What Happens When It Catches Me?

 

“It shows you another world, I think.”

That was the first thing Barry said to me when he produced the battered camcorder. He’d been sending me cryptic texts for days about a camera he’d found in the lot of his office park. At first, he’d just sounded excited that the weird find had broken up the monotony of his work day, but then he got it home and began fiddling with it, finding an old adapter cord that he figured wouldn’t work or would fry the thing, but for a wonder, it did neither. A green light had come on, and two hours later it seemed to be fully charged.

Sitting in my apartment, he handed me the camera gently, my eyes going between it and his face as I tried to judge if he was joking. I felt my stomach begin to twist when I saw he wasn’t. My worry must have shown on my face—he frowned at me slightly and started shaking his head.

“I know what you’re thinking. But I’m not crazy.” He let out a short, bitter laugh. “Or I’m not any more crazy than I was before.” Barry furrowed his eyebrows at my silence. “And I’m taking my meds, and I haven’t had any paranoid thoughts or anything else odd.” He gestured toward the camcorder. “Just…this thing.”

I smiled at him and nodded, trying to keep my expression in check. Something was off—it had to be if he believed what he was saying—but I’d never seen him this amped up since I’d first met him five years earlier. He hadn’t been hospitalized since he was a teenager, and there’d only been one time since I’d known him that he’d had what I considered an “episode”—one terrible week where he seemed like a different person because he’d gone off his meds “just to see how it went”. It hadn’t went well, and once I finally convinced him to start back to taking them, he’d realized that for himself.

But this…this was different. He was excited and nervous, but he didn’t seem out of control. Maybe the meds just needed adjusting this time? I didn’t know, but I figured the best thing was to just hear him out and go from there.

“Okay, I believe you. Just…what do you mean, it shows you another world?”

Barry’s face was still guarded, but brightened slightly at my question. “Okay, okay. So like, first thing I noticed is it’s weird, right? I mean I’m not an expert with cameras, but this one is a little different from any I’ve seen. The way it’s shaped and how small it is for one thing, but also, I can’t figure out how it stores video. There’s no slot for a tape or disc or anything.”

I turned the small camera in my hand. It was made of some kind of smooth grey metal, but was still very light, fitting comfortably in my palm. There was a padded leather strap where your hand would go while shooting, and a small hole that I guessed was the port for plugging in a power adapter, but otherwise it was just a small ergonomic tube with a lens on one end and a viewfinder on the other. I glanced back up at him with a shrug.

“Well, I mean that’s not that weird, is it? I don’t know how old it is, but if it was made in the last few years, it probably uses internal memory like a phone, right? Shit, I’m kind of surprised people even make camcorders anymore. Doesn’t everyone use a phone or tablet now?”

He nodded. “Yeah, most do, at least until you get into high-end stuff like they use to shoot professional videos. And I figure it has to have internal memory, but wouldn’t it have a USB port or something to download it to something else? A hard drive or computer or whatever? I can’t find any hidden ports—nothing but where I charged it up.”

I examined the camera closer. He was right. The cool skin of the thing was seamless, and I saw no lines or latches, no labels or… “Hey, this is weird too. There’s no writing on it. Like none. No brand, no “wifi” logo, no button names, nothing.”

He was smiling again now. “I caught that too. It’s almost like it was homemade, but who would do that? How many people could do that? And if you were somehow able to make something like this, would you just leave it in a random parking lot somewhere?”

I frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe you download video wirelessly. But how do you even turn it on or do anything with it? It doesn’t have any buttons.”

Barry’s smile widened. “It does, they’re just hidden. Here, hold it like you’re going to take video or look through the viewfinder.” I did as he asked, slipping my fingers under the brown leather strap on the side. “Okay. You feel the little bumps under your fingers?”

I flinched a little as I realized I did. Turning the camera over, I looked at where my fingertips had been. There was no sign of raised domes there, but I’d felt them. When I slid my fingers back over the area, I could still feel those same bumps, though I still couldn’t see them when I checked again. Lips thinning, I glanced up as he continued on.

“The index finger is fast forward. The ring finger is rewind. And the middle finger is play.” He shook his head slightly. “There isn’t a power button so far as I can tell. It’s always on in some kind of sleep mode that stops when you pick it up. It has to have some kind of sensor, because the viewfinder doesn’t light up until you put your eye up to it. Either way, I haven’t charged it in four days and there’s no sign it’s giving out or anything.”

Something occurred to me. “What about a record button?”

Barry shook his head. “Nope. Not that I can find. I even tried voice commands, but nothing. It just always records. Always. That’s another thing that’s weird. It seems to always record the same amount of footage, constantly deleting a second for every second it adds. I’ve timed it. It’s just over thirty-seven minutes worth.”

I let out a slow breath. “Okay. So you’re saying this weird camera is always on, always recording, and it keeps the last thirty-seven minutes all the time? Like you can rewind and watch it and it changes over time?”

He nodded. “Yep. There’s no flip out screen, so you have to watch through the viewfinder. And it’s recording even when it’s playing, so if you watch for fifteen minutes from the beginning, that fifteen minutes will be gone by the time you rewind to start over again. If you fast-forward and watch the last five, when you rewind, a little more than the first five of that thirty-seven minute recording will be gone, because its recording window will have shifted forward during the time you fast-forwarded, watched, and rewound.” He grimaced. “That’s what’s so frustrating. I can’t show you some of the things I’ve seen with it because they’ve already gone. All I can do is take you to places where you’ll notice the difference and record new footage.”

I eyed Barry warily. “Different because the camera shows you another world?”

“Yes. And yeah, I know it sounds crazy. That’s why I’m going to show you rather than try to convince you. Just…look at the recording as it is now, okay? So you know it’s not some trick or prank I’m pulling. Rewind all the way and watch the footage through the viewfinder. Just hit the button under your ring finger and it’ll rewind in just a few seconds.”

Hitting the hidden button, I thought about saying something more, but I wasn’t sure what would help. This was all really strange, but there had to be a reasonable explanation. Maybe someone was messing with him. Uploading new footage wirelessly to make it look like a magic camera? I didn’t know, and the only way I knew to figure it all out was to follow Barry’s lead until I knew enough to help him.

So I looked into the camera.

Immediately the viewfinder seemed to brighten, though it was hard to say for sure when the scene looked so dark. I hit play with my middle finger, and at first I thought something was wrong. The screen was just greyish black, and I was about to ask if I was doing something wrong when the scene brightened somewhat, showing what I guessed was the parking garage across the street from my building. The angle was odd and jumped rhythmically, but I could make out enough to see that while it was the parking garage, it looked different. There was graffiti covering most of the walls, and as the camera moved, I saw several cars that looked strange or covered with the dust of disuse. I’d never noticed any of that before, and I’d been in the garage just that morning. And why…

“Why is the camera like this? All bouncy and shaky?”

Barry’s face grew a little pale. “Because it was in my bag as I was walking. What you’re seeing is probably when I was on my way over here.”

I frowned. “What, did you have it sticking out through a hole or something? It’s not very good footage.”

He shook his head as he held up his bag and turned it for me to see. “No, no holes. If it was recording over here, it’d be showing the inside of my bag or be dark. I put it in my bag when I left home and didn’t take it out again until just now when I showed it to you.” He gave me a nervous grin. “But it wasn’t recording over here. It was recording the same spot over there, wherever there is, and over there there’s no bag to block its view.”

I felt my hands growing cold. I wanted to argue, to tell him it’d been a great joke but he needed to drop it. That I was getting irritated with the whole thing. But I didn’t. Because I knew he wasn’t lying, and if it was a joke, it was being played on him too. And my growing anger wasn’t at him anyway. It was as the fear growing fat in my belly.

Taking a deep breath, I put my eye back to the viewfinder.

At first I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. The view seemed to be of a dark wall periodically punctuated with metal rails and bits of wire as the camera seemed to float upward. Shooting Barry a questioning look, I showed him the viewfinder for a moment. He gave a shaky laugh.

“Yeah, that threw me at first too, but I’ve seen in with a couple of buildings now. It’s when I was coming up the elevator. I guess it doesn’t work over there, so you’re seeing the shaft instead.”

Swallowing, I watched again. The view was going down a version of my floor’s hallway, the paint chipped and dirty under sickly flickering fluorescent lights. A pause and then passing through a door into my apartment, except this version was filthy, with piles of trash in the corners and different furniture scattered in disarray across the room. I didn’t see any sign of a person, and I was grateful. My heart was already hammering harder and harder as I felt the last threads of my disbelief beginning to fray. When Barry spoke, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“Sorry. Yeah, it’s a lot to take in, I know. What I was saying is, fast-forward now. Index finger. Catch back up and then move the camera around in real-time.”

Hand trembling, I did as he asked. After a few seconds I was caught up to the present, and when I panned the camera, the scene in the viewfinder moved in sync, though it was still showing me that other version of my home.

I could hardly breath as I lowered the camera again to stare at Barry. “I…how is that…it has to be fake, right? Some kind of AR trick or something?”

He shook his head. “It’s not. I’ve done all kinds of tests. I don’t claim to be an expert, but how could it make those kinds of changes in the moment? It’s showing us some other place. A place that’s very similar to ours, but isn’t the same.” When I just kept staring, he nodded. “It’s hard to believe, I know. It was for me too. That’s why I want you to go for a walk with me.”

---

We went down to the street, Barry’s hand tight on mine like a lifeline as I stared through the camera and into that other world. The street and sidewalks were largely the same, but much of the rest was different. Stores sometimes had different names or weren’t the same kind of store at all. Several buildings were abandoned and a few had been burned. When I asked Barry about that, he told me there were a lot of places like that all over, and that nearly every house of worship he’d come across, be it a church, a synagogue, or a mosque, had been burned down or otherwise destroyed.

“The couple that haven’t…” His gaze trailed away from me as his lips grew thin. “…I think they’ve been converted into worshipping something else.” Barry gestured at the camera. “Keep looking though.”

I put my eye back to the viewfinder. It was the same time of day as where we were, a late winter afternoon that was quickly ripening into a grey twilight. In our world, people passed us by frequently, but in the camera’s view, there was no one at…I let out a gasp as a man rounded the corner in the viewfinder. He looked slightly disheveled, but otherwise seemed normal. Pulling away from the camera, I looked for him in the world, but no. There was a woman and her small child waiting at the crosswalk ahead, but no man in a tattered overcoat trudging in our direction. Looking back through the viewfinder, the man was about to pass us, pass through us, with no sign of seeing us.

Of course that made sense. We weren’t there, after all.

I handed the camera back to Barry shakily. “What…I…what are you going to do with it? Should you tell someone?”

He frowned and shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. If I show it to people, someone will just steal it or take it away. I want to use it more and try to figure out more. Like does it always show the same world, or does it go between different places? I think it’s the same one, but it’s hard to say for sure.” He looked scared but excited. “It’s great though, right? Kinda spooky, but it’s like having a magic mirror or something.”

I rubbed my arms. “I guess. I just…how do you know it’s not dangerous? Or that it wasn’t put out for someone to find? Like a trap or something?”

Barry nodded. “I know. I’ve thought about that, and I can’t say for sure. But I can’t just let go of something like this without trying can I? It’s like throwing away a miracle.”

I let out a shaky laugh. “My grandma used to say that people only call things miracles if it goes the way they want it to. The stuff that doesn’t…that’s just bad luck or the devil.”

Barry smiled uncertainly. “Well, I guess that’s true. Not everything turns out good.”

I shook my head slightly. “No, that wasn’t her point. She said that everything turned out good. Turned out exactly the way it was meant to be. That every extraordinary thing was a miracle to somebody, even if it hurt others. The thing that changed wasn’t the miracle.” I glanced back down at the camera with a shudder. “It was who the miracle helped.” Reaching out, I gently gripped his arm. “Just…just be careful with it, okay?”

Something passed across his face then, maybe a moment of doubt or a more potent strain of fear, but then it faded again. Nodding, he squeezed my hand. “I promise, I will be.”

---

Barry disappeared two weeks later, and there’s been no sign of him in the months since. He has no family, so I was the one that packed up his stuff when his lease ran out, renting a storage unit to keep it in until he hopefully returned. When I didn’t find the camcorder among his belongings, I thought it was strange, but it was also a relief. Though I didn’t know for sure, I figured the camera was connected to what had happened to my best friend, and if it wasn’t going to help me get him back, I didn’t want it around me at all.

Then last week I got a package in the mail. No return address and the next-day mailing label had been printed by one of those package drop-off stores. When I tracked it down, it was a place in northern New Hampshire. I called, but they said they didn’t remember who had come in with the box. That was okay.

I thought I already knew.

Because inside the box was the camera. It had to have come from Barry, and so I thought maybe there was something on it that could give me some clue. Heart pounding, I picked up the camera and watched the last 37 minutes of footage.

It amounted to little. Just sitting out in that dirty hallway and then floating into the other version of my apartment as I discovered it and brought it inside. No clues of what had happened to Barry or caused him to send me the thing that had most likely ruined his life.

I almost threw it away. It was an unclean thing that had infected Barry and now it was going to infect me, if it hadn’t already. But then there was the fact that Barry had sent me the camera in the first place. He wouldn’t have done that without a good reason, or if he thought it would hurt me, would he?

So I kept it. Started using it carefully. At first it was with the hopes that I could somehow figure out something that would lead me to Barry, but as time went on, I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into the larger mystery of it all.

That other world it showed me…it was a wrong place. A bad place that had gone sour down to its core. The people there…half of them seemed twisted and the other half looked exhausted and terrified. Just watching for a few minutes drained me, but by the fourth day I was using it every couple of hours, going to different places around the city to compare my version of a place to its dark twin.

When I got back home, there was a letter in my mailbox. The postmark was from Vermont a week earlier, and the address was written in Barry’s large and shaky script. Mouth dry, I tore it open and took out the note he’d written inside.

I was wrong. It’s not a miracle for us. They have cameras too. And they can reach through.

I didn’t use the camera for two days. I was too scared. But the more time that passed, and the more I thought about Barry’s letter, the more terrified I became of not at least taking an occasional peek, if only to reassure myself that nothing was looking back at me.

So I went for a walk yesterday afternoon. Just a short walk, following roughly the same path me and Barry had taken that first night he’d shown me the camera. At first it was fine. I could never get used to the strangeness of seeing that other world, but there was no sign of anyone noticing me. I was putting the camera away to head home when something made me stop and turn around. There was nothing there. I had to calm down. It was understandable that I was jumpy, but if I started freaking out at every little…

My skin grew cold as a thought occurred to me and I lifted the camera back to my eye.

Thirty feet away there was a woman, standing still as she held a camera up to her face, its lensed eye staring straight at me. She began to smile as she saw me notice her, the camera bobbing slightly as she gave a small nod—a small greeting or confirmation that she was seeing me just like I was seeing her.

I started to backpedal, and as I did so, she began to walk toward me. As we picked up pace, she began occasionally peeking out from behind the camera, presumably to watch where she was going while still following me. It was one of these times that I saw her face.

It was me.

The world turned upside down as I slammed into a trashcan and went sprawling. Between going backwards and being too afraid to leave the camera’s view and lose sight of her, I’d have likely run into the street if not for the steel can bolted to the corner. I felt pain flare in my hip and elbow as I landed, but I managed to roll over and get to my feet after just a couple of breathless seconds. I had to get the camera back and see where she…

My eyes found the camera, lying in the street and broken in half from either the fall or the car that had passed over it a moment before I saw where it had landed. Letting out a moan, I darted forward to grab it, but even before I touched it, I saw there was no point. It was crushed beyond any hope of repair, even if someone in this world were capable of working on such a thing.

And I could feel that pressure, that presence, growing closer behind me. Even without a camera, I could sense that other watching me, following me, as I began to run. I didn’t want to go home in case it didn’t know that’s where I lived. So instead I ran the other way, panting with fear and exertion as I tried to distance myself from that terrible prickle on my scalp that told me I was still being pursued.

And it worked, if only a little. By the time I stopped running, the feeling was still there, but was fainter. I was ten blocks away from where I’d fallen, and across the street I saw the bus depot. Patting my pockets, I was grateful to find I’d brought my card wallet with me. Maybe if I took a trip somewhere for a day or two, I could throw her off the trail for good.

At first, it seemed to work. I went to Springfield, and when I got off the bus, there was no warning tingle at all. I got a motel room and began weighing the risks of returning home the next day.

But that night, as I was coming back from grabbing dinner at a restaurant near the motel, I felt it again. Strong like the first time. I couldn’t see her, but I still knew. Her or someone like her, someone that could see into this world, had found me again.

I write this on a late night bus headed for the west coast. My money is going to run out soon, but I don’t know that it’ll matter. As we push through the night, I imagine I can feel a dozen roving eyes turning toward me as we pass. I think looking into their world has marked me somehow, made me easier to see across whatever veil might separate us from them. A veil that, according to my friend, they can reach through as well.

And something is following me. No matter how far I go or how hard I try, I can feel an invisible hunter stalking me and drawing closer all the time. Maybe it’s that other me I saw on the sidewalk or maybe it’s something else, but the details of that aren’t what scares me the most. It’s the fact that I can feel myself losing the race with every midnight mile. And it’s the question that follows those dark moments when I realize that I’ll eventually run out of road.

What happens when it catches me?

 

---

Credits

Why My Father Went into the Woods

 

My father was a careful man. Meticulous even. He lived a life that was well-measured, and if some considered him bland or dull, he didn’t seem to mind. He was moderately successful in his business. He was moderately well-thought of by the community we lived in. When my mother went missing, he was, to anyone that might observe him or inquire, moderately worried and sad.

He was the same with me. Reasonable, patient, and generally kind in the unfocused way you might expect from a pleasant doctor or taxi driver. A detached civility and courtesy that had more to do with how my father was than how he felt about me.

Not that I complained. Even when I was younger, I had enough sense to know so many kids had it worse. When my mother was around, they got along well enough, though he seemed to feed her the same brand of love as me—a bland, almost flavorless thing with an artificial aftertaste. I was twelve when she disappeared, and as much as I missed her, I was somewhat preoccupied by what would come next.

Because I had known for some months that occasionally, just every few weeks or so, my father would go out into the woods.

It never occurred to me to follow him, or to even question internally why I didn’t consider doing so. My fear of my father was like background radiation—invisible but ever present since I was old enough to understand that something was wrong. Eating and mutating me slowly enough that I never stopped to wonder if everyone lived so tight with tension and foreboding, perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When I saw him going into the woods one winter afternoon, I wondered if the time had finally come. He never went into those woods. He wasn’t the outdoorsy type, as he was quick to point out as he pulled his lips away from dry, polished teeth and nod in that precisely affable manner that he had, a mannequin making the motions of a real man.

He was just home from work, but an hour earlier than usual, which was odd in and of itself. When he parked and turned toward the trees instead of the house, I couldn’t help but watch from my upstairs window, heart beating a little faster as a voice whispered to me that this was it, this was it, he was starting to unravel and now we were going to see the thing that lay behind those placid smiles and cool pats on the back. The thing that made Mom flinch when she heard the door open at night and made me stay in my room when I was home alone with him. I was terrified, but also relieved, because at least it would be over.

Except it wasn’t. He went deeper into the woods until I couldn’t see him, and after an hour I gave up watching. When he came inside later that night, we didn’t comment on his lateness and neither did he. I went to bed half-expecting to wake up to screaming or not at all. But no, everything was fine. It was the same, except that occasionally, just every few weeks or so, my father would go back out into the dark that lay between the trees.

That continued until my mother vanished, and after a period of disruption where people searched and questions were asked, our lives went back to a form of normal. The dread I felt was constant now, but it was also an old and familiar friend by that point. I escaped to school or friends’ houses when I could, and t.v. and books when I couldn’t. For his part, my father left me alone past the threshold attention and affection he felt he needed to show.

His trips into the woods continued as long as I lived there. As soon as I graduated high school, I moved out and across the state to college. I went home that first Thanksgiving and Christmas, but after that, I never went back. He didn’t mind. He’d call to check on me once a month, always the first day of the month at eight o’clock, and other than that, we never spoke or saw each other again.

I went back home to see to his funeral and put his affairs in order, but nearly everything had already been done for me. He’d died in the back yard of a sudden embolism, but you’d think he’d known the moment he was going to go. Every corner of his life had been tucked and folded, lines even and corners crisp, much like the envelope he had left for me.

It wasn’t some heartfelt message of love or loss, and it wasn’t a confession of some dark, secret life. It was just a single line, written in my father’s small, neat script.

It begins with the dreams.

---

I rented a hotel room for the two weeks I planned to be back in town. The house just wasn’t an option. I couldn’t stay in that place again. Just walking in felt like putting my foot into quicksand, and I could feel the hands of that past me reaching up and grasping at me, hungry to pull me back down.

So I slept in a hotel room that could have been like any other hotel room in any city in the world, somewhere far away. And for the first couple of nights, it worked.

Then I started dreaming of the woods.

I’d toyed with the idea of going into the woods since I’d gotten the call of my father’s death. It had been years since I’d gone deeper in than the edge of the yard—I already spent most of my play time away from home, and after I saw my father go there, it wasn’t even a consideration. That was his place now, and whatever he did there, I didn’t want to know about it.

Maybe I would have just chalked up my dreams of picking my way between those dark and tangled trees as residual trauma dredged up by stirring the muck of my childhood, but on the fourth day, the day after the first of the dreams, the estate lawyer gave me the envelope with my father’s last words. When I pulled out of the parking lot, I headed away from town and back toward the house. I was a grown man and I wasn’t wasting another day being afraid, of letting that strange man poison my life.

My heart still hammered as I stepped into the woods, but I was determined. I could see the ghost of a trail ahead of me, and I followed it further and further, past a small creek and across a field to a deeper part of the wood that was thicker and swampier. The mud sucked at my shoes as I went, and the air was more humid, but also deathly still. I’d have expected insects, but there were none. Bird sounds or furtive motions beneath the strange plants that grew here, but everything was silent. I had the thought that I had stepped back in time, a frozen moment from some ancient swamp, oxygen-rich and teeming with unseen life. Life that was hungry and powerful, laying just beneath the black mud watching me perhaps, or suspended from the enormous boughs of the gargantuan trees that twisted overhead. The nightmare king of some dead dinosaur’s forgotten memory, but somehow alive and ready to be remembered.

I blinked and looked around. Where was I? What was I thinking about…I…My eyes fixed on the muddy bank I was standing in front of. In the middle of it, as though it had been excavated like a fossil, was the thing I felt sure my dream, and my father, had sent me to find.

It was a brass fortune teller machine.

I glanced around again. I had to be miles away from the house. How was that even possible? The woods weren’t that big. Less than a mile and I should have hit the highway.

I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. My body felt desiccated and hollow, just bone and dry skin and terrible will as I walked closer to the thing half-buried in the hill.

It was five feet tall, all polished wood and brass, though the metal was tarnished and the wood had began to bleach and speckle after time in the wet and the sun. The top three feet were a glass cube containing the torso of a puppet woman dressed in a headscarf and gold jewelry. Her painted green eyes regarded me from beneath arched, knowing eyebrows that told of knowledge of things unseen.

Above the glass, the brass arched into an arabesque roof framing a small sign of red and gold stained glass. I couldn’t read it at first, but then it lit up as a soft violin began to trill from a speaker grill below the fortune teller. I was startled, but I didn’t jump or step back. I was transfixed. Looking at the red lettering of the glass, I read the words glowing there.

“The Voice of Aradat.”

I did let out a small scream when the fortune teller began to move, waving metal arms over a glowing crystal ball resting in front of her. The violin picked up speed, growing louder and more insistent, the insectile trilling of some long dead song. My skin prickled as excitement began to grow in my belly, spreading up into my heart and head, down into my groin.

A small tray popped out on the front of the machine, and from it, a milky white card jutted out. I didn’t hesitate in reaching out and grasping it, pulling the card free from the silky strands that held it in place with some effort. On one side there was a strange symbol that I didn’t quite recognize, as though I’d seen it in a dream. On the other, there were only two words.

Offer yourself

I let the card flutter to the mud as I saw motion next to the machine. There was a hole beside it—somehow I hadn’t seen it before, but it was there now. Less than half the height of the fortune telling kiosk, and thick with shadow and more strands like had trailed from the card when I took it. There was no fear or confusion. I knew what had to be done. Of course I knew. I was doing something as old as rain or the sun rising. As sacred as being born or taking a life.

I knelt down and crawled toward the hole, keeping my eyes lowered as I reached it and lay down, rolling over onto my back as I scooted myself forward, pushing my head into the moist darkness beyond. Once my shoulders touched the sides, I waited, holding my breath as I began to worry that I had done something wrong.

But no.

A coolness came to rest against my cheek as an inner darkness within that gloom came to greet me. I began to cry as that coolness dug into my skin as a voice told me to keep my eyes closed, not to look. I couldn’t see it, not even a shadowy glimpse, or I’d be lost forever.

I lay in the muck, head surrounded by shadows and webs, as its icy weight settled over my face.

---

When I left the woods, I saw a sheriff’s patrol car parked behind mine. I was going to try and ignore it, but Sheriff Haverlin got out and met me at my car. We had met briefly two days earlier when I’d run in to him at the funeral home, and he had seemed a jolly and affable man at the time. Now, I could see beneath that, and I knew why he was there.

“Everything going all right, Kenneth? Need anything for the service tomorrow? My offer to give you an escort from the church still stands.”

I nodded. “I appreciate it. I don’t think many people will be at the funeral, so traffic shouldn’t be a problem.” Raising an eyebrow, I studied him. “Is that why you came? To offer help at the funeral again?”

He shrugged and gave me a small smile. “Partly, yeah. That and well, I just thought I should warn you.”

I felt my jaw tightening. “Warn me of what?”

The sheriff puffed out a breath as he looked down the road. “Your dad, well, he’s your daddy and he’s passed, and I don’t make a habit of talking bad about the dead. But…” He met my eyes again. “He was a strange man. And I’d be lying if I said me and others around here didn’t wonder if he was up to more than he let on.”

I frowned. “Up to what, exactly? You talking about my Mom? You never found any sign he did something to her, did you? Or that she had done anything but abandon us?”

Shrugging again, he nodded. “No, you’re right. But it was still odd. No one that knew her expected her to leave like that, and we never saw any sign of how or where she could have run off to. It’s natural to suspect foul play involving the husband in something like that, you understand.” He pulled at his bottom lip thoughtfully. “But it wasn’t just that. These last twenty years, we’ve had people go missing. That always happens sometimes—people move, run away, or get themselves killed. But since I was a deputy, we’ve had three times the number of people go missing here than in any of the surrounding areas. I know because I’ve checked.”

I stared at him. “Okay. So what are you saying? Do you think my father had something to do with any of that?”

Haverlin let out a short laugh. “Naw, I’m not saying that. Though I admit I did wonder a few times over the years. He always gave me an odd feeling, your dad. Nice enough fella, but I could never tell what he was really thinking.” His smile fell away. “You look like him, you know. I didn’t see it the other day, but I do now.”

I glanced past him to the swaying green of the woods. “I appreciate the sentiment. And the offer of help. But I really do have a lot to do today. Was there more that you needed to tell me?” When I looked back at the man, his face was troubled.

“Just…if you find anything, going through your dad’s stuff…things that don’t belong or don’t make sense, something that might belong to someone missing or…well, I don’t know. Anything that feels wrong.” He swallowed. “If you find anything like that, let me know, yeah?”

I gave him smile—not too friendly or happy, but not too cool or hard—as I nodded. “Sure thing, sheriff. I’ll be sure to do that.”

Seemingly satisfied, he stepped back from my car. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it. I know you want to get done and back to your life. Living in Colorado, right?”

I paused in opening the car door to glance back at him. “I did, yes. But I’m going to be staying here now.”

Haverlin raised his eyebrows. “Really? I got the idea the other day you were hot to be done and on your way. What changed your mind?”

I studied him a moment. “You know how it is. The past is a powerful thing. I guess I just realized where I am.”

A distant wind kicked up behind the man, rustling the trees and pushing him hard enough to make him have to catch his hat. Fumbling with it awkwardly, he looked back at me. “Where’s that?”

I sucked in a deep breath. The air smelled rich and thick with a dozen different scents. I smiled slightly at the fear I smelled coming from him.

“Home.”

 

---

Credits

Don’t Let It In

 

“Please let me in. I’m so cold.”

---

Growing up, my best friend was Matthew Ramsey. He was a year older than me but still in my grade—not because he was stupid, but his father had died when he was in the fourth grade and for a few months Matt was having a lot of problems at home and at school. When he got held back and put in my class, we became fast friends, and it wasn’t long before I was spending more time at his house than my own.

Matt’s mom was always nice, but she was also working most of the time, so that meant we wound up hanging out with Matt’s uncle Gene more than anyone else. He left us to our own devices most of the time, but if we were having a sleepover and Matt’s mom had a late shift, Gene would come over and keep an eye on us until she got home.

Those nights are some of my favorite memories of childhood. Hanging out with my best friend while his cool uncle cooked us hamburgers and told us stories he’d lived or heard during twenty years of traveling the world in the army. He was retired on disability when I knew him, and just looking at the pot-bellied, grey-haired man swigging a beer while absently poking at the grill, I had a hard time believing he’d ever been a soldier, much less the globe-trotting adventurer he told about in his stories.

But when he settled down and started talking, everything seemed to magically change. Unlike a lot of adults, he seemed to understand and appreciate what we wanted to hear and were interested in. Tales of battle and exotic lands, guns and tanks, interesting people and dangerous creatures. As we spent time with him, I felt sure that he’d run out of stories, but he never did. In fact, in the last years I knew him, he started telling us about some of the stranger things he’d ever seen or heard of.

If it was someone else, I’d have immediately written these stories off as fantasy—increasingly elaborate and sensational stories to entertain his maturing and potentially jaded audience of two. But Gene wasn’t really that kind of guy. He was a good storyteller, but he was honest, and I never got the sense that he was embellishing anything beyond putting a slight polish on a potentially dull tale. And while I can’t say for sure that much of what he told us wasn’t bullshit, what seems clear to me now is that one of his stories probably saved my life.

---

This was when I was about twelve and Matt had just turned thirteen. We were going to camp out in the woods right behind Matt’s house, and Gene had come over to hang out until we went to bed. He’d made a small fire in the pit in the back yard, and after dinner we all sat around it, staring into the fire while he told us about the time he’d spent stationed up in Alaska.

He said for the most part it was just cold and boring—the towns up there were small and the people, while pleasant enough, tended to keep to themselves. And the land was beautiful, but in an alien, almost hostile way that made him pine for the warm, dry hills of Arizona where he’d been stationed for years before this latest assignment.

His job there wasn’t even interesting. Just handling requisitions and hanging out with his boss, who spent most of his time drunk or asleep. Still, he told us, when his boss was awake and not too far gone, he was a pretty cool guy. He’d tell Gene stories about the people up there—local histories, myths and legends. And it was from him that Gene had heard about the woman that would sometimes come to your door, asking to be let inside because it was so very cold.

---

The way my boss told it, he was working at a weather outpost north of Anchorage when a big snow storm came in. He had supplies for a few days, but by the third night he was starting to get nervous. He’d lived up north for a few months by that point, but this was the first time he’d felt really trapped by the weather. Between the increasing snow and the isolation, he admitted to letting out a scream when he heard a knock at the door.

My boss wasn’t no rocket scientist, but he wasn’t a fool neither. He knew no one was around for twenty miles or more, and the odds of someone being out in that kind of weather at night…it just made no sense. His first thought was that it was someone come to relieve him for some reason, but as he approached the door, he heard what sounded like a young woman’s voice on the other side.

“Please let me in. I’m so cold.”

This threw him off. There were no young female enlisted locally that he knew of, and the more he thought, he realized he would have gotten a message beforehand if someone was coming up tonight. So who could this be? Heart pounding, he answered.

“Ma’am, who are you?”

“I’m cold and lost. I got lost in the storm. Please let me in.”

It was so strange, but she sounded scared, and if he left her out there for much longer, she was apt to freeze to death. Still, two feet of snow had fallen since he’d cleared the front door earlier in the day. If he was going to get her in, he needed to go out there with a light and shovel and clear the way.

“Okay. Give me just a minute and I’ll be out there.”

He put on his outerwear and headed up the ladder to the roof hatch that was mainly used for accessing the equipment up top and when the snow got too high to use the main door. He told me it really was bitterly cold, the coldest he could ever remember it being, though some of that was because he was so scared.

He told me that part of that was him being scared for the girl, but only part. He said another part of him could sense something wasn’t right. That there was something strange and dangerous beyond just the oddity of a stranger out in the midnight cold. Said that was why he shined the light over the edge of the roof before he went down to clear the door.

---

Gene gave me and Matt a nervous smile at this point, taking another sip of his beer before setting it aside. “He said most of it was buried in the snow outside the door, but looking down he could still make out the top of something’s body. Said it was huge, probably five hundred pounds or more, with a segmented ivory shell like a lobster and furry white spider legs that sat tensed and ready, the highest arches like small drifts just breaking the snow’s surface. The worst part though, was its head. Because it wasn’t a head at all, really. Over five feet tall and upright, the head had a slim and delicate shape covered in what looked like a dark poncho or cloak.” Gene glanced between us as he rubbed the side of his face. “He said he could see a face in that cloak. A woman’s face. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.”

Shifting in his chair, he went on. “But it saw him too. This look he got, it was all in a couple of seconds, and by then the thing had noticed the light shining down and turned that head that looked like a woman up toward him. He told me he’d been terrified by that point, frozen to the spot, and some part of his brain that was still working thought she would say something else to him. Try to get him to come down.”

Gene puffed out a breath. “But instead it started to scream—he said the noise didn’t come from the woman’s mouth, but instead he saw puffs of snow along its body like steam escaping a pot, and the air was filled with this terrible screech. He knew it was angry, and it was coming to get him.”

“He got going then. Made it to the hatch, locked it behind him, and got his gun ready in case the thing made it inside. Said he heard movement on the roof, but nothing ever tried to get through the door or the hatch. He stayed awake until sunrise and then he radioed for help, using the excuse that he’d gotten bad sick.”

Matt and I watched him wide-eyed and terrified as he gave a small laugh and shrug. “And that was it, at least for the most part. They came and got him. There was no sign of anything wrong outside, and he never told anyone above him about it.” Gene leaned forward toward the fire. “Until one night he was in town drinking and he buddied up to one of the locals. They were swapping bullshit for awhile, and eventually he got comfortable enough that he told the guy about what had happened up at the weather station. Told me his drinking buddy got real sober real quick. Told him he was real lucky to be sitting there able to talk about it at all.”

I waved my hand at Gene like I was in class. “So this dude knew what it was?”

Gene gave an uncertain nod. “Maybe, at least a little. Guy told him there wasn’t some fancy name for it, but it was just something strange and deadly that lived up there. Maybe other places too. He’d heard a few stories over the years, and he had some grandpa or whatever that claimed to have seen one. Some people said it was an evil spirit. Others some kind of animal we don’t know about or understand. But whatever it was, it was smart. Smart as a person and able to talk to you. To trick you. My boss just called it The Liar, and he said he’d gotten that from his buddy.”

“I figured it was because it had that lure, that part of itself that it could make look and sound like a person. But he said no. It was because, according to what he’d been told, the thing had certain rules it followed. It only preyed on things that invited it, that had been fooled by it to one extent or another. And whatever it said, it was always a lie. Always.”

He pointed his finger at me and then at Matt. “Now that might sound obvious, but its actually a pretty useful thing to remember. Because the way I understand it, it can’t tell the truth. And it’s compelled to talk, to lure, to try and trick you into letting it in so it can get you. So if you ask it questions the right way—things it can’t not answer and things that give away its lie, you can figure out what it is without ever opening your door.”

Gene sat back and gave a grin. “I just hope nothing comes scratching at ya’lls tent tonight.”

---

I hadn’t thought about Gene in some time until three nights ago. Matt was diagnosed with leukemia at fourteen and was gone two years later, and in the twenty years since I haven’t seen or spoken to his family over a couple of times on the internet. And yet three nights ago, as I sat cold and panicked on the side of a dark road, Matt’s uncle and that story came flooding back to me.

I’d been driving in the worst snow I’d ever seen, much less tried traveling through, when I felt my car starting to slip on the road for what felt like the hundredth time. The snowstorm was unusual for where I live, and I didn’t have snow tires or chains, but I was driving as slow and cautious as I thought the situation allowed. My wife was having contractions three hours away, and while I knew she’d already been checked-in at the hospital, I wanted to be there as soon as I could get there safely.

But I was an idiot. When the car hit a patch of ice, I overcorrected and slid off into a ditch. I was on a highway, but it was the middle of the night in a snowstorm, and I hadn’t seen another car for at least half an hour. I tried to get the car back out on my own, but all that got me was wet and cold. Cursing, I called for a wrecker, finally getting one the third number I tried. They were coming, but it would be about four hours based on the weather, my location, and the calls ahead of me. Looking at the gas gauge, I decided to run the car for just ten more minutes to build up some warm air and then sit in the dark for awhile to conserve fuel.

Shivering, I tried to call the hospital to check on my wife and get her a message as to what had happened, but I couldn’t get the call to go through. I had plenty of charge left, but where I’d had three bars just a few moments before, now I was down to one bar that flickered like a dying candle flame. As I watched, it went out a last time and then didn’t return. Maybe if I turned it off and turned it back…

“Please let me in. I’m so cold.”

I let out a scream and looked over at the driver’s side window. Staring in was a small boy, his dark eyes wide with pleading terror as they met mine. “Please, mister. Please let me in.” I could see what looked like snot frozen on his upper lip, and his pale blue lips were trembling as he begged me for help. My God, how had he gotten out here? I needed to get him inside, turn on the car again, and then…

I suddenly had a distant memory spark in the recesses of my mind. The orange glow of a fire pit lighting Gene’s face as he told us about something that hunted out in the cold and the dark. The Liar.

I looked back at the kid. This was ridiculous. That story wasn’t possible, and this child was going to freeze to death if I didn’t hurry up and do something. Yeah, he looked like he had a hooded jacket of some kind, but it was well below freezing out there, and if…

Swallowing, I smiled at the pale little boy staring in.

“How did you get out there?”

The boy stared at me for a moment. “My mom. She’s got bad sugar and fell asleep. I couldn’t wake her up. I went to get help, but I got…” He was crying now, pressing a small hand against the glass. What the fuck was I waiting for? I unlocked the car, but I still hesitated to open the door. I thought back to the story Gene had told. The thing was called The Liar because it had to lie. It just wanted to trick you, but if you asked the right question, you could see through it.

Taking a deep breath, I looked away from the boy. “What’s your name?”

“M-Matthew. People call me Matt. Please let me in.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach, but when I looked up, the kid just looked worried and scared, not like he’d just said the name of my dead childhood friend. It was a coincidence, and I had to stop this and help him. My hand was on the latch, but I still hesitated. If Gene’s story was real, what kind of question would work?

“Are you a little boy…er, a little human boy?”

The boy’s eyebrows went up slightly. “Yeah. Of course.”

Wait, that was dumb. If he was lying, he’d say yes. If he was telling the truth, he’d say yes. So that didn’t help.

“Um, okay.” I was running out of time to waste on this. I could ask him if he wasn’t a little boy, but it was the same problem, wasn’t it? If he was a little boy telling the truth, he’d say no. If he was a monster that had to lie, he’d also say no. Fuck me, I just needed to grow a spine and open the door.

“Please. I’m getting sleepy and it scares me. I’m so cold.”

Shuddering, I found the latch again, determined to finally open the door and let the boy in. Yet in spite of that, I heard myself asking another question.

“You’re not lying to me just to get me to open the door are you?” I hesitated at the latch, waiting for him to be confused by the oddly worded question or tell me no. Instead, there was a moment of silence, and when I looked up, I could see the boy’s lips were pressed into a thin line.

“Yes.”

I frowned, taking my hand away again. “Yes, you’re not lying to me, or yes you are?”

His lips began to tremble again. “Please let me in. I’m so cold.”

I needed to think. Him saying yes could mean anything. It was more how he’d reacted, almost like he was angry at a sign of being caught. Still, that wasn’t proof of anything. I needed to just…

“Are you outside my car right now?”

When I met his eyes this time, I thought they seemed darker. Colder. “What? Please let me in.”

I felt a thrill of fear skitter up my back. “Answer my question please. Are you outside my car right now?”

The boy’s sniffling stopped as a hard, cruel smile curled up the corners of his mouth. “No.”

Then suddenly, he was gone. I saw a blur of motion in the dark, and heard the rustling of some distant brush as something large pushed its way into the woods, but there was no other sign of the child or any other intruder as I sat alone in the freezing dark.

After a couple of minutes I got a cell signal back and checked on Peggy. She was doing fine so far, and they’d pass along my message that I’d be there soon. An hour later, the wrecker arrived, and if the man thought it was odd that I refused to get out of my car as he pulled me free from the ditch, he didn’t seem to mind.

As I write this, I’ve just gotten back from holding our new baby. He’s a healthy little boy, and after just two days I already love him so much. My wife asked if I wanted to name him Matthew, after my best friend growing up, but I shook my head quickly. After she’s home and rested, I’ll try to explain why.

Besides, it doesn’t matter what we call him. He’ll grow up good and strong, and we’ll be there to prepare him for a world that can be warm and wonderful, but also very strange and cold. A world where not everything is as it seems, and he has to be very careful.

Especially when inviting in a stranger from the dark.

 

---

Credits

Happy Birthday, Says The Dead Man

  

I first met Eddie when he came into our clinic eight months ago for a broken hand. He was quiet and reserved, not like he was shy so much as he was afraid of the world. Something, or someone, had hurt him in the past, and he still carried the bruises. It made me feel some sympathy for him, but it wasn’t why I liked him.

He was smart—talking to him for five minutes would tell you that—and by the time he came back for his second follow-up, he’d gotten familiar enough with me to talk more as I checked his hand. He was funny, and underneath his shaggy hair were kind eyes set in a sad, but handsome face. This was his last scheduled visit, and I was already dreading it being over—we lived in a big city, and the odds of us crossing paths again seemed small.

That’s when he laughed at some joke I’d made, and in that moment his face lit up—not just the cautious smile he usually gave, but a moment where I could see him without whatever baggage he seemed to carry around all the time. Seeing that, I knew. Before I could overthink it, I asked him out.

His eyes had gone wide as he sucked in a breath. You’d think he’d gotten punched in the gut instead of having the girl who was his PA ask him out. I felt sure he was going to say no, but when he met my eyes, something changed there. His expression was still troubled, but he gave a small nod as he began to smile.

“Yeah…I…I’d really like that.”

---

We dated for six months, and for the most part, it was great. Being with him was different than anyone I’d ever dated, and not just because of how I felt or how I could tell he felt about me. We got along well, had fun together, and over time we grew really close, but there was always a…barrier. Not like he wasn’t in touch with his emotions or he didn’t want things getting too serious, but more like he was always distracted or had something weighing on his mind. When I’d ask about it, he’d just shrug it off with a laugh, telling me he was just a moody prick. I didn’t buy it, but I didn’t want to push it either. I figured he’d tell me more when he was ready.

Then three weeks ago he broke up with me.

It was out of the blue, no explanation. Just a text that said: I’m sorry, but I have to stop seeing you. I should have stopped this earlier, but I liked you so much. Now I love you, and I’m sorry I ever put you at risk. Don’t contact me again, please.

When I tried texting and calling, there was never any answer. I even went by his apartment a couple of times, but he wouldn’t come to the door. I told myself I needed to just let it go and move on, but I couldn’t. Not just because I wanted to be with him and thought he was making a mistake, but because I knew that whatever he was talking about in the text was connected to the shadow that seemed to haunt him all the time, the same darkness that made him afraid of living.

So I started following him. Not all the time, and it sounds more stalkerish than it really was, but I admit to feeling weird as I sat outside his apartment some evenings and tailed him a few times when he ventured out. He never went anywhere other than work, the grocery store and the Sunday morning ferry—a ritual I’d always known about but never questioned. I admit to being relieved that there was no sign of him being with someone else, but that had never been my main concern. There was something going on with him, something bad, and if I couldn’t figure it out by watching him, I’d have to find a way to make him talk to me, at least one last time.

After two weeks of studying his habits, the ferry was the obvious option. Based on the little bit he told me, it was just something he liked doing—riding the Sunday ferry roundtrip—being around people without being a part of them. He never got off the boat, just rode the hour each way and then went back home. It had sounded odd at the time, but knowing him now, it made more sense. Just because he tried to avoid making connections with people didn’t mean he wasn’t lonely. And whatever was eating away at him, there was something just a strong in Eddie that loved and wanted to be loved. Something wonderful that was worth fighting for.

That next Sunday, this last Sunday, was Eddie’s birthday. I’d considered and discarded other options for contacting him—sending him a gift, going back to his apartment, calling until he answered or turned off his phone. But none of that would work, and if anything it would just drive him further away. As weird as it felt, ambushing him on the ferry while we were on the water seemed like the best and only way to get him to talk to me.

So that’s exactly what I did.

---

“Happy Birthday, stranger.”

Eddie jumped a little as he turned to look at me. “Emily, what’re you…” He glanced at the water and then around at the deck where he had been propped against the railing. “Did you follow me here?”

I tried to smile, but I could feel it twisting into an embarrassed wince. “I did, yeah…but…look, I know this looks like I’m stalking you or something. I’m not. Or if I am, it’s not like I’m crazy or something. I just…look, I care about you. Fuck, I love you. And…”

He was shaking his head. “Emily…you can’t be here. You can’t be around me, especially right now. You need to go. Get away from me…”

I felt tears springing to my eyes. “What is wrong with you? Not you being with me. If you don’t want to be with me, that sucks, but I’ll deal with it. But that’s not why I’ve been following you or whatever. Something bad is going on with you, and you’d never tell me what it was. So that’s why I’m doing this, okay?”

Eddie took a step back, looking around us again. “You don’t understand. You need to get out of here. Go to the far side of the ferry, and when we dock, I’ll get off. You ride back and then go home. Forget that you ever met me.” His eyes were glistening too, and he wiped his face distractedly as he continued to backpedal.

Lunging forward, I grabbed his hand. “Please tell me what’s going on. Are you in some kind of trouble? Is someone after you?” He tried to pull away, but only weakly. Gripping his hand tighter, I stepped closer, looking up at him. “Please. Tell me. I won’t leave until you do, but after you do, if you want me to go, I will. I promise.”

He let out a long, ragged sigh before giving me a defeated nod. “Fine. I’ll tell you.” Looking up, he met my eyes. “But you have to go after, okay? For good.”

Sniffling, I nodded. Then he began.

---

When I was in college, I pledged at one of the fraternities. It wasn’t something I planned, but my roommate was doing it and I was looking for a way to make more friends and meet girls. For the most part it was fine, but every pledge had to go through an initiation of sorts—some kind of prank or punishment that their sponsor came up with.

Mine was Mrs. Everett.

Mrs. Everett was a retired college professor that lived on the edge of town—apparently the fraternity had an ongoing beef with her from a few years back when she’d been a big part of flunking out a couple of members, and my sponsor, a guy named Dudley, thought it’d be funny to mess with her.

I never felt good about it. She’d retired because she was going senile, a decline that had apparently started a few years earlier when her husband disappeared. Honestly, the little stories my prospective “brothers” told me about her made me feel sorry for her more than anything else, and when they got to the man on her porch, I already knew where it was going.

Since her retirement three years earlier, Everett had taken to sitting a dummy or scarecrow out on her front porch year-round. Every day she’d go out on the porch and talk to it, barely noticing passerby that watched the old woman talking to the odd figure occupying the rocking chair across from her. Dudley told me that she must think it was her old man, come back from wherever he’d run off, and that didn’t seem unreasonable, but it just made everything he was telling me worse.

Because he wanted me to take the dummy off the porch and burn it.

I’d like to tell you I didn’t do it. That I was better or stronger than that. But I wasn’t. I was stupid and weak and I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. One night, Dudley drove me over there and parked across the street. Sure enough, there they were, the little old woman sitting on her porch talking to a slouching figure in stitched together clothes and a large-brimmed straw hat. It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen, but something about it made me shiver a bit too. I was about to tell Dudley that this was a bad idea, that she was never going to leave the dummy alone anyway, when he poked me in the side.

Look there, he said. The old bitch was finally going in.

I forced myself to do it before I could chicken out. I had a hood on and a scarf around my mouth, so even if she came back out, she’d never be able to give a good description. But there was no sign of her as I jumped up on the porch and grabbed the dummy. It was heavier than I was expecting, but I was scared enough that it didn’t slow me down much. I just dragged it down the steps and over to the driveway. Once I had it there, I squirted lighter fluid all over it and tossed down a match.

I could hear something behind me now, coming from the house. It was an awful sound, a thin, warbling wail. Looking back, I could see Mrs. Everett on the porch, looking past me at the burning dummy with shining eyes and a mouth slack with some form of sad horror. She started down the steps and I took off running for the car. Dudley was laughing as I jumped in, and twenty minutes later we were back at the frat house where everyone was slapping me on the back and telling me how fucking awesome I was.

But I didn’t feel awesome. I felt sick. Sick and ashamed. And when I finally went to bed, I barely slept at all before Dudley was texting me and telling me to check the local news.

Apparently, Mrs. Everett had tried to put the dummy out by smothering the flames and had gotten badly burned in the process. She was in an ICU, but the bigger story was what police had found in the dummy itself. Human remains, still unidentified but presumed to be parts of her missing husband, Harris Everett.

I spent the next two weeks constantly terrified. The police would find out that I’d burned the dummy, and they’d arrest me. And then she would die, and they’d charge me with murder.

Except no one ever found out. I don’t credit the fraternity with being that loyal—if anyone had asked, I’m sure they’d have turned on me in a second. But no one really cared about the burning dummy that much, or if they did, they didn’t have any idea she hadn’t done it herself. And once the body was identified as Harris Everett and there were signs that he’d been poisoned, well, they were focused almost entirely on his widow.

Maybe they would have looked at it all closer if things hadn’t worked out the way it did. Everett never left the ICU. I read she got a staph infection and died after a couple of more weeks. After that, everyone just kind of let it go. I was still ashamed, but I tried to tell myself that she was a crazy murderer and it wasn’t my fault she’d jumped on the flames. Over time, I got where I thought about it less and less.

Then the next year, on my birthday, I received a card.

It was in a plain orange envelope, and the cover of the card itself was one of those weird paintings of ships, like sailboats, that you see on some cards? Above it, it just said “Happy Birthday”.

It was funny, because I knew my parents were actually out on a boat that day. They were in Portugal, taking a trip out on a sailboat with some friends they were visiting for a couple of weeks. They’d called to wish me a happy birthday, telling me we’d have a big party when they got back. Wondering if the card was from them, I opened it. It was unsigned, with only three words written in small, black letters across the empty space.

Masts ahead deny.

It was so weird and random. I figured it was a joke, but when I asked my friends, no one admitted to it. It wasn’t until the next day that I heard about the accident.

Apparently the boat my parents had been on had never made it far past the harbor. I never knew the details, but two boats collided at the edge of the bay and my parents’ friend, who wasn’t that experienced piloting his new sailboat, couldn’t turn in time. They rammed into the other two ships and sank, killing two people.

My parents.

---

“Oh God. I…I knew they were dead, but I always figured it was like a car accident or something. You never wanted to say, and…”

Eddie met my eyes. “That’s just the start.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

We were sitting down on a bench near the railing now, and as Eddie looked away, he leaned forward onto his knees. “The next year, I got another card on my birthday. Same orange envelope. On the outside, was a cartoon of a wooden platform with a big block sitting on it. I could tell it was a chopping block because of the fat executioner standing next to it. He had on overalls and a black hood, and he was holding a big axe.” He laughed bitterly. “I was already fucked up by then, but I still didn’t really know what it all meant. When I opened it up, I saw that same handwriting and three words.”

Headsman Day Set

“That afternoon I got a call from the sheriff’s office back home. My sister had been driving when her brakes failed heading into a turn. It might not have been so bad, but there was a farmer coming from the other direction, driving one of those big combines up to his other field.” Eddie swallowed. “When she went under, it tore her head off.”

I reached out and grabbed his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept talking in that dead-sounding monotone as he stared out at the water.

“After that…I just shut down for awhile. I flunked out of school. I had enough money from my parents’ estate to just…exist for awhile. So I didn’t go out. Cut off all my friends. Kept myself almost entirely separate from the world.” He glanced at me. “And it worked. That next birthday? No card. The one after that? No card.” Eddie smiled bitterly. “By then, I’d convinced myself it was over. Whatever it was…it was done. So I started back to school. Reconnected with a few old friends. Even started dating a girl named Jamie.”

I felt my stomach twisting. “What happened?”

His smile turned hard. “It became my birthday again. And I got another fucking card.”

---

This one was of a knife plunged into a heart—it almost looked like an anti-Valentine’s day card, but I already knew better. It had been laying on my bed in the same orange envelope, and above the pierced drawn heart it said “Happy Birthday”. Inside, just three words.

Hated Damn Essay

I didn’t know what it meant at first, but then I got a text from Jamie. She told me she’d just gotten her paper back from her English professor, and he’d hated the damn essay she’s spent almost a month busting her ass on.

I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure where she was, but I thought I’d try her house first. The police cars were already there when I arrived.

They said she’d surprised a burglar. Her flat-screen t.v. was sitting in the middle of the floor, splashed with blood from where she’d been stabbed twice in the chest. They told me later she’d died quickly. One of the hits had gotten her in the heart.

No one was ever caught. They looked at me for awhile—not just because I was the boyfriend, but they managed to figure out the pattern of tragedy that seemed to follow me around. Still, what could they really do about it? My family had died hundreds and thousands of miles away from me and Jamie had been murdered when my phone and multiple cameras showed me as being across town. I finished out the year and then I moved away, determined that I was going to figure out what was going on and stop it, or if I couldn’t, I’d just live my life alone, as that seemed like the only way to keep people safe.

It wasn’t hard for me to connect it back to Mrs. Everett. Not that I could say for sure, but it had started the year after I burned her husband’s body and inadvertently contributed to her death. Maybe they had a child or friend that was trying to get revenge? I spent a long time looking into it, interviewing neighbors and cops and older faculty under the pretense of being a reporter working on an article on strange murders. I figured they must have someone else in their lives, but I could never find anyone. In fact, aside from each other, they seemed to be as isolated as I was.

Then I focused on the cards themselves. I found a woman on the internet that does forensic consultations on documents and handwriting—it cost a couple of grand, but I got her to look at the cards in person. She said they were all custom-made on the same cardstock, and while she couldn’t say for sure what ink was used, the medium and the writing itself seemed to be consistent across all the cards. I was starting to think I’d wasted the money when she told me something else.

---

“These messages, they’re all the same.”

I frowned at him. “What does that mean?”

Eddie shook his head slightly. “I’d never noticed it, but that lady saw it right away. All three messages: ‘Happy Birthday, masts ahead deny. Happy Birthday, headsman day set. Happy Birthday, hated damn essay.’ They’re anagrams. Just the same letters swapped around different ways.”

Staring, I felt myself begin to tremble. “Who would do that?”

He started to respond when his eyes went past me. “Oh God.” Turning, I let out a small scream at the figure coming toward us. It walked with a stooped, shuffling gait, its blackened clothes stitched together and smoking as it crossed the deck, its wide-brimmed hat only partially covering the ruined horror peeking out from beneath.

I looked around for help, but the deck was empty, and as I stood to run, I saw Eddie had already gotten up, pushing past me to meet the thing before it reached us. He never said anything as he ran forward, wrapping his arms around the figure as they staggered toward the rail. There was a terrible moment where they were still, and then they slammed into the railing hard enough that they both went over into the murky water below.

I called for help, of course, but they never found him, and the cameras on that end of the dock had somehow stopped working a few minutes before. I was left with nothing but sadness and fear and questions, endless questions of what had happened and why.

Nothing but an orange envelope that I found laying on the dock near where they’d gone over.

My hand shook as I held it. There was so much I didn’t know. What had been behind it all. Had it really been tied to Mrs. Everett and her murdered husband? If he had really been murdered at all…and if he had…why would he haunt and torment a boy just for playing an awful prank on the woman that took his life? It was then that it struck me that I didn’t really know Eddie that well either. I did love him, but how much of himself had he really shown me, and could I trust everything he had said? Had he ran at that creature to save me or just to finally make his own pain stop? And what good would come from opening the envelope now that it was all done?

In spite of myself, I broke the seal and slid the card free. It was a drawing of a man, much like Eddie, sinking down into the dark depths of a black sea. Framing his terrified face were charred arms and fingers, and above that, drifting up like dying air, were the words “Happy Birthday”. I opened the card and read the words before dropping it to the ground.

Says the dead man.

 

---

Credits

I Work As A Medical Examiner. I Just Found A USB Drive Inside A Body

 

I work at a medical examiner’s office in a large metropolitan area in the United States. You’ll have to excuse the vagueness, but I value my job and safety. My safety is also the reason why I’m recording my recounting of what happened in the first place. I’m not sure what to do next or who may be coming for me, and my hope is that having some evidence, even if its only my word at this point, may help me stay alive. Given what I know, it’s a very small hope.

Yesterday a body came into the lab. Badly burned, it had been found in a shallow grave out in the middle of nowhere woods. The only reason it was found at all was because the fire burning the body had spread to a nearby tree and then burned several acres before forestry got the call. It took two days to stop the fire spread, and it wasn’t until they were investigating the source that they found the twisted remains of a man, legs and arms broken and bound by barbwire that had melted into his flesh after he was set ablaze.

Identifying the corpse was going to be difficult. Any idea of facial recognition or fingerprints was out the window, and whatever blunt instrument had been used to break his limbs had also been used on his teeth. Still, his torso was partially intact, and after taking the initial round of external photos, I assisted the senior M.E. in conducting the autopsy.

Fire and heat change a body in a variety of ways, and because of all the variables—weather, clothing, ignition catalysts, body shape and mass—plus the inherent fickleness of fire, you never can be sure what you’re going to find during a burn autopsy. That being said, it still seemed odd that the internal organs were as intact as they were when we opened our John Doe up last night.

A person, terrible as it may sound, cooks just like any other animal or lump of meat. As the outside grows hotter, that temperature change pushes deeper and deeper into the center of the body, cooking the organs and muscle, the fat and bones, from the outside in. With some variance, you’ll see that pattern replicated on any part of the body, though different materials obviously change due to heat at different rates.

Yet even with the variances accounted for, this body had burned strange.

The bones, which are more resistant than soft-tissue, should still have had some damage at the extremities where there was less buffer between them and the fire—fingers and toes, for instance, or even at the wrists, ankles and neck. But no, there was no real sign of any damage to the bones other than where they had been intentionally broken.

And while the muscle and fatty tissue had melted within expected parameters, the internal organs were almost unblemished. As we began excavating and weighing them, I asked my boss if he noticed it too, and he said he did. He’s a reserved guy that doesn’t speculate on much, but I could tell he was as confused as I was.

I asked him if it was possible someone had set him on fire and then put him back out before it could do more damage to the bones and organs, but he began to shake his head slowly before I was even done speaking. Told me that if that was the case, we’d see signs of it in the burned tissue—irregular patterns where parts of the body was cooled off suddenly or melted residue from whatever was used to put the fire out. Besides, he said as he met my eyes, he’d heard the ranger that found the body said it was still burning when he found it.

I felt my mouth drop open a bit. How was that possible? If it was the source of the fire, it would have been set aflame days earlier. Fire had to have fuel, and the body would have been consumed well before then if it was burning the entire time. I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was, but before I could voice it, he began taking off his gloves.

He had a few calls to make before we went any further. Finish cataloguing the items we’d already removed, and then put the body in the freezer for the time being. He’d text me in an hour or two when he was ready to get started again.

All of this seemed strange—his demeanor, talking about calling someone to ask about the body, everything. But he was already leaving the examination room, and I still had to weigh the perfectly healthy-looking and unburned intestines we’d just removed.

It was as I was transferring them from the extraction bin to a sealed bag that I felt something hard and irregular inside. My first instinct was to just set it aside until we started back, but touching the bulge again, I reconsidered. It wasn’t a natural shape. Hard and rectangular, I felt along the length of intestine above and below it until I had a good sense of its dimensions and began to get an idea of what it might be.

A usb drive.

I glanced up at the clock. I had plenty of time to make a small incision and extract whatever it was. If it was important, that would certainly be better than leaving it in rotting guts to get damaged through another couple of hours of purification. Swallowing, I grabbed a scalpel.

Five minutes later I was holding a small, black usb drive in my hand. After its interrupted journey through the body, there was no chance of any fingerprints or other viable trace evidence, so I made the decision to clean it off. After that, it wasn’t long before I started debating whether to plug it into my laptop or not.

It was stupid. According to protocols, it should be bagged and sealed, deposited in the evidence lockbox, and examined forensically by someone in the computer forensics department. I knew that. But I felt this growing and irresistible urge to look at it anyway. At first I chalked it up to curiosity, but as the impulse took hold, I sensed it was something more. I was afraid, more afraid than could be explained by the strangeness of the body or finding the usb drive. And for whatever reason, I had the gut feeling that looking at what was on it was the key to understanding why.

So I plugged it in, running virus software on it before opening the one folder that popped up. It was supposedly clean, and the folder’s name was normal enough. It just said “Song”.

Clicking on the folder, I saw there were seven .mp3 files inside, numbered 1 through 7 without any other description. Dialing my laptop’s speakers down to 15, I selected the first one and hit play.

A low, echoing thrum filled the examination room. It wasn’t coming from my laptop, or if it was, it wasn’t coming just from there. Waves of softly booming sound made the air tremble, like distant thunder, and when I looked around, I could see the instruments near the exam table jumping slightly in time with the pulsing noise. And not just randomly. They were all hopping and rolling in the same direction.

Away from the body.

Standing up, I started back toward the corpse on the table. Somehow, that sound was coming from the body. How was that possible? I had the image of someone stuffing a small subwoofer into the man’s chest, but that was absurd. And even if someone had, why would it activate when I hit play on my unconnected laptop?

I looked back at my computer just as the player switched to the second file.

The thrum was suddenly gone, replaced by the sharply sweet sound of a violin, or something that reminded me of a stringed instrument. The room was stiller now, almost frozen in the delicate, crystalline trance of the winding melody, something familiar and melancholy and terrible. I felt myself shudder as it began to coil inside my head like something dark and venomous.

Wincing, I forced myself closer to the body. This new music was coming from there as well, but how? It had to be a hidden speaker, didn’t it? I didn’t know how it was playing off my laptop, but that was the only logical answer. Bending down, I put my ear near the ruined charred torso. Yes, it was definitely coming from the body, but I couldn’t identify a particular location. It was almost as if the entire corpse was a tuning fork vibrating with whatever this awful song was.

I felt myself growing queasy. I needed to turn it off. I had to stop it before it got worse, I needed to…

That’s when I first heard the new noises from the body.

It was a wet, sucking sound at first, rhythmic in its own way, it seemed to keep time with the razored melody digging into my brain, buried underneath it or entwined with those strings. Standing up, I looked down at the body.

The organs we had removed…they were growing back.

Staggering backward, I ran for the door even as the music shifted again. Now it was a chorus of some kind, whispering, singsong voices uttering sibilant phrases I didn’t understand but that still made my skin crawl. Reaching the hallway, I looked back through the door at the body, sucking in a breath as its broken limbs began to reset.

Turning away, I ran down the hall toward our office. If he was still in there, I would get him. If not, I’d head outside and get in my car. Call the cops from there.

The hallway lurched as I turned the corner. The sound was still here. It was everywhere. And as it shifted from that singing whisper to a jangle of tinny bells, I felt my stomach begin to loosen as my limbs grew heavy. I had to make it to the office. I could lock the door, and even if my boss wasn’t there, I could call for help. I…

The senior M.E. was laying on the floor outside the door to the office, unconscious, his body shuddering in some kind of small seizure that echoed the ringing of the bells. Dropping to my knees, I felt my own limbs spasming as I crawled toward the door. If I could just get inside…If I could just make it inside….

And then everything went dark.

When I woke up, my phone said that about ten minutes had passed. Pushing myself up, I saw that I’d almost made it to the door and the unconscious man next to it. I checked his pulse and breathing, and both were fine. He was unconscious, but stable, and as I dialed 911, I realized that the music had stopped. Everything was quiet.

They said emergency services would be there in less than five minutes, and my first thought was to just stay with the senior M.E. until they arrived. But then what I’d seen in the exam room came back to me. I had to have imagined it, that body making itself whole…that wasn’t possible. The music had some kind of hallucinatory effect. Maybe it was some secret military shit, who knew. But dead bodies didn’t heal themselves, and I needed to get my shit straight before the cops got here and I started talking crazy.

So I forced myself to go back down to the exam room, my heart fighting to get loose as I pushed open the door. I just had to see that the body was still there, unplug the usb drive from my computer, and then I’d go back to the office.

The body was gone.

Sucking in a breath, I looked all around the room, but there was no sign of anything out-of-place. I shot a look out at the hallway behind me, but there was nothing there. Head pounding, I stepped inside, walking quickly across to my computer and reaching for the usb stick when I saw the player change.

Now Playing: E:\Song\7.mp3

And then I heard my own voice echoing through the room.

I work at a medical examiner’s office in a large metropolitan area in the United States. You’ll have to excuse the vagueness, but I value my job and safety. My safety is also the reason why I’m recording my recounting of what happened in the first place. I’m not sure what to do next...

Snatching the usb drive from the laptop, I threw it into the sealed container we use for biohazard disposal. I was done, done with all of this. I was going to make sure that my boss was okay and then I was leaving. They could check the cameras in the hall to find out who had stolen the body or…however it had gotten out of there. I was going to play ignorant. Forget about the usb and the music, the healing corpse and hearing my voice say words I didn’t remember ever saying on a recording I’ve never made.

It all went smoothly enough. The EMTs arrived first and the senior M.E. woke up at the first sniff of smelling salts, looking confused but no worse for wear. It still took hours until we were able to leave, but the cops had seemed momentarily satisfied that someone had knocked us out and taken the burned body that had come in that evening. There were no cameras in the exam room, so they couldn’t know the rest unless I told them, particularly when my boss seemed to remember little after us first receiving the body.

It was well after midnight before I made it home, and after a long shower I climbed into bed with little hope of ever actually falling asleep. It would have helped if I’d turned off the lights, but I wasn’t quite able to.

I woke up to the sound of something sliding out from underneath my bed. Letting out a small scream, I saw myself, tufts of hair growing back in among other patches of black and red scalp. The eyes were bloodshot and sunken, but healed enough that they could focus on me clearly as this other me began to smile. A broken, bloody smile full of new teeth slowly pushing past the gums and the broken ruins that had been there before—pale white tombstones in red earth that’s gone sour.

Screaming louder, I try to back away, but its too fast and strong. It pulls itself up onto the bed and pushes me down, digging its grey fingernails into my cheeks as I struggle and squeal. It’s still naked, but there are only traces of the fire now, and down its center I can barely make out the pink ghost of my incision a few hours before. My mind is teetering now, balanced between self-preservation and buckling to the growing weight of madness as the air is forced from my lungs by his weight on me.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. It may look like me, but its far stronger, and in a matter of moments I’m bound to the bed with bedsheets and its placidly picking through my clothes before selecting something to wear. When it leaves the bedroom, I have hope it will just go away and leave me alone, but no. It’s in the other room. Talking. Using my voice, saying the words I heard on the seventh file and then going on, telling about last night and all that happened, even going into what is happening now while I struggle to get free. Using my thoughts, my words, though I’ve never spoke them aloud.

And then it stops for a moment and comes back into the bedroom, smiling a whole smile. Smirking down at me as I piss myself with fear and start crying, begging for it to let me go. Instead it just laughs and starts narrating again. Telling the recorder…my recorder I use during autopsies…what will happen next.

He will take me out to the woods, and there he will dig a shallow grave. The place is near an old cattle fence, and it only takes a few minutes for him to strip off a line of rusted barb wire to swaddle me in. A patch of my chest will stay free from sharp metal, because that’s where he’ll sit as he grabs my cheeks and tries to pry my mouth open. When I resist, he doesn’t miss a beat. He just picks up a rock and breaks in my teeth until it doesn’t matter if I fight. He can still fit the USB stick in, sliding it down my throat until I swallow.

Then he’ll wait awhile, just watching me cry and snot and shit myself as he hums along with the gentle music of some unseen star. Its night by the time I can smell the gasoline he’s siphoned from my truck. It’s cold on my skin as it splashes over me, making me struggle and scream when I thought I didn’t have any fight or noise left. I’ll beg again at the end, mind half gone, trying to explain to him that this can’t be happening. He is dead, which means he can’t be alive. And all this has already happened, which means it can’t happen again. And he’s me, but that can’t be. There can’t be two of us, can there?

When he pops the match in the night of the woods, his face is terrible and whole and familiar. If not for the past two days and the cruel look on his face, I’d think I was looking into a mirror. I recoil as he draws closer, and not just from the flame. He’s smiling, but there is a coldness there that is somehow worse than the blazing heat I know is about to come.

“You’re right you know.”

I feel a moment of uncertain hope. Maybe I’ve misunderstood something. But no. I know what is coming because he’s already told me. Line for line, thought for thought, word for word, its been recorded hours before as I listened. Despite myself, I can’t help but say the lines he told me I’d say.

“Right about what? That this can’t be real? Is this all a bad dream?”

He lets out a chuckle. The flame is to his fingertips now, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. “No, no. The other part.” Leaning down next to my face, he set my cheek on fire as he whispers in my ear.

“There is only one of us.”

 

---

Credits

It’s Coin-Operated

 

I woke up later than I expected, the sun shining on my face through the only bedroom window not covered by a blind. Had Herbie not cried since…when? I sat up slowly and picked up the baby monitor. It was on, and I could see the black and white image of his crib, his small form still beneath the blue blanket my mother had given him. I began to feel uneasy as I thought back to the night before.

I…I remembered putting him down at eleven and then checking on him at midnight before heading to bed, but usually he would wake me up between three and four and again between six and eight. I looked at my phone. It was ten fifteen. Had he really slept through the night for once, or had I slept through him crying?

Or was something wrong?

Pulling back the sheets, I jumped up, my heart pounding in time with my steps as I ran down the hall to his room. The house was so silent, and when I went into the nursery, the instinct that something was wrong just grew stronger. The room felt empty and cold.

Looking over into the crib, I was reaching out to pull back the blanket when I stopped myself. I could already see the rise and fall of his chest, and his face was unblemished by discomfort or bad dreams. He was sleeping well and peacefully, and here I was about to wake him up instead of being grateful for a few hours peace.

I was about to ease back out and go make some coffee when I heard a funny little snoring sound. Herbie had never snored before, though I guessed there was a first time for everything, especially with a three-month old baby. Still, I felt a new twist of worry. What if he was getting sick, and that wasn’t a snore, it was a wheeze? Wincing at the idea of disturbing him, I gently pulled back the blanket and picked him up.

He didn’t stir, his expression not changing from the placid mask of someone lost deep in slumber. This worried me more, as he normally woke up as soon as I touched him, but I held my fear in check as I eased him to my shoulder and put my ear to his face.

It didn’t sound like a wheeze, but it wasn’t a snore either, exactly. It was a thinner, more rhythmic sound that grew quiet and then louder, but was always there. Still thinking about congestion, I lifted Herbie up a bit and put my ear to his chest. The sound was clearer here, a whirring thrum that seemed to vibrate from somewhere in his core. That wasn’t right at all. I needed to call the doctor and carry…

That’s when I felt the hard place on his back.

My fingers had just brushed it, but the wrongness of it was immediately obvious. Under his onesie, right in the middle of his back, was a long, flat hardness that was cool to the touch. What was that? Laying him back down on his stomach, I pulled the onesie down as my breath caught in my throat.

It was a coin slot.

A metal coin slot, like you might find on an old-fashioned machine at one of those antique arcades or fairs. I reached out and touched the edges of it, thinking somehow it had gotten stuck to him, but no. It was flush against the flesh of the baby’s back, hard brass grown seamlessly into soft, pink skin. My mind was reeling, torn between confusion and fear and the growing realization that Herbie still hadn’t woken up.

That’s when I noticed the small gray envelope jutting out from the tangle of blanket nearby. Plucking it out, I felt the weight of something small and hard inside, and when I opened it, a thin silver coin tumbled out into my palm. Still in shock, I turned it over in my hand, studying it. One side was embossed with the face of a smiling woman crowned with a corona of sunlight. The other side showed the same woman, her thin face hard and sinister as she glared up at the moon. My eyes went back to Herbie and then to the envelope, where I could see a thin line of cramped writing on the inside of the upper flap.

This is better. It’s coin-operated.

I started to shudder, the envelope fluttering from my hand as I picked Herbie up again and began to rub his face and his arms, his legs and his feet, desperately crooning for him to wake up, to get up now. It was time to wake up and quit playing this joke. He just lay limply in my arms, purring that strange rusty-sounding snore without stirring at all.

I put him back down, tears blurring my vision as I tried to decide what to do. I should call 911. He must be sick, or I was crazy, and either way, we needed help. But…what if this was real? And what if using the coin fixed things somehow?

I hadn’t remembered dropping the coin, but after a moment of panic I found it on top of the blanket, gleaming dully as I held it in my hand. This was all insane, like some kind of nightmare. But maybe if I played by the rules, I’d wake up and everything would be okay.

So I turned Herbie back over and tugged down his onesie again. The coin slot was still there, cool to the touch and solidly real. Holding my breath, I put the coin up to the opening and dropped it in.

There was a muffled clink! and then the whirring snore grew louder for a moment before turning into a yawning sigh. Herbie turned his head and tried to push himself over as he began to wake. I let out a gasp and picked him up, looking into his face and finding his eyes. He was looking back at me, his expression drowsy but interested as he gave me what might have been a slight smile.

He was okay. He was okay and I was just messed up or…but no. The coin slot was still back there. And I could still hear a low-frequency whirring coming from inside him somewhere. Not the wet beating of a heart, but the dry orbits of an intricate clockwork.

My skin went cold as I eased the thing back down into the crib. It tried to hold on to me, but I gently pushed its grasping hands away. I…I didn’t know what this thing was, but it wasn’t my baby. Turning, I started out of the room. I’d get my phone and call Mom and then I’d go looking for Herbie. Maybe he was still in the house, but I had a feeling he was gone. Someone had taken him and left that envelope, left that thing in…

“Mommy?”

I froze, turning around slowly as Herbie’s face peered at me over the edge of the crib. How was that possible? It would have had to jump several inches and pull itself up to the edge, and Herbie was a long time from that or being able to form words.

“Mommy?” The tone was harder now, almost accusing, and my baby’s face was drawing down into a pouting frown.

I felt anger mixing with my fear as I took a step forward. “I’m not your mommy. Whatever you are, you aren’t mine.” The thing froze for a moment, and I had the thought that maybe it had broken or wound down. But then its cheek jumped as it began to pull itself over the edge. “I am. I’m your baby.” Grunting, it tugged its belly over the railing and flopped down onto the ground. Despite myself, I felt a moment of horrified panic that it had hurt itself. A moment later, the panic turned to terror as its limbs rotated with a whir and it flipped itself over and began to crab-walk toward me. “Come hold me, Mommy.”

I was back-peddling now, trying to close the door before it reached me, but it was too fast, leaping forward through the closing crack and landing on my chest. It squealed in my face with a sound like grinding gears as sparks glowed from somewhere down in its throat. Screaming, I grabbed it and slammed it into the wall and then the floor before kicking it away from me.

The meat of it was ruined now, the fleshy covering ripped and torn in a dozen places to reveal bits of gleaming metal and coiled wire, gears and axles flailing disconsolately as their places in the orderly whole were disrupted and destroyed. It was dying now, but even still it called to me, crawling to me as it clicked together pink gums made of thin strips of beaten tin.

“Mo…my. I’m your…bab…nowww…”

I was terrified to approach it, but my revulsion and rage was growing again, and I needed to make sure it was dead and stayed that way. Darting forward, I stomped on it, once, twice, and then a final third time, and that’s when the silver coin popped free from the mechanical ruin, rolling down the hall a few feet before spiraling and falling down, the evil face of the moonlight queen glaring up into the sky or perhaps toward me.

I was half-crazy as I searched the nursery and then the house for Herbie. When I saw no sign of him, I called Mom, screaming and crying into the phone before hanging up. I’d upset her, but it couldn’t be helped. She sounded as confused as I was, but I felt sure she’d call the police like I asked. I had other things to do.

I’d had the thought that I could go back and look at the recorded footage from the baby monitor. See what had happened to Herbie and when. My hands were shaking as I picked it up from beside the bed and tapped on the screen. It always kept the last 24 hours, so I jumped back ten hours and then started fast-forwarding through the footage. I found what I was looking for at 3:15.

A pair of small figures appeared from the shadows in the far corner of the room. There was no door or window there, so I wasn’t sure where they’d really come from, but I was more concerned with what they were doing. Helping each other up, they pulled themselves over into the crib. One of them scooped up Herbie even as the other was opening a dark sack and pulling his replacement out onto the bed. Weeping, I watched as Herbie began to wake and struggle, a tiny, furred hand covering his mouth before he could let out a frightened wail. The other had placed the blanket over the fake and was now opening up the sack again even as the one holding my baby stuffed Herbie inside. In a moment, they were back over the side of the crib and gone into the dark.

I dropped the monitor onto the bed and ran back into the nursery to check it. Maybe there was a hole in the wall or a secret door. Something I could use to follow wherever they had taken my baby. I just needed to check every inch of the…

Nursery.

Except it wasn’t a nursery anymore. The room was bare—no crib, no toys or changing table, no stacks of books or rocking chair. Even the walls were the stark grey they’d been when I first moved in two years before. How was any of this happening?

Stumbling back into the hall, I saw that the ruined baby-thing was gone too. There was no sign of its broken bits or torn disguise. There was no sign of anything, not even…

The coin.

My heart leapt as I saw it still dully gleaming from its resting place on the carpet, the woman’s face still harsh and displeased in the silver moonlight of some distant night. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it was proof. Proof of what had happened. Proof that someone had taken my Herbie.

I let out a small scream as the doorbell rang. The police! They were here and I could show them the coin and the video and they’d help me get my baby back.

When I opened the door, I saw it was Mom instead, her face drawn and pale as she looked at me. “I…Brenda…are you all right?”

I stared at her, incredulous. “Of course not! They took him! They took him and we have to get him back! Did you call the cops?”

Her face drew down further into a frown. “No…No, honey. I didn’t. You weren’t making any sense. You were talking about a baby? What baby?”

Stepping back, I felt a chill run up my spine. “My baby. Herbie. They took him.”

She followed me inside, shaking her head slightly. “Baby, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t have a baby. You never have.”

I could barely breathe. “That…That’s not true. I have a baby. Little Herbie. What’s wrong with you?” I started to cry again. “They…they took him, and tried to trick me or trade with me. They gave me a little mechanical baby that looked like him, but it wasn’t him, and then it attacked me, and then I saw them take him, and the room was a nursery, but now its not, and I need you to know this. I need you to remember and help me find him.”

My mother stepped forward and swept me up in a hug, stroking my hair as I wept against her shoulder. “There, there. I think you’re sick, honey. We need to get you some help. It’ll be okay.” I’d wrapped my arms around her neck, but now I started to recoil. How could she not remember him? I was still pulling away when my fingertips brushed against something in the back of her neck.

It was a coin slot.

I froze, staring at her as she smiled at me, her eyes jumping slightly to the left and right as she watched me, holding me tighter with the softly ratcheting ticks of some internal metronome. “This is better. Just accept it.”

She was too strong for me to push away, so I dug into my pocket instead. Found the coin that rested there, caressing the queen’s cheek as I pulled it free and reached around its neck to the coin slot imbedded into whatever it called a spine. I saw its eyes widen as I dropped the coin in.

And then it began to scream.

 

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Credits