POOLJUNKIE

 

I was out gardening and pulling weeds when the van rumbled into my driveway at half-past twelve. It was a shoddy looking thing, clinking and clacketing long after the key was pulled. On one side, a large scuffed and peeling label: POOLJUNKIE.

A decrepit, pale looking man slinked out of the vehicle. He looked sixty-five, seventy, and downright sickly. Under his scraggly, wiry grey hair and above his gaunt, bony cheekbones lay two sunken eyes. Not the concave, needly-pupil eyes and sockets that came from very old age or a long-lost love for work. They came from trauma.

“Guessing you’re the pool guy?” I asked, popping an index finger to the label on his van.

He shuffled toward me in his overalls. “Yes… Yes. I’ll head on to your backyard.”

“Hold on, man.” I smiled. “You want coffee? Tea?”

“I appreciate it, but I should really get started.” His voice was as rustic as his vehicle.

I turned and gestured him an open hand and watched him go through my house to the back. I thought about the man for a while. A little strange, sure, but maybe it was the time we were living in. Nobody was about the chitchat anymore.

Inside, I cut vegetables and watched him work through the window. All I could see over the edge of the pool was his balding head that bobbed up and down, glistening and sweating in the midday sun.

I finished my meals quite quickly since the accident happened. No more wife to vent to about work with and no more daughter to ask about soccer practice does that to someone – I’m just more time efficient with cleaning my plate. Don’t get me wrong, though, I never ate alone; I had the photos of my wife and daughter Sophia with me at the table.

An amber medication bottle stared at me invitingly. TAKE WITH MEALS TWICE DAILY.

I contemplated taking my pills for a while, though, I didn’t want to be wonky in case the geezer tried to gyp me. I shelved the bottle. Not today - you make me feel funny, old friend.

Rinsing off my lunch plate, I realized it had taken me a couple hours to prepare and eat my food. Not so efficient after all, Mark.

I cracked open the window to let fresh air in and caught the man standing in the pool, piles of equipment were scattered around the grass.

“Everything okay out there? Filter broken?” I yelled out.

One frail but reassuring thumbs-up over the concrete boundary. I sighed in relief; God knows what these guys charge.

Though, he was standing… uncomfortably still. For a while, I glared at the old man in my pool – he didn’t move. I couldn’t see what he was staring at on the pool wall between us, all I saw was the droplets of sweat that ran freely down his face. He stared and stared at the wall unflinchingly. The hell was he doing?

Puzzled, I decided to sprint up the stairs to get a vantage on my pool. If I’m being completely honest, I hated going upstairs. My heart still wrenched when I saw Sophia’s room, the years since she had moved on from this world provide no bandaging.

From my late wife’s room, I think I assumed he was staring into the void of the filter cube. No tool in his hand, no pensive gaze or gesture in his body. I contorted a shiver. The guy creeped me out.

My cellphone vibrated in my jeans. It was Ryan and we talked for a short while.

“Yeah, right, right.” I vacantly watched the man as I spoke to Ryan on the phone. “I know, I know, boring old Mark. Won’t set foot in a club, la-dee-da-dee-da. You know how old I am, man? What do you want me to do out there? Bust out the macarena?”

I nodded to myself and paced around my wife’s room. Our room. “Right, right. Let’s settle for the bar then. I’ll see you at six.” The phone clicked off.

---

The night was uneventful and frankly rather sullen, Ryan and Jacob had a great time though. I talked to a few women, but they weren’t my wife. Maybe I should stop looking for my late wife in women. That’s what she’d tell me, anyway.

It was one o’clock when I crawled my drunk ass back home. Going upstairs earlier today was therapeutic, I wanted to sleep in my old bed again.

Up the stairs I went, almost on all fours like a dog – I chuckled at myself. The carpet spun and my stomach swung with it. I managed to hold its contents in, though. Too much vodka, man.

Through the hall and up onto the bed, I declared myself a champion - a momentary victory only drunkards know.

Sleep didn’t come cheap, though.

Somebody was whispering outside.

Prone, I shuffled towards the windowsill on my queasy stomach. If the puke wasn’t going to come up before I heard the whispering, it sure felt like it would after my ears pricked to the open window with my belly squashed against the mattress.

In the dead of night, the old maintenance man stood there unblinkingly speaking into the pool filter.

My palm was sweaty and shiny like his pale sickly head; I felt queasier and queasier, my heart was out of my chest.

He saw me - his dry, pursed lips shut tightly. I ducked.

I peeked and saw him – his feet clapping as he sprinted out of view, leaving all his tools behind on the grass and concrete.

Slamming the window shut, I buried myself in my sheets. I should have taken my meds. No, he was really standing there. I heard him speak. I saw him stare back at me with his ghastly, sunken eyes.

For a while, nothing.

Griiink.

He was at the front door turning the creaky doorhandle to no avail.

Oh, God. I miss you Sophia. I’ll be seeing you soon.

I let my pillow swallow my head, I could not listen to him walking around the house anymore trying to get in.

Thankfully, that was the last time I heard him that night.

Sleep didn’t come cheap.

---

The hot sun stretched yellow arms through the window and reached my face, waking me with its embrace. Can’t say that I was keen to embrace it back with my pounding hangover, however.

I called Ryan; I called the police. No proof, no crime, no foul. I’m not sure why they didn’t follow up with me – I felt like a mental patient.

Cooking lunch took longer with shaking hands and a tight head. The amber pill bottle stared accusingly at me as usual, but I couldn’t be bothered taking my medication hungover.

It took me a while to notice what happened, hours even. In retrospect, I think it was because my eyes couldn’t stand the bright sunlight. Looking outside I saw it, a long stretch of reflection that wiggled and wavered upon my backyard furniture. The pool had been repaired then filled.

That guy is a creep, man - I’ll do the maintenance on my own next time. At least I didn’t have to see him anymore.

I was wrong.

The door rapped a few, unsure knocks.

Running to the door, my hand paused at the handle. Screw it, I thought, and opened the door. I wasn’t afraid of this geezer in the light of day – he had some explaining to do.

He was furious, shouting. I was the one who upset him, apparently.

“That fucking pool! That god forsaken, rotten pool!”

I frowned and flipped two palms up and as if to say, hey weirdo, what the hell are you talking about?

Veins stuck out his neck like thick cables, his face flush, burning with impatience. It was strange to see this quiet old man burst out in such a rage.

“You crazy prick.” He bent his head over my shoulder and peered around my home, one eye meeting my full amber pill bottle in the kitchen. “Lunatic.” He said with vile disdain.

“Listen man, I don’t know what has gotten into you. The hell were you doing around my place last night?”

He scrunched up his face and spat at me with short breaths: “Fixing. Your. Pool.”

“Really, were you?” I smirked and folded my arms.

He started pulling out paper from his shirt pocket. “Yes. Nightshift with overtime. Saw you were home, tried to ring you up the bill before I left.”

“I see, the pool looks like it’s running wel-“

“But you…” He said, tones of disgust. “You, you rotten…” He trailed off. “You and your rotten pool. No wonder the pipes were blocked up. You and your special pool.”

Those were the eyes I had seen last morning. Not the sunken, frail, and tired eyes of an old, blue-collared man who missed early retirement. The eyes of a traumatized soul. What the hell did he see? Special pool?

After the clinking van rumbled and huffed its way out the driveway, I stood and read the bill he had angrily scrunched into my shirt.

---

Days later, I stood in my yard and watched the water in the pool. He was right about one thing; it sure was special.

I turned to go back inside when I caught my reflection on the kitchen window. My pills mocked me through the glasspane.

My feet rustled the grass when I faced the yard again. I realized something strange: I didn’t really even use the damn pool. So, why not?

Miniature navy waves rose and broke within its walls, it invited me to take a dip. It looked so beautiful in the afternoon sun.

Sneakers thumped the earth as I kicked them off and away. The metal of the stair handles burned to touch, the cooling water and the rumbling filter beckoned me.

It was up to my legs - I sank and sank and sank into its belly. Gurgles filled my ears until I couldn’t hear the hissing of my sprinkler or the birds singing anymore.

I should have filled it long ago. It was like reminiscing with an old friend.

Staring down at the wavering tiled floors, my eye caught something coming out the wall of the pool.

Sophia? Is that you?

Her golden hair drifted out of the vent, blonde seaweed gleaming, flowing.

It’s me, honey.

My arms fit snug in the filter, I reeled forward into the void of its black mouth.

It’s dad.

I swam deeper, my bare feet slipped easily into the square in the wall.

Gooseflesh bloomed over my arms and legs in the icy water; it was so, so dark inside.

Everything was okay because I could feel her warmth emanating from somewhere in the filtering system. The warmth from her smile, such a big, big smile because dad was coming.

Chlorine stung my nose, it tickled away between my eyes like a common cold.

Away from the wavering azure sunlight shining through the pool, deeper and deeper I swam into blackness of the pipes. Powerful currents rumbled and gurgled past my ears.

In the abyss, I think I saw her.

I swam against the flow, closer, closer, closer.

Cerulean light dimly lit up the walls inside the space. Sage mossy growth crawled past the surface of the water in finger-like projections. Surfacing, the decaying stench of the claustrophobic room pierced me as easily as the chlorine had.

I couldn’t see much inside the walls of the pool, but I saw Sophia.

Daddy’s here.

Reaching out, I held her icy, bloated arm. She floated unblinkingly in the water, staring towards the tight ceiling with vacant eyes. Her slimy flesh shed away between my digits like moldy crème brûlée.

What’s the matter honey? You’re soaking.

She didn’t move, she was busy floating. Sophia loved swimming.

Maggots unearthed themselves from one of her protruding cheekbones.

You should clean yourself up, angel.

I held her and we floated.

Every week I come back and check on her, she likes swimming down there.

My medication stays bottled because I enjoy visiting my sweetheart.

I loved the pool and I loved Sophia and she loved me. 

---

Credits

 

Cheap Rental

 

Nothing is what it seems on Craigslist, or so I should have known. That’s on me.

Bill came through the door in an ill-fitting black suit that could have fit a donkey. He was a plump man that busted at the seams, his chin still sprinkled from the donut or pastry he had for lunch.

“Sorry I’m late.” He straightened and fixed his belt below his belly. “Had an emergency.”

People with greasy slicked-back hair and seedy disposition are destined to be used car salesmen. Unfortunately, this one was my real estate agent.

He took me on a tour through the apartment. It was a rundown place, sure, but nothing out of the ordinary. The ceiling sunk in places, mold saturated the walls and air. It tasted like mossy growth, and things were quite damp. Though, it was certainly not deserving of the cheapest place in the city. There was something I wasn’t seeing.

“Eh… As you can see,” He hobbled around the lounge making wide gestures. “Couple things to fix up, obviously. The walls and floorboards creak, the fridge actin’ up a lil’ strange, couple leaks when the rain comes through.”

I stroked my five o’clock shadow pensively. “I’ve been sitting on it for a while, Bill. Something just doesn’t add up, you know? This place is dirt cheap. Dirt cheap.”

He too fiddled with his beard, freeing some crumbs onto my potential new carpet. “Getya’ some new appliances, scrub up the mold, she’ll be perfect.”

I shook my head. “Bill, cut to the chase.” I stared at him intensely. “What’s wrong with the place?”

“Ah,” He exhaled in defeat, helpless like he was caught in a mousetrap. He palmed sweat away from his greasy forehead. “There was a woman. Old lady.”

I gestured him to sit on one of the dusty out-of-date stools.

“The Japanese would classify this place as a ‘stigmatized property’ – yes, that’s what they call it over there.” He sat down.

“Please explain.”

“Well, it’s not uncommon in Japan for a place to be on the market for twenty years after someone dies a lonely death – or worse - in their home. Y’know? The public think it’s cursed, that the previous occupant wanders the halls.”

I didn’t believe in all that mumbo-jumbo. I saw only dollar signs – to be a student and rent my own place was a luxury. Well, signing the agreement was contingent on one thing.

“How’d the old woman die?” I asked.

His eyes scanned the carpet for a while and he gulped, almost comically. “You don’t wanna’ know, chap.”

I started to say something but trailed off. I thought about it for a while. Maybe he was right - ignorance is bliss. I couldn’t stay put if I knew I had been eating on the kitchen counter where she was stabbed. The bed she was strangled in. That I bathed myself in the bathtub she once filled with blood.

I could get this place cleaned up without the gruesome details.

I reached out to Bill with one reluctant arm. “Deal.”

We shook hands, he gave me a quick nod and a smirk.

I smiled, too. “So, how bout’ you throw in a new fridge?”

He threw his head back and bellowed a fat man’s laugh. “Maybe for Christmas, Jeff.”

---

The first few nights at the apartment were drearily usual, nothing amiss.

Most nights after, I consoled myself that I had been dreaming. Dreaming the type of dream that Dr. Ron had told me about, the ones where I couldn’t move – like I was paralyzed. He called them by some fancy long names and told me to stop sleeping on my back. I tried to stop. But every time I ended up on my back, and no matter how hard I tried, she’d be there - standing at the end of my bed.

Those are the evenings I would begin to pray for. The nights where I would only see the silhouette of the woman, not hear her.

In the following weeks I would be woken up by gentle clatters, like she wanted to be quiet. She didn’t want me to know that she was there. I would hear steps along the floor in the living room, wandering the house. I heard the water running from the tap, only for a while, and only in the dead of night. Like something was… drinking.

After a while though, she wanted me to know that she was there. That she was hungry.

It was Thursday when I knew she was living in the walls.

I sat alone in my room reading with my back against my headboard. Rain sprayed against the window beside me, obscuring the bustling cityscape beyond my apartment’s eye with glassy droplets.

Sucking my cigarette, I exhaled and waved the smoke away from my book.

Tap, tap, tap

Something rapped against my bedchamber wall. It was coming from the living room, or kitchen.

I put my book down beside me and slinked out of bed. The hallway was dim and silent, save for the sound of the waves of rain thrashing against the windowpane.

“Hello?” I called.

There was no reply.

Tap, tap, tap

I sluggishly pulled myself forward, through the hall and into the living room.

The room smelled sickly. Decaying wafts of sour breath lingered in the air.

A low glow beamed onto the old-school tiles of the damp kitchen. The fridge had been left open. I was certain I had shut the door before bed.

When the sound of the rain had been pulled away by the wind, my ears twitched at the sound of the tap left running. I briskly made my way over to the kitchen, the floors creaking as I went.

I turned the tap and closed the door of the fridge. I stared at it for a while, a seed of doubt blossomed in my mind. Was I just forgetful?

Lights: off. I scanned the lounge and kitchen. Nothing amiss.

Jeff, you are one careless son of a bitch.

I smirked at my mistake. Had to get some new milk in the morning, it was probably spoiled.

In the hallway, my ears pricked.

Tap, tap, tap

Something was behind me.

I darted down the hall, I passed the toilet and study room and threw myself into my bed. It took me a while to catch my breath.

The noise came from the apartment. It was in the walls.

My head pounded from my rapid heartbeat.

Tap, tap, tap

I heard it distantly through my bedroom door. My pillow fit around my ears snugly.

Go away... Please just… Go away…

For a while, I was buried in my pillow, unable to sleep. The tiredness caught up to me eventually, and I fell into a deep sleep like a daydream, or a fever.

---

Things got worse for me at that apartment.

Much, much worse.

One afternoon started wonderfully, though. I called Rosie, and we agreed on a date.

“See you at nine?” I talked into my cellphone, combing my hair in my bedroom mirror. “Great, great. I’ll see you then.”

I hummed a happy tune on my way to the bathroom. If I were in a romcom there would have been a spring in my step. Maybe there was.

I made my way to the kitchen. A quick snack before dinner with Rosie, no biggie.

What a beautiful, beautiful quiet afternoon. Sunlight beamed a brilliant yellow through the windows. On days like these, impatient city folk stop their incessant honking outside to smell the roses and let birds sing their song.

In the kitchen, I almost tripped on shoddy tiling. My heart stopped.

The fridge was open.

Just a crack.

My jaw tightened; the birds had stopped singing.

All I could hear in my apartment was the forceful whistle of my breaths escaping me.

The apple I went to grab was rotten, a contorted mouth-shaped hole had been bitten away at its flesh, yellowing the fruit.

Inspecting the apple, I lost my appetite. Long strands of black hair were deeply engrained in its flesh. I shuddered and let go, it rolled for a while. A single broken tooth had found its way out of the apple and onto my floor.

That night I called Rosie again. We settled on a movie instead.

Make no mistake, I called Bill, my real estate agent, about the place. I think you can guess how that went.

I had to take matters into my own hands.

---

A few nights later, I decided to wait for it. I sat in the dark lounge of the apartment, finishing the final chapters of my book. Though, when you wait for these things, they seldom come. They come at you when you least expect.

Yawning, I pushed out of my chair and made my way into the kitchen.

Some buttered bread, a salad sandwich perhaps. My stomach rumbled.

I stopped in my tracks in the middle of the kitchen.

Tap

There it was again. How it felt to be afraid in my own home. A distinct sound - one long fingernail meeting plastic.

Tap, tap

My hand met the cold metal fridge handle - I didn’t want to open the door. I assured my stomach nothing was waiting for me, but my heart didn’t get the memo.

It was quiet in the apartment again. My eyes shut tight as I inhaled.

The handle turned; the fridge’s seal peeled open with a stomach-curdling thip.

The interior light wasn’t on. From standing I could only poke around the top shelf – it was empty inside except for a few condiments and rotten vegetables.

I wiped one sweaty palm on my leg and bent down to inspect the bottom shelves, rummaging in the cold void of its white shell. It was clean yet smelled rotten and sour, the trailing scent of a garbage truck.

Extending my arm into the unlit fridge I met something hairy and brittle in the darkness – it might as well have been a vile, moldy coconut. I retracted. I could not see anything, though it felt as if a ball of scraggly hair filled my hand like sand – it flowed between my fingers like a soaked kitchen sponge.

She hadn’t been living in the walls.

An icy grip tightened around my forearm. I shrieked and tried to yank away.

The old woman’s body twisted and buckled at the joints, one leg was bending backward over her shoulder, the other firmly planted below her jaw.

She stared up at me from inside the fridge, slowly reeling me in from my wrist to my arm like she was a flexible acrobat carefully climbing a fleshy rope.

I tried not to puke, I swallowed sour spit. Cockroaches scurried from her open lips and spread across her face like wildfire.

Teeth clattered as the woman grinned, squeezing one of the insects with a sickening pop in the space where a tooth had been. Maggots exhumed themselves from her fleshy skin, dropping onto my sweaty arm like Satan’s rain.

Frigid, gripping fingers closed in at my forearm, then my bicep, pulling, pulling, pulling.

I bent my head up to help steady myself and tow backward; my chin clasped onto the cold top of the fridge.

Pulling hard enough sent me flying back, crawling on the floor free from her decaying hands.

The woman’s face stared at me through scraggly silver and graphite strands of hair. Two gleaming white sockets over a wide, disgusting smile.

I kicked the door shut and lay on the floor, my chest heaving. My mouth tasted like bitter acid and my hand finally let go of the unkempt wire I had pulled from her head.

Many nights have passed since that encounter.

Bill still rents me the apartment. When I hang out with Rosie we always go back to her place, never mine.

I keep grandmother fed so she doesn’t wander the halls.

I don’t sleep much anymore, but it’s okay because I have the cheapest apartment in the city.

When I’m home, I hear her when she's hungry.

Tap, tap, tap… 

---

Credits

 

Comatose Cure

  

The Lazarus effect was the one that really got to me first - a term used to describe the way a patient’s arms would move involuntarily upward and cross at the chest once the brain had died. Pale mummies folding away for the long sleep under flickering clinical lights.

After that came agonal gasps – the dreadful, straining breaths one takes post-mortem – a last-ditch effort of the brainstem begging to breathe.

These were the two things that haunted me when I started at the hospital.

But we began to reduce these incidents.

See, I wasn’t a doctor. Hell, if I were, I wouldn’t be able to recollect it anyway - my memory had turned to shit after my accident. Despite this, I was luckily enough to be brought on for an easygoing monitoring role at Saint Kelly hospital.

‘Coma counsellor’ they called me. I had rounds talking to unresponsive patients and their grieving families at their bedside. Either way, it was always a one-sided conversation. The families always seemed to have less to say after I told them I didn’t practice medicine and didn’t have answers for them; that I merely spent my time being with their loved ones. Though, they were incredibly thankful for me.

I had only been at Saint Kelly for a few months before I felt as if I had truly seen it all. There are many more comatose patients than you think – you have the new-found plague of automotive travel to thank for that. Old, young, rich, poor – mistress tragedy makes no exceptions. All living but not quite here. How feeble our fleshy thought-bubble was in the grand scheme of the bustling world we surround ourselves with.

I was sitting with an old geezer in the west wing when everything changed. His face was a pallid sheet upon two bony cheekbones – I’m surprised his body still held on even though his mind couldn’t.

“How’s it going Richie?” Simon came through the door and folded one leg over the other as he sat down.

Simon was a senior doctor at the hospital and was one of the first faces I got to know when I recovered from my accident and began work. To a lot of people, I felt as if I was a burden – a pointless obstacle in the room that the nurses had to move around to reach the patient. But not to Simon. I rarely saw him since he was usually a few floors up concerning himself with research. When I did see him, he always seemed to take a genuine interest in how I was.

We talked for a while about his kids, the weather, a couple off-tournament sports games - the usual shit people ask about and pretend to show interest for. I just hoped that our bland conversation gave the bedridden geezer beside me a mind-movie for at least a little while we spoke.

“We’ve been working on something big.” His salt-and-peppered beard barely masked an excited grin.

From one coat pocket he pulled a syringe in a small glass case. He laid it down graciously on the bedside table and popped it eagerly. He looked like a kid unzipping a suitcase on his first trip - vacation spot: healthcare innovation hotel.

“See this, Rich’?” Simon pulled the syringe out with three pronged fingers. “We call it The Neon Key.”

It captured my attention entirely. Miniature azure waves rose and broke within the syringe, inviting me to look closer.

“As of today,” He checked his watch. “it’s fully approved by the FDA for clinical trials.”

“Layman’s terms, please doc.” I asked.

Simon took a while to explain: “We have tried the drug on animals without side effects for a couple years now, so it’s finally cleared for human testing, as long as we have the family’s approval.”

For a moment I stared at Ron, the geezer on the bed. How cold and alone it must be in the void of his mind. How cold it was that his family signed away the paperwork over a telephone, not even bothering to visit him anymore.

“Is it for his heart?”

There’s a fine line determined mostly by age where one man can call another man son, boy or kiddo without causing bitterness. Looking into Simon’s tight eyes between his weathered and wrinkled complexion, he reminded me of my grandfather or an old wizard. He checked out.

“It’s for his coma, sonny.” The doc’s eyes lit up as he said it.

I frowned. Surely, he was joking. I mean, I’m no professional, but the very idea of waking someone out of a coma at will was outlandish.

I didn’t have to speak before Simon read my face. “Yes, really.” He responded to the silence swiftly. “And I want you to watch.”

He stood up, rolled up his sleeves and began preparing the syringe. “See, the solution contains metabolites that can form dreams in the brain, no matter the degree of consciousness.”

“How did it get its name?”

“Well,” He cleared his throat, shooting a small spurt out of the syringe to get the measurement. “We have trialed it previously on a select group within our facilities. And when each one of them would wake, they would describe bizarre dreams. The link between every patient’s dream was that they saw a neon key towards the closing of their episodes. A distinct, bright neon key. And without knowing why, beyond reason, they knew they had to follow it to wake up.”

I sat in my chair frozen in intrigue, my hands locked at the armrests. I felt wariness for Ron, I had spent days by his side. I felt uneasy when I realized he would be one of the first people to trial the treatment. I guess somebody had to play the part of the worried son when his deadbeat kids wouldn’t show.

“I know this guy pretty well doc. His background. He’s had some pretty rough damage to the brain after his fall.”

There was silence for a while as Simon stood over the man. His face changed in the light, contemplating. “I know what you’re saying, Rich, but we have to extend treatment to the residents of Saint Kelly, especially after all the success we had treating the first patient.”

I nodded. This was a man passionate about his work, and it showed in his hand gestures.

“With patients like these…” He sucked at his teeth and shook his head. “I don’t think they can become responsive on their own anymore. These are our first to try.”

He was ready. “Grab his arms, will you?”

The needle went in effortlessly, and fluid flooded in.

A few minutes passed. I watched the old man tirelessly as he lay on the bed.

“It’s beginning.” The doc said. “He’s dreaming. Catch the rapid eye movement?”

I couldn’t believe it. This must have been the most he had moved for years. His eyes darted furiously under his lids, seeing what we could never see.

“Don’t let him free.”

At first, the geezer wrestled like a fish out of water. His shoulders twisted and turned, trying to escape my grip. He felt like a fish too – his skin feverish and sweaty, my hands almost failed to hold on.

“Something’s wrong, doc.”

“No, all natural.” When he said that, I caught a sparkle of worry in his withered eye.

That’s when it started. Great purple blotches began to bloom slowly but surely at the man’s fragile neck, spreading wide like butterfly wings.

Simon wore a frown and was shaking his head. “Bruising?” He tried to hold down one of the man’s limbs.

I knew Ron’s fall led to brain damage - to see him reanimated made my stomach sour, acidic splashes tickled my throat wanting to be free.

The man was loose. He sat up from his bed, his eyes glassy and vacant. He moaned words that didn’t make sense with a mouth that was never meant to speak again.

“He’s too far gone!” The doc boomed.

The man was whimpering meaningless phrases into the air, his breath smelled of decay. Bruises had wrapped around his neck like a scarf. Four plum-colored fingers bruised his nape, two indents lay under his chin. He spoke to me, and only to me.

“Don’t you see it?” He rasped.

The doctor tried to pull him away from me. The man stared through me with blackened empty eyes like I was glass.

I shouted, but the sound never came – he had me by my collar, choking me.

“Don’t you see him?” He whispered, thick cables sticking out of his bruised neck.

Then nothing. He had faded away like a deflated balloon into his sheets under the pale lights of the clinic.

The doc and I were silent for a while, save for the sound of our heavy breaths and the flatline echoing into the empty hallway. We exchanged a few glances.

Simon recomposed himself. “He… He must have had a severe hit to the head. You have to understand, we had to try it – you saw it yourself, despite everything he managed to speak to you. Everything was fine when we tried it on the first patient.”

I collapsed into my chair like a pile of jelly and covered my eyes with one hand. I cried for a while – I think it’s because I had to feel for him if nobody else could. Goodbye Ron.

Weeks passed.

The third, fourth, fifth patients Simon tried the drug on seemed fine at first. Until they weren’t.

I was dozing off next to Rose Walters in her ward when it happened again.

First a tap, then a loud clapping. I awoke suddenly to see a silhouette sprint down the hallway past Rose’s door. I made it to the doorway and peered out into the flickering lights of the hospital.

I followed. He ran around a couple bends before he slid down and crouched behind a wheelchair outside another patient’s room.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

Before he could settle himself he pushed me away at my ribcage, but I managed to steady.

His bald head looked up at me. He looked very sickly and contagious - like he had touched death, but death didn’t want to touch him. One of Simon’s patients.

Great marks where a hand had pulled his forearm were burned into his flesh. “He doesn’t want me to find the key.” He mumbled with a shaking jaw.

“Who? Who doesn’t want you to?” I asked.

You don’t see him? The voice of a snake escaped him.

I stared at him for a while – at the bruises on his arms and his glossy eyes. I couldn’t believe doc was still doing this to people. I felt sick, I had to say something.

A loud group of nurses dressed in white from head to toe came bustling through the hallway and passed me on either side, lifting the man into the wheelchair he had been hiding behind. When he was wheeled into the void at the end of the hall, I saw him twist and turn to face me, one finger pointing through me as if to say, hey, look behind you.

I didn’t, though. This west wing was quickly turning into a haven for the loonies. I lifted up my shirt to see where he had pushed me. At the sternum, a large bruise bloomed across my ribcage.

I lost my job that winter. Not so much from my own doing, rather, thanks to Simon. Authorities had shut down our wing once news got out about what he was doing. He took a chance to be a hero and failed miserably. The drug he had been giving patients induced nightmares so grotesque and harrowing it woke them from the deepest comas. The fatal mistake Simon had made was that the drug never truly left the system when the patients woke up. Reality bordered with nightmares. The thing that choked them in sleep had followed them into the halls of our hospital. And Simon paid the price. So did I.

I worked a new role at Saint Kelly. In fact, I was still in the same wing. The entire building had been emptied out and the staff reassigned. I stayed there, though. I could not remember anything before my accident, but I did know my way around Saint Kelly. I worked half janitorial half security. The warm feeling I got from talking to patients had been replaced by cold empty halls and cleaning products as I scrubbed away. I would be lying if I didn’t resent Simon for what he had morphed my job into.

I didn’t dread the evenings until Tuesday that week.

I had been up on my ladder replacing a lamp on the second floor when I heard somebody walk past.

I called out. Nothing.

The empty halls smelled like bleach, it coated my tongue and throat.

There was nothing out here except my mop standing against one wall.

At least, I wanted there to be.

At the end of the hall stood a tall man. Ghoulishly tall, he towered enough to bend his head to one side under the ceiling.

The lights flickered. I sprinted and he followed, his face indiscernible.

I screamed and screamed not because I was surprised to see him, but I might have screamed because the nightmares had come just like I knew they would, and the tall man grabbed and pulled, he pulled and pulled until my arms popped purple.

I screamed because at that moment I knew why Simon had taken such an interest in me.

I wanted to remember my wife’s face if I could.

Ahead, the green exit sign flickered incessantly under the cold lights of the clinic.

It looked like a neon key. 

---

Credits

 

My Christmas Elf

  

I’m a sleazy motherfucker, I’ll be the first to say so.

When I was young, I was the one in the schoolyard stealing Pokémon cards, when I was older: in the carpark leaving dents but never a note. Real slimeball.

God, I hope my two kids don’t grow up to be like me. I hope my kids grow up to be more like Timmy. Or rather, what he could have been.

Alone in my home office, I leaned back on my chair. The best writing that comes out of me is when I hear only the keys of my typewriter, or the sweet, sweet lullaby of whiskey rocks tumbling against my glass.

But on nights like these, I hear a third sound, distant in the recesses of my mind. I hear him scream. And so, I write.

I don’t want my son to suffer like Timmy did.

On an unsuspecting Winter day twenty years ago, I was staying at Tim’s home over Christmas Eve because my parents were busy with the divorce. Hell, I don’t blame them, with a kid like me it was probably my doing.

Timmy-boy pulled a different side out of me than what my parents had come to expect out of my bratty self, though. I loved him for that. He showed me that being a nerd wasn’t so bad after all. And if he hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t be pent up in my office writing this.

We played on his new Nintendo 64 until our mothers called us for dinner. We collected trading cards for games we didn’t know how to play. He was the perfect kid: kind, well-behaved and he had welcomed to me into all his hobbies which we began to share - they made me forget about woes at home.

But… well. Timmy had a fatal obsession.

See, twelve was a bit old to believe in Santa. But there was nothing I could have ever said to persuade him otherwise. He swore to me that the year before when he wished for the Nintendo, it came true. He hadn’t told his parents about what he wanted because he wanted to test the outcome, and, lo and behold, his new game console was wished into existence.

To me, utter hogwash. That was until I spoke to his mother.

“Timmy’s father and I never bought Tim a game... thingy, dearie. We had big bills to pay that year. I suspect Uncle Steve must have snuck it under the tree when we weren’t looking, but he’s never owned up to it.” She said.

His mother paused for a while, before her eyes lit up.

“But, I think we both know who it was, honey…” She pretended to rub an invisible, scruffy beard.

Twelve-year-old me was utterly mystified - I couldn’t wait to get my wish in before midnight. In retrospect, thirty-two-year-old me suspects she was playing the fool to encourage the theory that a bearded old fat man jumps down the chimney to drop off your gifts, neatly wrapped. For God’s sake, Margaret, I was twelve. I would have bullied the kid that believed in Santa at that age had it not been Timmy, or myself. Though, I still don’t know if she was telling the truth back then. Did Tim really wish something into being under that Christmas tree?

That evening was both the best and worst night of my life. We biked around the suburbs for hours in the late afternoon, our parkas blowing in the chilly wind, until we were parked up outside a 711 to drink hot chocolate. It wasn’t the best in the world but getting a blue Slurpee in December would have been bonkers.

“So, what are you wishing for this Christmas, Tim?” I asked.

He had a cheeky, mischievous smile. “I got a plan, Richie.” He said. “I’m gonna wish to be one of those Christmas elves. Helpers, I think.”

I almost snorted hard enough to spit out my drink. “What are you talking about?”

“You know, I read it in a book once. They make things appear from thin air only to wrap them day in and day out during the holidays.” He continued. “Oh, can you imagine! Anything I wanted, any time!”

I was losing faith in Santa – the more he spoke, the more ridiculous everything sounded. “So, you’re one of those kids, huh. I’ll wish for unlimited wishes from a genie.”

“Well, what do you hope Santa brings you?” Timmy said, his pale face sucking at the rim of his cup for any heat to stop his jaw chattering.

My chaste, excited mind raced for a moment and didn’t question Santa, I only questioned the possibilities. “Probably a Nintendo.” I brushed some snow off of my gloves. “Can’t always play it at yours, y’know.”

“Course you can!” He yapped.

My smile fell away like the snow from my hand. “No… I can’t.” I looked into the snowy distance, fixated on nothing but what was happening with Mum and Dad. “Told you I might have to move soon.”

A Christmas elf, huh. Maybe he could wish me happy parents.

“I know…” He sighed. “We should probably get to beating that level, then.”

We laughed for a bit. Yeah, we probably should have got around to that.

When the Sun fell, I realized I didn’t want the day to end. We had played handball until it got dark, played Nintendo until Timmy’s mom wanted the TV back to watch the new Tom Hanks movie Castaway. Hell, we even drew dicks in the snow. I loved Timmy. That was the last time I saw him. At least, what remained of him.

It was midnight when the tickle started.

First a tip-tap of the bladder, then a feather upon my belly. I needed to pee.

Out of bed I went. My food-baby was still round and kicking from Mrs Roy’s marvelous dinner, so it took me a couple wobbles to get to the hallway.

I looked down to find my slippers. Batman’s faces were round and plump on the stretched bit of pajama where the button popped by my tummy.

Moonlight flooded the hall and painted it an azure blue. Distantly, someone was speaking yonder the hallway in the living room.

I yawned - I guess Santa wasn’t real. A couple of adults crawling around for scissors and tape at midnight was the end of the mystery.

Though, something was… off.

Once in the hall, my jaw was already chattering. Winter’s bite had taken the house, it was freezing. Not the cold you would expect from air conditioning left running, but a cold like a snowstorm had broken a window and had come flooding in.

There was popping in the living room. Christmas crackers, perhaps.

“Hello?” I called.

Nothing. Only the muted sound of my voice with no echo, like I had been speaking into snow.

“Margaret?” I kept walking forward, tapping my slippers along the hall.

When I reached the lounge, there he was.

Timmy was facing the tree, the back of his head a messy black mop.

I smiled. “Couldn’t wait, huh?”

He didn’t move.

“Timmy?”

My heart began pounding.

Not even a shiver from him in the frosty room.

He pulled his head back at me slowly.

He looked like a wild dog, his face ghoulish and bearded, breaking into place a canine muzzle and two pointy ears.

Elves are not what you see in books.

His muzzle sought speech, rasp and shrill as if a snake was trying to speak. Though, deep within his chest past one contorted jaw, he still cried out in a little boy’s voice.

Mommy…

Brown barky remains where legs should be slogged under the thing, moving weighted like an unrooted oak. Every slow step it took made its torso contort with a sickening crack as if its bones had snapped and twisted, growing bigger than poor Timmy’s skin could bare. Its mouth had since widened enough that it could fit my sleepy, ripened head inside. Cracking, growing bones that broke through hairy skin made it struggle to chase me.

I sprinted down the hall flailing my arms, knocking against every door I could see in the faint moonlight.

Mommy…

It was looming close, a mere silhouette at the end of the hall. Its torso flailed with a disjointed crack in directions perpendicular to its body with each and every step. One arm bent up backwards, the other bent down forwards, holding a small, giftwrapped box.

Crack. Crack.

My chest bounced up and down until I felt dizzy. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to get out of there.

Every time I heard him wail, I wanted to scream, too.

Floorboards scratched around as it struggled to stand upright on contorted, pawed limbs.

When his parents came running out, he had already gone into the night. Staring outside through the cold wind blowing through the open door, I saw only indents where the thing hobbled away in the blanketed snow.

Christmas had come and Timmy had got what he wished for.

After the police interviews had stopped and I had moved in with my father in Arkansas, I received a neatly dressed package on the doorstep. It was Timmy’s Nintendo. I guess I got what I wished for, too.

Now, thirty-something, I find writing helps most to take the pain away. A story unbelievable to shrinks, a story only for the recesses of my mind. A story for me and my typewriter.

I got up from my chair and stretched. The world around me was spinning a tad. Too much whiskey, man.

I tumbled my glass as I stared at the snowfall out my windows. The ice in my glass had melted, and I was too drunk to realize.

I finished wrapping Jake’s bicycle. It took a couple hours because I was drunk. But mostly because I was wrapping a fucking bike.

I fumbled around in the hallway, trying to find steady footing. I wanted to wheel it to the Christmas tree, but it had to be carried. I knocked the walls a couple times with the handles, and I questioned why I even bothered to wrap it. When he looks at this gift's shape, the hell is he going to see? An Xbox?

Suddenly, I froze.

At the end of the hallway, a silhouette.

Please don’t be Jake. You aren’t allowed Christmas wishes anymore.

There it was again. How it felt to be truly afraid. The alcohol itched at my throat, it wanted to come up.

Mommy… 

---

Credits

 

Peach

 

You always remember where you were when something truly horrible happens. That afternoon I was sitting at my desk, feet up, cola in hand, not a care in the world.

I flipped my notebook to a blank page and took a sip of my drink. A few taps of the keyboard, and LECHALL8B from year 2020 became LECHALL8B from year 2019. And lo and behold, I, Michael, the world’s first technotard turned technowhiz, was in.

See, finals were next week, and the recordings were missing. I had scrounged around the site and found a couple of posts from students complaining that the lecturer had been slack in recording them. I had a trick these whining suckers didn’t, though.

The end of the URL of the recording read: LECHALL8B-12-14-20.mp4. You see, when I DID skip class, some were simply not uploaded, as a result of technical difficulties or otherwise, and I began to miss out. But the trick here: you could change the site’s address to a year prior, and funny enough, a lot of the time the same lecture was recorded the year before. And for a lot of classes, the content had not been changed. Bingo. Problem solved.

The lecture started off like any other: the ceiling-mounted camera recorded the lecturer front and center with a whiteboard behind. The back of a few student’s heads framed the bottom of the screen, watching the speaker and the board.

This recording however, something was… off. There was no youthful babbling at the beginning of the session before the start, the video feed was slightly grayscale and the picture a little out of focus, as if the camera and projector hadn’t been tended to in some time. Most curiously, the whiteboard had one word untidily written in red: ELIZABETH.

I stared at my screen, utterly intrigued. The students in the video did not move nor speak, they only stared forward at the whiteboard in center frame. This surely couldn’t have been my class, these guys had funeral service behavior. And who was this woman? I hadn’t seen her around campus before.

She stared at me. Eyes sunken and face gaunt, she looked unblinkingly toward the camera. The class was silent. Frayed brown hair had drifted partially over her pale face. And the class sat quiet. She opened her mouth, but not to speak - she moaned a single tone, and it didn’t stop. My heart was racing, it felt less like I was watching her and more like she was watching me. I stared back at the hole in her face.

The sound coming out of her mouth began to sound like a distant blowfly buzzing a deep hum, but I couldn’t bring myself to close the site - I kept looking on. My stomach twisted and turned, but I simply couldn’t look away. What the fuck was she doing?

And then I saw it. Its head was disproportionately massive, the size of a torso upon one starved neck. Because of this, it seemed to struggle to wander into frame behind the woman. It moved unpredictably, stepping one foot forward only to move the other backward to steady itself under its leaning head. The head was a moldy grape, round, smooth and fleshy, bobbing and leaning unsteadily as it slogged behind the woman.

It was then close enough to breathe on the woman’s neck. Abruptly, she shut her mouth.

From what I could see, it had no eyes, but it did have a mouth now agape, lined with long finger-like teeth that looked like white pencils.

That was the last time I saw her face. The thing engulfed her head with its own, its gangly body hanging limp, its lips still tightly wrapped around her throat.

The previously motionless students broke into a screaming frenzy, jumping and climbing out of their seats, clambering over one another.

And then nothing. The screen went black.

I felt like throwing up, I reached for my bin. And then it hit me: it was a practical joke. Right?

Come on, Michael. A joke, and you cannot even hit replay.

When I did, I paused it before the woman walked into frame. Wherever this lecture hall was, it was familiar but blurry, both in vision and memory.

Like every good one, there is truth behind the joke. A hurtful jest has you wondering if someone really meant to hurt you, a bitterness left behind. And when I stared at my screen, I couldn’t help but think about some sort of hurtful truth behind it all.

I knew where the room was.

---

A couple nights later, I found my head still spinning when drifting away to thoughts of the video. The head. The teeth going through her neck at one end and coming out the other. The way it never let go after it swallowed her.

It was a couple hours past midnight, and the campus was utterly haunting. Somewhere usually filled with bustling students and chatter, now hollow and quiet, made my heart race.

There were lights on outside to dispel people that were just like me. I wrestled with the locked door of the east wing for a while. I prayed that hallways were not the security’s priority to add alarms to, rather, the rooms inside which housed exam papers and valuable equipment.

And I was right. No alarms sounded when I lockpicked my way through. I was in, but my mind went to a possible silent alarm. I had to be quick.

Down the hall to the right, I found the room. It was sealed from the outside, the windows plastered with some sort of plasticky material that could not be peeled if I gave it all my might. It had been blocked off from students and staff for almost four years on account of maintenance, but at that moment I didn’t quite buy that. I needed a way in.

The locks on the door were intimidating. One large metallic contraption above the doorhandle, a second below requiring a small key. But I couldn’t turn back.

That’s when something quite peculiar happened. The handle turned, and the door opened. Curiosity beckoned me and yielded.

Inside, I heard each and every of my steps with reverb. There was no sound in the theatre, and each movement echoed to the black curtain against the wall behind the whiteboard.

This was where it happened.

Nothing happened, Michael. This is where they recorded the prank, or whatever awful-taste idea that was.

I was halfway down the steps. I looked about. Things were dusty, unkept. The projector and camera mounted to the distant ceiling were tilted. Pivoted. Leaning. Leaning because of the weight. The heavy weight and the thin, thin neck holding it together. I shuddered.

Each step drew me closer to the board. Into frame. Into where Elizabeth must have been standing when it happened.

I had reached the bottom. The room smelled like sulfur, dust coated my tongue and throat.

I was standing at the stage, but there was no show. Looking back there were just empty rows where many smiling faces must have sat before. I pushed a line of dust off the lectern with my finger and for the first time in a few days, smiled.

And that’s when I noticed it. It didn’t want to be seen, nor heard. Not at first. But I saw it.

My heart sank. Across the back wall towered an obsidian curtain draped from ceiling to floor.

Almost to the floor. In the few feet it didn’t reach the ground stood two legs. Gawky, awkward legs.

“Hello?” I called.

Nothing.

The pace of my breath raced my heart to the finish line. I flicked the dust off my finger with one sweaty palm.

“Who’s there?” I shuddered out a cry.

Nothing. The two sticks stood awkwardly posed behind the curtain.

Each stride made me think my heart was going to give out. It almost did when it darted behind the curtain one end to another.

My hand touched the fabric. It felt like razor wire to me, my body refused to pull it away.

When I did, I knew I should have stayed home.

The rotten peach of skin upon a sickening contorted frame stood before me. A pitted skin-fruit wobbling upon a skeletal neck. It opened its mouth and the decaying stench hit me.

Through its fence of boxcutter incisors, staring into the void of its throat, I think I saw her.

I’ll see you soon Elizabeth.

---

For the most part, the university site was down.

Before they took the course Q&A forum down, I signed my post off with: Thanks, Brian.

The majority of the university’s website functionality had been cordoned off since an incident occurred at lecture hall eight in December. They were under some real damage control, while we were kept in the dark.

I found a diary written by someone named Michael in one of lecture halls at the university, detailing his encounters and what I believe to be the reason for the university's closure.

And thanks to him, I had a workaround to access lectures.

I changed the URL of one of the lecture recording’s we were emailed to access some of 2020’s videos hoping that the lecture content hadn’t changed much, and that it would still apply to the 2021 course.

This footage however, something wasn’t quite right. The video was a tinge grayscale and the picture out of focus, as if the camera and projector hadn’t been tended to in some time. Most remarkably, the whiteboard had one word untidily written in red: MICHAEL. 

---

You always remember where you were when something truly horrible happens. That afternoon I was sitting at my desk, feet up, cola in hand, not a care in the world.

I flipped my notebook to a blank page and took a sip of my drink. A few taps of the keyboard, and LECHALL8B from year 2020 became LECHALL8B from year 2019. And lo and behold, I, Michael, the world’s first technotard turned technowhiz, was in.

See, finals were next week, and the recordings were missing. I had scrounged around the site and found a couple of posts from students complaining that the lecturer had been slack in recording them. I had a trick these whining suckers didn’t, though.

The end of the URL of the recording read: LECHALL8B-12-14-20.mp4. You see, when I DID skip class, some were simply not uploaded, as a result of technical difficulties or otherwise, and I began to miss out. But the trick here: you could change the site’s address to a year prior, and funny enough, a lot of the time the same lecture was recorded the year before. And for a lot of classes, the content had not been changed. Bingo. Problem solved.

The lecture started off like any other: the ceiling-mounted camera recorded the lecturer front and center with a whiteboard behind. The back of a few student’s heads framed the bottom of the screen, watching the speaker and the board.

This recording however, something was… off. There was no youthful babbling at the beginning of the session before the start, the video feed was slightly grayscale and the picture a little out of focus, as if the camera and projector hadn’t been tended to in some time. Most curiously, the whiteboard had one word untidily written in red: ELIZABETH.

I stared at my screen, utterly intrigued. The students in the video did not move nor speak, they only stared forward at the whiteboard in center frame. This surely couldn’t have been my class, these guys had funeral service behavior. And who was this woman? I hadn’t seen her around campus before.

She stared at me. Eyes sunken and face gaunt, she looked unblinkingly toward the camera. The class was silent. Frayed brown hair had drifted partially over her pale face. And the class sat quiet. She opened her mouth, but not to speak - she moaned a single tone, and it didn’t stop. My heart was racing, it felt less like I was watching her and more like she was watching me. I stared back at the hole in her face.

The sound coming out of her mouth began to sound like a distant blowfly buzzing a deep hum, but I couldn’t bring myself to close the site - I kept looking on. My stomach twisted and turned, but I simply couldn’t look away. What the fuck was she doing?

And then I saw it. Its head was disproportionately massive, the size of a torso upon one starved neck. Because of this, it seemed to struggle to wander into frame behind the woman. It moved unpredictably, stepping one foot forward only to move the other backward to steady itself under its leaning head. The head was a moldy grape, round, smooth and fleshy, bobbing and leaning unsteadily as it slogged behind the woman.

It was then close enough to breathe on the woman’s neck. Abruptly, she shut her mouth.

From what I could see, it had no eyes, but it did have a mouth now agape, lined with long finger-like teeth that looked like white pencils.

That was the last time I saw her face. The thing engulfed her head with its own, its gangly body hanging limp, its lips still tightly wrapped around her throat.

The previously motionless students broke into a screaming frenzy, jumping and climbing out of their seats, clambering over one another.

And then nothing. The screen went black.

I felt like throwing up, I reached for my bin. And then it hit me: it was a practical joke. Right?

Come on, Michael. A joke, and you cannot even hit replay.

When I did, I paused it before the woman walked into frame. Wherever this lecture hall was, it was familiar but blurry, both in vision and memory.

Like every good one, there is truth behind the joke. A hurtful jest has you wondering if someone really meant to hurt you, a bitterness left behind. And when I stared at my screen, I couldn’t help but think about some sort of hurtful truth behind it all.

I knew where the room was.

---

A couple nights later, I found my head still spinning when drifting away to thoughts of the video. The head. The teeth going through her neck at one end and coming out the other. The way it never let go after it swallowed her.

It was a couple hours past midnight, and the campus was utterly haunting. Somewhere usually filled with bustling students and chatter, now hollow and quiet, made my heart race.

There were lights on outside to dispel people that were just like me. I wrestled with the locked door of the east wing for a while. I prayed that hallways were not the security’s priority to add alarms to, rather, the rooms inside which housed exam papers and valuable equipment.

And I was right. No alarms sounded when I lockpicked my way through. I was in, but my mind went to a possible silent alarm. I had to be quick.

Down the hall to the right, I found the room. It was sealed from the outside, the windows plastered with some sort of plasticky material that could not be peeled if I gave it all my might. It had been blocked off from students and staff for almost four years on account of maintenance, but at that moment I didn’t quite buy that. I needed a way in.

The locks on the door were intimidating. One large metallic contraption above the doorhandle, a second below requiring a small key. But I couldn’t turn back.

That’s when something quite peculiar happened. The handle turned, and the door opened. Curiosity beckoned me and yielded.

Inside, I heard each and every of my steps with reverb. There was no sound in the theatre, and each movement echoed to the black curtain against the wall behind the whiteboard.

This was where it happened.

Nothing happened, Michael. This is where they recorded the prank, or whatever awful-taste idea that was.

I was halfway down the steps. I looked about. Things were dusty, unkept. The projector and camera mounted to the distant ceiling were tilted. Pivoted. Leaning. Leaning because of the weight. The heavy weight and the thin, thin neck holding it together. I shuddered.

Each step drew me closer to the board. Into frame. Into where Elizabeth must have been standing when it happened.

I had reached the bottom. The room smelled like sulfur, dust coated my tongue and throat.

I was standing at the stage, but there was no show. Looking back there were just empty rows where many smiling faces must have sat before. I pushed a line of dust off the lectern with my finger and for the first time in a few days, smiled.

And that’s when I noticed it. It didn’t want to be seen, nor heard. Not at first. But I saw it.

My heart sank. Across the back wall towered an obsidian curtain draped from ceiling to floor.

Almost to the floor. In the few feet it didn’t reach the ground stood two legs. Gawky, awkward legs.

“Hello?” I called.

Nothing.

The pace of my breath raced my heart to the finish line. I flicked the dust off my finger with one sweaty palm.

“Who’s there?” I shuddered out a cry.

Nothing. The two sticks stood awkwardly posed behind the curtain.

Each stride made me think my heart was going to give out. It almost did when it darted behind the curtain one end to another.

My hand touched the fabric. It felt like razor wire to me, my body refused to pull it away.

When I did, I knew I should have stayed home.

The rotten peach of skin upon a sickening contorted frame stood before me. A pitted skin-fruit wobbling upon a skeletal neck. It opened its mouth and the decaying stench hit me.

Through its fence of boxcutter incisors, staring into the void of its throat, I think I saw her.

I’ll see you soon Elizabeth.

---

For the most part, the university site was down.

Before they took the course Q&A forum down, I signed my post off with: Thanks, Brian.

The majority of the university’s website functionality had been cordoned off since an incident occurred at lecture hall eight in December. They were under some real damage control, while we were kept in the dark.

I found a diary written by someone named Michael in one of lecture halls at the university, detailing his encounters and what I believe to be the reason for the university's closure.

And thanks to him, I had a workaround to access lectures.

I changed the URL of one of the lecture recording’s we were emailed to access some of 2020’s videos hoping that the lecture content hadn’t changed much, and that it would still apply to the 2021 course.

This footage however, something wasn’t quite right. The video was a tinge grayscale and the picture out of focus, as if the camera and projector hadn’t been tended to in some time. Most remarkably, the whiteboard had one word untidily written in red: MICHAEL.

You always remember where you were when something truly horrible happens. That afternoon I was sitting at my desk, feet up, cola in hand, not a care in the world.

I flipped my notebook to a blank page and took a sip of my drink. A few taps of the keyboard, and LECHALL8B from year 2020 became LECHALL8B from year 2019. And lo and behold, I, Michael, the world’s first technotard turned technowhiz, was in.

See, finals were next week, and the recordings were missing. I had scrounged around the site and found a couple of posts from students complaining that the lecturer had been slack in recording them. I had a trick these whining suckers didn’t, though.

The end of the URL of the recording read: LECHALL8B-12-14-20.mp4. You see, when I DID skip class, some were simply not uploaded, as a result of technical difficulties or otherwise, and I began to miss out. But the trick here: you could change the site’s address to a year prior, and funny enough, a lot of the time the same lecture was recorded the year before. And for a lot of classes, the content had not been changed. Bingo. Problem solved.

The lecture started off like any other: the ceiling-mounted camera recorded the lecturer front and center with a whiteboard behind. The back of a few student’s heads framed the bottom of the screen, watching the speaker and the board.

This recording however, something was… off. There was no youthful babbling at the beginning of the session before the start, the video feed was slightly grayscale and the picture a little out of focus, as if the camera and projector hadn’t been tended to in some time. Most curiously, the whiteboard had one word untidily written in red: ELIZABETH.

I stared at my screen, utterly intrigued. The students in the video did not move nor speak, they only stared forward at the whiteboard in center frame. This surely couldn’t have been my class, these guys had funeral service behavior. And who was this woman? I hadn’t seen her around campus before.

She stared at me. Eyes sunken and face gaunt, she looked unblinkingly toward the camera. The class was silent. Frayed brown hair had drifted partially over her pale face. And the class sat quiet. She opened her mouth, but not to speak - she moaned a single tone, and it didn’t stop. My heart was racing, it felt less like I was watching her and more like she was watching me. I stared back at the hole in her face.

The sound coming out of her mouth began to sound like a distant blowfly buzzing a deep hum, but I couldn’t bring myself to close the site - I kept looking on. My stomach twisted and turned, but I simply couldn’t look away. What the fuck was she doing?

And then I saw it. Its head was disproportionately massive, the size of a torso upon one starved neck. Because of this, it seemed to struggle to wander into frame behind the woman. It moved unpredictably, stepping one foot forward only to move the other backward to steady itself under its leaning head. The head was a moldy grape, round, smooth and fleshy, bobbing and leaning unsteadily as it slogged behind the woman.

It was then close enough to breathe on the woman’s neck. Abruptly, she shut her mouth.

From what I could see, it had no eyes, but it did have a mouth now agape, lined with long finger-like teeth that looked like white pencils.

That was the last time I saw her face. The thing engulfed her head with its own, its gangly body hanging limp, its lips still tightly wrapped around her throat.

The previously motionless students broke into a screaming frenzy, jumping and climbing out of their seats, clambering over one another.

And then nothing. The screen went black.

I felt like throwing up, I reached for my bin. And then it hit me: it was a practical joke. Right?

Come on, Michael. A joke, and you cannot even hit replay.

When I did, I paused it before the woman walked into frame. Wherever this lecture hall was, it was familiar but blurry, both in vision and memory.

Like every good one, there is truth behind the joke. A hurtful jest has you wondering if someone really meant to hurt you, a bitterness left behind. And when I stared at my screen, I couldn’t help but think about some sort of hurtful truth behind it all.

I knew where the room was.

---

A couple nights later, I found my head still spinning when drifting away to thoughts of the video. The head. The teeth going through her neck at one end and coming out the other. The way it never let go after it swallowed her.

It was a couple hours past midnight, and the campus was utterly haunting. Somewhere usually filled with bustling students and chatter, now hollow and quiet, made my heart race.

There were lights on outside to dispel people that were just like me. I wrestled with the locked door of the east wing for a while. I prayed that hallways were not the security’s priority to add alarms to, rather, the rooms inside which housed exam papers and valuable equipment.

And I was right. No alarms sounded when I lockpicked my way through. I was in, but my mind went to a possible silent alarm. I had to be quick.

Down the hall to the right, I found the room. It was sealed from the outside, the windows plastered with some sort of plasticky material that could not be peeled if I gave it all my might. It had been blocked off from students and staff for almost four years on account of maintenance, but at that moment I didn’t quite buy that. I needed a way in.

The locks on the door were intimidating. One large metallic contraption above the doorhandle, a second below requiring a small key. But I couldn’t turn back.

That’s when something quite peculiar happened. The handle turned, and the door opened. Curiosity beckoned me and yielded.

Inside, I heard each and every of my steps with reverb. There was no sound in the theatre, and each movement echoed to the black curtain against the wall behind the whiteboard.

This was where it happened.

Nothing happened, Michael. This is where they recorded the prank, or whatever awful-taste idea that was.

I was halfway down the steps. I looked about. Things were dusty, unkept. The projector and camera mounted to the distant ceiling were tilted. Pivoted. Leaning. Leaning because of the weight. The heavy weight and the thin, thin neck holding it together. I shuddered.

Each step drew me closer to the board. Into frame. Into where Elizabeth must have been standing when it happened.

I had reached the bottom. The room smelled like sulfur, dust coated my tongue and throat.

I was standing at the stage, but there was no show. Looking back there were just empty rows where many smiling faces must have sat before. I pushed a line of dust off the lectern with my finger and for the first time in a few days, smiled.

And that’s when I noticed it. It didn’t want to be seen, nor heard. Not at first. But I saw it.

My heart sank. Across the back wall towered an obsidian curtain draped from ceiling to floor.

Almost to the floor. In the few feet it didn’t reach the ground stood two legs. Gawky, awkward legs.

“Hello?” I called.

Nothing.

The pace of my breath raced my heart to the finish line. I flicked the dust off my finger with one sweaty palm.

“Who’s there?” I shuddered out a cry.

Nothing. The two sticks stood awkwardly posed behind the curtain.

Each stride made me think my heart was going to give out. It almost did when it darted behind the curtain one end to another.

My hand touched the fabric. It felt like razor wire to me, my body refused to pull it away.

When I did, I knew I should have stayed home.

The rotten peach of skin upon a sickening contorted frame stood before me. A pitted skin-fruit wobbling upon a skeletal neck. It opened its mouth and the decaying stench hit me.

Through its fence of boxcutter incisors, staring into the void of its throat, I think I saw her.

I’ll see you soon Elizabeth.

---

For the most part, the university site was down.

Before they took the course Q&A forum down, I signed my post off with: Thanks, Brian.

The majority of the university’s website functionality had been cordoned off since an incident occurred at lecture hall eight in December. They were under some real damage control, while we were kept in the dark.

I found a diary written by someone named Michael in one of lecture halls at the university, detailing his encounters and what I believe to be the reason for the university's closure.

And thanks to him, I had a workaround to access lectures.

I changed the URL of one of the lecture recording’s we were emailed to access some of 2020’s videos hoping that the lecture content hadn’t changed much, and that it would still apply to the 2021 course.

This footage however, something wasn’t quite right. The video was a tinge grayscale and the picture out of focus, as if the camera and projector hadn’t been tended to in some time. Most remarkably, the whiteboard had one word untidily written in red: MICHAEL.

You always remember where you were when something truly horrible happens. That afternoon I was sitting at my desk, feet up, cola in hand, not a care in the world.

I flipped my notebook to a blank page and took a sip of my drink. A few taps of the keyboard, and LECHALL8B from year 2020 became LECHALL8B from year 2019. And lo and behold, I, Michael, the world’s first technotard turned technowhiz, was in.

See, finals were next week, and the recordings were missing. I had scrounged around the site and found a couple of posts from students complaining that the lecturer had been slack in recording them. I had a trick these whining suckers didn’t, though.

The end of the URL of the recording read: LECHALL8B-12-14-20.mp4. You see, when I DID skip class, some were simply not uploaded, as a result of technical difficulties or otherwise, and I began to miss out. But the trick here: you could change the site’s address to a year prior, and funny enough, a lot of the time the same lecture was recorded the year before. And for a lot of classes, the content had not been changed. Bingo. Problem solved.

The lecture started off like any other: the ceiling-mounted camera recorded the lecturer front and center with a whiteboard behind. The back of a few student’s heads framed the bottom of the screen, watching the speaker and the board.

This recording however, something was… off. There was no youthful babbling at the beginning of the session before the start, the video feed was slightly grayscale and the picture a little out of focus, as if the camera and projector hadn’t been tended to in some time. Most curiously, the whiteboard had one word untidily written in red: ELIZABETH.

I stared at my screen, utterly intrigued. The students in the video did not move nor speak, they only stared forward at the whiteboard in center frame. This surely couldn’t have been my class, these guys had funeral service behavior. And who was this woman? I hadn’t seen her around campus before.

She stared at me. Eyes sunken and face gaunt, she looked unblinkingly toward the camera. The class was silent. Frayed brown hair had drifted partially over her pale face. And the class sat quiet. She opened her mouth, but not to speak - she moaned a single tone, and it didn’t stop. My heart was racing, it felt less like I was watching her and more like she was watching me. I stared back at the hole in her face.

The sound coming out of her mouth began to sound like a distant blowfly buzzing a deep hum, but I couldn’t bring myself to close the site - I kept looking on. My stomach twisted and turned, but I simply couldn’t look away. What the fuck was she doing?

And then I saw it. Its head was disproportionately massive, the size of a torso upon one starved neck. Because of this, it seemed to struggle to wander into frame behind the woman. It moved unpredictably, stepping one foot forward only to move the other backward to steady itself under its leaning head. The head was a moldy grape, round, smooth and fleshy, bobbing and leaning unsteadily as it slogged behind the woman.

It was then close enough to breathe on the woman’s neck. Abruptly, she shut her mouth.

From what I could see, it had no eyes, but it did have a mouth now agape, lined with long finger-like teeth that looked like white pencils.

That was the last time I saw her face. The thing engulfed her head with its own, its gangly body hanging limp, its lips still tightly wrapped around her throat.

The previously motionless students broke into a screaming frenzy, jumping and climbing out of their seats, clambering over one another.

And then nothing. The screen went black.

I felt like throwing up, I reached for my bin. And then it hit me: it was a practical joke. Right?

Come on, Michael. A joke, and you cannot even hit replay.

When I did, I paused it before the woman walked into frame. Wherever this lecture hall was, it was familiar but blurry, both in vision and memory.

Like every good one, there is truth behind the joke. A hurtful jest has you wondering if someone really meant to hurt you, a bitterness left behind. And when I stared at my screen, I couldn’t help but think about some sort of hurtful truth behind it all.

I knew where the room was.

---

A couple nights later, I found my head still spinning when drifting away to thoughts of the video. The head. The teeth going through her neck at one end and coming out the other. The way it never let go after it swallowed her.

It was a couple hours past midnight, and the campus was utterly haunting. Somewhere usually filled with bustling students and chatter, now hollow and quiet, made my heart race.

There were lights on outside to dispel people that were just like me. I wrestled with the locked door of the east wing for a while. I prayed that hallways were not the security’s priority to add alarms to, rather, the rooms inside which housed exam papers and valuable equipment.

And I was right. No alarms sounded when I lockpicked my way through. I was in, but my mind went to a possible silent alarm. I had to be quick.

Down the hall to the right, I found the room. It was sealed from the outside, the windows plastered with some sort of plasticky material that could not be peeled if I gave it all my might. It had been blocked off from students and staff for almost four years on account of maintenance, but at that moment I didn’t quite buy that. I needed a way in.

The locks on the door were intimidating. One large metallic contraption above the doorhandle, a second below requiring a small key. But I couldn’t turn back.

That’s when something quite peculiar happened. The handle turned, and the door opened. Curiosity beckoned me and yielded.

Inside, I heard each and every of my steps with reverb. There was no sound in the theatre, and each movement echoed to the black curtain against the wall behind the whiteboard.

This was where it happened.

Nothing happened, Michael. This is where they recorded the prank, or whatever awful-taste idea that was.

I was halfway down the steps. I looked about. Things were dusty, unkept. The projector and camera mounted to the distant ceiling were tilted. Pivoted. Leaning. Leaning because of the weight. The heavy weight and the thin, thin neck holding it together. I shuddered.

Each step drew me closer to the board. Into frame. Into where Elizabeth must have been standing when it happened.

I had reached the bottom. The room smelled like sulfur, dust coated my tongue and throat.

I was standing at the stage, but there was no show. Looking back there were just empty rows where many smiling faces must have sat before. I pushed a line of dust off the lectern with my finger and for the first time in a few days, smiled.

And that’s when I noticed it. It didn’t want to be seen, nor heard. Not at first. But I saw it.

My heart sank. Across the back wall towered an obsidian curtain draped from ceiling to floor.

Almost to the floor. In the few feet it didn’t reach the ground stood two legs. Gawky, awkward legs.

“Hello?” I called.

Nothing.

The pace of my breath raced my heart to the finish line. I flicked the dust off my finger with one sweaty palm.

“Who’s there?” I shuddered out a cry.

Nothing. The two sticks stood awkwardly posed behind the curtain.

Each stride made me think my heart was going to give out. It almost did when it darted behind the curtain one end to another.

My hand touched the fabric. It felt like razor wire to me, my body refused to pull it away.

When I did, I knew I should have stayed home.

The rotten peach of skin upon a sickening contorted frame stood before me. A pitted skin-fruit wobbling upon a skeletal neck. It opened its mouth and the decaying stench hit me.

Through its fence of boxcutter incisors, staring into the void of its throat, I think I saw her.

I’ll see you soon Elizabeth.

---

For the most part, the university site was down.

Before they took the course Q&A forum down, I signed my post off with: Thanks, Brian.

The majority of the university’s website functionality had been cordoned off since an incident occurred at lecture hall eight in December. They were under some real damage control, while we were kept in the dark.

I found a diary written by someone named Michael in one of lecture halls at the university, detailing his encounters and what I believe to be the reason for the university's closure.

And thanks to him, I had a workaround to access lectures.

I changed the URL of one of the lecture recording’s we were emailed to access some of 2020’s videos hoping that the lecture content hadn’t changed much, and that it would still apply to the 2021 course.

This footage however, something wasn’t quite right. The video was a tinge grayscale and the picture out of focus, as if the camera and projector hadn’t been tended to in some time. Most remarkably, the whiteboard had one word untidily written in red: MICHAEL.

---

Credits

Don’t Ever Stop at the Traveling Spooktakular Roadshow

  

Fifteen years ago, I was driving down a dark road with my two best friends in the world. Evan, who I’d known since the fourth grade and been dating since the tenth, and Peter, who we’d met our first day of high school. We were sophomores in college at the time, all back in town together for the weekend—our first time together in two months to hang out and celebrate Halloween.

My stomach was in knots at being around them both again. I’d known for some time that things with Evan were fading out, and I’d had my excuses for why that was so—it was young love, we were at different colleges and were growing apart, etc. It was only as Peter and I began talking more and more about the what ifs of some possible future together in the past few weeks that I’d come to understand what I had to do. I’d give us all this last good weekend together, and then as gently as possible, I’d end things with Evan.

We’d been on our way to a Halloween party that night—it was being thrown by an old high school friend, but I could tell that Evan and Peter weren’t any more excited about going than I was. We were all faking a level of enthusiasm that we didn’t feel to try to keep the other two happy and entertained, and while the sentiment was kind, it still lead to us staring down the barrel of hours of forced reunions and awkward conversations with people we didn’t really talk to anymore.

Evan saw the lights up ahead first, and when he called out to us, I felt a twinge of relief and excitement at the orange marquee with its flashing light bulb arrows and blinking neon skulls. The lettering on the sign stood in shabby contrast to the care that had been shown to the sign itself, with mismatched black readerboard letters trailing across a single line:

The Traveling Spooktakular Roadshow

“Hey, Becca. Slow down. Let’s check this place out.”

I could hear the excitement in Evan’s voice and felt a new twinge of guilt. He really was a good guy, and I wasn’t sure what I had to do wasn’t going to break up our trio for good. Pushing the thought aside, I tried to smile at him. “You sure? Aren’t you super-pumped to get to Erik’s party?”

He rolled his eyes as Peter leaned in between us. “Cut the shit. None of us want to go to that really. Being a few minutes late to check this weird shit out can’t hurt.” He met my eyes for a moment before I looked away. Peter had been harsher with me this weekend and quick to side with whatever Evan wanted to do, and I got it. He didn’t know when I was going to talk to Evan, but he knew it was coming, and the combination of guilt and wanting to maintain appearances made it easy for us both to focus on making Evan happy and avoid acting too chummy with each other. Grimacing, I slowed the car and turned onto the small dirt track that wound past the sign into the dark.

We only had fifty feet to go before I could see the glow of pumpkin lights strung across the frame of what looked like an old tour bus. A single spotlight lit the open side door at the front of the bus, and next to it was an elaborately-carved wooden sign that said “Enter if you dare”. Raising my eyebrows, I glanced back at Evan and Peter.

“Well this looks sketchy as fuck.”

Evan grinned. “Yeah, right? It’s awesome. I didn’t even know this was here.”

Peter looked at him and then back at me. “Yeah…me either. I don’t think it was. I mean…when I came back into town last night, I came this way. There wasn’t any sign out then—it was late and I was tired, but I wasn’t that tired.”

Evan shrugged. “Maybe they just didn’t have the sign on anymore. You said you got in after midnight.”

Peter looked out at the bus as he sat back. “Maybe, but is this thing even open? Where are the people? It’s the night before Halloween and no one is out here? They could still be setting up for tomorrow.”

I nodded. “That, or this is some cover for a holiday meth sale. Either way, it looks creepy.”

Evan frowned at me. “So are you both against me?”

I heard Peter suck in a breath as I swallowed. “No, no. Not saying that…I just…well, if you want to check it out, see if it’s open, then we will.” I turned my head slightly without looking at Peter. “Right?”

From the shadows of the backseat, Peter’s voice sounded far away. “Sure man. It’ll be fun.”

---

We looked around the outside of the bus for someone to ask about a ticket or if they were even open, but there was no sign of anyone. Pointing at the open door, Evan said maybe we paid inside or it was just a free attraction someone had set up for fun. When he grabbed my hand and started forward, I went without complaint as Peter brought up the rear.

Climbing the five narrow, metal steps inside the doorway led us to a large driver’s cabin with a cracked, red vinyl seat and a large steering wheel wrapped in some kind of skin. There was no sign of a driver or guide, however. Just the way we’d come and the way forward, which lay through a thick black curtain that divided the driver’s cab from the rest of the bus. Giving me a nervous smile, Evan pushed past the barrier, and we followed.

I felt a sense of relief at what lay on the other side. It really was just a small haunt—the interior of the bus had been heavily customized, and it looked as though it had been hollowed out to make space for several discrete rooms in the long, wide body of the bus. The first held a decent-looking plastic corpse tied to a bedframe. Periodically, the sound of electric zaps would play from a hidden speaker as the body jolted and twisted in time with some internal mechanism. Peter let out a small laugh behind me.

“That’s pretty cool.”

The next room was littered with rubber body parts, and in the corner, a large drum bubbled as heads and hands bobbed on the surface of a misty brew. As we drew closer, a snake lunged out from beneath the water, causing Evan to jump as I let out a yelp. Cursing, I shook my head.

“Yeah, that got me.” I found myself actually growing tense, wondering if there would be a third room, and if so, what it might hold.

There was a third room. And a fourth. A fifth and a sixth. All similar in quality, but different in theme. It was actually a surprisingly good haunt, even though it was strange that we hadn’t seen or heard any actors or other staff yet. Still, my unease was growing steadily with each new scene. Not because of the jump scares or the animatronic monsters, but because…

“How the fuck is this thing this big?” Peter’s words were barely a whisper, scarcely audible above the whining strains of a creepy violin filling the funeral parlor we were in. A small white coffin lay to one side, and I felt sure something was going to spring from it as we got closer. Still, his words concerned me a lot more, as they echoed my own thoughts. As Evan looked back, I saw he’d heard it too, and the expression on his face mirrored my own.

“I…yeah, it’s weird, isn’t it?” Evan looked around. “This is what…our sixth room?”

“Seventh, I think.” I didn’t turn around, but I could hear the worry in Peter’s voice.

“Okay, seventh. And we looked around pretty good outside, right? There wasn’t another bus or a building or something attached to this thing. Or am I crazy?”

I shook my head slowly. “No. You’re not crazy.” Looking down at the floor, I frowned. “Maybe…I don’t know, maybe it’s a trick? Like the floor has been sloping down and they actually built the rest of this place underground? I know that sounds dumb, but it really feels like we’ve gone farther than the bus is long, so maybe we’re not really on the bus anymore.”

Evan nodded slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe we’re just misjudging things. This might be the last or…well, at least one of the last rooms. We have to be close to the end if it’s just the bus, right?”

I nodded back, and behind me, I heard Peter puff out a breath before adding, “Yeah, man. I bet we’re close.”

So we went on.

---

The rooms continued on. At first, we were silent except for the occasional gasp when something startled one of us. Then, we began making nervous jokes about how this would never end and how it really was impressive and how we’d have to tell people about this place when we got out. By the second hour, we were going through the rooms at a near walking run, ignoring most of the scenes as we held each other’s hands and focused on pushing forward.

We were at room sixty or seventy by this point, and while there had been some repeated broad themes, we hadn’t run across the same room twice. There were no branching paths or even noticeable curves, which meant that we’d somehow traveled in a straight line for what I guessed was close to three miles.

I based that guess in part on the changing size of the rooms themselves. As we went, they had slowly gotten wider and longer, so that by the time I glanced at my phone and saw it was after ten o’clock, we could barely make out the next black curtain at the far end of a fog-shrouded cemetery, and even the side walls were so far away we couldn’t touch them standing side by side.

Peter was the first person to suggest turning around and going back the way we came. Evan was against it from the start, insisting that it had to end at some point, and that so far, nothing bad had happened. It was all fake dolls and robots. Nothing real. And we’d have such a good story to tell when we got done, right?

I agreed with Evan to keep going, but not because I believed what he said. It was because I could tell he didn’t believe it either. There was a desperate sheen to his eyes in the yellow light of the artificial graveyard moon. A look that said what was being echoed in my own heart of hearts. So long as we kept going, we could pretend like things were okay. But what if we tried to go back and…

What if we tried to go back and it wouldn’t let us?

---

I lost count of the rooms we traveled through. I was thirsty and tired, but above all, terrified. I could feel myself edging closer to panic with every new place we visited, and the only thing worse than my fear of going on was my fear of what might happen if we didn’t.

Then suddenly, we stepped off of a bloody hill littered with plastic sacrifices to some strange wooden effigy and found ourselves in a large stone room. This room was different than the others—it was round, and there was no sign of another curtain at the far end of the circle. In the middle, surrounded by three large, silk pillows, was a short stone table that seemed carved from the rock of the room itself. On that table, was a single, laminated card of bright yellow. It said:

Be seated. Tell the others your most frightening story. Above all, tell the truth.

We were all in shock by then, I think. Grateful for anything different than the neverending haunt, ready to take any guidance that might provide a way forward and out, we didn’t even question the instructions. We all sat down on the pillows, staring across the table at each other. I already knew what story I had to tell. The memory had come back to me as soon as I’d seen the card. So I raised my hand, and without preamble, I began.

---

When I was eight, there was a man that lived at the end of our street. This was the year before you moved to town Evan, and I never told you about it because I was afraid it’d freak you out and you’d stop coming over to play. Anyway, this man…he had lived in the neighborhood for a long time. Everyone liked him and his family—they were the kind of people that would loan you stuff if you needed it—I remember Daddy had used his lawn mower for a month when ours died—and they always decorated their house and massive yard for the holidays.

That was the first thing that I noticed that year. They hadn’t decorated for Halloween. Not only that, but his kids hadn’t been to school for over two weeks and no one had seen the man or his wife either.

We weren’t a nosy neighborhood, but one night my Mom called over there to make sure they were all doing okay. The man answered, telling her they’d all been down with the flu, but they were doing better. Said he appreciated the call and he’d have to come visit us soon. She told me and Daddy about the call, but she seemed strange, like she was still worried about something.

Maybe that’s why I paid so much attention to the man’s house as we drove near the next day. I was excited when I saw him out in the yard, raking up huge, neat piles of autumn leaves. It was still early and he was nearly done, so I guess he’d been at it since before the sun came up.

I called out to Mom…I think hoping that pointing out that he was working in the yard would somehow make her feel better. And at first it did. She slowed the car a little and gave him a wave as we drove by. It was as he was returning the wave that I heard my mother gasp.

“Oh God.”

I looked at her, and then followed her gaze back to a distant part of the yard, to one of the piles of red and gold leaves that had started to scatter in the cool morning breeze. To the thing that poked out from beneath it.

It was part of a leg.

She drove on, making it three blocks into town before she saw a police car and flagged it down. The cop didn’t take her serious at first—he thought she was playing a joke or had mistaken Halloween decorations for the real thing. But she knew better, and when she threatened to call his superior if he didn’t check into it, he grudgingly relented. An hour later, our street was filled with lights and sirens.

They’d already arrested the man. They’d found him still raking the yard, carefully restacking the leaves the wind kept trying to carry away. As though he was tucking in the dismembered corpses of his family for a long sleep.

---

My mouth closed with an audible snap as I finished the story. I’d never told anyone that before, and my parents hadn’t mentioned it since the man had been found hanging from his bedsheets at an institution upstate a few months after the murders. This was all so strange and…

Then it was Peter’s turn.

---

My dad used to be in the military. You guys know that. Well, before I was born, maybe before my parents were even married, he was stationed in Germany for a couple of years. He was really young back then, and he’s told me some wild stories from his time there—getting in fights, doing dumb shit with his buddies, you know.

But one story he only told me once. It was one night not long before he died. He was drinking a lot by then—I don’t think the booze helped the pain that much, but it seemed to make him worry less about the cancer and leaving us behind. Those nights, he’d stay up late talking to us, almost…well, almost like he was trying to get in as much time with us as he could before it was too late.

This night, Mama had fallen asleep, but the two of us were still playing cards and talking. We’d watched a scary movie earlier in the night, and that made me think to ask him what was the scariest place he’d ever been. I expected him to talk about one of the few times he saw combat or something from his childhood, or maybe not have an answer at all, but instead he immediately sat his cards down and looked at me.

“It was a place called The Red Circle. It’s in Croatia. Me and a buddy had a week’s leave and decided to travel Europe some. We’d heard Croatia was cheap and full of beautiful scenery and women. That was all true, but as we traveled around, we kept hearing different people talk about this place called ‘The Red Circle’. That if we were looking for adventure, we needed to visit The Red Circle. If we wanted a story to tell, go to ‘The Red Circle’.”

My father shrugged slightly. “These were strangers we were shooting the shit with at bars, so at first we didn’t pay much attention. Whenever we asked what The Red Circle was or why it was so great, they would always get real dodgy. Talk about it being haunted or some bullshit.” He sighed. “Still, the fact that it kept coming up in different groups, in different towns even…we got curious. And while they were always scarce on details of what went on there, everyone who mentioned it to us was real good at telling us how to get there.”

“So our last night, we went. The directions took us out on a country road into the middle of the woods, and we were about to turn around, having decided that it was all a practical joke that locals played on stupid Americans, when we saw the start of the village.”

“The place was dead. Long dead. There were no people or cars…hell, I don’t know if there’d ever even been cars in that place. It was creepy as hell, and we loved it. It felt like we were on an archeological dig, finding a place that time had forgot. We just walked around at first, but we kept pushing each other, showing off how brave we were, and before long we were going into the empty houses and stores, the rotting chapel and the decaying city hall. And with each place that we visited, we somehow grew both more terrified and more driven to keep looking. Not because the buildings were abandoned.”

“It was because of the holes.”

“Every shop, every home, nearly every single place we visited had a large hole in the floor. It might be in the middle of the room or some dark corner of a basement, but it was nearly always there. And these weren’t holes that were being dug, either. Between the dirt pushed away and the broken floorboards pointed at the ceiling, it seemed clear to us that something had come up from underneath. Underground.”

“I don’t know why we didn’t leave sooner. We were both close to pissing our pants before we were halfway done, and it wasn’t until we heard the noise that we finally broke for the car and got out of there. We heard it first at what looked like a tiny post office. And then next door at what had once been a bar or restaurant I think.”

“It was a thumping noise, kind of like a weird heartbeat. Coming from those holes and getting closer.”

My father wiped his mouth before looking down dubiously at his empty glass. “I…We ran. Didn’t tell anybody about what we saw and heard. There was no point. They’d never believe us, and over the years, I stopped believing it much myself.” His eyes flickered up to mine for a minute. “Then a few years back, I heard from my old Army buddy. He wasn’t doing too good. Said he kept dreaming that he woke up down in the dark. Down beneath the earth in some mine or cave. He couldn’t see much of anything, but he could hear that sound. Thumping, thumping, as something came for him.”

He let out a short laugh. “I blew him off. Told him he just needed to let that shit go. Get some help if he couldn’t.” He lowered his eyes. “I heard later he killed himself.”

I didn’t know what to say. My father wasn’t an emotional man at the best of times, and now he seemed on the verge of tears. “Dad, I…”

He cut me off. “Thing is, I still didn’t believe him. Didn’t want to. Until last week.” His smile was terrible as he looked up at the ceiling. “Cuz last week, I started to have the dream too.”

---

Peter stopped talking suddenly, turning to Evan even as my own gaze shifted in the same direction. Face pale, Evan began to speak.

---

One night last year…this was late September, I think…I was up late. It might sound dumb, but even after a month in the dorm, I still had trouble getting to sleep a lot of nights. It wasn’t my bed, my room, my town, you know? Some nights I’d go for a walk or read a book for awhile, and on this night in particular, I’d opened the window to judge the weather for a walk before heading out.

That’s when I saw the person in the bear costume.

They were just standing out on the lawn of the dorm—A figure in a purple bear costume with cartoon eyes, a wide mouth, and a too-large head topping a body of shaggy lavender fur and a fluffy white chest and stomach. I let out a small laugh before catching myself, looking back to make sure I hadn’t woken up my roommate.

It was so odd, but then so much of college was like that. People got drunk, people did hazing rituals, people did weird shit to be funny, stand out, or get laid. I looked down at the bear for a few seconds with mild amusement, but that was about it. He was just standing there, hanging out on the grass in front of the building at like two in the morning and…well, it was dumb and funny, but that was about it. I was about to close the window and try my luck outside when the bear turned and looked up at me.

I froze for a moment, feeling weirdly caught for doing nothing more than looking out my window. I mean, it wasn’t like I was spying on him or anything. He was just out there to be seen. Still, I gave him an awkward wave, and felt relief when he gave a giant-pawed wave in return. Then he stopped waving, raising both arms as he began beckoning, as though he wanted me to come down.

I hesitated. I wasn’t scared, but I was tired and not in the mood to get tangled up in someone else’s bullshit. But then the thought occurred to me that maybe the person in the suit was getting hazed and they needed help. Maybe they had to stand there all night or some dumb shit to get into whatever fraternity or sorority was torturing them. Maybe they needed something to drink or something. Did I really want to leave them hanging if I could take a minute and help them out?

So I reluctantly nodded and gave them a thumbs up before putting on my shoes and heading downstairs. The dorm is laid out with the night exit being at the far end, so I had to walk out and around to get to the front lawn. When I did, I was pissed at first. There was no sign of the bear anymore, or that’s what I thought.

Then I noticed the crumpled pile of purple lying in the grass.

I walked up to the discarded suit and moved it with my foot as I looked around the yard. There was no sign of anyone. I figured they must have tossed it off as soon as I left the window. The thing was, I wasn’t even sure how they’d gotten it off at all. As I looked closer at the bear costume, I didn’t see any Velcro or zippers, no individual pieces or seams. It was all just fake fur and fabric aside from whatever kept the head in shape and the mouth open.

And looking into that mouth…it didn’t look right. Even when I tilted the head toward the security light overhead, I couldn’t see the inside of the costume. It wasn’t just that it was dark. It felt wrong. Like instead of looking into the mouth of a costume bear, I was staring down into something much darker and bigger. When I spoke near its yawning jaws, I even thought I could hear a faint echo from somewhere in the distant black.

I threw the suit down then and ran back to my room. I didn’t sleep at all that night, but by the next morning, when I looked out, it was gone.

---

As Evan finished, a new card fluttered out of the air and landed on the table between us. It was laminated like the first, but this one was red. It said:

Pick which story stays.

Our reactions should have been fear or confusion. Anger or rebellion. We shouldn’t have understood what it was asking for or been willing to decide so quickly. I’d like to say Peter and I didn’t know the consequences when we stood up and walked closer to one another, but there’s little point to lying now.

Taking Peter’s hand, we both spoke Evan’s name in unison. For his part, he never argued or even bothered to stand. He just looked at us with his sad eyes as the room began to grow dark. We found ourselves back out by the car, with no trace of the sign, the bus, or Evan to be found.

Peter and I got married the next year. Had a little girl that turned six this year. We’ve loved each other fairly well, I think, though that love has always been tainted by the guilt and shame of what we did. At the time I tried to tell myself he was accepting of our choice—that he loved us and was willing to sacrifice himself to set us free.

I don’t think that anymore.

Because last night, I couldn’t find our daughter. I searched the house from top to bottom, my calls becoming frantic and angry as panic gripped my chest. It wasn’t until I reached the point of looking outside that I saw the trail of candy leading off our front porch and into the grass.

The line of sweets was mainly hard candy, which Lexi didn’t like, but I saw mixed in a couple of empty wrappers where she’d opened small chocolates as she made her way out to the yard. Heart pounding, I followed the trail across the yard and to the edge of the trees beyond, and there I saw where the candy led.

To the open mouth of dirty, purple bear costume.

The suit was empty and seamless, lying in a wrinkled heap except for the head—large and cartoonishly bulbous with wide eyes and an open maw that seemed impossibly large. Not just out of proportion, but so big it seemed less like a mouth and more like the small opening of a cave or tunnel. Frantic, I picked up the suit and shook it, as though I thought our baby might come tumbling out. When nothing came, I checked the mouth again. Evan had been right. Something was wrong with it. It didn’t look like it should.

But that didn’t matter. I had to find Lexi. I called out to her again, and I jumped when I heard a responding sound—not an answer, but the faint echo of my words coming from the cavernous mouth of the bear. I dropped the suit and stepped back, staring in horror as it landed with the mouth pointed toward me and widened enough to admit at first a small child, and then a terrified mother.

I heard a new sound from inside. It was Lexi, crying out to me. Telling me she was lost. That she was scared. That she needed me.

I knew what this was without understanding it. It was a trap. A dare.

I wept as I crossed the yard back to the house. I called Peter and 911 when I got inside, but I already knew they’d never find her. By the time they arrived, even the bear suit was gone.

Maybe I should tell Peter about it, but I doubt I will. He’s already troubled and distant these days. He stays late at work, and when he’s home, he stays outside tending to the yard as though to avoid me. Even at night, I hear him moaning and crying out from some recurring nightmare. I’ve tried asking him about it, but he only gives me a haunted, almost angry look before changing the subject or getting up to go outside.

I think about the Roadshow all the time now. I wonder if we found it or it found us. If we could have done something different. If we ever really left at all.

But of course we did. That’s ridiculous. Whatever that place is, wherever it goes, we escaped it.

I have to stop here. The noise is back again. Something is underneath the house.

And it’s trying to get in.

 

---

Credits