The Burning Hour (Part 5) [FINALE]

  

I felt time rush forward, and as it surged, the force of it was pulling me apart. I was myself. I was Marie. I was her father. My mind and soul stretched between all three, but I felt myself being dragged into the last. The man named Solomon who still mourned his wife and daughter, but had been willing to work for their murderers all the same.

I caught glimpses of the next few years. Flashes of his new tasks in the lower echelons of some group called The Kin. He had worked for them before without knowing, but now he was on the inside, learning and doing impossible and terrible things, and I could feel his ambition and excitement, his fear and self-hatred.

This last was always strongest when he visited the woods. His daughter’s grave. The memorial site for the day he gave up the last of his soul out of cowardice and greed. The fact that he hated himself made me like him slightly more, but I still relished his suffering. Not just because he betrayed his family’s memory, but because of all he’d done since in the name of necessity. And because in those moments when I forgot that I was reliving memories, I was him, and I knew in my heart that I deserved every drop of self-loathing.

When Solomon first started visiting the site, it was just a freshly covered hole that slowly filled in with grass. It wasn’t until the fifth year that he started to notice the change. At first it seemed like the grass was giving way to a rock formation of some kind. Solomon thought it was being uncovered due to erosion, but he couldn’t see any signs of it anywhere else. Seeming noteworthy enough to report, he did so, and when he asked for a response, he got none.

By the end of the next year, he saw it wasn’t just natural rock pushing up past the grass. It was flat, smoothly carved slabs of marble, and when he began to experimentally dig around on the surface a bit, he saw there was much more down there. That afternoon he got a call from Kalinsky. The doctor told him his job was not to dig or interfere with the process. Merely to observe and to report. To visit his daughter every day without fail.

Things progressed faster after that. In less than two years from when he’d been told to stop digging, the place had become a fully-formed stairway that led down to a red metal door. Above it, a green-lettered sign said Mind the gap.

Solomon felt the breath go out of him as recognition flooded him. He’d been watching this all grow impossibly out of the earth for months, but it was only now that he realized the why of it.

This was the place. The tube station where Marie had been taken. Where she’d watched her mother die. Recreated in exacting detail by…what? The dead girl laying down in the ground somewhere?

Maybe. Or maybe she was behind that door, just waiting for him…for me…to go and finally get her out. Choking back tears, I reached for the knob and felt both relief and fear when it turned. I knew better than to go in. The sign, the door, these features had just grown in overnight, and even if there was something behind it, my superiors would never be okay with me just going in. Whatever this was, it was all too important to them. And yet…

And yet it was still my little girl they stuck down in the dark. And maybe this was her way of helping me find her again. So fuck them.

I turned the knob further and opened the door. I wasn’t surprised when I saw the dark outlines of the hall leading into Marie’s remembered version of the London Underground behind it. The door itself, the sign over it in that way…none of that actually existed at the tube station when Marie was taken. And as I went further in, I saw other oddities and lapses.

The map on the far wall of the hallway had no station names, for instance. And as I went on into the station proper, I saw advertisements that were blurred beyond recognition. It was strange—most everything was faintly visible, though how I didn’t know, as there were no lights on anywhere that I could see. But stranger yet were the dark patches. Walking onto the dead train I saw more of those, and it suddenly occurred to me what they were.

They were parts of this remembered world that Marie couldn’t see on that day. Almost every detail of that place had been seared into my little girl when she was taken and her mother was murdered, but only those details she could see. Whatever she was now, wherever she was, there were still gaps of darkness in her incredible creation because she hadn’t been on the train that killed her mother, hadn’t likely made it to the far end of the platform that lay similarly cloaked in shadow.

At the end of the day, despite all her wondrous power in that grave, she was still a terrified little girl that couldn’t forget the day her life was taken away.

Sobbing, I began calling out to her. I knew it was stupid. She was long dead, and whatever part of her still lived, that still gave this place form, was beyond knowing me or even being human. I’d told myself that for years, every day that I came out to this damned place, and I’d almost come to believe it. But here and now, in this place, I was…

I was in the mind of a terrified little girl, and it was all my fault.

“Marie? Where’s my Marie?” My voice sounded hoarse and shrill as I called out to her, and when it returned to me, it was distorted and strange. “M-“

“She’s not here, Solomon.”

Letting out a startled cry, I turned to see a small, keen-faced man pointing a gun at me. In the eldritch not-light of that place, I didn’t recognize him, but I still knew who he was. He was like me. A tool of The Kin. Sent to stop me from breaking my leash.

“Oh no. She’s here. She built all of this, you see.”

The man rolled his eyes at me. “I’m aware. But I’m on a very limited time table, so you need to go with me now.”

I frowned at him. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to see what my daughter can show me.”

Letting out a sigh, the man gestured to his cheek. A reddish-black stain lay across it, and as I watched, it seemed to ripple and spread closer to his nose. “I don’t have time for this bullshit. I know you have enough clearance for what I’m about to say, so let me be blunt. I’m not from here. And the process they used to send me over…well, I don’t have much time if I’m going to have a chance of making it back at all.”

“You’re talking about the Bowl, aren’t you?”

He smirked. “See, I knew you knew some stuff. Though I think that’s above your paygrade. So what I’ll tell you is this—in the where I’m from, there’s another guy named Solomon. He’s my boss. And he told me to come over here personally and take care of this. I have a place already set up, but I’m about to get improvisational if you don’t come with me right now.”

I stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. “So this…this other me sent you to…what? Kidnap me?” I glared at him. “Because you can go back now and tell him that this is my world and my job and my da-“

The man cocked the gun. “No, you still don’t get it. You’re done. You’ve done your part. And my boss? He says one of him is enough.”

And that’s when he shot me in the head.

---

I sat up, gasping, feeling my head for a gunshot wound as I looked around in the dark train station. Somehow I was back on the platform, and I…I wasn’t Solomon. I was me. I was…

There was light coming from the dark mouth of the train tunnel.

Standing up, I began walking shakily along the platform, but I couldn’t get a view of what was glowing without getting back down onto the track. Even then, I had to walk on into the tunnel proper before the source of the light started to come into view around the bend.

It was a door. A red door twice the size of the entrance to The Burning Hour, and ornately carved from something that looked like red bone shot through with webbed lines of glowing silver. This door…this thing…it was worse than the station. It led to something worse than the station. I had to get away, I had to go knock and ask to get out and get away from this place before…

From somewhere behind the door, a bell chimed out, cold and clear.

And the door began to open. 

---

Credits

 

The Burning Hour (Part 4)

 

When the woman, Mrs. Bergensohn, first came, there were just more tests. The tests were different. Drawing blood, having various people come and examine me in ways I didn’t understand, asking me questions about the gifts Kalinsky had given me over time. How I liked them, how often I held them, did they ever make me feel strange, that kind of thing.

Then one day the tests stopped, and Bergensohn told me that I was ready for my operation. I was immediately scared, both because I wondered what was wrong that I needed an operation and because over the last two weeks I’d come to fear and hate the woman in a way I’d never felt about Kalinksy. It wasn’t that she’d ever hurt me. It was the way she looked at me. Like she wanted to hurt me. Wanted to hurt me very badly, and was looking forward to the day when she could.

That day, the day of the operation, was the worst of my life. I was strapped down to a metal table in a room I’d never been in before. Men in surgical gowns came in and gave me injections at five different spots—my arm, my upper leg, my stomach, my shoulder, and my chest. Local anesthetic, Bergensohn told me as she approached from the shadowy edge of the operating room. I was crying by then, begging for her to let me go, asking what she was going to do to me. She smiled her cold smile then and gestured to a nearby surgical tray. On the tray were all of my gifts from Kalinsky—the tiny dog, the metal spinning top, the brass bell, the strange rock, and of course, my mother’s locket. When I looked back at Bergensohn in confusion, she smirked at me.

“I’m just going to help you. Make sure you never lose these precious things no matter where you go.”

It was then that she picked up the scalpel next to the locket and began to work.

---

I woke up the next day, my entire body aching and my head feeling heavy and full. Looking down, I saw bandages covering the places where she’d cut me open, hollowed out pockets of my flesh, and sewn the gifts inside. I could feel them in there, not painful, but uncomfortable, a pressure I couldn’t escape or an itch I couldn’t scratch. I was already starting to hear and see new things then I think, but I ignored them. Instead I looked into the worried smile of Dr. Kalinsky as he leaned over my bed and gently held my hand.

“Go slow, Marie. Your body is going to take time to recover.” He glanced down at my bandages and then back to my face. “A-are you in much pain?”

I started to shake my head, but stopped when I felt the loose sogginess of it all, as though my brain was a house being washed away in a flood, its contents floating around and bumping together with every eddy and swirl. Swallowing, I whispered hoarsely instead. “I don’t think so. It just feels weird.” I felt tears coming to my eyes. “What did she do to me?”

Kalinksy let out a sigh as he avoided my gaze. For several moments he just stared off, and I began to wonder if he was going to respond at all. When his eyes found me again, the gaze there was not unkind, but carried the harder look he often had when we were in the middle of my tests.

“There are multiple worlds.”

---

M-m-many, many worlds, in fact. And in those worlds, there are multiple versions of many things, including us. The people that we work for are aware of this. They are aware of and capable of many things, including some degree of communication with some of these other worlds. They use their knowledge and their power to do what all people with knowledge and power tend to do. Acquire more.

In one of these other worlds, there is a man named Gregor Kaminksy. I’ve never met him, of course, as they’ve yet to successfully send anyone to or from this world, though not for lack of trying. But his work…well, his work is similar to much of my own into human consciousness, memory, and more esoteric matters such as the nature of the soul. That, of course, makes sense, as he is his world’s version of me.

I’ve seen photographs of him. Read his research notes countless times. They’ve provided me with unfettered access as they believe that by pooling together their resources across these worlds they can exponentially increase the yield of their discoveries while gaining greater control wherever they reach. And I would like to say I’ve been a productive component of this process, a necessary cog in their machinery, but I try not to lie to you, Marie. And in many ways, I am l-little more than a redundancy. A f-f-failure drifting in the wake of a smarter, more capable version of myself.

This Kaminsky had identified and isolated key elements of several processes associated with the human mind and soul, as well as the reproducible phenomena that some dead bodies undergo if they are not treated in certain ways. While this is comprised of at least thirty-seven different theories and working models, the people of the Kin usually refer to it by a singular crude and overly-simplistic moniker:

The Kaminsky Effect.

Put in terms a young girl like you might understand, this mirror version of me, this Kaminsky, has started the process of bridging the divide between the living and the dead. Communication and collaboration has already been achieved, but that work has already implicated much greater possibilities. That death is not merely a window into some shadowy afterlife, but rather a door into places of untapped potential.

And it is there, in that narrow margin between what Kaminsky has already accomplished and the vast amount he has yet to achieve, that I hoped to make my own mark, my own contribution. While some of his ideas are beyond me, I do understand all of the principles of his work, and my hope has been that any deficit of mine in comparative intellect might be overcome by creativity and drive.

That’s why I began this p-project in the first place. We’ve worked with people like you, special people that have special talents and sensitivities, for quite some time. But I began to wonder if I could find some way to marry one of those special people to the principles of the Kaminsky Effect, and in so doing, produce better or more unique results than my counterpart.

For several years I met only failure. My methods were too safe at first, and then too reckless. I was, I must admit, nearing the end of my benefactors’ patience, and they are not kind when they feel their resources and time are being wasted. But then I learned about you, and as I was still researching your family and your past, it came to my attention that your father was working in London as a behavioral psychologist for one of the companies my employers control. A happy coincidence or fate, but either way, it was not enough. Even if you were as special as I suspected, what was the point if all it resulted in was failure for me and your untimely death?

---

I let out a gasp and Kalinsky’s eyes went wide before narrowing into what he likely meant as a comforting smile. “I’m sorry. I have grown so comfortable around you, and unburdening myself like this, I tend to forget that you are still so young and have been through so much. My point is that I didn’t want to see you unnecessarily hurt or killed. And I wasn’t sure if there was any point in even taking you if I had no better path forward than my past failed experiments.” His smile faded away. “But then I became aware of Mrs. Bergensohn’s work and my thoughts on how to use her to enhance my own chances of real progress began to form.”

He frowned as he looked down at his hand holding mine. “She calls it Miasma. Her work is not scientific, of course, and much of it seems to be little more than supernatural hokum, but I cannot deny that whatever her names and methods, she does get results.”

I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest, and I wanted to pull my hand away from his, but I didn’t quite dare. He was my only tether, my only life raft in a sea of darkness. If I rejected him now, I might lose my only chance of ever escaping this place. Still, I wanted, needed, to know more. To understand what had been done and what was still planned. So keeping my voice small and timid, I gently broke in as he took a breath in speaking.

“What did she do to me?”

Kalinsky sighed and gave my hand a squeeze. “If you ask her, she would say that she bound several spirits—g-ghosts if you will—to your body. This was done by surgically implanting several tethers—objects that the individual ghosts were already haunting—into you.” Rubbing his other hand into his thin hair, he shook his head. “It’s insane sounding, I know. And I only began this path out of desperation, but I swear that there is great power in what she does. Power and a connection to some of the forces I’ve been trying to tap into for years.”

I was trying to pull free of him now. This was all crazy. Was he saying there were ghosts inside of me? I couldn’t trust him at all either. They were all insane and I was going to die in here and…I winced as he gripped my wrist more tightly, his face growing hard as he scowled at me.

“Do you think I like doing this to you? Causing you pain and risking losing someone of your ability?” He let go of my wrist almost disdainfully as he turned away with an offended sniff. “I assure you I do not. Aside from your value to the work, I’ve grown quite fond of you over time. I’ve never had a d-daughter, but I think I would love one no more than I do you.” He glanced back over his shoulder at me. “B-but the work requires sacrifice from us all. Surely you can see that.”

I was freely crying now, and not just because of what he was saying. I was starting to see things again. Future things. Terrible things.

“I…I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

Kalinsky turned back to me in his chair. “I hope not, Marie. I do. These ghosts…according to the woman, they will go insane, but in that insanity, that Miasma, there is great power. My hope is that one of your ability can control it. Use your terrific will to shape it into something this world has never seen before. That none of the worlds has ever seen before.”

I wiped my nose, the tubing running into my arm scratching my nostril, which somehow made me cry even harder. “No…No, I see it. They will…no, what you have done…it will kill me. And then you’ll bury me deep some place far away where I’m all alone.”

The fact that there were tears in Kalinksy’s eyes now only made it all more horrible. Lip trembling, he shook his head. “No, not if I can help it. A-and if you do die, you should know that death isn’t the end. Dying…especially for someone special like you? Dying just gives the body

---

“…over.”

I gasped against the dirty gravel of the railway track. I could still feel the wet ruin of the trash golem across my back, and I began to roll over and scrub myself, trying to get free of the worms that had been invading me before…what was that? I felt like I had lived years as someone else, a girl named Marie that had…had that been a dream or a memory or…?

Sitting up, I looked at the handful of red worms I’d pulled from under my shirt. They were clearly dead, withering to grey before breaking apart like thin lines of ash at the slightest motion. The thought of them touching me, of some of them possibly still being inside of me, made me want to vomit, but I forced the thought away as I stood up and shook my clothes free of more trails of grey powder. No time for that now. I had to get out of here.

I climbed up onto the platform with a grunt and began making my way to the stairs when I saw her. It was me…no, it was Marie. The girl I’d been in the dream. The girl they’d taken so long ago. How was she here? Silent and staring at me with an extended hand, I should have been terrified, but somehow I wasn’t. I could feel her sadness and her loneliness, her desperate need to have me understand…what? I didn’t know, but I found myself walking to her instead of the stairs. Bending down to take her small hand even as I felt her fingers begin to run like wax and melt into my skin. It was burning and crushing me, but it didn’t hurt really, just felt uncomfortable, like a pressure I couldn’t escape or an itch I can’t scratch. And then I was falling again, not into the dark, but into

---

…the lights of the truck flared brightly in the grey afternoon as it backed up into the clearing. I looked from it to the hole that had been dug a few feet away. They said it went down thirty feet. Just big enough for the box. Just big enough for Marie. Pain burning in my chest, I looked up at the man standing on the other side of the deep grave and tried to strike him dead with my glare. If not for his two armed escorts, I’d have already pitched him down that hole. It had been a month since he first contacted me, first told me about what he did to my Zelda and my Marie, and since then my anger and hatred of him had only grown. Seeming to sense my thoughts, Dr. Kalinsky offered me an apologetic smile.

“I know you must think very ill of me. The murder of your wife for one thing, though as I have said, that was not done out of any m-malice toward you or her. And then taking away your sweet Marie...” The bastard had the gall to actually start tearing up as he spoke. “She was well-treated, as I’ve told you, but our loss of her doesn’t make that…”

“No!” I felt my throat burn as I screamed out at him, and I saw his guards tense as they gripped their guns tighter. “You don’t get to talk about them like you care. Like you’re sorry. You murdered them!”

Kalinsky visibly paled as he shook his head, his usually faint accent growing thicker. “N-not true. Not true at all. Your wife, perhaps, but not Marie. Never Marie. I tried to keep her alive. And bless her, she fought too. But the…the Miasma was too much for her, you see?” A flicker of a smile came on his face. “Too much for her in life, at least, but that is what we are here to see, yes?”

I shook my head. “You’re insane. You’re all insane.”

The other man’s lip curled into a sneer. “And you are still agreeing to all this, yes? You could have continued to refuse. C-could have told us to go to hell, even if it meant your death. But instead, you’ve agreed to take this land and have your daughter buried here. Accepted your new position with us, with all the wealth and power and knowledge that entails. Why are you doing these things if we are just insane, bad men, eh?”

His words went into me like knives. He was right. I’d fought at first. Threatened to go to authorities in England and America. Threatened to find and kill them. But I’d known from the start they were just words. Known that however broken I was by losing Zelda and our daughter, however sad and scared I was in finding out Marie was dead, I was even more frightened of what these people might do to me. Lowering my gaze to the hole, I shook my head. “What choice did I have?”

Kalinksy’s voice was mocking now. “The same choice we all have. And you have made the right one. Because you’re smart and ambitious. Pragmatic. You see the n-necessity of sacrifice, don’t you?”

I forced myself to meet his eyes. “I guess you know me very well.”

The doctor inclined his head slightly. “Let’s just say I’ve worked with someone very similar in recent years. An outside consultant like you, but he shows great promise. Like you. I imagine they’ll be putting you two in touch before long.”

“Yeah, sure.” I was only half paying attention as I watched them start lowering a large steel box down into the grave. My voice sounded soft and thin when I spoke next. “Is…is that my little girl?”

“It is, technically, but she’s so much more than you might remember or know. Think of this not as your daughter, but as a seed. A seed of potential that you will guard as part of your work for now.”

Swallowing, I wiped at my cheek. “Why me? Why wouldn’t you just keep her?”

Kalinsky shook his head. “Our experts think that things will go much better if she’s close to someone she loves and knows well. Be less volatile. And despite my fondness for Marie, I cannot truly take her father’s place. All you have to do is come out here every day as your new work allows. It may be this place just stays as a normal clearing in these fifty acres of woods. Or it m-may…change over time. You just report your experiences out here and we’ll take care of the rest. Do you understand?”

I barely felt like I could breathe, but I still managed to nod. Below us, I heard a soft thud as the coffin reached the bottom of the grave. Fresh tears sprang to my eyes and I turned away to stare at the trees as my vision began to blur. I heard Kalinsky cluck sympathetically behind me.

“There, there. I know this is hard. It will get better, trust me. You have a very bright future ahead of you, Mr. Solomon.” 

---

Credits

 

The Burning Hour (Part 3)

  

I was back in the train station, but it was brightly-lit. I heard Mum call out to me. Marie, don’t dawdle, the train is here. Except she didn’t say all that, only part. She got so far as “train” before the next part turned into a surprised grunt as the man in the black coat shoved her in front of the train that was to take us to Knightsbridge. I went to cry out, and in my dream I did cry out, but in truth there was already a rough hand on my shoulder and a rag at my face.

No one saw because they were all looking at the woman that had just been run over by the train that was screaming to a stop. It was screaming, the people were screaming, the whole world was screaming except for me, and I was the one that wanted to scream the most. The hand clenched tighter against my face as I was pulled back from the platform to the edge of the steps. I could feel myself slipping away now, my legs were jelly and I needed to breathe and fight and scream, to get away and see what happened to my mother, but every breath sent sharp prickles down my throat and pushed the world farther away. Whoever held me had turned me toward them now, pressing my face against their coat, acting as though they were consoling me or shielding me from the horror, all the while hiding the rag and my terrified face from any passerby.

The last emotion I had was clear and singular. Hatred. Hate for whoever had hurt my mother and was keeping me from her. Hate for the man that was now carrying me up the steps as the last of my consciousness slipped away. And most of all hate for the dull chime echoing from my core, singing that this was nothing, this was a blessing and a dream compared to what was still to come.

---

I woke up occasionally over the next few days. In a car. Then a room that swayed like we were at sea. Then another car. A train. Just snatches of sensation and light that burned my eyes when I tried to force my too-heavy lids open. Strangers looking down at me with hooded eyes as they called for someone with a needle full of another day or two of darkness.

When I was finally allowed to wake fully, I was in a bedroom. It was decorated very similarly to my room at home, though everything was new and slightly off from my real stuff. There were no windows here, and a door on one end led to a bathroom, while the door on the other was always locked except for when someone came to bring me food or books or take me for tests.

For the first few days I cried and begged whenever someone opened the door. Was Mum okay? Could I please go home? What were they going to do with me?

They were never rough or angry with me, but they ignored my questions just the same. And when I started the tests, those people were no different. They just wanted me to wear wires, draw pictures, tell them what popped into my head, things like that. Once they brought in a metal box with several glass openings and asked me to touch it. The box began to tremble and they immediately took it back without another word. Another time they showed me a picture of a key, a very old and strange-looking key, and asked me what it made me think of. I told them it made me think of nothing, and at first they seemed angry. I could tell they didn’t understand. So I told them in a different way. Told them I could see the shape of a key, but that it wasn’t really a key. It was a mouth. A hungry mouth that wanted to eat everything.

The woman holding the picture paled at that and they took it away too. After that the tests began to change and there was a new man watching now. When we finished the next session, he introduced himself to me as Dr. Grigori Kalinsky. He was a small man with thinning brown hair, his eyes wide and watchful behind grey wire-rimmed glasses. When he spoke, it was barely above a whisper, with a slight, trembling stutter as though he was afraid of disturbing the air.

“Marie, you are a very special young girl.”

“Please sir. I’ve done everything they’ve asked. Please let me go home.” I’d given up on hearing anything about my mother or father by that point. I assumed she was dead and that he had no idea where to find me. My begging now was purer and more desolate. I just needed to get away before things got worse.

Kalinsky gave me a nervous smile. “You have, you have. B-b-but there’s much more to do. I first learned about you from an article in one of London’s papers. M-maybe the Evening? About how you and your father left that store right before the fire last year.” His smile widened, curdling my belly. “You told the reporter an angel had w-warned you, yes?”

I felt tears springing into my eyes. “Yes, sir. That’s what happened.”

His own eyes widened. “Oh, I believe you, dear. We checked on you for months after that. We’re always looking for s-s-special people, but so many turn out to be ordinary. It was only after we found out about what had happened at school and when you were a baby that we decided that we needed to meet you in person.”

Glaring up at him, I tried to keep my voice steady. “Did you kill my mother?”

Kalinsky’s smile fell away. “In a way, yes. The men that took you are very good at their jobs, and they probably saw her as an obstacle or a necessary casualty. I don’t know the d-details. But it doesn’t matter. You’re here now, and this is where you will stay. We will be your family. We will love you and take care of you.” I went to respond when he held up his hand. My heart started to pound at what was laced between his fingers. A golden chain, and suspended from it, Mum’s locket. “If you are good, you can keep this as a keepsake. A tether to your old life and self. She would want you to have it, after all.”

I pulled it from his hand gently and clutched it to my chest as I began to weep.

---

There was a bit of blood in the seams of the locket. They had cleaned it before Kalinsky gave it to me, of course, but not well enough. There was a little spot near the hinge where the locket opened to show pictures of me on one side and my father on the other. The speck of red haunted me, and over the next few months I began to picture it more and more whenever they tested me. It made me angry, made me hate them even more, but I didn’t care. All I had left was my hate anyway.

They assured me that my father was okay and would be safe so long as I cooperated, so I still played their games. They brought me more objects and pictures. Many were just regular things, but some were special in one way or another. Some made me see or feel things, others made me oddly happy or terribly afraid. My sense of things, that had just been feelings or glimpses when I was younger, was becoming stronger and clearer. By the time I turned ten, I was hungry for the testing every day. I’d fixated on the idea that if I got strong enough, I could find a way to get free, but more than that, if I got really strong, maybe I could find something that would kill them all.

Because I had no illusions about the things I was seeing and the things that I’d learned--they were all real. And much of it wasn’t normal. Talking to creatures that shouldn’t exist, knowing things I shouldn’t know…It was scary, but it made me feel powerful and important. It also made me ashamed. Because to my disgust, I realized that as much as I hated him, I also felt a stir of pride and happiness when Kalinsky offered me praise. And on the rare occasion that he gave me one of his strange gifts, I always kept them.

---

“This is a stone from America. T-that doesn’t make it special in itself, but this little stone is from the banks of a place called Mirror Lake. And that place is very special.”

I eyed the small purple rock before frowning up at him. “It isn’t right. I can tell it isn’t right.”

Kalinsky smiled. “It’s certainly not normal, no. You see, I went to great pains to not only get this rock but to get it carried to a place much closer to here. A magic bowl that sometimes fills up with m-m-magic water that…”

“I can see it. It’s underground. They’re building a city above it, but most of them don’t know what’s underneath. They’re going to call it…Plipplop?” I looked at him questioningly as he chuckled.

“Close. I think they are talking of naming it Pripyat. But very good. We’ll have you journal what all you can see tonight. But for now, take your present. It’s for you.” His hand squeaked slightly from the thick rubber glove he wore on the hand holding out the rock.

It wasn’t the first time they’d protected themselves from something they asked me to hold, but Kalinsky had never done it with one of my gifts. The china dog, the small metal spinning top, the brass bell, none of them had ever been handled like poison before. Still, despite everything, they’d never actually hurt me other than making me briefly sick with some of the stuff they brought in. And I didn’t think they wanted to kill me. They valued their tests too much. So swallowing, I reached out and touched the rock. It was smooth and cool, but otherwise it felt like any other rock. My stomach clenched as I saw visible relief on Kalinksy’s face.

“G-good, very good. I knew it would be okay. I knew it would be okay for my special girl.”

“Why are you scared of it?”

The question seemed to catch him by surprise, but after a moment he gave a small nod. “Well, because for most people the water from that bowl can be very dangerous. I had good reason to think it wouldn’t hurt you, especially soaked into that rock as it is, but I still worried. I should have known you could handle it. And I’m so proud.”

My chest clenched painfully as I gave him a smile.

“But it also means we’re ready for the next stage of our work here.” He glanced up as a severe-looking woman stepped into the room. “Mrs. Bergensohn? Marie is ready for you now.”

I felt a chill as the woman stepped closer and offered me a thin smile. “Hello, my dear. I’ve heard so much about you.” 

---

Credits

 

The Burning Hour (Part 2)

  

I tried to control my breathing as I stepped toward the map on the wall. I already had an idea of what it was, and as I grew closer my suspicions seemed to be confirmed. A red circle intersected by a blue bar, and inside it, the word “Underground”. My eyes went to the colored lines snaking this way and that, looking for names for all the different stops along the various train routes the map seemed to be showing. I’d never been to London, but I felt sure I would recognize some names if they were there—but no. While there were little stubs off the main lines where stops would be, no words were there. No words were anywhere other than the one inside that blue bar, and...

My breath caught as I heard a noise from somewhere beyond the wall. Turning, I followed the wall to its edge, the white hallway curving and opening up to a larger area with ticket booths and turnstiles, all empty and silent in the dark. I shined my light all around but saw nothing that would have made that strange, shuffling noise. Fear was thick in my belly now, but I ignored it. I had a job to do, and if Andrea or some clue of what happened to her were down here, I needed to find it. Tightening my grip on the light, I pushed through one of the turnstiles, the metal arms easily turning with only the slightest rasp as I headed further in.

I went down more steps, and when I rounded the next corner, I just stared for several seconds. I couldn’t see everything from this vantage point, but I saw enough to know that I was somehow in a massive subway station. Platforms stretched out to a drop-off, and as I stepped closer I could see the rails of the track below. Further down the track there was a train, its silver body coldly reflecting my flashlight’s glow as it played across its dead face and vacant headlight eyes. I could just make out the lettering of a nameplate above the driver’s windshield—what I guessed was supposed to be the name of the line or destination.

Kaminsky.

How was any of this here? This place was huge. How much time and money would it have taken to build it underground, and why? Walking further down the platform, I saw the first changes to things. Where the upper level and ticket area had been pristine to the point of being sterile, the platform showed more signs of age and use the further down I went. The tiles went from white to a dirty grey, and the floor was thick with grimy footprints and bits of trash. In the distance, piled against a metal bench, was an enormous mound of black garbage bags packed tight and bulging, and a little beyond that the light just seemed to stop, as though it was hitting a wall of impenetrable black fog.

I spun around as I heard a new sound, and while I hadn’t noticed it before, I saw now that the train had one of its doors open. A high-pitched voice in my head warned me it was a trap, but I pushed it away. This whole place was some kind of trap, wasn’t it? And I was already in it. I needed to keep going, see it through, exhaust every avenue. Then when I got out of here, I could do what needed to be done.

Walking up to the train door, I shined my light inside while peering through the windows. It seemed empty enough, though I saw more patches of that black in there like existed at the far end of the platform. Sucking in a deep breath, I forced myself to go inside.

Seats lined the walls of the train car’s interior, divided by doors on both sides and windows above. There were places above the windows where various pictures and signs had been hung—I had the impression they were supposed to be ads, but they were all grey and oddly blurry, even when I drew close and tried to make out a discernable word or picture. Above the seats, hanging like strange fruit, cords ending in black balls dangled from the ceiling, presumably for standing passengers to hold onto when the train started forward or came to a stop.

Not that I thought this train had ever moved. Part of it was the quality of everything in that place, a sense of unreality that made it all feel like it was one thing disguised as another. It gave the station, the train, everything, an off-kilter, almost sneaky feeling that made my skin crawl. But even more than that was the fact that I couldn’t see if the train even continued past the far end of that car—as I walked down, I started to see more and more of that dense black stuff over everything, and before I reached what would have been the door to the next car, it just…stopped, fading into that blackness that my light wouldn’t breach and that I couldn’t quite make myself reach out and touch.

I felt a flash of anger at the panic I could feel growing in my chest. I’d just go check the driver’s compartment, leave the train, and then explore the rest of this place. I shined my light back out at the platform. The darkness was unnerving, but it was the damn noises and these odd patches of…whatever it was…that really set me on edge. I still thought someone might be in here with me, and if they were, so help me God they would…

I stopped, leaning toward the window as I stared out at the metal bench on the far wall of the platform. That…that had been where the mound of trash bags had been before. I knew it was. And now they were gone, as though they had just gotten up and walked away. I shined my light along the wall, making sure I wasn’t just looking at the wrong bench, but no. That was the one.

I stayed still for several moments, waiting for some sneaky noise or flicker of movement at the edge of my flashlight’s roving beam. But when there was nothing, I forced myself to turn back toward the front of the train and head toward the driver’s cab. I half-expected the door to it to be locked, but it wasn’t, and the door slid aside easily. Shining the light ahead of me, I stopped mid-step. Most of the driver’s compartment was covered in the same darkness that was at the far end of the train car. Retreating, I went to move outside when I saw a scrap of paper laying on one of the seats near the door. I would have sworn it hadn’t been there before, and unlike much of the trash outside, this piece was neatly folded in half, only its rough outer edge betraying that it had been torn from a larger page. Heart pounding, I reached down and picked it up. The paper was thick and felt greasy in my hand, my sweaty fingers staining it as I fumbled it open one-handed and read what was written there in the short, harsh strokes of a black pen.

My father wasn’t a scientist, but he was a smart man. He spent his life growing things, and I remember him telling me that the most important thing about growing was how you treated the seed. How you store it, how you plant it. What soil you put it in. What you feed it. He said that you aren’t just nurturing the seed, but the tree it will become and the fruit it will bear. If only he could see the fruits of…

The sentence ended at the edge of the ragged page. Frowning, I started to reread it when I sensed more than saw motion at the edge of my vision. Lifting my light, I shined it out through the doorway to the platform beyond.

Outside, a figure stood watching me. Its shape was misshapen and bulbous, the black trash bags that made up its arms and legs, its massive torso and comparatively small head, all shivering and shuddering as something underneath its plastic skin shifted uneasily. Instinctively I pointed the light up to look for a face, some sign that this was a person, that this was all still just a bet, a fucking game.

The plastic there was featureless as well, but as I watched, a small opening appeared in its surface. Grey sludge poured from the hole like drool, sliding down the pulsating chest of the trash golem even as something else began to explore the ragged mouth above. Thin red worms began poking out from the inner dark of the head, waving like bloody tongues crowding each other for a taste of the dead air. At first there was only a few, but in moments there were dozens, some over a foot long and none of them fully out of the bag that held them.

Assuming they were worms, of course, and not that it mattered. None of this could be happening, but my mind didn’t care about luxuries like reality or rational thought at the moment. It cared only about survival, and whatever that thing was, what it represented was horribly clear.

Death.

My first impulse was to run out the door and try to get past it, run up to the door and bang on it to be let out. Maybe it was slow, or it couldn’t move at all to chase me. Those hopeful thoughts died as it took its first steps forward.

It wasn’t running, but moved toward the open door with a quick and steady gait that spoke of greater speed and agility when it was needed. Each lurching step was heavy and squelching, the rustle of whatever lay beneath those bags growing louder as it grew near. I looked at both ends of the car, but nothing had changed. They both terminated in unknown and terrible darkness that I was afraid to touch, and I could see no way to close the open door either. I really was trapped and it was only a dozen steps away from the door now and…I suddenly turned toward the door on the other side. Maybe if I couldn’t close the one door, I could open the other. I thrust my fingers into the rubber seam between the two door panels and yanked at it savagely. At first, it barely moved, but I braced my foot against a nearby seat and pulled harder. I could hear the thing outside the door, starting to push itself inside with me, and my heart felt like it would burst in my chest if I didn’t get away from it. I couldn’t let it touch me, I couldn’t…

The third frantic pull opened a bigger gap and I shoved myself through it, my left shoe raking off my foot as I cleared the door and fell against the curved far wall of the station tunnel. Grunting in pain as I tumbled to the ground below, I sucked in a breath and grabbed up my flashlight before forcing myself to my feet. It would be fully in the train car now, and if I didn’t get away from the door it might…

But it was gone. There was no sign of it at the partially opened door or through the windows of the car. Where had it gone? I started forward, slow and limping, my breath ragged as I shined my light ahead, below, above. I was making my way around the front of the train when my flashlight flickered once, twice, and then died.

“Marie? Whereeee’s my…Marie?”

The voice was barely a whisper, but in the utter black the thick, wet-sounding words seemed to pour down across me like a flood. Pour down on me from some…where…up…

The thing hit me all at once, driving me to the ground. Wet slickness slimed against my cheek even as small tendrils began pushing their way into my ears, my nostrils, my mouth. I heard another gasp of noise that might have been “Marie” and then the gunshot pop of the bags splitting in half a dozen places as something poured out hungrily across my back and legs. I was trying to scream, but my mouth was full of writhing fingers pulling themselves down my throat. I felt the questing tongues going under my clothes, invading every crevice, every orifice, and I knew I was about to die. But that was fine. Anything would be better than this.

Then I felt something shift behind my eyes, and I began to fall. 

---

Credits

 

The Burning Hour (Part 1)

  

“Listen, man. It’s just a bet. A fucking game, you get me?”

I glared at Anton Fisker, sole owner and operator of “The Burning Hour”. My checks the day before had told me that he was twenty-seven years old and had grown up in Michigan before moving to this area ten years before. Upon his arrival, he’d immediately purchased a fifty-acre plot of pine trees and rocky ground out in the middle of nowhere. That was in August. By October of the same year, the first word of a new extreme haunt or fear challenge called “The Burning Hour” began popping up a few places. By this year, it was still an underground event, but one with quite a following. Available only by appointment, and even then, only on Wednesday nights, it had become the white whale of some internet circles, particularly among those for whom the distance, limited access, or the sheer cost, put entry out of reach.

There were numerous accounts of what took place in The Burning Hour. Most of them were fiction, created by people wanting some attention on their forum or social network of choice. Even they usually got the framework of the experience right, of course. That was simple enough, as it was detailed on the website. The site was password-protected, but that hadn’t stopped plenty of screenshots from being floated around by customers that had paid the entry fee and gained access. It was all in the first paragraphs when you entered the site:

Congratulations on taking the first step toward experiencing The Burning Hour. Before you proceed to the forms and disclaimers, a bit more about what you’re about to sign up for. You will be given directions to the location, and once you arrive, you will be given a new set of clothes and a fresh flashlight. This is all you can carry down with you.

After you are ready, you will head down into the space. The door will be shut and locked behind you, but a staff member will be on the other side. If at any point you wish to leave, simply knock four times quickly in a row on the door you first entered. The door will be unlocked and opened and you will be allowed to go. Bear in mind that your time allotted stops the moment you knock the fourth time, and if that occurs before the full hour has passed, you forfeit.

But if you are able to stay inside the entire hour, you will not only be refunded your entry fee, but you will receive $100,000.00 in cash, as well as digital certification from The Burning Hour that you have completed the challenge.

I bit the inside of my cheek as I waited to respond. Fisker didn’t look like he had $100,000.00 or even $100. And he certainly didn’t look like he’d be running some operation more complex than cooking up some low-grade meth. So it was a scam. Or worse, a trap for the unwary.

“As you know, I was hired by the parents of Andrea Wallace. Very rich and very sad people that will do just about anything to get their daughter back. You know, the young girl I showed you in the picture? The one that you admitted was here last month?”

He frowned and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m not trying to hide it. I keep good records. Got photos and video of everyone that comes and goes from here.” He gestured around at several obvious cameras on poles both inside and outside the chain-link fence. “Not looking to get sued.” Fisker glowered at me. “Or get hassled by cops.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not a cop. I’m a private investigator. And I already told you that when I arrived. So I can only assume you’re saying that to be rude.” I leaned forward slightly, my eyes fixed on his. “Why are you trying to be rude to me, sir?”

He held my gaze and shrugged. “Maybe because you come in here acting like I did something wrong. Look, it’s like I told you. The girl you’re talking about came with two of her friends. She’d paid the 15k to get them all in ahead of time through the website. They were all a little drunk, but otherwise seemed like nice kids. I got them signed in, went over everything with them, and then turned them over to Billy and Megan. Like you saw on the video, they go in at 8 p.m.”

Fisker’s expression changed as he slowly shook his head. “I figured they’d be out of there in five minutes. Ten, tops. But they didn’t knock.” His gaze had drifted away, but his eyes found me again as he went on. “No one—and I mean no one--has ever stayed in the space more than thirty minutes. When it reached forty, I was at the door with Billy. When it reached five past an hour, we unlocked it and went in.” He shrugged. “They were just…gone.”

I debated what tact to take. On the one hand, what he was saying was true, at least in part. I’d watched his security footage and gone over the statements police had taken a month earlier, as well as done my own follow-up investigation before going out to see the attraction and the man that owned it. Andrea had bought the tickets and gone with her two best friends, Betsy Jasper and Alice Woods to The Burning Hour voluntarily so far as I could tell. There was no sign in her texts or emails, or anyone I talked to, that she was doing anything other than thrillseeking like any other college kid with more money than sense.

He was also right that the video shows them entering, and I had seen no signs of editing or alteration of the two hours between then and when police first arrived. Hell, Fisker was the one that had called the cops once they’d looked for the girls and not found them anywhere. That didn’t mean he was innocent, of course. Just smart.

Unfolding my arms, I nodded at him. “Look, I believe you. I’m not saying you did anything to them. But there has to be something else you haven’t told me or the cops. For instance, isn’t there more than one way in and out of that place?”

Fisker’s eyes widened slightly as he broke into an uncomfortable smile. “Um, no. I guess you haven’t seen what’s down there, but there’s only one way in or out.” He pointed at the ten-foot high fence we were standing outside of. “And that thing goes around the only way down to the door. I’m the only one with the key to the fence gate, and only my key and a single staff key exists for the door down there. And no one is allowed inside the fence unless I’m either here or in the trailer where I can see the cameras.” He cocked his head behind him to the single-wide set up at the edge of the clearing. “Had a couple of kids climb past the fence a few years back, which is why I added the razor wire up top, but they couldn’t get any farther than that.

I frowned at him. “Well, if it’s all as tightly-run as you claim, then you’d have to know everyone that came and went. So where did Andrea and those other girls go?”

Fisker looked angry for a second, but then the flare of emotion faded away, only leaving behind a grey sad look in his eyes. “Man, I wish I knew. You think I want this hassle? The only reason they haven’t shut me down or locked me up is because of my lawyer threatening them, and even he says that I need to be real careful to not give them an excuse.” He glanced toward the set of stone steps heading down into the earth on the other side of the chain-link. “Thing is, there’s nothing for them to find.”

I felt my irritation growing. This guy was lying or hiding something, but I didn’t know exactly what yet. Stepping past him, I went to the fence and peered down the steps. “We’ll see. So what about when they went inside? You say you’ve showed me all the video you’ve got, but there was none from any cameras inside ‘the space’.”

He shook his head slightly, his eyes wary. “Because there are none. There’s no recording in there. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t.”

Letting his odd response go for a moment, I pressed on. “Okay, so no video. But you have to have people watching them, right? Doing stuff to people to freak them out and make them leave fast?”

It was Fisker’s turn to frown. “You don’t get it. This isn’t a haunted house or a carnival ride. We aren’t in there manipulating things.”

I stared at him. “So you’re telling me that there’s never anyone in there with them? Watching them or scaring them?”

His gaze was steady. “I’m telling you that I wouldn’t let me or my staff be in the space while the door was shut for a million fucking dollars. And there’s no way for us to get in or do anything in there other than through that same door.”

I smiled slightly at his phrasing. “You’re being very careful with your words, aren’t you, Mr. Fisker? So what, you control things remotely with electronics or something?”

Fisker scrubbed his hand across his cheek. “Look, dumbass. Most electronics don’t even work in there. Even the flashlights I give them, which I order special because they’re supposed to be shielded and durable? They burn out in like five or ten minutes.” He gave a laugh. “Hell, that’s probably when half these people start knocking to get out. But to be really clear, no, neither me nor anybody working for me goes in there to mess with them or messes with them remotely. We literally just shut the door, lock it, and wait.”

I felt my smile hardening. “I don’t believe you.”

He smirked. “And I don’t care.” Puffing out a breath, he ran a hand through his greasy hair. “Look, look. You said you read about this place online, right?”

I nodded. “Sure. Most of it sounded like bullshit, but yeah. What’s your point?”

Fisker gave me an unpleasant smile. “What let you know the ones that were bullshit?”

I paused, surprised by the question. After a moment of thought, I gave a shrug. “Some I could tell because what they said sounded like something from a normal haunt, not something that people would leave if they had a chance at winning the kind of money you claim to be offering. Others were clearly just made up crap—stuff that didn’t make sense and was supposed to be scary but you could tell the person telling it wasn’t actually scared by it because it had never happened to them. A few were just jumping on the bandwagon. Too vague.”

His smile widened. “Yeah, but you said most were bullshit. Not all. What about the ones you believed? What did they say?”

I felt my mouth going dry as I held his gaze. “They didn’t say much really. Just that they had done it and that they hadn’t won the money. And some of them warned people. Warned them to not come and do The Burning Hour. That it wasn’t worth it, even if they won the money.”

Fisker looked thoughtful. “Hmm. Those just sound like plants to me. Maybe I posted those myself. No better way to drum up business than to tell people to stay away.”

Looking past him, I stared at the steps going down. They looked like marble. What in the hell had he built out here? “Yeah, that was my first thought too. But I checked the people out. Tracked them back to real people. People that, so far as I can tell, are unconnected to each other or you…well, except for through this place.” Tearing my gaze away from the carved stone railing trailing away into the ground, I looked back at Fisker. “What is this place? Really? What happens to them down there?”

There was no smile on his face this time when he spoke. “I can’t tell you that.” He reached into his shirt and pulled out a metal chain with a small key on the end. “But I can let you see if you want.” The corners of his mouth twitched slightly. “Free of charge.”

He turned and unlocked the fence gate, stepping in before I could even respond. I hesitated to follow. “If this is some kind of trick to get me down there and do something to me, you should know I just left the sheriff’s office before coming here and they know where I was headed.”

Fisker shrugged. “That’s fine. I’m not going to touch a hair on your head. You’ll walk out of here just fine…unless, you disappear too I guess.”

“Uh-huh.” Clenching my jaw, I got out my phone and pulled up the contact I’d just added earlier that afternoon. “Hey, Investigator Grant. This is Wally Sturgis. Yeah, everything is fine. But I’m out here talking to this Mr. Fisker. He’s offered to let me go in his…attraction. If I don’t call you back in the next 90 minutes, send some deputies this way, yeah?” I smiled at Fisker as I put my phone away. “I’m ready.”

He held the door open until I was through and then locked it behind us. Walking past me, he beckoned to follow him to the steps and beyond. I felt my stomach tighten again. These steps were marble. Marble and ornately carved at the edges, curving slightly as they drifted further underground. I thought back to the land records. How had he bought this property in August and had this made within three months? And even if he had the means to do it, why?

But what was the alternative? That this had already existed here before he bought the land? It was possible, but that made no more sense. Stairs going down to…

I felt my breath catch as we reached a wall of featureless grey brick. Featureless except for a heavy metal red door and the white sign above it. Emblazoned across the sign in large green letters was a single line:

Mind the gap.

Fisker was about to unlock the door when he paused and turned back to me. “Sorry, almost forgot. Leave your phone and any electronic keys out here with me.”

“I don’t think so.”

He shrugged. “Then you don’t get in. Up to you.”

I stared at him a moment before handing over my phone and key fob. “Remember my phone call.” He rolled his eyes and turned back to unlock the door and open it. The door swung wide silently, and inside, everything was darkness.

“Oh, my bad. Here’s your complimentary flashlight. Good luck with it.” I glanced down to see he was holding out a small metal flashlight. Taking it, I clicked the rubber button experimentally. A bright beam of light flared out, and I turned it toward the open doorway. The beam didn’t penetrate far, but I could see tile floor and the ghostly outline of a distant white wall. On the wall, I could just make out what looked like some kind of map covered in lines of various colors. Walking closer, I shined my light around as my heart began to hammer in my chest. This was impossible. How was any of this…

Behind me, I heard the door slam shut. Fisker called out from the other side, barely audible. “Just knock four times when you’re ready to get out.”

I had spun toward the door when it closed, but now I turned back to the darkness, my breaths coming short and fast. Flashlight slippery in my hand, I took a step forward, tense for any motion or sound. The only noise was Fisker behind me. He was locking the door back with a metallic thunk before yelling to me one more time.

“Welcome to The Burning Hour.” 

---

Credits

 

One Step Behind (Part 4) [FINALE]

  

I knew what he meant right away. Maybe in the same strange way I’d pictured the rolltop just as it had been in Abrams’ house. We were connected somehow, tied together by whatever had happened to him or whatever he wanted me to find. Maybe I could save him somehow? Or maybe he was trying to save me. Either way, the path was clear. I needed to get what was in that desk, and I needed to trust that he was right on the timing of it all.

My conviction waivered as I crossed the moonlit road back to the shadows of Abrams’ monolithic home. It was the middle of the night, and her car was still there, so I had to assume she was inside. Was I really going to break into this woman’s house in the middle of the night, even if only for a few minutes to peek inside the desk? What if she was awake and caught me? What if she had a gun?

I tried to push the thought away. I’d be quiet, and if I heard or saw any sign of her being up, I’d just ease out before she saw me. And failing that…well, I could always act like I’d come over to…ugh, see if she wanted to have that coffee. I paused on the top step. Was this really worth all the potential hassle? And did I really want to risk entangling myself more with this odd woman?

Just then a new thought pushed its way into my mind. An intruder. I could tell her that I’d come in because I saw an intruder prowling around outside. And then…then before I could call her or the police, they’d entered the house. Fearing for her safety, I’d just run over to try and get her out before she got hurt.

That sounded better, but how would I explain how I got in? No, this was all too much. I could feel the drive to go on pushing me forward, but I resisted it. As interesting as all this was, I really didn’t want to go to jail over something that was none of my business. And while I liked the excuse of trying to protect her, the only way it would work was if I could get in without breaking anything.

I felt a nervous rumble at the thought. Not at the thought of breaking in, but at the realization that I’d been considering it a likely option on the way across the road. There was always the chance I could find an unlocked door or window, but Abrams didn’t strike me as absent-minded or careless. And yet I hadn’t hesitated in coming over anyway, all because some words scratched on a page told me so. If that even was what it meant…

I stood on the porch in a silver penumbra of moonlight, shadow draping my back like an unknown passenger and my heart thudding in my ears. What was I doing? I needed to go.

I tried to retreat, but something held me back. I’d come that far, hadn’t I? And this might be my only chance. Shouldn’t I at least try the door?

It was a stupid thought, and I felt fear and anger welling up inside my chest as I gingerly reached out to test the front door’s ornate latch. My stomach plummeted as it went down at the lightest touch, the door swinging silently open before I could pull my hand away.

I cursed myself as I stepped inside, but much of my fear was gone now. I was like a sleepwalker, moving steadily through the dark to the living room and the locked desk in its far corner. The key found its home easily in the black, and it turned smoothly when I twisted it to the right. Pulse thrumming, I slid the top of the desk upward with a soft ratcheting that still caused me to freeze as I glanced around momentarily.

Nothing. No sign of anyone being alerted or even awake. Shielding the light with my hand, I used my phone’s screen to softly illuminate the desk’s interior. I was worried I’d be looking through a rat’s nest of papers or personal effects, but it was nothing like that. The walnut paneling was clean and bare except for a single notebook resting at the desk’s center. I felt a moment of disorienting confusion at the sight of it—it looked just like the book I’d left back in my bedroom. It wasn’t until I lifted the cover that I saw the front page was filled with lines of blue ink instead of just a handful of grey words.

Closing the book, I debated what to do. I could stay here and look at it, but I risked being exposed or not getting a good look at the book. If I took it, it may very well be missed, but I could always try to sneak it back in, and even if I couldn’t, Abrams could never prove I was the one that took it. Clenching my teeth, I slid the book off the desk and eased the rolltop down. There was a moment where I began turning away before I realized with a start I hadn’t locked it back yet. Muttering at my stupidity, I reset the lock and crept back to the front door.

The house was still quiet, and there were no lights on anywhere. I was going to make it out after…

A moan echoed from upstairs. I stopped dead at the sound, sure that it was the preamble to screams or gunfire or Abrams calling the police. But no, the moaning continued, low and throaty, and as I listened from the well of shadows below, I came to understand that I wasn’t hearing sounds of fear or distress at all. Suppressing a shudder, I opened the door and slipped out into the night.

---

My sister Alvena was always a big fan of journals. Personally, I always thought they were a waste of time. Notes? Certainly. Formulas? Computations? Without question. But these were the tools of reason and logic. The planks and sails that carried the modern thinking man into new discoveries. Journals were for memories at best and feelings and emotions at worst—all of them inconstant things that usually served more as a means of servitude than an aid to elevation.

I don’t know that I disagree with that sentiment even now, yet here I am. My name is Albert Mulhaven, and this is my journal.

I have two degrees in physics, have published dozens of papers, and among those who are honest, I’d be regarded as an expert in many areas, but most especially those dealing with time. I’ve argued the merits and flaws of different theories of when for the past two decades: the past hypothesis, block universe theory, causal set theory, etc, etc. ad infinitum. They were interesting, and at times I pinned my hopes for true insight upon building from these ideas of others. Using these structures of great scientific scholarship as the foundations upon which to build my temple.

And yet…every time I began my labor in earnest, down one path or another, I found the materials to be woefully flimsy and brittle. Each was largely presupposition and guesswork crudely shaped to fit a particular model or more established theory. And those models and theories were, in turn, more of the same. I began to feel the fruitlessness of my efforts—of all our efforts. We were like children out camping, guessing the sources of the night-time sounds that surrounded us—giving them names and weaving stories around them so to better assure ourselves we had a measure of understanding, protection, control.

Or perhaps worse, we were like the lowest of the prehistoric men, staring up at the sun and declaring it God.

These realizations, these doubts, left me shaken. I left off my work for months, and during that time I took to going on long walks that carried me far from home. It was during one of those I found my way into a pawn shop, and among those shelves, I found an antique book dealing with the nature of time.

It was all in French, but I bought it anyway—something about it intrigued me and it only took me a few weeks to be able to read it well enough. In my arrogant youth, I’d have dismissed it as a work of philosophy at best or the superstitious ravings of a primitive madman at worst. But I was no longer that man, and the words of Alexander Trudeau renewed me—water to a man dying in a wasteland of self-doubt.

His understanding of space-time was remarkably modern for a man who lived hundreds of years ago. He used different terms for some things, and of course my translations were imperfect, but elements of a dozen modern theories lived in his work, all woven together by a brand of mystic insight that pierced me within the first few pages. This wasn’t a man who was guessing at the shape of truth in the dark. This was a man who had seen truth and was now setting it on display for those with sense enough to seek it out. The book was unparallelled genius—every principle and idea was explained clearly and well-established before he moved on to the next. I was breathless by the end, and when I finished early one morning after two days with no sleep…I began again from the beginning.

After I knew it by heart, I began a new series of thought experiments and exercises. I was done with theories and hypothesis. If I was going to touch the truth as Alexander had, I had to reach out with my own hand.

I can’t begin to do Alexander’s truth justice here—I lack the space and the language and…frankly, the mind. But I can summarize the most salient point of it as follows:

Time is a lie. What we perceive as time are an infinite series of moments—think of photographs or micrometer-thin slices of a neverending column of matter and energy. These slices are connected to each other in a multitude of ways and can be travelled by just as many, but we as sentient creatures already have one of the best and most efficient modes of travel built into our very natures.

Our consciousness, our true selves, travel through these moments with little effort—picture to picture, slice to slice, second by second. That motion, that inertia, gives the illusion of progress. Of progression. Of Time. It’s no different than animating a cartoon flipbook by fanning the pages.

We’re fooled by that motion into thinking it has more significance than it does. Into thinking that time is real and that it defines us, defines everything. We have these bodies, these meat vessels that age and wither, and we assume it is just the hand of time wasting us as it does everything. Never understanding that it isn’t the time that matters. It’s the meat.

Our consciousness pushes us through these points of infinity, but it comes with a cost. We unknowingly slowly consume our physical bodies to maintain that inertia, and when the debt can no longer be paid, the body is left behind. For Trudeau, this was a matter of little consequence. This work was clearly part of a larger body of thought he had—one that was embarrassingly religious if I’m honest, despite my deep respect for the man. His talk of other Realms and Nightlands...I suppose in those earlier times, even a genius such as he couldn’t help but be infected by some degree of superstition.

But the meat. The glorious meat. That was real enough. And while he didn’t explicitly say it, the implication was there. If one could find a way to break the cycle—to free one’s consciousness from barreling “forward” in this idiotic chronological pursuit—you could escape the lie of time and its consequences. It just required an open mind and enough energy to break the cycle and maintain one’s sense of self without the rigid structure that sequential casuality afforded lesser beings.

The first time I ate a person, I felt those shackles slip away.

It was terrifying at first. I felt as though I was being torn apart in a storm as I slipped into the dark between moments. But I had prepared myself in mind and body. I was now a contradiction that could exist outside the borders of the so-called “natural world”. I was matter and not. Energy and not. But always, if such a word has meaning, I was will and I was power.

So I steadied myself. I learned the nature of living without the weight of time’s lie on my neck. I found ways to travel to a multitude of moments, though initially my own mind provided limitations. I could only travel to places and times I was familiar with, you see. At first, that was enough. And when it wasn’t, I sought more power to pierce this new threshold.

I came back to my life to feed, but I soon realized my methods were unrefined and inefficient. So much energy was wasted in going back and forth into the timestream with a belly full of blood and meat and pain.

Again, I turned back to my muse, Alexander. To his references to connecting with higher, more ascended beings and being used by them. I’d dismissed it as fancy at the time, but perhaps too quickly. Wasn’t I a higher being now, after all?

My first few tries were failures. It’s a delicate thing you see. Interweaving a thread of your own consciousness in with another’s so completely that you can gain succor from them without having lips or teeth of your own. Mrs. Abrams was my first success. When she ate, I ate. And when she didn’t…well, I still ate a little from time to time.

It’s a much better system, but still imperfect. And Mrs. Abrams has reached the end of her usefulness, I’m afraid. I’ve plied her with fear and pleasure, gently milked her for all the life she has to give, all the meat she could consume in my name. But the process has been hard on her, and I can feel her beginning to slip away.

That’s why I had her place the ad. Accept you as a tenant. Hide the books and the key. Give me enough hooks in your brain that I could burrow my way in. Make my thoughts, your thoughts. My hungers, your hungers. Prepare you to take her place.

Even now, you think this is crazy. You’re confused and afraid. Considering whether or not you should even be reading any longer, or if your time is better spent running away. I could assure you there is no where or when to run to, but what would be the point? It’s easier to just do this.

Look up.

---

I looked up from the page, letting out a startled scream at the naked figure before me. It was Mrs. Abrams, her skin grey and sagging like corpseflesh as she looked down at me with dull eyes. If she’d seemed old before, now she was ancient—a few white-hairs nested on the top of her speckled skull, and when she smiled, I could see black gums foaming around yellow mounds of time-worn bone.

“Forgive me…I…I know I look a mess.” She croaked out the words with a brittle laugh. “That bagboy we ate…he was filling, but…my Albert is so terribly hungry of late.” Her rheumy eyes rolled in her head as she gave a small shiver. “Not that I mind. He’s always so gooooood to me.” A black line of drool crept from the corner of her mouth as she stepped toward me.

I shuffled back on my bed as I stared at her in horror. “Bagboy? That who ate?”

Abrams snickered nastily. “You know well enough. You smacked your mouth on it, didn’t you?” She sniffed as she ran a long-nailed hand down her side. “Could have had dessert, but that’s your loss.” Wiping at her mouth, she stared at the ceiling. “Still, your first is always the best. I remember eating my Hugo. He was dellllicious.”

I took her momentary distraction as my chance to get away. Sliding off the bed, I hit nightstand as my feet made it to the floor. The other notebook, the one I’d found under the bed, fell off the table and landed open next to me. I couldn’t help but look down at it for a moment. I’d been so fucking stupid. These people were crazy, and I was getting out of here, and why couldn’t I move? Why couldn’t I run?

Looking up in terrified frustration, I saw that Abrams was laying down on the floor, her eyes on some distant point as she began to thrash and groan. Again I tried to move my feet, but it was no use. I was trapped in this nightmare, and why? What…

“What do you want me to do?”

The question wasn’t to Abrams, but to the book, or at least to the thing behind it. I didn’t really expect an answer, but as soon as I looked down at the page, I saw two new words forming below the last.

to eat.

I sucked in a breath as I glanced back at Abrams. I wanted to feel revulsion, but I didn’t. All I felt was an intense, burning heat radiating out from my core. No, not heat. Hunger.

I looked back down at the book, as though to ask another question or try and talk myself out of it. I saw now that my own words, the questions I’d asked, were all gone. All that was left were the grey words of the thing that lived outside of time but in it. Always ahead of me, but always following one step behind.

Hello meat.

It’s time to eat.

Stifling a laugh, I wiped spittle from my chin as I turned back to the feast laid out before me.

And I fell to my knees. 

---

Credits

 

One Step Behind (Part 3)

  

What does that mean? Meat?

The paper of the journal stayed silent for the next two hours, and finally I was too exhausted to stare at it any longer. I considered carrying the notebook with me to bed, but something recoiled at the idea. This was all too strange, and while I was still largely preoccupied by the wonder and mystery of it all, I couldn’t help but feel a growing sense of unease too. I didn’t know what I was dealing with, not really. What if it was dangerous? What if I…

My eyes snapped open and I could see sunlight coming in through my bedroom windows. I’d slept past eleven, even though I’m usually awake before nine. Even then I felt like I could have slept on, and probably would have if not for the cold bit of metal digging against my cheek. Lifting my head, I looked groggily back down at my pillow.

It was a key.

A small, brass key like you sometimes saw on lockboxes or rolltop desks. Sitting up quickly, I looked around the room for other signs of an intruder, but I didn’t see any. Just this tiny key that had somehow been slipped onto my pillow like a bizarre tooth fairy. I picked it up gingerly, as though I thought it might shock or bite me if I didn’t handle it with care. Turning it over in my hand, I saw no markings or labels, and it didn’t seem remarkable in any way. Just three jagged teeth, defined by the valleys of planed metal that separated them into tiny, isolated islands of brass.

I blinked and realized I’d been just staring at the key for some time. What was wrong with me? I looked at the clock and saw it was nearly noon now. I had work to get done, and then there was that weird dinner invitation from Abrams if I decided to actually go. The idea of begging off was very tempting, but something in me resisted the idea. Aside from not wanting to be rude or alienate a landlord that could toss me out at a moment’s notice, I also wondered if I could find out more about the man that had lived there before me. She certainly seemed to think a lot of him, and if she’d gone through all his stuff, maybe she knew something about his work.

Still, the idea of being in that house with her made me uncomfortable. I glanced down at the key nestled in my palm. Just like all this was.

I put the key on my nightstand and wiped my hand on my shorts absently as I wandered into the living room. My excitement at checking the notebook was tainted by fear and uncertainty now, but I still made myself look before getting ready to go out. When I flipped open the cover, my eyes found the last word written in faded grey letters, still unchanged from the night before.

Meat.

---

“It’s an old, family recipe, though I have jazzed up the ingredients over time.” Mrs. Abrams shot me a sly look. “Maybe if you’re good to me, I’ll teach it to you.”

I shifted uncomfortably on the floral sofa she’d led me to when I arrived a few minutes earlier as I gave a small laugh. “Oh, I’m no cook. But it does smell good.”

She smiled at me, the red lipstick on her lips crawling up toward eyes that seemed to sparkle with a light I hadn’t noticed before. “You’d be surprised what you can learn if you put your mind to it.” Tipping me a wink, she gestured toward the kitchen. “I’ve still got to finish up in there, so you just sit here and relax.” She put her hand on her hip, smoothing out the black velvet of the dress she was wearing. “And if you think of anything you want, you just let me know.”

I nodded and tried to keep my expression neutral as she left the room. What the fuck? Was she fucking flirting with me? I was used to the amiable attention that I sometimes got from older women, but this? She was made up more than I’d ever seen, and while she didn’t really look younger than her seventyish years, there was a weird energy to her now that gave everything a different feel than just an old woman looking to mother a young tenant.

Shaking my head, I glanced toward the kitchen where I could hear her opening what sounded like an oven. I was being stupid, right? Or even if I wasn’t misreading things, wasn’t it a bit sexist of me to be so grossed out about it? I mean, if it was an older man being a little flirty with a younger woman, would I think it was so weird? And it wasn’t like she’d done anything out-of-the-way, at least not yet. I just needed to chill the fuck out and…

That’s when my eyes landed on the rolltop desk sitting in the far corner of the living room.

I froze, as though I was being caught in the act of…well, something, just by seeing the piece of furniture. It looked almost identical to the image that had come to mind when I’d found the key that morning. It was bound to be a coincidence, like one of those instances of fake déjà vu that your mind convinces you is real, but once I saw the desk, I found it hard to keep my gaze from wandering back to it.

Glancing in the direction of the kitchen, I heard the sound of metal clattering. If I was going to do more than look at it, now was my best chance. Odds were it was just full of old person crap, but if it would satisfy the buzzing curiosity in the base of my skull, at least I could re-focus my attention on fending off any awkward advances from Abrams while not pissing her off.

Standing up slowly, I casually meandered over toward that corner of the room, pretending to look at a picture of willows hanging on the wall and a small collection of porcelain figurines clustered in a display case next to the rolltop. Glancing around once last time, I focused my attention on the rolltop itself.

The ribbed lid was all the way down, and just below a small brass knob was a keyhole. One that looked the same size as the key I’d found. I felt my heart sink. I’d left it on my nightstand. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to try the lid. It was probably just a normal desk unrelated to anything, which meant it was probably unlo—

“Naughty boy.”

I jumped and spun around to see Mrs. Abrams just behind me. This close, I could smell flowery, too sweet perfume covering a deeper, sour smell. She smiled at me with yellowed teeth.

“I…I was just…”

She chuckled. “You were poking around. It’s okay. Curiosity killed the cat.” Her lips pursed into a smirk. “But satisfaction brought him back.” I took a step back and shuffled to the side as her eyes drifted down to the desk. “You won’t get into there, I’m afraid. Locked up tight to protect some of Albert’s papers.” Her eyes found mine again. “Delicate matters.”

Swallowing, I nodded. “Um, yeah. Sure. I…maybe I should just…”

Turning away, she beckoned for me to follow. “In any case, dinner’s ready. It’s time to eat.”

When I hesitated, she glanced back with a raised eyebrow. “Come on before the meat gets cold.”

---

The next hour was one of the most uncomfortable of my life. Abrams acted more normal at the dinner table, but I couldn’t shake feeling exposed—as though she was constantly weighing me in some way I didn’t understand. She did most of the talking, primarily asking me questions about where I was from and what I did for work, while occasionally pausing to ask if I was enjoying the food. I said yes, of course, though it wasn’t hard to be convincing.

The meal was actually very good—the roast had a tender spiciness that was offset by sauteed potatoes and steamed asparagus. It was the first homecooked meal I’d had in…well, years, and between its flavor and my nervousness, I’d cleaned my plate before I realized it.

Abrams offered me coffee in the living room, but the idea of settling back into that flower-print sofa with her sitting so close unnerved me. Making up the excuse that I had to get up early the next day, I thanked her for the delicious meal and started heading toward the door. My eyes stole a glance at the desk again as I walked through the living room—the significance of what she’d said was in there hadn’t been lost on me, and the desire to open it up and search for clues about Mulhaven only grew stronger as I got closer to escaping whatever weirdness Abrams might have planned.

She didn’t argue with my rushed farewell, smiling serenely as she stepped forward to give me a lingering peck on the cheek as I turned to say good-bye at the door. I smiled awkwardly at the gesture and told her good night again before turning and heading back across the road at something just short of a trot. My mind was racing—I wanted to get into that desk, but how? Did I really want to go back over there? Wouldn’t that just be encouraging her?

A few minutes later, as I was washing her ruby lipstick off my cheek and brushing my teeth, I started considering the idea of going back in there without being invited. Not to bother anything, of course. Just to see if I could open the desk, poke around in there, and then get back out.

The thing was, Abrams never seemed to leave her house. Not that I always paid a lot of attention, but I’d never noticed her car gone in the time I’d lived there. And if I wasn’t willing to go over there for another awkward dinner date, what other chance would I have?

Sighing with frustration, I went into the living room to check the journal before heading to bed. There was nothing new. Hell, maybe it was done. And would that be a bad thing? I wasn’t sure anymore.

After a moment’s consideration, I carried the notebook back into the bedroom with me. I still wasn’t sure I wanted it so close while I slept, but it did seem to write when I was close by. Maybe I’d wake up and it would give me some hint or clue as to what I should do or what was going on. If only I could see in that desk. If only she left the house or I had some way of knowing when it was safe to go have a…

I jumped slightly as I awoke to a familiar sound next to me.

Scritch scritch

Fumbling for the light, I grabbed up the notebook from the nightstand, knocking the small key to the floor in the process. Palms sweaty, I flipped open the cover to see two new words written on the lowest line.

It’s time 

---

Credits

 

One Step Behind (Part 2)

  

“Hello? Who is this?”

My voice was barely above a whisper, and I wondered if I’d be able to hear a response over the pounding of my heart. I was staring at the page, but was tensed for any sound or motion from any corner of the shadowy bedroom. As the seconds crawled by, my mind began trying to weakly interject that maybe it was nothing after all. Maybe the word had been there already and we just hadn’t…

No. That was bullshit. Maybe I’d missed the fingerprint or thumbprint or whatever it was, but not writing on the very first page. Plus there had been that sound, which I now imagined was the sound of some ghost pencil scritch-scratching the greeting to me.

Maybe that was it. I needed to write back instead of talking to it like it was a fucking smart phone. I checked the bedside table’s drawers, but they were empty aside from a t.v. remote and an old phone charger. Then I remembered that I might still have a pen from the last time I’d used my suitcase—it had been a work trip, and I thought I’d crammed some miscellaneous pens and notepads into one of the side pockets. Sure enough, I found two plastic ballpoints squirreled away underneath some socks and underwear. Heart still thundering, I went back to the bed and picked up the notebook with a pen in hand.

Hello? Who is this?

I sat for close to ten minutes waiting for a response, but there was none. Finally giving up, I put the book back on the nightstand and—leaving the light on—tried to go back to sleep. That was easier said than done. I was waiting to hear that scratching sound again, and more than once I flipped open the book to make sure something hadn’t been silently written in response to my question. It wasn’t until after the sun was starting to peek in my window that I finally fell back to sleep.

---

“Well, you look like dogshit.”

I snickered at Lena. “Good morning to you too.”

She snorted. “Good morning passed you by half an hour ago. I was going to let you sleep another half hour and then come check if you were dead.”

I glanced at the microwave and then back at her. “Shit. My bad. I didn’t mean to sleep that long. I’m sorry.”

She waved away the apology. “No biggie. Just go get dressed and let’s grab some lunch. I know a good taco bar you’ll like and I’m starving.”

Thirty minutes later and we were stuffing our faces between telling each other funny and irritating stories from our respective jobs. Lena was a pediatrician and I was a marketing analyst at a PR firm, so you’d think our stories would be wildly different from each other. And some were, of course, but most of them weren’t that far apart. Because at the end of the day, the stories were about people. And at the end of the day, most people just weren’t that compli…

“Make sure you give that stuff back, okay?”

I glanced up at Lena, confused both by what she’d said and the worried look on her face. “What?”

She frowned slightly as she waggled her fingers at me as though to ward off something distasteful. “The books. The weird books you found. Make sure you give them to that lady as soon as you get back.”

I shot her a dark look. “Lena, I shoplifted once. Once. And I was fifteen at the time. It was a stupid kid move, okay? Jesus. I’m not some fucking thief, and I don’t need you mother henning me about it.”

My sister looked ready to argue, but instead she took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. And I’m not saying you’d keep it. It’s more…I don’t know. I kept thinking about them last night and today. They creep me out.” She shot me an embarrassed smile. “You know me—I don’t believe in all that spooky shit. But that’s what made this so weird.”

I let out a small laugh I hoped sounded genuine. “Lena, there’s nothing to them. Just some old book and a weird journal or whatever.” When she didn’t look convinced, I added. “But yeah, I’ll give them to Mrs. Abrams as soon as I get back.”

She nodded, looking slightly relieved. “Good.”

I was close to mentioning the writing I’d seen the night before when Lena spoke up again.

“You know, I almost woke you up last night and asked you to go put those books back in your car.” She blushed a little. “The idea of them in the house kind of makes my skin crawl, stupid as that is.”

I felt a mixture of guilt and worry curdling in my belly. I’d looked at the notebook again that morning, but there was still nothing beyond that initial “Hello” and my response. Now I definitely wasn’t telling her about it—it would only make her worry more. But the fact that she was worried somehow spooked me more than the strangeness of the writing itself. Because she was right—she didn’t buy into anything otherworldly, and she didn’t scare easily. Whatever was going on with the book, I needed to stay out of it, and get it away from me as soon as possible.

When I left my sister’s that afternoon, I had every intention of giving Mrs. Abrams the books when I made it home. It wasn’t until I stopped for gas along the way that I decided I should check the book one last time. I pulled the notebook out of my bag, feeling my hands tingling slightly as I flipped open the cover.

Hello

Hello? Who is this?

Albert Mulhaven. I need

I fumbled with the book as my hands began to shake. Gripping it tighter, I moved over to be more directly under one of the bright white lights above the gas pumps. That’s what it said, in grey letters like the first, but newly written since I’d packed the notebook up a couple of hours earlier. Lena was right. There was something wrong with all this. I needed to give it to Abrams and be done.

Still, that voice of reason in my head lacked conviction, and by the time I reached the house, I found myself turning into my own driveway instead of Abrams’ across the street. I’d just sleep on it, I told myself. Sleep on it and…well, maybe see if it would write back if I wrote again.

A knock on my window made me jump. Looking up, I saw a teenage boy with long hair and swarms of acne on both cheeks staring at me unhappily. I only rolled the window down far enough to ask what he wanted. Looking irritated, he looked back down at his phone before glancing back up at me.

“Um, is this 129 Cypress Lane?”

I shook my head. “No, this is 130. I think 129 is my landlady’s house. The big one across the road.” I pointed in the general direction of the other house. “Did you try there yet?”

“Nah, not yet, man. Er, sir. Thank you for the help.” He was turning to walk back toward the road, and glancing in my rearview I could see an old, beat-up green hatchback parked on the shoulder next to my driveway. The kid looked harmless enough, but it still seemed odd. I didn’t remember ever seeing anyone over at Abrams’ house in the time that I’d lived across from her, and it wouldn’t hurt to make sure he had some legitimate reason for bothering her.

“Hey, why are you looking for that house?”

The boy stopped in his tracks, another irritated look passing across his face briefly before he could hide it. “Groceries. I drop off groceries for customers. But I’ve never been out here before, so…” He shrugged. “Anyway, got to get to it. Thanks.”

Nodding absently, I watched in the rearview as he trundled back to his car and drove over to the big house across the road. True to his word, he came back out of the car carrying what looked like several plastic bags of groceries as he made his way to the large front door.

Satisfied that he wasn’t up to anything nefarious, I grabbed my own bag and went inside.

---

I wanted to write something back right away, but I held off. I needed to be careful with this, and I didn’t want to waste time with stupid questions. He said he was Mulhaven, fair enough. But what did that mean? How was Mulhaven writing through the book? Was is some kind of science experiment gone wrong? Was he a ghost? Was the book some weird kind of old-fashioned looking but actually high-tech tablet or something?

I wanted answers to all those questions, but in the end I decided to focus on what he had already said.

What do you need?

I was staring at the book, waiting for a response, when I heard a quiet but sharp rapping at my door. Much like in the car, I jumped, but this time I almost ignored it. I wanted to be looking when the response came. Did it get written out by an unseen hand, or did it just fade in like the old spy ink I used to have as a kid?

Another knock. Muttering to myself, I pulled out my phone and propped it to where the camera would see the page before pressing record. It wasn’t the best angle or lighting, but it would have to do. If it was that stupid kid again…

It wasn’t. When I opened the door, I saw Mrs. Abrams standing there looking hot and flustered. I raised an eyebrow as I took a step back.

“Hey. Are you okay? You seem a bit out of breath.”

She wiped a damp string of hair off her forehead and gave me a smile. “No, no. I’m fine. I had food delivered and just finished putting it all where it needed to go.” She raised thin, black penciled eyebrows at me. “That’s why I came over here actually. I was going to invite you over for dinner tomorrow night. I’ll make a roast.”

I tried to hide my confusion. I’d hardly exchanged more than ten minutes of conversation with Abrams since the day I moved in. Why was she suddenly inviting me to come eat with her? “There’s no need to go to trouble like that. I…”

She was shaking her head. “No, no. Nonsense. It’s no trouble and I’ll enjoy the company. Besides, you’re a good tenant and I think that deserves something,” Abrams cut her eye toward me and chuckled. “Even if it’s only a bit of overly-dry meat.”

I nodded awkwardly, and apparently satisfied, Abrams said good night and told me to come over at seven before ambling back the way she’d came. Closing the door, I glanced back into the living room where the notebook still lay open. Was it my imagination, or was something new written there?

Walking fast, I went back toward the…

I woke up on the floor next to the coffee table. Had I fallen or passed out? Reaching for my phone, I saw that it was after midnight. It had been what? Nine or so when Abrams had come over? And then I’d shut the door and seen the notebook and was going to check to see if there was anything new written because it had look like there was and…

There was. Just another single word.

Meat. 

---

Credits