 
# Psychosis

Thirteen Tales of Horror

By Matt Dymerski

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 by Matt Dymerski

You can follow my work at MattDymerski.com,

or at my Smashwords Author Page.

# Psychosis

# Table of Contents

Psychosis

The Bonewalker

The Fire of the Soul

"Come Closer"

Scribblings

The Lodge

Correspondence

Strangers in a Graveyard

The Lonely Grave

The Basement

Erosion

Strange Things

The Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypse

About

****

# Psychosis

Sunday

I'm not sure why I'm writing this down on paper and not on my computer. I guess I've just noticed some odd things. It's not that I don't trust the computer... I just... need to organize my thoughts. I need to get down all the details somewhere objective, somewhere I know that what I write can't be deleted or... changed... not that that's happened. It's just... everything blurs together here, and the fog of memory lends a strange cast to things...

I'm starting to feel cramped in this small apartment. Maybe that's the problem. I just had to go and choose the cheapest apartment, the only one in the basement. The lack of windows down here makes day and night seem to slip by seamlessly. I haven't been out in a few days because I've been working on this programming project so intensively. I suppose I just wanted to get it done. Hours of sitting and staring at a monitor can make anyone feel strange, I know, but I don't think that's it.

I'm not sure when I first started to feel like something was odd. I can't even define what it is. Maybe I just haven't talked to anyone in awhile. That's the first thing that crept up on me. Everyone I normally talk to online while I program has been idle, or they've simply not logged on at all. My instant messages go unanswered. The last e-mail I got from anybody was a friend saying he'd talk to me when he got back from the store, and that was yesterday. I'd call with my cell phone, but reception's terrible down here. Yeah, that's it. I just need to call someone. I'm going to go outside.

\---

Well, that didn't work so well. As the tingle of fear fades, I'm feeling a little ridiculous for being scared at all. I looked in the mirror before I went out, but I didn't shave the two-day stubble I've grown. I figured I was just going out for a quick cell phone call. I did change my shirt, though, because it was lunchtime, and I guessed that I'd run into at least one person I knew. That didn't end up happening. I wish it did.

When I went out, I opened the door to my small apartment slowly. A small feeling of apprehension had somehow already lodged itself in me, for some indefinable reason. I chalked it up to having not spoken to anyone but myself for a day or two. I peered down the dingy gray hallway, made dingier by the fact that it was a basement hallway. On one end, a large metal door led to the building's furnace room. It was locked, of course. Two dreary soda machines stood by it; I bought a soda from one the first day I moved in, but it had a two year old expiration date. I'm fairly sure nobody knows those machines are even down here, or my cheap landlady just doesn't care to get them restocked.

I closed my door softly, and walked the other direction, taking care not to make a sound. I have no idea why I chose to do that, but it was fun giving in to the strange impulse not to break the droning hum of the soda machines, at least for the moment. I got to the stairwell, and took the stairs up to the building's front door. I looked through the heavy door's small square window, and received quite the shock: it was definitely not lunchtime. City-gloom hung over the dark street outside, and the traffic lights at the intersection in the distance blinked yellow. Dim clouds, purple and black from the glow of the city, hung overhead. Nothing moved, save the few sidewalk trees that shifted in the wind. I remember shivering, though I wasn't cold. Maybe it was the wind outside. I could vaguely hear it through the heavy metal door, and I knew it was that unique kind of late-night wind, the kind that was constant, cold, and quiet, save for the rhythmic music it made as it passed through countless unseen tree leaves.

I decided not to go outside.

Instead, I lifted my cell phone to the door's little window, and checked the signal meter. The bars filled up the meter, and I smiled. Time to hear someone else's voice, I remember thinking, relieved. It was such a strange thing, to be afraid of nothing. I shook my head, laughing at myself silently. I hit speed-dial for my best friend Amy's number, and held the phone up to my ear. It rang once... but then it stopped. Nothing happened. I listened to silence for a good twenty seconds, then hung up. I frowned, and looked at the signal meter again – still full. I went to dial her number again, but then my phone rang in my hand, startling me. I put it up to my ear.

"Hello?" I asked, immediately fighting down a small shock at hearing the first spoken voice in days, even if it was my own. I had gotten used to the droning hum of the building's inner workings, my computer, and the soda machines in the hallway. There was no response to my greeting at first, but then, finally, a voice came.

"Hey," said a clear male voice, obviously of college age, like me. "Who's this?"

"John," I replied, confused.

"Oh, sorry, wrong number," he replied, then hung up.

I lowered the phone slowly and leaned against the thick brick wall of the stairwell. That was strange. I looked at my received calls list, but the number was unfamiliar. Before I could think on it further, the phone rang loudly, shocking me yet again. This time, I looked at the caller before I answered. It was another unfamiliar number. This time, I held the phone up to my ear, but said nothing. I heard nothing but the general background noise of a phone. Then, a familiar voice broke my tension.

"John?" was the single word, in Amy's voice.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Hey, it's you," I replied.

"Who else would it be?" she responded. "Oh, the number. I'm at a party on Seventh Street, and my phone died just as you called me. This is someone else's phone, obviously."

"Oh, ok," I said.

"Where are you?" she asked.

My eyes glanced over the drab white-washed cylinder block walls and the heavy metal door with its small window.

"At my building," I sighed. "Just feeling cooped up. I didn't realize it was so late."

"You should come here," she said, laughing.

"Nah, I don't feel like looking for some strange place by myself in the middle of the night," I said, looking out the window at the silent windy street that secretly scared me just a tiny bit. "I think I'm just going to keep working or go to bed."

"Nonsense!" she replied. "I can come get you! Your building is close to Seventh Street, right?"

"How drunk are you?" I asked lightheartedly. "You know where I live."

"Oh, of course," she said abruptly. "I guess I can't get there by walking, huh?"

"You could if you wanted to waste half an hour," I told her.

"Right," she said. "Ok, have to go, good luck with your work!"

I lowered the phone once more, looking at the numbers flash as the call ended. Then, the droning silence suddenly reasserted itself in my ears. The two strange calls and the eerie street outside just drove home my aloneness in this empty stairwell. Perhaps from having seen too many scary movies, I had the sudden inexplicable idea that something could look in the door's window and see me, some sort of horrible entity that hovered at the edge of aloneness, just waiting to creep up on unsuspecting people that strayed too far from other human beings. I knew the fear was irrational, but nobody else was around, so... I jumped down the stairs, ran down the hallway into my room, and closed the door as swiftly as I could while still staying silent. Like I said, I feel a little ridiculous for being scared of nothing, and the fear has already faded. Writing this down helps a lot – it makes me realize that nothing is wrong. It filters out half-formed thoughts and fears and leaves only cold, hard facts. It's late, I got a call from a wrong number, and Amy's phone died, so she called me back from another number. Nothing strange is happening.

Still, there was something a little off about that conversation. I know it could have just been the alcohol she'd had... or was it even her that seemed off to me? Or was it... yes, that was it! I didn't realize it until this moment, writing these things down. I knew writing things down would help. She said she was at a party, but I only heard silence in the background! Of course, that doesn't mean anything in particular, as she could have just gone outside to make the call. No... that couldn't be it either. I didn't hear the wind! I need to see if the wind is still blowing!

Monday

I forgot to finish writing last night. I'm not sure what I expected to see when I ran up the stairwell and looked out the heavy metal door's window. I'm feeling ridiculous. Last night's fear seems hazy and unreasonable to me now. I can't wait to go out into the sunlight. I'm going to check my email, shave, shower, and finally get out of here! Wait... I think I heard something.

\---

It was thunder. That whole sunlight and fresh air thing didn't happen. I went out into the stairwell and up the stairs, only to find disappointment. The heavy metal door's little window showed only flowing water, as torrential rain slammed against it. Only a very dim, gloomy light filtered in through the rain, but at least I knew it was daytime, even if it was a gray, sickly, wet day. I tried looking out the window and waiting for lightning to illuminate the gloom, but the rain was too heavy and I couldn't make out anything more than vague weird shapes moving at odd angles in the waves washing down the window. Disappointed, I turned around, but I didn't want to go back to my room. Instead, I wandered further up the stairs, past the first floor, and the second. The stairs ended at the third floor, the highest floor in the building. I looked through the glass that ran up the outer wall of the stairwell, but it was that warped, thick kind that scatters the light, not that there was much to see through the rain to begin with.

I opened the stairwell door and wandered down the hallway. The ten or so thick wooden doors, painted blue a long time ago, were all closed. I listened as I walked, but it was the middle of the day, so I wasn't surprised that I heard nothing but the rain outside. As I stood there in the dim hallway, listening to the rain, I had the strange fleeting impression that the doors were standing like silent granite monoliths erected by some ancient forgotten civilization for some unfathomable guardian purpose. Lightning flashed, and I could have sworn that, for just a moment, the old grainy blue wood looked just like rough stone. I laughed at myself for letting my imagination get the best of me, but then it occurred to me that the dim gloom and lightning must mean there was a window somewhere in the hallway. A vague memory surfaced, and I suddenly recalled that the third floor had an alcove and an inset window halfway down the floor's hallway.

Excited to look out into the rain and possibly see another human being, I quickly walked over to the alcove, finding the large thin glass window. Rain washed down it, as with the front door's window, but I could open this one. I reached a hand out to slide it open, but hesitated. I had the strangest feeling that if I opened that window, I would see something absolutely horrifying on the other side. Everything's been so odd lately... so I came up with a plan, and I came back here to get what I needed. I don't seriously think anything will come of it, but I'm bored, it's raining, and I'm going stir crazy. I came back to get my webcam. The cord isn't long enough to reach the third floor by any means, so instead I'm going to hide it between the two soda machines in the dark end of my basement hallway, run the wire along the wall and under my door, and put black duct tape over the wire to blend it in with the black plastic strip that runs along the base of the hallway's walls. I know this is silly, but I don't have anything better to do...

Well, nothing happened. I propped open the hallway-to-stairwell door, steeled myself, then flung the heavy front door wide open and ran like hell down the stairs to my room and slammed the door. I watched the webcam on my computer intently, seeing the hallway outside my door and most of the stairwell. I'm watching it right now, and I don't see anything interesting. I just wish the camera's position was different, so that I could see out the front door. Hey! Somebody's online!

\---

I got out an older, less functional webcam that I had in my closet to video chat with my friend online. I couldn't really explain to him why I wanted to video chat, but it felt good to see another person's face. He couldn't talk very long, and we didn't talk about anything meaningful, but I feel much better. My strange fear has almost passed. I would feel completely better, but there was something... odd... about our conversation. I know that I've said that everything has seemed odd, but... still, he was very vague in his responses. I can't recall one specific thing that he said... no particular name, or place, or event... but he did ask for my email address to keep in touch. Wait, I just got an email.

I'm about to go out. I just got an email from Amy that asked me to meet her for dinner at 'the place we usually go to.' I do love pizza, and I've just been eating random food from my poorly stocked fridge for days, so I can't wait. Again, I feel ridiculous about the odd couple of days I've been having. I should destroy this journal when I get back. Oh, another email.

\---

Oh my god. I almost left the email and opened the door. I almost opened the door. I almost opened the door, but I read the email first! It was from a friend I hadn't heard from in a long time, and it was sent to a huge number of emails that must have been every person he had saved in his address list. It had no subject, and it said, simply:

seen with your own eyes don't trust them they

What the hell is that supposed to mean? The words shock me, and I keep going over and over them. Is it a desperate email sent just as... something happened? The words are obviously cut off without finishing! On any other day I would have dismissed this as spam from a computer virus or something, but the words... seen with your own eyes! I can't help but read over this journal and think back on the last few days and realize that I have not seen another person with my own eyes or talked to another person face to face. The webcam conversation with my friend was so strange, so vague, so... eerie, now that I think about it. Was it eerie? Or is the fear clouding my memory? My mind toys with the progression of events I've written here, pointing out that I have not been presented with one single fact that I did not specifically give out unsuspectingly. The random 'wrong number' that got my name and the subsequent strange return call from Amy, the friend that asked for my email address... I messaged him first when I saw him online! And then I got my first email a few minutes after that conversation! Oh my god! That phone call with Amy! I said over the phone – I said that I was within half an hour's walk of Seventh Street! They know I'm near there! What if they're trying to find me?! Where is everyone else? Why haven't I seen or heard anyone else in days?

No, no, this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. I need to calm down. This madness needs to end.

\---

I don't know what to think. I ran about my apartment furiously, holding my cell phone up to every corner to see if it got a signal through the heavy walls. Finally, in the tiny bathroom, near one ceiling corner, I got a single bar. Holding my phone there, I sent a text message to every number in my list. Not wanting to betray anything about my unfounded fears, I simply sent:

You seen anyone face to face lately?

At that point, I just wanted any reply back. I didn't care what the reply was, or if I embarrassed myself. I tried to call someone a few times, but I couldn't get my head up high enough, and if I brought my cell phone down even an inch, it lost signal. Then I remembered the computer, and rushed over to it, instant messaging everyone online. Most were idle or away from their computer. Nobody responded. My messages grew more frantic, and I started telling people where I was and to stop by in person for a host of barely passable reasons. I didn't care about anything by that point. I just needed to see another person!

I also tore apart my apartment looking for something that I might have missed; some way to contact another human being without opening the door. I know it's crazy, I know it's unfounded, but what if? WHAT IF? I just need to be sure! I taped the phone to the ceiling in case

Tuesday

THE PHONE RANG! Exhausted from last night's rampage, I must have fallen asleep. I woke up to the phone ringing, and ran into the bathroom, stood on the toilet, and flipped open the phone taped to the ceiling. It was Amy, and I feel so much better. She was really worried about me, and apparently had been trying to contact me since the last time I talked to her. She's coming over now, and, yes, she knows where I am without me telling her. I feel so embarrassed. I am definitely throwing this journal away before anyone sees it. I don't even know why I'm writing in it now. Maybe it's just because it's the only communication I've had at all since... god knows when. I look like hell, too. I looked in the mirror before I came back in here. My eyes are sunken, my stubble is thicker, and I just look generally unhealthy.

My apartment is trashed, but I'm not going to clean it up. I think I need someone else to see what I've been through. These past few days have NOT been normal. I am not one to imagine things. I know I have been the victim of extreme probability. I probably missed seeing another person a dozen times. I just happened to go out when it was late at night, or the middle of the day when everyone was gone. Everything's perfectly fine, I know this now. Plus, I found something in the closet last night that has helped me tremendously: a television! I set it up just before I wrote this, and it's on in the background. Television has always been an escape for me, and it reminds me that there's a world beyond these dingy brick walls.

I'm glad Amy's the only one that responded to me after last night's frantic pestering of everyone I could contact. She's been my best friend for years. She doesn't know it, but I count the day that I met her among one of the few moments of true happiness in my life. I remember that warm summer day fondly. It seems a different reality from this dark, rainy, lonely place. I feel like I spent days sitting in that playground, much too old to play, just talking with her and hanging around doing nothing at all. I still feel like I can go back to that moment sometimes, and it reminds me that this damn place is not all that there is... finally, a knock on the door!

\---

I thought it was odd that I couldn't see her through the camera I hid between the two soda machines. I figured that it was bad positioning, like when I couldn't see out the front door. I should have known. I should have known! After the knock, I yelled through the door jokingly that I had a camera between the soda machines, because I was embarrassed myself that I had taken this paranoia so far. After I did that, I saw her image walk over to the camera and look down at it. She smiled and waved.

"Hey!" she said to the camera brightly, giving it a wry look.

"It's weird, I know," I said into the mic attached to my computer. "I've had a weird few days."

"Must have," she replied. "Open the door, John."

I hesitated. How could I be sure?

"Hey, humor me a second here," I told her through the mic. "Tell me one thing about us. Just prove to me you're you."

She gave the camera a weird look.

"Um, alright," she said slowly, thinking. "We met randomly at a playground when we were both way too old to be there?"

I sighed deeply as reality returned and fear faded. God, I'd been so ridiculous. Of course it was Amy! That day wasn't anywhere in the world except in my memory. I'd never even mentioned it to anyone, not out of embarrassment, but out of a strange secret nostalgia and a longing for those days to return. If there was some unknown force at work trying to trick me, as I feared, there was no way they could know about that day.

"Haha, alright, I'll explain everything," I told her. "Be right there."

I ran to my small bathroom and fixed my hair as best I could. I looked like hell, but she would understand. Snickering at my own unbelievable behavior and the mess I'd made of the place, I walked to the door. I put my hand on the doorknob and gave the mess one last look. So ridiculous, I thought. My eyes traced over the half-eaten food lying on the ground, the overflowing trash bin, and the bed I'd tipped to the side looking for... God knows what. I almost turned to the door and opened it, but my eyes fell on one last thing: the old webcam, the one I used for that eerily vacant chat with my friend.

Its silent black sphere lay haphazardly tossed to the side, its lens pointed at the table where this journal lay. An overwhelming terror took me as I realized that if something could see through that camera, it would have seen what I just wrote about that day. I asked her for any one thing about us, and she chose the only thing in the world that I thought they or it did not know... but _IT DID! IT DID KNOW! IT COULD HAVE BEEN WATCHING ME THE WHOLE TIME!_

I didn't open the door. I screamed. I screamed in uncontrollable terror. I stomped on the old webcam on the floor. The door shook, and the doorknob tried to turn, but I didn't hear Amy's voice through the door. Was the basement door, made to keep out drafts, too thick? Or was Amy not outside? What could have been trying to get in, if not her? What the hell is out there?! I saw her on my computer through the camera outside, I heard her on the speakers through the camera outside, but was it real?! How can I know?! She's gone now – I screamed, and shouted for help! I piled up everything in my apartment against the front door –

Friday

At least I think that it's Friday. I broke everything electronic. I smashed my computer to pieces. Every single thing on there could have been accessed by network access, or worse, altered. I'm a programmer, I know. Every little piece of information I gave out since this started – my name, my email, my location – none of it came back from outside until I gave it out. I've been going over and over what I wrote. I've been pacing back and forth, alternating between stark terror and overpowering disbelief. Sometimes I'm absolutely certain some phantom _entity_ is dead set on the simple goal of getting me to go outside. Back to the beginning, with the phone call from Amy, she was effectively asking me to open the door and go outside.

I keep running through it in my head. One point of view says I've acted like a madman, and all of this is the extreme convergence of probability – never going outside at the right times by pure luck, never seeing another person by pure chance, getting a random nonsense email from some computer virus at just the right time. The other point of view says that extreme convergence of probability is the reason that whatever's out there hasn't gotten me already. I keep thinking: I never opened the window on the third floor. I never opened the front door, until that incredibly stupid stunt with the hidden camera after which I ran straight to my room and slammed the door. I haven't opened my own solid door since I flung open the front door of the building. Whatever's out there – if anything's out there – never made an 'appearance' in the building before I opened the front door. Maybe the reason it wasn't in the building already was that it was elsewhere getting everyone else... and then it waited, until I betrayed my existence by trying to call Amy... a call which didn't work, until it called me and asked me my name...

Terror literally overwhelms me every time I try to fit the pieces of this nightmare together. That email – short, cut off – was it from someone trying to get word out? Some friendly voice desperately trying to warn me before it came? Seen with my own eyes, don't trust them – exactly what I've been so suspicious of. It could have masterful control of all things electronic, practicing its insidious deception to trick me into coming outside. Why can't it get in? It knocked on the door – it must have some solid presence... the door... the image of those doors in the upper hallway as guardian monoliths flashes back in my mind every time I trace this path of thoughts. If there is some phantom entity trying to get me to go outside, maybe it can't get through doors. I keep thinking back over all the books I've read or movies I've seen, trying to generate some explanation for this. Doors have always been such intense foci of human imagination, always seen as wards or portals of special importance. Or perhaps the door is just too thick? I know that I couldn't bash through any of the doors in this building, let alone the heavy basement ones. Aside from that, the real question is, why does it even want me? If it just wanted to kill me, it could do it any number of ways, including just waiting until I starve to death. What if it doesn't want to kill me? What if it has some far more horrific fate in store for me? God, what can I do to escape this nightmare?!

A knock on the door...

\---

I told the people on the other side of the door I need a minute to think and I'll come out. I'm really just writing this down so I can figure out what to do. At least this time I heard their voices. My paranoia – and yes, I recognize I'm being paranoid – has me thinking of all sorts of ways that their voices could be faked electronically. There could be nothing but speakers outside, simulating human voices. Did it really take them three days to come talk to me? Amy is supposedly out there, along with two policemen and a psychiatrist. Maybe it took them three days to think of what to say to me – the psychiatrist's claim could be pretty convincing, if I decided to think this has all been a crazy misunderstanding, and not some entity trying to trick me into opening the door.

The psychiatrist had an older voice, authoritarian but still caring. I liked it. I'm desperate just to see someone with my own eyes! He said I have something called cyber-psychosis, and I'm just one of a nationwide epidemic of thousands of people having breakdowns triggered by a suggestive email that 'got through somehow.' I swear he said 'got through somehow.' I think he means spread throughout the country inexplicably, but I'm incredibly suspicious that the entity slipped up and revealed something. He said I am part of a wave of 'emergent behavior', that a lot of other people are having the same problem with the same fears, even though we've never communicated.

That neatly explains the strange email about eyes that I got. I didn't get the original triggering email. I got a descendant of it - my friend could have broken down too, and tried to warn everyone he knew against his paranoid fears. That's how the problem spreads, the psychiatrist claims. I could have spread it, too, with my texts and instant messages online to everybody I know. One of those people might be melting down right now, after being triggered by something I sent them, something they might interpret any way that they want, something like a text saying seen anyone face to face lately? The psychiatrist told me that he didn't want to 'lose another one', that people like me are intelligent, and that's our downfall. We draw connections so well that we draw them even when they shouldn't be there. He said it's easy to get caught up in paranoia in our fast paced world, a constantly changing place where more and more of our interaction is simulated...

I have to give him one thing. It's a great explanation. It neatly explains everything. It perfectly explains everything, in fact. I have every reason to shake off this nightmarish fear that some thing or consciousness or being out there wants me to open the door so it can capture me for some horrible fate worse than death. It would be foolish, after hearing that explanation, to stay in here until I starve to death just to spite the entity that might have got everyone else. It would be foolish to think that, after hearing that explanation, I might be one of the last people left alive on an empty world, hiding in my secure basement room, spiting some unthinkable deceptive entity just by refusing to be captured. It's a perfect explanation for every single strange thing I've seen or heard, and I have every reason in the world to let all of my fears go, and open the door.

That's exactly why I'm not going to.

How can I be sure?! How can I know what's real and what's deception? All of these damn things with their wires and their signals that originate from some unseen origin! They're not real, I can't be sure! Signals through a camera, faked video, deceptive phone calls, emails! Even the television, lying broken on the floor – how can I possibly know it's real? It's just signals, waves, light... the door! It's bashing on the door! It's trying to get in! What insane mechanical contrivance could it be using to simulate the sound of men attacking the heavy wood so well?! At least I'll finally see it with my own eyes... there's nothing left in here for it to deceive me with, I've ripped apart everything else! It can't deceive my eyes, can it? Seen with your own eyes don't trust them they... wait... was that desperate message telling me to trust my eyes, or warning me about my eyes too?! Oh my god, what's the difference between a camera and my eyes? They both turn light into electrical signals – they're the same! I can't be deceived! I have to be sure! I have to be sure!

Date Unknown

I calmly asked for paper and a pen, day in and day out, until it finally gave them to me. Not that it matters. What am I going to do? Poke my eyes out? The bandages feel like part of me now. The pain is gone. I figure this will be one of my last chances to write legibly, as, without my sight to correct mistakes, my hands will slowly forget the motions involved. This is a sort of self-indulgence, this writing... it's a relic of another time, because I'm certain everyone left in the world is dead... or something far worse.

I sit against the padded wall day in and day out. The entity brings me food and water. It masks itself as a kind nurse, as an unsympathetic doctor. I think it knows that my hearing has sharpened considerably now that I live in darkness. It fakes conversations in the hallways, on the off chance that I might overhear. One of the nurses talks about having a baby soon. One of the doctors lost his wife in a car accident. None of it matters, none of it is real. None of it gets to me, not like she does.

That's the worst part, the part I almost can't handle. The thing comes to me, masquerading as Amy. Its recreation is perfect. It sounds exactly like Amy, feels exactly like her. It even produces a reasonable facsimile of tears that it makes me feel on its lifelike cheeks. When it first dragged me here, it told me all the things I wanted to hear. It told me that she loved me, that she had always loved me, that it didn't understand why I did this, that we could still have a life together, if only I would stop insisting that I was being deceived. It wanted me to believe... no, it needed me to believe that she was real.

I almost fell for it. I really did. I doubted myself for the longest time. In the end, though, it was all too perfect, too flawless, and too real. The false Amy used to come every day, and then every week, and finally stopped coming altogether... but I don't think the entity will give up. I think the waiting game is just another one of its gambits. I will resist it for the rest of my life, if I have to. I don't know what happened to the rest of the world, but I do know that this thing needs me to fall for its deceptions. If it needs that, then maybe, just maybe, I am a thorn in its agenda. Maybe Amy is still alive out there somewhere, kept alive only by my will to resist the deceiver. I hold on to that hope, rocking back and forth in my cell to pass the time. I will never give in. I will never break. I am... a hero!

====

The doctor read the paper the patient had scribbled on. It was barely readable, written in the shaky script of one who could not see. He wanted to smile at the man's steadfast resolve, a reminder of the human will to survive, but he knew that the patient was completely delusional.

After all, a sane man would have fallen for the deception long ago.

The doctor wanted to smile. He wanted to whisper words of encouragement to the delusional man. He wanted to scream, but the nerve filaments wrapped around his head and into his eyes made him do otherwise. His body walked into the cell like a puppet, and told the patient, once more, that he was wrong, and that there was nobody trying to deceive him.

****

# The Bonewalker

8:51 PM...

I place the last bone in my carefully laid trap, and check my watch. I told it to meet me at thirty seconds past nine, and it has never once been late. I feel an odd sense of freedom and calm as I stand at the crest of the desolate junkyard, the battleground for my last stand. In nine minutes, one of us will die. If it must be me, I will at least go down fighting, and no longer held in thrall by fear. I hope that this act will somehow provide me a slight redemption in Audrey's eyes, if there's an afterlife, and if I go to the same place as she did.

It was her death that started all of this. No, I shouldn't say that. My inability to cope with her death was what started it all. When she died, I let a crushing depression grip my soul, and I let it fester within me, turning my heart black and desperate. Elation fills me as I realize that I am finally able to take responsibility for my actions. I am doing the right thing, standing up to the bonewalker like this. It's been over nine months since she died, and ever before I found something or someone else to blame for my choices and misfortunes.

8:52 PM...

Eight minutes. It's strange that I think of that detail now, that it was on my eighth and final visit to the occult bookstore that the owner approached me. He'd seen me at the 'rituals,' poorly veiled excuses for anonymous orgies in which I could never bring myself to partake. Still, I lurked on the edges of the underground, watching what became of people who were even further down the path of losing themselves in the darker human emotions than I. He handed a book to me, one which I almost refused out of frustration. The other books on occult powers I'd tried, ostensibly to speak to or gain knowledge of Audrey or our unborn child, had never worked, and had left me feeling ridiculous. This one, he insisted, held something more.

The powerful surge of freedom and elation in me begins to ebb as I remember the stress and nightmare of that first ritual, so exceedingly simple in design, yet so terrifying in result. The eight pages of instructive text, found near the back, were free of elaborate prose and vague promises. They merely... led. I prepared a vial of my drawn blood as the pages instructed, performing rites based on geometric angles, observation, and thought, rather than the arcane or satanic themes I'd seen elsewhere, a fact which curiously disturbed me.

8:53 PM...

I remember debating within myself over whether to go through with it, but, seven months into my downward spiral, I was too cynical to stop. In the end, I went through with the final step, and poured a bit of the prepared blood on my fingernails. Nothing happened at first, and I was sorely disappointed. After giving it seven minutes, I stood to leave my dim basement... and crumpled to the floor as an agonizing pain tore through my left shin.

8:54 PM...

I looked down aghast, screaming at the long, white, blade-like protrusion that had erupted from my leg, covered in crimson. Even as I watched, razors of bone slid out, tearing the skin open and forcing the iron smell of my own lifeblood into my senses. As I struggled and screamed, the protrusions spread themselves, and gripped the floor, pulling the rest of the thing delicately out through the six-inch gash in my shin.

And then, it was over. I whimpered, holding my eviscerated leg in shock. Gasping, I looked down myself, along the floor, at the watching thing that I now recognized as being alive. It was spindly, beautiful, deadly, and utterly alien in every aspect. It seemed to be comprised of carefully sculpted bone, resembling some sort of two-foot tall spider, except that it had six legs. My blood, dark red, dripped from every delicate angle as it watched me with its six opal eyes.

8:55 PM...

Without voice, it told me that next time I would not struggle and therefore the pain would be much less. It was much, much larger than the profusely hemorrhaging slit it had made in my flesh, and I realized that it had tried to maneuver its spindly form so as to minimize the damage its entry had caused. Still in shock and breathing rapidly, I saw my exposed tibia bone, undamaged amidst the tear. Five seconds passed in silence as I calmed.

Finally, it spoke without words once more. It told me that it would do something for me, and that I would do something for it. That was the darkest moment of my life. I foolishly agreed to some unknown deal in the hopes of gaining a thing which had consumed me for months, a thing born of the blackest of all human emotions. I would visit, for the fifth and final time, the man who had drunkenly killed my family.

8:56 PM...

I stared at him across the table, and four guards stared at me. I had become violent on my previous four visits, yet the haggard and drained-looking murderer continued to let me see him. His beard was much longer now, and he moved as little as I did, an emptiness welling in the brown of his irises as his eyes stared at mine. A part of me held back, decrying what I was about to do. The other part of me prompted the constant pain from the stitches in my leg, reminding me of the hurt that had not gone away since that moment, that last sweet moment, in our car.

I put out my hand, holding the vial hidden within. He put his hand out under mine, palm down. Four tense seconds passed, and then I dripped some of the blood on his fingernails. I looked up to see his reaction, but there was none. He even seemed to... relax. Could he have known? Is this what he... wanted? The guards took him away, and his empty brown eyes never left mine.

8:57 PM...

The next day, I received a call. He had died, and the coroner, a personal friend who had known Audrey, spoke to me personally. He said he'd never seen anything like it... as if something had emerged from the inside of the man's ribs, and scratched at his heart for three hours before piercing it like a blade. He had died in immense and horrible pain. I hung up wordlessly. I felt... no better. If anything, I felt even emptier.

It was then that the bonewalker returned. I froze at the pain, and it maneuvered its lithe body through my flesh without breaking any of the stitches. I looked at it in wonderment for a moment, but quickly remembered my promise. In three days, it told me in silence, a senator would be visiting the city. I was to go to the rally, meet him, and touch the prepared blood to his nails or teeth, through whatever means necessary. Terrified, I refused, and the bonewalker shoved a lightning fast bladed limb through my stitches. The other end erupted from my right arm, rending the flesh outwards. I saw the skin from my arm hanging loosely where it had been torn, and I screamed in pain and surprise. It withdrew its razor limb, and said no more. I nodded, and steeled my eyes shut, nodding until I felt it slip back through my leg, and back to wherever it came from.

8:58 PM...

Having redone the stitches myself in the two places I was injured, I found myself unwillingly present at the senator's rally. I had been patted down for weapons, but of course I had none. All I had on me was a small vial in an inner pocket, and the security hadn't found it. I wish they had. I wish they'd taken the thing, recognized it like the murderous man I'd had killed. If they'd taken the vial, I could just tell the bonewalker I'd failed... but what would it do to me if I did?

Thousands of roaring people moved about the huge auditorium. None of them had any idea what was about to happen. None of them could help me. None of them would believe me. If Audrey could see me now, would she turn away? Two security guards eyed me, noticing my sweat and nervousness, but they'd already patted me down. There was nothing they could do. I moved towards the walkway that the senator would enter through, and joined the crowd lining the sides.

8:59 PM...

The gray-haired senator, clad in an expensive suit and looking cheerful, walked down the path with his entourage. People cheered and clapped, and he shook hands as he went down the sides. For one brief, terrible moment, I thought he might not shake my hand. For one brief, horrible moment, I was terrified that he would. Then, suddenly, he was past. I looked around in confusion for a few moments, but then, aghast, I looked at my hand. My instincts had taken over, and I'd done it without thinking. I saw the senator frown, and wipe a few drops of red liquid off of his fingers, and then continue on towards the stage. I ran.

In the days following, I sat by the television in horror, waiting for that one phrase, waiting for that one broadcast. I had... I'd... I couldn't even think the words. I couldn't comprehend what I'd done. A week of darkness and terror passed, and then I saw the senator on the news. He was alive... I'd failed...! A moment of relief and fear washed over me... then, I saw his face. He seemed nervous, drawn, and worried. He was on the interview announcing a change in his policies. I screamed hoarsely at the television. I hadn't been tasked to assassinate the senator. I'd been tasked to give the bonewalker control over him!

9:00 PM...

The bonewalker came again, and it was then I realized that our deal would never end. For weeks, it made it clear that I had zero choice, and ordered me to several more tasks whose nature and purpose I could not discern. It made it clear, as its opal eyes stared at me in silence, that disobedience would be met with death. I thought about Audrey while I lay in bed each night, scratching my poorly-stitched leg wound. My arm wound was narrow, and had healed adequately.

At some point in those black and empty nights, as I thought back on the warm and happy times of our marriage, my grief and depression suddenly fell away. I realized that I had no future with this thing controlling me. If I wanted to be worthy of seeing Audrey again when I died, I couldn't let it continue whatever plan it had for the human race. First a senator, and then... what? There was no way it ended there.

It was then that I resolved to end this. I devised a trap, and begged the bonewalker to come at this time on this night. I was under its control, though it was not altogether against doing favors for its slaves. It enjoyed torturing and killing any whom its 'pets' disliked, with zero compassion... I can only pray that it doesn't suspect treachery. If it does, it can rip me to shreds from the inside, in ways too cruel and horrible to imagine. I look at my watch.

Time's up.

As my arm falls from looking at my watch, a white streak appears in my vision. Horrible pain shoots through me, but I was expecting it. It's just the location that's different... it must suspect! Another razor bone shoots out of my face, tearing open the left side of my nose. Screaming, I reach up, and grab hold of its limbs, which slice deeply into my hands. I can't let it escape!

I pull with all my might, my hands quickly becoming bloody messes of flayed flesh. For the first time, the bonewalker makes a sound, a sort of roar erupting from near my mouth. My mind erupts into chaos because of the pain, and I turn to animalistic rage, roaring back. It thrashes, and bone spikes erupt from my right leg and my left shoulder. Urged on by its panic, I explode with energy and fiery pain and tear the thing forward by its limbs. The eruptions abruptly recede, and the bonewalker's body rips through the skin of my face. I feel each bit of skin and muscle tear and separate, and one of my eyes goes dark, but I can't stop. I throw the spindly and blood-soaked creature into the compactor below...

A compactor I've filled with vial-treated animal bones.

The bonewalker thrashes, and its limbs begin sinking into each bone that they touch. My guess was correct, that it uses bones as portals somehow, and I just threw it into a pit filled with dozens... and there's about to be more. Staggering to the compactor controls, I activate it. The bonewalker struggles wildly, its limbs sinking into and emerging from bones in thousands of different angles and directions. Thoroughly mired, it can't figure out how to pull itself out, let alone escape. As the compactor begins crushing the trap, I can see bits of the bonewalker extending between almost every single bleached surface, its body completely trapped in a thousand twisting dimensions. That roar comes again as the bones crack, crush, and become hundreds, and then thousands of fragments. As the compactor walls meet, there is an immense shattering sound, as of something delicate exploding.

Finally, silence falls.

I fall to the ground, going limp as the ambulance I called in preparation arrives. The paramedics load me into the stretcher, looking at me with shock, horror, and panic. I sway with the vehicle as it rushes to the hospital. A paramedic shouts at me in desperation, asking what happened to my face, but I can only lie there, floating and disconnected, as everything goes dark. I made things right... I won... Audrey...

****

# The Fire of the Soul

Roan-Hinsky Receiver Transcripts

Received Broadcast #0470542 (DALTON)

[static]... Here, Dalton, you can use this one...

[light equipment noises]... [background conversation]...

[walking noises, followed by silence]...

I don't really believe in you. I just want to put that out there up front. I'm not going to worship you. I would, however, like to establish a discourse of sorts. Well, as much as can be had with one-way communication. I'm not going to lie – I'm hoping that my words may in some way... sway your favor... toward helping me in my planned endeavor. I don't believe that you are gods, but I'm not stupid. I've seen some of your minor miracles. I call them minor purposely, to goad you. Others are astonished and amazed when they broadcast their 'prayers' to you in times of need and a piece of equipment suddenly appears, or a failing component of our domain is suddenly fixed. Amazing, yes, but the question still remains – why is that the extent of your actions in our existence? Why do we still have to live underground? Why do we have to struggle and task and fight to grow food in artificial soil by the sickly light of the mists?

This is my first time talking to you, Those Who Came Before, so perhaps I should tell you more about who I am. I also think I should do this because I have always had the strange notion that perhaps you simply do not know enough about our lives to take major action. The most purported miracles are usually specific requests about specific locations, and all regard problems with simple solutions. My own father was once trapped in an air-machinery room by a heavy door whose rust finally sealed it shut; when those on the outside 'prayed' to you for help, a can of oil mysteriously appeared in the room with him, allowing him to remove the rust and escape. Though you did put the can there somehow, I'm certain you didn't know the full story. I just wanted you to know that I recognize and appreciate your help, even at the same time that I demand explanation for why that is all the help that you provide. You've never once answered us with words, so I don't truly expect any answers from you, but it can't hurt to try.

You've probably already noticed a difference in my communication to you, as well. Amid hundreds, or possibly thousands, of mundane requests and simple-minded broadcast prayers, a voice speaking to you at length and as an equal must catch your attention. I'm hoping this is true, and that you're not offended. I am simply one of those with the rare mixture of intelligence and curiosity that causes me to diverge significantly from my fellows. The saying among my people is that I have 'a fire in my soul,' and I understand why, for I feel constantly compelled by a burning spark of energy to seek, question, and understand practically everything.

It's quite painful to be who I am, as I am surrounded by small-minded and mundane people that have very little will of their own beyond the desire for friends, family, and becoming 'successful' within the confines of our underground domain. It is both sad and terrifying to me that literally everyone else in our civilization can grow up, live, love, lose, be sad, be happy, and scoot around like bugs in a puddle, completely oblivious to the possibilities of existence, entirely within the confines of the four habitable floors of this underground complex.

Many times in my youth I feared that I would be driven insane by the unquestioning and plodding nature of the rest of humanity. From an early age I questioned like every other child, recursively asking 'why?' until adults grew angry, but, as others grew up and lost their sense of wonder, I remained insatiable for knowledge. By my eighteenth harvest season, I had already delved into most of the knowledge in our computer database. Now, twenty-four, I have long since exhausted all the topics of history, biology, physics, and astronomy that our computers have preserved for what must be untold centuries. This centuries-long age I have estimated by the corrosion of various metals in the machinery rooms; chemistry, too, I learned from the aging glass monitors.

Astronomy, as you might guess, is what tore open the largest gash in my soul, exposing me painfully to the fire that burns within. I've been underground my entire life. I've never seen 'the atmosphere,' or 'the Sun.' I want to see 'stars' so badly! When I was younger I would seek out specific hallways within our four-floor world that allowed me to see the longest distance possible. The farthest I've ever seen at once was five hundred feet, in the interconnected cloth processing rooms. The prospect of seeing into unbridled space, absorbing light millions of years old from stars and worlds across the distant universe, has seized me utterly.

I made the mistake in my youth of mentioning that, if the surface proved habitable once more after whatever cataclysm forced humanity underground, we might even move our civilization into the open heights and infinite expanse of 'land' and 'sea,' where we could abandon the rigid hierarchy and monotonous industry of survival that has held our four-floor civilization together for so many centuries. The 'rigid hierarchy' did not like that at all. It has taken me many years to convince them to let me undertake my expedition to higher floors, and, even now, I believe they are only allowing me to leave as a clean method of removing me from society. My constant questioning and overcoming of decades-old structural and engineering problems normally left to the upper hierarchy to solve has always caused them endless trouble... though, among these plodding dullards, the slightest mental elevation, the slightest curiosity, the slightest frown of thought, is considered a drastic response.

No, I shouldn't be so harsh. There are a few whom I feel... attached to... though I doubt that I could ever love them as others of my kind love each other. We are simply too different. It would be like one of them loving a fly – the fly simply cannot feel or respond in kind to a human, ever. In the same way, none of the people in my world will ever truly understand me or be able to comprehend the heights to which my mind has soared, the worlds that I've imagined, and the understanding of reality that I have achieved. Though, my small few friends are precious to me nonetheless, for being slightly less monotonous, and for keeping me sane in my younger despairing years.

Belby, my best friend, has always stood by me, even when others would cast us both out because I caused them too much distress with my questions. He has, in some small way, absorbed a tiny bit of the fire of my soul, even sometimes able to discourse with me over the possible nature of other floors. I am careful, however, never to mention the surface, let alone the Sun, stars, and other worlds, for the few times that I have let slip concepts to that effect, Belby suffered night terrors for several months. Belby is going with me on my expedition – I pray that I can somehow, while on our journey up, expand his mind enough to handle those important concepts, before we reach the surface, or else he may go insane if we actually reach it. Wait, let me rephrase that. I hope I can do that. I don't pray. I'm not praying to you.

Rowina, in her singular and unstoppable affection, has also become someone I care about. I feel strange saying that. I have feigned annoyance at her constant and unwavering attempts to emotionally engage me since the earliest age I can remember... three, maybe four harvest seasons old. She has never courted another, and refused every other courter, despite my two decades of rejection. Even today she brought me a yellow weed she found on the corner of a food-patch. Her intentions were true, but the weed only reminded me of the 'flowers' I read about on the computers, and of the fact that she had no idea _why_ the giving of colored plants was part of romantic initiation. She merely did it to follow tradition. I wish I could explain to her the hollow emptiness that her attempts cause in me, but she could never understand. She will go with me to the surface, I'm sure of it, if only to follow me blindly as she has done all her life.

The only person I care about that is not going with me is Elder Fahl. My own father and mother had no idea how to handle one with fire in his soul, but Elder Fahl, in his old age 'wisdom,' at least understood that I was compelled to be inquisitive. It was not something I chose to do to annoy those around me. Many times, Fahl saved me from social punishment, pulling me aside and instructing me on ways to fit in. It was an extremely painful process, learning to hide the greater part of myself from others, but necessary.

The smallest of the concepts buzzing around in my mind could easily destroy this mechanical and plodding society. I think each and every person around me sensed that deadly threat in my dangerously pointed questions, and an eventual fearful frenzy of violence directed at me was the only possible result if I did not learn to restrain myself. In many ways, Elder Fahl saved my life. When he passed away a few weeks ago, I finally built up my resolve to go on this expedition. In his old and waddling ways, he was the closest thing to family I had down here. Now, there is no reason for me to stay, especially if Belby and Rowina are coming with me. In many ways, I knew this day was destined to come, for the fire in my soul has raged against the walls of every barrier I've ever found, from learning to walk, to mastering the information in the database, to improving inefficient jobs as I grew older, and now to the very walls of our four-floor civilization.

I am compelled to go exploring. I have no choice.

In many ways, I imagine myself like you, Those Who Came Before. You lived – wait, are living? Yes, I suppose 'are living' is the correct phrasing – you are living in a time before the cataclysm. You must be on the surface! I've read our history data, and much of it is intact before the ancient blank-data period that I believe marks the beginning of life underground. I have always counted myself as one day being among men like Columbus and Clark & Lewis. Tomorrow is that day. Tomorrow, I go to seek a new world... actually, no. Tomorrow, I seek the Old World. Discovery and rediscovery are both important. Perhaps people will read about me hundreds of years from now, while they sit under open sky on distant worlds, reading by the light of stars and Suns. That thought, a stark contrast to the cramped gray prison of stone and tradition that now encases humanity, literally brings tears to my eyes.

Received Broadcast #0470551 (DALTON)

[static]... [male voice]... Want some food, Dalton?

In a minute, Belby.

[distant female voice]... Will you eat with me, Dalton?

In a moment, Rowina. It's been a long day. I'm going to speak to Those Who Came Before, and update them on our journey.

[distant female voice]... It's good to see you finally praying, Dalton.

[long moment of silence]...

I wish I had the heart to explain to her that I'm not praying. Or, I wish she had the ability to understand the fine differences in theology I hold. I believe you exist, I just don't believe that you are gods. This technology, this tachyon communication, sends electronic signals to the past. The people of my society know that, and they believe that you are our ancestors, which is technically true... but they elevate you as gods in the nebulous and mythical past. I have studied physics and time and history. I know that you are simply monumental lords of technology, lords who, at many points, mastered the entire world, and even visited other worlds, called 'Moons' and 'Mar' in the ancient tongue. Or is the 's' switched? I can't remember. I'm sure you understand me.

[distant male voice]... You ready for that food yet, Dalton?

In a minute, Belby.

Today we breached the sealed staircase door on two hundred and eleven, the fourth and highest floor of our civilization. Twelve members of the upper hierarchy were there to bring us supplies, see us off, and to seal the door behind us. Myths tell of the terrors on other floors, so they had no choice but to weld it shut again. We have three months to return, before the guard posted to listen for our knock will no longer stand watch. For all their intent to be rid of me, they did equip us rather nicely, with food, ropes, and leather air-suits in case we encounter places with damaged air systems.

Belby and Rowina were terrified, but followed me with some coaxing, especially at the promise that I would protect them. In some ways, even though people fear me, they regard me almost as a hero. I have saved many lives and improved many inefficient jobs and machines, a fact which many conveniently forget when I later become a disruption to the status quo. Belby trusts me to protect him, while I feel that Rowina would walk into certain death simply to follow me. Her 'love' would inspire me, if it didn't feel like the dogged and dumb affection of a pet rat-dog, constantly returning to its master even when kicked.

For my part, I was immediately filled with apprehension at ascending to find the staircase was emblazoned with rusted metal numbers at the next floor that denoted, not two hundred and ten as I expected, but two hundred and twelve. How or why the floor numbers go up instead of down is perplexing, but I don't pretend to understand your logic, Those Who Came Before. Perhaps 'one' or 'zero' is the deepest floor, and 'two hundred and fifty' the shallowest. At least, I hope that's as far as we have to travel. If the floor numbers go up to some arbitrary number, there is no limit to the number of floors we might have to traverse to reach the surface. As of this broadcast, we are on floor two hundred and twenty-one.

Furthermore, the glass walls that house the energy mists continue to exist on each floor, providing power and subdued light to the strange and numerous plants that we have encountered on the ten floors that we have traversed today. I can't yet discount the myths of the horrific and bizarre dangers of the fabled 'other floors,' but, so far, we have stayed quiet and stuck to the rubble-strewn stone staircase, which has its own upward well. For each floor, a door leads from the staircase into the main open areas. We have merely peeked inside each of the nine before, until our safe well abruptly ended, not at a cave-in or collapse, but at a naturally artificed design point. At floor two hundred and twenty-one, the staircase simply... stopped. We are camping on the inner side of the heavy metal door, saving the true beginning of our adventure until after a period of rest.

We haven't gone far, but I need to give Belby and Rowina time to adjust. They are visibly agitated at having walked up ten floors – already two and a half times the extent of our entire society. There are no energy mist containers in the walls here, so it is dark enough to sleep well if we turn off our electric torches. I'm too excited to sleep. The fire in me has been fanned irreversibly by the prospect of exploring the true unknown for the first time in my life. I'll let them sleep, and I'll keep watch, and then... adventure!

Received Broadcast #0470623 (DALTON)

[static]...

[male voice screaming]...

Please, Those Who Came Before, I need your help! I need... bandages, surgical instruments, stitching material! I'm... I'm...

[female crying]...

[male voice screaming]...

... in the central shaft on floor two hundred and twenty-one! We're on a small ledge next to the open air pit! Please, help us! He's going to bleed to death!

Received Broadcast #0470631 (DALTON)

[static]...

... thank you so much... I got the kit... he's stopped bleeding...

[distant ragged breathing sounds]

Received Broadcast #0470635 (DALTON)

[static]...

... again, thank you! He's going to live! He's going to live...

[relieved sigh]

That thing... some horrific thing... it _bit_ him! It was slimy, tentacled, disgusting in appearance and smell... I've never seen or even conceptualized anything so horrifying... it came out of nowhere and laid ten jagged teeth right in his calf. We couldn't get it off, Rowina was screaming... I took the power cell out of my electric torch and burnt the thing's eye. It abruptly released and disappeared into the thick undergrowth. I couldn't see it by the dim light of the energy mist walls, and the lights overhead were long since destroyed... it's still on this floor somewhere, and there are probably more of them all over these levels...

These floors have a unique ecosystem all their own. I believe that at least ten levels must be interconnected via decayed openings or broken air-system controls. A creature like that could not have survived and adapted down here without a significant food chain. We have seen several crawling meaty bugs that may be the bottom of the ecosystem that has developed here over the centuries. The strange plants here seem to efficiently live off of the energy mist containers' life-giving light, get eaten by the bugs, and then unknown varied animals must live off of those... and then that horrific predator must feed on those animals. It would be amazing to research if we had the time or instruments... or if our first encounter with this new mini-world had not been so violent.

That disgusting predator creature is probably the source of our fearful myths about the other floors. When we get back, I should recommend their destruction. A minor alteration of the air-system balance should wipe out the plant life on these floors, and eventually eliminate all the offending alien life through starvation. The upper hierarchy members may actually listen, for such a minor effort could result in the expansion of our society into many more floors.

I've cauterized Belby's wounds and wrapped his leg. We're going to rest here, sealed behind the metal doors to the central shaft, until he recovers. This shaft makes me nervous. I don't understand what the purpose of an empty shaft is, especially not one that disappears ominously into darkness above and below us with no discernible function. There's a completely separate air system, so what could this shaft possibly be for? The narrow ledge that we are resting on is nerve-wracking.

Rowina calmed down a bit ago, and is sleeping quietly against my side. I hope I don't wake her up with this conversation, but you helped me save Belby's life, so I feel a debt of gratitude toward you, Those Who Came Before. If it had been anyone else but me there with him, that thing would have killed him outright. Intelligence is an amazing weapon... but I'm sure you know that. As jarring as that first encounter with new beings was, the fire in me is only growing hotter. I can't wait to see what's above. Belby and Rowina both want to go home – I can sense it – but we can't stop now. I told them that it's too dangerous to go back right now with that thing out there, and they uneasily accepted my reasoning.

Ah! I see a ladder across the shaft from us, leading both up and down. It'll be difficult climbing for Belby, with his wounded leg, but perhaps I'll tie us together with some rope that we brought in our supplies, for added safety.

Received Broadcast #0470935 (DALTON)

[static]...

Awhile since my last broadcast. I apologize. Once Belby was well enough, we climbed the ancient ladder. At many points it was broken or missing rungs, so the going was exceedingly difficult. We are now holding on tightly to the end of the ladder, and indeed the end of the entire shaft. I estimate that we have traveled up at least thirty floors, and I am anxious to leave this nightmarish ascent... although I am equally hesitant to open the shaft's metal doors and encounter a new floor. The last one we had to traverse ended up in Belby nearly dying. This one is over ten times higher than the height of our entire civilization. What terrors will we find here? We might as well do it, for there is no way I am turning back...

Received Broadcast #0470939 (DALTON)

Those Who Came Before, do you know what these machines on floor two hundred and thirty-five do? I am standing here now, wandering around with Rowina. Belby is resting by the shaft. There is no danger here – no plants, no creatures. I almost wish that there were. This floor is disconcerting and sublimely terrible in its efficient design.

Everything is white, and bright. The lights overhead are penetrating and absolute. Every tile of the ceiling emits a powerful glow. Great white walls, massive clean metal boxes, and skirts of glass create a maze almost maddening in its simplicity. There is no attempt to entrap us with complicated pathways – in fact, I can easily find my way to the outer energy mist walls from any point – but that only makes the purpose of the floor that much more mysterious. Who, if anyone, lives here? Why and how is it so clean? What is its purpose?

A vast portion of this place's undercurrent of unease is related to its similarity to the description of Heaven given in our holy text. All of the details are here – bright light, whiteness, purity and cleanliness... and, most of all, exacting order. None of the rust, decay, and chaos of the lower levels exists here. I am not a believer in our holy text, but that almost makes this worse. I don't know how to process this place. Belby and Rowina simply stare around at things with a suffusing happiness, smiling at the sheer purity of everything around us, with no thought as to its physical function or actual meaning. I, too, feel a stark contrast here to our dirty and cramped existence, but I also know that appearances can be deceiving.

Come on, let's look for another staircase or shaft up.

[distant female voice]... are you sure we should leave, Dalton?

Yes, we can't stay here indefinitely...

[distant male voice]... why not, Dalton? Do you know what this place could be, Dalton? If we just stay here forever, what happens, Dalton?

If we stay here forever, we'll starve to death. Besides, if this is the place you think it is, then we're surrounded by ghosts, spirits, and dead people. They're probably touching you all over right now, causing the hair on the back of your neck to raise or making you shiver.

[distant female voice]... I'm scared, Dalton. Can we go, Dalton?

I thought you might not like that idea. Hey, there's a staircase over here! But... it's sealed off by strange glass and metal walls... how do we get inside? There's some kind of interface with nine squares, and one digit on each.

[male voice]... it's a password device, Dalton!

Very good, Belby! Very perceptive. But what's the password? Let me try one...

[four varied tones]...

[abrupt beep]...

I guess that's not it. It took four tones before it beeped. There are so many combinations, we could be here forever! Those Who Came Before, I hate to ask you yet another favor, but can you somehow help us get through this? I'm going to try 5, 6, 7, 2 next in the mean time...

[four varied tones]...

[slow beep, and sliding sound]...

It worked! Did you do that, Those Who Came Before...? I find it hard to believe that I simply got lucky. But wait, if you can change the combination on this door, that means you really are the builders of this whole underground facility! The holy text is actually right in that regard! This is amazing!

Received Broadcast #0470939 (DALTON)

[static]...

The facility is getting smaller the closer to the surface we get. I firmly believe that we are almost there. We followed the staircase up another fifty floors. At intermittent periods we opened the door to the main area of a floor, and found many strange and varied habitats within. Many floors were empty. Many were filled with strange growing things, each floor highly distinct from the others. One floor had no air at all; probably due to a serious air-system malfunction. Poor Belby almost got sucked right in, for what surely would have been a most horrible death. Rowina and I managed to pull him back and shut the thankfully air-tight door.

By far my favorite was the last floor we peeked in upon – neon blue moss covered the hard cement floor, apparently growing purely by the light of the energy mist containers and the natural moisture in the air. For what reason this moss was neon blue, we could not discern, but we dared not touch it to investigate. Rather, we stared out of the door at the extent of the entire floor, which was now down to a roughly square area approximately two hundred feet wide. I was almost driven to distraction by excitement at this point, realizing that our entire underground complex must terminate at the surface very soon if the floors continued to shrink in size.

Currently, we are resting in an empty floor, oddly devoid of absolutely everything except the omnipresent lifeless air that we've all breathed our entire lives. Belby is sleeping, still tired from his wound, and Rowina hangs on my arm, staring into the energy mist walls with me. For whatever reason, humans, including myself, often find it comforting to think while staring into the energy mists. I have often wondered why, and personally decided that I enjoy looking into a space into which I cannot go. Living such a limited existence as we do underground, it is paradoxically reassuring to know that there are still strange unexplored places nearby that no man has ever gone.

Nobody knows what the energy mist is, really. It has one very simple function, and that is to provide power and light to all the floors of the underground complex. Yet, its nebulous and unreachable nature – it is always behind heavily shielded glass so as to protect living beings from harmful radiation – somehow entices fancy even among the dullard society which humanity has become. In part, it is because we _can_ see a short distance into the energy mist, and what we can see in that short space is as perplexing as it is beautiful.

The stonework of our complex can be seen extending a short distance into the mist, and, in some places, there is fanciful artwork or protruding spikes and buttresses. I truly believe that some cantankerous One Who Came Before artist put his strange creations in the stonework on the other side of the energy mist glass purely so that people would see it and wonder about it for as long as the structure was in use. I don't know, however, if he knew it would serve as humanity's dwelling place for so many centuries. In some ways, the unreachable stone art barely visible in the mists is the only thing left down here that reminds me that I am not alone in my mental strivings. You, Those Who Came Before, were all like me, and that thought comforts me at the same time that it saddens me that humanity has fallen so far and become so ignorant and dull.

Received Broadcast #0471439 (DALTON)

[static]...

... have finally reached the door to the surface! I feel like I'm about to explode with craze and wonder and curiosity! We came to a floor only five by five, with one stolid and heavy door. Knowing full well this meant the surface, we prepared ourselves for any eventuality. For their parts, Belby and Rowina were actually excited, and I found myself swelling with pride at their excitement, thinking that perhaps humanity is not so far gone after all!

We were lucky that Belby almost got sucked into a vacuum floor days ago. This caused us to tie ourselves together and to the wall, and don the air-suits that we brought with us, as a precaution. When I opened that door, all hell broke loose. It was not a vacuum at all – it was much more terrifying and wonderful. A massive fist of air immediately assailed us, almost ripping us from our rope and back down the stairs. It wasn't a vacuum – it was air from outside the complex, rushing in! I should have expected it – we've been sealed for centuries! Why should the air content, temperature, and pressure be at all similar?! Most of all - you won't believe it – there was _light!_ True, non-electric light! I almost screamed with happiness at the sight of light pouring in through that open door.

After a few moments, the rush of air settled to a powerful flow, and I shut the door as best I could so that we could devise how to handle this. Now, we are preparing for our true foray outside. We will see the surface, the first human beings to do so in centuries! It's got to be habitable by now... and even if it's not... I'll let the fire of my soul surge through me as I run around on open terrain, protected from radiation or toxin by the leather air-suits. I'll see the stars. I'll see the Sun! _The Sun!_ Pure joy awaits, the utter bliss of successful exploration that makes me feel one with my humanity. For the first time, I look at Belby and Rowina and see companions, not pets. They smile and chatter about what they might see. Could this lead to a rekindling of the old spirit? Could others begin to open their minds as you, Those Who Came Before once did? I'm going to burst if we don't do this already!

Received Broadcast #0471445 (DALTON)

[static]...

[female crying sounds]...

Belby's dead.

You bastards... what did you _do?_ What did you do to the world?

[male sob]...

I can't... I can't think of anything that could... do _that_... I expected nuclear war, perpetual winter, biological warfare... _something_ recognizable from history texts... but _that_... WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE PLANET?

We opened the door. We let the air normalize. We went outside, sliding our rope along a metal rod that split and ran to many places on the stonework of the surface of the complex. The rod seemed there as if exactly intended for what we used it for – to keep the high winds from tearing us away into the sky. I was enthralled by the sky at first – solid clouds in every direction, roaring, open wind – but I soon came to realize that something was horribly wrong.

Belby and Rowina screamed questions at me from inside their air-helmets, but I couldn't hear them over the titanic winds. I looked around, desperate to understand the insane maelstrom we found ourselves in. Grey vapor, exactly mirroring the energy mists but no longer separated from us by a glass wall, rushed by us at tremendous speeds, buffeting us back and forth. If not for our tie to the metal rod, we would have been torn away and destroyed.

Overhead, there were no stars, no Moons or Mar, no Sun, only glowing gray clouds. We seemed to be inside a gigantic sphere of rapid-flying mist, whose edges were pure impenetrable cloud in every direction. I followed the inside edges of the sphere of visibility with my eyes, my extreme hope quickly turning to confusion and dismay as I noted the clouds continuing down, down, all the way to the surface. We stood on a gray square of stone, representing the top of our complex. Behind us, we saw that the five by five room we had come from was actually _above_ the surface – so we had emerged onto the top of our own structure.

None of this was itself terrible. It was only when I realized that our square stone top, with its imbedded metal rods, was the only visible detail in the entire maelstrom of roaring fog – only then did true horror begin to enter my soul. I already guessed, at that moment, that my concept of reality was fatally flawed, but I could not yet discern exactly how.

We appeared to be the only things in existence, lost in a realm of terrifying blasting mists, fogs, and clouds. The ground, precious dirt and earth, was hidden under the damnable fog. All we could see was the stone square on which we stood – and that was not what we came for. I wanted to see ground, actual _dirt_ , before we retreated back to civilization with the terrible news that the surface world was a gibbering maelstrom of ether and nebulous death, and that nothing could live there.

I slowly led us down the leftmost metal rod, holding on tightly to both the rod and the rope holding us. I had to get close enough to see it. If I could, I wanted a handful. The fire in my soul was now angry, burning with resentment at the cosmic joke that had been played on us. I refused to go back to civilization without at least seeing _dirt_ , maybe even touching it, or bringing back a handful as proof.

I confess that tears of rage were flowing under my air-helmet as I reached the end of the rod and could still see nothing over the edge of the stone. As for the fog, it seemed to change markedly in structure and composition at level with the stone beneath our feet – a detail which led me to the conclusion that would prove to be tragic, that dirt must be just underneath the fog, barely hidden.

Unable to let it go and return defeated, I told Belby and Rowina to stay put, and unhitched myself from the rope. They screamed in terror at this, but I held the stonework with a death grip, flattening myself to keep from being torn away by the insane winds. I wish with all of my existence that I had relented to their screams and returned to the safety of the rod and rope, but I couldn't let it go.

[male sob]...

I...

[moment of silence]...

I got to the edge, finally, my fingers bleeding inside my leather air-suit gloves, and a strange film or residue accumulating on the part of my head and arms that were foremost against the fog. It was sticky, and wholly unpleasant to have on my air-suit. I leaned over the edge, which I realized had much slower winds, which, again, ceased almost exactly on level with the stone surface I was lying flat against and clinging to for dear life. I saw a dim flat gray below, so, ostensibly, I let myself drop over the edge... in retrospect, one of the worst decisions of my life.

The wind still roared overhead, but I found myself standing on something solid in much more agreeable currents of thicker fog. I leaned down and patted the surface, finding it to be stone, the same that I had just left. I hadn't yet reached the dirt level. Looking down, the fog was very dark, so I presumed the dirt to be somewhere very near. On a whim, I wondered why the rushing weather didn't etch all this stone away, so I pulled my knife out and attempted to nick the stone beneath my feet. My blade shattered before I was able to even put the slightest scratch against the carved blocks. I threw the broken knife into the dark fog, but could hear no impact over the roaring wind.

It was only when I truly looked at the building next to me, where I would have to climb back up to rejoin Belby and Rowina, that my mind began piecing together the nightmare. Instead of a solid wall, I found myself looking at glass. Peering in through the glass, I found myself looking at the empty space of the floor immediately before the five by five room. In shock, I clambered to my right, finding one of the strange rat-dog-esque statues that I always believed a cantankerous One Who Came Before had carved. It was quite clear that I had somehow climbed down into an open or malfunctioning energy mist container.

Confused, I leapt up to get my fingers on the edge of the stone surface above, where Belby and Rowina waited. To my dismay, I found ascending almost impossible. Between the sudden change in wind velocity, the sticky residue on my suit and blood in my gloves, and the height and slipperiness of the stone, I couldn't get back up! I was about to be overwhelmed by terror when a pair of legs, and then a body, slid down over the edge. It was Belby! Rowina followed him, the two of them joining me on the ledge. It was wholly uncharacteristic of them to brave danger unprompted like that, and their appearance filled me with pride and positive warmth. I had been very afraid I was going to die there, alone, in the fog, kept prisoner by fear and the simple inability to climb up a glass wall.

Belby grasped my arm, glad to see me alive. Rowina pressed her air-helmet up against mine and mock kissed me, and I returned her affection for the first time in my life, truly sharing her smile. Overwhelming relief filled me for many moments while we considered how to get all three of us back up the glass wall... until an ominous resistance started to build in me. The fire in my soul was returning, whispering to me of how close I came to _dirt_ , to the surface, and... failed! One part of me said I should go home, enjoy what I had discovered, and live to return another day. Another part of me whispered that I might never be able to come back, for why would anyone follow me through danger just to come to this nightmarish wind-world?

I found myself turning around to stare at the dark fog, my hard-wired animal brain functions telling me that, from the consistency and darkness of the fog, the surface _had_ to be just below. Perhaps a leap of faith would do it? It could be as little as a foot down in the fog. Wouldn't it be ridiculous, after all these centuries of underground prison dwelling, to turn back because of a foot of fog? I found myself almost stepping off the ledge I was on, and it took all of my strength not to do so. In the end, it was Rowina's terrified grip on my arm that finally turned me back. It was then, in that moment of contemplation and decision, that I made the fatal mistake.

Standing in the slower air currents, I explained my thoughts to Belby and Rowina. I told them how hard it was to turn back, how close the _surface_ was, how I felt, how terrible it would be to go back knowing how close I came – it would hurt even though I knew that jumping blindly wasn't worth the risk. I violated everything Elder Fahl taught me: I exposed them to the workings of my mind. I told them of the encroaching overwhelming curiosity I feared I would feel the rest of my life, slowly driving me to madness. They listened to all of this, doing the most dangerous thing that they could do in their dull-human states: they thought about it.

We began the process of lifting ourselves off the ledge, and I went first. I helped Rowina up, both of us clutching the stone for our lives. I clung to the edge, holding an arm down to Belby, ready to lift him up... but he didn't reach up. He simply stood there, frozen, as the pain in my limbs from resisting the wind grew. I shouted to him to come, but he just looked up at me, a cosmic confusion and terror in his eyes at the life of maddening curiosity that I had told him of. I suddenly remembered his months of nightmares at the mere concept of things outside his world. What had I done to him by speaking of life-long mental anguish born of curiosity, an emotion so new and strange to him?

Then, he looked down at the dark fog. For my part, I finally noticed a detail which had previously eluded me due to the shifting and chaotic nature of the clouds – they were significantly brighter above us. The brightness of the clouds seemed dependent upon our angle of viewing them, relative to some light source high above...

The Sun! The Sun was on the other side of the clouds! Of course! And it lit the clouds and fog and mists below, penetrating as a diffuse glow. It was only then that I pieced together several details of our journey, such as the rising floor numbers, the placement and omnipresence of the glass energy mist walls, and the shape of where we were. I made the most important human realization in centuries, moments too late to save Belby:

We were never underground at all!

I screamed at Belby in soul-wrenching terror even as he jumped, almost falling off of my edge in my attempt to grab at him. I watched him plummet into the clouds, leaving a dark silhouette for several moments before fading entirely. No sound or impact came, and I expected none would, for it was all too obvious now: we hadn't reached the surface at all... we had simply reached the roof.

[long silence]...

All this time... the energy mist... it was just thick, never-ending fog, backlit by the distant and hidden Sun... all the stars that I dreamed about... we'll never see them again... if it's this bad up here, the surface, three hundred floors below, must be instant death... I can feel it now, the true nature of our existence. Abortive, mechanical, unquestioning... because it has to be. There could be other gigantic buildings, filled with humans living in isolation, all unaware of the true situation of the world, because they have to be... because the truth is too horrible to face. I pushed, and I pushed, and I couldn't let it go... I have the truth now... and... I don't want it anymore.

[silence]...

Belby, you poor fool...

Received Broadcast #0480015 (DALTON)

[static]...

It's been a very long time since I've spoken to you, Those Who Came Before. It's taken me a very long time to forgive you enough to send you one last message. I work in the lowliest job now, as punishment – I tend the food-patches by the windows. I call them that in my head now, windows, because that is what they are. I told no-one the Truth that I found, and Rowina is not smart enough to piece together the nightmare. Nevertheless, people guessed that I had found something terrible, because they have always felt it somewhere in the deepest parts of their souls, and they fear me now that I know.

I understand now why they so willingly give up curiosity, intellectual pursuit, and exploration of reality, content with mundane milling about, gossip, and social pursuits. They can't exist any other way. Over the centuries, all those inquisitive like me must have met grisly fates, both physical and mental. Humans must do terrible things to themselves to survive, and I, for my part, have done mine. The fire in my soul is gone now, turned to ash, and I no longer cry at its loss as I once did. I feel nothing. I no longer question, no longer wonder, and no longer dream. Those things brought me to this terrible end.

I have said nothing of expansion to other floors, for this society must remain stagnant to survive. Expansion would mean eventual enlightenment, and then madness. The most basic reason underlying all of our actions is that of survival until 'the surface' becomes habitable again. For these people to continue milling about, living, having children, and dying, they must never know that the world will _never_ be habitable again. This is all that we are, forever.

My days are mundane, mechanical, and repetitive. I married Rowina when I came back, because there was no longer a reason not to. She goes through the motions of love no matter how I act, and society mills on no matter what I do. I am no longer an entity of concern. Underneath my numbness, I still feel grief for what was lost, both for the fire in my soul, and for my friend. They already knew Belby was dead before I returned. The way they found out is part of my punishment, punishment I accepted without question. I was the stupid one, for allowing the fire in my soul to push me too far. How could I possibly question a civilization that has survived for so many centuries? How could I think I knew better than all who came before me? How could I possibly think that one man could make a difference in the course of all humanity? Such pride... and my friend paid for it.

I know now why you help us in such trivial ways, Those Who Came Before. I know now why you provide us with medical kits or cans of oil in times of need, but do nothing to fix the world, do nothing to prevent the coming of the dense noxious and poisonous fog that covers the entire world. You can't face it. You are just like us. You're not gods, but nor are you lords of technology – you're simply poor fools. I can almost envision you, running around grinning after listening to our broadcasts from the future, placing a can of oil in a room that would, hundreds of years hence, have a man trapped inside it by rust. A can of oil is a simple solution. A can of oil is easy to be responsible for. A can of oil can be placed, and then, the task completed, can be forgotten while the placer goes back to living his life.

I understand. There are so many insurmountable tasks between us and the stars – this society, this building, the noxious atmosphere, finding and convincing the rest of humanity, the vast distance – it's simply foolish for me to wish to touch other planets anymore. I'd have to dedicate my entire life to it. There's too many minds to change, too many technologies to design, too many obstacles for one person to ever matter. It's too much for me, just like saving us is too much for you. I can't expect you to give so much of your life to save descendants you'll never meet. It's alright. I understand now, the all-encompassing apathy of will that comes once the fire in the soul goes out.

Each day I water the plants, and work hard to keep them growing. Each day I gaze out of the windows, striving to feel the excitement and wonder that I once did, but it does not come. I am constrained to work this patch in particular, because it lies next to the window that carries a grim reminder of the price of my pride. This is my punishment, to work this patch, and perform no other job, until that grim reminder outside the window decays and disappears entirely. Outside, impaled against one of the strangely carved statues, hangs the smashed and decaying body of my friend Belby, his face still bearing that final expression of confusion and fear that resulted from the fate that I, in my pride, led him to. If I could, I would shed tears for him, for me, and for you... but I cannot. I am merely ashes.

[end of file]

****

# "Come Closer"

I'd actually seen him on our way home from school. He looked dirty and disturbed, and stared straight at us as our bus went by. We even made jokes about him, probably as our way of pretending we weren't afraid. He was incredibly out of place in our middle class suburb, so his mere presence felt threatening... thus our panic when the three of us got off at our stop and saw him at the corner, about to look in our direction.

He was between us and our houses, and the bus had already pulled away, so we bolted for the bushes of a nearby yard. We weren't sure if he had seen us, but we peered through the leaves and saw him stalking our way, muttering randomly. Tim, my neighbor, insisted that he'd seen a large knife in the man's ragged clothing. Danny, a kid I hardly knew who had just moved into the neighborhood, insisted that he was imagining it - that Tim's glasses must have reflected the sun wrong or something. Still, we were terrified, and the sidewalk was going to bring him right by us.

It was Tim that broke and ran first, keeping low. I followed, my heart pounding, as we dove into the darkness underneath the porch of the unfamiliar house we'd been hiding near. As we squeezed our bodies against the dirt, the grimy wood pressed into our backs, barely giving us enough room to breathe. From our hiding place, we could see the disturbed man turn into the yard in front of us and begin searching around, hitting the bushes and muttering angrily.

I realized then that Danny wasn't with us, but I hadn't seen where he'd gone. Tim had lost his glasses back at the bushes, and he just huddled in the shadows next to me in near-blind terror. We stayed there in silence, waiting. Every so often, whenever I almost thought it was safe to come out, footsteps would creep across the wooden porch above us. Tim almost sneezed, once, but I covered his mouth and nose in stark fear.

We waited there so long that the tone of the sunlight began to change. We hadn't heard the man searching about in awhile, and I was just getting ready to peek out, when footsteps clattered and a thud hit the wood directly above us. A split second later, Danny's face appeared in front of us upside down, and he looked at us through the lattice. A look of shock and surprise crossed his features at finally finding us. He whispered something, but I couldn't hear anything. He seemed to be saying "come closer," so I figured the horrible man was still around and we had to be quiet, and I inched forward.

Danny's features grew fearful, and he kept indicating something above us. Strangely, I still couldn't hear him... his eyes seemed to dim then, and I inched forward a little bit more. I froze for a moment in horror, then backed up. Tim mouthed to me: "What did he say?" and I just shook my head, completely in shock. Danny hadn't conveyed "come closer," he had mimed "he's up there." The drifter was unknowingly sitting right above us, waiting, because he knew we had to be somewhere in that yard.

There was nothing to do but wait in silence, trying not to scream. I was glad Tim had lost his glasses. I lay there as darkness descended, waiting in unwavering terror and trying not to feel the glassy stare of Danny's severed head as it rested in the grass a foot away.

****

# Scribblings

To: James Batten

From: Mark Davis

Subject: What do you make of this?

Dr. Batten,

I found this during the cataloguing project -

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

[red scribbles]

Dav [fading red pen]

Da [fading blue pen]

David [heavy black pen from here on]

David David David david

David Messer

Use as journal, order thoughts [written sideways]

Room 36

[crude drawn map of a building, Room 36 at the map's center]

Where is everyone?? [written at an angle in the corner]

Finally found some food, and have retreated to room for the night. Sun setting soon. I can't find the words to express how good it feels to write again. The sleek pen in my fingers, the rough matte of the paper against my hand, and the sheer physicality of the act itself brings me untold joy, reminding me in every little way that I am once again experiencing the real world. Ah, it's snowing outside! It's not snowing, that is part of my delusions. It still laps at the edges of my consciousness like a puddle held at bay by the wind. Another, stranger force pushes against it in my mind, a waking nightmare

[black scribbles]

cannot be described without the sliding... sliding back into the dream where I have been trapped for so long. Not the same dream, a different one, someone else's... I can feel the two fighting over my mind like hungry wolves, viruses spiraling in combat, leaving me mostly free from both for the first time in eternities. I would like to find the date, to know how long I have been here. And also, to find out what happened to the staff. It's been so long since it snowed! [last phrase struck through by a line] Will look for a newspaper in the morning.

12/17/2014

Very satisfactory lunch. It's my second time consciously tasting food in 9 years, if I remember my last waking memories correctly. We fortified the building's front door and sealed all other entrances. The other patients are all exhibiting cessation of neuroses as well, and we collectively decided to protect the building until we can determine the fate of the staff and others.

The streets outside, viewed via window, are empty. We should go play in the snow! Cars litter the streets, in some cases still running. No sign of struggle. Expedition has been proposed to gather resources. Not sure if I should mention the nightmare-presence I feel in my mind. Cannot determine if the other patients are feeling it. How are former mental patients supposed to act?

12/18/2014

Frank Ditmer has been acting as leader, doing a good job. They went out and came back with a large amount of supplies. No other people encountered as of yet, and no evidence as to their fate. All the cars left running are now empty of gas; Ditmer and crew turned off as many as they could in case we need to use them. Do you mind if I go play in the snow, daddy? [last sentence aggressively struck through, but still legible]

Heard a distinct phrase in the nightmare waters washing around the outsides of my mind; another patient, Kelly Jackson, said it out loud. At this point we have all realized that we are feeling the same external influence. Atmosphere is tense, though surprisingly stable. It seems each of us are clear of thought while the dark waves stalemate our various dementias.

Same force responsible for disappearance of everyone else?

12/19/2014

We put on music and had a good old-fashioned dance today. No idea how long this clarity will last. Danced with Kelly, nearly cried at the touch of another person again. Fortunately I held it in; I still have my dignity. Still no sign of any other people. Talking with people and forming friendships is exhilarating. Sure, you can go play in the snow, I'll be right out. I was not aware of the passage of time, but it seems my body was. I crave interaction like a drug.

Frank is right. We are going to have to go out and search for the others eventually, as much as this place feels like rebirth and home. 'ngyah t'reth. We might not even be safe. We have to find out where they went. I plan to volunteer. I want to see the world again, for however long I have. She'd want that of me, to live again, to be happy again, for as long as I can manage.

12/20/2014

Bitter cold. Sun is setting, and the three of us have stopped for the night in an abandoned house. Heat still works, but we are only keeping on a tiny light in the basement for fear of being seen by threats as yet unknown. Maps found at a bus station indicate that we are now two miles from the northern edge of Columbus, Ohio. How I got here from Florida, where my family lives (lived?) I'll never know. It's so cold outside, I wish I was still there.

Frank's a good guy. Smart too. I think he was once a professor, like me. He won't talk about his dementia, though. Each of us keeps that to ourselves, for fear... of the problem returning, or of being judged, it's impossible to say. I know what they would say if they heard my delusion, that it wasn't my fault, that accidents happen, but those words meant nothing to me nine years ago, and they will mean nothing now. Eyah sa'kagra. [last phrase struck out]... ?... ? Kelly sleeping next to me, will write more later.

12/[unknown symbol]/2014

The balance of the waters in my mind, dark and sinister on one side, and the blinding white of winter on the other, shifts... the closer we get to the center of the city. Walked very slowly and [symbol] for most of the short daylight, once we heard the sound on the wind. The day was unnaturally short, even for winter. We are resting now in an unlocked restaurant in a pseudo-suburban area... looks like a large college campus. I am grateful to have almost no troubling thoughts from my personal demons, but fearful of those demons that are not mine, who continue to whisper strange words and pictures.

[symbol] / [symbol] / [symbol]

[symbol] terrified. Reached the city center, now hiding in the underground parking garages. Entire population of others seems all still alive, but under mental influence. We can hear them now, tens of thousands, chanting above. It was only luck that they didn't see us. [symbol]. Frank believes the foreign influence on us is the cause, I agree. Why we remain unaffected – perhaps our inherent insanity helps us resist the foreign one. [symbol] in the morning.

From creeping about, we briefly got up the internal stairs into the 34th floor of the [symbol] building, saw some sort of gigantic [symbol] to randomly shifting places and times appearing to slowly grow in front of the capitol building, as tens of thousands [symbol] and worshipped it. Frank is grim, Kelly terrified. I want to encourage her, make her feel better, but I am relearning all of my emotions again, and don't know what to say. All I know is, it would be foolish to assume that the [symbol] will stay random forever. All of this has the signs of a horrific attack on the human race.

[symbol] / [symbol] / [symbol]

Running out of food. Frank caught and got killed [symbol] nights ago, stings my heart bitterly. Fanatics now aware of the existence of non-controlled, and are searching the high rises for us. Kelly is now speaking half in the other language, half in English. She refuses to physically let go of me at any time. I am making a distinct conscious effort to write correctly. I have only one plan. We are trapped.

I saw, out a window into a window, in another building, seven fanatics walk into a certain room and suddenly become confused. They looked around in terror, until they left the room, and resumed their mind-controlled behavior. [symbol] means there is something that resists the effects of the [symbol]. This behavior happened on the 32nd floor of the building south of the [symbol] building, two rooms from the east end.

That portal is my only idea. I can see the light of awareness leaving Kelly's eyes, and I can hear the fanatics racing up the stairs. I'm [symbol] either way, so I might as well try. I'm going to try to make it to the roof and throw this book into the [symbol]. Wish me [symbol]. And if this lands in some time or place before 2005... I beg you to find a David Messer in Miami, Florida, and tell him not to let his daughter play in the snow. I have

[large black single line, as of pen being jerked across page]

[END TRANSCRIPT]

[Source: An ancient scroll found in the Royal Library of England; scroll claims it was exactly transcribed from a book lost in the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria in 48 BCE]

I already checked, and there is in fact a David Messer in a psychiatric hospital near Columbus, Ohio in the United States. I have to be honest, this is rather disturbing.

Mark Davis

Archivist

Royal Library of England

\-----------

From: James Batten

To: Mark Davis

Subject: Re: What do you make of this?

Mark,

We've uncovered over thirty different documents purported to be from wildly different times and places, all describing these events in 2014, all supposedly written by different cured psychiatric patients in different cities all over the world. It's a widespread and enduring hoax that, frankly, has this institution on its last nerve. Please have the item destroyed. Also, try exercising some scholarly skepticism in the future. Thanks.

James Batten

Head Researcher

Royal Library of England

****

# The Lodge

It was our second night at the old hunter's lodge that it happened. I'm not clear on who owned it at the time; but we had borrowed the keys from a friend of a friend who let people vacation there from time to time.

The only thing he told us was to stay out of the unfinished basement, as it hadn't been used in years, and there was old hunter's gear down there that could be dangerous. The door was locked and the key had been lost, regardless, so we didn't even think about it as we unpacked and explored the place we'd be spending a relaxing week at.

I was in a very happy mood that second night, as my family and I sat around the bonfire eating hamburgers and telling scary stories. My younger sister had gone inside to change into warmer clothes and had been gone for a few minutes when I went inside to get another drink. Upon entering, I immediately saw the basement door sitting a good two inches ajar.

My thoughts jumped to the mundane dangers that I had been told about, and I knew I had to get my eight-year-old sister out of there. Opening the door wider, I stared down the tilted wooden steps, wondering what she was doing in the dark. I flipped the old dirt-encrusted light switch, but nothing happened.

"Hello?" I projected loudly down the stairs.

A strange sound of moving air came first in reply, as if a furnace pipe had sprung a leak... and then I heard her.

"Hey!" came my sister's small, high voice. "Come down here!"

Perplexed and worried, I slowly stepped down the rotten wooden steps and onto the dirt floor. My feet crunched the glass of a broken light bulb... one mystery solved. The furnace breathed and pulsed like the lodge's heart somewhere in the darkness, making it difficult for me to listen for my sister.

"Where are you?" I asked to my left, where I thought I had heard her.

"Over here," she said, from my right. "I'm stuck!"

Now my heart pounded with fear for her safety. I slowly inched toward her, not wanting to injure myself on old hunting gear. As I moved, the deep breathing of the furnace grew louder, and I slowly became completely disoriented in the warm, flowing pitch black. For many long, terrible moments, I had no idea where I was. I only knew that I had to keep going forward and rescue my little sister.

"Right there!" she said, very close now. Could she see my silhouette against the dim light from the stairway? That surely must have been thirty or forty feet away by then, for as far as I'd crept and for how long it took. How big was the basement?

My face brushed against something metal, hanging on what seemed to be a wooden structural post. It was flat and round, and very rusty. It had given very slightly when my nose bumped it in the dark, and it was only the rust that had prevented it from moving further.

"That's the latch!" she said loudly, trying to be heard over the heated air from the now-roaring furnace right next to us. What was she stuck in? I couldn't understand.

"Press it!" she said, and I put my hand up to it, touching its ingrained patterns of rust.

I paused, trying to figure out what she might be stuck in that would have a latch on the wall. I figured she must know, so I began to press it.

"Hey, who's down there?" came a voice from above the stairs... my sister's.

My hand snapped back. My instincts had told me something was terribly wrong; now I knew.

"I'm stuck!" said the voice right next to me, also my sister's. "Press it!"

I stumbled backward, scrambling in the dirt toward the stairs. A blast of warm, humid air followed me almost up the steps as I burst out, covered in cobwebs and dust. My sister stood there, confused and scared. I breathed heavily, but kept my story to myself until I found my father.

In the morning, we went downstairs to investigate. My father didn't believe me at first, even as I found several details that chilled me to the bone. First, the furnace was in a back room on the first floor – not in the basement. What I'd mistaken for a furnace, with its massive breath and warm, moist air, I'll never know. My father chalked this up to faulty ducts or my imagination.

Second, the basement was only about ten feet wide. Again, my father suggested that I had simply become disoriented in the dark and miscalculated how far I'd gone.

The third and final detail, however, silenced his arguments with grim impact. Hanging on a post was the object I'd touched first with my face, and then my hand. The voice had wanted me to press the center piece, and both my father and I could plainly see where I'd rubbed some of the dirt and rust off of it. The object hung there with grim menace, impossible and terrifying. I felt my face compulsively to reassure myself that I was actually alright. I'd touched a latch, as the voice had said, but it was not for what it had claimed.

It was the release for a bear trap, hanging where a hunter must have placed it many years ago, but inexplicably left loaded and ready to snap shut...

****

# Correspondence

To: Nick Daschel, Federal Bureau of Investigations

From: Office of the District Attorney

Subject: FW: PLEASE INVESTIGATE IMMEDIATELY

Nick,

We've known each other a long time. You know I would never send you something like this as a joke. Please take this seriously. It's extremely important.

Forwarded message:

\--------------------

To: H______ M____

From: Office of the District Attorney

Subject: Re: Please, I just need to know

Mrs. M____,

I empathize with your situation. Not knowing the fate of your spouse must be very difficult for you. I've discussed the situation at length with our legal consultants, and our hands are tied by the government. This partial transcript of classified court proceedings is the most that I can do, and even this is crossing certain gray areas. Please take the greatest caution in keeping this private. If you reveal this to anyone, we'll disavow knowledge of it. I hope it provides some closure, despite the nature of the contents.

[Stenographer for __th Circuit Court in _______]

[December __, 201_]

[Day __ of Court Hearings regarding fiscal and legal liability in Case of The United States Government vs. _______ Productions]

Prosecutor: I'd now like to call to the stand Mr. J______, on-site crew manager for Season __ of the Haunting Investigators production run.

Judge: Mr. J______, please come up.

[Mr. J______ approaches the stand, sits]

Bailiff: Do you swear or affirm that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth?

[Mr. J______ looks nervously at the judge, then at the CEO of _______ Productions, Mr. R________, seated at the defense table]

Mr. J______: Yes...

[Prosecutor approaches]

Prosecutor: Mr. J______, please tell us about your experiences throughout the season, up to and including the taping of the final episode, the events therein, and the circumstances surrounding the fates of the filming crew.

[Mr. J______ pauses, looks at Mr. R________ again]

Mr. J______: Well... personally... I think it all started with a marketing gimmick.

Prosecutor: How so?

Mr. J______: After the last season, with the ratings dropping, we had to think of something. One day, Thompson comes in. He was a...

Prosecutor: Was?

[Mr. J______ fidgets]

Mr. J______: Is... a real believer in the paranormal. As the lead of the show, he actually believes in the stuff, and wants to find real ghosts. Me... it's just a paycheck. Anyway, Thompson comes in one day after the prior season ended, says he realized what the problem is. Says it's the electromagnetic fields from our cameras and equipment; that they suppress paranormal activity. He spent maybe like twenty grand of his own money on specially designed equipment that reduced the crew's EM signature by like... ninety-five percent.

Prosecutor: So this new equipment wasn't the idea of _______ Productions?

Mr. J______: No. They... just found out about it after Thompson had spent the money, and decided to run with it in our advertising. With the other shows like Ghost Hunters and Paranormal Files already done filming their next seasons, we were the only show with this 'new capability' to investigate hauntings...

Prosecutor: Sounds good for an ad campaign.

Mr. J______: Yes. It was better than anyone expected, in fact. They did some test ads before we even started filming the season, and the ratings spike on re-runs was tremendous.

Prosecutor: Ok. So what happened when the filming actually started?

Mr. J______: First couple of shoots went the same as always. The crew would explore some dark, supposedly haunted locale, and act all jumpy. The camera guys would art it up, you know, try to make the stuff scary. But it was still just the same old song and dance, none of it real. I overheard Thompson complaining more than once that he was disappointed in his investment, and that we should be seeing more unusual activity than we were.

[Defense Attorney, seated next to Mr. R________, nods]

Prosecutor: And then?

Mr. J______: Around the fourth shoot, after his complaints... things got weird.

Prosecutor: Weird?

Mr. J______: I was watching from the production trailer. I remember this so vividly. The team was in the _________ Dance Academy, the one that burned down fifty years ago, and got renovated recently. They were standing in the dark with the night vision on, as usual, and kind of being like... 'oh what was that,' or 'did you see something?'... when a kind of silence hit the place. I could see them talking, but couldn't hear them, and they couldn't hear each other either... the five of them, two camera men included, left immediately. It took them two minutes to get out. By the time they got to me, they were soaked in sweat, and Kelly, the poor girl, had third-degree burns on her hands. I couldn't figure out how Thompson did it.

Prosecutor: So your contention is that Thompson faked some sort of fire to improve the show?

Mr. J______: Not fire. Just heat. The camera never saw any light. And then it started getting worse after that.

Prosecutor: How so?

Mr. J______: We'd picked an especially brutal line-up of haunted places for the season. The next one was a prison. Some time during the filming, Nester, the other lead guy, got the living hell beat out of him. Came back bruised and bleeding... he swore up and down he was alone in the dark when it happened, but Thompson was also alone somewhere. No camera was on him at that time.

Prosecutor: And how was Thompson acting at that time?

Mr. J______: He seemed elated. He was going on and on about how the new equipment was working. Kelly and Nester were scared, but his excitement was infectious. They were convinced they'd experienced real paranormal activity. Out of concern, I added two burly guys, one to go with each camera man, and I told them never to let any of the team go off alone.

Prosecutor: Did that help?

Mr. J______: Christ, it got even worse. The next shoot was in a church graveyard that was over three hundred years old. Thompson went so far as to hire actors to come harass the crew.

Prosecutor: Actors?

Mr. J______: Yeah, guys dressed up really good like, to look like corpses. They waited in a mausoleum, and attacked Kelly, a guard, and a camera man. They barely got out, sealed the damn building. The guard had a huge bite on his arm; almost lost the limb to infection.

Prosecutor: And where was Thompson during this?

Mr. J______: In another area of the graveyard. By the time we came back to that mausoleum, was nothing but normal corpses in there. Kelly swore up and down they were the same ones, but of course the actors would have dressed like them. The actors even planted bits of the guard's skin and blood in the teeth of one of the corpses.

Prosecutor: After all this, you continued filming?

Mr. J______: I mean... the episodes were the best we'd ever done. The crew was loving it, despite the danger. They were more excited than they'd ever been. I suspected Thompson by then for sure, but I just told people to keep an eye out and be wary. I never thought he'd go so far as to use explosives.

Prosecutor: But apparently, he didn't. There were no accelerants or chemicals found at the cliffs.

Mr. J______: I... don't know how he did it then. All I know is he put on this big show of 'provoking the spirits' at the suicide cliffs. You know, insulting them, calling them out. Then... boom. I used to work in construction. That was like five, six sticks of standard dynamite. They felt it in the damn town nearby.

Prosecutor: Yet every member survived?

Mr. J______: Wasn't a miracle or anything... the explosion was below the cliffs, down at the bottom. Still, a lot of them damn near died when the rock collapsed. Damnedest thing though, how he got the fire to be spectral white like that instead of orange like you'd expect. Must have been some chemical.

Prosecutor: So you're now claiming that Thompson had high-level chemical engineering knowledge?

Mr. J______: Maybe he hired someone who did. All I know is, well all I don't know, is that I almost quit after the next one. He must have spent a fortune on a machine, or bombs somewhere.

Prosecutor: You're talking about the earthquake at the _______ Burial Mounds?

Mr. J______: Yeah.

Prosecutor: What happened there?

Mr. J______: I mean, you can see it in the videos. The crew was in a frenzy by then, excited as hell that they were finding real supernatural sh-, er, stuff. They were kind of getting more violent and aggressive towards... towards the paranormal I guess you could say. Danced on the mounds, spit on them, screamed out racial slurs towards the Indi-, er, Native American ghosts there. By then, they were kind of scaring me themselves, actually... it was only the severe danger of Thompson's spectacles that kept me working there, trying to protect these guys when they kept insisting on filming.

Prosecutor: And the earthquake?

Mr. J______: I felt it. I felt it in my damn bones, all the way from the production trailer, before it started. I knew Thompson had something big planned, from the way he had the guys whipped up like that. Even Kelly was dancing around, screaming like a madwoman and insulting the spirits. When it hit... Jesus Christ. The whole place must have been full of sinkholes beforehand. The ground tore itself apart... cracks fifty feet deep like someone took a giant axe to the place. From watching the footage, I swear it seems like the holes were actively chasing them. Thompson must have planned it like that, or they were lucky as hell... 'cause still, nobody died.

Prosecutor: So you're claiming Thompson used bombs or some other engineering device to destroy a National Park, all for the sake of this show?

Mr. J______: That's it, yes.

Prosecutor: And what about the final episode?

[Mr. J______ pauses for several moments, looks at Mr. R________]

Mr. J______: Thompson ran off, along with the whole crew, and took all the video and images from it with him. I was sick that day, took the day off work, didn't see any of it. We think they're planning to sell it to a major network or something. You know, break contract.

Prosecutor: Are you sure that's the story you want to go with?

Mr. J______: Yes...

Prosecutor: Because we performed reconstructive data analysis on your computer. We found the videos from the final episode. We know you went to work that day, and we know you know what happened.

[Defense Attorney stands suddenly]

Defense Attorney: Your Honor,-

Judge: Sit down! You'll have your turn. Mr. J______?

[Defense Attorney sits, and whispers continuously to Mr. R________, who looks angry]

Mr. J______: Um.

Prosecutor: Why don't you tell us what really happened?

Mr. J______: Have you watched... it...?

Prosecutor: The file's password encrypted. We can crack it, but we'd rather save the money and have you tell us the password now. We'll watch it together, right here.

Mr. J______: Is that... do I get a chance to talk to my lawyer? This is...

Prosecutor: This private hearing is a courtesy, Mr. J______. You're in far more trouble than you seem to realize.

[Bailiff brings out a television hooked to a laptop]

Mr. J______: Please, we don't...

Prosecutor: The password.

Mr. J______: _______.

[Prosecutor opens the file]

Prosecutor: Please, describe the events as they happen

Mr. J______: I... well... it's a mountain temple. The _________. It's said to be over four thousand years old.

[Voices from the video can be heard as the crew explores the temple]

Mr. J______: By this time, the crew they... seemed like different people. They were so eager to explore these places, with a strange zeal. Their eyes were so wide as they talked about it, smiling so hugely and strangely and fervently. After the Burial Mounds incident, I wasn't... I mean. I bought a gun. I wasn't sure what I would use it for.

[The crew can be seen entering the main room of the temple, excited]

Mr. J______: It was that day that I had received analysis back from the guy I sent a piece of our 'new equipment' to. It wasn't what Thompson had said it was at all.

[The camera taking the video is left on the ground as the camera man walks forward to join the group at a huge altar shaped like a strange creature]

Prosecutor [voice rising to be heard over the video]: What was it?

Mr. J______: He lied. The damn things... they were God-damned nuclear-powered. They didn't cut EM fields at all. They made them stronger. My guy said the gear we were carrying was probably generating an EM field as strong as a dozen nuclear bombs, in a very controlled radius. The worst part was, it was designed to seem like it would do what Thompson thought, meaning someone probably deceived him. He didn't know where Thompson got the stuff, but it was way beyond...

[The people in the video begin shouting and dancing frenetically]

Prosecutor [even louder now]: What's this have to do with the final episode?

Mr. J______: I was scared. I... started thinking. Why would someone give something like that to a team of actors? Then it hit me... who else would unknowingly carry this equipment around to all the most spiritually energetic locations in the world? Who else would purposely seek out the most depraved, the most evil, the most -

[The temple begins to shake. Spectral white flames seem to spontaneously appear around the strange statue]

[Mr. J______ watches the video, tears begin running down his face]

[The shouts from the furiously dancing people grow suddenly louder, almost like a roar]

Prosecutor: What the hell...

[The spectral flames begin to coalesce into a sphere in the air, in front of the strange statue. Clouds of orange fire set against crimson skies can be seen in the sphere]

Judge: Is this real? What is this?

[A dark mass seems to approach the sphere from a great distance within the clouds of fire]

Mr. J______: I had no choice!

[Mr. J______ runs on screen, firing a gun wildly. Blood erupts from the heads of Thompson, Nester, and Kelly. One camera man is shot in the chest. The other falls off of the high ledge of the altar. The two security guards, eyes red, turn and run at Mr. J______, who frantically reloads. They almost reach him, but he shoots each one in the face, and they fall to the stonework, dead]

[The spectral sphere vanishes, leaving only a grainy image of Mr. J______ in the automatic night vision, on his knees, sobbing]

Prosecutor: The...

[Prosecutor looks at Mr. R________, who holds a hand over his mouth, face pale]

[Defense Attorney stares in shock at the image of Mr. J______ sobbing in the dark]

[Prosecutor looks at Judge]

[Judge shakes head, unable to speak]

Mr. J______: I had no choice...

[Transcript censored here]

As you can see, Mrs. M____, your husband fell for a series of elaborate hoaxes perpetrated by Mr. Thompson, and became delusional. We apologize for the time it took to find you, as you two do not have the same last name.

Towards the end, Mr. J______ became convinced that the hoaxed 'events' were actually caused by good human souls attempting to destroy his increasingly-evil film crew. This delusion led to his murdering the seven of them during the final hoax. After coming to the conclusion that the final hoax he felt he 'prevented' was in fact a more concerted effort on the part of the human afterlife to destroy his film crew before their souls could be possessed by some sort of eldritch abomination, he started telling his caretakers that he had 'failed,' and that 'death only made it stronger.' He took his own life in one of our cells.

Again, I'm sorry we couldn't locate you earlier.

Terrence Smith

Public Relations Manager

Office of the District Attorney

\-----------------------

To: Office of the District Attorney

From: H______ M____

Re: Re: Please, I just need to know

Is this some sort of sick joke? Since our last correspondence, my husband came home, and is perfectly fine. What is wrong with you? Don't email me again!

\-------------------------

END OF FORWARDED MESSAGE

Terrence Smith

Public Relations Manager

Office of the District Attorney

****

# Strangers in a Graveyard

A girl I'd been seeing suggested that, for our third date, we take a bottle of wine, a laptop, and a scary movie to the most remote graveyard we could possibly find. As horror movie aficionados, we both felt jaded and immune to fear... so putting ourselves into the ideal situation for terror sounded like an exciting adventure.

The proposed night came, and she drove us an hour out into deep back-country, heading for a graveyard that we had found in ancient public record... but which was not on any map. When we finally found its supposed location, we ended up having to park three miles away behind some large undergrowth. There had been no other place to turn off along the forested country road. The night air was cool, though, so the walk wasn't bad.

We walked down a kind of raised ridge of dirt towards the unmarked graveyard, trying not to slip off into the pools of sludge and undergrowth on either side. The trees ringed an open double-hill that led up into darkness, and the century-old gravestones sat about in silence. We set up our laptop on a blanket, unafraid, and started the movie. The atmosphere was powerfully creepy, but I still felt nothing... until the unexpected happened.

Less than ten minutes into the movie, we saw a pick-up truck go by on the country road outside the graveyard. We could see its lights through the trees as it passed – the only vehicle we'd seen that night. We shrugged, thinking nothing of it... until it came back the other way. Its headlights were distinctive. It was definitely the same truck.

When it approached the dirt ridge to the graveyard, moving very slowly, I closed the laptop, and we froze as its headlights fell on us for a moment. The truck backed up, apparently turning around, and then proceeded to park right outside the entrance. We couldn't be sure if they had seen us, and we certainly had no idea what they were doing... I suggested we pack up, and my date agreed. We had just gathered all of our things when the truck went dark.

We stood there in the pitch black for a few moments, confused. Who was in the truck? Had they seen us? Were they coming this way? There was no other way out of this graveyard... the hill was surrounded by what amounted to impassable swamp. I started imagining how we might escape through it, regardless, but I realized that the attempt would make far too much noise. We'd never make it.

We had no choice. Carrying our stuff, I grabbed her free hand with mine. We crept forward along the dirt ridge, wincing at every dried leaf that our shoes crumpled. I could see the truck's dark outline parked in our path, but I heard nothing. There was nothing else to do but creep past the truck... which we did slowly, one silent and carefully placed step at a time. I kept trying to discern shapes inside the truck, but saw nothing but darkness. I looked around constantly, but heard and saw nothing. Still, in the pitch black night, I could hardly see the girl I was with, let alone somebody creeping about or following us...

We made it past the truck, but the lack of any incident only increased our fear. Where were the truck's occupants? What were they doing? They had to be out here somewhere... meaning we were out here in the middles of the night and nowhere, playing a potentially deadly game of hide and seek. My heart pounded even harder as I led her down the road toward our car. Where the hell were they?

We were maybe half a mile down the road when we heard a scream in the woods – and a distant gunshot. In that moment, we both immediately realized what was happening. The truck's occupants hadn't been here for us at all – but they would never let us leave if they knew we were here. We both started running in total panic, and actually made it another mile or two before we saw the truck's distinctive headlights coming up on us.

I grabbed her, jumped off of the road, and dove into the undergrowth and sludge between the trees. We peered through the bushes, waist deep in mud, and watched the truck go by. To our horror, the truck began to slow – I'd dropped the blanket! They'd seen it on the side of the road!

The truck stopped there, only a few feet away, for what seemed like an hour. At any moment, I expected its occupants to get out and come for us... instead, finally, amazingly, it pulled away and sped on down the road. I tried to see its license plate, but couldn't see anything through the glare of its lights. When I was convinced it was gone, we slogged out, and started walking toward our car again.

It was then that I had a horrible thought – what if they had found her car? What if they were waiting there? I talked it over with her, and we decided to find a good hiding spot in the muddy undergrowth and literally wait the entire night. We had heard a gunshot – this was serious. Neither of our cell phones had reception – there was no choice.

The hours passed, and, the longer we felt safe, the sillier we started to think ourselves. There had to have been another explanation, right? Even if there was something horrible going on in the woods, the truck's occupants couldn't have found our car. Or, even if they did, they wouldn't wait so long, would they? After two hours, we almost talked ourselves out of our cold, horrid hiding place – until I heard a slight sound, like shifting gravel. I peered intensely at the road.

It was the same truck – lights off, engine off, rolling ever so slowly along in the night - waiting, looking, and listening for the fools that almost gave themselves up.

It was noon the next day before we felt safe enough to leave our hiding spot, and begin the confused and terrified walk back to civilization.

****

# The Lonely Grave

Two months after our first visit to the ancient and forgotten graveyard, we decided to go back with a friend. She'd heard us talk about the first incident repeatedly, and kept pushing us to take here there. By then, that night of terror seemed like a story that had happened to someone else, so we finally gave in and decided to drive out there. I was also a bit excited to explore that graveyard more, as it had an amazing scary atmosphere.

We also went prepared with flashlights and a newer cellphone whose coverage for that area we verified. I was jaded when it came to fear, but I wasn't stupid. We also made sure to hide our car perfectly, and to be observant on our walk down the old country road. It started raining on us, and the whole thing felt like a terrible idea... but we soon realized that the chances of seeing that same mysterious truck again were probably zero. When the chilly drizzle stopped, we started to feel much better, and the rest of the walk went quickly.

As the three of us stepped onto the dirt ridge that led toward the old graveyard, our good cheer faded in favor of quiet apprehension. The place truly was terrifying, now that we could see more of it. The stars were out by then, and the trees were half-bare with oncoming autumn. A slight chill in the air made me shiver as we walked up the long leaf-covered path, approaching the first hill. That hill's crest directly melded into the second and bigger hill, whose grassy paths ran up into darkness. The entire double-hill was surrounded by huge skeletal trees whose leaves were almost entirely gone, and everything sat in stark and unmoving silence.

Although we'd been drinking on the walk over, my girlfriend and I were quiet. Though that night seemed distant, we both vividly remembered the danger we'd been in last time we were here... but our friend had no such qualms. She stumbled around excitedly, looking at gravestones and shouting out her discoveries.

The stones themselves were cracked and weathered, and most were impossible to read. We did locate one of the dates – the name had been scoured away, but the person had died in 1764. That surprised me, as I knew that meant the graveyard literally pre-dated Ohio itself. I had expected the headstones to be from the Civil War era, for some reason.

Our friend picked up a broken piece of headstone and carried it over to us, joking about souvenirs. I shared a glance of discomfort with my girlfriend at this, but we all continued our exploration. We hiked up the larger hill, entering the dark shadows that the crown of trees hung over the older and seemingly sadder section of the graveyard. A distinct feeling of privacy and sorrow seemed built into the worn stone nubs and monoliths that represented long forgotten loved ones.

It was then that the three of us stopped simultaneously at the sight of something strikingly out of place. The graveyard stopped at the crest of the hill, where we were nearly at level with the tops of the more distant trees... but we could see, down the slope and almost hidden by the undergrowth, a small headstone set far apart from all of the others. Immediately our friend ran toward it, and we hurriedly followed her in apprehension.

The lonely spot felt decidedly cut off from the graveyard and even more alone, if that was possible. The barely readable inscription had one letter remaining, M, and two dates: 1752 - 1759. The grave was for a young child... I began to feel strange... but I knew for certain that something was wrong when our friend laughed and looked down. She shone her flashlight on her discovery for us to see: a teddy bear, clean and in perfect condition... so much so that someone had to have placed it there recently.

My thoughts immediately grew fearful. Why was this grave set so far apart? Who was this child that had died so tragically young? And, most of all... who the hell was visiting this forgotten graveyard in the middle of nowhere to leave a toy at the headstone of a child that had died three hundred years ago? I had no time to guess before our friend reached down. My girlfriend and I both shouted, but it was too late: she picked up the teddy bear.

Immediately, a sharp blast of wind hit the surrounding trees all at once. Against the stark silence that we had grown accustomed to, it sounded like an angry explosion. Our friend screamed, dropped the teddy bear, and ran. My girlfriend followed. The blasting wind in the skeletal trees grew in intensity as I turned to bolt with them – but I turned back for just a moment to replace the teddy bear in its spot.

Our fearful flight turned to nervous laughter as we pelted back down the hill. As the wind continued to rise, we decided it was time to get back to the car before the oncoming storm clouds – sharp black against the stars – decided to drench us. I couldn't resist taking one look back up the hill as we traveled across the dirt ridge...

...and my eyes focused on something... a darker patch in the shaded sorrows we had come from, as if someone was standing there watching us leave. At first, I actually smiled. I was a hardcore skeptic, but the thought that the unknown child's spirit might be watching us go and appreciating our visit was genuinely enticing. Still, I couldn't quite make it out, and I figured it was just a trick of the shadows. As we finally exited onto the country road, I looked back, and a darker patch between the gravestones on the first hill - much closer than before - seemed to catch my eye. My smile faded, and I hurried the girls out of there.

It was on the drive home that the fear really hit us, prompted by something our friend told us. As it began to drizzle again, she suddenly insisted we pull over, and immediately threw up out the opened car door. We asked her what was wrong, and it took a few moments for her to tell us the horrible thing that had occurred to her... we'd been rained on only a few minutes before we got to the graveyard on foot... but the bear... the bear she'd picked up had been dry.

****

# The Basement

I was home alone for the week, as my family had gone on vacation while I had to stay and work. It was around 2 AM, and I'd stayed up to watch a scary movie in the dark in my basement. I was intent on really scaring myself and seeing how far into terror I could really go - while still knowing I was safe in my own home.

It was then that I heard pounding footsteps on the first floor. This was a common annoying occurrence when my family was home - every time they passed through the front hallway, past the basement door, I heard their footsteps. This time, fear immediately shot through me at the sound. My reflex was to turn the television off immediately... the basement door was up a flight of steps and around a corner, so whoever it was would not have seen any light.

I heard the basement door handle click and turn as I sat in absolute darkness. I moved slowly so as to be absolutely silent, and crawled behind our large television. As I passed it inch by inch, I noted with panic that its black screen still dimly glowed. I heard footsteps coming down the carpeted but creaky stairs.

I froze in my hiding place, listening. For many long minutes, I heard nothing. Had the intruder seen the television's afterglow, or had it faded in time? Was he standing in the pitch dark listening for me? I seemed to lie there in total silence for an interminably long time. My panic began to fade, and I began to think more clearly.

Had I really heard an intruder? Could someone possibly be standing there in silence for so long without making any noise? The basement was so exceedingly quiet that the silence itself began to hurt my ears. Could the unknown person really avoid any noise from shuffling or breathing or anything else? If there was an intruder, he was still in the basement, because the creaky stairs were incredibly loud, the door handle clicked, and he wouldn't know to mask his footsteps on the first floor so that they couldn't be heard down here...

I began counting in my head trying to pass the time, as drool fell from my mouth onto the carpet - I didn't dare risk the sound of swallowing. I reached sixty seconds once, twice... thirty times... sixty times... by now my fear had faded and I was more confused than anything. I estimated I'd been crouched in the absolute black for almost two hours, and had still heard nothing. If there was an intruder, none of this made sense... finally, I decided I'd have to make a move. If I did nothing, eventually the sun would come up, and shine in through the small basement windows... and, worse, I began to smell something horrible and cloying.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I began inching my way towards the stairs by way of the walls. If someone was standing there in the dark, I should be able to go around them and then make a break up the stairs... meanwhile, the horrible odor grew stronger. Had something died down here in the night? No living person would smell like that... terrible images of some sort of corpse-monster listening for me in the dark erupted in my thoughts, and I moved as fast as I could without making a sound.

Just as I finally approached the stairs, there was an enormous clatter, as of something falling or collapsing on the floor. It was at that moment I leapt forward and crashed up the stairs, running out through the open basement door and my wide-open front door. Now certain that someone was in the house, I called the police from my cellphone and watched my house from afar.

The police came, checked inside the house, and then grimly came back out to question me. They'd found a body in the house - my elderly neighbor, who seemed to have died of a heart attack. Their belief was that I must have left the front door unlocked, and he must have wandered in my house while dying, looking for help. At first, I felt horrible, thinking that I had sat there in the dark while the old man literally died a few feet away.

Then it occurred to me - what the hell was that loud noise of things falling, that last prompted me to bolt up the stairs and out of the house? I asked the police and they confirmed - the back door of my house had been left open as well, near a single bare footprint in the mud. Somehow, for some reason I'll never know, there was someone else in that basement with us... silent, waiting, and listening in the dark over the fresh corpse of an old man.

****

# Erosion

I can't remember when I first realized something strange was happening. I think the fog came first. It was, for a long while, only a vague yellow tint in the air over the longest of distances. It was there, but only imperceptibly so. Yes, it was soon after that... that I could first remember seeing them.

They left a person with an impression, at most, if they were sensed at all... fleeting sensations of being watched, of a person in a regular dark hoodie, cowl always up, but never up enough to hide the face. Something was wrong with the face. It might have been that their black eyes were far too large, or they were wearing a mask of some sort. I could remember details, but never a whole... details, of a curving, lurid, smiling face that wasn't smiling. It somehow managed to be both mocking and ironic and completely expressionless at the same. Maybe that's why I felt like it was a mask...

There were less of them, I think, at first. Daily life continued without much discussion of the yellow haze that, day by day, grew thicker. It was strange how little it was acknowledged, and only ever in a roundabout manner, such as how one couldn't see distant buildings as easily as the day before. Nobody asked, nobody tested, nobody investigated, yet we were all aware of it, and commonplace discussions took on an air of nervousness and foreboding as people tried to share their unfocused fears in the most subconscious and subtle ways.

Over time, the strange watchers grew more numerous, though I was never vaguely aware of more than one at once in any given scene... except when there was two, no longer watching, but instead dragging something away in an unknown direction. Their expressionless faces and grasping arms leered over the impression of a large black bag containing something kicking and struggling, and perhaps, screaming, though no noise registered in my awareness. These experiences started in the dark and at night and in lonely places, but, soon, I was feeling the accompanying increased anxiety of these events while buying coffee, or at work, or waiting at the bus stop.

As the watchers grew more prevalent, and the sticky yellow fog grew thicker, things started to seem... emptier. It was as if people were missing, people that couldn't be remembered, missed, or asked about. At work, we were tasked with jobs that required many more people than we had, but we obliviously worked on them anyway.

On the bus, the few other passengers who still shared my daily commute and I would murmur nervously and quietly to each other, our fear now stronger than ever, yet our concerns still vague and unable to be voiced. Even then, we all knew there was another on the bus, one who watched and leered without expression and did not join in our hushed whisperings, one who sat as we did in one of the seats and swayed as we did with the turns of the bus, but who could not be located, looked at, or acknowledged.

It was in one of these whisper-filled commutes that the normal course of life finally broke down. I was whispering to a homeless man who often rode, for he and I had befriended one another as a matter of necessity, being the only passengers these days. We had reached such rapport of subconscious body language that we were nearly on the same page with our fears, though the reasons we feared were still unclear.

Even so, it still took a long unknown while for us to realize that the bus had stopped... not at an intersection or a light, but merely stopped completely. There was nobody operating it, and we sat in the middle of a busy road that itself sat in yellow-shrouded silence. The husks of empty cars could be seen in the road, a mockery of the traffic that once flowed there. We were forced to leave the bus, our egress followed by the twin impressions of large black eyes and a seated, hooded watcher.

Unable to see more than ten feet in the dense and twisting yellow, he and I picked our way forward, initially heading towards my workplace, as I was still blithely intent on finishing my commute. As we moved, the sensations of being watched grew nearly unbearable, as the small radius of sight meant we felt as if the watcher was mere feet away. As we left one vague sense of unease behind, another would be standing ahead, waiting, and turning its mocking and unmoving eyes on us as we crept between the cars in apprehensive silence. If not for my friend's reassuring presence, I would have curled up in a ball and gone catatonic without even knowing why.

It was then that a single bright spark flared in my thoughts, as I thought of the work day ahead. I knew I worked at a corporation, in an office building, yet... I was the only employee I was aware of. The very concept of a corporation, of a large group of individuals, and the fact that I wasn't the head of the company... didn't... seem... to...

I froze, my hands holding my face in sudden terror. For the first time, I was able to conceptualize that something horrible was happening. I turned to my friend, insisting that we had to go to my home instead, to make sure... to check on... somebody... I felt like I was about to break down for worry about someone, but I knew not who. He saw my near-hysterics, and, though he didn't know the reason, trusted me enough to start heading the other way with me, those eyes on us the entire time. As we turned, his aged face grew concerned, as if he had finally realized something strange or fearful.

I started describing the path ahead, and, mid-sentence, there was suddenly the fleeting impression of pulling arms and two mocking faces and a struggling black bag being dragged away on the pavement. I screamed, and tried to race after it, stumbling between skeletal cars, but I couldn't tell which direction it had gone... if, indeed, it had gone in any direction at all. I found myself looking around in confusion, unable to see more than three or four feet now, my fists clenched, and my heart burning with anger and confusion and alarm. One thought remained, churning fire through my veins: home!

For a brief moment, I found all sensations of being watched had gone. I decided to risk injury, and began running crouched, following the river of dead cars in the direction I knew held my home. My visibility was so impaired that I almost ran into jutting metal a dozen times, each time barely avoiding a collision that would give away my position in the sea of fog. I felt emotionless eyes and hooded faces turning this way and that in the roiling gold, looking for me, and I shook with fear even as I scrambled along, now cutting my hands and bruising my knees on the pavement, stumbling along at a dangerous pace.

Somehow, I made it home, hitting the front door of my house with a soft thud that shot another surge of fear-fueled adrenaline through me. I quietly fumbled with the keys, went inside, locked the door, and pulled all the curtains. Even then, I still could not form a definite concept of what I feared... I barricaded everything I could, and then relaxed, overwhelmed with fatigue.

Wearily, I walked around my house. The fog was much lighter inside, where it merely gave everything a disturbing yellow tone. My rampant paranoia noted the sepia cast, even if I could not, and it urged me to hurry. I wasn't sure what I was looking for until I found it.

A picture.

It was a photo of me, and a woman, and a child. We stood on a beach somewhere, laughing and holding each other. It was only then, at that moment, that I finally let myself feel despair. I didn't know them... but I felt the void in me where a family should be. Warm tears flowed down my cheeks. I... had no more ideas... no more plans. That subconscious scheming and planning part of my mind that had brought me this far knew I was probably the last person left, though I still couldn't understand why.

I lifted my head at the slow realization that I was not alone. I could sense, behind me, a hooded face watching me from the back corner of the room. In my haste to pick up the picture, I had forgotten stealth, and I had been found. An image of a stranger, a man, old and disheveled, flashed into my mind – two ideas in turn, of a look of realization on his face, and then a strange sort of disappearance. The two images felt immediate and recent, as if they had just happened to someone I had known...

Animal instinct surged through me, and I understood vaguely that conscious acknowledgement of the threat meant death. My only choice was to flee, without thinking about why. I leapt into motion, and ran at the curtained bay window, smashing through it desperately. I felt stinging in my arm from sharp glass, but took off running in panic after I hit the ground. I could feel my mind attempting to think, attempting to interpret what was really happening, and I knew instinctively that I would be doomed if it was successful.

I ran down a hill in the almost complete yellow fog, blindly slamming my feet against the dirt. The watching, leering face constantly flashed by only an inch from my face, to my left, to my right, in front of me as I ran, trying to force me to acknowledge it. I fell brutally against rocks, and began crawling and stumbling on bruised arms and legs, eyes now closed, for the mocking and emotionless face was now right up against my skin as I fled through the void.

I could sense those huge black eyes pressed against my eyelids and I could feel the smooth curves of the emotionless watcher's masklike face grinning against my chin, its mocking expression daring me to open my eyes for even a moment. Through it all, I ran at full speed through the empty world, without sight or senses... but I knew it couldn't last.

The moment finally came, when the ground betrayed me, and I felt myself falling into space. I screamed then, a noiseless scream that filled my mind and soul. In that instant, I knew absolute despair. It shot through me like a torrent, rupturing my resolve, and my instinctual response to falling happened: I opened my eyes.

Arms grabbed me roughly. I heard a dozen shouts that felt like explosions after the silence I'd endured for so long. I struggled, fighting the arms and grasping hands, but more came. I heard machines somewhere nearby, rolling and turning and rumbling. I screamed again, but this time I heard myself.

"Sir!" came a voice, shocking me with its impact, with its reality. "Sir, calm down!"

Gradually, awareness came to me, and I stopped struggling. The yellow fog was gone, and I found myself in a bright and clear space, grass beneath me. Men in military uniforms grasped me, relaxing as I did. All around us, jeeps, tanks, and artillery stood poised.

"What..." I said reflexively, and the sound of my own voice surprised me. "Where am I?"

"Sir!" one of the soldiers shouted, trying to get my dazed attention. "How did you escape?"

I shook my head in confusion, lacking understanding. I followed the gaze of the soldiers...

Behind me, mere feet away, the world ended. A shimmering mass of strange motion and unreality extended like a wall in a vast sphere that stretched to both horizons. I could see the buildings of my city deep inside, and... strange, living matter, pulsing in vast cords and arrays. It was all one thing, one entity, vast and inexplicable, unlike anything alive, purely unphysical and seemingly extra-dimensional. I shook in sick relief and sheer terror as I realized that the little black specks floating within it were... people. I stared into the other world from which I had barely stumbled at the last seconds of my life, and... I felt it. It was aware of me, of my escape, but it felt no anger... only a sort of mocking irony – that damned leering! – as if it laughed about something only it knew.

And then, it left, the horizon-wide disturbance seeming to shrink on itself in moments, and I was left with the impression of its motion down a vast and infinite tunnel. I felt subconsciously that I had been right in thinking I was the last survivor. The entity's inscrutable purpose done, it had moved on... elsewhere.

The soldiers shouted and milled about, running to establish new orders. One stayed with me, the one that had spoken. He grabbed me again.

"How did you survive? How did you escape?" he shouted over the din.

"The fog..." I mumbled absently, going into shock. "The yellow fog..."

"What fog?" he asked loudly. I could only smile weakly, and eventually he gave up and placed me in a jeep. My head lolled back and forth lightly with the bumps in the road as they drove me. I was weak, and covered in cuts and bruises, but it was alright... I'd survived.

I knew then that the fog had been my own mind, my brain, trying to protect me as best it could from events it could not understand or interpret. My human capacity for self-delusion had saved me from that extra-dimensional predator. I felt... proud. I'd beaten it... I'd survived. I looked down at the crumpled picture still somehow in my hand, looking at the unknown woman and child with me in the image. I still couldn't remember them. My pride took on a shadow of hollow, vague sorrow.

I'd survived... but at what cost?

As the jeep bounced and sped along, the soldier next to me squinted at something in the distance. He blinked, checked his vision, and found he still couldn't see it clearly, but he didn't seem to know why. In that moment, I understood the entity's mirth, at the puny little animal's relief and pride in thinking that it had escaped, that it could escape at all. I clenched the picture of my forgotten family tighter in my hand. Soon, I might see them again. Would I remember them then? I closed my eyes in resignation, listening to the sounds of the road and wind while they lasted.

****

# Strange Things

I:

Never had the opportunity to write about something creepy as it's happening... and it's definitely not at all what you'd expect. I'm in my office building right now, broad daylight, open windows, sunny outside, coworkers sort of nearby... but I sit closest to the back entrance of the building, which is comprised of two automatically opening double doors made of glass.

The outer glass doors slide open if anyone walks near them. The inner ones are always locked and someone has to walk up and use a remote to open them for visitors, as there are very few walk-ins at a financial company like ours. We're also in the back of an office park, so the area is very nice and filled with tall trees, but very lonely and empty. Directly outside the back entrance, an old-growth forest stretches away for miles.

I was inspired to start writing about what I've seen today after it happened for a third time, just now. Twice today, once at around 8 am, and once at 10 am, I saw the outer doors open spontaneously. I am the only one that can see them from where I sit, and I'm partially hidden behind a plant that I put up in my cubicle so the rare visitor wouldn't see me and assume I was a secretary or something. I've worked here for a year, and never seen those doors open by themselves... but that's not the weird part.

All three times today that I've seen this happen, a few moments later the inner doors clinked against their locking mechanism and I could see them split apart about a quarter of an inch - as far as the lock allowed. I've now sat here and watched the phenomenon three times, and these doors are completely transparent, so I can see that nobody's there...

Each time, I also felt overwhelming fear and the urge to hide in the corner of my cubicle behind the obscuring plant. At first I chalked it up to playing along with my inner child, but I realize now that I felt the inexplicable fear at the first occurrence, too... before I knew something weird was happening. It's like my animal brain is terrified of something over there, something testing the doors, something looking in through the glass... something from the dim forest behind the building, testing the edges of civilization, looking in on another world...

II:

I've never experienced something creepy yet truly unexplainable, so this morning I decided to investigate what happened yesterday. My first instinct, of course, was to check the door from the inside when I first arrived. I thought that some sort of air pressure or mechanical failure might have caused the doors to attempt to open on their own, though the powerful fear and urge to hide was still inexplicable.

I pried the inner doors open to their limit while locked, the same quarter inch I'd seen yesterday. They were heavy enough that I can't accept air pressure as the cause... two sets of sealed glass doors simply wouldn't respond to pressure fluctuations by opening sideways... and the outer doors slid open by sensor activation yesterday, not by force. The problem, of course, is that I saw nothing at the doors that would have activated them one time, let alone three. Also, looking up - the mechanisms for each door were separate. Mechanical failure on one should have had no effect on the other.

I wasn't prepared to actually open the doors yet, as I still felt lingering traces of the unexplainable fear from yesterday. Instead, I opted to look through the glass and see what I could of the lonely back area that I'd never actually been in. As I expected, I could see a bit of old sidewalk and some grass that ended abruptly at a towering wall of old-growth trees about twenty feet away from my building. I was a bit relieved at seeing the cut grass, as that meant someone had to go back there and mow it every week or so...

As I stood there, I began to feel uncomfortable. The trees seemed to crowd closer with gloom, and I found myself staring into the thick underbrush. I had the strangest impression that I was seeing fragments of movement among the thick leaves, but couldn't pinpoint anything concrete in the seemingly motionless thicket. I'd most closely relate the sensation to that felt when looking at an illusory motion image. The vertigo passed after a few moments. This was around 8 AM, the time of the first door incident yesterday. Nothing else happened at that time, but it occurred to me that, standing in the door as I was, I was highly visible from a distance.

That realization, of course, inspired me to watch the doors more discretely at 10 AM, the time of yesterday's second incident. I watched the doors intently, but nothing happened for a long while... until my vigil was interrupted by a loud impact on glass, as if something had bounced off of a nearby window. It sounded like it came from a little further down the side of the building, rather than the door. I did check each of the darkly tinted office windows in the nearby back hallways, but none showed any signs of damage. Not the same event as yesterday, but the timing was oddly coincidental...

The third incident yesterday happened around 3 PM. Today, the third incident convinced me that something really might be happening... I was walking the back halls around that time, hoping to see or hear the thud from earlier, when I felt that familiar fear that I should run and hide. There was nothing between me and the outside but a series of long windows... but they were tinted, and should look like nothing but reflections from the outside. I fought the urge to run away, and instead ever so slowly approached the windows. The apprehension in me was a powerful single note that kept rising the closer that I got... but when I stopped moving inches from the glass, it did not. The fear rose to an almost unbearable level, and then... leveled off at just below total panic.

Confused, I looked back and forth, scrutinizing the shaded sidewalk and grass while my heart pounded painfully. The treeline towered closer here, covering the corner of the building in gloom. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary day outside, yet looking out there made me feel slightly disoriented, like the illusory-motion feeling from before... and then I understood what I was feeling. If I was unconsciously reacting to the presence of something outside, I knew now why the feeling had leveled off... it had stopped moving.

Right in front of me.

I'd been staring right at it...

I, of course, leapt away like a startled animal and bolted to my desk, while the uncontrollable fear faded with distance. I huddled here, hiding, for the remainder of the day. Now I'm sitting here trying to think it through - my coworkers all left 15 minutes ago, at 5 PM. I still haven't seen anything unexplainable. Maybe I'm just playing to my own fears. Still, I feel watched... circled... as if something out there in the woods is trying to figure out a way in...

III:

I used some of my Memorial Weekend to further investigate what's been happening, and I found some interesting facts. The geography behind my building involves a few miles of heavy forest, struck through by a large abrupt canyon – a feature that Ohio residents are probably familiar with. The canyon causes a natural 'wedge' between developed areas, and on the other side of this untouched wilderness is a major construction site.

My initial theory was that infrasound from that construction site caused the things I experienced last week. There are articles that detail how infrasound can cause unexplainable fear and other sensations, and perhaps infrasound had something to do with the spontaneous opening of the doors. The loud impact on one of the windows still went unexplained, but that could have been anything.

Tuesday's events made me question the simplicity of my answer. Confident in my explanation, I walked the back hallways at 8 AM. I felt the inexplicable fear as I expected, and could even detect the illusory motion sensation again when I looked out at the trees. I paced along the tinted windows, feeling the invisible wellspring of fear and vertigo seem to follow me... keeping step with me just beyond the glass. I felt intensely watched, despite knowing that the windows should only show a reflection from the outside.

Even knowing that it was just a reaction to infrasound, the fear was still very real, and hard to handle. I decided to overcome it once and for all by stepping outside during the 10 AM event. When the fear and vertigo came, and it began to follow me along the back windows again, I walked down to the side door usually used by maintenance. It was metal and rectangular, and had a traditional handle. The fear was more muted here away from the windows, but I could still feel it, and my thoughts ran through all sorts of horrible things that could be on the other side of the door.

Still, I knew there was nothing out there. Even if there was, it's not like it could have even seen me to follow me as I imagined it had been doing. I was about to open the outwardly-locked door when something occurred to me... the windows were only reflective from a distance. Up close, they could be seen through. Something up against the glass could have been staring right at me the entire time... so I hesitated.

The door shook.

I ran back down the hallway in a panic and watched it from around a corner. I watched the handle in intense fear – real fear this time – but nothing further happened. The more my thoughts analyzed the sound, the more I became convinced that it was the same impact I had heard on a window last week... and it had come from outside. I was careful to stay away from the windows during the 3 PM event, but I heard another impact on that same door around that time.

Today, Wednesday, I stayed at my desk through the first half of the day. I felt slight waves of fear at 8 and 10, but I couldn't be sure if it was my imagination. I spent the entire day configuring ideas in my head, trying to make sense of things. I couldn't accept infrasound as the cause of physical impacts... but certain symptoms of what I was experiencing definitely matched. I finally came up with something that got past my cynical mental armor and actually shocked me to my core.

What if there really is some sort of entity out there in the woods? The area is completely undeveloped, rarely traveled, and heavily forested... something old or strange could certainly exist there. What if the infrasound symptoms I'm experiencing aren't from the construction a few miles away, but from the entity itself, and it's being driven out of its natural habitat by the construction's infrasound pollution?

Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to understand what a building is, as it hasn't tried other sides of the structure yet – like the front doors – but it does seem to have a sort of animal intellect, enough to understand that I am something alive inside some sort of shelter... and it's trying to get inside. At today's 3 PM event, I stood at the two sets of glass double doors that originally opened by themselves last week, and watched the forest.

I stood there, in what was probably a very stupid move, and felt the fear and vertigo approach. As terrifying as the result of that move was, I now know for sure that something more is going on. As I stood there, watching empty space that made me feel heady, the outer doors slid open of their own accord. Last week, the inner doors were then pulled apart as far as their short locking mechanism allowed.

This time... they didn't move.

The outer doors stayed open for almost two minutes. I felt paralyzed, struck through by my painfully beating heart, but I continued to stare at the nothing that was standing there staring back at me. I feel that somewhere in that long moment was a clear declaration of intent on both our parts... acknowledgement that the game of cat and mouse we'd been playing had just gotten serious. Then, the fear faded, and the doors slid closed again. That was an hour ago.

I'm engaged in this now. I've never believed in anything strange or paranormal – not for real – but now I'm dead certain something is happening. I'm going to look into getting a camera and audio equipment, and I'm going to try to collect actual evidence on this. There's nothing more to say for now, except that I feel like I'm going to war.

\---

Investigator's note:

No further writings were found.

****

# The Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypse

"Finally, we are free!" shouted Death.

"Vengeance shall be ours!" Famine said in response.

"We shall destroy these mortals and bring an end to this world," Pestilence agreed.

"Let us start with the strongest, and enjoy their torture," War suggested.

The Four Horsemen triumphantly galloped to a hilltop above the largest nearby city in North America. There, they found many strange things. Artificial torches burned throughout the night, and massive buildings towered in every direction. More people than the Horsemen ever thought possible bustled this way and that. Still, this only meant more people to enjoy destroying.

"I shall go first," Famine said, stepping his black horse forward. With a tip of the scales in his hand, he set fire to crops across the continent and spoiled food in pantries of houses. Laughing, he watched to see the people's suffering. He was soon surprised to find that many people enjoyed the extreme lack of food and were excited to lose weight and become dangerously thin. Even more to his annoyance, those who did not want to lose weight simply switched to Ramen noodles, an inexplicable food source which seemed to come from nowhere, to never go rotten, and to be infinite in number. Desperate not to be embarrassed in front of his comrades, Famine tipped the scales once more, and corrupted all waters for hundreds of miles. Nobody noticed, as a vast majority of the people never drank water anyway, only strange and mystical concoctions known as coffee and soda. Shocked, Famine faltered.

"Hah!" Pestilence announced. "You are weak. Let me try."

Haughtily, Pestilence stepped his white horse forward. With a wave of his arrowless bow, he released vast clouds of bugs across the continent. Pestilence's haughty smile dropped slowly as people simply shut the windows of their fortress-like houses, and many communities and farms simply sprayed yellow clouds that immediately destroyed the bugs. Angry now, Pestilence sent heat waves to torture the people, but they simply turned up the air conditioners in their already-sealed-up houses.

"What?" Pestilence shouted, indignant. "How is this possible?"

War laughed. He pushed Pestilence aside, and stepped his red horse forward, raising his sword. With a slice of his sword through the air, War cut friendships and caused hatreds, igniting wars across the world.

"Now they will suffer," War mocked his colleagues.

Famine, Pestilence, and Death merely smiled.

"What? What is it?" War asked, worried. He turned and examined the people, whose behavior had not changed at all. The people milled about as usual, completely indifferent to the wars raging globally. War scratched his head, confused. Televisions with images of the warfare were everywhere throughout the city, yet people only glanced at them disinterested every so often. Determined to find out what was insulating the people from terror, he summoned a puny mortal to him.

"Mortal," he demanded, surrounding himself in fire and demon spirits. "Why are you not terrified of the expanding bloody conflicts?"

Instead of fear, the puny mortal exhibited boredom.

"These special effects are weak!" the young man shouted to the side. "Which show are you guys? Am I being Punk'd? Or is this some stupid political commercial stunt?"

Quietly, the three other Horsemen snickered. Disgusted, War threw the puny mortal back into the lands below. He sighed, and made way for Death.

Death moved his pale horse forward slowly. He silently raised a bony hand, pointing at individuals throughout the crowded city below. He caused them to suffer horrible deaths, through accidents, suicides, and murders. He paused, but the only response among the people was a couple sensationalist newspaper headlines. Raising his other hand, he caused bombings and attacks which killed thousands. He paused, but the only response among the people was a tightening of security and a heightening of fear, making each successive act even more difficult for Death. Finally, the people had shut themselves up in secure houses, with secure passage everywhere, antibiotics on everything, and foam corners for their coffee tables. Without risk, the people merely spent their time on the computer, watching television, and playing video games. Death sighed, powerless.

"We need to outsource this," Death spoke, the only words his colleagues had ever heard him speak. "Hold on."

With a wave of his hand, Death summoned from India the little-known fifth Horseman, Hurricane. Nodding, Hurricane stepped his blue horse forward, and waved his staff. He smashed a massive hurricane into the people, and, for a time, chaos ensued and many suffered. The Horsemen each smiled, but their smiles slowly dropped as the people soon lost their fear, restored order, and returned to their homes, their only concern being who to blame for what had happened. Hurricane waved his staff again, hitting the people with more and more hurricanes. Inexplicably, the people directly harmed by the hurricanes merely moved back to where they had been as soon as the hurricanes ended despite knowing more would soon come, and those outside the path of the storms exhibited no change in behavior, only glancing disinterested at their televisions every so often.

"What is WITH these people?" Hurricane demanded. "They are completely inexplicable!"

The Five Horsemen looked at each other in embarrassment.

"We can't possibly be defeated by these backwards mortals," War insisted. "There is one more that we can call upon, one whose powers were useless in ancient times, but may be of use now. There is also a seventh, the greatest, who I shall also summon."

A rift opened in time and space, and a sixth Horseman appeared from his long rest. His horse was lightning and he held a metal rod in his hand, and his name was Power Outage. With a wave of his rod, he stole all the electricity in the world. The six Horsemen looked at each other, then the world. There was a silent pause, then, suddenly, chaos ensued. The people went mad with looting, fires, and murders. Civilization collapsed in a matter of weeks as the people destroyed themselves, leaving nobody left alive for the Horsemen to destroy or torture.

The six Horsemen looked at each other in surprise and wonder, hearing the hoofbeats of the distant seventh Horseman approaching. It would be several hundred years before he arrived.

"That's it?" War asked. "That's all we had to do? Turn off the televisions, computers, and video games, and they destroyed themselves?"

Power Outage looked at him with equal surprise, and he said:

"I'm just happy we killed them all before that jerk Global Warming got here!"

****

# If you liked these stories, please leave a review.

Reviews are the best way to give back to authors you enjoy. If you enjoyed this work, please leave a review, rate the book, or share it with your friends!

Back to Table of Contents

You can follow my work at MattDymerski.com,

or at my Smashwords Author Page.

# About the Author

I've been an avid fan of horror my entire life, ever seeking exquisite terror as a reader - and now, as a writer. I write what I'd like to read, and I hope that you enjoy it, too. If you do, feel free to let me know, or follow my work!

My Blog:

http://MattDymerski.com

Facebook Author Page:

<http://www.facebook.com/MattDymerskiAuthor>

Twitter:

<https://twitter.com/MattDymerski>

Email:

mattdymerskiauthor@gmail.com

Stay scared...
