol. 2

20 Tales of Terror to Keep You Up At Night

Matthew Doggett

Five Brothers Publishing

Copyright © 2023 by Matthew Doggett

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

A Note from the Author

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1. Full of Malice

2. The Magic of Halloween

3. The Terrible Things We Do for the Ones We Love

4. Sandra

5. Blood and Meat

6. The Chosen One

7. Things Best Left in the Dark

8. The Crocodile

9. Creatures From the Kara Sea

10. A Guy Can Hope

11. Lost

12. The Green Lights

13. Black-Eyed Demons

14. Escape

15. More Than Six

16. Tunnel of Terror

17. Some People Just Need to Die

18. New Friends

19. House of Horrors

20. They Come From Below

Also By Matthew Doggett

A Note from the Author

The stories in this book were originally written for the Dr. NoSleep podcast. If you’ve listened to that horror podcast, you’ve probably heard these stories. Many of them also aired on the Dr. NoSleep YouTube channel, accompanied by animations. I have made minor changes where necessary to enhance the reading experience.

This is also the place where I warn you. Some people may find these stories disturbing, and they’re certainly not for anyone under 18.

Enjoy!

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Head to MatthewDoggettAuthor.com to sign up for my email list and get the free horror novella, The Rise of the Vampire Merek!

Full of Malice

The gate rolls shut behind me with a clatter. I take a moment to turn around and flip the guards the bird as they head back into the prison.

“Screw you!” I scream.

One of the guards, Shillard, stops and turns to look at me. He smiles from the other side of two razor-wire-topped fences. “See you again soon, Penzance!” he shouts. “We’ll be right here waiting.”

I flip him off again and shake my head. I’m never coming back. Never. But I don’t tell him that. Just in case.

Turning to face the parking lot again, I scan the cars for a familiar Buick.

She said she’d be here.

I allow myself to feel some kind of relief that she’s not here to greet me. Maybe she’s gone for good. Maybe she’s taken up with some other ex-con. Maybe she’s forgotten about me in the month since I talked to her. Hell, maybe she’s fucking dead.

A guy can hope.

It was the middle of a sweltering summer when I got my ass tossed into this prison. Now it’s a bitter January day, and I have no warm clothes. I’m wearing a pair of black jeans with holes in the knees, my Red Wing work boots, and a thin Hawaiian shirt.

I hug myself and look out past the parking lot at the road lined with barren trees. A crow perches on a branch across the street, cawing sporadically. Patches of dirty snow sit in divots and around tree trunks amid the rugged brown grasses that struggle to survive in the frigid temperatures.

My breath comes out as vapor, and I feel the residual warmth from inside the prison whisking away in the wind. The gray sky presses down close, as if trying to suffocate the land. It gives me more than a little claustrophobic anxiety. Which is funny, considering I’ve just been living in a tiny cell. Familiarity breeds contempt, I guess. And I’m not familiar with wide-open spaces and horizons stretching out before me. Not anymore.

I look at the ground and turn my mind to other things. There’s seventy-six dollars in my wallet, which means there’s seventy-six dollars to my name.

Stamping my feet as I head out to the road does little to warm me up. I walk about a hundred yards before I see the sign for the bus stop.

I think of all I’m going to do when I get back to town. First, I’m gonna buy me a couple of McDonald’s burgers. Then, I’m gonna buy me a pint of whisky. And a motel room, all to myself.

Then what the hell am I gonna do? I’ll be out of money.

I shake my head, telling myself to leave tomorrow for tomorrow.

Motion catches my eye, and I turn away from the road to see a rabbit twitching in the ditch. It’s a little cottontail rabbit, and it looks like it’s been clipped by a car. Its right leg looks to be broken.

The cry of a far-off bird puts me on edge, and I move in to swoop up the little rabbit before a raptor can come get it. The poor little guy’s barely bigger than my hand, and he’s truly terrified.

“I’m not the guy for you,” I say to the rabbit, his wide black eyes staring up at me in terror. “No. I don’t think so. I can’t. I’m not the one.”

The rabbit doesn’t seem to understand. So I run back to the prison gate, cradling the furry creature against my chest as I move. I bang on the gate and yell.

“Open up! I got a rabbit. I can’t take it with me. Please, come take this rabbit!”

There’s no answer for a long time. Then a voice comes blasting out of a loudspeaker, telling me to back away from the gate or they’ll call the police.

I flip them the bird one last time for good measure.

“You didn’t want to go in there, anyway,” I say to the rabbit as I hurry away from the gate. “Bunch of bastards in there. Believe me. I was one of them.”

Unsure what else to do, I head back to the bus stop. I’ve just added “Locate a veterinarian” to my list of things to do when I get to town. Then I’ll get the McDonalds and the whiskey and the motel room.

I hold the rabbit to my stomach as I wait for the bus. So far, life on the outside is just as shit as it was on the inside.

I suffer through several more frigid minutes before the bus comes around the bend on the two-lane road, chugging along with a cloud of vapor behind it. The vehicle comes to a loud halt, the hiss of hydraulics working as it lowers to let me on. The driver, a large woman in an unflattering blue uniform, looks at the rabbit like it’s growing out of me. “No animals on the bus,” she says.

“Come on,” I say. “Look at him. His leg’s all busted up. I just want to find him a vet. He won’t be any trouble. I swear.”

I can see the woman’s defenses break down as she looks at the little bundle of fur. “Fine,” she says. “It’s three bucks for a single trip and five for a transfer.”

I pay the five and get a flimsy bus card in return. The ragged few already on the bus glance from me to the prison and back again. They know I’m a criminal, freed on the world like a plague accidentally slipped from a lab on the bottom of someone’s shoe. They don’t seem to notice the rabbit. Maybe it’s a scene that doesn’t make sense to them. A hardened ex-con and a harmless little rabbit.

Whatever. I don’t care what they think.

At least it’s warm on the bus.

I sit as the vehicle pulls away from the stop.

We travel under watery gray skies, approaching the distant low buildings that denote the town’s outskirts. But before we get halfway there, a car pulls up alongside the bus in the wrong lane, swerving and honking.

“Oh, Christ,” I whisper to myself, recognizing the car. It’s a boxy old Buick half eaten with rust. The paint that’s left is more gray than black. The wheels are all missing hubcaps, and the tires are all bald.

I hear the bus driver cursing, unsure what to do about the crazed motorist. She picks up her radio — probably to call the police — but I jump up and run to the front of the bus before she can get more than one word out.

“Wait!” I tell the driver. “I know her. She’s trying to make you stop for me. So just pull over and I’ll get off.” The rabbit moves against my stomach, squirming and twitching.

The driver looks at me for a moment before pulling over to the side of the road and yanking the door open. The Buick pulls diagonally ahead, blocking the bus’s path.

I pause and look out the windshield, dreading what’s waiting for me in that car.

“Well, go then!” the bus driver says.

I step off the bus, then turn around just as the driver’s about to close the doors. “Wait,” I say, holding up the bus pass. “Can I get my five dollars back?”

“No!” she yells, pulling the door shut, making me jump back out of the way.

I trudge to the Buick and open the passenger door, tossing myself gently onto the threadbare maroon upholstery so as not to jostle the rabbit too much. Missy Telard sits in the driver’s seat, grinning at me with her perfectly straight, tobacco-and-wine-stained teeth. She’s a skeletal figure, with skin so tight it seems like she’s made of clay. Her stringy blonde hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and her red lipstick stands out against her mottled white skin.

“Willie!” she says, reaching across with one hand to pull me into a kiss. Her mouth tastes like a strange combination of ashtray and gasoline. Her tongue is the rough texture of a cat’s as it reaches in and drags across mine.

The kiss lasts an eternity before the bus driver starts honking, and Missy pulls her lips away. “Fuck you!” she screams toward the bus, thrusting her left hand out the window in an obscene gesture. She then turns her attention to operating the vehicle, hitting the gas and causing my side of the car to drop down off the road as she rights the Buick and tears toward the town.

“You didn’t wait for me like I told you,” she says.

“You weren’t on time like I told you.”

“Oh, aren’t we a little testy today? What’s wrong? You miss your boyfriends?” Missy cackles even as she lights a cigarette.

I grumble, holding the rabbit against me with both hands again. I look down at it, wanting to voice some words of encouragement, but knowing that it would only draw Missy’s attention.

Cigarette in mouth, she reaches across the bench seat and digs the fingers of her right hand into my thigh. “Missed you, babe,” she says.

I look out the window. “You got any money?”

“‘Course I got some money. What you think I been doing out here while you abandoned me?”

At least it’s one of her good days, I think. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

“We need to find a vet,” I say.

“What, like a soldier? Why? You got something planned?”

“No, like an animal vet. A veterinarian.”

“What the hell for?” Missy says, pulling her hand away from me to take the cigarette from her lips. She swerves out around a farm truck, doing twenty over the speed limit.

“I found an injured rabbit,” I say, reaching back to pull on my seatbelt.

Missy’s head swivels toward me with the exact look on her face I didn’t want to see. It’s the kind of look I’ve come to associate with ruthlessness. The kind of look she uses to ferret out weakness and exploit it for all its worth. Her pupils seem to overtake her irises as she looks at the rabbit in my hands, noticing it for the first time.

Instinctively, I turn my body away from her, shielding the rabbit from her gaze.

“Later,” she says after a moment. “First, we’re gonna have some fun.”

***

I don’t get McDonald’s. I don’t get whiskey. But I do get a motel room. Unfortunately, I have to share it with Missy. But at least there’s two beds.

The first thing I do is grab a towel and create a little nest for the rabbit — who I’ve decided to call Harvey. I put him in the little towel-nest on a pillow on the bed nearest the bathroom. Then I duck inside to use the toilet.

I come out of the bathroom and glance over at the nest, but Harvey’s not there.

Missy sits at the small table near the door, blood running down her chin. She smiles around a full mouth, and my knees buckle as I see Harvey’s headless body in her right hand. My elbows hit the mattress as my knees hit the carpet.

Missy crunches down on something in her mouth, and I try not to think about Harvey’s cute little black eyes popping between her teeth. I get to my feet, my mouth opening and closing as I move toward her, cold fury making a fist out of my heart.

My hands wrap around her skinny throat, but I’m somehow too weak to strangle her. The next thing I know, I’m hitting the ground hard and she’s on top of me. She bites my neck in that way she does and strips my clothes off. I can smell the blood in her mouth. Harvey’s blood. I want to vomit as Missy looks into my eyes and speaks softly to me, saying all those things that she’s been saying to me for years. Those things that somehow slip past my defenses and get me to do all the things she wants me to do.

Everything turns into a blur of papery skin and love bites and a strange sort of sickening ecstasy. She gives me drugs at some point, lines of white powder and needles filled with brown liquid. Then things get really blurry.

But through it all, I keep remembering Harvey, looking up at me as I held him against my stomach. I keep him in my mind, because it’s important to remember what she did. Not just this time, but every time she’s destroyed something I’ve cared about. Harvey’s just the latest in the long line of unforgivable trespasses. And it needs to be the last.

It needs to end.

***

There’s blood everywhere. It’s all over the bathroom floor.

I push myself off the carpet next to the bathroom, blinking the drug-induced sleep out of my eyes. Yes, I’m seeing it right.

Blood is splashed on the mirror. Streaks of the drying crimson liquid make the toilet look like red-and-white zebra print.

There’s a gun near the baseboard by the bathroom door. Right within reach of where I was laying. A small S&W Model 10 revolver.

I stand up on my knees and peek into the tub, expecting to see Missy’s body, but there’s no body. Just blood. Lots and lots of blood.

Bending back down, I bring my nose close to the gun and sniff. Smells like spent gunpowder. My pulse pounding like an alarm during a prison riot, I pick up the gun, open the chamber, and dump the .38 Special cartridges out. Three of the six bullets have been fired. I drop the gun and the shells to the ground and stare at them, trying to remember.

Lurching to my feet, I check the motel room, but there’s no body. Unless you count Harvey’s headless corpse in the corner where Missy chucked it however many hours or days ago. The clock is unplugged, and I don’t have a phone. The shades are drawn, and I’m not seeing any light around them.

In short, I have no fucking clue what time it is, what the hell happened, or how long I’ve been here with a bathroom full of blood.

I make my way over to the door and peer out the peephole. It’s dark outside. Night or early morning.

Stepping back from the door, I knock myself in the head, trying to jumpstart my brain. My head swims with soggy, half-formed ideas. Whatever the hell Missy gave me is still coursing through my bloodstream. My gaze moves over to Harvey’s body.

My eyes go blurry with tears of rage, remembering what she did — what she always does.

I move back to the gun, putting the three bullets back into the Smith & Wesson revolver. I line the cylinder up with the hammer so I can fire all three in quick succession if I need to. Worried my prints are on the cartridge casings, I pick them up and pocket them.

Sticking the gun in my waistband under my Hawaiian shirt, I move to the door, checking my pockets to make sure I have my few worldly possessions.

After a quick check through the peephole, I open the door and step out into the night — and then step back into the hotel room, closing the door. It’s below freezing outside, so I look around for something I can wear to keep warm.

I consider taking a comforter off one of the beds but decide against it when I find a fluffy fur coat in the closet. It’s a woman’s coat, and tight around the shoulders, but I couldn’t care less.

Two minutes later, I’m back outside, hunched against the biting wind, walking down a deserted street. Missy’s Buick wasn’t in the parking lot. There was no sign of her keys in the room. Did I dump her body with the car? I don’t remember. It’s all a blank.

The wind and the cold help to clear my head. And before I’ve put a mile between me and the motel, I know what I need to do.

I come across an all-night gas station and ask the old clerk, who’s separated from me by multiple layers of bullet-proof glass, where the nearest police station is.

“Well,” the old timer says, his cheek full of chewing tobacco. “That depends on what kinda police you’s looking for. You see, we ain’t in the city limits out here. No, sir. But we in the county limits. You got that right. So you can either head yonder into the city to the police station — about ten miles — or you can walk about two miles north to the sheriff’s station. Them’s your options.”

I look around for a clock, locating a branded one above the beer cooler. It’s nearly one in the morning.

“Is the sheriff’s office open all night?” I ask.

“Far as I know,” the old timer says. “You got a ‘mergency, I can call 911 for ya. But you gotta have a ‘mergency. They get mad if it ain’t a ‘mergency, you know.”

I nod and thank the clerk and head back out into the night. As I pass a trash can outside, I dig the three cartridge casings out of my pocket and drop them in.

Thirty minutes later, I’m nearing a small building with a brick sign out front and silver letters reading Collins County Sheriff’s Department. But before I reach the place, I detour into an alley between a post office and a drugstore. I stick the gun underneath and behind a dumpster.

The sheriff’s office is dark, and the doors are locked, but a light comes on after I bang on the door for a minute.

“I’m coming, just stop that godawful pounding!” a voice calls from inside.

A moment later, a large, graying man in a straining tan uniform shirt and brown trousers appears on the other side of the glass double doors. He has the wind-bitten face of a farmer, and the large, meaty hands of a mechanic. The belt around his sizable gut could wrap around me twice.

“What do you want?” he says.

“I need to report a crime,” I tell him.

“What crime?”

I hesitate. “Murder,” I say. “I killed someone.”

“Who’d you kill?” he asks, eyes narrowed in suspicion. I guess it’s not every day that someone shows up in the middle of the night and confesses to murder.

“A woman,” I tell him.

He opens up the door. “Come on inside. And don’t make any sudden moves or I’ll have to shoot you.” He says it matter-of-factly, not changing his tone at all.

I step inside, and he closes and locks the door. “You armed?”

I shake my head.

“What did you kill her with?” he says, leading the way deeper into the dark station.

“I think I shot her.”

He stops and turns around. “You think?”

“I don’t remember what exactly happened,” I tell him. “But I woke up, and there was blood everywhere. She must have stumbled out and died somewhere else, I guess.”

He brings one large, calloused hand to his expanding forehead, rubbing his temples.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” he says, showing me a seat next to a desk.

***

After I’m done with my story, I wait with Deputy Jacobson while another deputy on patrol heads over to the motel.

Around two-fifteen, Jacobson’s radio comes alive.

“Is your guy sure the room number was 231?” the deputy on the radio asks.

Jacobson looks at me, eyebrows raised.

“Yes,” I tell him. “I’m sure.”

“He’s sure,” Jacobson says into the radio.

“There’s nothing here,” the voice says back. “Only body here is a rabbit’s in the corner. Poor little bastard had his head ripped off.”

“Tell him to check the bathroom,” I say, growing frantic.

Jacobson leans back in his seat, studying me with his pale eyes. He brings the radio up to his mouth. “Did you check the bathroom?”

“‘Course I checked the damn bathroom,” the guy says. “No blood. Nothing. Looks so clean you can eat off it.”

“All right,” Jacobson says. “Thanks for checking, Dulles.”

“No,” I say, standing up from my seat. “I know what I saw. There was blood. And the gun! The gun had been fired three times.”

“And where is this gun?” he asks.

“I stashed it nearby. I can go get it for you. I’m an ex-con. I’m not supposed to have a gun. You can arrest me if I have a gun, right?”

“Listen, Mr. Penzance,” Jacobson says. “If you’re worried about this Missy woman, I can put you in a cell here for the night. Maybe you’ll think things differently in the morning. I mean, you don’t really want to go back to prison, do you? You just got out, right?”

“If it gets me away from her,” I say. “It’s a deal I’m willing to make.”

“Sure. She sounds like a real piece of work. But how about you sleep things off here tonight? Revisit things in the morning. You really want me to bust you for a parole violation, I’ll do it. But I have a feeling you’ll see things differently.”

I swallow, looking around the office. “Yeah,” I say, a little breathless. “Yeah, okay.”

Jacobson leads me to the cells in back. They’re all empty, and he puts me in the one nearest the door. As I sit on the thin mattress, he looks me over. “I don’t need to take your shoes and your belt, do I?” he asks.

“She’s bad, but she’s not that bad,” I say, smiling weakly.

“Okay,” Jacobson says. “I’m locking you in. I’ll check on you in a few hours.”

I nod, lying down on the cot that’s fastened to the wall. A stainless-steel toilet with a small sink above it takes up the head of the small cell.

I close my eyes and think of Harvey.

Sleep comes slowly, and I doze off. I wake up sometime later to screaming from beyond the door to the rest of the station.

I stand up and go over to the bars, but I can’t see out into the office. There’s no window in the heavy metal door.

It’s a man screaming. Jacobson.

There are two muffled gunshots, followed by a loud crash. Then silence.

The metal door opens, revealing Missy, looking in at me with that evil smile on her face. “What have you gone and done?” she says, wagging a finger at me.

I back up, shaking my head. The backs of my legs hit the toilet, and I have nowhere else to go. Missy produces a keyring and locates the numbered key for the cell. “Come on, baby,” she says. “Let’s go.”

She opens the cell door and looks in at me. I lower my gaze but make no move to leave the cell.

“Come on, Willie,” she says, her voice like velvet.

I look at the floor. If I look into her eyes, I’ll be done for.

“Don’t make me come in there,” she growls, her voice tinged with demonic menace.

I shuffle out of the cell without looking up. As I step beside her, she puts a hand on my shoulder. Her touch is like ice, and I shiver, even though I’m still wearing her fur coat.

We step out into the office area of the small sheriff’s station. Splashes of crimson catch my eye, and I can’t help but look up. Jacobson’s headless body is hanging upside down from the ceiling. Blood dribbles out of the ragged wound where his head was once attached. His feet have been jammed through and somehow secured above the acoustic-tile ceiling.

The scene makes me want to vomit, and I look away quickly as we move past, Missy’s hand still on my shoulder. I can’t help but think of Harvey. The way his blood dribbled down her chin as she crunched on his furry little head.

We step outside. It’s still dark out, with the faintest suggestion of morning on the eastern horizon.

“This way, baby,” Missy says, directing me toward the alley between the post office and the drugstore.

The gun, I think. Get the gun. End this, now. Kill the demon.

I’ve always suspected Missy was different. But now, there’s no doubt. She’s evil. Pure evil.

Her Buick is idling in the alley, the exhaust pipe spitting poison vapor.

We stop at the rear of the vehicle, and she steps in front of me, putting both heavy, freezing hands on my shoulders. “Look at me,” she whispers.

Before I know what I’m doing, I start to look up. But a vision of Harvey’s little headless body rushes into my brain, and I catch myself.

“Willie,” she says. “Look at me, baby.” Her voice seems to slither its way into my brain, numbing my defenses like a drug. When I still don’t look up, her fingers dig painfully into my shoulders.

I slowly bring my head up, remembering Harvey. Remembering Jacobson. Remembering all the terrible things she’s ever done to me. I look into her soulless eyes.

“Be a good boy and do what I say, okay?”

I feel drowsy. The world seems to disappear as she becomes everything to me. The only thing that matters.

Fight it, I think. Remember Harvey.

I nod.

“Get in the car,” she says.

I nod again and turn to walk to the car. Missy does the same, walking to the driver’s door.

Instead of turning to open the door, I burst into a run, making it to the dumpster in moments. I reach under and behind it, finding the gun easily.

When I straighten up, Missy is standing three feet away from me, curiosity on her face.

I level the gun at her. The Buick’s headlights provide stark illumination.

Finally, for the first time since we met, I see her clearly. She’s not a woman at all. She’s not even human. She’s a demon, black as insanity and full of malice. This other her — the real her — hulks above her like a shadow. It hunches, arms reaching out to me, ready to pull me back into her deceptions. To pull the wool over my eyes once again.

She tssks, shaking her head. “Baby, what are you—”

I fire the gun, putting two bullets into her chest and the third into her head. The reports echo off the alley walls, making my ears ring as she collapses to the dirty asphalt.

She’s dead. She’s finally dead.

I stare at her limp body for a long moment, unable to believe that the mess of blood and brains on the alley floor and wall are really hers. Could she really have such human-looking insides?

Snapping out of it, I move to the car, sliding behind the wheel and setting the pistol down on the seat beside me.

I pull out of the alley, driving over Missy’s body for good measure. I head out of town. I’ll go as far as I can on the seventy-one dollars in my pocket and whatever cash is in the car, if any.

The sun is brightening the eastern horizon as I stop at a bridge and put the car in park. A slow, gray river flows past underneath, headed for parts unknown. I drop the gun into the water, glad to be rid of it.

As I head back around the front of the car to get in the driver’s seat, I hear a scraping sound from the back of the Buick.

Thinking something’s wrong with the exhaust, I step that way, only to see Missy getting her feet under her. She’s dirty, bloody, and has little bits of brain stuck to the hair at the back of her head.

“That’s the second time you’ve shot me tonight,” she growls. “There won’t be a third.”

She stands, her broken bones cracking as she straightens them. The bullet holes in her forehead and chest are slowly closing.

I back up, terror filling my heart. She follows.

My back hits the bridge railing. I need to run, but my legs don’t want to work. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.

Missy lunges at me, her mouth open, fangs extending. As she crashes into me, the only thing I can do is wrap my arms around her and hold tight, pushing with my legs and throwing us over the bridge.

The freezing water takes my breath as we hit, but I don’t loosen my grip on Missy, whose teeth puncture my neck as we sink. I know I’m about to die. But maybe, just maybe, I can take her with me.

The Magic of Halloween

The Jack-o’-lantern hits the parked car with a loud thud. I wince, looking up at the dark house, sure that lights will come on any second.

Johnny, who everyone calls Jolly, laughs cruelly at the mess he’s made. The hit dented the car door.

“C’mon, Jolly,” I whisper. “Let’s just go home.”

Jolly ignores me. He’s not really jolly. Not in the truest sense of the word. He’s only happy when he’s causing pain or discomfort to others. I know this better than anyone. For reasons I’ll never understand, my mom fell in love with his dad. Now we’re stepbrothers.

Hooray.

I walk away from the house. There’s a path of destroyed pumpkins behind us. Along with smashed eggs on front doors, toilet paper snagged in trees, and vandalized Halloween decorations.

“Where you goin’, dipshit?” Jolly calls out, running to catch up with me.

“Home,” I say. “I don’t care if I get in trouble for leaving your side. I’ll just tell them what you’ve been out here doing this whole time.”

Jolly grabs me by the cape and yanks me back. I’m wearing a Thor costume. I should’ve known better than to wear a costume with a cape. It just makes things easier for Jolly.

“You tell anyone anything, I’ll curb stomp you, you little shit.” His breath smells of half-digested candy and chewing tobacco.

I don’t know what a curb stomp is, but it doesn’t sound good. At sixteen, Jolly is four years older than me. And a lot bigger. He’s wearing black clothes and carrying a black backpack.

“Fine,” I say, yanking my cape away from him. “I won’t tell. Let’s just go home.”

“Not yet,” he says. “I want to hit the Delgado house first. Teach those fuckin’ assholes a lesson. And you’re my alibi. You know what that means? It means you’re going to lie and say I was with you at the movies all night. Halloween Double Feature.”

At least we’re getting close to home. The Delgados live just one block over. Jolly has been feuding with their two sons for as long as I can remember. They’re nice kids. At least, they’ve always been nice to me. It’s probably why Jolly hates them. He likes to smash out any kindness. I guess he wants everyone to be as miserable as he is.

He’s now out of toilet paper and eggs, so we don’t make many stops on the way. Although he does smash nearly every pumpkin he sees.

I’d like to smash him one of these days.

We walk up to the Delgado house, which is a nice two-story white house with dark blue trim. It has a big oak tree in the front yard. Halloween decorations hang from the massive branches.

There are two lines of Jack-o’-lanterns along the walkway leading up to the house. Surprisingly, Jolly ignores these.

“Well, what do we have here?” he says, walking up to the porch and snagging a huge pumpkin. It’s no Jack-o’-lantern. It hasn’t been carved. But it has something painted on the front in red letters: Do Not Smash.

Jolly laughs his cruel laugh again as he chucks the pumpkin against the concrete walkway. It cracks but doesn’t break apart. But Jolly hasn’t noticed. He’s busy picking up the glowing Jack-o’-lanterns and smashing them.

I stand back, watching for cars on the road. Or for lights coming on in any of the houses. When I turn my head back toward Jolly’s frenzy, I see the cracked pumpkin move. At first, I think he must have bumped into it. But he’s nowhere near it. Besides, it’s still moving.

The dark crack widens and the pumpkin breaks apart, revealing a mess of pumpkin guts. But the guts are moving now, too. A small, bumpy orange arm with black claws on the four stubby fingers emerges from the mess. Followed by another arm.

Then a head comes out, shaking like a dog trying to get dry, throwing off slimy pumpkin guts. The head looks like a small pumpkin, but it has eyes and a mouth that glow with poison-green light.

The rest of its body emerges as the creature crawls free of the wreckage. It moves on all fours, its legs shorter than its arms, but thicker. The whole thing looks like it could be made out of pumpkin parts. But it moves with the fluidity of a cat.

Its glowing eyes sweep over me, its Jack-o’-lantern mouth stuck in an evil grin.

“J—Jolly?” I stutter.

He pays no mind.

The creature looks over at him. He’s just finishing with the Jack-o’-lanterns, turning his attention toward the decorations hanging from the oak tree.

“Jolly!” I shout.

“What the hell is it? There someone coming?”

“Look!” I say, pointing toward the creature, which is stalking slowly toward him.

Jolly sees it and laughs. “What the hell is this? A cat dressed up for Halloween?”

He takes two steps toward it and tries to kick the creature, but it grabs onto his leg, it’s claws sinking into his flesh like a fork into pumpkin pie. Jolly screams in pain. “What the fuck?” he says, jumping around and kicking his foot.

The thing scrambles up his leg and moves up under his sweatshirt, all while Jolly beats at it and screams. Blood spews out from under the hem of his sweatshirt. “No! No!” Jolly shouts, looking with terrified eyes at the amount of blood pouring out of his body.

I can’t see what the creature’s doing under there, but I can hear it, and the sound is making me sick to my stomach. It sounds like it’s burrowing into Jolly. Suddenly, the bulge in his sweatshirt goes flat.

The energy has gone out of Jolly. He coughs up blood and clutches his stomach area. His eyes are dull with immense pain. He stumbles around while I watch, speechless. Then he slumps against the oak tree’s trunk and stops moving.

I knew one day Jolly would go too far. I knew he would come across someone who wouldn’t take his crap lying down. But I could’ve never imagined this.

Movement from the Delgado house catches my eye. I look up to one of the second-floor windows to see the two teenage brothers looking out. They both wave at me. I wave back.

Then I turn and head for home, thinking about that creature, curled up and sleeping in Jolly’s chest cavity. I doubt it will be there in the morning. It’s just one of those things. The magic of Halloween.

I know just what I’ll tell my mom and my stepdad when I get home. I’ll tell them that Jolly ditched me, so I went to the movies. A Halloween Double Feature.

The Terrible Things We Do for the Ones We Love

There are over two million farms in America. Just under 900 million acres of farmland.

Most people only think about farms when they drive through the countryside and see the rows of crops. But even then, there’s no real thought as to the amount of work it takes to grow those crops.

I’m proud to be a farmer. I come from a long line of families who have made their living working off the land. But it’s a hard life. And, necessarily, a life that many people associate with a bygone era. A time when most Americans lived in the country instead of in the cities.

In fact, many people find it surprising that there are families like mine still living the old ways in America.

If they only knew the truth.

Were it not for the flatscreen television in our homes, the small phones we carry around, and the laptops we use to communicate with the world, you could easily think that progress has left us behind.

But it hasn’t.

The fact is, we are the backbone of progress. We get up before the sun rises and stop work after the sun sets so that people can go to the grocery store and have fresh produce at their fingertips. So they can buy processed foods — many of them made with the major ingredient corn — right off the shelves.

While farming machinery has gotten better over the years, and modified fruits and vegetables have become resilient to the thousands of things that can destroy them, farming has largely remained the same.

Just like any other major industry in America today, there are a few big corporations that dominate the market. Little farmers like me and my neighbors find it harder and harder to make a profit as these big companies drive down the price of anything and everything we grow.

It’s a struggle, is what I’m trying to say. But my little community has been lucky. We’ve done well over the years. We’ve learned things about farming and about … other things. And we pass those things onto our kids, just as our parents passed them onto us.

You see, I grew up on a farm. And I now have kids of my own who I hope will one day run the farm.

I have lived on the same plot of land my whole life. It’s two-hundred-fifty-four acres of land that I now proudly call my own. All of my best memories are on this land.

And all of my worst.

This story is about both. It’s about tradition and survival. It’s about the terrible things we do for the ones we love.

And it’s about fear.

The first night I remember being really scared was when I was nine years old. It was a clear spring night, and I was dog-tired from helping out on the farm after school. I had been ordered by my father, Gregory, to go to bed early. I had gladly obliged.

We had a two-story farmhouse that my grandfather had built with his own hands when he came to this country in the 1950s. Since I was an only child, I had my choice of the upstairs bedrooms. I took the biggest one, which was closest to the stairs and had a window that looked out on the small chicken coop. I could also see the corner of the big red barn if I pressed my face up against the window.

As I got ready for bed, I heard my dad talking to my mom about how the spring planting was almost done. This was important to me because it meant summer vacation was fast approaching.

I went to bed thinking about how much fun my friend Chuck and I would have once the oppressive weight of school was a thing of the past — at least for three months. Chuck lived on the next farm over, and he’d been my best friend since I could remember.

As I drifted off to sleep, I pictured us catching frogs in Riggins Pond, building tree forts in the nearby woods, and picking on Chuck’s little sister (who was my first crush). It was all a nine-year-old boy could want.

Sleep enveloped me. But not for long.

I jerked awake and looked in confusion around my room. Something had awoken me, but I wasn’t sure what. My digital alarm clock read two-forty-two in the morning.

I slid out of bed and stepped to my window, looking out on the chicken coop to make sure the door was closed and there weren’t any holes in the fence. Just a year earlier, my father had sat me down and told me to watch out for those chickens at night and report to him if I ever saw that something was wrong, since my room looked out on the small structure. We’d had incidents with foxes and coyotes in the area, and one time a raccoon had tried to break in, but everything looked fine to me as I looked out the window that night.

I turned my head and pressed the right side of my face up against the far right side of the window, bringing the corner of the barn into view. I could see that the barn door was open. It wasn’t supposed to be.

Excitement and importance surged in me, and I knew I had to go down and tell my father what I had discovered. But as I was about to pull away from the window, something moved out near the barn. Something big. I turned my eyes to where I’d seen the movement, but nothing was there. My mind immediately thought of a big black bear killing our horses in the barn. At nine, I didn’t know that bears weren’t common in our part of the country.

To my child’s mind, this was the most important thing to ever happen. I could be a hero to my mother and father, saving the horses from a savage bear. I ran out of my room and down the stairs in my pajamas, heading straight for my parents’ room. But when I hit the kitchen area at the bottom of the stairs, all the lights were on in the empty room, which was a rarity at that time of the morning. Especially given how many times my dad had told me in no uncertain terms to turn off the lights when I left a room. It slowed me down but didn’t dissuade me from my mission.

The second factor to give me pause was the partially open door to my parents’ room. The third was the light on behind the cracked door.

Maybe dad had seen the bear, too, I thought as I inched the door open. Only my mom’s side of the bed was unmade, as if my dad hadn’t been to bed yet. As I opened the door further, my mom came into view. She stood at a window at the far side of the room, her back to me. She wore a simple white nightgown, and her short brown hair was matted at the back.

I stepped into the room. I didn’t say anything to alert her to my presence. To this day, I don’t know why. Maybe I just wanted to know what she was so intently staring at out that window.

I crept up behind her and looked out on a full view of the barn beyond her right elbow. It was dark outside, but I could see that the barn door was still open.

Movement caught my eye near the barn again, just as it had when I was in my room. Standing as I was about two feet behind my mother, I squinted and leaned forward to look out the bottom right corner of the window.

An impossibly large and hunched figure moved swiftly out of the barn with long, bounding steps. It looked as if its skin were made of chalky black wood, like a tree that had been burned by a fire. The spikes all along its two legs and its two strangely jointed arms were like the nubs of broken branches. It had to hunch to clear the top of the barn door, which was a good nine feet tall. It looked like it was carrying something, but I couldn’t be sure, thanks to my angle and the dark night.

My mother made a little noise — a scared noise — as the creature came into view. But I didn’t dare pull my eyes from it. And as the thing moved off through the newly planted cornfields, I thought I saw several sets of eyes on the thing’s back and sides. They seemed to look into the lighted window at my mother and me with bland and subdued fury.

Then the creature was gone from sight.

More movement from the barn pulled my attention away from the patch of night into which the monster had disappeared. It was my father, walking stiffly out of the barn and looking off into the night after the monster.

The thought of my dad so near to such a frightening creature overwhelmed me, and I made a noise not unlike the one my mother had made moments earlier.

My mom spun from the window, the look on her face frightening me almost as much as the monster had. Her eyes were wide and filled with dread. There was a protective fury there, too, but I didn’t realize that at the time. Not until I had kids of my own.

In that moment, I saw a part of my mom I’d never seen before. And although I thought she was a wrong move away from throttling the life out of me for getting out of bed at such an hour, I now know that she would have gone up against whatever that thing was outside with her bare hands to protect me. And she might have won.

“Jason,” she said, kneeling in front of me and gripping either side of my face in her cold hands. “How long have you been here?”

A confluence of confusing emotions struck me as she stared at me with such intention, her wide dark eyes seeming to expand until they were the only things I could see, the only things I was aware of. I began bawling, unable to deal with the jumble of thoughts and emotions racing through my developing mind.

Suddenly realizing that she was scaring me, she pulled me into a hug and shushed me. Although her words were soothing, I could feel her heart beating even faster than mine was.

Once I had calmed down, my mother released me from her embrace and held me at arm’s length.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

I nodded, sniffling.

“You were having a bad dream. You were sleepwalking,” she said.

“I saw something outside,” I said, my mouth vibrating as I sucked back sobs.

“It’s okay, baby,” she said. “It was only a bad dream. Just a bad dream.”

I heard my father’s heavy footfalls enter the house and walk toward the bedroom. I pulled myself together as much as I could, wiping my tears away. The footfalls stopped outside the bedroom door. My mom looked up and over my shoulder. Before I turned around, I looked over my mom’s shoulder at the barn. The door was closed.

“He had a bad dream,” she said as I turned to face my father.

My dad stood there in his boots, jeans, plain t-shirt, and flannel jacket, looking down at me with a worry in his eyes I’d never seen before. Several long moments passed as he looked slowly from me to my mother still kneeling behind me.

“You okay, Jason?” he said, finally.

I nodded.

“Get on to bed, then,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said. He ruffled my hair with one square, calloused hand as I walked past.

Visions of the creature made sleep difficult that night, but I latched eagerly onto the notion that it was a vivid nightmare. Eventually, sleep took me.

***

Days passed, and then weeks. The incident receded from my conscious mind as spring turned to summer. By the time summer was in full swing, I truly believed that the whole incident was just a nightmare. A product of my overactive imagination.

And I believed that for a long time. Years, in fact.

I could explain away some other strange happenings around the place. Like the occasional deer found in the woods, torn in half with only its fur missing. Or the few cats that disappeared off our property over the years. The few dogs I found ripped apart and skinned while roaming the countryside with Chuck.

The news reports of missing children we heard about from the bigger towns and cities surrounding us.

We just managed to shrug these instances off. After all, life in the country was hard on animals. There may not have been bears around, but there were certainly other predators that would kill and eat deer, cats, and dogs.

And as for the kids, well, we were beginning to realize that life was pretty tough on a lot of people. Kids ran away for all sorts of reasons. And realizing that was a part of growing up, I thought.

I finished high school and toyed with the idea of going to college. But by that time, I was in a pretty serious relationship with Sandra, who is now my wife. Besides, I was never going to leave. Farming was all I knew. It’s all I know.

After I finished high school, my father started clearing a plot of land on a small hill about a hundred yards from the house. And then we started building a new house on that land. It was our project, and I was glad to work on it even before he told me it was for me and my family. I had assumed that he and mother were going to move out of the old house and into the new one. And I guess I figured I would stay nearby somewhere.

But it made sense to build the house for us. When I told Sandra about it, she was thrilled.

It took us two years to finish that house, and when it was done, I proposed to Sandra. We got married a year later and moved into the house. We were twenty-one years old.

My son Isaac came along just after my twenty-third birthday. Bethany, our youngest, came along two years later.

Isaac is turning eleven soon. Not long after, Bethany will be nine. Time flies.

I’m glossing over those formative years not because they weren’t important. They were. I learned a lot about farming and about life during my high school years.

In fact, looking back, some of the hard lessons I learned made me who I am today. They’ve allowed me to do what it takes to become a man. To step up and provide for my family.

I learned that life isn’t fair for a lot of people. And that you have to play the hand you’ve been given. You have to build on what has come before you in any way you can, so your kids can build on it even more, and their kids after them.

This is the way of life.

But I’m getting off-topic.

Years passed. Sandra and I were busy raising the kids in our twenties. And when we weren’t with the kids, we were both working on the farm, helping it prosper. I got to work alongside my mother, my father, and my wife. It was a good time in life.

And although margins were a little tight, we managed to profit every year. We didn’t have to go into debt for long, which was pretty good for a small family farm like ours.

The times weren’t without their struggles. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. But it was good. Overall, it was good.

When Sandra and I needed a weekend away, my parents took the kids. Or Sandra’s parents did, as they lived nearby and had a small farm of their own.

When things were under control on the farm, my mom and dad got to go see some of the world. They got to go to Europe one year and started taking little cruises after that.

What more could you ask for?

But my parents were in their late thirties when they had me, and they were getting old. Just a few years ago, my father died. He had a stroke in the shower one day. Just like that. Gone. He was seventy years old.

After his death, things started getting strange around the farm.

My mother started to lose it a little bit. Alzheimer’s, they said it was.

Just a few months ago, I was coming back late from tilling a field for green beans when I caught her wandering around in her nightgown — a plain white one, much like the one she was wearing that night so many years ago.

I was walking back from the equipment shed when I saw her by the old barn, looking out into the night, muttering to herself.

“Mom?” I said. “What are you doing out here?”

She turned at the sound of my voice, her cloudy eyes smiling when she saw me.

“Jason,” she said. “Why is it back? Why has it come back so soon?”

“What, Mom?” I said, humoring her. I’d been having a lot of these pointless conversations with her of late.

“It’s not our turn,” she said. “We just had our turn. Your father took care of it, didn’t he?”

“Mom, Dad’s been dead for three years. You know that. Now, let’s go back inside. It’s supposed to get down to forty tonight and you’re in your bare feet.”

She gripped the collar of my shirt and brought my face toward hers. I could see, even in the quickly growing dark, that her eyes had cleared. “How long?” she said. “Three years?”

The intensity of her gaze and the strength of her grip caused panic to constrict my throat. “Yes, Mom,” I said, hoarsely. “He’s been gone for three years now. Don’t you remember?”

“Did he tell you?” she asked, still holding onto my shirt, still intense.

“Tell me what, Mom?”

“He kept saying he would tell you. He said you’d understand. But he never did, did he? I guess I’ll have to tell you. This is our year. It’s our year.”

“Mom, what are you talking about? Tell me what?”

“Come with me to the barn,” my mother said, trading her grip on my shirt for one on my wrist. She pulled me along as I asked her what this was about.

“I’ll have to show you,” she said as we approached the old barn.

She let go of my wrist to open the door, and as she did so, an animal snorted from the field behind us. At least, that’s what I thought at first. But it didn’t actually sound like any animal I knew of.

I turned around and peered into the dark, silently cursing the blackness of the new moon sky. “Mom?” I asked. “Did you hear that?”

Another noise from the dark, this one a long dragging sound followed by a loud thump I felt through my boots.

I backed up two paces but kept my eyes squinting into the night. Suddenly, six or eight pairs of eyes opened in the darkness. They glowed a faint green and seemed to be stacked on top of each other, as if whatever animals they belonged to were standing on each other’s shoulders.

I turned and grabbed my mother by the wrist. She was staring at the eyes, too. She saw them.

I pulled her along to the house, glancing over my shoulder a dozen times as we walked between the barn and my mother’s house. I couldn’t see the eyes any longer after the second or third glance, but that didn’t stop me from looking.

I locked the kitchen door we came through and sat my mother down at the table. I paced back and forth, stopping to look out the windows every so often.

“Sit down,” my mom said. “You’ll wear a groove in the floor.”

It all seemed to click then, the supposed nightmare I’d had when I was a kid coming back at me full force. I took my mother’s hands in mine. “Mom,” I said. “What was dad supposed to tell me?”

“Well, I don’t know, Jason. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

I sighed. Her eyes were cloudy again. She wasn’t herself.

I hugged her tight and told her I loved her. After I got her in bed, I jogged up the hill to my own home, thinking that it was about time to move my mother in with us so we could keep a closer eye on her.

I didn’t tell Sandra about the eyes in the darkness. I tried to forget about them. But I couldn’t. And what happened next … Well, it changed everything.

***

Three days after the incident with my mom and the strange eyes in the darkness, my son Isaac woke me up. The clock on my bedside table said it was just after midnight.

“What’s wrong? Is everything okay? Is your sister okay?”

“Dad,” Isaac whispered. “There’s something outside.”

I immediately thought of the eyes, and the creature I’d seen when I was around Isaac’s age.

“What is it?” Sandra said from the other side of the bed.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s fine. Go back to sleep, baby. You, too, son.”

Isaac and I left my bedroom after I grabbed a robe from my closet. As I escorted him upstairs, I asked him where he’d seen the thing.

“I woke up to use the bathroom and looked out the window,” he said. “There was something down by grandma’s house. It looked big.”

“Okay,” I said, lifting Isaac into his bed. “It’s probably just an animal. I’ll take care of it. Go back to sleep. You’ve got school in the morning.”

Isaac nodded sleepily. He got under the covers and put his head down, closing his eyes as he hit the pillow.

I crept downstairs and unlocked the gun cabinet, retrieving a shotgun I kept loaded. I went to the front door and collected my house slippers, then I looked out the window down toward my mother’s house. There was a flash of white there that disappeared behind the far side of her house. It looked like my mother’s nightgown.

I stepped out of the house and started the walk down the gently sloping hill toward the old house. There was a crescent moon in the cloudless sky, providing some illumination to see by. I kept my eyes on the house, looking for any movement beyond. I just hoped my mother hadn’t wandered very far off the property.

Another flash of white nightgown caught my eye down near the barn beyond the old house. It looked as if my mom was dancing around, twirling in her gown. I picked up the pace, and as I got closer, I realized something wasn’t right.

Using the barn for reference, I saw that the white nightgown was too far off the ground. As if my mother had grown a few feet taller. Then I realized that I couldn’t see her feet. Or her arms. All I could see was the nightgown from where I was. And it wasn’t the uniform white that it had been.

It was stained with something dark.

I ran as fast as I could, holding the shotgun out in front of me. The gown swirled as it disappeared behind the barn. But even before that, I had gotten close enough to realize that it wasn’t my mom out in the dark with me.

It was something else.

As I came upon the barn, I flipped the safety off and loaded a shell into the chamber. I slowed as I approached the corner behind which the gown had disappeared. I put my back to the barn and took a few deep breaths. Then I stepped out, turning the corner and leveling the shotgun, pressing it against my shoulder.

My mother stood there, staring at me, somehow hovering off the ground.

At least that’s what my brain wanted to see. It took a split second for the reality to wash over me, freezing me to the ground.

My mother’s skin had been removed and stretched over the monster I’d seen as a child. It was affixed to the creature’s front using the spiky branch-like nubs that stuck up here and there on the hulking body. These sharp points pierced my mother’s skin at the edges, keeping it in place. The bloodstained nightgown was similarly fastened, as if it had been ripped up the back and placed over her skin in a gruesome approximation of how my mother looked when she’d been alive.

As I stood there, frozen, taking the horrid sight in, stiff, branchlike limbs cracked and crunched as they moved from around the monster’s bulk, shifting and repositioning themselves. At the end of each limb sat a pair of eyes, glowing green as they gazed at me.

A sound like mounds of earth moving came from the monster just before one of its gnarled, trunk-like legs moved toward me. This movement broke my paralysis. I screamed and pulled the trigger, shooting the creature before running back up toward my house.

Fearful glances behind me told me it wasn’t following. Maybe I killed it, I thought.

I locked all the doors and windows when I got to my house. I didn’t want to frighten the kids, but I had to involve Sandra.

“Sandy, wake up,” I pleaded, shaking her by the shoulder. “It killed her. It killed my mother.”

Sandra’s eyes came open, and she seemed to wake up immediately. “What happened to her?” she asked. “Why do you have a shotgun?”

“There’s something out there. It was wearing her skin. It’s huge — at least nine feet tall,” I said. “We have to call the police.”

“Wait,” Sandra said, reaching out and laying a calming hand on my arm. She looked at me like I was crazy. “Your dad …” she said, trailing off as something occurred to her.

“What about my dad?” I asked. “Did you not hear what I just said?”

“I heard you. But we need to be smart about this. Before we call the sheriff, let’s get Chuck over here. What do you think about that?”

Like me, my friend since childhood, Chuck, had taken over his parents’ farm. He had a wife and a son a little older than mine.

“Okay,” I said, unable to understand why my wife wanted to call Chuck instead of the sheriff. I only thought Chuck would back me up and suggest that we call the law in.

Sandra made the call, walking downstairs as she did so. I stayed upstairs, looking out various windows, keeping watch for the creature.

A few minutes after Sandra came back upstairs, I saw the headlights coming up our driveway. I ran downstairs and walked out into the front yard, shotgun still in hand, looking around for the monster that had killed my mother.

Chuck parked and shut off his truck, then he got out toting a 30-06 hunting rifle.

“Hey, buddy,” Chuck said as he walked up to me. “Let’s go inside and get some coffee. Tell me what happened.”

I nodded, feeling tired from the slow drain of adrenaline from my bloodstream.

I told Chuck everything I could remember, starting with the encounter when I was nine years old. I told him about seeing the eyes in the darkness three days previous, and ended with the night’s incident and the apparent death of my mother.

The first words out of his mouth once I was done surprised me.

“You shot it?” he said in an accusatory tone.

“Of course I shot it, Chuck. What would you have done?”

Chuck shook his head and looked up at Sandra, who had been standing behind me, leaning against the kitchen counter the whole time I’d been talking.

Something passed between them in that look.

I turned and looked at my wife, then back at Chuck. “What the hell is going on here?” I asked. “I tell you a monster killed my mother, and you act like I shot an endangered species.”

Chuck shook his head again. “I don’t know why your daddy didn’t tell you,” he said. “My daddy told me when I was twenty-one years old. At first, I didn’t want to do it. Nobody wants to do it. But he made me see how important it is. I just wish to hell he told you.”

“Told me what? What are you talking about?”

“You ever wonder why all the small farms in this area do so well when other farms around go belly up?” Chuck asked. “You ever wonder how it is that we never have a major crop failure, no matter how much or how little rain we get, or how many late freezes we have in the spring?”

“Some farmers are better than others,” I said. “It’s just like anything else.”

“Sure,” Chuck said. “To an extent, that’s right. But there are some things that are out of most farmers’ control. Things that, no matter how hard they try, will end up destroying their crops. But not us. Not the five farms in this little corner of Iowa. And it’s thanks to that damn thing that you just shot — because your daddy failed to tell you about it.”

I laughed, unable to believe what I was hearing. “Right,” I said. “Right.”

I turned and looked at Sandra again, and the hard stare I got back gave me pause.

“You know about this?” I asked.

She nodded. “I thought you knew,” she said. “Up until tonight, I thought you knew. My mother told me about it when we got engaged. She told me that it wouldn’t be discussed. That if you wanted to talk about it, you would bring it up. She said that’s how it had always been done.”

I turned in my seat, putting my head in my hands, trying to process what they were telling me.

“Your dad must have taken it upon himself to do it all this time,” Chuck said. “Every time it was your turn, your dad did it. He must have been putting off telling you. And then he died. And this, this is your year, Jason,” Chuck said, echoing the words my mother had said just three nights previous. She’d been trying to tell me, to warn me, but her failing mind had gotten in the way. And now she was gone.

“My year to what?” I asked, knowing I wouldn’t like the answer.

“Your year to make a sacrifice to our protector. Our god.”

“Sacrifice?” I whispered.

“That’s the reason it went after your mom,” Chuck said. “It’s hungry. You were supposed to feed it a month ago. And now that you’ve shot it, there’s no telling what it’ll do. We’ve got to make this right, Jason. You’ve got to. It’s your job as the man of the house. The provider. You’ve got to shoulder your part of the burden.”

“What?” I said, swallowing hard. “What does it take? What do I have to do?”

Chuck told me. He explained it all to me, like my dad should have done years ago.

***

I’m here, now, sitting in my barn, going over what I’m supposed to do.

It has been two days since my mother’s death. Two days since Chuck explained the ritual to me. There’s really not much to it.

I found my mother’s body in the barn that morning. She’d been torn in half and skinned. Much like the animals I’d seen as a kid.

Apparently, that was part of the unspoken deal between the creature — the god, as Chuck called it — and the families of the area. It would only kill animals for sport, so long as it was well fed. It would ensure agricultural prosperity, so long as it was well fed.

And, well, I’d seen what happened when it wasn’t well fed.

It’s a picky eater, apparently. It doesn’t like old flesh. Only new flesh. And only boys.

I had to drive around outside of Des Moines for almost two full days, only taking breaks to sleep and eat, before I found a young hitchhiker.

His name is Boyd. He says he’s thirteen years old. And he’s lying in the hay six feet away from me, crying through his gag.

He knew something was wrong when I started crying just after I picked him up. He tried to get out of the truck, so I hit him. I couldn’t let him escape. I couldn’t.

I haven’t cried since. This is something I have to do. There are people counting on me. And not just my family. My friends’ families are also counting on me.

I check my phone. It’s just after two-forty-five in the morning.

It should be here soon.

I get up from the old wooden bench and step over to Boyd. I grip the rope he’s bound with and drag him into the middle of the barn. I stand him up, facing the open barn door. I pull out my pocketknife and cut the rope with my right hand, keeping my left arm wrapped around his little neck. I don’t remove the binds around his hands. Those, I can leave. Or so Chuck said.

“Don’t try to run. I don’t want to have to hit you again,” I whisper in his ear.

His muffled cries increase as he struggles weakly. I can feel the wetness of his tears as they drop onto my forearm under his chin.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me for this,” I say. “But I’m not a bad guy. I don’t enjoy this. I wish to hell I didn’t have to do it.”

I hear movement outside, the sound like a mound of dirt shifting. It’s coming.

“Think of it this way,” I say to Boyd. “We help feed the world. We’re putting food on tables so people can eat and stay healthy and live their lives. So, in a way, you’re helping to feed the world, too. Even though the people eating the food that comes from our farms will never know your sacrifice. They’ll never know mine, either.”

The creature — Cerrnunitus, Chuck said its name was — comes into view, ducking through the barn door. Two branchlike appendages are positioned over its shoulders, the eyes at the ends of them looking at the boy. The creature’s two long arms shift forward, and I see the glistening claws at the ends of them. They’re shiny and black, reminding me of obsidian.

I notice that its two trunk-like feet end in giant hooves and that its skin looks exactly like the bark of a burned tree.

Its large mouth opens, revealing rows of sharp, shifting, black teeth.

Boyd screams through his gag.

“Take solace in the fact that you’re giving your life for the greater good,” I say to him as the creature approaches. “I know you’re just a boy. I’m sorry it had to be you. I really am. Now be quiet. And don’t worry, it’ll be over fast. You won’t hardly feel anything.”

I shove the boy forward, and the creature sweeps him up, a dozen more eyes creaking around from its back to look hungrily at the boy in its grasp.

I watch as the creature shoves Boyd’s head into its mouth and clamps down with those dark, shifting teeth. A spray of blood erupts as Boyd’s head separates from his neck.

I turn away, thinking of Sandra and Isaac and Becky.

When I turn back, there are six pairs of eyes looking at me from their places on the creature’s back as it lumbers away into the darkness. I can just see Boyd’s tennis shoes sticking out from between the creature’s right arm and its body as it cradles the dead boy protectively, taking him somewhere to finish the meal.

As I close the barn door and head back up to the house, I make a promise to myself.

I promise I’ll tell Isaac about this when he’s ready. Before it’s too late.

I’ll do my son the favor my dad never did me.

Sandra

“I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no way I can change your seating at this point. It’s a full flight,” the airline worker says to me. She stands behind her desk, looking down at her computer.

“Our original flight was canceled,” I say, pleading with her. “This was the next available flight. But we didn’t have the option to choose our own seats like we did on the original flight. There’s absolutely nothing you can do?”

The lady looks up at me from her computer. “I’m sorry, sir. If I could seat you next to your girlfriend, I would. It looks like you’re only a couple of rows away from each other. Maybe you can ask someone to switch with you on the plane.”

The stress of the last week sits on me like a monkey with a knife, digging around in my skull. I can feel myself slipping, but the last thing I want to do here is make a scene, so I grumble to the woman in the blue uniform and head back to the crowded seating area.

I shake my head as I approach Sandra. She gives me a sad smile, which does nothing to conceal the worry in her eyes.

“It’s completely full,” I tell her. “They can’t do anything for us.”

She reaches over and takes my hand, her touch making all the stress worth it. I look into her brilliant green eyes, set in the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. Her raven-colored hair frames her angelic features and gives contrast to her smooth pale skin.

“I love you,” I say to her.

“I love you, too,” she says. I know she means it.

We kiss, a gesture that’s cut short by the boarding call for our flight.

Our number is called shortly, and we stand up to get in line with all the other passengers.

“I’ll ask whoever sits next to you if we can switch,” I say once we have our tickets and passports checked.

“Oh, it’s okay, Frank,” she says, waving a hand. “Nothing’s going to happen. Don’t worry so much. There’s nothing to do but sit and wait for the plane to take us to our new life.”

I think about all the preparation I’ve done to get us here. Still, it would make me feel better if we sat together. But I find it hard to refuse Sandra anything.

“Are you sure?” I ask her.

“Yes, it’s fine,” she says. “It could be better this way, you know? It looks like we’re not traveling together.”

I nod. She’s right.

I let her go ahead of me as we board the plane. I scan the faces of the people already in seats. Looking for what, I don’t know. Some recognition. A hard stare. Something. But I don’t see anything like that. Just a bunch of people getting settled, reading books, or messing with their phones.

I’m in a middle seat on the right side of the plane. Sandra is in a window seat three rows behind me, on the left side of the plane. I’m comforted to see an old woman sitting next to her, and a middle-aged woman in the aisle seat.

As is my luck, I get stuck between an old man on my left and a particularly large young woman on my right. I can already tell the old man’s going to be a talker. He has that look in his eye as he sits down next to me.

Once I’m settled, I turn in my seat and look over my shoulder. I can just see the top half of Sandra’s head. She sees me, stretches up in her seat, smiles, and gives a thumbs up. I smile back, starting to relax for a change.

I can’t believe it. This is really happening. I’m with the love of my life, heading off to Europe to live the life I’ve always wanted. I smile as the old man next to me asks me my name.

I start chatting with him, asking him questions about his life, and listening to the rambling replies with a sense of calm I welcome whole-heartedly.

Once we’re in the air, I find that sense of calm expanding even more as the stress of the last seven days melts away. My mind drifts toward things we’ll do as we travel around Europe, money no longer a problem. I find that I’m incredibly tired. I’ve been so concerned with getting this trip underway, and all the other things that entailed, that I haven’t slept much.

Soon enough, we’re cruising high above the Atlantic and the flight attendants are serving food and drinks. I order a gin and tonic and enjoy a chicken wrap as the in-flight meal. The alcohol and food combine in my stomach, making me pleasantly groggy.

I turn in my seat once again and see that Sandra has her head propped back against the seat and her eyes closed. I gaze at her for a long moment, unable to believe my luck. What did I do to deserve a woman like this? I don’t know, but I’m not going to question it.

I settle into my seat and tell the man to my left that I’m going to get some sleep. It’s a long flight, and sleep is just what I need.

I close my eyes and drift off almost immediately.

I jolt awake as someone touches my arm. “Sir,” the flight attendant says. “Please bring your seat-back up. We’re making our descent into London.”

I do as I’m told, stretching my stiff neck and wiping the sleep from my eyes. I look back at Sandra, seeing that she’s still asleep.

We land without incident. It’s nighttime, but the massive Heathrow Airport is well lit. I look past the woman to my right, gazing out the window as we taxi.

Once we’re at the terminal, everyone gets up and starts to file out of the plane in the typical slow fashion.

I sit in my seat, waiting until everyone ahead of us leaves. I decide to wait for Sandra so we can walk off together, so I cross the aisle once the opposite row is empty so the lady next to me can get out. I look back, expecting to see Sandra standing there, but she’s not. Of course, there are people standing in the way, so I shrug it off.

The old woman and the middle-aged woman that were sitting next to Sandra move off the plane. They both look at me as they go, smiling strangely. I notice a small, dark stain on the old woman’s sweater as she walks past in the aisle, turning her head to smirk at me. At the last second, she throws a phone down on the seat next to me.

My throat thickens, my breathing grows ragged. I ignore the phone, turning around to look at Sandra now that there’s no one in the way. She’s still sitting in the seat, her eyes closed and head resting on the seatback.

But something seems off. I can’t place it, but I know something is terribly wrong. I lunge into the aisle, crashing into a man in a suit.

“Watch it, Frank,” he says as I squeeze past him. I barely even notice he’s there. Other people move out of the way as I scramble back toward the woman I love.

“Sandra!” I say. “Sandra?”

There’s a thin, dark blanket tucked under her chin, concealing her upper body and the seat. Now that I’m up close, I can see that Sandra’s skin is sallow, the texture of candle wax in a humid room.

I reach toward her, gripping her by the shoulders through the thin blanket. The movement jars her, and her head comes forward. For one moment, I think she’s waking up. But her head keeps going, her chin hitting her chest as her head tumbles off her neck to land in her lap.

I scream, only now seeing what the blanket previously concealed: the drying blood coating her clothes and soaking into the seatback.

In an insane act of grief, I grab her severed head in both hands and bring it to my face, placing my hot forehead against her cold one as the tears spill out of my eyes. A woman screams behind me in the aisle, seeing the gory scene.

The businessman’s words from moments ago echo in my head. “Watch it, Frank,” he said. I now remember seeing him sitting directly behind Sandra. And the two women sitting in the row with her …

Fury builds in me, and I put Sandra’s head back down in her lap like I’m setting a fragile vase on a stand. I rush back into the aisle, the small group of people still left on the plane looking at me with fear and disgust.

As I start down the aisle to find the man and the two women, a phone rings next to me — the phone the old woman threw down when she passed.

I answer it, already knowing who it will be.

“You thought you could run away with my wife?” the harsh voice says over the phone. “With my money? I trusted you, Frank. I treated you like a brother. You think I can’t buy a half-dozen seats on a plane and put my people in them?”

I listen to my former boss and the most dangerous man I know, but no words come to me.

“Nothing to say for yourself?” he asks. “Fine. My associates will see you in jail. Enjoy your last few days on earth.”

The line goes dead. I drop the phone back into the seat just before a police officer tackles me to the floor from behind. I barely notice as the cuffs go on. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

Not without Sandra.

Blood and Meat

Brandon’s skateboard stopped suddenly, sending him flying forward to roll on the asphalt. I knew without looking that he’d hit a small rock with one of his wheels.

Anyone who’s ever spent time on a skateboard knows how that feels.

Brandon cursed and got to his feet, inspecting the patch of road rash on his arm. His board, knocked backward from his fall, had started to roll down the gently sloping parking lot, so I skated over and snatched it up.

“Thanks,” Brandon said, taking his board from me.

“Yup,” I said. I pushed off and managed a smooth kickflip in the shadow of the abandoned mall.

It was early afternoon on a Saturday. Brandon and I had only been at it for about half an hour, but I could already sense that my friend was getting bored. He didn’t have the passion for skating that I did. It was just something to kill time for him.

I practiced another couple of tricks in the parking lot, the spring sunshine and my exertions causing me to break a light sweat. I glanced over at Brandon, who seemed to be transfixed by the old mall.

I knew the look on his face. We’d been friends since we were ten. After seven years, you get to know your friends pretty well.

“What are you thinking?” I said, skating up to him.

“Freddie, my friend,” he said, taking up what I thought of as his salesman voice. “I think it’s about time we perambulate the interior of this old mall.”

“Perambulate?” I asked. “Where do you learn these words?”

“It means ‘walk around,’” he said. “And I read books. How else do you learn new words?”

I shrugged, kicking my skateboard up into my hand and standing next to Brandon, following his gaze.

“Are you with me, young adventurer? Or are you unduly apprehensive?” he asked.

“Screw it,” I said. “I’ve always wondered what it looks like in there. You got a way in?”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Brandon said, sounding like my dad.

We didn’t end up needing much of a will to get in, though. At the second set of doors we checked, we found one with a broken lock. With minimal effort, we slipped inside the cool darkness of the mall.

We walked on the dirty linoleum, our footsteps echoing back at us. Most of the stores on either side of us still had their metal gates down, but some of these gates had been broken and the insides of the stock-less stores had been ransacked. Graffiti marred the walls. Broken shelves, beer cans, and fast-food trash covered the floors of these violated stores.

“Eww, check that out,” Brandon said as we passed what used to be a shoe store. There was a twin mattress inside, stained with fluids I didn’t even want to think about.

“We might come across some homeless people in here,” I said, noting the evidence.

“Nah,” Brandon said. “They’re usually out getting food at shelters or panhandling for change during this time of day. If we came back tonight though…”

I shuddered at the thought of coming into this mall at night. As it was, there was barely enough sunlight streaming in through various skylights for us to see. Had we been on the first floor, we would’ve needed our phones to see.

We continued on, talking and joking and picking up the odd piece of wood or metal to throw around, just because.

We came to a pair of frozen escalators and Brandon suggested we check out the first floor.

“Alright,” I said as seriously as I could. “But how are we going to get down there? The escalators aren’t working.”

“What?!” Brandon said. “They’re stairs now! A broken escalator is stairs.”

I couldn’t hold it any longer. I busted out laughing. Brandon did the same.

“You got me,” he said, starting down the escalator.

When we were near the bottom, a scrawny and dirty dog came shooting out from underneath the escalator, apparently scared by our presence.

“Wait!” Brandon yelled and ran after the dog. “I like dogs! Come back here.”

I laughed as he chased the dog down a dark wing of the mall, hollering as he went.

I lost them both to sight in the darkness just before I heard the dog yelp — followed almost immediately by Brandon screaming. His voice was cut off mid-scream, sending a chill up my spine.

“Brandon?” I called into the darkness. “You alright? What happened?”

No answer.

I pulled my phone out and turned on the flashlight, shining it down the dark wing. I saw nothing but the same kind of disarray we’d already passed on the second floor.

No dog. No Brandon.

But I thought I saw his skateboard lying on the floor. It was too far away to tell for sure.

I crept into the darkness, holding my phone in my left hand and my skateboard in my right, ready to swing it should anyone come out of the darkness toward me.

“Brandon, come on, man,” I called. “This isn’t funny. Just come out. I’m serious.”

No answer.

What I thought was Brandon’s skateboard was really just part of a metal bench that had been turned on its back.

Something moved in the darkness ahead; a wet, sliding sound that was just loud enough for me to hear.

I swung my light toward the sound and saw what looked like a dark crack in the floor. Some kind of liquid glistened around the large crack as if it had seeped out from the crevasse.

There were also a couple of small, dark piles around the crack. They looked like old clothes, but it was hard to tell from this distance.

There were two thick wires hanging down from a dark hole in the ceiling. I started thinking that a pipe had burst, damaging the ceiling and also causing the floor to crack. There wasn’t any water dripping now, but that didn’t mean anything.

I approached the crack in the floor, shining the light down on it. It was bigger than it had looked from afar. Brandon could’ve easily fallen through it if he hadn’t seen it.

I stepped into the strange liquid on the ground around the crack. It was thick, like slime, and slippery. But I was more concerned about Brandon. I stepped carefully up to the crack and positioned my light so I could see down.

I saw a dirt floor some ten feet down, but I didn’t see Brandon lying down there. Or the dog.

“Brandon? You down there?” I called.

A muffled whimper sounded from above me, and I immediately whipped my light up, shining it into the dark hole in the ceiling.

Brandon’s wide eyes reflected the light. He was stuck to the ceiling somehow. Only it wasn’t really the ceiling. I didn’t know what it was. He was surrounded by slowly pulsating mounds of gelatinous flesh. His mouth was wrapped with something rope-like that was nearly translucent around the edges but a dark red in the middle. I moved the light, seeing that more of these rope-like things were wrapped around his body, pinning him to the ceiling. They’re living, some faraway part of me realized.

Brandon’s eyes closed as I watched in horror, unable to process what I was seeing. He was pale — too pale. And I realized why a second later.

The dark red middle of these things wrapped around him suddenly cleared out, like the last of a drink getting sucked up a clear straw. Whatever the thing was, it was drinking him.

Another whimpering noise sounded, and I moved my light over, seeing the dog up there, wrapped with those things, getting the life sucked out of it.

What I had originally thought was a wire hanging from the ceiling moved, jerking toward me. I flinched, trying to get away, and slipped on the slime under my feet as the tentacle snapped out to where my head had just been. My skateboard clattered to the ground as I fell. I hit the ground hard only to see the other thick tentacle swinging toward me.

I didn’t think, I just moved, rolling to my right and falling through the crack in the floor. I landed on my side, my left arm under me, which broke with searing pain. The impact sent my phone skidding along the dirty floor, coming to rest with the bright light pointing straight up.

I fought for my breath, thinking I was going to suffocate, before finally gulping in a lungful of air.

I cried out, the insanity of my situation and the pain in my arm threatening to overwhelm me.

Finally, I gathered myself and crawled over to get my phone. I lifted it and shone it around the cave-like area I’d fallen into.

Everywhere I looked, there were wires hanging down from the ceiling.

But they weren’t wires. They were tentacles. There were dark piles of clothing sitting under some of these tentacles. Their existence told me I wasn’t the first person to end up down here, underneath the abandoned mall. Whatever these creatures were, they had no need for clothing. They only wanted blood and meat.

I saw Brandon’s board off to my right, which he must have dropped down the hole when that thing snagged him.

I stayed where I was, well away from the hanging tentacles. I looked down at my phone screen, thinking I’d call my dad.

The screen was a jumble of colors; it had been smashed in the fall. I messed with it for a minute, seeing if I could pull up anyone’s number. Nothing worked.

Rage and helplessness boiled over, and I screamed out for help.

No one answered. There was no one around.

But a tentacle came down from the crack in the ceiling, the crack I’d fallen through.

It stretched itself out as if offering help. A way to climb out of here.

I knew if I touched it, that would be the end.

Or would it?

Could I escape? Could I somehow get free once I was up in the mall again?

I didn’t know.

But I didn’t have much of a choice, either.

The Chosen One

I’ve never been a religious person. I mean, I was raised in a Christian household. But by the time I was a teenager, the grasp of religion was fading fast. Heaven and hell, God and the Devil, they seemed to be just allegorical stories written by men thousands of years ago who knew that people needed some guidelines for life.

Of course, like most people, I wondered what would happen when I died. The thought of a heaven was nice, but I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it. The same thing with hell.

But I got to see for myself what it was like to die. And what was on the other side.

And unlike 99% of the population, I got to come back from it, changed forever.

I was twenty-five years old when I was taking my nightly walk after dinner. My neighborhood was a quiet one, and it was a cool late-summer night in Massachusetts.

My walk was just over a mile, making a large circle around the neighborhood. About halfway into it, I heard a car’s engine revving behind me. It wasn’t an aggressive noise; it sounded like a person driving through the neighborhood. I didn’t pay it much mind.

The noise grew closer, and just when I expected it to pass by me, I heard the sound of wheels thumping up the curb. Managing a half-turn, I saw the car’s headlights closing in. I felt the engine’s warmth as the vehicle hit me, breaking my left leg at the knee as it folded under the bumper and then under the front right wheel.

Had it been a sedan, I probably would have been hit off the hood and ended up with minor scratches and bruises. But it was an SUV, and the fact that I managed to get the rest of my body out of the way was a bit of a miracle in itself.

Even through the crisp yet hazy pain of my broken leg, I was aware of the vehicle moving back left, as if, having hit me, its business was finished on the sidewalk. But then it angled across the street, jumped the opposite curb, and ran into the front of a house there, doing minimal damage because it had slowed considerably.

I had my cell phone on me, managing to call 911 and then my wife, who drove down in a panic to see me lying there at the edge of someone’s lawn, my left leg bent at a gruesome angle.

As it turned out, the man behind the wheel of the SUV hadn’t taken his insulin that day, and went into diabetic shock while driving home. His name was Jeffrey, and he visited me in the hospital two days before I died. He apologized profusely.

At the time, I was angry with him. Now, I’m eternally grateful to him. I know that what happened that night was meant to be. To show me my purpose in this life. And what a purpose it is.

I know what you may be wondering: How did I die from a broken leg?

After the surgery to repair my leg, I contracted MRSA, a type of staph infection. While not all MRSA infections are fatal, they can be under the right circumstances. But it wasn’t even the infection that actually caused my death.

While the doctors and hospital staff were trying to fight the infection that was threatening to shut down my major organs, they inserted a breathing tube into my throat. But they did it wrong, and I began to choke, unable to breathe because the tube was improperly inserted.

I went into cardiac arrest and died while they were trying to resuscitate me.

I was officially dead for just under two minutes.

But what I experienced in those two minutes felt like a lifetime. The things I saw were unimaginable by human standards. In fact, when they finally got my heart beating again and I was pulled back from the afterlife, some of the experiences I had were diluted into a blur by my uncomprehending physical brain.

But what remained was enough. I had been given a gift, a purpose, and a knowledge of the nature of life itself — and of death.

And I knew that other people wouldn’t understand. Not even my wife. Not my mother or my father. Not my friends from college. No one would get it. But that’s okay. They don’t need to. They will experience the joy I know soon enough.

I was twenty-five when I died. Now I’m sixty-one years old. And the time is fast approaching.

Everything I was shown in the afterlife has come true. Everything.

My first and only child was born a year after my accident. Leena, my daughter, has had a successful political career, as I knew she would. She’s the youngest female Speaker of the House of Representatives in history at only thirty-five.

I couldn’t be more proud. I doted on her, took her under my wing, groomed her for her career and her position and for the tasks to come.

So tomorrow, when I set off the bomb that will kill the President and Vice President as they drive past in their motorcade, my Leena will become the President of the United States.

Then she will help to bring about the vision that has been in my head for thirty-six years.

She will help me unleash the greatest power to ever exist. A power that has been locked away since a jealous God cast Lucifer down to the underworld.

The skies will turn black, the earth will split itself open, and chaos will consume the populace as they murder each other in droves.

Seas will boil, long-dormant volcanoes will erupt, earthquakes will swallow entire cities.

And when the population has been decimated, pared down to a few hundred thousand, His army will fly on leathery wings from the gaping holes in the earth, finally free to rule the world.

And right there, by His side, I will sit. Leena will have to be sacrificed, sadly. She is simply a means to an end.

But my life will be eternal, my youth restored, my rule never-ending. I will want for naught.

I will sit next to Him on his throne of bones and listen to the screams of the unworthy, gazing out upon the black fields of tortured bodies.

Because I am — and always will be — the chosen one.

Things Best Left in the Dark

“What the hell have you gotten me into?” I yell over the insistent whine of the revving engine and the piercing chaos of the police siren.

“Turn here! Turn here!” the man in the front seat shouts — I only know him as Jerry, but I doubt that’s his real name.

I tap the brakes and swing the wheel clockwise, then hit the gas as soon as the squealing back tires regain traction.

The flashing red and blue lights behind us fade back in the rearview mirror as the squad car spins out while trying to make the turn.

“Whoo!” Jerry shouts, looking back over his shoulder.

I look at the guy in the back seat — only a kid really — and see the wide, worried look on his face. He’s never done anything like this before. And if he has, he’s certainly not made for it.

“Where the hell are we going, Jerry?” I ask, seeing that he’s directed me to the old abandoned South Ridge Mall.

“Just keep going, dude,” Jerry says. “I’ll tell you when to turn.”

I don’t let up on the gas pedal. We haven’t lost the cops; I know that. I just pray Jerry has a plan. But I’m starting to feel like something is wrong.

I’m long past regret. I should have never taken this job. I broke my cardinal rule: Don’t drive for anyone I don’t know well.

“How you doing back there, boy?” Jerry says to the kid. He told us his name is Mark, but I hope he has the sense to not use his real name. I certainly didn’t give him mine.

“We’re going to jail,” Mark says. “Look, they’re getting back on us.”

Sure enough, I see the bright strobing lights of the squad car come around the soft curve. We’re on the big oblong road that surrounds the mall, and we could probably drive around it in circles like a racetrack if it were just us and the one cop car. Especially at this time of night.

But that’s not how cops work. In fact, I’m surprised that backup hasn’t shown up yet. It’s only a matter of time.

“We’re not going to jail,” Jerry says with all the confidence in the world.

What are you up to? I think but don’t say.

The job was supposed to be straightforward. We were supposed to hit a trap house, stealing from dope dealers. A victimless crime. All part of the game.

But before we were even near the house, these cops were on us. And there was no way we were pulling over. Not with all the hardware in the car.

So I booked it. And Jerry started giving me directions.

“Turn here, toward the old Sears,” Jerry says.

I do it, and we’re speeding directly at the mall.

“Ram the doors,” Jerry says.

“What?” I say. “You’re kidding, right?”

Jerry picks up the stubby black revolver he’s been holding in his hands since the chase began. He doesn’t point it at me, not directly, but his gesture makes the threat clear.

“Just do it,” he says.

“You guys better buckle up,” I say as we close the distance.

There’s a wheelchair ramp just in front of the doors, allowing just enough room for the late-model sedan I’m driving to fit without having to jump the curb.

I brake as we slam into the glass and metal doors of the Sears mall entrance. Sounds of wrenching metal and breaking glass momentarily drown out the fast-approaching siren behind us.

We end up breaking through both the outer and inner sets of doors. The sedan comes to rest in the dark and empty store that formerly held everything from beds and clothes to hand tools and lawnmowers.

We hit hard enough for the airbags to deploy, but I come out of the crash only slightly dazed. It’s not my first crash. And, if I live through this night, it won’t be my last. The last-second braking wasn’t an accident.

“Let’s move,” Jerry says, opening his door.

“You good, Mark?” I say, turning back. Mark nods.

We’re out of the car and following Jerry into the mall when the squad car slams to a stop outside the entrance. I hear the doors open and two men cursing as they look at the wreckage. The sedan is essentially blocking entrance to the store. The cops are going to have to pick their way through the twisted metal to get inside.

Maybe Jerry does know what he’s doing.

As we go deeper into the abandoned Sears, I pull out my phone and shake it to turn on my flashlight.

“Turn that off, Baxter,” Jerry says, using the name I gave him.

“I can’t see shit,” I say.

“Just follow my footsteps,” he says. “I know where I’m going. Besides, your eyes will adjust soon.”

I grumble but turn the light off and focus my attention on the sound of Jerry’s footsteps ahead of me. Mark is behind me, following close, breathing fast.

I sense the area around me open up and assume we’re out of the Sears store and into the rest of the two-story abandoned mall. It’s been years since this mall was open, but I’d been in it many times before it closed. I try to picture the layout in my head as we move, the only sounds our footsteps and our breathing.

“What the hell are we doing here?” Mark asks with a shaky voice.

Light flashes and an echoing bang comes from our right. Someone’s shooting at us.

We all duck as another gunshot sounds. A beam of light cuts through the darkness as a flashlight comes on. The light plays over a now-dry fountain next to the dormant elevator some fifteen yards ahead of us.

The ambient light shows me an escalator off to my left. I grab Mark by the arm and drag him under the dull silver metal of the silent escalator, giving us some cover. Jerry is already under it, peeking his head out the other side.

“Oh, Ethan,” the man with the flashlight calls out in a sing-song voice. “You’re gonna die.”

“Shit,” Jerry whispers. “They’re smart for cops. They came around to another entrance.”

“What the fuck is going on?” I say to Jerry, whose real name I’m starting to think is Ethan.

“Chill, man,” Jerry says. “It’s all good.”

The questing light scythes through the darkness and lands on the escalator. Jerry pulls his head back in quickly.

“Let’s get Mark out of here,” I say. “Let him go home.”

“Nah,” Jerry says. “Not until we’re done.”

“Done with what? There are probably more cops out there right now, getting into position. We’re screwed. At least we can get him out of here.”

“These guys aren’t calling backup,” Jerry says. “They’re dirtier than this mall floor, man. They’re just some crooked cops, looking for a payday.”

“Payday? We don’t have any money. We didn’t even do the job.”

Before Jerry can answer, there’s a scuffing noise from behind us and another beam of light stabs the darkness, lighting all three of us up under the escalator.

“Run,” Jerry says, and takes off. I hesitate, moving to put my hands up when the cop behind the flashlight fires. If he’d been aiming at me, I’d be dead. But he was trying to hit Jerry. Still, it’s enough for me. I grab Mark and we take off running after Jerry as more bullets pierce the surrounding darkness.

Both flashlights bounce through the darkness after us as the cops run, firing blindly every few steps.

Ahead of me, I can hear Jerry making strange sounds with his mouth. It’s like a foreign language but with clicks and other mouth sounds, almost as if he’s trying to coax a horse out of its stable.

I’m still gripping Mark’s arm when he falls down behind me. “Get up!” I yell, stopping to help him.

“I’m shot,” he says, his voice high with disbelief. “They shot me.”

The lights are still bouncing toward us, so I grab Mark under the armpits and drag him over to the side until my back hits the wall. I haven’t been able to see anything since the cop shined the light in my face, and my own light would give us away. So this is the best I can do. I sit down next to Mark and wait for the cops to find us. And, in all likelihood, kill us.

Jerry is nowhere to be seen, and the strange sounds he was making have stopped. I’m guessing he’s gone, leaving us behind as a diversion while he escapes.

I raise my hands above my head as the beams of light get closer, sweeping the area. One of them stops when it falls on me and Mark.

“Deckland, we got one,” the voice behind the flashlight says with immense satisfaction. I realize he’s talking about Mark’s gunshot wound.

Jerry’s right. These are dirty cops.

The second beam of light adjusts as the other cop joins his partner. They’re close enough now that I can see their chubby, mustache-laden faces from the backsplash of light. Their badges seem to glisten. Their bellies bulge over their heavy-looking belts.

I look over at Mark, who’s slumped against the wall, gripping his bloody side.

“Where’d Ethan go?” the cop, Deckland, asks.

I shrug.

“He ditched them,” the other cop says. “If we go now, we can still find him.”

Deckland nods. “Right you are, partner.” Then he turns to me. “You shoulda kept running, left this little punk behind. Now you’re dead, motherfucker.” He raises his gun.

Something shifts behind him in the dark.

A blur of shiny blackness sweeps down and hits Deckland in his outstretched hand. His gun clatters to the ground, still gripped by his severed hand. He screams and drops his flashlight, bringing his left hand up to grip the nub as it spurts blood like this mall’s fountain once spurted water.

The other cop swings his flashlight up, tracking the beam with his gun. The light lands on a four-legged creature standing above him, a good twelve feet tall. Its lower legs are made out of a shiny black material that reminds me of obsidian. They end in points, which clack on the tile floor as the thing moves. Its upper legs come up to a central circular body that’s also black but covered in stubby hair instead of the smooth armor on the thing’s legs.

The body is about five feet in diameter and is circled with blinking yellow eyes. Under the eyes, at the bottom of its body, there’s a circular mouth that opens as I watch. Two mandibles a good three feet long dart out of the maw as if tasting the air.

The uninjured cop screams and fires once at the monster before one of those legs comes up and swats at the guy, slicing his head off. The headless cop stands there like a statue as his head rolls around on the floor, eyes blinking and mouth open in a silent scream. After a long moment, his headless body falls forward and slams to the floor.

Deckland sits down hard on the floor, a mere foot away from his partner’s head. He reaches out for his gun on the floor, but I jump up and kick the gun and hand away. He looks up at me with hate in his eyes.

“I want to know why you killed my dad,” Jerry says, coming out of the darkness and walking under the creature that stands there, blinking its many eyes. “All for some money? To make sure all the other businesses in the area paid you for protection? Or was it just ‘cause you wanted to?”

Deckland turns to look at Jerry as he comes around. The cop — if you could call him that — looks increasingly pale. His wrist is still bleeding badly, even though he’s gripping it as tight as he can with his other hand.

“What the fuck is that thing?” Deckland whispers, looking past Jerry — or Ethan. Whatever his name is.

“How the hell should I know?” Jerry says. “All I know is that we look out for each other. I bring it food and it doesn’t hurt me. But it can only eat raw chicken and beef for so long. Once in a while, it’s gotta have something a little more … substantial.”

Jerry stands over Deckland for a long moment, waiting for the cop to say something. When he doesn’t, he steps back and sighs. “You don’t know how to feel remorse, do you?” he asks the cop. “You don’t even care that you killed a smart, strong, law-abiding man, do you? It doesn’t matter to you. Nothing matters but your own miserable life.”

Deckland smiles up at Jerry as he seems to remember something. He reaches down toward his left ankle for the pistol strapped above his boot. But before he’s even close to getting it out, Jerry signals to the monster. It lifts one black leg up and slams it down on Deckland’s back, impaling the man, the sickening sound of breaking bones and bursting skin echoing off the walls.

It lifts a squirming Deckland up to its mouth. The two mandibles come out and grab the man, who screams as he’s folded in half to fit into its mouth. His screaming stops as he disappears into the creature’s maw amid a wet, crunching sound.

Jerry walks over to me. “Let’s get Mark out of here,” he says.

I don’t say anything. I can’t believe what I’ve just seen.

I just tend to Mark. He’s in shock, but I think it’s more from what he’s just witnessed than his gunshot wound, which is minor. I think he’ll be okay when we get him to the hospital.

As we get Mark situated between us, Jerry turns back to the creature, which is now munching on the other cop. “I’ll be back in a few days,” he says to it, then makes some of those strange sounds with his mouth again. “Be good.”

I want to ask him about it, but I decide not to. It’s best not to know about these things.

It’s best to leave these dark things in the dark. Where they belong.

The Crocodile

“Give me a break,” I said to my buddy, Tim.

“I’m serious,” Tim said. “Look it up.”

We were sitting at our resort’s hotel bar, having just arrived in Cancun about two hours earlier. Both our girlfriends were up in our respective rooms, getting ready for an early dinner while Tim and I waited down at the bar.

“I didn’t even know they had crocodiles in Cancun,” I said, pulling out my phone.

“Mike,” Tim said, leaning toward me, “did you not do any research on this place? It’s one of the major reasons I wanted to come here. I can do a good three or four videos on the crocodiles alone. More if I can actually get up close to a few of them.”

Tim had started a YouTube travel channel. So far, he’d only been doing videos about camping and traveling in the United States, but he was excited about doing his first series in a foreign country.

“You’re insane, you know that?” I asked. “What do you know about crocodiles? You know how fast those things move?”

I typed in a search on my phone about crocodiles in Cancun.

“I’m not going to put my hand in one’s mouth or anything,” Tim said. “You know me better than that. But, with the magic of filmmaking, I can make it look like I get very close to them. Besides, people feed them all the time here. Maybe I’ll see some unsuspecting tourist get chomped on.”

I knew Tim was joking, but I still shook my head in disgust. “Don’t even joke about that, man,” I said, glancing down at the stories Google pulled up for me on my phone. According to reports, there had been more and more incidents of crocodiles attacking people in the Cancun area. Biologists blamed it on rising river levels that allowed the crocodiles to move around the area more, showing up in lagoons and cave systems that tourists frequented.

“Damn,” I said, reading one of the news stories. “Five people have been killed by crocodiles this year. That’s compared to no recorded deaths for the last twenty years in the area.”

“I know,” Tim said. “That’s what I’m saying. Most of the crocodiles down here aren’t big or aggressive enough to kill people. They just end up maiming them. So whatever is doing the killing must be a big, nasty croc.”

“And you want to try and find it?”

“Not necessarily. Like I said, man, it’s all about how you put things. With a good thumbnail and a scary title, I bet I can get fifty thousand views in the first week. Something like ‘Monster Crocodile Terrorizes Cancun Resorts.’ How does that sound?”

“It sounds like you’re sick,” I said, unable to keep from smiling at Tim’s excitement. I wanted him to succeed, but I also didn’t want anyone to get mauled or killed by a crocodile. Something occurred to me then. “Have you ever seen Nightcrawler, Tim? The one with Jake Gyllenhaal?”

Tim laughed. “Yeah. Great movie. But don’t worry, I’m not going to shove you into a crocodile just so I can grow my YouTube channel.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“But — and don’t be mad — I booked us a tour of some of the caves here tomorrow. Starts at eleven in the morning.”

“Seriously? You already paid for it?”

“Yeah, man. My treat. Besides, this is what we’re here for, right? I promise we’ll have a good time.”

“Fine,” I said. “But you get to tell the girls about it. They wanted to relax at the pool tomorrow.”

“Speaking of which,” Tim said, looking over my shoulder. “The girls are here.”

We had a great meal and a few drinks before calling it a night. To my surprise, the girls were excited about the tour in the morning. Of course, they probably didn’t know about Tim’s ulterior motives…

By the time the tour rolled around, I had all but forgotten about the gruesome news stories about crocodile attacks. After all, I reasoned, five out of the hundreds of thousands of people that had been in the area wasn’t bad. What were the chances of our group getting attacked?

A private tour company picked us up right at eleven. We all got into their van and started the hour drive out of the hotel zone and down the coast. Our driver’s name was Israel and our tour guide’s name was Humberto. On the drive to our destination, Humberto told us all about the caves we were going to see. There’s a whole system of these caves on the Yucatan Peninsula, known as cenotes.

Humberto went on to explain in excellent English what kind of wildlife we were likely to see. When he finished his list without mentioning the modern dinosaurs Tim was after, my friend asked him about them.

“What about crocodiles?” Tim said, his camera up and ready to record Humberto’s response.

I watched closely as something dark passed over our tour guide’s face. It was only for a moment, and so quick that I wasn’t really sure I’d seen it at all.

“There are crocodiles found there sometimes, yes,” he said. “But not in the places we will go. However, there are crocodile shows I can tell you about if you wish. Handled by professionals. Very safe.”

“What if we want to see a croc?” Tim said.

“Who knows, Señor?” Humberto said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“What’s your obsession with crocodiles, anyway?” Trina, my girlfriend, asked.

“He’s been talking about them nonstop for a month,” Beth, Tim’s girlfriend, said, rolling her eyes.

“I just think they’re cool,” Tim said, winking at me.

We had to hike a little ways into the jungle after we parked. Humberto handed us lifejackets and told us in no uncertain terms that we were to wear them the whole time we were in the water.

I didn’t know what to think about this, but when we crested a small hill and the jungle cleared, I was in awe. There was a large rock overhang in the clearing, and under the rock was some of the clearest water I had ever seen. It was a large pool, perhaps the size of a public swimming pool, and you could see all the way to the bottom, which was a good ten feet deep in places. The rock roof over the natural pool sloped down toward the back, and it looked like there were passageways in the rock that could easily fit a human.

There were some stairs leading down a slope to the water, so we could get in easily if we didn’t want to jump. Tim, of course, was the first one in. He threw his stuff down, grabbed his waterproof camera, and jumped in with a shout.

“Oh, hell yeah, Humberto!” he called. “The water’s great!”

Humberto smiled and gave a thumbs-up before heading back down to the van to get the cooler with our lunch in it. The driver, Israel, stood watching us quietly, a bored look on his face.

“Mike, come on in!” Tim shouted. “Now’s our chance!”

“For what?” I asked, taking off my shirt and putting the lifejacket on.

“Exploration!”

I turned and looked at Trina. She rolled her eyes and smiled. “We’ll be here,” she said. “Just be careful.”

I ran and jumped into the cenote, nearly landing on Tim. We both came to the surface of the pristine and warm water, laughing.

“Alright, let’s go,” Tim said, heading for one of the dark passageways at the back of the cave.

As we approached it, we heard a rush of shouted Spanish behind us. I turned around to see Israel standing at the edge of the cenote, yelling at us and waving his arms for us to stop. Trina and Beth stood behind him, looking perplexed.

“He says we can’t go that way,” I told Tim, who was pressing on as if nothing was amiss.

“Of course he’ll say that,” Tim said. “But I paid my money, and I’ll go where I want. You got my back?”

I looked back at Israel, who saw that he wasn’t getting through to us. “Está bien!” I called out to him, telling him it was all good. Then I turned and swam, following Tim into the dark passageway.

The light faded behind us as we rounded a bend. The limestone walls were close enough that we used our hands to help ourselves along. Tim turned on his camera’s light, and we continued on with only that for illumination.

The further we got, the more I realized how bad an idea this was. We were in the water. There was no way we could outmaneuver a crocodile in the water. We were sitting ducks.

“This is a bad idea,” I said. “We should — oh shit!”

“What? What is it?”

“Something touched my leg,” I said, twisting around and trying to look into the water, but only seeing the camera’s light reflected off the surface.

“There are tons of fish and turtles in here, man,” Tim said. “I bet it was—”

Tim slammed into me. Our heads cracked together from the impact.

“What the fuck was that?” I said, rubbing my head.

“I don’t know,” Tim said, fear creeping into his voice. “Let’s go back.”

“Good idea,” I said, turning around. Just as I did so, something big and fast hit me in the back of the legs, causing me to backflip in the water.

I scrambled to get my head out of the water, and pressed myself against the wall of the tunnel, as if that would help anything.

“That was the same thing,” Tim said, his voice shaking. “It just went past us. It hit me out of the way and then ran into you.”

“Whatever it was, it was big. And strong,” I said, unable to fathom just how strong it was. The thing pushed me out of the way like I was a floating beach ball in the water.

We stayed there for a minute, waiting for the thing to attack us. Tim was the one to break the spell of fear we were under.

“Let’s go,” he said. “We can’t just sit here and wait for it.”

“Right,” I said, “of course.”

We worked our way back toward the tunnel entrance, breathing hard and shivering despite the relatively warm water. I took the lead this time, and Tim followed along behind, holding up his camera for light. At one point, he must have dropped the camera, because I heard some splashing, and the light went out for a moment. But it was back before I even had a chance to turn around.

After what seemed like a very long time, I saw evidence of sunlight up ahead.

“We’re almost there,” I said.

Tim didn’t answer, but I shrugged it off.

There was one more bend up ahead before we were back in sight of the others, and I was itching to get out of the water. I started moving faster, and Tim started falling behind. Just as I reached the bend, I noticed that he was no longer right behind me.

I paused and turned to check on my friend.

“Hey, Tim—”

The words froze in my throat. About ten yards behind me, something was holding up Tim’s camera. Its yellow eyes seemed to glow with malice from where they stared at me just above the surface of the water, the vertical pupils fixed unnervingly on me. I could barely see its dark, leathery arm where it came out of the water to hold the camera.

Its face was a mess of scales, its ridged skull easily twice the size of mine. And as it rose up out of the water, it revealed its mouth, which looked to be a row of jagged teeth sticking out all around its vaguely human, oblong head.

Still fixing me with its sickly yellow eyes, the creature’s permanent smile split apart, its hinged jaw opening to release a gush of bloody water. And there, in the middle of its maw, sat a severed hand — Tim’s hand. The creature used its tongue to shift the hand out, the fingers falling against its teeth. It snapped down, severing the fingers like they were hotdogs under a butcher’s knife.

I screamed and convulsed, pushing off the wall and rounding that final bend. I could see the girls swimming in the cenote, and I screamed at them to get out of the water, sure that any second the hideous thing would pull me under and devour me like it did Tim.

“Get out of the water! Get out! Get out! There’s a crocodile!”

In my panicked state, telling them there was a crocodile in the water seemed like the best thing to do. There was no time to explain to them about the creature, and if I had called out about a monster in the water, they would have laughed, thinking it was a joke.

But they believed a crocodile could be in the water, so they climbed out. And soon after, I climbed out too.

Israel and Humberto stood there with us, staring at the water in utter shock. Beth was asking me where Tim was, but I could do nothing but watch the water, knowing, somehow, that something terrible was coming.

“Look,” Trina said in a near scream. Just near the back of the cave, where the shade made the water dark, we saw a cloud of red liquid streaming out as if from an underwater hose. And in that red liquid — that blood — a familiar face came floating out.

Beth and Trina both screamed, seeing it for what it was: Tim’s severed head.

It bobbed to the surface, his eyes open and staring in different directions. It floated there, face-up, while we stood on the shore, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

“It was a crocodile,” I said. It was a lie. I knew it was. But I needed that lie. I repeated it again and again. I couldn’t face a world where such creatures roamed, so I shoved what I saw deep inside, telling everyone that it was a big crocodile, warning them to never let anyone into that cave again.

But of course, they didn’t listen. They never do.

Creatures From the Kara Sea

The sound in my headphones comes from out of nowhere, a corresponding line suddenly appearing on my waterfall display.

“Contact! Bearing zero-nine-zero,” I say, pulling my left headphone fully over my ear so I can listen with both ears.

“Classify,” the Sonar Chief says from behind me, his voice slightly muffled.

“Copy,” I reply, then turn to Burke, the other Sonar Technician. “Track it,” I tell him.

“Copy,” Burke says. “Tracking. Contact holding steady at zero-nine-zero.”

The sound is strange, but I can tell right away that it’s not man-made. Unless the Russians have developed some amazing technology that we haven’t even dreamt of yet. Not likely.

“Biologic,” I say.

I feel everyone around me relax at the classification. I relax slightly, but I still listen. The sound is like no other biological I’ve heard. It’s not a whale or a school of fish or even pistol shrimp. It’s something else.

“Sir, there’s something strange about this. It’s—”

“Contact changing direction, bearing zero-six-zero,” Burke says. “It’s moving fast.”

I immediately notice the difference in my headphones. The sound that reaches the passive sonar array on the sub intensifies. Whatever it is, it’s loud. And it’s close.

“Plotter, how soon until it reaches us,” Chief says to Smith.

Smith does his quick calculations before answering. “Ninety seconds, sir.”

“You’re sure it’s biologic, Perez?” Chief asks me.

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“What about you, Burke? You agree?” Chief asks.

“Yes, sir,” Burke says. “But I couldn’t tell you what it is. There’s cavitation, and it’s moving fast.”

“Okay,” Chief says. “Well, whatever it is, it won’t mess with us. Maybe it’s just a curious whale.”

The sound changes in my headphones, shifting into something wholly different. Suddenly, there’s more than one source, or the thing is making the same noise from multiple points at different times.

“What the hell?” I say. “Sir, it must be a group of something that was traveling in formation. But it’s not anymore. Whatever it is just broke up.”

“But it’s still moving toward us,” Burke says.

Unbidden, my mind goes back to the meeting we had the previous day about our mission. Most of the time, enlisted Navy personnel like me aren’t filled in on the classified stuff that the captain, XO, and other officers know. But the stuff they told us yesterday wasn’t classified. It was alarming, though.

It wasn’t really relevant to our mission, but the XO told us that we would be passing close to the Kara Sea. Off the coast of Russia, the sea had been used as a dumping ground for nuclear waste and decommissioned Russian nuclear submarines for decades.

He said that over six times the radiation released at the Hiroshima bombing during World War II was now sitting at the bottom of the Kara Sea. Some of the materials hadn’t even been dumped deep. There were plenty of decaying containers with radioactive material in shallow parts of the Kara Sea.

So as the sound in my headphones grows louder and remains inexplicable, all I can think of is some strange, deformed sea creatures swimming up to our submarine.

But that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? This isn’t some B-Movie made in the sixties; it’s real life.

“Whatever it is, it’ll be gone soon. Sea creatures have never been known to attack a submarine,” Chief says.

I feel like I should object, like we should do something, but there’s nothing to be done. It’s not like we could fire a torpedo at the things. That would be ridiculous. So I just listen as the seconds tick by, waiting for whatever is causing the noise to pass.

Submariners often hear things on sonar that they can’t directly identify. Maybe once the data is analyzed back in the States, they’ll figure out what it is.

Maybe it’s just — a loud bang resonates through the ship. Followed by another. And another. All of a sudden, it’s as if there are two dozen hammers hitting the hull. I have to rip off my headphones to keep my ears from being damaged.

“What the hell is that?” Chief says.

“What’s going on Sonar Chief?” XO says.

No one has an answer. We all just sit or stand in our positions, wincing at each new bang.

But then it stops. Everything is quiet again. I put my headphones back on but hear nothing out of the ordinary. Just normal sounds that passive sonar picks up under water.

Commander Scott comes into the control room quickly, moving faster than I’ve ever seen. “What was that? Are we under attack?”

“I don’t know, Captain,” Chief says, the fear plain in his voice. “Contact classified as a biologic, moving fast toward us. Then it banged into us.”

“That didn’t sound like an it,” Commander Scott says. “It sounded like a them. And lots of them. What is passive sonar picking up?”

“Nothing sir,” Chief says, pointing to our waterfall displays. He’s right. I’m not hearing anything strange anymore.

A screeching sound suddenly erupts, causing me to once again pull my headphones off. “Captain, that’s something on the hull. It sounds like ripping metal.”

Scott steps past Chief in the cramped compartment and looks at the waterfall display, which is showing one thick, slightly wavy line — a representation of the sound the passive sonar is picking up. His eyes go wide.

He reaches his hand out and I hand him my headphones. He listens to them for about a second, then hands them back.

“Holy God, something’s trying to tear us apart,” he says.

“Something biologic?” Chief says. “Not possible.”

Scott ignores him, turning to dive control. “Make all preparations for surfacing.”

“Make all preparations for surfacing,” the dive control officer repeats into his radio, broadcasting the order to the rest of the ship.

The screeching sound coming from the passive sonar array is now filling the entire waterfall display screen, making it look like static on an old television.

Something shifts and the entire sub shakes. Alarms start going off.

“Hull breach!” someone shouts.

“Emergency blow! Emergency blow!” Commander Scott says.

I look over in time to see one of the officers flip the chicken switches next to the helmsman. Almost immediately, I feel the submarine angle up as high-pressure air forces water out of the ballast tanks, making us lighter.

“Three hundred feet,” Chief says.

I lift my headphones to my ears again.

“Two hundred-fifty feet!”

And I don’t hear any more screeching. We’re going up toward the surface fast — maybe we’ve knocked them all off — whatever they are.

“Two hundred feet!”

Everyone’s leaning forward to compensate for the angle. I’m leaning to the side since my seat faces the port side of the vessel.

“One hundred-fifty!”

Hull breach? What the hell could’ve breached the hull?

“One hundred feet!”

The tense air in the control room seems a little less so now.

“Fifty feet,”

There’s almost a feeling of weightlessness as the nose plunges through the surface of the water. Then we flatten out, rocking slightly on the ocean’s surface. We couldn’t have done this if it had been wintertime. Thankfully, it’s summer, so there’s not a layer of ice to keep us from floating on the surface to survey — and hopefully repair — the damage.

Commander Scott tells a couple of senior enlisted men to go up and get a visual check on the sub’s exterior. We all wait while the XO goes with them to the small arms locker to hand them weapons. They come back up again, and I see that one guy has a shotgun and the other a .45.

They make their way up to the bridge so they can look down on any potential threats from above.

The whole control room waits silently for them to come back and report.

A gunshot rings out, echoing down into the sub’s interior. It’s followed quickly by a scream and a thud.

Suddenly, the men gathered around the vertical ladder to the bridge are all shouting. I can just see the backs of the men there through the narrow doorway from the control room. In the next instance, they’re trying to scatter, which is easier said than done in the cramped space of the submarine.

One of them, a big man named Salazar, turns around, moving toward the control room. His eyes are wide with fear. Something dark and wet drops down behind him, and before Salazar can step through the hatch into the control room, something erupts from the center of his chest. He looks down at it, surprised; the pain clearly hasn’t hit him yet.

It’s a dark-colored, pointed, spear-like thing, sticking a couple of inches out of his flesh and through his blue uniform shirt. Everyone in the control room is silent for a second, wondering what the hell is happening.

Salazar falls forward, revealing a black, crablike creature standing about four feet tall. Two black eyes jut forward from its domed shell. Slowly, the creature puts the outstretched and blood-covered front leg down. It clicks as it touches the metal floor. The black eyes stare into the control room, a couple of long antennae waving in the air over its eyestalks.

It looks like a crab in that it has segmented legs that are longer at the front of its body and shorter at the back. But instead of two arms tipped with claws, it has two long, segmented arms that end in what looks like three large, sharp fingers — what would be two index fingers and a thumb on a human.

It has six legs total, besides the strange arms. And its prickly black mouth opens and closes as if tasting the air.

It stands there for what seems like a long time but is really only a few seconds. Behind it, several more of these creatures drop into the submarine and scurry up into a line. One of them climbs up onto a wall like a spider, using its legs and finger-claws to hold on.

Commander Scott stands there, the closest to them, still as a statue. The lead creature turns around, and the rest of the creatures follow suit. They scuttle off into the submarine.

This seems to break Commander Scott’s trance, and he lunges over to a radio. “Repel boarders! Repel boarders! Use whatever means necessary. Multiple hostiles on board.” This echoes all over the submarine, and just as soon as he puts the radio up, we hear commotion from the direction the creatures went.

“What are those things?” Burke asks.

“I don’t know,” Scott says. “But we need to stop them.”

“Should we close the bridge hatch?” I ask. “There might be more out there.”

“Yes. Burke, you close the hatch,” Scott says. “Perez, you’ve recently had your firearms qualification, right?”

“Yes, sir,” I say. “A little over a month ago.”

“You’re with me,” he says. “You too, Chief. The rest of you, stay put and keep this submarine on the surface. Johnson, get a message to the Admiral.”

After this flurry of commands, Scott, Chief, and I head deeper into the submarine. We go down a level and come across the XO, Delaney. He’s sitting propped against the wall outside the dry storage area. He’s clearly dead, his face torn apart to the point where he’s unrecognizable. The only way we know he’s the XO is because of his cloth nameplate. He had been bringing more weapons up from the small arms locker, as evidenced by the two shotguns and three .45 pistols lying on the floor next to him, sticky with his blood.

Scott reaches down without a word and grabs three weapons. He gives me and Chief a shotgun each and keeps a .45 for himself.

We’ve been hearing screaming and shouting from ahead, so we move quickly through dry storage, finding another two bodies — cooks, each with a knife nearby.

We enter the crew’s mess, which is the most open room on the sub. It’s about the size of a large studio apartment with six booths placed around and a place for food to be served. I move in directly behind Commander Scott to see two of the creatures fighting with two crewmen. There’s blood everywhere, bodies litter the floor. These men have no weapons aside from what they can find around — which isn’t much.

I raise my shotgun up and aim it at one of the creatures, but it’s on a man’s shoulders, its sharp legs piercing the guy’s back. With its claw-like hands, it takes chunks out of his face, neck, and chest with quick stabs.

If I fire, I will probably kill the man.

Scott fires first, rushing into the room and putting the barrel of his .45 directly to the back of a creature that’s attacking a screaming man on the ground. He fires four times before the creature stops moving.

Taking a hint from him, I move closer to the creature in my sights, almost falling as I step on a body.

I get close enough for reasonable accuracy and fire. The creature falls off the man’s shoulders onto its back on the floor, its six legs scrambling in the air. I step over and put another blast into its belly. It stops moving.

The man it was attacking sits down at a booth. He’s bleeding profusely out of his many wounds. He puts his head down on the table without a word. I doubt he’s going to be alive for much longer.

“The rest of them are in here somewhere,” Scott says.

Chief stands at the entrance to the mess, looking at the carnage. He’s either too scared or too shocked to be much help.

I remember yesterday’s meeting. “The reactor,” I say. “I bet that’s where they’re at. The reactor.”

Commander Scott looks up at me with confusion at first, but then a reluctant understanding comes over his face. “Let’s go,” he says.

We move through a stubby hallway and see that the door to the reactor compartment is open.

As we move closer to the door, I can hear faint beeping noises from inside the room. It’s a dosimeter — or more likely several dosimeters — worn by the reactor technicians, warning of high radiation levels.

“You hear that?” I whisper. Everything is quiet in the reactor compartment, aside from the beeping.

Scott nods but continues toward the door. I follow.

There are several bodies just inside the reactor compartment doorway. They look like they’ve been torn apart in a frenzy. They’re each wearing an electronic dosimeter, and all of them are beeping.

“Look,” Scott says, pointing. I look, seeing several of the crab creatures huddled up next to the reactor, as if they’re sleeping.

“They must have damaged the reactor to get at the radiation,” I say, raising my shotgun so I can be ready to kill them when Scott gives the go-ahead.

But he doesn’t. He reaches inside and closes the door, latching it.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“We can’t fire guns in there. We’ll kill everyone left on the ship. We don’t know what they did to the reactor, either. We just have to hope someone will get to us soon. Hope that the reactor doesn’t melt down in the meantime. Or, God forbid, we attract more of those fucking things.”

I lower my shotgun.

We do what we can for the injured crew members. And we stay on the surface as we head away from the Kara Sea to meet up with an aircraft carrier and a couple of destroyers.

It’s been a couple of hours since the attack, and I’m now back on sonar in the control room.

Every moment that passes, I expect those things to try to escape the reactor compartment. But they don’t.

And as we head through the Barents Sea toward Norway, I finally start to think we’ll be okay. We’re getting more radiation than is recommended, but the levels this far from the reactor aren’t lethal.

But then something pops up on the passive sonar. Something biologic. Something fast. And it’s coming right at us.

A Guy Can Hope

I’m not trying to brag. Really, I’m not. I’m just saying that I don’t generally have to do a lot of work when it comes to dating and — let’s be honest here — sex. Maybe it’s genetics. Maybe it’s the I-don’t-give-a-fuck confidence that I have.

Whatever the reason, I wasn’t surprised when the girl suggested we continue the date at her place after dinner.

But now, as we drive into some backwoods area I’ve never even heard of on the outskirts of town, I’m starting to get a bit of a creepy feeling.

I met her on one of those dating apps about a week ago. Her picture caught my attention, and the other pictures she had on there kept it. She’s exactly my type: blonde but not fake blonde, tanned but not fake tanned. She’s got big green eyes and a body that clearly sees the inside of a gym several times a week.

I glanced at her little bio on the app, seeing that she’d listed traveling, music, movies, and dogs as likes on her profile. Okay, no points for originality, but I still wasn’t about to swipe left just because of a lackluster bio. If I’m honest, I don’t even look at the bio half the time.

The first date is for getting to know each other, after all.

So after some chatting on the app, I decided to ask her out. She agreed.

I was actually a little nervous because, according to her pictures, she was maybe, perhaps, possibly a little out of my league. Just a little.

Listen, I may be good-looking, but supermodels don’t fall at my feet, okay?

Anyway, she looks just as good in person. Even sitting as she is now in the front passenger seat of my Escalade.

We seemed to have some chemistry, and the conversation had been flowing freely at the fancy restaurant. But now she seems a little preoccupied. And I’m starting to get the creeps.

We pass by an old rundown trailer home, its yard crowded with old rusty lawnmowers, hand tools, and paint cans.

It’s the last structure I can see, and we pass into the darkness of the woods, the leaves and branches blocking any moonlight. My Escalade’s headlights search out the gentle curves in the road as we drive.

“So, Melissa,” I say, “you live out here?”

“Yes,” she says, taking a moment to look up from her phone.

“And you took an Uber all the way to the restaurant tonight?”

“Mmm hmm,” she says. “You can never be too careful. If I had known you were such a nice guy, I would’ve had you come pick me up in your nice car.”

That’s another thing, I think. That little comment marks the third time she’s mentioned my car.

“So, how much further?” I ask.

“Not far,” she says, smiling and reaching over to lay her hand on my arm.

The gesture is one I would have found promising fifteen miles ago. But now it seems like too much. It seems phony.

She removes her hand and goes back to tapping away on her phone. I keep driving.

There’s a gap in the woods on the right side of the road where a gravel driveway cuts through them. Just as we’re passing it, Melissa looks up. “Oh,” she says. “That’s it. You missed it. I’m sorry, I’m really addicted to my phone. I’m working on it.”

I muster a chuckle as I slow the car and then put it in reverse.

“Wow, fancy camera,” she says, pointing at the display on my dash that relays the back camera feed, which automatically comes on when I reverse.

That’s four comments.

I turn into the dark driveway, the wheels crunching loudly on the gravel. At least it seems loud to me. The driveway seems long, probably a good quarter mile.

A small house — a cabin, really — comes into view where the driveway terminates. It’s dark, not a light to be seen through any of the windows. There’s no garage, and I see no car parked anywhere.

On the left side of the driveway near the cabin is a stack of chopped wood next to a large stump with an ax stuck in it. There’s also a mound of dirt nearby and a wheelbarrow next to it. A shovel leans against the wheelbarrow.

The woods surrounding the house are dark, and we’re far enough away from the road that I wouldn’t be able to see if a car went by.

“You can just park right here,” she says as I pull up in front of the house.

“You live here alone?” I ask her. Her appearance doesn’t match the house. She doesn’t seem like the type to live off in the woods.

“Yeah,” she answers. “Do you like it? Wait until you see the inside!”

I put the Escalade in park, but I don’t turn off the ignition. “You know what? I think I’ll just head home. I’ve got an early day tomorrow.”

She pouts dramatically, giving me puppy-dog eyes. “Are you sure? I was looking forward to … having some fun with you.” She reaches over and puts a hand on my upper thigh as she speaks.

“Believe me, I would love to,” I say, being honest. “But I really have to get some sleep. Let’s do this again?”

Melissa’s expression changes, her eyes going dull, the seductive look vanishing. She reaches over, grabs the keys, then turns them and yanks them out of the ignition, all in one quick move. Like she’s done it before.

“Hey,” I say, reaching to grab the keys back. She spits right in my face — in my eyes. I’m so surprised that I barely notice as she opens her door and gets out of the Escalade.

“He’s not coming in, guys,” she calls out into the night.

My stomach clenches as I hear this, wiping the spit off my face.

I open my door and step out of the car, determined to get my keys back before these guys — whoever they are — show up. But as I round the back of the SUV, I can already hear them coming. One steps out of the darkness of the woods on the other side of the driveway. It’s dark, but I can see well enough as he walks up to Melissa and takes the keys from her, giving her a kiss that’s disgustingly heavy on the tongue.

I stop near the SUV, thinking about my options. Footsteps behind me cause me to turn around, and I see another man coming out of the woods. A porch light comes on at the cabin, and a third man comes out of the structure. In the porch light’s illumination, I can see that they’re all pretty big, looking like corn-fed country boys with big bones and small brains. And they all look similar, as though they’re related. Brothers, I’m guessing.

I’m so fucked.

If movies are to be believed, the fact that these guys don’t have masks on is a really bad sign. I can see their close-cut haircuts, their pronounced brows, and their shifty smiles just fine.

But I don’t see a gun in any hand, so that’s good.

They’re closing in on me, and I make a quick decision to buy myself some time. I clamber up onto the roof of my Escalade, denting it inward as I stand up.

The four of them look up at me in the pale light from the house like I’m some kind of monkey in a cage.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“What do you think?” the one currently grabbing Melissa’s ass says. “We’ll take your car and your money.”

“Then what?” I ask.

“Then what what?” the guy says. “Then you’ll never see us again.”

“But I know where you live,” I say, pointing at the cabin.

“We don’t live here, dumbass,” the apparent ringleader says. “This is a vacation cabin or some shit. You don’t know anything about us. Her name’s not even Melissa.”

I’m starting to feel better about my prospects. If all they want is money, I can give that to them. It’ll hurt my pride, but at least I’ll be alive. I can always make more money. Besides, I have full insurance coverage on the Escalade.

This doesn’t stop my heart from trying to hammer its way out of my chest, though.

“Fine,” I say, “take the car and go.”

“It’s not that simple,” the guy says. The other two guys are now on either side of the car, looking up at me. I move my head back and forth, trying to look at both of them at once. They’re big enough that they can jump up and grab hold of my legs if I’m not careful.

“I won’t put up a fight. Just take the car,” I say.

“No. You’re coming with us to an ATM. You’re going to withdraw the max amount. Then we’ll take the car and leave you.”

One of the guys jumps up and tries to grab me, but I shift, getting out of the way. The other one manages to get a hand on one leg from the other side, and I kick out at him, hitting him in the face. This knocks me off balance, and as the guy jerks back from the foot to the face, he trips me. I fall backward, my butt smashing into the windshield, my momentum rolling me back onto the hood and then down onto the gravel driveway.

The pain from hitting the windshield is the least of my worries. All three guys are now coming at me. Melissa — or whatever her name is — shouts them on from a safe distance. “Get him, Jake!” she shouts, apparently talking to her boyfriend.

I scramble up and head for the nearest weapon: the shovel leaning against the wheelbarrow. I grab it up, noticing the ax not ten yards away from me. Too late.

The guy I hit in the face runs over and pulls the ax out of the stump. His eyes are watering, but he’s not bleeding or anything. It was a pretty poor shot, on my part. Still, that doesn’t keep him from wanting to do me some serious damage. I can tell just by looking at him.

The guys close in, but I use the shovel’s length to my advantage, swinging it in a wide arc to keep them away. I back up near the house so my rear is covered, but I make sure I don’t get too close to the structure. I need to be able to maneuver.

“Just take the Escalade, guys,” I say, not unreasonably.

“Fuck that,” the guy I hit says. His tone leaves no room for argument.

The three men are in a shallow arc in front of me, each about an arm’s length from the next. Ax-man is on my right, Jake in the middle, and the third brother on my left.

Ax-man swings the tool at me, but I’m ready for it, scything the shovel through the air. The metal-on-metal clank of spade hitting ax head is loud in the relative quiet. I hit the ax hard enough to throw it wild, and the momentum takes it around, sending it slamming into Jake’s chest where he stands. The blade embeds itself there like Jake is a piece of softwood.

Ax-man, who’s still holding the handle, looks up into his brother’s face. “Oh, fuck,” he says, and pulls the blade out in a brilliant showing of his mental capacity. Jake cries out as blood pours out of the gaping wound.

I take a brief moment to be shocked about what has just happened; it’s definitely not what I meant to do. But some part of my lizard brain snaps me out of it, screaming about the odds still stacked against me.

Assessing the ax-man as the more immediate threat, I bring the shovel up over my head and slice it down at him, the edge of the blade hitting him in the head just as he turns away from his brother to face me again.

The spade bounces off his skull, but not before doing some serious damage. He wobbles, blood pouring from the gash in his head down into his eyes. The ax handle slides out of his hand, the tool dropping harmlessly to the ground.

Not-Melissa is now screaming. The third brother turns to run, but I can’t let him go. I can’t let any of them go. Not now.

I bring the spade down flat on the back of the third brother’s head, knocking him unconscious. Then I drop the shovel to the ground and scramble over to grab the ax.

Not-Melissa is now running down the driveway, and I run after her, ax in hand. I realize quickly she’s got too much of a lead, so I slow down a bit, raising the ax over my head in both hands.

I slow even more, taking aim, then using my forward momentum and all my upper body strength to throw the ax end-over-end, just hoping to knock her down.

The worst first date ever gets just a little less so as the blade lands in her back. She falls forward, sliding on her face in the gravel with the ax sticking out of her.

I run over and grab hold of her feet and start dragging her back toward the house when I see the third brother — the one I only knocked out — getting to his feet. I yank the ax out of Not-Melissa’s back and run toward him. He sees me coming, and tries to run in the opposite direction, but the shovel to the head was pretty hard, and his legs don’t seem to be working well. He trips and falls not five yards into the woods.

I slow to a walk as I get closer to him. He looks up at me as I raise the ax.

“Seth? Are you okay?”

Melissa snaps me out of my daydream, and I find myself back in the boring old restaurant on a lackluster first date. “Yeah, sorry,” I say to her. “I was just thinking about work.”

“Well, I’m going to get an Uber home,” she says. “Thanks for the dinner, though.”

“No, no,” I say. “Look, I’m sorry. I just had a long day. Give me another chance, will you? Let’s get out of this stuffy restaurant and go get a drink.” I give her my best smile and reach across the table to lay my hand on hers.

She can’t resist. “Okay,” she says in a small voice, with a reluctant smile.

“Great,” I say, and wave at the waiter for the check.

For once, I wish something exciting would happen. I just want to feel justified in killing one of these girls. I keep hoping for a robbery or extortion or something that would actually be a fun challenge. I guess you can’t always get what you want.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to kill this one. Oh, no. I can’t not kill her. That would be even worse.

Maybe one day I’ll find a girl with some friends who try to rob me. Or maybe a jealous ex-boyfriend who will try to beat me up. A guy can hope.

It’s clear that this Melissa is not even close to the one from my vivid daydream.

This one really is a sweet girl, I think as we exit the restaurant. I just wish she wasn’t.

Lost

“Where did you last see him?” John asked me from the front seat of the taxi.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying and failing to clear my alcohol-fogged brain. “Maybe at the bar? I don’t remember, dammit.”

“He was dancing last time I saw him,” my friend Tiffany said next to me. “He looked pretty drunk, but I didn’t think he would just wander off like he did.”

“Well, that’s what I’m worried about,” John said. “Maybe he didn’t wander off. Maybe he was robbed or something. Strange things can happen down here. Especially when you’re blackout drunk.”

The taxi driver spoke Spanish to John, who answered him in the same language. The driver nodded and put the car in gear, pulling us away from the bar.

Our night had been going so well. We were in Cancun for spring break, like thousands of other college kids. We’d spent the night drinking and dancing and generally being jackasses at this bar near the beach. Everything was sand in the bar, which was pretty cool. I’d never been to any place like that. And it was packed with all kinds of people, young and drunk and looking to have a good time, just like we were.

But when one o’clock in the morning hit and it was time for us to leave, we couldn’t find our friend Harold.

“What are we doing?” I asked John, who was the only one that knew Spanish. He was also the most responsible of us, only having a couple of drinks over the course of the night.

“We’re going to pay this guy to drive us around for a bit,” John said. “We’re going to call out the windows for Harold. And we’re going to hope he just decided to walk back to the house.”

We had all pitched in to rent a house in a nice little gated community right near the beach, but it was outside the hotel zone, and it was a good three miles from the club to the house. A lot could happen in three miles in the middle of the night anywhere, not just in Mexico.

And that was all dependent on the idea that Harold had decided to walk home and wasn’t unconscious in an alley somewhere.

“Fuck!” I shouted. “Goddammit!” Harold had always been like a little brother to me. He was a small guy, quiet, and not the best at standing up for himself. For a big guy like me — with essentially the opposite personality — this was a complete failure on my part. Harold was the first friend I made at college, and ever since there had been a kind of unspoken agreement that I’d have his back no matter what.

“Chill, Derek,” John said. “This is not the time to lose your cool.”

The driver glared at me in the rearview mirror.

“Well, let’s just go,” I said. “Can’t this guy drive any faster?”

“We don’t want to drive fast, remember?” John said. “We need to be looking for Harold.”

Tiffany was looking out her side of the car, and she started calling for Harold every ten seconds or so. John did the same on the other side.

I scanned the roadside as we drove, looking into ditches and down alleys. I saw several dogs roaming around, but no people. Certainly no Harold.

As we came up to an intersection, I saw movement down the side street.

“Stop!” I said. “Alto!”

The driver stopped, pulling over just past the street.

“What is it?” John asked.

“I saw something,” I said, getting out of the car. “Tiffany, you stay here. John, come with me.”

John spoke some Spanish to the driver and then got out of the car. We walked over to the side street and started down it. There were two guys in uniform standing in the road, leaning into the back seat of a blue and white extended cab truck marked with “Policia Federal.”

“Woah, those are Federales,” John said.

“Yeah, no shit,” I said. “What do you suppose they’re doing?”

“Derek,” John warned, but I kept walking. He trailed along behind me.

I approached on the other side of the street, getting up next to the truck so I could see what they were doing. One of the police officers saw me coming and tapped his partner. They both turned around and looked at me, blocking my view of the back seat.

“What you got there?” I asked.

One of the guys started speaking Spanish.

“Harold, you in there?” I called.

“Derek?” I could tell from his voice that he’d been crying. I stormed across the street, swaying but determined to plow through these cops to get my friend back. I’d heard about dirty cops wanting money in Mexico, and I wasn’t about to pay them anything. I wanted to know what the hell they were doing to my friend.

Both officers raised their weapons — submachine guns, from the look of them — when I was about ten feet away. The one was still speaking rapid Spanish.

“Chill out, Derek!” John said. “He says that Harold broke into a house. They’re arresting him.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “Ask them what they want.” I pulled a wad of pesos out of my pocket. “How much? How much?”

“Don’t do that, man,” John said.

The talker smiled and stepped toward me like he was about to do a deal. He kept his submachine gun pointed at me while he yanked the wad of cash out of my hand. Then he let the gun hang on its strap as he grabbed my hand, speaking again.

“Oh, Christ, Derek,” John said from behind me. “He’s arresting you now, too.”

I outweighed the guy by a good fifty pounds, so when he tried to turn me around to put the plastic cuffs on, I yanked my hand away and elbowed him in the throat. He stumbled back, grabbing at his submachine gun. I heard the safety click off just as I lunged forward and grabbed at it. He got his finger inside the trigger guard just as I grabbed ahold of the stock, and the gun went off, spraying several bullets right into his partner. Blood splattered the side of the truck as the officer crumpled to the street.

When he realized what had happened, his eyes went wide, and his arms slackened for a moment. I kneed him in the crotch and found the clip to the gun strap, releasing it and taking the weapon in my hands.

I kicked him down onto his back and put a foot on him, pointing the submachine gun at his chest.

Looking over at the dead policeman, the reality of the situation dawned on me, fighting through the haze of alcohol I’d been living in for the last six hours.

“Fuck,” I said. “Harold? You okay?”

“Is it safe now?” Harold slurred from the back of the truck. He didn’t wait for me to answer before stumbling out and tripping over the dead policeman.

He started laughing, pointing at the cop.

“What did you do?” John said, his voice high. “What the fuck did you do?”

“I didn’t do it,” I said. “This guy—” immense pain in my leg cut my words short, and I looked down to see that the cop had stabbed me in the leg with his knife. On reflex, I pulled the trigger, and the gun nearly jumped out of my hands. But I was too close to miss, and the policeman’s head exploded in a mess of gore.

“Holy shit,” John said. “Holy shit. Holy shit, what the fuck, man?”

I looked from the knife in my leg to the police officer I’d just killed and back again. The mixture of sickening pain and dulling alcohol jumbled my thoughts into an incoherent sludge, much like the liquid that was leaking out of the cop’s decimated skull.

“Woah, are these guys really dead?” Harold said. “Did you just kill two cops, Derek?”

“No,” I said. “Nope. We were never here.”

I heard movement from up the street and saw the taxi driver poking his head around the corner to see what was going on. I fired from the hip at him, missing wide. He turned and ran, and a moment later I heard Tiffany scream. A moment after that, I heard his taxi start up and drive off. Tiffany came stumbling around the corner, talking about how the guy had thrown her out of his car. When her gaze landed on the two bodies, she stopped, eyes wide and mouth open.

“I’m sorry,” John said from just behind me. I turned in time to see him swinging a brick at my face. There was pain, and then everything went black.

Once I woke up, processing was extremely quick. I was in a Mexican prison within a week, and there was nothing the U.S. State Department could do about it. I’d killed two Mexican cops. A cab driver and two of my friends were there to testify.

I’ll die in this Mexican prison. And it’ll happen sooner than later. Not because of other inmates or poor conditions, although those things are certainly a danger.

No, it’s because once a month, I’m visited by Federal Police officers — friends of the ones I killed — and they break my bones, smash my teeth in, and have fractured my skull several times. I have to use a colostomy bag now because my insides have been so damaged I can’t even take a dump anymore.

I can’t take much more. I don’t even have a chance to heal properly before they’re back again.

But I take solace in the fact that I helped protect my friend Harold. I just wish I’d done things a little differently.

If I had it to do over again, I’d make sure to kill that taxi driver. And I’d sure as hell kill that traitor John.

The Green Lights

“Look out!” Will yelled, pointing out the dark windshield to a figure in the middle of the road. I had just looked over at my phone in its cradle to the left of my steering wheel, taking my eyes off the road for a second to check our next road change.

I snapped my attention back to the road to see that we were bearing down on … something. As I swerved, the car vibrating as the right wheels went over the rumble strip on the shoulder, the headlights moved off the figure. Traveling at 75 miles per hour through the dark Texas countryside meant that it was gone in a flash, passing my window in a blur.

“What the heck was that thing?” I asked, looking in my rearview mirror once I’d steered the car safely back off the shoulder and into the middle of the lane.

Will was twisted around in his seat, looking out the back window of my little sedan. “I don’t know, man,” he said, his voice shaking.

“It looked like … I don’t know what it looked like,” I said. “Maybe a deformed deer? One that had been hit by a car?”

“I don’t know,” Will said again, still looking at the dark highway stretching out behind us. I’d known Will for a long time, and he wasn’t one to scare easily, so he was kind of freaking me out.

“Look at this,” I said. Will turned to face forward in his seat as we passed a car on the shoulder, it’s lights still on and its passenger-side door open.

I slowed as we passed, but we were still going too fast and it was too dark to see much of anything besides a man hunched in the driver’s seat.

“Maybe that guy hit the deer, and he was going back to get it off the highway,” I suggested, my mind still grappling with the strange figure that I’d almost hit.

“I don’t think it was a deer, Tony,” Will said. “If it was, there’s something seriously wrong with the animal life around here.”

I laughed for form’s sake, unable to get the strange figure out of my mind. It was just a blur to me; Will had gotten the better look at it. But still, there was something wrong with it.

We were in east Texas, where, unlike west Texas, there were actually some tall trees bordering the highway. We were cutting across the northeast portion of the massive state, heading from Shreveport, Louisiana, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where Will’s parents lived. We were going to help them load up Will’s recently sold childhood home so his parents, William Senior and Janet, could enjoy their retirement in the Caribbean.

Ah, to be rich and done with work forever. I was more than a little jealous.

We could have stuck to the major highways, heading west to Dallas and then north up to Oklahoma City. But I didn’t want to brave the traffic around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Besides, there’s a charm to road tripping on the lesser-known roads.

Unless, of course, you get into trouble. Then things can get a little tricky.

I settled back into my seat, trying to forget about the disaster we had narrowly avoided. There wasn’t much traffic on the back road we were on. The limit was 70 miles per hour, but my thought had always been that any respectable motorist went at least five over the limit.

Will, it seemed, felt differently.

“Hey, can you slow down a bit?” he said.

I looked over at him, the green lighting of the dashboard giving his pale skin and black hair a sallow, unhealthy look. I put my eyes back on the road before speaking. “It was a freak occurrence,” I said. “I literally looked away for one second. Besides, we didn’t hit the thing, did we?”

“That’s not the point,” Will said. “The point is that, at night, you should follow the speed limit. Continuing to speed after nearly hitting something in the road is just asking for an accident.”

“When did you get so scared?” I asked and immediately regretted it. We had been friends for years, and I knew him better than that. He was being reasonable. I wasn’t.

“I’m not scared, Tony. I just want to get there alive, if possible.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’re right.” I pushed the minus button on the steering wheel five times to drop the cruise control speed to 70. “Better?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

We rode in silence for a few miles. Before nearly hitting whatever the hell that thing was, we’d been talking, so I hadn’t turned any music on. But now, I was tempted. Just to end the awkward silence.

While I was thinking about what to listen to, there was a flash of light back behind us, lighting up my mirrors for one brilliant moment.

“Whoah,” I said. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah,” Will said, looking into the passenger side mirror. “Is there a storm behind us?”

“Must be,” I said, although the flash of light didn’t look much like lightning to me. There had been an almost green hue to it.

Will leaned forward and looked out the windshield at a shallow angle, up at the sky. “There’s no clouds over us. I can see the stars.”

The strange figure in the road popped into my mind again.

“Must be a storm. Maybe—” Another flash of bright, greenish light erupted ahead of us, looking like an incredibly straight bolt of sickly lighting. It was gone in a blink.

“That’s not lightning,” Will said. “That was straight. And kind of green or something.”

I swallowed, searching for words that were hidden deep under the fear bubbling up inside me.

“What should we do?” Will said.

“What do you mean? We should keep driving. What else is there to do? People see strange lights in the skies all the time. There’s always some kind of logical explanation.”

The words even sounded hollow to me. Something strange was going on.

We came over a slight rise and saw another car on the side of the road. There was someone standing outside of this one. A middle-aged woman, standing in front of the parked car, the headlights illuminating her.

As we passed, she stared at us, although I doubted she could actually see our faces. Her face was blank with shock and, I thought, terror. Her head swiveled as we passed. Then I watched her turn back to her car. Just before the car was out of view behind us, I thought I saw her windshield turn white, as if something had broken it, causing it to spiderweb.

“Weird,” Will said. “This isn’t good.”

“No,” I said.

A blinding shaft of pale green light appeared in the road just ahead of us, too close for me to react before we ran into it. The shaft sliced through the car, flowing over the right half of the sedan before disappearing as quickly as it had appeared.

“What the hell was that?” I yelled, looking in my rearview mirror and then leaning forward to look up into the sky. I saw nothing at all. Just empty road behind us and empty night sky above.

I settled back in my seat, vibrating with nervous energy. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that something had changed in the car. I looked to my right, sucking in a breath as I saw what was sitting beside me, where Will had been.

The thing was wearing Will’s clothes, but it wasn’t Will. The clothes were bulging in some places and loose in others as the wet, bubbling, pale flesh moved. Two spindly arms stuck out of Will’s t-shirt, the skin rough with large and small pulsating bubbles. As I watched, two of them burst, releasing a terrible smell into the car like a mixture of caustic chemicals and weeks-dead flesh. Blood red bits of plastic-looking flesh emerged from these burst bubbles, moving around like feelers. Although I couldn’t see the flesh under the undulating jeans and t-shirt, the movement there was enough to infer that the same thing was happening all over its body.

Bits of hair stuck out between the boils on its bulbous head. I thought at first that the creature had no eyes, but it turned its head toward me and two large, green eyes came out of the roiling flesh on stubby pale stalks. These impossible eyes stared at me even as the stalks moved in different directions.

It took me only a few seconds to take all this in, and another few seconds for my mind to grasp the situation, at which point I swerved off the road and onto the shoulder, slamming the brakes.

I left the car running as I scrambled out my door, not even thinking about the possibility that I could get killed by a passing car. Luckily — at least on that front — there were no passing cars. I slammed the door and backed around to the front of the car, looking inside at the creature that had once been Will.

I watched as it continued to change, its pale Will-flesh bubbling away in a slimy mess as more and more of those strange red feelers emerged. All I could do was stare in disbelief, unsure what to do, just thankful that the thing was staying in the car. After a minute or two, it seemed that the transformation was done. The passenger seat was coated in a wet mess of melted flesh. Sitting in this mess was a giant bug-like creature of mottled red and orange, with two large green eyes on stalks.

Its skin — if you could call it that — reminded me of sea creatures found on coral reefs with strange appendages that swayed in the movements of the water. But the thousands of appendages on this skinny creature swayed on their own.

It had a mouth that opened vertically, revealing two sets of pincers that seemed to taste the air in the car before sliding back into the maw.

It still wore Will’s clothes, although they hung loosely and were soaked in whatever strange fluids were released during the transformation. It raised its hands, the eye-stalks bending down eerily to look at them. There were three long, triple-segmented fingers there — the equivalent of two fingers and a thumb. Whereas the creature’s arms, legs, and body had those moving feelers all over them, its hands looked solid, the hard segments looking like a knight’s glove made out of lobster shell.

It made a fist with its two hands and then used its right to punch up at the windshield, cracking the glass. Thinking it was trying to get at me, I ran down the slight slope beside the road and ducked into the woods some fifteen yards away.

I hid behind a tree and watched while the windshield turned white as the creature beat its fists against it. Soon enough, it flung the flimsy, crumbling windshield aside. I got ready to run, sure that the creature would come out, chase me down, and kill me.

But it didn’t.

Instead, it stuck its head out through the glassless windshield and seemed to sniff the air, although it didn’t have a nose that I could see.

Then it shifted over into the driver’s seat. I watched, absolutely stunned, as the creature put the car in drive and steered off the shoulder into the traffic lane, picking up speed as it went.

I stayed in the woods, wondering just what the hell was going on, while several more cars passed.

I’d been in such a hurry to get away from the creature, I’d left my phone in its cradle inside the car. I had no way to call for help. So I started walking. I stayed away from the road, remembering the two cars we had passed before the pillar of green light came down on us. I remembered the strange form in the road I’d nearly hit. It must have been one of those things.

Considering that, it seemed safer to walk.

I thought the road would come to a major highway intersection soon. I-30, if I remembered correctly. There would be gas stations and restaurants and people who could help me — if I could make them believe.

I trudged up a long but gently sloping hill and reached the top. The road went down on the other side and, about a half-mile further on, came to the highway intersection. The first thing that struck me was the number of cars pulled over to the side of the road on both sides of I-30. There must have been hundreds of them.

Green flashes of light off to the left caught my eye. I turned that way, looking toward the distant horizon. The flashes were regular, but never in the exact same place twice. And they seemed to be moving away from me, along the course of the highway.

Understanding forced its way into my confused mind. The lights had already come and gone. They were making their way along the highway.

Sure enough, the cars off to my right started moving, pulling away from the shoulder. The ones in the westbound lanes continued on their way, but the ones in the eastbound lanes turned around and drove west, going the wrong way on the highway.

I stood there on that hill and watched until all the parked cars I could see drove off, heading west.

I brought up the memory of the map in my mind, trying to figure out where they were all going. The closest major city to the west was Dallas.

A terrible thought occurred to me then. One I hoped wasn’t true.

What if this is happening all over the place? I thought. Not just Texas, but everywhere?

What if it’s an invasion?

I didn’t want to be right. I really didn’t.

But it turns out, I was.

Black-Eyed Demons

I work with furious intensity at the small window, trying to fit the tip of the screwdriver into the small slot on the window hinge.

Behind me, at the door, a crazed mob works to break into the room. To get in here. To kill us all. They scream and shout in tongues and bang on the door.

We’ve pulled stacks of chairs in front of the door to hold them. But it won’t work for much longer. There are too many of them.

Janet Fuller and Linda Amaro brace themselves against the stacks of chairs, fighting against the mob. Helen Fuller — who’s only sixteen — watches me work. She’s the only one who can fit through the narrow basement window. The only one who can get out to get help.

Perez Amaro stands by with a small crowbar in hand. But we need to do this without breaking the window. Without broadcasting to the people out in the hall what we’re up to.

Blood drips down into my right eye, making me effectively blind. My left eye radiates pain, and that half of my vision goes in and out of focus as I blink. I’m afraid I won’t ever be able to see well out of that eye again.

But there are bigger things to worry about. Like my life. And the lives of the four other people in the room.

I wipe at my right eye with the back of my hand, clearing the blood and allowing me to see slightly better.

My hands shake, and I can’t seem to unlock the hinge with the tip of the screwdriver. My fine motor skills are shot. Too much fear. Too much panic and adrenaline and disbelief.

But if I can’t get this window open all the way, we’ll all die.

I toss the screwdriver down in frustration and put my hand out for the crowbar. Perez slaps the tool into my hand.

I try not to think about how long it will take for Helen to get help. By the time she does, the rest of us will surely be dead. But it’s something. Saving her life is something.

***

The sound of the doorbell brings me out of my book. I look over at my wife, who’s lying on the couch with her legs propped on my thighs. Her eyebrows go up over her hazel eyes as she props her own book on her chest.

“You expecting someone?” she asks.

I shake my head, putting my book down. “Nope. I’ll see who it is.”

“I’ll get it!” Brandon calls from upstairs. This declaration is followed by the sound of his hurried footsteps on the stairs.

“No, you will not!” June calls, lifting her legs so I can stand up.

I glance at the clock as I move out of the den and through the kitchen. It’s seven after ten on a Saturday night. Much later than we’re used to having visitors.

As I turn the corner into the entryway, I see Brandon with his hand on the doorknob.

The doorbell rings three times in quick succession, putting me on edge.

“Didn’t you hear your mother?” I ask my son. He freezes and looks over his shoulder at me, a mischievous grin on his face. One upper eyetooth is missing, having fallen out three days ago. The tooth fairy gave him a whopping five dollars for it. I guess the tooth fairy is made of money.

“Come here, you little Jack ‘O Lantern,” I say to him.

He steps away from the door just as the doorbell rings again, testing my patience.

“I’m coming!” I call out. “Hold on!”

Turning my attention to my son, I say, “What did we tell you about answering the door by yourself?”

His grin fades, but a smirk stays on his face. “I’m old enough,” he tries, weakly.

“You’re old enough when we say you’re old enough,” I tell him. “Now, go get ready for bed. You should already be in your pajamas.”

Brandon runs to the staircase, but I hear him stop to see who’s at the door. He’s at that age where boundless energy meets unbridled curiosity. Which means headaches for mom and dad.

I peer through the peephole before unlocking and opening the door.

Luke Richards looks up at me with worried eyes. He fidgets on the stoop, small bugs whirling around his head and bouncing off the porch light.

“Ethan,” he says, “I need to talk to you.”

“Hey, Luke,” I say. “Been a while. Come on in.”

Luke glances over his shoulder at the quiet street. Modest houses with glowing windows sit peacefully, their residents inside, enjoying the weekend night.

Luke steps through the door, playing with the zipper pull tab on his light jacket. As we move toward the kitchen, June appears and says hello.

“Hey,” Luke says simply, barely looking her in the eye. Then he turns to me and says, “Can we talk in private?”

“Sure,” I say. “Of course. Let’s go to my office.”

As we turn down the hallway, I shrug in answer to my wife’s questioning look.

There’s an armchair in my office that Luke sits in. I pull out my desk chair and sit in it, turning it to face him.

“What’s going on? Everything okay?” I ask.

“I need to ask you a favor,” Luke says.

“Okay. What is it?”

“Come to church tomorrow,” Luke says. “Please.”

I sit back in my chair. “Luke, you know how I feel about Pastor Paul. And you know how he feels about me … I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Please, Ethan,” Luke says, scooting forward to the edge of his seat. “Please, this is important to me. I’ve …”

“You’ve what?” I prompt.

“I’ve had a vision. I know you don’t believe in that stuff, but I’ve been praying about it ever since. It’s … you just need to be there tomorrow.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe in it,” I tell him. “It’s just that I don’t agree with the way Pastor Paul goes about his teachings. He’s more of a politician than a spiritual leader.”

“I know, I know,” Lucas says. “And he’s been changing lately. That’s why I want you to come. I want you to see for yourself. Please.”

I take a deep breath, considering. It’s really not a lot to ask. I haven’t been to church in a while. Most Sundays, June, Brandon, and I do our own little worship session. And I like that better than going and sitting in church. I certainly know Brandon likes it better. And he seems to pay more attention. He seems to absorb things. But it wouldn’t hurt to go back just once. To see what all the fuss is about.

“Do you want to tell me about your vision?” I ask Luke.

He shakes his head. “It wouldn’t make much sense to you. But will you come?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll come.”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you, Ethan. You don’t know what this means to me.”

“Of course,” I say. “Now, tell me how you’ve been, Luke. I feel like we haven’t talked in a long while.”

“Yeah,” Luke says, clearly relaxing slightly now that I’ve said yes. “Things have been okay. Just really focusing on my faith since the divorce.”

I nod. “That’s good. Do you want a beer or anything?”

“No,” he says, standing. “No, I should go now. It’s late.”

“Okay. You sure you don’t want to tell me about your vision?”

“I’m sure,” he says. “But you’ll be there tomorrow, right?”

“I will, yeah. I’ll bring June and Brandon along, too.”

“No,” Luke says, nearly shouting.

“Woah, what is going on with you, Luke? Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Just don’t bring them, okay? Just, come alone.”

I study him for a long moment. He returns my gaze. “Is this something I need to be worried about?” I ask him.

“No,” he says. “No. How long have we known each other? I wouldn’t steer you wrong. This will all make sense tomorrow, I promise. Just come by yourself. Nine o’clock.”

“I remember,” I say. “I’ll be there. Alone, if that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

I walk Luke out and say goodnight, watching after him as he moves down the sidewalk in the direction of his small apartment building, four blocks away.

As I shut the door, June comes down the stairs wearing mismatched pajamas. “What was that about?” she asks. I can smell the toothpaste on her breath.

“I don’t really know. I haven’t seen Luke like that since Maureen filed for divorce. He was acting real strange. But he practically begged me to come to church tomorrow. Alone.”

June raises an eyebrow in question. “Huh,” she says. “Well, you’re welcome to it. I don’t want to hear Pastor Paul spout his nonsense for an hour. I hear he’s only gotten worse.”

“Who said that?”

“Oh, Tabby. She said she stopped going when he started doing these long, crazy rants about politics.”

“Sounds about right,” I say. “Well, you and Brandon can have your own little session while I’m gone.”

“We will,” June says with a smile. “I’ll get to read the Bible to Brandon for a change. No offense, but you’re a boring reader.”

“Boring!?” I gasp. “How dare you!?” I reach out to tickle her. She laughs and bolts back up the stairs as I chase her.

***

The New Endeavor Church looks different as I pull into the parking lot at 8:50 on Sunday morning. They’ve done something to the windows that I can’t quite place. They look as if they’ve been replaced, but I could be wrong. It has been a while since I’ve been here or driven past.

The church is a simple rectangular brick building with a pointed roof. Four windows line each side of the structure. The front doors are large, heavy, and wooden, with small ornate windows at head height. The parking lot isn’t full, but there are plenty of cars. I imagine that the pews will be about three-quarters full when the service starts.

As I park my car, I look around for signs of Luke. I don’t see him. And I don’t see his SUV, either. Then again, I am ten minutes early.

Several people glare at me as I walk toward the doors. I try not to take it personally. But that’s easier said than done. I definitely get the feeling I’m not wanted here.

This is strange because I’ve never been one to talk trash behind someone’s back. Luke knows about my feelings for Pastor Paul because our families used to attend church together every Sunday. And when June and I made the decision to stop, I explained our feelings to him. But I didn’t go around town denouncing the church.

Of course, not showing up anymore is a denunciation in itself, I suppose.

Still, I have a very odd feeling as I walk to the doors. There are a couple of greeters there — Mac Pollard and Suzy Libsom. They smile and say hello to the people ahead of me, but as soon as they see me, their expressions falter.

Mac, a graying man with large teeth and a sizable mole on his forehead, steps in front of the door. “Hey, Ethan,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

I smile, thinking it’s a joke. But when I look between him and Suzy, I see that it’s not.

“I was hoping to attend the service,” I say, keeping the smile on my face with some effort.

“Really?” Mac asks. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

“Luke invited me,” I say. “But why does that matter? Is this a closed session now? Do I need to know a secret password?”

Mac glances over at Suzy, who’s a severe-looking middle-aged woman with sharp features and bottle-blond hair. There are people piling up behind me on the walkway, many of them murmuring.

Suzy seems to shrug with her eyes as she looks back at Mac. The man turns toward me, smiles, and steps aside. “Don’t forget to put your phone in the box,” he says, gesturing just inside the doors.

I pause. “What?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “I guess we enacted that policy since you left. No phones aloud in the nave anymore. Pastor Paul doesn’t want anyone distracted from God. Most folks just leave theirs at home or in the car, but we still have the box for those who don’t.”

Sure enough, I step inside and see a decorated box sitting on a table. There are about a dozen phones sitting inside.

Reluctantly, I take my phone out and put it inside.

“Glad to have you back,” Mac says in a tone that suggests the opposite.

“Thanks,” I say. What in the hell is going on here? I think as I walk through the entryway. To my left and right are stairs leading up to the balcony seating area, but there won’t be enough people inside to warrant their use.

I move through the entryway and into the main room — the nave. The first thing I notice is the closed shutters over the interior windows. They’re heavy-duty metal shutters secured with padlocks. Since they aren’t allowing any sunlight in, the only illumination in the place comes from the recessed lights overhead in the peaked ceiling. It gives the space a solemn atmosphere.

People dressed in their Sunday best are getting comfortable in the pews. A few people stand in the center aisle, chatting. Several kids goof around on the outskirts of the pews.

“Ethan!” a man calls out from the middle of the right row of pews. It’s Ralph Fuller, a guy I work with at Elite Heating and Air Conditioning. He’s here with his family, and he smiles and waves.

I raise a hand in greeting as he gestures me over. “Good to see you back in church,” he says. I say hello to his wife, Janet, and their sullen teenage daughter, Helen, before taking a seat next to Ralph.

“What brings you back?” Ralph asks.

Sensing eyes on me, I look over my shoulder without answering. The youth ministry leader, a serious and well-kempt man named Kenan Delaney, stands near the open nave doors, staring at me as Mac whispers in his ear. He wears starched and pressed khaki pants with a powder blue long-sleeve shirt. Kenan nods at Mac and then hurries through the nave, heading toward the rooms at the back of the church.

“What’s wrong?” Ralph asks.

“Huh? Oh, nothing,” I say, turning back. “I’m here as a favor to Luke, actually. He asked me to come today.”

Ralph, an always-happy man with a balding head and small green eyes, mulls that over for a moment. “Luke Richards?” he asks.

“Yep.”

Something passes over Ralph’s face, but I can’t place it. “What’s up?” I ask him.

“What?” Ralph says.

“The mention of Luke Richards gave you pause,” I say. “Something going on with him?”

Ralph shrugs. “No. Not that I know of. Maybe you’re reading into things.”

I study him for a moment before agreeing. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Anyway, he should be here. He’s here every Sunday. Especially since the divorce.”

“I’m saving a seat for him right here,” I say, patting the stretch of pew to my left.

“Sounds good,” Ralph says with a smile.

“Hey, what’s with the window shutters?” I ask him.

He looks up at the nearest shuttered window and laughs once. “Yeah, pretty intense looking, right? I heard there was a break-in last week after services. Someone stole the collection money! So they put the shutters up to keep it from happening again. They also replaced some of the doors.” As Ralph says this last, he points a thumb over his shoulder. I follow, looking at the propped-open nave doors. Sure enough, they’re heavy-duty metal doors. They used to be simple wooden ones.

“Makes sense, I guess,” I say. “But why are the shutters still closed and locked? Wouldn’t they open them for some sunlight during the service?”

Ralph shrugs. “You’d think so,” he says. “Maybe someone forgot.”

Nine o’clock comes and goes, but Pastor Paul doesn’t come out. The crowd sits patiently, waiting for the service to start. People chat quietly. Ralph and I talk a bit about work. I joke around a little with Helen, getting a reluctant smile out of the sixteen-year-old.

Then the sound of the closing nave doors catches my attention. I turn to see Mac shutting the doors. He does something else with them after they’re closed. It almost looks like he’s locking them, but that can’t be right.

When he turns around, his eyes flick over to me. When he sees I’m looking, they bounce away. He doesn’t move from in front of the doors. He stands there, looking straight ahead.

Where’s Luke? I wonder. My bowels clench like a coiling snake. I ignore the feeling.

One of the two doors flanking the stage opens, and Pastor Paul walks out. Cheers go up from a few people in the crowd, which is something that certainly didn’t happen when I used to go here. He’s a tall man with a straight back, a head of short and neatly trimmed brown-blond hair, and a brown goatee. His eyes are lively and bright, almost turquoise in color.

Paul wears expensive-looking black slacks and a purple dress shirt with a crisp white collar. He wears a gold chain with a cross on it under the collar, like a tie. His black dress shoes are shiny. As he steps up on stage, he smiles, holding up a battered Bible until he stops at the podium.

His eyes move over the crowd as he sets the Bible down. They move over me easily, like he’s not surprised at all to see me here. I don’t know why I expected to see surprise on his face. Maybe because I saw it on Mac’s and Suzy’s and Kenan’s.

Then I remember Kenan hurrying to the back of the church. Maybe he told Pastor Paul that I was here. But why would he do that?

The crowd goes quiet, the cheers fading away as Paul’s eyes drag across his congregation.

“Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might,” he begins without preamble. “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

He pauses, sweat already glistening on his forehead.

“Do you know what that means?” he shouts out. “Are you familiar not only with the words from the book of Ephesians, but also with the meaning and the power and the purpose behind them?”

“Tell us!” a woman shouts.

“We’re ready!” a man yells out.

I wonder why they sound so angry. Not only Pastor Paul, but those who call out, too. Their voices are heavy with rage.

The mood is tense here. I realize this isn’t just another Sunday. This is a continuation of something Paul has been discussing for some time. But I also see that not everyone is in on it. Many other people glance around, looking confused or worried.

“It means, brothers and sisters,” Paul says, “that the time … has come!”

“Amen!” a man shouts.

“Hallelujah,” a woman says.

“I have been speaking with God a lot lately,” Paul continues in a forceful voice. He doesn’t use a microphone. He doesn’t need one. “He has deemed me worthy enough to talk with. And he’s told me many, many wonderful things about all of you.”

More shouts of affirmation come from the crowd.

“Well,” Paul says, stepping away from the podium, “almost all of you.”

The crowd goes silent. Paul paces on stage.

“You see, most of you have Jesus in your hearts, and in your souls. Most of you have been willing to give yourself over to Him. But not all of you. And that’s what God has been talking to me about.”

He pauses, looking around. “He told me that Demons have worked their way into my congregation!”

Hissing and booing come from various sections of the crowd. “He told me that if I were to do nothing about it, every single one of you would become infested by the demonic plague worming its way into this church! This community! This state! And this country!”

Pained moans sound. I look around, seeing that many of the people in the crowd are getting into it. This is certainly much more intense than I remember Pastor Paul being.

“He told me that the way we’ve been doing things is no longer enough! He told me that I must root out the demons in this room! And he told me how I must do it!”

I look over at Ralph, who glances back at me, a worried expression on his face. “Has he ever talked about demons in the congregation before?” I whisper.

Ralph just shakes his head.

“You’ve all seen it!” Paul shouts, pacing on the stage once again. “Every time you turn on your television. Every time you look out your window. Every time you get on your phone or your computer, you are confronted with the tools of Satan! The tools are all around us. They’re multiplying every day. And we’re quickly becoming outnumbered! And do you know why?”

“Why?” several people shout at once.

“Because we’ve been fighting the war all wrong. We’ve been doing battle in the hearts and minds of the people. But it’s not working! It’s not working! And God has had enough. He’s had enough, and he’s told me that we have to take the fight up a notch. We have to put our foot down and say, No More Satan! We will not fall prey to your trickery. We’ve had enough, and we have God on our side!”

A dozen people are standing now, swaying and shouting and holding their hands up toward the stage, as if absorbing the energy pouring off Pastor Paul.

“The Bible tells us clearly in Timothy!” Paul shouts. “It says: ‘Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.’ Well, I’m here to tell you that the Bible was right. And that the latter times are now! But I need your help! God needs your help! Who’s willing to do what it takes to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth!?”

About half of the crowd is standing now, shouting and convulsing in agreement with Pastor Paul. Most of the rest of us are glancing around at each other, wondering what will come next.

“Those that stand against us are agents of the Devil!” Paul shouts from the stage. “Let them not interfere with the Lord’s work! Let them not interfere as you bring me the demon posing as … Ethan Fortner!” He levels his finger at me from the stage. Every head in the place turns to look at me.

Before I can think of something to say, several men and women are moving toward me, their faces hard with determination.

I glance at Ralph, who has a terrified look on his face. His mouth hangs open.

“He’s been sent here by the demon Luke Richards!” Paul shouts. “Whosoever stands with him stands against God!”

“No,” I say, standing up and tensing. They’re coming from all directions. “No, this is crazy.”

“Don’t listen to the demon’s words!” Pastor Paul shouts. “It’ll say anything to get out of being sent back to Hell! But fear them not! The Demons have no power in this House of God!”

The first man to get to me is Kenan, the youth pastor. “Kenan, you don’t really believe this, do you?” I ask him, taking a step back from the aisle. But I can hear other people working their way toward me from behind, squeezing toward Ralph and his family.

Kenan doesn’t answer me. His eyes are flat, his jaw tensed.

God, help me, I think as Kenan steps toward me, his hands held out in front of him. I hear the sound of a fist striking flesh, followed quickly by a sharp exhalation. Backing away from Kenan, I risk a glance over my shoulder just in time to see Ralph throw another punch at the man who was flanking me. The man collapses and Ralph steps over him.

“This way,” he says to me and his family.

The violence seems to give Kenan pause; as I turn my head toward him, he’s staring past me at the man on the floor.

The church is silent for a good ten seconds. The only people moving are me and the Fuller family. Half the congregation watches us, while the other half watches them. It’s like everyone’s waiting to see what everyone else will do.

Pastor Paul is on stage, frozen with his face up toward the heavens, his arms cast skyward.

“Let us out, Mac,” I say as we get to the nave doors. The ones Mac locked just before the service started.

Mac swivels his head from me to Pastor Paul.

“We just want to leave, Mac,” I whisper, pleading. “Just let us leave.”

Mac ignores me, his eyes fixed on his spiritual leader.

Unable to help myself, I turn my own eyes that way, seeing that the whole congregation has done the same. Everyone except the man Ralph knocked out with his two punches.

Paul is still frozen in his strange posture, but he doesn’t stay that way for long. His head comes down to face forward again, but his arms stay up. His face is flushed pink, a series of veins standing out at his temples and on his forehead. His cheeks shake as his head vibrates. His eyes are nearly blinding in their ferocity.

He’s insane, I think.

“Get them!” he screams. “Get the black-eyed demons!”

Chaos erupts in the nave as half the congregation rushes toward us while the other half, apparently still in possession of their senses, tries to stop them.

Some people argue, trying to talk sense.

“Let them go!”

“Do what he says.”

“God is good!”

“Demons among us!”

“Kill the demons!”

I whip around to see Mac and Ralph choking each other in front of the double doors. Janet grasps Helen, both of them frozen with fear.

Stepping forward, I reach into Mac’s pocket to retrieve the set of keys. As I pull the keys out, I’m hit from behind, and I slam into Ralph and Mac, hitting my head on the side of Mac’s skull. The three of us go down, and I drop the keys in the process. There are suddenly bodies all around us. Hands reach down from the fray, sharp nails scraping across my face. Someone pulls my hair. A knee smashes into my temple. The air is filled with the sounds of violence. The scents of perfume and cologne battle with coffee breath and detergent as people go crazy.

Above all the shouting and the sounds of fighting, I can hear Pastor Paul ranting and raving from the stage. He’s listing the names of so-called demons in the room over and over again, prompting his people to attack them.

I punch up as hard as I can, not caring who I hit. Mac and Ralph are still struggling, wrestling with each other nearby. As I back up, trying to get enough room to stand, I find the keys. It’s a large ring, with perhaps two dozen keys on it. I grip the keyring in my hand, positioning it so several keys stick up through my fingers like claws.

Punching out with the makeshift weapon, I produce some screams and create enough room to get up. As I get to my feet, I hear Janet shout.

“Ralph!” she cries, nothing but fear in her voice. I look toward the source of the sound, over the heads of the brawling congregation, to see that she and Helen are being ushered back toward the same door Pastor Paul came out. A man and woman I recognize — the Amaros — are doing the ushering.

A man lunges at me, and I punch him in the throat with the keys, puncturing his skin. He backs away with wide eyes, gripping his throat. I swipe at another couple of guys who have their sights set on me, keeping them at bay. For now.

I quickly decide that I need to get out of here and get help. I don’t know if the Amaros are friends or hostiles, but Ralph’s wife and daughter are on their own now.

As I turn toward the door, I realize that I have no idea which key unlocks it. And there’s no way I’ll have time to figure it out.

“Ethan!” Janet calls out. “Bring Ralph!”

As I’m momentarily distracted, Kenan comes flying out of nowhere, tackling me to the ground. I land hard on my left side but manage to hold on to the keys this time. Kenan’s hands go toward my face, and he jabs a thumb into my left eye socket. I scream out, turning my head and then bucking to get him off me.

He punches me in the side of the head, then goes for the eye again. I can feel his nail digging into my eyelid as he tries to gouge out my eyeball. I convulse and buck again, and this time get enough clearance to scramble away. But I don’t get far before he’s on me again. This time, I’m ready. I slash out with the keys in my hand, scraping them across his face. He screams out, clutching his face and falling backward.

As I get up, I can only see out of my right eye. Something’s wrong with my left, and I’m worried Kenan has done permanent damage. But as I look over to where Ralph and Mac were fighting, I can see well enough to know that something terrible has happened.

Ralph is facedown near the door, a pool of blood spreading out on the polished hardwood floor. Mac is standing now, and he slams the heel of one cowboy boot down into the back of Ralph’s head.

I cry out and lunge toward the older man, but it’s clear to me now that the demon chasers are winning. A group of three men and two women are moving to surround me. So I run.

Dashing along the back wall, I make it to the corner of the room and turn right to sprint down the aisle on the far left side of the church. An eighteen-year-old kid — one of the Harlow boys — tries to stop me, but I bowl him over.

“Get him!” Pastor Paul is shouting from the stage, pointing at me. “The demon is escaping!”

I slam against the side door Janet, Helen, and the Amaros went through, trying to open it. It’s locked. I’m sure one of the keys on the keyring will open it, but I don’t know which one.

“Let me in!” I shout. “Let me in! It’s Ethan!”

Behind me, those not actively engaged with other church members are bearing down on me.

“Let me in!”

Just before the large group gets to me, the door opens and I slip through, shutting and locking it behind me.

Janet looks up at me. Helen and the Amaros are standing huddled in the middle of the classroom.

“Ralph?” Janet asks over the pounding on the door.

I shake my head. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “But we need to get out of here.” Blood drips into my right eye from where the woman scratched me. I wipe it absently away, blinking constantly for brief moments of unobstructed vision.

There’s another doorway in the classroom to my right, leading out to a small hallway. I’m keenly aware that the door on the other side of the nave leads to that same hallway. And I don’t know if it’s locked or not. If it is, Pastor Paul surely has the keys to it, just as he surely has the keys to the door I just came through.

But it seems that he’s too swept up in his religious fervor to think rationally or logically. I can hear him shouting through the wall, screaming about demons everywhere.

I look at Perez and Linda Amaro through my blurred vision. They stare back at me with wide brown eyes. They’re in their fifties. Perez is dressed in a blue-and-white striped shirt with black slacks. Linda wears a sparkly black skirt and a blue blouse. They’re looking to me for guidance. They all are.

“Let’s go,” I say. There is one window in this classroom, but it has the same locked shutters on it that the ones in the nave do. But I know there’s an emergency exit door at the back of the building. It should let us out without needing to go through all the keys still gripped in my right fist.

As we start toward the door to the hallway, the banging on the nave door stops. I pause and look over my shoulder. Pastor Paul is no longer speaking. The only thing I can hear is the low pleading from people out in the nave. Begging.

I swallow involuntarily, my mouth suddenly dry. The way all the noise stopped at once … it’s not natural. There was no signal I heard. No one even shouted stop. They all just … stopped.

“Demon!” Pastor Paul shouts. I jump as a gunshot follows.

“Demon!” Another gunshot.

“Black-eyed Demon!” A third shot.

The blood drains from my face as I hear this. A woman screams out in the nave, the noise stopping abruptly with another gunshot.

“They’re killing them!” Linda screams.

Silence from the nave. “Get them!”

“Come on!” I shout, running to the hallway door. I pull it open to reveal the staircase down to the basement just ahead. To get to the emergency exit, we need to go past the staircase to the other side of the hall, where we’ll take a left down a smaller hallway to the door.

But as soon as I step out into the hall, people come pouring through the other nave door. Half of them are splashed with blood, and they all look insane.

They rush toward us, leaving only one way to go: downstairs. So that’s where we go, running down the wooden steps and ducking into the first room we see. Chairs are stacked along three of the walls and there’s a storage shelf on the wall next to the door. The five of us get inside and I slam the door shut, locking it from the inside. Perez immediately starts pulling stacks of chairs over, and I move to help him.

People are banging on the wooden door before we get the first stack over, but they don’t come through. And pretty soon, we have the door barricaded as best we can with the chairs.

That done, I look around at the two small hopper windows near the ceiling. They have hinges at the bottom, so they open from the top and tilt inward, which will make it hard for us to use them as an escape route. In fact, I can tell by looking that the only person who can fit through is Helen.

It’s the only option we have. Because it’s just a matter of time before the people at the door break through. I can already hear the door cracking as they bang on it.

“Helen,” I say, going up to the frightened sixteen-year-old, “I need you to go get help, okay? We’ll get you out one of these windows, and you flag down the first person you see and have them call the police, okay?”

Helen looks up at her mom, her lip quivering. Janet takes her daughter’s face in her hands and says, “You can do this. Once you get out there, you give ‘em hell.”

I find it a strange thing to say, but I shrug it off.

Helen nods. “Okay,” she says, a look of determination coming over her face.

As I put Mac’s keys in my pocket, I turn around and step to the shelf near the door, finding a small crowbar among other common tools there. Perez moves, grabbing a chair and setting it under the back window. My first inclination is to smash the glass with the crowbar, but that will surely alert the mob to our plan. And if they get outside to surround us, we’re all dead.

I step up onto the chair and open the hopper window as wide as it will go, which isn’t more than six inches. They’re designed for ventilation and to let in light, not to have people crawl in and out. I’m sure there’s some way to remove the entire window, but I have no idea how to do it.

I better figure it out quickly. I swipe sweat and blood away from my right eye with the back of my hand, forcing myself to ignore the continuing sounds coming from the door.

“Hand me that flathead screwdriver,” I tell Perez. He does, grabbing it from the shelf.

Janet and Linda are pressing against the stacks of chairs barricading the door. The top left corner of the wooden door is cracked, and I can see hands shoving through, trying to remove the flimsy wood so they can reach in and topple the chairs.

I hand Perez the crowbar and he hands me the screwdriver. I bring the small tool up and try to work at what looks like a locking mechanism on a hinge.

But my hands are shaking so badly I can’t get the tip of the tool in the small locking mechanism. My fine motor functions are shot from the adrenaline and the pain. And it doesn’t help that I can only see out of one eye. And even then, there’s blood and sweat getting into it.

I throw the screwdriver down and stick my hand out for the crowbar. Perez slaps it into my hand. I try not to think about how long it will take for Helen to get help. By the time she does, the rest of us will surely be dead. But it’s something. Saving her life is something.

I stick the curved end of the crowbar between the hinge and the frame, then yank down on the tool, trying to break the hinge arm off. It works. One hinge off, one to go.

I have to get down from the chair and move it to the other side to work on the second hinge. I do the same thing, sticking the curved end between hinge and frame. I yank down. But I do it too hard. The hinge arm snaps off and the entire window falls, banging against the wall underneath and shattering the glass.

“They’re going out the window!” a crazed woman yells from the other side of the door.

“Helen!” I shout. “Come on!”

I jump down from the chair and tip it over to get the glass shards off of it. Then I put it directly underneath the window, tossing the crowbar aside in the process. Helen jumps up onto the chair. Perez and I boost her up. She gets her head and arms through fine, but her butt scrapes against the narrow frame as she goes out, leaving no doubt in my mind that she’s the only one of us who can fit through there.

As soon as she’s out, she turns around and sticks her hand through the window. “The keys!” she says. “Give me the keys!”

Thank God for you, girl, I think. I hadn’t even thought about that. When the police get here, they’ll need the keys to get inside. I dig them out of my pocket and hand them out to her. She takes them and darts off.

I watch as she runs away. I soon lose her from view. But I hear shouting from outside, in the direction she went. My heart sinks. Please, God, let her get away, I think. Please.

As soon as I finish the thought, I hear screams from outside. But it’s not Helen screaming. That much, I know.

Still, I wince as the awful, pain-filled screams reach my ears.

“Help!” Perez shouts, pulling me back to reality. I turn to see him, Janet, and Linda all pressed up against the stacks of chairs barricading the door.

After picking up the crowbar, I run over and put my weight and muscle into it. When I see a hand come through the broken top corner of the door, I jump up and bash it with the crowbar, keeping them from pushing the stacks over.

Suddenly, the sound of semiautomatic gunfire erupts from upstairs. The people trying to break into the storage room let up slightly. There’s yelling and more gunfire from upstairs. And it’s getting closer.

“Get down! Get down on the ground now!” a man shouts from the basement hallway.

A second later, more gunshots. The thump of bodies hitting the floor is clearly audible. There’s no longer anyone pushing on the door from outside.

“You people okay in there?” the voice calls out.

“We’re okay,” Janet calls out. “Did you see my daughter?”

“The girl’s fine,” the voice says. “She’s out with my colleagues now. You can open the door. I’m a police officer.”

We move the stacks of chairs away from the door and then open it to reveal a man in tactical gear with police markings. “Don’t look at them,” he says to us, talking about the bodies all over the floor. But it’s hard not to look.

He escorts us upstairs and through the back exit. I can only imagine what the nave looks like, how many bodies are in there.

But as we go around the side of the building — the same side Helen ran around — I see police officers covering yet more bodies with tarps. The thing is, these bodies weren’t shot, as far as I can tell. There are limbs scattered on the grass around the church building as if a bomb went off. Or as if something … tore them apart.

“What happened to them?” I ask the cop.

“Just keep going, sir,” he says. “Don’t look at the bodies. It’s all over now.”

He escorts us around to the front, where I see Helen sitting in the back of an ambulance. She’s covered in blood.

Janet runs up to her daughter and wraps her in a hug. Helen looks over her mother’s shoulder at me, and she smiles. Something happens to her eyes. Like a flicker of darkness passing through them. It’s so fast, and my vision is so messed up, I’m not even sure if I saw it.

But the memory lingers in my mind as a paramedic comes up to check on me. The memory of a curtain of black falling over Helen’s eyes.

Something Pastor Paul said suddenly comes to mind. He said, “The Demons have no power in this House of God.”

But what about outside the House of God? I wonder.

I shrug it off as I answer the paramedic’s questions while she leads me to a different ambulance.

But as we go, I see Luke Richards approaching from further back in the parking lot. I pull away from the paramedic and run up to him, gripping him by his shirt collar. “You knew?” I scream in his face. “You knew this was going to happen? Why’d you tell me to come?!”

Luke is the polar opposite of how he appeared last night. He’s smirking, confident, and calm. “You just answered your own question,” Luke says.

“How?” I shout, pulling him closer. I blink furiously, bringing him into clear focus for short moments at a time. “How did you know this would happen?”

“He told me,” Jake says. “How else do you think?”

“God?” I ask. “God told you?”

Jake smirks. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s all done with. I told you to come because I knew. I knew you’d be the one to make sure everything turned out okay.”

“Okay?” I scream, gesturing at the circus in front of the church. “You call this okay?! People are dead. Murdered.”

“Yes,” Luke says. “Some of them are. But the important thing to remember is that your people are fine. June and Brandon are at home waiting for you. And you’ll be a hero. A hero who defeated a deranged pastor who went on a murder spree.” Jake pauses as he brings his lips close to my ear. “It seems that God isn’t what he used to be.”

I step away from him, stunned into silence.

“He takes care of His own,” Luke says, smiling. And as he’s turning away, something happens to his eyes. Like a flicker of darkness moving through them. It’s so fast, and my vision is so messed up, I’m not even sure I saw it. But the memory lingers in my mind. The memory of a flash of black covering Luke’s eyes.

What did Pastor Dan call them? I think. Black-eyed demons?

Escape

The PA system crackled to life on a Thursday during second period in my junior year of high school. The familiar tones of the recorded voice filled my classroom: “Lockdown. Locks, lights, out of sight. Lockdown. Locks, lights, out of sight.”

The words kept repeating as Mrs. Danbury paused at the board and looked up at the speaker in the corner of the room. “Okay, you all know what to do,” she said, rushing toward the classroom door to shut and lock it.

Nervous chatter went up among the students as we rose from our desks and moved into position against the wall.

“Is this real?” my friend Colin asked as we sat on the floor with our backs to the wall.

“Must be,” I said. “They’d tell us if it was just a drill.”

The sound of helicopter rotors was faintly audible over the recorded voice of the lockdown alert, and the noise grew louder as we sat there in the dark classroom. After a few moments, it sounded like the helicopter was right over the school.

A full minute passed before the helicopter moved again, the noise making it sound like it was going in circles above the campus.

A loud bang, like a door flying open, sounded outside. Someone yelled in the hall, a sound that was quickly replaced by automatic gunfire.

I slammed my hands over my ears, along with many other students. Some of the girls — and even a few of the boys — covered their mouths as they cried out softly.

More gunfire erupted out in the hallway. It sounded as if there were four or five guns firing.

An inhuman screeching sound pierced the air, making my eyes go wide. I looked over at Mrs. Danbury, whose face was drained of all color. She was the nearest to the door — the nearest to whatever the hell was going on in the hallway.

The gunfire stopped, and I heard a man shout and then scream. His wail of pain stopped abruptly with a loud, crashing bang. I didn’t have to see it to know that he’d been thrown into the lockers lining the hallway. The metallic bang was enough to tell me that.

More gunfire sounded outside, and then more screaming.

Then there was silence.

For several seconds, we all listened hard for anything outside. The recorded voice was still going, and the helicopter was still faintly audible.

The sound of running footsteps suddenly came to us from the hall. The footsteps stopped abruptly and a terrible scream erupted just before the door to our classroom smashed in. A SWAT officer flew backward into the room and slammed into Mrs. Danbury’s desk, which slid several feet with the impact.

Cries of fear came from the students around me as they saw that the soldier was missing an arm. He’d hit the desk with his mid-back and had come to rest at an angle that told us his spine was broken.

Once the soldier came to rest, there was only silence from the hall. It went on for long enough that I was starting to think the danger had passed.

Mrs. Danbury apparently thought the same thing because she crawled toward the doorway and the smashed door hanging open. I don’t know what she was trying to do, but as soon as I saw her move toward the doorway, I wanted to tell her to stop. Still, I made no sound for fear of attracting whatever was outside — if there was anything there at all.

She peeked her head around the doorjamb to peer into the hall. Her left hand came up to her mouth as if trying to keep herself from getting sick. She stood up and turned around to face us.

“Okay, we need to move to another classroom,” she said. “The hall looks—” A long, blistered, red-and-black arm with a claw-like hand darted down from the ceiling outside the doorway and grabbed Mrs. Danbury by the neck, stopping her words. It yanked her out of the classroom before any of us knew what was happening.

We heard a scream and a thunk from outside, then Mrs. Danbury appeared in the doorway again. Only she didn’t have any arms. Blood spewed from her massive wounds as she stepped into the room, looking back over her shoulder with a dazed look on her face. What she saw there snapped her out of it, and she started running toward the wall of windows opposite the doorway. Fountains of blood poured out of her as she ran past her desk, screaming.

A monstrous, scarred figure that looked like a badly burned mix between a bear and a baboon darted through the doorway after our teacher. It leaped, smashing into Mrs. Danbury just as she reached the window. The two of them tumbled out, falling to the ground just a few feet below. My teacher screamed once more outside before her vocalizations stopped with a terrible ripping sound.

All of us students stayed frozen against the wall, staring at the broken window, waiting for the thing to come back in. We should have run, but we didn’t. It was all too much for us.

Eventually, the gruesome sounds from outside stopped, but none of us were willing to risk standing up and moving toward the window to see what was happening. Not long after those noises stopped, we heard a flurry of gunshots from far off, likely off the high school campus.

Hearing those faraway shots snapped me out of my shock. I stood up and moved slowly to the doorway. I looked out to see the hallway littered with dismembered bodies. There was blood all over the place. A man with a smashed head lay below a huge and bloody dent in several of the lockers across the hall.

A few other guys and I led the rest of the class out. We headed toward the evacuation spot and were about halfway there when we ran into more police coming into the school. They took us to safety.

We were told it was an escaped animal from the zoo. That’s even what they said on the news that night. They said it was a bear, but I know what I saw. It wasn’t a bear. It wasn’t any animal I’ve ever seen.

And the fact that there’s a military research base not far from our school is just too much of a coincidence.

But those of us who were in that classroom that day are smart enough to keep our mouths shut. But we know the truth. We’ll always know the truth.

More Than Six

The black truck’s grille filled my rearview mirror as it surged toward me, its headlights nearly blinding me as I looked back. It felt like my heart was beating as fast as the pistons in my motor as I pressed the gas pedal to the floor of my little sports SUV.

I risked a glance up at the rearview mirror again, seeing the truck falling back a few feet.

“C’mon, c’mon, please,” I said to my SUV — Diedra, I called her. My voice cracked, and hearing the fear there served to complete a sort of feedback loop, making me even more scared.

The truck surged forward again, closing the gap.

“Please!” I cried. “What did I do to you?”

Of course, whoever was in the truck couldn’t hear me.

My pedal was to the floor, and I looked down at my speedometer to see the needle creeping up on 120 miles per hour.

“Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. Goddammit just leave me alone!”

Warm liquid dribbled down my cheeks, and I took one hand away from the steering wheel to wipe the tears away. I was ashamed of crying. A man like me isn’t supposed to cry.

I knew I couldn’t keep up this speed for long. Diedra was an older model, and I was afraid I’d blow a gasket or something. I had to make a move if I wanted to get away from this psycho.

I saw no other cars on our side of the highway, and only a few had passed on the other side since the truck had started chasing me. It was just after two in the morning.

“I’m just a guy on a road trip,” I said to myself, sobbing. “What do you want from me?”

I saw an exit coming up, the green sign flashing by before I had a chance to read the whole thing. It didn’t matter. I had to get off the highway if I wanted to lose this creep.

Only then could I make my next move. I could call the police if I could just lose the guy. If I could just get some privacy and a few minutes without him chasing me.

I looked back to the cooler sitting on my back seat.

The exit ramp came up on my right, and I waited until the last second to jerk my wheel right. I drove over the thick white lines of the gore zone and made it onto the ramp without losing much speed.

I looked into my mirrors to see that the truck hadn’t reacted quickly enough. It slammed to a stop half in the grass just past the gore zone. I saw it reverse quickly before I lost it from view.

“Okay, I’ve got some time,” I said to myself. “Some time to lose this creep.”

There was a sign for a gas station to the right, and not much else. I could see the gas station down the road about a quarter mile, but it looked dark. It clearly wasn’t a 24-hour place.

I turned left and gunned it over the highway I’d just exited. The road stabbed into a thick grove of trees, which flashed by in a blur as I gained speed. I looked in the rearview mirror but didn’t see the truck. Yet.

The road was curved, so I had to slow down to around 60 miles an hour. Before I cleared the first curve into the woods, headlights splashed the back of my vehicle.

“No, not yet,” I cried. The tears had stopped, but I felt on the verge of losing control again.

I drove as fast as I could, nearly going off the winding road twice before it straightened out and came to the outskirts of a tiny town.

As I gunned it down the straightaway, I looked in my rearview mirror again, searching for headlights cutting through the trees behind me. There were no lights. It was so dark behind me that I couldn’t see anything but the formless night.

Had the truck stopped following me?

As I came into the small town — really just a collection of tiny buildings and a single stoplight up ahead — I started looking for a place to turn off. A building to hide behind.

I slowed down to look when a revving sound erupted from behind me. On reflex, I hit the gas pedal and looked up into the rearview mirror again. The truck’s grille was there, I could just see it, thanks to the illumination from a streetlight coming up on my left. He’d turned his lights off. Of course he had. How could I be so stupid?

I cried out as the truck rammed Deidra, sending me lurching and then spinning and then crashing into a small brick building that looked like a post office.

The impact slammed my head against the steering wheel, busting my nose open. The cooler I had in the back came open, spilling its contents into the footwells of the back seat.

Deidra came to a hissing, ticking stop. I cried out, the tears starting again, scrambling to put the items back in the cooler. But before I could get my seatbelt off to turn around, my door was wrenched open.

A large man in a camouflage trucker’s hat, a plaid work shirt, and work boots punched me in the face, causing my head to whip sideways. He reached over me and unbuckled my seatbelt, then grabbed me by the collar and threw me out onto the sidewalk next to the brick building.

“No!” I said, pleading. “I’m just a guy on a road trip. Leave me alone!”

The man was big. Much bigger than me. He had a black beard and crazy eyes.

“You motherfucker,” he said in a growl, bending over and punching me in the mouth. My teeth folded back in an explosion of pain. His big, rough hands gripped my neck and squeezed. Blood poured out of my nose and my lacerated lips. Tears poured out of my eyes.

Flashing blue and red lights suffused my surroundings. The sound of tires screeching sliced through my ringing ears.

“Let him go,” a voice said. “Right now.”

The big man’s grip relaxed on my throat.

“I’m the one that’s been on the phone with you people for the last twenty minutes,” the big man said from over me.

“I don’t give a good goddamn who you are. Stop choking that man right now.”

The big man’s hands slid from my throat, and I sucked in a breath through my deformed mouth.

“It’s not me,” I gasped. “I’m just on a road trip. He’s the one! He tried to kill me. You saw it, officer!”

“Shut up and turn onto your stomach,” the cop said as he came into view, pointing his gun at me. “You, step back and keep your hands up,” he said to the big man.

“Oh, Christ,” the big man said. “Look into the back, officer. Look into the back now and you’ll see that I’m right. It’s him. I recognized him at a rest stop. It’s him.”

The disgust in the big man’s voice was so apparent and vehement that the cop did what he asked. He stepped over to Deidra and looked into the back seat. At what had spilled out of my cooler when I hit the building.

“Oh, shit,” the cop said. “Oh, Mother Mary. You son of a bitch. Put your hands behind your back, right now.”

“I loved her,” I said, putting my hands behind my back. “I loved—” the cop’s knee coming down hard on my back stopped the words, but it didn’t stop the tears. He put the cuffs on and yanked me up to my feet.

“I loved her, officer,” I said as he perp-walked me past poor Deidra. I looked in the back window at the young woman’s severed head, which had come to rest propped against the back of the driver’s seat amid spilled ice and sodas. She was looking up at me with her dull eyes. “I love you,” I said to her.

She didn’t answer.

“I bet you loved all six of them, didn’t you?” the cop said. “You sick son of a bitch.”

“Six?” I said and smiled, the tears suddenly stopping. “You think there’s only six?”

Tunnel of Terror

The map was wrong, and the food was getting cold.

“Where the hell is this place?” I said over the noise of the podcast playing through my car’s speakers.

There was no moon tonight. Or if there was, I couldn’t see it through the thick cloud cover. I was going barely thirty miles an hour on the fifty-mile-an-hour road. Luckily, there were no headlights in either direction.

Although, at the moment, as I looked in every direction out of my Nissan Versa’s windows, I kind of wanted the familiar splash of headlights coming over a distant hill.

There were little groups of trees here and there on the sides of the rural road. Copses they were called. A copse of trees. But that word always made me think of corpses.

A corpse in the trees.

I shook my head, wondering why my brain always betrayed me.

Alone at night on a rural road with not a soul around? Let’s think about dead bodies in the trees.

God forbid we think about a Will Farrell movie or that time I made my cousin Sidney laugh so hard he peed his pants in the middle of a restaurant.

Of course, it didn’t help that I was listening to a horror podcast.

I consider myself a pretty capable guy, but you encounter some strange people when you deliver food for a living. There’s something about people being at home that brings out their weirdness. Like they’re no longer trying to hide their oddities, as they do in public. They’re comfortable at home. And when strange people are comfortable, they do strange things.

“Screw it,” I said, pulling over onto what little shoulder there was. I turned my hazards on and snatched my phone from its cradle, pausing the podcast. The smell of the Chinese food on the seat next to me was making my stomach growl.

I’d eaten not that long ago, but when you’re delivering delicious-smelling food all night, you tend to get hungry a lot.

According to my phone, the house I was supposed to deliver to was just behind me on the same side of the road. There was nothing but darkness there, as far as I could tell.

I checked my mirrors while taking off my seatbelt. And then I opened the driver’s side door, stepping out of the car with my phone. I left the door open and the car running. I just wanted to see if I could spot a house nearby.

Moving to the back of my Versa, I peered into the darkness bordering the road. I saw nothing but the dark shapes of trees in the middle of a field.

Then a flash of light caught my eye. I turned and looked ahead, past my car. About a half-mile distant, there were headlights on the road. I watched them as they grew closer. They were high up, making me think they belonged to a truck or an SUV. The vehicle was moving slowly, which I thought was strange.

But soon I saw why. It turned, making a left off the road onto some kind of driveway I hadn’t seen before. The driveway was bordered by trees, and I watched the twin cones of illumination as they moved deeper into the corpse — copse. As they moved deeper into the copse of trees.

The glow disappeared, but I couldn’t tell whether the driver had turned off the lights, or if the vehicle had gone beyond a wall of foliage, cutting off the illumination.

Checking the map on my phone, I verified that there was no official road there. That meant it was probably a driveway to a house. Maybe the very house that I was supposed to deliver to.

And if it wasn’t the right house, maybe they could tell me where the correct one was.

Worth a shot.

As I got back into my car, my phone chimed with a message. It was from my mother. This was supposed to be the last delivery of the night. In fact, the whole reason I’d taken it was because it was on the same side of town as my mom’s house. Well, her house was about half an hour from where I was, but it was better than driving across town, which could take forty-five minutes or more.

She had Parkinson’s Disease, and it was getting steadily worse, so I stopped by most nights to help her get ready for bed and everything. A nurse came by in the mornings, but I generally took care of the nights.

“Take your time,” the message said. “Watching John Wick again.”

My mom had seen the John Wick movies more times than I had. She was obsessed. She’d even been inspired to purchase a pistol and do some range shooting after the first one came out. And she’d gotten pretty good. Of course, that was before the Parkinson’s diagnosis. She hadn’t gone shooting in a while.

I smiled and put the phone back in its cradle, deciding I’d message her back after I delivered the food. She always worried when I took too long to reply to her.

I put the car in gear and drove forward, slowing as I came to the driveway. There was no mailbox and no sign with an address on it. Nothing to show that there was even a structure back there. But it was all I had, so I turned down the dirt drive and rolled slowly forward, scanning the trees ahead for any sign of a house or vehicle.

The dirt road — more of a track, really — ran straight for a couple hundred yards before starting a curving journey deeper into the trees. Soon, I found myself not in a copse of trees, but in a legit forest.

I had no idea how far I’d gone from the road, but it seemed like a mile. And I hadn’t seen a single thing that would indicate someone lived down here. Maybe it was someone going car camping or something, I thought.

As soon as I made the decision to turn around at the next spot wide enough to accommodate the maneuver, I spotted a house through the trees.

It was just a glimpse, but enough to tell me I might be in the right place.

As I came around the final bend leading up to the house, I saw an old Bronco parked in a clearing in front of the place, lights off. There were no other vehicles, so it must’ve been the one I saw turn down the drive.

The house was brown and sagging and in a state of disrepair. It was two stories, but the first floor looked like it was struggling to hold up the second. There was a low porch under an awning and a light on in one of the bottom-floor windows.

I looked for any numbers on the structure, but found none.

In contrast to the state of the house itself, the area immediately surrounding it was neatly kept. There was an orderly pile of firewood next to a chopping station. A new-looking shed crouched darkly on the other side of the house.

There was enough room to park my Versa next to the Bronco. I left the car running, but snagged my phone as I jumped out and headed for the front door. I also left the food in the car until I was sure this was the right place.

“Hello!” I called out. “Hello. Anyone home?”

As I stepped onto the warped wooden porch steps, the sound of footsteps on wood floors came from inside the house. They were fast yet heavy footsteps, and they seemed to move away from the front door, rather than toward it. A door slammed somewhere near the back of the house, and then there was silence.

Strange, I thought. It was clear someone had heard me. So why had they retreated to the back of the house?

Like I said, people are weird.

I raised my hand to knock.

“Help you?” a voice said from behind me, making me jump.

I turned around to see a man with long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail gazing up at me from the bottom of the steps. He wore a dark green vest jacket over a white short-sleeve shirt. His jeans and boots looked new. Both his hands were tucked into the front pockets of his vest jacket.

“Yeah,” I said, smiling at the scare he’d given me. “Is this 531 Shipley?”

“No,” the man said. His voice was low, as though he were talking at half-volume. I detected no accent.

“Right,” I said, stepping down toward him. “Do you know where that is? My map seems to be wrong.” I still had my phone in my left hand, and I held it up to illustrate.

“No,” he said, staring at me with bright green eyes. “I’d like you to leave now.”

“Fine,” I said, anger flaring inside. “Just thought you could help, that’s all.”

As I moved away from the man, I heard a crash inside the house. Like a lamp had been knocked over. I half-turned, looking back toward the man and the house beyond.

The noise had drawn his attention as well, but his head turned slowly back toward me. We looked at each other for a long moment. Something shady was going on here. But it wasn’t really my business.

Family drama, maybe.

“Thanks anyway,” I said sarcastically, stepping up to my driver’s side door.

As I opened the door, a scream came from inside the house.

A woman’s scream, filled with terror and pain.

I froze, the man still looking at me. But his blank expression morphed into a look of dark determination. He stepped toward my car, pulling both hands out of his vest pockets. His left hand was empty. But in his right hand, he held a knife.

The blade was long enough that I figured he probably had a hole in his right pocket.

As I threw myself into the car, I tossed my phone onto the front seat next to the bag of Chinese food, just wanting to free my hand.

I slammed the door while simultaneously putting the car in Reverse.

Then I looked up to find the man gone. I hesitated for a moment before taking my foot off the brake and putting it on the gas.

The front right side of my car shifted toward the ground as the sound of rushing air came to my ears.

“Shit!” I said, realizing that the man had simply dropped down next to my car and pierced the tire with his knife.

I hit the gas and twisted the wheel, reversing out of the spot. I had to fight the steering wheel, thanks to the rapidly deflating front tire.

As I whipped the front of the car around to face back down the drive, I spotted movement in my right side mirror. The man appeared, jamming the knife into the back tire on that side.

I pulled the shifter into Drive and hit the gas. The car lurched forward, but I knew I wouldn’t get far. Still, it would get me out to the road, at least. I could drive it faster than the man could run, I knew that.

Rounding the curve away from the house, I put the gas pedal down as far as I dared, my pulse thrumming in my head.

The steering wheel jiggled violently, wanting to pull me to the right and off the dirt road. I glanced in the rearview mirror only to see dark trees and empty road.

Gripping the steering wheel in my left hand, I took my right hand off and reached down for my phone. As I grabbed it and straightened back up, blinding lights bounced off my rearview mirror and into my eyes.

The Bronco.

I jammed the gas pedal to the floor while navigating to the phone app. I pressed nine and one just before the Bronco slammed into the back of my Versa. The impact wrenched the wheel from my hand and my car went off the road, crashing into a tree.

I rocked forward since I had no seatbelt on, slamming the bridge of my nose into the top of the steering wheel. Searing pain flashed in my head.

Somewhere between getting rear-ended and hitting the tree, I’d dropped my phone. The Chinese food had broken out of the bag and was all over the footwell.

Instinct kicked in and I scrambled out of the car, falling down as I tried to run. The blow to the head had messed up my equilibrium. My vision swam.

As I lurched to my feet again, I glanced over my shoulder to see that the driver’s door of the Bronco was open. There was no sign of the man.

I ran away from the crash site, into the woods. I’d made it no more than five steps when the man appeared from behind a tree right in front of me. He was grinning, revealing widely spaced teeth clamped on a busy tongue.

His hands came up to my throat. I swung at him, cracking him on the side of the head and eliciting a pained grunt.

But his tough, calloused hands tightened on my throat and the side of my head. He kicked at my legs and bashed my head into the side of the tree. I went down in a pile, the man standing over me.

“Screw you,” I said, slurring the words.

He stepped forward and slammed his foot into my face.

***

I was lying on my back in my mother’s spare room, the door open, when she called my name.

“Kurt? Kurt, can you help me?” Her voice wavered. Sometimes she had trouble talking. It never used to be like that. The Parkinson’s was getting worse.

I opened my eyes and winced at the pain in my head. It felt like I’d been hit by a bus.

“Coming!” I said, sitting up and trying to control the nausea rearing its ugly head in my gut.

Standing, I made my way uneasily into the hallway and toward the living room. As I turned the corner, I came face-to-face with my mother, standing bolt upright and staring through me with wide eyes.

Her mouth was agape.

“Mom? Are you okay?” I said, fear mounting.

She said nothing. Just stared with unseeing eyes.

“Mom?”

She sucked in a huge breath.

And let out an awful scream.

I opened my eyes, jerking myself to sit up only to be stopped by my hands, which were bound at the wrists.

My mother was still screaming.

The events came rushing back to me, their dark implications seeming to seize my heart.

I looked around, knowing immediately that I wasn’t in my mom’s house. And whoever was screaming wasn’t her. It was the person in the house. The same scream I’d heard earlier.

The noise suddenly stopped.

I looked around, seeing that I was lying spread-eagled on a hardwood floor in the middle of a spacious hallway. My arms and legs were affixed to the floor with straps that had seen better days. They looked like they were made from the kinds of thick ratchet straps truck drivers use to secure their cargo. But they were cut and modified for this purpose.

And they were bolted to the floor near the sides of the hallway.

The walls flanking me were coated with faded green-and-white floral wallpaper. But down near the floor, around where my feet and ankles were strapped, the wallpaper had been worn down. There were dents and scrapes there.

The implications stood out starkly in my mind. I wasn’t the first to be strapped to this hall floor.

By the looks of it, there had been many before me.

Raising my head and putting my chin to my chest, I saw a staircase leading to the second floor. The edges of the stairs were littered with beer cans and old doll parts and rusty tools. A soft orange glow spilled through a doorway to the right of the staircase.

I put the crown of my skull against the floor, tilting my chin up so I could look backward. I could see the closed front door about fifteen feet away.

Adjusting my head into a neutral position, I stared up at the ceiling, chest heaving with shallow breaths. My head throbbed. My nose was a source of constant pain. My mouth and chin were covered in dried blood.

Footsteps sounded from upstairs, heavy and steady. They continued down the staircase. The man came into view, still wearing the same clothes. But now his long hair was hanging free, cascading down his shoulders.

He carried a white five-gallon bucket in one latex-gloved hand. Its lip and upper edges were stained with dark liquid. I didn’t want to believe it was blood, but I knew better.

The man set the bucket down at the foot of the stairs and walked directly toward me, staring down with cruel, hooded eyes. He stepped on my left thigh and then my upper chest as he walked down the hallway, like I wasn’t even there.

Then he turned around and came back. His foot came down toward my face, prompting me to turn my head at the last moment. As he put his weight on my head, his boot dug my right ear into my skull. Then his other foot came down on my crotch.

Despite my best efforts, I cried out as he crushed my genitals before stepping off.

“What. The. Hell,” I gasped weakly as he turned around, standing in the space between my legs.

“That’s what you are to me,” he said. “That’s all. Just more trash to walk on.”

“What’s wrong with you?” I said. “What the hell did I ever do to you?”

“It’s not personal, you know,” the man said. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

“Well, it’s not too late,” I said. “I can still leave. We can forget all about this. No harm, no foul.”

The man shook his head. “All harm. All foul,” he said, then turned away. He picked up the bloody bucket and went into the room casting the faint orange glow. I heard a door open and shut. Then the house was silent.

I yanked on the straps, feeling for weakness and finding none. Although they were frayed at the sides, they were still too strong for me to break. The long Velcro straps around my wrists and ankles weren’t locked, but I would need to be able to reach the end of the straps to undo them. And that wasn’t going to happen.

I couldn’t get my mouth close enough to either one of my wrists to use my teeth. Not even close.

The creaking of a board from upstairs caught my attention.

Recalling the sound of footsteps moving away from the front of the house when I first arrived, I wondered if there was someone else in the house. Someone complicit in whatever sick stuff was going on here.

Or maybe the earlier footsteps had been the man’s. Maybe he’d gone out the back door to come around the house.

I quickly determined that I had nothing to lose. “Hello?” I called out. “I need help. Is someone there?”

Floorboards creaked upstairs. I waited, listening hard, holding my breath.

There was no telling how long the man would be gone. Or maybe this was some kind of trick.

The creaking noises made their way toward the stairs. I turned my attention there, and soon saw a pair of small, bare feet come into view.

The feet moved down the stairs, one step at a time, until I could see that they belonged to a little girl. She looked to be no older than thirteen. She stopped two steps from the bottom. Her pink pajamas were dirty and smeared with blood here and there. Her long brown hair was mousy and tangled, hanging disheveled in front of her face.

“Hey, yeah, come on,” I said in a low voice. “Come help me.”

She shook her head.

I bit back my frustration and decided on a different tactic. “What’s your name?” I asked. “My name’s Kurt.”

The girl peered at me from behind her hair. She said nothing.

A noise from the front yard caught my attention. It sounded like a car door closing.

The girl’s eyes went wide. She turned and ran back upstairs.

“Shit,” I breathed out, letting my head drop back to the floor.

The front door opened, and the man walked in. He stepped up, feet on either side of my head, and leaned down so he was upside down in my vision. He brought one fist forward and then opened it, letting pieces of hard plastic, silicon, iron, and aluminum fall onto my chest.

It didn’t take me long to realize that it was my phone. He’d smashed it to pieces. He’d probably been out dealing with my car.

He disappeared into a room at the front of the house and then came back, kneeling beside me with a knife in his left hand. He pressed the tip of the knife to my stomach, just under my ribcage. I winced, feeling the sharp tip pierce my t-shirt and stick into my skin.

“You make any sudden move, I’ll jam this into your guts,” he said.

When I said nothing, he applied a little more pressure. “Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

He smiled with his wide-spaced teeth and turned his attention to the strap on my left wrist. He undid the Velcro with one hand, always keeping the knife against my stomach with the other.

He repeated the process with the other three limbs. I made no move. I knew he was serious.

“Roll over and get on your hands and knees,” he said, standing up.

I did as I was told. Then he made me turn around and crawl up the stairs. He stayed behind me the whole time, telling me what he’d do with the knife if I made any sudden moves.

The stench of death crowded my nostrils as I crawled up the cluttered stairs. I thought about picking up every beer can with a sharp edge I passed. Every rusty tool, every broken doll. Scenarios ran through my head.

Pick up the screwdriver, dive forward while turning around, kick out to buy some time, then attack.

But I never did it. In all the scenarios, the man got the jump on me. It was too many moves. Too much to do, when he could just step forward and jam the knife into my body.

I wouldn’t have a chance.

But when we got to the top of the stairs, I realized I’d blown my only opportunity. I was going to die in this terrible house.

There was dried blood all over the second-floor hallway. It was soaked into the floor, creating a varnish of sorts. It was splashed on the green floral wallpaper.

The man directed me to the first room on the right. The door was open, and I crawled forward, glancing inside.

I stopped, shaking my head.

“No,” I whined. “No, please. Please, I’ll do anything.”

“Get in there!” the man shouted at me.

A steely resolve came upon me, birthed by the notion that I needed to die with some dignity left. “No,” I said, no longer whining, just stating a fact. “No. I’m not going in there.” I stood up on my knees, half-turning toward the man.

He stepped forward and slashed at me with the knife, the blade opening the skin on my upper left arm. The pain came a moment later, shocking in its crispness.

“Get in there or I’ll kill you slow right here. Don’t think I won’t do it. Where do you think all this blood came from?”

My resolve was gone. With my right hand clamped over the wound on my left arm, I moved awkwardly into the room on my knees. When I was past the door, the man kicked me in the back, sending me sprawling into the room.

He shut the door, leaving me alone with the array of naked, bloody dolls nailed to the bedroom walls. I heard the distinctive sound of a deadbolt sliding into place as he locked me in.

There were dolls of all kinds affixed to nearly every square inch of wall, but most of them were baby dolls. Some were plastic. Others were made of fabric and stuffing. They seemed to stare at me, their eyes vacant yet somehow accusatory.

There was a large pile of dolls and doll parts in the far left corner of the room.

This room’s floor, like the hallway, was coated in dried blood.

The window had been covered with a board, nailed in place, and coated with dolls.

I could see all this because of a dim, plug-in nightlight near the door.

There was no furniture in the room at all. There was a closet, but the doors had been removed, revealing only an empty rectangular space.

I didn’t know what was going to happen to me in this room, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Nothing good ever happened in a room with naked dolls nailed to the walls.

I turned my attention to the wound on my arm, ripping off a length of my sleeve to use as a makeshift bandage. As I worked, I thought about the little girl. Was she another captive? If so, why was she allowed to roam around freely?

Maybe she’s his daughter, I thought.

She seemed to be my only hope of escape. If she could just unlock the door, I could get the hell out of this place.

As I finished securing my makeshift bandage over the cut, my thoughts turned to my mom. She was probably wondering where I was. I had no idea how long it had been since she’d messaged me, but I didn’t think more than a couple of hours.

Still, maybe she’d contacted the police. Maybe they could find the last location of my phone and come out to investigate. Maybe they’d find me.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Standing up, I moved to the door and tried to open it. Locked.

I moved to the board over the window and inspected it. There were nails every inch or so, holding it to the wall. Still, I tried prying it off with my fingertips. It wouldn’t budge.

Next, I moved toward the pile of doll parts in the corner.

Something caught my eye. My heart lurched. There was a face there. A woman’s face, half-buried by the plastic parts. She stared at me, much like the dolls on the walls did, with vacant eyes.

I stuck my foot out and nudged the dolls over her face, making them fall away. They revealed a young woman with blonde hair and a plump face. Her skin was greenish blue, her lips purple. The wound across her throat was hard to see in the low light, but I didn’t need details. I knew what had happened to her.

What would soon happen to me.

She was no longer a person. Now she was a corpse. Nothing more than a corpse among lifeless dolls.

I wondered if she was the one I heard screaming. I doubted it. It looked like she’d been dead for too long.

Moving to the opposite corner of the room, I tried to keep it together. I tried not to focus on the pain and terror I would experience in the moments leading up to my death.

I pulled my knees up and crossed my forearms on them. Then I propped my forehead on my arms and fought against the despair blooming inside me.

A mad swirl of thoughts took over, making me lose track of time. So I wasn’t sure how long it had been when I heard the door lock disengage.

Raising my head, I looked up toward the door as it opened.

The little girl’s face appeared in the widening crack between door and jamb. She had one slender index finger pressed to her lips. I nodded, an ember of hope warming my insides.

She waved me over, looking behind her as if to check for the man. I stood up and moved as quickly and quietly as I could toward her.

She backed out into the hall, giving me space to come out. I looked both ways, seeing nothing but an empty hallway.

I moved out, floorboards creaking with each step. The girl pointed to the stairs. I didn’t need any urging. I moved down them, trying to be quiet. On my way up, I’d seen a screwdriver on the steps. I scanned for it, not seeing it at first. Then I spotted it, sitting near where I’d seen it earlier.

I grabbed it, realizing immediately that it was a fake. The handle was hollow, and upon closer inspection, I saw that the metal was in fact plastic. It looked so real, but it was about as good a weapon as the discarded doll arm lying next to my foot.

“What the hell?” I said, setting it down and moving toward a rusty hammer. It was the same thing. Hollow plastic made to look real.

A high-pitched chuckle came from behind me. I turned to see the little girl. Her face lit up as she laughed, pointing at me from several stairs up. My stomach dropped, that ember of hope extinguishing with deafening finality.

I turned away from the little girl and ran down the hall toward the front door. I nearly got up to a full sprint as I approached the door. Then a wooden baseball bat came swinging out of a doorway on the right. It hit me in the chest, knocking me off my feet and onto my back.

Writhing in pain on the floor and trying to catch my breath, I heard the little girl’s laughter joined by the man’s. He stepped out through the doorway, bat still in his hand, and looked down at me.

“She loves the look on people’s faces when they realize it’s all a setup,” he said, grinning. “Nothing like it. But she likes this next part even better.”

The man stepped over me, easily smacking my leg back down as I tried to kick him. He grabbed me by the ankle and dragged me down the hall into a kitchen area. My breathing was finally returning to normal when he dropped my leg and pointed through an open doorway with the bat. I looked through, seeing that it was access to a basement. Concrete steps led down to impenetrable darkness.

“Go on down,” the man said. “It’s all ready now. I didn’t expect another guest quite so soon, so I had to do some work. But when Janey’s ready, there’s no keeping her from the hunt.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked from the floor.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just go. Now. You get a head start.”

Sensing movement behind me, I glanced back and saw the little girl — Janey, I guessed — standing patiently near the leaning kitchen table. She held a knife in one hand and an old-fashioned razor in the other.

“What is wrong with you people?”

The man slammed the baseball bat into the floor next to my head. “Go!” he screamed. As he brought the bat up for another swing, I scrambled to my feet and ran down into the basement.

As I reached the bottom of the steps, the door shut behind me, plunging me into darkness. I stopped, unsure whether they’d locked me in, or they were coming down with me.

My frantic breathing was too loud, so I held my breath.

And heard the soft sound of a bare foot stepping onto concrete behind me.

“Better run, boy,” the man said from somewhere near the top of the steps. “She’s coming for you.”

At first, I thought, So what? She’s a little girl. But that bravado didn’t last long. I couldn’t see anything at all. And the girl had a knife and a razor.

I thought about the blood I’d seen on her pink pajamas. Most of it was on her sleeves, I realized. I had noticed, but it hadn’t clicked before. The blood was on her sleeves because she did the killing.

I moved forward with my hands out until I came to a brick wall. Following it left, I moved as quickly as I could, willing my eyes to adjust.

The floor was dirt, and my feet scuffled along, making more noise than I wanted to. Making a conscious effort to pick up my feet, I continued on for what seemed like a long time before the wall turned a hard right under my hands. I stopped, feeling a faint breeze coming from that direction.

A tunnel, I thought. If there’s a breeze, maybe there’s a way out.

I heard a faint giggle close behind me. Panic thrummed inside me, and I lurched forward, smacking my head into a wooden board.

I went down on my knees. And almost as soon as I did, a terrible pain erupted in the middle of my back.

The girl giggled as she took the knife out of me. Her pattering footsteps told me she was retreating into the darkness.

I took a gulping breath, twisting one hand to feel where she’d stabbed me. The blade was short, and I didn’t think it had gone deep enough to do serious damage.

I put my right hand on the wall and got to my feet. Then I put my left hand out in front of my face to try and prevent hitting my head a second time. Then I started moving again.

My eyes were adjusting, allowing me to make out dark shapes. But as I was coming up to something set in the tunnel ceiling at about head height, a flash of blinding light erupted from the object.

I shut my eyes on reflex, but it was too late. It had already ruined my night vision for the next several minutes.

The pitter-patter of running feet came up behind me. I ran forward, not wanting to get stabbed again, and tripped over a taut line set at ankle height. I went down hard, landing on my chest. I clambered to my hands and knees before the girl giggled again and stabbed me in the left side.

I cried out and swung a hand backward, but she was already gone.

They were fucking with me. They had this whole thing set up for maximum entertainment. The board. The light. The tripwire.

It was all there on purpose.

Who knows what else they had waiting up ahead in this damn tunnel.

Rage roiled inside me, driven by the pain of the stab wounds and the broken nose and the sliced arm. And by the humiliation.

They were fucking with me. Well, I wasn’t going to keep playing. Fuck that. They could kill me if they wanted, but I wasn’t about to let them draw it out for the sheer joy of it.

I settled into a crouch against the wall and waited. I would force them to make the next move. Either kill me or try to make me keep going. I had a good idea of what it would be.

“Better keep on going,” the man said from somewhere behind me. His voice bounced crazily off the walls. “You might even make it out. If you’re lucky.”

“Fuck you,” I said. “Come get me.”

“Such a tough guy.” the man said. “That’s why I usually go for women. They’re smarter. They keep going. But you …”

“I’m right here,” I said. “Either kill me or let me go. I’ve had enough of this shit.”

There was silence for a long moment. Then whispering. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I was pretty sure the guy was talking to his daughter — or whatever she was to him.

This continued for the better part of a minute. My eyes were slowly adjusting again, getting over the shock of the bright light, which was probably on a motion sensor.

Suddenly, that same pain-filled scream I’d heard earlier erupted in the tunnel. I jumped at the scream, looking to my left down the dark tunnel.

“Okay, okay,” the man said. “I’ll take care of it.”

It suddenly clicked. The screaming I’d heard earlier wasn’t a victim. It was the little girl, throwing a fit. Screaming so she could get what she wanted.

“In-fucking-sane,” I said under my breath.

A beam of light suddenly cut down the tunnel and directly into my face. It wasn’t the same one from earlier. This was a flashlight. The man was trying to kill my night vision again so he could come deal with me. So he could get me to play the little game.

I turned my head away, and he switched the flashlight off. But that didn’t make sense to me. Wouldn’t turning on the light like that have damaged his night vision, too?

Earlier, when I approached the other light, he could’ve shut his eyes and turned away. Maybe that’s what he did this time. Or maybe he had a way to see in the dark.

I listened hard as he approached. He stopped nearby, likely on the other side of the tripwire, and spoke. “I will get you to keep going. Whether I break an arm or take a finger off is up to you. But you will keep going. You will.”

I held out my left hand toward him. “Pick whichever finger you like. Hell, take them all,” I said.

“You little—”

I heard the whoosh of the bat and pulled my arm away just an instant before it cracked off the wall with a sound like a major leaguer hitting a home run. I shot my arm back out again, grabbing the bat off the rebound and yanking it toward me.

The man didn’t let go. Not at first.

I pulled him off balance and he stumbled forward — and tripped over the wire. He let go of the bat to catch himself. I reversed it quickly, slamming it down where I thought he landed.

The bat connected with flesh, making a satisfying crunching sound. The little girl started screaming again as I brought the bat down repeatedly on the man’s body.

He reached out and grabbed one of my legs with a hand, and I adjusted, hitting him in the arm and knocking his hand aside.

Then I reached down and felt around his head. There it was. A night vision device, on the ground near his head. It must’ve come off when he fell or when I hit him.

I dropped the bat to pull on the device. The tunnel came to life in shades of green and white.

The little girl filled my vision as she lunged forward, catching me in the neck with the old-fashioned razor blade.

Warmth poured down my chest as I brought one hand to the wound. I dodged her next attack and kicked her back, sending her falling onto the man.

Then I was up and running the other way, keeping my right hand pressed to the wound on my neck. I’d left the bat behind in my panic.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever. I felt myself growing weaker by the second, but I kept my legs churning. There were more traps, all of them designed to slow a person down but not do much damage. The damage, I knew, was supposed to come from the girl. Little by little. Like ripping apart a doll, piece by piece.

Finally, I saw an end to the hellish tunnel. There was a short staircase leading up to a set of double doors like you see outside of some houses. The kinds that lead to cellars.

Glancing back, I saw the little girl gaining on me. Her mouth was set in a toothy scowl, her eyes filled with hate like I’d never seen before from any child. She still had both her weapons, and I knew she was determined to use them.

I pushed on the doors with my left hand, my blood still seeping through the fingers of my right. The doors opened, to my surprise. They weren’t locked from the outside. I doubted anyone had gotten this far. By the time they came to the end of the tunnel, they were probably on their last legs.

Of course, I wasn’t much better off. My legs were impossibly heavy as I stepped out of the tunnel and into the dark forest. I thought about turning to fight my assailant. After all, she was just a little girl. But in my weakened state, I wasn’t sure I could succeed.

So I ran, hearing the patter of her feet coming up the concrete stairs behind me.

Lurching through the trees, I looked for a road. Or for some sign of civilization.

I forced my legs to keep moving, knowing that for every stride I took, the girl would have to take two.

My vision was dimming as I came to a small clearing in the woods. Breathing heavily, I had to stop for a moment. I still had the night-vision device on, so I swept my head around, looking for the girl.

She was nowhere to be seen.

Maybe she’d given up and gone back to help the man.

The faint sound of a car engine came to my ears from up ahead. I turned my head that way, looking through the trees and seeing the faint glow of far-off headlights.

Trudging forward on heavy legs, I made it to the other side of the clearing, seeing the distant ribbon of road ahead.

A smile touched my face as I continued on.

Thankfully, the car was going slowly on the country road. It was still a good fifty yards away when I scrambled up onto the road, waving my left hand. “Help!” I called out, but without much force.

I suddenly realized how I must look with the night vision goggles on, so I ripped them off and tossed them down. The car slowed to a stop about fifteen yards from me. I couldn’t see what kind of car it was or even how many people were inside, thanks to the bright headlights.

Overcome with relief, I dropped to my knees in the traffic lane, the beginnings of a sob starting in my throat.

That was when I heard the slap of bare feet on asphalt. I turned to see the girl mere feet away, moving fast. She growled like a wild animal as she jumped at me, swinging the razor blade for a killing strike.

I put my left hand up to ward off the blow, catching the blade in my fist. The sharp metal cut into my fingers, but I kept hold of it, pulling it out of the girl’s hand as I fell onto my back.

But she still had the knife.

She screamed that awful scream and lunged for me, leading with the knife. I raised my right hand from my neck wound, but I was too weak. I’d lost too much blood. This was it.

A booming gunshot sounded, and the girl collapsed on top of me, the knife cutting limply across my chest, barely breaking the skin.

I threw her off in a panic, not sure what had happened. But as I scrambled away from her, I noticed the gunshot wound in her back.

“Kurt?” my mom said. “Are you okay?”

My eyes went wide at the sound of her voice. I turned to see her standing behind the open driver’s side door, the backsplash from the headlights providing just enough illumination that I could make out her familiar features.

“Mom?” I said, a dreamlike state of unreality settling on me as my eyelids grew heavy. “How?”

Before she could answer, I lost consciousness.

***

When I started delivering food for a living several years ago, my mother made me promise to download one of those phone tracking apps.

I’d completely forgotten about it until she reminded me after I got out of surgery at the hospital.

“I knew something was wrong when you didn’t respond to my text after an hour,” she told me, sitting beside my bed in the hospital room.

It was true. I always made it a point to respond to her messages as quickly as I could.

“I was watching the tracking app on my phone when the little dot suddenly disappeared,” she said. “So I called the police and then started driving around in that area, seeing if I could spot your car.”

“I guess I’m lucky you were having a good night,” I said, even though talking hurt my throat.

She smiled. “Not too much shaking last night, that’s true. But when I shot that woman, I was so scared I’d hit you instead.”

“Well, you didn’t,” I said. “Wait, what woman? You mean the little girl?”

My mom shook her head. “That wasn’t a little girl,” she said. “The police told me she was known to them. She’d been arrested before. She’s a thirty-three-year-old woman named Jane Turner. She had a rare condition that affected her pituitary gland, stunting her growth and making her look like a young girl.”

“You said ‘was’. I guess she’s dead?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” my mom said. “Turns out I’m still a pretty good shot.”

I managed a weak smile. “What about the man? Did the police find him?”

My mom’s brows came together as she cocked her head. “What man?” she said.

Some People Just Need to Die

Some people just need to die.

The words echo through my head as I drive, heading to meet the man I contracted through the dark web. Not much longer now. I’ll get there soon enough, and deal with whatever is waiting for me there.

Some people just need to die. Six simple words, but they’ve turned my world upside down.

I never thought of myself as a cruel person. I still don’t. But there are some things you just don’t do, some people you just don’t mess with.

Still … where’s the line to cross? How do you know it has been crossed? Who gets to make that decision?

These questions plague me as I head toward the meeting place.

It all started a little over a week ago when I got a call from my grandmother.

She was crying on the phone, talking about how someone stole all her money.

“Wait, just slow down, grandma,” I said. “Tell me what happened. Slowly.”

I work from home, so when she called, I got up from my desk so I could put my full attention on her phone call. She’s eighty-one years old, and she still lives with my grandfather, but like most other people who are up there in age, they have a hard time keeping up with the times.

I’d tried to tell them how to avoid scams on the internet, but it’s hard even for me to keep up with all the new ways scammers are stealing money from people. So when she said someone stole all their money, I immediately grew concerned.

“I got an email from my bank,” my grandma said. “At least, I thought it was from my bank. And it had a link inside, telling me to download the new banking app on my phone.”

Oh, no, I thought. Christ. “You downloaded it?” I asked.

“I thought it was really from my bank,” she said, sobbing. “So I downloaded it. But I didn’t do anything after that. It was not until today that I needed to check the balance. So I used the app I downloaded.”

“And they stole your information,” I said, a sinking feeling in my stomach. My mind started reeling. Could my wife and I afford to support them? How much did they get from Social Security? How much were their expenses?

Numbers started running through my head, and I knew that things were tight. Between our two young kids and our mortgage, I didn’t think it would be possible to support them. Not in any meaningful way.

“They took it all,” my grandma was saying, over and over again.

“How much did they take?” I asked, but grandma was inconsolable. I heard my grandpa’s gruff voice over the line, growling at her to give him the phone.

“Chase?” my grandpa said.

“Yeah, Grandpa. It’s me.”

“Look, listen,” he said. “Mary — your grandmother — she fell for one of those internet scams. She—”

“I know, Grandpa, she told me. Please, just tell me how much they took.”

My grandpa went silent for a moment. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

I wanted to say something, but that number just hung in my head. It was more than my house cost. It was probably supposed to last them the rest of their lives, including unexpected medical expenses — of which there would be some. There was no doubt in my mind. Both of them were pretty active and fairly healthy for their age, but it wouldn’t last. That’s just growing old. There’s no avoiding it.

“Have you contacted the authorities?” I asked. “How about your bank?”

“You and I both know there’s nothing they can do,” Grandpa said. “She was on the dark web when it happened.”

“What?” I said. “How? You can’t just accidentally get on the dark web. That’s not how it works. You know what? I’m coming over to take a look at this. I’ll be right there.”

I hung up the phone and got ready to head across town to their house, wondering how the hell my grandparents even knew about the dark web.

By the time I got there, I had convinced myself it was some kind of mistake. They’d transferred the money to another account or something. We’d get it back.

Before I could knock, my grandmother opened the front door of their nice little house in a small retirement community. She was still crying. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Grandma,” I said, giving her a hug. “Now let’s figure out what happened to your money.”

Grandma, a stooped woman with gray hair who still dressed up every day, even though she sat at home most of the time, led me into the house. Grandpa, a tall and thin man with a shock of white hair, sat in his recliner watching old Mash reruns. He looked up as I walked in, his eyes clear and bright behind his old-fashioned glasses. “Good of you to come, Chase,” he said. “But I’m afraid there’s not much you’ll be able to do.”

“Well, it’s worth a try,” I said, trying to stay positive. “Grandma, where’s your phone?”

Pressing a tissue to her nose and sniffling, Grandma brought me her phone, open to the email she’d gotten. It did look like a legitimate email. Everything was spelled right, the logo looked correct, and the message was professional. There was a button at the bottom of the email that said, “Download the new app.” I held my thumb on it until a box showing the link came up.

“It looks like this thing had you download a Tor browser from some third-party site,” I said. I closed the email app and told her to show me the icon on her phone she had used. It looked like a legitimate bank icon, sitting on her home screen, ready for use.

It was pretty sophisticated. I might have even fallen for it. Her bank must have been hacked recently, I thought, allowing these scammers to get the email addresses of the bank’s customers.

For such an operation, I was skeptical that the source of the email would lead to anything. It had probably been bounced around the world before landing in Grandma’s inbox.

I gave her the phone back and sighed. “So how long until this really starts affecting you? How much are your monthly expenses?”

Grandpa shook his head, still watching Alan Alda as Hawkeye cracking jokes on the television. “This is going to ruin us. We were living off that money.”

“What about Social Security?” I asked.

“It’s about enough for food, but it won’t pay the mortgage. We’ll have to sell the house,” he said. Grandma started bawling again.

“Maybe I can help,” I said. “Along with Mom and Dad.”

Grandpa laughed at that, and I knew he was right. My mother and father were probably worse off than they were now. They’d never been what you’d call “financially literate.”

“Well, I better call the police. Then you should call your bank,” I said.

Suddenly, Grandpa stood up from his chair, walking toward me with a conspiratorial look in his eyes. He placed an arm around my shoulders and said, “Come with me, Chase.”

“Don’t you put any ideas into his head, James,” Grandma said from where she sat on the edge of her recliner.

Grandpa ignored her, leading me into his little office.

“I’ve got another idea,” he said to me when we were inside the room with the door closed.

“For what?”

“For getting our money back.”

I looked hard at Grandpa and determined that he was of clear mind. He was as sharp as ever, minus forgetting a few minor things here and there. I decided to hear him out.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s your idea?”

He smiled at me and ran a hand through his shock of hair as he sat down at his computer. He held a passing resemblance to a much older Doc Brown from the Back To The Future movies.

I was surprised to see him open up a Tor browser on his laptop. He navigated quickly to a site on the dark web called White Hats for Hire.

“Look at this,” he said, clicking on one of the listings. It was a brief page claiming that one of their “White Hats” would recover stolen funds for a 20% cut — but only if the stolen funds totaled over $100,000.

There was no upfront charge, and if they couldn’t recover the funds, you didn’t pay.

The bottom of the listing, in small print, said something about delivering the guilty parties to you for an extra 10%.

“You’re kidding, right?” I said.

“Have you ever known me to kid about money, Chase?” Grandpa said, his voice a stern growl.

“Well, no. But this is crazy. This could be a honeypot — an FBI trap. Or it could be something else. I’m sure they’ll ask for your bank information to ‘find the money’ or some nonsense like that.”

“So? All the money’s gone. What are they going to do with an empty bank account? Besides, there’s nothing illegal about asking someone to find stolen money for you. It’s like hiring a private detective.”

I wasn’t so sure about that one, but I couldn’t think of any way to refute it. So I just stood next to him and read the listing again.

It really was tempting. No upfront costs. It wasn’t an obvious rip-off. Not that I could tell.

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, it’s your money. You’re welcome to try it, I guess.”

“I want to try it,” he said. “But I’d like you to handle the communication for me. You’re a young man with a finger to the pulse. You’ll be able to tell better than me if something seems off.”

I sighed. “If you really want me to try this, I will. But I get ultimate veto power. If it doesn’t seem right, then I’ll shut it all down, okay?”

“Fine,” he said, reaching out for a handshake.

“Okay. Give me a day to get some things in order, and then I’ll get this thing rolling.”

“And Chase,” Grandpa said. “I want whoever did this delivered to me. I’ll pay the extra ten percent.”

I was silent for a long moment, unsure whether I heard him right. “Are you sure? That’s going to be like $35,000.”

“I’ve done the math,” Grandpa said. “I know what it will cost. Please, just do it.”

“Uh . . Okay.”

I left their house that day both surprised at my grandpa and wondering what kind of world I’d just stumbled into. I’d never done anything serious on the dark web. In fact, it had been several years since I’d messed around on it at all. And back then, it was mostly out of curiosity. Now, I was going to hire someone to track down a good chunk of money stolen from my dear grandparents.

I stopped and bought a burner phone on the way home, setting up a new anonymous email account for communications with the White Hat who I’d hire.

The next day, I had Grandma forward me the email and her banking information, hoping that would be all they’d need to catch the people.

Getting the job set up was pretty easy. After I gave them the details, plus my new burner phone number and email address, the person on the website said they’d be in touch soon.

And that was it. I told my grandpa I had set everything up and then got back into my normal routine.

It was five days later that the burner phone chirped with a new message from a number I didn’t recognize: “I found your money. Ready to transfer it back. Do you want the perpetrators delivered to you for an extra 10%?”

I stared at the message, reading it several times in a row. What was my grandfather going to do to the person? Why did he want them delivered? I decided he was probably just angry when he’d told me he wanted them delivered the other day, so I called him to check.

“Good news,” I said when I had him on the phone. “I just got a message that they found your money. But you don’t really want the guy delivered to you, right?”

“Yes, Chase. I do. I’d like to look them in the eye. Ask them a few questions. Do you know that old warehouse off of Rigley? The one that used to host the swap meets?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know the place.”

“Tell them to deliver the guy there. It belongs to a friend of mine. He’s already given me permission.”

“Grandpa, you told people about this?” I asked.

“No, no. I told him I needed it for a little car project,” Grandpa said. “Just let me know when the White Hats deliver them there, will you?”

“Yes. Okay,” I said.

After hanging up, I picked up the burner phone and texted back, saying that we would like the person responsible delivered. I looked up the address and texted it over.

The response came a few minutes later: “Fine. It will take us two days to get there. They spent some of your money, so expect $232,545 in your account. That’s with our 30% taken out. Recommend moving the money out of the compromised account immediately.”

I thought it would be easy to say that the thief spent a little over $10,000 and keep it for themselves. Of course, it would also be easy to just keep it all for themselves. It was looking like this was a legitimate business and not some sort of scam.

About five minutes later, my grandpa called and told me that $232,545 had just shown up in the account. He told me that he moved it to a different account at a different bank and that my grandmother was overcome with joy. “You made her year, Chase,” he said. Then Grandma grabbed the phone away from Grandpa and thanked me about a dozen times for helping them.

Before I got off the phone, Grandpa got back on again and told me to call him when I got the word that they were at the warehouse.

“I will, Grandpa,” I told him. “He said two days. So I’ll call you then.”

“Good,” he said. “And Chase?”

“Yeah, Grandpa?”

“I know you probably don’t like this. I don’t like it either. But some people just need to die.”

My grandpa hung up. I took the phone down from my ear, staring at it as if it could give me some insight into this person I thought I knew so well. “Some people just need to die?” I whispered to myself.

Now, as I drive to the warehouse, the words are still rattling around in my head. My grandpa is on his way to meet me there. But as I draw closer, I can’t help but think that I’m on my way to witness a murder.

I’ll admit that I was filled with anger when I first learned that someone had stolen my grandparents’ life savings. But does that deserve a death sentence?

I pull up outside the warehouse, and my grandpa pulls up next to me. I get out of my car, noticing the windowless van parked nearby. A man in a white mask gets out of the driver’s side. Another one gets out of the passenger’s side. They both head around to the back of the van and open it. The back doors are facing the warehouse, by design, I’m sure.

By now my grandpa has parked and gotten out of his car. He walks up to the door, unlocking it with a key his friend gave him.

I look around. We’re in a tucked-away area, which is probably one reason why the warehouse is vacant — not a lot of traffic. A couple of cars drive by on the street, but they’re far enough away that they probably can’t see much of what’s going on.

The two guys in the white masks pull two people with black hoods over their heads out of the van. Although I can’t see their faces, I can tell by their clothes that it’s a man and woman. Grandpa holds the door open while the two masked men shove the two people into the warehouse.

Pretty soon, I find that I’m standing alone in the parking lot. I have to force myself to go inside, locking the door behind me.

There are two metal chairs set up in the middle of the warehouse near a table with some tools on it. The men in white masks are using ropes to tie the man and woman to the chairs. When they’re done, they stand up and look at my grandpa.

“These two run a hacker house in Russia,” one of the masked men says in an English accent. “They’re not the ones who actually sent the email, but it’s their operation.”

“Who was it that actually sent the email?” Grandpa says.

“Let’s just say that getting these two was a messy operation. The entire hacker house is gone, along with most of the hackers. Those that are still around won’t be in any shape to steal from anyone.”

My grandpa nods. “I appreciate your service, gentlemen,” he says. “You can go now.”

“Tell your friends about us,” the man says.

“I will,” Grandpa says. “I will.”

The two masked men leave, and I make sure to lock the door behind them. I watch as they pull out of the parking lot and fade off into the distance.

Turning back around, I see that my grandpa has removed the black hoods from the two hackers. They’re a couple of middle-aged Russians, both of them sobbing and pleading in broken English.

“Please, sir. We have family. We support family. We are sorry for your money. Please.”

My grandpa picks up a ball-peen hammer from the table, hefting it in his hand. He suddenly swings it down, smashing it into the man’s left kneecap. The sound of the bone breaking echoes around the warehouse, followed closely by the man screaming.

“Oh, my God,” I whisper.

My grandpa turns and looks over his shoulder at me. “Chase,” he says, as if he forgot I was here. “I’m sorry. You can go now, too. You don’t need to see this. I just wanted you here in case those men tried anything funny.”

As he’s speaking to me, the Russian man is still screaming, making my grandfather’s words hard to decipher.

“Shut up!” Grandpa yells, smacking the man in the jaw with the hammer. The Russian spits up blood and several teeth. But he’s no longer wailing.

“You don’t need to see this,” Grandpa says to me. “Just remember what I told you.”

I nod numbly. “Some people just need to die,” I say.

“That’s right. Who knows how many lives these people have ruined. We’re doing a good thing here.”

“Okay,” I say, turning toward the door.

“Oh, and Chase?”

“Yeah?”

“Not a word to your grandmother about this,” he says, winking.

I nod again and unlock the door, stepping outside. As the door swings shut behind me, the screaming starts up again.

New Friends

Her laugh is so loud and forceful that it almost sounds like a scream at its highest, just before she sucks in another breath to laugh some more. The rest of the people on the bus are laughing, too, but no laugh stands out as much as hers.

I stand in the aisle, smiling at all the people around me, letting their laughter wash over me. I focus on the sound as much as I can, but not to the exception of all else — and especially not to the exception of the item in my hand. It’s important, I know. Precious. It is everything.

The landscape passes outside in a slow blur as the bus continues on its way, turning this way and that.

I feel the vehicle slow slightly, and then turn to look at the driver. I skip up the bus’s aisle like a child, watching as the driver’s eyes shift from the road to the narrow mirror above his head. Our eyes meet in that strip of reflective glass, and I can see the crow’s feet punctuating each eye become more pronounced as he smiles. Behind me, the laughter dies down to nothing.

“Everything okay, Dale?” I ask him, leaning down and talking to him like we’re old friends. We are old friends, aren’t we? It’s amazing how fast you can become pals with someone while traveling. Just amazing.

“Why, yes sir, everything’s fine,” he says, half-turning to look at me without using the mirror.

“Call me Slick,” I say. I’ve always liked the name Slick, although no one has ever called me it before. Not until I got on this bus and started telling people that was my nickname. That’s another thing about traveling: you can be whoever you want to be.

To these people, I’ve been Slick all my life. I’m a confident, charismatic, and downright funny guy. Yes, I am.

“Okay, Slick,” he says. “Everything’s hunky-dory.”

I throw my head back and laugh. A few of the people around us at the front of the bus laugh, too.

“That’s good,” I say. “Did you just make that up? ‘Hunky-dory.’ I like that.”

Dale smiles, but he doesn’t answer. It doesn’t matter. We’re having a good time.

I look out the windshield, at the landscape drenched in bright afternoon sunlight, and see a curve in the road coming up. I see a police car parked by the side of the road and a sudden darkness sweeps over me.

No. Best not to think about those things. Best to keep my attention here, inside the bus. My new friends are here. The passing landscape doesn’t matter. Not right now.

As I look back at Dale, I notice his eyes dart back up to my face. He was looking at my hand. No. He was looking at the object in my hand.

I suddenly feel that he wants to take it from me. But he can’t. He wouldn’t dare. Not driver Dale, my friend.

I remember back when I first met Dale. Must have been several hundred miles ago now, at the little Greyhound station in Flagstaff, Arizona. Or was it after that? Did I transfer to this bus later on? Maybe in Albuquerque? Or Colorado Springs? Surely it wasn’t Denver.

How long have I been riding these buses? It seems like I started in winter, but here it is summer. That can’t be right.

When I first met Dale — whether it was winter or spring or summer doesn’t matter — he checked my ticket and asked me with a smile where I was going. “Wherever you take me, I guess. You’re the driver,” I said. He laughed at that.

Not enough people laugh these days.

As he laughed, I got the idea that he liked his job. I mean, what’s not to like about traveling all over the country in a big old bus, taking people where they need to go?

But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Poor old Dale had to deal with a rabble-rouser on that first leg, if I’m remembering correctly. Yes. It was Dale.

There was a man that had clearly brought his own alcohol on the bus with him. You’re not supposed to do that.

And in the early hours of the morning, the man had started shouting nonsense, waking everyone up.

“You better calm yourself down, sir, or you’re going to be off my bus!” Dale called back from his position of power at the front of the bus.

“It’s a free country!” the drunk man had shouted back. “I can do whatever I please on your bus. I paid for my ticket, you son of a bitch.”

I had watched this exchange with some interest, seeing Dale look hard at the man with the help of the mirror. But Dale didn’t say anything more. He just kept driving.

“That’s what I thought, you pussy!” the drunk man called out.

Now, I like Dale. Even back then, before we really got to know each other, I liked him.

We stopped for a short break in Santa Fe, letting two passengers off. And when I got off the bus to stretch my legs, I saw Dale and the drunk man arguing.

“The next outburst from you, and I’ll pull over and kick you off my bus, understand?” Dale said.

The man just laughed in his face. “Sure, gramps,” he said, then sauntered off to the restroom.

I wanted to see if Dale was okay, but I thought better of it. Instead, I followed the drunk man into the bathroom and slit his throat with my pocket knife. I left his body locked in a stall and got back on the bus. I’d been lucky, really; there was no one in the bathroom, so it made things easier.

Now, as I stand at the front of the swaying bus next to Dale, I recall the favor I did for him. He doesn’t know about it, I realize. Maybe he wouldn’t want to take what’s mine if he did.

“Dale,” I say in a whisper, getting closer to him.

“What is it, Slick?” he says.

“You remember that guy that was causing a scene on the bus early this morning? The drunk guy?”

Dale nods, eyes on the road.

“Did you ever wonder why he didn’t get back on the bus?”

Dale shrugs. “I guess I just figured he passed out in the bathroom. That happens sometimes with the drunks and the druggies.”

I shake my head, struggling to contain my excitement. “Nope. It was me. I did it. I got him for you.”

Dale swallows hard, still keeping his eyes fixed on the road. “You … got him?” he says.

“Yes. I got him. For you. I got your back,” I say, slapping him on the shoulder with my free hand.

I stand up and turn around, seeing Joey standing in the aisle about fifteen feet behind me. “What are you doing, Joey?” I say. “Sit down.”

“My name’s not Joey,” he says, but his girlfriend or wife or whatever she is reaches out and pulls him back into his seat.

“No?” I say, heading back to him. Every pair of eyes on the nearly full bus follows me. “What’s your name?”

“Jarron,” he says. His girlfriend or whatever looks out the window. I think she’s crying.

“What did you do to her?” I ask. “Are you abusive to your wife, Jarron? Goddammit, I hate—”

“I’m not abusive and she’s not my wife,” Jarron says in a menacing tone. “She’s my sister. And you’re scaring her.”

“Me? How am I scaring her? I thought everyone was having a good time! Isn’t everyone having a good time?”

Everyone on the bus — besides Jarron and his sister — starts laughing again. And again, I hear the woman’s shrill yet charming laughter from where she sits toward the back of the bus.

I head back toward her, smiling my best smile. She really is very pretty. And that laugh!

She sees me coming and laughs even louder, but the sound changes. Now it sounds kind of desperate. It sounds fake.

Suddenly, I realize that all the laughter sounds fake. I freeze where I am in the aisle, looking around at the people. They’re laughing and smiling, but the smiles don’t reach their eyes.

“What’s wrong with you people!?” I scream, swinging around, trying to look at everyone at once. People flinch back as the gun in my hand sweeps over them. It’s just a gun, I realize with a sadness that seems to go on forever. Just a gun. But I’ve known that the whole time, haven’t I?

“You were all doing so well,” I say, bending down to look out the windows. There are about a dozen police cars surrounding the race track we’ve been circling for at least an hour. Why did I let Dale take us here? Why did I let the policeman on the phone talk me into it? He’d been so nice. But he’s really not nice.

I’m at a loss for what to do. I’ve always acted on impulse, never having much of a plan or a thought about consequences. It’s probably why I decided to pick up this gun in the first place.

It clattered to the floor of the bathroom stall in that little no-name town. It had been in the drunk man’s waistband or pocket, and he’d grabbed for it as I jammed my pocketknife into the side of his neck and then dragged it across his throat. By the time he got the gun in his hands, it was too late. The blood left his body in powerful jets, as if it had been waiting to escape for years. I was lucky to only get it on my hands.

When the man was dead, I sat him on the toilet and leaned him back, trying not to smear the blood dripping down the dirty walls. Then I stood there for a long moment, staring at that gun on the floor. I knew the power it held. More power even than the knife I still clutched in my hand.

I had an idea of what I could accomplish with it, even if it was a vague idea.

What’s that saying? One man’s trash is another man’s treasure?

That’s what I felt when I saw the gun. Like it was a treasure. Although I wasn’t really sure why. I’m still not. Things like that are hard for me to see, sometimes.

“Don’t kill us, please,” the woman with the shrill laugh says, tears spilling down her face.

“Kill you?” I say, bringing my attention from the police cars outside, and the police officers arrayed behind them, many of them with guns fixed on the bus.

“Honestly, I don’t even know if this thing works,” I say, pulling the trigger. The gun jumps in my hand, the shot hurting my ears. The back of a man’s head blows apart from the bullet, splattering brain, blood, and bits of skull on the nearby people.

Everyone screams, cowering in their seats.

“Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know it—”

Dale slams on the brakes, sending me backpedaling down the aisle toward the front of the bus. Jarron sticks his foot out to trip me, but I reach out and grab the seatbacks on either side of the aisle, arresting my fall.

The bus comes to a full stop.

One of the bus windows to my right splinters, and something knocks the breath out of me. I stumble, using the seatbacks to hold myself up once again.

“Wow,” I say, turning around to see all the blood splashed on the windows behind me. It’s my blood.

I lean down to look out the window, seeing if I can spot the sniper who shot me.

I think I see him. “You’re good,” I say, drunkenly. The last thing I see is a muzzle flash as the sniper takes his second shot.

House of Horrors

“See? I told you,” Mike says. “Right on time.”

I nod, keeping my eyes on the headlights as they pause at the end of the driveway. Then they swing out onto the winding woodland road, heading away from us.

Mike and I sit in the woods across the road and down about thirty yards from the driveway. The thick bushes and the cover of darkness make it impossible for anyone to see us unless they’re looking.

Our truck is parked a mile down the road on a seldom used turnout. It’s probably a driveway that never got finished, because it leads a little way into the woods and just stops.

Each time we’ve come up here to case the house, we’ve used the turnout. And we’ve used darkness and the woods to our advantage, walking the mile up here in the woods parallel to the road, even if it meant slow going. It isn’t our first home robbery. And, hopefully, it won’t be our last.

We can’t see the house from where we are, but that’s okay. We’re here to make sure they leave. We’ve already spent hours watching the house from the surrounding woods, making certain that it will be worth our trouble.

We sit in the woods for another ten minutes, giving the owners enough time to come back, in case they forgot something. When they don’t, we grab our backpacks and head across the road.

The house is massive. It’s a combination of a mansion and a cabin. Three stories, made out of lots of wood and glass, with a stepped roof and a wraparound porch made out of finished logs. We know it has an alarm system, but they never use it. Each time we watched them leave the house, they walked right past the keypad on the wall and out the door.

And we even tested the theory one night, picking the lock on the front door and opening it, then waiting in the woods to see if the cops showed up. They didn’t.

We could’ve gone in and taken everything that night, but we still didn’t know their schedule well enough. And our golden rule is we never do a robbery when people are home or may come home. That’s when things get messy.

Mike works on the front door while I keep watch. It doesn’t take him long to unlock it.

We step inside and check the alarm keypad. Nothing. Of course, it wouldn’t tell us anything if it were a silent alarm. Still, it’s a chance we have to take.

I close the door behind me and turn away. I hear a soft clicking sound and turn around to make sure the door is closed. By the time I lay eyes on the door again, the sound is gone. It was just for a split second.

“Did you hear that?” I whisper. We’re still not totally sure there’s no one home. And we’ll be quiet until we check all the rooms.

“Hear what?” Mike says, putting away his lock-picking kit.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

The inside of the house is immaculate. The cabin motif continues, but it’s more of a modern look than a rustic one. Rich hardwoods make up the walls and floors, giving the place a comforting feel, but everything also seems kind of sterile. Like people don’t even live here. It’s a strange combination.

“I’ll go down, you go up,” Mike says. I nod, and we move off into the house. I haven’t even stepped on the stairs yet when Mike shouts from behind me.

I head toward the sound, fearing the worst, which would be a man with a big gun. I turn the corner and see Mike standing in front of a closed door, looking down at his latex-gloved hand. His palm has been cut open.

“What the hell happened?” I ask, seeing that it’s a fairly deep cut.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Alls I did is touch the damn doorknob.”

“What?” I say, bending down to inspect the knob for a jagged piece of metal. It’s not a smooth, one-piece doorknob. It’s got lines and designs in it, making it look fancy, but I see nothing sharp. “You gonna be okay?” I ask. “You want to go get stitches or something?”

“No way,” he says, taking his backpack off. “Just grab me my spare shirt out of there.”

I dig around in his backpack, pulling out a t-shirt and handing it to him. He rips a strip off of it and wraps it around his hand. “My favorite shirt,” he says, shaking his head.

I help him bind the cloth around the cut.

“You want me to open the door for you?” I ask with a smile.

“Fuck off,” he says, using his other hand to open the door without any issues.

I laugh, heading back over to go upstairs. I get to the stairwell, taking two steps before a terrible pain erupts on the outside of my right foot. I scream, looking down to see that my two little toes on that foot have been chopped off, along with that portion of my shoe.

“What the fuck?” I yell, stepping back and then falling on my ass at the bottom of the stairs. I grab my foot in both hands, looking in shock at the bloody nubs there.

Mike appears at a jog from around the corner, stopping short when he sees my toes on the second stair.

“There was nothing there,” I say. “I didn’t see anything.”

Suddenly, a little panel on the face of the bottom stair opens up. Out comes a knife and a little torch on mechanical arms. The torch clicks, lighting automatically, its blue-white flame heating the top three inches of the knife to an orange glow.

“What the hell is this shit?” Mike says, looking around.

“Should I use it?” I ask, clenching my jaw against the pain. My foot’s still bleeding like a bitch.

“I don’t know, man,” he says. “We’re pretty far from a hospital.”

I growl, reaching forward to yank the knife from its little arm. I put the orange tip to my bloody nubs, screaming as it burns the flesh there, cauterizing the wound. I slam the knife down on the floor, cursing.

Mike heads back toward the front door. He reappears a moment later. “I can’t unlock it,” he says. “It’s stuck or something.”

I think of the little click I heard just after I closed the door.

“Who told you about this place again?” I ask him.

“That guy Caesar.”

“And how did he hear about it?”

“I don’t know, man,” Mike says. “I don’t ask him where he gets his information. Alls he said is that they had a bunch of jewels and shit here.”

“Jesus. This is a fuckin’ setup man,”

“No way. How could it be? I mean, why?” Mike says.

“I don’t know, but normal houses don’t cut your fucking toes off when you walk up the stairs. Or give you the tools to cauterize the wound afterward!”

“Alright, alright, I get it. We just need to get out of here, that’s all.”

“Funny,” I say, adrenaline building up in my bloodstream. “I just thought you were a little bitch for getting cut on the doorknob. Turns out this place is deadly!”

I laugh shakily, but it’s clear that Mike doesn’t find it nearly as funny as I do. He walks gingerly away from the staircase, toward a doorway that leads to the kitchen. I can see the sink and some cabinets from where I sit on the floor, still clutching my foot.

He places one hand against the doorjamb, leaning cautiously into the kitchen to look around. In the blink of an eye, something shoots out of the other side of the doorjamb — something shiny and metal and … sharp.

Mike senses this movement and pulls his head back just in time, but he doesn’t get his hand out of the way, and the door-size blade slams into the appendage, slicing his hand in half just behind the four fingers.

He stumbles back, mouth and eyes wide, staring down at his bloody half-hand.

“Mike!” I scream at him. He’s backing up right into me, and I’m trying to get him to stop. But he doesn’t. He’s too focused on his gruesome injury. I squirm to move out of his way, still screaming his name, but I can’t move fast enough. He trips over me and falls butt-first onto the second stair. I hear the low hum of the saw mechanism as it comes out of its hidden panel. But the sound that’s more apparent is the wet rending of flesh as the blade rips into Mike’s ass.

He screams, writhing on the stairs. Somehow, he stands up, limping and bleeding severely from his two major wounds. He walks a few paces, blood pouring out of him as if he’s a broken faucet, then falls flat on his face.

“Oh fuck,” is all I can think to say. “Mike? Mike?”

Mike’s dead. Or if he’s not, he will be soon. But I’m not, and I’m still trapped in this death house.

I sit on the floor, unmoving for a long time, thinking. The front door is locked. The kitchen is a no-go. In fact, going through any doorway is probably a bad idea.

Finally, I come up with a plan. It’s not a good one, but it’s all I’ve got.

I crawl over to Mike’s body. I try to drag him toward the stairs, but he’s just too heavy. I can barely move him, and I certainly won’t be able to take him up the stairs, using him as a test dummy of sorts to locate all the traps.

So instead of using his whole body, I decide to do the next best thing: use his leg. The saw that came out of the stairs already did most of the work for me, slicing deep into the back of his right thigh. Luckily, I still have the cauterizing knife nearby. It takes me about an hour and two vomiting spells to get Mike’s leg off.

Using his leg as a tester, I find that three different stairs have hidden blades in them. At the top of the stairs, a dart shoots out of the banister and into Mike’s leg. I probably would’ve fallen backward down the stairs if I’d been hit with the dart. And that would’ve been it.

There’s a wide-open room at the top of the stairs with windows facing a sloping awning over the wraparound porch outside. I’m amazed to find one window that opens onto the roof. I take Mike’s leg with me, testing the steps ahead of me as I move toward the edge of the roof. Below me there’s the well-kept lawn of the backyard. If I can just make it down there, I’ll be home free.

It’s about a ten-foot drop. No problem. I leave Mike’s leg on the roof; I have no more need for it.

I think about how I’ll land to try and protect my wounded foot. There’s no way around it: I’ll just have to grin and bear it, using both feet to break my fall.

“Here we go,” I say to myself, sitting down and hanging my legs off the edge. The pain in my injured foot is immense as I land on the lawn feet-first, then roll forward to dissipate the force. I come to rest on my back on the lawn, looking up through the gap in the trees at the night sky.

I almost want to laugh, but can’t bring myself to do it.

Little pinpricks of pain erupt in my shoulders and my butt. I scramble up and look down at the lawn to see sharp metal spikes coming slowly up through the grass. They’re placed evenly at two-inch intervals; a blanket of spikes covering the whole lawn.

I turn to run, stepping forward and impaling my foot in several places on the emerging spikes. I scream out, pulling my other foot forward as spikes dig up through my feet. There’s nothing I can do but try to run, but I know it won’t get me anywhere; it’s a good fifteen feet to the edge of the lawn.

Still, I step forward, trying and failing to put my toes down on the little bit of grass between four spikes. They’re about three inches up now, and they keep coming. I feel my balance teetering, and the realization that I’m about to fall forward is even more terrifying than the pain in my back foot.

I yank my back foot off its spikes, tearing gaping holes in the already injured appendage. I swing it forward wildly, trying to keep myself from falling. But it doesn’t work. The toes I have left get caught on a spike and I tumble forward, putting out my hands to break my fall.

As the spikes pierce my hands, I feel as if they belong to someone else. These aren’t my hands. They can’t be.

My knees come down on other spikes and the pain there is so great that I vomit.

The spikes keep coming up, stabbing into my thighs and my upper arms and my chest. They tear through my flesh, the currents of pain causing me to convulse. I turn my head and wait; I can’t watch the spikes come at my face. I just can’t.

I hear a humming above me, and I look up to see a drone flying low over me, a camera lens fixed on my impaled figure. Suddenly I understand that this whole place is for someone’s sick entertainment.

As I feel the spikes press against my left cheek, my temple, my ear, piercing the skin, I wonder how much Caesar got paid to send us to this house of horrors.

They Come From Below

I’m tempted to pull my phone out again. To use it for illumination in the dark underground tunnel. But I don’t. Not yet.

I can see well enough to watch the man as he walks stiffly down the tunnel. I follow along, seeing where he goes.

Something skitters in the tunnel ahead. I glance past the man, into the impenetrable darkness ahead. I see nothing. I tell myself it’s just rats, but there’s an unmistakable doubt creeping into my mind. We’re not alone down here. Something is there, just beyond the bounds of my vision.

Maybe they aren’t just rumors. Maybe people really are disappearing down here. Maybe lots of them.

The man I know as Ted slows and then stops as he approaches a mound of bricks piled against a spot on the left side of the tunnel. I stay back, watching. He gets down on his hands and knees and starts moving bricks out of the way.

Soon, I see that there’s a hole in the wall. It was hidden by the bricks.

When he’s cleared the hole enough, Ted crawls inside.

Something moves in the darkness down the tunnel.

Somehow, I know the friend I’m looking for is through the hole. What I don’t know is if he’s alive or not.

I move up to the hole and glance in. I can’t see anything. So I pull out my simple flip phone and open it, shining the pale blue light into the hole.

I see the soles of Ted’s shoes as he moves through the narrow, irregular tunnel. The stench of rotting flesh invades my nostrils. And before I can talk myself out of it, I crawl in, determined to find my friend.

***

Pulling my tattered coat tight with one hand, I use the other to press the button on the call box. While I wait for a response, I hug myself tight against the frigid breeze that kicks up long-dead leaves from the sidewalk and gutters.

“Yes? Who is it?” a man’s voice says. I depress the call button. “It’s Jayron,” I say. “Can I please come up? I have some news.”

The several long moments of silence speak volumes. I had a fifty-fifty chance of getting Layton when I called up. Luck wasn’t in my favor. But all is not lost.

“Jayron,” the voice says, the tone one of quiet exasperation, “it’s ten o’clock at night. We’ve been over this before. You had your chance here. Now it’s time to find your own way.”

“I got a job,” I say once I’m sure Tim is done talking. “No shit, I got a job.”

“Where?” Tim asks.

“Can I come up, please? I want to talk to you both about it.”

There’s more silence. I can picture Tim and Layton standing next to the intercom in their hallway, arguing. Layton for letting me up. Tim against. Some things never change.

Finally, the telltale buzz sounds at the door. I smile and grab the handle, opening the door and stepping into the warmth of the lobby.

My friend’s apartment is on the fourth floor. I take the stairs. I don’t want to get into an elevator with anyone. I know how bad I smell.

The door is already cracked when I come to it. I push it open and step inside. “Hello!” I say, shutting it behind me.

Layton comes out of the living room. “Hey, Jay,” he says, smiling sadly. He goes in for a hug, but I stop him.

“I stink,” I say. “And I’m dirty.”

Layton can’t hide the relief on his face. I try not to take it personally. “You got a job?” he asks.

“I did,” I say, smiling. Then I look around for Layton’s husband. “Does Tim want to hear this?” I ask.

Layton waves a dismissive hand. “He’s getting ready for bed. Here, let’s go into the kitchen. Are you hungry?”

I give him a look.

“Stupid question, I guess,” he says, turning to lead the way.

Two minutes later, I’m sitting at the dining room table with a bowl of grapes, strawberries, and blueberries in front of me. I’ve washed my hands and I’m scarfing down the fruit. One thing about being homeless is you don’t often get berries. Apples, sometimes. Bananas, occasionally. But berries don’t make their way into the food banks much. I savor each bite before gulping it down.

“It’s a stocking job at that grocery store on 4th,” I tell Layton, who sits across from me. He’s wearing sweatpants and a lightweight hooded sweatshirt. He looks comfortable and clean and very much the man I’ve known for nearly twenty years. “It’s only part-time, but it’s a start. I’m lucky to get it, in this economy.”

“That’s great, Jay,” he says. “I’m glad to hear it. When do you start?”

“That’s the thing. That’s why I’m here. I start tomorrow. And I need to show up clean and ready to work bright and early. I was hoping you could help me out?”

Layton’s eyes flick toward the hallway. Toward where Tim is on the other side of the apartment. “I don’t know, Jay. We discussed this last time you were here, remember?”

“I know I overstayed my welcome. I know that. And I’m sorry. But I was out looking for jobs almost every day. You know that.”

“Not every day. Some days you were out getting drunk,” he says.

“It’s true. But I’m done with that,” I tell him. “I haven’t had a drink in two weeks. Not one sip. I swear to you. But if I don’t find a way to shower and get a fresh change of clothes, the job won’t be mine anymore. The guy made that very clear when I interviewed today.”

“You interviewed looking like this?” Layton says, shocked.

I nod. “The hiring manager knows Father Flannigan, and he knew I’d be showing up like this. But I assured him I could show up clean tomorrow. I assured him because I knew my old friend Layton would help me out one more time.”

“Why didn’t you go to one of the shelters tonight? You could’ve gotten a shower and a change at any one of them.”

I push the bowl of fruit aside as I lean toward my old friend. “The interview was at 7:30. You have to be in line at those places before eight to even have any hope of getting in. There was no way I could’ve made it. I didn’t leave the grocery store until ten after.”

Layton studies me, then nods. “Just one night,” he says. “One night.”

“Thank you so much. This means so much to me. I will pay you back for everything when I get back on my feet. Everything.”

Layton smiles, leaning back in his chair. “You really haven’t had a drink in two weeks?”

“Swear to God,” I say, placing a hand over my heart. Then I look back over my shoulder, making sure Tim isn’t hanging around. Turning back to Layton, I say, “You won’t have to sleep on the couch for letting me stay tonight, will you?”

“You’re going to be sleeping on the couch,” Layton says with a smile. “I’ll be sleeping on the floor, probably.”

I smile. I’ve never really liked Tim, but Layton loves him, so I can’t really say much. They are a good couple, even if they’re opposites in many ways.

Suddenly, a ringtone sounds from my coat pocket.

“When did you get a phone?” Layton asks.

“Last week,” I say, reaching into my pocket to grab the simple flip phone. “Father Flannigan said he’d pay for it for a couple of months while I get on my feet.”

I don’t recognize the number. Then again, I haven’t put many numbers in the phone yet. No need. But I answer it anyway.

“Hello?”

“Jayron?” a familiar voice says. “It’s Suzy.”

She’s one of the small group of homeless people I’ve been kicking around with for a few months. We look out for each other. She sounds stressed.

“Hey, Suz. What’s going on?”

“It’s Darren. We can’t find Darren.”

My throat thickens at those six words. “What do you mean? Who was with him last?”

“I was last night, but when I woke up, he was gone. I figured he’d turn up at the Arc or St. Christopher’s, but he never did. Do you know where he’d go?”

“He’s been missing all day?” I say, nearly shouting. “Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

“He’s done this before. But he always shows up to get a bed. I thought it would be the same today.”

“He’s off his fucking meds, don’t you know that? He could freeze to death out there tonight!”

“That’s why I’m calling you!” Suzy says, getting defensive.

“Where have you looked?”

There’s a moment of silence. “Just here at St. Chris’s. He’s not here. I also called the other shelters. He’s not at any of them.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say. “So you’re in for the night? You’re not gonna go looking for him?”

More silence. “I don’t want to lose my bed,” she whines. “It’s cold out there tonight.”

I hang up on her. “Unbelievable.”

“What’s going on?” Layton asks. “Who’s missing?”

“You remember I told you about that kid Darren?” I ask.

Layton nods. “The nineteen-year-old? The one you took under your wing?”

I nod, thoughts whirling. “That’s him. He’s on the spectrum and he has some mental health issues. For some reason, the state stopped covering his meds. If there’s anyone who needs help from the state, it’s him. But of course, they stopped his meds for some bullshit bureaucratic reason.”

I stare down at the half-eaten bowl of berries, looking right through them. Then I stand up. “I think I know where he’d go,” I say, heading toward the door.

“Wait!” Layton says. “Jay, I can’t have you coming and going at all hours of the night. And you and I both know that Tim would divorce me if I gave you a key…” he trails off, unwilling to say the words.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll figure something out.”

“What about the job?”

“Fuck the job. I’m not going to stay here while Darren’s out there somewhere. I can’t do it. You should know me better than that.” I open the door and step out.

Layton follows me into the hall. “Just put my number in your phone,” he says. “Call me later and let me know you’re okay.”

“I have your number memorized,” I tell him, still walking toward the stairwell.

“Be careful out there,” he says to my back. “The news says there’ve been some strange attacks the last few nights.”

I put up a hand in acknowledgment. Then I’m rushing down the stairs, heading back out into the freezing temperatures and the dangerous windchill.

It takes me nearly an hour and a half to check the normal spots, but I don’t find Darren. In fact, I don’t find much of anyone. I wonder where everyone is. Maybe they all made it to a shelter tonight. Doesn’t seem likely, though.

My hands and feet are numb as I trudge toward the only other place I can think of. My face stings as the wind blows. The sirens seem to be non-stop tonight, which is strange because most people are indoors, staying warm.

I duck into a doorway of an old building slated for eventual demolition. And I take a moment to look around. Satisfied that no one’s around, I pull out my pocketknife and use it to unlatch the Jerry-rigged and damaged door mechanism. The door is covered with wood and plastered with No Trespassing signs, but people like me have been using it for more than a year. If they ever actually destroy the building, I don’t know what the desperate and downtrodden will do on nights like tonight.

Closing and latching the door behind me, I pull out my phone and use it to light the way. Before Father Flannigan gave me the phone, I used to stand in the dark and wait for my eyes to adjust every time I came in here. But not tonight. I want to get down into the tunnels as fast as I can to see if Darren is down there.

If he’s not … I don’t want to think about that.

I go into the basement, stepping over and around broken bottles, crushed cans, syringes, fast food wrappers, and cigarette butts.

Hidden in the boiler room behind a piece of warped chipboard is a small hole in the wall, just big enough for a man to slip through on his belly. Which is just what I do. I go feet-first because the floor on the other side of the hole is further down than the building’s basement. That’s because the hole leads to one of many abandoned tunnels under the city.

After pulling the chipboard back into place, I head down the shaft, walking for nearly five minutes before reaching the domed tunnel I’m looking for. As I turn the corner, I’m surprised to see only two person-shaped lumps curled up next to the steam pipe running the length of the tunnel.

On a night like tonight, I would expect to see two dozen or more.

I hurry up to the nearest person, using my phone to illuminate them. It’s not Darren. I know the woman. Her name is Patricia.

Continuing down to the next person, my heart falls as I realize it’s a guy named Ted.

I back up against the wall and slide down onto the dirty floor, telling myself to stay calm. I shut the phone and hang my head. I’m out of places to look. Aside from hospitals or jails, I’ve exhausted all the normal spots.

At least it’s warm here. The insulation has been ripped off the large steam pipe, allowing some heat to escape as the vapor is transported across the city to help warm old buildings.

After allowing my eyes to adjust, I crawl forward and shake Ted’s shoulder. “Ted,” I say. “Ted, it’s Jayron. Wake up.”

He stirs from his heroin stupor and then jerks back. “Getawayfromme!” he says, before realizing it’s me. Then he calms, lying his head on his cardboard mattress. “Jesus, Jayron,” he says. “What do you want?”

“You seen Darren?” I ask.

Ted raises his head and looks around the tunnel. “Huh. He was here when I fell asleep. Where the hell’d he get off to? Matter of fact, where the hell did everyone go?”

“When was that?” I ask. “When did you see him?”

“I don’t know, man,” Ted says. “I ain’t got a watch.”

I open my phone. “It’s nearly midnight now. When did you come down here?”

“Musta been around eleven or so. Darren was already down here. Along with four other people.”

I nod, looking around as if the kid will suddenly appear. Then I turn back to Ted. “There were only four when you came down? Where is everyone else?”

Ted scoffs. “Buncha pussies. Talkin’ about people disappearing from down here at night. Just here at night and gone in the morning without a trace. It’s bullshit.”

Since I quit drinking, I haven’t been sleeping down in the tunnel, but I have heard people in the shelters talking about disappearances. I never really gave the rumors much thought. By nature, homeless people are always disappearing. Some of them leave the city for somewhere warmer. Some of them get their shit together and try to get back into life. Some are arrested or hospitalized. And others simply die.

But the lack of people down here on a night like tonight makes me nervous. If that many people are avoiding this spot, it means they really believe something is going on down here. And if three people have wandered off tonight …

“What have you heard?” I ask Ted.

“Man, it’s all bullshit. Nothing’s happening down here. People are just stupid.”

“What have you heard, Ted?” I ask, an edge in my voice.

He sighs. “Bernie — you know Bernie, right? Well, he said he saw Old Luther just get up and walk down the tunnel one night. Left his little backpack and everything. Never came back. But he said Luther was walking kinda funny. Stiffly, kinda. Like he was sleepwalkin’ or somethin’.”

“He walked that way?” I ask, pointing further down the tunnel.

“That’s what the man said.”

There’s a warren of tunnels that way, but not until after a long walk. Most of the tunnels that branch off this one are much too small for a person to fit inside. They’re tunnels for smaller pipes that branch off the larger steam pipe. I’ve walked down that way once but saw nothing of interest. When I came to a lower tunnel full of sewer water, I turned around.

“You got more questions for me, or can I go back to sleep?” Ted asks. “I was dreaming I had about a kilo of dope when you woke me up. I hope I can get it back.”

“No,” I say, “go back to sleep.”

Ted turns onto his side, facing toward the steam pipe, and settles in for sleep. I stand up and walk down the tunnel, looking for any sign of Darren. After walking for several minutes, the tunnel walls turn from concrete to brick. I keep going.

The only thing of interest I pass is a pile of crumbled bricks against one wall. I can’t tell where they came from, because there is no visible damage. They’re piled knee-high against the wall. It almost looks like they’ve been placed there intentionally.

I shrug it off and keep going. Once again, I come to the lower intersecting tunnel that’s full of slow-moving sewage water. I know Darren wouldn’t have gone in there. Not even in his most manic state.

So I turn around and head back. There’s nothing I can do for now but try to get some sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll check jails and hospitals. I don’t know how much I can trust Ted’s word about seeing Darren down here tonight. He doesn’t have the most reliable memory. Years of heroin use will mess with your brain.

I pass the pile of bricks again. When I’m about ten yards past them, I hear them shift. Or I think I hear them shift.

I freeze and look over my shoulder. I haven’t been using my phone to see down here, and it’s too dark and I’m too far to make out specifics. As I turn fully around to look at the bricks, I think I see a dark shape move swiftly down the other side of the pile. About the size of an animal. Like a large raccoon or something.

My heart rate rising, I step closer. And closer.

It does look like the bricks have shifted at the top, revealing a small hole in the wall there. I look on the other side of the pile, but there’s nothing there. No raccoon. No nothing. And a glance down the dark tunnel reveals no animal. Of course, I can’t see very far. Something could be out there, sitting fifteen feet away, and I wouldn’t be able to see it.

I head back down the tunnel to choose a spot to sleep near the steam pipe between Ted and Patricia.

There are flattened cardboard boxes all along the length of pipe, and I choose one that looks fairly clean. Lying on my back, I close my eyes and wait for sleep. Eventually, it comes.

***

I have no idea how much time has passed when I wake up to a choking sound.

Blinking the sleep away, I sit up and glance around. Patricia is still asleep, but Ted is convulsing at his spot some six feet away from me. His legs are scraping and kicking along the ground, and his arms spasm stiffly at his sides as he writhes, banging his head onto his cardboard mattress.

I scramble over to him, pulling my phone out and flipping it open to get a good look at him. But I flinch away when I get a glimpse of his face.

His eyes are open, but all the blood vessels in them have ruptured, turning the whites of his eyes bright red. Blood spills out from between his lips, flowing down his cheeks.

Getting over my initial shock, I put a hand on his chest to keep him from smacking his head anymore. “What’s happening? What’s going on?” I ask him. He looks me in the eye but continues convulsing.

I look at my phone, seeing that I have no service this far under the city. Too much concrete between me and the cell towers. And even if I could call 911, I couldn’t really tell them how to get down here. I’d have to go meet them outside the abandoned building.

As I’m considering my options, Ted stops convulsing. His eyes shift away from mine, looking up at the roof of the tunnel.

“You okay?” I ask. “Can you walk?”

He doesn’t answer. And, after a moment, he moves to sit up. I push him back down. “Just stay down,” I say. “Talk to me. Where does it hurt?”

He tries to sit up, and I push him back down again. But this time, he shoots his left arm out, shoving me hard in the chest. I fall onto my back and watch as Ted stands up and starts walking down the tunnel.

“Ted?” I say. “Where are you going?”

He ignores me, walking stiffly away.

I get up and hurry after him. “Where are you going?” I ask, coming up beside him.

I see that the blood coming out of his mouth has slowed. His eyes are still bright red around his irises. He doesn’t seem to notice me at all.

I pick up the pace, getting in front of him and stopping. He sidesteps me and keeps going. So I get ahead of him again, this time putting my phone away and using both hands to stop him. He stops walking and looks down at my hands on his chest. Then he knocks them away and shoves me hard. I stumble back but manage to keep my feet.

He keeps walking, but I stand aside and let him pass before falling in a few yards behind him. I stay safely behind him, resisting the urge to pull my phone back out for illumination.

Something skitters ahead in the tunnel, but when I look, I see nothing.

Soon, Ted slows down at the pile of bricks against the tunnel wall.

Standing back, I watch as he gets down on his knees and goes to work moving bricks out of the way. The bricks cover a hole in the wall that Ted crawls through after making enough room.

Crawling to the hole on my hands and knees, I peer inside, but it’s too dark. I pull out my phone and flip it open, casting pale blue illumination into the hole. I see the soles of Ted’s shoes as he crawls through the narrow tunnel there.

I’m crawling over the bricks and into the hole before I really have a chance to think about it. A powerful stench invades my nostrils and causes me to gag, but I keep going. I have a terrible feeling that I’ll find Darren in here. I have to be sure.

After about six feet, the tunnel opens up into what feels like a wide space. Ted is still crawling ahead of me, but I stop and turn my phone toward the ceiling, seeing that there’s not enough room for me to stand.

There’s a strange sound coming from deep in the space. Like someone eating sloppily.

I shine my light to my left, illuminating a decomposing human head lying face-up on the ground. It’s attached to a body, but I don’t take the time to investigate further.

I yelp like a frightened child and drop my phone as I scramble away. The phone stays open, the light shining up at the low brick ceiling.

Crab-walking backward, I panic, bypassing the small tunnel without thinking about it. But I stop as my right hand tears into something sinewy, wet, and cold.

I turn my head slowly, dreading what I’ll see. There’s just enough light for me to make out Old Luther’s sneering face staring blankly up at the ceiling. The same Old Luther Ted was telling me about.

My eyes track down from his ghastly face to his chest cavity. My right hand is inside of it. It busted right through the rotting skin of his stomach. Before I can react, something moves inside of him. Something hard, brushing wetly against my hand.

This time I let out a scream, yanking my hand out and rushing over to grab my phone, shining it at Old Luther’s body. He’s shirtless, allowing me to see clearly as part of his stomach bulges. Something’s moving inside his corpse. Something fairly large.

“What’s happening?” I whisper to myself with mounting hysteria. “What’s happening?” I shine the light around, revealing the human-shaped lumps of more bodies. So many more.

“Darren!” I cry, unable to control the volume of my voice. “Darren!”

Something skitters in the darkness, adding to my ballooning terror.

As I’m turning to leave, I notice a pair of sneakers I recognize on a body at the edge of my phone’s illumination. Red and black sneakers. Darren’s sneakers.

Without thinking, I clamber over to the body, shining the light down on my friend’s face. He’s shirtless, like the other bodies down here. I can see his shirt and jacket discarded nearby. He doesn’t look dead. I touch his cheek, feeling his warmth. He’s still alive.

His eyes are open, but they’re bright red around his irises, just like Ted’s. Streaks of dried blood line his cheeks from the edges of his mouth.

“Darren, wake up!” I shout, shaking him. “Wake up!”

Then I notice his stomach. There’s something sticking out of it. A small, yellow-white cone that looks shiny with slime. It’s about the size and shape of the tip of a football. His stomach bulges underneath it, as if there’s more to the thing, and I’m just seeing the top.

I reach a finger out and touch the thing. It moves, squirming, undulating.

I suddenly realize what it is. It’s a larva. A football-sized insect larva.

Something skitters in the darkness, this time much closer to me. I whip my phone that way, seeing Ted as he tosses his shirt aside and lies down on his back between two decomposing bodies.

As soon as he’s down, a giant insect scurries onto his chest. It has four sharp legs, glossy black in color. Its tear-drop-shaped body is emerald green on top, and it has two short black arms ending in pincers at the front. But what draws my attention is the hook-like tail hanging down from the back of its body. It looks like a stubby version of a scorpion tail, but instead of curving up over the body, it curves down under it, between the long, segmented legs. And instead of ending in a bulbous stinger with a sharp tip, this creature’s stinger bypasses the bulbous portion and simply tapers to a wicked point.

Two black eyes on dark-green stalks move around as the thing positions itself over Ted’s stomach. The stinger pulls up and then shoots quickly down, piercing the middle of Ted’s stomach. He convulses but makes no move to fight the creature off.

The thing pulls the stinger back out, and something happens to the tip. The sharp point seems to retract into the tail, disappearing completely.

The creature jams the tail back into Ted’s stomach, right into the hole it made a moment ago. It goes very still for several long moments. I watch, transfixed in terror, as the base of the tail expands. A lump moves down through the tail until it disappears into Ted’s stomach. Then the creature pulls its tail out, revealing only the tip of the larva it has just inserted into the man’s body. The sharp point appears at the tip of the tail again, settling back into place.

As I finally come to my senses, I wonder how long it takes for these people to die. I wonder if Darren can feel what’s happening to him right now. I wonder if he can feel the larva eating his insides.

But most of all, I wonder how many of these things there are. And whether they’re in other cities across the globe.

Tears form in my eyes as I pull out my pocketknife and ready the blade. I look at Darren, fighting back the breakdown that wants so badly to take over. I can’t let it.

I just hope he can’t feel it. I hope to God he can’t feel it as I open his carotid arteries with the knife. The larva in his stomach seems to sense this as the blood drains from Darren’s body, pumped by his still-beating heart. It begins to squirm.

When I’m sure Darren’s dead, I jam the blade into the larva, killing it.

But as soon as I do this, a squealing sound erupts from all around me.

I don’t bother looking around. Phone in one hand and knife in the other, I clamber toward the exit.

As I get closer to the hole, I hear scurrying sounds growing near. I shine my light toward the source of the noise, seeing a creature back quickly away into the darkness.

I keep moving.

More scurrying. This time, from the other direction.

I continue to press buttons on my phone, keeping the screen lit. And each time I point it out at the darkness, the creatures back up.

By the time I make it to the tunnel, I’ve seen at least ten of the things hiding out at the edge of the light. My back pressed up against the brick wall next to the narrow tunnel, I take a breath, readying myself for the mad scramble out. I’ll be vulnerable from behind.

Gripping my phone and knife tightly, I turn and shove into the hole — coming face-to-face with a creature. The thing squeals as it jumps at me, the vicious stinger poised to strike. Acting on reflex, I back out of the tunnel while slicing out with the blade. The knife misses, but I strike the creature’s underside with my fist, sending it momentarily back. It doesn’t hesitate. It jumps at me again, but this time my head is out of the tunnel. I move, and it misses, coming to a stop near my foot. I kick out, sending the thing falling onto its back. It uses its tail to right itself quickly.

I can see the other creatures rushing me now. I clamber into the narrow tunnel, moving as fast as I can on my elbows and knees. I kick out when I feel the creatures near my feet, and it seems to work, keeping them back.

Getting to the exit, I launch myself out, rolling painfully on the carpet of bricks. I scramble to my feet. And I run.

I can hear the scurrying of dozens of legs behind me as I flee down the tunnel, back the way I came.

Soon, I can see Patricia ahead. She’s lying on her back, and there’s a creature poised over her head. It must have come out before me. Or, God forbid, it came from somewhere else entirely. Some other nest in the vast network of tunnels under the city.

As I approach, I see the creature using its hind legs and pincers to hold Patricia’s mouth open. Its tail shoots between her parted teeth, piercing the roof of her mouth with its sharp point.

Whatever it’s doing, it turns people into zombies whose only goal is to get to the nest and wait to be injected with a larva. Maybe it uses some kind of mind-control venom and then directs them to the nest with pheromones.

The how doesn’t really matter. What matters is stopping them.

I don’t slow down as I run past Patricia and the creature. I don’t slow until I reach the hole in the wall that gets me into the building’s basement.

I’m not sure when, but the creatures have stopped following me. I glance over my shoulder as I run up the stairs, but I don’t see any of them.

The sound of sirens is overwhelming as I reach the ground floor. It sounds like the entire police force is driving around the city.

I unlock the front door and step out onto the sidewalk just as a police car and an ambulance scream past.

As I run in the direction of the nearest precinct, I hear gunshots and screaming from nearby.

I turn the corner onto 4th Street and come to a halting stop. The creatures are everywhere. They pour out of a nearby sidewalk storm drain. They scuttle up the sides of buildings.

A police car that has crashed into a bodega is on fire. Several people are running away, off in the distance, pursued by a group of the large insects.

An eighth-story window breaks up ahead, and I see a creature fly out into the night to splatter on the sidewalk. People are screaming. More gunshots sound.

There’s too many of them. They’re everywhere.

They’re everywhere.

***

I hope these stories were sufficiently creepy. If you liked them, please take a moment to review this collection. Reviews help activate the Amazon algorithm, which can do a lot to get this book in front of people who will enjoy it. Just a minute of your time for a review can help immensely.

***

Short stories can be rewarding, but sometimes you just need to dig your teeth into the flesh of a novel. Check out the zombie apocalypse book that one reader called “A work of genius.” Undead Annihilation is a zombie apocalypse novel — with vampires. I like to describe it as Zombieland meets What We Do In The Shadows, but with more gore. Check it out on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited!

Also By Matthew Doggett

The Undead Trilogy

A zombie apocalypse series with a dash of humor and a whole lot of blood. All three books are available on Amazon and free on Kindle Unlimited.

Praise for Undead Annihilation

“A ‘Must Read’ for end-of-the-world, we’re-all-gonna-die, zombie apocalypse story lovers!” -Reedsy Reviewer

“A work of genius. I’ve read hundreds of zombie books and this is now in my top 2.” -Amazon Reviewer

“This book is a MUST!”

“Not to be missed.”

“Undead Annihilation starts off fast and just keeps on going.”

***

Horror Short Story Collections

3 Volumes with 20 spine-tingling tales each. Available on Amazon.

***

Hole: A Small-Town Horror Novel

A teenage boy and his dog face a gruesome evil in this coming-of-age horror novel.

***

The Trouble Series – Gritty Action Thrillers You Can Read in Any Order

Too Much Trouble

When a robbery gone wrong lands him in the middle of a cartel war, Trouble starts running out of options fast. And when these operatives cross the line and go after Trouble’s friends, only death will stop him from righting the wrongs and making the cartels pay for what they’ve done. Available on Amazon and free on Kindle Unlimited.

The Death Dealers

When he prevents a murder, Trouble is thrown into a twisted conspiracy that points to the most dangerous gang in Los Angeles. Available on Amazon and free on Kindle Unlimited.

The Deadly Divine

Trouble’s a one-man wrecking crew. When he crosses paths with a charismatic lunatic, can he blow away the murderous brainwashing? Available on Amazon and free on Kindle Unlimited.

Dead Man’s Hatch

Trouble works alone, busting heads and bashing bullies. But when he joins a crew of trained professionals, he becomes a target in a deadly revenge plot. Available on Amazon and free on Kindle Unlimited.

Kill Squad

Trouble infiltrates a domestic terrorist ring, posing as a white supremacist. The clock is ticking as he races to thwart their plot to destroy America.

Trouble

When Trouble stands up for what’s right, he finds himself in the crosshairs of an insane small-town sheriff with one goal: kill Trouble. Available for free when you sign up for my email list at MatthewDoggettAuthor.com/Trouble

Table of Contents

- A Note from the Author
- Get Your Free Horror Novella
- 1. Full of Malice
- 2. The Magic of Halloween

- 3. The Terrible Things We Do for the Ones We Love

- 4. Sandra
- 5. Blood and Meat
- 6. The Chosen One
- 7. Things Best Left in the Dark
- 8. The Crocodile
- 9. Creatures From the Kara Sea
- 10. A Guy Can Hope
- 11. Lost
- 12. The Green Lights
- 13. Black-Eyed Demons
- 14. Escape
- 15. More Than Six
- 16. Tunnel of Terror
- 17. Some People Just Need to Die
- 18. New Friends
- 19. House of Horrors
- 20. They Come From Below
- Also By Matthew Doggett