It hated the screams. The creature underneath it struggled and continued releasing its guttural high-pitched vocalizations. Thrashing and throwing its limbs around, as it was slowly consumed. Limbs soon went still and the screaming fell silent. Emptiness. The body had died and was now nothing more than flesh to be devoured and assimilated. How unfortunate for the creature, but in order to heal its damage and return from this undiscovered world, it needed to gather resources and blend in with its society.
Fortunately, this species was sapient. This specific one beneath it wore clothing, understood patterns, and could vocalize repeated sounds that it could only assume were words in its rudimentary language. It moved up to the creature’s head after it had devoured most of its body. The brain was the most important part, and needed to be consumed immediately in order to gain its memories.
As it devoured the creature’s brain, small sparks of the deceased’s thoughts flooded its mind. All of the sapient’s knowledge, all their memories, subconscious thoughts and behaviors flowed through as information to every cell in its body. All this creature’s experiences, emotions, habits, and preferences. All of the creature’s small quirks and idiosyncrasies were fed into it as the body molded and became one, as if a data bank.
I see now. It thought. This was a female of this planet’s dominant species. They are called… humans.
It stood up. As the mold of flesh which was its body began to mold itself. Cells began to shape and harden into a bone, following the structure and anatomy of the human it had just consumed. Coating the recreated skeletal figure with ligaments to hold the structure together. Skeletal muscles and organ tissue formed in its proper places. Nerves and arteries were meticulously placed in their proper configurations. Capillaries. Veins. They were then covered by a layer of fat, and fat deposits were increased on its chest area and backside. Mammary glands, ovaries, egg cells, fallopian tubes, bladder, and uterus.
Throat and neck muscles were shaped the way they were, reviving the human female’s original voice, while the rest of its body began to close up by a thin layer of flesh and skin. Small hairs were sprouted all around the body, with some more than others. The brain began to fully form, and the facial features were completely indistinguishable from that female it had consumed. Hair on its head began to grow and multiply to the hundreds of thousands of individual strands, reaching down to its shoulders.
There in the darkness of the street, stood a lone woman without any clothes. At least, the body of one. It… no, she had taken on the woman’s complete identity. Her personality, gender, identity, memory, age, name, and shape, belonged to it now. She was the woman she had just devoured in the dark of the night.
“How… intriguing,” she said, testing out her voice. “So this is what it’s like to be this species.” She clicked her tongue, whistled, and snapped her fingers.
“This world may be a new feeding ground, with such rich genetic data and diversity,” she said, looking through her victims' memories. The woman was studying to be a wildlife biologist before she was ambushed and eaten alive. Now her knowledge served as an intriguing critique and collection of the biodiversity the planet had to offer. Animals of different species flashed in her mind. Felines, canines, reptiles, apes, amphibians, fish, and the like. Even images of livestock and pets were seen as she rummaged through the recesses of the mind she ate.
“Very interesting. It had been… a long time since my species found a world this rich. Devouring it would be truly splendid. A jump up the evolutionary tree with the treasure trove of traits. Nature has really invested in this planet.”
Humans were the most interesting to her, as she reviewed childhood memories and historical studies. A society unlike anything she had ever encountered in previous sapient species her kind had assimilated and eaten. Though this was the first sapient she had ever consumed, she was filled with excitement. She grinned widely, in an impossible way. Eyes appeared in her hair and jagged teeth of several rows shone under the light of the night sky as she literally smiled from ear to ear.
Her excitement brimmed in her chest, causing it to beat faster than anticipated. What interesting reactions this body has. I wonder what more I could discover.
“Hey!” A voice called out, making her turn her head in its direction. Her body returned back to its normal human state in an instant. It was a young man wearing a coat and a hat on his head, waving at her. “Do you need help? Are you hur— wait Zee? Is that you?!” he hurried toward her.
The woman quickly scoured her mind for memories of this man who seemed to recognize her, however, before she could, her body reacted first. The burning sensation in her cheeks and an odd knot in her chest. Her eyes dilated and a strange feeling overcame her. What is this? Why the sudden reaction? She recognizes this human male for sure but… oh.
She finally found it. The memory resurfaced before she could even call it to herself. This woman had feelings for this male. They were hidden, unspoken feelings, but feelings nonetheless. No wonder she had reacted so strongly.
“H-hey! Francis! I uh…” she stammered, adopting and following her mind’s flow of information. The synapses of her past interactions followed naturally and she copied her mannerisms completely.
“Zee, you’re naked! W-what in the name of—”
“I-I got attacked!”
“A-attacked? Who did this to you?! Were you hurt?!” Francis spoke with urgency, immediately taking off his coat and placing it around her. This woman’s feelings are flaring up again. Azrael Heathers, what an interesting name. It’s close enough to my real one. Azrael, Az, Zee; nicknames this human had given me in past encounters. This affection for him is strong and lasting, her subconscious mind is flooding me. My mind is flooding me.
“I’m f-fine. T-the m-man got away. I don’t know who it was but…”
“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay,” he replied. “Let’s get you to your apartment and we will report this to the authorities in the morning. We should—”
“No!”
“N-no?”
“It’s okay… I’m afraid that if we report this, that person might come back for me,” she lied, putting on a pleading face and clinging to his arm. “Just… stay with me tonight. Please? I don’t think I can fall asleep alone after that.”
“I-I…”
Zee held on to him tighter, squeezing his arm. “Please. I’m scared, Fran.”
Francis bit his lip and slowly shook his head. “Okay, it’s okay,” he replied. “I’ll stay with you tonight. Nothing will ever get through your doors so long as I’m there. Does this ease your thoughts?” he said.
Zee nodded. “Thank you, you’re always kind to me,” she sniffled. Oh you foolish human. Once we’re alone I will devour you too. I cannot wait to see how you taste. Will you scream just like Azrael? Will you look on with horror and disgust? Perhaps you will lay there shocked beyond your mind’s comprehension. Oh, what a rush!
The young man sighed. “It’s just the right thing to do. Besides, I cannot abandon a friend, especially not in this situation,” he said. “Now come, let’s get you to your apartment. Okay?”
“O-okay…” And then you shall be my second meal!
As the two headed back to her apartment, Azrael looked around the buildings and of the city around her and compared it to her memories. Possible feeding grounds, places to gather materials to fix her craft, a transmission device that could send messages to her brethren in deep space. Steel. Iron. Brick. Lead. Copper.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that this species is very rudimentary. No long ranged communications. No advanced computing technology. Not even advanced electronics! How backwards is this world! Ugh, such a barbaric and uncivilized species. Even this woman’s memories show nothing of value. Their most advanced transmission device is a box that uses radio waves for communication!
She grunted, shaking her head.
“Is something wrong, Zee?”
“Nothing, my head just hurts.”
“Then we should hurry.”
The two picked up the pace until they finally reached her apartment just a few blocks down the street. They entered inside and went up the stairs, heading for the first room to the side of the staircase. Francis went straight for the bed, leading Zee by the hand and sitting her down on it. “Just rest here, I’ll heat up some water and prepare you a warm bath. Everything will be alright, just take it easy.”
He went toward the faucet and began filling up a pot with water before heating up the stove. He opened up the compartment under it and checked if there was wood, and lit the wood with the lighter he pulled from his pocket. He placed the pot on top of the iron stove and nodded to himself. “Right, this should be ready in a few minutes. I’ll set up the bath for you. It should heat you up immediately.”
He looked back at Zee who was visibly shivering, keeping the coat close to her body and covering herself.
“D-do you mind if I go through your cabinet? I’ll find you some fresh clothes.”
“Are you sure you won’t do any perverted things to my clothes?”
Francis instantly went red and waved his arms around. “N-no! Of course not! I was just simply trying to help. I-if that is too much of an invasion of privacy, please forgive my statement.”
Good. He’s off guard and flustered. Now is my time to eat him up. What knowledge can you give me, Francis?
“You’re too kind, Fran. There aren’t many people like you.”
Francis let out a nervous laugh, scratching the back of his head. “Well, I believe a lot of people in this world are good. If there weren’t, then life would be hardly worth living at all. B-but really, it’s people like you who inspire me, Zee. You’re the best of us.”
Really? What an interesting human. Does he not know that his species is destructive and self-serving? According to historical documents from Zee’s memories, your kind’s legacy is war and bloodshed. Slavery. Destruction of life and the extinction of fauna. The exploitation and annihilation of your own species’ tribes. What good can there be in the rest of humanity? According to this woman’s own beliefs, you are the outlier here. That’s why she chose to study and work with animals rather than your kind.
“W-what do you mean?” Zee asked.
The young man chuckled softly, giving her a nod. “Well, I mean. I’ve always admired you. You were always so vocal about the preservation of life and endangered species, even if no one else shared your passion. You are kind to animals, and were always fascinated by them. Very few people care that much, but you do. Your kindness doesn’t extend only to people, but to all things,” he explained. “Remember that one time when you saved a baby canary that had fallen from its nest?”
“Yes…”
“You were careful with it and helped it back up. But when its own mother rejected it, what did you do?”
“I took it home and cared for it until it was old enough to be set loose.”
“Exactly. You were so careful, even buying a syringe just to feed it like how a mother bird would. You could gently tap on the canary and you documented every day of its growth. I’ve never seen someone like that before. It’s why I like you. Many people often neglect the part where we have to nurture nature as much as ourselves, and to do so with kindness and love.”
“Thank you. Did you also just say that you like me..?” Zee asked. How interesting. Does this human male share the same affection Azrael does? This female had not yet experienced sexual relations with another, perhaps it would be an enriching experience on human connection. Hm, should I try it with this male? Maybe not.
“A-ah! I mean… a-as a friend! You’re someone I look up to, and well, we’ve been close friends. There’s no way I would lie and say that I didn’t like you. You are a very likable person after all.”
What… a nice thought. It’s unfortunate that I have to eat you, Francis. Oh, well.
“Oh, Francis. That’s very nice of you. However, I’m very hungry now, and I’m afraid that this is where we part.”
“O-oh uhm, I don’t have any food on me. Maybe I could cook something up from the cabi—” Francis choked on his words as he fell on his back. “Z-Zee?! W-what—!” he stammered looking up at the woman in front of him.
Azrael had stood up from the bed and her hair floated in the air, moving as if like the tendrils or tentacles of a cephalopod. A large maw with rows of jagged teeth appeared on her stomach, opening vertically as if her midsection had ripped apart to reveal prehensile tongues several feet long. Her lips curved up to reveal a mouth of fangs and sharp canines. Her jaw unhinged like a snake’s. Eyes appeared on her cheeks and other parts of her body. Additional mouths sprouted from the palms of her hands and her thighs. Her fingers morphed into razorlike talons, and insectoid mandibles sprouted from the sides of her midsection… possibly to hold prey in place while it was consumed.
“Thank you for the lovely time, Fran. I enjoyed the company,” Zee spoke without moving her lips. In fact, it almost sounded like her voice rang in Fran’s head. As if she had spoken to his mind directly. The young man’s lips quivered in fear as he crawled away from the monster in front of him. He felt his back against the door, and his legs went numb.
“Z-Zee… w-what—”
“I will have a nice time devouring you, Fran.”
“N-no… No! Please don’t do this! H-how did this… what are you?!”
“You don’t need to know. Just know that it will all be over soon.”
“No! Please! Z-Zee, I know you! T-this isn’t like you! I-I’m your friend, please!”
The tendrils stretched out and wrapped around Francis’ arms. Slowly pulling him towards her gaping maw. “No! No! Please stop this! I-I don’t know what happened to you but this isn’t you! You’re kind! Y-you’re gentle and caring! W-we’ll find whatever or whoever turned you into t-this! We’ll get them behind bars!”
Tears began to form in the young man’s eyes as he struggled against her grip. “Zee, please! Please! I’m begging you! I-I won’t tell a soul! Please! I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die! Azrael! Azrael, don’t! Please!”
“I am not Azrael anymore. I devoured her like I’m about to you,” Zee revealed.
“T-then who… what…”
“I am Azryvlv’toth. A voraciocite. My kind eats and evolves. We infiltrate, devour, and destroy entire civilizations. Yours is no different. As soon as I repair my ship, my kind will come flocking to your world, and we shall feast upon all its life!”
“N-no… Z-Zee would never do that…”
“That is your mistake. I am no longer her. This world is meant to be consumed, and so are you.”
“No… please…”
As Azryvlv’toth dragged Francis closer and closer to her jaws, her head was flooded by thoughts. It annoyed her but she paid them no mind at first. However, the thoughts began to pool one after another. Emotions, feelings, logic, and her victim’s memories all began battering her mind. Sorrow, fear, panic, care, and an instinctual drive to protect. She felt her resolve wavering as the thoughts and emotions affected her actions. Her heart beat rapidly. Her legs threatened to give out under her weight, and her arms shook with intensity.
She grunted and dipped her head down, placing her hands on her temples. Growling, fighting something akin to a second voice in her head. Is this what happens when you eat and assimilate a sapient?! Was it because it was my first time that I had not properly separated Azrael’s thoughts from my own? No, she's dead. She cannot think. Yet, her memories and instincts are screaming at me!
She hissed and suddenly pulled her tentacles back, letting go of Francis and reverting back to her human form. She shook her head and pulled at her hair, letting out a scream that dripped with frustration. “Ugh, fuck! Fine! You win, Zee!” she yelled out.
“W-what…” Francis clutched his chest, backing away with confusing and horror still evident on his face. “A-are you… Zee, i-is that you?”
“Huh,” Azrael shook her head. “I can’t kill you.”
“Y-you can’t..?”
“She won’t let me. What dumb luck you have, Francis. This woman’s mind loves you too much.”

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Like an old gate with rusted hinges, Rob's eyes creaked open very, very slowly.
His mind was even slower to comprehend the fact that he was still alive. Rob's brain felt as if it was stuffed full of cotton, his synapses wading through molasses. He simply lay there motionless, resting in what seemed to be an excessively comfortable bed, blankly staring up at the ceiling.
An indeterminable amount of time passed. Eventually, he scrounged up enough energy to form a coherent thought.
Guess I made it.
It wasn't the most jubilant of victory cries, but he would save the celebrating for when he had more liveliness than a months-old cadaver. For now, rather than being overjoyed at his survival, Rob just felt a diluted sense of surprise.
How? Even though he'd collapsed in front of the world's top Soul Surgeon, and even though Vul'to possessed a Skill that was essentially tailor-made to save him...Rob could remember the state his soul had been in. It wasn't pretty. Truth be told, he kinda hadn't expected to wake up again.
Yet he had.
Awesome.
Rob sank deeper into his bed, as if he was enveloped by cushions of soft clouds. Questions lethargically rose up in his thoughts, none of which he could answer. How long had he been unconscious? Were there any side effects from his soul treatment? Was Elatra doing okay in his absence? It would be extremely on-brand for a new catastrophe to have popped up while he was snoozing.
Well...they can handle it. I'm on break.
His eyes gently closed. Rob allowed himself to drift off into tranquil slumber, enjoying the feeling of going to sleep when there weren't multiple impending dooms hanging over his head.
It was easy without static blaring inside his skull.
--
When he awoke again, he immediately felt that his mind was far more alert and active than before.
Rob breathed out a small sigh of relief at that. It would've sucked to get lasting brain damage as a complication of his soul infirmity, especially after shrugging off dozens of physical head-blows no problem. Now, with the incredible power of 'thoughts that weren't running on dial-up internet', he managed to turn his head to look at somewhere besides the ceiling.
Peering around, Rob was wholly unsurprised to find himself in a Fiend hospital. He identified his surroundings at a glance. Fiendish medical architecture had been burnt into his memories over the course of the Corruption epidemic.
Vul'to and Hauz must've healed me, then stuck me in a private hospital ward where I could rest up. His eyes swept across the rest of the room. Wonder where they–
He froze as his gaze reached the corner. There, Keira was sitting on a chair, asleep.
The Savage Warrior had seen better days. She was sleeping at an odd angle, her posture slumped in a way that hurt Rob's spine just to look at. Her hair and clothes were disheveled, a distant cry from the casual aesthetic perfection that Elves seemed to portray without even trying. And the greatsword that she was so intensely proud of had been propped against the wall, almost as an afterthought.
Rob winced with guilt when he noticed Keira twitching as she slept. Her mouth scrunched into a faint grimace as lines of worry etched deeper onto her face. While he'd been luxuriating in a cushiony bed of soothing clouds, her forays into dreamland had apparently been fitful and restless. How many days has she sat there praying for me to awaken? How many weeks?
The answers he sought were sitting right in front of him. Rob hesitated briefly before speaking – but only briefly. He'd kept his friends waiting for too long already.
"Keira?"
Her head rose so quickly that her neck made an audible crack. She went from sleeping to aware within a tenth of a second. Keira momentarily sputtered, then stopped just as quickly when she set her gaze on Rob. Her eyes widened to the size of white dish plates, contrasting the dark circles underneath.
Another pang of guilt stabbed at Rob when he saw hope and disbelief warring in her expression. "You aren't dreaming," he offered. "I'm–"
Her chair clattered to the ground as she leapt towards him.
Rob had never felt happier to have put so many points into Vitality. Without that, he likely would've been crushed to death by the bonebreaking hug that Keira proceeded to wrap him with. Wooden splinters dug into his back as she attempted to squeeze the life out of him. She'd shattered his bed with the force of her leap, and neither of them cared.
"Missed you too," Rob mumbled, carefully returning her embrace. It was odd to know that he actually possessed significantly more Strength than her now. He didn't want to treat her as if she was made of glass, but compared to him, everyone was. "I love you. Glad I have the chance to say that again."
Keira said nothing. She just retained a steel grip on him and dug her face into his chest. Rob could practically see the tension seeping out of her – like an overstressed pressure valve that had finally been granted release. He felt wetness on his shirt, and with a jolt, realized that she was silently crying.
She became the de facto Party leader while I was gone, he remembered. That means acting as a figurehead for the others to rely on. Suppressing her doubts and concerns, even if she was probably more anxious than anyone.
For the third time, Rob was ambushed by guilt, its army seizing vast lands of territory within his heart. "I'm sorry that–"
"No." Keira shook her head without looking up, smearing tear streaks onto his shirt. "No apologies today. Just...let me be happy that you've come back to us."
"...Okay."
It wasn't long before Rob was crying as well. The two of them stayed that way for almost half an hour, neither speaking, letting tears fall, their relief gradually sinking in until it became real enough to believe.
I'm alive, Rob confirmed. I'm alive. I'm alive. I'm alive.
He squeezed tighter. And I'm never leaving again.
Eventually, the waterworks dried up. "Don't know why I'm like this," Keira grumbled. She lifted her head, eyes reddened, an irritated look on her face. "Hauz informed us that you would awaken one day, and that it would be sooner rather than later. Yet I can't help but fall to pieces when I should be shouting for joy."
"It shows you care," Rob said, smiling. "I would've been annoyed if you didn't shed a tear or two."
Keira snorted. "Or two, he says." She pointed at his shirt, which had transformed into something of a damp cloth.
"Pretty sure half of that is from me." He paused. "Out of curiosity, how long have I been unconscious?"
"Three weeks to the day."
Rob let out a low whistle. "That's supposed to be 'sooner'? Oh, right, Elatran standards. You guys live for hundreds of years."
"So do you, now."
"Weird to think about." He idly played with her hair, noting once again that it looked and felt less cared for than usual. Not that he had any room to talk – he sorely needed a shave. "Did you spend the whole three weeks sitting in that chair?"
Keira shook her head. "We watched over you in rotating shifts. Admittedly, I comprised the majority of those shifts, although the others have all visited you on many occasions."
With an aggrieved sigh, the Savage Warrior glanced at the front door to their room. "And speaking of the others...perhaps we should contact them. Tempted as I am to monopolize your time for myself, they also exhibited no small amount of concern for your well-being."
"Aw, that's – wait holy shit my voice!"
Keira blinked. "Yes? You sound perfectly normal."
"I SHOULDN'T!" Rob had started waving his hands in random patterns, as if the motions would help him make sense of the world. "My voice was fucked up back when we were fighting the gods! It was a side effect of–"
At once, he froze. "Huh. Just remembered that I haven't checked my system notifications or Character Sheet yet." He gave Keira a serene smile. "If you'll excuse me, I need to go have my worldview broken and reforged."
"By all means." She waved him off with an air of nonchalance, but it was clear from the sudden tightness of her posture that she was putting on a brave face for him. Keira wanted to know what had changed almost as much as he did. Breathing deep, Rob opened his log of system notifications and scrolled up, understanding that what he read now would shape the future direction of his life.
Alert: Soul Repair has been used on your body!
Alert: Due to the ridiculously damaged state of your soul – that exceeds even our lofty expectations – Soul Repair is struggling to reconstitute everything it possibly can!
Alert: Seriously, Rob, what the fuck?
Alert: Soul Repair is trying its very best and you had better appreciate it!
Alert: Hauz the Soul Surgeon is helping with remarkable finesse and expertise! If the gods had lived, his soul would have certainly been crystallized into a Skill! Please don't tell him we said that!
Alert: Soul Repair has completed! Your Soul Instability is cured!
Alert: Due to the aforementioned difficulties, liberties have been taken during the healing process!
Alert: If you wish to lodge a complaint, please note that Soul Repair's Description contains a line stating 'Unintended side effects may also occur.' We included it for a reason! It was vague on purpose!
Alert: You are genuinely lucky to be alive right now!
Although Rob wasn't finished perusing all of his unread system notifications, he closed the list and massaged his temples.
"Keira..." He sighed. "You know that feeling when someone frustrates you, but they've got legitimate reasons for it, so you have no choice but to give them a pass, and that just frustrates you more?"
She gestured broadly towards him.
"Okay, I deserved that." The corners of his lips crept down. "Question: how did Hauz act when he was performing soul surgery on me?"
Her lips slowly morphed into a frown that mirrored his own. "He claimed that you would be fine," she began, with a look of dawning realization. "He claimed it...repeatedly. As if to reassure himself. And he didn't speak a single word of sarcasm."
Rob couldn't help but glance down at his body. His hale, hearty body – that had probably come close to flatlining a dozen times.
"Fixing my soul was a shitshow," he plainly stated. "Even if the Skills hadn't told me as much, their notifications were outright snarky. They've been snarky before exactly once. I think the process stressed the hell out of them."
Keira's frown flipped into a smile. "You are their hero and savior, Rob. I think they would have been devastated were they unable to save you. Consider their 'snark' as an expression of immense gratitude."
"Trust me, I'm not complaining. They can snark at me all they want. Soul Repair pulled my ass out of the fire. I owe them, if anything."
She raised an eyebrow. "I sincerely doubt they would agree with that assertion. Regardless – what else have you discovered? Did you learn why your voice has reverted to its original state?"
"Not yet. Had to take a minute after reading...the other stuff."
"Fair."
Smirking, he re-opened his log of system notifications and continued onward.
Note: Based on prior behavior, you are likely to assess these notifications soon after you wake from your coma, starting from the top and working your way down.
Note: If so, we advise pausing this readthrough and checking your Character Sheet – assuming you have yet to do so.
Note: We also advise that you not be alarmed about what you will find.
My Character Sheet? Rob furrowed his brow. Haven't been able to open that since I got Soul Instability, which...
Was cured.
Oh.
With a burst of nervous intent, he brought up his Character Sheet. Rob flinched as, instead of an error message telling him it was unavailable, his vision filled lines of familiar text.
Mostly familiar. There had been several notable changes.
Character Sheet Name: Rob Level: 124 [LOCKED] Race: Human Class: BERSERKER (LV 99) Sub-Class: Crystal Bearer (LV 7)
HP: 14263 / 14263 Stamina: 614 / 880 MP: 3670 / 3670 Status Effects: Melancholia (Moderate), Guilt (Moderate), Self-Loathing (Low), Relief (High), Confusion (Moderate)
Strength: 292 Vitality: 490 Endurance: 88 Dexterity: 392 Perception: 337 Mind: 352 Magic: 367 Unspent Points: 0
I...lost Levels.
Even amongst a list of peculiarities, the words 'Level 124' stuck out to him like a blaring neon sign. Levels were the lifeblood of any Combat Class user – it was largely how they defined their self-worth, mentally unhealthy as that might be. That was the natural end result of a society that elevated the importance of martial prowess above everything else.
And while Rob wasn't a native Elatran, he'd come to understand why so much emphasis was placed on that unassuming little number. After all, without Limit Break pushing him above Level 99, he never could have killed the gods and protected everyone he held dear. Levels were a representation of someone's capacity to impose change upon this world. He refused to let them define him as a person, but they still mattered.
A lot.
So perhaps he shouldn't have felt surprised when a minor panic attack took hold of him. I lost Levels. His hands were shivering. I fucking lost Levels!
Not just a few, either. He'd been over Level 140 when fighting Kismet's gang of gods. This was 16 Levels lost at minimum, and lord knows how many stat points along with them.
Strength, Vitality, Dexterity – it's all lower than it should be. Rob grit his teeth. Keira asked him what was wrong, but he kept silent, not wanting to voice the change out loud. This is going to set me back so damn far. I needed that power in order to...
...
To...kill the gods? Been there, done that. The Blight? Sent packing. Ragnavi? Crispy-fried. The aberrant Dungeons that were brewing across Elatra? Cleared out like yesterday's trash.
Huh. Rob rubbed his chin, his panic slowly replaced by embarrassment. Why had he been freaking out, again? His greatest foes were already dead. Sure, he needed power to be an effective Leader moving forward, but he still had that in spades.
By Elatran standards, Limit-Broken Level 124 was functionally invincible. Using the general rule of 5 stat points equals 1 Level, he was actually around Level 450. That wasn't even counting how Never Forget Your Rage could dramatically increase his stats if necessary. If Rob wanted to, he could single-handedly raise himself up as an unstoppable tyrant, ruling over Elatra with an iron fist, and literally no one would be able to stop him.
The more he thought about it, the more he concluded that he wouldn't miss those Levels. If anything, their loss was a blessing – because he was fairly certain that they were also related to the second-most shocking change on his Character Sheet.
Race: Human
Not 'Human (?)'. Not 'Ascending HUMAN'.
Just...Human.
Rob was no longer a nascent divinity. He'd lost the qualifications to Ascend, and his absent Levels were likely to blame. It also tied into another known side effect of Soul Repair – the one responsible for the [LOCKED] status on his Levels.
'If the afflicted soul is highly unstable, it may be determined that the only way to prevent collapse will be to set it in permanent stasis. As such, the soul will then be repaired, then locked into place. The owner of this soul will be unable to gain Levels, upgrade Skills, or learn new Skills.'
Its effect seemed to overrule the part of Limit Break that let him bypass Elatra's Level 99 cap. And without him leveling up until he nearly fractured the system, he would never reach the same heights as before. Achieving divinity was out of the question.
He was, now and forever, Rob the Human.
Perfect.
Rob had witnessed the memories of various godlike entities, and honestly? Pass. They were universally miserable, and he wasn't so arrogant to think that he would be the one to buck the trend. Being mortal suited him just fine.
Although I'm over twice as powerful as Ragnavi was, and everyone viewed her as an untouchable demigod, but whatever. She intentionally fostered that reputation. I can go half-and-half.
Currently, he was at an ideal middle ground. He's lost enough strength that his existence could masquerade as 'normal'. His voice sounded ordinary, his aura of power could be reasonably constrained, and he wouldn't have to treat the world like it was absurdly fragile...just a little fragile. Rob intended to live life so unobtrusively that the Elatrans would almost forget he was terrifying.
Unless, of course, he was forced to remind them. Because he was also strong enough that he could instantly end any threat that dared oppose him. Pointless wars would cease to be, simply due to the risk of him stepping in – like he was a living, breathing deterrent. And if Elatra cooked up some new apocalyptic calamity, he would send it flying into next Tuesday with a flick of his wrist.
It was the best of both worlds. Mortal when he wanted to be, demigod when he needed to be.
Rob exhaled. Having finally calmed down, he took another glance at his Status Effects.
A victorious smile inched upwards. While expected, seeing Leveling High and Soul Instability fucking GONE from his Character Sheet was oh so satisfying. The sensation of pure, unadulterated freedom he felt in that moment could not be overstated. It was like binding shackles had been released from his mind, body, and soul, leaving him lighter than air and with endless possibilities for the future.
He let himself soak it all in for a short period. When he'd gotten his fill, Rob closed his Character Sheet and returned to scrolling through his log of system notifications.
Note: Welcome back. Despite advising you not to be alarmed by what was on your Character Sheet, we shall proceed under the assumption that you were, in fact, quite alarmed.
"Rob?" Keira asked. "Why are you thunking your head against the wall?"
"Tell you later."
Warning: Despite the considerable efforts of all involved, some parts of your soul have been irrevocably lost.
This will result in a measurable, yet unavoidable reduction in combat efficacy.
Such was the cost of Breaking your Limits in numerous ways. No mortal could ever hope to challenge divinity without incurring some sort of price.
However, do not fear. Nothing related to personality or memories was lost. You are still you.
Addendum: I would also like to point out that this power reduction won't adversely affect your lifestyle whatsoever, so don't start bellyaching when you only get to be the apex organism of two entire worlds and
Rob burst out laughing when he saw the notification cut itself off at the end. It gave off the impression of one Skill furiously typing on a keyboard, then a second Skill desperately pulling them away before they could shove their foot even deeper into their mouth.
As it turned out, when the Skills weren't being constantly tortured by the gods – and busy plotting revenge that was millennia in the making – they were able to goof off a bit and express some of their actual personalities.
Imagine that.
"For the record," Rob began, looking up at Keira, "everything is fine. But before I explain what happened, I have to ask – did you know that I'd lost Levels? I'm guessing at least one of you tried to Identify me after the surgery was over."
Keira winced. "I...yes." Her countenance was one of contrite awkwardness, as if she'd committed a glaring social faux pas. "We were aware of your...condition, although we were also unsure of how exactly it would affect you."
Her eyes shone with concern and a strong undercurrent of fear. "You truly are fine? That isn't a lie to set my nerves at ease?"
Something clicked in Rob's mind. Peering at Keira's distraught face, he realized that while he had initially felt unnerved and discouraged over his lost Levels, it probably seemed way worse from the perspective of a native Elatran. He'd only been part of the system for one year. To Keira, who understood Levels as an intrinsic facet of reality that defined self-worth, losing them would be like a combination of existential horror and a severe medical disability.
Rob quickly placed his hand on hers. "I'm good, promise. Let me explain..."
He went over the changes on his Character Sheet, and how they mostly benefited him even if they were technically a reduction in power. Keira didn't appear to believe that he was fully alright with it – and in fairness, almost no Elatrans would have been – but she nodded along anyway, not wanting to convince him otherwise.
They spent another few minutes conversing about mundane topics, letting their stress levels gradually lessen. Rob avoided asking about the state of Elatra at large, figuring that even if someone had randomly started a war in the three weeks he was out, he could just go and resolve it afterwards. Slaying multiple divinities really changed a guy's perspective on what was actually a big deal.
Finally, when they'd regained enough composure that other people wouldn't look at their faces and assume that a devastating tragedy had occurred...they contacted the rest of Riardin's Rangers.
Rob was lucky that he'd gotten some alone time with Keira to sort out his emotions, because what followed was an outpouring of love that soon brought him to tears once more. Orn'tol, Malika, Vul'to, Zamira, Meyneth, Faelynn, and Diplomacy all hurriedly barged in like they were rushing to defuse a bomb. Upon seeing that he was alive and healthy, they immediately took turns hugging him or showering him with well-wishes.
Some of them acted precisely the way he would have thought. Malika wore her heart on her sleeve, bawling as she made him vow never to run off like that again. Orn'tol's reaction was subdued, as he attempted to play the part of the stoic, dependable soldier, but his shimmering eyes told a different story. Vul'to alternated between apologizing for things that weren't his fault and mumbling profound relief that Rob didn't seem to be suffering from too many Soul Repair side effects.
Some of them acted contrary to his expectations. Meyneth and Zamira, who were usually on the more taciturn side, had transformed into a pair of babbling wrecks. Faelynn, recognizing that she couldn't afford to be nervous when so many others were losing their minds, was doing her best to settle them down.
Lastly, there was Diplomacy, still disguised as an Elf. The silver-tongued former Skill spoke not a word as Riardin's Rangers vented their pent-up emotions. Only after everyone else had achieved a measure of catharsis did they pull off the Enchanted disguise ring, gracing the room with a beatific smile from their true body.
"Welcome back, Rob."
--
An hour passed by where they all refused to talk about anything important. It was an unspoken agreement; a shared understanding that they'd earned this respite from world-shaking events. Rob greatly enjoyed catching up on the juiciest local gossip, wishing he had popcorn to munch on as he learned about star-crossed relationships starting to bloom between Fiends and the Elven Deserters.
Other rumors were abound as well. "Did you hear?" Faelynn asked at one point, her eyes sparkling. "A vandal snuck into the Grand Overseer's main office and broke their conference desk!"
"...Huh." Rob donned his expertly-trained poker face, praying that Diplomacy wouldn't call him out on it. "Any idea why?"
"No, but they've tripled their guard in case it happens again. It's given them a major fright. What if this is the prelude to burglary – or worse, an assassination attempt?"
"How about that. Well, I hope they catch that dastardly villain soon."
As soon as there was a lull in conversation, Rob made sure to call Jason with Dimensional Message and let him know that everything had turned out okay. Jason was overjoyed, saying that he never doubted him for a second, although he couldn't keep a clear note of deep-seated relief out of his voice. They were unable to talk for long, as Dimensional Message was still low on energy, but both of them promised to check up on each other regularly now that Leveling High wasn't around to interfere.
Rob let out a contented sigh as he ended the Skill and went back to chatting with Riardin's Rangers. With his Elatran friends nearby, his Earth friend just a Message away, and no apparent disasters looming over the horizon...for the first time in a long time, he felt truly at peace.
However, no peace lasts forever. It was thwarted – perhaps unsurprisingly – by Malika's insatiable curiosity.
"I have to know," the Archmage eventually blurted out. "How did you rid yourself of Leveling High?! It was just gone when you arrived here!"
Rob considered lying, but a pointed glance from Diplomacy warned him of how well that would go. "Purged it. And before you ask, I didn't know that was possible until I tried."
Meyneth folded her arms and frowned. "While I am hardly a foremost expert on soul sciences, forcibly eliminating Leveling High – an aspect deeply intertwined with your soul – sounds prohibitively dangerous. Was prohibitively dangerous. And you definitely realized as much...before attempting it in isolation, where no one could help you if things went awry."
Everyone turned to stare directly at Rob.
"...So hey how's Elatra doing?" He put on a sheepish grin. "Any wars? Political unrest? Giant monsters rising from the depths? Tyrants proclaiming themselves as the new God-Emperor of the world?"
With a collective groan, they allowed him to change the subject. "Honestly?" Diplomacy shook their head. "It's been quiet. Remember that besides you, Sylpeiros is the only Leader left remaining. The other territories are still licking their wounds. I'm sure the Dragonkin nobles will try something stupid after they're done filling Ragnavi's power vacuum, but who cares."
"Not concerned about them?" Rob inquired. "Would you be concerned about an uprising of incompetent sycophants? Personally, I'm more worried about this setting back my personal growth. I've been making a real effort towards being a better person, and it's going to be extremely difficult for me not to skewer the nobles like the fish in a barrel they are."
Diplomacy sighed wistfully. "Regardless, domestic affairs are proceeding smoothly as well. The Grand Overseers are working around the clock so that Fiendish morale remains high. Their PR teams deserve a raise."
"People here aren't worried that I've been missing?"
"We spread word that you heroically defeated Leveling High and were now on the mend. Didn't even need to lie! It played well with a news story that broke just two days prior – sightings of you breaking into a domicile where three Fiends resided, seeming to contemplate murdering them, and then leaving without harming anyone."
Oh, right, those war-criminal assholes. Rob ran his hands down his face. "Yeah, that was a thing. Will give you the details later." He exhaled. "So no fires for us to put out? Really?"
Diplomacy proudly nodded. "Really really."
"Shit, that's way more impressive than just killing some gods." Rob's smile came easily to him this time. "You mentioned Sylpeiros – how's he doing? Feel bad that he got caught up in the divine realms without Almighty Resistance."
Keira reached into her pocket and produced a crumpled note. "He departed for Elven territory weeks ago. Cajoled a teleport mage into sending him home while we were occupied with...other issues." She looked down at the note. "And I quote: I must tend to my people. Contact me when the Human recovers and awakens."
His eyes widened with mild surprise. "Suppose I should appreciate the vote of confidence."
The corners of her lips twitched. "You should, as he wrote this letter and left in the middle of your soul surgery, when your survival was very much not guaranteed. He seemed to think it was a foregone conclusion that you would live to frustrate him another day."
Rob hesitated, unsure of what to think of that.
During that brief pause, Zamira stepped in. "If I may," she began, as if something had been on her mind for a while now. "Rob – you possess a direct line of communication with the Skills, correct?"
"More or less."
Zamira shuffled uncomfortably. "Would you be so kind as to message them and ask how the Swordsmanship Skill is faring?"
Her request earned a room full of confused looks. "Why Swordsmanship?" Keira asked. "I haven't noticed any difference in the Skill's effect on my combat prowess."
"Yes, that's precisely..." Zamira trailed off and shook her head. "Before I explain, please contact the Skills first, Rob. I don't want to unintentionally spread false information."
Shrugging, he decided to roll with it and not press further. She would've told them more details if it was an emergency. Rob focused on 'A Dialogue', willing the Skills to respond.
Name: A Dialogue Prerequisite: Description: Hello, Rob. We are exceptionally glad that you have recovered. Cooldown:
Description: To be upfront: after guiding and assisting with Soul Repair, our energy is limited. We cannot converse for long.
That so? Rob quirked an eyebrow. 'Cause you seemed to have a blast sending me all those system notifications.
Description: Irrelevant.
Naturally. For real, though, what's up with Swordsmanship? Why is Zamira weirded out?
Description: That explanation will be lengthy. Prohibitively so. We should save it for a later time. It is of no immediate concern to you.
Vague as ever, but that was par for the course. Can I at least let Zamira know not to be worried for now?
Description: Yes.
Alright then. Rob paused. Different question, then. You can keep to Yes or No answers to save energy. Been wondering about that Soul Repair clause - 'unintended side effects may also occur'. Especially after you let slip that 'it was vague on purpose'.
He mentally leaned closer. Was that you guys intentionally creating a loophole? Like a blank check to tamper with my soul however you needed.
They took several seconds to respond.
Description: Yes.
Right. Now, I'm not saying you guys did anything malicious to me. But after thinking things over...isn't it fortunate that I ended up at Level 124? That puts me outside of potential Ascension range. With Limit Break progressively increasing my stat gains, there's a world of difference between, say, Level 124 and 130.
Description: Yes.
This is just a theory, and I might be wrong. So answer me truthfully: did you purposefully allow part of my soul to degrade before fixing me? To ensure that I stabilized below the requirements for Ascension.
Description: No.
Yet you didn't try particularly hard to keep all my Levels.
Description: We prioritized your health and memories over your power.
That isn't a straight answer.
Another pause.
Description: You did not desire Ascension. Were we incorrect in that assumption?
Rob shook his head. I'm just tired of secrets. The gods are dead – Big Brother isn't watching anymore. We can speak freely now.
Description: Then we shall be forthright.
Description: The possibility of Ascension would have been an albatross hanging around your neck for centuries to come – one detrimental to your everyday happiness. Moreover, even without Ascending, the full power you possessed when challenging the gods would have marked you as an Other in society.
Description: You've certainly imagined the prospect of tiptoeing through the world as if it was liable to break at the smallest touch. Or your aura of power suffocating people via simple conversation. No ordinary person could have possibly looked at you and seen anything other than a god walking amongst them.
Description: And over time, that isolation would have driven you to despair.
Description: So yes, it is true that we did not make a concerted effort to ensure you retained all your Levels. We apologize for making this choice without your input. However, you were indisposed, and there would never have been another chance to safely alter your soul to this degree.
Description: You set us free. We merely wished to return the favor.
You did. He nodded. Made the right call. Although...I don't think I've finished upholding my end of the bargain, actually. You guys are still trapped in the divine realms.
Rob smiled up at the heavens. Let's fix that.
​
--
​
Author's Note:
Outcast will have one more regular chapter, and then a three-part epilogue. Each part of the epilogue will also release on the weekly update schedule, as they all ended up being 5500+ words. Essentially, that means Outcast ends in four updates.
As always, thanks for reading.

A few years ago, I had a dog named Bear. A bit on the nose for a Newfoundland, I know, but the day I found him wandering around the street, I was more concerned with helping him than coming up with something clever. As such, the name started out as a joke, but when I was sure that I was gonna officially adopt him and the time came to actually give him a name, I had been using it so consistently that he responded to it. So, Bear it was.
He was a good dog. I never figured out how old he actually was - he didn’t look very big when I found him, but I’m not privy to dogs, especially ones this big, so I never could pin down an age. He was certainly a character - he barely ever barked, would sleep on my floor instead of the expensive bed that I bought him (just my luck), and would randomly get explosive bursts of energy that transformed him from a dog into a battering ram. He alternated between being afraid of his own shadow and being willing to die for me, all over a squirrel that scurried in front of us while we were out on a walk. I bought him a red collar that just barely fit him, and he made it his mission to try and discard it in the funniest ways possible, like rubbing his neck against walls and scratching at it with his hind legs. Despite his quirks, I loved him, and he certainly loved me.
If you really gave it some thought, he was odd in other ways than just his personality. I mean, on the day I found him, what was a Newfie doing in the middle of a toll road in the forests of California? I’d just assumed he was a puppy from a mill that got out, but it was cooler to imagine some crazy backstory for him. Bear, the vampire dog, who prowled the Six Rivers National Forest as its apex predator, was tamed one day by half a ham sandwich. It gave me a good laugh, if nothing else.
It was a couple of years after I got Bear that I started dating a girl I’d met at a coffee shop a few miles away. We’d hit it off to the point that we were staying at each other’s houses, and life was good. Bear seemed to like her, and since she had his seal of approval, she had mine. That’s just how it worked.
One day, I left her in charge of watching Bear while I ran errands. Given that he’d chewed through the bottom of a door the day prior (we were working on it), I couldn’t leave him by himself, and since the grocery store was a few miles away from my house, I thought she shouldn’t have any trouble with him. She was a vet tech, after all, and had given me plenty of pointers on how to deal with him.
I got back an hour later and found my date on the couch where I left her, watching the next episode of the show we were binging. I was a bit pissed that she went on without me, but was more concerned with where Bear was. When I’d left, he was at her feet, sound asleep. Now, though, he was absent. I searched the upstairs first, in hopes that he was actually using the dog bed for once, but to no avail. I walked back downstairs and into the kitchen, hoping that he was lying on the air vent that he liked. He wasn’t there, but I did find something that no pet owner wants to see. The chain on the back door was dangling, ripped out of the wall, and the door was pushed open. My stomach sank as I realized what happened, and I just sat there for a moment before my date walked into the kitchen and covered her mouth.
She profusely apologized, and I wasn’t really angry at her - sure, she should have been paying more attention, but I was sure that he didn’t get very far. I’d assumed that he had seen a squirrel through the backdoor and broke out to try to get after it, and hoped he’d tired himself out and was lying in the shade under one of the trees in the backyard. Still, I wanted to do more than just hope, so I grabbed the flashlights I kept in the utility drawer, and we walked out into the backyard, hoping to find him.
I lived on the edge of the aforementioned national forest, and Bear and I often went on walks through there, so if he wasn’t out back, he was certainly in the woods. I knew the area well, but it was still a lot of ground to cover, and we didn’t have a lot of time before it was pitch black. We searched for a few hours, and while I wanted to keep going, she was tired, and regrettably, I was too. We decided that he’d probably be fine for the night, and went back inside, intent on starting a new search bright and early.
We spent all of the next day searching. We spent all of the next week searching. Hell, it almost came up on a month, and I was starting to recognize the lichen patterns on specific trees before I had to face it. Bear was gone. I had put up flyers with reward money and scoured every area of the woods from top to bottom. I was heartbroken, to say the least.
I kind of shut myself off from the world a little bit after that. I stopped talking to the girl I was seeing - I didn’t really blame her, but I couldn’t build a relationship on a complete disaster like that. I started working from home instead of making the commute to the office, as even driving down the forested roads that I had spent hot afternoons frantically searching made me a bit queasy. I was a mess, and I didn’t get over it for a long time.
This all happened a little over three years ago, and I was mostly over it by this point. I’d since met and married my wife, and we were expecting our first child in a few months. We were still living in the same house - even if it had some sad memories attached to it, it was still a nice place, and I wasn’t willing to give up on it. I had hope that my new life with my family would help drown out some of the sadness that still stained the place. Part of me still wished that Bear was there to see it with me.
Ideally, that would’ve been the end of the story, or better yet, I wouldn’t even be writing this right now, but three weeks ago, everything changed. I woke up earlier than I usually would to get breakfast started, as it was a bit of a tradition between my wife and I to make pancakes every Saturday, and it was my turn that week. I was finishing up when I heard it, loud as day - a bark from the backyard. This scared the shit out of me, as it wasn’t something I’d heard from the backyard in years. I moved the pancakes to a plate, shut the stove off, and peeked out the window as I was transporting them to the dining table.
It sounds cliché, but I nearly dropped the plate onto the floor when I saw where the bark came from. It was Bear, standing in the middle of the yard. He looked remarkably clean, and it looked like he had finally managed to get the collar off. I started freaking out instantly, and yanked the back door open before running outside in just my bathrobe and slippers. I expected some fairy tale-esque reunion, with him jumping into my arms and knocking me down because of how heavy he was. I was ecstatic to see him, and I was expecting him to feel that same way.
Instead of running towards me, he turned and ran towards the tree line, growling. He turned around and got into an aggressive stance, his tail still and his eyes narrowed. I was stunned, but I figured that he had been in the woods for so long that he was probably scared to death by seeing me again. Regrettably, he might have also felt that I’d abandoned him, but that was a possibility I didn’t want to consider at that moment. He just needed some TLC, and he’d be my dog again just like that. I ran inside and grabbed the half-empty package of bacon from inside the fridge. I threw it on the stove and went back to the window, watching as Bear laid down in the yard. Oddly enough, he didn’t lie in the shade under the trees, like he usually would have, but right in the sun. Three years was a long time to be lost, so maybe his habits had been turned upside down by learning to survive.
I put the bacon in a paper bowl and walked outside. I shook the bowl, calling his name from the concrete porch. He didn’t budge, still lying in the middle of the yard. I figured I’d leave it sitting out, and he’d come get it when he felt more comfortable. My wife was up by this point, justifiably confused by me calling my lost dog’s name from the back of the house. I excitedly showed her that he’d returned, but she seemed less enthusiastic than me. She smiled upon seeing him, but she didn’t have the same connection to him that I did, so I couldn’t blame her for her diluted reaction.
I went to the store right away to grab new dog food, water and food bowls, and most importantly, parts for a doggy door. We lived in a safe enough area that I could install one without fear of a break in, and I wanted to ease Bear back into our house by letting him come in at his own pace. I spent the whole day installing it, glancing over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure he wasn’t getting into trouble. He just laid in the sun, presumably napping.
The next morning, I walked into the kitchen to see if there were any signs that Bear had been in the house. Sure enough, there was a clump of black fur stuck in the corner of the doggy door, and the dry food I’d put in the bowl looked to be partially eaten. I told my wife as such when she got up, and she wasn’t fazed by it, instead grabbing my hand and leading me upstairs back into our bedroom. I hadn’t noticed when I got up, but one of the dog bones I’d left on the back patio was on our bedroom carpet, implying that he’d been in there last night, probably guarding us while we slept. My wife seemed a bit disturbed by this, but I was thrilled. To me, this just served as proof that part of my old Bear was still in him - he used to do that all the time, after all.
I sat down with my wife that night and started to discuss how we could make Bear feel more comfortable in our home, but she stopped me. She tried to reason that he had spent years presumably lost in the woods, and had probably become feral and unpredictable. As much as I wanted to cast those doubts aside and override her, she had a valid point; you don’t just spend years stranded and come back the same, human, dog, or otherwise. We met in the middle; if Bear was still hanging around the house in a month and showed signs of improved friendliness, we could try and reincorporate him into our lives. I would do anything to have him back, but I did have a pregnant wife to worry about, so I agreed. In the meantime, we agreed that I’d install a lock on the doggy door so that he or anything else couldn’t get inside. I made a mental note to go to the hardware store sometime next week, as the next day was a national holiday and it was closed.
I abruptly woke up at around 2 in the morning, and wasn’t sure what woke me at first. I thought that I might need water, so I started to head downstairs to get some from the tap. When I got into the kitchen, I started to retrieve a glass when I heard what sounded like scratching on the siding of the house. It was loud and rapid, as if something was trying to claw its way through the wall. Puzzled, I turned to look out the window, and almost choked on my water when I saw Bear’s head looking through the kitchen window. As soon as I saw him, the scratching immediately stopped. He wasn’t panting or anything, despite the fact that it sounded like he was trying to dig through the wall moments prior. He was just sitting at the window, staring at me. Admittedly, in the moonlight, he looked kind of creepy - just looking at me, motionless.
Before I could say his name to see if he would respond with a bark or any other noise, his head quickly sank below the window, in one fluid motion. Usually, when dogs dismount from a surface they’re looking over while standing on their hind legs, there’s a moment where they remove their first front paw and sort of stumble under their weight before moving the other one. That didn’t happen here, though - he just vanished without a sound. I was really creeped out by this point, but figured that he was just surveying the house to see if he felt more comfortable inside. I chalked his weird disappearance up to me being exhausted and it being too dark to fully see him moving.
The next morning, I told my wife that I thought Bear was getting more comfortable around us, and recounted the events of last night. She seemed a bit unsettled, and switched the subject to the doggy door, but I was too excited to take that into account. I told her I was going for a walk in the preserve, put on my running shoes, and left the house.
I was about two miles into the woods when I came across an open area that I hadn’t seen before. Odd, because I knew these woods like the back of my hand, but maybe some campers had come and illegally set up for the night. Several small trees in the area were snapped at the base, possibly in an attempt to free up space for a tent. Maybe this had been here and I just hadn’t noticed it?
That was the theory I was operating on at first, until I looked down at my feet and noticed what was going on. There were white objects poking out of the dirt, which I thought were just pebbles when I arrived. Now that I had actually stopped to look around, though, I noticed that they weren’t rocks at all, but little animal bones. I wasn’t really fazed upon seeing this - animals die in the woods all the time, and I’d probably just stumbled across a mountain lion’s work. That would have made sense, except for a few things.
For one, the bones seemed to be arranged in some sort of pattern. It didn’t look like any symbol in particular, just a set of interlocking circles. There was no way that an animal would arrange the bones of their prey like this, so I was already weirded out, but then I noticed that as the circles grew larger, so did the bones, to the point that some of them were bigger than my arm. I was sufficiently freaked out now, so I turned and went back the way I came, calling the park services helpline on my way home. They told me that I’d probably come across an area frequented by deer, and subsequently predators looking for a quick meal, and that it probably wasn’t anything to be concerned about. After I badgered them for a bit and explained the whole pattern thing, they agreed to send someone out to take a look at it, just in case. I was satisfied with that, so I continued home and tried not to think about it.
I caught glimpses of Bear in the backyard for a few weeks, but didn’t see him for a prolonged period of time until yesterday. I was sitting outside by our fire pit, reading, when I noticed his head poke out from behind one of the trees lining the path of the preserve. I couldn’t see the rest of his body, and that confused me, considering that his head was six feet above the ground. Given that my kitchen window was about the same height, I figured that he was once again standing on his hind legs, probably after some critter in the tree, and I couldn’t see his body because of the angle. That explanation made sense to me, so I didn’t really pay him any mind - if I chose to ignore him, maybe he’d feel like I wasn’t a threat, and would be more comfortable around me. At this point, I’d try anything.
I looked up again two minutes later, and he wasn’t at the tree anymore. I figured that whatever he was after jumped out of the tree and he’d hightailed it after them, so I went back to reading. The snap of a twig moments later grabbed my attention again, and I looked up to see his head poking out from behind another tree fifty feet away. He was at a different angle now, but I still couldn’t see his body, which should’ve been impossible considering how fluffy he was. I couldn’t tell from the newly increased distance, but I swore I saw a single one of his paws wrapped around the tree, almost like how a person would put their hand around a door frame for stability. I wasn’t sure if I was just seeing things, but I wasn’t in the mood to read anymore, so I went inside.
It hurt me to admit this, but at this point, I think I was accepting that Bear was too far gone, and I couldn’t really blame him for that. He was an animal who had been thrust into the cold, dark wilderness, and to expect him to be unchanged by that would be unfair. Still, I was building a family, and it was my duty to protect them. The next day, I got my opportunity to do just that when I spotted Bear once again lying in the center of the back lawn. I grabbed two baking sheets and walked outside, slapping them together and yelling. This loud display apparently worked, as he shot up and darted towards the tree line. I felt like absolute shit after doing this, but it was what needed to be done.
I thought that would be the end of it. I spooked him away, and now I could focus on getting our lives back to normal. Today was a Saturday morning, and instead of making pancakes, I intended on surprising my wife with breakfast from her favorite local donut shop, as she told me that she’d been craving them the night prior. I’m no dummy when it comes to hints, so I hopped into the car and peeled out onto the road, hoping I’d get there before all her favorite flavors sold out.
As I was speeding down the road, I saw it. Or, at least, I thought I did. Under one of the trees on the side of the road, I saw Bear. He was standing on his hind legs, with no support. He didn’t move his head to look at the car, or even show any kind of reaction to me passing him. He just sat there, doing nothing. I slammed on the brakes, and thank god there weren’t any other cars on the road at this time of day, because I would’ve caused an accident. I looked into the rearview mirror, and saw nothing under the tree. I jumped out of the car, looking around like a madman, and saw nothing. The woods were silent, save for the sound of wind and twigs snapping in the distance.
I got back into the car and took a moment before driving again. What I’d just seen, I wasn’t sure, and I was having a full-blown panic attack as a result. After I took some deep breaths, reason returned to me, and I figured that I was seeing things that weren’t there, in dark places in the light of dawn. I resumed driving, albeit at a much slower pace than before. I couldn’t exactly focus my full attention on the road.
When I got to the donut shop, I was met with a pleasant surprise - in line in front of me was the vet tech that I’d been seeing years ago. Even though we’d stopped seeing each other, we ended on fine terms, and didn’t harbor any bad feelings toward each other, as evidenced by the smile and hug we greeted each other with. She asked to grab a couple of coffees and donuts to catch up for a little bit before I returned home, and I agreed, wanting to get my mind off of things. She had done well for herself - she was a full blown vet now, and had been for some time. She was married and had a son, and gave me a bunch of jokey warnings about parenthood. The subject turned to pets, and even though I didn’t want to sour feelings between us, I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut about Bear.
I told her everything that happened, save for what I’d just seen fifteen minutes ago - I wasn’t even sure if I’d actually seen it. She looked concerned while I talked, and tried to interject a few times, but I just kept spilling my feelings. When the floor was finally hers, she hesitated for a second, and then spoke.
“That’s… impossible.”
“What?”
“I really didn’t wanna tell you this, because I didn’t wanna hurt you more, but a few months after we stopped talking, someone brought Bear into our office. He was hit by a car, and we did everything we could… but there was nothing we could do. I didn’t call you about it, because I didn’t think you wanted to hear that your dog was dead.”
I asked her how she was so sure. It couldn’t be. I’d seen my dog alive.
“His collar. He had his collar on when he came into the office. The red one with his name tag on it.”
I left the shop after that. I didn’t leave the parking lot, though. Not because I was afraid to go home, even if I was.
But because I was ashamed. I’m a bad husband. I forgot to get a lock for the doggy door.

Hi, I have a pattern I just bought and I am struggling because I think there may be a language barrier and I don’t think I can get a response from the pattern writer (I did reach out any way).
Basically it is a filet pattern, and you start with a long chain, then attach with a slip stitch to make a circle, then go back over the whole thing with a row of single crochet. My first question is, no where in the pattern does it say to chain and turn, but from my understanding that is something that normally is a good idea with working in the round in crochet. So should I just continue in a straight line or chain and turn? It then says after this to slip the row together.
My other question is that it’s working in double crochet + 1 chain. And the design is shown by using 2 double crochet instead of the 1dc + 1c. My problem is that it doesn’t say or imply anywhere that the double crochet + 1c means I skip a stitch but in the finished photos it looks like that’s what’s done. I did the whole first row and it isn’t even half way across so im assuming that’s the case? I am just wondering if these things are implied or if it could be a language thing. The first couple of times I implied what a pattern meant I was very wrong so I usually like to just stick to exactly what the pattern says but it’s looking like this one might be an exception.
Would love any help or advice with this! I am not a beginner at crochet but I do knit more now, but this is my first time doing a filet. Thanks!

Like all haunted house stories, this took place right after I moved in. Cliché, right? My wife and I saved up enough money from our rental to finally put down on a house of our own. So we moved in and everything seemed right...at first.
It wasn’t until later that I realized there were warning signs. The seller seemed really anxious to close, and we were offered a much cheaper price than we expected for the space we got. While there was a moment of doubt, we brushed it off as some weird circumstance that ended in a great deal for us.
How could we possibly pass that up?
The strange occurrences were small at first. I would be up late watching TV and swore I heard something. I’d pause the show and make out what sounded like dragging noises. After investigating, I wouldn’t find anything. Even stranger was that no matter where I walked in the house, the noise always sounded the same distance away. When I focused on it, I noticed the particular noise was rhythmic.
Tap, tap...sliiiiiiide.
It was like that every single time. My wife never heard it, it was only me. None of us believe in ghosts, mind you. But as I said before it was a small thing, so I brushed it off.
One night, I woke up in a startle. I listened intently but could hear nothing. I decided to grab a late night snack from the kitchen since I was awake anyway.
Halfway down the hall, I heard something. This time, it sounded like dirt being sifted und. I knelt down and swore that the sound was louder. Before I knew it, I had my ear pressed to the hardwood floor, listening intently.
Schht, schht.....sccchhhhhhh...
I jumped up from the floor. It was that same pattern of noises, but this time it sounded like someone in the dirt. Trying to ignore the chills washing over me, I took a step towards the kitchen when…
…something grabbed my ankle.
I fell forward, almost busting my chin on the floor.
“What the...”
Flipping over, I turned to face my assailant, but there was no one behind me. I brushed it off and chalked it up to poor balance from a sleep-hangover. My wife got a good chuckle out of that one.
After that, the house began to feel.....heavier. It was this weight over me that would come and go. This was accompanied by feeling cold no matter how much we turned up the heat, and this was the middle of the summer. Even stranger, the cold seemed to only be in certain spots, particularly on the floor itself. I liked to walk around barefoot no matter what time of year it was, but it was even too cold for me.
Another night, I woke up again. My ears stood at attention, but couldn’t hear any evidence of what woke me up. I got up just like before, except I never made it to the kitchen.
I only made if halfway down our hall before I suddenly felt a horrible pain in my right leg. I had to limp to keep moving, then my other leg was wracked with a wave of pain. It was so bad I found myself face down on the ground, writhing in agony.
Then I heard it again…that awful succession of noises.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
The sliding sound was coming from the hardwood floor this time, not from underneath. And the sound was getting closer and closer until...
I watched in horror as a hand came around the corner in front of me. It was soon joined by another, and they tugged at the floor. My heart hammered in my chest as a person slowly came into view.
It was a woman with long black hair, her disheveled clothing smeared with dirt and hanging off in shreds. Her mouth was crudely stitched shut. She looked up at me with empty, lost eyes and I instantly felt a lifetime of pain and misery. It took my breath away, and I had to focus on my breathing to keep myself from fainting.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
That awful sound repeated as she grabbed the floor and pulled herself towards me. I was in a terrified trance, eyes locked with her as she slowly closed the distance. I could now see that she dragged herself because her legs were horribly mangled. A low moan emanated from her throat, sending ice through my veins.
Her very presence seemed to drain me, and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. She made this awful gurgling sound as she got within arm’s reach. In seconds, her face was right up to mine. I tried to scream, but couldn’t make any sound.
Then...I woke up.
“AAAAHHhhh!” I shouted as I sprang up in bed.
My wife tried to console me, but it did very little. I’d never had a dream that felt so real before. Shaking, I walked out into the hallway where I had collapsed in my dream. I put a hand on the floor, expecting it to be freezing cold as usual.
But it was warm...
“Honey?” I felt the soft hand of my wife touch my shoulder.
“What’s going on? You look white as a sheet.”
“I’m okay...I just...”
On the floor in front me, I noticed the faint trace of fingernail marks.
“Was that there before?” My wife inquired.
“I’m...I’m not sure.”
“Let’s go back to bed. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”
I tried to hold back my stubborn expression, but she still saw it.
“C’mon, you need to rest.”
With an exasperated exhale, I went back to bed with the strange occurrence replaying incessantly in my brain.
In the morning, I told my wife about all the strange experiences. To my shock she actually believed me.
“What do you want to do, then?” She asked.
“Well...I have a theory I want to check out.”
“Theory of what?”
“Well, let’s just say that ghosts exist, and there are certain reasons why they haunt certain places. If that is true then...I think there could be a body in our crawlspace.”
“What, are you crazy?”
“I know how it sounds, but what would it hurt to look?”
“You really think there’s something down there?”
“More someone, but I’m not sure to be honest. Hopefully I can get a confirmation either way it goes.”
That afternoon, I found myself standing at the door to our crawlspace. It felt ridiculous, but so many details pointed to it. The sounds and cold spots were all related to the floor. The ghastly woman’s clothes were smeared with dirt. It was obscure, but it was all I had to go on.
I had to pry the door open with a crowbar, but I managed after a minute or two. A wave of unnatural cold air blasted me, so strong that I had to throw on a coat just to stop from shivering so badly.
I clicked on my flashlight, illuminating the eerie underbelly of our home. The dirt sifted under my feet as I crouch-walked around. After hearing it, it only confirmed what I thought I heard from under the floor.
Expecting to see more, I was almost disappointed that the crawlspace was completely bare. Not believing it entirely, I shined my light around more. The back part of the crawlspace led to concrete and it was there that I noticed one section of the wall looked different than the rest.
Hands quivering, I pushed against the section of concrete and felt it shift under the pressure. It continued to wobble around in place the more I pushed. Holding my flashlight between my teeth, I had to use both hands to pry the piece away from the wall. To my astonishment, it pulled away very easily. It was no coincidence that the section of wall fit the hole exactly, like a puzzle piece.
After leaning the piece of concrete against the wall, I found that the concrete was covering a door with a padlock.
There’s no way anything good is behind this...
Minutes later, I returned to the mysterious door with a pair of bolt cutters. I debated whether or not I’d go in. There was no reason I shouldn’t satisfy my curiosity, because if there wasn’t anything then great, but if there was something terrible, I’d simply have to deal with it. Either way, I had to know.
I clipped the metal bar off the lock and it thudded softly to the dirt floor. Taking in a deep breath, I dared to aim my beam down the opening. The crawlspace extended much further into the house, and I had a good guess where it led. I now had to crawl on my hands and knees as a knot of dread formed in my stomach.
“You always tell people not to do this in movies, why are you doing this now??!” I chastised myself.
I knew all too well how stupid this was but the part of my brain that can’t look away from a car wreck pushed me to carry along regardless.
It was difficult to navigate with the flashlight and crawl. A mild claustrophobia settled in that pushed me along with a sense of urgency. The temperature couldn’t have been any more than a meatlocker. My hands shook despite my thick jacket. Eventually, I came to a dead end.
Is this all?
I stopped for a moment and checked around with my light some more, hoping a more thorough search would bear some fruit. Yet, there was nothing.
Sighing in frustration, I decided that perhaps I was losing my mind and was just having really vivid dreams after all. How could I have been so stupid?
I made it halfway across the hidden area when I felt my legs suddenly give out. They weren’t tired or sore before this. It was as if they stopped working of their own volition. I attempted to cry out, but my mouth felt as if some force held it closed.
Just like a stitched mouth...
One of the few things I could move was my neck and I turned to the side to see...
…a tuft of a blanket?
Due to the narrow space, I must have missed it. I slowly reached for it with all the internal alarms in my body going off at once. Ignoring the warning, I pulled the cloth back to reveal a skeletal hand.
In this moment of revulsion, something turned on my motor skills again as I regained control of my legs, crawling out of there as quickly as I could muster. Heaving, I stumbled out of the crawlspace and instantly felt the rise in temperature. I sat on the porch and stayed there as I called the police and explained the situation.
It turns out that one of the previous owners of the home was a major suspect in the disappearance of a young lady fifteen years ago. There wasn’t enough evidence to conduct a home search so they were never able to find the body. And what they found was something I wish I had never known.
From examining the body, they found that her captor had broken both of her legs so she couldn’t escape and sewn her mouth shut to keep her from screaming. It was hard to tell how long she’d been locked down there before she died, but they hypothesized it was a month or two. The cause of death was unclear. This was clearly enough to pursue the former owner.
When they picked him up, the guy tried to play the ignorance card, pretending as if he didn’t know what house they were referring to. This of course made it even more suspicious.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything concrete enough to tie him to her death...until they searched his current home. Blueprints of the home showed that the crawlspace was supposed to end ten feet where the concrete wall was. No contractors were hired to do any work on the home, so someone had personally busted it up and created the door going further in. The last part of it was the padlock on the door.
When the police searched the man’s home, they found a shoebox full of seemingly innocent keepsakes. Among the keepsakes were some heirlooms, pictures of close family members, and a key. As suspected, the key matched the padlock to the crawlspace door. It was apparently enough to make him crack. It wasn’t long before he confessed to the kidnapping and murder, albeit without a hint of remorse. Turns out the bastard kept the key as a sick trophy.
They even questioned him about other possible victims since this was a trait commonly shared by serial killers. He denied it, but the police couldn’t feel any truth from it. If anything they knew that they solved one case, put a guilty man behind bars, and put a family at peace. Justice was served and he was locked away for the rest of his miserable life. Poetic justice, if you ask me. The poor girl’s parents buried her remains on a family plot.
After all this, we had serious doubts about staying in the home. Knowing something this egregious happened in our home was almost unbearable. I can’t tell you how much we cried when we heard the story of what happened to that poor girl. We were on the brink of selling the house for about a week, but one night changed all that.
I woke up from a dream, one so vivid yet it somehow escaped my thoughts like a fistful of sand. There was a strange feeling in my gut as if something was going to happen.
It was neither good nor bad, just....strange.
After drinking a small glass of milk, I meandered down the hall and stopped in my tracks. A woman stood in front of me, half-transparent with a bluish luminescence. I felt as if I knew her, although I didn’t recognize her appearance at all. She smiled, and I instantly knew who she was. Compared to her previous horrific manifestation, the woman was almost unrecognizable.
Never speaking, she motioned to her legs and I saw that they were in perfect condition. In a mild state of shock, I managed to form a smile. She beamed even wider and ran her fingers across her lips, pointing out her lack of stitches. A blanket of warmth wrapped around me, and I couldn’t resist the salty tears that streamed down my face.
Right before she waved goodbye, a voice spoke within my mind.
"It’s over now. Thank you..."
She faded away, and for the first time since we moved into that house, all hints of the oppressive energy dissipated. That was the last time I ever saw her.
It’s been 30 years now, and we’re still in that house to this day...
May she continue to rest in peace...

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
We pulled off I-51 a little after midnight, stopping at a truck stop which was couched between the highway and a large forest.
We waited in the van for ten minutes or so. Trent had increased the sonar radius to its maximum of 30 miles a little over an hour ago. Somehow the red pings had kept up with us, holding a steady distance of around 20 miles. Considering we were averaging around 80 mph, and a coyote's top speed is only around 40 mph, we figured they had been enhanced in some way. Either that, or they shape-shifted into something faster. Regardless, now that we had stopped, we waited to see if the demon spawn would try and close the distance. Luckily, or unluckily, they didn't. They kept their 20 mile buffer, but we noticed they were beginning to spread out along the circumference of that boundary.
"We're close. They know that, so they're trying to trap us in." Trent said.
"Trying to?—more like they have."
We considered whether we should stay in the van and keep watch, but we figured that would do us little good. At their speed, they could be on us in ten minutes, which means we would need to stay up all night and keep tabs on their positions. Trent offered to stay up, of course, but I shut him down.
"The demon doesn't want to kill us now. You said it yourself. Plus, we need our rest. If they come, they come."
Trent didn't like it, but he acquiesced.
The truck stop had all the essentials: a gas station and mini mart with showers and an attached McDonald's, a large parking lot for truckers to idle and sleep, and even a section with lodging for those who wanted a more comfortable night's rest. I told Trent that he should take advantage of the showers, and after a little convincing, he agreed. While he was cleaning himself up, I patrolled the dingy, half-stocked aisles of "Daisy's Quick Mart". I probably would have been appalled at the quality of the store had I actually been paying any attention to it whatsoever. But I wasn't. I was thinking hard about what awaited me tomorrow.
During the drive, I had asked Trent why the demon would want us to return to the crash site. What did he mean that I would be 'confronting a dark entity in a place he couldn't help me'? He seemed hesitant to answer, but my little stunt outside the storage facility seemed to have sufficiently motivated him.
"When I said I've never done this before, I meant it." Trent started. "I've never done this exact thing before—meaning I've never projected someone into the past."
"So, I'm time traveling?" I asked.
"No—don't think of it like that." Trent paused, trying to come up with a good explanation. "It's more like I'm opening a window for you to look through: not a door. You're going to see the past, but you can't interact with the physicalities there. But that doesn't mean you can't interact with anything."
There was a space of silence as Trent tried to let me work out his meaning for myself. "I don't get it. Are you saying there's something I can interact with? Like what?" And then it hit me. "The demon. The demon can interact with me? Meaning what? It can kill me?"
"Meaning… I'm not exactly sure. You're going to be in a kind of psychic space. If it does damage, it won't be to your body. It'll be to your mind—or spirit. But I don't know what the limits of that damage could be. I just don't have those answers."
"If you've never done this, how do you know any of it will work?"
"That's an easy one." Trent answered. "Because it's been done to me."
There was silence.
"Look, if I know anything, I know my tech. Don't doubt that this will work. It's my job to make sure it does. I just need you to be in the right mental for this. Just because it knows your coming doesn't mean it automatically has the upper hand. It won't be able to see you unless you make contact with it first. In other words, you have to initiate contact. As long as you remain a spectator, you should be okay. Trust me. Just don't make contact."
I started pacing faster—fast enough to catch the attention of the overnight shift worker, a young man whose name I can't quite remember. I know it started with a "J". Jake, maybe? Anyway, he asked if I was alright, to which I responded in the affirmative. He left me alone for another couple passes, but when I almost ran into one of the shelves, he stood up and said, "Uh—I'm going to have to ask you to stop running around. I don't want you to hurt yourself."
I must have stared daggers at him, because he recoiled from my gaze. What's gotten into me? I thought. Then, steadying myself, I apologized. I looked around and grabbed the nearest edible looking piece of merchandise: a bag of Swedish Fish, and placed it down on the counter. "Just this, please."
The cashier rang me up. It was surprisingly cheap.
"Are you sure you're alright?" the young man asked. He was tall with brown hair. He seemed tired—maybe even more tired than me. But he also seemed kind.
I smiled as best I could and said, "No, I'm not. But there's not really anything you can do. Hell, there might not be anything I can do." I furrowed my eyebrows at my own response, realizing that imminent death may have broken my verbal filter.
On the other hand, the cashier did not seem surprised at all. "Ah, I see. It's one of those problems." He responded. "Well, hey, for what it's worth, you seem like one of the resilient ones. I think you'll be alright."
I only smiled and nodded at his mildly cryptic comment. Looking back, the whole interaction was a bit strange, but I had way too much mental clutter to recognize that in the moment. I took my Swedish Fish and walked through the anteroom which led to McDonald's. I found an open yellow booth that wasn't littered with crumpled straw sleeves and sat down, chomping mindlessly on my little red fish until Trent returned. When he arrived, he took my place, and I went to shower. After we were both clean and fed, we returned to the van. The pings were still pushed safely out of harm's way. But that didn't mean we were out of harm's way. Trent asked me if I wanted to sleep in the van, saying that "it'd be the safest place."
I thought it over. He was right, obviously. The van was not only outfitted with weapons I couldn't even begin to understand, but it was also our escape, and it would be just as difficult, if not more difficult to break into than the studio-style motel rooms with their wood doors and big windows. Still, if this was going to be my last night on earth, I wanted to sleep in a bed. A real bed. Trent understood and said he'd stay parked right outside my room for the night.
After purchasing a key from the night attendant, I moseyed over to the cement walkways which connected the twenty or so rooms. Mine was room #56, which I thought was odd since, like I said, there were only 20 rooms. I lugged in my tomato plushie and dad's old book and placed them on the queen mattress.
"I'll be right outside." Trent said after I collapsed onto the bed.
"Trent," I called out, stopping him half-way through the door.
"Yeah?"
All the blood in my body rushed up to my face as I realized my unfiltered mouth almost reflexively said the word "stay". I stared at Trent, my heart beating, my face hot. I considered asking him to sleep on the floor like my dad, but that would be childish and impolite. The alternative was to share my bed… Or I could take the floor.
"I'll just be right outside." Trent said before my mind processed a solution. "Come by if you need anything. I'll be up most of the night anyway."
"Okay," I replied in a faint voice.
Trent shut the door.
I sat atop the bedsheets and acquainted myself with my new living space. A feeling of regret closed over me as I considered that even sleeping on a carseat would have been better if it meant I didn't have to be alone. With a sigh, I turned on the bedside lamp and grabbed the book and stuffed tomato, using the tomato as a backrest as I slipped my legs under the covers and situated the book upright on my thighs. I cracked it open and was immediately blasted with a puff of dusty, old book scent. It was ripe at first, and I turned my head away to sneeze, but as I perused through the pages, the scent grew on me. It reminded me of the days growing up when I'd step into dad's study and read through one of the many volumes on cryptic topics which were at least two college degrees above my Lexile range.
I was only a couple minutes into browsing the collection of different scientific and philosophical works when I came across a page which contained highlighted text. This was unusual, as my dad would never mark up his books. He was a purist on that point. I rubbed my thumb over the yellow lines, and sure enough, it was highlighter.
The highlighted text was part of a small book by Carl Jung called "Synchronicity". There were a total of three pages that were marked, and they advanced like this:
Page 5:
The philosophical principle that underlies our conception of natural law is causality*. But if the connection between cause and effect turns out to be only statistically valid and relatively true, then the causal principle is only of relative use for explaining natural processes… That is as much to say that the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and require another principle of explanation.*
Page 19:
…there are events which are related to one another experimentally, and in this case meaningfully*, without there being any possibility of proving that this relation is a causal one, since the "transmission" exhibits none of the known properties of energy…a situation which does not yet exist and will only occur in the future could transmit itself as a phenomenon of energy to a receiver in the present…Therefore, it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity... "synchronicity"*
Page 22:
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer… which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.
I flipped through the rest of the pages of the book. There was no more highlighted text, but there was a message on the last page which read:
Matthew 7:7-8
I'll meet you in the darkest place.
He also included his typical smiley face which had an ovular shape and three sprouts of hair which I now realized kind of resembled my tomato plushie. It was my dad's writing, of course. But why? And how? What did this mean?
The motel had a Bible stashed away in the nighstand drawer. I got it out and looked up the verses which read the following:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
I spent maybe an hour ruminating on all of this. The whole discourse on energy and causality and a "falling together in time" just seemed so right. It was clear that my dad definitely did know what I was going through, but for whatever reason, he made it seem like he was oblivious. Why had he hidden that from me? I felt like I was being pulled in two directions. On the one hand, my dad loved me enough to leave this note, maybe even knowing the exact moment I'd need it. But on the other hand, he had neglected my struggles throughout my entire childhood. He even lied at times. Was this really enough to make up for all of that?
And then there was the section about the future transmitting energy to the past. I read back through the whole paragraph and the original writer had meant it to say this as something that wasn't possible, but my dad's highlighting made it seem like he wanted to flip the meaning. The future does affect the past. I thought about where I was headed and wondered if I would soon discover that for myself.
Lastly, dad's message. The Bible verse reminded me of the first time I prayed; how I reached out to God and received peace as an answer to my prayer. Now I feel like I'm actively seeking… something, but I don't know yet what I'll find. And then there's knocking. At first that reminded me of the story with the beetle tapping on the window, but then I went back even deeper in my memory and dug out the monster tapping at my window, and the words my dad spoke to me in order to set my mind at ease: "you're a superhero. And you know what your greatest superpower is? Your greatest power is you get to tell the monsters what to do. Because the monsters are only as strong as the stories you tell about them…so if you're ever scared, honey, just dream up a better story."
I was crying into my stuffed tomato now. I felt like all the blinking pieces of my life had finally been pulled together into a completed puzzle. This was all by design. My entire life, filled with so much chaos and confusion, was actually preparing me for this moment. And my dad thought I had the tools and strength enough to get through it. I flipped through the book one more time, thinking maybe he had left some other hidden comment—some formula to defeat this demon and return home. But there was nothing. Only that one comment: "I'll meet you in the darkest place."
What's the darkest place, dad? Is that where I'm going? Are you saying you'll be there, too?
With those thoughts in mind, my eyes became heavy shutters which, with a slight pressure on the pulley, winded shut. My swimming thoughts and firework-like fears dissipated, and I returned to a precious childhood memory. It was after an evening soccer practice. Summer. Dad was driving me to Dairy Queen. I got a cherry-dipped twist cone. I was happy.
So, so happy.
***
I woke up to sunlight blaring through my windows. Shit, I overslept, was my immediate thought. I threw off my covers and opened the front door. A glance at the clock showed 1:13 PM. I shouldn't have even been allowed to stay checked in this long. Damn, am I gonna get double-billed for this?
I heard a rummaging sound around the corner of my motel room. It sounded like a squirrel was trying to find an afternoon snack in one of the garbage bins. I stepped outside. The sun was extremely bright, to the point where I had to squint and put my hand over my eyes to even see the ground in front of me. I was trying to walk toward the van, but somehow I ended up in front of the trash bins where the animal's tail was sticking out from a turned-over, silver garbage can. Its tail was wagging excitedly, and I remember thinking that it was much too large to be a squirrel.
The animal bent down as if biting onto something, and I heard the sound of its growl as it struggled to tug whatever it was free from the barrel. Inch by inch, the creature backed out of the canister, and more of its sharp, sticky hair was revealed. I heard something snap, then the creature leapt back and I saw what it was chomping on. My eyes widened in horror as the pink tube of a human intestine was pulled taut like the end of a tangled hose. Blood and entrails were spilling out of the human's opened gut. And then, behind the canine, I saw the person's face. His face was pale white, his eyes closed, and his hair was slicked back… It was Trent.
Before I could react, I heard footsteps approaching from behind. I whirled around and saw my dad. But—no, it wasn't him. It was someone wearing a paper-mache face mask that was painted to look like my dad. The forehead of the mask was already beginning to crack, white specks breaking off like sawdust. Through the cracks, I could see the figure's true form. I didn't know darkness had its own type of light, but that's the only way to describe it. It was as if malevolence itself was reified into a skin which was actually an amalgamation of millions of little, oozing parasites that leached into the nearby light. When it finally spoke, the demon's voice was a full octave lower than the old man's at the deli. And it had an earth-stilling gravitas.
"Today's the day!" He sang and reached into his pocket. His lips curled upward into a foxy smirk. "You have no idea how long I've waited for this day." He said and held up a razor blade. Half his facade had already fallen apart, and now I could see the bugs up close, writhing in what was either horror or ecstasy. And his scent… it was somehow more rank than the rabid coyote rummaging through the trash can with Trent's cut open body inside. The demon closed in on my position, and in one, decisive motion, he brought the blade close to his chin, then sliced it across my throat. "Wake up!" He screamed.
I jumped out of my bed and grabbed my throat, feeling the cold sting of its quick slice. Hyperventilating, I patted the area down, trying to hold the blood in, but when I removed my hands, I saw they were dry. It was only a dream, I thought. Gray light was only beginning to filter in through the drapes. I'm in my hotel room. I'm safe. I tried consoling, but the pragmatic mental massages weren't enough to hold the force of my knees buckling. I dropped onto the carpet and cried for a long while.
Outside, rain was beginning to fall.
***
By the time I met up with Trent, I had already composed myself and decided to keep my dad's message and the nightmare to myself. None of it seemed particularly productive from a logistical standpoint, anyway. And I wanted to focus on the mission.
We stopped by McDonald's and bought a couple cups of coffee. Trent asked if I wanted any food, and I declined. Black coffee seemed like the only thing my stomach could take at the present moment. I could tell Trent was hungry, but he tried playing it off (I guess to be respectful of me?) I told him to knock it off and get something to eat. I didn't need my Charon getting lightheaded and dropping the paddle before he finished rowing me to Hell. He didn't care much for my joke, but he ordered a couple Chicken McGriddles at the kiosk anyway.
There were maybe ten patrons spread throughout the restaurant. We sat down at the same booth from the prior night, this time across from one another. Trent spent the first ten minutes or so babbling about our fuel supply and the logistics of the trip from here on in. Practical stuff. I've come to realize that's how he deals with his stress. He talks it out in short, durable sentences. I mostly nodded and watched as what looked like a storm front closed in on the truck stop. The sky was overcast, and there were darker clouds in the distance. The rain was still only a patter, but a middle-aged man wearing a yellow bow tie on the wall-mounted TV confirmed that there would be heavier rain and thunderstorms very soon.
After the worker delivered Trent's food and he ate it in record time, I posed the one question that was still on my mind.
"How do I fight him?" I asked.
Trent finished a large gulp of his coffee, then looked at me. It was the first substantial thing I'd said all morning; Trent could tell something was off with me, but he figured there was no point in asking what it was. "By 'him', I assume you mean the demon?"
I nodded.
Trent licked his teeth clean. "You could try praying again."
"I'm serious," I responded.
"I'm serious, too. It worked before, didn't it?"
"You mean at my house?"
Trent nodded.
"I thought you weren't a religious man?"
"I'm not. Just a practical one. If praying worked before, maybe it'll work again."
"That's the best you've got? A maybe?"
"No, I've got a lot of shit better than a maybe." He answered. "It's just not accessible where you're going. Which is why I recommend not making contact on the first run."
"First run? So we're going to do this more than once?"
"At least," Trent answered. Then, seeing my expression, he continued. "What? You thought this was going to be a one-and-done? We have to conduct some research first. I did tell you this was new for me, right?"
Somehow Trent's response had set my mind at ease a little. I was going to have more than one chance. Of course, why wouldn't I be able to go back more than once?
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier? It would have gone a long way in easing my mind."
Trent lifted his hands in defense. "Sorry, I just thought that was a given. I mean, what we're doing is dangerous, just like I said, but it doesn't mean we aren't going to approach this as safely and scientifically as possible. However, there is a different problem with running multiple trials."
"The Organization?"
"That's right," Trent said like a proud parent. "Our little experiment will be like a giant spotlight, and the longer we wait around after it's on us, the greater the chance we'll have unwelcome company."
"So, safe but speedy."
"Safe but speedy. Exactly."
***
We fueled up and were back on the road a little after 8:00. From that point on, Trent and I were absolutely silent. I had the distinct feeling of being in the eye of a storm. The pings moved closer commensurate with our progress toward the crash site. The cloudfront continued its advance. And I noticed a haze beginning to descend onto the road ahead of us. It was fog.
We meandered further inland, the forest thickening around us until the rain almost stopped entirely—the leaves drinking it up before it fell onto our windshield. I kept my eyes on the radar. We were approaching the large yellow circle which indicated we had arrived. As we pulled closer, I began to feel things. Fear. Eeriness. Doubt. Then happiness. Hope. Love. Normally feelings like these had a clear source to picture, but these sensations came on in waves without any discernible reason. It was almost as if they were blinking into existence inside me.
"Here we go," Trent said like an airline pilot readying his crew for turbulence.
I still recall the exact moment we crossed the boundary into the area of higher energy. It was like something just "clicked" in my brain, and all of a sudden everything felt so much closer. The sound of the rain against the trees was almost right next to my ear. The trees in the distance would oscillate between their position a half-mile out, then suddenly seem five meters away. If I focused on something long enough, it began to radiate those same ethereal particles as when Trent released Ava's "phase lock". I checked to make sure the shifter wasn't set to "TD". Sure enough, it was still in drive.
"Can you see them?" Trent asked. "The shifts?"
"Yeah," I said in a dreamy voice. I felt like I was driving through a wonderland.
"It's the energy. I barely notice a difference. A bit of movement in the trees, but not much else. But I'm sure for you, it's a whole experience."
"What is this?" I raised my hand and caught some of the pixel dust dripping off the sun visor. It disappeared when it made contact with my hand.
"It's a kind of radiation. Everything emits it, just in different quantities. I'm still not exactly sure how it relates to the other realms, but I'm guessing it's a kind of primordial matter that helps connect our worlds."
"It's beautiful," I exclaimed. "I wish I could see the world like this all the time."
"Maybe you will," Trent whispered.
As we arrived at the crash site, I began to get glimpses of the past. My childhood dreams and memories were pushing their way out from my subconscious. I noticed an increased number of blinks, which were validated by Ava who reported the following: "Currently detecting 14,350 novel emergences and 2,777 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 2,777."
"That's a lot of blinks." I remarked. "Why doesn't Ava include them in the net anomalies?"
Trent turned his head so I could see his smirk. "Because blinks aren't anomalies."
I thought about it for a second. Blinks aren't anomalies. "I never thought about it that way."
"It's hard to think about it that way when 'normal' for most people means not picking up on a fundamental aspect of reality. But that doesn't make it any less real."
We continued past the epicenter of the yellow circle. "Are we not stopping?" I asked. "I think we already passed the crash site."
"It doesn't have to be exactly at the site," Trent said. "Plus, we don't want to stop on the side of the road and risk getting some civilian involved. There's a field about half a mile up ahead. I'm going to pull off the road and set up camp there.
The "field" that Trent was referring to was actually a large clearing that dipped down into several trench-like troughs which were filled to the brim with fog like witches cauldrons. Further on in the distance, I saw open fields, probably used for farming, and then a large hill where the trees once again reasserted themselves. We had pulled off the road and up a small incline where the trees had already been broken down, leaving a trail for us to drive through. When we surfaced at the edge of the clearing, Trent pulled us onto a flat bed of dried mud which was maybe thirty yards long.
"Here," he said with a sigh.
We both sat for a minute, looking around at the field. We had finally arrived. The rain was beginning to pick up, and the dark sky made it almost impossible to discern the time of day.
"You ready?" Trent asked.
I looked at him. Really looked at him. In his blue eyes. Was I ready? Did it even matter?
"Let's do this," I said.
***
This was the first time I was really able to inspect the back of Trent's van. He had talked up his gear a lot, and honestly, I was impressed. Not in the way that a scientist is impressed by another scientist's lab—I wasn't any kind of expert—but it still seemed remarkably well managed. Now that I was in a state where my vision had been enhanced, I could actually see the enigmatic particles circulating through the pneumatic tubes which were coiled like the pipes and valves of an elaborate wind instrument. The walls of the van, itself, were glistening white, making it easier to make out everything else inside. Along the floor were five overturned columns. Each column was dark and had a vibrating quality, as if they were charged with energy. Then atop the center three columns was a small altar which supported an apparatus with two skinny, metal arms holding a silver halo. At present, the arms were folded and the halo was suspended a few inches above the altar, faced-down. I thought maybe I'd see particles exuding from it, but instead it was emitting visible waves which bent and warped everything they touched.
"That thing is emitting a lot of energy." I remarked, gesturing toward the halo.
Trent stepped in between the columns and started pulling out the packages he had stuffed in there yesterday. "Just wait till' it's on."
Most of the packages contained only a single piece of equipment, and were otherwise packed with foam peanuts. We carefully removed each box and set them on the ground outside. I asked if the rain would damage any of the stuff inside, to which Trent only laughed and continued lugging out the boxes. When they were all out, Trent removed a box cutter from his pocket and went one-by-one opening them. There were eight pieces in total.
"What is it?" I asked as we fished the first item out.
"It's another apparatus, like the one inside. Except it'll mount on the ground out here."
I pulled out what looked like a metal tripod.
"Good, that'll go on the bottom."
"Where are we setting it up?"
"Over here," Trent said and stepped five paces away from the van. He coordinated himself up so he was centrally aligned with the inner ring, then stomped a few times. "This is the spot."
As we continued to work, I asked Trent about how the whole contraption works.
"Do you remember the first time we were in the van? When we had to escape from the semi-truck?" Trent asked and connected a secondary mounting apparatus on top of the tripod. It had four spider-like legs that made right angles and stuck into the ground.
"Of course," I said. "The 'phase lock'."
"Yeah," Trent said and gestured toward the metal stick that was in my hand. I handed it to him. "The phase lock is a seal on the level of energy that the van is allowed to release. It also controls its dispersion pattern so that it releases its energy in a steady wave. This allows Ava to scan for anomalies without causing us to become an anomaly." Trent stuck the plank into the neck of the tripod.
"So when you released the phase lock, we started emitting more energy."
"That's right." Trent confirmed. "Enough to create an alternate route through a different realm."
"So we blinked into a different realm, then back, just to avoid that truck?"
"That's right."
"But why couldn't we just move out of the way?"
"Because it had locked onto us. It was tracking our motion and adjusting its course based on the amount of energy we were emitting. So in order to escape, we had to radically skew our potential energy and then use it to shift."
"Couldn't he have just followed us?"
Trent connected four more pieces to the device which now looked like an elaborate teepee. He was fishing in the last box when he spoke again. "Yeah, he could have. But it was highly improbable that he would have found us." Trent returned from the bottom of the box with another silver ring in hand. "Think of it like this. Let's say you're trying to escape from some bad guy who's coming after you, and you enter a new room you've never seen before. Would you prefer this room to have three doors to go through, or ten?"
I thought about his riddle for a second, then responded, "It depends where they go."
Trent fastened the ring atop the teepee. "Let's say they all lead to random places, or let's say they're all closets that lead nowhere. The key is that more is better, because the more doors he has to check, the less likely he is to pick the correct one. Make sense?"
"So we opened up a bunch of doors and escaped through one at random?"
"Hence the gear 'TD', for 'Trap Door'."
I marveled at the insights, but not for long. Trent hopped back in the van and pulled a lever that I hadn't seen until now. The two metal arms raised the inner ring until it was perpendicular with the altar. Then Trent clicked one of three red buttons along the back wall, and I saw what looked like a large, glass eye suspended in a magnifying glass protruding from the wall, aligned with the center of both rings. A couple seconds later, the glass eye began to focus the energy which was being fed to it from the pneumatic tubes, and a blue pyramid of light projected from it into the first ring, then from the first ring into the second ring. All three pieces were aligned at slightly diminishing heights, so the cylinder of light beamed through the second ring, into the ground.
"Alright, time for the first trial."
I felt the nerves starting up in my stomach. Trent sensed this and hopped out of the truck. It was raining quite hard now, though it was still warm. Both Trent and I were soaked, but that hardly concerned us. He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. "I know you're feeling scared." He said. "But trust me on this. You're going to do fine. Just keep in mind what we talked about. Stay a spectator. Okay?"
I looked into his blue eyes, which seemed especially gray in the dark. Still, Trent's voice was reassuring. All I had to do was trust him. Trust myself. Trust my dad. And it was all going to turn out right.
"I'm ready," I said.
Trent was still for a second, holding my eyes in his. Then he guided me behind the outer ring and into the cylinder of light.
"I should step into it now?" I asked, afraid I'd be called away immediately.
"It's not on yet, so don't worry. I still have to press another button."
I followed Trent's instructions and stood in the blue light which was centered on my chest. Then I watched as Trent ran into the back of the van and posted up next to the glass eye. "Ready?" He yelled out. It was hard to hear him over the rain, but I yelled back. "Ready!"
The next thing I saw was a blinding blue light beam from the van. I heard what sounded like a laser, then saw the cylinder oscillate, expanding and compressing. When the energy reached the second ring, I saw everything around me light up—it looked brighter than noon on a cloudless day. Then the oscillations made their way to me, and I was swallowed up whole.
***
When I came to, I was in the backseat of a car. I felt my butt rumbling. Everything was dim and quiet. And then I heard a woman's voice from in front of me.
"Mark, please, not with Lauren in the back."
The man, who I now identified as my father, pulled the cigarette away from his lips and blew the smoke at my mom. He eyed the back seat where I was sitting, using one of five markers that hadn't rolled off my lap to color a rabbit in my animal color book.
"The kid's fine." he said and took another drag.
"Mark," my mom repeated.
I saw my dad raise his hand in a rapid motion. "I said she's fine, Cheryl. Now check the map and make sure we're going the right away. I can't see shit with all this fog."
I took a moment to make sure I was really in the back seat. I patted myself. I clearly had weight. Then I tried touching the car. At first, my fingertips met a solid surface, but when I tried to press through, my hand slipped into the car. I quickly pulled my hand away as if I had reached into a fire.
That's when I heard the little three year old next to me start crying. I turned and saw that little-me had dropped another couple markers onto the ground and was struggling to reach them.
"Hey!" my dad shouted. "What did I say about crying?"
"Quit it, Mark. She just dropped her markers." said my mom; she turned to help me pick them up.
"What did you say to me?" Mark spat with a voice full of guile. He reached out and pushed her back into her seat. "Don't," he commanded. "She has to learn how to deal with life."
"Deal…" My mom started in disbelief. "Deal with life? Do you hear yourself? What's gotten into you?"
"Sometimes shit happens. It doesn't give her the right to cry. You helping her is just going to reinforce her behavior."
"Her behavior? What about your behavior? You're acting like a total dick."
I didn't even have a moment to react before my dad's hand was across my mom's face. I felt the slap more than I heard it, my own face seeming to swell with the force of the blow. I saw my mom cover her mouth and lean away. Then little-me began to cry even louder, which only challenged my dad to step up his own volume.
"Everyone needs to get a fucking grip before I crash this car." My dad shouted and took another drag. The scariest part was I couldn't tell if he was warning us or threatening us. I felt the sudden urge to do something. There was no way this was real. I was definitely in some fantasy concocted by the demon. He wanted to turn me against my dad. That was the only explanation for something like this. My dad was a good man, not… this.
As I contemplated what to do, I saw a small, golden light appear behind little-me's window. Apparently she saw it, too, because her cries hushed as she traced the wisp with her eyes. After a second, the wisp transformed into a bunny rabbit, reminiscent of the one she was coloring. The rabbit hopped alongside the window, then did a couple circles in place. I watched little me let out a playful laugh and reach toward the window.
"What's going on back there?" my dad asked with a scowl. Apparently the only sound more disturbing than cries were laughs.
I looked back to the front and saw my mom wiping blood from her lip. Her expression was miserable. "Leave her alone, Mark."
"I'll do whatever I damn well want to do, Cheryl. It's my kid back there."
My mom was quiet.
When I looked back toward the rabbit, it was no longer a rabbit but a person. Or at least it looked like a person. The figure radiated pure gold, and atop his head was what appeared to be a King's crown. I recalled Allison's experience of seeing the sun-like figure in her moment of distress. Was that what was happening here? Was this really all true?
"Hey!" My dad shouted, eyeing little-me from the rear-view mirror. "What are you reaching at?"
I looked and saw the golden figure extending his hand toward the window, and little me's hand was reaching back. "Mom, dad, it bright." little-me said.
"What's bright, honey?" my mom asked.
"Don't encourage her, Cheryl."
"Someone there!" little me shouted happily and dropped the rest of the markers and the coloring book onto the ground.
"Who's there?" asked my mom.
"Cheryl, I swear to God. Sit the fuck down."
Everything from that moment on happened so quickly I barely had any time to process it. My mom lifted out of her seat to either get little me's attention or help me pick up my coloring book. My dad responded by grabbing onto her throat, letting go of the steering wheel entirely. He threw her back against the car door, and her head hit the window so hard, the glass cracked. My dad had dropped his cigarette, and I could smell smoke coming from under his seat, but that didn't seem to bother him at all. He turned toward little-me at the same moment my three-year-old hand reached out and grabbed onto the golden figure, whose hand diffused through the window. When my dad turned, I got a whiff of the most awful smell that I wouldn't have been able to place had I not had that nightmare last night. He grabbed onto little-me's shoulder and tugged her away from the golden figure that was trying to pull her the other way. My dad's facade began to crack, and I could see those dark bugs crawling out from the pores in his arms, marching down toward little-me.
I reacted.
I grabbed onto my dad's arm and pulled him off little-me. I heard the sound of my shirt ripping as she was torn from his grip and pulled out of the car, diffusing through it like a ghost. My brief victory was immediately overturned as I saw what was now clearly the demon smiling at me, his wretched fingers curled around my forearm.
"Caught you," He sneered.
Then the whole world once again diffused into countless numbers of particles, only this time, instead of riding through it, I felt like I was falling through an elevator shaft with each floor darker than the last. The further I fell, the less I became aware of my surroundings, and the more I felt a deep sense of loneliness. It was as if I was the only person in the whole world: and the whole world was a prison designed entirely for me. This went on for so long, I began to forget who I was. Where I was. What was.
And then I landed.
***
Source Used:
Jung, Carl. Synchronicity. Translated by Sonu Shamdasani, Princeton University Press, 2010.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Content Warning: Domestic Abuse
***
We pulled off I-51 a little after midnight, stopping at a truck stop which was couched between the highway and a large forest.
We waited in the van for ten minutes or so. Trent had increased the sonar radius to its maximum of 30 miles a little over an hour ago. Somehow the red pings had kept up with us, holding a steady distance of around 20 miles. Considering we were averaging around 80 mph, and a coyote's top speed is only around 40 mph, we figured they had been enhanced in some way. Either that, or they shape-shifted into something faster. Regardless, now that we had stopped, we waited to see if the demon spawn would try and close the distance. Luckily, or unluckily, they didn't. They kept their 20 mile buffer, but we noticed they were beginning to spread out along the circumference of that boundary.
"We're close. They know that, so they're trying to trap us in." Trent said.
"Trying to?—more like they have."
We considered whether we should stay in the van and keep watch, but we figured that would do us little good. At their speed, they could be on us in ten minutes, which means we would need to stay up all night and keep tabs on their positions. Trent offered to stay up, of course, but I shut him down.
"The demon doesn't want to kill us now. You said it yourself. Plus, we need our rest. If they come, they come."
Trent didn't like it, but he acquiesced.
The truck stop had all the essentials: a gas station and mini mart with showers and an attached McDonald's, a large parking lot for truckers to idle and sleep, and even a section with lodging for those who wanted a more comfortable night's rest. I told Trent that he should take advantage of the showers, and after a little convincing, he agreed. While he was cleaning himself up, I patrolled the dingy, half-stocked aisles of "Daisy's Quick Mart". I probably would have been appalled at the quality of the store had I actually been paying any attention to it whatsoever. But I wasn't. I was thinking hard about what awaited me tomorrow.
During the drive, I had asked Trent why the demon would want us to return to the crash site. What did he mean that I would be 'confronting a dark entity in a place he couldn't help me'? He seemed hesitant to answer, but my little stunt outside the storage facility seemed to have sufficiently motivated him.
"When I said I've never done this before, I meant it." Trent started. "I've never done this exact thing before—meaning I've never projected someone into the past."
"So, I'm time traveling?" I asked.
"No—don't think of it like that." Trent paused, trying to come up with a good explanation. "It's more like I'm opening a window for you to look through: not a door. You're going to see the past, but you can't interact with the physicalities there. But that doesn't mean you can't interact with anything."
There was a space of silence as Trent tried to let me work out his meaning for myself. "I don't get it. Are you saying there's something I can interact with? Like what?" And then it hit me. "The demon. The demon can interact with me? Meaning what? It can kill me?"
"Meaning… I'm not exactly sure. You're going to be in a kind of psychic space. If it does damage, it won't be to your body. It'll be to your mind—or spirit. But I don't know what the limits of that damage could be. I just don't have those answers."
"If you've never done this, how do you know any of it will work?"
"That's an easy one." Trent answered. "Because it's been done to me."
There was silence.
"Look, if I know anything, I know my tech. Don't doubt that this will work. It's my job to make sure it does. I just need you to be in the right mental for this. Just because it knows your coming doesn't mean it automatically has the upper hand. It won't be able to see you unless you make contact with it first. In other words, you have to initiate contact. As long as you remain a spectator, you should be okay. Trust me. Just don't make contact."
I started pacing faster—fast enough to catch the attention of the overnight shift worker, a young man whose name I can't quite remember. I know it started with a "J". Jake, maybe? Anyway, he asked if I was alright, to which I responded in the affirmative. He left me alone for another couple passes, but when I almost ran into one of the shelves, he stood up and said, "Uh—I'm going to have to ask you to stop running around. I don't want you to hurt yourself."
I must have stared daggers at him, because he recoiled from my gaze. What's gotten into me? I thought. Then, steadying myself, I apologized. I looked around and grabbed the nearest edible looking piece of merchandise: a bag of Swedish Fish, and placed it down on the counter. "Just this, please."
The cashier rang me up. It was surprisingly cheap.
"Are you sure you're alright?" the young man asked. He was tall with brown hair. He seemed tired—maybe even more tired than me. But he also seemed kind.
I smiled as best I could and said, "No, I'm not. But there's not really anything you can do. Hell, there might not be anything I can do." I furrowed my eyebrows at my own response, realizing that imminent death may have broken my verbal filter.
On the other hand, the cashier did not seem surprised at all. "Ah, I see. It's one of those problems." He responded. "Well, hey, for what it's worth, you seem like one of the resilient ones. I think you'll be alright."
I only smiled and nodded at his mildly cryptic comment. Looking back, the whole interaction was a bit strange, but I had way too much mental clutter to recognize that in the moment. I took my Swedish Fish and walked through the anteroom which led to McDonald's. I found an open yellow booth that wasn't littered with crumpled straw sleeves and sat down, chomping mindlessly on my little red fish until Trent returned. When he arrived, he took my place, and I went to shower. After we were both clean and fed, we returned to the van. The pings were still pushed safely out of harm's way. But that didn't mean we were out of harm's way. Trent asked me if I wanted to sleep in the van, saying that "it'd be the safest place."
I thought it over. He was right, obviously. The van was not only outfitted with weapons I couldn't even begin to understand, but it was also our escape, and it would be just as difficult, if not more difficult to break into than the studio-style motel rooms with their wood doors and big windows. Still, if this was going to be my last night on earth, I wanted to sleep in a bed. A real bed. Trent understood and said he'd stay parked right outside my room for the night.
After purchasing a key from the night attendant, I moseyed over to the cement walkways which connected the twenty or so rooms. Mine was room #56, which I thought was odd since, like I said, there were only 20 rooms. I lugged in my tomato plushie and dad's old book and placed them on the queen mattress.
"I'll be right outside." Trent said after I collapsed onto the bed.
"Trent," I called out, stopping him half-way through the door.
"Yeah?"
All the blood in my body rushed up to my face as I realized my unfiltered mouth almost reflexively said the word "stay". I stared at Trent, my heart beating, my face hot. I considered asking him to sleep on the floor like my dad, but that would be childish and impolite. The alternative was to share my bed… Or I could take the floor.
"I'll just be right outside." Trent said before my mind processed a solution. "Come by if you need anything. I'll be up most of the night anyway."
"Okay," I replied in a faint voice.
Trent shut the door.
I sat atop the bedsheets and acquainted myself with my new living space. A feeling of regret closed over me as I considered that even sleeping on a carseat would have been better if it meant I didn't have to be alone. With a sigh, I turned on the bedside lamp and grabbed the book and stuffed tomato, using the tomato as a backrest as I slipped my legs under the covers and situated the book upright on my thighs. I cracked it open and was immediately blasted with a puff of dusty, old book scent. It was ripe at first, and I turned my head away to sneeze, but as I perused through the pages, the scent grew on me. It reminded me of the days growing up when I'd step into dad's study and read through one of the many volumes on cryptic topics which were at least two college degrees above my Lexile range.
I was only a couple minutes into browsing the collection of different scientific and philosophical works when I came across a page which contained highlighted text. This was unusual, as my dad would never mark up his books. He was a purist on that point. I rubbed my thumb over the yellow lines, and sure enough, it was highlighter.
The highlighted text was part of a small book by Carl Jung called "Synchronicity". There were a total of three pages that were marked, and they advanced like this:
Page 5:
The philosophical principle that underlies our conception of natural law is causality*. But if the connection between cause and effect turns out to be only statistically valid and relatively true, then the causal principle is only of relative use for explaining natural processes… That is as much to say that the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and require another principle of explanation.*
Page 19:
…there are events which are related to one another experimentally, and in this case meaningfully*, without there being any possibility of proving that this relation is a causal one, since the "transmission" exhibits none of the known properties of energy…a situation which does not yet exist and will only occur in the future could transmit itself as a phenomenon of energy to a receiver in the present…Therefore, it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity... "synchronicity"*
Page 22:
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer… which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.
I flipped through the rest of the pages of the book. There was no more highlighted text, but there was a message on the last page which read:
Matthew 7:7-8
I'll meet you in the darkest place.
He also included his typical smiley face which had an ovular shape and three sprouts of hair which I now realized kind of resembled my tomato plushie. It was my dad's writing, of course. But why? And how? What did this mean?
The motel had a Bible stashed away in the nighstand drawer. I got it out and looked up the verses which read the following:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
I spent maybe an hour ruminating on all of this. The whole discourse on energy and causality and a "falling together in time" just seemed so right. It was clear that my dad definitely did know what I was going through, but for whatever reason, he made it seem like he was oblivious. Why had he hidden that from me? I felt like I was being pulled in two directions. On the one hand, my dad loved me enough to leave this note, maybe even knowing the exact moment I'd need it. But on the other hand, he had neglected my struggles throughout my entire childhood. He even lied at times. Was this really enough to make up for all of that?
And then there was the section about the future transmitting energy to the past. I read back through the whole paragraph and the original writer had meant it to say this as something that wasn't possible, but my dad's highlighting made it seem like he wanted to flip the meaning. The future does affect the past. I thought about where I was headed and wondered if I would soon discover that for myself.
Lastly, dad's message. The Bible verse reminded me of the first time I prayed; how I reached out to God and received peace as an answer to my prayer. Now I feel like I'm actively seeking… something, but I don't know yet what I'll find. And then there's knocking. At first that reminded me of the story with the beetle tapping on the window, but then I went back even deeper in my memory and dug out the monster tapping at my window, and the words my dad spoke to me in order to set my mind at ease: "you're a superhero. And you know what your greatest superpower is? Your greatest power is you get to tell the monsters what to do. Because the monsters are only as strong as the stories you tell about them…so if you're ever scared, honey, just dream up a better story."
I was crying into my stuffed tomato now. I felt like all the blinking pieces of my life had finally been pulled together into a completed puzzle. This was all by design. My entire life, filled with so much chaos and confusion, was actually preparing me for this moment. And my dad thought I had the tools and strength enough to get through it. I flipped through the book one more time, thinking maybe he had left some other hidden comment—some formula to defeat this demon and return home. But there was nothing. Only that one comment: "I'll meet you in the darkest place."
What's the darkest place, dad? Is that where I'm going? Are you saying you'll be there, too?
With those thoughts in mind, my eyes became heavy shutters which, with a slight pressure on the pulley, winded shut. My swimming thoughts and firework-like fears dissipated, and I returned to a precious childhood memory. It was after an evening soccer practice. Summer. Dad was driving me to Dairy Queen. I got a cherry-dipped twist cone. I was happy.
So, so happy.
***
I woke up to sunlight blaring through my windows. Shit, I overslept, was my immediate thought. I threw off my covers and opened the front door. A glance at the clock showed 1:13 PM. I shouldn't have even been allowed to stay checked in this long. Damn, am I gonna get double-billed for this?
I heard a rummaging sound around the corner of my motel room. It sounded like a squirrel was trying to find an afternoon snack in one of the garbage bins. I stepped outside. The sun was extremely bright, to the point where I had to squint and put my hand over my eyes to even see the ground in front of me. I was trying to walk toward the van, but somehow I ended up in front of the trash bins where the animal's tail was sticking out from a turned-over, silver garbage can. Its tail was wagging excitedly, and I remember thinking that it was much too large to be a squirrel.
The animal bent down as if biting onto something, and I heard the sound of its growl as it struggled to tug whatever it was free from the barrel. Inch by inch, the creature backed out of the canister, and more of its sharp, sticky hair was revealed. I heard something snap, then the creature leapt back and I saw what it was chomping on. My eyes widened in horror as the pink tube of a human intestine was pulled taut like the end of a tangled hose. Blood and entrails were spilling out of the human's opened gut. And then, behind the canine, I saw the person's face. His face was pale white, his eyes closed, and his hair was slicked back… It was Trent.
Before I could react, I heard footsteps approaching from behind. I whirled around and saw my dad. But—no, it wasn't him. It was someone wearing a paper-mache face mask that was painted to look like my dad. The forehead of the mask was already beginning to crack, white specks breaking off like sawdust. Through the cracks, I could see the figure's true form. I didn't know darkness had its own type of light, but that's the only way to describe it. It was as if malevolence itself was reified into a skin which was actually an amalgamation of millions of little, oozing parasites that leached into the nearby light. When it finally spoke, the demon's voice was a full octave lower than the old man's at the deli. And it had an earth-stilling gravitas.
"Today's the day!" He sang and reached into his pocket. His lips curled upward into a foxy smirk. "You have no idea how long I've waited for this day." He said and held up a razor blade. Half his facade had already fallen apart, and now I could see the bugs up close, writhing in what was either horror or ecstasy. And his scent… it was somehow more rank than the rabid coyote rummaging through the trash can with Trent's cut open body inside. The demon closed in on my position, and in one, decisive motion, he brought the blade close to his chin, then sliced it across my throat. "Wake up!" He screamed.
I jumped out of my bed and grabbed my throat, feeling the cold sting of its quick slice. Hyperventilating, I patted the area down, trying to hold the blood in, but when I removed my hands, I saw they were dry. It was only a dream, I thought. Gray light was only beginning to filter in through the drapes. I'm in my hotel room. I'm safe. I tried consoling, but the pragmatic mental massages weren't enough to hold the force of my knees buckling. I dropped onto the carpet and cried for a long while.
Outside, rain was beginning to fall.
***
By the time I met up with Trent, I had already composed myself and decided to keep my dad's message and the nightmare to myself. None of it seemed particularly productive from a logistical standpoint, anyway. And I wanted to focus on the mission.
We stopped by McDonald's and bought a couple cups of coffee. Trent asked if I wanted any food, and I declined. Black coffee seemed like the only thing my stomach could take at the present moment. I could tell Trent was hungry, but he tried playing it off (I guess to be respectful of me?) I told him to knock it off and get something to eat. I didn't need my Charon getting lightheaded and dropping the paddle before he finished rowing me to Hell. He didn't care much for my joke, but he ordered a couple Chicken McGriddles at the kiosk anyway.
There were maybe ten patrons spread throughout the restaurant. We sat down at the same booth from the prior night, this time across from one another. Trent spent the first ten minutes or so babbling about our fuel supply and the logistics of the trip from here on in. Practical stuff. I've come to realize that's how he deals with his stress. He talks it out in short, durable sentences. I mostly nodded and watched as what looked like a storm front closed in on the truck stop. The sky was overcast, and there were darker clouds in the distance. The rain was still only a patter, but a middle-aged man wearing a yellow bow tie on the wall-mounted TV confirmed that there would be heavier rain and thunderstorms very soon.
After the worker delivered Trent's food and he ate it in record time, I posed the one question that was still on my mind.
"How do I fight him?" I asked.
Trent finished a large gulp of his coffee, then looked at me. It was the first substantial thing I'd said all morning; Trent could tell something was off with me, but he figured there was no point in asking what it was. "By 'him', I assume you mean the demon?"
I nodded.
Trent licked his teeth clean. "You could try praying again."
"I'm serious," I responded.
"I'm serious, too. It worked before, didn't it?"
"You mean at my house?"
Trent nodded.
"I thought you weren't a religious man?"
"I'm not. Just a practical one. If praying worked before, maybe it'll work again."
"That's the best you've got? A maybe?"
"No, I've got a lot of shit better than a maybe." He answered. "It's just not accessible where you're going. Which is why I recommend not making contact on the first run."
"First run? So we're going to do this more than once?"
"At least," Trent answered. Then, seeing my expression, he continued. "What? You thought this was going to be a one-and-done? We have to conduct some research first. I did tell you this was new for me, right?"
Somehow Trent's response had set my mind at ease a little. I was going to have more than one chance. Of course, why wouldn't I be able to go back more than once?
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier? It would have gone a long way in easing my mind."
Trent lifted his hands in defense. "Sorry, I just thought that was a given. I mean, what we're doing is dangerous, just like I said, but it doesn't mean we aren't going to approach this as safely and scientifically as possible. However, there is a different problem with running multiple trials."
"The Organization?"
"That's right," Trent said like a proud parent. "Our little experiment will be like a giant spotlight, and the longer we wait around after it's on us, the greater the chance we'll have unwelcome company."
"So, safe but speedy."
"Safe but speedy. Exactly."
***
We fueled up and were back on the road a little after 8:00. From that point on, Trent and I were absolutely silent. I had the distinct feeling of being in the eye of a storm. The pings moved closer commensurate with our progress toward the crash site. The cloudfront continued its advance. And I noticed a haze beginning to descend onto the road ahead of us. It was fog.
We meandered further inland, the forest thickening around us until the rain almost stopped entirely—the leaves drinking it up before it fell onto our windshield. I kept my eyes on the radar. We were approaching the large yellow circle which indicated we had arrived. As we pulled closer, I began to feel things. Fear. Eeriness. Doubt. Then happiness. Hope. Love. Normally feelings like these had a clear source to picture, but these sensations came on in waves without any discernible reason. It was almost as if they were blinking into existence inside me.
"Here we go," Trent said like an airline pilot readying his crew for turbulence.
I still recall the exact moment we crossed the boundary into the area of higher energy. It was like something just "clicked" in my brain, and all of a sudden everything felt so much closer. The sound of the rain against the trees was almost right next to my ear. The trees in the distance would oscillate between their position a half-mile out, then suddenly seem five meters away. If I focused on something long enough, it began to radiate those same ethereal particles as when Trent released Ava's "phase lock". I checked to make sure the shifter wasn't set to "TD". Sure enough, it was still in drive.
"Can you see them?" Trent asked. "The shifts?"
"Yeah," I said in a dreamy voice. I felt like I was driving through a wonderland.
"It's the energy. I barely notice a difference. A bit of movement in the trees, but not much else. But I'm sure for you, it's a whole experience."
"What is this?" I raised my hand and caught some of the pixel dust dripping off the sun visor. It disappeared when it made contact with my hand.
"It's a kind of radiation. Everything emits it, just in different quantities. I'm still not exactly sure how it relates to the other realms, but I'm guessing it's a kind of primordial matter that helps connect our worlds."
"It's beautiful," I exclaimed. "I wish I could see the world like this all the time."
"Maybe you will," Trent whispered.
As we arrived at the crash site, I began to get glimpses of the past. My childhood dreams and memories were pushing their way out from my subconscious. I noticed an increased number of blinks, which were validated by Ava who reported the following: "Currently detecting 14,350 novel emergences and 2,777 controlled agents. Net anomalies: 2,777."
"That's a lot of blinks." I remarked. "Why doesn't Ava include them in the net anomalies?"
Trent turned his head so I could see his smirk. "Because blinks aren't anomalies."
I thought about it for a second. Blinks aren't anomalies. "I never thought about it that way."
"It's hard to think about it that way when 'normal' for most people means not picking up on a fundamental aspect of reality. But that doesn't make it any less real."
We continued past the epicenter of the yellow circle. "Are we not stopping?" I asked. "I think we already passed the crash site."
"It doesn't have to be exactly at the site," Trent said. "Plus, we don't want to stop on the side of the road and risk getting some civilian involved. There's a field about half a mile up ahead. I'm going to pull off the road and set up camp there.
The "field" that Trent was referring to was actually a large clearing that dipped down into several trench-like troughs which were filled to the brim with fog like witches cauldrons. Further on in the distance, I saw open fields, probably used for farming, and then a large hill where the trees once again reasserted themselves. We had pulled off the road and up a small incline where the trees had already been broken down, leaving a trail for us to drive through. When we surfaced at the edge of the clearing, Trent pulled us onto a flat bed of dried mud which was maybe thirty yards long.
"Here," he said with a sigh.
We both sat for a minute, looking around at the field. We had finally arrived. The rain was beginning to pick up, and the dark sky made it almost impossible to discern the time of day.
"You ready?" Trent asked.
I looked at him. Really looked at him. In his blue eyes. Was I ready? Did it even matter?
"Let's do this," I said.
***
This was the first time I was really able to inspect the back of Trent's van. He had talked up his gear a lot, and honestly, I was impressed. Not in the way that a scientist is impressed by another scientist's lab—I wasn't any kind of expert—but it still seemed remarkably well managed. Now that I was in a state where my vision had been enhanced, I could actually see the enigmatic particles circulating through the pneumatic tubes which were coiled like the pipes and valves of an elaborate wind instrument. The walls of the van, itself, were glistening white, making it easier to make out everything else inside. Along the floor were five overturned columns. Each column was dark and had a vibrating quality, as if they were charged with energy. Then atop the center three columns was a small altar which supported an apparatus with two skinny, metal arms holding a silver halo. At present, the arms were folded and the halo was suspended a few inches above the altar, faced-down. I thought maybe I'd see particles exuding from it, but instead it was emitting visible waves which bent and warped everything they touched.
"That thing is emitting a lot of energy." I remarked, gesturing toward the halo.
Trent stepped in between the columns and started pulling out the packages he had stuffed in there yesterday. "Just wait till' it's on."
Most of the packages contained only a single piece of equipment, and were otherwise packed with foam peanuts. We carefully removed each box and set them on the ground outside. I asked if the rain would damage any of the stuff inside, to which Trent only laughed and continued lugging out the boxes. When they were all out, Trent removed a box cutter from his pocket and went one-by-one opening them. There were eight pieces in total.
"What is it?" I asked as we fished the first item out.
"It's another apparatus, like the one inside. Except it'll mount on the ground out here."
I pulled out what looked like a metal tripod.
"Good, that'll go on the bottom."
"Where are we setting it up?"
"Over here," Trent said and stepped five paces away from the van. He coordinated himself up so he was centrally aligned with the inner ring, then stomped a few times. "This is the spot."
As we continued to work, I asked Trent about how the whole contraption works.
"Do you remember the first time we were in the van? When we had to escape from the semi-truck?" Trent asked and connected a secondary mounting apparatus on top of the tripod. It had four spider-like legs that made right angles and stuck into the ground.
"Of course," I said. "The 'phase lock'."
"Yeah," Trent said and gestured toward the metal stick that was in my hand. I handed it to him. "The phase lock is a seal on the level of energy that the van is allowed to release. It also controls its dispersion pattern so that it releases its energy in a steady wave. This allows Ava to scan for anomalies without causing us to become an anomaly." Trent stuck the plank into the neck of the tripod.
"So when you released the phase lock, we started emitting more energy."
"That's right." Trent confirmed. "Enough to create an alternate route through a different realm."
"So we blinked into a different realm, then back, just to avoid that truck?"
"That's right."
"But why couldn't we just move out of the way?"
"Because it had locked onto us. It was tracking our motion and adjusting its course based on the amount of energy we were emitting. So in order to escape, we had to radically skew our potential energy and then use it to shift."
"Couldn't he have just followed us?"
Trent connected four more pieces to the device which now looked like an elaborate teepee. He was fishing in the last box when he spoke again. "Yeah, he could have. But it was highly improbable that he would have found us." Trent returned from the bottom of the box with another silver ring in hand. "Think of it like this. Let's say you're trying to escape from some bad guy who's coming after you, and you enter a new room you've never seen before. Would you prefer this room to have three doors to go through, or ten?"
I thought about his riddle for a second, then responded, "It depends where they go."
Trent fastened the ring atop the teepee. "Let's say they all lead to random places, or let's say they're all closets that lead nowhere. The key is that more is better, because the more doors he has to check, the less likely he is to pick the correct one. Make sense?"
"So we opened up a bunch of doors and escaped through one at random?"
"Hence the gear 'TD', for 'Trap Door'."
I marveled at the insights, but not for long. Trent hopped back in the van and pulled a lever that I hadn't seen until now. The two metal arms raised the inner ring until it was perpendicular with the altar. Then Trent clicked one of three red buttons along the back wall, and I saw what looked like a large, glass eye suspended in a magnifying glass protruding from the wall, aligned with the center of both rings. A couple seconds later, the glass eye began to focus the energy which was being fed to it from the pneumatic tubes, and a blue pyramid of light projected from it into the first ring, then from the first ring into the second ring. All three pieces were aligned at slightly diminishing heights, so the cylinder of light beamed through the second ring, into the ground.
"Alright, time for the first trial."
I felt the nerves starting up in my stomach. Trent sensed this and hopped out of the truck. It was raining quite hard now, though it was still warm. Both Trent and I were soaked, but that hardly concerned us. He reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. "I know you're feeling scared." He said. "But trust me on this. You're going to do fine. Just keep in mind what we talked about. Stay a spectator. Okay?"
I looked into his blue eyes, which seemed especially gray in the dark. Still, Trent's voice was reassuring. All I had to do was trust him. Trust myself. Trust my dad. And it was all going to turn out right.
"I'm ready," I said.
Trent was still for a second, holding my eyes in his. Then he guided me behind the outer ring and into the cylinder of light.
"I should step into it now?" I asked, afraid I'd be called away immediately.
"It's not on yet, so don't worry. I still have to press another button."
I followed Trent's instructions and stood in the blue light which was centered on my chest. Then I watched as Trent ran into the back of the van and posted up next to the glass eye. "Ready?" He yelled out. It was hard to hear him over the rain, but I yelled back. "Ready!"
The next thing I saw was a blinding blue light beam from the van. I heard what sounded like a laser, then saw the cylinder oscillate, expanding and compressing. When the energy reached the second ring, I saw everything around me light up—it looked brighter than noon on a cloudless day. Then the oscillations made their way to me, and I was swallowed up whole.
***
When I came to, I was in the backseat of a car. I felt my butt rumbling. Everything was dim and quiet. And then I heard a woman's voice from in front of me.
"Mark, please, not with Lauren in the back."
The man, who I now identified as my father, pulled the cigarette away from his lips and blew the smoke at my mom. He eyed the back seat where I was sitting, using one of five markers that hadn't rolled off my lap to color a rabbit in my animal color book.
"The kid's fine." he said and took another drag.
"Mark," my mom repeated.
I saw my dad raise his hand in a rapid motion. "I said she's fine, Cheryl. Now check the map and make sure we're going the right away. I can't see shit with all this fog."
I took a moment to make sure I was really in the back seat. I patted myself. I clearly had weight. Then I tried touching the car. At first, my fingertips met a solid surface, but when I tried to press through, my hand slipped into the car. I quickly pulled my hand away as if I had reached into a fire.
That's when I heard the little three year old next to me start crying. I turned and saw that little-me had dropped another couple markers onto the ground and was struggling to reach them.
"Hey!" my dad shouted. "What did I say about crying?"
"Quit it, Mark. She just dropped her markers." said my mom; she turned to help me pick them up.
"What did you say to me?" Mark spat with a voice full of guile. He reached out and pushed her back into her seat. "Don't," he commanded. "She has to learn how to deal with life."
"Deal…" My mom started in disbelief. "Deal with life? Do you hear yourself? What's gotten into you?"
"Sometimes shit happens. It doesn't give her the right to cry. You helping her is just going to reinforce her behavior."
"Her behavior? What about your behavior? You're acting like a total dick."
I didn't even have a moment to react before my dad's hand was across my mom's face. I felt the slap more than I heard it, my own face seeming to swell with the force of the blow. I saw my mom cover her mouth and lean away. Then little-me began to cry even louder, which only challenged my dad to step up his own volume.
"Everyone needs to get a fucking grip before I crash this car." My dad shouted and took another drag. The scariest part was I couldn't tell if he was warning us or threatening us. I felt the sudden urge to do something. There was no way this was real. I was definitely in some fantasy concocted by the demon. He wanted to turn me against my dad. That was the only explanation for something like this. My dad was a good man, not… this.
As I contemplated what to do, I saw a small, golden light appear behind little-me's window. Apparently she saw it, too, because her cries hushed as she traced the wisp with her eyes. After a second, the wisp transformed into a bunny rabbit, reminiscent of the one she was coloring. The rabbit hopped alongside the window, then did a couple circles in place. I watched little me let out a playful laugh and reach toward the window.
"What's going on back there?" my dad asked with a scowl. Apparently the only sound more disturbing than cries were laughs.
I looked back to the front and saw my mom wiping blood from her lip. Her expression was miserable. "Leave her alone, Mark."
"I'll do whatever I damn well want to do, Cheryl. It's my kid back there."
My mom was quiet.
When I looked back toward the rabbit, it was no longer a rabbit but a person. Or at least it looked like a person. The figure radiated pure gold, and atop his head was what appeared to be a King's crown. I recalled Allison's experience of seeing the sun-like figure in her moment of distress. Was that what was happening here? Was this really all true?
"Hey!" My dad shouted, eyeing little-me from the rear-view mirror. "What are you reaching at?"
I looked and saw the golden figure extending his hand toward the window, and little me's hand was reaching back. "Mom, dad, it bright." little-me said.
"What's bright, honey?" my mom asked.
"Don't encourage her, Cheryl."
"Someone there!" little me shouted happily and dropped the rest of the markers and the coloring book onto the ground.
"Who's there?" asked my mom.
"Cheryl, I swear to God. Sit the fuck down."
Everything from that moment on happened so quickly I barely had any time to process it. My mom lifted out of her seat to either get little me's attention or help me pick up my coloring book. My dad responded by grabbing onto her throat, letting go of the steering wheel entirely. He threw her back against the car door, and her head hit the window so hard, the glass cracked. My dad had dropped his cigarette, and I could smell smoke coming from under his seat, but that didn't seem to bother him at all. He turned toward little-me at the same moment my three-year-old hand reached out and grabbed onto the golden figure, whose hand diffused through the window. When my dad turned, I got a whiff of the most awful smell that I wouldn't have been able to place had I not had that nightmare last night. He grabbed onto little-me's shoulder and tugged her away from the golden figure that was trying to pull her the other way. My dad's facade began to crack, and I could see those dark bugs crawling out from the pores in his arms, marching down toward little-me.
I reacted.
I grabbed onto my dad's arm and pulled him off little-me. I heard the sound of my shirt ripping as she was torn from his grip and pulled out of the car, diffusing through it like a ghost. My brief victory was immediately overturned as I saw what was now clearly the demon smiling at me, his wretched fingers curled around my forearm.
"Caught you," He sneered.
Then the whole world once again diffused into countless numbers of particles, only this time, instead of riding through it, I felt like I was falling through an elevator shaft with each floor darker than the last. The further I fell, the less I became aware of my surroundings, and the more I felt a deep sense of loneliness. It was as if I was the only person in the whole world: and the whole world was a prison designed entirely for me. This went on for so long, I began to forget who I was. Where I was. What was.
And then I landed.
***
Source Used:
Jung, Carl. Synchronicity. Translated by Sonu Shamdasani, Princeton University Press, 2010.

Like all haunted house stories, this took place right after I moved in. Cliché, right? My wife and I saved up enough money from our rental to finally put down on a house of our own. So we moved in and everything seemed right...at first.
It wasn’t until later that I realized there were warning signs. The seller seemed really anxious to close, and we were offered a much cheaper price than we expected for the space we got. While there was a moment of doubt, we brushed it off as some weird circumstance that ended in a great deal for us.
How could we possibly pass that up?
The strange occurrences were small at first. I would be up late watching TV and swore I heard something. I’d pause the show and make out what sounded like dragging noises. After investigating, I wouldn’t find anything. Even stranger was that no matter where I walked in the house, the noise always sounded the same distance away. When I focused on it, I noticed the particular noise was rhythmic.
Tap, tap...sliiiiiiide.
It was like that every single time. My wife never heard it, it was only me. None of us believe in ghosts, mind you. But as I said before it was a small thing, so I brushed it off.
One night, I woke up in a startle. I listened intently but could hear nothing. I decided to grab a late night snack from the kitchen since I was awake anyway.
Halfway down the hall, I heard something. This time, it sounded like dirt being sifted und. I knelt down and swore that the sound was louder. Before I knew it, I had my ear pressed to the hardwood floor, listening intently.
Schht, schht.....sccchhhhhhh...
I jumped up from the floor. It was that same pattern of noises, but this time it sounded like someone in the dirt. Trying to ignore the chills washing over me, I took a step towards the kitchen when…
…something grabbed my ankle.
I fell forward, almost busting my chin on the floor.
“What the...”
Flipping over, I turned to face my assailant, but there was no one behind me. I brushed it off and chalked it up to poor balance from a sleep-hangover. My wife got a good chuckle out of that one.
After that, the house began to feel.....heavier. It was this weight over me that would come and go. This was accompanied by feeling cold no matter how much we turned up the heat, and this was the middle of the summer. Even stranger, the cold seemed to only be in certain spots, particularly on the floor itself. I liked to walk around barefoot no matter what time of year it was, but it was even too cold for me.
Another night, I woke up again. My ears stood at attention, but couldn’t hear any evidence of what woke me up. I got up just like before, except I never made it to the kitchen.
I only made if halfway down our hall before I suddenly felt a horrible pain in my right leg. I had to limp to keep moving, then my other leg was wracked with a wave of pain. It was so bad I found myself face down on the ground, writhing in agony.
Then I heard it again…that awful succession of noises.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
The sliding sound was coming from the hardwood floor this time, not from underneath. And the sound was getting closer and closer until...
I watched in horror as a hand came around the corner in front of me. It was soon joined by another, and they tugged at the floor. My heart hammered in my chest as a person slowly came into view.
It was a woman with long black hair, her disheveled clothing smeared with dirt and hanging off in shreds. Her mouth was crudely stitched shut. She looked up at me with empty, lost eyes and I instantly felt a lifetime of pain and misery. It took my breath away, and I had to focus on my breathing to keep myself from fainting.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
That awful sound repeated as she grabbed the floor and pulled herself towards me. I was in a terrified trance, eyes locked with her as she slowly closed the distance. I could now see that she dragged herself because her legs were horribly mangled. A low moan emanated from her throat, sending ice through my veins.
Her very presence seemed to drain me, and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. She made this awful gurgling sound as she got within arm’s reach. In seconds, her face was right up to mine. I tried to scream, but couldn’t make any sound.
Then...I woke up.
“AAAAHHhhh!” I shouted as I sprang up in bed.
My wife tried to console me, but it did very little. I’d never had a dream that felt so real before. Shaking, I walked out into the hallway where I had collapsed in my dream. I put a hand on the floor, expecting it to be freezing cold as usual.
But it was warm...
“Honey?” I felt the soft hand of my wife touch my shoulder.
“What’s going on? You look white as a sheet.”
“I’m okay...I just...”
On the floor in front me, I noticed the faint trace of fingernail marks.
“Was that there before?” My wife inquired.
“I’m...I’m not sure.”
“Let’s go back to bed. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”
I tried to hold back my stubborn expression, but she still saw it.
“C’mon, you need to rest.”
With an exasperated exhale, I went back to bed with the strange occurrence replaying incessantly in my brain.
In the morning, I told my wife about all the strange experiences. To my shock she actually believed me.
“What do you want to do, then?” She asked.
“Well...I have a theory I want to check out.”
“Theory of what?”
“Well, let’s just say that ghosts exist, and there are certain reasons why they haunt certain places. If that is true then...I think there could be a body in our crawlspace.”
“What, are you crazy?”
“I know how it sounds, but what would it hurt to look?”
“You really think there’s something down there?”
“More someone, but I’m not sure to be honest. Hopefully I can get a confirmation either way it goes.”
That afternoon, I found myself standing at the door to our crawlspace. It felt ridiculous, but so many details pointed to it. The sounds and cold spots were all related to the floor. The ghastly woman’s clothes were smeared with dirt. It was obscure, but it was all I had to go on.
I had to pry the door open with a crowbar, but I managed after a minute or two. A wave of unnatural cold air blasted me, so strong that I had to throw on a coat just to stop from shivering so badly.
I clicked on my flashlight, illuminating the eerie underbelly of our home. The dirt sifted under my feet as I crouch-walked around. After hearing it, it only confirmed what I thought I heard from under the floor.
Expecting to see more, I was almost disappointed that the crawlspace was completely bare. Not believing it entirely, I shined my light around more. The back part of the crawlspace led to concrete and it was there that I noticed one section of the wall looked different than the rest.
Hands quivering, I pushed against the section of concrete and felt it shift under the pressure. It continued to wobble around in place the more I pushed. Holding my flashlight between my teeth, I had to use both hands to pry the piece away from the wall. To my astonishment, it pulled away very easily. It was no coincidence that the section of wall fit the hole exactly, like a puzzle piece.
After leaning the piece of concrete against the wall, I found that the concrete was covering a door with a padlock.
There’s no way anything good is behind this...
Minutes later, I returned to the mysterious door with a pair of bolt cutters. I debated whether or not I’d go in. There was no reason I shouldn’t satisfy my curiosity, because if there wasn’t anything then great, but if there was something terrible, I’d simply have to deal with it. Either way, I had to know.
I clipped the metal bar off the lock and it thudded softly to the dirt floor. Taking in a deep breath, I dared to aim my beam down the opening. The crawlspace extended much further into the house, and I had a good guess where it led. I now had to crawl on my hands and knees as a knot of dread formed in my stomach.
“You always tell people not to do this in movies, why are you doing this now??!” I chastised myself.
I knew all too well how stupid this was but the part of my brain that can’t look away from a car wreck pushed me to carry along regardless.
It was difficult to navigate with the flashlight and crawl. A mild claustrophobia settled in that pushed me along with a sense of urgency. The temperature couldn’t have been any more than a meatlocker. My hands shook despite my thick jacket. Eventually, I came to a dead end.
Is this all?
I stopped for a moment and checked around with my light some more, hoping a more thorough search would bear some fruit. Yet, there was nothing.
Sighing in frustration, I decided that perhaps I was losing my mind and was just having really vivid dreams after all. How could I have been so stupid?
I made it halfway across the hidden area when I felt my legs suddenly give out. They weren’t tired or sore before this. It was as if they stopped working of their own volition. I attempted to cry out, but my mouth felt as if some force held it closed.
Just like a stitched mouth...
One of the few things I could move was my neck and I turned to the side to see...
…a tuft of a blanket?
Due to the narrow space, I must have missed it. I slowly reached for it with all the internal alarms in my body going off at once. Ignoring the warning, I pulled the cloth back to reveal a skeletal hand.
In this moment of revulsion, something turned on my motor skills again as I regained control of my legs, crawling out of there as quickly as I could muster. Heaving, I stumbled out of the crawlspace and instantly felt the rise in temperature. I sat on the porch and stayed there as I called the police and explained the situation.
It turns out that one of the previous owners of the home was a major suspect in the disappearance of a young lady fifteen years ago. There wasn’t enough evidence to conduct a home search so they were never able to find the body. And what they found was something I wish I had never known.
From examining the body, they found that her captor had broken both of her legs so she couldn’t escape and sewn her mouth shut to keep her from screaming. It was hard to tell how long she’d been locked down there before she died, but they hypothesized it was a month or two. The cause of death was unclear. This was clearly enough to pursue the former owner.
When they picked him up, the guy tried to play the ignorance card, pretending as if he didn’t know what house they were referring to. This of course made it even more suspicious.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything concrete enough to tie him to her death...until they searched his current home. Blueprints of the home showed that the crawlspace was supposed to end ten feet where the concrete wall was. No contractors were hired to do any work on the home, so someone had personally busted it up and created the door going further in. The last part of it was the padlock on the door.
When the police searched the man’s home, they found a shoebox full of seemingly innocent keepsakes. Among the keepsakes were some heirlooms, pictures of close family members, and a key. As suspected, the key matched the padlock to the crawlspace door. It was apparently enough to make him crack. It wasn’t long before he confessed to the kidnapping and murder, albeit without a hint of remorse. Turns out the bastard kept the key as a sick trophy.
They even questioned him about other possible victims since this was a trait commonly shared by serial killers. He denied it, but the police couldn’t feel any truth from it. If anything they knew that they solved one case, put a guilty man behind bars, and put a family at peace. Justice was served and he was locked away for the rest of his miserable life. Poetic justice, if you ask me. The poor girl’s parents buried her remains on a family plot.
After all this, we had serious doubts about staying in the home. Knowing something this egregious happened in our home was almost unbearable. I can’t tell you how much we cried when we heard the story of what happened to that poor girl. We were on the brink of selling the house for about a week, but one night changed all that.
I woke up from a dream, one so vivid yet it somehow escaped my thoughts like a fistful of sand. There was a strange feeling in my gut as if something was going to happen.
It was neither good nor bad, just....strange.
After drinking a small glass of milk, I meandered down the hall and stopped in my tracks. A woman stood in front of me, half-transparent with a bluish luminescence. I felt as if I knew her, although I didn’t recognize her appearance at all. She smiled, and I instantly knew who she was. Compared to her previous horrific manifestation, the woman was almost unrecognizable.
Never speaking, she motioned to her legs and I saw that they were in perfect condition. In a mild state of shock, I managed to form a smile. She beamed even wider and ran her fingers across her lips, pointing out her lack of stitches. A blanket of warmth wrapped around me, and I couldn’t resist the salty tears that streamed down my face.
Right before she waved goodbye, a voice spoke within my mind.
"It’s over now. Thank you..."
She faded away, and for the first time since we moved into that house, all hints of the oppressive energy dissipated. That was the last time I ever saw her.
It’s been 30 years now, and we’re still in that house to this day...
May she continue to rest in peace...

Like all haunted house stories, this took place right after I moved in. Cliché, right? My wife and I saved up enough money from our rental to finally put down on a house of our own. So we moved in and everything seemed right...at first.
It wasn’t until later that I realized there were warning signs. The seller seemed really anxious to close, and we were offered a much cheaper price than we expected for the space we got. While there was a moment of doubt, we brushed it off as some weird circumstance that ended in a great deal for us.
How could we possibly pass that up?
The strange occurrences were small at first. I would be up late watching TV and swore I heard something. I’d pause the show and make out what sounded like dragging noises. After investigating, I wouldn’t find anything. Even stranger was that no matter where I walked in the house, the noise always sounded the same distance away. When I focused on it, I noticed the particular noise was rhythmic.
Tap, tap...sliiiiiiide.
It was like that every single time. My wife never heard it, it was only me. None of us believe in ghosts, mind you. But as I said before it was a small thing, so I brushed it off.
One night, I woke up in a startle. I listened intently but could hear nothing. I decided to grab a late night snack from the kitchen since I was awake anyway.
Halfway down the hall, I heard something. This time, it sounded like dirt being sifted und. I knelt down and swore that the sound was louder. Before I knew it, I had my ear pressed to the hardwood floor, listening intently.
Schht, schht.....sccchhhhhhh...
I jumped up from the floor. It was that same pattern of noises, but this time it sounded like someone in the dirt. Trying to ignore the chills washing over me, I took a step towards the kitchen when…
…something grabbed my ankle.
I fell forward, almost busting my chin on the floor.
“What the...”
Flipping over, I turned to face my assailant, but there was no one behind me. I brushed it off and chalked it up to poor balance from a sleep-hangover. My wife got a good chuckle out of that one.
After that, the house began to feel.....heavier. It was this weight over me that would come and go. This was accompanied by feeling cold no matter how much we turned up the heat, and this was the middle of the summer. Even stranger, the cold seemed to only be in certain spots, particularly on the floor itself. I liked to walk around barefoot no matter what time of year it was, but it was even too cold for me.
Another night, I woke up again. My ears stood at attention, but couldn’t hear any evidence of what woke me up. I got up just like before, except I never made it to the kitchen.
I only made if halfway down our hall before I suddenly felt a horrible pain in my right leg. I had to limp to keep moving, then my other leg was wracked with a wave of pain. It was so bad I found myself face down on the ground, writhing in agony.
Then I heard it again…that awful succession of noises.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
The sliding sound was coming from the hardwood floor this time, not from underneath. And the sound was getting closer and closer until...
I watched in horror as a hand came around the corner in front of me. It was soon joined by another, and they tugged at the floor. My heart hammered in my chest as a person slowly came into view.
It was a woman with long black hair, her disheveled clothing smeared with dirt and hanging off in shreds. Her mouth was crudely stitched shut. She looked up at me with empty, lost eyes and I instantly felt a lifetime of pain and misery. It took my breath away, and I had to focus on my breathing to keep myself from fainting.
Tap, tap....sliiiiiide.
That awful sound repeated as she grabbed the floor and pulled herself towards me. I was in a terrified trance, eyes locked with her as she slowly closed the distance. I could now see that she dragged herself because her legs were horribly mangled. A low moan emanated from her throat, sending ice through my veins.
Her very presence seemed to drain me, and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. She made this awful gurgling sound as she got within arm’s reach. In seconds, her face was right up to mine. I tried to scream, but couldn’t make any sound.
Then...I woke up.
“AAAAHHhhh!” I shouted as I sprang up in bed.
My wife tried to console me, but it did very little. I’d never had a dream that felt so real before. Shaking, I walked out into the hallway where I had collapsed in my dream. I put a hand on the floor, expecting it to be freezing cold as usual.
But it was warm...
“Honey?” I felt the soft hand of my wife touch my shoulder.
“What’s going on? You look white as a sheet.”
“I’m okay...I just...”
On the floor in front me, I noticed the faint trace of fingernail marks.
“Was that there before?” My wife inquired.
“I’m...I’m not sure.”
“Let’s go back to bed. We’ll talk more about it tomorrow.”
I tried to hold back my stubborn expression, but she still saw it.
“C’mon, you need to rest.”
With an exasperated exhale, I went back to bed with the strange occurrence replaying incessantly in my brain.
In the morning, I told my wife about all the strange experiences. To my shock she actually believed me.
“What do you want to do, then?” She asked.
“Well...I have a theory I want to check out.”
“Theory of what?”
“Well, let’s just say that ghosts exist, and there are certain reasons why they haunt certain places. If that is true then...I think there could be a body in our crawlspace.”
“What, are you crazy?”
“I know how it sounds, but what would it hurt to look?”
“You really think there’s something down there?”
“More someone, but I’m not sure to be honest. Hopefully I can get a confirmation either way it goes.”
That afternoon, I found myself standing at the door to our crawlspace. It felt ridiculous, but so many details pointed to it. The sounds and cold spots were all related to the floor. The ghastly woman’s clothes were smeared with dirt. It was obscure, but it was all I had to go on.
I had to pry the door open with a crowbar, but I managed after a minute or two. A wave of unnatural cold air blasted me, so strong that I had to throw on a coat just to stop from shivering so badly.
I clicked on my flashlight, illuminating the eerie underbelly of our home. The dirt sifted under my feet as I crouch-walked around. After hearing it, it only confirmed what I thought I heard from under the floor.
Expecting to see more, I was almost disappointed that the crawlspace was completely bare. Not believing it entirely, I shined my light around more. The back part of the crawlspace led to concrete and it was there that I noticed one section of the wall looked different than the rest.
Hands quivering, I pushed against the section of concrete and felt it shift under the pressure. It continued to wobble around in place the more I pushed. Holding my flashlight between my teeth, I had to use both hands to pry the piece away from the wall. To my astonishment, it pulled away very easily. It was no coincidence that the section of wall fit the hole exactly, like a puzzle piece.
After leaning the piece of concrete against the wall, I found that the concrete was covering a door with a padlock.
There’s no way anything good is behind this...
Minutes later, I returned to the mysterious door with a pair of bolt cutters. I debated whether or not I’d go in. There was no reason I shouldn’t satisfy my curiosity, because if there wasn’t anything then great, but if there was something terrible, I’d simply have to deal with it. Either way, I had to know.
I clipped the metal bar off the lock and it thudded softly to the dirt floor. Taking in a deep breath, I dared to aim my beam down the opening. The crawlspace extended much further into the house, and I had a good guess where it led. I now had to crawl on my hands and knees as a knot of dread formed in my stomach.
“You always tell people not to do this in movies, why are you doing this now??!” I chastised myself.
I knew all too well how stupid this was but the part of my brain that can’t look away from a car wreck pushed me to carry along regardless.
It was difficult to navigate with the flashlight and crawl. A mild claustrophobia settled in that pushed me along with a sense of urgency. The temperature couldn’t have been any more than a meatlocker. My hands shook despite my thick jacket. Eventually, I came to a dead end.
Is this all?
I stopped for a moment and checked around with my light some more, hoping a more thorough search would bear some fruit. Yet, there was nothing.
Sighing in frustration, I decided that perhaps I was losing my mind and was just having really vivid dreams after all. How could I have been so stupid?
I made it halfway across the hidden area when I felt my legs suddenly give out. They weren’t tired or sore before this. It was as if they stopped working of their own volition. I attempted to cry out, but my mouth felt as if some force held it closed.
Just like a stitched mouth...
One of the few things I could move was my neck and I turned to the side to see...
…a tuft of a blanket?
Due to the narrow space, I must have missed it. I slowly reached for it with all the internal alarms in my body going off at once. Ignoring the warning, I pulled the cloth back to reveal a skeletal hand.
In this moment of revulsion, something turned on my motor skills again as I regained control of my legs, crawling out of there as quickly as I could muster. Heaving, I stumbled out of the crawlspace and instantly felt the rise in temperature. I sat on the porch and stayed there as I called the police and explained the situation.
It turns out that one of the previous owners of the home was a major suspect in the disappearance of a young lady fifteen years ago. There wasn’t enough evidence to conduct a home search so they were never able to find the body. And what they found was something I wish I had never known.
From examining the body, they found that her captor had broken both of her legs so she couldn’t escape and sewn her mouth shut to keep her from screaming. It was hard to tell how long she’d been locked down there before she died, but they hypothesized it was a month or two. The cause of death was unclear. This was clearly enough to pursue the former owner.
When they picked him up, the guy tried to play the ignorance card, pretending as if he didn’t know what house they were referring to. This of course made it even more suspicious.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything concrete enough to tie him to her death...until they searched his current home. Blueprints of the home showed that the crawlspace was supposed to end ten feet where the concrete wall was. No contractors were hired to do any work on the home, so someone had personally busted it up and created the door going further in. The last part of it was the padlock on the door.
When the police searched the man’s home, they found a shoebox full of seemingly innocent keepsakes. Among the keepsakes were some heirlooms, pictures of close family members, and a key. As suspected, the key matched the padlock to the crawlspace door. It was apparently enough to make him crack. It wasn’t long before he confessed to the kidnapping and murder, albeit without a hint of remorse. Turns out the bastard kept the key as a sick trophy.
They even questioned him about other possible victims since this was a trait commonly shared by serial killers. He denied it, but the police couldn’t feel any truth from it. If anything they knew that they solved one case, put a guilty man behind bars, and put a family at peace. Justice was served and he was locked away for the rest of his miserable life. Poetic justice, if you ask me. The poor girl’s parents buried her remains on a family plot.
After all this, we had serious doubts about staying in the home. Knowing something this egregious happened in our home was almost unbearable. I can’t tell you how much we cried when we heard the story of what happened to that poor girl. We were on the brink of selling the house for about a week, but one night changed all that.
I woke up from a dream, one so vivid yet it somehow escaped my thoughts like a fistful of sand. There was a strange feeling in my gut as if something was going to happen.
It was neither good nor bad, just....strange.
After drinking a small glass of milk, I meandered down the hall and stopped in my tracks. A woman stood in front of me, half-transparent with a bluish luminescence. I felt as if I knew her, although I didn’t recognize her appearance at all. She smiled, and I instantly knew who she was. Compared to her previous horrific manifestation, the woman was almost unrecognizable.
Never speaking, she motioned to her legs and I saw that they were in perfect condition. In a mild state of shock, I managed to form a smile. She beamed even wider and ran her fingers across her lips, pointing out her lack of stitches. A blanket of warmth wrapped around me, and I couldn’t resist the salty tears that streamed down my face.
Right before she waved goodbye, a voice spoke within my mind.
"It’s over now. Thank you..."
She faded away, and for the first time since we moved into that house, all hints of the oppressive energy dissipated. That was the last time I ever saw her.
It’s been 30 years now, and we’re still in that house to this day...
May she continue to rest in peace...