As was usually the case during the winter, the rooms and hallways were absolutely freezing.  Kathy Turner retrieved a sweater from the small closet in her office and quickly put it on.  Making sure that her hair was still at least somewhat pulled back, she put on her lab coat and stuck her hands into her armpits in an attempt to warm them up.

It didn’t help that her office was the closest to the hospital’s main entrance.  Every time the doors opened, the cold air would blow right at her office door.  Even if it was closed the gusts would get in through the cracks and crevices to fill the space and drag the temperature down.

She made a face.  One of the many perks of being the newest doctor on staff.  Another one would be having to work on New Year’s Eve in the first place.  All of the other doctors were bringing in 1974 with their loved ones, and she was stuck here.

She sighed.  There was no point in complaining, even just to herself.  The building was quiet, and with the nurses handling most of the routine work she was getting off easy, all things considered.  She might even be able to finish the book she had been trying to get through for the past three months.

Before she could sit down at her desk, she heard the sound of the front doors opening.  Cold air washed in over her feet and legs from under the office door.  She closed her eyes and shook her head.  Lovely.

“Doctor Turner,” a man’s voice called from out in the hallway.

Kathy opened her eyes.  It was the voice of one of the security guards.  Whenever one of them came to get her, something was wrong.  She mentally gathered herself and left the office.

The guard was a giant of a man.  He stood nearly seven feet tall, and he was built like a linebacker.  He nodded as she joined him.

“The police are here,” he told her as they headed towards the entryway.

“Right,” she replied shortly, knowing that meant that she wasn’t walking into a pleasant situation.

A group of people were wrestling with a distraught man on a gurney near the front desk.  He was tied to it with the usual straps, but a long cord had also been wrapped around his chest.  His eyes were bulging and the veins in his neck were standing out.  He was speaking so quickly that Kathy couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“Is that really necessary?” she asked as she approached, pointing at the cord.

“You’re damn right it is,” a man dressed in a police uniform growled back at her.  “Where are we putting this nutjob?”

“He’s bleeding from his forehead,” she pointed out.  “He also has multiple contusions on his arms and legs.  You should be taking him to County General.”

“We can’t,” one of two paramedics told her in a much kinder tone than the office had used.  “There’s a major accident just outside of it.  At least a dozen cars.  No one can get in or out.”

“Besides,” the officer put in, “a nutjob belongs in the nuthouse.”

“We prefer to call this a hospital,” Kathy snapped, already tired of the man’s attitude.  She looked over at the nurse behind the front desk.  “Joanne, would you please show them the way to one of the rooms, one far enough from the other patients that they won’t be disturbed?  Seventeen is open, I think.”

The paramedic stayed behind while the rest of the group followed the nurse.  Kathy opened her mouth to say something, but he shook his head and waited until the others were out of earshot.  When he was satisfied he nodded.

“There’s one more wrinkle in this, Doc,” he said, running a hand over his face.

“I don’t even know what this is,” Kathy pointed out.  “Everyone just barged in without actually filling me in.  If I didn’t think that man would be safer away from that cop I wouldn’t have assigned a room.  What is going on?”

The paramedic hesitated.  “Maybe it would be best if you get that from the officers.”

“Oh, yeah, they seem really inclined to give an unbiased account.”

He smiled slightly.  “You’ve got a point.  The patient’s name is Charles Mayweather.  He lives over on Sixth and Pennington.  You know the neighborhood?”

She nodded.  “Yeah.  Pretty upscale place to live.”

“Maybe not tonight.  From what we can tell, Mayweather just sort of… snapped.  He tried to kill his kid tonight.”  He looked away.  “Eight years old and his dad tried to strangle him.”

“Jesus.  Why?”

“I don’t know.  You heard him ranting and raving, right?  He’s been doing that since we got on the scene.  One of his neighbors called it in.  Apparently the screaming was so loud they could hear it two houses over.”

Kathy mulled it over for a moment.  “It could be stress related.  Maybe his family is prone to mental disorders.”

“Yeah, maybe.”  The paramedic turned his attention back to her.  “He went completely off the deep end with those cops before we got there.  He even bit Officer Sunshine on the arm.  But listen, Doc, there’s that wrinkle I mentioned.  We’ve got the kid with us.”

She blinked.  “You brought him here?  Why the hell would you do that?”

“We didn’t have a choice.  Child services couldn’t get there for hours because of the storm, and both us and the cops are going to be out most of the night with all the wrecks.  Drunk people and ice don’t mix.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Philip.  His name is Philip Mayweather.”

“Fine.  Philip.  What are you going to do with him?”

The paramedic smiled crookedly and shrugged.  “We were kind of hoping that he could stay here until the social worker picks him up.”

Kathy shook her head.  “We’re a hospital.  No, you know what?  Let’s cut the crap.  We’re an asylum.  This isn’t a place for a kid.”

“Neither is out there,” he pointed out.  “We haven’t been able to track down any family, and we’ve got to get back out there.  He’s got nowhere else to go.”

She sighed in frustration.  As much as she didn’t like to admit it, he was right.  The child couldn’t go back out into the storm with the police or paramedics, and at eight years old he certainly couldn’t just wait alone at his house.  She grudgingly nodded once.

“Okay, fine,” she agreed.  “It’s just a few hours, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” the paramedic said with noticeable relief in his voice.  “Just until child services gets here.  He’s a good kid, too.  Polite and everything.”

“Yeah, yeah, you can stop the hard sell.  Hand him off to Joanne when she gets back, okay?  I have to go get Mr. Mayweather checked in.”

Kathy went over to the front desk and dug a clipboard out of one of the drawers.  She was glad to find that admission paperwork was already fastened on it.  With a final nod at the paramedic she headed down the hall towards Room Seventeen.

The second paramedic and the two police officers were just coming out of the room as she approached.  They walked past her without a word.  It was rather rude, but she actually preferred it that way.  The officer she had briefly spoken to had rubbed her the wrong way, and she didn’t have time for people like that.  She childishly hoped that the bite on his arm was still hurting.

She entered the room’s open door without pausing.  Although she was still in her first year at the hospital, she had seen her fair share of disturbed individuals.  A surprisingly high number, in fact, when she took into account the small population of Blackwood.

Joanne was in the room talking to the patient in soothing tones.  Mayweather didn’t seem to be responding to her.  He just continued to rave at high speed while struggling against the bonds that kept him tight against the gurney.

“Mr. Mayweather,” Kathy said to him, loud enough that she knew he could hear her voice over his own.  “My name is Dr. Turner.  May I speak with you?”

He continued on as he had been.  She motioned for Joanne to come closer, and she relayed that the son would be waiting for her in the entryway.  The nurse nodded but didn’t move as she continued to watch the man.

“I’ll be fine,” Kathy assured her.  “Just have one of the guards standing by in the hall, okay?  Oh, and have one of the other nurses come in to treat these wounds.”

Joanne left the room.  She observed Mayweather for a few moments.  He was straining against his bonds so hard that she started to worry that he would give himself a heart attack.  Coming to a decision, she went over to the side of the gurney and gently placed her right hand on his shoulder.

“Mr. Mayweather,” she said, keeping her voice calm and friendly.  “You need to settle down before you hurt yourself.  I want to get this cord taken off of you, but I can’t do that if you’re pulling against it like this.”

The man turned his eyes towards her.  They looked surprised, like he hadn’t even realized that she was in the room with him.  His rantings slowed down and grew quieter until they stopped entirely.  He fell flat against the gurney and ceased struggling against the restraints.

“There, that’s much better,” she told him with a smile.  “Thank you for letting me help you.”

She set down the clipboard on the room’s only chair and knelt down to get a better look at the cord.  It was an extension cord, the kind that you could find at any hardware store.  She shook her head in revulsion.  No matter how difficult he had been, this was bordering on inhumane.

It took her a few minutes to undo the knot.  It had been tied tight, and the end had been looped through multiple times.  She eventually managed to get it to come free and unwrapped the cord from around his body.

“There,” she said as she tossed it on the floor and retrieved the clipboard.  “That’s much better, isn’t it?  I know the straps aren’t very comfortable, but that should at least give you a bit more breathing room.”

Mayweather stared at her for a long moment.  She returned his gaze as she waited to see what would happen next.  She would eventually have to go through the standard admission forms, but she wanted to give him some time to process what was happening before getting into that.

Truth be told, she was feeling a bit unsure of herself.  The man that had been dragged into the room acting like a lunatic had been someone that she was used to.  Not him in particular, but she had seen patients in the same kind of mental state before.  Now, though, he was acting completely different.  It was like he was another person entirely.

“The others,” he half spoke, half whispered.

“The other straps?” Kathy asked.  “Those can come off when I’m sure that you’re not going to be a danger to either me or yourself.  I’d like to talk for a while and see how that goes, and we can go from there.  Is that fair?”

He nodded his head once.

“Okay, good.  Let’s start over.  My name is Dr. Turner.  Yours is…?”

“Mayweather,” he replied after a moment.  “Charles Mayweather.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Mayweather.  May I call you Charles?”

“Yes.”

“Good.  Charles it is, then.  Now, are you on any medications that I should know about, or any-”

“Philip,” he interrupted sharply.  “Where is he?”

Kathy blinked.  “Philip?  As in your son?  He’s safe.  He’s with one of the nurses right now.”

Mayweather’s face grew pale.  “Keep him away.  Keep him away.”

“Why should we do that, Charles?  Are you afraid that you’ll hurt him again?”

He surprised her by laughing loudly.  It was a cynical laugh, one that didn’t have any mirth behind it.  The sound was cut off as he began to cough.

Kathy tried asking more questions, but Mayweather either refused to answer them or he was no longer processing that she was even speaking to him.  Telling him that she would be right back, she left the room and made sure that the door closed behind her.  Logically she knew that he’d never be able to get out of the restraints, but something about the looks he had given her and the way his voice sounded made her want to take every precaution.

She wasn’t going to be able to get through to him when he was like this, and it was very possible that he would injure himself if he was allowed to remain in such a state.  After motioning for the security guard in the hallway to stay near the room, she hurried down the hallway to a locked door at the far end.  She fished a key out of her pocket and unlocked it.  Inside was the hospital pharmacy.  

Normally she would have opted for the less intrusive option of pills, but she doubted that she could get those down Mayweather’s throat.  Instead, she went over to a cabinet and retrieved a syringe and two small glass bottles.  She put them  into her right lab coat pocket and hurried back to her patient’s room.  He was still caught up in a fit of laughter.

“I’m sorry about this, Charles,” she said as she stuck the point of the needle into the first bottle and pulled back on the plunger part of the way before doing the same with the second bottle.

Kathy inserted the syringe’s needle into the man’s arm and pushed down on the plunger.  When she had empted the syringe, she leaned back out of the room and tossed it and the empty bottles into a wastecan in the hallway.  She waited patiently for the medication to take effect.

After a few minutes, Mayweather’s laughing subsided and his body relaxed.  She waited longer to make sure that it wasn’t some sort of ruse.  She doubted that he was in any condition to come up with anything like that, but there was no point in taking chances.

“There now,” she said finally.  “Feel better?”

“I’m… a bit light-headed,” Mayweather answered slowly.

“That’s a side effect of the tranquilizer.  Nothing to worry about.  Now that you’re calm, I have some questions that I need you to answer.  Can you do that, Charles?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Good.”  She paused to gather her thoughts.  “Can you tell me what happened tonight with your son?”

“That… that thing is not my son,” he spat back with such hatred that she was momentarily taken aback.

“How do you mean that?  Who is he?”

He laughed again, but this time it only lasted for a few seconds.  “What’s the point?  You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

She arched an eyebrow.  “Try me.”

Mayweather was silent for a long moment.  At first Kathy thought that she had lost him again, but as she watched him closely she could tell that he was internally struggling with something.  He chewed on his lower lip as he stared up at the ceiling.

“You’re a psychiatrist, Dr. Turner?” he asked.

“I am,” she confirmed.

“I figured by the room decor.  It’s funny, my wife used to joke that someday I’d be dragged kicking and screaming to the looney bin, and here I am.”

“You’re married?”

“I was.  Doreen passed away five years ago.  Wait, no, it’s six now.  As of this past November.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Not as sorry as I am.”  He sighed.  “Anyway, as a psychiatrist, you must have some experience with recurring dreams.”

She nodded.  “Some, yes.”

“I’ve been having the same dream every night since the day my wife passed away.  The exact same dream, down to the smallest detail.”

Kathy furrowed her brow.  It was rare for someone to have a recurring dream that frequently.  Usually a person would have them sporadically rather than over and over again.  She sat down in the small uncomfortable chair and crossed her legs.

“What happens in this dream?” she asked.

“I’m standing on a beach filled with white sand,” Mayweather began.  “In front of me is a vast ocean.  It stretches from horizon to horizon.  The water looks gray in the pale light, and it’s surface is completely undisturbed.  It’s flat and unmoving, without a single wave.

“I look out over the water for what feels like hours.  It could be days, or weeks, or maybe even longer.  I just wait on the beach for something to happen.  I don’t know what will, but I can feel it in my bones that something is going to happen.”

He licked his lips.  One of the side effects of the tranquilizer was dry mouth.  Kathy stood up and retrieved some water from the room’s sink in a small paper cup.  She helped him take a few sips.

“Thank you,” he said gratefully.  “After what seems like an eternity I can just make out a figure walking on the surface of the water.  At first I think it’s some trick of the light, but as it draws closer I can see that it’s definitely a person.  When it reaches the water’s edge I see that it’s Doreen.”

“Your late wife?” she asked.

“Yes.  She’s wearing this long flowing white robe, and she looks like she did when she was in her twenties.  She smiles at me, and all that I want to do is run to her.  Somehow I know that I can’t do that, though.  I can’t leave the beach.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know.  I just can’t.  It’s like…  It’s like there’s this invisible barrier.  I don’t know how to explain it any better than that.  I can’t go into the water and she can’t come up onto the sand.”

“So there are… rules in this dream.”

“I guess so.”  Mayweather grunted uncomfortably.  “Can I at least have the strap around my head taken off?  My neck is killing me.”

Kathy went over to the gurney and undid the restraint.  He sighed in relief and moved his head from side to side.  She could hear his neck crack as he did so.

“Much better,” he muttered before he began to describe his dream once more.  “Doreen and I stare at each other for a long time.  I don’t know if you’ve ever lost someone that you love, some that’s your entire world, but you lose some of yourself when you do.  Seeing her, even like this, makes me feel whole again.  It’s a feeling that you don’t want to end.”

He stopped talking and stared off into the distance.  His eyes were wet, and Kathy could tell that he was struggling to continue.  She patiently waited until he started to speak.

“Eventually Doreen reaches out one hand.  I think that she’s trying to touch me, but she’s actually pointing.  I turn around, and right behind me is a metal contraption.  A machine.”

“A machine,” she repeated.  “What kind of machine?”

“In the dream, she calls it the Stygian Machine.”  He sounded almost wistful as he spoke.  “An instrument that can pierce the veil between life and death.  She tells me that if I can build it to the exact specifications, she and I can be together again.”

There was a scream from out in the hallway.  Mayweather’s head snapped towards the sound, and the blood rushed out of his face.  His breathing became hurried and shallow.

“What was that?” he asked sharply.

“Just one of the other patients,” Kathy assured him.  “The nurses will get it taken care of.  Tell me about this machine.  What does it look like?”

“It’s three pieces,” he replied, his eyes still locked on the door.  “There are two platforms and a large ring.  The ring sits on the platforms, and they supply power to allow it to spin.  On all three pieces are these markings that I don’t recognize.”

“Describe them to me.”

“They’re…  I don’t know.  They look kind of like Egyptian hieroglyphs, but not quite.  They’re carved into the metal on nearly every square inch of the machine.”

“If I unstrap your hand, can you draw some of them for me?”

Mayweather furrowed his eyebrows.  “Well, yes, but is it important?”

She tilted her head slightly.  “It could be.  Symbols in our dreams can represent important messages that the subconscious is trying to pass on to the conscious.”

Being careful not to get in reach of his fingers, Kathy carefully undid the strap around his left wrist.  He rotated it a few times, most likely to get the feeling back into it, but he didn’t make any move to grab her.  She carefully slid her pen into his hand and held up the clipboard so that he could draw on the paper.  When he was finished, she retrieved the pen and looked carefully at the symbols.

“Tell me the rest of the dream,” she instructed.

“There isn’t much more to tell,” Mayweather said.  “I look at the machine for a while, and then I wake up.  But here’s the thing.  When I wake up, I know exactly how the Stygian Machine should be built.  I know exactly where every bolt should be and exactly how tight it should be tightened.  I know that I can build it and get it working.”

Playing on a hunch, she stated, “So you built it.”

His eyes narrowed as his head nodded ever so slightly.  “I built it.  God help me, I built it.”

“And you used it.”

Before he could reply, there was another yell from outside the room.  This one only lasted for a second before it cut off in an odd gurgling noise.  He opened his mouth but Kathy was already continuing on.

“You built the Stygian Machine and you used it,” she said.  “You got the plans for it in your dream and, not knowing exactly what it did or what the symbols meant, you built it and flipped it on.  Does that pretty much sum it up?”

“It wasn’t that simple,” Mayweather countered with sudden anger.  “The machine took me years to build.  Everything had to be exact.  Every single night after my son went to bed I’d go down into the basement and work on the blasted thing.  I had to custom make most of the parts.  It cost me nearly every penny that I had.  And do you think that I liked killing those people?”

The words were barely out of his mouth when his eyes opened wide in shock.  He stammered incoherently as he shook his head slowly.

“Why did I say that?” he asked in a confused voice.

“Who did you kill?” Kathy countered.

“Nobody.  Just some hitchhikers I picked up on the highway.”  The answer was automatic, and he didn’t seem to have any control over it.  “What the-”

“Why did you kill them?”

“I had to.  The machine runs on human flesh and blood.  Please stop, I can’t-”

“How many people did you kill?”

“Eleven, maybe twelve.  I lost count.  What did you do to me?”

Kathy set the clipboard down on the chair and reached up behind her head with one hand.  Using two fingers she took out the band holding her hair up, allowing it to fall down onto her shoulders.  She brushed it away from her eyes before looking back at Mayweather.

“Sodium thiopental,” she told him.  “I filled the syringe with medication from two bottles, remember?  The first was a tranquilizer, like I said.  The other was sodium thiopental.  We use it mainly as a general anesthetic, but at the right dosage it can make a person very compliant when answering questions.  You might have heard it referred to as truth serum.”

Mayweather stared at her uncomprehendingly.

“You built the Stygian Machine,” she continued.  “You carved the symbols into the metal.  You fed it victim after victim to give it the strength to work.  The whole time you thought it was just some… how did you put it?  You thought it was just some contraption.  Never once did you realize that you had created something alive.  Made of metal and oil, yes, but alive nonetheless.”

She leaned in close to him.

“And then a miracle happened, right?  The machine actually worked.  It shredded time and space to create a gate between this world and… somewhere.  Only it wasn’t your wife that came through.  It was something else.”

Tears were streaming down Mayweather’s face.  He was on the verge of breaking down entirely.  It was a bit surprising that he managed to choke out words around the sobs.

“It… it came through and…”  He sniffed loudly.  “I thought Philip was in bed.  He…  must have heard the noise from the machine, and he was at the bottom of the basement stairs watching, and the thing went into him…”

There was a hard thump against the door.  It was quickly followed by a second, and then a third.  When the fourth one came a thick red liquid sprayed against the small window that allowed hospital staff to look into the rooms from the hallway.  It ran down the glass in wide streaks.

Kathy shook her head in a mixture of annoyance and amusement.

“I can’t believe you’re the one that did this,” she said.  “Then again, maybe I can.  You’re the perfect puppet, aren’t you?  An idiot that’s easily manipulated.  You didn’t even think that much about what you were doing.  You just followed an empty promise.  You brought a god into this world without even realizing it.  Then you, what, tried to kill it?  As if you could.”

She absently smoothed a wrinkle out of her lab coat.  “You asked me if I had any experience with recurring dreams, and I told you that I did.  You see, Charles, I have one myself.  There’s a great darkness surrounding me, and a thunderous voice proclaims that I will be the first to greet the bringer of the world’s end.  When this voice speaks, you believe it.  Now that day has finally come, and in a way that I never could have imagined.”

Kathy reached out and opened the door leading to the hallway.  Standing just on the other side of it was an eight year old boy.  He was wearing plaid pajamas; they were soaked in blood, and flecks of skin and gore were stuck to it and tangled throughout his light brown hair.  In the hallway behind him body parts were strewn across the floor and blood was splattered across every surface.

The boy took a step forward.  There were small protrusions coming from underneath his eyes, thin translucent tendrils that moved across the surface of his eyeballs.  He opened his mouth, and four tentacle-like appendages emerged.  Saliva dripped from them as they curled and writhed.

“Charles Mayweather,” Kathy said with a twisted grin on her face, “please allow me to introduce you to the son of your blood, your labor, and your sin.  He is Ancient Erra, Akkadian God of Violence and Plague, and the end of all things.”

The boy came into the room, and she slowly closed the door behind him.

Mayweather screamed.

As I grip my ticket and stare up at the outside of the Atlantean Tribute, I start to realize just how much I’ve needed this vacation.

It’s been, what, almost four years since I last took some time for myself?  Maybe five?  The past few years all kind of blend together.  To say that things in my professional life have been hectic is a massive understatement.  When I first took the job, I had thought that moving to a smaller media company in a smaller market would mean that I would have more free time than I had back in Chicago.  That turned out to be completely wrong, as I had quickly found myself having to handle multiple roles simultaneously.  I was and still am up for that challenge, but there’s no question that I need to recharge my batteries.  I’m just so damn weary.

I have to remember to thank my assistant when I get back to Wyoming.  When I had been racking my brain for a place to take my well-deserved vacation, she had been the one to suggest a cruise.  She had pointed out that it would take me completely away from work, and outside of a couple of stops I wouldn’t even be able to be reached by cellphone.  I nod up at the ship.  Being completely disconnected sounds like just what the doctor ordered.

The smile slips a bit.  Quite literally ordered, actually.  My stress and blood pressure levels were partly responsible for me taking a vacation at all.  They weren’t at dangerous levels, not yet anyway, but they were certainly on the right track.  I need to kick back and relax, making sure that work is the last thing on my mind.  Maybe that will help with the dreams.

I almost didn’t make it here in time.  My connecting flight in Georgia was delayed, which in turn made me late getting into Florida.  Luckily the cab driver I had managed to find didn’t seem to pay much attention to things such as posted speed limits, and he had gotten me to the dock in what had to be record time.  Sure, it had meant that my life had flashed before my eyes a few dozen times during the ride, but I can’t argue with the results.

I hand over my ticket to a smiling man in a small booth, and he exchanges it for a room key and an ID card on a lanyard before waving me over towards a large x-ray machine.  I give my bags, a duffel bag with my clothes and a leather case with my laptop, over to a security guard to check while I pass through the machine.  Everyone involved is extremely pleasant, and I can’t help but note the difference between this and the miserable checkpoints I had gone through at the various airports.

Once the guards are convinced that I’m not carrying a thermonuclear warhead, I join the line of people walking up the ramp leading into the ship.   I’m strangely pleased to see that I’m not the only one that looks like he needs a vacation.  There are a few people in the line that appear to be in even more desperate need of one than I am.

Now that I’m closer, the Atlantean Tribute is even more impressive.  At nearly 1100 feet long, its sixteen decks rise high above me and cast a long shadow over the dock.  In pictures and even from a distance the ship had looked pleasant and inviting.  Staring up at it from this close, however, it feels a bit intimidating.

I reach the top of the ramp and head inside.  Blinking to help my eyes adjust to the dimmer light, I take a look around and have to admit that I’m impressed.  Everything is decorated in an almost Victorian style.  The walls and floor are adorned with dark wood, and gold-colored chandeliers hang from the ceiling.  Plush ornate sitting room furniture is off to one side, and at the end of the long carpet I’m standing on is a reception desk.

Behind the counter is a beautiful woman with the reddest hair that I’ve ever seen.  It hangs over her shoulders, framing her pale freckled face.  She’s wearing an expensive-looking all-black suit.  She smiles at me as I approach the desk.

The registration process is fairly painless.  I’m given a cardkey to the cabin that I’ve reserved, and the woman hands me a brochure that discusses all the perks that I receive at the level of travel package I’ve purchased.  While I didn’t go with the highest level, as the pricing for that was astronomical, I didn’t skimp out on my package, either.

It takes me a minute to fish out the medical documents that the cruise line requires at check-in.  Since we’ll be traveling to a number of areas with little to no cell reception, records are needed for the ship’s medical staff in the event of an emergency.  I eventually manage to produce the slightly crumpled documentation, and the woman takes them from me and places them into a locked drawer so that they can be transported to the medical office later.

I’m finally past all of the setup process, and I find myself free to roam my home for the next two weeks.

My first stop is my cabin.  There’s no point in carrying my luggage around, after all, and besides, I’m still dressed in my colder climate clothes and I’m starting to sweat.  Near the reception area is an elevator, and I take it to the sixth deck where my room is located.  Even the elevator and hallways are done in the same Victorian decor; I’m not much of an architecture guy, but even I have to admit that the inside of the ship is quite beautiful.  It was obviously designed by someone with taste.

My cabin is cozy, but not small.  I unpack my bags and get changed into khaki shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, and leather sandals.  Once I’m finished dressing, I push open the curtains and look out the window.  I’m on the side of the ship facing away from the dock, so all that I see is the clear sky and blue water.

Now that all the prep work is done, I’m not sure what to do with myself.  What does one actually do on a vacation?  It’s been so long that it’s hard to remember.

The answer comes to me quickly.  After hours of flights and cab rides, the obvious place to start is with a stiff drink.

Taking out the pamphlet I was given at the reception desk, I open it up and examine the map of the ship on one side.  I’m amused but not too surprised to find that there are quite a few bars and lounges onboard.  There’s actually one nearby on the same deck as my cabin.  Taking one last look around the room to make sure that I’m not forgetting anything, I begin to return to the hallway.

My hand is on the door handle when I feel a heaviness in the air.  I hear the shuffling of feet behind me and the whispering of a voice in my ear.  I close my eyes.  I should have expected this.  People die on cruise ships more often than most people think.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath.  This is fine, I tell myself.  It doesn’t feel like it’s specifically focused in my cabin.  More than likely it’s just generalized on the ship itself.  I open my eyes again and continue into the hallway.

I’m not a heavy drinker.  It’s not because I have a history with alcohol or some moral objection to it.  I don’t drink much because I’m not a fan of how most alcoholic beverages taste, and I prefer to drink for taste.  Every so often, though, there’s a moment that calls for something harder than a soft drink or coffee.  When those times rear their ugly heads, I tend to go with a White Russian as my beverage choice.  What can I say, I saw The Big Lebowski years ago and the Dude still abides.

The bartender keeps up a friendly banter as he expertly prepares my drink.  When he’s finished, he places a napkin on the bar before carefully setting the glass on top of it.  He then asks if I wanted to drink it there or take it with me to the observation deck to watch the ship set sail.

I’m not sure why, but I hadn’t even considered that.  I tip the bartender and make my way up to the deck that he indicated.  There are well over a hundred people there when I arrive, but there’s still plenty of room for me to find a spot at the railing.  I barely swallow the first sip of my drink when the ship’s horn sounds and the vessel begins to move.

Down below on the dock, people are waving up at family and loved ones onboard.  There’s no one down there wishing me well, of course, but it’s still an oddly moving sight.  I’m reminded of old film reels depicting soldiers being shipped off to war.

I spend the rest of the day slowly exploring the cruise liner.  I know that at some point I’m going to have to actually start enjoying my vacation, but I want to get a sense of my surroundings before doing that.  Well, not so much want to as need to.  I’ll readily admit that I’m not the type of person that finds it easy to relax, especially in a new location or situation.

I find myself on one of the observation decks as the sun is setting over the ocean.  It’s truly magnificent.  I’ve obviously seen the sunset before, but there’s something different about it out on the water.  It’s like it’s sinking below the waves and off the edge of the Earth.  I stare out at the horizon until the last of the deep purple is gone from the sky and the stars begin to come out.

After eating dinner in a seafood restaurant, I decide to head to bed early.  That might seem like a strange way to start a vacation, but in my line of work getting a long uninterrupted night’s sleep is the ultimate luxury.  Just the thought of it makes me smile.

I go back to my cabin and get ready for bed.  It’s a bit warm in the room, so I turn on the air conditioner underneath the window.  Or rather I try to.  I turn the knob and try to adjust the settings, but nothing happens.  I frown.  It probably says something about my personality that I somehow expected something to go wrong.

There’s no way that I’ll ever be mistaken as a handyman.  My understanding of machines, even basic ones, is rudimentary, and that’s being kind.  Knowing this, I still lean forward to take a closer look at the air conditioner.  I can’t fix it.  I’m very much aware that I can’t do anything to make it run like it’s supposed to.  Yet here I am, leaning forward and examining it anyway.

I notice a small object sticking out of the side of the small control panel.  Curious, I reach out and pull it free.  It’s a small piece of folded paper.  Not really sure what to think, I unfold it and find that there’s writing inside.

They only come if the air is on.

I turn the paper over, but there’s nothing written on the other side.  I read it a second time to make sure that I understand it correctly, and then a third time.  For some reason I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.  It was such a random statement on such a random piece of paper.

There’s a knock at the door.  I’m so focused on the note that the sudden noise makes me jump.  I close my eyes and allow my heart rate to return to normal before going over to the door and opening it.

On the other side is a member of the ship staff.  He’s a large man dressed in a white shirt and pants, and he’s holding a large black case in his right hand.  He smiles at me pleasantly and tells me that he’s here to fix my room’s air conditioner.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have found that strange.  There could have easily been a work order put in for repairing the unit before I had been assigned the room, and those repairs could have simply have been delayed until after the ship set sail for any number of reasons.  Because of the presence of the note, however, I’m immediately suspicious of the timing of the man’s arrival.

Besides, there’s something… off about him.  I can’t describe it better than that.  Years of being a reporter has developed whatever mental muscle controls my bullshit detector.  There’s something in the man’s demeanor, or maybe in the expression on his face, that makes me think that this appearance doesn’t have anything to do with ensuring that I have a nice cool breeze while I sleep.

Still, I don’t know that anything is wrong for sure, and even if there is I don’t know what it is.  I smile at the man and step out of the way so that he can enter the cabin.

The man comes in and informs me that, due to company policy, I’ll need to leave the cabin while he works.  Making sure to keep an innocent expression on my face, I tell him that’s not a problem before almost absently asking him why that policy is in place.  He explains that it is for a number of reasons, such as possible dust that needs cleaned out and just in case there’s a leak that needs plugged.

Those are valid reasons, of course.  The way he gives them to me only increases my level of warniness, though.  Again, I can’t quite place my finger on why that is.

I decide that the best course of action is to just go along with things instead of questioning the repair man further.  With a smile, I tell him that I’ll leave him to his work and collect my keycard and lanyard before opening the door and stepping out into the hallway.

Just before the door closes entirely, I stick out the tip of my foot and stop it from latching.  I look up and down the hallway to make sure that it’s empty before silently counting to twenty and pushing it back open enough to see into the cabin with one eye.

The man has his case open, and as I watch he extracts a number of perfectly normal tools out of it.  Once he has them laid out, he uses a screwdriver to remove the front of the air conditioning unit and peers inside.  I begin to doubt myself.  Nothing about what I’m seeing is out of the ordinary.

With a shake of his head, he reaches back into the case and takes out a rectangular black box and places it gently onto the carpeted floor.  He then extracts a gas mask from the case and puts it on, tightening the straps to make sure that it’s airtight.

Score one for my instincts.

I can’t see what he takes out of the box.  His body blocks it as he lifts it out and does something with it inside the air conditioner.  When he finishes, he closes the box without putting anything back into it.  Whatever it is, it’s still inside the unit.

The man seems to be finishing up his task now.  Closing the door as quietly as I can, I hurry down the hallway and into an alcove containing vending machines and a silver ice machine.  I listen intently until I hear footsteps approaching.  Taking my wallet out of my pocket, I slide out a credit card and swipe it through the reader on one of the machines before pressing a button for a soda.  

The can drops out through the slot a moment before the repairman passes by the alcove.  He notices me retrieving the soda and informs me with a smile that the repair is all finished.  Telling me to have a good night, he continues on.  I count to twenty before heading back to my room.

I hesitate with my keycard in my hand.  Maybe I’m being ridiculous.  Like I reflected a bit earlier that evening, I know basically nothing about repairing appliances and home equipment.  Maybe what I had witnessed was perfectly normal.

There’s only one way to find out.  I open the door and go into the cabin.

Making sure that the door is locked behind me and the chain is latched, I slowly approach the air conditioner.  I feel more and more apprehensive as I get closer.  Closing my eyes for a moment, I force myself to calm down.  It’s a damn air conditioner.  Whatever’s going on, I don’t have to treat it like it’s a live cobra.

I kneel down next to the machine and look it over.  I’ll need to remove the front panel, but it’s not like I have a set of tools on me.  I locate the silver screws and smile.  Luckily they’re flat head screws.

I learned a trick a long time ago from my father.  Opening the soda can, I break off the tab and slowly push it into the gap on the first screw.  My luck continues to hold, as it’s just about a perfect fit.  A bit larger or smaller and this wouldn’t work.  Being careful not to put too much pressure on the tab, I slowly turn it.  The screw rotates with it, and within seconds I’ve got it removed.  I move onto the others and have the panel unscrewed in under a minute.

I remove the panel and stare into the unit.  It’s not hard to find what the repairman had placed inside.  There’s a plastic cylinder attached to some wiring and tubing.  It’s not transparent, but it’s thin enough that I can see some sort of fluid inside.

I use my very limited mechanical knowledge to try to piece together what I’m looking at.  The cylinder connects into the bottom of the unit’s fan, and there’s what looks like a small tube or nozzle that comes out of the top center of that fan.  From what I can tell, the liquid is injected through the nozzle, and the spinning blades pump it out into the cabin.

There’s something else attached to the bottom of the cylinder.  I have to almost lay down on the floor to get a good look at it.  I’m more familiar with this part.  It’s a wireless transmitter.

I sit back up and stare at the inside of the air conditioner.  So when the unit is turned on, the liquid is dispersed into the room.  The transmitter then, what, notifies someone that it’s been activated?  I remember the words on the note.  They only come if the air is on.

Something is very, very wrong here.  The smart thing to do is to get as far away from here as I can.

I’m already reaching for my bags when I remember that I’m on a cruise ship in the ocean.  There’s nowhere for me to go.

Not yet, anyway.  According to the itinerary, the ship will be docking at the first of the islands tomorrow.  I can get off there and hire a boat or plane to get me back to the States.

A quiet thump makes me jump.  It came from the other side of the wall to my right.  After a moment’s hesitation, I go over to it and place my ear up against it.  There are some muted sounds that I can barely make out, but they’re too distorted for me to place.

I suddenly realize that I’m least safe when I’m in my cabin.  It’s a small private space, and me not turning on the air conditioner when it’s this warm and the unit was just serviced might raise some red flags with whoever was monitoring.

Luckily, the cruise ship offers a wide variety of activities around the clock.  As much as I don’t feel like participating in fun and games at the moment, it gives anyone that might be keeping track of me an excuse as to why I’m not in my room.

Being careful not to disturb anything inside the unit, I put the front cover back on the air conditioner and return the screws to their places.  Once I’m finished, I take a moment to compose myself before leaving the cabin.

As I pass the room next to mine, I hear more of the thumping noise coming from behind the door.  I hesitate.  This could be an opportunity to get more information about what’s happening, and the more I know, the greater the odds that this is something that I get through unscathed.  On the other hand, I might just be hearing the audio results of a particularly vigorous sexual encounter.

I hear the ding of the nearby elevator arriving a bit further down the hallway.  That same internal voice that had served me well a bit earlier with the repairman is now telling me that I need to hide.  I return to the alcove with the vending machines and wait.

After a few moments, the red-haired woman that checked me in when I first arrived on the ship walks by.  She’s pushing a black cart with a black sheet covering it.  I wait until she’s past the alcove before leaning out into the hallway to watch her.  She arrives at the cabin next to mine and produces a keycard from inside her suit coat.  Swiping it, she opens the door and pushes the cart inside before closing it behind her.

There’s nothing to do but wait.  I try to look as inconspicuous as possible in case someone else enters the corridor, but no one does.  I feel extremely exposed.  I’m just about to give up my vigil when the door opens again and the woman pushes the cart back into the hallway.

The edge of the sheet catches in the door as it swings shut.  It pulls away from the bottom of the cart, and the woman has to stop to pull it free and readjust it.  Before she can get it back into place, I see the clear plastic bags containing blood neatly arranged on a silver shelf.

The red-haired woman finishes adjusting the sheet and comes towards my hiding spot.  I duck back into the alcove and press myself up against the widest side of the doorway wall.  A few moments later I hear her go past me and back towards the elevator.  I continued to be as quiet as possible until I hear the elevator chime as the car arrives.

I count to ten before going back into the now-empty hallway and hurrying towards the elevator.  This isn’t because of some plan that I had come up with.  Truth be told, I didn’t know that I was going to do this until I started to.  It’s those reporter instincts kicking in again.

I stop in front of the elevator and watch the floor indicator above it.  I had noticed earlier that it displayed the floor the car was on.  I wait patiently as the number slowly drops.  Finally, it stops on LD4.  It takes me a few seconds to translate that as Lower Deck 4.

I feel a sense of relief.  Those decks are off-limits to guests.  That means that it doesn’t affect my plans to get through the night.

I feel a presence further down the hallway.  I stare at the elevator for a moment longer before turning towards it.  I’ve learned over the years that it’s worse to ignore them than to acknowledge them.

Standing a dozen yards away from me is a young girl of maybe ten or eleven.  Her brown hair is tied back in a ponytail, and she’s wearing pink pajamas.  Like most of the other spirits I’ve encountered throughout my life, there’s something… off about her.  It’s like a small amount of color has been drained out of her.

She stares up at me for a pair of heartbeats before she points at the elevator.

The message she’s sending me is clear.

I shake my head firmly.  I tell her that I’m sorry, but whatever is happening here isn’t my business.  More than that, it’s obviously dangerous and it doesn’t make sense for me to take unnecessary risks when I can be off the ship and on my way back to safety in the morning.

Her hand slowly lowers back down to her side as she listens to me.  By the time that I’m done talking, she’s looking down at the floor.  If this was some bad horror movie she would do something scary, maybe lunge towards me with a terrifying look on her face, but that isn’t how things work.  Spirits are the lingering souls of people, people with their own personalities and reactions to situations.  The girl is reacting with sadness and disappointment.

Somehow this is far worse than if she had done the evil spirit lunging thing.

She looks back up at me and reaches up to move her ponytail to one side.  She then turns around so that I can see the back of her neck.  Despite myself, I move closer to get a better look.  There’s a small round mark just below her hairline, with a trickle of blood running out of it.  I immediately think of the plastic bags on the red-haired woman’s cart.

Some things click into place.  The liquid inside the air conditioner must be some sort of anesthetic.  The fan turns on, the chemical gets sprayed into the air and knocks out whoever happens to be in the cabin, and the ship staff comes to drain blood from the unconscious passengers.

I squint as I look at the spirit.  I’m guessing that any deaths were unintentional, or that there were specific reasons behind them.  When I had looked into the cruise ship I had learned that it had been operating for years.  Unexplained deaths and disappearances would have made that impossible.  It was more likely that the crew was only taking a small amount of blood at a time so that it wasn’t noticeable to the passengers that were being harvested.

Usually.  The spirit girl turns back towards me.  Something had obviously gone wrong in her case.  She stares at me as she silently pleads with me.

I sigh in defeat, knowing that I’m going to do something incredibly stupid.  Innocent people are dying, and many others are being violated.  I can’t get off the ship in the morning without having some evidence to present to the authorities so that they can put a stop to this.

The girl comes over to me and places her hand on mine with a smile.  An electric charge goes through my fingers as she makes contact.  I return the smile a bit unsteadily and nod once.  Seemingly satisfied, she vanishes.

I return my attention to the elevator.  I’m not going to get very far unless I do things the smart way.  Using the elevator would draw too much attention, not just from the noise of it moving and arriving on a floor but also from the arrows and floor indicator above the doors.  I’m going to need to take the stairs.

They’re located a bit further down the hall.  As I move quickly but carefully across the carpeted floor, I notice just how quiet these sleeping quarters are.  It’s not that late in the evening.  There should be some noise, some sign of people moving around inside their cabins or going from place to place.  Instead, there’s nothing.

I wonder how many people are passed out in their cabins as a result of being unwittingly gassed by their air conditioners.  It’s a warm night, even with the breeze coming in over the waves.  I wouldn’t be surprised if most people had sought the comfort of their rooms’ air conditioners at this point.

The stairwell isn’t very wide, and it’s only lit by a single white bulb at each of the landings.  I place my hand on the railing and slowly make my way down.  It’s more difficult than I would have thought.  The movement of the ship is far more noticeable here, and my stomach starts to churn as everything sways back and forth.  I grit my teeth and unsuccessfully try to ignore the nausea.

Each time I reach a landing, I look over the edge of the railing and peer down to make sure that I’m still alone in the stairwell.  Doing so only serves to strengthen the swirling sensation in my stomach, but it’s worth it to ensure that I’m not walking headfirst into something that I can’t handle.  The stairwell remains clear until I reach the door marked Lower Deck 4.

There’s a keycard reader next to the door.  I should have expected there to be security measures on the lower decks where passengers weren’t supposed to be.  I can’t get inside.

The lightbulb overhead flickers for a brief moment, and the red light on the card reader goes dark.

Furrowing my brow, I reach out and pull on the handle.  The door swings open easily.  I open it about halfway before looking inside.  The hallway beyond is dim, but I’m still able to see the girl’s spirit just before it disappears.  It appears that I’m not as alone as I thought.

The hallway goes past several pieces of large machinery that I don’t recognize.  All of them make a nearly deafening level of noise as they work, sending all manner of shrieks, hums, and squeals echoing off of the metal walls.  The good news is that there’s no way anyone would hear me coming.  The bad news was that it was impossible for me to hear anything as well.

At the end of the hallway is another door.  I open it slowly and pass through into a much quieter corridor.  It’s also decorated like the rest of the ship rather than being bare metal like the hall I had just come through.  Each side is lined with wooden doors, and at the end is a double set with circular windows in the top center of each.

I press my ear up against the first door on the left and listen.  It’s difficult to hear anything through the thick wood, but I’m pretty sure that there’s no one in the room beyond it.  I turn the knob and open it just enough to peek inside.  Verifying that I’m alone, I quickly go into the room and close the door behind me.

It takes me a moment to comprehend what I’m seeing.  I’m looking at a room containing dozens of tall dialysis machines.  A long series of the plastic bags I had seen the red-haired woman with are hooked into one end of each machine, and at the other is a heavy case.  Each machine is marked with a different blood type.  From what I can tell, it seems like the blood from the ship passengers is being processed and cleaned, then put into a long term storage container.  What the fuck is going on here?  Have I stumbled onto some sort kind of black market blood operation?

I take my cellphone out of my pocket.  Since the ship doesn’t have wifi and there’s no signal this far out to sea, I had assumed that I wouldn’t have any need of it while I was on vacation.  Now here I am, using it to take pictures of one of the strangest and most disgusting things I’ve ever seen.

I check the other rooms on the sides of the hallway.  All of them on the left are filled with the dialysis machines, while the rooms on the right are stacked to the ceiling with the storage containers.  Putting aside the absolute wrongness of it all, this is quite the sophisticated and organized operation.

Finally, all that I have left are the double doors at the end of the hallway.  I crouch down as I approach them, making sure to stay low enough that I can’t be seen through the circular windows.  When I reach them, I stand up again, but I do so in a way that my body is off to one side of the left door.  I take a few deep breaths to gather my courage before leaning forward to peer through the window.

I quickly pull back away from it.  Inside the room are half a dozen people sitting at a table.  Being careful to expose as little of my head as possible, I lean forward again, this time only enough to see through the window with one eye.

I’m looking at a dining room.  Seven people are seated at it, chatting amongst themselves in a casual manner.  At the head of the table is a man that I recognize as the ship’s captain.  The only other person that I’m familiar with is the red-haired woman.  She’s sitting slightly apart from the others and isn’t speaking with them.

As I watch, she reaches out with one hand to pick up the crystal glass in front of her.  It’s filled halfway with a thick red liquid.  She holds it up to her lips for a moment before taking a sip of the blood.  Nodding in satisfaction, she places the glass back onto the table.

I was already afraid, but now I’m starting to feel panic creeping in.  I pull back from the window and force myself to calm down.  Losing control now will all but guarantee that I’ll be caught and made to disappear.

Once again taking out my cellphone, I carefully take a few pictures through the window.  I’m not sure how well they’ll come out, but there’s no way that I’m going to take the time to make sure that they’re perfect.  I need to get out of here before anyone realizes that I’ve been here.

While I don’t run back down the hallway, I move fast enough that I might as well be.  I go back through the machinery room and into the stairwell.  Taking the steps two at a time, I hurry back up the floors.  After just a brief moment of thought I continue past the deck that my cabin is located on.  I need to get to somewhere more public.  That’s where I’ll be the safest until the ship docks.

I reach the level with the outdoor pool and practically throw myself through the door.  This deck is almost completely outdoors, and the salty smell of the ocean fills my nostrils.  There’s plenty of activity here, with the pool still filled with swimmers and the nearby bar bustling with customers.  On the far side of the deck is a stage with a band playing on it, and a large group of people are dancing to the music nearby.  I sigh in relief.  Even though it was absurd, a part of me had been convinced that I was going to find myself alone up here.

For the next hour or so I hang around the bar area, making sure that I’m close enough to other people to blend in.  I strike up a brief conversation with the bartender and am happy to hear that the first night of every voyage always has people that party the entire night.  I won’t seem out of place at all when I don’t return to my cabin.

I’m beginning to get a bit of a headache.  With the adrenaline wearing off my body is protesting what I’ve put it through.  I wander along the deck and past the pool as I seek a somewhat private but still public enough spot to let myself rest a bit.

Finding such a spot near the front of the ship, I lean up against the white railing and breathe the night air in and out.  The headache eventually relents, and by the time that I turn away from the water it’s no longer bothering me.

I freeze, one hand still on the railing.  Standing near the bar, her hands in the pockets of her black pants, is the red-haired woman.  She’s staring at me with her face expressionless, her hair blowing to one side in the wind.

She knows.  I have no idea how, but she knows.

There’s an odd blur, and the woman is no longer standing by the bar.  Instead, she’s now just a few feet away from me, her hands still in her pockets.  She’s moved so fast that my eyes couldn’t follow her and no one else on the deck seems to have noticed it.

She doesn’t say anything.  This part of the deck is fairly dark, and she’s shrouded in shadows.  We look at each other in silence.

There is a single pinprick of pale light in each of her eyes.  They’re like lonely stars in a completely black night sky.  The sight of them makes me shiver despite the warm evening.  I have no doubt that the woman standing in front of me isn’t human.

The drinking of blood.  The inhuman speed.  The lifeless eyes.  Only one word comes to mind, an impossible one that until now I thought only belonged in scary stories and countless movies.

Vampire.

There’s no doubt in my mind.  This woman could kill me on a whim.  I won’t be able to stop her.  Hell, I won’t even know she’s doing it.  It will be over before I’m even aware that things have started.

The pinpricks of light shift slightly as she looks off to my left.  I don’t have to turn around to know that the spirit of the young girl is now next to me.  I probably shouldn’t be, but I’m surprised that the vampire can see her.  I’ve met other people over the years that can see the dead, of course.  It’s just incredibly rare.  I wonder if the gift is specific to this individual woman or if it’s a trait that all vampires share.

For a long while the three of us just stand there.  Despite the situation, I start to feel that I’m the third wheel in our little group.  There’s something going on between the spirit and the vampire that I don’t understand.

Suddenly I’m airborne.  It all happens so fast that I can’t mentally process exactly what’s happening to me, but I clearly feel my feet leave the floor and a burst of wind flow over my body.  I land hard on the deck below, the wind whooshing out of my lungs.  The fall hurts.  It should have been much worse.  Between the height and the speed that I was thrown at, I should be dead.

I force myself up onto my elbows as I attempt to suck air back into my lungs.  It’s much darker on this deck, and very few lights are on.  it doesn’t look like this deck is used after dark.

Surrounding me are a number of spirits.  Men, women, and children are all represented, and judging by their modern clothes they’ve all died within the past twenty years or so.  They’re all looking down at me, some with solemn expressions and others with smiles on their faces.  I have them to thank for surviving my unexpected fall.

I look back up at the pool deck.  While I can’t actually see them, I know that those strange eyes of the red-haired woman are looking down at me.  The presence of the young girl’s spirit had stopped her for a brief moment.  I can only hope that the presence of so many others now will at least make her more cautious.  It’s the only thing even resembling an advantage that I have.

I make it back to my feet and, not knowing what else to do, hurry over to one of the doors leading back inside the ship.  The only thing that I can think of is to find a place to hide until the ship docks.  That’s assuming that the ship does dock when it’s scheduled to, of course.  There’s always the possibility that the red-haired woman has the captain stay out at sea until I’m found.  Hopefully they either won’t think of that or they’ll dismiss it due to the possibility of raising the suspicions of the other passengers.

Going inside, I find that I’m on the deck with the ship’s gym and workout facilities.  The only lights are the red Exit signs above the various doorways.  Outside of those small pools of illumination, the entire area is dark.

I have to move much slower than I’d like to avoid tripping over the various pieces of exercise equipment.  I’d love to have more light to work with, but flipping one of the switches along the wall would be announcing my exact location to my pursuer.  Or pursuers.  That thought makes me come to a stop.  The entire group that I had seen drinking blood in the lower deck dining room could be on their way towards me at this very moment.  Maybe even more.  Who knows how many vampires are on this damn ship?

My right foot bumps hard into a small dumbell sticking out from underneath a weight bench.  I barely manage to stop myself from swearing as pain blossoms from my toes.  Nothing is broken, but it still hurts like hell.

I’m about halfway through the room when the door on the far side opens.  I duck behind an exercise bike just before a figure appears in the opening, the light from the hallway framing it.  I peer out through the gaps in the machine.  The person turns to one side slightly and the light hits them just right for me to see that it’s one of the men that had been seated in the dining room.

There’s something different about this man.  He doesn’t move with the same fluid motions as the red-haired woman, and even from this distance I can tell that there aren’t those same white points of light in his eyes.  He also doesn’t seem to see any better in the dark than I do, as the first thing he does is start to turn on the lights.

I’m not concealed very well, and it doesn’t look like there are any good places to hide.  As soon as he has the lights on in my part of the room, I’ll be exposed.

I wait until he’s moved towards the switches further down the wall before standing up.  As I do so, I pick up a weight like the one I tripped over moments earlier.  Before the man can turn around, I rush forward with the weight raised.  He hears me approaching and begins to turn around, but before he can do so I’m on top of him and swinging the weight.  It connects with the side of his head and he immediately collapses to the floor.

Whoever this man is, it’s obvious that he’s not a vampire.  I pull my cellphone out of my pocket and quickly look through the pictures I took on Lower Deck 4.  They aren’t the best quality, but they’re clear enough for me to see that only the red-haired woman has a glass filled with blood.  The other people present are eating normal food and are drinking either water or alcohol.

I can’t be sure, but that seems to imply that only the red-haired woman is a vampire.

That’s a very good thing if true.  The problem is that I don’t have any way to verify it.  Besides, they probably want to kill me just as badly as the vampire does.  I need to keep my head on a swivel.

The man at my feet is barely moving, and those movements are just small twitches.  Blood is running from the wound in his head where I struck him with the weight.  I’ve never been a violent person.  I’ve never even been in a fight, not a real one, anyway.  I’m almost sickened by how easy it was to assault this man, even if he was trying to kill me.

I notice something lying next to him.  Leaning down, I find that it’s his cellphone.  I pick it up and look at the screen.  It’s a map of the deck that I’m on, zoomed in to show the room that I’m currently in.  There’s a small dot with my name right where I’m standing.

I swear violently.  I’m being tracked.  It’s not even hard to figure out how.  I reach into my pocket and take out the keycard to my cabin.  I toss it across the room and watch as the dot on the cellphone screen moves along with it.  Dammit.  It’s very likely that I’m about to have a lot of unwanted company.

I feel the air stir just before the lights the man had turned on click off one by one.  It’s happening faster than I can react, faster than I can even begin to form thoughts about what’s going on.  Before I can even turn towards the first of the extinguished lights, she’s standing in the now-dark room directly in front of me.  It’s too dim to make out details, but the already familiar silhouette of the red-haired woman now stands between me and the doorway.

She briefly glances over her shoulder at the man lying unconscious on the floor.  If she’s angry about me having knocked him out, she isn’t showing it.  She returns her attention to me and simply stares at me for what feels like hours but is probably only minutes.  I have the distinct impression that she’s looking for something in particular.

Whatever it is that she’s looking for, she apparently doesn’t find it.  She takes a slow, deliberate step forward.  I’ve seen how fast she can move.  The only reason for her to be approaching like this is because she is taunting me.  She’s enjoying this little game.  I want to be defiant and show that I’m not scared, but of course I’m afraid of her.  I take a step backwards.

The red-haired woman raises her right hand.  She’s holding a cellphone.  No, I correct myself as she slowly turns it with her fingers.  She’s holding my cellphone.  As I watch, she clenches her hand closed and the phone shatters into a useless pile of plastic, metal, and glass.  She opens her hand and allows the remains to fall to the floor.

The message is clear.  No evidence.  No lifeline.  Nothing but broken pieces.

I desperately look around for something, anything that might help me to escape.  I can see the spirits watching me from the outside through the windows.  Either they can’t interfere, or they’re choosing not to.  I’m on my own.

Or maybe not.  The spirit of the young girl appears behind the vampire.  The red-haired woman must sense her presence, because she turns around to look at the apparition.  They stare at each other silently as the seconds tick by.  Once again, I feel like I’m almost an afterthought for both of them.

This might be my only shot.  Hoping that their strange staring contest continues, I make a run for the open door.  The thought of being trapped in the narrow hallways with the vampire isn’t a pleasant one, but it’s better than sticking around until she decides to murder me.  I’m amazed when I’m allowed to make it to the door, and even more amazed when I’m able to close it behind me and make a mad dash down the corridor.

I pick random side hallways to continue down.  It doesn’t matter which ones that I choose.  I don’t know what’s down any of them, and all that I care about is putting as much distance between me and the vampire as I possibly can.  I reach a set of stairs leading down and descend them as quickly as I can without risking a fall.  Spraining an ankle now would be a death sentence.

The stairs go down much further than I expected them to.  There aren’t any doors or landings as they spiral downward into the ship.  When I finally reach the bottom, a sign informs me that I’m on Lower Deck 2.  With the way the floor numbers work on the Atlantean Tribute, that means that I’m only one floor up from the very bottom.

This isn’t where I want to be, but at the same time going back up the stairs and just hoping that the red-haired woman isn’t waiting for me isn’t a very appealing option.  I pass through the metal doorway and walk slowly down the hallway.

Now that I’m no longer being tracked digitally, my best course of action is probably to hide and wait until morning.  The schedule I had seen when I had first arrived on the ship had said that it would dock at the island early, sometime around 5am.  I check my watch.  That’s still a few hours away.

I go to the first door on my left and open it.  Making sure that both the room beyond and the hallway are empty, I slip inside and close it again, making sure to turn the small lock closed.  It won’t do much against the red-haired woman, but maybe it will deter other people from trying to come in.

I’m standing in a small office.  A wooden desk and leather chair are placed up against one wall, and a series of filing cabinets stand next to them.  A number of files, most of them closed, are stacked on the top of the desk.  I ignore them as I search for another way out of the room.  There’s a small vent up near the ceiling, but it’s not large enough for a person to climb through.  The only way in or out is through the main door.

All there is to do is wait.  I sit down at the desk and sigh as I rub at my temples.  The beginnings of what is sure to be a major migraine are starting to set in.

I glance down an open file on the desk.  The top page appears to be some sort of sales sheet.  I pick it up and take a closer look.  It’s definitely a sales sheet, but it’s not the type that I’d expect to find on a cruise ship.  Instead, it looks almost like an invoice for food products.  The items that were sold were measured in milliliters, and…

I feel a cold chill go down my spine.  Almost forgetting the danger that I’m in, I carefully read through the paperwork in the file, then open another one and pour over its documents as well.  It isn’t long before I’ve made my way through the entire stack.  I sit back in the chair and run a hand over my face.  The information has painted a picture for me, and it’s not a pleasant one.

From what I can tell, the blood being harvested on the ship is being sold to individuals on the islands that the cruise docks at during its regular route.  When I had first realized that vampires were somehow impossibly real, I had assumed that the blood being collected and purified was for the consumption of the staff.  The truth is much bigger than that, though.  The Atlantean Tribute is a mobile supplier of blood to nearby and, judging by the prices on the invoices, wealthy vampires.

I look up at the ceiling.  This is one hell of a supply and demand situation.  A grotesque twist on capitalism.

There’s a joke in there somewhere about a bloodsucking vampire not being all that different from a bloodsucking corporate executive.

There’s well over a million dollars of income detailed in these documents.  Even more impressive, they’re all dated within the past three months.  The annual numbers that this enterprise combined with the amount earned from bookings from passengers has to be substantial.

This changes things.  I don’t know how exactly, but it does.  It means that people are being assaulted, their blood fucking drained from their bodies, not just to satisfy some sort of hunger.  It’s also being done for monetary profit.  That’s cold and calculated, and it’s also somehow much worse.

The reporter in me is screaming to collect this evidence so that I can use it to bring this whole thing down.  The realist in me is responding firmly that I no longer have a phone to take pictures with, and I certainly can’t run around the ship carrying a large stack of files.  All that I can do is get off the ship and hope that I can somehow convince the authorities that I’m not completely insane.

I hear noise coming from the hallway.  I remain as still as possible, listening intently as the noise comes closer.  The red-haired woman has found me, and I’m completely trapped.

I nearly laugh in relief as I realize that I’m hearing two distinctly male voices talking.  Clamping a hand over my mouth, I get out of the chair and slowly make my way to the door.  I place my ear up against it.

I can’t make out everything that they’re saying.  The door isn’t very thick, but the metal hallway is distorting their words.  They walk right past the door towards the stairs I descended a bit earlier.  They don’t seem to be searching for me.

As they go past my hiding spot, I clearly hear one of them say that the ship will be docking at its first stop in less than fifteen minutes.  Surprised, I check my watch.  It’s nowhere near 5am.

I glance back over at the files and things click into place.  Of course the ship is docking in the early morning hours before the posted time.  That way the crew can unload the blood and deliver it to the purchaser without the passengers being aware.  Even if some of them notice the crew’s activity, they won’t have any idea what they’re seeing.

My best chance to get off the Atlantean Tribute is going to be while that unloading process is happening.  The crew that’s involved with it will be distracted, and I’ll still have the cover of darkness.  I’m going to have to figure out how to actually sneak off the ship, which won’t be easy if the boarding ramp is guarded, but it’s still better than trying to escape in broad daylight.

I wait for a couple of minutes before carefully unlocking and opening the door.  There doesn’t seem to be any members of the crew nearby, and the only sounds I can hear are the noise of the ship’s engine and my own footsteps echoing off the walls.  This deck isn’t adorned in the fancy trappings of the upper decks.  The bare metal makes it seem more claustrophobic.

I can’t go up the stairs that I had originally come down.  The crew members that I had heard from inside the office went that way, and they also lead to the deck that I last saw the red-haired woman on.  I continue down the hallway, stopping every so often to listen closely.  I don’t bother to check any of the other rooms.  My only goal at this point is to get the hell off.

The hallway doesn’t end when I reach the far side.  Instead, it curves off to the right.  I continue to follow it.  There are no doors on this section.  Instead, there are a few places where large metal gates extend down from the ceiling.  Through the mesh I can see pieces of equipment that I don’t recognize secured behind them.

I go around another curve and stop.  Standing a few yards ahead of me is the spirit of the young girl.  She looks different from when I last saw her.  

I’ve seen ghosts or specters or whatever you want to call them for a while now.  Every time I see one, it looks different from a living person.  It’s a little hard to describe, but it’s like some of the color has been drained from it, and it seems somehow less substantial.  It’s sort of like looking at a picture of a person that’s been printed on a translucent piece of plastic.

I’ve never seen a spirit look as colorless and see-through as the girl is now.  She looks…  I know this sounds weird when talking about a ghost, but she looks tired.  I wonder if the encounters she’s been having with the red-haired woman are somehow taking a toll on her.  I’ve never heard of that happening before.  I hadn’t known that vampires were real until tonight, though, so obviously there’s a lot that I don’t know.

This section of the hallway has more doors, and she points at the one closest to her.  She wants me to open it.

I chafe at the delay, but the girl has been protecting me all night and it doesn’t make sense to start ignoring her now.  I walk over to the door and do as she asks.

The room inside is dark, and I spend a moment looking for the light switch.  When I flip it on, I find that I’m looking at a maintenance room.  Raising an eyebrow, I look back at the girl.  She points once again.  I return my attention to the room and finally see what she’s trying to point out to me.  On the far wall, partially obscured by some boxes leaning against it, is a ladder.

I go into the room and close the door behind me.  Upon inspection, I find that the ladder is actually a series of metal rungs bolted into the wall.  It goes up into the ceiling and disappears out of sight as it extends beyond the light from the room’s single bulb.

Making sure to grip each rung tightly, I begin to climb.  The rungs themselves aren’t very large and the climbing isn’t easy.  I still count myself lucky.  Ascending up through the ship this way means that I’m extremely unlikely to bump into anyone from the crew.  That’s a very real risk, maybe even an inevitability, if I just continue to wander through the hallways.

I swear as I bump my head into something solid.  I feel around in the darkness, and my fingers run across a smooth metal surface.  I’ve hit a hatch.  I manage to find the release button and lift it up before continuing through the darkness.  I climb more cautiously now, reaching up after every few rungs to feel for hatches so that I don’t slam into another one.

It feels like I’ve been climbing forever when I run out of rungs.  Reaching down, I close the last hatch that I came through so that I have something to stand on before stepping off the ladder.  I grope around until I find the light switch and flip it on.  I’m in a maintenance room that looks almost exactly like the one that I had started in.

I lean against one of the walls and give myself time to catch my breath.  My hands and feet are hurting from the climb.  There’s nothing I can do about that, though, so I try my best to ignore them.

I’m not really sure where I am on the ship.  I definitely climbed through a number of decks, but I don’t know if the hatches I passed through marked changes in decks or if they were at different intervals.

When I leave the maintenance room, I find that I’m once again in one of the corridors decorated in the ship’s trademark Victorian style.  This doesn’t seem to be one of the passenger cabin levels.  This suspicion is confirmed when I pass a closed set of doors with a sign outside marking it as the Poseidon’s Bounty, one of the restaurants.

That means that I’m on the deck with the entryway that I first arrived in when I boarded the ship.  I smile to myself.  This is exactly where I need to be.  That smile quickly fades when I realize that’s not correct.  The Atlantean Tribute likely uses other levels for loading and unloading cargo and supplies.

It’s no time to start panicking.  On the plus side, I’m at least far from the last place the red-haired woman had seen me.  I’m also on a deck with a large amount of windows.  I might be able to use those to figure out which deck is being used to unload the blood.

I come around the corner into the section of hall leading into the entryway and have to immediately duck into a doorway.  Standing just in front of the desk is the red-haired woman.  Luckily she isn’t looking in my direction.  I only got a quick glance at her, but it looked like she was staring down at a tablet.

Taking a deep breath, I peek out around the corner of the doorway.  She’s no longer there.  I step out from behind cover and cautiously start to move forward.

I’ve only gone three steps when I feel the air shift on the back of my neck.  I freeze in my tracks.  All the lights in the hallway snap off, plunging the corridor into darkness.

She’s behind me.

I’m not sure how, but I know that no one is coming to save me this time.  There was something about how the girl’s spirit had looked the last time that I had seen her.  It was frail, if that’s even possible when it comes to the dead.  Even if she were to put in an appearance, she wouldn’t be able to defend me this time the way that she had twice already.

I don’t turn around.  Instead, I sigh dejectedly and lean up against the doorway.  The exertion of running around the Atlantean Tribute like a chicken with its head cut off has caught up to me.  I feel defeated.  It’s not like I could defend myself against this woman even if I was at my best, and I’m certainly not at my best right now.  At least I’ve made the chase somewhat competitive even given the giant chasm between her abilities and my natural ones.

“Do you know that I’m a reporter?” I ask quietly.

There’s no response.  I continue on anyway.

“I used to work for a major paper in Chicago.  I’m not arrogant enough to think that I was famous among its readers.  Nobody reads a paper and looks for specific writers’ names.  They read it for the entire presentation.  Still, I was pretty successful, and I like to think that I had the respect of my peers.  I thought that I’d be working at that paper forever.”

The red-haired woman still doesn’t say anything, but it feels like I have her interest.  She’s at least allowing me to tell my story.

“That changed about half a decade ago.  I was looking into a string of child disappearances.  At least the police thought they were disappearances.  They were street kids, and sometimes it’s hard to know if someone was taken against their will or just walked away to find another corner.  Their friends were worried, though, worried enough to call the police when one of the first rules you learn on the streets is not to do that.”

I shake my head slowly.

“I did things the way that I had been taught.  I talked to the right people, I asked the right questions, and wouldn’t you know it, I got a lead.  One of the kids’ friends pointed me towards an old warehouse.  It hadn’t been used in… well, I don’t know how long, but it was a long time.  With the way it was jammed between other buildings I doubt anyone even remembered it was there.  That happens, you know.  Cities like Chicago just keep building outward and upward until places and people are forgotten.”

I finally turn around, doing so slowly to make sure that the vampire knows that I’m not attempting anything foolish.  I immediately spot the white pinpricks of light in the darkness.  I swallow hard before continuing.

“So I went into this warehouse.  That’s not how I was taught, by the way.  As a reporter, you’re taught to be relentless but also safe.  I threw that lesson out the window by going in alone.  I didn’t even inform the cops about my tip.  For all I knew, I was walking right into a serial killer’s lair.

“Anyway, I went inside.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t what I found.  There was a big tent sitting in the middle of it.  Red and white stripes, the kind that make you think of a circus.  There were all these balloons floating through the air.  A lot of them had gotten stuck up on the ceiling, and there were some popped ones lying on the ground.  There was other stuff on the ground, too.  Plastic wrappers, peanut shells, all kinds of crap.”

The white lights have shrunk a bit, like the red-haired woman is squinting at me.

“In front of the tent, there was this absolute giant of a man.  He was dressed like a clown.  Makeup, clothing, the whole nine yards.  He was sitting on a bench that looked like it could barely hold him.  This clown, he was… he’s…”

I have to take a deep breath to steady myself.

“He was holding the body of the kid that I was looking for.  Cradling it, almost.  And he was…  This fucking monster was eating the boy.  Fucking eating him.”

I run a hand over my face.

“My mind just stopped thinking at that point.  I turned to run.  I had to get out of there.  The only problem was that there was a woman standing between me and the door out now.  She was wearing a black dress and a veil that covered her face.  It was like I was looking at the creepiest bride I’d ever seen.  She reached out towards me before I could stop myself.  I guess the adrenaline was really pumping at that point, though, because I managed to jerk to one side and not get grabbed by her.  The tips of her fingers brushed up against my neck for just a split second before I was past her and out the door.  I thought she or the large man would come after me.  For some reason, they didn’t.”

I look up at the ceiling.

“The cops didn’t find anything there when they arrived.  Just an empty rundown warehouse.  The kidnappings stopped, though.  I don’t know if it’s because I found where the kidnappers were, or if they simply moved on.  All I know is that I needed to get the hell out of Chicago myself.  Screw my career and future plans.  I couldn’t be in the same city that I witnessed that child being…”

I trail off.  I’m silent for a long moment before speaking again.  I notice that my voice is unintentionally quieter.

“I left three days later.  Packed all my things, got in my car, and moved to a small town in Wyoming to run their local newspaper.  Something came along with me, though.  That woman’s brief touch…  It did something to me.  I was able to see ghosts and spirits.  Not all the time, and not everywhere, but often enough that it stopped freaking me out and became, I dunno, commonplace.  It’s amazing what we can get used to, isn’t it?”

I return my gaze to stare into the pinpricks of light.

“I’ve never told anyone this.  Not all of it, anyway.  I think I’m telling you now because I know that you’re going to kill me.  Because in a way you’re doing me a favor.  I still dream about that warehouse and the tent inside of it.  When I close my eyes, I can still see that poor child.  And when I’m alone, I can still feel that veiled woman’s touch on my neck.  I’m not saying that I want to die.  I don’t.  I’m saying that, in some ways, this is almost a mercy.”

I feel strong hands grip me around my waist.  Without warning I’m swept off my feet.  Everything is happening so fast that I barely register what’s going on.  I’m flying through the bowels of the ship at speeds I wouldn’t have thought possible, the force of my passage flattening my skin against my bones and stripping the moisture from my eyes.  The vampire has me, and I’m powerless to stop her.

Everything comes to a halt with a hard jerk.  I gasp as my body violently shakes.  It isn’t until I begin to regain control of myself that I realize that I’m strapped down to the table.

The red-haired woman is standing over me.  The lights are on here, and as she smiles down at me I’m once again struck by her beauty.  The cruelty in her eyes is anything but beautiful, however.

I pull against my restraints, but I’m unable to make them budge.  She watches me struggle for a few seconds before holding up two needles.  Each is attached to plastic tubing.  I look to my left and see that one of the tubes leads to a dialysis machine.  When I look to the right, I find that the other tube connects into a series of saline bags.  She sets the needles down carefully and points at a third tub sitting on a nearby counter.  I recognize it as a feeding tube, the kind that hospitals use to feed patients that can’t do so themselves.

She’s going to hook me up to these machines, and she’s going to bleed me before allowing me to replenish my blood supply.  Then she’s going to bleed me again.  She’s going to trap me in a never ending cycle, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

I open my mouth to scream.  I was wrong.  This isn’t a mercy.  It’s my own personal Hell.

The red-haired woman’s smile broadens.

Dear God,

Please forgive this poor sinner for how long it has been since I have last prayed to you.  I swear that it wasn’t because of a lack of faith or loss of wanting to be wrapped in your grace.  Earthly matters have taken up my attention over the past few weeks, and while I know that’s no excuse for allowing a lapse in my prayers, I also know that you see all and that you know my time has been spent in service to you.

I attended a church service yesterday that moved me profoundly.  There was a guest speaker, a Reverend David Holloway.  Truly you have given him great gifts, Lord, as his sermon filled the entire congregation with the warmth of your glory.  He spoke of your many works, and of the need for your people to go out into the world and spread your word so that the world might perform its own works in line with your example.  It was a call to action, one that filled us to overflowing with love and light, more than enough to pass on to our fellow man.

Later that evening, I sat at home thinking about the sermon, and I suddenly realized just how far I’ve come.  I don’t think anyone really understands and appreciates the extent of their personal journey while it’s happening, not unless they really sit back and take honest stock of it.

For so many years, I was a lost lamb with no flock.  I was alone, scared, and feeling that the world had no use for me.  If I had met someone like Reverend David then, I’m certain that he would have brought me into the light of your love, but alas, that was not to be.

Instead of me finding you, you found it in your infinite wisdom to bring your majesty to me.  You must have seen that I was too far gone to ever find my own path.  You could have left me to rot, to come to the inevitable end that my way of living would have led to, but you did not.  You offered me your hand to help pull me up and an invitation to teach me how to stand.  My gratitude for that and all that you’ve given me since knows no bounds.

It amazes me that so many people speak of their devotion to God, but don’t truly understand what God is.  In the Bible, John 4:24 proclaims that “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth”.  There are many examples within the book’s pages that reinforce this concept.  A whisper on the night wind, a voice from a flaming bush, and more.  The portrayal of God in the Bible is that of a being that stands apart from his people.

Perhaps that is good enough for those that put their faith in a book stitched together from stories, legends, and, at best, third hand accounts.  The Satanists, although they would argue otherwise, are cut from the same cloth.  Both groups seem satisfied to worship deities from afar and trust that these unseen entities will toss them enough scraps to survive on.

I know what God truly is.  I know this, oh Lord, because you have shown me that God walks among us, and He is truly great.

I remember the moment that you came to me and made me yours.  One moment I was lying face down on a wet sidewalk, the cold rain pouring down on me as I slowly bled out from being stabbed while no one around me cared about my condition.  I knew that I had reached my end, and I am ashamed to admit that a large part of me welcomed it.

Suddenly the rain stopped.  I was no longer lying on pavement, but instead in a grassy field underneath a black sky filled with infinite stars.  My pain was gone, and my wound no longer bled.  I stood up and looked around.  The field seemed to go on forever.  In front of me was a huge bonfire, at least ten stories tall and just as wide at the base.  The red flames licked at black wood.  Heat radiated from it and blasted against me.  I had never felt anything that hot before.

That is when you walked around the side and into view, God.  No, ‘walked’ isn’t the right word.  There was purpose and power behind every movement.  It was more like a storm rolling in.  I apologize, Lord.  Language has limitations that act as shackles on describing you and your ways.

You approached me, and you towered over me.  I was nothing to you.  I was less than a single thread in the infinite tapestry of existence, and you were the weaver of that tapestry.

The human mind is not equipped to handle the sight of God.  I could process certain aspects of you, but not everything that stood before me.  Your great antlers extended from your inconceivable faces, their broken points replaced by flickering fire.  Your skin was like onyx that was constantly shifting and changing.  Your three faces looked towards me and through me and at everything else in your kingdom.  Your four legs dug into the earth like pillars supporting a temple.

I fell to my knees before you.  I was nothing, and you were all.  To my amazement, though, you reached down and pulled me back up.  You looked directly into my eyes and saw all that I was.

And you found me worthy!  Without you saying a word I knew that I would walk with you for the rest of my life.  Tears of joy filled my eyes as I accepted my place at your feet.

You laid one of your great hands upon my head and baptized me before the great bonfire with blood so hot it boiled.  As it poured down upon me, it scorched and burned the words of your scriptures directly onto my soul.  While lesser religions rely on the written word to pass along their messages, I feel and know every syllable of your decrees at all times.  I am truly one with God.

When you had finished, I looked up at your glory once more and knew that I was now a part of the one true faith.  My God doesn’t look down on His people from a cloud in the sky or up at them from a dank pit.  No, my God walks among us, culling the weak and creating the strong.  His judgment is of blood and flame.  Those that do not heed His words shall be broken in the dirt before Him and devoured in His many jaws.

Since that moment of my rebirth, I have sought to spread your message as you commanded.  In your infinite wisdom you saw that this is a task that I am well-suited for.  I do not have the way with words necessary to grow your church like Reverend David, but I have the tools to bring your will to the non-believers.

Just last night I shared your will in accordance with your scriptures with an affluent family in VIrginia.  I entered their home in the night and brought them together in the largest room on the first floor of the house.  One by one, I burned your mark into their foreheads, baptizing them with searing heat as you had once done for me.  I then spilled their blood and poured it into their mouths in holy communion.  WIth their souls ready to offer to your eternal embrace, I brought the flames of the great bonfire to the house to cleanse it with fire.

I hope that you have accepted these small offerings, and the many that I sent to you before them.  I shall continue to follow your words and ways all the days of my life.  I am yours, oh Lord, forever and ever.

Amen.

Dear James,

I’m sure that this letter comes as something of a surprise.  We haven’t spoken in, what, three years?  Maybe four?  It’s been quite a while, and we didn’t exactly part on the best terms.

That’s a gross understatement, obviously.  We both made fools out of ourselves that day.  Our shouting match just went on and on and on until we stormed away from each other and never looked back.

I want you to know that I’ve felt bad about that day ever since.  For a long time I blamed you for that argument, but over the years I’ve come to realize that it was my own fault.  You simply wanted to discuss the possibility of starting a family, and I just sort of snapped.  I was so stubborn that I didn’t even allow a discussion to take place.  I should have sat down with you and explained why I was so against the thought of having children.  Instead, I just dug in for a fight.  Well, I got that fight, and it ended up costing me dearly.

So, yeah, I’m sorry.  It was never my intention to hurt you like that.  At least I don’t think it was.  There have been times that I’ve wondered if there was some part of me that tried to ruin things.  I’ve never been fully comfortable being happy.

A therapist would have a field day with me.

I’m writing you to apologize for the way that things ended.  That’s one part of it, and the biggest part in my mind.  I’m also writing you because I don’t know how much time I have, and I feel like what’s happened needs to be documented.  You’re the best reporter that I’ve ever known.  Sure, you’re the only one that I’ve ever known, but still, you’re amazing at your job and I know that I can count on you to take this seriously.  Anyone else would just laugh it away as some nightmare conjured up out of the depths of my imagination.

Around a year ago, I accepted a position at the Jarl Aurdal Observatory.  Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of it before.  Pretty much no one has.  It’s a small space observatory located on the Svalbard archipelago between Norway and the North Pole.  It’s not nearly as well known as the Kjell Henriksen or Zepplin observatories in the same region, so most people don’t know that it exists.  We sometimes joke that even the Norwegian government has forgotten that we’re here.

There are so many observatories on Svalbard because of its special placement on the map.  From around the middle of November to the end of January, the entire region enters a dark season.  The pitch and rotation of the Earth keeps the area in perpetual night.  It’s called polar night, and it makes the region perfect for researching the atmosphere and the space beyond.

The darkness actually begins earlier than that, usually around the first week of October, but it’s during that November to January period that the sun is so low under the horizon that the region fully experiences the polar night.  The one happening right now is my first; I was brought into Jarl Aurdal just after the last one ended.  

That does mean that I’ve been through the opposite phenomenon, where the sun doesn’t fully set for months.  That was incredibly strange.  It screws with your internal clock in ways that you can’t truly appreciate unless you’ve experienced it.  You just feel weird and uncomfortable until your body adjusts, and even then it’s like you’re always just a bit off-balance.

I thought going through that would prepare me for the polar night.  I was very wrong about that.  Unlike the continuous light, the darkness almost feels like it’s a living thing.  It surrounds you in this oppressive way, and even when you’re sitting in a lit room you can sense that it’s still out there.  You know logically that the night isn’t alive, and it doesn’t have some sort of consciousness that’s making it creep in on you.  When you’re exposed to it for such a long time, though, you start to lose your grip on logic and reason.

The only thing that really helps is being around other people.  Four of us were assigned to work at Jarl Aurdal during this year’s polar night: astronomer Peter Boggard, telescope specialist Adnan Bhalla, computer scientist Bailey Miho, and myself as the team’s engineer.  We spent every moment that we weren’t sleeping or working together.  Now that I’m thinking about it, it was a lot like cavemen gathering around a fire for warmth and protection.

There were a number of days or nights or whatever you want to call them where the scientists couldn’t gather much data.  Svalbard is extremely far north, after all, and that means that blizzards are a common occurrence.  It’s tough to see out of a telescope when multiple feet of snow are coming straight down at you.  This is especially true during polar night.  The first of these heavy snows kicked up during the third week of darkness, and that’s when this all started.

The scientists might have been on break during snowfalls, but I wasn’t.  As the group’s engineer, I was constantly having to fix and maintain everything from the toaster to the facility’s many generators.  Jarl Aurdal is too far from the nearest town to be on a power grid, so all of its electricity is handled through a series of linked generators.  The night that the first snow began, one of those generators went offline.  I was notified of the outage by a blinking yellow light in my office.  I grabbed my coat and tools and headed outside.

A generator going offline wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.  They were constantly running, after all, and that kind of use would naturally cause mechanical issues over time.  The extreme cold didn’t help matters, either.  I got a good example of that chilled air as it blasted right into my face as I left the warm confines of the observatory.  I turned on the bulky flashlight I was carrying.  The generator shed was outside of the main building for safety and ventilation reasons, but it was close enough that I was able to cross the distance between the two structures within a few minutes even with needing to trudge through the heavy snow.

Although it was a short trip, I still found myself feeling uneasy.  The security lights on the outside of the observatory only reached about halfway, so for the second half of the walk I was surrounded by darkness.  I felt completely alone and isolated in the void, and the sounds of my feet crunching in the snow seemed to fade into nothingness.

I was only a few yards away from the generator shed when I noticed something strange about the snow.  I lowered the flashlight’s beam to get a better look.  I immediately regretted doing so.  A large section of snow was soaked in dark red blood.  It was smashed down like it had been trampled by some great weight.

I stood there staring dumbly at it for a long moment.  As the shock wore off, however, I pulled my eyes away from the blood and quickly looked around.  I knew that there weren’t any other people in the area besides the four of us at Jarl Aurdal.  All the deliveries to the observatory stopped during the polar winter, as the roads around it became impassable due to the snowstorms.  There weren’t any nearby towns, and even the always crazy survivalists avoided the area.

That didn’t mean that the area was deserted, however.  There was a surprisingly high amount of animal life.  Animals like reindeer, seals, and a variety of birds called Svalbard home.

The animal that I was worried about wasn’t one of those, however.  It was polar bears.  The region has one of the highest populations outside of the North Pole, and there are plenty of stories about them wandering into inhabited areas.  The ones that you’ve seen in zoos don’t do the wild ones justice.  Polar bears are huge, nearly half a ton of bulk and muscle.  They can tear a human in half without a second thought if they want to.

That’s ridiculously rare, but I wasn’t going to stick around to see if I could beat the odds.  I quickly crossed the rest of the distance to the shed and went inside.  I fumbled around in the dark for a moment before I was able to find the light switch.  I flipped it up and watched as the overhead lights began to come to life one at a time.

I felt a wave of relief wash over me, and it wasn’t just because I was safely indoors.  Just being under the lights was soothing.  They kept the encroaching blackness away.

It only took a few minutes to figure out which generator had gone offline.  It was Genny Five, the same one that I had been struggling with my entire time at the observatory.  It was one of the oldest of the group, and it had been repaired so many times over the years that I doubted that it still had any of its original parts.  The machine had become so unreliable that the only things it was assigned to provide power to were a few non-essentials like the observatory’s exit signs.

Even though it wasn’t crucial, I made sure that it was back up and running every single time that it stopped.  I knew that it might be needed for more than some signs if a real emergency came up.  It turned out that the only thing wrong with Genny Five was a damaged wire, so I was able to get the repair completed within minutes.

I went around the side of the generator to restart it and nearly slipped on something.  I looked down to find more blood and gore on the floor.  The wide streak ran across the floor and disappeared behind a large series of storage shelves.

I listened as hard as I could.  It was difficult to hear anything over the running machinery, and the wind whistling across the metal roof wasn’t helping matters.  There was just too much going on to make out any noises that shouldn’t have been present.

Coming to a decision, I crept towards the area of the shed that the blood was leading to.  You know those horror movies where someone hears a bang from upstairs and, instead of running the hell out of the house, stupidly goes to investigate?  In that exact moment, that was me.  There was a major difference, though.  If I left instead of finding out what was going on, I was either going to come back with the others or I wasn’t going to come back at all.  The first option would be putting more lives in danger, and the second meant running the risk of something in the generator shed being damaged.  Those generators were the only things that sustained us through the winter, and if they went down…  Well, we would be screwed, to put it bluntly.

The blood led further beyond the shelves towards the bay door.  When our supplier brought fuel, the driver would deliver much of it on pallets.  The tanks outside would be filled as well, but in the freezing cold of the arctic winter they would often become inoperable.  Smaller tanks were loaded on pallets to be kept indoors to make sure we were always able to keep the generators fueled up.

I could feel a cold wind as I came around the corner.  The bay door had been forced open on the right side, the metal crunched up above my shoulders.  Snow was blowing through the opening and forming piles against the walls.

Sitting in front of the door was the carcass of an adult polar bear.  Its chest had been torn open, exposing broken ribs and destroyed organs.  Its fur was stained red and black from its own gore.

The bear’s head was facing towards me, and I felt my stomach churning as I stared at it.  The head had been crushed, the skull almost completely flattened against the ground.  The animal’s tongue hung out of its mouth and against the concrete.  Its lower jaw had been nearly ripped off, and it hung at an awkward angle.  Its right eye was missing from the socket.

I jumped as a horrible sound came from the storm raging just beyond the door.  It was low and guttural, filled with hatred and hunger.  There was no doubt in my mind that what I was hearing wasn’t human, but it also didn’t sound like it belonged to some mindless animal.

I turned and ran.  I moved faster than I ever had in my life, racing through the generator shed and back out the front door.  The snow was coming down much harder than it had been when I had left the observatory.  The light from my flashlight barely penetrated the gloom in front of me.  My pace was greatly slowed by the accumulation, but I forced myself to keep moving as quickly as I could.

There was another howl from somewhere over my left shoulder.  I couldn’t tell if the creature was pursuing me, but I wasn’t going to stop to find out.  I almost slammed into a wall as I reached the observatory.  I had found the building, but I didn’t see the door.  It took me a few minutes to locate it; I had arrived about twenty feet to the right of it.  I went back inside and slammed the door behind me.

The others questioned me about what was going on, of course.  I must have looked like I was completely out of my mind while I stripped off my coat and boots, and my description of what had happened probably sounded like pure lunacy.  I was apparently convincing enough that Peter Boggard and Adnan Bhalla felt the need to go check for themselves.  

They retrieved two rifles from the gun locker.  None of us liked the idea of firearms being in the building with us, but it was a necessary evil.  We needed to be able to defend ourselves and each other in case of a wild animal attack.

The two men headed out towards the generator shed.  Bailey Miho and I watched the feed from the security cameras; the feed was mostly blocked by the falling snow, and they disappeared almost as soon as they appeared on the cameras.  The last image we saw was of them talking to one another as the darkness swallowed them up.

I was worried that something would happen to them, but they returned unharmed a short time later.  The polar bear carcass hadn’t been in the shed when they had arrived, but they had seen the damage to the door and they reported that large amounts of blood covered nearly every surface of the loading bay.  They had also heard the same bellowing that I had, but it had been further away and it had stopped after just a minute or two.

Bhalla also said that he had seen something as they had left the shed.  He hadn’t gotten a good look at it, but it had been big and definitely hadn’t been another bear.  Not unless one had learned to walk on two legs.

We were all on edge for the next few days, but nothing out of the ordinary happened.  The storm thankfully didn’t turn into a full blizzard.  It did, however, leave a large amount of snow behind.  We were forced to clear a path to the generator shed to make sure it was accessible.  Bhalla and Miho managed to get the bay door back into somewhat working order with a sledgehammer.

We didn’t talk about what had happened.  It wasn’t some decision that we all agreed on.  No one seemed to want to talk about it, though, so we didn’t.  It was like we believed that not discussing it meant that it wouldn’t happen again, and for a couple of weeks it seemed like that would be the case.  My three companions went about their research while I continued to make sure that the observatory itself was running smoothly.

On the Friday of the third week, I looked out of the window and found that the endless night wasn’t so endless after all.  The sky was finally clear enough for the aurora borealis to be seen.  The others were already at the door and getting dressed to go outside as I hurried down from my workshop.  Weeks of tension gave way to smiles and laughing as we rushed out into the snow like children on Christmas morning.

It might sound like we were being reckless, and maybe we were.  What you have to remember is that nothing out of the ordinary had happened after the initial incident.  We had been outside a number of times since then for various reasons without an issue.  We had become complacent.

I’m sure that you’ve seen pictures of the northern lights, but I’m here to tell you that those images don’t do it justice.  Bands of green and purple and blue wrapped throughout the sky, moving and pulsing like ethereal flames dancing for the amusement of the stars.  I wasn’t just in awe of what I was seeing.  The natural beauty was so incredible that I felt like I was having a religious experience.  I was aware that tears were falling down my cheeks, and I didn’t feel the slightest twinge of embarrassment.  I wish that you could have seen it.

I could have stood there in rapture for hours, but I was snapped out of my euphoria by the same deep growl I had heard in the generator room weeks earlier.  We all turned towards the noise.  A few hundred yards away, standing just outside of the ring of light created by the observatory’s security lamps, was a huge figure.

It had to have been well over nine feet tall, but it was hunched over so it was difficult to judge its full height.  It was wrapped in some kind of black cloak or tattered robe, with a baggy hood covering its head.  Its arms were disproportionately long, and its knuckles touched the snow.  The figure was holding a large object in its right hand, but I couldn’t tell what that object was from that distance.

As we watched, it lifted its head upward towards the aurora borealis and howled again.  It was a defiant roar, as if it was challenging everything in the heavens.  The hood slipped slightly as the creature bellowed, and I thought that I saw tufts of hair or fur sticking out.  They disappeared back beneath the cloth as the creature lowered its head once more.

It was moving towards us before we were able to register what was happening.  Its thick legs powered it towards us at an incredible rate, spraying snow off in every direction as they churned through it.  The creature grunted and groaned as it bore down on us.

Miho screamed and started towards the door.  Less than a second later Boggard and I were following, but Bhalla continued to stand in place.  His eyes were wide, and he had this expression on his face like he had no idea where he was.  I called out to him as Miho pushed the observatory door open.  My cries sounded flat as they were absorbed by the snow and the night.

The creature reached him and lifted the object it was carrying.  It was a huge wooden club roughly the size of a small tree trunk.  It was dented and splintered from use, and thick metal bands were tightly wrapped around its length.  The weight must have been incredible, but the creature hefted it like it had no weight to it at all.

Bhalla seemed to realize at the last moment what was happening.  He tried to back away, but the club was already swinging down at him.  It collided with his head and drove its way into his body.  The blow was so strong that it caused most of his upper half to erupt in a fountain of gore.  The creature kicked away his remains and turned towards the rest of us.

For a split second, my eyes locked with the creature’s.  They were the color of amber, and they glowed in the shadows of the hood.  I had never had anyone look at me with such unbridled malice.  The gaze was broken as Boggard pulled me inside the observatory and slammed the heavy door shut.

Miho attempted to radio for help, but of course there was no reply.  Jarl Aurdal was so remote that it was difficult to get in contact with someone even in the best weather conditions.  She didn’t give up, though.  She stayed at the radio for hours, sending out the same message over and over again.

I could hear her talking from down the hall as I sat in my office watching the security camera feeds.  One by one, the outside feeds went dark.  The cameras were still transmitting, but the lights near them were being knocked out.  A couple of times I was able to catch a glimpse of the creature as it used its club to shatter the bulbs.  Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t some mindless beast.

I spent the time running through our options, of which there weren’t very many.  There was a small garage around the back of the observatory that contained a four wheel drive SUV that we could theoretically use to escape.  The problem was that the roads were likely to be completely impassable after the heavy snow.  It would also mean that someone would have to go out into the darkness to collect fuel for the truck in the generator shed.

As far as I could tell, our best bet would be to stay put and wait things out.  We had enough food to last until we reached the other side of the polar winter.  If we limited ourselves to a small section of the observatory and cut off the power in all the other areas, we would probably be able to keep lights and heat going without needing to refuel the generators.  It was fortunate that I had filled them the previous day.  Plus there was always a chance, no matter how slim, that Miho’s calls would be answered.  We had to avoid going back outside if at all possible to avoid falling victim to the creature like Bhalla had.

I’m finding it difficult to even write Bhalla’s name.  He was a good man, with a wife and kids waiting for him back in London.  For his life to be brought to an end so quickly and so brutally…  He didn’t deserve that.  No one does.

Boggard appeared in my office doorway as the last of the cameras went dark.  He was holding a bottle of whiskey in one hand, and by the looks of him he had already started on it.  He sat down in an empty chair and stared at the black monitors.  We were both silent for a long time.  I don’t think either one of us knew how to put our thoughts into words.

When he finally started to talk, his voice sounded heavy and tired.  He told me that his grandmother was originally from Longyearbyen, a small settlement in Svalbard and the world’s northernmost town.  She had moved to Oslo as a teenager, and it was there that she had met his grandfather when he had been stationed there in World War II.

When he was a child, she had told him stories about the jotnar, magical creatures that existed alongside mankind in Norse mythology.  From what he told me, it sounded like jotnar was the plural form of jottun, a sort of catch-all term for things like giants, faeries, and trolls.  The Scandanavians believed many of them to be extremely dangerous, and there were countless tales about humans coming to their ends at the hands of the jotnar.

One particular story that had always fascinated him was about a jottun named Krig the Darkborn.  The monster would mercilessly hunt down and kill anyone that entered his territory.  After he had slaughtered an entire village in a single night, the ancient gods had been forced to step in.  He had proven to be far more formidable than they had thought, however, and they were unable to slay him.  Instead, they had been forced to banish him to the far north, far beyond where the humans dwelled.

Boggard finished his story and took a final drink from the bottle.  He stood up and stumbled a bit as he went over to the door.  He looked back at me and said that he didn’t know if he believed his grandmother’s tales, but they were becoming more difficult to dismiss as fiction because of what was happening.  In any case, Krig was as good a name as any to call the creature outside the observatory walls.  With a mirthless laugh, he left and closed the door behind him.

I sat at my desk for a long time with my head in my hands.  While I was certainly scared, I was more numb than anything.  My mind didn’t want to accept what was happening.  I had seen Bhalla killed with my own two eyes, but it strangely felt like I hadn’t really experienced it.  It was more like something that I had seen in a particularly vivid dream.

The next time that I saw the others was when we gathered together for a meal hours later.  When there’s no daytime, it’s hard to know what to call a meal.  Is it really still breakfast when it’s completely dark out just because a clock tells you that it is?  Time seems to have almost no meaning when the skies remain black.

We decided as a group that we needed to be armed.  There were two rifles in the gun locker, and Boggard retrieved them using his key.  As I mentioned before, the weapons were kept at the outpost in the event of an aggressive animal.  The situation certainly fit that criteria.  Neither Miho nor I had any experience with firearms, so Boggard patiently went through the basics of how to handle and use them.

Since there were three of us and two of the rifles, I volunteered to go without one.  I’ve never been comfortable around guns.  The only time that had I tried using one was at a shooting range, and after firing a single shot I knew that I never wanted to touch one again.  

We began the long process of getting most of the observatory shut down.  To conserve as much fuel as possible, we would bring the heat levels down in the majority of the building, keeping it just high enough to prevent pipes and equipment from freezing.  All lights except for emergency lights would be shut off, and all of the computer and mechanical systems would be disconnected.  The only part of the facility that would still be up and running would be the living quarters, which included the sleeping area, kitchen, and bathrooms.  We would use only as much power as we needed to survive so as to put as little drain on the generators as possible.

It was my job to get the main dome shut down.  That’s the central part of the observatory, and it’s basically what you think of when you hear the word ‘observatory’.  There’s a high rounded ceiling made up of retractable panels over a large circular room.  Two giant telescopes sit on a rotating platform surrounded by rows of computer systems designed to process and analyze collected data.  Under normal circumstances, it is by far the area that uses the most power.

It took me about an hour to get everything turned off, disconnected, and covered.  When I was finished, I went over to a breaker box and turned off the lights.  I was suddenly surrounded by total darkness.  A shiver went down my spine, and I held my breath as I waited.  To my relief, the red security lights turned on, and I let out the breath with a nervous smile.

Since I was done with my section, I went to help Miho get the maintenance tunnels finished.  Jarl Aurdal sits on top of a large series of rooms and hallways that the pipes and electrical wiring run through.  They’re also home to the mechanical systems that allow the dome to open and close, as well as the hydraulics needed to raise, lower, and adjust the telescopes.  Miho had volunteered to go down into the tunnels to turn off the power to the nonessential systems.

I found Miho’s body at the bottom of the stairs.  When Bhalla had been killed, it had happened so fast that I hadn’t been able to process it.  This was different.  For what seemed like hours I stared at her remains, taking in every last detail over and over again.  When I close my eyes now I can still see it clearly.

I’m not going to go into too many details.  She had been torn apart, and there was no question that she had died in agony.  Her head was lying next to her body with a horrified expression on its face.  The rifle she had taken with her was broken into dozens of pieces scattered throughout the pool of blood.

I heard a rumbling noise, and I looked up from the body and down into the darkness at the far end of the tunnel.

The hulking creature that we were now calling Krig emerged from the shadows.  I don’t mean that he stepped out into the light.  I mean that one second he wasn’t there, and the next he was coming out of the dark like he was walking through a doorway.  It wasn’t possible, and yet I was watching it happen.  I have no explanation for it.

Krig’s glowing amber eyes were staring straight at me as he came forward.  For just a split second, the overhead lights managed to penetrate through the shadows created by the heavy hood.  Instead of a nose and mouth, he instead had a wolf-like muzzle.  Unlike a wolf, however, there wasn’t any fur, just leathery skin pulled tight against the bone.  Tufts of hair stuck out from below it.  He took another step forward, and his face was once again shrouded.

I turned and darted back up the stairs.  Just before I reached the doorway, I heard a loud wet noise from behind me.  I knew what I was hearing, but I forced it out of my mind.  Thinking about how he was stepping through the bloody remains of Miho wasn’t going to do anything except cause me to panic more than I already was.

I screamed for Boggard as I slammed the door shut behind me.  I inserted the small padlock into the latch.  I knew with absolute certainty that it wouldn’t matter, but in my panic I locked it into place anyway.  It clicked shut just as the astronomer came around the corner, his rifle gripped tightly in his hands.

The door was even more ineffective than I would have thought.  It burst open almost immediately, sending wood and metal flying outward as it was torn from its hinges.  Boggard raised the rifle and fired into the opening.  I felt like I was going deaf from the noise as I slapped my hands over my ears and moved away from him, the sounds of the shots echoing off the corridor walls.

Krig emerged from the ruins of the doorway.  He completely ignored the bullets that were pounding into his body.  They weren’t even penetrating his skin; I could see them scattering across the tiled floor as they practically bounced off of him.

The rifle clicked empty.  To Boggard’s credit, he immediately switched his grip on the weapon and swung it at the creature’s head.  It impacted hard against the skull, but Krig wasn’t fazed in the slightest.  He batted away the rifle, wrapped one of his large hands around Boggard’s head, and squeezed.  With his last breath, Boggard yelled for me to run.

I turned on my heel and did as he instructed.  I was no longer thinking clearly.  I was operating on pure instinct, and those instincts were telling me to get as much distance between the creature and myself.  With each step came the certainty that I would feel Krig’s fingers dig into my body and pull me off of my feet.

Somehow I made it to the living quarters and managed to slam the door shut and lock it.  I stumbled back into the wall and slid down to the floor as I tried to suck air back into my lungs.  I wrapped my arms around my knees and waited for a death that didn’t come.

I don’t know how long I stayed locked in the living quarters.  There wasn’t anything in that section of the observatory to keep track of the time.  I’m sure that it was at least a few days, but it could have been weeks.  I slept, I ate, I tried to keep my mind occupied, and I stared out the windows into the always present night.

I kept expecting Krig to break down the door and come for me, or for him to emerge from the shadows like he had in the maintenance tunnel.  There was no doubt in my mind that he could do so at any moment, and that I was going to meet my end when he did so.  For some reason that I didn’t understand, he left me alone.

With access to both food and water, I would be able to last until the relief crew arrived at the end of the polar night.  That was the morbid upside to my companions being gone: it meant that less power was needed, which in turn meant that the fuel in the generators was sure to last as long as I needed it to.

I occupied myself by trying to figure out how to warn the relief crew.  I didn’t know if Krig was still roaming around the observatory or if he had gone back out into the dark, but I suspected that he was at least nearby.  If that was the case, the crew would be doomed the moment they arrived.

At some point I noticed that the power was sputtering more than usual.  When you’re running exclusively on generators, you become accustomed to them choking from time to time.  The lights dim for a second before going back to full illumination, a fan stops and restarts before it can even slow down, that sort of thing.

That normal type of quick interruption wasn’t what was happening.  The sputters were coming more and more frequently, and they were lasting longer each time they happened.  Something was wrong, and it was clear that it was going to continue to get worse.  Either the generators were having issues, or something was causing problems with the electrical lines.  Both were equally bad scenarios for me.

That moment of realization was when I began to feel truly afraid.  You would think that would have been when Bhalla was killed, or when I first saw Krig down in the maintenance tunnel.  I had felt fear then, but nothing compared to the terror that was now threatening to overtake me.

I knew that if the power went out, that was it.  I was screwed.  I would freeze to death without the heater running.

My only option at that point would be to leave the living quarters.  I would then have to head to the generator shed to retrieve fuel before taking my chances in the truck.  The odds were ridiculously low that I would be able to make it to civilization, as there had been more than enough snow to block the roads by this point.  The more likely outcome would be the truck would get stuck, and instead of dying in the living quarters I would die out on the snow-covered road with the darkness all around me.

To even get to that point, the plan assumed that Krig wasn’t still around.  If he was, there was no way that I could get the fuel before he tore me apart.  It seemed beyond hopeless.

I curled up on one of the bunks and began to cry.  I cried so hard that I began gasping in the throes of a panic attack, but I just couldn’t stop.  All of the weight of the stress and fear that had been building since finding the polar bear in the generator shed collapsed in on me in that moment, and the weight of it crushed me.

It wasn’t my finest moment.  You know how much I hate not being in control of myself.  I think it was the creeping feeling of self-loathing that ended up allowing me to stop crying and lift my head out of the wet spot on the mattress that I had created with my tears.

Now that I had come out the other side of my momentary weakness, my mind was oddly clear.  I knew exactly what I needed to do.  Instead of waiting for the power to go out completely, I would make the attempt to refuel the SUV and escape before that happened.  That way I’d at least have a warm place to return to if things didn’t work out.  Maybe I’d even have time to figure out why the power was unstable and get it fixed if it came to that.  I might not have had good odds, but this would increase my chances.

I got up off of the bunk and got dressed in the warmest clothing that I could find.  Not knowing how long it would take to get to the nearest town, I packed a bag with food and bottled water from the kitchen and slung it over my shoulder.  I clipped a flashlight to my belt as I ran through a mental checklist to make sure that I wasn’t forgetting anything.  It was a good thing that I did, because I almost forgot to get the keys to the truck.  I retrieved them from their hook and put them into my pocket.

Taking a deep breath, I went over to the door leading out of the living quarters.  I reached out towards the handle and found that my hand was trembling.  I clenched it into a fist and waited until it was steady.  It eventually stopped shaking, and I unlocked and opened the door before I had enough time to talk myself out of it.

The hallway beyond the door was dark.  The only illumination were the red security lights, and the glow from them created large shadows across the walls.  I slowly closed the door behind me and stood still as I waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom.  When I started walking, it was at a snail’s pace.

My shoulder brushed up against something.  I turned to find myself looking at several small white objects floating in the air.  I leaned forward and examined them closer for a few seconds before stepping back in revulsion.  They were pieces of bone suspended from the ceiling by what looked like thick hairs.

Forcing myself to continue, I walked down the hallway until I came to the point where it started to widen.  Up ahead was the large dome section of the observatory.  The building’s front door was just beyond it, which meant that I had to pass through it.  I would be completely exposed while doing so.

The light coming from the dome room was strange.  It was rhythmically pulsing like a heartbeat.  There was also a sweet smell in the air that was familiar, but I couldn’t quite identify it.  The windows on the outside wall were smeared in blood and some brown substance that I couldn’t identify.

I entered the dome room and nearly tripped over my own feet as I came to a halt.  The entire section had been completely transformed.  Boggard had once referred to this area of the observatory as a shrine to technology.  Computer terminals had formed a circle around the two huge cutting edge telescopes, and large monitors had lined the walls.

That shrine had been torn down and replaced with one far more primal.  The monitors had been torn from the walls and smashed into pieces.  The telescopes were both lying broken off to one side.  Symbols that I didn’t recognize were drawn in blood and more of that brown substance across the walls and floor.  Displays of skulls and bones were stacked and strung up throughout the room.  Some of the bones were from a variety of different animals, but many of them were human.  There were more of those than could have possibly come from my late companions.

Fires had been built in over a dozen places, their flames tinted red from the security lights.  The largest of them was a huge bonfire that had been built in the center of the room.  It towered over everything else, stretching upward for nearly two stories.  It crackled loudly as it released smoke up into the curved dome.

Directly behind the bonfire, the computer terminals had been split apart and shaped into a great throne.  Upon that throne of ruined human ingenuity sat the imposing figure of Krig the Darkborn.

The massive creature was sitting completely still, each hand gripping one of the arms of the metal and plastic throne.  I wasn’t able to see his glowing amber eyes, but I didn’t know if that was because of the distance between us or because they were closed.  Shadows danced across him as the fires burned.  Leaning up against the right side of the throne was the bloodstained club.

Seeing him like this as the unquestionable lord of Jarl Aurdal, I finally got it.  I wasn’t in the presence of some simple monster.  I now knew what it meant to be in the presence of a jottun.  This was a being that I could never fully understand.  I could never hope to truly define him.

He was Krig, master of the endless night and defier of gods, and Jar Aurdal was the great hall that he now ruled from.

Not having any other option, I slowly started walking towards the door.  I never looked away from him as I did so.  I’m not sure if I could have if I tried.

I was less than ten feet away when those horrible amber eyes opened and locked on me.   Whatever hope that I still had faded away.  He had known that I was there the entire time.  Of course he had.  He knew everything that happened in his territory, and things only happened in that territory when he permitted them to.  Without moving a muscle, he was letting me know that he had not granted me the right to leave.

I abandoned my plan and turned back towards the way that I had come from.  He watched me closely as I started walking.  His eyes didn’t close until I had reached the hallway.

I had been dismissed.

I returned to the living quarters, and that’s where I am now.  I apologize for the awful penmanship, but I can’t seem to stop shaking.  I can’t put into words how insignificant I feel.  A single look was all that it took to get me to put aside all my survival instincts and instead bow to his will.

I’ve come up with one last idea.  There’s an air vent in the kitchen that connects in with the other ductwork, and from there I should be able to find my way to the vent leading outside.  From there I can make a break for the generator shed.

It’s an all or nothing plan, and there’s a lot that can go wrong.  The duct in the kitchen is large enough for me to pull myself through, but I don’t know if the rest of the ductwork is going to be that large.  I also won’t be able to fit anything in there except my body, which means that I have to leave behind all my supplies and thick clothing.  Even assuming that I make it outside, I still have to get the fuel for the truck, go to the garage, refill the truck, and drive away hoping against hope that the road is clear enough for me to get through.

All the while I’ll be surrounded by the polar night.  I can’t risk using the flashlight.  I’ll have to make my way from building to building through the black void.  If my direction is off by only a few feet, I will likely wander lost in the darkness until my body succumbs to the cold.

Worst of all, Krig might come for me.  Like I said, I know now that nothing happens in his territory without his allowing it.

It’s a risk I have to take if I’ve got any hope of getting through this, though, and I guess that’s another part of why I’m writing this letter.  I may be dead within the next few hours, and I didn’t want to go without making a record of what we’ve been through.  There won’t be many people mourning me; both my parents passed away years ago, and I don’t keep many friends.  Bhalla, Miho, and Boggard all had families, though.  I need to know that there’s at least a chance of their loved ones finding out what happened to them.

I guess there’s no reason to delay this any longer.  If there’s anything that I want to leave you with, it’s that our years together did matter to me.  I loved you, and I still love you.  Please remember me fondly.  Without you, I don’t have anyone left that will.

Kimberly Farrington

Dearest Margaret,

I hope that this letter finds you well.  I’ve missed you greatly during the entire time away from you, but these past weeks have been especially difficult.  While we were busy pushing from Normandy it was easier to keep my mind occupied on other things.  Now that the Germans have left France, however, I’ve had a lot more time to myself and, as always, my thoughts have turned to you.

I have good news or bad news, depending on how you look at things.  As you’re an optimist by nature, a very glass half full kind of woman, I’ll give you the positive spin first.  You and I are going to be reunited sooner that we thought.  I’ll be shipping off to the good ol’ US of A within the next few weeks.

No matter how optimistic you are, however, you’re also a realist, so here’s the bad news.  The reason that I’ll be coming home to you so early is because I have been injured.

Now, there’s no need for worry, as I’m going to be fine.  Once the bullets stopped flying in France, my unit had been assigned to deliver cargo to Évian-les-Bains.  You’ve always been more of a scholar than I am, so you may be familiar with the town.  I had never heard of it before.

There were only three large crates, so Mark Johnston and I volunteered to make the delivery.  I’ve written to you about him before.  He’s the soldier in my platoon that has a wife and young son in Kansas.  All of my fellow soldiers are brothers, but he’s one of the few that I can honestly say is a friend.  

The round trip between Paris and Évian-les-Bains would take a few days, and we figured that the fresh mountain air would do us some good.  We never spoke about it, but I think we both were feeling that we needed to get out of Paris, even if only for a little while.  

When you see pictures of Paris in books, it looks like this grand place.  You can practically feel the magic in the air right through the page.  It conjures up images of long walks along the Seine River, or maybe ascending to the top of the Eiffel Tower to look out on the lights of the city.  You and I even talked about visiting it someday after we’re married.

I think that’s how the city once was, and maybe it will be like that again.  In the here and now, though, the magic is gone.  The Nazis did all that they could to stomp out the spirits of the people that live there.  They never fully could, but you can tell that the occupation left its mark in more ways than just those damn red and black banners hanging from buildings.  The enchantment and wonder of the city is gone for now, replaced with an iron resolve and a righteous fury.  The longer I stayed there, the more that I could feel the violation Paris had suffered through, if that makes any sense.

Is it any wonder that Johnston and I jumped on the opportunity to run a shipment through the countryside?  It was supposed to be a simple delivery.  As everyone in the world knows, though, there’s nothing simple about this war.

I don’t remember the moment that the truck’s rear tire struck the mine.  It must have been left over from the German retreat, or maybe it had been planted by the French resistance when the Nazis were using that particular road.  Whatever the case, the explosion flipped the truck completely over and sent us off the road.

I only know this because it was told to me later.  I remember sitting in the passenger seat while Johnston drove, idly flipping through a Captain Marvel comic book that I had traded a small bottle of half-drunk whiskey to a private for.  I’m not much for comic books, but there was something about it that made me feel like…  I don’t know.  It made me feel like I was holding a piece of home in my hands, I suppose.

After that, my next memory is slowly waking up.  I was lying on something soft, and my body felt oddly cold.  Instinctively I tried to sit up, but the worst pain I’ve ever felt went through my body like electricity.  It felt like someone was forcefully pushing down on me while trying to set me ablaze.

I shook my head in an effort to clear it.  I hadn’t even opened my eyes yet and I was already feeling dizzy.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a woman’s voice politely but firmly told me to calm down.  As I managed to get my eyes open and squinted against the bright light, she went on to explain that I had been in a mine explosion and to assure me that I was going to be okay.

My vision returned to normal after a few minutes and I was able to look up at the speaker.  She was dressed in the white uniform of a nurse, with red curls peeking out from under her hat and freckles dotting her nose.  She smiled down at me kindly and told me that her name was Ruth.

I tried sitting up again, but it had the same result as before.  Ruth informed me that I had suffered a fractured sternum when my chest had impacted with the front portion of the transport truck.  It sounded serious, but she told me that I just needed rest and it would heal naturally.  Normally ice would have been put on my chest to help with the swelling and lessen the pain.  There wasn’t any access to ice, however, so she was using rags soaked in cool water instead.

Along with the fractured sternum, I had suffered a painful bump on the head and a sprained ankle.  I had managed to escape in surprisingly good condition, all things considered.

Johnston hadn’t been so lucky.  He was lying in the bed next to me, unconscious and his body wrapped in bandages.  Every so often I could hear a gasp as he sucked in air.  The gasps sounded wet, like they were filled with water.  The nurse told me that they hoped that he would recover soon, but I could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn’t hopeful.

Over the next few hours, Ruth sat and talked with me.  Well, she did most of the talking.  Even getting a few words out made my chest hurt, so I mostly just sat there and listened.

She told me that we were in an old château known by the local people as Château des Espirits.  It had been the home of a wealthy but eccentric landowner who had died at the beginning of the war.  He hadn’t had any children or family, so the mansion was converted into a temporary hospital.  Most of the doctors and nurses were French, but Ruth was a volunteer with the Red Cross that had been sent to assist due to the place being woefully understaffed.

She eventually left my side to tend to other patients.  As I stared up at the ceiling, a stray thought entered my head, and despite my condition I found myself smiling.  It was a crooked sort of smile.  Can you imagine, Margaret?  Here I was, relaxing in a fancy château in the French Alps, and I couldn’t even get out of bed to enjoy a moment of it.

I have to admit that I tried not to look at Johnston.  Every time I glanced in his direction I felt an awful stab of guilt.  I had survived the explosion and would be back on my feet soon.  Meanwhile, he was fighting for his life.  It wasn’t fair.  Even though I kept my eyes off of him, I could still hear him wheezing and drawing in those wet breaths.

Evening came, and Ruth returned to help me eat my dinner.  It wasn’t much of a meal, just broth and small bits of potato, but I was so hungry that it felt like a banquet.  When I had finished, she changed out the rags with freshly soaked ones and put the used ones in a small bucket.

Have you ever experienced the kind of moment where it feels like the very air in the room has changed, Margaret?  That was what I experienced once Ruth finished her tasks.  Her entire demeanor went from warm and friendly to something much more serious.  The smile was gone from her face, and her eyes were uncertain.

What wasn’t uncertain was her firm instructions that, even if I found myself able to get up, I must not leave the room during the night.  I pressed her as to why, of course, but she simply shook her head and turned to leave.  Ignoring the pain, I grabbed her wrist and asked once more.  She hesitated before gently removing her hand from my weak grip.

“Monsieur Gangly marche dans les couloirs,” she said quietly in French before leaving the room and firmly closing the two large doors behind her.

Mr. Gangly walks the halls.

I stared after her for quite a while.  To say that I was confused would be an understatement.  I was fairly sure that I had understood her correctly, but as you’re well aware I’ve never had much of a head for languages.  It wasn’t hard to convince myself that my poor French simply wasn’t up to the task of properly translating her statement.  With that settled in my mind, I quickly drifted off to sleep.

My hand just started shaking so badly that I needed to take a few seconds to steady it.  You and I have known each other since we were small children.  We started school together.  You know me better than anyone else, and I’m still afraid of what you’re going to think of me when I tell you what came next.

You’re going to think I’ve lost my mind.  I don’t see how anyone could think otherwise.  I swear to you, Margaret, I’m not mad, and what I’m about to tell you in the honest to God truth.  I need you to believe me.  No one else ever will, but you’re the one person that has to.

Please.

I don’t know what time it was when I woke up.  The room was dark and still.  I knew immediately that something was wrong.  I had the same feeling in my stomach that I had gotten during lulls in battles throughout the war.  Sometimes the guns would go silent, and an eerie silence would fall over everything.  Instead of being happy for the reprieve, you start to feel sick to your stomach because you know that something even worse than what you just went through is about to happen.

That was the same feeling I was having as I laid in the darkness.  Something was about to happen.  I was so sure of it that I ignored the pain and forced myself up onto my elbows in an attempt to look around.

I couldn’t stay in the position for more than a few seconds before I collapsed back down onto the bed.  Less than a heartbeat after I had done so, I heard a soft click as the room’s doors began to swing open.  I craned my neck as best as I could and turned my eyes towards the sound.

There was just enough light coming in through the windows for me to see the figure enter the room, but not enough that I was able to make out many details.  It was well over eight feet tall, and it had to duck under the top of the doorway to enter the room.  It was wearing a black flowing robe that covered most of its features.  As it came forward it stayed hunched over.  It moved with an odd gait, swaying slighting back and forth as it walked.  Even though it was the largest creature I had ever seen, it made barely any noise as it moved across the wood floor towards the beds, like it had very little weight to it.

I knew immediately that this giant wasn’t human.  I know how that sounds, Margaret.  This is why I’m afraid that you’re going to think that I’ve been driven mad by the war.  If you do indeed love me as you say that you do, though, I need you to take what I’m saying at face value and put aside your skepticism until you finish my story.

Because of the creature’s size, it only took a few steps for it to reach the foot of Johnston’s bed.  It was starting to lean over him when I closed my eyes as tightly as I could.  As I write this I can feel the shame rising in me.  This… thing was going to do God knows what to a man that was closer to me than my own family, and there I was, keeping my eyes clenched shut like a frightened child trying to hide from a shadow on his bedroom wall.  What kind of a friend, what kind of a man, does that make me?

I laid as still as I could for what seemed like hours, but all that I heard was silence.  Curiosity started to win out over the fear.  I slowly opened my eyes.

The creature was still looming over Johnston, but it was completely motionless.  Its arms were extended towards his face.  The robe’s sleeves were pulled back enough that I could see the limbs.  In the dim moonlight they looked almost white, so white that it was like a single drop of blood had never run through their veins.  They were also extremely thin.  No, that’s not the right word for it.  They looked emaciated.

Its hands were attached to the arms at a slightly odd angle.  I had seen something similar before, when a private had dislocated his hand from his wrist in a bad fall.  Its fingers were long and boney, and they reached out towards Johnston’s face.

The hood of the robe was up over its head, and at the angle I was seeing the creature from its face was completely blocked off from view.  It was hard to tell in the dark, but I got the impression that the head was too large for the body.  The width wasn’t proportionate with the arms and legs.  Everything about the creature was wrong, and I felt a sense of revulsion as I watched it.

Johnston coughed once.  The creature pulled back slightly, but when he didn’t make another sound it drew closer once again.  It reached out with one finger and touched him lightly on the forehead.  He made a soft choking noise but remained unconscious.

The finger moved down his face, tracing down the nose, across the lips, and over the chin.  It stopped when its tip was touching Johnston’s neck.  The man’s entire body had stiffened as if the creature was sending a live current through him.

I wanted to yell out to him, to warn him about what was happening.  My mouth remained closed.  I was already trying to justify my lack of action to myself.  There was no pointing in letting the creature know that I was watching when Johnston was too injured to hear me anyway.  That was what I told myself over and over again.

The truth is that I was paralyzed by fear.  In the moment that my friend needed me most, I proved myself to be a coward.

The creature’s hand opened, and it wrapped its fingers around Johnston’s neck.  He whimpered quietly.  The whimpering soon turned into gagging as the fingers closed tightly.  I tried to will myself to somehow intervene, fear and fractured sternum be damned.  Instead, I just laid there watching.

The figure held up one finger on its other hand and placed its point between Johnston’s clavicles.  It lingered there for a moment before pushing down harder.  The finger sank into and through the skin.  He started to thrash, but the creature simply held him by the throat as if it was no effort at all.

The finger slowly started to make its way down his chest.  Skin, muscle, and bone all parted as if it was being cut with the sharpest of surgeon instruments.  When it reached the top of his stomach area it withdrew.  Blood covered it, and droplets dripped down onto the man’s body.

What came next has played over and over in my head ever since.  The creature reached into the hole in Johnston’s chest and pulled the opening wider.  The snapping of bone filled the air as his ribs were easily separated.  The arm jerked slightly to one side, and a moment later the hand rose out of the open chest cavity holding a misshapen lump.

Johnston stopped thrashing.

I must have made a sound, because the creature turned its head towards me.  The hood still covered its face, but I knew that it was watching me closely.  Instead of closing my eyes, however, I looked right back at it.  It wasn’t some act of bravery or defiance.  I was just too scared to think of anything else to do.

It moved to the side of my bed.  The gory mass it had taken from Johnston’s chest was still clutched in its right hand.  I couldn’t see exactly what the object was.  I was and still am thankful for that.

The creature regarded me for a long moment before reaching up with its free hand and slowly pulling back the hood.  I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out.  I was stricken voiceless by fear.  It was all that I could do to simply keep breathing.

Instead of being rounded, its head was elongated, with malformed protrusions sticking out of the back.  It was hairless, and like its arms the flesh was pale to the point of nearly being translucent.  It looked at me with lidless eyes, the pupils locked on me so intently that they appeared to be vibrating.

The creature’s face was vaguely human.  The best way that I can describe it is that it looked like a person whose skin had been pulled back so tightly that it had begun to tear off of the skull.  The large teeth and gums were exposed in a hideous grin, one so large that it ran past the mouth towards the back of the elongated head to show the bone beyond.

It tilted its head slightly.  I wasn’t looking at just some hideous monster.  Its eyes stared at me with intelligence.

It opened its mouth slightly as it regarded me.  Just beyond the first row of human-like but oversized teeth was a second row of them.  These were smaller and spaced wider apart.  Its thick black tongue sloshed around back and forth in its thick saliva.

“Gute nacht, Herr Lewis,” the creature said in a raspy voice, the words coming out as if it was exhaling them rather than speaking them.

With that, the creature turned and left the room the same way it had come in, closing the doors behind it.

I must have passed out.  The next thing I knew, I was regaining consciousness in a  room filled with sunlight.  I quickly looked over to my right at Johnston’s bed.  The spot that the bed had once occupied was empty.

Ruth came in a few minutes later.  I demanded to know what had happened to Johnston, and she told me that he had died from his wounds a few hours earlier.  I knew that she was lying, of course.  I had seen the creature tear him open and end his life.  I continued to press her, and as I did so I so she grew more and more uncomfortable.  She repeatedly tried to tell me that I must have dreamed the entire thing.

I became more and more agitated, and finally she relented.  She leaned in as if she was telling me something that needed to stay between the two of us even though we were the only ones in the otherwise empty room.  Every so often she would glance over her shoulder at the doors as she spoke.

She told me that Johnston’s body had been taken down to the makeshift morgue to be disposed of.  When I started to object, she shook her head firmly and told me to remain quiet.  The official record would say that the body was incinerated due to concerns of a possible disease.  That way no one would know about the damage the creature had caused to his body.

No one but me.

She warned me not to let anyone else know that I had seen the creature, which she again referred to as Mr. Gangly.  The few outside the hospital staff that had tried to tell others what they had seen had all died under mysterious circumstances.  I needed to remain silent for my own safety.

At first I refused, but something in the way that she was looking at me made me stop.  I got the feeling that she wasn’t just looking out for my safety, but also her own.  I began to understand that her current position at the château wasn’t entirely voluntary.

Still trying to wrap my mind around everything that I had seen and that she was telling me, I questioned her about Mr. Gangly.  What was it?  How long had it been at the château?  Why had it killed Johnston?  The questions spilled out of me as if they would never end.

Ruth didn’t have any solid answers to give me.  All of the doctors and nurses at the hospital seemed to have a different theory.  Some said that Mr. Gangly was an experiment that had been conducted by German scientists during the occupation.  Others said it was actually a German scientist itself, one that had done things to himself for some unknown reason and was still conducting experiments on the patients in this new grotesque form.  She had been told by one doctor that he believed it was a demon that had been summoned by Nazi occultists.

I mulled it over.  Mr. Gangly had spoken to me in German.  Hesitantly, not sure that I really wanted to know the answer, I asked how it had known my name.

Ruth looked surprised and regarded me curiously.  As she opened her mouth to speak, the doors opened and a pair of soldiers entered the room.  They told me that I was being transferred to a hospital in Paris immediately.

And that’s where I’m writing to you from now, Margaret.  I’m sitting at a small table in a private room of one of the dozens of medical facilities in Paris.  It’s been dark for some time, but I can still hear the sounds of talking and laughing coming up from the streets through my open window.  

Medically I’m doing much better.  My fractured sternum is almost fully healed, and I only have slight discomfort from it when I move around.

Mentally, I’m not really sure how I’m doing.  I have trouble sleeping at night, and during the day I feel like I’m walking through a dream.  Sometimes I think about how I failed Johnston and feel a mixture of remorse and anger, and other times I realize that I haven’t thought about him in a while and for some reason that makes me even more angry.

There are times that I debate with myself whether I should write Johnston’s wife and tell her what really happened to her husband.  Each time I decide not to.  Even if I could figure out how to begin to describe Mr. Gangly and what it had done to him, how could her knowing the truth be of any comfort to her?

I’m scheduled to ship out for the United States two weeks from Tuesday.  As I come to the end of this letter, however, I realize that I can’t come back home to you yet.  Even if you somehow found a way to forgive my cowardice, I would never be able to.

God help me, I have to go back to Château des Espirits, where Mr. Gangly walks the halls.

I love you, Margaret, and I’m sorry.

Always yours,

Corporal Peter Lewis, United States Army

October 14, 1944

I can’t be the only one that feels like this is a very weird time.

I’m sure that there’s a better term to go with than ‘weird’, but if there is, it’s not coming to me.  We’ve been locked down for over a year thanks to the pandemic.  We’ve worn masks whenever we’ve stepped more than a few steps outside of our homes, and all of our human interactions, the real kind that doesn’t involve staring at computer screens, have come from an oh-so-intimate six feet away.  This was our reality for so long that sometimes it felt like it was always going to be that way.

Now that we’re getting back to the way things were before the virus, or at least some reasonable facsimile of pre-pandemic life, it feels weird, right?  The masks were annoying, sure, but don’t you kind of miss them in a strange way?  It’s like a child being told that a nice soft safety blanket is no longer required.

Dating is probably the most bizarre thing now.  After sitting around in your home for a year eating nachos in your underwear and binging whatever cooking show happened to be streaming at the time, you’re suddenly back out in the real world in places you thought you’d never be allowed to return to.  To add to the awkwardness, you’re sharing this experience with someone that you barely know.

This was the position that I found myself in as I sat on a bench in front of an Italian restaurant waiting for my date to arrive.  More than once I caught myself bouncing my leg up and down nervously.  I had never been good on dates even before the pandemic, and after more than a year I wasn’t just rusty.  I was nearly hopeless.

A lot of what made me feel so inadequate was the conversation.  No matter how hard you try otherwise, the discussion always seems to come back to the pandemic.  How did you spend your time during it?  Did anyone you know catch the virus?  How strange does it feel being back out now?

You know what follows that line of conversation?  Silence.  Very awkward silence.  It’s tough to recover after going down that path.

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I barely registered my date’s arrival.  We had never met in person before, having just communicated through texts and the dating app we had both used.  On the app she had gone by the name LostLuv, but outside of the digital world her name was Jenna Borden.

She was a good deal shorter than I was, with the top of her dark hair coming up to the height of my shoulders.  I felt like I was looming over her when I stood up to greet her.  Her eyes were bright blue with flecks of purple throughout, a rather exotic look that I had never seen before.  They peered up at me over the black facemask she was wearing.

There’s another thing that’s much more awkward now than it used to be.  We’re so programmed now to avoid human contact that greeting one another normally is nearly a foreign concept.  Not knowing what else to do, I raised my hand in a rather stupid wave.  She returned the gesture, looking just as unsure about what to do as I was.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jenna admitted in a pleasant yet nervous voice.  “I feel like I’ve just come out of a coma and I’m trying to figure out complicated calculus equations.”

I laughed.  With two simple sentences she had broken the ice.

“Do you do that often?” I asked.  “Emerge from comas with the express purpose of doing math?”

“Oh, all the time.  I’ve done it three times today already.  I hope you don’t mind the mask.  I’m still a little paranoid, you know?”

I shook my head.  “I completely understand.  I’ve been fully vaccinated for almost two months now, and I still carry one in my pocket just in case.  Is this restaurant okay?  We can go somewhere else if you want, somewhere with outdoor dining.”

“No, it’s fine.  I actually love this place.  Why don’t we go inside and find a table?”

It turned out that I had been worried about nothing.  Jenna was easy to talk to, and she seemed just as interested in avoiding certain subjects as I was.  Our personalities were similar enough for us to enjoy each other’s company without being so close that we agreed on everything.  I’ve always found that to be important, as it’s boring to be around someone that doesn’t have something new and different to contribute to the conversation.

She didn’t remove her mask during the course of the meal.  At first I thought that she was just going to wear it until the food arrived.  That was the common practice that many people followed, so that would have made sense.

When we got our drinks, however, she slid the straw up under the bottom of the mask and drank it that way.  When she finished with a sip, she slipped the straw back out and placed the glass onto the table.  I didn’t find that as strange as I once might have.  She had already told me that she was still worried about the virus, after all.  If anything it made me feel more self-conscious about not wearing my own mask.

She kept it on her face when the meal itself was served, and that struck me as odd.  Most people would have at least pushed up the bottom of the mask to expose their mouths so that they could eat.  Instead, she used one hand to pull the mask forward a bit, making just enough separation between it and her face to allow her fork access.  It seemed like a cumbersome way to eat.

I didn’t say anything to her about it, of course.  First of all it wasn’t any of my business, and secondly I didn’t want to make her feel as if I was judging her.  It had been a while since I enjoyed a first date to this degree.  I didn’t want to say or do anything to jeopardize it, especially over something like this.

We ended up forgoing dessert.  Although she didn’t say anything about it, I could tell that she was starting to get a bit uncomfortable being in such an enclosed space.  I paid the check despite her protests that she wanted to split it.  I very much believe in equality, but there are certain things that were ingrained in me as a child by my father, and being the one to pay on a date is one of those things.  I followed it up by applying another of those lessons and opening the door for her as we went back outside.

“So,” Jenna said as we stood on the sidewalk.  “What now?”

“I honestly hadn’t thought that far ahead,” I replied sheepishly.  “We’re just a couple of blocks away from Pleasence Park.  We could go for a walk there.”

“Going for a casual stroll on a first date?  How very old school of you.  I think it’s a fantastic idea.”

We chatted as we slowly walked through the small downtown Blackwood area.  As we did so I kept finding myself glancing down at her.  There was a definite attraction.  I couldn’t quite tell if she was feeling the same thing, but I thought that she might be.  This was going much better than I could have hoped.

As we reached the final intersection before coming to the park gates, Jenna sneezed.  I turned towards her just in time to see an odd movement under her mask.  It was like it had briefly pulled tighter against something, or that something had pushed against it from underneath.  The movement was gone before I could even fully register what I had seen.  I quickly shrugged it off.  It had just been some trick of the light, or the soft breeze that was blowing through the streets had made it wrinkle and my eyes had misinterpreted things.

We crossed the street and entered Pleasence Park.  At the front was a playground filled with kids running around like maniacs while their exasperated parents attempted to maintain some semblance of order.  I smiled to myself.

“Do you like kids?” Jenna asked, noticing my expression.

“I do,” I answered.  “You?”

She nodded.  “Yeah.  Well, I like them to a point.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“For the most part I love being around them.  Playtime, meals, all of that.  I love that stuff.  I start to become less enthralled with them when it’s time for a temper tantrum or a diaper change.”

I laughed.  “I can’t argue with that.”

“You know what I like more than children?”

“What’s that?”

“Going down a slide.”  She pointed.  “And there just so happens to be an open one right over there.”

I watched as she hurried over to the tall slide and started to climb up the steps.  The pure joy she exuded was endearing.  It was also something that I could understand and relate to.  It wasn’t just a slide.  It was a symbolic return to a simpler time.

I squinted slightly as I chided myself for sounding like a first year college student that just had his first Intro to Poetry class.

For a brief moment I considered going up the stairs after her.  It had been at least a decade since I had been on a slide, and the urge to go down one again was strong.  I was quite a bit larger than I had been then, however, and a quick look was all it took for me to see that I wasn’t going to fit on it.  Instead, I walked around to the far side to meet her at the bottom.

As Jenna came down the slide towards me, I noticed the movement under her mask again.  This time it wasn’t just a small section of her covered face.  Odd ripples and waves ran across the entire area.  Her feet touched the ground, and as she began to stand up I saw that there were four bumps, each triangular with the longest points near her mouth.  They were moving in and out like they were pulsing.

By the time she was standing fully upright the lumps were gone and the facemask had returned to normal.  She looked up at me with an odd expression.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

I couldn’t explain away what I had seen this time.  There was no doubt in my mind that I had definitely seen something.  Something that wasn’t natural.

I glanced over at the children playing.  If there really was something wrong with Jenna, something dangerous, I couldn’t let on that I knew she wasn’t what she appeared to be.  Not here, anyway.  I couldn’t put the kids and their families at risk.  I mustered up the best smile that I could.

“Yeah, absolutely,” I replied.  “I’m just a bit sad that I’m too big to take a trip down the slide myself.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a tilt of her head.  “You look like you’re the perfect size to me.”

She started walking towards one of the nearby trail makers.  Pleasence Park was home to about a dozen hiking trails, each of which traveled through a different section of the dense woods.  Not many people used them during this time of day.  They were secluded and the perfect place to go when you wanted privacy.

I almost didn’t follow her.  My first instinct was to bolt back towards downtown, but I looked back over at the playing children again.  I couldn’t do anything that might put them in harm’s way.  Reluctantly, I went after her and we entered the treeline.

Jenna reached out and took my hand.  I smiled over at her, but all I could think about was how firm her grip was.  It was like a vice, as if she was making sure that I couldn’t get away.

“This is okay, right?” she asked.

“What?” I said dully as I was pulled out of my thoughts.

“Me holding your hand.  This is okay, right?”

“Oh, um, yeah, it’s fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She was testing me.  Or maybe she wasn’t, and instead she was luring me in.  She must have realized that I was no longer at ease.  

Now that I knew something was wrong, I began to notice small things that I hadn’t before.  She kept sneaking looks at me as we walked, her eyes carefully inspecting me before turning back towards the trail.  Her walk was also just slightly odd; her steps were light and didn’t make as much noise as they should on the leaves and twigs.

“Did you enjoy your lunch?” she asked, her eyes returning to my face.

“It was good,” I said.  “How about yours?”

“Not bad.  I prefer my meat a bit more raw than they prepared the beef tagliata, though.”

“It looked pretty red to me.”

“What can I say,” she replied with a laugh.  “I like my meat bloody.”

Jenna turned her attention forward once again, and I noticed more movement under the mask.  The firm triangular objects pressed tightly against the cloth for a few seconds before retracting back towards her face.  My mind flashed to images I had seen of insect mandibles opening and closing.

I felt panic rising in me.  I forced it down.  Obviously I was in a dangerous situation, but the only way I was going to get through it was if I kept my wits about me.

We came to a narrow section of the trail.  The brush was thick enough on both sides that it only allowed for us to walk through one at a time.  I gave her a smile and motioned for her to go first.  It was, after all, the gentlemanly thing to do.  She released my hand and started through.

I let her get a few feet ahead of me before taking the knife out of my pocket.  Slowly unfolding the blade from the handle, I followed her down the trail, expecting her to turn and attack me at any moment.  This would be the perfect time.  We were all alone, and because of the dense brush I wouldn’t be able to easily escape.

Somehow I knew that I was out of time and she was about to strike.  It was now or never.  Gritting my teeth, I lunged and wrapped my arm around her shoulders.  Before she could even cry out in surprise the knife was cutting across her throat.  I shoved her forward so that the blood wouldn’t get on me.  She stumbled a few steps before collapsing face first to the ground.

Being careful not to touch the growing pool of blood on the dirt path, I rolled her over just in time to hear the final gurgling sounds come out of her severed larynx and see the light fade out of her purple-flecked eyes.  I ignored all of that and grabbed the mask with my right hand.  I ripped it off and stood back up.

Jenna’s face was completely normal.  With the exception of a small scar on her bottom lip, the skin was unblemished and there was no sign of any sort of abnormality.  It certainly wasn’t the face of a monster.

I sighed as I licked the blood off of the knife.  There was no point in beating myself up over it.  It was an easy error to make.  I had made it several times over the past year, and I’d probably do it again at some point.  Honest mistakes happened.

I grabbed the body by the feet and started pulling it off the side of the trail.  It was best to get rid of it before some hiker came across it.  Who knew how someone would react to seeing a dead body in the woods.  

The pandemic made some people act a little crazy, after all.

For what seemed like hours, Harper Tully stared out the narrow rectangular window as she chewed on her bottom lip.

The focus of her attention was a small brown box sitting on the stoop a few feet away from her apartment’s front door.  It was an awkward angle, but she could just make out the top of the bag that was sitting inside of it.  It was well within reach if she simply opened the door to claim it.  She wouldn’t even have to step outside.

She noticed that she was nervously running her fingers across the thick curtain.  Frowning slightly, she released the cloth and stepped away from the window.  This was ridiculous.  She was acting like a scared child.

Harper unlocked the front door and placed her hand on the doorknob.  She curled her fingers around it with every intention of turning it, but instead she simply stood still and continued to chew on her lip.

On the other side of the door was the food that she had ordered an hour earlier.  The friendly-looking delivery driver had left it on the stoop just as she had requested in her online order, and he had waved pleasantly at her when he had noticed her looking out the window.  She had waved back politely and watched him walk back to his car before driving away.

He had been wearing a mask the entire time he was outside the apartment.  She had noticed that he had even left it on when he pulled away from the curb.  It was extremely unlikely that the virus could be transmitted on the box or bag, and she knew that the restaurant she had ordered from took the best possible precautions when preparing food.  There was absolutely nothing to worry about.

She closed her eyes.  She had never been prone to this sort of panic before the pandemic.  If anything she had been the opposite, rushing into things without fully thinking through the possible consequences.  Something had changed inside of her during the long months of lockdown.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she turned the doorknob and opened the front door.  A warm breeze blew in from outside, and the sensation of it washing over her skin made her panic start to rise.  She opened her eyes and quickly retrieved the box before slamming the door shut.

She tried to slow her breathing as she took the box into the kitchen.  Setting it down on the counter, she quickly washed her hands before also applying hand sanitizer.  She put on a pair of rubber gloves before laying out two rows of paper towels on the counter next to the box.

She removed the paper bag from the box and set it onto the paper towels.  Opening it, she pulled her sandwich out and carefully unwrapped it from the thin paper that covered it.  When she was finished, she put everything but the sandwich back into the box and tossed it into the trash can.  She sterilized the area of the counter that the box had been sitting on before getting a plate out of one of the cabinets and taking her food into the living room.

Harper sat down at her desk and started to eat, tapping one of the keys on the keyboard to bring her computer out of standby mode as she did so.  The screen turned back on and she was once again looking at the message board she had been reading through all morning.  A number of new posts had been left since she had stepped away, and she read through them all eagerly.

It didn’t take long for her to finish.  She set down the remainder of her sandwich on the plate and leaned back in her chair.  The only sounds in the room were the low hum of her computer’s fan and the ticking of the clock in the hallway.

She reached over and picked up a blanket from off of a nearby footrest.  She put it over her shoulders and pulled it tight.  As was becoming more and more common, the room felt large and empty even though that wasn’t actually the case.  She felt isolated and alone as she waited for a new post to appear on the message board.

Harper didn’t know most of the people that posted on this particular message board.  The ones she did know couldn’t be considered anything more than casual acquaintances, people that she had shared some online conversations with at one time or another.  That wasn’t all that different from her life before the lockdown had begun.  At work she had known many of the people she worked with but hadn’t been close to any of them.

At first she had only gone to the message board every so often out of mild curiosity.  Now, though, she was on it practically every waking moment.  There wasn’t anything special about it.  It was just one of those boards where people would chat about everything from the weather to politics to the ongoing pandemic.  It had become a familiar place, and it was the only thing that she had that was close to contact with the outside world.  She had felt that need for connection strongly, especially recently.

A notification that a new post had been made appeared on the screen.  Harper practically flung herself forward as she clicked on the button to refresh the page.  After a moment of loading the title of the post appeared at the top of the message board.

I’m Lonely.

She stared at the words for a long moment.  It wasn’t very often that she saw a post title that was that short and to the point, and it was rare that personal feelings such as that were discussed on the message board at all.  She opened the post and found that the full text was only two additional words.

Are you?

She shook her head.  It was probably just a spam post.  Those happened from time to time on the message board.  Usually it involved messages claiming that people could make massive amounts of money working from home, though, or the occasional statement touting the sexual performance enhancement of some wonder drug.  This one didn’t seem to have much of a point.

She made a face.  There was always the possibility that it was someone trying to find another person to hook up with.  Those kinds of posts were much more rare, as there were simply better places on the internet to go to for that.

The disgusted look slowly slid off of her face as she reread the words.  It could also be a real person that was really feeling that way and was reaching out to other people.  That would have taken a lot of courage to do.

Harper looked away from the computer screen as she mulled it over.  Coming to a decision, she turned back to it and hesitantly typed a response.

I am, too, she wrote.

She began to feel embarrassed the moment that she made the post.  If she could have immediately removed it she would have, but this particular message board didn’t allow for the deletion or editing of posts.  Her cheeks grew warm as she left the desk and went into the bathroom.

She splashed cool water on her face and looked at her reflection in the mirror.  The expression she saw on herself made her smile crookedly in a mixture of exasperation and amusement.  She had replied to an online post using a pseudonym.  No one would know that it had been her.  She was feeling self-conscious for no reason.

It was, however, time for her to start getting some work done instead of hanging out on a message board.  Working from home had a number of benefits, but one of the downsides was that she had a harder time keeping to a schedule than she did when she was still going into the office.  A large amount of documents had been emailed to her earlier in the day and they needed her attention.

Harper returned to the living room and sat back down at her desk, fully intending to get down to business.  She was immediately distracted by the sight of a notification that a reply had been posted to the message that she had left.  Her first instinct was to ignore it; not only did she have work to do, she was also still feeling a twinge of awkwardness for having responded to the original post.  Curiosity got the best of her, though, and with a certain reluctance she refreshed the page.

We don’t have to be.

She furrowed her brow.  They didn’t have to be lonely?  It sounded like a terrible pickup line.  It seemed like she had been right about the poster just looking for a random hookup.

She sat back in her chair.  Did that really make sense?  She hadn’t provided any personal information about herself.  Nothing about her location, or even anything about her gender and orientation.  Her screen name was vague enough that it didn’t give away anything along those lines.

The other possibility was that this really was someone that was looking for a way out of their loneliness.  In a strange way that made her feel more uncomfortable than if the poster was an indiscriminate pervert.  It struck a nerve.

Shaking her head, she closed the website and opened her email client.  If she didn’t get started on her work now she was going to miss the end of day deadline.  She brought up the first document and began to read through it.

She had only gotten a few sentences in when her mind wandered back to the message board conversation.  If the last post was meant to be taken at face value, what did the person mean when they said that they didn’t have to be lonely?  Were they suggesting that they strike up an online friendship like modern day penpals?  Or were they saying something else entirely?

Harper sighed.  It was impossible to figure out without knowing more details.  The only thing that was clear was that she wasn’t going to get any work done until she had some answers.  She closed her email and navigated back to the message board.

Nothing new had been posted in the last few minutes.  She reread the short message a couple of times before noticing that there was more in the post.  At the very bottom of the screen was a thin black line.  She scrolled down further and found that there was an image attached.

It was a handprint.  The image was a bit larger than the size of her own hand, and the fingers were stretched out rather than pressed together.  The shape and black color were formed by hundreds, if not thousands, of tightly wound spirals drawn around and on top of each other.  She had never seen anything quite like it before.

Without realizing that she was doing it, she reached out with her right hand and moved it slowly towards the screen.  It was like the person that had written the messages was reaching out to her in a way that was both figurative and literal.  Her fingertips gently touched the monitor and came to a rest over those of the handprint.

It was an oddly poignant moment.  Harper suddenly realized that this was the closest that she had come to human contact in over a year.  She felt her eyes begin to tear up as she kept her fingers pressed against the warm monitor.  She could almost feel the person on the other side of it experiencing the same emotions that she was.

She slowly took her hand away from the monitor.  As much as she wanted that to be true, it was just a picture on a computer screen.

Harper wiped at her eyes in annoyance as she returned to her work.  It was stupid to get so emotional over something as pointless as a post on a message board.  She had much more real things that she needed to attend to.

It took a few hours for her to get through all of the documents.  Two of them were rather complicated, and they had required research that had taken more time than she expected.  She just barely managed to get them finished and emailed back before her deadline.

Once she had finally finished, she raised her arms over her head and stretched.  Her entire body felt a little sore, but her neck in particular was bothering her.  She rubbed it with the palm of her hand as she stood up from the desk.  She was feeling hungry again.  She went into the kitchen to scrounge around for food.

“Hello,” a voice whispered in her ear.

Harper yelped and spun around, fully expecting to see an intruder standing behind her.  There was no one there.  Her eyes went over every inch of the apartment that she could see, but she came up empty.

She slowly went over to the front door.  A quick check verified that she had indeed locked it when she had retrieved the food earlier.  Taking an umbrella out of the stand and holding it out in front of her as a makeshift weapon, she quietly went through the apartment room by room.  The thought of someone being in there with her was horrifying.  To her relief, though, she found that she was alone.

The voice must have just been imagined.  Either that, or she might have caught a small snippet of a conversation from one of her neighbors.  The apartment walls weren’t nearly as thick as the landlord tried to make potential renters think.  The more she thought about it, the more that seemed like the most likely answer.

She put the umbrella back in the stand and returned to the kitchen, rubbing at her aching neck as she did so.  There weren’t many options for what to make, so she settled on making herself a sandwich.  That was two meals that day that consisted of only a sandwich.  As she chewed on the turkey she wondered just how many of the things she had consumed over the course of the pandemic.  There had been a time when she would only eat a sandwich as a last resort, but now she was basically living on them.

“Harper,” the same voice from before whispered.

She dropped the remains of the sandwich on the kitchen floor as she jumped.  She turned around to look behind her even though she knew it was impossible for anyone to be there.  She had been leaning up against the counter while she ate; the only thing behind her was the wall.

The ache in her neck intensified as a burning sensation ran up and down it.  She moaned in pain as she held a hand up to it.  There was something there.  She couldn’t tell what it was.

She immediately felt a sense of dread.  She had been so careful during the entire pandemic.  Was this thing on her neck part of the symptoms of the disease?  She couldn’t remember if growths were on the list or not.  There were so many damn symptoms that almost anything could be seen as one.

Forgetting everything else, she rushed through the apartment to the bathroom.  She turned on the light and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.  Taking a deep breath, she turned to face the mirror.

Harper stared into the mirror, the eyes reflected back at her filled with fear.  After a brief hesitation, she turned her head to the left to get a better look at her neck.  There was a long scar that ran from just under her ear to the top of her shoulder that hadn’t been there before.

The scar began to separate.  She gasped as she gripped the sides of the sink so tightly that her hands hurt.  The flesh opened to reveal a dark gap, and each side of the gap was lined with pointed white teeth.  Thin trickles of blood ran down between them and onto her shoulder.

“Hello, Harper,” the mouth said in the same whispered tones that she had been hearing.

She screamed.  Her shriek echoed through the small bathroom, coming back to her from many different angles and causing her ears to ring.  She continued screaming until she began to gasp for air and choke on her own saliva.  She coughed and wheezed while the mouth continued talking.

“It’s okay, Harper,” it said soothingly.  “I know that this is a shock to you.  I’m sorry for that.  It’s not my intention to frighten you.  Here, let me help.”

She felt something begin to move under her skin.  Turning back to the mirror, she watched as a long thin object pushed outward from the mouth and wound its way around the back of her neck and out of sight.  It was like watching a jellyfish’s tendril move in water, except that this was underneath her own flesh.

“This will hurt for just a moment,” the voice warned her.

“Please,” she managed to get out.  “Don’t do-”

She was cut off by a sharp pain at the base of her skull.  She cried out as it grew stronger.  Just when she thought that she would pass out, the pain was gone.

“There,” the mouth said.  “That’s better, isn’t it?”

Harper took a few deep breaths.  The… thing was right.  There wasn’t any more pain, and she was feeling more in control of herself and less afraid.

“What did you do to me?” she asked quietly.

“I made it so that you’re more comfortable,” it replied vaguely.

“How?  How did you do that?”

“I drilled a small hole through your skull.  That allowed me to adjust the parts of your brain that were causing your panic.”

“You…  you lobotomized me?”

“No, of course not.  I’ve only temporarily affected your system.  I wouldn’t do that to you, Harper.”

She stared at the mouth in the mirror.  She knew intellectually that she should be more angry and terrified than she was.  Those were the right things to be feeling in whatever this situation was.  While she did feel them, they were much fainter than they should have been.

“What are you?” she demanded.

The mouth didn’t respond.  Instead, she watched as another tendril began to snake out from it under her skin.  It continued down her shoulder and beneath her shirt.  She felt it go into her right arm, and less than a second later it reappeared from under the sleeve and stopped on the inside of her arm at the wrist.

A mass began to form at the end of the tendril.  It caused her skin to bulge outward, stretching and pulling as something moved beneath it.  As she watched the skin tore open, sending a spray of blood onto the bathroom floor.  Despite whatever the thing was doing to her brain, she felt sharp pain radiate out from the wound.

Fingers extended out from the tear.  They flexed as they pulled themselves forward and out of the gap.  They were covered in slick blood, but not as much as they should have been given where they were coming out of.  The flesh that she could see through the gore was pink and raw like a newborn baby’s skin.

Harper was paralyzed as she watched the fingers emerging.  She just couldn’t accept what she was witnessing.  It was impossible, and her mind reeled from it.

The fingers were followed by the rest of a hand.  It pressed up against her own, and she could feel the warmth of the skin and the stickiness of the blood.  For a moment the hand laid flat against her own.  Slowly, the fingers moved and intertwined with hers.

“I’m the reason that you never have to be alone again,” the mouth said.

A third tendril, this one much larger than the previous ones, appeared in her neck.  She could feel the heat from it under her skin.  It felt… good.  Comforting.  Her muscles started to relax as the tendril slowly began wrapping itself around her.  It wound around her shoulders before moving further down to encircle her waist.  It was a loving embrace, the kind that she hadn’t felt in far too long.

Her eyelids began to droop.  She was vaguely aware that dozens of smaller tendrils were now crawling under her skin and piercing through her skull as they made their way into her brain, but she didn’t care.  Nothing else mattered except that she wasn’t alone anymore.

She looked into the mirror.  Her right eye was beginning to change.  The round iris curled into the shape of a spiral, the same shape that the handprint on the computer screen had been made up of.  The vision in that eye warped and distorted before going black.  She was now blind on that side.  She vaguely wondered why she wasn’t upset about that before dismissing the thought.

“There are others out there that are lonely,” her loving companion told her.

“That’s… sad,” Harper answered slowly in a thick voice.  “We should do something about that.”

“That is a very good idea, Harper.  Why don’t you?”

She turned away from the mirror and left the bathroom.  Each footstep felt like someone else was making it, and the short trip from the bathroom to the living room seemed like a dream.  Sitting down at the desk, she tilted her head slightly as she looked at the monitor blankly.  After a few minutes she opened the message board, clicked on the button to start a new post, and placed her fingers on the keys, the second hand growing from her right wrist moving slightly to allow her to do so.

I’m lonely, she typed.  Are you?

In college, Thomas Eiden had studied under a professor named Dale Collins.  While that name is meaningless to most people, he was a legend in journalism circles.  He had worked for the New York Times for decades back when that had really meant something, and he had used his platform to expose everything from killers to corrupt politicians.  To his students, that meant that you listened when he imparted his wisdom during class.

He had taught many things that ended up having a major impact on both Thomas’ career and his life in general, but there was one particular piece of advice that he had especially taken to heart.

“You’re the follower,” Collins had said.  “The story is the leader.  You follow wherever the story leads.”

It was a tremendous piece of advice to any aspiring journalist.  Many times a journalist would start looking into one thing and end up finding out that the actual story that needed telling was something else entirely.

Thomas had written for a number of publications and had written a book about a notorious local celebrity.  Albert Bertelli, a criminal better known as Big Man Bertelli, had lived in the area back in the first half of the 1900s.  While most crime bosses chose to live in cities such as New York City or Chicago to stay closer to their businesses, Bertelli instead preferred to pull the strings from a distance and use trusted lieutenants as his mouthpieces.  He had his hands in everything imaginable, from brothels to bootlegging to good old-fashioned racketeering.

Big Man Bertelli was known for his brutality when handling anyone that crossed him or his various operations.  His tendency to drink mass amounts of alcohol didn’t help his demeanor, but he was just born ugly of soul, as Thomas’ father used to say.  There was a story that had long circulated that Bertelli had once decided that the standard cement shoes were too good for a police informant that his men had caught snooping around one of his warehouses.  Instead, he had personally gone to Chicago to pour the cement down the man’s throat before pushing the poor guy off a pier.

Then there were the pigs.

The locals still told stories about Bertelli and his supposed pig farm.  Children still sang a song about it while they were jumping rope or trying to scare their friends.

Big Man Bertelli walkin’ down the street

Owns every person that he’ll ever meet

His men never have a grave to dig

‘Cause if you cross him he’ll feed you to his pigs

Bertelli had been infamous for making his enemies disappear.  No one really knew for sure how he accomplished the disappearing act, but according to legend he had a pig farm hidden somewhere beyond the outskirts of town.  It had never been proven, but that unsubstantiated claim was all many people needed to mentally put two and two together.

As Thomas had written in his book, the truth was that Bertelli had used a number of different methods to get rid of people that crossed him.  Tony “Two Guns” Yancy had been gunned down by him personally in the back room of a pool hall, for example.  He has also all but admitted that he was the one responsible for bashing in Michael O’Sullivan’s skull with a hammer.  Still, the rumors about the secret pig farm he reserved for people that he really wanted to watch suffer lived on.

Recently, Thomas had been commissioned to write a series of articles for the local newspaper about historical figures from the area.  At first he was asked to focus on lesser known people that had had a positive influence on the community.  He had written about politicians, activists, and artists.  The editor never came right out and said it, but Thomas had the feeling from the woman’s demeanor and various remarks about the readers that she wanted to make things more classy.

It didn’t take long for that ill-fated and more than a little condescending idea to fall flat on its face.  The fact of the matter was that most readers didn’t care about local heroes.  They wanted the blood and guts and that creepy little feeling that comes with reading about the darker side of their city’s history.

Thomas was asked to write five more articles, one of which would run each week on Friday.  These articles were to spotlight the more unsavory parts of the town’s history.  He had written up a list of who he wanted to feature, and right at the top of the list was Big Man Bertelli.

The articles ran as intended, and he was pleased to see that the editor didn’t touch much of anything that he had written.  There were always some changes made after submission, and as a writer he knew that intellectually, but there was always some small part of him that detested when a single word that he’d written was removed.  It was simple vanity to believe that there was no way to improve on his work, and he knew that it was ridiculous, but it was a vanity that most writers shared.

In a complete coincidence, his final article ran the week of Halloween.  He had saved Bertelli for last so that the short series went out on a strong note, and by all accounts it was a success.  He basked in what little glory writing an article for a local paper brought with it for a few days before moving on to other projects.

He received a call from the paper a little over a week later.  The caller introduced herself as a member of the paper’s office staff before informing him that they had received a package addressed to him.  He wasn’t sure what to make of that.  No one had ever sent him anything via an employer before, and when he said as much the women assured him that it wasn’t unheard of for them to get mail for writers.  It wasn’t commonplace, but it did happen.  They made arrangements for the package to be sent to him by courier later that day.

The term ‘package’ had been a bit misleading.  What was delivered to Thomas was a thin manila envelope.  After thanking and tipping the courier, he closed the front door of his apartment and walked into the kitchen as he carefully tore the envelope open.

Inside was an old black and white photograph.  He held it up to the light to get a better look.  It took him a few moments to figure out exactly what it was that he was looking at.  The picture showed Big Man Bertelli, dressed in a long coat and wide-brimmed hat, standing in front of a wooden fence.  There was a disturbingly wide grin on his face, one filled with dark humor and something that he could best describe as satisfaction.  He felt a wave of revulsion wash over him.  It was clear that whatever had brought about that particular smile was something truly horrible.

Tearing his eyes away from Bertelli’s face, he closely examined the rest of the picture.  It had been taken at night, and even with the light of the flash and another source of illumination coming from just outside the viewable area it was difficult to make out deals of the area around the man.  His eyes fell on something between the slats of the fence.  He took off his glasses and held the picture up close to his face.  Staring out from between the wooden planks was a large pig.

Thomas blinked.  Assuming the picture was real, he was holding proof that Bertelli’s pig farm was real and not just an urban legend.  He felt a surge of excitement.  Flipping over the picture, he found that a phone number had been written on the blank side in blue pen.  Without hesitating he retrieved his phone and dialed the number.

A man’s voice answered on the third ring.  It was deep and raspy, the kind of voice that came from years of hard drinking and heavy smoking.

“What?” the man demanded.

“Yes, hello, my name is Thomas Eiden,” Thomas replied, a bit flustered.  “I received a picture with this phone number on the back of it.”

The man’s tone instantly became more friendly.  “Oh, yeah, the guy from the newspaper.  Good to hear you got it.  You never know with the mail being the way it is these days.”

“No, I suppose that you don’t.  Listen, this picture…”

“I thought you might like it.  I remember the day it was taken like it was yesterday.”

Thomas frowned.  “I’m sorry, are you trying to tell me that you are-”

“Big Man Bertelli?” the man finished for him before letting out a hoarse laugh.  “Of course I’m not saying that.  I’m not a nutjob.  My father worked for him back in the thirties and forties.  Tended the farm in the background of that picture I sent you, in fact.  He used to take me to work with him when I was just a pup.  That was, oh, three quarters of a century ago.”

“You were actually at Bertelli’s pig farm?” Thomas asked, more forcefully than he had intended.

“Damn right I was.  That’s why I sent you that picture and my number.  I read that article of yours in the paper, and there was all that nonsense that’s been floating around since forever about him and the pigs and all that.  I thought you might get a kick out of seeing the real thing.”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  “You mean the farm itself?  How?  It still exists?”

Another laugh.  “Sure does.  Right where Bertelli left it.  Be happy to show you around the place if you’re interested.”

They made arrangements to meet at an address that Thomas didn’t recognize the next day.  His hand was shaking as he wrote it down on a small notepad.  There was always a chance that this was some sort of elaborate prink or, despite the assertion to the contrary, the guy was crazy, but he didn’t think so.  Between the picture and the matter-of-fact way the man had spoken, he found himself believing him.  Still, he had to accept the possibility that he felt that way because he wanted the man to be telling the truth.

The drive to the address he had been given was uneventful.  About halfway there it began to rain, not a steady downpour but that spurting kind of rain that somehow manages to be even more miserable.  The clouds overhead cast everything in an unpleasant gray tone, and not even the colorful array of fall leaves clinging to the trees managed to lighten it.  He refused to let the weather bring down his spirits.  He was on his way to see a place that he had been thinking about since he was a child.

He almost missed his turn when he arrived.  He felt the tires slide for a brief but stomach-wrenching moment, but they found their group on the wet road and he was able to maneuver the car onto the dirt driveway.  It led into a thick patch of trees that blocked out everything beyond the road.

It was at that point that he began to get nervous.  If this was some sort of setup or sick game, it would be taking place at a very isolated location.

He was put at ease when the car emerged from the trees and into the clearing beyond.  The run-down building and decaying fences of the farm certainly gave off a creepy vibe, but the old man standing next to the rusting pickup truck was hardly intimidating.  He looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over.  Thomas pulled up next to him and got out of the car.

“Ah, there you are,” the man said with a grin missing more than a few teeth.  “I thought you might have gotten cold feet.  Name’s Peter Snyder.”

“Thomas Eiden,” Thomas replied, shaking the offered hand.  “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me.”

“Not a problem.  Well, what do you think?  Is this place everything that you hoped it would be?”

“Honestly?  It’s a bit of a shithole.”

Snyder laughed.  “That’s right to the point, and I can’t say that you’re wrong.  There hasn’t been anyone around to take care of the place in decades.  It used to be quite the looker in its day, though.  Big Man made sure of that.”

That seemed like as good a time as any to start the interview.  Thomas took his phone out of his pocket to start the voice recording app.  Before he could even turn on the screen, however, Snyder began to speak again.

“I gotta confess, Mr. Eiden, I’ve got a bit of an ulterior motive in bringing you out here,” he said.  “Oh, don’t get me wrong, this is Big Man’s farm, all right.  He did indeed bring people here to make sure they stayed gone.  So you’re going to get your money’s worth visiting here.  More than your money’s worth, I’d bet.”

Thomas opened his mouth to speak, but Snyder turned on his heel and headed towards the fenced-in yard.  He was surprisingly quick for a man his age, and Thomas didn’t catch up to him until he was nearly at his destination.  Turning around, he leaned up against the rotting wood of the barely standing fence and nodded once to himself.

“Most people think they know how much of a monster Big Man Bertelli was,” Snyder said slowly, an unreadable expression on his face.  “I don’t think anyone really knows how bad he was, though.  Well, anyone but me, and that’s because I witnessed the monster in action more than once.”

He pointed over his shoulder at the muddy turf behind him.  The fence wrapped around a large portion of the yard, with one side attaching to the back of a barn that seemed on the verge of collapsing.  There were only a few ragged tufts of grass that managed to grow inside of the perimeter.

“He’d keep them cooped up inside that barn most of the time,” Snyder continued in a quiet voice.  “They’d grunt and squeal and scream.  I thought it was just about the saddest sound I’d ever heard.  I told my Pa that once, and he said that Big Man loved hearing it.”

“He liked hearing the pigs cry out?” Thomas asked as he finally got the recorder running.

“Bogs,” Snyder corrected him firmly.  “Not pigs.  Hogs.  These weren’t cute little pink animals with curly tails and a friendly disposition.  These were massive animals.  Even the smallest were north of two hundred pounds.  Thing is, even though they were huge, they could move fast.  They could chase down a man running as hard as he could within the blink of an eye.”

Thomas shuddered, and it had nothing to do with the cold rain.  “And he trained them to kill people?”

“Not at first.  In the beginning he left the training to my Pa.  Gave him a real detailed list of what he wanted, and Pa delivered for him.”  The old man stared off into the distance.  “It’s surprisingly easy for hogs to get a taste for people.  It doesn’t take much at all.  Pa started with mixing blood in with the water they drank.  Pretty soon they would barely drink if the red stuff wasn’t there.  From there…  Well, from there the feeding got worse, let’s just leave it at that.”

They were silent for a long moment.  Snyder didn’t seem to be in a rush to continue his story, and for Thomas’ part he was at a loss as to what to even say after a statement like that.”

“You, um, you said that Bertelli left the training to your father at first,” he said eventually.  “That makes it sound like things changed later.”

“It did,” Snyder confirmed with a nod, bringing his attention back to the journalist.  “For a long time Bertelli was satisfied with my Pa’s work.  He’d have his thugs snatch up people and bring them here.  It was mostly people that had managed to get on his bad side.  Cops, prosecutors, snitches.  He’d have them brought out here and tossed into the hog pen.”

He scratched his chin for a moment before continuing.  “Guys like Big Man are never satisfied for long.  They want more.  Bigger.  Better.  Big Man took over the hog training, and his methods were a lot less kind than my Pa’s.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Thomas said, “but how were they different?”

“He beat them to make them meaner.  You could hear the howls from a mile away.  He said that it toughened them up.  He wouldn’t feed them for days.  They’d be starving by the time someone got thrown into the pen.  Those hogs would make a beeline straight for the poor bastard and tear him apart in a frenzy.”

“Jesus.”

“Yep.  he took it one step further, though.  He was sure to only breed the biggest and nastiest ones together while he let the weaker ones die off.  Every generation was a better killing machine than the last.”

Thomas took a moment to let what he was being told sink in.  Bertelli had basically been conducting crude experiments in eugenics.  It was simultaneously fascinating and revolting.

“It was around the third or fourth brood that things started getting strange.  There started to be some…  I guess you’d call them abnormalities.  Some of the babies were born with tusks.  Wild hogs have them, but the first of these particular hogs started out as farm animals and none of them had tusks.  Some of the babies had their weird deformities on their hooves where the tips were curved downward.  And then along came Stella.”

“Sorry, Stella?”

“She was massive.  Had to have weighed at least four hundred pounds when she finished growing.  Long tusks that could punch right through flesh and blood, and these sharp teeth that she used to bite and tear.  Her hooves were hooked like claws.  Her hide was thick and tough, and it stretched real tight against her muscles.  I had never seen anything like her, and I’ve never seen anything like her since.  When she looked at you it made your blood run cold.  You knew she was sizing you up, figuring out how she wanted to end you.”

Thomas had a number of questions to ask, but Snyder continued before he could ask any of them.

“I watched Stella kill quite a few full grown men on her own without any trouble.  Now, I get this next part is going to sound a little wild, maybe even crazy, but I’m telling you, she enjoyed the killing.  She would toy with them sometimes.  She’d let them get back up after she knocked them down, and the second they were on their feet she’d shove them down again.  Big Man loved that.  He loved her from the moment he laid eyes on her.  He decided she was going to be the blueprint going forward.  He made sure that she had her pick of the boars.  She probably would have had that anyway, as she tended to kill any sows that got near her.  Soon all of the hogs he kept were these unnatural-looking monsters.  I don’t use that term lightly, Mr. Eiden, but that’s what they were.  Monsters.”

Snyder abruptly stood upright and started walking around the fenceline.  Not sure what was going on, Thomas followed him as he as he could through the thick mud that pulled at his shoes with every step.  The old man led the way past the yard and towards the woods beyond.  He stopped next to a rotten stump and pointed at the ground.

“Right here is where Big Man died,” he said.

“What, no, that’s not right,” Thomas disagreed with a shake of his head.  “Bertelli was killed in a car bombing outside of the Douglas Theater during a trip to New York.”

“I hate to correct you, young man, but you’re the one that’s wrong.  That bastard, may he rot in hell, was killed and eaten by his own hogs right on this very spot.”

Snyder spit on the mud in what was either disgust or hatred, most likely both.  “Bertelli got the results he wanted, and he got a whole lot more along with them.  The hogs started getting too strong, too fast, too smart.  They weren’t satisfied with the scraps that were being offered to them anymore.  They wanted out.”

He nodded towards the fence.  “My Pa and I were over on the other side of the barn when it happened.  It was late, and believe me, this place gets dark at night.  Can’t hardly see the nose on the front of your face when the stars aren’t out.  There was just this single light at the top of the barn that shined down into the pen.  Bertelli had brought up another guy from the city for his hogs to meet.  Pa didn’t like me seeing that sort of thing, for good reason mind you, so he took me around the building

“Not seeing didn’t mean I couldn’t hear it.  The same kind of screams that I had heard a dozen times before echoed all over the place.  It’s not the screams that were the worst part.  It was the sounds that came after the screams stopped.  These wet sucking sounds, like meat being pulled off the bone by a butcher.  It was…  Well, you can imagine what those noises were.”

Thomas could indeed, but he didn’t want to.

“This time was different, though.  Normally you’d know that everything was over when you heard the hogs grunting and shuffling back into the barn.  That didn’t happen on this particular night.  Instead of things quieting down, they got louder.  The hogs started squealing and crying out.  I swear that I could actually feel the rage coming off of them even from the other side of the barn.  It was like heat coming off of a road on a hot day.  Bertelli was yelling at them, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“Suddenly there was this sharp crack.  It made my blood run cold.  My Pa told me to stay right where I was and walked back around the side of the barn.  Well, I was scared, but I was still a kid.  He was only gone a few seconds before I started to follow him to see what was going on.

“I got to the other side of the barn just in time to see the last of those monster hogs forcing its way through the hole they had made in the fence.  The light shining down on the pen was bright, but it didn’t reach past the pen itself.  I could just barely make out Bertelli running just as fast as he could away from the animals.  He couldn’t outrun them, and I suspect he knew that, but he tried anyway.”

“And here’s where they caught up to him,” Thomas said slowly, looking down at the spot that Snyder had indicated a few minutes earlier.  “He didn’t get far.”

“Not far at all,” Snyder agreed.  “Like I said, he didn’t have a chance.  No one would have.  They did just what they had been bred and trained to do.  When they were done, there was nothing left of the great Big Man Bertelli.”

They were silent for a long moment.  It was a lot to think through, and Thomas mulled over what he had been told as best as he could.  He blinked as a thought struck him.

“The car bomb was attributed to the O’Connor family,” he said.  “Danny Ricci, Bertelli’s second in command, had a major grudge against them.  When he found out what happened to Bertelli, he must have staged the bombing so that they would have no choice but to go to war with the O’Connors.”

“Could be,” Snyder replied with a shrug.  “I don’t know anything about any of that.  I don’t think that you’re quite appreciating what I’m telling you here, Mr. Eiden.  Bertelli’s hogs, the ones that could tear a man limb from limb and had the disposition to do just that, got free that night.  Think about that for a second.”

Thomas’ eyes went wide.  “Jesus.  What happened to them?”

“They went off into the woods.”  He motioned towards the trees.  “That particular forest goes on for miles.  Sometimes hunters come out of it with strange stories.  Black bear carcasses completely stripped of flesh.  Odd tracks in the dirt that they can’t identify.  Sometimes they say that they’ve seen unnatural animals in the shadows of the trees.  Most people write them off as eyes playing tricks and the product of one too many bears.  I know better, Mr. Eiden.  I know it’s Stella’s offspring.  Hell, maybe that sow is still out there somewhere.  I can’t imagine that’s the case after all these years, but if any hog was stubborn enough not to die, it was that one.”

Thomas took off his glasses and looked up at the overcast sky, ignoring the rain that pelted his face.  “This is a hell of a story, Mr. Snyder.  It’s a lot to unpack.”

The man bristled.  “I hope you’re not implying that I’m shoveling you a load of shit.”

“No, not at all.  I’ve interviewed a lot of liars over the years, and you don’t strike me as one.  I guess what I’m wondering is, why me?  Why now?  You’ve sat on this for so many decades, but you reached out to me.  I’m hardly the first person to write about Bertelli.”

Snyder didn’t answer.  Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.  He held it out to Thomas, and he took it curiously.  He put back on his glasses and used one hand to unfold the paper while using the other to protect it from the rain.

It was a newspaper article.  It had been carefully clipped out, and the title ‘Boy Killed in Animal Attack’ was circled with a thick black marker.  He quickly read through it.

“That’s from four days ago,” Snyder informed him.  “The police think that it was a dog, but no dog did that.  There was almost nothing left of the poor kid.  They were only able to identify him because they found a few hairs on a ripped off piece of shirt.  They matched them to those of a boy that went missing a week earlier.”

“You think it was the hogs,” Thomas surmised.

“I know it was.  There’s no question in my mind.  At my age a lot of things in my body are failing me, but this brain of mine is still sharp enough to put two and two together.  And let me tell you, Mr. Eiden, this is only the beginning.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Like I said, these woods go on for miles.  On the other side, though, they’ve built a big housing development.  Backed some of those properties right up to the treeline.  Dozens and dozens of three bedroom, two bathroom houses filled with men, women, and children making a whole lot of noise and drawing a whole lot of attention to themselves.  Having barbeques out in their backyards, with all those delicious smells wafting through the air.  It’s a nice safe neighborhood, too.  The kind where you let your kids run around in the yard while you take care of some things inside the house.”

Thomas stared at Snyder through the falling rain.  The old man looked right back at him with a serious expression devoid of any humor.  It was clear that he had thought this through, and that his thoughts had led him to some very dark conclusions.

“We have to tell someone,” Thomas said finally.  “We have to warn someone about the danger those people are in.”

“Tell who, exactly?” Snyder asked with a shake of his head.  “The police?  Do you really think they’ll believe it?  Besides, they already searched the woods and came up empty when they were looking for that kid.  The hogs are smart, Mr. Eiden.  They know when it’s time to hide.”

“You’re telling me that there’s nothing that can be done?  I don’t believe that.  I can’t believe that.”

“I didn’t say that.  Come with me.”

Snyder led the way to the broken down barn.  It appeared to have once been painted red, but the paint had faded into a dark gray.  The roof was warped, and it took a moment for the elderly man to force the right door open.  Without looking back he went inside.  Thomas hurried after him.  As he went through the door and into the structure, he was momentarily confused as he realized that Snyder had disappeared from view.

Thomas heard the sound of metal colliding with his head before he felt the pain.  He lost all control over his muscles, and he collapsed onto the dust and grime-covered barn floor so hard that it rattled his teeth.  He opened his mouth to cry out.  What came out instead was a loan moan that was barely recognizable as human.

“I’m sorry this is how it has to be,” Snyder said as he stepped out from behind the barn door.  “I truly am, Mr. Eiden.  Maybe if I had another choice…  Well, no sense in dwelling on what we don’t have, is there?”

Thomas felt his body being dragged further into the barn.  The old man was strong for his age, and he was in no condition to fight him.  The world was swimming before his eyes, blurred and swirling around in all directions.  His stomach churned.  Somehow he remained conscious.

The dragging stopped.  Something cold and hard pinched into the skin of his left wrist, then to his right.  His head was raised off the ground and his chin was placed onto something he recognized but couldn’t identify in his current state.

“Head wounds bleed the most,” Snyder told him from somewhere above.  “I’m going to let as much blood drain into the bucket as your forehead is willing to give before I move onto other parts.  No sense in wasting any.  Just going to have to work around this big ol’ dent your skull put in it when I hit you with it.”

Thomas blinked in a fruitless attempt to clear his vision.

“You probably won’t believe this, but I’m doing what’s necessary.  The only way that I’m going to keep those hogs around here and away from those houses is if I give them a reason to.  They want human blood and meat, and, well, I’m sorry to say that’s where you come in.”

He tried to bring his hand up to wipe at his face, but something was stopping him from doing so.  It took a long moment for him to realize that the pinches he had felt were from him being chained down.

“You asked me why I decided to tell you about Bertelli and these monster hogs of his,” Snyder was saying.  “Truth of the matter is that I looked into you before I sent that picture to you.  No wife, no kids, no real ties to anyone.  You’re pretty much alone in the world, Mr. Eiden.  You’re not even a real employee of that newspaper you write for, just a freelancer.  I guess you could say that I brought you here because no one would miss you.  That’s the trick to disappearing someone.  Make sure that there won’t be many people asking questions when the deed is done.”

Thomas felt a tear stream down his cheek.

“I’m going to get as much blood out of you as I can without killin’ you.  That way I can spread it around the treeline on this side of the woods and keep them drawn over this way.  That alone isn’t enough for them.  I suspect they have to have the thrill of the kill as well.  They need there to be some life left in you.  Well now, it looks like this particular well has run dry.  Time to drill a new one, if you catch my meaning.”

Thomas wasn’t sure how long the bleeding process lasted.  Each cut made him feel weaker, and he wasn’t able to fully regain his senses.  The small part of him that was still thinking rationally wondered if the blow to the head had caused permanent damage.  His limbs began to grow cold, and his body started to shake.

“Looks like we’re out of time,” Snyder said slowly.  “It’s been good talking with you, Mr. Eiden.  For your sake I hope they make it quick.”

With the last of his strength, Thomas forced himself up onto his elbows.  He squinted in a final attempt to be able to see straight.  It worked enough that he could just make out the barn door less than a dozen yards in front of him.  Something was standing just inside of it, something huge.  The creature exhaled, and he felt hot air wash over him even at that distance.

For just a brief moment, his vision cleared.  It happened too quickly for him to get a good look at the animal, but what he was able to see made his heart skip a beat.  Long broken tusks.  Sharp bones protruding from the body.  A mouth filled with razor-like teeth, the canines so extended that they hung out over the jaw.

The hog snarled as it charged towards him, and Thomas screamed.

In the middle of nowhere, under a sky of darkness filled with unrecognizable stars, there is a crossroads.

Its roads are made of rocks and dirt, and walking along them fills the cold air with dust.  Brown brittle grass covers the sides, making it difficult to see where the road ends and the battered landscape around it begins.  There is silence at this crossroads.  The only sounds are the ones that you bring with you.

At the northeast corner is a small cemetery.  The dozen or so wooden markers have cracked and crumbled over the years, and the names that once adorned them have long since faded.  Those poor souls that are buried under the dry ground have been anonymous for longer than any of us have lived, and they will remain that way long after you and I have joined them below.

On the northwest corner are the barely visible remains of what was once a path leading into a large crop field.  At the center of this field are the ruins of an old farmhouse.  The family that had built it had seen it as their greatest accomplishment, their reward for decades of struggle, suffering, and toil.  There had been happiness in that house.  Laughter and love had filled its walls.

In the end, those same walls had echoed with unanswered prayers and horrified screams.  They had been covered in thick blood and sticky gore.  With the family gone, the farmhouse had been left to rot, and that rotting continues still.  The structure’s bones look out over the crossroads like a gaping malformed skull.

The other two sides of the crossroads are filled with fields.  The color is not the cheerful gold of wheat before harvest, but is instead the yellow of dead plant matter.  The fields extend far beyond the limits of human sight.  They are vast seas of lifeless decay.

The roads extend off in different directions, each stretching towards a different point on the compass.  These roads lead to everywhere, and they lead to nowhere.

A young woman barely out of childhood once stumbled out of a dingy apartment building in a bad part of Chicago.  She had done something bad, something that she couldn’t see any way to come back from.  All she could think of was escaping, fleeing into the night to leave behind what she had done.  With red stains on her dress and a cocktail of narcotics pumping through her veins, she stumbled down the concrete street and under a rusting metal bridge.

Less than an hour later, she hung three feet off the ground inside the remains of the farmhouse, a broken piece of timber from the first floor ceiling shoved through her mouth and out the back of her skull.  Her glassy eyes were wide, and her pale skin was covered in deep scratches.  Blood dripped in thick droplets from her many wounds until her body had nothing left to give.  It pooled underneath her as it soaked into the old wood.

There was a day when a lawyer in Tallahassee was feeling particularly proud of himself.  He had just gotten one of his more affluent clients released from jail without the client even being officially charged.  The client had been extremely grateful, and he had made sure to show that appreciation in the form of a large payment.  Never mind that the client had confessed to the lawyer that he had indeed committed the crimes, and that the crimes in question had been despicable acts involving children.  None of that was important to the lawyer.  What was important to him was the increase in both his bank account and the bragging rights his performance gave him over his peers.

Thinking of the things he would do with his new financial windfall, the lawyer left the courthouse and walked down the sidewalk.  It was a bright day, and he took a deep breath of the warm Florida air as he allowed a self-satisfied smirk to spread across his face.  He turned the corner and looked down as he retrieved his cell phone from his suit jacket.

The cell phone eventually ended up deep in one of the dead fields south of the crossroads, its screen cracked and the back snapped off.  It was a long way away from the lawyer, who laid face down in the middle of the path leading away from the crossroads to the west.  His body was twisted and broken, and it was pushed down into the ground so far that it nearly disappeared into the earth.  His left arm was torn free and had been left off to one side.  In his right hand he still clutched his briefcase, inside of which were the documents that he had used to secure his client’s freedom.

Recently, a man in a small suburb of Phoenix opened his home’s front door and angrily stormed down the steps.  His wife had just demanded that he leave and not come back.  She had screamed at him that she was sick of his lies, sick of being humiliated as he constantly cheated on her and plunged them further into debt with his frivolous spending.  She had pointed at the swelling around her eye as she informed him that she would never allow him to hurt her or their two daughters ever again.

That had been what she had insisted this eviction was about, but the man was certain that he knew better.  It wasn’t about him.  He hadn’t done anything wrong.  Every time he had raised a hand against her or the kids, it had been because they had needed correcting.  That was a husband and father’s job, right?  And he bought whatever he wanted because he worked for almost half their income, damn it, and that meant it was his.  The cheating?  Well, it wasn’t his fault that she didn’t do it for him in bed anymore, was it?

No, she was kicking him out so that she could have the house to herself.  He was sure that she was cheating on him.  He didn’t have any evidence, but that was because she was careful.  A husband knew when his wife wasn’t being faithful, though, and he knew that was what was going on here.  Plus it would give her a chance to turn their daughters against him.  She was always trying to make him out to be the bad guy.

The man wasn’t going to let that happen, though.  He would go down to the bar, have a few drinks, and then he’d come back.  When he did, he’d make sure that his cheating bitch of a wife wouldn’t disrespect him anymore.  He’d make sure that she didn’t do anything ever again.  He had just the thing in the garage, too.  He’d get those drinks, come back to the house, and dig that heavy iron prybar out of his tool bench.  He’d drive the respect right back into her, and when he was done maybe he’d teach the girls to respect him, too.

The man never reached the bar as planned.  Instead, he spent countless days wandering through the lonely crossroads, walking up and down the roads until his legs ached and his feet bled.  Each time he would leave the crossroads behind him, it would appear in front of him once again even though he was sure that he had walked in a straight line.  He tried leaving the roads and going through the fields, but this had the same result.  The farmhouse was empty and gave him no shelter from the cold air.  Night never turned to day.

Finally, sick, dehydrated, and starving, with no sense of how long he had been trapped at the crossroads, he laid down among the markers in the small graveyard and closed his eyes to rest.  His breathing was labored, and he felt it burn in his lungs as he drifted off.  His eyes never opened.

I’m writing this while sitting at the desk in my study.  It’s one of my favorite places in my house, mostly because of the large window that looks out onto my backyard.  I live a good distance away from any neighbors.  I’m far away from any prying eyes or probing questions.  It allows me to enjoy my time as I wish.  Often that means simply looking out my study window and enjoying the view of all the pine trees that I’ve planted over the years.

I’ve arranged the rows of trees neatly, with six trees per row and the oldest plantings the furthest from the house.  There are currently three full rows, and I’m working on filling in the fourth.  I make sure that they are well taken care of and that they grow strong from the combination of clean water, rich soil, and, of course, the human body buried beneath each of them.  One body per tree is really all that you need.  As the body breaks down, its nutrients become a very potent fertilizer.

This morning, I awoke with the musty smell of decaying grass in my nostrils.  My bedroom was cold despite the hot summer day outside.  When I swung my feet over the side of the bed and stood up, I could feel dirt and stone crunch underneath them.

Soon it will be my turn to stand at the crossroads.  This place that is so damned it has been excised from the natural world has taken notice of my lovely trees, and it wants me to walk its roads and explore its ruins.  It has chosen me to be the next to satisfy whatever it is that it hungers for.  It’s an honor, in a way.  My sins are  great enough for the most unholy of places to take notice.

After it is finished with me and its hunger inevitably returns, I wonder who will be next.  Another killer, perhaps?  Maybe it will be a drug dealer whose small bags of poison have taken the lives of addicts.  How about you?  Are your hands clean, or do you wring those hands as you’re racked with guilt and thoughts of what you’ve done?  Is your soul free of sin or stained dark with it?

Are you ready for it to be your turn at the crossroads?

In a small town, nestled in an old quiet neighborhood, there is a house.

On the front lawn stands a white sign with metal stakes.  The words painted on it announce to the few cars that pass by that the house will soon be for sale.  Many of the properties in the neighborhood have the same kind of sign in their yards.  The block was once filled with the sounds of children playing.  The smells of outdoor cooking wafted through the air on warm summer evenings, and cheerfully twinkly Christmas lights illuminated the deep snow during the long winter nights.  Now there is only the rustling of dead leaves and the whistling of the wind between the buildings.

Three stone steps lead up from the overgrown sidewalk.  A rusting metal screen door is leaned up against them, its hinges broken and an empty space where the handle once was.  When the police arrived they hadn’t been able to get it open, and they had been forced to tear it free from the doorframe.  The weeds growing in the flowerbeds have begun to claim it.  They grow not only around it but also through the small gaps in the screen.

The house’s front door is closed.  The white paint is peeling from the wood, and the two rectangular windows are smeared with grime too thick to be seen through.  Sections are splintered outward or otherwise warped.  The door had withstood the battering it had taken from inside the house, but it hadn’t escaped destruction without its share of scars.

The realtor purchased the house for next to nothing at a bank auction last month.  She hopes to be able to flip it for four or five times her investment.  She’s hired workers to perform repairs and updates next week, and the first thing they’ll be doing is replacing the front door and removing the screen door entirely.

Beyond the front door is the living room.  It’s dim inside even during the day despite the blinds having been torn from the windows.  The light that does manage to penetrate the gloom casts shadows across the floor and walls.

The walls and ceilings have brown stains in many places.  The stains resemble an abstract created by a manic painter.  When they were fresh they had been a combination of bright and dark red, but as the thick blood had seeped into the wood and dried it had slowly turned brown.

Next week, the blood will be covered with two coats of fresh paint.  The paint will be a bright color, one that is inviting and pleasing to the eyes of the people that tour the house.  Light blue, maybe, or perhaps something with a hint of green.  The realtor hasn’t decided yet.

The carpet was originally light gray.  It is now almost black from the dust and decay.  Large areas are rotted.  Multiple places are stained with the same color as the walls, and those sections of the carpet are hard and stiff instead of soft like it was when the family had lived there.

One spot in the middle of the carpet is different from the rest.  It has miraculously avoided most of the dust, and the original color can still be seen.  This is most likely due to a slope in the floor or some trick of how the air flows through the room.  Someone with a romantic streak and knowledge of how the bodies were found, however, would be quick to note that this is the same spot where the man and woman’s fingertips had been touching from their final act of reaching out to one another.

The carpet will be completely replaced next week.  The new carpet will be very similar to the old, just clean and fresh.  There won’t be a single hint to prospective buyers that two people had died in the room.

A doorway leads out into the kitchen.  More of the stains can be found here, although they are fewer and farther apart than the ones in the living room.  The dust-covered counter is missing large chunks along one side.  A long crack runs down one section near where the oven used to stand.

The hardwood flooring has a series of deep scores leading away from the counter and towards the glass doors overlooking the backyard.  They had been gouged into the floor when the oven had been torn from its place and thrown across the room.  Two indentations mark where the appliance had come to a stop.

Less noticeable is a small gouge in the flooring in the corner of the kitchen.  It is barely an inch in width, but it goes nearly twice that far down into the wood.  Bits of sharp metal from the tip of a carving knife are still embedded at the bottom of the gash.

The realtor got a good deal on a new countertop and flooring at a local supply store.  The store was going out of business due to the owner’s retirement, and everything was heavily discounted.  She had to pay retail for the oven, however, and she still isn’t happy about that.

Half a dozen carpeted steps lead down from the kitchen into the family room.  The walls lining the stairs are covered in scratches.  The over two hundred pound man had tried to brace himself against them as the small girl had dragged him with one hand up the steps, the fingers of her right hand digging deep into the flesh under his chin.  It had been in vain.  The only results of his attempt at stopping the inevitable had been the scratches on the wall and broken fingernails.

Scratches on a wall are easily repaired, of course.  A small amount of spackling paste applied with a putty knife, some time to let it dry, and some light sanding is all that it will take to get the wall ready for repainting.  Half an hour’s worth of work to hide all evidence of a man fighting for his life against the impossible strength of the girl.

The room at the bottom of the stairs was originally a basement, but the family had turned it into a family room soon after moving into the house.  The air smells musty and stale, and dust hanges in the air in the feeble light let in by the half window near the ceiling.  The carpet is hard from absorbed moisture and crunches loudly when weight is put on it.

The walls appear black from a distance, but they are actually a deep red.  They are stained like the walls in the living room, but unlike those they are completely covered.  It is so thick and uniform that it looks like the blood was applied with a paint roller..  They have absorbed so much of the ichor that they remain red rather than fade to brown.

It was in this room that the house had wept blood.  The thick liquid had run down from the ceiling and along the walls in wide streaks, coating and violating everything that it touched.  The smell of iron still saturates the room.

This room will be the most difficult for the workers to prepare.  The blood has tainted the walls too completely to cover up.  The workers will remove the existing drywall and install paneling instead.  The paneling won’t be as sturdy as the removed drywall, of course, but most of the potential buyers won’t notice the difference and it will save the realtor the additional cost.

Once that is done, the workers will replace the trim along the bottom of the wall before stripping out the carpet and replacing it as well.  The smell will be an issue.  The scent of blood tends to linger.  It will take several days of airing the room out to be rid of it.

The door on the far side of the family room connects the inside of the house with the garage.  Seven concrete steps flanked by a wooden hand railing lead upward to the ground floor.  The garage is large, wide enough for two cars to be parked inside and still offer storage space.  The realtor considers it to be one of the house’s biggest selling points.

The chain from the automatic garage door opener hangs down from the track.  It is looped in the shape of a noose.  The skin that had been stuck between a number of the links was removed by the police as evidence, but there are still a few individual hairs that were missed.

The workers won’t need to do much to get the garage ready.  They’ll reattach the chain to the opener, sweep up the scattered nails and broken glass, and make sure that the electrical box in the corner is up to code.  At the end of each day they’re on the job they’ll meet up in the garage to smoke and drink beers, and none of them will notice that a small section of the concrete floor to the right of the stairs is just a bit darker than the rest.

In the living room is the final set of stairs in the house, the ones leading up to the second floor.  These are the steps that the woman was thrown down as she begged the girl to stop.  Her body was thrown so hard from the top that she missed the steps completely and landed with a sickening crack in the living room, so there’s nothing that needs repaired.

The upstairs hallway appears to be in good condition.  Behind the walls and under the flooring, however, are countless cracks that hint at the structural damage it has suffered.  As the woman backed away in horror towards the stairs, the hallway twisted and contorted as if it was a living thing trying to envelope her.  The realtor doesn’t know about this damage, but even if she did she wouldn’t want to spend the kind of money it would take to repair it.  There’s a reason the house will be listed “For Sale, As Is” when it is officially put on the market.

There are four doors in the upstairs hallway.  No matter how many times the realtor has opened them, they are once again closed when she leaves and comes back.  She’s sure that it’s due to uneven flooring, and she’s made it a point to pick up door stops before the first scheduled open house.

The room closest to the stairs on the right is the bathroom.  The workers will need to treat it for mold, as there is some growing at the base of the bathtub and along the bottom of the sink.  The seal around the toilet will also need to be replaced.

Water had flowed from the sink, toilet, and bathtub.  It had gushed out with great force, like a geyser bursting forth from the bathroom.  The water had been dark and murky, filled with sewage and oil.  It had splashed up onto every surface, and it had shorted out the electrical outlets just below the mirror.  The realtor had needed to call in an electrician to fix the damage before she had been able to schedule the workers.

The second door on the right side of the upstairs hallway leads to the missing boy’s room.  Although it’s now very faint, a hint of the smell of rotten eggs still permeates the room.  The realtor is hoping that it will be completely gone by the time the workers arrive, but if it isn’t, she’s going to have them scrub the room floor to ceiling.  Nothing turns off potential buyers like a bad smell.

The workers will need to clean at least the ceiling even if the scent has dissipated.  Black markings resembling giant cigarette burns cover it.  They form an intricate pattern of interwoven circles and triangles.  There’s something disconcerting about the designs.  Looking at them too closely makes a person nauseous.  Both the realtor and the police have experienced that firsthand.

The workers will wash off the markings as best as they can before painting the ceiling.  Once the paint has dried, they will apply stucco over top of it.  That will help conceal the burn marks that remain.

The master bedroom is through the first door on the left in the hallway.  This is the strangest room in the house.  The paint is missing from the tops of the walls, but it covers the wall trim and the edges of the floor.  It gives the impression that it had somehow slid down the wood, or perhaps melted right off of it.  The realtor has no explanation for it.

The pair of windows are permanently fogged over.  Although at a first glance it looks like they’re simply covered in a filth, it’s the glass itself that is too hazy to see through.  The frames are warped to the point of not being able to be opened.

Black handprints are visible in multiple places throughout the room.  They are the hands of a child, small and thin with short fingers.  Many of the handprints are smudged, but a few of them are so intact and perfect that all the lines and curves can easily be seen.  Even the spirals of the fingerprints are exact and unblemished.

The walls will be repainted.  The windows will be replaced.  The handprints will be scrubbed off.  The wood will be swapped out as necessary.  Nothing will be left to suggest that anything out of the ordinary had ever happened.

The final hallway door opens into the girl’s bedroom.  Unlike all the other rooms in the house, there’s nothing that can immediately be pointed to as being out of place or in need of covering up.  It’s the smallest of the bedrooms and it can feel a bit cramped, but otherwise it looks just like any other bedroom in any other house.

Against one wall was where the girl’s bed had once stood.  She had loved to jump up and down on it even though her parents had told her a hundred times not to.  Next to that had been her little two drawer dresser; the unicorn lamp that had been placed on it was her favorite thing in the whole wide world.  A pile of stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes had stood against the opposite wall.  The largest of the toys had been a pink elephant that her father had won for her at the fall festival.

Inside the closet had been her nice clothes.  Her mother had referred to them as the girl’s fancy clothes, the ones that she wore only on nice occasions.  She had enjoyed the feeling of the soft dresses with the flower patterns, but her fancy shoes had pinched the sides of her feet and she hadn’t enjoyed wearing those.

During the day her mother had played tea party and dolls with her.  Each evening her father would tell her a story before kissing her on the head and tucking her in.  Her brother hadn’t come into her room often, but when he did they would give the stuffed animals silly voices and take them on even sillier adventures.

There had been happiness in this room.  Laughter had bounced off of its walls.  Smiles had been housed beneath its ceiling.  Love had been shared.

Just beneath the room’s single window and nestled under a removable floorboard, inside of a metal box with a broken lock, is a book with a black cover.  There are markings cut into the cover with a razor-sharp blade, markings that form shapes and objects that are both nonsensical and meaningful at the same time.  Some of them are similar to the pattern of burn marks in the boy’s room, but most of them are different, more complex.  

The material of the cover is torn in places.  The pages are yellowed and crackle with age as they are turned.  The book has been in the house for decades, and it was written much, much longer ago than that.

It is a book that should never have been opened, especially by little fingers.

In a small town, nestled in an old quiet neighborhood, there is a house.

It is a house of madness and death.

In two weeks it will look like any other house, and it will be for sale.