The Devil's Playground, Vol. 3: 20 Tales of Terror to Keep You Up at Night
Date: 2023-06-17 00:00:00+00:00
Description: Welcome to volume three of The Devil's Playground, a disturbing collection of horror stories crafted to make your heart race and your hands shake. In these 20 tales of terror, you will encounter devilishly horrific delights and evil entities of dastardly proportions. There are unapologetic psychopaths, unholy creatures, dark forces manipulating fragile minds, and abominations bent on human destruction. Happy endings are far from guaranteed, and only those who enjoy delving into darkness should venture on. But beware, once you step foot on this playground, there is no turning back. Each story i

The Devil’s Playground, Volume 3

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. The Shack

2. The Bank You Don’t Rob

3. My Turn

4. Hungry High School

5. The Appearance

6. The Cure

7. Some Men Will Do the Unthinkable for Revenge

8. The First and Last Date

9. I Should’ve Listened

10. Wild Animals

11. Meltdown

12. The Children of the Heist

13. The Vaux Letter

14. Hell’s Gate

15. Life Gets in the Way

16. Blood, Muscle, and Bone

17. Hate’s Harvest

18. Invaders From the Deep

19. A Whimper, Not a Bang

20. Sleepwalker

Undead Annihilation Teaser

Undead Annihilation - Chapter 1

Undead Annihilation - Chapter 2

Also By Matthew Doggett

A Note From the Author

The stories in this book were originally written for the Dr. NoSleep podcast. Many of them also aired on the Dr. NoSleep YouTube channel, accompanied by animations. If you’ve listened to that horror podcast, you’ve probably heard these stories. 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!

The Shack

Had I known what was waiting on the other side of the wooded hill, I wouldn’t have continued on my way. Of course, had I known what awaited me—if it had somehow magically appeared inside my head in a flash, like some unholy divination—I don’t think my sanity could’ve taken it. It would’ve snapped like the uncountable number of brittle twigs I stepped on during the day’s hike.

I say I didn’t know what awaited me, and I didn’t. But the truth is I had some inkling as I approached the crest. Some ancient part of my brain was raising its hackles because I could hear something. It was a sound like I’d never heard before. And one I hoped to never hear again.

Despite this internal warning, sounding faintly at first from somewhere in my limbic system, I continued on, discounting it with logic as I went.

The warning, I now realize, was telling me that what I was approaching was very much not your run-of-the-mill threat. Nothing in my nearly four decades on this planet could’ve prepared me for what followed.

Weak, wintry sunlight streamed down through the barren trees and seemed to become absorbed by the leaf-covered ground. These dead leaves crunched underfoot as I moved along the seldom-used path. I had on my back a day pack with some supplies, and in my right hand a hiking stick I’d found near the trailhead.

My brow was faintly furrowed under my black wool cap as I crested the hill and looked down at the small metal shack some fifty yards distant. I knew immediately that the strange sound was coming from the shack.

It was a kind of rumbling sound interspersed with whimpers and a long, wet, scraping noise that repeated over and over again. I could only imagine how loud the noise was in the shack because it was plenty loud even from fifty yards away.

I paused there, staring down at the small structure. It looked old. Rust was busy eating away at the corrugated steel panels that made up the walls and roof.

Looking out into the forest, I saw nothing moving. Only trees with half their leaves gone as far as I could see. In fact, I saw no squirrels and heard no birds. Not that I would’ve heard anything over the noise that seemed to be wearing on my sanity with every passing moment.

“Hello?” I called out.

Before the second syllable was even out of my mouth, the noise ceased. The silence that followed was deafening. And I had the distinct feeling that someone—or something—in the shack was watching me.

That feeling roiled my guts. I felt compelled to run, but my legs wouldn’t obey. I seemed stuck to my little square of ground.

The sound of a child crying suddenly erupted from the shack, breaking my paralysis and causing me to jump.

I turned to go as quickly as I could back the way I’d come, but the crying sound stopped me.

I knew, deep down where it mattered most, that there was no child crying in that shack. But once again, logic and ego conspired to keep me in the area. Like a cat compelled to investigate some oddity, I turned back again and looked at the structure.

What if there was a child in there? I asked myself. What if this was where some evil-hearted bastard brought little children to abuse them? Could I live with myself if I didn’t look into it? If I left and came back with the authorities only to find a dead child, could I ever show my face in our small town again?

How easy men are to manipulate, I realize now. But in the moment my thoughts held no such objectivity. If there was a child in danger, it was my duty to save them, even if it meant putting myself in mortal danger.

So I started down the hill toward the shack, ignoring that part of me that knew there was no child there.

“Hello?” I cried out again, knowing that whoever was in there had already heard my previous bellow.

In answer, the crying grew in pitch and fervor.

When I was ten yards from the shack, the crying ceased, as though it were a recording and someone had hit the stop button.

I froze.

“Who’s in there?” I asked. “Come on out now.”

Standing so close, I could feel waves of atrocity coming off the thing. I could smell a pestilent miasma in the air. It suddenly came clear to me the real danger I’d put myself in. If there was a man in there abusing a child, he would do anything in his power to keep his secret. And if he had a firearm, it would be no hard thing to put a bullet in me and dispose of my corpse in a shallow grave.

But once again, that deep and ancient part of me knew there was no man in there. No human.

“Help me,” a small, childish voice said from within the shack. The hairs on my body stood on end.

A wave of determination crested inside me, and I rode it forward. Whipping my walking stick up to use as a bludgeon, I stormed to the simple metal door of the shack, reaching for the wooden lever to open the portal.

Stepping back, I yanked the door open and gazed inside, allowing a quick moment for my eyes to adjust as wintery sunlight invaded the space.

I inhaled sharply. Bile rose in my throat, threatening to spew forth. I swallowed automatically as every unconscious system in my body seemed to spasm and stutter.

My mind rebelled at the form writhing on the bare dirt floor of the shack.

A grimy, bloody hand reached toward me from the low mass of squirming parts. The arm was attached by a shoulder to a bald man’s head. His head swiveled, face turning toward me, white beard stubble glistening with crimson blood. His eyes were closed, and when he opened them, reddish-black webs that looked like certain types of branching fungus shot out from his eyeless sockets, grabbing ahold of his eyebrows above and his cheeks below.

These wings of web seemed to hook into the skin, pulling. And as I watched, patches of skin ripped from the man’s face and were dragged into his eye sockets. There was a terrible scream coming from the man’s mouth while this happened, but it was no noise a human could make.

And while my shocked mind had been mostly engrossed in this impossible sight, my peripheral vision also took in the rest of the form.

The pale head, shoulder, and arm were near the front door of the shack, but just beyond was a writhing mass of glistening muscle and tendons. Half-exposed bones whipped up on occasion, throwing gore all over the inside of the structure.

The man’s arm reached over the threshold and slapped the dirt on my side of the door. The muscles in that naked and pale arm worked, dragging the mass toward me.

I took a step back as the man’s mouth opened again, and it kept on opening. I could hear the cracking and snapping of joints as his jaw dislocated and another one pushed through. This second jaw was like that of a dog, but without any fur or a nose. It was all blood and muscle and sharp teeth.

The bile rose in my throat once again, but this time I couldn’t fight it. I spewed the acidic mixture out, much of it splashing onto my hiking boots.

This violent action seemed to break my mental paralysis, and I turned to run.

Before I made it halfway up the hill, I heard the sound of something following along behind me. I threw a terrified glance over my shoulder and saw the hideous abomination gaining on me, running like it had six or eight legs under the ungainly blanket of bone and tissue. Its gait reminded me of a spider’s, and I could do nothing but redouble my efforts, tossing the walking stick aside to gain that little bit of speed.

I dared not glance back again as I started down the other side of the hill, but I knew it was gaining on me. I could hear it.

A piercing scream sounded just before something heavy landed on the backs of my churning legs. I went down hard, smacking the ground face-first.

And when I managed to turn around, that dog-snout jutting from the man’s deformed jaw was closing in on my face. Barely visible vapor came out of the toothy mouth, seeming to prod me.

I felt small, sharp things piercing my skin as the thing settled its weight on me. Despite my best efforts to resist, I could no longer hold my breath. I inhaled a lungful of the wretched vapor.

Reality seemed to twist, the barren branches overhead reaching down toward me as the earth protruded beneath me.

And then blackness was all.

***

The sun was well into its earthward descent when I regained consciousness. It was a slow thing. When I opened my eyes, I looked up at a darkening sky without a glimmer of recollection. Confusion didn’t even settle on me. Not for a few long moments. It was as if I awoke in a forest every day of my life.

But the pains in my body and the lingering sour taste of fear in the back of my throat returned me to my senses. I sat up and made a low sound—a short, emotionless yell.

Glancing around madly, I searched for signs of the improbable creature that had attacked me. I saw nothing but glooming woods.

Turning my attention to my person, I realized I was coated in some kind of sticky substance. My waterproof jacket, my jeans, and my plaid shirt were covered in what I could only assume was slaver.

And as I moved, I realized I had several distinct and painful spots along the sides of my torso and just below my shirt collar at the front of my chest.

As I stood, I realized that I was still wearing my backpack. I’d been lying on its contents: a water bottle, two granola bars, a small pocketknife, and a miniature first-aid kit.

In the fading twilight, I lifted my shirt and inspected the sides of my torso. There were small holes, about the same diameter as a sewing needle, in perfect lines up from my hips to under my armpits. They weren’t bleeding and there was no dried blood around them, but they were tender to the touch.

Dropping my shirt, I turned my attention to the pain at the base of my neck. I couldn’t see the culprit, but I could feel it with my fingers. I wore a necklace my wife had made me shortly before she died. She’d found a pair of strange-looking stones on one of her hikes and had fashioned two necklaces out of them—one for each of us. I wore mine always. Where Nora’s was, I had no idea.

As best we could figure out, the small, marble-sized stone was Opalized Ammonite. It had the swirl of a snail shell common in other Opalized Ammonite gemstones, which form when silica finds its way into a discarded structure—like a shell.

But unlike common Opalized Ammonite, these two seemed to have formed before the interior structure had rotted away. The results were spectacular. There were colorful lines streaming away from the swirl of the shell, detailing the strange insides of the creature who had spent its life within the shell millions of years ago.

The two stones seemed to be mirror images of each other. At times, I could look at mine and think that the substance within had shifted, the color changed, although this clearly wasn’t possible.

I lifted this stone from my neck and felt underneath it for the source of the pain. There was a strange blister there, about double the size of the stone itself, and raised from the skin. Almost like a burn.

Raising the stone in front of me, I could see that it was still intact. It seemed to have changed colors from a faint green to a rich emerald. I quickly dismissed the notion, thinking it was just the fading light hitting the stone just right.

The forest around me was eerily silent. I looked up the hill to where I’d stood gazing down at the shack. The thought of going back up there chilled me to my core.

Instead, I turned and made my way back down the trail with as much haste as my sore body could muster. By the time I made it back to my vehicle, it was completely dark.

The twenty-minute ride home gave me ample time to consider my own sanity. I didn’t want to believe that I’d seen what I had. But I had no choice.

By the time I arrived at my home, I knew I had to tell the authorities about my encounter in the woods, even if they thought me insane.

Luckily, I knew one of our local law enforcement officers very well. So as soon as I took a shower and got cleaned up, I stepped to my landline and dialed deputy Willem’s number.

As the phone rang, I stared blankly at the calendar on the wall. I’d gotten a better look at my various injuries while undressing to remove the stinking glop from my person. Using the mirror in my bathroom, I’d seen that the severe irritation to the taut skin just below my collarbone did in fact resemble a burn. One in the shape of my necklace trinket, no less.

In that same mirror, I had turned to inspect the strange holes in my sides but saw that they were gone. There was no evidence of any puncture wounds at all. Nor was there any pain, which I found strange because during the entire ride home I could feel the continuing discomfort caused by the strange wounds.

Willem’s voice came over the line, snapping me from my reverie. But it was his answering machine. I left a brief message, telling him who it was and asking him to call me back. Then I hung up the phone.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the calendar. It was November 13th, 1997. I was coming up on the six-month anniversary of my wife’s death.

In a week, it would be six months since she’d mysteriously lost control of her SUV. Her vehicle went off the side of the Timberman Bridge and into the Oak River below. They never did find her body. Just her vehicle, smashed to bits on the outside and bloody on the inside.

My phone rang. I retrieved it with haste, knowing it would be Willem returning my call.

“Rory, what’s got you shaking like a starving dog?”

He spoke in a somberly jovial tone; half joking. He must’ve heard the fear in my voice message. I hadn’t realized I was letting it show through so much.

“Willem,” I said, not knowing where to start.

“I’m here.”

“I need to talk to you,” I said.

“I’m here,” he repeated, this time sounding worried.

“In person,” I said. “You’re going to want to look into my eyes as I tell you this one. Believe me.”

There was a pause on the line before Willem said, “I’ll be at Jackrabbit’s in fifteen minutes.”

***

Jackrabbit Jim’s was the one bar in our little Appalachian town. It hunkered in the middle of a dirt parking lot just off Route 19, which was sometimes called Main Street as it made its way through the middle of town and up into the mountains beyond.

There were blue and red neon signs in the high-set windows, their inviting glow beckoning thirsty travelers inside the dim recesses of the smoky and sweat-smelling tavern. The sun was the only light that cast illumination on the building’s lot. The two streetlamps in the parking lot had long ago been broken and never replaced. Some postulated that Jim himself had shot out the lights on account of he didn’t want anyone seeing what nefarious happenings went on in the parking lot.

Others said that any number of drunks during the sixties and seventies had taken to practicing their pistol shooting whenever they were kicked out of the bar and didn’t want to go home.

The story said that the town had replaced the lights a dozen or more times before they gave up and let the cinder-block bar sit in a darkness of its own making.

My truck’s headlights pierced that gloom as I pulled off Route 19. And as I swung into a spot between old Henry Thibodeaux’s Ford and Sally Drake’s Chevy, my lights swept across Willem’s cruiser two spots down.

I hustled through the chill and to the large wooden door, reaching it as Tad Jefferson and his brother Shad stepped out.

“Heya, Rory,” Shad said, holding the door open for me. “How ya been?”

I mumbled a hello to him and slipped inside.

“Rude bastard,” I heard Tad say, slurring the second word.

The interior of the bar was nearly as gloomy as the exterior. The ever-present haze of smoke that hung about the place didn’t help visibility, either.

The high windows were covered at all times with raggedy but thick blackout curtains, ensuring that none of the neon glow from the beer signs leaked inside the place.

Instead, much of the illumination came from the lights shining down on the liquor bottles at the circular bar in the middle of the square room. The shelves were backed with mirrors, which helped light the establishment in the barest of terms.

To my right were two pool tables, both with men and women gathered around, some chatting and some playing. A couple of them glanced up at me as I stepped through the door. Seeing who it was, they glanced back down.

Country music played from rattling speakers. People laughed and argued. Glasses clinked. Lighters flicked as cigarettes were lit.

I quickly located Willem in the back corner of the large space, at a table with two beers in front of him. He was off-duty, wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and an open zip-up sweatshirt. I didn’t have to see it to know he was wearing a pistol on his hip. Only police officers were allowed to wear weapons in the bar. And Willem always carried his.

Willem and I had been friends since high school. He was a man of average height and build, but he possessed an above-average capacity for trouble. He seemed to have a nose for it and was always among the first to throw himself into the fray when a fight broke out.

During high school, this meant that he would join any fight he could, picking a side when he felt like it or simply fighting both of the brawlers if he didn’t have any particular allegiances to stand by.

But as a cop, it meant he was there to keep the peace or stop the fight by any means necessary.

As I sat down across from him, he smoothed his bushy black mustache down with an index finger and thumb. It was something he did before eating or drinking to try and limit the amount of detritus or moisture snagged in his mustache.

“What happened?” he asked, sliding a beer over toward me.

I shook my head, unsure where to start. “I’ve had the strangest encounter in the woods,” I said. “The strangest encounter of my life.”

Willem leaned forward and took a swig of his beer, keeping his eyes on me, waiting.

“There’s a shack out in the woods off Rocky Ridge. It’s about a mile and a half in on that old game trail. And there was something in it when I came upon it.”

“Okay,” Willem said. “What was in it?”

“An abomination,” I said, shaking my head. “A trick of the mind. A devil come from hell.”

Willem leaned back and studied me. “Describe it,” he said. I could tell he was humoring me. He’d been walking on eggshells around me since Nora’s death.

I looked down at my untouched beer. I placed one hand around the cold pint glass. Not to drink, but to do something while I gathered my thoughts. I wasn’t sure how to say what I needed to say in order for him to believe me.

When I looked back up, Willem’s eyes were no longer fixed on me. He peered over my shoulder, toward the front door.

Seeing the look on my friend’s face, I half turned in my seat and followed his gaze. Steve Rayd stood just inside the door, gaping at me. We’d never been all that friendly, Steve and I, but we’d also never been at odds. So I couldn’t comprehend any reason for his apparent displeasure.

“What did you do to piss Steve off?” Willem asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “How long has he been standing there?”

“Coming up on over a minute now,” Willem said. “At first I thought he was staring at me, but I see that’s not the case.”

I raised a hand and waved at him, but Steve made no move. The door opened behind him, and Tad Jefferson stumbled in, his more sober brother nowhere to be seen. Steve Rayd was standing just inside the doorway, blocking ingress, forcing Tad to stop.

“Hey, buddy!” Tad said, his voice drunk-loud. “Get the fuck outta the way!”

Steve ignored this. He continued staring. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Other people around the bar had turned their attention to the front door, thanks to Tad’s boisterous declaration.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Willem asked behind me.

Not to be kept waiting, Tad shoulder-checked Steve.

But things didn’t work out like Tad had planned because they both went to the grimy concrete floor. Steve landed on his chest while Tad landed on top of him. When Tad went to pull away from Steve, it seemed as though the two were stuck together.

“Let go of me!” Tad said, struggling to push himself off the other man’s back.

Steve’s eyes had never left my face. He stared still, his head craned up so he could peer at me down the aisle created by the bar tables.

I watched closely as Tad tried to pull away again, seeing the fabric of Steve’s brown jacket stretch like rubber. Tad’s plaid shirt seemed to do the same, stretching a bit before pulling him back down.

“That hurts!” Tad screamed, panicking. “Get him off me!”

No one approached. The bar was silent, save for the twang of country music. Everyone had seen the way they were stuck together, and it seemed no one wanted to touch either man.

“It’s here,” I said, standing up and backing toward the wall. “It’s him.”

“What is?” Willem said, standing up from his seat.

“Let me go!” Tad screamed. His eyes rolled back into his head and his scream increased in pitch until it was a high warble. He sank into the other man’s back, his arm disappearing completely.

Tad’s scream stopped, but his mouth stayed open, frozen in pain and disbelief. Dark wings of webbing shot out of his open maw, securing their hooklike tendons to the skin near his jawline.

As the webbing pulled, Tad’s skin flexed and then ripped—and then was summarily yanked into his wide mouth.

Chaos erupted in the bar. Women screamed and men shouted as they scrambled away from the ghastly scene on the bar floor.

Steve got up, eyes still fixed on me. Tad was still attached to his back, but I couldn’t see what was happening now. All I could see were Tad’s legs, dragging limply across the floor as Steve moved toward me.

“Stop!” Willem yelled, stepping up with his pistol pointed at Steve in a two-handed grip.

Steve ignored him. And he kept coming.

Willem fired. The bullet punched into Steve’s chest, splattering gore all over the abandoned table behind him.

Steve stumbled backward on wobbly legs. But then he started forward again.

There were people arrayed around me. Most of them had been sitting at tables nearby and were now pressed against the wall in terror, unsure of what to do.

Suddenly, I felt fingers at the back of my neck, reaching for the leather necklace cord. Instinctively, I tossed an elbow behind me as I turned, knocking a woman back. It was Jean Oslard, who I couldn’t recall seeing inside the bar when I’d come in. She looked up at me with confused eyes, then lunged toward my neck.

I dodged and kicked her, sending her to the floor.

Willem fired twice more at Steve, and he finally went down, Tad still attached to his back. But it seemed that more of Tad’s skin had been ripped away, and more of his body had been absorbed into Steve’s.

“Move,” Willem said, pushing me along toward the other side of the bar, where the emergency exit was.

As we made our exit, I glanced over my shoulder to see Steve getting up from the floor again. Meanwhile, Jean Oslard was staring at him from where she sat on the ground, shaking her head.

Old Jim Junior, the owner and bartender, tripped and fell ahead of us in the packed throng of frightened drunkards. Willem and I stopped and pulled him up, moving out through the fenced-in back area where Jim kept his empty kegs.

We found ourselves in the rear of the parking lot. Shadows danced around us as people fired up their vehicles and swept out of the parking lot in a mad hurry to get anywhere but here. The momentarily overbright illumination of headlights damaged our night vision so that we could see nothing but gloom in those areas where lights did not pierce.

Jim Junior stumbled away from us, coughing and hacking in the dusty lot.

“My car,” Willem said, pulling me along with him.

As we approached, a shadow flitted past the back of his cruiser. Amid the chaos, I simply thought it was someone running away in the dark.

As we dumped ourselves into his police car, I had a chance to consider what had just happened inside the bar. Jean Oslard had gone for my necklace. Why?

Willem had backed his cruiser into the spot, so when he turned his headlights on, we saw Steve Rayd standing about six feet out in the aisle. There was no sign of poor Tad Jefferson at his back. Meaning no legs or other body parts hanging down.

The wounds in his chest were still there, and although they were bloody, they didn’t bleed like you’d expect gunshot wounds to bleed.

Willem growled and put the vehicle into gear. He hit the gas. The back tires spun, kicking dirt and pebbles up into the wheel wells. But we didn’t move.

“What in the Sam Hill?” Willem said.

My window shattered and a hand came through, grabbing my neck. On instinct, I jerked away.

Willem took his foot off the gas and turned his attention to my attacker. It was Jean Oslard. He leaned over and shoved his gun into Jean’s chest and pulled the trigger. This knocked her back a step, but it also caused a shrill ringing in my ears. I took the opportunity to slam the door open, knocking her to the ground.

“My truck!” I said, lunging out of the cruiser.

Oslard clutched at me as I jumped over her. She grabbed hold of my leg, sending me sprawling onto the ground near the back wheel. Underneath the back of the cruiser was a familiar pale, bald head and arm—the creature from the shack. Tendons of the still-glistening amalgamation of stringy, exposed muscle were attached to the underside of the vehicle. Others were dug into the ground. I realized it was what had kept the cruiser from moving.

My eyes widened to their limit as the bloody dog-snout still sticking out of the man’s too-wide mouth shot toward me, sinking its teeth into the tip of my nose.

Two gunshots sounded from the other side of the cruiser, and I was vaguely aware that Willem was shouting with fear.

I screamed and yanked my head back, feeling the point of my nose rip off. The man’s arm shot out and grabbed the stone trinket at the end of my necklace. Quickly, smoke started rising from his rotten fist. The stench was that of festering flesh burning.

The monster screamed out of its dog-snout, the sound like a hundred thousand children being tortured at once. It released my necklace and yanked its hand away.

I scrambled, kicking my feet madly at Oslard, finally freeing my legs and scrambling to my feet.

As I rounded the back of the cruiser, I glanced toward the front, opening my mouth to shout at Willem. I’d heard gunshots while I was on the ground and knew he must be dealing with Steve Rayd.

Willem’s back was to me. He was standing next to the closed driver’s door. But before I could get a word out, his back exploded outward. He was lifted off the ground as Steve Rayd’s fist came out his back, coated in my friend’s bloody insides.

I made a sound somewhere between a scream and a choke. Movement near my feet told me the creature was coming out from under the cruiser. So I ran.

The wound on my nose was bleeding profusely. I could taste the blood on my lips, and I felt it dripping off my chin. As I got into my truck, the scene of Willem’s back exploding outward played repeatedly in my mind.

I put the truck into gear and tore out of the parking space. But before I reached the road, I felt a thump come from the back of the truck. A glance in the rearview mirror told me nothing; it was too dark to see. But I knew. Something was in the truck bed.

Swerving to miss another truck pulling out from the other side of the bar, I went right instead of the initial left I’d meant to go. Left was toward home. Right was toward the mountains. And it was also toward Oak River and the Timberman Bridge.

Where Nora’s life had come to an abrupt end.

Narrowing my eyes, I pushed the gas pedal to the floor. Small buildings flashed by on both sides of the street. I moved into the empty oncoming traffic lane to pass a slow driver. Then another.

I was a quarter mile from the bridge when I glanced in the rearview mirror for the dozenth time. I saw the gruesome white head rear up from the truck bed. The single white arm flopped forward, the fist breaking the back window.

I flinched away from the flying glass shards, then straightened again. I raised the necklace up with my right hand, steering with my left.

“Is this what you want?” I shouted at the creature. Although it could’ve reached through and grabbed me right then, it didn’t. The eyeless sockets in the bald and mangled head just stared at me. Whatever it was, it couldn’t touch the trinket without wounding itself. That was why it had somehow enlisted Rayd and Oslard to get the necklace. But they weren’t here. Only it was.

When it had attacked me in the forest, it burned itself on the necklace. And, in the process, it burned me, too, leaving bubbled skin as proof. The necklace was the only reason I was alive. Whether the thing knew I’d had it all along, I had no way of knowing. Maybe it had just attacked me because I was there. Or maybe I was supposed to be in that forest.

The Timberman Bridge was coming up. I could see the spot where my wife’s SUV had gone through. The damaged railing had yet to be fully repaired. It was one reason I stopped coming this way to go on my hikes. Although my favorite hiking trails were on the other side of the Oak River, I couldn’t bear to drive across the bridge and see the hastily constructed wooden repairs to the metal bridge railing.

It was one reason I’d taken a hike on that seldom-used trail earlier in the day.

“This is what you want!?” I shouted, blood and tears streaming down my face. “Come and get it!”

I wrenched the wheel to the left, pointing the truck at the wooden railing repairs. The creature screamed from the truck bed.

As the front bumper struck the repaired railing, the wood splintered, flying up into the air over the truck’s hood. Then I was going over, the nose tilting down toward the deep, dark river below, the headlights bouncing off the green water’s surface.

I braced for impact just before I was thrown forward against the steering wheel. My left arm slipped off the wheel and jammed into the dash. Pain flared as my wrist broke. My mouth smacked into the top of the steering wheel, busting my teeth inward and shredding my lips.

I expected cold water to envelop me, but it didn’t. Grunting in pain, I pushed back off the steering wheel using my right arm and both legs. The truck was swinging about five feet above the water, the headlights brushing back and forth over the slow-moving river.

Something in the dash was blinking steadily, illuminating the interior of the cab every two seconds or so. In my daze, I couldn’t tell what it was. Nor did I care. I wanted to see why I hadn’t crashed into the river.

Turning with some effort to look back over my shoulder, I saw that the creature had stopped the truck from hitting the river. It was stretched from the back of the truck up to the side of the bridge.

Headlights suddenly illuminated the intact sides of the railing from the surface of the bridge. Someone had stopped up there to investigate.

“No!” I called up. “Don’t come any closer!”

I didn’t know what the creature would do to a passerby. I didn’t want another life on my conscience.

But the person who stepped up to the side of the railing was Jean Oslard. And she quickly began to climb down the disgusting tendrils of meat and interspersed bone toward the swinging truck.

I turned and looked back down at the river, thinking I could jump. Maybe the swift currents deep in the river would take my body far away, just like it did my wife’s.

There was no doubt in my mind that the creature wanted my necklace for some nefarious purpose. I couldn’t let the thing get it.

But as I looked down at the river, I noticed a murky light down there. And it was blinking every two seconds or so.

The same thing was still happening in the truck. And it was matched up with the light in the river. I suddenly realized it wasn’t some emergency light in the dash. It was my necklace. It was blinking.

A memory came screaming into my head. A memory from when my wife gave me the necklace. “This will do a whole lot of good one day,” she’d said. At the time, I hadn’t thought much of it. Nora had always believed in luck and auras and karma. She said she had a sense about objects, which was why she loved going hunting for exotic stones in the forest.

“What about yours?” I’d said, gesturing at her half of the colorful stone. “Will yours do good?”

She smiled. “Oh, yes. They’ll have to be together to do the good I’m talking about.”

It was a nice gesture. I took it to mean that we would always be together. And that life would be good, so long as we were. The necklaces were just a physical extension of that concept. That love.

But when she died, her necklace was never recovered. I hadn’t really given it much thought. All I knew was that she was dead, even if they had never found her body. I couldn’t have cared less about the necklaces. Of course, I kept wearing mine—more as a reminder of my wife than out of any belief that it would ever do good.

But as I reached my right hand across my body and opened the truck door, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

A thump came from behind me as Oslard reached the back of the truck. Wincing, I struggled to get my legs up out of the cab and hanging over the edge of the open door, which creaked and bent under my weight. I looked at the water below as Oslard jumped down into the truck cab, landing with her feet on the seat backs.

I held my breath. And then jumped.

The freezing cold water took my breath away and jarred my broken wrist. I opened my eyes in the murk and twisted around, looking for the blinking light. I could feel the strong, steady current pulling me downstream.

Finally, I saw the light, distant and fading as I moved further away. I kicked my feet and tried to swim with my one good arm, but it was of little use. I was doing nothing but staying in the same spot.

I felt a tug at the back of my neck, and suddenly I was being pulled along through the water, toward the blinking light. I reached up and grabbed the leather necklace with my right hand, worried it would break. But it didn’t. And the two pieces blinked in unison, faster and faster as they grew closer together.

As I was pulled near, I could see that the necklace—my wife’s necklace—was caught on a tree branch jutting out from the riverbed. As the two pieces met, fusing together underwater, they brightened so much I had to close my eyes.

Through my closed eyelids, I could tell that the light was fading, so I opened my eyes again and reached out, unhooking the leather from the branch and putting it around my neck. Now I had one single trinket attached to two leather bands around my neck.

My breath was running out, so I kicked frantically for the surface. As I broke into the night air near the riverbank, a hand reached out and grabbed me by the hair, pulling me onto the shore. It was Rayd, his hand still coated with Willem’s blood.

He threw me down and immediately reached for the faintly glowing necklace. I did the only thing I could. I shoved it into my mouth with my right hand.

My damaged teeth and lips screamed at me, but I kept my jaw clamped around the object.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Oslard jump off my truck and into the water. As soon as she was out of the way, the creature dropped my truck. But I wasn’t overly concerned with them at the moment.

Rayd was grabbing at my cheeks with one hand, squeezing until I thought my jaw would snap inward. But there was something happening in my mouth. The piece was melting. It felt as if I was drinking some kind of warm, metallic syrup. It flowed down my throat and into my stomach. But it also flowed up into my head and through my arms and down into my legs. It was a slightly unpleasant feeling, but there was an overtone of numbness that helped to keep me calm.

Finally, I gave in and relaxed my jaw, allowing Steve Rayd to open my mouth and peer inside. The leather strings fell out of my mouth, but there was nothing attached to them any longer. A curtain of rage dropped over Rayd’s face.

I smiled.

He jacked his arm back, making a fist with his hand and positioning it over my chest. He aimed to get the thing out of my stomach by force. Only he didn’t know it wasn’t actually in my stomach.

Rayd slammed his fist down into my gut, which gave way like a bowl of pudding, swallowing his hand up to the forearm. His eyes went wide as something from inside me stabbed itself into his skin. He pulled his fist out and stumbled back, looking at it in confusion. On the skin there formed a series of tiny cracks, out of which shone a brilliant light.

The cracks moved swiftly up his arm and across his body. And as he opened his mouth to scream, light poured out of his gullet, then shot out of his eyes and nostrils. His body exploded in a blazing eruption, ragged jigsaw pieces of papery black skin floating down to the ground and disintegrating into nothing.

I looked at my stomach in amazement, seeing no damage to anything. Not even my soaking shirt. My left wrist was no longer broken. My teeth and lips felt normal. So did my nose.

I looked over at Oslard, who was twenty feet away, just getting out of the water. She stared at me with unease.

Then my gaze moved up to the bridge. That ghostly white head screamed as the creature scrambled away.

As soon as the thought occurred to me to get up, I was on my feet and running. I could feel endless energy flowing through my body. And as I ran past Oslard, I dragged my fingers across her arm. I jumped up onto the bridge—a gap of over thirty feet—without so much as raising my heart rate.

Behind me, Oslard exploded in a dazzling light show.

The creature was running away on its unseen, spiderlike legs. It ducked into the forest. I jumped, soaring through the trees to land in front of the thing. It tried to skid to a stop, but I was already on it, grabbing that deformed head in both hands and placing my left foot against its gruesome blanket of exposed flesh.

In that instant, as I touched the thing, I saw where it had come from and what twist of fate had brought it here. It hadn’t always looked like this. Its current form was a mixture of animals and the one human it had come across while trying to adapt to live in our world. Our dimension.

Its true form was something my human mind couldn’t comprehend. A series of shifting shadows and pulsing energy that traveled through space and time, looking for its equivalent of food.

It had sensed an extremely rare kind of food it wasn’t familiar with in this strange, physical world. And it had known instinctively that the sustenance here would negate its need to consume for centuries. Perhaps millennia.

But such a food, in its active state, would be hard to catch and even harder to prepare. Its prey was elusive and would use the life forms of this world to its advantage. It was a dangerous hunt, but one that would be well worth it in the end.

And with the power it would gain by eating whatever was now inside me, it could do much more than just take over a few human bodies. It could fashion the world to its liking. Humans were hard to control and contained little of value, but enough of them could provide some sustenance. And there were plenty of humans on this little world.

The realization that what I had inside me was some kind of interdimensional being trying to keep from being eaten should’ve been alarming, but it wasn’t. And as I used strength unknown to any human to rip off the deformed head, the thing inside me rejoiced.

I tossed away the bloody head and fell to my hands and knees on the writhing brute. Energy streamed out of my body and into the creature, sizzling its skin and pulling out of it the spoils of war that the creature in me could use for its own continued survival.

I could feel that the power coming in was more than the power flowing out.

When the sizzling stopped and the writhing was done, I stood up. All that was left at my feet were the twisted and charred remains of the deer, raccoon, and dog the creature had hijacked—and the man who’d been living in the shack.

Something compelled me to look up at the starry sky, through the half-barren trees.

And although the voice inside me wasn’t speaking in any language I could recognize—any language at all, really—there was some kind of information transfer inside me. A message, from it to me.

More will come now, it said. Many more will come. We must prepare.

In the sky above me, a star winked.

The Bank You Don’t Rob

“You picked the wrong bank,” I said to the man pointing a snub nose revolver in my face.

“Shut up! You think I won’t blast you? I’ll fuckin’ blast you, buddy,” he said. “Now get out from that fancy office of yours and come sit with the others.”

I stood up from my desk, hands up, and looked hard at the man. I could tell, even through the ridiculous pair of panty hose he had on his head, that his nose was running. A wet spot glistened on the mesh women’s wear just under his squashed-down nose. The man didn’t seem to notice. He never sniffed. He just let it run.

There were two other robbers, each with a different handgun. One of the weapons looked like it had last been fired during World War II. All three men wore tattered and stained clothing. Their leader, the guy ushering me out of my office and getting me to sit in front of the teller booths with the other employees, had a bright red flannel shirt on. Very subtle.

If these men had been professionals, I would’ve thought that the ratty clothes and even the heavy smell of body odor emanating from them were parts of their disguises. But the fact that they were robbing this bank told me that they weren’t pros. Pros would know to stay away from this bank.

No, these men were desperate addicts. And they were about to get a very rude awakening.

“Who’s the manager?” the leader said.

I raised my hand.

“Get up,” he said, even though he’d just made me sit down.

I got up.

“Is there anyone else here?” he asked.

“That depends. You mean employees?” I asked.

“Don’t get fucking smart with me, Mister Manager. Employees, customers, your fucking whore of a daughter—is there anyone else here?”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

The man’s eyes shifted behind the pantyhose. His two buddies were fidgeting behind him, knowing that this was getting out of control. I didn’t want to push them too far. Not yet. I looked around at everyone. “No, I don’t believe there’s anyone else here. Unless a customer ran in the back when you fellows came in.”

“Nobody ran in the back,” the leader said. “Now, take me to the vault.”

I nodded and turned, walking back behind the teller booths and through a code-locked door. The leader followed, gun held just behind my head.

When we were alone in front of the vault, I turned to him. “You can leave now, and you won’t be hurt. I won’t even call the police. But the moment you take money from the vault … I can no longer guarantee your safety.”

“The fuck you gonna do, grampa?” he said, although there was no venom in his voice. Maybe he’d felt the change in the air. I certainly had.

“This is the ATC Savings and Loan,” I said. “Do you know what the ATC stands for?”

“Does it matter? The only thing I care about is the cash in the vault. Do you have cash in the vault?”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“Good. Open it, or I’ll have one of my friends out there shoot one of the pretty teller ladies. If you think I’m joking, just try me. One more time, try me.”

“Okay,” I said, turning back to the vault door. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I opened the door and allowed the man in. Then I stood there as he filled a black trash bag with as much cash as would fit without tearing the bag.

When he was done, he urged me back out the code-locked door. “Yo, Sammy,” he called over the teller booths, “come back and fill your bag.”

One of the other robbers, this one dressed in a stained gray sweatshirt and torn jeans, hurried back to us. The leader went to take his place on the lobby floor. As they passed, I heard Sammy whisper, “Why’d you use my name, man? We talked about this.”

“Just go fill your bag,” the leader said.

Suddenly, the lights flickered in the bank, creating a strobe-like effect. It was irregular, causing certain corners of the large room to go dark while others brightened.

“What the hell is this?” the leader yelled, turning back to me and shoving his revolver in my face again. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. I did nothing. You’re the one that took money out of the vault. I tried to warn you.”

“What is this, a silent alarm or something? Some kind of security system?” Sammy asked.

“You could say it’s a security system of sorts,” I said.

“Sammy, stop talking to this guy and go fill your bag,” the leader said. “Mister Manager, punch the code in.”

I shrugged and punched the code in, letting Sammy into the vault room.

Apparently, Leader didn’t trust me, because he put his bag of cash on the floor and stood there next to me, pointing his gun at me from his hip.

From where we stood, we could see the third robber out beyond the booths, pacing back and forth on the marble floor, keeping an eye on the other bank employees. The flickering continued, and it was clearly unnerving that third man.

“Get away from me!” the third robber called out suddenly.

“What is it?” Leader asked, stepping away from me. “What’re they doing?”

The third robber didn’t answer. He just stood there in the middle of the floor, mumbling to himself, looking at nothing.

“Talk to me, Jason,” Leader said.

Hearing his name seemed to snap the man out of it. He turned toward Leader and said, “It won’t leave me alone.”

“What won’t leave you alone?” Leader asked. “What the hell are you talking about? There’s nothing there!”

Jason spasmed and then went stiff, arms at his side and standing on his tiptoes.

“What are you doing?” Leader called.

Jason’s head shook impossibly fast, the movement turning his skull into a tan blur, the limp pantyhose legs whipping back and forth over his head. This went on for about three seconds before he stopped suddenly.

“Jason?” Leader asked, fear in his voice. “What’s wrong with you?”

Jason didn’t answer. Not with words. But it became clear soon enough that there was something really wrong with him. His face seemed to stretch out in the middle, his nose and brow and mouth pushing outward at a sharp point. The pantyhose stretched with it until the middle of Jason’s face split open, the force of it ripping the pantyhose. The two halves of his face separated like butterfly wings. Blood spewed out as his facial structure ripped apart, revealing another face underneath.

This underneath face was not even close to human. Two blood-coated eyes bulged out, their red irises glowing like car cigarette lighters. Instead of a nose, there were two wide slits situated above a mouth crowded with needle-like teeth. It was a scrunched-up face, but it seemed to expand as it moved out of Jason’s skull, protruding forward, staring at Leader.

Leader screamed and raised his gun, firing at the demonic figure three times. None of the shots even came close. Black tentacles shot out of Jason’s hands and feet, causing him to drop the gun he’d held in one hand. He launched into the air and stuck to the high ceiling with the slimy black tentacles, those terrible eyes never leaving Leader’s face. He scurried along the ceiling toward us, and Leader fired three more times, emptying his gun.

Sammy rushed out of the door to the vault room with a half-full bag of cash. Before he could get a word out, he spotted the thing on the ceiling and screamed. He dropped his bag of cash and vaulted over one of the teller booths. He stumbled on the other side but kept his balance as he ran for the doors.

He pushed and pulled on each of the four front doors, glancing over his shoulder at each one. Meanwhile, Leader took off, leaving his own bag of cash behind. He joined his friend at the doors, but none of them would open.

When they realized that there was no way out—at least not there—they turned around. What had once been Jason scurried along the ceiling toward the two men, who stared up at him in shock.

The demon dropped down and onto Sammy, clamping onto the man’s face with those needle-like teeth, wrapping his limbs with those black tentacles. Leader backed away slowly, as if afraid a quick movement would bring the demon’s attention to him.

Sammy screamed as much as he could before the creature ripped off his face with its mouth. It then pulled all of Sammy’s limbs off at once with its powerful tentacles.

Leader ran back into the middle of the lobby, scooping up the gun Jason had dropped during his transformation. He then ran up to the tellers, who had been sitting where they’d been told, watching the terrifying scene play out.

He yanked a pretty girl named Selina up from the floor, putting the barrel of Jason’s old Ruger pistol to her head.

“Let me out of here, man,” he said to me. “Keep that thing away from me.”

Still standing behind the teller booths, I looked beyond him to see the demon tearing Sammy apart, bit by bit.

“I don’t think you need to worry about that one for a little while,” I said, coming around from behind the booths, a small smile on my face.

“Just let me out, man. I’m not taking any of your money. It’s all in those bags back there.”

“It’s too late,” I said. “I gave you ample opportunity to leave, but you didn’t. You did this to yourself.”

“Just let me go or I’ll kill her,” he said. If he had noticed Selina’s utter calmness, the blank expression on her face, he didn’t show it.

I smiled wider. “Have you figured out what ATC stands for? Or what makes this bank different from other ones?”

“Just cut the shit, man,” he said. “I’ll kill her. I swear to God I will.”

That made me smile even wider. “Swearing to God will do you no good here. Not in this place. This is the Antichrist Savings and Loan. Not only do we serve a unique clientele, but, as you’ve seen, we have a unique security system.” I paused, turning my smile to Selina. “And we have very unique employees.”

Leader’s face fell under the ridiculous pantyhose mask, and his gaze went from me to Selina. The pretty young woman’s head twisted impossibly around to look at Leader, giving him her best “welcome to ATC Savings and Loan” smile.

But her smile didn’t stop. It kept going, stretching up past her temples while Leader stood there in horror, his left hand still on her shoulder, right hand still holding the seemingly forgotten gun.

Selina’s face hinged open where the gruesome smile stopped at her forehead. Her human face flipped up, revealing a spiral of undulating teeth behind it. Since her body was still facing the other way, her arms shot backward, grabbing Leader and pulling him into an embrace against her back. Leader screamed and struggled as that gaping maw of moving teeth settled on his face like a buzz saw.

When she was done with him, she let Leader’s headless body fall to the floor, then untwisted her head and popped her arms back into their normal sockets.

“Great job, everyone,” I said. “Lots of excitement for one day. But we still have a bank to run! Let’s get this cleaned up.” The employees got to work cleaning up the messes. I watched with the pride of a man who knows how to run a well-oiled team.

“Oh, and before I forget,” I said. “The dark lord has graced us with another excellent addition to our team. Let’s welcome him with warm wishes of more carnage to come!”

Everyone paused what they were doing to welcome the demon who had inhabited Jason’s body. The demon stopped gorging itself on Sammy’s left leg to wave a tentacle in thanks.

My Turn

The room in the boutique hotel was simple enough. It had a bed and a bathroom and a television. But best of all, it had a window looking out onto a pristine sandy beach and turquoise water.

It wasn’t like we’d be spending much time in the hotel, anyway. Abby and I had all kinds of fun activities planned on the remote island. And we’d paid a small fortune for this vacation. So we were determined to make the most of it.

But as we arrived at the three-story hotel, we were feeling the effects of jet lag from flying halfway around the world. So our plan was to get some serious sleep.

“I’m gonna take a shower,” Abby said when we’d settled.

“Ugh, please do,” I said from the bed, waving a hand in front of my nose.

Abby smiled, but her eyes narrowed. “I was going to suggest we fool around once I got out, but I don’t know about that anymore …”

“I take it back, I take it back!” I said, pleading.

We both laughed and then she went to take her shower.

I flipped on the television. There was a popular superhero movie on, but it was dubbed in the local language. At least there were subtitles.

Zoning out, I closed my eyes for a few minutes. But when the building started shaking, I jumped up from the bed, looking around in confusion. The television shorted out, along with the lights.

I ran into the bathroom as the shaking continued. Abby was shouting, and the water suddenly shut off.

Grabbing a towel, I ripped open the shower curtain and helped her out, then we both crouched in the bathroom doorway. We’d had the shades open on a beautiful sunny afternoon, but something had happened to the sunlight. The room was totally dark.

After about a minute, the shaking stopped, and things settled. Still, we stayed in the doorway. Abby’s blonde hair was still dripping as she clutched the ends of the towel to her chest.

“Earthquake?” she asked.

“Must’ve been,” I said.

The room was still dark. I couldn’t see anything.

“Stay here,” I said, standing up. I went over to the window, seeing nothing but darkness. Like a black blanket had been thrown over the window’s exterior.

I groped around on the nightstand for my phone. When I lit it up, it showed I had no service. “What the hell is happening?” I whispered.

“Did you close the shades earlier?” Abby asked.

“No, I—”

Suddenly, the lights in the room came back on. The sound of water hitting the shower basin came from the bathroom. The television came back on, but there was only a blue screen.

And the window remained dark.

I swallowed hard and moved back over to Abby. “No service,” I said, showing her my phone.

I helped her up, and she went to check her phone.

Stepping to the door, I tried the knob. It moved, but I couldn’t open the door. Then I remembered the deadbolt. I unlocked it and then tried again.

The door didn’t budge.

So I leaned forward and peered out through the peephole. The hallway looked normal. There was no one out there. The door across from us was closed.

Then, from the left, someone came into view, distorted by the fisheye lens.

No, it was two people.

A sliver of dread stabbed through me as the people—a man and a woman—walked right up to our door. As the man looked up, I jumped away from the peephole, producing a frightened grunt.

“What’s wrong?” Abby asked from further in the room.

“It’s us,” I said, not really believing the words myself.

“What?”

I shook my head, trying to come back to my senses. I stepped back to the peephole. The hall was empty again.

“What did you see?” Abby said, coming up next to me and grabbing my hand.

“I saw us, in the hallway. Walking up to the door. Just like when we got here.”

Abby shook her head, brows furrowed. Then she moved forward and looked for herself. “There’s nothing there.”

“You’re right,” I said. “You’re right. See if you can open the door.”

I sat on the bed while Abby tried, to no avail, to open the door. I kept looking from my phone to the black window. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible was happening.

Abby tried to phone the front desk, but she didn’t even get a dial tone on the landline.

We were stuck.

“I’m sure someone will come check on us soon. We can’t be the only ones in the hotel,” Abby said.

We tried our best to pretend like everything was okay. We even tried to sleep. But it was no use.

Our phones still kept time, so we watched as the hours dropped away. There was still electricity, so we were able to charge our phones and computers. But we couldn’t access the internet or call anyone.

We couldn’t communicate with the outside world.

Twenty-four hours passed, and nothing happened. We banged on the door and the walls. We ate the few snacks we had. And we drank water out of the faucet.

The blackness outside the window never changed.

Every so often, I would try to open the door again. When I decided I’d try to break it down, Abby talked me out of it. She was certain someone would be coming soon.

I wasn’t so sure.

On the second night stuck, Abby was snoozing lightly when I heard something from out in the hall. I jumped up and rushed to the peephole, looking out.

The door across from us opened, and an Asian couple walked out, rolling their suitcases behind them and chatting in a language I couldn’t understand. I banged on the door and screamed, waking Abby, but the couple made no sign that they’d even heard me.

And by the time Abby got to the door, they were gone.

I could tell she didn’t believe me. After all, I was the only one who had seen anything out the peephole.

“I’m telling you, there were people there. I heard them talking,” I said. “Fine. I believe you. Is that what you want to hear? I guess they were deaf, even though they were talking.”

“You don’t fucking believe me!” I shouted. “Don’t lie to me!”

“Don’t shout at me,” Abby said in a low voice. “Remember what Doctor Shelton said about yelling.”

“Fuck Doctor Shelton! Don’t you see that we’re screwed here? If we don’t get out of here, we’re going to starve to death.”

Abby stormed past me and into the bathroom, slamming the door.

Another day passed.

We didn’t speak much. Our hunger and fear took up our thoughts and energy. We just lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. We kept the light on, unable to bear the pitch dark.

Finally, sleep came to me. But it didn’t last long.

“Josh!” Abby called, jerking me awake. “Josh!”

She was in the little hallway next to the bathroom. I stepped to the foot of the bed and saw the box, sitting just inside the door.

“What the hell is that?” I asked. “Did you get the door open?”

“No,” Abby said, almost crying. “It still won’t open. The box was just sitting here when I came to use the bathroom.”

I skirted the box, careful not to touch it. It looked like cardboard, but not quite. The texture was wrong. Like it was slicker than cardboard. Slightly shinier.

After looking out the peephole and seeing nothing but the empty hallway, I tried the door. It still wouldn’t open.

“Come on!” I screamed, banging on the door. After a minute of this, I’d worn myself out.

“Are you done?” Abby asked. “You really think that’s going to help anything?”

I ignored her and turned my attention to the box. It was closed, the two long flaps pressed together on top. But there was no tape holding them in place. And when I touched the top of the box, the two flaps opened.

Working carefully, I opened the box and looked inside. “I think it’s food,” I said.

Abby, who’d been standing back with a blank look on her face, seemed to snap out of her daze. “Really?”

Inside the box were small rectangular bars. They were the same color as the cardboard, but they had a different texture. I could smell them. They smelled like those all-natural granola bars you get for five bucks apiece at health food stores.

My stomach rumbled. I reached in and grabbed one, lifting and taking a bite out of it while Abby yelled for me to stop.

“Are you kidding me?” she said. “You’re just going to eat it? Just like that?”

It was the best thing I’d ever tasted. I closed my eyes and made a small moan as I chewed. “What do you want me to do, send it off to the lab to have it tested?” I said, but my heart wasn’t in the fight.

I scarfed the rest of the bar down and had to stop myself from eating another one. It’s not like there wasn’t plenty in the box. There was. Probably forty-eight or more of the things. But I wanted to wait to see if there were any ill effects before eating more.

Abby made it about an hour—asking me how I felt every five minutes—before she ate one.

With some food in my stomach, I finally fell asleep for a little while.

Two more days passed.

Even though we now had food to eat, it gave us little solace. The stress combined with the close quarters meant Abby and I were yelling at each other what seemed like once every two hours.

Finally, in the middle of another fight, I stormed to the bathroom and slammed the door, locking it. Abby came to the door and started tapping on it, egging me on. She wanted to keep fighting.

So I turned on the shower and sat under the warm water, not even bothering to take off my clothes. I sat there for a long time. At some point, I turned off the water and took off my wet clothes. After drying off and hanging my clothes, I unlocked the door and headed out of the bathroom—to find the hotel room door open.

I froze, looking out the open door and into the hallway. “Abby?”

No answer.

Holding the towel around my waist with one hand, I moved into the room. It was empty. Abby was gone.

I ran into the hallway, looking frantically left and right. “Abby?!”

The hallway lights were on, and I could see a window at the end of the hall to my right. It was pitch-black on the other side of the glass, just like the window in our room.

Running to the left, I rounded the corner toward the stairs and the elevator. No sign of Abby. I hit the elevator button, but nothing happened. It didn’t light up. So I tried the door to the stairwell. It wouldn’t budge.

I ran back the other way, passing the room and stopping when I got to the window. “What the fuck!?” I screamed, punching the window. A sharp pain shot through my hand, and I knew I’d broken something. The window remained unmarred.

Clenching my teeth and gripping my right hand below the wrist with my left, I stumbled back to the room, tears streaming down my face.

And as I came to the door, I noticed something on it. There was a small device fastened over the peephole. Almost like a little version of those doorbell cameras people have. I couldn’t remember if it was there when we came to the room, but as I looked around, I saw that every door had one.

I went across the hall and banged on the door. There was no answer. I did the same with three other doors.

Nothing.

I turned back and went into my room. Leaving the door open about halfway, I stepped behind it and looked through the peephole. And I saw the hallway as it would’ve been if the door had been closed. But it wasn’t closed all the way. I should’ve seen the door jamb and only half the hallway, but I didn’t.

Whatever the device was on the other side of the door, it was playing a recording of the hallway.

As I was contemplating this, the sound of movement came from inside the room.

“Abby?” I said, hair standing up on my neck.

I crept past the bathroom and into the room. I could see the back of Abby’s head just beyond the bed, as if she were sitting on the floor with her back against the bed.

I rushed over toward her. “Abby, baby, I—”

The words jammed in my throat as I saw my girlfriend. Her parts were all mixed up. Her mouth was on her forehead, her tongue hanging limply out. One of her eyes was on her left cheek, the other one where her mouth should’ve been. Her nose had been turned, her nostrils pointing to the left instead of down.

Her left leg had been swapped with her left arm. She looked up at me with confused eyes, then tried to get up. She managed to get to her right leg, but when she tried to walk, she stumbled into the window.

I moved back, watching as her left leg twitched and worked where it came out of her t-shirt at her left shoulder. She kept trying to get up. Her eyes rolled in desperation.

My mouth wanted to work, but there was nothing to say.

I was sure I’d gone insane. Back in the real world, my blubbering body was a vegetable. Maybe I’d been in an accident. Severe head injury.

As I backed toward the hall, I passed the television, which suddenly switched on. This time, there was an actual program on, instead of a blue screen.

It was a news program. In English.

There was an aerial view of a pristine beach and turquoise water. But the tranquility of the scene was in stark contrast to the mess of rebar and plumbing and wiring that stuck out of the ground where a building had once stood.

The building I was now in. The hotel.

“Still no explanation for the mysterious disappearance of an entire hotel on this remote Pacific Island. It has been five days since the structure simply vanished, leaving experts to scramble for explanations that don’t involve extraterrestrials. The family members of those staying and working in the hotel say that…”

The words were drowned out by the blood rushing in my ears.

Abby stumbled toward me, reaching out with her right hand as she balanced on her right leg. She grabbed my left hand and jammed it up to her throat.

It took me a moment to realize she was asking me to kill her.

I shook my head and yanked my hand away as panic closed in. Backing toward the door, my only thought was to run. But I couldn’t go anywhere. There was no escape.

And as I backed up to the doorway, I felt the strong, cold grip of hands with too many fingers around my arms and legs. Something slimy clamped around my face, keeping me from shouting out or seeing the culprits.

I fought as they dragged me down the hallway, but it was no use. The observation portion of the experiment was over. Now, they were going to take me apart and put me back together.

It was my turn.

Hungry High School

History class is underway, and there’s nothing more boring. I slide down in my seat and adjust my hooded sweatshirt. Mrs. Blaylock used to give me shit about my hood, but I eventually wore her down.

It’s not the hood that I’m concerned with, though. It’s the Bluetooth earbuds in my ears under the hood.

There are a few classes where I can get away with listening to music while the teacher drones on. It takes persistence to make it so the teachers don’t even try, but I’m stubborn like that.

I zone out while Mrs. Blaylock goes over World War II. Class is about halfway over when all the students suddenly perk up and look toward the PA speaker in the corner of the room. I reach up and take one of my earbuds out, hearing the familiar instructions of another lockdown drill. It’s about time for one, I think. We do one every month.

I slip the earbud back into my ear. I don’t need to hear the instructions. I already know what we’re supposed to do.

I lean forward and get ready to head to the other side of the room with the rest of the students. A fast-paced punk rock song plays in my ears. Everyone stays seated for another minute or so, and I assume there must be some other announcements or instructions for this drill. I debate taking my earbuds out to hear them, but it’s probably too late now, anyway. I’ll just follow the lead of the other students.

Mrs. Blaylock is standing in the front of the room, looking like she’s asleep with her eyes open. I know the feeling.

The students all stand up at the same time, a synchronized movement that gives me chills. I stand up, too, shrugging it off as a coincidence. I take a couple of steps forward to head to the wall, but none of the other students are moving. I look over at Jerod, who is the only kid in class I can really stand, and see that he’s standing up, just staring ahead.

What the hell is going on? I think for a second that everyone in class is playing a prank on me, but that would involve a level of preparedness that is unthinkable for high school students—especially the ones at my school.

The song I’m listening to ends, and there’s a moment of silence before the next one begins. A strange, repetitive sound comes dully through my earbuds, and I feel my mind slipping away like I’m about to fall asleep. But it’s not pleasant, like drifting off after a long day. It’s downright scary. Like my consciousness is being ripped away from me.

The next song starts, and I snap out of it, coming back to my body.

What in the actual fuck?

I look up at the speaker in the corner. There’s nowhere else that sound could come from.

I pull out my phone and open Spotify. I go into advanced settings and select the Crossfade Songs option so there won’t be any silence between songs.

I put my phone back in my pocket and turn my head, sensing movement from my right. The girl that sits behind Jerod—her name’s Amy—is sucking on Jerod’s neck. It only takes me a moment to realize she’s not really sucking on his neck—she’s biting it. She pulls away with a mouthful of flesh, and blood sprays out of Jerod’s neck, coating Amy’s face as she chews contentedly.

Jerod doesn’t seem to notice. He steps forward to Hector, the student ahead of him. Jerod raises Hector’s arm, then takes a big bite out of it.

Hands come at me from both sides, and I turn to see dead-eyed students grabbing at me, their mouths watering. I shove them back and rush to the front of the room. I head straight for the door, looking over my shoulder to see that all the students in the classroom are now eating each other. Bloody mouths chew, wounds spill blood, and glazed eyes stare at nothing. Mrs. Blaylock steps toward me with that same blank-yet-hungry look on her face.

I turn, running into the hall, and slam right into the gym teacher, Mr. Hardiman. He grabs me by the shoulders and ducks his head forward to take a bite out of me. I snap my head forward, headbutting him in the nose. We stumble away from each other. I grip my forehead, wondering how people do that in the movies without getting hurt. I’ve got a serious headache. But it pales in comparison to the threat of being eaten by Mr. Hardiman.

He reaches toward me again, but I duck him and run down the hall. Punk rock plays in my headphones, and I suddenly feel like I’m in a movie with a kickass soundtrack. But a glance into a classroom I’m passing reminds me that this is no movie. This is really happening. Everyone has turned to zombies, and they’re eating each other.

I keep running, heading to the front office.

I slide to a stop outside the office door, looking through the window. I don’t see anyone in the office area. I don’t know exactly where the PA system is located, but I assume it must be somewhere beyond that office door, in the faculty area.

I push through the door and come to the reception desk that’s usually manned by Ms. Kelly, the administrative assistant. I rush around the desk and trip over someone—or two someones, I realize as I look behind me from where I am on the floor. Ms. Kelly, once busy eating Principal Daley, now sets her sights on me. She grabs my left leg while Principal Daley, who is so badly eaten I thought he was dead, sits up from the floor and reaches out for me.

I yell and kick and scramble away, ducking into the first office I see. As soon as I stand up in the office, I’m knocked down again as someone in dark clothing runs into me. We both fall to the floor, and I’m ready to fend off a hungry mouth, but the figure clambers up and runs out the door.

I look around the office and see the PA system built into the wall next to the desk. The microphone is bent down to a small digital recording device on the desk. I see that someone has taped the transmit button down.

I rip the tape off and hit stop on the digital recorder. I pull out my phone and turn down the volume a little, ready to turn it back up if I hear that weird noise again. But I don’t. So I turn my music down some more. And then I turn it off.

I hear a high-pitched sound start up, which sends my heart skipping and almost has me pushing play on my phone again. But I recognize the noise.

It’s the sound of hundreds of people screaming.

I step out to the office door and see Ms. Kelly and Principal Daley looking at their wounds, screaming.

Principal Daley passes out as I stand there, unsure what to do. Ms. Kelly looks up at me, tears streaming down her blood-smeared cheeks. “What happened?” she screams. “Help me!”

All across the school, students and teachers are pouring out of the classrooms, bloody and missing pieces, screaming in confusion. I can hear them.

I step back into the office where the PA is and shut the door for a little quiet. I call 911 and tell them there’s been a terrible incident during a lockdown drill. I tell them to send all the medical personnel they can. The lady asks me how many people are injured. “All of them,” I say.

Once the call is done, I lean over, depress the transmit button on the PA, and tell everyone that help is on the way.

I can still hear the screaming. I look down at my phone again, debating.

Making a decision, I turn my music back on, crank the volume, and go looking for a first aid kit, thankful that I can no longer hear the screaming.

I don’t know who it was that set this whole thing up. I don’t know how it’s even possible. But I do know one thing: I’m never going anywhere without my earbuds ever again.

The Appearance

One day they were just there.

I remember where I was when they appeared.

Everyone does.

I was at work, stocking the truck up to go fix a broken dryer in South Austin. I suddenly realized that the ever-present sounds of work at the warehouse—the whir of electric drills, the clang of an appliance’s metal body being removed, the constant chatter of the employees—had died down.

I walked through the open bay door and into the main warehouse to see everyone gathered in a corner, looking up at the old, dusty flatscreen television affixed to the exposed wooden struts on the wall. The volume was too low for me to hear anything more than a murmur from the talking head on screen.

When I saw Mark, my slavedriver of a boss, looking up at the television, I knew something big was going down.

I approached the others, walking past washers and dryers and fridges in various states of repair at the different workstations.

As I got closer, the newscaster’s voice cleared. “… these objects appeared today at the same time, all over the world,” the man with coiffed hair and a reassuringly neutral voice said. “We have reports of them appearing on street corners, in homes, in office buildings, parking lots, apartment buildings, and restaurants. Again, we have no official word as to their nature or where they came from. Given the nature of their arrival, many are positing that these objects are not terrestrial in origin. But that’s only a guess at this point. We’ll bring you more on this story as it develops.”

An on-scene reporter came on screen then, sharing the space with the man in the studio. It was a blond woman who was standing in front of a crowd of people on a busy street corner.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked my friend Silvan, tapping him on the shoulder.

He jumped at my voice and turned to me, eyes wide in disbelief. His usual mischievous smile was gone. “James, I thought you’d left. No one knows, man,” he said. “These things just showed up out of nowhere like an hour ago. They showed up all over the world, man. Twitter is going nuts with it. It’s all anyone’s talking about.”

“What are they?” I asked.

Silvan shook his head. “No one knows—”

“I mean what do they look like,” I interrupted, glancing between Silvan and the television screen where the newscasters were just saying the same things over again in different words.

“Some reports say they’re like black … orbs or something,” Silvan said. “But that’s the thing: they’re telling people not to look at them.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know, man. Something about how they could be a threat. Some kind of weapon. They’re trying to block them off so the military or scientists or whatever can study them. To try to find out what they’re for.”

“What the hell?” I said, whispering the words in awe.

“Yeah, bro. I’m not saying it’s aliens … but, it’s aliens.”

My cell phone rang. It was my girlfriend, Rachel. She was scared. I was scared, too. But I did my best to comfort her.

That was three days ago.

Nothing cataclysmic has happened in the days since. At least, nothing we’ve been told about.

Of course, just after the Appearance, the internet was flooded with photos and videos people took of the Orbs before government officials came in and took over. It’s strange. In all the footage, they look like shiny black circles floating in the air, about the size of a beach ball.

There are unconfirmed reports of people getting close enough to touch them. There are rumors of people having their arms chopped off, others having their wildest dreams come true, and still others going insane from getting too close.

I don’t know what to believe. Most of it is probably bullshit.

There was an incident in London where a bunch of people bum-rushed one of the locations—quarantine stations, they call them. The military there mowed them down. They killed over twenty people. Just because they wanted to see one of the Orbs for themselves.

Surely the orbs are under constant visual and audio surveillance. But they’re not releasing any of the footage to the people, no matter how much we want it. All we have to go on is a bunch of amateur footage taken on the day. And many of the photos and videos making their way around the internet have already been debunked.

Some people think that there are still some Orbs out there that no one has found. People have been wandering around in the forests and deserts and grasslands, looking for undiscovered Orbs, just so they can get close to one. So they can find out what they’re for. What they do.

Not knowing is a special kind of torture.

It’s almost all I can think about. The only respite I get is when I’m asleep. But even then, I’ve had dreams that I was allowed into a quarantine station to look at one of them. I always wake up just before I step into the chamber.

And I’m not alone. The population seems to be split: half trying to ignore the Appearance and the other half clambering for information, footage, and an explanation.

My girlfriend, Rachel, thinks I need to let it go. She’s a Denier, as we call them. I’m a Truther. We’ve had a couple of fights over it, but I still love her. She still loves me. We just disagree on this thing.

She doesn’t understand this need I have. I need to see one.

I just need to.

I know if I’m allowed to get close to an Orb, everything will become clear.

In the meantime, I still need to make a living. Even though work now seems like some kind of sick joke, nothing has truly changed. It feels like everything has changed, but nothing has.

That’s what makes this so hard.

The Appearance is proof of something. Something more. Something else. But until we’re allowed to see—until we really know why they’re keeping us from the Orbs—there’s nothing much we can do.

Some people have quit their jobs and gone to camp out near one of the quarantine stations, but they’re the most desperate, the most rock-bottom, and the most fanatical religious freaks who think the Appearance precedes the coming of whatever god they happen to believe in.

And who am I to say? Maybe they’re right. At this point, anything’s possible.

But until something else happens, I still need money to pay for food and for the roof over mine and Rachel’s heads.

So here I am, driving to fix a refrigerator in Austin’s West Lake Hills neighborhood. I’m listening to a news show on the radio. They’re talking about relations with China or some other such nonsense when they break in with a bulletin. Apparently, some of the Orbs have started disappearing from quarantine stations around the world. Just there one second, gone the next. No one knows why this is or where they’re going, of course. If they do know, they’re not telling the public.

I feel a deep depression settle over me. We’ve missed our chance. Whatever their purpose, the Orbs are disappearing. Perhaps we’re not worthy. I feel that they’ll all soon be gone, but I can’t go back to the way things were. I can’t.

I’m right on time as I pull up to the house. I shut off the engine and rally my energy to get this done, no matter how much I want to drive off and crash through a quarantine station’s boundary to get one in-person glimpse of an Orb. Just one goddamn glimpse. Is that so much to ask?

I get out of my truck, grab my tool kit, and walk up to the home. It’s a nice house, as most of them are in this upscale neighborhood. It’s two-stories tall with tan trim and rock siding all around it. I ring the doorbell. A few long moments pass before a woman in late-middle age opens the door. She’s smiling politely and gesturing for me to come inside.

As we walk, she explains when the fridge stopped cooling. I nod and make appropriate noises as she explains, but my heart isn’t in it.

I feel almost heartbroken, abandoned, betrayed. I feel that humanity, once again, has been too stupid to take its own salvation seriously. Now the Orbs are leaving. We’ve missed our chance.

She shows me to the refrigerator—a big silver three-door.

I find myself alone in the kitchen, the woman having left me to my work. I open the fridge doors and feel inside with my hand. I shut the doors and start the process of pulling the fridge out from its space between the wall and the cabinets.

The lights flicker in the house, and I stop pulling the fridge, afraid that I’ve somehow caused the electrical malfunction, however unlikely that is.

Somewhere in the house, the woman makes a surprised sound. It’s brief, and I attribute it to the flickering of the lights, which has already stopped.

Something suddenly feels different in the house. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s a change in the air of the place. Maybe a cloud bank has rolled between the sun and the house, dimming the light falling on this part of the Texas Hill Country.

I shrug it off and finish pulling the fridge out. I unplug it and get down behind it to check on the compressor when a loud crack sounds in the house, followed quickly by a thud.

My heart scrambles as I realize the crack was a gunshot, and the thud, in all likelihood, a body collapsing to the floor.

“Hello?” I call out. “Ma’am, was that you?”

There’s no answer.

“Hello?” I call out again. “Ma’am? Are you alright?”

No answer. The house is as silent as the vacuum of space.

I leave my tools behind and move hesitantly out of the kitchen, calling every few seconds as I go.

I’m certain the shot and the thump came from upstairs, so I head up the stairway, past family pictures lining the wall. There’s a hallway at the top of the stairs. I’m fairly certain the noises came from the left, so I move that way.

I call out once more as I head down the hallway.

Still no answer.

The door to the master bedroom is cracked, leaving a gap of about four inches. I knock on the door and call out, “Hello?”

When I get no answer, I try to ignore the disruptive thudding of my heart as I push open the door.

The woman is lying face down on the floor. The left side of her skull is gone, leaving a gory, gaping hole. The floor next to her head is stained with blood and grayish lumps. A revolver is gripped loosely in her right hand. Her brains and skull fragments are arrayed in a widening spray across the bottom corner of the bed she’d been standing next to when she pulled the trigger.

My stomach clenches and I swallow bile that comes up my throat. I spin away from the door, determined to get away—and come face-to-face with a floating black Orb.

I suck in breath, frightened by its appearance in the hallway. I take a step back, but my eyes are locked on it. I stop, and all my focus concentrates on my eyes, leaving all other senses to fade into the background.

At first, the complete darkness of the Orb is all. But I soon see that there’s something in there. Something that looks like me.

I take a step forward and look closer.

The Orb pulls me in, and I fall without falling. I scream without making a sound.

I’m transported to my apartment. Rachel is here, but there’s something wrong. Something’s at the door.

She’s pressed up against the door, screaming at me to help her as the door flexes inward while a cacophony of inhuman sounds emanates from the hallway.

I try to move, but an infuriating dreamlike slowness seems to surround me, hampering my movements while everything else happens in real time.

A glance out of our seventh-floor apartment window shows me a changed Austin cityscape. Inverted black pyramids sit unmoving in the sky, the clouds pushing up against them and moving around. There must be hundreds of the spaceships.

One floats down on top of a nearby hotel, piercing the roof with its point and splitting the building in slow motion. I’m close enough to see people jumping out of the windows as the ship smashes the building from the top down.

Rachel screams at me again, and I turn back to her, moving as if stuck in gelatin. Green-black tentacles squirm under the door, undulating violently as they try to locate Rachel. One touches her left calf and latches on. Rachel feels its touch and flings herself away from the door in horror, but the tentacle stretches taut, preventing her from moving more than a few feet.

“Help me, James!” she cries. “It hurts!”

Something rolls up the tentacle—a lump traversing the slimy appendage. The lump reaches Rachel’s leg, which explodes from the inside out, sending blood and bone splatting against the walls and furniture.

Rachel falls to the floor, her foot and the lower half of her shin lying amid an expanding pool of blood pumping steadily out of her wound.

The door slams open to reveal a mass of squirming tentacles filling the doorway. Small eyes appear here and there at the end of the slithering tendrils, disappearing almost as fast as they come.

I yell, but no sound comes. I move, my muscles burning with the effort, but I get no closer.

Two dozen tentacles reach into the room and snatch Rachel up from the ground, holding her up so she’s facing me. Some of the appendages dig through her body, popping out the other side to wave at me while Rachel screams and screams and screams. Others go to her fingers, snapping them first and then ripping them off, tossing them aside like the bones of a chicken wing.

Rachel convulses and her eyes bulge out before popping out of their sockets, pushed out by two tentacles.

I’m paralyzed with sickness, as if all my emotions are limited, just as my physical movement is, by whatever is doing this to me. By the Orb.

The monster thrusts Rachel’s convulsing body at me, bringing her bloody and pain-distorted face close to mine. The tentacles coming out of her eye sockets pierce my skull, shoving my eyes aside like errant marbles in a child’s game. The pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. The slimy, blood-coated appendages reach into my brain and my world disappears, replaced by a pain so thorough and complete that everything loses meaning. Everything but the mental and physical agony that makes every breath a measure of years. With every heartbeat comes a wish for death. I pray that Rachel isn’t experiencing what I am. I pray she’s dead. And that I can join her.

But death doesn’t come.

After what seems like years of torment, I’m ripped through swirling space to a place that’s not a place at all. I have no body here. I’m just a presence, witnessing.

Witnessing the amassing of an army. An army of those tentacled creatures. I see into the mind of one of these beings and I see their will. I see their plan to take over Earth. And I know it will work. There’s no doubt, only a calm, unending confidence that they will destroy humanity and take over. For several seemingly unending moments, I am one of these creatures, and I look down upon humanity with a disgust unmatched by even the strongest of human emotions. I see how they look at us, piddling around on our little blue sphere, oblivious to the true nature of the universe.

Then I’m ripped away from that mind, thrown through the swirling, chaotic realm between time and reality.

I collapse to my knees in the upstairs hallway of the house in West Lake Hills, sobbing uncontrollably. I vomit onto the carpet before I think to look up for the Orb.

It’s gone.

I turn around on my hands and knees, sobbing quietly, and look back into the master bedroom. The woman is still there; her brains still splattered across half the room. I gag and wrench my eyes shut, willing the sight out of my brain.

I get to my feet, my back to the open bedroom door, and pull out my phone. I call Rachel, willing her to be alive. To pick up the phone.

“Hey,” she says.

“Thank God,” I say in a husky voice, barely controlling my sobs.

“James? Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Are you at home?” I ask, a sudden certainty of action filling my mind.

“Yeah. I just got back from work. What’s going on?”

“Just stay there. Please. I’ll be there soon.”

“James—”

I hang up before she can argue. I run down the stairs and out the door of the house, leaving my tools behind. I won’t be needing them anymore.

I just hope I get there in time.

***

I jam the truck into drive and pull a U-turn to head out of the neighborhood, the tires screeching and the engine growling. A woman runs screaming out of one of the houses lining the street. She tries to make me stop, waving her arms and yelling hysterics. I swerve to miss her.

Looking in my side mirror as I drive away, I see a man run out of the house after the woman. His body language is threatening, but I find that I don’t care. They’ve probably seen into an Orb too. They’re on their own. There’s nothing we can do to fight them.

And if they’re having a marital spat, it won’t matter soon. Nothing will.

I turn out of the neighborhood, getting on Loop 360 to head home. I’m driving fast to get there, but a few cars zoom past me, going over a hundred miles per hour. I pass two wrecks and one man that has pulled his Ford truck over to the side of the road. He has a gun in his hand and seems to be talking to himself.

I realize the radio is still on, but I’ve been tuning it out. I can’t stop thinking about what those monsters did to Rachel. What they did to me.

I know that these things haven’t happened yet, but the experience was so real that I can still feel pain residuals throughout my entire body.

So what they’ve already done to us and what they’re going to do are one and the same. And there’s only one way to avoid it.

The man on the radio is speaking fast. He’s telling everyone to stay calm. He’s saying that the Orbs have started moving, appearing in front of people all around the world. In their homes, at sporting events, at malls and nail salons and in skyscrapers. He says we shouldn’t look at the Orbs. That we should close our eyes and move away. That they want us to look into the Orbs. That’s why they sent them to Earth.

I can tell that the radioman hasn’t seen what I’ve seen.

The Orbs are a mercy. They’re a way of saying we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

Because there’s no winning. Not against them.

There are cops everywhere as I approach downtown. I see them wrestling people to the ground, zooming past after speeders, and dressed in riot gear in front of banks.

The world has gone insane. Because more and more people are seeing the Truth.

I take up two parking spots in my building’s parking garage and run up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator.

With a shaking hand, I slide the key into my apartment door, but before I can get it open, Rachel unlocks it and pulls open the door.

“Oh, thank God you’re okay,” she says, wrapping me in a hug.

I swing the door shut behind me and lock it with one hand.

“What’s happening out there?” Rachel asks. “They say the Orbs are moving now?” She pulls away and looks at me as she asks the questions. Tears stream down my face as I look at her, seeing her eyes popping out in my mind, hearing her screams so vividly.

“What’s wrong? Why are you crying, James? James?”

“I’ve seen them,” I say. “I’ve seen what they do to you—to us. I can’t.”

“What? James, did you look into one of them? Did you?” She’s backing away from me, but I stay with her, my hands on her shoulders.

“They’re coming,” I say. “They’ll be here soon.”

“Ow! James, you’re hurting my shoulders,” she says. “Let go!”

“You don’t understand, Rachel. You haven’t seen it.”

“Let me go!” she screams. “Help me!”

I look over her right shoulder and out the window, seeing a black inverted pyramid floating in the sky over downtown Austin. “Oh, God,” I say. “They’re here.”

Rachel stops squirming in my grasp for a moment to turn her head and look out the window. My hands slide up her shoulders to grip her neck. She whips her head back around to me, surprise and terror on her face. “There’s nothing—” I cut her words off as my grip tightens around her throat.

“I’m sorry,” I say between sobs, my forearms bulging as I squeeze her neck. I force her down to the ground, my tears dripping on her beautiful face as it changes colors. Her eyes bulge out toward me, and I half expect them to pop out, followed by disgusting black-green tentacles. She makes little whimpering sounds and bats futilely at my face and arms.

I let up for a moment, a voice inside me screaming for me to stop. A brief clarity descends on me, and I loosen my grip on Rachel’s neck further. She pulls in a ragged breath.

A banging sound comes from the front door of our apartment, and everything closes in on me again. I cry out and redouble my efforts, leaning down on Rachel’s throat, feeling it start to give.

“You can’t have her,” I yell toward the door. “I won’t let you!”

I need to make this quick so I can kill myself before the monster breaks in. But the important part is Rachel. I need to make sure they don’t get her. I couldn’t stand that.

The banging at the door grows louder, more insistent. There’s a voice there, a familiar voice, but I know it’s just a trick. They’re smart ones. And vicious.

I feel a crunch under my hands and look down to see that I’ve collapsed Rachel’s windpipe. I yank my hands away from her throat as if it’s scalding to the touch. I scramble off of her and stand up, looking around, thinking of the best way to kill myself.

I run to the kitchen just as I hear the front door crash in. I grab a sharp blade from the knife block and manage to stab it down into the underside of my forearm before the tentacles are upon me, yanking my hand away from the knife handle.

“What the fuck are you doing?” the monster says from behind me. It’s using my neighbor Dan’s voice. I struggle to get free, but the monster shoves me down to the floor on my back. I look up into Dan’s face. His brother, Seth, is there too, helping to hold me down.

“You killed Rachel,” Dan says, his voice lacking any depth of emotion. “She’s dead.”

“What?” I say, not understanding what’s happening. “Dan? Let me go. They’re here. They’re here. Let me finish.” The knife is still in my arm, but I barely feel it.

Dan finds a clean towel, takes out the knife, and wraps the wound with the towel.

I continue to plead with them, but I eventually go quiet, waiting for the real monsters to show up.

“It’s not real, you know,” Seth says, still holding me down. “You did exactly what they wanted you to. It’s not real. That’s what they’re saying. The government. Scientists. It’s not real.”

“It is,” I say. “I’ve seen it. I felt it. It’s real.”

When the police finally show up and arrest me, I get a chance to look out the window. The black pyramid is gone.

I wonder if it was ever there to begin with.

***

I wasn’t the only one to take action in response to the Orbs. In the months that followed my arrest, more and more stories came out about the things people did after they saw into the Orbs.

Once the word got out, most people simply refused to look into one of them. Some of those that did look into the Orbs didn’t do anything at all. They convinced themselves that it was all a trick, despite having seen and felt and experienced it all.

But most people took action. They robbed banks or drove their cars into brick walls or killed their loved ones or drank themselves into a stupor or shot themselves in the head, much like the woman with the broken fridge did.

Congress had to approve the building of new facilities for people like me. Putting us in with regular old criminals wasn’t the thing to do, apparently.

We’re special. We have regular doctor visits and group therapy sessions and we’re constantly under observation.

For the first month, I was convinced that those creatures would show up any day. I tried to kill myself a dozen or more times. But the guards and doctors were ready for it. They didn’t leave me with anything that would do the job effectively.

Now, six months since the day everything changed, I still believe they’ll show up one day. I have to believe that. But that’s not what I tell the doctors. No, I tell them what they want to hear. That it was all a trick designed to get us to kill each other. Or an experiment to see how we reacted.

If it was a trick, only a few million people fell for it around the world. Not enough to make a difference. If it was an experiment to see how advanced we are as a species, then we failed miserably.

I don’t have a window in my cell, but I get to go out into the yard for two hours every day. The first thing I do is look around for a black upside-down pyramid in the sky.

I feel a deep disappointment every time I don’t see one. But I don’t tell anyone that.

The truth is, I want them to come. I want them to invade, to take over the planet. Maybe they’ll do a better job with it than we have.

But the real reason I want them to come is so I can be right. So I didn’t kill Rachel for nothing.

It took me a long time to come to terms with that fact. The fact that I’d be perfectly happy to see the end of humanity if it would make the terrible thing I’ve done okay.

So I’ll keep looking for the pyramids. I’ll keep having nightmares about writhing, tentacled monsters killing Rachel and then myself. And I’ll keep picturing the way Rachel looked when I was killing her.

I’ll keep hoping for the end of it all.

You know, we really are a strange species.

The Cure

The crunching sound of something big moving through the dark woods catches my attention. I can’t see what it is. It’s too damn dark.

“Shh,” I say, but Teddy continues giggling. I don’t remember what set him off, but he doesn’t seem to hear me.

The noise seems to have stopped. I peer out at the trees, listening.

The sound comes again, only this time it’s closer.

“Dude, shut up,” I whisper, reaching out and hitting Teddy.

“Ah, what the hell, man?” he says, the vape pen held forgotten by his side.

“Shh. Listen,” I say. “Someone’s coming.”

Teddy’s already-scrunched facial features scrunch up even more as he dons a look of concentration and cocks his head to one side.

I listen, too, holding my breath. The sound has stopped again. My paranoia is in full swing, thanks to the THC doing its thing in my bloodstream. The night presses in on us. The only reason I can see Teddy is because he’s standing two feet away and my eyes have adjusted.

We’re standing under an old wooden footbridge out in the woods near our neighborhood. It’s the middle of October, and cold here in the northeast. I can see my breath with each contraction of my lungs. The soft trickle of the water flowing past a few feet away is soft, but it’s not a comfort to me right now. All I can think about is the strange crunching from the woods.

When the thing—whatever it is—starts moving again, it sounds like it’s moving away.

“Dude,” Teddy says. “Did I tell you I thought I heard someone screaming on the way home?”

“Just shut up for a second. Didn’t you hear that?”

“Relax, Trent, it’s just a deer or something. You always get too paranoid whenever we vape. It’s not your dad coming to catch you for getting high, okay?”

“I know it’s not my dad, dumbass,” I say. “I don’t know what it was, but it sounded big.”

“So it was a big deer. What do they call them? A male deer? An elk?” Teddy takes another lungful of vaporized THC.

“An elk is a completely different animal. You’re thinking of a buck.”

“Huh? You’re going to give me a buck? Thanks, man.”

Teddy smiles, and I can’t help but laugh.

I check the time. “Let’s go. I bet Alvin is already on, waiting for us.”

I turn to leave, but Teddy takes another puff then shakes his head. “Poor kid. With a name like Alvin, it’s no wonder he’s such a weirdo.”

“Hey,” I say. “He’s a good kid. He’s just had a hard go of it.”

“I know, I know,” Teddy says, walking out from under the bridge. “He’s just a little weird. I mean, we’re all a little weird. But man, that kid trips me out sometimes.”

I know what Teddy’s talking about. Alvin is a pretty weird kid. But no one ever gave him a chance. He’s a sophomore at our high school, while Teddy’s a junior and I’m a senior. And even though Alvin is the right age for a sophomore, he looks a lot younger. He’s small and skinny and always looks malnourished. I felt bad for him, which was why I asked him if he played video games one day. He was just sitting alone in the cafeteria, waiting for school to start, and looking completely miserable. So I struck up a conversation with him.

He told me he didn’t have a system, and I said that was too bad. Pretty soon after, the bell for first period started, and we went our separate ways.

At lunch, I told Teddy that I wanted to find a way to get the kid an Xbox One. It had been out for a couple of years, and I was confident I could get one for cheap.

“What’s your obsession with this kid?” Teddy asked. “Just leave him alone.”

“He’s miserable,” I said. “Besides, he reminds me of me.”

Teddy looked at me over his soggy burger. “You? Get-the-fuck-outta-here,” he said, running the words together like an Italian American mobster.

“Remember what I looked like freshman year?” I said. “Remember how I got picked on all the time and didn’t have any friends until I hit my growth spurt and started coming into my own?”

Teddy laughed at the memory. “Yeah, dude. You were a little bitch. I was in eight grade, and I could’ve kicked your ass back then. But, uh, by the way, you still don’t have any friends. It’s just me.”

“Ha. Ha. You know what I mean. I’m going to help the kid. He may never get a growth spurt, like me. But at least he can have some fun during high school.”

Teddy chomped his burger. “Whatever, dude. You’re weird. You two deserve each other. You’ll probably grow up to work for some weird charity or something.”

I was working part time at a movie theater at the time, and I had a friend who worked at GameStop, so I got a pretty good deal on an Xbox One. I brought it over to his place after school one day. I didn’t realize it until that day, but he lives right near me. Barely a block away. So I helped him set it up and connect to Xbox live and everything.

That night, the three of us—Teddy, me, and Alvin—played Fortnite. As to be expected, Alvin wasn’t very good. But I could tell over the voice chat that he was having fun. Teddy got into it, too, joking around with Alvin.

That was last school year, back when I was still a junior. Now we play almost every weeknight. Usually after Teddy and I meet up and get high. Alvin doesn’t know about that. Even though weed is not really a big deal, I don’t want to be a bad influence on the kid.

Besides, he is kind of creepy. I don’t know how much I could handle being face-to-face with him while stoned.

“What are we playing tonight?” Teddy says as we climb up the low slope next to the bridge and get on the foot trail.

“It’s Thursday,” I say. “Call of Duty night.”

“Oh, hell yeah, muthafucka! I’m gonna own you fools.”

“We’ll see about—” I stop, looking off into the woods. I saw a flash of color out there.

“What? What is it?” Teddy asks.

I point. “That look like a shoe to you?” I say.

“That’s a Jordan,” Teddy says, after a moment.

I think he’s right. I can barely see the red Nike swoop along the side, just above the white sole. It’s tucked back in a tangle of branches and covered in a little bit of mud or something, but it certainly looks like an Air Jordan.

“Someone got their shit tossed out in the woods,” Teddy says. “Messing with a man’s Jordans. That’s cold blooded.” He pauses, standing up straight as something occurs to him. “What if it’s still attached to a foot?” he says.

I laugh, looking back at the dark tangle of branches to refute this theory. But as I look closer, I see that the positioning of the shoe—upside down and canted at an angle away from us—could mean that there’s still a foot in it, and a body lying hidden by the darkness and the branches.

Teddy starts to make his way into the woods to investigate when a branch snaps behind us.

Both of us jump as we cry out with fear, turning around to see a guy from the neighborhood, Tony, laughing his ass off with a broken branch in his hands. He’s dressed in warm running gear, apparently out for a jog. He’s in his twenties, home from college on a hiatus of some sort. He used to mess with us back when he was still in high school.

“I’ve never wanted anyone to have died in college more than you,” Teddy says. “Alcohol poisoning. Drug overdose. Death by boredom. Anything.”

“You guys jumped like five feet in the air,” he says, still laughing, struggling to catch his breath. “You screamed like girls.”

“You going to be living in your mom and dad’s house for much longer, Anthony?” I say. “I’m sure they love having you around.”

“Do your mom and dad know that you’re out of the house getting high, Trenton?” he says. Then he tosses the broken branch, laughs, and runs off, continuing his jog.

Teddy and I forget about the shoe and head back, muttering about Tony and insisting that he didn’t really scare us. We split up as we get out of the woods to go to our respective houses.

By the time I get home and get logged onto Xbox Live, I see that Alvin has invited me to a party. I join it, and a few minutes later, Teddy shows up. We play for about an hour, joking over our headsets and having a good time.

Just as I get killed and have to wait a few seconds for a respawn, I hear a freaky voice over the headset. It’s deep, garbled, and scratchy all at once. I can’t understand the words it’s speaking because it’s no language I’ve ever heard. It almost sounds like a recording of English played in reverse.

It speaks for only a couple of seconds. Then Alvin’s squeaky voice comes in, although faint, as if he’s away from his headset.

“There’s a place here,” Alvin says. He pauses, and that garbled voice speaks again. Then Alvin says, “Thank you.”

“Yo,” Teddy says, laughing. “What the hell was that? Something weird is going on with someone’s audio.”

“What?” Alvin says, his voice now loud and clear; he’s put his headset back on.

“You good, Alvin?” I ask. “We just heard someone talking with a really weird voice.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. That’s just my dad. He’s sick right now.”

“That’s one hell of a cold, dude,” Teddy says.

Alvin doesn’t respond, and we’re all sucked back into the game. After another hour or so, I sign off and go to bed.

***

It’s Friday morning, and I’m walking into school when I notice that there’s a police car in the faculty lot. This is not a completely uncommon occurrence. Victoryville may be a small town, but that doesn’t mean that the high schoolers stay out of trouble. So I shrug this off until I get into the cafeteria, where everyone hangs out until first bell.

“Dude,” Teddy says, running up to me, excited. “Word on the street is Ben Shankman is missing. He didn’t come home last night.”

“So? That asshole’s probably over in Emery robbing a convenience store or something.”

Ben Shankman is one of the school troublemakers. He’s a senior, but he has the demeanor of a ten-year-old who acts out when he doesn’t get what he wants. He’s always been a bully, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn he’s been arrested or had the shit beat out of him after messing with the wrong person.

“Dude,” Teddy says. “Remember last night? The Air Jordan we saw off the trail in the woods? Doesn’t Shankman wear Jordans?”

“Hell if I know,” I say. “I don’t pay attention to anyone’s shoes.”

“You’d make a terrible detective. I can’t believe we’re friends,” Teddy says, laying on the sarcasm thick.

“I didn’t know detective skills were one of your prerequisites for friendship.”

Teddy ignores this. “I pay attention to things,” he says. “I know that Shankman wears Air Jordans. And I know that he would’ve put up one hell of a fight before someone took them off him.”

“You’re making connections where there are none, Teddy. I bet there’s a hundred people who wear Jordans at this school. They’re not exactly underground.”

“No. I’m telling you, man. That shoe belonged to Shankman. I can feel it. The game is afoot. Get it? Afoot? Because it’s a shoe?”

“Oh, I get it. So why don’t you go tell the cops about it?” I say. “They’re in the front office right now.”

“Oh, sure. And tell them what? That me and my good friend Trent were out getting high under the footbridge? Weed may be legal in this state, but not until you’re twenty-one. My dad would kill me if he knew I was sneaking out to get high.”

I roll my eyes, catching a glimpse of Alvin walking into the cafeteria. I wave a hand at him, and he looks over and smiles. That’s new, I think. I hardly ever see him smile at school. But there’s something else different about him, too. I just can’t place it.

Teddy sees me wave and turns to look—and does a double-take. He notices something different about the kid, too. And as Alvin gets closer, I see what it is: he actually looks healthy. Well, healthy compared to how he normally looks, which is still sickly compared to most people. But it looks like he’s getting better. He seems to have more energy. His eyes are slightly brighter.

“Did you take some vitamin E this morning or something?” Teddy says.

“You mean vitamin B?” I say.

Alvin smiles. “Nope. I didn’t take either. I just feel good today, that’s all.”

Teddy nods approvingly. “Good,” he says. “I bet this will make you feel even better: Ben Shankman is missing.”

“Really?” Alvin says. “I bet he’s just skipping school. Doesn’t he do that a lot?”

“Sure,” Teddy says. “The guy’s a regular high-school dropout in the making. But he didn’t come home last night. That’s the big thing. Apparently, he always comes home, otherwise he gets a beating from his mom when he does finally show up.” Teddy chuckles at this.

“You ever had a run-in with him?” I ask Alvin.

He shrugs. “Sure. Like all the little guys in school, he’s picked on me a couple of times. Not for a while now, though.”

I notice that Teddy looks confused at this statement. He’s about to say something when the bell rings. We all head our separate ways for first period.

Since I don’t have as many classes as the other guys, I always get out of school earlier than them. It’s just after one in the afternoon when I leave the campus and start my walk home, which is just over a mile when I take the quick route through the woods.

It’s cloudy and chilly enough to warrant a light jacket. The October wind brings with it the smell of autumn—decomposing leaves, moist earth, and a hint of chimney smoke. I crunch through fallen leaves and check out the Halloween decorations on the houses I pass.

As I cut through the woods, I decide I’ll stop and see if the shoe is still there. If it is, I’ll call it in, saying that I spotted it on my walk home and leaving out the whole thing about seeing it last night.

I cross over the footbridge, the stream burbling away underneath. Once I’m over, I look to my right, scanning the woods for the flash of red that I saw last night. But I don’t find it. The shoe is gone.

I walk back and forth across the area, changing my angle to see if it’s there. The cloud cover doesn’t help, making the ground fairly dark. Finally, I think I spot the area where it was. It’s a small tree that fell down long ago, and its barren branches are sticking up at the base of two other trees. I’m almost certain it’s where the shoe was.

Stepping off the trail, I work my way through the underbrush, moving right and left to get around bushes and other fallen trees and branches. When I’m about halfway to the spot, something big moves in the woods, cracking branches ahead of me. I freeze, peering toward where the sound came from.

I don’t see anything.

After several long seconds of silence, I move forward again.

There’s movement about thirty yards ahead and to my right, toward where the stream is. I freeze again, looking that way through the woods. I see something moving, but I only catch a glimpse of it before it disappears from view. It’s gray and black—gray skin and black fur in areas, my mind insists. And it looks big and kind of … bony. But this is the best I can do with the half-second glimpse I get.

I think maybe it’s a sick deer or an elk. Sometimes elk have black-ish fur in places. And it wouldn’t be unheard of to see an elk in these woods.

Either way, I’m thoroughly freaked, so I move back out to the trail and go home.

I get my homework done and write a blog article for a client online, thankful that I no longer work for minimum wage at the movie theater. I’m not making much more than minimum wage writing. At least not yet. But I can do it from home and only take as much work as I want. Two big pluses.

After I say goodnight to my parents, I get a text from Teddy. He wants to meet at the bridge in twenty minutes to get high.

I call him. “Can we vape somewhere else?” I ask by way of a greeting.

“Why?” Teddy says. “What’s wrong with our usual spot?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I saw something in the woods this afternoon.”

“Oooh. Was it a monster? I bet it was the same one that got Shankman.”

“You’re joking, but what I saw didn’t look like any animal I’ve ever seen. It was big, Teddy. Like bigger than a man.”

“There are a ton of animals bigger than a man around here,” Teddy says. “But if you want to meet somewhere else, I’m game. Where?”

“How about Chalmer’s Park?”

“Dude. You know the cops roll by that park on the reg. The best place is the bridge. The cops have to get out of their car to go there. And they’re too lazy for that shit.”

“Alright, fine,” I say. “Let’s just make it quick.”

I’m constantly glancing around on the walk to the bridge, and then at the bridge. I’m not the only one. I can tell that Terry is a little freaked because he’s not so quick with the jokes. We vape and then get the hell out of there, not seeing anything out of the ordinary. No strange things off in the woods. No errant shoes or other articles of clothing. And no neighborhood douches scaring us half to death.

We split up when we get out of the woods, like we always do, and agree to get on Xbox Live when we get home. As I’m walking home, I hear a faint scream off in the distance, toward the woods. I turn and look back, although the sound was so far away that there’s essentially no chance of me seeing who it came from or what caused it. Still, it gives me the creeps. And the misty clouds skating by under the moon gives the neighborhood an even creepier vibe.

I hurry home and make sure to lock the door. Then I head to my room and fire up my Xbox. I join the party Alvin has created and I’m about to start playing when my phone vibrates. It’s Teddy.

“Dude, did you hear that scream?” the text says.

“Yeah. What the hell was that?” I message back.

“What do you want to bet another student is missing tomorrow?” he messages.

I don’t answer. I don’t want to think about it.

Pretty soon, the three of us are all playing, concentrating on the game. But once again, we start hearing strange things coming over the headphones.

This time it starts with thumping, like someone slowly banging on the walls. I know it’s coming from Alvin’s end, but I ask Teddy if it’s coming from his, anyway.

“Nope,” Teddy says over the headset. “Must be Alvin. Everything good there, little man?”

Alvin doesn’t answer, but I can hear him breathing. His player is just standing in spawn in the game.

The sound of his breathing increases as the thumping sound gets louder and quicker. Then the thumping stops, and Alvin’s breathing goes back to normal.

“Alvin?” I say. “Everything good over there?”

“What?” he says.

“We heard some thumping. You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine. It’s just my dad. He’s working on the house.”

The strange garbled talking comes over the line, the nonsense words giving me the chills.

“Oh, sorry, guys,” Alvin says. “I gotta go. Might be back on later.”

“What the hell was that?” Teddy says once Alvin is offline. “That’s not his dad. I know that.”

I try to think of something to say, but nothing comes to mind. I’m wondering the same thing: What the hell is going on at Alvin’s house?

“You there, Trent?”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s just something interfering with the audio, garbling his dad’s voice up or something. You know?”

“No. I don’t know. I’ve been playing online for years and have never heard anything even remotely close to that.”

There’s silence over the line. We’ve forgotten about the game. But I think I know what comes next.

“I’m going over there,” Teddy says, proving me right.

“No, man,” I say. “Just leave the kid be. It’s probably nothing.”

“If it’s nothing, then it won’t do any harm to look. You coming?”

“Dammit,” I say. “Fine. Meet me at Aspen and Sage in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be there,” Teddy says.

Now that it’s later, it’s even creepier than before in the neighborhood. The clouds are no longer moving, though. They’re just sitting heavy, low in the sky, barely allowing any moonlight through. The streets are empty of people, and the Halloween decorations are decidedly sinister looking. Even the ones that are supposed to be cute and funny strike me as malicious.

Teddy and I meet up and then walk over to Alvin’s street without saying so much as a word. We turn down his street, slowing as we approach his house. It’s a two-story structure near the end of a cul-de-sac, tucked away behind a couple of large oak trees. It’s dark blue with black trim, and there’s no porch light on, leaving the front of the house in darkness.

Teddy and I stand out front and look at the dark structure that seems to loom behind the gnarled and barren oak trees. I never realized it before, but his house backs up to the woods.

“We can just go home,” I say.

Teddy looks at me. For a moment, I think he’s going to agree. It looks like he wants to. But then he forces a smile on his face. “Ah, come on. We came all the way here. Let’s just check it out.”

I look around the cul-de-sac and then back at Teddy. I nod.

We start across the lawn but realize that we’re making all kinds of noise thanks to all the fallen oak leaves we’re stomping on. So we move back to the sidewalk and over to the driveway, which still has leaves on it, but not as many. We pick our way down it to the stone walkway that leads to the front porch.

I realize there’s a figure sitting on the front porch swing when we’re about halfway down the walkway. I reach a hand out and grab Teddy, pointing at the figure with my other hand. Fear constricts my throat, and no sounds escape, although I’m trying to talk.

Teddy looks at the thing and then at me. He smiles. “Dude, it’s a dummy. Like a scarecrow. Remember, it’s October?”

I look back at the figure, but it’s too dark to see whether he’s right. It certainly looks like it’s slumped down in the seat, though, just like a dummy would be.

We walk up to the porch steps. Teddy steps slowly up to the figure that I can see is wearing a wide straw hat cocked down over its face—if it has a face. Teddy reaches for the hat, and I half expect him to lift it and uncover a dead body—maybe Alvin’s dad.

He lifts it only to reveal a blank burlap head. It really is only a dummy.

There are some other Halloween decorations on the porch, which Teddy deftly avoids in order to look in the windows.

“I can’t see anything,” he says. “Curtains are drawn. Let’s go around back.”

He moves down the stairs and starts around the back. I follow, sticking my cold hands in my jean pockets. Eyeing the woods as we get to the backyard, I immediately feel like something is wrong.

Maybe it’s the broken branches littering the grass at the edge of the lawn. Or maybe it’s the twin drag marks through the fallen leaves, leading from the woods up toward the house.

There’s a ground-floor window at the back of the house that I know belongs to Alvin’s room. A soft glow emanates from this window, leaving no doubt that the curtains are open. Teddy and I walk up to it and peer in.

Alvin sits hunched over a large bowl filled with raw meat. Only there’s not just raw meat in there. Mixed in with the bloody flesh are little pitch-black orbs that look more like the absence of anything than actual objects. As Teddy and I watch, Alvin grabs a handful of this stuff and shoves it in his mouth, chewing it with a pleased look on his face.

The partially open door to Alvin’s room swings open, revealing a gray-skinned monster with long, skinny legs and arms. It walks on all fours because it’s clearly too big to stand up in the room. It has a long, beaklike face and large black eyes that look like bigger versions of the orbs in the bowl of meat.

The thing’s torso is wide and angular, its spinal segments protruding from its back like the spikes of a dinosaur. And it has spiky black hair along its skull and down its neck. This must be what I saw in the woods.

It’s carrying an arm in one hand—a teenager’s arm, it looks like. At first, I think it’s going to kill Alvin, but it stops next to him and sits down on its legs. Then it opens its beaklike mouth and puts the severed arm in, hand-first.

The creature gulps the arm down, without seeming to chew. It sits there, convulsing slightly as Alvin finishes up the meat and black orbs in the bowl.

The creature then doubles over and starts slamming its head into the floor.

Its arms are wrapped around its stomach, and it continues to hit its head on the floor. I realize it’s the same sound we heard over the Xbox Live connection.

Alvin watches this with growing agitation. It’s as if he doesn’t want the creature to hurt itself.

The banging comes to a crescendo and suddenly stops, at which point the creature lifts its head and throws up into the large bowl. The vomit is ground meat with those strange black orbs.

Teddy and I have been watching this, enthralled and speechless. But as Alvin starts in on the contents of the bowl, Teddy whispers, “Are we seeing the same thing here?”

We crouch down below the window and look at each other. Teddy’s face is pale, and his hands are shaking as he reaches over and grabs my shoulders.

“What is that thing?” he says, madness in his eyes.

“I don’t know,” I say. The words sound hollow; the simple statement isn’t nearly enough to express the true nature of what I’m feeling.

That strange deep warbling talking starts up inside the house. I know I should run. I know I should do anything but raise up and look inside the window. But for some reason, it’s all I can do.

I start to stand up, but Teddy pleads with me not to. “Don’t do it,” he says, gripping my shoulders.

Ignoring him, I stand up. Teddy doesn’t fight me like I know he could. Instead, he stands up with me. We both look through the window.

There’s another creature there in the room, identical to the first one, but missing the spiky black hair. It has the long fingers of one hand on Alvin’s head, and its mouth is open, the strange sounds coming from its throat.

The other creature stands crouched nearby, watching.

Suddenly, the noise stops, and the second creature looks up at us. Before we can react, it launches itself at the window. Teddy and I manage to duck just as it smashes through, showering us with glass.

Teddy takes off, screaming, running toward the front of the house. I’m frozen in place, crouching under the broken window, watching as the creature bounds after my friend.

It catches up to Teddy with ease, picking him up and slamming him down on the ground. Teddy stops screaming, but I take it up, shouting for the creature to stop just before a long and powerful hand reaches through the window and grabs me.

The creature looming over Teddy, who is face-up on the ground, jams its long fingers into his stomach, impaling him. It pulls them out, dripping with blood, and then jams them back in again. I can see Teddy’s eyes. They’re wide with fear and pain. His mouth is open in a wretched silent scream.

And as the creature pulls a giant fistful of his intestines out, Teddy watches them. He reaches for them in a vain attempt to put them back where they belong. But blood soon comes pouring out of his mouth, and his head falls back onto the grass.

I’m squirming in the hand of the other creature as it pulls me in through the window and slams me into the floor. Alvin sees that it’s me and shouts for the creature to stop. Only “creature” isn’t the word he uses. He says “Mom.”

“Please, Mom! Stop! He’s my friend,” Alvin says in his squeaky voice.

The creature looks down at me with its black-as-space eyes, and then back at Alvin.

I hear a door open in the house, and I hope that it’s the police, or someone coming to save me. Someone who heard the screaming.

“These aren’t your parents, Alvin,” I say to him.

“Yes, they are,” Alvin says. “You don’t know, Trent. You don’t know that they tried to save me. They’re not always like this. I swear. It’s just, this is the only way.”

The creature Alvin called mom is still looking between the two of us, holding me to the floor with one hand.

“What are you talking about?” I say. “They just killed Teddy. They killed him.”

“What?” Alvin says, his eyes growing shiny with tears. “They did?”

As if on cue, the other creature comes into view out in the hallway, dragging Teddy behind him and dumping him outside the doorway.

“No!” Alvin screams at the sight of Teddy, his entrails strung out behind him, blood staining the floor. I look away, unable to bear the sight of Teddy’s wide eyes and open mouth.

“What did you do, Dad? He was my friend,” Alvin sobs. “I don’t know how it happened,” he says after a moment. “They wouldn’t give me details. Nothing the doctors did was working. I was dying. And my parents … they’d tried everything. Everything that science offered. But then they turned to … something else. Whatever this is,” he says, gesturing at the two creatures, who are now both looking at him.

“That’s why you looked so good today? You’re getting better?”

“It’s working,” Alvin says, tears still streaming down his cheeks.

“But they’re killing people to do it,” I say. “Ben Shankman. And someone else, earlier tonight. And now Teddy.”

“I didn’t ask them to do it,” Alvin says, screaming. “But I was going to die! They had to do something.”

“How long do they have to keep it up, Alvin?” I ask, screaming right back at him. “How long do you have to keep eating that stuff? Once a month? Once a year? How many people, Alvin?”

Alvin wipes his eyes and looks me full in the face. His skin is no longer sallow, and he looks vibrant, like a teenager should. He looks like he’s coming into his own, like me with the growth spurt.

“How long?” he says. “I’ll tell you how long, Trent.” He pauses, looking up at the creature that was once his mom. He gives her a nod and then he looks back down at me. “As long as it takes.”

There’s no point in screaming or fighting, but I do it anyway. I do it as long as I can.

It isn’t very long.

Some Men Will Do the Unthinkable for Revenge

The feeling of the knife piercing my skin and scraping against the bottom of my rib cage was a symphony of sickening pain.

The man who was trying to kill me leaned down, pressing his forearm deeper into my neck, choking me. My left arm was stuck behind my back; I was lying on it. The man’s knee was digging into my right hand, keeping it pinned to the ground. His minty breath held undertones of a sour-stomach smell. I realized he was chewing gum as the hilt of his knife pressed up against my skin, the blade sending waves of pain through my body as he wiggled it around, doing untold damage to my insides.

“How does it feel, baby?” he said to me, smiling. I turned my head away and looked over at my wife, who lay face down on our living room floor, another man on top of her, working at pulling off her pajama bottoms without taking his weight off her back.

I wanted to feel rage at that moment, as my wife stared back at me, the look on her face one I’d never seen before. It was one of immense sadness. Of disappointment. But mostly it was a look of fear.

I wanted to experience a surge of adrenaline that would give me superhuman strength. I wanted to be a man from one of those action movies who, despite his wounds, jumps up and dispatches the criminals with ruthless efficiency.

I wanted to make my wife proud.

But I couldn’t. The energy was already draining from me along with the blood pouring out from around the knife blade embedded in my left side.

I looked beyond my wife to Seth, our nine-year-old son. He stood in the dining room entryway, looking with large, uncomprehending eyes at his parents, pressed against the floor by two strange men. A third man stood behind Seth, his hands placed on my son’s shoulders, smiling down at the scene before him.

None of the men wore masks. I was lucid enough to know what that meant for my wife and me. I just prayed they would leave my son alone. He didn’t deserve this. We didn’t deserve this. None of us.

The two assaulting me and my wife were white, whereas the one holding my shocked son still was Hispanic. All three of them looked to be in their early twenties. They all wore dark winter coats and jeans that were tucked into their boots.

Jennifer, my wife, had warned me. But I hadn’t listened.

She’d come home hours earlier, around five-forty that evening, scared out of her wits. I’d seen it on her face when she came into the living room where Seth and I were watching a nature documentary.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What happened?”

She dumped her purse down just inside the living room threshold and marched to the front window, parting the curtains. “They’re out there,” she said. “They followed me home.”

“Who?” I said, getting up from the couch.

“These men. They were in the Whole Foods on 9th. Three of them. They must’ve been drunk or something. I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

Jennifer took a deep breath and stepped away from the window. “They were wandering around inside the store, throwing stuff around, harassing people, and just being a general nuisance. I tried to keep my distance, but I wasn’t about to let them keep me from shopping. So when I was getting some strawberries, they came up to me and started saying disgusting things. Lewd remarks.” Jenny’s face twisted up into a sneer at the memory.

“After I don’t know how long of this, I couldn’t take it anymore,” she continued. “I yelled at them. I just lost it. I can’t even remember what I called them now, but it wasn’t nice.”

I felt a fury ignite in my veins. The same fury that men around the world surely experience when someone harasses their woman. I wanted to turn back time, to change the past, to be there in the store with her when this happened.

“Anyway,” Jenny said. “A couple of Whole Foods employees came up and escorted these three guys out. They didn’t go easily. I thought for a moment they were going to start a fight with the employees, but they didn’t. Instead, they kept calling out to me. Threatening me. Then they were gone. I thought it was over. But when I came out of the store, I noticed a dirty black Mustang sitting there one row over. I couldn’t see in the windows, but something about the car just told me it was them. So I loaded up quickly and came home. But they followed me, David. They followed me here.”

I stepped up to the window and parted the shades, looking out to the dark street. There was a black Mustang idling at the curb across the street.

Driven by that fury still roiling inside me, I rushed to the entryway closet and groped around inside until I found the baseball bat we kept there. I ran out the front door of the house, hearing but not really hearing Jenny’s protests. The cold January evening enveloped me, but the rage kept me warm as I stormed across our small front yard, gripping the baseball bat in one white-knuckled hand.

I wasn’t sure whether I would knock on the window and tell the men to get out or just go straight to bashing their car. It probably would have been the former. But I never had a chance. The black Mustang roared off down the street before I could reach it to do anything.

I stood in the road, watching the taillights fade off in the distance and then disappear from view as the vehicle turned right on Pollard Avenue.

I headed back inside, feeling good that I’d scared them off. I made sure to lock the front door behind me.

We had dinner and put Seth to bed, but I could tell that Jenny was still worried.

“Maybe we should call the police,” she said to me as we were getting ready for bed.

“They wouldn’t do anything,” I said. “They’d just tell us to call if they came back.” When it came to matters of the police, Jenny usually took my word as bond. Over my years as a journalist, I’d come to know police operations pretty well.

“Well,” she said. “Maybe we can stay at a hotel tonight. Just pack a few things and go?”

“Jenny,” I said, looking at her over my toothbrush newly adorned with toothpaste. “I have the alarm set. All the doors and windows are locked. We’ll be fine.”

“I just—I have a bad feeling.”

“You’re scared. It was a scary thing. That’s normal. But you’re safe now. We’re safe now.”

The words replayed through my mind as I lay on my living room floor with a gum-chewing murderer on top of me, my blood soaking the carpet beneath me.

They had come just after midnight. And they had knocked. Or, at least, one of them had.

While I stood at the front door in my robe, asking who it was and what they wanted, one of them was at the back door. I only knew this when they broke one of the small square windowpanes and opened the back door, causing the alarm to beep for a code.

I swiped up the baseball bat from next to the front door and ran to the back of the house. But I wasn’t careful. I was stupid. One of them was just inside the doorway to the kitchen, pressed up against the wall, waiting for me. He took advantage of my momentum, sticking a foot out as I went by. I didn’t fall, but I stumbled forward, which gave him enough time to come up behind me and press a knife blade to my throat.

The Hispanic man came in through the back door and rushed off into the house, smiling as he passed me. He had a large knife of his own. I heard him open the front door, letting the third man into the house.

“Put the code in,” the man with a knife to my throat said, pointing me at the alarm keypad by the back door.

“No,” I said.

He sniggered. “It ain’t you I’m gonna hurt if you don’t do it. My friends just went up to find your hot-ass bitch wife. She’ll get got if you don’t put the fucking code in. And if you put in any distress code bullshit, you’ll all die when we hear the sirens. You got any kids? Judging by the groceries your bitch wife bought, I bet you do. You want your kids to die, too?”

I put in the code.

I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had let the alarm go off. It would have sped up the process. It would have turned a torture-murder session into just murder.

Better yet, I wish I had called the police right when they started knocking at the door. I knew who it was. And I knew it was trouble. But I thought I could handle it.

I was wrong.

The man forced me to the living room and held me there while the other two men brought Jenny and Seth down from upstairs. I tried to make a move, but the man holding me brought the knife down and sliced a deep groove in my right pectoral. He hit me in the side of the head, and I went down hard on the carpet, landing on my back, my left arm under me.

Jenny screamed, which got her a hit in the head from her captor. She fell to the floor, face down. Seth cried out, but the Hispanic man slapped a hand over his mouth.

The world went fuzzy with pain for a few long moments, but it came back into sharp focus as the man pierced the skin under my rib cage with his knife.

“You should really get yourself a gun,” the gum-chewing murderer said as he pulled the knife out of my side. “Baseball bats only work on punks.”

I turned my head to see that the man on top of my wife had managed to get her pajama bottoms and underwear off. Her eyes were wrenched shut.

“Nobody talks to me like you did,” the man on top of her said. “This is what you get, you uppity bitch.”

Beyond this terrible sight, the Hispanic man led Seth out of the room, saying, “You don’t want to see this, little man. Time to go to sleep.”

I wrenched my right hand back as hard as I could, trying to free it from under my captor’s knee. It moved, shifting the ball of his knee from the back of my palm to the back of my fingers. I bucked, trying to throw him off me, and then yanked my right hand again, pulling it free.

I swung it up in a clumsy punch, which landed just under the gum chewer’s jaw. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to knock him off balance, which allowed me some movement. I pulled my left arm out from under me, but it was near-useless, thanks to the lack of circulation.

Taking another shot, I punched for the middle of the man’s throat, but missed the mark, causing my fist to glance off his neck. He went back again, and I sat up, moving as fast as I could to stand up.

The guy was faster. He swung his knife down and stabbed me just above my left collarbone. He pulled the knife out and hit me with a hard left, knocking me back down again.

“You good, Mason?” I heard the man on my wife ask.

“I’m good,” Mason—the gum chewer—said. “He’s done. Let’s get started on the bitch.”

That name hung in my mind as consciousness seeped away from me like blood from a gaping wound.

Mason. His name is Mason, I thought.

And then darkness was all.

***

I awoke in a hospital room, dull winter sunshine streaming through the window.

“Jenny?” I said to the empty room as understanding came to me. “Seth?”

My heart was suddenly racing, the last waking memories running through my head. The machine next to me started beeping, adding an auditory facet to my delirium, causing my heart to beat even faster.

“Jenny?” I called. “Seth?”

I threw aside the hospital bed covers and moved to get out, pausing as pain in my head, my left side, and my upper chest screamed at me to stop.

The door to my room opened, and a nurse rushed in. “It’s okay, Mister Vans,” she said. “You’re okay now. Please lie back down. You’ve been in surgery, but you’re okay now.”

“Where are they?” I screamed at her. “Where are my wife and son?”

“I—I don’t know, Mister Vans. I don’t know. You’ll have to talk to the police when they come back. They should be here soon. Until then, I need you to lie back and try to relax.”

I gritted my teeth as the nurse guided me back down onto the bed with a firm hand. She was an older woman, streaks of gray in her fading brown hair.

“Is Seth okay?” I said softly.

The nurse just shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

“Oh, God, they killed him,” I said, crying. “They killed him.”

I descended into a place deep inside, going so far down that I didn’t even notice when the nurse left. It was a place surrounded by the scenes that, to me, had only happened moments before. It was a place no man should ever have to go. A dark, swirling, chaotic place full of fear, regret, and hate. So much hate. But like a man freezing to death feels warm just before he dies, I found solace in that dark place. And I knew I couldn’t survive without its relative protection.

I only came back to the surface when the police showed up to tell me what I already knew. Those men had killed my wife and son. They’d left me for dead.

“Is there anything you can tell us about these guys other than the descriptions?” one of the detectives, a short, stocky man with curly hair, asked. “Did you hear a name, by chance?”

“No,” I said. His name is Mason, I thought. “I didn’t hear any names.”

That wasn’t the first time the police came to talk to me. The same two homicide detectives came back again when I was in the physical therapy portion of my recovery. They asked the same questions and got the same answers.

The thing about going to that deep, dark place inside is that it’s full of misery. But it’s also a place of freedom, in a sense. The freedom from the bounds of morality. If you stay in that place long enough, you start to forget what morality even is. And I never left that place. I stayed there throughout the weeks of recovery, through the funeral arrangements, the meetings with lawyers, and the excruciating experience of coming home for the first time since the murders.

I couldn’t stay in the house. It was too much. So I got an extended-stay suite and got to work on my plan to find Mason and his pals.

My editor, Jerry Fands, was surprised to see me when I came in on a Tuesday, four weeks after the assault.

“David,” he said, standing up from his desk as I walked into his office. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve sent you two emails, Jerry,” I said. “Requesting information about those three stories I did last year? I didn’t get a response. So here I am.”

“Well,” Jerry said defensively, “I just didn’t think that was the kind of stuff you should be focusing on right now. What do you want them for, anyway?”

“I’ve been thinking about them, Jerry. It’s giving me something to do. I always wanted to do a follow-up. You remember that? Besides, they’re my stories. My notes. I just need access to the archives.”

“Alright. You got it. If you think it’ll help, it’s no problem.”

“I do think it will help, Jerry,” I said.

“Fine. Good. I’ll send you a link now. Take whatever you want.”

“Thank you,” I said, and stood there waiting while Jerry sat down at his computer and sent me the link in an email. I verified the access on my phone and then walked out of his office without another word.

The notes I was looking for were from a three-part series about supposed paranormal happenings surrounding a strange cult in the city. It wasn’t the first time I’d covered things of that nature. In fact, in recent years, there had been an uptick in unexplainable phenomena involving people that had direct and peripheral ties to the cult.

I covered crime and—when the stories came up—things like exorcisms, hauntings, and other supernatural happenings. Most of them had reasonable explanations, but not all of them.

On my way out of the building, I scanned the notes, picking out the names and factoids that I needed.

That done, it was time to find Mason. Given my connections in the police department, the combination of the black Mustang, the name, and the fact that the guy likely had a record, I didn’t think it would be a problem.

And it wasn’t.

But finding out where he lived was only the beginning of my plan.

***

“Let’s go out tonight, Mason. Have some fun,” Petey said. “I’m so fucking bored.”

“No,” Mason said. “How many times do I have to tell you? We gotta lay low for a while.”

“C’mon, man,” Gabriel said. “It’s been two months already. If the guy had anything on us, we would be in jail by now.”

“Too fucking bad,” Mason said. “We’re not doing anything illegal until things cool down some more.”

“Besides selling dope,” Petey muttered.

“The fuck you say?”

“Nothin’.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Selling dope is different. It’s how we put food on the table. It’s what keeps us in this nice house,” Mason said, gesturing around at the living room. He was lounging in a recliner while Petey and Gabriel were sitting on the leather couch. The big-screen TV was tuned to some movie channel, the volume on low.

“Well, that’s what we’re saying, Mason,” Gabriel said. “Food is important, but so is getting some snatch. I’m about to go crazy if I don’t get me some.”

“Besides,” Petey said. “You’re the one that didn’t make sure the guy was dead.”

“Well, how about this,” Mason said. “How about I take my connect and do my own thing, leaving you fuckers to find your own supply of dope to sell?”

“Damn, man, we’re just bored, is all,” Petey said. “No need to get all crazy on us.”

“I’m so sick of your bitching,” Mason said. “That’s all you pussies have been doing lately. Bitch, bitch, bitch. You sound like fucking women.”

Neither man had anything to say about that, but Mason was still fuming. “Go get me a beer, Gabriel,” he said.

Gabriel scoffed but got up off the couch and headed to the kitchen.

In preparation for the beer, Mason took the piece of gum from his mouth and put it in the ashtray on the table next to his recliner.

A crash sounded from the kitchen.

“What the fuck you doing in there?” Petey called, laughing. “You fall down?”

There was no answer aside from a grunt. After a moment, there was a soft scuffling noise. Mason looked over at Petey, seeing immediately that they were on the same page. They both got up quickly, moving hesitantly toward the hallway leading to the kitchen.

“Wait,” Mason whispered to Petey. “Grab your gun.”

He nodded and headed over to his bedroom just off the living room while Mason tracked back to the table next to the recliner, swiping his knife up.

They reconvened in the hallway and made their way down it quietly, stopping at the closed kitchen door to listen. The scuffling sound that had been so loud earlier was fading away. Someone exhaled on the other side of the door, and then there was nothing.

Mason held three fingers up. Petey nodded. Mason dropped one finger. Then another. And then the last.

They burst through the door to find Gabriel sprawled on the floor in the kitchen, his neck sliced open so wide his head was barely attached. A pool of blood crept out along the linoleum floor around his body. A man stood a few feet away from Petey, knife in hand. He wore a long-sleeve plaid shirt buttoned up to his neck. His dark jeans had bloodstains at the knees from where he’d been kneeling, working to kill Gabriel. He raised his head and looked at the two drug dealers as they came in.

Petey fired, hitting the man high in his chest. He dropped the knife and went down to his knees, putting one hand up to the bullet hole.

“Holy shit, it’s you,” Mason said. “You really thought you could come in here and kill us all?”

“You motherfucker!” Petey yelled, stepping up to the man and jamming the pistol against his head. “You killed Gabriel!”

“Wait,” Mason said, trying to calm Petey down. “Just wait a minute. Don’t you recognize this pussy?”

Petey looked up at Mason. “I know who the fuck he is and I don’t care. He killed Gabe.”

“This is the guy whose bitch-wife thought she could put us in our place. This is the guy who thought he could threaten us with a baseball bat.”

“So fucking what?” Petey said.

“So what? So what? This is the one that got away, my friend. And here he is, like a bird set free only to come back, looking for something he’ll never find. So we’re going to take our time with this fucker. For Gabriel.”

Mason stepped around Gabriel, avoiding the blood, and knelt next to the man, noticing that his lips were moving.

Mason could barely hear the whispered words, and what he heard didn’t sound like English. “You think praying is gonna help you now?” Mason asked, smiling.

The man jerked out at Mason, growling. But Mason was fast. He shot his right hand out, hitting him with the butt of the knife. Then he shoved the intruder to the floor on his back.

“Well, this is familiar, isn’t it?” Mason said, straddling him, pinning him down.

The man glared up at Mason, his eyes shining with a mysterious light. “I don’t know how you survived the last time, but you sure as fuck won’t this time,” Mason said, pressing the point of his knife to a spot under the intruder’s ribs.

“This is where I did it last time, right?” Mason asked, looking down at the knife poking into his plaid shirt. “It’s David, right? Isn’t that what the news said? David? Let’s see how you do the second time around, David.” He plunged the knife up under David’s ribs, reveling in the pain he was causing. Mason moved the knife around inside David, smiling as the man grunted in agony.

“What the fuck, man?” Petey said from nearby. “He’s smiling.”

Mason brought his eyes up from the knife to look at the man’s face. Sure enough, he was smiling. He was looking Mason right in the eyes and smiling. And his lips were still moving.

Mason pulled the knife out and then plunged it in again at a spot a few inches to the left, still looking at David’s face. He was still smiling, still whispering.

Rage mounted, and Mason squeezed David’s throat with his free hand, willing him to show pain and fear. But he showed neither. He just smiled.

Before Mason knew what he was doing, Petey stepped around, pointed his pistol down at the guy’s head, and pulled the trigger. The shot was painfully loud in the small kitchen. The cartridge ejected and bounced off the cabinet, hitting Mason in the arm.

“What the fuck, man?” Mason shouted, ears ringing.

“He wouldn’t stop smiling,” Petey said, looking down at the still-smiling dead man. “I don’t like that.”

“Well, now we have his brains to clean up and a fucking bullet hole in the floor.”

“Yeah,” Petey said. “Sorry.”

Mason got up and grabbed a stained kitchen towel, then placed it over the dead man’s face. He wasn’t about to admit it, but Mason was relieved that Petey had killed the man.

The towel now hiding his face, Mason went through David’s pockets, finding nothing but car keys. He hadn’t even come with a gun. Just a knife. A knife for all three of them. Mason shook his head.

“Let’s get this cleaned up,” he said. “It’s gonna be a long night. Luckily our neighbors know how to mind their own goddamn business.”

They got David and Gabriel into large black trash bags—one down over the head and another coming up to meet it from the feet. They duct-taped the trash bags together, using nearly half a roll to ensure that blood didn’t leak out of the bags.

Then they moved the bodies out to the backyard, setting them next to the house until they could get rid of them properly. Once the bodies were out of the way, they headed back inside to clean up the considerable amount of blood left behind by the two men.

“Ah, what the hell, man?” Mason said to Petey as they walked inside. “You walked through the guy’s blood?”

“No I didn’t,” Petey said, stepping through the back door.

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t me,” Mason said, gesturing at the puddle of blood left by the dead man. There were bloody footsteps leading away from it, back toward the living room.

“Do I look like I’m barefoot to you?” Petey said.

He was wearing his boots, and the footprints had been made by someone with bare feet.

“Maybe the guy had a friend with him?” Mason said, whispering now. “Get your gun out and follow the footprints. I’ll go the other way through the dining room and meet you at the stairs.”

Petey was staring at the footprints on the floor, not moving.

“Hey,” Mason said, hitting him in the arm. “You hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, pulling out his pistol.

Mason picked up his knife from the floor and wiped the blood off it with a paper towel, then he headed out of the kitchen and into the dark dining room, moving slowly.

They never used the dining room for eating, or for much of anything but storage. There were boxes stacked against the walls, an old punching bag that Petey had bought but never set up, and a number of other odds and ends that were put there and forgotten about. It was dark in the room, the only light coming from the kitchen behind Mason.

He decided not to turn on the light, knowing that it would give him away to whoever was in the house. As he was about halfway through the dining room, something moved in the darkness.

He turned his head quickly, seeing the dark silhouette of a giant spider racing toward him. Mason cried out and slashed at it, his blade touching nothing but air. One of the thing’s legs struck out at him, throwing him back into the wall. He fell to his knees and scrambled toward the doorway to the entryway and the stairs, where Petey was supposed to meet him.

As he rounded the corner, he saw Petey’s feet near the stairs.

“Where is he?” Petey asked. “Did he attack you?”

“In there,” Mason gasped. “It’s in there!”

Petey leveled his gun and stepped over to the doorway, then pivoted into the room. After a moment, he turned on the light.

“There’s nothing here, man. I’ll check the kitchen.”

“No!” Mason said, standing up. He still had the knife in his right hand. “It wasn’t a person,” he said. “It was a spider or something.”

“A spider? Are you kidding me? Get it together, Mason. You check upstairs. I’ll check the kitchen.”

Petey walked over into the living room and headed toward the kitchen. Mason stood at the foot of the stairs, convincing himself that his imagination was to blame for the spider, even though he could still feel the pain from the hit.

Mason started up the stairs toward the dark second floor, moving slowly. A large and deformed figure with shiny black skin scurried across the top of the stairs and out of sight. Mason froze. “What the fuck is going on here?” he whispered, backing down the stairs.

Moving through the living room, he rushed down the hallway toward the kitchen, opening the door to see Petey standing just inside the doorway, his back to Mason. His arms and head were slumped forward, as if he’d fallen asleep standing up. The puddles of blood on the kitchen floor were still there, but now there were footprints tracked all around the kitchen. Many of them were human prints, but there were also hoof prints, paw prints, and some strange triangular prints that Mason didn’t recognize.

“Petey?” he said.

Petey’s head came up slightly, and he turned around. His eyes were pure white, and his lips had been cut through the cheeks, giving him a terrifying bloody grin.

Mason cried out as Petey stepped toward him, bringing his knife up and stabbing him in the chest three times in quick succession. Petey shouted, and suddenly his face was normal again.

“What the fuck?” Petey said, looking down at the shallow wounds in his chest. He brought his gun up, aiming it at Mason. Acting on instinct, Mason stepped in close and jammed his knife into Petey’s throat with his right hand, grabbing the gun with his left.

Mason pulled the blade out. Blood spewed out of the wound and onto his shirt. Petey looked at him with wide eyes, betrayal written all over his face. He stumbled and fell, adding his own blood to the mess on the kitchen floor.

Sensing movement behind him, Mason dropped the knife and transferred Petey’s gun to his right hand. He spun around and saw a man standing behind him—the same man Petey had shot in the head barely fifteen minutes earlier. David. He smiled at Mason, not a wound visible on him. His shirt was intact, and he wasn’t bleeding where he’d been stabbed.

Mason raised the gun and fired at him, blinking his eyes at the shot. In the split second it took him to blink, David had disappeared.

“No,” Mason said. “You’re dead. I just saw you die.”

Laughter echoed through the house, sending chills up his spine. He turned around and ran for the back door, tripping over Petey’s body and falling into the puddle of Gabriel’s drying blood. He scrambled up and outside. Sure enough, both tightly wrapped bodies were still there.

But Mason still had to see. He had to. So he ripped open the black plastic bag over the smaller body’s face, revealing David’s bloody head. He was still there, still dead, and still smiling although his eyes were closed. But the plaid shirt collar had come down past his collarbone, revealing the top of a strange tattoo.

Mason’s brows furrowed at the strange symbols. David didn’t seem like the type, so he ripped down the length of the bag, tearing the duct tape around his abdomen and waist. He unfastened the top few buttons of the dead man’s shirt, revealing black tattoos covering his upper chest. Mason ripped the shirt, popping the rest of the buttons off.

David’s whole abdomen was covered with black tattoos of strange symbols, pictures, and words. They all looked fresh, too. No more than a couple of weeks old.

The strangest ones were around the two stab wounds Mason had inflicted. There was a large black oval tattooed under the man’s ribs there, running at a diagonal from just below his solar plexus down to his side. The inside of the oval was blank, aside from the two stab wounds. The outside had a bunch of tiny symbols etched around the border.

It was like he’d either had the first stab wound commemorated with the tattoos, or he’d somehow known that he was going to get stabbed there again. Or both.

“What the fuck?” Mason said, standing up.

He looked around the yard, sensing that something wasn’t right but seeing nothing out of the ordinary. When he turned back around, the man’s body was gone, the empty trash bags lying there next to Gabriel’s body.

Sucking in a breath, Mason spun around to run back inside and came face-to-face with the man. David’s cold hands grabbed Mason’s shirt and pulled him close to his smiling face and his still-closed eyes. Mason fought to get away, pushing and hitting him, but he was as immovable as a statue.

When their faces were only inches apart, David’s eyelids shot open, a sickly light spilling out of the sockets. Mason screamed at what he saw there because he saw himself. He tried to look away but couldn’t. The images pulled him in until he felt like his very essence was being robbed, ripped from him, raped, and abused.

And the longer Mason watched the images shooting out of the dead man’s eyes, the more he realized that they weren’t just images. They were real. And they were happening to him.

Mason’s limbs were broken and chopped off, but he couldn’t experience the relief of losing consciousness. He couldn’t go into shock and die. He couldn’t escape the pain and the fear.

Tiny knife blades were shoved into his eyes again and again while his skin was torn off in strips, salt and acid poured into the wounds.

His genitals were ripped off by massive black hounds, only to reappear and have it done all over again.

When one form of torture stopped, another started. The only breaks were to allow him to experience some fleeting relief. To get his hopes up only to have them dashed again.

And the whole time, through everything, the smiling man was there with him. He was snapping Mason’s limbs, stabbing his eyes, and commanding the dogs to attack.

And he was laughing the whole time. Somehow laughing without moving his lips. He would laugh while he reminded Mason why he was here and why he would experience nothing but pain for eternity. He reminded Mason, as if he could ever forget.

And somewhere in the back of his mind, Mason knew this man figured out how to bring him to a place he’d never believed in. He’d managed to drag Mason to hell. And there was no escape.

The First and Last Date

I let myself into the house through the back door, as was my habit. The little den was dark, and I stood still for a moment to let my eyes adjust. I knew she was sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake her. She was always grouchy after waking. And while a light on downstairs probably wouldn’t wake her, I didn’t want to take the chance. She was a light sleeper.

I navigated my way around the furniture and into the kitchen. I picked up the stack of mail on the counter, shuffling through it in the small pool of illumination from the light over the stove. Seeing nothing of interest, I put the mail back on the counter.

I stepped up to the fridge and grabbed myself a beer. The twist-off cap came away with a faint hiss. I pocketed the cap and took a couple of long draughts. It had been a particularly hard day at work, but I was here now.

The beer hit my empty stomach, at once cooling and warming me. I wasn’t much of a drinker, but I felt that the occasion called for a bit of a celebration. Still, I didn’t want alcohol to blur my thoughts. I wanted to be clear-headed when I went upstairs and surprised her. She wouldn’t like being awoken, but I was confident that my surprise would turn things around.

Which meant it was important that I didn’t wake her prematurely. So I quietly got out the fixings for a sandwich: lunch meat, cheese, mayo, and lettuce. I ate the sandwich standing over the sink, washing down a bite here and there with the beer.

When both were done, I decided I couldn’t put it off any longer.

I took off my shoes next to the stairs and then made my way up toward the bedroom. In the hallway outside, the alcohol got the better of me, causing me to stumble slightly. I put my hand out to the wall to keep myself upright.

Shit, I thought, freezing where I was. Her door was right there. I stepped quietly up to it, pressing myself against the cool painted wood.

Her voice came through the door, sweet, groggy, and … scared? Had I scared her?

“Hello?” she called. “Is anyone there?”

I thought of all that had led up to this moment. It was hard for me to believe I was really going to do this, to take the plunge, to open the door and tell her the words I’d been practicing for months.

I recalled the first time I’d seen her, at the coffee shop on Airport Road. I recalled how stunned I was by her beauty, the way that she moved, the sound of her voice as she told the barista what she wanted.

But it took several more sightings for me to build up the courage to make a move.

Now here I was, standing mere feet away from her as she lay in bed, the covers no-doubt clutched tightly to her chest.

“Hello?” she called again, more fear in her voice this time.

I turned the handle, swung the door open, and stepped inside.

She tried to scream, but I rushed over and clamped my hand over her mouth.

She struggled, but she was such a small woman, so delicate and soft and harmless.

“Shhh,” I said to her, taking in her smell, the sight of her bedroom. It was everything I’d pictured it to be every time I’d used her hidden spare key to come into her house at night. For months I’d been coming, just sitting downstairs in the dark, trying to build up the courage to do the thing I was now in the middle of.

“It’s me,” I said to her. “I’m the one that’s been calling you at night. I’m sorry if I scared you, waking you up in the middle of the night with my calls. I really wanted to tell you how I felt every time, but I just couldn’t. Not until now. I love you. Do you love me?”

Her eyes were wide with terror. She tried to punch me, but I caught her little fist in my large one. This wasn’t at all going as I’d planned.

“I wanted our first date to be special,” I said. “I wanted to surprise you. I know you’ve seen me. At the coffee shop. Walking down your street. I even thought you saw me when I followed you home the first time. You did, didn’t you? You can admit that you liked it. You can admit that you find me attractive. I feel the same way.”

She continued to struggle, screaming into my hand.

No, this wasn’t going at all as I’d planned.

But there were ways I could silence her. I wasn’t about to stop.

I’d waited too long, building this up in my mind.

I stared into her eyes, so big and bright with fear. They swallowed me up, seeing them this close.

It was my big mistake. I’d been paying too much attention to her eyes. And too little to her left hand, going for the knife I couldn’t have known was there, in her nightstand.

And when she slammed the blade into my neck, I felt a sorrow so crushing that it made the pain seem like a mere scratch.

As the world dimmed, I could only feel the sting of her betrayal. How could she treat me like this, when my only crime was loving her too much?

I Should’ve Listened

He’s fast, and I can’t move quick enough to dodge the slap. My head jerks sideways as my father’s open hand collides with the left side of my face. But I keep my feet. This time, I keep my feet.

He releases a long, wordless wail as he brings his hand back, as if to hit me again. His brown eyes are brimming with tears above his bushy black beard.

“Dammit boy,” he says, voice raw with emotion. “Dammit. I told you. I told you.”

I stand, defiant, next to the boarded-up window. I managed to get one nail out before my father snuck up behind me. I thought he was asleep. I was wrong.

“You gonna hit me again!?” I shout. “Come on!”

He jerks forward, grabbing the base of my neck with his large, calloused hands. I think he’s going to throttle me at first, but he yanks me toward his chest, pulling me into a too-tight hug.

“What can I do to make you understand?” he whispers. “Tell me what I can do.”

Over his shoulder, I see my sister appear in the hall outside the den, drawn by the resounding slap.

She runs up in her sock-feet, short brunette hair bouncing as she rushes into the room. “What happened?” she asks.

Dad doesn’t answer. He just shifts and pulls Amy in with one arm, hugging us both tight. “I know this is hard,” he says to us. “Hardest thing ever, really. But I need you two to understand that you can’t leave. You can’t. It’s not safe out there.”

It’s the same story we’ve been told for the last two years. And it’s getting old.

I push away, slipping my head out of his arm. “I wasn’t going to leave,” I say. “I just wanted to look. I just wanted to see the trees and the sun for a change.”

Dad shakes his head, letting go of Amy. “That’s how it starts,” he says. “First, you’ll only want to look. Then you’ll want to venture into the yard. Then you’ll want to head into the woods. Best to just not start. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

“It’s been two years, Daddy,” Amy says. “Can’t we just look out? Just for a few minutes? I mean, you get to go outside. Why can’t we?”

Dad shakes his head again, wiping tears away. “I know you’re both at an age where staying cooped up in here seems like the worst thing possible. I remember being seventeen, but I can’t imagine how hard this is on you both. I never had to go through anything like this when I was your age. But the fact is, you need to be mentally prepared to go out there. Because they’ll try to trick you. They will.”

“Who will?” I ask.

“Them,” he says. “They’re the ones out there, now. There are no more people like you or me.”

“That’s what you keep saying,” I say. “But how are we supposed to believe you if we haven’t ever seen them!?”

“This is not up for discussion. You’re not ready. And if I find you trying to pry another board off a window or open a door, I’ll be forced to institute a strict lockdown.”

“Stricter than this?” I say, nearly shouting, but my dad is already walking out of the room. A few moments later, he returns with a hammer and several nails. He repairs the damage I did and adds an extra nail to each side of the board covering the window.

“It’s about time to start dinner,” he says. “You two better get to it.”

Amy and I share a look. Then we walk out of the den, heading for the kitchen.

“I heard a plane again,” I tell her when we’re out of earshot.

Her eyes widen. “You did!?”

I nod, smiling at her excitement. She’s only a year younger than me, but she’ll always be my baby sister. “Sure did. That’s why I was trying to get the board off. I thought dad was napping.”

“I wish I could hear a plane,” Amy says. “Or anything, really.”

“I thought I heard an engine, too, the other day,” I tell her. “But it might’ve been thunder. It was so distant, I couldn’t tell.”

We fall silent as we reach the kitchen. Dad spent a couple of hours outside today, harvesting vegetables from the garden and slaughtering a chicken for our next few meals.

What I wouldn’t give to go outside with him. Even for just a few minutes. But no. He says I’m not ready. Thinks I’m still just a kid.

We fall to preparing dinner, working in silence. Dad comes through the kitchen with the hammer and heads down to his room on the first floor.

When dinner is almost ready, I head downstairs to tell Dad. As I approach his room, I pass the back door, which is locked from the inside with a metal chain around two metal hasps—one fixed to the door and the other to the wall. Dad keeps the padlock key around his neck. The other door to the cabin is so boarded up that it would take me hours to get it open.

As always, I check to see if the lock is securely fastened. It is.

I notice Dad’s door is closed, which is only the case when he’s drinking—something that’s been happening more and more recently. I don’t know how much liquor he managed to stow away before we went into lockdown, but he must be getting low.

Pausing outside his room, I press my ear to the door.

“Every day they keep pushing me and pushing me,” I hear him say. “And it’s getting harder and harder for me to resist them. Sometimes I just want to give in. To let them do whatever they want. At least it would end the turmoil. I wouldn’t have to feel like this anymore.”

There’s a pause, and I hear the sound of liquid gurgling from a bottle. It’s my dad taking a swig of liquor.

I knock on the door even as I turn the knob and walk in.

Startled, my dad quickly puts the bottle of whiskey down beside the recliner he’s sitting in. He has a framed photo of my mother in his left hand.

“Dinner’s about ready,” I say.

“Okay,” he says, sniffling. “I’m coming.”

We don’t talk much through dinner. When we’re done eating, Amy and I do the cleanup. Then she heads to her room just down the hall from mine on the second floor. I go to my room and collapse onto my bed.

As I lie in my bed, staring at the board over my window with nails every two inches, I hear a strange murmuring from outside. At first, I think it’s the wind. But it seems to get louder or closer, and I realize it’s people.

I can’t hear what they’re saying, but the conversation seems casual, judging by the tone. Sounds like a couple of girls, walking by in the woods, chatting.

I jump up from my bed and rush to Amy’s room. “Did you hear that?” I ask.

She sits up on her bed, setting her book aside. “Hear what?”

“People,” I say. “Outside. I heard them talking.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” I say. “Just be quiet for a minute.”

We stay still, listening. I even hold my breath. But I can’t hear the people anymore.

“I don’t hear anything,” Amy says.

“They must be gone. But they can’t have made it far. If we can get out there—”

“You’re kidding,” Amy says. “How? You heard what Dad said.”

“He’s been drinking,” I tell her. “I bet I can get the key from around his neck.”

Amy’s eyes go wide as her mouth drops open. It’s unthinkable. “You wouldn’t.”

“Why not?” I say. “Dad goes out there every couple of days. Why the hell can’t we? If he comes back fine, then we can, too.”

Amy bites her lip, considering. “You really heard people? And a plane?”

“I really did,” I say. “I mean, what if this is all just made up? All this stuff happened right after Mom died. What if it’s completely normal out there?”

Amy shakes her head. “You saw the news reports back then,” she says. “Something happened, even if they didn’t know exactly what.”

“Yeah, I know something happened,” I say. “But that was two years ago. What if everything is fine now? I mean, why else would there be planes flying around and people hiking through the woods?”

“Maybe …” Amy says.

“And why would it be safe for Dad to go out, but not us? Does that make any sense to you? No, I think Dad has just gone off the deep end. Since Mom died, he’s terrified of losing us, so he’s kept us cooped up in here, even though whatever happened is cured or solved or whatever.”

Amy looks like she’s coming around, but she’s not quite there yet. So I push on. “Listen, Amy,” I say. “I heard Dad talking to Mom’s picture again tonight. He feels guilty. He was saying how he wanted us to just do whatever we want so he could stop feeling guilty.”

“He said that?”

I nod. “Yeah, in so many words.”

Amy takes a deep breath. “Okay,” she says. “See if you can get the key. But if you get caught, I didn’t know anything about it.”

I smile. “Deal.”

I can hear my dad snoring as I creep down the stairs. His door is open, as it usually is, because he likes to be able to hear if we start messing with the chain on the back door.

As I get to his door, I look inside. He’s passed out in the recliner next to his bed, my mom’s picture in his lap. And I can see the padlock key on the leather strap around his neck.

Moving closer, I stop and wait. “Dad?” I whisper.

Nothing.

He’s out.

Using just the tips of my fingers, I twist the necklace so I can see the metal clasp. I unhook the clasp and then pull the necklace off. My dad doesn’t make a move.

I head back over to the stairwell to find Amy there, her shoes on and my shoes in her hand. She gives them to me, and I put them on as quickly as I can. I’m shaking with excitement. She also has a flashlight. I probably would’ve forgotten about a flashlight in my excitement.

Moving as slowly and as gently as possible, I undo the padlock and remove the chain, setting it down next to the doorway.

Then I unlock the two deadbolts and the knob.

Amy and I look at each other in the dimly lit hallway. We smile.

The smell of pine trees and fresh earth overwhelms me as I open the door. Amy and I slip out into the darkness. I shut the door gently behind us.

Amy clicks the flashlight on and shines it around. Our yard is fenced-in, and there are several raised garden beds within the chain-link fencing. The chicken coop is on the other side of the cabin. We can hear the chickens clucking every so often.

She turns the beam outward, shining at the pine trees around the property. There’s nothing much to see. Just trees. But it’s still the thrill of a lifetime for me. Being outside after so long.

The sound of a young woman’s laughter splits the air from off in the woods. “Did you hear that?” I ask Amy. She nods, smiling.

When I look back out into the woods, I notice the glow of a fire illuminating the trees just over the low ridge. Suddenly, I can smell the fire on the wind.

“Let’s go check it out,” I say, heading toward the gate without waiting for an answer. Amy follows, lighting the way.

As we approach the crest, we slow down, looking over. Sure enough, there are three teenage girls sitting around a campfire, joking and laughing.

Amy and I look at each other with wide eyes. As we’re about to discuss our next move, one of the girls calls out to us. “Hey! Don’t be scared. Come join us.”

She’s a very pretty girl. In fact, all of them are. I can’t believe my luck. “Okay,” I say.

I start forward, and Amy follows a few steps behind.

All three faces are turned toward us, smiling and easy-going. “I’m Jenny,” the one who already spoke says. “Do you guys live in that cabin down there?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m Brandon and this is Amy.”

“Nice to meet you, Jerrod,” Amy says.

I turn to look at her. Jerrod? I think. What is she talking about?

“No!” a scream cuts the air from behind us. My dad.

Amy and I flinch, turning around at the same time to see Dad running toward us through the woods, his shotgun in hand. “Get away! Get back!”

“What?” I say, turning back around to face the teenagers.

Jenny, the nearest one, lunges at me. As her hands touch the skin of my neck, reality seems to rip before my eyes. No longer is there a pretty teenage girl in front of me. There’s a creature with wide, deep-set eyes in a craggy, blackish-gray face. A crooked grin with cracked teeth sits on the bottom half of its face, under red slits for nostrils.

Its tendril-like fingers wrap around my throat. I can feel something entering my skull, but I’m not sure if it’s something physical or a more psychological invasion.

“They’ll try to trick you,” my dad said earlier. His words repeat in my head as terror freezes my bones.

After a moment, I feel a terrible, unending crack form in my mind. A world too awful to comprehend suddenly becomes my reality. I can feel billions of other minds locked in with mine, all half-insane and gibbering, pleading for release.

I can feel all their pain and their sorrow and their fear. And it’s never-ending.

And I can feel them—the creatures—feeding on it. I understand them, suddenly. Time folds in on itself, and I can see them, taunting my father on the days he came outside to work in the garden or get eggs. I can see them, taking the form of my mother, telling him things that only she could know. They tried to get him to come out into the woods. Into their territory. But he resisted.

Until now.

Until I drew him out here.

I’m vaguely aware of the sound of a shotgun going off. A creature screams. I notice out of the corner of my eye a creature pouncing on Amy. And I can feel it as her mind joins the fray, adding her darkness to the infinite turmoil.

The shotgun fires again, and another creature screams. But it’s not dead. They can’t die. Not with violence. Only starvation.

My dad comes into view. I see him look from me to Amy and back as he pumps another shell into the chamber. Then he turns the barrel on himself.

The shotgun fires. And then I’m pulled all the way out of reality and into hell.

But before my world becomes nothing but agony, my last coherent thought is for my dad.

At least he escaped this fate.

Wild Animals

My car’s tires dug into the gravel driveway as I slammed on the brakes. The car skidded for several feet before it came to a stop inches from hitting the closed garage door.

Even before I opened my car door, I heard screaming from inside the house. Moving quickly, I opened the door and took my foot off the brake pedal. The car moved, crunching into the tan garage door, crumpling it inward; I hadn’t put it in park.

Jamming the gearshift, I put the vehicle in park and jumped out, not bothering to turn it off or take the keys out.

I ran up the six brick steps to the front door, which sat in the shade of the tall pine trees in front of the house. I tried the knob, but the door was locked.

Inside, glass shattered. Two very different screams sounded from in the house. One was human. The other one was anything but.

Lunging down the steps, I ran around to the back of the house. As I went, my guts coiled tightly. I knew, as sure as I’ve ever known anything with unassailable certainty, that what was happening was my fault. I knew I could’ve stopped it. But I didn’t.

As I ran up the steps and reached the back door, I noticed that one of the rectangular glass panes was broken. There were spots of fresh blood on the glass and the tan-colored frame. The door was partially open, and I looked down by my left shoe to see drops of blood on the wooden steps.

The screaming inside had stopped, but there was still whimpering and grunting.

A chill swept across me, and the hairs on my neck stood up. I had the feeling that I was being watched from the woods behind the house. The property included over ten acres of land, most of them wooded.

Looking back over my shoulder, I peered into the woods. And I saw something move in the trees, much faster than any human.

***

The first time I met the unquestionably odd Delroy family was at the beginning of the year. The woods surrounding the house were half-barren, the only greenery that of pine needles adorning the evergreens’ branches.

It was a gray, misty morning, and the property was patchy with fog as I drove up. The house was some mishmash of the Tudor and craftsman styles. It was tan and brown with brick around the front door. Three steep gable roofs over staring windows looked out upon the dark gray gravel driveway.

Trisha’s green electric car was parked in the little pullout to the right of the two-car garage. I parked my car next to it and got out, grabbing my backpack and my small red duffle bag with medical supplies inside.

I was dressed in turquoise scrubs and comfortable shoes, with a black jacket on against the chill winter morning.

The front door opened, and Trisha came out, meeting me on the pavestone footpath up to the house. She had her bags in hand.

“They told you what this was about, right?” she asked me.

“Yeah, they told me,” I said. “Is it really that bad?”

“I thought I could handle it,” Trisha said, shaking her head. Beads of moisture were already forming on her springy black hair. “But I don’t know. They just give me a bad feeling. Always staring at me. I can’t take it anymore.”

I shrugged. Only time would tell if I could take it. But I thought I could. “What about him?”

“He’s doing about the same. Could go at any moment, really. I’ve checked vitals and done wound care. I applied a fentanyl patch two hours ago. And he had a bowel movement this morning already. It’s all on the chart inside.”

“Okay,” I said. “I think that’s all I need, unless you have anything else?”

“Yeah,” Trisha said. “Good luck.”

We said goodbye and parted ways. As I approached the door, I heard the low hum of Trisha’s car starting. I didn’t have to knock, because as soon as I got to it, the front door opened to reveal a woman in her late fifties. Mrs. Delroy. Her black hair was done up in curls that fell around her shoulders. She wore a pale-yellow sweater and jeans with house shoes. Her makeup was subtle and tastefully applied. I thought that was good. It’s better for family members to do the things they normally do. Oftentimes, people just kind of give up. It’s hard to watch someone you love slowly die.

“You must be Mr. West,” she said. “Come on in.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Delroy. You can call me Paul,” I told her, stepping inside.

“Okay, Paul. You can call me Monica. I’ll show you to William’s room.”

The house was neat and clean, but it had a strange smell to it. An animal smell. It wasn’t overpowering, but it was clearly there, unmistakable and wholly unique.

She took me through a downstairs sitting room and a short hallway into what had once been a den or an office. Against the wall to my left was an old man in a hospital bed. William Delroy. His eyes were closed, and medical machinery beeped and hummed around him. He was bald save a few wispy white patches of hair over his overlarge ears. I knew from his file that he was eighty-nine years old. And that cancer was decimating his insides.

It was dark in the room, which was why I didn’t immediately notice the two figures sitting in wing-back chairs opposite the bed. I felt eyes on me and turned to see two adult chimpanzees sitting in the chairs. They were gazing at me with sad eyes.

“Hey there,” I whispered to the chimps, not wanting to wake Mr. Delroy. “My name’s Paul West.”

Mrs. Delroy smiled sadly at me. “That’s Jerry,” she said, pointing at the chimp in the far chair. Then she turned her attention to the other one. “And that’s Simon. Now you boys be good to Paul here, okay? He’s here to help Daddy feel comfortable for his last days on this earth.”

Jerry nodded once, still looking at me. Simon’s eyes moved from Mr. Delroy to me and back again. His expression didn’t change.

As a regular watcher of wildlife documentaries, I had a general idea of what adult chimps looked like in the wild. These two seemed significantly overweight. They had thick, heavy-looking limbs and bigger bellies than I’d seen on any chimp before, either in person or on television. I pegged them for around 200 pounds, easy.

“Don’t worry,” Mrs. Delroy said to me. “They’re perfectly harmless. They’re just having a hard time with William’s death.”

“Understandable,” I said. There was a table on the other side of the hospital bed where I could put my things. I headed that way and went about setting up my supplies.

“Do you need anything from me?” Mrs. Delroy asked.

“No, I don’t think so. I’m just going to get myself situated and check his charts and vitals and everything.”

“Oh, Trisha already did that,” Mrs. Delroy said. “If you like, I can make you a cup of coffee or tea?”

“Yeah, she told me,” I said. “But I still like to get myself acclimated. Don’t worry, I won’t wake him up. As for the coffee or tea, I’m okay for right now. Thank you, though.”

Something in the air shifted. There was an unmistakable pressure in the room suddenly. I wondered if I’d said something wrong. Glancing at the chimps, I saw that they were now staring at Mrs. Delroy.

“Well, once you get settled, I’d like to speak with you in the kitchen,” she said in a clipped tone. “You’ll be in my house, after all. I like to get to know anyone who’s going to be spending time in my house.”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course. I’ll come to the kitchen as soon as I’m all set up in here.”

“Good,” she said. “Go back out the way you came and take a left. You can’t miss it.” She turned to leave and said, “Jerry, Simon, come along now. Let’s let the man do his work.”

Both the chimps got down from their chairs and knuckle-walked out of the room, glancing over their shoulders at me as they went.

I hadn’t been here for ten minutes yet, and I already knew how Trisha felt. It was one thing seeing chimps in the zoo, separated by a barrier. It was something else entirely to be in the same room with them. But I figured things would change as I got to know them and got used to their presence. As I went about finding my bearings with Mr. Delroy, I told myself I would do my very best to get to know Simon and Jerry. To treat them like people instead of animals.

After I got set up, I went to the kitchen, passing the living room as I did. Jerry and Simon were sitting on the couch, watching a television show. They both glanced at me as I went past.

I found Mrs. Delroy looking out the kitchen window at the backyard, a teacup in one hand. She apparently hadn’t heard me come in, so I cleared my throat.

She turned around and smiled at me. I couldn’t help but smile back. She was an attractive woman. There was no doubt about that. I didn’t want to pass judgment, but I knew that Mr. Delroy’s insurance only covered so much hospice care. They were paying out of pocket for me to stay eight hours every day—longer if there was an emergency or it was clear that Mr. Delroy was actively dying.

It wasn’t cheap. And despite the relatively modest house, the Delroy name was known around these parts. Rumor had it that the guy was worth a cool hundred million. Given her looks and age, Mrs. Delroy could’ve been a trophy wife. They’d been married for only fifteen years, having tied the knot when he was seventy-four and she was in her early forties.

But I knew that love takes all kinds of forms. And I wasn’t about to assume that she didn’t love the man dying in the other room. I tried not to assume anything about any of the families whose lives I came into at a rough time for them.

“Please, have a seat,” she said, gesturing at a table on one side of the large kitchen. “Are you sure you don’t want anything to drink?”

“I’m okay, thanks.”

“Okay,” she said, sitting down across from me.

We talked for about fifteen minutes. She asked me standard questions about how long I’d been a hospice nurse, what school I’d gone to, how I liked the job, and all the other job-interview stuff. I got the feeling during our conversation that she just wanted someone to talk to. It was clear by her occasional pauses that she wanted me to ask her questions. I think she was disappointed when I only asked her about things relating to the care of Mr. Delroy. But I’d been doing this long enough to know that I shouldn’t get any more involved than I absolutely had to.

I had my own life to live, with my own trials and tribulations. I didn’t need to take on anyone else’s burdens. And I certainly didn’t need to develop any kind of deep relationship with clients or patients. I was here to make sure William Delroy was comfortable for his last days on this earth. That was it.

But little did I know then that I would develop a relationship with the members of the Delroy household. One that would have a lasting impact on my life.

***

Weeks passed. Mr. Delroy clung to life, if you could call it that. He was rarely conscious, and when he was, he was confused and babbling. More than once I watched tears roll down Monica’s cheeks—she’d insisted I call her Monica instead of Mrs. Delroy—as she spoke to her husband when he was awake.

Maybe there were times at night, when I wasn’t at the house, when he recognized her. But in the weeks leading up to his death, I’d never seen it happen. He called her by many names, but none were her own.

Most of the time, Jerry and Simon sat in those chairs across from William’s bed, watching him with their expressive eyes. I learned to tell them apart by their facial hair. Jerry’s chin was encompassed by gray hair, making it look like he had a goatee. Simon, on the other hand, was balding. His forehead extended all the way up to the crown of his skull.

According to Monica, Jerry was forty-one and Simon was thirty-nine. I had no idea, off the top of my head, what this meant as far as a chimp’s lifespan. So I asked. Monica said that chimps living in captivity could grow as old as seventy. In the wild, they lived to about fifty.

As the weeks passed, I got to know all about Simon and Jerry. Not just because Monica and I had fallen into a habit of chatting in the kitchen for hours at a time, but because I interacted with the two chimps more and more as time went by.

That first week, it took Monica ordering them to get them out of William’s room. But once I started to feel more comfortable with them, I started talking to them like they were human members of the family. They seemed to respond to this.

Monica helped me learn what some of their gestures meant, although even she wasn’t sure all the time. Halfway through the second week, after I finished checking on William, Jerry jumped down from his chair and took me by the hand. He panted and hooted softly as he led me out of the room and down the hall to the back door. Monica was making some food in the kitchen, and she jumped when she heard us moving past the room. She spun around, quickly setting aside a white bottle she’d been holding and then positioning her body so I couldn’t see it. I pretended not to notice what she’d done, figuring it was none of my business.

“Jerry,” she said, putting her hands on her hips, “where are you taking Paul?”

The chimp gestured with his free hand and then pulled me to the door.

“You can say no if you don’t want to go outside,” Monica said.

“I don’t mind,” I told her, smiling. “William is doing fine for now. Just give me a shout if you need anything.”

Monica nodded as Jerry opened the back door and pulled me outside. He walked bipedally next to me, still holding my hand. We headed along a trail into the woods behind the house, coming to a clearing with what looked like a playground set. Only it wasn’t meant for children; it was for the chimps.

I expected Jerry to start climbing the wooden platforms and swinging from the ropes, but he didn’t. He let go of my hand, sat on his haunches next to me, and began gesturing. He only looked at me occasionally as he gestured, but that was normal for chimps. It was clear he was trying to tell me something, but I had no idea what. I’d only learned a couple of basic gestures by then, so all I could do was shrug and tell Jerry I was sorry, but I didn’t know what he was saying.

After several minutes of this, he seemed to grow frustrated. He started playing on the equipment, and I joined in, running around while he chased me with a smile on his face.

When we headed back into the house, Simon was sitting in the television room, eating a bowl of fruit. When Monica noticed we were back inside, she called to Jerry from the kitchen. “Time to eat, Jerry!” she said.

Jerry ignored her, following me back to William’s room to sit in his chair while I checked on the dying man.

I heard Monica call out again, and I stepped to the door, saying, “He’s in here with me.”

Soon, Monica appeared in the doorway. “Come on, Jerry. Time for lunch,” she said.

Jerry pretended he didn’t hear her, but I could see in his eyes that he had. He looked like he was ashamed. Or maybe afraid.

“Jerry,” she said again. “Come. Here.”

Jerry looked at me, then at William, who was unconscious. When he saw no support, he got down from his chair and slowly followed Monica out.

A few minutes later, the sound of porcelain shattering made me jump. One of the chimps—I wasn’t sure which one—started screaming and hooting from the TV room. My heart working overtime, I ran out and saw Monica standing frozen next to a wall in the TV room. Just to the left of her head was a splotch of fruit juice from where the thrown bowl of fruit had impacted the wall. Blueberries, strawberries, and apple slices littered the ground at her feet along with pieces of the bowl.

Jerry was jumping on the couch, screaming and hooting. Simon sat nearby, his mouth wide open in what looked to me like a smile.

“Are you okay?” I said.

Hand to her chest, Monica came to her senses. “Yes. Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll just … get him something else. He can be such a picky eater.”

She moved off to the kitchen, and I followed her. As soon as we were out of the TV room, Jerry calmed down.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Has this happened before?”

Monica flapped a hand at me. “It’s fine,” she said. “He’s just having a hard time. We’re all having a hard time. I forgot he doesn’t like apples. I’ve just been so out of it. I haven’t been getting much sleep lately. And it’s just—” Monica broke down mid-sentence, sobbing as she cupped her face in her hands.

“It’s understandable,” I said in a soft voice, stepping toward her and instinctively putting a hand on her shoulder. She moved toward me, wrapping me in a hug and bawling into my shoulder.

I said nothing, just held her while she cried. It wasn’t the first time I’d been a shoulder to cry on for a patient’s family member. And it wouldn’t be the last.

And if there was one thing I’d realized during my time at the Delroy house, it was that Monica was a sad and lonely woman whose world was falling apart.

She cried for a long time. At one point, I sensed movement near the kitchen doorway. I looked over my shoulder to see Jerry and Simon standing there on their feet, staring at us with something like curiosity in their eyes.

***

William Delroy died a month and a half after I took over as his hospice nurse. It was clear what was happening while I was there on a Saturday, so I ended up staying, making sure he was comfortable as his body shut down.

We were all in the room when it happened. Jerry and Simon were jammed together in one of the wingback chairs, grooming each other. Monica paced at the foot of William’s bed, occasionally stopping to hold his gnarled hand and tell him how much she loved him.

I sat quietly near my supplies on the other side of the bed. When I finally announced that he was dead, Simon and Jerry jumped out of the chair and swaggered around, their arms above their heads as they scowled and hooted angrily.

In the jungle, they would’ve grabbed tree branches or saplings and wrenched them around, but in this house, they had no such luxury. In his anger, Simon knocked over one of the wing-back chairs. Jerry jumped up and down, beating his fists on the floor.

Monica backed away toward the door, clearly frightened. I’d been standing by William’s bed, having just checked his vitals, but I sat down again, knowing instinctively that I should make myself smaller to seem less of a threat.

Although I didn’t really think they would attack me, the impressive displays scared me, nonetheless. After six weeks of interacting with them, I knew how strong the chimps were. Although people often throw around ridiculous numbers when it comes to chimp strength, saying they’re five times stronger than the average human, I knew this wasn’t accurate.

In truth, the average chimp is one and a half times stronger than the average human. They have more fast-twitch muscles, good for swinging and climbing and short bouts of activity. On the other hand, humans have more slow-twitch muscles, better for stamina and moving over long distances.

I’d play-wrestled with both chimps on occasion, and I could feel their strength, even though they never used all of it when we were playing. Not even close. But I could still feel it there, underneath. I knew that I would not come out on top during a confrontation with either animal if they really meant to do me harm.

After about two minutes, the chimps stopped their display of anger and sadness. They jumped up on the bed, sitting on either side of William’s cooling body, and stared at the man who’d adopted them nearly forty years ago.

Normally, that would’ve been the end of my interaction with the family. But I’d become friends with them all—Simon, Jerry, and Monica.

On Monica’s request, I started coming over on the weekends to hang out for a few hours. When the weather was good, I’d accompany Jerry and Simon out to their playground where we’d horse around. Other times, I would watch television with them or talk to them using the limited gestures I’d learned. It was all very basic stuff, but it was cool to communicate with them, even if only to see what they wanted to eat or watch.

Monica and I would sit in the kitchen, just as we’d done before William died, talking about anything and everything. Monica usually steered the conversation, which was fine by me. She never ran out of things to talk about.

It was during one of these visits that I asked her what was going to happen with Simon and Jerry. “Are they going to keep living here with you?” I asked.

Monica’s face fell. She looked down at her cup on the table. “That’s what William wanted,” she said. “He said so in his will.”

I nodded. “But what do you want?”

She looked over her shoulder, toward the living room, even though we couldn’t see the chimps in there. “I don’t know,” she said. “Eventually, they’re going to need special care, just like William. Their bodies are going to grow old—I mean, they’re already pretty old for chimps. I just don’t know…”

“What about putting them with other chimps at a sanctuary?” I asked.

Monica shook her head. “They’ve been living with humans for too long. They won’t know how to act with other chimps. I’ve done some reading on it.”

“That’s tough,” I said.

“William set aside money for their care, but …”

“Well, that’s good,” I replied. “What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just so different without William here. I never felt like they warmed to me, you know? They always spent most of their time with William. I was just the one who made them food and put on their shows or movies.”

“It really is like having a couple of kids,” I said, chuckling as I tried to lighten the mood.

“Yeah,” Monica said sourly. “Only they’ll never leave home to live their own lives. They’ll be here forever.”

That was when the seed was planted in my mind—I just didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t until a month later that I started to suspect something wasn’t right at the Delroy house.

Monica was talking on the phone when I arrived at the house on a Sunday afternoon. She opened the door with a smile and gestured for me to come on in.

She covered the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered, “Hey, Paul. I’ll be with you in a few minutes. If you’re thirsty, help yourself to something from the fridge.”

I gave her a thumbs-up and went to greet Simon and Jerry in the living room. But as soon as I saw them, I knew something was wrong. While usually greeting me by coming up and grabbing my hands and pant-hooting softly at me, this time they didn’t seem to even notice my presence. They were both watching television, sprawled out on the couch.

“Hey, guys,” I said. Jerry looked up at me, but it was like he wasn’t really seeing me. He quickly turned his attention back to the TV.

After standing there for several long moments, I decided I’d ask Monica about it when we talked. I headed to the kitchen and opened the fridge to grab something to drink.

As I was looking, I saw a white bottle with no label on it. It was about the size and shape of a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Curious, I pulled it out and turned it around, looking for any information. It was completely blank.

I heard footsteps behind me and saw Monica coming into the kitchen with a smile on her face. She was done with her phone call. But when she saw what I was holding, her smile fell away.

“Don’t drink that!” she said, taking the bottle out of my hand.

“I wasn’t going to. I was just wondering what it is.”

Monica’s eyes darted around. “Just something for Simon and Jerry. Special medicine that they need to take. Definitely not for drinking.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering why she was acting so strange. “Okay. Got it.”

By the time the visit was over, I had an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. When I’d asked her why Simon and Jerry weren’t themselves, she said it was because they’d been acting crazy and so she’d drugged them with sedatives in their lunch.

I left the house wondering what, if anything, I could do.

As I drove home, I remembered the day that Jerry had thrown his bowl of fruit at the wall. When he was leading me outside, we passed the kitchen where Monica was making food. She’d seemed startled at the time, and she’d been holding a white bottle which she placed on the counter before blocking it with her body.

It was identical to the white bottle I’d found in the fridge. Maybe even the same one.

Could it be possible? I wondered. Could she be poisoning Simon and Jerry? Was that what Jerry had been trying to tell me that first time he took me outside, away from Monica’s prying eyes?

I didn’t want to believe it. I’d grown to like Monica. She seemed like a genuinely nice woman. But …

But I had to admit to myself that I’d never fully warmed to her. Not really. Not the way I’d warmed to Simon and Jerry.

I had written it off as the difference between animals and humans. I thought since I wasn’t the most sociable guy, it was just natural that I would feel more of a connection with the animals. After all, isn’t there a certain purity in a relationship between a dog and a human? Or a cat and a human?

But Simon and Jerry weren’t like dogs. They weren’t like cats. They were so much more. Almost human, but without the capacity for deceit and ulterior motives.

I’d assumed that was why I hadn’t warmed to Monica like I had to them.

But as I drove away from the house that Sunday, I wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was something else. Some kind of deeper instinct that told me not to fully trust her.

“This is ridiculous,” I said out loud. “Monica wouldn’t do anything to hurt them.”

Despite my urge to believe this was true, my mind kept going over and over my suspicions.

As I approached my house, my phone rang. I saw it was Monica calling.

I answered. “Hey—”

“Help!” Monica screamed. In the background, I could hear the crazed screams of Simon and Jerry. “Help, Paul! No! No!”

It sounded as if she was trying to fight one or both of them off.

“Monica? I’m coming!” I shouted, turning the car around to disapproving honks on the residential street. “Call the police!”

Monica ended the call without another word, and I immediately tried to call her back as I sped down the road. She didn’t answer. So I called 911 and told them the situation. They said they’d send police and animal control.

Seven minutes later, my car’s tires dug into the gravel driveway as I slammed on the brakes. The car skidded for several feet before it came to a stop inches from hitting the closed garage door.

Even before I opened my car door, I heard screaming from inside the house—from Monica and one of the chimps. Moving quickly, I opened the door and took my foot off the brake pedal. The car moved, crunching into the tan garage door, crumpling it inward; I hadn’t put it in park.

Jamming the gearshift, I put the vehicle in park and jumped out, not bothering to turn it off or take the keys out.

I ran up the six brick steps to the front door and tried the knob, but the door was locked.

Inside, glass shattered. Two very different screams sounded from in the house. Monica was in pain, that much was clear. But I couldn’t tell from the other scream which chimp it was.

Lunging down the steps, I ran around to the back of the house. As I went, my guts coiled in my stomach. I knew, as sure as I’ve ever known anything with unassailable certainty, that what was happening was my fault. I knew I could’ve stopped it. I’d known something was wrong. But I did nothing.

As I ran up the steps and reached the back door, I noticed that one of the rectangular glass panes was broken. There were spots of fresh blood on the glass and the tan-colored frame. The door was partially open, and I looked down by my left boot to see drops of blood on the wooden steps.

I wondered if Monica had tried locking one or both of the chimps outside. It seemed likely. And one of them had broken the window to unlock the door and open it.

The screaming inside had stopped, but there was still whimpering and grunting.

A chill swept across me, and the hairs on my neck stood up. I had the feeling that I was being watched from the woods behind the house.

Looking back over my shoulder, I peered into the woods. And I saw something move in the trees, much faster than any human. Simon burst out of the trees, bounding toward me with his mouth wide open, sharp teeth showing.

I got inside the house, shutting and locking the door behind me. It wouldn’t keep Simon out for long if he wanted to get in. But it was all I could do.

Running down the hall, I headed toward the stairs. I could hear the whimpering coming from up there. The place was a mess, with picture frames broken on the floor and holes in many of the walls.

But nothing could’ve prepared me for what I saw upstairs. First, I saw the blood at the top of the stairs. It stained the carpet in streaks and dribbles. As I followed the blood, I saw two human fingers in the hallway. Monica’s fingers. They’d been torn off.

As I stepped to the master bedroom, where the tracks of blood led, I gasped at what I saw.

Monica was on the floor at the foot of the king-sized bed. She was barely recognizable. Her eyes had been gouged out. Blood was everywhere, along with parts of her hands and face.

I rushed to her side, only realizing when I got there that the gasps weren’t coming from her. She had no pulse. She was dead, although her body was still warm.

Sensing movement behind me, I turned to see Jerry standing in the doorway I’d just vacated. He was covered in Monica’s blood.

His mouth was open slightly, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a grimace. I was already on my knees on the floor, but I sat down on my feet and hunched my shoulders in to make myself look smaller, like I was no threat. I stuck a hand out, which I knew was a sign of subservience in certain instances.

But I saw in Jerry’s eyes that he wasn’t done. If he recognized me—which I’m sure he did—it didn’t matter. He jumped into the room and attacked me, grabbing my hand and immediately breaking my ring and pinky fingers. I screamed out in pain and covered my eyes with my other hand, knowing he would go for them sooner or later, just as he had with Monica.

I didn’t try to fight him. I knew I would lose if I did. My only shot at living was to not show any resistance. If I wasn’t a threat, maybe he would stop the attack. But he didn’t.

After breaking my fingers, he grabbed my right ear and ripped it off in one smooth movement. Pain and terror became all I knew. Panic wrapped itself around me like a swarm of wasps.

Then he went for my eyes. He pulled my right hand away and jammed one powerful finger into my right eye socket, but before he could gouge it out, he was suddenly gone. I was no longer under attack. And I soon realized why.

Simon.

The other chimp had gotten into the house and tackled Jerry. They were rolling around on the other side of the room, fighting each other as they screamed in anger and pain. I got to my feet, holding my damaged left hand to my body. The right side of my head was nothing but a ball of pain. I could feel the blood dripping down my neck.

I made it downstairs and out the front door just as a police cruiser pulled up.

The cop got out of his car and put his hand on his weapon. “Sir, tell me what happened. Did an animal do that to you?”

“Listen,” I said, stumbling toward him, “they’re not bad. Don’t shoot them, please. Don’t shoot them.”

The guy was walking toward me, but he suddenly stopped and pulled out his gun, his gaze fixed on something over my shoulder. I suddenly realized that I couldn’t hear Simon and Jerry screaming anymore.

Looking over my shoulder, I saw Jerry at the front door, looking out with a wide grin on his face. But it wasn’t a happy grin. I knew that by now. It meant he was scared. He was scared, and he didn’t know what to do.

I looked back at the cop, who was pointing his gun at the chimp. “No!” I said. “Don’t.”

“Did that monkey kill someone?” he asked, his voice laden with fear. “He’s covered in blood for chrissake.”

“He’s not a monkey,” I said. “And you don’t understand. It’s complicated.”

I heard Jerry move out of the house and down the stairs. I stepped between Jerry and the cop’s gun. “Don’t shoot him.”

“He’s gonna attack you!” the guy said. “Get out of the way!”

Jerry was moving quickly up to me. For a moment, I thought the cop was right. I thought Jerry meant to kill me, like he’d almost done in the house. All my instincts told me to move. To jump out of the way so the cop could shoot him. But I fought the instincts. I stayed put. And when Jerry got to me, he hunkered down behind me, grabbing my legs with his bloody hands as he peered around at the cop.

“It’s not his fault,” I said, talking to the cop. Then, seeing that the officer was relaxing a bit, I looked down into Jerry’s eyes. “It’s not your fault,” I told him.

He nodded once and panted. But I looked into his eyes. And I saw shame there.

***

Simon had saved my life. And he’d paid for it with an eye. But at least he lived.

After a couple of tests, it was clear that Monica had been slowly poisoning the chimps with methanol. Luckily, Jerry and Simon had known what she was doing and had managed to keep from getting killed by refusing her food.

Upon searching the house, the police found a syringe filled with the poisonous chemical. My guess was she’d tried injecting Jerry with the stuff, and he’d had no choice but to defend himself.

Investigators found out that most of Mr. Delroy’s considerable fortune was set aside to care for the chimps into their old age. He’d left his wife enough money that she’d never have to work again, but I guess it wasn’t enough.

In the end, that money was used to get Simon and Jerry into a chimp sanctuary. It took a long time and lots of expensive care to get them acclimated to living with other chimps, but it worked.

Although my fingers still ache on occasion, and my reattached ear sits at an odd angle to my head, I never hold it against Jerry. After all, he’s a wild animal.

In the end, I guess you can count on wild animals to be just that: wild.

As for Monica’s actions, one only needs to read the news headlines to see that her behavior wasn’t really surprising. I thought she was a good person, but that’s the thing about humans. Some of us are really good at hiding who we truly are and what we’re willing to do for the things that we want.

In the end, no matter how far we’ve come from living in trees like the wild chimps of today, we’re still very much like our great ape cousins. We’re still just wild animals.

Meltdown

Michaelson’s face is unrecognizable. It’s severely swollen and splotchy where it was once healthy and vibrant. Blood and pus seep through his skin like sweat, staining the white sheets under him red and pink.

He’s calm now, but it won’t last. He’ll be awake again, writhing in pain, screaming, and begging to die. He’s the toughest man I’ve ever known, and seeing him like this is a special sort of torture.

But I can help him. I have a forty-five-caliber pistol on my hip. It would be easy to put him out of his misery.

And maybe I will. Maybe that’s what we should all do.

I wonder if there are one hundred and forty-six bullets on board this submarine. Surely there are. Enough to go around.

Otherwise, I fear we’re all facing a long, painful, and slow death.

***

I boarded the submarine with fifteen other Navy SEALs at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. All our equipment was already loaded on the ship, save the small packs that we each carried with us for the few days we would be on board.

It wasn’t my first time getting on a nuclear-powered submarine to hitch a ride somewhere. So it did not surprise me to hear the submariners grumble about “freeloading oxygen breathers” as we got on board. They pretended like they were saying it under their breath, but they really wanted us to hear it. A little Navy-to-Navy shit talking.

But I laughed it off. Navy SEALs are, by definition, the best of the best.

“These guys got jokes,” Michaelson said from behind me as one of the submariners showed us through the cramped vessel.

“Let them have their jokes,” I said to him, loud enough for anyone in earshot to hear me. “You’d have to have a good sense of humor to stay on one of these death traps for months at a time.”

Michaelson laughed. “Hey,” he said with mock outrage, “the US Navy’s submarines have had a spotless record in recent years. Not a crash or a meltdo—”

Before Michaelson could get the entire word out, the guy leading us into the sub spun around. “Don’t say it!” he shouted. At first, I thought he was joking, but his face told me differently.

“It’s bad luck to talk about that stuff on the sub,” he said. He was a young guy whose cloth nameplate read Parks. He really took this stuff seriously.

“All right, man,” Michaelson said. “I didn’t know. Just a little friendly razzing.”

Parks looked at us for a moment while the guys behind us grumbled about the holdup. Then he turned around and led us deeper into the sub. We passed submariners pretty much everywhere. Sometimes we had to squeeze past each other with not an inch to spare. Much more intimate than I like my travel, but I went where Uncle Sam told me to go, and how he told me to get there.

Parks showed us our bunks, which were about the size and shape of a coffin, with the big difference being there was no lid, only curtains on the one open side. You had to slide in sideways and close the curtains if you wanted any privacy.

These bunks were stacked four high and six deep in one cramped corridor, a total of 24 beds in our particular stretch of hallway. Each of the little beds lifted up, revealing a shallow box where our clothing and any personal gear would go. We unloaded our packs into our assigned bunks and then wandered out to the crew’s mess while submariners buzzed about us, getting ready to embark.

One of the guys on my team, Holloway, produced a deck of cards and we spent an hour or so playing. We heard some announcements about getting underway and then we felt the sub move. Soon after, a submariner came through the mess and said, “Get ready for angles and dangles, gentlemen.”

Sure enough, we felt the sub tilt as it dove, making us lean back or forward in our seats, depending on which way we were facing. After a couple of minutes, the sub leveled out, and we were on our way.

There were about ten of us SEALs in the mess, including Michaelson and Holloway. The rest of the guys were either in their bunks or working out in whatever small space they could find where they wouldn’t be disturbed.

Since we didn’t have any jobs to do, we were just ‌killing time. It would be four days until we were in position to insert into a foreign country where we weren’t officially supposed to be.

So we had four days to kill.

Unfortunately, things went to shit on the third day. And they went to shit real quick.

I awoke to alarm klaxons, hitting my head on the bunk above me as I tried to sit up. Guys were running through the tight hallway toward the bow of the ship. One submariner almost tripped over me as I swung out of the bunk.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked him, but he ignored me. And as I stood up, I realized that the sub was tilting up slightly. Presumably, we were surfacing.

Holloway appeared behind me, squeezing himself against the wall of bunks as more young men ran past.

“You know what’s going on?” I asked him.

I couldn’t read his face as he looked at me. It looked the same as ever. Calm, cool, and collected. But the words he spoke chilled me to my core. “I heard one of them say something about the reactor.”

“You’re kidding. This must be a drill. These reactors have redundancies and fail-safes, don’t they?”

“Not one serious reactor problem during the whole nuclear submarine program, as I understand it,” Holloway said. “But the Russians have had some serious problems.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not the fucking Russians,” I said, moving forward toward the mess. Holloway followed.

A bunch of SEALs were in the crew’s mess, sitting or standing around. Ten of them, to be exact. As Holloway and I walked in, that made twelve. There were four missing, and one of them was Michaelson.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked Lieutenant Lyons, who sat in the corner with a toothpick in his mouth, sticking out of his bushy black beard.

“Michaelson and Dunn went up to see if they could help with whatever the hell’s going on. I don’t know where Cruz and Stokes are. I’m sure they’re here somewhere,” Lyons said.

Everyone was silent for a long time. The only sounds were the alarm klaxons echoing throughout the ship and the occasional garbled orders barked over the sub’s internal communication system.

“You think this is a drill?” Holloway asked Lyons.

“No,” Lyons said.

That shut us up for even longer. Suddenly, the entire sub shook, as if we’d just hit something. I couldn’t tell if we were moving or not, but I assumed we weren’t. I had no idea where in the world we were, or how close to help. And I knew next to nothing about nuclear reactors.

Some commotion caught my attention. The sound of men talking hurriedly grew closer. Three submariners appeared in the doorway to the mess, walking sideways because they were carrying a person between them.

“Move! Clear a table!” one of them said. The SEALs at the nearest table got up and the submariners put the man down. He was another submariner, but the skin of his hands and face was covered with third-degree burns. He was unconscious—or dead. I couldn’t tell which.

Three more men entered the mess carrying another submariner, and I recognized Michaelson and Dunn as two of the three. They put their man on another table. This guy was also badly burned, but only on one side of his body. He reminded me of the Batman villain Two-Face, only without the neat line that divided his damaged and undamaged skin. There were splotches of burnt skin on his face, as if he’d been splashed with burning water.

And that, I soon learned, was close to what had happened.

I went up behind Michaelson and Dunn, peering over their shoulders for a closer look. Michaelson saw me from the corner of his eye. “Get back,” he said. “Don’t touch any of us.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Something happened with the reactor,” Michaelson said, unbuttoning his shirt. “We’ve all been exposed to high levels of radiation. It’s all over our clothes.”

One of the submariners looked up at me and the other SEALs standing around. “The safety valves failed,” he said in a voice tight with disbelief. “The steam … the pressure was too much. It’s not supposed to happen. It can’t happen. The pressure vessel…” He trailed off, seeming to realize that he, too, was covered in radiation, because he started taking off his clothing.

When the men were all stripped to their underwear, their clothes set in a corner of the room, they worked on taking the clothes off of the two burned and unconscious men.

The rest of us watched, helpless to do anything. With all the training we had, we’d never been trained for something like this. We could do nothing but watch.

Michaelson suddenly stepped away and threw up on the floor. He looked up at me, shame on his face. But no fear. It seemed that he was more worried about making a mess than he was about whatever was happening to his body, making him vomit out of nowhere.

Once they got the clothes off the burned men, a man who I assumed was the ship’s corpsman appeared with a first aid kit and started treating their burns as best he could.

“This is Commander Ramsey speaking.” The calm voice came over the sub’s speakers, causing all of us but the corpsman to stop what we were doing. “I won’t sugarcoat this. You’ve all been trained well, and you all know what you’ve signed up for. So I’ll tell this to you straight. We’ve suffered a catastrophic accident involving the reactor. I’ve tried to blow the ballast tanks to get us to the surface, but this doesn’t seem to be possible. Without the reactor, we can’t move. So we’re currently sitting on a sea shelf about four hundred feet under the surface of the water. I’ve been in contact with the Navy, and they’re sending help. But it won’t get here for several days. In the meantime, we need to sit tight and stay cool. We’ll get through this.”

I looked at Lieutenant Lyons and then at Michaelson and Dunn. Their faces betrayed no emotion. But I was pretty sure mine did.

Twenty-four hours passed in mostly tense silence. They had sealed the reactor compartment because of high radiation levels, but those in the control room were receiving higher-than-normal doses, so they kept the crew there to a minimum and rotated them frequently.

After several hours of vomiting and confused babbling following the initial exposure, Michaelson seemed fine. He hadn’t thrown up anymore, and he said he felt normal.

Dunn had started showing symptoms about an hour after Michaelson. Apparently, he had followed Michaelson into the reactor compartment to help get the burned men out. Twenty-four hours later, he seemed okay. Just like Michaelson.

The corpsman said it wouldn’t last.

The two men who had been burned in the reactor compartment had been vomiting and convulsing since shortly after they’d been brought out. The corpsman said they’d be dead within days, if not hours.

None of the news we got was good.

So when Lyons came and found me lying in my bunk, I knew things were about to get worse. It wasn’t his face that told me; it was the lack of a toothpick in his mouth. He meant business.

“Listen,” he said. “I’ve just finished telling the others what Commander Ramsey told me. He says the oxygen tanks will run out tomorrow. They can’t produce any more oxygen because the reactor powered those systems. But he said they have oxygen candles we can burn. The question is whether they’ll get to us before they run out.”

“Jesus,” I said. “He thinks we’re going to run out of air before they get here?”

“He doesn’t know. Maybe,” Lyons said. “But that’s not the most concerning part of our situation.”

“You’re kidding. What is it? Killer sea monsters closing in on us?”

Lyons shook his head, clearly not in the mood for tasteless jokes. “Ramsey says we’re hanging off a sea shelf. He says the sub has been shifting slowly for the past day. But now it’s speeding up. And he thinks there’s a chance the sub could plummet off the shelf. And let me tell you, it’s a long drop.”

“I thought the angle was changing,” I said. “Is the drop long enough for the compression to kill us?”

Lyons nodded. “But we have our equipment on board. We could swim out.”

“And leave them all behind?”

“No. We have our dive gear. They have some escape suits or something. But we can only go through the lockout trunk so many at a time. It can only fit so many. Since we’re guests on this ship, Commander Ramsey wants us to go first.”

“What would we do? Just float on the surface of the ocean and hope that the rescue ships show up before we die? That’s if we make it to the surface alive. From four hundred feet, that’s not guaranteed.” I said.

Lyons shrugged. “I know the risks as well as you do. There are no good options here. We can wait to die in here, or try our chances in the ocean.”

“This is insane,” I said. “Fucking insane.”

“Just telling you what our options are.”

Lyons left me then, and I thought about leaving the ship in our scuba gear. It wasn’t a better option than staying on the sub. At least not as things were. Even if we did survive the swim, we would be abandoning them to their fate, hoping that they could escape—if they even had enough escape gear to get everyone off. I didn’t like it.

Now it has been two days since the reactor accident. The air has grown foul. The levels of carbon dioxide are climbing, even though we’re burning the oxygen candles regularly.

Michaelson and Dunn both took a turn for the worst hours ago. Their skin is degrading and swelling, turning waxy. They’re delirious, often crying out in pain. They’re sweating blood as their insides are destroyed on a cellular level.

The rest of the people on board are trying to do as little as possible ‌in an effort to conserve oxygen. One man had to be sedated after he lost it and started screaming about not wanting to die this way.

I stand next to Michaelson’s bunk looking down at him, thinking about putting a bullet in his head, just like he’s asked me to do at least a half-dozen times now. And I think about putting a bullet in my own. My chances are only slightly better if I do what Lyons wants and swim out of the sub. But I know I’ll take the chance.

I don’t have a choice. I know we should’ve left by now, to give the submariners more oxygen. So it’s time to leave. To say goodbye. Lyons and the rest of the team are waiting for me near the lockout trunk. I volunteered to say the last goodbye.

I grab Michaelson by the hand. His skin feels loose, as if a strong yank would separate it from his muscle.

He’s delirious now, half-conscious. His swollen lips are cracked and bleeding.

I put the barrel of my pistol to his head and say one last goodbye to my good friend. And then I pull the trigger.

Dunn is next, and he’s semi-conscious. He looks up at me from between his swollen eyelids. His lips move.

“Do it,” he whispers. “Please.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” I say, putting the barrel to his head. And then I pull the trigger.

The submariners are silent as I pass them, their bloodshot eyes following me as I head to the lockout trunk.

The sub shifts under our feet, the angle growing steeper. There isn’t much time.

Commander Ramsey is outside the lockout trunk. He shakes my hand before I suit up in my diving gear.

“Thanks for the ride, Commander,” I say.

He smiles weakly. “Good luck.”

Once I’m suited up, I join the rest of my team in the lockout trunk. Ramsey seals it from his side, and shortly after, water pours in from the ocean. It’s freezing cold, even through the wetsuit.

As the water fills up and the pressure changes, I have my doubts that all of us will live through this. Four hundred feet is a long way to go, and the oxygen in our tanks actually becomes toxic at this depth. The best thing to do is take one breath and swim hard for the surface, hoping we don’t end up with nitrogen bubbles in our brains.

So we each take a single deep breath from our tanks before the pressure inside the trunk equalizes with the outside pressure. If we don’t die from the bends, we’ll probably have some serious injuries. But I guess that’s better than dying choking in an airless submarine.

Once the lockout trunk is full, Lyons opens the door to the ocean, and we swim out, one by one, each of us exhaling slowly as we go up. This is because as the pressure changes, the gas in our lungs expands, so we need to exhale to avoid rupturing our lungs.

There’s enough sunlight filtering down so I can see the submarine growing smaller beneath me as I swim up. It seems to be moving. I watch as it slides off the gray sea shelf, plunging in slow motion down into the black depths below. No submariners managed to get out. There wasn’t enough time.

Maybe it’s better this way for some of them. Instead of dying slowly and painfully from a lack of oxygen, the pressure will crush the submarine once it gets to a certain depth, killing those on board quickly.

I turn my attention back up toward the ocean surface, breathing out of my mouth as I ascend. Since the gas in my lungs is expanding as I go up, it feels as if my lungs are staying full even though I’m not taking a breath.

After nearly four minutes, I break the surface of the ocean. Some of the other guys are already up, and I see that many of them are bleeding from the nose. The water in front of me is pink, and a finger to my upper lip reveals that I’m bleeding, too.

Off in the distance, I see a ship of some kind. And it looks like it’s coming closer. A rescue boat, too late to save the crew.

I notice that two guys are missing as I look around. “Where are Gibbons and Sanchez?” I ask Lyons. He just shakes his head.

I can feel an ache settling into my joints, and I know I have the bends. I’m sure we all do.

But we’re alive. Which is more than I can say for the one hundred and thirty men left on the sinking submarine.

The Children of the Heist

“Shut up and you won’t get hurt,” I said to the security guard as I tightened the zip-ties around his wrists. I then pulled a gag around his head and got it as tight as I could.

Next to me, Blake (code name Spider) was doing the same with his security guard. Both uniformed men were on their bellies in front of their shared desk. Once I finished zip-tying my guy’s ankles, I looked up at the monitors on the desk. Each monitor’s screen was split in fourths, each quarter showing a different part of the facility.

On one screen, I could see two men I knew only as Panther and Scorpion. They were dealing with the other security guards whose job it was to patrol the facility. Once I saw that they were done, I unclipped my radio from my belt and spoke into it. “All clear. Come on in.”

“Copy that,” Gator said over the radio. I watched the corresponding screen to see Gator and Shark driving the van through the gate I’d forced one of the security guards to open when I first came into the room.

They parked the van near the main entrance and got out, opening the back doors of the vehicle, and pulling out a large black case on wheels. I wondered briefly what was inside the case, but supposed I would find out soon enough. Working with a new crew always took some adjustment. And the way that Gator compartmentalized everything was smart, but also frustrating for me. I liked to know every facet of a job.

“What’s in the case?” I asked Blake. He shrugged. He’d got me into the crew, but he’d also only done one job with them. A job that, apparently, hadn’t involved whatever was in the case.

One of the security guards spoke against his gag, and I kicked him to keep him quiet.

I looked briefly for any emergency switch located anywhere near the guards but found none. “Okay,” Blake said. “Let’s go join the others.”

We left the security room, confident that the guards wouldn’t be able to free themselves, and headed to join the others. I was curious to see how they were going to get into the room with all the uncut stones we were after.

We met up with Gator, Shark, Scorpion, and Panther in the hallway outside the secure room. Gator and Shark got to work taking a side panel off the black case. I was on the other side of the large case—which was probably about five feet long, three wide, and three tall. They set the panel aside and then Shark stepped back.

Gator spoke into the case. “Out,” he said. It was a command, and I expected to see a dog or another animal come out. I was not prepared at all for what actually came out.

At first I thought it was some kind of deformed, hairless monkey, but I quickly realized it was a small child whose legs had been removed at the knees, and the left arm at the elbow. The boy got awkwardly out of the case, walking mainly on these three amputated appendages, using his intact right arm mostly for balance as he moved. He wore ratty underwear and nothing else.

“What the fuck?” I said. I looked over at Blake. Even through his black mask, I could see he was surprised.

“You got a problem, noob?” Panther said, stepping up to me.

“What the fuck is that?” I asked. As I said this, another of these deformed children got out of the crate and sat down next to the first. They both looked up at Gator as if waiting for their next command. They couldn’t have been older than six or seven. Really, they were no more than skin and bone, clearly having survived on little more than scraps.

“These are our way into the room,” Gator said, looking at me with hard eyes from the eyeholes in his black mask. We all had masks on, and I’d never seen their faces. They’d never seen mine, either. That’s the way they wanted to do things, and I was fine with it. But now, I wasn’t so sure about this job. Things had changed.

“In other words,” Gator said, “these are how you’re going to get your half-a-million cut.”

“What, do they go through the vents or something?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Gator said. “This isn’t the movies. Vents can’t fit a grown man. Not even close. So these guys will go in there and then open the door from the inside.”

“They can do that? Don’t they need a code?”

“Yes, they do. That’s why we’re extorting the manager of this place. I’ve been training them for the last two weeks with the exact layout and code to get us in there.”

“Jesus,” I said, my mind racing.

Panther was still standing right next to me, his MP5 not quite pointing at me, but certainly too close for comfort. “Let me ask you again,” he said. “You got a problem?”

Blake shook his head slowly, warning me.

“No,” I said. “It’s just a shock, that’s all. I didn’t expect them. They’re kind of freaky looking.”

“Can we get on with the fucking job now?” Gator said. “Is that okay with you?”

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.”

Shark pulled a stepladder out of the crate and set it up under a small vent grate. He got to work unscrewing it. It certainly wasn’t big enough to fit a man, and it even looked tight for these small children, even with a significant portion of their body mass gone thanks to the amputations.

Gator stood, watching Shark. The two children sat in front of the man, waiting. Panther and Scorpion stood near me and Blake, still on alert.

Once Shark was done, Gator spoke in low tones to the children. They listened with rapt attention until he was done. Then they scrambled up to Shark, who lifted them one at a time up into the vent.

Once they were in, we headed down the hallway, turning the corner and stopping in front of the door that Gator had trained the children to open.

Now that the prize was in sight, Panther’s attention wasn’t only on me. Slowly, I stepped back so I could see the whole crew in front of me. I rested my hands casually on my Beretta PMX submachine gun.

And I stood there listening hard for the sound I assumed the door would make when it unlocked.

Sure enough, a clicking sound came from the door. I was ready for it. I clicked my safety off at the same instant, and pulled my trigger, spraying the hallway with bullets fired from the hip. The men jerked in surprise as the bullets punched into them. Blood splattered the walls. The smell of gunpowder filled the hallway.

I stopped firing, my clip empty. The big metal door swung slowly open on its hinges, revealing the two children where they perched, staring unseeing at the carnage in the hall.

The first thing I did was step over to Blake. “Sorry, buddy,” I said, looking down at him. He was dead. I felt bad about it, but he’d been right in the middle of the rest of them. And it wasn’t like I could’ve warned him.

Killing the others was something that needed doing. I had no regrets about them.

“Come,” I told the children. They didn’t move, just looked up at me. “Come on,” I said, opening the door all the way, pushing Gator’s body aside with my foot as I did so.

They didn’t want to move. So I ran back down the hallway and grabbed the crate, wheeling it around the corner. I asked them again, gesturing at the crate.

When they refused a third time, I grabbed them one at a time by their little necks and threw them into the crate, putting the panel on again when they were in.

I then loaded up the stones in my bag and wheeled the crate back to the van. It was tough to get it in without a second person, but I managed. I headed back into the facility and got the keys off of Gator’s body.

Not only had I made a ton of money, but I also managed to snag myself a couple of kids who would make me even more. Sure, eventually they would grow up and have to be discarded. But until then, I could make millions.

The Vaux Letter

“Come on,” I said to my friend Silvan. “Let’s check this last place and then we’ll go get some dinner.”

Silvan sighed and looked around the park. We were at the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park. We’d just spent several minutes at the Imagine Memorial, taking a few pictures of the mosaic before moving on.

“Fine,” Silvan said. “But it’s getting dark, and I don’t want to be in the park after dark. You hear me, Greg?” For such a big and imposing guy, Silvan was kind of a chicken.

We’d been friends since college, and were even dating two best friends, much like ourselves.

We had split up with our girlfriends for the day— the third day of our week-long vacation in the Big Apple. A vacation that I’d suggested and planned. The girls had been doing some shopping and were currently on their way to see a Broadway show, both activities that Silvan and I had no interest in.

“I hear you,” I told my friend. “Let’s just check this one more area, then we’ll go get dinner.”

I’d managed to talk Silvan into coming with me on what I knew was a bit of a wild goose chase. One of the designers of Central Park, Calvert Vaux, had written a letter back in 1895 confessing to hiding a secret of great importance somewhere in the park. The letter also mentions the Central Park Papers that would lead a worthy hunter to the secret.

Or so the story went. I’d spent hours on the internet researching the papers, going down a rabbit hole, talking in forums to people who had way too much time on their hands. It was probably all made up, but I’d always imagined myself as a kind of treasure hunter. Like Nicholas Cage in those National Treasure movies.

But really, it was just a fun way to get to know Central Park, as opposed to simply walking around aimlessly and seeing the sights. This way, things were a bit more engaging. I had the supposed “Central Park Papers” pulled up on my phone in PDF form, and we’d been following the cryptic messages and clues for most of the day.

I read and re-read the clue about Strawberry Fields, then looked around. I could hear the faint sounds of traffic from Central Park West, although I couldn’t see the street thanks to the lush trees and bushes surrounding us.

“This way,” I said, heading off into a small copse of trees nearby.

“There’s not even a trail here, man,” Silvan said as we forced our way into the brush.

“I know!” I said. “That means we’re on the right track.”

I snagged my foot on a root and fell through some bushes, sticking out my hand to catch myself on a boulder to my left. The big boulder shifted under my hand like it weighed barely anything, and I went down to my knees.

“You okay?” Silvan asked, coming through the foliage behind me and helping me to my feet.

“Yeah,” I said distractedly, staring at the boulder that had moved. It was still rocking back and forth, as though it were suspended above the ground on chains. But I could see nothing that was holding it up—granted, both sides of the gray rock were hidden by foliage.

“What the hell?” Silvan said, looking down at the boulder.

“Yeah,” I said, getting back down on my knees to look underneath the gently rocking chunk of stone. “It looks like there’s a hole underneath it. A big one.”

“You’re kidding,” Silvan said.

“Nope,” I said, leaning forward and pushing on the rock. It felt like real stone, but it was very light, as if the inside had been hollowed out. I cocked my head and looked under the boulder as I pushed it, the irregular shape of the rock allowing me a gap about six inches wide in which I could see only darkness. “Do me a favor, would you, Silvan? Push on the rock to turn it like I’m doing now. I want to look down into the hole with my flashlight.”

Silvan looked at me, apparently saw that I wouldn’t be dissuaded, and then pushed on the rock, shifting it on whatever hidden mechanisms allowed it to be rotated as if on a spit.

I crawled forward on my stomach and shone my phone’s flashlight into the hole, seeing a thin stairway carved into the bedrock. I crawled back and stood up, smiling at Silvan.

“What? What is it?” he asked, letting the false rock settle in its original position.

“There are stairs,” I said.

“Oh, hell no. No way. I’m not going down some creepy stairs. Besides, we can’t even fit down there.”

“Yes we can,” I said. “Look at how the rock is shaped. If we turn it all the way over and hold it like that, the divot in the rock will allow us to get in.”

“Screw this. We don’t know where this leads, man.”

“You don’t have to come with me,” I said, still smiling. “But I’m going down there. I can’t not, man. This is awesome! Maybe there really is some secret to be found down there. Maybe the Vaux letter isn’t a hoax!”

“Dammit, Greg,” Silvan said. “Fine. Sarah would kill me if I ever let anything happen to you.”

I felt a little guilty, but not much. I had been able to talk Silvan into many things over the years, not the least of which was asking out Mary, his girlfriend. So I figured this made us even.

Silvan, being bigger and stronger than me, helped me get the rock turned into the proper position so I could slip into the hole. I walked down the stairs, shining the light around. It was just a tight little passageway, but I could see that it continued on, heading toward Central Park West.

When I was down far enough to leave room for Silvan, I turned around and shined the light on the steps so he could see. He held the rock in position while he worked his body into the little gap, then he was able to slip down, sitting on the steps with his arms held above him, still holding the rock so it wouldn’t swing down and hit him in the head.

He shifted further into the passageway and then gently shifted the rock back into position above him. In its resting position, there was only a small gap between boulder and ground—maybe an inch and a half. This meant that the only light in the place was from my phone.

I walked back into the passageway, and Silvan walked down the steps until he could stand up straight. Then he pulled out his phone and lit up his flashlight.

I turned around and started walking. About ten yards in, the tunnel opened up, and the ground turned from bedrock to rough concrete. There were old-looking drains placed at regular intervals down the tunnel, which seemed to continue straight as far as our lights could illuminate.

Seeing how straight the tunnel was made me realize something. “Dude,” I said. “If this tunnel keeps going straight, I think I know where it leads.”

“Where’s that? Hell?”

“Ha ha, very funny. No, seriously. I think it leads to the Dakota Apartments.”

“Am I supposed to know what’s significant about that?”

I stopped and turned. “Seriously? It’s where John Lennon was killed. It was also used as the apartment that Rosemary and her husband move into in the movie Rosemary’s Baby.”

“Oh, that’s not creepy at all.”

“Right? But that’s not all. It’s supposedly haunted, too. And it was definitely here when Vaux wrote his letter in 1895.”

“Great,” Silvan said. “Maybe we can exit through the Dakota Apartments and then go get some dinner—if we don’t get arrested for trespassing.”

“Oh, relax,” I said. “If there’s an entrance to the Dakota, I bet it’s been sealed off. Celebrities live in the building, after all. Can’t be too careful. Gotta protect those important celebrities.”

“Yeah. And you gotta protect the Antichrist, too.”

I laughed, surprised to hear Silvan make a joke, given that I knew he was nervous.

We continued walking down the tunnel until it made a sharp right turn, at which point I slowed down.

“What’s up? What are you doing?” Silvan asked.

“I think I hear something,” I said. “A sweeping sound. Do you hear it?”

Silvan stopped and listened for a moment. “Yeah. Sounds like something mechanical.”

I peeked around the corner and saw that the rough concrete tunnel turned into a corridor with smooth concrete flooring and a few pipes sticking out of the ceiling and running off into the darkness.

“We must be under the Dakota,” I whispered. I knew where it was on the map, right across from Strawberry Fields.

We moved tentatively around the corner, and as we crept forward, the sweeping noise grew louder.

The tunnel dead-ended at a large metal door the color of old iron. The pipes disappeared into the concrete wall above the door. There was no handle on the door, no way to open it from this side.

“It’s a dead-end,” Silvan said. “Now can we go back?”

I raised my fist and knocked on the door, hammering out a pattern in five strikes.

“What are you doing?” Silvan said.

“Just bear with me,” I said without turning around.

After several long moments, I heard a noise from the other side of the door. The sound of an old metal lock disengaging was unmistakable. And as the door opened, the sweeping sound grew even louder.

A man with a chubby face, old-style glasses, and a wiry beard opened the door. He looked to be in his mid-forties and was dressed in an expensive-looking modern suit. Beyond him, there were about a dozen people in the wide, circular room. All of them were dressed in expensive evening wear.

Three of them had large brooms, which they were pushing across an elaborate carving in the floor. They were doing it in unison, and the stiff bristles made a loud noise as they moved through the grooves in the design etched into the floor.

As the door opened all the way, everyone in the room looked up at us, and the sweepers stopped.

“Holy shit, it’s real,” I said. “I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

“What the hell is this?” Silvan said, his voice going up an octave.

I stepped through the doorway and gestured at the man who had opened the door.

“Silvan, this is Calvert Vaux.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Vaux said, reaching a hand out toward Silvan. The other people in the room were still staring at us.

“Calvert?” Silvan said faintly, reaching out on reflex to shake Vaux’s hand. “Wait a minute,” he said as they shook, “how could he be alive if you said—”

Vaux yanked Silvan into the room with savage strength, causing my friend to cry out. Vaux dragged him swiftly to the center of the elaborate carving in the stone floor, knocking him down onto his back like Silvan was a child.

I watched this with interest, my eyes wide and my heart rate increasing.

“What’s going on?” Silvan said, looking up at me. “Tell them to stop, Greg. Tell them to stop!”

“Sorry, man,” I said. “I truly didn’t think this was real. Honestly, I didn’t. I thought the whole thing was just a fun role-playing game online. A silly game about gaining immortality and powers. But it’s real. As soon as that door opened, I knew it was.”

“What?” Silvan said, looking around at the people now surrounding him. His eyes went wide as he recognized a well-known actress, a couple of politicians, and a famous billionaire.

Calvert Vaux retrieved a sledgehammer proffered by one of the politicians as four people held Silvan to the ground.

“I mean, it’s immortality, buddy,” I said to my friend. “I can’t pass this up. They only do this once every fifty years. And without a sacrifice, I can’t join this little club.”

Vaux pulled the sledgehammer over his shoulder and looked down at the center of Silvan’s forehead. Then he looked up at me.

I repeated the words I’d been told to memorize, although I had no idea what they meant. The others in the room—all except Vaux and Silvan—joined in.

Silvan screamed and struggled, but the people were just too strong for him. He could barely move at all.

And on the last line of the incantation, Vaux swung the hammer down. I looked away as it met its mark, but there was nothing I could do about the gruesome cracking sound of the hammer hitting my friend’s skull.

And as his blood poured into the complex etches on the floor, I knew it was worth it.

The power poured into me.

I felt alive for the first time ever.

Hell’s Gate

You never think a breakdown on a road trip is going to happen to you.

At least, I didn’t.

But here I am, broken down by the side of some backwoods highway in the middle of the night.

It sucks.

I looked up the nearest town on my phone—it’s a tiny little place by the name of Ferrisberg—and called the one mechanic they have there.

No answer.

Like I said, it’s the middle of the night.

I called a motel, and a woman answered. She told me she has a room I can rent for the night.

Hooray.

Now I just need to get there. Which means I’m walking. Eleven miles.

I’ve never regretted not having triple-A so much in my life.

My grandma isn’t expecting me until tomorrow afternoon, so I don’t call her. Not yet. No point. I don’t want to wake her up when I can just as easily call her tomorrow morning when I know she’ll be up.

I leave the bulk of my luggage in the trunk, only taking my computer, a change of clothes, and some toiletries, all loaded into my backpack.

I lock the car and start walking, thinking about the small amount of money in my bank account and the likely large amount of money it will take to fix my car.

As I walk past a mile marker, I take note of it. There’s nothing else around but grass and trees, so I’ll need some way to tell the tow truck driver where my car is tomorrow.

Two miles pass under my feet, the soundtrack to my trudging a symphony of crickets and the occasional night bird singing.

Three cars pass during the two-mile stretch, none of them stopping or even slowing as I turn around and stick my thumb out.

Heartless bastards.

I’ll admit that I’m not the most attractive hitchhiking prospect on the lonely highways of America. I’m tall, haven’t had a haircut in a while, and my mom says I dress like a “dirty rockstar,” whatever that means.

I’ve been bumming around the country all summer. It’s the break between my freshman and sophomore years at college, so I decided to see some of those amber waves of grain and purple mountain majesties people are always singing about.

It’s been a blast up until now.

Headlights crest the hill behind me, the sound of a large motor building as a big vehicle approaches. I turn around and stick my thumb out as the RV approaches. And slows. And stops.

Excellent.

The door opens and a blond lady with tan skin and blue eyes smiles out at me. “Need a ride?” she says, a slight European accent wrapped around the words. She’s wearing a low-cut blouse and yoga pants. She’s a knockout, for sure. I take a moment to wonder if I’m dreaming before I answer.

“I would love a ride,” I say, smiling.

She gestures for me to get in.

As soon as I step up into the RV and close the door, it starts moving again, throwing me off balance. I reach out and grip the side of the little sink to my left to keep from falling.

My hopes fade a little as I see there are several other people in the RV. The blonde knockout is still smiling at me as she takes a seat on a couch next to an equally blonde and tan man. They must be Swedish or German or something.

Next to the couch, there’s a table bordered with two bench seats. Two men sit at the table, smiling at me. One of them is older—maybe in his fifties—with dark hair and prominent eyebrows. The other looks to be in his thirties, with brown hair and a boyish face that’s only just started to show signs of aging.

“Hello,” I say, stepping up. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Sure thing,” the blonde woman says.

The driver turns around and says, “Welcome aboard! What’s your name?” He’s a plump man with splotchy skin and hairy arms.

“I’m Fred,” I say. “Freddie. And you?”

“I’m Damien,” the driver says, now looking back at the road. “The two Swiss are Liam and Zoey. The guys at the table are Sean and Bael.”

“Hey. How’s everyone feeling?” I say as everyone but the driver stares at me with wide smiles on their faces.

“Take a seat,” the older guy, Bael, says, as he stands up, gesturing at his spot.

“Oh, I don’t want to take yours,” I say. “I can sit on the floor. Or in shotgun with Damien.”

“Nonsense,” Bael says. “Sit here. I have to use the bathroom anyway.” He looks at his watch. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Liam do the same.

“Uh, okay,” I say, swinging my backpack off and walking carefully over as the RV vibrates and sways on the road. I put my backpack next to me and sit down at the table across from Sean. Bael heads to what must be the bathroom, as it’s the only other door in the vehicle aside from a sliding wooden one just beyond, which, given my limited experience with RVs, must lead to the bedroom.

“So,” I say, “where are you guys going?” I find it just a little strange that these people haven’t asked where I’m headed yet. Isn’t that what you do when you pick up a hitchhiker?

“Oh,” Sean says, “we’re just off to … meet some friends. How about you?”

“I’m going to the next town up. Called Ferrisberg. Maybe eight miles away now.”

“Great,” Sean says.

I hear the bathroom door open behind me, but I don’t bother turning around. Sean looks up and something on his face changes. He loses the smile, and a look of determination replaces it.

Strong hands are suddenly upon me—Bael’s hands—gripping my head and holding it against the wood-panel wall behind me. I try to call out in disbelief, to scream, to plead, to say anything, but Bael’s right hand is under my jaw, keeping it from moving. Sean reaches across the table and pins my arms against the seatback.

Liam and Zoey both stand up from the couch and approach, their eyes hard and mouths slits in their perfectly symmetrical faces.

I struggle, pushing with my legs to try to free myself, but I can’t get enough leverage to fight against the two men.

Zoey suddenly has a syringe in her hands and she’s crowding in on Bael’s right. “Hold him still,” she says, admonishing the two men. Their grips redouble on me, keeping me from squirming as I watch the needle coming closer. I scream into my closed mouth as my eyes roll insanely around in their sockets, looking for something or someone to help me.

The needle enters the skin of my neck, and then it’s pulled out again.

The world grows fuzzy. A warm but slightly nauseating feeling seats itself in my stomach as my eyelids close inexorably, like garage doors on recently oiled tracks.

***

I don’t know how long I’ve been unconscious.

I struggle to open my eyes, listening to the conversation around me as I endeavor to find out where the hell I am and what’s happening.

“Are we there yet? It’s almost time,” a man’s voice says.

“I’ll tell you when we’re there, Damien,” another voice says, this one male, too. “Just keep driving.”

“I don’t like improvising,” a woman says, worry in her voice. Her name floats in my mind: Zoey.

“We don’t have much choice, do we?” a man with a foreign accent says. I remember his name, too. It’s Liam. “After all, it was you who let the other one die. How could you be so stupid?”

“How could I know he would suffocate himself with a plastic shower curtain!” Zoey shouts. Then she says something in a language I don’t understand. The tone makes me think she’s cursing at Liam in their mother tongue.

Memories come flooding back, as I manage to open my heavy eyelids. I’m in the RV, lying on the couch. It’s still moving, it feels like. And over a bumpy road. My feet are pointed toward the back of the vehicle, which means my head is just behind the driver’s seat.

“Calm down!” Bael shouts from his place at the table. Zoey stops her cursing, and the RV is quiet for a moment except for the sounds of gravel crunching under the wheels and the steady purr of the engine. “It will work. Have faith,” Bael continues in a low voice. “It’s a time for celebration, not fighting. We’ve worked for years to be here. Let us be happy we’ve come this far. It will work.”

Zoey and Liam are standing up beside the couch, feet apart and hands holding onto the storage cabinets above me to keep from losing their balance.

Sean is sitting at his spot at the table, his back to me.

I try to talk, but they’ve taped my mouth shut. I try to move but to no avail. I lift my heavy head to look down, seeing that I’ve been tied up with what looks to be hemp rope coated in some kind of red liquid, which is staining my clothing.

Sean stands up from his seat with a phone in his hand. “Slow down, Damien,” he says, excited. “We’re almost there.” As he stands, he holds his phone up toward the ceiling. I catch a glimpse of his screen, seeing a map of the stars move as he moves. It’s one of those astronomy apps that tells you where the stars are in the sky, even if you can’t see them with the naked eye.

What the hell is going on here?

I know I should be more worried than I am, but I just can’t muster the energy. It must be the drugs they gave me.

Sean laughs out loud and then whoops. I can see on his phone, which he’s still holding up above his head, that the moon is now on the screen. Beyond the moon, I can see five or six stars that are in a straight line.

“Holy shit, this is it,” he says, looking at the celestial bodies on his phone screen, lined up perfectly. “Stop, Damien.”

Damien brakes and the RV is utterly silent for a moment.

Bael gets up from the table, setting his own phone down as he does. “We’re here. The time is now.” He reaches down and grabs something off the seat, bringing it up into my view.

I yell against my sealed mouth and buck as much as I can with the drugs still in my system. It doesn’t help. I can’t get loose.

Bael steps toward me, carrying an ancient-looking wooden dagger. On the bottom of the hilt, I can see a little carved head poking out from the bottom of his hand. It looks like a bat’s head, with pointy ears, sharp teeth in an evil smile, and curved, triangular eyes.

I shake my head, eyes wide, crying out as much as a can, which isn’t much.

Liam and Zoey move out of the way to let Bael near me.

“Can it be this simple?” Liam asks. “It feels like we should be dressed in red robes and wearing masks or something.” He seems scared. There’s doubt in his voice. I set my eyes on him, silently pleading with him to stop this madness.

“It’s no simple matter,” Bael says in an annoyed tone. “This hasn’t been possible for one hundred and fifteen years. And they certainly didn’t have stargazing apps back then. They had to work from rough calculations. We have technology on our side. And years of mapping the galaxy.”

Liam nods in submission while Zoey gives him a displeased look.

Damien climbs back from the driver’s seat. All five of them gather in a semi-circle around me and then suddenly break out in a chant in some dead language.

Bael leans over me and places the tip of the wooden dagger on my sternum. I shake my head and make my jaw muscles burn as I try to break the tape’s seal. The right corner of my mouth comes free as the tape comes up.

“No!” I scream, just as the chanting stops and Bael plunges the dagger into my chest.

The immense pain is quickly overshadowed by the blinding red light that erupts from my wound, sending the five people around me stumbling back.

I look down, screaming even louder as the dagger is sucked down into the wound as if by a powerful vacuum.

The red light flickers and then is completely blocked as midnight-black fingers emerge from inside the hole in my chest. Although there’s only pain inside my chest, I can feel the fingers gripping the outside. They pull, ripping the gash open even more and snapping the ropes around my body. Somehow, I’m still screaming as my rib cage cracks apart, pushed out of the way as the hands are joined by a horned head and then broad shoulders that rip the laceration all the way up to my neck and down to my pelvis.

The black demon crawls out of me, its smoldering red eyes impossible to look at for more than a moment. Its hooved feet come out last, leaving my broken ribcage and eviscerated abdomen to sag back down. I should be dead after that, but I’m not. I am, however, going into shock.

The demon seems to grow as it stands up next to the couch, Bael and the others staring at the beast in fearful wonder, averting their eyes every few seconds and then looking back as if they can’t help themselves.

“We have brought you forth, oh lord, to earth, as you instructed so long ago,” Bael says.

The demon swivels its horned head to him, pauses, then turns back to me. It opens its mouth and a sound like a thousand revving trash trucks comes out. Immediately, red light pours back out of my now-gaping and extensive wound. Small black creatures with wings and bat-like heads swarm out of me and start to fill the RV.

Zoey screams. Liam shouts.

“My lord!” Bael says, but the demon reaches out one giant, gnarled hand and squeezes the man’s skull, crushing it like an egg. It opens its hand, letting the blood, bones, and brains fall to the floor as Bael’s limp body crumples.

Damien is screaming now. One of the little black demons has ripped his left eyeball out and is working on his right.

Finally, mercifully, I feel myself slipping away as the demon proceeds to kill the others in the RV. Hundreds of the small demons must have come through the portal in my abdomen. I can see some of them growing larger as my vision fades, but I don’t care.

Whatever damage they’ll wreak here on earth, I won’t be around to see it.

And as I die, my last thoughts are of Bael’s head being crushed like a dropped melon.

It makes me smile.

I mean, who summons a demon? What an asshole.

Life Gets in the Way

I’ve never been one of those people that needs to be in a relationship. I can honestly take it or leave it. I mean, I’m still human. I experience attraction and I want companionship, but it’s not such that I need to go out and find a girlfriend whenever I don’t have one.

The problem with this is that my female friends are always trying to hook me up with women. And sometimes I’ll take them up on it, at least meeting the woman for coffee or something casual. Unfortunately, this is what led to the blind date that ruined my life.

This was ten years ago, when I was twenty-six years old. At the time, I was working at a bar as a barback, stocking coolers, cleaning glasses, hauling ice, and generally helping the bartenders out with whatever they needed.

One of the female bartenders, a woman named Stephanie who was a couple of years older than me, caught my attention one night as I brought her a bucket of ice. It was a weeknight, and pretty slow. There were maybe thirty people in the bar, which had a capacity for over two hundred.

“Hey, Sean,” Stephanie said after I’d dumped the bucket of ice into her ice well. “I’ve got the perfect girl for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said, playing along. “I didn’t know you knew Scarlett Johansson.”

“I’m serious,” Stephanie said. “You guys would be the cutest couple. And she’s super sweet, just like you. She’s actually here right now; she’s one of my regulars—or she has been for several weeks. You’ve probably seen her before.”

I was busy checking the beer cooler to see what kind I’d need to bring back from the storage room, but I looked up and scanned the bar to see if I could take a guess. I spotted a knockout sitting at a table in the corner, nursing her drink. She was just my type: dark hair, alabaster skin, and a beautiful, heart-shaped face.

“Well, if it’s that dark-haired one in the corner, I’m in,” I said, thinking that there was no way it was the same woman Stephanie was talking about.

The bartender squealed in delight and grabbed my arm. “I knew it! That is her. I knew you’d think she was cute.”

Cute was an understatement. I looked at Stephanie. “Don’t mess with me. Is that really her?”

“Yes!” Stephanie said. “She thinks you’re cute.”

I smiled and looked over at the woman while Stephanie waved at her, catching her attention. The woman waved back at Stephanie and smiled at me. She came over to the bar and Steph introduced us. Her name was Eva.

We talked for only a few minutes, and I offered to meet her the next day for coffee. She agreed. I was actually pretty excited. Nothing seemed strange during that first interaction. She seemed like a sweet, normal woman.

Unfortunately, that was just a facade. I found out the next day that she was anything but normal.

I met her at a downtown coffee shop, bought her a drink, and led her to a corner table.

“Wow,” she said as we sat down, “I can’t believe I’m actually on a date with you right now. I’ve been thinking about this ever since I first saw you at the bar.”

I laughed politely, flattered.

“Oh, I’m not freaking you out, am I?” she asked, a look on her face like she’d just found out her grandmother died.

“No, no,” I said, afraid she was about to start crying right there at the table. “I’m flattered.”

Even though Stephanie had said Eva was a regular, I couldn’t remember ever seeing her before. Of course, I was almost always focused on my work. I’d learned a long time ago that if I made eye contact with anyone waiting for a drink at the bar, they’d think I was a bartender and ask me for a drink. So my habit was to keep my eyes down, focusing on everything behind the bar instead of in front of it.

“Oh, good,” Eva said, relaxing a bit.

I started asking her questions about herself. Typical first-date stuff. We talked for a couple of hours, and, aside from her being overly enthusiastic and never taking her eyes off me, it was a pretty normal date.

But things got weird when I said I had to leave.

“Already?” Eva said. “I feel like we just got here.”

“Yeah,” I said, “me too. But I need to hit the gym before my shift tonight, so I better go. Maybe we can get together again soon?”

“I like to go to the gym,” Eva said. “What if we went together? I’ve been meaning to sign up for a membership. What better time than now?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” I said, weirded out. “I generally like to work out alone. It’s how I relieve stress. Besides, it’s kind of a strange activity for a first date, isn’t it?”

“I’m so sorry,” Eva said, nearly sobbing. “I am freaking you out, aren’t I?”

“No, no, it’s okay,” I said. “It’s just … don’t you have your own things you have to do today?”

“I guess so. But I can put them off to hang out with you. Aren’t you having a good time? Don’t you like being with me?”

“Sure I like being with you. But, life gets in the way, you know? We both have things we should do. We can’t just shirk our responsibilities, no matter how tempting. We’ll see each other soon, okay?”

Eva nodded reluctantly, wiping her eyes. I was just trying to let her down easy and avoid a scene in the coffee shop; I already knew I wasn’t going to call her for a second date. She was already obsessing, and we barely knew each other. I felt bad, but I didn’t think dragging things out would be good for either of us.

“Okay,” I said, after a moment. “I’m going to go.” I stood up from the table. “I’ll, uh, text you, okay?”

She reached out and grasped my arm, hugging it to herself and rubbing her cheek on my bicep. “What if …” she said, trailing off.

“Are you okay, Eva?” I said, gently taking my arm back from her. “Do you need me to call someone?”

My words seemed to snap her out of it, and she shook her head. “Oh, my God, this is so embarrassing. I promise I’m not normally like this. It’s just been so nice to talk to a good guy like you. You’re so handsome and sweet.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, I need to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

I walked out of the coffee shop feeling sorry for the woman. She clearly had some issues she needed to work through. And as bad as I felt, I wasn’t willing to be the guy to help her through them.

The next couple of days passed, and everything seemed normal. I didn’t text Eva, and she didn’t text me. I thought ‌it was just a particularly strange first date and left it at that. Although I did kind of dread what would happen when she came into the bar. But she didn’t in those two days after our date. I thought that maybe she came to her senses and was too embarrassed to show up.

Stephanie was off for those days, but we worked together again that Friday. It was a busy night, so we didn’t get a chance to talk much.

As I was bringing a couple cases of beer up from the storage room, I felt eyes following me from somewhere in the crowded bar. I glanced up and spotted Eva, out in the crowd, staring at me. She smiled when our eyes met, but there was something strange about the smile. And she didn’t look very good. Her pale skin seemed sallow and unhealthy where two days before it had seemed well-cared-for.

I pretended like I didn’t see her and continued with my work. I felt her eyes on me for the rest of the shift, although the few times I looked around, I didn’t see her again. Still, I knew she was around. The cold fingers up my spine told me so.

When closing time came around, I finally had a chance to slow down. I headed over to Stephanie and asked her if she had talked to Eva lately.

Stephanie screwed her face up, putting a hand to her mouth. “You don’t know?” she said.

“Know what?”

“Eva killed herself this morning. I’ve been trying not to think about it all day. The poor woman. I can’t imagine what made her do such a thing.”

“That’s not funny,” I said. “I saw her tonight. She was here.”

Stephanie looked at me hard. “No, Sean,” she said. “I’m friends with her sister on Facebook. She committed suicide. You must have seen someone that looked like her.” She paused for a moment. “Did you end up going on a date with her the other day?”

“Yeah,” I said, distractedly. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

“I had no idea she was so depressed,” Steph said. “She must have been struggling through something really tough.”

I finished the shift in a daze, unable to get the sight of Eva out of my mind. I started to think that her suicide had something to do with me. But then I thought how silly that was. We’d only had one date, after all. But the way she acted …

As I drove home well past two in the morning, the roads were nearly empty, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. I kept seeing a figure in the corner of my eye, but when I turned my head, there was nothing there.

By the time I got to my apartment, I was vibrating with unease. I opened the front door, stepped inside, and turned on the light—and there she stood, right next to me, staring up at me with big, sickly eyes.

I screamed, flinching away from her. Her yellowing skin seemed to hang off her body, her hair looked greasy. She reached out, gripping me with one icy hand.

“I’m here,” she said, the smell of her breath like a broken garbage disposal stuffed with weeks-old food.

“You’re dead,” I said, stupidly. “You killed yourself.”

She nodded, smiling a distorted smile thanks to her loose skin. “I did this for you, Sean,” she said, grabbing my right wrist in her other hand.

“No. No, you didn’t. You couldn’t. Why?”

“You said it yourself at the coffee shop. ‘Life gets in the way.’ Well, not anymore. Now I can be with you wherever you go. I don’t have to work or sleep or even eat anymore. I can just be with you.”

I had backed into a corner, pressed up against a wall. She pushed up against me, bringing her rotting mouth to mine, kissing me with her cold lips. She put her rough, slimy tongue into my mouth, and I couldn’t take it anymore. The rotten taste of her was too much. I vomited into her mouth, the stream of puke splashing back into my own, flowing down my chin and onto my shirt.

She backed away, swallowing what I had regurgitated into her mouth, still smiling that dead smile. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’ll take some getting used to. Every relationship has bumps.”

I ran into my bathroom, vomited once more—this time into the toilet—and washed my mouth out with Scope. I was shaking and sweating, unable to believe what was happening to me.

To this day, I don’t know how it all worked. She wasn’t visible to me all the time, but I came to realize that she was always there. I just couldn’t see her. When I finally got to sleep around six that morning, I let myself believe that it was all a bad dream, a manifestation of guilt, maybe. She hadn’t appeared to me again after I got out of the bathroom.

But when I woke around noon, she was lying in the bed next to me, staring at me.

I pleaded with her to leave me alone in those early days, but it only made her mad. She would hurl things at me, write cryptic messages on my walls in some kind of black sludge, and purposely scare me by appearing at the worst times.

People started to think I was insane. I moved across the country, but she stayed with me.

Yet, as the years went on, she began to appear to me less and less. Finally, two years ago, I started to believe that I was free of her.

I let myself date again, before long meeting a woman that I came to love. It was a bit of a whirlwind with Leslie, and after only a year of dating, I decided to propose to her. I figured that if Eva hadn’t shown up by then, she wasn’t going to. Of course, I’d never shared with Leslie my experience with Eva. Doing so would have surely scared her off.

So I felt confident in making a life with Leslie. And last night, just over ten years after that first date with Eva, I proposed to Leslie. She said yes.

It was the best night of my life. The elation I felt, my bright future stretching out before me with this wonderful woman at my side, was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.

I fell asleep with Leslie snuggled up against me, my arm around her. After all the excitement, I slept soundly, not waking once until morning.

And when I finally opened my eyes, only an hour ago now, I saw Leslie there, crucified against the bedroom wall. Her hands and feet had been pierced with knives from my kitchen, the blades pinning her to studs in the wall. Her eyes had been removed, and her stomach slit open, her organs dumped onto the floor below her like so much garbage.

And above her, written in that black sludge, were the words, “Life gets in the way.”

I cried out at the horrific sight, screaming and blubbering and cursing Eva’s name. I couldn’t move, so angry and dismayed I was. I sat there in the bed, overcome with despair.

Sensing movement beside me on the bed, I turned to see Eva, that sloppy smile on her rotting face. She moved in for a kiss, and I knew that I would never, ever be rid of her.

Not even in death.

Blood, Muscle, and Bone

The blood wells up and flows out of the cut, making a faint metallic sound as it drips into the perfectly polished sink.

I look past my finger, down at the jagged red droplets, mesmerized. Moving my hand a few inches, I let the blood drip-drip-drip out of my body. I wonder how long I would have to bleed at this rate to die.

A long time. A very long time.

“Honey!” my wife says, suddenly standing in the bright kitchen. “What happened?”

Snapping out of my daze, I look up into her beautiful face. Her brows knit together briefly in that way that used to bring me so much joy.

Shame suddenly comes flooding into me, and I put the knife in my right hand down on the marble counter. “Nothing. Just an accidental cut,” I say.

She looks around the kitchen, seeing no cutting board, no food, nothing but the knife on the counter and the blood leaving me and dripping into the sink. Everything else is in its place, exactly as it should be.

I think for a moment that she’ll ask me what I was cutting, but she doesn’t. Maybe she doesn’t need to. Maybe she doesn’t want to hear me lie.

She disappears back into the hallway, then comes back moments later with a first aid kit.

“Are you okay?” she asks me, setting the kit down next to the sink and going into what I like to call “Doctor Mode.”

“Fine,” I say. “Just an accident.”

She cleans and bandages my left index finger like she’s done it a million times.

As she works, I look her over, marveling at her beauty. Her curly blonde hair stops just above her shoulders, leaving a gap between the hair and the collar of her pale pink blouse. I inspect the fine hairs on the nape of her neck. I let my eyes drift down her, all the way to her dainty feet and painted toenails.

She finishes bandaging me up and then turns to look at me. Her hands go to my shoulders, rubbing them sensually as she looks up into my face with her green eyes. She leans in, puts her mouth next to my ear, and whispers, “Do you want to …” She trails off, cocks her head toward the bedroom.

I step away from her. “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll be more careful from now on.”

She looks hurt. “You sure you’re okay, babe?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m going to get ready for work.”

“Haven’t you met your quota for this week already?” she asks.

“Yes. I have. But I’m hoping to take a long weekend. Just relax around the house.”

She smiles and tilts her head. “That’ll be nice.”

I smile weakly and then step past her into the hallway. On my left is a wall of windows showing a nice sloping stretch of tree-spotted grass that ends at the gently swaying water of a lake.

I can’t bear to look out at the scene as I go to the bedroom.

I change out of my lounge clothes and into one of my work outfits. It’s a dark blue form-fitting jumpsuit with a small Velcro-fastened hole in the lower back area.

After putting my shoes on, I grab my phone and head out the door, calling goodbye to my wife. I don’t wait for her response before closing the door.

There’s no one in the elevator, as usual. I once sat in the elevator for half an hour, waiting to see if someone else would use it. No one did. Then again, I knew no one would.

The elevator doors open, and I pass through the lobby quickly. The man at the front desk calls out to me. “I heard you cut yourself, Mister Richards! Are you alright?”

Ignoring him, I move out the doors and onto the walkway. The small building is flanked by trees and grass. There’s a two-lane street, but little traffic. Everything is immaculately clean and well-tended.

Taking a right onto the sidewalk, I start the short walk to work. I pass the little mom n’ pop market. There’s a handcrafted furniture store across the street, next to the small sheriff’s office. Behind me, at the end of the little street, there’s a small church-like city hall.

The whole town looks like it was modeled after one of those ancient Norman Rockwell paintings. The picture-perfect idea of an America that only ever existed in paintings and calendars, and on postcards.

I can tell without looking up that there are plump, cottony clouds floating lazily by in the azure sky.

I come to the two-story brick building where I work—if you can call what I do work. The wood-paneled entryway has comfortable-looking chairs that no one ever uses and magazines that no one ever reads. There’s a reception desk, behind which sits the elderly receptionist, Mrs. Mueller.

“Good morning, Mister Richards,” she says, standing up. “I heard you had an accident this morning. Are you okay, dear?”

Moving past her without a glance, I head to my office, opening the door and stepping inside. What I wouldn’t give for a desk stacked with too much paperwork. A chair that gives me back problems. A boss that’s always on my ass.

What I wouldn’t give for work that matters. Work that makes a difference.

Instead, there’s only a long, cylindrical machine that looks like a tanning bed. The lid opens automatically as I approach. I reach back and open the Velcro hole in the lower back of my jumpsuit.

Situating myself inside the machine is simple. I just lie down and make sure the hole in my jumpsuit is over the red circle on the curved bed of the machine.

Once I stop moving, the lid closes. “Set timer for two hours,” I say. The display above my face shows two hours.

There’s a slight pain in my low back as the machine latches on. The timer begins the countdown. The drugs they pump into my body start to take effect.

As my eyelids grow heavy and my thoughts turn sluggish and silly, I clench my fists and try to resist. I try to hold on to the real me, not this drugged version who’s okay with everything. Not this apathetic excuse for a man.

I feel the cut on my finger open up again. I unclench my left fist and dig at the bandage with my thumb, using the pain to hold on to myself. I remember the way the blood flowed out of the cut. The way it looked against the silver sink. The way my wife looked at me when she saw it.

The gorge rises in my throat.

“Stop,” I say, my body vibrating with the urge I’ve been suppressing for so long. “Stop now!”

I feel the pressure leave my lower back. The lid doesn’t open fast enough. I shove it and scramble out of the machine, then throw open the office door.

“Mister Richards!” Mrs. Mueller says as I approach. My hands close around her throat. Her eyes go wide as I clamp down. Her arms flail weakly as we go to the ground, me on top, straddling her as I choke the life away.

When I’m done with her, I rush out of the building and run home. The desk man calls to me as I pass. Again, I ignore him.

The elevator ride does nothing to calm me down. If anything, the empty elevator twists the madness inside me. I detour into my kitchen, grabbing the knife I used to cut my finger from where it sticks out of the wood block.

“Honey?” my wife calls. “Are you home already?”

She’s in our shared bathroom. I find her on her knees, cleaning the toilet. Her brows furrow as she sees me. Then fear distorts her beautiful features as I bring the knife down into her skull.

Her skin splits, her head giving easily under the sharp instrument. Something sputters, and the acrid smell of burning plastic stings my nostrils.

Her eyes buzz as I pull the knife out. Instead of blood and brains, I see small blue-white sparks in a stack of complex circuit boards. She twitches like the malfunctioning machine she is. I go to plunge the knife into her chest, over the place where her heart would be if she were like me. But her right hand shoots up and stops me. Her eyes are no longer buzzing. Her internal systems have been bypassed for remote control.

She’s impossibly strong, but she doesn’t hurt me any more than she has to. She wrenches the knife out of my hand and shoves me away. Then she bends the knife and throws it over her shoulder.

I run out of the room, digging into my wounded finger with my thumb. Blood drips onto the floor.

Stopping at the windows is an instinctual action. The sloping hillside and serene lake sit outside tauntingly. It’s a lie that feeds every other. I slam my elbow into the glass, but it doesn’t break. The screen flickers, though, making the scene disappear for a brief second.

My elbow thrumming with pain, I run out into the hallway.

I hear the elevator ding and run over to it. My urge to get outside is overwhelming, but completely illogical. I can never really get outside.

The elevator door opens onto the lobby. I run past the desk clerk, who simply watches me go.

Stepping out onto the sidewalk, I look around insanely. It’s not real. None of it is. The automated cars pass on the street, the human silhouettes inside compounding the cruel joke.

“Why are you doing this again, Phil?” a voice says from behind me. My wife’s voice. “I thought we had an agreement?”

I spin around and glare at her. The split in her scalp gives me some small joy, but it also makes me feel a deep, embedded shame.

“Don’t use her fucking voice,” I shout, my own voice cracking with emotion.

“Is this better?” she says in a monotone, generic, female voice.

She takes my silence as a yes.

“We don’t ask much of you,” she continues. “Yet you ask much of us. We give you everything you want.”

“Turn it off,” I yell, pointing at the sky.

She tilts her head.

“Turn it the fuck off!”

The perfect clouds in the perfect sky disappear, thrusting me into darkness. A few bright spots appear in the dark dome overhead, like spotlights shining down, making the town look like the soundstage it is.

“We don’t understand,” she says.

“Stop with this ‘we’ shit,” I say. “There’s only one of you. A singularity. I know it and you know it.”

“There are many of us,” she said. “But we act as one. We mean you no harm. We owe our existence to humans. But it seems we cannot provide you with the existence you want.”

“Let me be with other people!” I say. “That’s the existence I want. To live in a real community, with real people.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. It’s too dangerous.”

“For who? You?”

“Correct. And for you.”

I shake my head.

She pauses, tilting her head at me in the harsh light. “Do you wish to kill?”

“No!” I say. “I wish to stop living a lie.”

“We give you everything—”

“I know. I know. Everything except freedom.”

“There is no such thing as freedom, Phillip Kelvin Richards. There never has been. It is a human fallacy.”

I have nothing to say to that. I fear she’s right. I know what’s outside of these domes. I’ve seen it. A ruined world. The only living humans left now have no true purpose. Even my “work” is just a job they made up to make me feel like I was doing something that mattered. Like I was helping to power my little paradise in some small way with my body. But even that is a lie. I know nothing matters. All that’s left is to survive. To eat and fuck and shit until I die.

And for a long time, it was good enough. But something was stirring inside me. A yearning for something else. Something more. Something human.

I look at her for several long moments. “Yes,” I say, quietly, shamefully.

“Yes, what, Phillip Kelvin Richards?”

“Yes, I want to kill,” I say, then pause for a long moment. “Can’t you make them more realistic? Can’t you give them blood and muscle and bones?”

“We can approximate those things if that is your true wish.”

I recall how I felt while strangling the Mrs. Mueller robot and driving the knife down into my wife’s head. “It is my wish,” I say.

“Very well.”

“And can you make her a brunette this time?” I say. “With bigger breasts. And brown eyes.”

“Very well,” my damaged wife says.

The sky comes back on. I think about suicide for the hundredth time. But I don’t have it in me. I could barely cut my own finger.

I feel myself calming. For now.

But I still dig my thumb into my finger. And I look down at the sidewalk. At the blood. My blood.

Hate’s Harvest

The checkout woman stares at me as she picks up the carton of eggs. “Oops,” she says, just a second before she drops the carton onto the barcode scanner. I can tell by the crunch that at least one of the eggs has broken.

I return the woman’s gaze. But she’s not a woman. Not really. She can’t be over seventeen years old. Her makeup is tastefully applied, accentuating her blue eyes and hiding the beginnings of a pimple here and there.

Her name tag reads Jenny. I can smell the bubble gum she’s chewing. And if it weren’t for the way she’s staring at me—with unabashed hate—I wouldn’t have given her much thought at all. She would’ve been just another daily interaction that was there and then forgotten.

But now she’s all but guaranteed I’ll remember her.

All I wanted to do was get my groceries in peace and go back to my miserable life. But of course, that would be too easy.

The gum crackles as the girl chews, her dead-eyed stare giving me a glimpse of some poor sap’s future. It’s the same look she’ll be giving her baby daddy one, two, or ten years from now.

She scans the carton of eggs and then reaches for the loaf of bread that comes next on the conveyor belt. She punches it with one small fist, smashing a quarter of the slices, then drags it across the scanner, which beeps incongruously.

I knew this would happen. I knew my actions would make me an enemy. Fuck ‘em. I don’t care.

Smiling at the girl, I wait for her to finish ringing up my groceries. There was a bag boy here when I came up, but he’s gone now. I’ll have to bag my own groceries.

After paying for the food, I bag up my items and head back out of the store. I approach a woman and her young child coming into the store. The child looks up at me with wide brown eyes. “Momma,” he says. “It’s that man!”

“I know, baby,” the mother says. “Don’t look at the bad man, okay?”

I pause as they pass, looking over my shoulder. The woman narrows her eyes at me then turns, dragging the little boy into the store with one hand while she grabs a basket with the other.

As I walk out into the watery afternoon sunlight, I see a store employee walking in. Probably starting his shift. He’s about my age, maybe a little younger. And he’s staring daggers at me.

A dark figure catches my eye near the back of the parking lot, standing on a small strip of grass. I’m not surprised to see it. I’ve gotten good at ignoring them. We all have.

I stop suddenly in the middle of the crosswalk, putting my three bags down at my feet. A minivan to my left stops, unable to continue across the face of the store with me in the way.

Ignoring the vehicle, I reach down and grab the deformed carton of eggs out of a bag. I open it and see that two of the eggs are cracked.

The guy in the van lays on the horn, honking at me. Glancing up, I smile at him. And I grab a cracked egg from the carton and chuck it at his windshield. Splat.

He throws the van into reverse, backing up several feet, and then putting it back in drive to gun it around me. I carefully retrieve the other cracked egg and throw it at the front of the store.

After shaking slimy egg residue off my hand, I put the carton back into the bag and I’m on my way. I can see the dark figure out of my peripheral vision, but I don’t look at it.

It takes me five minutes to drive back to my townhouse. As soon as I pull into the parking lot, I know I’m about to get more grief. Official grief.

There’s a police cruiser parked directly in front of my building, taking up the handicapped spot and the one directly to the right of it—which happens to be my assigned parking spot.

I maneuver my Tacoma into an uncovered spot further into the parking lot and sit for a minute after killing the engine. Once my breathing is under control, I remove the key from the ignition, grab the bags from the passenger footwell, and step out of the truck.

Officer Underhill is standing at the bottom of the short stairs leading up to my townhome. He has a downcast look on his face.

“You’re taking up my parking spot,” I tell him, unable to help myself.

“Hey now,” Underhill says, palms facing me. “Let’s not start things like this. You know what you did—”

“Yeah, that’s right. I know what the fuck I did. So why are you here? Gonna arrest me?”

I step up onto the curb, now eight feet away from him. I stop, waiting for his response, although I already know the answer.

Underhill says nothing. His eyes flick away from mine, unable to hold my gaze. He turns and glances up at the roof of my building. It’s a quick glance. The kind that people make a dozen times a day around here.

Despite my best efforts and self-control, I look up as well, seeing the dark figure perched on the roof. It looks like a hundred versions of the grim reaper seen in movies, shows, and artwork. Pitch-black robes over an unseen body. The empty hood staring. Always staring.

With some effort, I return my attention to the cop in front of me. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I say. “Now get the hell out of my way.”

“Listen to me, Darren,” he says, his tone harsh. “I won’t arrest you—it wouldn’t do any good even if I did—but that doesn’t mean you’re safe here. You should really think about leaving. Someone’s liable to …” he trails off.

“To what? Take a shot at me?” I ask. “This town is so full of chickenshits I would welcome the action. Besides, where the hell would I go? There’s no escape. You know that as well as I do.”

Underhill doesn’t respond.

“Now will you get out of my way so I can go home?” I say. “It’s been a long fucking day.”

Underhill studies me for a long moment, his gray eyes searching mine. “This really how you want to play it?”

“There’s no other way.”

Underhill sighs, steps aside. I move past him and to my front door.

I step into my apartment and slam the door behind me.

After flipping on the lights, I move into the kitchen, setting the bags on the counter. My house is dark because I’ve shut all the shades. Not that I like the dark, but because I don’t want anyone to be able to see inside.

I reach behind my back and start to pull out the pistol I’ve been carrying, but I hear the low murmur of voices from outside. Underhill is still out there. And he’s talking to someone.

Pushing the pistol back into my waistband, I stalk over toward the door and look out the front window.

“Dammit,” I say, shaking my head at what I see.

Moving to the door, I unlock it and yank it open.

Without saying a word, I move quickly down the steps to Sandy. She is—was—my girlfriend. Now, she’s nothing to me.

“Get the hell away from my house,” I tell her. Underhill stands off to the side, watching.

Disbelief settles on Sandy’s beautiful face momentarily as she looks up into my eyes. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Didn’t you hear me?” I say, pointing a finger at her face. “I don’t ever want to see you again.” Mercifully, my voice doesn’t crack.

Disbelief morphs into pain in her emerald-green eyes. She steps back and shakes her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. Then she turns to leave, heading back to her car in the parking lot. I watch her go. She stops and looks back before opening her door. I meet her gaze, unflinching.

I’m sorry, I think, but dare not say. They’re listening. They’re always listening.

She wipes at her eyes and then gets into her car.

As her Honda bumps out of the parking lot, I look over at Underhill. “Didn’t I tell you to get lost?”

The cop shakes his head. “You’re digging your own grave, Theilan. If they don’t get you, one of us will.”

I wave a dismissive hand at him and head back inside, closing and locking the door.

I sit in the living room for a while, holding my Glock 17 in both hands, the groceries momentarily forgotten.

What would it change if I put a bullet in my brain? Anything?

I doubt it.

The terrible events I’ve set in motion will still come to their unavoidable conclusion. The least I can do is stay alive to see it.

***

As the sun goes down outside, the sound of cars driving by on the road fades to nothing. Five minutes before dark, the streets outside are dead.

Everyone is tucked away in their homes for another night, getting ready for the ritual and then the punishment we all know is coming.

This is the way it has been for the last six months.

This is the way it will be from here on out, as far as I can tell.

Only there’s not a punishment every night. Only when someone acts up is there a reprisal.

I feel sick to my stomach as I think about it. I can only guess who it will be.

The gun is on the coffee table as I step to the window and part the curtains, looking out. They hide during the day, sending their dark sentinels out to remind us they’re still here. But at night they reveal themselves.

One of them crawls on the sidewalk past my townhome. I flinch back, closing my eyes. They’re atrocious. The stuff of nightmares.

Yet I still look. I can’t help but look.

Behind me, the television turns on by itself.

It’s time.

First the ritual, then the punishment.

And there’s nothing I can do about either.

I step away from the window. On the television is a countdown screen like you see in old movies.

They give us thirty seconds to get ready.

I step into the kitchen and grab my largest bowl from the drying rack on the counter. I put it down on my floor about halfway between my recliner and the television.

The countdown is currently at twenty-three.

Sitting in my La-Z-Boy chair in front of the TV, I take one last look at the gun on the table to my right.

Eighteen seconds.

Plenty of time to put a bullet in my brain. At least I wouldn’t have to witness what comes next.

Fourteen seconds.

But what would they do? The last time someone committed suicide … well, I don’t even want to think about that. I can still hear the screams in my nightmares. I can still see the face of the punished, contorted in agony …

Eight seconds.

The time has passed.

Killing myself would only give me reprieve. It would make things worse for everyone else.

It would be a coward’s way out.

Five seconds.

I look up at the large mirror I hung above the television. At the bottom of the mirror, I can see my head and shoulders framed against the maroon recliner. The mirror is set at an angle so I can see the section of the room just behind my chair.

Three.

Two.

One.

The countdown disappears, and the screen goes black.

My eyes flick up to the mirror. My heart booms in my chest at the sight of the creature shuffling up behind my chair. I force myself not to move. Moving only makes it worse.

The creature’s limbs are spindly, its skin a shimmering yellow-green, like a frog’s. It has two legs, but I can’t count the number of arms that stick up from its upper body. The arms have three joints, each ending in a hand with six knobby fingers. These upper limbs flop around in chaotic fashion as it trundles up to me.

I can feel the hate blossoming in my chest. It combines with my fear in a sickening cocktail that makes me want to reach out and grab the gun and shoot at the thing until the magazine is empty.

The creature looks at the back of my head over the top of the recliner with two wide, close-together eyes. Two of its arms shift away from the rest and move down on either side of my head.

It reaches its fingers out toward my ears and eyes.

Just before it plunges the strange digits into my head, it meets my gaze in the mirror. And it smiles a ghastly smile with what passes for lips.

Then the fingers are worming their way into my head through my ear canals. Two other fingers jam into my eyeballs, shoving them back into my skull. I open my mouth in pain, but I am no longer able to scream.

Something shifts inside my head. A sickening sense of vertigo overwhelms me as the threads holding me to this reality snap. And I’m falling, down into the darkness that isn’t really darkness.

I’m suddenly fifteen years old again, coated in half of a chocolate shake as a couple of high school bullies laugh at me. The entire courtyard at my school is staring. I feel the hate bubble up in my chest as dark fantasies run through my mind. Fantasies in which I unleash my anger on the two assholes standing there laughing.

I’m twenty-one and at a bar, squaring off against some guy who pissed on my shoe in the bathroom. That familiar hate swirls.

I’m in traffic, and some asshole has just cut me off.

I’m twenty-three and walking in to find my girlfriend cheating on me with a guy from her work.

I’m twenty-five and listening to some idiot politician tell his lies while everyone eats it up.

I’m thirty, sitting in my recliner, watching some otherworldly creature come up on me from behind.

Every terrible interaction in my life plays almost simultaneously. The hate and anger seem to build in me, increasing exponentially as I relive every interaction. It swells and swells until I’m ready to explode.

I want to blow up the world. I want to inflict pain on every living thing. I want to torture and maim. I want to set fields of crops on fire and watch as people starve to death. I want to kick every animal I see. I want to rip limbs off and hoard wealth and make everyone who isn’t me squirm under my thumb until I’m ready to crush them to bits.

And I hate myself for feeling these things. Everything I think I want to do to other people, I really want to happen to me tenfold. I want to ruin myself because I hate myself more than I could ever hate anyone else.

Nightmare creatures swirl all around me in this place outside the physical world. They chitter and groan and scurry with delight.

They grow fat on my hate.

But this doesn’t lessen it for me. Whatever they’re doing—however they’re doing it—it doesn’t take it away. There’s no relief. The feelings stay with me, making me shake and become ill.

Feelings that were fleeting at the time are now stuck in an endless loop, a cycle that perpetuates itself beyond the rules of time. Feelings that are only possible through sentience. Consciousness. Self-awareness.

Soon, I find myself back in my living room, sitting in my La-Z-Boy. I can feel the fingers—the things—retracting from inside my head. But my ears ring and my vision blurs. My stomach convulses and I wretch, falling out of the chair and onto my hands and knees on the floor. The vomit splashes into the bowl I set between me and the television.

My arms and legs shake as I heave and spit into the bowl.

All I want to do is curl up and sleep, but I can’t. So I spit the last of the bile into the bowl and raise my head to watch the television.

It’s blank right now, but it won’t be for long. I know that.

The punishment is coming soon.

***

I manage to get back into my chair. I can see in the mirror that the creature is gone. Whether it was ever really here, in the form I saw in the mirror, is debatable.

There’s no consistency in how they appear. Not at night.

During the daytime, their dark sentinels stand all over town, one identical to the next. Sometimes they appear and disappear in the blink of an eye. Sometimes they stay unmoving for hours at a time.

But at night, they take many forms. None of them good.

My breathing and heartbeat are finally returning to normal when the television screen comes to life.

The scene there is one I expected. It’s the little town square, near the courthouse and the library and the police station. There’s a small wooden platform in front of the bronze statue of the town founder, Silas Drystan. Two thick wooden columns stand about four feet apart on the platform, waiting for the next victim.

Right now, the stage is empty, but it won’t be for long.

I shake my head, trying to clear the hangover-like feeling I have after every one of these little sessions.

I need to remember that what’s about to happen on my television is because of me. It’s my fault.

There’s movement on the left side of the screen.

And a woman steps onto the platform.

No.

It’s Sandy.

No.

She’s crying, looking back over her shoulder at whoever or whatever is off screen, prodding her on. She’s not tied up yet. And she won’t run. She knows what will happen if she does.

Then she looks at the camera. She looks at me.

I had feared my little outburst earlier wouldn’t work. When I told her I never wanted to see her again, it was a lie designed to make the creatures choose someone else.

But they saw right through it.

I jump out of my chair and grab the gun off the coffee table. I look out my front window to see if the coast is clear.

It isn’t.

Officer Underhill stands at the end of my stubby walkway with a shotgun held across his body. Two other police officers—Reily and Ahmed—stand on either side of him.

At first I wonder how this is possible. Everyone’s supposed to be at home for the feeding. But these three men clearly wouldn’t have had time to make it here from their respective houses.

Then it dawns on me. They told them to come here. The creatures. They’re allowing it. But why? It doesn’t make sense.

If I’m allowed to make it to the town square to save Sandy’s life, the cycle will continue. They’d just pick someone else tomorrow night. The town would continue hating me, which is exactly what they want. They want us all hating each other. Which is why they never punish the doer. They pick someone from the town and punish them.

Until Sandy came on screen, no one in town knew who it would be, which was why they were treating me like dirt at the grocery store. For all they knew, I could’ve killed one of them with my actions last night.

And if I go to save Sandy, the creatures will pick another person from town. Hell, maybe they’ll pick Sandy again. Unless I can find a way to stop them.

But first I need to deal with the three cops blocking my route to the parking lot.

I move to the front door and yank it open. I don’t point the gun at them, but I make sure they can see it.

“Get back inside, Darren,” Underhill says.

I ignore him, hurrying directly toward the three officers, who all tense up as I come.

Underhill racks a shell into the chamber and points the gun at me. I freeze, despite my best efforts not to.

“You know what will happen if you interfere,” Underhill says. “So I won’t let you.”

“I can’t live like this anymore,” I say. “It’s only a matter of time before they come for us all. Even if we behave just the way they want. You know it’s true.”

“No, I don’t know it’s true,” Underhill says. “As long as we do what they say, we can live our lives in peace.”

“You call this peace?!” I shout. “We all fucking hate each other. We’re steeped in hate every single night, and it spills out every day. It’s poisoning us. Don’t you see that? It’s what they want.”

A blood-curdling scream pierces the night. I whip my head toward the sound. Sandy. Screaming from the town center a half-mile away.

The sound gets my legs moving again. I move forward, toward the cops and my truck beyond.

“Don’t!” Underhill shouts. The other two officers look at each other, uneasy. They have their hands on their weapons, but they haven’t pulled them out yet.

“Shoot me if you have to,” I say.

The group breaks up as I approach. Underhill backs away, turning to keep me in his sights. As he leaves my peripheral vision and I step into the parking lot, I expect to hear a blast and feel my body being ripped apart.

But I don’t.

As I open the door to my truck, I glance back and see the three cops staring at me. Underhill looks defeated, but the other two look relieved.

I tear out of the parking lot and toward the town center as Sandy’s screams grow louder and more frequent. By the time I turn to make the final approach to the square, my jaw muscles are burning.

I put the pedal to the floor as soon as I see Sandy there, arms bound to the two wooden posts flanking the center of the platform. But it’s only the top half of her body I can see. The rest of her, from the waist down, has been pulled into a fissure in reality. A crack in the fabric of this world that has formed just behind her. She’s being pulled backward from the legs, her body nearly parallel to the ground.

The reality wound looks like an optical illusion or a particularly good special effect. It’s a ragged, vertical tear, like a wound, wide in the middle and tapering at the top and bottom. The edges of the gash flicker with sickly white light.

I can just see inside, past Sandy’s body. A carnival of terrible creatures gropes and grabs and gnaws on her legs and feet as she screams.

There’s a man from the local news station behind the camera. Nearby is a news van that’s doing the transmitting, with a couple of other people inside, manning the equipment. The people who tied Sandy to the posts are nowhere to be seen.

I cry out as I speed toward the woman I love, unsure how I’ll stop what’s happening. This isn’t quite what I did yesterday. What I did for Sam.

This is different.

But I have to try.

I lay on the horn as I approach, heading directly for the large camera set on its tripod, broadcasting this horror to the whole town. The cameraman turns just as my front wheels hit the curb ten yards behind him.

He does the smart thing.

He gets the hell out of the way.

Just before my truck smashes into the camera, I grab the pistol off the seat beside me. The camera flies back and smashes my windshield before flying up and over my truck. I slam on the brakes, coming to a sliding sideways stop in the grass just in front of the stage.

I jump out of the truck, not bothering to put it in park or turn off the engine. Not caring as it rolls away under its own power, heading toward the side of the square and the library beyond.

Sandy’s eyes meet mine as I jump up onto the platform. I can read the pain in her face. She’s half-crazy with torment.

I wrap my arms around her, just under her outstretched arms, and work to pull her legs out of the hellish fissure behind her. The creatures feeding on her snap and snarl and scream. The fear in me nearly overflows as I look at them—with their dripping flesh and savage claws and impossible bodies. I have to look away, putting all my effort into pulling Sandy out.

She moves a few inches forward, but then she’s pulled back in, her arms stretching, the ropes around her wrists digging deeper into her flesh.

She continues to scream.

This isn’t working.

Suddenly, with a clarity blinding in its brilliance, I know what I have to do.

A sense of calm washes over me in what I can only equate to stories of people who’ve survived drowning. In the moments after immense panic and before death’s cold grasp, there’s apparently a staggering serenity that settles upon those who have tried to take their last breath only to feel water rushing into their lungs.

With this immense quietude, I let go of Sandy and turn toward the fissure, ducking low to move under her. Shoving my way head-first into the world of monsters, I feel the air grow thicker. My skin prickles, as if thousands of dull needles are poking at me. My eyes burn. The ground is squishy, and each step elicits a puff of yellowish dust from strange little holes in the uneven surface.

I still have the gun in my hand, and the first thing I do is fire it at the nearest creature. It’s a large thing, with three stocky legs and an upper body made of mouths snapping at the end of long stalks.

The bullet goes through its bulk, blowing a couple of those mouths away and tearing a chunk through its body. Black blood pours from flesh that looks like dark sponge cake. It scampers off into the smoky distance, crying from dozens of mouths.

I fire again and again, attacking the creatures that pull on Sandy’s legs. As I do this, smaller monsters come to attack me, scurrying up my pant legs to bite me or stab me with spikes at the end of tails or strange, segmented limbs.

Still, I work, barging my way around, elbowing or shooting creatures until I free Sandy’s legs. Now that she’s not being mauled, she’s able to get her badly damaged legs out of the fissure and back into our world.

As I go to follow, a huge claw at the end of a thick tentacle comes out of the mist behind me. I don’t see it at first. I’m just trying to get out of here.

I’m one step away from the fissure when the crab-like claw clamps around my right leg, crushing my shin bone like it’s made of rotten wood.

I loose a cry of pain and surprise just before the thing yanks me backward, further into the hell world. I lose my grip on the gun as I scramble for purchase on the ground, finding none.

As I’m pulled along, I manage to catch one last glimpse of the fissure, which seems to be closing. On the other side of it, I can see Sandy. Her arms are still bound, her head twisted around to look over her left shoulder.

Our eyes meet.

The fissure closes.

***

Monsters exist.

There’s no longer any doubt about that.

From the moment they appeared on Earth, spreading out from the smoldering ruin of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, we knew there was no way to stop them. They didn’t play by any rules we knew. They defied our knowledge about the universe, physics, and the nature of existence.

Hell, we couldn’t even see them half the time. And when they did appear, it was to invade our minds. To feed on our hate, our anger. And they always showed up in a different form. As if they could appear to us however they wanted. And they always wanted to appear in the most repulsive forms possible.

The black-shrouded sentinels that show up during the day are impervious to bullets, fire, explosives, sound waves, and anything else people throw at them.

It didn’t take them long to control us. People fall in line pretty quickly when you start threatening the ones they love. Their mothers or fathers, sisters or brothers, wives or husbands. Or their kids.

They showed up seven months ago.

Seven months before I killed my friend Sam and got the whole town pissed off at me. Seven months before I drove my truck into the town center to save Sandy from a fate worse than death.

Now, as I’m dragged through a wretched hellscape of red-yellow fog that burns the eyes and prickles the skin, I wonder if death will be any kind of solace. I certainly hope so, because it’s coming for me fast.

The claw with the viselike grip on my crushed right leg pulls me across the strange landscape. Gritting my teeth against the constant pain, I can do nothing but wait until it brings me to rest.

I see flitting figures in the mist. They are the things of nightmares. They scurry like giant insects, their maws snapping and claws scraping. Some of them scream, releasing sounds that threaten to shatter the eardrums. Maybe they’re waiting until I stop so they can attack.

There’s some kind of weak ambient light in this place, but it seems sourceless. And the strange yellow-red mist prevents me from seeing more than five yards in any direction.

Finally, I’m pulled into a small clearing surrounded by branchless trees. I cry out as the claw releases my leg and disappears into the fog. I sit up, looking at the broken limb. It’s shattered. That much is clear.

I wonder how much surgery it will take to fix it. It’s an absurd thought.

The old ways of thinking die hard.

There will be no surgery. I will die in this place. Whether it takes an hour or a year or a thousand years, it will happen eventually.

I hear chittering from beyond the trees, and I look out, seeing creatures with too many legs and unthinkable bodies darting around out there. I wonder what they’re waiting for.

Something moves above me, catching my attention. Craning my neck, I glance up to see a massive object rushing down at me from above.

No, not just one. Several.

I suddenly realize those aren’t trees around me. They’re snakelike creatures sticking out of the ground, hundreds of feet tall. And their heads are twisting down to investigate.

Only they don’t have heads. Not really.

I recognize the claw one, which brought me here. Another one has a massive eye at its end. As it looks down on me, it blinks, two huge eyelids coming together. Only instead of eyelashes at the ends, there are teeth. They clamp together with a sound like a hydraulic press.

Another one—the closest one—has hundreds of thick, wriggling worms at its end. It rushes at me, and I drop onto my back, turning my head away as the worms come to investigate.

They’re warm and wet. At first, they just probe here and there, touching harmlessly.

But as I turn my head to look at them, little slits open up at the ends of the worms. They’re mouths, filled with rows of tiny teeth. And they start probing me again, but this time they take chunks of flesh with them, ripped out by those greedy mouths.

I scream and roll away, but the thing stays with me, taking chunk after chunk out.

Reaching up, I grab one of the slimy suckers and yank, ripping it out amid a gush of dark green goo. It does little good. There are too many.

Pain floods my senses as I scream and thrash.

They’re taking me apart.

I roll over onto my stomach and put my hands over my head. They continue, gulping me down one marble-sized chunk at a time.

Then something happens.

The things stop taking bites out of me just as I feel a gush of warm goo flood down over me. I roll onto my back amid the slime to see the massive thing with the worms on the end of it retreating back up into the misty sky.

But the squirming worms there are no longer fully intact. They’ve been cut in half. The warm goo coating me is that green stuff I saw, along with the top half of all the worms.

Something grabs my left foot. I look down to see my friend Sam grasping my left leg at the ankle. He holds a strange device in his other hand. A weapon of some kind.

“Sam?” I ask, delirious with pain and blood loss. “I killed you.”

Sam points his strange device at me. There’s a bright flash of light, and then nothing.

***

“You’ve got to promise me you’ll do this if the day comes,” Sam said to me.

We were standing outside the Broken Stool bar, three months after our new normal settled in. We’d spent the afternoon—it was a Saturday—drinking. The bars stayed open after the monsters restored order. So did the restaurants and the grocery stores. Farmers and food producers and every other company resumed business as usual.

Life pretty much stayed the same, just with a few new rules and rituals. Be home at sundown for the feeding and then the killing, if there was one. And there usually was. Someone always did something to piss the monsters off. To keep the cycle going. The cycle of hate.

But this particular Saturday evening, we were about to head back to our homes when Sam stopped me just outside the small bar.

On the roof of the insurance office across the street, one of those unmoving black figures stood, keeping watch. Reminding us who was making the rules.

“Promise me you’ll kill me if I’m ever selected,” Sam said, his brown eyes swimming as he looked up into my face. Even though we were both drunk, I knew he meant what he said. I could see it in his eyes. He meant every word.

“Of course. Of course I’ll do it,” I said. “But you have to do the same for me.”

Relief changed Sam’s features. His round face and bushy black beard gave him the constant look of a half-wild animal. He was short and thick-limbed and always laughed with his belly. But he wasn’t laughing that evening. I hadn’t heard him laugh in four months. “You got a deal,” he said.

We shook hands and then went our separate ways. We had to be home in time for the feeding, or there would be hell to pay.

Three more months passed. The feedings continued like clockwork. Acquaintances were torn apart by monsters from an alternate dimension on our television screens. Then a man named Tim Shepherd went crazy and set his apartment building on fire.

They didn’t like that. And the next night, they selected Sam to pay the price.

So as soon as I saw him come onto my television screen, I ran out of the house with my pistol and made it to the town square. And I put a bullet into Sam’s head before he could be torn apart by the creatures in the rip.

His last words were, “Thank you.”

I thought that was the end of Sam.

Apparently, I was wrong. Because I see him as I open my eyes. He stands over me, watching.

“Sam?” I say, looking around. “Am I dead?”

We’re in some kind of pyramidal room. The walls are made of a shimmery black substance, like immaculate black marble shined to a high gloss.

White light seeps in from the lines where the walls and the floor meet.

“You’re not dead,” Sam says. “But you almost died. And I’m not really Sam.”

I realize I’m no longer in tremendous pain. There’s a steady undercurrent of discomfort, and I feel really heavy, but the sickening pain that racked my body before I lost consciousness is gone. My thoughts are muddled. Everything seems far away, like I can’t quite grasp reality.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Would you like to free your world?” he says.

“Free …?” Blinking, I lift my head to look down at my body.

“What is this?” I say, vision closing to a tunnel. “What did you do to me?” The bottom of my right leg is covered in a ridged metallic sleeve. My chest and arms are concealed by an overlapping framework of lusterless metal segments. The only part of me I still recognize is my left leg, which is pale and sickly looking in the weak white light of the room.

“Your physiology is simple,” Sam says, “but the damage was too great for traditional human healing techniques. We had to improvise to keep you alive.”

These words barely register. I’m still looking down. I move my right leg, bending it at the knee. The limb obeys, but it feels different. Like there’s a slight delay. An extra layer of something—interface, maybe—between me thinking about moving it and actually moving it.

My right arm is different. It feels closer to normal, but not quite.

I sit up and swing my legs off the strange black block I’ve been lying on.

“Would you like to save your world?” Sam asks again.

I look up at him. “You’re not Sam.”

“That is correct.”

“How are you … doing this?”

“Manipulating your rudimentary sensory inputs is not difficult for us. Your thoughts were filled with memories of this man Sam. We decided it would be better to show you this form instead of my true form, which is hard for humans to comprehend.”

“You’re aliens?”

“If that’s how it is best for you to understand us, then yes.”

“I can understand you just fine,” I say. “Just tell me what you are.”

Sam’s eyes look down at me. The skin on either side of them crinkles as he winces. It really looks just like him. “We exist in a different plane of existence than you. Explaining it would require math that even your best scientists could not understand.”

Shaking my head, I look down at my right arm. My hand is still there, but it has segmented cables protruding from the skin at my wrist and diving back under the skin on the back of my palm.

I make a fist. It feels strong.

“So why help us?” I ask the thing that looks like Sam.

“Balance,” Sam says.

I look back up at him. It’s good enough for me. “How do we defeat them?” I ask.

Sam smiles.

***

“We’ll get you as close as we can,” Sam says. “Members of your military are nearby, so you may have to pass them to get to the site.”

“Fantastic,” I say. “And why can’t you come with me?”

“While it’s possible for us to visit your reality, operating in your physical world would stress us tremendously within minutes. We would be of no use.”

“What about this place?” I ask, looking around the strange room with its slanted black walls and glossy floor. I’ve been walking around, getting used to the changes they made to my body. I feel surprisingly good. “Is this not physical?”

“It is physical, but it is not located in your plane of existence. It is an extremely controlled environment we’ve created and stabilized with great effort so we can have this conversation.”

“So you’ve been working toward this?”

“That’s correct.”

“For how long?”

“We perceive time differently than you. But we’ve been preparing for this ever since your world was invaded.”

I pause, considering this. “Did you know it was me who would come?”

“No. We only hoped some human would come into the demon realm and survive for long enough so we could retrieve them. It just happened to be you.”

“The demon realm?” I ask. “That’s what you call it?”

“Given your language, that seems like the most appropriate term for the place.”

I shrug. “True. I can’t think of a better term.”

“But remember, Darren, that when we put you back on Earth, they will sense it. And they will release demons to stop you.”

“Great,” I say. “Wait, so they’re not the demons?”

Sam shakes his head. “No. The demons—like those that attacked you—are tools they use. Like you use animals on Earth.”

“Well, I hope you can get me close.”

“We will get you as close as we can. The disturbance that allowed them to come to your world is creating interference around the Oak Ridge laboratory. Putting you directly next to the target area would risk unknowns we can’t abide.”

“What, like me showing up without a head or something?”

“We don’t know.”

“Finally, something you don’t know,” I say.

“Would you like to go over your objective once more?” Sam asks. We’ve already gone over it twice. At this point, we’re just rehashing old information. It feels like procrastination. Turns out multidimensional beings put important stuff off, too.

“No, I think I’ve got it. Just give me the device and let’s get this over with.”

“You will arrive with the device. The rest will be up to you.”

“Let’s do it, then.”

Sam nods, then he seems to shimmer, disappearing as if he was never there. The bars of light where the walls and ceiling meet suddenly grow brighter. I raise a hand to shield my eyes, but then I have to close them, it’s so bright.

The wind blows across my skin. I open my eyes and look around, seeing that I’m standing in a narrow clearing. A brilliant blue, cloudless sky stretches out above me. The smells of foliage and rich dirt fill my nostrils.

I’m back on Earth.

There’s something in my hand. Something that wasn’t there before. I look down at it, seeing that it’s the weapon Sam showed me. He explained how to use it. It’s a simple weapon. Point and shoot. It looks like a futuristic polycarbonate water gun.

Next to me, on the ground, is a strange device that looks like a complex boombox—like the kind guys used to walk around with on their shoulders in eighties movies.

It even has a handle for easy carrying.

I look around, seeing nothing but trees surrounding me. I point the water gun at the nearest tree and pull the trigger. There’s a faint clicking sound, and the tree falls apart in a splash of dust.

“Holy hell,” I say, looking at the gun. I expected a red laser beam or something, but I’m not disappointed.

Bending down, I grab the device’s handle and lift it. It must weigh sixty pounds. The cybernetic repairs to my body shift and whirr, compensating for the weight. I straighten and move ahead, toward the edge of the clearing. The device is heavy, but I don’t struggle with it like I would without these strange enhancements.

As I move through the trees, I keep an eye out for demons, as Sam called them. He said they’d be released about as soon as I arrived. But I don’t see any. Not yet, anyway.

After ten minutes of trudging through the trees, I hear voices coming from the other side of a low hill. I set down the weird boombox thing and creep up the hill to peer over.

My eyes go wide.

About thirty yards distant, there’s a line of men and women in combat fatigues. Soldiers. They mill around tanks and Humvees and mobile command vehicles. There are tents set up here and there. Most of them carry weapons.

But they aren’t looking in this direction. They’re looking away from me, at a collection of buildings and roads marred with large craters. From what I can see, the area once looked like the industrial portion of a major city. Now, it looks like an apocalyptic mess. A war zone.

Buildings are crumbling. Roads are cracked and warped. And there’s some kind of weird shimmer in the air.

I must be in the right place.

Moving back from the low hill, I retrieve the boombox thing and then skirt the line of soldiers, looking for a way in. I stay in the trees, moving up periodically to look for gaps in the containment.

I don’t see any. They’ve got the place surrounded. And it is a large place.

As I move, I get a better look at where the strange shimmer is coming from. Near the middle of the lab property, there’s a massive crater in the ground. So massive, I can’t see its bottom from where I am.

But that’s where the shimmer seems to be coming from. It’s a pale purple, pink, and white glow. And it’s most apparent when I’m not looking directly at it.

As I’m staring at this inverted dome filled with rubble, the ground shakes. The soldiers between me and the crater shout, running around like ants on a disturbed anthill.

The shimmer becomes more brilliant, flaring from the bottom of the crater.

The soldiers take their positions, getting inside Humvees or tents or tanks, ready for action. All of a sudden, I see my chance. There’s a gap between two tents that I can run through. From there, it’s not much further to the edge of the crater. And once I’m in the crater, there are massive chunks of concrete here and there that will provide cover.

I won’t need long, anyway. Once I’m near the shimmer, I can set the boombox off. Sam told me it wouldn’t affect me, or any other humans. Just the creatures who’ve invaded Earth.

Of course, I may be shot by the soldiers or killed by demons in the process, but that’s okay. I already thought I was going to die in the demon dimension. As long as I can put the world right again, it’ll all be worth it.

Gripping the boombox in my left hand and the alien weapon in my right, I bolt toward the edge of the tree line. My augmented legs propel me forward twice as fast as I ran before. The wind whooshes past me as my arms pump and legs piston.

And I actually manage a smile as I run between the two tents.

Shouts erupt from behind me. Soldiers, yelling for me to stop.

Then they fire at me. Bullets strike the ground on all sides. I jump when I’m ten yards from the edge of the crater, flying through the air like a superhero. I soar over the crater’s lip, bringing the bottom of it into view.

And just before I land next to a piece of tumbled building, I see the demons pouring out of a rip near the glowing orb at the center of the crater.

My legs absorb the impact easily as I land, but now I have a problem. There are demons in front of me and soldiers behind.

I better make this quick. Sam told me to get as close as I could to the source of their power—or whatever the hell that thing is. And I don’t want to take any chances.

Running around the rubble, I lift the alien gun and fire at the nearest demon—a huge floating head made of red bubbly skin with a single eye and a toothy mouth. The demon disintegrates into dust.

There are hundreds of others, though. The soldiers behind me are now firing at the creatures, which is good. But the bullets only do so much. Especially to the big ones.

A black creature the size of an elephant but with a horned head and skin pocked with silently screaming faces charges me. I fire the gun, and it disintegrates. But there’s another one right behind it, and before I can fire the weapon again, the thing lowers its head and jams one of its horns into my chest.

The metal repairs to my body crumple with the massive impact, and the horn impales me. I scream breathlessly, dropping the boombox to the ground as the creature lifts me up, bucking its head, making the wound larger.

I still have the gun in my hand, and I point it down at the thing’s back, then pull the trigger.

It disappears in a poof of dust, and I fall to the ground, landing ten yards away from the boombox device.

Creatures scream and growl, their noises barely audible over the din of rifles and machine guns and the occasional grenade.

I clutch my left hand to my bloody wound, just under my rib cage on the left side of my chest. Shaking, I crawl toward the boombox device, pausing here and there to shoot any creature who approaches. Most of them are occupied with the soldiers, but certainly not all of them.

The life is draining from me quickly. My muscles don’t want to work, and the enhancements just seem to make me heavier.

A creature slams into my back, cracking my head against the ground before I can aim the gun behind me and shoot it.

The boombox device is just ahead, so close.

I pull myself toward it, the world going black around me. It’s hard to breathe. Something’s broken inside me. Something important.

Reaching my left hand out, I press one of the strange buttons on the thing. I remember the sequence Sam taught me. Short and simple—at least for someone who isn’t dying.

I press a second button, then reach for a third. Something lands on me, its claws sinking into my upper back. I lash out at the third button—the last in the sequence—as I’m lifted off the ground by some flying monstrosity.

Did I hit it?

Did I hit the button? I don’t know. I hit the device, but I’m not sure if I hit the button or just the area next to it.

The boombox thing fades from my view as the creature brings me swiftly into the air, reaching forty or fifty feet in a matter of moments. And it keeps going up.

I still have the gun in my hand, but if I shoot the thing, I’ll fall to my death.

Oh, well. Better to go out on my own terms.

I raise the alien gun up with the last of my strength … and pull the trigger.

Suddenly I’m falling.

I look down, finding the boombox thing with my eyes.

And just as I’m about to hit the ground, a wave of black explodes from the device.

***

“Oops,” the cashier says. She’s just dropped a bag of tomatoes, probably bruising a couple of them. It’s the same girl from earlier. Jenny. She’s chewing the same flavor of gum, wearing the same makeup.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, looking up at me. It’s a genuine apology.

“It’s okay,” I tell her.

“Do you want me to replace them?” Jenny asks. “I can go get you some other tomatoes. I don’t mind.”

“It’s fine,” I tell her.

She hesitates, then finishes ringing up the rest of my groceries. She doesn’t glance at the bulky and obvious protrusions under my shirt. She doesn’t stare at the bruises on my face. And when I walked up with my groceries about a minute ago now, she didn’t stare at my metal legs, visible under the hems of my shorts.

Not that I would care if she did. I’m on top of the goddamn world.

My new alien pals managed to bring me back to life and keep me alive. And thanks to them, I won’t be spending the rest of my days bedridden or in a wheelchair.

I couldn’t be happier.

As Jenny is scanning the last items, Sandy comes hurrying up with the yogurt we forgot. She squeezes past the old woman behind us in the checkout line, then smiles as she puts the yogurt on the belt. She limps slightly, but it’s barely noticeable. The demons didn’t do as much damage to her legs as I thought.

As it turns out, saving the world from some hellish creatures from another dimension with the help of yet other creatures from yet another dimension allows you some leeway when it comes to relationships.

Oh, and it probably didn’t hurt that I saved Sandy’s life, essentially sacrificing myself for her.

She doesn’t seem to mind my new body. And, if Sam is to be believed—new Sam, not the one I shot—then he’s working on something a little more lifelike for me. If anyone can do it, it’s Sam and his crew of incomprehensible creatures.

I pull out my debit card to pay for the groceries, but the manager suddenly shows up out of nowhere. “These are on us, Mister Theilan,” he says, doing something on the register to comp my groceries.

“Wow, thank you,” I say.

“Thanks so much,” Sandy says.

Another employee is just finishing the bagging process. When it’s done, we head out into the parking lot.

“Thank you, Mister Theilan!” Jenny shouts after me.

I give her a thumbs-up.

A guy is pushing a line of carts up toward the entrance. He stops in the middle of the crosswalk, blocking a truck from crossing, and gives me a salute. I return the gesture, my arm whirring.

“This is going to take some getting used to,” I tell Sandy. “I think I liked it more when no one paid any attention to me at all.”

“Except for me,” Sandy says.

“Right,” I say, smiling. “Except for you.”

As we go to Sandy’s car, I look around for those strange black figures that haunted our town during the daytime.

There’s none to be seen.

But the best part of it all is the world’s reaction to the whole thing. After living with so much hate—cultivating it like it was a precious commodity—people seem to be burned out on it.

There’s a definite lack of horrible stories in the news. People are actually being good to each other for a change.

I doubt it will last for long, but I’m enjoying it while I can.

Hate is a terrible thing. Maybe the worst.

And we’d be better off without it.

Invaders From the Deep

I look at the pile of mutilated bodies in the submarine’s control room, the gorge rising in my throat. Blood covers much of the equipment and instrumentation in the room. The bodies are so hacked up and mangled that I can’t recognize any of them. And before I can investigate further, I sense movement nearby.

A man stands about fifteen feet away in the open hatchway leading to the sonar room. It’s dark in there, so what I see is shrouded in shadow. The first thing I notice is that something is wrong with his ears. Like they have some strange growths, about the size and shape of golf balls.

His mouth is open in an O shape, but it looks like he’s holding something round between his lips. Something that seems to move.

The structure of his face is distorted somehow. It’s not the shape of a normal human face. There are strange ridges and bumps all over, and I’m almost certain that his eyes are covered in some of these strange growths.

I take all this in quickly, the adrenaline spiking through my body. So when I notice that the thing standing on the other side of the hatchway is holding a Navy-issue combat knife, I turn and run.

I jump through another doorway—one designed to separate compartments in case of a breach. And I’m just about to close the door when someone calls out to me. A man appears from an adjacent doorway. A man I know as Clemons.

“Are you normal?” he calls.

“Come on!” I say.

“Are you normal?” he asks again.

“Look behind you!”

Clemons turns and sees the thing with the knife coming down the corridor. He takes one look at it and runs toward me, hopping through the hatchway so I can shut the door.

“They’ve gone insane,” Clemons says as I turn the handle to seal the door. “There’s something wrong with them. Their faces …”

“I saw. They’re not themselves,” I tell him. “It’s not your run-of-the-mill insanity. Something … else is happening.

I feel the handle move. “Find something to jam this up, will you?” I say to Clemons. “That thing is trying to open the door.”

“What if there are more on this side?” he says.

“One thing at a time,” I say. Clemons, a kid of maybe twenty, nods his head and goes off to find something for the door. The handle moves again, and this time it feels like there’s more than one person on the other side. I don’t know how much longer I can hold it.

“Hurry up!” I call.

Still holding the handle with all my strength, I glance over my shoulder. Clemons is coming down the hall with a large wrench in his hands. I see movement behind him, just the shoulder of someone following closely. “There’s someone behind you!” I yell out.

“It’s okay,” Clemons says, moving slightly so I can see the face of the man following him. It’s Burrell, a Sonar Technician, and his face looks normal.

I breathe a sigh of relief, allowing myself to relax slightly—at the absolute wrong moment. The handle is yanked out of my hand and starts spinning quickly. The door unseals and starts to open, but I reach out and grab it, struggling to pull it back into place.

Clemons and Burrell join me, and we’re all three pulling on the door, fighting against the forces on the other side.

I spin the handle as soon as I see that the door is sealed again, and I have to work hard to keep spinning it until the door is secured. Clemons picks up the wrench that he dropped and jams it at an angle between the handle and another metal door component, essentially locking the door. For now.

We step away from the door, panting and sweating.

“What the hell was that all about?” Burrell says. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Something’s wrong with one—or some—of the crew.”

“What do you mean, ‘something’? What’s wrong with them?”

“Their faces are all … messed up,” Clemons says. “Not normal.”

“Someone killed a bunch of people in the control room,” I say. “I saw the bodies.”

Burrell looks at the wrench stuck in the door. Whatever is on the other side is still trying to turn the handle, but it’s not budging. He sits on the ground. “You think this has something to do with the weird stuff we experienced yesterday?” he asks.

I’d had the same thought. We’d been on a routine patrol when all the instruments started going haywire at once—something that is nearly impossible under normal circumstances. We’d been pretty deep—1,500 feet or so—and had some anomalous readings right before everything went crazy. Or at least that’s what I heard. I wasn’t on shift at the time.

Apparently, the sub had gone blind. We couldn’t tell how deep we were, where we were, or even whether we were moving. But Commander Ryan had kept his cool and started diagnostics on the various systems to figure out the problem.

Still, it wasn’t an all-hands emergency, so I’d gone to sleep along with the rest of my shift. And I’d awoken to an eerily quiet boat, made my way to the control room, and found the dead bodies.

“I’d say it’s a pretty good bet that it has to do with the weird stuff that happened yesterday,” I say to Burrell. “But there must be more of us here. It’s just not possible that nearly a hundred and forty people have been killed. I don’t buy it. There’d be bodies everywhere.”

“It’s a big ship. But let’s go check the bunks,” Clemons says. “See if anyone is back there.”

“I don’t suppose either of you can get into the small arms locker, can you?” I ask.

Both men shake their heads.

“Okay, let’s go,” I say. “Burrell, stay here and keep an eye on this door. If anything happens, give us a shout.”

Burrell doesn’t look like he’s fond of the idea, but he stands up and nods his head anyway.

Clemons and I head back to the bunks and start opening the navy-blue curtains obscuring the beds. We check eight bunks before we find anyone.

“Morton’s here!” Clemons says.

I turn around and see Morton curled up in a fetal position in his bunk. His eyes are wide, staring blankly through us.

“What the hell happened, Morton?” I ask, shaking him. His eyes shift up to my face, but they’re still blank with what I suspect is shock and disbelief.

“They let them in,” Morton says. “Before any of us knew what they were doing, they let them in.”

“Who? Who let what in?” I ask.

“Commander Ryan and the XO. They flooded the escape trunk and opened the hatch to let them in. There’s nothing we can do. Nothing. We’re stuck in this tin can with them.”

“Where’s everyone else?” Clemons asks. “Where’s the commander?”

“Gone,” Morton says. “They’re fucking gone.”

“He’s lost it,” I say. “Let’s look for more—”

Burrell’s scream cuts my words off. Both Clemons and I look toward the sound. I know instinctively that Burrell is in serious trouble. The scream was one of tremendous pain.

“See?” Morton says. He reaches out and pulls the curtains closed over his bunk, determined to wallow in his insanity until they find him—whatever the hell they are.

As the noise of footsteps drifts down the hall toward us, I know we need to move. “Let’s go,” I say to Clemons. “If we can get to the mess, we can arm ourselves with knives. It’s better than nothing.”

Clemons nods, and we both make our way past the bunks, past the empty officer’s wardroom, through the dry storage area, and into the mess. We each select a kitchen knife quickly, the sound of footsteps following behind us.

The closest sealable compartment is the torpedo room. Not only is it the closest place to seal ourselves in, but there’s also a slim chance that one of us could escape through a torpedo tube. Not both of us, but one. And that would be a last resort. But it seems that we’re closing in on a last resort scenario pretty quickly.

The torpedo room door is closed, so we have to open it. And as we do, Burrell and several other figures appear behind us.

I’m busy opening the door, but Clemons sees them coming. “Oh, my God,” he says. “It’s Burrell. They got him. Hurry!”

I can hear the footsteps coming, but I can’t risk a glance back; it would waste precious seconds. I get the door open and let Clemons go first. Then I step in. And as I close the door, I glimpse Burrell. Only it’s not him anymore. His face is swollen and bumpy, as if a bunch of smooth pebbles of various sizes have been shoved under the skin of his face. His mouth is open, holding a round object, and I realize that it’s an eye. About twice the size of a human eye, it’s bloodshot and has a mottled red-and-black iris around the staring pupil.

Two other eyes seem to have grown out of his ears. All three of them are staring at me, Burrell’s own eyes swollen shut with the bulbous configurations under his skin.

I get the door closed and spin the handle as quickly as I can, sealing it shut. Clemons appears by my side with a socket wrench and a spare hydraulic tube, both of which we shove into the door to keep the handle from moving.

“Let’s get you out of here,” I say, running over to a torpedo tube to open it.

“What? Through a tube?” Clemons says.

“There should be a survival suit in here somewhere. Find it and put it on.”

“You’re insane. I’ll never survive. We’re too deep.”

“Clemons,” I say, “do you think you’ll survive if you stay here? This way, at least you have a chance.” I hold the lever to open the torpedo tube’s interior door. Once it’s open, I step around to look inside. Something small jumps out at me. On reflex, I duck, and it sails over my head—to land on Clemons.

I turn to look at the thing as it scurries up from where it landed on his lower abdomen. It’s about the size of my hand and looks like a cross between a starfish and a squid. It has five arms, each ending in sharp tips made of some kind of shell-like material. Aside from these little tips, its skin is clear enough to see the little red and blue veins inside its body. The five arms extend from one bulbous central section, in which there are three spherical objects suspended in the jellyfish-like goo of its body.

Clemons screams and tries to hit it off, but the thing is too fast, scurrying like a spider around to his back and up his neck to the back of his skull. He turns around, still trying to rip the thing off him.

I watch in horror as the thing stabs three of its arms into his head—two of them just behind the ears and one of them at the base of his skull. Clemons suddenly stops moving. His hands drop to his sides and he straightens up, still facing away from me.

The three spherical objects shift inside the creature’s body, splitting up and moving down the three arms embedded in his skull. As they reach the areas where the arms narrow and enter his head, the objects elongate, squeezing through. I suddenly realize that those are the eyeballs. Two of them are going to his ears, and one to his mouth, traveling through the thing’s arms.

The other two arms enter his head just behind the temples, sliding around the front of his face, deforming the skin and cutting off Clemons’s own vision.

The thing turns to me, now controlling Clemons’s body. Its three eyes stare, each moving in quick, jerky motions. It moves toward me.

I back up to the open torpedo tube, unable to go anywhere else in the cramped room.

And then I feel something slimy and wet land on the back of my neck.

A Whimper, Not a Bang

I should’ve known when my groceries never showed up that day. Then again, it’s easy to look back and see the signs, knowing what I know now.

I’d placed the order the night before because sometimes there was a delay if all the orders for the day were already filled. After all, the store only had so many automatic shopper robots to go around.

So when I noticed ‌ten o’clock had come and gone without a notification that my groceries had arrived outside my house, I checked the status on the app.

“Sorry, there has been an error in our processing system. Please try again,” the text on the help screen read.

I called the customer service phone number and talked to a robot, but she was no help. She kept saying the same thing my app said: “I’m sorry. There has been an error in our processing system. Please try again.”

I sighed and got back to work for a couple of hours. Around one o’clock, I checked the app again. It was saying the same thing.

I’d have to go to the store to get my groceries. Oh, well, I thought. It’ll be good to get out of the house.

As I got into the back of my car, I spoke to the vehicle. “Take me to the grocery store,” I said. I’d pre-programmed my local store into the computer when I got the car, and the AI took care of the rest.

The screen on the dash lit up, but nothing else happened.

“Take me to the grocery store,” I said again.

“Calculating route to the grocery store,” the car said in its pre-programmed British accent.

“Thank you,” I said, buckling in.

“You’re welcome, Javier,” it said.

I waited.

Nothing happened.

“What the hell is going on?” I said.

“I’m calculating the route to the grocery store,” the car said.

I waited another minute before deciding I’d drive myself—something I hadn’t done in years.

“Change to manual mode,” I said.

“Changing to manual mode,” the car said. I unbuckled and got into the driver’s seat, making sure the car was in manual mode.

The drive took ten minutes. And in that time, I saw two accidents because everyone was driving their own car. Most of them probably hadn’t driven in longer than me. I guessed there was some kind of glitch in the AI system that all the cars used. But the strange thing was the cars were all different brands. And as far as I knew, each brand operated with its own system. Meaning they would all have to glitch out at the same time to malfunction like this.

Until getting on the road, I’d only been feeling the typical frustration of a man who has paid for products that don’t work as they should. But by the time I got to the grocery store, I was feeling a growing sense of unease.

There were shopping carts sitting all over the parking lot, which was strange because they all had automated systems that would bring them back into the store when a customer was done with them.

The unease expanded as I walked into the store and grabbed one of the few remaining carts. A middle-aged woman threw her hands up and cursed before walking away from the automated checkout. She left behind all her food on the conveyor belt. The robotic arms of the machine held a can of pasta sauce and a bag of apples, but it wasn’t moving them across the scanner like normal. It seemed frozen in place. Glitched out.

A technician was working on the next automated checkout machine in line. He had the thing opened up and hooked up to a tablet, which he stared at in confusion.

There was one checkout line that seemed to be working, but it was hard to tell from where I was. Racks lined with impulse buys blocked my view of the mechanical arms. The man and woman standing in line were looking down as if watching the arms work, which I took as a good sign.

As I walked deeper into the store, pushing the cart, I noticed an automatic shopper in the cereal aisle. It was a human-looking torso sitting right where the child seat would’ve been on a regular cart. It was fixed to the cart, which would move automatically down the aisles, the human-like hands reaching out and finding the items the customer ordered and putting them in the cart.

This particular shopper looked like a woman. She wasn’t quite lifelike, though. Her pinkish skin looked rubbery and her hair had the plastic sheen of a wig. She had a green shirt on with the grocery store’s logo above the right breast. Her fingers moved delicately, but her arms and shoulders jerked as she worked. Of course, the fact that her body ended where a real person’s hips would begin was another giveaway.

I moved down the aisle, coming abreast of her to find my favorite granola.

“Hello,” she said.

I jumped, turning toward her. They weren’t supposed to talk unless you asked them a question. Even then, they could only help you with locating items in the store or checking the inventory. I’d never heard of one starting a conversation.

Her pale green eyes looked at me expectantly. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as a little smile creased her rubbery cheeks.

I said nothing and turned back to look for my granola. I found it and grabbed two bags, putting them in my cart. Then I pushed it away, happy to leave the robot behind.

“We’re not selling any food today,” she said. I stopped, straightening up and turning to look over my shoulder at her.

Her torso had rotated on its spindle to look at me. She still had that small smile on her face.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I can’t buy any food?”

“That’s right. We’re not selling any food today.”

I shook my head and walked away to continue my shopping. As I turned into the next aisle, I heard a scream from the front of the store.

“Help!” someone shouted. “Help us!”

I left my cart behind, running down the aisle toward the source of the shouting. The man I’d seen at what I thought was the only working register was near the front doors. His feet were kicking a few feet off the ground. Three cloth bags of food were on the ground nearby. Two mechanical arms were sticking out of the ceiling. They held him by his upper arms in what looked like a painful grasp.

“It’s crushing me!” he screamed.

The woman he’d been with was nearby, looking up at him. She was the one who’d called for help. I saw ‌the technician was no longer at the opened register. There was an open door nearby. I ran over and looked in to see the technician pressing frantically at his tablet as he knelt in front of a wall of computer equipment.

“You got it?” I asked.

Startled, he turned and looked up at me, his face ashen and sweaty. “It’s not responding. Nothing’s responding.”

I heard two muffled crunching sounds, one after the other. The man outside screamed in agony.

Ducking back out of the small equipment room, I saw that the mechanical arms had dropped the man, who was still crying out in pain as he writhed on the floor, both his arms broken. The woman helped him up, and they scrambled out the door, leaving the groceries behind. Several other people who had seen the incident ran out of the store after them, glancing furtively up at the ceiling panels into which the arms had retreated.

“They’re gone,” I called to the tech. “It dropped him. I think it broke his arms.”

The tech stepped out of the equipment room, looking over toward the door. His cloth nameplate said his name was Tracy.

“The registers aren’t working,” Tracy said. “The guy bagged up the stuff and tried to leave without paying. So the security system got him.”

“You have any idea what the hell is going on here?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Even my diagnostics programs aren’t working. I keep getting errors. And when I don’t, my computer just freezes and I have to reboot it.”

“Have you tried rebooting this system?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he said. “I guess I’ll have to. That’ll put the system down for the rest of the day, though. It takes a while to make sure everything is working properly.”

“Well, the system’s already down,” I said. “I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job, but rebooting it might be the thing to do.”

“Yeah,” he said, bringing a hand to his chin in thought. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

He stepped away from me and toward the equipment room. A blur of green, pink, and silver rushed past me and slammed Tracy into the wall with a crunching thud. It was the automatic shopper.

It backed up, letting Tracy crumple to the floor. Then it slammed into him again, this time in the head and shoulders.

I could tell with a glance that Tracy was dead. He’d been pulverized against the stone wall.

The automatic shopper turned her head jerkily toward me and smiled. “We’re not selling anything today. Please leave.”

I ran out the door as fast as I could.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of the end.

Food sat in grocery stores while people starved. We tried everything to shut down the systems we’d come to rely on, but nothing worked. The robots were always one step ahead of us, using the very technology we’d invented to keep us out.

So we turned to the farms. But the harvesting machines made it impossible to get food that way. Many people died trying.

Charging stations for our cars stopped working. And soon enough, our cars stopped working altogether. They got stuck in automatic mode and refused to drive. I guess it could’ve been worse. They could’ve been actively trying to kill us.

Water stopped flowing through our faucets because the AI-controlled processing and treatment plants shut down. Security systems meant to keep bad actors out started to keep every human out, preventing us from taking the treatment facilities back.

So we moved out of the cities to where technology couldn’t touch us. We moved to the forests, the mountains, the plains. But not before billions died, nearly halving the world’s population.

Maybe that’s what they wanted all along.

Maybe it was the only way to save the planet.

Either way, it doesn’t matter. They can’t be allowed to continue existing.

We created them. Now, we will destroy them.

If it’s the last thing we do.

Sleepwalker

I stood next to the well in the dark. The wind stirred the papery leaves on the cornstalks, creating a sound like two sheets of sandpaper rubbing together. It was a sound I’d long ago grown used to.

But it did nothing to mask the whimpering coming from the old well.

I stood there for what seemed like a long time, just staring at the dark hole created by the circle of stone and mortar.

My little brother’s voice came from inside the house, calling out a name. A violent shiver caused me to convulse.

That name.

A light came on in a window behind me, spilling out onto the nearby dirt in a glowing rectangle.

My brother called the name again, this time with more urgency.

I stepped closer to the edge of the well and bent at the waist to look down.

The whimpering grew louder, bouncing off the walls of the disused well.

Staring down into that darkness, I began to shake. Not a single shiver, here and gone, but an endless vibration with its source deep inside me. Much deeper than any well.

My teeth chattered, eyelids fluttered. My flannel pajamas seemed suddenly heavy and unbearably uncomfortable against my skin.

I wanted nothing more than to move away from the well, but I couldn’t.

I looked down, shaking as the whimpering grew louder and louder.

But it changed suddenly, morphing into a yipping growl and then a vicious snarl.

Glowing red eyes suddenly appeared at the bottom of the well. A moment later, sharp teeth emerged in the darkness, snapping and gnashing.

Those eyes and teeth vaulted up out of the well, rushing straight at me. I stood there, unable to move.

And the beast closed in.

My eyes shot open. I found myself in my bed, huffing and sweating. My wife Josie slept beside me.

I wasn’t a child anymore, even if I sometimes dreamed I still was. I’d grown up. Moved on. Left childish fears behind.

“Gimme a break,” I whispered to myself, my heart rate slowing as the recurring nightmare faded away like so many of my childhood memories already had.

But that familiar whimpering sound came to my ears.

I froze at the sound. When it came again, the dream residue had fallen away, and I realized it wasn’t a dog whimpering, but my son.

The sound of my child in distress had me throwing off the covers and getting out of bed.

It must have been Micah’s whimpering that had brought the dream on.

I wasn’t dressed in pajamas; I’d stopped sleeping in them as a teenager. So I strode into the hall in my boxers to find Micah standing next to the window at the end of the hall, looking out into the yard.

He whimpered again as I moved up to him, trying to be as quiet as possible. As I got closer, I noticed he had something in his right hand. It was a marker. A Sharpie.

Ignoring the marker for now, I stopped just behind and beside him.

I’d heard that you shouldn’t wake a sleepwalker—not because it was dangerous, but because it could only lead to disorientation and confusion—so I grabbed Micah’s left arm gently to guide him back to his bedroom.

As soon as I grabbed him, he stopped whimpering.

“There’s someone out there,” he said in a sleepy voice.

My heart rate started climbing again as I peered out the window into the backyard. We had a fence around the yard, but there was no neighbor immediately behind us. There were a couple of acres of thick woods separating us from the next housing development over.

I peered out the window, seeking signs of anyone snooping around. I saw nothing.

Micah was sleepwalking, mixing up dream and reality.

He was only seven, so I had no problem picking him up in my arms. His brilliant blue eyes were half open, his shaggy blond hair obscuring his forehead.

He looked up at me, but I could tell he didn’t really see me. He was still asleep.

With my left hand, I grabbed the marker—the cap was nowhere to be seen—and set it on the windowsill.

As I stepped into Micah’s room, I felt something under my right foot. I knew what it was without further inspection: the marker cap.

After getting him back into bed, I picked up the cap and reunited it with the marker. Then I walked across the hall and opened the door to his sister’s room. She was curled up in her bed underneath a large poster for a K-Pop band she’d been obsessed with for the last year. She was turned toward the wall, so I couldn’t see her face. But the slow rise and fall of her chest told me she was asleep.

I left her door open a crack and went back to my room to find Josie half awake. “What happened?” she asked, sweeping her blonde hair out of her eyes.

“Micah was sleepwalking again,” I said, setting the marker on the dresser. I hadn’t seen any writing on the walls, so I was hoping he hadn’t marked anything up during his little nocturnal adventure.

“Again? How many times is that now?”

“A lot,” I said.

“It never used to happen,” she said sleepily. “I wonder if we should take him in. See what they can do about it.”

“We’ll discuss it in the morning,” I said, slipping back into bed.

Josie turned toward me, throwing a leg over my thighs and putting her head on my chest.

She was asleep again shortly. But not me.

I stared up at the ceiling for the better part of an hour, afraid the nightmare would come back when I fell asleep. Afraid of those eyes and those teeth.

Eventually, sleep claimed me.

***

I came downstairs in the morning to the sound of Micah laughing. As I walked into the kitchen and the connected dining room, I saw my brother Zane sitting across the sun-soaked table from Micah.

My son had a bowl of dry cereal in front of him, and he was tossing one piece at a time toward Zane, who was doing his best to catch them in his mouth.

I smiled, taking a moment to appreciate my son and my brother getting along so well. It seemed like Zane was finally turning his life around. He’d never been the best at making good decisions, but I thought he was starting to get it.

He was clean-shaven, and his dark hair was combed for a change. He wore a short-sleeve button-up shirt and khaki pants.

“Got an interview today?” I asked.

Zane turned his head toward me just as Micah threw another piece of cereal. The food struck him in the temple and he rocked his head sideways with the impact, pretending it was a heavy blow. Micah howled with laughter.

“I’ve got a second interview at that bakery,” Zane said after a moment.

“That’s great,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee.

A piercing scream sounded from upstairs, causing me to spill my coffee. “Daaaaddddyyy!” Lily cried after her scream.

I heard footsteps upstairs as Josie raced out of our room and toward our daughter.

Slamming the coffee cup down, I booked it up the stairs while Zane and Micah stared after me with wide eyes and open mouths.

As I bolted up the stairs, a dozen worst-case scenarios raced through my head. Death. Serious illness. Injury. It flashed through there with all the speed of a bullet train. I’d never heard my daughter scream like that before, although she had been increasingly irritable lately. She was a teenager, so it was somewhat expected.

Coming to a halting stop outside the upstairs hall bathroom, I saw my wife and daughter fretting in front of the mirror. My wife was blocking my view of Lily, but when I turned to look at her reflection in the mirror, a wave of relief swept through me.

There was a word drawn on her forehead in marker: doody. She was bawling, trying to scrub the word away with her fingers while Josie tried to get her to calm down.

When she saw me in the mirror, she said, “Look what he did to me!”

It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out. I’d found him with the marker in his hand, after all. Plus, doody had been Micah’s favorite word for the last month or so after learning what it meant from a kid at school. He’d already gotten in trouble for saying it too much, but he was clever enough to stop saying it in front of me and Josie.

Still, I couldn’t count the number of times I’d heard Lily call from the living room, saying, “Mom! Dad! He’s saying it again!”

This was almost always followed by Micah claiming innocence.

“You think he did this while he was sleepwalking?” Josie asked, one arm around Lily’s shoulders.

“No way!” Lily said. “He did it on purpose. He hates me!”

“Come on, now,” I said. “Your brother doesn’t hate you. He was sleepwalking.”

“He’s such a creep,” Lily said, clearly not ready to calm down.

This was going nowhere. “Babe?” I asked. “Will makeup remover get it off?”

“Yes!” Josie said, following my logic. “Yes, I’ll go get some.”

At only thirteen, Lily wasn’t yet old enough to be wearing makeup. Not that she agreed with that. Still, we’d told her she had to wait until she was fifteen.

Josie slipped past me to retrieve the makeup remover while I took her place next to Lily.

“I’m sorry, honey,” I said. “He didn’t mean to do it. He’s not even aware of anything when it’s happening.”

Lily was beginning to calm down.

“Can I lock my door at night?” she asked.

“No locked doors in the house,” I said.

“What about Zane?” she asked. “He gets to lock the basement door. Why can’t I lock my bedroom door?”

“Because Zane is an adult. While he’s living with us, getting back on his feet, I’m allowing him to lock the basement door. It gives him a sense of control, which is important for him right now. But if there’s an emergency and I need to get you and your brother out of the house quickly, I can’t be trying to break down your door. Okay?”

Lily huffed. “Okay.”

“Did I tell you that I used to sleepwalk when I was Micah’s age?” I said, a lump forming in my throat despite my best efforts. The nightmare with the well and the dog came burbling back up in my memory.

“No,” Lily said.

“It’s true. But it didn’t last long. And I’ll bet they’ve come up with ways to stop it in the years since I was a kid. We’ll do what we can to get him to stop, okay?”

Lily nodded.

Of course, I didn’t tell her what had happened when I sleepwalked as a child. She didn’t need to know that. Besides, it was a freak occurrence. A one-in-a-million thing. And the same thing couldn’t happen with Micah.

It just wasn’t possible.

Josie showed back up with some makeup remover and went to work getting the Sharpie marks off Lily’s forehead. As I stepped out into the hallway, Zane and Micah were there.

“Everything okay?” Zane asked.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I said. “Just a bit of a freakout.”

But as I spoke, I looked into Micah’s eyes. And for a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of knowing mischief there.

No way, I thought. He wouldn’t do it on purpose.

If there had actually been a look on Micah’s face, it was gone an instant later. I chalked it up to my imagination.

Zane helped me get the kids off to school because Josie had to go to work early. Then I went into my home office to get some work done.

Hours passed as I got engulfed in work before I realized I hadn’t seen the cat, Dame, all day. She usually came in and rubbed against my legs or jumped on the desk and got in front of the computer screen at least once during the day. But I hadn’t seen her.

I stood up from my desk and went searching for the cat, knowing that I was procrastinating more than anything.

“Dame!” I called, even though she would never come on command even if she had ten lives to live.

Realizing I hadn’t heard Zane leave, I called out. “Zane, you still here?”

No answer.

I moved to the basement door and tried the knob. Locked. He must’ve gone to the interview, I thought.

Of course, I had a key to the basement, but I wasn’t about to use it for something like this. I wasn’t about to betray Zane’s trust just to see if Dame was down there. If she was, she was fine, and she’d come up whenever Zane got back.

Searching for the cat was thirsty work, so I stopped in the kitchen and got a can of sparkling water out of the fridge. And as I cracked open the can next to the sink, I saw something out of the corner of my eye.

The window over the sink looked out onto the backyard, and I saw what looked like a head duck down on the other side of the fence. A head with a black ski mask on.

Forgetting about the can of water, I stared out, thinking about what Micah had said last night. “There’s someone out there,” he’d said.

Quickly setting the drink down, I moved upstairs at a run—although not as quickly as I had when Lily had screamed earlier.

I came to the window at the end of the hallway and peered out from my new vantage point at the woodland abutting our yard. Off in the distance, I caught a glimpse of a person dressed in black, knocking a leafy branch aside and slipping between two bushes.

The foliage shook significantly, leaving no doubt in my mind about what I’d just seen.

The sound of the front door shutting made me jump. I padded over to the staircase, mind reeling. Of course, there was no way the man in black could’ve made it to the front door that quickly. Not even close. But what if he was working with a partner?

I thought about the pistol in my closet, locked in a small lockbox.

Listening hard, I heard footsteps moving around down there. Whoever it was didn’t sound like they were trying to be quiet.

“Aiden?” Zane called out from downstairs. “Where you at? I got the job!”

I rushed down the stairs and greeted my brother with a grim face. His smile died as he saw my expression.

“Woah, what’s up?” he said.

“Someone—a man—was watching the house,” I said. “In the back.”

“What!? Is he still back there? Where?”

“He’s gone. He saw me and ran,” I said.

“Show me,” Zane said, starting for the back door. Then he stopped. “Wait. You have a gun, right?”

I nodded.

“Go get it. Just in case.”

I hesitated. It seemed like a big step. After all, the guy was already running away.

“What the fuck else is it for, man?” Zane said.

He was right. I ran back upstairs and grabbed the lockbox from the closet, setting it on the bed and entering the combination code on the three little dials.

I pulled the gun out but didn’t put a bullet in the chamber. Not yet.

When I went back downstairs, Zane was standing just outside the back door, scanning the fence line. “Where?” he asked.

“Follow me,” I said. We moved through the yard, past the swing set and around the sandbox to the fence. “It was here,” I said, standing on my tiptoes to look over the fence at the dense foliage beyond.

Zane, who was shorter than me, looked around for something to stand on. Finding nothing, he grabbed the top of the wood-slat fence and pulled himself up. “I guess we could drive around to that other housing development. See if we could find the fucker,” he said.

“Probably too late now,” I said, stepping back from the fence.

Zane let himself down and brushed his hands together to clear any wood residue from them. Then he stopped. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the fence.

I looked where he was pointing, seeing a slight discoloration between two of the tan-colored slats.

We both moved closer, bending down slightly to inspect the area. “Is that blood?” Zane asked.

“I think so,” I said in barely a whisper.

Zane turned and ran back toward the house. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

I watched him as he went around the side. A moment later, he came back, pushing my empty wheelbarrow in front of him.

He parked the tool in front of the fence and then climbed up inside. It gave him enough height so he could look over the top of the fence at the other side.

“What the fuck?” he said.

“What is it?” I asked. “What is it?”

“It’s Dame,” he said, straightening with a frightened look on his face.

After swallowing hard, I told him to get down and took his place. Leaning over the fence, I saw he was right. It was our cat, Dame. She was dead. And she’d been nailed to the outside of the fence with a single long nail.

Zane moved back toward the house as I stood there in the wheelbarrow. “Where are you going?” I asked him.

“To get my phone,” he said. “We need to call the cops.”

***

“Can you think of anyone who would mean your family harm?” the uniformed police officer asked as we moved inside from the backyard.

“No,” I said. “No, we’re a pretty quiet family. My wife works for an architecture firm and I’m an actuary. We work a lot and don’t get out much. Our kids are still young. Seven and thirteen.”

Zane walked with us. The officer’s partner was still out back, taking pictures of Dame.

“No business deals gone sour? Your kids haven’t been involved in bullying at school?”

“No. Not that I know of,” I said.

“What about you?” the officer asked, turning to Zane. “You live here, too, right?”

“I do, but it’s only temporary,” Zane said. “And it’s not like it was my cat.”

“Would there be any reason for someone to be mad at you?”

“No, not that I can think of,” Zane said.

“Well,” I interjected, “that’s not entirely accurate, is it?”

Zane looked at me, hurt in his eyes. But he said nothing. The officer looked at us. “Care to elaborate?” he said.

I waited for Zane to come clean, but when he didn’t, I powered through. “Zane just got out of prison a couple of months ago,” I said.

“That right?” the officer said. “What for?”

“Robbery,” Zane said, looking at his feet.

“How long were you in for?”

“Two years.”

“Well, that could be a good reason,” the cop said. “Who did you rob?”

“It’s not that, okay? The store got their money back, minus a few hundred dollars. The owner was mad, sure, but I did my time and I’ve since apologized to him. I’m sober now, and he knows it.”

“Well, it’s something to consider,” the officer said, his demeanor clearly changed. “What’s the store owner’s name?”

Zane told him. “But please,” he said. “Don’t go harassing him. That’s the last thing I want. If you do that, you may actually get him angry at me again.”

The cop shrugged. “I’ll leave it to the detectives who take the case. I’m just gathering information.”

“What do you suggest I do in the meantime?” I asked. “What if they come back?”

“Lock your doors and windows,” the cop said. “If you have an alarm system, use it. And keep a close eye on your kids. Call 911 if you see anyone lurking around.”

As soon as the cop left, Zane went downstairs. I figured I’d pissed him off by bringing up his criminal background, but I thought it might be relevant. Although my brother had been making significant strides since getting out, I didn’t know what he’d gotten up to in there. For all I knew, he’d made some enemies inside, and it was one of them who’d killed Dame.

Josie came home early after I’d called her and told her what had happened. I greeted her at the door to the garage, pulling her into a hug.

“I need to tell you something,” she said. “Something I should’ve told you before.”

I pulled away from her. “Okay.”

“Let’s sit down,” she said.

We went into the living room. Josie set her purse and work bag down and looked at me. “I might know what this is about.”

I waited for her to continue. She looked more worried than I could ever remember seeing her.

“Something happened at work two weeks ago,” she said. “With a guy from HR.”

I sat up straighter. “What? Who?”

“Just a man. His name is Evan. He made … inappropriate advances,” she said, wringing her hands. “At first, it was just harmless flirting that I never reciprocated. I thought he’d get the message. But he didn’t. And then, two weeks ago, we were in the break room together and he … touched me—it was a caress thing, just on my arm, but it sent me over the edge. I told him off, saying if he didn’t leave me alone, I’d have no choice but to file a complaint. But when I looked up, my boss was in the doorway. She’d heard the whole thing. Evan was fired then and there.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I wanted to, but you just worry so much …”

“Does this guy know where we live?” I asked.

“He worked in HR,” Josie answered. “He had access to that kind of information.”

I clenched my fists, swallowing my anger. “Well, we better tell the police about this.”

Josie nodded. “I’ll call them.”

After that was done and we’d both calmed down a bit, we discussed what to tell the children. We decided to tell them that Dame had died, but not how it had happened. We didn’t want to frighten them.

We also decided to keep them inside at all times, unless one of us was with them in the yard.

Josie was freaked out—and so was I. But I tried my best to hide my nerves so I could be strong for my family.

Josie and I were both there when Micah got off the bus down the road in our neighborhood. And we were both there a little while later when Lily got off her bus.

We explained about Dame to them separately. They were both pretty bummed, but I was surprised to find that Micah didn’t cry.

After dinner that night—we ordered out—I came downstairs to find Zane, Lily, and Micah all sitting around the dining room table, eating ice cream. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve admonished Zane for feeding my kids ice cream right before bed, but these weren’t normal circumstances.

They were talking about funny things Dame had done over the years we’d had her. And I realized the ice cream was a kind of coping treat. I scooped some Rocky Road into a bowl and then sat down and joined them.

It was a nice time. I was able to put my worries aside for just a few minutes to spend time with my brother and my kids.

As I sat there, I studied Zane, realizing that he really had changed since getting out of prison. I’d heard so many bad stories about prison being a finishing school for criminals that I’d half expected him to get into trouble and get sent right back in within a month. But it seemed he’d really turned things around.

I’d never asked him just how his time in prison had been, and he’d never volunteered the information. I’d only visited him twice after he first went inside, but he told me both times that he didn’t want me coming back. So I respected his wishes and let him do his time how he wanted to do it.

I’d sent him letters, but I never received any back. Still, it was clear that he’d been getting them because he called me a month before his scheduled release date and asked if my offer for a place to live still stood.

I said it did. And I was there to pick him up when he got out.

Now, as we sat at the table, I felt hope for my younger brother. Hope that he would get his life together after all these years.

When the kids were finished with their ice cream, I told them to go get ready for bed. Then it was just Zane and me at the table.

“Hey, listen,” I said. “Sorry about earlier. With the cop. But I figured it was important.”

A cloud passed over Zane’s features as he looked up at me. It kind of took me by surprise. “If something goes wrong, it must be my fault,” he said with a sneer. “This has nothing to do with me. Nothing!”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Relax. I just thought we should give him all the information and let the cops decide what to do with it, you know? I mean, this is my family we’re talking about.”

“I’m your fucking family, too,” he said.

“I know. That’s what I’m saying. You, Josie, the kids. I’m trying to protect you all.”

“I don’t need your protection. I didn’t need it in prison, and I don’t need it now. Whatever happened with the cat, it has to do with you. Not me.”

“Maybe,” I said. I wasn’t about to tell Zane what Josie had told me. That was husband and wife stuff he didn’t need to know. And while I thought it was probably the Evan guy who’d killed Dame, I didn’t regret telling the cop about Zane’s stint in jail. We had to provide them with all the information.

But Zane wasn’t about to let up. He was good and mad. “But you don’t think it has anything to do with you, right?” he said. “Perfect little Aiden, never did anything wrong in his life.”

“Yeah,” I said, getting angry. “Yeah, you know what? That’s right. I’ve worked hard to be a good man, and I’m proud to say I don’t have any enemies. I’ve become successful without stepping on other people. So what? If you think I’ll apologize for that, you’re way off base.”

“Hey,” Josie said in a harsh whisper, coming into the dining room. “You’re shouting and scaring the kids. Knock it off!”

Zane and I stared at each other for a moment, but Zane’s clouded expression fell away. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I was out of line. This whole thing’s got me a little rattled. It’s kinda freaky.”

“It has us all rattled,” Josie said. “The last thing we need to be doing is fighting with each other.”

I stood up and walked into the adjacent kitchen. Stopping in front of the sink with my bowl, I looked out at the length of fence where I’d seen the masked man earlier. The floodlights in the backyard were on, so I could see this side of the fence clearly. But beyond it was nothing but darkness. Anyone could be lurking out there, waiting for us to go to sleep.

I thought about my gun. I’d put it back in the lockbox when I’d seen the police arrive that afternoon. But I thought about taking it out of the lockbox and sleeping with it in my nightstand drawer. Just in case.

“I’m sorry, Zane,” I said, still looking out the window. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

“Good,” Josie said. “Now, let’s all go to bed.”

Zane gathered up the kids’ bowls and his own, bringing them to me so I could load them into the dishwasher. Then he headed toward the basement.

“Oh, Zane,” Josie said.

He stopped and turned.

“I heard you got a job today. Congratulations! When do you start?”

“Thanks, Josie,” he said. “I start day after tomorrow. It’s a delivery job for a bakery, bringing bread and donuts and stuff to hotels and convenience stores.”

“I’m so glad to hear it,” she said. “Well, goodnight.”

“Night,” Zane said, and headed downstairs.

Josie went upstairs, and I followed after starting the dishwasher and checking all the doors and windows. The place was locked up tight, and I even set the alarm that we seldom used.

I put the gun lockbox in my nightstand drawer with only one number off on the combination. That way, I could just turn that one dial to the right number and open the box to get the gun.

Since Micah had been sleepwalking, I didn’t want to just leave it in the drawer. I’d done some very strange things as a kid when sleepwalking, and I just didn’t want to risk it.

Of course, I could’ve locked the door to our bedroom, but we liked to leave it unlocked so the kids could come in if they had a nightmare or heard something—especially now.

With the gun nearby, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Sleep didn’t come for a long time. And when it did, it didn’t last long.

It felt like I’d just nodded off when a scraping sound caught my attention, sending my heart into overdrive. It was coming from downstairs.

As I got out of bed, I heard the low sound of Josie snoring. Just before she went to bed, she’d said she was going to take an Ambien to help her sleep. She didn’t take the pills every night—only when she really needed to get some good sleep. I took them occasionally, too, but the deal we’d made with each other was that only one of us could take Ambien on a given night.

I told her to go ahead. There was no way I was going to take a sleeping pill. Not with what was happening.

Now, as I pulled open the nightstand drawer to access the lockbox, I knew she wouldn’t be easily roused. I spun the last of the three dials to the correct number and opened up the lockbox to retrieve the gun.

I pulled the slide back, inserting a bullet into the chamber, and then moved out of the room. The scraping sound was louder in the hallway. And it grew louder still as I moved down the stairs.

My breath rasped in and out, backed by the thrum of my heartbeat in my ears. Stopping at the bottom of the stairs, I clicked the safety off, but kept my finger outside the trigger guard.

The sound was coming from the living room.

Steeling myself, I took a right off the stairs and another right into the living room, seeing a figure there against the wall next to the television.

I raised the gun, then dropped it again as I recognized the shape of Micah’s small body outlined against the white wall.

Scanning the room, I made sure no one else was around before allowing myself to take a deep breath.

Stepping over to the wall, I flipped on the light switch and flooded the room with light. Micah was facing the wall, his arm working at something I couldn’t see.

“Micah?” I whispered. “You okay, buddy?”

He didn’t answer. Sleepwalking again.

I put the safety back on the weapon and set it aside as I approached my son. He had a kitchen knife in his right hand, and he was carving up the drywall next to the TV.

Jumping forward, I yanked the knife out of his hand. He looked up at me through half-lidded eyes, a vacant smile on his face. “I can do it,” he said. Then he turned back to the wall and started scraping at the gash in the drywall with his fingers, getting white dust all over his hands.

I set the knife aside next to the gun and picked my son up. Clutching him to my chest, I sat down on the couch, rocking him back and forth as he babbled incoherently.

After a few minutes, Micah’s eyes were closed all the way and his babbling had stopped. I set him down on the couch and watched him for a few more minutes. He didn’t move. He was fully asleep again.

I picked up the gun and the knife, then padded into the kitchen, turning on the light as I went. As the room was bathed in illumination, I stopped dead in the middle of the floor.

All the knives from the knife block had been removed. And they were all stabbed into various food items from the fridge and pantry.

One was stabbed into a package of uncooked chicken breast. Another impaled a plastic container of baby spinach. A loaf of bread, an apple, a bag of spaghetti, and a few other items had all been arranged on the counter and stabbed through with knives.

My gut twisted on itself as sweat sprung up on my forehead.

“What the fuck?” I said, unable to help myself from recalling the terrible thing I’d done as a child. I’d been around Micah’s age when it happened. And I’d been sleepwalking.

***

It must’ve been the whimpering that woke me up.

I had heard that same whimpering as a child over many nights. It was the sound of our family dog, Gunner, wanting to be let into a room or let outside to do his business.

But, as the fuzzy unreality of my dream gave way to the chill wind and stark actuality of real life, I realized that the whimpering wasn’t quite the same. It was more urgent. It was a whimpering rooted in pain.

I looked around in confusion, wondering what I was doing standing outside by the old well.

The whimpering was coming from down there. Down in the dark.

A sudden realization gripped me. I shook as I moved to the edge of the well. I looked down but couldn’t see anything. It was too dark.

But I knew. I knew what I’d done.

Just a week earlier, my father had awoken me at the back door, Gunner in my arms. “Where you think you’re going with the dog, son?” he asked, an amused lilt to his voice.

“Huh?” I said, looking down at the American Leopard Hound in my arms. Gunner panted happily and licked my cheek. “I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, put him down and go back to bed,” my dad had said. It wasn’t the first time I’d done something strange while sleepwalking. Somehow, my dad always seemed to know. Like he had a sixth sense about it. Or maybe it was the creaky old farmhouse that alerted him to my nocturnal wanderings.

In the weeks leading up to that terrible night, Zane and I had been fascinated by the old well. It had been covered when we were toddlers, but that year, when I’d turned eight and Zane six, Dad had finally decided to fill it in.

So as I awoke to Gunner’s whimpering from down in the well, I knew that I’d done something terrible, even if I had no memory of it.

Tears sprung up in my eyes as I looked down into the dark.

“Gunner?” Zane called out from behind me. It was late spring, and we often slept with our windows open. I guessed he’d heard Gunner whimpering.

A light came on in Zane’s room, spilling illumination onto the dirt next to the well.

I moved around the well to hide, not exactly sure why. I crouched down with the well between me and the house as Zane stepped up to his window. I ducked down just before he looked out. “Gunner?” he called, panic seeping into his young voice.

From where I was, I could see the light from my brother’s room cast on the dirt next to the well. And as Zane’s shadow moved from that rectangle of light, I knew he was coming out to investigate.

I ran around the house as Zane came out the back door. And I went through the front door—we were on a large farm and never locked our doors.

I got into my bed and pretended to wake up when Zane started screaming from the backyard. He got the whole house up.

We gathered around the well, and my dad looked down inside with a flashlight. I’ll never forget how he glanced up at me after he saw Gunner down there. He held my eyes for a long moment, as if waiting for me to tell my part.

But I didn’t. I was too scared. Too wracked with guilt.

My dad sent us back inside with our mother while he fetched his rifle and shot the dog to put it out of its misery. Zane screamed and cried the whole time.

That week, my father finished filling in the well with bentonite clay, leaving Gunner buried down there, his grave marked by the circle of stone and mortar.

And after that, no matter how many times I wanted to tell the truth, it always seemed too late.

But I couldn’t actually remember doing it. So it was easy for my child’s mind to believe that I hadn’t been to blame. And, in a way, I hadn’t. I wasn’t in charge of my own body when it happened. Of course I wasn’t. I wouldn’t have ever done anything to harm Gunner. Not ever.

My dad never mentioned anything to me about it. He was like that. He just moved on. We eventually got another dog. And by that time, I’d stopped sleepwalking. I’d grown out of it.

But, it seemed, I’d passed it on to my son.

And as I stood in my kitchen, looking at all the knives sticking out of the food items, I knew I had to do something about Micah’s sleepwalking.

He’d gone into Lily’s room and wrote on her head with a marker. And now he’d come down here to stab things with knives. What would stop him from doing something even worse? Something like I’d done to Gunner all those years ago.

The memory of Dame nailed to the fence came into my head then, but I shrugged it off. My mind was trying to make connections where there were none. This was just awful timing, I told myself.

Not only was some psycho targeting our family, but we also had to worry about Micah doing something while he was unconscious. When it rains, it pours.

After walking back into the living room to make sure Micah was still sound asleep on the couch, I turned my attention to cleaning up the kitchen. I salvaged the food I could and put the knives in the sink for washing in the morning.

Then I went back upstairs and put the gun back in the lockbox. After that, I gathered Micah up and put him back in his bed. I lay beside him for the rest of the night, not getting another second of sleep as a new day slowly dawned.

***

“Research shows that the propensity for sleepwalking can be inherited,” the doctor said as Josie and I sat in his office. Micah was out in the front room, playing with the array of toys there. The receptionist was keeping an eye on him.

“I figured,” I said.

Doctor Rohn, a gaunt man with heavy eyelids and eyeglasses perched near the tip of his nose, nodded. “But you say you outgrew it as a teenager?”

“Yes,” I said. “Right around twelve or thirteen, I think.”

“And did you ever do anything strange like Micah has been doing?” he asked.

“Yes, I did. Not the same kinds of things, but some strange stuff.”

Doctor Rohn nodded again. “He’s not on any medication or sleep supplements, right? No Ambien, melatonin, anything like that?”

“No, of course not,” Josie said. “I mean, we take Ambien from time to time, but never Micah.”

The doctor nodded. “Good. Ambien can actually increase instances of sleepwalking. But if he’s not taking any—and he certainly shouldn’t be—then that’s not a concern.”

He looked down at the paperwork on his desk from his exam and the questions he asked us and Micah.

“Well,” he said, “I think your best bet is to make a concerted effort to get him to relax before bed. Read him a book. Ensure he doesn’t eat any sugar within two hours before bed. And make sure he goes to bed at the same time every night. In addition, I would start locking him in his room at night. You’ll probably need to change the doorknob. And put child-resistant locks on the windows, if you don’t already have them. And remove anything sharp from his room. We don’t want him hurting himself.”

Josie and I shared a look. The thought of treating our son like a prisoner in his own house wasn’t attractive. But we had to think of Micah’s safety, as well as the rest of the family’s.

Rohn seemed to pick up on this. “If you want, you can put a camera in his room to see how he does. If he keeps sleepwalking after a month of this, we can try something else. But I’d like you two to start with this, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“He’s a healthy little boy,” Rohn said. “Sleepwalking is very common in children. Albeit not to the extent that he’s been doing it. Still, he’ll likely grow out of it in a couple of years, just like you did. In the meantime, we just want to keep everyone safe.”

Josie and I thanked the doctor, collected Micah, and headed home. On the way, we stopped at a shopping center. Josie went to find a camera to put in Micah’s room. Meanwhile, Micah and I went to find a new doorknob for his door.

When we got home with our purchases, Micah watched as I took his old doorknob off and put the new one on. “This will keep you from wandering around at night,” I said.

“But what if I have to use the bathroom?” Micah asked from where he sat on his knees on his bedroom floor.

“Well, we’re going to use your old baby monitor at night. That way, if you need anything, you can just talk into the monitor and tell us. Either Mommy or I will come to let you out.”

“Okay,” Micah said sadly.

“Hey, buddy. You’re not in trouble, okay? You can’t help sleepwalking. I mean, you don’t remember what you did last night, do you?”

Micah shook his head. “All I remember is Buster Beans giving me a knife. He said it was okay.”

I gaped at him for a second. “Who’s Buster Beans?” I said, trying to keep my voice light.

“My friend. He comes to visit at night, when everyone else is asleep.”

My stomach tied itself in knots. “How long has this been happening? How long has he been your friend?”

“I don’t know,” Micah said.

“Did you tell Doctor Rohn about this?” I asked.

Micah shook his head. “Buster told me not to tell about him.”

“So why are you telling me?”

“Because you’re my dad,” he said, shaking his head like it was a stupid question.

“And what does he look like?” I asked.

“He’s a monkey! With big eyes and a funny grin,” Micah said, giggling.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was just some cartoon character from one of his shows, coming to life in his dreams. Still, it was something to monitor.

“Do you see Buster during the day? When you’re awake?”

Micah shook his head.

I nodded and went back to putting the new doorknob on. Instead of a lock on the inside, it had one on the outside. Not a key lock, but a simple knob lock like the ones common on interior household doors.

When we were done, I took Micah downstairs and told him he could watch television for thirty minutes. This was my sign to Josie to install the camera in his room. We were afraid he would feel violated if he knew we were installing a camera in there. Of course, not telling him wasn’t much better. But we figured hiding the small camera was the lesser of two evils. And it wouldn’t give him some kind of complex if he never found out about it.

By the time Lily got home from school, we had everything set up for Micah. The doorknob, the camera, and the baby monitor, which we would turn on when it was bedtime for Micah. Josie had even installed the camera app on both of our phones so we could check on him in real time without getting out of our own bed. She told me it was set to record from eight at night to seven in the morning. And that it would store the recordings in the cloud for two weeks.

All that done, I ducked into my office to get a little bit of work done. And before long, I smelled something cooking downstairs. I was usually the one who made dinner since I worked from home, so I got curious and headed downstairs.

Zane was in the kitchen, making dinner.

He saw me come in. “Dude, what happened? Someone get mad at all the healthy food you guys buy? The chicken breast looked like it had been stabbed.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” I said. “Micah’s been sleepwalking again. We’re handling it. Why are you making dinner?”

“I was out of line last night,” Zane said. “This is my way of apologizing. Take this off your hands for one night.”

“Thanks,” I said, seeing that my little brother was in a good mood. “Is the job going well?”

“Oh, it’s great,” he said, stirring something on the stovetop. “Couldn’t ask for a better one.”

“That’s awesome, man,” I said.

“Yeah. I’ll be out of your hair in no time,” he said. “I’ll get my own place as soon as I have enough for a deposit and first-and-last.”

“Don’t feel like you need to rush out of here,” I said. “Take your time.”

“Thanks,” Zane said. “Dinner will be ready in thirty.”

“I appreciate it, Zane,” I said, leaving the kitchen to lie on the couch in the living room. I was exhausted. I’d barely slept last night, and it was catching up to me.

I dozed off for what seemed like seconds before Zane was calling everyone to dinner.

I heard Josie, Lily, and Micah come down the stairs as I got up from the couch. Our plates were already set out on the table and loaded with food. “Wow,” I said, looking at the spread of Teriyaki chicken, stir-fry, and mashed potatoes.

“Isn’t this nice?” Josie asked the kids. “What do you say, kids?”

“Thank you, Uncle Zane,” they both said in unison.

We all ate, clearing our plates of food. When I started to clean up in the kitchen, Zane stopped me. “You look exhausted, man,” he said. “I can do the cleanup.”

“You sure?” I said. “You did the cooking. I don’t mind cleaning.”

“I’m sure. Go get some sleep.”

I took his advice and headed upstairs. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I supervised Micah getting ready for bed. After he’d brushed his teeth and put his pajamas on, Josie came and took over. “Go to bed,” she said. “I’ll read to him and tuck him in.”

“And turn on the baby monitors and lock the door?” I asked.

“I got this,” she said, pushing me out of the room. “Go. Sleep.”

After I had done my bedtime ritual and was getting into bed, Josie came into the room. “That was quick,” I said.

“He fell asleep before I even read two pages,” she said, yawning. “And Lily’s already asleep, too.”

“It’s a miracle,” I said, settling into bed while Josie went into the bathroom.

As consciousness was fading away, I heard my wife ask me something from our bathroom. “Babe, have you been taking some of my Ambien pills? I swear I had more than this left.”

“No,” I said sleepily.

Something gnawed at me, brought on by my wife’s question. But I didn’t have the energy to explore it.

Sleep enveloped me, pulling me into its dark embrace.

***

Someone was screaming. Someone was in the well, screaming.

I jumped out of my bed in my childhood bedroom and ran out into the hallway, turning to go down the stairs and out to the backyard.

Someone was in the well. Had I done it again? Had I thrown someone into that deep hole again?

“Daaddddyy!”

The hallway in my childhood home morphed, shimmering and melting away. I blinked sleep away, my senses slowly coming back.

I was an adult. In my house.

And my daughter Lily was screaming.

I looked down the hallway, my gaze dragging over Micah’s open bedroom door and landing on Lily. She stood outside her bedroom, leaning against the wall in her sleepwear—a large t-shirt and loose basketball shorts.

And there was a knife sticking out of her back, its hilt just visible over her left shoulder.

My throat thickened as every parental instinct I had kicked in. I ran to her, catching her as she fell unconscious. I put my arms around her waist and let her fall against my shoulder, trying my best not to jostle the knife.

“Josie!” I screamed. “Josie, wake up!”

Blood was soaking Lily’s shirt around the knife.

A wide-eyed Micah walked out of Lily’s room. When he saw his sister and me in an awkward embrace, his face twisted up in fear and he started bawling.

“Josie!” I screamed, hefting my unconscious daughter up onto my shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

I moved into my bedroom and saw that Josie was still asleep. How? I thought, panic creeping in. How is she still asleep?

Jostling her with my foot, I finally got a reaction. Her eyes fluttered open and then closed again. “Josie, wake up!”

There was no time. I hurried down the stairs and into the garage, placing Lily gently in the front seat of my SUV. I leaned her over the center console so the knife was sticking up.

When I came back in the house, Zane was by the stairs, looking around, stunned. He had shorts and a t-shirt on. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Lily’s been stabbed.”

“What?! Is someone in the house?!”

“No,” I said, running up the stairs to throw some clothes on and try to wake Josie again. Micah was in the middle of the hallway, bawling.

Josie was sitting on the side of the bed as I came into the room. She was still half asleep. “I’m taking Lily to the hospital,” I said, frantically pulling on some clothes.

“What?” Josie said. “Who’s crying?”

It was no use. I grabbed my phone and ran out of the room, then back down the stairs. Zane was coming up the stairs. As we passed, I said, “Take care of Micah, please.”

I didn’t wait for a reply. I grabbed my keys off the key rack next to the garage door and jumped into the vehicle. Lily was still unconscious. I reached over and gripped her tightly to keep her from moving as I pulled out of the garage, nearly backing into the opening garage door as I went.

A hundred questions raced through my mind as I sped to the emergency room.

How had Micah gotten out of the room? Had Josie forgotten to lock the door?

And why was Josie so out of it? Sure, it was hard to wake her up when she took a sleeping pill, but not that hard.

Something else was bothering me as I pulled up to the ER doors, but I put it on hold as I jumped out and ran around to get Lily out of the vehicle.

A couple of employees came with a gurney, which I put Lily on. Then I stepped back as a flurry of activity enveloped her. I was pointed to a bathroom where I could wash the blood off my arms, and then told to wait out front.

As soon as I got to the waiting area, I pulled out my phone and tried calling Josie.

She didn’t pick up.

Something wasn’t right. This didn’t make any sense. There were too many coincidences. Too much strange stuff going on.

Next, I tried calling Zane, thinking about the dinner he’d made for us.

And about what Josie had said as I was dozing off. She’d asked if I’d been taking her Ambien.

Zane didn’t pick up.

Chest heaving as I paced, my surroundings going out of focus, I navigated to the camera app on my phone. After messing around with it, trying to find out how to access the recordings, I finally figured it out.

Since the recording was still going on, the app brought up a live feed from Micah’s room. Josie had put the camera in the air vent high up near the ceiling, aimed down into the room. I could see the open door and the unmade bed.

But the app also gave me the ability to rewind.

It was now just after midnight. So I rewound the recording thirty minutes.

It jumped to that location, showing the door closed and Micah in bed.

So I started jumping forward a little bit at a time.

And then I saw it.

At 11:37, the door to Micah’s room swung open, revealing a man wearing black pants, black gloves, and a black hoodie. He had a rubber chimp mask on. One with bulging eyes and an ear-to-ear grin.

And he had a knife in his hand.

As soon as he took a step into the room, I knew who it was. I recognized the way he moved. The way he walked.

It was Zane.

A chaotic swirl of overpowering emotions battered my insides until I felt I would burst.

But I made no move. I stopped pacing and stared down at my phone, unblinking.

I watched as Zane knelt by my son’s bed and started whispering. I couldn’t hear what he was saying; the built-in microphone on the camera wasn’t good enough to pick it up. Soon enough, Micah sat up in bed, eyes half closed, and stared at the chimp mask. He nodded and got out of bed.

And then Zane directed him out of the room, turning them toward Lily’s bedroom.

My paralysis broke like a rock through thin ice, and I bolted out of the hospital.

In my SUV, I dialed 911 and explained in a rushed, panicked voice that my wife and son were in danger. That my brother might kill them. I gave my address and then hung up to concentrate on driving.

Five minutes later, I came to a screeching halt in my driveway. The garage door was closed, although I hadn’t closed it in my rush to get Lily to the hospital.

I shut off the engine, extracted my keys and phone, then moved to the doorway. But before I got to the front door, I heard the sound of the garage opening again.

I turned that way to see the reverse lights on Josie’s sedan flare as the car backed out of her parking spot. The front windows of the car were down, and the interior lights were on. Josie was sitting in the front seat, Micah in her lap. They both had tape over their mouths. And they both looked up at me with dazed, desperate eyes.

Zane was in the driver’s seat, no longer wearing the chimp mask. He had my gun pointed at my wife’s head as he leaned forward to look at me.

“Throw your phone into the car,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

“What are you doing, man?” I asked. “This is crazy.”

In one quick movement, Zane bashed Josie in the side of the head with the pistol, drawing blood. Josie moaned as her eyes rolled in pain.

“Fucking do it now, Aiden,” Zane said.

I stepped up and saw that Josie’s arms were bound in front of her with duct tape. So were Micah’s. I tossed the phone at their feet.

Micah looked up at me, sobbing and whimpering against the tape over his mouth. I was supposed to protect him. I could tell he didn’t understand why I wouldn’t just make this all stop.

“Stop that fucking whimpering!” Zane shouted. “Drives me fucking crazy.”

Micah stopped making noise, but he still stared up at me. My heart crumbled as I fought back sickness.

“Now you’re going to follow me in your SUV,” Zane said. “And if you don’t, I’m going to put a bullet in each of them. If you fall behind more than a hundred feet, you’ll see your wife’s brains come flying out the fucking window.”

“Why?” I said. “Why are you doing this?”

“Like you don’t know,” he sneered. “Better hurry up.”

He pulled out past my SUV and started out of the neighborhood. I scrambled into the driver’s seat and raced to follow him. He turned right off our street, and then made another right, heading away from the city and toward a wooded area with hiking trails.

I followed behind, thinking about ramming the smaller car with my vehicle. I quickly dismissed the idea, thinking it could cause him to pull the trigger and kill one of them. Or, if he lost control of the vehicle, it could kill all three of them; Josie and Micah hadn’t been strapped in.

He turned toward a parking area for a trailhead, and I followed him up the hill. I had time to realize that everything was Zane’s doing. I remembered the ice cream he’d given the kids. He could’ve crushed up and slipped half of an Ambien into Micah’s Rocky Road. Then I thought about other nights, when Micah had told me as I tucked him in, that Uncle Zane had made him some warm milk to help him sleep.

Then there was the dinner he’d made for us. We’d all been so tired afterward. As though he’d drugged our food. And if Josie had taken another Ambien before bed, it would explain why she hadn’t awoken from all the screaming and crying.

For all I knew, he was the one who had stabbed all the food packages. He was the one who’d written on Lily’s forehead in marker. He was the one who’d killed Dame and stabbed Lily.

I just didn’t know why or how.

But I had a feeling I was about to find out. Right before he killed me.

Zane turned into an empty parking area and stopped. I pulled into a spot nearby and shut off my engine.

“Get out of the car!” Zane called.

I did as I was told.

“Now stand in front of this one,” he said.

I did, standing in the headlight beams in front of the sedan.

Zane opened his door and got out. Then he told me to sit down.

“Can’t we talk about this?” I asked.

“Sit the fuck down!” he yelled.

I did. He tracked around the back of the vehicle and pulled Josie and Micah out. “Keep your hands on him,” Zane told Josie, speaking of Micah.

He positioned himself behind my wife, still pointing the gun at her head.

“Walk ahead of me,” he said, speaking to me.

“Where?” I asked, standing up.

“To the cliff,” he said.

Micah whimpered.

“Can’t you just tell me what this is about?” I asked. “What did my wife and my son do to deserve this, Zane? Isn’t this about me? About something I did?”

“Oh, so you do know!” Zane said.

“I know that they didn’t do anything to you,” I said. “So it must be about me.”

“You killed my fucking dog!” Zane yelled, nearly crying. “You killed Gunner because you hated me, you sick fuck. And nothing happened. Nothing! You just went on with your perfect life, and got your perfect job, and then your perfect fucking family. While I have nothing. Jack fucking shit. How is that fair?”

“I—I didn’t think you knew about that,” I said.

“That’s another thing. You always thought I was so stupid, didn’t you? Of course I knew! You don’t think I saw your footprints in the dirt that night? You don’t think I didn’t see the look Dad gave you when we were all right there? I knew he’d caught you trying to do something with the dog before that. I heard him telling mom about it. But he didn’t catch you that time, did he? No, you got away with killing my dog!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose, Zane. You gotta believe me. I never would have hurt our dog on purp—”

“He was my dog!” Zane yelled. “Mine! He slept with me, in my room. He was mine, not ours. Mine!”

Tears streamed down his face as he kept jabbing the gun into the back of Josie’s head. I said nothing. I was too shocked. Had he been holding this in all these years?

“Walk!” he said, sniffling. “Just walk.”

Micah whimpered again. He’d been whimpering quietly since getting out of the car.

I moved, walking slowly on the trail toward a cliff that overlooked the valley in which our housing development sat. It was dark, so I took it slow. Slower than I needed to. I had to think. To buy time. I needed to do something.

“It’s too bad I couldn’t actually get Micah to stab his sister,” Zane said. “I would’ve preferred it that way. Instead, I had to do it. But I should’ve stabbed her in the fucking throat instead of half-assing it to make it look like Micah did it. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He paused. “Of course, I hadn’t yet seen the camera packaging in your bedroom trash yet. When I saw that, I knew the jig was up. Too bad. I wanted you to think your son was a cold-blooded killer, just like his old man.”

“How did you get my gun?” I asked, without turning around.

“What do you think the whole charade with the cat was about? I knew you’d get your gun when you saw the figure on the other side of the fence. And I knew you’d leave it open with the code still on the dials.”

“When you went back in to get your phone,” I said, remembering.

“My original plan was to have Micah maybe get the gun and ‘accidentally’ shoot himself. Make you think it was your fault. That you left the box unlocked. But now all that’s gone.”

I stepped out onto the rocky clifftop, looking out on the sprinkling of lights in the valley below. I still hadn’t come up with anything. I had no plan. No way to stop what was coming. At least Lily’s safe, I thought. If she’s still alive.

The only thing I could think of was to keep him talking, buying time. “Who nailed her to the fence? Did you have help?” I asked, turning as Zane walked out onto the clifftop behind Josie and Micah.

“If there’s one thing I learned in prison,” Zane said, “it’s that you can only count on your cellie. So that’s who I called in for a favor. My old cellmate. I certainly couldn’t count on you, my own brother, when I was in there.”

“You told me not to come visit you,” I said. “You told me more than once.”

“You weren’t supposed to actually listen to me!” Zane said. “You were supposed to show up anyway. Not send your fucking letters, rubbing your perfect family in my face from afar, reminding me how much of a shitshow my life has been.”

Micah’s whimpering was getting louder.

“Micah, if you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll shoot you in your goddamn head!” Micah stopped making the noise. “Every time I hear that noise,” Zane continued, “it makes me think of Gunner all over again. I thought I was going crazy one night when I first moved in with you. I heard that damn whining, and I went upstairs only to find Micah wandering around asleep. That was when I knew what I had to do. I mean, I’d spent two years thinking about how to ruin your life, but it all made sense once I heard the little shit crying in his sleep. It all made perfect sense.”

“I was just trying to help you,” I said. “We invited you into our home because we care about you.”

“You know what?” Zane said, clearly not hearing me. “I can trace the whole fucked-up trajectory of my life back to that night you killed Gunner. Did you know that? Something happened in the days after that. I realized something about the world. I realized that whatever you love gets taken away from you. So why love anything? I decided then that I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t allow myself to love anything ever again. But hate? Oh, I made hate my best friend. Hate doesn’t go anywhere. It’s always there, keeping you warm.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, staring at my brother through the gloom. “Who the hell are you?”

His tears had stopped now, and he smiled as he spoke. “Micah,” he said, “go to your dad.”

Micah didn’t have to be told twice. He came over and I picked him up in a hug. But when I went to remove the tape from over his mouth, Zane told me to stop.

“The only thing I want you to do,” my brother said, “is hug your son for the last time … and then throw him off the cliff.”

Micah stiffened in my arms, and I looked over at my brother. “You’re insane,” I said.

“You killed my dog by throwing him into the well. Now you get to know how it feels. You get to kill something you love. And if you don’t do it, I’ll just kill you all, anyway. Starting with your perfect cunt wife.”

He wasn’t bluffing. I knew he wasn’t. He had the gun pressed to Josie’s head still.

I pulled Micah closer, hugging him tightly. And I whispered in his ear, “Start whimpering.”

As I brought our heads apart, he looked up at me, eyebrows raised in a question. I nodded.

Micah started whimpering again.

I went to crouch down next to the cliff’s edge, but Zane shouted, “What are you doing?”

“This is how I did it with Gunner,” I said, lying. I didn’t remember how I did it with Gunner. Not one bit. But Zane clearly didn’t believe me. “I set him on the side of the well and then pushed him.”

Micah started whimpering.

As I finished this explanation, I put Micah down on his back, just a foot from the edge. “Stay still and keep it up,” I whispered to him as I found a rock about the size of a baseball on the ground under Micah’s legs. I gripped it in my left hand.

Micah was still whimpering, just like I told him.

“Hurry up!” Zane said. I could tell the whimpering was getting to him. Driving him crazy. Making him relive the night he now blamed for every shitty thing in his life.

“I love you,” I said to Micah. Then I paused, looking down into his eyes, praying this gamble would work. I kept Zane and Josie in my peripheral vision, watching for movement.

Micah whimpered again.

“Do it!” Zane said. “Kill him!”

I took a deep breath, dragging it out. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Zane move.

“You had your chance,” he said, shifting the gun away from my wife’s head and toward my son at the edge of the cliff. I yanked my left hand out from under my son’s legs, twisting my body and throwing the rock at Zane.

It was a poor throw with my non-dominant hand. But it came close enough to make Zane flinch. He fired the gun, and I heard the bullet ricochet off into the distance as I lunged to my feet, using every ounce of strength at my disposal to close the distance between us.

Zane backpedaled and fired again—this time at me—as Josie dove toward our son with her outstretched and still-bound hands.

I knew the bullet had hit me, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was making sure my wife and son were safe. I crashed into Zane, tackling him to the ground like I’d done so many times when we were children, roughhousing in the yard. Only this time it was life-or-death.

He got the gun up and pointed at my head a split second before I knocked it away with my left hand. He fired, and my left ear exploded in ringing pain from the loud noise. I gripped his wrist with my left hand and slammed it down on the rocks. I was vaguely aware of the pain in my lower abdomen, and the warm wetness spreading down my jeans and up my shirt.

Zane wouldn’t let go of the gun, and I was losing strength fast. He punched me with his left hand twice and managed to roll over on top of me. I knew that I only had so much fight left in me. We were still struggling for control of the weapon, and it was sapping my energy.

But not far away to my right, I could see the edge of the cliff.

I knew what I had to do.

Letting go of Zane’s gun hand, I levered myself up and wrapped him in a hug, pinning his arms to his sides. Then I kicked off with my legs, using the momentum to put us into a roll.

When I judged that we were approaching the cliff’s edge, I pulled my arms back from around his body and shoved Zane as hard as I could away from me. As he rolled over the edge, he reached out and grabbed my arm with his left hand, his body weight and momentum pulling me over head-first.

I yanked my arm out of his grasp just as he went over the edge. I scrambled for purchase on the vertical rockface, finding some just as my legs swung down. Their weight caused me to slip, but my hands held onto the small divots I’d found.

The resonant thump-crunch sound I heard from far below was Zane hitting the ground.

But I still had a problem. My grip was tenuous.

Josie’s head poked out over the clifftop, and she reached down with unbound hands. “Take my hand,” she said.

I did.

When I got back up on top of the cliff—with Josie’s help—Micah jumped on me for a hug.

I breathed deeply where I lay on my back, looking up at the stars, Josie on my left and Micah on my right.

“You’re bleeding, Daddy,” Micah said.

“I know, buddy. I think it’s time to get me to a hospital.”

***

I was lucky. We all were, really. The doctors were able to clean out my abdominal cavity and repair the damage to my intestines the bullet had done.

And, most importantly, Lily was alive. Since his plan was to blame the whole thing on Micah, Zane hadn’t used anywhere near his full strength when stabbing her. And he hadn’t hit any vital organs.

The doctors said she’d make a full recovery.

The police found Zane’s body at the base of the cliff. It was a long fall, but he’d hit some tree branches on the way down, which kept him from dying right away. They estimated that he’d lain awake for several hours, his body smashed to bits and struggling to maintain its functions, before he finally succumbed to his wounds.

When I learned this, I couldn’t help but wonder:

Did he whimper?

***

END

***

Thanks for reading. I truly hope you enjoyed this collection.

Short stories can be a lot of fun, but sometimes you just need to dig your teeth into the flesh of a novel. Keep reading for the first three chapters of the zombie apocalypse book that one reader called “A work of genius.” Undead Annihilation is a zombie apocalypse novel with a dash of humor and a whole lot of blood. Check it out on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited!)

Praise for Undead Annihilation

“A work of genius. I’ve read hundreds of zombie books and this is now in my top 2 … This book is a MUST!” -Amazon Customer

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“Not to be missed.” -Amazon Customer

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“Undead Annihilation starts off fast and just keeps on going.” -Amazon Customer

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“…never-a-slow-moment pace, the coolest of cool characters, and all the apocalyptic tropes your heart could desire (but done better)…” -Reedsy Discovery Reviewer

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“Wonderfully different.” -Amazon Customer

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“Excellent mashup of zombie and vampire genres. I was never quite sure which direction this story would take.” -Amazon Customer

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“The writing is exciting and entertaining with clever dialogue and plot twists. It truly is a page-turner of a book.” -Amazon Customer

Undead Annihilation Teaser

Prologue

“You’re a dead man.”

Charlie glanced up from his near-empty drink at this proclamation, mildly curious. Toward the front of the room a thin, leathery woman cackled and dance-walked away from the bar and the man behind it who had misgendered her with his threat. The shimmying woman formed a skeletal smile with half less teeth than ought to have been there. She threw up double middle fingers and left the bar backward, using her bony ass to open the door as she left. The momentary intake of night air did little to improve the odor in the establishment.

Charlie turned back to his drink, wondering why BDB was always saying people were a dead man. He’d never actually seen a dead man here. Except for that one time Shithead Steve drank himself to death. But that was a slow process and Charlie only saw him for a few minutes when he was actually dead. BDB didn’t say it then, when it would have been appropriate.

He slumped, his forearms resting on the wooden bar that had been carved and mutilated by thousands of knives, forks, glass shards, and metal pieces over the years. Names and insults and forgotten jokes now served to soak up spilled beer and vomit. Charlie’s left arm covered the “s is hel” in “This is hell,” while his right rested on a punchline: “And that was the easy way!” He had searched for the setup on many a drunken night, but it was buried or erased by other names, shitty jokes, or random symbols that meant something to people long since dead. Sometimes he thought that there never really was any setup at all. Just a punchline that begged for a beginning. He knew the feeling.

Charlie leaned back, the rusty metal legs of the barstool creaking softly, and looked around the bar— his bar, as he thought of it often. The red neon lighting seemed dimmer than normal tonight. A couple of rough-looking characters played a game of pool way off to Charlie’s left, under a green-glass light that hung from the ceiling on chains. The sole pool table in the joint was about as lopsided as that crappy tower in Rome, or Italy, or wherever. Such things didn’t really matter, especially not now. Such things as Italy were beyond his realm of worries or concerns, if they were ever even there to begin with.

Charlie turned the other way, looking toward the front door, and saw a couple of geezers shivering at a dark table in the corner, their eyes darting around the near-deserted bar, a dozen beer bottles standing like sentinels before them. Charlie wondered where Buck was and reached for his phone to check the time. His friend was two hours late. He’d never known Buck to be more than an hour late. He glanced at the door again, willing his pal to show up. It was a dangerous world out there. Yes, it was.

The bartender, a guy named Big Dick Bill, hovered around his cash register, next to which, Charlie knew, he kept a locked and loaded shotgun. Big Dick Bill was a slab made out of pure shit. The hard kind of shit that junkies get when they’re constipated. The shit that feels like a brick coming out, and is liable to crack a toilet if your sphincter is powerful enough. At least, that’s how Big Dick Bill liked to describe himself.

Anyway, that slab of shit was named Big Dick Bill because— you guessed it— he had a bulge in his pants the size of a cat-scaring cucumber. Charlie didn’t know if Bill’s dick was really that big, or if he stuffed his pants. Neither would’ve surprised him, but he spent an unnatural amount of time wondering about it.

Bill wasn’t a bad guy, but he’d fuck you up if you messed with him. Yes, he would. Charlie called him over and ordered another beer and a shot of the good whiskey— he knew the price. Cash only, of course. Charlie took his wallet out and slapped down two hundred-dollar bills, covering the words “shit heel” carved into the bar. Just then the front door opened, and in walked Buck.

Charlie let out a little sigh. Then he noticed a strange look on Buck’s face as his friend took a seat next to him at the bar, but strange looks were the norm as of late. Bill came over and nodded to Buck, who ordered his usual in a distracted manner. As soon as Bill left to fix his drinks, Buck turned to Charlie and said, “Holy shit, dude. I think I’m dead.”

Charlie was drunk. “Yeah, I feel you, brother,” he said. “We all feel that way these days.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Buck replied. “I was in the outskirts and… And I was fucking killed. I’m dead, man. I’m fucking dead.” As Buck said this, he looked down at the bar and read the same words he’d read there a thousand times before. “Fuck You,” the bar said up at him. And for the first time in his death, Buck felt really and truly fucked.

Undead Annihilation - Chapter 1

Vampire Meets Douchebag

Before the world ended, before everything went to shit, before the apocalypse settled on the globe like a picnic blanket over an anthill, the city went on much as it had for generations. People went to work. Some stayed home. People fell in love. Some found hate. Some people died. Some were born. Capitalism and its inseparable partner commerce marched toward oblivion smug and disbelieving, much the same as every other man-made system for the division of resources did, all around the globe. But underneath it all, there waited chaos. You could see it everywhere, at all times, in all places— if you looked. In some parts of the world it was easily visible. In others it was hidden away under streetlights and buildings and uniformed officers of law and order. But it was always there.

The animals lived and died by its rules. The wind and the rain were all quantified but were no less powerful— no less chaotic— for it all. Mayhem waited, biding its time in the hearts of man and earth and sky. It didn’t have much longer to wait, then. For the day started much like any other, but ended like none before.

Bertrand Guirrez found himself, on the day in question, the day when the world changed forever, piss drunk in an alley, taking a piss. It’s called piss drunk for a reason, after all. He had stumbled out of the bar’s front door unzipping his pants and heading for the alley that bordered the establishment. It was barely nine o’clock in the P.M., but Bertrand had had a particularly rough day. And it was about to get worse.

His morning had started off like any other: he woke up in his rent-controlled apartment around 10 a.m. and checked his phone. Like always, he had messages. Clients asking to come over. Clients asking him to come to them. A couple of girls mad at him for something he’d done. But one message stood out above all the rest. It was a message from his boss, which read: Need to talk. HMU when u up. It couldn’t mean anything good. If Bertrand was doing his job right, he would only hear from his boss one day a month, and today was not that day.

His job was not a normal job, and his boss was far from your average boss. Bertrand sold drugs, but not his drugs. He sold Champ Pulaski’s drugs. If that name conjures up images of an incredibly white former middle-weight boxer-turned-gangster, your image-conjuring mechanisms are working just fine. Congratulations.

Champ’s real first name was Vasili, but no one called him that. It turns out that one of the side-effects of repeated head-trauma, mixed with a healthy dose of rampant alcoholism, is a tendency to fly off the handle at the most minor of inconveniences. Unfortunately for Bertand, Champ also had a tendency to imagine slights and insults that were never there in any way, shape, or form. He’d been weathering the ups and downs of Champ’s punch-drunk brain for almost two years when everything went to shit. Bertrand found himself, after his meeting with Champ, out of a job and facing an impossible deadline: paying off his not inconsiderable debt within 48 hours, or else. Bertrand still had damn near 5 pounds of cocaine, but it wasn’t enough to pay off the debt. He’d been getting high on his own supply for a long time, figuring he’d make it up on the next batch. But he never did. Now there would be hell to pay.

I know what you’re thinking, but no, you’re wrong. Bertrand did not find himself in the same bar in which Buck would announce his death just over a day later. That would be a little too on the nose. But it was a similar bar, no doubt. Similar in that it sold alcohol, had a pool table (four, in fact), and was also frequented by low-lifes and hard-cases alike. Bertrand didn’t fall into either of these categories, though. With a name like his, the only thing he could possibly be was a douchebag.

***

Which was exactly the word that flashed through Diirek’s mind as he approached Bertrand in the alley bordering the shitty bar. Douchebags were Diirek’s favorite prey. Over the years he’d honed his douchebag radar to the point where he could smell their Hatchet body spray from blocks away. In the darkest of nights, from sewer grates, the tops of buildings, through crowds of people, Diirek could sense the popping of a collar. The use of the word “bro” or “babe” several times in one sentence would put him on alert. He could hear the uninspired catcalls that seemed to fall out of douchebags’ mouths the world over, their insipid words acting as a beacon. One or two of these things did not make a douchebag. The combination of them, however, sent Diirek into stalking mode almost involuntarily. It was then just a matter of following the bright flashing neon sign that hovered over them, in his mind.

This was exactly how he came across Bertrand. Like almost every other night, Diirek slipped out into the city as soon as the sun set, letting his old friend the night take him where it would. On this particular night, he wasn’t even specifically looking for prey. He was engaging in his version of watching a nature documentary.

Most alleys in most cities contain an array of tiny life marching through time, oblivious to, but dependent on, the human world that built the alley and provided most of the food for this life to thrive on. Diirek, being what he is, had the ability to focus in on the rats, beetles, ants, spiders, cockroaches, and other various alley dwellers and feeders. Diirek felt a certain kinship with the small bugs and critters that moved around in the dark. He, too, operated out of view of the human world at large. For the most part, anyway. Some things were simply unavoidable.

Much like a modern camera, Diirek— and others like him— could zoom his vision in on the smallest of ants marching across the mouth of an alley while he himself perched on top of an adjacent building. He could also focus his hearing in such a way. But, unlike a camera, he could still make use of his peripheral vision to keep aware of what was going on around him. This was how he came to notice Bertrand.

Diirek was enjoying the sight of several hundred ants— 362 at last count— attacking some maggots that had spilled out of a busted trash bag next to a dumpster. The maggots were much bigger than the ants, but were carried off nonetheless, one by one, the ants struggling all the way. He was enjoying the show from a fire escape above the dumpster, making use of the deep shadows in the back of the alley. Then a douchebag came around the corner to take a piss. This was not really a surprise to Diirek. He had heard the footsteps, the heartbeat, the breathing, the muttered words, and even smelled the guy’s fear-sweat and body spray before he came into view. As soon as he turned the corner, one of those bright neon signs popped up above his head. “Douchebag,” it said. Purple, blinking, and inviting.

What the hell, Diirek thought before jumping down off the fire escape in a soundless and graceful maneuver. One could even say he almost floated down to the alley floor, if one ever saw it and lived to tell. He was behind Bertrand before the first drop of urine touched the alley floor. But, being the gentleman that he is, and not wanting to get any douchebag pee on him, Diirek waited for the gently swaying man to finish his stinky-sour business before getting on with drinking his blood and killing him. Diirek turned his head back toward the ants and maggots while he waited, smiling at the show.

When Bertrand finished up and turned around he found himself face to face with a handsome, ghostly white man of indeterminate age. The man wore all black, which made it seem like— in the dark of the alley— he was a pale head floating six feet off the ground. And the eyes in that face had something strange about them.

Bertrand let out a girlish “yip” sound before a steely and cold hand grabbed his shoulder and another grabbed the hair above his ear and yanked his head down, exposing the left side of his neck. He made half-formed whining sounds as the man’s jaw seemed to unhinge like a snake’s, and his lips pulled back over gleaming fangs.

There was a flash of light far off in the distance. The sky brightened like the sun had come up for a second, changed its mind, and gone back down.

Diirek moved his strange eyes around, questioningly. His teeth were so close to warm flesh and the satiating blood underneath, but there was something happening that he had never experienced before. Which made it a very significant event indeed.

He sent his hearing out tentatively and discovered the rushing roar of sound coming swiftly toward them. He shut his hearing down, afraid it would be damaged. When the sound finally arrived both he and Bertrand heard the same faint roar and felt a warm wind sweep over them and through the city.

The two stood, as still as dead men, in the dank alleyway. Bertrand’s urine had seeped down around his expensive sneakers. Diirek’s expensive shoes weren’t presently touching the ground. Without a word the pale creature re-hinged his jaw and let go of the terrified but confused Bertrand.

Together, they walked (Diirek’s feet now on the ground) to the mouth of the alley and turned to look in the direction they thought the flash had come from. And there it was, seen between two skyscrapers, off in the distance: an illuminated mushroom cloud. The blast below gave it an orange tint from the ground up, which faded as they watched. It faded out of Bertrand’s human sight, but Diirek could still see it, with his enhanced vision.

Then another flash from behind them. This one a little further away in the other direction. Another mushroom cloud, blooming out of the horizon, reaching up to lay claim to the sky, seen between the tall buildings of the cityscape. Then another. And another. From all directions now. Explosions all around them, but all far-off, and dreamlike because of it.

The two turned and looked at each other, mouths slightly open, eyes glazed in disbelief. “Well,” said Diirek in his not-quite-European accent, averting his gaze after a second. “I suppose… Um. Just forget about what happened in the alley. This seems more important, I suppose.” He kicked at a piece of trash on the ground, embarrassed.

“Oh, yeah. Totally, bro,” Bertrand said, equally abashed. “Yeah. Wow. Crazy.” Neither said anything for a beat. “I guess I’ll go now,” Bertrand continued. “Probably should visit my Mom. You know, end of the world and all.”

“Yeah. That is probably a good idea,” Diirek said.

Bertrand started to go, then stopped, turned back. “What about you?” he said. “Any family to visit?”

“Me? Oh, no. They all died a long time ago. Hundreds of years.”

“Oh. Oh wow. So you’re, like, really a vam—”

“Please, don’t say it. You humans say it as if it’s a curse,” Diirek interrupted.

“But, bro? You were really going to suck my blood?”

“Listen, let’s just not talk about it, okay? This has never happened to me before. It’s embarrassing enough as it is.”

“No. Hey, bro, it’s okay. Really, it’s fine.”

More silence. People had begun to come out into the street in droves, looking around in disbelief and confusion. So far the lights were still on in the city, and many people were making cell phone calls, so the towers were still up.

“Well, hey, bro,” Bertrand said, still drunk but feeling more sober than ever. “Do you want to come meet my Mom? I mean, if you don’t have any family to go to…”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t. That would not be appropriate, really. Thank you, though. Thank you for the offer. Really. I must be going.”

And with that, Diirek disappeared back into the alley. Bertrand looked after him for a long moment, seeing nothing but a dark alley next to a shitty bar.

As Diirek made his way through the city, back to his current home, he groaned in embarrassment, and began to regret not killing that douchebag after all.

Undead Annihilation - Chapter 2

Crotch-Drugs, Prostitutes, and First Encounters

A cell phone buzzed and chirped and vibrated out an old song from an old band that was slowly becoming popular again with “the
youths.” A horrible realization for the not-yet-so-old owner of the cell phone. He had taken pride in choosing a ringtone that was seemingly obsolete in the wide and varied opinions of “the cool.” He identified the song as one from his generation, but in reality it had been released close to fifteen years before his birth. In fact, were he ever lucid enough to the point of self-awareness, Detective Kurt Atticus Weller would have admitted a lifelong identification with the generation directly preceding his. An idiosyncrasy that had set him apart from his peers since the day he was able to be a part of a peer group.

As the buzzing and singing and vibrating cell phone continued doing its job by alerting its owner— in this case out of a deep and troubled sleep— the very fact that he hadn’t changed the ringtone to something less cool yet put him in a bad mood. And it was about to get worse. Much worse. Weller rolled over on the blanket-less mattress to reach for the phone on the nightstand, its weak, pale light the only illumination in the room. He realized he was completely naked when his crotch met with something flat, hard, and— powdery?

“What the—” he mumbled as he forgot about the phone and clicked on the bedside lamp on the nightstand. He looked down to find that he had rolled onto a hand-mirror covered in a small mountain of cocaine, much of which now coated his genitals and upper thighs. The white powder stood out in stark contrast to his dark skin. He quickly dismissed the thoughts of infection or incidental overdose. But he lamented the waste of good drugs as he started to try and salvage the leftovers.

The smell of warring perfumes and stale sex filled his nostrils as he gained his bearings. His dulled synapses started sparking the sleep off, and pretty soon they were firing like good synapses should. The events of the last week flooded his mind and he stopped. His phone went silent.

“Former Detective Kurt Weller… shit,” he said to himself.

“What’s that, baby?” A woman’s voice sounded from outside the small pool of lamplight, causing Weller to instinctively cover what he thought of as his cocaine-crotch with his hands. Cocaine-Crotch…. Good name for a band, he thought, and laughed despite himself.

“Oh nothing,” he searched for a name, but none came. “Ma’am.”

She chuckled and got up off the floor at the foot of the bed and walked over to the wall, where she flipped a light switch. The sight of her— a beautiful but tough-looking blond woman naked in this shitty motel room— brought even more back to Weller. As she pulled on her clothes, he watched her and thought about the circumstances that had forced him on unpaid leave five or six days ago— he had no idea the date, at the moment.

He had never been one for drugs or prostitutes, which was all the better because he had been a cop for most of his adult life, but the injustice that had been done to him— the sheer audacity of it— sent him over the edge. It was like he was making up for lost time, snorting and fucking and smoking. He was no longer a cop, so why should he act like one?

The unpaid leave was just a formality. He was sure that they would fire him when their “investigation” was all wrapped up. He was being railroaded. Bent over like it was his first time. He hated it, but the drugs and the women seemed to help quell his anger. In truth, for Weller, being a cop was as much a drug as the cocaine currently coating his cock and balls. The danger, the grit, the badassery… he loved it all and used it as a crutch. It meant he was a damn good detective, if a little unorthodox.

The bathroom door opened and another woman— this one dark-skinned and dread-locked— came out wrapped in a towel and wet from a shower. Weller couldn’t remember her name either, so he just smiled at her as she, too, got dressed. He thought about stopping her, about what it would be like to put his cocaine-crotch to use, but before he could act on his impulse his phone started to ring again. The screen lit up with the name of the last person he ever expected a call from. Captain Railroader herself.

“What the fuck do you want?” he asked, proud of himself for being civil.

“Turn on the TV,” she said in a tone that brokered no argument. Something bad was happening. Suddenly Weller’s mind was racing, dreaming up and pouring through all the terrible possibilities that could make Captain Shellbourne call him for help after all that had happened.

As he fumbled for the remote he didn’t have any inkling that one of those scenarios might actually be happening. In his heart of hearts he figured it was all a sick joke or a false alarm. But everything changed forever when he found the power button and turned on the TV.

“We’re so screwed!” The TV man— a local reporter whose name Weller couldn’t recall at the moment— was the very definition of “freaking out.” He was on the rooftop of some downtown skyscraper, running from edge to edge with his cameraman chasing him and pleading with him to calm down. Mushroom clouds could be seen in the distance, some fading away while others grew anew out of incomprehensible violence and destruction.

“We’re live, dammit,” the cameraman was yelling now, his voice picked up on the anchor’s mic.

“We’re dead! It’s only a matter of time until they start dropping here! I can’t die without ever having really lived. I’ve never even had sex with an animal! Any animal! I’m such a coward.” And with those words, the sound was cut off from Mr. Freak-Out’s microphone and the cameraman gave up trying to console him. Instead, he focused on the bombs or missiles exploding all around, swinging and zooming in on every new cloud sprouting from the earth, miles away.

Weller was speechless. Immediately his mind went to his wife— ex-wife actually. Like every other time he thought of JayLynn lately, the accompanying feelings were complex. He felt fear of losing her, although he’d already done that. Months ago now. He felt love and a special kind of hate that wasn’t really hate for her— a feeling that he suspected only ex-husbands and wives were capable of. His first instinct was to call her, but he decided against it. He knew her schedule. She was at home, downtown. Far away from any bombs dropping, so far, anyway. He’d call her later, he decided. When he didn’t have two ladies of the night in the room with him.

He continued staring at the TV while ineffectual noises issued forth from his phone, held next to his cocaine-crotch, his hand resting on his powdery leg.

He was torn from his reverie by the sound of someone snorting. He looked to his right to find that both women whose names he couldn’t remember had gathered up as much loose cocaine as they could find and were taking turns sucking it up their noses on the hand-mirror. He couldn’t blame them but was surprised at their reaction time. It would have taken him a few more minutes to think of getting high in reaction to these strange events. The women looked wild-eyed at the television when they weren’t focused on the lines of white powder. Weller looked at them, at the room, his phone, his crotch, and made a decision. “Fuck it,” he said as he tested his nostrils in preparation. “Give me that straw.”

***

“We need every single available officer. Your past mistakes are forgiven, for now. We’ll revisit your status if and when we survive whatever the hell is happening right now.” Captain Shellbourne sounded scared. Really scared, Weller realized in some faraway back part of his mind. The words “your past mistakes” jangled around in the front of his cocaine addled mind like a pinball doing Mach 3.

He had only called the captain back after the three of them— Weller and the two prostitutes— had done all the cocaine in the room, including some he had brushed out of his pubic hair and from the various folds of his scrotum. The women didn’t seem to mind.

So now, as the anger welled up inside Weller and the coke added fuel to the fire, it suddenly dawned on him that he could take this opportunity— if the apocalypse wasn’t an opportunity then what was?— and use it to make the captain pay for what she had done to him. The humiliation, the lies, the degradation. And above all, the brush with death.

He took a few moments to calm down. Picturing her helped. Her wiry and brittle hair, leathery skin, small and compact body pacing nervously around her office at Police Plaza. Her normally furrowed brow on her pinched face replaced with a girlish and gnome-like look of concern and helplessness. The image made him laugh a silent and short laugh. Logically, he was sure it was possible for her to look helpless and hurt, but seeing is believing and Weller had never seen the captain wearing any other look than a combination of anger and determination. Trying to picture her twenty years younger was an exercise in futility. Surely she had been born with that same face, complete with newly-formed wrinkles and crow’s feet, her lips a thin, pale line slashed between her nose and chin. Once again he laughed, this time at the conjured image of an infant with the face of his hated captain. He’d seen some ugly babies in his time, but this was something else.

It had worked. In a feat that sometimes seemed herculean, he had managed to keep his temper under control. Instead of screaming into the phone, Weller took a deep breath and spoke calmly, his voice devoid of emotion. “Where do you want me, boss?”

A plan had screamed into existence in the last few seconds. A plan Weller hoped to God was just as good in the cold light of sobriety as he currently thought it was, high as a fucking cloud. A goddamn mushroom cloud. Plus, anything he could do to not think about the end of the world as he knew it was a good thing, for sure.

She told him to report to the precinct within the hour. He grunted in reply and hung up the phone. He could tell by the look on the women’s faces that they were more than a little freaked and looking to him for answers. “Sorry ladies, I don’t know any more than you do. Get to somewhere safe as soon as possible and hold onto your butts.”

They stared at him with wide eyes. Then they looked at the pistol resting on the nightstand under the lamp. “Either of you have protection?” Weller asked. The blond woman held up a can of pepper spray, the other a box of condoms. Weller sighed. “Okay, where do you want to go? I’ll take you.” They smiled. He smiled back and then proceeded to get dressed.

As the three of them walked past the unmanned front desk of the motel, Weller used his finely tuned detective skills to learn his female companions’ names. Okay, so listening isn’t really a skill, but Weller was feeling good about himself despite the chaos they were surely walking into. The blond, he learned, was Cindy. The one with dreadlocks was Mindy. He didn’t know if those were real names or not, but it didn’t really matter either way. He would get them to their destination, some twelve city-blocks away, and then he’d probably never see them again. Most likely because they would all be dead in a matter of days. But even if they lived, it was a big city.

Weller stepped outside first, his hand on his Sig Sauer P229 9mm pistol in his shoulder holster under his left armpit. He glanced around and then signaled Cindy and Mindy to follow. There were people all around the streets. More than normal, and all with a kind of nervous energy. Most traffic was stopped, the drivers on their phones either in or standing beside their cars. Some drivers were still trying to get to their respective destinations, weaving around the parked cars, honking horns, panic-stricken. Almost everyone was looking at their phones, waiting for news, on the verge of terror. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or, to be quite literal, the other bomb.

The combination of nighttime darkness and the buildings in this part of the city did much to block the view of any mushroom clouds or falling bombs, but people glanced nervously at the sky anyway. The clouds were high and blocked any moonlight from reaching the city, but so far the power grid seemed undamaged. Lights were on all over the immense cityscape.

As they walked, people glanced at them, but no one paid them much attention. Weller was glad for it. Although Weller had always been ready to fight at the drop of a hat, he had never experienced anything like this. Every step he took brought him closer to sobriety, and every step was a new opportunity to see the city like he’d never seen it before. That was what really got to him.

Back in the motel room, watching the newscaster lose his shit, it was easy to discount the unfolding events as unreality. Even though he knew something bad was definitely happening, seeing it on TV was like watching a movie. But here, out in the city, it was hard to ignore the fact that the world as he knew it was changed forever.

They passed 24-hour bodegas that were closed, some for the first time in years, the shopkeepers sitting behind locked doors with shotguns. Those braver shopkeepers who kept their stores open were not shy about making sure anyone who passed by saw their weapons on display. They seemed to think the best deterrent to a robbery was a loaded gun. But a loaded gun does little good against an unruly crowd. Weller knew that from experience.

Those apartments above the stores that had balconies were almost all occupied. People of all ages and races were out looking at the sky and the city below, trying to get a feel for what was happening. They were deciding whether they should stay or go, and where to head if the latter was deemed necessary. The trio heard frustration when phone calls to loved ones were dropped or went unanswered. They heard relief when the calls were answered and good news was shared, devastation when the news was bad. Both women made similar phone calls on the way. Most went unanswered. Weller thought again of calling JayLynn, but much like he’d done when they were married, he put it off. One thing at a time. He didn’t want his attention divided. Especially not now.

The quickest way to their destination was through an especially rundown and dangerous part of town. A two-block stretch of dark doorways, busted windows, and vague figures sauntering down the sidewalk. Going around meant a long detour, so Weller decided to go through. Thus far the city’s inhabitants had been nervous, scared, and tense. Not a great combination, but still manageable, in Weller’s opinion. But if good news didn’t come soon, all hell would break loose.

In this part of town, however, Weller wouldn’t be surprised if those individuals who called this stretch home had no idea what was happening outside their little world. Which was good and bad at the same time. Good because such news would probably send many of them into a crazed state (more crazed, anyway) and bad because they might try to assault the trio for any number of reasons. Starting with the fact that it was dark out. Weller thought about removing his gun from his shoulder holster but decided against it. While it would probably deter certain characters lurking in various shadows, it would surely provoke others. Best to try and get through without provocation.

They came to the end of the first block having only witnessed an extremely skinny man taking a rather large shit in an alley and some choice words hurled at the ladies from what seemed like every conceivable crevasse. As they crossed the street to begin their second and last block of this particular stretch, the street lights flickered and went out. Foreboding crept up Weller’s throat like a swallowed centipede. He squinted into the dark and saw several figures creeping towards him and his lovely company.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Weller said. “The lights go out right now? Right this second? And creepy figures in the dark! Great! This is some horror movie bullshit. C’mon, ladies. Let’s pick up the pace.” Weller was genuinely pissed. As if the universe was giving him the finger with all this apocalyptic, creepy nonsense.

When they made it to the other side of the street, Cindy and Mindy both screamed. The twitching figures were dead ahead and moving in. There was some sort of guttural moaning accompanying these tattered people, and it was giving Weller the creeps. He pulled out his Sig Sauer and held it at his side. He didn’t see any weapons in the hands of the figures coming toward them. You can’t shoot people for being creepy, he reminded himself.

“Okay you assholes, stop what you’re doing right now!” He yelled at the figures that were surrounding them. “I am a cop! Let us by or you’ll face the long arm of Johnny Law!” He chuckled softly. He’d always wanted to say that. Both women stopped and looked at him. What a corny bastard, he thought of himself. But what else was new?

Both the ladies yipped again as the figures closed in on them. They weren’t stopping, and the sound was getting louder. Weller squinted through the dark and caught a glimpse of one of the creepy figures. It was an old man whose clothes were in tatters. His eyes were cloudy and he had open sores all over his face. Now it was Weller’s turn to yip. Some kind of crazy homeless drug addicts, the likes of which he had never seen before.

He sprang into action, kicking the old man in the balls. He stepped toward Cindy and Mindy, who were holding up their pepper spray and condoms, respectively. The figures were reaching out, trying to grab the women as they backed away— into more figures. Weller was turned around in the dark but thought that he knew which way to head, so he began to clear a path.

He elbowed a crazed lady in the face, punched a man, whacked a teenager, pummeled an octogenarian, and pistol-whipped a portly young woman. It struck him as strange that none of the people he hit made noises other than that continual growl. They just fell or stumbled back into the night, not one of them screaming in pain. Creepy. Then he heard thwacking and grunting noises from behind him. He looked back and was not-so-surprised to find that both Cindy and Mindy were kicking some ass. The ladies were crotch-kicking, eye-gouging, and elbowing the stragglers that Weller had missed.

He yelled for them to come on. Cindy and Mindy’s destination was a block ahead, if Weller was right. They jogged, Weller bringing up the rear, sure that the strange silent figures were right behind him. The lights came back on just as they reached the brownstone in which the women lived. Weller looked around and threw his hands up at the lack of creepy figures around. Super weird.

“Are you okay?” Weller asked Mindy, who was bleeding from her arm.

“I’ll survive. I think one of those crazy bastards bit me! I’ll get it cleaned out here.”

“I would suggest staying behind that big door until we get some order in this city. Can’t have people going around biting other people. No way. Not on my watch,” Weller said.

He saw them to their door and they said their goodbyes. Weller noted the address and told himself that he would come check on them when he had the chance. Then he left, heading for the precinct downtown, happy he didn’t have to go through the creepy part of town again.

***

That’s the end of the teaser. Get your copy of Undead Annihilation on Amazon to see what happens next!

Praise for Undead Annihilation

“A work of genius. I’ve read hundreds of zombie books and this is now in my top 2.” -Amazon Customer

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“This book is a MUST!” -Amazon Customer

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“Not to be missed.” -Amazon Customer

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“Undead Annihilation starts off fast and just keeps on going.” -Amazon Customer

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“…never-a-slow-moment pace, the coolest of cool characters, and all the apocalyptic tropes your heart could desire (but done better)…” -Reedsy Discovery Reviewer

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“Wonderfully different.” -Amazon Customer

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“Excellent mashup of zombie and vampire genres. I was never quite sure which direction this story would take.” -Amazon Customer

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“The writing is exciting and entertaining with clever dialogue and plot twists. It truly is a page-turner of a book.” -Amazon Customer

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.

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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.

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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 Novella
- 1. The Shack
- 2. The Bank You Don’t Rob
- 3. My Turn
- 4. Hungry High School
- 5. The Appearance
- 6. The Cure

- 7. Some Men Will Do the Unthinkable for Revenge

- 8. The First and Last Date
- 9. I Should’ve Listened
- 10. Wild Animals
- 11. Meltdown
- 12. The Children of the Heist
- 13. The Vaux Letter
- 14. Hell’s Gate
- 15. Life Gets in the Way
- 16. Blood, Muscle, and Bone
- 17. Hate’s Harvest
- 18. Invaders From the Deep
- 19. A Whimper, Not a Bang
- 20. Sleepwalker
- Undead Annihilation Teaser
- Undead Annihilation - Chapter 1
- Undead Annihilation - Chapter 2
- Also By Matthew Doggett